History Of The Christian Church

Complete Eight Volumes In One

by

Philip Schaff

Contents

VOLUME I. APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY A.D. 1–100.

VOLUME II. ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 100–325.

VOLUME III. NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 311-600.

VOLUME IV. MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY FROM A.D. 590 TO 1517.

VOLUME V. THE MIDDLE AGES GROM GREGORY VII., 1049, to BONIFACE VIII., 1294.

VOLUME VI. THE MIDDLE AGES FROM BONIFACE VIII., 1294 TO THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1517.

VOLUME VII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY - THE GERMAN REFORMATION

VOLUME VIII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY - THE SWISS REFORMATION

VOLUME I. APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY A.D. 1–100.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

ADDENDA

PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD

JESUS CHRIST.

THE APOSTOLIC AGE

ST. PETER AND THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

ST. PAUL AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GENTILES.

THE GREAT TRIBULATION. (MATT. 24:21.)

THE CONSOLIDATION OF JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY.

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

WORSHIP IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.

ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

THEOLOGY OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

VOLUME II. ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 100–325.

SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.

LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.

ORGANIZATION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH.

CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.

CHRISTIAN ART.

THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS.

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.

ASCETIC TENDENCIES.

MONTANISM.

THE HERESIES OF THE ANTE-NICENE AGE.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY.

ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE OF THE ANTE-NICENE AGE, AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE CHURCH-FATHERS.

APPENDIX TO THE REVISED EDITION, 1884.

VOLUME III. NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 311-600

DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

THE LITERARY TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER GREEK AND ROMAN HEATHENISM.

ALLIANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC MORALS AND RELIGION.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONASTICISM.

THE HIERARCHY AND POLITY OF THE CHURCH.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE AND SCHISMS.

PUBLIC WORSHIP AND RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS AND CEREMONIES.

CHRISTIAN ART.

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECUMENICAL ORTHODOXY.

CHURCH FATHERS, AND THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

LIST OF POPES AND EMPERORS

APPENDIX TO THE REVISED EDITION, 1884.

VOLUME IV. MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY FROM A.D. 590 TO 1517.

THE CHURCH AMONG THE BARBARIANS FROM GREGORY I. TO GREGORY VII.

MOHAMMEDANISM IN ITS RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY.136

THE PAPAL HIERARCHY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

THE CONFLICT OF THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCHES AND THEIR SEPARATION.

MORALS AND RELIGION.

MONASTICISM.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

CHURCH AND STATE.

WORSHIP AND CEREMONIES.

DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES.

HERETICAL SECTS.

THE STATE OF LEARNING.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS.

VOLUME V. THE MIDDLE AGES GROM GREGORY VII., 1049, to BONIFACE VIII., 1294

PREFACE

THE PAPAL THEOCRACY IN CONFLICT WITH THE SECULAR POWER.

THE HILDEBRANDIAN POPES. A.D. 1049–1073.

GREGORY VII, 1073–1085.

THE PAPACY FROM THE DEATH OF GREGORY VII. TO THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS. A.D. 1085–1122.

THE PAPACY FROM THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS TO INNOCENT III. A.D. 1122–1198.

INNOCENT III. AND HIS AGE. A.D. 1198–1216.

THE PAPACY FROM THE DEATH OF INNOCENT III. TO BONIFACE VIII. 1216–1294.

THE CRUSADES.

THE MONASTIC ORDERS.

MISSIONS.

HERESY AND ITS SUPPRESSION.

UNIVERSITIES AND CATHEDRALS.

SCHOLASTIC AND MYSTIC THEOLOGY.

SCHOLASTICISM AT ITS HEIGHT.

THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM.

POPE AND CLERGY.

POPULAR WORSHIP AND SUPERSTITION.

VOLUME VI. THE MIDDLE AGES FROM BONIFACE VIII., 1294 TO THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1517

PREFACE

THE DECLINE OF THE PAPACY AND THE PREPARATION FOR MODERN CHRISTIANITY.

THE DECLINE OF THE PAPACY AND THE AVIGNON EXILE.

THE PAPAL SCHISM AND THE REFORMATORY COUNCILS. 1378–1449.

LEADERS OF CATHOLIC THOUGHT.

THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

REFORMERS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

THE LAST POPES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 1447–1521

HERESY AND WITCHCRAFT.

THE RENAISSANCE.

THE PULPIT AND POPULAR PIETY.

THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

VOLUME VII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY - THE GERMAN REFORMATION

PREFACE.

THE REFORMATION. FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648.

LUTHER’S TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, A.D. l483–1517.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE PUBLICATION OF LUTHER’S THESES TO THE DIET OF WORMS, A.D. 1517–1521.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE DIET OF WORMS

THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION FROM THE PEASANTS’ WAR TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, A.D. 1525–1530.

PROPAGATION AND PERSECUTION OF PROTESTANTISM IN

THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION BETWEEN 1526 AND 1529.

THE DIET AND CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG. A.D. 1530.

VOLUME VIII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY - THE SWISS REFORMATION

PREFACE.

INTRODUCTION.

ZWINGLI’S TRAINING.

THE REFORMATION IN ZURICH. 1519–1526.

SPREAD OF THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND.

THE CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND REFORMED CANTONS.

THE PERIOD OF CONSOLIDATION.

THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND or THE CALVINISTIC MOVEMENT.

JOHN CALVIN AND HIS WORK.

FROM FRANCE TO SWITZERLAND.

CALVIN’S FIRST SOJOURN AND LABORS IN GENEVA. 1536–1538.

CALVIN IN GERMANY. FROM 1538–1541.

CALVIN’S SECOND SOJOURN AND LABORS AT GENEVA. 1541–1564.

CONSTITUTION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH OF GENEVA.

CALVIN’S THEOLOGY.

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES.

SERVETUS: HIS LIFE. OPINIONS, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION.

CALVIN ABROAD.

THE CLOSING SCENES IN CALVIN’S LIFE.

THEODORE BEZA.

APPENDIX. LITERATURE ON THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE

VOLUME I. APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY A.D. 1–100.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

As I appear before the public with a new edition of my Church History, I feel more than ever the difficulty and responsibility of a task which is well worthy to occupy the whole time and strength of a long life, and which carries in it its own rich reward. The true historian of Christianity is yet to come. But short as I have fallen of my own ideal, I have done my best, and shall rejoice if my efforts stimulate others to better and more enduring work.

History should be written from the original sources of friend and foe, in the spirit of truth and love, "sine ira et studio," "with malice towards none, and charity for all," in clear, fresh, vigorous style, under the guidance of the twin parables of the mustard seed and leaven, as a book of life for instruction, correction, encouragement, as the best exposition and vindication of Christianity. The great and good Neander, "the father of Church History"—first an Israelite without guile hoping for the Messiah, then a Platonist longing for the realization of his ideal of righteousness, last a Christian in head and heart—made such a history his life-work, but before reaching the Reformation he was interrupted by sickness, and said to his faithful sister: "Hannchen, I am weary; let us go home; good night!"  And thus he fell gently asleep, like a child, to awake in the land where all problems of history are solved.

When, after a long interruption caused by a change of professional duties and literary labors, I returned to the favorite studies of my youth, I felt the necessity, before continuing the History to more recent times, of subjecting the first volume to a thorough revision, in order to bring it up to the present state of investigation. We live in a restless and stirring age of discovery, criticism, and reconstruction. During the thirty years which have elapsed since the publication of my separate "History of the Apostolic Church," there has been an incessant activity in this field, not only in Germany, the great workshopof critical research, but in all other Protestant countries. Almost every inch of ground has been disputed and defended with a degree of learning, acumen, and skill such as were never spent before on the solution of historical problems.

In this process of reconstruction the first volume has been more than doubled in size and grown into two volumes. The first embraces Apostolic, the second post-Apostolic or ante-Nicene Christianity. The first volume is larger than my separate "History of the Apostolic Church," but differs from it in that it is chiefly devoted to the theology and literature, the other to the mission work and spiritual life of that period. I have studiously avoided repetition and seldom looked into the older book. On two points I have changed my opinion—the second Roman captivity of Paul (which I am disposed to admit in the interest of the Pastoral Epistles), and the date of the Apocalypse (which I now assign, with the majority of modern critics, to the year 68 or 69 instead of 95, as before).1

I express my deep obligation to my friend, Dr. Ezra Abbot, a scholar of rare learning and microscopic accuracy, for his kind and valuable assistance in reading the proof and suggesting improvements.

The second volume, likewise thoroughly revised and partly rewritten, is in the hands of the printer; the third requires a few changes. Two new volumes, one on the History of Mediaeval Christianity, and one on the Reformation (to the Westphalian Treaty and the Westminster Assembly, 1648), are in an advanced stage of preparation.

May the work in this remodelled shape find as kind and indulgent readers as when it first appeared. My highest ambition in this sceptical age is to strengthen the immovable historical foundations of Christianity and its victory over the world.

Philip Schaff

Union Theological Seminary, New York,

October,1882

FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

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Encouraged by the favorable reception of my "History of the Apostolic Church," I now offer to the public a History of the Primitive Church from the birth of Christ to the reign of Constantine, as an independent and complete work in itself, and at the same time as the first volume of a general history of Christianity, which I hope, with the help of God, to bring down to the present age.

The church of the first three centuries, or the ante-Nicene age, possesses a peculiar interest for Christians of all denominations, and has often been separately treated, by Eusebius, Mosheim, Milman, Kaye, Baur, Hagenbach, and other distinguished historians. It is the daughter of Apostolic Christianity, which itself constitutes the first and by far the most important chapter in its history, and the common mother of Catholicism and Protestantism, though materially differing from both. It presents a state of primitive simplicity and purity unsullied by contact with the secular power, but with this also, the fundamental forms of heresy and corruption, which reappear from time to time under new names and aspects, but must serve, in the overruling providence of God, to promote the cause of truth and righteousness. It is the heroic age of the church, and unfolds before us the sublime spectacle of our holy religion in intellectual and moral conflict with the combined superstition, policy, and wisdom of ancient Judaism and Paganism; yet growing in persecution, conquering in death, and amidst the severest trials giving birth to principles and institutions which, in more matured form, still control the greater part of Christendom.

Without the least disposition to detract from the merits of my numerous predecessors, to several of whom I feel deeply indebted, I have reason to hope that this new attempt at a historical reproduction of ancient Christianity will meet a want in our theological literature and commend itself, both by its spirit and method, and by presenting with the author’s own labors the results of the latest German and English research, to therespectful attention of the American student. Having no sectarian ends to serve, I have confined myself to the duty of a witness—to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; always remembering, however, that history has a soul as well as a body, and that the ruling ideas and general principles must be represented no less than the outward facts and dates. A church history without the life of Christ glowing through its pages could give us at best only the picture of a temple stately and imposing from without, but vacant and dreary within, a mummy in praying posture perhaps and covered with trophies, but withered and unclean: such a history is not worth the trouble of writing or reading. Let the dead bury their dead; we prefer to live among the living, and to record the immortal thoughts and deeds of Christ in and through his people, rather than dwell upon the outer hulls, the trifling accidents and temporary scaffolding of history, or give too much prominence to Satan and his infernal tribe, whose works Christ came to destroy.

The account of the apostolic period, which forms the divine-human basis of the whole structure of history, or the ever-living fountain of the unbroken stream of the church, is here necessarily short and not intended to supersede my larger work, although it presents more than a mere summary of it, and views the subject in part under new aspects. For the history of the second period, which constitutes the body of this volume, large use has been made of the new sources of information recently brought to light, such as the Syriac and Armenian Ignatius, and especially the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus. The bold and searching criticism of modern German historians as applied to the apostolic and post-apostolic literature, though often arbitrary and untenable in its results, has nevertheless done good service by removing old prejudices, placing many things in a new light, and conducing to a comprehensive and organic view of the living process and gradual growth of ancient Christianity in its distinctive character, both in its unity with, and difference from, the preceding age of the apostles and the succeeding systems of Catholicism and Protestantism.

And now I commit this work to the great Head of the church with the prayer that, under his blessing, it may aid in promoting a correct knowledge of his heavenly kingdom on earth, and in setting forth its history as a book if life, a storehouse of wisdom and piety, and surest test of his own promise to his people: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

P. S.

Theological Seminary, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania,

November, 8, 1858

PREFACE TO THIRD REVISION

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The continued demand for my Church History lays upon me the grateful duty of keeping it abreast of the times. I have, therefore, submitted this and the other volumes (especially the second) to another revision and brought the literature down to the latest date, as the reader will see by glancing at pages 2, 35, 45, 51–53, 193, 411, 484, 569, 570, etc. The changes have been effected by omissions and condensations, without enlarging the size. The second volume is now passing through the fifth edition, and the other volumes will follow rapidly.

This is my last revision. If any further improvements should be necessary during my lifetime, I shall add them in a separate appendix.

I feel under great obligation to the reading public which enables me to perfect my work. The interest in Church History is steadily increasing in our theological schools and among the rising generation of scholars, and promises good results for the advancement of our common Christianity.

The Author

New York, January, 1890.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

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Literature

C. Sagittarius: Introductio in historiam ecclesiasticam. Jen. 1694.

F. Walch: Grundsätze der zur K. Gesch. nöthigen Vorbereitungslehren u. Bücherkenntnisse. 3d ed. Giessen, 1793.

Flügge: Einleitung in das Studium u. die Liter. der K. G. Gött. 1801.

John G. Dowling: An Introduction to the Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History, attempted in an account of the progress, and a short notice of the sources of the history of the Church. London, 1838.

Möhler (R. C.): Einleitung in die K. G. 1839 ("Verm. Schriften," ed. Döllinger, II. 261 sqq.).

Kliefoth: Einleitung in die Dogmengeschichte. Parchim & Ludwigslust, 1839.

Philip Schaff: What is Church History?  A Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development. Philad. 1846.

H B. Smith: Nature and Worth of the Science of Church History. Andover, 1851.

E. P. Humphrey: lnaugural Address, delivered at the Danville Theol. Seminary. Cincinnati, 1854.

R. Turnbull: Christ in History; or, the Central Power among Men. Bost. 1854, 2d ed. 1860.

W. G. T. Shedd: Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Andover, Mass., 1856.

R. D. Hitchcock: The True Idea and Uses of Church History. N. York, 1856.

C. Bunsen: Gott in der Geschichte oder der Fortschritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. Bd. I. Leipz. 1857. (Erstes Buch. Allg. Einleit. p. 1–134.)  Engl. Transl.: God in History. By S. Winkworth. Lond. 1868. 3 vols.

A. P. Stanley: Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Eccles. History  Lond. 1857. (Also incorporated in his History of the Eastern Church 1861.)

Goldwin Smith: Lectures on the Study of History, delivered in Oxford, 1859–’61. Oxf. and Lond. (republished in N. York) 1866.

J. Gust. Droysen: Grundriss der Historik. Leipz. 1868; new ed. 1882.

C. de Smedt (R. C.): Introductio generalis ad historiam ecclesiasticam critice tractandam. Gandavi (Ghent), 1876 (533 pp.).

E. A. Freeman: The Methods of Historical Study. Lond 1886.

O. Lorenz: Geschichtswissenschaft. Berlin, 1886.

Jos. Nirschl (R. C.): Propädeutik der Kirchengeschichte. Mainz, 1888 (352 pp.).

On the philosophy of history in general, see the works of Herder (Ideen zur Philosophie der Gesch. der Menschheit), Fred. Schlegel, Hegel (1840, transl. by Sibree, 1870), Hermann (1870), Rocholl (1878), Flint (The Philosophy of History in Europe. Edinb., 1874, etc.), Lotze (Mikrokosmus, bk. viith; 4th ed. 1884; Eng. transl. by Elizabeth Hamilton and E. E. C. Jones, 1885, 3d ed. 1888). A philosophy of church history is a desideratum. Herder and Lotze come nearest to it

A fuller introduction, see in Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church; with a General Introduction to Ch. H. (N. York, 1853), pp. 1–134.

§ 1. Nature of Church History.

History has two sides, a divine and a human. On the part of God, it is his revelation in the order of time (as the creation is his revelation in the order of space), and the successive unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom, justice, and mercy, looking to his glory and the eternal happiness of mankind. On the part of man, history is the biography of the human race, and the gradual development, both normal and abnormal, of all its physical, intellectual, and moral forces to the final consummation at the general judgment, with its eternal rewards and punishments. The idea of universal history presupposes the Christian idea of the unity of God, and the unity and common destiny of men, and was unknown to ancient Greece and Rome. A view of history which overlooks or undervalues the divine factor starts from deism and consistently runs into atheism; while the opposite view, which overlooks the free agency of man and his moral responsibility and guilt, is essentially fatalistic and pantheistic.

From the human agency we may distinguish the Satanic, which enters as a third power into the history of the race. In the temptation of Adam in Paradise, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, and at every great epoch, Satan appears as the antagonist of God, endeavoring to defeat the plan of redemption and the progress of Christ’s kingdom, and using weak and wicked men for his schemes, but is always defeated in the end by the superior wisdom of God.

The central current and ultimate aim of universal history is the Kingdom of God established by Jesus Christ. This is the grandest and most comprehensive institution in the world, as vast as humanity and as enduring as eternity. All other institutions are made subservient to it, and in its interest the whole world is governed. It is no after-thought of God, no subsequent emendation of the plan of creation, but it is the eternal forethought, the controlling idea, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his ways and works. The first Adam is a type of the second Adam; creation looks to redemption as the solution of its problems. Secular history, far from controlling sacred history, is controlled by it, must directly or indirectly subserve its ends, and can only be fully understood in the central light of Christian truth and the plan of salvation. The Father, who directs the history of the world, "draws to the Son," who rules the history of the church, and the Son leads back to the Father, that "God may be all in all." "All things," says St. Paul, "were created through Christ and unto Christ: and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence." Col. 1:16–18. "The Gospel," says John von Müller, summing up the final result of his lifelong studies in history, "is the fulfilment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpreter of all revolutions, the key of all seeming contradictions of the physical and moral worlds; it is life—it is immortality."

The history of the church is the rise and progress of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, for the glory of God and the salvation of the world. It begins with the creation of Adam, and with that promise of the serpent-bruiser, which relieved the loss of the paradise of innocence by the hope of future redemption from the curse of sin. It comes down through the preparatory revelations under the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets, to the immediate forerunner of the Saviour, who pointed his followers to the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. But this part of its course was only introduction. Its proper starting-point is the incarnation of the Eternal Word, who dwelt among us and revealed his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and next to this, the miracle of the first Pentecost, when the Church took her place as a Christian institution, filled with the Spirit of the glorified Redeemer and entrusted with the conversion of all nations. Jesus Christ, the God-Man and Saviour of the world, is the author of the new creation, the soul and the head of the church, which is his body and his bride. In his person and work lies all the fulness of the Godhead and of renewed humanity, the whole plan of redemption, and the key of all history from the creation of man in the image of God to the resurrection of the body unto everlasting life.

This is the objective conception of church history.

In the subjective sense of the word, considered as theological science and art, church history is the faithful and life-like description of the origin and progress of this heavenly kingdom. It aims to reproduce in thought and to embody in language its outward and inward development down to the present time. It is a continuous commentary on the Lord’s twin parables of the mustard-seed and of the leaven. It shows at once how Christianity spreads over the world, and how it penetrates, transforms, and sanctifies the individual and all the departments and institutions of social life. It thus embraces not only the external fortunes of Christendom, but more especially her inward experience, her religious life, her mental and moral activity, her conflicts with the ungodly world, her sorrows and sufferings, her joys and her triumphs over sin and error. It records the deeds of those heroes of faith "who subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the months of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens."

From Jesus Christ, since his manifestation in the flesh, an unbroken stream of divine light and life has been and is still flowing, and will continue to flow, in ever-growing volume through the waste of our fallen race; and all that is truly great and good and holy in the annals of church history is due, ultimately, to the impulse of his spirit. He is the fly-wheel in the world’s progress. But he works upon the world through sinful and fallible men, who, while as self-conscious and free agents they are accountable for all their actions, must still, willing or unwilling, serve the great purpose of God. As Christ, in the days of his flesh, was bated, mocked, and crucified, his church likewise is assailed and persecuted by the powers of darkness. The history of Christianity includes therefore a history of Antichrist. With an unending succession of works of saving power and manifestations of divine truth and holiness, it uncovers also a fearful mass of corruption and error. The church militant must, from its very nature, be at perpetual warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil, both without and within. For as Judas sat among the apostles, so "the man of sin" sits in the temple of God; and as even a Peter denied the Lord, though he afterwards wept bitterly and regained his holy office, so do many disciples in all ages deny him in word and in deed.

But on the other hand, church history shows that God is ever stronger than Satan, and that his kingdom of light puts the kingdom of darkness to shame. The Lion of the tribe of Judah has bruised the head of the serpent. With the crucifixion of Christ his resurrection also is repeated ever anew in the history of his church on earth; and there has never yet been a day without a witness of his presence and power ordering all things according to his holy will. For he has received all power in heaven and in earth for the good of his people, and from his heavenly throne he rules even his foes. The infallible word of promise, confirmed by experience, assures us that all corruptions, heresies, and schisms must, under the guidance of divine wisdom and love, subserve the cause of truth, holiness, and peace; till, at the last judgment, Christ shall make his enemies his footstool, and rule undisputed with the sceptre of righteousness and peace, and his church shall realize her idea and destiny as "the fullness of him that filleth all in all."

Then will history itself, in its present form, as a struggling and changeful development, give place to perfection, and the stream of time come to rest in the ocean of eternity, but this rest will be the highest form of life and activity in God and for God.

§ 2. Branches of Church History.

The kingdom of Christ, in its principle and aim, is as comprehensive as humanity. It is truly catholic or universal, designed and adapted for all nations and ages, for all the powers of the soul, and all classes of society. It breathes into the mind, the heart, and the will a higher, supernatural life, and consecrates the family, the state, science, literature, art, and commerce to holy ends, till finally God becomes all in all. Even the body, and the whole visible creation, which groans for redemption from its bondage to vanity and for the glorious liberty of the children of God, shall share in this universal transformation; for we look for the resurrection of the body, and for the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. But we must not identify the kingdom of God with the visible church or churches, which are only its temporary organs and agencies, more or less inadequate, while the kingdom itself is more comprehensive, and will last for ever.

Accordingly, church history has various departments, corresponding to the different branches of secular history and of natural life. The principal divisions are:

I. The history of missions, or of the spread of Christianity among unconverted nations, whether barbarous or civilized. This work must continue, till "the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in," and "Israel shall be saved." The law of the missionary progress is expressed in the two parables of the grain of mustard-seed which grows into a tree, and of the leaven which gradually pervades the whole lump. The first parable illustrates the outward expansion, the second the all-penetrating and transforming power of Christianity. It is difficult to convert a nation; it is more difficult to train it to the high standard of the gospel; it is most difficult to revive and reform a dead or apostate church.

The foreign mission work has achieved three great conquests: first, the conversion of the elect remnant of the Jews, and of civilized Greeks and Romans, in the first three centuries; then the conversion of the barbarians of Northern and Western Europe, in the middle ages; and last, the combined efforts of various churches and societies for the conversion of the savage races in America, Africa, and Australia, and the semi-civilized nations of Eastern Asia, in our own time. The whole non-Christian world is now open to missionary labor, except the Mohammedan, which will likewise become accessible at no distant day.

The domestic or home mission work embraces the revival of Christian life in corrupt or neglected portions of the church in old countries, the supply of emigrants in new countries with the means of grace, and the labors, among the semi-heathenism populations of large cities. Here we may mention the planting of a purer Christianity among the petrified sects in Bible Lands, the labors of the Gustavus Adolphus Society, and the Inner mission of Germany, the American Home Missionary Societies for the western states and territories, the City Mission Societies in London, New York, and other fast-growing cities.

II. The history of Persecution by hostile powers; as by Judaism and Heathenism in the first three centuries, and by Mohammedanism in the middle age. This apparent repression of the church proves a purifying process, brings out the moral heroism of martyrdom, and thus works in the end for the spread and establishment of Christianity. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church."2  There are cases, however, where systematic and persistent persecution has crushed out the church or reduced it to a mere shadow, as in Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, under the despotism of the Moslems.

Persecution, like missions, is both foreign and domestic. Besides being assailed from without by the followers of false religions, the church suffers also from intestine wars and violence. Witness the religious wars in France, Holland, and England, the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, all of which grew out of the Protestant Reformation and the Papal Reaction; the crusade against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the massacre of the Huguenots, the dragonnades of Louis XIV., the crushing out of the Reformation in Bohemia, Belgium, and Southern Europe; but also, on the Protestant side, the persecution of Anabaptists, the burning of Servetus in Geneva the penal laws of the reign of Elizabeth against Catholic and Puritan Dissenters, the hanging of witches and Quakers in New England. More Christian blood has been shed by Christians than by heathens and Mohammedans.

The persecutions of Christians by Christians form the satanic chapters, the fiendish midnight scenes, in the history of the church. But they show also the gradual progress of the truly Christian spirit of religious toleration and freedom. Persecution exhausted ends in toleration, and toleration is a step to freedom. The blood of patriots is the price of civil, the blood of martyrs the price of religious liberty. The conquest is dear, the progress slow and often interrupted, but steady and irresistible. The principle of intolerance is now almost universally disowned in the Christian world, except by ultramontane Romanism (which indirectly reasserts it in the Papal Syllabus of 1864); but a ruling church, allied to the state, under the influence of selfish human nature, and, relying on the arm of flesh rather than the power of truth, is always tempted to impose or retain unjust restrictions on dissenting sects, however innocent and useful they may have proved to be.

In the United States all Christian denominations and sects are placed on a basis of equality before the law, and alike protected by the government in their property and right of public worship, yet self-supporting and self-governing; and, in turn, they strengthen the moral foundations of society by training loyal and virtuous citizens. Freedom of religion must be recognized as one of the inalienable rights of man, which lies in the sacred domain of conscience, beyond the restraint and control of politics, and which the government is bound to protect as much as any other fundamental right. Freedom is liable to abuse, and abuse may be punished. But Christianity is itself the parent of true freedom from the bondage of sin and error, and is the best protector and regulator of freedom.

III. The history of Church Government and Discipline. The church is not only an invisible communion of saints, but at the same time a visible body, needing organs, laws, and forms, to regulate its activity. Into this department of history fall the various forms of church polity: the apostolic, the primitive episcopal, the patriarchal, the papal, the consistorial, the presbyterial, the congregational, etc.; and the history of the law and discipline of the church, and her relation to the state, under all these forms.

IV. The history of Worship, or divine service, by which the church celebrates, revives, and strengthens her fellowship with her divine head. This falls into such subdivisions as the history of preaching, of catechisms, of liturgy, of rites and ceremonies, and of religious art, particularly sacred poetry and music.

The history of church government and the history of worship are often put together under the title of Ecclesiastical Antiquities or Archaeology, and commonly confined to the patristic age, whence most of the, Catholic institutions and usages of the church date their origin. But they may as well be extended to the formative period of Protestantism.

V. The history of Christian Life, or practical morality and religion: the exhibition of the distinguishing virtues and vices of different ages, of the development of Christian philanthropy, the regeneration of domestic life, the gradual abatement and abolition of slavery and other social evils, the mitigation and diminution of the horrors of war, the reform of civil law and of government, the spread of civil and religious liberty, and the whole progress of civilization, under the influence of Christianity.

VI. The history of Theology, or of Christian learning and literature. Each branch of theology—exegetical, doctrinal, ethical, historical, and practical—has a history of its own.

The history of doctrines or dogmas is here the most important, and is therefore frequently treated by itself. Its object is to show how the mind of the, church has gradually apprehended and unfolded the divine truths of revelation, how the teachings of scripture have been formulated and shaped into dogmas, and grown into creeds and confessions of faith, or systems of doctrine stamped with public authority. This growth of the church in the knowledge of the infallible word of God is a constant struggle against error, misbelief, and unbelief; and the history of heresies is an essential part of the history of doctrines.

Every important dogma now professed by the Christian church is the result of a severe conflict with error. The doctrine of the holy Trinity, for instance, was believed from the beginning, but it required, in addition to the preparatory labors of the ante-Nicene age, fifty years of controversy, in which the strongest intellects were absorbed, until it was brought to the clear expression of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Christological conflict was equally long and intense, until it was brought to a settlement by the council of Chalcedon. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a continual warfare with popery. The doctrinal symbols of the various churches, from the Apostles’ Creed down to the confessions of Dort and Westminster, and more recent standards, embody the results of the theological battles of the militant church.

The various departments of church history have not a merely external and mechanical, but an organic relation to each other, and form one living whole, and this relation the historian must show. Each period also is entitled to a peculiar arrangement, according to its character. The number, order, and extent of the different divisions must be determined by their actual importance at a given time.

§ 3. Sources of Church History.

The sources of church history, the data on which we rely for our knowledge, are partly divine, partly human. For the history of the kingdom of God from the creation to the close of the apostolic age, we have the inspired writings of the Old and New Testaments. But after the death of the apostles we have only human authorities, which of course cannot claim to be infallible. These human sources are partly written, partly unwritten.

I. The written sources include:

(a) Official documents of ecclesiastical and civil authorities: acts of councils and synods, confessions of faith, liturgies, church laws, and the official letters of popes, patriarchs, bishops, and representative bodies.

(b) Private writings of personal actors in the history: the works of the church fathers, heretics, and heathen authors, for the first six centuries; of the missionaries, scholastic and mystic divines, for the middle age; and of the reformers and their opponents, for the sixteenth century. These documents are the richest mines for the historian. They give history in its birth and actual movement. But they must be carefully sifted and weighed; especially the controversial writings, where fact is generally more or less adulterated with party spirit, heretical and orthodox.

(c) Accounts of chroniclers and historians, whether friends or enemies, who were eye-witnesses of what they relate. The value of these depends, of course, on the capacity and credibility of the authors, to be determined by careful criticism. Subsequent historians can be counted among the direct or immediate sources only so far as they have drawn from reliable and contemporary documents, which have either been wholly or partially lost, like many of Eusebius authorities for the period before Constantine, or are inaccessible to historians generally, as are the papal regesta and other documents of the Vatican library.

(d) Inscriptions, especially those on tombs and catacombs, revealing the faith and hope of Christians in times of persecution. Among the ruins of Egypt and Babylonia whole libraries have been disentombed and deciphered, containing mythological and religious records, royal proclamations, historical, astronomical, and poetical compositions, revealing an extinct civilization and shedding light on some parts of Old Testament history.

II. The Unwritten sources are far less numerous: church edifices, works of sculpture and painting, and other monuments, religious customs and ceremonies, very important for the history of worship and ecclesiastical art, and significant of the spirit of their age.3

The works of art are symbolical embodiments of the various types of Christianity. The plain symbols and crude sculptures of the catacombs correspond to the period of persecution; the basilicas to the Nicene age; the Byzantine churches to the genius of the Byzantine state-churchism; the Gothic cathedrals to the Romano-Germanic catholicism of the middle ages; the renaissance style to the revival of letters.

To come down to more recent times, the spirit of Romanism can be best appreciated amidst the dead and living monuments of Rome, Italy, and Spain. Lutheranism must be studied in Wittenberg, Northern Germany, and Scandinavia; Calvinism in Geneva, France, Holland, and Scotland; Anglicanism at Oxford, Cambridge, and London; Presbyterianism in Scotland and the United States; Congregationalism in England and New England. For in the mother countries of these denominations we generally find not only the largest printed and manuscript sources, but also the architectural, sculptural, sepulchral, and other monumental remains, the natural associations, oral traditions, and living representatives of the past, who, however they may have departed from the faith of their ancestors, still exhibit their national genius, social condition, habits, and customs—often in a far more instructive manner than ponderous printed volumes.

§ 4. Periods of Church History.

The purely chronological or annalistic method, though pursued by the learned Baronius and his continuators, is now generally abandoned. It breaks the natural flow of events, separates things which belong together, and degrades history to a mere chronicle.

The centurial plan, which prevailed from Flacius to Mosheim, is an improvement. It allows a much better view of the progress and connection of things. But it still imposes on the history a forced and mechanical arrangement; for the salient points or epochs very seldom coincide with the limits of our centuries. The rise of Constantine, for example, together with the union of church and state, dates from the year 311; that of the absolute papacy, in Hildebrand, from 1049; the Reformation from 1517; the peace of Westphalia took place in 1648; the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England in 1620; the American emancipation in 1776; the French revolution in 1789; the revival of religious life in Germany began in 1817.

The true division must grow out of the actual course of the history itself, and present the different phases of its development or stages of its life. These we call periods or ages. The beginning of a new period is called an epoch, or a stopping and starting point.

In regard to the number and length of periods there is, indeed, no unanimity; the less, on account of the various denominational differences establishing different points of view, especially since the sixteenth century. The Reformation, for instance, has less importance for the Roman church than for the Protestant, and almost none for the Greek; and while the edict of Nantes forms a resting-place in the history of French Protestantism, and the treaty of Westphalia in that of German, neither of these events had as much to do with English Protestantism as the accession of Elizabeth, the rise of Cromwell, the restoration of the Stuarts, and the revolution of 1688.

But, in spite of all confusion and difficulty in regard to details, it is generally agreed to divide the history of Christianity into three principal parts—ancient, mediaeval, and modern; though there is not a like agreement as to the dividing epochs, or points of departure and points of termination.

I. The history of Ancient Christianity, from the birth of Christ to Gregory the Great. A.D. 1–590.

This is the age of the Graeco-Latin church, or of the Christian Fathers. Its field is the countries around the Mediterranean—Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Europe—just the theatre of the old Roman empire and of classic heathendom. This age lays the foundation, in doctrine, government, and worship, for all the subsequent history. It is the common progenitor of all the various confessions.

The Life of Christ and the Apostolic Church are by far the most important sections, and require separate treatment. They form the divine-human groundwork of the church, and inspire, regulate, and correct all subsequent periods.

Then, at the beginning of the fourth century, the accession of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, marks a decisive turn; Christianity rising from a persecuted sect to the prevailing religion of the Graeco-Roman empire. In the history of doctrines, the first oecumenical council of Nicaea, falling in the midst of Constantine’s reign, A.D. 325, has the prominence of an epoch.

Here, then, are three periods within the first or patristic era, which we may severally designate as the period of the Apostles, the period of the Martyrs, and the period of the Christian Emperors and Patriarchs.

II. Medieval Christianity, from Gregory I to the Reformation. A.D. 590–1517.

The middle age is variously reckoned—from Constantine, 306 or 311; from the fall of the West Roman empire, 476; from Gregory the Great, 590; from Charlemagne, 800. But it is very generally regarded as closing at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and more precisely, at the outbreak of the Reformation in 1517. Gregory the Great seems to us to form the most proper ecclesiastical point of division. With him, the author of the Anglo-Saxon mission, the last of the church fathers, and the first of the proper popes, begins in earnest, and with decisive success, the conversion of the barbarian tribes, and, at the same time, the development of the absolute papacy, and the alienation of the eastern and western churches.

This suggests the distinctive character of the middle age: the transition of the church from Asia and Africa to Middle and Western Europe, from the Graeco-Roman nationality to that of the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavonic races, and from the culture of the ancient classic world to the modern civilization. The great work of the church then was the conversion and education of the heathen barbarians, who conquered and demolished the Roman empire, indeed, but were themselves conquered and transformed by its Christianity. This work was performed mainly by the Latin church, under a firm hierarchical constitution, culminating in the bishop of Rome. The Greek church though she made some conquests among the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe, particularly in the Russian empire, since grown so important, was in turn sorely pressed and reduced by Mohammedanism in Asia and Africa, the very seat of primitive Christianity, and at last in Constantinople itself; and in doctrine, worship, and organization, she stopped at the position of the oecumenical councils and the patriarchal constitution of the fifth century.

In the middle age the development of the hierarchy occupies the foreground, so that it may be called the church of the Popes, as distinct from the ancient church of the Fathers, and the modern church of the Reformers.

In the growth and decay of the Roman hierarchy three popes stand out as representatives of as many epochs: Gregory I., or the Great (590), marks the rise of absolute papacy; Gregory VII., or Hildebrand (1049), its summit; and Boniface VIII. (1294), its decline. We thus have again three periods in mediaeval church history. We may briefly distinguish them as the Missionary, the Papal, and the pre- or ante-Reformatory4 ages of Catholicism.

III. Modern Christianity, from the Reformation of the sixteenth century to the present time. A.D. 1517–1880.

Modern history moves chiefly among the nations of Europe, and from the seventeenth century finds a vast new theatre in North America. Western Christendom now splits into two hostile parts—one remaining on the old path, the other striking out a new one; while the eastern church withdraws still further from the stage of history, and presents a scene of almost undisturbed stagnation, except in modern Russia and Greece. Modern church history is the age of Protestantism in conflict with Romanism, of religious liberty and independence in conflict with the principle of authority and tutelage, of individual and personal Christianity against an objective and traditional church system.

Here again three different periods appear, which may be denoted briefly by the terms, Reformation, Revolution, and Revival.

The sixteenth century, next to the apostolic age the most fruitful and interesting period of church history, is the century of the evangelical renovation of the Church, and the papal counter-reform. It is the cradle of all Protestant denominations and sects, and of modern Romanism.

The seventeenth century is the period of scholastic orthodoxy, polemic confessionalism, and comparative stagnation. The reformatory motion ceases on the continent, but goes on in the mighty Puritanic struggle in England, and extends even into the primitive forests of the American colonies. The seventeenth century is the most fruitful in the church history of England, and gave rise to the various nonconformist or dissenting denominations which were transplanted to North America, and have out-grown some of the older historic churches. Then comes, in the eighteenth century, the Pietistic and Methodistic revival of practical religion in opposition to dead orthodoxy and stiff formalism. In the Roman church Jesuitism prevails but opposed by the half-evangelical Jansenism, and the quasiliberal Gallicanism.

In the second half of the eighteenth century begins the vast overturning of traditional ideas and institutions, leading to revolution in state, and infidelity in church, especially in Roman Catholic France and Protestant Germany. Deism in England, atheism in France, rationalism in Germany, represent the various degrees of the great modern apostasy from the orthodox creeds.

The nineteenth century presents, in part, the further development of these negative and destructive tendencies, but with it also the revival of Christian faith and church life, and the beginnings of a new creation by the everlasting gospel. The revival may be dated from the third centenary of the Reformation, in 1817.

In the same period North America, English and Protestant in its prevailing character, but presenting an asylum for all the nations, churches, and sects of the old world, with a peaceful separation of the temporal and the spiritual power, comes upon the stage like a young giant full of vigor and promise.

Thus we have, in all, nine periods of church history, as follows:

First Period:

The Life of Christ, and the Apostolic church.

From the Incarnation to the death of St. John. A.D. 1–100.

Second Period:

Christianity under persecution in the Roman empire.

From the death of St. John to Constantine, the first Christian emperor. A.D. 100–311.

Third Period:

Christianity in union with the Graeco-Roman empire, and amidst the storms of the great migration of nations.

From Constantine the Great to Pope Gregory I. A.D. 311–590.

Fourth Period:

Christianity planted among the Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic nations.

From Gregory I. to Hildebrand, or Gregory VII. A.D. 590–1049.

Fifth Period:

The Church under the papal hierarchy, and the scholastic theology.

From Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII. A.D. 1049–1294.

Sixth Period:

The decay of mediaeval Catholicism, and the preparatory movements for the Reformation.

From Boniface VIII. to Luther. A.D. 1294–1517.

Seventh Period:

The evangelical Reformation, and the Roman Catholic Reaction.

From Luther to the Treaty of Westphalia. A.D. 1517–1648.

Eighth Period:

The age of polemic orthodoxy and exclusive confessionalism, with reactionary and progressive movements.

From the Treaty of Westphalia to the French Revolution. A.D. 1648–1790.

Ninth Period:

The spread of infidelity, and the revival of Christianity in Europe and America, with missionary efforts encircling the globe.

From the French Revolution to the present time. A.D. 1790–1880.

Christianity has thus passed through many stages of its earthly life, and yet has hardly reached the period of full manhood in Christ Jesus. During this long succession of centuries it has outlived the destruction of Jerusalem, the dissolution of the Roman empire, fierce persecutions from without, and heretical corruptions from within, the barbarian invasion, the confusion of the dark ages, the papal tyranny, the shock of infidelity, the ravages of revolution, the attacks of enemies and the errors of friends, the rise and fall of proud kingdoms, empires, and republics, philosophical systems, and social organizations without number. And, behold, it still lives, and lives in greater strength and wider extent than ever; controlling the progress of civilization, and the destinies of the world; marching over the ruins of human wisdom and folly, ever forward and onward; spreading silently its heavenly blessings from generation to generation, and from country to country, to the ends of the earth. It can never die; it will never see the decrepitude of old age; but, like its divine founder, it will live in the unfading freshness of self-renewing youth and the unbroken vigor of manhood to the end of time, and will outlive time itself. Single denominations and sects, human forms of doctrine, government, and worship, after having served their purpose, may disappear and go the way of all flesh; but the Church Universal of Christ, in her divine life and substance, is too strong for the gates of hell. She will only exchange her earthly garments for the festal dress of the Lamb’s Bride, and rise from the state of humiliation to the state of exaltation and glory. Then at the coming of Christ she will reap the final harvest of history, and as the church triumphant in heaven celebrate and enjoy the eternal sabbath of holiness and peace. This will be the endless end of history, as it was foreshadowed already at the beginning of its course in the holy rest of God after the completion of his work of creation.

§ 5. Uses of Church History.

Church history is the most extensive, and, including the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments, the most important branch of theology. It is the backbone of theology or which it rests, and the storehouse from which it derives its supplies. It is the best commentary of Christianity itself, under all its aspects and in all its bearings. The fulness of the stream is the glory of the fountain from which it flows.

Church history has, in the first place, a general interest for every cultivated mind, as showing the moral and religious development of our race, and the gradual execution of the divine plan of redemption.

It has special value for the theologian and minister of the gospel, as the key to the present condition of Christendom and the guide to successful labor in her cause. The present is the fruit of the past, and the germ of the future. No work can stand unless it grow out of the real wants of the age and strike firm root in the soil of history. No one who tramples on the rights of a past generation can claim the regard of its posterity. Church history is no mere curiosity shop. Its facts are not dry bones, but embody living realities, the general principles and laws for our own guidance and action. Who studies church history studies Christianity itself in all its phases, and human nature under the influence of Christianity as it now is, and will be to the end of time.

Finally, the history of the church has practical value for every Christian, as a storehouse of warning and encouragement, of consolation and counsel. It is the philosophy of facts, Christianity in living examples. If history in general be, as Cicero describes it, "testis temporum, lux veritatis, et magistra vitae," or, as Diodorus calls it, "the handmaid of providence, the priestess of truth, and the mother of wisdom," the history of the kingdom of heaven is all these in the highest degree. Next to the holy scriptures, which are themselves a history and depository of divine revelation, there is no stronger proof of the continual presence of Christ with his people, no more thorough vindication of Christianity, no richer source of spiritual wisdom and experience, no deeper incentive to virtue and piety, than the history of Christ’s kingdom. Every age has a message from God to man, which it is of the greatest importance for man to understand.

The Epistle to the Hebrews describes, in stirring eloquence, the cloud of witnesses from the old dispensation for the encouragement of the Christians. Why should not the greater cloud of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, fathers, reformers, and saints of every age and tongue, since the coming of Christ, be held up for the same purpose?  They were the heroes of Christian faith and love, the living epistles of Christ, the salt of the earth, the benefactors and glory of our race; and it is impossible rightly to study their thoughts and deeds, their lives and deaths, without being elevated, edified, comforted, and encouraged to follow their holy example, that we at last, by the grace of God, be received into their fellowship, to spend with them a blessed eternity in the praise and enjoyment of the same God and Saviour.

§ 6. Duty of the Historian.

The first duty of the historian, which comprehends all others, is fidelity and justice. He must reproduce the history itself, making it live again in his representation. His highest and only aim should be, like a witness, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and, like a judge, to do full justice to every person and event which comes under his review.

To be thus faithful and just he needs a threefold qualification—scientific, artistic, and religious.

1. He must master the sources. For this purpose he must be acquainted with such auxiliary sciences as ecclesiastical philology (especially the Greek and Latin languages, in which most of the earliest documents are written), secular history, geography, and chronology. Then, in making use of the sources, he must thoroughly and impartially examine their genuineness and integrity, and the credibility and capacity of the witnesses. Thus only can he duly separate fact from fiction, truth from error.

The number of sources for general history is so large and increasing so rapidly, that it is, of course, impossible to read and digest them all in a short lifetime. Every historian rests on the shoulders of his predecessors. He must take some things on trust even after the most conscientious search, and avail himself of the invaluable aid of documentary collections and digests, ample indexes, and exhaustive monographs, where he cannot examine all the primary sources in detail. Only he should always carefully indicate his authorities and verify facts, dates, and quotations. A want of accuracy is fatal to the reputation of an historical work.

2. Then comes the composition. This is an art. It must not simply recount events, but reproduce the development of the church in living process. History is not a heap of skeletons, but an organism filled and ruled by a reasonable soul.

One of the greatest difficulties here lies in arranging the material. The best method is to combine judiciously the chronological and topical principles of division; presenting at once the succession of events and the several parallel (and, indeed, interwoven) departments of the history in due proportion. Accordingly, we first divide the whole history into periods, not arbitrary, but determined by the actual course of events; and then we present each of these periods in as many parallel sections or chapters as the material itself requires. As to the number of the periods and chapters, and as to the arrangement of the chapters, there are indeed conflicting opinions, and in the application of our principle, as in our whole representation, we can only make approaches to perfection. But the principle itself is, nevertheless, the only true one.

The ancient classical historians, and most of the English and French, generally present their subject in one homogeneous composition of successive books or chapters, without rubrical division. This method might seem to bring out better the living unity and variety of the history at every point. Yet it really does not. Language, unlike the pencil and the chisel, can exhibit only the succession in time, not the local concomitance. And then this method, rigidly pursued, never gives a complete view of any one subject, of doctrine, worship, or practical life. It constantly mixes the various topics, breaking off from one to bring up another, even by the most sudden transitions, till the alternation is exhausted. The German method of periodical and rubrical arrangement has great practical advantages for the student, in bringing to view the order of subjects as well as the order of time. But it should not be made a uniform and monotonous mechanism, as is done in the Magdeburg Centuries and many subsequent works. For, while history has its order, both of subject and of time, it is yet, like all life, full of variety. The period of the Reformation requires a very different arrangement from the middle age; and in modern history the rubrical division must be combined with and made subject to a division by confessions and countries, as the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed churches in Germany, France, England, and America.

The historian should aim then to reproduce both the unity and the variety of history, presenting the different topics in their separate completeness, without overlooking their organic connection. The scheme must not be arbitrarily made, and then pedantically applied, as a Procrustean framework, to the history; but it must be deduced from the history itself, and varied as the facts require.

Another difficulty even greater than the arrangement of the material consists in the combination of brevity and fulness. A general church history should give a complete view of the progress of Christ’s kingdom in all its departments. But the material is so vast and constantly increasing, that the utmost condensation should be studied by a judicious selection of the salient points, which really make up the main body of history. There is no use in writing books unless they are read. But who has time in this busy age to weary through the forty folios of Baronius and his continuators, or the thirteen folios of Flacius, or the forty-five octaves of Schroeckh?  The student of ecclesiastical history, it is true, wants not miniature pictures only (as in Hase’s admirable compend), but full-length portraits. Yet much space may be gained by omitting the processes and unessential details, which may be left to monographs and special treatises. Brevity is a virtue in the historian, unless it makes him obscure and enigmatic.5

The historian, moreover, must make his work readable and interesting, without violating truth. Some parts of history are dull and wearisome; but, upon the whole, the truth of history is "stranger than fiction." It is God’s own epos. It needs no embellishment. It speaks for itself if told with earnestness, vivacity, and freshness. Unfortunately, church historians, with very few exceptions, are behind the great secular historians in point of style, and represent the past as a dead corpse rather than as a living and working power of abiding interest. Hence church histories are so little read outside of professional circles.

3. Both scientific research and artistic representation must be guided by a sound moral and religious, that is, a truly Christian spirit. The secular historian should be filled with universal human sympathy, the church historian with universal Christian sympathy. The motto of the former is: "Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto;" the motto of the latter: "Christianus sum, nihil Christiani a me alienum puto."

The historian must first lay aside all prejudice and party zeal, and proceed in the pure love of truth. Not that he must become a tabula rasa. No man is able, or should attempt, to cast off the educational influences which have made him what he is. But the historian of the church of Christ must in every thing be as true as possible to the objective fact, "sine ira et studio;" do justice to every person and event; and stand in the centre of Christianity, whence he may see all points in the circumference, all individual persons and events, all confessions, denominations, and sects, in their true relations to each other and to the glorious whole. The famous threefold test of catholic truth—universality of time (semper), place (ubique), and number (ab omnibus)—in its literal sense, is indeed untrue and inapplicable. Nevertheless, there is a common Christianity in the Church, as well as a common humanity in the world, which no Christian can disregard with impunity. Christ is the divine harmony of all the discordant human creeds and sects. It is the duty and the privilege of the historian to trace the image of Christ in the various physiognomies of his disciples, and to act as a mediator between the different sections of his kingdom.

Then he must be in thorough sympathy with his subject, and enthusiastically devoted thereto. As no one can interpret a poet without poetic feeling and taste, or a philosopher without speculative talent, so no one can rightly comprehend and exhibit the history of Christianity without a Christian spirit. An unbeliever could produce only a repulsive caricature, or at best a lifeless statue. The higher the historian stands on Christian ground, the larger is his horizon, and the more full and clear his view of single regions below, and of their mutual bearings. Even error can be fairly seen only from the position of truth. "Verum est index sui et falsi." Christianity is the absolute truth, which, like the sun, both reveals itself and enlightens all that is dark. Church history, like the Bible, is its own best interpreter.

So far as the historian combines these three qualifications, he fulfils his office. In this life we can, of course, only distantly approach perfection in this or in any other branch of study. Absolute success would require infallibility; and this is denied to mortal man. It is the exclusive privilege of the Divine mind to see the end from the beginning, and to view events from all sides and in all their bearings; while the human mind can only take up things consecutively and view them partially or in fragments.

The full solution of the mysteries of history is reserved for that heavenly state, when we shall see no longer through a gloss darkly, but face to face, and shall survey the developments of time from the heights of eternity. What St. Augustine so aptly says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament, "Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet," may be applied also to the relation of this world and the world to come. The history of the church militant is but a type and a prophecy of the triumphant kingdom of God in heaven—a prophecy which will be perfectly understood only in the light of its fulfilment.

§ 7. Literature of Church History.

Stäudlin: Geschichte u. Literatur der K. Geschichte. Hann. 1827.

J. G. Dowling: An Introduction to the Critical Study of Eccles. History. London, 1838. Quoted p. 1. The work is chiefly an account of the ecclesiastical historians. pp. 1–212.

F. C. Baur: Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tüb. 1852.

Philip Schaff: Introduction to History of the Apost. Church (N. York, 1853), pp. 51–134.

Engelhardt: Uebersicht der kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur vom Jahre 1825–1850. In Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für historische Theologie," 1851.

G. Uhlhorn: Die kirchenhist. Arbeiten von 1851–1860. In Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für histor. Theologie," for 1866, Gotha, pp. 3–160. The same: Die ältere Kirchengesch. in ihren neueren Darstellungen. In "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol." Vol. II. 648 sqq.

Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte" (begun in 1877 and published in Gotha) contains bibliographical articles of Ad. Harnack, Möller, and others, on the latest literature.

Ch. K. Adams: A Manual of Historical Literature. N. York, 3d ed. 1888.

Like every other science and art, church historiography has a history of development toward its true perfection. This history exhibits not only a continual growth of material, but also a gradual, though sometimes long interrupted, improvement of method, from the mere collection of names and dates in a Christian chronicle, to critical research and discrimination, pragmatic reference to causes and motives, scientific command of material, philosophical generalization, and artistic reproduction of the actual history itself. In this progress also are marked the various confessional and denominational phases of Christianity, giving different points of view, and consequently different conceptions and representations of the several periods and divisions of Christendom; so that the development of the Church itself is mirrored in the development of church historiography.

We can here do no more than mention the leading works which mark the successive epochs in the growth of our science.

I. The Apostolic Church.

The first works on church history are the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the inspired biographical memoirs of Jesus Christ, who is the theanthropic head of the Church universal.

These are followed by Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which describes the planting of Christianity among Jews and Gentiles from Jerusalem to Rome, by the labors of the apostles, especially Peter and Paul.

II. The Greek Church historians.

The first post-apostolic works on church history, as indeed all branches of theological literature, take their rise in the Greek Church.

Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine, and contemporary with Constantine the Great, composed a church history in ten books (ejkklhsiastikh; iJstoriva, from the incarnation of the Logos to the year 324), by which he has won the title of the Father of church history, or the Christian Herodotus. Though by no means very critical and discerning, and far inferior in literary talent and execution to the works of the great classical historians, this ante-Nicene church history is invaluable for its learning, moderation, and love of truth; for its use of so since totally or partially lost; and for its interesting position of personal observation between the last persecutions of the church and her establishment in the Byzantine empire.

Eusebius was followed in similar spirit and on the same plan by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret in the fifth century, and Theodorus and Evagrius in the sixth, each taking up the thread of the narrative where his predecessor had dropped it, and covering in part the same ground, from Constantine the Great till toward the middle of the fifth century.6

Of the later Greek historians, from the seventh century, to the fifteenth, the "Scriptores Byzantini," as they are called, Nicephorus Callisti (son of Callistus, about A.D. 1333) deserves special regard. His Ecclesiastical History was written with the use of the large library of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and dedicated to the emperor Andronicus Palaeologus (d. 1327). It extends in eighteen books (each of which begins with a letter of his name) from the birth of Christ to the death of Phocas, A.D. 610, and gives in the preface a summary of five books more, which would have brought it down to 911. He was an industrious and eloquent, but uncritical and superstitious writer.7

III. Latin Church historians of the middle ages.

The Latin Church, before the Reformation, was, in church history, as in all other theological studies, at first wholly dependent on the Greek, and long content with mere translations and extracts from Eusebius and his continuators.

The most popular of these was the Historia Tripartita, composed by Cassiodorus, prime minister of Theodoric, and afterwards abbot of a convent in Calabria (d. about A.D. 562). It is a compilation from the histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, abridging and harmonizing them, and supplied—together with the translation of Eusebius by Rufinus—the West for several centuries with its knowledge of the fortunes of the ancient church.

The middle age produced no general church history of consequence, but a host of chronicles, and histories of particular nations, monastic orders, eminent popes, bishops, missionaries, saints, etc. Though rarely worth much as compositions, these are yet of great value as material, after a careful sifting of truth from legendary fiction.

The principal mediaeval historians are Gregory of Tours (d. 595), who wrote a church history of the Franks; the Venerable Bede, (d. 735), the father of English church history; Paulus Diaconus (d. 799), the historian of the Lombards; Adam of Bremen, the chief authority for Scandinavian church history from A.D. 788–1072; Haimo (or Haymo, Aimo, a monk of Fulda, afterwards bishop of Halberstadt, d. 853), who described in ten books, mostly from Rufinus, the history of the first four centuries (Hist oriae Sacrae Epitome); Anastasius (about 872), the author in part of the Liber Pontificalis, i.e., biographies of the Popes till Stephen VI. (who died 891); Bartholomaeus of Lucca. (about 1312), who composed a general church history from Christ to A.D. 1312; St. Antoninus (Antonio Pierozzi), archbishop of Florence (d. 1459), the author of the largest mediaeval work on secular and sacred history (Summa Historialis), from the creation to A.D. 1457.

Historical criticism began with the revival of letters, and revealed itself first in the doubts of Laurentius Valla (d. 1457) and Nicolaus of Cusa (d. 1464) concerning the genuineness of the donation of Constantine, the Isidorian Decretals, and other spurious documents, which are now as universally rejected as they were once universally accepted.

IV. Roman Catholic historians.

The Roman Catholic Church was roused by the shock of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, to great activity in this and other departments of theology, and produced some works of immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally characterized rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestantism, than by the purely historical spirit. Her best historians are either Italians, and ultramontane in spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the more liberal but less consistent Gallicanism.

(a) Italians:

First stands the Cardinal Caesar Baronius (d. 1607), with his Annales Ecclesiastici (Rom. 1588 sqq.), in 12 folio volumes, on which he spent thirty years of unwearied study. They come down only to the year 1198, but are continued by Raynaldi (to 1565), Laderchi (to 1571), and Theiner (to 1584).8

This truly colossal and monumental work is even to this day an invaluable storehouse of information from the Vatican library and other archives, and will always be consulted by professional scholars. It is written in dry, ever broken, unreadable style, and contains many spurious documents. It stands wholly on the ground of absolute papacy, and is designed as a positive refutation of the Magdeburg Centuries, though it does not condescend directly to notice them. It gave immense aid and comfort to the cause of Romanism, and was often epitomized and popularized in several languages. But it was also severely criticized, and in part refuted, not only by such Protestants as Casaubon, Spanheim, and Samuel Basnage, but by Roman Catholic scholars also, especially two French Franciscans, Antoine and François Pagi, who corrected the chronology.

Far less known and used than the Annals of Baronius is the Historia Ecclesiastica of Caspar Sacharelli, which comes down to A.D. 1185, and was published in Rome, 1771–1796, in 25 quarto volumes.

Invaluable contributions to historical collections and special researches have been made by other Italian scholars, as Muratori, Zaccagni, Zaccaria, Mansi, Gallandi, Paolo Sarpi, Pallavicini (the last two on the Council of Trent), the three Assemani, and Angelo Mai.

(b) French Catholic historians.

Natalis (Noel) Alexander, Professor and Provincial of the Dominican order (d. 1724), wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica Veteris et Nova Testamenti to the year 1600 (Paris, 1676, 2d ed. 1699 sqq. 8 vols. fol.) in the spirit of Gallicanism, with great learning, but in dry scholastic style. Innocent XI. put it in the Index (1684). This gave rise to the corrected editions.

The abbot Claude Fleury (d. 1723), in his Histoire ecclésiastique (Par. 1691–1720, in 20 vols. quarto, down to A.D. 1414, continued by Claude Fabre, a very decided Gallican, to A.D. 1595), furnished a much more popular work, commended by mildness of spirit and fluency of style, and as useful for edification as for instruction. It is a minute and, upon the whole, accurate narrative of the course of events as they occurred, but without system and philosophical generalization, and hence tedious and wearisome. When Fleury was asked why he unnecessarily darkened his pages with so many discreditable facts, he properly replied that the survival and progress of Christianity, notwithstanding the vices and crimes of its professors and preachers, was the best proof of its divine origin.9

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the distinguished bishop of Meaux (d. 1704), an advocate of Romanism on the one hand against Protestantism, but of Gallicanism on the other against Ultramontanism, wrote with brilliant eloquence, and in the spirit of the Catholic church, a universal history, in bold outlines for popular effect.10  This was continued in the German language by the Protestant Cramer, with less elegance but more thoroughness, and with special reference to the doctrine history of the middle age.

Sebastien le Nain de Tillemont (d. 1698), a French nobleman and priest, without office and devoted exclusively to study and prayer—a pupil and friend of the Jansenists and in partial sympathy with Gallicanism—composed a most learned and useful history of the first six centuries (till 513), in a series of minute biographies, with great skill and conscientiousness, almost entirely in the words of the original authorities, from which he carefully distinguishes his own additions. It is, as far as it goes, the most valuable church history produced by Roman Catholic industry and learning.11

Contemporaneously with Tillemont, the Gallican, L. Ellies Dupin (d. 1719), furnished a biographical and bibliographical church history down to the seventeenth century.12  Remi Ceillier (d. 1761) followed with a similar work, which has the advantage of greater completeness and accuracy.13  The French Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, did immense service to historical theology by the best critical editions of the fathers and extensive archaeological works. We can only mention the names of Mabillon, Massuet, Montfaucon, D’achery, Ruinart, Martène, Durand. Among the Jesuits, Sirmond and Petau occupy a prominent place.

The Abbé Rohrbacher. (Professor of Church History at Nancy, d. 1856) wrote an extensive Universal History of the Church, including that of the Old Testament, down to 1848. It is less liberal than the great Gallican writers of the seventeenth century, but shows familiarity with German literature.14

(c) German Catholic historians.

The pioneer of modern German Catholic historians of note is a poet and an ex-Protestant, Count Leopold Von Stolberg (d. 1819). With the enthusiasm of an honest, noble, and devout, but credulous convert, he began, in 1806, a very full Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi, and brought it down in 15 volumes to the year 430. It was continued by F. Kerz (vols. 16–45, to A.D. 1192) and J. N. Brischar (vols. 45–53, to A.D. 1245).

Theod. Katerkamp (d. at Münster, 1834) wrote a church history, in the same spirit and pleasing style, down to A.D. 1153.15  It remained unfinished, like the work of Locherer(d. 1837), which extends to 1073.16

Bishop Hefele’s History of the Councils (Conciliengeschichte, 1855–’86; revised edition and continuation, 1873 sqq.) is a most valuable contribution to the history of doctrine and discipline down to the Council of Trent.17

The best compendious histories from the pens of German Romanists are produced by Jos. Ign. Ritter, Professor in Bonn and afterward in Breslau (d. 1857);18 Joh. Adam Möhler, formerly Professor in Tübingen, and then in Munich, the author of the famous Symbolik (d. 1838);19 Joh. Alzog (d. 1878);20 H. Brück (Mayence, 2d ed., 1877); F. X. Kraus (Treves, 1873; 3d ed., 1882); Card. Hergenröther (Freiburg, 3d ed., 1886, 3 vols.); F. X. Funk (Tübingen, 1886; 2d ed., 1890).

A. F. Gfrörer (d. 1861) began his learned General Church History as a Protestant, or rather as a Rationalist (1841–’46, 4 vols., till A.D. 1056), and continued it from Gregory VII. on as a Romanist (1859–’61).

Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most learned historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the opposite course from popery to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History (Landshut, 1833, 2 vols.) till A.D. 680, and a Manual of Church History (1836, 2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.21  He wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.), on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for Christianity (Heidenthum u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its Founding (1860), The Church and the Churches (1862), Papal Fables of the Middle Age (1865), The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus," 1869), etc.

During the Vatican Council in 1870 Döllinger broke with Rome, became the theological leader of the Old Catholic recession, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich (his former pupil), April 17, 1871, as being guilty of "the crime of open and formal heresy." He knows too much of church history to believe in the infallibility of the pope. He solemnly declared (March 28, 1871) that "as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen," he could not accept the Vatican decrees, because they contradict the spirit of the gospel and the genuine tradition of the church, and, if carried out, must involve church and state, the clergy and the laity, in irreconcilable conflict.22

V. The Protestant Church historians.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century is the mother church history as a science and art in the proper sense of term. It seemed at first to break off from the past and to depreciate church history, by going back directly to the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, and especially to look most unfavorably on the Catholic middle age, as a progressive corruption of the apostolic doctrine and discipline. But, on the other hand, it exalted primitive Christianity, and awakened a new and enthusiastic interest in all the documents of the apostolic church, with an energetic effort to reproduce its spirit and institutions. It really repudiated only the later tradition in favor of the older, taking its stand upon the primitive historical basis of Christianity. Then again, in the course of controversy with Rome, Protestantism found it desirable and necessary to wrest from its opponent not only the scriptural argument, but also the historical, and to turn it as far as possible to the side of the evangelical cause. For the Protestants could never deny that the true Church of Christ is built on a rock, and has the promise of indestructible permanence. Finally, the Reformation, by, liberating the mind from the yoke of a despotic ecclesiastical authority, gave an entirely new impulse, directly or indirectly to free investigation in every department, and produced that historical criticism which claims to clear fact from the accretions of fiction, and to bring out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of history. Of course this criticism may run to the extreme of rationalism and scepticism, which oppose the authority of the apostles and of Christ himself; as it actually did for a time, especially in Germany. But the abuse of free investigation proves nothing against the right use of it; and is to be regarded only as a temporary aberration, from which all sound minds will return to a due appreciation of history, as a truly rational unfolding of the plan of redemption, and a standing witness for the all-ruling providence of God, and the divine character of the Christian religion.

(a) German, Swiss, and Dutch historians.

Protestant church historiography has thus far flourished most on German soil. A patient and painstaking industry and conscientious love of truth and justice qualify German scholars for the mining operations of research which bring forth the raw material for the manufacturer; while French and English historians know best how to utilize and popularize the material for the general reader.

The following are the principal works:

Matthias Flacius (d 1575), surnamed Illyricus, a zealous Lutheran, and an unsparing enemy of Papists, Calvinists, and Melancthonians, heads the list of Protestant historians with his great Eccelesiastica Historia Novi Testamenti, commonly called Centuriae Magdeburgenses (Basle, 1560–’74), covering thirteen centuries of the Christian era in as many folio volumes. He began the work in Magdeburg, in connection with ten other, scholars of like Spirit and zeal, and in the face of innumerable difficulties, for the purpose of exposing the corruptions and, errors of the papacy, and of proving the doctrines of the Lutheran Reformation orthodox by the "witnesses of the truth" in all ages. The tone is therefore controversial throughout, and quite as partial as that of the Annals of Baronius on the papal side. The style is tasteless and repulsive, but the amount of persevering labor, the immense, though ill-digested and unwieldy mass of material, and the boldness of the criticism, are imposing and astonishing. The "Centuries" broke the path of free historical study, and are the first general church history deserving of the name. They introduced also a new method. They divide the material by centuries, and each century by a uniform Procrustean scheme of not less than sixteen rubrics: "de loco et propagatione ecclesiae; de persecutione et tranquillitate ecclesiae; de doctrina; de haeresibus; de ceremoniis; de politia; de schismatibus; de conciliis; de vitis episcoporum; de haereticis; de martyribus; de miraculis et prodigiis; de rebus Judaicis; de aliis religionibus; de mutationibus politicis." This plan destroys all symmetry, and occasions wearisome diffuseness and repetition. Yet, in spite of its mechanical uniformity and stiffness, it is more scientific than the annalistic or chronicle method, and, with material improvements and considerable curtailment of rubrics, it has been followed to this day.

The Swiss, J. H. Hottinger (d. 1667), in his Historia Ecclesiastica N. Testamenti (Zurich, 1655–’67, 9 vols. fol.), furnished a Reformed counterpart to the Magdeburg Centuries. It is less original and vigorous, but more sober and moderate. It comes down to the sixteenth century, to which alone five volumes are devoted.

From Fred. Spanheim of Holland (d. 1649) we have a Summa Historia Ecclesiasticae (Lugd. Bat. 1689), coming down to the sixteenth century. It is based on a thorough and critical knowledge of the sources, and serves at the same time as a refutation of Baronius.

A new path was broken by Gottfried Arnold (d. 1714), in his, Impartial History of the Church and Heretics to A.D. 1688.23  He is the historian of the pietistic and mystic school. He made subjective piety the test of the true faith, and the persecuted sects the main channel of true Christianity; while the reigning church from Constantine down, and indeed not the Catholic church only, but the orthodox Lutheran with it, he represented as a progressive apostasy, a Babylon full of corruption and abomination. In this way he boldly and effectually broke down the walls of ecclesiastical exclusiveness and bigotry; but at the same time, without intending or suspecting it, he opened the way to a rationalistic and sceptical treatment of history. While, in his zeal for impartiality and personal piety, he endeavored to do justice to all possible heretics and sectaries, he did great injustice to the supporters of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical order. Arnold was also the first to use the German language instead of the Latin in learned history; but his style is tasteless and insipid.

J. L. von Mosheim (Chancellor of the University at Göttingen, d. 1755), a moderate and impartial Lutheran, is the father of church historiography as an art, unless we prefer to concede this merit to Bossuet. In skilful construction, clear, though mechanical and monotonous arrangement, critical sagacity, pragmatic combination, freedom from passion, almost bordering on cool indifferentism, and in easy elegance of Latin style, he surpasses all his predecessors. His well-known Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentioris (Helmstädt, 1755) follows the centurial plan of Flacius, but in simpler form, and, as translated and supplemented by Maclaine, and Murdock, is still used extensively as a text-book in England and America.24

J. M. Schröckh (d. 1808), a pupil of Mosheim, but already touched with the neological spirit which Semler (d. 1791) introduced into the historical theology of Germany, wrote with unwearied industry the largest Protestant church history after the Magdeburg Centuries. He very properly forsook the centurial plan still followed by Mosheim, and adopted the periodic. His Christian Church History comprises forty-five volumes, and reaches to the end of the eighteenth century. It is written in diffuse but clear and easy style, with reliable knowledge of sources, and in a mild and candid spirit, and is still a rich storehouse of historical matter.25

The very learned Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae V. et N. Testamenti of the Dutch Reformed divine, H. Venema (d. 1787), contain the history of the Jewish and Christian Church down to the end of the sixteenth century (Lugd. Bat. 1777–’83, in seven parts).

H. P. C. Henke (d. 1809) is the leading representative of the rationalistic church historiography, which ignores Christ in history. In his spirited and able Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, continued by Vater (Braunschweig, 1788–1820, 9 vols.), the church appears not as the temple of God on earth, but as a great infirmary and bedlam.

August Neander. (Professor of Church History in Berlin, d. 1850), the "father of modern church history," a child in spirit, a giant in learning, and a saint in piety, led back the study of history from the dry heath of rationalism to the fresh fountain of divine life in Christ, and made it a grand source of edification as well as instruction for readers of every creed. His General History of the Christian Religion and Church begins after the apostolic age (which he treated in a separate work), and comes down to the Council of Basle in 1430, the continuation being interrupted by his death.26  It is distinguished for thorough and conscientious use of the sources, critical research, ingenious combination, tender love of truth and justice, evangelical catholicity, hearty piety, and by masterly analysis of the doctrinal systems and the subjective Christian life of men of God in past ages. The edifying character is not introduced from without, but naturally grows out of his conception of church history, viewed as a continuous revelation of Christ’s presence and power in humanity, and as an illustration of the parable of the leaven which gradually pervades and transforms the whole lump. The political and artistic sections, and the outward machinery of history, were not congenial to the humble, guileless simplicity of Neander. His style is monotonous, involved, and diffuse, but unpretending, natural, and warmed by a genial glow of sympathy and enthusiasm. It illustrates his motto: Pectus est quod theologum facit.

Torrey’s excellent translation (Rose translated only the first three centuries), published in Boston, Edinburgh, and London, in multiplied editions, has given Neander’s immortal work even a much larger circulation in England and America than it has in Germany itself.

Besides this general history, Neander’s indefatigable industry produced also special works on the Life of Christ (1837, 4th ed. 1845), the Apostolic Age (1832, 4th ed. 1842, translated by J. E. Ryland, Edinburgh, 1842, and again by E. G. Robinson, N. York, 1865), Memorials of Christian Life (1823, 3d ed. 1845, 3 vols.), the Gnostic Heresies (1818), and biographies of representative characters, as Julian the Apostate (1812), St. Bernard (1813, 2d ed. 1848), St. Chrysostom (1822, 3d ed. 1848), and Tertullian (1825, 2d ed. 1849). His History a Christian Doctrines was published after his death by Jacobi (1855), and translated by J. E. Ryland (Lond., 1858).27

From J. C. L. Gieseler (Professor of Church History in Göttingen, d. 1854), a profoundly learned, acute, calm, impartial, conscientious, but cold and dry scholar, we have a Textbook of Church History from the birth of Christ to 1854.28  He takes Tillemont’s method of giving the history in the very words of the sources; only he does not form the text from them, but throws them into notes. The chief excellence of this invaluable and indispensable work is in its very carefully selected and critically elucidated extracts from the original authorities down to the year 1648 (as far as he edited the work himself). The skeleton-like text presents, indeed, the leading facts clearly and concisely, but does not reach the inward life and spiritual marrow of the church of Christ. The theological views of Gieseler hardly rise above the jejune rationalism of Wegscheider, to whom he dedicated a portion of his history; and with all his attempt at impartiality he cannot altogether conceal the negative effect of a rationalistic conception of Christianity, which acts like a chill upon the narrative of its history, and substitutes a skeleton of dry bones for a living organism.

Neander and Gieseler matured their works in respectful and friendly rivalry, during the same period of thirty years of slow, but solid and steady growth. The former is perfectly subjective, and reproduces the original sources in a continuous warm and sympathetic composition, which reflects at the same time the author’s own mind and heart; the latter is purely objective, and speaks with the indifference of an outside spectator, through the ipsissima verba of the same sources, arranged as notes, and strung together simply by a slender thread of narrative. The one gives the history ready-made, and full of life and instruction; the other furnishes the material and leaves the reader to animate and improve it for himself. With the one, the text is everything; with the other, the notes. But both admirably complete each other, and exhibit together the ripest fruit of German scholarship in general church history in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (Prof. of Church History in Tübingen, d. 1860) must be named alongside with Neander and Gieseler in the front rank of German church historians. He was equal to both in independent and thorough scholarship, superior in constructive criticism and philosophical generalization, but inferior in well-balanced judgment and solid merit. He over-estimated theories and tendencies, and undervalued persons and facts. He was an indefatigable investigator and bold innovator. He completely revolutionized the history of apostolic and post-apostolic Christianity, and resolved its rich spiritual life of faith and love into a purely speculative process of conflicting tendencies, which started from an antagonism of Petrinism and Paulinism, and were ultimately reconciled in the compromise of ancient Catholicism. He fully brought to light, by a keen critical analysis, the profound intellectual fermentation of the primitive church, but eliminated from it the supernatural and miraculous element; yet as an honest and serious sceptic he had to confess at last a psychological miracle in the conversion of St. Paul, and to bow before the greater miracle of the resurrection of Christ, without which the former is an inexplicable enigma. His critical researches and speculations gave a powerful stimulus to a reconsideration and modification of the traditional views on early Christianity.

We have from his fertile pen a general History of the Christian Church, in five volumes (1853–1863), three of which were, published after his death and lack the originality and careful finish of the first and second, which cover the first six centuries; Lectures on Christian Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte), published by his son (1865–’67, in 3 volumes), and a brief Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, edited by himself (1847, 2d ed. 1858). Even more valuable are his monographs: on St. Paul, for whom he had a profound veneration, although he recognized only four of his Epistles as genuine (1845, 2d ed. by E. Zeller, 1867, 2 vols., translated into English, 1875); on Gnosticism, with which he had a strong spiritual affinity (Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religionsphilosophie, 1835); the history of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1838, 1 vol.), and of the Trinity and Incarnation (1841–’43, in 3 vols.), and his masterly vindication of Protestantism against Möhler’s Symbolik (2d ed. 1836).29

Karl Rudolph Hagenbach (Professor of Church History at Basel, d. 1874) wrote, in the mild and impartial spirit of Neander, with poetic taste and good judgment, and in pleasing popular style, a general History of the Christian Church in seven volumes (4th ed. 1868–’72),30 and a History of Christian Doctrines, in two volumes (1841, 4th ed. 1857).31

Protestant Germany is richer than any other country in, manuals and compends of church history for the use of students. We mention Engelhardt (1834), Niedner (Geschichte der christl. Kirche, 1846, and Lehrbuch, 1866), Hase (11th ed. 1886), Guericke (9th ed. 1866, 3 vols.), Lindner (1848–’54), Jacobi (1850, unfinished), Fricke (1850), Kurtz (Lehrbuch, 10th ed. 1887, in 2 vols., the larger Handbuch, unfinished), Hasse (edited by Köhler, 1864, in 3 small vols.), Köllner (1864), Ebrard (1866) 2 vols.), Rothe (lectures edited by Weingarten, 1875, 2 vols.), Herzog (1876–’82, 3 vols.), H. Schmid (1881, 2 vols.). Niedner’s Lehrbuch (1866) stands first for independent and thorough scholarship, but is heavy. Hase’s Compend is unsurpassed for condensation, wit, point, and artistic taste, as a miniature picture.32  Herzog’s Abriss keeps the medium between voluminous fulness and enigmatic brevity, and is written in a candid Christian spirit. Kurtz is clear, concise, and evangelical.33  A new manual was begun by Möller, 1889.

The best works on doctrine history (Dogmengeschichte) are by Münscher, Geiseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Thomasius, H. Schmid, Nitzsch, and Harnack (1887).

It is impossible to do justice here to the immense service which Protestant Germany has done to special departments of church history. Most of the fathers, popes, schoolmen and reformers, and the principal doctrines of Christianity have been made the subject of minute and exhaustive historical treatment. We have already mentioned the monographs of Neander and Baur, and fully equal to them are such masterly and enduring works as Rothe’s Beginnings of the Christian Church, Ullmann’s Reformers before the Reformation, Hasse’s Anselm of Canterbury, and Dorner’s History of Christology.

(b) French works.

Dr. Etienne L. Chastel (Professor of Church History in the National Church at Geneva, d. 1886) wrote a complete Histoire du Christianisme (Paris, 1881–’85, 5 vols.).

Dr. Merle D’aubigné (Professor of Church History in the independent Reformed Seminary at Geneva, d. 1872) reproduced in elegant and eloquent French an extensive history both of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, with an evangelical enthusiasm and a dramatic vivacity which secured it an extraordinary circulation in England and America (far greater, than on the Continent), and made it the most popular work on that important period. Its value as a history is somewhat diminished by polemical bias and the occasional want of accuracy. Dr. Merle conceived the idea of the work during the celebration of the third centenary of the German Reformation in 1817, in the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther translated, the New Testament and threw his inkstand at the devil. He labored on it till the year of his death.34

Dr. Edmund De Pressensé (pastor of a free church in Paris, member of the National Assembly, then senator of France), and able scholar, with evangelical Protestant convictions similar to those of Dr. Merle, wrote a Life of Christ against Renan, and a History of Ancient Christianity, both of which are translated into English.35

Ernest Renan, the celebrated Orientalist and member of the French Academy, prepared from the opposite standpoint of sceptical criticism, and mixing history with romance, but in brilliant, and fascinating style, the Life of Christ, and the history of the Beginnings of Christianity to the middle of the second century.36

(c) English works.

English literature is rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other special departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity.

The first place among English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (finished after twenty years’ labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout the chief events in ecclesiastical history from the introduction of the Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the consummate skill of a master in the art of composition, with occasional admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius and Chrysostom, but with a keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the visible church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of Christianity which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest centuries. He conceived the idea of his magnificent work in papal Rome, among the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline and fall of imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the gradual growth and triumph of the religion of the cross, of which no historian of the future will ever record a history of decline and fall, though some "lonely traveller from New Zealand," taking his stand on "a broken arch" of the bridge of St. Angelo, may sketch the ruins of St. Peter’s.37

Joseph Milner (Vicar of Hull, d. 1797) wrote a History of the Church of Christ for popular edification, selecting those portions which best suited his standard of evangelical orthodoxy and piety. "Nothing," he says in the preface, "but what appears to me to belong to Christ’s kingdom shall be admitted; genuine piety is the only thing I intend to celebrate. He may be called the English Arnold, less learned, but free from polemics and far more readable and useful than the German pietist. His work was corrected and continued by his brother, Isaac Milner (d. 1820), by Thomas Grantham and Dr. Stebbing.38

Dr. Waddington (Dean of Durham) prepared three volumes on the history of the Church before the Reformation (1835) and three volumes on the Continental Reformation (1841). Evangelical.

Canon James C. Robertson of Canterbury (Prof. of Church History in King’s College, d. 1882) brings his History of the Christian Church from the Apostolic Age down to the Reformation (A.D. 64–1517). The work was first published in four octavo volumes (1854 sqq.) and then in eight duodecimo volumes (Lond. 1874), and is the best, as it is the latest, general church history written by an Episcopalian. It deserves praise for its candor, moderation, and careful indication of authorities.

From Charles Hardwick (Archdeacon of Ely, d. 1859) we have a useful manual of the Church History of the Middle Age (1853, 3d ed. by Prof. W. Stubbs, 1872), and another on the Reformation (1856, 3d ed. by W. Stubbs, London, 1873). His History of the Anglican Articles of Religion (1859) is a valuable contribution to English church history.

Dr. Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, has published his Lectures on Mediaeval Church History (Lond. 1877), delivered before the girls of Queen’s College, London. They are conceived in a spirit of devout churchly piety and interspersed with judicious reflections.

Philip Smith’s History of the Christian Church during the First Ten Centuries (1879), and during the Middle Ages (1885), in 2 vols., is a skilful and useful manual for students.39

The most popular and successful modern church historians in the English or any other language are Dean Milman of St. Paul’s, Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey, and Archdeacon Farrar of Westminster. They belong to the broad church school of the Church of England, are familiar with Continental learning, and adorn their chosen themes with all the charms of elegant, eloquent, and picturesque diction. Henry Hart Milman (d. 1868) describes, with the stately march of Gibbon and as a counterpart of his decline and fall of Paganism, the rise and progress of Ancient and Latin Christianity, with special reference to its bearing on the progress of civilization.40  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (d. 1881) unrolls a picture gallery of great men and events in the Jewish theocracy, from Abraham to the Christian era, and in the Greek church, from Constantine the Great to Peter the Great.41  Frederic W. Farrar (b. 1831) illuminates with classical and rabbinical learning, and with exuberant rhetoric the Life of Christ, and of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and the Early Days of Christianity.42

(d) American works.

American literature is still in its early youth, but rapidly growing in every department of knowledge. Prescott, Washington Irving, Motley, and Bancroft have cultivated interesting portions of the history of Spain, Holland, and the United States, and have taken rank among the classical historians in the English language.

In ecclesiastical history the Americans have naturally so far been mostly in the attitude of learners and translators, but with every prospect of becoming producers. They have, as already noticed, furnished the best translations of Mosheim, Neander, and Gieseler.

Henry B. Smith (late Professor in the Union Theol. Seminary, New York, d. 1877) has prepared the best Chronological Tables of Church History, which present in parallel columns a synopsis of the external and internal history of Christianity, including that of America, down to 1858, with lists of Councils, Popes, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and Moderators of General Assemblies.43

W. G. T. Shedd (Professor in the same institution, b. 1820) wrote from the standpoint of Calvinistic orthodoxy an eminently readable History of Christian Doctrine (N. York, 1863, 2 vols.), in clear, fresh, and vigorous English, dwelling chiefly on theology, anthropology, and soteriology, and briefly touching on eschatology, but entirely omitting the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, with the connected controversies.

Philip Schaff is the author of a special History of the Apostolic Church, in English and German (N. York, 1853, etc., and Leipzig, 1854), of a History of the Creeds of Christendom (N. York, 4th ed., 1884, 3 vols., with documents original and translated), and of a general History of the Christian Church (N. York and Edinb., 1859–’67, in 3 vols.; also in German, Leipzig, 1867; rewritten and enlarged, N. Y. and Edinb., 1882–’88; third revision, 1889, 5 vols.; to be continued).

George P. Fisher (Professor in New Haven, b. 1827) has written the best manual in the English language: History of the Christian Church with Maps. N. York, 1887. He has also published a History of the Reformation (1873); Beginnings of Christianity (1877), and Outlines of Universal History (1885),—all in a calm, amiable, and judicious spirit, and a clear, chaste style.

Contributions to interesting chapters in the history of Protestantism are numerous. Dr. E. H. Gillett (d. 1875) wrote a Monograph on John Hus (N. York, 1864, 2 vols.), a History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philad. 1864, 2 vols.), and a History of Natural Theology (God in Human Thought, N. York, 1874, 2 vols.); Dr. Abel Stevens, a History of Methodism, viewed as the great religious revival of the eighteenth century, down to the centenary celebration of 1839 (N. York, 1858–’61, 3 vols.), and a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States (1864–’67, 4 vols.); Henry M. Baird, a History of the Rise and Progress of the Huguenots in France (N. York, 1879, 2 vols.), and The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1886, 2 vols.).

The denominational and sectarian divisions of American Christianity seem to be unfavorable to the study and cultivation of general church history, which requires a large-hearted catholic spirit. But, on the other hand, the social and national intermingling of ecclesiastical organizations of every variety of doctrine and discipline, on a basis of perfect freedom and equality before the law, widens the horizon, and facilitates comparison and appreciation of variety in unity and unity in variety; while the growth and prosperity of the churches on the principle of self-support and self-government encourages a hopeful view of the future. America falls heir to the whole wealth of European Christianity and civilization, and is in a favorable position to review and reproduce in due time the entire course of Christ’s kingdom in the old world with the faith and freedom of the new.44

(e) Finally, we must mention biblical and ecclesiastical Encyclopaedias which contain a large number of valuable contributions to church history from leading scholars of the age, viz.:

1. The Bible Dictionaries of Winer. (Leipzig, 1820, 3d ed. 1847, 2 vols.); Schenkel (Leipzig, 1869–’75, 5 vols.); Riehm   Kitto (Edinb., 1845, third revised ed. by W. L. Alexander, 1862–’65, 3 vols.); Wm. Smith (London, 1860–’64, in 3 vols., American edition much enlarged and improved by H. Hackett and E. Abbot, N. York, 1870, in 4 vols.); Ph. Schaff (Philadelphia, 1880, with maps and illustrations; 4th ed., revised, 1887).

2. The Biblical and Historical Dictionaries of Herzog (Real-Encyklopädie für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche, Gotha 1854 to 1868, in 22 vols., new ed. thoroughly revised by Herzog, Plitt and Hauck, Leipzig, 1877–’88, in 18 vols.), Schaff-Herzog (Religious Encyclopaedia, based on Herzog but condensed, supplemented, and adapted to English and American students, edited by Philip Schaff in connection with Samuel M. Jackson and D. S. Schaff, N. York and Edinburgh, revised ed., 1887, in 3 vols., with a supplementary vol. on Living Divines and Christian Workers, 1887); Wetzer and Welte (Roman Catholic Kirchenlexicon, Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1847-l860, in 12 vols.; second ed. newly elaborated by Cardinal Joseph Hergenröther and Dr. Franz Kaulen, 1880 sqq., promised in 10 vols.); Lichtenberger. (Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, Paris, 1877–’82, in 13 vols., with supplement); Mcclintock and Strong (Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, New York, 1867–’81, 10 vols. and two supplementary volumes, 1885 and 1887, largely illustrated). The Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th ed., completed 1889 in 25 vols.) contains also many elaborate articles on biblical and ecclesiastical topics.

3. For ancient church history down to the age of Charlemagne: Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (London and Boston, 1875, 2 vols.); Smith and Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines during the first eight centuries (London and Boston, 1877–’87, 4 vols.). The articles in these two works are written mostly by scholars of the Church of England, and are very valuable for fulness and accuracy of information.

Note.—The study of church history is reviving in the Greek Church where it began. Philaret Bapheidos has issued a compendious church history under the title: jEkklhsiastikh; Jistoriva ajpo; tou' kurivou hJmwn jIhsou' Cristou' mevcri tw'n kaq j hJma'"  crovnwn uJpo; Filaretou' Bayeivdou, ajrcimavndrivtou D. F. kai; kaqhghtou' th'" Qeologiva" ejn th/' ejn Cavlkh/ Qeologikh/' Scolh/'. Tovmo" prw'to". jArcaiva   jekklh":  iJstoriva.  A.D. 1–700. jEn Kwnstantinopovlei, 1884 (Lorentz & Keil, libraries de S. M. I. le Sultan), 380 pp. The second vol. embraces the mediaeval church to the fall of Constantinople, 1453, and has 459 pp. The work is dedicated to Dr. Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, the discoverer of the famous Jerusalem Codex. Nearly all the literature quoted is German Protestant; no English, very few Latin, and still fewer Greek works are mentioned. Another compend of Church History in Greek by Diomedes Kyriakos appeared at Athens, 1881, in 2 vols.

ADDENDA

(Fifth Edition.)

———————————

Since the third revision of this volume in 1889, the following works deserving notice have appeared till September, 1893. (P. S.)

Page 2. After "Nirschl" add:

E. Bernheim Lehrbuch der historischen Methode. Mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte.  Leipzig, 1889.

Edward Bratke: Wegweiser zur Quellen- und Literaturkunde der Kirchengeschichte. Gotha, 1890 (282 pp.).

Page 35, line 9:

H. Brueck (Mainz, 5th ed., 1890).

Page 45:

Of the Church History of Kurtz (who died at Marburg, 1890), an 11th revised edition appeared in 1891.

Wilhelm Moeller (d. at Kiel, 1891): Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg, 1891. 2 vols., down to the Reformation. Vol. III. to be added by Kawerau. Vol. I. translated by Rutherford. London, 1892.

Karl Mueller (Professor in Breslau): Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg, 1892. A second volume will complete the work. An excellent manual from the school of Ritschl-Harnack.

Harnack’s large Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte was completed in 1890 in 3 vols. Of his Grundriss, a 2d ed. appeared in 1893 (386 pp.); translated by Edwin K. Mitchell, of Hartford, Conn.: Outlines of the History of Dogma. New York, 1893.

Friedrich Loofs (Professor of Church History in Halle, of the Ritschl-Harnack school): Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte. Halle, 1889; 3d ed., 1893.

Page 51. After "Schaff "add:

5th revision, 1889–93, 7 vols. (including vol. v., which is in press). Page 51. After "Fisher" add:

John Fletcher Hurst (Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church): Short History of the Christian Church. New York, 1893.

Page 61. After "Kittel "add:

Franz Delitzsch (d. 1890): Messianische Weissagungen in geschichtlicher Folge. Leipzig, 1890. His last work. Translated by Sam. Ives Curtiss (of Chicago),  Edinb. and New York, 1892.

Page 97:

Samuel J. Andrews: Life of our Lord. "A new and wholly revised edition."  New York, 1891 (651 pp.). With maps and illustrations. Maintains the quadripaschal theory. Modest, reverent, accurate, devoted chiefly to the chronological and topographical relations.

Page 183 add:

On the Apocryphal Traditions of Christ, comp. throughout

Alfred Resch: Agrapha. Aussercanonische Evangelienfragmente gesammelt und untersucht.  With an appendix of Harnack on the Gospel Fragment of Tajjum. Leipzig, 1889 (520 pp.). By far the most complete and critical work on the extra-canonical sayings of our Lord, of which he collects and examines 63 (see p. 80), including many doubtful ones, e.g., the much-discussed passage of the Didache (I. 6) on the sweating of aloes.

Page 247:

Abbé Constant Fouard: Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity. Translated from the second French edition with the author’s sanction, by George F. X. Griffith. With an Introduction by Cardinal Gibbons. New York and London, 1892 (pp. xxvi, 422). The most learned work in favor of the traditional Roman theory of a twenty-five years’ pontificate of Peter in Rome from 42 to 67.

The apocryphal literature of Peter has received an important addition by the discovery of fragments of the Greek Gospel and Apocalypse of Peter in a tomb at Akhmim in Egypt. See Harnack’s ed. of the Greek text with a German translation and commentary, Berlin, 1892 (revised, 1893); Zahn’s edition and discussion, Leipzig, 1893; and O. von Gebhardt’s facsimile ed., Leipzig, 1893; also the English translation by J. Rendel Harris, London, 1893.

Page 284. Add to lit. on the life of Paul:

W. H. Ramsey (Professor of Humanity in the University of Aberdeen): The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170. With Maps and Illustrations. London and New York, 1893 (494 pp.). An important work, for which the author received a gold medal from Pope Leo XIII. The first part (pp. 3–168) treats of the missionary journeys of Paul in Asia Minor, on the ground of careful topographical exploration and with a full knowledge of Roman history at that time. He comes to the conclusion that nearly all the books of the New Testament can no more be forgeries of the second century than the works of Horace and Virgil can be forgeries of the time of Nero. He assumes all "travel-document," which was written down under the immediate influence of Paul, and underlies the account in The Acts of the Apostles (Acts. 13–21), which he calls "an authority of the highest character for an historian of Asia Minor" (p. 168). He affirms the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles, which suit the close of the Neronian period (246 sqq.), and combats Holtzmann. He puts 2 Peter to the age of "The Shepherd of Hermas" before 130 (p. 432). As to the First Epistle of Peter, he assumes that it was written about 80, soon after Vespasian’s resumption of the Neronian policy (279 sqq.). If this date is correct, it would follow either that Peter cannot have been the author, or that he must have long outlived the Neronian persecution. The tradition that he died a martyr in Rome is early and universal, but the exact date of his death is uncertain.

Page 285 insert:

Of Weizsaecker’s Das Apostolische Zeitalter, which is chiefly devoted to Paul, a second edition has appeared in 1892, slightly revised and provided with an alphabetical index (770 pp.). It is the best critical history of the Apostolic age from the school of Dr. Baur, whom Dr. Weizsaecker succeeded as professor of Church history in Tuebingen, but gives no references to literature and other opinions.

Charles Carroll Everett: The Gospel of Paul. New York, 1893.

Page 360:

Rodolfo Lanciani: Pagan and Christian Rome. New York, 1893 (pp. x, 374). A very important work which shows from recent explorations that Christianity entered more deeply into Roman Society in the first century than is usually supposed.

Page 401 add:

Henry William Watkins: Modern Criticism in its relation to the Fourth Gospel; being the Bampton Lectures for 1890. London, 1890. Only the external evidence, but with a history of opinions since Breitschneider’s Probabilia.

Paton J. Gloag: Introduction to the Johannine Writings. London, 1891 (pp. 440). Discusses the critical questions connected with the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John from a liberal conservative standpoint.

E. Schuerer: On the Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel. In the "Contemporary Review" for September, 1891.

Page 484:

E. Loening: Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums. Halle, 1889—CH. De Smedt: L’organisation des églises chrétiennes jusqu’au milieu du 3e siècle.  1889.

Page 569. Add to literature:

Gregory: Prolegomena to Tischendorf, Pt. II., 1890. (Pt. III. will complete this work.)

Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament, 4th ed. revised, 1892.

Salmon: Introduction to the New Testament, 5th ed., 1890.,

Holtzmann: Introduction to the New Testament, 3d ed., 1892.

F. Godet: Introduction au Nouveau Testament. Neuchatel, 1893. The first volume contains the Introduction to the Pauline Epistles; the second and third will contain the Introduction to the Gospels, the Catholic Epp. and the Revelation. To be translated.

Page 576:

Robinson’s Harmony, revised edition, by M B. Riddle (Professor in Allegheny Theological Seminary), New York, 1885.

Page 724:

Friedrich Spitta: Die Apostelgeschichte, ihre Quellen und ihr historischer Wert. Halle, 1891 (pp. 380). It is briefly criticised by Ramsey.

———————————

FIRST PERIOD

THE CHURCH UNDER THE APOSTLES

FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN,

A.D. 1–100

———————————

CHAPTER I.

PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD.

Literature.

J. L. von Mosheim: Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity in the first three centuries. 1753. Transl. by Vidal and Murdock, vol. i. chs. 1 and 2 (pp. 9–82, of the N. York ed. 1853).

Neander: Allg. Gesch. der christl. Religion und Kirche. Vol. 1st (1842). Einleit. (p. 1–116).

J. P. Lange: Das Apost. Zeitalter. 1853, I. pp. 224–318.

Schaff: Hist. of the Apostolic Church. pp. 137–188 (New York ed.).

Lutterbeck (R. C.): Die N. Testamentlichen Lehrbegriffe, oder Untersuchungen über das Zeitalter der Religionswende, die Vorstufen des Christenthums und die erste Gestaltung desselben. Mainz, 1852, 2 vols.

Döllinger (R. C.): Heidenthum und Judenthum. Vorhalle zur Geschichte des Christenthums. Regensb. 1857. Engl. transl. by N. Darnell under the title: The Gentile and the Jew in the courts of the Temple of Christ: an Introduction to the History of Christianity. Lond. 1862, 2 vols.

Charles Hardwick (d. 1859): Christ and other Masters. London, 4th ed. by Procter, 1875.

M. Schneckenburger (d. 1848): Vorlesungen über N. Testamentliche Zeitgeschichte, aus dessen Nachlass herausgegeben von Löhlein, mit Vorwort von Hundeshagen. Frankf. a M. 1862.

A. Hausrath: N. Testamentliche Zeitgeschichte. Heidelb. 1868 sqq., 2d ed. 1873–’77, 4 vols. The first vol. appeared in a third ed. 1879. The work includes the state of Judaism and heathenism in the time of Christ, the apostolic and the post-apostolic age to Hadrian (A.D. 117). English translation by Poynting and Guenzer, Lond. 1878 sqq.

E. Schürer: Lehrbuch der N. Testamentlichen Zeitgeschichte. Leipz. 1874. Revised and enlarged under the title: Gesch. des jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter Christi. 1886, 2 vols. Engl. translation, Edinb. and N. Y.

H. Schiller: Geschichte des römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Regierung des Nero. Berlin, 1872.

L. Freidländer: Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von Augustus  bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Leipzig, 5th ed., revised, 1881, 3 vols. A standard work.

Geo. P. Fisher (of Yale College, New Haven): The Beginnings of Christianity. N. York, 1877. Chs. II.-VII.

Gerhard Uhlhorn: The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. Transl. by Egbert C. Smyth and C. T H. Ropes. N. York, 1879. Book I. chs. 1 and 2. The German original appeared in a 4th ed., 1884.

§ 8. Central Position of Christ in the History of the World.

To see clearly the relation of the Christian religion to the preceding history of mankind, and to appreciate its vast influence upon all future ages, we must first glance at the preparation which existed in the political, moral, and religious condition of the world for the advent of our Saviour.

As religion is the deepest and holiest concern of man, the entrance of the Christian religion into history is the most momentous of all events. It is the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. It was a great idea of Dionysius "the Little" to date our era from the birth of our Saviour. Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the prophet, priest, and king of mankind, is, in fact, the centre and turning-point not only of chronology, but of all history, and the key to all its mysteries. Around him, as the sun of the moral universe, revolve at their several distances, all nations and all important events, in the religious life of the world; and all must, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, contribute to glorify his name and advance his cause. The history of mankind before his birth must be viewed as a preparation for his coming, and the history after his birth as a gradual diffusion of his spirit and progress of his kingdom. "All things were created by him, and for him." He is "the desire of all nations." He appeared in the "fulness of time,"45 when the process of preparation was finished, and the world’s need of redemption fully disclosed.

This preparation for Christianity began properly with the very creation of man, who was made in the image of God, and destined for communion with him through the eternal Son; and with the promise of salvation which God gave to our first parents as a star of hope to guide them through the darkness of sin and error.46  Vague memories of a primitive paradise and subsequent fall, and hopes of a future redemption, survive even in the heathen religions.

With Abraham, about nineteen hundred years before Christ, the religious development of humanity separates into the two independent, and, in their compass, very unequal branches of Judaism and heathenism. These meet and unite—at last in Christ as the common Saviour, the fulfiller of the types and prophecies, desires and hopes of the ancient world; while at the same time the ungodly elements of both league in deadly hostility against him, and thus draw forth the full revelation of his all—conquering power of truth and love.

As Christianity is the reconciliation and union of God and man in and through Jesus Christ, the God-Man, it must have been preceded by a twofold process of preparation, an approach of God to man, and an approach of man to God. In Judaism the preparation is direct and positive, proceeding from above downwards, and ending with the birth of the Messiah. In heathenism it is indirect and mainly, though not entirely, negative, proceeding from below upwards, and ending with a helpless cry of mankind for redemption. There we have a special revelation or self-communication of the only true God by word and deed, ever growing clearer and plainer, till at last the divine Logos appears in human nature, to raise it to communion with himself; here men, guided indeed by the general providence of God, and lighted by the glimmer of the Logos shining in the darkness,47 yet unaided by direct revelation, and left to "walk in their own ways,"48 "that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him."49  In Judaism the true religion is prepared for man; in heathenism man is prepared for the true religion. There the divine substance is begotten; here the human forms are moulded to receive it. The former is like the elder son in the parable, who abode in his father’s house; the latter like the prodigal, who squandered his portion, yet at last shuddered before the gaping abyss of perdition, and penitently returned to the bosom of his father’s compassionate love.50  Heathenism is the starry night, full of darkness and fear, but of mysterious presage also, and of anxious waiting for the light of day; Judaism, the dawn, full of the fresh hope and promise of the rising sun; both lose themselves in the sunlight of Christianity, and attest its claim to be the only true and the perfect religion for mankind.

The heathen preparation again was partly intellectual and literary, partly political and social. The former is represented by the Greeks, the latter by the Romans.

Jerusalem, the holy city, Athens, the city of culture, and Rome, the city of power, may stand for the three factors in that preparatory history which ended in the birth of Christianity.

This process of preparation for redemption in the, history of the world, the groping of heathenism after the "unknown God"51 and inward peace, and the legal struggle and comforting hope of Judaism, repeat themselves in every individual believer; for man is made for Christ, and "his heart is restless, till it rests in Christ."52

§ 9. Judaism.

Literature.

I. Sources.

1. The Canonical Books of the O. and N. Testaments.

2. The Jewish Apocrypha. Best edition by Otto Frid. Fritzsche: Libri Apocryphi Veteris Testamenti Graece. Lips. 1871. German Commentary by Fritzsche and Grimm, Leipz. 1851–’60 (in the "Exeget. Handbuch zum A. T."); English Com. by Dr. E. C. Bissell, N. York, 1880 (vol. xxv. in Schaff’s ed. of Lange’s Bible-Work).

3. Josephus (a Jewish scholar, priest, and historian, patronized by Vespasian and Titus,  b. A.D. 37, d. about 103): Antiquitates Judaicae (jArcaiologiva  jIoudaikhv), in 20 books, written first (but not preserved) in Aramaic, and then reproduced in Greek, A.D. 94, beginning with the creation and coming down to the outbreak of the rebellion against the Romans, A.D. 66, important for the post-exilian period. Bellum Judaicum (peri; tou' jIoudai>vkou' polevmou), in 7 books, written about 75, from his own personal observation (as Jewish general in Galilee, then as Roman captive, and Roman agent), and coming down to the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. Contra. Apionem, a defence of the Jewish nation against the calumnies of the grammarian Apion. His Vita or Autobiography was written after A.D. 100.—Editions of Josephus by Hudson, Oxon. 1720, 2 vols. fol.; Havercamp, Amst. 1726, 2 fol.; Oberthür, Lips. 1785, 3 vols.; Richter, Lips. 1827, 6 vols.; Dindorf, Par. 1849, 2 vols.; Imm. Bekker, Lips. 1855, 6 vols. The editions of Havercamp and Dindorf are the best. English translations by Whiston and Traill, often edited, in London, New York, Philadelphia. German translations by Hedio, Ott, Cotta, Demme.

4. Philo of Alexandria (d. after A.D. 40) represents the learned and philosophical (Platonic) Judaism. Best ed. by Mangey, Lond. 1742, 2 fol., and Richter, Lips. 1828, 2 vols. English translation by C. D. Yonge, London, 1854, 4 vols. (in Bohn’s "Ecclesiastical Library").

5. The Talmud (T'l]mWd  i.e. Doctrine) represents the traditional, post-exilian, and anti-Christian Judaism. It consists of the Mishna (!iv]n:h ,, deutevrwsi" Repetition of the Law), from the end of the second century, and the Gemara (gÒm;r;a  i.e. Perfect Doctrine, from gÉm'r  to bring to an end). The latter exists in two forms, the Palestinian Gemara, completed at Tiberias about A.D. 350, and the Babylonian Gemara of the sixth century. Best eds. of the Talmud by Bomberg, Ven. 1520 sqq. 12 vols. fol., and Sittenfeld, Berlin, 1862–’68, 12 vols. fol. Latin version of the Mishna by G. Surenhusius, Amst. 1698–1703, 6 vols. fol.; German by J. J. Rabe, Onolzbach, 1760–’63.

6. Monumental Sources: of Egypt (see the works of Champollion, Young, Rosellini, Wilkinson, Birch, Mariette, Lepsius, Bunsen, Ebers, Brugsch, etc.); of Babylon and Assyria (see Botta, Layard, George Smith, Sayce, Schrader, etc.).

7. Greek and Roman authors: Polybius (d. b.c. 125), Diodorus Siculus (contemporary of Caesar), Strabo ((d. A.D. 24), Tacitus (d. about 117), Suetonius(d. about 130), Justinus (d. after A.D. 160). Their accounts are mostly incidental, and either simply derived from Josephus, or full of error and prejudice, and hence of very little value.

II. Histories.

(a) By Christian authors.

Prideaux (Dean of Norwich, d. 1724): The Old and New Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and neighboring nations, from the declension of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the time of Christ. Lond. 1715; 11th ed. 1749, 4 vols. (and later eds.). The same in French and German.

J. J. Hess (d. 1828): Geschichte der Israeliten vor den Zeiten Jesu. Zür. 1766 sqq., 12 vols.

Warburton (Bishop of Gloucester, d. 1779): The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated. 5th ed. Lond. 1766; 10th ed. by James Nichols, Lond. 1846, 3 vols. 8vo.

Milman (Dean of St. Paul’s, d. 1868): History of the Jews. Lond. 1829, 3 vols.; revised ed. Lond. and N. York, 1865, 3 vols.

J. C. K. Hofmann (Prof. in Erlangen, d. 1878): Weissagung und Erfüllung. Nördl. 1841, 2 vols.

Archibald Alexander (d. at Princeton, 1851): A History of the Israelitish Nation. Philadelphia, 1853. (Popular.)

H. Ewald (d. 1874): Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus. Gött. 1843 sqq. 3d ed. 1864–’68, 7 vols. A work of rare genius and learning, but full of bold conjectures. Engl. transl. by Russell Martineau and J. E. Carpenter. Lond. 1871–’76, 5 vols. Comp. also Ewald’s Prophets, and Poetical Books of the O. T.

E. W. Hengstenberg (d. 1869): Geschichte des Reiches Gottes unter dem Alten Bunde. Berl. 1869–’71, 2 vols. (Posthumous publication.)  English transl., Edinburgh (T. & T. Clark), 1871–272, 2 vols. (Name of the translator not given.)

J. H. Kurtz: Geschichte des Alten Bundes. Berlin, 1848–’55, 2 vols. (unfinished). Engl. transl. by Edersheim, Edinb. 1859, in 3 vols. The same: Lehrbuch der heil. Geschichte. Königsb. 6th ed. 1853; also in English, by C. F. Schäffer. Phil. 1855.

P. Cassel: Israel in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin, 1865 (32 pp.).

Joseph Langen (R. C.): Das Judenthum in Palästina zur Zeit Christi. Freiburg i. B. 1866.

G. Weber and H. Holtzmann: Geschichte des Volkes Israel und der Gründung des Christenthums. Leipzig, 1867, 2 vols. (the first vol. by Weber, the second by Holtzmann).

H. Holtzmann: Die Messiasidee zur Zeit Christi, in the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," Gotha, 1867 (vol. xii. pp. 389–411).

F. Hitzig: Geschichte des Volkes Israel von Anbeginn bis zur Eroberung Masada’s im J. 72 nach Chr. Heidelb. 1869, 2 vols.

A. Kuenen (Prof. in Leyden): De godsdienst van Israël tot den ondergang van den joodschen staat. Haarlem, 1870, 2 vols. Transl. into English. The Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State, by A. H. May. Lond. (Williams & Norgate), 1874–’75, 3 vols. Represents the advanced rationalism of Holland.

A. P. Stanley (Dean of Westminster): Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Lond. and N. York, 1863–76, 3 vols. Based on Ewald.

W. Wellhausen: Geschichte Israels. Berlin, 1878, 3d ed. 1886. Transl. by Black and Menzies: Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinb. 1885.

F. Schürer: Geschichte des jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter Christi. 1886 sq. 2 vols.

A. Edersheim: Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah. Lond. 1885.

A. Köhler: Lehrbuch der bibl. Geschichte des A. T. Erlangen, 1875–’88.

C. A. Briggs: Messianic Prophecy. N. York and Edinb. 1886.

V. H. Stanton: The Jewish, and the Christian Messiah. Lond. 1886.

B. Stade: Gesch. des Volkes Israel. Berlin, 1888, 2 vols. Radical.

E. Renan: Hist. du peuple d’Israel. Paris, 1887 sqq., 3 vols. Engl. translation, London, 1888 sqq. Radical.

B. Kittel: Gesch. der Hebräer. Gotha, 1888 sqq. Moderate.

(b) By Jewish authors.

J. M. Jost: Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer bis auf unsere Tage. Leipz. 1820–’28, 9 vols. By the same: Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Secten. 1857–159, 3 vols.

Salvador: Histoire de la domination Romaine en Judée et de la ruine de Jerusalem. Par. 1847, 2 vols.

Raphall: Post-biblical History of the Jews from the close of the 0. T. about the year 420 till the destruction of the second Temple in the year 70. Lond. 1856, 2 vols.

Abraham Geiger (a liberal Rabbi at Frankfort on the M.): Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte. Breslau; 2d ed. 1865–’71, 3 vols. With an appendix on Strauss and Renan. Comes down to the 16th century. English transl. by Maurice Mayer. N. York, 1865.

L. Herzfeld: Geschichte des Volkes Jizrael. Nordhausen, 1847–’57, 3 vols. The same work, abridged in one vol. Leipz. 1870.

H. Grätz (Prof. in Breslau): Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. Leipz. 1854–’70, 11 vols. (to 1848).

"Salvation is of the Jews."53  This wonderful people, whose fit symbol is the burning bush, was chosen by sovereign grace to stand amidst the surrounding idolatry as the bearer of the knowledge of the only true God, his holy law, and cheering promise, and thus to become the cradle of the Messiah. It arose with the calling of Abraham, and the covenant of Jehovah with him in Canaan, the land of promise; grew to a nation in Egypt, the land of bondage; was delivered and organized into a theocratic state on the basis of the law of Sinai by Moses in the wilderness; was led back into Palestine by Joshua; became, after the Judges, a monarchy, reaching the height of its glory in David and Solomon; split into two hostile kingdoms, and, in punishment for internal discord and growing apostasy to idolatry, was carried captive by heathen conquerors; was restored after seventy years’ humiliation to the land of its fathers, but fell again under the yoke of heathen foes; yet in its deepest abasement fulfilled its highest mission by giving birth to the Saviour of the world. "The history of the Hebrew people," says Ewald, "is, at the foundation, the history of the true religion growing through all the stages of progress unto its consummation; the religion which, on its narrow national territory, advances through all struggles to the highest victory, and at length reveals itself in its full glory and might, to the end that, spreading abroad by its own irresistible energy, it may never vanish away, but may become the eternal heritage and blessing of all nations. The whole ancient world had for its object to seek the true religion; but this people alone finds its being and honor on earth exclusively in the true religion, and thus it enters upon the stage of history."54

Judaism, in sharp contrast with the idolatrous nations of antiquity, was like an oasis in a desert, clearly defined and isolated; separated and enclosed by a rigid moral and ceremonial law. The holy land itself, though in the midst of the three Continents of the ancient world, and surrounded by the great nations of ancient culture, was separated from them by deserts south and east, by sea on the west, and by mountain on the north; thus securing to the Mosaic religion freedom to unfold itself and to fulfil its great work without disturbing influenced from abroad. But Israel carried in its bosom from the first the large promise, that in Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Abraham, the father of the faithful, Moses, the lawgiver, David, the heroic king and sacred psalmist, Isaiah, the evangelist among the prophets, Elijah the Tishbite, who reappeared with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration to do homage to Jesus, and John the Baptist, the impersonation of the whole Old Testament, are the most conspicuous links in the golden chain of the ancient revelation.

The outward circumstances and the moral and religious condition of the Jews at the birth of Christ would indeed seem at first and on the whole to be in glaring contradiction with their divine destiny. But, in the first place, their very degeneracy proved the need of divine help. In the second place, the redemption through Christ appeared by contrast in the greater glory, as a creative act of God. And finally, amidst the mass of corruption, as a preventive of putrefaction, lived the succession of the true children of Abraham, longing for the salvation of Israel, and ready to embrace Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah and Saviour of the world.

Since the conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey, b.c. 63 (the year made memorable by the consulship of Cicero. the conspiracy of Catiline, and the birth of Caesar Augustus), the Jews had been subject to the heathen Romans, who heartlessly governed them by the Idumean Herod and his sons, and afterwards by procurators. Under this hated yoke their Messianic hopes were powerfully raised, but carnally distorted. They longed chiefly for a political deliverer, who should restore the temporal dominion of David on a still more splendid scale; and they were offended with the servant form of Jesus, and with his spiritual kingdom. Their morals were outwardly far better than those of the heathen; but under the garb of strict obedience to their law, they concealed great corruption. They are pictured in the New Testament as a stiff-necked, ungrateful, and impenitent race, the seed of the serpent, a generation of vipers. Their own priest and historian, Josephus, who generally endeavored to present his countrymen to the Greeks and Romans in the most favorable light, describes them as at that time a debased and wicked people, well deserving their fearful punishment in the destruction of Jerusalem.

As to religion, the Jews, especially after the Babylonish captivity, adhered most tenaciously to the letter of the law, and to their traditions and ceremonies, but without knowing the spirit and power of the Scriptures. They cherished a bigoted horror of the heathen, and were therefore despised and hated by them as misanthropic, though by their judgment, industry, and tact, they were able to gain wealth and consideration in all the larger cities of the Roman empire.

After the time of the Maccabees (b.c. 150), they fell into three mutually hostile sects or parties, which respectively represent the three tendencies of formalism, skepticism, and mysticism; all indicating the approaching dissolution of the old religion and the dawn of the new. We may compare them to the three prevailing schools of Greek philosophy—the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Platonic, and also to the three sects of Mohammedanism—the Sunnis, who are traditionalists, the Sheas, who adhere to the Koran, and the Sufis or mystics, who seek true religion in "internal divine sensation."

1. The Pharisees, the "separate,"55 were, so to speak, the Jewish Stoics. They represented the traditional orthodoxy and stiff formalism, the legal self-righteousness and the fanatical bigotry of Judaism. They had most influence with the people and the women, and controlled the public worship. They confounded piety with theoretical orthodoxy. They overloaded the holy Scriptures with the traditions of the elders so as to make the Scriptures "of none effect." They analyzed the Mosaic law to death, and substituted a labyrinth of casuistry for a living code. "They laid heavy burdens and grievous to be borne on men’s shoulders," and yet they themselves would "not move them with their fingers." In the New Testament they bear particularly the reproach of hypocrisy; with, of course, illustrious exceptions, like Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and his disciple, Paul.

2. The less numerous Sadducees56 were skeptical, rationalistic, and worldly-minded, and held about the same position in Judaism as the Epicureans and the followers of the New Academy in Greek and Roman heathendom. They accepted the written Scriptures (especially the Pentateuch), but rejected the oral traditions, denied the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul, the existence of angels and spirits, and the doctrine of an all-ruling providence. They numbered their followers among the rich, and had for some time possession of the office of the high-priest. Caiaphas belonged to their party.

The difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees reappears among modern Jews, who are divided into the orthodox and the liberal or rationalistic parties.

3. The Essenes (whom we know only from Philo and Josephus) were not a party, but a mystic and ascetic order or brotherhood, and lived mostly in monkish seclusion in villages and in the desert Engedi on the Dead Sea.57  They numbered about 4,000 members. With an arbitrary, allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, they combined some foreign theosophic elements, which strongly resemble the tenets of the new Pythagorean and Platonic schools, but were probably derived (like the Gnostic and Manichaean theories) from eastern religions, especially from Parsism. They practised communion of goods, wore white garments, rejected animal food, bloody sacrifices, oaths, slavery, and (with few exceptions) marriage, and lived in the utmost simplicity, hoping thereby to attain a higher degree of holiness. They were the forerunners of Christian monasticism.

The sect of the Essenes came seldom or never into contact with Christianity under the Apostles, except in the shape of a heresy at Colossae. But the Pharisees and Sadducees, particularly the former, meet us everywhere in the Gospels as bitter enemies of Jesus, and hostile as they are to each other, unite in condemning him to that death of the cross, which ended in the glorious resurrection, and became the foundation of spiritual life to believing Gentiles as well as Jews.

§ 10. The Law, and the Prophecy.

Degenerate and corrupt though the mass of Judaism was, yet the Old Testament economy was the divine institution preparatory to the Christian redemption, and as such received deepest reverence from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by terrible rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives to repentance. It therefore could not fail of its saving effect on those hearts which yielded to its discipline, and conscientiously searched the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets.

Law and prophecy are the two great elements of the Jewish religion, and make it a direct divine introduction to Christianity, "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God."

1. The law of Moses was the clearest expression of the holy will of God before the advent of Christ. The Decalogue is a marvel of ancient legislation, and in its two tables enjoins the sum and substance of all true piety and morality—supreme love to God, and love to our neighbor. It set forth the ideal of righteousness, and was thus fitted most effectually to awaken the sense of man’s great departure from it, the knowledge of sin and guilt.58  It acted as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ59 that they might be justified by faith."60

The same sense of guilt and of the need of reconciliation was constantly kept alive by daily sacrifices, at first in the tabernacle and afterwards in the temple, and by the whole ceremonial law, which, as a wonderful system of types and shadows, perpetually pointed to the realities of the new covenant, especially to the one all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

God in his justice requires absolute obedience and purity of heart under promise of life and penalty of death. Yet he cannot cruelly sport with man; he is the truthful faithful, and merciful God. In the moral and ritual law, therefore, as in a shell, is hidden the sweet kernel of a promise, that he will one day exhibit the ideal of righteousness in living form, and give the penitent sinner pardon for all his transgressions and the power to fulfil the law. Without such assurance the law were bitter irony.

As regards the law, the Jewish economy was a religion of repentance.

2. But it was at the same time, as already, hinted, the vehicle of the divine promise of redemption, and, as such, a religion of hope. While the Greeks and Romans put their golden age in the past, the Jews looked for theirs in the future. Their whole history, their religious, political, and social institutions and customs pointed to the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of his kingdom on earth.

Prophecy, or the gospel under the covenant of the law, is really older than the law, which was added afterwards and came in between the promise and its fulfilment, between sin and redemption, between the disease and the cure.61  Prophecy begins in paradise with the promise of the serpent-bruiser immediately after the fall. It predominates in the patriarchal age, especially in the life of Abraham, whose piety has the corresponding character of trust and faith; and Moses, the lawgiver, was at the same time a prophet pointing the people to a greater successor.62  Without the comfort of the Messianic promise, the law must have driven the earnest soul to despair. From the time of Samuel, some eleven centuries before Christ, prophecy, hitherto sporadic, took an organized form in a permanent prophetical office and order. In this form it accompanied the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic dynasty down to the Babylonish captivity, survived this catastrophe, and directed the return of the people and the rebuilding of the temple; interpreting and applying the law, reproving abuses in church and state, predicting the terrible judgments and the redeeming grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting and encouraging, with an ever plainer reference to the coming Messiah, who should redeem Israel and the world from sin and misery, and establish a kingdom of peace and righteousness on earth.

The victorious reign of David and the peaceful reign of Solomon furnish, for Isaiah and his successors, the historical and typical ground for a prophetic picture of a far more glorious future, which, unless thus attached to living memories and present circumstances, could not have been understood. The subsequent catastrophe and the sufferings of the captivity served to develop the idea of a Messiah atoning for the sins of the people and entering through suffering into glory.

The prophetic was an extraordinary office, serving partly to complete, partly to correct the regular, hereditary priesthood, to prevent it from stiffening into monotonous formality, and keep it in living flow. The prophets were, so to speak, the Protestants of the ancient covenant, the ministers of the spirit and of immediate communion with God, in distinction from the ministers of the letter and of traditional and ceremonial mediation.

The flourishing period of our canonical prophecy began with the eighth century before Christ, some seven centuries after Moses, when Israel was suffering under Assyrian oppression. In this period before the captivity, Isaiah ("the salvation of God"), who appeared in the last years of king Uzziah, about ten years before the founding of Rome, is the leading figure; and around him Micah, Joel, and Obadiah in the kingdom of Judah, and Hosea, Amos, and Jonah in the kingdom of Israel, are grouped. Isaiah reached the highest elevation of prophecy, and unfolds feature by feature a picture of the Messiah—springing from the house of David, preaching the glad tidings to the poor, healing the broken-hearted, opening the eyes to the blind, setting at liberty the captives, offering himself as a lamb to the slaughter, bearing the sins of the people, dying the just for the unjust, triumphing over death and ruling as king of peace over all nations—a picture which came to its complete fulfilment in one person, and one only, Jesus of Nazareth. He makes the nearest approach to the cross, and his book is the Gospel of the Old Testament. In the period of the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah (i.e. "the Lord casts down") stands chief. He is the prophet of sorrow, and yet of the new covenant of the Spirit. In his denunciations of priests and false prophets, his lamentations over Jerusalem, his holy grief, his bitter persecution he resembles the mission and life of Christ. He remained in the land of his fathers, and sang his lamentation on the ruins of Jerusalem; while Ezekiel warned the exiles on the river Chebar against false prophets and carnal hopes, urged them to repentance, and depicted the new Jerusalem and the revival of the dry bones of the people by the breath of God; and Daniel at the court of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon saw in the spirit the succession of the four empires and the final triumph of the eternal kingdom of the Son of Man. The prophets of the restoration are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. With Malachi who lived to the time of Nehemiah, the Old Testament prophecy ceased, and Israel was left to himself four hundred years, to digest during this period of expectation the rich substance of that revelation, and to prepare the birth-place for the approaching redemption.

3. Immediately before the advent of the Messiah the whole Old Testament, the law and the prophets, Moses and Isaiah together, reappeared for a short season embodied in John the Baptist, and then in unrivalled humility disappeared as the red dawn in the splendor of the rising sun of the new covenant. This remarkable man, earnestly preaching repentance in the wilderness and laying the axe at the root of the tree, and at the same time comforting with prophecy, and pointing to the atoning Lamb of God, was indeed, as the immediate forerunner of the New Testament economy, and the personal friend of the heavenly Bridegroom, the greatest of them that were born of woman; yet in his official character as the representative of the ancient preparatory economy he stands lower than the least in that kingdom of Christ, which is infinitely more glorious than all its types and shadows in the past.

This is the Jewish religion, as it flowed from the fountain of divine revelation and lived in the true Israel, the spiritual children of Abraham, in John the Baptist, his parents and disciples, in the mother of Jesus, her kindred and friends, in the venerable Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in Lazarus and his pious sisters, in the apostles and the first disciples, who embraced Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfiller of the law and the prophets, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and who were the first fruits of the Christian Church.

§ 11. Heathenism.

Literature.

I. Sources.

The works of the Greek and Roman Classics from Homer to Virgil and the age of the Antonines.

The monuments of Antiquity.

The writings of the early Christian Apologists, especially Justin Martyr: Apologia I. and II.; Tertullian: Apologeticus; Minucius Felix: Octavius; Eusebius: Praeparatio Evangelica; and Augustine (d. 430): De Civitate Dei (the first ten books).

II. Later Works.

Is. Vossius: De theologia gentili et physiolog. Christ. Frcf. 1675, 2 vols.

Creuzer (d. 1858): Symbolik und Mythologie der alien Völker. Leipz. 3d ed, 1837 sqq. 3 vols.

Tholuck (d. 1877): Das Wesen und der sittliche Einfluss des Heidenthums, besonders unter den Griechen und Römern, mit Hinsicht auf das Christenthum. Berlin, 1823. In Neander’s Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. i. of the 1st ed. Afterwards separately printed. English translation by Emerson in, "Am. Bibl. Repository" for 1832.

Tzschirner (d. 1828): Der Fall des Heidenthums, ed. by Niedner. Leip, 1829, 1st vol.

O. Müller (d. 1840): Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftl. Mythologie. Gött. 1825. Transl. into English by J. Leitch. Lond. 1844.

Hegel (d. 1831): Philosphie der Religion. Berl. 1837, 2 vols.

Stuhr: Allgem. Gesch. der Religionsformen der heidnischen Völker. Berl. 1836, 1837, 2 vols. (vol. 2d on the Hellenic Religion).

Hartung: Die Religion der Römer. Erl. 1836, 2 vols.

C. F. Nägelsbach: Homerische Theologie. Nürnb. 1840; 2d ed. 1861. The same: Die nach-homerische Theologie des Griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander. Nürnb. 1857 .

Sepp (R. C.): Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeutung für das Christenthum. Regensb. 1853, 3 vols.

Wuttke: Geschichte des Heidenthums in Beziehung auf Religion, Wissen, Kunst, Sittlichkeit und Staatsleben. Bresl. 1852 sqq. 2 vols.

Schelling (d. 1854): Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie. Stuttg. 1856; and Philosophie der Mythologie . Stuttg. 1857.

Maurice (d. 1872): The Religions of the World in their Relations to Christianity. Lond. 1854 (reprinted in Boston).

Trench: Hulsean Lectures for 1845–’46. No. 2: Christ the Desire of all Nations, or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom (a commentary on the star of the wise men, Matt. ii.). Cambr. 4th ed. 1854 (also 1850).

L. Preller: Griechische Mythologie. Berlin, 1854, 3d ed. 1875, 2 vols. By the same; Römische Mythologie. Berlin, 1858; 3d ed., by Jordan, 1881–83, 2 vols.

M. W. Heffter: Griech. und Röm. Mythologie. Leipzig, 1854.

Döllinger: Heidenthum und Judenthum, quoted in § 8.

C. Schmidt: Essai historique sur la societé civil dans le monde romain et sur sa transformation par le christianisme. Paris, 1853.

C. G. Seibert: Griechenthum und Christenthum, oder der Vorhof des Schönen und das Heiligthum der Wahrheit. Barmen, 1857.

Fr. Fabri: Die Entstehung des Heidenthums und die Aufgabe der Heidenmission. Barmen, 1859.

W. E. Gladstone (the English statesman): Studies on Homer and Homeric Age. Oxf. 1858, 3 vols. (vol. ii. Olympus; or the Religion of the Homeric Age). The same: Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. 2d ed. Lond. 1870. (Embodies the results of the larger work, with several modifications in the ethnological and mythological portions.)

W. S. Tyler (Prof. in Amherst Coll., Mass.): The Theology of the Greek Poets. Boston, 1867.

B. F. Cocker: Christianity and Greek Philosophy; or the Relation between Reflective Thought in Greece and the Positive Teaching of Christ and his Apostles. N. York, 1870.

Edm. Spiess: Logos spermaticós. Parallelstellen zum N. Text. aus den Schriften der alten Griechen. Ein Beitrag zur christl. Apologetik und zur vergleichenden Religionsforschung. Leipz. 1871.

G. Boissier: La religion romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins. Paris, 1884, 2 vols.

J Reville: La religion à Rome sous les Sévères. Paris, 1886.

Comp. the histories of Greece by Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius; the histories of Rome by Gibbon, Niebuhr, Arnold, Merivale, Schwegler, Ihne, Duruy (transl. from the French by W. J. Clarke), and Mommsen. Ranke’s Weltgeschichte. Th. iii. 1882. Schiller’s Gesch. der römischen Kaiserzeit. 1882.

Heathenism is religion in its wild growth on the soil of fallen human nature, a darkening of the original consciousness of God, a deification of the rational and irrational creature, and a corresponding corruption of the moral sense, giving the sanction of religion to natural and unnatural vices.63

Even the religion of Greece, which, as an artistic product of the imagination, has been justly styled the religion of beauty, is deformed by this moral distortion. It utterly lacks the true conception of sin and consequently the true conception of holiness. It regards sin, not as a perverseness of will and an offence against the gods, but as a folly of the understanding and an offence against men, often even proceeding from the gods themselves; for "Infatuation," or Moral Blindness (  [Ath), is a "daughter of Jove," and a goddess, though cast from Olympus, and the source of all mischief upon earth. Homer knows no devil, but he put, a devilish element into his deities. The Greek gods, and also the Roman gods, who were copied from the former, are mere men and women, in whom Homer and the popular faith saw and worshipped the weaknesses and vices of the Grecian character, as well as its virtues, in magnified forms. The gods are born, but never die. They have bodies and senses, like mortals, only in colossal proportions. They eat and drink, though only nectar and ambrosia. They are awake and fall asleep. They travel, but with the swiftness of thought. They mingle in battle. They cohabit with human beings, producing heroes or demigods. They are limited to time and space. Though sometimes honored with the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, and called holy and just, yet they are subject to an iron fate (Moira), fall under delusion, and reproach each other with folly and crime. Their heavenly happiness is disturbed by all the troubles of earthly life. Even Zeus or Jupiter, the patriarch of the Olympian family, is cheated by his sister and wife Hera (Juno), with whom he had lived three hundred years in secret marriage before he proclaimed her his consort and queen of the gods, and is kept in ignorance of the events before Troy. He threatens his fellows with blows and death, and makes Olympus tremble when he shakes his locks in anger. The gentle Aphrodite or Venus bleeds from a spear-wound on her finger. Mars is felled with a stone by Diomedes. Neptune and Apollo have to serve for hire and are cheated. Hephaestus limps and provokes an uproarious laughter. The gods are involved by their marriages in perpetual jealousies and quarrels. They are full of envy and wrath, hatred and lust prompt men to crime, and provoke each other to lying, and cruelty, perjury and adultery. The Iliad and Odyssey, the most popular poems of the Hellenic genius, are a chronique scandaleuse of the gods. Hence Plato banished them from his ideal Republic. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles also rose to loftier ideas of the gods and breathed a purer moral atmosphere; but they represented the exceptional creed of a few, while Homer expressed the popular belief. Truly we have no cause to long with Schiller for the return of the "gods of Greece," but would rather join the poet in his joyful thanksgiving:

"Einen zu bereichern unter allen,

Musste diese Götterwelt vergehen."

Notwithstanding this essential apostasy from truth and holiness, heathenism was religion, a groping after "the unknown God." By its superstition it betrayed the need of faith. Its polytheism rested on a dim monotheistic background; it subjected all the gods to Jupiter, and Jupiter himself to a mysterious fate. It had at bottom the feeling of dependence on higher powers and reverence for divine things. It preserved the memory of a golden age and of a fall. It had the voice of conscience, and a sense, obscure though it was, of guilt. It felt the need of reconciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation by prayer, penance, and sacrifice. Many of its religious traditions and usages were faint echoes of the primal religion; and its mythological dreams of the mingling of the gods with men, of demigods, of Prometheus delivered by Hercules from his helpless sufferings, were unconscious prophecies and fleshly anticipations of Christian truths.

This alone explains the great readiness with which heathens embraced the gospel, to the shame of the Jews.64

There was a spiritual Israel scattered throughout the heathen world, that never received the circumcision of the flesh, but the unseen circumcision of the heart by the hand of that Spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and is not bound to any human laws and to ordinary means. The Old Testament furnishes several examples of true piety outside of the visible communion with the Jewish church, in the persons of Melchisedec, the friend of Abraham, the royal priest, the type of Christ; Jethro, the priest of Midian; Rahab, the Canaanite woman and hostess of Joshua and Caleb; Ruth, the Moabitess and ancestress of our Saviour; King Hiram, the friend of David; the queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; Naaman the Syrian; and especially Job, the sublime sufferer, who rejoiced in the hope of his Redeemer.65

The elements of truth, morality, and piety scattered throughout ancient heathenism, may be ascribed to three sources. In the first place, man, even in his fallen state, retains some traces of the divine image, a knowledge of God,66 however weak, a moral sense or conscience,67 and a longing for union with the Godhead, for truth and for righteousness.68  In this view we may, with Tertullian, call the beautiful and true sentences of a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Plutarch, "the testimonies of a soul constitutionally Christian,"69 of a nature predestined to Christianity. Secondly, some account must be made of traditions and recollections, however faint, coming down from the general primal revelations to Adam and Noah. But the third and most important source of the heathen anticipations of truth is the all-ruling providence of God, who has never left himself without a witness. Particularly must we consider, with the ancient Greek fathers, the influence of the divine Logos before his incarnation,70 who was the tutor of mankind, the original light of reason, shining in the darkness and lighting every man, the sower scattering in the soil of heathendom the seeds of truth, beauty, and virtue.71

The flower of paganism, with which we are concerned here, appears in the two great nations of classic antiquity, Greece and Rome. With the language, morality, literature, and religion of these nations, the apostles came directly into contact, and through the whole first age the church moves on the basis of these nationalities. These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations of the ancient world, and shared the earth among them. The Jews were chosen for things eternal, to keep the sanctuary of the true religion. The Greeks prepared the elements of natural culture, of science and art, for the use of the church. The Romans developed the idea of law, and organized the civilized world in a universal empire, ready to serve the spiritual universality of the gospel. Both Greeks and Romans were unconscious servants of Jesus Christ, "the unknown God."

These three nations, by nature at bitter enmity among themselves, joined hands in the superscription on the cross, where the holy name and the royal title of the Redeemer stood written, by the command of the heathen Pilate, "in Hebrew and Greek and Latin."72

§ 12. Grecian Literature, and the Roman Empire.

The literature of the ancient Greeks and the universal empire of the Romans were, next to the Mosaic religion, the chief agents in preparing the world for Christianity. They furnished the human forms, in which the divine substance of the gospel, thoroughly prepared in the bosom of the Jewish theocracy, was moulded. They laid the natural foundation for the supernatural edifice of the kingdom of heaven. God endowed the Greeks and Romans with the richest natural gifts, that they might reach the highest civilization possible without the aid of Christianity, and thus both provide the instruments of human science, art, and law for the use of the church, and yet at the same time show the utter impotence of these alone to bless and save the world.

The Greeks, few in number, like the Jews, but vastly more important in history than the numberless hordes of the Asiatic empires, were called to the noble task of bringing out, under a sunny sky and with a clear mind, the idea of humanity in its natural vigor and beauty, but also in its natural imperfection. They developed the principles of science and art. They liberated the mind from the dark powers of nature and the gloomy broodings of the eastern mysticism. They rose to the clear and free consciousness of manhood, boldly investigated the laws of nature and of spirit, and carried out the idea of beauty in all sorts of artistic forms. In poetry, sculpture, architecture, painting, philosophy, rhetoric, historiography, they left true masterpieces, which are to this day admired and studied as models of form and taste.

All these works became truly valuable and useful only in the hands of the Christian church, to which they ultimately fell. Greece gave the apostles the most copious and beautiful language to express the divine truth of the Gospel, and Providence had long before so ordered political movements as to spread that language over the world and to make it the organ of civilization and international intercourse, as the Latin was in the middle ages, as the French was in the eighteenth century and as the English is coming to be in the nineteenth. "Greek," says Cicero, "is read in almost all nations; Latin is confined by its own narrow boundaries." Greek schoolmasters and artists followed the conquering legions of Rome to Gaul and Spain. The youthful hero Alexander the Great, a Macedonian indeed by birth, yet an enthusiastic admirer of Homer, an emulator of Achilles, a disciple of the philosophic world-conqueror, Aristotle, and thus the truest Greek of his age, conceived the sublime thought of making Babylon the seat of a Grecian empire of the world; and though his empire fell to pieces at his untimely death, yet it had already carried Greek letters to the borders of India, and made them a common possession of all civilized nations. What Alexander had begun Julius Caesar completed. Under the protection of the Roman law the apostles could travel everywhere and make themselves understood through the Greek language in every city of the Roman domain.

The Grecian philosophy, particularly the systems of Plato and Aristotle, formed the natural basis for scientific theology; Grecian eloquence, for sacred oratory; Grecian art, for that of the Christian church. Indeed, not a few ideas and maxims of the classics tread on the threshold of revelation and sound like prophecies of Christian truth; especially the spiritual soarings of Plato,73 the deep religious reflections of Plutarch,74 the sometimes almost Pauline moral precepts of Seneca.75  To many of the greatest church fathers, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and in some measure even to Augustine, Greek philosophy was a bridge to the Christian faith, a scientific schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Nay, the whole ancient Greek church rose on the foundation of the Greek language and nationality, and is inexplicable without them.

Here lies the real reason why the classical literature is to this day made the basis of liberal education throughout the Christian world. Youth are introduced to the elementary forms of science and art, to models of clear, tasteful style, and to self-made humanity at the summit of intellectual and artistic culture, and thus they are at the same time trained to the scientific apprehension of the Christian religion, which appeared when the development of Greek and Roman civilization had reached its culmination and began already to decay. The Greek and Latin languages, as the Sanskrit and Hebrew, died in their youth and were embalmed and preserved from decay in the immortal works of the classics. They still furnish the best scientific terms for every branch of learning and art and every new invention. The primitive records of Christianity have been protected against the uncertainties of interpretation incident upon the constant changes of a living language.

But aside from the permanent value of the Grecian literature, the glory of its native land had, at the birth of Christ, already irrecoverably departed. Civil liberty and independence had been destroyed by internal discord and corruption. Philosophy had run down into skepticism and refined materialism. Art had been degraded to the service of levity and sensuality. Infidelity or superstition had supplanted sound religious sentiment. Dishonesty and licentiousness reigned among high and low.

This hopeless state of things could not but impress the more earnest and noble souls with the emptiness of all science and art, and the utter insufficiency of this natural culture to meet the deeper wants of the heart. It must fill them with longings for a new religion.

The Romans were the practical and political nation of antiquity. Their calling was to carry out the idea of the state and of civil law, and to unite the nations of the world in a colossal empire, stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the Libyan desert to the banks of the Rhine. This empire embraced the most fertile and civilized countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and about one hundred millions of human beings, perhaps one-third of the whole race at the time of the introduction of Christianity.76  To this outward extent corresponds its historical significance. The history of every ancient nation ends, says Niebuhr, as the history of every modern nation begins, in that of Rome. Its history has therefore a universal interest; it is a vast storehouse of the legacies of antiquity. If the Greeks had, of all nations, the deepest mind, and in literature even gave laws to their conquerors, the Romans had the strongest character, and were born to rule the world without. This difference of course reached even into the moral and religious life of the two nations. Was the Greek, mythology the work of artistic fantasy and a religion of poesy, so was the Roman the work of calculation adapted to state purposes, political and utilitarian, but at the same time solemn, earnest, and energetic. "The Romans had no love of beauty, like the Greeks. They held no communion with nature, like the Germans. Their one idea was Rome—not ancient, fabulous, poetical Rome, but Rome warring and conquering; and orbis terrarum domina. S. P. Q. R. is inscribed on almost every page of their literature."77

The Romans from the first believed themselves called to govern the world. They looked upon all foreigners—not as barbarians, like the cultured Greeks, but—as enemies to be conquered and reduced to servitude. War and triumph were their highest conception of human glory and happiness. The "Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!"had been their motto, in fact, long before Virgil thus gave it form. The very name of the urbs aeterna, and the characteristic legend of its founding, prophesied its future. In their greatest straits the Romans never for a moment despaired of the commonwealth. With vast energy, profound policy, unwavering consistency, and wolf-like rapacity, they pursued their ambitious schemes, and became indeed the lords, but also, as their greatest historian, Tacitus, says, the insatiable robbers of the world.78

Having conquered the world by the sword, they organized it by law, before whose majesty every people had to bow, and beautified it by the arts of peace. Philosophy, eloquence, history, and poetry enjoyed a golden age under the setting sun of the republic and the rising sun of the empire, and extended their civilizing influence to the borders of barbarianism. Although not creative in letters and fine arts, the Roman authors were successful imitators of Greek philosophers, orators, historians, and poets. Rome was converted by Augustus from a city of brick huts into a city of marble palaces.79  The finest paintings and sculptures were imported from Greece, triumphal arches and columns were erected on public places, and the treasures of all parts of the world were made tributary to, the pride, beauty, and luxury of the capital. The provinces caught the spirit of improvement, populous cities sprung up, and the magnificent temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt by the ambitious extravagance of Herod. The rights of persons and property were well protected. The conquered nations, though often and justly complaining of the rapacity of provincial governors, yet, on the whole, enjoyed greater security against domestic feuds and foreign invasion, a larger share of social comfort, and rose to a higher degree of secular civilization. The ends of the empire were brought into military, commercial, and literary communication by carefully constructed roads, the traces of which still exist in Syria, on the Alps, on the banks of the Rhine. The facilities and security of travel were greater in the reign of the Caesars than in any subsequent period before the nineteenth century. Five main lines went out from Rome to the extremities of the empire, and were connected at seaports with maritime routes. "We may travel," says a Roman writer, "at all hours, and sail from east to west." Merchants brought diamonds from the East, ambers from the shores of the Baltic, precious metals from Spain, wild animals from Africa, works of art from Greece, and every article of luxury, to the market on the banks of the Tiber, as they now do to the banks of the Thames. The Apocalyptic seer, in his prophetic picture of the downfall of the imperial mistress of the world, gives prominence to her vast commerce: "And the merchants of the earth," he says, "weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; and all thine wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul desired are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and sumptuous are perished from thee, and men shall find them no more at all."80

Heathen Rome lived a good while after this prediction, but, the causes of decay were already at work in the first century. The immense extension and outward prosperity brought with it a diminution of those domestic and civil virtues which at first so highly distinguished the Romans above the Greeks. The race of patriots and deliverers, who came from their ploughs to the public service, and humbly returned again to the plough or the kitchen, was extinct. Their worship of the gods, which was the root of their virtue, had sunk to mere form, running either into the most absurd superstitions, or giving place to unbelief, till the very priests laughed each other in the face when they met in the street. Not unfrequently we find unbelief and superstition united in the same persons, according to the maxim that all extremes touch each other. Man must believe something, and worship either God or the devil.81  Magicians and necromancers abounded, and were liberally patronized. The ancient simplicity and contentment were exchanged for boundless avarice and prodigality. Morality and chastity, so beautifully symbolized in the household ministry of the virgin Vesta, yielded to vice and debauchery. Amusement came to be sought in barbarous fights of beasts and gladiators, which not rarely consumed twenty thousand human lives in a single month. The lower classes had lost all nobler feeling, cared for nothing but "panem et circenses," and made the proud imperial city on the Tiber a slave of slaves. The huge empire of Tiberius and of Nero was but a giant body without a soul, going, with steps slow but sure, to final dissolution. Some of the emperors were fiendish tyrants and monsters of iniquity; and yet they were enthroned among the gods by a vote of the Senate, and altars and temples were erected for their worship. This characteristic custom began with Caesar, who even during his lifetime was honored as "Divus Julius" for his brilliant victories, although they cost more than a million of lives slain and another million made captives and slaves.82  The dark picture which St. Paul, in addressing the Romans, draws of the heathenism of his day, is fully sustained by Seneca, Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius, and other heathen writers of that age, and shows the absolute need of redemption. "The world," says Seneca, in a famous passage, "is full of crimes and vices. More are committed than can be cured by force. There is an immense struggle for iniquity. Crimes are no longer bidden, but open before the eyes. Innocence is not only rare, but nowhere."83  Thus far the negative. On the other hand, the universal empire of Rome was a positive groundwork for the universal empire of the gospel. It served as a crucible, in which all contradictory and irreconcilable peculiarities of the ancient nations and religions were dissolved into the chaos of a new creation. The Roman legions razed the partition-walls among the ancient nations, brought the extremes of the civilized world together in free intercourse, and united north and south and east and west in the bonds of a common language and culture, of common laws and customs. Thus they evidently, though unconsciously, opened the way for the rapid and general spread of that religion which unites all nations in one family of God by the spiritual bond of faith and love.

The idea of a common humanity, which underlies all the distinctions of race, society and education, began to dawn in the heathen mind, and found expression in the famous line of Terentius, which was received with applause in the theatre:

"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."

This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed."

The civil laws and institutions, also, and the great administrative wisdom of Rome did much for the outward organization of the Christian church. As the Greek church rose on the basis of the Grecian nationality, so the Latin church rose on that of ancient Rome, and reproduced in higher forms both its virtues and its defects. Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a Christian reproduction of the universal empire seated of old in the city of the seven hills.

§ 13. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact.

The Roman empire, though directly establishing no more than an outward political union, still promoted indirectly a mutual intellectual and moral approach of the hostile religious of the Jews and Gentiles, who were to be reconciled in one divine brotherhood by the supernatural power of the cross of Christ.

1. The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been scattered over all the world. They were as ubiquitous in the Roman empire in the first century as they are now throughout, Christendom. According to Josephus and Strabo, there was no country where they did not make up a part of the population.85   Among the witnesses of the miracle of Pentecost were "Jews from every nation under heaven ... Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers of Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians."86   In spite of the antipathy of the Gentiles, they had, by talent and industry, risen to wealth, influence, and every privilege, and had built their synagogues in all the commercial cities of the Roman empire. Pompey brought a considerable number of Jewish captives from Jerusalem to the capital (b.c. 63), and settled them on the right bank of the Tiber (Trastevere). By establishing this community he furnished, without knowing it, the chief material for the Roman church. Julius Caesar was the great protector of the Jews; and they showed their gratitude by collecting for many nights to lament his death on the forum where his murdered body was burnt on a funeral pile.87  He granted them the liberty of public worship, and thus gave them a legal status as a religious society. Augustus confirmed these privileges. Under his reign they were numbered already by thousands in the city. A reaction followed; Tiberius and Claudius expelled them from Rome; but they soon returned, and succeeded in securing the free exercise of their rites and customs. The frequent satirical allusions to them prove their influence as well as the aversion and contempt in which they were held by the Romans. Their petitions reached the ear of Nero through his wife Poppaea, who seems to have inclined to their faith; and Josephus, their most distinguished scholar, enjoyed the favor of three emperors—Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. In the language of Seneca (as quoted by Augustin) "the conquered Jews gave laws to their Roman conquerors."

By this dispersion of the Jews the seeds of the knowledge of the true God and the Messianic hope were sown in the field of the idolatrous world. The Old Testament Scriptures were translated into Greek two centuries before Christ, and were read and expounded in the public worship of God, which was open to all. Every synagogue was a mission-station of monotheism, and furnished the apostles an admirable place and a natural introduction for their preaching of Jesus Christ as the fulfiller of the law and the prophets.

Then, as the heathen religious had been hopelessly undermined by skeptical philosophy and popular infidelity, many earnest Gentiles especially multitudes of women, came over to Judaism either, wholly or in part. The thorough converts, called "proselytes of righteousness,"88 were commonly still more bigoted and fanatical than the native Jews. The half-converts, "proselytes of the gate"89 or "fearers of God,"90 who adopted only the monotheism, the principal moral laws, and the Messianic hopes of the Jews, without being circumcised, appear in the New Testament as the most susceptible hearers of the gospel, and formed the nucleus of many of the first Christian churches. Of this class were the centurion of Capernaum, Cornelius of Caesarea, Lydia of Philippi, Timothy, and many other prominent disciples.

2. On the other hand, the Graeco-Roman heathenism, through its language, philosophy, and literature, exerted no inconsiderable influence to soften the fanatical bigotry of the higher and more cultivated classes of the Jews. Generally the Jews of the dispersion, who spoke the Greek language—the "Hellenists," as they were called—were much more liberal than the proper "Hebrews," or Palestinian Jews, who kept their mother tongue. This is evident in the Gentile missionaries, Barnabas of Cyprus and Paul of Tarsus, and in the whole church of Antioch, in contrast with that at Jerusalem. The Hellenistic form of Christianity was the natural bridge to the Gentile.

The most remarkable example of a transitional, though very fantastic and Gnostic-like combination of Jewish and heathen elements meets us in the educated circles of the Egyptian metropolis, Alexandria, and in the system of Philo, who was born about b.c. 20, and lived till after A.D. 40, though he never came in contact with Christ or the apostles. This Jewish, divine sought to harmonize the religion of Moses with the philosophy of Plato by the help of an ingenious but arbitrary allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament; and from the books of Proverbs and of Wisdom he deduced a doctrine of the Logos so strikingly like that of John’s Gospel, that many expositors think it necessary to impute to the apostle an acquaintance with the writings, or at least with the terminology of Philo. But Philo’s speculation is to the apostle’s "Word made flesh" as a shadow to the body, or a dream to the reality. He leaves no room for an incarnation, but the coincidence of his speculation with the great fact is very remarkable.91

The Therapeutae or Worshippers, a mystic and ascetic sect in Egypt, akin to the Essenes in Judaea, carried this Platonic Judaism into practical life; but were, of course, equally unsuccessful in uniting the two religions in a vital and permanent way. Such a union could only be effected by a new religion revealed from heaven.92

Quite independent of the philosophical Judaism of Alexandria were the Samaritans, a mixed race, which also  combined, though in a different way, the elements of Jewish and Gentile religion.93  They date from the period of the exile. They held to the Pentateuch, to circumcision, and to carnal Messianic hopes; but they had a temple of their own on Mount Gerizim, and mortally hated the proper Jews. Among these Christianity, as would appear from the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria,94 and the preaching of Philip,95 found ready access, but, as among the Essenes and Therapeutae fell easily into a heretical form. Simon Magus, for example, and some other Samaritan arch-heretics, are represented by the early Christian writers as the principal originators of Gnosticism.

3. Thus was the way for Christianity prepared on every side, positively and negatively, directly and indirectly, in theory and in practice, by truth and by error, by false belief and by unbelief—those hostile brothers, which yet cannot live apart—by Jewish religion, by Grecian culture, and by Roman conquest; by the vainly attempted amalgamation of Jewish and heathen thought, by the exposed impotence of natural civilization, philosophy, art, and political power, by the decay of the old religions, by the universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by the yearnings of all earnest and noble souls for the religion of salvation.

"In the fulness of the time," when the fairest flowers of science and art had withered, and the world was on the verge of despair, the Virgin’s Son was born to heal the infirmities of mankind. Christ entered a dying world as the author of a new and imperishable life.

CHAPTER II.

JESUS CHRIST.

§ 14. Sources and Literature.

A. Sources.

Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise. The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. ( His letter to King Abgarus of Edessa, in Euseb., Hist. Eccl., I. 13, is a worthless fabrication.)  Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper.

I. Authentic Christian Sources.

(1) The four Canonical Gospels. Whatever their origin and date, they exhibit essentially the same divine-human life and character of Christ, which stands out in sharp contrast with the fictitious Christ of the Apocryphal Gospels, and cannot possibly have been invented, least of all by illiterate Galileans. They would never have thought of writing books without the inspiration of their Master.

(2) The Acts of Luke, the Apostolic Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John. They presuppose, independently of the written Gospels, the main facts of the gospel-history, especially the crucifixion and the resurrection, and abound in allusions to these facts. Four of the Pauline Epistles (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians) are admitted as genuine by the most extreme of liberal critics (Baur and the Tübingen School), and from them alone a great part of the life of Christ might be reconstructed. (See the admissions of Keim, Gesch. Jesu v. Naz., I. 35 sqq.)

II. Apocryphal Gospels:

The Apocryphal Gospels are very numerous (about 50), some of them only known by name, others in fragments, and date from the second and later centuries. They are partly heretical (Gnostic and Ebionite) perversions or mutilations of the real history, partly innocent compositions of fancy, or religious novels intended to link together the disconnected periods of Christ’s biography, to satisfy the curiosity concerning his relations, his childhood, his last days, and to promote the glorification of the Virgin Mary. They may be divided into four classes: (1) Heretical Gospels (as the Evangelium Cerinthi, Ev. Marcionis, Ev. Judae Ischariotae, Ev. secundum Hebraeos, etc.); (2) Gospels of Joseph and Mary, and the birth of Christ (Protevangelium Jacobi, Evang. Pseudo-Mathaei sive liber de Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia Salvatoris, Evang. de Nativitate Mariae, Historia Josephi Fabri lignarii, etc.); (3) Gospels of the childhood of Jesus from the flight to Egypt till his eighth or twelfth year (Evang. Thomae, of Gnostic origin, Evang. Infantiae Arabicum, etc.); (4) Gospels of the passion and the mysterious triduum in Hades (Evang. Nicodemi, including the Gesta or Acta Pilati and the Descensus ad Inferos, Epistola Pilati, a report of Christ’s passion to the emperor Tiberius, Paradosis Pilati, Epistolae Herodis ad Pilatum and Pilati ad Herodem, Responsum Tiberii ad Pilatum, Narratio Josephi Arimathiensis, etc.). It is quite probable that Pilate sent an account of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus to his master in Rome (as Justin Martyr and Tertullian confidentially assert), but the various documents bearing his name are obviously spurious, including the one recently published by Geo. Sluter (The Acta Pilati, Shelbyville, Ind. 1879), who professes to give a translation from the supposed authentic Latin copy in the Vatican Library.

These apocryphal productions have no historical, but considerable apologetic value; for they furnish by their contrast with the genuine Gospels a very strong negative testimony to the historical truthfulness of the Evangelists, as a shadow presupposes the light, a counterfeit the real coin, and a caricature the original picture. They have contributed largely to mediaeval art (e.g., the ox and the ass in the history of the nativity), and to the traditional Mariology and Mariolatry of the Greek and Roman churches, and have supplied Mohammed with his scanty knowledge of Jesus and Mary.

See the collections of the apocryphal Gospels by Fabricius (Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Hamburg, 1703, 2d ed. 1719), Thilo (Cod. Apocr. N. Ti., Lips. 1832), Tischendorf (Evangelia Apocrypha, Lips. 1853), W. Wright (Contributions to the Apocr. Lit. of the N. T. from Syrian MSS. in the British Museum, Lond. 1865), B. Harris Cowper (The Apocryphal Gospels, translated, London, 1867), and Alex. Walker (Engl. transl. in Roberts & Donaldson’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. xvi., Edinb. 1870; vol. viii. of Am. ed., N. Y. 1886).

Comp. the dissertations of Tischendorf: De Evang. aproc. origine et usu (Hagae, 1851), and Pilati circa Christum judicio quid lucis offeratur ex Actis Pilati (Lips. 1855). Rud. Hofmann: Das Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen (Leipz. 1851), and his art., Apokryphen des N. T, in Herzog & Plitt, "R. Encykl.," vol. i. (1877), p. 511. G. Brunet: Les évangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1863. Michel Nicolas: Études sur les évangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1866. Lipsius: Die Pilatus-Acten, Kiel, 1871; Die edessenische Abgar-Sage, 1880; Gospels, Apocr., in Smith & Wace, I. 700 sqq.; Holtzmann Einl. in’s N. T., pp. 534–’54.

III. Jewish Sources.

The O. Test. Scriptures are, in type and prophecy, a preparatory history of Christ, and become fully intelligible only in him who came "to fulfill the law and the prophets."

The Apocryphal and post-Christian Jewish writings give us a full view of the outward framework of society and religion in which the life of Christ moved, and in this way they illustrate and confirm the Gospel accounts.

IV. The famous testimony of the Jewish historian Josephus (d. after A.D. 103) deserves special consideration. In his Antiqu. Jud., 1. xviii. cap. 3,§ 3, he gives the following striking summary of the life of Jesus:

"Now there rose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works (paradovxwn e[rgwn poihthv"), a teacher of such men as receive the truth with gladness. He carried away with him many of the Jews and also many of the Greeks. He was the Christ (oJ Cristo;" ou|to" h\n). And after Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, his first adherents did not forsake him. For he appeared to them alive again the third day (ejfavnh ga;r aujtoi'" trivthn e[cwn hJmevran pavlin zw'n); the divine prophets having foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things (a[lla muriva qaumavsia) concerning him. And the tribe of those called Christians, after him, is not extinct to this day."

This testimony is first quoted by Eusebius, twice, without a misgiving (Hist. Eccl., I. II; and Demonstr. Evang., III. 5), and was considered genuine down to the 16th century, but has been disputed ever since. We have added the most doubtful words in Greek.

The following are the arguments for the genuineness:

(1) The testimony is found in all the MSS. of Josephus.

But these MSS. were written by Christians, and we have none older than from the 11th century.

(2) It agrees with the style of Josephus.

(3) It is extremely improbable that Josephus, in writing a history of the Jews coming down to A.D. 66, should have ignored Jesus; all the more since he makes favorable mention of John the Baptist (Antiqu., XVIII. 5, 2), and of the martyrdom of James "the Brother of Jesus called the Christ" (Antiqu. XX 9, 1: to;n ajdelfo;n  jIhsou' tou' legomevnou Cristou',  jjIavkabo" o[noma aujtw/').  Both passages are generally accepted as genuine, unless the words tou' legomevnou Cristou' should be an interpolation.

Against this may be said that Josephus may have had prudential reasons for ignoring Christianity altogether.

Arguments against the genuineness:

(1) The passage interrupts the connection.

But not necessarily. Josephus had just recorded a calamity which befell the Jews under Pontius Pilate, in consequence of a sedition, and he may have regarded the crucifixion of Jesus as an additional calamity. He then goes on (§ 4 and 5) to record another calamity, the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Tiberius.

(2) It betrays a Christian, and is utterly inconsistent with the known profession of Josephus as a Jewish priest of the sect of the Pharisees. We would rather expect him to have represented Jesus as an impostor, or as an enthusiast.

But it may be urged, on the other hand, that Josephus, with all his great literary merits, is also known as a vain and utterly unprincipled man, as a renegade and sycophant who glorified and betrayed his nation, who served as a Jewish general in the revolt against Rome, and then, after having been taken prisoner, flattered the Roman conquerors, by whom he was richly rewarded. History furnishes many examples of similar inconsistencies. Remember Pontius Pilate who regarded Christ as innocent, and yet condemned him to death, the striking testimonies of Rousseau and Napoleon I. to the divinity of Christ, and also the concessions of Renan, which contradict his position.

(3) It is strange that the testimony should not have been quoted by such men as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, or any other writer before Eusebius (d. 340), especially by Origen, who expressly refers to the passages of Josephus on John the Baptist and James (Contra Cels., I. 35, 47). Even Chrysostom (d. 407), who repeatedly mentions Josephus, seems to have been ignorant of this testimony.

In view of these conflicting reasons, there are different opinions:

(1) The passage is entirely genuine. This old view is defended by Hauteville, Oberthür, Bretschneider, Böhmert, Whiston, Schoedel (1840), Böttger (Das Zeugniss des Jos., Dresden, 1863).

(2) It is wholly interpolated by a Christian hand. Bekker (in his ed. of Jos., 1855), Hase (1865 and 1876), Keim (1867), Schürer (1874).

(3) It is partly genuine, partly interpolated. Josephus probably wrote Xristo;" ou\to" ejlevgeto (as in the passage on James), but not h|n and all other Christian sentences were added by a transcriber before Eusebius, for apologetic purposes. So Paulus, Heinichen, Gieseler (I. § 24, p. 81, 4th Germ. ed.), Weizsäcker, Renan, Farrar. In the introduction to his Vie de Jésus (p. xii.), Renan says: "Je crois le passage sur Jésus authentique. Il est parfaitement dans le goût de Joseph, et si cet historian a fait mention de Jésus, c’est bien comme cela qu’il a dû en parler. On sent seulement qu’une main chrétienne a retouché le morceau, y a ajouté quelques mots sans lesquels il eút été presque blasphématoire, a peut-étre retranché ou modifié quelques expressions."

(4) It is radically changed from a Jewish calumny into its present Christian form. Josephus originally described Jesus as a pseudo-Messiah, a magician, and seducer of the people, who was justly crucified. So Paret and Ewald (Gesch. Christus’, p. 183, 3d ed.).

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Josephus must have taken some notice of the greatest event in Jewish history (as he certainly did of John the Baptist and of James), but that his statement—whether non-committal or hostile—was skillfully enlarged or altered by a Christian hand, and thereby deprived of its historical value.

In other respects, the writings of Josephus contain, indirectly, much valuable testimony, to the truth of the gospel history. His History of the Jewish War is undesignedly a striking commentary on the predictions of our Saviour concerning the destruction of the city and the temple of Jerusalem; the great distress and affliction of the Jewish people at that time; the famine, pestilence, and earthquake; the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his disciples at the approach of these calamities. All these coincidences have been traced out in full by the learned Dr. Lardner, in his Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion, first published 1764–’67, also in vol. vi. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838.

V. Heathen testimonies are few and meagre. This fact must be accounted for by the mysterious origin, the short duration and the unworldly character of the life and work of Christ, which was exclusively devoted to the kingdom of heaven, and, was enacted in a retired country and among a people despised by the proud Greeks and Romans.

The oldest heathen testimony is probably in the Syriac letter of Mara, a philosopher, to his son Serapion, about A.D. 74, first published by Cureton, in Spicilegium Syriacum, Lond. 1855, and translated by Pratten in the "Ante-Nicene Library," Edinb. vol. xxiv. (1872), 104–114. Here Christ is compared to Socrates and Pythagoras, and called "the wise king of the Jews," who were justly punished for murdering him. Ewald (l.c. p. 180) calls this testimony "very remarkable for its simplicity and originality as well as its antiquity."

Roman authors of the 1st and 2d centuries make only brief and incidental mention of Christ as the founder of the Christian religion, and of his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus, Annales, I. xv. cap. 44, notices him in connection with his account of the conflagration at Rome and the Neronian persecution, in the words: "Auctor nominis ejus [Christiani] Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat," and calls the Christian religion an exitiabilis superstitio. Comp. his equally contemptuous misrepresentation of the Jews in Hist., v. c. 3–5. Other notices are found in Suetonius: Vita Claudii, c. 25; Vita Neronis, c. 16; Plinius, jun.: Epist., X. 97, 98; Lucian: De morte Peregr., c. 11; Lampridius: Vita Alexandri Severi, c. 29, 43.

The heathen opponents of Christianity, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Julian the Apostate, etc., presuppose the principal facts of the gospel-history, even the miracles of Jesus, but they mostly derive them, like the Jewish adversaries, from evil spirits. Comp. my book on the Person of Christ, Appendix, and Dr. Nath. Lardner’s Credibility, and Collection of Testimonies.

B. Biographical and Critical.

The numerous Harmonies of the Gospel began already A.D. 170, with Tatian’s to; dia; tessavrwn (on which Ephraem Syrus, in the fourth century, wrote a commentary, published in Latin from an Armenian version in the Armenian convent at Venice, 1876). The first biographies of Christ were ascetic or poetic, and partly legendary. See Hase, Leben Jesu, § 17–19. The critical period began with the infidel and infamous attacks of Reimarus, Bahrdt, and Venturini, and the noble apologetic works of Hess, Herder, and Reinhard. But a still greater activity was stimulated by the Leben Jesu of Strauss, 1835 and again by Renan’s Vie de Jésus, 1863.

J. J. Hess (Antistes at Zürich, d. 1828): Lebensgeschichte Jesu. Zürich, 1774; 8th ed. 1823, 3 vols. Translated into Dutch and Danish. He introduced the psychological and pragmatic treatment.

F. V. Rienhard (d. 1812): Versuch über den Plan Jesu. Wittenberg, 1781; 5th ed. by Heubner, 1830. English translation, N. York, 1831. Reinhard proved the originality and superiority of the plan of Christ above all the conceptions of previous sages and benefactors of the race.

J. G. Herder (d. 1803): Vom Erlöser der Menschen nach unsern 3 ersten Evang. Riga, 1796. The same: Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland, nach Joh. Evang. Riga, 1797.

H. E. G. Paulus (Prof. in Heidelberg, d. 1851): Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristenthums. Heidelb. 1828, 2 vols. Represents the "vulgar" rationalism superseded afterwards by the speculative rationalism of Strauss.

C. Ullmann (d. 1865): Die Sündlosigkeit Jesu. Hamb. 1828; 7th ed. 1864. Eng. translation (of 7th ed.) by Sophia Taylor, Edinb. 1870. The best work on the sinlessness of Jesus. Comp. also his essay (against Strauss), Historisch oder Mythisch?  Gotha, 1838.

Karl Hase:  Das Leben Jesu. Leipz. 1829; 5th ed. 1865. The same: Geschichte Jesu.  Leipz. 1876.

Schleiermacher (d. 1834): Vorlesungen über das Leben Jesu, herausgeg. von Rütenik. Berlin, 1864. The lectures were delivered 1832, and published from imperfect manuscripts. "Eine Stimme aus vergangenen Tagen." Comp. the critique of D. F. Strauss in Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte. Berlin, 1865.

D. F. Strauss (d. 1874): Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet. Tübingen, 1835–’36; 4th ed. 1840, 2 vols. French transl. by Emile Littré, Par. 1856 (2d ed.); Engl. transl. by Miss Marian Evans (better known under the assumed name George Eliot), Lond. 1846, in 3 vols., republ. in N. York, 1850. The same: Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet. Leipz. 1864; 3d ed. 1875. In both these famous works Strauss represents the mythical theory. It has been popularized in the third volume of The Bible for Learners by Oort and Hooykaas, Engl. transl., Boston ed. 1879.

A. Neander (d. 1850): Das Leben Jesu. Hamb. 1837; 5th ed. 1852. A positive refutation of Strauss. The same in English by McClintock and Blumenthal, N. York, 1848.

Joh. Nep. Sepp (R. C.): Das Leben Jesu Christi. Regensb. 1843 sqq. 2d ed. 1865, 6 vols. Much legendary matter.

Jordan Bucher (R. C.): Das Leben Jesu Christi. Stuttgart, 1859.

A. Ebrard: Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte. Erl. 1842; 3d ed. 1868. Against Strauss, Bruno Bauer, etc. Condensed English translation, Edinb. 1869.

J. P. Lange: Das Leben Jesu. Heidelb. 1844–’47, 3 parts in 5 vols. Engl. transl. by Marcus Dods and others, in 6 vols., Edinb. 1864. Rich and suggestive.

J. J. van Oosterzee: Leven van Jesus. First publ. in 1846–’51, 3 vols. 2d ed. 1863–’65. Comp. his Christologie, Rotterdam, 1855–’61, 3 vols., which describe the Son of God before his incarnation, the Son of God in the flesh, and the Son of God in glory. The third part is translated into German by F. Meyering: Das Bild Christi nach der Schrift, Hamburg, 1864.

Chr. Fr. Schmid: Biblische Theologie des N. Testaments. Ed. by Weizsäcker. Stuttgart, 1853 (3d ed. 1854), 2 vols. The first volume contains the life and doctrine of Christ. The English translation by G. H. Venables (Edinb. 1870) is an abridgment.

H. Ewald: Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit. Gött. 1854; 3d ed 1867 (vol. v. of his Hist. of Israel). Transl. into Engl. by O. Glover, Cambridge, 1865.

J. Young: The Christ of History. Lond. and N. York, 1855. 5th ed., 1868.

P. Lichtenstein: Lebensgeschichte Jesu in chronolog. Uebersicht. Erlangen, 1856.

C. J. Riggenbach: Vorlesungen über das Leben Jesu. Basel, 1858.

M. Baumgarten: Die Geschichte Jesu für das Verständniss der Gegenwart. Braunschweig, 1859.

W. F. Gess: Christi Person und Werk nach Christi Selbstzeugniss und den Zeugnissen der Apostel. Basel, 1878, in several parts. (This supersedes his first work on the same subject, publ. 1856.)

Horace Bushnell (d. 1878): The Character of Jesus: forbidding his possible classification with men. N. York, 1861. (A reprint of the tenth chapter of his work on, "Nature and the Supernatural," N. York, 1859.)  It is the best and most useful product of his genius.

C. J. Elliott (Bishop): Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, being the Hulsean Lect. for 1859. 5th ed. Lond. 1869; republ. in Boston, 1862.

Samuel J. Andrews: The Life of our Lord upon the earth, considered in its historical, chronological, and geographical relations. N. York, 1863; 4th ed. 1879

Ernest Renan: Vie de Jésus. Par. 1863, and often publ. since (13th ed. 1867) and in several translations. Strauss popularized and Frenchified. The legendary theory. Eloquent, fascinating, superficial, and contradictory.

Daniel Schenkel: Das Characterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864; 4th ed. revised 1873. English transl. by W. H. Furness. Boston, 1867, 2 vols. By the same: Das Christusbild der Apostel und der nachapostolischen Zeit. Leipz. 1879. See also his art., Jesus Christus, in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lexikon," III. 257 sqq. Semi-mythical theory. Comp. the sharp critique of Strauss on the Characterbild: Die Halben und die Ganzen. Berlin, 1865.

Philip Schaff: The Person of Christ: the Perfection of his Humanity viewed as a Proof of his Divinity. With a Collection of Impartial Testimonies. Boston and N. York, 1865; 12th ed., revised, New York, 1882. The same work in German, Gotha, 1865; revised ed., N. York (Am. Tract Soc.), 1871; in Dutch by Cordes, with an introduction by J. J. van Oosterzee. Groningen, 1866; in French by Prof. Sardinoux, Toulouse, 1866, and in other languages. By the same: Die Christusfrage. N. York and Berlin, 1871.

Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. [By Prof. J. R. Seeley, of Cambridge.] Lond. 1864, and several editions and translations. It gave rise also to works on Ecce Deus, Ecce Deus Homo, and a number of reviews and essays (one by Gladstone).

Charles Hardwick (d. 1859): Christ and other Masters. Lond., 4th ed., 1875. (An extension of the work of Reinhard; Christ compared with the founders of the Eastern religions.)

E. H. Plumptre: Christ and Christendom. Boyle Lectures. Lond. 1866

E. de Pressensé: Jésus Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1866. (Against Renan.)  The same transl. into English by Annie Harwood (Lond., 7th ed. 1879), and into German by Fabarius (Halle, 1866).

F. Delitzsch: Jesus und Hillel. Erlangen, 1867; 3rd ed. revised, 1879.

Theod. Keim (Prof. in Zürich, and then in Giessen, d. 1879); Geschichte Jesu von Nazara. Zürich, 1867–’72, 3 vols. Also an abridgment in one volume, 1873, 2d ed. 1875. (This 2d ed. has important additions, particularly a critical Appendix.)  The large work is translated into English by Geldart and Ransom. Lond. (Williams & Norgate), 1873–82, 6 vols. By the same author: Der geschichtliche Christus. Zürich, 3d ed. 1866. Keim attempts to reconstruct a historical Christ from the Synoptical Gospels, especially Matthew, but without John.

Wm. HANNA: The Life of our Lord. Edinb. 1868–’69, 6 vols.

Bishop Dupanloup (R. C.): Histoire de noire Sauveur Jésus Christ. Paris, 1870.

Fr. W. Farrar (Canon of Westminster): The Life of Christ. Lond. and N. York, 1874, 2 vols. (in many editions, one with illustrations).

C. Geikie: The Life and Words of Christ. Lond. and N. York, 1878,·2 vols. (Illustrated. Several editions.)

Bernhard Weis (Prof. in Berlin): Das Leben Jesu. Berlin, 1882, 2 vols., 3d ed. 1888. English transl. Edinb. 1885, 3 vols.

Alfred Edersheim: The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. London and N. Y. 1884, 2 vols. Strictly orthodox. Valuable for rabbinical illustrations.,

W. Beyschlag: Das Leben Jesu. Halle, 1885–’86, 2 vols.; 2d ed. 1888.

The works of Paulus, Strauss, and Renan (also Joseph Salvador, a learned Jew in France, author of Jésus Christ et sa doctrine, Par. 1838) represent the various phases of rationalism and destructive criticism, but have called forth also a copious and valuable apologetic literature. See the bibliography in Hase’s Leben Jesu, 5th ed. p. 44 sqq., and in his Geschichte Jesu, p. 124 sqq. Schleiermacher, Gfrörer, Weisse, Ewald, Schenkel, Hase, and Keim occupy, in various degrees and with many differences, a middle position. The great Schleiermacher almost perished in the sea of scepticism, but, like Peter, he caught the saving arm of Jesus extended to him (Matt. 14:30, 31). Hase is very valuable for the bibliography and suggestive sketches, Ewald and Keim for independent research and careful use of Josephus and the contemporary history. Keim rejects, Ewald accepts, the Gospel of John as authentic; both admit the sinless perfection of Jesus, and Keim, from his purely critical and synoptical standpoint, goes so far as to say (vol. iii. 662) that Christ, in his gigantic elevation above his own and succeeding ages, "makes the impression of mysterious loneliness, superhuman miracle, divine creation (den Eindruck geheimnissvoller Einsamkeit, übermenschlichen Wunders, göttlicher Schöpfung)." Weiss and Beyschlag mark a still greater advance, and triumphantly defend the genuineness of John’s Gospel, but make concessions to criticism in minor details.

C. Chronological.

Kepler: De Jesu Christi Servatoris nostri vero anno natalicio. Frankf. 1606. De vero anno quo aeternus Dei Filius humanam naturam in utero benedicitae Virginis Mariae assumpsit. Frcf. 1614.

J. A. Bengel: Ordo Temporum. Stuttgart, 1741, and 1770.

Henr. Sanclemente: De Vulgaris Aerae Emendatione libri quatuor.

C. Ideler: Handbuch der Chronologie. Berlin, 1825–226, 2 vols. By the same: Lehrbuch der Chronologie, 1831

Fr. Münter: Der Stern der Weisen. Kopenhagen, 1827.

K. Wieseler: Chronolog. Synopse der vier Evangelien. Hamb. 1843. Eng. trans. by Venables, 2d ed., 1877. Supplemented by his Beiträge zur richtigen Würdigung der Evangelien. Gotha, 1869.

Henry Browne: Ordo Saeclorum. London, 1844. Comp. his art. Chronology, in the 3d ed. of Kitto’s "Cycl. of Bib. Lit."

Sam. F. Jarvis (historiographer of the Prot. Episc. Ch. in the U. S., d. 1851): A Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church. N. York, 1845.

G. Seyffarth: Chronologia sacra, Untersuchungen über das Geburtsjahr des Herrn. Leipzig, 1846.

Rud. Anger: Der Stern der Weisen und das Geburtsjahr Christi. Leipz. 1847. By the same. Zur Chronologie des Lehramtes Christi. Leipz. 1848.

Henry F. Clinton: Fasti Romani. Oxford, 1845–’50, 2 vols.

Thomas Lewin: Essay on the Chronology of the New Testament. Oxford, 1854. The same: Fasti Sacri (from b.c. 70 to A.D. 70). Lond. 1865.

F. Piper: Das Datum der Geburt Christi, in his "Evangel. Kalender" for 1856, pp. 41 sqq.

Henri Lutteroth: Le recensement de Quirinius en Judée. Paris, 1865 (134 pp.).

Gust. Rösch: Zum Geburtsjahr Jesu, in the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theol." Gotha, 1866, pp. 3–48.

Ch. Ed. Caspari: Chronologisch-Geographische Einleitung in das Leben J. C. Hamb. 1869 (263 pp.). English translation by M. J. Evans. Edinburgh (T. Clark), 1876.

Francis W. Upham: The Wise Men. N. York, 1869 (ch. viii. 145, on Kepler’s Discovery). Star of Our Lord, by the same author. N. Y., 1873.

A. W. Zumpt: Das Geburtsjahr Christi. Leipz. 1869 (306 pp.). He makes much account of the double governorship of Quirinus, Luke 2:2. Comp. Pres. Woolsey in Bibl. Sacra, April, 1870.

Herm. Sevin: Chronologie des Lebens Jesu. Tübingen, 2d. ed., 1874.

Florian Riess: (Jesuit): Das Geburtsjahr Christi. Freiburg i. Br. 1880.

Peter Schegg: (R. C.): Das Todesjahr des Königs Herodes und das Todesjahr Jesu Christi. Against Riess. München, 1882.

Florian Riess: Nochmals das Geburtsjahr Jesu Christi. Reply to Schegg. Freib. im Br. 1883.

Bernhard Matthias: Die römische Grundsteuer und das Vectigalrecht. Erlangen, 1882.

H. Lecoultre: De censu Quiriniano et anno nativitatis Christi secundum Lucam evangelistam Dissertatio. Laussanne, 1883.

§ 15. The Founder of Christianity.

When "the fulness of the time" was come, God sent forth his only-begotten Son, "the Desire of all nations," to redeem the world from the curse of sin, and to establish an everlasting kingdom of truth, love, and peace for all who should believe on his name.

In Jesus Christ a preparatory history both divine and human comes to its close. In him culminate all the previous revelations of God to Jews and Gentiles; and in him are fulfilled the deepest desires and efforts of both Gentiles and Jews for redemption. In his divine nature, as Logos, he is, according to St. John, the eternal Son of the Father, and the agent in the creation and preservation of the world, and in all those preparatory manifestations of God, which were completed in the incarnation. In his human nature, as Jesus of Nazareth, he is the ripe fruit of the religions growth of humanity, with an earthly ancestry, which St. Matthew (the evangelist of Israel) traces to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, and St. Luke (the evangelist of the Gentiles), to Adam, the father of all men. In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and in him also is realized the ideal of human virtue and piety. He is the eternal Truth, and the divine Life itself, personally joined with our nature; he is our Lord and our God; yet at the same time flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. In him is solved the problem of religion, the reconciliation and fellowship of man with God; and we must expect no clearer revelation of God, nor any higher religious attainment of man, than is already guaranteed and actualized in his person.

But as Jesus Christ thus closes all previous history, so, on the other hand, he begins an endless future. He is the author of a new creation, the second Adam, the father of regenerate humanity, the head of the church, "which is his body, the fulness of him, that filleth all in all." He is the pure fountain of that stream of light and life, which has since flowed unbroken through nations and ages, and will continue to flow, till the earth shall be full of his praise, and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The universal diffusion and absolute dominion of the spirit and life of Christ will be also the completion of the human race, the end of history, and the beginning of a glorious eternity.

It is the great and difficult task of the biographer of Jesus to show how he, by external and internal development, under the conditions of a particular people, age, and country, came to be in fact what he was in idea and destination, and what he will continue to be for the faith of Christendom, the God-Man and Saviour of the world. Being divine from eternity, he could not become God; but as man he was subject to the laws of human life and gradual growth. "He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."96  Though he was the Son of God, "yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."97  There is no conflict between the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the ideal Christ of faith. The full understanding of his truly human life, by its very perfection and elevation above all other men before and after him, will necessarily lead to an admission of his own testimony concerning his divinity.

"Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine,

Within our earthly sod!

Most human and yet most divine,

The flower of man and God!"

Jesus Christ came into the world under Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, before the death of king Herod the Great, four years before the traditional date of our Dionysian aera. He was born at Bethlehem of Judaea, in the royal line of David, from Mary, "the wedded Maid and Virgin Mother." The world was at peace, and the gates of Janus were closed for only the second time in the history of Rome. There is a poetic and moral fitness in this coincidence: it secured a hearing for the gentle message of peace which might have been drowned in the passions of war and the clamor of arms. Angels from heaven proclaimed the good tidings of his birth with songs of praise; Jewish shepherds from the neighboring fields, and heathen sages from the far east greeted the newborn king and Saviour with the homage of believing hearts. Heaven and earth gathered in joyful adoration around the Christ-child, and the blessing of this event is renewed from year to year among high and low, rich and poor, old and young, throughout the civilized world.

The idea of a perfect childhood, sinless and holy, yet truly human and natural, had never entered the mind of poet or historian before; and when the legendary fancy of the Apocryphal Gospels attempted to fill out the chaste silence of the Evangelists, it painted an unnatural prodigy of a child to whom wild animals, trees, and dumb idols bowed, and who changed balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of his playmates.

The youth of Jesus is veiled in mystery. We know only one, but a very significant fact. When a boy of twelve years he astonished the doctors in the temple by his questions and answers, without repelling them by immodesty and premature wisdom, and filled his parents with reverence and awe by his absorption in the things of his heavenly Father, and yet was subject and obedient to them in all things. Here, too, there is a clear line of distinction between the supernatural miracle of history and the unnatural prodigy of apocryphal fiction, which represents Jesus as returning most learned answers to perplexing questions of the doctors about astronomy, medicine, physics, metaphysics, and hyperphysics.98

The external condition and surroundings of his youth are in sharp contrast with the amazing result of his public life. He grew up quietly and unnoticed in a retired Galilean mountain village of proverbial insignificance, and in a lowly carpenter-shop, far away from the city of Jerusalem, from schools and libraries, with no means of instruction save those which were open to the humblest Jew—the care of godly parents, the beauties of nature, the services of the synagogue, the secret communion of the soul with God, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which recorded in type and prophecy his own character and mission. All attempts to derive his doctrine from any of the existing schools and sects have utterly failed. He never referred to the traditions of the elders except to oppose them. From the Pharisees and Sadducees he differed alike, and provoked their deadly hostility. With the Essenes he never came in contact. He was independent of human learning and literature, of schools and parties. He taught the world as one who owed nothing to the world. He came down from heaven and spoke, out of the fulness of his personal intercourse with the great Jehovah. He was no scholar, no artist, no orator; yet was he wiser than all sages, he spake as never man spake, and made an impression on his age and all ages after him such as no man ever made or can make. Hence the natural surprise of his countrymen as expressed in the question: "From whence hath this men these things?" "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"99

He began his public ministry in the thirtieth year of his age, after the Messianic inauguration by the baptism of John, and after the Messianic probation in the wilderness—the counterpart of the temptation of the first Adam in Paradise. That ministry lasted only three years—and yet in these three years is condensed the deepest meaning of the history of religion. No great life ever passed so swiftly, so quietly, so humbly, so far removed from the noise and commotion of the world; and no great life after its close excited such universal and lasting interest. He was aware of this contrast: he predicted his deepest humiliation even to the death on the cross, and the subsequent irresistible attraction of this cross, which may be witnessed from day to day wherever his name is known. He who could say, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto myself,"100 knew more of the course of history and of the human heart than all the sages and legislators before and after him.

He chose twelve apostles for the Jews and seventy disciples for the Gentiles, not from among the scholars and leaders, but from among the illiterate fishermen of Galilee. He had no home, no earthly possessions, no friends among the mighty and the rich. A few pious women from time to time filled his purse; and this purse was in the bands of a thief and a traitor. He associated with publicans and sinners, to raise them up to a higher and nobler life, and began his reformation among them lower classes, which were despised and neglected by the proud: hierarchy of the day. He never courted the favor of the great, but incurred their hatred and persecution. He never flattered, the prejudices of the age, but rebuked sin and vice among the high and the low, aiming his severest words at the blind leaders of the blind, the self-righteous hypocrites who sat on Moses’ seat. He never encouraged the carnal Messianic hopes of the people, but withdrew when they wished to make him a king, and declared before the representative of the Roman empire that his kingdom was not of this world. He announced to his disciples his own martyrdom, and promised to them in this life only the same baptism of blood. He went about in Palestine, often weary of travel, but never weary of his work of love, doing good to the souls and bodies of men, speaking words of spirit and life, and working miracles of power and mercy.

He taught the purest doctrine, as a direct revelation of his heavenly Father, from his own intuition and experience, and with a power and authority which commanded unconditional trust and obedience. He rose above the prejudices of party and sect, above the superstitions of his age and nation. He addressed the naked heart of man and touched the quick of the conscience. He announced the founding of a spiritual kingdom which should grow from the smallest seed to a mighty tree, and, working like leaven from within, should gradually pervade all nations and countries. This colossal idea, had never entered the imagination of men, the like of which he held fast even in the darkest hour of humiliation, before the tribunal of the Jewish high-priest and the Roman governor, and when suspended as a malefactor on the cross; and the truth of this idea is illustrated by every page of church history and in every mission station on earth.

The miracles or signs which accompanied his teaching are supernatural, but not unnatural, exhibitions of his power over man and nature; no violations of law, but manifestations of a higher law, the superiority of mind over matter, the superiority of spirit over mind, the superiority of divine grace over human nature. They are all of the highest moral and of a profoundly symbolical significance, prompted by pure benevolence, and intended for the good of men; in striking contrast with deceptive juggler works and the useless and absurd miracles of apocryphal fiction. They were performed without any ostentation, with such simplicity and ease as to be called simply his "works." They were the practical proof of his doctrine and the natural reflex of his wonderful person. The absence of wonderful works in such a wonderful man would be the greatest wonder.

His doctrine and miracles were sealed by the purest and holiest life in private and public. He could challenge his bitterest opponents with the question: "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" well knowing that they could not point to a single spot.

At last he completed his active obedience by the passive obedience of suffering in cheerful resignation to the holy will of God. Hated and persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, betrayed into their hands by Judas, accused by false witnesses, condemned by the Sanhedrin, rejected by the people denied by Peter, but declared innocent by the representative of the Roman law and justice, surrounded by his weeping mother and faithful disciples, revealing in those dark hours by word and silence the gentleness of a lamb and the dignity of a God, praying for his murderers, dispensing to the penitent thief a place in paradise, committing his soul to his heavenly Father he died, with the exclamation: "It is finished!"  He died before he had reached the prime of manhood. The Saviour of the world a youth!  He died the shameful death of the cross the just for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a free self, sacrifice of infinite love, to reconcile the world unto God. He conquered sin and death on their own ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified all who are willing to accept his benefits and to follow his example. He instituted the Lord’s Supper, to perpetuate the memory of his death and the cleansing and atoning power of his blood till the end of time.

The third day he rose from the grave, the conqueror of death and hell, the prince of life and resurrection. He repeatedly appeared to his disciples; he commissioned them to preach the gospel of the resurrection to every creature; he took possession of his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit he established the church, which he has ever since protected, nourished, and comforted, and with which he has promised to abide, till he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.

This is a meagre outline of the story which the evangelists tell us with childlike simplicity, and yet with more general and lasting effect than could be produced by the highest art of historical composition. They modestly abstained from adding their own impressions to the record of the words and acts of the Master whose "glory they beheld, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Who would not shrink from the attempt to describe the moral character of Jesus, or, having attempted it, be not dissatisfied with the result?  Who can empty the ocean into a bucket?  Who (we may ask with Lavater) "can paint the glory of the rising sun with a charcoal?"  No artist’s ideal comes up to the reality in this case, though his ideals may surpass every other reality. The better and holier a man is, the more he feels his need of pardon, and how far he falls short of his own imperfect standard of excellence. But Jesus, with the same nature as ours and tempted as we are, never yielded to temptation; never had cause for regretting any thought, word, or action; he never needed pardon, or conversion, or reform; he never fell out of harmony with his heavenly Father. His whole life was one unbroken act of self-consecration to the glory of God and the eternal welfare of his fellow-men. A catalogue of virtues and graces, however complete, would give us but a mechanical view. It is the spotless purity and sinlessness of Jesus as acknowledged by friend and foe; it is the even harmony and symmetry of all graces, of love to God and love to man, of dignity and humility of strength and tenderness, of greatness and simplicity, of self-control and submission, of active and passive virtue; it is, in one word, the absolute perfection which raises his character high above the reach of all other men and makes it an exception to a universal rule, a moral miracle in history. It is idle to institute comparisons with saints and sages, ancient or modern. Even the infidel Rousseau was forced to exclaim: "If Socrates lived and died like a sage, Jesus lived and died like a God." Here is more than the starry heaven above us, and the moral law within us, which filled the soul of Kant with ever-growing reverence and awe. Here is the holy of holies of humanity, here is the very gate of heaven.

Going so far in admitting the human perfection of Christ—and how can the historian do otherwise?—we are driven a step farther, to the acknowledgment of his amazing claims, which must either be true, or else destroy all foundation for admiration and reverence in which he is universally held. It is impossible to construct a life of Christ without admitting its supernatural and miraculous character.

The divinity of Christ, and his whole mission as Redeemer, is an article of faith, and, as such, above logical or mathematical demonstration. The incarnation or the union of the infinite divinity and finite humanity in one person is indeed the mystery of mysteries. "What can be more glorious than God?  What more vile than flesh?  What more wonderful than God in the flesh?"101  Yet aside from all dogmatizing which lies outside of the province of the historian, the divinity of Christ has a self-evidencing power which forces itself irresistibly upon the reflecting mind and historical inquirer; while the denial of it makes his person an inexplicable enigma.

It is inseparable from his own express testimony respecting himself, as it appears in every Gospel, with but a slight difference of degree between the Synoptists and St. John. Only ponder over it!  He claims to be the long-promised Messiah who fulfilled the law and the prophets, the founder and lawgiver of a new and universal kingdom, the light of the world, the teacher of all nations and ages, from whose authority there is no appeal. He claims to have come into this world for the purpose to save the world from sin—which no merely human being can possibly do. He claims the power to forgive sins on earth; he frequently exercised that power, and it was for the sins of mankind, as he foretold, that he shed his own blood. He invites all men to follow him, and promises peace and life eternal to every one that believes in him. He claims pre-existence before Abraham and the world, divine names, attributes, and worship. He disposes from the cross of places in Paradise. In directing his disciples to baptize all nations, he coordinates himself with the eternal Father and the Divine Spirit, and promises to be with them to the consummation of the world and to come again in glory as the Judge of all men. He, the humblest and meekest of men, makes these astounding pretensions in the most easy and natural way; he never falters, never apologizes, never explains; he proclaims them as self-evident truths. We read them again and again, and never feel any incongruity nor think of arrogance and presumption.

And yet this testimony, if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in his every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and so sound, is equally out of the question. How could He be an enthusiast or a madman who never lost the even balance of his mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately predicted his death on the cross, his resurrection on the third day, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of his Church, the destruction of Jerusalem—predictions which have been literally fulfilled? A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been well said, would in this case be greater than the hero. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.

We are shut up then to the recognition of the divinity of Christ; and reason itself must bow in silent awe before the tremendous word: "I and the Father are one!" and respond with skeptical Thomas: "My Lord and my God!"

This conclusion is confirmed by the effects of the manifestation of Jesus, which far transcend all merely human capacity and power. The history of Christianity, with its countless fruits of a higher and purer life of truth and love than was ever known before or is now known outside of its influence, is a continuous commentary on the life of Christ, and testifies on every page to the inspiration of his holy example. His power is felt on every Lord’s Day from ten thousand pulpits, in the palaces of kings and the huts of beggars, in universities and colleges, in every school where the sermon on the Mount is read, in prisons, in almshouses, in orphan asylums, as well as in happy homes, in learned works and simple tracts in endless succession. If this history of ours has any value at all, it is a new evidence that Christ is the light and life of a fallen world.

And there is no sign that his power is waning. His kingdom is more widely spread than ever before, and has the fairest prospect of final triumph in all the earth. Napoleon at St. Helena is reported to have been struck with the reflection that millions are now ready to die for the crucified Nazarene who founded a spiritual empire by love, while no one would die for Alexander, or Caesar, or himself, who founded temporal empires by force. He saw in this contrast a convincing argument for the divinity of Christ, saying: "I know men, and I tell you, Christ was not a man. Everything about Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds me. There is no comparison between him and any other being. He stands single and alone.102  And Goethe, another commanding genius, of very different character, but equally above suspicion of partiality for religion, looking in the last years of his life over the vast field of history, was constrained to confess that "if ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the Person of Christ," and that "the human mind, no matter how far it may advance in every other department, will never transcend the height and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glows in the Gospels."

The rationalistic, mythical, and legendary attempts to explain the life of Christ on purely human and natural grounds, and to resolve the miraculous elements either into common events, or into innocent fictions, split on the rock of Christ’s character and testimony. The ablest of the infidel biographers of Jesus now profess the profoundest regard for his character, and laud him as the greatest sage and saint that ever appeared on earth. But, by rejecting his testimony concerning his divine origin and mission, they turn him into a liar; and, by rejecting the miracle of the resurrection, they make the great fact of Christianity a stream without a source, a house without a foundation, an effect without a cause. Denying the physical miracles, they expect us to believe even greater psychological miracles; yea, they substitute for the supernatural miracle of history an unnatural prodigy and incredible absurdity of their imagination. They moreover refute and supersede each other. The history of error in the nineteenth century is a history of self-destruction. A hypothesis was scarcely matured before another was invented and substituted, to meet the same fate in its turn; while the old truth and faith of Christendom remains unshaken, and marches on in its peaceful conquest against sin and error

Truly, Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of history, the crucified and risen Christ, the divine-human Christ, is the most real, the most certain, the most blessed of all facts. And this fact is an ever-present and growing power which pervades the church and conquers the world, and is its own best evidence, as the sun shining in the heavens. This fact is the only solution of the terrible mystery of sin and death, the only inspiration to a holy life of love to God and man, and only guide to happiness and peace. Systems of human wisdom will come and go, kingdoms and empires will rise and fall, but for all time to come Christ will remain "the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

§16. Chronology of the Life of Christ.

See the Lit. in §14, p. 98, especially Browne, Wieseler, Zumpt, Andrews, and Keim

We briefly consider the chronological dates of the life of Christ.

I. The Year of the Nativity.—This must be ascertained by historical and chronological research, since there is no certain and harmonious tradition on the subject. Our Christians aera, which was introduced by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and came into general use two centuries later, during the reign of Charlemagne, puts the Nativity Dec. 25, 754 Anno Urbis, that is, after the founding of the city of Rome.103  Nearly all chronologers agree that this is wrong by at least four years. Christ was born a.u. 750 (or b.c. 4), if not earlier.

This is evident from the following chronological hints in the Gospels, as compared with and confirmed by Josephus and contemporary writers, and by astronomical calculations.

The Death of Herod.

(1) According to Matthew 2:1 (Comp. Luke 1:5, 26),  Christ was born "in the days of king Herod" I. or the Great, who died, according to Josephus, at Jericho, a.u. 750, just before the Passover, being nearly seventy years of age, after a reign of thirty-seven years104  This date has been verified by the astronomical calculation of the eclipse of the moon, which took place March 13, a.u. 750, a few days before Herod’s death.105  Allowing two months or more for the events between the birth of Christ and the murder of the Innocents by Herod, the Nativity must be put back at least to February or January, a.u. 750 (or b.c. 4), if not earlier.

Some infer from the slaughter of the male children in Bethlehem, "from two years old and under,"106 that Christ must have been born two years before Herod’s death; but he counted from the time when the star was first seen by the Magi (Matt. 2:7), and wished to make sure of his object. There is no good reason to doubt the fact itself, and the flight of the holy family to Egypt, which is inseparably connected with it. For, although the horrible deed is ignored by Josephus, it is in keeping with the well-known cruelty of Herod, who from jealousy murdered Hyrcanus, the grandfather of his favorite wife, Mariamne; then Mariamne herself, to whom he was passionately attached; her two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, and, only five days before his death, his oldest son, Antipater; and who ordered all the nobles assembled around him in his last moments to be executed after his decease, so that at least his death might be attended by universal mourning. For such a monster the murder of one or two dozen infants in a little town107 was a very small matter, which might easily have been overlooked, or, owing to its connection with the Messiah, purposely ignored by the Jewish historian. But a confused remembrance of it is preserved in the anecdote related by Macrobius (a Roman grammarian and probably a heathen, about A.D. 410), that Augustus, on hearing of Herod’s murder of "boys under two years" and of his own son, remarked "that it was better to be Herod’s swine than his son."108  The cruel persecution of Herod and the flight into Egypt were a significant sign of the experience of the early church, and a source of comfort in every period of martyrdom.

The Star of the Magi.

(2) Another chronological hint of Matthew 2:1–4, 9, which has been verified by astronomy, is the Star of the Wise Men, which appeared before the death of Herod, and which would naturally attract the attention of the astrological sages of the East, in connection with the expectation of the advent of a great king among the Jews. Such a belief naturally arose from Balaam’s prophecy of "the star that was to rise out of Jacob" (Num. 24:17), and from the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel, and widely prevailed in the East since the dispersion of the Jews.109

The older interpretation of that star made it either a passing meteor, or a strictly miraculous phenomenon, which lies beyond astronomical calculation, and was perhaps visible to the Magi alone. But Providence usually works through natural agencies, and that God did so in this case is made at least very probable by a remarkable discovery in astronomy. The great and devout Kepler observed in the years 1603 and 1604 a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which was made more rare and luminous by the addition of Mars in the month of March, 1604. In the autumn of the same year (Oct. 10) he observed near the planets Saturn, Jupiter and Mars a new (fixed) star of uncommon brilliancy, which appeared "in triumphal pomp, like, some all-powerful monarch on a visit to the metropolis of his realm." It was blazing and glittering "like the most beautiful and glorious torch ever seen when driven by a strong wind," and seemed to him to be "an exceedingly wonderful work of God."110  His genius perceived that this phenomenon must lead to the determination of the year of Christ’s birth, and by careful calculation he ascertained that a similar conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, with the later addition of Mars, and probably some, extraordinary star, took place repeatedly a.u. 747 and 748 in the sign of the Pisces.

It is worthy of note that Jewish astrologers ascribe a special signification to the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the Pisces, and connect it with the advent of the Messiah.111

The discovery of Kepler was almost forgotten till the nineteenth century, when it was independently confirmed by several eminent astronomers, Schubert of Petersburg, Ideler and Encke of Berlin, and Pritchard of London. It is pronounced by Pritchard to be "as certain as any celestial phenomenon of ancient date." It certainly makes the pilgrimage of the Magi to Jerusalem and Bethlehem more intelligible. "The star of astrology has thus become a torch of chronology" (as Ideler says), and an argument for the truthfulness of the first Gospel.112

It is objected that Matthew seems to mean a single star (ajsthvr, comp. Matt. 2:9) rather than a combination of stars (a[stron). Hence Dr. Wieseler supplements the calculation of Kepler and Ideler by calling to aid a single comet which appeared from February to April, a.u. 750, according to the Chinese astronomical tables, which Pingré and Humboldt acknowledge as historical. But this is rather far-fetched and hardly necessary; for that extraordinary star described by Kepler, or Jupiter at its most luminous appearance, as described by Pritchard, in that memorable conjunction, would sufficiently answer the description of a single star by Matthew, which must at all events not be pressed too literally; for the language of Scripture on the heavenly bodies is not scientific, but phenomenal and popular. God condescended to the astrological faith of the Magi, and probably made also an internal revelation to them before, as well as after the appearance of the star (comp. 2:12).

If we accept the result of these calculations of astronomers we are brought to within two years of the year of the Nativity, namely, between a.u. 748 (Kepler) and 750 (Wieseler). The difference arises, of course, from the uncertainty of the time of departure and the length of the journey of the Magi.

As this astronomical argument is often very carelessly and erroneously stated, and as the works of Kepler and Ideler are not easy of access, at least in America (I found them in the Astor Library), I may be permitted to state the case more at length. John Kepler wrote three treatises on the year of Christ’s birth, two in Latin (1606 and 1614), one in German (1613), in which he discusses with remarkable learning the various passages and facts bearing on that subject. They are reprinted in Dr. Ch. Frisch’s edition of his Opera Omnia (Frcf. et Erlang. 1858–’70, 8 vols.), vol. IV. pp. 175 sqq.; 201 sqq.; 279 sqq. His astronomical observations on the constellation which led him to this investigation are fully described in his treatises De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii (Opera, vol. II. 575 sqq.), and Phenomenon singulare seu Mercurius in Sole (ibid. II. 801 sqq.). Prof. Ideler, who was himself an astronomer and chronologist, in his Handbuch der mathemat. und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1826, vol. III. 400 sqq.), gives the following clear summary of Kepler’s and of his own observations:

"It is usually supposed that the star of the Magi was, if not a fiction of the imagination, some meteor which arose accidentally, or ad hoc. We will belong neither to the unbelievers nor the hyper-believers (weder zu den Ungläubigen noch zu den Uebergläubigen), and regard this starry phenomenon with Kepler to be real and well ascertainable by calculation, namely, as a conjunction of the Planets Jupiter and Saturn. That Matthew speaks only of a star (ajsthvr), not a constellation (a[stron), need not trouble us, for the two words are not unfrequently confounded. The just named great astronomer, who was well acquainted with the astrology of his and former times, and who used it occasionally as a means for commending astronomy to the attention and respect of the laity, first conceived this idea when he observed the conjunction of the two planets mentioned at the close of the year 1603. It took place Dec. 17. In the spring following Mars joined their company, and in autumn 1604 still another star, one of those fixed star-like bodies (einer jener fixstern-artigen Körper) which grow to a considerable degree of brightness, and then gradually disappear without leaving a trace behind. This star stood near the two planets at the eastern foot of Serpentarius (Schlangenträger), and appeared when last seen as a star of the first magnitude with uncommon splendor. From month to month it waned in brightness, and at the end of 1605 was withdrawn from the eyes which at that time could not yet be aided by good optical instruments. Kepler wrote a special work on this Stella nova in pede Serpentarii (Prague, 1606), and there he first set forth the view that the star of the Magi consisted in a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and some other extraordinary star, the nature of which he does not explain more fully." Ideler then goes on to report (p. 404) that Kepler, with the imperfect tables at his disposal, discovered the same conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn a.u. 747 in June, August and December, in the sign of the Pisces; in the next year, February and March, Mars was added, and probably another extraordinary star, which must have excited the astrologers of Chaldaea to the highest degree. They probably saw the new star first, and then the constellation.

Dr. Münter, bishop of Seeland, in 1821 directed new attention to this remarkable discovery, and also to the rabbinical commentary of Abarbanel on Daniel, according to which the Jewish astrologers expected a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of the Pisces before the advent of the Messiah, and asked the astronomers to reinvestigate this point. Since then Schubert of Petersburg (1823), Ideler and Encke of Berlin (1826 and 1830), and more recently Pritchard of London, have verified Kepler’s calculations.

Ideler describes the result of his calculation (vol. II. 405) thus: I have made the calculation with every care .... The results are sufficiently remarkable. Both planets [Jupiter and Saturn] came in conjunction for the first time a.u. 747, May 20, in the 20th degree of Pisces. They stood then on the heaven before sunrise and were only one degree apart. Jupiter passed Saturn to the north. In the middle of September both came in opposition to the sun at midnight in the south. The difference in longitude was one degree and a half. Both were retrograde and again approached each other. On the 27th of October a second conjunction took place in the sixteenth degree of the Pisces, and on the 12th of November, when Jupiter moved again eastward, a third in the fifteenth degree of the same sign. In the last two constellations also the difference in longitude was only about one degree, so that to a weak eye both planets might appear as one star. If the Jewish astrologers attached great expectations to conjunction of the two upper planets in the sign of the Pisces, this one must above all have appeared to them as most significant."

In his shorter Lehrbuch der Chronologie, which appeared Berlin 1831 in one vol., pp. 424–431, Ideler gives substantially the same account somewhat abridged, but with slight changes of the figures on the basis of a new calculation with still better tables made by the celebrated astronomer Encke, who puts the first conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn a.u. 747, May 29th, the second Sept. 30th, the third Dec. 5th. See the full table of Encke, p. 429.

We supplement this account by an extract from an article on the Star of the Wise Men by the Rev. Charles Pritchard, M.A., Hon. Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, who made a fresh calculation of the constellation in a.u. 747, from May to December, and published the results in Memoirs of Royal Ast. Society, vol. xxv., and in Smith’s "Bible Dictionary," p. 3108, Am. ed., where he says: "At that time [end of Sept., b.c. 7] there can be no doubt Jupiter would present to astronomers, especially in so clear an atmosphere, a magnificent spectacle. It was then at its most brilliant apparition, for it was at its nearest approach both to the sun and to the earth. Not far from it would be seen its duller and much less conspicuous companion, Saturn. This glorious spectacle continued almost unaltered for several days, when the planets again slowly separated, then came to a halt, when, by reassuming a direct motion, Jupiter again approached to a conjunction for a third time with Saturn, just as the Magi may be supposed to have entered the Holy City. And, to complete the fascination of the tale, about an hour and a half after sunset, the two planets might be seen from Jerusalem, hanging as it were in the meridian, and suspended over Bethlehem in the distance. These celestial phenomena thus described are, it will be seen, beyond the reach of question, and at the first impression they assuredly appear to fulfil the conditions of the Star of the Magi." If Pritchard, nevertheless, rejects the identity of the constellation with the single star of Matthew, it is because of a too literal understanding of Matthew’s language, that the star  proh'gen aujtouv" and ejstavqh ejpavnw, which would make it miraculous in either case.

The Fifteenth Year of Tiberius.

(3) Luke 3:1, 23, gives us an important and evidently careful indication of the reigning powers at the time when John the Baptist and Christ entered upon their public ministry, which, according to Levitical custom, was at the age of thirty.113  John the Baptist began his ministry "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius,"114 and Jesus, who was only about six months younger than John (comp. Luke 1:5, 26), was baptized and began to teach when he was "about thirty years of age."115  Tiberius began to reign jointly with Augustus, as "collega imperii," a.u. 764 (or, at all events, in the beginning of 765), and independently, Aug. 19, a.u. 767 (A.D. 14); consequently, the fifteenth year of his reign was either a.u. 779, if we count from the joint reign (as Luke probably did, using the more general term hJgemoniva rather than monarciva or basileiva116 or 782, if we reckon from the independent reign (as was the usual Roman method).117

Now, if we reckon back thirty years from a.u. 779 or 782, we come to a.u. 749 or 752 as the year of John’s birth, which preceded that of Christ about six months. The former date (749) is undoubtedly to be preferred, and agrees with Luke’s own statement that Christ was born under Herod (Luke 1:5, 26).118

Dionysius probably (for we have no certainty on the subject) calculated from the independent reign of Tiberius; but even that would not bring us to 754, and would involve Luke in contradiction with Matthew and with himself.119

The other dates in Luke 3:1 generally agree with this result, but are less definite. Pontius Pilate was ten years governor of Judaea, from A.D. 26 to 36. Herod Antipas was deposed by Caligula, A.D. 39. Philip, his brother, died A.D. 34. Consequently, Christ must have died before A.D. 34, at an age of thirty-three, if we allow three years for his public ministry.

The Census of Quirinius.

(4) The Census of Quirinius Luke 2:2.120  Luke gives us another chronological date by the incidental remark that Christ was born about the time of that census or enrolment, which was ordered by Caesar Augustus, and which was "the first made when Quirinius (Cyrenius) was governor [enrolment] of Syria."121  He mentions this fact as the reason for the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. The journey of Mary makes no difficulty, for (aside from the intrinsic propriety of his company for protection) all women over twelve years of age (and slaves also) were subject in the Roman empire to a head-tax, as well as men over fourteen) till the age of sixty-five.122  There is some significance in the coincidence of the birth of the King of Israel with the deepest humiliation of Israel. and its incorporation in the great historical empire of Rome.

But the statement of Luke seems to be in direct conflict with the fact that the governorship and census of Quirinius began A.D. 6, i.e., ten years after the birth of Christ.123  Hence many artificial interpretations.124  But this difficulty is now, if not entirely removed, at least greatly diminished by archaeological and philological research independent of theology. It has been proved almost to a demonstration by Bergmann, Mommsen, and especially by Zumpt, that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria—first, a.u. 750 to 753, or b.c. 4 to 1 (when there happens to be a gap in our list of governors of Syria), and again, a.u. 760–765 (A.D. 6–11). This double legation is based upon a passage in Tacitus,125 and confirmed by an old monumental inscription discovered between the Villa Hadriani and the Via Tiburtina.126  Hence Luke might very properly call the census about the time of Christ’s birth "the first" (prwvth) under Quirinius, to distinguish it from the second and better known, which he himself mentions in his second treatise on the history of the origin of Christianity (Acts 5:37). Perhaps the experience of Quirinius as the superintendent of the first census was the reason why he was sent to Syria a second time for the same purpose.

There still remain, however, three difficulties not easily solved: (a) Quirinius cannot have been governor of Syria before autumn a.u. 750 (b.c. 4), several months after Herod’s death (which occurred in March, 750), and consequently after Christ’s birth; for we know from coins that Quintilius Varus was governor from a.u. 748 to 750 (b.c. 6–4), and left his post after the death of Herod.127  (b) A census during the first governorship of Quirinius is nowhere mentioned but in Luke. (c) A Syrian governor could not well carry out a census in Judaea during the lifetime of Herod, before it was made a Roman province (i.e., a.u. 759).

In reply to these objections we may say: (a) Luke did not intend to give an exact, but only an approximate chronological statement, and may have connected the census with the well-known name of Quirinius because be completed it, although it was begun under a previous administration. (b) Augustus ordered several census populi between a.u. 726 and 767, partly for taxation, partly for military and statistical purposes;128 and, as a good statesman and financier, he himself prepared a rationarium or breviarium totius imperii, that is, a list of all the resources of the empire, which was read, after his death, in the Senate.129  (c) Herod was only a tributary king (rex sosius), who could exercise no act of sovereignty without authority from the emperor. Judaea was subject to taxation from the time of Pompey, and it seems not to have ceased with the accession of Herod. Moreover, towards the end of his life he lost the favor of Augustus, who wrote him in anger that "whereas of old he had used him as his friend, he would now use him as his subject."130

It cannot, indeed, be proven by direct testimony of Josephus or the Roman historians, that Augustus issued a decree for a universal census, embracing all the Provinces ("that all the world," i.e., the Roman world, "should be taxed," Luke 2:1), but it is in itself by no means improbable, and was necessary to enable him to prepare his breviarium totius imperii.131 In the nature of the case, it would take several years to carry out such a decree, and its execution in the provinces would be modified according to national customs. Zumpt assumes that Sentius Saturninus,132 who was sent as governor to Syria a.u. 746 (b.c. 9), and remained there till 749 (b.c. 6), began a census in Judaea with a view to substitute a head tax in money for the former customary tribute in produce; that his successor, Quintilius Varus (b.c. 6–4), continued it, and that Quirinius (b.c. 4) completed the census. This would explain the confident statement of Tertullian, which he must have derived from some good source, that enrolments were held under Augustus by Sentius Saturninus in Judaea.133  Another, but less probable view is that Quirinius was sent to the East as special commissioner for the census during the administration of his predecessor. In either case Luke might call the census "the first" under Quirinius, considering that he finished the census for personal taxation or registration according to the Jewish custom of family registers, and that afterwards he alone executed the second census for the taxation of property according to the Roman fashion.

The problem is not quite solved; but the establishment of the fact that Quirinius was prominently connected with the Roman government in the East about the time of the Nativity, is a considerable step towards the solution, and encourages the hope of a still better solution in the future.134

The Forty-Six Years of Building of Herod’s Temple.

(5) St. John, 2:20, furnishes us a date in the remark of the Jews, in the first year of Christ’s ministry: "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days?"

We learn from Josephus that Herod began the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of his reign, i.e., a.u. 732, if we reckon from his appointment by the Romans (714), or a.u. 735, if we reckon from the death of Antigonus and the conquest of Jerusalem (717).135  The latter is the correct view; otherwise Josephus would contradict himself, since, in another passage, he dates the building from the fifteenth year, of Herod’s reign.136  Adding forty-six years to 735, we have the year a.u. 781 (A.D. 27) for the first year of Christ’s ministry; and deducting thirty and a half or thirty-one years from 781, we come back to a.u. 750 (b.c. 4) as the year of the Nativity.

The Time of the Crucifixion.

(6) Christ was crucified under the consulate of the two Gemini (i.e., C. Rubellius Geminus and C. Fufius Geminus), who were consuls a.u. 782 to 783 (A.D. 28 to 29). This statement is made by Tertullian, in connection with an elaborate calculation of the time of Christ’s birth and passion from the seventy weeks of Daniel.137  He may possibly have derived it from some public record in Rome. He erred in identifying the year of Christ’s passion with the first year of his ministry (the 15th year of Tiberius, Luke 3:1). Allowing, as we must, two or three years for his public ministry, and thirty-three years for his life, we reach the year 750 or 749 as the year of the Nativity.

Thus we arrive from these various incidental notices of three Evangelists, and the statement of Tertullian essentially at the same conclusion, which contributes its share towards establishing the credibility of the gospel history against the mythical theory. Yet in the absence of a precise date, and in view of uncertainties in calculation, there is still room for difference of opinion between the years a.u. 747 (b.c. 7), as the earliest, and a.u. 750 (b.c. 4), as the latest, possible date for the year of Christ’s birth. The French Benedictines, Sanclemente, Münter, Wurm, Ebrard, Jarvis, Alford, Jos. A. Alexander, Zumpt, Keim, decide for a.u. 747; Kepler (reckoning from the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in that year), Lardner, Ideler, Ewald, for 748; Petavius, Ussher, Tillemont, Browne, Angus, Robinson, Andrews, McClellan, for 749; Bengel, Wieseler, Lange, Lichtenstein, Anger, Greswell, Ellicott, Plumptre, Merivale, for 750.

II. The Day of the Nativity.—The only indication of the season of our Saviour’s birth is the fact that the Shepherds were watching their flocks in the field at that time, Luke 2:8. This fact points to any other season rather than winter, and is therefore not favorable to the traditional date, though not conclusive against it. The time of pasturing in Palestine (which has but two seasons, the dry and the wet, or summer and winter) begins, according to the Talmudists, in March, and lasts till November, when the herds are brought in from the fields, and kept under shelter till the close of February. But this refers chiefly to pastures in the wilderness, far away from towns and villages,138 and admits of frequent exceptions in the close neighborhood of towns, according to the character of the season. A succession of bright days in December and January is of frequent occurrence in the East, as in Western countries. Tobler, an experienced traveller in the Holy Land, says that in Bethlehem the weather about Christmas is favorable to the feeding of flocks and often most beautiful. On the other hand strong and cold winds often prevail in April, and. explain the fire mentioned John 18:18.

No certain conclusion can be drawn from the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and to Egypt; nor from the journey of the Magi. As a rule February, is the best time for travelling in Egypt, March the best in the Sinaitic Peninsula, April and May, and next to it autumn, the best in Palestine; but necessity knows no rule.

The ancient tradition is of no account here, as it varied down to the fourth century. Clement of Alexandria relates that some regarded the 25th Pachon. (i.e. May 20), others the 24th or 25th Pharmuthi (April 19 or 20), as the day of Nativity.

(1) The traditional 25th of December is defended by Jerome, Chrysostom, Baronius, Lamy, Ussher, Petavius, Bengel (Ideler), Seyffarth and Jarvis. It has no historical authority beyond the fourth century, when the Christmas festival was introduced first in Rome (before A.D. 360), on the basis of several Roman festivals (the Saturnalia, Sigillaria, Juvenalia, Brumalia, or Dies natalis Invicti Solis), which were held in the latter part of December in commemoration of the golden age of liberty and equality, and in honor of the sun, who in the winter solstice is, as it were, born anew and begins his conquering march. This phenomenon in nature was regarded as an appropriate symbol of the appearance of the Sun of Righteousness dispelling the long night of sin and error. For the same reason the summer solstice (June 24) was afterwards selected for the festival of John the Baptist, as the fittest reminder of his own humble self-estimate that he must decrease, while Christ must increase (John 3:30). Accordingly the 25th of March was chosen for the commemoration of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and the 24th of September for that of the conception of Elizabeth.139

(2) The 6th of January has in its favor an older tradition (according to Epiphanius and Cassianus), and is sustained by Eusebius. It was celebrated in the East from the third century as the feast of the Epiphany, in commemoration of the Nativity as well as of Christ’s baptism, and afterwards of his manifestation to the Gentiles (represented by the Magi).

(3) Other writers have selected some day in February (Hug, Wieseler, Ellicott), or March (Paulus, Winer), or April (Greswell), or August (Lewin), or September (Lightfoot, who assumes, on chronological grounds, that Christ was born on the feast of Tabernacles, as he died on the Passover and sent the Spirit on Pentecost), or October (Newcome). Lardner puts the birth between the middle of August and the middle of November; Browne December 8; Lichtenstein in summer; Robinson leaves it altogether uncertain.

III. The Duration of Christ’s Life.—This is now generally confined to thirty-two or three years. The difference of one or two years arises from the different views on the length of his public ministry. Christ died and rose again in the full vigor of early manhood and so continues to live in the memory of the church. The decline and weakness of old age is inconsistent with his position as the Renovator and Saviour of mankind.

Irenaeus, otherwise (as a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John) the most trustworthy witness of apostolic traditions among the fathers, held the untenable opinion that Christ attained to the ripe age of forty or fifty years and taught over ten years (beginning with the thirtieth), and that he thus passed through all the stages of human life, to save and sanctify "old men" as well as "infants and children and boys and youths."140  He appeals for this view to tradition dating from St. John141 and supports it by an unwarranted inference from the loose conjecture of the Jews when, surprised at the claim of Jesus to have existed before Abraham was born, they asked him: "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"142  A similar inference from another passage, where the Jews speak of the "forty-six years" since the temple of Herod began to be constructed, while Christ spoke of the, temple his body (John 2:20), is of course still less conclusive.

IV. Duration of Christ’s Public Ministry.—It began with the baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion. About the length of the intervening time there are (besides the isolated and decidedly erroneous view of Irenaeus) three theories, allowing respectively one, two, or three years and a few months, and designated as the bipaschal, tripaschal, and quadripaschal schemes, according to the number of Passovers. The Synoptists mention only the last Passover during the public ministry of our Lord, at which he was crucified, but they intimate that he was in Judaea more than once.143  John certainly mentions three Passovers, two of which (the first and the last) Christ did attend,144 and perhaps a fourth, which he also attended.145

(1) The bipaschal scheme confines the public ministry to one year and a few weeks or months. This was first held by the Gnostic sect of the Valentinians (who connected it with their fancy about thirty aeons), and by several fathers, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian) and perhaps by Origen and Augustine (who express themselves doubtfully). The chief argument of the fathers and those harmonists who follow them, is derived from the prophecy of "the acceptable year of the Lord," as quoted by Christ,146 and from the typical meaning of the paschal lamb, which must be of "one year" and without blemish.147  Far more important is the argument drawn by some modern critics from the silence of the synoptical Gospels concerning the other Passovers.148  But this silence is not in itself conclusive, and must yield to the positive testimony of John, which cannot be conformed to the bipaschal scheme.149  Moreover, it is simply impossible to crowd the events of Christ’s life, the training of the Twelve, and the development of the hostility of the Jews, into one short year.

(2) The choice therefore lies between the tripaschal and the quadripaschal schemes. The decision depends chiefly on the interpretation of the unnamed "feast of the Jews," John 5:1, whether it was a Passover, or another feast; and this again depends much (though not exclusively) on a difference of reading (the feast, or a feast).150  The parable of the barren fig-tree, which represents the Jewish people, has been used as an argument in favor of a three years’ ministry: "Behold, these three year I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none."151  The three years are certainly significant; but according to Jewish reckoning two and a half years would be called three years. More remote is the reference to the prophetic announcement of Daniel 9:27: "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." The tripaschal theory is more easily reconciled with the synoptical Gospels, while the quadripaschal theory leaves more room for arranging the discourses and miracles of our Lord, and has been adopted by the majority of harmonists.152

But even if we extend the public ministry to three years, it presents a disproportion between duration and effect without a parallel in history and inexplicable on purely natural grounds. In the language of an impartial historian, "the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. This has indeed been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life."153

V. The Date of the Lord’s Death.—The day of the week on which Christ suffered on the cross was a Friday,154 during the week of the Passover, in the month of Nisan, which was the first of the twelve lunar months of the Jewish year, and included the vernal equinox. But the question is whether this Friday was the 14th, or the 15th of Nisan, that is, the day before the feast or the first day of the feast, which lasted a week. The Synoptical Gospels clearly decide for the 15th, for they all say (independently) that our Lord partook of the paschal supper on the legal day, called the "first day of unleavened bread,"155 that is on the evening of the 14th, or rather at the beginning of the 15th (the paschal lambs being slain "between the two evenings," i.e. before and after sunset, between 3 and 5 p.m. of the 14th).156  John, on the other hand, seems at first sight to point to the 14th, so that the death of our Lord would very nearly have coincided with the slaying of the paschal lamb.157  But the three or four passages which look in that direction can, and on closer examination, must be harmonized with the Synoptical statement, which admits only of one natural interpretation.158  It seems strange, indeed, that, the Jewish priests should have matured their bloody counsel in the solemn night of the Passover, and urged a crucifixion on a great festival, but it agrees, with the satanic wickedness of their crime.159  Moreover it is on the other hand equally difficult to explain that they, together with the people, should have remained about the cross till late in the afternoon of the fourteenth, when, according to the law, they were to kill the paschal lamb and prepare for the feast; and that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea, with the pious women, should have buried the body of Jesus and so incurred defilement at that solemn hour.

The view here advocated is strengthened by astronomical calculation, which shows that in A.D. 30 the probable year of the crucifixion, the 15th of Nisan actually fell on a Friday (April 7);and this was the case only once more between the years A.D. 28 and 36, except perhaps also in 33. Consequently Christ must have been Crucified A.D. 30.160

To sum up the results, the following appear to us the most probable dates in the earthly life of our Lord:

Birth                                              a.u. 750 (Jan.?) or 749 (Dec.?)           b.c. 4 or 5.

Baptism                                         a.u. 780 (Jan.?)                                   A.D. 27.

Length of Public Ministry

(three years and three or

four months)                          a.u. 780–783                                        A.D. 27–30.

Crucifixion                                  a.u. 783 (15th of Nisan)                       A.D. 30 (April 7)

§ 17. The Land and the People.

Literature.

I. The geographical and descriptive works on the Holy Land by Reland (1714), Robinson (1838 and 1856), Ritter (1850–1855), Raumer (4th ed. 1860), Tobler (several monographs from 1849 to 1869), W. M. Thomson (revised ed. 1880), Stanley (1853, 6th ed. 1866), Tristram (1864), Schaff (1878; enlarged ed. 1889), Guérin (1869, 1875, 1880).

See Tobler’s Bibliographia geographica Palaestinae (Leipz. 1867) and the supplementary lists of more recent works by Ph. Wolff in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, " 1868 and 1872, and by Socin in the "Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins," 1878, p. 40, etc.

II. The "Histories of New Testament Times" (Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, a special department of historical theology recently introduced), by Schneckburger (1862), Hausrath (1868 sqq.), and Schürer (1874).

See Lit. in § 8, p. 56.

There is a wonderful harmony between the life of our Lord as described by the Evangelists, and his geographical and historical environment as known to us from contemporary writers, and illustrated and confirmed by modern discovery and research. This harmony contributes not a little to the credibility of the gospel history. The more we come to understand the age and country in which Jesus lived, the more we feel, in reading the Gospels, that we are treading on the solid ground of real history illuminated by the highest revelation from heaven. The poetry of the canonical Gospels, if we may so call their prose, which in spiritual beauty excels all poetry, is not (like that of the Apocryphal Gospels) the poetry of human fiction—"no fable old, no mythic lore, nor dream of bards and seers;" it is the poetry of revealed truth, the poetry of the sublimest facts the poetry of the infinite wisdom and love of God which, ever before had entered the imagination of man, but which assumed human flesh and blood in Jesus of Nazareth and solved through his life and work the deepest problem of our existence.

The stationary character of Oriental countries and peoples enables us to infer from their present aspect and condition what they were two thousand years ago. And in this we are aided by the multiplying discoveries which make even stones and mummies eloquent witnesses of the past. Monumental evidence appeals to the senses and overrules the critical conjectures and combinations of unbelieving skepticism, however ingenious and acute they may be. Who will doubt the history of the Pharaohs when it can be read in the pyramids and sphinxes, in the ruins of temples and rock-tombs, in hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyrus rolls which antedate the founding of Rome and the exodus of Moses and the Israelites?  Who will deny the biblical records of Babylon and Nineveh after these cities have risen from the grave of centuries to tell their own story through cuneiform inscriptions, eagle-winged lions and human-headed bulls, ruins of temples and palaces disentombed from beneath the earth?  We might as well erase Palestine from the map and remove it to fairy-land, as to blot out the Old and New Testament from history and resolve them into airy myths and legends.161

The Land.

Jesus spent his life in Palestine. It is a country of about the size of Maryland, smaller than Switzerland, and not half as large as Scotland,162 but favored with a healthy climate, beautiful scenery, and great variety and fertility of soil, capable of producing fruits of all lands from the snowy north to the tropical south; isolated from other countries by desert, mountain and sea, yet lying in the centre of the three continents of the eastern hemisphere and bordering on the Mediterranean highway of the historic nations of antiquity, and therefore providentially adapted to develop not only the particularism of Judaism, but also the universalism of Christianity. From little Phoenicia the world has derived the alphabet, from little Greece philosophy and art, from little Palestine the best of all—the true religion and the cosmopolitan Bible. Jesus could not have been born at any other time than in the reign of Caesar Augustus, after the Jewish religion, the Greek civilization, and the Roman government had reached their maturity; nor in any other land than Palestine, the classical soil of revelation, nor among any other people than the Jews, who were predestinated and educated for centuries to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah and the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. In his infancy, a fugitive from the wrath of Herod, He passed through the Desert (probably by the short route along the Mediterranean coast) to Egypt and back again; and often may his mother have spoken to him of their brief sojourn in "the land of bondage," out of which Jehovah had led his people, by the mighty arm of Moses, across the Red Sea and through "the great and terrible wilderness" into the land of promise. During his forty days of fasting "in the wilderness" he was, perhaps, on Mount Sinai communing with the spirits of Moses and Elijah, and preparing himself in the awfully eloquent silence of that region for the personal conflict with the Tempter of the human race, and for the new legislation of liberty from the Mount of Beatitudes.163  Thus the three lands of the Bible, Egypt, the cradle of Israel, the Desert, its school and playground, and Canaan, its final home, were touched and consecrated by "those blessed feet which, eighteen centuries ago, were nailed for our advantage on the bitter cross."

He travelled on his mission of love through Judaea, Samaria, Galilee, and Peraea; he came as far north as mount Hermon, and once he crossed beyond the land of Israel to the Phoenician border and healed the demonized daughter of that heathen mother to whom he said, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt."

We can easily follow him from place to place, on foot or on horseback, twenty or thirty miles a day, over green fields and barren rocks over hill and dale among flowers and thistles, under olive and fig-trees, pitching our tent for the night’s rest, ignoring the comforts of modern civilization, but delighting in the unfading beauties of God’s nature, reminded at every step of his wonderful dealings with his people, and singing the psalms of his servants of old.

We may kneel at his manger in Bethlehem, the town of Judaea where Jacob buried his beloved Rachel, and a pillar, now a white mosque, marks her grave; where Ruth was rewarded for her filial devotion, and children may still be seen gleaning after the reapers in the grainfields, as she did in the field of Boaz; where his ancestor, the poet-king, was born and called from his father’s flocks to the throne of Israel; where shepherds are still watching the sheep as in that solemn night when the angelic host thrilled their hearts with the heavenly anthem of glory to God, and peace on earth to men of his good pleasure; where the sages from the far East offered their sacrifices in the name of future generations of heathen converts; where Christian gratitude has erected the oldest church in Christendom, the "Church of the Nativity," and inscribed on the solid rock in the "Holy Crypt," in letters of silver, the simple but pregnant inscription: "Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est." When all the surroundings correspond with the Scripture narrative, it is of small account whether the traditional grotto of the Nativity is the identical spot—though pointed out as such it would seem already in the middle of the second century.164

We accompany him in a three days’ journey from Bethlehem to Nazareth, his proper home, where he spent thirty silent years of his life in quiet preparation for his public work, unknown in his divine character to his neighbors and even the members of his own household (John 7:5), except his saintly parents. Nazareth is still there, a secluded, but charmingly located mountain village, with narrow, crooked and dirty streets, with primitive stone houses where men, donkeys and camels are huddled together, surrounded by cactus hedges and fruitful gardens of vines, olive, fig, and pomegranates, and favorably distinguished from the wretched villages of modern Palestine by comparative industry, thrift, and female beauty; the never failing "Virgin’s Fountain," whither Jesus must often have accompanied his mother for the daily supply of water, is still there near the Greek Church of the Annunciation, and is the evening rendezvous of the women and maidens, with their water-jars gracefully poised on the head or shoulder, and a row of silver coins adorning their forehead; and behind the village still rises the hill, fragrant with heather and thyme, from which he may often have cast his eye eastward to Gilboa, where Jonathan fell, and to the graceful, cone-like Tabor—the Righi of Palestine—northward to the lofty Mount Hermon—the Mont Blanc of Palestine—southward to the fertile plain of Esdraëlon—the classic battle-ground of Israel—and westward to the ridge of Carmel, the coast of Tyre and Sidon and the blue waters of the Mediterranean sea—the future highway of his gospel of peace to mankind. There he could feast upon the rich memories of David and Jonathan, Elijah and Elisha, and gather images of beauty for his lessons of wisdom. We can afford to smile at the silly superstition which points out the kitchen of the Virgin Mary beneath the Latin Church of the Annunciation, the suspended column where she received the angel’s message, the carpenter shop of Joseph and Jesus, the synagogue in which he preached on the acceptable year of the Lord, the stone table at which he ate with his disciples, the Mount of Precipitation two miles off, and the stupendous monstrosity of the removal of the dwelling-house of Mary by angels in the air across the sea to Loretto in Italy!  These are childish fables, in striking contrast with the modest silence of the Gospels, and neutralized by the rival traditions of Greek and Latin monks; but nature in its beauty is still the same as Jesus saw and interpreted it in his incomparable parables, which point from nature to nature’s God and from visible symbols to eternal truths.165

Jesus was inaugurated into his public ministry by his baptism in the fast-flowing river Jordan, which connects the Old and New Covenant. The traditional spot, a few miles from Jericho, is still visited by thousands of Christian pilgrims from all parts of the world at the Easter season, who repeat the spectacle of the multitudinous baptisms of John, when the people came "from Jerusalem and all Judaea and all the region round about the Jordan" to confess their sins and to receive his water-baptism of repentance.

The ruins of Jacob’s well still mark the spot where Jesus sat down weary of travel, but not of his work of mercy and opened to the poor woman of Samaria the well of the water of life and instructed her in the true spiritual worship of God; and the surrounding landscape, Mount Gerizim, and Mount Ebal, the town of Shechem, the grain-fields whitening to the harvest, all illustrate and confirm the narrative in the fourth chapter of John; while the fossil remnant of the Samaritans at Nablous (the modern Shechem) still perpetuates the memory of the paschal sacrifice according to the Mosaic prescription, and their traditional hatred of the Jews.

We proceed northward to Galilee where Jesus spent the most popular part of his public ministry and spoke so many of his undying words of wisdom and love to the astonished multitudes. That province was once thickly covered with forests, cultivated fields, plants and trees of different climes, prosperous villages and an industrious population.166  The rejection of the Messiah and the Moslem invasion have long since turned that paradise of nature into a desolate wilderness, yet could not efface the holy memories and the illustrations of the gospel history. There is the lake with its clear blue waters, once whitened with ships sailing from shore to shore, and the scene of a naval battle between the Romans and the Jews, now utterly forsaken, but still abounding in fish, and subject to sudden violent storms, such as the one which Jesus commanded to cease; there are the hills from which he proclaimed the Sermon on the Mount, the Magna Charta of his kingdom, and to which he often retired for prayer; there on the western shore is the plain of Gennesaret, which still exhibits its natural fertility by the luxuriant growth of briers and thistles and the bright red magnolias overtopping them; there is the dirty city of Tiberias, built by Herod Antipas, where Jewish rabbis still scrupulously search the letter of the Scriptures without finding Christ in them; a few wretched Moslem huts called Mejdel still indicate the birth-place of Mary Magdalene, whose penitential tears and resurrection joys are a precious legacy of Christendom. And although the cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazim, "where most of his mighty works were done" have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth, and their very sites are disputed among scholars, thus verifying to the letter the fearful prophecy of the Son of Man,167 yet the ruins of Tell Hum and Kerazeh bear their eloquent testimony to the judgment of God for neglected privileges, and the broken columns and friezes with a pot of manna at Tell Hum are probably the remains of the very synagogue which the good Roman centurion built for the people of Capernaum, and in which Christ delivered his wonderful discourse on the bread of life from heaven.168

Caesarea Philippi, formerly and now called Banias (or Paneas, Paneion, from the heathen sanctuary of Pan), at the foot of Hermon, marks the northern termination of the Holy Land and of the travels of the Lord, and the boundary-line between the Jews and the Gentiles; and that Swiss-like, picturesque landscape, the most beautiful in Palestine, in full view of the fresh, gushing source of the Jordan, and at the foot of the snow-crowned monarch of Syrian mountains seated on a throne of rock, seems to give additional force to Peter’s fundamental confession and Christ’s prophecy of his Church universal built upon the immovable rock of his eternal divinity.

The closing scenes of the earthly life of our Lord and the beginning of his heavenly life took place in Jerusalem and the immediate neighborhood, where every spot calls to mind the most important events that ever occurred or can occur in this world. Jerusalem, often besieged and destroyed, and as often rebuilt "on her own heap," is indeed no more the Jerusalem of Herod, which lies buried many feet beneath the rubbish and filth of centuries; even the site of Calvary is disputed, and superstition has sadly disfigured and obscured the historic associations.169  "Christ is not there, He is risen."170  There is no more melancholy sight in the world than the present Jerusalem as contrasted with its former glory, and with the teeming life of Western cities; and yet so many are the sacred memories clustering around it and perfuming the very air, that even Rome must yield the palm of interest to the city which witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Herodian temple on Mount Moriah, once the gathering place of pious Jews from all the earth, and enriched with treasures of gold and silver which excited the avarice of the conquerors, has wholly disappeared, and "not one stone is left upon another," in literal fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy;171 but the massive foundations of Solomon’s structure around the temple area still bear the marks of the Phoenician workmen; the "wall of wailing" is moistened with the tears of the Jews who assemble there every Friday to mourn over the sins and misfortunes of their forefathers; and if we look down from Mount Olivet upon Mount Moriah and the Moslem Dome of the Rock, the city even now presents one of the most imposing, as well as most profoundly affecting sights on earth. The brook Kedron, which Jesus crossed in that solemn night after the last Passover, and Gethsemane with its venerable olive-trees and reminiscences of the agony, and Mount Olivet from which he rose to heaven, are still there, and behind it the remnant of Bethany, that home of peace and holy friendship which sheltered him the last nights before the crucifixion. Standing on that mountain with its magnificent view, or at the turning point of the road from Jericho and Bethany, and looking over Mount Moriah and the holy city, we fully understand why the Saviour wept and exclaimed, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!

Thus the Land and the Book illustrate and confirm each other. The Book is still full of life and omnipresent in the civilized world; the Land is groaning under the irreformable despotism of the "unspeakable" Turk, which acts like a blast of the Sirocco from the desert. Palestine lies under the curse of God. It is at best a venerable ruin "in all the imploring beauty of decay," yet not without hope of some future resurrection in God’s own good time. But in its very desolation it furnishes evidence for the truth of the Bible. It is "a fifth Gospel," engraven upon rocks.172

The People.

Is there a better argument for Christianity than the Jews?  Is there a more patent and a more stubborn fact in history than that intense and unchangeable Semitic nationality with its equally intense religiosity?  Is it not truly symbolized by the bush in the desert ever burning and never consumed?  Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Epiphanes, Titus, Hadrian exerted their despotic power for the extermination of the Jews; Hadrian’s edict forbade circumcision and all the rites of their religion; the intolerance of Christian rulers treated them for ages with a sort of revengeful cruelty, as if every Jew were personally responsible for the crime of the crucifixion. And, behold, the race still lives as tenaciously as ever, unchanged and unchangeable in its national traits, an omnipresent power in Christendom. It still produces, in its old age, remarkable men of commanding influence for good or evil in the commercial, political, and literary world; we need only recall such names as Spinoza, Rothschild, Disraeli, Mendelssohn, Heine, Neander. If we read the accounts of the historians and satirists of imperial Rome about the Jews in their filthy quarter across the Tiber, we are struck by the identity of that people with their descendants in the ghettos of modern Rome, Frankfurt, and New York. Then they excited as much as they do now the mingled contempt and wonder of the world; they were as remarkable then for contrasts of intellectual beauty and striking ugliness, wretched poverty and princely wealth; they liked onions and garlic, and dealt in old clothes, broken glass, and sulphur matches, but knew how to push themselves from poverty and filth into wealth and influence; they were rigid monotheists and scrupulous legalists who would strain out a gnat and swallow a camel; then as now they were temperate, sober, industrious, well regulated and affectionate in their domestic relations and careful for the religious education of their children. The majority were then, as they are now, carnal descendants of Jacob, the Supplanter, a small minority spiritual children of Abraham, the friend of God and father of the faithful. Out of this gifted race have come, at the time of Jesus and often since, the bitterest foes and the warmest friends of Christianity.

Among that peculiar people Jesus spent his earthly life, a Jew of the Jews, yet in the highest sense the Son of Man, the second Adam, the representative Head and Regenerator of the whole race. For thirty years of reserve and preparation he hid his divine glory and restrained his own desire to do good, quietly waiting till the voice of prophecy after centuries of silence announced, in the wilderness of Judaea and on the banks of the Jordan, the coming of the kingdom of God, and startled the conscience of the people with the call to repent. Then for three years he mingled freely with his countrymen. Occasionally he met and healed Gentiles also, who were numerous in Galilee; he praised their faith the like of which he had not found in Israel, and prophesied that many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.173  He conversed with a woman of Samaria, to the surprise of his disciples, on the sublimest theme, and rebuked the national prejudice of the Jews by holding up a good Samaritan as a model for imitation.174  It was on the occasion of a visit from some "Greeks," shortly before the crucifixion, that he uttered the remarkable prophecy of the universal attraction of his cross.175 But these were exceptions. His mission, before the resurrection, was to the lost sheep of Israel.176

He associated with all ranks of Jewish society, attracting the good and repelling the bad, rebuking vice and relieving misery, but most of his time he spent among the middle classes who constituted the bone and sinew of the nation, the farmers and workingmen of Galilee, who are described to us as an industrious, brave and courageous race, taking the lead in seditious political movements, and holding out to the last moment in the defence of Jerusalem.177  At the same time they were looked upon by the stricter Jews of Judaea as semi-heathens and semi-barbarians; hence the question, "Can any good come out of Nazareth, and "Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."178  He selected his apostles from plain, honest, unsophisticated fishermen who became fishers of men and teachers of future ages. In Judaea he came in contact with the religious leaders, and it was proper that he should close his ministry and establish his church in the capital of the nation.

He moved among the people as a Rabbi (my Lord) or a Teacher, and under this name he is usually addressed.179  The Rabbis were the intellectual and moral leaders of the nation, theologians, lawyers, and preachers, the expounders of the law, the keepers of the conscience, the regulators of the daily life and conduct; they were classed with Moses and the prophets, and claimed equal reverence. They stood higher than the priests who owed their position to the accident of birth, and not to personal merit. They coveted the chief seats in the synagogues and at feasts; they loved to be greeted in the markets and to be called of men, "Rabbi, Rabbi." Hence our Lord’s warning: "Be not ye called ’Rabbi:’ for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren."180  They taught in the temple, in the synagogue, and in the schoolhouse (Bethhamidrash), and introduced their pupils, sitting on the floor at their feet, by asking, and answering questions, into the intricacies of Jewish casuistry. They accumulated those oral traditions which were afterwards embodied in the Talmud, that huge repository of Jewish wisdom and folly. They performed official acts gratuitously.181  They derived their support from an honorable trade or free gifts of their pupils, or they married into rich families. Rabbi Hillel warned against making gain of the crown (of the law), but also against excess of labor, saying, "Who is too much given to trade, will not become wise." In the book of Jesus Son of Sirach (which was written about 200 b.c.) a trade is represented as incompatible with the vocation of a student and teacher,182 but the prevailing sentiment at the time of Christ favored a combination of intellectual and physical labor as beneficial to health and character. One-third of the day should be given to study one-third to prayer, one third to work. "Love manual labor," was the motto of Shemaja, a teacher of Hillel. "He who does not teach his son a trade," said Rabbi Jehuda, "is much the same as if he taught him to be a robber." "There is no trade," says the Talmud, "which can be dispensed with; but happy is he who has in his parents the example of a trade of the more excellent sort."183

Jesus himself was not only the son of a carpenter, but during his youth he worked at that trade himself.184  When he entered upon his public ministry the zeal for God’s house claimed all his time and strength, and his modest wants were more than supplied by a few grateful disciples from Galilee, so that something was left for the benefit of the poor.185  St. Paul learned the trade of tentmaking, which was congenial to his native Cilicia, and derived from it his support even as an apostle, that he might relieve his congregations and maintain a noble independence.186

Jesus availed himself of the usual places of public instruction in the synagogue and the temple, but preached also out of doors, on the mountain, at the, sea-side, and wherever the people assembled to hear him. "I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and in secret spake I nothing.187  Paul likewise taught in the synagogue wherever he had an opportunity on his missionary journeys.188  The familiar mode of teaching was by disputation, by asking and answering questions on knotty points, of the law, by parables and sententious sayings, which easily lodged in the memory; the Rabbi sat on a chair, the pupils stood or sat on the floor at his feet.189  Knowledge of the Law of God was general among the Jews and considered the most important possession. They remembered the commandments better than their own name.190  Instruction began in early childhood in the family and was carried on in the school and the synagogue. Timothy learned the sacred Scriptures on the knees of his mother and grandmother.191  Josephus boasts, at the expense of his superiors, that when only fourteen years of age he had such an exact knowledge of the law that he was consulted by the high priest and the first men of Jerusalem.192  Schoolmasters were appointed in every town, and children were taught to read in their sixth or seventh year, but writing was probably a rare accomplishment.193

The synagogue was the local, the temple the national centre of religious and social life; the former on the weekly Sabbath (and also on Monday and Thursday), the latter on the Passover and the other annual festivals. Every town had a synagogue, large cities had many, especially Alexandria and Jerusalem.194  The worship was very simple: it consisted of prayers, singing, the reading of sections from the Law and the Prophets in Hebrew, followed by a commentary and homily in the vernacular Aramaic. There was a certain democratic liberty of prophesying, especially outside of Jerusalem. Any Jew of age could read the Scripture lessons and make comments on invitation of the ruler of the synagogue. This custom suggested to Jesus the most natural way of opening his public ministry. When he returned from his baptism to Nazareth, "he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the roll of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the roll and found the place where it was written (61:1, 2) ’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’  And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, ’To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.’  And all bare witness unto him, and wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth: and they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?"195

On the great festivals he visited from his twelfth year the capital of the nation where the Jewish religion unfolded all its splendor and attraction. Large caravans with trains of camels and asses loaded with provisions and rich offerings to the temple, were set in motion from the North and the South, the East and the West for the holy city, "the joy of the whole earth;" and these yearly pilgrimages, singing the beautiful Pilgrim Psalms (Ps, 120 to 134), contributed immensely to the preservation and promotion of the common faith, as the Moslem pilgrimages to Mecca keep up the life of Islam. We may greatly reduce the enormous figures of Josephus, who on one single Passover reckoned the number of strangers and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000 and the number of slaughtered lambs at 256,500, but there still remains the fact of the vast extent and solemnity of the occasion. Even now in her decay, Jerusalem (like other Oriental cities) presents a striking picturesque appearance at Easter, when Christian pilgrims from the far West mingle with the many-colored Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Latins, Spanish and Polish Jews, and crowd to suffocation the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. How much more grand and dazzling must this cosmopolitan spectacle have been when the priests (whose number Josephus estimates at 20,000) with the broidered tunic, the fine linen girdle, the showy turban, the high priests with the ephod of blue and purple and scarlet, the breastplate and the mitre, the Levites with their pointed caps, the Pharisees with their broad phylacteries and fringes, the Essenes in white dresses and with prophetic mien, Roman soldiers with proud bearing, Herodian courtiers in oriental pomposity, contrasted with beggars and cripples in rags, when pilgrims innumerable, Jews and proselytes from all parts of the empire, "Parthians and Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans, and Arabians,"196 all wearing their national costume and speaking a Babel of tongues, surged through the streets, and pressed up to Mount Moriah where "the glorious temple rear’d her pile, far off appearing like a mount of alabaster, topp’d with golden spires" and where on the fourteenth day of the first month columns of sacrificial smoke arose from tens of thousands of paschal lambs, in historical commemoration of the great deliverance from the land of bondage, and in typical prefiguration of the still greater redemption from the slavery of sin and death.197

To the outside observer the Jews at that time were the most religious people on earth, and in some sense this is true. Never was a nation so ruled by the written law of God; never did a nation so carefully and scrupulously study its sacred books, and pay greater reverence to its priests and teachers. The leaders of the nation looked with horror and contempt upon the unclean, uncircumcised Gentiles, and confirmed the people in their spiritual pride and conceit. No wonder that the Romans charged the Jews with the odium generis humani.

Yet, after all, this intense religiosity was but a shadow of true religion. It was a praying corpse rather than a living body. Alas! the Christian Church in some ages and sections presents a similar sad spectacle of the deceptive form of godliness without its power. The rabbinical learning and piety bore the same relation to the living oracles of God as sophistic scholasticism to Scriptural theology, and Jesuitical casuistry to Christian ethics. The Rabbis spent all their energies in "fencing" the law so as to make it inaccessible. They analyzed it to death. They surrounded it with so many hair-splitting distinctions and refinements that the people could not see the forest for the trees or the roof for the tiles, and mistook the shell for the kernel.198  Thus they made void the Word of God by the traditions of men.199  A slavish formalism and mechanical ritualism was substituted for spiritual piety, an ostentatious sanctimoniousness for holiness of character, scrupulous casuistry for genuine morality, the killing letter for the life-giving spirit, and the temple of God was turned into a house of merchandise.

The profanation and perversion of the spiritual into the carnal, and of the inward into the outward, invaded even the holy of holies of the religion of Israel, the Messianic promises and hopes which run like a golden thread from the protevangelium in paradise lost to the voice of John the Baptist pointing to the Lamb of God. The idea of a spiritual Messiah who should crush the serpent’s head and redeem Israel from the bondage of sin, was changed into the conception of a political deliverer who should re-establish the throne of David in Jerusalem, and from that centre rule over the Gentiles to the ends of the earth. The Jews of that time could not separate David’s Son, as they called the Messiah, from David’s sword, sceptre and crown. Even the apostles were affected by this false notion, and hoped to secure the chief places of honor in that great revolution; hence they could not understand the Master when he spoke to them of his, approaching passion and death.200

The state of public opinion concerning the Messianic expectations as set forth in the Gospels is fully confirmed by the preceding and contemporary Jewish literature, as the Sibylline Books (about b.c. 140), the remarkable Book of Enoch (of uncertain date, probably from b.c. 130–30), the Psalter of Solomon (b.c. 63–48), the Assumption of Moses, Philo and Josephus, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and the Fourth Book of Esdras.201  In all of them the Messianic kingdom, or the kingdom of God, is represented as an earthly paradise of the Jews, as a kingdom of this world, with Jerusalem for its capital. It was this popular idol of a pseudo-Messiah with which Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, when he showed him all the kingdoms of the world; well knowing that if he could convert him to this carnal creed, and induce him to abuse his miraculous power for selfish gratification, vain ostentation, and secular ambition, he would most effectually defeat the scheme of redemption. The same political aspiration was a powerful lever of the rebellion against the Roman yoke which terminated in the destruction of Jerusalem, and it revived again in the rebellion of Bar-Cocheba only to end in a similar disaster.

Such was the Jewish religion at the time of Christ. He was the only teacher in Israel who saw through the hypocritical mask to the rotten heart. None of the great Rabbis, no Hillel, no Shammai, no Gamaliel attempted or even conceived of a reformation; on the contrary, they heaped tradition upon tradition and accumulated the talmudic rubbish of twelve large folios and 2947 leaves, which represents the anti-Christian petrifaction of Judaism; while the four Gospels have regenerated humanity and are the life and the light of the civilized world to this day.

Jesus, while moving within the outward forms of the Jewish religion of his age, was far above it and revealed a new world of ideas. He, too, honored the law of God, but by unfolding its deepest spiritual meaning and fulfilling it in precept and example. Himself a Rabbi, he taught as one having direct authority from God, and not as the scribes. How he arraigned those hypocrites seated on Moses’ seat, those blind leaders of the blind, who lay heavy burdens on men’s shoulders without touching them with their finger; who shut the kingdom of heaven against men, and will not enter themselves; who tithe the mint and the anise and the cumin, and leave undone the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel; who are like unto whited sepulchres which outwardly appear beautiful indeed, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. But while he thus stung the pride of the leaders, he cheered and elevated the humble and lowly. He blessed little children, he encouraged the poor, he invited the weary, he fed the hungry he healed the sick, he converted publicans and sinners, and laid the foundation strong and deep, in God’s eternal love, for a new society and a new humanity. It was one of the sublimest as well as loveliest moments in the life of Jesus when the disciples asked him, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? and when he called a little child, set him in the midst of them and said, "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me."202  And that other moment when he thanked his heavenly Father for revealing unto babes the things of the kingdom which were hid from the wise, and invited all that labor and are heavy laden to come to him for rest.203

He knew from the beginning that he was the Messiah of God and the King of Israel. This consciousness reached its maturity at his baptism when he received the Holy Spirit without measure.204  To this conviction he clung unwaveringly, even in those dark hours of the apparent failure of his cause, after Judas had betrayed him, after Peter, the confessor and rock-apostle, had denied him, and everybody had forsaken him. He solemnly affirmed his Messiahship before the tribunal of the Jewish highpriest; he assured the heathen representative of the Roman empire that he was a king, though not of this world, and when hanging on the cross he assigned to the dying robber a place in his kingdom.205  But before that time and in the days of his greatest popularity he carefully avoided every publication and demonstration which might have encouraged the prevailing idea of a political Messiah and an uprising of the people. He chose for himself the humblest of the Messianic titles which represents his condescension to our common lot, while at the same time it implies his unique position as the representative head of the human family, as the ideal, the perfect, the universal, the archetypal Man. He calls himself habitually "the Son of Man" who "hath not where to lay his head," who "came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many," who "hath power to forgive sins," who "came to seek and to save that which was lost."206  When Peter made the great confession at Caesarea Philippi, Christ accepted it, but immediately warned him of his approaching passion and death, from which the disciple shrunk in dismay.207  And with the certain expectation of his crucifixion, but also of his triumphant resurrection on the third day, he entered in calm and sublime fortitude on his last journey to Jerusalem which "killeth the prophets," and nailed him to the cross as a false Messiah and blasphemer. But in the infinite wisdom and mercy of God the greatest crime in history was turned into the greatest blessing to mankind.

We must conclude then that the life and work of Christ, while admirably adapted to the condition and wants of his age and people, and receiving illustration and confirmation from his environment, cannot be explained from any contemporary or preceding intellectual or moral resources. He learned nothing from human teachers. His wisdom was not of this world. He needed no visions and revelations like the prophets and apostles. He came directly from his great Father in heaven, and when he spoke of heaven he spoke of his familiar home. He spoke from the fullness of God dwelling in him. And his words were verified by deeds. Example is stronger than precept. The wisest sayings remain powerless until they are incarnate in a living person. It is the life which is the light of men. In purity of doctrine and holiness of character combined in perfect harmony, Jesus stands alone, unapproached and unapproachable. He breathed a fresh life from heaven into his and all subsequent ages. He is the author of a new moral creation.

Jesus and Hillel.—The infinite elevation of Christ above the men of his time and nation, and his deadly conflict with the Pharisees and scribes are so evident that it seems preposterous and absurd to draw a parallel between him and Hillel or any other Rabbi. And yet this has been done by some modern Jewish Rabbis, as Geiger, Grätz, Friedlander, who boldly affirm, without a shadow of historical proof, that Jesus was a Pharisee, a pupil of Hillel, and indebted to him for his highest moral principles. By this left-handed compliment they mean to depreciate his originality. Abraham Geiger (d. 1874) says, in his Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte (Breslau, 2d ed. 1865, vol. I. p. 117): "Jesus war ein Jude, ein pharisäischer Jude mit galiläischer Färbung, ein Mann der die Hofnungen der Zeit theilte und diese Hoffnungen in sich erfüllt glaubte. Einen neuen Gedanken sprach er keineswegs aus [!], auch brach er nicht etwa die Schranken der Nationalität .... Er hob nicht im Entferntesten etwas vom Judenthum auf; er war ein Pharisäer, der auch in den Wegen Hillels ging." This view is repeated by Rabbi Dr. M. H. Friedlander, in his Geschichtsbilder aus der Zeit der Tanaite n und Amoräer. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Talmuds  (Brünn, 1879, p. 32): "Jesus, oder Jeschu, war der Sohn eines Zimmermeisters, Namens Josef, aus Nazareth. Seine Mutter hiess Mirjam oder Maria. Selbst der als conservativer Katholik [sic!] wie als bedeutender Gelehrter bekannte Ewald nennt ihn ’Jesus den Sohn Josef’,.... Wenn auch Jesus’ Gelehrsamkeit nicht riesig war, da die Galiläer auf keiner hohen Stufe der Cultur standen, so zeichnete er sich doch durch Seelenadel, Gemüthlichkeit und Herzensgü te vortheilhaft aus. Hillel I. scheint sein Vorbild und Musterbild gewesen zu sein;  denn der hillelianische Grundsatz: ’Was dir nicht recht ist, füge, deinen Nebenmenschen nicht zu,’ war das Grundprincip seiner Lehren." Renan makes a similar assertion in his Vie de Jésus (Chap. III. p. 35), but with considerable qualifications: "Par sa pauvreté humblement supportée, par la douceur de son caractère, par l’opposition qu’il faisait aux hypocrites et aux prêtres, Hillel fut le vrai maître de Jésus, s’il est permis de parler de maître, quand il s’agit d’une si haute originalité." This comparison has been effectually disposed of by such able scholars as Dr. Delitzsch, in his valuable pamphlet Jesus und Hillel (Erlangen, 3d revised ed. 1879, 40 pp.); Ewald, V. 12–48 (Die Schule Hillel’s und deren Geqner); Keim I. 268–272; Schürer, p. 456; and Farrar, Life of Christ, II. 453–460. All these writers come to the same conclusion of the perfect independence and originality of Jesus. Nevertheless it is interesting to examine the facts in the case.

Hillel and Shammai are the most distinguished among the Jewish Rabbis. They were contemporary founders of two rival schools of rabbinical theology (as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus of two schools of scholastic theology). It is strange that Josephus does not mention  them, unless he refers to them under the Hellenized names of Sameas and Pollion; but these names agree better with Shemaja and Abtalion, two celebrated Pharisees and teachers of Hillel and Shammai; moreover he designates Sameas as a disciple of Pollion. (See Ewald, v. 22–26; Schürer, p. 455). The Talmudic tradition has obscured their history and embellished it with many fables.

Hillel I. or the Great was a descendant of the royal family of David, and born at Babylon. He removed to Jerusalem in great poverty, and died about A.D. 10. He is said to have lived 120 years, like Moses, 40 years without learning, 40 years as a student, 40 years as a teacher. He was the grandfather of the wise Gamaliel in whose family the presidency of the Sanhedrin was hereditary for several generations. By his burning zeal for knowledge, and his pure, gentle and amiable character, he attained the highest renown. He is said to have understood all languages, even the unknown tongues of mountains, hills, valleys, trees, wild and tame beasts, and demons. He was called "the gentle, the holy, the scholar of Ezra." There was a proverb: "Man should be always as meek as Hillel, and not quick-tempered as Shammai." He differed from Rabbi Shammai by a milder interpretation of the law, but on some points, as the mighty question whether it was right or wrong to eat an egg laid on a Sabbath day, he took the more rigid view. A talmudic tract is called Beza, The Egg, after this famous dispute. What a distance from him who said: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: so then the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

Many wise sayings, though partly obscure and of doubtful interpretation, are attributed to Hillel in the tract Pirke Aboth (which is embodied in the Mishna and enumerates, in ch. 1, the pillars of the legal traditions from Moses down to the destruction of Jerusalem). The following are the best:

"Be a disciple of Aaron, peace-loving and peace-making; love men, and draw them to the law."

"Whoever abuses a good name (or, is ambitious of aggrandizing his name) destroys it."

"Whoever does not increase his knowledge diminishes it."

"Separate not thyself from the congregation, and have no confidence in thyself till the day of thy death."

"If I do not care for my soul, who will do it for me?  If I care only for my own soul, what am I?  If not now, when then?"

"Judge not thy neighbor till thou art in his situation."

"Say not, I will repent when I have leisure, lest that leisure should never be thine."

"The passionate man will never be a teacher."

"In the place where there is not a man, be thou a man."

Yet his haughty Pharisaism is clearly seen in this utterance: "No uneducated man easily avoids sin; no common person is pious." The enemies of Christ in the Sanhedrin said the same (John 7:49): "This multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed." Some of his teachings are of doubtful morality, e.g. his decision that, in view of a vague expression in Deut. 24:1, a man might put away his wife "even if she cooked his dinner badly." This is, however, softened down by modern Rabbis so as to mean: "if she brings discredit on his home."

Once a heathen came to Rabbi Shammai and promised to become a proselyte if he could teach him the whole law while he stood on one leg. Shammai got angry and drove him away with a stick. The heathen went with the same request to Rabbi Hillel, who never lost his temper, received him courteously and gave him, while standing on one leg, the following effective answer:

Do not to thy neighbor what is disagreeable to thee. This is the whole Law; all the rest is commentary: go and do that." (See Delitzsch, p. 17; Ewald, V. 31, Comp. IV. 270).

This is the wisest word of Hillel and the chief ground of a comparison with Jesus. But

1. It is only the negative expression of the positive precept of the gospel, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and of the golden rule, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do ye also to them"(Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). There is a great difference between not doing any harm, and doing good. The former is consistent with selfishness and every sin which does not injure our neighbor. The Saviour, by presenting God’s benevolence (Matt. 7:11) as the guide of duty, directs us to do to our neighbor all the good we can, and he himself set the highest example of self-denying love by sacrificing his life for sinners.

2. It is disconnected from the greater law of supreme love to God, without which true love to our neighbor is impossible. "On these two commandments," combined and inseparable, hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37–40).

3. Similar sayings are found long before Hillel, not only in the Pentateuch and the Book of Tobith 4:15: (o} misei'" mhdeni; poihvsh/", "Do that to no man which thou hatest"), but substantially even among the heathen (Confucius, Buddha, Herodotus, Isocrates, Seneca, Quintilian), but always either in the negative form, or with reference to a particular case or class; e.g. Isocrates, Ad Demonic. c. 4: "Be such towards your parents as thou shalt pray thy children shall be towards thyself;" and the same In Aeginet. c. 23: "That you would be such judges to me as you would desire to obtain for yourselves." See Wetstein on Matt. 7:12 (Nov. Test. I. 341 sq.). Parallels to this and other biblical maxims have been gathered in considerable number from the Talmud and the classics by Lightfoot, Grotius, Wetstein, Deutsch, Spiess, Ramage; but what are they all compared with the Sermon on the Mount?  Moreover, si duo idem dicunt, non est idem. As to the rabbinical parallels, we must remember that they were not committed to writing before the second century, and that, Delitzsch says (Ein Tag in Capernaum, p. 137), "not a few sayings of Christ, circulated by Jewish Christians, reappeared anonymously or under false names in the Talmuds and Midrashim."

4. No amount of detached words of wisdom constitute an organic system of ethics any, more than a heap of marble blocks constitute a palace or temple; and the best system of ethics is unable to produce a holy life, and is worthless without it.

We may admit without hesitation that Hillel was "the greatest and best of all Pharisees" (Ewald), but he was far inferior to John the Baptist; and to compare him with Christ is sheer blindness or folly. Ewald calls such comparison "utterly perverse" (grundverkehrt, v. 48). Farrar remarks that the distance between Hillel and Jesus is "a distance absolutely immeasurable, and the resemblance of his teaching to that of Jesus is the resemblance of a glow-worm to the sun" (II. 455). "The fundamental tendencies of both," says Delitzsch (p. 23), "are as widely apart as he and earth. That of Hillel is legalistic, casuistic, and nationally contracted; that of Jesus is universally religious, moral and human. Hillel lives and moves in the externals, Jesus in the spirit of the law." He was not even a reformer, as Geiger and Friedlander would make him, for what they adduce as proofs are mere trifles of interpretation, and involve no new principle or idea.

Viewed as a mere human teacher, the absolute originality of Jesus consists in this, "that his words have touched the hearts of all men in all ages, and have regenerated the moral life of the world" (Farrar, II. 454). But Jesus is far more than a Rabbi, more than a sage and saint more than a reformer, more than a benefactor; he is the author of the true religion, the prophet, priest and king, the renovator, the Saviour of men, the founder of a spiritual kingdom as vast as the race and as long as eternity.

§ 18. Apocryphal Traditions.

We add some notes of minor interest connected with the history of Christ outside of the only authentic record in the Gospel.

I. The Apocryphal Sayings of our Lord.—The canonical Gospels contain all that is necessary for us to know about the words and deeds of our Lord, although many more might have been recorded (John 20:30; 21:25). Their early composition and reception in the church precluded the possibility of a successful rivalry of oral tradition. The extra-biblical sayings of our Lord are mere fragments, few in number, and with one exception rather unimportant, or simply variations of genuine words.

They have been collected by Fabricius, in Codex Apocr. N. T., I pp. 321–335; Grabe: Spicilegium SS. Patrum, ed. alt. I. 12 sqq., 326 sq.; Koerner: De sermonibus Christi ajgravfoi" (Lips. 1776); Routh, in Reliq. Sacrae, vol. I. 9–12, etc.; Rud. Hofmann, in Das Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen (Leipz. 1851, § 75, pp. 317–334); Bunsen, in Anal. ante-Nic. I. 29 sqq.; Anger, in Synops. Evang. (1852); Westcott: Introd. to the Study of the Gospels, Append. C. (pp. 446 sqq. of the Boston ed. by Hackett); Plumptre, in Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers, I. p. xxxiii.; J. T. Dodd: Sayings ascribed to our Lord by the Fathers (1874); E. B. Nicholson: The Gospel according to the Hebrews (Lond. 1879, pp. 143–162). Comp. an essay of Ewald in his "Jahrbücher der Bibl. Wissenschaft," VI. 40 and 54 sqq., and Geschichte Christus’, p. 288. We avail ourselves chiefly of the collections of Hofmann, Westcott, Plumptre, and Nicholson.

(1) "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Quoted by Paul, Acts 20:35. Comp. Luke 6:30, 31; also Clement of Rome, Ad Cor. c. 2,  h[dion didovnte" h] lambavnonte", "more gladly giving than receiving." This is unquestionably authentic, pregnant with rich meaning, and shining out like a lone star all the more brilliantly. It is true in the highest sense of the love of God and Christ. The somewhat similar sentences of Aristotle, Seneca, and Epicurus, as quoted by Plutarch (see the passages in Wetstein on Acts 20:35), savor of aristocratic pride, and are neutralized by the opposite heathen maxim of mean selfishness: "Foolish is the giver, happy the receiver." Shakespeare may have had the sentence in his mind when he put into the mouth of Portia the golden words:

"The quality of mercy is not strained,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown."

(2) "And on the same day Jesus saw a man working at his craft on the Sabbath-day, and He said unto him, ’O man, if thou knowest what thou doest, then art thou blessed; but if thou knowest not, then art thou accursed, and art a transgressor of the Law.’ "  An addition to Luke 6:4, in Codex D. or Bezae (in the University library at Cambridge), which contains several remarkable additions. See Tischendorf’s apparatus in ed. VIII. Luc. 6:4, and Scrivener, lntrod. to Criticism of the N. T. p. 8. ejpikatavrato" is used John 7:49 (text. rec.) by the Pharisees of the people who know not the law (also Gal. 3:10, 13 in quotations from the O. T.); parabavth" tou' novmou by Paul (Rom. 2:25, 27; Gal. 2:18) and James (2:9, 11). Plumptre regards the narrative as authentic, and remarks that "it brings out with a marvellous force the distinction between the conscious transgression of a law recognized as still binding, and the assertion of a higher law as superseding the lower. Comp. also the remarks of Hofmann, l.c. p. 318.

(3) "But ye seek (or, in the imperative, seek ye, zhtei'te) to increase from little, and (not) from greater to be less." An addition in Codex D. to Matt 20:28. See Tischendorf. Comp. Luke 14:11; John 5:44. Westcott regards this as a genuine fragment. Nicholson inserts "not," with the Curetonian Syriac, D; all other authorities omit it. Juvencus has incorporated the passage in his poetic Hist. Evang. III. 613 sqq., quoted by Hofmann, p. 319.

(4) "Be ye trustworthy money-changers, or, proved bankers (trapezi'tai dovkimoi); i.e. expert in distinguishing the genuine coin from the counterfeit. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria (several times), Origen (in Joann, xix.), Eusebius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and many others. Comp. 1 Thess. 5:21: "Prove all things, hold fast the good," and the parable of the talents, Matt. 25:27. Delitzsch, who with many others regards this maxim as genuine, gives it the meaning: Exchange the less valuable for the more valuable, esteem sacred coin higher than common coin, and highest of all the one precious pearl of the gospel.(Ein Tag in Capernaum, p. 136.)  Renan likewise adopts it as historical, but explains it in an Ebionite and monastic sense as an advice of voluntary poverty. "Be ye good bankers (soyez de bons banquiers), that is to say: Make good investments for the kingdom of God, by giving your goods to the poor, according to the ancient proverb (Prov. 19:17): ’He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth to the Lord’ " (Vie de Jésus, ch. XI. p. 180, 5th Par. ed.).

[(5) "The Son of God says,(?) ’Let us resist all iniquity, and hold it in abhorrence.’ " From the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 4. This Epistle, though incorporated in the Codex Sinaiticus, is probably not a work of the apostolic Barnabas. Westcott and Plumptre quote the passage from the Latin version, which introduces the sentence with the words: sicut dicit Filius Dei. But this seems to be a mistake for sicut decet filios Dei, "as becometh the sons of God." This is evident from the Greek original (brought to light by the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus), which reads, wJ" prevpei uiJoi'"  qeou'  and connects the words with the preceding sentence. See the edition of Barnabae Epistula by Gebhardt and Harnack in Patr. Apost. Op. I. 14. For the sense comp. 2 Tim. 2:19: ajpostavtw ajpo; ajdikiva" James 4:7: ajnivsthte tw/' diabovlw/, Ps. 119:163: ajdikivan ejmivshsa.]

(6) "They who wish to see me, and to lay hold on my kingdom, must receive me with affliction and suffering." From the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 7, where the words are introduced by "Thus he [Jesus] saith," fhsivn. But it is doubtful whether they are meant as a quotation or rather as a conclusion of the former remarks and a general reminiscence of several passages. Comp. Matt. 16:24; 20:3; Acts 14:22: "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."

(7) "He that wonders [oJ qaumavsa" with the wonder of reverential faith] shall reign, and he that reigns shall be made to rest." From the "Gospel of the Hebrews," quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. II. 9, § 45). The Alexandrian divine quotes this and the following sentence to show, as Plumptre finely says, "that in the teaching of Christ, as in that of Plato, wonder is at once the beginning and the end of knowledge."

(8) "Look with wonder at the things that are before thee (qauvmason ta pavronta)." From Clement of Alexandria (Strom. II. 9, § 45.).

(9) "I came to abolish sacrifices, and unless ye cease from sacrificing, the wrath [of God] will not cease from you." From the Gospel of the Ebionites (or rather Essaean Judaizers), quoted by Epiphanius (Haer. xxx. 16). Comp. Matt. 9:13, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."

(10) "Ask great things, and the small shall be added to you: ask heavenly and there shall be added unto you earthly things."  Quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. I. 24, § 154; comp. IV. 6, § 34) and Origen (de Oratione, c. 2), with slight differences. Comp. Matt. 6:33, of which it is probably a free quotation from memory. Ambrose also quotes the sentence (Ep. xxxvi. 3): "Denique scriptum est: ’Petite magna, et parva adjicientur vobis. Petite coelestia, et terrena adjicientur.’ "

(11) "In the things wherein I find you, in them will I judge you." Quoted by Justin Martyr (Dial. c. Tryph. c. 47), and Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives, § 40). Somewhat different Nilus: "Such as I find thee, I will judge thee, saith the Lord." The parallel passages in Ezekiel 7:3, 8; 18:30; 24:14; 33:20 are not sufficient to account for this sentence. It is probably taken from an apocryphal Gospel. See Hofmann, p. 323.

(12) "He who is nigh unto me is nigh unto the fire: he who is far from me is far from the kingdom. From Origen (Comm. in Jer. III. p. 778), and Didymus of Alexandria (in Ps. 88:8). Comp, Luke 12:49. Ignatius (Ad Smyrn. c. 4) has a similar saying, but not as a quotation, "To be near the sword is to be near God" (ejgguv" macaivra" ejgguv" qeou').

(13) "If ye kept not that which is little, who will give you that which is great?  For I say unto you, he that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much."  From the homily of Pseudo-Clement of Rome (ch. 8). Comp. Luke 16:10–12 and Matt, 25:21, 23. Irenaeus (II. 34, 3) quotes similarly, probably from memory: "Si in modico fideles non fuistis, quod magnum est quis dabit nobis?"

(14) "Keep the flesh pure, and the seal [probably baptism] without stain that we (ye) may receive eternal life." From Pseudo-Clement, ch. 8. But as this is connected with the former sentence by a[ra ou\n tou'to le;gei, it seems to be only an explanation ("he means this") not a separate quotation. See Lightfoot, St. Clement of Rome, pp. 200 and 201, and his Appendix containing the newly recovered Portions, p. 384:. On the sense comp. 2 Tim. 2:19; Rom. 4:11; Eph. 1:13; 4:30.

(15) Our Lord, being asked by Salome when His kingdom should come, and the things which he had spoken be accomplished, answered, "When the two shall be one, and the outward as the inward, and the male with the female, neither male nor female." From Clement of Alexandria, as a quotation from "the Gospel according to the Egyptians" (Strom.III. 13, § 92), and the homily of Pseudo-Clement of Rome (ch. 12). Comp. Matt. 22:30; Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 7:29. The sentence has a mystical coloring which is alien to the genuine Gospels, but suited the Gnostic taste.

(16) "For those that are infirm was I infirm, and for those that hunger did I hunger, and for those that thirst did I thirst." From Origen (in Matt. xiii. 2). Comp. Matt. 25:35, 36; 1 Cor. 9:20–22.

(17) "Never be ye joyful, except when ye have seen your brother [dwelling] in love." Quoted from the Hebrew Gospel by Jerome (in Eph. v. 3).

(18) "Take hold, handle me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon [i.e. spirit]." From Ignatius (Ad Symrn. c. 3), and Jerome, who quotes it from the Nazarene Gospel (De Viris illustr. 16). Words said to have been spoken to Peter and the apostles after the resurrection. Comp. Luke 24:39; John 20:27.

(19) "Good must needs come, but blessed is he through whom it cometh; in like manner evil must needs come, but woe to him through whom it cometh." From the "Clementine Homilies," xii. 29. For the second clause comp. Matt. 18:7; Luke 17:1.

(20) "My mystery is for me, and for the sons of my house." From Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V. 10, § 64), the Clementine Homilies (xix. 20), and Alexander of Alexandria (Ep. ad Alex. c. 5, where the words are ascribed to the Father). Comp. Isa. 24:16 (Sept.); Matt. 13:11; Mark 4:11.

(21) "If you do not make your low things high and your crooked things straight ye shall not enter into my kingdom." From the Acta Philippi in Tischendorf’s Acta Apost. Apocr. p. 90, quoted by Ewald, Gesch. Christus, p. 288, who calls these words a weak echo of more excellent sayings.

(22) "I will choose these things to myself. Very excellent are those whom my Father that is in heaven hath given to me." From the Hebrew Gospel, quoted by Eusebius (Theophan. iv. 13).

(23) "The Lord said, speaking of His kingdom, ’The days will come in which vines will spring up, each having ten thousand stocks, and on each stock ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand bunches, and on each bunch ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall give five-and-twenty measures of wine. And when any saint shall have laid hold on one bunch, another shall cry, I am a better bunch, take me; through me bless the Lord.’  Likewise also [he said], ’that a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand ears of corn, and each grain ten pounds of fine pure flour; and so all other fruits and seeds and each herb according to its proper nature. And that all animals, using for food what is received from the earth, shall live in peace and concord with one another, subject to men with all subjection.’ " To this description Papias adds: "These things are credible to those who believe. And when Judas the traitor believed not and asked, ’How shall such products come from the Lord?’ the Lord said, ’They shall see who come to me in these times.’ " From the "weak-minded" Papias (quoted by Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V. 33, 3). Comp. Isa. 11:6–9.

This is a strongly figurative description of the millennium. Westcott thinks it is based on a real discourse, but to me it sounds fabulous, and borrowed from the Apocalypse of Baruch which has a similar passage (cap. 29, first published in Monumenta Sacra et Profana opera collegii Doctorum Bibliothecae Ambrosianae, Tom. I. Fasc. II. Mediol. 1866, p. 80, and then in Fritzsche’s ed. of Libri Apocryphi Veteris Test. Lips. 1871, p. 666): "Etiam terra dabit fructus suos unum in decem millia, et in vite una erunt Mille palmites, et unus palmes faciet mille botros, et botrus unus faciet mille acinos, et unus acinus faciet corum vini. Et qui esurierunt jucundabuntur, iterum autem videbunt prodigia quotidie .... Et erit in illo tempore, descendet iterum desuper thesaurus manna, et comedent ex eo in istis annis."

Westcott quotes eleven other apocryphal sayings which are only loose quotations or perversions of genuine words of Christ, and may therefore be omitted. Nicholson has gathered the probable or possible fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which correspond more or less to passages in the canonical Gospels.

Mohammedan tradition has preserved in the Koran and in other writings several striking words of Christ, which Hofmann, l.c. pp. 327–329, has collected. The following is the best:

"Jesus, the Son of Mary, said, ’He who longs to be rich is like a man who drinks sea-water; the more he drinks the more thirsty he becomes, and never leaves off drinking till he perishes."

II. Personal Appearance of Jesus.  None of the Evangelists, not even the beloved disciple and bosom-friend of Jesus, gives us the least hint of his countenance and stature, or of his voice, his manner, his food, his dress, his mode of daily life. In this respect our instincts of natural affection have been wisely overruled. He who is the Saviour of all and the perfect exemplar for all should not be identified with the particular lineaments of one race or nationality or type of beauty. We should cling to the Christ in spirit and in glory rather than to the Christ in the flesh So St. Paul thought (2 Cor. 5:16; Comp. 1 Pet. 1:8). Though unseen, he is loved beyond all human beings.

I see Thee not, I hear Thee not,

Yet art Thou oft with me;

And earth hath ne’er so dear a spot,

As when I meet with Thee."

Jesus no doubt accommodated himself in dress and general appearance to the customs of his age and people, and avoided all ostentation. He probably passed unnoticed through busy crowds. But to the closer observer he must have revealed a spiritual beauty and an overawing majesty in his countenance and personal bearing. This helps to explain the readiness with which the disciples, forsaking all things, followed him in boundless reverence and devotion. He had not the physiognomy of a sinner. He had more than the physiognomy of a saint. He reflected from his eyes and countenance the serene peace and celestial purity of a sinless soul in blessed harmony with God. His presence commanded reverence, confidence and affection.

In the absence of authentic representation, Christian art in its irrepressible desire to exhibit in visible form the fairest among the children of men, was left to its own imperfect conception of ideal beauty. The church under persecution in the first three centuries, was averse to pictorial representations of Christ, and associated with him in his state of humiliation (but not in his state of exaltation) the idea of uncomeliness, taking too literally the prophetic description of the suffering Messiah in the twenty-second Psalm and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. The victorious church after Constantine, starting from the Messianic picture in the forty-fifth Psalm and the Song of Solomon, saw the same Lord in heavenly glory, "fairer than the children of men" and "altogether lovely." Yet the difference was not so great as it is sometimes represented. For even the ante-Nicene fathers (especially Clement of Alexandria), besides expressly distinguishing between the first appearance of Christ in lowliness and humility, and his second appearance in glory and, majesty, did not mean to deny to the Saviour even in the days of his flesh a higher order of spiritual beauty, "the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth," which shone through the veil of his humanity, and which at times, as on the mount of transfiguration, anticipated his future glory. "Certainly," says Jerome, "a flame of fire and starry brightness flashed from his eye, and the majesty of the God head shone in his face."

The earliest pictures of Christ, in the Catacombs, are purely symbolic, and represent him under the figures of the Lamb, the good Shepherd, the Fish. The last has reference to the Greek word Ichthys, which contains the initials of the words  jIhsou'" Cristov" Qeou' JUio;" Swth;r. "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." Real pictures of Christ in the early church would have been an offence to the Jewish, and a temptation and snare to the heathen converts.

The first formal description of the personal appearance of Christ, which, though not authentic and certainly not older than the fourth century, exerted great influence on the pictorial representations, is ascribed to the heathen Publius Lentulus, a supposed contemporary of Pilate and "President of the people of Jerusalem" (there was no such office), in an apocryphal Latin letter to the Roman Senate, which was first discovered in a MS. copy of the writings of Anselm of Canterbury in the twelfth century, and published with slight variations by, Fabricius, Carpzov, Gabler, etc. It is as follows:

"In this time appeared a man, who lives till now, a man endowed with great powers. Men call him a great prophet; his own disciples term Him the Son of God. His name is Jesus Christ. He restores the dead to life, and cures the sick of all manner of diseases. This man is of noble and well-proportioned stature, with a face full of kindness and yet firmness, so that the beholders both love Him and fear Him. His hair is of the color of wine, and golden at the root; straight, and without lustre, but from the level of the ears curling and glossy, and divided down the centre after the fashion of the Nazarenes [Nazarites?]. His forehead is even and smooth, his face without wrinkle or blemish, and glowing with delicate bloom. His countenance is frank and kind. Nose and mouth are in no way faulty. His beard is full, of the same hazel color as his hair, not long, but forked. His eyes are blue, and extremely brilliant. In reproof and rebuke he is formidable; in exhortation and teaching, gentle and amiable. He has never been seen to laugh, but oftentimes to weep, (numquam visus est ridere, flere autem saepe). His person is tall and erect; his hands and limbs beautiful and straight. In speaking he is deliberate and grave, and little given to loquacity. In beauty he surpasses the children of men."

Another description is found in the works of the Greek theologian, John of Damascus, of the 8th century (Epist. ad Theoph. Imp. de venerandis Imag., spurious), and a similar one in the Church History of Nicephorus (I. 40), of the 14th century. They represent Christ as resembling his mother, and ascribe to him a stately person though slightly stooping, beautiful eyes, blond, long, and curly hair, pale, olive complexion, long fingers, and a look expressive of nobility, wisdom, and patience.

On the ground of these descriptions, and of the Abgar and the Veronica legends, arose a vast number of pictures of Christ, which are divided into two classes: the Salvator pictures, with the expression of calm serenity and dignity, without the faintest mark of grief, and the Ecce Homo pictures of the suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns. The greatest painters and sculptors have exhausted the resources of their genius in representations of Christ; but neither color nor chisel nor pen can do more than produce a feeble reflection of the beauty and glory of Him who is the Son of God and the Son of Man.

Among modern biographers of Christ, Dr. Sepp (Rom. Cath., Das Leben Jesu Christi, 1865, vol. VI. 312 sqq.) defends the legend of St. Veronica of the Herodian family, and the genuineness of the picture, of the suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns which he impressed on her silken veil. He rejects the philological explanation of the legend from "the true image" (vera eijkw;n = Veronica), and derives the name from ferenivkh (Berenice), the Victorious. But Bishop Hefele (Art. Christusbilder, in the Cath. Kirchen-Lexikon of Wetzer and Welte, II. 519–524) is inclined, with Grimm, to identify Veronica with the Berenice who is said to have erected a statue to Christ at Caesarea Philippi (Euseb. VII. 18), and to see in the Veronica legend only the Latin version of the Abgar legend of the Greek Church. Dr. Hase (Leben Jesu, p. 79) ascribes to Christ manly beauty, firm health, and delicate, yet not very characteristic features. He quotes John 20:14 and Luke 24:16, where it is said that his friends did not recognize him, but these passages refer only to the mysterious appearances of the risen Lord. Renan (Vie de Jésus, ch. X-XIV. p. 403) describes him in the frivolous style of a novelist, as a doux Galilèen, of calm and dignified attitude, as a beau jeune homme who made a deep impression upon women, especially Mary of Magdala; even a proud Roman lady, the wife of Pontius Pilate, when she caught a glimpse of him from the window (?), was enchanted, dreamed of him in the night and was frightened at the prospect of his death. Dr. Keim (I. 463) infers from his character, as described in the Synoptical Gospels, that he was perhaps not strikingly handsome, yet certainly noble, lovely, manly, healthy and vigorous, looking like a prophet, commanding reverence, making men, women, children, sick and poor people feel happy in his presence. Canon Farrar (I. 150) adopts the view of Jerome and Augustine, and speaks of Christ as "full of mingled majesty and tenderness in—

’That face

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made

Sorrow more beautiful than beauty’s self.’ "

On artistic representations of Christ see J. B. Carpzov: De oris et corpor is J. Christi forma Pseudo-Lentuli, J. Damasceni et Nicephori proso - pographiae. Helmst. 1777. P. E. Jablonski: De origine imaginum Christi Domini. Lugd. Batav. 1804. W. Grimm: Die Sage vom Ursprung der Christusbilder. Berlin, 1843. Dr. Legis Glückselig: Christus-Archäologie; Das Buch von Jesus Christus und seinem wahren Ebenbilde. Prag, 1863 4to. Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake: The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art (with illustrations). Lond., 2d ed. 1865 2 vols. Cowper: Apocr. Gospels. Lond. 1867, pp. 217–226. Hase: Leben Jesu, pp. 76–80 (5th ed.), Keim: Gesch. Jesu von Naz. I. 459–464. Farrar: Life of Christ. Lond. 1874, I. 148–150, 312–313; II. 464.

III. The Testimony of Josephus on John the Baptist. Antiq. Jud.  xviii. c. 5, § 2. Whatever may be thought of the more famous passage of Christ which we have discussed in § 14 (p. 92), the passage on John is undoubtedly genuine and so accepted by most scholars. It fully and independently confirms the account of the Gospels on John’s work and martyrdom, and furnishes, indirectly, an argument in favor of the historical character of their account of Christ, for whom he merely prepared the way. We give it in Whiston’s translation: "Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, who was called the Baptist; for Herod slew him, who was a good man (ajgaqo;n a[ndra), and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body: supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure to him."

IV. The Testimony of Mara to Christ, A.D. 74. This extra-biblical notice of Christ, made known first in 1865, and referred to above § 14 p. 94) reads as follows (as translated from the Syriac by Cureton and Pratten):

"What are we to say, when the wise are dragged by force by hands of tyrants, and their wisdom is deprived of its freedom by slander, and they are plundered for their [superior] intelligence, without [the opportunity of making] a defence?  [They are not wholly to be pitied.]  For what benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution for it famine and pestilence?  Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the whole of their country was covered with sand?  Or The Jews [by the murder] of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away [from them]?  For with justice did God grant a recompense to the wisdom of [all] three of them. For the Athenians died by famine; and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, brought to destruction and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. [Nay], Socrates did not die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor yet The Wise King, because of the new laws he enacted.

The nationality and position of Mara are unknown. Dr. Payne Smith supposes him to have been a Persian. He wrote from prison and wished to die, "by what kind of death concerns me not." In the beginning of his letter Mara says: "On this account, lo, I have written for thee this record, [touching] that which I have by careful observation discovered in the world. For the kind of life men lead has been carefully observed by me. I tread the path of learning, and from the study of Greek philosophy have I found out all these things, although they suffered shipwreck when the birth of life took place." The birth of life may refer to the appearance of Christianity in the world, or to Mara’s own conversion. But there is no other indication that he was a Christian. The advice he gives to his son is simply to "devote himself to wisdom, the fount of all things good, the treasure that fails not."

§ 19. The Resurrection of Christ.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead is reported by the four Gospels, taught in the Epistles, believed throughout Christendom, and celebrated on every "Lord’s Day," as an historical fact, as the crowning miracle and divine seal of his whole work, as the foundation of the hopes of believers, as the pledge of their own future resurrection. It is represented in the New Testament both as an act of the Almighty Father who raised his Son from the dead,208 and as an act of Christ himself, who had the power to lay down his life and to take it again.209  The ascension was the proper conclusion of the resurrection: the risen life of our Lord, who is "the Resurrection and the Life," could not end in another death on earth, but must continue in eternal glory in heaven. Hence St. Paul says, "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God."210

The Christian church rests on the resurrection of its Founder. Without this fact the church could never have been born, or if born, it would soon have died a natural death. The miracle of the resurrection and the existence of Christianity are so closely connected that they must stand or fall together. If Christ was raised from the dead, then all his other miracles are sure, and our faith is impregnable; if he was not raised, he died in vain and our faith is vain. It was only his resurrection that made his death available for our atonement, justification and salvation; without the resurrection, his death would be the grave of our hopes; we should be still unredeemed and under the power of our sins. A gospel of a dead Saviour would be a contradiction and wretched delusion. This is the reasoning of St. Paul, and its force is irresistible.211

The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records.212

Christ had predicted both his crucifixion and his resurrection, but the former was a stumbling-block to the disciples, the latter a mystery which they could not understand till after the event.213  They no doubt expected that he would soon establish his Messianic kingdom on earth. Hence their utter disappointment and downheartedness after the crucifixion. The treason of one of their own number, the triumph of the hierarchy, the fickleness of the people, the death and burial of the beloved Master, had in a few hours rudely blasted their Messianic hopes and exposed them to the contempt and ridicule of their enemies. For two days they were trembling on the brink of despair. But on the third day, behold, the same disciples underwent a complete revolution from despondency to hope, from timidity to courage, from doubt to faith, and began to proclaim the gospel of the resurrection in the face of an unbelieving world and at the peril of their lives. This revolution was not isolated, but general among them; it was not the result of an easy credulity, but brought about in spite of doubt and hesitation;214 it was not superficial and momentary, but radical and lasting; it affected, not only the apostles, but the whole history of the world. It reached even the leader of the persecution, Saul of Tarsus one of the clearest and strongest intellects, and converted him into the most devoted and faithful champion of this very gospel to the hour of his martyrdom.

This is a fact patent to every reader of the closing chapters of the Gospels, and is freely admitted even by the most advanced skeptics.215

The question now rises whether this inner revolution in the, life of the disciples, with its incalculable effects upon the fortunes of mankind, can be rationally explained without a corresponding outward revolution in the history of Christ; in other words, whether the professed faith of the disciples in the risen Christ was true and real, or a hypocritical lie, or an honest self-delusion.

There are four possible theories which have been tried again and again, and defended with as much learning and ingenuity as can be summoned to their aid. Historical questions are not like mathematical problems. No argument in favor of the resurrection will avail with those critics who start with the philosophical assumption that miracles are impossible, and still less with those who deny not only the resurrection of the body, but even the immortality of the soul. But facts are stubborn, and if a critical hypothesis can be proven to be psychologically and historically impossible and unreasonable, the result is fatal to the philosophy which underlies the critical hypothesis. It is not the business of the historian to construct a history from preconceived notions and to adjust it to his own liking, but to reproduce it from the best evidence and to let it speak for itself.

1. The Historical view, presented by the Gospels and believed in the Christian church of every denomination and sect. The resurrection of Christ was an actual though miraculous event, in harmony with his previous history and character, and in fulfilment of his own prediction. It was a re-animation of the dead body of Jesus by a return of his soul from the spirit-world, and a rising of body and soul from the grave to a new life, which after repeated manifestations to believers during a short period of forty days entered into glory by the ascension to heaven. The object of the manifestations was not only to convince the apostles personally of the resurrection, but to make them witnesses of the resurrection and heralds of salvation to all the world.216

Truth compels us to admit that there are serious difficulties in harmonizing the accounts of the evangelists, and in forming a consistent conception of the nature of Christ’s, resurrection-body, hovering as it were between heaven and earth, and oscillating for forty days between a natural and a supernatural state of the body clothed with flesh and blood and bearing the wound-prints, and yet so spiritual as to appear and disappear through closed doors and to ascend visibly to heaven. But these difficulties are not so great as those which are created by a denial of the fact itself. The former can be measurably solved, the latter cannot. We, do not know all the details and circumstances which might enable us to clearly trace the order of events. But among all the variations the great central fact of the resurrection itself and its principal features "stand out all the more sure."217  The period of the forty days is in the nature of the case the most mysterious in the life of Christ, and transcends all ordinary Christian experience. The Christophanies resemble in some respect, the theophanies of the Old Testament, which were granted only to few believers, yet for the general benefit. At all events the fact of the resurrection furnishes the only key for the solution of the psychological problem of the sudden, radical, and permanent change in the mind and conduct of the disciples; it is the necessary link in the chain which connects their history before and after that event. Their faith in the resurrection was too clear, too strong, too steady, too effective to be explained in any other way. They showed the strength and boldness of their conviction by soon returning to Jerusalem, the post of danger, and founding there, in the very face of the hostile Sanhedrin, the mother-church of Christendom.

2. The Theory of Fraud. The apostles stole and hid the body of Jesus, and deceived the world.218

This infamous lie carries its refutation on its face: for if the Roman soldiers who watched the grave at the express request of the priests and Pharisees, were asleep, they could not see the thieves, nor would they have proclaimed their military crime; if they, or only some of them, were awake, they would have prevented the theft. As to the, disciples, they were too timid and desponding at the time to venture on such a daring act, and too honest to cheat the world. And finally a self-invented falsehood could not give them the courage and constancy of faith for the proclamation of the resurrection at the peril of their lives. The whole theory is a wicked absurdity, an insult to the common sense and honor of mankind.

3. The Swoon-Theory. The physical life of Jesus was not extinct, but only exhausted, and was restored by the tender care of his friends and disciples, or (as some absurdly add) by his own medical skill; and after a brief period he quietly died a natural death.219

Josephus, Valerius Maximus, psychological and medical authorities have been searched and appealed to for examples of such apparent resurrections from a trance or asphyxy, especially on the third day, which is supposed to be a critical turning-point for life or putrefaction.

But besides insuperable physical difficulties—as the wounds and loss of blood from the very heart pierced by the spear of the Roman soldier—this theory utterly fails to account for the moral effect. A brief sickly existence of Jesus in need of medical care, and terminating in his natural death and final burial, without even the glory of martyrdom which attended the crucifixion, far from restoring the faith of the apostles, would have only in the end deepened their gloom and driven them to utter despair.220

4. The Vision-Theory. Christ rose merely in the imagination of his friends, who mistook a subjective vision or dream for actual reality, and were thereby encouraged to proclaim their faith in the resurrection at the risk of death. Their wish was father to the belief, their belief was father to the fact, and the belief, once started, spread with the power of a religious epidemic from person to person and from place to place. The Christian society wrought the miracle by its intense love for Christ. Accordingly the resurrection does not belong to the history of Christ at all, but to the inner life of his disciples. It is merely the embodiment of their reviving faith.

This hypothesis was invented by a heathen adversary in the second century and soon buried out of sight, but rose to new life in the nineteenth, and spread with epidemical rapidity among skeptical critics in Germany, France, Holland and England.221

The advocates of this hypothesis appeal first and chiefly to the vision of St. Paul on the way to Damascus, which occurred several years later, and is nevertheless put on a level with the former appearances to the older apostles (1 Cor. 15:8); next to supposed analogies in the history of religious enthusiasm and mysticism, such as the individual visions of St. Francis of Assisi, the Maid of Orleans, St. Theresa (who believed that she had seen Jesus in person with the eyes of the soul more distinctly than she could have seen him with the eyes of the body), Swedenborg, even Mohammed, and the collective visions of the Montanists in Asia Minor, the Camisards in France, the spectral resurrections of the martyred Thomas à Becket of Canterbury and Savonarola of Florence in the excited imagination of their admirers, and the apparitions of the Immaculate Virgin at Lourdes.222

Nobody will deny that subjective fancies and impressions are often mistaken for objective realities. But, with the exception of the case of St. Paul—which we shall consider in its proper place, and which turns out to be, even according to the admission of the leaders of skeptical criticism, a powerful argument against the mythical or visionary theory—these supposed analogies are entirely irrelevant; for, not to speak of other differences, they were isolated and passing phenomena which left no mark on history; while the faith in the resurrection of Christ has revolutionized the whole world. It must therefore be treated on its own merits as an altogether unique case.

(a) The first insuperable argument against the visionary nature, and in favor of the objective reality, of the resurrection is the empty tomb of Christ. If he did not rise, his body must either have been removed, or remained in the tomb. If removed by the disciples, they were guilty of a deliberate falsehood in preaching the resurrection, and then the vision-hypothesis gives way to the exploded theory of fraud. If removed by the enemies, then these enemies had the best evidence against the resurrection, and would not have failed to produce it and thus to expose the baselessness of the vision. The same is true, of course, if the body had remained in the tomb. The murderers of Christ would certainly not have missed such an opportunity to destroy the very foundation of the hated sect.

To escape this difficulty, Strauss removes the origin of the illusion away off to Galilee, whether the disciples fled; but this does not help the matter, for they returned in a few weeks to Jerusalem, where we find them all assembled on the day of Pentecost.

This argument is fatal even to the highest form of the vision hypothesis, which admits a spiritual manifestation of Christ from heaven, but denies the resurrection of his body.

(b) If Christ did not really rise, then the words which he spoke to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples of Emmaus, to doubting Thomas, to Peter on the lake of Tiberias, to all the disciples on Mount Olivet, were likewise pious fictions. But who can believe that words of such dignity and majesty, so befitting the solemn moment of the departure to the throne of glory, as the commandment to preach the gospel to every creature, to baptize the nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the promise to be with his disciples alway to the end of the world—a promise abundantly verified in the daily experience of the church—could proceed from dreamy and self-deluded enthusiasts or crazy fanatics any more than the Sermon on the Mount or the Sacerdotal Prayer!  And who, with any spark of historical sense, can suppose that Jesus never instituted baptism, which has been performed in his name ever since the day of Pentecost, and which, like the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, bears testimony to him every day as the sunlight does to the sun!

(c) If the visions of the resurrection were the product of an excited imagination, it is unaccountable that they should suddenly have ceased on the fortieth day (Acts 1:15), and not have occurred to any of the disciples afterwards, with the single exception of Paul, who expressly represents his vision of Christ as "the last." Even on the day of Pentecost Christ did not appear to them, but, according to his promise, "the other Paraclete" descended upon them; and Stephen saw Christ in heaven, not on earth.223

(d) The chief objection to the vision-hypothesis is its intrinsic impossibility. It makes the most exorbitant claim upon our credulity. It requires us to believe that many persons, singly and collectively, at different times, and in different places, from Jerusalem to Damascus, had the same vision and dreamed the same dream; that the women at the open sepulchre early in the morning, Peter and John soon afterwards, the two disciples journeying to Emmaus on the afternoon of the resurrection day, the assembled apostles on the evening in the absence of Thomas, and again on the next Lord’s Day in the presence of the skeptical Thomas, seven apostles at the lake of Tiberias, on one occasion five hundred brethren at once most of whom were still alive when Paul reported the fact, then James, the brother of the Lord, who formerly did not believe in him, again all the apostles on Mount Olivet at the ascension, and at last the clearheaded, strong-minded persecutor on the way to Damascus—that all these men and women on these different occasions vainly imagined they saw and heard the self-same Jesus in bodily shape and form; and that they were by this baseless vision raised all at once from the deepest gloom in which the crucifixion of their Lord had left them, to the boldest faith and strongest hope which impelled them to proclaim the gospel of the resurrection from Jerusalem to Rome to the end of their lives!  And this illusion of the early disciples created the greatest revolution not only in their own views and conduct, but among Jews and Gentiles and in the subsequent history of mankind!  This illusion, we are expected to believe by these unbelievers, gave birth to the most real and most mighty of all facts, the Christian Church which has lasted these eighteen hundred years and is now spread all over the civilized world, embracing more members than ever and exercising more moral power than all the kingdoms and all other religions combined!

The vision-hypothesis, instead of getting rid of the miracle, only shifts it from fact to fiction; it makes an empty delusion more powerful than the truth, or turns all history itself at last into a delusion. Before we can reason the resurrection of Christ out of history we must reason the apostles and Christianity itself out of existence. We must either admit the miracle, or frankly confess that we stand here before an inexplicable mystery.

Remarkable Concessions.—The ablest advocates of the vision-theory are driven against their wish and will to admit some unexplained objective reality in the visions of the risen or ascended Christ.

Dr. Baur, of Tübingen (d. 1860), the master-critic among sceptical church historians, and the corypheus of the Tübingen school, came at last to the conclusion (as stated in the revised edition of his Church History of the First Three Centuries, published shortly before his death, 1860) that "nothing but the miracle of the resurrection could disperse the doubts which threatened to drive faith itself into the eternal night of death (Nur das Wunder der Auferstehung konnte die Zweifel zerstreuen, welche den Glauben selbst in die ewige Nacht des Todes verstossen zu müssen schienen)."  Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, I. 39. It is true he adds that the nature of the resurrection itself lies outside of historical investigation ("Was die Auferstehung an sich ist, liegt ausserhalb des Kreises der geschichtlichen Untersuchung"), but also, that "for the faith of the disciples the resurrection of Jesus became the most solid and most irrefutable certainty. In this faith only Christianity gained a firm foothold of its historical development. (In diesem Glauben hat erst das Christenthum den festen Grund seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung gewonnen.)  What history requires as the necessary prerequisite of all that follows is not so much the fact of the resurrection itself [?] as the faith in that fact. In whatever light we may consider the resurrection of Jesus, whether as an actual objective miracle or as a subjective psychological one (als ein objectiv geschehenes Wunder, oder als ein subjectiv psychologisches), even granting the possibility of such a miracle, no psychological analysis can penetrate the inner spiritual process by which in the consciousness of the disciples their unbelief at the death of Jesus was transformed into a belief of his resurrection .... We must rest satisfied with this, that for them the resurrection of Christ was a fact of their consciousness, and had for them all the reality of an historical event." (Ibid., pp. 39, 40.)  Baur’s remarkable conclusion concerning the conversion of St. Paul (ibid., pp. 44, 45) we shall consider in its proper place.

Dr. Ewald, of Göttingen (d. 1874), the great orientalist and historian of Israel, antagonistic to Baur, his equal in profound scholarship and bold, independent, often arbitrary criticism, but superior in religious sympathy with the genius of the Bible, discusses the resurrection of Christ in his History of the Apostolic Age (Gesch. des Volkes Israel, vol. VI. 52 sqq.), instead of his Life of Christ, and resolves it into a purely spiritual, though long continued manifestation from heaven. Nevertheless he makes the strong statement (p. 69) that "nothing is historically more certain than that Christ rose from the dead and appeared to his own, and that this their vision was the beginning of their new higher faith and of an their Christian labors." "Nichts steht geschichtlich fester," he says, "als dass Christus aus den Todten auferstanden den Seinigen wiederschien und dass dieses ihr wiedersehen der anfang ihres neuen höhern glaubens und alles ihres Christlichen wirkens selbst war. Es ist aber ebenso gewiss dass sie ihn nicht wie einen gewöhnlichen menschen oder wie einen aus dem grabe aufsteigenden schatten oder gespenst wie die sage von solchen meldet, sondern wie den einzigen Sohn Gottes, wie ein durchaus schon übermächtiges und übermenschliches wesen wiedersahen und sich bei späteren zurückerinnerungen nichts anderes denken konnten als dass jeder welcher ihn wiederzusehen gewürdigt sei auch sogleich unmittelbar seine einzige göttliche würde erkannt und seitdem felsenfest daran geglaubt habe. Als den ächten König und Sohn Gottes hatten ihn aber die Zwölfe und andre schon im leben zu erkennen gelernt: der unterschied ist nur der dass sie ihn jetzt auch nach seiner rein göttlichen seite und damit auch als den über den tod siegreichen erkannt zu haben sich erinnerten. Zwischen jenem gemeinen schauen des irdischen Christus wie er ihnen sowohl bekannt war und diesem höhern tieferregten entzückten schauen des himmlischen ist also dock ein innerer zusammenhang, so dass sie ihn auch jetzt in diesen ersten tagen und wochen nach seinem tode nie als den himmlischen Messias geschauet hätten wenn sie ihn nicht schon vorher als den irdischen so wohl gekannt hätten."

Dr. Keim, of Zürich (d. at Giessen, 1879), an independent pupil of Baur, and author of the most elaborate and valuable Life of Christ which the liberal critical school has produced, after giving every possible advantage to the mythical view of the resurrection, confesses that it is, after all, a mere hypothesis and fails to explain the main point. He says (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, III. 600): "Nach allen diesen Ueberlegungen wird man zugestehen müssen, dass auch die neuerdings beliebt gewordene Theorie nur eine Hypothese ist, welche Einiges erklärt, die Hauptsache nicht erklärt, ja im Ganzen und Grossen das geschichtlich Bezeugte schiefen und hinfälligen Gesichtspunkten unterstellt. Misslingt aber gleichmässig der Versuch, die überlieferte Aufs Auferstehungsgeschichte festzuhalten, wie das Unternehmen, mit Hilfe der paulinischen Visionen eine natürliche Erklärung des Geschehenen aufzubauen, so bleibt für die Geschichte zunächst kein Weg übrig als der des Eingeständnisses, dass die Sagenhaftigkeit der redseligen Geschichte und die dunkle Kürze der glaubwürdigen Geschichte es nicht gestattet, über die räthselhaften Ausgange des Lebens Jesu, so wichtig sie an und für sich und in der Einwirkung auf die Weltgeschichte gewesen sind, ein sicheres unumstössliches Resultat zu geben. Für die Geschichte, sofern sie nur mit benannten evidenten Zahlen und mit Reihen greifbarer anerkannter Ursachen und Wirkungen rechnet, existirt als das Thatsächliche und Zweifellose lediglich der feste Glaube der Apostel, dass Jesus auferstanden, und die ungeheure Wirkung dieses Glaubens, die Christianisirung der Menschheit. On p. 601 he expresses the conviction that "it was the crucified and living Christ who, not as the risen one, but rather as the divinely glorified one (als der wenn nicht Auferstandene, so doch vielmehr himmlisch Verherrlichte), gave visions to his disciples and revealed himself to his society." In his last word on the great problem, Keim, in view of the exhaustion and failure of the natural explanations, comes to the conclusion, that we must either, with Dr. Baur, humbly confess our ignorance, or return to the faith of the apostles who "have seen the Lord" (John 20:25). See the third and last edition of his abridged Geschichte Jesu, Zürich, 1875, p. 362.

Dr. Schenkel, of Heidelberg, who in his Charakterbild Jesu (third ed. 1864, pp. 231 sqq.) had adopted the vision-theory in its higher form as a purely spiritual, though real manifestation from heaven, confesses in his latest work, Das Christusbild der Apostel (1879, p. 18), his inability to solve the problem of the resurrection of Christ, and says: "Niemals wird es der Forschung gelingen, das Räthsel des Auferstehungsglaubens zu ergründen. Nichts aber steht fester in der Geschichte als die Thatsache dieses Glaubens; auf ihm beruht die Stiftung der christlichen Gemeinschaft ... Der Visionshypothese, welche die Christuserscheinungen der Jünger aus Sinnestäuschungen erklären will, die in einer Steigerung des ’Gemüths und Nervenlebens’ ihre physische und darum auch psychische Ursache hatten,... steht vor allem die Grundfarbe der Stimmung in den Jüngern, namentlich in Petrus, im Wege: die tiefe Trauer, das gesunkene Selbstvertrauen, die nagende Gewissenspein, der verlorne Lebensmuth. Wie soll aus einer solchen Stimmung das verklärte Bild des Auferstandenen hervorgehen, mit dieser unverwüstlichen Sicherheit und unzerstörbaren Freudigkeit, durch welche der Auferstehungsglaube die Christengemeinde in allen Stürmen und Verfolgungen aufrecht zu erhalten vermochte?"

CHAPTER III.

THE APOSTOLIC AGE

§ 20. Sources and Literature of the Apostolic Age.

I. Sources.

1. The Canonical Books of the New Testament.—The twenty-seven books of the New Testament are better supported than any ancient classic, both by a chain of external testimonies which reaches up almost to the close of the apostolic age, and by the internal evidence of a spiritual depth and unction which raises them far above the best productions of the second century. The church has undoubtedly been guided by the Holy Spirit in the selection and final determination of the Christian canon. But this does, of course, not supersede the necessity of criticism, nor is the evidence equally strong in the case of the seven Eusebian Antilegomena. The Tübingen and Leyden schools recognized at first only five books of the New Testament as authentic, namely, four Epistles of Paul-Romans, First and Second Corinthians, and Galatians—and the Revelation of John. But the progress of research leads more and more to positive results, and nearly all the Epistles of Paul now find advocates among liberal critics. (Hilgenfeld and Lipsius admit seven, adding First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon; Renan concedes also Second Thessalonians, and Colossians to be Pauline, thus swelling the number of genuine Epistles to nine.)  The chief facts and doctrines of apostolic Christianity are sufficiently guaranteed even by those five documents, which are admitted by the extreme left of modern criticism.

The Acts of the Apostles give us the external, the Epistles the internal history of primitive Christianity. They are independent contemporaneous compositions and never refer to each other; probably Luke never read the Epistles of Paul, and Paul never read the Acts of Luke, although he no doubt supplied much valuable information to Luke. But indirectly they illustrate and confirm each other by a number of coincidences which have great evidential value, all the more as these coincidences are undesigned and incidental. Had they been composed by post-apostolic writers, the agreement would have been more complete, minor disagreements would have been avoided, and the lacunae in the Acts supplied, especially in regard to the closing labors and death of Peter and Paul.

The Acts bear on the face all the marks of an original, fresh, and trustworthy narrative of contemporaneous events derived from the best sources of information, and in great part from personal observation and experience. The authorship of Luke, the companion of Paul, is conceded by a majority of the best modern scholars, even by Ewald. And this fact alone establishes the credibility. Renan (in his St. Paul, ch. 1) admirably calls the Acts "a book of joy, of serene ardor. Since the Homeric poems no book has been seen full of such fresh sensations. A breeze of morning, an odor of the sea, if I dare express it so, inspiring something joyful and strong, penetrates the whole book, and makes it an excellent compagnon de voyage, the exquisite breviary for him who is searching for ancient remains on the seas of the south. This is the second idyl of Christianity. The Lake of Tiberias and its fishing barks had furnished the first. Now, a more powerful breeze, aspirations toward more distant lands, draw us out into the open sea."

2. The Post-Apostolic and Patristic writings are full of reminiscences of, and references to, the apostolic books, and as dependent on them as the river is upon its fountain.

3. The Apocryphal and Heretical literature. The numerous Apocryphal Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses were prompted by the same motives of curiosity and dogmatic interest as the Apocryphal Gospels, and have a similar apologetic, though very little historical, value. The heretical character is, however, more strongly marked. They have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Lipsius (in Smith and Wace’s, "Dict. of Christ. Biog." vol. I. p. 27) divides the Apocryphal Acts into four classes: (1) Ebionitic; (2) Gnostic; (3) originally Catholic; (4) Catholic adaptations or recensions of heretical documents. The last class is the most numerous, rarely older than the fifth century, but mostly resting on documents from the second and third centuries.

(a) Apocryphal Acts: Acta Petri et Pauli (of Ebionite origin, but recast), Acta Pauli et Theclae (mentioned by Tertullian at the end of the second century, of Gnostic origin), Acta Thomae (Gnostic), Acta Matthaei, Acta Thaddei, Martyrium Bartholomaei, Acta Barnabae, Acta Andreae, Acta Andreae et Mathiae, Acta Philippi, Acta Johannis, Acta Simonis et Judae, Acta Thaddaei, The Doctrine of Addai, the Apostle (ed. in Syriac and English by Dr. G. Phillips, London, 1876).

(b) Apocryphal Epistles: the correspondence between Paul and Seneca (six by Paul and eight by Seneca, mentioned by Jerome and Augustine), the third Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Epistolae Mariae, Epistolae Petri ad Jacobum.

(c) Apocryphal Apocalypses: Apocalypsis Johannis, Apocalypsis Petri, Apocalypsis Pauli (or ajnabatiko;n Pauvlou, based on the report of his rapture into Paradise, 2 Cor. 12:2–4), Apocalypsis Thomae, Apoc. Stephani, Apoc. Mariae, Apoc. Mosis, Apoc. Esdrae.

Editions and Collections:

Fabricius: Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti. Hamburg, 1703, 2d ed. 1719, 1743, 3 parts in 2 vols. (vol. II.)

Grabe: Spicilegium Patrum et Haereticorum. Oxford, 1698, ed. II. 1714.

Birch: Auctarium Cod. Apoc. N. Ti Fabrician. Copenh. 1804 (Fasc. I.). Contains the pseudo-Apocalypse of John.

Thilo: Acta Apost. Petri et Pauli. Halis, 1838. Acta Thomae. Lips. 1823.

Tischendorf: Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha. Lips. 1851.

Tischendorf: Apocalypses Apocryphae Mosis, Esdrae, Pauli, Joannis, item Mariae Dormitio. Lips. 1866.

R. A. Lipsius: Die apokryph  Apostel geschichten und Apostel legenden. Leipz. 1883 sq. 2 vols.

4. Jewish sources: Philo and Josephus, see § 14, p. 92. Josephus is all-important for the history of the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, which marks the complete rapture of the Christian Church with the Jewish synagogue and temple. The apocryphal Jewish, and the Talmudic literature supplies information and illustrations of the training of the Apostles and the form of their teaching and the discipline and worship of the primitive church. Lightfoot, Schöttgen, Castelli, Delitzsch, Wünsche, Siegfried, Schürer, and a few others have made those sources available for the exegete and historian. Comp. here also the Jewish works of Jost, Graetz, and Geiger, mentioned § 9, p. 61, and Hamburger’s Real-Ecyclopädie des Judenthums (für Bibel und Talmud), in course of publication.

5. Heathen writers: Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Julian. They furnish only fragmentary, mostly incidental, distorted and hostile information, but of considerable apologetic value.

Comp. Nath. Lardner (d. 1768): Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion. Originally published in 4 vols. Lond. 1764–’67, and then in the several editions of his Works (vol. VI. 365–649, ed. Kippis).

II. Histories of the Apostolic Age.

William Cave (Anglican, d. 1713): Lives of the Apostles, and the two Evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke. Lond. 1675, new ed. revised by H. Cary, Oxford, 1840 (reprinted in New York, 1857). Comp. also Cave’s Primitive Christianity, 4th ed. Lond. 1862.

Joh. Fr. Buddeus (Luth., d. at Jena, 1729): Ecclesia Apostolica. Jen. 1729.

George Benson (d. 1763): History of the First Planting of the Christian Religion. Lond. 1756, 3 vols. 4to (in German by Bamberger, Halle, 1768).

J. J. Hess (d. at Zurich, 1828): Geschichte der Apostel Jesu. Zür. 1788; 4th ed. 1820.

Gottl. Jac. Planck (d. in Göttingen, 1833): Geschichte des Christenthums in der Periode seiner Einführung in die Welt durch Jesum und die Apostel. Göttingen, 1818, 2 vols.

*Aug. Neander (d. in Berlin, 1850): Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel. Hamb. 1832. 2 vols.; 4th ed. revised 1847. The same in English (History of the Planting and Training of the Christ. Church), by J. E. Ryland, Edinb. 1842, and in Bohn’s Standard Library, Lond. 1851; reprinted in Philad. 1844; revised by E. G. Robinson, N. York, 1865. This book marks an epoch and is still valuable.

F. C. Albert Schwegler (d. at Tübingen, 1857): Das nachapostolische Zeitalter in den Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung. Tübingen, 1845, 1846, 2 vols. An ultra-critical attempt to transpose the apostolic literature (with the exception of five books) into the post-apostolic age.

*Ferd. Christ. Baur (d. 1860): Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1853, 2d revised ed. 1860 (536 pp.). The third edition is a mere reprint or title edition of the second and forms the first volume of his General Church History, edited by his son, in 5 vols. 1863. It is the last and ablest exposition of the Tübingen reconstruction of the apostolic history from the pen of the master of that school. See vol. I. pp. 1–174. English translation by Allen Menzies, in 2 vols. Lond. 1878 and 1879. Comp. also Baur’s Paul, second ed. by Ed. Zeller, 1866 and 1867, and translated by A. Menzies, 2 vols. 1873, 1875. Baur’s critical researches have compelled a thorough revision of the traditional views on the apostolic age, and have so far been very useful, notwithstanding their fundamental errors.

A. P. Stanley (Dean of Westminster): Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age. Oxford, 1847. 3d ed. 1874.

*Heinrich W. J. Thiersch (Irvingite, died 1885 in Basle): Die Kirche im apostolischen Zeitalter. Francf. a. M. 1852; 3d ed. Augsburg, 1879, "improved," but very slightly. (The same in English from the first ed. by Th. Carlyle. Lond. 1852.)

*J. P. Lange (d. 1884):Das apostolische Zeitalter. Braunschw. 1854. 2 vols.

Philip Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church, first in German, Mercersburg, Penns. 1851; 2d ed. enlarged, Leipzig, 1854; English translation by Dr. E. D. Yeomans, N. York, 1853, in 1 vol.; Edinb. 1854, in 2 vols.; several editions without change. (Dutch translation from the second Germ. ed. by T. W. Th. Lublink Weddik, Tiel, 1857.)

*G. V. Lechler (Prof. in Leipzig): Das apostolische und das nachapostolische Zeitalter. 2d ed. 1857; 3d ed. thoroughly revised, Leipzig, 1885. Engl. trsl. by Miss Davidson, Edinb. 1887. Conservative.

*Albrecht Ritschl (d. in Göttingen, 1889): Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche. 2d ed. Bonn, 1857. The first edition was in harmony with the Tübingen School; but the second is materially improved, and laid the foundation for the Ritschl School.

*Heinrich Ewald (d. at Göttingen, 1874): Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vols. VI. and VII. 2d ed. Göttingen, 1858 and 1859. Vol. VI. of this great work contains the History of the Apostolic Age to the destruction of Jerusalem; vol. VII. the History of the post-Apostolic Age to the reign of Hadrian. English translation of the History of Israel by R. Martineau and J. E. Carpenter. Lond. 1869 sqq. A trans. of vols. VI. and VII. is not intended. Ewald (the "Urvogel von Göttingen") pursued an independent path in opposition both to the traditional orthodoxy and to the Tübingen school, which he denounced as worse than heathenish. See Preface to vol. VII.

*E. de Pressensé: Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l’église chrétienne. Par. 1858 sqq. 4 vols. German translation by E. Fabarius (Leipz. 1862–’65); English translation by Annie Harwood-Holmden (Lond. and N. York, 1870, new ed. Lond. 1879). The first volume contains the first century under the title Le siècle apostolique; rev. ed. 1887.

*Joh. Jos. Ign. von Döllinger (Rom. Cath., since 1870 Old Cath.): Christenthum und Kirche in der Zeit der Gründung. Regensburg, 1860. 2d ed. 1868. The same translated into English by H. N. Oxenham. London, 1867.

C. S. Vaughan: The Church of the First Days. Lond. 1864–’65. 3 vols. Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles.

N. Sepp (Rom. Cath.): Geschichte der Apostel Jesu his zur Zerstörung Jerusalems. Schaffhausen, 1866.

C. Holsten: Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868 (447 pp.).

Paul Wilh. Schmidt und Franz v. Holtzendorf: Protestanten-Bibel Neuen Testaments. Zweite, revid. Auflage. Leipzig, 1874. A popular exegetical summary of the Tübingen views with contributions from Bruch, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, Lipsius, Pfleiderer and others.

A. B. Bruce (Professor in Glasgow): The Training of the Twelve. Edinburgh, 1871, second ed. 1877.

*Ernest Renan (de l’Académie Francaise): Histoire des origines du Christianisme. Paris, 1863 sqq. The first volume is Vie de Jésus, 1863, noticed in § 14 (pp. 97 and 98); then followed II. Les Apôtres, 1866; III. St. Paul, 1869; IV. L’Antechrist, 1873; V. Les Évangiles, 1877; VI. L’Église Chrétienne, 1879; VII. and last volume, Marc-Auréle, 1882. The II., III., IV., and V. volumes belong to the Apostolic age; the last two to the next. The work of a sceptical outsider, of brilliant genius, eloquence, and secular learning. It increases in value as it advances. The Life of Jesus is the most interesting and popular, but also by far the most objectionable volume, because it deals almost profanely with the most sacred theme.

Emil Ferriére: Les Apôtres. Paris, 1875.

Supernatural Religion. An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation. Lond. 1873, (seventh), "complete ed., carefully revised," 1879, 3 vols. This anonymous work is an English reproduction and repository of the critical speculations of the Tübingen School of Baur, Strauss, Zeller, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, etc. It may be called an enlargement of Schwegler’s Nachapostolisches Zeitalter. The first volume is mostly taken up with a philosophical discussion of the question of miracles; the remainder of vol. I. (pp. 212–485) and vol. II. contain an historical inquiry into the apostolic origin of the canonical Gospels, with a negative result. The third volume discusses the Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse, and the evidence for the Resurrection and Ascension, which are resolved into hallucinations or myths. Starting with the affirmation of the antecedent incredibility of miracles, the author arrives at the conclusion of their impossibility; and this philosophical conclusion determines the historical investigation throughout. Dr. Schürer, in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung" for 1879, No. 26 (p. 622), denies to this work scientific value for Germany, but gives it credit for extraordinary familiarity with recent German literature and great industry in collecting historical details. Drs. Lightfoot, Sanday, Ezra Abbot, and others have exposed the defects of its scholarship, and the false premises from which the writer reasons. The rapid sale of the work indicates the extensive spread of skepticism and the necessity of fighting over again, on Anglo-American ground, the theological battles of Germany and Holland; it is to be hoped with more triumphant success.

*J. B. Lightfoot (Bishop of Durham since 1879): A series of elaborate articles against "Supernatural Religion," in the "Contemporary Review" for 1875 to 1877. They should be republished in book form. Comp. also the reply of the anonymous author in the lengthy preface to the sixth edition. Lightfoot’s Commentaries on Pauline Epistles contain valuable Excursuses on several historical questions of the apostolic age, especially St. Paul and the Three, in the Com. on the Galatians, pp. 283–355.

W. Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century. London, 1876. This is directed against the critical part of "Supernatural Religion." The eighth chapter on Marcion’s Gnostic mutilation and reconstruction of St. Luke’s Gospel (pp. 204 sqq.) had previously appeared in the "Fortnightly Review" for June, 1875, and finishes on English soil, a controversy which had previously been fought out on German soil, in the circle of the Tübingen School. The preposterous hypothesis of the priority of Marcion’s Gospel was advocated by Ritschl, Baur and Schwegler, but refuted by Volkmar and Hilgenfeld, of the same school; whereupon Baur and Ritschl honorably abandoned their error. The anonymous author of "Supernatural Religion," in his seventh edition, has followed their example. The Germans conducted the controversy chiefly under its historic and dogmatic aspects; Sanday has added the philological and textual argument with the aid of Holtzmann’s analysis of the style and vocabulary of Luke.

A. Hausrath (Prof. in Heidelberg): Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. Heidelberg, 1873 sqq. Parts II. and III. (second ed. 1875) embrace the apostolic times, Part IV. (1877) the post-apostolic times. English translation by Poynting and Quenzer. Lond. 1878 sqq. H. belongs to the School of Tübingen.

Dan. Schenkel (Prof. in Heidelberg): Das Christusbild der Apostel und der nachapostolischen Zeit. Leipz. 1879. Comp. the review by H. Holtzmann in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." 1879, p. 392.

H. Oort and I. Hooykaas: The Bible for Learners, translated from the Dutch by Philip H. Wicksteed, vol. III. (the New Test., by Hooykaas), Book III. pp. 463–693 of the Boston ed. 1879. (In the Engl. ed. it is vol. VI.)  This is a popular digest of the rationalistic Tübingen and Leyden criticism under the inspiration of Dr. A. Kuenen, Professor of Theology at Leyden. It agrees substantially with the Protestanten-Bibel noticed above.

*George P. Fisher (Prof. in Yale College, New Haven): The Beginnings of Christianity. N. York, 1877. Comp. also the author’s former work: Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, with special reference to the Theories of Renan, Strauss, and the Tübingen School. New York, 1865. New ed. enlarged, 1877.

*C. Weizsäcker (successor of Baur in Tübingen): Das Apostolische Zeitalter. Freiburg, 1886. Critical and very able.

*O. Pfleiderer (Prof. in Berlin): Das Urchristenthum, seine Schriften und Lehren. Berlin, 1887. (Tübingen School.)

III. The Chronology of the Apostolic Age.

Rudolph Anger: De temporum in Actis Apostolorum ratione. Lips. 1833 (208 pp.).

Henry Browne: Ordo Saeculorum. A Treatise on the Chronology of the Holy Scriptures. Lond. 1844. Pp. 95–163.

Karl Wieseler: Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. Göttingen, 1848 (606 pp.).

The older and special works are noticed in Wieseler, pp. 6–9. See also the elaborate Synopsis of the dates of the Apostolic Age in Schäffer’s translation of Lechler on Acts (in the Am. ed. of Lange’s Commentary); Henry B. Smith’s Chronological Tables of Church History (1860); and Weingarten: Zeittafeln zur K-Gesch. 3d ed. 1888.

§21. General Character of the Apostolic Age.

"Der Schlachtruf, der St. Pauli Brust entsprungen,

Rief nicht sein Echo auf zu tausend Streiten?

Und welch’ ein Friedensecho hat geklungen

Durch tausend Herzen von Johannis Saiten!

Wie viele rasche Feuer sind entglommen

Als Wiederschein von Petri Funkensprühen!

Und sieht man Andre still mit Opfern kommen,

Ist’s, weil sie in Jakobi Schul’gediehen:—

Ein Satz ist’s, der in Variationen

Vom ersten Anfang forttönt durch Aeonen."

(Tholuck.)

Extent and Environment of the Apostolic Age.

The apostolic period extends from the Day of Pentecost to the death of St. John, and covers about seventy years, from A.D. 30 to 100. The field of action is Palestine, and gradually extends over Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. The most prominent centres are Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome, which represent respectively the mother churches of Jewish, Gentile, and United Catholic Christianity. Next to them are Ephesus and Corinth. Ephesus acquired a special importance by the residence and labors of John, which made themselves felt during the second century through Polycarp and Irenaeus. Samaria, Damascus, Joppa, Caesarea, Tyre, Cyprus, the provinces of Asia Minor, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Beraea, Athens, Crete, Patmos, Malta, Puteoli, come also into view as points where the Christian faith was planted. Through the eunuch converted by Philip, it reached Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians.224  As early as A.D. 58 Paul could say: "From Jerusalem and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ."225  He afterwards carried it to Rome, where it had already been known before, and possibly as far as Spain, the western boundary of the empire.226

The nationalities reached by the gospel in the first century were the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, and the languages used were the Hebrew or Aramaic, and especially the Greek, which was at that time the organ of civilization and of international intercourse within the Roman empire.

The contemporary secular history includes the reigns of the Roman Emperors from Tiberius to Nero and Domitian, who either ignored or persecuted Christianity. We are brought directly into contact with King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great), the murderer of the apostle, James the Elder; with his son King Agrippa II. (the last of the Herodian house), who with his sister Bernice (a most corrupt woman) listened to Paul’s defense; with two Roman governors, Felix and Festus; with Pharisees and Sadducees; with Stoics and Epicureans; with the temple and theatre at Ephesus, with the court of the Areopagus at Athens, and with Caesar’s palace in Rome.

Sources of Information.

The author of Acts records the heroic march of Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of heathenism with the same artless simplicity and serene faith as the Evangelists tell the story of Jesus; well knowing that it needs no embellishment, no apology, no subjective reflections, and that it will surely triumph by its inherent spiritual power.

The Acts and the Pauline Epistles accompany us with reliable information down to the year 63. Peter and Paul are lost out of sight in the lurid fires of the Neronian persecution which seemed to consume Christianity itself. We know nothing certain of that satanic spectacle from authentic sources beyond the information of heathen historians.227  A few years afterwards followed the destruction of Jerusalem, which must have made an overpowering impression and broken the last ties which bound Jewish Christianity to the old theocracy. The event is indeed brought before us in the prophecy of Christ as recorded in the Gospels, but for the terrible fulfilment we are dependent on the account of an unbelieving Jew, which, as the testimony of an enemy, is all the more impressive.

The remaining thirty years of the first century are involved in mysterious darkness, illuminated only by the writings of John. This is a period of church history about which we know least and would like to know most. This period is the favorite field for ecclesiastical fables and critical conjectures. How thankfully would the historian hail the discovery of any new authentic documents between the martyrdom of Peter and Paul and the death of John, and again between the death of John and the age of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.

Causes of Success.

As to the numerical strength of Christianity at the close of the first century, we have no information whatever. Statistical reports were unknown in those days. The estimate of half a million among the one hundred millions or more inhabitants of the Roman empire is probably exaggerated. The pentecostal conversion of three thousand in one day at Jerusalem,228 and the "immense multitude" of martyrs under Nero,229 favor a high estimate. The churches in Antioch also, Ephesus, and Corinth were strong enough to bear the strain of controversy and division into parties.230  But the majority of congregations were no doubt small, often a mere handful of poor people. In the country districts paganism (as the name indicates) lingered longest, even beyond the age of Constantine. The Christian converts belonged mostly to the middle and lower classes of society, such as fishermen, peasants, mechanics, traders, freedmen, slaves. St. Paul says: "Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble were called, but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God."231  And yet these poor, illiterate churches were the recipients of the noblest gifts, and alive to the deepest problems and highest thoughts which can challenge the attention of an immortal mind. Christianity built from the foundation upward. From the lower ranks come the rising men of the future, who constantly reinforce the higher ranks and prevent their decay.

At the time of the conversion of Constantine, in the beginning of the fourth century, the number of Christians may have reached ten or twelve millions, that is about one-tenth of the total population of the Roman empire. Some estimate it higher.

The rapid success of Christianity under the most unfavorable circumstances is surprising and its own best vindication. It was achieved in the face of an indifferent or hostile world, and by purely spiritual and moral means, without shedding a drop of blood except that of its own innocent martyrs. Gibbon, in the famous fifteenth chapter of his "History," attributes the rapid spread to five causes, namely: (1) the intolerant but enlarged religious zeal of the Christians inherited from the Jews; (2) the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, concerning which the ancient philosophers had but vague and dreamy ideas; (3) the miraculous powers attributed to the primitive church; (4) the purer but austere morality of the first Christians; (5) the unity and discipline of the church, which gradually formed a growing commonwealth in the heart of the empire. But every one of these causes, properly understood, points to the superior excellency and to the divine origin of the Christian religion, and this is the chief cause, which the Deistic historian omits.

Significance of the Apostolic Age.

The life of Christ is the divine-human fountainhead of the Christian religion; the apostolic age is the fountainhead of the Christian church, as an organized society separate and distinct from the Jewish synagogue. It is the age of the Holy Spirit, the age of inspiration and legislation for all subsequent ages.

Here springs, in its original freshness and purity, the living water of the new creation. Christianity comes down front heaven as a supernatural fact, yet long predicted and prepared for, and adapted to the deepest wants of human nature. Signs and wonders and extraordinary demonstrations of the Spirit, for the conversion of unbelieving Jews and heathens, attend its entrance into the world of sin. It takes up its permanent abode with our fallen race, to transform it gradually, without war or bloodshed, by a quiet, leaven-like process, into a kingdom of truth and righteousness. Modest and humble, lowly and unseemly in outward appearance, but steadily conscious of its divine origin and its eternal destiny; without silver or gold, but rich in supernatural gifts and powers, strong in faith, fervent in love, and joyful in hope; bearing in earthen vessels the imperishable treasures of heaven, it presents itself upon the stage of history as the only true, the perfect religion, for all the nations of the earth. At first an insignificant and even contemptible sect in the eyes of the carnal mind, hated and persecuted by Jews and heathens, it confounds the wisdom of Greece and the power of Rome, soon plants the standard of the cross in the great cities of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and proves itself the hope of the world.

In virtue of this original purity, vigor, and beauty, and the permanent success of primitive Christianity, the canonical authority of the single but inexhaustible volume of its literature, and the character of the apostles, those inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, those untaught teachers of mankind, the apostolic age has an incomparable interest and importance in the history of the church. It is the immovable groundwork of the whole. It has the same regulative force for all the subsequent developments of the church as the inspired writings of the apostles have for the works of all later Christian authors.

Furthermore, the apostolic Christianity is preformative, and contains the living germs of all the following periods, personages, and tendencies. It holds up the highest standard of doctrine and discipline; it is the inspiring genius of all true progress; it suggests to every age its peculiar problem with the power to solve it. Christianity can never outgrow Christ, but it grows in Christ; theology cannot go beyond the word of God, but it must ever progress in the understanding and application of the word of God. The three leading apostles represent not only the three stages of the apostolic church, but also as many ages and types of Christianity, and yet they are all present in every age and every type.232

The Representative Apostles.

Peter, Paul, and John stand out most prominently as the chosen Three who accomplished the great work of the apostolic age, and exerted, by their writings and example, a controlling influence on all subsequent ages. To them correspond three centres of influence, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome.

Our Lord himself had chosen Three out of the Twelve for his most intimate companions, who alone witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. They fulfilled all the expectations, Peter and John by their long and successful labors, James the Elder by drinking early the bitter cup of his Master, as the proto-martyr of the Twelve.233  Since his death, A.D. 44, James, "the brother of the Lord" seems to have succeeded him, as one of the three "pillars" of the church of the circumcision, although he did not belong to the apostles in the strict sense of the term, and his influence, as the head of the church at Jerusalem, was more local than oecumenical.234

Paul was called last and out of the regular order, by the personal appearance of the exalted Lord from heaven, and in authority and importance he was equal to any of the three pillars, but filled a place of his own, as the independent apostle of the Gentiles. He had around him a small band of co-laborers and pupils, such as Barnabas, Silas, Titus, Timothy, Luke.

Nine of the original Twelve, including Matthias, who was chosen in the place of Judas, labored no doubt faithfully and effectively, in preaching the gospel throughout the Roman empire and to the borders of the barbarians, but in subordinate positions, and their labors are known to us only from vague and uncertain traditions.235

The labors of James and Peter we can follow in the Acts to the Council of Jerusalem, A.D. 50, and a little beyond; those of Paul to his first imprisonment in Rome, A.D. 61–63; John lived to the close of the first century. As to their last labors we have no authentic information in the New Testament, but the unanimous testimony of antiquity that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome during or after the Neronian persecution, and that John died a natural death at Ephesus. The Acts breaks off abruptly with Paul still living and working, a prisoner in Rome, "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him." A significant conclusion.

It would be difficult to find three men equally great and good, equally endowed with genius sanctified by grace, bound together by deep and strong love to the common Master, and laboring for the same cause, yet so different in temper and constitution, as Peter, Paul, and John. Peter stands out in history as the main pillar of the primitive church, as the Rock-apostle, as the chief of the twelve foundation-stones of the new Jerusalem; John as the bosom-friend of the Saviour, as the son of thunder, as the soaring eagle, as the apostle of love; Paul as the champion of Christian freedom and progress, as the greatest missionary, with "the care of all the churches" upon his heart, as the expounder of the Christian system of doctrine, as the father of Christian theology. Peter was a man of action, always in haste and ready to take the lead; the first to confess Christ, and the first to preach Christ on the day of Pentecost; Paul a man equally potent in word and deed; John a man of mystic contemplation. Peter was unlearned and altogether practical; Paul a scholar and thinker as well as a worker; John a theosophist and seer. Peter was sanguine, ardent, impulsive, hopeful, kind-hearted, given to sudden changes, "consistently inconsistent" (to use an Aristotelian phrase); Paul was choleric, energetic, bold, noble, independent, uncompromising; John some what melancholic, introverted, reserved, burning within of love to Christ and hatred of Antichrist. Peter’s Epistles are full of sweet grace and comfort, the result of deep humiliation and rich experience; those of Paul abound in severe thought and logical argument, but rising at times to the heights of celestial eloquence, as in the seraphic description of love and the triumphant paean of the eighth chapter of the Romans; John’s writings are simple, serene, profound, intuitive, sublime, inexhaustible.

We would like to know more about the personal relations of these pillar-apostles, but must be satisfied with a few hints. They labored in different fields and seldom met face to face in their busy life. Time was too precious, their work too serious, for sentimental enjoyments of friendship. Paul went to Jerusalem A.D. 40, three years after his conversion, for the express purpose of making the personal acquaintance of Peter, and spent two weeks with him; he saw none of the other apostles, but only James, the Lord’s brother.236  He met the pillar-apostles at the Conference in Jerusalem, A.D. 50, and concluded with them the peaceful concordat concerning the division of labor, and the question of circumcision; the older apostles gave him and Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship" in token of brotherhood and fidelity.237  Not long afterwards Paul met Peter a third time, at Antioch, but came into open collision with him on the great question of Christian freedom and the union of Jewish and Gentile converts.238  The collision was merely temporary, but significantly reveals the profound commotion and fermentation of the apostolic age, and foreshadowed future antagonisms and reconciliations in the church. Several years later (A.D. 57) Paul refers the last time to Cephas, and the brethren of the Lord, for the right to marry and to take a wife with him on his missionary journeys.239  Peter, in his first Epistle to Pauline churches, confirms them in their Pauline faith, and in his second Epistle, his last will and testament, he affectionately commends the letters of his "beloved brother Paul," adding, however, the characteristic remark, which all commentators must admit to be true, that (even beside the account of the scene in Antioch) there are in them "some things hard to be understood."240  According to tradition (which varies considerably as to details), the great leaders of Jewish and Gentile Christianity met at Rome, were tried and condemned together, Paul, the Roman citizen, to the death by the sword on the Ostian road at Tre Fontane; Peter, the Galilean apostle, to the more degrading death of the cross on the hill of Janiculum. John mentions Peter frequently in his Gospel, especially in the appendix,241 but never names Paul; he met him, as it seems, only once, at Jerusalem, gave him the right hand of fellowship, became his successor in the fruitful field of Asia Minor, and built on his foundation.

Peter was the chief actor in the first stage of apostolic Christianity and fulfilled the prophecy of his name in laying the foundation of the church among the Jews and the Gentiles. In the second stage he is overshadowed by the mighty labors of Paul; but after the apostolic age he stands out again most prominent in the memory of the church. He is chosen by the Roman communion as its special patron saint and as the first pope. He is always named before Paul. To him most of the churches are dedicated. In the name of this poor fisherman of Galilee, who had neither gold nor silver, and was crucified like a malefactor and a slave, the triple-crowned popes deposed kings, shook empires, dispensed blessings and curses on earth and in purgatory, and even now claim the power to settle infallibly all questions of Christian doctrine and discipline for the Catholic world.

Paul was the chief actor in the second stage of the apostolic church, the apostle of the Gentiles, the founder of Christianity in Asia Minor and Greece, the emancipator of the new religion from the yoke of Judaism, the herald of evangelical freedom, the standard-bearer of reform and progress. His controlling influence was felt also in Rome, and is clearly seen in the genuine Epistle of Clement, who makes more account of him than of Peter. But soon afterwards he is almost forgotten, except by name. He is indeed associated with Peter as the founder of the church of Rome, but in a secondary line; his Epistle to the Romans is little read and understood by the Romans even to this day; his church lies outside of the walls of the eternal city, while St. Peter’s is its chief ornament and glory. In Africa alone he was appreciated, first by the rugged and racy Tertullian, more fully by the profound Augustine, who passed through similar contrasts in his religious experience; but Augustine’s Pauline doctrines of sin and grace had no effect whatever on the Eastern church, and were practically overpowered in the Western church by Pelagian tendencies. For a long time Paul’s name was used and abused outside of the ruling orthodoxy and hierarchy by anti-catholic heretics and sectaries in their protest against the new yoke of traditionalism and ceremonialism. But in the sixteenth century he celebrated a real resurrection and inspired the evangelical reformation. Then his Epistles to the Galatians and Romans were republished, explained, and applied with trumpet tongues by Luther and Calvin. Then his protest against Judaizing bigotry and legal bondage was renewed, and the rights of Christian liberty asserted on the largest scale. Of all men in church history, St. Augustine not excepted, Martin Luther, once a contracted monk, then a prophet of freedom, has most affinity in word and work with the apostle of the Gentiles, and ever since Paul’s genius has ruled the theology and religion of Protestantism. As the gospel of Christ was cast out from Jerusalem to bless the Gentiles, so Paul’s Epistle to the Romans was expelled from Rome to enlighten and to emancipate Protestant nations in the distant North and far West.

St. John, the most intimate companion of Jesus, the apostle of love, the seer who looked back to the ante-mundane beginning and forward to the post-mundane end of all things, and who is to tarry till the coming of the Lord, kept aloof from active part in the controversies between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. He appears prominent in the Acts and the Epistle to the Galatians, as one of the pillar-apostles, but not a word of his is reported. He was waiting in mysterious silence, with a reserved force, for his proper time, which did not come till Peter and Paul had finished their mission. Then, after their departure, he revealed the hidden depths of his genius in his marvellous writings, which represent the last and crowning work of the apostolic church. John has never been fully fathomed, but it has been felt throughout all the periods of church history that he has best understood and portrayed the Master, and may yet speak the last word in the conflict of ages and usher in an era of harmony and peace. Paul is the heroic captain of the church militant, John the mystic prophet of the church triumphant.

Far above them all, throughout the apostolic age and all subsequent ages, stands the one great Master from whom Peter, Paul, and John drew their inspiration, to whom they bowed in holy adoration, whom alone they served and glorified in life and in death, and to whom they still point in their writings as the perfect image of God, as the Saviour from sin and death, as the Giver of eternal life, as the divine harmony of conflicting creeds and schools, as the Alpha and Omega of the Christian faith.

§22. The Critical Reconstruction of the History of the Apostolic Age.

"Die Botschaft hör’ ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube."

(Goethe.)

Never before in the history of the church has the origin of Christianity, with its original documents, been so thoroughly examined from standpoints entirely opposite as in the present generation. It has engaged the time and energy of many of the ablest scholars and critics. Such is the importance and the power of that little book which "contains the wisdom of the whole world," that it demands ever new investigation and sets serious minds of all shades of belief and unbelief in motion, as if their very life depended upon its acceptance or rejection. There is not a fact or doctrine which has not been thoroughly searched. The whole life of Christ, and the labors and writings of the apostles with their tendencies, antagonisms, and reconciliations are theoretically reproduced among scholars and reviewed under all possible aspects. The post-apostolic age has by necessary connection been drawn into the process of investigation and placed in a new light.

The great biblical scholars among the Fathers were chiefly concerned in drawing from the sacred records the catholic doctrines of salvation, and the precepts for a holy life; the Reformers and older Protestant divines studied them afresh with special zeal for the evangelical tenets which separated them from the Roman church; but all stood on the common ground of a reverential belief in the divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. The present age is preëminently historical and critical. The Scriptures are subjected to the same process of investigation and analysis as any other literary production of antiquity, with no other purpose than to ascertain the real facts in the case. We want to know the precise origin, gradual growth, and final completion of Christianity as an historical phenomenon in organic connection with contemporary events and currents of thought. The whole process through which it passed from the manger in Bethlehem to the cross of Calvary, and from the upper room in Jerusalem to the throne of the Caesars is to be reproduced, explained and understood according to the laws of regular historical development. And in this critical process the very foundations of the Christian faith have been assailed and undermined, so that the question now is, "to be or not to be." The remark of Goethe is as profound as it is true: "The conflict of faith and unbelief remains the proper, the only, the deepest theme of the history of the world and mankind, to which all others are subordinated."

The modern critical movement began, we may say, about 1830, is still in full progress, and is likely to continue to the end of the nineteenth century, as the apostolic church itself extended over a period of seventy years before it had developed its resources. It was at first confined to Germany (Strauss, Baur, and the Tübingen School), then spread to France (Renan) and Holland (Scholten, Kuenen), and last to England ("Supernatural Religion") and America, so that the battle now extends along the whole line of Protestantism.

There are two kinds of biblical criticism, verbal and historical.

Textual Criticism.

The verbal or textual criticism has for its object to restore as far as possible the original text of the Greek Testament from the oldest and most trustworthy sources, namely, the uncial manuscripts (especially, the Vatican and Sinaitic), the ante-Nicene versions, and the patristic quotations. In this respect our age has been very successful, with the aid of most important discoveries of ancient manuscripts. By the invaluable labors of Lachmann, who broke the path for the correct theory (Novum Testament. Gr., 1831, large Graeco-Latin edition, 1842–50, 2 vols.), Tischendorf (8th critical ed., 1869–72, 2 vols.), Tregelles (1857, completed 1879), Westcott and Hort (1881, 2 vols.), we have now in the place of the comparatively late and corrupt textus receptus of Erasmus and his followers (Stephens, Beza, and the Elzevirs), which is the basis of au Protestant versions in common use, a much older and purer text, which must henceforth be made the basis of all revised translations. After a severe struggle between the traditional and the progressive schools there is now in this basal department of biblical learning a remarkable degree of harmony among critics. The new text is in fact the older text, and the reformers are in this case the restorers. Far from unsettling the faith in the New Testament, the results have established the substantial integrity of the text, notwithstanding the one hundred and fifty thousand readings which have been gradually gathered from all sources. It is a noteworthy fact that the greatest textual critics of the nineteenth century are believers, not indeed in a mechanical or magical inspiration, which is untenable and not worth defending, but in the divine origin and authority of the canonical writings, which rest on fax stronger grounds than any particular human theory of inspiration.

Historical Criticism.

The historical or inner criticism (which the Germans call the "higher criticism," höhere Kritik) deals with the origin, spirit, and aim of the New Testament writings, their historical environments, and organic place in the great intellectual and religious process which resulted in the triumphant establishment of the catholic church of the second century. It assumed two very distinct shapes under the lead of Dr. Neander in Berlin (d. 1850), and Dr. Baur in Tübingen (d. 1860), who labored in the mines of church history at a respectful distance from each other and never came into personal contact. Neander and Baur were giants, equal in genius and learning, honesty and earnestness, but widely different in spirit. They gave a mighty impulse to historical study and left a long line of pupils and independent followers who carry on the historico-critical reconstruction of primitive Christianity. Their influence is felt in France, Holland and England. Neander published the first edition of his Apostolic Age in 1832, his Life of Jesus (against Strauss) in 1837 (the first volume of his General Church History had appeared already in 1825, revised ed. 1842); Baur wrote his essay on the Corinthian Parties in 1831, his critical investigations on the canonical Gospels in 1844 and 1847, his "Paul" in 1845 (second ed. by Zeller, 1867), and his "Church History of the First Three Centuries" in 1853 (revised 1860). His pupil Strauss had preceded him with his first Leben Jesu (1835), which created a greater sensation than any of the works mentioned, surpassed only by that of Renan’s Vie de Jésus, nearly thirty years later (1863). Renan reproduces and popularizes Strauss and Baur for the French public with independent learning and brilliant genius, and the author of "Supernatural Religion" reëchoes the Tübingen and Leyden speculations in England. On the other hand Bishop Lightfoot, the leader of conservative criticism; declares that he has learnt more from the German Neander than from any recent theologian ("Contemp. Review" for 1875, p. 866. Matthew Arnold says (Literature and Dogma, Preface, p. xix.): "To get the facts, the data, in all matters of science, but notably in theology and Biblical learning, one goes to Germany. Germany, and it is her high honor, has searched out the facts and exhibited them. And without knowledge of the facts, no clearness or fairness of mind can in any study do anything; this cannot be laid down too rigidly." But he denies to the Germans "quickness and delicacy of perception." Something more is necessary than learning and perception to draw the right conclusions from the facts: sound common sense and well-balanced judgment. And when we deal with sacred and supernatural facts, we need first and last a reverential spirit and that faith which is the organ of the supernatural. It is here where the two schools depart, without difference of nationality; for faith is not a national but an individual gift.

The Two Antagonistic Schools.

The two theories of the apostolic history, introduced by Neander and Baur, are antagonistic in principle and aim, and united only by the moral bond of an honest search for truth. The one is conservative and reconstructive, the other radical and destructive. The former accepts the canonical Gospels and Acts as honest, truthful, and credible memoirs of the life of Christ and the labors of the apostles; the latter rejects a great part of their contents as unhistorical myths or legends of the post-apostolic age, and on the other hand gives undue credit to wild heretical romances of the second century. The one draws an essential line of distinction between truth as maintained by the orthodox church, and error as held by heretical parties; the other obliterates the lines and puts the heresy into the inner camp of the apostolic church itself. The one proceeds on the basis of faith in God and Christ, which implies faith in the supernatural and miraculous wherever it is well attested; the other proceeds from disbelief in the supernatural and miraculous as a philosophical impossibility, and tries to explain the gospel history and the apostolic history from purely natural causes like every other history. The one has a moral and spiritual as well is intellectual interest in the New Testament, the other a purely intellectual and critical interest. The one approaches the historical investigation with the subjective experience of the divine truth in the heart and conscience, and knows and feels Christianity to be a power of salvation from sin and error; the other views it simply as the best among the many religions which are destined to give way at last to the sovereignty of reason and philosophy. The controversy turns on the question whether there is a God in History or not; as the contemporaneous struggle in natural science turns on the question whether there is a God in nature or not. Belief in a personal God almighty and omnipresent in history and in nature, implies the possibility of supernatural and miraculous revelation. Absolute freedom from prepossession (Voraussetzungslosigkeit such as Strauss demanded) is absolutely impossible, "ex nihilo nihil fit." There is prepossession on either side of the controversy, the one positive, the other negative, and history itself must decide between them. The facts must rule philosophy, not philosophy the facts. If it can be made out that the life of Christ and the apostolic church can be psychologically and historically explained only by the admission of the supernatural element which they claim, while every other explanation only increases the difficulty, of the problem and substitutes an unnatural miracle for a supernatural one, the historian has gained the case, and it is for the philosopher to adjust his theory to history. The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room.

The Alleged Antagonism in the Apostolic Church.

The theory of the Tübingen school starts from the assumption of a fundamental antagonism between Jewish or primitive Christianity represented by Peter, and Gentile or progressive Christianity represented by Paul, and resolves all the writings of the New Testament into tendency writings (Tendenzschriften), which give us not history pure and simple, but adjust it to a doctrinal and practical aim in the interest of one or the other party, or of a compromise between the two.242 The Epistles of Paul to the Galatians, Romans, First and Second Corinthians—which are admitted to be genuine beyond any doubt, exhibit the anti-Jewish and universal Christianity, of which Paul himself must be regarded as the chief founder. The Apocalypse, which was composed by the apostle John in 69, exhibits the original Jewish and contracted Christianity, in accordance with his position as one of the "pillar"-apostles of the circumcision (Gal. 2:9), and it is the only authentic document of the older apostles.

Baur (Gesch. der christl. Kirche, I., 80 sqq.) and Renan (St. Paul, ch. X.) go so far as to assert that this genuine John excludes Paul from the list of the apostles (Apoc. 21:14, which leaves no room for more than twelve), and indirectly attacks him as a "false Jew" (Apoc. 2:9; 3:9), a "false apostle" (2:2), a "false prophet" (2:20), as "Balaam" (2:2, 6, 14 15; comp. Jude 11; 2 Pet. 2:15); just as the Clementine Homilies assail him under the name of Simon the Magician and arch-heretic. Renan interprets also the whole Epistle of Jude, a brother of James, as an attack upon Paul, issued from Jerusalem in connection with the Jewish counter-mission organized by James, which nearly ruined the work of Paul.

The other writings of the New Testament are post-apostolic productions and exhibit the various phases of a unionistic movement, which resulted in the formation of the orthodox church of the second and third centuries. The Acts of the Apostles is a Catholic Irenicon which harmonizes Jewish and Gentile Christianity by liberalizing Peter and contracting or Judaizing Paul, and concealing the difference between them; and though probably based on an earlier narrative of Luke, it was not put into its present shape before the close of the first century. The canonical Gospels, whatever may have been the earlier records on which they are based, are likewise post-apostolic, and hence untrustworthy as historical narratives. The Gospel of John is a purely ideal composition of some unknown Gnostic or mystic of profound religious genius, who dealt with the historic Jesus as freely as Plato in his Dialogues dealt with Socrates, and who completed with consummate literary skill this unifying process in the age of Hadrian, certainly not before the third decade of the second century. Baur brought it down as late as 170; Hilgenfeld put it further back to 140, Keim to 130, Renan to the age of Hadrian.

Thus the whole literature of the New Testament is represented as the living growth of a century, as a collection of polemical and irenical tracts of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. Instead of contemporaneous, reliable history we have a series of intellectual movements and literary fictions. Divine revelation gives way to subjective visions and delusions, inspiration is replaced by development, truth by a mixture of truth and error. The apostolic literature is put on a par with the controversial literature of the Nicene age, which resulted in the Nicene orthodoxy, or with the literature of the Reformation period, which led to the formation of the Protestant system of doctrine.

History never repeats itself, yet the same laws and tendencies reappear in ever-changing forms. This modern criticism is a remarkable renewal of the views held by heretical schools in the second century. The Ebionite author of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the Gnostic Marcion likewise assumed an irreconcilable antagonism between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, with this difference, that the former opposed Paul as the arch-heretic and defamer of Peter, while Marcion (about 140) regarded Paul as the only true apostle, and the older apostles as Jewish perverters of Christianity; consequently he rejected the whole Old Testament and such books of the New Testament as he considered Judaizing, retaining in his canon only a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ton of the Pauline Epistles (excluding the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews). In the eyes of modern criticism these wild heretics are better historians of the apostolic age than the author of the Acts of the Apostles.

The Gnostic heresy, with all its destructive tendency, had an important mission as a propelling force in the ancient church and left its effects upon patristic theology. So also this modern gnosticism must be allowed to have done great service to biblical and historical learning by removing old prejudices, opening new avenues of thought, bringing to light the immense fermentation of the first century, stimulating research, and compelling an entire scientific reconstruction of the history of the origin of Christianity and the church. The result will be a deeper and fuller knowledge, not to the weakening but to the strengthening of our faith.

Reaction.

There is considerable difference among the scholars of this higher criticism, and while some pupils of Baur (e.g. Strauss, Volkmar) have gone even beyond his positions, others make concessions to the traditional views. A most important change took place in Baur’s own mind as regards the conversion of Paul, which he confessed at last, shortly before his death (1860), to be to him an insolvable psychological problem amounting to a miracle. Ritschl, Holtzmann, Lipsius, Pfleiderer, and especially Reuss, Weizsäcker, and Keim (who are as free from orthodox prejudices as the most advanced critics) have modified and corrected many of the extreme views of the Tübingen school. Even Hilgenfeld, with all his zeal for the "Fortschrittstheologie" and against the "Rückschrittstheologie," admits seven instead of four Pauline Epistles as genuine, assigns an earlier date to the Synoptical Gospels and the Epistle to the Hebrews (which he supposes to have been written by Apollos before 70), and says: "It cannot be denied that Baur’s criticism went beyond the bounds of moderation and inflicted too deep wounds on the faith of the church" (Hist. Krit. Einleitung in das N. T. 1875, p. 197). Renan admits nine Pauline Epistles, the essential genuineness of the Acts, and even the, narrative portions of John, while he rejects the discourses as pretentious, inflated, metaphysical, obscure, and tiresome!  (See his last discussion of the subject in L’église chrétienne, ch. I-V. pp. 45 sqq.)  Matthew Arnold and other critics reverse the proposition and accept the discourses as the sublimest of all human compositions, full of "heavenly glories" (himmlische Herrlichkeiten, to use an expression of Keim, who, however, rejects the fourth Gospel altogether). Schenkel (in his Christusbild der Apostel, 1879) considerably moderates the antagonism between Petrinism and Paulinism, and confesses (Preface, p. xi.) that in the progress of his investigations he has been "forced to the conviction that the Acts of the Apostles is a more trustworthy source of information than is commonly allowed on the part of the modern criticism; that older documents worthy of credit, besides the well known We-source (Wirquelle) are contained in it; and that the Paulinist who composed it has not intentionally distorted the facts, but only placed them in the light in which they appeared to him and must have appeared to him from the time and circumstances under which he wrote. He has not, in my opinion, artificially brought upon the stage either a Paulinized Peter, or a Petrinized Paul, in order to mislead his readers, but has portrayed the two apostles just as he actually conceived of them on the basis of his incomplete information." Keim, in his last work (Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, a year before his death), has come to a similar conclusion, and proves (in a critical essay on the Apostelkonvent, pp. 64–89) in opposition to Baur, Schwegler, and Zeller, yet from the same standpoint of liberal criticism, and allowing later additions, the substantial harmony between the Acts and the Epistle to the Galatians as regards the apostolic conference and concordat of Jerusalem. Ewald always pursued his own way and equalled Baur in bold and arbitrary criticism, but violently opposed him and defended the Acts and the Gospel of John.

To these German voices we may add the testimony of Matthew Arnold, one of the boldest and broadest of the broad-school divines and critics, who with all his admiration for Baur represents him as an "unsafe guide," and protests against his assumption of a bitter hatred of Paul and the pillar-apostles as entirely inconsistent with the conceded religious greatness of Paul and with the nearness of the pillar-apostles to Jesus (God and the Bible, 1875, Preface, vii-xii). As to the fourth Gospel, which is now the most burning spot of this burning controversy, the same author, after viewing it from without and from within, comes to the conclusion that it is, "no fancy-piece, but a serious and invaluable document, full of incidents given by tradition and genuine ’sayings of the Lord’ "(p. 370), and that "after the most free criticism has been fairly and strictly applied,... there is yet left an authentic residue comprising all the profoundest, most important, and most beautiful things in the fourth Gospel" (p. 372 sq.).

The Positive School.

While there are signs of disintegration in the ranks of destructive criticism, the historic truth and genuineness of the New Testament writings have found learned and able defenders from different standpoints, such as Neander, Ullmann, C. F. Schmid (the colleague of Baur in Tübingen), Rothe, Dorner, Ebrard, Lechler, Lange, Thiersch, Wieseler, Hofmann (of Erlangen), Luthardt, Christlieb, Beyschlag, Uhlhorn, Weiss, Godet, Edm. de Pressensé.

The English and American mind also has fairly begun to grapple manfully and successfully, with these questions in such scholars as Lightfoot, Plumptre, Westcott, Sanday, Farrar, G. P. Fisher, Ezra Abbot (on the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 1880). English and American theology is not likely to be extensively demoralized by these hypercritical speculations of the Continent. It has a firmer foothold in an active church life and the convictions and affections of the people. The German and French mind, like the Athenian, is always bent upon telling and hearing something new, while the Anglo-American mind cares more for what is true, whether it be old or new. And the truth must ultimately prevail.

St. Paul’s Testimony to Historical Christianity.

Fortunately even the most exacting school of modern criticism leaves us a fixed fulcrum from which we can argue the truth of Christianity, namely, the four Pauline Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, which are pronounced to be unquestionably genuine and made the Archimedean point of assault upon the other parts of the New Testament. We propose to confine ourselves to them. They are of the utmost historical as well as doctrinal importance; they represent the first Christian generation, and were written between 54 and 58, that is within a quarter of the century after the crucifixion, when the older apostles and most of the principal eye-witnesses of the life of Christ were still alive. The writer himself was a contemporary of Christ; he lived in Jerusalem at the time of the great events on which Christianity rests; he was intimate with the Sanhedrin and the murderers of Christ; he was not blinded by favorable prejudice, but was a violent persecutor, who had every motive to justify his hostility; and after his radical conversion (A.D. 37) he associated with the original disciples and could learn their personal experience from their own lips (Gal. 1:18; 2:1–11).

Now in these admitted documents of the best educated of the apostles we have the clearest evidence of all the great events and truths of primitive Christianity, and a satisfactory answer to the chief objections and difficulties of modern skepticism.243

They prove

1. The leading facts in the life of Christ, his divine mission, his birth from a woman, of the royal house of David, his holy life and example, his betrayal, passion, and death for the sins of the world, his resurrection on the third day, his repeated manifestations to the disciples, his ascension and exaltation to the right hand of God, whence he will return to judge mankind, the adoration of Christ as the Messiah, the Lord and Saviour from sin, the eternal Son of God; also the election of the Twelve, the institution of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the mission of the Holy Spirit, the founding of the church. Paul frequently alludes to these facts, especially the crucifixion and resurrection, not in the way of a detailed narrative, but incidentally and in connection with doctrinal expositions arid exhortations as addressed to men already familiar with them from oral preaching and instruction. Comp. Gal 3:13; 4:4–6; 6:14; Rom. 1:3; 4:24, 25; 5:8–21; 6:3–10; 8:3–11, 26, 39; 9:5; 10:6, 7; 14:5; 15:3 1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2, 12; 5:7; 6:14; 10:16; 11:23–26; 15:3–8, 45–49; 2 Cor. 5:21.

2. Paul’s own conversion and call to the apostleship by the personal appearance to him of the exalted Redeemer from heaven. Gal. 1:1, 15, 16; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8.

3. The origin and rapid progress of the Christian church in all parts of the Roman empire, from Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome, in Judaea, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Macedonia and Achaia. The faith of the Roman church, he says, was known "throughout the world," and "in every place "there were worshippers of Jesus as their Lord. And these little churches maintained a lively and active intercourse with each other, and though founded by different teachers and distracted by differences of opinion and practice, they worshipped the same divine Lord, and formed one brotherhood of believers. Gal. 1:2, 22; 2:1, 11; Rom. 1:8; 10:18; 16:26; 1 Cor. 1:12; 8:1; 16:19, etc.

4. The presence of miraculous powers in the church at that time. Paul himself wrought the signs and mighty deeds of an apostle. Rom. 15:18, 19; 1 Cor. 2:4; 9:2; 2 Cor. 12:12. He lays, however, no great stress on the outer sensible miracles, and makes more account of the inner moral miracles and the constant manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and sanctifying sinful men in an utterly corrupt state of society. 1 Cor. 12 to 14; 6:9–11; Gal. 5:16–26; Rom. 6 and 8.

5. The existence of much earnest controversy in these young churches, not indeed about the great facts on which their faith was based, and which were fully admitted on both sides, but about doctrinal and ritual inferences from these facts, especially the question of the continued obligation of circumcision and the Mosaic law, and the personal question of the apostolic authority of Paul. The Judaizers maintained the superior claims of the older apostles and charged him with a radical departure from the venerable religion of their fathers; while Paul used against them the argument that the expiatory death of Christ and his resurrection were needless and useless if justification came from the law. Gal. 2:21; 5:2–4.

6. The essential doctrinal and spiritual harmony of Paul with the elder apostles, notwithstanding their differences of standpoint and field of labor. Here the testimony of the Epistle to the Galatians 2:1–10, which is the very bulwark of the skeptical school, bears strongly against it. For Paul expressly states that the, "pillar"-apostles of the circumcision, James, Peter, and John, at the conference in Jerusalem A.D. 50, approved the gospel he had been preaching during the preceding fourteen years; that they "imparted nothing" to him, gave him no new instruction, imposed on him no now terms, nor burden of any kind, but that, on the contrary, they recognized the grace of God in him and his special mission to the Gentiles, and gave him and Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship" in token of their brotherhood and fidelity. He makes a clear and sharp distinction between the apostles and "the false brethren privily brought in, who came to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage," and to whom he would not yield, "no, not for an hour." The hardest words he has for the Jewish apostles are epithets of honor; he calls them, the pillars of the church, "the men in high repute" (oiJ stu'loi, oiJ dokou'nte", Gal. 2:6, 9); while he considered himself in sincere humility "the least of the apostles," because he persecuted the church of God (1 Cor. 15:9).

This statement of Paul makes it simply impossible and absurd to suppose (with Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, and Renan) that John should have so contradicted and stultified himself as to attack, in the Apocalypse, the same Paul whom he had recognized as a brother during his life, as a false apostle and chief of the synagogue of Satan after his death. Such a reckless and monstrous assertion turns either Paul or John into a liar. The antinomian and antichristian heretics of the Apocalypse who plunged into all sorts of moral and ceremonial pollutions (Apoc. 2:14, 15) would have been condemned by Paul as much as by John; yea, he himself, in his parting address to the Ephesian elders, had prophetically foreannounced and described such teachers as "grievous wolves" that would after his departure enter in among them or rise from the midst of them, not sparing the flock (Acts 20:29, 30). On the question of fornication he was in entire harmony with the teaching of the Apocalypse (1 Cor. 3:15, 16; 6:15–20); and as to the question of eating meat offered in sacrifice to idols Gr215(rA fi8coX6zvra), though he regarded it as a thing indifferent in itself, considering the vanity of idols, yet he condemned it whenever it gave offence to the weak consciences of the more scrupulous Jewish converts (1 Cor. 8:7–13; 10:23–33; Rom. 14:2, 21); and this was in accord with the decree of the Apostolic Council (Acts 15:29).

7. Paul’s collision with Peter at Antioch, Gal. 2:11–14. which is made the very bulwark of the Tübingen theory, proves the very reverse. For it was not a difference in principle and doctrine; on the contrary, Paul expressly asserts that Peter at first freely and habitually (mark the imperfect sunhvsqien, Gal. 2:12) associated with the Gentile converts as brethren in Christ, but was intimidated by emissaries from the bigoted Jewish converts in Jerusalem and acted against his better conviction which he had entertained ever since the vision at Joppa (Acts 10:10–16), and which he had so boldly confessed at the Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15:7–11) and carried out in Antioch. We have here the same impulsive, impressible, changeable disciple, the first to confess and the first to deny his Master, yet quickly returning to him in bitter repentance and sincere humility. It is for this inconsistency of conduct, which Paul called by the strong term of dissimulation or hypocrisy, that he, in his uncompromising zeal for the great principle of Christian liberty, reproved him publicly before the church. A public wrong had to be publicly rectified. According to the Tübingen hypothesis the hypocrisy would have been in the very opposite conduct of Peter. The silent submission of Peter on the occasion proves his regard for his younger colleague, and speaks as much to his praise as his weakness to his blame. That the alienation was only temporary and did not break up their fraternal relation is apparent from the respectful though frank manner in which, several years after the occurrence, they allude to each other as fellow apostles, Comp. Gal. 1:18, 19; 2:8, 9; 1 Cor. 9:5; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16, and from the fact that Mark and Silas were connecting links between them and alternately served them both.244

The Epistle to the Galatians then furnishes the proper solution of the difficulty, and essentially confirms the account of the Acts. It proves the harmony as well as the difference between Paul and the older apostles. It explodes the hypothesis that they stood related to each other like the Marcionites and Ebionites in the second century. These were the descendants of the heretics of the apostolic age, of the "false brethren insidiously brought in" (Yeudavdelfoi pareivsaktoi, Gal. 2:4); while the true apostles recognized and continued to recognize the same grace of God which wrought effectually through Peter for the conversion of the Jews, and through Paul for the conversion of the Gentiles. That the Judaizers should have appealed to the Jewish apostles, and the antinomian Gnostics to Paul, as their authority, is not more surprising than the appeal of the modern rationalists to Luther and the Reformation.

We have thus discussed at the outset, and at some length, the fundamental difference of the two standpoints from which the history of the apostolic church is now viewed, and have vindicated our own general position in this controversy.

It is not to be supposed that all the obscure points have already been satisfactorily cleared up, or ever will be solved beyond the possibility of dispute. There must be some room left for faith in that God who has revealed himself clearly enough in nature and in history to strengthen our faith, and who is concealed enough to try our faith. Certain interstellar spaces will always be vacant in the firmament of the apostolic age that men may gaze all the more intensely at the bright stars, before which the post-apostolic books disappear like torches. A careful study of the ecclesiastical writers of the second and third centuries, and especially of the numerous Apocryphal Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses, leaves on the mind a strong impression of the immeasurable superiority of the New Testament in purity and truthfulness, simplicity and majesty; and this superiority points to a special agency of the Spirit of God, without which that book of books is an inexplicable mystery.

§ 23. Chronology of the Apostolic Age.

See the works quoted in § 20 p. 193, 194, especially Wieseler. Comp. also, Hackett on Acts, pp. 22 to 30 (third ed.).

The chronology of the apostolic age is partly certain, at least within a few years, partly conjectural: certain as to the principal events from A.D. 30 to 70, conjectural as to intervening points and the last thirty years of the first century. The sources are the New Testament (especially the Acts and the Pauline Epistles), Josephus, and the Roman historians. Josephus ( b. 37, d. 103) is especially valuable here, as he wrote the Jewish history down to the destruction of Jerusalem.

The following dates are more or less certain and accepted by most historians:

1. The founding of the Christian Church on the feast of Pentecost in May A.D. 30. This is on the assumption that Christ was born b.c. 4 or 5, and was crucified in April A.D. 30, at an age of thirty-three.

2. The death of King Herod Agrippa I. A.D. 44 (according to Josephus). This settles the date of the preceding martyrdom of James the elder, Peter’s imprisonment and release Acts 12:2, 23).

3. The Apostolic Council in Jerusalem, A.D. 50 (Acts 15:1 sqq.; Gal. 2:1–10). This date is ascertained by reckoning backwards to Paul’s conversion, and forward to the Caesarean captivity. Paul was probably converted in 37, and "fourteen years" elapsed from that event to the Council. But chronologists differ on the year of Paul’s conversion, between 31 and 40.245

4. The dates of the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, between 56 and 58. The date of the Epistle to the Romans can be fixed almost to the month from its own indications combined with the statements of the Acts. It was written before the apostle had been in Rome, but when he was on the point of departure for Jerusalem and Rome on the way to Spain,246 after having finished his collections in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor brethren in Judaea;247 and he sent the epistle through Phebe, a deaconess of the congregation in the eastern port of Corinth, where he was at that time.248  These indications point clearly to the spring of the year 58, for in that year he was taken prisoner in Jerusalem and carried to Caesarea.

5. Paul’s captivity in Caesarea, A.D. 58 to 60, during the procuratorship of Felix and Festus, who changed places in 60 or 61, probably in 60. This important date we can ascertain by combination from several passages in Josephus, and Tacitus.249  It enables us at the same time, by reckoning backward, to fix some preceding events in the life of the apostle.

6. Paul’s first captivity in Rome, A.D. 61 to 63. This follows from the former date in connection with the statement in Acts 28:30.

7. The Epistles of the Roman captivity, Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, A.D. 61–63.

8. The Neronian persecution, A.D. 64 (the tenth year of Nero, according to Tacitus). The martyrdom of Paul and Peter occurred either then, or (according to tradition) a few years later. The question depends on the second Roman captivity of Paul.

9. The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 70 (according to Josephus and Tacitus).

10. The death of John after the accession of Trajan, A.D. 98 (according to general ecclesiastical tradition).

The dates of the Synoptical Gospels, the Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, the Hebrews, and the Epistles of Peter, James, and Jude cannot be accurately ascertained except that they were composed before the destruction of Jerusalem, mostly between 60 and 70. The writings of John were written after that date and towards the close of the first century, except the Apocalypse, which some of the best scholars, from internal indications assign to the year 68 or 69, between the death of Nero and the destruction of Jerusalem.

The details are given in the following table:

Chronological Table of the Apostolic Age.

A.D.

Scripture History

Events In Palestine

Events In The Roman Empire

A.D.

b.c. 5 or 4

Birth of Christ

Death of Herod I. or the Great (a.u. 750, or b.c. 4).

Augustus Emperor of Rome, B. C. 27-A.D. 14.

6

A.D. 8

His visit to the Temple at twelve years of age

Cyrenius (Quirinius), Governor of Syria (for the second time). The registration, or "taxing." Acts 5:37. Revolt of "Judas of Galilee." Coponius Procurator of Judaea. Marcus Ambivius Procurator.

9

Tiberius colleague of Augustus

12

Annius Rufus Procurator (about)

13

Valerius Gratus Procurator

Augustus dies. Tiberius sole emperor (14–37)

14

Pontius Pilate Procurator from A.D. 26

26

27

Christ’s Baptism.

Caiaphas high priest from A.D. 26

27–30

His three years’ ministry.

30

His Crucifixion, Resurrection (April), and Ascension (May).

Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Birthday of the Church (May). Acts, ch. 2.

Marcellus Procurator. Pilate sent to Rome by the Prefect of Syria.

36

37

Martyrdom of Stephen. Acts, ch 7. Peter and John in Samaria. Acts, ch. 8. Conversion of Saul. Acts, ch. 9, comp. 22 and 26, and Gal. 1:16; 1 Cor. 15:8.

Maryllus appointed Hipparch.

Herod Agrippa I King of Judea and Samaria

Caligula Emperor (37–41)

37

40

Saul’s escape from Damascus, and first visit to Jerusalem (after his conversion). Gal. 1:18. Admission of Cornelius into the Church. Acts, chs. 10 and 11.

Philo at Rome

40

Claudius Emperor (41-54).

41

44

Persecution of the Church in Jerusalem. James the Elder, the son of Zebedee, beheaded. Peter imprisoned and delivered. He leaves Palestine. Acts 12:2–23. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, with alms from the church at Antioch. Acts 11:30.

Herod Agrippa I dies at Caesarea

Conquest of Britain, 43-51.

44

45

Paul is set apart as an apostle. Acts 13:2.

Cuspius Fadus Procurator of Judea. Tiberius Alexander Procurator

46

Ventidius Cumanus Procurator

47

50

Paul's first missionary journey with Barnabas and Mark, Cyprus, Pisidia, Lystra, Derbe. Return to Antioch. Acts chs. 13 and 14. The Epistle of James (variously dated from 44 to 62). The apostolic council of Jerusalem. Conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Paul's third visit to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus. Peaceful adjustment of the quesiton of circumcision. Acts, ch. 15 and Gal. 2:1-10. Temporary collision with Peter and Barnabas at Antioch. Gal. 2:11-14.

51

Paul sets out on his second missionary journey from Antioch to Asia Minor (Cilicia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Troas) and Greece (Philippi, Thessalonica, Beraea, Athens, Corinth). The Christianization of Europe. Acts, 15:36 to 18:22.

Antonius Felix Procurator

51

52–53

Paul at Corinth a year and a half. Writes First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians from Corinth.

The Tetrarchy of Trachonitis given to Herod Agrippa II (the last of the Herodian family).

Decree of Claudius banishing Jews from Rome.

52

54

Paul’s, fourth visit to Jerusalem (spring). Short stay at Antioch. Enters (autumn, 54) on his third missionary journey, occupying about four years. Paul at Ephesus, 54 to 57. Acts, ch. 19.

Nero Emperor (54-68).

54

Revolt of the Sicarii, headed by an Egyptian (Acts, 21:38).

55

56

Paul writes to the Galatians (?) from Ephesus, or from some part of Greece on his journey to Corinth (57). Acts, ch. 20.

57

Paul writes First Epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus; starts for Macedonia and writes Second Epistle to the Corinthians from Macedonia.

58

Epistle to the Romans from Corinth, where he spent three months. He visits (the fifth time) Jerusalem; is apprehended, brought before Felix, and imprisoned at Caesarea for two years. Acts, 21:37 to 26:31.

60

Paul appears before Festus, appeals to Caesar, is sent to Italy (in autumn). Shipwreck at Malta. Acts, chs. 27 and 28.

Porcius Festus Procurator

60

61

Arrives a prisoner at Rome (in spring).

Embassy from Jerusalem to Rome respecting the wall.

War with Boadicea in Britian

61

61–63

Paul writes to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, from his prison in Rome.

Apollonius of Tyana at the Olympic games

61

62

Martyrdom of James, the Lord’s brother, at Jerusalem (according to Josephus, or 69 according to Hegesippus).

Josephus at Rome

62

63

Paul is supposed to have been released. Acts, 28:30

Albinus Procurator

63

64

Epistle to the Hebrews, written from Italy after the release of Timothy (ch. 13:23).

Gessius Florus Procurator

Great fire at Rome (in July); first imperial persecution of the Christians (martyrdom of Peter and Paul)

64

64–67

First Epistle of Peter. Epistle of Jude (?). Second Epistle of Peter.

60–70

The Synoptical Gospels and Acts.

Seneca and Lucan put to death by Nero

65

Beginning of the great war between the Romans and the Jews

66

64–67

Paul visits Crete and Macedonia, and writes First Epistle to Timothy, and Epistle to Titus (?).250 Paul writes Second Epistle to Timothy (?).

Vespasian General in Palestine

67

65–67

Paul’s and Peter’s martyrdom in Rome (?).

68–69

The Revelation of John (?).

Galba Emperor

68

Otho and Vitellius Emperors

69

Vespasian Emperor

69

Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus

70

(Josephus released.)

Coliseum begun

76

Destruction of Pompeii and Heraculaneum

79

Titus Emperor

79

80–90

John writes his Gospel and Epistles (?).

Domitian Emperor

91

95

John writes the Revelation (?).

Persecution of Christians

95

Nerva Emperor

96

Death of Apollonius

97

98–100

Death of John.

Trajan Emperor

98

––––––––––

CHAPTER IV.

ST. PETER AND THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

§ 24. The Miracle of Pentecost and the Birthday of the Christian Church. A.D. 30.

Kai; ejplhvsqhsan pavnte" pneuvmato" aJgivou, kai; h[rxanto lalei'n eJtevrai" glwvssai", Kaqw;" to; pneu'ma ejdivdou ajpofqevggesqai aujtoi'" —Acts 2:4

"The first Pentecost which the disciples celebrated after the ascension of our Saviour, is, next to the appearance of the Son of God on earth, the most significant event. It is the starting-point of the apostolic church and of that new spiritual life in humanity which proceeded from Him, and which since has been spreading and working, and will continue to work until the whole humanity is transformed into the image of Christ."—Neander (Geschichte der  Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel., I. 3, 4).

Literature.

I. Sources: Acts 2:1–47. Comp. 1 Cor. 12 and 14. See Commentaries on the Acts by Olshausen, De Wette, Meyer, Lechler, Hackett, Alexander, Gloag, Alford, Wordsworth, Plumptre Jacobson, Howson and Spence, etc., and on the Corinthians by Billroth, Kling, Stanley, Heinrici, Edwards, Godet, Ellicott.

II. Special treatises o the Pentecostal Miracle and the Gift of Tongues (glossolalia) by Herder (Die Gabe der Sprachen, Riga, 1794) Hase (in Winer’s "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theol." 1827), Bleek in "Studien und Kritiken" for 1829 and 1830), Baur in the "Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theol." for 1830 and 1831, and in the "Studien und Krit." 1838), Schneckenburger (in his Beiträge zur Einleitung in das N. T. 1832), Bäumlein (1834), Dav. Schulz (1836), Zinsler (1847), Zeller (Acts of the Apostles, I. 171, of the E. translation by J. Dare), Böhm (Irvingite, Reden mit Zungen und Weissagen, Berlin, 1848), Rossteuscher (Irvingite, Gabe der Sprachen im apost. Zeitalter, Marburg, 1855), Ad. Hilgenfeld (Glossolalie, Leipz. 1850), Maier (Glossolalie des apost. Zeitalters, 1855), Wieseler (in "Stud. u. Krit." 1838 and 1860), Schenkel (art. Zungenreden in his "Bibel-Lex." V. 732), Van Hengel (De gave der talen, Leiden, 1864), Plumptre (art. Gift of Tongues in Smith’s, "B. D." IV. 3305, Am. ed.), Delitzsch (art. Pfingsten in Riehm’s "H. B. A." 1880, p. 1184); K. Schmidt (in Herzog, 2d ed., xvii., 570 sqq.).

Comp. also Neander (I. 1), Lange (II. 13), Ewald (VI. 106), Thiersch (p. 65, 3d ed.), Schaff (191 and 469), Farrar (St. Paul, ch. V. vol. I. 83).

The ascension of Christ to heaven was followed ten days afterwards by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon earth and the birth of the Christian Church. The Pentecostal event was the necessary result of the Passover event. It could never have taken place without the preceding resurrection and ascension. It was the first act of the mediatorial reign of the exalted Redeemer in heaven, and the beginning of an unbroken series of manifestations in fulfilment of his promise to be with his people "alway, even unto the end of the world." For his ascension was only a withdrawal of his visible local presence, and the beginning of his spiritual omnipresence in the church which is "his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." The Easter miracle and the Pentecostal miracle are continued and verified by the daily moral miracles of regeneration and sanctification throughout Christendom.

We have but one authentic account of that epoch-making event, in the second chapter of Acts, but in the parting addresses of our Lord to his disciples the promise of the Paraclete who should lead them into the whole truth is very prominent,251 and the entire history of the apostolic church is illuminated and heated by the Pentecostal fire.252

Pentecost, i.e. the fiftieth day after the Passover-Sabbath,253 was a feast of joy and gladness, in the loveliest season of the year, and attracted a very large number of visitors to Jerusalem from foreign lands.254  It was one of the three great annual festivals of the Jews in which all the males were required to appear before the Lord. Passover was the first, and the feast of Tabernacles the third. Pentecost lasted one day, but the foreign Jews, after the period of the captivity, prolonged it to two days. It was the "feast of harvest," or "of the first fruits," and also (according to rabbinical tradition) the anniversary celebration of the Sinaitic legislation, which is supposed to have taken place on the fiftieth day after the Exodus from the land of bondage.255

This festival was admirably adapted for the opening event in the history of the apostolic church. It pointed typically to the first Christian harvest, and the establishment of the new theocracy in Christ; as the sacrifice of the paschal lamb and the exodus from Egypt foreshadowed the redemption of the world by the crucifixion of the Lamb of God. On no other day could the effusion of the Spirit of the exalted Redeemer produce such rich results and become at once so widely known. We may trace to this day not only the origin of the mother church at Jerusalem, but also the conversion of visitors from other cities, as Damascus, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, who on their return would carry the glad tidings to their distant homes. For the strangers enumerated by Luke as witnesses of the great event, represented nearly all the countries in which Christianity was planted by the labors of the apostles.256

The Pentecost in the year of the Resurrection was the last Jewish (i.e. typical) and the first Christian Pentecost. It became the spiritual harvest feast of redemption from sin, and the birthday of the visible kingdom of Christ on earth. It marks the beginning of the dispensation of the Spirit, the third era in the history of the revelation of the triune God. On this day the Holy Spirit, who had hitherto wrought only sporadically and transiently, took up his permanent abode in mankind as the Spirit of truth and holiness, with the fulness of saving grace, to apply that grace thenceforth to believers, and to reveal and glorify Christ in their hearts, as Christ had revealed and glorified the Father.

While the apostles and disciples, about one hundred and twenty (ten times twelve) in number, no doubt mostly Galilaeans,257 were assembled before the morning devotions of the festal day, and were waiting in prayer for the fulfilment of the promise, the exalted Saviour sent from his heavenly throne the Holy Spirit upon them, and founded his church upon earth. The Sinaitic legislation was accompanied by "thunder and lightning, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, and all the people that was in the camp trembled."258  The church of the new covenant war, ushered into existence with startling signs which filled the spectators with wonder and fear. It is quite natural, as Neander remarks, that "the greatest miracle in the inner life of mankind should have been accompanied by extraordinary outward phenomena as sensible indications of its presence." A supernatural sound resembling that of a rushing mighty wind,259 came down from heaven and filled the whole house in which they were assembled; and tongues like flames of fire, distributed themselves among them, alighting for a while on each head.260  It is not said that these phenomena were really wind and fire, they are only compared to these elements,261 as the form which the Holy Spirit assumed at the baptism of Christ is compared to a dove.262  The tongues of flame were gleaming, but neither burning nor consuming; they appeared and disappeared like electric sparks or meteoric flashes. But these audible and visible signs were appropriate symbols of the purifying, enlightening, and quickening power of the Divine Spirit, and announced a new spiritual creation. The form of tongues referred to the glossolalia, and the apostolic eloquence as a gift of inspiration.

"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit." This is the real inward miracle, the main fact, the central idea of the Pentecostal narrative. To the apostles it was their baptism, confirmation, and ordination, all in one, for they received no other.263  To them it was the great inspiration which enabled them hereafter to be authoritative teachers of the gospel by tongue and pen. Not that it superseded subsequent growth in knowledge, or special revelations on particular points (as Peter receive at Joppa, and Paul on several occasions); but they were endowed with such an understanding of Christ’s words and plan of salvation as they never had before. What was dark and mysterious became now clear and full of meaning to them. The Spirit revealed to them the person and work of the Redeemer in the light of his resurrection and exaltation, and took full possession of their mind and heart. They were raised, as it were, to the mount of transfiguration, and saw Moses and Elijah and Jesus above them, face to face, swimming in heavenly light. They had now but one desire to gratify, but one object to live for, namely, to be witnesses of Christ and instruments of the salvation of their fellow-men, that they too might become partakers of their "inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven."264

But the communication of the Holy Spirit was not confined to the Twelve. It extended to the brethren of the Lord, the mother of Jesus, the pious women who had attended his ministry, and the whole brotherhood of a hundred and twenty souls who were assembled in that chamber.265  They were "all" filled with the Spirit, and all spoke with tongues;266 and Peter saw in the event the promised outpouring of the Spirit upon "all flesh," sons and daughters, young men and old men, servants and handmaidens.267  It is characteristic that in this spring season of the church the women were sitting with the men, not in a separate court as in the temple, nor divided by a partition as in the synagogue and the decayed churches of the East to this day, but in the same room as equal sharers in the spiritual blessings. The beginning was a prophetic anticipation of the end, and a manifestation of the universal priesthood and brotherhood of believers in Christ, in whom all are one, whether Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female.268

This new spiritual life, illuminated, controlled, and directed by the Holy Spirit, manifested itself first in the speaking with tongues towards God, and then in the prophetic testimony towards the people. The former consisted of rapturous prayers and anthems of praise, the latter of sober teaching and exhortation. From the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples, like their Master, descended to the valley below to heal the sick and to call sinners to repentance.

The mysterious gift of tongues, or glossolalia, appears here for the first time, but became, with other extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, a frequent phenomenon in the apostolic churches, especially at Corinth, and is fully described by Paul. The distribution of the flaming tongues to each of the disciples caused the speaking with tongues. A new experience expresses itself always in appropriate language. The supernatural experience of the disciples broke through the confines of ordinary speech and burst out in ecstatic language of praise and thanksgiving to God for the great works he did among them.269  It was the Spirit himself who gave them utterance and played on their tongues, as on new tuned harps, unearthly melodies of praise. The glossolalia was here, as in all cases where it is mentioned, an act of worship and adoration, not an act of teaching and instruction, which followed afterwards in the sermon of Peter. It was the first Te Deum of the new-born church. It expressed itself in unusual, poetic, dithyrambic style and with a peculiar musical intonation. It was intelligible only to those who were in sympathy with the speaker; while unbelievers scoffingly ascribed it to madness or excess of wine. Nevertheless it served as a significant sign to all and arrested their attention to the presence of a supernatural power.270

So far we may say that the Pentecostal glossolalia was the same as that in the household of Cornelius in Caesarea after his conversion, which may be called a Gentile Pentecost,271 as that of the twelve disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus, where it appears in connection with prophesying,272 and as that in the Christian congregation at Corinth.273

But at its first appearance the speaking with tongues differed in its effect upon the hearers by coming home to them at once in their own mother-tongues; while in Corinth it required an interpretation to be understood. The foreign spectators, at least a number of them, believed that the unlettered Galilaeans spoke intelligibly in the different dialects represented on the occasion.274  We must therefore suppose either that the speakers themselves, were endowed, at least temporarily, and for the particular purpose of proving their divine mission, with the gift of foreign languages not learned by them before, or that the Holy Spirit who distributed the tongues acted also as interpreter of the tongues, and applied the utterances of the speakers to the susceptible among the hearers.

The former is the most natural interpretation of Luke’s language. Nevertheless I suggest the other alternative as preferable, for the following reasons: 1. The temporary endowment with a supernatural knowledge of foreign languages involves nearly all the difficulties of a permanent endowment, which is now generally abandoned, as going far beyond the data of the New Testament and known facts of the early spread of the gospel. 2. The speaking with tongues began before the spectators arrived, that is before there was any motive for the employment of foreign languages.275  3. The intervening agency of the Spirit harmonizes the three accounts of Luke, and Luke and Paul, or the Pentecostal and the Corinthian glossolalia; the only difference remaining is that in Corinth the interpretation of tongues was made by men in audible speech,276 in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit in inward illumination and application. 4. The Holy Spirit was certainly at work among the hearers as well as the speakers, and brought about the conversion of three thousand on that memorable day. If he applied and made effective the sermon of Peter, why not also the preceding doxologies and benedictions?  5. Peter makes no allusion to foreign languages, nor does the prophecy of Joel which he quotes. 6. This view best explains the opposite effect upon the spectators. They did by no means all understand the miracle, but the mockers, like those at Corinth,277 thought the disciples were out of their right mind and talked not intelligible words in their native dialects, but unintelligible nonsense. The speaking in a foreign language could not have been a proof of drunkenness. It may be objected to this view that it implies a mistake on the part of the hearers who traced the use of their mother-tongues directly to the speakers; but the mistake referred not to the fact itself, but only to the mode. It was the same Spirit who inspired the tongues of the speakers and the hearts of the susceptible hearers, and raised both above the ordinary level of consciousness.

Whichever view we take of this peculiar feature of the Pentecostal glossolalia, in this diversified application to the cosmopolitan multitude of spectators, it was a symbolical anticipation and prophetic announcement of the universalness of the Christian religion, which was to be proclaimed in all the languages of the earth and to unite all nations in one kingdom of Christ. The humility and love of the church united what the pride and hatred of Babel had scattered. In this sense we may say that the Pentecostal harmony of tongues was the counterpart of the BabyIonian confusion of tongues..278

The speaking with tongues was followed by the sermon of Peter; the act of devotion, by an act of teaching; the rapturous language of the soul in converse with God, by the sober words of ordinary self-possession for the benefit of the people.

While the assembled multitude wondered at this miracle with widely various emotions, St. Peter, the Rock-man, appeared in the name of all the disciples, and addressed them with remarkable clearness and force, probably in his own vernacular Aramaic, which would be most familiar to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, possibly in Greek, which would be better understood by the foreign visitors.279  He humbly condescended to refute the charge of intoxication by reminding them of the early hour of the day, when even drunkards are sober, and explained from the prophecies of Joel and the sixteenth Psalm of David the meaning of the supernatural phenomenon, as the work of that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jews had crucified, but who was by word and deed, by his resurrection from the dead, his exaltation to the right hand of God, and the effusion of the Holy Ghost, accredited as the promised Messiah, according to the express prediction of the Scripture. Then he called upon his hearers to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus, as the founder and head of the heavenly kingdom, that even they, though they had crucified him, the Lord and the Messiah, might receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, whose wonderful workings they saw and heard in the disciples.

This was the first independent testimony of the apostles, the first Christian sermon: simple, unadorned, but full of Scripture truth, natural, suitable, pointed, and more effective than any other sermon has been since, though fraught with learning and burning with eloquence. It resulted in the conversion and baptism of three thousand persons, gathered as first-fruits into the garners of the church.

In these first-fruits of the glorified Redeemer, and in this founding of the new economy of Spirit and gospel, instead of the old theocracy of letter and law, the typical meaning of the Jewish Pentecost was gloriously fulfilled. But this birth-day of the Christian church is in its turn only the beginning, the type and pledge, of a still greater spiritual harvest and a universal feast of thanksgiving, when, in the full sense of the prophecy of Joel, the Holy Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh, when all the sons and daughters of men shall walk in his light, and God shall be praised with new tongues of fire for the completion of his wonderful work of redeeming love.

Notes.

I. Glossolalia.—The Gift of Tongues is the most difficult feature of the Pentecostal miracle. Our only direct source of information is in Acts 2, but the gift itself is mentioned in two other passages, 10:46 and 19:6, in the concluding section of Mark 16 (of disputed genuineness), and fully described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. There can be no doubt as to the existence of that gift in the apostolic age, and if we had only either the account of Pentecost, or only the account of Paul, we would not hesitate to decide as to its nature, but the difficulty is in harmonizing the two.

(1) The terms employed for the strange tongues are "new tongues" (kainai; glw'ssai, Mark 16:17, where Christ promises the gift), "other tongues," differing from ordinary tongues (e{terai gl. Acts 2:4, but nowhere else), "kinds" or "diversities of tongues" (gevnh glwssw'n, 1 Cor. 12:28), or simply, "tongues" (glw'ssai, 1 Cor. 14:22), and in the singular, "tongue" (glw'ssa, 14:2, 13, 19 27, in which passages the E. V. inserts the interpolation "unknown tongue"). To speak in tongues is called glwvssai" or glwvssh/ lalei'n (Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6; 1 Cor. 14:2, 4, 13, 14, 19, 27). Paul uses also the phrase to "pray with the tongue" (proseuvcesqai glwvssh/), as equivalent to "praying and singing with the spirit" (Proseuvcesqai and yavllein tw'/ pneuvmati, and as distinct from proseuvcesqai and yavllein tw'/ noi>v, 1 Cor. 14:14, 15). The plural and the term "diversities" of tongues, as well as the distinction between tongues of "angels" and tongues of "men" (1 Cor. 13:1) point to different manifestations (speaking, praying, singing), according to the individuality, education, and mood of the speaker, but not to various foreign languages, which are excluded by Paul’s description.

The term tongue has been differently explained.

(a) Wieseler (and Van Hengel): the organ of speech, used as a passive instrument; speaking with the tongue alone, inarticulately, and in a low whisper. But this does not explain the plural, nor the terms "new" and "other" tongues; the organ of speech remaining the same.

(b) Bleek: rare, provincial, archaic, poetic words, or glosses (whence our "glossary"). But this technical meaning of glw'ssai occurs only in classical writers (as Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.) and among grammarians, not in Hellenistic Greek, and the interpretation does not suit the singular glw'ssa and glwvssh/ lalei'n, as glw'ssa could only mean a single gloss.

(c) Most commentators: language or dialect (diavlekto", comp. Acts 1:19; 2:6, 8; 21:40; 26:14). This is the correct view. "Tongue" is an abridgment for "new tongue" (which was the original term, Mark 16:17). It does not necessarily mean one of the known languages of the earth, but may mean a peculiar handling of the vernacular dialect of the speaker, or a new spiritual language never known before, a language of immediate inspiration in a state of ecstasy. The "tongues" were individual varieties of this language of inspiration.

(2) The glossolalia in the Corinthian church, with which that at Caesarea in Acts 10:46, and that at Ephesus, 19:6, are evidently identical, we know very well from the description of Paul. It occurred in the first glow of enthusiasm after conversion and continued for some time. It was not a speaking in foreign languages, which would have been entirely useless in a devotional meeting of converts, but a speaking in a language differing from all known languages, and required an interpreter to be intelligible to foreigners. It had nothing to do with the spread of the gospel, although it may, like other devotional acts, have become a means of conversion to susceptible unbelievers if such were present. It was an act of self-devotion, an act of thanksgiving, praying, and singing, within the Christian congregation, by individuals who were wholly absorbed in communion with God, and gave utterance to their rapturous feelings in broken, abrupt, rhapsodic, unintelligible words. It was emotional rather than intellectual, the language of the excited imagination, not of cool reflection. It was the language of the spirit (pneu'ma) or of ecstasy, as distinct from the language of the understanding (nou'"). We might almost illustrate the difference by a comparison of the style of the Apocalypse which was conceived ejn pneuvmati (Apoc. 1:10) with that of the Gospel of John, which was written ejn noi>v. The speaker in tongues was in a state of spiritual intoxication, if we may use this term, analogous to the poetic "frenzy" described by Shakespeare and Goethe. His tongue was a lyre on which the divine Spirit played celestial tunes. He was unconscious or only half conscious, and scarcely knew whether he was, "in the body or out of the body." No one could understand this unpremeditated religious rhapsody unless he was in a similar trance. To an unbelieving outsider it sounded like a barbarous tongue, like the uncertain sound of a trumpet, like the raving of a maniac (1 Cor. 14:23), or the incoherent talk of a drunken man (Acts 2:13, 15). "He that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not to men, but to God; for no one understandeth; and in the spirit he speaketh mysteries; but he that prophesieth speaketh unto men edification, and encouragement, and comfort. He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church" (1 Cor. 14:2–4; comp. 26–33).

The Corinthians evidently overrated the glossolalia, as a showy display of divine power; but it was more ornamental than useful, and vanished away with the bridal season of the church. It is a mark of the great wisdom of Paul who was himself a master in the glossolalia (1 Cor. 14:18), that he assigned to it a subordinate and transient position, restrained its exercise, demanded an interpretation of it, and gave the preference to the gifts of permanent usefulness in which God displays his goodness and love for the general benefit. Speaking with tongues is good, but prophesying and teaching in intelligible speech for the edification of the congregation is better, and love to God and men in active exercise is best of all (1 Cor. 13).

We do not know how long the glossolalia, as thus described by Paul, continued. It passed away gradually with the other extraordinary or strictly supernatural gifts of the apostolic age. It is not mentioned in the Pastoral, nor in the Catholic Epistles. We have but a few allusions to it at the close of the second century. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1. v. c. 6, § 1) speaks of "many brethren" whom he heard in the church having the gift of prophecy and of speaking in "diverse tongues" (Pantodapai'" glwvssai"), bringing the hidden things of men (Ta; kpuvfia tw'n ajnqpwvpwn) to light and expounding the mysteries of God (tav musthvria tou' qeou'). It is not clear whether by the term "diverse," which does not elsewhere occur, he means a speaking in foreign languages, or in diversities of tongues altogether peculiar, like those meant by Paul. The latter is more probable. Irenaeus himself had to learn the language of Gaul. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. V. 8; comp. De Anima, c. 9) obscurely speaks of the spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues, as being still manifest among the Montanists to whom he belonged. At the time of Chrysostom it had entirely disappeared; at least he accounts for the obscurity of the gift from our ignorance of the fact. From that time on the glossolalia was usually misunderstood as a miraculous and permanent gift of foreign languages for missionary purposes. But the whole history of missions furnishes no clear example of such a gift for such a purpose.

Analogous phenomena, of an inferior kind, and not miraculous, yet serving as illustrations, either by approximation or as counterfeits, reappeared from time to time in seasons of special religious excitement, as among the Camisards and the prophets of the Cevennes in France, among the early Quakers and Methodists, the Mormons, the Readers ("Läsare") in Sweden in 1841 to 1843, in the Irish revivals of 1859, and especially in the "Catholic Apostolic Church," commonly called Irvingites, from 1831 to 1833, and even to this day. See Ed. Irving’s articles on Gifts of the Holy Ghost called Supernatural, in his "Works," vol. V., p. 509, etc.; Mrs. Oliphant’s Life of Irving, vol. II.; the descriptions quoted in my Hist. Ap. Ch. § 55, p. 198; and from friend and foe in Stanley’s Com. on Corinth., p. 252, 4th ed.; also Plumptre in Smith’s, "Bible Dict.," IV. 3311, Am. ed. The Irvingites who have written on the subject (Thiersch, Böhm, and Rossteuscher) make a marked distinction between the Pentecostal glossolalia in foreign languages and the Corinthian glossolalia in devotional meetings; and it is the latter only which they compare to their own experience. Several years ago I witnessed this phenomenon in an Irvingite congregation in New York; the words were broken, ejaculatory and unintelligible, but uttered in abnormal, startling, impressive sounds, in a state of apparent unconsciousness and rapture, and without any control over the tongue, which was seized as it were by a foreign power. A friend and colleague (Dr. Briggs), who witnessed it in 1879 in the principal Irvingite church at London, received the same impression.

(3) The Pentecostal glossolalia cannot have been essentially different from the Corinthian: it was likewise an ecstatic act of worship, of thanksgiving and praise for the great deeds of God in Christ, a dialogue of the soul with God. It was the purest and the highest utterance of the jubilant enthusiasm of the new-born church of Christ in the possession of the Holy Spirit. It began before the spectators arrived (comp. Acts 2:4 and 6), and was followed by a missionary discourse of Peter in plain, ordinary language. Luke mentions the same gift twice again (Luke 10 and 19) evidently as an act of devotion, and not of teaching.

Nevertheless, according to the evident meaning of Luke’s narrative, the Pentecostal glossolalia differed from the Corinthian not only by its intensity, but also by coming home to the hearers then present in their own vernacular dialects, without the medium of a human interpreter. Hence the term "different" tongues, which Paul does not use, nor Luke in any other passage; hence the astonishment of the foreigners at hearing each his own peculiar idiom from the lips of those unlettered Galileans. It is this heteroglossolalia, as I may term it, which causes the chief difficulty. I will give the various views which either deny, or shift, or intensify, or try to explain this foreign element.

(a) The rationalistic interpretation cuts the Gordian knot by denying the miracle, as a mistake of the narrator or of the early Christian tradition. Even Meyer surrenders the heteroglossolalia, as far as it differs from the Corinthian glossolalia, as an unhistorical tradition which originated in a mistake, because he considers the sudden communication of the facility of speaking foreign languages as "logically impossible, and psychologically and morally inconceivable" (Com. on Acts 2:4, 4th ed.). But Luke, the companion of Paul, must have been familiar with the glossolalia in the apostolic churches, and in the two other passages where he mentions it he evidently means the same phenomenon as that described by Paul.

(b) The heteroglossolalia was a mistake of the hearers (a Hörwunder), who in the state of extraordinary excitement and profound sympathy imagined that they heard their own language from the disciples; while Luke simply narrates their impression without correcting it. This view was mentioned (though not adopted) by Gregory of Nyssa, and held by Pseudo-Cyprian, the venerable Bede, Erasmus, Schneckenburger and others. If the pentecostal language was the Hellenistic dialect, it could, with its composite character, its Hebraisms and Latinisms, the more easily produce such an effect when spoken by persons stirred in the inmost depth of their hearts and lifted out of themselves. St. Xavier is said to have made himself understood by the Hindoos without knowing their language, and St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Vincent Ferrer were able, by the spiritual power of their eloquence, to kindle the enthusiasm and sway the passions of multitudes who were ignorant of their language. Olshausen and Bäumlein call to aid the phenomena of magnetism and somnambulism, by which people are brought into mysterious rapport.

(c) The glossolalia was speaking in archaic, poetic glosses, with an admixture of foreign words. This view, learnedly defended by Bleek (1829), and adopted with modifications by Baur (1838), has already been mentioned above (p. 233), as inconsistent with Hellenistic usage, and the natural meaning of Luke.

(d) The mystical explanation regards the Pentecostal Gift of Tongues in some way as a counterpart of the Confusion of Tongues, either as a temporary restoration of the original language of Paradise, or as a prophetic anticipation of the language of heaven in which all languages are united. This theory, which is more deep than clear, turns the heteroglossolalia into a homoglossolalia, and puts the miracle into the language itself and its temporary restoration or anticipation. Schelling calls the Pentecostal miracle "Babel reversed" (das umgekehrte Babel), and says: "Dem Ereigniss der Sprachenverwirrung lässt sich in der ganzen Folge der religiösen Geschichte nur Eines an die Seite stellen, die momentan wiederhergestellte Spracheinheit (oJmoglwssiva) am Pfingstfeste, mit dem das Christenthum, bestimmt das ganze Menschengeschlecht durch die Erkenntniss des Einen wahren Gottes wieder zur Einheit zu verknüpfen, seinen grossen Weg beginnt." (Einl. in d. Philos. der Mythologie, p. 109). A similar view was defended by Billroth (in his Com. on 1 Cor. 14, p. 177), who suggests that the primitive language combined elements of the different derived languages, so that each listener heard fragments of his own. Lange (II. 38) sees here the normal language of the inner spiritual life which unites the redeemed, and which runs through all ages of the church as the leaven of languages, regenerating, transforming, and consecrating them to sacred uses, but he assumes also, like Olshausen, a sympathetic rapport between speakers and hearers. Delitzsch (l.c. p. 1186) says: "Die apostolische Verkündigung erging damals in einer Sprache des Geistes, welche das Gegenbild der in Babel zerschellten Einen Menschheitssprache war und von allen ohne Unterschied der Sprachen gleichmässig verstanden wurde. Wie das weisse Licht alle Farben aus sich erschliesst, so fiel die geistgewirkte Apostelsprache wie in prismatischer Brechung verständlich in aller Ohren und ergreifend in aller Herzen. Es war ein Vorspiel der Einigung, in welcher die von Babel datirende Veruneinigung sich aufheben wird. Dem Sivan-Tag des steinernen Buchstabens trat ein Sivan-Tag des lebendigmachenden Geistes entgegen. Es war der Geburtstag der Kirche, der Geistesgemeinde im Unterschiede von der altestamentlichen Volksgemeinde; darum nennt Chrysostomus in einer Pfingsthomilie die Pentekoste die Metropole der Feste." Ewald’s view (VI. 116 sqq.) is likewise mystical, but original and expressed with his usual confidence. He calls the glossolalia an "Auflallen und Aufjauchzen der Christlichen Begeisterung, ein stürmisches Hervorbrechen aller der verborgenen Gefühle und Gedanken in ihrer vollsten Unmittelbarkeit und Gewalt." He says that on the day of Pentecost the most unusual expressions and synonyms of different languages (as ajbbav oJ pathvr, Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15, and mara;n ajqav 1 Cor. 16:22), with reminiscences of words of Christ as resounding from heaven, commingled in the vortex of a new language of the Spirit, and gave utterance to the exuberant joy of the young Christianity in stammering hymns of praise never heard before or since except in the weaker manifestations of the same gift in the Corinthian and other apostolic churches.

(e) The Pentecostal glossolalia was a permanent endowment of the apostles with a miraculous knowledge of all those foreign languages in which they were to preach the gospel. As they were sent to preach to all nations, they were gifted with the tongues of all nations. This theory was first clearly brought out by the fathers in the fourth and fifth centuries, long after the gift of tongues had disappeared, and was held by most of the older divines, though with different modifications, but is now abandoned by nearly all Protestant commentators except Bishop Wordsworth, who defends it with patristic quotations. Chrysostom supposed that each disciple was assigned the particular language which he needed for his evangelistic work (Hom. on Acts 2). Augustine went much further, saying (De Civ. Dei, XVIII. c. 49): "Every one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the catholic church would embrace all nations, and would in like manner speak in all tongues." Some confined the number of languages to the number of foreign nations and countries mentioned by Luke (Chrysostom), others extended it to 70 or 72 (Augustine and Epiphanius), or 75, after the number of the sons of Noah (Gen. 10), or even to 120 (Pacianus), after the number of the disciples present. Baronius mentions these opinions in Annal. ad Ann. 34, vol. I. 197. The feast of languages in the Roman Propaganda perpetuates this theory, but turns the moral miracle of spiritual enthusiasm into a mechanical miracle of acquired learning in unknown tongues. Were all the speakers to speak at once, as on the day of Pentecost, it would be a more than Babylonian confusion of tongues.

Such a stupendous miracle as is here supposed might be justified by the far-reaching importance of that creative epoch, but it is without a parallel and surrounded by insuperable difficulties. The theory ignores the fact that the glossolalia began before the spectators arrived, that is, before there was any necessity of using foreign languages. It isolates the Pentecostal glossolalia and brings Luke into conflict with Paul and with himself; for in all other cases the gift of tongues appears, as already remarked, not as a missionary agency, but as an exercise of devotion. It implies that all the one hundred disciples present, including the women—for a tongue as of fire "sat upon each of them"—were called to be traveling evangelists. A miracle of that kind was superfluous (a Luxuswunder); for since the conquest of Alexander the Great the Greek language was so generally understood throughout the Roman empire that the apostles scarcely needed any other—unless it was Latin and their native Aramaean—for evangelistic purposes; and the Greek was used in fact by all the writers of the New Testament, even by James of Jerusalem, and in a way which shows that they had learnt it like other people, by early training and practice. Moreover there is no trace of such a miraculous knowledge, nor any such use of it after Pentecost.280  On the contrary, we must infer that Paul did not understand the Lycaonian dialect (Acts 14:11–14), and we learn from early ecclesiastical tradition that Peter used Mark as an interpreter (eJrmhneuv" or eJrmhneuthv", interpres, according to Papias, Irenaeus, and Tertullian). God does not supersede by miracle the learning of foreign languages and other kinds of knowledge which can be attained by the ordinary use of our mental faculties and opportunities.

(f) It was a temporary speaking in foreign languages confined to the day of Pentecost and passing away with the flame-like tongues. The exception was justified by the object, namely, to attest the divine mission of the apostles and to foreshadow the universalness of the gospel. This view is taken by most modern commentators who accept the account of Luke, as Olshausen (who combines with it the theory b), Baumgarten, Thiersch, Rossteuscher, Lechler, Hackett, Gloag, Plumptre (in his Com. on Acts), and myself (in H. Ap. Ch.), and accords best with the plain sense of the narrative. But it likewise makes an essential distinction between the Pentecostal and the Corinthian glossolalia, which is extremely improbable. A temporary endowment with the knowledge of foreign languages unknown before is as great if not a greater miracle than a permanent endowment, and was just as superfluous at that time in Jerusalem as afterwards at Corinth; for the missionary sermon of Peter, which was in one language only, was intelligible to all.

(g) The Pentecostal glossolalia was essentially the same as the Corinthian glossolalia, namely, an act of worship, and not of teaching; with only a slight difference in the medium of interpretation: it was at once internally interpreted and applied by the Holy Spirit himself to those hearers who believed and were converted, to each in his own vernacular dialect; while in Corinth the interpretation was made either by the speaker in tongues, or by one endowed with the gift of interpretation.

I can find no authority for this theory, and therefore suggest it with modesty, but it seems to me to avoid most of the difficulties of the other theories, and it brings Luke into harmony with himself and with Paul. It is certain that the Holy Spirit moved the hearts of the hearers as well as the tongues of the speakers on that first day of the new creation in Christ. In a natural form the Pentecostal heteroglossolalia is continued in the preaching of the gospel in all tongues, and in more than three hundred translations of the Bible.

II. False interpretations of the Pentecostal miracle.

(1) The older rationalistic interpretation resolves the wind into a thunderstorm or a hurricane surcharged with electricity, the tongues of fire into flashes of lightning falling into the assembly, or electric sparks from a sultry atmosphere, and the glossolalia into a praying of each in his own vernacular, instead of the sacred old Hebrew, or assumes that some of the disciples knew several foreign dialects before and used them on the occasion. So Paulus, Thiess, Schulthess, Kuinöl, Schrader, Fritzsche, substantially also Renan, who dwells on the violence of Oriental thunderstorms, but explains the glossolalia differently according to analogous phenomena of later times. This view makes the wonder of the spectators and hearers at such an ordinary occurrence a miracle. It robs them of common sense, or charges dishonesty on the narrator. It is entirely inapplicable to the glossolalia in Corinth, which must certainly be admitted as an historical phenomenon of frequent occurrence in the apostolic church. It is contradicted by the comparative w{sper and wJseiv of the narrative, which distinguishes the sound from ordinary wind and the tongues of flame from ordinary fire; just as the words, "like a dove," to which all the Gospels compare the appearance of the Holy Spirit at Christ’s baptism, indicate that no real dove is intended.

(2) The modern rationalistic or mythical theory resolves the miracle into a subjective vision which was mistaken by the early Christians for an objective external fact. The glossolalia of Pentecost (not that in Corinth, which is acknowledged as historical) symbolizes the true idea of the universalness of the gospel and the Messianic unification of languages and nationalities (eij\" lao;" Kurivou kai; glw'ssa miva  as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs expresses it). It is an imitation of the rabbinical fiction (found already in Philo) that the Sinaitic legislation was proclaimed through the bath-kol, the echo of the voice of God, to all nations in the seventy languages of the world. So Zeller (Contents and Origin of the Acts, I. 203–205), who thinks that the whole pentecostal fact, if it occurred at all. "must have been distorted beyond recognition in our record." But his chief argument is: "the impossibility and incredibility of miracles," which he declares (p. 175, note) to be "an axiom" of the historian; thus acknowledging the negative presupposition or philosophical prejudice which underlies his historical criticism. We hold, on the contrary, that the historian must accept the facts as he finds them, and if he cannot explain them satisfactorily from natural causes or subjective illusions, he must trace them to supernatural forces. Now the Christian church, which is certainly a most palpable and undeniable fact, must have originated in a certain place, at a certain time, and in a certain manner, and we can imagine no more appropriate and satisfactory account of its origin than that given by Luke. Baur and Zeller think it impossible that three thousand persons should have been converted in one day and in one place. They forget that the majority of the hearers were no skeptics, but believers in a supernatural revelation, and needed only to be convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. Ewald says against Zeller, without naming him (VI. 119)  "Nothing can be more perverse than to deny the historical truth of the event related in Acts 2." We hold with Rothe (Vorlesungen über Kirchengeschichte I. 33) that the Pentecostal event was a real miracle ("ein eigentliches Wunder"), which the Holy Spirit wrought on the disciples and which endowed them with the power to perform miracles (according to the promise, Mark 16:17, 18). Without these miraculous powers Christianity could not have taken hold on the world as it then stood. The Christian church itself, with its daily experiences of regeneration and conversion at home and in heathen lands, is the best living and omnipresent proof of its supernatural origin.

III. Time and Place, of Pentecost. Did it occur on a Lord’s Day (the eighth after Easter), or on a Jewish Sabbath?  In a private house, or in the temple ?  We decide for the Lord’s Day, and for a private house. But opinions are much divided, and the arguments almost equally balanced.

(1) The choice of the day in the week depends partly on the interpretation of "the morrow after the (Passover) Sabbath" from which the fiftieth day was to be counted, according to the legislative prescription in Lev. 23:11, 15, 16—namely, whether it was the morrow following the first day of the Passover, i.e. the 16th of Nisan, or the day after the regular Sabbath in the Passover week; partly on the date of Christ’s crucifixion, which took place on a Friday, namely, whether this was the 14th or 15th of Nisan. If we assume that the Friday of Christ’s death was the 14th of Nisan, then the 15th was a Sabbath, and Pentecost in that year fall on a Sunday; but if the Friday of the crucifixion was the 15th of Nisan (as I hold myself, see § 16, p. 133), then Pentecost fell on a Jewish Sabbath (so Wieseler, who fixes it on Saturday, May 27, A.D. 30), unless we count from the end of the 16th of Nisan (as Wordsworth and Plumptre do, who put Pentecost on a Sunday). But if we take the "Sabbath" in Lev. 23 in the usual sense of the weekly Sabbath (as the Sadducees and Karaites did), then the Jewish Pentecost fell always on a Sunday. At all events the Christian church has uniformly observed Whit-Sunday on the eighth Lord’s Day after Easter, adhering in this case, as well as in the festivals of the resurrection (Sunday) and of the ascension (Thursday), to the old tradition as to the day of the week when the event occurred. This view would furnish an additional reason for the substitution of Sunday, as the day of the Lord’s resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit, for the Jewish Sabbath. Wordsworth: "Thus the first day of the week has been consecrated to all the three Persons of the ever-blessed and undivided Trinity; and the blessings of Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification are commemorated on the Christian Sunday." Wieseler assumes, without good reason, that the ancient church deliberately changed the day from opposition to the Jewish Sabbath; but the celebration of Pentecost together with that of the Resurrection seems to be as old as the Christian church and has its precedent in the example of Paul, Acts 18:21; 20:16.—Lightfoot (Horae Hebr. in Acta Ap. 2:1; Opera II. 692) counts Pentecost from the 16th of Nisan, but nevertheless puts the first Christian Pentecost on a Sunday by an unusual and questionable interpretation of Acts 2:1 ejn tw'/ sunplhrou'sqai th;n hJmevran th'" Penthkosth'", which he makes to mean "when the day of Pentecost was fully gone," instead of "was fully come." But whether Pentecost fell on a Jewish Sabbath or on a Lord’s Day, the coincidence in either case was significant.

(2) As to the place, Luke calls it simply a "house" (oi\ko", Acts 2:2), which can hardly mean the temple (not mentioned till 2:46). It was probably the same "upper room" or chamber which he had mentioned in the preceding chapter, as the well known usual meeting place of the, disciples after the ascension, to; uJperw'/on ...ou| h\san katamevnonte", 1:13). So Neander, Meyer, Ewald, Wordsworth, Plumptre, Farrar, and others. Perhaps it was the same chamber in which our Lord partook of the Paschal Supper with them (Mark 14:14, 15; Matt. 26:28). Tradition locates both events in the "Coenaculum," a room in an irregular building called "David’s Tomb," which lies outside of Zion Gate some distance from Mt. Moriah. (See William M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, new ed. 1880, vol. I. p. 535 sq.). But Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. XVI. 4) states that the apartment where the Holy Spirit descended was afterwards converted into a church. The uppermost room under the flat roof of Oriental houses. (uJperw'/on, [}liYh) as often used as a place of devotion (comp. Acts 20:8). But as a private house could not possibly hold so great a multitude, we must suppose that Peter addressed the people in the street from the roof or from the outer staircase.

Many of the older divines, as also Olshausen, Baumgarten, Wieseler, Lange, Thiersch (and myself in first ed. of Ap. Ch., p. 194), locate the Pentecostal scene in the temple, or rather in one of the thirty side buildings around it, which Josephus calls "houses" (oi[kou") in his description of Solomon’s temple (Ant. VIII. 3, 2), or in Solomon’s porch, which remained from the first temple, and where the disciples assembled afterwards (Acts 5:12, comp. 3:11). In favor of this view may be said, that it better agrees with the custom of the apostles (Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 5:12, 42), with the time of the miracle (the morning hour of prayer), and with the assembling of a large multitude of at least three thousand hearers, and also that it seems to give additional solemnity to the event when it took place in the symbolical and typical sanctuary of the old dispensation. But it is difficult to conceive that the hostile Jews should have allowed the poor disciples to occupy one of those temple buildings and not interfered with the scene. In the dispensation of the Spirit which now began, the meanest dwelling, and the body of the humblest Christian becomes a temple of God. Comp. John 4:24.

IV. Effects of the Day of Pentecost. From Farrar’s Life and Work of St. Paul (I. 93): "That this first Pentecost marked an eternal moment in the destiny of mankind, no reader of history will surely deny. Undoubtedly in every age since then the sons of God have, to an extent unknown before, been taught by the Spirit of God. Undoubtedly since then, to an extent unrealized before, we may know that the Spirit of Christ dwelleth in us. Undoubtedly we may enjoy a nearer sense of union with God in Christ than was accorded to the saints of the Old Dispensation, and a thankful certainty that we see the days which kings and prophets desired to see and did not see them, and hear the truths which they desired to hear and did not hear them. And this New Dispensation began henceforth in all its fulness. It was no exclusive consecration to a separated priesthood, no isolated endowment of a narrow apostolate. It was the consecration of a whole church—its men, its women, its children—to be all of them ’a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people;’ it was an endowment, of which the full free offer was meant ultimately to be extended to all mankind. Each one of that hundred and twenty was not the exceptional recipient of a blessing and witness of a revelation, but the forerunner and representative of myriads more. And this miracle was not merely transient, but is continuously renewed. It is not a rushing sound and gleaming light, seen perhaps for a moment, but it is a living energy and an unceasing inspiration. It is not a visible symbol to a gathered handful of human souls in the upper room of a Jewish house, but a vivifying wind which shall henceforth breathe in all ages of the world’s history; a tide of light which is rolling, and shall roll, from shore to shore until the earth is fall of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

§ 25. The Church of Jerusalem and the Labors of Peter.

Su; ei| Pevtro", kai; ejpi; tauvth/ pevtra/ oikodomhvsw mou th;n ejkklhsivan, kai; puvlai a{/dou ouj katiscuvsousin aujth'".—Matt. 16:18.

Literature.

I. Genuine sources: Acts 2 to 12; Gal. 2; and two Epistles of Peter.

Comp. the Commentaries on Acts, and the Petrine Epistles.

Among the commentators of Peter’s Epp. I mention Archbishop Leighton (in many editions, not critical, but devout and spiritual), Steiger (1832, translated by Fairbairn, 1836), John Brown (1849, 2 vols.), Wiesinger (1856 and 1862, in Olshausen’s Com.), Schott (1861 and 1863), De Wette (3d ed. by Brückner, 1865), Huther (in Meyer’s Com., 4th ed. 1877), Fronmüller (in Lange’s Bibelwerk, transl. by Mombert, 1867), Alford (3d ed. 1864), John Lillie (ed. by Schaff, 1869), Demarest (Cath. Epp 1879), Mason and Plumptre (in Ellicott’s Com., 1879), Plumptre (in the "Cambridge Bible," 1879, with a very full introduction, pp. 1–83), Salmond (in Schaff’s Pop. Com. 1883). Comp. also the corresponding sections in the works on the Apostolic Age mentioned in §20, and my H. Ap. Ch. pp. 348–377.

II. Apocryphal sources: Eujaggevlion kata; Pevtron of Ebionite origin, Khvrugma Pevtrou , Pravxei" Pevtrou,  jApokavluyi" Pevtrou, Perivodoi Pevtrou (Itinerarium Petri), Pravxei" tw'n aJgivwn ajpostovlwn Pevtrou kai; Pauvlou (Acta Petri et Pauli). See Tischendorf’s Acta Apost. Apocr  1–39, and Hilgenfeld’s Novum Testamentum extra canonem receptum (1866), IV. 52 sqq. The Pseudo-Clementine "Homilies" are a glorification of Peter at the expense of Paul; the, "Recognitions" are a Catholic recension and modification of the "Homilies." The pseudo-Clementine literature will be noticed in the second Period.

III. Special works on Peter:

E. Th. Mayerhoff: Historisch-Kritische Einleitung in die Petrinischen Schriften. Hamb. 1835.

Windischmann (R. C.): Vindiciae Petrinae. Ratisb. 1836.

Stenglein (R. C.): Ueber den 25 jahrigen Aufenthalt des heil. Petrus in Rom. In the "Tübinger Theol. Quartalschrift," 1840.

J. Ellendorf: 1st Petrus in Rom und Bishof der römischen Gemeinde gewesen?  Darmstadt, 1841. Transl. in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1858, No. 3. The author, a liberal R. Cath., comes to the conclusion that Peter’s presence in Rome can never be proven.

Carlo Passaglia (Jesuit): De Praerogativis Beati Petri, Apostolorum Principis. Ratisbon, 1850.

Thomas W. Allies (R. C.): St. Peter, his Name and his Office as set forth in Holy Scripture. London, 1852. Based upon the preceding work of Father Passaglia.

Bernh. Weiss: Der Petrinische Lehrbegriff. Berlin, 1855. Comp. his Bibl. Theol. des N. T, 3d ed. 1880, and his essay, Die petrinische Frage in "Studien und Kritiken," 1865, pp. 619–657, 1866, pp. 255–308, and 1873, pp. 539–546.

Thos. Greenwood: Cathedra Petri. Lond., vol. I. 1859, chs. I and II. pp. 1–50.

Perrone (R. C.): S. Pietro in Roma. Rome, 1864.

C. Holsten (of the Tübingen School): Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868.

R. A. Lipsius: Die Quellen der röm. Petrussage. Kiel, 1872. By the same: Chronologie der röm  Bischöfe. Kiel, 1869. Lipsius examines carefully the heretical sources of the Roman Peter-legend, and regards it as a fiction from beginning to end. A summary of his view is given by

Samuel M. Jackson: Lipsius on the Roman Peter-Legend. In the "Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review" (N. York) for 1876, pp. 265 sqq.

G. Volkmar: Die römische Papstmythe. Zürich, 1873.

A. Hilgenfeld: Petrus in Rom und Johannes in Kleinasien. In his "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theol." for 1872. Also his Einleitung in das N. T., 1875, pp. 618 sqq.

W. Krafft: Petrus in Rom. Bonn, 1877. In the "Theol. Arbeiten des rhein. wissenschaftl. Predigervereins, " III. 185–193.

Joh. Friedrich (Old Cath.): Zur ältesten Gesch. des Primates in der Kirche. Bonn, 1879.

William M. Taylor: Peter the Apostle. N. York, 1879.

The congregation of Jerusalem became the mother church of Jewish Christianity, and thus of all Christendom. It grew both inwardly and outwardly under the personal direction of the apostles, chiefly of Peter, to whom the Lord had early assigned a peculiar prominence in the work of building his visible church on earth. The apostles were assisted by a number of presbyters, and seven deacons or persons appointed to care for the poor and the sick. But the Spirit moved in the whole congregation, bound to no particular office. The preaching of the gospel, the working of miracles in the name of Jesus, and the attractive power of a holy walk in faith and love, were the instruments of progress. The number of the Christians, or, as they at first called themselves, disciples, believers, brethren, saints, soon rose to five thousand. They continued steadfastly under the instruction and in the fellowship of the apostles, in the daily worship of God and celebration of the holy Supper with their agapae or love-feasts. They felt themselves to be one family of God, members of one body under one head, Jesus Christ; and this fraternal unity expressed itself even in a voluntary community of goods—an anticipation, as it were, of an ideal state at the end of history, but without binding force upon any other congregation. They adhered as closely to the temple worship and the Jewish observances as the new life admitted and as long as there was any hope of the conversion of Israel as a nation. They went daily to the temple to teach, as their Master had done, but held their devotional meetings in private houses.281

The addresses of Peter to the people and the Sanhedrin282 are remarkable for their natural simplicity and adaptation. They are full of fire and vigor, yet full of wisdom and persuasion, and always to the point. More practical and effective sermons were never preached. They are testimonies of an eye-witness so timid a few weeks before, and now so bold and ready at any moment to suffer and die for the cause. They are an expansion of his confession that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God, the Saviour. He preached no subtle theological doctrines, but a few great facts and truths: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, already known to his hearers for his mighty signs and wonders, his exaltation to the right hand of Almighty God, the descent and power of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of prophecy, the approaching judgment and glorious restitution of all things, the paramount importance of  conversion and faith in Jesus as the only name whereby we can be saved. There breathes in them an air of serene joy and certain triumph.

We can form no clear conception of this bridal season of the Christian church when no dust of earth soiled her shining garments, when she was wholly absorbed in the contemplation and love of her divine Lord, when he smiled down upon her from his throne in heaven, and added daily to the number of the saved. It was a continued Pentecost, it was paradise restored. "They did take their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people."283

Yet even in this primitive apostolic community inward corruption early appeared, and with it also the severity of discipline and self-purification, in the terrible sentence of Peter on the hypocritical Ananias and Sapphira.

At first Christianity found favor with the people. Soon, however, it had to encounter the same persecution as its divine founder had undergone, but only, as before, to transform it into a blessing and a means of growth.

The persecution was begun by the skeptical sect of the Sadducees, who took offence at the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, the centre of all the apostolic preaching.

When Stephen, one of the seven deacons of the church at Jerusalem, a man full of faith and zeal, the forerunner of the apostle Paul, boldly assailed the perverse and obstinate spirit of Judaism, and declared the approaching downfall of the Mosaic economy, the Pharisees made common cause with the Sadducees against the gospel. Thus began the emancipation of Christianity from the temple-worship of Judaism, with which it had till then remained at least outwardly connected. Stephen himself was falsely accused of blaspheming Moses, and after a remarkable address in his own defence, he was stoned by a mob (A.D. 37), and thus became the worthy leader of the sacred host of martyrs, whose blood was thenceforth to fertilize the soil of the church. From the blood of his martyrdom soon sprang the great apostle of the Gentiles, now his bitterest persecutor, and an eye-witness of his heroism and of the glory of Christ in his dying face.284

The stoning of Stephen was the signal for a general persecution, and thus at the same time for the spread of Christianity over all Palestine and the region around. And it was soon followed by the conversion of Cornelius of Caesarea, which opened the door for the mission to the Gentiles. In this important event Peter likewise was the prominent actor.

After some seven years of repose the church at Jerusalem suffered a new persecution under king Herod Agrippa (A.D. 44). James the elder, the brother of John, was beheaded. Peter was imprisoned and condemned to the same fate; but he was miraculously liberated, and then forsook Jerusalem, leaving the church to the care of James the "brother of the Lord." Eusebius, Jerome, and the Roman Catholic historians assume that he went at that early period to Rome, at least on a temporary visit, if not for permanent residence. But the book of Acts (12:17) says only: "He departed, and went into another place." The indefiniteness of this expression, in connection with a remark of Paul. 1 Cor. 9:5, is best explained on the supposition that he had hereafter no settled home, but led the life of a travelling missionary like most of the apostles.

The Later Labors of Peter.

Afterwards we find Peter again in Jerusalem at the apostolic council (A.D. 50);285 then at Antioch (51); where he came into temporary collision with Paul;286 then upon missionary tours, accompanied by his wife (57);287 perhaps among the dispersed Jews in Babylon or in Asia Minor, to whom he addressed his epistles.288  Of a residence of Peter in Rome the New Testament contains no trace, unless, as the church fathers and many modern expositors think, Rome is intended by the mystic "Babylon" mentioned in 1 Pet. 5:13 (as in the Apocalypse), but others think of Babylon on the Euphrates, and still others of Babylon on the Nile (near the present Cairo, according to the Coptic tradition). The entire silence of the Acts of the Apostles 28, respecting Peter, as well as the silence of Paul in his epistle to the Romans, and the epistles written from Rome during his imprisonment there, in which Peter is not once named in the salutations, is decisive proof that he was absent from that city during most of the time between the years 58 and 63. A casual visit before 58 is possible, but extremely doubtful, in view of the fact that Paul labored independently and never built on the foundation of others;289 hence he would probably not have written his epistle to the Romans at all, certainly not without some allusion to Peter if he had been in any proper sense the founder of the church of Rome. After the year 63 we have no data from the New Testament, as the Acts close with that year, and the interpretation of "Babylon" at the end of the first Epistle of Peter is doubtful, though probably meant for Rome. The martyrdom of Peter by crucifixion was predicted by our Lord, John 21:18, 19, but no place is mentioned.

We conclude then that Peter’s presence in Rome before 63 is made extremely doubtful, if not impossible, by the silence of Luke and Paul, when speaking of Rome and writing from Rome, and that His presence after 63 can neither be proved nor disproved from the New Testament, and must be decided by post-biblical testimonies.

It is the uniform tradition of the eastern and western churches that Peter preached the gospel in Rome, and suffered martyrdom there in the Neronian persecution. So say more or less clearly, yet not without admixture of error, Clement of Rome (who mentions the martyrdom, but not the place), at the close of the first century; Ignatius of Antioch (indistinctly), Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus of Lyons, Caius of Rome, in the second century; Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, in the third; Lactantius, Eusebius, Jerome, and others, in the fourth. To these patristic testimonies may be added the apocryphal testimonies of the pseudo-Petrine and pseudo-Clementine fictions, which somehow connect Peter’s name with the founding of the churches of Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, and Rome. However these testimonies from various men and countries may differ in particular circumstances, they can only be accounted for on the supposition of some fact at the bottom; for they were previous to any use or abuse of this, tradition for heretical or for orthodox and hierarchical purposes. The chief error of the witnesses from Dionysius and Irenaeus onward is that Peter is associated with Paul as "founder" of the church of Rome; but this may be explained from the very probable fact that some of the "strangers from Rome" who witnessed the Pentecostal miracle and heard the sermon of Peter, as also some disciples who were scattered abroad by the persecution after the martyrdom of Stephen, carried the seed of the gospel to Rome, and that these converts of Peter became the real founders of the Jewish-Christian congregation in the metropolis. Thus the indirect agency of Peter was naturally changed into a direct agency by tradition which forgot the names of the pupils in the glorification of the teacher.

The time of Peter’s arrival in Rome, and the length of his residence there, cannot possibly be ascertained. The above mentioned silence of the Acts and of Paul’s Epistles allows him only a short period of labor there, after 63. The Roman tradition of a twenty or twenty-five years’ episcopate of Peter in Rome is unquestionably a colossal chronological mistake.290  Nor can we fix the year of his martyrdom, except that it must have taken place after July, 64, when the Neronian persecution broke out (according to Tacitus). It is variously assigned to every year between 64 and 69. We shall return to it again below, and in connection with the martyrdom of Paul, with which it is associated in tradition.291

§ 26. The Peter of History and the Peter of Fiction.

No character in the New Testament is brought before us in such life-like colors, with all his virtues and faults, as that of Peter. He was frank and transparent, and always gave himself as he was, without any reserve.

We may distinguish three stages in his development. In the Gospels, the human nature of Simon appears most prominent the Acts unfold the divine mission of Peter in the founding of the church, with a temporary relapse at Antioch (recorded by Paul); in his Epistles we see the complete triumph of divine grace. He was the strongest and the weakest of the Twelve. He had all the excellences and all the defects of a sanguine temperament. He was kind-hearted, quick, ardent, hopeful, impulsive, changeable, and apt to run from one extreme to another. He received from Christ the highest praise and the severest censure. He was the first to confess him as the Messiah of God, for which he received his new name of Peter, in prophetic anticipation of his commanding position in church history; but he was also the first to dissuade him from entering the path of the cross to the crown, for which he brought upon himself the rebuke, "Get thee behind me, Satan." The rock of the church had become a rock of offence and a stumbling-block. He protested, in presumptive modesty, when Christ would wash his feet; and then, suddenly changing his mind, he wished not his feet only, but his hands and head to be washed. He cut off the ear of Malchus in carnal zeal for his Master; and in a few minutes afterwards he forsook him and fled. He solemnly promised to be faithful to Christ, though all should forsake him; and yet in the same night he betrayed him thrice. He was the first to cast off the Jewish prejudices against the unclean heathen and to fraternize with the Gentile converts at Caesarea and at Antioch; and he was the first to withdraw from them in cowardly fear of the narrow-minded Judaizers from Jerusalem, for which inconsistency he had to submit to a humiliating rebuke of Paul.292

But Peter was as quick in returning to his right position as in turning away from it. He most sincerely loved the Lord from the start and had no rest nor peace till he found forgiveness. With all his weakness he was a noble, generous soul, and of the greatest service in the church. God overruled his very sins and inconsistencies for his humiliation and spiritual progress. And in his Epistles we find the mature result of the work of purification, a spirit most humble, meek, gentle, tender, loving, and lovely. Almost every word and incident in the gospel history connected with Peter left its impress upon his Epistles in the way of humble or thankful reminiscence and allusion. His new name, "Rock," appears simply as a "stone" among other living stones in the temple of God, built upon Christ, "the chief corner-stone."293  His charge to his fellow-presbyters is the same which Christ gave to him after the resurrection, that they should be faithful "shepherds of the flock" under Christ, the chief "shepherd and bishop of their souls."294  The record of his denial of Christ is as prominent in all the four Gospels, as Paul’s persecution of the church is in the Acts, and it is most prominent—as it would seem under his own direction—in the Gospel of his pupil and "interpreter" Mark, which alone mentions the two cock-crows, thus doubling the guilt of the denial,295 and which records Christ’s words of censure ("Satan"), but omits Christ’s praise ("Rock").296  Peter made as little effort to conceal his great sin, as Paul. It served as a thorn in his flesh, and the remembrance kept him near the cross; while his recovery from the fall was a standing proof of the power and mercy of Christ and a perpetual call to gratitude. To the Christian Church the double story of Peter’s denial and recovery has been ever since an unfailing source of warning and comfort. Having turned again to his Lord, who prayed for him that his personal faith fail not, he is still strengthening the brethren.297

As to his official position in the church, Peter stood from the beginning at the head of the Jewish apostles, not in a partisan sense, but in a large-hearted spirit of moderation and comprehension. He never was a narrow, contracted, exclusive sectarian. After the vision at Joppa and the conversion of Cornelius he promptly changed his inherited view of the necessity of circumcision, and openly professed the change at Jerusalem, proclaiming the broad principle "that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him;" and "that Jews and Gentiles alike are saved only through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ."298  He continued to be the head of the Jewish Christian church at large, and Paul himself represents him as the first among the three "pillar"-apostles of the circumcision299  But he stood mediating between James, who represented the right wing of conservatism, and Paul, who commanded the left wing of the apostolic army. And this is precisely the position which Peter occupies in his Epistles, which reproduce to a great extent the teaching of both Paul and James, and have therefore the character of a doctrinal Irenicum; as the Acts are a historical Irenicum, without violation of truth or fact.

The Peter of Fiction.

No character of the Bible, we may say, no personage in all history, has been so much magnified, misrepresented and misused for doctrinal and hierarchical ends as the plain fisherman of Galilee who stands at the head of the apostolic college. Among the women of the Bible the Virgin Mary has undergone a similar transformation for purposes of devotion, and raised to the dignity of the queen of heaven. Peter as the Vicar of Christ, and Mary as the mother of Christ, have in this idealized shape become and are still the ruling powers in the polity and worship of the largest branch of Christendom.

In both cases the work of fiction began among the Judaizing heretical sects of the second and third centuries, but was modified and carried forward by the Catholic, especially the Roman church, in the third and fourth centuries.

1. The Peter of the Ebionite fiction. The historical basis is Peter’s encounter with Simon Magus in Samaria,300 Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch,301 and the intense distrust and dislike of the Judaizing party to Paul.302  These three undoubted facts, together with a singular confusion of Simon Magus with an old Sabine deity, Semo Sancus, in Rome,303 furnished the material and prompted the motive to religious tendency—novels written about and after the middle of the second century by ingenious semi-Gnostic Ebionites, either anonymously or under the fictitious name of Clement of Rome, the reputed successor of Peter.304  In these productions Simon Peter appears as the great apostle of truth in conflict with Simon Magus, the pseudo-apostle of falsehood, the father of all heresies, the Samaritan possessed by a demon; and Peter follows him step by step from Caesarea Stratonis to Tyre, Sidon, Berytus, Antioch, and Rome, and before the tribunal of Nero, disputing with him, and refuting his errors, until at last the impostor, in the daring act of mocking Christ’s ascension to heaven, meets a miserable end.

In the pseudo-Clementine Homilies the name of Simon represents among other heresies also the free gospel of Paul, who is assailed as a false apostle and hated rebel against the authority of the Mosaic law. The same charges which the Judaizers brought against Paul, are here brought by Peter against Simon Magus, especially the assertion that one may be saved by grace alone. His boasted vision of Christ by which he professed to have been converted, is traced to a deceptive vision of the devil. The very words of Paul against Peter at Antioch, that he was "self-condemned" (Gal. 2:11), are quoted as an accusation against God. In one word, Simon Magus is, in part at least, a malignant Judaizing caricature of the apostle of the Gentiles.

2. The Peter of the Papacy. The orthodox version of the Peter-legend, as we find it partly in patristic notices of Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, and Eusebius, partly in apocryphal productions,305 retains the general story of a conflict of Peter with Simon Magus in Antioch and Rome, but extracts from it its anti-Pauline poison, associates Paul at the end of his life with Peter as the joint, though secondary, founder of the Roman church, and honors both with the martyr’s crown in the Neronian persecution on the same day (the 29th of June), and in the same year or a year apart, but in different localities and in a different manner.306  Peter was crucified like his Master (though head-downwards 307), either on the hill of Janiculum (where the church S. Pietro in Montorio stands), or more probably on the Vatican hill (the scene of the Neronian circus and persecution);308 Paul, being a Roman citizen, was beheaded on the Ostian way at the Three Fountains (Tre Fontane), outside of the city. They even walked together a part of the Appian way to the place of execution. Caius (or Gaius), a Roman presbyter at the close of the second century, pointed to their monuments or trophies309 on the Vatican, and in the via Ostia. The solemn burial of the remains of Peter in the catacombs of San Sebastiano, and of Paul on the Via Ostia, took place June 29, 258, according to the Kalendarium of the Roman church from the time of Liberius. A hundred years later the remains of Peter were permanently transferred to the Basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican, those of St. Paul to the Basilica of St. Paul (San Paolo fuori le mura) outside of the Porta Ostiensis (now Porta San Paolo).310

The tradition of a twenty-five years’ episcopate in Rome (preceded by a seven years’ episcopate in Antioch) cannot be traced beyond the fourth century (Jerome), and arose, as already remarked, from chronological miscalculations in connection with the questionable statement of Justin Martyr concerning the arrival of Simon Magus in Rome under the reign of Claudius (41–54). The "Catalogus Liberianus," the oldest list of popes (supposed to have been written before 366), extends the pontificate of Peter to 25 years, 1 month, 9 days, and puts his death on June 29, 65 (during the consulate of Nerva and Vestinus), which would date his arrival in Rome back to A.D. 40. Eusebius, in his Greek Chronicle as far as it is preserved, does not fix the number of years, but says, in his Church History, that Peter came to Rome in the reign of Claudius to preach against the pestilential errors of Simon Magus.311  The Armenian translation of his Chronicle mentions "twenty" years;312 Jerome, in his translation or paraphrase rather, "twenty-five" years, assuming, without warrant, that Peter left Jerusalem for Antioch and Rome in the second year of Claudius (42; but Acts 12:17 would rather point to the year 44), and died in the fourteenth or last year of Nero (68).313  Among modern Roman Catholic historians there is no agreement as to the year of Peter’s martyrdom: Baronius puts it in 69;314 Pagi and Alban Butler in 65; Möhler, Gams, and Alzog indefinitely between 66 and 68. In all these cases it must be assumed that the Neronian persecution was continued or renewed after 64, of which we have no historical evidence. It must also be assumed that Peter was conspicuously absent from his flock during most of the time, to superintend the churches in Asia Minor and in Syria, to preside at the Council of Jerusalem, to meet with Paul in Antioch, to travel about with his wife, and that he made very little impression there till 58, and even till 63, when Paul, writing to and from Rome, still entirely ignores him. Thus a chronological error is made to overrule stubborn facts. The famous saying that "no pope shall see the (twenty-five) years of Peter," which had hitherto almost the force of law, has been falsified by the thirty-two years’ reign of the first infallible pope) Pius IX., who ruled from 1846 to 1878.

Note. — On the Claims of the Papacy.

On this tradition and on the indisputable preëminence of Peter in the Gospels and the Acts, especially the words of Christ to him after the great confession (Matt. 16:18), is built the colossal fabric of the papacy with all its amazing pretensions to be the legitimate succession of a permanent primacy of honor and supremacy of jurisdiction in the church of Christ, and—since 1870—with the additional claim of papal infallibility in all official utterances, doctrinal or moral. The validity of this claim requires three premises:

1. The presence of Peter in Rome. This may be admitted as an historical fact, and I for my part cannot believe it possible that such a rock-firm and world-wide structure as the papacy could rest on the sand of mere fraud and error. It is the underlying fact which gives to fiction its vitality, and error is dangerous in proportion to the amount of truth which it embodies. But the fact of Peter’s presence in Rome, whether of one year or twenty-five, cannot be of such fundamental importance as the papacy assumes it to be: otherwise we would certainly have some allusion to it in the New Testament. Moreover, if Peter was in Rome, so was Paul, and shared with him on equal terms the apostolic supervision of the Roman congregation, as is very evident from his Epistle to the Romans.

2. The transferability of Peter’s preëminence on a successor. This is derived by inference from the words of Christ: "Thou art Rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."315  This passage, recorded only by Matthew, is the exegetical rock of Romanism, and more frequently quoted by popes and papists than any other passage of the Scriptures. But admitting the obvious reference of petra to Peter, the significance of this prophetic name evidently refers to the peculiar mission of Peter in laying the foundation of the church once and for all time to come. He fulfilled it on the day of Pentecost and in the conversion of Cornelius; and in this pioneer work Peter can have no successor any more than St. Paul in the conversion of the Gentiles, and John in the consolidation of the two branches of the apostolic church.

3. The actual transfer of this prerogative of Peter—not upon the bishops of Jerusalem, or Antioch, where he undoubtedly resided—but upon the bishop of Rome, where he cannot be proven to have been from the New Testament. Of such a transfer history knows absolutely nothing. Clement, bishop of Rome, who first, about A.D. 95, makes mention of Peter’s martyrdom, and Ignatius of Antioch, who a few years later alludes to Peter and Paul as exhorting the Romans, have not a word to say about the transfer. The very chronology and succession of the first popes is uncertain.

If the claims of the papacy cannot be proven from what we know of the historical Peter, there are, on the other hand, several undoubted facts in the real history of Peter which bear heavily upon those claims, namely:

1. That Peter was married, Matt. 8:14, took his wife with him on his missionary tours, 1 Cor. 9:5, and, according to a possible interpretation of the "coëlect" (sister), mentions her in 1 Pet. 5:13. Patristic tradition ascribes to him children, or at least a daughter (Petronilla). His wife is said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome before him. What right have the popes, in view of this example, to forbid clerical marriage?  We pass by the equally striking contrast between the poverty of Peter, who had no silver nor gold (Acts 3:6) and the gorgeous display of the triple-crowned papacy in the middle ages and down to the recent collapse of the temporal power.

2. That in the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–11), Peter appears simply as the first speaker and debater, not as president and judge (James presided), and assumes no special prerogative, least of all an infallibility of judgment. According to the Vatican theory the whole question of circumcision ought to have been submitted to Peter rather than to a Council, and the decision ought to have gone out from him rather than from "the apostles and elders, brethren" (or "the elder brethren," 15:23).

3. That Peter was openly rebuked for inconsistency by a younger apostle at Antioch (Gal. 2:11–14). Peter’s conduct on that occasion is irreconcilable with his infallibility as to discipline; Paul’s conduct is irreconcilable with Peter’s alleged supremacy; and the whole scene, though perfectly plain, is so inconvenient to Roman and Romanizing views, that it has been variously distorted by patristic and Jesuit commentators, even into a theatrical farce gotten up by the apostles for the more effectual refutation of the Judaizers!

4. That, while the greatest of popes, from Leo I. down to Leo XIII. never cease to speak of their authority over all the bishops and all the churches, Peter, in his speeches in the Acts, never does so. And his Epistles, far from assuming any superiority over his "fellow-elders" and over "the clergy" (by which he means the Christian people), breathe the spirit of the sincerest humility and contain a prophetic warning against the besetting sins of the papacy, filthy avarice and lordly ambition (1 Pet. 5:1–3). Love of money and love of power are twin-sisters, and either of them is "a root of all evil."

It is certainly very significant that the weaknesses even more than the virtues of the natural Peter—his boldness and presumption, his dread of the cross, his love for secular glory, his carnal zeal, his use of the sword, his sleepiness in Gethsemane—are faithfully reproduced in the history of the papacy; while the addresses and epistles of the converted and inspired Peter contain the most emphatic protest against the hierarchical pretensions and worldly vices of the papacy, and enjoin truly evangelical principles—the general priesthood and royalty of believers, apostolic poverty before the rich temple, obedience to God rather than man, yet with proper regard for the civil authorities, honorable marriage, condemnation of mental reservation in Ananias and Sapphira, and of simony in Simon Magus, liberal appreciation of heathen piety in Cornelius, opposition to the yoke of legal bondage, salvation in no other name but that of Jesus Christ.

§ 27. James the Brother of the Lord.

JH pivsti" cwri;" e[rgwn nekrav ejstin.—James 2:26

Sources.

I. Genuine sources: Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12. Comp. James "the brother of the Lord," Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19.

The Epistle of James.

II. Post-apostolic: Josephus: Ant. XX. 9, 1.—Hegesippus in Euseb. Hist. Ecc. II. ch. 23.—Jerome: Catal. vir. ill. c. 2, under "Jacobus." Epiphanius, Haer. XXIX. 4; XXX. 16; LXXVIII. 13 sq.

III. Apocryphal: Protevangelium Jacobi, ed. in Greek by Tischendorf, in "Evangelia Apocrypha," pp. 1–49, comp. the Prolegg. pp. xii-xxv. James is honorably mentioned in several other apocryphal Gospels.—Epiphanius, Haer. XXX. 16, alludes to an Ebionite and strongly anti-Pauline book, the Ascents of James ( jAnabaqmoi;  jIakwvbou), descriptions of his ascension to heaven, which are lost.—The Liturgy of James, ed. by W. Trollope, Edinb. 1848. Composed in the third century, after the Council of Nicaea (as it contains the terms oJmoouvsio" and qeotovko"), but resting on some older traditions. It was intended for the church of Jerusalem, which is styled "the mother of all churches." It is still used once a year on the festival of St. James, Oct. 23, in the Greek Church at Jerusalem. (See vol. II. 527 sqq.)

Exegetical and Doctrinal.

Commentaries on the Epistle of James by Herder (1775), Storr (1784), Gebser (1828), Schneckenburger (1832), Theile (1833), Kern (1838), De Wette (1849, 3d ed. by Brückner, 1865), Cellerier (1850), Wiesinger (in Olshausen’s Com., 1854), Stier (1845), Huther and Beyschlag (in Meyer’s Com., 1858, 4th ed. 1882), Lange and Van Oosterzee (in Lange’s Bibelwerk, 1862, Engl. transl. enlarged by Mombert, 1867), Alford, Wordsworth, Bassett (1876, ascribes the Ep. to James of Zebedee), Plumptre (in the Cambridge series, 1878), Punchard (in Ellicott’s Com. 1878), Erdmann (1882), GLOAG (1883).

Woldemar G. Schmidt: Der Lehrgehalt des Jakobusbriefes. Leipzig, 1869.

W. Beyschlag: Der Jacobusbrief als urchristliches Geschichtsdenkmal. In the "Stud. u. Kritiken," 1874, No. 1, pp. 105–166. See his Com.

Comp. also the expositions of the doctrinal type of James in Neander, Schmid, Schaff, Weiss (pp. 176–194, third ed.).

Historical and Critical.

Blom: De toi'" ajdelqoi'" et tai'" ajdelfai'" Kurivou. Leyden, 1839. (I have not seen this tract, which advocates the brother-theory. Lightfoot says of it: "Blom gives the most satisfactory statement of the patristic authorities, and Schaff discusses the scriptural arguments most carefully.")

Schaff: Jakobus Alphäi, und Jakobus der Bruder des Herrn. Berlin, 1842 (101 pages).

Mill: The Accounts of our Lord’s Brethren in the New Test. vindicated. Cambridge, 1843. (Advocates the cousin-theory of the Latin church.)

Lightfoot: The Brethren of the Lord. Excursus in his Com. on Galatians. Lond. 2d ed. 1866, pp. 247–282. (The ablest defence of the step-brother-theory of the Greek Church.)

H. Holtzmann: Jakobus der Gerechte und seine Namensbrüder, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theol." Leipz. 1880, No. 2.

Next to Peter, who was the oecumenical leader of Jewish Christianity, stands James, the brother, of the Lord (also called by post-apostolic writers "James the Just," and "Bishop of Jerusalem"), as the local head of the oldest church and the leader of the most conservative portion of Jewish Christianity. He seems to have taken the place of James the son of Zebedee, after his martyrdom, A.D. 44. He became, with Peter and John, one of the three "pillars" of the church of the circumcision. And after the departure of Peter from Jerusalem James presided over the mother church of Christendom until his death. Though not one of the Twelve, he enjoyed, owing to his relationship to our Lord and his commanding piety, almost apostolic authority, especially in Judaea and among the Jewish converts.316  On one occasion even Peter yielded to his influence or that of his representatives, and was misled into his uncharitable conduct towards the Gentile brethren.317

James was not a believer before the resurrection of our Lord. He was the oldest of the four "brethren" (James, Joseph, Judas, Simon), of whom John reports with touching sadness: "Even his brethren did not believe in him."318  It was one of the early and constant trials of our Lord in the days of his nomination that he was without honor among his fellow-townsmen, yea, "among his own kin, and in his own house."319  James was no doubt imbued with the temporal and carnal Messianic misconceptions of the Jews, and impatient at the delay and unworldliness of his divine brother. Hence the taunting and almost disrespectful language: "Depart hence and go into Judaea .... If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world." The crucifixion could only deepen his doubt and sadness.

But a special personal appearance of the risen Lord brought about his conversion, as also that of his brothers, who after the resurrection appear in the company of the apostles.320  This turning-point in his life is briefly but significantly alluded to by Paul, who himself was converted by a personal appearance of Christ.321  It is more fully reported in an interesting fragment of the, "Gospel according to the Hebrews" (one of the oldest and least fabulous of the apocryphal Gospels), which shows the sincerity and earnestness of James even before his conversion.322  He had sworn, we are here told, "that he would not eat bread from that hour wherein the Lord had drunk the cup [of his passion]323 until he should see him rising from the dead." The Lord appeared to him and communed with him, giving bread to James the Just and saying: "My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from them that sleep."

In the Acts and in the Epistle to the Galatians, James appears as the most conservative of the Jewish converts, at the head of the extreme right wing; yet recognizing Paul as the apostle of the Gentiles, giving him the right hand of fellowship, as Paul himself reports, and unwilling to impose upon the Gentile Christians the yoke of circumcision. He must therefore not be identified with the heretical Judaizers (the forerunners of the Ebionites), who hated and opposed Paul, and made circumcision a condition of justification and church membership. He presided at the Council of Jerusalem and proposed the compromise which saved a split in the church. He probably prepared the synodical letter which agrees with his style and has the same greeting formula peculiar to him.324

He was an honest, conscientious, eminently practical, conciliatory Jewish Christian saint, the right man in the right place and at the right time, although contracted in his mental vision as in his local sphere of labor.

From an incidental remark of Paul we may infer that James, like Peter and the other brothers of the Lord, was married.325

The mission of James was evidently to stand in the breach between the synagogue and the church, and to lead the disciples of Moses gently to Christ. He was the only man that could do it in that critical time of the approaching judgment of the holy city. As long as there was any hope of a conversion of the Jews as a nation, he prayed for it and made the transition as easy as possible. When that hope vanished his mission was fulfilled.

According to Josephus he was, at the instigation of the younger Ananus, the high priest, of the sect of the Sadducees, whom he calls "the most unmerciful of all the Jews in the execution of judgment," stoned to death with some others, as "breakers of the law," i.e. Christians, in the interval between the procuratorship of Festus and that of Albinus, that is, in the year 63. The Jewish historian adds that this act of injustice created great indignation among those most devoted to the law (the Pharisees), and that they induced Albinus and King Agrippa to depose Ananus (a son of the Annas mentioned in Luke 3:2; John 18:13). He thus furnishes an impartial testimony to the high standing of James even among the Jews.326

Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian historian about A.D. 170, puts the martyrdom a few years later, shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem (69).327  He relates that James was first thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple by the Jews and then stoned to death. His last prayer was an echo of that of his brother and Lord on the cross: "God, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

The dramatic account of James by Hegesippus328 is an overdrawn picture from the middle of the second century, colored by Judaizing traits which may have been derived from the "Ascents of James" and other apocryphal sources. He turns James into a Jewish priest and Nazirite saint (comp. his advice to Paul, Acts 21:23, 24), who drank no wine, ate no flesh, never shaved, nor took a bath, and wore only linen. But the biblical James is Pharisaic and legalistic rather than Essenic and ascetic. In the pseudo-Clementine writings, he is raised even above Peter as the head of the holy church of the Hebrews, as "the lord and bishop of bishops," as "the prince of priests." According to tradition, mentioned by Epiphanius. James, like St. John at Ephesus, wore the high-priestly petalon, or golden plate on the forehead, with the inscription: "Holiness to the Lord" (Ex. 28:36). And in the Liturgy of St. James, the brother of Jesus is raised to the dignity of "the brother of the very God" (ajdelfovqeo"). Legends gather around the memory of great men, and reveal the deep impression they made upon their friends and followers. The character which shines through these James-legends is that of a loyal, zealous, devout, consistent Hebrew Christian, who by his personal purity and holiness secured the reverence and affection of all around him.

But we must carefully distinguish between the Jewish-Christian, yet orthodox, overestimate of James in the Eastern church, as we find it in the fragments of Hegesippus and in the Liturgy of St. James, and the heretical perversion of James into an enemy of Paul and the gospel of freedom, as he appears in apocryphal fictions. We have here the same phenomenon as in the case of Peter and Paul. Every leading apostle has his apocryphal shadow and caricature both in the primitive church and in the modern critical reconstruction of its history. The name and authority of James was abused by the Judaizing party in undermining the work of Paul, notwithstanding the fraternal agreement of the two at Jerusalem.329  The Ebionites in the second century continued this malignant assault upon the memory of Paul under cover of the honored names of James and Peter; while a certain class of modern critics (though usually from the opposite ultra- or pseudo-Pauline point of view) endeavor to prove the same antagonism from the Epistle of James (as far as they admit it to be genuine at all).330

The Epistle in our canon, which purports to be written by "James, a bond-servant of God and of Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes of the dispersion," though not generally acknowledged at the time of Eusebius and Jerome, has strong internal evidence of genuineness. It precisely suits the character and position of the historical James as we know him from Paul and the Acts, and differs widely from the apocryphal James of the Ebionite fictions.331  It hails undoubtedly from Jerusalem, the theocratic metropolis, amid the scenery of Palestine. The Christian communities appear not as churches, but as synagogues, consisting mostly of poor people, oppressed and persecuted by the rich and powerful Jews. There is no trace of Gentile Christians or of any controversy between them and the Jewish Christians. The Epistle was perhaps a companion to the original Gospel of Matthew for the Hebrews, as the first Epistle of John was such a companion to his Gospel. It is probably the oldest of the epistles of the New Testament.332  It represents, at all events, the earliest and meagerest, yet an eminently practical and necessary type of Christianity, with prophetic earnestness, proverbial sententiousness, great freshness, and in fine Greek. It is not dogmatic but ethical. It has a strong resemblance to the addresses of John the Baptist and the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, and also to the book of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon.333  It never attacks the Jews directly, but still less St. Paul, at least not his genuine doctrine. It characteristically calls the gospel the "perfect law of liberty,"334 thus connecting it very closely with the Mosaic dispensation, yet raising it by implication far above the imperfect law of bondage. The author has very little to say about Christ and the deeper mysteries of redemption, but evidently presupposes a knowledge of the gospel history, and reverently calls Christ "the Lord of glory," and himself humbly his "bond-servant."335  He represents religion throughout in its practical aspect as an exhibition of faith by good works. He undoubtedly differs widely from Paul, yet does not contradict, but supplements him, and fills an important place in the Christian system of truth which comprehends all types of genuine piety. There are multitudes of sincere, earnest, and faithful Christian workers who never rise above the level of James to the sublime heights of Paul or John. The Christian church would never have given to the Epistle of James a place in the canon if she had felt that it was irreconcilable with the doctrine of Paul. Even the Lutheran church did not follow her great leader in his unfavorable judgment, but still retains James among the canonical books.

After the martyrdom of James he was succeeded by Symeon, a son of Clopas and a cousin of Jesus (and of James). He continued to guide the church at Jerusalem till the reign of Trajan, when he died a martyr at the great age of a hundred and twenty years.336  The next thirteen bishops of Jerusalem, who came, however, in rapid succession, were likewise of Jewish descent.

Throughout this period the church of Jerusalem preserved its strongly Israelitish type, but joined with it "the genuine knowledge of Christ," and stood in communion with the Catholic church, from which the Ebionites, as heretical Jewish Christians, were excluded. After the line of the fifteen circumcised bishops had run out, and Jerusalem was a second time laid waste under Hadrian, the mass of the Jewish Christians gradually merged in the orthodox Greek Church.

Notes

I. James and the Brothers of the Lord. – There are three, perhaps four, eminent persons in the New Testament bearing the name of James (abridged from Jacob, which from patriarchal memories was a more common name among the Jews than any other except Symeon or Simon, and Joseph or Joses):

1. James (the son) of Zebedee, the brother of John and one of the three favorite apostles, the proto-martyr among the Twelve (beheaded A.D. 44, see Acts 12:2), as his brother John was the survivor of all the apostles. They were called the "sons of thunder."

2. James (the son) of Alphaeus, who was likewise one of the Twelve, and is mentioned in the four apostle-catalogues, Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:10; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13.

3. James the Little, Mark 15:40 (oJ mikrov", not, "the Less," as in the E. V.), probably so called from his small stature (as Zacchaeus, Luke 19:3), the son of a certain Mary and brother of Joseph, Matt. 27:56 (Maria hJ tou'  jIakwvbou kai;  jIwsh;f mhvthr ); Mark 15:40, 47; 16:1; Luke 24:10. He is usually identified with James the son of Alphaeus, on the assumption that his mother Mary was the wife of Clopas, mentioned John 19:25, and that Clopas was the same person as Alphaeus. But this identification is at least very problematical.

4. James, simply so called, as the most distinguished after the early death of James the Elder, or with the honorable epithet Brother of the Lord (oJ ajdelfo;" tou' Kurivou), and among post-apostolic writers, the Just, also Bishop of Jerusalem. The title connects him at once with the four brothers and the unnamed sisters of our Lord, who are repeatedly mentioned in the Gospels, and he as the first among them. Hence the complicated question of the nature of this relationship. Although I have fully discussed this intricate subject nearly forty years ago (1842) in the German essay above mentioned, and then again in my annotations to Lange on Matthew (Am. ed. 1864, pp. 256–260), I will briefly sum up once more the chief points with reference to the most recent discussions (of Lightfoot and Renan).

There are three theories on James and the brothers of Jesus. I would call them the brother-theory, the half-brother-theory, and the cousin-theory. Bishop Lightfoot (and Canon Farrar) calls them after their chief advocates, the Helvidian (an invidious designation), the Epiphanian, and the Hieronymian theories. The first is now confined to Protestants, the second is the Greek, the third the Roman view.

(1) The brother-theory takes the term ajdelfoiv the usual sense, and regards the brothers as younger children of Joseph and Mary, consequently as full brothers of Jesus in the eyes of the law and the opinion of the people, though really only half-brothers, in view of his supernatural conception. This is exegetically the most natural view and favored by the meaning of ajdelfov" (especially when used as a standing designation), the constant companionship of these brethren with Mary (John 2:12; Matt. 12:46; 13:55), and by the obvious meaning of Matt. 1:25 (oujk ejgivnwsken aujth;n eJw" ou},  comp. 1:18 privn h] sunelqei'n aujtouv") and Luke 2:7 (prwtovtoko"), as explained from the standpoint of the evangelists, who used these terms in full view of the subsequent history of Mary and Jesus. The only serious objection to it is of a doctrinal and ethical nature, viz., the assumed perpetual virginity of the mother of our Lord and Saviour, and the committal of her at the cross to John rather than her own sons and daughters (John 19:25). If it were not for these two obstacles the brother-theory would probably be adopted by every fair and honest exegete. The first of these objections dates from the post-apostolic ascetic overestimate of virginity, and cannot have been felt by Matthew and Luke, else they would have avoided those ambiguous terms just noticed. The second difficulty presses also on the other two theories, only in a less degree. It must therefore be solved on other grounds, namely, the profound spiritual sympathy and congeniality of John with Jesus and Mary, which rose above carnal relationships, the probable cousinship of John (based upon the proper interpretation of the same passage, John 19:25), and the unbelief of the real brethren at the time of the committal.

This theory was held by Tertullian (whom Jerome summarily disposes of as not being a, "homo ecclesiae," i.e. a schismatic), defended by Helvidius at Rome about 380 (violently attacked as a heretic by Jerome), and by several individuals and sects opposed to the incipient worship of the Virgin Mary; and recently by the majority of German Protestant exegetes since Herder, such as Stier, De Wette, Meyer, Weiss, Ewald, Wieseler, Keim, also by Dean Alford, and Canon Farrar (Life of Christ, I. 97 sq.). I advocated the same theory in my German tract, but admitted afterwards in my Hist. of Ap. Ch., p. 378, that I did not give sufficient weight to the second theory.

(2) The half-brother-theory regards the brethren and sisters of Jesus as children of Joseph by a former wife, consequently as no blood-relations at all, but so designated simply as Joseph was called the father of Jesus, by an exceptional use of the term adapted to the exceptional fact of the miraculous incarnation. This has the dogmatic advantage of saving the perpetual virginity of the mother of our Lord and Saviour; it lessens the moral difficulty implied in John 19:25; and it has a strong traditional support in the apocryphal Gospels and in the Eastern church. It also would seem to explain more easily the patronizing tone in which the brethren speak to our Lord in John 7:3, 4. But it does not so naturally account for the constant companionship of these brethren with Mary; it assumes a former marriage of Joseph nowhere alluded to in the Gospels, and makes Joseph an old man and protector rather than husband of Mary; and finally it is not free from suspicion of an ascetic bias, as being the first step towards the dogma of the perpetual virginity. To these objections may be added, with Farrar, that if the brethren had been elder sons of Joseph, Jesus would not have been regarded as legal heir of the throne of David (Matt. 1:16; Luke 1:27; Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8; Rev. 22:16).

This theory is found first in the apocryphal writings of James (the Protevangelium Jacobi, the Ascents of James, etc.), and then among the leading Greek fathers (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria); it is embodied in the Greek, Syrian, and Coptic services, which assign different dates to the commemoration of James the son of Alphaeus (Oct. 9), and of James the Lord’s brother (Oct. 23). It may therefore be called the theory of the Eastern church. It was also held by some Latin fathers before Jerome (Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose), and has recently been ably advocated by Bishop Lightfoot (l.c.), followed by Dr. Plumptre (in the introduction to his Com. on the Ep. of James).

(3) The cousin-theory regards the brethren as more distant relatives, namely, as children of Mary, the wife of Alphaeus and sister of the Virgin Mary, and identifies James, the brother of the Lord, with James the son of Alphaeus and James the Little, thus making him (as well as also Simon and Jude) an apostle. The exceptive eij mhv, Gal. 1:19 (but I saw only James), does not prove this, but rather excludes James from the apostles proper (comp. eij mhv in Gal. 2:16; Luke 4:26, 27).

This theory was first advanced by Jerome in 383, in a youthful polemic tract against Helvidius, without any traditional support,337 but with the professed dogmatic and ascetic aim to save the virginity of both Mary and Joseph, and to reduce their marriage relation to a merely nominal and barren connection. In his later writings, however, after his residence in Palestine, he treats the question with less confidence (see Lightfoot, p. 253). By his authority and the still greater weight of St. Augustin, who at first (394) wavered between the second and third theories, but afterwards adopted that of Jerome, it became the established theory of the Latin church and was embodied in the Western services, which acknowledge only two saints by the name of James. But it is the least tenable of all and must be abandoned, chiefly for the following reasons:

(a) It contradicts the natural meaning of the word "brother," when the New Testament has the proper term for cousin Col. 4:10, comp. also suggenhv" Luke 2:44; 21:16; Mark 6:4, etc.), and the obvious sense of the passages where the brothers and sisters of Jesus appear as members of the holy family.

(b) It assumes that two sisters had the same name, Mary, which is extremely improbable.

(c) It assumes the identity of Clopas and Alphaeus, which is equally doubtful; for jAlfai'o" is a Hebrew name (jlpy), while Klwpa'", like Kleovpa", Luke 24:18, is an abbreviation of the Greek Kleovpatro", as Antipas is contracted from Antipatros.(d) It is absolutely irreconcilable with the fact that the brethren of Jesus, James among them, were before the resurrection unbelievers, John 7:5, and consequently none of them could have been an apostle, as this theory assumes of two or three.

Renan’s theory.—I notice, in conclusion, an original combination of the second and third theories by Renan, who discusses the question of the brothers and cousins of Jesus in an appendix to his Les évangiles, 537–540. He assumes four Jameses, and distinguishes the son of Alphaeus from the son of Clopas. He holds that Joseph was twice married, and that Jesus had several older brothers and cousins as follows:

1. Children of Joseph from the first marriage, and older brothers of Jesus:

a. James, the brother of the Lord, or Just, or Obliam. his is the one mentioned Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12; 1 Cor. 15:7; Acts 12:17, etc.; James 1:1 Jude 1:1, and in Josephus and Hegesippus.

b. Jude, mentioned Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; Jude 1:1; Hegesippus in Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl. III. 19, 20, 32. From him were descended those two grandsons, bishops of different churches, who were presented to the emperor Domitian as descendants of David and relations of Jesus. Hegesippus in Euseb. III. 19, 20, 32

c. Other sons and daughters unknown. Matt. 13:56; Mark 6:3; 1 Cor. 9:5.

2. Children of Joseph (?) from the marriage with Mary:

Jesus.

3. Children of Clopas, and cousins of Jesus, probably from the father’s side, since Clopas, according to Hegesippus, was a brother of Joseph, and may have married also a woman by the name of Mary (John 19:25).

a. James the Little (oJ mikrov"), so called to distinguish him from his older cousin of that name. Mentioned Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40; 16:1; Luke 24:10; otherwise unknown.

b. Joses, Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40, 47, but erroneously (?) numbered among the brothers of Jesus: Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3; otherwise unknown.

c. Symeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem (Hegesippus in Eus. III. 11, 22, 32; IV. 5, 22), also erroneously (?) put among the brothers of Jesus by Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3.

d. Perhaps other sons and daughters unknown.

II. The description of James by Hegesippus (from Eusebius, H. E. II. 23)." Hegesippus also, who flourished nearest the days of the apostles, gives (in the fifth book of his Memorials) this most accurate account of him:

" ’Now James, the brother of the Lord, who (as there are many of this name) was surnamed the Just by all (oJ ajdelfov" tou' Kurivou  jIavkwbo" oJ ojnomasqei;" uJpo; pavntwn divkaio"), from the Lord’s time even to our own, received the government of the church with (or from) the apostles [metav, in conjunction with, or according to another reading, para; tw'n ajpostovlwn, which would more clearly distinguish him from the apostles]. This man [ou|to" not this apostle] was consecrated from his mother’s womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, and abstained from animal food. No razor came upon his head, he never anointed himself with oil, and never used a bath [probably the luxury of the Roman bath, with its sudatorium, frigidarium, etc., but not excluding the usual ablutions practised by all devout Jews]. He alone was allowed to enter the sanctuary [not the holy of holies, but the court of priests]. He wore no woolen, but linen garments only. He was in the habit of entering the temple alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding for the forgiveness of the people; so that his knees became as hard as a camel’s, on account of his constant supplication and kneeling before God. And indeed, on account of his exceeding great piety, he was called the Just [Zaddik] and Oblias [divkaio" kai; wjbliva", probably a corruption of the Hebrew Ophel am, Tower of the People], which signifies justice and the bulwark of the people (perioch; tou' laou'); as the prophets declare concerning him. Some of the seven sects of the people, mentioned by me above in my Memoirs, used to ask him what was the door, [probably the estimate or doctrine] of Jesus? and he answered that he was the Saviour. And of these some believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the aforesaid sects did not believe either a resurrection, or that he was coming to give to every one according to his works; as many, however, as did believe, did so on account of James. And when many of the rulers also believed, there arose a tumult among the Jews, Scribes, and Pharisees, saying that the whole people were in danger of looking for Jesus as the Messiah. They came therefore together, and said to James: We entreat thee, restrain the people, who are led astray after Jesus, as though he were the Christ. We entreat thee to persuade all that are coming to the feast of the Passover rightly concerning Jesus; for we all have confidence in thee. For we and all the people bear thee testimony that thou art just, and art no respecter of persons. Persuade therefore the people not to be led astray by Jesus, for we and all the people have great confidence in thee. Stand therefore upon the pinnacle of the temple, that thou mayest be conspicuous on high, and thy words may be easily heard by all the people; for all the tribes have come together on account of the Passover, with some of the Gentiles also. The aforesaid Scribes and Pharisees, therefore, placed James upon the pinnacle of the temple, and cried out to him: "O thou just man, whom we ought all to believe, since the people are led astray after Jesus that was crucified, declare to us what is the door of Jesus that was crucified." And he answered with a loud voice: "Why do ye ask me respecting Jesus the Son of Man?  He is now sitting in the heavens, on the right hand of the great Power, and is about to come on the clouds of heaven." And as many were confirmed, and gloried in this testimony of James, and said:, "Hosanna to the Son of David," these same priests and Pharisees said to one another: "We have done badly in affording such testimony to Jesus, but let us go up and cast him down, that they may dread to believe in him." And they cried out: "Ho, ho, the Just himself is deceived." And they fulfilled that which is written in Isaiah, "Let us take away the Just, because he is offensive to us; wherefore they shall eat the fruit of their doings." [Comp. Is. 3:10.]

And going up, they cast down the just man, saying to one another: "Let us stone James the Just." And they began to stone him, as he did not die immediately when cast down; but turning round, he knelt down, saying:, I entreat thee, O Lord God and Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Thus they were stoning him, when one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, a son of the Rechabites, spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet (Jer. 35:2), cried out, saying: "Cease, what are you doing?  The Just is praying for you." And one of them, a fuller, beat out the brains of the Just with the club that he used to beat out clothes. Thus he suffered martyrdom, and they buried him on the spot where his tombstone is still remaining, by the temple. He became a faithful witness, both to the Jews and Greeks, that Jesus is the Christ. Immediately after this, Vespasian invaded and took Judaea.’ "

"Such," adds Eusebius, "is the more ample testimony of Hegesippus, in which he fully coincides with Clement. So admirable a man indeed was James, and so celebrated among all for his justice, that even the wiser part of the Jews were of opinion that this was the cause of the immediate siege of Jerusalem, which happened to them for no other reason than the crime against him. Josephus also has not hesitated to superadd this testimony in his works: ’These things,’ says he, ’happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his preeminent justice.’ The same writer also relates his death, in the twentieth book of his Antiquities, in the following words,’ " etc.

Then Eusebius gives the account of Josephus.

§ 28. Preparation for the Mission to the Gentiles.

The planting of the church among the Gentiles is mainly the work of Paul; but Providence prepared the way for it by several steps, before this apostle entered upon his sublime mission.

1. By the conversion of those half-Gentiles and bitter enemies of the Jews, the Samaritans, under the preaching and baptism of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven deacons of Jerusalem, and under the confirming instruction of the apostles Peter and John. The gospel found ready entrance into Samaria, as had been prophetically hinted by the Lord in the conversation at Jacob’s well.338  But there we meet also the first heretical perversion of Christianity by Simon Magus, whose hypocrisy and attempt to degrade the gift of the Holy Spirit received from Peter a terrible rebuke. (Hence the term simony, for sordid traffic in church offices and dignities.)  This encounter of the prince of the apostles with the arch-heretic was regarded in the ancient church, and fancifully represented, as typifying the relation of ecclesiastical orthodoxy to deceptive heresy.

2. Somewhat later (between 37 and 40) occurred the conversion of the noble centurion, Cornelius of Caesarea, a pious proselyte of the gate, whom Peter, in consequence of a special revelation, received into the communion of the Christian church directly by baptism, without circumcision. This bold step the apostle had to vindicate to the strict Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, who thought circumcision a condition of salvation, and Judaism the only way to Christianity. Thus Peter laid the foundation also of the Gentile-Christian church. The event marked a revolution in Peter’s mind, and his emancipation from the narrow prejudices of Judaism.339

3. Still more important was the rise, at about the same time, of the church at Antioch the capital of Syria. This congregation formed under the influence of the Hellenist Barnabas of Cyprus and Paul of Tarsus, seems to have consisted from the first of converted heathens and Jews. It thus became the mother of Gentile Christendom, as Jerusalem was the mother and centre of Jewish. In Antioch, too, the name "Christian" first appeared, which was soon everywhere adopted, as well denoting the nature and mission as the followers of Christ, the divine-human prophet, priest, and king.340

The other and older designations were disciples (of Christ the only Master), believers (in Christ as their Saviour), brethren (as members of the same family of the redeemed, bound together by a love which springs not from earth and will never cease), and saints (as those who are purified and consecrated to the service of God and called to perfect holiness).

CHAPTER V.

ST. PAUL AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GENTILES.

cavriti qeou' eivmi; o{ eijmi, kai; hJ cavri" auvtou' hJ eij" ejme; ouj kenh; ejgenhvqÀh, ajlla; perissovteron aujtw'n pavntwn ejkopivasa, ojuk ejgw; de;, ajlla; hJ cavri" tou' qeou' su;n ejmoiv.—1 Cor. 15:10.

Cristo;"  jIhsou'" h\lqen eij" to;n kovsmon aJmartwlou;" sw'sai, w}n prw'tov" eijmi ejgwv.—1 Tim. 1:15.

"Paul’s mind was naturally and perfectly adapted to take up into itself and to develop the free, universal, and absolute principle of Christianity."—Dr. Baur (Paul, II. 281, English translation).

"Did St. Paul’s life end with his own life?  May we not rather believe that in a sense higher than Chrysostom ever dreamt of [when he gave him the glorious name of ’the Heart of the world’], the pulses of that mighty heart are still the pulses of the world’s life, still beat in these later ages with even greater force than ever?"—Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age. p. 166).

§ 29. Sources and Literature on St. Paul and his Work.

I. Sources.

1. The authentic sources:

The Epistles of Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles 9:1–30 and 13 to 28. Of the Epistles of Paul the four most important Galatians, Romans, two Corinthians—are universally acknowledged as genuine even by the most exacting critics; the Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians are admitted by nearly all critics; the Pastoral Epistles, especially First Timothy, and Titus, are more or less disputed, but even they bear the stamp of Paul’s genius.

On the coincidences between the Acts and the Epistles see the section on the Acts. Comp. also § 22, pp. 213 sqq.

2. The legendary and apocryphal sources:

Acta Pauli et Theclae, edition in Greek by E. Grabe (from a Bodleian MS. in Spicileg. SS. PP., Oxon. 1698, tom. I. pp. 95–128; republished by Jones, 1726), and by Tischendorf (from three Paris MSS, in Acta Apost. Apocrypha, Lips. 1851); in Syriac, with an English version by W. Wright (in Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, Lond. 1871); Engl. transl. by Alex. Walker (in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," vol. XVI. 279 sqq.). Comp. C. Schlau: Die Acten des Paulus und der Thecla und die ältere Thecla-Legende, Leipz. 1877.

The Acts of Paul and Thecla strongly advocate celibacy. They are probably of Gnostic origin and based on some local tradition. They were originally written, according to Tertullian (De Bapt. cap. 17, comp. Jerome, Catal. cap. 7), by a presbyter in Asia "out of love to Paul," and in support of the heretical opinion that women have the right to preach and to baptize after the example of Thecla; hence the author was deposed. The book was afterwards purged of its most obnoxious features and extensively used in the Catholic church. (See the patristic quotations in Tischendorf’s Prolegomena, p. xxiv.) Thecla is represented as a noble virgin of Iconium, in Lycaonia, who was betrothed to Thamyris, converted by Paul in her seventeenth year, consecrated herself to perpetual virginity, was persecuted, carried to the stake, and thrown before wild beasts, but miraculously delivered, and died 90 years old at Seleucia. In the Greek church she is celebrated as the first female martyr. Paul is described at the beginning of this book (Tischend. p. 41) as "little in stature, bald-headed, bow-legged, well-built (or vigorous), with knitted eye-brows, rather long-nosed, full of grace, appearing now as a man, and now having the face of an angel." From this description Renan has borrowed in part his fancy-sketch of Paul’s personal appearance.

Acta Pauli (Pravxei" Pauvlou¼, used by Origen and ranked by Eusebiu" with the Antilegomena »or novqa rather). They are, like the Acta Petri (Pravxei", or Perivodoi Pevtrou), a Gnostic reconstruction of the canonical Acts and ascribed to the authorship of St. Linus. Preserved only in fragments.

Acta Petri et Pauli. A Catholic adaptation of an Ebionite work. The Greek and Latin text was published first in a complete form by Thilo, Halle, 1837-’38, the Greek by Tischendorf (who collated six MSS.) in his Acta Apost. Apoc. 1851, 1–39; English transl. by Walker in "Ante-Nicene Libr., " XVI. 256 sqq. This book records the arrival of Paul in Rome, his meeting with Peter and Simon Magus, their trial before the tribunal of Nero, and the martyrdom of Peter by crucifixion, and of Paul by decapitation. The legend of Domine quo vadis is here recorded of Peter, and the story of Perpetua is interwoven with the martyrdom of Paul.

The pseudo-Clementine Homilies, of the middle of the second century or later, give a malignant Judaizing caricature of Paul under the disguise of Simon Magus (in part at least), and misrepresent him as an antinomian arch-heretic; while Peter, the proper hero of this romance, is glorified as the apostle of pure, primitive Christianity.

The Correspondence of Paul and Seneca, mentioned by Jerome (De vir. ill. c. 12) and Augustin (Ep. ad Maced. 153, al. 54), and often copied, though with many variations, edited by Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., and in several editions of Seneca. It consists of eight letters of Seneca and six of Paul. They are very poor in thought and style, full of errors of chronology and history, and undoubtedly a forgery. They arose from the correspondence of the moral maxims of Seneca with those of Paul, which is more apparent than real, and from the desire to recommend the Stoic philosopher to the esteem of the Christians, or to recommend Christianity to the students of Seneca and the Stoic philosophy. Paul was protected at Corinth by Seneca’s brother, Gallio (Acts 18:12–16), and might have become acquainted with the philosopher who committed suicide at Rome in 65, but there is no trace of such acquaintance. Comp. Amédée Fleury: Saint-Paul et Sénèque (Paris, 1853, 2 vols.); C. Aubertin: Étude critique sur les rapports supposé entre Sénèque et Saint-Paul (Par. 1887); F. C. Baur: Seneca und Paulus, 1858 and 1876; Reuss: art. Seneca in Herzog, vol. XIV. 273 sqq.; Lightfoot: Excursus in Com. on Philippians, pp 268–331; art. Paul and Seneca, in "Westminster Review," Lond. 1880, pp. 309 sqq.

II. Biographical and Critical.

Bishop Pearson (d. 1686): Annales Paulini. Lond. 1688. In the various editions of his works, and also separately: Annals of St. Paul, transl. with geographical and critical notes. Cambridge, 1825.

Lord Lyttleton (d. 1773): The Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul. 3d ed. Lond. 1747. Apologetic as an argument for the truth of Christianity from the personal experience of the author.

Archdeacon William Paley (d. 1805): Horae Paulinae: or The Truth of the Scripture History of Paul evinced by a comparison of the Epistles which bear his name, with the Acts of the Apostles and with one another. Lond. 1790 (and subsequent editions). Still valuable for apologetic purposes.

J. Hemsen: Der Apostel Paulus. Gött. 1830.

Carl Schrader: Der Apostel Paulus. Leipz. 1830-’36. 5 Parts. Rationalistic.

F. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi. Tüb. 1845, second ed. by E. Zeller, Leipzig, 1866-’67, in 2 vols. Transl. into English by Allan Menzies. Lond. (Williams & Norgate) 1873 and ’75, 2 vols. This work of the great leader of the philosophico-critical reconstruction of the Apostolic Age (we may call him the modern Marcion) was preceded by several special treatises on the Christ-Party in Corinth (1831), on the Pastoral Epistles (1835), on the Epistle to the Romans (1836), and a Latin programme on Stephen’s address before the Sanhedrin (1829). It marks an epoch in the literature on Paul and opened new avenues of research. It is the standard work of the Tübingen school of critics.

Conybeare and Howson: The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. Lond. 1853, 2 vols., and N. York, 1854; 2d ed. Lond. 1856, and later editions; also an abridgment in one vol. A very useful and popular work, especially on the geography of Paul’s travels. Comp. also Dean Howson: Character of St. Paul (Lond. 1862; 2d ed. 1864); Scenes from the Life of St. Paul (1867); Metaphors of St. Paul (1868); The Companions of St. Paul (1871). Most of these books were republished in America.

Ad. Monod (d. 1856): Saint Paul. Six sermons. See his Sermons, Paris, 1860, vol. II. 121–296. The same in German and English.

W. F. Besser: Paulus. Leipz. 1861. English transl. by F. Bultmann, with Introduction by J. S. Howson. Lond. and N. York, 1864.

F. Bungener: St. Paul, sa vie, son oeuvre et ses épitres. Paris, 1865.

A. Hausrath: Der Apostel Paulus. Heidelb. 1865; 2d ed. 1872. Comp. also his N. T. liche Zeitgeschichte, Part III.

M. Krenkel: Paulus, der Apostel der Heiden. Leipz. 1869.

Ernest Renan: Saint Paul. Paris, 1869. Transl. from the French by J. Lockwood, N. York, 1869. Very fresh and entertaining, but full ,of fancies and errors.

Thomas Lewin (author of "Fasti Sacri") The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, new ed. Lond. and N. York, 1875, 2 vols. A magnificent work of many years’ labor, with 370 illustrations.

Canon F. W. Farrar: The Life and Work of St. Paul. Lond. and N. York, 1879, 2 vols. Learned and eloquent.

W. M. Taylor: Paul as a Missionary. N. York, 1881.

As biographies, the works of Conybeare and Howson, Lewin, and Farrar are the most complete and instructive.

Also the respective sections in the Histories of the Ap. Age by Neander, Lechler, Thiersch, Lange, Schaff (226–347 and 634–640), Pressensé.

III. Chronological.

Thomas Lewin: Fasti Sacri, a Key to the Chronology of the New Testament.  London, 1865. Chronological Tables from b.c. 70 to A.D. 70.

Wieseler: Chronologie des apostolischen Zeitalters. Göttingen, 1848.

IV. Doctrinal and Exegetical.

L. Usteri: Entwicklung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. Zürich, 1824, 6th ed. 1851.

A. P. Dähne: Entwicklung des Paulinischen Lehrbegriffs. Halle, 1835.

Baur: Paulus. See above.

R. A. Lipsius: Die Paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre. Leipz. 1853.

C. Holsten: Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus. Rostock, 1868. This book, contains: 1. An essay on the Christusvision des Paulus und die Genesis des paulinischen Evangeliums, which had previously appeared in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift," 1861, but is here enlarged by a reply to Beyschlag; 2. Die Messiasvision des Petrus (new); 3. An analysis of the Epistle to the Galatians (1859); 4. A discussion of the meaning of savrx in Paul’s system (1855). By the same: Das Evangelium des Paulus. Part I. Berlin, 1880.

TH. Simar (R. C.): Die Theologie des heil. Paulus. Freiberg, 1864.

Ernesti: Die Ethik des Ap. Paulus. Braunschweig, 1868; 3d ed. 1880.

R. Schmidt: Die Christologie des Ap. Paulus. Gött., 1870.

Matthew Arnold: St. Paul and Protestantism. Lond. 1870; 3d ed. 1875.

William I. Irons (Episcop.): Christianity as taught by St. Paul. Eight Bampton Lectures for 1870. Oxf. and Lond. 1871; 2d ed. 1876.

A. Sabatier: L’apôtre Paul. Esquisse d’une histoire de sa pensée. Strasb. and Paris, 1870.

Otto Pfleiderer (Prof. in Berlin): Der Paulinismus. Leipzig, 1873. Follows Baur and Holsten in developing the doctrinal system of Paul from his conversion. English translation by E. Peters. Lond. 1877, 2 vols. Lectures on the Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity (The Hibbert Lectures). Trsl. by J. Fr. Smith. Lond. and N. Y. 1885. Also his Urchristenthum, 1887.

C. Weizsäcker: D. Apost. Zeitalter (1886), pp. 68–355.

Fr. Bethge: Die Paulinischen Reden der Apostelgesch. Göttingen, 1887.

V. Commentaries.

The Commentators on Paul’s Epistles (in whole or in part) are so numerous that we can only mention some of the most important:

1. On all the Pauline Epp.: Calvin, Beza, Estius (b.c.), Corn. A Lapide (R. C.), Grotius, Wetstein, Bengel, Olshausen, De Wette, Meyer, Lange (Am. ed. enlarged), Ewald, Von Hofmann, Reuss (French), Alford, Wordsworth, Speaker’s Com., Ellicott (Pop. Com.), Schaff (Pop. Com., vol. III. 1882). Compare also P. J. Gloag: Introduction to the Pauline Epistles. Edinburgh, 1874.

2. On single Epp.: Romans by Tholuck (5th ed. 1856), Fritzsche (3 vols. in Latin), Reiche, Rückert, Philippi (3d ed. 1866, English transl. by Banks, 1878-’79, 2 vols.), Mos. Stuart, Turner, Hodge, Forbes, Jowett, Shedd (1879), Godet (L’épitre aux Romains, 1879 and 1880, 2 vols).—Corinthians by Neander, Osiander, Hodge, Stanley, Heinrici, Edwards, Godet, Ellicott.—Galatians by Luther, Winer, Wieseler, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, Jowett, Eadie, Ellicott, Lightfoot.—Ephesians by Harless, Matthies, Stier, Hodge, Eadie, Ellicott, J. L. Davies.—Other minor Epp. explained by Bleek (Col., Philemon, and Eph.), Koch (Thess.), van Hengel (Phil.), Eadie (Col.), Ellicott (Phil., Col., Thess., Philem.), Lightfoot (Phil, Col., Philemon).—Pastoral Epp. by Matthies, Mack (R. C.), Beck (ed. Lindenmeyer, 1879), Holtzmann (1880), Fairbairn, Ellicott, Weiss (1886), Knoke (1887), Kölling (1887).

3. The Commentaries on the second part of Acts by De Wette, Meyer, Baumgarten, Alexander, Hackett, Lechler, Gloag, Plumptre, Jacobson, Lumby, Howson and Spence.

§ 30. Paul before his Conversion.

His Natural Outfit.

We now approach the apostle of the Gentiles who decided the victory of Christianity as a universal religion, who labored more, both in word and deed, than all his colleagues, and who stands out, in lonely grandeur, the most remarkable and influential character in history. His youth as well as his closing years are involved in obscurity, save that he began a persecutor and ended a martyr, but the midday of his life is better known than that of any other apostle, and is replete with burning thoughts and noble deeds that can never die, and gather strength with the progress of the gospel from age to age and country to country.

Saul or Paul341 was of strictly Jewish parentage, but was born, a few years after Christ,342 in the renowned Grecian commercial and literary city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, and inherited the rights of a Roman citizen. He received a learned Jewish education at Jerusalem in the school of the Pharisean Rabbi, Gamaliel, a grandson of Hillel, not remaining an entire stranger to Greek literature, as his style, his dialectic method, his allusions to heathen religion and philosophy, and his occasional quotations from heathen poets show. Thus, a "Hebrew of the Hebrews,"343 yet at the same time a native Hellenist, and a Roman citizen, be combined in himself, so to speak, the three great nationalities of the ancient world, and was endowed with all the natural qualifications for a universal apostleship. He could argue with the Pharisees as a son of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, and as a disciple of the renowned Gamaliel, surnamed "the Glory of the Law." He could address the Greeks in their own beautiful tongue and with the convincing force of their logic. Clothed with the dignity and majesty of the Roman people, he could travel safely over the whole empire with the proud watchword: Civis Romanus sum.

This providential outfit for his future work made him for a while the most dangerous enemy of Christianity, but after his conversion its most useful promoter. The weapons of destruction were turned into weapons of construction. The engine was reversed, and the direction changed; but it remained the same engine, and its power was increased under the new inspiration.

The intellectual and moral endowment of Saul was of the highest order. The sharpest thinking was blended with the tenderest feeling, the deepest mind with the strongest will. He had Semitic fervor, Greek versatility, and Roman energy. Whatever he was, he was with his whole soul. He was totus in illis, a man of one idea and of one purpose, first as a Jew, then as a Christian. His nature was martial and heroic. Fear was unknown to him—except the fear of God, which made him fearless of man. When yet a youth, he had risen to high eminence; and had he remained a Jew, he might have become a greater Rabbi than even Hillel or Gamaliel, as he surpassed them both in original genius and fertility of thought.

Paul was the only scholar among the apostles. He never displays his learning, considering it of no account as compared with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, for whom he suffered the loss of all things,344 but he could not conceal it, and turned it to the best use after his conversion. Peter and John had natural genius, but no scholastic education; Paul had both, and thus became the founder of Christian theology and philosophy.

His Education.

His training was thoroughly Jewish, rooted and grounded in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant, and those traditions of the elders which culminated in the Talmud.345  He knew the Hebrew and Greek Bible almost by heart. In his argumentative epistles, when addressing Jewish converts, he quotes from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Psalms, now literally, now freely, sometimes ingeniously combining several passages or verbal reminiscences, or reading between the lines in a manner which betrays the profound student and master of the hidden depths of the word of God, and throws a flood of light on obscure passages.346  He was quite familiar with the typical and allegorical methods of interpretation; and he occasionally and incidentally uses Scriptural arguments, or illustrations rather, which strike a sober scholar as far-fetched and fanciful, though they were quite conclusive to a Jewish reader.347  But he never bases a truth on such an illustration without an independent argument; he never indulges in the exegetical impositions and frivolities of those "letter-worshipping Rabbis who prided themselves on suspending dogmatic mountains by textual hairs." Through the revelation of Christ, the Old Testament, instead of losing itself in the desert of the Talmud or the labyrinth of the Kabbala, became to him a book of life, full of types and promises of the great facts and truths of the gospel salvation. In Abraham he saw the father of the faithful, in Habakkuk a preacher of justification by faith, in the paschal lamb a type of Christ slain for the sins of the world, in the passage of Israel through the Red Sea a prefigurement of Christian baptism, and in the manna of the wilderness a type of the bread of life in the Lord’s Supper.

The Hellenic culture of Paul is a matter of dispute, denied by some, unduly exalted by others. He no doubt acquired in the home of his boyhood and early manhood348 a knowledge of the Greek language, for Tarsus was at that time the seat of one of the three universities of the Roman empire, surpassing in some respects even Athens and Alexandria, and furnished tutors to the imperial family. His teacher, Gamaliel, was comparatively free from the rabbinical abhorrence and contempt of heathen literature. After his conversion he devoted his life to the salvation of the heathen, and lived for years at Tarsus, Ephesus, Corinth, and other cities of Greece, and became a Greek to the Greeks in order to save them. It is scarcely conceivable that a man of universal human sympathies, and so wide awake to the deepest problems of thought, as he, should have under such circumstances taken no notice of the vast treasures of Greek philosophy, poetry, and history. He would certainly do what we expect every missionary to China or India to do from love to the race which he is to benefit, and from a desire to extend his usefulness. Paul very aptly, though only incidentally, quotes three times from Greek poets, not only a proverbial maxim from Menander,349 and a hexameter from Epimenides,350 which may have passed into common use, but also a half-hexameter with a connecting particle, which he must have read in the tedious astronomical poem of his countryman, Aratus (about b.c. 270), or in the sublime hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, in both of which the passage occurs.351  He borrows some of his favorite metaphors from the Grecian games; he disputed with Greek philosophers of different schools and addressed them from the Areopagus with consummate wisdom and adaptation to the situation; some suppose that he alludes even to the terminology of the Stoic philosophy when he speaks of the "rudiments" or "elements of the world."352  He handles the Greek language, not indeed with classical purity and elegance, yet with an almost creative vigor, transforming it into an obedient organ of new ideas, and pressing into his service the oxymoron, the paronomasia, the litotes, and other rhetorical figures.353  Yet all this does by no means prove a regular study or extensive knowledge of Greek literature, but is due in part to native genius. His more than Attic urbanity and gentlemanly refinement which breathe in his Epistles to Philemon and the Philippians, must be traced to the influence of Christianity rather than his intercourse with accomplished Greeks. His Hellenic learning seems to have been only casual, incidental, and altogether subordinate to his great aim. In this respect he differed widely from the learned Josephus, who affected Attic purity of style, and from Philo, who allowed the revealed truth of the Mosaic religion to be controlled, obscured, and perverted by Hellenic philosophy. Philo idealized and explained away the Old Testament by allegorical impositions which he substituted for grammatical expositions; Paul spiritualized the Old Testament and drew out its deepest meaning. Philo’s Judaism evaporated in speculative abstractions, Paul’s Judaism was elevated and transformed into Christian realities.

His Zeal for Judaism.

Saul was a Pharisee of the strictest sect, not indeed of the hypocritical type, so witheringly rebuked by our Saviour, but of the honest, truth-loving and truth-seeking sort, like that of Nicodemus and Gamaliel. His very fanaticism in persecution arose from the intensity of his conviction and his zeal for the religion of his fathers. He persecuted in ignorance, and that diminished, though it did not abolish, his guilt. He probably never saw or heard Jesus until he appeared to him at Damascus. He may have been at Tarsus at the time of the crucifixion and resurrection.354  But with his Pharisaic education he regarded Jesus of Nazareth, like his teachers, as a false Messiah, a rebel, a blasphemer, who was justly condemned to death. And he acted according to his conviction. He took the most prominent part in the persecution of Stephen and delighted in his death. Not satisfied with this, he procured from the Sanhedrin, which had the oversight of all the synagogues and disciplinary punishments for offences against the law, full power to persecute and arrest the scattered disciples. Thus armed, he set out for Damascus, the capital of Syria, which numbered many synagogues. He was determined to exterminate the dangerous sect from the face of the earth, for the glory of God. But the height of his opposition was the beginning of his devotion to Christianity.

His External Relations and Personal Appearance.

On the subordinate questions of Paul’s external condition and relations we have no certain information. Being a Roman citizen, he belonged to the respectable class of society, but must have been poor; for he depended for support on a trade which he learned in accordance with rabbinical custom; it was the trade of tent-making, very common in Cilicia, and not profitable except in large cities.355

He had a sister living at Jerusalem whose son was instrumental in saving his life.356

He was probably never married. Some suppose that he was a widower. Jewish and rabbinical custom, the completeness of his moral character, his ideal conception of marriage as reflecting the mystical union of Christ with his church, his exhortations to conjugal, parental, and filial duties, seem to point to experimental knowledge of domestic life. But as a Christian missionary moving from place to place, and exposed to all sorts of hardship and persecution, he felt it his duty to abide alone.357 He sacrificed the blessings of home and family to the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.358

His "bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible" (of no value), in the superficial judgment of the Corinthians, who missed the rhetorical ornaments, yet could not help admitting that his "letters were weighty and strong."359  Some of the greatest men have been small in size, and some of the purest souls forbidding in body. Socrates was the homeliest, and yet the wisest of Greeks. Neander, a converted Jew, like Paul, was short, feeble, and strikingly odd in his whole appearance, but a rare humility, benignity, and heavenly aspiration beamed from his face beneath his dark and bushy eyebrows. So we may well imagine that the expression of Paul’s countenance was highly intellectual and spiritual, and that he looked "sometimes like a man and sometimes like an angel."360

He was afflicted with a mysterious, painful, recurrent, and repulsive physical infirmity, which he calls a "thorn in the flesh, " and which acted as a check upon spiritual pride and self-exultation over his abundance of revelations.361  He bore the heavenly treasure in an earthly vessel and his strength was made perfect in weakness.362  But all the more must we admire the moral heroism which turned weakness itself into an element of strength, and despite pain and trouble and persecution carried the gospel salvation triumphantly from Damascus to Rome.

§ 31. The Conversion of Paul.

Eujdovkhsen oJ qeo" ... ajpokaluvyai to;n uiJo;n aujtou' ejn ejmoi;, iJna eujaggelivzwmai aujto;n ejn toi'" ej[qnesin   Gal. 1:15, 16.

The conversion of Paul marks not only a turning-point in his personal history, but also an important epoch in the history of the apostolic church, and consequently in the history of mankind. It was the most fruitful event since the miracle of Pentecost, and secured the universal victory of Christianity.

The transformation of the most dangerous persecutor into the most successful promoter of Christianity is nothing less than a miracle of divine grace. It rests on the greater miracle of the resurrection of Christ. Both are inseparably connected; without the resurrection the conversion would have been impossible, and on the other hand the conversion of such a man and with such results is one of the strongest proofs of the resurrection.

The bold attack of Stephen—the forerunner of Paul—upon the hard, stiff-necked Judaism which had crucified the Messiah, provoked a determined and systematic attempt on the part of the Sanhedrin to crucify Jesus again by destroying his church. In this struggle for life and death Saul the Pharisee, the bravest and strongest of the rising rabbis, was the willing and accepted leader.

After the martyrdom of Stephen and the dispersion of the congregation of Jerusalem, he proceeded to Damascus in suit of the fugitive disciples of Jesus, as a commissioner of the Sanhedrin, a sort of inquisitor-general, with full authority and determination to stamp out the Christian rebellion, and to bring all the apostates he could find, whether they were men or women, in chains to the holy city to be condemned by the chief priests.

Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world, known in the days of Abraham, and bursts upon the traveller like a vision of paradise amidst a burning and barren wilderness of sand; it is watered by the never-failing rivers Abana and Pharpar (which Naaman of old preferred to all the waters of Israel), and embosomed in luxuriant gardens of flowers and groves of tropical fruit trees; hence glorified by Eastern poets as "the Eye of the Desert."

But a far higher vision than this earthly paradise was in store for Saul as he approached the city. A supernatural light from heaven, brighter than the Syrian sun, suddenly flashed around him at midday, and Jesus of Nazareth, whom he persecuted in his humble disciples, appeared to him in his glory as the exalted Messiah, asking him in the Hebrew tongue: "Shaûl, Shaûl, why persecutest thou Me?363  It was a question both of rebuke and of love, and it melted his heart. He fell prostrate to the ground. He saw and heard, he trembled and obeyed, he believed and rejoiced. As he rose from the earth he saw no man. Like a helpless child, blinded by the dazzling light, he was led to Damascus, and after three days of blindness and fasting he was cured and baptized—not by Peter or James or John, but—by one of the humble disciples whom he had come to destroy. The haughty, self-righteous, intolerant, raging Pharisee was changed into an humble, penitent, grateful, loving servant of Jesus. He threw away self-righteousness, learning, influence, power, prospects, and cast in his lot with a small, despised sect at the risk of his life. If there ever was an honest, unselfish, radical, and effective change of conviction and conduct, it was that of Saul of Tarsus. He became, by a creative act of the Holy Spirit, a "new creature in Christ Jesus."364

We have three full accounts of this event in the Acts, one from Luke, two from Paul himself, with slight variations in detail, which only confirm the essential harmony.365  Paul also alludes to it five or six times in his Epistles.366  In all these passages he represents the change as an act brought about by a direct intervention of Jesus, who revealed himself in his glory from heaven, and struck conviction into his mind like lightning at midnight. He compares it to the creative act of God when He commanded the light to shine out of darkness.367  He lays great stress on the fact that he was converted and called to the apostolate directly by Christ, without any human agency; that he learned his gospel of free and universal grace by revelation, and not from the older apostles, whom he did not even see till three years after his call.368

The conversion, indeed, was not a moral compulsion, but included the responsibility of assent or dissent. God converts nobody by force or by magic. He made man free, and acts upon him as a moral being. Paul might have "disobeyed the heavenly vision."369  He might have "kicked against the goads," though it was "hard" (not impossible) to do so.370  These words imply some psychological preparation, some doubt and misgiving as to his course, some moral conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which he himself described twenty years afterwards from personal experience, and which issues in the cry of despair: "O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"371  On his journey from Jerusalem to Damascus, which takes a full week on foot or horseback—the distance being about 140 miles—as he was passing, in the solitude of his own thoughts, through Samaria, Galilee, and across Mount Hermon, he had ample time for reflection, and we may well imagine how the shining face of the martyr Stephen, as he stood like a holy angel before the Sanhedrin, and as in the last moment he prayed for his murderers, was haunting him like a ghost and warning him to stop his mad career.

Yet we must not overrate this preparation or anticipate his riper experience in the three days that intervened between his conversion and his baptism, and during the three years of quiet meditation in Arabia. He was no doubt longing for truth and for righteousness, but there was a thick veil over his mental eye which could only be taken away by a hand from without; access to his heart was barred by an iron door of prejudice which had to be broken in by Jesus himself. On his way to Damascus he was "yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," and thinking he was doing "God service;" he was, to use his own language, "beyond measure" persecuting the church of God and endeavoring to destroy it, "being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of his fathers" than many of his age, when "it pleased God to reveal his Son in him." Moreover it is only in the light of faith that we see the midnight darkness of our sin, and it is only beneath the cross of Christ that we feel the whole crushing weight of guilt and the unfathomable depth of God’s redeeming love. No amount of subjective thought and reflection could have brought about that radical change in so short a time. It was the objective appearance of Jesus that effected it.

This appearance implied the resurrection and the ascension, and this was the irresistible evidence of His Messiahship, God’s own seal of approval upon the work of Jesus. And the resurrection again shed a new light upon His death on the cross, disclosing it as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, as the means of procuring pardon and peace consistent with the claims of divine justice. What a revelation!  That same Jesus of Nazareth whom he hated and persecuted as a false prophet justly crucified between two robbers, stood before Saul as the risen, ascended, and glorified Messiah!  And instead of crushing the persecutor as he deserved, He pardoned him and called him to be His witness before Jews and Gentiles! This revelation was enough for an orthodox Jew waiting for the hope of Israel to make him a Christian, and enough for a Jew of such force of character to make him an earnest and determined Christian. The logic of his intellect and the energy of his will required that he should love and promote the new faith with the same enthusiasm with which he had hated and persecuted it; for hatred is but inverted love, and the intensity of love and hatred depends on the strength of affection and the ardor of temper.

With all the suddenness and radicalness of the transformation there is nevertheless a bond of unity between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian. It was the same person with the same end in view, but in opposite directions. We must remember that he was not a worldly, indifferent, cold-blooded man, but an intensely religious man. While persecuting the church, he was "blameless" as touching the righteousness of the law.372  He resembled the rich youth who had observed the commandments, yet lacked the one things needful, and of whom Mark says that Jesus "loved him."373  He was not converted from infidelity to faith, but from a lower faith to a purer faith, from the religion of Moses to the religion of Christ, from the theology of the law to the theology of the gospel. How shall a sinner be justified before the tribunal of a holy God?  That was with him the question of questions before as well as after his conversion; not a scholastic question merely, but even far more a moral and religious question. For righteousness, to the Hebrew mind, is conformity to the will of God as expressed in his revealed law, and implies life eternal as its reward. The honest and earnest pursuit of righteousness is the connecting link between the two periods of Paul’s life. First he labored to secure it by works of the law, then obedience of faith. What he had sought in vain by his fanatical zeal for the traditions of Judaism, he found gratuitously and at once by trust in the cross of Christ: pardon and peace with God. By the discipline of the Mosaic law as a tutor he was led beyond its restraints and prepared for manhood and freedom. Through the law he died to the law that he might live unto God. His old self, with its lusts, was crucified with Christ, so that henceforth he lived no longer himself, but Christ lived in him.374  He was mystically identified with his Saviour and had no separate existence from him. The whole of Christianity, the whole of life, was summed up to him in the one word: Christ. He determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified for our sins, and risen again for our justification.375

His experience of justification by faith, his free pardon and acceptance by Christ were to him the strongest stimulus to gratitude and consecration. His great sin of persecution, like Peter’s denial, was overruled for his own good: the remembrance of it kept him humble, guarded him against temptation, and intensified his zeal and devotion. "I am the least of the apostles," he said in unfeigned humility  that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."376  This confession contains, in epitome, the whole meaning of his life and work.

The idea of justification by the free grace of God in Christ through a living faith which makes Christ and his merits our own and leads to consecration and holiness, is the central idea of Paul’s Epistles. His whole theology, doctrinal, ethical, and practical, lies, like a germ, in his conversion; but it was actually developed by a sharp conflict with Judaizing teachers who continued to trust in the law for righteousness and salvation, and thus virtually frustrated the grace of God and made Christ’s death unnecessary and fruitless.

Although Paul broke radically with Judaism and opposed the Pharisaical notion of legal righteousness at every step and with all his might, he was far from opposing the Old Testament or the Jewish people. Herein he shows his great wisdom and moderation, and his infinite superiority over Marcion and other ultra- and pseudo-Pauline reformers. He now expounded the Scriptures as a direct preparation for the gospel, the law as a schoolmaster leading to Christ, Abraham as the father of the faithful. And as to his countrymen after the flesh, he loved them more than ever before. Filled with the amazing love of Christ who had pardoned him, "the chief of sinners," he was ready for the greatest possible sacrifice if thereby he might save them. His startling language in the ninth chapter of the Romans is not rhetorical exaggeration, but the genuine expression of that heroic self-denial and devotion which animated Moses, and which culminated in the sacrifice of the eternal Son of God on the cross of Calvary.377

Paul’s conversion was at the same time his call to the apostleship, not indeed to a place among the Twelve (for the vacancy of Judas was filled), but to the independent apostleship of the Gentiles.378  Then followed an uninterrupted activity of more than a quarter of a century, which for interest and for permanent and ever-growing usefulness has no parallel in the annals of history, and affords an unanswerable proof of the sincerity of his conversion and the truth of Christianity.379

Analogous Conversions.

God deals with men according to their peculiar character and condition. As in Elijah’s vision on Mount Horeb, God appears now in the mighty rushing wind that uproots the trees, now in the earthquake that rends the rocks, now in the consuming fire, now in the still small voice. Some are suddenly converted, and can remember the place and hour; others are gradually and imperceptibly changed in spirit and conduct; still others grow up unconsciously in the Christian faith from the mother’s knee and the baptismal font. The stronger the will the more force it requires to overcome the resistance, and the more thorough and lasting is the change. Of all sudden and radical conversions that of Saul was the most sudden and the most radical. In several respects it stands quite alone, as the man himself and his work. Yet there are faint analogies in history. The divines who most sympathized with his spirit and system of doctrine, passed through a similar experience, and were much aided by his example and writings. Among these Augustin, Calvin, and Luther are the most conspicuous.

St. Augustin, the son of a pious mother and a heathen father, was led astray into error and vice and wandered for years through the labyrinth of heresy and scepticism, but his heart was restless and homesick after God. At last, when he attained to the thirty-third year of his life (Sept., 386), the fermentation of his soul culminated in a garden near Milan, far away from his African home, when the Spirit of God, through the combined agencies of the unceasing prayers of Monica, the sermons of Ambrose, the example of St. Anthony, the study of Cicero and Plato, of Isaiah and Paul, brought about a change not indeed as wonderful—for no visible appearance of Christ was vouchsafed to him—but as sincere and lasting as that of the apostle. As he was lying in the dust of repentance and wrestling with God in prayer for deliverance, be suddenly heard a sweet voice as from heaven, calling out again and again: ’Take and read, take and read!"  He opened the holy book and read the exhortation of Paul: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." It was a voice of God; he obeyed it, he completely changed his course of life, and became the greatest and most useful teacher of his age.

Of Calvin’s conversion we know very little, but he himself characterizes it as a sudden change (subita conversio) from papal superstition to the evangelical faith. In this respect it resembles that of Paul rather than Augustin. He was no sceptic, no heretic, no immoral man, but as far as we know, a pious Romanist until the brighter life of the Reformation burst on his mind from the Holy Scriptures and showed him a more excellent way. "Only one haven of salvation is left for our souls," he says, "and that is the mercy of God in Christ. We are saved by grace—not by our merits, not by our works." He consulted not with flesh and blood, and burned the bridge after him. He renounced all prospects of a brilliant career, and exposed himself to the danger of persecution and death. He exhorted and strengthened the timid Protestants of France, usually closing with the words of Paul  If God be for us, who can be against us?"  He prepared in Paris a flaming address on reform, which was ordered to be burned; he escaped from persecution in a basket from a window, like Paul at Damascus, and wandered for two years as a fugitive evangelist from place to place until he found his sphere of labor in Geneva. With his conversion was born his Pauline theology, which sprang from his brain like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Paul never had a more logical and theological commentator than John Calvin.380

But the most Paul-like man in history is the leader of the German Reformation, who combined in almost equal proportion depth of mind, strength of will, tenderness of heart, and a fiery vehemence of temper, and was the most powerful herald of evangelical freedom; though inferior to Augustin and Calvin (not to say Paul) in self-discipline, consistency, and symmetry of character.381 Luther’s commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, though not a grammatical or logical exposition, is a fresh reproduction and republication of the Epistle against the self-righteousness, and bondage of the papacy. Luther’s first conversion took place in his twenty-first year (1505), when, as a student of law at Erfurt, on his return from a visit to his parents, he was so frightened by a fearful thunder-storm and flashes of lightning that he exclaimed: "Help, dear St. Anna, I will become a monk!"  But that conversion, although it has often been compared with that of the apostle, had nothing to do with his Paulinism and Protestantism; it made him a pious Catholic, it induced him to flee from the world to the retreat of a convent for the salvation of his soul. And he became one of the most humble, obedient, and self-denying of monks, as Paul was one of the most earnest and zealous of Pharisees. "If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery," says Luther, "I ought to have gotten there." But the more he sought righteousness and peace by ascetic self denial and penal exercises, the more painfully he felt the weight of sin and the wrath of God, although unable to mention to his confessor any particular transgression. The discipline of the law drove him to the brink of despair, when by the kind interposition of Staupitz he was directed away from himself to the cross of Christ, as the only source of pardon and peace, and found, by implicit faith in His all-sufficient merits, that righteousness which he had vainly sought in his own strength.382  This, his second conversion, as we may call it, which occurred several years later (1508), and gradually rather than suddenly, made him an evangelical freeman in Christ and prepared him for the great conflict with Romanism, which began in earnest with the nailing of the ninety-nine theses against the traffic in indulgences (1517). The intervening years may be compared to Paul’s sojourn in Arabia and the subordinate labors preceding his first great missionary tour.

False Explanations.

Various attempts have been made by ancient heretics and modern rationalists to explain Paul’s conversion in a purely natural way, but they have utterly failed, and by their failure they indirectly confirm the true view as given by the apostle himself and as held in all ages by the Christian church.383

1. The Theory of Fraud.—The heretical and malignant faction of the Judaizers was disposed to attribute Paul’s conversion to selfish motives, or to the influence of evil spirits.

The Ebionites spread the lie that Paul was of heathen parents, fell in love with the daughter of the high priest in Jerusalem, became a proselyte and submitted to circumcision in order to secure her, but failing in his purpose, he took revenge and attacked the circumcision, the sabbath, and the whole Mosaic law.384

In the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which represent a speculative form of the Judaizing heresy, Paul is assailed under the disguise of Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, who struggled antinomian heathenism into the church. The manifestation of Christ was either a manifestation of his wrath, or a deliberate lie.385

2. The Rationalistic Theory of Thunder and Lightning.—It attributes the conversion to physical causes, namely, a violent storm and the delirium of a burning Syrian fever, in which Paul superstitiously mistook the thunder for the voice of God and the lightning for a heavenly vision.386 But the record says nothing about thunderstorm and fever, and both combined could not produce such an effect upon any sensible man, much less upon the history of the world. Who ever heard the thunder speak in Hebrew or in any other articulate language? And had not Paul and Luke eyes and ears and common sense, as well as we, to distinguish an ordinary phenomenon of nature from a supernatural vision?

3. The Vision-Hypothesis resolves the conversion into a natural psychological process and into an honest self-delusion. It is the favorite theory of modern rationalists, who scorn all other explanations, and profess the highest respect for the intellectual and moral purity and greatness of Paul.387 It is certainly more rational and creditable than the second hypothesis, because it ascribes the mighty change not to outward and accidental phenomena which pass away, but to internal causes. It assumes that an intellectual and moral fermentation was going on for some time in the mind of Paul, and resulted at last, by logical necessity, in an entire change of conviction and conduct, without any supernatural influence, the very possibility of which is denied as being inconsistent with the continuity of natural development. The miracle in this case was simply the mythical and symbolical reflection of the commanding presence of Jesus in the thoughts of the apostle.

That Paul saw a vision, he says himself, but he meant, of course, a real, objective, personal appearance of Christ from heaven, which was visible to his eyes and audible to his ears, and at the same time a revelation to his mind through the medium of the senses.388  The inner spiritual manifestation389 was more important than the external, but both combined produced conviction. The vision-theory turns the appearance of Christ into a purely subjective imagination, which the apostle mistook for an objective fact.390

It is incredible that a man of sound, clear, and keen mind as that of Paul undoubtedly was, should have made such a radical and far reaching blunder as to confound subjective reflections with an objective appearance of Jesus whom he persecuted, and to ascribe solely to an act of divine mercy what he must have known to be the result of his own thoughts, if he thought at all.

The advocates of this theory throw the appearances of the risen Lord to the older disciples, the later visions of Peter, Philip, and John in the Apocalypse, into the same category of subjective illusions in the high tide of nervous excitement and religious enthusiasm. It is plausibly maintained that Paul was an enthusiast, fond of visions and revelations,391 and that he justifies a doubt concerning the realness of the resurrection itself by putting all the appearances of the risen Christ on the same level with his own, although several years elapsed between those of Jerusalem and Galilee, and that on the way to Damascus.

But this, the only possible argument for the vision-hypothesis, is entirely untenable. When Paul says: "Last of all, as unto an untimely offspring, Christ appeared to me also," he draws a clear line of distinction between the personal appearances of Christ and his own later visions, and closes the former with the one vouchsafed to him at his conversion.392 Once, and once only, he claims to have seen the Lord in visible form and to have heard his voice; last, indeed, and out of due time, yet as truly and really as the older apostles. The only difference is that they saw the risen Saviour still abiding on earth, while he saw the ascended Saviour coming down from heaven, as we may expect him to appear to all men on the last day. It is the greatness of that vision which leads him to dwell on his personal unworthiness as "the least of the apostles and not worthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God." He uses the realness of Christ’s resurrection as the basis for his wonderful discussion of the future resurrection of believers, which would lose all its force if Christ had not actually been raised from the dead.393

Moreover his conversion coincided with his call to the apostleship. If the former was a delusion, the latter must also have been a delusion. He emphasizes his direct call to the apostleship of the Gentiles by the personal appearance of Christ without any human intervention, in opposition to his Judaizing adversaries who tried to undermine his authority.394

The whole assumption of a long and deep inward preparation, both intellectual and moral, for a change, is without any evidence, and cannot set aside the fact that Paul was, according to his repeated confession, at that time violently persecuting Christianity in its followers. His conversion can be far less explained from antecedent causes, surrounding circumstances, and personal motives than that of any other disciple. While the older apostles were devoted friends of Jesus, Paul was his enemy, bent at the very time of the great change on an errand of cruel persecution, and therefore in a state of mind most unlikely to give birth to a vision so fatal to his present object and his future career. How could a fanatical persecutor of Christianity, "breathing threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," stultify and contradict himself by an imaginative conceit which tended to the building up of that very religion which he was laboring to destroy!395

But supposing (with Renan) that his mind was temporarily upset in the delirium of feverish excitement, he certainly soon recovered health and reason, and had every opportunity to correct his error; he was intimate with the murderers of Jesus, who could have produced tangible evidence against the resurrection if it had never occurred; and after a long pause of quiet reflection he went to Jerusalem, spent a fortnight with Peter, and could learn from him and from James, the brother of Christ, their experience, and compare it with his own. Everything in this case is against the mythical and legendary theory which requires a change of environment and the lapse of years for the formation of poetic fancies and fictions.

Finally, the whole life-work of Paul, from his conversion at Damascus to his martyrdom in Rome, is the best possible argument against this hypothesis and for the realness of his conversion, as an act of divine grace. "By their fruits ye shall know them." How could such an effective change proceed from an empty dream?  Can an illusion change the current of history?  By joining the Christian sect Paul sacrificed everything, at last life itself, to the service of Christ. He never wavered in his conviction of the truth as revealed to him, and by his faith in this revelation he has become a benediction to all ages.

The vision-hypothesis denies objective miracles, but ascribes miracles to subjective imaginations, and makes a he more effect ive and beneficial than the truth.

All rationalistic and natural interpretations of the conversion of Paul turn out to be irrational and unnatural; the supernatural interpretation of Paul himself, after all, is the most rational and natural.

Remarkable Concessions.

Dr. Baur, the master-spirit of skeptical criticism and the founder of the "Tübingen School," felt constrained, shortly before his death (1860), to abandon the vision-hypothesis and to admit that "no psychological or dialectical analysis can explore the inner mystery of the act in which God revealed his Son in Paul (keine, weder psychologische noch dialektische Analyse kann das innere Geheimniss des Actes erforschen, in welchem Gott seinen Sohn in ihm enthülte). In the same connection he says that in, "the sudden transformation of Paul from the most violent adversary of Christianity into its most determined herald" he could see "nothing short of a miracle (Wunder);" and adds that "this miracle appears all the greater when we remember that in this revulsion of his consciousness he broke through the barriers of Judaism and rose out of its particularism into the universalism of Christianity."396  This frank confession is creditable to the head and heart of the late Tübingen critic, but is fatal to his whole anti-supernaturalistic theory of history. Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. If we admit the miracle in one case, the door is opened for all other miracles which rest on equally strong evidence.

The late Dr. Keim, an independent pupil of Baur, admits at least spiritual manifestations of the ascended Christ from heaven, and urges in favor of the objective reality of the Christophanies as reported by Paul, 1 Cor. 15:3 sqq., "the whole character of Paul, his sharp understanding which was not weakened by his enthusiasm, the careful, cautious, measured, simple form of his statement, above all the favorable total impression of his narrative and the mighty echo of it in the unanimous, uncontradicted faith of primitive Christendom."397

Dr. Schenkel, of Heidelberg, in his latest stage of development, says that Paul, with full justice, put his Christophany on a par with the Christophanies of the older apostles; that all these Christophanies are not simply the result of psychological processes, but "remain in many respects psychologically inconceivable," and point back to the historic background of the person of Jesus; that Paul was not an ordinary visionary, but carefully distinguished the Christophany at Damascus from his later visions; that he retained the full possession of his rational mind even in the moments of the highest exaltation; that his conversion was not the sudden effect of nervous excitement, but brought about by the influence of the divine Providence which quietly prepared his soul for the reception of Christ; and that the appearance of Christ vouchsafed to him was "no dream, but reality."398

Professor Reuss, of Strasburg, likewise an independent critic of the liberal school, comes to the same conclusion as Baur, that the conversion of Paul, if not an absolute miracle, is at least an unsolved psychological problem. He says: "La conversion de Paul, après tout ce qui en a été dit de notre temps, reste toujours, si ce n’est un miracle absolu, dans le sens traditionnel de ce mot (c’est-à-dire un événement qui arrête ou change violemment le cours naturel des choses, un effet sans autre cause que l’intervention arbitraire et immédiate de Dieu), du moins un problème psychologique aujourd’hui insoluble. L’explication dite naturelle, qu’elle fasse intervenir un orage on qu’elle se retranche dans le domaine des hallucinations ... ne nous donne pas la clef de cette crise elle-même, qui a décidé la métamorphose du pharisien en chrétien."399

Canon Farrar says (I. 195): "One fact remains upon any hypothesis and that is, that the conversion of St. Paul was in the highest sense of the word a miracle, and one of which the spiritual consequences have affected every subsequent age of the history of mankind."

§ 32. The Work of Paul.

"He who can part from country and from kin,

And scorn delights, and tread the thorny way,

A heavenly crown, through toil and pain, to win—

He who reviled can tender love repay,

And buffeted, for bitter foes can pray—

He who, upspringing at his Captain’s call,

Fights the good fight, and when at last the day

Of fiery trial comes, can nobly fall—

Such were a saint—or more—and such the holy Paul!"

—Anon.

The conversion of Paul was a great intellectual and moral revolution, yet without destroying his identity. His noble gifts and attainments remained, but were purged of Selfish motives, inspired by a new principle, and consecrated to a divine end. The love of Christ who saved him, was now his all-absorbing passion, and no sacrifice was too great to manifest his gratitude to Him. The architect of ruin became an architect of the temple of God. The same vigor, depth and acuteness of mind, but illuminated by the Holy Spirit; the same strong temper and burning zeal, but cleansed, subdued and controlled by wisdom and moderation; the same energy and boldness, but coupled with gentleness and meekness; and, added to all this, as crowning gifts of grace, a love and humility, a tenderness and delicacy of feeling such as are rarely, if ever, found in a character so proud, manly and heroic. The little Epistle to Philemon reveals a perfect Christian gentleman, a nobleman of nature, doubly ennobled by grace. The thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians could only be conceived by a mind that had ascended on the mystic ladder of faith to the throbbing heart of the God of love; yet without inspiration even Paul could not have penned that seraphic description of the virtue which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, which never faileth, but will last for ever the greatest in the triad of celestial graces: faith, hope, love.

Saul converted became at once Paul the missionary. Being saved himself, he made it his life-work to save others. "Straight way" he proclaimed Christ in the synagogues, and confounded the Jews of Damascus, proving that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God.400  But this was only a preparatory testimony in the fervor of the first love. The appearance of Christ, and the travails of his soul during the three days and nights of prayer and fasting, when he experienced nothing less than a spiritual death and a spiritual resurrection, had so shaken his physical and mental frame that he felt the need of protracted repose away from the noise and turmoil of the world. Besides there must have been great danger threatening his life as soon as the astounding news of his conversion became known at Jerusalem. He therefore went to the desert of Arabia and spent there three years,401 not in missionary labor (as Chrysostom thought), but chiefly in prayer, meditation and the study of the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of their fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. This retreat took the place of the three years’ preparation of the Twelve in the school of Christ. Possibly he may have gone as far as Mount Sinai, among the wild children of Hagar and Ishmael.402 On that pulpit of the great lawgiver of Israel, and in view of the surrounding panorama of death and desolation which reflects the terrible majesty of Jehovah, as no other spot on earth, he could listen with Elijah to the thunder and earthquake, and the still small voice, and could study the contrast between the killing letter and the life-giving spirit, between the ministration of death and the ministration of righteousness.403 The desert, like the ocean, has its grandeur and sublimity, and leaves the meditating mind alone with God and eternity.

"Paul was a unique man for a unique task."404 His task was twofold: practical and theoretical. He preached the gospel of free and universal grace from Damascus to Rome, and secured its triumph in the Roman empire, which means the civilized world of that age. At the same time he built up the church from within by the exposition and defence of the gospel in his Epistles. He descended to the humblest details of ecclesiastical administration and discipline, and mounted to the sublimest heights of theological speculation. Here we have only to do with his missionary activity; leaving his theoretical work to be considered in another chapter.

Let us first glance at his missionary spirit and policy.

His inspiring motive was love to Christ and to his fellow-men. "The love of Christ," he says, "constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died: and He died for all that they who live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." He regarded himself as a bondman and ambassador of Christ, entreating men to be reconciled to God. Animated by this spirit, he became "as a Jew to the Jews, as a Gentile to the Gentiles, all things to all men that by all means he might save some."

He made Antioch, the capital of Syria and the mother church of Gentile Christendom, his point of departure for, and return from, his missionary journeys, and at the same time he kept up his connection with Jerusalem, the mother church of Jewish Christendom. Although an independent apostle of Christ, he accepted a solemn commission from Antioch for his first great missionary tour. He followed the current of history, commerce, and civilization, from East to West, from Asia to Europe, from Syria to Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and perhaps as far as Spain.405  In the larger and more influential cities, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, he resided a considerable time. From these salient points he sent the gospel by his pupils and fellow-laborers into the surrounding towns and villages. But he always avoided collision with other apostles, and sought new fields of labor where Christ was not known before, that he might not build on any other man’s foundation. This is true independence and missionary courtesy, which is so often, alas! violated by missionary societies inspired by sectarian rather than Christian zeal.

His chief mission was to the Gentiles, without excluding the Jews, according to the message of Christ delivered through Ananias: "Thou shalt bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel." Considering that the Jews had a prior claim in time to the gospel,406 and that the synagogues in heathen cities were pioneer stations for Christian missions, he very naturally addressed himself first to the Jews and proselytes, taking up the regular lessons of the Old Testament Scriptures, and demonstrating their fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth. But almost uniformly he found the half-Jews, or "proselytes of the gate," more open to the gospel than his own brethren; they were honest and earnest seekers of the true religion, and formed the natural bridge to the pure heathen, and the nucleus of his congregations, which were generally composed of converts from both religions.

In noble self-denial he earned his subsistence with his own hands, as a tent-maker, that he might not be burthensome to his congregations (mostly belonging to the lower classes), that he might preserve his independence, stop the mouths of his enemies, and testify his gratitude to the infinite mercy of the Lord, who had called him from his headlong, fanatical career of persecution to the office of an apostle of free grace. He never collected money for himself, but for the poor Jewish Christians in Palestine. Only as an exception did he receive gifts from his converts at Philippi, who were peculiarly dear to him. Yet he repeatedly enjoins upon the churches to care for the liberal temporal support of their teachers who break to them the bread of eternal life. The Saviour of the world a carpenter! the greatest preacher of the gospel a tent-maker!

Of the innumerable difficulties, dangers, and sufferings which he encountered with Jews, heathens, and false brethren, we can hardly form an adequate idea; for the book of Acts is only a summary record. He supplements it incidentally. "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Three times was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren: in labor and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, the anxious care for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak?  Who is offended, and I burn not?"407  Thus he wrote reluctantly to the Corinthians, in self-vindication against his calumniators, in the year 57, before his longest and hardest trial in the prisons of Caesarea and Rome, and at least seven years before his martyrdom. He was "pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not in despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed."408  His whole public career was a continuous warfare. He represents the church militant, or "marching and conquering Christianity." He was "unus versus mundum," in a far higher sense than this has been said of Athanasius the Great when confronted with the Arian heresy and the imperial heathenism of Julian the Apostate.

Yet he was never unhappy, but full of joy and peace. He exhorted the Philippians from his prison in Rome: "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say, Rejoice." In all his conflicts with foes from without and foes from within Paul was "more than conqueror" through the grace of God which was sufficient for him. "For I am persuaded," he writes to the Romans in the strain of a sublime ode of triumph, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."409  And his dying word is an assurance of victory: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing."410

§ 33. Paul’s Missionary Labors.

The public life of Paul, from the third year after his conversion to his martyrdom, A.D. 40–64, embraces a quarter of a century, three great missionary campaigns with minor expeditions, five visits to Jerusalem, and at least four years of captivity in Caesarea and Rome. Some extend it to A.D. 67 or 68. It may be divided into five or six periods, as follows:

1. A.D. 40–44. The period of preparatory labors in Syria and his native Cilicia, partly alone, partly in connection with Barnabas, his senior fellow-apostle among the Gentiles.

On his return from the Arabian retreat Paul began his public ministry in earnest at Damascus, preaching Christ on the very spot where he had been converted and called. His testimony enraged the Jews, who stirred up the deputy of the king of Arabia against him, but he was saved for future usefulness and let down by the brethren in a basket through a window in the wall of the city.411  Three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem to make the acquaintance of Peter and spent a fortnight with him. Besides him he saw James the brother of the Lord. Barnabas introduced him to the disciples, who at first were afraid of him, but when they heard of his marvellous conversion they "glorified God" that their persecutor was now preaching the faith he had once been laboring to destroy.412  He did not come to learn the gospel, having received it already by revelation, nor to be confirmed or ordained, having been called "not from men, or through man, but through Jesus Christ." Yet his interview with Peter and James, though barely mentioned, must have been fraught with the deepest interest. Peter, kind-hearted and generous as he was, would naturally receive him with joy and thanksgiving. He had himself once denied the Lord—not malignantly but from weakness—as Paul had persecuted the disciples—ignorantly in unbelief. Both had been mercifully pardoned, both had seen the Lord, both were called to the highest dignity, both could say from the bottom of the heart: "Lord thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." No doubt they would exchange their experiences and confirm each other in their common faith.

It was probably on this visit that Paul received in a vision in the temple the express command of the Lord to go quickly unto the Gentiles.413  Had he stayed longer at the seat of the Sanhedrin, he would undoubtedly have met the fate of the martyr Stephen.

He visited Jerusalem a second time during the famine under Claudius, in the year 44, accompanied by Barnabas, on a benevolent mission, bearing a collection of the Christians at Antioch for the relief of the brethren in Judaea.414  On that occasion he probably saw none of the apostles on account of the persecution in which James was beheaded, and Peter imprisoned.

The greater part of these four years was spent in missionary work at Tarsus and Antioch.

2. A.D. 45–50. First missionary journey. In the year 45 Paul entered upon the first great missionary journey, in company with Barnabas and Mark, by the direction of the Holy Spirit through the prophets of the congregation at Antioch. He traversed the island of Cyprus and several provinces of Asia Minor. The conversion of the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, at Paphos; the rebuke and punishment of the Jewish sorcerer, Elymas; the marked success of the gospel in Pisidia, and the bitter opposition of the unbelieving Jews; the miraculous healing of a cripple at Lystra; the idolatrous worship there offered to Paul and Barnabas by the superstitious heathen, and its sudden change into hatred against them as enemies of the gods; the stoning of the missionaries, their escape from death, and their successful return to Antioch, are the leading incidents of this tour, which is fully described in Acts 13 and 14.

This period closes with the important apostolic conference at Jerusalem, A.D. 50, which will require separate consideration in the next section.

3. From A.D. 51–54. Second missionary journey. After the council at Jerusalem and the temporary adjustment of the difference between the Jewish and Gentile branches of the church, Paul undertook, in the year 51, a second great journey, which decided the Christianization of Greece. He took Silas for his companion. Having first visited his old churches, he proceeded, with the help of Silas and the young convert, Timothy, to establish new ones through the provinces of Phrygia and Galatia, where, notwithstanding his bodily infirmity, he was received with open arms like an angel of God.

From Troas, a few miles south of the Homeric Troy and the entrance to the Hellespont, he crossed over to Greece in answer to the Macedonian cry:  "Come over and help us!"  He preached the gospel with great success, first in Philippi, where he converted the purple dealer, Lydia, and the jailor, and was imprisoned with Silas, but miraculously delivered and honorably released; then in Thessalonica, where he was persecuted by the Jews, but left a flourishing church; in Beraea, where the converts showed exemplary zeal in searching the Scriptures. In Athens, the metropolis of classical literature, he reasoned with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and unveiled to them on Mars’ Hill (Areopagus), with consummate tact and wisdom, though without much immediate success, the "unknown God," to whom the Athenians, in their superstitious anxiety to do justice to all possible divinities, had unconsciously erected an altar, and Jesus Christ, through whom God will judge the world in righteousness.415  In Corinth, the commercial bridge between the East and the West, a flourishing centre of wealth and culture, but also a sink of vice and corruption, the apostle spent eighteen months, and under almost insurmountable difficulties he built up a church, which exhibited all the virtues and all the faults of the Grecian character under the influence of the gospel, and which he honored with two of his most important Epistles.416

In the spring of 54 he returned by way of Ephesus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem to Antioch.

During this period he composed the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the earliest of his literary remains excepting his missionary addresses preserved in the Acts.

4. A.D. 54–58. Third missionary tour. Towards the close of the year 54 Paul went to Ephesus, and in this renowned capital of proconsular Asia and of the worship of Diana, he fixed for three years the centre of his missionary work. He then revisited his churches in Macedonia and Achaia, and remained three months more in Corinth and the vicinity.

During this period he wrote the great doctrinal Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, which mark the height of his activity and usefulness.

5. A.D. 58–63. The period of his two imprisonments, with the intervening winter voyage from Caesarea to Rome. In the spring of 58 he journeyed, for the fifth and last time, to Jerusalem, by way of Philippi, Troas, Miletus (where he delivered his affecting valedictory to the Ephesian presbyter-bishops), Tyre, and Caesarea, to carry again to the poor brethren in Judaea a contribution from the Christians of Greece, and by this token of gratitude and love to cement the two branches of the apostolic church more firmly together.

But some fanatical Jews, who bitterly bated him as an apostate and a seducer of the people, raised an uproar against him at Pentecost; charged him with profaning the temple, because he had taken into it an uncircumcised Greek, Trophimus; dragged him out of the sanctuary, lest they should defile it with blood, and would undoubtedly have killed him had not Claudius Lysias, the Roman tribune, who lived near by, come promptly with his soldiers to the spot. This officer rescued Paul, out of respect for his Roman citizenship, from the fury of the mob, set him the next day before the Sanhedrin, and after a tumultuous and fruitless session of the council, and the discovery of a plot against his life, sent him, with a strong military guard and a certificate of innocence, to the procurator Felix in Caesarea.

Here the apostle was confined two whole years (58–60), awaiting his trial before the Sanhedrin, uncondemned, occasionally speaking before Felix, apparently treated with comparative mildness, visited by the Christians, and in some way not known to us promoting the kingdom of God.417

After the accession of the new and better procurator, Festus, who is known to have succeeded Felix in the year 60, Paul, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the tribunal of Caesar and thus opened the way to the fulfilment of his long-cherished desire to preach the Saviour of the world in the metropolis of the world. Having once more testified his innocence, and spoken for Christ in a masterly defence before Festus, King Herod Agrippa II. (the last of the Herods), his sister Bernice, and the most distinguished men of Caesarea, he was sent in the autumn of the year 60 to the emperor. He had a stormy voyage and suffered shipwreck, which detained him over winter at Malta. The voyage is described with singular minuteness and nautical accuracy by Luke as an eye-witness. In the month of March of the year 61, the apostle, with a few faithful companions, reached Rome, a prisoner of Christ, and yet freer and mightier than the emperor on the throne. It was the seventh year of Nero’s reign, when he had already shown his infamous character by the murder of Agrippina, his mother, in the previous year, and other acts of cruelty.

In Rome Paul spent at least two years till the spring of 63, in easy confinement, awaiting the decision of his case, and surrounded by friends and fellow-laborers "in his own hired dwelling." He preached the gospel to the soldiers of the imperial body-guard, who attended him; sent letters and messages to his distant churches in Asia Minor and Greece; watched over all their spiritual affairs, and completed in bonds his apostolic fidelity to the Lord and his church.418

In the Roman prison he wrote the Epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon.

6. A.D. 63 and 64. With the second year of Paul’s imprisonment in Rome the account of Luke breaks off, rather abruptly, yet appropriately and grandly. Paul’s arrival in Rome secured the triumph of Christianity. In this sense it was true, "Roma locuta est, causa finita est."  And he who spoke at Rome is not dead; he is still "preaching (everywhere) the kingdom of God and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him."419

But what became of him after the termination of those two years in the spring of 63?  What was the result of the trial so long delayed?  Was he condemned to death? or was he released by Nero’s tribunal, and thus permitted to labor for another season?  This question is still unsettled among scholars. A vague tradition says that Paul was acquitted of the charge of the Sanhedrin, and after travelling again in the East, perhaps also into Spain, was a second time imprisoned in Rome and condemned to death. The assumption of a second Roman captivity relieves certain difficulties in the Pastoral Epistles; for they seem to require a short period of freedom between the first and a second Roman captivity, and a visit to the East,420 which is not recorded in the Acts, but which the apostle contemplated in case of his release.421  A visit to Spain, which he intended, is possible, though less probable.422  If he was set at liberty, it must have been before the terrible persecution in July, 64, which would not have spared the great leader of the Christian sect. It is a remarkable coincidence that just about the close of the second year of Paul’s confinement, the celebrated Jewish historian, Josephus, then in his 27th year, came to Rome (after a tempestuous voyage and shipwreck), and effected through the influence of Poppaea (the wife of Nero and a half proselyte of Judaism) the release of certain Jewish priests who had been sent to Rome by Felix as prisoners.423  It is not impossible that Paul may have reaped the benefit of a general release of Jewish prisoners.

The martyrdom of Paul under Nero is established by the unanimous testimony of antiquity. As a Roman citizen, he was not crucified, like Peter, but put to death by the sword.424  The scene of his martyrdom is laid by tradition about three miles from Rome, near the Ostian way, on a green spot, formerly called Aquae Salviae, afterwards Tre Fontane, from the three fountains which are said to have miraculously gushed forth from the blood of the apostolic martyr. His relics were ultimately removed to the basilica of San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, built by Theodosius and Valentinian in 388, and recently reconstructed. He lies outside of Rome, Peter inside. His memory is celebrated, together with that of Peter, on the 29th and 30th of June.425  As to the year of his death, the views vary from A.D. 64 to 69. The difference of the place and manner of his martyrdom suggests that he was condemned by a regular judicial trial, either shortly before, or more probably a year or two after the horrible wholesale massacre of Christians on the Vatican hill, in which his Roman citizenship would not have been regarded. If he was released in the spring of 63, he had a year and a half for another visit to the East and to Spain before the outbreak of the Neronian persecution (after July, 64); but tradition favors a later date. Prudentius separates the martyrdom of Peter from that of Paul by one year. After that persecution the Christians were everywhere exposed to danger.426

Assuming the release of Paul and another visit to the East, we must locate the First Epistle to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus between the first and second Roman captivity, and the Second Epistle to Timothy in the second captivity. The last was evidently written in the certain view of approaching martyrdom; it is the affectionate farewell of the aged apostle to his beloved Timothy, and his last will and testament to the militant church below in the bright prospect of the unfading crown in the church triumphant above.427

Thus ended the earthly course of this great teacher of nations, this apostle of victorious faith, of evangelical freedom, of Christian progress. It was the heroic career of a spiritual conqueror of immortal souls for Christ, converting them from the service of sin and Satan to the service of the living God, from the bondage of the law to the freedom of the gospel, and leading them to the fountain of life eternal. He labored more abundantly than all the other apostles; and yet, in sincere humility, he considered himself "the least of the apostles," and "not meet to be called an apostle," because he persecuted the church of God; a few years later he confessed: "I am less than the least of all saints," and shortly before his death: "I am the chief of sinners."428  His humility grew as he experienced God’s mercy and ripened for heaven. Paul passed a stranger and pilgrim through this world, hardly observed by the mighty and the wise of his age. And yet how infinitely more noble, beneficial, and enduring was his life and work than the dazzling march of military conquerors, who, prompted by ambitions absorbed millions of treasure and myriads of lives, only to die at last in a drunken fit at Babylon, or of a broken heart on the rocks of St. Helena!  Their empires have long since crumbled into dust, but St. Paul still remains one of the foremost benefactors of the human race, and the pulses of his mighty heart are beating with stronger force than ever throughout the Christian world.

Note on the Second Roman Captivity of Paul.

The question of a second Roman captivity of Paul is a purely historical and critical problem, and has no doctrinal or ethical bearing, except that it facilitates the defence of the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles. The best scholars are still divided on the subject. Neander, Gieseler, Bleek, Ewald, Lange, Sabatier, Godet, also Renan (Saint Paul, p. 560, and L’Antechrist, p. 106), and nearly all English biographers and commentators, as Alford, Wordsworth, Howson, Lewin, Farrar, Plumptre, Ellicott, Lightfoot, defend the second captivity, and thus prolong the labors of Paul for a few years. On the other hand not only radical and skeptical critics, as Baur, Zeller, Schenkel, Reuss, Holtzmann, and all who reject the Pastoral Epistles (except Renan), but also conservative exegetes and historians, as Niedner, Thiersch, Meyer, Wieseler, Ebrard, Otto, Beck, Pressensé, deny the second captivity. I have discussed the problem at length in my Hist. of the Apost. Church, § 87, pp. 328–347, and spin in my annotations to Lange on Romans, pp. 10–12. I will restate the chief arguments in favor of a second captivity, partly in rectification of my former opinion.

1. The main argument are the Pastoral Epistles, if genuine, as I hold them to be, notwithstanding all the objections of the opponents from De Wette (1826) and Baur (1835) to Renan (1873) and Holtzmann (1880). It is, indeed, not impossible to assign them to any known period in Paul’s life before his captivity, as during his three years’ sojourn in Ephesus (54–57), or his eighteen months’ sojourn in Corinth (52–53), but it is very difficult to do so. The Epistles presuppose journeys of the apostle not mentioned in Acts, and belong apparently to an advanced period in his life, as well as in the history of truth and error in the apostolic church.

2. The release of Timothy from a captivity in Italy, probably in Rome, to which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 13:23 alludes, may have some connection with the release of Paul, who had probably a share in the inspiration, if not in the composition, of that remarkable production.

3. The oldest post-apostolic witness is Clement of Rome, who wrote about 95:, Paul ... having come to the limit of the West (ejpi; to; tevrma th'" duvsew" ejlqwn) and borne witness before the magistrates (marturhvsa" epi; tw'n hJgoumevnwn, which others translate, "having suffered martyrdom under the rulers"), departed from the world and went to the holy place, having furnished the sublimest model of endurance" (Ad Corinth. c. 5). Considering that Clement wrote in Rome, the most natural interpretation of tevrma th'" duvsew", "the extreme west," is Spain or Britain; and as Paul intended to carry the gospel to Spain, one would first think of that country, which was in constant commercial intercourse with Rome, and had produced distinguished statesmen and writers like Seneca and Lucan. Strabo (II. 1) calls the pillars of Hercules pevrata th'" oijkoumevnh"; and Velleius Paterc. calls Spain "extremus nostri orbis terminus." See Lightfoot, St. Clement, p. 50. But the inference is weakened by the absence of any trace or tradition of Paul’s visit to Spain.429  Still less can he have suffered martyrdom there, as the logical order of the words would imply. And as Clement wrote to the Corinthians, he may, from their geographical standpoint, have called the Roman capital the end of the West. At all events the passage is rhetorical (it speaks of seven imprisonments, eJptavki" desma; forevsa"), and proves nothing for further labors in the East.430

4. An incomplete passage in the fragmentary Muratorian canon (about A.D. 170): "Sed profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis ..." seems to imply a journey of Paul to Spain, which Luke has omitted; but this is merely a conjecture, as the verb has to be supplied. Comp., however, Westcott, The Canon of the N. Test., p. 189, and Append. C., p. 467, and Renan, L’Antechrist, p. 106 sq.

5. Eusebius (d. 310) first clearly asserts that "there is a tradition (lovgo" e[cei) that the apostle, after his defence, again set forth to the ministry of his preaching and having entered a second time the same city [Rome], was perfected by his martyrdom before him [Nero]." Hist. Eccl. II. 22 (comp. ch. 25). But the force of this testimony is weakened first by its late date; secondly, by the vague expression lovgo" e[cei, "it is said," and the absence of any reference to older authorities (usually quoted by Eusebius); thirdly, by his misunderstanding of 2 Tim. 4:16, 17, which he explains in the same connection of a deliverance from the first imprisonment (as if ajpologiva were identical with aijcmalwsiva); and lastly by his chronological mistake as to the time of the first imprisonment which, in his "Chronicle," he misdates A.D. 58, that is, three years before the actual arrival of Paul in Rome. On the other hand he puts the conflagration of Rome two years too late, A.D. 66, instead of 64, and the Neronian persecution, and the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, in the year 70.

6. Jerome (d. 419): "Paul was dismissed by Nero that he might preach Christ’s gospel also in the regions of the West (in Occidentis quoque partibus). De Vir. ill. sub Paulus. This echoes the tevrma th'" duvsew" of Clement. Chrysostom (d. 407), Theodoret, and other fathers assert that Paul went to Spain (Rom. 15:28), but without adducing any proof.

These post-apostolic testimonies, taken together, make it very probable, but not historically certain, that Paul was released after the spring of 63, and enjoyed an Indian summer of missionary work before his Martyrdom. The only remaining monuments, as well as the best proof, of this concluding work are the Pastoral Epistles, if we admit them to be genuine. To my mind the historical difficulties of the Pastoral Epistles are an argument for rather than against their Pauline origin. For why should a forger invent difficulties when he might so easily have fitted his fictions in the frame of the situation known from the Acts and the other Pauline Epistles?  The linguistic and other objections are by no means insurmountable, and are overborne by the evidence of the Pauline spirit which animates these last productions of his pen.

§ 34. The Synod of Jerusalem, and the Compromise between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.

Literature.

I. Acts 15, and Gal. 2, and the Commentaries thereon.

II. Besides the general literature already noticed (in §§ 20 and 29), compare the following special discussions on the Conference of the Apostles, which tend to rectify the extreme view of Baur (Paulus, ch. V.) and Overbeck (in the fourth edition of De Wette’s Com. on Acts) on the conflict between Acts 15 and Gal. 2, or between Petrinism and Paulinism, and to establish the true historic view of their essential unity in diversity.

Bishop Lightfoot: St. Paul and the Three, in Com. on Galat., London, 1866 (second ed.), pp. 283–355. The ablest critical discussion of the problem in the English language.

R. A. Lipsius: Apostelconvent, in Schenkel’s Bibel-Lexikon, I. (1869), pp. 194–207. A clear and sharp statement of eight apparent contradictions between Acts 15 and Gal. 2. He admits, however, some elements of truth in the account of Acts, which he uses to supplement the account of Paul. Schenkel, in his Christusbild der Apostel, 1879, p. 38, goes further, and says, in opposition to Overbeck, who regards the account of Acts as a Tendenz- Roman, or partisan fiction: "The narrative of Paul is certainly trustworthy, but one-sided, which was unavoidable, considering his personal apologetic aim, and passes by in silence what is foreign to that aim. The narrative of Acts follows oral and written traditions which were already influenced by later views and prejudices, and it is for this reason unreliable in part, yet by no means a conscious fiction."

Otto Pfleiderer: Der Paulinismus. Leipzig, 1873, pp. 278 sqq. and 500 sqq. He tones down the differences to innocent inaccuracies of the Acts, and rejects the idea of "intentional invention."

C. Weizsäcker (successor of Dr. Baur in Tübingen, but partly dissenting from him): Das Apostelconcil in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie" for 1873, pp. 191–246. And his essay on Paulus und die Gemeinde in Korinth, ibid., 1876, pp. 603–653. In the last article he concludes (p. 652) that the real opponents of Paul, in Corinth as well as in Galatia, were not the primitive apostles (as asserted by Baur, Schwegler, etc.), but a set of fanatics who abused the authority of Peter and the name of Christ, and imitated the agitation of Jewish proselytizers, as described by Roman writers.

K. Schmidt: Der Apostel-Konvent, in Herzog and Plitt, R. E. I. (1877), 575–584. Conservative.

Theod. Keim: Aus dem Urchristenthum. Zürich, 1879, Der Apostelkonvent, pp. 64–89. (Comp. Hilgenfeld’s review in the "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie," 1879, pp. 100f sqq.)  One of the last efforts of the author of the Leben Jesu von Nazara. Keim goes a step further than Weizsäcker, strongly maintains the public as well as the private character of the apostolic agreement, and admits the circumcision of Timothy as a fact. He also entirely rejects the view of Baur, Weizsäcker, and Overbeck that the author of Acts derived his information from the Ep. to the Galatians, and perverted it for his irenic purpose.

F. W. Farrar: The Life and Work of Paul (Lond., 1879), chs. XXII.-XXIII. (I. 398–454).

Wilibald Grimm: Der Apostelconvent, in the "Theol. Studien und Kritiken" (Gotha), for 1880, pp. 405–432. A critical discussion in the right direction. The exegetical essay of Wetzel on Gal. 2:14, 21, in the same periodical, pp. 433 sqq., bears in part on the same subject.

F. Godet: Com. on the Ep. to the Romans, vol. I. (1879), pp. 3742, English translation. Able and sound.

Karl Wieseler: Zur Gesch. der N. T.lichen Schrift und des Urchristenthums. Leipzig, 1880, pp. 1–53, on the Corinthian parties and their relation to the errorists in the Galatians and the Nicolaitans in the Apocalypse. Learned, acute, and conservative.

Comp. above § 22, pp. 213 sqq.; my Hist. of the Apost. Church, §§ 67–70, pp. 245–260; and Excursus on the Controversy between Peter and Paul, in my Com. on the Galat. 2:11–14.

The question of circumcision, or of the terms of admission of the Gentiles to the Christian church, was a burning question of the apostolic age. It involved the wider question of the binding authority of the Mosaic law, yea, the whole relation of Christianity to Judaism. For circumcision was in the synagogue what baptism is in the church, a divinely appointed sign and seal of the covenant of man with God, with all its privileges and responsibilities, and bound the circumcised person to obey the whole law on pain of forfeiting the blessing promised. Upon the decision of this question depended the peace of the church within, and the success of the gospel without. With circumcision, as a necessary condition of church membership, Christianity would forever have been confined to the Jewish race with a small minority of proselytes of the gate, or half-Christians while the abrogation of circumcision and the declaration of the supremacy and sufficiency of faith in Christ ensured the conversion of the heathen and the catholicity of Christianity. The progress of Paul’s mission among the Gentiles forced the question to a solution and resulted in a grand act of emancipation, yet not without great struggle and temporary reactions.

All the Christians of the first generation were converts from Judaism or heathenism. It could not be expected that they should suddenly lose the influence of opposite kinds of religious training and blend at once in unity. Hence the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity throughout the apostolic age, more or less visible in all departments of ecclesiastical life, in missions, doctrine, worship, and government. At the head of the one division stood Peter, the apostle of the circumcision; at the head of the other, Paul, to whom was intrusted the apostleship of the uncircumcision. In another form the same difference even yet appears between the different branches of Christendom. The Catholic church is Jewish-Christian or Petrine in its character; the Evangelical church is Gentile or Pauline. And the individual members of these bodies lean to one or the other of these leading types. Where-ever there is life and motion in a denomination or sect, there will be at least two tendencies of thought and action—whether they be called old and new school, or high church and low church, or by any other party name. In like manner there is no free government without parties. It is only stagnant waters that never run and overflow, and corpses that never move.

The relation between these two fundamental forms of apostolic Christianity is in general that of authority and freedom, law and gospel, the conservative and the progressive, the objective and the subjective. These antithetic elements are not of necessity mutually exclusive. They are mutually complemental, and for perfect life they must co-exist and co-operate. But in reality they often run to extremes, and then of course fall into irreconcilable contradiction. Exclusive Jewish Christianity sinks into Ebionism; exclusive Gentile Christianity into Gnosticism. And these heresies were by no means confined to the apostolic and post-apostolic ages; pseudo-Petrine and pseudo-Pauline errors, in ever-varying phases, run more or less throughout the whole history of the church.

The Jewish converts at first very naturally adhered as closely as possible to the sacred traditions of their fathers. They could not believe that the religion of the Old Testament, revealed by God himself, should pass away. They indeed regarded Jesus as the Saviour of Gentiles as well as Jews; but they thought Judaism the necessary introduction to Christianity, circumcision and the observance of the whole Mosaic law the sole condition of an interest in the Messianic salvation. And, offensive as Judaism was, rather than attractive, to the heathen, this principle would have utterly precluded the conversion of the mass of the Gentile world.431  The apostles themselves were at first trammelled by this Judaistic prejudice, till taught better by the special revelation to Peter before the conversion of Cornelius.432

But even after the baptism of the uncircumcised centurion, and Peter’s defence of it before the church of Jerusalem, the old leaven still wrought in some Jewish Christians who had formerly belonged to the rigid and exclusive sect of the Pharisees.433  They came from Judaea to Antioch, and taught the converts of Paul and Barnabas: "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." They no doubt appealed to the Pentateuch, the universal Jewish tradition, the circumcision of Christ, and the practice of the Jewish apostles, and created a serious disturbance. These ex-Pharisees were the same whom Paul, in the heat of controversy, more severely calls "false brethren insidiously or stealthily foisted in," who intruded themselves into the Christian brotherhood as spies and enemies of Christian liberty.434  He clearly distinguishes them not only from the apostles, but also from the great majority of the brethren in Judaea who sincerely rejoiced in his conversion and glorified God for it.435  They were a small, but very active and zealous minority, and full of intrigue. They compassed sea and land to make one proselyte. They were baptized with water, but not with the Holy Spirit. They were Christians in name, but narrow-minded and narrow-hearted Jews in fact. They were scrupulous, pedantic, slavish formalists, ritualists, and traditionalists of the malignant type. Circumcision of the flesh was to them of more importance than circumcision of the heart, or at all events an indispensable condition of salvation.436  Such men could, of course, not understand and appreciate Paul, but hated and feared him as a dangerous radical and rebel. Envy and jealousy mixed with their religious prejudice. They got alarmed at the rapid progress of the gospel among the unclean Gentiles who threatened to soil the purity of the church. They could not close their eyes to the fact that the power was fast passing from Jerusalem to Antioch, and from the Jews to the Gentiles, but instead of yielding to the course of Providence, they determined to resist it in the name of order and orthodoxy, and to keep the regulation of missionary operations and the settlement of the terms of church membership in their own hands at Jerusalem, the holy centre of Christendom and the expected residence of the Messiah on his return.

Whoever has studied the twenty-third chapter of Matthew and the pages of church history, and knows human nature, will understand perfectly this class of extra-pious and extra-orthodox fanatics, whose race is not dead yet and not likely to die out. They serve, however, the good purpose of involuntarily promoting the cause of evangelical liberty.

The agitation of these Judaizing partisans and zealots brought the Christian church, twenty years after its founding, to the brink of a split which would have seriously impeded its progress and endangered its final success.

The Conferences in Jerusalem.

To avert this calamity and to settle this irrepressible conflict, the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch resolved to hold a private and a public conference at Jerusalem. Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas as commissioners to represent the Gentile converts. Paul, fully aware of the gravity of the crisis, obeyed at the same time an inner and higher impulse.437  He also took with him Titus, a native Greek, as a living specimen of what the Spirit of God could accomplish without circumcision. The conference was held A.D. 50 or 51 (fourteen years after Paul’s conversion). It was the first and in some respects the most important council or synod held in the history of Christendom, though differing widely from the councils of later times. It is placed in the middle of the book of Acts as the connecting link between the two sections of the apostolic church and the two epochs of its missionary history.

The object of the Jerusalem consultation was twofold: first, to settle the personal relation between the Jewish and Gentile apostles, and to divide their field of labor; secondly, to decide the question of circumcision, and to define the relation between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. On the first point (as we learn from Paul) it effected a complete and final, on the second point (as we learn from Luke) a partial and temporary settlement. In the nature of the case the public conference in which the whole church took part, was preceded and accompanied by private consultations of the apostles.438

1. Apostolic Recognition. The pillars of the Jewish Church, James, Peter, and John439—whatever their views may have been before—were fully convinced by the logic of events in which they recognized the hand of Providence that Paul as well as Barnabas by the extraordinary success of his labors had proven himself to be divinely called to the apostolate of the Gentiles. They took no exception and made no addition to his gospel. On the contrary, when they saw that God who gave grace and strength to Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision, gave grace and strength to Paul also for the conversion of the uncircumcision, they extended to him and to Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, with the understanding that they would divide as far as practicable the large field of labor, and that Paul should manifest his brotherly love and cement the union by aiding in the support of the poor, often persecuted and famine-stricken brethren of Judaea. This service of charity he had cheerfully done before, and as cheerfully and faithfully did afterward by raising collections among his Greek congregations and carrying the money in person to Jerusalem.440  Such is the unequivocal testimony of the fraternal understanding among the apostles from the mouth of Paul himself. And the letter of the council officially recognizes this by mentioning "beloved" Barnabas441 and Paul, as "men who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." This double testimony of the unity of the apostolic church is quite conclusive against the modern invention of an irreconcilable antagonism between Paul and Peter.442

2. As regards the question of circumcision and the status of the Gentile Christians, there was a sharp conflict of opinions in open debate, under the very shadow of the inspired apostles.443  There was strong conviction and feeling on both sides, plausible arguments were urged, charges and countercharges made, invidious inferences drawn, fatal consequences threatened. But the Holy Spirit was also present, as he is with every meeting of disciples who come together in the name of Christ, and overruled the infirmities of human nature which will crop out in every ecclesiastical assembly.

The circumcision of Titus, as a test case, was of course strongly demanded by the Pharisaical legalists, but as strongly resisted by Paul, and not enforced.444  To yield here even for a moment would have been fatal to the cause of Christian liberty, and would have implied a wholesale circumcision of the Gentile converts, which was impossible.

But how could Paul consistently afterwards circumcise Timothy?445  The answer is that he circumcised Timothy as a Jew, not as a Gentile, and that he did it as a voluntary act of expediency, for the purpose of making Timothy more useful among the Jews, who had a claim on him as the son of a Jewish mother, and would not have allowed him to teach in a synagogue without this token of membership; while in the case of Titus, a pure Greek, circumcision was demanded as a principle and as a condition of justification and salvation. Paul was inflexible in resisting the demands of false brethren, but always willing to accommodate himself to weak brethren, and to become as a Jew to the Jews and as a Gentile to the Gentiles in order to save them both.446  In genuine Christian freedom he cared nothing for circumcision or uncircumcision as a mere rite or external condition, and as compared with the keeping of the commandments of God and the new creature in Christ.447

In the debate Peter, of course, as the oecumenical chief of the Jewish apostles, although at that time no more a resident of Jerusalem, took a leading part, and made a noble speech which accords entirely with his previous experience and practice in the house of Cornelius, and with his subsequent endorsement of Paul’s doctrine.448  He was no logician, no rabbinical scholar, but he had admirable good sense and practical tact, and quickly perceived the true line of progress and duty. He spoke in a tone of personal and moral authority, but not of official primacy.449  He protested against imposing upon the neck of the Gentile disciples the unbearable yoke of the ceremonial law, and laid down, as clearly as Paul, the fundamental principle that "Jews as well as Gentiles are saved only by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ."450

After this bold speech, which created a profound silence in the assembly, Barnabas and Paul reported, as the best practical argument, the signal miracles which God had wrought among the Gentiles through their instrumentality.

The last and weightiest speaker was James, the brother of the Lord, the local head of the Jewish Christian church and bishop of Jerusalem, who as such seems to have presided over the council. He represented as it were the extreme right wing of the Jewish church bordering close on the Judaizing faction. It was through his influence chiefly no doubt that the Pharisees were converted who created this disturbance. In a very characteristic speech he endorsed the sentiments of Symeon—he preferred to call Peter by his Jewish name—concerning the conversion of the Gentiles as being in accordance with ancient prophecy and divine fore-ordination; but he proposed a compromise to the effect that while the Gentile disciples should not be troubled with circumcision, they should yet be exhorted to abstain from certain practices which were particularly offensive to pious Jews, namely, from eating meat offered to idols, from tasting blood, or food of strangled animals, and from every form of carnal uncleanness. As to the Jewish Christians, they knew their duty from the law, and would be expected to continue in their time-honored habits.

The address of James differs considerably from that of Peter, and meant restriction as well as freedom, but after all it conceded the main point at issue—salvation without circumcision. The address entirely accords in spirit and language with his own epistle, which represents the gospel as law, though "the perfect law of freedom," with his later conduct toward Paul in advising him to assume the vow of the Nazarites and thus to contradict the prejudices of the myriads of converted Jews, and with the Jewish Christian tradition which represents him as the model of an ascetic saint equally revered by devout Jews and Christians, as the "Rampart of the People" (Obliam), and the intercessor of Israel who prayed in the temple without ceasing for its conversion and for the aversion of the impending doom.451  He had more the spirit of an ancient prophet or of John the Baptist than the spirit of Jesus (in whom he did not believe till after the resurrection), but for this very reason he had most authority over the Jewish Christians, and could reconcile the majority of them to the progressive spirit of Paul.

The compromise of James was adopted and embodied in the following brief and fraternal pastoral letter to the Gentile churches. It is the oldest literary document of the apostolic age and bears the marks of the style of James:452

"The apostles and the elder brethren453 unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greeting: Forasmuch as we have heard, that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, to whom we gave no commandment, it seemed good unto us, having come to be of one accord, to choose out men and send them unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves also shall tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that ye abstain from meats sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Farewell."454

The decree was delivered by four special messengers, two representing the church at Antioch, Barnabas and Paul, and two from Jerusalem, Judas Barsabbas and Silas (or Silvanus), and read to the Syrian and Cilician churches which were agitated by the controversy.455  The restrictions remained in full force at least eight years, since James reminded Paul of them on his last visit to Jerusalem in 58.456  The Jewish Christians observed them no doubt with few exceptions till the downfall of idolatry,457 and the Oriental church even to this day abstains from blood and things strangled; but the Western church never held itself bound to this part of the decree, or soon abandoned some of its restrictions.

Thus by moderation and mutual concession in the spirit of peace and brotherly love a burning controversy was settled, and a split happily avoided.

Analysis of the Decree.

The decree of the council was a compromise and had two aspects: it was emancipatory, and restrictive.

(1.) It was a decree of emancipation of the Gentile disciples from circumcision and the bondage of the ceremonial law. This was the chief point in dispute, and so far the decree was liberal and progressive. It settled the question of principle once and forever. Paul had triumphed. Hereafter the Judaizing doctrine of the necessity of circumcision for salvation was a heresy, a false gospel, or a perversion of the true gospel, and is denounced as such by Paul in the Galatians.

(2.) The decree was restrictive and conservative on questions of expediency and comparative indifference to the Gentile Christians. Under this aspect it was a wise and necessary measure for the apostolic age, especially in the East, where the Jewish element prevailed, but not intended for universal and permanent use. In Western churches, as already remarked, it was gradually abandoned, as we learn from Augustine. It imposed upon the Gentile Christians abstinence from meat offered to idols, from blood, and from things strangled (as fowls and other animals caught in snares). The last two points amounted to the same thing. These three restrictions had a good foundation in the Jewish abhorrence of idolatry, and every thing connected with it, and in the Levitical prohibition.458  Without them the churches in Judaea would not have agreed to the compact. But it was almost impossible to carry them out in mixed or in purely Gentile congregations; for it would have compelled the Gentile Christians to give up social intercourse with their unconverted kindred and friends, and to keep separate slaughter-houses, like the Jews, who from fear of contamination with idolatrous associations never bought meat at the public markets. Paul takes a more liberal view of this matter—herein no doubt dissenting somewhat from James—namely, that the eating of meat sacrificed to idols was in itself indifferent, in view of the vanity of idols; nevertheless he likewise commands the Corinthians to abstain from such meat out of regard for tender and weak consciences, and lays down the golden rule: "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but his neighbor’s good."459

It seems strange to a modern reader that with these ceremonial prohibitions should be connected the strictly moral prohibition of fornication.460  But it must be remembered that the heathen conscience as to sexual intercourse was exceedingly lax, and looked upon it as a matter of indifference, like eating and drinking, and as sinful only in case of adultery where the rights of a husband are invaded. No heathen moralist, not even Socrates, or Plato, or Cicero, condemned fornication absolutely. It was sanctioned by the worship of Aphrodite at Corinth and Paphos, and practised to her honor by a host of harlot-priestesses!  Idolatry or spiritual whoredom is almost inseparable from bodily pollution. In the case of Solomon polytheism and polygamy went hand in hand. Hence the author of the Apocalypse also closely connects the eating of meat offered to idols with fornication, and denounces them together.461  Paul had to struggle against this laxity in the Corinthian congregation, and condemns all carnal uncleanness as a violation and profanation of the temple of God.462  In this absolute prohibition of sexual impurity we have a striking evidence of the regenerating and sanctifying influence of Christianity. Even the ascetic excesses of the post-apostolic writers who denounced the second marriage as "decent adultery" (eujpreph;" moiceiva), and glorified celibacy as a higher and better state than honorable wedlock, command our respect, as a wholesome and necessary reaction against the opposite excesses of heathen licentiousness.

So far then as the Gentile Christians were concerned the question was settled.

The status of the Jewish Christians was no subject of controversy, and hence the decree is silent about them. They were expected to continue in their ancestral traditions and customs as far as they were at all consistent with loyalty to Christ. They needed no instruction as to their duty, "for," said James, in his address to the Council, "Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."463  And eight years afterwards he and his elders intimated to Paul that even he, as a Jew, was expected to observe the ceremonial law, and that the exemption was only meant for the Gentiles.464

But just here was a point where the decree was deficient. It went far enough for the temporary emergency, and as far as the Jewish church was willing to go, but not far enough for the cause of Christian union and Christian liberty in its legitimate development.

Notes.

1. The Apostolic Conference at Jerusalem.—This has been one of the chief battle-fields of modern historical criticism. The controversy of circumcision has been fought over again in German, French, Dutch, and English books and essays, and the result is a clearer insight both into the difference and into the harmony of the apostolic church.

We have two accounts of the Conference, one from Paul in the second chapter of the Galatians, and one from his faithful companion, Luke, in Acts 15. For it is now almost universally admitted that they refer to the same event. They must be combined to make up a full history. The Epistle to the Galatians is the true key to the position, the Archimedian pou' stw'.

The accounts agree as to the contending parties—Jerusalem and Antioch—the leaders on both sides, the topic of controversy, the sharp conflict, and the peaceful result.

But in other respects they differ considerably and supplement each other. Paul, in a polemic vindication of his independent apostolic authority against his Judaizing antagonists in Galatia, a few years after the Council (about 56), dwells chiefly on his personal understanding with the other apostles and their recognition of his authority, but he expressly hints also at public conferences, which could not be avoided; for it was a controversy between the churches, and an agreement concluded by the leading apostles on both sides was of general authority, even if it was disregarded by a heretical party. Luke, on the other hand, writing after the lapse of at least thirteen years (about 63) a calm and objective history of the primitive church, gives (probably from Jerusalem and Antioch documents, but certainly not from Paul’s Epistles) the official action of the public assembly, with an abridgment of the preceding debates, without excluding private conferences; on the contrary he rather includes them; for he reports in Acts 15:5, that Paul and Barnabas "were received by the church and the apostles and elders and declared all things that God had done with them," before he gives an account of the public consultation, ver. 6. In all assemblies, ecclesiastical and political, the more important business is prepared and matured by Committees in private conference for public discussion and action; and there is no reason why the council in Jerusalem should have made an exception. The difference of aim then explains, in part at least, the omissions and minor variations of the two accounts, which we have endeavored to adjust in this section.

The ultra- and pseudo-Pauline hypercriticism of the Tübingen school in several discussions (by Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holsten, Overbeck, Lipsius, Hausrath, and Wittichen) has greatly exaggerated these differences, and used Paul’s terse polemic allusions as a lever for the overthrow of the credibility of the Acts. But a more conservative critical reaction has recently taken place, partly in the same school (as indicated in the literature above), which tends to harmonize the two accounts and to vindicate the essential consensus of Petrinism and Paulinism.

2. The Circumcision of Titus.—We hold with most commentators that Titus was not circumcised. This is the natural sense of the difficult and much disputed passage, Gal. 2:3–5, no matter whether we take dev in 2:4 in the explanatory sense (nempe, and that), or in the usual adversative sense (autem, sed, but). In the former case the sentence is regular, in the latter it is broken, or designedly incomplete, and implies perhaps a slight censure of the other apostles, who may have first recommended the circumcision of Titus as a measure of prudence and conciliation out of regard to conservative scruples, but desisted from it on the strong remonstrance of Paul. If we press the hjnagkavsqh compelled, in 2:3, such an inference might easily be drawn, but there was in Paul’s mind a conflict between the duty of frankness and the duty of courtesy to his older colleagues. So Dr. Lightfoot accounts for the broken grammar of the sentence, "which was wrecked on the hidden rock of the counsels of the apostles of the circumcision."

Quite another view was taken by Tertullian (Adv. Marc., V. 3), and recently by Renan (ch. III. p. 89) and Farrar (I. 415), namely, that Titus voluntarily submitted to circumcision for the sake of peace, either in spite of the remonstrance of Paul, or rather with his reluctant consent. Paul seems to say that Titus was not circumcised, but implies that he was. This view is based on the omission of oi\" oujdev in 2:5. The passage then would have to be supplemented in this way: "But not even Titus was compelled to be circumcised, but [he submitted to circumcision voluntarily] on account of the stealthily introduced false brethren, to whom we yielded by way of submission for an hour [i.e., temporarily]." Renan thus explains the meaning: "If Titus was circumcised, it is not because he was forced, but on account of the false brethren, to whom we might yield for a moment without submitting ourselves in principle." He thinks that pro" w{ran is opposed to the following diameivnh/. In other words, Paul stooped to conquer. He yielded for a moment by a stretch of charity or a stroke of policy, in order to save Titus from violence, or to bring his case properly before the Council and to achieve a permanent victory of principle. But this view is entirely inconsistent not only with the frankness and firmness of Paul on a question of principle, with the gravity of the crisis, with the uncompromising tone of the Epistle to the Galatians, but also with the addresses of Peter and James, and with the decree of the council. If Titus was really circumcised, Paul would have said so, and explained his relation to the fact. Moreover, the testimony of Irenaeus and Tertullian against oi|" oujdev must give way to the authority of the best uncials (a B A C, etc) and versions in favor of these words. The omission can be better explained from carelessness or dogmatic prejudice rather than the insertion.

§ 35. The Conservative Reaction, and the Liberal Victory—

Peter and Paul at Antioch.

The Jerusalem compromise, like every other compromise, was liable to a double construction, and had in it the seed of future troubles. It was an armistice rather than a final settlement. Principles must and will work themselves out, and the one or the other must triumph.

A liberal construction of the spirit of the decree seemed to demand full communion of the Jewish Christians with their uncircumcised Gentile brethren, even at the Lord’s table, in the weekly or daily agapae, on the basis of the common saving faith in Christ, their common Lord and Saviour. But a strict construction of the letter stopped with the recognition of the general Christian character of the Gentile converts, and guarded against ecclesiastical amalgamation on the ground of the continued obligation of the Jewish converts to obey the ceremonial law, including the observance of circumcision, of the Sabbath and new moons, and the various regulations about clean and unclean meats, which virtually forbid social intercourse with unclean Gentiles.465

The conservative view was orthodox, and must not be confounded with the Judaizing heresy which demanded circumcision from the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and made it a term of church membership and a condition of salvation. This doctrine had been condemned once for all by the Jerusalem agreement, and was held hereafter only by the malignant pharisaical faction of the Judaizers.

The church of Jerusalem, being composed entirely of Jewish converts, would naturally take the conservative view; while the church of Antioch, where the Gentile element prevailed, would as naturally prefer the liberal interpretation, which had the certain prospect of ultimate success. James, who perhaps never went outside of Palestine, far from denying the Christian character of the Gentile converts, would yet keep them at a respectful distance; while Peter, with his impulsive, generous nature, and in keeping with his more general vocation, carried out in practice the conviction he had so boldly professed in Jerusalem, and on a visit to Antioch, shortly after the Jerusalem Council (A.D. 51), openly and habitually communed at table with the Gentile brethren.466  He had already once before eaten in the house of the uncircumcised Cornelius at Caesarea, seeing that "God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him."467

But when some delegates of James468 arrived from Jerusalem and remonstrated with him for his conduct, he timidly withdrew from fellowship with the uncircumcised followers of Christ, and thus virtually disowned them. He unwittingly again denied his Lord from the fear of man, but this time in the persons of his Gentile disciples. The inconsistency is characteristic of his impulsive temper, which made him timid or bold according to the nature of the momentary impression. It is not stated whether these delegates simply carried out the instructions of James or went beyond them. The former is more probable from what we know of him, and explains more easily the conduct of Peter, who would scarcely have been influenced by casual and unofficial visitors. They were perhaps officers in the congregation of Jerusalem; at all events men of weight, not Pharisees exactly, yet extremely conservative and cautious, and afraid of miscellaneous company, which might endanger the purity and orthodoxy of the venerable mother church of Christendom. They did, of course, not demand the circumcision of the Gentile Christians, for this would have been in direct opposition to the synodical decree, but they no doubt reminded Peter of the understanding of the Jerusalem compact concerning the duty of Jewish Christians, which he above all others should scrupulously keep. They represented to him that his conduct was at least very hasty and premature, and calculated to hinder the conversion of the Jewish nation, which was still the object of their dearest hopes and most fervent prayers. The pressure must have been very strong, for even Barnabas, who had stood side by side with Paul at Jerusalem in the defence of the rights of the Gentile Christians, was intimidated and carried away by the example of the chief of the apostles.

The subsequent separation of Paul from Barnabas and Mark, which the author of Acts frankly relates, was no doubt partly connected with this manifestation of human weakness.469

The sin of Peter roused the fiery temper of Paul, and called upon him a sharper rebuke than he had received from his Master. A mere look of pity from Jesus was enough to call forth bitter tears of repentance. Paul was not Jesus. He may have been too severe in the manner of his remonstrance, but he knew Peter better than we, and was right in the matter of dispute, and after all more moderate than some of the greatest and best men have been in personal controversy. Forsaken by the prince of the apostles and by his own faithful ally in the Gentile mission, he felt that nothing but unflinching courage could save the sinking ship of freedom. A vital principle was at stake, and the Christian standing of the Gentile converts must be maintained at all hazards, now or never, if the world was to be saved and Christianity was not to shrink into a narrow corner as a Jewish sect. Whatever might do in Jerusalem, where there was scarcely a heathen convert, this open affront to brethren in Christ could not be tolerated for a moment at Antioch in the church which was of his own planting and full of Hellenists and Gentiles. A public scandal must be publicly corrected. And so Paul confronted Peter and charged him with downright hypocrisy in the face of the whole congregation. He exposed his misconduct by his terse reasoning, to which Peter could make no reply.470  "If thou," he said to him in substance, "who art a Jew by nationality and training, art eating with the Gentiles in disregard of the ceremonial prohibition, why art thou now, by the moral force of thy example as the chief of the Twelve, constraining the Gentile converts to Judaize or to conform to the ceremonial restraints of the elementary religion?  We who are Jews by birth and not gross sinners like the heathen, know that justification comes not from works of the law, but from faith in Christ. It may be objected that by seeking gratuitous justification instead of legal justification, we make Christ a promoter of sin.471  Away with this monstrous and blasphemous conclusion!  On the contrary, there is sin in returning to the law for justification after we have abandoned it for faith in Christ. I myself stand convicted of transgression if I build up again (as thou doest now) the very law which I pulled down (as thou didst before), and thus condemn my former conduct. For the law itself taught me to exchange it for Christ, to whom it points as its end. Through the Mosaic law as a tutor leading me beyond itself to freedom in Christ, I died to the Mosaic law in order that I might live a new life of obedience and gratitude to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer my old self that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me; and the new life of Christ which I now live in this body after my conversion, I live in the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if the observance of the law of Moses or any other human work could justify and save, there was no good cause of Christ’s death his atoning sacrifice on the cross was needless and fruitless."

From such a conclusion Peter’s soul shrank back in horror. He never dreamed of denying the necessity and efficacy of the death of Christ for the remission of sins. He and Barnabas stood between two fires on that trying occasion. As Jews they seemed to be bound by the restrictions of the Jerusalem compromise on which the messengers of James insisted; but by trying to please the Jews they offended the Gentiles, and by going back to Jewish exclusiveness they did violence to their better convictions, and felt condemned by their own conscience.472  They no doubt returned to their more liberal practice.

The alienation of the apostles was merely temporary. They were too noble and too holy to entertain resentment. Paul makes honorable mention afterwards of Peter and Barnabas, and also of Mark, who was a connecting link between the three.473  Peter in his Epistles endorses the teaching of the "beloved brother Paul," and commends the wisdom of his Epistles, in one of which his own conduct is so severely rebuked, but significantly adds that there are some "things in them hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."474

The scene of Antioch belongs to these things which have been often misunderstood and perverted by prejudice and ignorance in the interest both of heresy and orthodoxy. The memory of it was perpetuated by the tradition which divided the church at Antioch into two parishes with two bishops, Evodius and Ignatius, the one instituted by Peter, the other by Paul. Celsus, Porphyry, and modern enemies of Christianity have used it as an argument against the moral character and inspiration of the apostles. The conduct of Paul left a feeling of intense bitterness and resentment in the Jewish party which manifested itself even a hundred years later in a violent attack of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions upon Paul, under the disguise of Simon Magus. The conduct of both apostles was so unaccountable to Catholic taste that some of the fathers substituted an unknown Cephas for Peter;475 while others resolved the scene into a hypocritical farce gotten up by the apostles themselves for dramatic effect upon the ignorant congregation.476

The truth of history requires us to sacrifice the orthodox fiction of moral perfection in the apostolic church. But we gain more than we lose. The apostles themselves never claimed, but expressly disowned such perfection.477  They carried the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels, and thus brought it nearer to us. The infirmities of holy men are frankly revealed in the Bible for our encouragement as well as for our humiliation. The bold attack of Paul teaches the right and duty of protest even against the highest ecclesiastical authority, when Christian truth and principle are endangered; the quiet submission of Peter commends him to our esteem for his humility and meekness in proportion to his high standing as the chief among the pillar-apostles; the conduct of both explodes the Romish fiction of papal supremacy and infallibility; and the whole scene typically foreshadows the grand historical conflict between Petrine Catholicism and Pauline Protestantism, which, we trust, will end at last in a grand Johannean reconciliation.

Peter and Paul, as far as we know, never met afterwards till they both shed their blood for the testimony of Jesus in the capital of the world.

The fearless remonstrance of Paul had probably a moderating effect upon James and his elders, but did not alter their practice in Jerusalem.478  Still less did it silence the extreme Judaizing faction; on the contrary, it enraged them. They were defeated, but not convinced, and fought again with greater bitterness than ever. They organized a countermission, and followed Paul into almost every field of his labor, especially to Corinth and Galatia. They were a thorn, if not the thorn, in his flesh. He has them in view in all his Epistles except those to the Thessalonians and to Philemon. We cannot understand his Epistles in their proper historical sense without this fact. The false apostles were perhaps those very Pharisees who caused the original trouble, at all events men of like spirit. They boasted of their personal acquaintance with the Lord in the days of his flesh, and with the primitive apostles; hence Paul calls these "false apostles" sarcastically "super-eminent" or "over-extra-apostles."479  They attacked his apostolate as irregular and spurious, and his gospel as radical and revolutionary. They boldly told his Gentile converts that the, must submit to circumcision and keep the ceremonial law; in other words, that they must be Jews as well as Christians in order to insure salvation, or at all events to occupy a position of pre-eminence over and above mere proselytes of the gate in the outer court. They appealed, without foundation, to James and Peter and to Christ himself, and abused their name and authority for their narrow sectarian purposes, just as the Bible itself is made responsible for all sorts of heresies and vagaries. They seduced many of the impulsive and changeable Galatians, who had all the characteristics of the Keltic race. They split the congregation in Corinth into several parties and caused the apostle the deepest anxiety. In Colossae, and the churches of Phrygia and Asia, legalism assumed the milder form of Essenic mysticism and asceticism. In the Roman church the legalists were weak brethren rather than false brethren, and no personal enemies of Paul, who treats them much more mildly than the Galatian errorists.

This bigoted and most persistent Judaizing reaction was overruled for good. It drew out from the master mind of Paul the most complete and most profound vindication and exposition of the doctrines of sin and grace. Without the intrigues and machinations of these legalists and ritualists we should not have the invaluable Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Where error abounded, truth has still more abounded.

At last the victory was won. The terrible persecution under Nero, and the still more terrible destruction of Jerusalem, buried the circumcision controversy in the Christian church. The ceremonial law, which before Christ was "alive but not life-giving," and which from Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem was "dying but not deadly," became after that destruction "dead and deadly."480  The Judaizing heresy was indeed continued outside of the Catholic church by the sect of the Ebionites during the second century; and in the church itself the spirit of formalism and bigotry assumed new shapes by substituting Christian rites and ceremonies for the typical shadows of the Mosaic dispensation. But whenever and wherever this tendency manifests itself we have the best antidote in the Epistles of Paul.

§ 36. Christianity in Rome.

I. On the general, social, and moral condition of Rome under the Emperors:

Ludwig Friedländer: Sittengeschichte Roms. Leipzig, 1862, 5th ed. revised and enlarged, 1881, 3 vols.

Rod. Lanciani: Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries. Boston, 1889 (with 100 illustrations).

II. On the Jews in Rome and the allusions of Roman Writers to Them:

Renan: Les Apôtres, 287–293; Merivale: History of the Romans, VI., 203 sqq.; Friedländer: l.c. III., 505 sqq.; Hausrath: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, III., 383–392 (2d ed.); Schürer: Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte, pp. 624 sq., and Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, Leipz., 1879; Huidekoper: Judaism at Rome, 1876. Also John Gill: Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of Antiquity. 2d ed. London, 1872. On Jewish Roman inscriptions see Garrucci (several articles in Italian since 1862), von Engeström (in a Swedish work, Upsala, 1876), and Schürer (1879).

III. On the Christian Congregation in Rome:

The Histories of the Apostolic Age (see pp. 189 sqq.); the Introductions to the Commentaries on Romans (mentioned p. 281), and a number of critical essays on the origin and composition of the Church of Rome and the aim of the Epistle to the Romans, by Baur (Ueber Zweck und Veranlassung des Römerbriefs, 1836; reproduced in his Paul, I., 346 sqq., Engl. transl.), Beyschlag (Das geschichtliche Problem des Römerbriefs in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1867), Hilgenfeld (Einleitung in das N. T., 1875, pp. 302 sqq.), C. Weizsäcker (Ueber die älteste römische Christengemeinde, 1876, and his Apost. Zeitalter, 1886, pp. 415–467).

W. Mangold: Der Römerbrief und seine gesch. Voraussetzungen, Marburg, 1884. Defends the Jewish origin and character of the Roman church (against Weizsäcker).

Rud. Seyerlen: Entstehung und erste Schicksale der Christengemeinde in Rom. Tübingen, 1874.

Adolf Harnack: Christianity and Christians at the Court of the Roman Emperors before the Time of Constantine. In the "Princeton Review," N. York, 1878, pp. 239–280.

J. Spencer Northcote and W. R. Brownlow (R. C.): Roma Sotterranea, new ed., London, 1879, vol. I., pp. 78–91. Based upon Caval. de Rossi’s large Italian work under the same title (Roma, 1864–1877, in three vols. fol.). Both important for the remains of early Roman Christianity in the Catacombs.

Formby: Ancient Rome and its Connect. with the Chr. Rel. Lond., 1880.

Keim: Rom. u. das Christenthum. Berlin, 1881.

[MAP INSET] From "Roma Sotteranea," by Northcote and Brownlow.

The City of Rome.

The city of Rome was to the Roman empire what Paris is to France, what London to Great Britain: the ruling head and the beating heart. It had even a more cosmopolitan character than these modern cities. It was the world in miniature, "orbis in urbe." Rome had conquered nearly all the nationalities of the then civilized world, and drew its population from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South. All languages, religious, and customs of the conquered provinces found a home there. Half the inhabitants spoke Greek, and the natives complained of the preponderance of this foreign tongue, which, since Alexander’s conquest, had become the language of the Orient and of the civilized world.481  The palace of the emperor was the chief centre of Oriental and Greek life. Large numbers of the foreigners were freedmen, who generally took the family name of their masters. Many of them became very wealthy, even millionnaires. The rich freedman was in that age the type of the vulgar, impudent, bragging upstart. According to Tacitus, "all things vile and shameful" were sure to flow from all quarters of the empire into Rome as a common sewer. But the same is true of the best elements: the richest products of nature, the rarest treasures of art, were collected there; the enterprising and ambitious youths, the men of genius, learning, and every useful craft found in Rome the widest field and the richest reward for their talents.

With Augustus began the period of expensive building. In his long reign of peace and prosperity he changed the city of bricks into a city of marble. It extended in narrow and irregular streets on both banks of the Tiber, covered the now desolate and feverish Campagna to the base of the Albanian hills, and stretched its arms by land and by sea to the ends of the earth. It was then (as in its ruins it is even now) the most instructive and interesting city in the world. Poets, orators, and historians were lavish in the praises of the urbs aeterna,

"qua nihil posis visere majus."482

The estimates of the population of imperial Rome are guesswork, and vary from one to four millions. But in all probability it amounted under Augustus to more than a million, and increased rapidly under the following emperors till it received a check by the fearful epidemic of 79, which for many days demanded ten thousand victims a day.483  Afterwards the city grew again and reached the height of its splendor under Hadrian and the Antonines.484

The Jews in Rome.

The number of Jews in Rome during the apostolic age is estimated at twenty or thirty thousand souls.485  They all spoke Hellenistic Greek with a strong Hebrew accent. They had, as far as we know, seven synagogues and three cemeteries, with Greek and a few Latin inscriptions, sometimes with Greek words in Latin letters, or Latin words with Greek letters.486  They inhabited the fourteenth region, beyond the Tiber (Trastevere), at the base of the Janiculum, probably also the island of the Tiber, and part of the left bank towards the Circus Maximus and the Palatine hill, in the neighborhood of the present Ghetto or Jewry. They were mostly descendants of slaves and captives of Pompey, Cassius, and Antony. They dealt then, as now, in old clothing and broken ware, or rose from poverty to wealth and prominence as bankers, physicians, astrologers, and fortunetellers. Not a few found their way to the court. Alityrus, a Jewish actor, enjoyed the highest favor of Nero. Thallus, a Samaritan and freedman of Tiberius, was able to lend a million denarii to the Jewish king, Herod Agrippa.487  The relations between the Herods and the Julian and Claudian emperors were very intimate.

The strange manners and institutions of the Jews, as circumcision, Sabbath observance, abstinence from pork and meat sacrificed to the gods whom they abhorred as evil spirits, excited the mingled amazement, contempt, and ridicule of the Roman historians and satirists. Whatever was sacred to the heathen was profane to the Jews.488  They were regarded as enemies of the human race. But this, after all, was a superficial judgment. The Jews had also their friends. Their indomitable industry and persistency, their sobriety, earnestness, fidelity and benevolence, their strict obedience to law, their disregard of death in war, their unshaken trust in God, their hope of a glorious future of humanity, the simplicity and purity of their worship, the sublimity and majesty of the idea of one omnipotent, holy, and merciful God, made a deep impression upon thoughtful and serious persons, and especially upon females (who escaped the odium of circumcision). Hence the large number of proselytes in Rome and elsewhere. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, as well as Josephus, testify that many Romans abstained from all business on the Sabbath, fasted and prayed, burned lamps, studied the Mosaic law, and sent tribute to the temple of Jerusalem. Even the Empress Poppaea was inclined to Judaism after her own fashion, and showed great favor to Josephus, who calls her "devout" or "God-fearing" (though she was a cruel and shameless woman).489  Seneca, who detested the Jews (calling them sceleratissima gens), was constrained to say that this conquered race gave laws to their conquerors.490

The Jews were twice expelled from Rome under Tiberius and Claudius, but soon returned to their transtiberine quarter, and continued to enjoy the privileges of a religio licita, which were granted to them by heathen emperors, but were afterwards denied them by Christian popes.491

When Paul arrived in Rome he invited the rulers of the synagogues to a conference, that he might show them his good will and give them the first offer of the gospel, but they replied to his explanations with shrewd reservation, and affected to know nothing of Christianity, except that it was a sect everywhere spoken against. Their best policy was evidently to ignore it as much as possible. Yet a large number came to hear the apostle on an appointed day, and some believed, while the majority, as usual, rejected his testimony.492

Christianity in Rome.

From this peculiar people came the first converts to a religion which proved more than a match for the power of Rome. The Jews were only an army of defense, the Christians an army of conquest, though under the despised banner of the cross.

The precise origin of the church of Rome is involved in impenetrable mystery. We are informed of the beginnings of the church of Jerusalem and most of the churches of Paul, but we do not know who first preached the gospel at Rome. Christianity with its missionary enthusiasm for the conversion of the world must have found a home in the capital of the world at a very early day, before the apostles left Palestine. The congregation at Antioch grew up from emigrant and fugitive disciples of Jerusalem before it was consolidated and fully organized by Barnabas and Paul.

It is not impossible, though by no means demonstrable, that the first tidings of the gospel were brought to Rome soon after the birthday of the church by witnesses of the pentecostal miracle in Jerusalem, among whom were "sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes."493  In this case Peter, the preacher of the pentecostal sermon, may be said to have had an indirect agency in the founding of the church of Rome, which claims him as the rock on which it is built, although the tradition of his early visit (42) and twenty or twenty-five years’ residence there is a long exploded fable.494  Paul greets among the brethren in Rome some kinsmen who had been converted before him, i.e., before 37.495  Several names in the list of Roman brethren to whom he sends greetings are found in the Jewish cemetery on the Appian Way among the freedmen of the Empress Livia. Christians from Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece must have come to the capital for various reasons, either as visitors or settlers.

The Edict of Claudius.

The first historic trace of Christianity in Rome we have in a notice of the heathen historian Suetonius, confirmed by Luke, that Claudius, about A.D. 52, banished the Jews from Rome because of their insurrectionary disposition and commotion under the instigation of "Chrestus" (misspelt for "Christus").496

This commotion in all probability refers to Messianic controversies between Jews and Christians who were not yet clearly distinguished at that time. The preaching, of Christ, the true King of Israel, would naturally produce a great commotion among the Jews, as it did at Antioch, in Pisidia, in Lystra, Thessalonica, and Beraea; and the ignorant heathen magistrates would as naturally infer that Christ was a political pretender and aspirant to an earthly throne. The Jews who rejected the true Messiah looked all the more eagerly for an imaginary Messiah that would break the yoke of Rome and restore the theocracy of David in Jerusalem. Their carnal millennarianism affected even some Christians, and Paul found it necessary to warn them against rebellion and revolution. Among those expelled by the edict of Claudius were Aquila and Priscilla, the hospitable friends of Paul, who were probably converted before they met him in Corinth.497

The Jews, however, soon returned, and the Jewish Christians also, but both under a cloud of suspicion. To this fact Tacitus may refer when he says that the Christian superstition which had been suppressed for a time (by the edict of Claudius) broke out again (under Nero, who ascended the throne in 54).

Paul’s Epistle.

In the early part of Nero’s reign (54–68) the Roman congregation was already well known throughout Christendom, had several meeting places and a considerable number of teachers.498  It was in view of this fact, and in prophetic anticipation of its future importance, that Paul addressed to it from Corinth his most important doctrinal Epistle (A.D. 58), which was to prepare the way for his long desired personal visit. On his journey to Rome three years later he found Christians at Puteoli (the modern Puzzuolo at the bay of Naples), who desired him to tarry with them seven days.499  Some thirty or forty miles from the city, at Appii Forum and Tres Tabernae (The Three Taverns), he was met by Roman brethren anxious to see the writer of that marvellous letter, and derived much comfort from this token of affectionate regard.500

Paul in Rome.

His arrival in Rome, early in the year 61, which two years later was probably followed by that of Peter, naturally gave a great impulse to the growth of the congregation. He brought with him, as he had promised, "the fulness of the blessing of Christ." His very bonds were overruled for the progress of the gospel, which he was left free to preach under military guard in his own dwelling.501  He had with him during the whole or a part of the first Roman captivity his faithful pupils and companions: Luke, "the beloved physician" and historian; Timothy, the dearest of his spiritual sons; John Mark, who had deserted him on his first missionary tour, but joined him at Rome and mediated between him and Peter; one Jesus, who is called Justus, a Jewish Christian, who remained faithful to him; Aristarchus, his fellow-prisoner from Thessalonica; Tychicus from Ephesus; Epaphras and Onesimus from Colossae; Epaphroditus from Philippi; Demas, Pudens, Linus, Eubulus, and others who are honorably mentioned in the Epistles of the captivity.502  They formed a noble band of evangelists and aided the aged apostle in his labors at Rome and abroad. On the other hand his enemies of the Judaizing party were stimulated to counter-activity, and preached Christ from envy and jealousy; but in noble self-denial Paul rose above petty sectarianism, and sincerely rejoiced from his lofty standpoint if only Christ was proclaimed and his kingdom promoted. While he fearlessly vindicated Christian freedom against Christian legalism in the Epistle to the Galatians, he preferred even a poor contracted Christianity to the heathenism which abounded in Rome.503

The number which were converted through these various agencies, though disappearing in the heathen masses of the metropolis, and no doubt much smaller than the twenty thousand Jews, must have been considerable, for Tacitus speaks of a "vast multitude" of Christians that perished in the Neronian persecution in 64; and Clement, referring to the same persecution, likewise mentions a "vast multitude of the elect," who were contemporary with Paul and Peter, and who, "through many indignities and tortures, became a most noble example among ourselves" (that is, the Roman Christians).504

Composition and Consolidation of the Roman Church.

The composition of the church of Rome has been a matter of much learned controversy and speculation. It no doubt was, like most congregations outside of Palestine, of a mixed character, with a preponderance of the Gentile over the Jewish element, but it is impossible to estimate the numerical strength and the precise relation which the two elements sustained to each other.505

We have no reason to suppose that it was at once fully organized and consolidated into one community. The Christians were scattered all over the immense city, and held their devotional meetings in different localities. The Jewish and the Gentile converts may have formed distinct communities, or rather two sections of one Christian community.

Paul and Peter, if they met together in Rome (after 63), would naturally, in accordance with the Jerusalem compact, divide the field of supervision between them as far as practicable, and at the same time promote union and harmony. This may be the truth which underlies the early and general tradition that they were the joint founders of the Roman church. No doubt their presence and martyrdom cemented the Jewish and Gentile sections. But the final consolidation into one organic corporation was probably not effected till after the destruction of Jerusalem.

This consolidation was chiefly the work of Clement, who appears as the first presiding presbyter of the one Roman church. He was admirably qualified to act as mediator between the disciples of Peter and Paul, being himself influenced by both, though more by Paul. His Epistle to the Corinthians combines the distinctive features of the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and James, and has been called "a typical document, reflecting the comprehensive principles and large sympathies which had been impressed upon the united church of Rome."506

In the second century we see no more traces of a twofold community. But outside of the orthodox church, the heretical schools, both Jewish and Gentile, found likewise au early home in this rendezvous of the world. The fable of Simon Magus in Rome reflects this fact. Valentinus, Marcion, Praxeas, Theodotus, Sabellius, and other arch-heretics taught there. In heathen Rome, Christian heresies and sects enjoyed a toleration which was afterwards denied them by Christian Rome, until, in 1870, it became the capital of united Italy, against the protest of the pope.

Language.

The language of the Roman church at that time was the Greek, and continued to be down to the third century. In that language Paul wrote to Rome and from Rome; the names of the converts mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Romans, and of the early bishops, are mostly Greek; all the early literature of the Roman church was Greek; even the so-called Apostles’ Creed, in the form held by the church of Rome, was originally Greek. The first Latin version of the Bible was not made for Rome, but for the provinces, especially for North Africa. The Greeks and Greek speaking Orientals were at that time the most intelligent, enterprising, and energetic people among the middle classes in Rome. "The successful tradesmen, the skilled artisans, the confidential servants and retainers of noble houses—almost all the activity and enterprise of the common people, whether for good or for evil, were Greek."507

Social Condition.

The great majority of the Christians in Rome, even down to the close of the second century, belonged to the lower ranks of society. They were artisans, freedmen, slaves. The proud Roman aristocracy of wealth, power, and knowledge despised the gospel as a vulgar superstition. The contemporary writers ignored it, or mentioned it only incidentally and with evident contempt. The Christian spirit and the old Roman spirit were sharply and irreconcilably antagonistic, and sooner or later had to meet in deadly conflict.

But, as in Athens and Corinth, so there were in Rome also a few honorable exceptions.

Paul mentions his success in the praetorian guard and in the imperial household.508

It is possible, though not probable, that Paul became passingly acquainted with the Stoic philosopher, Annaeus Seneca, the teacher of Nero and friend of Burrus; for he certainly knew his brother, Annaeus Gallio, proconsul at Corinth, then at Rome, and had probably official relations with Burrus, as prefect of the praetorian guard, to which he was committed as prisoner; but the story of the conversion of Seneca, as well as his correspondence with Paul, are no doubt pious fictions, and, if true, would be no credit to Christianity, since Seneca, like Lord Bacon, denied his high moral principles by his avarice and meanness.509

Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, who was arraigned for "foreign superstition" about the year 57 or 58 (though pronounced innocent by her husband), and led a life of continual sorrow till her death in 83, was probably the first Christian lady of the Roman nobility, the predecessor of the ascetic Paula and Eustochium, the companions of Jerome.510  Claudia and Pudens, from whom Paul sends greetings (2 Tim. 4:21), have, by an ingenious conjecture, been identified with the couple of that name, who are respectfully mentioned by Martial in his epigrams; but this is doubtful.511  A generation later two cousins of the Emperor Domitian (81–96), T. Flavius Clemens, consul (in 95), and his wife, Flavia Domitilla, were accused of "atheism, " that is, of Christianity, and condemned, the husband to death, the wife to exile (A.D. 96).512  Recent excavations in the catacomb of Domitilla, near that of Callistus, establish the fact that an entire branch of the Flavian family had embraced the Christian faith. Such a change was wrought within fifty or sixty years after Christianity had entered Rome.513

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT TRIBULATION. (MATT. 24:21.)

§ 37. The Roman Conflagration and the Neronian Persecution.

"And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder."—Apoc. 17:6.

Literature.

I. Tacitus: Annales, 1. XV., c. 38–44.

Suetonius: Nero, chs. 16 and 38 (very brief).

Sulpicius Severus: Hist. Sacra, 1. II., c. 41. He gives to the Neronian persecution a more general character.

II. Ernest Renan: L’Antechrist. Paris, deuxième ed., 1873. Chs. VI. VIII, pp. 123 sqq. Also his Hibbert Lectures, delivered in London, 1880, on Rome and Christianity.

L. Friedländer: Sittengeschichte Roms, I. 6, 27; III. 529.

Hermann Schiller: Geschichte der röm. Kaiserzeit unter der Regierung des Nero. Berlin, 1872 (173–179; 424 sqq.; 583 sqq.).

Hausrath: N. T.liche Zeitgeschichte, III. 392 sqq. (2d ed., 1875).

Theod. Keim: Aus dem Urchristenthum. Zürich, 1878, pp. 171–181. Rom u. das Christenthum, 1881, pp. 132 sqq.

Karl Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren. 1878.

G. Uhlhorn: The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. Engl. transl. by Smyth and Ropes, N. Y. 1879, pp. 241–250.

C. F. Arnold: Die Neron. Christenverfolgung. Leipz. 1888.

The preaching of Paul and Peter in Rome was an epoch in the history of the church. It gave an impulse to the growth of Christianity. Their martyrdom was even more effective in the end: it cemented the bond of union between the Jewish and Gentile converts, and consecrated the soil of the heathen metropolis. Jerusalem crucified the Lord, Rome beheaded and crucified his chief apostles and plunged the whole Roman church into a baptism of blood. Rome became, for good and for evil, the Jerusalem of Christendom, and the Vatican hill the Golgotha of the West. Peter and Paul, like a new Romulus and Remus, laid the foundation of a spiritual empire vaster and more enduring than that of the Caesars. The cross was substituted for the sword as the symbol of conquest and power.514

But the change was effected at the sacrifice of precious blood. The Roman empire was at first, by its laws of justice, the protector of Christianity, without knowing its true character, and came to the rescue of Paul on several critical occasions, as in Corinth through the Proconsul Annaeus Gallio, in Jerusalem through the Captain Lysias, and in Caesarea through the Procurator Festus. But now it rushed into deadly conflict with the new religion, and opened, in the name of idolatry and patriotism, a series of intermittent persecutions, which ended at last in the triumph of the banner of the cross at the Milvian bridge. Formerly a restraining power that kept back for a while the outbreak of Antichrist,515 it now openly assumed the character of Antichrist with fire and sword.516

Nero.

The first of these imperial persecutions with which the Martyrdom of Peter and Paul is connected by ecclesiastical tradition, took place in the tenth year of Nero’s reign, A.D. 64, and by the instigation of that very emperor to whom Paul, as a Roman citizen, had appealed from the Jewish tribunal. It was, however, not a strictly religious persecution, like those under the later emperors; it originated in a public calamity which was wantonly charged upon the innocent Christians.

A greater contrast can hardly be imagined than that between Paul, one of the purest and noblest of men, and Nero, one of the basest and vilest of tyrants. The glorious first five years of Nero’s reign (54–59) under the wise guidance of Seneca and Burrhus, make the other nine (59–68) only more hideous by contrast. We read his life with mingled feelings of contempt for his folly, and horror of his wickedness. The world was to him a comedy and a tragedy, in which he was to be the chief actor. He had an insane passion for popular applause; he played on the lyre; he sung his odes at supper; he drove his chariots in the circus; he appeared as a mimic on the stage, and compelled men of the highest rank to represent in dramas or in tableaux the obscenest of the Greek myths. But the comedian was surpassed by the tragedian. He heaped crime upon crime until he became a proverbial monster of iniquity. The murder of his brother (Britannicus), his mother (Agrippina), his wives (Octavia and Poppaea), his teacher (Seneca), and many eminent Romans, was fitly followed by his suicide in the thirty-second year of his age. With him the family of Julius Caesar ignominiously perished, and the empire became the prize of successful soldiers and adventurers.517

The Conflagration in Rome.

For such a demon in human shape, the murder of a crowd of innocent Christians was pleasant sport. The occasion of the hellish spectacle was a fearful conflagration of Rome, the most destructive and disastrous that ever occurred in history. It broke out in the night between the 18th and 19th of July,518 among the wooden shops in the south-eastern end of the Great Circus, near the Palatine hill.519  Lashed by the wind, it defied all exertions of the firemen and soldiers, and raged with unabated fury for seven nights and six days.520  Then it burst out again in another part, near the field of Mars, and in three days more laid waste two other districts of the city.521

The calamity was incalculable. Only four of the fourteen regions into which the city was divided, remained uninjured; three, including the whole interior city from the Circus to the Esquiline hill, were a shapeless mass of ruins; the remaining seven were more or less destroyed; venerable temples, monumental buildings of the royal, republican, and imperial times, the richest creations of Greek art which had been collected for centuries, were turned into dust and ashes; men and beasts perished in the flames, and the metropolis of the world assumed the aspect of a graveyard with a million of mourners over the loss of irreparable treasures.

This fearful catastrophe must have been before the mind of St. John in the Apocalypse when he wrote his funeral dirge of the downfall of imperial Rome (Apoc. 18).

The cause of the conflagration is involved in mystery. Public rumor traced it to Nero, who wished to enjoy the lurid spectacle of burning Troy, and to gratify his ambition to rebuild Rome on a more magnificent scale, and to call it Neropolis.522  When the fire broke out he was on the seashore at Antium, his birthplace; he returned when the devouring element reached his own palace, and made extraordinary efforts to stay and then to repair the disaster by a reconstruction which continued till after his death, not forgetting to replace his partially destroyed temporary residence (domus transitoria) by "the golden house" (domus aurea), as a standing wonder of architectural magnificence and extravagance.

The Persecution of the Christians.

To divert from himself the general suspicion of incendiarism, and at the same time to furnish new entertainment for his diabolical cruelty, Nero wickedly cast the blame upon the hated Christians, who, meanwhile, especially since the public trial of Paul and his successful labors in Rome, had come to be distinguished from the Jews as a genus tertium, or as the most dangerous offshoot from that race. They were certainly despisers of the Roman gods and loyal subjects of a higher king than Caesar, and they were falsely suspected of secret crimes. The police and people, under the influence of the panic created by the awful calamity, were ready to believe the worst slanders, and demanded victims. What could be expected of the ignorant multitude, when even such cultivated Romans as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, stigmatized Christianity as a vulgar and pestiferous superstition. It appeared to them even worse than Judaism, which was at least an ancient national religion, while Christianity was novel, detached from any particular nationality, and aiming at universal dominion. Some Christians were arrested, confessed their faith, and were "convicted not so much," says Tacitus, "of the crime of incendiarism as of hating the human race." Their Jewish origin, their indifference to politics and public affairs, their abhorrence of heathen customs, were construed into an "odium generis humani," and this made an attempt on their part to destroy the city sufficiently plausible to justify a verdict of guilty. An infuriated mob does not stop to reason, and is as apt to run mad as an individual.

Under this wanton charge of incendiarism, backed by the equally groundless charge of misanthropy and unnatural vice, there began a carnival of blood such as even heathen Rome never saw before or since.523  It was the answer of the powers of hell to the mighty preaching of the two chief apostles, which had shaken heathenism to its centre. A "vast multitude" of Christians was put to death in the most shocking manner. Some were crucified, probably in mockery of the punishment of Christ,524 some sewed up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the voracity of mad dogs in the arena. The satanic tragedy reached its climax at night in the imperial gardens on the slope of the Vatican (which embraced, it is supposed, the present site of the place and church of St. Peter): Christian men and women, covered with pitch or oil or resin, and nailed to posts of pine, were lighted and burned as torches for the amusement of the mob; while Nero, in fantastical dress, figured in a horse race, and displayed his art as charioteer. Burning alive was the ordinary punishment of incendiaries; but only the cruel ingenuity of this imperial monster, under the inspiration of the devil, could invent such a horrible system of illumination.

This is the account of the greatest heathen historian, the fullest we have—as the best description of the destruction of Jerusalem is from the pen of the learned Jewish historian. Thus enemies bear witness to the truth of Christianity. Tacitus incidentally mentions in this connection the crucifixion of Christ under Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. With all his haughty Roman contempt for the Christians whom he knew only from rumor and reading, he was convinced of their innocence of incendiarism, and notwithstanding his cold stoicism, he could not suppress a feeling of pity for them because they were sacrificed not to the public good, but to the ferocity of a wicked tyrant.

Some historians have doubted, not indeed the truth of this terrible persecution, but that the Christians, rather than the Jews, or the Christians alone, were the sufferers. It seems difficult to understand that the harmless and peaceful Christians, whom the contemporary writers, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Persius, ignore, while they notice the Jews, should so soon have become the subjects of popular indignation. It is supposed that Tacitus and Suetonius, writing some fifty years after the event, confounded the Christians with the Jews, who were generally obnoxious to the Romans, and justified the suspicion of incendiarism by the escape of their transtiberine quarter from the injury of the fire.525

But the atrocious act was too public to leave room for such a mistake. Both Tacitus and Suetonius distinguish the two sects, although they knew very little of either; and the former expressly derives the name Christians from Christ, as the founder of the new religion. Moreover Nero, as previously remarked, was not averse to the Jews, and his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, a year before the conflagration, had shown special favor to Josephus, and loaded him with presents. Josephus speaks of the crimes of Nero, but says not a word of any persecution of his fellow-religionists.526  This alone seems to be conclusive. It is not unlikely that in this (as in all previous persecutions, and often afterwards) the fanatical Jews, enraged by the rapid progress of Christianity, and anxious to avert suspicion from themselves, stirred up the people against the hated Galilaeans, and that the heathen Romans fell with double fury on these supposed half Jews, disowned by their own strange brethren.527

The Probable Extent of the Persecution.

The heathen historians, if we are to judge from their silence, seem to confine the persecution to the city of Rome, but later Christian writers extend it to the provinces.528  The example set by the emperor in the capital could hardly be without influence in the provinces, and would justify the outbreak of popular hatred. If the Apocalypse was written under Nero, or shortly after his death, John’s exile to Patmos must be connected with this persecution. It mentions imprisonments in Smyrna, the martyrdom of Antipas in Pergamus, and speaks of the murder of prophets and saints and all that have been slain on the earth.529  The Epistle to the Hebrews 10:32–34, which was written in Italy, probably in the year 64, likewise alludes to bloody persecutions, and to the release of Timothy from prison, 13:23. And Peter, in his first Epistle, which may be assigned to the same year, immediately after the outbreak of the persecution, and shortly before his death, warns the Christians in Asia Minor of a fiery trial which is to try them, and of sufferings already endured or to be endured, not for any crime, but for the name of "Christians."530  The name "Babylon"531 for Rome is most easily explained by the time and circumstances of composition.

Christianity, which had just reached the age of its founder, seemed annihilated in Rome. With Peter and Paul the first generation of Christians was buried. Darkness must have overshadowed the trembling disciples, and a despondency seized them almost as deep as on the evening of the crucifixion, thirty-four years before. But the morning of the resurrection was not far distant, and the very spot of the martyrdom of St. Peter was to become the site of the greatest church in Christendom and the palatial residence of his reputed successors.532

The Apocalypse on the Neronian Persecution.

None of the leading apostles remained to record the horrible massacre, except John. He may have heard of it in Ephesus, or he may have accompanied Peter to Rome and escaped a fearful death in the Neronian gardens, if we are to credit the ancient tradition of his miraculous preservation from being burnt alive with his fellow-Christians in that hellish illumination on the Vatican hill.533  At all events he was himself a victim of persecution for the name of Jesus, and depicted its horrors, as an exile on the lonely island of Patmos in the vision of the Apocalypse.

This mysterious book—whether written between 68 and 69, or under Domitian in 95—was undoubtedly intended for the church of that age as well as for future ages, and must have been sufficiently adapted to the actual condition and surroundings of its first readers to give them substantial aid and comfort in their fiery trials. Owing to the nearness of events alluded to, they must have understood it even better, for practical purposes, than readers of later generations. John looks, indeed, forward to the final consummation, but he sees the end in the beginning. He takes his standpoint on the historic foundation of the old Roman empire in which he lived, as the visions of the prophets of Israel took their departure from the kingdom of David or the age of the Babylonian captivity. He describes the heathen Rome of his day as "the beast that ascended out of the abyss," as "a beast coming out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads" (or kings, emperors), as "the great harlot that sitteth among many waters," as a "woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns," as "Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth."534  The seer must have in view the Neronian persecution, the most cruel that ever occurred, when he calls the woman seated on seven hills, "drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,"535 and prophesied her downfall as a matter of rejoicing for the "saints and apostles and prophets."536

Recent commentators discover even a direct allusion to Nero, as expressing in Hebrew letters (Neron Kesar) the mysterious number 666, and as being the fifth of the seven heads of the beast which was slaughtered, but would return again from the abyss as Antichrist. But this interpretation is uncertain, and in no case can we attribute to John the belief that Nero would literally rise from the dead as Antichrist. He meant only that Nero, the persecutor of the Christian church, was (like Antiochus Epiphanes) the forerunner of Antichrist, who would be inspired by the same bloody spirit from the infernal world. In a similar sense Rome was a second Babylon, and John the Baptist another Elijah.

Notes.

I. The Accounts of the Neronian Persecution.

1. From heathen historians.

We have chiefly two accounts of the first imperial persecution, from Tacitus, who was born about eight years before the event, and probably survived Trajan (d. 117), and from Suetonius, who wrote his XII. Caesares a little later, about A.D. 120. Dion Cassius (born circa A.D. 155), in his History of Rome ( JRwmaikh;  jIstoriva , preserved in fragments, and in the abridgment of the monk Xiphilinus), from the arrival of Aeneas to A.D. 229, mentions the conflagration of Rome, but ignores the persecutions of the Christians.

The description of Tacitus is in his terse, pregnant, and graphic style, and beyond suspicion of interpolation, but has some obscurities. We give it in full, from Annal., XV. 44

"But not all the relief of men, nor the bounties of the emperor, nor the propitiation of the gods, could relieve him [Nero] from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration. Therefore, in order to suppress the rumor, Nero falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, those persons who, hated for their crimes, were commonly called Christians (subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus ’Christianos’ appellabat). The founder of that name, Christus, had been put to death (supplicio affectus erat) by the procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), repressed for a time,537 broke out again, not only through Judaea, the source of this evil, but also through the city [of Rome], whither all things vile and shameful flow from all quarters, and are encouraged (quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque). Accordingly, first, those only were arrested who confessed.538  Next, on their information, a vast multitude (multitudo ingens), were convicted, not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred of the human race (odio humani generis).539 And in their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were wrapped in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights (in usum nocturni luminis urerentur). Nero had offered his own gardens [on the Vatican] for this spectacle, and also exhibited a chariot race on the occasion, now mingling in the crowd in the dress of a charioteer, now actually holding the reins. Whence a feeling of compassion arose towards the sufferers, though justly held to be odious, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but as victims to the ferocity of one man."

The account of Suetonius, Nero, c. 16, is very short and unsatisfactory: "Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficaea." He does not connect the persecution with the conflagration, but with police regulations.

Juvenal, the satirical poet, alludes, probably as an eye-witness, to the persecution, like Tacitus, with mingled feelings of contempt and pity for the Christian sufferers (Sat. I. 155):

"Dar’st thou speak of Tigellinus’ guilt?

Thou too shalt shine like those we saw

Stand at the stake with throat transfixed

Smoking and burning."

2. From Christians.

Clement of Rome, near the close of the first century, must refer to the Neronian persecution when he writes of the "vast multitude of the elect "who suffered, many indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy; "and of Christian women who were made to personate "Danaides" and "Dirces," Ad Corinth., c. 6. I have made no use of this passage in the text. Renan amplifies and weaves it into his graphic description of the persecution (L’Antechrist, pp. 163 sqq., almost literally repeated in his Hibbert Lectures). According to the legend, Dirce was bound to a raging bull and dragged to death. The scene is represented in the famous marble group in the museum at Naples. But the Danaides can furnish no suitable parallel to Christian martyrs, unless, as Renan suggests, Nero had the sufferings of the Tartarus represented. Lightfoot, following the bold emendation of Wordsworth (on Theocritus, XXVI. 1), rejects the reading Danai>vde" kai; Divrkai (which is retained in all editions, including that of Gebhardt and Harnack), and substitutes for it neanivde", paidivskai, so that Clement would say:, Matrons (gunai'ke") maidens, slave-girls, being persecuted, after suffering cruel and unholy insults, safely reached the goal in the race of faith, and received a noble reward, feeble though they were in body."

Tertullian (d. about 220) thus alludes to the Neronian persecution, Ad Nationes, I. ch. 7: "This name of ours took its rise in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught with all clearness and publicity; under Nero it was ruthlessly condemned (sub Nerone damnatio invaluit), and you may weigh its worth and character even from the person of its persecutor. If that prince was a pious man, then the Christians are impious; if he was just, if he was pure, then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not a public enemy, we are enemies of our country: what sort of men we are, our persecutor himself shows, since he of course punished what produced hostility to himself. Now, although every other institution which existed under Nero has been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly remained—righteous, it would seem, as being unlike the author [of its persecution]."

Sulpicius Severus, Chron. II. 28, 29, gives a pretty full account, but mostly from Tacitus. He and Orosius (Hist. VII. 7) first clearly assert that Nero extended the persecution to the provinces.

II. Nero’s Return as Antichrist.

Nero, owing to his youth, beauty, dash, and prodigality, and the startling novelty of his wickedness (Tacitus calls him "incredibilium cupitor," Ann. XV. 42), enjoyed a certain popularity with the vulgar democracy of Rome. Hence, after his suicide, a rumor spread among the heathen that he was not actually dead, but had fled to the Parthians, and would return to Rome with an army and destroy the city. Three impostors under his name used this belief and found support during the reigns of Otho, Titus, and Domitian. Even thirty years later Domitian trembled at the name of Nero. Tacit., Hist. I. 2; II. 8, 9; Sueton., Ner. 57; Dio Cassius, LXIV. 9; Schiller, l.c., p. 288.

Among the Christians the rumor assumed a form hostile to Nero. Lactantius (De Mort. Persecut., c. 2) mentions the Sibylline saying that, as Nero was the first persecutor, he would also be the last, and precede the advent of Antichrist. Augustin (De Civil. Dei, XX. 19) mentions that at his time two opinions were still current in the church about Nero: some supposed that he would rise from the dead as Antichrist, others that he was not dead, but concealed, and would live until he should be revealed and restored to his kingdom. The former is the Christian, the latter the heathen belief. Augustin rejects both. Sulpicius Severus (Chron., II. 29) also mentions the belief (unde creditur) that Nero, whose deadly wound was healed, would return at the end of the world to work out "the mystery of lawlessness" predicted by Paul (2 Thess. 2:7).

Some commentators make the Apocalypse responsible for this absurd rumor and false belief, while others hold that the writer shared it with his heathen contemporaries. The passages adduced are Apoc. 17:8: "The beast was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition" ... "the beast was, and is not, and shall be present" (kai; pavrestai, not kaivper ejstivn, "and yet is," as the E. V. reads with the text. ec.); 17:11: "And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition;" and 13:3: "And I saw one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole world wondered after the beast."

But this is said of the beast, i.e., the Roman empire, which is throughout clearly distinguished from the seven heads, i.e., the emperors. In Daniel, too, the beast is collective. Moreover, a distinction must be made between the death of one ruler (Nero) and the deadly wound which thereby was inflicted on the beast or the empire, but from which it recovered (under Vespasian).

§ 38. The Jewish War and the Destruction of Jerusalem. A.D. 70.

"And as He went forth out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto Him, Master, behold, what manner of stones and what manner of buildings!  And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings?  There shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down."—Mark 13:1,2.

Sources.

Josephus: Bell. Jud., in 7 books; and Vita, c. 4–74. The history of the Jewish war was written by him as eye-witness about A.D. 75. English translations by W. Whiston, in Works of Jos., and by Rob. Traill, ed. by Isaac Taylor, new ed., Lond., 1862. German translations by Gfrsörer and W. Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1836; and Paret, Stuttg., 1855; French translations by Arnauld d’andilly, 1667, Joachim Gillet, 1756, and Abbé Glaire, 1846.

Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien. Paris, 1867 (first part of his L’Histoire et la géographie de la Palestine d’après les Thalmuds et les autres sources rabbiniques), pp. 255–295.

Tacitus: Hist., II. 4; V. 1–13. A mere fragment, full of errors and insults towards the vanquished Jews. The fifth book, except this fragment, is lost. While Josephus, the Jew, is filled with admiration for the power and greatness of Rome, Tacitus, the heathen, treats Jews and Christians with scorn and contempt, and prefers to derive his information from hostile Egyptians and popular prejudice rather than from the Scriptures, and Philo, and Josephus.

Sulpicius Severus: Chronicon, II. 30 (p. 84, ed. Halm). Short.

Literature.

Milman: The History of the  Jews, Books XIV.-XVII. (New York ed., vol. II., 219 sqq.).

Ewald: Geschichte des Folkes Israel, VI. 705–753 (second ed.).

Grätz: Geschichte der Juden, III. 336–414.

Hitzig: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, II. 594–629.

Lewin: The Siege of Jerusalem by Titus. With the Journal of a recent Visit in the Holy City, and a general Sketch of the Topography of Jerusalem from the Earliest Times down to the Siege. London, 1863.

Count de Champagny: Rome et la Judie au temps de la chute de Néron (ans 66–72 après Jésus-Christ), 2. éd., Paris, 1865. T. I., pp. 195–254; T. II., pp. 55–200.

Charles Merivale: History of the Romans under the Empire, ch. LIX. (vol. VI., 415 sqq., 4th ed., New York, 1866).

De Saulcy: Les derniers jours de Jérusalem. Paris, 1866.

E. Renan: L’Antechrist (ch. X.-XX., pp. 226–551). Paris, second ed., 1873.

Emil Schürer: Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1874), pp. 323–350. He also gives the literature.

A. Hausrath: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, Part III., second ed., Heidelberg, 1875, pp. 424 487.

Alfred J. Church: The Story of the Last Days of Jerusalem, from Josephus. With illustrations. London, 1880.

There is scarcely another period in history so full of vice, corruption, and disaster as the six years between the Neronian persecution and the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophetic description of the last days by our Lord began to be fulfilled before the generation to which he spoke had passed away, and the day of judgment seemed to be close at hand. So the Christians believed and had good reason to believe. Even to earnest heathen minds that period looked as dark as midnight. We have elsewhere quoted Seneca’s picture of the frightful moral depravity and decay under the reign of Nero, his pupil and murderer. Tacitus begins his history of Rome after the death of Nero with these words: "I proceed to a work rich in disasters, full of atrocious battles, of discord and rebellion, yea, horrible even in peace. Four princes [Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian] killed by the sword; three civil wars, several foreign wars; and mostly raging at the same time. Favorable events in the East [the subjugation of the Jews], unfortunate ones in the West. Illyria disturbed, Gaul uneasy; Britain conquered and soon relinquished; the nations of Sarmatia and Suevia rising against us; the Parthians excited by the deception of a pseudo-Nero. Italy also weighed down by Dew or oft-repeated calamities; cities swallowed up or buried in ruins; Rome laid waste by conflagrations, the old temples burned up, even the capitol set on fire by citizens; sanctuaries desecrated; adultery rampant in high places. The sea filled with exiles; the rocky islands contaminated with murder. Still more horrible the fury in the city. Nobility, riches, places of honor, whether declined or occupied, counted as crimes, and virtue sure of destruction.540

The Approaching Doom.

The most unfortunate country in that period was Palestine, where an ancient and venerable nation brought upon itself unspeakable suffering and destruction. The tragedy of Jerusalem prefigures in miniature the final judgment, and in this light it is represented in the eschatological discourses of Christ, who foresaw the end from the beginning.

The forbearance of God with his covenant people, who had crucified their own Saviour, reached at last its limit. As many as could be saved in the usual way, were rescued. The mass of the people had obstinately set themselves against all improvement. James the Just, the man who was fitted, if any could be, to reconcile the Jews to the Christian religion, had been stoned by his hardened brethren, for whom he daily interceded in the temple; and with him the Christian community in Jerusalem had lost its importance for that city. The hour of the "great tribulation" and fearful judgment drew near. The prophecy of the Lord approached its literal fulfilment: Jerusalem was razed to the ground, the temple burned, and not one stone was left upon another.541

Not long before the outbreak of the Jewish war, seven years before the siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 63), a peasant by the name of Joshua, or Jesus, appeared in the city at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in a tone of prophetic ecstasy cried day and night on the street among the people:, A voice from the morning, a voice from the evening!  A voice from the four winds!  A voice of rain against Jerusalem and the Temple!  A voice against the bridegrooms and the brides!  A voice against the whole people!  Woe, woe to Jerusalem!  "The magistrates, terrified by this woe, had the prophet of evil taken up and scourged. He offered no resistance, and continued to cry his "Woe." Being brought before the procurator, Albinus, he was scourged till his bones could be seen, but interposed not a word for himself; uttered no curse on his enemies; simply exclaimed at every blow in a mournful tone: "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!"  To the governor’s question, who and whence he was, He answered nothing. Finally they let him go, as a madman. But he continued for seven years and five months, till the outbreak of the war, especially at the three great feasts, to proclaim the approaching fall of Jerusalem. During the siege he was singing his dirge, for the last time, from the wall. Suddenly he added: "Woe, woe also to me!"—and a stone of the Romans hurled at his head put an end to his prophetic lamentation.542

The Jewish Rebellion.

Under the last governors, Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Florus, moral corruption and the dissolution of all social ties, but at the same time the oppressiveness of the Roman yoke, increased every year. After the accession of Felix, assassins, called "Sicarians" (from sica, a dagger), armed with daggers and purchasable for any crime, endangering safety in city and country, roamed over Palestine. Besides this, the party spirit among the Jews themselves, and their hatred of their heathen oppressors, rose to the most insolent political and religious fanaticism, and was continually inflamed by false prophets and Messiahs, one of whom, for example, according to Josephus, drew after him thirty thousand men. Thus came to pass what our Lord had predicted: "There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall lead many astray."

At last, in the month of May, A.D. 66, under the last procurator, Gessius Florus (from 65 onward), a wicked and cruel tyrant who, as Josephus says, was placed as a hangman over evil-doers, an organized rebellion broke out against the Romans, but it the same time a terrible civil war also between different parties of the revolters themselves, especially between the Zealots, and the Moderates, or the Radicals and Conservatives. The ferocious party of the Zealots had all the fire and energy which religious and patriotic fanaticism could inspire; they have been justly compared with the Montagnards of the French Revolution. They gained the ascendancy in the progress of the war, took forcible possession of the city and the temple and introduced a reign of terror. They kept up the Messianic expectations of the people and hailed every step towards destruction as a step towards deliverance. Reports of comets, meteors, and all sorts of fearful omens and prodigies were interpreted as signs of the common of the Messiah and his reign over the heathen. The Romans recognized the Messiah in Vespasian and Titus.

To defy Rome in that age, without a single ally, was to defy the world in arms; but religious fanaticism, inspired by the recollection of the heroic achievements of the Maccabees, blinded the Jews against the inevitable failure of this mad and desperate revolt.

The Roman Invasion.

The emperor Nero, informed of the rebellion, sent his most famous general, Vespasian, with a large force to Palestine Vespasian opened the campaign in the year 67 from the Syrian port-town, Ptolemais (Acco), and against a stout resistance overran Galilee with an army of sixty thousand men. But events in Rome hindered him from completing the victory, and required him to return thither. Nero had killed himself. The emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius followed one another in rapid succession. The latter was taken out of a dog’s kennel in Rome while drunk, dragged through the streets, and shamefully put to death. Vespasian, in the year 69, was universally proclaimed emperor, and restored order and prosperity.

His son, Titus, who himself ten years after became emperor, and highly distinguished himself by his mildness and philanthropy,543 then undertook the prosecution of the Jewish war, and became the instrument in the hand of God of destroying the holy city and the temple. He had an army of not less than eighty thousand trained soldiers, and planted his camp on Mount Scopus and the adjoining Mount Olivet, in full view of the city and the temple, which from this height show to the best advantage. The valley of the Kedron divided the besiegers from the besieged.

In April, A.D. 70, immediately after the Passover, when Jerusalem was filled with strangers, the siege began. The zealots rejected, with sneering defiance, the repeated proposals of Titus and the prayers of Josephus, who accompanied him as interpreter and mediator; and they struck down every one who spoke of surrender. They made sorties down the valley of the Kedron and tip the mountain, and inflicted great loss oil the Romans. As the difficulties multiplied their courage increased. The crucifixion of hundreds of prisoners (as many as five hundred a day) only enraged them the more. Even the famine which began to rage and sweep away thousands daily, and forced a woman to roast her own child,544 the cries of mothers and babes, the most pitiable scenes of misery around them, could not move the crazy fanatics. History records no other instance of such obstinate resistance, such desperate bravery and contempt of death. The Jews fought, not only for civil liberty, life, and their native land, but for that which constituted their national pride and glory, and gave their whole history its significance—for their religion, which, even in this state of horrible degeneracy, infused into them an almost superhuman power of endurance.

The Destruction of the City and the Temple.

At last, in July, the castle of Antonia was surprised and taken by night. This prepared the way for the destruction of the Temple in which the tragedy culminated. The daily sacrifices ceased July 17th, because the hands were all needed for defence. The last and the bloodiest sacrifice at the altar of burnt offerings was the slaughter of thousands of Jews who had crowded around it.

Titus (according to Josephus) intended at first to save that magnificent work of architecture, as a trophy of victory, and perhaps from some superstitious fear; and when the flames threatened to reach the Holy of Holies he forced his way through flame and smoke, over the dead and dying, to arrest the fire.545  But the destruction was determined by a higher decree. His own soldiers, roused to madness by the stubborn resistance, and greedy of the golden treasures, could not be restrained from the work of destruction. At first the halls around the temple were set on fire. Then a firebrand was hurled through the golden gate. When the flames arose the Jews raised a hideous yell and tried to put out the fire; while others, clinging with a last convulsive grasp to their Messianic hopes, rested in the declaration of a false prophet, that God in the midst of the conflagration of the Temple would give a signal for the deliverance of his people. The legions vied with each other in feeding the flames, and made the unhappy people feel the full force of their unchained rage. Soon the whole prodigious structure was in a blaze and illuminated the skies. It was burned on the tenth of August, A.D. 70, the same day of the year on which, according to tradition, the first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. "No one," says Josephus, "can conceive a louder, more terrible shriek than arose from all sides during the burning of the temple. The shout of victory and the jubilee of the legions sounded through the wailings of the people, now surrounded with fire and sword, upon the mountain, and throughout the city. The echo from all the mountains around, even to Peraea (?), increased the deafening roar. Yet the misery itself was more terrible than this disorder. The hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and seemed enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame. The blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them. The ground was nowhere visible. All was covered with corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives."546

The Romans planted their eagles on the shapeless ruins, over against the eastern gate, offered their sacrifices to them, and proclaimed Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy concerning the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place."547

Jerusalem was razed to the ground; only three towers of the palace of Herod—Hippicus (still standing), Phasael, and Mariamne—together with a portion of the western wall, were left as monuments of the strength of the conquered city, once the centre of the Jewish theocracy and the cradle of the Christian Church.

Even the heathen Titus is reported to have publicly declared that God, by a special providence, aided the Romans and drove the Jews from their impregnable strongholds.548  Josephus, who went through the war himself from beginning to end, at first as governor of Galilee and general of the Jewish army, then as a prisoner of Vespasian, finally as a companion of Titus and mediator between the Romans and Jews, recognized in this tragical event a divine judgment and admitted of his degenerate countrymen, to whom he was otherwise sincerely attached: "I will not hesitate to say what gives me pain: I believe that, had the Romans delayed their punishment of these villains, the city would have been swallowed up by the earth, or overwhelmed with a flood, or, like Sodom, consumed with fire from heaven. For the generation which was in it was far more ungodly than the men on whom these punishments had in former times fallen. By their madness the whole nation came to be ruined."549

Thus, therefore, must one of the best Roman emperors execute the long threatened judgment of God, and the most learned Jew of his time describe it, and thereby, without willing or knowing it, bear testimony to the truth of the prophecy and the divinity of the mission of Jesus Christ, the rejection of whom brought all this and the subsequent misfortune upon the apostate race.

The destruction of Jerusalem would be a worthy theme for the genius of a Christian Homer. It has been called "the most soul-stirring struggle of all ancient history."550  But there was no Jeremiah to sing the funeral dirge of the city of David and Solomon. The Apocalypse was already written, and had predicted that the heathen "shall tread the holy city under foot forty and two months."551  One of the master artists of modern times, Kaulbach, has made it the subject of one of his greatest paintings in the museum at Berlin. It represents the burning temple: in the foreground, the high-priest burying his sword in his breast; around him, the scenes of heart-rending suffering; above, the ancient prophets beholding the fulfilment of their oracles; beneath them, Titus with the Roman army as the unconscious executor of the Divine wrath; below, to the left, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew of the mediaeval legend, driven by furies into the undying future; and to the right the group of Christians departing in peace from the scene of destruction, and Jewish children imploring their protection.

The Fate of the Survivors, and the Triumph in Rome.

After a siege of five months the entire city was in the hands of the victors. The number of the Jews slain during the siege, including all those who had crowded into the city from the country, is stated by Josephus at the enormous and probably exaggerated figure of one million and one hundred thousand. Eleven thousand perished from starvation shortly after the close of the siege. Ninety-seven thousand were carried captive and sold into slavery, or sent to the mines, or sacrificed in the gladiatorial shows at Caesarea, Berytus, Antioch, and other cities. The strongest and handsomest men were selected for the triumphal procession in Rome, among them the chief defenders and leaders of the revolt, Simon Bar-Giora and John of Gischala.552

Vespasian and Titus celebrated the dearly bought victory together (71). No expense was spared for the pageant. Crowned with laurel, and clothed in purple garments, the two conquerors rode slowly in separate chariots, Domitian on a splendid charger, to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, amid the shouts of the people and the aristocracy. They were preceded by the soldiers in festive attire and seven hundred Jewish captives. The images of the gods, and the sacred furniture of the temple—the table of show-bread, the seven-armed candlestick, the trumpets which announced the year of jubilee, the vessel of incense, and the rolls of the Law—were borne along in the procession and deposited in the newly built Temple of Peace,553 except the Law and the purple veils of the holy place, which Vespasian reserved for his palace. Simon Bar-Giora was thrown down from the Tarpeian Rock; John of Gischala doomed to perpetual imprisonment. Coins were cast with the legend Judaea capta, Judaea devicta. But neither Vespasian nor Titus assumed the victorious epithet Judaeus; they despised a people which had lost its fatherland.

Josephus saw the pompous spectacle of the humiliation and wholesale crucifixion of his nation, and described it without a tear.554  The thoughtful Christian, looking at the representation of the temple furniture borne by captive Jews on the triumphal arch of Titus, still standing between the Colosseum and the Forum, is filled with awe at the fulfilment of divine prophecy.

The conquest of Palestine involved the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. Vespasian retained the land as his private property or distributed it among his veterans. The people were by the five years’ war reduced to extreme poverty, and left without a magistrate (in the Jewish sense), without a temple, without a country. The renewal of the revolt under the false Messiah, Bar-Cocheba, led only to a still more complete destruction of Jerusalem and devastation of Palestine by the army of Hadrian (132–135). But the Jews still had the law and the prophets and the sacred traditions, to which they cling to this day with indestructible tenacity and with the hope of a great future. Scattered over the earth, at home everywhere and nowhere; refusing to mingle their blood with any other race, dwelling in distinct communities, marked as a peculiar people in every feature of the countenance, in every rite of religion; patient, sober, and industrious; successful in every enterprise, prosperous in spite of oppression, ridiculed yet feared, robbed yet wealthy, massacred yet springing up again, they have outlived the persecution of centuries and are likely to continue to live to the end of time: the object of the mingled contempt, admiration, and wonder of the world.

§ 39. Effects of the Destruction of Jerusalem on the Christian Church.

The Christians of Jerusalem, remembering the Lord’s admonition, forsook the doomed city in good time and fled to the town of Pella in the Decapolis, beyond the Jordan, in the north of Peraea, where king Herod Agrippa II., before whom Paul once stood, opened to them a safe asylum. An old tradition says that a divine voice or angel revealed to their leaders the duty of flight.555  There, in the midst of a population chiefly Gentile, the church of the circumcision was reconstructed. Unfortunately, its history is hidden from us. But it never recovered its former importance. When Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Christian city, its bishop was raised to the dignity of one of the four patriarchs of the East, but it was a patriarchate of honor, not of power, and sank to a mere shadow after the Mohammedan invasion.

The awful catastrophe of the destruction of the Jewish theocracy must have produced the profoundest sensation among the Christians, of which we now, in the absence of all particular information respecting it, can hardly form a true conception.556  It was the greatest calamity of Judaism and a great benefit to Christianity; a refutation of the one, a vindication and emancipation of the other. It not only gave a mighty impulse to faith, but at the same time formed a proper epoch in the history of the relation between the two religious bodies. It separated them forever. It is true the apostle Paul had before now inwardly completed this separation by the Christian universality of his whole system of doctrine; but outwardly he had in various ways accommodated himself to Judaism, and had more than once religiously visited tile temple. He wished not to appear as a revolutionist, nor to anticipate the natural course of history, tile ways of Providence.557  But now the rupture was also outwardly consummated by the thunderbolt of divine omnipotence. God himself destroyed the house, in which he had thus far dwelt, in which Jesus had taught, in which the apostles had prayed; he rejected his peculiar people for their obstinate rejection of the Messiah; he demolished the whole fabric of the Mosaic theocracy, whose system of worship was, in its very nature, associated exclusively with the tabernacle at first and afterwards with the temple; but in so doing he cut the cords which had hitherto bound, and according to the law of organic development necessarily bound the infant church to the outward economy of the old covenant, and to Jerusalem as its centre. Henceforth the heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism, but must regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The destruction of Jerusalem, therefore, marks that momentous crisis at which the Christian church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis of Judaism, awoke to a sense of its maturity, and in government and worship at once took its independent stand before the world.558

This breaking away from hardened Judaism and its religious forms, however, involved no departure from the spirit of the Old Testament revelation. The church, on the contrary, entered into the inheritance of Israel. The Christians appeared as genuine Jews, as spiritual children of Abraham, who, following the inward current of the Mosaic religion, had found Him, who was the fulfilment of the law and the prophets; the perfect fruit of the old covenant and the living germ of the new; the beginning and the principle of a new moral creation.

It now only remained to complete the consolidation of the church in this altered state of things; to combine the premises in their results; to take up the conservative tendency of Peter and the progressive tendency of Paul, as embodied respectively in the Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian churches, and to fuse them into a third and higher tendency in a permanent organism; to set forth alike the unity of the two Testaments in diversity, and their diversity in unity; and in this way to wind up the history of the apostolic church.

This was the work of John, the apostle of completion.

CHAPTER VII.

ST. JOHN, AND THE LAST STADIUM OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY.

Kai; oJ lovgo" sa;rx ejgevneto kai; ejskhvnwsen ejn hmi'n, kai; eqeasavmeqa th;n dovxan autou'.—John 1:14.

§ 40. The Johannean Literature.

I. Sources.

1. The Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation of John. The notices of John in the Synoptical Gospels, in the Acts, and in Gal. 2:9. (See the passages in Young’s Analytical Concordance.)

2. Patristic traditions. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. II. 22, 5 (John lived to the age of Trajan); III. 1, 1 (John at Ephesus); III. 3, 4 (John and Cerinthus); V. 30, 3 (John and the Apocalypse). Clemens Alex.: Quis dives salvus, c. 42 (John and the young robber). Polycrates of Ephesus in Eus. Hist. Eccl., III. 31; V. 24 (John, one of the mevgala stoicei'a, and a iJereu;" to; pevtalon peforhkwv"). Tertullian: De praescr. haer., c. 36 (the legend of John’s martyrdom in Rome by being steeped in oil, and his miraculous preservation). Eusebius: Hist. Eccl, III. chs. 18, 23, 31; IV. 14; V. 24 (the paschal controversy). Jerome: Ad Gal. 6:10 (the last words of John); De vir. ill., c. 9. Augustin: Tract. 124 in Evang. Joann. (Opera III. 1970, ed. Migne). Nicephorus Cal.: Hist. Eccl., II. 42.

II. Apocryphal Traditions.

Acta Johannis, ed. Const. Tischendorf, in his Acta Apost. Apocr., Lips., 1851, pp. 266–276. Comp. Prolegg. LXXIII. sqq., where the patristic testimonies on the apocryphal Acts of John are collected.

Acta Joannis, unter Benutzung von C. v. Tischendorf’s Nachlass bearbeitet von Theod. Zahn. Erlangen, 1880 (264 pages and clxxii. pages of Introd.).

The "Acta "contain the pravxei" tou' ... jIwavnnou tou' qeolovgou Prochorus, who professes to be one of the Seventy Disciples, one of the Seven Deacons of Jerusalem (Acts 6:5), and a pupil of St. John; and fragments of the perivodoi  jIwavnnou, "the Wanderings of John," by Leucius Charinus, a friend and pupil of John. The former work is a religious romance, written about 400 years after the death of John; the latter is assigned by Zahn to an author in Asia Minor before 160, and probably before 140; it uses the fourth as well as the Synoptical Gospels, and so far has some apologetic value. See p. cxlviii.

Max Bonnet, the French philologist, promises a new critical edition of the Acts of John. See E. Leroux’s "Revue critique," 1880, p. 449.

Apocalypsis Johannis, in Tischindorf’s Apocalypses Apocryphae Mosis, Esdrae, Pauli, Johannis, item Mariae Dormitio. Lips., 1866, pp. 70–94.

This pseudo-Johannean Apocalypse purports to have been written shortly after the ascension of Christ, by St. John, on Mount Tabor. It exists in MS. from the ninth century, and was first edited by A. Birch, 1804.

On the legends of St. John comp. Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 157–172, fifth edition.

III. Biographical and Critical.

Francis Trench: Life and Character of St. John the Evangelist. London, 1850.

Dean Stanley (d. 1881): Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age. Oxford and London, 1847, third ed., 1874, pp. 234–281.

Max Krenkel: Der Apostel Johannes. Leipzig, 1871.

James M. Macdonald: The Life and Writings of St. John. With Introduction by Dean Howson. New York, 1877 (new ed. 1880).

Weizsäcker: Das Apost. Zeitalter. 1886, pp. 493–559.

Comp. the biographical sketches in the works on the Apostolic Church, mentioned § 20 (p. 189); and the Introductions to the Commentaries of Lücke, Meyer, Lange, Luthardt, Godet, Westcott, Plummer.

IV. Doctrinal.

The Johannean type of doctrine is expounded by Neander (in his work on the Apost. Age, 4th ed., 1847; E. transl. by Robinson, N. York, 1865, pp. 508–531); Frommann (Der Johanneische Lehrbegriff, Leipz., 1839); C. Reinh. Köstlin (Der Lehrbegriff des Ev. und der Briefe Johannis, Berlin, 1843); Reuss (Die Johann. Theologie, in the Strasburg "Beiträge zu den Theol. Wissenschaften," 1847, in La Théologie johannique, Paris, 1879, and in his Theology of the Apost. Age, 2d ed. 1860, translated from the third French ed. by Annie Harwood, Lond. 1872–74, 2 vols.); Schmid (in his Bibl. Theol. des N. T, Stuttg. 1853); Baur (in Vorlesungen über N. T. Theol, Leipz. 1864); Hilgenfeld (1849 and 1863); B. Weiss (Der Johanneische Lehrbegriff, Berlin, 1862, and in his Bibl. Theol. des N. T., 4th ed. 1884). There are also special treatises on John’s Logos-doctrine and Christology by Weizsäcker (1862), Beyerschlag (1866), and others.

V. Commentaries on the Gospel of John.

The Literature on the Gospel of John and its genuineness, from 1792 to 1875 (from Evanson to Luthardt), is given with unusual fulness and accuracy by Dr. Caspar René Gregory (an American scholar), in an appendix to his translation of Luthardt’s St. John, the Author of the Fourth Gospel. Edinb. 1875, pp. 283–360. Comp. also the very careful lists of Dr. Ezra Abbot (down to 1869) in the article John, Gospel of, in the Am. ed. of Smith’s "Dict. of the Bible," I. 1437–1439.

Origen (d. 254) Chrysostom (407); Augustin (430); Cyril of Alexandria (444) Calvin (1564); Lampe (1724, 3 vols.); Bengel (Gnomen, 1752); Lücke (1820, 3d ed. 1843); Olshausen (1832, 4th ed. by Ebrard, 1861) Tholuck (1827, 7th ed. 1857); Hengstesnberg (1863, 2d, I. 1867 Eng. transl. 1865); Luthardt (1852, 2d ed. entirely rewritten 1875; Eng. transl. by Gregory, in 2 vols., and a special volume on the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 1875) De Wette-Brückner (5th ed. 1863); Meyer (5th and last ed. of Meyer, 1869; 6th ed. by Weiss, 1880); Ewald (1861); Alford (6th ed. 1868; Wordsworth (5th ed. 1866), Godet (1865, 2 vols., 2d ed. 1877, Eng. transl. in 3 vols.; 3d edition, Paris, 1881, trsl. by T. Dwight, 1886); Lange (as translated and enlarged by Schaff, N. Y. and Edinb. 1871); Watkins (in Ellicott’s "N.T. Com. for English Readers," 1878); Westcott (in "Speaker’s Commentary," 1879, and separately); Milligan and Moulton (in "Schaff’s Popul. Com.," 1880); Keil (1881); Plummer (1881); Thoma (Die Genesis des Joh. Evangeliums, 1882); Paul Schanz (Tübingen, 1885).

VI. Special Treatises on the Genuineness and Credibility of the

Fourth Gospel.

We have no room to give all the titles of books, or the pages in the introductions to Commentaries, and refer to the lists of Abbot and Gregory.

a. Writers against the Genuineness:

E. Evanson (The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, Gloucester, 1792). K. G. Bretschneider (Probabilia de Ev. et Ep. Joh. Ap. Indole et Origine, Leips. 1820, refuted by Schott, Eichhorn, Lücke, and others; retracted by the author himself in 1828). D. F. Strauss (in his Leben Jesu, 1835; withdrawn in the 3d ed. 1838, but renewed in the 4th, 1840 in his Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk, 1864); Lützelberger (1840); Bruno Baum (1840).—F. Chr. BAUR (first in a very acute and ingenious analysis of the Gospel, in the "Theol. Jahrbücher," of Tübingen, 1844, and again in 1847, 1848, 1853, 1855, 1859). He represents the fourth Gospel as the ripe result of a literary development, or evolution, which proceeded, according to the Hegelian method, from thesis to antithesis and synthesis, or from Judaizing Petrinism to anti-Jewish Paulinism and (pseudo-) Johannean reconciliation. He was followed by the whole Tübingen School; Zeller (1845, 1847, 1853); Schwegler (1846); Hilgenfeld (1849, 1854, 1855, 1875); Volkmar (1870, 1876); Schenkel (1864 and 1873); Holtzmann (in Schenkel’s "Bibellexikon." 1871, and Einleitung, 1886). Keim (Gesch. Jesu v. Nazara, since 1867, vol. I., 146 sqq.; 167 sqq., and in the 3d ed. of his abridgement, 1875, p. 40); Hausrath (1874); Mangold (in the 4th ed. of Bleek’s Introd., 1886); Thoma (1882). In Holland, Scholten (Leyden, 1865, and again 1871). In England, J. J. Tayler (London, 1867); Samuel Davidson (in the new ed. of his Introduction to the N. T., 1868, II. 323 sqq. and 357 sqq.); the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion (vol. II. 251 sqq., of the 6th ed., London, 1875); and E. A. A. (Edwin A. Abbott, D. D., of London, in art. Gospels, "Encycl. Brit.," vol. X., 1879, pp. 818–843).

The dates assigned to the composition of the Fourth Gospel by these opponents vary from 110 to 170, but the best scholars among them are more and more forced to retreat from 170 (Baur’s date) to 130 (Keim), or to the very beginning of the second century (110). This is fatal to their theory; for at that time many of the personal friends and pupils of John must have been still living to prevent a literary fiction from being generally accepted in the church as a genuine work of the apostle.

Reuss (in his Théologie johannique, 1879, in the sixth part of his great work, "La Bible" and in the Sixth edition of his Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., 1887, pp. 249 sqq.) leaves the question undecided, though inclining against the Johannean authorship. Sabatier, who had formerly defended the authenticity (in his Essai sur les sources de la vie de Jésus, 1866), follows the steps of Reuss, and comes to a negative conclusion (in his art. Jean in Lichtenberger’s "Encycl. des Sciences Relig.," Tom. VII., Paris, 1880, pp. 173 sqq.).

Weisse (1836), Schweizer (1841), Weizsäcker (1857, 1859, 1862, 1886), Hase (in his Geschichte Jesu, 1875, while in his earlier writings he had defended the genuineness), and Renan (1863, 1867, and 1879) admit genuine portions in the Fourth Gospel, but differ among themselves as to the extent. Some defend the genuineness of the discourses, but reject the miracles. Renan, on the contrary, favors the historical portions, but rejects the discourses of Christ, in a special discussion in the 13th ed. of his Vie de Jésus, pp. 477 sqq. He changed his view again in his L’église chrétienne, 1879, pp. 47 sqq. "Ce qui paraît le plus probable," he says, "c’est qu’un disciple de l’apôtre, dépositaire de plusieurs de ses souvenirs, se crut autorisé à parler en son nom et à écrire, vingt-cinq ou trente ans aprés sa mort, ce que l’on regrettait qu’il n’eût pas lui-même fixé de son vivant." He is disposed to ascribe the composition to the "Presbyter John" (whose very existence is doubtful) and to Aristion, two Ephesian disciples of John the Apostle. In characterizing the discourses in the Gospel of John he shows his utter incapacity of appreciating its spirit. Matthew Arnold (God and the Bible, p. 248) conjectures that the Ephesian presbyters composed the Gospel with the aid of materials furnished by John.

It should be remarked that Baur and his followers, and Renan, while they reject the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, strongly defend the Johannean origin of the Apocalypse, as one of the certain documents of the apostolic age. But Keim, by denying the whole tradition of John’s sojourn at Ephesus, destroys the foundation of Baur’s theory.

b. The genuineness has been defended by the following writers:

Jos. Priestley (Unitarian, against Evanson, 1793). Schleiermacher and his school, especially Lücke (1820 and 1840), Bleek (1846 and 1862), and De Wette (after some hesitation, 1837, 5th ed., by Brückner, 1863). Credner (1836); Neander (Leben Jesu, 1837) Tholuck (in Glaubwürdigkeit der evang. Geschichte, against Strauss, 1837); Andrews Norton (Unitarian, in Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, 1837–1844, 3 vols., 2d ed. 1846, abridged ed., Boston, 1875); Ebrard (1845, against Baur; again 1861, 1868, and 1880, in Herzog’s "Encykl." Thiersch (1845, against Baur); Schneider (1854); Hengstenberg (1863); Astié, (1863); Hofstede de Groot (Basilides, 1863; Germ. transl. 1868); Van Oosterzee (against Scholten, Germ. ed. 1867; Engl. transl. by Hurst); Tischendorf (Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst?  1865, 4th ed. 1866; also translated into English, but very poorly); Riggenbach (1866, against Volkmar). Meyer (Com., 5th ed. 1869); Weiss (6th ed. of Meyer, 1880); Lange (in his Leben Jesu, and in his Com., 3d ed. 1868, translated and enlarged by Schaff, 1871); Sanday (Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, London, 1872); Beyschlag (in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1874 and 1875); Luthardt (2d ed. 1875); Lightfoot (in the Contemporary Review, " 1875–1877, against Supernatural Religion); Geo. P. Fisher (Beginnings of Christianity, 1877, ch. X., and art. The Fourth Gospel, in "The Princeton Review" for July, 1881, pp. 51–84); Godet (Commentaire sur l’Évangile de Saint Jean, 2d ed. 1878; 3d ed. "complètement revue," vol. I., Introduction historique et critique, Paris, 1881, 376 pages); Westcott (Introd. to the Gospels, 1862, 1875, and Com. 1879); McClellan (The Four Gospels, 1875); Milligan (in several articles in the "Contemp. Review" for 1867, 1868, 1871, and in his and Moulton’s Com., 1880); Ezra Abbot (The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Boston, 1880; republished in his Critical Essays, Boston, 1888; conclusive on the external evidences, especially the important testimony of Justin Martyr); George Salmon (Historical Introd. to the N. T., London, 1886; third ed. 1888, pp. 210 sqq.). See also A. H. Francke: Das Alte Test. bei Johannes, Göttingen, 1885.

VIII. Commentaries on the Epistles of John.

Oecumenius (1000); Theophylact (1071); Luther; Calvin; Bullinger; Lücke (3d ed. 1856); De Wette (1837, 5th ed. by Brückner, 1863); Neander (1851, Engl. transl. by Mrs. Conant, 1852); Düsterdieck 1852–1856, 2 vols.); Huther (in Meyer’s Com., 1855, 4th ed. 1880); F. D. Maurice, (1857); Ebrard (in Olshausen’s Com., 1859, transl. by W. B. Pope, Edinb. 1860); Ewald (1861); Braune (in Lange’s Com., 1865, Engl. ed. by Mombert, 1867); Candlish (1866); Erich Haupt (1869, Engl. transl. by W. B. Pope, Edinb., 1879); R. Rothe (posthumous ed. by K. Mühlhäuser, 1879); W. B. Pope (in Schaff’s Pop. Com., 1883); Westcott (1883).

IX. Commentaries on the Apocalypse of John.

Bullinger (1535, 6th ed. 1604); Grotius (1644); Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, 1682); Bossuet (R. C., 1689); Vitringa (1719); Bengel (1740, 1746, and new ed. 1834); Herder (1779); Eichhorn (1791); E. P. Elliott (Horae Apocalypticae, or, a Com. on the Apoc., 5th ed., Lond., 1862, 4 vols.) Lücke (1852); Ewald (1828 and 1862); Züllig (1834 and 1840) Moses Stuart (1845, 2 vols.); De Wette (1848, 3d ed. 1862); Alford (3d ed. 1866); Hengstenberg (1849 and 1861); Ebrard (1853); Auberlen (Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis, 1854; Engl. transl. by Ad. Saphir, 1856, 2d Germ. ed. 1857); Düsterdieck (1859, 3d ed. 1877); Bleek (1820 and 1862); Luthardt (1861); Volkmar (1862); Kienlen (1870); Lange (1871, Am. ed., with large additions by Craven, 1874); Cowles (1871); Gebhardt (Der Lehrbegriff der Apocalypse, 1873; Engl. transl., The Doctrine of the Apocalypse, by J. Jefferson, 1878); Kliefoth (1874); Lee (1882); Milligan (in Schaff’s Internat. Com., 1883, and in Lectures on the Revel., 1886); Spitta (1889). Völter (1882) and Vischer (1886) deny the unity of the book. Vischer makes it a Jewish Apocalypse worked over by a Christian, in spite of the warning, Apoc. 22:18, 19, which refutes this hypothesis.

§ 41. Life and Character of John

"Volat avis sine meta,

Quo nec votes nec propheta

Evolavit altius:

Tam implenda quam impleta,

Numquam vidit tot secreta

Purus homo purius.

(Adam of St. Victor.)

The Mission of John.

Peter, the Jewish apostle of authority, and Paul, the Gentile apostle of freedom, had done their work on earth before the destruction of Jerusalem—had done it for their age and for all ages to come; had done it, and by the influence of their writings are doing it still, in a manner that can never be superseded. Both were master-builders, the one in laying the foundation, the other in rearing the superstructure, of the church of Christ, against which the gates of Hades can never prevail.

But there remained a most important additional work to be done, a work of union and consolidation. This was reserved for the apostle of love, the bosom-friend of Jesus, who had become his most perfect reflection so far as any human being can reflect the ideal of divine-human purity and holiness. John was not a missionary or a man of action, like Peter and Paul. He did little, so far as we know, for the outward spread of Christianity, but all the more for the inner life and growth of Christianity where it was already established. He has nothing to say about the government, the forms, and rites of the visible church (even the name does not occur in his Gospel and first Epistle), but all the more about the spiritual substance of the church—the vital union of believers with Christ and the brotherly communion of believers among themselves. He is at once the apostle, the evangelist, and the seer, of the new covenant. He lived to the close of the first century, that he might erect on the foundation and superstructure of the apostolic age the majestic dome gilded by the light of the new heaven.

He had to wait in silent meditation till the church was ripe for his sublime teaching. This is intimated by the mysterious word of our Lord to Peter with reference to John: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"559  No doubt the Lord did come in the terrible judgment of Jerusalem. John outlived it personally, and his type of doctrine and character will outlive the earlier stages of church history (anticipated and typified by Peter and Paul) till the final coming of the Lord. In that wider sense he tarries even till now, and his writings, with their unexplored depths and heights still wait for the proper interpreter. The best comes last. In the vision of Elijah on Mount Horeb, the strong wind that rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks, and the earthquake, and the fire preceded the still small voice of Jehovah.560  The owl of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, begins its flight at twilight. The storm of battle prepares the way for the feast of peace. The great warrior of the apostolic age already sounded the keynote of love which was to harmonize the two sections of Christendom; and John only responded to Paul when he revealed the inmost heart of the supreme being by the profoundest of all definitions: "God is love."561

John in the Gospels.

John was a son (probably the younger son) of Zebedee and Salome, and a brother of the elder James, who became the protomartyr of the apostles.562  He may have been about ten years younger than Jesus, and as, according to the unanimous testimony of antiquity, he lived till the reign of Trajan, i.e., till after 98, he must have attained an age of over ninety years. He was a fisherman by trade, probably of Bethsaida in Galilee (like Peter, Andrew, and Philip). His parents seem to have been in comfortable circumstances. His father kept hired servants; his mother belonged to the noble band of women who followed Jesus and supported him with their means, who purchased spices to embalm him, who were the last at the cross and the first at the open tomb. John himself was acquainted with the high priest, and owned a house in Jerusalem or Galilee, into which he received the mother of our Lord.563

He was a cousin of Jesus, according to the flesh, from his mother, a sister of Mary.564  This relationship, together with the enthusiasm of youth and the fervor of his emotional nature, formed the basis of his intimacy with the Lord.

He had no rabbinical training, like Paul, and in the eyes of the Jewish scholars he was, like Peter and the other Galilaean disciples, an "unlearned and ignorant man."565  But he passed through the preparatory school of John the Baptist who summed up his prophetic mission in the testimony to Jesus as the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," a testimony which he afterwards expanded in his own writings. It was this testimony which led him to Jesus on the banks of the Jordan in that memorable interview of which, half a century afterwards, he remembered the very hour.566  He was not only one of the Twelve, but the chosen of the chosen Three. Peter stood out more prominently before the public as the friend of the Messiah; John was known in the private circle as the friend of Jesus.567  Peter always looked at the official character of Christ, and asked what he and the other apostles should do; John gazed steadily at the person of Jesus, and was intent to learn what the Master said. They differed as the busy Martha, anxious to serve, and the pensive Mary, contented to learn. John alone, with Peter and his brother James, witnessed the scene of the transfiguration and of Gethsemane—the highest exaltation and the deepest humiliation in the earthly life of our Lord. He leaned on his breast at the last Supper and treasured those wonderful farewell discourses in his heart for future use. He followed him to the court of Caiaphas. He alone of all the disciples was present at the crucifixion, and was intrusted by the departing Saviour with the care of his mother. This was a scene of unique delicacy and tenderness: the Mater dolorosa and the beloved disciple gazing at the cross, the dying Son and Lord uniting them in maternal and filial love. It furnishes the type of those heaven-born spiritual relationships, which are deeper and stronger than those of blood and interest. As John was the last at the cross, so he was also, next to Mary Magdalene, the first of the disciples who, outrunning even Peter, looked into the open tomb on the resurrection morning; and he first recognized the risen Lord when he appeared to the disciples on the shore of the lake of Galilee.568

He seems to have been the youngest of the apostles, as he long outlived them all; he certainly was the most gifted and the most favored. He had a religious genius of the highest order—not indeed for planting, but for watering; not for outward action and aggressive work, but for inward contemplation and insight into the mystery of Christ’s person and of eternal life in him. Purity and simplicity of character, depth and ardor of affection, and a rare faculty of spiritual perception and intuition, were his leading traits, which became ennobled and consecrated by divine grace.

There are no violent changes reported in John’s history; he grew silently and imperceptibly into the communion of his Lord and conformity to his example; he was in this respect the antipode of Paul. He heard more and saw more, but spoke less, than the other disciples. He absorbed his deepest sayings, which escaped the attention of others; and although he himself did not understand them at first, he pondered them in his heart till the Holy Spirit illuminated them. His intimacy with Mary must also have aided him in gaining an interior view of the mind and heart of his Lord. He appears throughout as the beloved disciple, in closest intimacy and in fullest sympathy with the Lord.569

The Son of Thunder and the Beloved Disciple.

There is an apparent contradiction between the Synoptic and the Johannean picture of John, as there is between the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel; but on closer inspection it is only the twofold aspect of one and the same character. We have a parallel in the Peter of the Gospels and the Peter of his Epistles: the first youthful, impulsive, hasty, changeable, the other matured, subdued, mellowed, refined by divine grace.

In the Gospel of Mark, John appears as a Son of Thunder (Boanerges).570  This surname, given to him and to his elder brother by our Saviour, was undoubtedly an epithet of honor and foreshadowed his future mission, like the name Peter given to Simon. Thunder to the Hebrews was the voice of God.571  It conveys the idea of ardent temper, great strength and vehemence of character whether for good or for evil, according to the motive and aim. The same thunder which terrifies does also purify the air and fructify the earth with its accompanying showers of rain. Fiery temper under the control of reason and in the service of truth is as great a power of construction as the same temper, uncontrolled and misdirected, is a power of destruction. John’s burning zeal and devotion needed only discipline and discretion to become a benediction and inspiration to the church in all ages.

In their early history the sons of Zebedee misunderstood the difference between the law and the gospel, when, in an outburst of holy indignation against a Samaritan village which refused to receive Jesus, they were ready, like Elijah of old, to call consuming fire from heaven.572  But when, some years afterwards, John went to Samaria to confirm the new converts, he called down upon them the fire of divine life and light, the gift of the Holy Spirit.573  The same mistaken zeal for his Master was at the bottom of his intolerance towards those who performed a good work in the name of Christ, but outside of the apostolic circle.574  The desire of the two brothers, in which their mother shared, for the highest positions in the Messianic kingdom, likewise reveals both their strength and their weakness, a noble ambition to be near Christ, though it be near the fire and the sword, yet an ambition that was not free from selfishness and pride, which deserved the rebuke of our Lord, who held up before them the prospect of the baptism of blood.575

All this is quite consistent with the writings of John. He appears there by no means as a soft and sentimental, but as a positive and decided character. He had no doubt a sweet and lovely disposition, but at the same time a delicate sensibility, ardent feelings, and strong convictions. These traits are by no means incompatible. He knew no compromise, no division of loyalty. A holy fire burned within him, though he was moved in the deep rather than on the surface. In the Apocalypse, the thunder rolls loud and mighty against the enemies of Christ and his kingdom, while on the other hand there are in the same book episodes of rest and anthems, of peace and joy, and a description of the heavenly Jerusalem, which could have proceeded only from the beloved disciple. In the Gospel and the Epistles of John, we feel the same power, only subdued and restrained. He reports the severest as well as the sweetest discourses of the Saviour, according as he speaks to the enemies of the truth, or in the circle of the disciples. No other evangelist gives us such a profound inside-view of the antagonism between Christ and the Jewish hierarchy, and of the growing intensity of that hatred which culminated in the bloody counsel; no apostle draws a sharper line of demarcation between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and Antichrist, than John. His Gospel and Epistles move in these irreconcilable antagonisms. He knows no compromise between God and Baal. With what holy horror does he speak of the traitor, and the rising rage of the Pharisees against their Messiah!  How severely does he, in the words of the Lord, attack the unbelieving Jews with their murderous designs, as children of the devil!  And, in his Epistles, he terms every one who dishonors his Christian profession a liar; every one who hates his brother a murderer; every one who wilfully sins a child of the devil; and he earnestly warns against teachers who deny the mystery of the incarnation, as Antichrists, and he forbids even to salute them.576  The measure of his love of Christ was the measure of his hatred of antichrist. For hatred is inverted love. Love and hatred are one and the same passion, only revealed in opposite directions. The same sun gives light and heat to the living, and hastens the decay of the dead.

Christian art has so far well understood the double aspect of John by representing him with a face of womanly purity and tenderness, but not weakness, and giving him for his symbol a bold eagle soaring with outspread wings above the clouds.577

The Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel.

A proper appreciation of John’s character as thus set forth removes the chief difficulty of ascribing the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel to one and the same writer.578  The temper is the same in both: a noble, enthusiastic nature, capable of intense emotions of love and hatred, but with the difference between vigorous manhood and ripe old age, between the roar of battle and the repose of peace. The theology is the same, including the most characteristic features of Christology and soteriology.579  By no other apostle is Christ called the Logos. The Gospel is, "the Apocalypse spiritualized," or idealized. Even the difference of style, which is startling at first sight, disappears on closer inspection. The Greek of the Apocalypse is the most Hebraizing of all the books of the New Testament, as may be expected from its close affinity with Hebrew prophecy to which the classical Greek furnished no parallel, while the Greek of the fourth Gospel is pure, and free from irregularities; yet after all John the Evangelist also shows the greatest familiarity with, and the deepest insight into, the Hebrew religion, and preserves its purest and noblest elements; and his style has all the childlike simplicity and sententious brevity of the Old Testament; it is only a Greek body inspired by a Hebrew soul.580

In accounting for the difference between the Apocalypse and the other writings of John, we must also take into consideration the necessary difference between prophetic composition under direct inspiration, and historical and didactic composition, and the intervening time of about twenty years; the Apocalypse being written before the destruction of Jerusalem, the fourth Gospel towards the close of the first century, in extreme old age, when his youth was renewed like the eagle’s, as in the case of some of the greatest poets, Homer, Sophocles, Milton, and Goethe.

Notes.

I. The Son of Thunder and the Apostle of Love.

I quote some excellent remarks on the character of John from my friend, Dr. Godet (Com. I. 35, English translation by Crombie and Cusin):

"How are we to explain two features of character apparently so opposite?  There exist profound receptive natures which are accustomed to shut up their impressions within themselves, and this all the more that these impressions are keen and thrilling. But if it happens that these persons once cease to be masters of themselves, their long-restrained emotions then burst forth in sudden explosions, which fill the persons around them with amazement. Does not the character of John belong to this order?  And when Jesus gave to him and his brother the surname of Boanerges, sons of thunder (Mark 3:17), could he have described them better?  I cannot think that, by that surname, Jesus intended, as all the old writers have believed, to signalize the eloquence which distinguished them. Neither can I allow that he desired by that surname to perpetuate the recollection of their anger in one of the cases indicated. We are led by what precedes to a more natural explanation, and one more worthy of Jesus himself. As electricity is stored up by degrees in the cloud until it bursts forth suddenly in the lightning and thunderbolt, so in those two loving and passionate natures impressions silently accumulated till the moment when the heart overflowed, and they took an unexpected and violent flight. We love to represent St. John to ourselves as of a gentle rather than of an energetic nature, tender even to weakness. Do not his writings insist before and above all else upon love?  Were not the last sermons of the old man ’Love one another?’  That is true; but we forget other features of a different kind, during the first and last periods of his life, which reveal something decisive, sharp, absolute, even violent in his disposition. If we take all the facts stated into consideration, we shall recognize in him one of those sensitive, ardent souls, worshippers of an ideal, who attach themselves at first sight, and without reservation, to that being who seems to them to realize that of which they have dreamt, and whose devotion easily becomes exclusive and intolerant. They feel themselves repelled by everything which is not in sympathy with their enthusiasm. They no longer understand a division of heart which they themselves know not how to practice. All for all! such is their motto. Where that all is not, there is in their eyes nothing. Such affections do not subsist without including an alloy of impure egoism. A divine work is needed, in order that the true devotion, which constitutes the basis of such, may shine forth at the last in all its sublimity. Such was, if we are not deceived, the inmost history of John." Comp. the third French ed. of Godet’s Com., I. p. 50.

Dr. Westcott (in his Com., p. xxxiii.): "John knew that to be with Christ was life, to reject Christ was death; and he did not shrink from expressing the thought in the spirit of the old dispensation. He learned from the Lord, as time went on, a more faithful patience, but he did not unlearn the burning devotion which consumed him. To the last, words of awful warning, like the thunderings about the throne, reveal the presence of that secret fire. Every page of the Apocalypse is inspired with the cry of the souls beneath the altar, ’How long’ (Rev. 6:10); and nowhere is error as to the person of Christ denounced more sternly than in his Epistles (2 John 10; 1 John 4:1ff.)." Similar passages in Stanley.

II. The Mission of John.

Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apost. Age, p. 249 sq., 3d ed.): "Above all John spoke of the union of the soul with God, but it was by no mere process of oriental contemplation, or mystic absorption; it was by that word which now for the first time took its proper place in the order of the world—by Love. It has been reserved for St. Paul to proclaim that the deepest principle in the heart of man was Faith; it was reserved for St. John to proclaim that the essential attribute of God is Love. It had been taught by the Old Testament that ’the beginning of wisdom was the fear of God;’ it remained to be taught by the last apostle of the New Testament that ’the end of wisdom was the love of God.’  It had been taught of old time by Jew and by heathen, by Greek philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God’s children is ’the love of the brethren.’  And as it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him—it surely is no unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, ’We love Him because He loved us.’  And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, ’Little children, love one another;’ till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, ’Because this is our Lord’s command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.’ "

§ 42. Apostolic Labors of John.

John in the Acts.

In the first stadium of Apostolic Christianity John figures as one of the three pillars of the church of the circumcision, together with Peter and James the brother of the Lord; while Paul and Barnabas represented the Gentile church.581  This seems to imply that at that time he had not yet risen to the full apprehension of the universalism and freedom of the gospel. But he was the most liberal of the three, standing between James and Peter on the one hand, and Paul on the other, and looking already towards a reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile Christianity. The Judaizers never appealed to him as they did to James, or to Peter.582  There is no trace of a Johannean party, as there is of a Cephas party and a party of James. He stood above strife and division.

In the earlier chapters of the Acts he appears, next to Peter, as the chief apostle of the new religion; he heals with him the cripple at the gate of the temple; he was brought with him before the Sanhedrin to bear witness to Christ; he is sent with him by the apostles from Jerusalem to Samaria to confirm the Christian converts by imparting to them the Holy Spirit; he returned with him to Jerusalem.583  But Peter is always named first and takes the lead in word and act; John follows in mysterious silence and makes the impression of a reserved force which will manifest itself at some future time. He must have been present at the conference of the apostles in Jerusalem, A.D. 50, but he made no speech and took no active part in the great discussion about circumcision and the terms of church membership.584  All this is in entire keeping with the character of modest and silent prominence given to him in the Gospels.

After the year 50 he seems to have left Jerusalem. The Acts no more mention him nor Peter. When Paul made his fifth and last visit to the holy City (A.D. 58) he met James, but none of the apostles.585

John at Ephesus.

The later and most important labors of John are contained in his writings, which we shall fully consider in another chapter. They exhibit to us a history that is almost exclusively inward and spiritual, but of immeasurable reach and import. They make no allusion to the time and place of residence and composition. But the Apocalypse implies that he stood at the head of the churches of Asia Minor.586  This is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity which is above all reasonable doubt, and assigns Ephesus to him as the residence of his latter years.587  He died there in extreme old age during the reign of Trajan, which began in 98. His grave also was shown there in the second century.

We do not know when he removed to Asia Minor, but he cannot have done so before the year 63. For in his valedictory address to the Ephesian elders, and in his Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians and the second to Timothy, Paul makes no allusion to John, and speaks with the authority of a superintendent of the churches of Asia Minor. It was probably the martyrdom of Peter and Paul that induced John to take charge of the orphan churches, exposed to serious dangers and trials.588

Ephesus, the capital of proconsular Asia, was a centre of Grecian culture, commerce, and religion; famous of old for the songs of Homer, Anacreon, and Mimnermus, the philosophy of Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander, the worship and wonderful temple of Diana. There Paul had labored three years (54–57) and established an influential church, a beacon-light in the surrounding darkness of heathenism. From there he could best commune with the numerous churches he had planted in the provinces. There he experienced peculiar joys and trials, and foresaw great dangers of heresies that should spring up from within.589  All the forces of orthodox and heretical Christianity were collected there. Jerusalem was approaching its downfall; Rome was not yet a second Jerusalem. Ephesus, by the labors of Paul and of John, became the chief theatre of church history in the second half of the first and during the greater part of the second century. Polycarp, the patriarchal martyr, and Irenaeus, the leading theologian in the conflict with Gnosticism, best represent the spirit of John and bear testimony to his influence. He alone could complete the work of Paul and Peter, and give the church that compact unity which she needed for her self-preservation against persecution from without and heresy and corruption from within.

If it were not for the writings of John the last thirty years of the first century would be almost an entire blank. They resemble that mysterious period of forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, when the Lord hovered, as it were, between heaven and earth, barely touching the earth beneath, and appearing to the disciples like a spirit from the other world. But the theology of the second and third centuries evidently presupposes the writings of John, and starts from his Christology rather than from Paul’s anthropology and soteriology, which were almost buried out of sight until Augustin, in Africa, revived them.

John at Patmos.

John was banished to the solitary, rocky, and barren island of Patmos (now Patmo or Palmosa), in the Aegean sea, southwest of Ephesus. This rests on the testimony of the Apocalypse, 1:9, as usually understood: "I, John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for (on account of) the word of God and the testimony of Jesus."590  There he received, while "in the spirit, on the Lord’s day," those wonderful revelations concerning the struggles and victories of Christianity.

The fact of his banishment to Patmos is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity.591  It is perpetuated in the traditions of the island, which has no other significance. "John—that is the thought of Patmos; the island belongs to him; it is his sanctuary. Its stones preach of him, and in every heart, he lives."592

The time of the exile is uncertain, and depends upon the disputed question of the date of the Apocalypse. External evidence points to the reign of Domitian, A.D. 95; internal evidence to the reign of Nero, or soon after his death, A.D. 68.

The prevailing—we may say the only distinct tradition, beginning with so respectable a witness as Irenaeus about 170, assigns the exile to the end of the reign of Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96.593  He was the second Roman emperor who persecuted Christianity, and banishment was one of his favorite modes of punishment.594  Both facts give support to this tradition. After a promising beginning he became as cruel and bloodthirsty as Nero, and surpassed him in hypocrisy and blasphemous self-deification. He began his letters: "Our Lord and God commands," and required his subjects to address him so.595  He ordered gold and silver statues of himself to be placed in the holiest place of the temples. When he seemed most friendly, he was most dangerous. He spared neither senators nor consuls when they fell under his dark suspicion, or stood in the way of his ambition. He searched for the descendants of David and the kinsmen of Jesus, fearing their aspirations, but found that they were poor and innocent persons.596  Many Christians suffered martyrdom under his reign, on the charge of atheism—among them his own cousin, Flavius Clemens, of consular dignity, who was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, who was banished to the island of Pandateria, near Naples.597  In favor of the traditional date may also be urged an intrinsic propriety that the book which closes the canon, and treats of the last things till the final consummation, should have been written last.

Nevertheless, the internal evidence of the Apocalypse itself, and a comparison with the fourth Gospel, favor an earlier date, before the destruction of Jerusalem, and during the interregnum which followed the death of Nero (68), when the beast, that is the Roman empire, was wounded, but was soon to be revived (by the accession of Vespasian). If there is some foundation for the early tradition of the intended oil-martyrdom of John at Rome, or at Ephesus, it would naturally point to the Neronian persecution, in which Christians were covered with inflammable material and burned as torches. The unmistakable allusions to imperial persecutions apply much better to Nero than to Domitian. The difference between the Hebrew coloring and fiery vigor of the Apocalypse and the pure Greek and calm repose of the fourth Gospel, to which we have already alluded, are more easily explained if the former was written some twenty years earlier. This view has some slight support in ancient tradition,598 and has been adopted by the majority of modern critical historians and commentators.599

We hold, then, as the most probable view, that John was exiled to Patmos under Nero, wrote the Apocalypse soon after Nero’s death, A.D. 68 or 69, returned to Ephesus, completed his Gospel and Epistles several (perhaps twenty) years later, and fell asleep in peace during the year of Trajan, after A.D. 98.

The faithful record of the historical Christ in the whole fulness of his divine-human person, as the embodiment and source of life eternal to all believers, with the accompanying epistle of practical application, was the last message of the Beloved Disciple at the threshold of the second century, at the golden sunset of the apostolic age. The recollections of his youth, ripened by long experience, transfigured by the Holy Spirit, and radiant with heavenly light of truth and holiness, are the most precious legacy of the last of the apostles to all future generations of the church.

§ 43. Traditions Respecting John.600

The memory of John sank deep into the heart of the church, and not a few incidents more or less characteristic and probable have been preserved by the early fathers.

Clement of Alexandria, towards the close of the second century, represents John as a faithful and devoted pastor when, in his old age, on a tour of visitation, he lovingly pursued one of his former converts who had become a robber, and reclaimed him to the church.

Irenaeus bears testimony to his character as "the Son of Thunder" when he relates, as from the lips of Polycarp, that, on meeting in a public bath at Ephesus the Gnostic heretic Cerinthus,601 who denied the incarnation of our Lord, John refused to remain under the same roof, lest it might fall down. This reminds one of the incident recorded in Luke 9:49, and the apostle’s severe warning in 2 John 10 and 11. The story exemplifies the possibility of uniting the deepest love of truth with the sternest denunciation of error and moral evil.602

Jerome pictures him as the disciple of love, who in his extreme old age was carried to the meeting-place on the arms of his disciples, and repeated again and again the exhortation, "Little children, love one another," adding: "This is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough." This, of all the traditions of John, is the most credible and the most useful.

In the Greek church John bears the epithet "the theologian (qeolovgo"), for teaching most clearly the divinity of Christ (th;n qeovthta tou' lovgou). He is also called "the virgin" (parqevno"),603 for his chastity and supposed celibacy. Augustin says that the singular chastity of John from his early youth was supposed by some to be the ground of his intimacy with Jesus.604

The story of John and the huntsman, related by Cassian, a monk of the fifth century, represents him as gently playing with a partridge in his hand, and saying to a huntsman, who was surprised at it: "Let not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind offend thee, without which the spirit would flag from over-exertion and not be able to respond to the call of duty when need required." Childlike simplicity and playfulness are often combined with true greatness of mind.

Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, at the close of the second century, relates (according to Eusebius) that John introduced in Asia Minor the Jewish practice of observing Easter on the 14th of Nisan, irrespective of Sunday. This fact entered largely into the paschal controversies of the second century, and into the modern controversy about the genuineness of the Gospel of John.

The same Polycrates of Ephesus describes John as wearing the plate, or diadem of the Jewish high-priest (Ex. 28:36, 37; 39:30, 31). It is probably a figurative expression of priestly holiness which John attaches to all true believers (Comp. Rev. 2:17), but in which he excelled as the patriarch.605

From a misunderstanding of the enigmatical word of Jesus, John 21:22, arose the legend that John was only asleep in his grave, gently moving the mound as he breathed, and awaiting the final advent of the Lord. According to another form of the legend he died, but was immediately raised and translated to heaven, like Elijah, to return with him as the herald of the second advent of Christ.606

CHAPTER VIII.

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

Sources.

The teaching and example of Christ as exhibited in the Gospels, and of the apostles in the Acts and Epistles; compared and contrasted with the rabbinical ethics and the state of Jewish society, and with the Greek systems of philosophy and the moral condition of the Roman empire, as described in the writings of Seneca, Tacitus, the Roman satirists, etc.

Literature.

I. The respective sections in the Histories of the Apost. Church by Neander: I. 229–283 (Germ. ed.); Schaff: §§ 109–123 (pp. 433–492); Lange: II. 495–534; Weizsäcker: 647–698.

II The works on the Theology of the Apostolic Age, by Schmid, Reuss, Baur, Weiss, etc.

III. The Systems of Christian Ethics by Schleiermacher, Rothe, Neander, Schmid, Wuttke, Harless, Martensen, Luthardt, and Lecky’s History of European Morals (1869), vol I. 357 sqq.

IV. A. Thoma (pastor in Mannheim): Geschichte der christlichen Sittenlehre in der Zeit des Neuen Testamentes, Haarlem, 1879 (380 pp.). A crowned prize-essay of the Teyler Theol. Society. The first attempt of a separate critical history of N. T. ethics, but written from the negative standpoint of the Tübingen school, and hence very unsatisfactory. It is divided in three parts: I. The Ethics of Jesus; II. The Ethics of Paul; III. The Ethics of the Congregation.

V. Works which treat of Christian life in the post-apostolic age (Cave, Arnold, Schmidt, Chastel, Pressensé, etc.) will be noticed in the second period.

§ 44. The Power of Christianity.

Practical Christianity is the manifestation of a new life; a spiritual (as distinct from intellectual and moral) life; a supernatural (as distinct from natural) life; it is a life of holiness and peace; a life of union and communion with God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; it is eternal life, beginning with regeneration and culminating in the resurrection. It lays hold of the inmost centre of man’s personality, emancipates him from the dominion of sin, and brings him into vital union with God in Christ; from this centre it acts as a purifying, ennobling, and regulating force upon all the faculties of man—the emotions, the will, and the intellect—and transforms even the body into a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Christianity rises far above all other religions in the theory and practice of virtue and piety. It sets forth the highest standard of love to God and to man; and this not merely as an abstract doctrine, or an object of effort and hope, but as a living fact in the person of Jesus Christ, whose life and example have more power and influence than all the maxims and precepts of sages and legislators. Deeds speak louder than words. Praecepta docent, exempla trahunt. The finest systems of moral philosophy have not been able to regenerate and conquer the world. The gospel of Christ has done it and is doing it constantly. The wisest men of Greece and Rome sanctioned slavery, polygamy, concubinage, oppression, revenge, infanticide; or they belied their purer maxims by their conduct. The ethical standard of the Jews was much higher; yet none of their patriarchs, kings, or prophets claimed perfection, and the Bible honestly reports the infirmities and sins, as well as the virtues, of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon.

But the character of Christ from the manger to the cross is without spot or blemish; he is above reproach or suspicion, and acknowledged by friend and foe to be the purest as well as the wisest being that ever appeared on earth. He is the nearest approach which God can make to man, and which man can make to God; he represents the fullest imaginable and attain able harmony of the ideal and real, of the divine and human. The Christian church may degenerate in the hands of sinful men, but the doctrine and life of her founder are a never-failing fountain of purification.

The perfect life of harmony with God and devotion to the welfare of the human race, is to pass from Christ to his followers. Christian life is an imitation of the life of Christ. From his word and spirit, living and ruling in the church, an unbroken stream of redeeming, sanctifying, and glorifying power has been flowing forth upon individuals, families, and nations for these eighteen centuries, and will continue to flow till the world is transformed into the kingdom of heaven, and God becomes all in all.

One of the strongest proofs of the supernatural origin of Christianity, is its elevation above the natural culture and moral standard of its first professors. The most perfect doctrine and life described by unschooled fishermen of Galilee, who never before had been outside of Palestine, and were scarcely able to read and to write!  And the profoundest mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, the incarnation, redemption, regeneration, resurrection, taught by the apostles to congregations of poor and illiterate peasants, slaves and freedmen!  For "not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" were called, "but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption: that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."607

If we compare the moral atmosphere of the apostolic churches with the actual condition of surrounding Judaism and heathenism, the contrast is as startling as that between a green oasis with living fountains and lofty palm trees, and a barren desert of sand and stone. Judaism in its highest judicatory committed the crime of crimes, the crucifixion of the Saviour of the world, and hastened to its doom. Heathenism was fitly represented by such imperial monsters as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, and exhibited a picture of hopeless corruption and decay, as described in the darkest colors not only by St. Paul, but by his heathen contemporary, the wisest Stoic moralist, the teacher and victim of Nero.608

Notes.

The rationalistic author of Supernatural Religion (vol. II. 487) makes the following remarkable concession: "The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point attained, or even attainable, by humanity. The influence of his spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of his character. Surpassing in his sublime simplicity and earnestness the moral grandeur of Sâkya Muni, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied, though generally admirable, teaching of Socrates and Plato, and the whole round of Greek philosophers, he presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with his own lofty principles, so that the ’imitation of Christ’ has become almost the final word in the preaching of his religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful elements of its permanence."

Lecky, likewise a rationalistic writer and historian of great ability and fairness, makes this weighty remark in his History of European Morals (vol. II. 9):, "It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. This has, indeed, been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration."

To this we may add the testimony of the atheistic philosopher, John Stuart Mill from his essay on Theism, written shortly before his death (1873), and published, 1874, in Three Essays on Religion. (Am. ed., p. 253): "Above all, the most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate more than the God of the Jews, or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modem mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?  Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source."

§ 45. The Spiritual Gifts.

Comp. the Commentaries on Rom. 12:3–9, and 1 Cor. 12–14.

The apostolic church was endowed from the day of Pentecost with all the needful spiritual gifts for the moral regeneration of the world. They formed, as it were, her bridal garment and her panoply against Jewish and Gentile opposition. They are called charisms609 or gifts of grace, as distinguished from, though not opposed to, natural endowments. They are certain special energies and manifestations of the Holy Spirit in believers for the common good.610   They are supernatural, therefore, in their origin; but they correspond to natural virtues, and in operation they follow all the mental and moral faculties of Dian, raising them to higher activity, and consecrating them to the service of Christ. They all rest on faith, that "gift of gifts."

The spiritual gifts may be divided into three classes: first, intellectual gifts of knowledge, mainly theoretical in their character, and concerned primarily with doctrine and theology; secondly, emotional gifts of feeling, appearing chiefly in divine worship and for immediate edification; and thirdly, practical gifts of will, devoted to the organization, government, and discipline of the church. They are not, however, abstractly separate, but work together harmoniously for the common purpose of edifying the body of Christ. In the New Testament ten charisms are specially mentioned; the first four have to do chiefly, though not exclusively, with doctrine, the next two with worship, and the remaining four with government and practical affairs.

1. The gift of Wisdom and Knowledge,611 or of deep insight into the nature and system of the divine word and the doctrines of the Christian salvation.

2. The gift of Teaching.612 or of practically applying the gift of knowledge; the power of clearly expounding the Scriptures for the instruction and edification of the people.

3. The gift of Prophecy,613 akin to the two preceding, but addressed rather to pious feeling than to speculative reflection, and employing commonly the language of higher inspiration, rather than that of logical exposition and demonstration. It is by no means confined to the prediction of future events, but consists in disclosing the hidden counsel of God, the deeper sense of the Scriptures, the secret state of the heart, the abyss of sin, and the glory of redeeming grace. It appears particularly in creative periods, times of mighty revival; while the gift of reaching suits better a quiet state of natural growth in the church. Both act not only in the sphere of doctrine and theology, but also in worship, and might in this view be reckoned also among the gifts of feeling.

4. The gift of Discerning Spirits,614 serves mainly as a guide to the third gift, by discriminating between true prophets and false, between divine inspiration and a merely human or satanic enthusiasm. In a wider sense it is a deep discernment in separating truth and error, and in judging of moral and religious character; a holy criticism still ever necessary to the purity of Christian doctrine and the administration of the discipline of the church.

5. The gift of Tongues,615 or of an utterance proceeding from a state of unconscious ecstasy in the speaker, and unintelligible to the hearer unless interpreted—thus differing from prophecy, which requires a self-conscious though highly elevated state of feeling, serves directly to profit the congregation, and is therefore preferred by Paul.616  The speaking with tongues is an involuntary psalm-like prayer or song, uttered from a spiritual trance, and in a peculiar language inspired by the Holy Spirit. The soul is almost entirely passive, an instrument on which the Spirit plays his heavenly melodies. This gift has, therefore, properly, nothing to do with the spread of the church among foreign peoples and in foreign languages, but is purely an act of worship, for the edification primarily of the speaker himself, and indirectly, through interpretation, for the hearers. It appeared, first, indeed, on the day of Pentecost, but before Peter’s address to the people, which was the proper mission-sermon; and we meet with it afterwards in the house of Cornelius and in the Corinthian congregation, as a means of edification for believers, and not, at least not directly, for unbelieving hearers, although it served to them as a significant sign,617 arresting their attention to the supernatural power in the church.

6. The gift of Interpretation 618 is the supplement of the glossolalia, and makes that gift profitable to the congregation by translating the prayers and songs from the language of the spirit and of ecstasy619 into that of the understanding and of sober self-consciousness.620  The preponderance of reflection here puts this gift as properly in the first class as in the second.

7. The gift of Ministry and Help,621 that is, of special qualification primarily for the office of deacon and deaconess, or for the regular ecclesiastical care of the poor and the sick, and, in the wide sense, for all labors of Christian charity and philanthropy.

8. The gift of church Government and the Care of souls,622 indispensable to all pastors and rulers of the church, above all to the apostles and apostolic men, in proportion to the extent of their respective fields of labor. Peter warns his co-presbyters against the temptation to hierarchical arrogance and tyranny over conscience, of which so many priests, bishops, patriarchs, and popes have since been guilty; and points them to the sublime example of the great Shepherd and Archbishop, who, in infinite love, laid down his life for the sheep.623

9. The gift of Miracles624 is the power possessed by the apostles and apostolic men, like Stephen, to heal all sorts of physical maladies, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and perform other similar works, in virtue of an extraordinary energy or faith, by word, prayer, and the laying on of hands in the name of Jesus, and for his glory. These miracles were outward credentials and seals of the divine mission of the apostles in a time and among a people which required such sensible helps to faith. But as Christianity became established in the world, it could point to its continued moral effects as the best evidence of its truth, and the necessity for outward physical miracles ceased.

10. Finally, the gift of Love, the greatest, most precious, most useful, most needful, and most enduring of all, described and extolled by St. Paul in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with the pen of an angel in the vision and enjoyment of the God of infinite love himself.625  Love is natural kindness and affection sanctified and raised to the spiritual sphere, or rather a new heavenly affection created in the soul by the experience of the saving love of God in Christ. As faith lies at the bottom of all charisms, so love is not properly a separate gift, but the soul of all the gifts, guarding them from abuse for selfish and ambitious purposes, making them available for the common good, ruling, uniting, and completing them. It alone gives them their true value, and without love even the speaking with tongues of angels, and a faith which removes mountains, are nothing before God. It holds heaven and earth in its embrace. It "believeth all things," and when faith fails, it "hopeth all things," and when hope fails, it "endureth all things," but it "never fails." As love is the most needful of all the gifts on earth, so it will also outlast all the others and be the ornament and joy of the saints in heaven. For love is the inmost essence, the heart, as it were, of God, the ground of all his attributes, and the motive of all his works. It is the beginning and the end of creation, redemption, and sanctification—the link which unites us with the triune God, the cardinal virtue of Christianity, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, and the fountain of bliss.

§ 46. Christianity in Individuals.

The transforming spiritual power of Christianity appears first in the lives of individuals. The apostles and primitive Christians rose to a morality and piety far above that of the heroes of heathen virtue and even that of the Jewish saints. Their daily walk was a living union with Christ, ever seeking the glory of God and the salvation of men. Many of the cardinal virtues, humility, for example, and love for enemies, were unknown before the Christian day.

Peter, Paul, and John represent the various leading forms or types of Christian piety, as well as of theology. They were not without defect, indeed they themselves acknowledged only one sinless being, their Lord and Master, and they confessed their own shortcomings;626 yet they were as nearly perfect as it is possible to be in a sinful world; and the moral influence of their lives and writings on all generations of the church is absolutely immeasurable. Each exhibits the spirit and life of Christ in a peculiar way. For the gospel does not destroy, but redeems and sanctifies the natural talents and tempers of men. It consecrates the fire of a Peter, the energy of a Paul, and the pensiveness of a John to the same service of God. It most strikingly displays its new creating power in the sudden conversion of the apostle of the Gentiles from a most dangerous foe to a most efficient friend of the church. Upon Paul the Spirit of God came as an overwhelming storm; upon John, as a gentle, refreshing breeze. But in all dwelt the same new, supernatural, divine principle of life. All are living apologies for Christianity, whose force no truth-loving heart can resist.

Notice, too, the moral effects of the gospel in the female characters of the New Testament. Christianity raises woman from the slavish position which she held both in Judaism and in heathendom, to her true moral dignity and importance; makes her an heir of the same salvation with man,627 and opens to her a field for the noblest and loveliest virtues, without thrusting her, after the manner of modern pseudo-philanthropic schemes of emancipation, out of her appropriate sphere of private, domestic life, and thus stripping her of her fairest ornament and peculiar charm.

The Virgin Mary marks the turning point in the history of the female sex. As the mother of Christ, the second Adam, she corresponds to Eve, and is, in a spiritual sense, the mother of all living.628  In her, the "blessed among women," the whole sex wass blessed, and the curse removed which had hung over the era of the fall. She was not, indeed, free from actual and native sin, as is now, taught, without the slightest ground in Scripture, by the Roman church since the 8th of December, 1854. On the contrary, as a daughter of Adam, she needed, like all men, redemption and sanctification through Christ, the sole author of sinless holiness, and she herself expressly calls God her Saviour.629  But in the mother and educator of the Saviour of the world we no doubt may and should revere, though not worship, the model of female Christian virtue, of purity, tenderness, simplicity, humility, perfect obedience to God, and unreserved surrender to Christ. Next to her we have a lovely group of female disciples and friends around the Lord: Mary, the wife of Clopas; Salome, the mother of James and John; Mary of Bethany, who sat at Jesus’ feet; her busy and hospitable sister, Martha; Mary of Magdala, whom the Lord healed of a demoniacal possession; the sinner, who washed his feet with her tears of penitence and wiped them with her hair; and all the noble women, who ministered to the Son of man in his earthly poverty with the gifts of their love,630 lingered last around his cross,631 and were the first at his open sepulchre on the, morning of the resurrection.632

Henceforth we find woman no longer a slave of man and tool of lust, but the pride and joy of her husband, the fond mother training her children to virtue and godliness, the ornament and treasure of the family, the faithful sister, the zealous servant of the congregation in every work of Christian charity, the sister of mercy, the martyr with superhuman courage, the guardian angel of peace, the example of purity, humility, gentleness, patience, love, and fidelity unto death. Such women were unknown before. The heathen Libanius, the enthusiastic eulogist of old Grecian culture, pronounced an involuntary eulogy on Christianity when he exclaimed, as he looked at the mother of Chrysostom: "What women the Christians have!"

§ 47. Christianity and the Family.

H. Gregoire: De l’influence du christianisme sur la condition des femmes. Paris, 1821.

F. Münter: Die Christin im heidnischen Hause vor den Zeiten Constantin’s des Grossen. Kopenhagen, 1828.

Julia Kavanagh: Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity. Lond., 1851; N. York, 1866.

Thus raising the female sex to its true freedom and dignity, Christianity transforms and sanctifies the entire family life. It abolishes polygamy, and makes monogamy the proper form of marriage; it condemns concubinage with all forms of unchastity and impurity. It presents the mutual duties of husband and wife, and of parents and children, in their true light, and exhibits marriage as a copy of the mystical union of Christ with his bride, the church; thus imparting to it a holy character and a heavenly end.633

Henceforth the family, though still rooted, as before, in the soil of nature, in the mystery of sexual love, is spiritualized and becomes a nursery of the purest and noblest virtues, a miniature church, where the father, as shepherd, daily leads his household into the pastures of the divine word, and, as priest, offers to the Lord the sacrifice of their common petition, intercession, thanksgiving, and praise.

With the married state, the single also, as an exception to the rule, is consecrated by the gospel to the service of the kingdom of God; as we see in a Paul, a Barnabas, and a John,634 and in the history of missions and of ascetic piety. The enthusiasm for celibacy, which spread so soon throughout the ancient church, must be regarded as a one-sided, though natural and, upon the whole, beneficial reaction against the rotten condition and misery of family life among the heathen.

§ 48. Christianity and Slavery.

Literature.

H. Wallon (Prof. of Modern History in Paris): Histoire de l’esclavage dans l’antiquité, Par. 1879, 3 vols., treats very thoroughly of Slavery in the Orient, among the Greeks and the Romans, with an Introduction on modern negro slavery in the Colonies.

Augustin Cochin (ancien maire et conseiller municipal de la Ville de Paris): L’abolition de l’esclavage, Paris, 1862, 2 vols. This work treats not only of the modern abolition of slavery, but includes in vol. II., p. 348–470, an able discussion of the relation of Christianity and slavery.

Möhler (R. C., d. 1848): Bruchstücke aus der Geschichte der Aufhebung der Sklaverei, 1834. ("Vermischte Schriften," vol. II., p. 54.)

H. Wiskemann: Die Sklaverei. Leiden, 1866. A crowned prize-essay.

P. Allard: Les esclaves chrétiens depuis les premiers temps de l’église jusqu’ à la fin de la domination romaine en Occident Paris, 1876 (480 pp.).

G. V. Lechler: Sklaverei und Christenthum. Leipz. 1877–78.

Ph. Schaff: Slavery and the Bible, in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York and London, 1885, pp. 184–212.

Compare the Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, especially Braune, and Lightfoot (in Colossians and Philemon, 1875).

The numerous American works on slavery by Channing, Parker, Hodge, Barnes, Wilson, Cheever, Bledsoe, and others, relate to the question of negro slavery, now providentially abolished by the civil war of 1861–65.

To Christianity we owe the gradual extinction of slavery.

This evil has rested as a curse on all nations, and at the time of Christ the greater part of the existing race was bound in beastly degradation—even in civilized Greece and Rome the slaves being more numerous than the free-born and the freedmen. The greatest philosophers of antiquity vindicated slavery as a natural and necessary institution; and Aristotle declared all barbarians to be slaves by birth, fit for nothing but obedience. According to the Roman law, "slaves had no head in the State, no name, no title, no register;" they had no rights of matrimony, and no protection against adultery; they could be bought and sold, or given away, as personal property; they might be tortured for evidence, or even put to death, at the discretion of their master. In the language of a distinguished writer on civil law, the slaves in the Roman empire "were in a much worse state than any cattle whatsoever." Cato the elder expelled his old and sick slaves out of house and home. Hadrian, one of the most humane of the emperors, wilfully destroyed the eye of one of his slaves with a pencil. Roman ladies punished their maids with sharp iron instruments for the most trifling offences, while attending half-naked, on their toilet. Such legal degradation and cruel treatment had the worst effect upon the character of the slaves. They are described by the ancient writers as mean, cowardly, abject, false, voracious, intemperate, voluptuous, also as hard and cruel when placed over others. A proverb prevailed in the Roman empire: "As many slaves, so many enemies." Hence the constant danger of servile insurrections, which more than once brought the republic to the brink of ruin, and seemed to justify the severest measures in self-defence.

Judaism, indeed, stood on higher ground than this; yet it tolerated slavery, though with wise precautions against maltreatment, and with the significant ordinance, that in the year of jubilee, which prefigured the renovation of the theocracy, all Hebrew slaves should go free.635

This system of permanent oppression and moral degradation the gospel opposes rather by its whole spirit than by any special law. It nowhere recommends outward violence and revolutionary measures, which in those times would have been worse than useless, but provides an internal radical cure, which first mitigates the evil, takes away its sting, and effects at last its entire abolition. Christianity aims, first of all, to redeem man, without regard to rank or condition, from that worst bondage, the curse of sin, and to give him true spiritual freedom; it confirms the original unity of all men in the image of God, and teaches the common redemption and spiritual equality of all before God in Christ;636 it insists on love as the highest duty and virtue, which itself inwardly levels social distinctions; and it addresses the comfort and consolation of the gospel particularly to all the poor, the persecuted, and the oppressed. Paul sent back to his earthly master the fugitive slave, Onesimus, whom he had converted to Christ and to his duty, that he might restore his character where he had lost it; but he expressly charged Philemon to receive and treat the bondman hereafter as a beloved brother in Christ, yea, as the apostle’s own heart. It is impossible to conceive of a more radical cure of the evil in those times and within the limits of established laws and customs. And it is impossible to find in ancient literature a parallel to the little Epistle to Philemon for gentlemanly courtesy and delicacy, as well as for tender sympathy with a poor slave.

This Christian spirit of love, humanity, justice, and freedom, as it pervades the whole New Testament, has also, in fact, gradually abolished the institution of slavery in almost all civilized nations, and will not rest till all the chains of sin and misery are broken, till the personal and eternal dignity of man redeemed by Christ is universally acknowledged, and the evangelical freedom and brotherhood of men are perfectly attained.

Note on the Number and Condition of Slaves in Greece and Rome.

Attica numbered, according to Ctesicles, under the governorship of Demetrius the Phalerian (309 b.c.), 400,000 slaves, 10,000 foreigners, and only 21,000 free citizens. In Sparta the disproportion was still greater.

As to the Roman empire, Gibbon estimates the number of slaves under the reign of Claudius at no less than one half of the entire population, i.e., about sixty millions (I. 52, ed. Milman, N. Y., 1850). According to Robertson there were twice as many slaves as free citizens, and Blair (in his work on Roman slavery, Edinb. 1833, p. 15) estimates over three slaves to one freeman between the conquest of Greece (146 b.c.) and the reign of Alexander Severna (A.D. 222–235). The proportion was of course very different in the cities and in the rural districts. The majority of the plebs urbana were poor and unable to keep slaves; and the support of slaves in the city was much more expensive than in the country. Marquardt assumes the proportion of slaves to freemen in Rome to have been three to two. Friedländer (Sittengeschichte Roms. l. 55, fourth ed.) thinks it impossible to make a correct general estimate, as we do not know the number of wealthy families. But we know that Rome A.D. 24 was thrown into consternation by the fear of a slave insurrection (Tacit. Ann. IV. 27). Athenaeus, as quoted by Gibbon (I. 51) boldly asserts that he knew very many (pavmpolloi) Romans who possessed, not for use, but ostentation, ten and even twenty thousand slaves. In a single palace at Rome, that of Pedanius Secundus, then prefect of the city, four hundred slaves were maintained, and were all executed for not preventing their master’s murder (Tacit. Ann. XIV. 42, 43).

The legal condition of the slaves is thus described by Taylor on Civil Law, as quoted in Cooper’s Justinian, p. 411: "Slaves were held pro nullis, pro mortuis, pro quadrupedibus; nay, were in a much worse state than any cattle whatsoever. They had no head in the state, no name, no title, or register; they were not capable of being injured; nor could they take by purchase or descent; they had no heirs, and therefore could make no will; they were not entitled to the rights and considerations of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in case of adultery; nor were they proper objects of cognation or affinity, but of quasi-cognation only; they could be sold, transferred, or pawned, as goods or personal estate, for goods they were, and as such they were esteemed; they might be tortured for evidence, punished at the discretion of their lord, and even put to death by his authority; together with many other civil incapacities which I have no room to enumerate." Gibbon (I. 48) thinks that "against such internal enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more then once reduced the republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe regulations and the most cruel treatment seemed almost justifiable by the great law of self-preservation."

The individual treatment of slaves depended on the character of the master. As a rule it was harsh and cruel. The bloody spectacles of the amphitheatre stupefied the finer sensibilities even in women. Juvenal describes a Roman mistress who ordered her female slaves to be unmercifully lashed in her presence till the whippers were worn out; Ovid warns the ladies not to scratch the face or stick needles into the naked arms of the servants who adorned them; and before Hadrian a mistress could condemn a slave to the death of crucifixion without assigning a reason. See the references in Friedländer, I. 466. It is but just to remark that the philosophers of the first and second century, Seneca, Pliny, and Plutarch, entertained much milder views on this subject than the older writers, and commend a humane treatment of the slaves; also that the Antonines improved their condition to some extent, and took the oft abused jurisdiction of life and death over the slaves out of private hands and vested it in the magistrates. But at that time Christian principles and sentiments already freely circulated throughout the empire, and exerted a silent influence even over the educated heathen. This unconscious atmospheric influence, so to speak, is continually exerted by Christianity over the surrounding world, which without this would be far worse than it actually is.

§ 49. Christianity and Society.

Christianity enters with its leaven-like virtue the whole civil and social life of a people, and leads it on the path of progress in all genuine civilization. It nowhere prescribes, indeed, a particular form of government, and carefully abstains from all improper interference with political and secular affairs. It accommodates itself to monarchical and republican institutions, and can flourish even under oppression and persecution from the State, as the history of the first three centuries sufficiently shows. But it teaches the true nature and aim of all government, and the duties of rulers and subjects; it promotes the abolition of bad laws and institutions, and the establishment of good; it is in principle opposed alike to despotism and anarchy; it tends, under every form of government, towards order, propriety, justice, humanity, and peace; it fills the ruler with a sense of responsibility to the supreme king and judge, and the ruled with the spirit of loyalty, virtue, and piety.

Finally, the Gospel reforms the international relations by breaking down the partition walls of prejudice and hatred among the different nations and races. It unites in brotherly fellowship and harmony around the same communion table even the Jews and the Gentiles, once so bitterly separate and hostile. The spirit of Christianity, truly catholic or universal, rises above all national distinctions. Like the congregation at Jerusalem, the whole apostolic church was of "one heart and of one soul."637  It had its occasional troubles, indeed, temporary collisions between a Peter and a Paul, between Jewish and Gentile Christians; but instead of wondering at these, we must admire the constant victory of the spirit of harmony and love over the remaining forces of the old nature and of a former state of things. The poor Gentile Christians of Paul’s churches in Greece sent their charities to the poor Jewish Christians in Palestine, and thus proved their gratitude for the gospel and its fellowship, which they had received from that mother church.638  The Christians all felt themselves to be "brethren," were constantly impressed with their common origin and their common destiny, and considered it their sacred duty to "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."639  While the Jews, in their spiritual pride and "odium generis humani" abhorred all Gentiles; while the Greeks despised all barbarians as only half men; and while the Romans, with all their might and policy, could bring their conquered nations only into a mechanical conglomeration, a giant body without a soul; Christianity, by purely moral means) founded a universal spiritual empire and a communion of saints, which stands unshaken to this day, and will spread till it embraces all the nations of the earth as its living members, and reconciles all to God.

§ 50. Spiritual Condition of the Congregations.—The Seven Churches in Asia.

We must not suppose that the high standard of holiness set up in doctrine and example by the evangelists and apostles was fully realized in their congregations. The dream of the spotless purity and perfection of the apostolic church finds no support in the apostolic writings, except as an ideal which is constantly held up before our vision to stimulate our energies. If the inspired apostles themselves disclaimed perfection, much less can we expect it from their converts, who had just come from the errors and corruptions of Jewish and heathen society, and could not be transformed at once without a miracle in violation of the ordinary laws of moral growth.

We find, in fact, that every Epistle meets some particular difficulty and danger. No letter of Paul can be understood without the admission of the actual imperfection of his congregations. He found it necessary to warn them even against the vulgar sins of the flesh as well as against the refined sins of the spirit. He cheerfully and thankfully commended their virtues, and as frankly and fearlessly condemned their errors and vices.

The same is true of the churches addressed in the Catholic Epistles, and in the Revelation of John.640

The seven Epistles in the second and third chapters of the Apocalypse give us a glimpse of the church in its light and shade in the last stage of the apostolic age—primarily in Asia Minor, but through it also in other lands. These letters are all very much alike in their plan, and present a beautiful order, which has been well pointed out by Bengel. They contain (1) a command of Christ to write to the "angel" of the congregation. (2) A designation of Jesus by some imposing title, which generally refers to his majestic appearance (Rev. 1:13 sqq.), and serves as the basis and warrant of the subsequent promises and threatenings. (3) The address to the angel, or the responsible head of the congregation, be it a single bishop or the college of pastors and teachers. The angels are, at all events, the representatives of the people committed to their charge, and what was said to them applies at the same time to the churches. This address, or the epistle proper, consists always of (a) a short sketch of the present moral condition of the congregation—both its virtues and defects—with commendation or censure as the case may be; (b) an exhortation either to repentance or to faithfulness and patience, according to the prevailing character of the church addressed; (c) a promise to him who overcomes, together with the admonition: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches," or the same in the reverse order, as in the first three epistles. This latter variation divides the seven churches into two groups, one comprising the first three, the other the remaining four, just as the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials are divided. The ever-recurring admonition: "He that hath an ear," etc., consists of ten words. This is no unmeaning play, but an application of the Old Testament system of symbolical numbers, in which three was the symbol of the Godhead; four of the world or humanity; the indivisible number seven, the sum of three and four (as also twelve, their product), the symbol of the indissoluble covenant between God and man; and ten (seven and three), the round number, the symbol of fulness and completion.

As to their moral and religious condition, the churches and the representatives fall, according to the Epistles, into three classes:

1. Those which were predominantly good and pure, viz., those of Smyrna and Philadelphia. Hence, in the messages to these two churches we find no exhortation to repentance in the strict sense of the word, but only an encouragement to be steadfast, patient, and joyful under suffering.

The church of Smyrna (a very ancient, still flourishing commercial city in Ionia, beautifully located on the bay of Smyrna) was externally poor and persecuted, and had still greater tribulation in view, but is cheered with the prospect of the crown of life. It was in the second century ruled by Polycarp, a pupil of John, and a faithful martyr.

Philadelphia (a city built by king Attalus Philadelphus, and named after him, now Ala-Schär), in the province of Lydia, a rich wine region, but subject to earthquakes, was the seat of a church likewise poor and small outwardly, but very faithful and spiritually flourishing—a church which was to have all the tribulations and hostility it met with on earth abundantly rewarded in heaven.

2. Churches which were in a predominantly evil and critical condition, viz., those of Sardis and Laodicea. Here accordingly we find severe censure and earnest exhortation to repentance.

The church at Sardis (till the time of Croesus the flourishing capital of the Lydian empire, but now a miserable hamlet of shepherds) had indeed the name and outward form of Christianity, but not its inward power of faith and life. Hence it was on the brink of spiritual death. Yet Rev. 3:4 sq., distinguishes from the corrupt mass a few souls which had kept their walk undefiled, without, however, breaking away from the congregation as separatists, and setting up an opposition sect for themselves.

The church of Laodicea (a wealthy commercial city of Phrygia, not far from Colosse and Hierapolis, where now stands only a desolate village by the name of Eski-Hissar) proudly fancied itself spiritually rich and faultless, but was in truth poor and blind and naked, and in that most dangerous state of indifference and lukewarmness from which it is more difficult to return to the former decision and ardor, than it was to pass at first from the natural coldness to faith. Hence the fearful threatening: "I will spew thee out of my mouth." (Lukewarm water produces vomiting.)  Yet even the Laodiceans are not driven to despair. The Lord, in love, knocks at their door and promises them, on condition of thorough repentance, a part in the marriage-supper of the lamb (3:20).

3. Churches of a mixed character, viz., those of Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira. In these cases commendation and censure, promise and threatening are united.

Ephesus, then the metropolis of the Asian church, had withstood, indeed, the Gnostic errorists predicted by Paul, and faithfully maintained the purity of the doctrine delivered to it; but it had lost the ardor of its first love, and it is, therefore, earnestly exhorted to repent. It thus represents to us that state of dead, petrified orthodoxy, into which various churches oftentimes fall. Zeal for pure doctrine is, indeed, of the highest importance, but worthless without living piety and active love. The Epistle to the angel of the church of Ephesus is peculiarly applicable to the later Greek church as a whole.

Pergamum in Mysia (the northernmost of these seven cities, formerly the residence of the kings of Asia of the Attalian dynasty, and renowned for its large library of 200,000 volumes and the manufacture of parchment; hence the name charta Pergamena;—now Bergamo, a village inhabited by Turks, Greeks, and Armenians) was the seat of a church, which under trying circumstances had shown great fidelity, but tolerated in her bosom those who held dangerous Gnostic errors. For this want of rigid discipline she also is called on to repent.

The church of Thyatira (a flourishing manufacturing and commercial city in Lydia, on the site of which now stands a considerable Turkish town called Ak-Hissar, or "the White Castle," with nine mosques and one Greek church) was very favorably distinguished for self-denying, active love and patience, but was likewise too indulgent towards errors which corrupted Christianity with heathen principles and practices.

The last two churches, especially that of Thyatira, form thus the exact counterpart to that of Ephesus, and are the representatives of a zealous practical piety in union with theoretical latitudinarianism. As doctrine always has more or less influence on practice, this also is a dangerous state. That church alone is truly sound and flourishing in which purity of doctrine and purity of life, theoretical orthodoxy and practical piety are harmoniously united and promote one another.

With good reason have theologians in all ages regarded these, seven churches of Asia Minor as a miniature of the whole Christian church. "There is no condition, good, bad, or mixed, of which these epistles do not present a sample, and for which they do not give suitable and wholesome direction." Here, as everywhere, the word of God and the history of the apostolic church evince their applicability to all times and circumstances, and their inexhaustible fulness of instruction, warning, and encouragement for all states and stages of religious life.

CHAPTER IX.

WORSHIP IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.

Literature.

Th Harnack: Der christliche Gemeindegottesdienst im Apost. und altkathol. Zeitalter. Erlangen, 1854. The same: Prakt. Theol., I. 1877.

P. Probst (R. C.): Liturgie der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tüb., 1870.

W. L. Volz: Anfänge des christl. Gottesdienstes, in "Stud. und Krit." 1872.

H. Jacoby: Die constitutiven Factoren des Apost. Gottesdienstes, in "Jahrb. für deutsche Theol." for 1873.

C. Weizsäcker: Die Versammlungen der ältesten Christengemeinden, 1876; and Das Apost. Zeitalter, 1886, pp. 566 sqq.

Th Zahn: Gesch. des Sonntags in der alten Kirche. Hann., 1878.

Schaff: Hist. of the Apost. Ch., pp. 545–586.

Comp. the Lit. on Ch. X., and on the Didache, vol. II. 184.

§ 51. The Synagogue.

Campeg. Vitringa (d. at Franeker, 1722): De Synagoga Vetere libri tres. Franeker, 1696. 2 vols. (also Weissenfels, 1726). A standard work, full of biblical and rabbinical learning. A condensed translation by J. L. Bernard: The Synagogue and the Church. London, 1842.

C. Bornitius: De Synagogis veterum Hebraeorum. Vitemb., 1650. And in Ugolinus: Thesaurus Antiquitatum sacrarum (Venet., 1744–69), vol. XXI. 495–539.

Ant. Th. Hartmann: Die enge Verbindung des A. Testamenes mit dem Neuen. Hamburg, 1831 (pp. 225–376).

Zunz (a Jewish Rabbi): Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden. Berlin, 1832

The Histories of the Jews, by Jost, Herzfeld, and Milman.

The Histories of N. T. Times, by Hausrath (I. 73 sqq. 2d ed.) and Schürer (463–475, and the literature there given).

Art. "Synag.," by Ginsburg in "Kitto"; Plumptre: in "Smith" (with additions by Hackett, IV. 3133, Am. ed.); Leyrer in "Herzog" (XV. 299, first ed.); Kneuker in "Schenkel" (V. 443).

As the Christian Church rests historically on the Jewish Church, so Christian worship and the congregational organization rest on that of the synagogue, and cannot be well understood without it.

The synagogue was and is still an institution of immense conservative power. It was the local centre of the religious and social life of the Jews, as the temple of Jerusalem was the centre of their national life. It was a school as well as a church, and the nursery and guardian of all that is peculiar in this peculiar people. It dates probably from the age of the captivity and of Ezra.641  It was fully organized at the time of Christ and the apostles, and used by them as a basis of their public instruction.642  It survived the temple, and continues to this day unaltered in its essential features, the chief nursery and protection of the Jewish nationality and religion.643

The term "synagogue" (like our word church) signifies first the congregation, then also the building where the congregation meet for public worship.644  Every town, however small, had a synagogue, or at least a place of prayer in a private house or in the open air (usually near a river or the sea-shore, on account of the ceremonial washings). Ten men were sufficient to constitute a religious assembly. "Moses from generations of old hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath."645  To erect a synagogue was considered a work of piety and public usefulness.646  In large cities, as Alexandria and Rome, there were many; in Jerusalem, about four hundred for the various sects and the Hellenists from different countries.647

1. The building was a plain, rectangular ball of no peculiar style of architecture, and in its inner arrangement somewhat resembling the Tabernacle and the Temple. It had benches, the higher ones ("the uppermost seats") for the elders and richer members,648 a reading-desk or pulpit, and a wooden ark or closet for the sacred rolls (called "Copheret" or Mercy Seat, also "Aaron"). The last corresponded to the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and the Temple. A sacred light was kept burning as a symbol of the divine law, in imitation of the light in the Temple, but there is no mention made of it in the Talmud. Other lamps were brought in by devout worshippers at the beginning of the Sabbath (Friday evening). Alms-boxes were provided near the door, as in the Temple, one for the poor in Jerusalem, another for local charities. Paul imitated the example by collecting alms for the poor Christians in Jerusalem.

There was no artistic (except vegetable) ornamentation; for the second commandment strictly forbids all images of the Deity as idolatrous. In this, as in many other respects, the Mohammedan mosque, with its severe iconoclastic simplicity, is a second edition of the synagogue. The building was erected on the most elevated spot of the neighborhood, and no house was allowed to overtop it. In the absence of a commanding site, a tall pole from the roof rendered it conspicuous.649

2. Organization.—Every synagogue had a president,650 a number of elders (Zekenim) equal in rank,651 a reader and interpreter,652 one or more envoys or clerks, called "messengers" (Sheliach),653 and a sexton or beadle (Chazzan) for the humbler mechanical services.654  There were also deacons (Gabae zedaka) for the collection of alms in money and produce. Ten or more wealthy men at leisure, called Batlanim, represented the congregation at every service. Each synagogue formed an independent republic, but kept up a regular correspondence with other synagogues. It was also a civil and religious court, and had power to excommunicate and to scourge offenders.655

3.  Worship.—It was simple, but rather long, and embraced three elements, devotional, didactic, and ritualistic. It included prayer, song, reading, and exposition of the Scripture, the rite of circumcision, and ceremonial washings. The bloody sacrifices were confined to the temple and ceased with its destruction; they were fulfilled in the eternal sacrifice on the cross. The prayers and songs were chiefly taken from the Psalter, which may be called the first liturgy and hymn book.

The opening prayer was called the Shema or Keriath Shema, and consisted of two introductory benedictions, the reading of the Ten Commandments (afterward abandoned) and several sections of the Pentateuch, namely, Deut. 6:4–9; 11:13–21; Num. 15:37–41. Then followed the eighteen prayers and benedictions (Berachoth). This is one of them: "Bestow peace, happiness, blessing, grace, mercy, and compassion upon us and upon the whole of Israel, thy people. Our Father, bless us all unitedly with the light of thy countenance, for in the light of thy countenance didst thou give to us, O Lord our God, the law of life, lovingkindness, justice, blessing, compassion, life, and peace. May it please thee to bless thy people lsrael at all times, and in every moment, with peace. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who blessest thy people Israel with peace." These benedictions are traced in the Mishna to the one hundred and twenty elders of the Great Synagogue. They were no doubt of gradual growth, some dating from the Maccabean struggles, some from the Roman ascendancy. The prayers were offered by a reader, and the congregation responded "Amen." This custom passed into the Christian church.656

The didactic and homiletical part of worship was based on the Hebrew Scriptures. A lesson from the Law (called parasha),657 and one from the Prophets (haphthara) were read in the original,658 and followed by a paraphrase or commentary and homily (midrash) in the vernacular Aramaic or Greek. A benediction and the "Amen" of the people closed the service.

As there was no proper priesthood outside of Jerusalem, any Jew of age might get up to read the lessons, offer prayer, and address the congregation. Jesus and the apostles availed themselves of this democratic privilege to preach the gospel, as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.659  The strong didactic element which distinguished this service from all heathen forms of worship, had the effect of familiarizing the Jews of all grades, even down to the servant-girls, with their religion, and raising them far above the heathen. At the same time it attracted proselytes who longed for a purer and more spiritual worship.

The days of public service were the Sabbath, Monday, and Thursday; the hours of prayer the third (9 a.m.), the sixth (noon), and the ninth (3 p.m.).660

The sexes were divided by a low wall or screen, the men on the one side, the women on the other, as they are still in the East (and in some parts of Europe). The people stood during prayer with their faces turned to Jerusalem.

§ 52. Christian Worship.

Christian worship, or cultus, is the public adoration of God in the name of Christ; the celebration of the communion of believers as a congregation with their heavenly Head, for the glory of the Lord, and for the promotion and enjoyment of spiritual life. While it aims primarily at the devotion and edification of the church itself, it has at the same time a missionary character, and attracts the outside world. This was the case on the Day of Pentecost when Christian worship in its distinctive character first appeared.

As our Lord himself in his youth and manhood worshipped in the synagogue and the temple, so did his early disciples as long as they were tolerated. Even Paul preached Christ in the synagogues of Damascus, Cyprus, Antioch in Pisidia, Amphipolis, Beraeea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus. He "reasoned with the Jews every sabbath in the synagogues" which furnished him a pulpit and an audience.

The Jewish Christians, at least in Palestine, conformed as closely as possible to the venerable forms of the cultus of their fathers, which in truth were divinely ordained, and were an expressive type of the Christian worship. So far as we know, they scrupulously observed the Sabbath, the annual Jewish feasts, the hours of daily prayer, and the whole Mosaic ritual, and celebrated, in addition to these, the Christian Sunday, the death and the resurrection of the Lord, and the holy Supper. But this union was gradually weakened by the stubborn opposition of the Jews, and was at last entirely broken by the destruction of the temple, except among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.

In the Gentile-Christian congregations founded by Paul, the worship took from the beginning a more independent form. The essential elements of the Old Testament service were transferred, indeed, but divested of their national legal character, and transformed by the spirit of the gospel. Thus the Jewish Sabbath passed into the Christian Sunday; the typical Passover and Pentecost became feasts of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the bloody sacrifices gave place to the thankful remembrance and appropriation of the one, all-sufficient, and eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and to the personal offering of prayer, intercession, and entire self-consecration to the service of the Redeemer; on the ruins of the temple made without hands arose the never ceasing worship of the omnipresent God in spirit and in truth.661  So early as the close of the apostolic period this more free and spiritual cultus of Christianity had no doubt become well nigh universal; yet many Jewish elements, especially in the Eastern church, remain to this day.

§ 53. The Several Parts of Worship.

The several parts of public worship in the time of the apostles were as follows:

1. The Preaching of the gospel. This appears in the first period mostly in the form of a missionary address to the unconverted; that is, a simple, living presentation of the main facts of the life of Jesus, with practical exhortation to repentance and conversion. Christ crucified and risen was the luminous centre, whence a sanctifying light was shed on all the relations of life. Gushing forth from a full heart, this preaching went to the heart; and springing from an inward life, it kindled life—a new, divine life—in the susceptible hearers. It was revival preaching in the purest sense. Of this primitive Christian testimony several examples from Peter and Paul are preserved in the Acts of the Apostles.

The Epistles also may be regarded in the wider sense as sermons, addressed, however, to believers, and designed to nourish the Christian life already planted.

2. The Reading of portions of the Old Testament,662 with practical exposition and application; transferred from the Jewish synagogue into the Christian church.663  To these were added in due time lessons from the New Testament; that is, from the canonical Gospels and the apostolic Epistles, most of which were addressed to whole congregations and originally intended for public use.664  After the death of the apostles their writings became doubly important to the church, as a substitute for their oral instruction and exhortation, and were much more used in worship than the Old Testament.

3. Prayer, in its various forms of petition, intercession, and thanksgiving. This descended likewise from Judaism, and in fact belongs essentially even to all heathen religions; but now it began to be offered in childlike confidence to a reconciled Father in the name of Jesus, and for all classes and conditions, even for enemies and persecutors. The first Christians accompanied every important act of their public and private life with this holy rite, and Paul exhorts his readers to "pray without ceasing." On solemn occasions they joined fasting with prayer, as a help to devotion, though it is nowhere directly enjoined in the New Testament.665  They prayed freely from the heart, as they were moved by the Spirit, according to special needs and circumstances. We have an example in the fourth chapter of Acts. There is no trace of a uniform and exclusive liturgy; it would be inconsistent with the vitality and liberty of the apostolic churches. At the same time the frequent use of psalms and short forms of devotion, as the Lord’s Prayer, may be inferred with certainty from the Jewish custom, from the Lord’s direction respecting his model prayer,666 from the strong sense of fellowship among the first Christians, and finally from the liturgical spirit of the ancient church, which could not have so generally prevailed both in the East and the West without some apostolic and post-apostolic precedent. The oldest forms are the eucharistic prayers of the Didache, and the petition for rulers in the first Epistle of Clement, which contrasts most beautifully with the cruel hostility of Nero and Domitian.667

4. The Song, a form of prayer, in the festive dress of poetry and the elevated language of inspiration, raising the congregation to the highest pitch of devotion, and giving it a part in the heavenly harmonies of the saints. This passed immediately, with the psalms of the Old Testament, those inexhaustible treasures of spiritual experience, edification, and comfort, from the temple and the synagogue into the Christian church. The Lord himself inaugurated psalmody into the new covenant at the institution of the holy Supper,668 and Paul expressly enjoined the singing of "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," as a means of social edification.669  But to this precious inheritance from the past, whose full value was now for the first time understood in the light of the New Testament revelation, the church, in the enthusiasm of her first love, added original, specifically Christian psalms, hymns, doxologies, and benedictions, which afforded the richest material for Sacred poetry and music in succeeding centuries; the song of the heavenly hosts, for example, at the birth of the Saviour;670 the "Nunc dimittis" of Simeon;671 the "Magnificat" of the Virgin Mary;672 the "Benedictus" of Zacharias;673 the thanksgiving of Peter after his miraculous deliverance;674 the speaking with tongues in the apostolic churches, which, whether song or prayer, was always in the elevated language of enthusiasm; the fragments of hymns scattered through the Epistles;675 and the lyrical and liturgical passages, the doxologies and antiphonies of the Apocalypse.676

5. Confession Of Faith. All the above-mentioned acts of worship are also acts of faith. The first express confession of faith is the testimony of Peter, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. The next is the trinitarian baptismal formula. Out of this gradually grew the so-called Apostles’ Creed, which is also trinitarian in structure, but gives the confession of Christ the central and largest place. Though not traceable in its present shape above the fourth century, and found in the second and third in different longer or shorter forms, it is in substance altogether apostolic, and exhibits an incomparable summary of the leading facts in the revelation of the triune God from the creation of the world to the resurrection of the body; and that in a form intelligible to all, and admirably suited for public worship and catechetical use. We shall return to it more fully in the second period.

6. Finally, the administration of the Sacraments, or sacred rites instituted by Christ, by which, under appropriate symbols and visible signs, spiritual gifts and invisible grace are represented, sealed, and applied to the worthy participators.

The two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the antitypes of circumcision and the passover under the Old Testament, were instituted by Christ as efficacious signs, pledges, and means of the grace of the new covenant. They are related to each other as regeneration and sanctification, or as the beginning and the growth of the Christian life. The other religious rites mentioned in the New Testament, as confirmation and ordination, cannot be ranked in dignity with the sacraments, as they are not commanded by Christ.

§ 54. Baptism.

Literature.

The commentaries on Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38; 8:13, 16, 18, 37; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet 3:21.

G. J. Vossius: De Baptismo Disputationes XX. Amsterdam, 1648.

W. Wall (Episcopalian): The History of Infant Baptism (a very learned work), first published in London, 1705, 2 vols., best edition by H. Cotton, Oxford, 1836, 4 vols., and 1862, 2 vols., together with Gale’s (Baptist) Reflections and Wall’s Defense. A Latin translation by Schlosser appeared, vol. I., at Bremen, 1743, and vol. II at Hamburg, 1753.

F. Brenner (R. Cath.): Geschichtliche Darstellung der Verrichtung der Taufe von Christus his auf unsere Zeiten. Bamberg, 1818.

Moses Stuart (Congregat.): Mode of Christian Baptism Prescribed in the New Testament. Andover, 1833 (reprinted 1876).

Höfling (Lutheran): Das Sacrament der Taufe. Erlangen, 1846 and 1848, 2 vols.

Samuel Miller (Presbyterian): Infant Baptism Scriptural and Reasonable; And Baptism By Sprinkling Or Affusion, The Most Suitable and Edifying Mode. Philadelphia, 1840.

Alex. Carson (Baptist): Baptism in its Mode and Subjects. London, 1844; 5th Amer. ed., Philadelphia, 1850.

Alex. Campbell (founder of the Church of the Disciples, who teach that baptism by immersion is regeneration): Christian Baptism, with its Antecedents and Consequents. Bethany, 1848, and Cincinnati, 1876.

T. J. Conant (Baptist): The Meaning and Use of Baptism Philologically and Historically Investigated for the American (Baptist) Bible Union. New York, 1861.

James W. Dale (Presbyterian, d. 1881): Classic Baptism. An inquiry into the meaning of the word baptizo. Philadelphia, 1867. Judaic Baptism, 1871. Johannic Baptism, 1872. Christic and Patristic Baptism, 1874. In all, 4 vols. Against the immersion theory.

R. Ingham (Baptist): A Handbook on Christian Baptism, in 2 parts. London, 1868.

D. B. Ford (Baptist): Studies on Baptism. New York, 1879. (Against Dale.)

G. D. Armstrong (Presbyterian minister at Norfolk, Va.): The Sacraments of the New Testament, as Instituted by Christ. New York, 1880. (Popular.)

Dean Stanley: Christian Institutions. London and Now York, 1881. Chap. I.

On the (post-apostolic) archaeology of baptism see the archaeological works of Martene (De Antiquis Eccles. Ritibus), Goar (Euchologion Graecorum), Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, Siegel, Martigny, and Smith and Cheetham (Dict. of Christ. Ant., I., 155 sqq.).

On the baptismal pictures in the catacombs see the works of De Rossi, Garrucci, and Schaff on the Didache, pp. 36 sqq.

1. The Idea of Baptism. It was solemnly instituted by Christ, shortly before his ascension, to be performed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It took the place of circumcision as a sign and seal of church membership. It is the outward mark of Christian discipleship, the rite of initiation into the covenant of grace. It is the sacrament of repentance (conversion), of remission of sins, and of regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit.677  In the nature of the case it is to be received but once. It incorporates the penitent sinner in the visible church, and entitles him to all the privileges, and binds him to all the duties of this communion. Where the condition of repentance and faith is wanting, the blessing (as in the case of the holy Supper, and the preaching of the Word) is turned into a curse, and what God designs as a savor of life unto life becomes, by the unfaithfulness of man, a savor of death unto death.

The necessity of baptism for salvation has been inferred from John 3:5 and Mark 16:16; but while we are bound to God’s ordinances, God himself is free and can save whomsoever and by whatsoever means he pleases. The church has always held the principle that the mere want of the sacrament does not condemn, but only the contempt. Otherwise all unbaptized infants that die in infancy would be lost. This horrible doctrine was indeed inferred by St. Augustin and the Roman church, from the supposed absolute necessity of baptism, but is in direct conflict with the spirit of the gospel and Christ’s treatment of children, to whom belongs the kingdom of heaven.

The first administration of this sacrament in its full Christian sense took place on the birthday of the church, after the first independent preaching of the apostles. The baptism of John was more of a negative sort, and only preparatory to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. In theory Christian baptism is preceded by conversion, that is the human act of turning from sin to God in repentance and faith, and followed by regeneration, that is the divine act of forgiveness of sin and inward cleansing and renewal. Yet in practice the outward sign and inward state and effect do not always coincide; in Simon Magus we have an example of the baptism of water without that of the Spirit, and in Cornelius an example of the communication of the Spirit before the application of the water. In the case of infants, conversion, as a conscious act of the will, is impossible and unnecessary. In adults the solemn ordinance was preceded by the preaching of the gospel, or a brief instruction in its main facts, and then followed by more thorough inculcation of the apostolic doctrine. Later, when great caution became necessary in receiving proselytes, the period of catechetical instruction and probation was considerably lengthened.

2. The usual Form of baptism was immersion. This is inferred from the original meaning of the Greek baptivzein and baptismov";678 from the analogy of John’s baptism in the Jordan; from the apostles’ comparison of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, with the escape of the ark from the flood, with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and with burial and resurrection; finally, from the general custom of the ancient church which prevails in the East to this day.679  But sprinkling, also, or copious pouring rather, was practised at an early day with sick and dying persons, and in all such cases where total or partial immersion was impracticable. Some writers suppose that this was the case even in the first baptism of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost; for Jerusalem was poorly supplied with water and private baths; the Kedron is a small creek and dry in summer; but there are a number of pools and cisterns there. Hellenistic usage allows to the relevant expressions sometimes the wider sense of washing, bathing, sprinkling, and ceremonial cleansing.680  Unquestionably, immersion expresses the idea of baptism, as a purification and renovation of the whole man, more completely than pouring or sprinkling; but it is not in keeping with the genius of the gospel to limit the operation of the Holy Spirit by the quantity or the quality of the water or the mode of its application. Water is absolutely necessary to baptism, as an appropriate symbol of the purifying and regenerating energy of the Holy Spirit; but whether the water be in large quantity or small, cold or warm, fresh or salt, from river, cistern, or spring, is relatively immaterial, and cannot affect the validity of the ordinance.

3. As to the Subjects of baptism: the apostolic origin of infant baptism is denied not only by the Baptists, but also by many paedobaptist divines. The Baptists assert that infant baptism is contrary to the idea of the sacrament itself, and accordingly, an unscriptural corruption. For baptism, say they, necessarily presupposes the preaching of the gospel on the part of the church, and repentance and faith on the part of the candidate for the ordinance; and as infants can neither understand preaching, nor repent and believe, they are not proper subjects for baptism, which is intended only for adult converts. It is true, the apostolic church was a missionary church, and had first to establish a mother community, in the bosom of which alone the grace of baptism can be improved by a Christian education. So even under the old covenant circumcision was first performed on the adult Abraham; and so all Christian missionaries in heathen lands now begin with preaching, and baptizing adults. True, the New Testament contains no express command to baptize infants; such a command would not agree with the free spirit of the gospel. Nor was there any compulsory or general infant baptism before the union of church and state; Constantine, the first Christian emperor, delayed his baptism till his deathbed (as many now delay their repentance); and even after Constantine there were examples of eminent teachers, as Gregory Nazianzen, Augustin, Chrysostom, who were not baptized before their conversion in early manhood, although they had Christian mothers.

But still less does the New Testament forbid infant baptism; as it might be expected to do in view of the universal custom of the Jews, to admit their children by circumcision on the eighth day after birth into the fellowship of the old covenant.

On the contrary, we have presumptive and positive arguments for the apostolic origin and character of infant baptism, first, in the fact that circumcision as truly prefigured baptism, as the passover the holy Supper; then in the organic relation between Christian parents and children; in the nature of the new covenant, which is even more comprehensive than the old; in the universal virtue of Christ, as the Redeemer of all sexes, classes, and ages, and especially in the import of his own infancy, which has redeemed and sanctified the infantile age; in his express invitation to children, whom he assures of a title to the kingdom of heaven, and whom, therefore, he certainly would not leave without the sign and seal of such membership; in the words, of institution, which plainly look to the Christianizing, not merely of individuals, but of whole nations, including, of course, the children; in the express declaration of Peter at the first administration of the ordinance, that this promise of forgiveness of sins and of the Holy Spirit was to the Jews "and to their children;" in the five instances in the New Testament of the baptism of whole families, where the presence of children in most of the cases is far more probable than the absence of children in all; and finally, in the universal practice of the early church, against which the isolated protest of Tertullian proves no more, than his other eccentricities and Montanistic peculiarities; on the contrary, his violent protest implies the prevailing practice of infant baptism. He advised delay of baptism as a measure of prudence, lest the baptized by sinning again might forever forfeit the benefit of this ordinance; but he nowhere denies the apostolic origin or right of early baptism.

We must add, however, that infant baptism is unmeaning, and its practice a profanation, except on the condition of Christian parentage or guardianship, and under the guarantee of a Christian education. And it needs to be completed by an act of personal consecration, in which the child, after due instruction in the gospel, intelligently and freely confesses Christ, devotes himself to his service, and is thereupon solemnly admitted to the full communion of the church and to the sacrament of the holy Supper. The earliest traces of confirmation are supposed to be found in the apostolic practice of laying on hands, or symbolically imparting the Holy Spirit. after baptism.681

§ 55. The Lord’s Supper.

The commentaries on Matt. 26:26 sqq., and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke; 1 Cor. 10:16, 17; 11:23 sqq.; John 6:47–58, 63.

D. Waterland (Episcopal., d. 1740): A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, a new edition, 1868 (Works, vols. IV. and V.).

J. Döllinger: Die Lehre von der Eucharistie in den drei ersten Jahrhunderten. Mainz, 1826. (Rom. Cath.)

Ebrard: Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl u. seine Geschichte. Frankf. a. M., 1845, 2 vols., vol. I., pp. 1–231. (Reformed.)

J. W. Nevin: The Mystical Presence. A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic soctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 199–256. (Reformed.)

Kahnis: Die Lehre vom heil. Abendmahl. Leipz., 1851. (Lutheran.)

Robert Wilberforce: The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. London, 1853. (Anglican, or rather Tractarian or Romanizing.)

L. Imm. Ruckert: Das Abendmahl. Sein Wesen und seine Geschichte in der alten Kirche. Leipz., 1856. (Rationalistic.)

E. B. Pusey: The Doctrine of the Real Presence, as contained in the Fathers, from St. John to the Fourth General Council. Oxford, 1855. (Anglo-Catholic.)

Philip Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. London, 1855–1862, in two parts. (Anglican, contains much historical investigation on the subject of eucharistic worship in the ancient Catholic church.)

Thos. S. L. Vogan: The True Doctrine of the Eucharist. London, 1871.

John Harrison: An Answer to Dr. Pusey’s Challenge respecting the Doctrine of the Real Presence. London, 1871, 2 vols. (Anglican, Low Church. Includes the doctrine of the Scripture and the first eight centuries.)

Dean Stanley: Christian Institutions, London and New York, 1881, chs. IV., V., and VI. (He adopts the Zwinglian view, and says of the Marburg Conference of 1529: "Everything which could be said on behalf of the dogmatic, coarse, literal interpretation of the institution was urged with the utmost vigor of word and gesture by the stubborn Saxon. Everything which could be said on behalf of the rational, refined, spiritual construction was urged with a union of the utmost acuteness and gentleness by the sober-minded Swiss.")

L. Gude (Danish Lutheran): Den hellige Nadvere. Copenhagen, 1887, 2 vols. Exegetical and historical. Reviewed in Luthardt’s "Theol. Literaturblatt.," 1889, Nos. 14 sqq.

The sacrament of the holy Supper was instituted by Christ under the most solemn circumstances, when he was about to offer himself a sacrifice for the salvation of the world. It is the feast of the thankful remembrance and appropriation of his atoning death, and of the living union of believers with him, and their communion among themselves. As the Passover kept in lively remembrance the miraculous deliverance from the land of bondage, and at the same time pointed forward to the Lamb of God; so the eucharist represents, seals, and applies the now accomplished redemption from sin and death until the end of time. Here the deepest mystery of Christianity is embodied ever anew, and the story of the cross reproduced before us. Here the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is spiritually perpetuated. Here Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, and is yet truly present in his church to the end of the world, gives his own body and blood, sacrificed for us, that is, his very self, his life and the virtue of his atoning death, as spiritual food, as the true bread from heaven, to all who, with due self-examination, come hungering and thirsting to the heavenly feast. The communion has therefore been always regarded as the inmost sanctuary of Christian worship.

In the apostolic period the eucharist was celebrated daily in connection with a simple meal of brotherly love (agape), in which the Christians, in communion with their common Redeemer, forgot all distinctions of rank, wealth, and culture, and felt themselves to be members of one family of God. But this childlike exhibition of brotherly unity became more and more difficult as the church increased, and led to all sorts of abuses, such as we find rebuked in the Corinthians by Paul. The lovefeasts, therefore, which indeed were no more enjoined by law than the community of goods at Jerusalem, were gradually severed from the eucharist, and in the course of the second and third centuries gradually disappeared.

The apostle requires the Christians682 to prepare themselves for the Lord’s Supper by self-examination, or earnest inquiry whether they have repentance and faith, without which they cannot receive the blessing from the sacrament, but rather provoke judgment from God. This caution gave rise to the appropriate custom of holding special preparatory exercises for the holy communion.

In the course of time this holy feast of love has become the subject of bitter controversy, like the sacrament of baptism and even the Person of Christ himself. Three conflicting theories—transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and spiritual presence of Christ-have been deduced from as many interpretations of the simple words of institution ("This is my body," etc.), which could hardly have been misunderstood by the apostles in the personal presence of their Lord, and in remembrance of his warning against carnal misconception of his discourse on the eating of his flesh.683  The eucharistic controversies in the middle ages and during the sixteenth century are among the most unedifying and barren in the history of Christianity. And yet they cannot have been in vain. The different theories represent elements of truth which have become obscured or perverted by scholastic subtleties, but may be purified and combined. The Lord’s Supper is: (1) a commemorative ordinance, a memorial of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross; (2) a feast of living union of believers with the Saviour, whereby they truly, that is spiritually and by faith, receive Christ, with all his benefits, and are nourished with his life unto life eternal; (3) a communion of believers with one another as members of the same mystical body of Christ; (4) a eucharist or thankoffering of our persons and services to Christ, who died for us that we might live for him.

Fortunately, the blessing of the holy communion does not depend upon the scholastic interpretation and understanding of the words of institution, but upon the promise of the Lord and upon childlike faith in him. And therefore, even now, Christians of different denominations and holding different opinions can unite around the table of their common Lord and Saviour, and feel one with him and in him.

§ 56. Sacred Places.

Although, as the omnipresent Spirit, God may be worshipped in all places of the universe, which is his temple,684 yet our finite, sensuous nature, and the need of united devotion, require special localities or sanctuaries consecrated to his worship. The first Christians, after the example of the Lord, frequented the temple at Jerusalem and the synagogues, so long as their relation to the Mosaic economy allowed. But besides this, they assembled also from the first in private houses, especially for the communion and the love feast. The church itself was founded, on the day of Pentecost, in the upper room of an humble dwelling.

The prominent members and first converts, as Mary, the mother of John Mark in Jerusalem, Cornelius in Caesarea, Lydia in Philippi, Jason in Thessalonica, Justus in Corinth, Priscilla in Ephesus, Philemon in Colosse, gladly opened their houses for social worship. In larger cities, as in Rome, the Christian community divided itself into several such assemblies at private houses,685 which, however, are always addressed in the epistles as a unit.

That the Christians in the apostolic age erected special houses of worship is out of the question, even on account of their persecution by Jews and Gentiles, to say nothing of their general poverty; and the transition of a whole synagogue to the new faith was no doubt very rare. As the Saviour of the world was born in a stable, and ascended to heaven from a mountain, so his apostles and their successors down to the third century, preached in the streets, the markets, on mountains, in ships, sepulchres, eaves, and deserts, and in the homes of their converts. But how many thousands of costly churches and chapels have since been built and are constantly being built in all parts of the world to the honor of the crucified Redeemer, who in the days of his humiliation had no place of his own to rest his head!686

§ 57. Sacred Times—The Lord’s Day.

Literature.

George Holden: The Christian Sabbath. London, 1825. (See ch. V.)

W. Henstenberg: The Lord’s Day. Transl. from the German by James Martin, London, 1853. (Purely exegetical; defends the continental view, but advocates a better practical observance.)

John T. Baylee: History of the Sabbath. London, 1857. (See chs. X. XIII.)

James Aug. Hessey: Sunday: Its Origin, History, and Present Obligation. Bampton Lectures, preached before the University of Oxford, London, 1860. (Defends the Dominican and moderate Anglican, as distinct both from the Continental latitudinarian, and from the Puritanic Sabbatarian, view of Sunday, with proofs from the church fathers.)

James Gilfillan: The Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. 1861, republished and widely circulated by the Am. Tract Society and the "New York Sabbath Committee," New York, 1862. (The fullest and ablest defence of the Puritan and Scotch Presbyterian theory of the Christian Sabbath, especially in its practical aspects.)

Robert Cox (F.S.A.): Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties. Edinb. 1853. By the same: The Literature of the Sabbath Question. Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. (Historical, literary, and liberal.)

Th. Zahn: Geschichte des Sonntags in der alten Kirche. Hannover, 1878.

There is a very large Sabbath literature in the English language, of a popular and practical character. For the Anglo-American theory and history of the Christian Sabbath, compare the author’s essay, The Anglo-American Sabbath, New York, 1863 (in English and German), the publications of the New York Sabbath Committee from 1857–1886, the Sabbath Essays, ed. by Will. C. Wood, Boston (Congreg. Publ. Soc.), 1879; and A. E. Waffle: The Lord’s Day, Philad. 1886.

As every place, so is every day and hour alike sacred to God, who fills all space and all time, and can be worshipped everywhere and always. But, from the necessary limitations of our earthly life, as well as from the nature of social and public worship, springs the use of sacred seasons. The apostolic church followed in general the Jewish usage, but purged it from superstition and filled it with the spirit of faith and freedom.

1. Accordingly, the Jewish Hours of daily prayer, particularly in the morning and evening, were observed as a matter of habit, besides the strictly private devotions which are bound to no time.

2. The Lord’s Day took the place of the Jewish Sabbath as the weekly day of public worship. The substance remained, the form was changed. The institution of a periodical weekly day of rest for the body and the soul is rooted in our physical and moral nature, and is as old as man, dating, like marriage, from paradise.687  This is implied in the profound saying of our Lord: "The Sabbath is made for man."

It is incorporated in the Decalogue, the moral law, which Christ did not come to destroy, but to fulfil, and which cannot be robbed of one commandment without injury to all the rest.

At the same time the Jewish Sabbath was hedged around by many national and ceremonial restrictions, which were not intended to be permanent, but were gradually made so prominent as to overshadow its great moral aim, and to make man subservient to the sabbath instead of the sabbath to man. After the exile and in the hands of the Pharisees it became a legal bondage rather than a privilege and benediction. Christ as the Lord of the Sabbath opposed this mechanical ceremonialism and restored the true spirit and benevolent aim of the institution.688  When the slavish, superstitious, and self-righteous sabbatarianism of the Pharisees crept into the Galatian churches and was made a condition of justification, Paul rebuked it as a relapse into Judaism.689

The day was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, not on the ground of a particular command, but by the free spirit of the gospel and by the power of certain great facts which he at the foundation of the Christian church. It was on that day that Christ rose from the dead; that he appeared to Mary, the disciples of Emmaus, and the assembled apostles; that he poured out his Spirit and founded the church;690 and that he revealed to his beloved disciple the mysteries of the future. Hence, the first day was already in the apostolic age honorably designated as "the Lord’s Day." On that day Paul met with the disciples at Troas and preached till midnight. On that day he ordered the Galatian and Corinthian Christians to make, no doubt in connection with divine service, their weekly contributions to charitable objects according to their ability. It appears, therefore, from the New Testament itself, that Sunday was observed as a day of worship, and in special commemoration of the Resurrection, whereby the work of redemption was finished.691

The universal and uncontradicted Sunday observance in the second century can only be explained by the fact that it had its roots in apostolic practice. Such observance is the more to be appreciated as it had no support in civil legislation before the age of Constantine, and must have been connected with many inconveniences, considering the lowly social condition of the majority of Christians and their dependence upon their heathen masters and employers. Sunday thus became, by an easy and natural transformation, the Christian Sabbath or weekly day of rest, at once answering the typical import of the Jewish Sabbath, and itself forming in turn a type of the eternal rest of the people of God in the heavenly Canaan.692  In the gospel dispensation the Sabbath is not a degradation, but an elevation, of the week days to a higher plane, looking to the consecration of all time and all work. It is not a legal ceremonial bondage, but rather a precious gift of grace, a privilege, a holy rest in God in the midst of the unrest of the world, a day of spiritual refreshing in communion with God and in the fellowship of the saints, a foretaste and pledge of the never-ending Sabbath in heaven.

The due observance of it, in which the churches of England, Scotland, and America, to their incalculable advantage, excel the churches of the European continent, is a wholesome school of discipline, a means of grace for the people, a safeguard of public morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family. Next to the Church and the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the chief pillar of Christian society.

Besides the Christian Sunday, the Jewish Christians observed their ancient Sabbath also, till Jerusalem was destroyed. After that event, the Jewish habit continued only among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.

As Sunday was devoted to the commemoration of the Saviour’s resurrection, and observed as a day of thanksgiving and joy, so, at least as early as the second century, if not sooner, Friday came to be observed as a day of repentance, with prayer and fasting, in commemoration of the sufferings and death of Christ.

3. Annual festivals. There is no injunction for their observance, direct or indirect, in the apostolic writings, as there is no basis for them in the Decalogue. But Christ observed them, and two of the festivals, the Passover and Pentecost, admitted of an easy transformation similar to that of the Jewish into the Christian Sabbath. From some hints in the Epistles,693 viewed in the light of the universal and uncontradicted practice of the church in the second century it may be inferred that the annual celebration of the death and the resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, originated in the apostolic age. In truth, Christ crucified, risen, and living in the church, was the one absorbing thought of the early Christians; and as this thought expressed itself in the weekly observance of Sunday, so it would also very naturally transform the two great typical feasts of the Old Testament into the Christian Easter and Whit-Sunday. The Paschal controversies of the second century related not to the fact, but to the time of the Easter festival, and Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicet of Rome traced their customs to an unimportant difference in the practice of the apostles themselves.

Of other annual festivals, the New Testament contains not the faintest trace. Christmas came in during the fourth century by a natural development of the idea of a church year, as a sort of chronological creed of the people. The festivals of Mary, the Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs, followed gradually, as the worship of saints spread in the Nicene and post-Nicene age, until almost every day was turned first into a holy day and then into a holiday. As the saints overshadowed the Lord, the saints’ days overshadowed the Lord’s Day.

CHAPTER X.

ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

§ 58. Literature.

I. Sources.

The Acts represent the first, the Pastoral Epistles the second stage of the apostolic church polity. Baur (Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe des Ap. Paulus, 1835), Holtzmann (Die Pastoralbriefe, 1880, pp. 190 sqq.), and others, who deny the Pauline authorship of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, date the organization laid down there from the post-apostolic age, but it belongs to the period from A.D. 60–70. The Epistles to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:28) and to the Ephesians (4:11), and the Apocalyptic Epistles (Rev. 2 and 3) contain important hints on the church offices.

Comp. the Didache, and the Epp. of Clement and Ignatius.

II. General Works.

Comp. in part the works quoted in ch. IX. (especially Vitringa), and the respective sections in the "Histories of the Apostolic Age" by  Neander Thiersch (pp. 73, 150, 281), Lechler, Lange, and Schaff, (Amer. ed, pp. 495–545).

III. Separate Works.

Episcopal and Presbyterian writers during the seventeenth century, and more recently, have paid most attention to this chapter, generally with a view of defending their theory of church polity.

Richard Hooker (called "the Judicious," moderate Anglican, d. 1600): Ecclesiastical Polity, 1594, and often since, best edition by Keble, 1836, in 4 vols. A standard work for Episcopal churchmen,

Jos. Bingham (Anglican, d. 1668): Origines Ecclesiasticae; or, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, first published 1710–22, in 10 vols. 8vo, and often since, Books; II.-IV. Still an important work.

Thomas Cartwright (the father of English Presbyterianism, d. 1603). Directory o f Church Government anciently contended for, written in 1583, published by authority of the Long Parliament in 1644.

In the controversy during the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, Bishop Hall and Archbishop Ussher were the most learned champions of episcopacy; while the five Smectymnians (so called from their famous tract Smectymnuus, 1641, in reply to Hall), i.e., Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow, were the most prominent Presbyterians trying to "demonstrate the parity of bishops and presbyters in Scripture, and the antiquity of ruling elders." See also A Vindication of the Presbyterian Government and Ministry, London, 1650, and Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici, or the Divine Right of the Gospel Ministry, London, 1654, both published by the Provincial Assembly of London. These books have only historical interest.

Samuel Miller (Presbyterian d. 1850): Letters concerning the Constitution and Order of the Christian Ministry, 2d ed., Philadelphia, 1830.

James P. Wilson (Presbyterian): The Primitive Government of Christian Churches. Philadelphia, 1833 (a learned and able work).

Joh. Adam Möhler (Rom. Cath., d. 1848): Die Einheit der Kirche, oder das Princip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im Geiste der Kirchenvater der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Tübingen, 1825 (new ed. 1844). More important for the post-apostolic age.

Rich. Rothe (d. 1866): Die Anfänge der christlichen Kirche u. ihrer Verfassung, vol. I. Wittenb., 1837, pp. 141 sqq. A Protestant counterpart of Möhler’s treatise, exceedingly able, learned, and acute, but wrong on the question of church and state, and partly also on the origin of the episcopate, which he traces back to the apostolic age.

F. Chr. Baur: Ueber den Ursprung des Episcopates in der christl. Kirche. Tübingen, 1838. Against Rothe.

William Palmer (Anglo-Catholic): A Treatise on the Church of Christ. London, 1838, 2 vols., 3d ed., 1841. Amer. ed., with notes, by Bishop Whittingham, New York, 1841.

W. Löhe (Luth.): Die N. T. lichen Aemter u. ihr Verhältniss zur Gemeinde. Nürnb. 1848. Also: Drei Bücher von der Kirche, 1845.

Fr. Delitzsch (Luth.): Vier Bücher von der Kirche. Leipz., 1847.

J. Köstlin (Luth.): Das Wesen der Kirche nach Lehre und Geschiche des N. T., Gotha, 1854; 2d ed. 1872.

Samuel Davidson (Independent): The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament. London, 1848; 2d ed. 1854.

Ralph Wardlaw (Independent): Congregational Independency, in contradistinction to Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, the Church Polity of the New Testament. London, 1848.

Albert Barnes (Presbyterian, d. 1870): Organization and Government of the Apostolic Church. Philadelphia, 1855.

Charles Hodge (Presbyterian, d. 1878) and others: Essays on the Primitive Church Offices, reprinted from the "Princeton Review," N. York, 1858. Also Ch. Hodge: Discussions in Church Polity. Selected from the "Princeton Review," and arranged by W. Durant. New York, 1878.

Bishop Kaye (Episc.): Account of the External Discipline and Government of the Church of Christ in the First Three Centuries. London, 1855.

K. Lechler (Luth.): Die N. Testamentliche Lehre vom heil. Amte. Stuttgart, 1857.

Albrecht Ritschl: Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 2d ed., thoroughly revised, Bonn, 1857 (605 pp.). Purely historical and critical.

James Bannerman (Presbyterian): The Church of Christ. A Treatise on the Nature, Powers, Ordinances, Discipline, and Government of the Christian Church. Edinburgh, 1868, 2 vols.

John J. McElhinney (Episc.): The Doctrine of the Church. A Historical Monograph. Philadelphia, 1871. It begins after the apostolic age, but has a useful list of works on the doctrine of the Church from A.D. 100 to 1870.

G. A. Jacob (Low Church Episc.): Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament: Study for the Present Crisis in the Church of England. London, 1871; 5th Amer. ed., New York (Whittaker), 1879.

J. B. Lightfoot (Evangelical Broad Church Episcop., Bishop of Durham, very learned, able, and fair): The Christian Ministry. Excuraus to his Commentary on Philippians. London, 1868, 3d ed. London, 1873, pp. 179–267; also separately printed in New York (without notes), 1879.

Charles Wordsworth (High Church Episcop., Bishop of St. Andrews) The Outlines of the Christian Ministry. London, 1872.

Henry Cotherill (Bishop of Edinburgh): The Genesis of the Church. Edinburgh and London, 1872.

W. Beyschlag: Die christliche Gemeindeverfassung im Zeitalter des N. Testaments (Crowned prize essay). Harlem, 1876.

C. Weizsäcker: Die Versammlungen der ältesten Christengemeinden. In the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," Gotha, 1876, pp. 474–530. His Apost. Zeitalter (1886), pp. 606–645.

Henry M. Dexter (Congregationalist): Congregationalism. 4th ed. Boston, 1876.

E. Mellor: Priesthood in the Light of the New Testament. Lond., 1876.

J. B. Paton: The Origin of the Priesthood in the Christian Church. London, 1877.

H. Weingarten: Die Umwandlung der urspranglichen christl. Gemeindeorganisation zur katholischen Kirche, in Sybel’s "Histor. Zeitschrift" for 1881, pp. 441–467.

Edwin Hatch (Broad Church Episcop.): The Organization of the Early Christian Churches. Bampton Lectures for 1880. Oxford and Cambridge, 1881. Discusses the post-apostolic organization (Bishops, Deacons, Presbyters, Clergy and Laity, Councils, etc.). A learned and independent work, which endeavors to show that the development of the organization of the church was gradual; that the elements of which it was composed were already existing in human society; that the form was originally a democracy and became by circumstances a monarchy; and that the Christian church has shown its vitality and its divinity by readjusting its form in successive ages. German translation by Ad. Harnack, Giessen, 1883.

P. Stanley (Broad Church Episc., d. 1881): Christian Institutions, London and New York, 1881. Ch. X. on the Clergy.

Ch. Gore: The Ministry of the Church, London, 1889 (Anglo-Catholic).

Articles on the Christian Ministry by Sanday, Harnack, Milligan, Gore, Simcox, Salmon, and others, in "The Expositor," London, 1887 and 1888.

§ 59. The Christian Ministry, and its Relation to the Christian Community.

Christianity exists not merely as a power or principle in this world, but also in an institutional and organized form which is intended to preserve and protect (not to obstruct) it. Christ established a visible church with apostles, as authorized teachers and rulers, and with two sacred rites, baptism and the holy communion, to be observed to the end of the world.694

At the same time he laid down no minute arrangements, but only the simple and necessary elements of an organization, wisely leaving the details to be shaped by the growing and changing wants of the church in different ages and countries. In this respect Christianity, as a dispensation of the Spirit, differs widely from the Mosaic theocracy, as a dispensation of the letter.

The ministerial office was instituted by the Lord before his ascension, and solemnly inaugurated on the first Christian Pentecost by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, to be the regular organ of the kingly power of Christ on earth in founding, maintaining, and extending the church. It appears in the New Testament under different names, descriptive of its various functions:—the "ministry of the word," "of the Spirit," "of righteousness," "of reconciliation." It includes the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and church discipline or the power of the keys, the power to open and shut the gates of the kingdom of heaven, in other words, to declare to the penitent the forgiveness of sins, and to the unworthy excommunication in the name and by the authority of Christ. The ministers of the gospel are, in an eminent sense, servants of God, and, as such, servants of the churches in the noble spirit of self-denying love according to the example of Christ, for the eternal salvation of the souls intrusted to their charge. They are called—not exclusively, but emphatically—the light of the world, the salt of the earth, fellow-workers with God, stewards of the mysteries of God, ambassadors for Christ. And this unspeakable dignity brings with it corresponding responsibility. Even a Paul, contemplating the glory of an office, which is a savor of life unto life to believers and of death unto death to the impenitent, exclaims: "Who is sufficient for these things?"695 and ascribes all his sufficiency and success to the unmerited grace of God.

The internal call to the sacred office and the moral qualification for it must come from the Holy Spirit,696 and be recognized and ratified by the church through her proper organs. The apostles were called, indeed, immediately by Christ to the work of founding the church; but so soon as a community of believers arose, the congregation took an active part also in all religious affairs. The persons thus inwardly and outwardly designated by the voice of Christ and his church, were solemnly set apart and inducted into their ministerial functions by the symbolical act of ordination; that is, by prayer and the laying on of the hands of the apostles or their representatives, conferring or authoritatively confirming and sealing the appropriate spiritual gifts.697

Yet, high as the sacred office is in its divine origin and import, it was separated by no impassable chasm from the body of believers. The Jewish and later Catholic antithesis of clergy and laity has no place in the apostolic age. The ministers, on the one part, are as sinful and as dependent on redeeming grace as the members of the congregation; and those members, on the other, share equally with the ministers in the blessings of the gospel, enjoy equal freedom of access to the throne of grace, and are called to the same direct communion with Christ, the head of the whole body. The very mission of the church is, to reconcile all men with God, and make them true followers of Christ. And though this glorious end can be attained only through a long process of history, yet regeneration itself contains the germ and the pledge of the final perfection. The New Testament, looking at the principle of the now life and the high calling of the Christian, styles all believers "brethren," "saints," a "spiritual temple," a "peculiar people," a "holy and royal priesthood." It is remarkable, that Peter in particular should present the idea of the priesthood as the destiny of all, and apply the term clerus not to the ministerial order as distinct from the laity, but to the community; thus regarding every Christian congregation as a spiritual tribe of Levi, a peculiar people, holy to the Lord.698

The temporal organization of the empirical church is to be a means (and not a hindrance, as it often is) for the actualization of the ideal republic of God when all Christians shall be prophets, priests, and kings, and fill all time and all space with his praise.

Notes.

1. Bishop Lightfoot begins his valuable discussion on the Christian ministry (p. 179) with this broad and liberal statement: "The kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. It displays this character, not only in the acceptance of all comers who seek admission, irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also in the instruction and treatment of those who are already its members. It has no sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because every time and every place alike are holy. Above all it has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone God is reconciled and man forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion with the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength."

But he immediately proceeds to qualify this statement, and says that this is simply the ideal view—"a holy season extending the whole year round, a temple confined only by the limits of the habitable world, a priesthood co-extensive with the race"—and that the Church of Christ can no more hold together without officers, rules, and institutions than any other society of men. "As appointed days and set places are indispensable to her efficiency, so also the Church could not fulfil the purposes for which she exists without rulers and teachers, without a ministry of reconciliation, in short, without an order of men who may in some sense be designated a priesthood. In this respect the ethics of Christianity present an analogy to the politics. Here also the ideal conception and the actual realization are incommensurate and in a manner contradictory."

2. Nearly all denominations appeal for their church polity to the New Testament, with about equal right and equal wrong: the Romanists to the primacy of Peter; the Irvingites to the apostles and prophets and evangelists, and the miraculous gifts; the Episcopalians to the bishops, the angels, and James of Jerusalem; the Presbyterians to the presbyters and their identity with the bishops; the Congregationalists to the independence of the local congregations and the absence of centralization. The most that can be said is, that the apostolic age contains fruitful germs for various ecclesiastical organizations subsequently developed, but none of them can claim divine authority except for the gospel ministry, which is common to all. Dean Stanley asserts that no existing church can find any pattern or platform of its government in the first century, and thus strongly contrasts the apostolic and post-apostolic organizations (l.c.): "It is certain that the officers of the apostolical or of any subsequent church, were not part of the original institution of the Founder of our religion; that of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon; of Metropolitan, Patriarch, and Pope, there is not the shadow of a trace in the four Gospels. It is certain that they arose gradually out of the preexisting institutions either of the Jewish synagogue, or of the Roman empire, or of the Greek municipalities, or under the pressure of local emergencies. It is certain that throughout the first century, and for the first years of the second, that is, through the later chapters of the Acts, the Apostolical Epistles, and the writings of Clement and Hermas. Bishop and Presbyter were convertible terms, and that the body of men so-called were the rulers—so far as any permanent rulers existed—of the early church. It is certain that, as the necessities of the time demanded, first at Jerusalem, then in Asia Minor, the elevation of one Presbyter above the rest by the almost universal law, which even in republics engenders a monarchial element, the word ’Bishop’ gradually changed its meaning, and by the middle of the second century became restricted to the chief Presbyter of the locality. It is certain that in no instance were the apostles called ’Bishops’ in any other sense than they were equally called ’Presbyters’ and ’Deacons.’ It is certain that in no instance before the beginning of the third century the title or function of the Pagan or Jewish priesthood is applied to the Christian pastors .... It is as sure that nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before the close of the first century as it is that nothing like modern Presbyterianism existed after the beginning of the second. That which was once the Gordian knot of theologians has at least in this instance been untied, not by the sword of persecution, but by the patient unravelment of scholarships."

§ 60. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists.

The ministry originally coincided with the apostolate; as the church was at first identical with the congregation of Jerusalem. No other officers are mentioned in the Gospels and the first five chapters of the Acts. But when the believers began to number thousands, the apostles could not possibly perform all the functions of teaching, conducting worship, and administering discipline; they were obliged to create new offices for the ordinary wants of the congregations, while they devoted themselves to the general supervision and the further extension of the gospel. Thus arose gradually, out of the needs of the Christian church, though partly at the suggestion of the existing organization of the Jewish synagogue, the various general and congregational offices in the church. As these all have their common root in the apostolate, so they partake also, in different degrees, of its divine origin, authority, privileges, and responsibilities.

We notice first, those offices which were not limited to any one congregation, but extended over the whole church, or at least over a great part of it. These are apostles, prophets, and evangelists. Paul mentions them together in this order.699  But the prophecy was a gift and function rather than an office, and the evangelists were temporary officers charged with a particular mission under the direction of the apostles. All three are usually regarded as extraordinary officers and confined to the apostolic age; but from time to time God raises extraordinary missionaries (as Patrick, Columba, Boniface, Ansgar), divines (as Augustin, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin), and revival preachers (as Bernard, Knox, Baxter, Wesley, Whitefield), who may well be called apostles, prophets, and evangelists of their age and nation.700

1. Apostles. These were originally twelve in number, answering to the twelve tribes of Israel. In place of the traitor, Judas, Matthias was chosen by lot, between the ascension and Pentecost.701  After the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Paul was added as the thirteenth by the direct call of the exalted Saviour. He was the independent apostle of the Gentiles, and afterward gathered several subordinate helpers around him. Besides these there were apostolic men, like Barnabas, and James the brother of the Lord, whose standing and influence were almost equal to that of the proper apostles. The Twelve (excepting Matthias, who, however, was an eye-witness of the resurrection) and Paul were called directly by Christ, without human intervention, to be his representatives on earth, the inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, the founders and pillars of the whole church. Their office was universal, and their writings are to this day the unerring rule of faith and practice for all Christendom. But they never exercised their divine authority in arbitrary and despotic style. They always paid tender regard to the rights, freedom, and dignity of the immortal souls under their care. In every believer, even in a poor slave like Onesimus, they recognized a member of the same body with themselves, a partaker of their redemption, a beloved brother in Christ. Their government of the church was a labor of meekness and love, of self-denial and unreserved devotion to the eternal welfare of the people. Peter, the prince of the apostles, humbly calls himself a "fellow-presbyter," and raises his prophetic warning against the hierarchical spirit which so easily takes hold of church dignitaries and alienates them from the people.

2. Prophets. These were inspired and inspiring teachers and preachers of the mysteries of God. They appear to have had special influence on the choice of officers, designating the persons who were pointed out to them by the Spirit of God in their prayer and fasting, as peculiarly fitted for missionary labor or any other service in the church. Of the prophets the book of Acts names Agabus, Barnabas, Symeon, Lucius, Manaen, and Saul of Tarsus, Judas and Silas.702  The gift of prophecy in the wider sense dwelt in all the apostles, pre-eminently in John, the seer of the new covenant and author of the Revelation. It was a function rather than an office.

3. Evangelists, itinerant preachers, delegates, and fellow-laborers of the apostles—such men as Mark, Luke, Timothy, Titus, Silas, Epaphras, Trophimus, and Apollos.703  They may be compared to modern missionaries. They were apostolic commissioners for a special work. "It is the conception of a later age which represents Timothy as bishop of Ephesus, and Titus as bishop of Crete. St. Paul’s own language implies that the position which they held was temporary. In both cases their term of office is drawing to a close when the apostle writes."704

§ 61. Presbyters or Bishops. The Angels of the Seven Churches. James of Jerusalem.

We proceed to the officers of local congregations who were charged with carrying forward in particular places the work begun by the apostles and their delegates. These were of two kinds, Presbyters or Bishops, and Deacons or Helpers. They multiplied in proportion as Christianity extended, while the number of the apostles diminished by death, and could, in the nature of the case, not be filled up by witnesses of the life and resurrection of Christ. The extraordinary officers were necessary for the founding and being of the church, the ordinary officers for its preservation and well-being.

The terms Presbyter (or Elder)705 and Bishop (or Overseer, Superintendent)706 denote in the New Testament one and the same office, with this difference only, that the first is borrowed from the Synagogue, the second from the Greek communities; and that the one signifies the dignity, the other the duty.707

1. The identity of these officers is very evident from the following facts:

a. They appear always as a plurality or as a college in one and the same congregation, even in smaller cities) as Philippi.708

b. The same officers of the church of Ephesus are alternately called presbyters709 and bishops.

c. Paul sends greetings to the "bishops" and "deacons" of Philippi, but omits the presbyters because they were included in the first term; as also the plural indicates.710

d. In the Pastoral Epistles, where Paul intends to give the qualifications for all church officers, he again mentions only two, bishops and deacons, but uses the term presbyter afterwards for bishop.711

Peter urges the "presbyters" to "tend the flock of God," and to "fulfil the office of bishops" with disinterested devotion and without "lording it over the charge allotted to them."712

e. The interchange of terms continued in use to the close of the first century, as is evident from the Epistle of Clement of Rome (about 95), and the Didache, and still lingered towards the close of the second.713

With the beginning of the second century, from Ignatius onward, the two terms are distinguished and designate two offices; the bishop being regarded first as the head of a congregation surrounded by a council of presbyters, and afterwards as the head of a diocese and successor of the apostles. The episcopate grew out of the presidency of the presbytery, or, as Bishop Lightfoot well expresses it: "The episcopate was formed, not out of the apostolic order by localization, but out of the presbyteral by elevation; and the title, which originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief among them."714  Nevertheless, a recollection of the original identity was preserved by the best biblical scholars among the fathers, such as Jerome (who taught that the episcopate rose from the presbyterate as a safeguard against schism), Chrysostom, and Theodoret.715

The reason why the title bishop (and not presbyter) was given afterwards to the superior officer, may be explained from the fact that it signified, according to monumental inscriptions recently discovered, financial officers of the temples, and that the bishops had the charge of all the funds of the churches, which were largely charitable institutions for the support of widows and orphans, strangers and travellers, aged and infirm people in an age of extreme riches and extreme poverty.716

2. The origin of the presbytero-episcopal office is not recorded in the New Testament, but when it is first mentioned in the congregation at Jerusalem, A.D. 44, it appears already as a settled institution.717  As every Jewish synagogue was ruled by elders, it was very natural that every Jewish Christian congregation should at once adopt this form of government; this may be the reason why the writer of the Acts finds it unnecessary to give an account of the origin; while he reports the origin of the deaconate which arose from a special emergency and had no precise analogy in the organization of the synagogue. The Gentile churches followed the example, choosing the already familiar term bishop. The first thing which Paul and Barnabas did after preaching the gospel in Asia Minor was to organize churches by the appointment of elders.718

3. The office of the presbyter-bishops was to teach and to rule the particular congregation committed to their charge. They were the regular "pastors and teachers."719  To them belonged the direction of public worship, the administration of discipline, the care of souls, and the management of church property. They were usually chosen from the first converts, and appointed by the apostles or their delegates, with the approval of the congregation, or by the congregation itself, which supported them by voluntary contributions. They were solemnly introduced into their office by the apostles or by their fellow presbyters through prayers and the laying on of hands.720

The presbyters always formed a college or corporation, a presbytery; as at Jerusalem, at Ephesus, at Philippi, and at the ordination of Timothy.721  They no doubt maintained a relation of fraternal equality. The New Testament gives us no information about the division of labor among them, or the nature and term of a presidency. It is quite probable that the members of the presbyteral college distributed the various duties of their office among themselves according to their respective talents, tastes, experience, and convenience. Possibly, too, the president, whether temporary or permanent, was styled distinctively the bishop; and from this the subsequent separation of the episcopate from the presbyterate may easily have arisen. But so long as the general government of the church was in the hands of the apostles and their delegates, the bishops were limited in their jurisdiction either to one congregation or to a small circle of congregations.

The distinction of "teaching presbyters" or ministers proper, and "ruling presbyters" or lay-elders, is a convenient arrangement of Reformed churches, but can hardly claim apostolic sanction, since the one passage on which it rests only speaks of two functions in the same office.722  Whatever may have been the distribution and rotation of duties, Paul expressly mentions ability to teach among the regular requisites for the episcopal or presbyteral office.723

4. The Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia Minor must be regarded as identical with the presbyter-bishops or local pastors. They represent the presiding presbyters, or the corps of regular officers, as the responsible messengers of God to the congregation.724  At the death of Paul and Peter, under Nero, the congregations were ruled by a college of elders, and if the Apocalypse, as the majority of critical commentators now hold, was written before the year 70, there was too little time for a radical change of the organization from a republican to a monarchical form. Even if we regard the "angels" as single persons, they were evidently confined to a single church, and subject to St. John; hence, not successors of the apostles, as the latter diocesan bishops claim to be. The most that can be said is that the angels were congregational, as distinct from diocesan bishops, and mark one step from the primitive presbyters to the Ignatian bishops, who were likewise congregational officers, but in a monarchical sense as the heads of the presbytery, bearing a patriarchal relation to the congregation and being eminently responsible for its spiritual condition.725

5. The nearest approach to the idea of the ancient catholic episcopate may be found in the unique position of James, the Brother of the Lord. Unlike the apostles, he confined his labors to the mother church of Jerusalem. In the Jewish Christian traditions of the second century he appears both as bishop and pope of the church universal.726  But in fact he was only primus inter pares. In his last visit to Jerusalem, Paul was received by the body of the presbyters, and to them he gave an account of his missionary labors.727  Moreover, this authority of James, who was not an apostle, was exceptional and due chiefly to his close relationship with the Lord, and his personal sanctity, which won the respect even of the unconverted Jews.

The institution of episcopacy proper cannot be traced to the apostolic age, so far as documentary evidence goes, but is very apparent and well-nigh universal about the middle of the second century. Its origin and growth will claim our attention in the next period.

§ 62. Deacons and Deaconesses.

Deacons,728 or helpers, appear first in the church of Jerusalem, seven in number. The author of the Acts 6 gives us an account of the origin of this office, which is mentioned before that of the presbyters. It had a precedent in the officers of the synagogue who had charge of the collection and distribution of alms.729  It was the first relief of the heavy burden that rested on the shoulders of the apostles, who wished to devote themselves exclusively to prayer and the ministry of the word. It was occasioned by a complaint of the Hellenistic Christians against the Hebrew or Palestinian brethren, that their widows were neglected in the daily distribution of food (and perhaps money). In the exercise of a truly fraternal spirit the congregation elected seven Hellenists instead of Hebrews, if we are to judge from their Greek names, although they were not uncommon among the Jews in that age. After the popular election they were ordained by the apostles.

The example of the mother church was followed in all other congregations, though without particular regard to the number. The church of Rome, however, perpetuated even the number seven for several generations.730  In Philippi the deacons took their rank after the presbyters, and are addressed with them in Paul’s Epistle.

The office of there deacons, according to the narrative in Acts, was to minister at the table in the daily love-feasts, and to attend to the wants of the poor and the sick. The primitive churches were charitable societies, taking care of the widows and orphans, dispensing hospitality to strangers, and relieving the needs of the poor. The presbyters were the custodians, the deacons the collectors and distributors, of the charitable funds. To this work a kind of pastoral care of souls very naturally attached itself, since poverty and sickness afford the best occasions and the most urgent demand for edifying instruction and consolation. Hence, living faith and exemplary conduct were necessary qualifications for the office of deacon.731

Two of the Jerusalem deacons, Stephen and Philip, labored also as preachers and evangelists, but in the exercise of a personal gift rather than of official duty.

In post-apostolic times, when the bishop was raised above the presbyter and the presbyter became priest, the deacon was regarded as Levite, and his primary function of care of the poor was lost in the function of assisting the priest in the subordinate parts of public worship and the administration of the sacraments. The diaconate became the first of the three orders of the ministry and a stepping-stone to the priesthood. At the same time the deacon, by his intimacy with the bishop as his agent and messenger, acquired an advantage over the priest.

Deaconesses,732 or female helpers, had a similar charge of the poor and sick in the female portion of the church. This office was the more needful on account of the rigid separation of the sexes at that day, especially among the Greeks and Orientals. It opened to pious women and virgins, and chiefly to widows, a most suitable field for the regular official exercise of their peculiar gifts of self-denying charity and devotion to the welfare of the church. Through it they could carry the light and comfort of the gospel into the most private and delicate relations of domestic life, without at all overstepping their natural sphere. Paul mentions Phoebe as a deaconess of the church of Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, and it is more than probable that Prisca (Priscilla), Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, whom he commends for their labor in the Lord, served in the same capacity at Rome.733

The deaconesses were usually chosen from elderly widows. In the Eastern churches the office continued to the end of the twelfth century.734

§ 63. Church Discipline.

Holiness, like unity and catholicity or universality, is an essential mark of the Church of Christ, who is himself the one, holy Saviour of all men; but it has never yet been perfectly actualized in her membership on earth, and is subject to gradual growth with many obstructions and lapses. The church militant, as a body, like every individual Christian, has to pass through a long process of sanctification, which cannot be complete till the second coining of the Lord.

Even the apostles, far as they tower above ordinary Christians, and infallible as they are in giving all the instruction necessary to salvation, never during their earthly life claimed sinless perfection of character, but felt themselves oppressed with manifold infirmities, and in constant need of forgiveness and purification.

Still less can we expect perfect moral purity in their churches. In fact, all the Epistles of the New Testament contain exhortations to progress in virtue and piety, warnings against unfaithfulness and apostasy, and reproofs respecting corrupt practices among the believers. The old leaven of Judaism and heathenism could not be purged away at once, and to many of the blackest sins the converts were for the first time fully exposed after their regeneration by water and the Spirit. In the churches of Galatia many fell back from grace and from the freedom of the gospel to the legal bondage of Judaism and the "rudiments of the world." In the church of Corinth, Paul had to rebuke the carnal spirit of sect, the morbid desire for wisdom, participation in the idolatrous feasts of the heathen, the tendency to uncleanness, and a scandalous profanation of the holy Supper or the love-feasts connected with it. Most of the churches of Asia Minor, according to the Epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse, were so infected with theoretical errors or practical abuses, as to call for the earnest warnings and reproofs of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.735

These facts show how needful discipline is, both for the church herself and for the offenders. For the church it is a process of self-purification, and the assertion of the holiness and moral dignity which essentially belong to her. To the offender it is at once a merited punishment and a means of repentance and reform. For the ultimate end of the agency of Christ and his church is the salvation of souls; and Paul styles the severest form of church discipline the delivering of the backslider "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."736

The means of discipline are of various degrees of severity; first, private admonition, then public correction, and, finally, when these prove fruitless, excommunication, or temporary exclusion from all the means of grace and from Christian intercourse.737  Upon sincere repentance, the fallen one is restored to the communion of the church. The act of discipline is that of the whole congregation in the name of Christ; and Paul himself, though personally absent, excommunicated the fornicator at Corinth with the concurrence of the congregation, and as being, in spirit united with it. In one of the only two passages where our Lord uses the term ecclesia, he speaks of it as a court which, like the Jewish synagogue, has authority to decide disputes and to exercise discipline.738  In the synagogue, the college of presbyters formed the local court for judicial as well as administrative purposes, but acted in the name of the whole congregation.

The two severest cases of discipline in the apostolic church were the fearful punishment of Ananias and Sapphira by Peter for falsehood and hypocrisy in the church of Jerusalem in the days of her first love,739 and the excommunication of a member of the Corinthian congregation by Paul for adultery and incest.740  The latter case affords also an instance of restoration.741

§ 64. The Council at Jerusalem.

(Comp. § 34, pp. 835 sqq. and 346 sq.)

The most complete outward representation of the apostolic church as a teaching and legislative body was the council convened at Jerusalem in the year 50, to decide as to the authority of the law of Moses, and adjust the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.742

We notice it here simply in its connection with the organization of the church.

It consisted not of the apostles alone, but of apostles, elders, and brethren. We know that Peter, Paul, John, Barnabas, and Titus were present, perhaps all the other apostles. James—not one of the Twelve—presided as the local bishop, and proposed the compromise which was adopted. The transactions were public, before the congregation; the brethren took part in the deliberations; there was a sharp discussion, but the spirit of love prevailed over the pride of opinion; the apostles passed and framed the decree not without, but with the elders and with the whole church and sent the circular letter not in their own name only, but also in the name of "the brother elders" or "elder brethren" to "the brethren" of the congregations disturbed by the question of circumcision.743

All of which plainly proves the right of Christian people to take part in some way in the government of the church, as they do in the acts of worship. The spirit and practice of the apostles favored a certain kind of popular self-government, and the harmonious, fraternal co-operation of the different elements of the church. It countenanced no abstract distinction of clergy and laity. All believers are called to the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices in Christ. The bearers of authority and discipline should therefore never forget that their great work is to train the governed to freedom and independence, and by the various spiritual offices to build them up unto the unity of faith and knowledge, and to the perfect manhood of Christ.

The Greek and Roman churches gradually departed from the apostolic polity and excluded not only the laity, but also the lower clergy from all participation in the legislative councils.

The conference of Jerusalem, though not a binding precedent, is a significant example, giving the apostolic sanction to the synodical form of government, in which all classes of the Christian community are represented in the management of public affairs and in settling controversies respecting faith and discipline. The decree which it passed and the pastoral letter which it sent, are the first in the long line of decrees and canons and encyclicals which issued from ecclesiastical authorities. But it is significant that this first decree, though adopted undoubtedly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and wisely adapted to the times and circumstances of the mixed churches of Jewish and Gentile converts, was after all merely "a temporary expedient for a temporary emergency," and cannot be quoted as a precedent for infallible decrees of permanent force. The spirit of fraternal concession and harmony which dictated the Jerusalem compromise, is more important than the letter of the decree itself. The kingdom of Christ is not a dispensation of law, but of spirit and of life.

Notes.

I. There is an interesting difference of reading in Acts 15:23 (see the critical editions), but it does not affect the composition of the conference, at least as far as the elders are concerned. The textus receptus reads: oiJ ajpovstoloi, kai; oiJ  presbuvteroi, kai; oiJ ajdelfoiv (a’, H, L, P, Syr., etc.), "The apostles, and the elders, and the brethren send greeting unto the brethren," etc. So the E. V., except that it omits the article twice. The Revised V., following the better attested reading: oiJ ajpovstoloi, kai; oiv  presbuvteroi ajdelfoiv, renders in the text: "The apostles, and the elders, brethren," and in the margin: "The apostles and the elder brethren" (omitting the comma). But it may also be translated: "The apostles, and brother-elders," considering that Peter addresses the elders as sumpresbuvtero", or "fellow-elder" (1 Pet. 5:1). The textus rec. agrees better with Acts 15:22, and the omission of kai; oiJ may possibly have arisen from a desire to conform the text to the later practice which excluded the laity from synods, but it is strongly supported by aBellarmin and other Roman Catholic and certain Episcopal divines get over the fact of the participation of the elders and brethren in a legislative council by allowing the elders and brethren simply a silent consent. So Becker (as quoted by Bishop Jacobson, in Speaker’s Commentary on Acts 15:22):, "The apostles join the elders and brethren with themselves ... not to allow them equal authority, but merely to express their concurrence." Very different is the view of Dr. Plumptre on Acts 15:22: "The latter words [’with the whole church’] are important as showing the position occupied by the laity. If they concurred in the latter, it must have been submitted to their approval, and the right to approve involves the power to reject and probably to modify." Bishop Cotterill (Genesis of the Church, p. 379) expresses the same view. "It was manifestly," he says, "a free council, and not a mere private meeting of some office-bearers. It was in fact much what the Agora was in archaic times, as described in Homer: in which the council of the nobles governed the decisions, but the people were present and freely expressed their opinion. And it must be remembered that the power of free speech in the councils of the church is the true test of the character of these assemblies. Free discussion, and arbitrary government, either by one person or by a privileged class, have been found, in all ages and under all polities, to be incompatible with each other. Again, not only were the multitude present, but we are expressly told that the whole church concurred in the decision and in the action taken upon it."

II. The authority of the Jerusalem conference as a precedent for regular legislative councils and synods has been often overrated. On the other hand, Canon Farrar (Life and Work of St. Paul, I. 431) greatly underrates it when he says: "It is only by an unwarrantable extension of terms that the meeting of the church of Jerusalem can be called a ’council,’ and the word connotes a totally different order of conceptions to those that were prevalent at that early time. The so-called Council of Jerusalem in no way resembled the General Councils of the Church, either in its history, its constitution, or its object. It was not a convention of ordained delegates, but a meeting of the entire church of Jerusalem to receive a deputation from the church of Antioch. Even Paul and Barnabas seem to have had no vote in the decision, though the votes of a promiscuous body could certainly not be more enlightened than theirs, nor was their allegiance due in any way to James. The church of Jerusalem might out of respect be consulted, but it had no claim to superiority, no abstract prerogative to bind its decisions on the free church of God. The ’decree’ of the ’council’ was little more than the wise recommendation of a single synod, addressed to a particular district, and possessing only a temporary validity. It was, in fact, a local concordat. Little or no attention has been paid by the universal church to two of its restrictions; a third, not many years after, was twice discussed and settled by Paul, on the same general principles, but with a by no means identical conclusion. The concession which it made to the Gentiles, in not insisting on the necessity of circumcision, was equally treated as a dead letter by the Judaizing party, and cost Paul the severest battle of his lifetime to maintain. If this circular letter is to be regarded as a binding and final decree, and if the meeting of a single church, not by delegates, but in the person of all its members, is to be regarded as a council, never was the decision of a council less appealed to, and never was a decree regarded as so entire inoperative alike by those who repudiated the validity of its concessions, and by those who discussed, as though they were still an open question, no less than three of its four restrictions."

§ 65. The Church and the Kingdom of Christ.

Thus the apostolic church appears as a free, independent, and complete organism, a system of supernatural, divine life in a human body. It contains in itself all the offices and energies required for its purposes. It produces the supply of its outward wants from its own free spirit. It is a self-supporting and self-governing institution, within the state, but not of the state. Of a union with the state, either in the way of hierarchical supremacy or of Erastian subordination, the first three centuries afford no trace. The apostles honor the civil authority as a divine institution for the protection of life and property, for the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil-doer; and they enjoin, even under the reign of a Claudius and a Nero, strict obedience to it in all civil concerns; as, indeed, their heavenly Master himself submitted in temporal matters to Herod and to Pilate, and rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. But in their spiritual calling they allowed nothing to be prescribed or forbidden to them by the authorities of the state. Their principle was, to "obey God rather than men." For this principle, for their allegiance to the King of kings, they were always ready to suffer imprisonment, insult, persecution, and death, but never to resort to carnal weapons, or stir up rebellion and revolution. "The weapons of our warfare," says Paul, "are not carnal, but mighty through God." Martyrdom is a far nobler heroism than resistance with fire and sword, and leads with greater certainty at last to a thorough and permanent victory.

The apostolic church, as to its membership, was not free from impurities, the after-workings of Judaism and heathenism and the natural man. But in virtue of an inherent authority it exercised rigid discipline, and thus steadily asserted its dignity and holiness. It was not perfect; but it earnestly strove after the perfection of manhood in Christ, and longed and hoped for the reappearance of the Lord in glory, to the exaltation of his people. It was as yet not actually universal, but a little flock compared with the hostile hosts of the heathen and Jewish world; yet it carried in itself the principle of true catholicity, the power and pledge of its victory over all other religions, and its final prevalence among all nations of the earth and in all classes of society.

Paul defines the church as the body of Jesus Christ.744  He thus represents it as an organic living system of various members, powers, and functions, and at the same time as the abode of Christ and the organ of his redeeming and sanctifying influence upon the world. Christ is, in one view, the ruling head, in another the all-pervading soul, of this body. Christ without the church were a head without a body, a fountain without a stream, a king without subjects, a captain without soldiers, a bridegroom without a bride. The church without Christ were a body without soul or spirit—a lifeless corpse. The church lives only as Christ lives and moves and works in her. At every moment of her existence she is dependent on him, as the body on the soul, or the branches on the vine. But on his part he perpetually bestows upon her his heavenly gifts and supernatural powers, continually reveals himself in her, and uses her as his organ for the spread of his kingdom and the christianizing of the world, till all principalities and powers shall yield free obedience to him, and adore him as the eternal Prophet, Priest, and King of the regenerate race. This work must be a gradual process of history. The idea of a body, and of all organic life, includes that of development, of expansion and consolidation. And hence the same Paul speaks also of the growth and edification of the body of Christ, "till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."745

This sublime idea of the church, as developed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, when Paul was a prisoner chained to a heathen soldier, soars high above the actual condition of the little flocks of peasants, freedmen, slaves, and lowly, uncultured people that composed the apostolic congregations. It has no parallel in the social ideals of ancient philosophers and statesmen. It can only be traced to divine inspiration.

We must not confound this lofty conception of the church as the body of Christ with any particular ecclesiastical organization, which at best is only a part of the whole, and an imperfect approach to the ideal. Nor must we identify it with the still higher idea of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. A vast amount of presumption, bigotry, and intolerance has grown out of such confusion. It is remarkable that Christ speaks only once of the church in the organic or universal sense.746  But be very often speaks of the kingdom, and nearly all his parables illustrate this grand idea. The two conceptions are closely related, yet distinct. In many passages we could not possibly substitute the one for the other without manifest impropriety.747  The church is external, visible, manifold, temporal; the kingdom of heaven is internal, spiritual, one, and everlasting. The kingdom is older and more comprehensive; it embraces all the true children of God on earth and in heaven, before Christ and after Christ, inside and outside of the churches and sects. The historical church with its various ramifications is a paedagogic institution or training-school for the kingdom of heaven, and will pass away as to its outward form when its mission is fulfilled. The kingdom has come in Christ, is continually coming, and will finally come in its full grown strength and beauty when the King will visibly appear in his glory.

The coming of this kingdom in and through the visible churches, with varying conflicts and victories, is the proper object of church history. It is a slow, but sure and steady progress, with many obstructions, delays, circuitous turns and windings, but constant manifestations of the presence of him who sits at the helm of the ship and directs it through rain, storm, and sunshine to the harbor of the other and better world.

CHAPTER XI.

THEOLOGY OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

§ 66. Literature.

I. Works on the Theology of the whole New Testament.

August Neander (d. 1850): Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christl. Kirche durch die Apostel. Hamburg, 1832; 4th ed., 1847, 2 vols. (in the second vol.); Engl. transl. by J. A. Ryland, Edinb., 1842; revised and corrected by E. G. Robinson, New York, 1865. Neander and Schmid take the lead in a historical analysis of the different types of Apostolic doctrine (James, Peter, Paul, John).

Sam. Lutz: Biblische Dogmatik, herausgeg. von R. Rüetschi. Pforzheim, 1847.

Christ. Friedr. Schmidt (an independent co-laborer of Neander, d. 1852): Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Ed. by Weizsäcker. Stuttg., 1853, 2d ed. 1859. 2 vols. (The Engl. translation by G. H. Venables, Edinb., 1870, is merely an abridgment.)

Edward Reuss (Prof. in Strassburg): Histoire de la théologie chétienne au siécle apostolique. Strassb., 1852. 3d ed., Paris, 1864. 2 vols. English translation from the third French ed. by Annie Harwood. London, 1872. 2 vols.

Lutterbeck (a liberal Rom. Cath.): Die N. T. lichen Lehrbegriffe, oder Untersuchungen über das Zeitalter der Religionswende. Mainz, 1852. 2 vols.

G. L. Hahn: Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Bd. I. Leipzig, 1854.

H. Messner: Die Lehre der Apostel. Leipz., 1856. Follows in the path of Neander.

P. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie. Leipz., 1864. Published after his death, by his son. Sums up the bold critical speculations of the founder of the Tübingen School. The most important part is the section on the system of Paul.

W. Beyschlag: Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments. Berlin, 1866 (260 pages).

Thomas Dehaney Bernsard: Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. Lectures on the Bampton Foundation. London and Boston, 1867.

H. Ewald: Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott oder die Theologie des alten und neuen Bundes. Leipzig, 1871–76. 4 vols. (More important for the Old Test. than for the New.)

A. Immer: Theologie des neuen Testaments. Bern, 1877.

J. J. van Oosterzee: Biblische Theol. des N. T. (translated from the Dutch). Elberf., 1868. Engl. transl. by Prof. G. E. Day. New Haven, 1870. Another English translation by Maurice J. Evans: The Theology of the New Test., etc. London, 1870.

Bernh. Weiss: Bibl. Theologie des Neuen Testaments.  Berlin, 1868; 4th ed., 1884. Engl. translation, Edinb., 1883, 2 vols.

II. Separate works on the doctrinal types of the several apostles, by W. G. Schmidt, and Beyerschlag, on James; by Mayerhoff, Weiss, and Morich, on Peter; by Usteri, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Leathes, Irons, on Paul; by Reihm, on Hebrews; by Frommann, Köstlin, Weiss, Leathes, on John—quoted in previous sections.

III. The doctrinal sections in the Histories of the Apostolic Church by Lange, Lechler, Thiersch, Stanley, and Schaff (pp. 614–679), besides Neander already mentioned. Comp. also Charles A. Briggs: The idea, history and importance of Biblical Theology, in the "Presbyterian Review," New York, July, 1882.

IV. For the contrast between the apostolic and the rabbinical theology, see Ferd. Weber (a missionary among the Jews, d. 1879): System der altsynagogalen paltästinsichen Theologie, aus Targum, Midrasch, und Talmud dargestellt. Nach des Verf. Tode herausgeg. von Frz. Delitzsch und G. Schnedermann. Leipz., 1880.

§ 67. Unity of Apostolic Teaching.

Christianity is primarily not merely doctrine, but life, a new moral creation, a saving fact, first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man, to spread from him and embrace gradually the whole body of the race, and bring it into saving fellowship with God. The same is true of Christianity as it exists subjectively in single individuals. It begins not with religious views and notions simply; though it includes these, at least in germ. It comes as a new life; as regeneration, conversion, and sanctification; as a creative fact in experience, taking up the whole man with all his faculties and capacities, releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with God, restoring harmony and peace to the soul, and at last glorifying the body itself. Thus, the life of Christ is mirrored in his people, rising gradually, through the use of the means of grace and the continued exercise of faith and love to its maturity in the resurrection.

But the new life necessarily contains the element of doctrine, or knowledge of the truth. Christ calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life." He is himself the personal revelation of saving truth, and of the normal relation of man to God. Yet this element of doctrine itself appears in the New Testament, not in the form of an abstract theory, the product of speculation, a scientific system of ideas subject to logical and mathematical demonstration; but as the fresh, immediate utterance of the supernatural, divine life, a life-giving power, equally practical and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart, the will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly drawing them to itself. The knowledge of God in Christ, as it meets us here, is at the same time eternal life.748  We must not confound truth with dogma. Truth is the divine substance, doctrine or dogma is the human apprehension and statement of it; truth is a living and life-giving power, dogma a logical formula; truth is infinite, unchanging, and eternal; dogma is finite, changeable, and perfectible.

The Bible, therefore, is not only, nor principally, a book for the learned, but a book of life for every one, an epistle written by the Holy Spirit to mankind. In the words of Christ and his apostles there breathes the highest and holiest spiritual power, the vivifying breath of God, piercing bone and marrow, thrilling through the heart and conscience, and quickening the dead. The life, the eternal life, which was from the beginning with the Father, and is manifested to us, there comes upon us, as it were, sensibly, now as the mighty tornado, now as the gentle zephyr; now overwhelming and casting us down in the dust of humility and penitence, now reviving and raising us to the joy of faith and peace; but always bringing forth a new creature, like the word of power, which said at the first creation. "Let there be light!"  Here verily is holy ground. Here is the door of eternity, the true ladder to heaven, on which the angels of God are ascending and descending in unbroken line. No number of systems of Christian faith and morals, therefore, indispensable as they are to the scientific purposes of the church and of theology, can ever fill the place of the Bible, whose words are spirit and life.

When we say the New Testament is no logically arranged system of doctrines and precepts, we are far from meaning that it has no internal order and consistency. On the contrary, it exhibits the most beautiful harmony, like the external creation, and like a true work of art. It is the very task of the historian, and especially of the theologian, to bring this hidden living order to view, and present it in logical and scientific forms. For this work Paul, the only one of the apostles who received a learned education, himself furnishes the first fruitful suggestions, especially in his epistle to the Romans. This epistle follows a logical arrangement even in form, and approaches as nearly to a scientific treatise as it could consistently with the fervent, direct, practical, popular spirit and style essential to the Holy Scriptures and inseparable from their great mission for all Christendom.

The substance of all the apostolic teaching is the witness of Christ, the gospel, and the free message of that divine love and salvation, which appeared in the person of Christ, was secured to mankind by his work, is gradually realized in the kingdom of God on earth, and will be completed with the second coming of Christ in glory. This salvation also comes in close connection with Judaism, as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, the substance of all the Old Testament types and shadows. The several doctrines entering essentially into this apostolic preaching are most beautifully and simply arranged and presented in what is called the Apostles’ Creed, which, though not in its precise form, yet, as regards its matter, certainly dates from the primitive age of Christianity. On all the leading points, the person of Jesus as the promised Messiah, his holy life, his atoning death, his triumphant resurrection and exaltation at the right hand of God, and his second coming to judge the world, the establishment of the church as a divine institution, the communion of believers, the word of God, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, the work of the Holy Spirit, the necessity of repentance and conversion, of regeneration and sanctification, the final completion of salvation in the day of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting—on all these points the apostles are perfectly unanimous, so far as their writings have come down to us.

The apostles all drew their doctrine in common from personal contact with the divine-human history of the crucified and risen Saviour, and from the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, revealing the person and the work of Christ in them, and opening to them the understanding of his words and acts. This divine enlightenment is inspiration, governing not only the composition of the sacred writings, but also the oral instructions of their authors; not merely an act, but a permanent state. The apostles lived and moved continually in the element of truth. They spoke, wrote, and acted from the spirit of truth; and this, not as passive instruments, but as conscious and free organs. For the Holy Spirit does not supersede the gifts and peculiarities of nature, which are ordained by God; it sanctifies them to the service of his kingdom. Inspiration, however, is concerned only with moral and religious truths, and the communication of what is necessary to salvation. Incidental matters of geography, history, archeology, and of mere personal interest, can be regarded as directed by inspiration only so far as they really affect religious truth.

The revelation of the body of Christian truth essential to salvation coincides in extent with the received canon of the New Testament. There is indeed constant growth and development in the Christian church, which progresses outwardly and inwardly in proportion to the degree of its vitality and zeal, but it is a progress of apprehension and appropriation by man, not of communication or revelation by God. We may speak of a secondary inspiration of extraordinary men whom God raises from time to time, but their writings must be measured by the only infallible standard, the teaching of Christ and his apostles. Every true advance in Christian knowledge and life is conditioned by a deeper descent into the mind and spirit of Christ, who declared the whole counsel of God and the way of salvation, first in person, and then through his apostles.

The New Testament is thus but one book, the teaching of one mind, the mind of Christ. He gave to his disciples the words of life which the Father gave him, and inspired them with the spirit of truth to reveal his glory to them. Herein consists the unity and harmony of the twenty-seven writings which constitute the New Testament, for all emergencies and for perpetual use, until the written and printed word shall be superseded by the reappearance of the personal Word, and the beatific vision of saints in light.

§ 68. Different Types of Apostolic Teaching.

With all this harmony, the Christian doctrine appears in the New Testament in different forms according to the peculiar character, education, and sphere of the several sacred writers. The truth of the gospel, in itself infinite, can adapt itself to every class, to every temperament, every order of talent, and every habit of thought. Like the light of the sun, it breaks into various colors according to the nature of the bodies on which it falls; like the jewel, it emits a new radiance at every turn.

Irenaeus speaks of a fourfold "Gospel."749  In like manner we may distinguish a fourfold "Apostle,"750 or four corresponding types of apostolic doctrine.751  The Epistle of James corresponds to the Gospel of Matthew; the Epistles of Peter and his addresses in the Acts to that of Mark; the Epistles of Paul to the Gospel of Luke and his Acts; and the Epistles of John to the Gospel of the same apostle.

This division, however, both as regards the Gospels and the Epistles, is subordinate to a broader difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, which runs through the entire history of the apostolic period and affects even the doctrine, the polity, the worship, and the practical life of the church. The difference rests on the great religious division of the world, before and at the time of Christ, and continued until a native Christian race took the place of the first generation of converts. The Jews naturally took the Christian faith into intimate association with the divinely revealed religion of the old covenant, and adhered as far as possible to their sacred institutions and rites; while the heathen converts, not having known the law of Moses, passed at once from the state of nature to the state of grace. The former represented the historical, traditional, conservative principle; the latter, the principle of freedom, independence, and progress.

Accordingly we have two classes of teachers: apostles of the Jews or of the circumcision, and apostles of the Gentiles or of the uncircumcision. That this distinction extends farther than the mere missionary field, and enters into all the doctrinal views and practical life of the parties, we see from the accounts of the apostolic council which was held for the express purpose of adjusting the difference respecting the authority of the Mosaic law.

But the opposition was only relative, though it caused collisions at times, and even temporary alienation, as between Paul and Peter at Antioch.752  As the two forms of Christianity had a common root in the full life of Christ, the Saviour of both Gentiles and Jews, so they gradually grew together into the unity of the catholic church. And as Peter represents the Jewish church, and Paul the Gentile, so John, at the close of the apostolic age, embodies the higher union of the two.

With this difference of standpoint are connected subordinate differences, as of temperament, style, method. James has been distinguished as the apostle of the law or of works; Peter, as the apostle of hope; Paul, as the apostle of faith; and John, as the apostle of love. To the first has been assigned the phlegmatic (?) temperament, in its sanctified Christian state, to the second the sanguine, to the third the choleric, and to the fourth the melancholic; a distribution, however, only admissible in a very limited sense. The four gospels also present similar differences; the first having close affinity to the position of James, the second to that of Peter, the third to that of Paul, and the fourth representing in its doctrinal element the spirit of John.

If we make the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity the basis of classification, we may reduce the books of the New Testament to three types of doctrine: the Jewish Christian, the Gentile Christian, and the ideal or unionistic Christian. The first is chiefly represented by Peter, the second by Paul, the third by John. As to James, he must be ranked under the first type as the local head of the Jerusalem wing of the conservative school, while Peter war, the oecumenical head of the whole church of the circumcision.753

§ 69. The Jewish Christian Theology—I. James and the Gospel of Law.

(Comp. § 27, and the Lit. given there.)

The Jewish Christian type embraces the Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and to some extent the Revelation of John; for John is placed by Paul among the "pillars" of the church of the circumcision, though in his later writings he took an independent position above the distinction of Jew and Gentile. In these books, originally designed mainly, though not exclusively, for Jewish Christian readers, Christianity is exhibited in its unity with the Old Testament, as the fulfilment of the same. They unfold the fundamental idea of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17), that Christ did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to "fulfil." The Gospels, especially that of Matthew, show historically that Jesus is the Messiah, the lawgiver, the prophet, priest, and king of Israel.

On this historical basis James and Peter build their practical exhortations, with this difference, that the former shows chiefly the agreement of the gospel with the law, the latter with the prophets.

James, the brother of the Lord, in keeping with his life-long labors in Jerusalem, his speech at the Council, and the letter of the Council—which he probably wrote himself—holds most closely to the Mosaic religion, and represents the gospel itself as law, yet as the "perfect law of liberty."754  Herein lies the difference as well as the unity of the two dispensations. The "law" points to the harmony, the qualifying "perfect" and "liberty" to the superiority of Christianity, and intimates that Judaism was imperfect and a law of bondage, from which Christ has set us free. Paul, on the contrary, distinguishes the gospel as freedom from the law, as a system of slavery;755 but he re-establishes the law on the basis of freedom, and sums up the whole Christian life in the fulfilment of the law of love to God and to our neighbor; therein meeting James from the opposite starting-point.756

James, the Christian legalist, lays great stress on good works which the law requires, but he demands works which are the fruit of faith in Him, whom he, as his servant, reverently calls "the Lord of glory," and whose words as reported by Matthew are the basis of his exhortations.757  Such faith, moreover, is the result of it new birth, which he traces to "the will of God" through the agency of "the word of truth," that is, the gospel.758  As to the relation between faith and works and their connection with justification at the tribunal of God, he seems to teach the doctrine of justification by faith and works; while Paul teaches the doctrine of justification by faith alone, to be followed by good works, as the necessary evidence of faith. The two views as thus stated are embodied in the Roman Catholic and the evangelical Protestant confessions, and form one of the chief topics of controversy. But the contradiction between James and Paul is verbal rather than logical and doctrinal, and admits of a reconciliation which lies in the inseparable connection of a living faith and good works, or of justification and sanctification, so that they supplement and confirm each other, the one laying the true foundation in character, the other insisting on the practical manifestation. James wrote probably long before he had seen any of Paul’s Epistles, certainly with no view to refute his doctrine or even to guard it against antinomian abuse; for this was quite unnecessary, as Paul did it clearly enough himself, and it would have been quite useless for Jewish Christian readers who were exposed to the danger of a barren legalism, but not of a pseudo-Pauline liberalism and antinomianism. They cannot, indeed, be made to say precisely the same thing, only using one or more of the three terms, "to justify," "faith," "works" in different senses; but they wrote from different standpoints and opposed different errors, and thus presented two distinct aspects of the same truth. James says: Faith is dead without works. Paul says: Works are dead without faith. The one insists on a working faith, the other on faithful works. Both are right: James in opposition to the dead Jewish orthodoxy, Paul in opposition to self-righteous legalism. James does not demand works without faith, but works prompted by faith;759 While Paul, on the other hand, likewise declares a faith worthless which is without love, though it remove mountains,760 and would never have attributed a justifying power to the mere belief in the existence of God, which James calls the trembling faith of demons.761  But James mainly looks at the fruit, Paul at the root; the one is concerned for the evidence, the other for the principle; the one takes the practical and experimental view, and reasons from the effect to the cause, the other goes deeper to the inmost springs of action, but comes to the same result: a holy life of love and obedience as the necessary evidence of true faith. And this, after all, is the ultimate standard of judgment according to Paul as well as James.762  Paul puts the solution of the difficulty in one sentence: "faith working through love." This is the Irenicon of contending apostles and contending churches.763

The Epistle of James stands at the head of the Catholic Epistles, so called, and represents the first and lowest stage of Christian knowledge. It is doctrinally very meagre, but eminently practical and popular. It enjoins a simple, earnest, and devout style of piety that visits the orphans and widows, and keeps itself unspotted from the world.764

The close connection between the Epistle of James and the Gospel of Matthew arises naturally from their common Jewish Christian and Palestinian origin.

Notes

I. James and Paul.. The apparent contradiction in the doctrine of justification appears in James 2:14–26, as compared with Rom. 3:20 sqq.; 4:1 sqq.; Gal. 2:16 sqq. Paul says (Rom. 3:28): "Man is justified by faith apart from works of law" (pivstei cwri;" e[rgwn novmou), comp. Gal. 2:16 (ouj dikaiou'tai a[nqrwpo" ejz e[rgwn novmou eja;n mh; dia; pivstew" Cristou' jIhsou'), and appeals to the example of Abraham, who was justified by faith before he was circumcised (Gen. 17:10). James 2:24 says: "By works a man is justified, and not only by faith" (ejx e[rgwn dikaiou'tai, a[nqrwpo" kai; oujk ejk pivstew'" movnon), and appeals to the example of the same Abraham who showed his true faith in God by offering up his son Isaac upon the altar (Gen. 22:9, 12). Luther makes the contradiction worse by unnecessarily inserting the word allein (sola fide) in Rom. 3:28, though not without precedent (see my note on the passage in the Am. ed. of Lange on Romans, p. 136). The great Reformer could not reconcile the two apostles, and rashly called the Epistle of James an "epistle of straw" (eine recht ströherne Epistel, Pref. to the New Test., 1524).

Baur, from a purely critical point of view, comes to the same conclusion; he regards the Epistle of James as a direct attack upon the very heart of the doctrine of Paul, and treats all attempts at reconciliation as vain. (Vorles. über neutestam. Theol., p. 277). So also Renan and Weiffenbach. Renan (St. Paul, ch. 10) asserts without proof that James organized a Jewish counter-mission to undermine Paul. But in this case, James, as a sensible and practical man, ought to have written to Gentile Christians, not to "the twelve tribes," who needed no warning against Paul and his doctrine. His Epistle represents simply an earlier and lower form of Christianity ignorant of the higher, yet preparatory to it, as the preaching of John the Baptist prepared the way for that of Christ. It was written without any reference to Paul, probably before the Council of Jerusalem and before the circumcision controversy, in the earliest stage of the apostolic church as it is described in the first chapters of the Acts, when the Christians were not yet clearly distinguished and finally separated from the Jews. This view of the early origin of the Epistle is maintained by some of the ablest historians and commentators, as Neander, Schneckenburger, Theile, Thiersch, Beyschlag, Alford, Basset, Plumptre, Stanley. Weiss also says very confidently (Bibl. Theol. 3d ed., p. 120): "Der Brief gehört der vorpaulinischen Zeit an und steht jedenfalls zeitlich wie inhaltlich dem ersten Brief Petri am nächsten." He therefore treats both James and Peter on their own merits, without regard to Paul’s teaching. Comp. his Einleitung in d. N. T. (1886), p. 400.

II. James and Matthew. The correspondence has often been fully pointed out by Theile and other commentators. James contains more reminiscences of the words of Christ than any other Epistle, especially from the Sermon on the Mount. Comp. James 1:2 with Matt. 5:10–12; James 1:4 with Matt. 5:48; James 1:17 with Matt. 7:11; James 1:20 with Matt. 5:22; James 1:22 sqq. with Matt. 7:21 sq.; James 1:23 with Matt. 7:26; James 2:13 with Matt. 6:14 sq.; James 2:14 with Matt. 7:21–23; James 3:2 with Matt. 12:36, 37; James 3:17, 18 with Matt. 5:9; James 4:3 with Matt. 7:7; James 4:4 with Matt. 6:24; James 5:12 with Matt. 5:34. According to a notice in the pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis, James "the Bishop of Jerusalem" translated the Gospel of Matthew from the Aramaic into the Greek. But there are also parallelisms between James and the first Epistle of Peter, and even between James and the apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon. See Plumptre, Com. on James, pp. 32 sq.

§ 70. II. Peter and the Gospel of Hope.

(Comp. the Lit. in §§ 25 and 26.)

Peter stands between James and Paul, and forms the transition from the extreme conservatism of the one to the progressive liberalism of the other. The germ of his doctrinal system is contained in his great confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.765  A short creed indeed, with only one article, but a fundamental and all-comprehensive article, the corner-stone of the Christian church. His system, therefore, is Christological, and supplements the anthropological type of James. His addresses in the Acts and his Epistles are full of the fresh impressions which the personal intercourse with Christ made upon his noble, enthusiastic, and impulsive nature. Christianity is the fulfilment of all the Messianic prophecies; but it is at the same time itself a prophecy of the glorious return of the Lord. This future glorious manifestation is so certain that it is already anticipated here in blessed joy by a lively hope which stimulates to a holy life of preparation for the end. Hence, Peter eminently deserves to be called "the Apostle of hope."766

I. Peter began his testimony with the announcement of the historical facts of the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and represents these facts as the divine seal of his Messiahship, according to the prophets of old, who bear witness to him that through his name every one that believes shall receive remission of sins. The same Jesus whom God raised from the dead and exalted to his right hand as Lord and Saviour, will come again to judge his people and to bring in seasons of refreshing from his presence and the apokatastasis or restitution of all things to their normal and perfect state, thus completely fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. There is no salvation out of the Lord Jesus Christ. The condition of this salvation is the acknowledgment of his Messiahship and the change of mind and conduct from the service of sin to holiness.767

These views are so simple, primitive, and appropriate that we cannot conceive how Peter could have preached differently and more effectively in that early stage of Christianity. We need not wonder at the conversion of three thousand souls in consequence of his, pentecostal sermon. His knowledge gradually widened and deepened with the expansion of Christianity and the conversion of Cornelius. A special revelation enlightened him on the question of circumcision and brought him to the conviction that "in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness, is acceptable to him," and that Jews and Gentiles are saved alike by the grace of Christ through faith, without the unbearable yoke of the ceremonial law.768

II. The Epistles of Peter represent this riper stage of knowledge. They agree substantially with the teaching of Paul. The leading idea is the same as that presented in his addresses in the Acts: Christ the fulfiller of the Messianic prophecies, and the hope of the Christian. Peter’s christology is free of all speculative elements, and simply derived from the impression of the historical and risen Jesus. He emphasizes in the first Epistle, as in his earlier addresses, the resurrection whereby God "begat us again unto a lively hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven," when "the chief shepherd shall be manifested," and we "shall receive the crown of glory." And in the second Epistle he points forward to "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."769  He thus connects the resurrection of Christ with the final consummation of which it is the sure pledge. But, besides the resurrection, he brings out also the atoning efficacy of the death of Christ almost as strongly and clearly as Paul. Christ "suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God;" he himself "bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness;" he redeemed us "with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."770  Christ is to him the only Saviour, the Lord, the Prince of life, the Judge of the world. He assigns him a majestic position far above all other men, and brings him into the closest contact with the eternal Jehovah, though in subordination to him. The doctrine of the pre-existence seems to be intimated and implied, if not expressly stated, when Christ is spoken of as being "foreknown before the foundation of the world" and "manifested at the end of the time," and his Spirit as dwelling in the prophets of old and pointing them to his future sufferings and glory.771

III. Peter extends the preaching, judging, and saving activity of Christ to the realm of the departed spirits in Hades during the mysterious triduum between the crucifixion and the resurrection.772  The descent into Hades is also taught by Paul (Eph. 4:9, 10).

IV. With this theory correspond the practical exhortations. Subjective Christianity is represented as faith in the historical Christ and as a lively hope in his, glorious reappearance, which should make the Christians rejoice even amidst trials and persecution, after the example of their Lord and Saviour.

§ 71. The Gentile Christian Theology. Paul and the Gospel of Faith.

(See the Lit. in § 29, pp. 280 sqq.)

The Gentile Christian type of the gospel is embodied in the writings of Paul and Luke, and in the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews.

The sources of Paul’s theology are his discourses in the Acts (especially the speech on the Areopagus) and his thirteen Epistles, namely, the Epistles to the Thessalonians—the earliest, but chiefly practical; the four great Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, which are the mature result of his conflict with the Judaizing tendency; the four Epistles of the captivity; and the Pastoral Epistles. These groups present as many phases of development of his system and discuss different questions with appropriate variations of style, but they are animated by the same spirit, and bear the marks of the same profound and comprehensive genius.

Paul is the pioneer of Christian theology. He alone among the apostles had received a learned rabbinical education and was skilled in logical and dialectical argument. But his logic is vitalized and set on fire. His theology springs from his heart as well as from his brain; it is the result of his conversion, and all aglow with the love of Christ; his scholasticism is warmed and deepened by mysticism, and his mysticism is regulated and sobered by scholasticism; the religious and moral elements, dogmatics, and ethics, are blended into a harmonious whole. Out of the depths of his personal experience, and in conflict with the Judaizing contraction and the Gnostic evaporation of the gospel be elaborated the fullest scheme of Christian doctrine which we possess from apostolic pens. It is essentially soteriological, or a system of the way of salvation. It goes far beyond the teaching of James and Peter, and yet is only a consistent development of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels.773

The Central Idea.

Paul’s personal experience embraced intense fanaticism for Judaism, and a more intense enthusiasm for Christianity. It was first an unavailing struggle of legalism towards human righteousness by works of the law, and then the apprehension of divine righteousness by faith in Christ. This dualism is reflected in his theology. The idea of righteousness or conformity to God’s holy will is the connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. Law and works, was the motto of the self-righteous pupil of Moses; gospel and faith, the motto of the humble disciple of Jesus. He is the emancipator of the Christian consciousness from the oppressive bondage of legalism and bigotry, and the champion of freedom and catholicity. Paul’s gospel is emphatically the gospel of saving faith, the gospel of evangelical freedom, the gospel of universalism, centring in the person and work of Christ and conditioned by union with Christ. He determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified; but this included all—it is the soul of his theology. The Christ who died is the Christ who was raised again and ever lives as Lord and Saviour, and was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.774  A dead Christ would be the grave of all our hopes, and the gospel of a dead Saviour a wretched delusion. "If Christ has not been raised then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain."775  His death becomes available only through his resurrection. Paul puts the two facts together in the comprehensive statement: "Christ delivered up for our trespasses, and raised for our justification."776  He is a conditional universalist; he teaches the universal need of salvation, and the divine intention and provision for a universal salvation, but the actual salvation of each man depends upon his faith or personal acceptance and appropriation of Christ. His doctrinal system, then, turns on the great antithesis of sin and grace. Before Christ and out of Christ is the reign of sin and death; after Christ and in Christ is the reign of righteousness and life.

We now proceed to an outline of the leading features of his theology as set forth in the order of the Epistle to the Romans, the most methodical and complete of his writings. Its central thought is: The Gospel of Christ, a power of God for the salvation of all men, Jew and Gentile.777

1. The Universal Need of Salvation.—It arises from the fall of Adam and the whole human race, which was included in him as the tree is included in the seed, so that his one act of disobedience brought sin and death upon the whole posterity. Paul proves the depravity of Gentiles and Jews without exception to the extent that they are absolutely unable to attain to righteousness and to save themselves. "There is none righteous, no, not one." They are all under the dominion of sin and under the sentence of condemnation.778  He recognizes indeed, even among the heathen, the remaining good elements of reason and conscience,779 which are the connecting links for the regenerating work of divine grace; but for this very reason they are inexcusable, as they sin against better knowledge. There is a conflict between the higher and the lower nature in man (the nou'", which tends to God who gave it, and the savrx, which tends to sin), and this conflict is stimulated and brought to a crisis by the law of God; but this conflict, owing to the weakness of our carnal, fallen, depraved nature, ends in defeat and despair till the renewing grace of Christ emancipates us from the curse and bondage of sin and gives us liberty and victory. In the seventh chapter of the Romans, Paul gives from his personal experience a most remarkable and truthful description of the religious history of man from the natural or heathen state of carnal security (without the law, Rom. 7:7–9) to the Jewish state under the law which calls out sin from its hidden recess, reveals its true character, and awakens the sense of the wretchedness of slavery under sin (7:10–25), but in this very way prepares the way for the Christian state of freedom (7:24 and Rom. 8).780

II. The Divine Intention and Provision of Universal Salvation.—God sincerely wills (qevlei) that all men, even the greatest of sinners, should be saved, and come to the knowledge of truth through Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all.781  The extent of Christ’s righteousness and life is as universal as the extent of Adam’s sin and death, and its intensive power is even greater. The first and the second Adam are perfectly parallel by contrast in their representative character, but Christ is much stronger and remains victor of the field, having slain sin and death, and living for ever as the prince of life. Where sin abounds there grace super-abounds. As through the first Adam sin (as a pervading force) entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death passed unto all men, inasmuch as they all sinned (in Adam generically and potentially, and by actual transgression individually); so much more through Christ, the second Adam, righteousness entered into the world and life through righteousness, and thus righteousness passed unto all men on condition of faith by which we partake of his righteousness.782  God shut up all men in disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all that believe.783

(1.) The Preparation for this salvation was the promise and the law of the Old dispensation. The promise given to Abraham and the patriarchs is prior to the law, and not set aside by the law; it contained the germ and the pledge of salvation, and Abraham stands out as the father of the faithful, who was justified by faith even before he received circumcision as a sign and seal. The law came in besides, or between the promise and the gospel in order to develop the disease of sin, to reveal its true character as a transgression of the divine will, and thus to excite the sense of the need of salvation. The law is in itself holy and good, but cannot give life; it commands and threatens, but gives no power to fulfil; it cannot renew the flesh, that is, the depraved, sinful nature of man; it can neither justify nor sanctify, but it brings the knowledge of sin, and by its discipline it prepares men for the freedom of Christ, as a schoolmaster prepares children for independent manhood.784

(2.) The Salvation itself is comprehended in the person and work of Christ. It was accomplished in the fulness of the time by the sinless life, the atoning death, and the glorious resurrection and exaltation of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who appeared in the likeness of the flesh of sin and as an offering for sin, and thus procured for us pardon, peace, and reconciliation. "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." This is the greatest gift of the eternal love of the Father for his creatures. The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross. Though he was rich, being equal with God, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich. In reward for his active and passive obedience God exalted him and gave him a name above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord.785

Formerly the cross of Christ had been to the carnal Messianic expectations and self-righteousness of Paul, as well as of other Jews, the greatest stumbling-block, as it was the height of folly to the worldly wisdom of the heathen mind.786  But the heavenly vision of the glory of Jesus at Damascus unlocked the key for the understanding of this mystery, and it was confirmed by the primitive apostolic tradition,787 and by his personal experience of the failure of the law and the power of the gospel to give peace to his troubled conscience. The death of Christ appeared to him now as the divinely appointed means for procuring righteousness. It is the device of infinite wisdom and love to reconcile the conflicting claims of justice and mercy whereby God could justify the sinner and yet remain just himself.788  Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us that we might become righteousness of God in him. He died in the place and for the benefit (uJpevr, periv) of sinners and enemies, so that his death has a universal significance. If one died for all, they all died.789  He offered his spotless and holy life as a ransom (luvtron) or price (timhv) for our sins, and thus effected our redemption (ajpoluvtrwsi"), as prisoners of war are redeemed by the payment of an equivalent. His death, therefore, is a vicarious sacrifice, an atonement, an expiation or propitiation iJlasmov", iJlasthvrion, sacrificium expiatorium) for the sins of the whole world, and secured full and final remission (a[fesi") and reconciliation between God and man (katallaghv). This the Mosaic law and sacrifices could not accomplish. They could only keep alive and deepen the sense of the necessity of an atonement. If righteousness came by the law, Christ’s death would be needless and fruitless. His death removes not only the guilt of sin, but it destroyed also its power and dominion. Hence the great stress Paul laid on the preaching of the cross (oJ lovgo" tou' staurou') in which alone he would glory.790

This rich doctrine of the atonement which pervades the Pauline Epistles is only a legitimate expansion of the word of Christ that he would give his life as a ransom for sinners and shed his blood for the remission of sins.

(3.) While Christ accomplished the salvation, the Holy Spirit appropriates it to the believer. The Spirit is the religious and moral principle of the new life. Emanating from God, he dwells in the Christian as a renewing, sanctifying, comforting energy, as the higher conscience, as a divine guide and monitor. He mediates between Christ and the church as Christ mediates between God and the world; be is the divine revealer of Christ to the individual consciousness and the source of all graces (carivsmata) through which the new life manifests itself. "Christ in us" is equivalent to having the "Spirit of Christ." It is only by the inward revelation of the Spirit that we can call Christ our Lord and Saviour, and God our Father; by the Spirit the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; the Spirit works in us faith and all virtues; it is the Spirit who transforms even the body of the believer into a holy temple; those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God and heirs of salvation; it is by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that we are made free from the law of sin and death and are able to walk in newness of life. Where the Spirit of God is there is true liberty.791

(4.) There is, then, a threefold cause of our salvation: the Father who sends his Son, the Son who procures salvation, and the Holy Spirit who applies it to the believer. This threefold agency is set forth in the benediction, which comprehends all divine blessings: "the grace (cavri") of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the (ajgavph) of God, and the communion (koinwniva) of the Holy Spirit."792  This is Paul’s practical view of the Holy Trinity as revealed in the gospel. The grace of Christ is mentioned first because in it is exhibited to us the love of the Father in its highest aspect as a saving power; to the Holy Spirit is ascribed the communion because he is the bond of union between the Father and the Son, between Christ and the believer, and between the believers as members of one brotherhood of the redeemed.

To this divine trinity corresponds, we may say, the human trinity of Christian graces: faith, hope, love.793

III. The Order of Salvation.—(1.) Salvation has its roots in the eternal counsel of God, his Foreknowledge (provgnwsi"), and his Foreordination (proorismov", provqesi"); the former an act of his omniscient intellect, the latter of his omnipotent will. Logically, foreknowledge precedes foreordination, but in reality both coincide and are simultaneous in the divine mind, in which there is no before nor after.794

Paul undoubtedly teaches an eternal election by the sovereign grace of God, that is an unconditioned and unchangeable predestination of his children to holiness and salvation in and through his Son Jesus Christ.795  He thus cuts off all human merit, and plants the salvation upon an immovable rock. But he does not thereby exclude human freedom and responsibility; on the contrary, he includes them as elements in the divine plan, and boldly puts them together.796  Hence he exhorts and warns men as if salvation might be gained or lost by their effort. Those who are lost, are lost by their own unbelief. Perdition is the righteous judgment for sin unrepented of and persisted in. It is a strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he is the strongest opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even in the ninth chapter of Romans. But he aims at no philosophical solution of a problem which the finite understanding of man cannot settle; he contents himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free gift of salvation and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian experience includes both truths, and we find no contradiction in praying as if all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man. This is Pauline theology and practice.

Foreknowledge and foreordination are the eternal background of salvation: call, justification, sanctification, and glorification mark the progressive steps in the time of execution, and of the personal application of salvation.797

(2.) The Call (klh'si") proceeds from God the Father through the preaching of the gospel salvation which is sincerely offered to all. Faith comes from preaching, preaching from preachers, and the preachers from God who sends them.798

The human act which corresponds to the divine call is the conversion (metavnoia) of the sinner; and this includes repentance or turning away from sin, and faith or turning to Christ, under the influence of the Holy Spirit who acts through the word.799  The Holy Spirit is the objective principle of the new life of the Christian. Faith is the free gift of God, and at the same time the highest act of man. It is unbounded trust in Christ, and the organ by which we apprehend him, his very life and benefits, and become as it were identified with him, or mystically incorporated with him.800

(3.) Justification (dikaivwsi") is the next step. This is a vital doctrine in Paul’s system and forms the connecting link as well as the division line between the Jewish and the Christian period of his life. It was with him always a burning life-question. As a Jew he sought righteousness by works of the law, honestly and earnestly, but in vain; as a Christian he found it, as a free gift of grace, by faith in Christ. Righteousness (dikaiosuvnh), as applied to man, is the normal relation of man to the holy, will of God as expressed in his revealed law, which requires supreme love to God and love to our neighbor; it is the moral and religious ideal, and carries in itself the divine favor and the highest happiness. It is the very end for which man was made; he is to be conformed to God who is absolutely holy and righteous. To be god-like is the highest conception of human perfection and bliss.

But there are two kinds of righteousness, or rather two ways of seeking it: one of the law, and sought by works of the law; but this is imaginary, at best very defective, and cannot stand before God; and the righteousness of Christ, or the righteousness of faith, which is freely communicated to the believer and accepted by God. Justification is the act of God by which he puts the repenting sinner in possession of the righteousness of Christ. It is the reverse of condemnation; it implies the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It is based upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ and conditioned by faith, as the subjective organ of apprehending and appropriating Christ with all his benefits. We are therefore justified by grace alone through faith alone; yet faith remains not alone, but is ever fruitful of good works.

The result of justification is peace (eijrhvnh) with God, and the state of adoption (uiJoqesiva) and this implies also the heirship (klhronomiva) of eternal life. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him."801  The root of Paul’s theory of justification is found in the teaching of Christ: he requires from his disciples a far better righteousness than the legal righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, as a condition of entering the kingdom of heaven, namely, the righteousness of God; he holds up this righteousness of God as the first object to be sought; and teaches that it can only be obtained by faith, which he everywhere presents as the one and only condition of salvation on the part of man.802

(4.) Sanctification (aJgiasmov").803  The divine act of justification is inseparable from the conversion and renewal of the sinner. It affects the will and conduct as well as the feeling. Although gratuitous, it is not unconditional. It is of necessity the beginning of sanctification, the birth into a new life which is to grow unto full manhood. We are not justified outside of Christ, but only in Christ by a living faith, which unites us with him in his death unto sin and resurrection unto holiness. Faith is operative in love and must produce good works as the inevitable proof of its existence. Without love, the greatest of Christian graces, even the strongest faith would be but "sounding brass or clanging cymbal."804

Sanctification is not a single act, like justification, but a process. It is a continuous growth of the whole inner man in holiness from the moment of conversion and justification to the reappearance of Jesus Christ in glory.805  On the part of God it is insured, for he is faithful and will perfect the good work which he began; on the part of man it involves constant watchfulness, lest he stumble and fall. In one view it depends all on the grace of God, in another view it depends all on the exertion of man. There is a mysterious co-operation between the two agencies, which is expressed in the profound paradox: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure."806  The believer is mystically identified with Christ from the moment of his conversion (sealed by baptism). He died with Christ unto sin so as to sin no more; and he rose with him to a new life unto God so as to live for God; he is crucified to the world and the world to him; he is a new creature in Christ; the old man of sin is dead and buried, the new man lives in holiness and righteousness. "It is no longer I (my own sinful self) that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me."807  Here is the whole doctrine of Christian life: it is Christ in us, and we in Christ. It consists in a vital union with Christ, the crucified and risen Redeemer, who is the indwelling, all-pervading, and controlling life of the believer; but the union is no pantheistic confusion or absorption; the believer continues to live as a self-conscious and distinct personality. For the believer "to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s."808

In Romans 12, Paul sums up his ethics in the idea of gratitude which manifests itself in a cheerful sacrifice of our persons and services to the God of our salvation.809

(5.) Glorification (doxavzein). This is the final completion of the work of grace in the believer and will appear at the parousia of our Lord. It cannot be hindered by any power present or future, visible or invisible, for God and Christ are stronger than all our enemies and will enable us to come out more than conquerors from the conflict of faith.

This lofty conviction of final victory finds most eloquent expression in the triumphal ode which closes the eighth chapter of Romans.810

IV. The Historical Progress of the gospel of salvation from Jews to Gentiles and back again to the Jews.811  Salvation was first intended for and offered to the Jews, who were for centuries prepared for it by the law and the promise, and among whom the Saviour was born, lived, died, and rose again. But the Jews as a nation rejected Christ and his apostles, and hardened their hearts in unbelief. This fact filled the apostle with unutterable sadness, and made him willing to sacrifice even his own salvation (if it were possible) for the salvation of his kinsmen.

But he sees light in this dark mystery. First of all, God has a sovereign right over all his creatures and manifests both his mercy and his righteousness in the successive stages of the historical execution of his wise designs. His promise has not failed, for it was not given to all the carnal descendants of Abraham and Isaac, but only to the spiritual descendants, the true Israelites who have the faith of Abraham, and they have been saved, as individual Jews are saved to this day. And even in his relation to the vessels of wrath who by unbelief and ingratitude have fitted themselves for destruction, he shows his long-suffering.

In the next place, the real cause of the rejection of the body of the Jews is their own rejection of Christ. They sought their own righteousness by works of the law instead of accepting the righteousness of God by faith.

Finally, the rejection of the Jews is only temporary and incidental in the great drama of history. It is overruled for the speedier conversion of the Gentiles, and the conversion of the full number or the organic totality of the Gentiles (not all individual Gentiles) will lead ultimately to the conversion of Israel. "A hardening in part has befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved."

With this hopeful prophecy, which seems yet far off, but which is steadily approaching fulfilment, and will be realized in God’s own time and way, the apostle closes the doctrinal part of the Epistle to the Romans. "God has shut up all men (tou;" pavnta"¼ unto disobedience that he might have mercy upon all men. O the depth of the riche" both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God[ how unsearchable are hi" judgment", and hi" way" past tracing out[ ... For of Him »ejx aujtou'¼ and through Him »dij aujtou'), and unto Him (eij" aujtonv) are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen."812

Before this glorious consummation, however, there will be a terrible conflict with Antichrist or "the man of sin," and the full revelation of the mystery of lawlessness now held in check. Then the Lord will appear as the conqueror in the field, raise the dead, judge the world, destroy the last enemy, and restore the kingdom to the Father that God may be all in all (ta; pavnta ejn pa'sin).813

Notes.

I. The Pauline System of Doctrine has been more frequently explained than any other.

Among the earlier writers Neander, Usteri, and Schmid take the lead, and are still valuable. Neander and Schmid are in full sympathy with the spirit and views of Paul. Usteri adapted them somewhat to Schleiermacher’s system, to which he adhered.

Next to them the Tübingen school, first the master, Baur (twice, in his Paul, and in his New Test. Theology), and then his pupils, Pfleiderer and Holsten, have done most for a critical reproduction. They rise far above the older rationalism in an earnest and intelligent appreciation of the sublime theology of Paul, and leave the impression that he was a most profound, bold, acute, and consistent thinker on the highest themes. But they ignore the supernatural element of inspiration, they lack spiritual sympathy with the faith of the apostle, overstrain his antagonism to Judaism (as did Marcion of old), and confine the authentic sources to the four anti-Judaic Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, although recognizing in the minor Epistles the "paulinische Grundlage."  The more moderate followers of Baur, however, now admit the genuineness of from seven to ten Pauline Epistles, leaving only the three Pastoral Epistles and Ephesians in serious doubt.

The Paulinismus of Weiss (in the third ed. of his Bibl. Theol., 1881, pp. 194–472) is based upon a very careful philological exegesis in detail, and is in this respect the most valuable of all attempts to reproduce Paul’s theology. He divides it into three sections: 1st, the system of the four great doctrinal and polemical Epistles; 2d, the further development of Paulinism in the Epistles of the captivity; 3d, the doctrine of the Pastoral Epistles. He doubts only the genuineness of the last group, but admits a progress from the first to the second.

Of French writers, Reuss, Pressensé, and Sabatier give the best expositions of the Pauline system, more or less in imitation of German labors. Reuss, of Strasburg, who writes in German as well, is the most independent and learned; Pressensé is more in sympathy with Paul’s belief, but gives only a meagre summary; Sabatier leans to the Tübingen school. Reuss discusses Paul’s system (in vol. III., 17–220) very fully under these heads: righteousness; sin; the law; the gospel; God; the person of Christ; the work of Christ; typical relation of the old and new covenant; faith; election; calling and the Holy Spirit; regeneration; redemption; justification and reconciliation; church; hope and trial; last times; kingdom of God. Sabatier (L’apôtre Paul, pp. 249–318, second ed., 1881) more briefly but clearly develops the Pauline theology from the Christological point of view (la personne de Christ Principe générateur de la conscience chrétienne) under three heads: lot, the Christian principle in the psychological sphere (anthropology); 2d, in the social and historical sphere (religious philosophy of history); 3d, in the metaphysical sphere (theology), which culminates in the qeo;" ta; pavnta ejn pa'sin "Ainsi naît et grandit cet arbre magnifique de la pensée de Paul, dont les racines plongent dans le sol de la conscience chrétienne et dont la cime est dans les cieux."

Renan, who professes so much sentimental admiration for the poetry and wisdom of Jesus, "the charming Galilaean peasant," has no organ for the theology of Paul any more than Voltaire had for the poetry of Shakespeare. He regards him as a bold and vigorous, but uncouth and semi-barbarous genius, full of rabbinical subtleties, useless speculations, and polemical intolerance even against good old Peter at Antioch.

Several doctrines of Paul have been specially discussed by German scholars, as Tischendorf: Doctrina Pauli apostoli de Vi Mortis Christi Satisfactoria (Leipz., 1837); Räbiger: De Christologia Paulina (Breslau, 1852); Lipsius: Die paulinische Rechtfertigunglehre (Leipz., 1853); Ernesti: Vom Ursprung der Sünde nach paulinischem Lehrgehalt (Wolfenbüttel, 1855); Die Ethik des Paulus (Braunschweig, 1868; 3d ed., 1881); W. Beyschlag Die paulinische Theodicee (Berlin, 1868); R. Schmidt: Die Christologie des Ap. Paulus (Gött., 1870); A. Delitzsch: Adam und Christus (Bonn, 1871); H. Lüdemann: Die Anthropologie des Ap. Paulus (Kiel, 1872); R. Stähelin: Zur paulinischen Eschatologie (1874); A. Schumann: Der weltgeschichtl. Entwickelungsprocess nach dem Lehrsystem des Ap. Paulus (Crefeld, 1875); Fr. Köstlin: Die Lehre des Paulus von der Auferstehung (1877); H. H. Wendt: Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist in biblischen Sprachgebrauch (Gotha, 1878).

II. The Christology of Paul is closely interwoven with his soteriology. In Romans and Galatians the soteriological aspect prevails, in Philippians and Colossians the christological. His christology is very rich, and with that of the Epistle to the Hebrews prepares the way for the christology of John. It is even more fully developed than John’s, only less prominent in the system.

The chief passages on the person of Christ are: Rom. 1:3, 4 (ejk spevrmato" Dauei;d kata; savrka ... uiJo" qeou' kata; pneu'ma aJgiwsuvnh"); 8:3 (oJ qeo;" to;n ejautou' uiJo;n pemya" ejn oJmoiwvmati savrko" aJmartiva") 8:32 (o}" tou' ijdivou uiJou' oujk ejfeivsato) 9:5 (ejx w|n oJ Cristo;" to; kata; savrka, oJ w]n epi; pavntwn, qe;o" eujloghto;" eij" tou;" aijwna"—but the punctuation and consequently the application of the doxology—whether to God or to Christ—are disputed); 1 Cor. 1:19 (oJ kuvrio" hJmw'n, a very frequent designation); 2 Cor. 5:21 (to;n mh; gnovnta aJmartivan); 8:9 (ejptwceusen plouvsio" w[n, i{na uJmei'" th/' ejkeivnou ptwceiva/ plouthvshte ); Phil. 2:5–11 (the famous passage about the kevnwsi"); Col. 1:15–18 (o{" ejstin eijkw;n tou' qeou' tou' ajoravtou prwtovtoko" pavsh" krivsew", o{ti ejn aujtw/' ejkrivsqh ta; panvta ... ta; pavnta dij aujtou' kai;i; eij" aujto;n e[ktistai ...); 2:9 (ejn aujtw/' katoikei' pa'n to; plhvrwma th'" qeovthto" swmatikw'" ); 1 Tim. 3:16 (o}" ejfanerwvqh ejn sarkiv ...); Tit.2:13 (tou' megavlou qeou' kai; swth'ro" hJmw'n Cristou' jIhsou', where, however, commentators differ in the construction, as in Rom. 9:5).

From these and other passages the following doctrinal points may be inferred:

1.The eternal pre-existence of Christ as to his divine nature. The pre-existence generally is implied in Rom. 8:3, 32; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 2:5; the pre-existence before the creation is expressly asserted, Col. 1:15; the eternity of this pre-existence is a metaphysical inference from the nature of the case, since an existence before all creation must be an uncreated, therefore a divine or eternal existence which has no beginning as well as no end. (John carefully distinguishes between the eternal h\n of the pre-existent Logos, and the temporal ejgevneto of the incarnate Logos, John 1:1, 14; comp. 8:58.)  This is not inconsistent with the designation of Christ as "the first-born of all creation," Col. 1:15; for prwtovtoko" is different from prwtovktisto" (first-created), as the Nicene fathers already remarked, in opposition to Arius, who inferred from the passage that Christ was the first creature of God and the creator of all other creatures. The word first-born corresponds to the Johannean monogenhv", only-begotten. "Both express," as Lightfoot says (Com. on Col.) "the same eternal fact; but while monogenhv" states it in itself, prwtovtoko" places it in relation to the universe."  We may also compare the protovgono", first-begotten, which Philo applies to the Logos, as including the original archetypal idea of the created world. "The first-born," used absolutely (prwtovtoko" B]kror  Ps. 89:28), became a recognized title of the Messiah. Moreover, the genitive pavsh" ktivsew" is not the partitive, but the comparative genitive: the first-born as compared with, that is, before, every creature. So Justin Martyr (pro; pavntwn tw'n ktismavtwn), Meyer, and Bp. Lightfoot, in loc.; also Weiss, Bibl. Theol. d. N. T., p. 431 (who refutes the opposite view of Usteri, Reuss, and Baur, and says: "Da pavsh" krivsew" jede einzelne Creatur bezeichnet, so kann der Genii. nur comparativ genommen werden, und nur besagen, dass er im Vergleich mit jeden Creatur der Erstgeborne war"). The words immediately following, John 1:16, 17, exclude the possibility of regarding Christ himself as a creature. Lightfoot, in his masterly Comm. (p. 212 sq.), very fully explains the term as teaching the absolute pre-existence of the Son, his priority to and sovereignty over all creation.

The recent attempt of Dr. Beyschlag (Christologie des N. T., pp. 149 sqq., 242 sqq.) to resolve the pre-existent Christ of Paul and John into an ideal principle, instead of a real personality, is an exegetical failure, like the similar attempts of the Socinians, and is as far from the mark as the interpretation of some of the Nicene fathers (e.g., Marcellus) who, in order to escape the Arian argument, understood prototokos of the incarnate Logos as the head of the new spiritual creation.

2. Christ is the mediator and the end of creation. "All things were created in him, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible ...; all things have been created through him (di j aujtou' and unto him (eij" aujtovn); and he is before all things, and in him all things consist," Col. 1:15–18. The same doctrine is taught in 1 Cor. 8:6 ("Jesus Christ, through whom are all things"); 10;9; 15:47; as well as in the Ep. to the Hebrews 1:2: ("through whom he also made the worlds" or "ages"), and in John 1:3.

3. The divinity of Christ is clearly implied in the constant co-ordination of Christ with the Father as the author of "grace and peace," in the salutations of the Epistles, and in such expressions as, "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15); "in him dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (2:9): "existing in the form of God," and "being on an equality with God" (Phil. 2:6). In two passages he is, according to the usual interpretation, even called "God" (qeov"), but, as already remarked, the exegetes are still divided on the reference of qeov" in Rom. 9:5 and Tit. 2:13. Meyer admits that Paul, according to his christology, could call Christ "God" (as predicate, without the article, qeov" not oJ qeov"); and Weiss, in the 6th edition of Meyer on Romans (1881), adopts the prevailing orthodox punctuation and interpretation in Rom. 9:5 as the most natural, on purely exegetical grounds (the necessity of a supplement to kata; savrka, and the position of eujlovghto" after qeov"): "Christ as concerning the flesh, who [at the same time according to his higher nature] is over all, even God blessed for ever."  Westcott and Hort are not quite agreed on the punctuation. See their note in Greek Test., Introd. and Appendix, p. 109.

4. The incarnation. This is designated by the terms "God sent his own Son (Rom. 8:3, comp. 8:32); Christ "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:7). Without entering here into the Kenosis controversy (the older one between Giessen and Tübingen, 1620–1630, and the recent one which began with Thomasius, 1845), it is enough to say that the Kenosis, or self-exinanition, refers not to the incarnate, but to the pre-existent Son of God, and implies a certain kind of self-limitation or temporary surrender of the divine mode of existence during the state of humiliation. This humiliation was followed by exaltation as a reward for his obedience unto death (Phil 2:9–11); hence he is now "the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8). To define the limits of the Kenosis, and to adjust it to the immutability of the Godhead and the intertrinitarian process, lies beyond the sphere of exegesis and belongs to speculative dogmatics.

5. The true, but sinless humanity of Christ. He appeared "in the likeness of the flesh of sin" (Rom. 8:3); he is a son of David "according to the flesh" (1:3), which includes the whole human nature, body, soul, and spirit (as in John 1:14); he is called a man (a[nqrwpo") in the full sense of the term (1 Cor. 15:21; Rom. 5:15; Acts 17:31). He was "born of a woman, born under the law"(Gal. 4:4); he was "found in fashion as a man" and became "obedient even unto death" (Phil. 2:8), and he truly suffered and died, like other men. But he "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). He could, of course, not be the Saviour of sinners if he himself were a sinner and in need of salvation.

Of the events of Christ’s life, Paul mentions especially and frequently his death and resurrection, on which our salvation depends. He also reports the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which perpetuates the memory and the blessing of the atoning sacrifice on the cross (1 Cor. 11:23–30). He presupposes, of course, a general knowledge of the historical Christ, as his Epistles are all addressed to believing converts; but he incidentally preserves a gem of Christ’s sayings not reported by the Evangelists, which shines like a lone star on the firmament of uncertain traditions:, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

III. Paul’s Doctrine of Predestination.—Eternal foreknowledge of all persons and things is necessarily included in God’s omniscience, and is uniformly taught in the Bible; eternal foreordination or predestination is included in his almighty power and sovereignty, but must be so conceived as to leave room for free agency and responsibility, and to exclude God from the authorship of sin. Self-limitation is a part of freedom even in man, and may be exercised by the sovereign God for holy purposes and from love to his creatures; in fact it is necessary, if salvation is to be a moral process, and not a physical or mechanical necessity. Religion is worth nothing except as the expression of free conviction and voluntary devotion. Paul represents sometimes the divine sovereignty, sometimes the human responsibility, sometimes, as in Phil. 2:12, 13, he combines both sides, without an attempt to solve the insolvable problem which really lies beyond the present capacity of the human mind. "He does not deal with speculative extremes; and in whatever way the question be speculatively adjusted, absolute dependence and moral self-determination are both involved in the immediate Christian self-consciousness," Baur, Paul, II. 249. "Practical teaching," says Reuss (II. 532) to the same effect, "will always be constrained to insist upon the fact that man’s salvation is a free gift of God, and that his condemnation is only the just punishment of sin."  Comp. also Farrar, St. Paul, II. 243, 590; Weiss, p. 356 sqq.; Beyschlag, Die paulinische Theodicee (Berlin, 1868). Weiss thus sums up Paul’s doctrine of predestination: "An sich hat Gott das absolute Becht, die Menschen von vornherein zum Heil oder zum Verderben zu erschaffen und durch freie Machtwirkung diesem Ziele zuzuführen; aber er hat sich in Betreff des christlichen Heils dieses Rechtes nur insofern bedient, als er unabhängig von allem menschlichen Thun und Verdienen nach seinem unbeschränkten Willen bestimmt, an welche Bedingung er seine Gnade knüpfen will. Die Bedingung, an welche er seine Erwählung gebunden hat, ist nun nichts anders als die Liebe zu ihm, welche er an den empfänglichen Seelen vorhererkennt. Die Erwählten aber werden berufen, indem Gott durch das Evangelium in ihnen den Glauben wirkt."

There can be no doubt that Paul teaches an eternal election to eternal salvation by free grace, an election which is to be actualized by faith in Christ and a holy life of obedience. But he does not teach a decree of reprobation or a predestination to sin and perdition (which would indeed be a "decretum horribile," if verum). This is a logical invention of supralapsarian theologians who deem it to be the necessary counterpart of the decree of election. But man’s logic is not God’s logic. A decree of reprobation is nowhere mentioned. The term ajdovkimo", disapproved, worthless, reprobate, is used five times only as a description of character (twice of things). Romans 9 is the Gibraltar of supralapsarianism, but it must be explained in connection with Rom. 10–11, which present the other aspects. The strongest passage is Rom. 9:22, where Paul speaks of skeuvh ojrgh'" kathrtismevna eij" ajpwvleian. But he significantly uses here the passive: "fitted unto destruction," or rather (as many of the best commentators from Chrysostom to Weiss take it) the middle: "who fitted themselves for destruction," and so deserved it; while of the vessels of mercy he says that God "before prepared" them unto glory (skeuvh ejlevou" a} prohtoivmasen, 9:23). He studiously avoids to say of the vessels of wrath: a} kathvrtisen, which would have corresponded to a} prohtoivmasen, and thus he exempts God from a direct and efficient agency in sin and destruction. When in 9:17, he says of Pharaoh, that God raised him up for the very purpose (eij" auvto; tou'tov ejxhvgeirav se) that he might show in him His power, he does not mean that God created him or called him into existence (which would require a different verb), but, according to the Hebrew (Ex. 9:16, the hiphil of [;m'd), that "he caused him to stand forth" as actor in the scene; and when he says with reference to the same history that God "hardens whom he will" (Rom. 9:18. o}n dev qevlei sklhruvnei), it must be remembered that Pharaoh had already repeatedly hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34, 35), so that God punished him for his sin and abandoned him to its consequences. God does not cause evil, but he bends, guides, and overrules it and often punishes sin with sin. "Das ist der Fluch der bösen That, dass sie, fortzeugend, immer Böses muss gebären." (Schiller.)

In this mysterious problem of predestination Paul likewise faithfully carries out the teaching of his Master. For in the sublime description of the final judgment, Christ says to the "blessed of my Father:" "Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34), but to those on the left hand he says, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels" (25:41). The omission of the words "of my Father," after "ye cursed," and of the words, for you, "and, from the foundation of the world," is very significant, and implies that while the inheritance of the kingdom is traced to the eternal favor of God, the damnation is due to the guilt of man.

IV. The doctrine of Justification. This occupies a prominent space in Paul’s system, though by no means to the disparagement of his doctrine of sanctification, which is treated with the same fulness even in Romans (comp. Rom. 6–8 and 12–15). Luther, in conflict with Judaizing Rome, overstated the importance of justification by faith when he called it the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. This can only be said of Christ (comp. Matt. 16:16; 1 Cor. 3:11; 1 John 4:2, 3). It is not even the theme of the Epistle to the Romans, as often stated (e.g., by Farrar, St. Paul, II. 181); for it is there subordinated by gavr to the broader idea of salvation (swthriva), which is the theme (Rom 1:16, 17). Justification by faith is the way by which salvation can be obtained.

The doctrine of justification may be thus illustrated:

Dikaiosuvnh

( qd,x, , hq;d;x] )

Dikaiosuvnh tou' novmou                                    Dikaiosuvnh tou' qeou'

ejx e[rgwn                                                           ejk qeou'

ijdiva.                                                                  th' " pivstew"

ejk th' " pivstew"

dia; pivstew" Cristou'.

The cognate words are dikaivwsi", dikaivwma, divkaio", dikaiovw. The Pauline idea of righteousness is derived from the Old Testament, and is inseparable from the conception of the holy will of God and his revealed law. But the classical usage is quite consistent with it, and illustrates the biblical usage from a lower plane. The Greek words are derived from jus, right, and further back from. divca, or div", two-fold, in two parts (according to Aristotle, Eth. Nic., v. 2); hence they indicate a well-proportioned relation between parts or persons where each has his due. It may then apply to the relation between God and man, or to the relation between man and man, or to both at once. To the Greeks a righteous man was one who fulfils his obligations to God and man. It was a Greek proverb: "In righteousness all virtue is contained."

Dikaiosuvnh (qd,x, hq;d;x])  is an attribute of God, and a corresponding moral condition of man, i.e., man’s conformity to the will of God as expressed in his holy law. It is therefore identical with true religion, with piety and virtue, as required by God, and insures his favor and blessing. The word occurs (according to Bruder’s Concord.) sixty times in all the Pauline Epistles, namely: thirty-six times in Romans, four times in Galatians, seven times in 2 Corinthians, once in 1 Corinthians, four times in Philippians, three times in Ephesians, three times in 2 Timothy, once in 1 Timothy, and once in Titus.

Divkaio" (qyDix;) righteous (rechtbeschaffen), is one who fulfils his duties to God and men, and is therefore well pleasing to God. It is used seventeen times by Paul (seven times in Romans), and often elsewhere in the New Testament.

Dikaivwsi" occurs only twice in the New Test. (Rom. 4:25; 5:18). It signifies justification, or the act of God by which he puts the sinner into the possession of righteousness.

Dikaivwma, which is found Rom. 1:32; 2:26; 5:16, 18; 8:4 means a righteous decree, or judgment. Aristotle (Eth. Nicom., v. 10) defines it as to; ejpanovrqwma tou' ajdikhvmato", the amendment of an evil deed, or a legal adjustment; and this would suit the passage in Rom. 5:16, 18.

The verb dikaiovw (iq]Dex , qyDix]hi)occurs twenty-seven times in Paul, mostly in Romans, several times in the Synoptical Gospels, once in Acts, and three times in James 2:21, 24, 25. It may mean, etymologically, to make just, justificare (for the verbs in ovw, derived from adjectives of the second declension, indicate the making of what the adjective denotes, e.g., dhlovw, to make clear, fanerovw, to reveal, tuflovw, to blind); but in the Septuagint and the Greek Testament it hardly, ever has this meaning ("haec significatio," says Grimm, "admodum rara, nisi prorsus dubia est"), and is used in a forensic or judicial sense: to declare one righteous (aliquem justum declarare, judicare). This justification of the sinner is, of course, not a legal fiction, but perfectly true, for it is based on the real righteousness of Christ which the sinner makes his own by faith, and must prove his own by a life of holy obedience, or good works. For further expositions see my annotations to Lange on Romans, pp. 74, 130, 136, 138; and my Com on Gal. 2:16, 17. On the imputation controversies see my essay in Lange on Romans 5:12, pp. 190–195. On the relation of Paul’s doctrine of justification to that of James, see § 69 of this vol.

V. Paul’s doctrine of the Church has been stated in § 65 of this vol. But it requires more than one book to do anything like justice to the wonderful theology of this wonderful

§72. John and the Gospel of Love.

(See the Lit. in § 40 p. 405.)

General Character.

The unity of Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian theology meets us in the writings of John, who, in the closing decades of the first century, summed up the final results of the preceding struggles of the apostolic age and transmitted them to posterity. Paul had fought out the great conflict with Judaism and secured the recognition of the freedom and universality of the gospel for all time to come. John disposes of this question with one sentence: "The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."814  His theology marks the culminating height of divine knowledge in the apostolic age. It is impossible to soar higher than the eagle, which is his proper symbol.815  His views are so much identified with the words of his Lord, to whom he stood more closely related than any other disciple, that it is difficult to separate them; but the prologue to his Gospel contains his leading ideas, and his first Epistle the practical application. The theology of the Apocalypse is also essentially the same, and this goes far to confirm the identity of authorship.816

John was not a logician, but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition. He speaks from personal experience and testifies of that which his eyes have seen and his ears heard and his hands have handled, of the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.817

John’s theology is marked by artless simplicity and spiritual depth. The highest art conceals art. As in poetry, so in religion, the most natural is the most perfect. He moves in a small circle of ideas as compared with Paul, but these ideas are fundamental and all-comprehensive. He goes back to first principles and sees the strong point without looking sideways or taking note of exceptions. Christ and Antichrist, believers and unbelievers, children of God and children of the devil, truth and falsehood, light and darkness, love and hatred, life and death: these are the great contrasts under which he views the religious world. These he sets forth again and again with majestic simplicity.

John and Paul.

John’s type of doctrine is less developed and fortified than Paul’s, but more ideal. His mind was neither so rich nor so strong, but it soared higher and anticipated the beatific vision. Although Paul was far superior to him as a scholar (and practical worker), yet the ancient Greek church saw in John the ideal theologian.818  John’s spirit and style may be compared to a calm, clear mountain-lake which reflects the image of the sun) moon, and stars, while Paul resembles the mountain-torrent that rushes over precipices and carries everything before it; yet there are trumpets of war in John, and anthems of peace in Paul. The one begins from the summit, with God and the Logos, the other from the depths of man’s sin and misery; but both meet in the God-man who brings God down to man and lifts man up to God. John is contemplative and serene, Paul is aggressive and polemical; but both unite in the victory of faith and the never-ending dominion of love. John’s theology is Christological, Paul’s soteriological; John starts from the person of Christ, Paul from his work; but their christology and soteriology are essentially agreed. John’s ideal is life eternal, Paul’s ideal is righteousness; but both derive it from the same source, the union with Christ, and find in this the highest happiness of man. John represents the church triumphant, Paul the church militant of his day and of our day, but with the full assurance of final victory even over the last enemy.

The Central Idea.

John’s Christianity centres in the idea of love and life, which in their last root are identical. His dogmatics are summed up in the word: God first loved us; his ethics in the exhortation: Therefore let us love Him and the brethren. He is justly called the apostle of love. Only we must not understand this word in a sentimental, but in the highest and purest moral sense. God’s love is his self-communication to man; man’s love is a holy self-consecration to God. We may recognize—in rising stages of transformation—the same fiery spirit in the Son of Thunder who called vengeance from heaven; in the Apocalyptic seer who poured out the vials of wrath against the enemies of Christ; and in the beloved disciple who knew no middle ground, but demanded undivided loyalty and whole-souled devotion to his Master. In him the highest knowledge and the highest love coincide: knowledge is the eye of love, love the heart of knowledge; both constitute eternal life, and eternal life is the fulness of happiness.819

The central truth of John and the central fact in Christianity itself is the incarnation of the eternal Logos as the highest manifestation of God’s love to the world. The denial of this truth is the criterion of Antichrist.820

The Principal Doctrines.

I. The doctrine of God. He is spirit (pneu'ma), he is light (fw'") he is love (ajgavph).821  These are the briefest and yet the profoundest definitions which can be given of the infinite Being of all beings. The first is put into the mouth of Christ, the second and third are from the pen of John. The first sets forth God’s metaphysical, the second his intellectual, the third his moral perfection; but they are blended in one.

God is spirit, all spirit, absolute spirit (in opposition to every materialistic conception and limitation); hence omnipresent, all-pervading, and should be worshipped, whether in Jerusalem or Gerizim or anywhere else, in spirit and in truth.

God is light, all light without a spot of darkness, and the fountain of all light, that is of truth, purity, and holiness.

God is love; this John repeats twice, looking upon love as the inmost moral essence of God, which animates, directs, and holds together all other attributes; it is the motive power of his revelations or self-communications, the beginning and the end of his ways and works, the core of his manifestation in Christ.

II. The doctrine of Christ’s Person. He is the eternal and the incarnate Logos or Revealer of God. No man has ever yet seen God (qeovn, without the article, God’s nature, or God as God); the only-begotten Son (or God only-begotten),822 who is in the bosom823 of the Father, he and he alone (ekei'no") declared him and brought to light, once and forever, the hidden mystery of his being.824

This perfect knowledge of the Father, Christ claims himself in that remarkable passage in Matthew 11:27, which strikingly confirms the essential harmony of the Johannean and Synoptical representations of Christ.

John (and he alone) calls Christ the "Logos" of God, i.e., the embodiment of God and the organ of all his revelations.825  As the human reason or thought is expressed in word, and as the word is the medium of making our thoughts known to others, so God is known to himself and to the world in and through Christ as the personal Word. While "Logos" designates the metaphysical and intellectual relation, the term "Son" designates the moral relation of Christ to God, as a relation of love, and the epithet "only-begotten" or "only-born" (monogenhv") raises his sonship as entirely unique above every other sonship, which is only a reflection of it. It is a blessed relation of infinite knowledge and infinite love. The Logos is eternal, he is personal, he is divine.826  He was in the beginning before creation or from eternity. He is, on the one hand, distinct from God and in the closest communion with him (pro;" to;n qeovn); on the other hand he is himself essentially divine, and therefore called "God" (qeov", but not oJ qeov").827

This pre-existent Logos is the agent of the creation of all things visible and invisible.828  He is the fulness and fountain of life (hJ zwhv, the true, immortal life, as distinct from bivo", the natural, mortal life), and light (to; fw'", which includes intellectual and moral truth, reason and conscience) to all men. Whatever elements of truth, goodness, and beauty may be found shining like stars and meteors in the darkness of heathendom, must be traced to the Logos, the universal Life-giver and Illuminator.

Here Paul and John meet again; both teach the agency of Christ in the creation, but John more clearly connects him with all the preparatory revelations before the incarnation. This extension of the Logos revelation explains the high estimate which some of the Greek fathers, (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen) put upon the Hellenic, especially the Platonic philosophy, as a training-school of the heathen mind for Christ.

The Logos revealed himself to every man, but in a special manner to his own chosen people; and this revelation culminated in John the Baptist, who summed up in himself the meaning of the law and the prophets, and pointed to Jesus of Nazareth as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

At last the Logos became flesh.829  He completed his revelation by uniting himself with man once and forever in all things, except sin.830  The Hebraizing term "flesh" best expresses his condescension to our fallen condition and the complete reality of his humanity as an object of sense, visible and tangible, in strong contrast with his immaterial divinity. It includes not only the body (sw'ma), but also a human soul (yuchv) and a rational spirit (nou'", pneu'ma); for John ascribes them all to Christ. To use a later terminology, the incarnation (ejnsavrkwsi",incarnatio) is only a stronger term for the assumption of humanity (ejnanqrwvphsi",Menschwerdung). The Logos became man—not partially but totally, not apparently but really, not transiently but permanently, not by ceasing to be divine, nor by being changed into a man, but by an abiding, personal union with man. He is henceforth the Godman. He tabernacled on earth as the true Shekinah, and manifested to his disciples the glory of the only begotten which shone from the veil of his humanity.831  This is the divine-human glory in the state of humiliation as distinct from the divine glory in his preexistent state, and from the final and perfect manifestation of his glory in the state of exaltation in which his disciples shall share.832

The fourth Gospel is a commentary on the ideas of the Prologue. It was written for the purpose that the readers may believe "that Jesus is the Christ (the promised Messiah), the Son of God (in the sense of the only begotten and eternal Son), and that believing they may have life in his name."833

III. The Work of Christ (Soteriology). This implies the conquest over sin and Satan, and the procurement of eternal life. Christ appeared without sin, to the end that he might destroy the works of the devil, who was a liar and murderer from the beginning of history, who first fell away from the truth and then brought sin and death into mankind.834  Christ laid down his life and shed his blood for his sheep. By this self-consecration in death he became the propitiation (iJlasmov") for the sins of believers and for the sins of the whole world.835  His blood cleanses from all the guilt and contamination of sin. He is (in the language of the Baptist) the Lamb of God that bears and takes away the sin of the world; and (in the unconscious prophecy of Caiaphas) he died for the people.836  He was priest and sacrifice in one person. And he continues his priestly functions, being our Advocate in Heaven and ready to forgive us when we sin and come to him in true repentance.837

This is the negative part of Christ’s work, the removal of the obstruction which separated us from God. The positive part consists in the revelation of the Father, and in the communication of eternal life, which includes eternal happiness. He is himself the Life and the Light of the world.838  He calls himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In him the true, the eternal life, which was from the beginning with the Father, appeared personally in human form. He came to communicate it to men. He is the bread of life from heaven, and feeds the believers everywhere spiritually without diminishing, as He fed the five thousand physically with five loaves. That miracle is continued in the mystical self-communication of Christ to his people. Whosoever believes in him has eternal life, which begins here in the new birth and will be completed in the resurrection of the body.839

Herein also the Apocalypse well agrees with the Gospel and Epistles of John. Christ is represented as the victor of the devil.840  He is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, but also the suffering Lamb slain for us. The figure of the lamb, whether it be referred to the paschal lamb, or to the lamb in the Messianic passage of Isaiah 53:7, expresses the idea of atoning sacrifice which is fully realized in the death of Christ. He "washed" (or, according to another reading, he "loosed") "us from our sins by his blood;" he redeemed men "of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and made them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests."  The countless multitude of the redeemed "washed their robes and made them white (bright and shining) in the blood of the Lamb."  This implies both purification and sanctification; white garments being the symbols of holiness.841  Love was the motive which prompted him to give his life for his people.842  Great stress is laid on the resurrection, as in the Gospel, where he is called the Resurrection and the Life. The exalted Logos-Messiah has the keys of death and Hades.843  He is a sharer in the universal government of God; he is the mediatorial ruler of the world, "the Prince of the kings of the earth" "King of kings and Lord of lords."844  The apocalyptic seer likewise brings in the idea of life in its highest sense as a reward of faith in Christ to those who overcome and are faithful unto death, Christ will give "a crown of life," and a seat on his throne. He "shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life; and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes."845

IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology). This is most fully set forth in the farewell discourser, of our Lord, which are reported by John exclusively. The Spirit whom Christ promised to send after his return to the Father, is called the Paraclete, i.e., the Advocate or Counsellor, Helper, who pleads the cause of the believers, directs, supports, and comforts them.846  He is "another Advocate" (a[llo" paravklhto"), Christ himself being the first Advocate who intercedes for believers at the throne of the Father, as their eternal High priest. The Spirit proceeds (eternally) from the Father, and was sent by the Father and the Son on the day of Pentecost.847  He reveals Christ to the heart and glorifies him (ejme; doxavsei¼_ he bear" witnes" to him »marturhvsei peri; ejmou'¼_ he call" to remembrance and explain" hi" teaching »uJma'" didavxei pavnta kai; uJpomnhvsei uJma'" pavnta a{ ei|pon uJmi'n ejgwv); he leads the disciples into the whole truth (oJdhghvsei uJma'" eij" th;n ajlhvqeian pa'san¼_ he take" out of the fulnes" of Christ and show" it to them »ejk tou' ejmou' lambavnei kai; ajnaggelei' uJmi'n ¼. The Holy Spirit i" the Mediator and Intercessor between Christ and the believer, a" Christ i" the Mediator between God and the world. He i" the Spirit of truth and of holines". He convict" »ejlevgcei¼ the world, that i" all men who come under hi" influence, in respect of sin »peri; aJmartiva"¼, of righteousnes" »dikaiosuvnh"¼, and of judgment »krivsew"¼_ and thi" conviction will result either in the conversion, or in the impenitence of the sinner. The operation of the Spirit accompanie" the preaching of the word, and i" alway" internal in the sphere of the heart and conscience. He i" one of the three witnesse" and give" efficacy to the other two witnesse" of Christ on earth, the baptism »to; u}dwr), and the atoning death (to; ai|ma) of Christ.848

V. Christian Life. It begins with a new birth from above or from the Holy Spirit. Believers are children of God who are "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."849  It is a "new" birth compared with the old, a birth "from God," as compared with that from man, a birth from the Holy "Spirit," in distinction from carnal birth, a birth "from heaven," as opposed to earthly birth. The life of the believer does not descend through the channels of fallen nature, but requires a creative act of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. The life of the regenerate is free from the principle and power of sin. "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God."850  Over him the devil has no power.851

The new life is the life of Christ in the soul. It is eternal intrinsically and as to duration. Eternal life in man consists in the knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ—a knowledge which implies full sympathy and communion of love.852  It begins here in faith; hence the oft-repeated declaration that he who believes in Christ has (e[cei) eternal life.853  But it will not appear in its full development till the time of his glorious manifestation, when we shall be like him and see him even as he is.854  Faith is the medium of communication, the bond of union with Christ. Faith is the victory over the world, already here in principle.855

John’s idea of life eternal takes the place of Paul’s idea of righteousness, but both agree in the high conception of faith as the one indispensable condition of securing it by uniting us to Christ, who is both righteousness and life eternal.856

The life of the Christian, moreover, is a communion with Christ and with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Our Lord prayed before his passion that the believers of that and all future ages might be one with him, even as he is one with the Father, and that they may enjoy his glory. John writes his first Epistle for the purpose that his readers may have "fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ, and that thus their joy may be made full."857  This fellowship is only another word for love, and love to God is inseparable from love to the brethren. "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."  "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth in him."  Love to the brethren is the true test of practical Christianity.858  This brotherly fellowship is the true essence of the Church, which is nowhere even mentioned in John’s Gospel and First Epistle.859

Love to God and to the brethren is no mere sentiment, but an active power, and manifests itself in the keeping of God’s commandments.860

Here again John and Paul meet in the idea of love, as the highest of the Christian graces which abides forever when faith shall have passed into sight, and hope into fruition.861

Notes.

The incarnation is expressed by John briefly and tersely in the phrase "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14).

I. The meaning of savrx. Apollinaris confined "flesh" to the body, including the animal soul, and taught that the Logos occupied the place of the rational soul or spirit (nou'", pneu'ma) in Christ; that consequently he was not a full man, but a sort of middle being between God and man, half divine and haIf human, not wholly divine and wholly human. This view was condemned as heretical by the Nicene church, but renewed substantially by the Tübingen school, as being the doctrine of John. According to Baur (l.c., p. 363) savrx ejgeneto is not equivalent to (a[nqrwpo" ejgevneto, but means that the Logos assumed a human body and continued otherwise the same. The incarnation was only an incidental phenomenon in the unchanging personality of the Logos. Moreover the flesh of Christ was not like that of other men, but almost immaterial, so at; to be able to walk on the lake (John 6:16; Comp. 7:10, 15; 8:59 10:39). To this exegesis we object:

1. John expressly ascribes to Christ a soul, John 10:11, 15, 17; 12:27 (hJ yuch/' mou tetavraktai), and a spirit, 11:33 (ejnebrimhvsato tw/' pneuvmati); 13:21 (ejtaracqh tw/' pneuvmati); 19:30 (parevdwken to; pneu'ma). It may be said that pneu’ma is here nothing more than the animal soul, because the same affection is attributed to both, and because it was surrendered in death. But Christ calls himself in John frequently "the Son of man" 1:51, etc.), and once "a man" (a[nqrwpo", 8:40), which certainly must include the more important intellectual and spiritual part as well as the body.

2. "Flesh" is often used in the Old and New Testament for the whole man, as in the phrase "all flesh" (pa'sa savrx, every mortal man), or miva sarvx (John 17:2; Rom. 3:20; 1 Cor. 1:29; Gal. 2:16). In this passage it suited John’s idea better than a[nqrwpo", because it more strongly expresses the condescension of the Logos to the human nature in its present condition, with its weakness, trials, temptations, and sufferings. He completely identified himself with our earthly lot, and became homogeneous with us, even to the likeness, though not the essence, of sin (Rom. 8:3; comp. Heb. 2:14; 5:8, 9). "Flesh" then, when ascribed to Christ, has the same comprehensive meaning in John as it has in Paul (comp. also 1 Tim. 3:16). It is animated flesh, and the soul of that flesh contains the spiritual as well as the physical life.

II. Another difficulty is presented by the verb ejgevneto. The champions of the modern Kenosis theory (Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, Godet, etc.), while differing from the Apollinarian substitution of the Logos for a rational human soul in Christ, assert that the Logos himself because a human soul by voluntary transformation; and so they explain ejgevneto and the famous Pauline phrase eJauto;n ejkevnwsen, morfh;n douvlou labwvn (Phil. 2:7). As the water was changed into wine at Cana (John 2:9: To; u{dwr oi|non gegenhmevnon), so the Logos in infinite self-denial changed his divine being into a human being during the state of his humiliation, and thus led a single life, not a double life (as the Chalcedonian theory of two complete natures simultaneously coexisting in the same person from the manger to the cross seems to imply). But

1. The verb ejgevneto must be understood in agreement with the parallel passages:, "he came in the flesh," 1 John 4:2 (ejn sarki; ejlhluqovta); 2 John 7 (ejrcovmenon ejn sarkiv), with this difference, that "became" indicates the realness of Christ’s manhood, "came" the continuance of his godhood. Compare also Paul’s expression, ejfanerwvqh ejn sarkiv, 1 Tim. 3:16.

2. Whatever may be the objections to the Chalcedonian dyophysitism, they cannot be removed by running the Kenosis to the extent of a self-suspension of the Logos or an actual surrender of his essential attributes; for this is a metaphysical impossibility, and inconsistent with the unchangeableness of God and the intertrinitarian process. The Logos did not cease to be God when he entered into the human state of existence, nor did he cease to be man when he returned to the state of divine glory which he had with the Father before the foundation of the world.

III. Beyschlag (Die Christologie des N. T, p. 168) denies the identity of the Logos with Christ, and resolves the Logos into a divine principle, instead of a person. "Der Logos ist nicht die Person Christi ... sondern er ist das gottheitliche Princip dieser menschlichen Persönlichkeit."  He assumes a gradual unfolding of the Logos principle in the human person of Christ. But the personality of the Logos is taught in John 1:1–3, and ejgevneto denotes a completed act. We must remember, however, that personality in the trinity and personality of the Logos are different from personality of man. Human speech is inadequate to express the distinction.

§ 73. Heretical Perversions of the Apostolic Teaching.

(Comp. my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., pp. 649–674.)

The three types of doctrine which we have briefly unfolded, exhibit Christianity in the whole fulness of its life; and they form the theme for the variations of the succeeding ages of the church. Christ is the key-note, harmonizing all the discords and resolving all the mysteries of the history of his kingdom.

But this heavenly body of apostolic truth is confronted with the ghost of heresy; as were the divine miracles of Moses with the satanic juggleries of the Egyptians, and as Christ was with demoniacal possessions. The more mightily the spirit of truth rises, the more active becomes the spirit of falsehood. "Where God builds a church the devil builds, a chapel close by." But in the hands of Providence all errors must redound to the unfolding and the final victory of the truth. They stimulate inquiry and compel defence. Satan himself is that "power which constantly wills the bad, and works the good."  Heresies in a disordered world are relatively necessary and negatively justifiable; though the teachers of them are, of course, not the less guilty. "It must needs be, that scandals come; but woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh."862

The heresies of the apostolic age are, respectively, the caricatures of the several types of the true doctrine. Accordingly we distinguish three fundamental forms of heresy, which reappear, with various modifications, in almost every subsequent period. In this respect, as in others, the apostolic period stands as the type of the whole future; and the exhortations and warnings of the New Testament against false doctrine have force for every age.

1. The Judaizing tendency is the heretical counterpart of Jewish Christianity. It so insists on the unity of Christianity with Judaism, as to sink the former to the level of the latter, and to make the gospel no more than an improvement or a perfected law. It regards Christ as a mere prophet, a second Moses; and denies, or at least wholly overlooks, his divine nature and his priestly and kingly offices. The Judaizers were Jews in fact, and Christians only in appearance and in name. They held circumcision and the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be still binding, and the observance of them necessary to salvation. Of Christianity as a new, free, and universal religion, they had no conception. Hence they hated Paul, the liberal apostle of the Gentiles, as a dangerous apostate and revolutionist, impugned his motives, and everywhere, especially in Galatia and Corinth, labored to undermine his authority in the churches. The epistles of Paul, especially that to the Galatians, can never be properly understood, unless their opposition to this false Judaizing Christianity be continually kept in view.

The same heresy, more fully developed, appears in the second century under the name of Ebionism.

2. The opposite extreme is a false Gentile Christianity, which may be called the Paganizing or Gnostic heresy. It is as radical and revolutionary as the other is contracted and reactionary. It violently breaks away from the past, while the Judaizing heresies tenaciously and stubbornly cling to it as permanently binding. It exaggerates the Pauline view of the distinction of Christianity from Judaism, sunders Christianity from its historical basis, resolves the real humanity of the Saviour into a Doketistic illusion, and perverts the freedom of the gospel into antinomian licentiousness. The author, or first representative of this baptized heathenism, according to the uniform testimony of Christian antiquity, is Simon Magus, who unquestionably adulterated Christianity with pagan ideas and practices, and gave himself out, in pantheistic style, for an emanation of God.863  Plain traces of this error appear in the later epistles of Paul (to the Colossians, to Timothy, and to Titus), the second epistle of Peter, the first two epistles of John, the epistle of Jude, and the messages of the Apocalypse to the seven churches.

This heresy, in the second century, spread over the whole church, east and west, in the various schools of Gnosticism.

3. As attempts had already been made, before Christ, by Philo, by the Therapeutae and the Essenes, etc., to blend the Jewish religion with heathen philosophy, especially that of Pythagoras and Plato, so now, under the Christian name, there appeared confused combinations of these opposite systems, forming either a Paganizing Judaism, i.e., Gnostic Ebionism, or a Judaizing Paganism i.e., Ebionistic Gnosticism, according as the Jewish or the heathen element prevailed. This Syncretistic heresy was the caricature of John’s theology, which truly reconciled Jewish and Gentile Christianity in the highest conception of the person and work of Christ. The errors combated in the later books of the New Testament are almost all more or less of this mixed sort, and it is often doubtful whether they come from Judaism or from heathenism. They were usually shrouded in a shadowy mysticism and surrounded by the halo of a self-made ascetic holiness, but sometimes degenerated into the opposite extreme of antinomian licentiousness.

Whatever their differences, however, all these three fundamental heresies amount at last to a more or less distinct denial of the central truth of the gospel—the incarnation of the Son of God for the salvation of the world. They make Christ either a mere man, or a mere superhuman phantom; they allow, at all events, no real and abiding union of the divine and human in the person of the Redeemer. This is just what John gives as the mark of antichrist, which existed even in his day in various forms.864  It plainly undermines the foundation of the church. For if Christ be not God-man, neither is he mediator between God and men; Christianity sinks back into heathenism or Judaism. All turns at last on the answer to that fundamental question: "What think ye of Christ?"  The true solution of this question is the radical refutation of every error.

Notes.

"It has often been remarked that truths and error keep pace with each other. Error is the shadow cast by truth, truth the bright side brought out by error. Such is the relation between the heresies and the apostolical teaching of the first century. The Gospels indeed, as in other respects, so in this, rise almost entirely above the circumstances of the time, but the Epistles are, humanly speaking, the result of the very conflict between the good and the evil elements which existed together in the bosom of the early Christian society. As they exhibit the principles afterward to be unfolded into all truth and goodness, so the heresies which they attack exhibit the principles which were afterward to grow up into all the various forms of error, falsehood and wickedness. The energy, the freshness, nay, even the preternatural power which belonged to the one belonged also to the other. Neither the truths in the writings of the Apostles, nor the errors in the opinions of their opponents, can be said to exhibit the dogmatical form of any subsequent age. It is a higher and more universal good which is aimed at in the former; it is a deeper and more universal principle of evil which is attacked in the latter. Christ Himself, and no subordinate truths or speculations concerning Him, is reflected in the one; Antichrist, and not any of the particular outward manifestations of error which have since appeared, was justly regarded by the Apostles as foreshadowed in the other." — Dean Stanley (Apostolic Age, p. 182).

Literature.—The heresies of the Apostolic Age have been thoroughly investigated by Neander and Baur in connection with the history of Ebionism and Gnosticism (see next vol.), and separately in the introductions to critical commentaries on the Colossians and Pastoral Epistles; also by Thiersch, Lipsius, Hilgenfeld. Among English writers we mention Burton: Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, in eight Sermons (Bampton Lectures). Oxford, 1829. Dean Stanley: Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, pp. 182–233, 3d ed. Oxford, 1874. Bishop Lightfoot: Com. on St. Paul’s Ep. to the Colossians and to Philemon, pp. 73–113 (on the Colossian heresy and its connection with Essenism). London, 1875. Comp. also Hilgenfeld: Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums. Leipzig, 1884 (642 pages).

CHAPTER XII.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

§ 74. Literature.

Comp. the Lit. on the Life of Christ, § 14, and on the Apostolic Age, § 20.

I. The Critical Editions of the Greek Testament by Lachmann (1842–50, 2 vols.); Tischendorf (ed. octava critics major, 1869–72, 2 vols., with Prolegomena by C. R. Gregory, Part I., Leipz., 1884); Tregelles (1857–79); Westcott and Hort (1881, with a vol. of Introd. and Appendix. Cambridge and New York, revised ed. 1888).

Lachmann laid the foundation; Tischendorf and Tregelles greatly enlarged and carefully sifted the critical apparatus; Westcott and Hort restored the cleanest text from the oldest attainable sources; all substantially agree in principle and result, and give us the ancient uncial instead of the mediaeval cursive text.

Two bilingual editions also deserve special mention in connection with the recent revision of Luther’s and King James’s versions. Oskar von Gebhardt, Novum Testamentum Graece et Germanice, Lips., 1881, gives the last text of Tischendorf (with the readings of Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort below) and the revised translation of Luther. His Greek text is also separately issued with an "Adnotatio critica," not contained in the diglott edition. The Greek-English New Testament, containing Westcott and Hort’s Greek Text and the Revised English Version on opposite pages, with introduction by Schaff. New York (Harper & Brothers), 1882, revised ed. 1888.

II. The historico-critical Introductions, or literary Histories of the New Testament by Hug, De Wette, Credner, Guericke, Horne, Davidson, Tregelles, Grau, Hilgenfeld, Aberle, (R. Cath.), Bleek (4th ed. by Mangold, 1886), Reuss (6th ed. 1887), Holtzmann (2d ed. 1886), Weiss (1886), Salmon (3d ed. 1888).

III. Thiersch: Herstellung des historischen Standpunktes für die Kritik der neutestamentl. Schriften. Erlangen, 1845. (Against Baur and the Tübingen School.)—Edward C. Mitchell: Critical Handbook to the New Test. (on Authenticity, Canon, etc.). Lond. and Andover, 1880; French translation, Paris, 1882.—J. P. Lange: Grundriss der Bibelkunde. Heidelberg, 1881.—Philip Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version. N. Y. and Lond., 1883, 3d ed. revised 1888.—G. D. Ladd: The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, N. York, 1883, 2 vols. The same, abridged, 1888.

IV. The works quoted below on the Gospels and Epistles.

V. On the Canon of the New Test., the works of Kirchhofer (Quellensammlung, etc. Zürich, 1844, Engl. transl. enlarged by Charteris: Canonicity, etc. Edinb., 1881); Credner (Zur Gesch. des Kanon. Halle, 1847; Geschichte des Neutest. Kanon, herausg. von Volkmar. Berlin, 1860); Gaussen (Engl. transl., London, 1862; abridged transl. by Kirk, Boston, 1862); Tregelles (Canon Muratorianus. Oxford, 1867); Sam. Davidson (Lond., 1878, 3d ed., 1880); Westcott (Cambridge and London, 1855; 6th ed., 1889); Reuss (Histoire du canon des S. Écritures. Strasb., 2d ed., 1864); Ad. Harnack (Das muratorische Fragment und die Entstehung einer Sammlung Apost.-katholischer Schriften, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte," 1879, III., 358 sqq.; comp. 595 sqq.); F. Overbeck (Zur Geschichte des Kanons. Chemnitz, 1880); Réville (French, 1881); Theod. Zahn (Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentl. Kanons, Part I-III., 1881–84; and Geschichte des Kanons d. N. T., Leipz., 1888 sqq., 3 vols). Comp. Harnack: Das N. T. um das Jahr. 200, Freiburg, 1889 (against Zahn), and Zahn’s reply, Leipz., 1889.

§ 75. Rise of the Apostolic Literature.

Christ is the book of life to be read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command, like the law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit; not a literary production, but a moral creation; not a new system of theology or philosophy for the learned, but a communication of the divine life for the redemption of the whole world. Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos, who became flesh and dwelt upon earth as the true Shekinah, in the veiled glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. He spoke; and all the words of his mouth were, and still are, spirit and life. The human heart craves not a learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working, cross-bearing, atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and ruling the world; furnishing, at the same time, to men and angels an unending theme for meditation, discourse, and praise.

So, too, the Lord chose none of his apostles, with the single exception of Paul, from the ranks of the learned; he did not train them to literary authorship, nor give them, throughout his earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way. Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world, but filled with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the world to come, were commissioned to preach the glad tidings of salvation to all nations in the strength and in the name of their glorified Master, who sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of time.

The gospel, accordingly, was first propagated and the church founded by the personal oral teaching and exhortation, the "preaching," "testimony," "word," "tradition," of the apostles and their disciples; as, in fact, to this day the living word is the indispensable or, at least, the principal means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly all the books of the New Testament were written between the years 50 and 70, at least twenty years after the resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the church; and the Gospel and Epistles of John still later.

As the apostles’ field of labor expanded, it became too large for their personal attention, and required epistolary correspondence. The vital interests of Christianity and the wants of coming generations demanded a faithful record of the life and teaching of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral tradition, among fallible men, is liable to so many accidental changes, that it loses in certainty and credibility as its distance from the fountain-head increases, till at last it can no longer be clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions collected upon it. There was great danger, too, of a wilful distortion of the history and doctrine of Christianity by Judaizing and paganizing errorists, who had already raised their heads during the lifetime of the apostles. An authentic written record of the words and acts of Jesus and his disciples was therefore absolutely indispensable, not indeed to originate the church, but to keep it from corruption and to furnish it with a pure standard of faith and discipline.

Hence seven and twenty books by apostles and apostolic men, written under the special influence and direction of the Holy Spirit. These afford us a truthful picture of the history, the faiths, and the practice of primitive Christianity, "for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."865

The collection of these writings into a canon, in distinction both from apocryphal or pseudo-apostolic works, and from orthodox yet merely human productions, was the work of the early church; and in performing it she was likewise guided by the Spirit of God and by a sound sense of truth. It was not finished to the satisfaction of all till the end of the fourth century, down to which time seven New Testament books (the "Antilegomena" of Eusebius), the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and in a certain sense also the Apocalypse of John, were by some considered of doubtful authorship or value. But the collection was no doubt begun, on the model of the Old Testament canon, in the first century;866 and the principal books, the Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of Peter, and the first of John, in a body, were in general use after the middle of the second century, and were read, either entire or by sections, in public worship, after the manner of the Jewish synagogue, for the edification of the people.

The external testimony of tradition alone cannot (for the Protestant Christian) decide the apostolic origin and canonical character of a book; it must be confirmed by the internal testimony of the book itself. But this is not wanting, and the general voice of Christendom for these eighteen hundred years has recognized in the little volume, which we call the New Testament, a book altogether unique in spiritual power and influence over the mind and heart of man, and of more interest and value than all the ancient and modern classics combined. If ever God spoke and still speaks to man, it is in this book.

§ 76. Character of the New Testament.

In these inspired writings we have, not indeed an equivalent, but a reliable substitute for the personal presence and the oral instruction of Christ and his apostles. The written word differs from the spoken only in form; the substance is the same, and has therefore the same authority and quickening power for us as it had for those who heard it first. Although these books were called forth apparently by special and accidental occasions, and were primarily addressed to particular circles of readers and adapted to peculiar circumstances, yet, as they present the eternal and unchangeable truth in living forms, they suit all circumstances and conditions. Tracts for the times, they are tracts for all times; intended for Jews and Greeks of the first century, they have the same interest for Englishmen and Americans of the nineteenth century. They are to this day not only the sole reliable and pure fountain of primitive Christianity, but also the infallible rule of Christian faith and practice. From this fountain the church has drunk the water of life for more than fifty generations, and will drink it till the end of time. In this rule she has a perpetual corrective for an her faults, and a protective against all error. Theological systems come and go, and draw from that treasury their larger or smaller additions to the stock of our knowledge of the truth; but they can never equal that infallible word of God, which abideth forever.

"Our little systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of Thee,

And Thou, O God, art more than they."

The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times. It has a Greek body, a Hebrew soul, and a Christian spirit which rules both. The language is the Hellenistic idiom; that is, the Macedonian Greek as spoken by the Jews of the dispersion in the time of Christ; uniting, in a regenerated Christian form, the two great antagonistic nationalities and religions of the ancient world. The most beautiful language of heathendom and the venerable language of the Hebrews are here combined, and baptized with the spirit of Christianity, and made the picture of silver for the golden apple of the eternal truth of the gospel. The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study. The Bible is not simply a popular book, but a book of all nations, and for all societies, classes, and conditions of men. It is more than a book, it is an institution which rules the Christian world.

The New Testament presents, in its way, the same union of the divine and human as the person of Christ. In this sense also "the word became flesh, and dwells among us."  As Christ was like us in body, soul, and spirit, sin only excepted, so the Scriptures, which "bear witness of him," are thoroughly human (though without doctrinal and ethical error) in contents and form, in the mode of their rise, their compilation, their preservation, and transmission; yet at the same time they are thoroughly divine both in thoughts and words, in origin, vitality, energy, and effect, and beneath the human servant-form of the letter, the eye of faith discerns the glory of "the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

The apostolic writings are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic. To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts; to the second, the Epistles; to the third, the Revelation. They are related to each other as regeneration, sanctification, and glorification; as foundation, house, and dome. Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption. In the Acts and Epistles he founds the church, and fills and guides it by his Spirit. And at last, in the visions of the Apocalypse, he comes again in glory, and with his bride, the church of the saints, reigns forever upon the new earth in the city of God.

This order corresponds with the natural progress of the Christian revelation and was universally adopted by the church, with the exception of a difference in the arrangement of the Epistles. The New Testament was not given in the form of a finished volume, but the several books grew together by recognition and use according to the law of internal fitness. Most of the ancient Manuscripts, Versions, and Catalogues arrange the books in the following order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse.867  Some put the Pauline Epistles before the Catholic Epistles.868  Our English Bible follows the order of the Latin Vulgate.869

§ 77. Literature on the Gospels.

I. Harmonies of the Gospels.

They begin with Tatian’s Diatessaron, A.D. 170. See lists of older works in Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., III. 212; Hase, Leben Jesu, pp. 22–31 (fifth ed.); Robinson, Harmony, pp. v. and vi.; Darling, Cyclopaedia Bibliog. (I. Subjects, cols. 761–767); and McClintock and Strong (Cyclop., IV. 81). We give the chief works from Griesbach to Rushbrooke.

Griesbach (Synopsis, Halle, 1774, etc., 1822); Newcome (Dublin, 1778 and often; also Andover, 1834); Jos. Priestley (in Greek, London, 1778; in English, 1780); Jos. White (Diatessaron, Oxford, 1799, 1803); De Wette and Lücke (1818, 1842); Rödiger (1829, 1839); Greswell (Harmonia Evangelica, 1830, 5th ed. Oxford, 1856; Dissertations upon an Harmony, etc., 2d ed., Oxford, 1837, 4 vols.); Macbride (Diatessaron, Oxford, 1837); Wieseler (Chronolog. Synopse, Hamb., 1843); Krafft (d. 1845; Chronologie u. Harmonie der 4 Evang. Erlangen, 1848; edit. by Burger); Tischendorf (Synopsis Evang. Lips., 1851, 1854; 4th ed., 1878); Rud. Anger (Lips., 1852); Stroud (comprising a Synopsis and a Diatessaron, London, 1853) E. Robinson (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according to the text of Hahn, Boston, 1845, 1851; revised ed., 1862; in English, 1846); James Strong (in English, New York, 1852; in Greek, 1854); R. Mimpriss (London, 1855); Douglas (1859); Sevin (Wiesbaden, 1866); Fr. Gardiner (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according to the text of Tischendorf, with a Collation of the Textus Receptus, etc. Andover, 1876; also his Diatessaron, The Life of our Lord in the Words of the Gospels, Andover, 1871); J. R. Gilmore and Lyman Abbott (The Gospel History: being a Complete Chronological Narrative of the Life of our Lord, New York, 1881); W. G. Rushbrooke (Synopticon: an Exposition of the Common Matter in the Synoptic Gospels, Cambridge, 1880–81, 2 parts; the Greek text of Tischendorf, corrected from Westcott and Hort). The last work is unique and superbly printed. It marks the differences of the narratives by different types and color, namely, the matter common to all Evangelists in red type, the matter common to each pair in black spaced type or capitals, the matter peculiar to each in ordinary black type. It furnishes the best basis for a detailed comparison and critical analysis.

II. Critical Discussions.

Nathaniel Lardner (1684–1768, a dissenting minister of great learning): The Credibility of the Gospel History. First published in 17 vols. 8vo, London, 1727–1757, and in his collected Works, ed. by A. Kippis, London, 1788 (in 11 vols.), vols. I.-V. Unsurpassed for honest and solid learning, and still valuable.

J. G. Eichhorn (d. 1827): Allgem. Bibliothek der Bibl. Liter., vol. V. (1794), pp. 759 sqq. Einleitung in das N. Testament., 1804, vol. I., 2d ed., 1820. Here he brought out his new idea of an Urevangelium.

Herbert Marsh (Bishop of Peterborough, d. 1839): An Illustration of the Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our Three First Canonical Gospels. Cambridge, 1803. Also his translation of J. D. Michaelis: Introduction to the New Test., with a Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of the Three First Gospels. London, 1802. A modification of Eichhorn’s hypothesis.

Fr. Schleiermacher: Kritischer Versuch über die Schriften des Lucas. Berlin, 1817 (Werke I. 2, pp. 1–220); trans. by Thirlwall, Lond., 1825. Comp. his Einleitung in das N. Testament. (posthumous).

J. C. L. Gieseler: Historisch-kritischer Versuch über die Entstehung und die frühesten Schicksale der schriftlichen Evangelien. Leipz., 1818.

Andrews Norton (a conservative Unitarian, died at Cambridge, 1853): The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels. Boston, 1837; 2d ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1846–1848, 3 vols. Abridged ed. in 1 vol., Boston (Am. Unitar. Assoc.), 1867 and 1875. By the same: Internal Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (posthumous). Boston. 1855. With special reference to Strauss.

Fr. Bleek (d. 1859): Beiträge zur Evangelien-Kritik. Berlin, 1846.

F. Chr. Baur (d. 1860): Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen Evangelien. 1847. Comp. the first volume of his Church History (Germ. ed., pp. 22 sqq., 148 sqq.).

Isaac Da Costa: The Four Witnesses: being a Harmony of the Gospels on a New Principle. Transl. (from the Dutch) by David Scott, 1851; New York ed., 1855. Against Strauss.

Ad. Hilgenfeld (Tübingen School): Die Evangelien nach ihrer Entstehung und geschichtl. Bedeutung. Leipz., 1854. His Einleitung, 1875.

Canon Westcott: Introduction to the Study of the Gospels. London and Boston, 1860; 7th ed., London, 1888. Very useful.

Const. Tischendorf (d. 1874): Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst?  Leipz., 4th ed., 1866 (Engl. transl. by W. L. Gage, Boston, 1868).

H. Jul. Holtzmann: Die synoptischen Evangelien, ihr Ursprung und geschichtl. Charakter. Leipz., 1863. See also his art. Evangelien in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lex.," II. 207, and two articles on the Synoptic Question in the "Jahrbücher für Protest. Theol.," 1878, pp. 145 sqq. and 533 sqq.; but especially his Einleitung in das N. T., 2d ed., 1886.

C. Weizsäcker (successor of Dr. Baur, but less radical): Untersuchungen über die evang. Gesch., ihre Quellen, etc. Gotha, 1864.

Gustave d’Eichthal: Les Évangiles. Paris, 1863. 2 vols.

L. A. Sabatier: Essai sur les sources de la vie de Jésus. Paris, 1866.

Andrew Jukes: The Characteristic Differences of the Four Gospels. London, 1867.

Edward A. Thomson: The Four Evangelists; with the Distinctive Characteristics of their Gospels. Edinburgh, 1868.

C. A. Row: The Historical Character of the Gospels Tested by an Examination of their Contents. 1865–67. The Jesus of the Evangelists. London, 1868.

Karl Wieseler: Beiträge zur richtigen Würdigung der Evangelien und der evangel. Geschichte. Gotha, 1869.

Supernatural Religion (anonymous). London, 1873, 7th ed., 1879, vol. I., Part II., pp. 212 sqq., and vol. III. Comp. the careful review and refutation of this work by Bishop Lightfoot in a series of articles in the "Contemporary Review," 1875, sqq.

P. Godet: The Origin o f the Four Gospels. In his "Studies on the New Test.," 1873. Engl. transl. by W. H. Lyttelton. London, 1876. See also his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, Introd. and Appendix, Eng. trans. from 2d French ed. Edinb., 1875.

W. Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century. London, 1876.

Bernhard Weiss (Professor in Berlin): Das Marcusevangelium und seine synoptischen Parallelen. Berlin, 1872. Das Matthäusevangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen erklärt. Halle, 1876. Two very thorough critical works. Comp. also his reply to Holtzmann in the "Jahrbücher for Protest. Theologie," 1878; and his Einleitung in’s N. T., 1886.

D. S. Gregory: Why Four Gospels?  or, the Gospels for all the World. New York, 1877.

E. Renan: Les évangiles et la seconde génération Chrétienne. Paris, 1877.

Geo. P. Fisher (Professor in New Haven): The Beginnings of Christianity. New York, 1877. Chs. VIII.-XII. Also several articles on the Gospels in the "Princeton Review" for 1881.

Wm. Thomson (Archbishop of York): The Gospels. General Introduction to Speaker’s "Com. on the New Test.," vol. I., pp. xiii.-lxxv. London and New York, 1878.

Edwin A. Abbott (Head Master, City of London School): Gospels, in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannia," vol. X., pp. 789–843. Edinburgh and New York, 1879.

Fred. Huidekoper (Unitar. Theol. Seminary, Meadville, Pa.): Indirect Testimony of History to the Genuineness of the Gospels. New York, 2d ed., 1879.

John Kennedy (D. D.): The Four Gospels: their Age and Authorship. Traced from the Fourth Century into the First. London; Am. ed., with an introduction by Edwin W. Rice. Philadelphia, 1880 (Am. Sunday School Union).

J. H. Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium. Transl. from the Dutch by E. B. Redepenning. Elberfeld, 1881.

C. Holsten: Die drei ursprünglichen, noch ungeschriebenen Evangelien. Leipzig, 1883 (79 pages). A modification of Baur’s tendency-hypothesis. Holsten assumes three forms of the original oral Gospel—the Pauline, the Petrine, and the Judaistic.

Norton, Tischendorf, Wieseler, Ebrard, Da Costa, Westcott, Lightfoot, Sanday, Kennedy, Thomson, Godet, Ezra Abbot, and Fisher are conservative and constructive, yet critical; Baur, Hilgenfeld, Holtzmann, Keim, Renan, Scholten, Davidson, and the author of "Supernatural Religion" are radical but stimulating and negatively helpful especially Baur, Reim, and Renan. Bleek, Ewald, Reuss, Meyer, and Weiss occupy independent middle ground, but all defend the genuineness of John except Reuss, who hesitates.

III. Commentaries.

1. Ancient Works: Origen (in Math., Luc., etc., fragmentary); Chrysostom (Hom. in Matth., ed. Fr. Field, 1839); Jerome (in Matth.; in Luc.); Augustine (Quaestionum Evangeliorum libri II.); Theophylact (Comment, in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Euthymius Zigabenus (Com. in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Thomas Aquinas (Catena aurea in Evan .; English edition by Pusey, Keble, and Newman. Oxford, 1841–45, 4 vols.).

2. Since the Reformation: Calvin (Harmonia, and Ev. Joa., 1553; Engl. ed., Edinb., 1846, 3 vols.); Maldonatus (R. Cath., Com. in quatuor Evang., 1615); Pasquier Quesnel (Jansenist; The Four Gospels, French and English, several editions); John Lightfoot (Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in quatuor Evangelistas, and Harmonia quatuor Evangelistarum tum inter se, tum cum Veteri Testamento, in his Opera. London, 1684; also Leipz., 1675; Rotterdam, 1686; London, 1825); J. Macknight (Harm. of the Four Gospels, with Paraphrase and Notes. London, 1756; 5th ed., 1819, 2 vols.); George Campbell (d. 1796; The Four Gospels, with Dissertations and Notes. Aberdeen, 1814, 4 vols.; Andover, 1837, 2 vols.).

3. In the nineteenth century: Olshausen (d. 1839; 3d ed., 1837 sqq. revised and completed by Ebrard and others; Engl. transl., Edinb. and Now York); De Wette (d. 1849; Exeget. Handbuch zum N. T., 1837; 5th ed. by Brückner and others, 1863 sqq.); Bleek (d. 1859; Synopt. Erklärung der 3 ersten Evang., 1862, 2 vols.); Meyer (d. 1874; 6th ed., 1876–80, Matthew by Meyer Mark, Luke and John revised by Weiss); Lange (Am. ed. enlarged, New York and Edinb., 1864 sqq., 3 vols.); Alford (d. 1871; 6th ed., 1868; new ed., 1877); Wordsworth (5th ed., 1866); Jos. A. Alexander (d. 1859; Mark and Matthew, the latter unfinished); McClellan (The Four Gospels, with the Chronological and Analytical Harmony. London, 1875); Keil (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 1877–1881); Morison (Matthew and Mark, the latter in a third ed., 1882); Godet (Luke and John, French and English), Strack and Zöckler (1888). For English readers: Speaker’s Com., Ellicott’s Com., Schaff’s Revision Com., 1882, etc.

Comp. a list of Com. on the Gospels in the English transl. of Meyer on Matthew (Edinb., 1877, pp. xxiv.-xliii).

§ 78. The Four Gospels.

General Character and Aim of the Gospels.

Christianity is a cheerful religion and brings joy and peace from heaven to earth. The New Testament opens with the gospel, that is with the authentic record of the history of all histories, the glad tidings of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.870  The four canonical Gospels are only variations of the same theme, a fourfold representation of one and the same gospel, animated by the same spirit.871  They are not full biographies,872 but only memoirs or a selection of characteristic features of Christ’s life and work as they struck each Evangelist and best suited his purpose and his class of readers.873  They are not photographs which give only the momentary image in a single attitude, but living pictures from repeated sittings, and reproduce the varied expressions and aspects of Christ’s person.

The style is natural, unadorned, straightforward, and objective. Their artless and naïve simplicity resembles the earliest historic records in the Old Testament, and has its peculiar and abiding charm for all classes of people and all degrees of culture. The authors, in noble modesty and self-forgetfulness, suppress their personal views and feelings, retire in worshipful silence before their great subject, and strive to set it forth in all its own unaided power.

The first and fourth Gospels were composed by apostles and eye-witnesses, Matthew and John; the second and third, under the influence of Peter and Paul, and by their disciples Mark and Luke, so as to be indirectly likewise of apostolic origin and canonical authority. Hence Mark is often called the Gospel of Peter, and Luke the Gospel of Paul.

The common practical aim of the Evangelists is to lead the reader to a saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah and Redeemer of the world.874

Common Origin.

The Gospels have their common source in the personal intercourse of two of the writers with Christ, and in the oral tradition of the apostles and other eye-witnesses. Plain fishermen of Galilee could not have drawn such a portrait of Jesus if he had not sat for it. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus. They did not create the divine original, but they faithfully preserved and reproduced it.

The gospel story, being constantly repeated in public preaching and in private circles, assumed a fixed, stereotyped form; the more readily, on account of the reverence of the first disciples for every word of their divine Master. Hence the striking agreement of the first three, or synoptical Gospels, which, in matter and form, are only variations of the same theme. Luke used, according to his own statement, besides the oral tradition, written documents on certain parts of the life of Jesus, which doubtless appeared early among the first disciples. The Gospel of Mark, the confidant of Peter, is a faithful copy of the gospel preached and otherwise communicated by this apostle; with the use, perhaps, of Hebrew records which Peter may have made from time to time under the fresh impression of the events themselves.

Individual Characteristics.

But with all their similarity in matter and style, each of the Gospels, above all the fourth, has its peculiarities, answering to the personal character of its author, his special design, and the circumstances of his readers. The several evangelists present the infinite fulness of the life and person of Jesus in different aspects and different relations to mankind; and they complete one another. The symbolical poesy of the church compares them with the four rivers of Paradise, and with the four cherubic representatives of the creation, assigning the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John.

The apparent contradictions of these narratives, when closely examined, sufficiently solve themselves, in all essential points, and serve only to attest the honesty, impartiality, and credibility of the authors. At the same time the striking combination of resemblances and differences stimulates close observation and minute comparison, and thus impresses the events of the life of Christ more vividly and deeply upon the mind and heart of the reader than a single narrative could do. The immense labor of late years in bringing out the comparative characteristics of the Gospels and in harmonizing their discrepancies has not been in vain, and has left a stronger conviction of their independent worth and mutual completeness.

Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, Luke for Greeks, John for advanced Christians; but all are suited for Christians in every age and nation.875  The first Gospel exhibits Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and Lawgiver of the kingdom of heaven who challenges our obedience; the second Gospel as the mighty conqueror and worker of miracles who excites our astonishment; the third Gospel as the sympathizing Friend and Saviour of men who commands our confidence; the fourth Gospel as the eternal Son of God who became flesh for our salvation and claims our adoration and worship, that by believing in him we may have eternal life. The presiding mind which planned this fourfold gospel and employed the agents without a formal agreement and in conformity to their talents, tastes, and spheres of usefulness, is the Spirit of that Lord who is both the Son of Man and the Son of God, the Saviour of us all.

Time Of Composition.

As to the time of composition, external testimony and internal evidence which modern critical speculations have not been able to invalidate, point to the seventh decade of the first century for the Synoptic Gospels, and to the ninth decade for the Gospel of John.

The Synoptic Gospels were certainly written before A.D. 70; for they describe the destruction of Jerusalem as an event still future, though nigh at hand, and connect it immediately with the glorious appearing of our Lord, which it was thought might take place within the generation then living, although no precise date is fixed anywhere, the Lord himself declaring it to be unknown even to him. Had the Evangelists written after that terrible catastrophe, they would naturally have made some allusion to it, or so arranged the eschatological discourses of our Lord (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) as to enable the reader clearly to discriminate between the judgment of Jerusalem and the final judgment of the world, as typically foreshadowed by the former.876

On the other hand, a considerable number of years must have elapsed after the resurrection. This is indicated by the fact that several imperfect attempts at a gospel history had previously been made (Luke 1:1), and by such a phrase as: "until this day" (Matt. 27:8; 28:15).

But it is quite impossible to fix the precise year of composition. The silence of the Epistles is no conclusive argument that the Synoptists wrote after the death of James, Peter, and Paul; for there is the same silence in the Acts concerning the Epistles of Paul, and in the Epistles concerning the Acts. The apostles did not quote each other’s writings. the only exception is the reference of Peter to the Epistles of Paul. In the multiplicity of their labors the Evangelists may have been engaged for several years in preparing their works until they assumed their present shape. The composition of a life of Christ now may well employ many years of the profoundest study.

The Hebrew Matthew was probably composed first; then Mark; the Greek Matthew and Luke cannot be far apart. If the Acts, which suddenly break off with Paul’s imprisonment in Rome (61–63), were written before the death of the apostle, the third Gospel, which is referred to as "the first treatise" (Acts 1:1), must have been composed before A.D. 65 or 64, perhaps, in Caesarea, where Luke had the best opportunity to gather his material during Paul’s imprisonment between 58 and 60; but it was probably not published till a few years afterwards. Whether the later Synoptists knew and used the earlier will be discussed in the next section.

John, according to the universal testimony of antiquity, which is confirmed by internal evidence, wrote his Gospel last, after the fall of Jerusalem and after the final separation of the Christians from the Jews. He evidently presupposes the Synoptic Gospels (although he never refers to them), and omits the eschatological and many other discourses and miracles, even the institution of the sacraments, because they were already sufficiently known throughout the church. But in this case too it is impossible to fix the year of composition. John carried his Gospel in his heart and memory for many years and gradually reduced it to writing in his old age, between A.D. 80 and 100; for he lived to the close of the first century and, perhaps, saw the dawn of the second.

Credibility.

The Gospels make upon every unsophisticated reader the impression of absolute honesty. They tell the story without rhetorical embellishment, without any exclamation of surprise or admiration, without note and comment. They frankly record the weaknesses and failings of the disciples, including themselves, the rebukes which their Master administered to them for their carnal misunderstandings and want of faith, their cowardice and desertion in the most trying hour, their utter despondency after the crucifixion, the ambitious request of John and James, the denial of Peter, the treason of Judas. They dwell even with circumstantial minuteness upon the great sin of the leader of the Twelve, especially the Gospel of Mark, who derived his details no doubt from Peter’s own lips. They conceal nothing, they apologize for nothing, they exaggerate nothing. Their authors are utterly unconcerned about their own fame, and withhold their own name; their sole object is to tell the story of Jesus, which carries its own irresistible force and charm to the heart of every truth-loving reader. The very discrepancies in minor details increase confidence and exclude the suspicion of collusion; for it is a generally acknowledged principle in legal evidence that circumstantial variation in the testimony of witnesses confirms their substantial agreement. There is no historical work of ancient times which carries on its very face such a seal of truthfulness as these Gospels.

The credibility of the canonical Gospels receives also negative confirmation from the numerous apocryphal Gospels which by their immeasurable inferiority and childishness prove the utter inability of the human imagination, whether orthodox or heterodox, to produce such a character as the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

No post-apostolic writers could have composed the canonical Gospels, and the apostles themselves could not have composed them without the inspiration of the spirit of Christ.

Notes.

1. The Symbolism of the Gospels. This belongs to the history of Christian poetry and art, but also to the history of exegesis, and may be briefly mentioned here. It presents the limited recognition of the individuality of the Gospels among the fathers and throughout the middle ages.

The symbolic attributes of the Evangelists were suggested by Ezekiel’s vision of the four cherubim which represent the creation and carry the throne of God (Ez. 1:15 sqq.; 10:1 sqq.; 11:22), and by the four "living creatures" (zw'a, not qhriva, "beasts," with which the E. V. confounds them) in the Apocalypse (Rev. 4:6–9; 5:6, 8, 11, 14; 6:1, 3, 5, 6, 7; 7:11; 14:3; 15:7; 19:4).

(1.) The theological use. The cherubic figures which the prophet saw in his exile on the banks of the Chebar, symbolize the divine attributes of majesty and strength reflected in the animal creation; and the winged bulls and lions and the eagle-beaded men of Assyrian monuments have a similar significance. But the cherubim were interpreted as prophetic types of the four Gospels as early as the second century, with some difference in the application.

Irenaeus (about 170) regards the faces of the cherubim (man, lion, ox, eagle) as "images of the life and work of the Son of God," and assigns the man to Matthew, and the ox to Luke, but the eagle to Mark and the lion to John (Adv. Haer., III. 11, 8, ed. Stieren I. 469 sq.). Afterwards the signs of Mark and John were properly exchanged. So by Jerome (d. 419) in his Com. on Ezekiel and other passages. I quote from the Prologus to his Comment. in Ev. Matthaei (Opera, vol. VII., p. 19, ed. Migne): "Haec igitur quatuor Evangelia multo ante praedicta, Ezechielis quoque volumen probat, in quo prima visio ita contexitur: ’Et in medio sicut similitudo quatuor animalium: et vultus eorum facies hominis, et facies leonis, et facies vituli, et facies aquilae’ (Ezech. 1:5 et 10). Prima hominis facies Matthaeum significat, qui quasi de homine exorsus est scribere: ’Liber generationis Jesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham’ (Matth. 1). Secunda, Marcum, in quo [al. qua] vox leonis in eremo rugientis auditur: ’Vox clamantis in deserto [al. eremo], Parate viam Domini, rectas facile semitas ejus’ (Marc. 1:3).  Tertia, vituli, quae evangelistam Lucam a Zacharia sacerdote sumpsisse initium praefigurat. Quarta, Joannem evangelistam, qui assumptis pennis aquilae, et ad altiora festinans, de Verbo Dei disputat.

Augustin (De Consens. Evang., Lib. I., c. 6, in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, tom. III., 1046) assigns the lion to Matthew, the man to Mark (whom he wrongly regarded as an abbreviator of Matthew), the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John, because "he soars as an eagle above the clouds of human infirmity, and gazes on the light of immutable truth with most keen and steady eyes of the heart."  In another place (Tract. XXXVI. in Joh. Ev., c. 8, § 1) Augustin says: "The other three Evangelists walked as it were on earth with our Lord as man (tamquam cum homine Domino in terra ambulabant) and said but little of his divinity. But John, as if he found it oppressive to walk on earth, opened his treatise, so to speak, with a peal of thunder .... To the sublimity of this beginning all the rest corresponds, and he speaks of our Lord’s divinity as no other."  He calls the evangelic quaternion "the fourfold car of the Lord, upon which he rides throughout the world and subdues the nations to his easy yoke."  Pseudo-Athanasius (Synopsis Script.) assigns the man to Matthew, the ox to Mark, the lion to Luke. These variations in the application of the emblems reveal the defects of the analogy. The man might as well (with Lange) be assigned to Luke’s Gospel of humanity as the sacrificial ox. But Jerome’s distribution of the symbols prevailed and was represented in poetry by Sedulius in the fifth century.

Among recent divines, Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, who is in full sympathy with the fathers and all their pious exegetical fancies, has thus eloquently reproduced the cherubic symbolism (in his Com. on The New Test., vol. I., p. xli): "The Christian church, looking at the origin of the Four Gospels, and the attributes which God has in rich measure been pleased to bestow upon them by his Holy Spirit, found a prophetic picture of them in the four living cherubim, named from heavenly knowledge, seen by the prophet Ezekiel at the river of Chebar. Like them the Gospels are four in number; like them they are the chariot of God, who sitteth between the cherubim; like them they bear him on a winged throne into all lands; like them they move wherever the Spirit guides them; like them they are marvellously joined together, intertwined with coincidences and differences: wing interwoven with wing, and wheel interwoven with wheel; like them they are full of eyes, and sparkle with heavenly light; like them they sweep from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, and fly with lightning’s speed and with the noise of many waters. Their sound is gone out into all lands, and the words to the end of the world."  Among German divines, Dr. Lange is the most ingenious expounder of this symbolism, but he exchanges the symbols of Matthew and Luke. See his Leben Jesu, I., 156 sqq., and his Bibelkunde (1881), p. 176.

(2.) The pictorial representations of the four Evangelists, from the rude beginnings in the catacombs and the mosaics of the basilicas at Rome and Ravenna to modern times, have been well described by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, vol. I, 132–175 (Boston ed., 1865). She distinguishes seven steps in the progress of Christian art: 1st, the mere fact, the four scrolls, or books of the Evangelists; 2d, the idea, the four rivers of salvation flowing from on high to fertilize the whole earth; 3d, the prophetic symbol, the winged cherub of fourfold aspect; 4th, the Christian symbol, the four "beasts" (better, "living creatures") in the Apocalypse, with or without the angel-wings; 5th, the combination of the emblematical animal with the human form; 6th, the human personages, each of venerable or inspired aspect, as becomes the teacher and witness, and each attended by the scriptural emblem—no longer an emblem, but an attribute—marking his individual vocation and character; 7th, the human being only, holding his Gospel, i.e., his version of the teaching and example of Christ.

(3.) Religious poetry gives expression to the same idea. We find it in Juvencus and Sedulius, and in its perfection in Adam of St. Victor, the greatest Latin poet of the middle ages (about 1172). He made the Evangelists the subject of two musical poems: "Plausu chorus laetabundo," and "Jocundare plebs fidelis."  Both are found in Gautier’s edition (1858), and with a good English translation by Digby S. Wrangham in The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor, London, 1881, vol, II., pp. 156–169. The first has been well reproduced in English by Dr. Plumptre (in his Com. on the Synoptists, in Ellicott’s series, but with the omission of the first three stanzas). I will quote the third stanza of the first (with Wrangham’s version):

"Circa thema generale,

Habet quisque speciale

Styli privilegium:

Quod praesignat in propheta

Forma pictus sub discreta

Vultus animalium."

"Though one set of facts is statted,

They by each one are related

In a manner all his own:

This the prophet by four creatures,

Each of different form and features,

Pictures for us, one by one."

In the second poem the following stanzas are the best:

Formam viri dant Matthaeo,

Quia scripsit sic de Deo,

Sicut descendit ab eo,

Quem plasmavit, homine.

Lucas bos est in figura

Ut praemonstrat in Scriptura,

Hostiarum tangens jura

Legis sub velamine.

Matthew as the man is treated,

Since 'tis he, who hath related,

How from man, by God created,

God did, as a man, descend.

Luke the ox's semmblance weareth,

Since his Gospel first declareth,

As he thence the Law's veil teareth,

Sacrifice' aim and end.

Marcus, lleo per desertum

Clamans, rugit in apertum:

Iter fiat Deo certum,

Mundum cor a crimine.

Sed Johannes, ala bina

Charitatis, aquilina

Forma, fetur in divinaa

Puriori lumine.

Mark, the lion, his voice upraises,

Crying out in desert places:

"Cleanse your hearts from all sin's traces,

For our God a way prepare!"

John, the eagle's feature having,

Earth on love's twain pinions leaving,

Soars aloft, God's truth perceiving

In light's purer atmosphere.

Ecce forma bestialis

Quam Scriptura prophetalis

Notat, sed materialis

Haec est impositio.

Currunt rotis, volant alis;

Inest sensus spiuritalis;

Rota gressus est aequalis,

Ala contemplatio.

Thus the Thus the forms of brute creation

Prophets in their revelation

Use; but in their application

All their sacred lessons bring.

Mystic meaning underlieth

Wheels that run, or wing that flieth

One consent the first implieth,

Contemplation means the wing.

Quatuor decribunt isti

Quadriformes actus Christi:

Et figurant, ut audisti,

Quisque sua formula.

Natus homo declaratur

Vitulus sacrificatur,

Leo mortem depraedatur,

Et ascendit aquila.

These four writers, in portraying

Christ, his fourfold acts displaying.

Show him – thou hast heard the saying –

Each of them distinctively;

Man – of woman generated;

Ox – in offering dedicated;

Lion – having death defeated;

Eagle – mounting to the sky.

Paradisus lis regature,

Viret, floret, foecundatur,

His abundat, his laetatur

Quatuor fluminibus:

Fons est Christus, hi aunt rivi,

Fons est altus, hi proclivi,

Ut saporem fontis vivi

Ministrent fidelibus.

These four streams, through Eden flowing,

Moisture, verdure, still bestowing,

Make the flowers and fruit there growing

In rich plenty kaugh and sing

Christ the cource, these streams forth sending;

High the source, these downward trending;

That they thus a taste transcending

Of life's fount to saints may bring.

Horum rivo debriatis

Sitis crescat caritatis,

Ut de fonte pietatis

Satiemur plenius.

Horum trabat nos doctrina

Vitiorum de sentinâ,

Sicque ducat ad divina

Ab imo superius.

At their stream inebriated,

Be our love's thirst aggravated,

More completely to be sated

At a holier love's full fount!

May the doctrine they provide us

Draw us from sin's slough beside us,

An to things divine thus guide us,

As from earth we upward mount!

II. The Credibility of the Gospels would never have been denied if it were not for the philosophical and dogmatic skepticism which desires to get rid of the supernatural and miraculous at any price. It impresses itself upon men of the highest culture as well as upon the unlearned reader. The striking testimony of Rousseau is well known and need not be repeated. I will quote only from two great writers who were by no means biased in favor of orthodoxy. Dr. W. E. Channing, the distinguished leader of American Unitarianism, says (with reference to the Strauss and Parker skepticism): "I know no histories to be compared with the Gospels in marks of truth, in pregnancy of meaning, in quickening power."  ... "As to his [Christ’s] biographers, they speak for themselves. Never were more simple and honest ones. They show us that none in connection with Christ would give any aid to his conception, for they do not receive it .... The Gospels are to me their own evidence. They are the simple records of a being who could not have been invented, and the miraculous and more common parts of his life so hang together, are so permeated by the same spirit, are so plainly outgoings of one and the same man, that I see not how we can admit one without the other."  See Channing’s Memoir by his nephew, tenth ed., Boston, 1874 Vol. II., pp. 431, 434, 436. The testimony of Goethe will have with many still greater weight. He recognized in the Gospels the highest manifestation of the Divine which ever appeared in this world, and the summit of moral culture beyond which the human mind can never rise, however much it may progress in any other direction. "Ich halte die Evangelien," he says, "für durchaus ächt; denn es ist in ihnen der Abglanz einer Hoheit wirksam, die von der Person Christi ausging: die ist qöttlicher Art, wie nur je auf Erden das Göttliche erschienen ist."  (Gespräche mit Eckermann, III., 371.)  Shortly before his death he said to the same friend: "Wir wissen gar nicht, was wir Luther’n und der Reformation zu danken haben. Mag die geistige Cultur immer Fortschreiten, mögen die Naturwissenschaften in immer breiterer Ausdehnung und Tiefe wachsen und der menschliche Geist sick erweitern wie er will: über die Hoheit und sittliche Cultur des Christenthums, wie es in den Evangelien leuchtet, wird er nicht hinauskommen."  And such Gospels Strauss and Renan would fain make us believe to be poetic fictions of illiterate Galilaeans!  This would be the most incredible miracle of all.

§ 79. The Synoptists.

(See the Lit. in § 78.)

The Synoptic Problem.

The fourth Gospel stands by itself and differs widely from the others in contents and style, as well as in distance of time of composition. There can be no doubt that the author, writing towards the close of the first century, must have known the three older ones.

But the first three Gospels present the unique phenomenon of a most striking agreement and an equally striking disagreement both in matter and style, such as is not found among any three writers on the same subject. Hence they are called the Synoptic or Synoptical Gospels, and the three Evangelists, Synoptists.877 This fact makes a harmony of the Gospels possible in all essentials, and yet impossible in many minor details. The agreement is often literal, and the disagreement often borders on contradiction, but without invalidating the essential harmony.

The interrelationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke is, perhaps, the most complicated and perplexing critical problem in the history of literature. The problem derives great importance from its close connection with the life of Christ, and has therefore tried to the utmost the learning, acumen, and ingenuity of modern scholars for nearly a century. The range of hypotheses has been almost exhausted, and yet no harmonious conclusion reached.

The Relationship.

The general agreement of the Synoptists consists:

1. In the harmonious delineation of the character of Christ. The physiognomy is the same, only under three somewhat different aspects. All represent him as the Son of man and as the Son of God, as the promised Messiah and Saviour, teaching the purest doctrine, living a spotless life, performing mighty miracles, suffering and dying for the sins of the world, and rising in triumph to establish his kingdom of truth and righteousness. Such unity in the unique character of the hero of the three narratives has no parallel in secular or sacred histories or biographies, and is the best guarantee of the truthfulness of the picture.

2. In the plan and arrangement of the evangelical history, yet with striking peculiarities.

(a.) Matthew 1–2, and Luke 1–2, and 3:23–38, begin with the genealogy and infancy of Christ, but with different facts drawn from different sources. Mark opens at once with the preaching of the Baptist; while the fourth Evangelist goes back to the eternal pre-existence of the Logos. About the thirty years of Christ’s private life and his quiet training for the great work they are all silent, with the exception of Luke, who gives us a glimpse of his early youth in the temple (Luke2:42–52).

(b.) The preaching and baptism of John which prepared the way for the public ministry of Christ, is related by all the Synoptists in parallel sections: Matt. 3:1–12; Mark 1:1–8; Luke 3:1–18.

(c.) Christ’s baptism and temptation, the Messianic inauguration and Messianic trial: Matt. 3:13–17; 4:1–11; Mark 1:9–11, 12, 13 (very brief); Luke 3:21–23; 4:1–13. The variations here between Matthew and Luke are very slight, as in the order of the second and third temptation. John gives the testimony of the Baptist to Christ, and alludes to his baptism (John 1:32–34), but differs from the Synoptists.

(d.) The public ministry of Christ in Galilee: Matt. 4:12–18:35; Mark 1:14–9:50; Luke 4:14–9:50. But Matthew 14:22–16:12, and Mark 6:45–8:26, narrate a series of events connected with the Galilaean ministry, which are wanting in Luke; while Luke 9:51–18:14, has another series of events and parables connected with the last journey to Jerusalem which are peculiar to him.

(e.) The journey to Jerusalem: Matt. 19:1–20:31; Mark 10:1–52; Luke 18:15–19:28.

(f.) The entry into Jerusalem and activity there during the week before the last passover: Matt. 21–25; Mark 11–13; Luke 19:29–21:38.

(g.) The passion, crucifixion, and resurrection in parallel sections, but with considerable minor divergences, especially in the denial of Peter and the history of the resurrection: Matt. 26–28; Mark 14–16; Luke 22–24.

The events of the last week, from the entry to the resurrection (from Palm Sunday to Easter), occupy in all the largest space, about one-fourth of the whole narrative.

3. In the selection of the same material and in verbal coincidences, as in the eschatological discourses of Christ, with an almost equal number of little differences. Thus the three accounts of the hearing of the paralytic (Matt. 9:1–8, and parallel passages), the feeding of the five thousand, the transfiguration, almost verbally agree. Occasionally the Synoptists concur in rare and difficult words and forms in the same connection, as ejpiouvsio" »in the Lord'" Prayer¼, the diminutive wjtivon, little ear (of Malchus, Matt. 26:51, and parallel passages), duskovlw", hard (for a rich man to enter into the kingdom, Matt. 19:23, etc.). These coincidences are the more striking since our Lord spoke usually in Aramaic; but those words may have been Palestinian provincialisms.878

The largest portion of verbal agreement, to the extent of about seven-eighths, is found in the words of others, especially of Christ; and the largest portion of disagreement in the narratives of the writers.879  This fact bears against the theory of interdependence, and proves, on the one hand, the reverent loyalty of all the Synoptists to the teaching of the great Master, but also, on the other hand, their freedom and independence of observation and judgment in the narration of facts. Words can be accurately reported only in one form, as they were spoken; while events may be correctly narrated in different words.

Numerical Estimates Of The Harmony And Variation.

The extent of the coincidences, and divergences admits of an approximate calculation by sections, verses, and words. In every case the difference of size must be kept in mind: Luke is the largest, with 72 pages (in Westcott and Hort’s Greek Testament); Matthew comes next, with 68 pages; Mark last, with 42 pages. (John has 55 pages.)

1. Estimate by Sections.

Matthew has in all 78, Mark, 67, Luke, 93 sections.

Dividing the Synoptic text into 124 sections, with Dr. Reuss,880

All Evangelists have in common 47 sections.

Matthew and Mark alone have 12      "

Matthew and Luke    "       "   2      "

Mark and Luke         "        "   6      "

Sections peculiar to Matthew 17

"            "        "  Mark   2

"            "        "  Luke 38

Another arrangement by sections has been made by Norton, Stroud, and Westcott.881  If the total contents of the Gospels be represented by 100, the following result is obtained:

Mark has            7 peculiarities and 93 coincidences.

Matthew has     42       "             "   58          "

Luke has           59       "             "   41          "

[John has           92       "             "      8         "           ]

If the extent of all the coincidences be represented by 100, their proportion is:

Matthew, Mark, and Luke have        53 coincidences.

Matthew and Luke have                    21         "

Matthew and Mark have                    20         "

Mark and Luke have                            6         "

"In St. Mark," says Westcott, "there are not more than twenty-four verses to which no parallel exists in St. Matthew and St. Luke, though St. Mark exhibits everywhere traits of vivid detail which are peculiar to his narrative."

2. Estimate by Verses.

According to the calculation of Reuss,882

Matthew contains                 330 verses peculiar to him.

Mark contains                         68    "           "         "

Luke contains                        541    "           "         "

Matthew and Mark have from 170 to 180 verses in common, but not found in Luke.

Matthew and Luke have from 230 to 240 verses in common, but not found in Mark.

Mark and Luke have about 50 verses in common, but not found in Matthew.

The total number of verses common to all three Synoptists is only from 330 to 370. But, as the verses in the second Gospel are generally shorter, it is impossible to make an exact mathematical calculation by verses.

3. Estimate by Words.

A still more accurate test can be furnished by the number of words. This has not yet been made as far as I know, but a basis of calculation is furnished by Rushbrooke in his admirably printed Synopticon (1880), where the words common to the three Synoptists, the words common to each pair, and the words peculiar to each, are distinguished by different type and color.883  The words found in all constitute the "triple tradition," and the nearest approximation to the common Greek source from which all have directly or indirectly drawn. On the basis of this Synopticon the following calculations have been made:

A. –– Number of words in

Words common to all

Per cent of words in common.

Matthew           18,222

2,651, or

.14 1/2

Mark    11,158

2,651, or

.23 3/4

Luke    19,209

2,651, or

.13 3/4

Total    48,589

7,953, or

.16 1/3

B. ––   Additional words in common. Whole per cent in common

Matthew 2,793 (or in all 5,444) with Mark       29+

Mark 2,793 (or in all 5,444) with Matthew       48+

Matthew 2,415 (or in all 5,066) with Luke        27+

Luke 2,415 (or in all 5,066) with Matthew        26+

Mark 1,174 (or in all 3,825) with Luke 34+

Luke 1,174 (or in all 3,825) with Mark 20-

C. ––   Words peculiar to Matthew   10,363, or 56+ percent.

Words peculiar to Mark           4,540, or 40+ percent

Words peculiar to Luke         12,969, or 67+ percent

Total                                       27,872

D. ––         These figures give the following results:

(a.) The proportion of words peculiar to the Synoptic Gospels is 28,000 out of 48,000, more than one half.

In Matthew                 56 words out of every 100 are peculiar.

In Mark                      40 words out of every 100 are peculiar.

In Luke                       67 words out of every 100 are peculiar.

(b.) The number of coincidences common to all three is less than the number of the divergences.

Matthew agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 7.

Mark agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 4½.

Luke agrees with the other two Gospels in 1 word out of 8.

(c.) But, comparing the Gospels two by two, it is evident that Matthew and Mark have most in common, and Matthew and Luke are most divergent.

One-half of Mark is found in Matthew.

One fourth of Luke is found in Matthew.

One-third of Mark is found in Luke.886

(d.) The general conclusion from these figures is that all three Gospels widely diverge from the common matter, or triple tradition, Mark the least so and Luke the most (almost twice as much as Mark). On the other hand, both Matthew and Luke are nearer Mark than Luke and Matthew are to each other.

The Solution of the Problem.

Three ways open themselves for a solution of the Synoptic problem: either the Synoptists depend on one another; or they all depend on older sources; or the dependence is of both kinds. Each of these hypotheses admits again of several modifications.887

A satisfactory solution of the problem must account for the differences as well as for the coincidences. If this test be applied, the first and the third hypotheses with their various modifications must be ruled out as unsatisfactory, and we are shut up to the second as at least the most probable.

The Canonical Gospels Independent of One Another.

There is no direct evidence that any of the three Synoptists saw and used the work of the others; nor is the agreement of such a character that it may not be as easily and better explained from antecedent sources. The advocates of the theory of interdependency, or the "borrowing" hypothesis,888 differ widely among themselves: some make Matthew, others. Mark, others Luke, the source of the other two or at least of one of them; while still others go back from the Synoptists in their present form to a proto-Mark (Urmarkus), or proto-Matthew (Urmatthaeus), proto-Luke (Urlukas), or other fictitious antecanonical documents; thereby confessing the insufficiency of the borrowing hypothesis pure and simple.

There is no allusion in any of the Synoptists to the others; and yet Luke expressly refers to many earlier attempts to write the gospel history. Papias, Irenaeus, and other ancient writers assume that they wrote independently.889  The first who made Mark a copyist of Matthew is Augustin, and his view has been completely reversed by modern research. The whole theory degrades one or two Synoptists to the position of slavish and yet arbitrary compilers, not to say plagiarists; it assumes a strange mixture of dependence and affected originality; it weakens the independent value of their history; and it does not account for the omissions of most important matter, and for many differences in common matter. For the Synoptists often differ just where we should most expect them to agree. Why should Mark be silent about the history of the infancy, the whole sermon on the Mount (the Magna Charta of Christ’s kingdom), the Lord’s Prayer, and important parables, if he had Matthew 1–2, 5–7, 13, before him?  Why should he, a pupil of Peter, record the Lord’s severe rebuke to Peter (Mark 8:27–33), but fail to mention from Matthew 16:16–23 the preceding remarkable laudation: "Thou art Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church?"  Why should Luke omit the greater part of the sermon on the Mount, and all the appearances of the risen Lord in Galilee?  Why should he ignore the touching anointing scene in Bethany, and thus neglect to aid in fulfilling the Lord’s prediction that this act of devotion should be spoken of as a memorial of Mary "wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world (Matt. 26:13; Mark 14:9)?  Why should he, the pupil and companion of Paul, fail to record the adoration of the Magi, the story of the woman of Canaan, and the command to evangelize the Gentiles, so clearly related by Matthew, the Evangelist of the Jews (Matt. 2:1–12; 15:21–28; 24:14; 28:19)?  Why should Luke and Matthew give different genealogies of Christ, and even different reports of the model prayer of our Lord, Luke omitting (beside the doxology, which is also wanting in the best MSS. of Matthew) the petition, "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth," and the concluding petition, "but deliver us from evil" (or "the evil one"), and substituting "sins" for "debts," and "Father" for "Our Father who art in heaven"?  Why should all three Synoptists differ even in the brief and official title on the Cross, and in the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, where Paul, writing in 57, agrees with Luke, referring to a revelation from the Lord (1 Cor. 11:23)?  Had the Synoptists seen the work of the others, they could easily have harmonized these discrepancies and avoided the appearance of contradiction. To suppose that they purposely varied to conceal plagiarism is a moral impossibility. We can conceive no reasonable motive of adding a third Gospel to two already known to the writer, except on the ground of serious defects, which do not exist (certainly not in Matthew and Luke as compared with Mark), or on the ground of a presumption which is inconsistent with the modest tone and the omission of the very name of the writers.

These difficulties are felt by the ablest advocates of the borrowing hypothesis, and hence they call to aid one or several pre-canonical Gospels which are to account for the startling discrepancies and signs of independence, whether in omissions or additions or arrangement. But these pre-canonical Gospels, with the exception of the lost Hebrew Matthew, are as fictitious as the Syro-Chaldaic Urevangelium of Eichhorn, and have been compared to the epicycles of the old astronomers, which were invented to sustain the tottering hypothesis of cycles.

As to Luke, we have shown that he departs most from the triple tradition, although he is supposed to have written last, and it is now almost universally agreed that he did not use the canonical Matthew.890  Whether he used the Hebrew Matthew and the Greek Mark or a lost proto-Mark, is disputed, and at least very doubtful.891  He follows a plan of his own; he ignores a whole cycle of events in Mark 6:45–8:26; he omits in the common sections the graphic touches of Mark, for which he has others equally graphic; and with a far better knowledge of Greek he has yet more Hebraisms than Mark, because he drew largely on Hebrew sources. As to Matthew, he makes the impression of primitive antiquity, and his originality and completeness have found able advocates from Augustin down to Griesbach and Keim. And as to Mark, his apparent abridgments, far from being the work of a copyist, are simply rapid statements of an original writer, with many fresh and lively details which abundantly prove his independence. On the other hand, in several narratives he is more full and minute than either Matthew or Luke.892  His independence has been successfully proven by the most laborious and minute investigations and comparisons.893  Hence many regard him as the primitive Evangelist made use of by both Matthew and Luke, but disagree among themselves as to whether it was the canonical Mark or a proto-Mark.894  In either case Matthew and Luke would be guilty of plagiarism. What should we think of an historian of our day who would plunder another historian of one-third or one-half of the contents of his book without a word of acknowledgment direct or indirect?  Let us give the Evangelists at least the credit of common honesty, which is the basis of all morality.

Apostolic Teaching the Primary Source of All the Synoptists.

The only certain basis for the solution of the problem is given to us in the preface of Luke. He mentions two sources of his own Gospel—but not necessarily of the two other Synoptic Gospels—namely, the oral tradition or deliverance of original "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (apostles, evangelists, and other primitive disciples), and a number of written "narratives," drawn up by "many," but evidently incomplete and fragmentary, so as to induce him to prepare, after accurate investigation, a regular history of "those matters which have been fulfilled among us."  Besides this important hint, we may be aided by the well-known statements of Papias about the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and the Greek Mark, whom he represents as the interpret

The chief and common source from which the Synoptists derived their Gospels was undoubtedly the living apostolic tradition or teaching which is mentioned by Luke in the first order. This teaching was nothing more or less than a faithful report of the words and deeds of Christ himself by honest and intelligent eye-witnesses.895  He told his disciples to preach, not to write, the gospel, although the writing was, of course, not forbidden, but became necessary for the preservation of the gospel in its purity. They had at first only "hearers;" while the law and the prophets had readers.896

Among the Jews and Arabs the memory was specially trained in the accurate repetition and perpetuation of sacred words and facts.897  The Mishna was not reduced to writing for two or three hundred years. In the East everything is more settled and stationary than in the West, and the traveller feels himself as by magic transferred back to manners and habits as well as the surroundings of apostolic and patriarchal times. The memory is strongest where it depends most on itself and least upon books.898

The apostolic tradition or preaching was chiefly historical, a recital of the wonderful public life of Jesus of Nazareth, and centred in the crowning facts of the crucifixion and resurrection. This is evident from the specimens of sermons in the Acts. The story was repeated in public and in private from day to day and sabbath to sabbath. The apostles and primitive evangelists adhered closely and reverently to what they saw and heard from their divine Master, and their disciples faithfully reproduced their testimony. "They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching" (Acts 2:42). Reverence would forbid them to vary from it; and yet no single individual, not even Peter or John, could take in the whole fulness of Christ. One recollected this, another another part of the gospel story; one had a better memory for words, another for facts. These differences, according to varying capacities and recollection, would naturally appear, and the common tradition adapted itself, without any essential alteration, to particular classes of hearers who were first Hebrews in Palestine, then Greek Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles.

The Gospels are nothing more than comprehensive summaries of this apostolic preaching and teaching. Mark represents it in its simplest and briefest form, and agrees nearest with the preaching of Peter as far as we know it from the Acts; it is the oldest in essence, though not necessarily in composition. Matthew and Luke contain the same tradition in its expanded and more matured form, the one the Hebrew or Jewish Christian, the other the Hellenistic and Pauline type, with a corresponding selection of details. Mark gives a graphic account of the main facts of the public life of Christ "beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that he was received up," as they would naturally be first presented to an audience (Acts 1:22). Matthew and Luke add the history of the infancy and many discourses, facts, and details which would usually be presented in a fuller course of instruction.

Written Documents.

It is very natural that parts of the tradition were reduced to writing during the thirty years which intervened between the events and the composition of the canonical Gospels. One evangelist would record for his own use a sketch of the chief events, another the sermon on the Mount, another the parables, another the history of the crucifixion and resurrection, still another would gather from the lips of Mary the history of the infancy and the genealogies. Possibly some of the first hearers noted down certain words and events under the fresh impressions of the moment. The apostles were indeed unlearned, but not illiterate men, they could read and write and had sufficient rudimentary education for ordinary composition. These early memoranda were numerous, but have all disappeared, they were not intended for publication, or if published they were superseded by the canonical Gospels. Hence there is room here for much speculation and conjectural criticism.899  "Many," says Luke, "have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us."900  He cannot mean the apocryphal Gospels which were not yet written, nor the canonical Gospels of Matthew and Mark which would have spared him much trouble and which he would not have dared to supersede by an improved work of his own without a word of acknowledgment, but pre-canonical records, now lost, which emanated from "eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," yet were so fragmentary and incomplete as to justify his own attempt to furnish a more satisfactory and connected history. He had the best opportunity to gather such documents in Palestine, Antioch, Greece, and Rome. Matthew, being himself an eyewitness, and Mark, being the companion of Peter, had less need of previous documents, and could rely chiefly, oil their own memory and the living tradition in its primitive freshness. They may have written sketches or memoranda for their own use long before they completed their Gospels; for such important works cannot be prepared without long continued labor and care. The best books grow gradually and silently like trees.

Conclusion.

We conclude, then, that the Synoptists prepared their Gospels independently, during the same period (say between A.D. 60 and 69), in different places, chiefly from the living teaching of Christ and the first disciples, and partly from earlier fragmentary documents. They bear independent testimony to the truth of the gospel. Their agreement and disagreement are not the result of design, but of the unity, richness, and variety of the original story as received, understood, digested, and applied by different minds to different conditions and classes of hearers and readers.901

The Traditional Order.

There is no good reason to doubt that the canonical arrangement which is supported by the prevailing oldest tradition, correctly represents the order of composition.902  Matthew, the apostle, wrote first in Aramaic and in Palestine, from his personal observation and experience with the aid of tradition; Mark next, in Rome, faithfully reproducing Peter’s preaching; Luke last, from tradition and sundry reliable but fragmentary documents. But all wrote under a higher inspiration, and are equally honest and equally trustworthy; all wrote within the lifetime of many of the primitive witnesses, before the first generation of Christians had passed away, and before there was any chance for mythical and legendary accretions. They wrote not too late to insure faithfulness, nor too early to prevent corruption. They represent not the turbid stream of apocryphal afterthoughts and fictions, but the pure fountain of historic truth.

The gospel story, being once fixed in this completed shape, remained unchanged for all time to come. Nothing was lost, nothing added. The earlier sketches or pre-canonical gospel fragments disappeared, and the four canonical records of the one gospel, no more nor less, sufficient for all purposes, monopolized the field from which neither apocryphal caricatures nor sceptical speculations have been able to drive them.

Exoteric and Esoteric Tradition.

Besides the common Galilaean tradition for the people at large which is embodied in the Synoptic Gospels, there was an esoteric tradition of Christ’s ministry in Judaea and his private relation to the select circle of the apostles and his mysterious relation to the Father. The bearer of this tradition was the beloved disciple who leaned on the beating heart of his Master and absorbed his deepest words. He treasured them up in his memory, and at last when the church was ripe for this higher revelation he embodied it in the fourth Gospel.

Notes.

The problem of the Relationship of the Synoptists was first seriously discussed by Augustin (d. 430), in his three books De Consensu Evangelistarum (Opera, Tom. III., 1041–1230, ed. Migne). He defends the order in our canon, first Matthew, last John, and the two apostolic disciples in the middle (in loco medio constituti tamquam filii amplectendi, I., 2), but wrongly makes Mark dependent on Matthew (see below, sub. I. 1). His view prevailed during the middle ages and down to the close of the eighteenth century. The verbal inspiration theory checked critical investigation.

The problem was resumed with Protestant freedom by Storr (1786), more elaborately by Eichhorn (1794), and Marsh (1803), and again by Hug (a liberal Roman Catholic scholar, 1808), Schleiermacher (1817), Gieseler (1818), De Wette (1826), Credner (1836), and others. It received a new impulse and importance by the Leben Jesu of Strauss (1836), and the Tübingen school, and has been carried forward by Baur (1847), Hilgenfeld, Bleek, Reuss, Holtzmann, Ewald, Meyer, Keim, Weiss, and others mentioned in the Literature (p. 577). Starting in Germany, the investigation was prosecuted also in France, Holland, England, and the United States.

It is not easy to find a way through the labyrinth of the Synoptic question, with all its by-ways and cross-ways, turns and windings, which at first make the impression:

"Mir wird von alle dem so dumm,

Als ging mir ein Mühlrad im Kopf herum."

Holtzmann gives a brief history of opinions (in his able work, Die Synopt. Evang.) down to 1863, and Hilgenfeld (Hist. Krit. Einl. in das N. T, pp. 173–210) down to 1874. Comp. also Reuss (Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., I., §§ 165–198, 6th ed., 1887), Holtzmann, Einleitung, 351 sqq., and Weiss, Einl., 473 sqq. The following classification of theories is tolerably complete, but several overlap each other, or are combined.

I. The Inspiration hypothesis cuts the gordian knot by tracing the agreement of the Synoptists directly and solely to the Holy Spirit. But this explains nothing, and makes God responsible for all the discrepancies and possible inaccuracies of the Evangelists. No inspiration theory can stand for a moment which does not leave room for the personal agency and individual peculiarities of the sacred authors and the exercise of their natural faculties in writing. Luke expressly states in the preface his own agency in composing his Gospel and the use he made of his means of information.

II. The Interdependency hypothesis, or Borrowing hypothesis (Benützungshypothese) holds that one or two Evangelists borrowed from the other. This admits of as many modifications as the order in which they may be placed.

1.  Matthew, Mark, Luke. This is the traditional order defended by Augustin, who called Mark, rather disrespectfully, a "footman and abbreviator of Matthew" (tamquam pedissequus et breviator Matthäi, II., 3), Grotius, Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, Hug (1808), Hilgenfeld, Klostermann, Keil. Among English writers Townson and Greswell.

Many scholars besides those just mentioned hold to this order without admitting an interdependence, and this I think is the correct view, in connection with the tradition hypothesis. See below, sub V. and the text.

2. Matthew, Luke, Mark. So first Clement of Alexandria (Eus., H. E., VI. 14), but, without intimating a dependence of Mark except on Peter. Griesbach (in two Programs, 1789) renewed this order and made Mark an extract from both Matthew and Luke. So Theile (1825), Fritzsche (1830), Sieffert (1832), De Wette, Bleek, Anger, Strauss, Baur, Keim. The Tübingen school utilized this order for the tendency theory (see below). Keim puts Matthew A.D. 66, Luke, 90, Mark, 100.

Bleek is the most considerate advocate of this order (Einleitung in das N. T., 2d ed., 1866, 91 sqq., 245 sqq.), but Mangold changed it (in the third ed. of Bleek, 1875, pp. 388 sqq.) in favor of the priority of a proto-Mark.

3. Mark, Matthew, Luke. The originality and priority of Mark was first suggested by Koppe (1782) and Storr (1786 and 1794). The same view was renewed by Lachmann (1835), elaborately carried out by Weisse (1838, 1856; Hilgenfeld calls him the "Urheber der conservativen Markushypothese "), and still more minutely in all details by Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838; but he assumes numerous interpolations in the present Mark and goes back to a proto-Mark), and by B. Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium, 1872). It is maintained in various ways by Hitzig (Johannes Markus, 1843), Ewald (1850, but with various prior sources), Ritschl (1851), Reuss, Thiersch, Tobler, Réville (1862), Eichthal (1863), Schenkel, Wittichen, Holtzmann (1863), Weizsäcker (1864), Scholten (1869), Meyer (Com. on Matt., 6th ed., 1876, p. 35), Renan (Les Évangiles, 1877, pp. 113, but the Greek Mark was preceded by the lost Hebrew Matthew, p. 93 sqq.). Among English writers, James Smith, of Jordan Hill (Dissertat. on the Origin of the Gospels, etc., Edinb., 1853), G. P. Fisher (Beginnings of Christianity, New York, 1877, p. 275), and E. A. Abbott (in "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. X., 1879, art. "Gospels") adopt the same view.

The priority of Mark is now the prevailing theory among German critics, notwithstanding the protest of Baur and Keim, who had almost a personal animosity against the second Evangelist. One of the last utterances of Keim was a passionate protest against the Präkonisation des Markus (Aus dem Urchristenthum, 1878, pp. 28–45). But the advocates of this theory are divided on the question whether the canonical Mark or a lost proto-Mark was the primitive evangelist. The one is called the Markushypothese, the other the Urmarkushypothese. We admit the originality of Mark, but this does not necessarily imply priority of composition. Matthew and Luke have too much original matter to be dependent on Mark, and are far more valuable, as a whole, though Mark is indispensable for particulars.

4. Mark, Luke, Matthew. Herder (1796), Volkmar (1866 and 1870).

5. Luke, Matthew, Mark. Büsching (1776), Evanson (1792).

6. Luke, Mark, Matthew. Vogel (1804), Schneckenburger (1882).

The conflicting variety of these modifications shakes the whole borrowing theory. It makes the omissions of most important sections, as Matt. 12–17; 14:22 – 16:12; and Luke 10–18:14, and the discrepancies in the common sections entirely inexplicable. See text.

III. The hypothesis of a Primitive Gospel (Urevangelium) written before those of the Synoptists and used by them as their common source, but now lost.

1. A lost Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaic Gospel of official character, written very early, about 35, in Palestine by the apostles as a manual for the travelling preachers. This is the famous Urevangeliumshypothese of the learned Professor Eichhorn (1794, 1804, 1820), adopted and modified by Bishop Herbert Marsh (1803), Gratz (1809), and Bertholdt (who, as Baur says, was devoted to it with "carnal self-security").

But there is no trace of such an important Gospel, either Hebrew or Greek. Luke knows nothing about it, although he speaks of several attempts to write portions of the history. To carry out his hypothesis, Eichhorn was forced to assume four altered copies or recensions of the original document, and afterwards he added also Greek recensions. Marsh, outgermanizing the German critic, increased the number of recensions to eight, including a Greek translation of the Hebrew original. Thus a new recension might be invented for every new set of facts ad infinitum. If the original Gospel was an apostolic composition, it needed no alterations and would have been preserved; or if it was so defective, it was of small account and unfit to be used as a basis of the canonical Gospels. Eichhorn’s hypothesis is now generally abandoned, but in modified shape it has been renewed by Ewald and others. See below.

2. The Gospel "according to the Hebrews," of which some fragments still remain. Lessing (1784, in a book published three years after his death), Semler (who, however, changed his view repeatedly), Weber (1791), Paulus (1799). But this was a heretical or Ebionitic corruption of Matthew, and the remaining fragments differ widely from the canonical Gospels.

3. The Hebrew Matthew (Urmatthäus). It is supposed in this case that the famous Logia, which Matthew is reported by Papias to have written in Hebrew, consisted not only of a collection of discourses of our Lord (as Schleiermacher, Ewald, Reuss, I., 183, explained the term), but also of his deeds: "things said and done."  But in any case the Hebrew Matthew is lost and cannot form a safe basis for conclusions. Hug and Roberts deny that it ever existed. See next section.

4. The canonical Mark.

5. A pre-canonical proto-Mark (Urmarkus). The last two hypotheses have already been mentioned under the second general head (II. 3).

IV. The theory of a number of fragmentary documents (the Diegesentheorie), or different recensions. It is based on the remark of Luke that "many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative (dihvghsin concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us" (Luke 1:1). Schleiermacher (1817) assumed a large number of such written documents, or detached narratives, and dealt very freely with the Synoptists, resting his faith chiefly on John.

Ewald (1850) independently carried out a similar view in fierce opposition to the "beastly wildness" of the Tübingen school. He informs us with his usual oracular self-assurance that Philip, the evangelist (Acts 8), first wrote a historical sketch in Hebrew, and then Matthew a collection of discourses (the lovgia of Papias), also in Hebrew, of which several Greek translations were made; that Mark was the third, Matthew the fifth, and Luke the ninth in this series of Gospels, representing the "Höhebilder, die himmlische Fortbewegung der Geschichte," which at last assumed their most perfect shape in John.

Köstlin, Wittichen, and Scholten likewise assume a number of precanonical Gospels which exist only in their critical fancy.

Renan (Les Evang., Introd., p. vi.) distinguishes three sets of Gospels: (1) original Gospels of the first hand, taken from the oral tradition without a previous written text: the Hebrew Matthew and the Greek proto-Mark; (2) Gospels partly original and partly second-handed: our canonical Gospels falsely attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke; (3) Gospels of the second and third hand: Marcion’s and the Apocryphal Gospels.

V. The theory of a common Oral Tradition (Traditionshypothese). Herder (1796), Gieseler (who first fully developed it, 1818), Schulz (1829), Credner, Lange, Ebrard (1868), Thiersch (1845, 1852), Norton, Alford, Westcott (1860, 6th ed., 1881), Godet (1873), Keil (1877), and others. The Gospel story by constant repetition assumed or rather had from the beginning a uniform shape, even in minute particulars, especially in the words of Christ. True, as far as it goes, but must be supplemented, at least in the case of Luke, by pre-canonical, fragmentary documents or memoranda (dihghvsei"). See the text.

VI. The Tendency hypothesis (Tendenzhypothese), or the theory of Doctrinal Adaptation. Baur (1847) and the Tübingen school (Schwegler, Ritschl, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, Köstlin), followed in England by Samuel Davidson (in his Introd. to the New Test., 1868, revised ed., 1882). Each Evangelist modified the Gospel history in the interest of the religious school or party to which he belonged. Matthew represents the Jewish Christian, Luke the Pauline or Gentile Christian tendency, Mark obliterates the difference, or prepares the way from the first to the second. Every individual trait or characteristic feature of a Gospel is connected with the dogmatic antithesis between Petrinism and Paulinism. Baur regarded Matthew as relatively the most primitive and credible Gospel, but it is itself a free reproduction of a still older Aramaic Gospel "according to the Hebrews."  He was followed by an Urlukas, a purely Pauline tendency Gospel. Mark is compiled from our Matthew and the Urlukas in the interest of neutrality. Then followed the present Luke with an irenical Catholic tendency. Baur overstrained the difference between Petrinism and Paulinism far beyond the limits of historic truth, transformed the sacred writers into a set of partisans and fighting theologians after modem fashion, set aside the fourth Gospel as a purely ideal fiction, and put all the Gospels about seventy years too far down (130–170), when they were already generally used in the Christian church—according to the concurrent testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Volkmar went even beyond Baur in reckless radicalism, although he qualified it in other respects, as regards the priority of Mark, the originality of Luke (as compared with Marcion), and the date of Matthew which he put back to about 110. See a summary of his views in Hilgenfeld’s Einleitung, pp. 199–202. But Ritschl and Hilgenfeld have considerably moderated the Tübingen extravagancies. Ritschl puts Mark first, and herein Volkmar agrees. Hilgenfeld assigns the composition of Matthew to the sixth decade of the first century (though he thinks it was somewhat changed soon after the destruction of Jerusalem), then followed Mark and paved the way from Petrinism to Paulinism, and Luke wrote last before the close of the first century. He ably maintained his theory in a five years’ conflict with the Tübingen master (1850–1855) and reasserts it in his Einleitung (1875). So he brings us back to the traditional order. As to the time of composition, the internal evidence strongly supports the historical tradition that the Synoptists wrote before the destruction of Jerusalem.

§ 80. Matthew.

Critical.

Bernh. Weiss: Das Matthäusevangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen erklärt. Halle, 1876. Exceedingly elaborate.

Edw. Byron Nicholson: The Gospel according to the Hebrews. Its Fragments translated and annotated. Lond., 1879.

Exegetical

Commentaries on Matthew by Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Melanchthon (1523), Fritzsche, De Wette, Alford, Wordsworth, Schegg (R. Cath., 1856–58, 3 vols.), J. A. Alexander, Lange (trsl. and enlarged by Schaff, N. Y., 1864, etc.), James Morison (of Glasgow, Lond., 1870), Meyer, (6th ed., 1876), Wichelhaus (Halle, 1876), Keil (Leipz., 1877), Plumptre (Lond., 1878), Carr (Cambr., 1879), Nicholson (Lond., 1881), Schaff (N. Y., 1882).

Life of Matthew.

Matthew,903 formerly called Levi, one of the twelve apostles, was originally a publican or taxgatherer904 at Capernaum, and hence well acquainted with Greek and Hebrew in bilingual Galilee, and accustomed to keep accounts. This occupation prepared him for writing a Gospel in topical order in both languages. In the three Synoptic lists of the apostles he is associated with Thomas, and forms with him the fourth pair; in Mark and Luke he precedes Thomas, in his own Gospel he is placed after him (perhaps from modesty).905  Hence the conjecture that he was a twin brother of Thomas (Didymus, i.e., Twin), or associated with him in work. Thomas was an honest and earnest doubter, of a melancholy disposition, yet fully convinced at last when he saw the risen Lord; Matthew was a strong and resolute believer.

Of his apostolic labors we have no certain information. Palestine, Ethiopia, Macedonia, the country of the Euphrates, Persia, and Media are variously assigned to him as missionary fields. He died a natural death according to the oldest tradition, while later accounts make him a martyr.906

The first Gospel is his imperishable work, well worthy a long life, yea many lives. Matthew the publican occupies as to time the first place in the order of the Evangelists, as Mary Magdalene, from whom Christ expelled many demons, first proclaimed the glad tidings of the resurrection. Not that it is on that account the best or most important—the best comes last,—but it naturally precedes the other, as the basis precedes the superstructure.907

In his written Gospel he still fulfils the great commission to bring all nations to the school of Christ (Matt. 28:19).

The scanty information of the person and life of Matthew in connection with his Gospel suggests the following probable inferences:

1. Matthew was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, yet comparatively liberal, being a publican who came in frequent contact with merchants from Damascus. This occupation was indeed disreputable in the eyes of the Jews, and scarcely consistent with the national Messianic aspirations; but Capernaum belonged to the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, and the Herodian family, which, with all its subserviency to heathen Rome, was yet to a certain extent identified with the Jewish nation.

2. He was a man of some means and good social position. His office was lucrative, he owned a house, and gave a farewell banquet to "a great multitude" of his old associates, at which Jesus presided.908  It was at the same time his farewell to the world, its wealth, its pleasures and honors. "We may conceive what a joyous banquet that was for Matthew, when he marked the words and acts of Jesus, and stored within his memory the scene and the conversation which he was inspired to write according to his clerkly ability for the instruction of the church in all after ages."909  It was on that occasion that Jesus spoke that word which was especially applicable to Matthew and especially offensive to the Pharisees present: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."  It is remarkable that the first post-apostolic quotation from the Gospel of Matthew is this very passage, and one similar to it (see below).

3. He was a man of decision of character and capable of great sacrifice to his conviction. When called, while sitting in Oriental fashion at his tollbooth, to follow Jesus, he "forsook all, rose up, and followed Him," whom he at once recognized and trusted as the true king of Israel.910  No one can do more than leave his "all," no matter how much or how little this may be; and no one can do better than to "follow Christ."

Character and Aim of the Gospel.

The first Gospel makes the impression of primitive antiquity. The city of Jerusalem, the temple, the priesthood and sacrifices, the entire religious and political fabric of Judaism are supposed to be still standing, but with an intimation of their speedy downfall.911  It alone reports the words of Christ that he came not to destroy but to fulfil the law and the prophets, and that he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.912  Hence the best critics put the composition several years before the destruction of Jerusalem.913

Matthew’s Gospel was evidently written for Hebrews, and Hebrew Christians with the aim to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the last and greatest prophet, priest, and king of Israel. It presupposes a knowledge of Jewish customs and Palestinian localities (which are explained in other Gospels).914  It is the connecting link between the Old and the New Covenant. It is, as has been well said,915 "the ultimatum of Jehovah to his ancient people: Believe, or prepare to perish!  Recognize Jesus as the Messiah, or await Him as your Judge!"  Hence he so often points out the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy in the evangelical history with his peculiar formula: "that it might be fulfilled," or "then was fulfilled." 916

In accordance with this plan, Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, showing him to be the son and heir of David the king, and of Abraham the father, of the Jewish race, to whom the promises were given. The wise men of the East come from a distance to adore the new-born king of the Jews. The dark suspicion and jealousy of Herod is roused, and foreshadows the future persecution of the Messiah. The flight to Egypt and the return from that land both of refuge and bondage are a fulfilment of the typical history of Israel. John the Baptist completes the mission of prophecy in preparing the way for Christ. After the Messianic inauguration and trial Jesus opens his public ministry with the Sermon on the Mount, which is the counterpart of the Sinaitic legislation, and contains the fundamental law of his kingdom. The key-note of this sermon and of the whole Gospel is that Christ came to fulfil the law and the prophets, which implies both the harmony of the two religions and the transcendent superiority of Christianity. His mission assumes an organized institutional form in the kingdom of heaven which he came to establish in the world. Matthew uses this term (hJ basileiva tw'n oujranw'n) no less than thirty-two times, while the other Evangelists and Paul speak of the "kingdom of God" (hJ basileiva tou' qeou'). No other Evangelist has so fully developed the idea that Christ and his kingdom are the fulfilment of all the hopes and aspirations of Israel, and so vividly set forth the awful solemnity of the crisis at this turning point in its history.

But while Matthew wrote from the Jewish Christian point of view, he is far from being Judaizing or contracted. He takes the widest range of prophecy. He is the most national and yet the most universal, the most retrospective and yet the most prospective, of Evangelists. At the very cradle of the infant Jesus he introduces the adoring Magi from the far East, as the forerunners of a multitude of believing Gentiles who "shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven;" while "the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness."  The heathen centurion, and the heathen woman of Canaan exhibit a faith the like of which Jesus did not find in Israel. The Messiah is rejected and persecuted by his own people in Galilee and Judaea. He upbraids Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, wherein his mighty works were done, because they repented not; He sheds tears over Jerusalem because she would not come to Him; He pronounces his woe over the Jewish hierarchy, and utters the fearful prophecies of the destruction of the theocracy. All this is most fully recorded by Matthew, and he most appropriately and sublimely concludes with the command of the universal evangelization of all nations, and the promise of the unbroken presence of Christ with his people to the end of the world.917

Topical Arrangement.

The mode of arrangement is clear and orderly. It is topical rather than chronological. It far surpasses Mark and Luke in the fulness of the discourses of Christ, while it has to be supplemented from them in regard to the succession of events. Matthew groups together the kindred words and works with special reference to Christ’s teaching; hence it was properly called by Papias a collection of the Oracles of the Lord. It is emphatically the didactic Gospel.

The first didactic group is the Sermon on the Mount of Beatitudes, which contains the legislation of the kingdom of Christ and an invitation to the whole people to enter, holding out the richest promises to the poor in spirit and the pure in heart (Matt. 5–7. The second group is the instruction to the disciples in their missionary work (Matt. 10). The third is the collection of the parables on the kingdom of God, illustrating its growth, conflict, value, and consummation (Matt. 13). The fourth, the denunciation of the Pharisees (Matt. 23), and the fifth, the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (Matt. 24 and 25).

Between these chief groups are inserted smaller discourses of Christ, on his relation to John the Baptist (11:1–19); the woe on the unrepenting cities of Galilee (11:20–24); the thanksgiving for the revelation to those of a childlike spirit (11:25–27); the invitation to the weary and heavy laden (11:28–30); on the observance of the Sabbath and warning to the Pharisees who were on the way to commit the unpardonable sin by tracing his miracles to Satanic powers (Matt. 12); the attack on the traditions of the elders and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (Matt. 15 and 16); the prophecy of the founding of the church after the great confession of Peter, with the prediction of his passion as the way to victory (Matt. 16); the discourse on the little children with their lesson of simplicity and humility against the temptations of hierarchial pride; the duty of forgiveness in the kingdom and the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18); the discourse about divorce, against the Pharisees; the blessing of little children; the warning against the danger of riches; the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard and the nature of the future rewards (Matt. 19 and 20); the victorious replies of the Lord to the tempting questions of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. 22).

These discourses are connected with narratives of the great miracles of Christ and the events in his life. The miracles are likewise grouped together (as in Matt. 8–9), or briefly summed up (as in 4:23–25). The transfiguration (Matt. 17) forms the turning-point between the active and the passive life; it was a manifestation of heaven on earth, an anticipation of Christ’s future glory, a pledge of the resurrection, and it fortified Jesus and his three chosen disciples for the coming crisis, which culminated in the crucifixion and ended in the resurrection.918

Peculiar Sections.

Matthew has a number of original sections:

1. Ten Discourses of our Lord, namely, the greater part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7); the thanksgiving for the revelation to babes (11:25–27); the touching invitation to the heavy laden (11:28–30), which is equal to anything in John; the warning against idle words (12:36, 37); the blessing pronounced upon Peter and the prophecy of founding the church (16:17–19); the greater part of the discourse on humility and forgiveness (Matt. 18); the rejection of the Jews (21:43); the denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23); the description of the final judgment (25:31–46); the great commission and the promise of Christ’s presence to the end of time (28:18–20).

2. Ten Parables: the tares; the hidden treasure; the pearl of great price; the draw-net (13:24–50); the unmerciful servant (18:23–35); the laborers in the vineyard (20:1–16); the two sons (21:28–32); the marriage of the king’s son (22: 1–14); the ten virgins (25:1–13); the talents (25:14–30).

3. Two Miracles: the cure of two blind men (9:27–31); the stater in the fish’s mouth (17:24–27).

4. Facts and Incidents: the adoration of the Magi; the massacre of the innocents; the flight into Egypt; the return from Egypt to Nazareth (all in Matt. 2); the coming of the Pharisees and Sadducees to John’s baptism (3:7); Peter’s attempt to walk on the sea (14:28–31); the payment of the temple tax (17:24–27); the bargain of Judas, his remorse, and suicide (26:14–16; 27:3–10); the dream of Pilate’s wife (27:19); the appearance of departed saints in Jerusalem (27:52); the watch at the sepulchre (27:62–66); the lie of the Sanhedrin and the bribing of the soldiers (28:11–15); the earthquake on the resurrection morning (28:2, a repetition of the shock described in 27:51, and connected with the rolling away of the stone from the sepulchre).

The Style.

The Style of Matthew is simple, unadorned, calm, dignified, even majestic; less vivid and picturesque than that of Mark; more even and uniform than Luke’s, because not dependent on written sources. He is Hebraizing, but less so than Mark, and not so much as Luke 1–2. He omits some minor details which escaped his observation, but which Mark heard from Peter, and which Luke learned from eye-witnesses or found in his fragmentary documents. Among his peculiar expressions, besides the constant use of "kingdom of heaven," is the designation of God as "our heavenly Father," and of Jerusalem as "the holy city" and "the city of the Great King."  In the fulness of the teaching of Christ he surpasses all except John. Nothing can be more solemn and impressive than his reports of those words of life and power, which will outlast heaven and earth (24:34). Sentence follows sentence with overwhelming force, like a succession of lightning flashes from the upper world.919

Patristic Notices of Matthew.

The first Gospel was well known to the author of the "Didache of the Apostles," who wrote between 80 and 100, and made large use of it, especially the Sermon on the Mount.920

The next clear allusion to this Gospel is made in the Epistle of Barnabas, who quotes two passages from the Greek Matthew, one from 22:14: "Many are called, but few chosen," with the significant formula used only of inspired writings, "It is written."921  This shows clearly that early in the second century, if not before, it was an acknowledged authority in the church. The Gospel of John also indirectly presupposes, by its numerous emissions, the existence of all the Synoptical Gospels.

The Hebrew Matthew.

Next we hear of a Hebrew Matthew from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, "a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp."922  He collected from apostles and their disciples a variety of apostolic traditions in his "Exposition of Oracles of the Lord," in five books (logivwn kuriakw'n ejxhvghsi"¼.  In a fragment of this lost work preserved by Eusebius, he says distinctly that "Matthew composed the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew tongue, and everyone interpreted them as best he could."923

Unfortunately the Hebrew Matthew, if it ever existed, has disappeared, and consequently there is much difference of opinion about this famous passage, both as regards the proper meaning of "oracles" (logiva) and the truth of the whole report.

1. The "oracles" are understood by some to mean only the discourses of our Lord;924 by others to include also the narrative portions.925  But in any case the Hebrew Matthew must have been chiefly an orderly collection of discourses. This agrees best with the natural and usual meaning of Logia, and the actual preponderance of the doctrinal element in our canonical Matthew) as compared with our Mark. A parte potiori fit denominatio.

2. The report of a Hebrew original has been set aside altogether as a sheer mistake of Papias, who confounded it with the Ebionite "Gospel according to the Hebrews," known to us from a number of fragments.926  It is said that Papias was a credulous and weak-minded, though pious man.927  But this does not impair his veracity or invalidate a simple historical notice. It is also said that the universal spread of the Greek language made a Hebrew Gospel superfluous. But the Aramaic was still the vernacular and prevailing language in Palestine (comp. Acts 21:40; 22:2) and in the countries of the Euphrates.

There is an intrinsic probability of a Hebrew Gospel for the early stage of Christianity. And the existence of a Hebrew Matthew rests by no means merely on Papias. It is confirmed by the independent testimonies of most respectable fathers, as Irenaeus,928 Pantaenus,929 Origen, 930 Eusebius,931 Cyril of Jerusalem,932 Epiphanius,933 and Jerome.934

This Hebrew Matthew must not be identified with the Judaizing "Gospel according to the Hebrews," the best among the apocryphal Gospels, of which in all thirty-three fragments remain. Jerome and other fathers clearly distinguish the two. The latter was probably an adaptation of the former to the use of the Ebionites and Nazarenes.935  Truth always precedes heresy, as the genuine coin precedes the counterfeit, and the real portrait the caricature. Cureton and Tregelles maintain that the Curetonian Syriac fragment is virtually a translation of the Hebrew Matthew, and antedates the Peshito version. But Ewald has proven that it is derived from our Greek Matthew.936

Papias says that everybody "interpreted" the Hebrew Matthew as well as he could. He refers no doubt to the use of the Gospel in public discourses before Greek hearers, not to a number of written translations of which we know nothing. The past tense (hjrmhvneuse) moreover seems to imply that such necessity existed no longer at the time when he wrote; in other words, that the authentic Greek Matthew had since appeared and superseded the Aramaic predecessor which was probably less complete.937  Papias accordingly is an indirect witness of the Greek Matthew in his own age; that is, the early part of the second century (about A.D. 130). At all events the Greek Matthew was in public use even before that time, as is evident from the, quotations in the Didache, and the Epistle of Barnabas (which were written before 120, probably before 100).

The Greek Matthew.

The Greek Matthew, as we have it now, is not a close translation from the Hebrew and bears the marks of an original composition. This appears from genuine Greek words and phrases to which there is no parallel in Hebrew, as the truly classical "Those wretches he will wretchedly destroy,"938 and from the discrimination in Old Testament quotations which are freely taken from the Septuagint in the course of the narrative, but conformed to the Hebrew when they convey Messianic prophecies, and are introduced by the solemn formula: "that there might be fulfilled," or "then was fulfilled."939

If then we credit the well nigh unanimous tradition of the ancient church concerning a prior Hebrew Matthew, we must either ascribe the Greek Matthew to some unknown translator who took certain liberties with the original,940 or, what seems most probable, we must assume that Matthew himself at different periods of his life wrote his Gospel first in Hebrew in Palestine, and afterward in Greek.941  In doing so, he would not literally translate his own book, but like other historians freely reproduce and improve it. Josephus did the same with his history of the Jewish war, of which only the Greek remains. When the Greek Matthew once was current in the church, it naturally superseded the Hebrew, especially if it was more complete.

Objections are raised to Matthew’s authorship of the first canonical Gospel, from real or supposed inaccuracies in the narrative, but they are at best very trifling and easily explained by the fact that Matthew paid most attention to the words of Christ, and probably had a better memory for thoughts than for facts.942

But whatever be the view we take of the precise origin of the first canonical Gospel, it was universally received in the ancient church as the work of Matthew. It was our Matthew who is often, though freely, quoted by Justin Martyr as early as A.D. 146 among the "Gospel Memoirs;" it was one of the four Gospels of which his pupil Tatian compiled a connected "Diatessaron;" and it was the only Matthew used by Irenaeus and all the fathers that follow.

§ 81. Mark.

Commentaries.

George Petter (the largest Com. on M., London, 1661, 2 vols. fol.); C. Fr. A. Fritzsche (Evangelium Marci, Lips., 1830); A. Klostermann (Das Marcusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwerthe für die evang. Gesch., Göttingen, 1867); B. Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium und seine synopt. Parallelen, Berlin, 1872); Meyer (6th ed. by Weiss, Gött., 1878); Joseph A. Alexander (New York, 1858, and London, 1866); Harvey Goodwin (London, 1860); John H. Godwin (London, 1869); James Morison (Mark’s Memoir of Jesus Christ, London and Glasgow, 1873, second ed., 1876, third ed., 1881, one of the very best Com., learned, reverential, and sensible); C. F. Maclear (Cambridge, 1877); Canon Cook (London, 1878); Edwin W. Rich (Philad., 1881); Matthew B. Riddle (New York, 1881).

Life of Mark

The second Evangelist combines in his name, as well as in his mission, the Hebrew and the Roman, and is a connecting link between Peter and Paul, but more especially a pupil and companion of the former, so that his Gospel may properly be called the Gospel of Peter. His original name was John or Johanan (i.e., Jehovah is gracious, Gotthold) his surname was Mark (i.e., Mallet).943  The surname supplanted the Hebrew name in his later life, as Peter supplanted Simon, and Paul supplanted Saul. The change marked the transition of Christianity from the Jews to the Gentiles. He is frequently mentioned in the Acts and the Epistles.944

He was the son of a certain Mary who lived at Jerusalem and offered her house, at great risk no doubt in that critical period of persecution, to the Christian disciples for devotional meetings. Peter repaired to that house after his deliverance from prison (A.D. 44). This accounts for the close intimacy of Mark with Peter; he was probably converted through him, and hence called his spiritual "son" (1 Pet. 5:13).945  He may have had a superficial acquaintance with Christ; for he is probably identical with that unnamed "young man" who, according to his own report, left his "linen cloth and fled naked" from Gethsemane in the night of betrayal (Mark 14:51). He would hardly have mentioned such a trifling incident, unless it had a special significance for him as the turning-point in his life. Lange ingeniously conjectures that his mother owned the garden of Gethsemane or a house close by.

Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas as their minister (uJphrevth") on their first great missionary journey; but left them half-way, being discouraged, it seems, by the arduous work, and returned to his mother in Jerusalem. For this reason Paul refused to take him on his next tour, while Barnabas was willing to overlook his temporary weakness (Acts 15:38). There was a "sharp contention" on that occasion between these good men, probably in connection with the more serious collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11 sqq.). Paul was moved by a stern sense of duty; Barnabas by a kindly feeling for his cousin.946  But the alienation was only temporary. For about ten years afterwards (63) Paul speaks of Mark at Rome as one of his few "fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God," who had been "a comfort" to him in his imprisonment; and he commends him to the brethren in Asia Minor on his intended visit (Col. 4:10, 11; Philem. 24). In his last Epistle he charges Timothy to bring Mark with him to Rome on the ground that he was "useful to him for ministering" (2 Tim. 4:11). We find him again in company with Peter at "Baby]on," whether that be on the Euphrates, or, more probably, at Rome (1 Pet. 5:3).

These are the last notices of him in the New Testament. The tradition of the church adds two important facts, that he wrote his Gospel in Rome as the interpreter of Peter, and that afterwards he founded the church of Alexandria. The Coptic patriarch claims to be his successor. The legends of his martyrdom in the eighth year of Nero (this date is given by Jerome) are worthless. In 827 his relics were removed from Egypt to Venice, which built him a magnificent five-domed cathedral on the Place of St. Mark, near the Doge’s palace, and chose him with his symbol, the Lion, for the patron saint of the republic.

His Relation to Peter.

Though not an apostle, Mark had the best opportunity in his mother’s house and his personal connection with Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and other prominent disciples for gathering the most authentic information concerning the gospel history.

The earliest notice of his Gospel we have from Papias of Hierapolis in the first half of the second century. He reports among the primitive traditions which he collected, that "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter (eJrmhneuth;" Pevtrou genovmeno"¼, wrote down accurately »ajkribw'" e[grayen) whatever he remembered,947 without, however, recording in order (ta;xei) what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow Him; but afterwards, as I said, [he followed] Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs [of his hearers], but not in the way of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses.948  So then Mark committed no error in thus writing down such details as he remembered; for he made it his one forethought not to omit or to misrepresent any details that he had heard."949

In what sense was Mark an "interpreter" of Peter?  Not as the translator of a written Aramaic Gospel of Peter into the Greek, for of such an Aramaic original there is no trace, and Peter (to judge from his Epistles) wrote better Greek; nor as the translator of his discourses into Latin, for we know not whether he understood that language, and it was scarcely needed even in Rome among Jews and Orientals who spoke Greek;950 nor in the wider sense, as a mere clerk or amanuensis, who wrote down what Peter dictated; but as the literary editor and publisher of the oral Gospel of his spiritual father and teacher. So Mercury was called the interpreter of the gods, because he communicated to mortals the messages of the gods. It is quite probable, however, that Peter sketched down some of the chief events under the first impression, in his vernacular tongue, and that such brief memoirs, if they existed, would naturally be made use of by Mark.951

We learn, then, from Papias that Mark wrote his Gospel from the personal reminiscences of Peter’s discourses, which were adapted to the immediate wants of his hearers; that it was not complete (especially in the didactic part, as compared with Matthew or John), nor strictly chronological.

Clement of Alexandria informs us that the people of Rome were so much pleased with the preaching of Peter that they requested Mark, his attendant, to put it down in writing, which Peter neither encouraged nor hindered. Other ancient fathers emphasize the close intimacy of Mark with Peter, and call his Gospel the Gospel of Peter.952

The Gospel.

This tradition is confirmed by the book: it is derived from the apostolic preaching of Peter, but is the briefest and so far the least complete of all the Gospels, yet replete with significant details. It reflects the sanguine and impulsive temperament, rapid movement, and vigorous action of Peter. In this respect its favorite particle "straightway" is exceedingly characteristic. The break-down of Mark in Pamphylia, which provoked the censure of Paul, has a parallel in the denial and inconsistency of Peter; but, like him, he soon rallied, was ready to accompany Paul on his next mission, and persevered faithfully to the end.

He betrays, by omissions and additions, the direct influence of Peter. He informs us that the house of Peter was "the house of Simon and Andrew" (Mark 1:29). He begins the public ministry of Christ with the calling of these two brothers (1:16) and ends the undoubted part of the Gospel with a message to Peter (16:7), and the supplement almost in the very words of Peter.953  He tells us that Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he proposed to erect three tabernacles, "knew not what to say" (9:6). He gives the most minute account of Peter’s denial, and—alone among the Evangelists—records the fact that he warmed himself "in the light" of the fire so that he could be distinctly seen (14:54), and that the cock crew twice, giving him a second warning (14:72). No one would be more likely to remember and report the fact as a stimulus to humility and gratitude than Peter himself.

On the other hand, Mark omits the laudatory words of Jesus to Peter: "Thou art Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church;" while yet he records the succeeding rebuke: "Get thee behind me, Satan."954  The humility of the apostle, who himself warns so earnestly against the hierarchical abuse of the former passage, offers the most natural explanation of this conspicuous omission. "It is likely," says Eusebius, "that Peter maintained silence on these points; hence the silence of Mark."955

Character and Aim of Mark.

The second Gospel was—according to the unanimous voice of the ancient church, which is sustained by internal evidence—written at Rome and primarily for Roman readers, probably before the death of Peter, at all events before the destruction of Jerusalem.956

It is a faithful record of Peter’s preaching, which Mark must have heard again and again. It is an historical sermon on the text of Peter when addressing the Roman soldier Cornelius: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him."957  It omits the history of the infancy, and rushes at once into the public ministry of our Lord, beginning, like Peter, with the baptism of John, and ending with the ascension. It represents Christ in the fulness of his living energy, as the Son of God and the mighty wonder-worker who excited amazement and carried the people irresistibly before him as a spiritual conqueror. This aspect would most impress the martial mind of the Romans, who were born to conquer and to rule. The teacher is lost in the founder of a kingdom. The heroic element prevails over the prophetic. The victory over Satanic powers in the healing of demoniacs is made very prominent. It is the gospel of divine force manifested in Christ. The symbol of the lion is not inappropriate to the Evangelist who describes Jesus as the Lion of the tribe of Judah.958

Mark gives us a Gospel of facts, while Matthew’s is a Gospel of divine oracles. He reports few discourses, but many miracles. He unrolls the short public life of our Lord in a series of brief life-pictures in rapid succession. He takes no time to explain and to reveal the inside. He dwells on the outward aspect of that wonderful personality as it struck the multitude. Compared with Matthew and especially with John, he is superficial, but not on that account incorrect or less useful and necessary. He takes the theocratic view of Christ, like Matthew; while Luke and John take the universal view; but while Matthew for his Jewish readers begins with the descent of Christ from David the King and often directs attention to the fulfilment of prophecy, Mark, writing for Gentiles, begins with "the Son of God" in his independent personality.959  He rarely quotes prophecy; but, on the other hand, he translates for his Roman readers Aramaic words and Jewish customs and opinions.960  He exhibits the Son of God in his mighty power and expects the reader to submit to his authority.

Two miracles are peculiar to him, the healing of the deaf and dumb man in Decapolis, which astonished the people "beyond measure" and made them exclaim: "He hath done all things well: he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak" (Mark 7:31–37). The other miracle is a remarkable specimen of a gradual cure, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, who upon the first touch of Christ saw the men around him walking, but indistinctly as trees, and then after the second laying on of hands upon his eyes "saw all things clearly" (8:22–26). He omits important parables, but alone gives the interesting parable of the seed growing secretly and bearing first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (4:26–29).

It is an interesting feature to which Dr. Lange first has directed attention, that Mark lays emphasis on the periods of pause and rest which "rhythmically intervene between the several great victories achieved by Christ."  He came out from his obscure abode in Nazareth; each fresh advance in his public life is preceded by a retirement, and each retirement is followed by a new and greater victory. The contrast between the contemplative rest and the vigorous action is striking and explains the overpowering effect by revealing its secret spring in the communion with God and with himself. Thus we have after his baptism a retirement to the wilderness in Judaea before he preached in Galilee (1:12); a retirement to the ship (3:7); to the desert on the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee (6:31); to a mountain (6:46); to the border land of Tyre and Sidon (7:24); to Decapolis (7:31); to a high mountain (9:2); to Bethany (11:1); to Gethsemane (14:34); his rest in the grave before the resurrection; and his withdrawal from the world and his reappearance in the victories of the gospel preached by his disciples. "The ascension of the Lord forms his last withdrawal, which is to be followed by his final onset and absolute victory."961

Doctrinal Position.

Mark has no distinct doctrinal type, but is catholic, irenic, unsectarian, and neutral as regards the party questions within the apostolic church. But this is not the result of calculation or of a tendency to obliterate and conciliate existing differences.962  Mark simply represents the primitive form of Christianity itself before the circumcision controversy broke out which occasioned the apostolic conference at Jerusalem twenty years after the founding of the church. His Gospel is Petrine without being anti-Pauline, and Pauline without being anti-Petrine. Its doctrinal tone is the same as that of the sermons of Peter in the Acts. It is thoroughly practical. Its preaches Christianity, not theology.

The same is true of the other Gospels, with this difference, however, that Matthew has a special reference to Jewish, Luke to Gentile readers, and that both make their selection accordingly under the guidance of the Spirit and in accordance with their peculiar charisma and aim, but without altering or coloring the facts. Mark stands properly between them just as Peter stood between James and Paul.

The Style.

The style of Mark is unclassical, inelegant, provincial, homely, poor and repetitious in vocabulary, but original, fresh, and picturesque, and enlivened by interesting touches and flickers..963

He was a stranger to the arts of rhetoric and unskilled in literary composition, but an attentive listener, a close observer, and faithful recorder of actual events. He is strongly Hebraizing, and uses often the Hebrew and, but seldom the argumentative for. He inserts a number of Latin words, though most of these occur also in Matthew and Luke, and in the Talmud.964  He uses the particle "forthwith" or "straightway" more frequently than all the other Evangelists combined.965  It is his pet word, and well expresses his haste and rapid transition from event to event, from conquest to conquest. He quotes names and phrases in the original Aramaic, as "Abba," "Boanerges," "Talitha kum," "Corban," "Ephphathah," and "Eloi, Eloi," with a Greek translation.966  He is fond of the historical present,967 of the direct instead of the indirect mode of speech,968 of pictorical participles,969 and of affectionate diminutives.970  He observes time and place of important events.971  He has a number of peculiar expressions not found elsewhere in the New Testament.972

Characteristic Details.

Mark inserts many delicate tints and interesting incidents of persons and events which he must have heard from primitive witnesses. They are not the touches of fancy or the reflections of an historian, but the reminiscences of the first impressions. They occur in every chapter. He makes some little contribution to almost every narrative he has in common with Matthew and Luke. He notices the overpowering impression of awe and wonder, joy and delight, which the words and miracles of Jesus and his very appearance made upon the people and the disciples;973 the actions of the multitude as they were rushing and thronging and pressing upon Him that He might touch and heal them, so that there was scarcely standing room, or time to eat.974  On one occasion his kinsmen were about forcibly to remove Him from the throng. He directs attention to the human emotions and passions of our Lord, how he was stirred by pity, wonder, grief, anger and indignation.975  He notices his attitudes, looks and gestures,976 his sleep and hunger.977

He informs us that Jesus, "looking upon" the rich young ruler, "loved him," and that the ruler’s "countenance fell" when he was told to sell all he had and to follow Jesus. Mark, or Peter rather, must have watched the eye of our Lord and read in his face the expression of special interest in that man who notwithstanding his self-righteousness and worldliness had some lovely qualities and was not very far from the kingdom.978

The cure of the demoniac and epileptic at the foot of the mount of transfiguration is narrated with greater circumstantiality and dramatic vividness by Mark than by the other Synoptists. He supplies the touching conversation of Jesus with the father of the sufferer, which drew out his weak and struggling faith with the earnest prayer for strong and victorious faith: "I believe; help Thou mine unbelief."979  We can imagine how eagerly Peter, the confessor, caught this prayer, and how often he repeated it in his preaching, mindful of his own weakness and trials.

All the Synoptists relate on two distinct occasions Christ’s love for little children, but Mark alone tells us that He "took little children into his arms, and laid his hands upon them."980

Many minor details not found in the other Gospels, however insignificant in themselves, are yet most significant as marks of the autopticity of the narrator (Peter). Such are the notices that Jesus entered the house of "Simon and Andrew, with James and John" (Mark 1:29); that the Pharisees took counsel "with the Herodians" (3:6); that the raiment of Jesus at the transfiguration became exceeding white as snow "so as no fuller on earth can whiten them" (9:3); that blind Bartimaeus when called, "casting away his garment, leaped up" (10:50), and came to Jesus; that "Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately" on the Mount of Olives about the coming events (13:3); that the five thousand sat down "in ranks, by hundreds and fifties" (6:40); that the Simon who carried the cross of Christ (15:21) was a "Cyrenian" and "the father of Alexander and Rufus" (no doubt, two well-known disciples, perhaps at Rome, comp. Rom. 16:13).

We may add, as peculiar to Mark and "bewraying" Peter, the designation of Christ as "the carpenter" (Mark 6:3); the name of the blind beggar at Jericho, "Bartimaeus" (10:46); the "cushion" in the boat on which Jesus slept (4:38); the "green grass" on the hill side in spring time (4:39); the "one loaf" in the ship (8:14); the colt "tied at the door without in the open street" (11:4); the address to the daughter of Jairus in her mother tongue (5:41); the bilingual "Abba, Father," in the prayer at Gethsemane (14:36; comp. Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6).

Conclusion.

The natural conclusion from all these peculiarities is that Mark’s Gospel, far from being an extract from Matthew or Luke or both, as formerly held,981 is a thoroughly independent and original work, as has been proven by minute investigations of critics of different schools and aims.982  It is in all its essential parts a fresh, life-like, and trustworthy record of the persons and events of the gospel history from the lips of honest old Peter and from the pen of his constant attendant and pupil. Jerome hit it in the fourth century, and unbiassed critics in the nineteenth century confirm it: Peter was the narrator, Mark the writer, of the second Gospel.983

Some have gone further and maintain that Mark, "the interpreter of Peter," simply translated a Hebrew Gospel of his teacher;984 but tradition knows nothing of a Hebrew Peter, while it speaks of a Hebrew Matthew; and a book is called after its author, not after its translator. It is enough to say Peter was the preacher, Mark the reporter and editor.

The bearing of this fact upon the reliableness of the Synoptic record of the life of Christ is self-evident. It leaves no room for the mythical or legendary hypothesis.985

Integrity of the Gospel.

The Gospel closes (Mark 16:9–20) with a rapid sketch of the wonders of the resurrection and ascension, and the continued manifestations of power that attend the messengers of Christ in preaching the gospel to the whole creation. This close is upon the whole characteristic of Mark and presents the gospel as a divine power pervading and transforming the world, but it contains some peculiar features, namely: (1) one of the three distinct narratives of Christ’s ascension (16:19, "he was received up into heaven;" the other two being those of Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9–11), with the additional statement that he "sat down at the right hand of God" (comp. the similar statement, 1 Pet. 3:22) (2) an emphatic declaration of the necessity of baptism for salvation ("he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved"), with the negative clause that unbelief (i.e., the rejection of the gospel offer of salvation) condemns ("he that disbelieveth shall be condemned");986 (3) the fact that the apostles disbelieved the report of Mary Magdalene until the risen Lord appeared to them personally (Mark 16:11–14; but John intimates the same, John 20:8, 9, especially in regard to Thomas, 20:25, and Matthew mentions that some doubted, Matt. 28:17; comp. Luke 24:37–41); (4) an authoritative promise of supernatural powers and signs which shall accompany the believers (Mark 16:17, 18). Among these is mentioned the pentecostal glossolalia under the unique name of speaking with new tongues.987

The genuineness of this closing section is hotly contested, and presents one of the most difficult problems of textual criticism. The arguments are almost equally strong on both sides, but although the section cannot be proven to be a part of the original Gospel, it seems clear: (1) that it belongs to primitive tradition (like the disputed section of the adulteress in John 8); and (2) that Mark cannot have closed his Gospel with Mark 16:8 (gavr) without intending a more appropriate conclusion. The result does not affect the character and credibility of the Gospel. The section may be authentic or correct in its statements, without being genuine or written by Mark. There is nothing in it which, properly understood, does not harmonize with apostolic teaching.

Note on the Disputed Close of Mark, 16:9–20.

I. Reasons against the genuineness:

1. The section is wanting altogether in the two oldest and most valuable uncial manuscripts, the Sinaitic (a ) and the Vatican (B). The latter, it is true, after ending the Gospel with Mark 16:8 and the subscription kata mapkon, leaves the remaining third column blank, which is sufficient space for the twelve verses. Much account is made of this fact by Drs. Burgon and Scrivener; but in the same MS. I find, on examination of the facsimile edition, blank spaces from a few lines up to two-thirds and three-fourths of a column, at the end of Matthew, John, Acts, 1 Pet. (fol. 200), 1 John (fol. 208), Jude (fol. 210), Rom. (fol. 227), Eph. (fol. 262), Col. (fol. 272). In the Old Testament of B, as Dr. Abbot has first noted (in 1872), there are two blank columns at the end of Nehemiah, and a blank column and a half at the end of Tobit. In any case the omission indicates an objection of the copyist of B to the section, or its absence in the earlier manuscript he used.

I add the following private note from Dr. Abbot:, "In the Alexandrian MS. a column and a third are left blank at the end of Mark, half a page at the end of John, and a whole page at the end of the Pauline Epistles. (Contrast the ending of Matthew and Acts.)  In the Old Testament, note especially in this MS. Leviticus, Isaiah, and the Ep. of Jeremiah, at the end of each of which half a page or more is left blank; contrast Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations. There are similar blanks at the end of Ruth, 2 Samuel, and Daniel, but the last leaf of those books ends a quaternion or quire in the MS. In the Sinaitic MS. more than two columns with the whole following page are left blank at the end of the Pauline Epistles, though the two next leaves belong to the same quaternion; so at the end of the Acts a column and two-thirds with the whole of the following page; and at the end of Barnabas a column and a half. These examples show that the matter in question depended largely on the whim of the copyist; and that we can not infer with confidence that the scribe of B knew of any other ending of the Gospel."

There is also a shorter conclusion, unquestionably spurious, which in L and several MSS. of the Aethiopic version immediately follows Mark 16:8, and appears also in the margin of 274, the Harclean Syriac, and the best Coptic MS. of the Gospel, while in k of the Old Latin it takes the place of the longer ending. For details, see Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30, 38, 44 sq.

2. Eusebius and Jerome state expressly that the section was wanting in almost all the Greek copies of the Gospels. It was not in the copy used by Victor of Antioch. There is also negative patristic evidence against it, particularly strong in the case of Cyril of Jerusalem, Tertullian, and Cyprian, who had special occasion to quote it (see Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30–38). Jerome’s statement, however, is weakened by the fact that he seems to depend upon Eusebius, and that he himself translated the passage in his Vulgate.

3. It is ’wanting in the important MS. k representing the African text of the Old Latin version, which has a different conclusion (like that in L), also in some of the best MSS. of the Armenian version, while in others it follows the usual subscription. It is also wanting in an unpublished Arabic version (made from the Greek) in the Vatican Library, which is likewise noteworthy for reading o{" in 1 Tim. 3:16.

4. The way in which the section begins, and in which it refers to Mary Magdalene, give it the air of a conclusion derived from some extraneous source. It does not record the  fulfilment of the promise in Mark 16:7. It uses (16:9) prwvth/ sabbavtou for the Hebraistic th'/ mia'/ tw'n sabbavtwn of 16:2. It has many words or phrases (e.g., poreuvomai used three times) not elsewhere found in Mark, which strengthen the impression that we are dealing with a different writer, and it lacks Mark’s usual graphic detail. But the argument from difference of style and vocabulary has been overstrained, and can not be regarded as in itself decisive.

II. Arguments in favor of the genuineness:

1. The section is found in most of the uncial MSS., A C D C G D S, in all the late uncials (in L as a secondary reading), and in all the cursive MSS., including 1, 33, 69, etc.; though a number of the cursives either mark it with an asterisk or note its omission in older copies. Hence the statements of Eusebius and Jerome seem to need some qualification. In MSS 22 (as Dr. Burgon has first pointed out) the liturgical word tevlo" denoting the end of a reading lesson, is inserted after both Mark 16:8 and 16:20, while no such word is placed at the end of the other Gospels. This shows that there were two endings of Mark in different copies.

2. Also in most of the ancient versions, the Itala (with the exception of "k," or the codex Bobbiensis, used by Columban), the Vulgate, the Curetonian Syriac (last part), the Peshito, the Philoxenian, the Coptic, the Gothic (first part), and the Aethiopic, but in several MSS. only after the spurious shorter conclusion. Of these versions the Itala, the Curetonian and Peshito Syriac, and the Coptic, are older than any of our Greek codices, but the MSS. of the Coptic are not older than the twelfth or tenth century, and may have undergone changes as well as the Greek MSS.; and the MSS. of the Ethiopic are all modern. The best MSS. of the old Latin are mutilated here. The only extant fragment of Mark in the Curetonian Syriac is 16:17–20, so that we cannot tell whether Mark 16:9–20 immediately followed 16:8, or appeared as they do in cod. L. But Aphraates quotes it.

3. In all the existing Greek and Syriac lectionaries or evangeliaries and synaxaries, as far as examined, which contain the Scripture reading lessons for the churches. Dr. Burgon lays great stress on their testimony (ch. X.), but he overrates their antiquity. The lection-systems cannot be traced beyond the middle of the fourth century when great liturgical changes took place. At that time the disputed verses were widely circulated and eagerly seized as a suitable resurrection and ascension lesson.

4. Irenaeus of Lyons, in the second half of the second century, long before Eusebius, expressly quotes Mark 16:19 as a part of the Gospel of Mark (Adv. Haer., III. 10, 6). The still earlier testimony of Justin Martyr (Apol., I. 45) is doubtful (The quotation of Mark 16:17 and 18 in lib. viii., c. 1 of the Apostolic Constitutions is wrongly ascribed to Hippolytus.) Marinus, Macarius Magnes (or at least the heathen writer whom he cites), Didymus, Chrysostom (??), Epiphanius, Nestorius, the apocryphal Gesta Pilati, Ambrose, Augustin, and other later fathers quote from the section.

5. A strong intrinsic argument is derived from the fact that Mark cannot intentionally have concluded his Gospel with the words ejfobou'nto gavr (Mark 16:8). He must either have himself written the last verses or some other conclusion, which was accidently lost before the book was multiplied by transcription; or he was unexpectedly prevented from finishing his book, and the conclusion was supplied by a friendly hand from oral tradition or some written source.

In view of these facts the critics and exegetes are very much divided. The passage is defended as genuine by Simon, Mill, Bengel, Storr, Matthaei, Hug, Schleiermacher, De Wette, Bleek, Olshausen, Lange, Ebrard, Hilgenfeld, Broadus ("Bapt. Quarterly," Philad., 1869), Burgon (1871), Scrivener, Wordsworth, McClellan, Cook, Morison (1882). It is rejected or questioned by the critical editors, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort (though retained by all in the text with or without brackets), and by such critics and Commentators as Fritzsche, Credner, Reuss, Wieseler, Holtzmann, Keim, Scholten, Klostermann, Ewald, Meyer, Weiss, Norton, Davidson. Some of these opponents, however, while denying the composition of the section by Mark, regard the contents as a part of the apostolic tradition. Michelsen surrenders only 16:9–14, and saves 16:15–20. Ewald and Holtzmann conjecture the original conclusion from 16:9, 10 and 16–20; Volkmar invents one from elements of all the Synoptists.

III. Solutions of the problem. All mere conjectures; certainty is impossible in this case.

1. Mark himself added the section in a later edition, issued perhaps in Alexandria, having been interrupted in Rome just as he came to 16:8, either by Peter’s imprisonment and martyrdom, or by sickness, or some accident. Incomplete copies got into circulation before he was able to finish the book. So Michaelis, Hug, and others.

2. The original conclusion of Mark was lost by some accident, most probably from the original autograph (where it may have occupied a separate leaf), and the present paragraph was substituted by an anonymous editor or collector in the second century. So Griesbach, Schulthess, David Schulz.

3. Luke wrote the section. So Hitzig (Johannes Marcus, p. 187).

4. Godet (in his Com. on Luke, p. 8 and p. 513, Engl. transl.) modifies this hypothesis by assuming that a third hand supplied the close, partly from Luke’s Gospel, which had appeared in the mean time, and partly (Mark 16:17, 18) from another source. He supposes that Mark was interrupted by the unexpected outbreak of the Neronian persecution in 64 and precipitously fled from the capital, leaving his unfinished Gospel behind, which was afterward completed when Luke’s Gospel appeared. In this way Godet accounts for the fact that up to Mark 16:8 Luke had no influence on Mark, while such influence is apparent in the concluding section.

5. It was the end of one of the lost Gospel fragments used by Luke 1:1, and appended to Mark’s by the last redactor. Ewald.

6. The section is from the pen of Mark, but was purposely omitted by some scribe in the third century from hierarchical prejudice, because it represents the apostles in an unfavorable light after the resurrection, so that the Lord "upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart" (Mark 16:14). Lange (Leben Jesu, I. 166). Unlikely.

7. The passage is genuine, but was omitted in some valuable copy by a misunderstanding of the word tevlo" which often is found after Mark 16:8 in cursives. So Burgon. "According to the Western order," he says (in the "Quarterly Review" for Oct., 1881), "S. Mark occupies the last place. From the earliest period it had been customary to write tevlo" (The End) after 16:8, in token that there a famous ecclesiastical lection comes to a close. Let the last leaf of one very ancient archetypal copy have begun at 16:9, and let that last leaf have perished;—and all is plain. A faithful copyist will have ended the Gospel perforce—as B and a  have done—at S. Mark 16:8."  But this liturgical mark is not old enough to explain the omission in a, B, and the MSS. of Eusebius and Jerome; and a reading lesson would close as abruptly with gavr as the Gospel itself.

8. The passage cannot claim any apostolic authority; but it is doubtless founded on some tradition of the apostolic age. Its authorship and precise date must remain unknown, but it is apparently older than the time when the canonical Gospels were generally received; for although it has points of contact with them all, it contains no attempt to harmonize their various representations of the course of events. So Dr. Hort (II., Appendix, 51). A similar view was held by Dean Alford.

For full information we refer to the critical apparatus of Tischendorf and Tregelles, to the monograph of Weiss on Mark (Das Marcusevang., pp. 512–515), and especially to the exhaustive discussion of Westcott and Hort in the second volume (Append., pp. 29–51). The most elaborate vindication of the genuineness is by Dean Burgon: The Last Twelve Verses o f the Gospel according to S. Mark Vindicated against Recent Critical Objections and Established (Oxford and Lond., 1871, 334 pages), a very learned book, but marred by its over-confident tone and unreasonable hostility to the oldest uncial MSS. (a and B) and the most meritorious textual critics (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles). For other able defences see Dr. Scrivener (Introd. to the Criticism of the New Test., 3d ed., 1883, pp. 583–590), Dr. Morison (Com. on Mark, pp. 446 and 463 sqq.), and Canon Cook (in Speaker’s Com. on Mark, pp. 301–308).

Lachmann gives the disputed section, according to his principle to furnish the text as found in the fourth century, but did not consider it genuine (see his article in "Studien und Kritiken" for 1830, p. 843). Tischendorf and Tregelles set the twelve verses apart. Alford incloses them in single brackets, Westcott and Hort in double brackets, as an early interpolation; the Revised Version of 1881 retains them with a marginal note, and with a space between Mark 16:8 and 9. Dean Burgon ("Quarterly Rev." for Oct., 1881) holds this note of the Revision (which simply states an acknowledged fact) to be "the gravest blot of all," and triumphantly refers the critical editors and Revisionists to his "separate treatise extending over 300 pages, which for the best of reasons has never yet been answered," and in which he has "demonstrated," as he assures us, that the last twelve verses in Mark are "as trustworthy as any other verses which can be named."  The infallible organ in the Vatican seems to have a formidable rival in Chichester, but they are in irreconcilable conflict on the true reading of the angelic anthem (Luke 2:14): the Pope chanting with the Vulgate the genitive (eujdokiva", bonae voluntatis), the Dean, in the same article, denouncing this as a "grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture," and holding the evidence for the nominative (eujdokiva) to be "absolutely decisive," as if the combined testimony of a* A B D, Irenaeus, Origen (lat.), Jerome, all the Latin MSS., and the Latin Gloria in Excelsis were of no account, as compared with his judgment or preference.

§ 82. Luke.

Lucas, Evangelii el medicinae munera pandens;

Artibus hinc, illinc religione, valet:

Utilis ille labor, per quem vixere tot aegri;

Utilior, per quem tot didicere mori!"

Critical and  Biographical

Schleiermacher: Ueber die Schriften des Lukas. Berlin, 1817. Reprinted in the second vol. of his Sämmtliche Werke, Berlin, 1836 (pp. 1–220). Translated by Bishop Thirlwall, London, 1825.

James Smith (of Jordanhill, d. 1867): Dissertation on the Life and Writings of St. Luke, prefixed to his Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul (1848), 4th ed., revised by Walter E. Smith, London, 1880 (pp. 293). A most important monograph, especially for the historical accuracy and credibility of the Acts, by an expert in navigation and an able scholar.

E. Renan: Les Évangiles. Paris, 1877. Ch. XIX, pp. 435–448.

Th. Keim: Aus dem Urchristenthum. Zürich, 1878, Josephus im N. T., pp. 1–27. An unsuccessful attempt to prove that Luke used Josephus in his chronological statement, Luke 3:1, 2. Keim assumes that the third Gospel was written after the "Jewish war" of Josephus (about 75–78), and possibly after his "Antiquities" (A.D. 94), though in his Geschichte Jesu (I. 71) he assigns the composition of Luke to A.D. 90.

Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium, transl. from the Dutch by Redepenning. Elberf., 1881.

The Ancient Testimonies on the Genuineness of Luke, see in Charteris (Kirchhofer): Canonicity, Edinb., 1880, pp. l54–166.

On the relation of Luke to Marcion, see especially Volkmar: Das Evangelium Marcions, Leipz., 1852, and Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century, London, 1876 (and his article in the "Fortnightly Review" for June, 1875).

Exegetical.

Commentaries by Origen (in Jerome’s Latin translation, with a few Greek fragments), Eusebius (fragments), Cyril of Alexandria (Syriac Version with translation, ed. by Dean Smith, Oxf., 1858 and 1859), Euthymius Zigabenus, Theophylact.—Modern Com.: Bornemann (Scholia in Luc. Ev., 1830), De Wette (Mark and Luke, 3d ed., 1846), Meyer (Mark and Luke, 6th ed., revised by B. Weiss, 1878), James Thomson (Edinb., 1851, 3 vols.), J. J. Van Oosterzee (in Lange, 3d ed., 1867, Engl. ed. by Schaff and Starbuck, N. Y., 1866), Fr. Godet (one of the very best, 2d French ed., 1870, Engl. transl. by Shalders and Cusin, Edinb., 1875, 2 vols., reprinted in N. Y., 1881), Bishop W. B. Jones (in Speaker’s Com., Lond. and N. Y., 1878), E. H. Plumptre (in Bp. Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers, Lond., 1879), Frederich W. Farrar (Cambridge, 1880), Matthew B. Riddle (1882).

Life of Luke.

As Mark is inseparably associated with Peter, so is Luke with Paul. There was, in both cases, a foreordained correspondence and congeniality between the apostle and the historian or co-laborer. We find such holy and useful friendships in the great formative epochs of the church, notably so in the time of the Reformation, between Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Calvin and Beza, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley; and at a later period between the two Wesleys and Whitefield. Mark, the Hebrew Roman "interpreter" of the Galilaean fisherman, gave us the shortest, freshest, but least elegant and literary of the Gospels; Luke, the educated Greek, "the beloved physician," and faithful companion of Saul of Tarsus, composed the longest and most literary Gospel, and connected it with the great events in secular history under the reigns of Augustus and his successors. If the former was called the Gospel of Peter by the ancients, the latter, in a less direct sense, may be called the Gospel of Paul, for its agreement in spirit with the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles. In their accounts of the institution of the Lord’s Supper there is even a verbal agreement which points to the same source of information. No doubt there was frequent conference between the two, but no allusion is made to each other’s writings, which tends to prove that they were composed independently during the same period, or not far apart.988

Luke nowhere mentions his name in the two books which are by the unanimous consent of antiquity ascribed to him, and bear all the marks of the same authorship; but he is modestly concealed under the "we" of a great portion of the Acts, which is but a continuation of the third Gospel.989  He is honorably and affectionately mentioned three times by Paul during his imprisonment, as "the beloved physician" (Col. 4:14), as one of his "fellow-laborers" (Philem. 24), and as the most faithful friend who remained with him when friend after friend had deserted him (2 Tim. 4:11). His medical profession, although carried on frequently by superior slaves, implies some degree of education and accounts for the accuracy of his medical terms and description of diseases.990  It gave him access to many families of social position, especially in the East, where physicians are rare. It made him all the more useful to Paul in the infirmities of his flesh and his exhausting labors.991

He was a Gentile by birth,992 though he may have become a proselyte of the gate. His nationality and antecedents are unknown. He was probably a Syrian of Antioch, and one of the earliest converts in that mother church of Gentile Christianity.993  This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that he gives us much information about the church in Antioch (Acts 11:19–30; 13:1–3; 15:1–3, 22–35), that he traces the origin of the name "Christians" to that city (11:19), and that in enumerating the seven deacons of Jerusalem he informs us of the Antiochian origin of Nicolas (Acts 6:5), without mentioning the nationality of any of the others.994

We meet Luke first as a companion of Paul at Troas, when, after the Macedonian call, "Come over and help us," he was about to carry the gospel to Greece on his second great missionary tour. For from that important epoch Luke uses the first personal pronoun in the plural: "When he [Paul] had seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel unto them" (Acts 16:10). He accompanied him to Philippi and seems to have remained there after the departure of Paul and Silas for Corinth (A.D. 51), in charge of the infant church; for the "we" is suddenly replaced by "they" (17:1). Seven years later (A.D. 58) he joined the apostle again, when he passed through Philippi on his last journey to Jerusalem, stopping a week at Troas (Acts 20:5, 6); for from that moment Luke resumes the "we" of the narrative. He was with Paul or near him at Jerusalem and two years at Caesarea, accompanied him on his perilous voyage to Rome, of which he gives a most accurate account, and remained with him to the end of his first Roman captivity, with which he closes his record (A.D. 63). He may however, have been temporarily absent on mission work during the four years of Paul’s imprisonment. Whether he accompanied him on his intended visit to Spain and to the East, after the year 63, we do not know. The last allusion to him is the word of Paul when on the point of martyrdom: "Only Luke is with me" (2 Tim. 4:11).

The Bible leaves Luke at the height of his usefulness in the best company, with Paul preaching the gospel in the metropolis of the world.

Post-apostolic tradition, always far below the healthy and certain tone of the New Testament, mostly vague and often contradictory, never reliable, adds that he lived to the age of eighty-four, labored in several countries, was a painter of portraits of Jesus, of the Virgin, and the apostles, and that he was crucified on an olive-tree at Elaea in Greece. His real or supposed remains, together with those of Andrew the apostle, were transferred from Patrae in Achaia to the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople.995

The symbolic poetry of the Church assigns to him the sacrificial ox; but the symbol of man is more appropriate; for his Gospel is par excellence the Gospel of the Son of Man.

Sources of Information.

According to his own confession in the preface, Luke was no eye-witness of the gospel history,996 but derived his information from oral reports of primitive disciples, and from numerous fragmentary documents then already in circulation. He wrote the Gospel from what he had heard and read, the Acts from, what he had seen and heard. He traced the origin of Christianity "accurately from the beginning."

His opportunities were the very best. He visited the principal apostolic churches between Jerusalem and Rome, and came in personal contact with the founders and leaders. He met Peter, Mark, and Barnabas at Antioch, James and his elders at Jerusalem (on Paul’s last visit) Philip and his daughters at Caesarea, the early converts in Greece and Rome; and he enjoyed, besides, the benefit of all the information which Paul himself had received by revelation or collected from personal intercourse with his fellow-apostles and other primitive disciples. The sources for the history of the infancy were Jewish-Christian and Aramaean (hence the strongly Hebraizing coloring of Luke 1–2); his information of the activity of Christ in Samaria was probably derived from Philip, who labored there as an evangelist and afterwards in Caesarea. But a man of Luke’s historic instinct and conscientiousness would be led to visit also in person the localities in Galilee which are immortalized by the ministry of Christ. From Jerusalem or Caesarea he could reach them all in three or four days.

The question whether Luke also used one or both of the other Synoptic Gospels has already been discussed in a previous section. It is improbable that he included them among his evidently fragmentary sources alluded to in the preface. It is certain that he had no knowledge of our Greek Matthew; on the use of a lost Hebrew Matthew and of Mark the opinion of good scholars is divided, but the resemblance with Mark, though very striking in some sections,997 is not of such a character that it cannot as well, and even better, be explained from prior oral tradition or autoptical memoirs, especially if we consider that the resemblances are neutralized by unaccountable differences and omissions. The matter is not helped by a reference to a proto-Mark, either Hebrew or Greek, of which we know nothing.

Luke has a great deal of original and most valuable matter, which proves his independence and the variety of his sources. He adds much to our knowledge of the Saviour, and surpasses Matthew and Mark in fulness, accuracy, and chronological order—three points which, with all modesty, he claims to have aimed at in his preface.998  Sometimes he gives special fitness and beauty to a word of Christ by inserting it in its proper place in the narrative, and connecting it with a particular occasion. But there are some exceptions, where Matthew is fuller, and where Mark is more chronological. Considering the fact that about thirty years had elapsed since the occurrence of the events, we need not wonder that some facts and words were dislocated, and that Luke, with all his honest zeal, did not always succeed in giving the original order.

The peculiar sections of Luke are in keeping with the rest. They have not the most remote affinity with apocryphal marvels and fables, nor even with the orthodox traditions and legends of the post-apostolic age, but are in full harmony with the picture of Christ as it shines from the other Gospels and from the Epistles. His accuracy has been put to the severest test, especially in the Acts, where he frequently alludes to secular rulers and events; but while a few chronological difficulties, as that of the census of Quirinius, are not yet satisfactorily removed, he has upon the whole, even in minute particulars, been proven to be a faithful, reliable, and well informed historian.

He is the proper father of Christian church history, and a model well worthy of imitation for his study of the sources, his conscientious accuracy, his modesty and his lofty aim to instruct and confirm in the truth.

Dedication and Object.

The third Gospel, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, is dedicated to a certain Theophilus (i.e., Friend of God), a man of social distinction, perhaps in the service of the government, as appears from his title "honorable" or "most noble."999  He was either a convert or at least a catechumen in preparation for church membership, and willing to become sponsor and patron of these books. The custom of dedicating books to princes and rich friends of literature was formerly very frequent, and has not died out yet. As to his race and residence we can only conjecture that Theophilus was a Greek of Antioch, where Luke, himself probably an Antiochean, may have previously known him either as his freedman or physician. The pseudo-Clementine Recognitions mention a certain nobleman of that name at Antioch who was converted by Peter and changed his palace into a church and residence of the apostle.1000

The object of Luke was to confirm Theophilus and through him all his readers in the faith in which he had already been orally instructed, and to lead him to the conviction of the irrefragable certainty of the facts on which Christianity rests.1001

Luke wrote for Gentile Christians, especially Greeks, as Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, John for advanced believers without distinction of nationality. He briefly explains for Gentile readers the position of Palestinian towns, as Nazareth, Capernaum, Arimathaea, and the distance of Mount Olivet and Emmaus from Jerusalem.1002  He does not, like Matthew, look back to the past and point out the fulfilment of ancient prophecy with a view to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, but takes a universal view of Christ as the Saviour of all men and fulfiller of the aspirations of every human heart. He brings him in contact with the events of secular history in the vast empire of Augustus, and with the whole human race by tracing his ancestry back to Adam.

These features would suit Gentile readers generally, Romans as well as Greeks. But the long residence of Luke in Greece, and the ancient tradition that he labored and died there, give strength to the view that he had before his mind chiefly readers of that country. According to Jerome the Gospel was written (completed) in Achaia and Boeotia. The whole book is undoubtedly admirably suited to Greek taste. It at once captivates the refined Hellenic ear by a historic prologue of classic construction, resembling the prologues of Herodotus and Thucydides. It is not without interest to compare them.

Luke begins: "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fufilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most noble Theophilus; that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed."

Herodotus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in order to preserve from oblivion the remembrance of former deeds of men, and to secure a just tribute of glory to the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud."

Thucydides: "Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war in which the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against one another. He began to write when they first took up arms, believing that it would be great and memorable above any previous war. For he argued that both States were then at the full height of their military power, and he saw the rest of the Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other of them. No movement ever stirred Hellas more deeply than this; it was shared by many of the barbarians, and might be said even to affect the world at large."  (Jowett’s translation.)

These prefaces excel alike in brevity, taste, and tact, but with this characteristic difference: the Evangelist modestly withholds his name and writes in the pure interest of truth a record of the gospel of peace for the spiritual welfare of all men; while the great pagan historians are inspired by love of glory, and aim to immortalize the destructive wars and feuds of Greeks and barbarians.

Contents of the Gospel of Luke.

After a historiographic preface, Luke gives us: first a history of the birth and infancy of John the Baptist and Jesus, from Hebrew sources, with an incident from the boyhood of the Saviour (Luke 1 and 2). Then he unfolds the history of the public ministry in chronological order from the baptism in the Jordan to the resurrection and ascension. We need only point out those facts and discourses which are not found in the other Gospels and which complete the Synoptic history at the beginning, middle, and end of the life of our Lord.1003

Luke supplies the following sections:

I. In the history of the Infancy of John and Christ:

The appearance of the angel of the Lord to Zacharias in the temple announcing the birth of John, Luke 1:5–25.

The annunciation of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, 1:26–38.

The visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth; the salutation of Elizabeth, 1:39–45.

The Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, 1:46–56.

The birth of John the Baptist, 1:57–66.

The Benedictus of Zacharias, 1:67–80.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, 2:1–7.

The appearance of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the "Gloria in excelsis," 2:8–20.

The circumcision of Jesus, and his presentation in the Temple, 2:21–38.

The visit of Jesus in his twelfth year to the passover in Jerusalem, and his conversation with the Jewish doctors in the Temple, 2:41–52.

To this must be added the genealogy of Christ from Abraham up to Adam; while Matthew begins, in the inverse order, with Abraham, and presents in the parallel section several differences which show their mutual independence, Luke 3:23–38; comp. Matt. 1:1–17.

II. In the Public Life of our Lord a whole group of important events, discourses, and incidents which occurred at different periods, but mostly on a circuitous journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem through Samaria and Peraea (9:51–18:14). This section includes—

1. The following miracles and incidents:

The miraculous draught of fishes, 5:4–11.

The raising of the widow’s son at Nain, 7:11–18.

The pardoning of the sinful woman who wept at the feet of Jesus, 7:36–50.

The support of Christ by devout women who are named, 8:2, 3.

The rebuke of the Sons of Thunder in a Samaritan village, 9:51–56.

The Mission and Instruction of the Seventy, 10:1–6.

Entertainment at the house of Martha and Mary; the one thing needful, 10:38–42.

The woman who exclaimed: "Blessed is the womb that bare thee," 11:27.

The man with the dropsy, 14:1–6.

The ten lepers, 17:11–19.

The visit to Zacchaeus, 19:1–10.

The tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, 19:41–44.

The sifting of Peter, 22:31, 32.

The healing of Malchus, 22:50, 51.

2. Original Parables:

The two Debtors, 7:41–43.

The good Samaritan, 10:25–37.

The importunate Friend, 11:5–8.

The rich Fool, 12:16–21.

The barren Fig-tree, 13:6–9.

The lost Drachma, 15:8–10.

The prodigal Son, 15:11–32.

The unjust Steward, 16:1–13.

Dives and Lazarus, 16:19–31.

The importunate Widow, and the unjust Judge, 18:1–8.

The Pharisee and the Publican 18:10–14.

The ten Pounds, 19:11–28 (not to be identified with the Parable of the Talents in Matt. 25:14–30).

III. In the history of the Crucifixion and Resurrection

The lament of the women on the way to the cross, Luke 23:27–30.

The prayer of Christ for his murderers, 23:3

His conversation with the penitent malefactor and promise of a place in paradise, 23:39–43.

The appearance of the risen Lord to the two Disciples on the way to Emmaus, 24:13–25; briefly mentioned also in the disputed conclusion of Mark, 16:12, 13.

The account of the ascension, Luke 24:50–53; comp. Mark 16:19, 20; and Acts 1:3–12.

Characteristic Features of Luke.

The third Gospel is the Gospel of free salvation to all men.1004  This corresponds to the two cardinal points in the doctrinal system of Paul: gratuitousness and universalness of salvation.

1. It is eminently the Gospel of free salvation by grace through faith. Its motto is: Christ came to save sinners. "Saviour" and "salvation" are the most prominent ideas1005  Mary, anticipating the birth of her Son, rejoices in God her "Saviour" (Luke 1:47); and an angel announces to the shepherds of Bethlehem "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people "(2:10), namely, the birth of Jesus as the "Saviour" of men (not only as the Christ of the Jews). He is throughout represented as the merciful friend of sinners, as the healer of the sick, as the comforter of the broken-hearted, as the shepherd of the lost sheep. The parables peculiar to Luke—of the prodigal son, of the lost piece of money, of the publican in the temple, of the good Samaritan—exhibit this great truth which Paul so fully sets forth in his Epistles. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican plucks up self-righteousness by the root, and is the foundation of the doctrine of justification by faith. The paralytic and the woman that was a sinner received pardon by faith alone. Luke alone relates the prayer of Christ on the cross for his murderers, and the promise of paradise to the penitent robber, and he ends with a picture of the ascending Saviour lifting up his hands and blessing his disciples.

The other Evangelists do not neglect this aspect of Christ; nothing can be more sweet and comforting than his invitation to sinners in Matthew 11, or his farewell to the disciples in John; but Luke dwells on it with peculiar delight. He is the painter of Christus Salvator and Christus Consolator.

2. It is the Gospel of universal salvation. It is emphatically the Gospel for the Gentiles. Hence the genealogy of Christ is traced back not only to Abraham (as in Matthew), but to Adam, the son of God and the father of all men (Luke 3:38). Christ is the second Adam from heaven, the representative Head of redeemed humanity—an idea further developed by Paul. The infant Saviour is greeted by Simeon as a "Light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel" (2:32). The Baptist, in applying the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the voice in the wilderness (Isa. 40), adds the words (from Isa. 52:10): "All flesh shall see the salvation of God" (Luke 3:6). Luke alone records the mission of the Seventy Disciples who represent the Gentile nations, as the Twelve represent the twelve tribes of Israel. He alone mentions the mission of Elijah to the heathen widow in Sarepta, and the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian by Elisha (4:26, 27). He contrasts the gratitude of the leprous Samaritan with the ingratitude of the nine Jewish lepers (17:12–18). He selects discourses and parables, which exhibit God’s mercy to Samaritans and Gentiles1006  Yet there is no contradiction, for some of the strongest passages which exhibit Christ’s mercy to the Gentiles and humble the Jewish pride are found in Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist.1007  The assertion that the third Gospel is a glorification of the Gentile (Pauline) apostolate, and a covert attack on the Twelve, especially Peter, is a pure fiction of modern hypercriticism.

3. It is the Gospel of the genuine and full humanity of Christ.1008  It gives us the key-note for the construction of a real history of Jesus from infancy to boyhood and manhood. Luke represents him as the purest and fairest among the children of men, who became like unto us in all things except sin and error. He follows him through the stages of his growth. He alone tells us that the child Jesus "grew and waxed strong," not only physically, but also in "wisdom" (Luke 2:40); he alone reports the remarkable scene in the temple, informing us that Jesus, when twelve years old, sat as a learner "in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking questions;" and that, even after that time, He "advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (2:46, 52). All the Synoptists narrate the temptation in the wilderness, and Mark adds horror to the scene by the remark that Christ was "with the wild beasts" (Mark 1:12, meta; tw'n qhrivwn); but Luke has the peculiar notice that the devil departed from Jesus only "for a season."  He alone mentions the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, and "the bloody sweat" and the strengthening angel in the agony of Gethsemane. As he brings out the gradual growth of Jesus, and the progress of the gospel from Nazareth to Capernaum, from Capernaum to Jerusalem, so afterwards, in the Acts, he traces the growth of the church from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Ephesus and Corinth, from Greece to Rome. His is the Gospel of historical development. To him we are indebted for nearly all the hints that link the gospel facts with the contemporary history of the world.

4. It is the Gospel of universal humanity. It breathes the genuine spirit of charity, liberty, equality, which emanate from the Saviour of mankind, but are so often counterfeited by his great antagonist, the devil. It touches the tenderest chords of human sympathy. It delights in recording Christ’s love and compassion for the sick, the lowly, the despised, even the harlot and the prodigal. It mentions the beatitudes pronounced on the poor and the hungry, his invitation to the maimed, the halt, and the blind, his prayer on the cross for pardon of the wicked murderers, his promise to the dying robber. It rebukes the spirit of bigotry and intolerance of the Jews against Samaritans, in the parable of the good Samaritan. It reminds the Sons of Thunder when they were about to call fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village that He came not to destroy but to save. It tells us that "he who is not against Christ is for Christ," no matter what sectarian or unsectarian name he may bear.

5. It is the Gospel for woman. It weaves the purest types of womanhood into the gospel story: Elizabeth, who saluted the Saviour before his birth; the Virgin, whom all generations call blessed; the aged prophetess Anna, who departed not from the temple; Martha, the busy, hospitable housekeeper, with her quiet, contemplative sister Mary of Bethany; and that noble band of female disciples who ministered of their substance to the temporal wants of the Son of God and his apostles.

It reveals the tender compassion of Christ for all the suffering daughters of Eve: the widow at Nain mourning at the bier of her only son; for the fallen sinner who bathed his feet with her tears; for the poor sick woman, who had wasted all her living upon physicians, and whom he addressed as "Daughter;" and for the "daughters of Jerusalem" who followed him weeping to Calvary. If anywhere we may behold the divine humanity of Christ and the perfect union of purity and love, dignity and tender compassion, it is in the conduct of Jesus towards women and children. "The scribes and Pharisees gathered up their robes in the streets and synagogues lest they should touch a woman, and held it a crime to look on an unveiled woman in public; our Lord suffered a woman to minister to him out of whom he had cast seven devils."

6. It is the Gospel for children, and all who are of a childlike spirit. It sheds a sacred halo and celestial charm over infancy, as perpetuating the paradise of innocence in a sinful world. It alone relates the birth and growth of John, the particulars of the birth of Christ, his circumcision and presentation in the temple, his obedience to parents, his growth from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood. Luke 1 – 2 will always be the favorite chapters for children and all who delight to gather around the manger of Bethlehem and to rejoice with shepherds on the field and angels in heaven.

7. It is the Gospel of poetry.1009  We mean the poetry of religion, the poetry of worship, the poetry of prayer and thanksgiving, a poetry resting not on fiction, but on facts and eternal truth. In such poetry there is more truth than in every-day prose. The whole book is full of dramatic vivacity and interest. It begins and ends with thanksgiving and praise. Luke 1–2 are overflowing with festive joy and gladness; they are a paradise of fragrant flowers, and the air is resonant with the sweet melodies of Hebrew psalmody and Christian hymnody. The Salute of Elizabeth ("Ave Maria"), the "Magnificat" of Mary, the "Benedictus" of Zacharias, the "Gloria in Excelsis" of the Angels, the "Nunc Dimittis" of Simeon, sound from generation to generation in every tongue, and are a perpetual inspiration for new hymns of praise to the glory of Christ.

No wonder that the third Gospel has been pronounced, from a purely literary and humanitarian standpoint, to be the most beautiful book ever written.1010

The Style.

Luke is the best Greek writer among the Evangelists.1011  His style shows his general culture. It is free from solecisms, rich in vocabulary, rhythmical in construction. But as a careful and conscientious historian he varies considerably with the subject and according to the nature of his documents.

Matthew begins characteristically with "Book of generation" or "Genealogy" (bivblo" genevsew"), which looks back to the Hebrew Sepher toledoth (comp. Gen. 5:1; 2:4); Mark with "Beginning of the gospel" (ajrch tou' eujaggelivou), which introduces the reader at once to the scene of present action; Luke with a historiographic prologue of classical ring, and unsurpassed for brevity, modesty, and dignity. But when he enters upon the history of the infancy, which he derived no doubt from Aramaic traditions or documents, his language has a stronger Hebrew coloring than any other portion of the New Testament. The songs of Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, and Simeon, and the anthem of the angelic host, are the last of Hebrew psalms as well as the first of Christian hymns. They can be literally translated back into the Hebrew, without losing their beauty.1012  The same variation in style characterizes the Acts; the first part is Hebrew Greek, the second genuine Greek.

His vocabulary considerably exceeds that of the other Evangelists: he has about 180 terms which occur in his Gospel alone and nowhere else in the New Testament; while Matthew has only about 70, Mark 44, and John 50 peculiar words. Luke’s Gospel has 55, the Acts 135 a{pax legovmena, and among them many verbal compounds and rare technical terms.

The medical training and practice of Luke, "the beloved physician," familiarized him with medical terms, which appear quite naturally, without any ostentation of professional knowledge, in his descriptions of diseases and miracles of healing, and they agree with the vocabulary of ancient medical writers. Thus he speaks of the "great fever" of Peter’s mother-in-law, with reference to the distinction made between great and small fevers (according to Galen);1013 and of "fevers and dysentery," of which the father of Publius at Melita was healed (as Hippocrates uses fever in the plural).1014

He was equally familiar with navigation, not indeed as a professional seaman, but as an experienced traveller and accurate observer. He uses no less than seventeen nautical terms with perfect accuracy.1015  His description of the Voyage and Shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27–28, as explained and confirmed by a scholarly seaman, furnishes an irrefragable argument for the ability and credibility of the author of that book.1016

Luke is fond of words of joy and gladness.1017  He often mentions the Holy Spirit, and he is the only writer who gives us an account of the pentecostal miracle.1018  Minor peculiarities are the use of the more correct livmnh of the lake of Galilee for qavlassa, nomikov" and nomodidavskalo" for grammateuv", to; eijrhmevnon in quotations for rjhqevn, nu'n for a[rti, eJspevra for ojyiva, the frequency of attraction of the relative pronoun and participial construction.

There is a striking resemblance between the style of Luke and Paul, which corresponds to their spiritual sympathy and long intimacy.1019  They agree in the report of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is the oldest we have (from A.D. 57); both substitute: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood," for "This is My blood of the (new) covenant," and add: "This do in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19, 20; 1 Cor. 11:24, 25). They are equally fond of words which characterize the freedom and universal destination of the gospel salvation.1020  They have many terms in common which occur nowhere else in the New Testament.1021  And they often meet in thought and expression in a way that shows both the close intimacy and the mutual independence of the two writers.1022

Genuineness.1023

The genuineness of Luke is above reasonable doubt. The character of the Gospel agrees perfectly with what we might expect from the author as far as we know him from the Acts and the Epistles. No other writer answers the description.

The external evidence is not so old and clear as that in favor of Matthew and Mark. Papias makes no mention of Luke. Perhaps he thought it unnecessary, because Luke himself in the preface gives an account of the origin and aim of his book. The allusions in Barnabas, Clement of Rome, and Hermas are vague and uncertain. But other testimonies are sufficient for the purpose. Irenaeus in Gaul says: "Luke, the companion of Paul, committed to writing the gospel preached by the latter."  The Muratori fragment which contains the Italian traditions of the canon, mentions the Gospel of "Luke, the physician, whom Paul had associated with himself as one zealous for righteousness, to be his companion, who had not seen the Lord in the flesh, but having carried his inquiries as far back as possible, began his history with the birth of John."  Justin Martyr makes several quotations from Luke, though he does not name him.1024  This brings us up to the year 140 or 130. The Gospel is found in all ancient manuscripts and translations.

The heretical testimony of Marcion from the year 140 is likewise conclusive. It was always supposed that his Gospel, the only one he recognized, was a mutilation of Luke, and this view is now confirmed and finally established by the investigations and concessions of the very school which for a short time had endeavored to reverse the order by making Marcion’s caricature the original of Luke.1025  The pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions quote from Luke. Basilides and Valentinus and their followers used all the four Gospels, and are reported to have quoted Luke 1:35 for their purpose.

Celsus must have had Luke in view when he referred to the genealogy of Christ as being traced to Adam.

Credibility.

The credibility of Luke has been assailed on the ground that he shaped the history by his motive and aim to harmonize the Petrine and Pauline, or the Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian parties of the church. But the same critics contradict themselves by discovering, on the other hand, strongly Judaizing and even Ebionitic elements in Luke, and thus make it an incoherent mosaic or clumsy patchwork of moderate Paulinism and Ebionism, or they arbitrarily assume different revisions through which it passed without being unified in plan.

Against this misrepresentation we have to say: (1) An irenic spirit, such as we may freely admit in the writings of Luke, does not imply an alteration or invention of facts. On the contrary, it is simply an unsectarian, catholic spirit which aims at the truth and nothing but the truth, and which is the first duty and virtue of an historian. (2) Luke certainly did not invent those marvellous parables and discourses which have been twisted into subserviency to the tendency hypothesis; else Luke would have had a creative genius of the highest order, equal to that of Jesus himself, while he modestly professes to be simply a faithful collector of actual facts. (3) Paul himself did not invent his type of doctrine, but received it, according to his own solemn asseveration, by revelation from Jesus Christ, who called him to the apostleship of the Gentiles. (4) It is now generally admitted that the Tübingen hypothesis of the difference between the two types and parties in the apostolic church is greatly overstrained and set aside by Paul’s own testimony in the Galatians, which is as irenic and conciliatory to the pillar-apostles as it is uncompromisingly polemic against the "false" brethren or the heretical Judaizers. (5) Some of the strongest anti-Jewish and pro-Gentile testimonies of Christ are found in Matthew and omitted by Luke.1026

The accuracy of Luke has already been spoken of, and has been well vindicated by Godet against Renan in several minor details. "While remaining quite independent of the other three, the Gospel of Luke is confirmed and supported by them all."

Time of Composition.

There are strong indications that the third Gospel was composed (not published) between 58 and 63, before the close of Paul’s Roman captivity. No doubt it took several years to collect and digest the material; and the book was probably not published, i.e., copied and distributed, till after the death of Paul, at the same time with the Acts, which forms the second part and is dedicated to the same patron. In this way the conflicting accounts of Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus may be harmonized.1027

1. Luke had the best leisure for literary composition during the four years of Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea and Rome. In Caesarea he was within easy reach of the surviving eyewitnesses and classical spots of the gospel history, and we cannot suppose that he neglected the opportunity.

2. The Gospel was written before the book of Acts, which expressly refers to it as the first treatise inscribed to the same Theophilus (Acts 1:1). As the Acts come down to the second year of Paul’s captivity in Rome, they cannot have been finished before A.D. 63; but as they abruptly break off without any mention of Paul’s release or martyrdom, it seems quite probable that they were concluded before the fate of the apostle was decided one way or the other, unless the writer was, like Mark, prevented by some event, perhaps the Neronian persecution, from giving his book the natural conclusion. In its present shape it excites in the reader the greatest curiosity which could have been gratified with a few words, either that the apostle sealed his testimony with his blood, or that he entered upon new missionary tours East and West until at last he finished his course after a second captivity in Rome. I may add that the entire absence of any allusion in the Acts to any of Paul’s Epistles can be easily explained by the assumption of a nearly contemporaneous composition, while it seems almost unaccountable if we assume an interval of ten or twenty years.

3. Luke’s ignorance of Matthew and probably also of Mark points likewise to an early date of composition. A careful investigator, like Luke, writing after the year 70, could hardly have overlooked, among his many written sources, such an important document as Matthew which the best critics put before A.D. 70.

4. Clement of Alexandria has preserved a tradition that the Gospels containing the genealogies, i.e., Matthew and Luke, were written first. Irenaeus, it is true, puts the third Gospel after. Matthew and Mark and after the death of Peter and Paul, that is, after 64 (though certainly not after 70). If the Synoptic Gospels were written nearly simultaneously, we can easily account for these differences in the tradition. Irenaeus was no better informed on dates than Clement, and was evidently mistaken about the age of Christ and the date of the Apocalypse. But he may have had in view the time of publication, which must not be confounded with the date of composition. Many books nowadays are withheld from the market for some reason months or years after they have passed through the hands of the printer.

The objections raised against such an early date are not well founded.1028

The prior existence of a number of fragmentary Gospels implied in Luke 1:1 need not surprise us; for such a story as that of Jesus of Nazareth must have set many pens in motion at a very early time. "Though the art of writing had not existed," says Lange, "it would have been invented for such a theme."

Of more weight is the objection that Luke seems to have shaped the eschatological prophecies of Christ so as to suit the fulfilment by bringing in the besieging (Roman) army, and by interposing "the times of the Gentiles" between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (Luke 19:43, 44; 21:20–24). This would put the composition after the destruction of Jerusalem, say between 70 and 80, if not later.1029  But such an intentional change of the words of our Lord is inconsistent with the unquestionable honesty of the historian and his reverence for the words of the Divine teacher.1030  Moreover, it is not borne out by the facts. For the other Synoptists likewise speak of wars and the abomination of desolation in the holy place, which refers to the Jewish wars and the Roman eagles (Matt. 24:15; Mark 13:14). Luke makes the Lord say:, Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). But Matthew does the same when he reports that Christ predicted and commanded the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in all parts of the world before the end can come (Matt. 24:14; 28:19; comp. Mark 16:15). And even Paul said, almost in the same words as Luke, twelve years before the destruction of Jerusalem: "Blindness is happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Rom. 11:25). Must we therefore put the composition of Romans after A.D. 70?  On the other hand, Luke reports as clearly as Matthew and Mark the words of Christ, that "this generation shall not pass away till all things" (the preceding prophecies) "shall be fulfilled" (Luke 21:32). Why did he not omit this passage if he intended to interpose a larger space of time between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world?

The eschatological discourses of our Lord, then, are essentially the same in all the Synoptists, and present the same difficulties, which can only be removed by assuming: (1) that they refer both to the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, two analogous events, the former being typical of the latter; (2) that the two events, widely distant in time, are represented in close proximity of space after the manner of prophetic vision in a panoramic picture. We must also remember that the precise date of the end of the world was expressly disclaimed even by the Son of God in the days of his humiliation (Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32), and is consequently beyond the reach of human knowledge and calculation. The only difference is that Luke more clearly distinguishes the two events by dividing the prophetical discourses and assigning them to different occasions (Luke 17:20–37 and 21:5–33); and here, as in other cases, he is probably more exact and in harmony with several hints of our Lord that a considerable interval must elapse between the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the final catastrophe of the world.

Place of Composition.

The third Gospel gives no hint as to the place of composition. Ancient tradition is uncertain, and modern critics are divided between Greece,1031 Alexandria,1032 Ephesus,1033 Caesarea, 1034 Rome.1035  It was probably written in sections during the longer residence of the author at Philippi, Caesarea, and Rome, but we cannot tell where it was completed and published.1036

§ 83. John.

See Literature on John, § 40, of this vol.; Life and Character of John, §§ 41–43, of this vol.; Theology of John, § 72, pp. 549 sqq.

The best comes last. The fourth Gospel is the Gospel of Gospels, the holy of holies in the New Testament. The favorite disciple and bosom friend of Christ, the protector of his mother, the survivor of the apostolic age was pre-eminently qualified by nature and grace to give to the church the inside view of that most wonderful person that ever walked on earth. In his early youth he had absorbed the deepest words of his Master, and treasured them in a faithful heart; in extreme old age, yet with the fire and vigor of manhood, he reproduced them under the influence of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him and led him, as well as the other disciples, into "the whole truth."

His Gospel is the golden sunset of the age of inspiration, and sheds its lustre into the second and all succeeding centuries of the church. It was written at Ephesus when Jerusalem lay in ruins, when the church had finally separated from the synagogue, when "the Jews" and the Christians were two distinct races, when Jewish and Gentile believers had melted into a homogeneous Christian community, a little band in a hostile world, yet strong in faith, full of hope and joy, and certain of victory.

For a satisfactory discussion of the difficult problems involved in this Gospel and its striking contrast with the Synoptic Gospels, we must keep in view the fact that Christ communed with the apostles after as well as before his visible departure, and spoke to them through that "other Advocate" whom he sent to them from the Father, and who brought to remembrance all things he had said unto them.1037  Here lies the guarantee of the truthfulness of a picture which no human artist could have drawn without divine inspiration. Under any other view the fourth Gospel, and indeed the whole New Testament, becomes the strangest enigma in the history of literature and incapable of any rational solution.

John and the Synoptists.

If John wrote long after the Synoptists, we could, of course, not expect from him a repetition of the story already so well told by three independent witnesses. But what is surprising is the fact that, coming last, he should produce the most original of all the Gospels.

The transition from Matthew to Mark, and from Mark to Luke is easy and natural; but in passing from any of the Synoptists to the fourth Gospel we breathe a different atmosphere, and feel as if we were suddenly translated from a fertile valley to the height of a mountain with a boundless vision over new scenes of beauty and grandeur. We look in vain for a genealogy of Jesus, for an account of his birth, for the sermons of the Baptist, for the history of the temptation in the wilderness, the baptism in the Jordan, and the transfiguration on the Mount, for a list of the Twelve, for the miraculous cures of demoniacs. John says nothing of the institution of the church and the sacraments; though he is full of the mystical union and communion which is the essence of the church, and presents the spiritual meaning of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (John 3 and John 6). He omits the ascension, though it is promised through Mary Magdalene (20:17). He has not a word of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord’s Prayer, none of the inimitable parables about the kingdom of heaven, none of those telling answers to the entangling questions of the Pharisees. He omits the prophecies of the downfall of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and most of those proverbial, moral sentences and maxims of surpassing wisdom which are strung together by the Synoptists like so many sparkling diamonds.

But in the place of these Synoptical records John gives us an abundance of new matter of equal, if not greater, interest and importance. Right at the threshold we are startled, as by a peal of thunder from the depths, of eternity: "In the beginning was the Word."  And as we proceed we hear about the creation of the world, the shining of the true light in darkness, the preparatory revelations, the incarnation of the Logos, the testimony of the Baptist to the Lamb of God. We listen with increasing wonder to those mysterious discourses about the new birth of the Spirit, the water of life, the bread of life from heaven, about the relation of the eternal and only-begotten Son to the Father, to the world, and to believers, the mission of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the many mansions in heaven, the farewell to the disciples, and at last that sacerdotal prayer which brings us nearest to the throne and the beating heart of God. John alone reports the interviews with Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, and the Greek foreigners. He records six miracles not mentioned by the Synoptists, and among them the two greatest—the changing of water into wine and the raising of Lazarus from the grave. And where he meets the Synoptists, as in the feeding of the five thousand, he adds the mysterious discourse on the spiritual feeding of believers by the bread of life which has been going on ever since. He makes the nearest approach to his predecessors in the closing chapters on the betrayal, the denial of Peter, the trial before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals, the crucifixion and resurrection, but even here he is more exact and circumstantial, and adds, interesting details which bear the unmistakable marks of personal observation.

He fills out the ministry of Christ in Judaea, among the hierarchy and the people of Jerusalem, and extends it over three years; while the Synoptists seem to confine it to one year and dwell chiefly on his labors among the peasantry of Galilee. But on close inspection John leaves ample room for the Galilaean, and the Synoptists for the Judaean ministry. None of the Gospels is a complete biography. John expressly disclaims, this (20:31). Matthew implies repeated visits to the holy city when he makes Christ exclaim: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together" (23:37; comp. 27:57). On the other hand John records several miracles in Cana, evidently only as typical examples of many (2:1 sqq.; 4:47 sqq.; 6:1 sqq.). But in Jerusalem the great conflict between light and darkness, belief and unbelief, was most fully developed and matured to the final crisis; and this it was one of his chief objects to describe.

The differences between John and the Synoptists are many and great, but there are no contradictions.

The Occasion.

Irenaeus, who, as a native of Asia Minor and a spiritual grand-pupil of John, is entitled to special consideration, says: "Afterward" [i.e., after Matthew, Mark, and Luke] "John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia."1038  In another place he makes the rise of the Gnostic heresy the prompting occasion of the composition.1039

A curious tradition, which probably contains a grain of truth, traces the composition to a request of John’s fellow-disciples and elders of Ephesus. "Fast with me," said John, according to the Muratorian fragment (170), "for three days from this time" [when the request was made], "and whatever shall be revealed to each of us" [concerning my composing the Gospel], "let us relate it to one another. On the same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should relate all things in his own name, aided by the revision of all.1040  ... What wonder is it then that John brings forward every detail with so much emphasis, even in his Epistles, saying of himself, What we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have we written unto you. For so he professes that he was not only an eyewitness, but also a hearer, and moreover a writer of all the wonderful works of the Lord in their historical order."1041

The mention of Andrew in this fragment is remarkable, for he was associated with John as a pupil of the Baptist and as the first called to the school of Christ (John 1:35–40). He was also prominent in other ways and stood next to the beloved three, or even next to his brother Peter in the catalogues of the apostles.1042

Victorinus of Pettau (d. about 304), in the Scholia on the Apocalypse, says that John wrote the Gospel after the Apocalypse, in consequence of the spread of the Gnostic heresy and at the request of "all the bishops from the neighboring provinces."1043

Jerome, on the basis of a similar tradition, reports that John, being constrained by his brethren to write, consented to do so if all joined in a fast and prayer to God, and after this fast, being saturated with revelation (revelatione saturatus), he indited the heaven-sent preface: "In the beginning was the Word."1044

Possibly those fellow-disciples and pupils who prompted John to write his Gospel, were the same who afterward added their testimony to the genuineness of the book, speaking in the plural ("we know that his witness is true," 21:24), one of them acting as scribe ("I suppose," 21:25).

The outward occasion does not exclude, of course, the inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, which is in fact implied in this tradition, but it shows how far the ancient church was from such a mechanical theory of inspiration as ignores or denies the human and natural factors in the composition of the apostolic writings. The preface of Luke proves the same.

The Object.

The fourth Gospel does not aim at a complete biography of Christ, but distinctly declares that Jesus wrought "many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book" (John 20:30; comp. 21:25).

The author plainly states his object, to which all other objects must be subordinate as merely incidental, namely, to lead his readers to the faith "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing they may have life in his name" (20:31). This includes three points: (1) the Messiahship of Jesus, which was of prime importance to the Jews, and was the sole or at least the chief aim of Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist; (2) the Divine Sonship of Jesus, which was the point to be gained with the Gentiles, and which Luke, the Gentile Evangelist, had also in view; (3) the practical benefit of such faith, to gain true, spiritual, eternal life in Him and through Him who is the personal embodiment and source of eternal life.

To this historico-didactic object all others which have been mentioned must be subordinated. The book is neither polemic and apologetic, nor supplementary, nor irenic, except incidentally and unintentionally as it serves all these purposes. The writer wrote in full view of the condition and needs of the church at the close of the first century, and shaped his record accordingly, taking for granted a general knowledge of the older Gospels, and refuting indirectly, by the statement of facts and truths, the errors of the day. Hence there is some measure of truth in those theories which have made an incidental aim the chief or only aim of the book.

1. The anti-heretical theory was started by Irenaeus. Being himself absorbed in the controversy with Gnosticism and finding the strongest weapons in John, he thought that John’s motive was to root out the error of Cerinthus and of the Nicolaitans by showing that "there is one God who made all things by his word; and not, as they say, one who made the world, and another, the Father of the Lord."1045  Jerome adds the opposite error of Ebionism, Ewald that of the disciples of the Baptist.

No doubt the fourth Gospel, by the positive statement of the truth, is the most effective refutation of Gnostic dualism and doketism, which began to raise its head in Asia Minor toward the close of the first century. It shows the harmony of the ideal Christ of faith and the real Christ of history, which the ancient and modern schools of Gnosticism are unable to unite in one individual. But it is not on this account a polemical treatise, and it even had by its profound speculation a special attraction for Gnostics and philosophical rationalists, from Basilides down to Baur. The ancient Gnostics made the first use of it and quoted freely from the prologue, e.g., the passage: "The true light, which enlighteneth every man, was coming into the world" (1:9).1046

The polemical aim is more apparent in the first Epistle of John, which directly warns against the anti-Christian errors then threatening the church, and may be called a doctrinal and practical postscript to the Gospel.

2. The supplementary theory. Clement of Alexandria (about 200) states, on the authority of "presbyters of an earlier generation," that John, at the request of his friends and the prompting of the divine Spirit, added a spiritual Gospel to the older bodily Gospels which set forth the outward facts.1047  The distinction is ingenious. John is more spiritual and ideal than the Synoptists, and he represents as it were the esoteric tradition as distinct from the exoteric tradition of the church. Eusebius records also as a current opinion that John intended to supply an amount of the earlier period of Christ’s ministry which was omitted by the other Evangelists.1048  John is undoubtedly a most welcome supplementer both in matter and spirit, and furnishes in part the key for the full understanding of the Synoptists, yet he repeats many important events, especially in the closing chapters, and his Gospel is as complete as any.1049

3. The Irenic tendency-theory is a modern Tübingen invention. It is assumed that the fourth Gospel is purely speculative or theological, the last and crowning literary production which completed the process of unifying Jewish and Gentile Christianity and melting them into the one Catholic church of the second century.

No doubt it is an Irenicon of the church in the highest and best sense of the term, and a prophecy of the church of the future, when all discords of Christendom past and present will be harmonized in the perfect union of Christians with Christ, which is the last object of his sacerdotal prayer. But it is not an Irenicon at the expense of truth and facts.

In carrying out their hypothesis the Tübingen critics have resorted to the wildest fictions. It is said that the author depreciated the Mosaic dispensation and displayed jealousy of Peter. How in the world could this promote peace?  It would rather have defeated the object. But there is no shadow of proof for such an assertion. While the author opposes the unbelieving Jews, he shows the highest reverence for the Old Testament, and derives salvation from the Jews. Instead of showing jealousy of Peter, he introduces his new name at the first interview with Jesus (1:42), reports his great confession even more fully than Matthew (John 6:68, 69), puts him at the head of the list of the apostles (21:2), and gives him his due prominence throughout down to the last interview when the risen Lord committed to him the feeding of his sheep (21:15–19). This misrepresentation is of a piece with the other Tübingen myth adopted by Renan, that the real John in the Apocalypse pursues a polemical aim against Paul and deliberately excludes him from the rank of the twelve Apostles. And yet Paul himself, in the acknowledged Epistle to the Galatians, represents John as one of the three pillar-apostles who recognized his peculiar gift for the apostolate of the Gentiles and extended to him the right hand of fellowship.

Analysis.

The object of John determined the selection and arrangement of the material. His plan is more clear and systematic than that of the Synoptists. It brings out the growing conflict between belief and unbelief, between light and darkness, and leads step by step to the great crisis of the cross, and to the concluding exclamation of Thomas, "My Lord and my God."

In the following analysis the sections peculiar to John are marked by a star.

*I. The Prologue. The theme of the Gospel: the Logos, the eternal Revealer of God:

(1.) In relation to God, John 1:1, 2.

(2.) In relation to the world. General revelation, 1:3–5.

(3.) In relation to John the Baptist and the Jews. Particular revelation, 1:6–13.

(4.) The incarnation of the Logos, and its effect upon the disciples, 1:14–18.

II. The Public Manifestation of the Incarnate Logos in Active Word and Work, 1:19 to 12:50.

*(1.) The preparatory testimony of John the Baptist pointing to Jesus as the promised and expected Messiah, and as the Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world, 1:19–37.

*(2.) The gathering of the first disciples, 1:38–51.

*(3.) The first sign: the changing of water into wine at Cana in Galilee, 2:1–11. First sojourn in Capernaum, 2:12. First Passover and journey to Jerusalem during the public ministry, 2:13.

*(4.) The reformatory cleansing of the Temple, 2:14–22. (Recorded also by the Synoptists, but at the close of the public ministry.)  Labors among the Jews in Jerusalem, 2:23–25.

*(5.) Conversation with Nicodemus, representing the timid disciples, the higher classes among the Jews. Regeneration the condition of entering into the kingdom of God, 3:1–15. The love of God in the sending of his Son to save the world, 3:16–21. (Jerusalem.)

*(6.) Labors of Jesus in Judaea. The testimony of John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease, 3:22–36. (Departure of Jesus into Galilee after John’s imprisonment, 4:1–3; comp. Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:14.)

*(7.) Labors in Samaria on the journey from Judaea to Galilee. The woman of Samaria; Jacob’s well; the water of life; the worship of God the Spirit in spirit and in truth; the fields ripening for the harvest, John 4:1–42. Jesus teaches publicly in Galilee, 4:43–45 (comp. Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:14, 15 Luke 4:14, 15).

*(8.) Jesus again visits Cana in Galilee and heals a nobleman’s son at Capernaum, John 4:46–54.

*(9.) Second journey to Jerusalem at a feast (the second Passover?). The healing of the infirm man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, 5:1–18. Beginning of the hostility of the Jews. Discourse of Christ on his relation to the Father, and his authority to judge the world, 5:19–47.

(10.) The feeding of the five thousand, 6:1–14. The stilling of the tempest, 6:15–21.

*The mysterious discourse in Capernaum on the bread of life; the sifting of the disciples; the confession of Peter: "To whom shall we go," etc.; the hinting at the treason of Judas, 6:22–71.

*(11.) Third visit to Jerusalem, at the feast of the Tabernacles. The hasty request of the brethren of Jesus who did not believe on him. His discourse in the Temple with opposite effect. Rising hostility of the Jews, and vain efforts of the hierarchy to seize him as a false teacher misleading the people, 7:1–52.

[*(12a.) The woman taken in adultery and pardoned by Jesus, 7:53–8:11. Jerusalem. Probably an interpolation from oral tradition, authentic and true, but not from the pen of John. Also found at the end, and at Luke 21.]

*(12b.) Discourse on the light of the world. The children of God and the children of the devil. Attempts to stone Jesus, John 8:12–59.

*(13.) The healing of the man born blind, on a Sabbath, and his testimony before the Pharisees, 9:1–41.

*(14.) The parable of the good shepherd, 10:1–21. Speech at the feast of Dedication in Solomon’s porch, 10:22–39. Departure to the country beyond the Jordan, 10:40–42.

*(15.) The resurrection of Lazarus at Bethany, and its effect upon hastening the crisis. The counsel of Caiaphas. Jesus retires from Jerusalem to Ephraim, 11:1–57.

(16.) The anointing by Mary in Bethany, 12:1–8. The counsel of the chief priests, 12:9–11.

(17.) The entry into Jerusalem, 12:12–19. (Comp. Matt. 21:1–17; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:29–44.)

*(18.) Visit of the Greeks. Discourse of Jesus on the grain of wheat which must die to bear fruit; the voice from heaven; the attraction of the cross; the opposite effect; reflection of the Evangelist; summary of the speeches of Jesus, John 12:20–50.

III. The Private Manifestation of Christ in the Circle of his Disciples. During the fourth and last Passover week. Jerusalem, 13:1–17:26.

*(l.) Jesus washes the feet of the disciples before the Passover meal, 13:1–20.

(2.) He announces the traitor, 13:21–27. The departure of Judas, 13:27–30.

*(3.) The new commandment of love, 13:31–35. (Here is the best place for the institution of the Lord’s Supper, omitted by John, but reported by all the Synoptists and by Paul.)

(4.) Prophecy of Peter’s denial, 13:36–38.

*(5.) The farewell discourses to the disciples; the promise of the Paraclete, and of Christ’s return, 14:1 – 16:33.

*(6.) The Sacerdotal Prayer, 17:1–26.

IV. The Glorification of Christ in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, 18:1–20:31.

(1.) The passage over the Kedron, and the betrayal, 18:1–11.

(2.) Jesus before the high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, 18:12–14, 19–24.

(3.) Peter’s denial, 18:15–18, 25–27.

(4.) Jesus before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, 18:28–19:16. Original in part (19:4–16).

(5.) The crucifixion, 19:17–37.

(6.) The burial of Jesus, 19:38–42.

(7.) The resurrection. Mary Magdalene, Peter and John visit the empty tomb, 20:1–10.

(8.) Christ appears to Mary Magdalene, 20:11–18.

*(9.) Christ appears to the apostles, except Thomas, on the evening of the resurrection day, 20:19–23.

*(10.) Christ appears to the apostles, including Thomas, on the following Lord’s Day, 20:26–29.

*(11.) Object of the Gospel, 20:30, 31

*V. The Appendix and Epilogue, 21:1–25.

(1.) Christ appears to seven disciples on the lake of Galilee. The third manifestation to the disciples, 21:1–14.

(2.) The dialogue with Simon Peter: "Lovest thou Me?"  "Feed My sheep."  "Follow Me," 21:15–19.

(3.) The mysterious word about the beloved disciple, 21:1–23.

(4.) The attestation of the authorship of the Gospel by the pupils of John, 21:24, 25.

Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel.

The Gospel of John is the most original, the most important, the most influential book in all literature. The great Origen called it the crown of the Gospels, as the Gospels are the crown of all sacred writings.1050  It is pre-eminently the spiritual and ideal, though at the same time a most real Gospel, the truest transcript of the original. It lifts the veil from the holy of holies and reveals the glory of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. It unites in harmony the deepest knowledge and the purest love of Christ. We hear as it were his beating heart; we lay our hands in his wound-prints and exclaim with doubting Thomas: "My Lord and my God."  No book is so plain and yet so deep, so natural and yet so full of mystery. It is simple as a child and sublime as a seraph, gentle as a lamb and bold as an eagle, deep as the sea and high as the heavens.

It has been praised as "the unique, tender, genuine Gospel," "written by the hand of an angel," as "the heart of Christ," as "God’s love-letter to the world," or "Christ’s love-letter to the church."  It has exerted an irresistible charm on many of the strongest and noblest minds in Christendom, as Origen in Egypt, Chrysostom in Asia, Augustin in Africa, the German Luther, the French Calvin, the poetic Herder, the critical Schleiermacher, and a multitude of less famous writers of all schools and shades of thought. Even many of those who doubt or deny the apostolic authorship cannot help admiring its more than earthly beauties.1051

But there are other sceptics who find the Johannean discourses monotonous, tedious, nebulous, unmeaning, hard, and feel as much offended by them as the original hearers.1052

Let us point out the chief characteristics of this book which distinguish it from the Synoptical Gospels.

1. The fourth Gospel is the Gospel of the Incarnation, that is, of the perfect union of the divine and human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who for this very reason is the Saviour of the world and the fountain of eternal life. "The Word became flesh."  This is the theoretical theme. The writer begins with the eternal pre-existence of the Logos, and ends with the adoration of his incarnate divinity in the exclamation of the sceptical Thomas: "My Lord and my God!"  Luke’s preface is historiographic and simply points to his sources of information; John’s prologue is metaphysical and dogmatic, and sounds the keynote of the subsequent history. The Synoptists begin with the man Jesus and rise up to the recognition of his Messiahship and divine Sonship; John descends from the pre-existent Son of God through the preparatory revelations to his incarnation and crucifixion till he resumes the glory which he had before the world began. The former give us the history of a divine man, the latter the history of a human God. Not that he identifies him with the Godhead (oJ qeov"); on the contrary, he clearly distinguishes the Son and the Father and makes him inferior in dignity ("the Father is greater than I"); but he declares that the Son is "God" (qeov"), that is, of divine essence or nature.

And yet there is no contradiction here between the Evangelists except for those who deem a union of the Divine and human in one person an impossibility. The Christian Church has always felt that the Synoptic and the Johannean Christ are one and the same, only represented from different points of view. And in this judgment the greatest scholars and keenest critics, from Origen down to the present time, have concurred.

For, on the one hand, John’s Christ is just as real and truly human as that of the Synoptists. He calls himself the Son of man and "a man" (John 8:40); he "groaned in the spirit" (11:33), he "wept" at the grave of a friend (11:35), and his "soul" was "troubled" in the prospect of the dark hour of crucifixion (12:27) and the crime of the traitor (13:1). The Evangelist attests with solemn emphasis from what he saw with his own eyes that Jesus truly suffered and died (19:33–35).1053

The Synoptic Christ, on the other hand, is as truly elevated above ordinary mortals as the Johannean. It is true, he does not in so many words declare his pre-existence as in John 1:1; 6:62; 8:58; 17:5, 24, but it is implied, or follows as a legitimate consequence. He is conceived without sin, a descendant of David, and yet the Lord of David (Matt. 22:41); he claims authority to forgive sins, for which he is accused of blasphemy by the Jews (quite consistently from their standpoint of unbelief); he gives his life a ransom for the redemption of the world; he will come in his glory and judge all nations; yea, in the very Sermon on the Mount, which all schools of Rationalists accept his genuine teaching, He declares himself to be the judge of the world (Matt. 7:21–23; comp. 25:31–46), and in the baptismal formula He associates himself and the Holy Spirit with the eternal Father, as the connecting link between the two, thus assuming a place on the very throne of the Deity (28:19). It is impossible to rise higher. Hence Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist, does not hesitate to apply to Him the name Immanuel, that is, "God with us"(1:23). Mark gives us the Gospel of Peter, the first who confessed that Jesus is not only "the Christ" in his official character, but also "the Son of the living God."  This is far more than a son; it designates his unique personal relation to God and forms the eternal basis of his historical Messiahship (Matt. 16:16; comp. 26:63). The two titles are distinct, and the high priest’s charge of blasphemy (26:65) could only apply to the latter. A false Messiah would be an impostor, not a blasphemer. We could not substitute the Messiah for the Son in the baptismal formula. Peter, Mark, and Matthew were brought up in the most orthodox monotheism, with an instinctive horror of the least approach to idolatry, and yet they looked up to their Master with feelings of adoration. And, as for Luke, he delights in representing Jesus throughout as the sinless Saviour of sinners, and is in full sympathy with the theology of his elder brother Paul, who certainly taught the pre-existence and divine nature of Christ several years before the Gospels were written or published (Rom. 1:3, 4; 9:5; 2 Cor. 8:9; Col. 1:15–17; Phil. 2:6–11).

2. It is the Gospel of Love. Its practical motto is: "God is love."  In the incarnation of the eternal Word, in the historic mission of his Son, God has given the greatest possible proof of his love to mankind. In the fourth Gospel alone we read that precious sentence which contains the very essence of Christianity: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). It is the Gospel of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep (10:11); the Gospel of the new commandment: "Love one another" (13:34). And this was the last exhortation of the aged disciple "whom Jesus loved."

But for this very reason that Christ is the greatest gift of God to the world, unbelief is the greatest sin and blackest ingratitude, which carries in it its own condemnation. The guilt of unbelief, the contrast between faith and unbelief is nowhere set forth in such strong light as in the fourth Gospel. It is a consuming fire to all enemies of Christ.

3. It is the Gospel of Mystic Symbolism.1054  The eight miracles it records are significant "signs" (shmei'a) which symbolize the character and mission of Christ, and manifest his glory. They are simply his "works" (e[rga), the natural manifestations of his marvellous person performed with the same ease as men perform their ordinary works. The turning of water into wine illustrates his transforming power, and fitly introduces his public ministry; the miraculous feeding of the five thousand set him forth as the Bread of life for the spiritual nourishment of countless believers; the healing of the man born blind, as the Light of the world; the raising of Lazarus, as the Resurrection and the Life. The miraculous draught of fishes shows the disciples to be fishers of men, and insures the abundant results of Christian labor to the end of time. The serpent in the wilderness prefigured the cross. The Baptist points to him as the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. He represents himself under the significant figures of the Door, the good Shepherd, the Vine; and these figures have inspired Christian art and poetry, and guided the meditations of the church ever since.

The whole Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the New. "The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (1:17). Herein lies the vast superiority of Christianity, and yet the great importance of Judaism as an essential part in the scheme of redemption. Clearly and strongly as John brings out the opposition to the unbelieving Jews, he is yet far from going to the Gnostic extreme of rejecting or depreciating the Old Testament; on the contrary "salvation comes from the Jews" (says Christ to the Samaritan woman, 4:22); and turning the Scripture argument against the scribes and Pharisees who searched the letter of the Scriptures, but ignored the spirit, Christ confronts them with the authority of Moses on whom they fixed their hope. "If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (5:46). John sees Christ everywhere in those ancient Scriptures which cannot be broken. He unfolds the true Messianic idea in conflict with the carnal perversion of it among the Jews under the guidance of the hierarchy.

The Johannean and Synoptic Discourses of Christ.

4. John gives prominence to the transcendent Discourses about the person of Christ and his relation to the Father, to the world, and the disciples. His words are testimonies, revealing the inner glory of his person; they are Spirit and they are life.

Matthew’s Gospel is likewise didactic; but there is a marked difference between the contents and style of the Synoptic and the Johannean discourses of Jesus. The former discuss the nature of the Messianic kingdom, the fulfilment of the law, the duty of holy obedience, and are popular, practical, brief, pointed, sententious, parabolic, and proverbial; the latter touch the deepest mysteries of theology and Christology, are metaphysical, lengthy, liable to carnal misunderstanding, and scarcely discernible from John’s own style in the prologue and the first Epistle, and from that used by the Baptist. The transition is almost imperceptible in John 3:16 and 3:31.

Here we reach the chief difficulty in the Johannean problem. Here is the strong point of sceptical criticism. We must freely admit at the outset that John so reproduced the words of his Master as to mould them unconsciously into his own type of thought and expression. He revolved them again and again in his heart, they were his daily food, and the burden of his teaching to the churches from Sunday to Sunday; yet he had to translate, to condense, to expand, and to apply them; and in this process it was unavoidable that his own reflections should more or less mingle with his recollections. With all the tenacity of his memory it was impossible that at such a great interval of time (fifty or sixty years after the events) he should be able to record literally every discourse just as it was spoken; and he makes no such claim, but intimates that he selects and summarizes.

This is the natural view of the case, and the same concession is now made by all the champions of the Johannean authorship who do not hold to a magical inspiration theory and turn the sacred writers into unthinking machines, contrary to their own express statements, as in the Preface of Luke. But we deny that this concession involves any sacrifice of the truth of history or of any lineament from the physiognomy of Christ. The difficulty here presented is usually overstated by the critics, and becomes less and less, the higher we rise in our estimation of Christ, and the closer we examine the differences in their proper connection. The following reflections will aid the student:

(1) In the first place we must remember the marvellous heighth and depth and breadth of Christ’s intellect as it appears in the Synoptists as well as in John. He commanded the whole domain of religious and moral truth; he spake as never man spake, and the people were astonished at his teaching (Matt. 7:28, 29; Mark 1:22; 6:2; Luke 4:32; John 7:46). He addressed not only his own generation, but through it all ages and classes of men. No wonder that his hearers often misunderstood him. The Synoptists give examples of such misunderstanding as well as John (comp. Mark 8:16). But who will set limits to his power and paedagogic wisdom in the matter and form of his teaching?  Must he not necessarily have varied his style when he addressed the common people in Galilee, as in the Synoptists, and the educated, proud, hierarchy of Jerusalem, as in John?  Or when he spoke on the mountain, inviting the multitude to the Messianic Kingdom at the opening of his ministry, and when he took farewell from his disciples in the chamber, in view of the great sacrifice?  Socrates appears very different in Xenophon and in Plato, yet we can see him in both. But here is a far greater than Socrates.1055

(2) John’s mind, at a period when it was most pliable and plastic, had been so conformed to the mind of Christ that his own thoughts and words faithfully reflected the teaching of his Master. If there ever was spiritual sympathy and congeniality between two minds, it was between Jesus and the disciple whom he loved and whom he intrusted with the care of his mother. John stood nearer to his Lord than any Christian or any of the Synoptists. "Why should not John have been formed upon the model of Jesus rather than the Jesus of his Gospel be the reflected image of himself?  Surely it may be left to all candid minds to say whether, to adopt only the lowest supposition, the creative intellect of Jesus was not far more likely to mould His disciple to a conformity with itself, than the receptive spirit of the disciple to give birth by its own efforts to that conception of a Redeemer which so infinitely surpasses the loftiest image of man’s own creation."1056

(3) John reproduced the discourses from the fulness of the spirit of Christ that dwelt in him, and therefore without any departure from the ideas. The whole gospel history assumes that Christ did not finish, but only began his work while on earth, that he carries it on in heaven through his chosen organs, to whom he promised mouth and wisdom (Luke 21:15; Matt. 10:19) and his constant presence (Matt. 19:20; 28:20). The disciples became more and more convinced of the superhuman character of Christ by the irresistible logic of fact and thought. His earthly life appeared to them as a transient state of humiliation which was preceded by a pre-existent state of glory with the Father, as it was followed by a permanent state of glory after the resurrection and ascension to heaven. He withheld from them "many things" because they could not bear them before his glorification (John 16:12). "What I do," he said to Peter, "thou knowest not now, but thou shalt come to know hereafter" (13:7). Some of his deepest sayings, which they had at first misunderstood, were illuminated by the resurrection (2:22; 12:16), and then by the outpouring of the Spirit, who took things out of the fulness of Christ and declared them to the disciples (16:13, 14). Hence the farewell discourses are so full of the Promises of the Spirit of truth who would glorify Christ in their hearts. Under such guidance we may be perfectly sure of the substantial faithfulness of John’s record.

(4) Beneath the surface of the similarity there is a considerable difference between the language of Christ and the language of his disciple. John never attributes to Christ the designation Logos, which he uses so prominently in the Prologue and the first Epistle. This is very significant, and shows his conscientious care. He distinguished his own theology from the teaching of his Master, no matter whether he borrowed the term Logos from Philo (which cannot be proven), or coined it himself from his reflections on Old Testament distinctions between the hidden and the revealed God and Christ’s own testimonies concerning his relation to the Father. The first Epistle of John is an echo of his Gospel, but with original matter of his own and Polemical references to the anti-Christian errors of big day. "The phrases of the Gospel," says Westcott, "have a definite historic connection: they belong to circumstances which explain them. The phrases in the Epistle are in part generalizations, and in part interpretations of the earlier language in view of Christ’s completed work and of the experience of the Christian church."

As to the speeches of the Baptist, in the fourth Gospel, they keep, as the same writer remarks, strictly within the limits suggested by the Old Testament. "What he says spontaneously of Christ is summed up in the two figures of the ’Lamb’ and the ’Bridegroom,’ which together give a comprehensive view of the suffering and joy, the redemptive and the completive work of Messiah under prophetic imagery. Both figures appear again in the Apocalypse; but it is very significant that they do not occur in the Lord’s teaching in the fourth Gospel or in St. John’s Epistles."

(5) There are not wanting striking resemblances in thought and style between the discourses in John and in the Synoptists, especially Matthew, which are sufficient to refute the assertion that the two types of teaching are irreconcilable.1057  The Synoptists were not quite unfamiliar with the other type of teaching. They occasionally rise to the spiritual height of John and record briefer sayings of Jesus which could be inserted without a discord in his Gospel. Take the prayer of thanksgiving and the touching invitation to all that labor and are heavy laden, in Matt. 11:25–30. The sublime declaration recorded by Luke 10:22 and Matthew 11:27: "No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him," is thoroughly Christ-like according to John’s conception, and is the basis of his own declaration in the prologue: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him"(John 1:18). Jesus makes no higher claim in John than he does in Matthew when he proclaims: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth" (Matt. 28:18). In almost the same words Jesus says in John 17:2: "Thou hast given him power over all flesh."

On the other hand, John gives us not a few specimens of those short, pithy maxims of oriental wisdom which characterize the Synoptic discourses.1058

The Style of the Gospel of John.

The style of the fourth Gospel differs widely from the ecclesiastical writers of the second century, and belongs to the apostolic age. It has none of the technical theological terms of post-apostolic controversies, no allusions to the state of the church, its government and worship, but moves in the atmosphere of the first Christian generation; yet differs widely from the style of the Synoptists and is altogether unique in the history of secular and religious literature, a fit expression of the genius of John: clear and deep, simple as a child, and mature as a saint, sad and yet serene, and basking in the sunshine of eternal life and love. The fourth Gospel is pure Greek in vocabulary and grammar, but thoroughly Hebrew in temper and spirit, even more so than any other book, and can be almost literally translated into Hebrew without losing its force or beauty. It has the childlike simplicity, the artlessness, the imaginativeness, the directness, the circumstantiality, and the rhythmical parallelism which characterize the writings of the Old Testament. The sentences are short and weighty, coordinated, not subordinated. The construction is exceedingly simple: no involved periods, no connecting links, no logical argumentation, but a succession of self-evident truths declared as from immediate intuition. The parallelism of Hebrew poetry is very apparent in such double sentences as: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you;" "A servant is not greater than his lord; neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him;" "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that hath been made."  Examples of antithetic parallelism are also frequent: "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" "He was in the world, and the world knew him not;" "He confessed, and denied not;" "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish."

The author has a limited vocabulary, but loves emphatic repetition, and his very monotony is solemn and impressive. He uses certain key-words of the profoundest import, as Word, life, light, truth, love, glory, testimony, name, sign, work, to know, to behold, to believe. These are not abstract conceptions but concrete realities. He views the world under comprehensive contrasts, as life and death, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, God and the devil, and (in the first Epistle) Christ and Antichrist.

He avoids the optative, and all argumentative particles, but uses very frequently the simple particles kaiv, dev, ou|n, i{na. His most characteristic particle in the narrative portions is "therefore" (ou|n¼, which i" with him not syllogistic »like a[ra and its compounds), but indicative simply of continuation and retrospect (like "so" and "then" or the German "nun"), yet with the idea that nothing happens without a cause; while the particle "in order that" (i{na) indicates that nothing happens without a purpose. He avoids the relative pronoun and prefers the connecting "and" with the repetition of the noun, as "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God .... In him was life, and the life was the light of men."  The "and" sometimes takes the place of "but," as "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not" (John 1:5).

We look in vain for such important words as church, gospel, repentance (metavnoia), but the substance is there in different forms. He does not even use the noun "faith" (pivsti"), which frequently occurs in the Synoptists and in Paul, but he uses the verb "to believe" (pisteuvein) ninety-eight times, about twice as often as all three Synoptists together.

He applies the significant term Logos (ratio and oratio) to Christ as the Revealer and the Interpreter of God (1:18), but only in the Prologue, and such figurative designations as "the Light of the world," "the Bread of life," "the Good Shepherd," "the Vine," "the Way," "the Truth," and "the Life."  He alone uses the double "Verily" in the discourses of the Saviour. He calls the Holy Spirit the "Paraclete" or "Advocate" of believers, who pleads their cause here on earth, as Christ pleads it on the throne in heaven. There breathes through this book an air of calmness and serenity, of peace and repose, that seems to come from the eternal mansions of heaven.1059

Is such a style compatible with the hypothesis of a post- and pseudo-apostolic fiction?  We have a large number of fictitious Gospels, but they differ as much from the fourth canonical Gospel as midnight darkness from noonday brightness.

Authorship.

For nearly eighteen centuries the Christian church of all denominations has enjoyed the fourth Gospel without a shadow of doubt that it was the work of John the Apostle. But in the nineteenth century the citadel was assailed with increasing force, and the conflict between the besiegers and defenders is still raging among scholars of the highest ability. It is a question of life and death between constructive and destructive criticism. The vindication of the fourth Gospel as a genuine product of John, the beloved disciple, is the death-blow of the mythical and legendary reconstruction and destruction of the life of Christ and the apostolic history. The ultimate result cannot be doubtful. The opponents have been forced gradually to retreat from the year 170 to the very beginning of the second century, as the time when the fourth Gospel was already known and used in the church, that is to the lifetime of many pupils and friends of John and other eye-witnesses of the life of Christ.1060

I. The External Proof of the Johannean authorship is as strong, yea stronger than that of the genuineness of any classical writer of antiquity, and goes up to the very beginning of the second century, within hailing distance of the living John. It includes catholic writers, heretics, and heathen enemies. There is but one dissenting voice, hardly audible, that of the insignificant sect of the Alogi who opposed the Johannean doctrine of the Logos (hence their name, with the double meaning of unreasonable, and anti-Logos heretics) and absurdly ascribed both the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse to his enemy, the Gnostic Cerinthus.1061  Let us briefly sum up the chief testimonies.

1.  Catholic testimonies. We begin at the fourth century and gradually rise up to the age of John. All the ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including the Sinaitic and the Vatican, which date from the age of Constantine and are based upon older copies of the second century, and all the ancient versions, including the Syriac and old Latin from the third and second centuries, contain without exception the Gospel of John, though the Peshito omits his second and third Epistles and the Apocalypse. These manuscripts and versions represent the universal voice of the churches.

Then we have the admitted individual testimonies of all the Greek and Latin fathers up to the middle of the second century, without a dissenting voice or doubt: Jerome (d. 419) and Eusebius (d. 340), who had the whole ante-Nicene literature before them; Origen in Egypt (d. 254), the greatest scholar of his age and a commentator on John; Tertullian of North Africa (about 200), a Catholic in doctrine, a Montanist in discipline, and a zealous advocate of the dispensation of the Paraclete announced by John; Clement of Alexandria (about 190), a cultivated philosopher who had travelled in Greece, Italy, Syria, and Palestine, seeking religious instruction everywhere; Irenaeus, a native of Asia Minor and from 178 bishop of Lyons, a pupil of Polycarp and a grand-pupil of John himself, who derived his chief ammunition against the Gnostic heresy from the fourth Gospel, and represents the four canonical Gospels—no more and no less—as universally accepted by the churches of his time; Theophilus of Antioch (180), who expressly quotes from the fourth Gospel under the name of John;1062 the Muratorian Canon (170), which reports the occasion of the composition of John’s Gospel by urgent request of his friends and disciples; Tatian of Syria (155–170), who in his "Address to the Greeks" repeatedly quotes the fourth Gospel, though without naming the author, and who began his, "Diatessaron"—once widely spread in the church notwithstanding the somewhat Gnostic leanings of the author, and commented on by Ephraem of Syria—with the prologue of John.1063  From him we have but one step to his teacher, Justin Martyr, a native of Palestine (103–166), and a bold and noble-minded defender of the faith in the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. In his two Apologies and his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, he often quotes freely from the four Gospels under the name of Apostolic "Memoirs" or "Memorabilia of the Apostles," which were read at his time in public, worship.1064  He made most use of Matthew, but once at least he quotes a passage on regeneration1065 from Christ’s dialogue with Nicodemus which is recorded only by John. Several other allusions of Justin to John are unmistakable, and his whole doctrine of the pre-existent Logos who sowed precious seeds of truth among Jews and Gentiles before his incarnation, is unquestionably derived from John. To reverse the case is to derive the sunlight from the moon, or the fountain from one of its streams.

But we can go still farther back. The scanty writings of the Apostolic Fathers, so called, have very few allusions to the New Testament, and breathe the atmosphere of the primitive oral tradition. The author of the "Didache" was well acquainted with Matthew. The first Epistle of Clement has strong affinity with Paul. The shorter Epistles of Ignatius show the influence of John’s Christology.1066  Polycarp (d. A.D. 155 in extreme old age), a personal pupil of John, used the First Epistle of John, and thus furnishes an indirect testimony to the Gospel, since both these ’books must stand or fall together.1067  The same is true of Papias (died about 150), who studied with Polycarp, and probably was likewise a bearer of John. He "used testimonies from the former Epistle of John."1068  In enumerating the apostles whose living words he collected in his youth, he places John out of his regular order of precedence, along with Matthew, his fellow-Evangelist, and "Andrew, Peter, and Philip" in the same order as John 1:40–43; from which it has also been inferred that he knew the fourth Gospel. There is some reason to suppose that the disputed section on the woman taken in adultery was recorded by him in illustration of John 8:15; for, according to Eusebius, he mentioned a similar story in his lost work.1069  These facts combined, make it at least extremely probable that Papias was familiar with John.1070  The joint testimony of Polycarp and Papias represents the school of John in the very field of his later labors, and the succession was continued through Polycrates at Ephesus, through Melito at Sardis, through Claudius Apollinaris at Hieropolis, and Pothinus and Irenaeus in Southern Gaul. It is simply incredible that a spurious Gospel should have been smuggled into the churches under the name of their revered spiritual father and grandfather.

Finally, the concluding verse of the appendix, John 21:24, is a still older testimony of a number of personal friends and pupils of John, perhaps the very persons who, according to ancient tradition, urged him to write the Gospel. The book probably closed with the sentence: "This is the disciple who beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things."  To this the elders add their attestation in the plural: "And we know that his witness is true."  A literary fiction would not have been benefited by an anonymous postscript. The words as they, stand are either a false testimony of the pseudo-John, or the true testimony of the friends of the real John who first received his book and published it before or after his death.

The voice of the whole Catholic church, so far as it is heard, on the subject at all, is in favor of the authorship of John. There is not a shadow of proof to the contrary opinion except one, and that is purely negative and inconclusive. Baur to the very last laid the greatest stress on the entangled paschal controversy of the second century as a proof that John could not have written the fourth Gospel because he was quoted as an authority for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the 14th of Nisan; while the fourth Gospel, in flat contradiction to the Synoptists, puts the crucifixion on that day (instead of the 15th), and represents Christ as the true paschal lamb slain at the very time when the typical Jewish passover was slain. But, in the first place, some of the ablest scholars know how to reconcile John with the Synoptic date of the crucifixion on the 15th of Nisan; and, secondly, there is no evidence at all that the apostle John celebrated Easter with the Quartodecimans on the 14th of Nisan in commemoration of the day of the Lord’s Supper. The controversy was between conforming the celebration of the Christian Passover to the day of the month, that is to Jewish chronology, or to the day of the week on which Christ died. The former would have made Easter, more conveniently, a fixed festival like the Jewish Passover, the latter or Roman practice made it a movable feast, and this practice triumphed at the Council of Nicaea.1071

2. Heretical testimonies. They all the more important in view of their dissent from Catholic doctrine. It is remarkable that the heretics seem to have used and commented on the fourth Gospel even before the Catholic writers. The Clementine Homilies, besides several allusions, very clearly quote from the story of the man born blind, John 9:2, 3.1072  The Gnostics of the second century, especially the Valentinians and Basilidians, made abundant use of the fourth Gospel, which alternately offended them by its historical realism, and attracted them by its idealism and mysticism. Heracleon, a pupil of Valentinus, wrote a commentary on it, of which Origen has preserved large extracts; Valentinus himself (according to Tertullian) tried either to explain it away, or he put his own meaning into it. Basilides, who flourished about A.D. 125, quoted from the Gospel of John such passages as the "true light, which enlighteneth every man was coming into the world" (John 1:9), and, my hour is not yet come "(2:4).1073

These heretical testimonies are almost decisive by themselves. The Gnostics would rather have rejected the fourth Gospel altogether, as Marcion actually did, from doctrinal objection. They certainly would not have received it from the Catholic church, as little as the church would have received it from the Gnostics. The concurrent reception of the Gospel by both at so early a date is conclusive evidence of its genuineness. "The Gnostics of that date," says Dr. Abbot,1074 "received it because they could not help it. They would not have admitted the authority of a book which could be reconciled with their doctrines only by the most forced interpretation, if they could have destroyed its authority by denying its genuineness. Its genuineness could then be easily ascertained. Ephesus was one of the principal cities of the Eastern world, the centre of extensive commerce, the metropolis of Asia Minor. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were living who had known the apostle John. The question whether he, the beloved disciple, had committed to writing his recollections of his Master’s life and teaching, was one of the greatest interest. The fact of the reception of the fourth Gospel as his work at so early a date, by parties so violently opposed to each other, proves that the evidence of its genuineness was decisive. This argument is further confirmed by the use of the Gospel by the opposing parties in the later Montanistic controversy, and in the disputes about the time of celebrating Easter."

3. Heathen testimony. Celsus, in his book against Christianity, which was written about A.D. 178 (according to Keim, who reconstructed it from the fragments preserved in the refutation of Origen), derives his matter for attack from the four Gospels, though he does not name their authors, and he refers to several details which are peculiar to John, as, among others, the blood which flowed from the body of Jesus at his crucifixion (John 19:34), and the fact that Christ "after his death arose and showed the marks of his punishment, and how his hands had been pierced" (20:25, 27).1075

The radical assertion of Baur that no distinct trace of the fourth Gospel can be found before the last quarter of the second century has utterly broken down, and his own best pupils have been forced to make one concession after another as the successive discoveries of the many Gnostic quotations in the Philosophumena, the last book of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the Syrian Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, revealed the stubborn fact of the use and abuse of the Gospel before the middle and up to the very beginning of the second century, that is, to a time when it was simply impossible to mistake a pseudo-apostolic fiction for a genuine production of the patriarch of the apostolic age.

II. Internal Evidence. This is even still stronger, and leaves at last no alternative but truth or fraud.

1. To begin with the style of the fourth Gospel, we have already seen that it is altogether unique and without a parallel in post-apostolic literature, betraying a Hebrew of the Hebrews, impregnated with the genius of the Old Testament, in mode of thought and expression, in imagery and symbolism, in the symmetrical structure of sentences, in the simplicity and circumstantiality of narration; yet familiar with pure Greek, from long residence among Greeks. This is just what we should expect from John at Ephesus. Though not a rabbinical scholar, like Paul, he was acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures and not dependent on the Septuagint. He has in all fourteen quotations from the Old Testament.1076  Four of these agree with the Hebrew and the Septuagint; three agree with the Hebrew against the Septuagint (6:45; 13:18 19:37), the rest are neutral, either agreeing with both or differing from both, or being free adaptations rather than citations; but none of them agrees with the Septuagint against the Hebrew.1077

Among the post-apostolic writers there is no converted Jew, unless it be Hegesippus; none who could read the Hebrew and write Hebraistic Greek. After the destruction of Jerusalem the church finally separated from the synagogue and both assumed an attitude of uncompromising hostility.

2. The author was a Jew of Palestine. He gives, incidentally and without effort, unmistakable evidence of minute familiarity with the Holy Land and its inhabitants before the destruction of Jerusalem. He is at home in the localities of the holy city and the neighborhood. He describes Bethesda as "a pool by the sheep gate, having five porches" (5:2), Siloam as "a pool which is by interpretation Sent" (9:7), Solomon’s porch as being "in the Temple" (10:23), the brook Kedron "where was a garden" (18:1); he knows the location of the praetorium (18:28), the meaning of Gabbatha (19:13), and Golgotha (19:17), the distance of Bethany from Jerusalem "about fifteen furlongs off" (11:18), and he distinguishes it from Bethany beyond Jordan (1:28). He gives the date when the Herodian reconstruction of the temple began (2:19). He is equally familiar with other parts of Palestine and makes no mistakes such as are so often made by foreigners. He locates Cana in Galilee (2:1; 4:26 21:2), to distinguish it from another Cana; Aenon "near to Salim" where there are "many waters" (3:23); Sychar in Samaria near "Jacob’s, well," and in view of Mount Gerizim (4:5). He knows the extent of the Lake of Tiberias (6:19); he describes Bethsaida as "the city of Andrew and Peter" (1:44), as distinct from Bethsaida Julias on the eastern bank of the Jordan; he represents Nazareth as a place of proverbial insignificance (1:46).

He is well acquainted with the confused politico-ecclesiastical Messianic ideas and expectations of the Jews (1:19–28, 45–49; 4:25; 6:14, 15 7:26; 12:34, and other passages); with the hostility between Jews and Samaritans (4:9, 20, 22 8:48); with Jewish usages and observances, as baptism (1:25; 3:22, 23 4:2), purification (2:6; 3:25, etc.), ceremonial pollution (18:28), feasts (2:13, 23; 5:1 7:37, etc.), circumcision, and the Sabbath (7:22, 23). He is also acquainted with the marriage and burial rites (2:1–10; 11:17–44), with the character of the Pharisees and their influence in the Sanhedrin, the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas. The objection of Bretschneider that he represents the office of the high-priest as an annual office arose from a misunderstanding of the phrase "that year" (11:49, 51 18:13), by which he means that memorable year in which Christ died for the sins of the people.

3. The author was an eye-witness of most of the events narrated. This appears from his life-like familiarity with the acting persons, the Baptist, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, Judas Iscariot, Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, Nicodemus, Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria, the man born blind; and from the minute traits and vivid details which betray autopticity. He incidentally notices what the Synoptists omit, that the traitor was "the son of Simon" ( 6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26 at Thomas was called "Didymus" (11:16; 20:24 21:2); while, on the other hand, he calls the Baptist simply "John" ( he himself being the other John), without adding to it the distinctive title as the Synoptists do more than a dozen times to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee.1078  He indicates the days and hours of certain events,1079 and the exact or approximate number of persons and objects mentioned.1080  He was privy to the thoughts of the disciples on certain occasions, their ignorance and misunderstanding of the words of the Master,1081 and even to the motives and feelings of the Lord.1082

No literary artist could have invented the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus on the mystery of spiritual regeneration (John 3), or the conversation with the woman of Samaria (John 4), or the characteristic details of the catechization of the man born blind, which brings out so naturally the proud and heartless bigotry of the Jewish hierarchy and the rough, outspoken honesty and common sense of the blind man and his parents (9:13–34). The scene at Jacob’s well, described in John 4, presents a most graphic, and yet unartificial picture of nature and human life as it still remains, though in decay, at the foot of Gerizim and Ebal: there is the well of Jacob in a fertile, well-watered valley, there the Samaritan sanctuary on the top of Mount Gerizim, there the waving grain-fields ripening for the harvest; we are confronted with the historic antagonism of Jews and Samaritans which survives in the Nablus of to-day; there we see the genuine humanity of Jesus, as he sat down "wearied with his journey," though not weary of his work, his elevation above the rabbinical prejudice of conversing with a woman, his superhuman knowledge and dignity; there is the curiosity and quick-wittedness of the Samaritan Magdalene; and how natural is the transition from the water of Jacob’s well to the water of life, and from the hot dispute of the place of worship to the highest conception of God as an omnipresent spirit, and his true worship in spirit and in truth.1083

4. The writer represents himself expressly as an eye-witness of the life of Christ. He differs from the Synoptists, who never use the first person nor mix their subjective feelings with the narrative. "We beheld his glory," he says, in the name of all the apostles and primitive disciples, in stating the general impression made upon them by the incarnate Logos dwelling.1084  And in the parallel passage of the first Epistle, which is an inseparable companion of the fourth Gospel, he asserts with solemn emphasis his personal knowledge of the incarnate Word of life whom he heard with his ears and saw with his eyes and handled with his hands (1 John 1:1–3). This assertion is general, and covers the whole public life of our Lord. But he makes it also in particular a case of special interest for the realness of Christ’s humanity; in recording the flow of blood and water from the wounded side, he adds emphatically: "He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knoweth that he saith things that are true, that ye also may believe" (John 19:35). Here we are driven to the alternative: either the writer was a true witness of what he relates, or he was a false witness who wrote down a deliberate lie.

5. Finally, the writer intimates that he is one of the Twelve, that he is one of the favorite three, that he is not Peter, nor James, that he is none other than the beloved John who leaned on the Master’s bosom. He never names himself, nor his brother James, nor his mother Salome, but he has a very modest, delicate, and altogether unique way of indirect self-designation. He stands behind his Gospel like a mysterious figure with a thin veil over his face without ever lifting the veil. He leaves the reader to infer the name by combination. He is undoubtedly that unnamed disciple who, with Andrew, was led to Jesus by the testimony of the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan (1:35–40), the disciple who at the last Supper "was reclining at the table in Jesus’ bosom" (13:23–25), that "other disciple" who, with Peter, followed Jesus into the court of the high-priest (18:15, 16), who stood by the cross and was intrusted by the dying Lord with the care of His mother (19:26, 27), and that "other disciple whom Jesus loved," who went with Peter to the empty sepulchre on the resurrection morning and was convinced of the great fact by the sight of the grave-cloths, and the head-cover rolled up in a place by itself (20:2–8). All these narratives are interwoven with autobiographic details. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," not from vanity (as has been most strangely asserted by some critics), but in blessed and thankful remembrance of the infinite mercy of his divine Master who thus fulfilled the prophecy of his name Johanan, i.e., Jehovah is gracious. In that peculiar love of his all-beloved Lord was summed up for him the whole significance of his life.

With this mode of self-designation corresponds the designation of members of his family: his mother is probably meant by the unnamed "sister of the mother" of Jesus, who stood by the cross (John 19:25), for Salome was there, according to the Synoptists, and John would hardly omit this fact; and in the list of the disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Lake of Galilee, "the sons of Zebedee" are put last (21:2), when yet in all the Synoptic lists of the apostles they are, with Peter and Andrew, placed at the head of the Twelve. This difference can only be explained from motives of delicacy and modesty.

What a contrast the author presents to those pseudonymous literary forgers of the second and third centuries, who unscrupulously put their writings into the mouth of the apostles or other honored names to lend them a fictitious charm and authority; and yet who cannot conceal the fraud which leaks out on every page.

Conclusion.

A review of this array of testimonies, external and internal, drives us to the irresistible conclusion that the fourth Gospel is the work of John, the apostle. This view is clear, self-consistent, and in full harmony with the character of the book and the whole history of the apostolic age; while the hypothesis of a literary fiction and pious fraud is contradictory, absurd, and self-condemned. No writer in the second century could have produced such a marvellous book, which towers high above all the books of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Clement and Origen, or any other father or schoolman or reformer. No writer in the first century could have written it but an apostle, and no apostle but John, and John himself could not have written it without divine inspiration.

§ 84. Critical Review of the Johannean Problem.

See the Liter. in § 40, pp. 408 sqq., and the history of the controversy by Holtzmann, in Bunsen’s Bibelwerk, VIII. 56 sqq.; Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schriften N. T.’s (6th ed.), I. 248 sqq.; Godet, Com. (3d ed.), I. 32 sqq.; Holtzmann, Einleitung (2d ed.), 423 sqq.; Weiss, Einleitung (1886), 609 sqq.

The importance of the subject justifies a special Section on the opposition to the fourth Gospel, after we have presented our own view on the subject with constant reference to the recent objections.

The Problem Stated.

The Johannean problem is the burning question of modern criticism on the soil of the New Testament. It arises from the difference between John and the Synoptists on the one hand, and the difference between the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse on the other.

I. The Synoptic aspect of the problem includes the differences between the first three Evangelists and the fourth concerning the theatre and length of Christ’s ministry, the picture of Christ, the nature and extent of his discourses, and a number of minor details. It admits the following possibilities:

(1.) Both the Synoptists and John are historical, and represent only different aspects of the same person and work of Christ, supplementing and confirming each other in every essential point. This is the faith of the Church and the conviction of nearly all conservative critics and commentators.

(2.) The fourth Gospel is the work of John, and, owing to his intimacy with Christ, it is more accurate and reliable than the Synoptists, who contain some legendary embellishments and even errors, derived from oral tradition, and must be rectified by John. This is the view of Schleiermacher, Lücke, Bleek, Ewald, Meyer, Weiss, and a considerable number of liberal critics and exegetes who yet accept the substance of the whole gospel history as true, and Christ as the Lord and Saviour of the race. The difference between these scholars and the church tradition is not fundamental, and admits of adjustment.

(3.) The Synoptists represent (in the main) the Christ of history, the fourth Gospel the ideal Christ of faith and fiction. So Baur and the Tübingen school (Schwegler, Zeller, Köstlin, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holtzmann, , Hausrath, Schenkel, Mangold, Keim, Thoma), with their followers and sympathizers in France (Nicolas, d’Eichthal, Renan, Réville, Sabatier), Holland (Scholten and the Leyden school), and England (the anonymous author of "Supernatural Religion," Sam. Davidson, Edwin A. Abbott). But these critics eliminate the miraculous even from the Synoptic Christ, at least as far as possible, and approach the fourth hypothesis.

(4.) The Synoptic and Johannean Gospels are alike fictitious, and resolve themselves into myths and legends or pious frauds. This is the position of the extreme left wing of modern criticism represented chiefly by Strauss. It is the legitimate result of the denial of the supernatural and miraculous, which is as inseparable from the Synoptic as it is from the Johannean Christ; but it is also subversive of all history and cannot be seriously maintained in the face of overwhelming facts and results. Hence there has been a considerable reaction among the radical critics in favor of a more historical position. Keim’s, "History of Jesus of Nazara" is a very great advance upon Strauss’s "Leben Jesu," though equally critical and more learned, and meets the orthodox view half way on the ground of the Synoptic tradition, as represented in the Gospel of Matthew, which he dates back to A.D. 66.

II. The Apocalyptic aspect of the Johannean problem belongs properly to the consideration of the Apocalypse, but it has of late been inseparably interwoven with the Gospel question. It admits likewise of four distinct views:

(1.) The fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse are both from the pen of the apostle John, but separated by the nature of the subject, the condition of the writer, and an interval of at least twenty or thirty years, to account for the striking differences of temper and style. When he met Paul at Jerusalem, A.D. 50, he was one of the three "pillar-apostles" of Jewish Christianity (Gal. 2:9), but probably less than forty years of age, remarkably silent with his reserved force, and sufficiently in sympathy with Paul to give him the right hand of fellowship; when he wrote the Apocalypse, between A.D. 68 and 70, he was not yet sixty, and when he wrote the Gospel he was over eighty years of age. Moreover, the differences between the two books are more than counterbalanced by an underlying harmony. This has been acknowledged even by the head of the Tübingen critics, who calls the fourth Gospel an Apocalypse spiritualized or a transfiguration of the Apocalypse.1085

(2.) John wrote the Gospel, but not the Apocalypse. Many critics of the moderate school are disposed to surrender the Apocalypse and to assign it to the somewhat doubtful and mysterious "Presbyter John," a contemporary of the Apostle John. So Schleiermacher, Lücke, Bleek, Neander, Ewald, Düsterdieck, etc. If we are to choose between the two books, the Gospel has no doubt stronger claims upon our acceptance.

(3.) John wrote the Apocalypse, but for this very reason he cannot have written the fourth Gospel. So Baur, Renan, Davidson, Abbott, and nearly all the radical critics (except Keim).

(4.) The fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse are both spurious and the work of the Gnostic Cerinthus (as the Alogi held), or of some anonymous forger. This view is so preposterous and unsound that no critic of any reputation for learning and judgment dares to defend it.

There is a correspondence between the four possible attitudes on both aspects of the Johannean question, and the parties advocating them.

The result of the conflict will be the substantial triumph of the faith of the church which accepts, on new grounds of evidence, all the four Gospels as genuine and historical, and the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel as the works of John.

The Assaults on the Fourth Gospel.

Criticism has completely shifted its attitude on both parts of the problem. The change is very remarkable. When the first serious assault was made upon the genuineness of the fourth Gospel by the learned General Superintendent Bretschneider (in 1820), he was met with such overwhelming opposition, not only from evangelical divines like Olshausen and Tholuck, but also from Schleiermacher, Lücke, Credner, and Schott, that he honestly confessed his defeat a few years afterward (1824 and 1828).1086  And when Dr. Strauss, in his Leben Jesu (1835), renewed the denial, a host of old and new defenders arose with such powerful arguments that he himself (as he confessed in the third edition of 1838) was shaken in his doubt, especially by the weight and candor of Neander, although he felt compelled, in self-defence, to reaffirm his doubt as essential to the mythical hypothesis (in the fourth edition, 1840, and afterward in his popular Leben Jesu, 1864).

But in the meantime his teacher, Dr. Baur, the coryphaeus of the Tübingen school, was preparing his heavy ammunition, and led the second, the boldest, the most vigorous and effective assault upon the Johannean fort (since 1844).1087  He was followed in the main question, though with considerable modifications in detail, by a number of able and acute critics in Germany and other countries. He represented the fourth Gospel as a purely ideal work which grew out of the Gnostic, Montanistic, and paschal controversies after the middle of the second century, and adjusted the various elements of the Catholic faith with consummate skill and art. It was not intended to be a history, but a system of theology in the garb of history. This "tendency" hypothesis was virtually a death-blow to the mythical theory of Strauss, which excludes conscious design.

The third great assault inspired by Baur, yet with independent learning and judgment, was made by Dr. Keim (in his Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 1867). He went beyond Baur in one point: he denied the whole tradition of John’s sojourn in Ephesus as a mistake of Irenaeus; he thus removed even the foundation for the defence of the Apocalypse as a Johannean production, and neutralized the force of the Tübingen assault derived from that book. On the other hand, he approached the traditional view by tracing the composition back from 170 (Baur) to the reign of Trajan, i.e., to within a few years after the death of the apostle. In his denial of the Ephesus tradition he met with little favor,1088 but strong opposition from the Tübingen critics, who see the fatal bearing of this denial upon the genuineness of the Apocalypse.1089  The effect of Keim’s movement therefore tended rather to divide and demoralize the besieging force.

Nevertheless the effect of these persistent attacks was so great that three eminent scholars, Hase of Jena (1876), Reuss of Strassburg, and Sabatier of Paris (1879), deserted from the camp of the defenders to the army of the besiegers. Renan, too, who had in the thirteenth edition of his Vie de Jesus (1867) defended the fourth Gospel at least in part, has now (since 1879, in his L’Église chrétienne) given it up entirely.1090

The Defence of the Fourth Gospel.

The incisive criticism of Baur and his school compelled a thorough reinvestigation of the whole problem, and in this way has been of very great service to the cause of truth. We owe to it the ablest defences of the Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel and the precious history which it represents. Prominent among these defenders against the latest attacks were Bleek, Lange, Ebrard, Thiersch, Schneider, Tischendorf, Riggenbach, Ewald, Steitz, Aberle, Meyer, Luthardt, Wieseler, Beyschlag, Weiss, among the Germans; Godet, Pressensé, Astié, among the French; Niermeyer, Van Oosterzee, Hofstede de Groot, among the Dutch; Alford, Milligan, Lightfoot, Westcott, Sanday, Plummer, among the English; Fisher, and Abbot among the Americans.1091

It is significant that the school of negative criticism has produced no learned commentary on John. All the recent commentators on the fourth Gospel (Lücke, Ewald, Lange, Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Meyer, Weiss, Alford, Wordsworth, Godet, Westcott, Milligan , Moulton, Plummer, etc.) favor its genuineness.

The Difficulties of the Anti-Johannean Theory.

The prevailing theory of the negative critics is this: They accept the Synoptic Gospels, with the exception of the miracles, as genuine history, but for this very reason they reject John; and they accept the Apocalypse as the genuine work of the apostle John, who is represented by the Synoptists as a Son of Thunder, and by Paul (Gal. 2) as one of the three pillars of conservative Jewish Christianity, but for this very reason they deny that he can have written the Gospel, which in style and spirit differs so widely from the Apocalypse. For this position they appeal to the fact that the Synoptists and the Apocalypse are equally well, and even better supported by internal and external evidence, and represent a tradition which is at least twenty years older.

But what then becomes of the fourth Gospel?  It is incredible that the real John should have falsified the history of his Master; consequently the Gospel which bears his name is a post-apostolic fiction, a religious poem, or a romance on the theme of the incarnate Logos. It is the Gospel of Christian Gnosticism, strongly influenced by the Alexandrian philosophy of Philo. Yet it is no fraud any more than other literary fictions. The unknown author dealt with the historical Jesus of the Synoptists, as Plato dealt with Socrates, making him simply the base for his own sublime speculations, and putting speeches into his mouth which he never uttered.

Who was that Christian Plato?  No critic can tell, or even conjecture, except Renan, who revived, as possible at least, the absurd view of the Alogi, that the Gnostic heretic, Cerinthus the enemy of John, wrote the fourth Gospel1092  Such a conjecture requires an extraordinary stretch of imagination and an amazing amount of credulity. The more sober among the critics suppose that the author was a highly gifted Ephesian disciple of John, who freely reproduced and modified his oral teaching after he was removed by death. But how could his name be utterly unknown, when the names of Polycarp and Papias and other disciples of John, far less important, have come down to as?  "The great unknown" is a mystery indeed. Some critics, half in sympathy with Tübingen, are willing to admit that John himself wrote a part of the book, either the historic narratives or the discourses, but neither of these compromises will do: the book is a unit, and is either wholly genuine or wholly a fiction.

Nor are the negative critics agreed as to the time of composition. Under the increasing pressure of argument and evidence they have been forced to retreat, step by step, from the last quarter of the second century to the first, even within a few years of John’s death, and within the lifetime of hundreds of his hearers, when it was impossible for a pseudo-Johannean book to pass into general currency without the discovery of the fraud. Dr. Baur and Schwegler assigned the composition to A.D. 170 or 160; Volkmar to 155; Zeller to 150; Scholten to 140; Hilgenfeld to about 130; Renan to about 125; Schenkel to 120 or 115; until Keim (in 1867) went up as high as 110 or even 100, but having reached such an early date, he felt compelled (1875)1093 in self-defence to advance again to 130, and this notwithstanding the conceded testimonies of Justin Martyr and the early Gnostics. These vacillations of criticism reveal the impossibility of locating the Gospel in the second century.

If we surrender the fourth Gospel, what shall we gain in its place?  Fiction for fact, stone for bread, a Gnostic dream for the most glorious truth.

Fortunately, the whole anti-Johannean hypothesis breaks down at every point. It suffers shipwreck on innumerable details which do not fit at all into the supposed dogmatic scheme, but rest on hard facts of historical recollections.1094

And instead of removing any difficulties it creates greater difficulties in their place. There are certain contradictions which no ingenuity can solve. If "the great unknown" was the creative artist of his ideal Christ, and the inventor of those sublime discourses, the like of which were never heard before or since, he must have been a mightier genius than Dante or Shakespeare, yea greater than his own hero, that is greater than the greatest: this is a psychological impossibility and a logical absurdity. Moreover, if he was not John and yet wanted to be known as John, he was a deceiver and a liar:1095 this is a moral impossibility. The case of Plato is very different, and his relation to Socrates is generally understood. The Synoptic Gospels are anonymous, but do not deceive the reader. Luke and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews honestly make themselves known as mere disciples of the apostles. The real parallel would be the apocryphal Gospels and the pseudo-Clementine productions, where the fraud is unmistakable, but the contents are so far below the fourth Gospel that a comparison is out of the question. Literary fictions were not uncommon in the ancient church, but men had common sense and moral sense then as well is now to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lie. It is simply incredible that the ancient church should have been duped into a unanimous acceptance of such an important book as the work of the beloved disciple almost from the very date of his death, and that the whole Christian church, Greek, Latin, Protestant, including an innumerable army of scholars, should have been under a radical delusion for eighteen hundred years, mistaking a Gnostic dream for the genuine history of the Saviour of mankind, and drinking the water of life from the muddy source of fraud.1096

In the meantime the fourth Gospel continues and will continue to shine, like the sun in heaven, its own best evidence, and will shine all the brighter when the clouds, great and small, shall have passed away.

§ 85. The Acts of the Apostles.

Comp. § 82.

1. Critical  Treatises.

M. Schneckenburger: Zweck der Apostelgeschichte. Bern, 1841.

Schwanbeck: Quellen der Ap. Gesch. Darmstadt, 1847.

Ed. Zeller: Contents and Origin of the Acts of the Apostles. Stuttg., 1854; trsl. by Jos. Dare, 1875–76, London, 2 vols.

Lekebusch: Composition u. Entstehung der Ap. Gesch. Gotha, 1854.

Klostermann: Vindiciae Lucancae. Göttingen, 1866.

Arthur König (R. C.): Die Aechtheit der Ap. Gesch. Breslau, 1867.

J. R. Oertel: Paulus in der Ap. Gesch. Der histor. Char. dieser Schrift, etc. Halle, 1868.

J. B. Lightfoot: Illustrations of the Acts from recent Discoveries, in the "Contemporary Review" for May, 1878, pp. 288–296.

Dean Howson: Bohlen Lectures on the Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles, delivered in Philadelphia, 1880. London and New York, 1880.

Friedr. Zimmer: Galaterbrief und Apostelgeschichte. Hildburghausen, 1882.

Comp. also, in part, J. H. Scholten: Das Paulinische Evangelium, trsl. from the Dutch by Redepenning, Elberf., 1881. A critical essay on the writings of Luke (pp. 254 sqq.).

2. Commentaries on  Acts.

By Chrysotom; Jerome; Calvin; Olshausen; De Wette (4th ed., revised by Overbeck, 1870); Meyer (4th ed., 1870; 5th ed., revised by Wendt 1880); Baumgarten (in 2 parts, 1852, Engl. transl. in 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1856); Jos. A. Alexander; H. B. Hackett (2d ed., 1858; 3d ed., 1877); Ewald (1872); Lecher-Gerok (in Lange’s Bibelwerk, transl. by Schaeffer, N. Y., 1866); F. C. Cook (Lond., 1866); Alford; Wordsworth; Gloag; Plumptre; (in Ellicott’s Com.); Jacobson (in the "Speaker’s Com.," 1880); Lumby (in the "Cambridge Bible for Schools," 1880); Howson and Spence (in Schaff’s "Popul. Com.," 1880; revised for "Revision Com.," N. Y., 1882); K. Schmidt (Die Apostelgesch. unter dem Hauptgesichtspunkt ihrer Glaubwürdigkeit kritisch exegetisch bearbeitet. Erlangen, 1882, 2 vols.); Nösgen (Leipz. 1882), Bethge (1887).

The Acts and the Third Gospel.

The book of Acts, though placed by the ancient ecclesiastical division not in the "Gospel," but in the "Apostle," is a direct continuation of the third Gospel, by the same author, and addressed to the same Theophilus, probably a Christian convert of distinguished social position. In the former he reports what he heard and read, in the latter what he heard and saw. The one records the life and work of Christ, the other the work of the Holy Spirit, who is recognized at every step. The word Spirit, or Holy Spirit, occurs more frequently in the Acts than in any other book of the New Testament. It might properly be called "the Gospel of the Holy Spirit."

The universal testimony of the ancient church traces the two books to the same author. This is confirmed by internal evidence of identity of style, continuity of narrative, and correspondence of plan. About fifty words not found elsewhere in the New Testament are common to both books.1097

Object and Contents

The Acts is a cheerful and encouraging book, like the third Gospel; it is full of missionary zeal and hope; it records progress after progress, conquest after conquest, and turns even persecution and martyrdom into an occasion of joy and thanksgiving. It is the first church history. It begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome. An additional chapter would probably have recorded the terrible persecution of Nero and the heroic martyrdom of Paul and Peter. But this would have made the book a tragedy; instead of that it ends as cheerfully and triumphantly as it begins.

It represents the origin and progress of Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of heathenism. It is a history of the planting of the church among the Jews by Peter, and among the Gentiles by Paul. Its theme is expressed in the promise of the risen Christ to his disciples (Acts 1:8): "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you (Acts 2): and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem (Acts 3–7), and in all Judaea and Samaria (Acts 8–12), and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 13–28). The Gospel of Luke, which is the Pauline Gospel, laid the foundation by showing how salvation, coming from the Jews and opposed by the Jews, was intended for all men, Samaritans and Gentiles. The Acts exhibits the progress of the church from and among the Jews to the Gentiles by the ministry of Peter, then of Stephen, then of Philip in Samaria, then of Peter again in the conversion of Cornelius, and at last by the labors of Paul and his companions.1098

The Acts begins with the ascension of Christ, or his accession to his throne, and the founding of his kingdom by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it closes with the joyful preaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the capital of the then known world.

The objective representation of the progress of the church is the chief aim of the work, and the subjective and biographical features are altogether subordinate. Before Peter, the hero of the first or Jewish-Christian division, and Paul, the hero of the second or Gentile-Christian part, the other apostles retire and are only once named, except John, the elder James, Stephen, and James, the brother of the Lord. Even the lives of the pillar-apostles appear in the history only so far as they are connected with the missionary work. In this view the long-received title of the book, added by some other hand than the author’s, is not altogether correct, though in keeping with ancient usage (as in the apocryphal literature, which includes "Acts of Pilate," "Acts of Peter and Paul," "Acts of Philip," etc.). More than three-fifths of it are devoted to Paul, and especially to his later labors and journeys, in which the author could speak from personal knowledge. The book is simply a selection of biographical memoirs of Peter and Paul connected with the planting of Christianity or the beginnings of the church (Origines Ecclesiae).

Sources.

Luke, the faithful pupil and companion of Paul, was eminently fitted to produce the history of the primitive church. For the first part he had the aid not only of oral tradition, but she of Palestinian documents, as he had in preparing his Gospel. Hence the Hebrew coloring in the earlier chapters of Acts; while afterward he writes as pure Greek, as in the classical prologue of his Gospel. Most of the events in the second part came under his personal observation. Hence he often speaks in the plural number, modestly including himself.1099  The "we" sections begin Acts 16:10, when Paul started from Troas to Macedonia (A.D. 51); they break off when he leaves Philippi for Corinth (17:1); they are resumed (20:5, 6) when he visits Macedonia again seven years later (58), and then continue to the close of the narrative (A.D. 63). Luke probably remained several years at Philippi, engaged in missionary labors, until Paul’s return. He was in the company of Paul, including the interruptions, at least twelve years. He was again with Paul in his last captivity, shortly before his martyrdom, his most faithful and devoted companion (2 Tim. 4:11).

Time of Composition.

Luke probably began the book of Acts or a preliminary diary during his missionary journeys with Paul in Greece, especially in Philippi, where he seems to have tarried several years; he continued it in Caesarea, where he had the best opportunity to gather reliable information of the earlier history, from Jerusalem, and such living witnesses as Cornelius and his friends, from Philip and his daughters, who resided in Caesarea; and he finished it soon after Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, before the terrible persecution in the summer of 64, which he could hardly have left unnoticed.

We look in vain for any allusion to this persecution and the martyrdom of Paul or Peter, or to any of their Epistles, or to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to the later organization of the church, or the superiority of the bishop over the presbyter (Comp. Acts 20:17, 28), or the Gnostic heresies, except by way of prophetic warning (20:30). This silence in a historical work like this seems inexplicable on the assumption that the book was written after A.D. 70, or even after 64. But if we place the composition before, the martyrdom of Paul, then the last verse is after all an appropriate conclusion of a missionary history of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. For the bold and free testimony of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the very heart of the civilized world was the sign and pledge of victory.

The Acts and the Gospels.

The Acts is the connecting link between the Gospels and Epistles. It presupposes and confirms the leading events in the life of Christ, on which the church is built. The fact of the resurrection, whereof the apostles were witnesses, sends a thrill of joy and an air of victory through the whole book. God raised Jesus from the dead and mightily proclaimed him to be the Messiah, the prince of life and a Saviour in Israel; this is the burden of the sermons of Peter, who shortly before had denied his Master. He boldly bears witness to it before the people, in his pentecostal sermon, before the Sanhedrin, and before Cornelius. Paul likewise, in his addresses at Antioch in Pisidia, at Thessalonica, on the Areopagus before the Athenian philosophers, and at Caesarea before Festus and Agrippa, emphasizes the resurrection without which his own conversion never could have taken place.

The Acts and the Epistles.

The Acts gives us the external history of the apostolic church; the Epistles present the internal life of the same. Both mutually supplement and confirm each other by a series of coincidences in all essential points. These coincidences are all the more conclusive as they are undesigned and accompanied by slight discrepancies in minor details. Archdeacon Paley made them the subject of a discussion in his Horae Paulinae,1100 which will retain its place among classical monographs alongside of James Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Arguments such as are furnished in these two books are sufficient to silence most of the critical objections against the credibility of Acts for readers of sound common sense and unbiased judgment. There is not the slightest trace that Luke had read any of the thirteen Epistles of Paul, nor that Paul had read a line of Acts. The writings were contemporaneous and independent, yet animated by the same spirit. Luke omits, it is true, Paul’s journey to Arabia, his collision with Peter at Antioch, and many of his trials and persecutions; but he did not aim at a full biography. The following are a few examples of these conspicuously undesigned coincidences in the chronological order:

Paul’s  Conversion.

Comp. Acts chs. 9; 22and 26; three accounts which differ only in minor details.

Gal. 1:15–17; 1 Cor. 15:8; 1 Tim. 1:13–16.

Paul’s  Persecution and Escape at Damascus.

Acts 9:23–25. The Jews took counsel together to kill him ... but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through the wall lowering him in a basket.

2 Cor. 11:32, 33. In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes, in order to take me; and through a window I was let down in a basket by the wall, and escaped his hands

Paul’s  Visits to Jerusalem.

9:26, 27. And when he was come to Jerusalem ... Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles.

Gal. 1:18. Then after three years [counting from his conversion] I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.

15:2. They appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders [to the apostolic conference to settle the question about circumcision].

Gal. 2:1. Then after the space of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up by revelation. [This inner motive does, of course, not exclude the church appointment mentioned by Luke.]

Paul  Left at Athens Alone.

17:16. Now while Paul waited for them [Silas and Timothy] at Athens.

1 Thess. 3:1  We thought it good to be left behind at Athens alone, and sent Timothy, etc. Comp 3:7.

Paul Working at his Trade.

18:3. And because he [Aquila] was of the same trade, he abode with them, and they wrought; for by their trade they were tent makers. Comp. 20:34.

1 Thess. 2:9. Ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you. Comp. 1 Cor. 4:11, 12.

Paul’s  Two Visits to Corinth.

18:1; 20:2.

1 Cor. 2:1; 4:19; 16:5.

Work of Apollos at Corinth.

18:27, 28.

1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6.

Paul Becoming a Jew to the Jews.

16:3; 18:18 21:23–26.

1 Cor. 9:20.

Baptism of Crispus and Gaius.

18:8.

1 Cor. 1:14–17.

Collection for the Poor Brethren.

28:23.

1 Cor. 16:1.

Paul’s  Last Journey to Jerusalem.

20 ;6; 24:17

Rom. 15:25, 26

His Desire to Visit Rome.

19:21.

Rom. 1:13;15:23.

Paul an Ambassador in Bonds.

28:16–20.

Eph. 6:19, 20

The Acts and Secular History.

The Acts brings Christianity in contact with the surrounding world and makes many allusions to various places, secular persons and events, though only incidentally and as far as its object required it. These allusions are—with a single exception, that of Theudas—in full harmony with the history of the age as known from Josephus and heathen writers, and establish Luke’s claim to be considered a well-informed, honest, and credible historian. Bishop Lightfoot asserts that no ancient work affords so many tests of veracity, because no other has such numerous points of contact in all directions with contemporary history, politics, and typography, whether Jewish or Greek or Roman. The description of persons introduced in the Acts such as Gamaliel, Herod, Agrippa I., Bernice, Felix, Festus, Gallio, agrees as far as it goes entirely with what we know from contemporary sources. The allusions to countries, cities, islands, in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy are without exception correct and reveal an experienced traveller. We mention the chief points, some of which are crucial tests.

1. The rebellion of Theudas, Acts 5:36, alluded to in the speech of Gamaliel, which was delivered about A.D. 33. Here is, apparently, a conflict with Josephus, who places this event in the reign of Claudius, and under the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, A.D. 44, ten or twelve years after Gamaliel’s speech.1101  But he mentions no less than three insurrections which took place shortly after the death of Herod the Great, one under the lead of Judas (who may have been Theudas or Thaddaeus, the two names being interchangeable, comp. Matt. 10:3; Luke 6:16), and he adds that besides these there were many highway robbers and murderers who pretended to the name of king.1102  At all events, we should hesitate to charge Luke with an anachronism. He was as well informed as Josephus, and more credible. This is the only case of a conflict between the two, except the case of the census in Luke 2:2, and here the discovery of a double governorship of Quirinius has brought the chronological difficulty within the reach of solution.1103

2. The rebellion of Judas of Galilee, mentioned in the same speech, Acts 5:37, as having occurred in the days of the enrolment (the census of Quirinius), is confirmed by Josephus.1104  The insurrection of this Judas was the most vigorous attempt to throw off the Roman yoke before the great war.

3. Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, 8:27. Strabo mentions a queen of Meroè in Ethiopia, under that name, which was probably, like Pharaoh, a dynastic title.1105

4. The famine under Claudius, 11:28. This reign (A.D. 41–54) was disturbed by frequent famines, one of which, according to Josephus, severely affected Judaea and Syria, and caused great distress in Jerusalem under the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, A.D. 45.1106

5. The death of King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of Herod the Great), 12:20–23. Josephus says nothing about the preceding persecution of the church, but reports in substantial agreement with Luke that the king died of a loathsome disease in the seventh year of his reign (A.D. 44), five days after he had received, at the theatre of Caesarea, divine honors, being hailed, in heathen fashion, as a god by his courtiers.1107

6. The proconsular (as distinct from the propraetorian) status of Cyprus, under Sergius Paulus, 13:7 (suvn tw' ajnqupavtw/ Sergivw/ Pauvlw/). Here Luke was for a long time considered inaccurate, even by Grotius, but has been strikingly confirmed by modern research. When Augustus assumed the supreme power (b.c. 27), he divided the government of the provinces with the Senate, and called the ruler of the imperatorial provinces, which needed direct military control under the emperor as commander of the legions, propraetor (ajntistravthgo") or legate (presbuvth"), the ruler of a senatorial province, proconsul (ajnquvpato"). Formerly these terms had signified that the holder of the office had previously been praetor (strathgo;" or hJgemwvn) or consul (u{pato"); now they signified the administrative heads of the provinces. But this subdivision underwent frequent changes, so that only a well-informed person could tell the distinction at any time. Cyprus was in the original distribution (b.c. 27) assigned to the emperor,1108 but since b.c. 22, and at the time of Paul’s visit under Claudius, it was a senatorial province;1109 and hence Sergius Paulus is rightly called proconsul. Coins have been found from the reign of Claudius which confirm this statement.1110  Yea, the very name of (Sergius) Paulus has been discovered by General di Cesnola at Soli (which, next to Salamis, was the most important city of the island), in a mutilated inscription, which reads: "in the proconsulship of Paulus."1111  Under Hadrian the island was governed by a propraetor; under Severus, again by a proconsul.

7. The proconsular status of Achaia under Gallio, 18:12 (Gallivwno" ajnqupavtou o[nto" th'" Acaiva"). Achaia, which included the whole of Greece lying south of Macedonia, was originally a senatorial province, then an imperatorial province under Tiberius, and again a senatorial province under Claudius.1112  In the year 53–54, when Paul was at Corinth, M. Annaeus Novatus Gallio, the brother of the philosopher L. Annaeus Seneca, was proconsul of Achaia, and popularly esteemed for his mild temper as "dulcis Gallio."

8. Paul and Barnabas mistaken for Zeus and Hermes in Lycaonia, 14:11. According to the myth described by Ovid,1113 the gods Jupiter and Mercury (Zeus and Hermes) had appeared to the Lycaonians in the likeness of men, and been received by Baucis and Philemon, to whom they left tokens of that favor. The place where they had dwelt was visited by devout pilgrims and adorned with votive offerings. How natural, therefore, was it for these idolaters, astonished by the miracle, to mistake the eloquent Paul for Hermes, and Barnabas who may have been of a more imposing figure, for Zeus.

9. The colonial dignity of the city of Philippi, in Macedonia, 16:12 ("a Roman colony," kolwvnia; comp. 16:21, "being Romans"). Augustus had sent a colony to the famous battlefield where Brutus and the Republic expired, and conferred on the place new importance and the privileges of Italian or Roman citizenship (jus Italicum).1114

10. "Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira," 16:14. Thyatira (now Akhissar), in the valley of Lycus in Asia Minor, was famous for its dying works, especially for purple or crimson.1115

11. The "politarchs" of Thessalonica, 17:6, 8.1116  This was a very rare title for magistrates, and might easily be confounded with the more usual designation "poliarchs." But Luke’s accuracy has been confirmed by an inscription still legible on an archway in Thessalonica, giving the names of seven "politarchs" who governed before the visit of Paul.1117

12. The description of Athens, the Areopagus, the schools of philosophy, the idle curiosity and inquisitiveness of the Athenians (mentioned also by Demosthenes), the altar of an unknown God, and the quotation from Aratus or Cleanthes, in Acts 17, are fully borne out by classical authorities.1118

13. The account of Ephesus in the nineteenth chapter has been verified as minutely accurate by the remarkable discoveries of John T. Wood, made between 1863 and 1874, with the aid of the English Government. The excessive worship of Diana, "the great goddess of Artemis," the temple-warden, the theatre (capable of holding twenty-five thousand people) often used for public assemblies, the distinct officers of the city, the Roman proconsul (ajnquvpato"), the recorder or "town-clerk" (grammateuv"), and the Asiarchs (jAsiarcaiv) or presidents of the games and the religious ceremonials, have all reappeared in ruins and on inscriptions, which may now be studied in the British Museum. "With these facts in view," says Lightfoot, "we are justified in saying that ancient literature has preserved no picture of the Ephesus of imperial times—the Ephesus which has been unearthed by the sagacity and perseverance of Mr. Wood—comparable for its life-like truthfulness to the narrative of St. Paul’s sojourn there in the Acts."1119

14. The voyage and shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27. This chapter contains more information about ancient navigation than any work of Greek or Roman literature, and betrays the minute accuracy of an intelligent eye-witness, who, though not a professional seaman, was very familiar with nautical terms from close observation. He uses no less than sixteen technical terms, some of them rare, to describe the motion and management of a ship, and all of them most appropriately; and he is strictly correct in the description of the localities at Crete, Salmone, Fair Havens, Cauda, Lasea and Phoenix (two small places recently identified), and Melita (Malta), as well as the motions and effects of the tempestuous northeast wind called Euraquilo (A. V. Euroclydon) in the Mediterranean. All this has been thoroughly tested by an expert seaman and scholar, James Smith, of Scotland, who has published the results of his examination in the classical monograph already mentioned.1120  Monumental and scientific evidence outweighs critical conjectures, and is an irresistible vindication of the historical accuracy and credibility of Luke.

The Acts an Irenicum.

But some critics have charged the Acts with an intentional falsification of history in the interest of peace between the Petrine and Pauline sections of the church. The work is said to be a Catholic Irenicum, based probably on a narrative of Luke, but not completed before the close of the first century, for the purpose of harmonizing the Jewish and Gentile sections of the church by conforming the two leading apostles, i.e., by raising Peter to the Pauline and lowering Paul to the Petrine Plane, and thus making both subservient to a compromise between Judaizing bigotry and Gentile freedom.1121

The chief arguments on which this hypothesis is based are the suppression of the collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch, and the friendly relation into which Paul is brought to James, especially at the last interview. Acts 15 is supposed to be in irreconcilable conflict with Galatian. But a reaction has taken place in the Tübingen school, and it is admitted now by some of the ablest critics that the antagonism between Paulinism and Petrinism has been greatly exaggerated by Baur, and that Acts is a far more trustworthy account than he was willing to admit. The Epistle to the Galatians itself is the best vindication of the Acts, for it expressly speaks of a cordial agreement between Paul and the Jewish pillar-apostles. As to the omission of the collision between Peter and Paul at Antioch, it was merely a passing incident, perhaps unknown to Luke, or omitted because it had no bearing on the course of events recorded by him. On the other hand, he mentions the "sharp contention" between Paul and Barnabas, because it resulted in a division of the missionary work, Paul and Silas going to Syria and Cilicia, Barnabas and Mark sailing away to Cyprus (15:39–41). Of this Paul says nothing, because it had no bearing on his argument with the Galatians. Paul’s conciliatory course toward James and the Jews, as represented in the Acts, is confirmed by his own Epistles, in which he says that he became a Jew to the Jews, as well as a Gentile to the Gentiles, in order to gain them both, and expresses his readiness to make the greatest possible sacrifice for the salvation of his brethren after the flesh (1 Cor. 9:20; Rom. 9:3).

The Truthfulness of the Acts.

The book of Acts is, indeed, like every impartial history, an Irenicum, but a truthful Irenicum, conceived in the very spirit of the Conference at Jerusalem and the concordat concluded by the leading apostles, according to Paul’s own testimony in the polemical Epistle to the Galatians. The principle of selection required, of course, the omission of a large number of facts and incidents. But the selection was made with fairness and justice to all sides. The impartiality and truthfulness of Luke is very manifest in his honest record of the imperfections of the apostolic church. He does not conceal the hypocrisy and mean selfishness of Ananias and Sapphira, which threatened to poison Christianity in its cradle (Acts 5:1 sqq.); he informs us that the institution of the diaconate arose from a complaint of the Grecian Jews against their Hebrew brethren for neglecting their widows in the daily ministration (61 sqq.) he represents Paul and Barnabas as "men of like passions" with other men (14:15), and gives us some specimens of weak human nature in Mark when he became discouraged by the hardship of missionary life and returned to his mother in Jerusalem (13:13), and in Paul and Barnabas when they fell out for a season on account of this very Mark, who was a cousin of Barnabas (15:39); nor does he pass in silence the outburst of Paul’s violent temper when in righteous indignation he called the high-priest a "whited wall" (23:3); and he speaks of serious controversies and compromises even among the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—all for our humiliation and warning as well as comfort and encouragement.

Examine and compare the secular historians from Herodotus to Macaulay, and the church historians from Eusebius to Neander, and Luke need not fear a comparison. No history of thirty years has ever been written so truthful and impartial, so important and interesting, so healthy in tone and hopeful in spirit, so aggressive and yet so genial, so cheering and inspiring, so replete with lessons of wisdom and encouragement for work in spreading the gospel of truth and peace, and yet withal so simple and modest, as the Acts of the Apostles. It is the best as well as the first manual of church history.

§ 86. The Epistles.

The sermons of Stephen and the apostles in Acts (excepting the farewell of Paul to the Ephesian Elders) are missionary addresses to outsiders, with a view to convert them to the Christian faith. The Epistles are addressed to baptized converts, and aim to strengthen them in their faith, and, by brotherly instruction, exhortation, rebuke, and consolation, to build up the church in all Christian graces on the historical foundation of the teaching and example of Christ. The prophets of the Old Testament delivered divine oracles to the people; the apostles of the New Testament wrote letters to the brethren, who shared with them the same faith and hope as members of Christ.

The readers are supposed to be already "in Christ," saved and sanctified "in Christ," and holding all their social and domestic relations and discharging their duties "in Christ."  They are "grown together"1122 with Christ, sharing in his death, burial, and resurrection, and destined to reign and rule with him in glory forever. On the basis of this new relation, constituted by a creative act of divine grace, and sealed by baptism, they are warned against every sin and exhorted to every virtue. Every departure from their profession and calling implies double guilt and double danger of final ruin.

Occasions and calls for correspondence were abundant, and increased with the spread of Christianity over the Roman empire. The apostles could not be omnipresent and had to send messengers and letters to distant churches. They probably wrote many more letters than we possess, although we have good reason to suppose that the most important and permanently valuable are preserved. A former letter of Paul to the Corinthians is implied in 1 Cor. 5:9: "I wrote to you in my epistle;"1123 and traces of further correspondence are found in 1 Cor. 16:3; 2 Cor. 10:9; Eph. 3:3. The letter "from Laodicea," referred to in Col. 4:16, is probably the encyclical Epistle to the Ephesians.

The Epistles of the New Testament are without a parallel in ancient literature, and yield in importance only to the Gospels, which stand higher, as Christ himself rises above the apostles. They are pastoral letters to congregations or individuals, beginning with an inscription and salutation, consisting of doctrinal expositions and practical exhortations and consolations, and concluding with personal intelligence, greetings, and benediction. They presuppose throughout the Gospel history, and often allude to the death and resurrection of Christ as the foundation of the church and the Christian hope. They were composed amidst incessant missionary labors and cares, under trial and persecution, some of them from prison, and yet they abound in joy and thanksgiving. They were mostly called forth by special emergencies, yet they suit all occasions. Tracts for the times, they are tracts for all times. Children of the fleeting moment, they contain truths of infinite moment. They compress more ideas in fewer words than any other writings, human or divine, excepting the Gospels. They discuss the highest themes which can challenge an immortal mind—God, Christ, and the Spirit, sin and redemption, incarnation, atonement, regeneration, repentance, faith and good works, holy living and dying, the conversion of the world, the general judgment, eternal glory and bliss. And all this before humble little societies of poor, uncultured artisans, freedmen and slaves!  And yet they are of more real and general value to the church than all the systems of theology from Origen to Schleiermacher—yea, than all the confessions of faith. For eighteen hundred years they have nourished the faith of Christendom, and will continue to do so to the end of time. This is the best evidence of their divine inspiration.

The Epistles are divided into two groups, Catholic and Pauline. The first is more general; the second bears the strong imprint of the intense personality of the Apostle of the Gentiles.

§ 87. The Catholic Epistles.

I. Storr: De Catholicarum Epp. Occasione et Consilio. Tüb. 1789. Staeudlin: De Fontibus Epp. Cath. Gott. 1790. J. D. Schulze: Der schriftstellerische Charakter und Werth des Petrus, Jacobus und Judas. Leipz. 1802. Der schriftsteller. Ch. des Johannes. 1803.

II. Commentaries on all the Catholic Epistles by Goeppfert (1780), Schlegel (1783), Carpzov (1790), Augusti (1801), Grashof (1830), Jachmann (1838), Sumner (1840), De Wette (3d ed. by Brückner 1865), Meyer (the Cath. Epp. by Huther, Düsterdieck, Beyerschlag), Lange (Eng. transl. with additions by Mombert, 1872), John T. Demarest (N. York, 1879); also the relevant parts in the "Speaker’s Com.," in Ellicott’s Com., the Cambridge Bible for Schools (ed. by Dean Perowne), and in the International Revision Com. (ed. by Schaff), etc. P. I. Gloag: Introduction, to the Catholic Epp., Edinb., 1887.

The seven Epistles of James, 1st and 2d Peter, 1st, 2d, and 3d John, and Jude usually follow in the old manuscripts the Acts of the Apostles, and precede the Pauline Epistles, perhaps as being the works of the older apostles, and representing, in part at least, the Jewish type of Christianity. They are of a more general character, and addressed not to individuals or single congregations, as those of Paul, but to a larger number of Christians scattered through a district or over the world. Hence they are called, from the time of Origen and Eusebius, Catholic. This does not mean in this connection anti-heretical (still less, of course, Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic), but encyclical or circular. The designation, however, is not strictly correct, and applies only to five of them. The second and third Epistles of John are addressed to individuals. On the other hand the Epistle to the Hebrews is encyclical, and ought to be numbered with the Catholic Epistles, but is usually appended to those of Paul. The Epistle to the Ephesians is likewise intended for more than one congregation. The first Christian document of an encyclical character is the pastoral letter of the apostolic Conference at Jerusalem (A.D. 50) to the Gentile brethren in Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:23–29).1124

The Catholic Epistles are distinct from the Pauline by their more general contents and the absence of personal and local references. They represent different, though essentially harmonious, types of doctrine and Christian life. The individuality of James, Peter, and John stand out very prominently in these brief remains of their correspondence. They do not enter into theological discussions like those of Paul, the learned Rabbi, and give simpler statements of truth, but protest against the rising ascetic and Antinomian errors, as Paul does in the Colossians and Pastoral Epistles. Each has a distinct character and purpose, and none could well be spared from the New Testament without marring the beauty and completeness of the whole.

The time of composition cannot be fixed with certainty, but is probably as follows: James before A.D. 50; 1st Peter (probably also 2d Peter and Jude) before A.D. 67; John between A.D. 80 and 100.

Only two of these Epistles, the 1st of Peter and the 1st of John, belong to the Eusebian Homologumena, which were universally accepted by the ancient church as inspired and canonical. About the other five there was more or less doubt as to their origin down to the close of the fourth century, when all controversy on the extent of the canon went to sleep till the time of the Reformation. Yet they bear the general imprint of the apostolic age, and the absence of stronger traditional evidence is due in part to their small size and limited use.

James.

Comp. on the lit., biography, and doctrine of James, §§ 27 and 69.

The Epistle of James the Brother of the Lord was written, no doubt, from Jerusalem, the metropolis of the ancient theocracy and Jewish Christianity, where the author labored and died a martyr at the head of the mother church of Christendom and as the last connecting link between the old and the new dispensation. It is addressed to the Jews and Jewish Christians of the dispersion before the final doom in the year 70.

It strongly resembles the Gospel of Matthew, and echoes the Sermon on the Mount in the fresh, vigorous, pithy, proverbial, and sententious style of oriental wisdom. It exhorts the readers to good works of faith, warns them against dead orthodoxy, covetousness, pride, and worldliness, and comforts them in view of present and future trials and persecutions. It is eminently practical and free from subtle theological questions. It preaches a religion of good works which commends itself to the approval of God and all good men. It represents the primary stage of Christian doctrine. It takes no notice of the circumcision controversy, the Jerusalem compromise, and the later conflicts of the apostolic age. Its doctrine of justification is no protest against that of Paul, but prior to it, and presents the subject from a less developed, yet eminently practical aspect, and against the error of a barren monotheism rather than Pharisaical legalism, which Paul had in view. It is probably the oldest of the New Testament books, meagre in doctrine, but rich in comfort and lessons of holy living based on faith in Jesus Christ, "the Lord of glory."  It contains more reminiscences of the words of Christ than any other epistle.1125  Its leading idea is "the perfect law of freedom," or the law of love revealed in Christ.

Luther’s harsh, unjust, and unwise judgment of this Epistle has been condemned by his own church, and reveals a defect in his conception of the doctrine of justification which was the natural result of his radical war with the Romish error.

Peter.

See on the lit., biography, and theology of Peter, §§ 25, 26, and 70.

The First Epistle of Peter, dated from Babylon,1126 belongs to the later life of the apostle, when his ardent natural temper was deeply humbled, softened, and sanctified by the work of grace. It was written to churches in several provinces of Asia Minor, composed of Jewish and Gentile Christians together, and planted mainly by Paul and his fellow-laborers; and was sent by the hands of Silvanus, a former companion of Paul. It consists of precious consolations, and exhortations to a holy walk after the example of Christ, to joyful hope of the heavenly inheritance, to patience under the persecutions already raging or impending. It gives us the fruit of a rich spiritual experience, and is altogether worthy of Peter and his mission to tend the flock of God under Christ, the chief shepherd of souls.1127

It attests also the essential agreement of Peter with the doctrine of the Gentile apostle, in which the readers had been before instructed (1 Pet. 5:12). This accords with the principle of Peter professed at the Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15:11) that we are saved without the yoke of the law, "through the grace of the Lord Jesus."  His doctrinal system, however, precedes that of Paul and is independent of it, standing between James and Paul. Peculiar to him is the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades (1 Pet. 3:19; 4:6; comp. Acts 2:32), which contains the important truth of the universal intent of the atonement. Christ died for all men, for those who lived before as well as after his coming, and he revealed himself to the spirits in the realm of Hades. Peter also warns against hierarchical ambition in prophetic anticipation of the abuse of his name and his primacy among the apostles.

The Second Epistle of Peter is addressed, shortly before the author’s death, as a sort of last will and testament, to the same churches as the first. It contains a renewed assurance of his agreement with his "beloved brother Paul," to whose Epistles he respectfully refers, yet with the significant remark (true in itself, yet often abused by Romanists) that there are in them "some things hard to be understood" (2 Pet. 3:15, 16). As Peter himself receives in one of these Epistles (Gal. 2:11) a sharp rebuke for his inconsistency at Antioch (which may be included in the hard things), this affectionate allusion proves how thoroughly the Spirit of Christ had, through experience, trained him to humility, meekness, and self-denial. The Epistle exhorts the readers to diligence, virtue, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly love, and brotherly kindness; refers to the Transfiguration on the Mount, where the author witnessed the majesty of Christ, and to the prophetic word inspired by the Holy Spirit; warns against antinomian errors; corrects a mistake concerning the second coming; exhorts them to prepare for the day of the Lord by holy living, looking for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness; and closes with the words: "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom be glory both now and forever."

The second Epistle is reckoned by Eusebius among the seven Antilegomena, and its Petrine authorship is doubted or denied, in whole or in part, by many eminent divines1128 but defended by competent critics.1129  The chief objections are: the want of early attestation, the reference to a collection of the Pauline Epistles, the polemic against Gnostic errors, some peculiarities of style, and especially the apparent dependence of the second chapter on the Epistle of Jude.

On the other hand, the Epistle, at least the first and third chapters, contains nothing which Peter might not have written, and the allusion to the scene of transfiguration admits only the alternative: either Peter, or a forger. It seems morally impossible that a forger should have produced a letter so full of spiritual beauty and unction, and expressly denouncing all cunning fabrications. It may have been enlarged by the editor after Peter’s death. But the whole breathes an apostolic spirit, and could not well be spared from the New Testament. It is a worthy valedictory of the aged apostle awaiting his martyrdom, and with its still valid warnings against internal dangers from false Christianity, it forms a suitable complement to the first Epistle, which comforts the Christians amidst external dangers from heathen and Jewish persecutors.

Jude.

The Epistle of Jude, a, "brother of James" (the Just),1130 is very short, and strongly resembles 2 Peter 2, but differs from it by an allusion to the remarkable apocryphal book of Enoch and the legend of the dispute of Michael with the devil about the body of Moses. It seems to be addressed to the same churches and directed against the same Gnostic heretics. It is a solemn warning against the antinomian and licentious tendencies which revealed themselves between A.D. 60 and 70. Origen remarks that it is "of few lines, but rich in words of heavenly wisdom."  The style is fresh and vigorous.

The Epistle of Jude belongs likewise to the Eusebian Antilegomena, and has signs of post-apostolic origin, yet may have been written by Jude, who was not one of the Twelve, though closely connected with apostolic circles. A forger would hardly have written under the name of a "brother of James" rather than a brother of Christ or an apostle.

The time and place of composition are unknown. The Tübingen critics put it down to the reign of Trajan; Renan, on the contrary, as far back as 54, wrongly supposing it to have been intended, together with the Epistle of James, as a counter-manifesto against Paul’s doctrine of free grace. But Paul condemned antinomianism as severely as James and Jude (comp. Rom. 6, and in fact all his Epistles). It is safest to say, with Bleek, that it was written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, which is not alluded to (comp. Jude 14, 15).

The Epistles of John.

Comp. §§ 40–43, 83 and 84.

The First Epistle of John betrays throughout, in thought and style, the author of the fourth Gospel. It is a postscript to it, or a practical application of the lessons of the life of Christ to the wants of the church at the close of the first century. It is a circular letter of the venerable apostle to his beloved children in Asia Minor, exhorting them to a holy life of faith and love in Christ, and earnestly warning them against the Gnostic "antichrists," already existing or to come, who deny the mystery of the incarnation, sunder religion from morality, and run into Antinomian practices.

The Second and Third Epistles of John are, like the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, short private letters, one to a Christian woman by the name of Cyria, the other to one Gains, probably an officer of a congregation in Asia Minor. They belong to the seven Antilegomena, and have been ascribed by some to the "Presbyter John," a contemporary of the apostle, though of disputed existence. But the second Epistle resembles the first, almost to verbal repetition,1131 and such repetition well agrees with the familiar tradition of Jerome concerning the apostle of love, ever exhorting the congregation, in his advanced age, to love one another. The difference of opinion in the ancient church respecting them may have risen partly from their private nature and their brevity, and partly from the fact that the author styles himself, somewhat remarkably, the "elder," the "presbyter."  This term, however, is probably to be taken, not in the official sense, but in the original, signifying age and dignity; for at that time John was in fact a venerable father in Christ, and must have been revered and loved as a patriarch among his "little children."

§ 88. The Epistles of Paul

Pau'lo" genovmeno: mevgisto": uJpogrammov". (Clement of Rome.)

Comp. §§ 29–36 and 71.

General Character.

Paul was the greatest worker among the apostles, not only as a missionary, but also as a writer. He "labored more than all."  And we may well include in this "all" the whole body of theologians who came after him; for where shall we find an equal wealth of the profoundest thoughts on the highest themes as in Paul?  We have from him thirteen Epistles; how many more were lost, we cannot even conjecture. The four most important of them are admitted to be genuine even by the most exacting and sceptical critics. They are so stamped with the individuality of Paul, and so replete with tokens of his age and surroundings, that no sane man can mistake the authorship. We might as well doubt the genuineness of Luther’s work on the Babylonian captivity, or his Small catechism. The heretic Marcion, in the first half of the second century, accepted ten, excluding only the three Pastoral Epistles which did not suit his notions.

The Pauline Epistles are pastoral addresses to congregations of his own founding (except that of Rome, and probably also that of Colossae, which were founded by his pupils), or to individuals (Timothy, Titus, Philemon). Several of them hail from prison, but breathe the same spirit of faith, hope, and joy as the others, and the last ends with a shout of victory. They proceeded from profound agitation, and yet are calm and serene. They were occasioned by the trials, dangers, and errors incident to every new congregation, and the care and anxiety of the apostle for their spiritual welfare. He had led them from the darkness of heathen idolatry and Jewish bigotry to the light of Christian truth and freedom, and raised them from the slime of depravity to the pure height of saving grace and holy living. He had no family ties, and threw the whole strength of his affections into his converts, whom he loved as tenderly as a mother can love her offspring.1132  This love to his spiritual children was inspired by his love to Christ, as his love to Christ was the response to Christ’s love for him. Nor was his love confined to the brethren: he was ready to make the greatest sacrifice for his unbelieving and persecuting fellow-Jews, as Christ himself sacrificed his life for his enemies.

His Epistles touch on every important truth and duty of the Christian religion, and illuminate them from the heights of knowledge and experience, without pretending to exhaust them. They furnish the best material for a system of dogmatics and ethics. Paul looks back to the remotest beginning before the creation, and looks out into the farthest future beyond death and the resurrection. He writes with the authority of a commissioned apostle and inspired teacher, yet, on questions of expediency, he distinguishes between the command of the Lord and his private judgment. He seems to have written rapidly and under great pressure, without correcting his first draft. If we find, with Peter, in his letters, "some things hard to be understood," even in this nineteenth century, we must remember that Paul himself bowed in reverence before the boundless ocean of God’s truth, and humbly professed to know only in part, and to see through a mirror darkly. All knowledge in this world "ends in mystery."1133  Our best systems of theology are but dim reflections of the sunlight of revelation. Infinite truths transcend our finite minds, and cannot be compressed into the pigeon-holes of logical formulas. But every good commentary adds to the understanding and strengthens the estimate of the paramount value of these Epistles.

The Chronological Order.

Paul’s Epistles were written within a period of about twelve years, between A.D. 52 or 53 and 64 or 67, when he stood at the height of his power and influence. None was composed before the Council of Jerusalem. From the date of his conversion to his second missionary journey (A.D. 37 to 52) we have no documents of his pen. The chronology of his letters can be better ascertained than that of the Gospels or Catholic Epistles, by combining internal indications with the Acts and contemporary events, such as the dates of the proconsulship of Gallio in Achaia, and the procuratorship of Felix and Festus in Judaea. As to the Romans, we can determine the place, the year, and the season of composition: he sends greetings from persons in Corinth (Rom. 16:23), commends Phoebe, a deaconess of Kenchreae, the port of Corinth, and the bearer of the letter (16:1); he had not yet been in Rome (1:13), but hoped to get there after another visit to Jerusalem, on which he was about to enter, with collections from Macedonia and Achaia for the poor brethren in Judaea (15:22–29; comp. 2 Cor. 8:1–3); and from Acts we learn that on his last visit to Achaia he abode three months in Corinth, and returned to Syria between the Passover and Pentecost (Acts 20:3, 6, 16). This was his fifth and last journey to Jerusalem, where he was taken prisoner and sent to Felix in Caesarea, two years before he was followed by Festus. All these indications lead us to the spring of A.D. 58.

The chronological order is this: Thessalonians were written first, A.D. 52 or 53; then Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, between 56 and 58; then the Epistles of the captivity: Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians, between 61 and 63; last, the Pastoral Epistles, but their date is uncertain, except that the second Epistle to Timothy is his farewell letter on the eve of his martyrdom.

It is instructive to study the Epistles in their chronological order with the aid of the Acts, and so to accompany the apostle in his missionary career from Damascus to Rome, and to trace the growth of his doctrinal system from the documentary truths in Thessalonians to the height of maturity in Romans; then through the ramifications of particular topics in Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and the farewell counsels in the Pastoral Epistles.

Doctrinal Arrangement.

More important than the chronological order is the topical order, according to the prevailing object and central idea. This gives us the following groups:

1. Anthropological and Soteriological: Galatians and Romans.

2. Ethical and Ecclesiastical: First and Second Corinthians.

3. Christological: Colossians and Philippians.

4. Ecclesiological: Ephesians (in part also Corinthians).

5. Eschatological: Thessalonians.

6. Pastoral: Timothy and Titus.

7. Social and Personal: Philemon.

The Style.

"The style is the man."  This applies with peculiar force to Paul. His style has been called "the most personal that ever existed."1134  It fitly represents the force and fire of his mind and the tender affections of his heart. He disclaims classical elegance and calls himself "rude in speech," though by no means "in knowledge."  He carried the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. But the defects are more than made up by excellences. In his very weakness the Strength of Christ was perfected. We are not lost in the admiration of the mere form, but are kept mindful of the paramount importance of the contents and the hidden depths of truth which he behind the words and defy the power of expression.

Paul’s style is manly, bold, heroic, aggressive, and warlike; yet at times tender, delicate, gentle, and winning. It is involved, irregular, and rugged, but always forcible and expressive, and not seldom rises to more than poetic beauty, as in the triumphant paean at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, and in the ode on love (1 Cor. 13). His intense earnestness and overflowing fulness of ideas break through the ordinary rules of grammar. His logic is set on fire. He abounds in skilful arguments, bold antitheses, impetuous assaults, abrupt transitions, sudden turns, zigzag flashes, startling questions and exclamations. He is dialectical and argumentative; he likes logical particles, paradoxical phrases, and plays on words. He reasons from Scripture, from premises, from conclusions; he drives the opponent to the wall without mercy and reduces him ad absurdum, but without ever indulging in personalities. He is familiar with the sharp weapons of ridicule, irony, and sarcasm, but holds them in check and uses them rarely. He varies the argument by touching appeals to the heart and bursts of seraphic eloquence. He is never dry or dull, and never wastes words; he is brief, terse, and hits the nail on the head. His terseness makes him at times obscure, as is the case with the somewhat similar style of Thucydides, Tacitus, and Tertullian. His words are as many warriors marching on to victory and peace; they are like a mountain torrent rushing in foaming rapids over precipices, and then calmly flowing over green meadows, or like a thunderstorm ending in a refreshing shower and bright sunshine.

Paul created the vocabulary of scientific theology and put a profounder meaning into religious and moral terms than they ever had before. We cannot speak of sin, flesh, grace, mercy, peace, redemption, atonement, justification, glorification, church, faith, love, without bearing testimony to the ineffaceable effect which that greatest of Jewish rabbis and Christian teachers has had upon the language of Christendom.

Notes.

Chrysostom justly compares the Epistles of Paul to metals more precious than gold and to unfailing fountains which flow the more abundantly the more we drink of them.

Beza: "When I more closely consider the whole genius and character of Paul’s style, I must confess that I have found no such sublimity of speaking in Plato himself ... no exquisiteness of vehemence in Demosthenes equal to his."

Ewald begins his Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Göttingen, 1857) with these striking and truthful remarks: "Considering these Epistles for themselves only, and apart from the general significance of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, we must still admit that, in the whole history of all centuries and of all nations, there is no other set of writings of similar extent, which, as creations of the fugitive moment, have proceeded from such severe troubles of the age, and such profound pains and sufferings of the author himself, and yet contain such an amount of healthfulness, serenity, and vigor of immortal genius, and touch with such clearness and certainty on the very highest truths of human aspiration and action .... The smallest as well as the greatest of these Epistles seem to have proceeded from the fleeting moments of this earthly life only to enchain all eternity they were born of anxiety and bitterness of human strife, to set forth in brighter lustre and with higher certainty their superhuman grace and beauty. The divine assurance and firmness of the old prophets of Israel, the all-transcending glory and immediate spiritual presence of the Eternal King and Lord, who had just ascended to heaven, and all the art and culture of a ripe and wonderfully excited age, seem to have joined, as it were, in bringing forth the new creation of these Epistles of the times which were destined to last for all times."

On the style of Paul, see my Companion, etc., pp. 62 sqq. To the testimonies there given I add the judgment of Reuss (Geschichte der h. Schr. N. T., I. 67): "Still more [than the method] is the style of these Epistles the true expression of the personality of the author. The defect of classical correctness and rhetorical finish is more than compensated by the riches of language and the fulness of expression. The condensation of construction demands not reading simply, but studying. Broken sentences, ellipses, parentheses, leaps in the argumentation, allegories, rhetorical figures express inimitably all the moods of a wide-awake and cultured mind, all the affections of a rich and deep heart, and betray everywhere a pen at once bold, and yet too slow for the thought. Antitheses, climaxes, exclamations, questions keep up the attention, and touching effusions win the heart of the reader."

§ 89. The Epistles to the Thessalonians.

Thessalonica,1135 a large and wealthy commercial city of Macedonia, the capital of "Macedonia secunda," the seat of a Roman proconsul and quaestor, and inhabited by many Jews, was visited by Paul on his second missionary tour, A.D. 52 or 53, and in a few weeks he succeeded, amid much persecution, in founding a flourishing church composed chiefly of Gentiles. From this centre Christianity spread throughout the neighborhood, and during the middle ages Thessalonica was, till its capture by the Turks (A.D. 1430), a bulwark of the Byzantine empire and Oriental Christendom, and largely instrumental in the conversion of the Slavonians and Bulgarians; hence it received the designation of "the Orthodox City."  It numbered many learned archbishops, and still has more remains of ecclesiastical antiquity than any other city in Greece, although its cathedral is turned into a mosque.

To this church Paul, as its spiritual father, full of affection for his inexperienced children, wrote in familiar conversational style two letters from Corinth, during his first sojourn in that city, to comfort them in their trials and to correct certain misapprehensions of his preaching concerning the glorious return of Christ, and the preceding development of "the man of sin" or Antichrist, and "the mystery of lawlessness," then already at work, but checked by a restraining power. The hope of the near advent had degenerated into an enthusiastic adventism which demoralized the every-day life. He now taught them that the Lord will not come so soon as they expected, that it was not a matter of mathematical calculation, and that in no case should the expectation check industry and zeal, but rather stimulate them. Hence his exhortations to a sober, orderly, diligent, and prayerful life.

It is remarkable that the first Epistles of Paul should treat of the last topic in the theological system and anticipate the end at the beginning. But the hope of Christ’s speedy coming was, before the destruction of Jerusalem, the greatest source of consolation to the infant church amid trial and persecution, and the church at Thessalonica was severely tried in its infancy, and Paul driven away. It is also remarkable that to a young church in Greece rather than to that in Rome should have first been revealed the beginning of that mystery of anti-Christian lawlessness which was then still restrained, but was to break out in its full force in Rome.1136

The objections of Baur to the genuineness of these Epistles, especially the second, are futile in the judgment of the best critics.1137

The Theoretical Theme:: The parousia of Christ. The Practical Theme: Christian hope in the midst of persecution.

Leading Thoughts: This is the will of God, even your sanctification (1 Thess. 4:3). Sorrow not as the rest who have no hope (4:13). The Lord will descend from heaven, and so shall we ever be with the Lord (4:16, 17). The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night (5:2). Let us watch and be sober (5:6). Put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation (5:8). Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks (5:16). Prove all things; hold fast that which is good; abstain from every form of evil (5:21, 22). The Lord will come to be glorified in his saints (2 Thess. 1:10). But the falling away must come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition (2:3, 4). The mystery of lawlessness doth already work, but is restrained for the time (2:7). Stand fast and hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours (2:15). If any will not work, neither let him eat (3:10). Be not weary in well-doing (3:13). The God of peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming (ejn th'/ parousiva/) our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:23).

§ 90. The Epistles to the Corinthians.

Corinth was the metropolis of Achaia, on the bridge of two seas, an emporium of trade between the East and the West—wealthy, luxurious, art-loving, devoted to the worship of Aphrodite. Here Paul established the most important church in Greece, and labored, first eighteen months, then three months, with, perhaps, a short visit between (2 Cor. 12:14; 13:1). The church presented all the lights and shades of the Greek nationality under the influence of the Gospel. It was rich in "all utterance and all knowledge," "coming behind in no gift," but troubled by the spirit of sect and party, infected with a morbid desire for worldly wisdom and brilliant eloquence, with scepticism and moral levity—nay, to some extent polluted with gross vices, so that even the Lord’s table and love feasts were desecrated by excesses, and that the apostle, in his absence, found himself compelled to excommunicate a particularly offensive member who disgraced the Christian profession.1138  It was distracted by Judaizers and other troublers, who abused the names of Cephas, James, Apollos, and even of Christ (as extra-Christians), for sectarian ends.1139  A number of questions of morality and casuistry arose in that lively, speculative, and excitable community, which the apostle had to answer from a distance before his second (or third) and last visit.

Hence, these Epistles abound in variety of topics, and show the extraordinary versatility of the mind of the writer, and his practical wisdom in dealing with delicate and complicated questions and unscrupulous opponents. For every aberration he has a word of severe censure, for every danger a word of warning, for every weakness a word of cheer and sympathy, for every returning offender a word of pardon and encouragement. The Epistles lack the unity of design which characterizes Galatians and Romans. They are ethical, ecclesiastical, pastoral, and personal, rather than dogmatic and theological, although some most important doctrines, as that on the resurrection, are treated more fully than elsewhere.

I. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was composed in Ephesus shortly before Paul’s departure for Greece, in the spring of A.D. 57.1140  It had been preceded by another one, now lost (1 Cor. 5:9). It was an answer to perplexing questions concerning various disputes and evils which disturbed the peace and spotted the purity of the congregation. The apostle contrasts the foolish wisdom of the gospel with the wise folly of human philosophy; rebukes sectarianism; unfolds the spiritual unity and harmonious variety of the church of Christ, her offices and gifts of grace, chief among which is love; warns against carnal impurity as a violation of the temple of God; gives advice concerning marriage and celibacy without binding the conscience (having "no commandment of the Lord," 7:25); discusses the question of meat sacrificed to idols, on which Jewish and Gentile Christians, scrupulous and liberal brethren, were divided; enjoins the temporal support of the ministry as a Christian duty of gratitude for greater spiritual mercies received; guards against improprieties of dress; explains the design and corrects the abuses of the Lord’s Supper; and gives the fullest exposition of the doctrine of the resurrection on the basis of the resurrection of Christ and his personal manifestations to the disciples, and last, to himself at his conversion. Dean Stanley says of this Epistle that it "gives a clearer insight than any other portion of the New Testament into the institutions, feelings and opinions of the church of the earlier period of the apostolic age. It is in every sense the earliest chapter of the history of the Christian church."  The last, however, is not quite correct. The Corinthian chapter was preceded by the Jerusalem and Antioch chapters.

Leading Thoughts: Is Christ divided?  Was Paul crucified for you (1 Cor. 1:13) ?  It was God’s pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching [not through foolish preaching] to save them that believe (1:21). We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (1:24). I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus, and him crucified (2:2). The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (2:14). Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ (3:11). Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?  If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy (3:16, 17). Let a man so account of ourselves as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God (4:1). The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power (4:20). Purge out the old leaven (5:7). All things are lawful for me; but not all things are expedient (6:12). Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ (6:15) ?  Flee fornication (6:18). Glorify God in your body (6:20). Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God (7:19). Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called (7:20). Ye were bought with a price; become not bondservants of men (7:23). Take heed lest this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to the weak (8:9). If meat [or wine] maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh [and drink no wine] for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble (8:13). They who proclaim the gospel shall live of the gospel (9:14). Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel (9:16). I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some (9 22). Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall (10:12). All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient. Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor’s good (10:23). Whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord ... He that eateth and drinketh eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself if he discern (discriminate) not the body (11:27–29). There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (12:4). Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love (13:13). Follow after love (14:1). Let all things be done unto edifying (14:26). By the grace of God I am what I am (15:9). If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins (15:17). As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (15:22). God shall be all in all (15:28). If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (15:44). This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (15:54). Be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord (15:58). Upon the first day in the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper (16:2). Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all that ye do be done in love (16:13, 14.).

II. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians was written in the summer or autumn of the same year, 57, from some place in Macedonia, shortly before the author’s intended personal visit to the metropolis of Achaia.1141  It evidently proceeded from profound agitation, and opens to us very freely the personal character and feelings, the official trials and joys, the noble pride and deep humility, the holy earnestness and fervent love, of the apostle. It gives us the deepest insight into his heart, and is almost an autobiography. He had, in the meantime, heard fuller news, through Titus, of the state of the church, the effects produced by his first Epistle, and the intrigues of the emissaries of the Judaizing party, who followed him everywhere and tried to undermine his work. This unchristian opposition compelled him, in self-defence, to speak of his ministry and his personal experience with overpowering eloquence. He also urges again upon the congregation the duty of charitable collections for the poor. The Epistle is a mine of pastoral wisdom.

Leading Thoughts: As the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, even so our comfort also aboundeth through Christ (2 Cor. 1:5). As ye are partakers of the sufferings, so also are ye of the comfort (1:7). Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy (1:24). Who is sufficient for these things (2:16)?  Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men (3:2). Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (3:5). The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life (3:6). The Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (3:17). We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake (4:5). We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves (4:7). Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory (4:17). We know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens (5:1). We walk by faith, not by sight (5:7). We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ (5:10). The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died (5:14). And he died for all, that they who live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again (5:15). If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new (5:17). God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation (5:19). We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God (5:20). Him who knew no sin he made to be sin in our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him (5:21). Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers (6:14). I am filled with comfort, I overflow with joy in all our affliction (7:4). Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, but the sorrow of the world worketh death (7:10). Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich (8:9). He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully (9:6). God loveth a cheerful giver (9:7). He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (10:17). Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth (10:18). My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness (12:9). We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth (13:8). The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all (13:14).

§ 91. The Epistles to the Galatians.

Comp. the introduction to my Com. on Gal. (1882).

Galatians and Romans discuss the doctrines of sin and redemption, and the relation of the law and the gospel. They teach salvation by free grace and justification by faith, Christian universalism in opposition to Jewish particularism, evangelical freedom versus legalistic bondage. But Galatians is a rapid sketch and the child of deep emotion, Romans an elaborate treatise and the mature product of calm reflexion. The former Epistle is polemical against foreign intruders and seducers, the latter is irenical and composed in a serene frame of mind. The one rushes along like a mountain torrent and foaming cataract, the other flows like a majestic river through a boundless prairie; and yet it is the same river, like the Nile at the Rapids and below Cairo, or the Rhine in the Grisons and the lowlands of Germany and Holland, or the St. Lawrence at Niagara Falls and below Montreal and Quebec where it majestically branches out into the ocean.

It is a remarkable fact that the two races represented by the readers of these Epistles—the Celtic and the Latin—have far departed from the doctrines taught in them and exchanged the gospel freedom for legal bondage; thus repeating the apostasy of the sanguine, generous, impressible, mercurial, fickle-minded Galatians. The Pauline gospel was for centuries ignored, misunderstood, and (in spite of St. Augustin) cast out at last by Rome, as Christianity itself was cast out by Jerusalem of old. But the overruling wisdom of God made the rule of the papacy a training-school of the Teutonic races of the North and West for freedom; as it had turned the unbelief of the Jews to the conversion of the Gentiles. Those Epistles, more than any book of the New Testament, inspired the Reformation of the Sixteenth century, and are to this day the Gibraltar of evangelical Protestantism. Luther, under a secondary inspiration, reproduced Galatians in his war against the "Babylonian captivity of the church;" the battle for Christian freedom was won once more, and its fruits are enjoyed by nations of which neither Paul nor Luther ever heard.

The Epistle to the Galatians (Gauls, originally from the borders of the Rhine and Moselle, who had migrated to Asia Minor) was written after Paul’s second visit to them, either during his long residence in Ephesus (A.D. 54–57), or shortly afterwards on his second journey to Corinth, possibly from Corinth, certainly before the Epistle to the Romans. It was occasioned by the machinations of the Judaizing teachers who undermined his apostolic authority and misled his converts into an apostasy from the gospel of free grace to a false gospel of legal bondage, requiring circumcision as a condition of justification and full membership of the church. It is an "Apologia pro vita sua," a personal and doctrinal self-vindication. He defends his independent apostleship (Gal.1:1–2:14), and his teaching (2:15–4:31), and closes with exhortations to hold fast to Christian freedom without abusing it, and to show the fruits of faith by holy living (Gal. 5–6).

The Epistle reveals, in clear, strong colors, both the difference and the harmony among the Jewish and Gentile apostles—a difference ignored by the old orthodoxy, which sees only the harmony, and exaggerated by modern scepticism, which sees only the difference. It anticipates, in grand fundamental outlines, a conflict which is renewed from time to time in the history of different churches, and, on the largest scale, in the conflict between Petrine Romanism and Pauline Protestantism. The temporary collision of the two leading apostles in Antioch is typical of the battle of the Reformation.

At the same time Galatians is an Irenicon and sounds the key-note of a final adjustment of all doctrinal and ritualistic controversies. "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love" (5:6). "And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (6:16).

Central Idea: Evangelical freedom.

Key-Words: For freedom Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage (5:1). A man is not justified by works of the law, but only through faith in Jesus Christ (2:16). I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live but Christ liveth in me (2:20). Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (3:13). Ye were called for freedom, only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another (5:13). Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh (5:16).

§ 92. The Epistle to the Romans.

On the church in Rome, see § 36 (pp. 360 sqq.); on the theology of the Ep. to the Rom., § 71 (pp. 525 sqq.).

A few weeks before his fifth and last journey to Jerusalem, Paul sent, as a forerunner of his intended personal visit, a letter to the Christians in the capital of the world, which was intended by Providence to become the Jerusalem of Christendom. Foreseeing its future importance, the apostle chose for his theme: The gospel the power of God unto salvation to every believer, the Jew first, and also the Gentile (Rom. 1:16, 17). Writing to the philosophical Greeks, he contrasts the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man. To the world-ruling Romans he represents Christianity as the power of God which by spiritual weapons will conquer even conquering Rome. Such a bold idea must have struck a Roman statesman as the wild dream of a visionary or madman, but it was fulfilled in the ultimate conversion of the empire after three centuries of persecution, and is still in the process of ever-growing fulfilment.

In the exposition of his theme the apostle shows: (1) that all men are in need of salvation, being under the power of sin and exposed to the judgment of the righteous God, the Gentiles not only (1:18–32), but also the Jews, who are still more guilty, having sinned against the written law and extraordinary privileges (2:1–3:20); (2) that salvation is accomplished by Jesus Christ, his atoning death and triumphant resurrection, freely offered to all on the sole condition of faith, and applied in the successive acts of justification, sanctification, and glorification (3:21–8:17); (3) that salvation was offered first to the Jews, and, being rejected by them in unbelief, passed on to the Gentiles, but will return again to the Jews after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in (Rom. 9–11); (4) that we should show our gratitude for so great a salvation by surrendering ourselves to the service of God, which is true freedom (Rom. 12–16).

The salutations in Rom. 16, the remarkable variations of the manuscripts in 15:33; 16:20, 24, 27, and the omission of the words "in Rome," 1:7, 15, in Codex G, are best explained by the conjecture that copies of the letter were also sent to Ephesus (where Aquila and Priscilla were at that time, 1 Cor. 16:19, and again, some years afterwards, 2 Tim. 4:19), and perhaps to other churches with appropriate conclusions, all of which are preserved in the present form.1142

This letter stands justly at the head of the Pauline Epistles. It is more comprehensive and systematic than the others, and admirably adapted to the mistress of the world, which was to become also the mistress of Western Christendom. It is the most remarkable production of the most remarkable man. It is his heart. It contains his theology, theoretical and practical, for which he lived and died. It gives the clearest and fullest exposition of the doctrines of sin and grace and the best possible solution of the universal dominion of sin and death in the universal redemption by the second Adam. Without this redemption the fall is indeed the darkest enigma and irreconcilable with the idea of divine justice and goodness. Paul reverently lifts the veil from the mysteries of eternal foreknowledge and foreordination and God’s gracious designs in the winding course of history which will end at last in the triumph of his wisdom and mercy and the greatest good to mankind. Luther calls Romans "the chief book of the New Testament and the purest Gospel," Coleridge: "the profoundest book in existence."  Meyer: "the greatest and richest of all the apostolic works," Godet (best of all): "the cathedral of the Christian faith."

Theme: Christianity the power of free and universal salvation, on condition of faith.

Leading Thoughts: They are all under sin (Rom. 3:9). Through the law cometh the knowledge of sin (3:20). Man is justified by faith apart from works of the law (3:28). Being justified by faith we have (e[comen or, let us have, e[cwmen) peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (5:1). As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned (5:12): [so through one man righteousness entered into the world, and life through righteousness, and so life passed unto all men on condition that they believe in Christ and by faith become partakers of his righteousness]. Where sin abounded, grace did abound much more exceedingly: that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (5:20, 21). Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus (6:11). There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus (8:1). To them that love God all things work together for good (8:28). Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son ... and whom he foreordained them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified (8:29, 30). If God is for us, who is against us (8:31)?  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ (8:35)?  Hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved (11:25). God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all (11:32). Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all things (11:36). Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (12:1).

§ 93. The Epistles of the Captivity.

During his confinement in Rome, from A.D. 61 to 63, while waiting the issue of his trial on the charge of being "a mover of insurrections among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5), the aged apostle composed four Epistles, to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, and Philippians. He thus turned the prison into a pulpit, sent inspiration and comfort to his distant congregations, and rendered a greater service to future ages than he could have done by active labor. He gloried in being a "prisoner of Christ."  He experienced the blessedness of persecution for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:10), and "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7). He often refers to his bonds, and the coupling chain or hand-cuff (a{lusi") by which, according to Roman custom, he was with his right wrist fettered day and night to a soldier; one relieving the other and being in turn chained to the apostle, so that his imprisonment became a means for the spread of the gospel "throughout the whole praetorian guard."1143  He had the privilege of living in his own hired lodging (probably in the neighborhood of the praetorian camp, outside of the walls, to the northeast of Rome), and of free intercourse with his companions and distant congregations.

Paul does not mention the place of his captivity, which extended through four years and a half (two at Caesarea, two at Rome, and six months spent on the stormy voyage and at Malta). The traditional view dates the four Epistles from the Roman captivity, and there is no good reason to depart from it. Several modern critics assign one or more to Caesarea, where he cannot be supposed to have been idle, and where he was nearer to his congregations in Asia Minor.1144  But in Caesarea Paul looked forward to Rome and to Spain; while in the Epistles of the captivity he expresses the hope of soon visiting Colossae and Philippi. In Rome he had the best opportunity of correspondence with his distant friends, and enjoyed a degree of freedom which may have been denied him in Caesarea. In Philippians he sends greetings from converts in "Caesar’s household" (Phil. 4:22), which naturally points to Rome; and the circumstances and surroundings of the other Epistles are very much alike.

Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon were composed about the same time and sent by the same messengers (Tychicus and Onesimus) to Asia Minor, probably toward the close of the Roman captivity, for in Philemon 22, he engaged a lodging in Colosae in the prospect of a speedy release and visit to the East.

Philippians we place last in the order of composition, or, at all events, in the second year of the Roman captivity; for some time must have elapsed after Paul’s arrival in Rome before the gospeI could spread "throughout the whole praetorian guard" (Phil. 1:13), and before the Philippians, at a distance of seven hundred miles from Rome (a full month’s journey in those days), could receive news from him and send him contributions through Epaphroditus, besides other communications which seem to have preceded the Epistle.1145

On the other hand, the priority of the composition of Philippians has been recently urged on purely internal evidence, namely, its doctrinal affinity with the preceding anti-Judaic Epistles; while Colossians and Ephesians presuppose the rise of the Gnostic heresy and thus form the connecting link between them and the Pastoral Epistles, in which the same heresy appears in a more matured form.1146  But Ephesians has likewise striking affinities in thought and language with Romans in the doctrine of justification (comp. Eph. 2:8), and with Romans 12 and 1 Cor. 12 and 1 Cor. 14) in the doctrine of the church. As to the heresy, Paul had predicted its rise in Asia Minor several years before in his farewell to the Ephesian elders. And, finally, the grateful and joyful tone of Philippians falls in most naturally with the lofty and glorious conception of the church of Christ as presented in Ephesians.

§ 94. The Epistle to the Colossians.

The Churches in Phrygia.

The cities of Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis are mentioned together as seats of Christian churches in the closing chapter of Colossians, and the Epistle may be considered as being addressed to all, for the apostle directs that it be read also in the churches of the Laodiceans (Col. 4:13–16). They were situated within a few miles of each other in the valley of the Lycus (a tributary of the Maeander) in Phrygia on the borders of Lydia, and belonged, under the Roman rule, to the proconsular province of Asia Minor.

Laodicea was the most important of the three, and enjoyed metropolitan rank; she was destroyed by a disastrous earthquake A.D. 61 or 65, but rebuilt from her own resources without the customary aid from Rome.1147  The church of Laodicea is the last of the seven churches addressed in the Apocalypse (Rev. 3:14–22), and is described as rich and proud and lukewarm. It harbored in the middle of the fourth century (after 344) a council which passed an important act on the canon, forbidding the public reading of any but "the canonical books of the New and Old Testaments" (the list of these books is a later addition), a prohibition which was confirmed and adopted by later councils in the East and the West.

Hierapolis was a famous watering-place, surrounded by beautiful scenery,1148 and the birthplace of the lame slave Epictetus, who, with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, ranks among the first heathen moralists, and so closely resembles the lofty maxims of the New Testament that some writers have assumed, though without historic foundation, a passing acquaintance between him and Paul or his pupil Epaphras of Colossae.1149  The church of Hierapolis figures in the post-apostolic age as the bishopric of Papias (a friend of Polycarp) and Apollinaris.

Colossae,1150 once likewise famous, was at the time of Paul the smallest of the three neighboring cities, and has almost disappeared from the earth; while magnificent ruins of temples, theatres, baths, aqueducts, gymnasia, and sepulchres still testify to the former wealth and prosperity of Laodicea and Hierapolis. The church of Colossae was the least important of the churches to which Paul addressed an Epistle, and it is scarcely mentioned in post-apostolic times; but it gave rise to a heresy which shook the church in the second century, and this Epistle furnished the best remedy against it.

There was a large Jewish population in Phrygia, since Antiochus the Great had despotically transplanted two thousand Jewish families from Babylonia and Mesopotamia to that region. It thus became, in connection with the sensuous and mystic tendency of the Phrygian character, a nursery of religious syncretism and various forms of fanaticism.

Paul and the Colossians.

Paul passed twice through Phrygia, on his second and third missionary tours,1151 but probably not through the valley of the Lycus. Luke does not say that he established churches there, and Paul himself seems to include the Colossians and Laodiceans among those who had not seen his face in the flesh.1152  He names Epaphras, of Colossae, his "dear fellow-servant" and "fellow-prisoner," as the teacher and faithful minister of the Christians in that place.1153  But during his long residence in Ephesus (A.D. 54–57) and from his imprisonment he exercised a general supervision over all the churches in Asia. After his death they passed under the care of John, and in the second century they figure prominently in the Gnostic, Paschal, Chiliastic, and Montanistic controversies.

Paul heard of the condition of the church at Colossae through Epaphras, his pupil, and Onesimus, a runaway slave. He sent through Tychicus (Col. 4:7) a letter to the church, which was also intended for the Laodiceans (4:16); at the same time he sent through Onesimus a private letter of commendation to his master, Philemon, a member of the church of Colossae. He also directed the Colossians to procure and read "the letter from Laodicea,"1154 which is most probably the evangelical Epistle to the Ephesians which was likewise transmitted through Tychicus. He had special reasons for writing to the Colossians and to Philemon, and a general reason for writing to all the churches in the region of Ephesus; and he took advantage of the mission of Tychicus to secure both ends. In this way the three Epistles are closely connected in time and aim. They would mutually explain and confirm one another.

The Colossian Heresy.

The special reason which prompted Paul to write to the Colossians was the rise of a new heresy among them which soon afterward swelled into a mighty and dangerous movement in the ancient church, as rationalism has done in modern times. It differed from the Judaizing heresy which he opposed in Galatians and Corinthians, as Essenism differed from Phariseeism, or as legalism differs from mysticism. The Colossian heresy was an Essenic and ascetic type of Gnosticism; it derived its ritualistic and practical elements from Judaism, its speculative elements from heathenism; it retained circumcision, the observance of Sabbaths and new moons, and the distinction of meats and drinks; but it mixed with it elements of oriental mysticism and theosophy, the heathen notion of an evil principle, the worship of subordinate spirits, and an ascetic struggle for emancipation from the dominion of matter. It taught an antagonism between God and matter and interposed between them a series of angelic mediators as objects of worship. It thus contained the essential features of Gnosticism, but in its incipient and rudimental form, or a Christian Essenism in its transition to Gnosticism. In its ascetic tendency it resembles that of the weak brethren in the Roman congregation (Rom. 14:5, 6, 21). Cerinthus, in the age of John, represents a more developed stage and forms the link between the Colossian heresy and the post-apostolic Gnosticism.1155

The Refutation.

Paul refutes this false philosophy calmly and respectfully by the true doctrine of the Person of Christ, as the one Mediator between God and men, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And he meets the false asceticism based upon the dualistic principle with the doctrine of the purification of the heart by faith and love as the effectual cure of all moral evil.

The Gnostic and the Pauline Pleroma.

"Pleroma" or "fulness" is an important term in Colossians and Ephesians.1156  Paul uses it in common with the Gnostics, and this has been made an argument for the post-apostolic origin of the two Epistles. He did, of course, not borrow it from the Gnostics; for he employs it repeatedly in his other Epistles with slight variations. It must have had a fixed theological meaning, as it is not explained. It cannot be traced to Philo, who, however, uses "Logos" in a somewhat similar sense for the plenitude of Divine powers.

Paul speaks of "the pleroma of the earth," i.e., all that fills the earth or is contained in it (1 Cor. 10:26, 28, in a quotation from Ps. 24:1); "the pleroma," i.e., the fulfilment or accomplishment, "of the law," which is love (Rom. 13:101157); "the pleroma," i.e., the fulness or abundance, "of the blessing of Christ" ( Rom. 15:29)  "the pleroma," or full measure, "of the time" ( Gal. 4:4; comp. Eph. 1:10; Mark 1:15; Luke 21:24); "the pleroma of the Gentiles," meaning their full number, or whole body, but not necessarily all individuals (Rom. 11:25); "the pleroma of the Godhead," i.e., the fulness or plenitude of all Divine attributes and energies (Col. 1:19; 2:9); "the pleroma of Christ," which is the church as the body of Christ (Eph. 1:23; comp. 3:19; 4:13).

In the Gnostic systems, especially that of Valentinus, "pleroma" signifies the intellectual and spiritual world, including all Divine powers or aeons, in opposition to the "kenoma," i.e., the void, the emptiness, the material world. The distinction was based on the dualistic principle of an eternal antagonism between spirit and matter, which led the more earnest Gnostics to an extravagant asceticism, the frivolous ones to wild antinomianism. They included in the pleroma a succession of emanations from the Divine abyss, which form the links between the infinite and the finite; and they lowered the dignity of Christ by making him simply the highest of those intermediate aeons. The burden of the Gnostic speculation was always the question: Whence is the world? and whence is evil?  It sought the solution in a dualism between mind and matter, the pleroma and the kenoma; but this is no solution at all.

In opposition to this error, Paul teaches, on a thoroughly monotheistic basis, that Christ is "the image of the invisible God" (ei'kw;n tou' qeou' tou'  ajoravtou Col. 1:15; comp. 2 Cor. 4:4—an expression often used by Philo as a description of the Logos, and of the personified Wisdom, in Wisd. 7:26); that he is the preëxistent and incarnate pleroma or plenitude of Divine powers and attributes; that in him the whole fulness of the Godhead, that is, of the Divine nature itself,1158 dwells bodily-wise or corporeally (swmatikw'"), as the soul dwells in the human body; and that he is the one universal and all-sufficient Mediator, through whom the whole universe of things visible and invisible, were made, in whom all things hold together (or cohere, sunevsthken) , and through whom the Father is pleased to reconcile all things to himself.

The Christology of Colossians approaches very closely to the Christology of John; for he represents Christ as the incarnate "Logos" or Revealer of God, who dwelt among us "full (plhvrh"¼ of grace and truth," and out of whose Divine sfulness" »ejk tou' plhrwvmato" aujtou') we all have received grace for grace (John 1:1, 14, 16). Paul and John fully agree in teaching the eternal preëxistence of Christ, and his agency in the creation and preservation of the world (Col. 1:15–17; John 1:3). According to Paul, He is "the first-born or first-begotten" of all creation (prwtovtoko" pavsh" ktivsew", Col. 1:15, distinct from prwtovktisto", first-created), i.e., prior and superior to the whole created world, or eternal; according to John He is "the only-begotten Son" of the Father. (oJ monogenh;" uiJov"1159 John 1:14, 18; comp. 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9), before and above all created children of God. The former term denotes Christ’s unique relation to the world, the latter his unique relation to the Father.

The Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Colossians will be discussed in the next section in connection with the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Theme: Christ all in all. The true gnosis and the false gnosis. True and false asceticism.

Leading Thoughts: Christ is the image of the invisible God, the first-begotten of all creation (Col. 1:15).—In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (2:3).—In him dwelleth all the fulness (to; plhvrwma) of the Godhead bodily (2:9).—If ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God (3:1).—When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory (3:4).—Christ is all, and in all (3:11).—Above all things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness (3:14).—Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus (3:17).

§ 95. The Epistle to the Ephesians.

Contents.

When Paul took leave of the Ephesian Elders at Miletus, in the spring of the year 58, he earnestly and affectionately exhorted them, in view of threatening disturbances from within, to take heed unto themselves and to feed "the church of the Lord, which he acquired with his own blood."1160

This strikes the key-note of the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is a doctrinal and practical exposition of the idea of the church, as the house of God (Eph. 2:20–22), the spotless bride of Christ (5:25–27), the mystical body of Christ (4:12–16), "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (1:23). The pleroma of the Godhead resides in Christ corporeally; so the pleroma of Christ, the plenitude of his graces and energies, resides in the church, as his body. Christ’s fulness is God’s fulness; the church’s fulness is Christ’s fulness. God is reflected in Christ, Christ is reflected in the church.

This is an ideal conception, a celestial vision, as it were, of the church in its future state of perfection. Paul himself represents the present church militant as a gradual growth unto the complete stature of Christ’s fulness (4:13–16). We look in vain for an actual church which is free from spot or wrinkle or blemish (5:27). Even the apostolic church was full of defects, as we may learn from every Epistle of the New Testament. The church consists of individual Christians, and cannot be complete till they are complete. The body grows and matures with its several members. "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be" (1 John 3:2).

Nevertheless, Paul’s church is not a speculation or fiction, like Plato’s Republic or Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. It is a reality in Christ, who is absolutely holy, and is spiritually and dynamically present in his church always, as the soul is present in the members of the body. And it sets before us the high standard and aim to be kept constantly in view; as Christ exhorts every one individually to be perfect, even as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48).

With this conception of the church is closely connected Paul’s profound and most fruitful idea of the family. He calls the relation of Christ to his church a great mystery (Eph. 5:32), and represents it as the archetype of the marriage relation, whereby one man and one woman become one flesh. He therefore bases the family on new and holy ground, and makes it a miniature of the church, or the household of God. Accordingly, husbands are to love their wives even as Christ loved the church, his bride, and gave himself up for her; wives are to obey their husbands as the church is subject to Christ, the head; parents are to love their children as Christ and the church love the individual Christians; children are to love their parents as individual Christians are to love Christ and the church. The full and general realization of this domestic ideal would be heaven on earth. But how few families come up to this standard.1161

Ephesians and the Writings of John.

Paul emphasizes the person of Christ in Colossians, the person and agency of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians. For the Holy Spirit carries on the work of Christ in the church. Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 4:30). The spirit of wisdom and revelation imparts the knowledge of Christ (1:17; 3:16). Christians should be filled with the Spirit (5:18), take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit at all seasons (6:17, 18).

The pneumatology of Ephesians resembles that of John, as the christology of Colossians resembles the christology of John. It is the Spirit who takes out of the "fulness" of Christ, and shows it to the believer, who glorifies the Son and guides into the truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13–15, etc.). Great prominence is given to the Spirit also in Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, and the Acts of the Apostles.

John does not speak of the church and its outward organization (except in the Apocalypse), but he brings Christ in as close and vital a contact with the individual disciples as Paul with the whole body. Both teach the unity of the church as a fact, and as an aim to be realized more and more by the effort of Christians, and both put the centre of unity in the Holy Spirit.

Encyclical Intent

Ephesians was intended not only for the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia Minor, but for all the leading churches of that district. Hence the omission of the words "in Ephesus" (Eph. 1:1) in some of the oldest and best MSS.1162  Hence, also, the absence of personal and local intelligence. The encyclical destination may be inferred also from the reference in Col. 4:16 to the Epistle to the church of Laodicea, which the Colossians were to procure and to read, and which is probably identical with our canonical Epistle to the Ephesians."1163

Character and Value of the Epistle.

Ephesians is the most churchly book of the New Testament. But it presupposes Colossians, the most Christly of Paul’s Epistles. Its churchliness is rooted and grounded in Christliness, and has no sense whatever if separated from this root. A church without Christ would be, at best, a praying corpse (and there are such churches). Paul was at once the highest of high churchmen, the most evangelical of evangelicals, and the broadest of the broad, because most comprehensive in his grasp and furthest removed from all pedantry and bigotry of sect or party.1164

Ephesians is, in some respects, the most profound and difficult (though not the most important) of his Epistles. It certainly is the most spiritual and devout, composed in an exalted and transcendent state of mind, where theology rises into worship, and meditation into oration. It is the Epistle of the Heavenlies (ta; ejpouravnia), a solemn liturgy, an ode to Christ and his spotless bride, the Song of Songs in the New Testament. The aged apostle soared high above all earthly things to the invisible and eternal realities in heaven. From his gloomy confinement he ascended for a season to the mount of transfiguration. The prisoner of Christ, chained to a heathen soldier, was transformed into a conqueror, clad in the panoply of God, and singing a paean of victory.

The style has a corresponding rhythmical flow and overflow, and sounds at times like the swell of a majestic organ.1165  It is very involved and presents unusual combinations, but this is owing to the pressure and grandeur of ideas; besides, we must remember that it was written in Greek, which admits of long periods and parentheses. In Eph. 1:3–14 we have one sentence with no less than seven relative clauses, which rise like a thick cloud of incense higher and higher to the very throne of God.1166

Luther reckoned Ephesians among "the best and noblest books of the New Testament."  Witsius characterized it as a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of Christian love and the splendor of holy light. Braune says: "The exalted significance of the Epistle for all time lies in its fundamental idea: the church of Jesus Christ a creation of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, decreed from eternity, destined for eternity; it is the ethical cosmos; the family of God gathered in the world and in history and still further to be gathered, the object of his nurture and care in time and in eternity."

These are Continental judgments. English divines are equally strong in praise of this Epistle. Coleridge calls it "the sublimest composition of man;" Alford: "the greatest and most heavenly work of one whose very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens;" Farrar: "the Epistle of the Ascension, the most sublime, the most profound, and the most advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the gospel which it was given to St. Paul for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world."

Theme: The church of Christ, the family of God, the fulness of Christ.

Leading Thoughts: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love (Eph. 1:4). In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (1:7). He purposed to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth (1:10). God gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all (1:23). God, being rich in mercy, quickened us together with Christ and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (2:4–6). By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory (2:8, 9). Christ is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition (2:14). Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone (2:19, 20). Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach Unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (3:8). That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God (3:17–19). Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:3). There is one body, and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all (4:6). He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints (4:11, 12). Speak the truth in love (4:15). Put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (4:24). Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for as, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell (5:1, 2). Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (5:22). Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it (5:25). This mystery is great; but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church (532). Children, obey your parents in the Lord (6:1). Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (6:11).

§ 96. Colossians and Ephesians Compared and Vindicated.

Comparison.

The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians were written about the same time and transmitted through the same messenger, Tychicus. They are as closely related to each other as the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans. They handle the same theme, Christ and his church; as Galatians and Romans discuss the same doctrines of salvation by free grace and justification by faith.

But Colossians, like Galatians, arose from a specific emergency, and is brief, terse, polemical; while Ephesians, like Romans, is expanded, calm, irenical. Colossians is directed against the incipient Gnostic (paganizing) heresy, as Galatians is directed against the Judaizing heresy. The former is anti-Essenic and anti-ascetic, the latter is anti-Pharisaic and anti-legalistic; the one deals with a speculative expansion and fantastic evaporation, the latter, with a bigoted contraction, of Christianity; yet both these tendencies, like all extremes, have points of contact and admit of strange amalgamations; and in fact the Colossian and Galatian errorists united in their ceremonial observance of circumcision and the Sabbath. Ephesians, like Romans, is an independent exposition of the positive truth, of which the heresy opposed in the other Epistles is a perversion or caricature.

Again, Colossians and Ephesians differ from each other in the modification and application of their common theme: Colossians is christological and represents Christ as the true pleroma or plenitude of the Godhead, the totality of divine attributes and powers; Ephesians is ecclesiological and exhibits the ideal church as the body of Christ, as the reflected pleroma of Christ, "the fulness of Him who filleth all in all."  Christology naturally precedes ecclesiology in the order of the system, as Christ precedes the church; and Colossians preceded Ephesians most probably, also in the order of composition, as the outline precedes the full picture; but they were not far apart, and arose from the same train of meditation.1167

This relationship of resemblance and contrast can be satisfactorily explained only on the assumption of the same authorship, the same time of composition, and the same group of churches endangered by the same heretical modes of thought. With Paul as the author of both everything is clear; without that assumption everything is dark and uncertain. "Non est cuiusvis hominis," says Erasmus, "Paulinum pectus effingere; tonat, fulgurat, meras flammas loquitur Paulus."1168

Authorship.

The genuineness of the two cognate Epistles has recently been doubted and denied, but the negative critics are by no means agreed; some surrender Ephesians but retain Colossians, others reverse the case; while Baur, always bolder and more consistent than his predecessors, rejects both.1169

They must stand or fall together. But they will stand. They represent, indeed, an advanced state of christological and ecclesiological knowledge in the apostolic age, but they have their roots in the older Epistles of Paul, and are brimful of his spirit. They were called forth by a new phase of error, and brought out new statements of truth with new words and phrases adapted to the case. They contain nothing that Paul could not have written consistently with his older Epistles, and there is no known pupil of Paul who could have forged such highly intellectual and spiritual letters in his name and equalled, if not out-Pauled Paul.1170  The external testimonies are unanimous in favor of the Pauline authorship, and go as far back as Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatius, and the heretical Marcion (about 140), who included both Epistles in his mutilated canon.1171

The difficulties which have been urged against their Pauline origin, especially of Ephesians, are as follows:

1. The striking resemblance of the two Epistles, and the apparent repetitiousness and dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, which seem to be unworthy of such an original thinker as Paul.1172  But this resemblance, which is more striking in the practical than in the doctrinal part, is not the resemblance between an author and an imitator, but of two compositions of the same author, written about the same time on two closely connected topics; and it is accompanied by an equally marked variety in thought and language.

2. The absence of personal and local references in Ephesians. This is, as already remarked, sufficiently explained by the encyclical character of that Epistle.

3. A number of peculiar words not found elsewhere in the Pauline Epistles.1173  But they are admirably adapted to the new ideas, and must be expected from a mind so rich as Paul’s. Every Epistle contains some hapaxlegomena. The only thing which is somewhat startling is that an apostle should speak of "holy apostles and prophets" (Eph. 3:5), but the term "holy" (a{gioi) is applied in the New Testament to all Christians, as being consecrated to God (aJgiasmevnoi, John 17:17), and not in the later ecclesiastical sense of a spiritual nobility. It implies no contradiction to Eph. 3:8, where the author calls himself "the least of all saints" (comp. 1 Cor. 15:9, "I am the least of the apostles").

4. The only argument of any weight is the alleged post-Pauline rise of the Gnostic heresy, which is undoubtedly opposed in Colossians (not in Ephesians, at least not directly). But why should this heresy not have arisen in the apostolic age as well as the Judaizing heresy which sprung up before A.D. 50, and followed Paul everywhere?  The tares spring up almost simultaneously with the wheat. Error is the shadow of truth. Simon Magus, the contemporary of Peter, and the Gnostic Cerinthus, the contemporary, of John, are certainly historic persons. Paul speaks (1 Cor. 8:1) of a "gnosis which puffeth up," and warned the Ephesian elders, as early as 58, of the rising of disturbing errorists from their own midst; and the Apocalypse, which the Tübingen critics assign to the year 68, certainly opposes the antinomian type of Gnosticism, the error of the Nicolaitans (Rev. 2:6, 15, 20), which the early Fathers derived from one of the first seven deacons of Jerusalem. All the elements of Gnosticism—Ebionism, Platonism, Philoism, syncretism, asceticism, antinomianism—were extant before Christ, and it needed only a spark of Christian truth to set the inflammable material on fire. The universal sentiment of the Fathers, as far as we can trace it up to Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp found the origin of Gnosticism in the apostolic age, and called Simon Magus its father or grandfather.

Against their testimony, the isolated passage of Hegesippus, so often quoted by the negative critics,1174 has not the weight of a feather. This credulous, inaccurate, and narrow-minded Jewish Christian writer said, according to Eusebius, that the church enjoyed profound peace, and was "a pure and uncorrupted virgin," governed by brothers and relations of Jesus, until the age of Trajan, when, after the death of the apostles, "the knowledge falsely so called" (yeudwvnumo" gnw'si", comp. 1 Tim. 6:20), openly raised its head.1175  But he speaks of the church in Palestine, not in Asia Minor; and he was certainly mistaken in this dream of an age of absolute purity and peace. The Tübingen school itself maintains the very opposite view. Every Epistle, as well as the Acts, bears testimony to the profound agitations, parties, and evils of the church, including Jerusalem, where the first great theological controversy was fought out by the apostles themselves. But Hegesippus corrects himself, and makes a distinction between the secret working and the open and shameless manifestation of heresy. The former began, he intimates, in the apostolic age; the latter showed itself afterward.1176  Gnosticism, like modern Rationalism,1177 had a growth of a hundred years before it came to full maturity. A post-apostolic writer would have dealt very differently with the fully developed systems of Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion. And yet the two short Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians strike at the roots of this error, and teach the positive truth with an originality, vigor, and depth that makes them more valuable, even as a refutation, than the five books of Irenaeus against Gnosticism, and the ten books of the Philosophumena of Hippolytus; and this patent fact is the best proof of their apostolic origin.

§ 97. The Epistle to the Philippians.

The Church at Philippi.

Philippi was a city of Macedonia, founded by and called after Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, in a fertile region, with contiguous gold and silver mines, on the banks of a small river and the highway between Asia and Europe, ten miles from the seacoast. It acquired immortal fame by the battle between Brutus and Mark Antony (b.c. 42), in which the Roman republic died and the empire was born. After that event it had the rank of a Roman military colony, with the high-sounding title, "Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis."1178  Hence its mixed population, the Greeks, of course, prevailing, next the Roman colonists and magistrates, and last a limited number of Jews, who had a place of prayer on the riverside. It was visited by Paul, in company with Silas, Timothy, and Luke, on his second missionary tour, in the year 52, and became the seat of the first Christian congregation on the classical soil of Greece. Lydia, the purple dealer of Thyatira and a half proselyte to Judaism, a native slave-girl with a divining spirit, which was used by her masters as a means of gain among the superstitious heathen, and a Roman jailer, were the first converts, and fitly represent the three nationalities (Jew, Greek, and Roman) and the classes of society which were especially benefited by Christianity. "In the history of the gospel at Philippi, as in the history of the church at large, is reflected the great maxim of Christianity, the central truth of the apostle’s teaching, that here is ’neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.’ "1179  Here, also, are the first recorded instances of whole households (of Lydia and the jailer) being baptized and gathered into the church, of which the family is the chief nursery. The congregation was fully organized, with bishops (presbyters) and deacons at the head (Phil. 1:1).

Here the apostle was severely persecuted and marvellously delivered. Here he had his most loyal and devoted converts, who were his "joy and crown."  For them he felt the strongest personal attachment; from them alone he would receive contributions for his support. In the autumn of the year 57, after five years’ absence, he paid a second visit to Philippi, having in the meantime kept up constant intercourse with the congregation through living messengers; and on his last journey to Jerusalem, in the spring of the following year, he stopped at Philippi to keep the paschal feast with his beloved brethren. They had liberally contributed out of their poverty to the relief of the churches in Judaea. When they heard of his arrival at Rome, they again sent him timely assistance through Epaphroditus, who also offered his personal services to the prisoner of the Lord, at the sacrifice of his health and almost his life. It was through this faithful fellow-worker that Paul sent his letter of thanks to the Philippians, hoping, after his release, to visit them in person once more.

The Epistle.

The Epistle reflects, in familiar ease, his relations to this beloved flock, which rested on the love of Christ. It is not systematic, not polemic, nor apologetic, but personal and autobiographic, resembling in this respect the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, and to some extent, also, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. It is the free outflow of tender love and gratitude, and full of joy and cheerfulness in the face of life and death. It is like his midnight hymn of praise in the dungeon of Philippi. "Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say, Rejoice" (Phil. 4:4).1180  This is the key-note of the letter.1181  It proves that a healthy Christian faith, far from depressing and saddening the heart, makes truly happy and contented even in prison. It is an important contribution to our knowledge of the character of the apostle. In acknowledging the gift of the Philippians, he gracefully and delicately mingles manly independence and gratitude. He had no doctrinal error, nor practical vice to rebuke, as in Galatians and Corinthians.

The only discordant tone is the warning against "the dogs of the concision" (katatomhv, 3:2), as he sarcastically calls the champions of circumcision (peritomhv), who everywhere sowed tares in his wheat fields, and at that very time tried to check his usefulness in Rome by substituting the righteousness of the law for the righteousness of faith. But he guards the readers with equal earnestness against the opposite extreme of antinomian license (3:2–21). In opposition to the spirit of personal and social rivalry and contention which manifested itself among the Philippians, Paul reminds them of the self-denying example of Christ, who was the highest of all, and yet became the lowliest of all by divesting himself of his divine majesty and humbling himself, even to the death on the cross, and who, in reward for his obedience, was exalted above every name (2:1–11).

This is the most important doctrinal passage of the letter, and contains (together with 2 Cor. 8:9) the fruitful germ of the speculations on the nature and extent of the kenosis, which figures so prominently in the history of christology.1182  It is a striking example of the apparently accidental occasion of some of the deepest utterances of the apostle. "With passages full of elegant negligence (Phil. 1:29), like Plato’s dialogues and Cicero’s letters, it has passages of wonderful eloquence, and proceeds from outward relations and special circumstances to wide-reaching thoughts and grand conceptions."1183

The objections against the genuineness raised by a few hyper-critical are not worthy of a serious refutation.1184

The Later History.

The subsequent history of the church at Philippi is rather disappointing, like that of the other apostolic churches in the East. It appears again in the letters of Ignatius, who passed through the place on his way to his martyrdom in Rome, and was kindly entertained and escorted by the brethren, and in the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, who expressed his joy that "the sturdy root of their faith, famous from the earliest days, still survives and bears fruit unto our Lord Jesus Christ," and alludes to the labors of "the blessed and glorious Paul" among them. Tertullian appeals to the Philippian church as still maintaining the apostle’s doctrine and reading his Epistle publicly. The name of its bishop is mentioned here and there in the records of councils, but that is all. During the middle ages the city was turned into a wretched village, and the bishopric into a mere shadow. At present there is not even a village on the site, but only a caravansary, a mile or more from the ruins, which consist of a theatre, broken marble columns, two lofty gateways, and a portion of the city wall.1185  "Of the church which stood foremost among all the apostolic communities in faith and love, it may literally be said that not one stone stands upon another. Its whole career is a signal monument of the inscrutable counsels of God. Born into the world with the brightest promise, the church of Philippi has lived without a history and perished without a memorial."1186

But in Paul’s Epistle that noble little band of Christians still lives and blesses the church in distant countries.

Theme: Theological: The self-humiliation (kevnwsi") of Christ for our salvation (Phil. 2:5–11). Practical: Christian cheerfulness.

Leading Thoughts: He who began a good work in you will perfect it (1:6). If only Christ is preached, I rejoice (1:13). To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (1:21). Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who emptied himself, etc. (2:5 sqq.). God worketh in you both to will and to work (2:13). Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I will say, Rejoice (3:1; 4:1). I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ (3:8). I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (3:14). Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (4:8). The peace of God passeth all understanding (4:7).

§ 98. The Epistle to Philemon.

Of the many private letters of introduction and recommendation which Paul must have written during his long life, only one is left to us, very brief but very weighty. It is addressed to Philemon, a zealous Christian at Colossae, a convert of Paul and apparently a layman, who lent his house for the religious meetings of the brethren.1187  The name recalls the touching mythological legend of the faithful old couple, Philemon and Baucis, who, in the same province of Phrygia, entertained gods unawares and were rewarded for their simple hospitality and conjugal love. The letter was written and transmitted at the same time as that to the Colossians. It may be regarded as a personal postscript to it.

It was a letter of recommendation of Onesimus (i.e., Profitable),1188 a slave of Philemon, who had run away from his master on account of some offence (probably theft, a very common sin of slaves),1189 fell in with Paul at Rome, of whom he may have heard in the weekly meetings at Colossae, or through Epaphras, his fellow-townsman, was converted by him to the Christian faith, and now desired to return, as a penitent, in company with Tychicus, the bearer of the Epistle to the Colossians (Col. 4:9).

Paul and Slavery.

The Epistle is purely personal, yet most significant. Paul omits his official title, and substitutes the touching designation, "a prisoner of Christ Jesus," thereby going directly to the heart of his friend. The letter introduces us into a Christian household, consisting of father (Philemon), mother (Apphia), son (Archippus, who was at the same time a "fellow-soldier," a Christian minister), and a slave (Onesimus). It shows the effect of Christianity upon society at a crucial point, where heathenism was utterly helpless. It touches on the institution of slavery, which lay like an incubus upon the whole heathen world and was interwoven with the whole structure of domestic and public life.

The effect of Christianity upon this gigantic social evil is that of a peaceful and gradual care from within, by teaching the common origin and equality of men, their common redemption and Christian brotherhood, by, emancipating them from slavery unto spiritual freedom, equality, and brotherhood in Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one moral person (Gal. 3:28). This principle and the corresponding practice wrought first an amelioration, and ultimately the abolition of slavery. The process was very slow and retarded by the counteracting influence of the love of gain and power, and all the sinful passions of men; but it was sure and is now almost complete throughout the Christian world; while paganism and Mohammedanism regard slavery as a normal state of society, and hence do not even make an attempt to remove it. It was the only wise way for the apostles to follow in dealing with the subject. A proclamation of emancipation from them would have been a mere brutum fulmen, or, if effectual, would have resulted in a bloody revolution of society in which Christianity itself would have been buried.

Paul accordingly sent back Onesimus to his rightful master, yet under a new character, no more a contemptible thief and runaway, but a regenerate man and a "beloved brother," with the touching request that Philemon might receive him as kindly as he would the apostle himself, yea as his own heart (Philem. 16, 17). Such advice took the sting out of slavery; the form remained, the thing itself was gone. What a contrast!  In the eyes of the heathen philosophers (even Aristotle) Onesimus, like every other slave, was but a live chattel; in the eyes of Paul a redeemed child of God and heir of eternal life, which is far better than freedom.1190

The New Testament is silent about the effect of the letter. We cannot doubt that Philemon forgave Onesimus and treated him with Christian kindness. In all probability he went beyond the letter of the request and complied with its spirit, which hints at emancipation. Tradition relates that Onesimus received his freedom and became bishop of Beraea in Macedonia; sometimes he is confounded with his namesake, a bishop of Ephesus in the second century, or made a missionary in Spain and a martyr in Rome, or at Puteoli. 1191

Paul and Philemon.

The Epistle is at the same time an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of Paul. It reveals him to us as a perfect Christian gentleman. It is a model of courtesy, delicacy, and tenderness of feeling. Shut up in a prison, the aged apostle had a heart full of love and sympathy for a poor runaway slave, made him a freeman in Christ Jesus, and recommended him as if he were his own self.

Paul and Pliny.

Grotius and other commentators1192 quote the famous letter of Pliny the Consul to his friend Sabinianus in behalf of a runaway slave. It is very creditable to Pliny, who was born in the year when Paul arrived as a prisoner in Rome, and shows that the natural feelings of kindness and generosity could not be extinguished even by that inhuman institution. Pliny was a Roman gentleman of high culture and noble instincts, although he ignorantly despised Christianity and persecuted its innocent professors while Proconsul in Asia. The letters present striking points of resemblance: in both, a fugitive slave, guilty, but reformed, and desirous to return to duty; in both, a polite, delicate, and earnest plea for pardon and restoration, dictated by sentiments of disinterested kindness. But they differ as Christian charity differs from natural philanthropy, as a Christian gentleman differs from a heathen gentleman. The one could appeal only to the amiable temper and pride of his friend, the other to the love of Christ and the sense of duty and gratitude; the one was concerned for the temporal comfort of his client, the other even more for his eternal welfare; the one could at best remand him to his former condition as a slave, the other raised him to the high dignity of a Christian brother, sitting with his master at the same communion table of a common Lord and Saviour. "For polished speech the Roman may bear the palm, but for nobleness of tone and warmth of heart he falls far short of the imprisoned apostle."

The Epistle was poorly understood in the ancient church when slavery ruled supreme in the Roman empire. A strong prejudice prevailed against it in the fourth century, as if it were wholly unworthy of an apostle. Jerome, Chrysostom, and other commentators, who themselves had no clear idea of its ultimate social bearing, apologized to their readers that Paul, instead of teaching metaphysical dogmas and enforcing ecclesiastical discipline, should take so much interest in a poor runaway slave.1193  But since the Reformation full justice has been done to it. Erasmus says: "Cicero never wrote with greater elegance."  Luther and Calvin speak of it in high terms, especially Luther, who fully appreciated its noble, Christ-like sentiments. Bengel: "mire ajstei'o"." Ewald: "Nowhere can the sensibility and warmth of a tender friendship blend more beautifully with the loftier feeling of a commanding spirit than in this letter, at once so brief, and yet so surpassingly full and significant."  Meyer: "A precious relic of a great character, and, viewed merely as a specimen of Attic elegance and urbanity, it takes rank among the epistolary masterpieces of antiquity."  Baur rejects it with trifling arguments as post-apostolic, but confesses that it "makes an agreeable impression by its attractive form," and breathes "the noblest Christian spirit."1194  Holtzmann calls it "a model of tact, refinement, and amiability."  Reuss: "a model of tact and humanity, and an expression of a fine appreciation of Christian duty, and genial, amiable humor."  Renan, with his keen eye on the literary and aesthetic merits or defects, praises it as "a veritable little f-d’oeuvre, of the art of letter-writing."  And Lightfoot, while estimating still higher its moral significance on the question of slavery, remarks of its literary excellency: "As an expression of simple dignity, of refined courtesy, of large sympathy, of warm personal affection, the Epistle to Philemon stands unrivalled. And its pre-eminence is the more remarkable because in style it is exceptionally loose. It owes nothing to the graces of rhetoric; its effect is due solely to the spirit of the writer."

§ 99. The Pastoral Epistles.

Comp. § 33, pp. 327–329.

Contents.

The three Pastoral Epistles, two to Timothy and one to Titus, form a group by themselves, and represent the last stage of the apostle’s life and labors, with his parting counsels to his beloved disciples and fellow-workers. They show us the transition of the apostolic church from primitive simplicity to a more definite system of doctrine and form of government. This is just what we might expect from the probable time of their composition after the first Roman captivity of Paul, and before the composition of the Apocalypse.

They are addressed not to congregations, but to individuals, and hence more personal and confidential in their character. This fact helps us to understand many peculiarities. Timothy, the son of a heathen father and a Jewish mother, and Titus, a converted Greek) were among the dearest of Paul’s pupils.1195  They were, at the same time, his delegates and commissioners on special occasions, and appear under this official character in the Epistles, which, for this reason, bear the name "Pastoral."

The Epistles contain Paul’s pastoral theology and his theory of church government. They give directions for founding, training, and governing churches, and for the proper treatment of individual members, old and young, widows and virgins, backsliders and heretics. They are rich in practical wisdom and full of encouragement, as every pastor knows.

The Second Epistle to Timothy is more personal in its contents than the other two, and has the additional importance of concluding the autobiography of Paul. It is his last will and testament to all future ministers and soldiers of Christ.

The Pauline Authorship.

There never was a serious doubt as to the Pauline authorship of these Epistles till the nineteenth century, except among a few Gnostics in the second century. They were always reckoned among the Homologumena, as distinct from the seven Antilegomena, or disputed books of the New Testament. As far as external evidence is concerned, they stand on as firm a foundation as any other Epistle. They are quoted as canonical by Eusebius, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus. Reminiscences from them, in some cases with verbal agreement, are found in several of the Apostolic Fathers. They are included in the ancient MSS. and Versions, and in the list of the Muratorian canon. Marcion (about 140), it is true, excluded them from his canon of ten Pauline Epistles, but he excluded also the Gospels (except a mutilated Luke), the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse.1196

But there are certain internal difficulties which have induced a number of modern critics to assign them all, or at least First Timothy, to a post-Pauline or pseudo-Pauline writer, who either changed and adapted Pauline originals to a later state of the church, or fabricated the whole in the interest of Catholic orthodoxy. In either case, the writer is credited with the best intentions and must not be judged according to the modern standard of literary honesty and literary property. Doctrinally, the Pastoral Epistles are made the connecting link between genuine Paulinism and the Johannean Logos—philosophy; ecclesiastically, the link between primitive Presbyterianism and Catholic Episcopacy; in both respects, a necessary element in the formation process of the orthodox Catholic church of the second century.

The objections against the Pauline authorship deserve serious consideration, and are as follows: (1) The impossibility of locating these Epistles in the recorded life of Paul; (2) the Gnostic heresy opposed; (3) the ecclesiastical organization implied; (4) the peculiarities of style and temper. If they are not genuine, Second Timothy must be the oldest, as it is least liable to these objections, and First Timothy and Titus are supposed to represent a later development.1197

The Time of Composition.

The chronology of the Pastoral Epistles is uncertain, and has been made an objection to their genuineness. It is closely connected with the hypothesis of a second Roman captivity, which we have discussed in another place.

The Second Epistle to Timothy, whether genuine or not, hails from a Roman prison, and appears to be the last of Paul’s Epistles; for he was then hourly expecting the close of his fight of faith, and the crown of righteousness from his Lord and Master (2 Tim. 4:7, 8). Those who deny the second imprisonment, and yet accept Second Timothy as Pauline, make it the last of the first imprisonment.

As to First Timothy and Titus, it is evident from their contents that they were written while Paul was free, and after he had made some journeys, which are not recorded in the Acts. Here lies the difficulty. Two ways are open:

1. The two Epistles were written in 56 and 57. Paul may, during his three years’ sojourn in Ephesus, A.D. 54–57 (see Acts 19:8–10; 20:31), easily have made a second journey to Macedonia, leaving Ephesus in charge of Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3); and also crossed over to the island of Crete, where he left Titus behind to take care of the churches (Tit. 1:5). Considering the incompleteness of the record of Acts, and the probable allusions in 2 Cor. 2:1; 12:13, 14, 21; 13:1, to a second visit to Corinth, not mentioned in the Acts, these two journeys are within the reach of possibility.1198  But such an early date leaves the other difficulties unexplained.

2. The tradition of the second Roman captivity, which can be raised at least to a high degree of probability, removes the difficulty by giving us room for new journeys and labors of Paid between his release in the spring of 63 and the Neronian persecution in July, 64 (according to Tacitus), or three or four years later (according to Eusebius and Jerome), as well as for the development of the Gnostic heresy and the ecclesiastical organization of the church which is implied in these Epistles. Hence, most writers who hold to the genuineness place First Timothy and Titus between the first and second Roman captivities.1199

Paul certainly intended to make a journey from Rome to Spain (Rom. 15:24), and also one to the East (Philem. 22; Phil. 1:25, 26; 2:24), and he had ample time to carry out his intention even before the Neronian persecution, if we insist upon confining this to the date of Tacitus.1200

Those who press the chronological difficulty should not forget that a forger could have very easily fitted the Epistles into the narrative of the Acts, and was not likely to invent a series of journeys, circumstances, and incidents, such as the bringing of the cloak, the books, and the parchments which Paul, in the hurry of travel, had left at Troas (2 Tim. 4:13).

The Gnostic Heresy.

The Pastoral Epistles, like Colossians, oppose the Gnostic heresy (gnw'si" yeudwvnumo", 1 Tim. 6:20) which arose in Asia Minor during his first Roman captivity, and appears more fully developed in Cerinthus, the contemporary of John. This was acknowledged by the early Fathers, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who used these very Epistles as Pauline testimonies against the Gnosticism of their day.

The question arises, which of the many types of this many-sided error is opposed?  Evidently the Judaizing type, which resembled that at Colossae, but was more advanced and malignant, and hence is more sternly denounced. The heretics were of "the circumcision" (Tit. 1:10); they are called "teachers of the law" (nomodidavskaloi, 1 Tim. 1:7, the very reverse of antinomians), "given to Jewish fables" ( jIoudai>koi mu'qoi, Tit. 1:14), and "disputes connected with the law" (mavcai nomikaiv, Tit. 3:9), and fond of foolish and ignorant questionings (2 Tim. 2:23). They were, moreover, extravagant ascetics, like the Essenes, forbidding to marry and abstaining from meat (1 Tim. 4:3), 8; Tit. 1:14, 15). They denied the resurrection and overthrew the faith of some (2 Tim. 2:18).

Baur turned these heretics into anti-Jewish and antinomian Gnostics of the school of Marcion (about 140), and then, by consequence, put the Epistles down to the middle of the second century. He finds in the "genealogies" ( 1 Tim. 1:4; Tit. 3:9) the emanations, of the Gnostic aeons, and in the "antitheses" (1 Tim. 6:20), or anti-evangelical assertions of the heretical teachers, an allusion to Marcion’s "antitheses" (antilogies), by which he set forth the supposed contradictions between the Old and New Testaments.1201  But this is a radical misinterpretation, and the more recent opponents of the genuineness are forced to admit the Judaizing character of those errorists; they identify them with Cerinthus, the Ophites, and Saturninus, who preceded Marcion by several decades.1202

As to the origin of the Gnostic heresy, which the Tübingen school would put down to the age of Hadrian, we have already seen that, like its counterpart, the Ebionite heresy, it dates from the apostolic age, according to the united testimony of the later Pauline Epistles, the Epistles of Peter, John, and Jude, the Apocalypse, and the patristic tradition.1203

Ecclesiastical Organization.

The Pastoral Epistles seem to presuppose a more fully developed ecclesiastical organization than the other Pauline Epistles, and to belong to an age of transition from apostolic simplicity, or Christo-democracy—if we may use such a term—to the episcopal hierarchy of the second century. The church, in proportion as it lost, after the destruction of Jerusalem, its faith in the speedy advent of Christ, began to settle down in this world, and to make preparations for a permanent home by a fixed creed and a compact organization, which gave it unity and strength against heathen persecution and heretical corruption. This organization, at once simple and elastic, was episcopacy, with its subordinate offices of the presbyterate and deaconate, and charitable institutions for widows and orphans. Such an organization we have, it is said, in the Pastoral Epistles, which were written in the name of Paul, to give the weight of his authority to the incipient hierarchy.1204

But, on closer inspection, there is a very marked difference between the ecclesiastical constitution of the Pastoral Epistles and that of the second century. There is not a word said about the divine origin of episcopacy; not a trace of a congregational episcopate, such as we find in the Ignatian epistles, still less of a diocesan episcopate of the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian. Bishops and presbyters are still identical as they are in the Acts 20:17, 28, and in the undoubtedly genuine Epistle to the Philippians 1:1. Even Timothy and Titus appear simply as delegates of the apostle for a specific mission.1205  The qualifications and functions required of the bishop are aptness to teach and a blameless character; and their authority is made to depend upon their moral character rather than their office. They are supposed to be married, and to set a good example in governing their own household. The ordination which Timothy received (1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22) need not differ from the ordination of deacons and elders mentioned in Acts 6:6; 8:17; comp. 14:23; 19:6). "Few features," says Dr. Plumptre, himself an Episcopalian, "are more striking in these Epistles than the absence of any high hierarchical system."  The Apocalypse, which these very critics so confidently assign to the year 68, shows a nearer approach to episcopal unity in the "angels" of the seven churches. But even from the "angels," of the Apocalypse there was a long way to the Ignatian and pseudo-Clementine bishops, who are set up as living oracles and hierarchical idols.

The Style.

The language of the Pastoral Epistles shows an unusual number of un-Pauline words and phrases, especially rare compounds, some of them nowhere found in the whole New Testament, or even in Greek literature.1206

But, in the first place, the number of words peculiar to each one of the three epistles is much greater than the number of peculiar words common to all three; consequently, if the argument proves anything, it leads to the conclusion of three different authors, which the assailants will not admit, in view of the general unity of the Epistles. In the next place, every one of Paul’s Epistles has a number of peculiar words, even the little Epistle of Philemon.1207  The most characteristic words were required by the nature of the new topics handled and the heresy combated, such as "knowledge falsely so called" (yeudwvnumo" gnw'si", 1 Tim. 6:20) "healthful doctrine" (uJgiaivnousa didaskaliva, Tim. 1:10);  "Jewish myths" (Tit. 1:14); "genealogies" (Tit. 3:9); "profane babblings" (2 Tim. 2:16). Paul’s mind was uncommonly fertile and capable of adapting itself to varying, conditions, and had to create in some measure the Christian idiom. The Tübingen critics profess the highest admiration for his genius, and yet would contract his vocabulary to a very small compass. Finally, the peculiarities of style are counterbalanced by stronger resemblances and unmistakable evidences of Pauline authorship. "There are flashes of the deepest feeling, outbursts of the most intense expression. There is rhythmic movement and excellent majesty in the doxologies, and the ideal of a Christian pastor drawn not only with an unfaltering hand, but with a beauty, fulness, and simplicity which a thousand years of subsequent experience have enabled no one to equal, much less to surpass."1208

On the other hand, we may well ask the opponents to give a good reason why a forger should have chosen so many new words when he might have so easily confined himself to the vocabulary of the other Epistles of Paul; why he should have added "mercy" to the salutation instead of the usual form; why he should have called Paul "the chief of sinners" (1 Tim. 1:15), and affected a tone of humility rather than a tone of high apostolic authority?

Other Objections.

The Epistles have been charged with want of logical connection, with abruptness, monotony, and repetitiousness, unworthy of such an original thinker and writer as Paul. But this feature is only the easy, familiar, we may say careless, style which forms the charm as well as the defect of personal correspondence. Moreover, every great author varies more or less at different periods of life, and under different conditions and moods.

It would be a more serious objection if the theology of these Epistles could be made to appear in conflict with that of his acknowledged works.1209  But this is not the case. It is said that greater stress is laid on sound doctrine and good works. But in Galatians, Paul condemns most solemnly every departure from the genuine gospel (Gal. 1:8, 9), and in all his Epistles he enjoins holiness as the indispensable evidence of faith; while salvation is just as clearly traced to divine grace alone, in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 3:5), as in Romans.

In conclusion, while we cannot be blind to certain difficulties, and may not be able, from want of knowledge of the precise situation of the writer, satisfactorily to explain them, we must insist that the prevailing evidence is in favor of the genuineness of these Epistles. They agree with Paul’s doctrinal system; they are illuminated with flashes of his genius; they bear the marks of his intense personality; they contain rare gems of inspired truth, and most wholesome admonition and advice, which makes them to-day far more valuable than any number of works on pastoral theology and church government. There are not a few passages in them which, for doctrine or practice, are equal to the best he ever wrote, and are deeply lodged in the experience and affection of Christendom.1210

And what could be a more fitting, as well as more sublime and beautiful, finale of such a hero of faith than the last words of his last Epistle, written in the very face of martyrdom: "I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing."

Note.

Schleiermacher led the way, in 1807, with his attack on 1 Timothy, urging very keenly historical, philological, and other objections, but assuming 2 Timothy and Titus to be the genuine originals from which the first was compiled. DeWette followed in his Introduction. Baur left both behind and rejected all, in his epoch-making treatise, Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe, 1835. He was followed by Schwegler (1846), Hilgenfeld (1875), Mangold, Schenkel, Hausrath, Pfleiderer (both in his Paulinismus and in his Commentary in the Protestanten-Bibel, 1874), Holtzmann; also by Ewald, Renan (L’Église chrétienne, pp. 85 sqq.), and Sam. Davidson (Introd., revised ed., II. 21 sqq.). The most elaborate book against the genuineness is Holtzmann’s Die Pastoralbriefe kritisch und exeg. behandelt, Leipzig, 1880 (504 pp.); comp. his Einleitung (1886).

Reuss (Les épitres Pauliniennes, 1878, II. 243 sq., 307 sq., and Gesch. des N. T, 1887, p. 257 sqq.) rejects 1 Timothy and Titus, but admits 2 Timothy, assigning it to the first Roman captivity. He thinks that 2 Timothy would never have been doubted except for its suspicious companionship. Some of the opponents, as Pfleiderer and Renan, feel forced to admit some scraps of genuine Pauline Epistles or notes, and thus they break the force of the opposition. The three Epistles must stand or fall together, either as wholly Pauline, or as wholly pseudo-Pauline.

The genuineness has been ably vindicated by Guericke, Thiersch, Huther, Wiesinger, Otto, Wieseler, Van Oosterzee, Lange, Herzog, von Hofmann, Beck, Alford, Gloag, Fairbairn (Past. Ep., 1874), Farrar (St. Paul, II. 607 sqq.), Wace (in the Speaker’s Com. New Test., III., 1881, 749 sqq.), Plumptre (in Schaff’s Com. on the New Test., III., 1882, pp. 550 sqq.), Kölling (Der erste Br. a. Tim. 1882), Salmon (1885), and Weiss (1886).

§ 100. The Epistle To The Hebrews.

I. Commentaries on Hebrews by Chrysostom (d. 407, eJrmhneiva, in 34 Homilies publ. after his death by an Antioch. presbyter, Constantinus); Theodoret (d. 457); Oecumenius (10th cent.); Theophylact (11th cent.); Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274); Erasmus (d. 1536, Annotationes in N. T., with his Greek Test., 1516 and often, and Paraphrasis in N. T., 1522 and often); Card. Cajetanus (Epistolae Pauli, etc., 1531); Calvin (d. 1564, Com. in omnes P. Ep. atque etiam in Ep. ad Hebraeos, 1539 and often, also Halle, 1831); Beza (d. 1605, transl. and notes, 1557 and often; had much influence on King Jame’s Version); Hyperius (at Marburg, d. 1564); Dav. Pareus (d. 1615, Com. in Ep. ad Hebr.); Corn. A Lapide (Jesuit, d. 1637, Com. in omnes Pauli Epp., 1627 and often); Guil. Estius (R. C. Prof. at Douai, 1614, etc.); Jac. Cappellus (Sedan, 1624); Lud. Cappellus (Geneva, 1632); Grotius (d. 1645, Arminian, a great classical and general scholar); Joh. Gerhard (d. 1637); John Owen (the great Puritan divine, d. 1683, Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews, London, 1668–80, in 4 vols. fol., Lat. transl., Amsterd., 1700 [new Engl. ed. in 7 vols., in his Works, Lond., 1826, 21 vols.; Edinb. ed. of Works by W. H. Goold, 1850–55; 24 vols., Philad. reprint, 1869], "a work of gigantic strength as well as gigantic size," as Chalmers called it, and containing a whole system of Puritan theology); Jac. Pierce (Non-conformist, d. 1726); Sykes (d. 1756); Carpzov (d. 1803, Exercitat., etc., 1750); J. D. Michaelis (2d ed., 1780–86, 2 vols.); Rosenmüller (1793); Storr (d. 1805; Tüb., 1789); Böhme (Lips., 1825); Mos. Stuart (Andover, 1827, 2 vols., 4th ed., abridged and revised by Robbins, 1860); Kühnöl (1831); Friedrich Bleek (Prof. in Bonn., d. 1859; the large Com. in 3 vols., Berlin, 1836–40, an exegetical masterpiece, most learned, critical, candid, judicious, and reverential, though free; his Lectures on Hebrews were ed., after his death, by Windrath, 1868); Tholuck (Hamburg, 1836, dedicated to Bunsen, 3d ed., 1850, transl. by James Hamilton, Edinb., 1852); Stier (1842); DeWette (1847, 2d ed.); Ebrard (1850, in Olshausen’s Com., vol. v.; Engl. transl., Edinb., 1853); Turner (new ed. N. Y., 1855); Sampson (ed. by Dabney, N. Y., 1856); Lünemann (in Meyer’s Com., 1857, 4th ed., 1878); Delitzsch (1857, transl. by Th. L. Kingsbury, Edinb., 1868, 2 vols.); John Brown (Edinb., 1862, 2 vols.); Reuss (in French, 1862); Lindsay (Edinb., 1867, 2 vols.); Moll (in Lange’s Com., translated and enlarged by Kendrick, 1868); Ripley (1868); Kurtz (1869); Ewald (1870); Hofmann (1873); Biesenthal (1878); Bloomfield; Alford; Wordsworth; W. Kay (in the Speaker’s Com. N. T, vol. iv., 1882); Moulton (in Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers); A. B. Davidson (of the New College, Edinburgh. 1882); Angus (1883); Sam. T. Lowrie (1884); Weiss (1888).

II. The doctrinal system of the Ep. has been most fully expounded by Riehm (d. 1888 in Halle): Der Lehrbegriff des Hebräerbriefs, Basel und Ludwigsburg, 1858–59, 2 vols.; new ed., 1867, in 1 vol. (899 pages). Comp. the expositions of Neander, Messner, Baur, Reuss, and Weiss. On the use of the O. T., see Tholuck: Das A. T. im N., Hamb., 3d ed., 1849; on the Christology of the Epistle, Beyerschlag: Christologie des N. T. (1866), 176 sqq.; on the Melchisedek priesthood, Auberlen, in "Studien und Kritiken" for 1857, pp. 453 sqq. Pfleiderer, in his Paulinismus (pp. 324–366), treats of Hebrews, together with Colossians and the Epistle of Barnabas, as representing Paulinism under the influence of Alexandrinism.

III. On the introductory questions, comp. Norton in the: "Christian Examiner" (Boston), 1827–29; Olshausen: De auctore Ep. ad Hebraeos (in Opusc. theol., 1834); Wieseler: Untersuchung über den Hebraeerbrief, Kiel, 1861; J. H. Thayer: Authorship and Canonicity of the to the Hebrews, in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1867; Zahn, in Herzog’s "Encykl.," vol. v. (1879), pp. 656–671; and articles in "Bible Dictionaries," and in "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., vol. xi., 602 sqq.

The anonymous Epistle "to the Hebrews," like the Book of Job, belongs to the order of Melchizedek, combining priestly unction and royal dignity, but being "without father, without mother, without pedigree, having neither beginning of days nor end of life" (Heb. 7:1–3). Obscure in its origin, it is clear and deep in its knowledge of Christ. Hailing from the second generation of Christians (2:3), it is full of pentecostal inspiration. Traceable to no apostle, it teaches, exhorts, and warns with apostolic authority and power. Though not of Paul’s pen, it has, somehow, the impress of his genius and influence, and is altogether worthy to occupy a place in the canon, after his Epistles, or between them and the Catholic Epistles. Pauline in spirit, it is catholic or encyclical in its aim.1211

Contents.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is not an ordinary letter. It has, indeed, the direct personal appeals, closing messages, and salutations of a letter; but it is more, it is a homily, or rather a theological discourse, aiming to strengthen the readers in their Christian faith, and to protect them against the danger of apostasy from Christianity. It is a profound argument for the superiority of Christ over the angels, over Moses, and over the Levitical priesthood, and for the finality of the second covenant. It unfolds far more fully than any other book the great idea of the eternal priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, offered once and forever for the redemption of the world, as distinct from the national and transient character of the Mosaic priesthood and the ever-repeated sacrifices of the Tabernacle and the Temple. The author draws his arguments from the Old Testament itself, showing that, by its whole character and express declarations, it is a preparatory dispensation for the gospel salvation, a significant type and prophecy of Christianity, and hence destined to pass away like a transient shadow of the abiding substance. He implies that the Mosaic oeconomy was still existing, with its priests and daily sacrifices, but in process of decay, and looks forward to the fearful judgment which a few years, afterward destroyed the Temple forever.1212  He interweaves pathetic admonitions and precious consolations with doctrinal expositions, and every exhortation leads him to a new exposition. Paul puts the hortatory part usually at the end.

The author undoubtedly belonged to the Pauline school, which emphasized the great distinction between the Old and the New Covenant; while yet fully acknowledging the divine origin and paedagogic use of the former. But he brings out the superiority of Christ’s priesthood and sacrifice to the Mosaic priesthood and sacrifice; while Paul dwells mainly on the distinction between the law and the gospel. He lays chief stress on faith, but he presents it in its general aspect as trust in God, in its prospective reference to the future and invisible, and in its connection with hope and perseverance under suffering; while Paul describes faith, in its specific evangelical character, as a hearty trust in Christ and his atoning merits, and in its justifying effect, in opposition to legalistic reliance on works. Faith is defined, or at least described, as "assurance (uJpovstasi") of things hoped for, a conviction (e[legco") of things not seen" (11:1). This applies to the Old Testament as well as the New, and hence appropriately opens the catalogue of patriarchs and prophets, who encourage Christian believers in their conflict; but they are to look still more to Jesus as "the author and perfecter of our faith" (12:2), who is, after all, the unchanging object of our faith, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever" (13:8).

The Epistle is eminently Christological. It resembles in this respect Colossians and Philippians, and forms a stepping-stone to the Christology of John. From the sublime description of the exaltation and majesty of Christ in Heb. 1:1–4 (comp. Col. 1:15–20), there is only one step to the prologue of the fourth Gospel. The exposition of the high priesthood of Christ reminds one of the sacerdotal prayer (John 17).

The use of proof-texts from the Old Testament seems at times contrary to the obvious historical import of the passage, but is always ingenious, and was, no doubt, convincing to Jewish readers. The writer does not distinguish between typical and direct prophecies. He recognizes the typical, or rather antitypical, character of the Tabernacle and its services, as reflecting the archetype seen by Moses in the mount, but all the Messianic prophecies are explained as direct (Heb. 1:5–14; 2:11–13; 10:5–10). He betrays throughout a high order of Greek culture, profound knowledge of the Greek Scriptures, and the symbolical import of the Mosaic worship.1213  He was also familiar with the Alexandrian theosophy of Philo,1214 but he never introduces foreign ideas into the Scriptures, as Philo did by his allegorical interpretation. His exhortations and warnings go to the quick of the moral sensibility; and yet his tone is also cheering and encouraging. He had the charisma of exhortation and consolation in the highest degree.1215  Altogether, he was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and gifted with a tongue of fire.

The Style.

Hebrews is written in purer Greek than any book of the New Testament, except those portions of Luke where he is independent of prior documents. The Epistle begins, like the third Gospel, with a rich and elegant period of classic construction. The description of the heroes of faith in the eleventh chapter is one of the most eloquent and sublime in the entire history of religious literature. He often reasons a minori ad majus (eij ... povsw/ ma'llon). He uses a number of rare and choice terms which occur nowhere else in the New Testament.1216

As compared with the undoubted Epistles of Paul, the style of Hebrews is less fiery and forcible, but smoother, more correct, rhetorical, rhythmical, and free from anacolutha and solecisms. There is not that rush and vehemence which bursts through ordinary rules, but a calm and regular flow of speech. The sentences are skilfully constructed and well rounded. Paul is bent exclusively on the thought; the author of Hebrews evidently paid great attention to the form. Though not strictly classical, his style is as pure as the Hellenistic dialect and the close affinity with the Septuagint permit.

All these considerations exclude the idea of a translation from a supposed Hebrew original.

The Readers.

The Epistle is addressed to the Hebrew Christians, that is, according to the usual distinction between Hebrews and Hellenists (Acts 6:1; 9:27), to the converted Jews in Palestine, chiefly to those in Jerusalem. To them it is especially adapted. They lived in sight of the Temple, and were exposed to the persecution of the hierarchy and the temptation of apostasy. This has been the prevailing view from the time of Chrysostom to Bleek.1217  The objection that the Epistle quotes the Old Testament uniformly after the Septuagint is not conclusive, since the Septuagint was undoubtedly used in Palestine alongside with the Hebrew original.

Other views more or less improbable need only be mentioned: (1) All the Christian Jews as distinct from the Gentiles;1218 (2) the Jews of Jerusalem alone;1219 (3) the Jews of Alexandria;1220 (4) the Jews of Antioch;1221 (5) the Jews of Rome;1222 (6) some community of the dispersion in the East (but not Jerusalem).1223

Occasion and Aim.

The Epistle was prompted by the desire to strengthen and comfort the readers in their trials and persecutions (Heb. 10:32–39; Heb. 11 and 12), but especially to warn them against the danger of apostasy to Judaism (2:2, 3; 3:6, 14; 4:1, 14; 6:1–8; 10:23, 26–31). And this could be done best by showing the infinite superiority of Christianity, and the awful guilt of neglecting so great a salvation.

Strange that but thirty years after the resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, there should have been such a danger of apostasy in the very mother church of Christendom. And yet not strange, if we realize the condition of things, between 60 and 70. The Christians in Jerusalem were the most conservative of all believers, and adhered as closely as possible to the traditions of their fathers. They were contented with the elementary doctrines, and needed to be pressed on "unto perfection" (5:12; 6:1–4). The Epistle of James represents their doctrinal stand-point. The strange advice which he gave to his brother Paul, on his last visit, reflects their timidity and narrowness. Although numbered by "myriads," they made no attempt in that critical moment to rescue the great apostle from the hands of the fanatical Jews; they were "all zealous for the law," and afraid of the radicalism of Paul on hearing that he was teaching the Jews of the Dispersion "to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs" ( Acts 21:20, 21).

They hoped against hope for the conversion of their people. When that hope vanished more and more, when some of their teachers had suffered martyrdom (Heb. 13:7), when James, their revered leader, was stoned by the Jews (62), and when the patriotic movement for the deliverance of Palestine from the hated yoke of the heathen Romans rose higher and higher, till it burst out at last in open rebellion (66), it was very natural that those timid Christians should feel strongly tempted to apostatize from the poor, persecuted sect to the national religion, which they at heart still believed to be the best part of Christianity. The solemn services of the Temple, the ritual pomp and splendor of the Aaronic priesthood, the daily sacrifices, and all the sacred associations of the past had still a great charm for them, and allured them to their embrace. The danger was very strong, and the warning of the Epistle fearfully solemn.

Similar dangers have occurred again and again in critical periods of history.

Time and Place of Composition.

The Epistle hails and sends greetings from some place in Italy, at a time when Timothy, Paul’s disciple, was set at liberty, and the writer was on the point of paying, with Timothy, a visit to his readers (13:23, 24). The passage, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them" (13:3), does not necessarily imply that he himself was in prison, indeed 13:23 seems to imply his freedom. These notices naturally suggest the close of Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, in the spring of the year 63, or soon after; for Timothy and Luke were with him there, and the writer himself evidently belonged to the circle of his friends and fellow-workers.

There is further internal evidence that the letter was written before the destruction of Jerusalem (70), before the outbreak of the Jewish war (66), before the Neronian persecution (in July, 64), and before Paul’s martyrdom. None of these important events are even alluded to;1224 on the contrary, as already remarked, the Temple was still standing, with its daily sacrifices regularly going on, and the doom of the theocracy was still in the future, though "nigh unto a curse," "becoming old and ready to vanish away;" it was "shaken" and about to be removed; the day of the fearful judgment was drawing nigh.1225

The place of composition was either Rome or some place in Southern Italy, if we assume that the writer had already started on his journey to the East.1226  Others assign it to Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus.1227

Authorship.

This is still a matter of dispute, and will probably never be decided with absolute certainty. The obscurity of its origin is the reason why the Epistle to the Hebrews was ranked among the seven Antilegomena of the ante-Nicene church. The controversy ceased after the adoption of the traditional canon in 397, but revived again at the time of the Reformation. The different theories may be arranged under three heads: (1) sole authorship of Paul; (2) sole authorship of one of his pupils; (3) joint authorship of Paul and one of his pupils. Among the pupils again the views are subdivided between Luke, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Silvanus, and Apollos.1228

1. The Pauline Authorship was the prevailing opinion of the church from the fourth century to the eighteenth, with the exception of the Reformers, and was once almost an article of faith, but has now very few defenders among scholars.1229  It rests on the following arguments:

(a) The unanimous tradition of the Eastern church, to which the letter was in all probability directed; yet with the important qualification which weakens the force of this testimony, that there was a widely prevailing perception of a difference of style, and consequent supposition of a Hebrew original, of which there is no historic basis whatever. Clement of Alexandria ascribed the Greek composition to Luke.1230  Origen observes the greater purity of the Greek style,1231 and mentions Luke and Clement, besides Paul, as possible authors, but confesses his own ignorance.1232

(b) The mention of Timothy and the reference to a release from captivity (Heb. 13:23) point to Paul. Not necessarily, but only to the circle of Paul. The alleged reference to Paul’s own captivity in 10:34 rests on a false reading (desmoi'" mou, E. V., "in my bonds," instead of the one now generally adopted, toi'" desmivoi", "those that were in bonds"). Nor does the request 13:18, 19, imply that the writer was a prisoner at the time of composition; for 13:23 rather points to his freedom, as he expected, shortly to see his readers in company with Timothy.

(c) The agreement of the Epistle with Paul’s system of doctrine, the tone of apostolic authority, and the depth and unction which raises the Epistle to a par with his genuine writings. But all that can be said in praise of this wonderful Epistle at best proves only its inspiration and canonicity, which must be extended beyond the circle of the apostles so as to embrace the writings of Luke, Mark, James, and Jude.

2. The Non-Pauline Authorship is supported by the following arguments:

(a) The Western tradition, both Roman and North African, down to the time of Augustin, is decidedly against the Pauline authorship. This has all the more weight from the fact that the earliest traces of the Epistle to the Hebrews are found in the Roman church, where it was known before the close of the first century. Clement of Rome makes very extensive use of it, but nowhere under the name of Paul. The Muratorian Canon enumerates only thirteen Epistles of Paul and omits Hebrews. So does Gaius, a Roman presbyter, at the beginning of the third century. Tertullian ascribed the Epistle to Barnabas. According to the testimony of Eusebius, the Roman church did not regard the Epistle as Pauline at his day (he died 340). Philastrius of Brescia (d. about 387) mentions that some denied the Pauline authorship, because the passage 6:4–6 favored the heresy and excessive disciplinary rigor of the Novatians, but he himself believed it to be Paul’s, and so did Ambrose of Milan. Jerome (d. 419) can be quoted on both sides. He wavered in his own view, but expressly says: "The Latin custom (Latina consuetudo) does not receive it among the canonical Scriptures;" and in another place: "All the Greeks receive the Epistle to the Hebrews, and some Latins (et nonnulli Latinorum)."  Augustin, a profound divine, but neither linguist nor critic, likewise wavered, but leaned strongly toward the Pauline origin. The prevailing opinion in the West ascribed only thirteen Epistles to Paul. The Synod of Hippo (393) and the third Synod of Carthage (397), under the commanding influence of Augustin, marked a transition of opinion in favor of fourteen.1233  This opinion prevailed until Erasmus and the Reformers revived the doubts of the early Fathers. The Council of Trent sanctioned it.

(b) The absence of the customary name and salutation. This has been explained from modesty, as Paul was sent to the Gentiles rather than the Jews (Pantaenus), or from prudence and the desire to secure a better hearing from Jews who were strongly prejudiced against Paul (Clement of Alexandria). Very unsatisfactory and set aside by the authoritative tone of the Epistle.

(c) In 2:3 the writer expressly distinguishes himself from the apostles, and reckons himself with the second generation of Christians, to whom the word of the Lord was "confirmed by them that heard" it at the first from the Lord. Paul, on the contrary, puts himself on a par with the other apostles, and derives his doctrine directly from Christ, without any human intervention (Gal. 1:1, 12, 15, 16). This passage alone is conclusive, and decided Luther, Calvin, and Beza against the Pauline authorship.1234

(d) The difference, not in the substance, but in the form and method of teaching and arguing.1235

(e) The difference of style (which has already been discussed). This argument does not rest on the number of peculiar words for such are found in every book of the New Testament, but in the superior purity, correctness, and rhetorical finish of style.

(f) The difference in the quotations from the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews follows uniformly the Septuagint, even with its departures from the Hebrew; while Paul is more independent, and often corrects the Septuagint from the Hebrew. Bleek has also discovered the important fact that the former used the text of Codex Alexandrinus, the latter the text of Codex Vaticanus.1236  It is incredible that Paul, writing to the church of Jerusalem, should not have made use of his Hebrew and rabbinical learning in quoting the Scriptures.

3 Conjectures concerning the probable author. Four Pauline disciples and co-workers have been proposed, either as sole or as joint authors with Paul, three with some support in tradition—Barnabas, Luke, and Clement—one without any Apollos. Silvanus also has a few advocates.1237

(a) Barnabas.1238  He has in his favor the tradition of the African church (at least Tertullian), his Levitical training, his intimacy with Paul, his close relation to the church in Jerusalem, and his almost apostolic authority. As the uiJo;" paraklhvsew" (Acts 4:36), he may have written the lovgo" paraklhvsew" (Heb. 13:22). But in this case he cannot be the author of the Epistle which goes by his name, and which, although belonging to the Pauline and strongly anti-Judaizing tendency, is yet far inferior to Hebrews in spirit and wisdom. Moreover, Barnabas was a primitive disciple, and cannot be included in the second generation (2:3).

(b) Luke.1239  He answers the description of 2:3, writes pure Greek, and has many affinities in style.1240  But against him is the fact that the author of Hebrews was, no doubt, a native Jew, while Luke was a Gentile (Col. 4:11, 14). This objection, however, ceases in a measure if Luke wrote in the name and under the instruction of Paul.

(c) Clemens Romanus.1241  He makes thorough use of Hebrews and interweaves passages from the Epistle with his own ideas, but evidently as an imitator, far inferior in originality and force.

(d) Apollos.1242 A happy guess of the genius of Luther, suggested by the description given of Apollos in the Acts 18:24–28, and by Paul (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4–6, 22; 4:6; 16:12; Tit. 3:13). Apollos was a Jew of Alexandria, mighty in the Scriptures, fervent in spirit, eloquent in speech, powerfully confuting the Jews, a friend of Paul, and independently working with him in the same cause at Ephesus, Corinth, Crete. So far everything seems to fit. But this hypothesis has not a shadow of support in tradition, which could hardly have omitted Apollos in silence among the three or four probable authors. Clement names him once,1243 but not as the author of the Epistle which he so freely uses. Nor is there any trace of his ever having been in Rome, and having stood in so close a relationship to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine.

The learned discussion of modern divines has led to no certain and unanimous conclusion, but is, nevertheless, very valuable, and sheds light in different directions. The following points may be regarded as made certain, or at least in the highest degree probable: the author of Hebrews was a Jew by birth; a Hellenist, not a Palestinian; thoroughly at home in the Greek Scriptures (less so, if at all, in the Hebrew original); familiar with the Alexandrian Jewish theology (less so, if at all, with the rabbinical learning of Palestine); a pupil of the apostles (not himself an apostle); an independent disciple and coworker of Paul; a friend of Timothy; in close relation with the Hebrew Christians of Palestine, and, when he wrote, on the point of visiting them; an inspired man of apostolic insight, power, and authority, and hence worthy of a position in the canon as "the great unknown."

Beyond these marks we cannot go with safety. The writer purposely withholds his name. The arguments for Barnabas, Luke, and Apollos, as well as the objections against them, are equally strong, and we have no data to decide between them, not to mention other less known workers of the apostolic age. We must still confess with Origen that God only knows the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Notes.

I.—The Position of Hebrews in the New Testament. In the old Greek MSS. (a, B, C, D) the Epistle to the Hebrews stands before the Pastoral Epistles, as being an acknowledged letter of Paul. This order has, perhaps, a chronological value, and is followed in the critical editions Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort), although Westcott and Hort regard the Pastoral Epistles as Pauline, and the Ep. to the Hebrews as un-Pauline. See their Gr. Test., vol. II., 321.

But in the Latin and English Bibles, Hebrews stands more appropriately at the close of the Pauline Epistles, and immediately precedes the Catholic Epistles.

Luther, who had some doctrinal objections to Hebrews and James, took the liberty of putting them after the Epistles of Peter and John, and making them the last Epistles except Jude. He misunderstood Heb. 6:4–6; 10:26, 27; 12:17, as excluding the possibility of a second repentance and pardon after baptism, and called these passages, "hard knots" that ran counter to all the Gospels and Epistles of Paul; but, apart from this, he declared Hebrews to be, "an Epistle of exquisite beauty, discussing from Scripture, with masterly skill and thoroughness, the priesthood of Christ, and interpreting on this point the Old Testament with great richness and acuteness."

The English Revisers retained, without any documentary evidence, the traditional title, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews."  This gives sanction to a particular theory, and is properly objected to by the American Revisers. The Pauline authorship is, to say the least, an open question, and should have been left open by the Revisers. The ancient authorities entitle the letter simply, Pro;s JEbraivou", and even this was probably added by the hand of an early transcriber. Still less is the subscription, "Written to the Hebrews from Italy by Timothy" to be relied on as original, and was probably a mere inference from the contents (Heb. 13:23, 24).

II.—The Hapaxtegomena of the Epistle. ajgenealovghto", without pedigree (said of Melchizedek), Heb. 7:3. ajmhvtwr, motherless, 7:3. ajpavtwr, fatherless, 7:3. ajpauvgasma, effulgence (said of Christ in relation to God), 1:2. aijsqhthvrion, sense, 5:14. ajkroqivnion, spoils, 7:4. eujperivstato" (from eu\ and periivsthmi, to place round), a difficult word of uncertain interpretation, easily besetting, closely clinging to (E. R. on the margin: admired by many), 12:1. kritikov", quick to discern, 4:12. hJ mevllousa oijkoumevnh, the future world, 2:5. mesiteuvein, to interpose one’s self, to mediate, 6:17., metriopaqei'n, to have compassion on, to bear gently with, 5:2 (said of Christ). oJrkwmosiva, oath, 7:20, 21, 28. parapikraivnein, to provoke, 3:16. parapikrasmov", provocation, 3:8, 15. polumerw'", by divers portions, 1:1. polutrovpw", in divers manners, 1:1. provdromo", forerunner, 6:20 (of Christ). sunepimarturei'n, to bear witness with, 2:4. trachlivzein. to open, 4:13 (tetrachlismevna, laid open). uJpostasi", substance (or person), 1:3 (of God); confidence, 3:14; assurance, 11:1. This word, however, occurs also in 2 Cor. 11:17, in the sense of confidence. carakthvr, express image (Christ, the very image of the essence of God), Heb. 1:3.

On the other hand, the Ep. to the Hebrews has a number of rare words in common with Paul which are not elsewhere found in the New Testament or the Septuagint, as aijdwv" (12:13; 1 Tim. 2:9), a[naqewrevw (Heb. 13:7; Acts 17:23), ajnupovtakto" (Heb.2:8; 1 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 1:6, 10), ajpeivqeia (Heb. 4:6, 11; Rom. 11:30, 32; Eph. 2:2; Col. 3:5), ajpovlousi" (Heb. 11:25; 1 Tim. 6:17), ajfilavrguro" (Heb. 13:5; 1 Tim. 3:3), e[ndiko" (Heb. 2:1; Rom. 3:8), ejnerghv" (Heb. 4:12; 1 Cor. 16:9; Philem. 6), ejfavpax (Heb. 7:27; 10:10; Rom. 9:10; 1 Cor. 15:6), kosmikov" (Heb. 9:11; Tit. 2:12), mimhthv" (Heb. 6:12; 1 Cor. 4:16, etc.), nekrovw (Heb. 11:12; Rom. 4:19; Col. 3:5), ojrevgomai (Heb. 11:16; 1 Tim. 3:1; 6:10), parakohv (Heb. 2:2; Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 10:6), plhroforiva (Heb. 6:11; 10:22; Col. 2:2; 1 Thess. 1:5), filoxeniva (Heb. 13:2; Rom. 12:13).

On the linguistic peculiarities of Hebrews, see Bleek, I. 315–338 Lünemann, Com., pp. 12 and 24 sqq. (4th ed., 1878); Davidson, Introd., I. 209 sqq. (revised ed., 1882); and the Speaker’s Com. N. T., IV. 7–16.

§ 101. The Apocalypse.

On the Lit. and life of John, see §§ 40 and 41 (this vol.); on the authorship of the Apoc. and the time of composition, § 37 (this vol.); § 41 (this vol.); and § 84 (this vol.)

1. Modern Critical, works of German and French scholars on the Apocalypse: Lücke (Voltständige Einleitung, etc., 2d ed., 1852; 1,074 pages of introductory matter, critical and historical; compare with it the review of Bleek in the "Studien and Kritiken" for 1854 and 1855); DeWette Com., 1848, with a remarkable preface, 3d ed. by Möller, 1862); Bleek (Posthumous Lectures, ed. by Hossbach, 1862); Ewald (Die Johann. Schriften, vol. II, 1862; besides his older Latin Com., 1828); Düsterdieck (in Meyer’s Com., 3d ed., 1877); Renan (L’Antechrist, 1873); Reuss (1878). A. Sabatier, in Lichtenberger’s "Encyclopédie," I. 396–407. E. Vischer: Die Offenb. Joh. eine Jüd. Apok. in christl. Bearbeitung, Leipz., 1886. F. Spitta: Die Offenb. Joh. untersucht, Halle, 1889.

2. For Doctrinal and Practical exposition, the Commentaries of Hengstenberg (1849, spoiled by false prophecies and arbitrary fancies) Auberlen (on Daniel and Revelation, 2d ed., 1854); Gaussen (Daniel le prophète, 1850); Ebrard (in Olshausen’s Com., 1853); Luthardt (1861); J. C. K. Hofmann (1844 and 1862); J. L. Füller (follows Hofmann, 1874); Lange (1871, Am. ed. enlarged by Craven, 1874); Gebhardt (Lehrbegriff der Apok., 1873); Kliefoth (1874). Comp. also Rougemont: La Révélation de St. Jean expliquant l’histoire (1866). Godet: Essay upon the Apoc., in his Studies on the N. T., translated from the French by W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1876, 294–398.

3. English Com.: E. H. Elliott (d. 1875, Horae Apoc., 5th ed., 1862, 4 vols.); Wordsworth (4th ed., 1866); Alford (3d ed., 1866); C. J. Vaughan (3d ed., 1870, practical); William Lee (Archdeacon in Dublin, in the "Speaker’s" Com. N. T., vol. iv., 1881, pp. 405–844) E. Huntingford (Lond., 1882); Milligan (1883 and 1886 the best). Trench: The Epistles to the Seven Churches (2d ed., 1861), and Plumptre: Expos. of the Epp. to the Seven Ch. (Lond. and N. Y., 1877).

4. American Com. by Moses Stuart (1845, 2 vols., new ed., 1864, with an Excursus on the Number of the Beast, II. 452); Cowles (1871).

5. Of Older Commentaries, the most important and valuable are the following:

(a) Greek: Andreas of Caesarea in Cappadocia (5th cent.; the first continuous Com. on the Apoc., publ. 1596, also in the works of Chrysostom; see Lücke, p. 983); Arethas Of Caes. in Cappad. (not of the 6th cent., as stated by Lücke, p. 990, and others, but of the 10th, according to Otto, and Harnack, in Altchristl. Liter., 1882, pp, 36 sqq.; his suvvnoyi" scolikhv, ed. by J. A. Cramner, in his Catenae Graec. Patr. in N. T., Oxon., 1840, vol. VIII.; and in the works of Oecumenius); 0ecumenius (10th cent., see Lücke, p. 991).

(b) Rom. Cath.: Lud. Ab Alcasar (a Jesuit, 1614); Cornelius A Lapide (1662); Bossuet (1690, and in Oeuvres, vol. III., 1819); Bisping (1876).

(c) Protestant: Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, Cambr., 1632; Engl. transl. by More, 1643; a new transl. by R. B. Cooper, Lond., 1833); Hugo Grotius (first, 1644); Vitringa (1705, 1719, 1721); Bengel (1740); Bishop Thomas Newton (in Dissertations on the Prophecies, 8 vols., 1758).

This list is a small selection. The literature on the Apocalypse, especially in English, is immense, but mostly impository rather than expository, and hence worthless or even mischievous, because confounding and misleading. Darling’s list of English works on the Apocalypse contains nearly fifty-four columns (I., 1732–1786).

General Character of the Apocalypse.

The "Revelation" of John, or rather "of Jesus Christ" through John,1244 appropriately closes the New Testament. It is the one and only prophetic book, but based upon the discourses of our Lord on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and his second advent (Matt. 24). It has one face turned back to the prophecies of old, the other gazing into the future. It combines the beginning and the end in Him who is "the Alpha and the Omega."  It reminds one of the mysterious sphinx keeping ceaseless watch, with staring eyes, at the base of the Great Pyramid. "As many words as many mysteries," says Jerome; "Nobody knows what is in it," adds Luther.1245  No book has been more misunderstood and abused; none calls for greater modesty and reserve in interpretation.1246

The opening and closing chapters are as clear and dazzling as sunlight, and furnish spiritual nourishment and encouragement to the plainest Christian; but the intervening visions are, to most readers, as dark as midnight, yet with many stars and the full moon illuminating the darkness. The Epistles to the Seven Churches, the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the anthems and doxologies1247 which are interspersed through the mysterious visions, and glister like brilliant jewels on a canopy of richest black, are among the most beautiful, sublime, edifying, and inspiring portions of the Bible, and they ought to guard us against a hasty judgment of those chapters which we may be unable to understand. The Old Testament prophets were not clearly understood until the fulfilment cast its light upon them, and yet they served a most useful purpose as books of warning, comfort, and hope for the coming Messiah. The Revelation will be fully revealed when the new heavens and the new earth appear—not before.1248

"A prophet" (says the sceptical DeWette in his Commentary on Revelation, which was his last work) "is essentially an inspired man, an interpreter of God, who announces the Word of God to men in accordance with, and within the limits of, the divine truth already revealed through Moses in the Old Testament, through Christ in the New (the ajpokavluyi" musthrivou, Rom. 16:25. Prophecy rests on faith in a continuous providence of God ruling over the whole world, and with peculiar efficacy over Israel and the congregation of Christ, according to the moral laws revealed through Moses and Christ especially the laws of retribution. According to the secular view, all changes in human affairs proceed partly from man’s power and prudence, partly from accident and the hidden stubbornness of fate; but according to the prophetic view, everything happens through the agency of God and in harmony with his counsels of eternal and unchangeable justice, and man is the maker of his own fortunes by obeying or resisting the will of God."1249

The prophecy of the Bible meets the natural desire to know the future, and this desire is most intense in great critical periods that are pregnant with fears and hopes. But it widely differs from the oracles of the heathen, and the conjectures of farseeing men. It rests on revelation, not on human sagacity and guesses; it gives certainty, not mere probability; it is general, not specific; it does not gratify curiosity, but is intended to edify and improve. The prophets are not merely revealers of secrets, but also preachers of repentance, revivalists, comforters, rebuking sin, strengthening faith, encouraging hope.

The Apocalypse is in the New Testament what the Book of Daniel is in the Old, and differs from it as the New Testament differs from the Old. Both are prophetic utterances of the will of God concerning the future of his kingdom on earth. Both are books of the church militant, and engage heaven and earth, divine, human, and satanic powers, in a conflict for life and death. They march on as "a terrible army with banners."  They reverberate with thunderings and reflect the lightning flashes from the throne. But while Daniel looks to the first advent of the Messiah as the heir of the preceding world-monarchies, John looks to the second advent of Christ and the new heavens and the new earth. He gathers up all the former prophecies and sends them enriched to the future. He assures us of the final fulfilment of the prophecy of the serpent-bruiser, which was given to our first parents immediately after the fall as a guiding star of hope in the dark night of sin. He blends the glories of creation and redemption in the finale of the new Jerusalem from heaven.

The Apocalypse, as to its style of composition, is written in prose, like Daniel, but belongs to prophetic poetry, which is peculiar to the Bible and takes there the place of the epic poetry of the Greeks; God himself being the hero, as it were, who rules over the destinies of man. It is an inspired work of art, and requires for its understanding a poetic imagination, which is seldom found among commentators and critics; but the imagination must be under the restraint of sober judgment, or it is apt to run into fantastic comments which themselves need a commentary. The apocalyptic vision is the last and most complete form of the prophetic poetry of the Bible. The strong resemblance between the Revelation and Daniel, Ezekiel and Zechariah is admitted, and without them it cannot be understood.

But we may compare it also, as to its poetic form and arrangement, with the book of Job. Both present a conflict on earth, controlled by invisible powers in heaven. In Job it is the struggle of an individual servant of God with Satan, the arch-slanderer and persecutor of man, who, with the permission of God, uses temporal losses, bodily sufferings, mental anguish, harassing doubt, domestic affliction, false and unfeeling friends to secure his ruin. In the Apocalypse it is the conflict of Christ and his church with the anti-Christian world. In both the scene begins in heaven; in both the war ends in victory but in Job long life and temporal prosperity of the individual sufferer is the price, in the Apocalypse redeemed humanity in the new heavens and the new earth. Both are arranged in three parts: a prologue, the battle with successive encounters, and an epilogue. In both the invisible power presiding over the action is the divine counsel of wisdom and mercy, in the place of the dark impersonal fate of the Greek drama.1250

A comparison between the Apocalypse and the pseudo-apocalyptic Jewish and Christian literature—the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Book of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Sibylline Oracles, etc.—opens a wide field on which we cannot enter without passing far beyond the limits of this work. We may only say that the relation is the same as that between the canonical Gospels and the apocryphal pseudo-Gospels, between real history and the dreamland of fable, between the truth of God and the fiction of man.1251

The theme of the Apocalypse is: "I come quickly," and the proper attitude of the church toward it is the holy longing of a bride for her spouse, as expressed in the response (Rev. 22:20): "Amen: come, Lord Jesus."  It gives us the assurance that Christ is coming in every great event, and rules and overrules all things for the ultimate triumph of his kingdom; that the state of the church on earth is one of continual conflict with hostile powers, but that she is continually gaining victories and will at last completely and finally triumph over all her foes and enjoy unspeakable bliss in communion with her Lord. From the concluding chapters Christian poetry has drawn rich inspiration, and the choicest hymns on the heavenly home of the saints are echoes of John’s description of the new Jerusalem. The whole atmosphere of the book is bracing, and makes one feel fearless and hopeful in the face of the devil and the beasts from the abyss. The Gospels lay the foundation in faith, the Acts and Epistles build upon it a holy life; the Apocalypse is the book of hope to the struggling Christian and the militant church, and insures final victory and rest. This has been its mission; this will be its mission till the Lord come in his own good time.1252

Analysis of Contents.

The Apocalypse consists of a Prologue, the Revelation proper, and an Epilogue. We may compare this arrangement to that of the Fourth Gospel, where John 1:1–18 forms the Prologue, John 21 the Epilogue, and the intervening chapters contain the evangelical history from the gathering of the disciples to the Resurrection.

I. The Prologue and the Epistles to the Seven Churches, Rev. 1–3. The introductory notice; John’s salutation and dedication to the Seven Churches in Asia; the vision of Christ in his glory, and the Seven Churches; the Seven Epistles addressed to them and through them to the whole church, in its various states.1253

II. The Revelation proper or the Prophetic Vision of the Church of the Future, 4:1–22:5. It consists chiefly of seven Visions, which are again subdivided according to a symmetrical plan in which the numbers seven, three, four, and twelve are used with symbolic significance. There are intervening scenes of rest and triumph. Sometimes the vision goes back to the beginning and takes a new departure.

(1) The Prelude in heaven, Rev. 4 and 5. (a) The appearance of the throne of God (Rev. 4). (b) The appearance of the Lamb who takes and opens the sealed book (Rev. 5).

(2) The vision of the seven seals, with two episodes between the sixth and seventh seals, 6:1–8:1.

(3) The vision of the seven trumpets of vengeance, 8:2–11:19.

(4) The vision of the woman (the church) and her three enemies, 12:1–13:18. The three enemies are the dragon (12:3–17), the beast from the sea (12:18–13:10), and the beast from the earth, or the false prophet (13:11–18).

(5) The group of visions in Rev 14: (a) the vision of the Lamb on Mount Zion (14:1–5); (b) of the three angels of judgment (14:6–11), followed by an episode (14:12, 13); (c) the vision of the harvest and the vintage of the earth (14:14–20).

(6) The vision of the seven vials of wrath, 15:1–16:21.

(7) The vision of the final triumph, 17:1–22:5: (a) the fall of Babylon (17:1–19:10); (b) the overthrow of Satan (19:11–20:10), with the millennial reign intervening (20:1–6); (c) the universal judgment (20:11–15); (d) the new heavens and the new earth, and the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem (21:1–22:5).

III. The Epilogue, 22:6–21. The divine attestation, threats, and promises.

Authorship and Canonicity.

The question of authorship has already been discussed in connection with John’s Gospel. The Apocalypse professes to be the work of John, who assumes a commanding position over the churches of Asia. History knows only one such character, the Apostle and Evangelist, and to him it is ascribed by the earliest and most trustworthy witnesses, going back to the lifetime of many friends and pupils of the author. It is one of the best authenticated books of the New Testament.1254

And yet, owing to its enigmatical obscurity, it is the most disputed of the seven Antilegomena; and this internal difficulty has suggested the hypothesis of the authorship of "Presbyter John," whose very existence is doubtful (being based on a somewhat obscure passage of Papias), and who at all events could not occupy a rival position of superintendency over the churches in Asia during the lifetime of the great John. The Apocalypse was a stumbling-block to the spiritualism of the Alexandrian fathers, and to the realism of the Reformers (at least Luther and Zwingli), and to not a few of eminent modern divines; and yet it has attracted again and again the most intense curiosity and engaged the most patient study of devout scholars; while humble Christians of every age are cheered by its heroic tone and magnificent close in their pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem. Rejected by many as unapostolic and uncanonical, and assigned to a mythical Presbyter John, it is now recognized by the severest school of critics as an undoubted production of the historical Apostle John.1255

If so, it challenges for this reason alone our profound reverence. For who was better fitted to be the historian of the past and the seer of the future than the bosom friend of our Lord and Saviour?  Able scholars, rationalistic as well as orthodox, have by thorough and patient investigation discovered or fully confirmed its poetic beauty and grandeur, the consummate art in its plan and execution. They have indeed not been able to clear up all the mysteries of this book, but have strengthened rather than weakened its claim to the position which it has ever occupied in the canon of the New Testament.

It is true, the sceptical critics who so confidently vindicate the apostolic origin of the Apocalypse, derive from this very fact their strongest weapon against the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. But the differences of language and spirit which have been urged are by no means irreconcilable, and are overruled by stronger resemblances in the theology and christology and even in the style of the two books. A proper estimate of John’s character enables us to see that he was not only able, but eminently fitted to write both; especially if we take into consideration the intervening distance of twenty or thirty years, the difference of the subject (prospective prophecy in one, and retrospective history in the other), and the difference of the state of mind, now borne along in ecstacy (ejn preuvmati) from vision to vision and recording what the Spirit dictated, now calmly collecting his reminiscences in full, clear self-consciousness (ejn noi>v).1256

The Time of Composition.

The traditional date of composition at the end of Domitian’s reign (95 or 96) rests on the clear and weighty testimony of Irenaeus, is confirmed by Eusebius and Jerome, and has still its learned defenders,1257 but the internal evidence strongly favors an earlier date between the death of Nero (June 9, 68) and the destruction of Jerusalem (August 10, 70).1258  This helps us at the same time more easily to explain the difference between the fiery energy of the Apocalypse and the calm repose of the fourth Gospel, which was composed in extreme old age. The Apocalypse forms the natural transition from the Synoptic Gospels to the fourth Gospel. The condition of the Seven Churches was indeed different from that which existed a few years before when Paul wrote to the Ephesians; but the movement in the apostolic age was very rapid. Six or seven years intervened to account for the changes. The Epistle to the Hebrews implies a similar spiritual decline among its readers in 63 or 64. Great revivals of religion are very apt to be quickly followed by a reaction of worldliness or indifference.

The arguments for the early date are the following:

1. Jerusalem was still standing, and the seer was directed to measure the Temple and the altar (Rev. 11:1), but the destruction is predicted as approaching. The Gentiles "shall tread (pathvsousin) the holy city under foot forty and two months" (11:2; Comp. Luke 21:24), and the "dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified" (Rev. 11:8). The existence of the twelve tribes seems also to be assumed in 7:4–8. The advocates of the traditional date understand these passages in a figurative sense. But the allusion to the crucifixion compels us to think of the historical Jerusalem.

2. The book was written not long after the death of the fifth Roman emperor, that is, Nero, when the empire had received a deadly wound (comp. 13:3, 12, 14). This is the natural interpretation of 17:10, where it is stated that the seven heads of the scarlet-colored beast, i.e., heathen Rome, "are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come, and when he cometh, he must continue a little while."  The first five emperors were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, with whom the gens Julia ingloriously perished. Next came Galba, a mere usurper (seventy-three years old), who ruled but a short time, from June, 68, to January, 69, and was followed by two other usurpers, Otho and Vitellius, till Vespasian, in 70, restored the empire after an interregnum of two years, and left the completion of the conquest of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem to his son Titus.1259  Vespasian may therefore be regarded as the sixth head, the three rebels not being counted; and thus the composition of the Apocalypse would fall in the spring (perhaps Easter) of the year 70. This is confirmed by 13:3, 12, 14, where the deadly wound of the beast is represented as being already healed.1260  But if the usurpers are counted, Galba is the sixth head, and the Revelation was written in 68. In either case Julius Caesar must be excluded from the series of emperors (contrary to Josephus).

Several critics refer the seventh head to Nero, and ascribe to the seer the silly expectation of the return of Nero as Antichrist.1261  In this way they understand the passage 17:11: "The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth and is of the seven."  But John makes a clear distinction between the heads of the beast, of whom Nero was one, and the beast itself, which is the Roman empire. I consider it simply impossible that John could have shared in the heathen delusion of Nero redivivus, which would deprive him of all credit as an inspired prophet. He may have regarded Nero as a fit type and forerunner of Antichrist, but only in the figurative sense in which Babylon of old was the type of heathen Rome.

3. The early date is best suited for the nature and object of the Apocalypse, and facilitates its historical understanding. Christ pointed in his eschatological discourses to the destruction of Jerusalem and the preceding tribulation as the great crisis in the history of the theocracy and the type of the judgment of the world. And there never was a more alarming state of society. The horrors of the French Revolution were confined to one country, but the tribulation of the six years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem extended over the whole Roman empire and embraced wars and rebellions, frequent and unusual conflagrations, earthquakes and famines and plagues, and all sorts of public calamities and miseries untold. It seemed, indeed, that the world, shaken to its very centre, was coming to a close, and every Christian must have felt that the prophecies of Christ were being fulfilled before his eyes.1262

It was at this unique juncture in the history of mankind that St. John, with the consuming fire in Rome and the infernal spectacle of the Neronian persecution behind him, the terrors of the Jewish war and the Roman interregnum around him, and the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Jewish theocracy before him, received those wonderful visions of the impending conflicts and final triumphs of the Christian church. His was truly a book of the times and for the times, and administered to the persecuted brethren the one but all-sufficient consolation: Maran atha!  Maran atha!

Interpretation.

The different interpretations are reduced by English writers to three systems according as the fulfilment of the prophecy is found in the past, present, or future.1263

1. The Preterist system applies the Revelation to the destruction of Jerusalem and heathen Rome. So among Roman Catholics: Alcasar (1614), Bossuet (1690). Among Protestants: Hugo Grotius (1644), Hammond (1653), Clericus (1698), Wetstein (1752), Abauzit, Herder, Eichhorn, Ewald, Lücke, Bleek, DeWette, Reuss, Renan, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Davidson, Moses Stuart Cowles, Desprez, etc. Some1264 refer it chiefly to the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy, others chiefly to the conflict with the Roman empire, still others to both.

But there is a radical difference between those Preterists who acknowledge a real prophecy and permanent truth in the book, and the rationalistic Preterists who regard it as a dream of a visionary which was falsified by events, inasmuch as Jerusalem, instead of becoming the habitation of saints, remained a heap of ruins, while Rome, after the overthrow of heathenism, became the metropolis of Latin Christendom. This view rests on a literal misunderstanding of Jerusalem.

2. The Continuous (or Historical) system: The Apocalypse is a prophetic compend of church history and covers all Christian centuries to the final consummation. It speaks of things past, present, and future; some of its prophecies are fulfilled, some are now being fulfilled, and others await fulfillment in the yet unknown future. Here belong the great majority of orthodox Protestant commentators and polemics who apply the beast and the mystic Babylon and the mother of harlots drunken with the blood of saints to the church of Rome, either exclusively or chiefly. But they differ widely among themselves in chronology and the application of details. Luther, Bullinger, Collado, Pareus, Brightman, Mede, Robert Fleming, Whiston, Vitringa, Bengel, Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Woodhouse, Elliott, Birks, Gaussen, Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee.

3. The Futurist system: The events of the Apocalypse from Rev. 4 to the close lie beyond the second advent of Christ. This scheme usually adopts a literal interpretation of Israel, the Temple, and the numbers (the 31 times, 42 months, 1260 days, 3 1/2 years). So Ribera (a Jesuit, 1592), Lacunza (another Jesuit, who wrote under the name of Ben-Ezra "On the coming of Messiah in glory and majesty," and taught the premillennial advent, the literal restoration of the ancient Zion, and the future apostasy of the clergy of the Roman church to the camp of Antichrist), S. R. Maitland, De Burgh, Todd, Isaac Williams, W. Kelly.

Another important division of historical interpreters is into Post-Millennarians and Pre-Millennarians, according as the millennium predicted in Rev. 20 is regarded as part or future. Augustin committed the radical error of dating the millennium from the time of the Apocalypse or the beginning of the Christian era (although the seer mentioned it near the end of his book), and his view had great influence; hence the wide expectation of the end of the world at the close of the first millennium of the Christian church. Other post-millennarian interpreters date the millennium from the triumph of Christianity over paganism in Rome at the accession of Constantine the Great (311); still others (as Hengstenberg) from the conversion of the Germanic nations or the age of Charlemagne. All these calculations are refuted by events. The millennium of the Apocalypse must he in the future, and is still an article of hope.

The grammatical and historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, as well as of any other book, is the only safe foundation for all legitimate spiritual and practical application. Much has been done in this direction by the learned commentators of recent times. We must explain it from the standpoint of the author and in view of his surroundings. He wrote out of his time and for his time of things which must shortly come to pass (1:1, 3; 22:20), and he wished to be read and understood by his contemporaries (1:3). Otherwise he would have written in vain, and the solemn warning at the close (22:18, 19) would be unintelligible. In some respects they could understand him better than we; for they were fellow-sufferers of the fiery persecutions and witnesses of the fearful judgments described. Undoubtedly he had in view primarily the overthrow of Jerusalem and heathen Rome, the two great foes of Christianity at that time. He could not possibly ignore that great conflict.

But his vision was not confined to these momentous events. It extends even to the remotest future when death and Hades shall be no more, and a new heaven and a new earth shall appear. And although the fulfilment is predicted as being near at hand, he puts a millennium and a short intervening conflict before the final overthrow of Satan, the beast, and the false prophet. We have an analogy in the prophecy of the Old Testament and the eschatalogical discourses of our Lord, which furnish the key for the understanding of the Apocalypse. He describes the destruction of Jerusalem and the general judgment in close proximity, as if they were one continuous event. He sees the end from the beginning. The first catastrophe is painted with colors borrowed from the last, and the last appears as a repetition of the first on a grand and universal scale. It is the manner of prophetic vision to bring distant events into close proximity, as in a panorama. To God a thousand years are as one day. Every true prophecy, moreover, admits of an expanding fulfilment. History ever repeats itself, though never in the same way. There is nothing old under the sun, and, in another sense, there is nothing new under the sun.

In the historical interpretation of details we must guard against arbitrary and fanciful schemes, and mathematical calculations, which minister to idle curiosity, belittle the book, and create distrust in sober minds. The Apocalypse is not a prophetical manual of church history and chronology in the sense of a prediction of particular persons, dates, and events. This would have made it useless to the first readers, and would make it useless now to the great mass of Christians. It gives under symbolic figures and for popular edification an outline of the general principles of divine government and the leading forces in the conflict between Christ’s kingdom and his foes, which is still going on under ever-varying forms. In this way it teaches, like all the prophetic utterances of the Gospels and Epistles, lessons of warning and encouragement to every age. We must distinguish between the spiritual coming of Christ and his personal arrival or parousia. The former is progressive, the latter instantaneous. The coming began with his ascension to heaven (comp. Matt. 26:64: "Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven") and goes on in unbroken succession of judgments and blessings (for "the history of the world is a judgment of the world"); hence the alternation of action and repose, of scenes of terror and scenes of joy, of battles and victories. The arrival of the Bridegroom is still in the unknown future, and may be accelerated or delayed by the free action of the church, but it is as certain as the first advent of Christ. The hope of the church will not be disappointed, for it rests on the promise of Him who is called "the Amen, the faithful and true witness" (Rev. 3:14).

Notes.

The Number 666.

The historical understanding of the Apocalypse turns, according to its own statement, chiefly on the solution of the numerical riddle in the thirteenth chapter, which has tried the wits of commentators from the time of Irenaeus in the second century to the present day, and is still under dispute. The history of its solution is a history of the interpretation of the whole book. Hence I present here a summary of the most important views. First some preliminary remarks.

1. The text, Apoc. 13:18: "Here is wisdom: he that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man (ajriqmo;" ga;r ajnqrwvpou ejstivn), and the number is six hundred and sixty-six " cx"j or eJxakovsioi eJxhvkonta e}x ).

This is the correct reading in the Greek text (supported by Codd. a, A, B (2), P (2), Origen, Primasius, and Versions), and is adopted by the best editors. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. v. 30, quoted also in full by Tischendorf in his edition VIII. critica major) found it "in all the most approved and ancient copies" (ejn pa'si toi'" spoudaivoi" kai; ajrcaivoi" ajntigravfoi"), and "attested by those who had themselves seen John face to face."  There was, however, in his day, a very remarkable variation, sustained by Cod. C, and "some" copies, known to, but not approved by, Irenaeus, namely, 616. (ci"j, i.e., eJxakovsioi devka e}x)  In the Anglo-American revision this reading is noted in the margin.

2. "The number of a man" may mean either the number of an individual, or of a corporate person, or a human number (Menschenzahl), i.e., a number according to ordinary human reckoning (so Bleek, who compares mevtron ajnqrwvpou, , "the measure of a man," Rev. 21:17, and Isa. 8:1). Just because the number may be counted in the customary way, the writer could expect the reader to find it out. He made the solution difficult indeed, but not impossible. Dr. Lee (p. 687) deems it not inconsistent with a proper view of inspiration that John himself did not know the meaning of the number. But how could he then ask his less knowing readers to count the number?

3. The mystic use of numbers (the rabbinical Ghematria, gewmetriva) was familiar to the Jews in Babylon, and passed from them to the Greeks in Asia. It occurs in the Cabbala, in the Sibylline Books (I. 324–331), in the Epistle of Barnabas, and was very common also among the Gnostic sects (e g., the Abrasax or Abraxas, which signified the unbegotten Father, and the three hundred and sixty-five heavens, corresponding to the number of days in the year).1265  It arose from the employment of the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets for the designation of numbers. The Hebrew Aleph counts 1, Beth 2, etc., Yodh 10; but Kaph (the eleventh letter) counts 20, Resh (the twentieth letter) 200, etc. The Greek letters, with the addition of an acute accent (as a’, b’), have the same numerical value in their order down to Sigma, which counts 200; except that "’ (st) is used for 6, and F’ (an antiquated letter Koppa between p and r) for 90. The Hebrew alphabet ends with Tau  = 400, the Greek with Omega = 800. To express thousands an accent is put beneath the letter, as,a, = 1,000; ,b, = 2,000; ,i, = 10,000.

4. On this fact most interpretations of the Apocalyptic puzzle are based. It is urged by Bleek, DeWette, Wieseler, and others, that the number 666 must be deciphered from the Greek alphabet, since the book was written in Greek and for Greek readers, and uses the Greek letters Alpha and Omega repeatedly as a designation of Christ, the Beginning and the End (1:8; 21:6; 22:13). On the other hand, Ewald and Renan, and all who favor the Nero-hypothesis, appeal against this argument to the strongly Hebraistic spirit and coloring of the Apocalypse and the familiarity of its Jewish Christian readers with the Hebrew alphabet. The writer, moreover, may have preferred this for the purpose of partial concealment; just as he substituted Babylon for Rome (comp. 1 Pet. 5:13). But after all, the former view is much more natural. John wrote to churches of Asia Minor, chiefly gathered from Gentile converts who knew no Hebrew. Had he addressed Christians in Palestine, the case might be different.

5. The number 666 (three sixes) must, in itself, be a significant number, if we keep in view the symbolism of numbers which runs through the whole Apocalypse. It is remarkable that the numerical value of the name Jesus is 888 (three eights), and exceeds the trinity of the sacred number (777) as much as the number of the beast falls below it.1266

6. The "beast" coming out of the sea and having seven heads and ten horns (Rev. 13:1–10) is the anti-Christian world-power at war with the church of Christ. It is, as in Daniel, an apt image of the brutal nature of the pagan state. It is, when in conflict with the church, the secular or political Antichrist; while "the false prophet," who works signs and deceives the worshippers of the beast (16:13; 19:20; 20:10), is the intellectual and spiritual Antichrist, in close alliance with the former, his high-priest and minister of cultus, so to say, and represents the idolatrous religion which animates and supports the secular imperialism. In wider application, the false prophet may be taken as the personification of all false doctrine and heresy by which the world is led astray. For as there are "many Antichrists," so there are also many false prophets. The name "Antichrist," however, never occurs in the Apocalypse, but only in the Epistles of John (five times), and there in the plural, in the sense of "false prophets" or heretical teachers, who deny that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John 4:1–3). Paul designates the Antichrist as, "the man of sin," the son of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God" (2 Thess. 2:3, 4). But he seems to look upon the Roman empire as a restraining power which, for a time at least, prevented the full outbreak of the "mystery of lawlessness," then already at work (2:6–8). He thus wrote a year or two before the accession of Nero, and sixteen years or more before the composition of the Apocalypse.

The beast must refer to heathen Rome and the seven heads to seven emperors. This is evident from the allusion to the "seven mountains," that is, the seven-hilled city (urbs septicollis) on which the woman sits, 17:9. But not a few commentators give it a wider meaning, and understand by the heads as many world-monarchies, including those of Daniel, before Christ, and extending to the last times. So Auberlen, Ganssen, Hengstenberg, Von Hofmann, Godet, and many English divines.

7. The numerous interpretations of the mystic number of the beast may be reduced to three classes:

(a) The figures 666 represent the letters composing the name of a historical power, or of a single man, in conflict with Christ and his church. Here belong the explanations: Latinus, Caesar-Augustus, Nero, and other Roman emperors down to Diocletian. Even such names as Julian the Apostate, Genseric, Mohammed (Maometis), Luther (Martinus Lauterus), Joannes Calvinus, Beza Antitheos, Louis XIV., Napoleon Bonaparte, the Duke of Reichstadt (called "King of Rome"), Napoleon III., have been discovered in the three sixes by a strange kind of imposition.1267

(b) The number is chronological, and designates the duration of the life of the beast, whether it be heathenism, or Mohammedanism, or popery.

(c) The number is symbolical of Antichrist and the anti-Christian power.

We now proceed to the principal interpretations.

Latinus or the Roman Empire.

Lateinos (Latei'no" for lati'no", Latinus), i.e., the Latin or Roman empire. This is the numerical value of 666 in Greek: l = 30 +a = 1 + t = 300 + e = 5 + i = 10 + n = 50 + o = 70 + s = 200 = total 666. The Greek form Latei'no" is no valid objection; for ei often represents the Latin long i, as in  jAntonei'no",  Paulei'no",   Papei'ro" Sabei'no", Faustei'o".  J. E. Clarke shows that hJ Latinh; basileiva, "the Latin empire," likewise gives the number 666.1268

This interpretation is the oldest we know of, and is already mentioned by Irenaeus, the first among the Fathers who investigated the problem, and who, as a pupil of Polycarp in Smyrna (d. 155), the personal friend of John, deserves special consideration as a witness of traditions from the school of the beloved disciple. He mentions three interpretations, all based on the Greek alphabet, namely Eujanqa" (which is of no account), Lateino" (which he deems possible), and Teitan, i.e., Titus (which he, upon the whole, prefers), but he abstains from a positive decision, for the reason that the Holy Scripture does not clearly proclaim the name of the beast or Antichrist.1269

The interpretation Latinus is the only sensible one among the three, and adopted by Hippolytus, Bellarmin, Eichhorn, Bleek, DeWette, Ebrard, Düsterdieck, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee, and others.

Latinus was the name of a king of Latium, but not of any Roman emperor. Hence it must here be taken in a generic sense, and applied to the whole heathen Roman empire.

Here the Roman Catholic divines stop.1270  But many Protestant commentators apply it also, in a secondary sense, to the Latin or papal church as far as it repeated in its persecuting spirit the sins of heathen Rome. The second beast which is described, Rev. 13:11–17, as coming out of the earth, and having two horns like unto a lamb, and speaking as a dragon, and exercising all the authority of the first beast in his sight, is referred to the papacy. The false prophet receives a similar application. So Luther, Vitringa, Bengel, Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, and many English divines.

Dean Alford advocates this double application in his Commentary. "This name," he says, "describes the common character of the rulers of the former Pagan Roman Empire—’Latini sunt qui nunc regnant,’ Iren.: and, which Irenaeus could not foresee, unites under itself the character of the later Papal Roman Empire also, as revived and kept up by the agency of its false prophet, the priesthood. The Latin Empire, the Latin Church, Latin Christianity, have ever been its commonly current appellations: its language, civil and ecclesiastical, has ever been Latin: its public services, in defiance of the most obvious requisite for public worship, have ever been throughout the world conducted in Latin; there is no one word which could so completely describe its character, and at the same time unite the ancient and modern attributes of the two beasts, as this. Short of saying absolutely that this was the word in St. John’s mind, I have the strongest persuasion that no other can be found approaching so near to a complete solution."  Bishop Wordsworth gives the same anti-papal interpretation to the beast, and indulges in a variety of pious and farfetched fancies. See his Com. on 13:18, and his special work on the Apocalypse.

Nero.

The Apocalypse is a Christian counterblast against the Neronian persecution, and Nero is represented as the beast of the abyss who will return as Antichrist. The number 666 signifies the very name of this imperial monster in Hebrew letters, rs'qi @woonoe , Neron Kaesar, as follows: n (n) = 50, r  (r) = 200, /  (o) = 6, @ (n) = 50, q  (k) = 100,  s (s) = 60, r  (r) = 200; in all 666. The Neronian coins of Asia bear the inscription: Nerwn Kai'sar. But the omission of the iy (which would add 10 to 666) from rsyq  = Kai'sar, has been explained by Ewald (Johanneische Schriften, II. 263) from the Syriac in which it is omitted, and this view is confirmed by the testimony of inscriptions of Palmyra from the third century; see Renan (L’Antechrist, p. 415).

The coincidence, therefore, must be admitted, and is at any rate most remarkable, since Nero was the first, as well as the most wicked, of all imperial persecutors of Christianity, and eminently worthy of being characterized as the beast from the abyss, and being regarded as the type and forerunner of Antichrist.

This interpretation, moreover, has the advantage of giving the number of a man or a particular person (which is not the case with Lateinos), and affords a satisfactory explanation of the varians lectio 616; for this number precisely corresponds to the Latin form, Nero Caesar, and was probably substituted by a Latin copyist, who in his calculation dropped the final Nun (= 50), from Neron (666 less 50=616).

The series of Roman emperors (excluding Julius Caesar), according to this explanation, is counted thus: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba. This makes Nero (who died June 9, 68) the fifth, and Galba the sixth, and seems to fit precisely the passage 17:10: "Five [of the seven heads of the beast] are fallen, the one [Galba] is, the other [the seventh] is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a little while."  This leads to the conclusion that the Apocalypse was written during the short reign of Galba, between June 9, 68, and January 15, 69. It is further inferred from 17:11 ("the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition"), that, in the opinion of the seer and in agreement with a popular rumor, Nero, one of the seven emperors, would return as the eighth in the character of Antichrist, but shortly perish.

This plausible solution of the enigma was almost simultaneously and independently discovered, between 1831 and 1837, by several German scholars, each claiming the credit of originality, viz.: C. F. A. Fritzsche (in the "Annalen der gesammten Theol. Liter.," I. 3, Leipzig, 1831); F. Benary (in the "Zeitschrift für specul. Theol.," Berlin, 1836); F. Hitzig (in Ostern und Pfingsten, Heidelb., 1837); E. Reuss (in the "Hallesche Allg. Lit.-Zeitung" for Sept., 1837); and Ewald, who claims to have made the discovery before 1831, but did not publish it till 1862. It has been adopted by Baur, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Hausrath, Krenkel, Gebhardt, Renan, Aubé, Réville, Sabatier, Sam. Davidson (I. 291); and among American commentators by Stuart and Cowles. It is just now the most popular interpretation, and regarded by its champions as absolutely conclusive.

But, as already stated in the text, there are serious objections to the Nero-hypothesis:

(1) The language and readers of the Apocalypse suggest a Greek rather than a Hebrew explanation of the numerical riddle.

(2) The seer clearly distinguishes the beast, as a collective name for the Roman empire (so used also by Daniel), from the seven heads, i.e., kings (basilei'") or emperors. Nero is one of the five heads who ruled before the date of the Apocalypse. He was "slain" (committed suicide), and the empire fell into anarchy for two years, until Vespasian restored it, and so the death-stroke was healed (Rev. 13:3). The three emperors between Nero and Vespasian (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius) were usurpers, and represent an interregnum and the deadly wound of the beast. This at least is a more worthy interpretation and consistent with the actual facts.

It should be noticed, however, that Josephus, Ant. XVIIII. 2, 2; 6, 10, very distinctly includes Julius Caesar among the emperors, and calls Augustus the second, Tiberius the third, Caius Caligula the fourth Roman emperor. Suetonius begins his Lives of the Twelve Caesars with Julius and ends with Domitian, including the lives of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. This fact tends at all events to weaken the foundation of the Nero-hypothesis.

(3) It is difficult to conceive of a reasonable motive for concealing the detested name of Nero after his death. For this reason Cowles makes Nero the sixth emperor (by beginning the series with Julius Caesar) and assigns the composition to his persecuting reign. But this does not explain the wound of the beast and the statement that "it was and is not."

(4) A radical error, such as the belief in the absurd heathen fable of the return of Nero, is altogether incompatible with the lofty character and profound wisdom of the Apocalypse, and would destroy all confidence in its prophecy. If John, as these writers maintain, composed it in 68, he lived long enough to be undeceived, and would have corrected the fatal blunder or withheld the book from circulation.

(5) It seems incredible that such an easy solution of the problem should have remained unknown for eighteen centuries and been reserved for the wits of half a dozen rival rationalists in Germany. Truth is truth, and must be thankfully accepted from any quarter and at any time; yet as the Apocalypse was written for the benefit of contemporaries of Nero, one should think that such a solution would not altogether have escaped them. Irenaeus makes no mention of it.

The Emperor of Rome.

Caesar Romae, from . m/r rsyq. So Ewald formerly (in his first commentary, published in 1828). But this gives the number 616, which is rejected by the best critics in favor of 666. In his later work, Ewald adopts the Nero-hypothesis (Die Johanneischen Schriften, Bd. II., 1862, p. 202 sq.).

Caligula.

From Gavio" Kai'sar. But this counts likewise 616.

Titus.

The Greek Tei'tan. Irenaeus considers this the most probable interpretation, because the word is composed of six letters, and belongs to a royal tyrant. If we omit the final n (n), we get the other reading (616). The objection is that Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem, was one of the best emperors, and not a persecutor of Christians.

Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.

Wetstein refers the letters to Titus Flavius Vespasianus, father and sons (Titus and Domitian). He thinks that John used both numbers, 616 in the first, 666 in the second edition of his book.  "Eleganter" he says in his notes, et apposite Joannes Titum Flavium Vespasianum patrem et filios hoc nomine designat ... Convenit secundo nomen. Teitavn praenomini ipsorum Titus. Res ipsa etiam convenit. Titanes fuerunt qeomavcoi, tales etiam Vespasiani."  Nov. Test., II., p. 806; comp. his critical note on p. 805.

Diocletian.

Diocletian, Emperor, in Roman characters, Diocles Augustus, counting only some of the letters, namely: DIo CLes aVg Vst Vs.1271  Diocletian was the last of the persecuting emperors (d. 313). So Bossuet. To his worthless guess the Huguenots opposed the name of the "grand monarch" and persecutor of Protestants, Louis XIV., which yields the same result (LVDo VICVs).

The Roman Emperors from Augustus To Vespasian.

Märcker (in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1868, p. 699) has found out that the initial letters of the first ten Roman emperors from Octavianus (Augustus) to Titus, including the three usurpers Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, yield the numerical value of 666. Düsterdieck (p. 467) calls this "eine frappante Spielerei."

Caesar Augustus.

Kaisarsebaston (for-", suited to the neuter qhrivon), i.e., the "Caesar Augustan" beast.1272 The official designation of the Roman emperors was Kaivsar Sebastov" (Caesar Augustus), in which their blasphemous apotheosis culminates. In support of it may be quoted "the names of blasphemy on the heads of the beast," Rev. 13:1.

This is the conjecture proposed by Dr. Wieseler in his book: Zur Geschichte der Neutest. Schrift und des Urchristenthums, 1880, p. 169. It is certainly ingenious and more consistent with the character of the Apocalypse than the Nero-hypothesis. It substantially agrees with the interpretation Lateinos. But the substitution of a final n for " is an objection, though not more serious than the omission of the yodh from qyrs The

Chronological Solutions.—The Duration of Antichrist.

The number 666 signifies the duration of the beast or antichristian world power, and the false prophet associated with the beast.

(1) The duration of Heathenism. But heathen Rome, which persecuted the church, was Christianized after the conversion of Constantine, A.D. 311. The other forms and subsequent history of heathenism lie outside of the apocalyptic vision.

(2) Mohammedanism. Pope Innocent III., when rousing Western Europe to a new crusade, declared the Saracens to be the beast, and Mohammed the false prophet whose power would last six hundred and sixty-six years. See his bull of 1213, in which he summoned the fourth Lateran Council, in Hardouin, Conc., Tom. VII. 3. But six hundred and sixty-six years have passed since the Hegira (622), and even since the fourth Lateran Council (1215); yet Islam still sits on the throne in Constantinople, and rules over one hundred and sixty million of consciences.

(3). The anti-Christian Papacy. This interpretation was suggested by mediaeval sects hostile to Rome, and was matured by orthodox Protestant divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the fresh impression of the fearful persecutions which were directly instigated or approved by the papacy, and which surpass in cruelty and extent the persecutions of heathen Rome. It is asserted that the terrible Duke of Alva alone put more Protestants to death in the Netherlands within a few years than all the heathen emperors from Nero to Diocletian; and that the victims of the Spanish Inquisition (105,000 persons in eighteen years under Torquemada’s administration) outnumber the ancient martyrs. It became almost a Protestant article of faith that the mystical Babylon, the mother of harlots, riding on the beast, the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Apoc. 17:5 sqq.), is none other than the pseudo-Christian and anti-Christian church of Rome, and this view is still widely prevalent, especially in Great Britain and North America.

Luther struck the key-note of this anti-popery exegesis. He had at first a very low opinion of the Apocalypse, and would not recognize it as apostolic or prophetic (1522), but afterward he utilized for polemic purposes (in a preface to his edition of the N. T. of 1530). He dated the one thousand years (Rev. 20:7) with Augustin from the composition of the book, and the six hundred and sixty-six years from Gregory VII., as the supposed founder of the papacy, and understood Gog and Magog to mean the unspeakable Turks and the Jews. As Gregory VII. was elected pope 1073, the anti-Christian era ought to have come to an end A.D. 1739; but that year passed off without any change in the history of the papacy.

Luther was followed by Chytraeus (1563), Selnecker (1567), Hoe v. Honegg (1610 and 1640), and other Lutheran commentators. Calvin and Beza wisely abstained from prophetic exposition, but other Reformed divines carried out the anti-popery scheme with much learning, as Bibliander (1549 and 1559), Bullinger (1557), David Pareus (1618), Joseph Mede (the founder of the ingenious system of synchronism, in his Clavis Apocalyptica, 1627), Coccejus (1696), Vitringa (a very learned and useful commentator, 1705, 3d ed. 1721), and Joh. Albrecht Bengel (in his Gnomon, his Ordo Temporum, 1741, and especially his Erklärte Offenbarung Johannis, 1740, new ed. 1834). This truly great and good man elaborated a learned scheme of chronological interpretation, and fixed the end of the anti-Christian (papal) reign at the year 1836, and many pious people among his admirers in Würtemburg were in anxious expectation of the millennium during that year. But it passed away without any serious change, and this failure, according to Bengel’s own correct prediction, indicates a serious error in his scheme. Later writers have again and again predicted the fall of the papacy and the beginning of the millennium, advancing the date as times progress; but the years 1848 and 1870 have passed away, and the Pope still lives, enjoying a green old age, with the additional honor of infallibility, which the Fathers never heard of, which even St. Peter never claimed, and St. Paul effectually disputed at Antioch. All mathematical calculations about the second advent are doomed to disappointment, and those who want to know more than our blessed Lord knew in the days of his flesh deserve to be disappointed. "It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his own authority" (Acts 1:7). This settles the question.

Mystical and Symbolical Interpretations.

The number is neither alphabetical nor chronological, but the mystical or symbolical name of Antichrist, who is yet to come. Here we meet again with different views.

Primasius, the African commentator of the Apocalypse (a pupil of Augustin), mentions two names as giving the general characteristics of Antichrist: jAntemo" and ajrnoume, the former honori contrarius the other from ajrnevomai, to deny, by which the Antichrist is justly described, "utpote per duas partes orationis, nominis scilicet et verbi, et personae qualitas et operis insinuatur asperitas."  Utterly worthless. See Lücke, p. 997. Züllig finds in the figure the name of Bileam. Not much better is Hengstenberg’s explanation: Adonikam, i.e., "The Lord arises," a good name for Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:4)!  He bases it on Ezra 2:13: "The children of Adonikam, six hundred and sixty-six."  Ezra gives a list of the children of Israel who returned from the captivity under Zerubbabel. What this has to do with Antichrist is difficult to see.

Von Hofmann and Füller think that the number implies the personal name of Antichrist.

Another view is this: the number is symbolical, like all other numbers in the Apocalypse, and signifies the anti-Christian world-power in all its successive forms from heathen Rome down to the end. Hence it admits of many applications, as there are "many Antichrists."  The number six is the number of human work and toil (six days of the week), as seven is the number of divine rest. Or, six is the half of twelve—the number of the church—and indicates the divided condition of the temporal power. Three sixes signify worldliness (worldly glory, worldly wisdom, worldly civilization) at the height of power, which with all vaunted strength is but weakness and folly, and falls short of the divine perfection symbolized by the numbers seven and twelve. Such or similar views were suggested by Herder, Auberlen, Rösch, Hengstenberg, Burger, Maurice, Wordsworth, Vaughan, Carpenter, etc.

The Messiah of Satan.

To the class of mystical interpretation belongs the recent view of Professor Godet, of Neuchatel, which deserves special mention. This eminent commentator sees in 666 the emblematic name of The Messiah of Satan in opposition to the divine Messiah. The number was originally represented by the three letters cx"’. The first and the last letters are an abridgment of the name of Christ, and have the value of 606 (x = 600 + "= 6); the middle x is, in virtue of its form and of the sibilant sound, the emblem of Satan, and as a cipher has the value of 60. Satan is called in the Apocalypse the old serpent in allusion to the history of the temptation (Gen. 3). This explanation was first suggested by Heumann and Herder, and is made by Godet the basis of an original theory, namely, that Antichrist or the man of sin will be a Jew who will set up a carnal Israel in opposition to the true Messiah, and worship the prince of this world in order to gain universal empire.1273 Corruptio optimi pessima. Renan says: "Nothing can equal in wickedness the wickedness of Jews: at the same time the best of men have been Jews; you may say of this race whatever good or evil you please, without danger of overstepping the truth."  In blasphemy, as well as in adoration, the Jew is the foremost of mankind. Only an apostate can blaspheme with all his heart. Our Gentile Voltaires are but lambs as compared with Jews in reviling Christ and his church. None but Israel could give birth to Judas, none but apostate Israel can give birth to Antichrist. Israel answers precisely to the description of the apocalyptic beast, which was and is not and shall be (Rev. 17:11), which was wounded to death, and is to be miraculously healed, in order to play, as the eighth head, the part of Antichrist. Godet refers to the rising power of the Jews in wealth, politics, and literature, and especially their command of the anti-Christian press in Christian countries, as indications of the approach of the fulfilment of this prophecy.

Godet holds to the late date of the Apocalypse under Domitian, and rejects the application of the seven heads of the beast to Roman emperors. He applies them, like Auberlen, Hengstenberg, and others, to as many empires, before and after Christ, but brings in, as a new feature, the Herodian dynasty, which was subject to the Roman power.

According to his view, the first head is ancient Egypt trying to destroy Israel in its cradle; the second is the Assyro-Babylonian empire which destroyed the kingdom of the ten tribes, and then Jerusalem; the third is the Persian empire, which held restored Israel under its authority; the fourth is the Greek monarchy under Antiochus Epiphanes (the little horn of Daniel 8, the Antichrist of the Old Testament), who attempted to suppress the worship of God in Israel, and to substitute that of Zeus; the fifth is the Jewish state under the Herods and the pontificates of Annas and Caiaphas, who crucified the Saviour and then tried to destroy his church; the sixth is the Roman empire, which is supposed to embrace all political power in Europe to this day; the seventh head is that power of short duration which shall destroy the whole political system of Europe, and prepare it for the arrival of Antichrist from the bosom of infidel Judaism. In this way Godet harmonizes the Apocalypse with the teaching of Paul concerning the restraining effect of the Roman empire, which will be overthrown in order to give way to the full sway of Antichrist. The eighth head is Israel restored, with a carnal Messiah at its head, who will preach the worship of humanity and overthrow Rome, the old enemy of the Jews (Apoc. 18), but be overthrown in turn by Christ (Rev. 19 and 2 Thess. 2:8). Then follows the millennium, the sabbath of humanity on earth after its long week of work, not necessarily a visible reign of Christ, but a reign by his Spirit. At the end of this period, Satan, who as yet is only bound, shall try once more to destroy the work of God, but shall only prepare his final defeat, and give the signal for the universal judgment (Rev. 20). The terrestrial state founded on the day of creation now gives place to the now heavens and the new earth (Rev. 21), in which God shall be all in all. Anticipating the sight of this admirable spectacle, John prostrates himself and invites all the faithful to cry with the Spirit and the spouse, "Lord, come—come soon" (Rev. 22). What a vast drama!  What a magnificent conclusion to the Scriptures opening with Genesis!  The first creation made man free; the second shall make him holy, and then the work of God is accomplished.

Conclusion.

A very ingenious interpretation, with much valuable truth, but not the last word yet on this mysterious book, and very doubtful in its solution of the numerical riddle. The primary meaning of the beast, as already remarked, is heathen Rome, as represented by that monster tyrant and persecutor, Nero, the very incarnation of satanic wickedness. The oldest interpretation (Lateinos), known already to a grand-pupil of St. John, is also the best, and it is all the more plausible because the other interpretations which give us the alphabetical value of 666, namely, Nero and Caesar Augustus, likewise point to the same Roman power which kept up a bloody crusade of three hundred years against Christianity. But the political beast, and its intellectual ally, the false prophet, appear again and again in history, and make war upon the church and the truth of Christ, within and without the circle of the old Roman empire. Many more wonders of exegetical ability and historical learning will yet be performed before the mysteries of Revelation are solved, if they ever will be solved before the final fulfilment. In the meantime, the book will continue to accomplish its practical mission of comfort and encouragement to every Christian in the conflict of faith for the crown of life.

§ 102. Concluding Reflections. Faith and Criticism.

There is no necessary conflict between faith and criticism any more than between revelation and reason or between faith and philosophy. God is the author of both, and he cannot contradict himself. There is an uncritical faith and a faithless criticism as there is a genuine philosophy and a philosophy falsely so called; but this is no argument either against faith or criticism; for the best gifts are liable to abuse and perversion; and the noblest works of art may be caricatured. The apostle of faith directs us to "prove all things," and to "hold fast that which is good."  We believe in order to understand, and true faith is the mother of knowledge. A rational faith in Christianity, as the best and final religion which God gave to mankind, owes it to itself to examine the foundation on which it rests; and it is urged by an irresistible impulse to vindicate the truth against every form of error. Christianity needs no apology. Conscious of its supernatural strength, it can boldly meet every foe and convert him into an ally.

Looking back upon the history of the apostolic age, it appears to us as a vast battle-field of opposite tendencies and schools. Every inch of ground is disputed and has to be reconquered; every fact, as well as every doctrine of revelation, is called in question; every hypothesis is tried; all the resources of learning, acumen, and ingenuity are arrayed against the citadel of the Christian faith. The citadel is impregnable, and victory is certain, but not to those who ignorantly or superciliously underrate the strength of the besieging army. In the sixteenth century the contest was between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism; in the nineteenth century the question is Christianity or infidelity. Then both parties believed in the inspiration of the New Testament and the extent of the canon, differing only in the interpretation; now inspiration is denied, and the apostolicity of all but four or five books is assailed. Then the Word of God, with or without tradition, was the final arbiter of religious controversies; now human reason is the ultimate tribunal.

We live in an age of discovery, invention, research, and doubt. Scepticism is well nigh omnipresent in the thinking world. It impregnates the atmosphere. We can no more ignore it than the ancient Fathers could ignore the Gnostic speculations of their day. Nothing is taken for granted; nothing believed on mere authority; everything must be supported by adequate proof, everything explained in its natural growth from the seed to the fruit. Roman Catholics believe in an infallible oracle in the Vatican; but whatever the oracle may decree, the earth moves and will continue to move around the sun. Protestants, having safely crossed the Red Sea, cannot go back to the flesh-pots of the land of bondage, but must look forward to the land of promise. In the night, says a proverb, all cattle are black, but the daylight reveals the different colors.

Why did Christ not write the New Testament, as Mohammed wrote the Koran?  Writing was not beneath his dignity; he did write once in the sand, though we know not what. God himself wrote the Ten Commandments on two tables of stone. But Moses broke them to pieces when he saw that the people of Israel worshipped the golden calf before the thunders from Sinai had ceased to reverberate in their ears. They might have turned those tables into idols. God buried the great law-giver out of sight and out of the reach of idolatry. The gospel was still less intended to be a dumb idol than the law. It is not a killing letter but a life-giving spirit. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words of Christ "are spirit and are life."  A book written by his own unerring hand, unless protected by a perpetual miracle, would have been subject to the same changes and corruptions in the hands of fallible transcribers and printers as the books of his disciples, and the original autograph would have perished with the brittle papyrus. Nor would it have escaped the unmerciful assaults of sceptical and infidel critics, and misinterpretations of commentators and preachers. He himself was crucified by the hierarchy of his own people, whom he came to save. What better fate could have awaited his book?  Of course, it would have risen from the dead, in spite of the doubts and conjectures and falsehoods of unbelieving men; but the same is true of the writings of the apostles, though thousands of copies have been burned by heathens and false Christians. Thomas might put his hand into the wound-prints of his risen Lord; but "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed."

We must believe in the Holy Spirit who lives and moves in the Church and is the invisible power behind the written and printed word.

The form in which the authentic records of Christianity have come down to us, with their variations and difficulties, is a constant stimulus to study and research and calls into exercise all the intellectual and moral faculties of men. Every one must strive after the best understanding of the truth with a faithful use of his opportunities and privileges, which are multiplying with every generation.

The New Testament is a revelation of spiritual and eternal truth to faith, and faith is the work of the Holy Spirit, though rooted in the deepest wants and aspirations of man. It has to fight its way through an unbelieving world, and the conflict waxes hotter and hotter as the victory comes nearer. For the last half century the apostolic writings have been passing through the purgatory of the most scorching criticism to which a book can be subjected. The opposition is itself a powerful testimony to their vitality and importance.

There are two kinds of scepticism: one represented by Thomas, honest, earnest, seeking and at last finding the truth; the other represented by Sadducees and Pontius Pilate, superficial, worldly, frivolous, indifferent to truth and ending in despair. With the latter "even the gods reason in vain."  When it takes the trouble to assail the Bible, it deals in sneers and ridicule which admit of no serious answer. The roots of infidelity he in the heart and will rather than in the reason and intellect, and wilful opposition to the truth is deaf to any argument. But honest, truth-loving scepticism always deserves regard and sympathy and demands a patient investigation of the real or imaginary difficulties which are involved in the problem of the origin of Christianity. It may be more useful to the church than an unthinking and unreasoning orthodoxy. One of the ablest and purest sceptical critics of the century (DeWette) made the sad, but honorable confession:

"I lived in times of doubt and strife,

When childlike faith was forced to yield;

I struggled to the end of life,

Alas! I did not gain the field."

But he did gain the field, after all, at last; for a few months before his death he wrote and published this significant sentence: "I know that in no other name can salvation be found, than in the name of Jesus Christ the Crucified, and there is nothing higher for mankind than the divine humanity (Gottmenschheit) realized in him, and the kingdom of God planted by him."  Blessed are those that seek the truth, for they shall find it.

The critical and historical rationalism which was born and matured in this century in the land of Luther, and has spread in Switzerland, France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America, surpasses in depth and breadth of learning, as well as in earnestness of spirit, all older forms of infidelity and heresy. It is not superficial and frivolous, as the rationalism of the eighteenth century; it is not indifferent to truth, but intensely interested in ascertaining the real facts, and tracing the origin and development of Christianity, as a great historical phenomenon. But it arrogantly claims to be the criticism par excellence, as the Gnosticism of the ancient church pretended to have the monopoly of knowledge. There is a historical, conservative, and constructive criticism, as well as an unhistorical, radical, and destructive criticism; and the former must win the fight as sure as God’s truth will outlast all error. So there is a believing and Christian Gnosticism as well as an unbelieving and anti- (or pseudo-) Christian Gnosticism.

The negative criticism of the present generation has concentrated its forces upon the life of Christ and the apostolic age, and spent an astonishing amount of patient research upon the minutest details of its history. And its labors have not been in vain; on the contrary, it has done a vast amount of good, as well as evil. Its strength lies in the investigation of the human and literary aspect of the Bible; its weakness in the ignoring of its divine and spiritual character. It forms thus the very antipode of the older orthodoxy, which so overstrained the theory of inspiration as to reduce the human agency to the mechanism of the pen. We must look at both aspects. The Bible is the Word of God and the word of holy men of old. It is a revelation of man, as well as of God. It reveals man in all his phases of development—innocence, fall, redemption—in all the varieties of character, from heavenly purity to satanic wickedness, with all his virtues and vices, in all his states of experience, and is an ever-flowing spring of inspiration to the poet, the artist, the historian, and divine. It reflects and perpetuates the mystery of the incarnation. It is the word of him who proclaimed himself the Son of Man, as well as the Son of God. "Men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit."  Here all is divine and all is human.

No doubt the New Testament is the result of a gradual growth and conflict of different forces, which were included in the original idea of Christianity and were drawn out as it passed from Christ to his disciples, from the Jews to the Gentiles, from Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome, and as it matured in the mind of the leading apostles. No doubt the Gospels and Epistles were written by certain men, at a certain time, in a certain place, under certain surroundings, and for definite ends; and all these questions are legitimate objects of inquiry and eminently deserving of ever-renewed investigation. Many obscure points have been cleared up, thanks, in part, to these very critics, who intended to destroy, and helped to build up.

The literary history of the apostolic age, like its missionary progress, was guided by a special providence. Christ only finished a part of his work while on earth. He pointed his disciples to greater works, which they would accomplish in his name and by his power, after his resurrection. He promised them his unbroken presence, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, who, as the other Advocate, should lead them into the whole truth and open to them the understanding of all his words. The Acts of the Apostles are a history of the Holy Spirit, or of the post-resurrection work of Christ in establishing his kingdom on earth. Filled with that Spirit, the apostles and evangelists went forth into a hostile world and converted it to Christ by their living word, and they continue their conquering march by their written word.

Unbelieving criticism sees only the outside surface of the greatest movement in history, and is blind to the spiritual forces working from within or refuses to acknowledge them as truly divine. In like manner, the materialistic and atheistic scientists of the age conceive of nature’s laws without a lawgiver; of a creature without a creator; and stop with the effect, without rising to the cause, which alone affords a rational explanation of the effect.

And here we touch upon the deepest spring of all forms of rationalism, and upon the gulf which inseparably divides it from supernaturalism. It is the opposition to the supernatural and the miraculous. It denies God in nature and God in history, and, in its ultimate consequences, it denies the very existence of God. Deism and atheism have no place for a miracle; but belief in the existence of an Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible, as the ultimate and all-sufficient cause of all phenomena in nature and in history, implies the possibility of miracle at any time; not, indeed, as a violation of his own laws, but as a manifestation of his law-giving and creative power over and above (not against) the regular order of events. The reality of the miracle, in any particular case, then, becomes a matter of historical investigation. It cannot be disposed of by a simple denial from à priori philosophical prejudice; but must be fairly examined, and, if sufficiently corroborated by external and internal evidence, it must be admitted.

Now, the miracles of Christ cannot be separated from his person and his teachings. His words are as marvellous as his deeds; both form a harmonious whole, and they stand or fall together. His person is the great miracle, and his miracles are simply his natural works. He is as much elevated above other men as his words and deeds are above ordinary words and deeds. He is separated from all mortals by his absolute freedom from sin. He, himself, claims superhuman origin and supernatural powers; and to deny them is to make him a liar and impostor. It is impossible to maintain his human perfection, which all respectable rationalists admit and even emphasize, and yet to refuse his testimony concerning himself. The Christ of Strauss and of Renan is the most contradictory of all characters; the most incredible of all enigmas. There is no possible scientific mediation between a purely humanitarian conception of Christ, no matter how high he may be raised in the scale of beings, and the faith in Christ as the Son of God, whom Christendom has adored from the beginning and still adores as the Lord and Saviour of the world.

Nor can we eliminate the supernatural element from the Apostolic Church without destroying its very life and resolving it into a gigantic illusion. What becomes of Paul if we deny his conversion, and how shall we account for his conversion without the Resurrection and Ascension?  The greatest of modern sceptics paused at the problem, and felt almost forced to admit an actual miracle, as the only rational solution of that conversion. The Holy Spirit was the inspiring and propelling power of the apostolic age, and made the fishers of Galilee fishers of men.

A Christian, who has experienced the power of the gospel in his heart, can have no difficulty with the supernatural. He is as sure of the regenerating and converting agency of the Spirit of God and the saving efficacy of Christ as he is of his own natural existence. He has tasted the medicine and has been healed. He may say with the man who was born blind and made to see: "One thing I do know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."  This is a short creed; but stronger than any argument. The fortress of personal experience is impregnable; the logic of stubborn facts is more cogent than the logic of reason. Every genuine conversion from sin to holiness is a psychological miracle, as much so as the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

The secret or open hostility to the supernatural is the moving spring of infidel criticism. We may freely admit that certain difficulties about the time and place of composition and other minor details of the Gospels and Epistles are not, and perhaps never can be, satisfactorily solved; but it is, nevertheless, true that they are far better authenticated by internal and external evidence than any books of the great Greek and Roman classics, or of Philo and Josephus, which are accepted by scholars without a doubt. As early as the middle of the second century, that is, fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, when yet many of his personal pupils and friends must have been living, the four Canonical Gospels, no more and no less, were recognized and read in public worship as sacred books, in the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; and such universal acceptance and authority in the face of Jewish and heathen hostility and heretical perversion can only be explained on the ground that they were known and used long before. Some of them, Matthew and John, were quoted and used in the first quarter of the second century by Orthodox and Gnostic writers. Every new discovery, as the last book of the pseudo-"Clementine Homilies," the "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, the "Diatessaron" of Tatian, and every deeper investigation of the "Gospel Memoirs" of Justin Martyr, and the "Gospel" of Marcion in its relation to Luke, have strengthened the cause of historical and conservative criticism and inflicted bleeding wounds on destructive criticism. If quotations from the end of the first and the beginning of the second century are very rare, we must remember that we have only a handful of literary documents from that period, and that the second generation of Christians was not a race of scholars and scribes and critics, but of humble, illiterate confessors and martyrs, who still breathed the bracing air of the living teaching, and personal reminiscences of the apostles and evangelists.

But the Synoptical Gospels bear the strongest internal marks of having been composed before the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), which is therein prophesied by Christ as a future event and as the sign of the fast approaching judgment of the world, in a manner that is consistent only with such early composition. The Epistle to the Hebrews, likewise, was written when the Temple was still standing, and sacrifices were offered from day to day. Yet, as this early date is not conceded by all, we will leave the Epistle out of view. The Apocalypse of John is very confidently assigned to the year 68 or 69 by Baur, Renan, and others, who would put the Gospels down to a much later date. They also concede the Pauline authorship of the great anti-Judaic Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, and make them the very basis of their assaults upon the minor Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, on the ground of exaggerated or purely imaginary differences. Those Epistles of Paul were written twelve or fourteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem. This brings us within less than thirty years of the resurrection of Christ and the birthday of the church.

Now, if we confine ourselves to these five books, which the most exacting and rigorous criticism admits to be apostolic—the four Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse—they alone are sufficient to establish the foundation of historical faith; for they confirm by direct statement or allusion every important fact and doctrine in the gospel history, without referring to the written Gospels. The memory and personal experience of the writers—Paul and John—goes back to the vision of Damascus, to the scenes of the Resurrection and Crucifixion, and the first call of the disciples on the banks of the Jordan and the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Criticism must first reason Paul and John out of history, or deny that they ever wrote a line, before it can expect sensible men to surrender a single chapter of the Gospels.

Strong as the external evidence is, the internal evidence of the truth and credibility of the apostolic writings is still stronger, and may be felt to this day by the unlearned as well as the scholar. They widely differ in style and spirit from all post-apostolic productions, and occupy a conspicuous isolation even among the best of books. This position they have occupied for eighteen centuries among the most civilized nations of the globe; and from this position they are not likely to be deposed.

We must interpret persons and events not only by themselves, but also in the light of subsequent history. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Christianity can stand this test better than any other religion, and better than any system of philosophy.

Taking our position at the close of the apostolic age, and looking back to its fountain-head and forward to succeeding generations, we cannot but be amazed at the magnitude of the effects produced by the brief public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, which sends its blessings through centuries as an unbroken and ever-expanding river of life. There is absolutely nothing like it in the annals of the race. The Roman empire embraced, at the birth of Christ, over one hundred millions of men, conquered by force, and, after having persecuted his religion for three hundred years, it died away without the possibility of a resurrection. The Christian church now numbers four hundred millions, conquered by the love of Christ, and is constantly increasing. The first century is the life and light of history and the turning point of the ages. If ever God revealed himself to man, if ever heaven appeared on earth, it was in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. He is, beyond any shadow of doubt, and by the reluctant consent of sceptics and infidels, the wisest of the wise, the purest of the pure, and the mightiest of the mighty. His Cross has become the tree of life to all nations; his teaching is still the highest standard of religious truth; his example the unsurpassed ideal of holiness; the Gospels and Epistles of his Galilean disciples are still the book of books, more powerful than all the classics of human wisdom and genius. No book has attracted so much attention, provoked so much opposition, outlived so many persecutions, called forth so much reverence and gratitude, inspired so many noble thoughts and deeds, administered so much comfort and peace from the cradle to the grave to all classes and conditions of men. It is more than a book; it is an institution, an all-pervading omnipresent force, a converting, sanctifying, transforming agency; it rules from the pulpit and the chair; it presides at the family altar; it is the sacred ark of every household, the written conscience of every Christian man, the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of light by night in the pilgrimage of life. Mankind is bad enough, and human life dark enough with it; but how much worse and how much darker would they be without it?  Christianity might live without the letter of the New Testament, but not without the facts and truths which it records and teaches. Were it possible to banish them from the world, the sun of our civilization would be extinguished, and mankind left to midnight darkness, with the dreary prospect of a dreamless and endless Nirvana.

But no power on earth or in hell can extinguish that sun. There it shines on the horizon, the king of day, obscured at times by clouds great or small, but breaking through again and again, and shedding light and life from east to west, until the darkest corners of the globe shall be illuminated. The past is secure; God will take care of the future.

Magna est veritas et praevalebit.

VOLUME II. ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 100–325.

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PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION REVISED

A few months after the appearance of the revised edition of this volume, Dr. Bryennios, the learned Metropolitan of Nicomedia, surprised the world by the publication of the now famous Didache, which he had discovered in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople. This led me, in justice to myself and to my readers, to write an independent supplement under the title: The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, etc., which is now passing through the press.

At the same time I have taken advantage of a new issue of this History, without increasing the size and the price, to make in the plates all the necessary references to the Didache where it sheds new light on the post-apostolic age (especially on pages 140, 184, 185, 202, 226, 236, 239, 241, 247, 249, 379, 640).

I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. ("Theolog. Literatur-Zeitung," for March 22, 1884.)  But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature which it has called forth, remind me of the imperfect character of historical books in an age of such rapid progress as ours.

The Author.

New York, April 22, 1885.

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FIFTH EDITION

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The fourth edition (1886) was a reprint of the third, with a few slight improvements. In this fifth edition I have made numerous additions to the literature, and adapted the text throughout to the present stage of research, which continues to be very active and fruitful in the Ante-Nicene period.

Several topics connected with the catechetical instruction, organization, and ritual (baptism and eucharist) of the early Church are more fully treated in my supplementary monograph, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Oldest Church Manual, which first appeared in June, 1885, and in a third edition, revised and enlarged, January, 1889, (325 pages).

P. S.

New York, July, 1889.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

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This second volume contains the history of Christianity from the end of the Apostolic age to the beginning of the Nicene.

The first edict of Toleration, A. D. 311, made an end of persecution; the second Edict of Toleration, 311 (there is no third), prepared the way for legal recognition and protection; the Nicene Council, 325, marks the solemn inauguration of the imperial state-church. Constantine, like Eusebius, the theologian, and Hosius, the statesman, of his reign, belongs to both periods and must be considered in both, though more fully in the next.

We live in an age of discovery and research, similar to that which preceded the Reformation. The beginnings of Christianity are now absorbing the attention of scholars.

During the present generation early church history has been vastly enriched by new sources of information, and almost revolutionized by independent criticism. Among the recent literary discoveries and publications the following deserve special mention:

The Syriac Ignatius (by Cureton 1845 and 1849), which opened a new chapter in the Ignatian controversy so closely connected with the rise of Episcopacy and Catholicism; the Philosophumena of Hippolytus (by Miller 1851, and by Duncker and Schneidewin, 1859), which have shed a flood of light on the ancient heresies and systems of thought, as well as on the doctrinal and disciplinary commotions in the Roman church in the early part of third century; the Tenth Book of The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (by Dressel, 1853), which supplements our knowledge of a curious type of distorted Christianity in the post-apostolic age, and furnishes, by an undoubted quotation, a valuable contribution to the solution of the Johannean problem; the Greek Hermas from Mt. Athos (the Codex Lipsiensis, published by Anger and Tischendorf, 1856); a new and complete Greek MS. of the First Epistle of the Roman Clement with several important new chapters and the oldestwritten Christian prayer (about one tenth of the whole), found in a Convent Library at Constantinople (by Bryennios, 1875); and in the same Codex the Second (so called) Epistle of Clement, or post-Clementine Homily rather, in its complete form (20 chs. instead of 12), giving us the first post-apostolic sermon, besides a new Greek text of the Epistle of Barnabus; a Syriac Version of Clement in the library of Jules Mohl, now at Cambridge (1876); fragments of Tatian’s Diatessaron with Ephraem’s Commentary on it, in an Armenian version (Latin by Mösinger 1878); fragments of the apologies of Melito (1858), and Aristides (1878); the complete Greek text of the Acts of Thomas (by Max Bonnet, 1883); and the crowning discovery of all, the Codex Sinaiticus, the only complete uncial MS. of the Greek Testament, together with the Greek Barnabus and the Greek Hermas (by Tischendorf, 1862), which, with the facsimile edition of the Vatican Codex (1868–1881, 6 vols.), marks an epoch in the science of textual criticism of the Greek Testament and of those two Apostolic Fathers, and establishes the fact of the ecclesiastical use of all our canonical books in the age of Eusebius.

In view of these discoveries we would not be surprised if the Exposition of the Lord’s Oracles by Papias, which was still in existence at Nismes in 1215, the Memorials of Hegesippus, and the whole Greek original of Irenaeus, which were recorded by a librarian as extant in the sixteenth century, should turn up in some old convent.

In connection with these fresh sources there has been a corresponding activity on the part of scholars. The Germans have done and are doing an astonishing amount of Quellenforschung and Quellenkritik in numerous monographs and periodicals, and have given us the newest and best critical editions of the Apostolic Fathers and Apologists. The English with their strong common sense, judicial calmness, and conservative tact are fast wheeling into the line of progress, as is evident from the collective works on Christian Antiquities, and the Christian Biography, and from Bp. Lightfoot’s Clementine Epistles, which are soon to be followed by his edition of the Ignatian Epistles. To the brilliant French genius and learning of Mr. Renan we owe a graphic picture of the secular surroundings of early Christianity down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, with sharp glances into the literature and life of the church. His Historie des Origines du Christianisme, now completed in seven volumes, after twenty year’s labor, is well worthy to rank with Gibbon’s immortal work. The Rise and Triumph of Christianity is a grander theme than the contemporary Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but no historian can do justice to it without faith in the divine character and mission of that peaceful Conqueror of immortal souls, whose kingdom shall have no end.

The importance of these literary discoveries and investigations should not blind us to the almost equally important monumental discoveries and researches of Cavalier de Rossi, Garrucci, and other Italian scholars who have illuminated the subterranean mysteries of the church of Rome and of Christian art. Neander, Gieseler, and Baur, the greatest church historians of the nineteenth century, are as silent about the catacombs as Mosheim and Gibbon were in the eighteenth. But who could now write a history of the first three centuries without recording the lessons of those rude yet expressive pictures, sculptures, and epitaphs from the homes of confessors and martyrs?  Nor should we overlook the gain which has come to us from the study of monumental inscriptions, as for instance in rectifying the date of Polycarp’s martyrdom who is now brought ten years nearer to the age of St. John.

Before long there will be great need of an historic architect who will construct a beautiful and comfortable building out of the vast material thus brought to light. The Germans are historic miners, the French and English are skilled manufacturers; the former understand and cultivate the science of history, the latter excel in the art of historiography. A master of both would be the ideal historian. But God has wisely distributed his gifts, and made individuals and nations depend upon and supplement each other.

The present volume is an entire reconstruction of the corresponding part of the first edition (vol. I p. 144–528), which appeared twenty-five years ago. It is more than double in size. Some chapters (e.g. VI. VII. IX.) and several sections (e.g. 90–93, 103, 155–157, 168, 171, 184, 189, 190, 193, 198–204, etc.) are new, and the rest has been improved and enlarged, especially the last chapter on the literature of the church. My endeavor has been to bring the book up to the present advanced state of knowledge, to record every important work (German, French, English, and American) which has come under my notice, and to make the results of the best scholarship of the age available and useful to the rising generation.

In conclusion, I may be permitted to express my thanks for the kind reception which has been accorded to this revised edition of the work of my youth. It will stimulate me to new energy in carrying it forward as far as God may give time and strength. The third volume needs no reconstruction, and a new edition of the same with a few improvements will be issued without delay.

Philip Schaff.

Union Theological Seminary,

October, 1883.

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§ 1. Literature on the Ante-Nicene Age

I. Sources

1. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, and all the ecclesiastical authors of the 2nd and 3rd, and to some extent of the 4th and 5th centuries; particularly Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and Theodoret.

2. The writings of the numerous heretics, mostly extant only in fragments.

3. The works of the pagan opponents of Christianity, as Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, Julian the Apostate.

4. The occasional notices of Christianity, in the contemporary classical authors, Tacitus, Suetonius, the younger Pliny, Dion Cassius.

II. Collections of Sources, (besides those included in the comprehensive Patristic Libraries):

Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn: Patrum Apostolicorum Opera. Lips., 1876; second ed. 1878 sqq.

Fr. Xav. Funk (R.C.): Opera Patrum Apost. Tübing., 1878, 1881, 1887, 2 vols. The last edition includes the Didache.

I. C. Th. Otto: Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum saeculi secundi. Jenae, 1841 sqq., in 9 vols.; 2nd ed. 1847–1861; 3rd ed. 1876 sqq. ("plurimum aucta et emendata").

Roberts And Donaldson: Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Edinburgh (T.& T. Clark), 1868–’72, 25 volumes. American edition, chronologically arranged and enlarged by Bishop A. C. Coxe, D. D., with a valuable Bibliographical Synopsis by E. C. Richardson. New York (Christian Literature Company), 1885–’87, 9 large vols.

The fragments of the earliest Christian writers, whose works are lost, may be found collected in Grabe: Spicilegium Patrum ut et Haereticorum Saeculi I. II. et III. (Oxon. 1700; new ed. Oxf. 1714, 3 vols.); in Routh: Reliquiae Sacrae, sive auctorum fere jam perditorum secundi, tertiique saeculi fragmenta quae supersunt (Oxon. 1814 sqq. 4 vols.; 2nd ed. enlarged, 5 vols. Oxf. 1846–48); and in Dom. I. B. Pitra (O. S. B., a French Cardinal since 1863): Spicilegium Solesmense, complectens sanctorum patrum scriptorumque eccles. anecdota hactenus opera, selecta e Graecis, Orientialibus et Latinis codicibus (Paris, 1852–’60, 5 vols.). Comp. also Bunsen: Christianity and Mankind, etc. Lond. 1854, vols. V., VI. and VII., which contain the Analecta Ante-Nicaena (reliquicae literariae, canonicae, liturgicae).

The haereseological writings of Epiphanius, Philastrius, Pseudo-Tertullian, etc. are collected in Franc. Oehler: Corpus haereseologicum. Berol. 1856–61, 3 vols. They belong more to the next period.

The Jewish and Heathen Testimonies are collected by N. Lardner, 1764, new ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838.

III. Histories.

1. Ancient Historians.

Hegesippus (a Jewish Christian of the middle of the second century):  JUpomnhvmata tw'n ejkklhsiastikw'n pravxewn (quoted under the title pevnte uJpomnhvmata and pevnte suggravmmata). These ecclesiastical Memorials are only preserved in fragments (on the martyrdom of James of Jerusalem, the rise of heresies, etc.) in Eusebius H. Eccl., collected by Grabe (Spicileg. II. 203–214), Routh (Reliqu. Sacrae, vol. I. 209–219), and Hilgenfeld ("Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theol." 1876, pp. 179 sqq.). See art. of Weizsäcker in Herzog, 2nd ed., V. 695; and of Milligan in Smith & Wace, II. 875. The work was still extant in the 16th century, and may be discovered yet; see Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift" for 1880, p. 127. It is strongly Jewish-Christian, yet not Ebionite, but Catholic.

*Eusebius (bishop of Caesarea in Palestine since 315, died 340, "the father of Church History," "the Christian Herodotus," confidential friend, adviser, and eulogist of Constantine the Great):  jEkklhsiastikh; iJstoriva, from the incarnation to the defeat and death of Licinius 324. Chief edd. by Stephens, Paris 1544 (ed. princeps); Valesius (with the other Greek church historians), Par. 1659; Reading, Cambr. 1720; Zimmermann, Francof. 1822; Burton, Oxon. 1838 and 1845 (2 vols.); Schwegler, Tüb. 1852; Lämmer, Scaphus. 1862 (important for the text); F. A. Heinichen, Lips. 1827, second ed. improved 1868–’70, 3 vols. (the most complete and useful edition of all the Scripta Historica of Eus.); G. Dindorf, Lips., 1871. Several versions(German, French, and English); one by Hanmer (Cambridge; 1683, etc.); another by C. F. Crusé (an Am. Episc., London, 1842, Phil., 1860, included in Bagster’s edition of the Greek Eccles. Historians, London, 1847, and in Bohn’s Eccles. Library); the best with commentary by A. C. McGiffert (to be published by "The Christian Lit. Comp.," New York, 1890).

The other historical writings of Eusebius, including his Chronicle, his Life of Constantine, and his Martyrs of Palestine, are found in Heinichen’s ed., and also in the ed. of his Opera omnia, by Migne, "Patrol. Graeca," Par. 1857, 5 vols. Best ed. of his Chronicle, by Alfred Schöne, Berlin, 1866 and 1875, 2 vols.

Whatever may be said of the defects of Eusebius as an historical critic and writer, his learning and industry are unquestionable, and his Church History and Chronicle will always remain an invaluable collection of information not attainable in any other ancient author. The sarcastic contempt of Gibbon and charge of willful suppression of truth are not justified, except against his laudatory over-estimate of Constantine, whose splendid services to the church blinded his vision. For a just estimate of Eusebius see the exhaustive article of Bishop Lightfoot in Smith & Wace, II. 308–348.

2. Modern Historians.

William Cave, (died 1713): Primitive Christianity. Lond. 4th ed. 1682, in 3 parts. The same: Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the Church that flourished in the first four centuries, 1677–’83, 2 vols.; revised by ed. H. Carey, Oxford, 1840, in 3 vols. Comp. also Cave’s Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria, a Christo nato usque ad saeculum  XIV; best ed. Oxford 1740–’43, 2 vols. fol.

*J. L. Mosheim: Commentarii de rebus Christianis ante Constantinum M. Helmst. 1753. The same in English by Vidal, 1813 sqq., 3 vols., and by Murdock, New Haven, 1852, 2 vols.

*Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. London, 1776–’88, 6 vols.; best edd. by Milman, with his own, Guizot’s and Wenck’s notes, and by William Smith, including the notes of Milman, etc. Reprinted, London, 1872, 8 vols., New York, Harpers, 1880, in 6 vols. In Chs. 15 and 16, and throughout his great work, Gibbon dwells on the outside, and on the defects rather than the virtues of ecclesiastical Christianity, without entering into the heart of spiritual Christianity which continued beating through all ages; but for fullness and general accuracy of information and artistic representation his work is still unsurpassed.

H. G. Tzschirner: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829.

Edw. Burton: Lectures upon the Ecclesiastical History of the first three Centuries. Oxf. 1833, in 3 parts (in 1 vol. 1845). He made also collections of the ante-Nicene testimonies to the Divinity of Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Henry H. Milman: The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Lond. 1840. 3 vols.; 2nd ed. 1866. Comp. also the first book of his History of Latin Christianity, 2d ed. London and New York, 1860, in 8 vols.

John Kaye (Bishop of Lincoln, d. 1853). Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries, illustrated from the writinqs of Tertullian. Lond. 1845. Comp. also his books on Justin Martyr, Clement of Alex., and the Council of Nicaea (1853).

F. D. Maurice: Lectures on the Eccles. Hist. of the First and Second Cent.  Cambr. 1854.

*A. Ritschl: Die Entstehung der alt-katholischen Kirche. Bonn, 1850; 2nd ed. 1857. The second edition is partly reconstructed and more positive.

*E. de Pressensé (French Protestant): Histoire de trois premiers siècles de l’église chrétienne.  Par. 1858 sqq. The same in German trans. by E. Fabarius. Leipz. 1862–’63, 4 vols. English transl. by Annie Harwood Holmden, under the title: The Early Years of Christianity.  A Comprehensive History of the First Three Centuries of the Christian Church, 4 vols. Vol. I. The Apost. Age; vol. II. Martyrs and Apologists; vol. III. Heresy and Christian Doctrine; vol. IV. Christian Life and Practice. London (Hodder & Stoughton), 1870 sqq., cheaper ed., 1879. Revised edition of the original, Paris, 1887 sqq.

W. D. Killen (Presbyterian): The Ancient Church traced for the first three centuries. Edinb. and New York, 1859. New ed. N. Y., 1883.

Ambrose Manahan (R. Cath.): Triumph of the Catholic Church in the Early Ages. New York, 1859.

Alvan Lamson (Unitarian): The Church of the First Three Centuries, with special reference to the doctrine of the Trinity; illustrating its late origin and gradual formation. Boston, 1860.

Milo Mahan (Episcopalian): A Church History of the First Three centuries. N. York, 1860. Second ed., 1878 (enlarged).

J. J. Blunt: History of the Christian Church during the first three centuries. London, 1861.

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862.

Th. W. Mossman: History of the Cath. Church of J. Christ from the death of John to the middle of the second century. Lond. 1873.

*Ernest Renan: L’ Histoire des origines du Christianisme. Paris, 1863–1882, 7 vols. The last two vols., I’ église Chrétienne, 1879, and Marc Aurèle, 1882, belong to this period. Learned, critical, and brilliant, but thoroughly secular, and skeptical.

*Gerhard Uhlhorn: Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum. 3d improved ed. Stuttgart, 1879. English transl. by Profs. Egbert C. Smyth and C. J. H. Ropes: The Conflict of Christianity, etc. N. York, 1879. An admirable translation of a graphic and inspiring, account of the heroic conflict of Christianity with heathen Rome.

*Theod. Keim, (d. 1879): Rom und das Christenthum. Ed. from the author’s MSS. by H. Ziegler. Berlin, 1881. (667 pages).

Chr. Wordsworth (Bishop of Lincoln): A Church History to the Council of Nicea, A.D. 325. Lond. and N. York, 1881. Anglo-Catholic.

A. Plummer: The Church of the Early Fathers, London, 1887.

Of the general works on Church History, those of Baronius, Tillemont (R.C.), Schröckh, Gieseler, Neander, and Baur. (the third revised ed. of vol. 1st, Tüb. 1853, pp. 175–527; the same also transl. into English) should be noticed throughout on this period; but all these books are partly superseded by more recent discoveries and discussions of special points, which will be noticed in the respective sections.

§ 2. General Character of Ante-Nicene Christianity.

We now descend from the primitive apostolic church to the Graeco-Roman; from the scene of creation to the work of preservation; from the fountain of divine revelation to the stream of human development; from the inspirations of the apostles and prophets to the productions of enlightened but fallible teachers. The hand of God has drawn a bold line of demarcation between the century of miracles and the succeeding ages, to show, by the abrupt transition and the striking contrast, the difference between the work of God and the work of man, and to impress us the more deeply with the supernatural origin of Christianity and the incomparable value of the New Testament. There is no other transition in history so radical and sudden, and yet so silent and secret. The stream of divine life in its passage from the mountain of inspiration to the valley of tradition is for a short time lost to our view, and seems to run under ground. Hence the close of the first and the beginning of the second centuries, or the age of the Apostolic Fathers is often regarded as a period for critical conjecture and doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversy rather than for historical narration.

Still, notwithstanding the striking difference, the church of the second and third centuries is a legitimate continuation of that of the primitive age. While far inferior in originality, purity, energy, and freshness, it is distinguished for conscientious fidelity in preserving and propagating the sacred writings and traditions of the apostles, and for untiring zeal in imitating their holy lives amidst the greatest difficulties and dangers, when the religion of Christ was prohibited by law and the profession of it punished as a political crime.

The second period, from the death of the apostle John to the end of the persecutions, or to the accession of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, is the classic age of the ecclesia pressa, of heathen persecution, and of Christian martyrdom and heroism, of cheerful sacrifice of possessions and life itself for the inheritance of heaven. It furnishes a continuous commentary on the Saviour’s words: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword."1 To merely human religion could have stood such an ordeal of fire for three hundred years. The final victory of Christianity over Judaism and heathenism, and the mightiest empire of the ancient world, a victory gained without physical force, but by the moral power of patience and perseverance, of faith and love, is one of the sublimest spectacles in history, and one of the strongest evidences of the divinity and indestructible life of our religion.

But equally sublime and significant are the intellectual and spiritual victories of the church in this period over the science and art of heathenism, and over the assaults of Gnostic and Ebionitic heresy, with the copious vindication and development of the Christian truth, which the great mental conflict with those open and secret enemies called forth.

The church of this period appears poor in earthly possessions and honors, but rich in heavenly grace, in world-conquering faith, love, and hope; unpopular, even outlawed, hated, and persecuted, yet far more vigorous and expansive than the philosophies of Greece or the empire of Rome; composed chiefly of persons of the lower social ranks, yet attracting the noblest and deepest minds of the age, and bearing, in her bosom the hope of the world; "as unknown, yet well-known, as dying, and behold it lives;" conquering by apparent defeat, and growing on the blood of her martyrs; great in deeds, greater in sufferings, greatest in death for the honor of Christ and the benefit of generations to come.2

The condition and manners of the Christians in this age are most beautifully described by the unknown author of the "Epistola ad Diognetum" in the early part of the second century.3 "The Christians," he says, "are not distinguished from other men by country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For they neither dwell in cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life. They dwell in the Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be; they follow the usage of the country in dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical conduct. They dwell in their own native lands, but as strangers. They take part in all things as citizens; and they suffer all things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every native land is a foreign. They marry, like all others; they have children; but they do not cast away their offspring. They have the table in common, but not wives. They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh. They live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the existing laws, and excel the laws by their lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet they are condemned. They are killed and are made alive. They are poor and make many rich. They lack all things, and in all things abound. They are reproached, and glory in their reproaches. They are calumniated, and are justified. They are cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give honor. They do good, and are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell. In short, what the soul is in the body, the Christians are in the world. The soul is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Christians are spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; so the Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body; so also the Christians are seen to live in the world, but their piety is invisible. The flesh hates and wars against the soul, suffering no wrong from it, but because it resists fleshly pleasures; and the world hates the Christians with no reason, but that they resist its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and members, by which it is hated; so the Christians love their haters. The soul is inclosed in the body, but holds the body together; so the Christians are detained in the world as in a prison; but they contain the world. Immortal, the soul dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the corruptible, but look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the better for restriction in food and drink; and the Christians increase, though daily punished. This lot God has assigned to the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from them."

The community of Christians thus from the first felt itself, in distinction from Judaism and from heathenism, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city of God set on a hill, the immortal soul in a dying body; and this its impression respecting itself was no proud conceit, but truth and reality, acting in life and in death, and opening the way through hatred and persecution even to an outward victory over the world.

The ante-Nicene age has been ever since the Reformation a battle-field between Catholic and Evangelical historians and polemics, and is claimed by both for their respective creeds. But it is a sectarian abuse of history to identify the Christianity of this martyr period either with Catholicism, or with Protestantism. It is rather the common root out of which both have sprung, Catholicism (Greek and Roman) first, and Protestantism afterwards. It is the natural transition from the apostolic age to the Nicene age, yet leaving behind many important truths of the former (especially the Pauline doctrines) which were to be derived and explored in future ages. We can trace in it the elementary forms of the Catholic creed, organization and worship, and also the germs of nearly all the corruptions of Greek and Roman Christianity.

In its relation to the secular power, the ante-Nicene church is simply the continuation of the apostolic period, and has nothing in common either with the hierarchical, or with the Erastian systems. It was not opposed to the secular government in its proper sphere, but the secular heathenism of the government was opposed to Christianity. The church was altogether based upon the voluntary principle, as a self-supporting and self-governing body. In this respect it may be compared to the church in the United States, but with this essential difference that in America the secular government, instead of persecuting Christianity, recognizes and protects it by law, and secures to it full freedom of public worship and in all its activities at home and abroad.

The theology of the second and third centuries was mainly apologetic against the paganism of Greece and Rome, and polemic against the various forms of the Gnostic heresy. In this conflict it brings out, with great force and freshness, the principal arguments for the divine origin and character of the Christian religion and the outlines of the true doctrine of Christ and the holy trinity, as afterwards more fully developed in the Nicene and post-Nicene ages.

The organization of this period may be termed primitive episcopacy, as distinct from the apostolic order which preceded, and the metropolitan and patriarchal hierarchy which succeeded it. In worship it forms likewise the transition from apostolic simplicity to the liturgical and ceremonial splendor of full-grown Catholicism.

The first half of the second century is comparatively veiled in obscurity, although considerable light has been shed over it by recent discoveries and investigations. After the death of John only a few witnesses remain to testify of the wonders of the apostolic days, and their writings are few in number, short in compass and partly of doubtful origin: a volume of letters and historical fragments, accounts of martyrdom, the pleadings of two or three apologists; to which must be added the rude epitaphs, faded pictures, and broken sculptures of the subterranean church in the catacombs. The men of that generation were more skilled in acting out Christianity in life and death, than in its literary defence. After the intense commotion of the apostolic age there was a breathing spell, a season of unpretending but fruitful preparation for a new productive epoch. But the soil of heathenism had been broken up, and the new seed planted by the hands of the apostles gradually took root.

Then came the great literary conflict of the apologists and doctrinal polemics in the second half of the same century; and towards the middle of the third the theological schools of Alexandria, and northern Africa, laying the foundation the one for the theology of the Greek, the other for that of the Latin church. At the beginning of the fourth century the church east and west was already so well consolidated in doctrine and discipline that it easily survived the shock of the last and most terrible persecution, and could enter upon the fruits of its long-continued sufferings and take the reins of government in the old Roman empire.

CHAPTER I.

SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

§ 3. Literature.

I. Sources.

No statistics or accurate statements, but only scattered hints in

Pliny (107): Ep. x. 96 sq. (the letter to Trajan). Ignatius (about 110): Ad Magnes. c. 10. Ep. ad Diogn. (about 120) c. 6.

Justin Martyr (about 140): Dial. 117; Apol. I. 53.

Irenaeus (about 170): Adv. Haer. I. 10; III. 3, 4; v. 20, etc.

Tertullian (about 200): Apol. I. 21, 37, 41, 42; Ad Nat. I. 7; Ad Scap. c. 2, 5; Adv. Jud. 7, 12, 13.

Origen (d. 254): Contr. Cels. I, 7, 27; II. 13, 46; III. 10, 30; De Princ. l. IV. c. 1, § 2; Com. in Matth. p. 857, ed. Delarue.

Eusebius (d. 340): Hist. Eccl III. 1; v. 1; vii, 1; viii. 1, also books ix. and x. RUFINUS: Hist. Eccles. ix. 6.

Augustin (d. 430): De Civitate Dei. Eng. translation by M. Dods, Edinburgh, 1871; new ed. (in Schaff’s "Nicene and Post-Nicene Library"), N. York, 1887.

II. Works.

Mich. Le Quien (a learned Dominican, d. 1733): Oriens Christianus. Par. 1740. 3 vols. fol. A complete ecclesiastical geography of the East, divided into the four patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Mosheim: Historical Commentaries, etc. (ed. Murdock) I. 259–290.

Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Chap. xv.

A. Beugnot: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en Occident. Paris 1835, 2 vols. Crowned by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-letters.

Etienne Chastel: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans I’ empire d’ Orient. Paris 1850. Prize essay of the Académie.

Neander: History of the Christian Relig. and Church (trans. of Torrey), I. 68–79

Wiltsch: Handbuch der kirchl. Geographie u. Statistik. Berlin 1846. I. p. 32 sqq.

Chs. Merivale: Conversion of the Roman Empire (Boyle Lectures for 1864), republ. N. York 1865. Comp. also his History of the Romans under the Empire, which goes from Julius Caesar to Marcus Aurelius, Lond. & N. York, 7 vols.

Edward A. Freeman: The Historical Geography of Europe. Lond. & N. York 1881. 2 vols. (vol. I. chs. II. & III. pp. 18–71.)

Comp. Friedländer, Sittengesch. Roms. III. 517 sqq.; and Renan: Marc-Aurèle. Paris 1882, ch. xxv. pp. 447–464 (Statistique et extension géographique du Christianisme).

V. Schultze: Geschichte des Untergangs des griech-römischen. Heidenthums. Jena, 1887.

§ 4. Hindrances and Helps.

For the first three centuries Christianity was placed in the most unfavorable circumstances, that it might display its moral power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual weapons alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal existence in the Roman empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish sect, then slandered, proscribed, and persecuted, as a treasonable innovation, and the adoption of it made punishable with confiscation and death. Besides, it offered not the slightest favor, as Mohammedanism afterwards did, to the corrupt inclinations of the heart, but against the current ideas of Jews and heathen it so presented its inexorable demand of repentance and conversion, renunciation of self and the world, that more, according to Tertullian, were kept out of the new sect by love of pleasure than by love of life. The Jewish origin of Christianity also, and the poverty and obscurity of a majority of its professors particularly offended the pride of the Greeks, and Romans. Celsus, exaggerating this fact, and ignoring the many exceptions, scoffingly remarked, that "weavers, cobblers, and fullers, the most illiterate persons" preached the "irrational faith," and knew how to commend it especially "to women and children."

But in spite of these extraordinary difficulties Christianity made a progress which furnished striking evidence of its divine origin and adaptation to the deeper wants of man, and was employed as such by Irenaeus, Justin, Tertullian, and other fathers of that day. Nay, the very hindrances became, in the hands of Providence, means of promotion. Persecution led to martyrdom, and martyrdom had not terrors alone, but also attractions, and stimulated the noblest and most unselfish form of ambition. Every genuine martyr was a living proof of the truth and holiness of the Christian religion. Tertullian could exclaim to the heathen: "All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing; they are only a lure to this sect. Our number increases the more you destroy us. The blood of the Christians is their seed." The moral earnestness of the Christians contrasted powerfully with the prevailing corruption of the age, and while it repelled the frivolous and voluptuous, it could not fail to impress most strongly the deepest and noblest minds. The predilection of the poor and oppressed for the gospel attested its comforting and redeeming power. But others also, though not many, from the higher and educated classes, were from the first attracted to the new religion; such men as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathaea, the apostle Paul, the proconsul Sergius Paulus, Dionysius of Athens, Erastus of Corinth, and some members of the imperial household. Among the sufferers in Domitian’s persecution were his own near kinswoman Flavia Domitilla and her husband Flavius Clemens. In the oldest part of the Catacomb of Callistus, which is named after St. Lucina, members of the illustrious gens Pomponia, and perhaps also of the Flavian house, are interred. The senatorial and equestrian orders furnished several converts open or concealed. Pliny laments, that in Asia Minor men of every rank (omnis ordinis) go over to the Christians. Tertullian asserts that the tenth part of Carthage, and among them senators and ladies of the noblest descent and the nearest relatives of the proconsul of Africa professed Christianity. The numerous church fathers from the middle of the second century, a Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, excelled, or at least equalled in talent and culture, their most eminent heathen contemporaries.

Nor was this progress confined to any particular localities. It extended alike over all parts of the empire. "We are a people of yesterday," says Tertullian in his Apology, "and yet we have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum!  We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be greater." All these facts expose the injustice of the odious charge of Celsus, repeated by a modern sceptic, that the new sect was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace—of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves.

§ 5. Causes of the Success of Christianity.

The chief positive cause of the rapid spread and ultimate triumph of Christianity is to be found in its own absolute intrinsic worth, as the universal religion of salvation, and in the perfect teaching and example of its divine-human Founder, who proves himself to every believing heart a Saviour from sin and a giver of eternal life. Christianity is adapted to all classes, conditions, and relations among men, to all nationalities and races, to all grades of culture, to every soul that longs for redemption from sin, and for holiness of life. Its value could be seen in the truth and self-evidencing power of its doctrines; in the purity and sublimity of its precepts; in its regenerating and sanctifying effects on heart and life; in the elevation of woman and of home life over which she presides; in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and suffering; in the faith, the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of its confessors.

To this internal moral and spiritual testimony were added the powerful outward proof of its divine origin in the prophecies and types of the Old Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in the New; and finally, the testimony of the miracles, which, according to the express statements of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and others, continued in this period to accompany the preaching of missionaries from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen.

Particularly favorable outward circumstances were the extent, order, and unity of the Roman empire, and the prevalence of the Greek language and culture.

In addition to these positive causes, Christianity had a powerful negative advantage in the hopeless condition of the Jewish and heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism wandered restless and accursed, without national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was inwardly rotten and in process of inevitable decay. The popular religion and public morality were undermined by a sceptical and materialistic philosophy; Grecian science and art had lost their creative energy; the Roman empire rested only on the power of the sword and of temporal interests; the moral bonds of society were sundered; unbounded avarice and vice of every kind, even by the confession of a Seneca and a Tacitus, reigned in Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the hovel. Virtuous emperors, like Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were the exception, not the rule, and could not prevent the progress of moral decay. Nothing, that classic antiquity in its fairest days had produced, could heal the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient relief. The only star of hope in the gathering night was the young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of Jesus, fearless of death, strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to commend itself more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living religion of the present and the future. While the world was continually agitated by wars, and revolutions, and public calamities, while systems of philosophy, and dynasties were rising and passing away, the new religion, in spite of fearful opposition from without and danger from within, was silently and steadily progressing with the irresistible force of truth, and worked itself gradually into the very bone and blood of the race.

"Christ appeared," says the great Augustin, "to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that while all around them was withering away, they might through Him receive new, youthful life."

Notes.

Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, traces the rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire to five causes: the zeal of the early Christians, the belief in future rewards and punishment, the power of miracles, the austere (pure) morals of the Christian, and the compact church organization. But these causes are themselves the effects of a cause which Gibbon ignores, namely, the divine truth of Christianity, the perfection of Christ’s teaching and Christ’s example. See the strictures of Dr. John Henry Newman, Grammar of Assent, 445 sq., and Dr. George P. Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 543 sqq. "The zeal" [of the early Christians], says Fisher, "was zeal for a person, and for a cause identified with Him; the belief in the future life sprang out of faith in Him who had died and risen again, and ascended to Heaven; the miraculous powers of the early disciples were consciously connected with the same source; the purification of morals, and the fraternal unity, which lay at the basis of ecclesiastical association among the early Christians, were likewise the fruit of their relation to Christ, and their common love to Him. The victory of Christianity in the Roman world was the victory of Christ, who was lifted up that He might draw all men unto Him."

Lecky (Hist. of Europ. Morals, I. 412) goes deeper than Gibbon, and accounts for the success of early Christianity by its intrinsic excellency and remarkable adaptation to the wants of the times in the old Roman empire. "In the midst of this movement," he says, "Christianity gained its ascendancy, and we can be at no loss to discover the cause of its triumph. No other religion, under such circumstances, had ever combined so many distinct elements of power and attraction. Unlike the Jewish religion, it was bound by no local ties, and was equally adapted for every nation and for every class. Unlike Stoicism, it appealed in the strongest manner to the affections, and offered all the charm of a sympathetic worship. Unlike the Egyptian religion, it united with its distinctive teaching a pure and noble system of ethics, and proved itself capable of realizing it in action. It proclaimed, amid a vast movement of social and national amalgamation, the universal brotherhood of mankind. Amid the softening influence of philosophy and civilization, it taught the supreme sanctity of love. To the slave, who had never before exercised so large an influence over Roman religious life, it was the religion of the suffering and the oppressed. To the philosopher it was at once the echo of the highest ethics of the later Stoics, and the expansion of the best teaching of the school of Plato. To a world thirsting for prodigy, it offered a history replete with wonders more strange than those of Apollonius; while the Jew and the Chaldean could scarcely rival its exorcists, and the legends of continual miracles circulated among its followers. To a world deeply conscious of political dissolution, and prying eagerly and anxiously into the future, it proclaimed with a thrilling power the immediate destruction of the globe—the glory of all its friends, and the damnation of all its foes. To a world that had grown very weary gazing on the cold passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and of love—an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest, as well as all that was noblest upon earth—a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of His friend, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. To a world, in fine, distracted by hostile creeds and colliding philosophies, it taught its doctrines, not as a human speculation, but as a Divine revelation, authenticated much less by reason than by faith. ’With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;’ ’He that doeth the will of my Father will know the doctrine, whether it be of God;’ ’Unless you believe you cannot understand;’ ’A heart naturally Christian;’ ’The heart makes the theologian,’ are the phrases which best express the first action of Christianity upon the world. Like all great religions, it was more concerned with modes of feeling than with modes of thought. The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was true of the moral sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the supreme type of excellence to which men were then tending, because it corresponded with their religious wants, aims, and emotions, because the whole spiritual being could then expand and expatiate under its influence that it planted its roots so deeply in the hearts of men."

Merivale (Convers. of the Rom. Emp., Preface) traces the conversion of the Roman empire chiefly to four causes: 1) the external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of recorded prophecy and miracles to the truth of Christianity; 2) the internal evidence of satisfying the acknowledged need of a redeemer and sanctifier; 3) the goodness and holiness manifested in the lives and deaths of the primitive believers; 4) the temporal success of Christianity under Constantine, which "turned the mass of mankind, as with a sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed truth in Christ Jesus."

Renan discusses the reasons for the victory of Christianity in the 31st chapter of his Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 561–588. He attributes it chiefly "to the new discipline of life," and "the moral reform," which the world required, which neither philosophy nor any of the established religions could give. The Jews indeed rose high above the corruptions of the times. "Glorie éternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien des folies et des violence!  Les Juifs sont les révolutionnaires du 1er et du 2e siècle de notre ère." They gave to the world Christianity. "Les populations se précipitèrent, par une sorte du mouvement instinctif, dans une secte qui satisfaisait leur aspirations les plus intimes et ouvrait des ésperances infinies." Renan makes much account of the belief in immortality and the offer of complete pardon to every sinner, as allurements to Christianity; and, like Gibbon, he ignores its real power as a religion of salvation. This accounts for its success not only in the old Roman empire, but in every country and nation where it has found a home.

§ 6. Means of Propagation.

It is a remarkable fact that after the days of the Apostles no names of great missionaries are mentioned till the opening of the middle ages, when the conversion of nations was effected or introduced by a few individuals as St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Columba in Scotland, St. Augustine in England, St. Boniface in Germany, St. Ansgar in Scandinavia, St. Cyril and Methodius among the Slavonic races. There were no missionary societies, no missionary institutions, no organized efforts in the ante-Nicene age; and yet in less than 300 years from the death of St. John the whole population of the Roman empire which then represented the civilized world was nominally Christianized.

To understand this astonishing fact, we must remember that the foundation was laid strong and deep by the apostles themselves. The seed scattered by them from Jerusalem to Rome, and fertilized by their blood, sprung up as a bountiful harvest. The word of our Lord was again fulfilled on a larger scale: "One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have labored, and ye are entered into their labor" (John 4:38).

Christianity once established was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It attracted people by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the darkness. And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch, and by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, "were scattered abroad and went about preaching the Word."4 Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old man whom he met "walking on the shore of the sea." Every Christian laborer, says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests him, though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when he is found to make him known to all." Celsus scoffingly remarks that fuller, and workers in wool and leather, rustic and ignorant persons, were the most zealous propagators of Christianity, and brought it first to women and children. Women and slaves introduced it into the home-circle, it is the glory of the gospel that it is preached to the poor and by the poor to make them rich. Origen informs us that the city churches sent their missionaries to the villages. The seed grew up while men slept, and brought forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Every Christian told his neighbor, the laborer to his fellow-laborer, the slave to his fellow-slave, the servant to his master and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.

The gospel was propagated chiefly by living preaching and by personal intercourse; to a considerable extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were early propagated and translated into various tongues, the Latin (North African and Italian), the Syriac (the Curetonian and the Peshito), and the Egyptian (in three dialects, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric). Communication among the different parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was comparatively easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and for the Roman legions, served also the messengers of peace and the silent conquests of the cross. Commerce itself at that time, as well as now, was a powerful agency in carrying the gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization to the remotest parts of the Roman empire.

The particular mode, as well as the precise time, of the introduction of Christianity into the several countries during this period is for the most part uncertain, and we know not much more than the fact itself. No doubt much more was done by the apostles and their immediate disciples, than the New Testament informs us of. But on the other hand the mediaeval tradition assigns an apostolic origin to many national and local churches which cannot have arisen before the second or third century. Even Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Lazarus, Martha and Mary were turned by the legend into missionaries to foreign lands.

§ 7. Extent of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Justin Martyr says, about the middle of the second century: "There is no people, Greek or barbarian, or of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things." Half a century later, Tertullian addresses the heathen defiantly: "We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities, islands, camps, your palace, senate and forum; we have left to you only your temples."5 These, and similar passages of Irenaeus and Arnobius, are evidently rhetorical exaggerations. Origen is more cautious and moderate in his statements. But it may be fairly asserted, that about the end of the third century the name of Christ was known, revered, and persecuted in every province and every city of the empire. Maximian, in one of his edicts, says that "almost all" had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new sect.

In the absence of statistics, the number of the Christians must be purely a matter of conjecture. In all probability it amounted at the close of the third and the beginning of the fourth century to nearly one-tenth or one-twelfth of the subjects of Rome, that is to about ten millions of souls.

But the fact, that the Christians were a closely united body, fresh, vigorous, hopeful, and daily increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a loose aggregation, daily diminishing, made the true prospective strength of the church much greater.

The propagation of Christianity among the barbarians in the provinces of Asia and the north-west of Europe beyond the Roman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the current of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it prepared the way for the civilization of those regions, and their subsequent position in the world.

Notes.

Gibbon and Friedländer (III. 531) estimate the number of Christians at the accession of Constantine (306) probably too low at one-twentieth; Matter and Robertson too high at one-fifth of his subjects. Some older writers, misled by the hyperbolical statements of the early Apologists, even represent the Christians as having at least equalled if not exceeded the number of the heathen worshippers in the empire. In this case common prudence would have dictated a policy of toleration long before Constantine. Mosheim, in his Hist. Commentaries, etc. (Murdock’s translation I. p. 274 sqq.) discusses at length the number of Christians in the second century without arriving at definite conclusions. Chastel estimates the number at the time of Constantine at 1/15 in the West, 1/10 in the East, 1/12 on an average (Hist. de la destruct. du paganisme, p. 36). According to Chrysostom, the Christian population of Antioch in his day (380) was about 100,000, or one-half of the whole.

§ 8. Christianity in Asia.

Asia was the cradle of Christianity, as it was of humanity and civilization. The apostles themselves had spread the new religion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to the younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia Minor were almost forsaken, and animals of sacrifice found hardly any purchasers. In the second century Christianity penetrated to Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some distance into Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia; and in the third, into Armenia and Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, but probably in contemplative retirement preparing for his apostolic ministry. There is a legend, that the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew carried the gospel to India. But a more credible statement is, that the Christian teacher Pantaeus of Alexandria journeyed to that country about 190, and that in the fourth century churches were found there.

The transfer of the seat of power from Rome to Constantinople, and the founding of the East Roman empire under Constantine I. gave to Asia Minor, and especially to Constantinople, a commanding importance in the history of the Church for several centuries. The seven oecumenical Councils from 325 to 787 were all held in that city or its neighborhood, and the doctrinal controversies on the Trinity and the person of Christ were carried on chiefly in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.

In the mysterious providence of God those lands of the Bible and the early church have been conquered by the prophet of Mecca, the Bible replaced by the Koran, and the Greek church reduced to a condition of bondage and stagnation; but the time is not far distant when the East will be regenerated by the undying spirit of Christianity. A peaceful crusade of devoted missionaries preaching the pure gospel and leading holy lives will reconquer the holy land and settle the Eastern question.

§ 9. Christianity in Egypt.

In Africa Christianity gained firm foothold first in Egypt, and there probably as early as the apostolic age. The land of the Pharaohs, of the pyramids and sphinxes, of temples and tombs, of hieroglyphics and mummies, of sacred bulls and crocodiles, of despotism and slavery, is closely interwoven with sacred history from the patriarchal times, and even imbedded in the Decalogue as "the house of bondage." It was the home of Joseph and his brethren, and the cradle of Israel. In Egypt the Jewish Scriptures were translated more than two hundred years before our era, and this Greek version used even by Christ and the apostles, spread Hebrew ideas throughout the Roman world, and is the mother of the peculiar idiom of the New Testament. Alexandria was full of Jews, the literary as well as commercial centre of the East, and the connecting link between the East and the West. There the largest libraries were collected; there the Jewish mind came into close contact with the Greek, and the religion of Moses with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. There Philo wrote, while Christ taught in Jerusalem and Galilee, and his works were destined to exert a great influence on Christian exegesis through the Alexandrian fathers.

Mark, the evangelist, according to ancient tradition, laid the foundation of the church of Alexandria. The Copts in old Cairo, the Babylon of Egypt, claim this to be the place from which Peter wrote his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13); but he must mean either the Babylon on the Euphrates, or the mystic Babylon of Rome. Eusebius names, as the first bishops of Alexandria, Annianos (A.D. 62–85), Abilios (to 98), and Kerdon (to 110). This see naturally grew up to metropolitan and patriarchal importance and dignity. As early as the second century a theological school flourished in Alexandria, in which Clement and Origen taught as pioneers in biblical learning and Christian philosophy. From Lower Egypt the gospel spread to Middle and Upper Egypt and the adjacent provinces, perhaps (in the fourth century) as far as Nubia, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia. At a council of Alexandria in the year 235, twenty bishops were present from the different parts of the land of the Nile.

During the fourth century Egypt gave to the church the Arian heresy, the Athanasian orthodoxy, and the monastic piety of St. Antony and St. Pachomius, which spread with irresistible force over Christendom.

The theological literature of Egypt was chiefly Greek. Most of the early manuscripts of the Greek Scriptures—including probably the invaluable Sinaitic and Vatican MSS.—were written in Alexandria. But already in the second century the Scriptures were translated into the vernacular language, in three different dialects. What remains of these versions is of considerable weight in ascertaining the earliest text of the Greek Testament.

The Christian Egyptians are the descendants of the Pharaonic Egyptians, but largely mixed with negro and Arab blood. Christianity never fully penetrated the nation, and was almost swept away by the Mohammedan conquest under the Caliph Omar (640), who burned the magnificent libraries of Alexandria under the plea that if the books agreed with the Koran, they were useless, if not, they were pernicious and fit for destruction. Since that time Egypt almost disappears from church history, and is still groaning, a house of bondage under new masters. The great mass of the people are Moslems, but the Copts—about half a million of five and a half millions—perpetuate the nominal Christianity of their ancestors, and form a mission field for the more active churches of the West.

§ 10. Christianity in North Africa.

Böttiger: Geschichte der Carthager. Berlin, 1827.

Movers: Die Phönizier. 1840–56, 4 vols. (A standard work.)

Th. Mommsen: Röm. Geschichte, I. 489 sqq. (Book III. chs. 1–7, 5th ed.)

N. Davis: Carthage and her Remains. London & N. York, 1861.

R. Bosworth Smith: Carthage and the Carthaginians. Lond. 2nd ed. 1879. By the same: Rome and Carthage. N. York, 1880.

Otto Meltzer: Geschichte der Karthager. Berlin, vol. I. 1879.

These books treat of the secular history of the ancient Carthaginians, but help to understand the situation and antecedents.

Julius Lloyd; The North African Church. London, 1880. Comes down to the Moslem Conquest.

The inhabitants of the provinces of Northern Africa were of Semitic origin, with a language similar to the Hebrew, but became Latinized in customs, laws, and language under the Roman rule. The church in that region therefore belongs to Latin Christianity, and plays a leading part in its early history.

The Phoenicians, a remnant of the Canaanites, were the English of ancient history. They carried on the commerce of the world; while the Israelites prepared the religion, and the Greeks the civilization of the world. Three small nations, in small countries, accomplished a more important work than the colossal empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, or even Rome. Occupying a narrow strip of territory on the Syrian coast, between Mount Lebanon and the sea, the Phoenicians sent their merchant vessels from Tyre and Sidon to all parts of the old world from India to the Baltic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope two thousand years before Vasco de Gama, and brought back sandal wood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, ostrich plumes from Nubia, silver from Spain, gold from the Niger, iron from Elba, tin from England, and amber from the Baltic. They furnished Solomon with cedars from Lebanon, and helped him to build his palace and the temple. They founded on the northernmost coast of Africa, more than eight hundred years before Christ, the colony of Carthage.6  From that favorable position they acquired the control over the northern coast of Africa from the pillars of Hercules to the Great Syrtes, over Southern Spain, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the whole Mediterranean sea. Hence the inevitable rivalry between Rome and Carthage, divided only by three days’ sail; hence the three Punic wars which, in spite of the brilliant military genius of Hannibal, ended in the utter destruction of the capital of North Africa (b.c. 146).7 "Delenda est Carthago," was the narrow and cruel policy of the elder Cato. But under Augustus, who carried out the wiser plan of Julius Caesar, there arose a new Carthage on the ruins of the old, and became a rich and prosperous city, first heathen, then Christian, until it was captured by the barbarous Vandals (A.D. 439), and finally destroyed by a race cognate to its original founders, the Mohammedan Arabs (647). Since that time "a mournful and solitary silence" once more brooded over its ruins.8

Christianity reached proconsular Africa in the second, perhaps already at the close of the first century, we do not know when and how. There was constant intercourse with Italy. It spread very rapidly over the fertile fields and burning sands of Mauritania and Numidia. Cyprian could assemble in 258 a synod of eighty-seven bishops, and in 308 the schismatical Donatists held a council of two hundred and seventy bishops at Carthage. The dioceses, of course, were small in those days.

The oldest Latin translation of the Bible, miscalled "Itala" (the basis of Jerome’s "Vulgata"), was made probably in Africa and for Africa, not in Rome and for Rome, where at that time the Greek language prevailed among Christians. Latin theology, too, was not born in Rome, but in Carthage. Tertullian is its father. Minutius Felix, Arnobius, and Cyprian bear witness to the activity and prosperity of African Christianity and theology in the third century. It reached its highest perfection during the first quarter of the fifth century in the sublime intellect and burning heart of St. Augustin, the greatest among the fathers, but soon after his death (430) it was buried first beneath the Vandal barbarism, and in the seventh century by the Mohammedan conquest. Yet his writings led Christian thought in the Latin church throughout the dark ages, stimulated the Reformers, and are a vital force to this day.

§ 11. Christianity in Europe.

"Westward the course of Empire takes its way."

This law of history is also the law of Christianity. From Jerusalem to Rome was the march of the apostolic church. Further and further West has been the progress of missions ever since.

The church of Rome was by far the most important one for all the West. According to Eusebius, it had in the middle of the third century one bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons with as many sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty readers, exorcists, and door-keepers, and fifteen hundred widows and poor persons under its care. From this we might estimate the number of members at some fifty or sixty thousand, i.e. about one-twentieth of the population of the city, which cannot be accurately determined indeed, but must have exceeded one million during the reign of the Antonines.9  The strength of Christianity in Rome is also confirmed by the enormous extent of the catacombs where the Christians were buried.

From Rome the church spread to all the cities of Italy. The first Roman provincial synod, of which we have information, numbered twelve bishops under the presidency of Telesphorus (142–154). In the middle of the third century (255) Cornelius of Rome held a council of sixty bishops.

The persecution of the year 177 shows the church already planted in the south of Gaul in the second century. Christianity came hither probably from the East; for the churches of Lyons and Vienne were intimately connected with those of Asia Minor, to which they sent a report of the persecution, and Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna. Gregory of Tours states, that in the middle of the third century seven missionaries were sent from Rome to Gaul. One of these, Dionysius, founded the first church of Paris, died a martyr at Montmartre, and became the patron saint of France. Popular superstition afterwards confounded him with Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by Paul at Athens.

Spain probably became acquainted with Christianity likewise in the second century, though no clear traces of churches and bishops there meet us till the middle of the third. The council of Elvira in 306 numbered nineteen bishops. The apostle Paul once formed the plan of a missionary journey to Spain, and according to Clement of Rome he preached there, if we understand that country to be meant by "the limit of the West," to which he says that Paul carried the gospel.10  But there is no trace of his labors in Spain on record. The legend, in defiance of all chronology, derives Christianity in that country from James the Elder, who was executed in Jerusalem in 44, and is said to be buried at Campostella, the famous place of pilgrimage, where his bones were first discovered under Alphonse II, towards the close of the eighth century.11

When Irenaeus speaks of the preaching of the gospel among the Germans and other barbarians, who, "without paper and ink, have salvation written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit," he can refer only to the parts of Germany belonging to the Roman empire (Germania cisrhenana).

According to Tertullian Britain also was brought under the power of the cross towards the end of the second century. The Celtic church existed in England, Ireland, and Scotland, independently of Rome, long before the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by the Roman mission of Augustine; it continued for some time after that event and sent offshoots to Germany, France, and the Low Countries, but was ultimately at different dates incorporated with the Roman church. It took its origin probably from Gaul, and afterwards from Italy also. The legend traces it to St. Paul and other apostolic founders. The venerable Bede (†735) says, that the British king Lucius (about 167) applied to the Roman bishop Eleutherus for missionaries. At the council of Arles, in Gaul (Arelate), in 314, three British bishops, of Eboracum (York), Londinum (London), and Colonia Londinensium (i.e. either Lincoln or more probably Colchester), were present.

The conversion of the barbarians of Northern and Western Europe did not begin in earnest before the fifth and sixth centuries, and will claim our attention in the history of the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER II.

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.

"Semen est sanguis Christianorum."—Tertullian.

–––––

§ 12. Literature.

I. Sources:

Eusebius: H. E., particularly Lib. viii. and ix.

Lactantius: De Mortibus persecutorum.

The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Origen, and the Epistles of Cyprian.

Theod. Ruinart: Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta. Par. 1689; 2nd ed. Amstel. 1713 (covering the first four cent.).

Several biographies in the Acta Sanctorum. Antw. 1643 sqq.

Les Acts des martyrs depuis l’origine de l’église Chrétienne jusqu’à nos temps. Traduits et publiés par les R. R. P. P bénédictins de la congreg. de France. Par. 1857 sqq.

The Martyrol. Hieronymianum (ed. Florentini, Luc. 1668, and in Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Opp. Hieron. xi. 434 sqq.); the Martyrol. Romanum (ed. Baron. 1586), the Menolog. Graec. (ed. Urbini, 1727); De Rossi, Roller, and other works on the Roman Catacombs.

II. Works.

John Foxe (or Fox, d. 1587): Acts and Monuments of the Church (commonly called Book of Martyrs), first pub. at Strasburg 1554, and Basle 1559; first complete ed. fol. London 1563; 9th ed. fol. 1684, 3 vols. fol.; best ed. by G. Townsend, Lond. 1843, 8 vols. 8o.; also many abridged editions. Foxe exhibits the entire history of Christian martyrdom, including the Protestant martyrs of the middle age and the sixteenth century, with polemical reference to the church of Rome as the successor of heathen Rome in the work of blood persecution. "The Ten Roman persecutions" are related in the first volume.

Kortholdt: De persecutionibus eccl. primcevae. Kiel, 1629.

Gibbon: chap. xvi.

Münter: Die Christen im heidnischen Hause vor Constantin. Copenh. 1828.

Schumann Von Mansegg (R.C.): Die Verfolgungen der ersten christlichen Kirche. Vienna, 1821.

W. Ad. Schmidt: Geschichte der Denk u. Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiserherrschaft und des Christenthums. Berl. 1847.

Kritzler: Die Heldenzeiten des Christenthums. Vol. i. Der Kampf mit dem Heidthum. Leipz. 1856.

Fr. W. Gass: Das christl. Märtyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten. 1859–60 (in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1859, pp. 323–392, and 1860, pp. 315–381).

F. Overbeck: Gesetze der röm. Kaiser gegen die Christen, in his Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche, I. Chemn. 1875.

B. Aubé: Histoire des persécutions de l’église jusqu’ à la fin des Antonins. 2nd ed. Paris 1875 (Crowned by the Académie française). By the same: Histoire des persécutions de l’église, La polémique paÿenne à la fin du II. siècle, 1878. Les Chréstiens dans l’empire romain, de la fin des Antonins au milieu du IIIe siécle (180–249), 1881.  L’église et L’état dans la seconde moitié du IIIe siécle, 1886.

K. Wieseler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, Hist. und chronol. untersucht. Gütersloh, 1878.

Gerh. Uhlhorn: Der Kampf des Christenthums mit dem Heidenthum. 3d ed. Stuttgart, 1879. Engl. transl. by Smyth & Ropes, 1879.

Theod. Keim: Rom und das Christenthum. Berlin, 1881.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle. Paris, 1882, pp. 53–69.

§ 13. General Survey.

The persecutions of Christianity during the first three centuries appear like a long tragedy: first, foreboding signs; then a succession of bloody assaults of heathenism upon the religion of the cross; amidst the dark scenes of fiendish hatred and cruelty the bright exhibitions of suffering virtue; now and then a short pause; at last a fearful and desperate struggle of the old pagan empire for life and death, ending in the abiding victory of the Christian religion. Thus this bloody baptism of the church resulted in the birth of a Christian world. It was a repetition and prolongation of the crucifixion, but followed by a resurrection.

Our Lord had predicted this conflict, and prepared His disciples for it. "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. They will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you; yea and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child: and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved." These, and similar words, as well as the recollection of the crucifixion and resurrection, fortified and cheered many a confessor and martyr in the dungeon and at the stake.

The persecutions proceeded first from the Jews, afterwards from the Gentiles, and continued, with interruptions, for nearly three hundred years. History reports no mightier, longer and deadlier conflict than this war of extermination waged by heathen Rome against defenseless Christianity. It was a most unequal struggle, a struggle of the sword and of the cross; carnal power all on one side, moral power all on the other. It was a struggle for life and death. One or the other of the combatants must succumb. A compromise was impossible. The future of the world’s history depended on the downfall of heathenism and the triumph of Christianity. Behind the scene were the powers of the invisible world, God and the prince of darkness. Justin, Tertullian, and other confessors traced the persecutions to Satan and the demons, though they did not ignore the human and moral aspects; they viewed them also as a punishment for past sins, and a school of Christian virtue. Some denied that martyrdom was an evil, since it only brought Christians the sooner to God and the glory of heaven. As war brings out the heroic qualities of men, so did the persecutions develop the patience, the gentleness, the endurance of the Christians, and prove the world-conquering power of faith.

Number of Persecutions.

From the fifth century it has been customary to reckon ten great persecutions: under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, and Diocletian.12  This number was suggested by the ten plagues of Egypt taken as types (which, however, befell the enemies of Israel, and present a contrast rather than a parallel), and by the ten horns of the Roman beast making war with the Lamb, taken for so many emperors.13  But the number is too great for the general persecutions, and too small for the provincial and local. Only two imperial persecutions—those, of Decius and Diocletian—extended over the empire; but Christianity was always an illegal religion from Trajan to Constantine, and subject to annoyance and violence everywhere.14 Some persecuting emperors—Nero, Domitian, Galerius, were monstrous tyrants, but others—Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Decius, Diocletian—were among the best and most energetic emperors, and were prompted not so much by hatred of Christianity as by zeal for the maintenance of the laws and the power of the government. On the other hand, some of the most worthless emperors—Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus—were rather favorable to the Christians from sheer caprice. All were equally ignorant of the true character of the new religion.

The Result.

The long and bloody war of heathen Rome against the church, which is built upon a rock, utterly failed. It began in Rome under Nero, it ended near Rome at the Milvian bridge, under Constantine. Aiming to exterminate, it purified. It called forth the virtues of Christian heroism, and resulted in the consolidation and triumph of the new religion. The philosophy of persecution is best expressed by the terse word of Tertullian, who lived in the midst of them, but did not see the end: "The blood of the Christians is the seed of the Church."

Religious Freedom.

The blood of persecution is also the seed of civil and religious liberty. All sects, schools, and parties, whether religious or political, when persecuted, complain of injustice and plead for toleration; but few practise it when in power. The reason of this inconsistency lies in the selfishness of human nature, and in mistaken zeal for what it believes to be true and right. Liberty is of very slow, but sure growth.

The ancient world of Greece and Rome generally was based upon the absolutism of the state, which mercilessly trampled under foot the individual rights of men. It is Christianity which taught and acknowledged them.

The Christian apologists first proclaimed, however imperfectly, the principle of freedom of religion, and the sacred rights of conscience. Tertullian, in prophetic anticipation as it were of the modern Protestant theory, boldly tells the heathen that everybody has a natural and inalienable right to worship God according to his conviction, that all compulsion in matters of conscience is contrary to the very nature of religion, and that no form of worship has any value whatever except as far as it is a free voluntary homage of the heart.15

Similar views in favor of religious liberty were expressed by Justin Martyr,16 and at the close of our period by Lactantius, who says: "Religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion."17

The Church, after its triumph over paganism, forgot this lesson, and for many centuries treated all Christian heretics, as well as Jews and Gentiles, just as the old Romans had treated the Christians, without distinction of creed or sect. Every state-church from the times of the Christian emperors of Constantinople to the times of the Russian Czars and the South American Republics, has more or less persecuted the dissenters, in direct violation of the principles and practice of Christ and the apostles, and in carnal misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of heaven.

§ 14. Jewish Persecution.

Sources.

I. Dio Cassius: Hist. Rom. LXVIII. 32; LXIX. 12–14; Justin M.: Apol. I. 31, 47; Eusebius: H. Eccl. IV. 2. and 6. Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien (Paris 1867), pp. 402–438.

II. Fr. Münter.: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan u. Hadrian. Altona and Leipz. 1821.

Deyling: Aeliae Capitol. origines et historiae. Lips. 1743.

Ewald: Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 373–432.

Milman: History of the Jews, Books 18 and 20.

Grätz: Gesch. der Juden. Vol. IV. (Leipz. 1866).

Schürer: Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 350–367.

The Jews had displayed their obstinate unbelief and bitter hatred of the gospel in the crucifixion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the execution of James the Elder, the repeated incarceration as of Peter and John, the wild rage against Paul, and the murder of James the Just. No wonder that the fearful judgment of God at last visited this ingratitude upon them in the destruction of the holy city and the temple, from which the Christians found refuge in Pella.

But this tragical fate could break only the national power of the Jews, not their hatred of Christianity. They caused the death of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were particularly active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna; and they inflamed the violence of the Gentiles by eliminating the sect of the Nazarenes.

The Rebellion under Bar-Cochba. Jerusalem again Destroyed.

By severe oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, the prohibition of circumcision, and the desecration of Jerusalem by the idolatry of the pagans, the Jews were provoked to a new and powerful insurrection (A.D. 132–135). A pseudo-Messiah, Bar-Cochba (son of the stars, Num. 24:17), afterwards called Bar-Cosiba (son of falsehood), put himself at the head of the rebels, and caused all the Christians who would not join him to be most cruelly murdered. But the false prophet was defeated by Hadrian’s general in 135, more than half a million of Jews were slaughtered after a desperate resistance, immense numbers sold into slavery, 985 villages and 50 fortresses levelled to the ground, nearly all Palestine laid waste, Jerusalem again destroyed, and a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, erected on its ruins, with an image of Jupiter and a temple of Venus. The coins of Aelia Capitolina bear the images of Jupiter Capitolinus, Bacchus, Serapis, Astarte.

Thus the native soil of the venerable religion of the Old Testament was ploughed up, and idolatry planted on it. The Jews were forbidden to visit the holy spot of their former metropolis upon pain of death.18  Only on the anniversary of the destruction were they allowed to behold and bewail it from a distance. The prohibition was continued under Christian emperors to their disgrace. Julian the Apostate, from hatred of the Christians, allowed and encouraged them to rebuild the temple, but in vain. Jerome, who spent the rest of his life in monastic retirement at Bethlehem (d. 419), informs us in pathetic words that in his day old Jewish men and women, "in corporibus et in habitu suo iram a Domini demonstrantes," had to buy from the Roman watch the privilege of weeping and lamenting over the ruins from mount Olivet in sight of the cross, "ut qui quondam emerant sanguinem Christi, emant lacrymas suas, et ne fletus quidem i eis gratuitus sit."19 The same sad privilege the Jews now enjoy under Turkish rule, not only once a year, but every Friday beneath the very walls of the Temple, now replaced by the Mosque of Omar.20

The Talmud.

After this the Jews had no opportunity for any further independent persecution of the Christians. Yet they continued to circulate horrible calumnies on Jesus and his followers. Their learned schools at Tiberias and Babylon nourished this bitter hostility. The Talmud, i.e. Doctrine, of which the first part (the Mishna, i.e. Repetition) was composed towards the end of the second century, and the second part (the Gemara, i.e. Completion) in the fourth century, well represents the Judaism of its day, stiff, traditional, stagnant, and anti-Christian. Subsequently the Jerusalem Talmud was eclipsed by the Babylonian (430–521), which is four times larger, and a still more distinct expression of Rabbinism. The terrible imprecation on apostates (pratio haereticorum), designed to deter Jews from going over to the Christian faith, comes from the second century, and is stated by the Talmud to have been composed at Jafna, where the Sanhedrin at that time had its seat, by the younger Rabbi Gamaliel.

The Talmud is the slow growth of several centuries. It is a chaos of Jewish learning, wisdom, and folly, a continent of rubbish, with hidden pearls of true maxims and poetic parables. Delitzsch calls it "a vast debating club, in which there hum confusedly the myriad voices of at least five centuries, a unique code of laws, in comparison with which the law-books of all other nations are but lilliputian." It is the Old Testament misinterpreted and turned against the New, in fact, though not in form. It is a rabbinical Bible without inspiration, without the Messiah, without hope. It shares the tenacity of the Jewish race, and, like it, continues involuntarily to bear testimony to the truth of Christianity. A distinguished historian, on being asked what is the best argument for Christianity, promptly replied: the Jews.21

Unfortunately this people, still remarkable even in its tragical end, was in many ways cruelly oppressed and persecuted by the Christians after Constantine, and thereby only confirmed in its fanatical hatred of them. The hostile legislation began with the prohibition of the circumcision of Christian slaves, and the intermarriage between Jews and Christians, and proceeded already in the fifth century to the exclusion of the Jews from all civil and political rights in Christian states. Even our enlightened age has witnessed the humiliating spectacle of a cruel Judenhetze in Germany and still more in Russia (1881). But through all changes of fortune God has preserved this ancient race as a living monument of his justice and his mercy; and he will undoubtedly assign it an important part in the consummation of his kingdom at the second coming of Christ.

§ 15. Causes of Roman Persecution.

The policy of the Roman government, the fanaticism of the superstitious people, and the self-interest of the pagan priests conspired for the persecution of a religion which threatened to demolish the tottering fabric of idolatry; and they left no expedients of legislation, of violence, of craft, and of wickedness untried, to blot it from the earth.

To glance first at the relation of the Roman state to the Christian religion.

Roman Toleration.

The policy of imperial Rome was in a measure tolerant. It was repressive, but not preventive. Freedom of thought was not checked by a censorship, education was left untrammelled to be arranged between the teacher and the learner. The armies were quartered on the frontiers as a protection of the empire, not employed at home as instruments of oppression, and the people were diverted from public affairs and political discontent by public amusements. The ancient religions of the conquered races were tolerated as far as they did not interfere with the interests of the state. The Jews enjoyed special protection since the time of Julius Caesar.

Now so long as Christianity was regarded by the Romans as a mere sect of Judaism, it shared the hatred and contempt, indeed, but also the legal protection bestowed on that ancient national religion. Providence had so ordered it that Christianity had already taken root in the leading cities of the empire before, its true character was understood. Paul had carried it, under the protection of his Roman citizenship, to the ends of the empire, and the Roman proconsul at Corinth refused to interfere with his activity on the ground that it was an internal question of the Jews, which did not belong to his tribunal. The heathen statesmen and authors, even down to the age of Trajan, including the historian Tacitus and the younger Pliny, considered the Christian religion as a vulgar superstition, hardly worthy of their notice.

But it was far too important a phenomenon, and made far too rapid progress to be long thus ignored or despised. So soon as it was understood as a new religion, and as, in fact, claiming universal validity and acceptance, it was set down as unlawful and treasonable, a religio illicita; and it was the constant reproach of the Christians: "You have no right to exist."22

Roman Intolerance.

We need not be surprised at this position. For with all its professed and actual tolerance the Roman state was thoroughly interwoven with heathen idolatry, and made religion a tool of itspolicy. Ancient history furnishes no example of a state without some religion and form of worship. Rome makes no exception to the general rule. "The Romano-Hellenic state religion" (says Mommsen), "and the Stoic state-philosophy inseparably combined with it were not merely a convenient instrument for every government—oligarchy, democracy, or monarchy—but altogether indispensable, because it was just as impossible to construct the state wholly without religious elements as to discover any new state religion adapted to form a substitute for the old."23

The piety of Romulus and Numa was believed to have laid the foundation of the power of Rome. To the favor of the deities of the republic, the brilliant success of the Roman arms was attributed. The priests and Vestal virgins were supported out of the public treasury. The emperor was ex-officio the pontifex maximus, and even an object of divine worship. The gods were national; and the eagle of Jupiter Capitolinus moved as a good genius before the world-conquering legions. Cicero lays down as a principle of legislation, that no one should be allowed to worship foreign gods, unless they were recognized by public statute.24  Maecenas counselled Augustus: "Honor the gods according to the custom of our ancestors, and compel25 others to worship them. Hate and punish those who bring in strange gods."

It is true, indeed, that individuals in Greece and Rome enjoyed an almost unlimited liberty for expressing sceptical and even impious sentiments in conversation, in books and on the stage. We need only refer to the works of Aristophanes, Lucian, Lucretius, Plautus, Terence. But a sharp distinction was made then, as often since by Christian governments, between liberty of private thought and conscience, which is inalienable and beyond the reach of legislation, and between the liberty of public worship, although the latter is only the legitimate consequence of the former. Besides, wherever religion is a matter of state-legislation and compulsion, there is almost invariably a great deal of hypocrisy and infidelity among the educated classes, however often it may conform outwardly, from policy, interest or habit, to the forms and legal acquirements of the established creed.

The senate and emperor, by special edicts, usually allowed conquered nations the free practice of their worship even in Rome; not, however, from regard for the sacred rights of conscience, but merely from policy, and with the express prohibition of making proselytes from the state religion; hence severe laws were published from time to time against transition to Judaism.

Obstacles to the Toleration of Christianity.

To Christianity, appearing not as a national religion, but claiming to be the only true universal one making its converts among every people and every sect, attracting Greeks and Romans in much larger numbers than Jews, refusing to compromise with any form of idolatry, and threatening in fact the very existence of the Roman state religion, even this limited toleration could not be granted. The same all-absorbing political interest of Rome dictated here the opposite course, and Tertullian is hardly just in changing the Romans with inconsistency for tolerating the worship of all false gods, from whom they had nothing to fear, and yet prohibiting the worship of the only true God who is Lord over all.26  Born under Augustus, and crucified under Tiberius at the sentence of the Roman magistrate, Christ stood as the founder of a spiritual universal empire at the head of the most important epoch of the Roman power, a rival not to be endured. The reign of Constantine subsequently showed that the free toleration of Christianity was the death-blow to the Roman state religion.

Then, too, the conscientious refusal of the Christians to pay divine honors to the emperor and his statue, and to take part in any idolatrous ceremonies at public festivities, their aversion to the imperial military service, their disregard for politics and depreciation of all civil and temporal affairs as compared with the spiritual and eternal interests of man, their close brotherly union and frequent meetings, drew upon them the suspicion of hostility to the Caesars and the Roman people, and the unpardonable crime of conspiracy against the state.27

The common people also, with their polytheistic ideas, abhorred the believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of the gods. They readily gave credit to the slanderous rumors of all sorts of abominations, even incest and cannibalism, practised by the Christians at their religious assemblies and love-feasts, and regarded the frequent public calamities of that age as punishments justly inflicted by the angry gods for the disregard of their worship. In North Africa arose the proverb: "If God does not send rain, lay it to the Christians." At every inundation, or drought, or famine, or pestilence, the fanatical populace cried: "Away with the atheists!  To the lions with the Christians!"

Finally, persecutions were sometimes started by priests, jugglers, artificers, merchants, and others, who derived their support from the idolatrous worship. These, like Demetrius at Ephesus, and the masters of the sorceress at Philippi, kindled the fanaticism and indignation of the mob against the new religion for its interference with their gains.28

§ 16. Condition of the Church before the Reign of Trajan.

The imperial persecutions before Trajan belong to the Apostolic age, and have been already described in the first volume. We allude to them here only for the sake of the connection. Christ was born under the first, and crucified under the second Roman emperor. Tiberius (A.D. 14–37) is reported to have been frightened by Pilate’s account of the crucifixion and resurrection, and to have proposed to the senate, without success, the enrollment of Christ among the Roman deities; but this rests only on the questionable authority of Tertullian. The edict of Claudius (42–54) in the year 53, which banished the Jews from Rome, fell also upon the Christians, but as Jews with whom they were confounded. The fiendish persecution of Nero (54–68) was intended as a punishment, not for Christianity, but for alleged incendiarism (64). It showed, however, the popular temper, and was a declaration of war against the new religion. It became a common saying among Christians that Nero would reappear as Antichrist.

During the rapidly succeeding reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespacian, and Titus, the church, so far as we know, suffered no very serious persecution.

But Domitian (81–96), a suspicious and blasphemous tyrant, accustomed to call himself and to be called "Lord and God," treated the embracing of Christianity a crime against the state, and condemned to death many Christians, even his own cousin, the consul Flavius Clemens, on the charge of atheism; or confiscated their property, and sent them, as in the case of Domitilia, the wife of the Clemens just mentioned, into exile. His jealousy also led him to destroy the surviving descendants of David; and he brought from Palestine to Rome two kinsmen of Jesus, grandsons of Judas, the "brother of the Lord," but seeing their poverty and rustic simplicity, and hearing their explanation of the kingdom of Christ as not earthly, but heavenly, to be established by the Lord at the end of the world, when He should come to judge the quick and the dead, he let them go. Tradition (in Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome) assigns to the reign of Domitian the banishment of John to Patmos (which, however, must be assigned to the reign of Nero), together with his miraculous preservation from death in Rome (attested by Tertullian), and the martyrdom of Andrew, Mark, Onesimus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. The Martyrium of Ignatius speaks of "many persecutions under Domitian."

His humane and justice-loving successor, Nerva (96–98), recalled the banished, and refused to treat the confession of Christianity as a political crime, though he did not recognise the new religion as a religio licita.

§ 17. Trajan. A.D. 98–117—Christianity Forbidden—Martyrdom of Symeon of Jerusalem, and Ignatius of Antioch.

I. Sources.

Plinius, jun.: Epist. x. 96 and 97 (al. 97 sq.). Tertullian: Apol. c. 2; Eusebius: H. E. III. 11, 32, 33, 36. Chron. pasch. p. 470 (ed. Bonn.).

Acta Martyrii Ignatii, in Ruinart, p. 8 sqq.; recent edd. by Theod. Zahn, in Patrum Apost. Opera (Lips. 1876), vol. II. pp. 301 sqq.; FUNK, Opera Patr. Apost., vol. I. 254–265; II. 218–275; and Lightfoot: S. Ignatius and S. Polyc., II. 1, 473–570.

II. Works.

On Trajan’s reign in general see Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs; Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire.

On Ignatius: Theod. Zahn: Ignatius von Antiochien. Gotha 1873 (631 pages). Lightfoot: S. Ignatius and S. Polyc., London 1885, 2 vols.

On the chronology: Adolph Harnack: Die Zeit des Ignatius. Leipzig, 1878 (90 pages); Comp. Keim, l.c. 510–562; but especially Lighfoot, l.c. II. 1, 390 sqq.

The Epistles of Ignatius will be discussed in chapter XIII. on ecclesiastical literature, §164 and 165.

Trajan, one of the best and most praiseworthy emperors, honored as the "father of his country," but, like his friends, Tacitus and Pliny, wholly ignorant of the nature of Christianity, was the first to pronounce it in form a proscribed religion, as it had been all along in fact. He revived the rigid laws against all secret societies,29 and the provincial officers applied them to the Christians, on account of their frequent meetings for worship. His decision regulated the governmental treatment of the Christians for more than a century . It is embodied in his correspondence with the younger Pliny, who was governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor from 109 to 111.

Pliny came in official contact with the Christians. He himself saw in that religion only a "depraved and immoderate superstition," and could hardly account for its popularity. He reported to the emperor that this superstition was constantly spreading, not only in the cities, but also in the villages of Asia Minor, and captivated people of every age, rank, and sex, so that the temples were almost forsaken, and the sacrificial victims found no sale. To stop this progress, he condemned many Christians to death, and sent others, who were Roman citizens, to the imperial tribunal. But he requested of the emperor further instructions, whether, in these efforts, he should have respect to age; whether he should treat the mere bearing of the Christian name as a crime, if there were no other offence.

To these inquiries Trajan replied: "You have adopted the right course, my friend, with regard to the Christians; for no universal rule, to be applied to all cases, can be laid down in this matter. They should not be searched for; but when accused and convicted, they should be punished; yet if any one denies that be has been a Christian, and proves it by action, namely, by worshipping our gods, he is to be pardoned upon his repentance, even though suspicion may still cleave to him from his antecedents. But anonymous accusations must not be admitted in any criminal process; it sets a bad example, and is contrary to our age" (i.e. to the spirit of Trajan’s government).

This decision was much milder than might have been expected from a heathen emperor of the old Roman stamp. Tertullian charges it with self-contradiction, as both cruel and lenient, forbidding the search for Christians and yet commanding their punishment, thus declaring them innocent and guilty at the same time. But the emperor evidently proceeded on political principles, and thought that a transient and contagious enthusiasm, as Christianity in his judgment was, could be suppressed sooner by leaving it unnoticed, than by openly assailing it. He wished to ignore it as much as possible. But every day it forced itself more and more upon public attention, as it spread with the irresistible power of truth.

This rescript might give occasion, according to the sentiment of governors, for extreme severity towards Christianity as a secret union and a religio illicita. Even the humane Pliny tells us that he applied the rack to tender women. Syria and Palestine suffered heavy persecutions in this reign.

Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem, and, like his predecessor James, a kinsman of Jesus, was accused by fanatical Jews, and crucified A.D. 107, at the age of a hundred and twenty years.

In the same year (or probably between 110 and 116) the distinguished bishop Ignatius of Antioch was condemned to death, transported to Rome, and thrown before wild beasts in the Colosseum. The story of his martyrdom has no doubt been much embellished, but it must have some foundation in fact, and is characteristic of the legendary martyrology of the ancient church.

Our knowledge of Ignatius is derived from his disputed epistles,30 and a few short notices by Irenaeus and Origen. While his existence, his position in the early Church, and his martyrdom are admitted, everything else about him is called in question. How many epistles he wrote, and when he wrote them, how much truth there is in the account of his martyrdom, and when it took place, when it was written up, and by whom—all are undecided, and the subject of protracted controversy. He was, according to tradition, a pupil of the Apostle John, and by his piety so commended himself to the Christians in Antioch that he was chosen bishop, the second after Peter, Euodius being, the first. But although he was a man of apostolic character and governed the church with great care, he was personally not satisfied, until he should be counted worthy of sealing his testimony with his blood, and thereby attaining to the highest seat of honor. The coveted crown came to him at last and his eager and morbid desire for martyrdom was gratified. The emperor Trajan, in 107, came to Antioch, and there threatened with persecution all who refused to sacrifice to the gods. Ignatius was tried for this offence, and proudly confessed himself a "Theophorus" ("bearer of God") because, as he said, he had Christ within his breast. Trajan condemned him to be thrown to the lions at Rome. The sentence was executed with all haste. Ignatius was immediately bound in chains, and taken over land and sea, accompanied by ten soldiers, whom he denominated his "leopards," from Antioch to Seleucia, to Smyrna, where he met Polycarp, and whence be wrote to the churches, particularly to that in Rome; to Troas, to Neapolis, through Macedonia to Epirus, and so over the Adriatic to Rome. He was received by the Christians there with every manifestation of respect, but would not allow them to avert or even to delay his martyrdom. It was on the 20th day of December, 107, that he was thrown into the amphitheater: immediately the wild beasts fell upon him, and soon naught remained of his body but a few bones, which were carefully conveyed to Antioch as an inestimable treasure. The faithful friends who had accompanied him from home dreamed that night that they saw him; some that he was standing by Christ, dropping with sweat as if he had just come from his great labor. Comforted by these dreams they returned with the relics to Antioch.

Note on the Date of the Martyrdom of Ignatius.

The date A.D.107 has in its favor the common reading of the best of the martyrologies of Ignatius (Colbertium) ejnnavtw/ e[tei, in the ninth year, i.e. from Trajan’s accession, A.D. 98. From this there is no good reason to depart in favor of another reading tevtarton e[to", the nineteenth year, i.e. A.D. 116. Jerome makes the date A.D. 109. The fact that the names of the Roman consuls are correctly given in the Martyrium Colbertinum, is proof of the correctness of the date, which is accepted by such critics as Ussher, Tillemont, Möhler, Hefele, and Wieseler. The latter, in his work Die Christenverfolgungen der Caesaren, 1878, pp. 125 sqq., finds confirmation of this date in Eusebius’s statement that the martyrdom took place before Trajan came to Antioch, which was in his 10th year; in the short interval between the martyrdom of Ignatius and Symeon, son of Klopas (Hist. Ecc. III. 32); and finally, in the letter of Tiberian to Trajan, relating how many pressed forward to martyrdom—an effect, as Wieseler thinks, of the example of Ignatius. If 107 be accepted, then another supposition of Wieseler is probable. It is well known that in that year Trajan held an extraordinary triumph on account of his Dacian victories: may it not have been that the blood of Ignatius reddened the sand of the amphitheatre at that time?

But 107 A.D. is by no means universally accepted. Keim (Rom und das Christenthum, p. 540) finds the Martyrium Colbertinum wrong in stating that the death took place under the first consulate of Sura and the second of Senecio, because in 107 Sura was consul for the third and Senecio for the fourth time. He also objects that Trajan was not in Antioch in 107, but in 115, on his way to attack the Armenians and Parthians. But this latter objection falls to the ground if Ignatius was not tried by Trajan personally in Antioch. Harnack concludes that it is only barely possible that Ignatius was martyred under Trajan. Lightfoot assigns the martyrdom to between 110 and 118.

§ 18. Hadrian. A.D. 117–138.

See Gregorovius: Gesch. Hadrians und seiner Zeit (1851); Renan: L’E’glise, chrétienne (1879), 1–44, and Wagenmann in Herzog, vol. v. 501–506.

Hadrian, of Spanish descent, a relative of Trajan, and adopted by him on his death-bed, was a man of brilliant talents and careful education, a scholar an artist, a legislator and administrator, and altogether one of the ablest among the Roman emperors, but of very doubtful morality, governed by changing moods, attracted in opposite directions, and at last lost in self-contradictions and utter disgust of life. His mausoleum (Moles Hadriani) still adorns, as the castle of Sant’ Angelo, the bridge of the Tiber in Rome. He is represented both as a friend and foe of the church. He was devoted to the religion of the state, bitterly opposed to Judaism, indifferent to Christianity, from ignorance of it. He insulted the Jews and the Christians alike by erecting temples of Jupiter and Venus over the site of the temple and the supposed spot of the crucifixion. He is said to have directed the Asiatic proconsul to check the popular fury against the Christians, and to punish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial process, convicted of transgression of the laws.31  But no doubt he regarded, like Trajan, the mere profession of Christianity itself such a transgression.

The Christian apologies, which took their rise under this emperor, indicate a very bitter public sentiment against the Christians, and a critical condition of the church. The least encouragement from Hadrian would have brought on a bloody persecution. Quadratus and Aristides addressed their pleas for their fellow-Christians to him, we do not know with what effect.

Later tradition assigns to his reign the martyrdom of St. Eustachius, St. Symphorosa and her seven sons, of the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are scarcely known, and whose chronology is more than doubtful.

§ 19 Antoninus Pius. A.D. 137–161. The Martyrdom of Polycarp.

Comte de Champagny (R.C.): Les Antonins. (A.D. 69–180), Paris, 1863; 3d ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 vo. Merivale’s History.

Martyrium Polycarp (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of the martyr-acts), in a letter of the church of Smyrna to the Christians in Pontus or Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius, H. Eccl. IV. 15, and separately edited from various MSS. by Ussher (1647) and in nearly all the editions of the Apostolic Fathers, especially by O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L-LVI. The recension of the text is by Zahn, and departs from the text of the Bollandists in 98 places. Best edition by Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq., and II. 1005–1047. Comp. the Greek Vita Polycarpi, in Funk, II. 315 sqq.

Ignatius: Ad. Polycarpum. Best ed., by Lightfoot, l.c.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus in Euseb. v. 20.

Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Euseb. v. 24.

On the date of Polycarp’s death:

Waddington: Mémoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rhéteur Aelius Aristide (in "Mém. de l’ Acad: des inscript. et belles letters," Tom. XXVI. Part II. 1867, pp. 232 sqq.), and in Fastes des provinces Asiatiques, 1872, 219 sqq.

Wieseler: Das Martyrium Polykarp’s und dessen Chronologie, in his Christenverfolgungen, etc. (1878), 3 87.

Keim: Die Zwölf Märtyrer von Smyrna und der Tod des Bishops Polykarp, in his Aus dem Urchristenthum (1878), 92–133.

E. Egli: Das Martyrium des Polyk., in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." for 1882, pp. 227 sqq.

Antoninus Pius protected the Christians from the tumultuous violence which broke out against them on account of the frequent public calamities. But the edict ascribed to him, addressed to the deputies of the Asiatic cities, testifying to the innocence of the Christians, and holding them up to the heathen as models of fidelity and zeal in the worship of God, could hardly have come from an emperor, who bore the honorable title of Pius for his conscientious adherence to the religion of his fathers;32 and in any case he could not have controlled the conduct of the provincial governors and the fury of the people against an illegal religion.

The persecution of the church at Smyrna and the martyrdom of its venerable bishop, which was formerly assigned to the year 167, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, took place, according to more recent research, under Antoninus in 155, when Statius Quadratus was proconsul in Asia Minor.33  Polycarp was a personal friend and pupil of the Apostle John, and chief presbyter of the church at Smyrna, where a plain stone monument still marks his grave. He was the teacher of Irenaeus of Lyons, and thus the connecting link between the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. As he died 155 at an age of eighty-six years or more, he must have been born A.D. 69, a year before the destruction of Jerusalem, and may have enjoyed the friendship of St. John for twenty years or more. This gives additional weight to his testimony concerning apostolic traditions and writings. We have from him a beautiful epistle which echoes the apostolic teaching, and will be noticed in another chapter.

Polycarp steadfastly refused before the proconsul to deny his King and Saviour, whom he had served six and eighty years, and from whom he had experienced nothing but love and mercy. He joyfully went up to the stake, and amidst the flames praised God for having deemed him worthy "to be numbered among his martyrs, to drink the cup of Christ’s sufferings, unto the eternal resurrection of the soul and the body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit." The slightly legendary account in the letter of the church of Smyrna states, that the flames avoided the body of the saint, leaving it unharmed, like gold tried in the fire; also the Christian bystanders insisted, that they perceived a sweet odor, as of incense. Then the executioner thrust his sword into the body, and the stream of blood at once extinguished the flame. The corpse was burned after the Roman custom, but the bones were preserved by the church, and held more precious than gold and diamonds. The death of this last witness of the apostolic age checked the fury of the populace, and the proconsul suspended the persecution.

§ 20. Persecutions under  Marcus Aurelius. A.D. 161–180.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: (b. 121, d. 180)::Tw'n eij" eJauto;n Bibliva ib J|'’, or Meditations. It is a sort of diary or common place book, in which the emperor wrote down, towards the close of his life, partly amid the turmoil of war "in the land of the Quadi" (on the Danube in Hungary), for his self-improvement, his own moral reflections) together with striking maxims of wise and virtuous men. Ed. princeps by Xylander Zurich 1558, and Basle 1568; best ed with a new Latin trans. and very full notes by Gataker, Lond. 1643, Cambr. 1652, and with additional notes from the French by Dacier, Lond. 1697 and 1704. New ed. of the Greek text by J. M. Schultz, 1802 (and 1821); another by Adamantius Coraïs, Par. 1816. English translation by George Long, Lond. 1863, republ. Boston, revised edition, London, 1880. There are translations into most European languages, one in Italian by the Cardinal Francis Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban VIII), who dedicated his translation to his own soul, "to make it redder than his purple at the sight of the virtues of this Gentile." Comp. also the letters of the famous rhetorician M. Corn. Fronto, the teacher of M. Aurelius, discovered and published by Angelo Mai, Milan 1815 and Rome 1823 (Epistolarum ad Marcum Caesarem Lib. V., etc.)  They are, however, very unimportant, except so far as they show the life-long congenial friendship between the amiable teacher and his imperial pupil.

Arnold Bodek: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus als Freund und Zeitgenosse les Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nasi. Leipz. 1868. (Traces the connection of this emperor with the Jewish monotheism and ethics.)

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique. Paris 1882. This is the seventh and the last vol. of his work of twenty years’ labor on the "Histoire des Origines du Christianisme." It is as full of genius, learning and eloquence, and as empty of positive faith as the former volumes. He closes the period of the definite formation of Christianity in the middle of the second century, but proposes in a future work to trace it back to Isaiah (or the "Great Unknown") as its proper founder.

Eusebius: H. E. V. 1–3. The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to the Christians of Asia Minor. Die Akten, des Karpus, des Papylus und der Agathonike, untersucht von AD. Harnack. Leipz., 1888.

On the legend of the Legio fulminatrix see Tertullian: Apol. 5; Euseb.: H. E V. 5.; and Dion Cass.: Hist. LXXI. 8, 9.

Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher on the throne, was a well-educated, just, kind, and amiable emperor, and reached the old Roman ideal of self-reliant Stoic virtue, but for this very reason he had no sympathy with Christianity, and probably regarded it as an absurd and fanatical superstition. He had no room in his cosmopolitan philanthropy for the purest and most innocent of his subjects, many of whom served in his own army. He was flooded with apologies of Melito, Miltiades, Athenagoras in behalf of the persecuted Christians, but turned a deaf ear to them. Only once, in his Meditations, does he allude to them, and then with scorn, tracing their noble enthusiasm for martyrdom to "sheer obstinacy" and love for theatrical display.34  His excuse is ignorance. He probably never read a line of the New Testament, nor of the apologies addressed to him.35

Belonging to the later Stoical school, which believed in an immediate absorption after death into the Divine essence, he considered the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul, with its moral consequences, as vicious and dangerous to the welfare of the state. A law was passed under his reign, punishing every one with exile who should endeavor to influence people’s mind by fear of the Divinity, and this law was, no doubt, aimed at the Christians.36  At all events his reign was a stormy time for the church, although the persecutions cannot be directly traced to him. The law of Trajan was sufficient to justify the severest measures against the followers of the "forbidden" religion.

About the year 170 the apologist Melito wrote: "The race of the worshippers of God in Asia is now persecuted by new edicts as it never has been heretofore; shameless, greedy sycophants, finding occasion in the edicts, now plunder the innocent day and night." The empire was visited at that time by a number of conflagrations, a destructive flood of the Tiber, an earthquake, insurrections, and particularly a pestilence, which spread from Ethiopia to Gaul. This gave rise to bloody persecutions, in which government and people united against the enemies of the gods and the supposed authors of these misfortunes. Celsus expressed his joy that "the demon" [of the Christians] was "not only reviled, but banished from every land and sea," and saw in this judgment the fulfilment of the oracle: "the mills of the gods grind late." But at the same time these persecutions, and the simultaneous literary assaults on Christianity by Celsus and Lucian, show that the new religion was constantly gaining importance in the empire.

In 177, the churches of Lyons and Vienne, in the South of France, underwent a severe trial. Heathen slaves were forced by the rack to declare, that their Christian masters practised all the unnatural vices which rumor charged them with; and this was made to justify the exquisite tortures to which the Christians were subjected. But the sufferers, "strengthened by the fountain of living water from the heart of Christ," displayed extraordinary faith and steadfastness, and felt, that "nothing can be fearful, where the love of the Father is, nothing painful, where shines the glory of Christ."

The most distinguished victims of this Gallic persecution were the bishop Pothinus, who, at the age of ninety years, and just recovered from a sickness, was subjected to all sorts of abuse, and then thrown into a dismal dungeon, where he died in two days; the virgin Blandina, a slave, who showed almost superhuman strength and constancy under the most cruel tortures, and was at last thrown to a wild beast in a net; Ponticus, a boy of fifteen years, who could be deterred by no sort of cruelty from confessing his Saviour. The corpses of the martyrs, which covered the streets, were shamefully mutilated, then burned, and the ashes cast into the Rhone, lest any remnants of the enemies of the gods might desecrate the soil. At last the people grew weary of slaughter, and a considerable number of Christians survived. The martyrs of Lyons distinguished themselves by true humility, disclaiming in their prison that title of honor, as due only, they said, to the faithful and true witness, the Firstborn from the dead, the Prince of life (Rev. 1:5), and to those of his followers who had already sealed their fidelity to Christ with their blood.

About the same time a persecution of less extent appears to have visited Autun (Augustodunum) near Lyons. Symphorinus, a young man of good family, having refused to fall down before the image of Cybele, was condemned to be beheaded. On his way to the place of execution his own mother called to him: "My son, be firm and fear not that death, which so surely leads to life. Look to Him who reigns in heaven. To-day is thy earthly life not taken from thee, but transferred by a blessed exchange into the life of heaven."

The story of the "thundering legion"37 rests on the fact of a remarkable deliverance of the Roman army in Hungary by a sudden shower, which quenched their burning thirst and frightened their barbarian enemies, A.D. 174. The heathens, however, attributed this not to the prayers of the Christian soldiers, but to their own gods. The emperor himself prayed to Jupiter: "This hand, which has never yet shed human blood, I raise to thee." That this event did not alter his views respecting the Christians, is proved by the persecution in South Gaul, which broke out three years later.

Of isolated cases of martyrdom in this reign, we notice that of Justin Martyr, at Rome, in the year 166. His death is traced to the machinations of Crescens, a Cynic philosopher.

Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his cruel and contemptible son, Commodus (180–192), who wallowed in the mire of every sensual debauchery, and displayed at the same time like Nero the most ridiculous vanity as dancer and singer, and in the character of buffoon; but he was accidentally made to favor the Christians by the influence of a concubine,38 Marcia, and accordingly did not disturb them. Yet under his reign a Roman senator, Apollonius, was put to death for his faith.

§ 21. Condition of the Church from Septimius Severus to Philip the Arabian. A.D. 193–249.

Clemens Alex.: Strom. II. 414. Tertull.: Ad Scapulam, c. 4, 5; Apol. (A.D. 198), c. 7, 12, 30, 37, 49.

Respecting the Alexandrian martyrs comp. Euseb.: VI. 1 and 5.

The Acts of the Carthaginian martyrs, which contain their ipsissima verba from their diaries in the prisons, but bear a somewhat Montanistic stamp, see in Ruinart, p 90 sqq.

Lampridius: Vita Alex. Severi, c. 22, 29, 49.

On Philip the Arabian see Euseb.:VI. 34, 36. Hieron.: Chron. ad ann. 246.

J. J. Müller: Staat und Kirche unter Alex. Severus. Zürich 1874.

F. Görres: Kaiser Alex. Severus und das Christenthum. Leipz., 1877.

Jean Réville: La religion à Rome sous les Sévères. Paris, 1886 (vii and 302 pp.); Germ. transl. by Krüger, 1888.

With Septimius Severus (193–211), who was of Punic descent and had a Syrian wife, a line of emperors (Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus) came to the throne, who were rather Oriental than Roman in their spirit, and were therefore far less concerned than the Antonines to maintain the old state religion. Yet towards the close of the second century there was no lack of local persecutions; and Clement of Alexandria wrote of those times: "Many martyrs are daily burned, confined, or beheaded, before our eyes."

In the beginning of the third century (202) Septimius Severus, turned perhaps by Montanistic excesses, enacted a rigid law against the further spread both of Christianity and of Judaism. This occasioned violent persecutions in Egypt and in North Africa, and produced some of the fairest flowers of martyrdom.

In Alexandria, in consequence of this law, Leonides, father of the renowned Origen, was beheaded. Potamiaena, a virgin of rare beauty of body and spirit, was threatened by beastly passion with treatment worse than death, and, after cruel tortures, slowly burned with her mother in boiling pitch. One of the executioners, Basilides, smitten with sympathy, shielded them somewhat from abuse, and soon after their death embraced Christianity, and was beheaded. He declared that Potamiaena had appeared to him in the night, interceded with Christ for him, and set upon his head the martyr’s crown.

In Carthage some catechumens, three young men and two young women, probably of the sect of the Montanists, showed remarkable steadfastness and fidelity in the dungeon and at the place of execution. Perpetua, a young woman of noble birth, resisting, not without a violent struggle, both the entreaties of her aged heathen father and the appeal of her helpless babe upon her breast, sacrificed the deep and tender feelings of a daughter and a mother to the Lord who died for her. Felicitas, a slave, when delivered of a child in the same dungeon, answered the jailor, who reminded her of the still keener pains of martyrdom: "Now I suffer, what I suffer; but then another will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for him." All remaining firm, they were cast to wild beasts at the next public festival, having first interchanged the parting kiss in hope of a speedy reunion in heaven.

The same state of things continued through the first years of Caracalla (211–217), though this gloomy misanthrope passed no laws against the Christians.

The abandoned youth, El-Gabal, or Heliogabalus (218–222), who polluted the throne by the blackest vices and follies, tolerated all the religions in the hope of at last merging them in his favorite Syrian worship of the sun with its abominable excesses. He himself was a priest of the god of the sun, and thence took his name.39

His far more worthy cousin and successor, Alexander Severus (222–235), was addicted to a higher kind of religious eclecticism and syncretism, a pantheistic hero-worship. He placed the busts of Abraham and Christ in his domestic chapel with those of Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and the better Roman emperors, and had the gospel rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," engraven on the walls of his palace, and on public monuments40. His mother, Julia Mammaea, was a patroness of Origen.

His assassin, Maximinus the Thracian (235–238), first a herdsman, afterwards a soldier, resorted again to persecution out of mere opposition to his predecessor, and gave free course to the popular fury against the enemies of the gods, which was at that time excited anew by an earthquake. It is uncertain whether he ordered the entire clergy or only the bishops to be killed. He was a rude barbarian who plundered also heathen temples.

The legendary poesy of the tenth century assigns to his reign the fabulous martyrdom of St. Ursula, a British princess, and her company of eleven thousand (according to others, ten thousand) virgins, who, on their return from a pilgrimage to Rome, were murdered by heathens in the neighborhood of Cologne. This incredible number has probably arisen from the misinterpretation of an inscription, like "Ursula et Undecimilla" (which occurs in an old missal of the Sorbonne), or "Ursula et XI M. V.," i.e. Martyres Virgines, which, by substituting milia for martyres, was increased from eleven martyrs to eleven thousand virgins. Some historians place the fact, which seems to form the basis of this legend, in connexion with the retreat of the Huns after the battle of Chalons, 451. The abridgment of Mil., which may mean soldiers (milites) as well as thousands (milia), was another fruitful source of mistakes in a credulous and superstitious age.

Gordianus (208–244) left the church undisturbed. Philip the Arabian (244–249) was even supposed by some to be a Christian, and was termed by Jerome "primus omnium ex Romanis imperatoribus Christianus." It is certain that Origen wrote letters to him and to his wife, Severa.

This season of repose, however, cooled the moral zeal and brotherly love of the Christians; and the mighty storm under the following reign served well to restore the purity of the church.

§ 22. Persecutions under Decius, and Valerian. A.D. 249–260. Martyrdom of Cyprian.

Dionysius Alex., in Euseb. VI. 40–42; VII. 10, 11.

Cyprian: De Lapsis, and particularly his Epistles of this period. On Cyprian’s martyrdom see the Proconsular Acts, and Pontius: Vita Cypriani.

Franz Görres: Die Toleranzedicte des Kaisers Gallienus, in the "Jahrbücher für protest. Theol.," 1877, pp. 606–630. By the same: Die angebliche Christenverfolgung zur Zeit der Kaiser Numerianus und Carinus, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie." 1880 pp. 31–64.

Decius Trajan (249–251), an earnest and energetic emperor, in whom the old Roman spirit once more awoke, resolved to root out the church as an atheistic and seditious sect, and in the year 250 published an edict to all the governors of the provinces, enjoining return to the pagan state religion under the heaviest penalties. This was the signal for a persecution which, in extent, consistency, and cruelty, exceeded all before it. In truth it was properly the first which covered the whole empire, and accordingly produced a far greater number of martyrs than any former persecution. In the execution of the imperial decree confiscation, exile, torture, promises and threats of all kinds, were employed to move the Christians to apostasy. Multitudes of nominal Christians,41 especially at the beginning, sacrificed to the gods (sacrificati, thurificati), or procured from the, magistrate a false certificate that they had done so (libellatici), and were then excommunicated as apostates (lapsi); while hundreds rushed with impetuous zeal to the prisons and the tribunals, to obtain the confessor’s or martyr’s crown. The confessors of Rome wrote from prison to their brethren of Africa: "What more glorious and blessed lot can fall to man by the grace of God, than to confess God the Lord amidst tortures and in the face of death itself; to confess Christ the Son of God with lacerated body and with a spirit departing, yet free; and to become fellow-sufferers with Christ in the name of Christ?  Though we have not yet shed our blood, we are ready to do so. Pray for us, then, dear Cyprian, that the Lord, the best captain, would daily strengthen each one of us more and more, and at last lead us to the field as faithful soldiers, armed with those divine weapons (Eph. 6:2) which can never be conquered."

The authorities were specially severe with the bishops and officers of the churches. Fabianus of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem, perished in this persecution. Others withdrew to places of concealment; some from cowardice; some from Christian prudence, in hope of allaying by their absence the fury of the pagans against their flocks, and of saving their own lives for the good of the church in better times.

Among the latter was Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who incurred much censure by his course, but fully vindicated himself by his pastoral industry during his absence, and by his subsequent martyrdom. He says concerning the matter: "Our Lord commanded us in times of persecution to yield and to fly. He taught this, and he practised it himself. For since the martyr’s crown comes by the grace of God, and cannot be gained before the appointed hour, he who retires for a time, and remains true to Christ, does not deny his faith, but only abides his time."

The poetical legend of the seven brothers at Ephesus, who fell asleep in a cave, whither they had fled, and awoke two hundred years afterwards, under Theodosius II. (447), astonished to see the once despised and hated cross now ruling over city and country, dates itself internally from the time of Decius, but is not mentioned before Gregory of Tours in the sixth century.

Under Gallus (251–253) the persecution received a fresh impulse thorough the incursions of the Goths, and the prevalence of a pestilence, drought, and famine. Under this reign the Roman bishops Cornelius and Lucius were banished, and then condemned to death.

Valerian (253–260) was at first mild towards the Christians; but in 257 he changed his course, and made an effort to check the progress of their religion without bloodshed, by the banishment of ministers and prominent laymen, the confiscation of their property, and the prohibition of religious assemblies. These measures, however, proving fruitless, he brought the death penalty again into play.

The most distinguished martyrs of this persecution under Valerian are the bishops Sixtus II. of Rome, and Cyprian of Carthage.

When Cyprian received his sentence of death, representing him as an enemy of the Roman gods and laws, he calmly answered: "Deo gratias!"  Then, attended by a vast multitude to the scaffold, he proved once more, undressed himself, covered his eyes, requested a presbyter to bind his hands, and to pay the executioner, who tremblingly drew the sword, twenty-five pieces of gold, and won the incorruptible crown (Sept. 14, 258). His faithful friends caught the blood in handkerchiefs, and buried the body of their sainted pastor with great solemnity.

Gibbon describes the martyrdom of Cyprian with circumstantial minuteness, and dwells with evident satisfaction on the small decorum which attended his execution. But this is no fair average specimen of the style in which Christians were executed throughout the empire. For Cyprian was a man of the highest social standing and connection from his former eminence, as a rhetorician and statesman. His deacon, Pontius relates that "numbers of eminent and illustrious persons, men of mark family and secular distinction, often urged him, for the sake of their old friendship with him, to retire." We shall return to Cyprian again in the history of church government, where he figures as a typical, ante-Nicene high-churchman, advocating both the visible unity of the church and episcopal independence of Rome.

The much lauded martyrdom of the deacon St. Laurentius of Rome, who pointed the avaricious magistrates to the poor and sick of the congregation as the richest treasure of the church, and is said to have been slowly roasted to death (Aug. 10, 258) is scarcely reliable in its details, being first mentioned by Ambrose a century later, and then glorified by the poet Prudentius. A Basilica on the Via Tiburtina celebrates the memory of this saint, who occupies the same position among the martyrs of the church of Rome as Stephen among those of Jerusalem.

§ 23. Temporary Repose. A.D. 260–303.

Gallienus (260–268) gave peace to the church once more, and even acknowledged Christianity as a religio licita. And this calm continued forty years; for the edict of persecution, issued by the energetic and warlike Aurelian (270–275), was rendered void by his assassination; and the six emperors who rapidly followed, from 275 to 284, let the Christians alone.

The persecutions under Carus, Numerianus and Carinus from 284 to 285 are not historical, but legendary.42

During this long season of peace the church rose rapidly in numbers and outward prosperity. Large and even splendid houses of worship were erected in the chief cities, and provided with collections of sacred books and vessels of gold and silver for the administration of the sacraments. But in the same proportion discipline relaxed, quarrels, intrigues, and factions increased, and worldliness poured in like a flood.

Hence a new trial was a necessary and wholesome process of purification.43

§ 24. The Diocletian Persecution, A.D. 303–311.

I. Sources.

Eusebius: H. E. Lib. VIII. – X; De Martyr. Palaest. (ed. Cureton, Lond, 1861); Vita Const. (ed. Heinichen, Lips. 1870).

Lactantius: De Mortibus Persec. c. 7 sqq. Of uncertain authorship.

Basilius M.: Oratio in Gordium mart.; Oratio in Barlaham mart.

II. Works.

Baronius: Annal. ad ann. 302–305.

Gibbon: Chrs. XIII., XIV. and XVI.

Jak. Burckhardt: Die Zeit Constantins des Gr. Basel, 1853, p. 325.

Th. Keim: Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zürich 1852. The same: Die römischen Toleranzedicte für das Christenthum (311–313), in the "Tüb. Theol. Jahrb." 1852. (His. Rom und das Christenthum only comes down to A.D. 192.)

Alb. Vogel: Der Kaiser Diocletian. Gotha 1857.

Bernhardt: Diokletian in s. Verhältnisse zu den Christen. Bonn, 1862.

Hunziker: Regierung und Christenverfolgung des Kaisers Diocletianus und seiner Nachfolger. Leipz. 1868.

Theod. Preuss: Kaiser Diocletian und seine Zeit. Leipz. 1869.

A. J. Mason: The Persecution of Diocletian. Cambridge, 1876. Pages 370. (Comp. a review by Ad. Harnack in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung" for 1877. No. 7. f. 169.)

Theod. Zahn: Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche. Hannover, 1876.

Brieger.: Constantin der Gr. als Religionspolitiker. Gotha, 1880. Comp. the Lit. on Constantine, in vol. III., 10, 11.

The forty years’ repose was followed by, the last and most violent persecution, a struggle for life and death.

"The accession of the Emperor Diocletian is the era from which the Coptic Churches of Egypt and Abyssinia still date, under the name of the ’Era of Martyrs.’ All former persecutions of the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the tenth wave (as men delighted to count it) of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope."44

Diocletian (284–305) was one of the most judicious and able emperors who, in a trying period, preserved the sinking state from dissolution. He was the son of a slave or of obscure parentage, and worked himself up to supreme power. He converted the Roman republican empire into an Oriental despotism, and prepared the way for Constantine and Constantinople. He associated with himself three subordinate co-regents, Maximian (who committed suicide, 310), Galerius (d. 311), and Constantius Chlorus (d. 306, the father of Constantine the Great), and divided with them the government of the immense empire; thereby quadrupling the personality of the sovereign, and imparting vigor to provincial administration, but also sowing the seed of discord and civil war45. Gibbon calls him a second Augustus, the founder of a new empire, rather than the restorer of the old. He also compares him to Charles V., whom he somewhat resembled in his talents, temporary success and ultimate failure, and voluntary retirement from the cares of government.

In the first twenty years of his reign Diocletian respected the toleration edict of Gallienus. His own wife Prisca his daughter Valeria, and most of his eunuchs and court officers, besides many of the most prominent public functionaries, were Christians, or at least favorable to the Christian religion. He himself was a superstitious heathen and an oriental despot. Like Aurelian and Domitian before him, he claimed divine honors, as the vicar of Jupiter Capitolinus. He was called, as the Lord and Master of the world, Sacratissimus Dominus Noster; he guarded his Sacred Majesty with many circles of soldiers and eunuchs, and allowed no one to approach him except on bended knees, and with the forehead touching the ground, while he was seated on the throne in rich vestments from the far East. "Ostentation," says Gibbon, "was the first principle of the new system instituted by Diocletian." As a practical statesman, he must have seen that his work of the political restoration and consolidation of the empire would lack a firm and permanent basis without the restoration of the old religion of the state. Although he long postponed the religious question, he had to meet it at last. It could not be expected, in the nature of the case, that paganism should surrender to its dangerous rival without a last desperate effort to save itself.

But the chief instigator of the renewal of hostility, according to the account of Lactantius, was Diocletian’s co-regent and son-in-law, Galerius, a cruel and fanatical heathen.46  He prevailed at last on Diocletian in his old age to authorize the persecution which gave to his glorious reign a disgraceful end.

In 303 Diocletian issued in rapid succession three edicts, each more severe than its predecessor. Maximian issued the fourth, the worst of all, April 30, 304. Christian churches were to be destroyed; all copies of the Bible were to be burned; all Christians were to be deprived of public office and civil rights; and at last all, without exception, were to sacrifice to the gods upon pain of death. Pretext for this severity was afforded by the occurrence of fire twice in the palace of Nicomedia in Bithynia, where Diocletian resided 47. It was strengthened by the tearing down of the first edict by an imprudent Christian (celebrated in the Greek church under the name of John), who vented in that way his abhorrence of such "godless and tyrannical rulers," and was gradually roasted to death with every species of cruelty. But the conjecture that the edicts were occasioned by a conspiracy of the Christians who, feeling their rising power, were for putting the government at once into Christian hands, by a stroke of state, is without any foundation in history. It is inconsistent with the political passivity of the church during the first three centuries, which furnish no example of rebellion and revolution. At best such a conspiracy could only have been the work of a few fanatics; and they, like the one who tore down the first edict, would have gloried in the deed and sought the crown of martyrdom.48

The persecution began on the twenty-third day of February, 303, the feast of the Terminalia (as if to make an end of the Christian sect), with the destruction of the magnificent church in Nicomedia, and soon spread over the whole Roman empire, except Gaul, Britain, and Spain, where the co-regent Constantius Chlorus, and especially his son, Constantine the Great (from 306), were disposed, as far as possible, to spare the Christians. But even here the churches were destroyed, and many martyrs of Spain (St. Vincentius, Eulalia, and others celebrated by Prudentins), and of Britain (St. Alban) are assigned by later tradition to this age.

The persecution raged longest and most fiercely in the East under the rule of Galerius and his barbarous nephew Maximin Daza, who was intrusted by Diocletian before his retirement with the dignity of Caesar and the extreme command of Egypt and Syria49. He issued in autumn, 308, a fifth edict of persecution, which commanded that all males with their wives and servants, and even their children, should sacrifice and actually taste the accursed offerings, and that all provisions in the markets should be sprinkled with sacrificial wine. This monstrous law introduced a reign of terror for two years, and left50 the Christians no alternative but apostasy or starvation. All the pains, which iron and steel, fire and sword, rack and cross, wild beasts and beastly men could inflict, were employed to gain the useless end.

Eusebius was a witness of this persecution in Caesura, Tyre, and Egypt, and saw, with his own eyes, as he tells us, the houses of prayer razed to the ground, the Holy Scriptures committed to the flames on the market places, the pastors hunted, tortured, and torn to pieces in the amphitheatre. Even the wild beasts, he says, not without rhetorical exaggeration, at last refused to attack the Christians, as if they had assumed the part of men in place of the heathen Romans; the bloody swords became dull and shattered; the executioners grew weary, and had to relieve each other; but the Christians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving in honor of Almighty God, even to their latest breath. He describes the heroic sufferings and death of several martyrs, including his friend, "the holy and blessed Pamphilus," who after two years of imprisonment won the crown of life (309), with eleven others—a typical company that seemed to him to be "a perfect representation of the church."

Eusebius himself was imprisoned, but released. The charge of having escaped martyrdom by offering sacrifice is without foundation.51

In this, as in former persecutions, the number of apostates who preferred the earthly life to the heavenly, was very great. To these was now added also the new class of the traditores, who delivered the holy Scriptures to the heathen authorities, to be burned. But as the persecution raged, the zeal and fidelity of the Christians increased, and martyrdom spread as by contagion. Even boys and girls showed amazing firmness. In many the heroism of faith degenerated to a fanatical courting of death; confessors were almost worshipped, while yet alive; and the hatred towards apostates distracted many congregations, and produced the Meletian and Donatist schisms.

The number of martyrs cannot be estimated with any degree of certainty. The seven episcopal and the ninety-two Palestinian martyrs of Eusebius are only a select list bearing a similar relation to the whole number of victims as the military lists its of distinguished fallen officers to the large mass of common soldiers, and form therefore no fair basis for the calculation of Gibbon, who would reduce the whole number to less than two thousand. During the eight years52 of this persecution the number of victims, without including the many confessors who were barbarously mutilated and condemned to a lingering death in the prisons and mines, must have been much larger. But there is no truth in the tradition (which figures in older church histories) that the tyrants erected trophies in Spain and elsewhere with such inscriptions as announce the suppression of the Christian sect.53

The martyrologies date from this period several legends, the germs of which, however, cannot now be clearly sifted from the additions of later poesy. The story of the destruction of the legio Thebaica is probably an exaggeration of the martyrdom of St. Mauritius, who was executed in Syria, as tribunus militum, with seventy soldiers, at the order of Maximin. The martyrdom of Barlaam, a plain, rustic Christian of remarkable constancy, and of Gordius, a centurion (who, however, was tortured and executed a few years later under Licinius, 314) has been eulogized by St. Basil. A maiden of thirteen years, St. Agnes, whose memory the Latin church has celebrated ever since the fourth century, was, according to tradition, brought in chains before the judgment-seat in Rome; was publicly exposed, and upon her steadfast confession put to the sword; but afterwards appeared to her grieving parents at her grave with a white lamb and a host of shining virgins from heaven, and said: "Mourn me no longer as dead, for ye see that I live. Rejoice with me, that I am forever united in heaven with the Saviour, whom on earth I loved with all my heart." Hence the lamb in the paintings of this saint; and hence the consecration of lambs in her church at Rome at her festival (Jan. 21), from whose wool the pallium of the archbishop is made. Agricola and Vitalis at Bologna, Gervasius and Protasius at Milan, whose bones were discovered in the time of Ambrose Janurius, bishop of Benevent, who became the patron saint of Naples, and astonishes the faithful by the annual miracle of the liquefaction of his blood, and the British St. Alban, who delivered himself to the authorities in the place of the priest he had concealed in his house, and converted his executioner, are said to have attained martyrdom under Diocletian.54

§ 25. The Edicts of Toleration. A.D. 311–313.

See Lit. in § 24, especially Keim, and Mason (Persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326 sqq.)

This persecution was the last desperate struggle of Roman heathenism for its life. It was the crisis of utter extinction or absolute supremacy for each of the two religions. At the close of the contest the old Roman state religion was exhausted. Diocletian retired into private life in 305, under the curse of the Christians; he found greater pleasure in planting cabbages at Salona in his native Dalmatia, than in governing a vast empire, but his peace was disturbed by the tragical misfortunes of his wife and daughter, and in 313, when all the achievements of his reign were destroyed, he destroyed himself.

Galerius, the real author of the persecution, brought to reflection by a terrible disease, put an end to the slaughter shortly before his death, by a remarkable edict of toleration, which he issued from Nicomedia in 311, in connexion with Constantine and Licinius. In that document he declared, that the purpose of reclaiming the Christians from their wilful innovation and the multitude of their sects to the laws and discipline of the, Roman state, was not accomplished; and that he would now grant them permission to hold their religious assemblies provided they disturbed not the order of the state. To this he added in conclusion the significant instruction that the Christians, "after this manifestation of grace, should pray to their God for the welfare of the emperors, of the state, and of themselves, that the state might prosper in every respect, and that they might live quietly in their homes."55

This edict virtually closes the period of persecution in the Roman empire.

For a short time Maximin, whom Eusebius calls "the chief of tyrants," continued in every way to oppress and vex the church in the East, and the cruel pagan Maxentius (a son of Maximian and son-in-law of Galerius) did the same in Italy.

But the young Constantine, who hailed from the far West, had already, in 306, become emperor of Gaul, Spain, and Britain. He had been brought up at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia (like Moses at the court of Pharaoh) and destined for his successor, but fled from the intrigues of Galerius to Britain, and was appointed by his father and proclaimed by the army as his successor. He crossed the Alps, and under the banner of the cross, he conquered Maxentius at the Milvian bridge near Rome, and the heathen tyrant perished with his army of veterans in the waters of the Tiber, Oct. 27, 312. A few months afterwards Constantine met at Milan with his co-regent and brother-in-law, Licinius, and issued a new edict of toleration (313), to which Maximin also, shortly before his suicide (313), was compelled to give his consent at Nicomedia.56  The second edict went beyond the first of 311; it was a decisive step from hostile neutrality to friendly neutrality and protection, and prepared the way for the legal recognition of Christianity, as the religion of the empire. It ordered the full restoration of all confiscated church property to the Corpus Christianorum, at the expense of the imperial treasury, and directed the provincial magistrates to execute this order at once with all energy, so that peace may be fully established and the continuance of the Divine favor secured to the emperors and their subjects.

This was the first proclamation of the great principle that every man had a right to choose his religion according to the dictates of his own conscience and honest conviction, without compulsion and interference from the government.57  Religion is worth nothing except as an act of freedom. A forced religion is no religion at all. Unfortunately, the successors of Constantine from the time of Theodosius the Great (383–395) enforced the Christian religion to the exclusion of every other; and not only so, but they enforced orthodoxy to the exclusion of every form of dissent, which was punished as a crime against the state.

Paganism made another spasmodic effort. Licinius fell out with Constantine and renewed the persecution for a short time in the East, but he was defeated in 323, and Constantine became sole ruler of the empire. He openly protected and favored the church, without forbidding idolatry, and upon the whole remained true to his policy of protective toleration till his death (337). This was enough for the success of the church, which had all the vitality and energy of a victorious power; while heathenism was fast decaying at its root.

With Constantine, therefore, the last of the heathen, the first of the Christian, emperors, a new period begins. The church ascends the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the once despised, now honored and triumphant cross, and gives new vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome. This sudden political and social revolution seems marvellous; and yet it was only the legitimate result of the intellectual and moral revolution which Christianity, since the second century, had silently and imperceptibly wrought in public opinion. The very violence of the Diocletian persecution betrayed the inner weakness of heathenism. The Christian minority with its ideas already controlled the deeper current of history. Constantine, as a sagacious statesman, saw the signs of the times and followed them. The motto of his policy is well symbolized in his military standard with the inscription: "Hoc signo vinces."58

What a contrast between Nero, the first imperial persecutor, riding in a chariot among Christian martyrs as burning torches in his gardens, and Constantine, seated in the Council of Nicaea among three hundred and eighteen bishops (some of whom—as the blinded Confessor Paphnutius, Paul of Neocaesarea, and the ascetics from Upper Egypt clothed in wild raiment—wore the insignia of torture on their maimed and crippled bodies), and giving the highest sanction of civil authority to the decree of the eternal deity of the once crucified Jesus of Nazareth!  Such a revolution the world has never seen before or since, except the silent, spiritual, and moral reformation wrought by Christianity itself at its introduction in the first, and at its revival in the sixteenth century.

§ 26. Christian Martyrdom.

I. Sources.

Ignatius: Epistolae. Martyrum Polycarpi. Tertullian: Ad Martyres. Origenes: Exhortatio ad martyrium (protreptikoV" Lovgo" ei*" martuvpion.) Cyprian: Ep. 11 ad mart. Prudentius: PeriV stefavvwnV hymni XIV. Comp. Lit. § 12.

II. Works.

Sagittarius: De mart. cruciatibus, 1696.

H. Dodwell: De paucitate martyrum, in his Dissertationes Cyprianiae. Lond. 1684.

Ruinart (R.C.): Praefatio generalis in Acta Martyrum.

P. W. Gass: Das christl. Märtyrerthum in den ersten Jahrhunderten, in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift f. Hist. Theol." 1859 and ’60.

E. de Pressensé: The Martyrs and Apologists. Translated from the French. London and N. Y. 1871. (Ch. II. p. 67 sqq.).

Chateaubriand: Les martyrs ou le triomphe de la rel. chrét. 2 vols. Paris 1809 and often (best Engl. trsl. by O W. Wight, N. York, 1859.)  Has no critical or historical value, but merely poetical.

Comp. in part Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art. Lond. 1848. 2 vols.

To these protracted and cruel persecutions the church opposed no revolutionary violence, no carnal resistance, but the moral heroism of suffering and dying for the truth. But this very heroism was her fairest ornament and staunchest weapon. In this very heroism she proved herself worthy of her divine founder, who submitted to the death of the cross for the salvation of the world, and even prayed that his murderers might be forgiven. The patriotic virtues of Greek and Roman antiquity reproduced themselves here in exalted form, in self-denial for the sake of a heavenly country, and for a crown that fadeth not away. Even boys and girls became heroes, and rushed with a holy enthusiasm to death. In those hard times men had to make earnest of the words of the Lord: "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." "He, that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." But then also the promise daily proved itself true: "Blessed are they, who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "He, that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." And it applied not only to the martyrs themselves, who exchanged the troubled life of earth for the blessedness of heaven, but also to the church as a whole, which came forth purer and stronger from every persecution, and thus attested her indestructible vitality.

These suffering virtues are among the sweetest and noblest fruits of the Christian religion. It is not so much the amount of suffering which challenges our admiration, although it was terrible enough, as the spirit with which the early Christians bore it. Men and women of all classes, noble senators and learned bishops, illiterate artisans and poor slaves, loving mothers and delicate virgins, hoary-headed pastors and innocent children approached their tortures in no temper of unfeeling indifference and obstinate defiance, but, like their divine Master, with calm self-possession, humble resignation, gentle meekness, cheerful faith, triumphant hope, and forgiving charity. Such spectacles must have often overcome even the inhuman murderer. "Go on," says Tertullian tauntingly to the heathen governors, "rack, torture, grind us to powder: our numbers increase in proportion as ye mow us down. The blood of Christians is their harvest seed. Your very obstinacy is a teacher. For who is not incited by the contemplation of it to inquire what there is in the core of the matter?  And who, after having joined us, does not long to suffer?"59

Unquestionably there were also during this period, especially after considerable seasons of quiet, many superficial or hypocritical Christians, who, the moment the storm of persecution broke forth, flew like chaff from the wheat, and either offered incense to the gods (thurificati, sacrificati), or procured false witness of their return to paganism (libellatici, from libellum), or gave up the sacred books (traditores). Tertullian relates with righteous indignation that whole congregations, with the clergy at the head, would at times resort to dishonorable bribes in order to avert the persecution of heathen magistrates.60  But these were certainly cases of rare exception. Generally speaking the three sorts of apostates (lapsi) were at once excommunicated, and in many churches, through excessive rigor, were even refused restoration.

Those who cheerfully confessed Christ before the heathen magistrate at the peril of life, but were not executed, were honored as confessors.61 Those who suffered abuse of all kind and death itself, for their faith, were called martyrs or bloodwitnesses.62

Among these confessors and martyrs were not wanting those in whom the pure, quiet flame of enthusiasm rose into the wild fire of fanaticism, and whose zeal was corrupted with impatient haste, heaven-tempting presumption, and pious ambition; to whom that word could be applied: "Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." They delivered themselves up to the heathen officers, and in every way sought the martyr’s crown, that they might merit heaven and be venerated on earth as saints. Thus Tertullian tells of a company of Christians in Ephesus, who begged martyrdom from the heathen governor, but after a few had been executed, the rest were sent away by him with the words: "Miserable creatures, if you really wish to die, you have precipices and halters enough." Though this error was far less discreditable than the opposite extreme of the cowardly fear of man, yet it was contrary to the instruction and the example of Christ and the apostles,63 and to the spirit of true martyrdom, which consists in the union of sincere humility and power, and possesses divine strength in the very consciousness of human weakness. And accordingly intelligent church teachers censured this stormy, morbid zeal. The church of Smyrna speaks thus: "We do not commend those who expose themselves; for the gospel teaches not so." Clement of Alexandria says: "The Lord himself has commanded us to flee to another city when we are persecuted; not as if the persecution were an evil; not as if we feared death; but that we may not lead or help any to evil doing." In Tertullian’s view martyrdom perfects itself in divine patience; and with Cyprian it is a gift of divine grace, which one cannot hastily grasp, but must patiently wait for.

But after all due allowance for such adulteration and degeneracy, the martyrdom of the first three centuries still remains one of the grandest phenomena of history, and an evidence of the indestructible divine nature of Christianity.

No other religion could have stood for so long a period the combined opposition of Jewish bigotry, Greek philosophy, and Roman policy and power; no other could have triumphed at last over so many foes by purely moral and spiritual force, without calling any carnal weapons to its aid. This comprehensive and long-continued martyrdom is the peculiar crown and glory of the early church; it pervaded its entire literature and gave it a predominantly apologetic character; it entered deeply into its organization and discipline and the development of Christian doctrine; it affected the public worship and private devotions; it produced a legendary poetry; but it gave rise also, innocently, to a great deal of superstition, and undue exaltation of human merit; and it lies at the foundation of the Catholic worship of saints and relics.

Sceptical writers have endeavored to diminish its moral effect by pointing to the fiendish and hellish scenes of the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the Parisian massacre of the Huguenots, the Spanish Inquisition, and other persecutions of more recent date. Dodwell expressed the opinion, which has been recently confirmed by the high authority of the learned and impartial Niebuhr, that the Diocletian persecution was a mere shadow as compared with the persecution of the Protestants in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva in the service of Spanish bigotry and despotism. Gibbon goes even further, and boldly asserts that "the number of Protestants who were executed by the Spaniards in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman empire." The victims of the Spanish Inquisition also are said to outnumber those of the Roman emperors.64

Admitting these sad facts, they do not justify any sceptical conclusion. For Christianity is no more responsible for the crimes and cruelties perpetrated in its name by unworthy professors and under the sanction of an unholy alliance of politics and religion, than the Bible for all the nonsense men have put into it, or God for the abuse daily and hourly practised with his best gifts. But the number of martyrs must be judged by the total number of Christians who were a minority of the population. The want of particular statements by contemporary writers leaves it impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of martyrs. Dodwell and Gibbon have certainly underrated it, as far as Eusebius, the popular tradition since Constantine, and the legendary poesy of the middle age, have erred the other way. This is the result of recent discovery and investigation, and fully admitted by such writers as Renan. Origen, it is true, wrote in the middle of the third century, that the number of Christian martyrs was small and easy to be counted; God not permitting that all this class of men should be exterminated.65  But this language must be understood as referring chiefly to the reigns of Caracalla, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus and Philippus Arabs, who did not persecute the Christians. Soon afterwards the fearful persecution of Decius broke out, in which Origen himself was thrown into prison and cruelly treated. Concerning the preceding ages, his statement must be qualified by the equally valid testimonies of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria (Origen’s teacher), and the still older Irenaeus, who says expressly, that the church, for her love to God, "sends in all places and at all times a multitude of martyrs to the Father."66  Even the heathen Tacitus speaks of an "immense multitude" (ingens multitudo) of Christians, who were murdered in the city of Rome alone during the Neronian persecution in 64. To this must be added the silent, yet most eloquent testimony of the Roman catacombs, which, according to the calculation of Marchi and Northcote, extended over nine hundred English miles, and are said to contain nearly seven millions of graves, a large proportion of these including the relics of martyrs, as the innumerable inscriptions and instruments of death testify. The sufferings, moreover, of the church during this period are of course not to be measured merely by the number of actual executions, but by the far more numerous insults, slanders, vexatious, and tortures, which the cruelty of heartless heathens and barbarians could devise, or any sort of instrument could inflict on the human body, and which were in a thousand cases worse than death.

Finally, while the Christian religion has at all times suffered more or less persecution, bloody or unbloody, from the ungodly world, and always had its witnesses ready for any sacrifice; yet at no period since the first three centuries was the whole church denied the right of a peaceful legal existence, and the profession of Christianity itself universally declared and punished as a political crime. Before Constantine the Christians were a helpless and proscribed minority in an essentially heathen world, and under a heathen government. Then they died not simply for particular doctrines, but for the facts of Christianity. Then it was a conflict, not for a denomination or sect, but for Christianity itself. The importance of ancient martyrdom does not rest so much on the number of victims and the cruelty of their sufferings as on the great antithesis and the ultimate result in saving the Christian religion for all time to come. Hence the first three centuries are the classical period of heathen persecution and of Christian martyrdom. The martyrs and confessors of the ante-Nicene age suffered for the common cause of all Christian denominations and sects, and hence are justly held in reverence and gratitude by all.

Notes.

Dr. Thomas Arnold, who had no leaning to superstitious and idolatrous saint-worship, in speaking of a visit to the church of San Stefano at Rome, remarks: "No doubt many of the particular stories thus painted will bear no critical examination; it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the general statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labor. Divide the sum total of the reported martyrs by twenty—by fifty, if you will; after all you have a number of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torment and death for conscience’ sake, and for Christ’s; and by their sufferings manifestly with God’s blessing ensuring the triumph of Christ’s gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit half enough. I do not think that pleasure is a sin; but though pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering for Christ’s sake is a thing most needful for us in our days, from whom in our daily life suffering seems so far removed. And as God’s grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women and even children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach, in times past; so there is the same grace no less mighty now; and if we do not close ourselves against it, it might be in us no less glorious in a time of trial."

Lecky, a very able and impartial historian, justly censures the unfeeling chapter of Gibbon on persecution. "The complete absence," he says (History of European Morals, I. 494 sqq.), "of all sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid, and in truth most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly, struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions .... It is true that in one Catholic country they introduced the atrocious custom of making the spectacle of men burnt alive for their religious opinions an element in the public festivities. It is true, too, that the immense majority of the acts of the martyrs are the transparent forgeries of lying monks; but it is also true that among the authentic records of Pagan persecutions there are histories, which display, perhaps more vividly than any other, both the depth of cruelty to which human nature may sink, and the heroism of resistance it may attain. There was a time when it was the just boast of the Romans, that no refinement of cruelty, no prolongations of torture, were admitted in their stern but simple penal code. But all this was changed. Those hateful games, which made the spectacle of human suffering and death the delight of all classes, had spread their brutalising influence wherever the Roman name was known, had rendered millions absolutely indifferent to the sight of human suffering, had produced in many, in the very centre of an advanced civilisation, a relish and a passion for torture, a rapture and an exultation in watching the spasms of extreme agony, such as an African or an American savage alone can equal. The most horrible recorded instances of torture were usually inflicted, either by the populace, or in their presence, in the arena. We read of Christians bound in chains of red-hot iron, while the stench of their half-consumed flesh rose in a suffocating cloud to heaven; of others who were torn to the very bone by, shells or hooks of iron; of holy virgins given over to the lust of the gladiator or to the mercies of the pander; of two hundred and twenty-seven converts sent on one occasion to the mines, each with the sinews of one leg severed by a red-hot iron, and with an eye scooped from its socket; of fires so slow that the victims writhed for hours in their agonies; of bodies torn limb from limb, or sprinkled with burning lead; of mingled salt and vinegar poured over the flesh that was bleeding from the rack; of tortures prolonged and varied through entire days. For the love of their Divine Master, for the cause they believed to be true, men, and even weak girls, endured these things without flinching, when one word would have freed them from their sufferings, No opinion we may form of the proceedings of priests in a later age should impair the reverence with which we bend before the martyr’s tomb.

§ 27. Rise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics.

I. Sources.

In addition to the works quoted in §§ 12 and 26, comp. Euseb. H. E. IV. 15; De Mart. Palaest. c. 7. Clem. Alex.: Strom. IV. p. 596. Orig.: Exhort. ad mart. c. 30 and 50. In Num. Kom. X. 2. Tertull.: De cor. mil. c. 3; De Resurr. carn. c. 43. Cypr.: De lapsis, c. 17; Epist. 34 and 57. Const. Apost.: l. 8.

II. Works.

C. Sagittarius: De natalitiis mart. Jen. 1696.

Schwabe: De insigni veneratione, quae obtinuit erga martyres in primit. eccl. Altd. 1748.

In thankful remembrance of the fidelity of this "noble army of martyrs," in recognition of the unbroken communion of saints, and in prospect of the resurrection of the body, the church paid to the martyrs, and even to their mortal remains, a veneration, which was in itself well-deserved and altogether natural, but which early exceeded the scriptural limit, and afterwards degenerated into the worship of saints and relics. The heathen hero-worship silently continued in the church and was baptized with Christian names.

In the church of Smyrna, according to its letter of the year 155, we find this veneration still in its innocent, childlike form: "They [the Jews] know not, that we can neither ever forsake Christ, who has suffered for the salvation of the whole world of the redeemed, nor worship another. Him indeed we adore (proskunou'men) as the Son of God; but the martyrs we love as they deserve (ajgapw'men ajxivw") for their surpassing love to their King and Master, as we wish also to be their companions and fellow-disciples."67  The day of the death of a martyr was called his heavenly birth-day,68 and was celebrated annually at his grave (mostly in a cave or catacomb), by prayer, reading of a history of his suffering and victory, oblations, and celebration of the holy supper.

But the early church did not stop with this. Martyrdom was taken, after the end of the second century, not only as a higher grade of Christian virtue, but at the same time as a baptism of fire and blood,69 an ample substitution for the baptism of water, as purifying from sin, and as securing an entrance into heaven. Origen even went so far as to ascribe to the sufferings of the martyrs an atoning virtue for others, an efficacy like that of the sufferings of Christ, on the authority of such passages as 2 Cor. 12:15; Col. 1:24; 2 Tim. 4:6. According to Tertullian, the martyrs entered immediately into the blessedness of heaven, and were not required, like ordinary Christians, to pass through the intermediate state. Thus was applied the benediction on those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Matt. 5:10–12. Hence, according to Origen and Cyprian, their prayers before the throne of God came to be thought peculiarly efficacious for the church militant on earth, and, according to an example related by Eusebius, their future intercessions were bespoken shortly before their death.

In the Roman Catacombs we find inscriptions where the departed are requested to pray for their living relatives and friends.

The veneration thus shown for the persons of the martyrs was transferred in smaller measure to their remains. The church of Smyrna counted the bones of Polycarp more precious than gold or diamonds.70  The remains of Ignatius were held in equal veneration by the Christians at Antioch. The friends of Cyprian gathered his blood in handkerchiefs, and built a chapel over his tomb.

A veneration frequently excessive was paid, not only to the deceased martyrs, but also the surviving confessors. It was made the special duty of the deacons to visit and minister to them in prison. The heathen Lucian in his satire, "De morte Peregrini," describes the unwearied care of the Christians for their imprisoned brethren; the heaps of presents brought to them; and the testimonies of sympathy even by messengers from great distances; but all, of course, in Lucian’s view, out of mere good-natured enthusiasm. Tertullian the Montanist censures the excessive attention of the Catholics to their confessors. The libelli pacis, as they were called—intercessions of the confessors for the fallen—commonly procured restoration to the fellowship of the church. Their voice had peculiar weight in the choice of bishops, and their sanction not rarely overbalanced the authority of the clergy. Cyprian is nowhere more eloquent than in the praise of their heroism. His letters to the imprisoned confessors in Carthage are full of glorification, in a style somewhat offensive to our evangelical ideas. Yet after all, he protests against the abuse of their privileges, from which he had himself to suffer, and earnestly exhorts them to a holy walk; that the honor they have gained may not prove a snare to them, and through pride and carelessness be lost. He always represents the crown of the confessor and the martyr as a free gift of the grace of God, and sees the real essence of it rather in the inward disposition than in the outward act. Commodian conceived the whole idea of martyrdom in its true breadth, when he extended it to all those who, without shedding their blood, endured to the end in love, humility, and patience, and in all Christian virtue.

CHAPTER III.

LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.

§ 28. Literature.

I. Sources.

Tacitus (Consul 97, d. about 117): Annal. xv. 44. Comp. his picture of the Jews, Hist. v. 1–5.

Plinius (d. about 114): Ep. x. 96, 97.

Celsus (flourished about 150):  jAlhqh;" lovgo" .  Preserved in fragments in Origen’s Refutation (8 books Kata; Kevlsou); reconstructed, translated and explained by Theodor Keim: Celsus’ Wahres Wort, Aelteste wissenschaftliche Streitschrift, antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum, Zürich 1873 (293 pages).

Lucian (d. about 180): Peri; th'" Peregrivvnou teleuth'"  c. 11–16; and  JAlhqh;" iJstoriva  I. 30; II. 4, 11.

Porphyrius (about 300): Kata; Cristianw'n lovgoi. Only fragments preserved, and collected by Holstein, Rom. 1630. His most important works are lost. Those that remain are ed. by A. Nauck, 1860.

II. Works.

Nath. Lardner: Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion (Lond. 1727–’57) in the VI. and VII. vols. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, London, 1838. Very valuable.

Mosheim: introduction to his Germ. translation of Origen against Celsus. Hamb. 1745.

Bindemann: Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen, in Illgen’s "Zeitschr. für hist. Theol." Leipz. 1842. N. 2, p. 58–146.

Ad. Planck: Lukian u. das Christenthum, in the "Studien u. Kritiken," 1851. N. 4; translated in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1852.

F. Chr. Baur: Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh. Tüb. secd. ed. 1860 (and 1863) pp. 370–430.

Neander: General History of the Christian Religion and Church; Engl. trans. by Torrey, vol. I., 157–178. (12th Boston ed.)

Richard von der Alm: Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten Jahrh. ueber Jesus und die ersten Christen. Leipz. 1865. (An infidel book.)

H. Kellner (R.C.): Hellenismus und Christenthum oder die geistige Reaction des antiken Heidenthums gegen das Christenthum. Köln 1866 (454 pp.)

B. Aubé: De l’ Apologétique chrétienne au IIe siécle. St. Justin, philosophe et martyr, 2nd ed. Paris 1875. By the same: Histoire des Persecutions de l’église. The second part, also under the title La polémique païenne à la fin du IIe siécle. Paris 1878.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 345 (Celse et Lucien), 379 sqq. (Nouvelles apologies).

J. W. Farrar: Seekers after God. London, 1869, new ed. 1877. (Essays on Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, compared with Christianity.)

Comp. the Lit. quoted in § 12, especially Uhlhorn and Keim (1881), and the monographs on Justin M., Tertullian, Origen, and other Apologists, which are noticed in sections treating of these writers.

§ 29. Literary Opposition to Christianity.

Besides the external conflict, which we have considered in the second chapter, Christianity was called to pass through an equally important intellectual and literary struggle with the ancient world; and from this also it came forth victorious, and conscious of being the perfect religion for man. We shall see in this chapter, that most of the objections of modern infidelity against Christianity were anticipated by its earliest literary opponents, and ably and successfully refuted by the ancient apologists for the wants of the church in that age. Both unbelief and faith, like human nature and divine grace, are essentially the same in all ages and among all nations, but vary in form, and hence every age, as it produces its own phase of opposition, must frame its own mode of defense.

The Christian religion found at first as little favor with the representatives of literature and art as with princes and statesmen. In the secular literature of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second, we find little more than ignorant, careless and hostile allusions to Christianity as a new form of superstition which then began to attract the attention of the Roman government. In this point of view also Christ’s kingdom was not of the world, and was compelled to force its way through the greatest difficulties; yet it proved at last the mother of an intellectual and moral culture far in advance of the Graeco-Roman, capable of endless progress, and full of the vigor of perpetual youth.

The pious barbarism of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered the destruction of the works of Porphyrius and all other opponents of Christianity, to avert the wrath of God, but considerable fragments have been preserved in the refutations of the Christian Fathers, especially Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria (against Julian), and scattered notices of Jerome and Augustin.

§ 30. Jewish Opposition. Josephus and the Talmud.

The hostility of the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees to the gospel is familiar from the New Testament. Josephus mentions Jesus once in his archaeology, but in terms so favorable as to agree ill with his Jewish position, and to subject the passage to the suspicion of interpolation or corruption.71  His writings, however, contain much valuable testimony to the truth of the gospel history. His "Archaeology" throughout is a sort of fifth Gospel in illustration of the social and political environments of the life of Christ.72  His "History of the Jewish War," in particular, is undesignedly a striking commentary on the Saviour’s predictions concerning the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, the great distress and affliction of the Jewish people at that time, the famine, pestilence, and earthquake, the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his disciples at the approach of these calamities.73

The attacks of the later Jews upon Christianity are essentially mere repetitions of those recorded in the Gospels—denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and horrible vituperation of his confessors. We learn their character best from the dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho. The fictitious disputation on Christ by Jason and Papiscus, first mentioned by Celsus, was lost since the seventh century.74  It seems to have been a rather poor apology of Christianity against Jewish objections by a Jewish Christian, perhaps by Aristo of Pella.

The Talmud is the Bible of Judaism separated from, and hostile to, Christianity, but it barely notices it except indirectly. It completed the isolation of the Jews from all other people.

§ 31. Pagan Opposition. Tacitus and Pliny.

The Greek and Roman writers of the first century, and some of the second, as Seneca, the elder Pliny, and even the mild and noble Plutarch, either from ignorance or contempt, never allude to Christianity at all.

Tacitus and the younger Pliny, contemporaries and friends of the emperor Trajan, are the first to notice it; and they speak of it only incidentally and with stoical disdain and antipathy, as an "exitiabilis superstition" "prava et immodica superstitio," "inflexibilis obstinatio." These celebrated and in their way altogether estimable Roman authors thus, from manifest ignorance, saw in the Christians nothing but superstitious fanatics, and put them on a level with the hated Jews; Tacitus, in fact, reproaching them also with the "odium generis humani." This will afford some idea of the immense obstacles which the new religion encountered in public opinion, especially in the cultivated circles of the Roman empire. The Christian apologies of the second century also show, that the most malicious and gratuitous slanders against the Christians were circulated among the common people, even charges of incest and cannibalism,75 which may have arisen in part from a misapprehension of the intimate brotherly love of the Christians, and their nightly celebration of the holy supper and love-feasts.

Their Indirect Testimony to Christianity.

On the other hand, however, the scanty and contemptuous allusions of Tacitus and Pliny to Christianity bear testimony to a number of facts in the Gospel History. Tacitus, in giving an account of the Neronian persecution, incidentally attests, that Christ was put to death as a malefactor by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; that he was the founder of the Christian sect, that the latter took its rise in Judaea and spread in spite of the ignominious death of Christ and the hatred and contempt it encountered throughout the empire, so that a "vast multitude" (multitudo ingens) of them were most cruelly put to death in the city of Rome alone as early as the year 64. He also bears valuable testimony, in the fifth book of his History, together with Josephus, from whom he mainly, though not exclusively takes his account, to the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy.

As to Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan, written about 107, it proves the rapid spread of Christianity in Asia Minor at that time among all ranks of society, the general moral purity and steadfastness of its professors amid cruel persecution, their mode and time of worship, their adoration of Christ as God, their observance of a "stated day," which is undoubtedly Sunday, and other facts of importance in the early history of the Church. Trajan’s rescript in reply to Pliny’s inquiry, furnishes evidence of the innocence of the Christians; he notices no charge against them except their disregard of the worship of the gods, and forbids them to be sought for. Marcus Aurelius testifies, in one brief and unfriendly allusion, to their eagerness for the crown of martyrdom.

§ 32. Direct Assaults. Celsus.

The direct assault upon Christianity, by works devoted to the purpose, began about the middle of the second century, and was very ably conducted by a Grecian philosopher, Celsus, otherwise unknown; according to Origen, an Epicurean with many Platonic ideas, and a friend of Lucian. He wrote during the persecuting reign of Marcus Aurelius.76

Celsus, with all his affected or real contempt for the new religion, considered it important enough to be opposed by an extended work entitled "A True Discourse," of which Origen, in his Refutation, has faithfully preserved considerable fragments.77  These represent their author as an eclectic philosopher of varied culture, skilled in dialectics, and familiar with the Gospels, Epistles, and even the writings of the Old Testament. He speaks now in the frivolous style of an Epicurean, now in the earnest and dignified tone of a Platonist. At one time he advocates the popular heathen religion, as, for instance, its doctrine of demons; at another time he rises above the polytheistic notions to a pantheistic or sceptical view. He employs all the aids which the culture of his age afforded, all the weapons of learning, common sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style, to disprove Christianity; and he anticipates most of the arguments and sophisms of the deists and infidels of later times. Still his book is, on the whole, a very superficial, loose, and light-minded work, and gives striking proof of the inability of the natural reason to understand the Christian truth. It has no savor of humility, no sense of the corruption of human nature, and man’s need of redemption; it is full of heathen passion and prejudice, utterly blind to any spiritual realities, and could therefore not in the slightest degree appreciate the glory of the Redeemer and of his work. It needs no refutation, it refutes itself.

Celsus first introduces a Jew, who accuses the mother of Jesus of adultery with a soldier named Panthera;78 adduces the denial of Peter, the treachery of Judas, and the death of Jesus as contradictions of his pretended divinity; and makes the resurrection an imposture. Then Celsus himself begins the attack, and begins it by combating the whole idea of the supernatural, which forms the common foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The controversy between Jews and Christians appears to him as foolish as the strife about the shadow of an ass. The Jews believed, as well as the Christians, in the prophecies of a Redeemer of the world, and thus differed from them only in that they still expected the Messiah’s coming. But then, to what purpose should God come down to earth at all, or send another down?  He knows beforehand what is going on among men. And such a descent involves a change, a transition from the good to the evil, from the lovely to the hateful, from the happy to the miserable; which is undesirable, and indeed impossible, for the divine nature. In another place he says, God troubles himself no more about men than about monkeys and flies. Celsus thus denies the whole idea of revelation, now in pantheistic style, now in the levity of Epicurean deism; and thereby at the same time abandons the ground of the popular heathen religion. In his view Christianity has no rational foundation at all, but is supported by the imaginary terrors of future punishment. Particularly offensive to him are the promises of the gospel to the poor and miserable, and the doctrines of forgiveness of sins and regeneration, and of the resurrection of the body. This last he scoffingly calls a hope of worms, but not of rational souls. The appeal to the omnipotence of God, he thinks, does not help the matter, because God can do nothing improper and unnatural. He reproaches the Christians with ignorance, credulity, obstinacy, innovation, division, and sectarianism, which they inherited mostly from their fathers, the Jews. They are all uncultivated, mean, superstitious people, mechanics, slaves, women, and children. The great mass of them he regarded as unquestionably deceived. But where there are deceived, there must be also deceivers; and this leads us to the last result of this polemical sophistry. Celsus declared the first disciples of Jesus to be deceivers of the worst kind; a band of sorcerers, who fabricated and circulated the miraculous stories of the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus; but betrayed themselves by contradictions. The originator of the imposture, however, is Jesus himself, who learned that magical art in Egypt, and afterwards made a great noise with it in his native country.

But here, this philosophical and critical sophistry virtually, acknowledges its bankruptcy. The hypothesis of deception is the very last one to offer in explanation of a phenomenon so important as Christianity was even in that day. The greater and more permanent the deception, the more mysterious and unaccountable it must appear to reason.

Chrysostom made the truthful remark, that Celsus bears witness to the antiquity of the apostolic writings. This heathen assailant, who lived almost within hailing distance of St. John, incidentally gives us an abridgement of the history of Christ as related by the Gospels, and this furnishes strong weapons against modern infidels, who would represent this history as a later invention. "I know everything" he says; "we have had it all from your own books, and need no other testimony; ye slay yourselves with your own sword." He refers to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and makes upon the whole about eighty allusions to, or quotations from, the New Testament. He takes notice of Christ’s birth from a virgin in a small village of Judaea, the adoration of the wise men from the East, the slaughter of the infants by order of Herod, the flight to Egypt, where he supposed Christ learned the charms of magicians, his residence in Nazareth, his baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove and the voice from heaven, the election of disciples, his friendship with publicans and other low people, his supposed cures of the lame and the blind, and raising of the dead, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the principal circumstances in the history of the passion and crucifixion, also the resurrection of Christ.79

It is true he perverts or abuses most of these facts; but according to his own showing they were then generally and had always been believed by the Christians. He alludes to some of the principal doctrines of the Christians, to their private assemblies for worship, to the office of presbyters. He omits the grosser charges of immorality, which he probably disowned as absurd and incredible.

In view of all these admissions we may here, with Lardner, apply Samson’s riddle: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."80

§ 33. Lucian.

Edd. of Lucian’s works by Hemsterhuis and Reiz (1743 sqq.), Jacobitz (1836–39), Dindorf (1840 and 1858), Bekker (1853), Franc. Fritzsche (1860–’69). The pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Philopatris (filovpatri", loving one’s country, patriot) in which the Christians are ridiculed and condemned as enemies of the Roman empire, is of a much later date, probably from the reign of Julian the Apostate (363). See Gesner: De aetate et auctore Philopatridis, Jen. 1714.

Jacob: Charakteristik Lucians. Hamburg 1822.

G. G. Bernays: Lucian und die Cyniker. Berlin. 1879.

Comp. Keim: Celsus, 143–151; Ed. D. Zeller: Alexander und Peregrinus , in the "Deutsche Rundschau," for Jan. 1877; Henry Cotterill: Peregrinus Proteus (Edinb. 1879); Ad. Harnack in Herzog (ed. II.), VIII. 772–779; and the Lit. quoted in § 28.

In the same period the rhetorician Lucian (born at Samosata in Syria about 120, died in Egypt or Greece before 200), the Voltaire of Grecian literature, attacked the Christian religion with the same light weapons of wit and ridicule, with which, in his numerous elegantly written works, he assailed the old popular faith and worship, the mystic fanaticism imported from the East, the vulgar life of the Stoics and Cynics of that day, and most of the existing manners and customs of the distracted period of the empire. An Epicurean, worldling, and infidel, as he was, could see in Christianity only one of the many vagaries and follies of mankind; in the miracles, only jugglery; in the belief of immortality, an empty dream; and in the contempt of death and the brotherly love of the Christians, to which he was constrained to testify, a silly enthusiasm.

Thus he represents the matter in an historical romance on the life and death of Peregrinus Proteus, a contemporary Cynic philosopher, whom he make the basis of a satire upon Christianity, and especially upon Cynicism. Peregrinus is here presented as a perfectly contemptible man, who, after the meanest and grossest crimes, adultery, sodomy, and parricide, joins the credulous Christians in Palestine, cunningly imposes on them, soon rises to the highest repute among them, and, becoming one of the confessors in prison, is loaded with presents by them, in fact almost worshipped as a god, but is afterwards excommunicated for eating some forbidden food (probably meat of the idolatrous sacrifices); then casts himself into the arms of the Cynics, travels about everywhere, in the filthiest style of that sect; and at last about the year 165, in frantic thirst for fame, plunges into the flames of a funeral pile before the assembled populace of the town of Olympia, for the triumph of philosophy. This fiction of the self-burning was no doubt meant for a parody on the Christian martyrdom, perhaps with special reference to Polycarp, who a few years before had suffered death by fire at Smyrna (155).81

Lucian treated the Christians rather with a compassionate smile, than with hatred. He nowhere urges persecution. He never calls Christ an impostor, as Celsus does, but a "crucified sophist;" a term which he uses as often in a good sense as in the bad. But then, in the end, both the Christian and the heathen religions amount, in his view, to imposture; only, in his Epicurean indifferentism, he considers it not worth the trouble to trace such phenomena to their ultimate ground, and attempt a philosophical explanation.82

The merely negative position of this clever mocker of all religions injured heathenism more than Christianity, but could not be long maintained against either; the religious element is far too deeply seated in the essence of human nature. Epicureanism and scepticism made way, in their turns, for Platonism, and for faith or superstition. Heathenism made a vigorous effort to regenerate itself, in order to hold its ground against the steady advance of Christianity. But the old religion itself could not help feeling more and more the silent influence of the new.

§ 34. Neo-Platonism.

I. Sources.

Plotinus: Opera Omnia, ed. Oxf 1835, 3 vols.; ed. Kirchhoff, Lips. 1856; ed. Didot, Par. 1856; H. F. Müller, Berlin 1878–80.

Porphyrius: Kata; Cristianw'n lovgoi (fragments collected in Holstein: Dissert. de vita et scriptis Porphyr. Rom. 1630). His biographies of Pythagoras, Plotinus, and other works were ed. by A. A. Nauck, 1860.

Hierocles: Lovgoi filalhvqei" prov" Cristianouv" (fragments in Euse b.: Contra Hierocl. lib., and probably also in Macarius Magnes:  jApokritiko;"  h] Monogenhv"  Par. 1876).

Philostratus: De Vita Apollonii Tyanensis libri octo (Greek and Latin), Venet. 1501; ed. Westerman, Par. 1840; ed. Kayser, Zürich, 1853, 1870. Also in German, French and English translations.

II. Works.

Vogt: Neuplatonismus u. Christenthum. Berl. 1836.

Ritter: Gesch. der Philos. vol. 4th, 1834 (in English by Morrison, Oxf. 1838).

Neander: Ueber das neunte Buch in der zweiten Enneade des Plotinus. 1843. (vid. Neander’s Wissenschaftl. Abhandlungen, published by Jacobi, Berl. 1851, p. 22 sqq.)

Ullmann: Einflusz des Christentums auf Porphyrius, in "Stud. u. Krit." 1832.

Kirchner: Die Philosophie des Plotin. Halle, 1854.

F. Chr. Baur: Apollonius von Tyana u. Christus. Tüb. 1832, republ. by Ed. Zeller, in Drei Abhandlungen zur Gesch. der alten Philosophie U. ihres Verh. zum Christenthum. Leipzig, 1876, pp. 1–227.

John H. Newman: Apollonius Tyanaeus. Lond. 1849 (Encycl. Metropol. Vol. X., pp. 619–644).

A. Chassang: Ap. de T., sa vie, ses voyages, ses prodiges, etc. Paris, 1862. Translation from the Greek, with explanatory notes.

H. Kellner: Porphyrius und sein Verhültniss zum Christenthum, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1865. No. I.

Albert Réville: Apollonius of Tyana, the Pagan Christ of the third century, translated from the French. Lond. 1866.

K. Mönkeberg: Apollonius v. Tyana. Hamb. 1877.

Fr. Ueberweg: History of Philosophy (Eng. transl. N. York, 1871), vol. I. 232–259.

Ed. Zeller: Philosophie der Griechen, III. 419 sqq.

More earnest and dignified, but for this very reason more lasting and dangerous, was the opposition which proceeded directly and indirectly from Neo-Platonism. This system presents the last phase, the evening red, so to speak, of the Grecian philosophy; a fruitless effort of dying heathenism to revive itself against the irresistible progress of Christianity in its freshness and vigor. It was a pantheistic eclecticism and a philosophico-religious syncretism, which sought to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Oriental religion and theosophy, polytheism with monotheism, superstition with culture, and to hold, as with convulsive grasp, the old popular religion in a refined and idealized form. Some scattered Christian ideas also were unconsciously let in; Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too much, to be wholly shut out. As might be expected, this compound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic, heterogeneous affair, like its contemporary, Gnosticism, which differed from it by formally recognising Christianity in its syncretism. Most of the NeoPlatonists, Jamblichus in particular, were as much hierophants and theurgists as philosophers, devoted themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine inspirations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy natural product, but an abnormal after-growth.

In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human mind hunts up old and obsolete systems and notions, or resorts to magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear of ghosts and the worship of demons. The enlightened emperor Augustus was troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the morning, instead of the right; and the accomplished elder Pliny wore amulets as protection from thunder and lightning. In their day the long-forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the grave and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Elymas, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius of Tyana (d. A.D. 96), found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the fables of the gods. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially to the mysterious East, the land of primitive wisdom and religion. The Syrian cultus was sought out; and all sorts of religions, all the sense and all the nonsense of antiquity found a rendezvous in Rome. Even a succession of Roman emperors, from Septimius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander Severus, embraced this religious syncretism, which, instead of supporting the old Roman state religion, helped to undermine it.83

After the beginning of the third century this tendency found philosophical expression and took a reformatory turn in Neo-Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reanimate all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and to put deep meaning into the old mythology, was the philosophy of the divine Plato; which in truth possessed essentially a mystical character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo, and by Christians, like Origen, in their idealizing efforts and their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the Bible. In this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of forerunner of the NeoPlatonists in the pious and noble-minded Platonist, Plutarch, of Boeotia (d. 120), who likewise saw a deeper sense in the myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in general, in his comparative biographies and his admirable moral treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, but often wanders off into the trackless regions of fancy.

The proper founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria, who was born of Christian parents, but apostatized, and died in the year 243. His more distinguished pupil, Plotinus, also an Egyptian (204–269), developed the NeoPlatonic ideas in systematic form, and gave them firm foothold and wide currency, particularly in Rome, where he taught philosophy. The system was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (d. 304), who likewise taught in Rome, by Jamblichus of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria (d. 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 485). It supplanted the popular religion among in the educated classes of later heathendom, and held its ground until the end of the fifth century, when it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions.

From its love for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical, this system, like the original Platonism, might become for many philosophical minds a bridge to faith; and so it was even to St. Augustin, whom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism, and filled with a burning thirst for truth and wisdom. But it could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in fact, a direct attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathenism to rally all its nobler energies, especially the forces of Hellenic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal religion, a pagan counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not expressly, the Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles the Neo-Platonists could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They ranked the wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) gave Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus.

The rhetorician Philostratus, the elder, about the year 220, at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, and a zealous patron of the reform of paganism, idealized the life of the pagan magician and soothsayer Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, and made him out an ascetic saint, a divinely inspired philosopher, a religious reformer and worker of miracles, with the purpose, as is generally assumed, though without direct evidence, of holding him up as a rival of Christ with equal claims to the worship of men.84

The points of resemblance are chiefly these: Jesus was the Son of God, Apollonius the son of Jupiter; the birth of Christ was celebrated by the appearance of angels, that of Apollonius by a flash of lightning; Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, Apollonius a young Roman maiden, from the dead; Christ cast out demons, Apollonius did the same; Christ rose from the dead, Apollonius appeared after his death. Apollonius is made to combine also several characteristics of the apostles, as the miraculous gift of tongues, for he understood all the languages of the world. Like St. Paul, he received his earlier education at Tarsus, labored at Antioch, Ephesus, and other cities, and was persecuted by Nero. Like the early Christians, he was falsely accused of sacrificing children with certain mysterious ceremonies.85  With the same secret polemical aim Porphyry and Jamblichus embellished the life of Pythagoras, and set him forth as the highest model of wisdom, even a divine being incarnate, a Christ of heathenism.

These various attempts to Christianize paganism were of course as abortive as so many attempts to galvanize a corpse. They made no impression upon their age, much less upon ages following. They were indirect arguments in favor of Christianity: they proved the internal decay of the false, and the irresistible progress of the true religion, which began to mould the spirit of the age and to affect public opinion outside of the church. By inventing false characters in imitation of Christ they indirectly conceded to the historical Christ his claim to the admiration and praise of mankind.

§ 35. Porphyry and Hierocles

See the Lit. in § 34.

One of the leading Neo-Platonists made a direct attack upon Christianity, and was, in the eyes of the church fathers, its bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Towards the end of the third century Porphyry wrote an extended work against the Christians, in fifteen books, which called forth numerous refutations from the most eminent church teachers of the time, particularly from Methodius of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea. In 448 all the copies were burned by order of the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., and we know the work now only from fragments in the fathers.

Porphyry attacked especially the sacred books of the Christians, with more knowledge than Celsus. He endeavored, with keen criticism, to point out the contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, and among the apostles themselves; and thus to refute the divinity of their writings. He represented the prophecies of Daniel as vaticinia post eventum, and censured the allegorical interpretation of Origen, by which transcendental mysteries were foisted into the writings of Moses, contrary to their clear sense. He took advantage, above all, of the collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11), to reproach the former with a contentious spirit, the latter with error, and to infer from the whole, that the doctrine of such apostles must rest on lies and frauds. Even Jesus himself he charged with equivocation and inconsistency, on account of his conduct in John 7:8 compared with verse 14.

Still Porphyry would not wholly reject Christianity. Like many rationalists of more recent times, he distinguished the original pure doctrine of Jesus from the second-handed, adulterated doctrine of the apostles. In another work86 on the "Philosophy of Oracles," often quoted by Eusebius, and also by Augustin,87 he says, we must not calumniate Christ, who was most eminent for piety, but only pity those who worship him as God. "That pious soul, exalted to heaven, is become, by a sort of fate, an occasion of delusion to those souls from whom fortune withholds the gifts of the gods and the knowledge of the immortal Zeus." Still more remarkable in this view is a letter to his wife Marcella, which A. Mai published at Milan in 1816, in the unfounded opinion that Marcella was a Christian. In the course of this letter Porphyry remarks, that what is born of the flesh is flesh; that by faith, love, and hope we raise ourselves to the Deity; that evil is the fault of man; that God is holy; that the most acceptable sacrifice to him is a pure heart; that the wise man is at once a temple of God and a priest in that temple. For these and other such evidently Christian ideas and phrases he no doubt had a sense of his own, which materially differed from their proper scriptural meaning. But such things show how Christianity in that day exerted, even upon its opponents, a power, to which heathenism was forced to yield an unwilling assent.

The last literary antagonist of Christianity in our period is Hierocles, who, while governor of Bythynia, and afterwards of Alexandria under Diocletian, persecuted that religion also with the sword, and exposed Christian maidens to a worse fate than death. His "Truth-loving Words to the Christians" has been destroyed, like Porphyry’s work, by the mistaken zeal of Christian emperors, and is known to us only through the answer of Eusebius of Caesarea.88  He appears to have merely repeated the objections of Celsus and Porphyry, and to have drawn a comparison between Christ and Apollonius of Tyana, which resulted in favor of the latter. The Christians says he, consider Jesus a God, on account of some insignificant miracles falsely colored up by his apostles; but the heathens far more justly declare the greater wonder-worker Apollonius, as well as an Aristeas and a Pythagoras, simply a favorite of the gods and a benefactor of men.

§ 36. Summary of the Objections to Christianity.

In general the leading arguments of the Judaism and heathenism of this period against the new religion are the following:

1. Against Christ: his illegitimate birth; his association with poor, unlettered fishermen, and rude publicans: his form of a servant, and his ignominious death. But the opposition to him gradually ceased. While Celsus called him a downright impostor, the Syncretists and Neo-Platonists were disposed to regard him as at least a distinguished sage.

2. Against Christianity: its novelty; its barbarian origin; its want of a national basis; the alleged absurdity of some of its facts and doctrines, particularly of regeneration and the resurrection; contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, among the Gospels, and between Paul and Peter; the demand for a blind, irrational faith.

3. Against the Christians: atheism, or hatred of the gods; the worship of a crucified malefactor; poverty, and want of culture and standing; desire of innovation; division and sectarianism; want of patriotism; gloomy seriousness; credulity; superstition, and fanaticism. Sometimes they were charged even with unnatural crimes, like those related in the pagan mythology of Oedipus and his mother Jocaste (concubitus Oedipodei), and of Thyestes and Atreus (epulae Thyesteae). Perhaps some Gnostic sects ran into scandalous excesses; but as against the Christians in general this charge was so clearly unfounded, that it is not noticed even by Celsus and Lucian. The senseless accusation, that they worshipped an ass’s head, may have arisen, as Tertullian already intimates,89 from a story of Tacitus, respecting some Jews, who were once directed by a wild ass to fresh water, and thus relieved from the torture of thirst; and it is worth mentioning, only to show how passionate and blind was the opposition with which Christianity in this period of persecution had to contend.

§ 37. The Apologetic Literature of Christianity.

Comp. Lit. in § 1 and 12.

I. The sources are all the writings of the Apologists of the second and third centuries; particularly Justin M.: Apologia I. and II.; Tertull.: Apologeticus; Minucius Felix: Octavius; Origen: Contra Celsum (kata; Kevlsou) libr. VIII. Aristidis, Philosophi Atheniensis, Sermones duo, Venetiis 1878. (From an Armenian translation). Complete editions of the Apologists: Apologg. Christ. Opp. ed. Prud. Maranus, Par. 1742; Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum seculi secundi, ed. Th. Otto, Jenae, 1847 sqq. ed. III. 1876 sqq. A new ed. by O. v. Gebhardt and E. Schwartz, begun 1888.

II. Fabricius:Dilectus argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Rel. Christ. asseruerunt. Hamb. 1725.

Tzschirner: Geschichte der Apologetik. Lpz. 1805 (unfinished).

G. H. Van Sanden: Gesch. der Apol. translated from Dutch into German by Quack and Binder. Stuttg. 1846. 2 vols.

Semisch: Justin der Mürt. Bresl. 1840. II. 56–225.

W. B. Colton: The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the writings of its Apologists down to Augustine (Hulsean Prize Essay, 1852), republ. in Boston, 1854.

Karl Werner (R.C.): Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur der christl. Theologie.  Schaffhausen, 1861–’65. 5 vols. (vol. I. belongs here).

James Donaldson: A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from, the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. London, 1864–66. 3 vols.

Adolf Harnack: Die Ueberlieferung der Griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts in der alten Kirche und im Mittelalter. Band I. Heft 1 and 2. Leipz. 1882.

These assaults of argument and calumny called forth in the second century the Christian apologetic literature, the vindication of Christianity by the pen, against the Jewish zealot, the Grecian philosopher, and the Roman statesman. The Christians were indeed from the first "ready always to give an answer to every man that asked them a reason of the hope that was in them." But when heathenism took the field against them not only with fire and sword, but with argument and slander besides, they had to add to their simple practical testimony a theoretical self-defence. The Christian apology against non-Christian opponents, and the controversial efforts against Christian errorists, are the two oldest branches of theological science.

The apologetic literature began to appear under the reign of Hadrian, and continued to grow till the end of our period. Most of the church teachers took part in this labor of their day. The first apologies, by Quadratus, bishop of Athens, Aristides, philosopher of Athens, and Aristo of Pella, which were addressed to the emperor Hadrian, and the later works of Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and Miltiades, who lived under Marcus Aurelius, were either entirely lost, or preserved only in scattered notices of Eusebius. But some interesting fragments of Melito and Aristides have been recently discovered.90  More valuable are the apologetical works of the Greek philosopher and martyr, Justin (d. 166), which we possess in full. After him come, in the Greek church, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and Hermias in the last half of the second century, and Origen, the ablest of all, in the first half of the third.

The most important Latin apologists are Tertullian (d. about 220), Minucius Felix (d. between 220 and 230; according to some, between 161 and 200), the later Arnobius and Lactantius, all of North Africa.

Here at once appears the characteristic difference between the Greek and the Latin minds. The Greek apologies are more learned and philosophical, the Latin more practical and juridical in their matter and style. The former labor to prove the truth of Christianity and its adaptedness to the intellectual wants of man; the latter plead for its legal right to exist, and exhibit mainly its moral excellency and salutary effect upon society. The Latin also are in general more rigidly opposed to heathenism, while the Greek recognize in the Grecian philosophy a certain affinity to the Christian religion.

The apologies were addressed in some cases to the emperors (Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius) or the provincial governors; in others, to the intelligent public. Their first object was to soften the temper of the authorities and people towards Christianity and its professors by refuting the false charges against them. It may be doubtful whether they ever reached the hands of the emperors; at all events the persecution continued.91  Conversion commonly proceeds from the heart and will, not from the understanding and from knowledge. No doubt, however, these writings contributed to dissipate prejudice among honest and susceptible heathens, to spread more favorable views of the new religion, and to infuse a spirit of humanity into the spirit of the age, the systems of moral philosophy and the legislation of the Antonines.

Yet the chief service of this literature was to strengthen believers and to advance theological knowledge. It brought the church to a deeper and clearer sense of the peculiar nature of the Christian religion, and prepared her thenceforth to vindicate it before the tribunal of reason and philosophy; whilst Judaism and heathenism proved themselves powerless in the combat, and were driven to the weapons of falsehood and vituperation. The sophisms and mockeries of a Celsus and a Lucian have none but a historical interest; the Apologies of Justin and the Apologeticus of Tertullian, rich with indestructible truth and glowing piety, are read with pleasure and edification to this day.

The apologists do not confine themselves to the defensive, but carry the war aggressively into the territory of Judaism and heathenism. They complete their work by positively demonstrating that Christianity is the divine religion, and the only true religion for all mankind.

§ 38. The Argument against Judaism.

In regard to the controversy with Judaism, we have two principal sources: the Dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Trypho,92 based, it appears, on real interviews of Justin with Trypho; and Tertullian’s work against the Jews.93  Another work from the first half of the second century by Aristo of Pella, entitled "A Disputation of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ," is lost.94 It was known to Celsus who speaks contemptuously of it on account of its allegorical interpretation. Origen deems it useful for ordinary readers, though not calculated to make much impression on scholars. It was intended to show the fulfillment of the old prophecies in Christ, and ends with the conviction of the Jew Papiscus and his baptism by Jason. The author was a Jewish Christian of Pella, the city of refuge for the Christians of Jerusalem before the destruction.

I. The defensive apology answered the Jewish objections thus:

(1) Against the charge, that Christianity is an apostasy from the Jewish religion, it was held, that the Mosaic law, as far as it relates to outward rites and ceremonies was only a temporary institution for the Jewish nation foreshadowing the substance of Christianity, while its moral precepts as contained in the Decalogue were kept in their deepest spiritual sense only by Christians; that the Old Testament itself points to its own dissolution and the establishment of a new covenant;95 that Abraham was justified before he was circumcised, and women, who could not be circumcised, were yet saved.

(2) Against the assertion, that the servant-form of Jesus of Nazareth, and his death by the cross, contradicted the Old Testament idea of the Messiah, it was urged, that the appearance of the Messiah is to be regarded as twofold, first, in the form of a servant, afterwards in glory; and that the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and the prophecies of David in Psalm 22, of Isaiah 53, and Zech. 13, themselves point to the sufferings of Christ as his way to glory.

(3) To the objection, that the divinity of Jesus contradicts the unity of God and is blasphemy, it was replied, that the Christians believe likewise in only one God; that the Old Testament itself makes a distinction in the divine nature; that the plural expression: "Let us make man,"96 the appearance of the three men at Mamre97 of whom one was confessedly God,98 yet distinct from the Creator,99 indicate this; and that all theophanies (which in Justin’s view are as many christophanies), and the Messianic Psalms,100 which ascribe divine dignity to the Messiah, show the same.

II. The aggressive apology or polemic theology urges as evidence against Judaism:

(1) First and mainly that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his church. Justin finds all the outlines of the gospel history predicted in the Old Testament: the Davidic descent of Jesus, for example, in Isa. 11:1; the birth from a virgin in 7:14; the birth at Bethlehem in Micah 5:1; the flight into Egypt in Hosea 11:1 (rather than Ps. 22:10?); the appearance of the Baptist in Is. 40:1–17; Mal. 4:5; the heavenly voice at the baptism of Jesus in Ps. 2:7; the temptation in the wilderness under the type of Jacob’s wrestling in Gen. 32:24 sqq.; the miracles of our Lord in Is. 35:5; his sufferings and the several circumstances of his crucifixion in Is. 53 and Ps. 22. In this effort, however, Justin wanders also, according to the taste of his uncritical age, into arbitrary fancies and allegorical conceits; as when he makes the two goats, of which one carried away the sins into the wilderness, and the other was sacrificed, types of the first and second advents of Christ; and sees in the twelve bells on the robe of the high priest a type of the twelve apostles, whose sound goes forth into all the world.101

(2) The destruction of Jerusalem, in which Judaism, according to the express prediction of Jesus, was condemned by God himself, and Christianity was gloriously vindicated. Here the Jewish priest and historian Josephus, who wrote from personal observation a graphic description of this tragedy, had to furnish a powerful historical argument against his own religion and for the truth of Christianity. Tertullian sums up the prophetic predictions of the calamities which have befallen the Jews for rejecting Christ, "the sense of the Scriptures harmonizing with the events."102

§ 39. The Defense against Heathenism.

I. The various Objections and Accusations of the heathens, which we have collected in §

(1) The attack upon the miraculous in the evangelical history the apologists could meet by pointing to the similar element in the heathen mythology; of course proposing this merely in the way of argumentum ad hominem, to deprive the opposition of the right to object. For the credibility of the miraculous accounts in the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus, Origen appealed to the integrity and piety of the narrators, to the publicity of the death of Jesus, and to the effects of that event.

(2) The novelty and late appearance of Christianity were justified by the need of historical preparation in which the human race should be divinely trained for Christ; but more frequently it was urged also, that Christianity existed in the counsel of God from eternity, and had its unconscious votaries, especially among the pious Jews, long before the advent of Christ. By claiming the Mosaic records, the apologists had greatly the advantage as regards antiquity over any form of paganism, and could carry their religion, in its preparatory state, even beyond the flood and up to the very gates of paradise. Justin and Tatian make great account of the fact that Moses is much older than the Greek philosophers, poets, and legislators. Athenagoras turns the tables, and shows that the very names of the heathen gods are modern, and their statues creations of yesterday. Clement of Alexandria calls the Greek philosophers thieves and robbers, because they stole certain portions of truth from the Hebrew prophets and adulterated them. Tertullian, Minucius Felix and others raise the same charge of plagiarism.

(3) The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so peculiarly offensive to the heathen and Gnostic understanding, was supported, as to its possibility, by reference to the omnipotence of God, and to the creation of the world and of man; and its propriety and reasonableness were argued from the divine image in man, from the high destiny of the body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and from its intimate connection with the soul, as well as from the righteousness and goodness of God. The argument from analogy was also very generally used, but often without proper discrimination. Thus, Theophilus alludes to the decline and return of the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the renewal of the waning and waxing moon, the growth of seeds and fruits. Tertullian expresses his surprise that anybody should deny the possibility and probability of the resurrection in view of the mystery of our birth and the daily occurrences of surrounding nature. "All things," he says, "are preserved by dissolution, renewed by perishing; and shall man ... the lord of all this universe of creatures, which die and rise again, himself die only to perish forever?"103

(4) The charge of immoral conduct and secret vice the apologists might repel with just indignation, since the New Testament contains the purest and noblest morality, and the general conduct of the Christians compared most favorably with that of the heathens. "Shame! shame!" they justly cried; "to roll upon the innocent what you are openly guilty of, and what belongs to you and your gods!"  Origen says in the preface to the first book against Celsus: "When false witness was brought against our blessed Saviour, the spotless Jesus, he held his peace, and when he was accused, returned no answer, being fully persuaded that the tenor of his life and conduct among the Jews was the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf .... And even now he preserves the same silence, and makes no other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere followers; they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so loud a voice that they drown the clamors of the most zealous and bigoted adversaries."

II. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness of victory, added direct arguments against heathenism, which were practically sustained by, its dissolution in the following period.

(1) The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doctrine of the gods, is unworthy, contradictory, absurd, immoral, and pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or personified powers of nature or deifications of distinguished men, but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the Septuagint version of Ps. 96:5,104 and from the immorality of those deities, which was charged to demons (even sexual intercourse with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. 6:2).

"What sad fates," says Minucius Felix, "what lies, ridiculous things, and weaknesses we read of the pretended gods!  Even their form, how pitiable it is!  Vulcan limps; Mercury has wings to his feet; Pan is hoofed; Saturn in fetters; and Janus has two faces, as if he walked backwards .... Sometimes Hercules is a hostler, Apollo a cow-herd, and Neptune, Laomedon’s mason, cheated of his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as if the heavens and the thunder and lightning did not exist before Jove was born in Crete); the adultery of Mars and Venus; the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the gods to authorize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Tertullian, "does not calumniate your gods?  One sets Apollo to keep sheep; another hires out Neptune to build a wall; Pindar declares Esculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in exercising the art of medicine to a bad purpose; whilst the writers of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behindhand in this respect. Out of pure contempt, they would swear by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridicule; and the Roman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves without heads." From the stage abuser the sarcastic African father selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana being flogged, the reading of Jupiter’s will after his decease, and the three half-starved Herculesses!  Justin brings up the infanticide of Saturn, the parricide, the anger, and the adultery of Jupiter, the drunkenness of Bacchus, the voluptuousness of Venus, and he appeals to the judgment of the better heathens, who were ashamed of these scandalous histories of the gods; to Plato, for example, who for this reason banishes Homer from his ideal State. Those myths, which had some resemblance to the Old Testament prophecies or the gospel history, Justin regards as caricatures of the truth, framed by demons by abuse of Scripture. The story of Bacchus, for instance rests in his fanciful view, on Gen. 49:11 sq.; the myth of the birth of Perseus from a virgin, on Is. 7:14; that of the wandering of Hercules, on Ps. 19:6; the fiction of the miracles of Esculapius on Is. 35:1 sqq.

Origen asks Celsus, why it is that he can discover profound mysteries in those strange and senseless accidents, which have befallen his gods and goddesses, showing them to be polluted with crimes and doing many shameful things; whilst Moses, who says nothing derogatory to the character of God, angel, or man, is treated as an impostor. He challenges any one to compare Moses and his laws with the best Greek writers; and yet Moses was as far inferior to Christ, as he was superior to the greatest of heathen sages and legislators.

(2) The Greek philosophy, which rises above the popular belief, is not suited to the masses, cannot meet the religious wants, and confutes itself by its manifold contradictions. Socrates, the wisest of all the philosophers, himself acknowledged that he knew nothing. On divine and human things Justin finds the philosophers at variance among themselves; with Thales water is the ultimate principle of all things; with Anaximander, air; with Heraclitus, fire; with Pythagoras, number. Even Plato not seldom contradicts himself; now supposing three fundamental causes (God, matter, and ideas), now four (adding the world-soul); now he considers matter is unbegotten, now as begotten; at one time he ascribes substantiality to ideas, at another makes them mere forms of thought, etc. Who, then, he concludes, would intrust to the philosophers the salvation of his soul?

(3) But, on the other hand, the Greek apologists recognized also elements of truth in the Hellenic literature, especially in the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and saw in them, as in the law and the prophecies of Judaism, a preparation of the way for Christianity. Justin attributes all the good in heathenism to the divine Logos, who, even before his incarnation, scattered the seeds of truth (hence the name "Logos spermaticos"), and incited susceptible spirits to a holy walk. Thus there were Christians before Christianity; and among these he expressly reckons Socrates and Heraclitus.105  Besides, he supposed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other educated Greeks, in their journeys to the East, became acquainted with the Old Testament writings, and drew from them the doctrine of the unity of God, and other like truths, though they in various ways misunderstood them, and adulterated them with pagan errors. This view of a certain affinity between the Grecian philosophy and Christianity, as an argument in favor of the new religion, was afterwards further developed by the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Origen.106

The Latin fathers speak less favorably of the Greek philosophy; yet even Augustin acknowledges that the Platonists approach so nearly to Christian truth that with a change of some expressions and sentences they would be true Christians (in theory).107

§ 40. The Positive Apology.

The Christian apology completed itself in the positive demonstration of the divinity of the new religion; which was at the same time the best refutation of both the old ones. As early as this period the strongest historical and philosophical arguments for Christianity were brought forward, or at least indicated, though in connection with many untenable adjunct.

1. The great argument, not only with Jews, but with heathens also, was the prophecies; since the knowledge of future events can come only from God. The first appeal of the apologists was, of course, to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, in which they found, by a very liberal interpretation, every event of the gospel history and every lineament of our Saviour’s character and work. In addition to the Scriptures, even such fathers as Clement of Alexandria, and, with more caution, Origen, Eusebius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustin, employed also, without hesitation, apocryphal prophecies, especially the Sibylline oracles, a medley of ancient heathen, Jewish, and in part Christian fictions, about a golden age, the coining of Christ, the fortunes of Rome, and the end of the world.108  And indeed, this was not all error and pious fraud. Through all heathenism there runs, in truth, a dim, unconscious presenti-ment and longing hope of Christianity. Think of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with its predictions of the "virgo" and "nova progenies" from heaven, and the "puer," with whom, after the blotting out of sin and the killing of the serpent, a golden age of peace was to begin. For this reason Virgil was the favorite poet of the Latin church during the middle ages, and figures prominently in Dante’s Divina Comedia as his guide through the dreary regions of the Inferno and Purgatorio to the very gates of Paradise. Another pseudo-prophetic book used by the fathers (Tertullian, Origen, and apparently Jerome) is "The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, "written by a Jewish Christian between A.D. 100 and 120. It puts into the mouth of the twelve sons of Jacob farewell addresses and predictions of the coming of Christ, his death and resurrection, of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the rejection of the gospel by the Jews, and the preaching of Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world.109

2. The types. These, too, were found not only in the Old Testament, but in the whole range of nature. Justin saw everywhere, in the tree of life in Eden, in Jacob’s ladder, in the rods of Moses and Aaron, nay, in every sailing ship, in the wave-cutting oar, in the plough, in the human countenance, in the human form with outstretched arms, in banners and trophies—the sacred form of the cross, and thus a prefiguration of the mystery of redemption through the crucifixion of the Lord.110

3. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles, with those which continued to be wrought in the name of Jesus, according to the express testimony of the fathers, by their contemporaries. But as the heathens also appealed to miraculous deeds and appearances in favor of their religion, Justin, Arnobius, and particularly Origen, fixed certain criteria, such as the moral purity of the worker, and his intention to glorify God and benefit man, for distinguishing the true miracles from Satanic juggleries. "There might have been some ground," says Origen, "for the comparison which Celsus makes between Jesus and certain wandering magicians, if there had appeared in the latter the slightest tendency to beget in persons a true fear of God, and so to regulate their actions in prospect of the day of judgment. But they attempt nothing of the sort. Yea, they themselves are guilty of the most grievous crimes; whereas the Saviour would have his hearers to be convinced by the native beauty of religion and the holy lives of its teachers, rather than by even the miracles they wrought."

The subject of post-apostolic miracles is surrounded by much greater difficulties in the absence of inspired testimony, and in most cases even of ordinary immediate witnesses. There is an antecedent probability that the power of working miracles was not suddenly and abruptly, but gradually withdrawn, as the necessity of such outward and extraordinary attestation of the divine origin of Christianity diminished and gave way to the natural operation of truth and moral suasion. Hence St. Augustin, in the fourth century, says: "Since the establishment of the church God does not wish to perpetuate miracles even to our day, lest the mind should put its trust in visible signs, or grow cold at the sight of common marvels."111  But it is impossible to fix the precise termination, either at the death of the apostles, or their immediate disciples, or the conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, or any subsequent era, and to sift carefully in each particular case the truth from legendary fiction.

It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious elements than the annals of the Nicene age and the middle ages. The history of monasticism teems with miracles even greater than those of the New Testament. Most of the statements of the apologists are couched in general terms, and refer to extraordinary cures from demoniacal possession (which probably includes, in the language of that age, cases of madness, deep melancholy, and epilepsy) and other diseases, by the invocation of the name of Jesus.112  Justin Martyr speaks of such cures as a frequent occurrence in Rome and all over the world, and Origen appeals to his own personal observation, but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles, so as to suggest the gradual cessation theory as held by Dr. Neander, Bishop Kaye, and others. Tertullian attributes many if not most of the conversions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions, as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line of demarcation between natural and supernatural causes, and between providential interpositions and miracles proper. The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides prophecies and miraculous cures of demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic church;113 but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age.

4. The moral effect of Christianity upon the heart and life of its professors. The Christian religion has not only taught the purest and sublimest code of morals ever known among men, but actually exhibited it in the life sufferings, and death of its founder and true followers. All the apologists, from the author of the Epistle to Diognetus down to Origen, Cyprian, and Augustin, bring out in strong colors the infinite superiority of Christian ethics over the heathen, and their testimony is fully corroborated by the practical fruits of the church, as we shall have occasion more fully to show in another chapter. "They think us senseless," says Justin, "because we worship this Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, as God next to the Father. But they would not say so, if they knew the mystery of the cross. By its fruits they may know it. We, who once lived in debauchery, now study chastity; we, who dealt in sorceries, have consecrated ourselves to the good, the increate God; we, who loved money and possessions above all things else, now devote our property freely to the general good, and give to every needy one; we, who fought and killed each other, now pray for our enemies; those who persecute us in hatred, we kindly try to appease, in the hope that they may share the same blessings which we enjoy."114

5. The rapid spread of Christianity by purely moral means, and in spite of the greatest external obstacles, yea, the bitter persecution of Jews and Gentiles. The anonymous apologetic Epistle to Diognetus which belongs to the literature of the Apostolic Fathers, already thus urges this point: "Do you not see the Christians exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome?  Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest?  This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of his manifestation."115  Justin Martyr and Tertullian frequently go on in a similar strain. Origen makes good use of this argument against Celsus, and thinks that so great a success as Christianity met among Greeks and barbarians, learned and unlearned persons in so short a time, without any force or other worldly means, and in view of the united opposition of emperors, senate, governors, generals, priests, and people, can only be rationally accounted for on the ground of an extraordinary providence of God and the divine nature of Christ.

6. The reasonableness of Christianity, and its agreement with all the true and the beautiful in the Greek philosophy and poesy. All who had lived rationally before Christ were really, though unconsciously, already Christians. Thus all that is Christian is rational, and all that is truly rational is Christian. Yet, on the other hand, of course, Christianity is supra-rational (not irrational).

7. The adaptation of Christianity to the deepest needs of human nature, which it alone can meet. Here belongs Tertullian’s appeal to the "testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae;" his profound thought, that the human soul is, in its inmost essence and instinct, predestined for Christianity, and can find rest and peace in that alone. "The soul," says he, "though confined in the prison of the body, though perverted by bad training, though weakened by lusts and passions, though given to the service of false gods, still no sooner awakes from its intoxication and its dreams, and recovers its health, than it calls upon God by the one name due to him: ’Great God! good God!’—and then looks, not to the capitol, but to heaven; for it knows the abode of the living God, from whom it proceeds."116

This deep longing of the human soul for the living God in Christ, Augustin, in whom Tertullian’s spirit returned purified and enriched, afterwards expressed in the grand sentence: "Thou, O God, hast made us for thee, and our heart is restless, till it rests in thee."117

CHAPTER IV.

ORGANIZATION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH.

I. The chief sources for this chapter are the Epistles of Ignatius, the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and especially Cyprian, and the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicae,

II. See the Literature in vol. I. § 58 (p. 481 sqq. ), particularly the works of Rothe, Ritchsl, Lightfoot, and Hatch.

§ 41. Progress in Consolidation.

In the external organization of the church, several important changes appear in the period before us. The distinction of clergy and laity, and the sacerdotal view of the ministry becomes prominent and fixed; subordinate church offices are multiplied; the episcopate arises; the beginnings of the Roman primacy appear; and the exclusive unity of the Catholic church develops itself in opposition to heretics and schismatics. The apostolical organization of the first century now gives place to the old Catholic episcopal system; and this, in its turn, passes into the metropolitan, and after the fourth century into the patriarchal. Here the Greek church stopped, and is governed to this day by a hierarchical oligarchy of patriarchs equal in rank and jurisdiction; while the Latin church went a step further, and produced in the middle ages the papal monarchy. The germs of this papacy likewise betray themselves even in our present period, particularly in Cyprian, together with a protest against it. Cyprian himself is as much a witness for consolidated primacy, as for independent episcopacy, and hence often used and abused alike by Romanists and Anglicans for sectarian purposes.

The characteristics, however, of the pre-Constantinian hierarchy, in distinction from the post-Constantinian, both Greek and Roman, are, first, its grand simplicity, and secondly, its spirituality, or freedom from all connection with political power and worldly splendor. Whatever influence the church acquired and exercised, she owed nothing to the secular government, which continued indifferent or positively hostile till the protective toleration edict of Constantine (313). Tertullian thought it impossible for an emperor to be a Christian, or a Christian to be an emperor; and even after Constantine, the Donatists persisted in this view, and cast up to the Catholics the memory of the former age: "What have Christians to do with kings? or what have bishops to do in the palace?"118  The ante-Nicene fathers expected the ultimate triumph of Christianity over the world from a supernatural interposition at the second Advent. Origen seems to have been the only one in that age of violent persecution who expected that Christianity, by continual growth, would gain the dominion over the world.119

The consolidation of the church and its compact organization implied a restriction of individual liberty, in the interest of order, and a temptation to the abuse of authority. But it was demanded by the diminution of spiritual gifts, which were poured out in such extraordinary abundance in the apostolic age. It made the church a powerful republic within the Roman empire, and contributed much to its ultimate success. "In union is strength," especially in times of danger and persecution such as the church had to pass through in the ante-Nicene age. While we must deny a divine right and perpetual obligation to any peculiar form of government as far as it departs from the simple principles of the New Testament, we may concede a historical necessity and great relative importance to the ante-Nicene and subsequent organizations of the church. Even the papacy was by no means an unmixed evil, but a training school for the barbarian nations during the middle ages. Those who condemn, in principle, all hierarchy, sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism, should remember that God himself appointed the priesthood and ceremonies in the Mosaic dispensation, and that Christ submitted to the requirements of the law in the days of his humiliation.

§ 42. Clergy and Laity.

The idea and institution of a special priesthood, distinct from the body of the people, with the accompanying notion of sacrifice and altar, passed imperceptibly from Jewish and heathen reminiscences and analogies into the Christian church. The majority of Jewish converts adhered tenaciously to the Mosaic institutions and rites, and a considerable part never fully attained to the height of spiritual freedom proclaimed by Paul, or soon fell away from it. He opposed legalistic and ceremonial tendencies in Galatia and Corinth; and although sacerdotalism does not appear among the errors of his Judaizing opponents, the Levitical priesthood, with its three ranks of high-priest, priest, and Levite, naturally furnished an analogy for the threefold ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon, and came to be regarded as typical of it. Still less could the Gentile Christians, as a body, at once emancipate themselves from their traditional notions of priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, on which their former religion was based. Whether we regard the change as an apostasy from a higher position attained, or as a reaction of old ideas never fully abandoned, the change is undeniable, and can be traced to the second century. The church could not long occupy the ideal height of the apostolic age, and as the Pentecostal illumination passed away with the death of the apostles, the old reminiscences began to reassert themselves.120

In the apostolic church preaching and teaching were not confined to a particular class, but every convert could proclaim the gospel to unbelievers, and every Christian who had the gift could pray and teach and exhort in the congregation.121  The New Testament knows no spiritual aristocracy or nobility, but calls all believers "saints" though many fell far short of their vocation. Nor does it recognize a special priesthood in distinction from the people, as mediating between God and the laity. It knows only one high-priest, Jesus Christ, and clearly teaches the universal priesthood, as well as universal kingship, of believers.122  It does this in a far deeper and larger sense than the Old;123 in a sense, too, which even to this day is not yet fully realized. The entire body of Christians are called "clergy" (klh'roi a peculiar people, the heritage of God.124

On the other hand it is equally clear that there was in the apostolic church a ministerial office, instituted by Christ, for the very purpose of raising the mass of believers from infancy and pupilage to independent and immediate intercourse with God, to that prophetic, priestly, and kingly position, which in principle and destination belongs to them all.125  This work is the gradual process of church history itself, and will not be fully accomplished till the kingdom of glory shall come. But these ministers are nowhere represented as priests in any other sense than Christians generally are priests, with the privilege of a direct access to the throne of grace in the name of their one and eternal high-priest in heaven. Even in the Pastoral Epistles which present the most advanced stage of ecclesiastical organization in the apostolic period, while the teaching, ruling, and pastoral functions of the presbyter-bishops are fully discussed, nothing is said about a sacerdotal function. The Apocalypse, which was written still later, emphatically teaches the universal priesthood and kingship of believers. The apostles themselves never claim or exercise a special priesthood. The sacrifice which all Christians are exhorted to offer is the sacrifice of their person and property to the Lord, and the spiritual sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise.126  In one passage a Christian "altar" is spoken of, in distinction from the Jewish altar of literal and daily sacrifices, but this altar is the cross on which Christ offered himself once and forever for the sins of the world.127

After the gradual abatement of the extraordinary spiritual elevation of the apostolic age, which anticipated in its way the ideal condition of the church, the distinction of a regular class of teachers from the laity became more fixed and prominent. This appears first in Ignatius, who, in his high episcopalian spirit, considers the clergy the necessary medium of access for the people to God. "Whoever is within the sanctuary (or altar), is pure; but he who is outside of the sanctuary is not pure; that is, he who does anything without bishop and presbytery and deacon, is not pure in conscience."128  Yet he nowhere represents the ministry as a sacerdotal office. The Didache calls "the prophets" high-priests, but probably in a spiritual sense.129  Clement of Rome, in writing to the congregation at Corinth, draws a significant and fruitful parallel between the Christian presiding office and the Levitical priesthood, and uses the expression "layman" (lai>ko" a[nqrwpo") as antithetic to high-priest, priests, and Levites.130  This parallel contains the germ of the whole system of sacerdotalism. But it is at best only an argument by analogy. Tertullian was the first who expressly and directly asserts sacerdotal claims on behalf of the Christian ministry, and calls it "sacerdotium," although he also strongly affirms the universal priesthood of all believers. Cyprian (d. 258) goes still further, and applies all the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of the Aaronic priesthood to the officers of the Christian church, and constantly calls them sacerdotes and sacerdotium. He may therefore be called the proper father of the sacerdotal conception of the Christian ministry as a mediating agency between God and the people. During the third century it became customary to apply the term "priest" directly and exclusively to the Christian ministers especially the bishops.131  In the same manner the whole ministry, and it alone, was called "clergy," with a double reference to its presidency and its peculiar relation to God.132  It was distinguished by this name from the Christian people or "laity."133  Thus the term "clergy," which first signified the lot by which office was assigned (Acts 1:17, 25), then the office itself, then the persons holding that office, was transferred from the Christians generally to the ministers exclusively.

Solemn "ordination" or consecration by the laying on of hands was the form of admission into the "ordo ecclesiasticus" or "sacerdotalis." In this order itself there were again three degrees, "ordines majores," as they were called: the diaconate, the presbyterate, and the episcopate—held to be of divine institution. Under these were the "ordines minores," of later date, from sub-deacon to ostiary, which formed the stepping-stone between the clergy proper and the people.134

Thus we find, so early as the third century, the foundations of a complete hierarchy; though a hierarchy of only moral power, and holding no sort of outward control over the conscience. The body of the laity consisted of two classes: the faithful, or the baptized and communicating members, and the catechumens, who were preparing for baptism. Those church members who lived together in one place,135 formed a church in the narrower sense.136

With the exaltation of the clergy appeared the tendency to separate them from secular business, and even from social relations—from marriage, for example—and to represent them, even outwardly, as a caste independent of the people, and devoted exclusively to the service of the sanctuary. They drew their support from the church treasury, which was supplied by voluntary contributions and weekly collections on the Lord’s Day. After the third century they were forbidden to engage in any secular business, or even to accept any trusteeship. Celibacy was not yet in this period enforced, but left optional. Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, and other distinguished church teachers, lived in wedlock, though theoretically preferring the unmarried state. Of an official clerical costume no certain trace appears before the fourth century; and if it came earlier into use, as may have been the ease, after the example of the Jewish church, it must have been confined, during the times of persecution, to the actual exercises of worship.

With the growth of this distinction of clergy and laity, however, the idea of the universal priesthood continued from time to time to assert itself: in Irenaeus,137 for example, and in an eccentric form in the Montanists, who even allowed women to teach publicly in the church. So Tertullian, with whom clerus and laici were at one time familiar expressions, inquires, as the champion of the Montanistic reaction against the Catholic hierarchy: "Are not we laymen priests also?"138  It is written, he continues: "He hath made us kings and priests (Rev. 1:6). It is the authority of the church alone which has made a distinction between clergy and laity. Where there is no college of ministers, you administer the sacrament, you baptize, you are a priest for yourself alone. And where there are three of you, there is a church, though you be only laymen. For each one lives by his own faith, and there is no respect of persons with God."139  All, therefore, which the clergy considered peculiar to them, he claimed for the laity as the common sacerdotal privilege of all Christians.

Even in the Catholic church an acknowledgment of the general priesthood showed itself in the custom of requiring the baptized to say the Lord’s Prayer before the assembled congregation. With reference to this, Jerome says: "Sacerdotium laici, id est, baptisma." The congregation also, at least in the West, retained for a long time the right of approval and rejection in the choice of its ministers, even of the bishop. Clement of Rome expressly requires the assent of the whole congregation for a valid election;140 and Cyprian terms this an apostolic and almost universal regulation.141  According to his testimony it obtained also in Rome, and was observed in the case of his contemporary, Cornelius.142  Sometimes in the filling of a vacant bishopric the "suffragium" of the people preceded the "judicium" of the clergy of the diocese. Cyprian, and afterwards Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustin, and other eminent prelates, were in a manner pressed into the bishopric in this democratic way. Cyprian, with all his high-church proclivities, declares it his principle to do nothing as bishop without the advice of the presbyters and deacons, and the consent of the people.143  A peculiar influence, which even the clergy could not withstand, attached to the "confessors," and it was sometimes abused by them, as in their advocacy of the lapsed, who denied Christ in the Decian persecution.

Finally, we notice cases where the function of teaching was actually exercised by laymen. The bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea allowed the learned Origen to expound the Bible to their congregations before his ordination, and appealed to the example of several bishops in the East.144  Even in the Apostolical Constitutions there occurs, under the name of the Apostle Paul, the direction: "Though a man be a layman, if experienced in the delivery of instruction, and reverent in habit, he may teach; for the Scripture says: ’They shall be all taught of God.’ "145  The fourth general council at Carthage (398) prohibited laymen from teaching in the presence of clergymen and without their consent; implying at the same time, that with such permission the thing might be done.146

It is worthy of notice that a number of the most eminent church teachers of this period, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, were either laymen, or at most only presbyters. Hermas, who wrote one of the most popular and authoritative books in the early church, was probably a layman; perhaps also the author of the homily which goes under the name of the Second Epistle of Clement of Rome, and has recently been discovered in full both in the original Greek and in a Syriac translation; for he seems to distinguish himself and his hearers from the presbyters.147

§ 43. New Church Officers.

The expansion of the church, the development of her cultus, and the tendency towards hierarchical pomp, led to the multiplication of offices below the diaconate, which formed the ordines minores. About the middle of the third century the following new officers are mentioned:

1. Sub-deacons, or under-helpers;148 assistants and deputies of the deacons; the only one of these subordinate offices for which a formal ordination was required. Opinions differ as to its value.

2. Readers,149 who read the Scriptures in the assembly and had charge of the church books.

3. Acolyths,150 attendants of the bishops in their official duties and processions.

4. Exorcists,151 who, by prayer and the laying on of hands, cast out the evil spirit from the possessed,152 and from catechumens, and frequently assisted in baptism. This power had been formerly considered a free gift of the Holy Spirit.

5. Precentors,153 for the musical parts of the liturgy, psalms, benedictions, responses, etc.

6. Janitors or sextons,154 who took care of the religious meeting-rooms, and at a later period also of the church-yards.

7. Besides these there were in the larger churches catechists, and, where the church language in the worship was not understood, interpreters; but the interpreting was commonly done by presbyters, deacons, or readers.

The bishop Cornelius of Rome (d. 252), in a letter on the Novatian schism,155 gives the number of officers in his church as follows: Forty-six presbyters, probably corresponding to the number of the meeting-houses of the Christians in the city; seven deacons, after the model of the church at Jerusalem (Acts vi); seven sub-deacons; forty-two acolyths, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and janitors.

As to the ordines majores, the deacons during this period rose in importance. In addition to their original duties of caring for the poor and sick, they baptized, distributed the sacramental cup, said the church prayers, not seldom preached, and were confidential advisers, sometimes even delegates and vicars of the bishops. This last is true especially of the "archdeacon," who does not appear, however, till the fourth century. The presbyters, on the contrary, though above the deacons, were now overtopped by the new office of bishop, in which the entire government of the church became centred.

§ 44. Origin of the Episcopate.

Besides the works already cited, compare the special works and essays on the Ignatian controversy, published since 1837, by Rothe (close of his Anfänge, etc.), Hefele (R.C.), Baur, Hilgenfeld, Bunsen, Petermann, Cureton, Lipsius, Uhlhorn, Zahn, Lightfoot (I. 376 sqq). Also R. D. Hitchcock on the Origin of Episcopacy, N. Y. 1867 (in the "Am. Presbyt. & Theol. Review" for Jan. 1867, pp. 133–169); Lightfoot on the Christian Ministry (1873); Hatch on the Organization of the Early Christian Church (1881); Renan, L’Eglise chrétienne (1879), ch. VI. Progrés de l’épiscopat; and Gore, The Ministry of the Church (1889).

The most important and also the most difficult phenomenon of our period in the department of church organization is the rise and development of the episcopate as distinct from the presbyterate. This institution comes to view in the second century as the supreme spiritual office, and is retained to this day by all Roman and Greek Christendom, and by a large part of the Evangelical church, especially the Anglican communion. A form of government so ancient and so widely adopted, can be satisfactorily accounted for only on the supposition of a religious need, namely, the need of a tangible outward representation and centralization, to illustrate and embody to the people their relation to Christ and to God, and the visible unity of the church. It is therefore inseparable from the catholic principle of authority and mediation; while the protestant principle of freedom and direct intercourse of the believer with Christ, consistently carried out, infringes the strict episcopal constitution, and tends to ministerial equality. Episcopacy in the full sense of the term requires for its base the idea of a real priesthood and real sacrifice, and an essential distinction between clergy and laity. Divested of these associations, it resolves itself into a mere superintendency.156

During the lifetime of the apostles, those eye- and ear-witnesses of the divine-human life of Jesus, and the inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, there was no room for proper bishops; and those who were so called, must have held only a subordinate place. The church, too, in the first century was as yet a strictly supernatural organization, a stranger in this world, standing with one foot in eternity, and longing for the second coming of her heavenly bridegroom. But in the episcopal constitution the church provided an extremely simple but compact and freely expansible organization, planted foot firmly upon earth, became an institution for the education of her infant people, and, as chiliastic hopes receded, fell into the path of quiet historical development; yet unquestionably she thus incurred also the danger of a secularization which reached its height just when the hierarchy became complete in the Roman church, and which finally necessitated a reformation on the basis of apostolical Christianity. That this secularization began with the growing power of the bishops even before Constantine and the Byzantine court orthodoxy, we perceive, for instance, in the lax penitential discipline, the avarice, and the corruption with which Hippolytus, in the ninth book of his Philosophumena, reproaches Zephyrinus and Callistus, the Roman bishops of his time (202–223); also in the example of the bishop Paul of Samosata, who was deposed in 269 on almost incredible charges, not only against his doctrine, but still more against his moral character.157  Origen complains that there are, especially in the larger cities, overseers of the people of God, who seek to outdo the pomp of heathen potentates, would surround themselves, like the emperors, with a body-guard, and make themselves terrible and inaccessible to the poor.158

We consider, first, the origin of the episcopate. The unreliable character of our documents and traditions from the transition period between the close of the apostolic church and the beginning of the post-apostolic, leaves large room here for critical research and combination. First of all comes the question: Was the episcopate directly or indirectly of apostolic (Johannean) origin?159  Or did it arise after the death of the apostles, and develope itself from the presidency of the congregational presbytery?160  In other words, was the episcopate a continuation and contraction of, and substitute for, the apostolate, or was it an expansion and elevation of the presbyterate?161  The later view is more natural and better sustained by facts. Most of its advocates date the change from the time of Ignatius in the first quarter of the second century, while a few carry it further back to the close of the first, when St. John still lived in Ephesus.

I. For the apostolic origin of episcopacy the following points may be made:

(1) The position of James, who evidently stood at the head of the church at Jerusalem,162 and is called bishop, at least in the pseudo-Clementine literature, and in fact supreme bishop of the whole church.163  This instance, however, stands quite alone, and does not warrant an inference in regard to the entire church.

(2) The office of the assistants and delegates of the apostles, like Timothy, Titus, Silas, Epaphroditus, Luke, Mark, who had a sort of supervision of several churches and congregational officers, and in a measure represented the apostles in special missions. But, in any case, these were not limited, at least during the life of the apostles, each to a particular diocese; they were itinerant evangelists and legates of the apostles; only the doubtful tradition of a later day assigns them distinct bishoprics. If bishops at all, they were missionary bishops.

(3) The angels of the seven churches of Asia,164 who, if regarded as individuals, look very like the later bishops, and indicate a monarchical shaping of the church government in the days of John. But, apart from the various interpretations of the Apocalyptic a[ggeloi, that office appears not co-ordinate with the apostolate of John, but subordinate to it, and was no more than a congregational superintendency.

(4) The testimony of Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John, in his seven (or three) epistles from the beginning of the second century (even according to the shorter Syriac version), presupposes the episcopate, in distinction from the presbyterate, as already existing, though as a new institution, yet in its growth.

(5) The statement of Clement of Alexandria,165 that John instituted bishops after his return from Patmos; and the accounts of Irenaeus,166 Tertullian,167 Eusebius,168 and Jerome,169 that the same apostle nominated and ordained Polycarp (with whom Irenaeus was personally acquainted) bishop of Smyrna.

(6) The uncertain tradition in Eusebius, who derived it probably from Hegesippus, that the surviving apostles and disciples of the apostles, soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, elected Symeon, the son of Klopas and a cousin of Jesus, bishop of that city and successor of James. But this arrangement at best was merely local, and not general.170

(7) The tradition of the churches of Antioch and Rome, which trace their line of bishops back to apostolic institution, and kept the record of an unbroken succession.

(8) A passage in the second of the Pfaff Fragments of Irenaeus, which speaks of "second ordinances of the apostles" (deuvterai tw'n ajpostovlwn diatavxei"). Rothe understands by these the institution of the episcopate. But aside from the doubtful genuineness of the Fragments, these words are at all events of unsettled interpretation, and, according to the connection, relate not to the government of the church at all, but to the celebration of the eucharist.

(9) Equally uncertain is the conclusion drawn from an obscure passage in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, which admits of different interpretations.171  The apostles, it is said, foreseeing the future controversy about the name of the episcopal office, appointed bishops and deacons, and afterwards made the disposition,172 that when they should fall asleep, other approved men should follow them in office. Rothe refers "they" and "them" to the apostles as the main subject. But these words naturally refer to the congregational officers just before mentioned, and in this case the "other approved men" are not successors of the apostles, but of the presbyter-bishops and deacons.173  This view is sustained by the connection. The difficulty in the Corinthian congregation was a rebellion, not against a single bishop, but against a number of presbyter-bishops, and Clement reminds them that the apostles instituted this office not only for the first generation, but provided for a permanent succession, and that the officers were appointed for life, and could therefore not be deposed so long as they discharged their duties. Hence he goes on to say, immediately after the disputed passage in chapter 44: "Wherefore we think that those cannot justly be thrown out of their ministry who were appointed either by them (the apostles), or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole congregation; and who have with all lowliness and innocency ministered to the flock of Christ, in peace, and without self-interest, and were for a long time commended by all."

(10) Finally, the philosophical consideration, that the universal and uncontested spread of the episcopate in the second century cannot be satisfactorily explained without the presumption of at least the indirect sanction of the apostles. By the same argument the observance of Sunday and infant baptism are usually traced to apostolic origin. But it is not quite conclusive, since most of the apostles died before the destruction of Jerusalem. It could only apply to John, who was the living centre of the church in Asia Minor to the close of the first century.174

II. The theory of the post-apostolic origin of the episcopate as a separate office or order, and its rise out of the presidency of the original congregational presbyterate, by way of human, though natural and necessary, development, is supported by the following facts:

(1) The undeniable identity of presbyters and bishops in the New Testament,175 conceded even by the best interpreters among the church fathers, by Jerome, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, and by the best scholars of recent times.

(2) Later, at the close of the first and even in the second century, the two terms are still used in like manner for the same office. The Roman bishop Clement, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians says, that the apostles, in the newly-founded churches, appointed the first fruits of the faith, i.e., the first converts, "bishops and deacons."176  He here omits the presbuvteroi, as Paul does in Phil. 1:1, for the simple reason that they are in his view identical with ejpivskopoi; while conversely, in c. 57, he enjoins subjection to presbyters, without mentioning bishops.177  The Didache mentions bishops and deacons, but no presbyters.178  Clement of Alexandria distinguishes, it is true, the deaconate, the presbyterate, and the episcopate; but he supposes only a two-fold official character, that of presbyters, and that of deacons—a view which found advocates so late as the middle ages, even in pope Urban II., A.D. 1091. Lastly, Irenaeus, towards the close of the second century, though himself a bishop, makes only a relative difference between episcopi and presbyteri; speaks of successions of the one in the same sense as of the other; terms the office of the latter episcopatus; and calls the bishops of Rome "presbyters".179  Sometimes, it is true, he appears to use the term "presbyters" in a more general sense, for the old men, the fathers.180  But in any case his language shows that the distinction between the two offices was at that time still relative and indefinite.

(3) The express testimony of the learned Jerome, that the churches originally, before divisions arose through the instigation of Satan, were governed by the common council of the presbyters, and not till a later period was one of the pres-byters placed at the head, to watch over the church and suppress schisms.181  He traces the difference of the office simply to "ecclesiastical" custom as distinct from divine institution.182

(4) The custom of the church of Alexandria, where, from the evangelist Mark down to the middle of the third century, the twelve presbyters elected one of their number president, and called him bishop. This fact rests on the authority of Jerome,183 and is confirmed independently by the Annals of the Alexandrian patriarch, Eutychius, of the tenth century.184  The latter states that Mark instituted in that city a patriarch (this is an anachronism) and twelve presbyters, who should fill the vacant patriarchate by electing and ordaining to that office one of their number and then electing a new presbyter, so as always to retain the number twelve. He relates, moreover, that down to the time of Demetrius, at the end of the second century, there was no bishop in Egypt besides the one at Alexandria; consequently there could have been no episcopal ordination except by going out of the province.

III. Conclusion. The only satisfactory conclusion from these various facts and traditions seems to be, that the episcopate proceeded, both in the descending and ascending scale, from the apostolate and the original presbyterate conjointly, as a contraction of the former and an expansion of the latter, without either express concert or general regulation of the apostles, neither of which, at least, can be historically proved. It arose, instinctively, as it were, in that obscure and critical transition period between the end of the first and the middle of the second century. It was not a sudden creation, much less the invention of a single mind. It grew, in part, out of the general demand for a continuation of, or substitute for, the apostolic church government, and this, so far as it was transmissible at all, very naturally passed first to the most eminent disciples and fellow-laborers of the apostles, to Mark, Luke, Timothy, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias, which accounts for the fact that tradition makes them all bishops in the prominent sense of the term. It was further occasioned by the need of a unity in the presbyterial government of congregations, which, in the nature of the case and according to the analogy of the Jewish arcisunavgwgo",185 required a head or president. This president was called bishop, at first only by eminence, as primus inter pares; afterwards in the exclusive sense. In the smaller churches there was, perhaps, from the beginning, only one presbyter, who of himself formed this centre, like the chorepiscopi or country-bishops in the fourth century. The dioceses of the bishops in Asia Minor and North Africa, owing to their large number, in the second and third centuries, can hardly have exceeded the extent of respectable pastoral charges. James of Jerusalem, on the other hand, and his immediate successors, whose positions in many respects were altogether peculiar, seem to have been the only bishops in Palestine. Somewhat similar was the state of things in Egypt, where, down to Demetrius (A.D. 190–232), we find only the one bishop of Alexandria.

We cannot therefore assume any strict uniformity. But the whole church spirit of the age tended towards centralization; it everywhere felt a demand for compact, solid unity; and this inward bent, amidst the surrounding dangers of persecution and heresy, carried the church irresistibly towards the episcopate. In so critical and stormy a time, the principle, union is strength, division is weakness, prevailed over all. In fact, the existence of the church at that period may be said to have depended in a great measure on the preservation and promotion of unity, and that in an outward, tangible form, suited to the existing grade of culture. Such a unity was offered in the bishop, who held a monarchical, or more properly a patriarchal relation to the congregation. In the bishop was found the visible representative of Christ, the great Head of the whole church. In the bishop, therefore, all sentiments of piety found a centre. In the bishop the whole religious posture of the people towards God and towards Christ had its outward support and guide. And in proportion as every church pressed towards a single centre, this central personage must acquire a peculiar importance and subordinate the other presbyters to itself; though, at the same time, as the language of Clement and Irenaeus, the state of things in Egypt, and even in North Africa, and the testimony of Jerome and other fathers, clearly prove, the remembrance of the original equality could not be entirely blotted out, but continued to show itself in various ways.

Besides this there was also a powerful practical reason for elevating the powers of the bishop. Every Christian congregation was a charitable society, regarding the care of the widow and orphan, the poor and the stranger as a sacred trust; and hence the great importance of the bishop as the administrative officer by whom the charitable funds were received and the alms disbursed. In Greek communities the title bishop (ejpivskopo", ejpimelithv"), was in wide use for financial officers. Their administrative functions brought them in close relation to the deacons, as their executive aids in the care of the poor and sick. The archdeacon became the right arm, the "eye" and "heart" of the bishop. In primitive times every case of poverty or suffering was separately brought to the notice of the bishop and personally relieved by a deacon. Afterwards institutions were founded for widows and orphans, poor and infirm, and generally placed under the superintendence of the bishop; but personal responsibility was diminished by this organized charity, and the deacons lost their original significance and became subordinate officers of public worship.186

Whatever may be thought, therefore, of the origin and the divine right of the episcopate, no impartial historian can deny its adaptation to the wants of the church at the time, and its historical necessity.

But then, this primitive catholic episcopal system must by no means be confounded with the later hierarchy. The dioceses, excepting those of Jerusalem, Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, must have long remained very small, if we look at the number of professing Christians. In the Apocalypse seven such centres of unity are mentioned within a comparatively small compass in Asia Minor, and at a time when the number of Christians was insignificant. In the year 258, Cyprian assembled a council of eighty-seven bishops of North Africa. The functions of the bishops were not yet strictly separated from those of the presbyters, and it was only by degrees that ordination, and, in the Western church, confirmation also, came to be intrusted exclusively to the bishops.

§ 45. Development of the Episcopate. Ignatius.

It is matter of fact that the episcopal form of government was universally established in the Eastern and Western church as early as the middle of the second century. Even the heretical sects, at least the Ebionites, as we must infer from the commendation of the episcopacy in the pseudo-Clementine literature, were organized on this plan, as well as the later schismatic parties of Novatians, Donatists, etc. But it is equally undeniable, that the episcopate reached its complete form only step by step. In the period before us we must note three stages in this development connected with the name of Ignatius in Syria (d. 107 or 115), Irenaeus in Gaul (d. 202), and Cyprian in North Africa (d. 258).

The episcopate first appears, as distinct from the presbyterate, but as a congregational office only (in distinction from the diocesan idea), and as yet a young institution, greatly needing commendation, in the famous seven (or three) Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch a disciple of the apostles, and the second bishop of that see (Evodius being the first, and Hero the third). He is also the first who uses the term "catholic church," as if episcopacy and catholicity sprung up simultaneously. The whole story of Ignatius is more legendary than real, and his writings are subject to grave suspicion of fraudulent interpolation. We have three different versions of the Ignatian Epistles, but only one of them can be genuine; either the smaller Greek version, or the lately discovered Syriac.187  In the latter, which contains only three epistles, most of the passages on the episcopate are wanting, indeed; yet the leading features of the institution appear even here, and we can recognise ex ungue leonem.188  In any case they reflect the public sentiment before the middle of the second century.

The substance of these epistles (with the exception of that to the Romans, in which, singularly enough, not a word is said about bishops189), consists of earnest exhortations to obey the bishop and maintain the unity of the church against the Judaistic and docetic heresies. With the near prospect and the most ardent desire for martyrdom, the author has no more fervent wish than the perfect inward and outward unity of the faithful; and to this the episcopate seems to him indispensable. In his view Christ is the invisible supreme head, the one great universal bishop of all the churches scattered over the earth. The human bishop is the centre of unity for the single congregation, and stands in it as the vicar of Christ and even of God.190  The people, therefore, should unconditionally obey him, and do nothing without his will. Blessed are they who are one with the bishop, as the church is with Christ, and Christ with the Father, so that all harmonizes in unity. Apostasy from the bishop is apostasy from Christ, who acts in and through the bishops as his organs.

We shall give passages from the shorter Greek text (as edited by Zahn):

If any one is able to continue in purity (ejn aJgneiva/ i.e., in the state of celibacy), to the honor of the flesh of our Lord, let him continue so without boasting; if he boasts, he is lost (ajpwvleto) if he become known more than the bishop,191 he is corrupt (e[fqartai). It is becoming, therefore, to men and women who marry, that they marry by the counsel of the bishop, that the marriage may be in the Lord, and not in lust. Let ever thing be done for the honor of God. Look to the bishop, that God also [may look] upon you. I will be in harmony with those who are subject to the bishop, and the presbyters, and the deacons; with them may I have a portion near God!"  This passage is one of the strongest, and occurs in the Syriac Epistle to Polycarp as well as in the shorter Greek recension.192  It characteristically connected episcopacy with celibacy: the ascetic system of Catholicism starts in celibacy, as the hierarchical organization of Catholicism takes its rise in episcopacy. "It becomes you to be in harmony with the mind (or sentence, gnwvmh/) of the bishop, as also ye do. For your most estimable presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted to the bishop as the strings are to the harp."193  "It is evident that we should look upon the bishop as we do upon the Lord himself."194  "I exhort you that ye study to do all things with a divine concord: the bishop presiding in the place of God (eij" tovpon qeou'), and presbyters in the place of the college of the apostles, (ei" tovpon sunedrivou tw'n ajpostovlwn), and the deacons, most dear to me, being intrusted with the ministry (diakonivan) of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before all ages, and in the end appeared to us."195  "Be subject to the bishop, and to one another, as Christ [was subject] to the Father according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit, in order that the union be carnal (sarkikhv), as well as spiritual."196 "It is necessary, as is your habit, to do nothing without the bishop, and that ye should be subject also to the presbytery (tw' presbuterivw/), as to the apostles of Jesus Christ."197  "As many as are of God and of Jesus Christ, are also with their bishop."198  "Let all of you follow the bishop, as Jesus Christ [follows] the Father; and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons as the ordinance of God. Without the bishop let no one do anything connected with the church. Let that eucharist be accounted valid which is [offered] under the bishop or by one he has appointed. Wherever the bishop is found, there let the people be; as wherever Christ is, there is the catholic church. Without the bishop it is not lawful either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast."199

This is the first time that the term "catholic" is applied to the church, and that episcopacy is made a condition of catholicity.

"He that honors the bishop, shall be honored by God; he that does anything without the knowledge of the bishop serves the devil."200

This is making salvation pretty much depend upon obedience to the bishop; just as Leo I., three centuries later, in the controversy with Hilary of Arles, made salvation depend upon obedience to the pope by declaring every rebel against the pope to be a servant of the devil!  Such daring superabundance of episcopalianism clearly betrays some special design and raises the suspicion of forgery or large interpolations. But it may also be explained as a special pleading for a novelty which to the mind of the writer was essential to the very existence of the church.

The peculiarity in this Ignatian view is that the bishop appears in it as the head and centre of a single congregation, and not as equally the representative of the whole church; also, that (as in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies) he is the vicar of Christ, and not, as in the later view, merely the successor of the apostles,—the presbyters and deacons around him being represented as those successors; and finally, that there are no distinctions of order among the bishops, no trace of a primacy; all are fully coordinate vicars of Christ, who provides for himself in them, as it were, a sensible, perceptible omnipresence in the church. The Ignatian episcopacy, in short, is congregational, not diocesan; a new and growing institution, not a settled policy of apostolic origin.

§ 46. Episcopacy at the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian.

In all these points the idea of the episcopate in Irenaeus, the great opponent of Gnosticism (about 180), is either lower or higher. This father represents the institution as a diocesan office, and as the continuation of the apostolate, the vehicle of the catholic tradition, and the support of doctrinal unity in opposition to heretical vagaries. He exalts the bishops of the original apostolic churches, above all the church of Rome, and speaks with great emphasis of an unbroken episcopal succession as a test of apostolic teaching and a bulwark against heresy.201

At the same time the wavering terminology of Irenaeus in the interchangeable use of the words "bishop" and "presbyter" reminds us of Clement of Rome, and shows that the distinction of the two orders was not yet fully fixed.202

The same view of the episcopal succession as the preserver of apostolic tradition and guardian of orthodox doctrine, we find also, though less frequently, in the earlier writings of Tertullian, with this difference that he uniformly and clearly distinguishes bishops and presbyters, and thus proves a more advanced state of the episcopal polity at his time (about 200).203  But afterwards, in the chiliastic and democratic cause of Montanism, he broke with the episcopal hierarchy, and presented against it the antithesis that the church does not consist of bishops, and that the laity are also priests.204

§ 47. Cyprianic Episcopacy.

The old catholic episcopalianism reached its maturity in the middle of the third century in the teaching and example of Cyprian, bishop and martyr of the church in North Africa. He represents the claims of episcopacy in close connection with the idea of a special priesthood and sacrifice.205  He is the typical high-churchman of the ante-Nicene age. He vigorously put into practice what he honestly believed. He had a good opportunity to assert his authority in the controversy about the lapsed during the Decian persecution, in the schism of Felicissimus, and in the controversy on heretical baptism.

Cyprian considers the bishops as the bearers of the Holy Spirit, who passed from Christ to the apostles, from them by ordination to the bishops, propagates himself in an unbroken line of succession, and gives efficacy to all religious exercises. Hence they are also the pillars of the unity of the church; nay, in a certain sense they are the church itself. "The bishop," says he, "is in the church, and the church in the bishop, and if any one is not with the bishop he is not in the church."206  And this is the same with him as to say, he is no Christian. Cyprian is thoroughly imbued with the idea of the solidary unity of the episcopate,—the many bishops exercising only one office in solidum, each within his diocese, and each at the same time representing in himself the whole office.207

But with all this, the bishop still appears in Cyprian in the closest connexion with the presbyters. He undertook no important matter without their advice. The fourth general council, at Carthage, A.D. 398, even declared the sentence of a bishop, without the concurrence of the lower clergy, void, and decreed that in the ordination of a presbyter, all the presbyters, with the bishop, should lay their hands on the candidate.208

The ordination of a bishop was performed by the neighboring bishops, requiring at least three in number. In Egypt, however, so long as there was but one bishop there, presbyters must have performed the consecration, which Eutychius209 and Hilary the Deacon210 expressly assert was the case.

§ 48. The Pseudo-Clementine Episcopacy.

Besides this orthodox or catholic formation of the episcopate, the kindred monarchical hierarchy of the Ebionitic sect deserves attention, as it meets us in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies. Chronologically this falls in the middle of the second century, between Ignatius and Irenaeus, and forms a sort of transition from the former to the latter; though it cannot exactly be said to have influenced the Catholic church. It is rather a heretical counterpart of the orthodox episcopate. The organization which consolidated the Catholic church answered the same purpose for a sect. The author of the pseudo-Clementine, like Ignatius, represents the bishop as the vicar of Christ,211 and at the same time, according to the view of Irenaeus, as the vicar and successor of the apostles;212 but outstrips both in his high hierarchical expressions, such as kavqedra qrovno" tou' ejpiskovpou, and in his idea of the primacy, or of a universal church monarchy, which he finds, however, not as Irenaeus suggests and Cyprian more distinctly states, in Peter and the Roman see, but, agreeably to his Judaistic turn, in James of, Jerusalem, the "bishop of bishops."213

The Manichaeans had likewise a hierarchical organization (as the Mormons in modern times).

Montanism, on the other hand, was a democratic reaction against the episcopal hierarchy in favor of the general priesthood, and the liberty of teaching and prophesying, but it was excommunicated and died out, till it reappeared under a different form in Quakerism.

§ 49. Beginnings of the Metropolitan and Patriarchal Systems

Though the bishops were equal in their dignity and powers as successors of the apostles, they gradually fell into different ranks, according to the ecclesiastical and political importance of their several districts.

1. On the lowest level stood the bishops of the country churches, the chorepiscopi who, though not mentioned before the beginning of the fourth century, probably originated at an earlier period.214  They stood between the presbyters and the city bishops, and met the wants of episcopal supervision in the villages of large dioceses in Asia Minor and Syria, also in Gaul.

2. Among the city bishops the metropolitans rose above the rest, that is, the bishops of the capital cities of the provinces.215  They presided in the provincial synods, and, as primi inter pares, ordained the bishops of the province. The metropolitan system appears, from the Council of Nicaea in 325, to have been already in operation at the time of Constantine and Eusebius, and was afterwards more fully carried out in the East. In North Africa the oldest bishop, hence called senex, stood as primas, at the head of his province; but the bishop of Carthage enjoyed the highest consideration, and could summon general councils.

3. Still older and more important is the distinction of apostolic mother-churches,216 such as those at Jerusalem, Antioch) Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. In the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian they were held in the highest regard, as the chief bearers of the pure church tradition. Among these Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome were most prominent, because they were the capitals respectively of the three divisions (eparchiae) of the Roman empire, and centres of trade and intercourse, combining with their apostolic origin the greatest political weight. To the bishop of Antioch fell all Syria as his metropolitan district; to the bishop of Alexandria, all Egypt; to the bishop of Rome, central and lower Italy, without definite boundaries.

4. Here we have the germs of the eparchal or patriarchal system, to which the Greek church to this day adheres. The name patriarch was at first, particularly in the East, an honorary title for all bishops, and was not till the fourth century exclusively appropriated to the bishops of the three ecclesiastical and political capitals of the Roman empire, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome, and also to the bishop of Jerusalem honoris causa, and the bishop of Constantinople or New Rome. So in the West the term papa afterwards appropriated by the Roman bishop, as summus pontifex, vicarius Christi, was current for a long time in a more general application.

§ 50. Germs of the Papacy.

Comp. the Lit. in vol. I. §25 (p. 245).

Blondel: Traité historique de la primauté en l’église. Genéve, 1641.

Salmasius: De Primatu Papae. Lugd. Bat. 1645.

Is. Barrow: The Pope’s Supremacy. Lond. 1680 (new ed. Oxf. 1836. N. York, 1845).

Rothensee (R.C.): Der Primal Des Papstes in allen Christlichen Jahrhunderten, 3 vols. Mainz, 1836–38 (I. 1–98).

Kenrick (R.C., archbishop of Baltimore, d. 1853): The Primacy of the Apostolic See vindicated. N. York, 4th ed. 1855.

R. I. Wilberforce (formerly archdeacon in the Anglican church; died in the Roman church, 1857): An Inquiry into the Principles of Church Authority; or Reasons for Recalling my subscriptions to the Royal Supremacy. Lond. 1854 (ch. vi.-x.).

J. E. Riddle: The History of the Papacy to the Period of the Reformation.  Lond. 1856. 2 vols. (Chapter 1, p. 2–113; chiefly taken from Schröckh and Planck).

Thomas Greenwood: Cathedra Petri. A Political History of the great Latin Patriarchate. Lond. 1856–1872. 6 vols. Vol. I. ch. I.-VI. (A work of independent and reliable learning.)

Joh. Friedrich (Old Cath.): Zur ältesten Geschichte des Primates in der Kirche. Bonn, 1879.

E Renan: Conferences d’Angleterre. Rome et le christianisme. Paris 1880. The Hibbert Lectures delivered in Lond. 1880. English translation by Charles Beard, London (Williams & Norgate) 1880, another by Erskine Clement (Boston, 1880). Consists mostly of extracts from his books on the Origin of Christianity, skillfully put together.

H. Formby (R.C.): Ancient Rome and its connection with the Christian Religion. London 1880.

Jos. Langen (Old Cath.): Geschichte der römischen Kirche bis zum Pontificate Leo’s I. Bonn, 1881.

R. F. Littledale (Anglo-Cath.): The Petrine Claims, A Critical Inquiry London 1880. Controversial.

Among the great bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, the Roman bishop combined all the conditions for a primacy, which, from a purely honorary distinction, gradually became the basis of a supremacy of jurisdiction. The same propension to monarchical unity, which created out of the episcopate a centre, first for each congregation, then for each diocese, pressed on towards a visible centre for the whole church. Primacy and episcopacy grew together. In the present period we already find the faint beginnings of the papacy, in both its good and its evil features; and with them, too, the first examples of earnest protest against the abuse of its power. In the Nicene age the bishop of Jerusalem was made an honorary patriarch in view of the antiquity of that church, though his diocese was limited; and from the middle of the fourth century the new patriarch of Constantinople or New Rome, arose to the primacy among the eastern patriarchs, and became a formidable rival of the bishop of old Rome.

The Roman church claims not only human but divine right for the papacy, and traces its institution directly to Christ, when he assigned to Peter an eminent position in the work of founding his church, against which even the gates of hades shall never prevail. This claim implies several assumptions, viz. (1) that Peter by our Lord’s appointment had not simply a primacy of personal excellency, or of honor and dignity (which must be conceded to him), but also a supremacy of jurisdiction over the other apostles (which is contradicted by the fact that Peter himself never claimed it, and that Paul maintained a position of perfect independence, and even openly rebuked him at Antioch, Gal. 2:11); (2) that the privileges of this primacy and supremacy are not personal only (as the peculiar gifts of Paul or John undoubtedly were), but official, hereditary and transferable; (3) that they were actually transferred by Peter, not upon the bishop of Jerusalem, or Antioch (where Peter certainly was), but upon the bishop of Rome; (4) that Peter was not only at Rome (which is very probable after 63, though not as certain as Paul’s presence and martyrdom in Rome), but acted there as bishop till his martyrdom, and appointed a successor (of which there is not the slightest historical evidence); and (5) that the bishops of Rome, as successors of Peter, have always enjoyed and exercised an universal jurisdiction over the Christian church (which is not the case as a matter of fact, and still less as a matter of conceded right).

Leaving a full discussion of most of these points to polemical theology, we are here concerned with the papacy as a growth of history, and have to examine the causes which have gradually raised it to its towering eminence among the governing institutions of the world.

The historical influences which favored the ascendency of the Roman see were:

(1) The high antiquity of the Roman church, which had been honored even by Paul with the most important doctrinal epistle of the New Testament. It was properly the only apostolic mother-church in the West, and was thus looked upon from the first by the churches of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, with peculiar reverence.

(2) The labors, martyrdom, and burial at Rome of Peter and Paul, the two leading apostles. The whole Roman congregation passed through the fearful ordeal of martyrdom during the Neronian persecution, but must soon afterwards have been reorganized, with a halo of glory arising from the graves of the victims.

(3) The political pre-eminence of that metropolis of the world, which was destined to rule the European races with the sceptre of the cross, as she had formerly ruled them with the sword.

(4) The executive wisdom and the catholic orthodox instinct of the Roman church, which made themselves felt in this period in the three controversies on the time of Easter, the penitential discipline, and the validity of heretical baptism.

To these may be added, as secondary causes, her firmness under persecutions, and her benevolent care for suffering brethren even in distant places, as celebrated by Dionysius of Corinth (180), and by Eusebius.

From the time of St. Paul’s Epistle (58), when he bestowed high praise on the earlier Roman converts, to the episcopate of Victor at the close of the second century, and the unfavorable account by Hippolytus of Pope Zephyrinus and Pope Callistus, we have no express and direct information about the internal state of the Roman church. But incidentally it is more frequently mentioned than any other. Owing to its metropolitan position, it naturally grew in importance and influence with the spread of the Christian religion in the empire. Rome was the battle-field of orthodoxy and heresy, and a resort of all sects and parties. It attracted from every direction what was true and false in philosophy and religion. Ignatius rejoiced in the prospect of suffering for Christ in the centre of the world; Polycarp repaired hither to settle with Anicetus the paschal controversy; Justin Martyr presented there his defense of Christianity to the emperors, and laid down for it his life; Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian conceded to that church a position of singular pre-eminence. Rome was equally sought as a commanding position by heretics and theosophic jugglers, as Simon Magus, Valentine, Marcion, Cerdo, and a host of others. No wonder, then, that the bishops of Rome at an early date were looked upon as metropolitan pastors, and spoke and acted accordingly with an air of authority which reached far beyond their immediate diocese.

Clement of Rome.

The first example of the exercise of a sort of papal authority is found towards the close of the first century in the letter of the Roman bishop Clement (d. 102) to the bereaved and distracted church of Corinth. This epistle, full of beautiful exhortations to harmony, love, and humility, was sent, as the very address shows,217 not in the bishop’s own name, which is not mentioned at all, but in that of the Roman congregation, which speaks always in the first person plural. It was a service of love, proffered by one church to another in time of need. Similar letters of instruction, warning and comfort were written to other congregations by Ignatius, Polycarp, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus. Nevertheless it can hardly be denied that the document reveals the sense of a certain superiority over all ordinary congregations. The Roman church here, without being asked (as far as appears), gives advice, with superior administrative wisdom, to an important church in the East, dispatches messengers to her, and exhorts her to order and unity in a tone of calm dignity and authority, as the organ of God and the Holy Spirit.218  This is all the more surprising if St. John, as is probable, was then still living in Ephesus, which was nearer to Corinth than Rome. The hierarchical spirit arose from the domineering spirit of the Roman church, rather than the Roman bishop or the presbyters who were simply the organs of the people.219  But a century later the bishop of Rome was substituted for the church of Rome, when Victor in his own name excommunicated the churches of Asia Minor for a trifling difference of ritual. From this hierarchical assumption there was only one step towards the papal absolutism of a Leo and Hildebrand, and this found its ultimate doctrinal climax in the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility.

Ignatius.

Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Romans (even in the Syriac recension), applies to that congregation a number of high-sounding titles, and describes her as "presiding in the place of the region of the Romans," and as "taking the lead in charity."220  This is meant as a commendation of her practical benevolence for which she was famous. Dionysius of Corinth in his letter to Soter of Rome testifies to it as saying: "This practice has prevailed with you from the very beginning, to do good to all the brethren in every way, and to send contributions to many churches in every city."221  The Roman church was no doubt more wealthy than any other, and the liberal use of her means must have greatly increased her influence. Beyond this, Ignatius cannot be quoted as a witness for papal claims. He says not a word of the primacy, nor does he even mention Clement or any other bishop of Rome. The church alone is addressed throughout. He still had a lively sense of the difference between a bishop and an apostle. "I do not command you," he writes to the Romans, "as if I were Peter or Paul; they were apostles."

Irenaeus.

Irenaeus calls Rome the greatest, the oldest(?) church, acknowledged by all, founded by the two most illustrious apostles, Peter and Paul, the church, with which, on account of her more important precedence, all Christendom must agree, or (according to another interpretation) to which (as the metropolis of the world) all other churches must resort.222  The "more important precedence" places her above the other apostolic churches, to which likewise a precedence is allowed.

This is surely to be understood, however, as a precedence only of honor, not of jurisdiction. For when Pope Victor, about the year 190, in hierarchical arrogance and intolerance, broke fellowship with the churches of Asia Minor, for no other reason but because they adhered to their tradition concerning the celebration of Easter, the same Irenaeus, though agreeing with him on the disputed point itself, rebuked him very emphatically as a troubler of the peace of the church, and declared himself against a forced uniformity in such unessential matters. Nor did the Asiatic churches allow themselves to be intimidated by the dictation of Victor. They answered the Roman tradition with that of their own sedes apostolicae. The difference continued until the council at Nicaea at last settled the controversy in favor of the Roman practice, but even long afterwards the old British churches differed from the Roman practice in the Easter observance to the time of Gregory I.

Hippolytus.

The celebrated Hippolytus, in the beginning of the third century, was a decided antagonist of the Roman bishops, Zephyrinus and Callistus, both for doctrinal and disciplinary reasons. Nevertheless we learn from his work called Philosophumena, that at that time the Roman bishop already claimed an absolute power within his own jurisdiction; and that Callistus, to the great grief of part of the presbytery, laid down the principle, that a bishop can never be deposed or compelled to resign by the presbytery, even though he have committed a mortal sin.

Tertullian.

Tertullian points the heretics to the apostolic mother churches, as the chief repositories of pure doctrine; and among these gives especial prominence to that of Rome, where Peter was crucified, Paul beheaded, and John immersed unhurt in boiling oil(?) and then banished to the island. Yet the same father became afterwards an opponent of Rome. He attacked its loose penitential discipline, and called the Roman bishop (probably Zephyrinus), in irony and mockery, "pontifex maximus" and "episcopus episcoporum."

Cyprian.

Cyprian is clearest, both in his advocacy of the fundamental idea of the papacy, and in his protest against the mode of its application in a given case. Starting from the superiority of Peter, upon whom the Lord built his church, and to whom he intrusted the feeding of his sheep, in order to represent thereby the unity in the college of the apostles, Cyprian transferred the same superiority to the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, and accordingly called the Roman church the chair of Peter, and the fountain of priestly unity,223 the root, also, and mother of the catholic church.224  But on the other side, he asserts with equal energy the equality and relative independence of the bishops, as successors of the apostles, who had all an equally direct appointment from Christ. In his correspondence he uniformly addresses the Roman bishop as "brother" and "colleague," conscious of his own equal dignity and authority. And in the controversy about heretical baptism, he opposes Pope Stephen with almost Protestant independence, accusing him of error and abuse of his power, and calling a tradition without truth an old error. Of this protest he never retracted a word.

Firmilian.

Still more sharp and unsparing was the Cappadocian bishop, Firmilian, a disciple of Origen, on the bishop of Rome, while likewise implying a certain acknowledgment of his primacy. Firmilian charges him with folly, and with acting unworthily of his position; because, as the successor of Peter, he ought rather to further the unity of the church than to destroy it, and ought to abide on the rock foundation instead of laying a new one by recognizing heretical baptism. Perhaps the bitterness of Firmilian was due partly to his friendship and veneration for Origen, who had been condemned by a council at Rome.

Nevertheless, on this question of baptism, also, as on those of Easter, and of penance, the Roman church came out victorious in the end.

Comparative Insignificance of the first Popes.

From these testimonies it is clear, that the growing influence of the Roman see was rooted in public opinion and in the need of unity in the ancient church. It is not to be explained at all by the talents and the ambition of the incumbents. On the contrary, the personality of the thirty popes of the first three centuries falls quite remarkably into the background; though they are all canonized saints and, according to a later but extremely doubtful tradition, were also, with two exceptions, martyrs.225  Among them, and it may be said down to Leo the Great, about the middle of the fifth century, there was hardly one, perhaps Clement, who  could compare, as a church leader, with an Ignatius, a Cyprian, and an Ambrose; or, as a theolooian, with an Irenaeus, a Tertullian, an Athanasius, and an Augustin.226  Jerome, among his hundred and thirty-six church celebrities, of the first four centuries, brings in only four Roman bishops, Clement, Victor, Cornelius, and Damasus, and even these wrote only a few epistles. Hippolytus, in his Philosophumena, written about 225, even presents two contemporaneous popes, St. Zephyrinus (202–218) and Callistus (St. Calixtus I., 218–223), from his own observation, though not without partisan feeling, in a most unfavorable light; charging the first with ignorance and avarice,227 the second with scandalous conduct (he is said to have been once a swindler and a fugitive slave rescued from suicide), and both of them with the Patripassian heresy. Such charges could not have been mere fabrications with so honorable an author as Hippolytus, even though he was a schismatic rival bishop to Callistus; they must have had at least some basis of fact.

§ 51. Chronology of the Popes.

I. Sources.

The principal sources for the obscure chronology of the early bishops of Rome are the catalogues of popes. These are divided into two classes, the oriental or Greek, and the occidental or Latin. To the first belong the lists of Hegesippus and Irenaeus, from the second century, that of Eusebius (in his Chronicle, and his Church History), and his successors from the fourth century and later. This class is followed by Lipsius and Harnack. The second class embraces the catalogues of Augustin (Ep. 55, al. 165), Optatus of Mileve (De schism. Donat. II. 3), the "Catalogus Liberianus" (coming down to Liberius, 354), the "Catalogus Felicianus" (to 530), the "Catalogus Cononianus," based perhaps on the "Catalogus Leoninus" (to 440), the "Liber Pontificalis" (formerly supposed to be based on the preceding catalogues, but according to the Abbé Duchesne and Waitz, older than the "Liber Felicianus"). The "Liber Pontif." itself exists in different MSS., and has undergone many changes. It is variously dated from the fifth or seventh century.

To these may be added the "Martyrologia" and "Calendaria" of the Roman Church, especially the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum," and the "Martyrologium Romanum parvum" (both of the seventh or eighth century).

The inscriptions on the papal tombs discovered in Rome since 1850, contain names and titles, but no dates.

On the "Catalogus Liberianus," see especially the critical essay of Mommsen "Ueber de Chronographen des Jahres 354," in the "Transactions of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences," Philos. histor. Section, vol. I. (1850), p. 631 sqq. The text of the Catalogue is given, p. 634–’37, and by Lipsius, Chronologie der röm. Bischöfe, Append. p. 265–268. The oldest MSS. of the "Liber Pontificalis" date from the seventh and eighth centuries, and present a text of A.D. 641, but with many variations. "Mit wahrer Sicherheit," says Waitz, "gelangen wir in der Geschichte des Papsthums nicht über das 7te Jahrhundert hinauf."

II. Works.

Phil. Jaffé: Regesta Pontificum Romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad Ann. 1198. Berolini 1851, ed. secunda correcta et aucta auspiciis Gul. Wattenbach. Lips. 1881 sqq. Continued by Potthast from 1198–1304, and supplemented by Harttung (Bd. I. A.D. 748–1198, Gotha 1880).

R A. Lipsius: Chronologie der Röm. Bischöfe bis zur Mitte des 4ten Jahrh. Kiel, 1869. Comp. Hort’s review of this book in the "Academy" for Sept. 15, 1871. Lipsius: Neue Studien zur Papstchronologie, in the "Jahrbücher für Protest. Theol." Leipz. 1880 (pp. 78–126 and 233–307). Lipsius denies that Peter ever was at Rome.

Abbé L. Duchesne: Étude sur le Liber Pontificalis. Paris, 1887. La date et les recensions du Liber Pontificalis. 1879. Le Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire. Paris, 1884 and 1889, 2 vols. 4° (with facsimiles).

Adolf Harnack: Die Zeit des Ignatius und die Chronologie der antiochenischen Bischöfe bis Tyrannus, Leipz. 1878 (p. 73).

G. Waitz: UEber die verschiedenen Texte des Liber Pontificalis, in the "Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde," IV; and his review of Duchesne, and Lipsius, in H. v. Sybel’s "Histor. Zeitschrift" for 1880, p. 135 sqq.

The oldest links in the chain of Roman bishops are veiled in impenetrable darkness. Tertullian and most of the Latins (and the pseudo-Clementina), make Clement (Phil. 4:3), the first successor of Peter;228 but Irenaeus, Eusebius, and other Greeks, also Jerome and the Roman Catalogue, give him the third place, and put Linus (2 Tim. 4:21), and Anacletus (or Anincletus), between him and Peter.229 In some lists Cletus is substituted for Anacletus, in others the two are distinguished. Perhaps Linus and Anacletus acted during the life time of Paul and Peter as assistants or presided only over one part of the church, while Clement may have had charge of another branch; for at that early day, the government of the congregation composed of Jewish and Gentile Christian elements was not so centralized as it afterwards became. Furthermore, the earliest fathers, with a true sense of the distinction between the apostolic and episcopal offices, do not reckon Peter among the bishops of Rome at all; and the Roman Catalogue in placing Peter in the line of bishops, is strangely regardless of Paul, whose independent labors in Rome are attested not only by tradition, but by the clear witness of his own epistles and the book of Acts.

Lipsius, after a laborious critical comparison of the different catalogues of popes, arrives at the conclusion that Linus, Anacletus, and Clement were Roman presbyters (or presbyter-bishops in the N. T. sense of the term), at the close of the first century, Evaristus and Alexander presbyters at the beginning of the second, Xystus I. (Latinized: Sixtus), presbyter for ten years till about 128, Telesphorus for eleven years, till about 139, and next successors diocesan bishops.230

It must in justice be admitted, however, that the list of Roman bishops has by far the preeminence in age, completeness, integrity of succession, consistency of doctrine and policy, above every similar catalogue, not excepting those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople; and this must carry great weight with those who ground their views chiefly on external testimonies, without being able to rise to the free Protestant conception of Christianity and its history of development on earth.

§ 52. List of the Roman Bishops and Roman Emperors during the First Three Centuries.

From the lists of Eusebius (till Silvester), Jaffé (Regesta), Potthast (Bibliotheca Hist. Medii Aevi), Lipsius and others compared. See a continuation of the list in my History of Mediaeval Christianity, p. 205 sqq.

Date

Popes

Emperors

Date

Augustus

27 b.c.

Tiberius

A.D. 14–37

Caligula

67–41

Claudius

41–54

? 42–67

Petrus-Apostolus

(63–64)

Nero

54–68

? 67–79

Linus-Presbyter

Galba

68

Otho

68–69

Vitellius

69 –69

? 79–91

Cletus or Anacletus

Titus

79–81

Domitian

81–96

? 91–100

Clemens I

Nerva

96–98

Trajan

98–117

? 100–109

Evaristus

? 109–119

Alexander I

Hadrian

117–138

? 119–128

Xystus or Sixtus I

? 128–139

Telesphorus (Martyr)

Antoninus Pius

138–161

? 139–142

Hyginus

? 142–154

Pius I

? 154–168

Anicetus

Marcus Aurelius

161–180

? 168–176

Soter

? 177- 190

Eleutherus

Commodus

180–190

? 190–202

Victor I

Pertinax

190–191

Didius Julianus

191–192

Niger

192–193

Septimius Severus

193–211

202–218

Zephyrinus

Caracalla

211–217

Geta (d. 212)

211–217

M.Opilius Macrinus

217–218

218–223

Callistus, or Calixtus I

Heliogabalus

218–222

(Hippolytus,Antipope)

? 223–230

Urbanus I

Alexander Severus

222–235

? 230–235

Pontianus (resigned in exile)

235–236

Anterus

Maximin I (the Thracian)

235–237

236–250

Fabianus, Martyr

The two Gordians:

Maximus Pupienus,

Balbinus

237–238

Gordian, the Younger

238–244

Philip

244–249

250–251

The See vacant till March, 251

Decius

249–251

? 251–252

Cornelius (in exile)

Gallus

251–252

? 251

(Novatianus, Antipope)

252–253

Lucius I

Volusian

252–253

? 253–257

Stephanus I

Aemilian

253–268

Valerian

256–259

Gallienus

259–268

? 257–258

Xystus (Sixtus) II

Till July 21, 259

The See vacant

259–269

Dionysius

Claudius II

268–270

269–274

Felix I

Aurelian

270–275

275–283

Eutychianus

Tacitus

275–276

Probus

276–282

283–296

Gajus (Caius)

Carus

282–284

Carinus

284–286

Numerian

"

Diocletian (d. 313 )

284–305

Maximian joint Emp. with Diocletian

286–305

296–304

Marcellinus

Constantius (d. 306)

304 or 307

304–307

The See vacant

Galerius (d. 311)

"

Licinius (d. 323)

"

Maximin II (Daza)

308–309

Constantine the Great,

309–323

Galerius (d. 311),

"

308–309

Marcellus

Licinius (d.323),

"

309–310

Eusebius, d. Sept. 26 (?) 309

Maximin (d. 313),

"

Maxentius (d. 312),

"

309–310

The See Vacant

reigning jointly.

311–314

Miltiades (Melchiades)

314-335 Silvester I.

Constantine the Great,

323-337

sole ruler.

The whole number of popes, from the Apostle Peter to Leo XIII. (1878) is two hundred and sixty-three. This would allow about seven years on an average to each papal reign. The traditional twenty-five years of Peter were considered the maximum which none of his successors was permitted to reach, except Pius IX., the first infallible pope, who reigned twenty-seven years (1846-1878). The average term of office of the archbishops of Canterbury is fourteen years.

§ 53. The Catholic Unity.

J. A. Möhler (R.C.): Die Einheit der Kirche oder das Princip des Katholicismus. Tübingen 1825. Full of Catholic enthusiasm for the unity of the church.

R. Rothe: Die Anfänge der christl. Kirche. Wittenb. 1837 (pp. 553–711). A Protestant counterpart of Möhler’s book.

Huther.: Cyprian’s Lehre von der Einheit der Kirche. Hamb. 1839.

J. W. Nevin: Cyprian; four articles in the "Mercersburg Review," 1852. Comp. Varien’s strictures on these articles in the same "Review" for 1853, p. 555 sqq.

Joh. Peters (Ultramontane): Die Lehre des heil. Cyprian von der Einheit der Kirche gegenüber den beiden Schismen in Carthago und Rom. Luxemb. 1870.

Jos. H. Reinkens (Old Cath. Bishop): Die Lehre des heil. Cyprian von der Einheit er Kirche. Würzburg, 1873.

Comp. also Hartel’s ed. of Cyprian’s Opera (3 Parts, Vienna, 1868–’71), and the monographs on Cyprian by Rettberg (1831), Peters (1877), Fechtrup (1878), and O. Ritschl (1883).

On the basis of Paul’s idea of the unity, holiness, and universality of the church, as the mystical body of Christ; hand in hand with the episcopal system of government; in the form of fact rather than of dogma; and in perpetual conflict with heathen persecution from without, and heretical and schismatic tendencies within—arose the idea and the institution of: "the Holy Catholic Church," as the Apostles’ Creed has it;232 or, in the fuller language of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, "the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church." In both the oecumenical symbols, as even in the more indefinite creeds of the second and third centuries, on which those symbols are based, the church appears as an article of faith,233 presupposing and necessarily, following faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and as a holy fellowship,234 within which the various benefits of grace, from the forgiveness of sins to the life everlasting, are enjoyed.

Nor is any distinction made here between a visible and an invisible church. All catholic antiquity thought of none but the actual, historical church, and without hesitation applied to this, while yet in the eyes of the world a small persecuted sect, those four predicates of unity, holiness, universality, and apostolicity, to which were afterwards added exclusiveness infallibility and indestructibility. There sometimes occur, indeed, particularly in the Novatian schism, hints of the incongruity between the empirical reality and the ideal conception of the church; and this incongruity became still more palpable, in regard to the predicate of holiness, after the abatement of the spiritual elevation of the apostolic age, the cessation of persecution, and the decay of discipline. But the unworthiness of individual members and the external servant-form of the church were not allowed to mislead as to the general objective character, which belonged to her in virtue of her union with her glorious heavenly Head.

The fathers of our period all saw in the church, though with different degrees of clearness, a divine, supernatural order of things, in a certain sense the continuation of the life of Christ on earth, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the sole repository of the powers of divine life, the possessor and interpreter of the Holy Scriptures, the mother of all the faithful. She is holy because she is separated from the service of the profane world, is animated by the Holy Spirit, forms her members to holiness, and exercises strict discipline. She is catholic, that is (according to the precise sense of o}lo", which denotes not so much numerical totality as wholeness), complete, and alone true, in distinction from all parties and sects. Catholicity, strictly taken, includes the three marks of universality, unity, and exclusiveness, and is an essential property of the church as the body and organ of Christ, who is, in fact, the only Redeemer for all men. Equally inseparable from her is the predicate of apostolicity, that is, the historical continuity or unbroken succession, which reaches back through the bishops to the apostles, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God. In the view of the fathers, every theoretical departure from this empirical, tangible, catholic church is heresy, that is, arbitrary, subjective, ever changing human opinion; every practical departure, all disobedience to her rulers is schism, or dismemberment of the body of Christ; either is rebellion against divine authority, and a heinous, if not the most heinous, sin. No heresy can reach the conception of the church, or rightly claim any one of her predicates; it forms at best a sect or party, and consequently falls within the province and the fate of human and perishing things, while the church is divine and indestructible.

This is without doubt the view of the ante-Nicene fathers, even of the speculative and spiritualistic Alexandrians. The most important personages in the development of the doctrine concerning the church are, again, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Cyprian. Their whole doctrine of the episcopate is intimately connected with their doctrine of the catholic unity, and determined by it. For the episcopate is of value in their eyes only, is the indispensable means of maintaining and promoting this unity: while they are compelled to regard the bishops of heretics and schismatics as rebels and antichrists.

1. In the Epistles of Ignatius the unity of the church, in the form and through the medium of the episcopate, is the fundamental thought and the leading topic of exhortation. The author calls himself a man prepared for union.235  He also is the first to use the term "catholic" in the ecclesiastical sense, when he says:236 "Where Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church;" that is, the closely united and full totality of his people. Only in her, according to his view, can we eat the bread of God; he, who follows a schismatic, inherits not the kingdom of God.237

We meet similar views, although not so clearly and strongly stated, in the Roman Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the letter of the church of Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp, and in the Shepherd of Hermas.

2 Irenaeus speaks much more at large respecting the church. He calls her the haven of rescue, the way of salvation, the entrance to life, the paradise in this world, of whose trees, to wit, the holy Scriptures, we may eat, excepting the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which he takes as a type of heresy. The church is inseparable from the Holy Spirit; it is his home, and indeed his only dwelling-place on earth. "Where the church is," says he, putting the church first, in the genuine catholic spirit, "there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is all grace."238  Only on the bosom of the church, continues he, can we be nursed to life. To her must we flee, to be made partakers of the Holy Spirit; separation from her is separation from the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Heretics, in his view, are enemies of the truth and sons of Satan, and will be swallowed up by hell, like the company of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Characteristic in this respect is the well-known legend, which he relates, about the meeting of the apostle John with the Gnostic Cerinthus, and of Polycarp with Marcion, the "first-born of Satan."

3. Tertullian is the first to make that comparison of the church with Noah’s ark, which has since become classical in Roman catholic theology; and he likewise attributes heresies to the devil, without any qualification. But as to schism, he was himself guilty of it since he joined the Montanists and bitterly opposed the Catholics in questions of discipline. He has therefore no place in the Roman Catholic list of the patres, but simply of the scriptores ecclesiae.

4. Even Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, with all their spiritualistic and idealizing turn of mind, are no exception here. The latter, in the words: "Out of the church no man can be saved,"239 brings out the principle of the catholic exclusiveness as unequivocally as Cyprian. Yet we find in him, together with very severe judgments of heretics, mild and tolerant expressions also; and he even supposes, on the ground of Rom. 2:6 sqq., that in the future life honest Jews and heathens will attain a suitable reward, a low grade of blessedness, though not the "life everlasting" in the proper sense. In a later age he was himself condemned as a heretic.

Of other Greek divines of the third century, Methodius in particular, an opponent of Origen, takes high views of the church, and in his Symposion poetically describes it as "the garden of God in the beauty of eternal spring, shining in the richest splendor of immortalizing fruits and flowers;" as the virginal, unspotted, ever young and beautiful royal bride of the divine Logos.

5. Finally, Cyprian, in his Epistles, and most of all in his classical tract: De Unitate Eccelesiae, written in the year 251, amidst the distractions of the Novatian schism, and not without an intermixture of hierarchical pride and party spirit, has most distinctly and most forcibly developed the old catholic doctrine of the church, her unity, universality, and exclusiveness. He is the typical champion of visible, tangible church unity, and would have made a better pope than any pope before Leo I.; yet after all he was anti-papal and anti-Roman when he differed from the pope. Augustin felt this inconsistency, and thought that he had wiped it out by the blood of his martyrdom. But he never gave any sign of repentance. His views are briefly as follows:

The Catholic church was founded from the first by Christ on St. Peter alone, that, with all the equality of power among the apostles, unity might still be kept prominent as essential to her being. She has ever since remained one, in unbroken episcopal succession; as there is only one sun, though his rays are everywhere diffused. Try once to separate the ray from the sun; the unity of the light allows no division. Break the branch from the tree; it can produce no fruit. Cut off the brook from the fountain; it dries up. Out of this empirical orthodox church, episcopally organized and centralized in Rome, Cyprian can imagine no Christianity at all;240 not only among the Gnostics and other radical heretics, but even among the Novatians, who varied from the Catholics in no essential point of doctrine, and only elected an opposition bishop in the interest of their rigorous penitential discipline. Whoever separates himself from the catholic church is a foreigner, a profane person, an enemy, condemns himself, and must be shunned. No one can have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother.241  As well might one out of the ark of Noah have escaped the flood, as one out of the church be saved;242 because she alone is the bearer of the Holy Spirit and of all grace.

In the controversy on heretical baptism, Cyprian carried out the principle of exclusiveness even more consistently than the Roman church. For he entirely rejected such baptism, while Stephen held it valid, and thus had to concede, in strict consistency, the possibility of regeneration, and hence of salvation, outside the Catholic church. Here is a point where even the Roman system, generally so consistent, has a loophole of liberality, and practically gives up her theoretical principle of exclusiveness. But in carrying out this principle, even in persistent opposition to the pope, in whom he saw the successor of Peter and the visible centre of unity, Cyprian plainly denied the supremacy of Roman jurisdiction and the existence of an infallible tribunal for the settlement of doctrinal controversies and protested against identifying the church in general with the church of Rome. And if he had the right of such protest in favor of strict exclusiveness, should not the Greek church, and above all the Evangelical, much rather have the right of protest against the Roman exclusiveness, and in favor of a more free and comprehensive conception of the church?

We may freely acknowledge the profound and beautiful truth at the bottom of this old catholic doctrine of the church, and the historical importance of it for that period of persecution, as well as for the great missionary work among the barbarians of the middle ages; but we cannot ignore the fact that the doctrine rested in part on a fallacy, which, in course of time, after the union of the church with the state, or, in other words, with the world, became more and more glaring, and provoked an internal protest of ever-growing force. It blindly identified the spiritual unity of the church with unity of organization, insisted on outward uniformity at the expense of free development, and confounded the faulty empirical church, or a temporary phase of the development of Christianity, with the ideal and eternal kingdom of Christ, which will not be perfect in its manifestation until the glorious second coming of its Head. The Scriptural principle "Out of Christ there is no salvation," was contracted and restricted to the Cyprianic principle: "Out of the (visible) church there is no salvation;" and from this there was only one step to the fundamental error of Romanism: "Out of the Roman Church there is no salvation."

No effort after outward unity could prevent the distinction of all Oriental and Occidental church from showing itself at this early period, in language, customs, and theology;—a distinction which afterwards led to a schism to this day unhealed.

It may well be questioned whether our Lord intended an outward visible unity of the church in the present order of things. He promised that there should be "one flock one shepherd," but not "one fold."243  There may be one flock, and yet many folds or church organizations. In the sacerdotal prayer, our Lord says not one word about church, bishops or popes, but dwells upon that spiritual unity which reflects the harmony between the eternal Father and the eternal Son. "The true communion of Christian men—’the communion of saints’ upon which all churches are built—is not the common performance of external acts, but a communion of soul with soul and of the soul with Christ. It is a consequence of the nature which God has given us that an external organization should help our communion with one another: it is a consequence both of our twofold nature, and of Christ’s appointment that external acts should help our communion with Him. But subtler, deeper, diviner than anything of which external things can be either the symbol or the bond is that inner reality and essence of union—that interpenetrating community of thought and character—which St. Paul speaks of as the ’unity of the Spirit,’ and which in the sublimest of sublime books, in the most sacred words, is likened to the oneness of the Son with the Father and of the Father with the Son."244

§ 54. Councils.

Best Collections of Acts of Councils by Harduin (1715, 12 vols.), and Mansi (1759, 31 vols.).

C. J. Hefele (R.C. Bishop of Rottenburg, and member of the Vatican Council of 1870): Conciliengeschichte, Freiburg 1855; second ed. 1873 sqq., 7 vols. down to the Council of Florence, A.D. 1447 (See vol. I., pp. 83–242). English translation by W. R. Clark and H. R. Oxenham ( Edinb. 1871, 2d vol. 1876, 3d vol. 1883).

E. B. Pusey (d. 1882): The Councils of the Church, from the Council of Jerusalem, A.D. 51, to the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381; chiefly as to their constitution, but also as to their object and history. Lond. 1857.

A. W. Dale: The Synod of Elvira [A.D. 306] and Christian Life in the Fourth Century. Lond. 1882.

Comp. the article Council in Smith and Cheetham and Lect. VII. in Hatch, Bampton Lect. on the Organization of the Early Christian Church. Lond. 1881, pp. 165 sqq.

Councils or Synods were an important means of maintaining and promoting ecclesiastical unity, and deciding questions of faith and discipline.245  They had a precedent and sanction in the apostolic Conference of Jerusalem for the settlement of the circumcision controversy.246  They were suggested moreover by the deliberative political assemblies of the provinces of the Roman empire, which met every year in the chief towns.247  But we have no distinct trace of Councils before the middle of the second century (between 50 and 170), when they first appear, in the disputes concerning Montanism and Easter.

There are several kinds of Synods according to their size, diocesan, provincial (or metropolitan), national, patriarchal, and oecumenical (or universal).248  Our period knows only the first three. Diocesan synods consist of the bishop and his presbyters and deacons with the people assisting, and were probably held from the beginning, but are not mentioned before the third century. Provincial synods appear first in Greece, where the spirit of association had continued strong since the days of the Achaean league, and then in Asia Minor, North Africa, Gaul, and Spain. They were held, so far as the stormy times of persecution allowed, once or twice a year, in the metropolis, under the presidency of the metropolitan, who thus gradually acquired a supervision over the other bishops of the province. Special emergencies called out extraordinary sessions, and they, it seems, preceded the regular meetings. They were found to be useful, and hence became institutions.

The synodical meetings were public, and the people of the community around sometimes made their influence felt. In the time of Cyprian presbyters, confessors, and laymen took an active part, a custom which seems to have the sanction of apostolic practice.249  At the Synod which met about 256, in the controversy on heretical baptism, there were present eighty-seven bishops, very many priests and deacons, and "maxima pars plebis;"250 and in the synods concerning the restoration of the Lapsi, Cyprian convened besides the bishops, his clergy, the "confessores," and "laicos stantes" (i.e. in good standing).251  Nor was this practice confined to North Africa. We meet it in Syria, at the synods convened on account of Paul of Samosata (264–269), and in Spain at the council of Elvira. Origen, who was merely a presbyter, was the leading spirit of two Arabian synods, and convinced their bishop Beryllus of his Christological error. Even the Roman clergy, in their letter to Cyprian,252 speak of a common synodical consultation of the bishops with the priests, deacons, confessors, and laymen in good standing.

But with the advance of the hierarchical spirit, this republican feature gradually vanished. After the council of Nicaea (325) bishops alone had seat and voice, and the priests appear hereafter merely as secretaries, or advisers, or representatives of their bishops. The bishops, moreover, did not act as representatives of their churches, nor in the name of the body of the believers, as formerly, but in their own right as successors of the apostles. They did not as yet, however, in this period, claim infallibility for their decisions, unless we choose to find a slight approach to such a claim in the formula: "Placuit nobis, Sancto Spiritu suggerente," as used, for example, by the council of Carthage, in 252.253  At all events, their decrees at that time had only moral power, and could lay no claim to universal validity. Even Cyprian emphatically asserts absolute independence for each bishop in his own diocese. "To each shepherd," he says, "a portion of the Lord’s flock has been assigned, and his account must be rendered to his Master."

The more important acts, such as electing bishops, excommunication, decision of controversies, were communicated to other provinces by epistolae synodicae. In the intercourse and the translation of individual members of churches, letters of recommendation254 from the bishop were commonly employed or required as terms of admission. Expulsion from one church was virtually an expulsion from all associated churches.

The effect of the synodical system tended to consolidation. The Christian churches from independent communities held together by a spiritual fellowship of faith, became a powerful confederation, a compact moral commonwealth within the political organization of the Roman empire.

As the episcopate culminated in the primacy, so the synodical system rose into the oecumenical councils, which represented the whole church of the Roman empire. But these could not be held till persecution ceased, and the emperor became the patron of Christianity. The first was the celebrated council of Nicaea, in the year 325. The state gave legal validity to the decrees of councils, and enforced them if necessary by all its means of coercion. But the Roman government protected only the Catholic or orthodox church, except during the progress of the Arian and other controversies, before the final result was reached by the decision of an oecumenical Synod convened by the emperor.255

§ 55. The Councils of Elvira, Arles, and Ancyra.

Among the ante-Nicene Synods some were occasioned by the Montanist controversy in Asia Minor, some by the Paschal controversies, some by the affairs of Origen, some by the Novatian schism and the treatment of the Lapsi in Carthage and Rome, some by the controversies on heretical baptism (255, 256), three were held against Paul of Samosata in Antioch (264–269).

In the beginning of the fourth century three Synods, held at Elvira, Arles, and Ancyra, deserve special mention, as they approach the character of general councils and prepared the way for the first oecumenical council. They decided no doctrinal question, but passed important canons on church polity and Christian morals. They were convened for the purpose of restoring order and discipline after the ravages of the Diocletian persecution. They deal chiefly with the large class of the Lapsed, and reflect the transition state from the ante-Nicene to the Nicene age. They are alike pervaded by the spirit of clericalism and a moderate asceticism.

1. The Synod of Elvira (Illiberis, or Eliberis, probably on the site of the modern Granada) was held in 306,256 and attended by nineteen bishops, and twenty-six presbyters, mostly from the Southern districts of Spain. Deacons and laymen were also present. The Diocletian persecution ceased in Spain after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian Herculeus in 305; while it continued to rage for several years longer in the East under Galerius and Maximin. The Synod passed eighty-one Latin canons against various forms of heathen immorality then still abounding, and in favor of church discipline and austere morals. The Lapsed were forbidden the holy communion even in articulo mortis (can. 1). This is more severe than the action of the Nicene Synod. The thirty-sixth canon prohibits the admission of sacred pictures on the walls of the church buildings,257 and has often been quoted by Protestants as an argument against image worship as idolatrous; while Roman Catholic writers explain it either as a prohibition of representations of the deity only, or as a prudential measure against heathen desecration of holy things.258  Otherwise the Synod is thoroughly catholic in spirit and tone. Another characteristic feature is the severity against the Jews who were numerous in Spain. Christians are forbidden to marry Jews.259

The leading genius of the Elvira Synod and the second in the list was Hosius, bishop of Corduba (Cordova), who also attended the Council of Nicaea as the chief representative of the West. He was native of Cordova, the birth-place of Lucan and Seneca, and more than sixty years in the episcopate. Athanasius calls him a man holy in fact as well as in name, and speaks of his wisdom in guiding synods. As a far-seeing statesman, he seems to have conceived the idea of reconciling the empire with the church and influenced the mind of Constantine in that direction. He is one of the most prominent links between the age of persecution and the age of imperial Christianity. He was a strong defender of the Nicene faith, but in his extreme old age he wavered and signed an Arian formula. Soon afterwards he died, a hundred years old (358).

2. The first Council of Arles in the South of France260 was held A.D. 314, in consequence of an appeal of the Donatists to Constantine the Great, against the decision of a Roman Council of 313, consisting of three Gallican and fifteen Italian bishops under the lead of Pope Melchiades. This is the first instance of an appeal of a Christian party to the secular power, and it turned out unfavorably to the Donatists who afterwards became enemies of the government. The Council of Arles was the first called by Constantine and the forerunner of the Council of Nicaea. Augustin calls it even universal, but it was only Western at best. It consisted of thirty-three bishops261 from Gaul, Sicily, Italy (exclusive of the Pope Sylvester, who, however, was represented by two presbyters and two deacons), North Africa, and Britain (three, from York, London, and probably from Caerleon on Usk), besides thirteen presbyters and twenty-three deacons. It excommunicated Donatus and passed twenty-two canons concerning Easter (which should be held on one and the same day), against the non-residence of clergy, against participation in races and gladiatorial fights (to be punished by excommunication), against the rebaptism of heretics, and on other matters of discipline. Clergymen who could be proven to have delivered sacred books or utensils in persecution (the traditores) should be deposed, but their official acts were to be held valid. The assistance of at least three bishops was required at ordination.262

3. The Council of Ancyra, the capital of Galatia in Asia Minor, was held soon after the death of the persecutor Maximin (3l3), probably in the year 314, and represented Asia Minor and Syria. It numbered from twelve to eighteen bishops (the lists vary), several of whom eleven years afterwards attended the Council of Nicaea. Marcellus of Ancyra who acquired celebrity in the Arian controversies, presided, according to others Vitalis of Antioch. Its object was to heal the wounds of the Diocletian persecution, and it passed twenty-five canons relating chiefly to the treatment of those who had betrayed their faith or delivered the sacred books in those years of terror. Priests who had offered sacrifice to the gods, but afterwards repented, were prohibited from preaching and all sacerdotal functions, but allowed to retain their clerical dignity. Those who had sacrificed before baptism may be admitted to orders. Adultery is to be punished by seven years’ penance, murder by life-long penance.263

A similar Council was held soon afterwards at, Neo-Caesarea in Cappadocia (between 314–325), mostly by the same bishops who attended that of Ancyra, and passed fifteen disciplinary canons.264

§ 56. Collections of Ecclesiastical Law. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons.

Sources.

I. Diatagai; tw'n aJgivwn   jApostovlwn dia; Klhvmneto", etc., Constitutiones Apostolicae, first edited by Fr Turrianus, Ven. 1563, then in Cotelier’s ed. of the Patres Apostolici (I. 199 sqq.), in Mansi (Collect. Concil. I.), and Harduin (Coll. Conc. I.); newly edited by Ueltzen, Rost. 1853, and P. A. de Lagarde, Lips. and Lond. 1854 and 1862. Ueltzen gives the textus receptus improved. Lagarde aims at the oldest text, which he edited in Syriac (Didascalia Apostolorum Syriace, 1854), and in Greek (Constit. Apostolorum Graece, 1862). Hilgenfels: Nov. Test. extra Canonem rec., Lips. (1866), ed. II. (1884), Fasc. IV. 110–121. He gives the Ap. Church Order under the title Duae Viae vel Judicium Petri.

Thos. Pell Platt: The Æthiopic Didascalia; or the Æthiopic Version of the Apostolical Constitutions, received in the Church of Abyssinia, with an Engl Transl, , Lond. 1834.

Henry Tattam: The Apostolical Constitutions, or Canons of the Apostles in Coptic. With an Engl. translation. Lond. 1848 (214 pages).

II. Kanovne" ejkklhsiastikoi; tw'n aJg. jApostovlwn, Canones, qui dicuntur Apostolorum, in most collections of church law, and in Cotel. (I. 437 sqq.), Mansi, and Harduin (tom. I.), and in the editions of the Ap. Constitutions at the close. Separate edd. by Paul De Lagarde in Greek and Syriac: Reliquiae juris ecclesiastici antiquissimae Syriace, Lips. 1856; and Reliquiae juris ecclesiastici Graece, 1856 (both to be had at Trübner’s, Strassburg). An Ethiopic translation of the Canons, ed. by Winand Fell, Leipz. 1871.

W. G. Beveridge, (Bishop of St. Asaph, d. 1708): Sunovdikon, s. Pandectae Canonum S. G. Apostolorum et Conciliorum, ab Ecclesia Gr. reliquit. Oxon. 1672–82, 2 vols. fol.

John Fulton: Index Canonum. In Greek and English. With a Complete Digest of the entire code of canon law in the undivided Primitive Church. N. York 1872; revised ed. with Preface by P. Schaff, 1883.

Critical Discussions.

Krabbe: Ueber den Ursprung u. den Inhalt der Apost. Constitutionen des Clemens Romanus. Hamb. 1829.

S. v. Drey (R.C.): Neue Untesuchungen über die Constitut. u. Kanones der Ap. Tüb. 1832.

J. W. Bickell (d. 1848): Gesch. des Kirchenrechts. Giess. 1843 (I. 1, pp. 52–255). The second part appeared, Frankf., 1849.

Chase: Constitations of the Holy Apostles, including the Canons; Whiston’s version revised from the Greek; with a prize essay(of Krabbe) upon their origin and contents. New York, 1848.

Bunsen: Hippolytus u. seine Zeit., Leipz. 1852 (I. pp. 418–523, and II. pp. 1126); and in the 2d Engl. ed. Hippolytus and his Age, or Christianity and Mankind, Lond. 1854 (vols. V – VII).

Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengeschichte I. p. 792 sqq. (second ed. 1873). The Didache Literature (fully noticed in Schaff’s monograph

Philoth. Bryennios: Didach; tw'n dwvdeka ajpostovlwn. Constantinople, 1833.

Ad. Harnack: Die Lehre der Zwölf Apostel. Leipz., 1884. Die Apostellehre und die jüdischen beiden Wege, 1886.

Ph. Schaff: The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or the Oldest Church Manual. N. York, 1885. 3d ed. revised and enlarged, 1889.

Several church manuals or directories of public worship, and discipline have come down to us from the first centuries in different languages. They claim directly or indirectly apostolic origin and authority, but are post-apostolic and justly excluded from the canon. They give us important information on the ecclesiastical laws, morals, and customs of the ante-Nicene age.

1. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is the oldest and simplest church manual, of Jewish Christian (Palestinian or Syrian) origin, from the end of the first century, known to the Greek fathers, but only recently discovered and published by Bryennios (1883). It contains in 16 chapters (1) a summary of moral instruction based on the Decalogue and the royal commandment of love to God and man, in the parabolic form of two ways, the way of life and the way of death; (2) directions on the celebration of baptism and the eucharist with the agape; (3) directions on discipline and the offices of apostles (i.e. travelling evangelists), prophets, teachers, bishops (i.e. presbysters), and deacons; (4) an exhortation to watchfulness in view of the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the saints. A very remarkable book. Its substance survived in the seventh book of the Apostolical Constitutions.

2. The Ecclesiastical Canons of the holy apostles or Apostolical Church Order, of Egyptian origin, probably of the third century. An expansion of the former in the shape of a fictitious dialogue of the apostles, first published in Greek by Bickell (1843), and then also in Coptic and Syriac. It contains ordinances of the apostles on morals, worship, and discipline.

3. The Apostolical Constitutions, the most complete and important Church Manual. It is, in form, a literary fiction, professing to be a bequest of all the apostles, handed down through the Roman bishop Clement, or dictated to him. It begins with the words: "The apostles and elders, to all who among the nations have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with you, and peace." It contains, in eight books, a collection of moral exhortations, church laws and usages, and liturgical formularies which had gradually arisen in the various churches from the close of the first century, the time of the Roman Clement, downward, particularly in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, partly on the authority of apostolic practice. These were at first orally transmitted; then committed to writing in different versions, like the creeds; and finally brought, by some unknown hand, into their present form. The first six books, which have a strongly Jewish-Christian tone, were composed, with the exception of some later interpolations, at the end of the third century, in Syria. The seventh book is an expansion of the Didache of the Twelve Apostles. The eighth book contains a liturgy, and, in an appendix, the apostolical canons. The collection of the three parts into one whole may be the work of the compiler of the eighth book. It is no doubt of Eastern authorship, for the church of Rome nowhere occupies a position of priority or supremacy.265  The design was, to set forth the ecclesiastical life for laity and clergy, and to establish the episcopal theocracy. These constitutions were more used and consulted in the East than any work of the fathers, and were taken as the rule in matters of discipline, like the Holy Scriptures in matters of doctrine. Still the collection, as such, did not rise to formal legal authority, and the second Trullan council of 692 (known as quinisextum), rejected it for its heretical interpolations, while the same council acknowledged the Apostolical Canons.266

The "Apostolical Canons" consist of brief church rules or prescriptions, in some copies eighty-five in number, in others fifty, and pretend to be of apostolic origin, being drawn up by Clement of Rome from the directions of the apostles, who in several places speak in the first person. They are incorporated in the "Constitutions" as an appendix to the eighth book, but are found also by themselves, in Greek, Syriac, Aethiopic, and Arabic manuscripts. Their contents are borrowed partly from the Scriptures, especially the Pastoral Epistles, partly from tradition, and partly from the decrees of early councils at Antioch, Neo-Caesarea, Nicaea, Laodicea, &c. (but probably not Chalcedon, 451). They are, therefore, evidently of gradual growth, and were collected either after the middle of the fourth century,267 or not till the latter part of the fifth,268 by some unknown hand, probably also in Syria. They are designed to furnish a complete system of discipline for the clergy. Of the laity they say scarcely a word. The eighty-fifth and last canon settles the canon of the Scripture, but reckons among the New Testament books two epistles of Clement and the genuine books of the pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions.

The Greek church, at the Trullan council of 692, adopted the whole collection of eighty-five canons as authentic and binding, and John of Damascus placed it even on a parallel with the epistles of the apostle Paul, thus showing that he had no sense of the infinite superiority of the inspired writings. The Latin church rejected it at first, but subsequently decided for the smaller collection of fifty canons, which Dionysus Exiguus about the year 500 translated from a Greek manuscript.

§ 57. Church Discipline.

I. Several Tracts of Tertullian (especially De Poenitentia). The Philosophumena of Hippolytus (l. IX.). The Epistles of Cyprian, and his work De Lapsis. The Epistolae Canonicae of Dionysius of Alex., Gregory Thaumaturgus (about 260), and Peter of Alex. (about 306), collected in Routh’s Reliquiae Sacrae, tom. III., 2nd ed. The Constit. Apost. II. 16, 21–24. The Canons of the councils of Elvira, Arelate, Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, and Nicaea, between 306 and 325 (in the Collections of Councils, and in Routh’s Reliq. Sacr. tom. IV.).

II. Morinus: De Disciplina in administratione sacram poenitentiae, Par. 1651 (Venet. 1702).

Marshall: Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church. Lond. 1714 (new ed. 1844).

Fr. Frank: Die Bussdisciplin der Kirche bis zum 7 Jahrh. Mainz. 1868.

On the discipline of the Montanists, see Bonwetsch: Die Geschichte des Montanismus (1881), pp. 108–118.

The ancient church was distinguished for strict discipline. Previous to Constantine the Great, this discipline rested on purely moral sanctions, and had nothing to do with civil constraints and punishments. A person might be expelled from one congregation without the least social injury. But the more powerful the church became, the more serious were the consequences of her censures, and when she was united with the state, ecclesiastical offenses were punished as offenses against the state, in extreme cases even with death. The church always abhorred blood ("ecclesia non sitit sanguiem"), but she handed the offender over to the civil government to be dealt with according to law. The worst offenders for many centuries were heretics or teachers of false doctrine.

The object of discipline was, on the one hand, the dignity and purity of the church, on the other, the spiritual welfare of the offender; punishment being designed to be also correction. The extreme penalty was excommunication, or exclusion from all the rights and privileges of the faithful. This was inflicted for heresy and schism, and all gross crimes, such as, theft, murder, adultery, blasphemy, and the denial of Christ in persecution. After Tertullian, these and like offences incompatible with the regenerate state, were classed as mortal sins,269 in distinction from venial sins or sins of weakness.270

Persons thus excluded passed into the class of penitents,271 and could attend only the catechumen worship. Before they could be re-admitted to the fellowship of the church, they were required to pass through a process like that of the catechumens, only still more severe, and to prove the sincerity of their penitence by the absence from all pleasures, from ornament in dress, and from nuptial intercourse, by confession, frequent prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other good works. Under pain of a troubled conscience and of separation from the only saving church, they readily submitted to the severest penances. The church teachers did not neglect, indeed, to inculcate the penitent spirit and the contrition of the heart is the main thing. Yet many of them laid too great stress on certain outward exercises. Tertullian conceived the entire church penance as a "satisfaction" paid to God. This view could easily obscure to a dangerous degree the all-sufficient merit of Christ, and lead to that self-righteousness against which the Reformation raised so loud a voice.

The time and the particular form of the penances, in the second century, was left as yet to the discretion of the several ministers and churches. Not till the end of the third century was a rigorous and fixed system of penitential discipline established, and then this could hardly maintain itself a century. Though originating in deep moral earnestness, and designed only for good, it was not fitted to promote the genuine spirit of repentance. Too much formality and legal constraint always deadens the spirit, instead of supporting and regulating it. This disciplinary formalism first appears, as already familiar, in the council of Ancyra, about the year 314.272

Classes of Penitents.

The penitents were distributed into four classes:—

(1) The weepers,273 who prostrated themselves at the church doors in mourning garments and implored restoration from the clergy and the people.

(2) The hearers,274 who, like the catechumens called by the same name, were allowed to hear the Scripture lessons and the sermon.

(3) The kneelers,275 who attended the public prayers, but only in the kneeling posture.

(4) The standers,276 who could take part in the whole worship standing, but were still excluded from the communion.

Those classes answer to the four stages of penance.277  The course of penance was usually three or four years long, but, like the catechetical preparation, could be shortened according to circumstances, or extended to the day of death. In the East there were special penitential presbyters,278 intrusted with the oversight of the penitential discipline.

Restoration.

After the fulfilment of this probation came the act of reconciliation.279  The penitent made a public confession of sin, received absolution by the laying on of hands of the minister, and precatory or optative benediction,280 was again greeted by the congregation with the brotherly kiss, and admitted to the celebration of the communion. For the ministry alone was he for ever disqualified. Cyprian and Firmilian, however, guard against the view, that the priestly absolution of hypocritical penitents is unconditional and infallible, and can forestall the judgment of God.281

Two Parties.

In reference to the propriety of any restoration in certain cases, there was an important difference of sentiment, which gave rise to several schisms. All agreed that the church punishment could not forestall the judgment of God at the last day, but was merely temporal, and looked to the repentance and conversion of the subject. But it was a question whether the church should restore even the grossest offender on his confession of sorrow, or should, under certain circumstances leave him to the judgment of God. The strict, puritanic party, to which the Montanists, the Novatians, and the Donatists belonged, and, for a time, the whole African and Spanish Church, took ground against the restoration of those who had forfeited the grace of baptism by a mortal sin, especially by denial of Christ; since, otherwise, the church would lose her characteristic holiness, and encourage loose morality. The moderate party, which prevailed in the East, in Egypt, and especially in Rome, and was so far the catholic party, held the principle that the church should refuse absolution and communion, at least on the death-bed, to no penitent sinner. Paul himself restored the Corinthian offender.282

The point here in question was of great practical moment in the times of persecution, when hundreds and thousands renounced their faith through weakness, but as soon as the danger was passed, pleaded for readmission into the church, and were very often supported in their plea by the potent intercessions of the martyrs and confessors, and their libelli pacis. The principle was: necessity knows no law. A mitigation of the penitential discipline seemed in such cases justified by every consideration of charity and policy. So great was the number of the lapsed in the Decian persecution, that even Cyprian found himself compelled to relinquish his former rigoristic views, all the more because he held that out of the visible church there was no salvation.

The strict party were zealous for the holiness of God; the moderate, for his grace. The former would not go beyond the revealed forgiveness of sins by baptism, and were content with urging the lapsed to repentance, without offering them hope of absolution in this life. The latter refused to limit the mercy of God and expose the sinner to despair. The former were carried away with an ideal of the church which cannot be realized till the second coming of Christ; and while impelled to a fanatical separatism, they proved, in their own sects, the impossibility of an absolutely pure communion on earth. The others not rarely ran to the opposite extreme of a dangerous looseness, were quite too lenient, even towards mortal sins, and sapped the earnestness of the Christian morality.

It is remarkable that the lax penitential discipline had its chief support from the end of the second century, in the Roman church. Tertullian assails that church for this with bitter mockery. Hippolytus, soon after him, does the same; for, though no Montanist, he was zealous for strict discipline. According to his statement (in the ninth book of his Philosophumena), evidently made from fact, the pope Callistus, whom a later age stamped a saint because it knew little of him, admitted bigami and trigami to ordination, maintained that a bishop could not be deposed, even though he had committed a mortal sin, and appealed for his view to Rom. 14:4, to the parable of the tares and the wheat, Matt. 13:30, and, above all, to the ark of Noah, which was a symbol of the church, and which contained both clean and unclean animals, even dogs and wolves. In short, he considered no sin too great to be loosed by the power of the keys in the church. And this continued to be the view of his successors.

But here we perceive, also, how the looser practice in regard to penance was connected with the interest of the hierarchy. It favored the power of the priesthood, which claimed for itself the right of absolution; it was at the same time matter of worldly policy; it promoted the external spread of the church, though at the expense of the moral integrity of her membership, and facilitated both her subsequent union with the state and her hopeless confusion with the world. No wonder the church of Rome, in this point, as in others, triumphed at last over all opposition.

§ 58. Church Schisms.

I. On the Schism of Hippolytus-. The Philosophumena of Hippol. lib. IX. (ed. Miller, Oxf. 1851, better by Duncker and Schneidewin, Gött. 1859), and the monographs on Hippolytus, by Bunsen, Döllinger, Wordsworth, Jacobi, and others (which will be noticed in chapter XIII. § 183).

II. On the Schism of Felicissimus: Cyprian: Epist. 38–40, 42, 55.

III. On the Novatian Schism: Hippol.: Philosoph. 1 IX. Cypr.: Epist. 41–52; and the Epistles of Cornelius of Rome, and Dionys. of Alex., in Euseb. H. E., VI. 43–45; VII. 8. Comp. Lit. in § 200.

IV. On the Meletian Schism: Documents in Latin translation in Maffei: Osservationi Letterarie, Verona, 1738, tom. III p. 11 sqq., and the Greek fragments from the Liber de poenitentia of Peter of Alexandria in Routh: Reliquicae Sacr. vol. II. pp. 21–51. Epiphan.: Haer. 68 (favorable to Meletius); Athanas.: Apol. contra Arianos, § 59; and after him, Socr, Sozom., and Theod. (very unfavorable to Meletius).

Out of this controversy on the restoration of the lapsed, proceeded four schisms during the third century; two in Rome, one in North Africa, and one in Egypt. Montanism, too, was in a measure connected with the question of penitential discipline, but extended also to several other points of Christian life, and will be discussed in a separate chapter.

I. The Roman schism of Hippolytus. This has recently been brought to the light by the discovery of his Philosophumena (1851). Hippolytus was a worthy disciple of Irenaeus, and the most learned and zealous divine in Rome, during the pontificates of Zephyrinus (202–217), and Callistus (217–222). He died a martyr in 235 or 236. He was an advocate of strict views on discipline in opposition to the latitudinarian practice which we have described in the previous section. He gives a most unfavorable account of the antecedents of Callistus, and charges him and his predecessor with the patripassian heresy. The difference, therefore, was doctrinal as well as disciplinarian. It seems to have led to mutual excommunication and a temporary schism, which lasted till A.D. 235. Hippolytus ranks himself with the successors of the apostles, and seems to have been bishop of Portus, the port of Rome (according to later Latin tradition), or bishop of Rome (according to Greek writers). If bishop of Rome, he was the first schismatic pope, and forerunner of Novatianus, who was ordained anti pope in 251.283  But the Roman Church must have forgotten or forgiven his schism, for she numbers him among her saints and martyrs, and celebrates his memory on the twenty-second of August. Prudentius, the spanish poet, represents him as a Roman presbyter, who first took part in the Novatian schism, then returned to the Catholic church, and was torn to pieces by wild horses at Ostia on account of his faith. The remembrance of the schism was lost in the glory of his supposed or real martyrdom. According to the chronological catalogue of Popes from A.D. 354, a "presbyter" Hippolytus, together with the Roman bishop Pontianus, the successor of Callistus, was banished from Rome in the reign of Alexander Severus (235), to the mines of Sardinia.284

II. The schism of Felicississimus, at Carthage, about the year 250, originated in the personal dissatisfaction of five presbyters with the hasty and irregular election of Cyprian to the bishopric, by the voice of the congregation, very soon after his baptism, A.D. 248. At the head of this opposition party stood the presbyter Novatus, an unprincipled ecclesiastical demagogue, of restless, insubordinate spirit and notorious character,285 and the deacon Felicissimus, whom Novatus ordained, without the permission or knowledge of Cyprian, therefore illegally, whether with his own hands or through those of foreign bishops. The controversy cannot, however, from this circumstance, be construed, as it is by Neander and others, into a presbyterial reaction against episcopal autocracy. For the opponents themselves afterwards chose a bishop in the person of Fortunatus. The Novatians and the Meletians likewise had the episcopal form of organization, though doubtless with many irregularities in the ordination.

After the outbreak of the Decian persecution this personal rivalry received fresh nourishment and new importance from the question of discipline. Cyprian originally held Tertullian’s principles, and utterly opposed the restoration of the lapsed, till further examination changed his views. Yet, so great was the multitude of the fallen, that he allowed an exception in periculo mortis. His opponents still saw even in this position an unchristian severity, least of all becoming him, who, as they misrepresented him, fled from his post for fear of death. They gained the powerful voice of the confessors, who in the face of their own martyrdom freely gave their peace-bills to the lapsed. A regular trade was carried on in these indulgences. An arrogant confessor, Lucian, wrote to Cyprian in the name of the rest, that he granted restoration to all apostates, and begged him to make this known to the other bishops. We can easily understand how this lenity from those who stood in the fire, might take more with the people than the strictness of the bishop, who had secured himself. The church of Novatus and Felicissimus was a resort of all the careless lapsi. Felicissimus set himself also against a visitation of churches and a collection for the poor, which Cyprian ordered during his exile.

When the bishop returned, after Easter, 251, he held a council at Carthage, which, though it condemned the party of Felicissimus, took a middle course on the point in dispute. It sought to preserve the integrity of discipline, yet at the same time to secure the fallen against despair. It therefore decided for the restoration of those who proved themselves truly penitent, but against restoring the careless, who asked the communion merely from fear of death. Cyprian afterwards, when the persecution was renewed, under Gallus, abolished even this limitation. He was thus, of course, not entirely consistent, but gradually accommodated his principles to circumstances and to the practice of the Roman church.286  His antagonists elected their bishop, indeed, but were shortly compelled to yield to the united force of the African and Roman churches, especially as they had no moral earnestness at the bottom of their cause.

His conflict with this schismatical movement strengthened Cyprian’s episcopal authority, and led him in his doctrine of the unity of the church to the principle of absolute exclusiveness.

III. The Novatian schism in Rome was prepared by the controversy already alluded to between Hippolytus and Callistus. It broke out soon after the African schism, and, like it, in consequence of an election of bishop. But in this case the opposition advocated the strict discipline against the lenient practice of the dominant church. The Novatianists287 considered themselves the only pure communion,288 and unchurched all churches which defiled themselves by re-admitting the lapsed, or any other gross offenders. They went much farther than Cyprian, even as far as the later Donatists. They admitted the possibility of mercy for a mortal sinner, but denied the power and the right of the church to decide upon it, and to prevent, by absolution, the judgment of God upon such offenders. They also, like Cyprian, rejected heretical baptism, and baptized all who came over to them from other communions not just so rigid as themselves.

At the head of this party stood the Roman presbyter Novatian,289 an earnest, learned, but gloomy man, who had come to faith through severe demoniacal disease and inward struggles. He fell out with Cornelius, who, after the Decian persecution in 251, was nominated bishop of Rome, and at once, to the grief of many, showed great indulgence towards the lapsed. Among his adherents the above-named Novatus of Carthage was particularly busy, either from a mere spirit of opposition to existing authority, or from having changed his former lax principles on his removal to Rome. Novatian, against his will, was chosen bishop by the opposition. Cornelius excommunicated him. Both parties courted the recognition of the churches abroad. Fabian, bishop of Antioch, sympathized with the rigorists. Dionysius of Alexandria, on the contrary, accused them of blaspheming the most gracious Lord Jesus Christ, by calling him unmerciful. And especially Cyprian, from his zeal for ecclesiastical unity and his aversion to Novatus, took sides with Cornelius, whom he regarded the legitimate bishop of Rome.

In spite of this strong opposition the Novatian sect, by virtue of its moral earnestness, propagated itself in various provinces of the West and the East down to the sixth century. In Phrygia it combined with the remnants of the Montanists. The council of Nicaea recognized its ordination, and endeavored, without success, to reconcile it with the Catholic church. Constantine, at first dealt mildly with the Novatians, but afterwards prohibited them to worship in public and ordered their books to be burnt.

IV. The Meletian schism in Egypt arose in the Diocletian persecution, about 305, and lasted more than a century, but, owing to the contradictory character of our accounts, it is not so well understood. It was occasioned by Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis in Thebais, who, according to one statement, from zeal for strict discipline, according to another, from sheer arrogance, rebelled against his metropolitan, Peter of Alexandria (martyred in 311), and during his absence encroached upon his diocese with ordinations, excommunications, and the like. Peter warned his people against him, and, on returning from his flight, deposed him as a disturber of the peace of the church. But the controversy continued, and spread over all Egypt. The council of Nicaea endeavored, by recognizing the ordination of the twenty-nine Meletian bishops, and by other compromise measures, to heal the division; but to no purpose. The Meletians afterwards made common cause with the Arians.

The Donatist schism, which was more formidable than any of those mentioned, likewise grew out of the Diocletian persecution, but belongs more to the next period.

CHAPTER V.

CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.

I. The richest sources here are the works of Justin M., Tertullian, Cyprian, Eusebius, and the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicae; also Clement of Rome (Ad Cor. 59–61), and the Homily falsely ascribed to him (fully publ. 1875).

II. See the books quoted in vol. I. 455, and the relevant sections in the archaeological works of Bingham (Antiquities of the Christian Church, Lond. 1708–22. 10 vols.; new ed. Lond. 1852, in 2 vols.), Augusti (whose larger work fills 12 vols., Leipz. 1817–31, and his Handbuch der Christl. Archaeol. 3 vols. Leipz. 1836), Binterim (R.C.), Siegel, Smith & Cheetham (Dict. of Chr. Ant., Lond. 1875, 2 vols.), and Garrucci (Storia della arte crist., 1872–80, 6 vols.)

§ 59. Places of Common Worship.

R. Hospinianus: De Templis, etc. Tig. 1603. And in his Opera, Genev. 1681.

Fabricius: De Templis vett. Christ. Helmst. 1704.

Muratori (R.C.): De primis Christianorum Ecclesiis. Arezzo, 1770.

Hübsch: Altchristliche Kirchen. Karlsruh, 1860.

Jos. Mullooly: St. Clement and his Basilica in Rome. Rome, 2nd ed. 1873.

De Vogüé: Architecture civile et relig. du Ie au Vlle siècle. Paris, 1877, 2 vols.

The numerous works on church architecture (by Fergusson, Brown, Bunsen, Kugler, Kinkel, Kreuser, Schnaase, Lübke, Voillet-le-Duc, De Vogüé etc.) usually begin with the basilicas of the Constantinian age, which are described in vol. III. 541 sqq.

The Christian worship, as might be expected from the humble condition of the church in this period of persecution, was very simple, strongly contrasting with the pomp of the Greek and Roman communion; yet by no means puritanic. We perceive here, as well as in organization and doctrine, the gradual and sure approach of the Nicene age, especially in the ritualistic solemnity of the baptismal service, and the mystical character of the eucharistic sacrifice.

Let us glance first at the places of public worship. Until about the close of the second century the Christians held their worship mostly in private houses, or in desert places, at the graves of martyrs, and in the crypts of the catacombs. This arose from their poverty, their oppressed and outlawed condition, their love of silence and solitude, and their aversion to all heathen art. The apologists frequently assert, that their brethren had neither temples nor altars (in the pagan sense of these words), and that their worship was spiritual and independent of place and ritual. Heathens, like Celsus, cast this up to them as a reproach; but Origen admirably replied: The humanity of Christ is the highest temple and the most beautiful image of God, and true Christians are living statues of the Holy Spirit, with which no Jupiter of Phidias can compare. Justin Martyr said to the Roman prefect: The Christians assemble wherever it is convenient, because their God is not, like the gods of the heathen, inclosed in space, but is invisibly present everywhere. Clement of Alexandria refutes the superstition, that religion is bound to any building.

In private houses the room best suited for worship and for the love-feast was the oblong dining-hall, the triclinium, which was never wanting in a convenient Greek or Roman dwelling, and which often had a semicircular niche, like the choir290 in the later churches. An elevated seat291 was used for reading the Scriptures and preaching, and a simple tables292 for the holy communion. Similar arrangements were made also in the catacombs, which sometimes have the form of a subterranean church.

The first traces of special houses of worship293 occur in Tertullian, who speaks of going to church,294 and in his contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, who mentions the double meaning of the word ekklhsiva.295  About the year 230, Alexander Severus granted the Christians the right to a place in Rome against the protest of the tavern-keepers, because the worship of God in any form was better than tavern-keeping. After the middle of the third century the building of churches began in great earnest, as the Christians enjoyed over forty years of repose (260–303), and multiplied so fast that, according to Eusebius, more spacious places of devotion became everywhere necessary. The Diocletian persecution began (in 303,) with the destruction of the magnificent church at Nicomedia, which, according to Lactantius, even towered above the neighboring imperial palace.296  Rome is supposed to have had, as early as the beginning of the fourth century, more than forty churches. But of the form and arrangement of them we have no account. With Constantine the Great begins the era of church architecture, and its first style is the Basilica. The emperor himself set the example, and built magnificent churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Constantinople, which, however, have undergone many changes. His contemporary, the historian Eusebius, gives us the first account of a church edifice which Paulinus built in Tyre between A.D. 313 and 322.297  It included a large portico (pro;pulon) a quadrangular atrium (ai[qrion) surrounded by ranges of columns; a fountain in the centre of the atrium for the customary washing of hands and feet before entering the church; interior porticoes; the nave or central space (basivleio" oi\ko") with galleries above the aisles, and covered by a roof of cedar of Lebanon; and the most holy altar (a{gion aJgivwn qusiasthvrion). Eusebius mentions also the thrones (qrovnoi) for the bishops and presbyters, and benches or seats. The church was surrounded by halls and inclosed by a wall, which can still be traced. Fragments of five granite columns of this building are among the ruins of Tyre.

The description of a church in the Apostolic Constitutions,298 implies that the clergy occupy the space at the cast end of the church (in the choir), and the people the nave, but mentions no barrier between them. Such a barrier, however, existed as early as the fourth century, when the laity were forbidden to enter the enclosure of the altar.

§ 60. The Lord’s Day.

See Lit. in vol. I. 476.

The celebration of the Lord’s Day in memory of the resurrection of Christ dates undoubtedly from the apostolic age.299  Nothing short of apostolic precedent can account for the universal religious observance in the churches of the second century. There is no dissenting voice. This custom is confirmed by the testimonies of the earliest post-apostolic writers, as Barnabas,300 Ignatius,301 and Justin Martyr.302  It is also confirmed by the younger Pliny.303  The Didache calls the first day "the Lord’s Day of the Lord."304

Considering that the church was struggling into existence, and that a large number of Christians were slaves of heathen masters, we cannot expect an unbroken regularity of worship and a universal cessation of labor on Sunday until the civil government in the time of Constantine came to the help of the church and legalized (and in part even enforced) the observance of the Lord’s Day. This may be the reason why the religious observance of it was not expressly enjoined by Christ and the apostles; as for similar reasons there is no prohibition of polygamy and slavery by the letter of the New Testament, although its spirit condemns these abuses, and led to their abolition. We may go further and say that coercive Sunday laws are against the genius and spirit of the Christian religion which appeals to the free will of man, and uses only moral means for its ends. A Christian government may and ought to protect the Christian Sabbath against open desecration, but its positive observance by attending public worship, must be left to the conscientious conviction of individuals. Religion cannot be forced by law. It looses its value when it ceases to be voluntary.

The fathers did not regard the Christian Sunday as a continuation of, but as a substitute for, the Jewish Sabbath, and based it not so much on the fourth commandment, and the primitive rest of God in creation, to which the commandment expressly refers, as upon the resurrection of Christ and the apostolic tradition. There was a disposition to disparage the Jewish law in the zeal to prove the independent originality of Christian institutions. The same polemic interest against Judaism ruled in the paschal controversies, and made Christian Easter a moveable feast. Nevertheless, Sunday was always regarded in the ancient church as a divine institution, at least in the secondary sense, as distinct from divine ordinances in the primary sense, which were directly and positively commanded by Christ, as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Regular public worship absolutely requires a stated day of worship.

Ignatius was the first who contrasted Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath as something done away with.305  So did the author of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas.306  Justin Martyr, in controversy with a Jew, says that the pious before Moses pleased God without circumcision and the Sabbath,307 and that Christianity requires not one particular Sabbath, but a perpetual Sabbath.308  He assigns as a reason for the selection of the first day for the purposes of Christian worship, because on that day God dispelled the darkness and the chaos, and because Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his assembled disciples, but makes no allusion to the fourth commandment.309 He uses the term "to sabbathize" (sabbativzein), only of the Jews, except in the passage just quoted, where he spiritualizes the Jewish law. Dionysius of Corinth mentions Sunday incidentally in a letter to the church of Rome, A.D., 170: "To-day we kept the Lord’s Day holy, in which we read your letter."310  Melito of Sardis wrote a treatise on the Lord’s Day, which is lost.311  Irenaeus of Lyons, about 170, bears testimony to the celebration of the Lord’s Day,312 but likewise regards the Jewish Sabbath merely as a symbolical and typical ordinance, and says that "Abraham without circumcision and without observance of Sabbaths believed in God," which proves "the symbolical and temporary character of those ordinances, and their inability to make perfect."313  Tertullian, at the close of the second and beginning of the third century, views the Lord’s Day as figurative of rest from sin and typical of man’s final rest, and says: "We have nothing to do with Sabbaths, new moons or the Jewish festivals, much less with those of the heathen. We have our own solemnities, the Lord’s Day, for instance, and Pentecost. As the heathen confine themselves to their festivals and do not observe ours, let us confine ourselves to ours, and not meddle with those belonging to them." He thought it wrong to fast on the Lord’s Day, or to pray kneeling during its continuance. "Sunday we give to joy." But he also considered it Christian duty to abstain from secular care and labor, lest we give place to the devil.314  This is the first express evidence of cessation from labor on Sunday among Christians. The habit of standing in prayer on Sunday, which Tertullian regarded as essential to the festive character of the day, and which was sanctioned by an ecumenical council, was afterwards abandoned by the western church.

The Alexandrian fathers have essentially the same view, with some fancies of their own concerning the allegorical meaning of the Jewish Sabbath.

We see then that the ante-Nicene church clearly distinguished the Christian Sunday from the Jewish Sabbath, and put it on independent Christian ground. She did not fully appreciate the perpetual obligation of the fourth commandment in its substance as a weekly day of rest, rooted in the physical and moral necessities of man. This is independent of those ceremonial enactments which were intended only for the Jews and abolished by the gospel. But, on the other hand, the church took no secular liberties with the day. On the question of theatrical and other amusements she was decidedly puritanic and ascetic, and denounced them as being inconsistent on any day with the profession of a soldier of the cross. She regarded Sunday as a sacred day, as the Day of the Lord, as the weekly commemoration of his resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, and therefore as a day of holy joy and thanksgiving to be celebrated even before the rising sun by prayer, praise, and communion with the risen Lord and Saviour.

Sunday legislation began with Constantine, and belongs to the next period.

The observance of the Sabbath among the Jewish Christians gradually ceased. Yet the Eastern church to this day marks the seventh day of the week (excepting only the Easter Sabbath) by omitting fasting, and by standing in prayer; while the Latin church, in direct opposition to Judaism, made Saturday a fast day. The controversy on this point began as early as the, end of the second century

Wednesday,315 and especially Friday,316 were devoted to the weekly commemoration of the sufferings and death of the Lord, and observed as days of penance, or watch-days,317 and half-fasting (which lasted till three o’clock in the afternoon).318

§ 61. The Christian Passover. (Easter).

R. Hospinianus: Festa Christ., h.e. de origine, progressu, ceremonies el ritibusfestorum dierum Christ. Tig. 1593, and often.

A. G. Pillwitz: Gesch. der heil. Zeiten in der abendländ. Kirche. Dresden, 1842.

M. A. Nickel (R.C.): Die heil. Zeiten u. Feste nach ihrer Gesch. u. Feier in der kath. Kirche. Mainz, 1825–1838. 6 vols.

P. Piper: Gesch. des Osterfestes. Berl. 1845.

Lisco: Das christl. Kirchenjahr. Berlin, 1840, 4th ed. 1850.

Strauss (court-chaplain of the King of Prussia, d. 1863): Das evangel. Kirchenjahr. Berlin, 1850.

Boberstag: Das evangel. Kirchenjahr. Breslau 1857.

H. Alt: Der Christliche Cultus, IInd Part: Das Kirchenjahr, 2nd ed. Berlin 1860.

L. Hensley: Art. Easter in Smith and Cheetham (1875), I. 586–595.

F. X. Kraus (R.C.): Art. Feste in "R. Encykl. der Christl. Alterthümer," vol. I. (1881), pp. 486–502, and the Lit. quoted there. The article is written by several authors, the section on Easter and Pentecost by Dr. Funk of Tübingen.

The yearly festivals of this period were Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany. They form the rudiments of the church year, and keep within the limits of the facts of the New Testament.

Strictly speaking the ante-Nicene church had two annual festive seasons, the Passover in commemoration of the suffering of Christ, and the Pentecoste in commemoration of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, beginning with Easter and ending with Pentecost proper. But Passover and Easter were connected in a continuous celebration, combining the deepest sadness with the highest joy, and hence the term pascha (in Greek and Latin) is often used in a wider sense for the Easter season, as is the case with the French paque or paques, and the Italian pasqua. The Jewish passover also lasted a whole week, and after it began their Pentecost or feast of weeks. The death of Christ became fruitful in the resurrection, and has no redemptive power without it. The commemoration of the death of Christ was called the pascha staurosimon or the Passover proper.319  The commemoration of the resurrection was called the pascha anastasimon, and afterwards Easter.320 The former corresponds to the gloomy Friday, the other to the cheerful Sunday, the sacred days of the week in commemoration of those great events.

The Christian Passover naturally grew out of the Jewish Passover as the Lord’s Day grew out of the Sabbath; the paschal lamb being regarded as a prophetic type of Christ, the Lamb of God slain for our sins (1 Cor. 5:7, 8), and the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt as a type of the redemption from sin. It is certainly the oldest and most important annual festival of the church, and can be traced back to the first century, or at all events to the middle of the second, when it was universally observed, though with a difference as to the day, and the extent of the fast connected with it. It is based on the view that Christ crucified and risen is the centre of faith. The Jewish Christians would very naturally from the beginning continue to celebrate the legal passover, but in the light of its fulfillment by the sacrifice of Christ, and would dwell chiefly on the aspect of the crucifixion. The Gentile Christians, for whom the Jewish passover had no meaning except through reflection from the cross, would chiefly celebrate the Lord’s resurrection as they did on every Sunday of the week. Easter formed at first the beginning of the Christian year, as the month of Nisan, which contained the vernal equinox (corresponding to our March or April.), began the sacred year of the Jews. Between the celebration of the death and the resurrection of Christ lay "the great Sabbath,"321 on which also the Greek church fasted by way of exception; and "the Easter vigils," 322 which were kept, with special devotion, by the whole congregation till the break of day, and kept the more scrupulously, as it was generally believed that the Lord’s glorious return would occur on this night. The feast of the resurrection, which completed the whole work of redemption, became gradually the most prominent part of the Christian Passover, and identical with Easter. But the crucifixion continued to be celebrated on what is called "Good Friday."323

The paschal feast was preceded by a season of penitence and fasting, which culminated in "the holy week."324  This fasting varied in length, in different countries, from one day or forty hours to six weeks;325 but after the fifth century, through the influence of Rome, it was universally fixed at forty days,326 with reference to the forty days’ fasting of Christ in the wilderness and the Old Testament types of that event (the fasting of Moses and Elijah).327

§ 62. The Paschal Controversies.

I. The sources for the paschal controversies:

Fragments from Melito, Apollinarius, Polycrates, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, preserved in Euseb. H. E. IV. 3, 26; V. 23–25; VI. 13; The Chronicon Pasch. I. 12 sqq., a passage in the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, Lib. VIII. cap. 18 (p. 435, ed. Duncker & Schneidewin, 1859), a fragment from Eusebius in Angelo Mai’s Nova P. P. Bibl. T. IV. 2O9–216, and the Haeresies of Epiphanius, Haer. LXX. 1–3; LXX. 9.

II. Recent works, occasioned mostly by the Johannean controversy:

Weitzel: Die Christl. Passafeier der drei ersten Jahrh. Pforzheim, 1848 (and in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1848, No. 4, against Baur).

Baur: Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh. (1853). Tüb. 3rd ed. 1863, pp. 156–169. And several controversial essays against Steitz.

Hilgenfeld: Der Paschastreit und das Evang. Johannis (in "Theol. Jahrbücher" for 1849); Noch ein Wort über den Passahstreit (ibid. 1858); and Der Paschastreit der alten Kirche nach seiner Bedeutung für die Kirchengesch. und für die Evangelienforschung urkundlich dargestellt. Halle 1860 (410 pages).

Steitz: Several essays on the subject, mostly against Baur, in the "Studien u. Kritiken, "1856, 1857, and 1859; in the "Theol. Jahrbücher, "1857, and art. Passah in "Herzog’s Encycl." vol. XII. (1859), p. 149 sqq., revised in the new ed., by Wagenmann, XI. 270 sqq.

William Milligan: The Easter Controversies of the second century in their relation to the Gospel of St. John, in the "Contemporary Review" for Sept. 1867 (p. 101–118).

Emil Schürer: De Controversiis paschalibus sec. post Chr. soc. exortis, Lips. 1869. By the same: Die Paschastreitigkeiten des 2ten Jahrh., in Kahnis’ "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." 1870, pp. 182–284. Very full and able.

C. Jos. von Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengeschichte, I. 86–101 (second ed. Freib. 1873; with some important changes).

Abbé Duchesne: La question de la Pâque, in "Revue des questions historiques," July 1880.

Renan: L’église chrét. 445–451; and M. Aurèle, 194–206 (la question de la Páque.

Respecting the time of the Christian Passover and of the fast connected with it, there was a difference of observance which created violent controversies in the ancient church, and almost as violent controversies in the modern schools of theology in connection with the questions of the primacy of Rome, and the genuineness of John’s Gospel.328

The paschal controversies of the ante-Nicene age are a very complicated chapter in ancient church-history, and are not yet sufficiently cleared up. They were purely ritualistic and disciplinary, and involved no dogma; and yet they threatened to split the churches; both parties laying too much stress on external uniformity. Indirectly, however, they involved the question of the independence of Christianity on Judaism.329

Let us first consider the difference of observance or the subject of controversy.

The Christians of Asia Minor, following the Jewish chronology, and appealing to the authority of the apostles John and Philip, celebrated the Christian Passover uniformly on the fourteenth of Nisan (which might fall on any of the seven days of the week) by a solemn fast; they fixed the close of the fast accordingly, and seem to have partaken on the evening of this day, as the close of the fast, but indeed of the Jewish paschal lamb, as has sometimes been supposed,330 but of the communion and love-feast, as the Christian passover and the festival of the redemption completed by the death of Christ.331  The communion on the evening of the 14th (or, according to the Jewish mode of reckoning, the day from sunset to sunset, on the beginning of the 15th) of Nisan was in memory of the last pascha supper of Christ. This observance did not exclude the idea that Christ died as the true paschal Lamb. For we find among the fathers both this idea and the other that Christ ate the regular Jewish passover with his disciples, which took place on the14th.332 From the day of observance the Asiatic Christians were afterwards called Quartadecimanians.333 Hippolytus of Rome speaks of them contemptuously as a sect of contentious and ignorant persons, who maintain that "the pascha should be observed on the fourteenth day of the first month according to the law, no matter on what day of the week it might fall."334  Nevertheless the Quartadecimanian observance was probably the oldest and in accordance with the Synoptic tradition of the last Passover of our Lord, which it commemorated.335

The Roman church, on the contrary, likewise appealing to early custom, celebrated the death of Jesus always on a Friday, the day of the week on which it actually occurred, and his resurrection always on a Sunday after the March full moon, and extended the paschal fast to the latter day; considering it improper to terminate the fast at an earlier date, and to celebrate the communion before the festival of the resurrection. Nearly all the other churches agreed with the Roman in this observance, and laid the main stress on the resurrection-festival on Sunday. This Roman practice created an entire holy week of solemn fasting and commemoration of the Lord’s passion, while the Asiatic practice ended the fast on the 14th of Nisan, which may fall sometimes several days before Sunday.

Hence a spectacle shocking to the catholic sense of ritualistic propriety and uniformity was frequently presented to the world, that one part of Christendom was fasting and mourning over the death of our Saviour, while the other part rejoiced in the glory of the resurrection. We cannot be surprised that controversy arose, and earnest efforts were made to harmonize the opposing sections of Christendom in the public celebration of the fundamental facts of the Christian salvation and of the most sacred season of the church-year.

The gist of the paschal controversy was, whether the Jewish paschal-day (be it a Friday or not), or the Christian Sunday, should control the idea and time of the entire festival. The Johannean practice of Asia represented here the spirit of adhesion to historical precedent, and had the advantage of an immovable Easter, without being Judaizing in anything but the observance of a fixed day of the month. The Roman custom represented the principle of freedom and discretionary change, and the independence of the Christian festival system. Dogmatically stated, the difference would be, that in the former case the chief stress was laid on the Lord’s death; in the latter, on his resurrection. But the leading interest of the question for the early Church was not the astronomical, nor the dogmatical, but the ritualistic. The main object was to secure uniformity of observance, and to assert the originality of the Christian festive cycle, and its independence of Judaism; for both reasons the Roman usage at last triumphed even in the East. Hence Easter became a movable festival whose date varies from the end of March to the latter part of April.

The history of the controversy divides itself into three acts.

1. The difference came into discussion first on a visit of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to Anicetus, bishop of Rome, between A.D. 150 and 155.336  It was not settled; yet the two bishops parted in peace, after the latter had charged his venerable guest to celebrate the holy communion in his church. We have a brief, but interesting account of this dispute by Irenaeus, a pupil of Polycarp, which is as follows:337

"When the blessed Polycarp sojourned at Rome in the days of Anicetus, and they had some little difference of opinion likewise with regard to other points,338 they forthwith came to a peaceable understanding on this head [the observance of Easter], having no love for mutual disputes. For neither could Anicetus persuade Polycarp not to observe339 inasmuch as he [Pol.] had always observed with John, the disciple of our Lord, and the other apostles, with whom he had associated; nor did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to observe Gr. (threi’n) who said that he was bound to maintain the custom of the presbyters (= bishops) before him. These things being so, they communed together; and in the church Anicetus yielded to Polycarp, out of respect no doubt, the celebration of the eucharist Gr. (thVn eujcaristivan), and they separated from each other in peace, all the church being at peace, both those that observed and those that did not observe [the fourteenth of Nisan], maintaining peace."

This letter proves that the Christians of the days of Polycarp knew how to keep the unity of the Spirit without uniformity of rites and ceremonies. "The very difference in our fasting," says Irenaeus in the same letter, "establishes the unanimity in our faith."

2. A few years afterwards, about A.D. 170, the controversy broke out in Laodicea, but was confined to Asia, where a difference had arisen either among the Quartadecimanians themselves, or rather among these and the adherents of the Western observance. The accounts on this interimistic sectional dispute are incomplete and obscure. Eusebius merely mentions that at that time Melito of Sardis wrote two works on the Passover.340  But these are lost, as also that of Clement of Alexandria on the same topic.341  Our chief source of information is Claudius Apolinarius (Apollinaris),342 bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, in two fragments of his writings upon the subject, which have been preserved in the Chronicon Paschale.343 These are as follows:

"There are some now who, from ignorance, love to raise strife about these things, being guilty in this of a pardonable offence; for ignorance does not so much deserve blame as need instruction. And they say that on the fourteenth [of Nisan] the Lord ate the paschal lamb (to; provbaton e[fage) with his disciples, but that He himself suffered on the great day of unleavened bread344 [i.e. the fifteenth of Nisan]; and they interpret Matthew as favoring their view from which it appears that their view does not agree with the law,345 and that the Gospels seem, according to them, to be at variance.346

The Fourteenth is the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice, the. Son of God347 in the place of the lamb ... who was lifted up upon the horns of the unicorn ... and who was buried on the day of the Passover, the stone having been placed upon his tomb."

Here Apolinarius evidently protests against the Quartadecimanian practice, yet simply as one arising from ignorance, and not as a blameworthy heresy. He opposes it as a chronological and exegetical mistake, and seems to hold that the fourteenth, and not the fifteenth, is the great day of the death of Christ as the true Lamb of God, on the false assumption that this truth depends upon the chronological coincidence of the crucifixion and the Jewish passover. But the question arises:  Did he protest from the Western and Roman standpoint which had many advocates in the East,348 or as a Quartadecimanian?349  In the latter case we would be obliged to distinguish two parties of Quartadecimanians, the orthodox or catholic Quartadecimanians, who simply observed the 14th Nisan by fasting and the evening communion, and a smaller faction of heretical and schismatic Quartadecimanians, who adopted the Jewish practice of eating a paschal lamb on that day in commemoration of the Saviour’s last passover. But there is no evidence for this distinction in the above or other passages. Such a grossly Judaizing party would have been treated with more severity by a catholic bishop. Even the Jews could no more eat of the paschal lamb after the destruction of the temple in which it had to be slain. There is no trace of such a party in Irenaeus, Hippolytus350 and Eusebius who speak only of one class of Quartadecimanians.351

Hence we conclude that Apolinarius protests against the whole Quartadecimanian practice, although very mildly and charitably. The Laodicean controversy was a stage in the same controversy which was previously discussed by Polycarp and Anicetus in Christian charity, and was soon agitated again by Polycrates and Victor with hierarchical and intolerant violence.

3. Much more important and vehement was the third stage of the controversy between 190 and 194, which extended over the whole church, and occasioned many synods and synodical letters.352  The Roman bishop Victor, a very different man from his predecessor Anicetus, required the Asiatics, in an imperious tone, to abandon their Quartadecimanian practice. Against this Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, solemnly protested in the name of a synod held by him, and appealed to an imposing array of authorities for their primitive custom. Eusebius has preserved his letter, which is quite characteristic.

"We," wrote the Ephesian bishop to the Roman pope and his church, "We observe the genuine day; neither adding thereto nor taking therefrom. For in Asia great lights353 have fallen asleep, which shall rise again in the day of the Lord’s appearing, in which he will come with glory from heaven, and will raise up all the saints: Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis, and his two aged virgin daughters; his other daughter, also, who having lived under the influence of the Holy Spirit, now likewise rests in Ephesus; moreover, John, who rested upon the bosom of our Lord,354 who was also a priest, and bore the sacerdotal plate,355 both a martyr and teacher; he is buried in Ephesus. Also Polycarp of Smyrna, both bishop and martyr, and Thraseas, both bishop and martyr of Eumenia, who sleeps in Smyrna. Why should I mention Sagaris, bishop and martyr, who sleeps in Laodicea; moreover, the blessed Papirius, and Melito, the eunuch [celibate], who lived altogether under the influence of the Holy Spirit, who now rests in Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven, in which he shall rise from the dead. All these observed the fourteenth day of the passover according to the gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith.

"Moreover, I, Polycrates, who am the least of you, according to the tradition of my relatives, some of whom I have followed. For seven of my relatives were bishops, and I am the eighth; and my relatives always observed the day when the people of the Jews threw away the leaven. I, therefore, brethren, am now sixty-five years in the Lord, who having conferred with the brethren throughout the world, and having studied the whole of the Sacred Scriptures, am not at all alarmed at those things with which I am threatened, to intimidate me. For they who are greater than I have said, ’we ought to obey God rather than men.’ ... I could also mention the bishops that were present, whom you requested me to summon, and whom I did call; whose names would present a great number, but who seeing my slender body consented to my epistle, well knowing that I did not wear my gray hairs for nought, but that I did at all times regulate my life in the Lord Jesus."356

Victor turned a deaf ear to this remonstrance, branded the Asiatics as heretics, and threatened to excommunicate them.357

But many of the Eastern bishops, and even Irenaeus, in the name of the Gallic Christians, though he agreed with Victor on the disputed point, earnestly reproved him for such arrogance, and reminded him of the more Christian and brotherly conduct of his predecessors Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Xystus, who sent the eucharist to their dissenting brethren. He dwelt especially on the fraternal conduct of Anicetus to Polycarp. Irenaeus proved himself on this occasion, as Eusebius remarks, a true peacemaker, and his vigorous protest seems to have prevented the schism.

We have from the same Irenaeus another utterance on this controversy,358 saying: "The apostles have ordered that we should ’judge no one in meat or in drink, or in respect to a feast-day or a new moon or a sabbath day’ (Col. 2:16). Whence then these wars?  Whence these schisms?  We keep the feasts, but in the leaven of malice by tearing the church of God and observing what is outward, in order to reject what is better, faith and charity. That such feasts and fasts are displeasing to the Lord, we have heard from the Prophets." A truly evangelical sentiment from one who echoes the reaching of St. John and his last words: "Children, love one another."

4. In the course of the third century the Roman practice gained ground everywhere in the East, and, to anticipate the result, was established by the council of Nicaea in 325 as the law of the whole church. This council considered it unbecoming, in Christians to follow the usage of the unbelieving, hostile Jews, and ordained that Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon succeeding the vernal equinox (March 21), and always after the Jewish passover.359  If the full moon occurs on a Sunday, Easter-day is the Sunday after. By this arrangement Easter may take place as early as March 22, or as late as April 25.

Henceforth the Quartadecimanians were universally regarded as heretics, and were punished as such. The Synod of Antioch, 341, excommunicated them. The Montanists and Novatians were also cleared with the Quartadecimanian observance. The last traces of it disappeared in the sixth century.

But the desired uniformity in the observance of Easter was still hindered by differences in reckoning the Easter Sunday according to the course of the moon and the vernal equinox, which the Alexandrians fixed on the 21st of March, and the Romans on the 18th; so that in the year 387, for example, the Romans kept Easter on the 21st of March, and the Alexandrians not till the 25th of April. In the West also the computation changed and caused a renewal of the Easter controversy in the sixth and seventh centuries. The old British, Irish and Scotch Christians, and the Irish missionaries on the Continent adhered to the older cycle of eighty-four years in opposition to the later Dionysian or Roman cycle of ninety-five years, and hence were styled "Quartadecimanians "by their Anglo-Saxon and Roman opponents, though unjustly; for they celebrated Easter always on a Sunday between the 14th and the 20th of the mouth (the Romans between the 15th and 21st). The Roman practice triumphed. But Rome again changed the calendar under Gregory XIII. (A.D. 1583). Hence even to this day the Oriental churches who hold to the Julian and reject the Gregorian calendar, differ from the Occidental Christians in the time of the observance of Easter.

All these useless ritualistic disputes might have been avoided if, with some modification of the old Asiatic practice as to the close of the fast, Easter, like Christmas, had been made an immovable feast at least as regards the week, if not the day, of its observance.

Note.

The bearing of this controversy on the Johannean origin of the fourth Gospel has been greatly overrated by the negative critics of the Tübingen School. Dr. Baur, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, Straus (Leben Jesu, new ed. 1864, p. 76 sq.), Schenkel, Scholten, Samuel Davidson, Renan (Marc-Aurèle, p. 196), use it as a fatal objection to the Johannean authorship. Their argument is this: "The Asiatic practice rested on the belief that Jesus ate the Jewish Passover with his disciples on the evening of the 14th of Nisan, and died on the 15th; this belief is incompatible with the fourth Gospel, which puts the death of Jesus, as the true Paschal Lamb, on the 14th of Nisan, just before the regular Jewish Passover; therefore the fourth Gospel cannot have existed when the Easter controversy first broke out about A.D. 160; or, at all events, it cannot be the work of John to whom the Asiatic Christians so confidently appealed for their paschal observance."

But leaving out of view the early testimonies for the authenticity of John, which reach back to the first quarter of the second century, the minor premise is wrong, and hence the conclusion falls. A closer examination of the relevant passages of John leads to the result that he agrees with the Synoptic account, which puts the last Supper on the 14th, and the crucifixion on the 15th of Nisan. (Comp. on this chronological difficulty vol. I. 133 sqq.; and the authorities quoted there, especially John Lightfoot, Wieseler, Robinson, Lange, Kirchner, and McClellan.)

Weitzel, Steitz, and Wagenmann deny the inference of the Tübingen School by disputing the major premise, and argue that the Asiatic observance (in agreement with the Tübingen school and their own interpretation of John’s chronology) implies that Christ died as the true paschal lamb on the 14th, and not on the 15th of Nisan. To this view we object: 1) it conflicts with the extract from Apolinarius in the Chronicon Paschale as given p. 214. 2) There is no contradiction between the idea that Christ died as the true paschal lamb, and the Synoptic chronology; for the former was taught by Paul (1 Cor. 5:7), who was quoted for the Roman practice, and both were held by the fathers; the coincidence in the time being subordinate to the fact. 3) A contradiction in the primitive tradition of Christ’s death is extremely improbable, and it is much easier to conform the Johannean chronology to the Synoptic than vice versa.

It seems to me that the Asiatic observance of the 14th of Nisan was in commemoration of the last passover of the Lord, and this of necessity implied also a commemoration of his death, like every celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In any case, however, these ancient paschal controversies did not hinge on the chronological question or the true date of Christ’s death at all but on the week-day and the manner of its annual observance. The question was whether the paschal communion should be celebrated on the 14th of Nisan, or on the Sunday of the resurrection festival, without regard to the Jewish chronology.

§ 63. Pentecost.

Easter was followed by the festival of Pentecost.360  It rested on the Jewish feast of harvest. It was universally observed, as early as the second century, in commemoration of the appearances and heavenly exaltation of the risen Lord, and had throughout a joyous character. It lasted through fifty days—Quinquagesima —which were celebrated as a continuous Sunday, by daily communion, the standing posture in prayer, and the absence of all fasting. Tertullian says that all the festivals of the heathen put together will not make up the one Pentecost of the Christians.361 During that period the Acts of the Apostles were read in the public service (and are read to this day in the Greek church).

Subsequently the celebration was limited to the fortieth day as the feast of the Ascension, and the fiftieth day, or Pentecost proper (Whitsunday) as the feast of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Christian Church. In this restricted sense Pentecost closed the cycle of our Lord’s festivals (the semestre Domini), among which it held the third place (after Easter and Christmas).362 It was also a favorite time for baptism, especially the vigil of the festival.

§ 64. The Epiphany

The feast of the Epiphany is of later origin.363  It spread from the East towards the West, but here, even in the fourth century, it was resisted by such parties as the Donatists, and condemned as an oriental innovation. It was, in general, the feast of the appearance of Christ in the flesh, and particularly of the manifestation of his Messiahship by his baptism in the Jordan, the festival at once of his birth and his baptism. It was usually kept on the 6th of January.364  When the East adopted from the West the Christmas festival, Epiphany was restricted to the celebration of the baptism of Christ, and made one of the three great reasons for the administration of baptism.

In the West it was afterwards made a collective festival of several events in the life of Jesus, as the adoration of the Magi, the first miracle of Cana, and sometimes the feeding of the five thousand. It became more particularly the "feast of the three kings," that is, the wise men from the East, and was placed in special connexion with the mission to the heathen. The legend of the three kings (Caspar, Melchior, Baltazar) grew up gradually from the recorded gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which the Magi offered to the new-born King, of the Jews.365

Of the Christmas festival there is no clear trace before the fourth century; partly because the feast of the Epiphany in a measure held the place of it; partly because of birth of Christ, the date of which, at any rate, was uncertain, was less prominent in the Christian mind than his death and resurrection. It was of Western (Roman) origin, and found its way to the East after the middle of the fourth century for Chrysostom, in a Homily, which was probably preached Dec. 25, 386, speaks of the celebration of the separate day of the Nativity as having been recently introduced in Antioch.

§ 65. The Order of Public Worship.

The earliest description of the Christian worship is given us by a heathen, the younger Pliny, A.D. 109, in his well-known letter to Trajan, which embodies the result of his judicial investigations in Bithynia.366  According to this, the Christians assembled on an appointed day (Sunday) at sunrise, sang responsively a song to Christ as to God,367 and then pledged themselves by an oath (sacramentum) not to do any evil work, to commit no theft, robbery, nor adultery, not to break their word, nor sacrifice property intrusted to them. Afterwards (at evening) they assembled again, to eat ordinary and innocent food (the agape).

This account of a Roman official then bears witness to the primitive observance of Sunday, the separation of the love-feast from the morning worship (with the communion), and the worship of Christ as God in song.

Justin Martyr, at the close of his larger Apology,368 describes the public worship more particularly, as it was conducted about the year 140. After giving a full account of baptism and the holy Supper, to which we shall refer again, he continues:

"On Sunday369 a meeting of all, who live in the cities and villages, is held, and a section from the Memoirs of the Apostles (the Gospels) and the writings of the Prophets (the Old Testament) is read, as long as the time permits.370  When the reader has finished, the president,371 in a discourse, gives all exhortation372 to the imitation of these noble things. After this we all rise in common prayer.373  At the close of the prayer, as we have before described,374 bread and wine with water are brought. The president offers prayer and thanks for them, according to the power given him,375 and the congregation responds the Amen. Then the consecrated elements are distributed to each one, and partaken, and are carried by the deacons to the houses of the absent. The wealthy and the willing then give contributions according to their free will, and this collection is deposited with the president, who therewith supplies orphans and widows, poor and needy, prisoners and strangers, and takes care of all who are in want. We assemble in common on Sunday because this is the first day, on which God created the world and the light, and because Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples."

Here, reading of the Scriptures, preaching (and that as an episcopal function), prayer, and communion, plainly appear as the regular parts of the Sunday worship; all descending, no doubt, from the apostolic age. Song is not expressly mentioned here, but elsewhere.376  The communion is not yet clearly separated from the other parts of worship. But this was done towards the end of the second century.

The same parts of worship are mentioned in different places by Tertullian.377

The eighth book of the Apostolical Constitutions contains already an elaborate service with sundry liturgical prayers.378

§ 66. Parts of Worship.

1. The reading of Scripture lessons from the Old Testament with practical application and exhortation passed from the Jewish synagogue to the Christian church. The lessons from the New Testament came prominently into use as the Gospels and Epistles took the place of the oral instruction of the apostolic age. The reading of the Gospels is expressly mentioned by Justin Martyr, and the Apostolical Constitutions add the Epistles and the Acts.379  During the Pentecostal season the Acts of the Apostles furnished the lessons. But there was no uniform system of selection before the Nicene age. Besides the canonical Scripture, post-apostolic writings, as the Epistle of Clement of Rome, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Pastor of Hermas, were read in some congregations, and are found in important MSS. of the New Testament.380  The Acts of Martyrs were also read on the anniversary of their martyrdom.

2. The sermon381 was a familiar exposition of Scripture and exhortation to repentance and a holy life, and gradually assumed in the Greek church an artistic, rhetorical character. Preaching was at first free to every member who had the gift of public speaking, but was gradually confined as an exclusive privilege of the clergy, and especially the bishop. Origen was called upon to preach before his ordination, but this was even then rather an exception. The oldest known homily, now recovered in full (1875), is from an unknown Greek or Roman author of the middle of the second century, probably before A.D. 140 (formerly ascribed to Clement of Rome). He addresses the hearers as "brothers" and "sisters," and read from manuscript.382  The homily has no literary value, and betrays confusion and intellectual poverty, but is inspired by moral earnestness and triumphant faith. It closes with this doxology: "To the only God invisible, the Father of truth, who sent forth unto us the Saviour and Prince of immortality, through whom also He made manifest unto us the truth and the heavenly life, to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen."383

3. Prayer. This essential part of all worship passed likewise from the Jewish into the Christian service. The oldest prayers of post-apostolic times are the eucharistic thanksgivings in the Didache, and the intercession at the close of Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians, which seems to have been used in the Roman church.384 It is long and carefully composed, and largely interwoven with passages from the Old Testament. It begins with an elaborate invocation of God in antithetical sentences, contains intercession for the afflicted, the needy, the wanderers, and prisoners, petitions for the conversion of the heathen, a confession of sin and prayer for pardon (but without a formula of absolution), and closes with a prayer for unity and a doxology. Very touching is the prayer for rulers then so hostile to the Christians, that God may grant them health, peace, concord and stability. The document has a striking resemblance to portions of the ancient liturgies which begin to appear in the fourth century, but bear the names of Clement, James and Mark, and probably include some primitive elements.385

The last book of the Apostolical Constitutions contains the pseudo- or post-Clementine liturgy, with special prayers for believers, catechumens, the possessed, the penitent, and even for the dead, and a complete eucharistic service.386

The usual posture in prayer was standing with outstretched arms in Oriental fashion.

4. Song. The Church inherited the psalter from the synagogue, and has used it in all ages as an inexhaustible treasury of devotion. The psalter is truly catholic in its spirit and aim; it springs from the deep fountains of the human heart in its secret communion with God, and gives classic expression to the religious experience of all men in every age and tongue. This is the best proof of its inspiration. Nothing like it can be found in all the poetry of heathendom. The psalter was first enriched by the inspired hymns which saluted the birth of the Saviour of the world, the Magnificat of Mary, the Benedictus of Zacharias, the Gloria in Excelsis of the heavenly host, and the Nunc Dimittis of the aged Simeon. These hymns passed at once into the service of the Church, to resound through all successive centuries, as things of beauty which are "a joy forever." Traces of primitive Christian poems can be found throughout the Epistles and the Apocalypse. The angelic anthem (Luke 2:14) was expanded into the Gloria in Excelsis, first in the Greek church, in the third, if not the second, century, and afterwards in the Latin, and was used as the morning hymn.387  It is one of the classical forms of devotion, like the Latin Te Deum of later date. The evening hymn of the Greek church is less familiar and of inferior merit.

The following is a free translation:

"Hail! cheerful Light, of His pure glory poured,

Who is th’ Immortal Father, Heavenly, Blest,

Holiest of Holies—Jesus Christ our Lord!

Now are we come to the Sun’s hour of rest,

The lights of Evening round us shine,

We sing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Divine!

Worthiest art Thou at all times, to be sung

With undefiled tongue,

Son of our God, Giver of Life alone!

Therefore, in all the world, Thy glories, Lord, we own."388

An author towards the close of the second century389 could appeal against the Artemonites, to a multitude of hymns in proof of the faith of the church in the divinity of Christ: "How many psalms and odes of the Christians are there not, which have been written from the beginning by believers, and which, in their theology, praise Christ as the Logos of God?"  Tradition says, that the antiphonies, or responsive songs; were introduced by Ignatius of Antioch. The Gnostics, Valentine and Bardesanes also composed religious songs; and the church surely learned the practice not from them, but from the Old Testament psalms.

The oldest Christian poem preserved to us which can be traced to an individual author is from the pen of the profound Christian philosopher, Clement of Alexandria, who taught theology ill that city before A.D. 202. It is a sublime but somewhat turgid song of praise to the Logos, as the divine educator and leader of the human race, and though not intended and adapted for public worship, is remarkable for its spirit and antiquity.390

Notes.

I. The Prayer of the Roman Church from the newly recovered portion of the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, ch. 59–61 (in Bishop Lightfoot’s translation, St. Clement of Rome, Append. pp. 376–378):

"Grant unto us, Lord, that we may set our hope on Thy Name which is the primal source of all creation, and open the eyes of our hearts, that we may know Thee, who alone abidest Highest in the highest, Holy in the holy; who layest low the insolence of the proud: who scatterest the imaginings of nations; who settest the lowly on high, and bringest the lofty low; who makest rich and makest poor; who killest and makest alive; who alone art the Benefactor of spirits and the God of all flesh; who lookest into the abysses, who scannest the works of man; the Succor of them that are in peril, the Saviour of them that are in despair; the Creator and Overseer of every spirit; who multipliest the nations upon earth, and hast chosen out from all men those that love Thee through Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, through whom Thou didst instruct us, didst sanctify us, didst honor us. We beseech Thee, Lord and Master, to be our help and succor. Save those among us who are in tribulation; have mercy on the lowly; lift up the fallen; show Thyself unto the needy; heal the ungodly; convert the wanderers of Thy people; feed the hungry; release our prisoners; raise up the weak; comfort the faint-hearted. Let all the Gentiles know that Thou art God alone, and Jesus Christ is Thy Son, and we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pastures

"Thou through Thine operation didst make manifest the everlasting faithful of the world. Thou, Lord, didst create the earth. Thou art faithful throughout all generations, righteous in Thy judgments, marvellous in strength and excellence. Thou that art wise in creating and prudent in establishing that which Thou hast made, that art good in the things which are seen and faithful with them that trust on Thee, pitiful and compassionate, forgive us our iniquities and our unrighteousnesses and our transgressions and shortcomings. Lay not to our account every sin of Thy servants and Thine handmaids, but cleanse us with the cleansing of Thy truth, and guide our steps to walk in holiness and righteousness and singleness of heart, and to do such things as are good and well-pleasing in Thy sight and in the sight of our rulers. Yea Lord, make Thy face to shine upon us in peace for our good, that we may be sheltered by Thy mighty hand and delivered from every sin by Thine uplifted arm. And deliver up from them that hate us wrongfully. Give concord and peace to us and to all that dwell on the earth, as thou gavest to our fathers, when they called on Thee in faith and truth with holiness, that we may be saved, while we render obedience to Thine almighty and most excellent Name, and to our rulers and governors upon the earth.

"Thou, Lord and Master, hast given them the power of sovereignty through Thine excellent and unspeakable might, that we knowing the glory and honor which Thou hast given them may submit ourselves unto them, in nothing resisting Thy will. Grant unto them therefore, O Lord, health, peace, concord, stability, that they may administer the government which Thou hast given them without failure. For Thou, O heavenly Master, King of the ages, givest to the sons of men glory and honor and power over all things that are upon earth. Do Thou, Lord, direct their counsel according to that which is good and well pleasing in Thy sight, that, administering in peace and gentleness with godliness the power which Thou hast given them, they may obtain Thy favor. O Thou, who alone art able to do these things and things far more exceeding good than these for us, we praise Thee through the High-priest and Guardian of our souls, Jesus Christ, through whom be, the glory and the majesty unto Thee both now and for all generations and for ever and ever. Amen."

II. A literal translation of the poem of Clement of Alexandria in praise of Christ.

{Umno" tou' Swth'ro" cristouv . (Stomivon pwvlwn ajdavwn).

"Bridle of untamed colts,

O footsteps of Christ,

Wing of unwandering birds,

O heavenly way,

Sure Helm of babes,

Perennial Word,

Shepherd of royal lambs!

Endless age,

Assemble Thy simple children,

Eternal Light,

To praise holily,

Fount of mercy,

To hymn guilelessly

Performer of virtue.

With innocent mouths

Noble [is the] life of those

Christ, the guide of children.

Who praise God

O Christ Jesus,

O King of saints,

Heavenly milk

All-subduing Word

Of the sweet breasts

Of the most high Father,

Of the graces of the Bride,

Prince of wisdom,

Pressed out of Thy wisdom.

Support of sorrows,

That rejoicest in the ages,

Babes nourished

Jesus, Saviour

With tender mouths,

Of the human race,

Filled with dewy spirit

Shepherd, Husbandman,

Of the spiritual breast.

Helm, Bridle,

Let us sing together

Heavenly Wing,

Simple praises

Of the all holy flock,

True hymns

Fisher of men

To Christ [the] King,

Who are saved,

Holy reward

Catching the chaste fishes

For the doctrine of life.

With sweet life

Let us sing together,

From the hateful wave

Sing in simplicity

Of a sea of vices.

To the mighty Child.

O choir of peace,

Guide [us], Shepherd

The Christ begotten,

Of rational sheep;

O chaste people

Guide harmless children,

Let us praise together

O holy King.

The God of peace."

This poem was for sixteen centuries merely a hymnological curiosity, until an American Congregational minister, Dr. Henry Martyn Dexter, by a happy reproduction, in 1846, secured it a place in modern hymn-books. While preparing a sermon (as He. informs me) on "some prominent characteristics of the early Christians" (text, Deut. 32:7, "Remember the days of old"), he first wrote down an exact translation of the Greek hymn of Clement, and then reproduced and modernized it for the use of his congregation in connection with the sermon. It is well known that many Psalms of Israel have inspired some of the noblest Christian hymns. The 46th Psalm gave the key-note of Luther’s triumphant war-hymn of the Reformation: "Ein’ feste Burg." John Mason Neale dug from the dust of ages many a Greek and Latin hymn, to the edification of English churches, notably some portions of Bernard of Cluny’s De Contemptu Mundi, which runs through nearly three thousand dactylic hexameters, and furnished the material for "Brief life is here our portion."  "For thee, O dear, dear Country," and "Jerusalem the golden." We add Dexter’s hymn as a fair specimen of a useful transfusion and rejuvenation of an old poem.

1. Shepherd of tender youth,

None calls on Thee in vain;

Guiding in love and truth

Help Thou dost not disdain—

Through devious ways;

Help from above.

Christ, our triumphant King,

We come Thy name to sing;

4. Ever be Thou our Guide,

Hither our children bring

Our Shepherd and our Pride,

To shout Thy praise!

Our Staff and Song!

Jesus, Thou Christ of God

2. Thou art our Holy Lord,

By Thy perennial Word

The all-subduing Word,

Lead us where Thou hast trod,

Healer of strife!

Make our faith strong.

Thou didst Thyself abase,

That from sin’s deep disgrace

5. So now, and till we die,

Thou mightest save our race,

Sound we Thy praises high,

And give us life.

And joyful sing:

Infants, and the glad throng

3. Thou art the great High Priest;

Who to Thy church belong,

Thou hast prepared the feast

Unite to swell the song

Of heavenly lov

§ 67. Division of Divine Service. The Disciplina Arcani.

Richard Rothe: De Disciplinae Arcani, quae dicitur, in Ecclesia Christ. Origine. Heidelb. 1841; and his art. on the subject in the first ed. of Herzog (vol. I. 469–477).

C. A. Gerh. Von Zezschwitz: System der christl. kirchlichen Katechetik. Leipz. 1863, vol. I. p. 154–227. See also his art. in the second ed. of Herzog, I. 637–645 (abridged in Schaff’s "Rel. Enc.").

G. Nath. Bonwetsch (of Dorpat): Wesen, Entstehunq und Fortgang der Arkandisciplin, in Kahnis’ "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." 1873, pp. 203 sqq.

J. P. Lundy: Monumental Christianity. N. York, 1876, p. 62–86.

Comp. also A. W. Haddan in Smith & Cheetham, I. 564–566; Wandinger, in Wetzer & Welte, new ed. vol. I. (1882), 1234–1238. Older dissertations on the subject by Schelstrate (1678), Meier (1679), Tenzell (1863), Scholliner (1756), Lienhardt (1829), Toklot (1836), Frommann (1833), Siegel (1836, I. 506 sqq.).

The public service was divided from. the middle of the second century down to the close of the fifth, into the worship of the catechumens,391 and the worship of the faithful.392  The former consisted of scripture reading, preaching, prayer, and song, and was open to the unbaptized and persons under penance. The latter consisted of the holy communion, with its liturgical appendages; none but the proper members of the church could attend it; and before it began, all catechumens and unbelievers left the assembly at the order of the deacon,393 and the doors were closed or guarded.

The earliest witness for this strict separation is Tertullian, who reproaches the heretics with allowing the baptized and the unbaptized to attend the same prayers, and casting the holy even before the heathens.394  He demands, that believers, catechumens, and heathens should occupy separate places in public worship. The Alexandrian divines furnished a theoretical ground for this practice by their doctrine of a secret tradition for the esoteric. Besides the communion, the sacrament of baptism, with its accompanying confession, was likewise treated as a mystery for the initiated,395 and withdrawn from the view of Jews and heathens.

We have here the beginnings of the Christian mystery-worship, or what has been called since 1679 "the Secret Discipline," (Disciplina Arcani), which is presented in its full development in the liturgies of the fourth century, but disappeared from the Latin church after the sixth century, with the dissolution of heathenism and the universal introduction of infant baptism.

The Secret Discipline had reference chiefly to the celebration of the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, but included also the baptismal symbol, the Lord’s Prayer, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and other fathers make a distinction between lower or elementary (exoteric) and higher or deeper (esoteric) doctrines, and state that the latter are withheld from the uninitiated out of reverence and to avoid giving offence to the weak and the heathen. This mysterious reticence, however, does not justify the inference that the Secret Discipline included transubstantiation, purgatory, and other Roman dogmas which are not expressly taught in the writings of the fathers. The argument from silence is set aside by positive proof to the contrary.396  Modern Roman archaeologists have pressed the whole symbolism of the Catacombs into the service of the Secret Discipline, but without due regard to the age of those symbolical representations.

The origin of the Secret Discipline has been traced by some to the apostolic age, on the ground of the distinction made between "milk for babes" and "strong meat" for those "of full age," and between speaking to "carnal" and to "spiritual" hearers.397  But this distinction has no reference to public worship, and Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, addressed to a heathen emperor, describes the celebration of baptism and the eucharist without the least reserve. Others derive the institution from the sacerdotal and hierarchical spirit which appeared in the latter part of the second century, and which no doubt favored and strengthened it;398 still others, from the Greek and Roman mystery worship, which would best explain many expressions and formulas, together with all sorts of unscriptural pedantries connected with these mysteries.399  Yet the first motive must be sought rather in an opposition to heathenism; to wit, in the feeling of the necessity of guarding the sacred transactions of Christianity, the embodiment of its deepest truths, against profanation in the midst of a hostile world, according to Matt. 7:6; especially when after Hadrian, perhaps even from the time of Nero, those transactions came to be so shamefully misunderstood and slandered. To this must be added a proper regard for modesty and decency in the administration of adult baptism by immersion. Finally—and this is the chief cause—the institution of the order of catechumens led to a distinction of half-Christians and full-Christians, exoteric and esoteric, and this distinction gradually became established in the liturgy. The secret discipline was therefore a temporary, educational and liturgical expedient of the ante-Nicene age. The catechumenate and the division of the acts of worship grew together and declined to, together. With the disappearance of adult catechumens, or with the general use of infant baptism and the union of church and state, disappeared also the secret discipline in the sixth century: "cessante causa cessat effectus."

The Eastern church, however, has retained in her liturgies to this day the ancient form for the dismission of catechumens, the special prayers for them, the designation of the sacraments as "mysteries," and the partial celebration of the mass behind the veil; though she also has for centuries had no catechumens in the old sense of the word, that is, adult heathen or Jewish disciples preparing for baptism, except in rare cases of exception, or on missionary ground.

§ 68. Celebration of the Eucharist.

The celebration of the Eucharist or holy communion with appropriate prayers of the faithful was the culmination of Christian worship.400 Justin Martyr gives us the following description, which still bespeaks the primitive simplicity:401 "After the prayers [of the catechumen worship] we greet one another with the brotherly kiss. Then bread and a cup with water and wine are handed to the president (bishop) of the brethren. He receives them, and offers praise, glory, and thanks to the Father of all, through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit, for these his gifts. When he has ended the prayers and thanksgiving, the whole congregation responds: ’Amen.’ For ’Amen’ in the Hebrew tongue means: ’Be it so.’ Upon this the deacons, as we call them, give to each of those present some of the blessed bread,402 and of the wine mingled with water, and carry it to the absent in their dwellings. This food is called with us the eucharist, of which none can partake, but the believing and baptized, who live according to the commands of Christ. For we use these not as common bread and common drink; but like as Jesus Christ our Redeemer was made flesh through the word of God, and took upon him flesh and blood for our redemption; so we are taught, that the nourishment blessed by the word of prayer, by which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation (assimilation), is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus."

Then he relates the institution from the Gospels, and mentions the customary collections for the poor.

We are not warranted in carrying back to this period the full liturgical service, which we find prevailing with striking uniformity in essentials, though with many variations in minor points, in all quarters of the church in the Nicene age. A certain simplicity and freedom characterized the period before us. Even the so-called Clementine liturgy, in the eighth book of the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions, was probably not composed and written out in this form before the fourth century. There is no trace of written liturgies during the Diocletian persecution. But the germs (late from the second century. The oldest eucharistic prayers have recently come to light in the Didache ,which contains three thanksgivings, for the, cup, the broken and for all mercies. (chs. 9 and 10.)

From scattered statements of the ante-Nicene fathers we may gather the following view of the eucharistic service as it may have stood in the middle of the third century, if not earlier.

The communion was a regular and the most solemn part of the Sunday worship; or it was the worship of God in the stricter sense, in which none but full members of the church could engage. In many places and by many Christians it was celebrated even daily, after apostolic precedent, and according to the very common mystical interpretation of the fourth petition of the Lord’s prayer.403  The service began, after the dismission of the catechumens, with the kiss of peace, given by the men to men, and by the women to women, in token of mutual recognition as members of one redeemed family in the midst of a heartless and loveless world. It was based upon apostolic precedent, and is characteristic of the childlike simplicity, and love and joy of the early Christians.404  The service proper consisted of two principal acts: the oblation,405 or presenting of the offerings of the congregation by the deacons for the ordinance itself, and for the benefit of the clergy and the poor; and the communion, or partaking of the consecrated elements. In the oblation the congregation at the same time presented itself as a living thank-offering; as in the communion it appropriated anew in faith the sacrifice of Christ, and united itself anew with its Head. Both acts were accompanied and consecrated by prayer and songs of praise.

In the prayers we must distinguish, first, the general thanksgiving (the eucharist in the strictest sense of the word) for all the natural and spiritual gifts of God, commonly ending with the seraphic hymn, Isa. 6:3; secondly, the prayer of consecration, or the invocation of the Holy Spirit406 upon the people and the elements, usually accompanied by the recital of the words of institution and the Lord’s Prayer; and finally, the general intercessions for all classes, especially for the believers, on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the salvation of the world. The length and order of the prayers, however, were not uniform; nor the position of the Lord’s Prayer, which sometimes took the place of the prayer of consecration, being reserved for the prominent part of the service. Pope Gregory I. says that it "was the custom of the Apostles to consecrate the oblation only by the Lord’s Prayer." The congregation responded from time to time, according to the ancient Jewish and the apostolic usage, with an audible "Amen, "or "Kyrie eleison." The "Sursum corda," also, as an incitement to devotion, with the response, "Habemus ad Dominum," appears at least as early as Cyprian’s time, who expressly alludes to it, and in all the ancient liturgies. The prayers were spoken, not read from a book. But extemporaneous prayer naturally assumes a fixed form by constant repetition.

The elements were common or leavened bread407 (except among the Ebionites, who, like the later Roman church from the seventh century, used unleavened bread), and wine mingled with water. This mixing was a general custom in antiquity, but came now to have various mystical meanings attached to it. The elements were placed in the hands (not in the mouth) of each communicant by the clergy who were present, or, according to Justin, by the deacons alone, amid singing of psalms by the congregation (Psalm 34), with the words: "The body of Christ;" "The blood of Christ, the cup of life;" to each of which the recipient responded "Amen."408  The whole congregation thus received the elements, standing in the act.409  Thanksgiving and benediction concluded the celebration.

After the public service the deacons carried the consecrated elements to the sick and to the confessors in prison. Many took portions of the bread home with them, to use in the family at morning prayer. This domestic communion was practised particularly in North Africa, and furnishes the first example of a communio sub una specie. In the same country, in Cyprian’s time, we find the custom of infant communion (administered with wine alone), which was justified from John 6:53, and has continued in the Greek (and Russian) church to this day, though irreconcilable with the apostle’s requisition of a preparatory examination (1 Cor. 11:28).

At first the communion was joined with a love feast, and was then celebrated in the evening, in memory of the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. But so early as the beginning of the second century these two exercises were separated, and the communion was placed in the morning, the love feast in the evening, except on certain days of special observance.410  Tertullian gives a detailed description of the Agape in refutation of the shameless calumnies of the heathens.411  But the growth of the churches and the rise of manifold abuses led to the gradual disuse, and in the fourth century even to the formal prohibition of the Agape, which belonged in fact only to the childhood and first love of the church. It was a family feast, where rich and poor, master and slave met on the same footing, partaking of a simple meal, hearing reports from distant congregations, contributing to the necessities of suffering brethren, and encouraging each other in their daily duties and trials. Augustin describes his mother Monica as going to these feasts with a basket full of provisions and distributing them.

The communion service has undergone many changes in the course of time, but still substantially survives with all its primitive vitality and solemnity in all churches of Christendom,—a perpetual memorial of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and saving love to the human race. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are institutions which proclaim from day to day the historic Christ, and can never be superseded by contrivances of human ingenuity and wisdom.

§ 69. The Doctrine of the Eucharist.

Literature. See the works quoted, vol. I. 472, by Waterland (Episc. d. 1740), Döllinger (R. Cath., 1826; since 1870 Old Cath.), Ebrard (Calvinistic, 1845), Nevin (Calvinistic, 1846), Kahnis (Luth. 1851, but changed his view in his Dogmatik), E. B. Pusey (high Anglic., 1855), Rückert (Rationalistic, 1856), Vogan (high Anglic., 1871), Harrison (Evang. Angl., 1871), Stanley (Broad Church Episc., 1881), Gude (Lutheran, 1887).

On the Eucharistic doctrine of Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, there are also special treatises by Thiersch (1841), Semisch (1842), Engelhardt (1842), Baur (1839 and 1857), Steitz (1864), and others.

Höfling: Die Lehre der ältesten Kirche vom Opfer im Leben und Cultus der Christen. Erlangen, 1851.

Dean Stanley: The Eucharistic Sacrifice. In "Christian Institutions" (N. Y. 1881) p. 73 sqq.

The doctrine concerning the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, not coming into special discussion, remained indefinite and obscure. The ancient church made more account of the worthy participation of the ordinance than of the logical apprehension of it. She looked upon it as the holiest mystery of the Christian worship, and accordingly celebrated it with the deepest devotion, without inquiring into the mode of Christ’s presence, nor into the relation of the sensible signs to his flesh and blood. It is unhistorical to carry any of the later theories back into this age; although it has been done frequently in the apologetic and polemic discussion of this subject.

1. The Eucharist as a Sacrament.

The Didache of the Apostles contains eucharistic prayers, but no theory of the eucharist. Ignatius speaks of this sacrament in two passages, only by way of allusion, but in very strong, mystical terms, calling it the flesh of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, and the consecrated bread a medicine of immortality and an antidote of spiritual death.412  This view, closely connected with his high-churchly tendency in general, no doubt involves belief in the real presence, and ascribes to the holy Supper an effect on spirit and body at once, with reference to the future resurrection, but is still somewhat obscure, and rather an expression of elevated feeling than a logical definition.

The same may be said of Justin Martyr, when he compares the descent of Christ into the consecrated elements to his incarnation for our redemption. 413

Irenaeus says repeatedly, in combating the Gnostic Docetism,414 that broad and wine in the sacrament become, by the presence of the Word of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the body and blood of Christ and that the receiving of there strengthens soul and body (the germ of the resurrection body) unto eternal life. Yet this would hardly warrant our ascribing either transubstantiation or consubstantiation to Irenaeus. For in another place he calls the bread and wine, after consecration, "antitypes," implying the continued distinction of their substance from the body and blood of Christ.415  This expression in itself, indeed, might be understood as merely contrasting here the upper, as the substance, with the Old Testament passover, its type; as Peter calls baptism the antitype of the saving water of the flood.416  But the connection, and the usus loquendi of the earlier Greek fathers, require us to take the term antitype, a the sense of type, or, more precisely, as the antithesis of archetype. The broad and wine represent and exhibit the body and blood of Christ as the archetype, and correspond to them, as a copy to the original. In exactly the same sense it is said in Heb. 9:24—comp. 8:5—that the earthly sanctuary is the antitype, that is the copy, of the heavenly archetype. Other Greek fathers also, down to the fifth century, and especially the author of the Apostolical Constitutions, call the consecrated elements "antitypes" (sometimes, like Theodoretus, "types") of the body and blood of Christ.417

A different view, approaching nearer the Calvinistic or Reformed, we meet with among the African fathers. Tertullian makes the words of institution: Hoc est corpus meum, equivalent to: figura corporis mei, to prove, in opposition to Marcion’s docetism, the reality of the body of Jesus—a mere phantom being capable of no emblematic representation418  This involves, at all events, an essential distinction between the consecrated elements and the body and blood of Christ in the Supper. Yet Tertullian must not be understood as teaching a merely symbolical presence of Christ; for in other places he speaks, according to his general realistic turn, in almost materialistic language of an eating of the body of Christ, and extends the participation even to the body of the receiver.419  Cyprian likewise appears to favor a symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, yet not so clearly. The idea of the real presence would have much better suited his sacerdotal conception of the ministry. In the customary mixing of the wine with water he sees a type of the union of Christ with his church,420 and, on the authority of John 6:53, holds the communion of the Supper indispensable to salvation. The idea of a sacrifice comes out very boldly in Cyprian.

The Alexandrians are here, as usual, decidedly spiritualistic. Clement twice expressly calls the wine a symbol or an allegory of the blood of Christ, and says, that the communicant receives not the physical, but the spiritual blood, the life, of Christ; as, indeed, the blood is the life of the body. Origen distinguishes still more definitely the earthly elements from the heavenly bread of life, and makes it the whole design of the supper to feed the soul with the divine word.421  Applying his unsound allegorical method here, he makes the bread represent the Old Testament, the wine the New, and the breaking of the bread the multiplication of the divine word!  But these were rather private views for the initiated, and can hardly be taken as presenting the doctrine of the Alexandrian church.

We have, therefore, among the ante-Nicene fathers, three different views, an Oriental, a North-African, and an Alexandrian. The first view, that of Ignatius and Irenaeus, agrees most nearly with the mystical character of the celebration of the eucharist, and with the catholicizing features of the age.

2. The Eucharist as a Sacrifice.

This point is very important in relation to the doctrine, and still more important in relation to the cultus and life, of the ancient church. The Lord’s Supper was universally regarded not only as a sacrament, but also as a sacrifice,422 the true and eternal sacrifice of the new covenant, superseding all the provisional and typical sacrifices of the old; taking the place particularly of the passover, or the feast of the typical redemption from Egypt. This eucharistic sacrifice, however, the ante-Nicene fathers conceived not as an unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross, but simply as a commemoration and renewed appropriation of that atonement, and, above all, a thank-offering of the whole church for all the favors of God in creation and redemption. Hence the current name itself—eucharist; which denoted in the first place the prayer of thanksgiving, but afterwards the whole rite.423

The consecrated elements were regarded in a twofold light, as representing at once the natural and the spiritual gifts of God, which culminated in the self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Hence the eucharistic prayer, like that connected with the typical passover, related at the same time to creation and redemption, which were the more closely joined in the mind of the church for their dualistic separation by the Gnostics. The earthly gifts of broad and wine were taken as types and pledges of the heavenly gifts of the same God, who has both created and redeemed the world.

Upon this followed the idea of the self-sacrifice of the worshipper himself, the sacrifice of renewed self-consecration to Christ in return for his sacrifice on the cross, and also the sacrifice of charity to the poor. Down to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the eucharistic elements were presented as a thank-offering by the members of the congregation themselves, and the remnants went to the clergy and he poor. In these gifts the people yielded themselves as a priestly race and a living thank-offering to God, to whom they owed all the blessings alike of providence and of grace. In later times the priest alone offered the sacrifice. But even the Roman Missal retains a recollection of the ancient custom in the plural form, "We offer," and in the sentence: "All you, both brethren and sisters, pray that my sacrifice and your sacrifice, which is equally yours as well as mine, may be meat for the Lord."

This subjective offering of the whole congregation on the ground of the objective atoning sacrifice of Christ is the real centre of the ancient Christian worship, and particularly of the communion. It thus differed both from the later Catholic mass, which has changed the thank-offering into a sin-offering, the congregational offering into a priest offering; and from the common Protestant cultus, which, in opposition to the Roman mass, has almost entirely banished the idea of sacrifice from the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, except in the customary offerings for the poor.

The writers of the second century keep strictly within the limits of the notion of a congregational thank-offering. Thus Justin says expressly, prayers and thanksgivings alone are the true and acceptable sacrifices, which the Christians offer. Irenaeus has been brought as a witness for the Roman doctrine, only on the ground of a false reading.424 The African fathers, in the third century, who elsewhere incline to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this point the later Roman Catholic idea of a sin-offering; especially Cyprian, the steadfast advocate of priesthood and of episcopal authority.425  The ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar, are intimately connected, and a Judaizing or paganizing conception of one must extend to all.

§ 70. The Celebration of Baptism.

The Lit. see in vol. I. § 54, p. 465 sq., especially Wall and Höfling. On the archaeology of baptism see Bingham’s Antiquities, Augusti’s Denkwürdigkeiten, the first vol. of Binterim, and the art. Baptism in Smith and Cheetham, I. 155–172. Also Schaff, on the Didache (1885), p. 29–56. For pictorial illustrations see the monumental works of Cav. de Rossi, Garrucci, Roller, on the catacombs, and Schaff, l.c.

The "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ch. 7,) enjoins baptism, after catechetical instruction, in these words: "Baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost in living (running) water. But if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. But if thou hast neither, pour water upon the head thrice, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Justin Martyr gives the following account of baptism:426  "Those who are convinced of the truth of our doctrine, and have promised to live according to it, are exhorted to prayer, fasting and repentance for past sins; we praying and fasting with them. Then they are led by its to a place where is water, and in this way they are regenerated, as we also have been regenerated; that is, they receive the water-bath in the name of God, the Father and Ruler of all, and of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost. For Christ says: Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. (John 3:5)  Thus, from children of necessity and ignorance, we become children of choice and of wisdom, and partakers of the forgiveness of former sins .... The baptismal bath is called also illumination (fwtismov") because those who receive it are enlightened in the understanding."

This account may be completed by the following particulars from Tertullian and later writers.

Before the act the candidate was required in a solemn vow to renounce the service of the devil, that is, all evil,427 give himself to Christ, and confess the sum of the apostolic faith in God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit.428  The Apostles’ Creed, therefore, is properly the baptismal symbol, as it grew, in fact, out of the baptismal formula.

This act of turning front sin and turning to God, or of repentance and faith, on the part of the candidate, was followed by an appropriate prayer of the minister, and then by the baptism itself into the triune name, with three successive immersions in which the deacons and deaconesses assisted. The immersion in thrice dipping the head of the candidate who stood nude in the water.429  Single immersion seems to have been introduced by Eunomius about 360, but was condemned on pain of degradation, yet it reappeared afterwards in Spain, and Pope Gregory I. declared both forms valid, the trine immersion as setting forth the Trinity, the single immersion the Unity of the Godhead.430  The Eastern church, however, still adheres strictly to the trine immersion.431  Baptism by pouring water from a shell or vessel or from the hand on the head of the candidate very early occurs also and was probably considered equivalent to immersion.432  The Didache allows pouring in cases of scarcity of water. But afterwards this mode was applied only to infirm or sick persons; hence called clinical baptism.433  The validity of this baptism was even doubted by many in the third century; and Cyprian wrote in its defence, taking the ground that the mode of application of water was a matter of minor importance, provided that faith was present in the recipient and ministrant.434  According to ecclesiastical law clinical baptism at least incapacitated for the clerical office.435  Yet the Roman bishop Fabian ordained Novatian a presbyter, though he had been baptized on a sickbed by aspersion.436

Thanksgiving, benediction, and the brotherly kiss concluded the sacred ceremony.

Besides these essential elements of the baptismal rite, we find, so early as the third century, several other subordinate usages, which have indeed a beautiful symbolical meaning, but, like all redundancies, could easily obscure the original simplicity of this sacrament, as it appears in Justin Martyr’s description. Among these appendages are the signing of the cross on the forehead and breast of the subject, as a soldier of Christ under the banner of the cross; giving him milk and honey (also salt) in token of sonship with God, and citizenship in the heavenly Canaan; also the unction of the head, the lighted taper, and the white robe.

Exorcism, or the expulsion of the devil, which is not to be confounded with the essential formula of renunciation, was probably practised at first only in special cases, as of demoniacal possession. But after the council of Carthage, A.D. 256, we find it a regular part of the ceremony of baptism, preceding the baptism proper, and in some eases, it would seem, several times repeated during the course of catechetical instruction. To understand fully this custom, we should remember that the early church derived the whole system of heathen idolatry, which it justly abhorred as one of the greatest crimes,437 from the agency of Satan. The heathen deities, although they had been eminent men during their lives, were, as to their animating principle, identified with demons—either fallen angels or their progeny. These demons, as we may infer from many passages of Justin, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and others, were believed to traverse the air, to wander over the earth, to deceive and torment the race, to take possession of men, to encourage sacrifices, to lurk in statues, to speak through the oracles, to direct the flights of birds, to work the illusions of enchantment and necromancy, to delude the senses by false miracles, to incite persecution against Christianity, and, in fact, to sustain the whole fabric of heathenism with all its errors and vices. But even these evil spirits were Subject to the powerful name of Jesus. Tertullian openly challenges the pagan adversaries to bring demoniacs before the tribunals, and affirms that the spirits which possessed them, would bear witness to the truth of Christianity.

The institution of sponsors,438, first mentioned by Tertullian, arose no doubt from infant baptism, and was designed to secure Christian training, without thereby excusing Christian parents from their duty.

Baptism might be administered at any time, but was commonly connected with Easter and Pentecost, and in the East with Epiphany also, to give it the greater solemnity. The favorite hour was midnight lit up by torches. The men were baptized first, the women afterwards. During the week following, the neophytes wore white garments as symbols of their purity.

Separate chapels for baptism, or baptisteries, occur first in the fourth century, and many of them still remain in Southern Europe. Baptism might be performed in any place, where, as Justin says, "water was." Yet Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions, require the element to be previously consecrated, that it may become the vehicle of the purifying energy of the Spirit. This corresponded to the consecration of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, and involved no transformation of the substance.

§ 71. The Doctrine of Baptism.

This ordinance was regarded in the ancient church as the sacrament of the new birth or regeneration, and as the solemn rite of initiation into the Christian Church, admitting to all her benefits and committing to all her obligations. It was supposed to be preceded, in the case of adults, by instruction on the part of the church, and by repentance and faith (i.e. conversion) on the part of the candidate, and to complete and seal the spiritual process of regeneration, the old man being buried, and the new man arising from the watery grave. Its effect consists in the forgiveness of sins and the communication of the Holy Spirit. Justin calls baptism "the water-bath for the forgiveness of sins and regeneration," and "the bath of conversion and the knowledge of God." It is often called also illumination, spiritual circumcision, anointing, sealing, gift of grace, symbol of redemption, death of sins, &c.439  Tertullian describes its effect thus: "When the soul comes to faith, and becomes transformed through regeneration by water and power from above, it discovers, after the veil of the old corruption is taken away, its whole light. It is received into the fellowship of the Holy Spirit; and the soul, which unites itself to the Holy Spirit, is followed by the body." He already leans towards the notion of a magical operation of the baptismal water. Yet the subjective condition of repentance and faith was universally required. Baptism was not only an act of God, but at the same time the most solemn surrender of man to God, a vow for life and death, to live henceforth only to Christ and his people. The keeping of this vow was the condition of continuance in the church; the breaking of it must be followed either by repentance or excommunication.

From John 3:5 and Mark 16:16, Tertullian and other fathers argued the necessity of baptism to salvation. Clement of Alexandria supposed, with the Roman Hermas and others, that even the saints of the Old Testament were baptized in Hades by Christ or the apostles. But exception was made in favor of the bloody baptism of martyrdom as compensating the want of baptism with water; and this would lead to the evangelical principle, that not the omission, but only the contempt of the sacrament is damning.440

The effect of baptism, however, was thought to extend only to sins committed before receiving it. Hence the frequent postponement of the sacrament,441 which Tertullian very earnestly recommends, though he censures it when accompanied with moral levity and presumption.442  Many, like Constantine the Great, put it off to the bed of sickness and of death. They preferred the risk of dying unbaptized to that of forfeiting forever the baptismal grace. Death-bed baptisms were then what death-bed repentances are now.

But then the question arose, how the forgiveness of sins committed after baptism could be obtained?  This is the starting point of the Roman doctrine of the sacrament of penance. Tertullian443 and Cyprian444 were the first to suggest that satisfaction must be made for such sins by self-imposed penitential exercises and good works) such as prayers and almsgiving. Tertullian held seven gross sins, which he denoted mortal sins, to be unpardonable after baptism, and to be left to the uncovenanted mercies of God; but the Catholic church took a milder view, and even received back the adulterers and apostates on their public repentance.

Notes

In reviewing the patristic doctrine of baptism which was sanctioned by the Greek and Roman, and, with some important modifications, also by the Lutheran and Anglican churches, we should remember that during the first three centuries, and even in the age of Constantine, adult baptism was the rule, and that the actual conversion of the candidate was required as a condition before administering the sacrament (as is still the case on missionary ground). Hence in preceding catechetical instruction, the renunciation of the devil, and the profession of faith. But when the same high view is applied without qualification to infant baptism, we are confronted at once with the difficulty that infants cannot comply with this condition. They may be regenerated (this being an act of God), but they cannot be converted, i.e. they cannot repent and believe, nor do they need repentance, having not yet committed any actual transgression. Infant baptism is an act of consecration, and looks to subsequent instruction and personal conversion, as a condition to full membership of the church. Hence confirmation came in as a supplement to infant baptism.

The strict Roman Catholic dogma, first clearly enunciated by St. Augustin though with reluctant heart and in the mildest form, assigns all unbaptized infants to hell on the round of Adam’s sin and the absolute necessity of baptism for salvation. A dogma horribile, but falsum. Christ, who is the truth, blessed unbaptized infants, and declared: "To such belongs again kingdom of heaven. The Augsburg Confession (Art. IX.) still teaches against the Anabaptists: quod baptismus sit necessarius ad salutem," but the leading Lutheran divines reduce the absolute necessity of baptism to a relative or ordinary necessity; and the Reformed churches, under the influence of Calvin’s teaching went further by making salvation depend upon divine election, not upon the sacrament, and now generally hold to the salvation of all infants dying in infancy. The Second Scotch Confession (A.D. 1580) was the first to declare its abhorrence of "the cruel [popish] judgment against infants departing without the sacrament," and the doctrine of "the absolute necessity of baptism."

§ 72. Catechetical Instruction and Confirmation.

Literature.

I. Cyril (Kurivllo") of Jerusalem (315–386):  Eighteen Catechetical Lectures, addressed to Catechumens (Kathchvsei" fwtizomevnwn), and Five Mystigogical Lectures, addressed to the newly baptized. Best ed. byTouttée, § 1720, reprinted in Migne’s Patrol. Gr. vol. 33.

Augustin (d. 430): De Catechizandis Rudibus.

II. Bingham: Antiquities, X. 2.

Zezschwitz (Tüb.): System der christl. Kirchl. Katechetik. Leipzig, vol. I. 1863; vol. II. in 2 Parts, 1869 and 1872.

Joh. Mayer (R.C.): Geschichte des Katechumenats, and der Katechese, in den ersten sechs Jahrh. Kempten, 1866.

A. Weiss (R.C.): Die altkirchliche Pädagogik dargestelit in Katecumenat und Katechese der ersten sechs Jahrh. Freiburg, 1869.

Fr. X. Funk (R. C): Die Katechumenats-classen des christl. Alterthums, in the Tübing. "Theol. Quartalschrift," Tüb. 1883, p. 41–77.

1. The catechumenate or preparation for baptism was a very important institution of the early church. It dates substantially from apostolic times. Theophilus was "instructed" in the main facts of the gospel history; and Apollos was "instructed" in the way of the Lord.445  As the church was set in the midst of a heathen world, and addressed herself in her missionary preaching in the first instance to the adult generation, she saw the necessity of preparing the susceptible for baptism by special instruction under teachers called "catechists," who were generally presbyters and deacons.446  The catechumenate preceded baptism (of adults); whereas, at a later period, after the general introduction of infant baptism, it followed. It was, on the one hand, a bulwark of the church against unworthy members; on the other, a bridge from the world to the church, a Christian novitiate, to lead beginners forward to maturity. The catechumens or hearers447 were regarded not as unbelievers, but as half-Christians, and were accordingly allowed to attend all the exercises of worship, except the celebration of the sacraments. They embraced people of all ranks, ages, and grades of culture, even philosophers, statesmen, and rhetoricians,—Justin, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, who all embraced Christianity in their adult years.

The Didache contains in the first six chapters, a high-toned moral catechism preparatory to baptism, based chiefly on the Sermon on the Mount.

There was but one or at most two classes of Catechumens. The usual division into three (or four) classes rests on confusion with the classes of Penitents.448

The catechetical school of Alexandria was particularly renowned for its highly learned character.

The duration of this catechetical instruction was fixed sometimes at two years449 sometimes at three,450 but might be shortened according to circumstances. Persons of decent moral character and general intelligence were admitted to baptism without delay. The Councils allow immediate admission in cases of sickness.

2. Confirmation451 was originally closely connected with baptism, as its positive complement, and was performed by the imposition of hands, and the anointing of several parts of the body with fragrant balsam-oil, the chrism, as it was called. These acts were the medium of the communication of the Holy Spirit, and of consecration to the spiritual priesthood. Later, however, it came to be separated from baptism, especially in the case of infants, and to be regarded as a sacrament by itself. Cyprian is the first to distinguish the baptism with water and the baptism with the Spirit as two sacraments; yet this term, sacrament, was used as yet very indefinitely, and applied to all sacred doctrines and rites.

The Western church, after the third century, restricted the power of confirmation to bishops, on the authority of Acts 8:17; they alone, as the successors of the apostles, being able to impart the Holy Ghost. The Greek church extended this function to priests and deacons. The Anglican church retains the Latin practice. Confirmation or some form of solemn reception into full communion on personal profession of faith, after proper instruction, was regarded as a necessary supplement to infant baptism, and afterwards as a special sacrament.

§ 73. Infant Baptism.

On Infant Baptism comp. Just. M.: Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. c. 43. IREN.: Adv. Haer. II. 22, § 4, compared with III. 17, § 1, and other passages. Tertul.: De Baptismo, c. 18. Cypr.: Epist. LIX. ad Fidum. Clem. Alex.: Paedag. III. 217. Orig.: Com. in Rom. V. Opp. IV. 565, and Homil. XIV. in Luc.

See Lit. in vol. I. 463sq., especially Wall. Comp. also W. R. Powers: Irenaeus and Infant Baptism, in the "Am. Presb. and Theol. Rev." N. Y. 1867, pp. 239–267.

While the church was still a missionary institution in the midst of a heathen world, infant baptism was overshadowed by the baptism of adult proselytes; as, in the following periods, upon the union of church and state, the order was reversed. At that time, too, there could, of course, be no such thing, even on the part of Christian parents, as a compulsory baptism, which dates from Justinian’s reign, and which inevitably leads to the profanation of the sacrament. Constantine sat among the fathers at the great Council of Nicaea, and gave legal effect to its decrees, and yet put off his baptism to his deathbed. The cases of Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustin, who had mothers of exemplary piety, and yet were not baptized before early manhood, show sufficiently that considerable freedom prevailed in this respect even in the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. Gregory of Nazianzum gives the advice to put off the baptism of children, where there is no danger of death, to their third year.452

At the same time it seems an almost certain fact, though by many disputed, that, with the baptism of converts, the optional baptism of the children of Christian parents in established congregations, comes down from the apostolic age.453  Pious parents would naturally feel a desire to consecrate their offspring from the very beginning to the service of the Redeemer, and find a precedent in the ordinance of circumcision. This desire would be strengthened in cases of sickness by the prevailing notion of the necessity of baptism for salvation. Among the fathers, Tertullian himself not excepted—for he combats only its expediency—there is not a single voice against the lawfulness and the apostolic origin of infant baptism. No time can be fixed at which it was first introduced. Tertullian suggests, that it was usually based on the invitation of Christ: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." The usage of sponsors, to which Tertullian himself bears witness, although he disapproves of it, and still more, the almost equally ancient abuse of infant communion, imply the existence of infant baptism. Heretics also practised it, and were not censured for it.

The apostolic fathers make, indeed, no mention of it. But their silence proves nothing; for they hardly touch upon baptism at all, except Hermas, and he declares it necessary to salvation, even for the patriarchs in Hades (therefore, as we may well infer, for children also). Justin Martyr expressly teaches the capacity of all men for spiritual circumcision by baptism; and his "all" can with the less propriety be limited, since he is here speaking to a Jew.454  He also says that many old men and women of sixty and seventy years of age have been from childhood disciples of Christ.455  Polycarp was eighty-six years a Christian, and must have been baptized in early youth. According to Irenaeus, his pupil and a faithful bearer of Johannean tradition, Christ passed through all the stages of life, to sanctify them all, and came to redeem, through himself, "all who through him are born again unto God, sucklings, children, boys, youths, and adults."456  This profound view seems to involve an acknowledgment not only of the idea of infant baptism, but also of the practice of it; for in the mind of Irenaeus and the ancient church baptism and regeneration were intimately connected and almost identified.457  In an infant, in fact, any regeneration but through baptism cannot be easily conceived. A moral and spiritual regeneration, as distinct from sacramental, would imply conversion, and this is a conscious act of the will, an exercise of repentance and faith, of which the infant is not capable.

In the churches of Egypt infant baptism must have been practised from the first. For, aside from some not very clear expressions of Clement of Alexandria, Origen distinctly derives it from the tradition of the apostles; and through his journeys in the East and West he was well acquainted with the practice of the church in his time.458

The only opponent of infant baptism among the fathers is the eccentric and schismatic Tertullian, of North Africa. He condemns the hastening of the innocent age to the forgiveness of sins, and intrusting it with divine gifts, while we would not commit to it earthly property.459  Whoever considers the solemnity of baptism, will shrink more from the receiving, than from the postponement of it. But the very manner of Tertullian’s opposition proves as much in favor of infant baptism as against it. He meets it not as an innovation, but as a prevalent custom; and he meets it not with exegetical nor historical arguments, but only with considerations of religious prudence. His opposition to it is founded on his view of the regenerating effect of baptism, and of the impossibility of having mortal sins forgiven in the church after baptism; this ordinance cannot be repeated, and washes out only the guilt contracted before its reception. On the same ground he advises healthy adults, especially the unmarried, to postpone this sacrament until they shall be no longer in danger of forfeiting forever the grace of baptism by committing adultery, murder, apostasy, or any other of the seven crimes which he calls mortal sins. On the same principle his advice applies only to healthy children, not to sickly ones, if we consider that he held baptism to be the indispensable condition of forgiveness of sins, and taught the doctrine of hereditary sin. With him this position resulted from moral earnestness, and a lively sense of the great solemnity of the baptismal vow. But many put off baptism to their death-bed, in moral levity and presumption, that they might sin as long as they could.

Tertullian’s opposition, moreover, had no influence, at least no theoretical influence, even in North Africa. His disciple Cyprian differed from him wholly. In his day it was no question, whether the children of Christian parents might and should be baptized—on this all were agreed,—but whether they might be baptized so early as the second or third day after birth, or, according to the precedent of the Jewish circumcision, on the eighth day. Cyprian, and a council of sixty-six bishops held at Carthage in 253 under his lead, decided for the earlier time, yet without condemning the delay.460  It was in a measure the same view of the almost magical effect of the baptismal water, and of its absolute necessity to salvation, which led Cyprian to hasten, and Tertullian to postpone the holy ordinance; one looking more at the beneficent effect of the sacrament in regard to past sins, the other at the danger of sins to come.

§ 74. Heretical Baptism.

On Heretical Baptism comp. Eusebius: H.E. VII. 3–5. Cyprian: Epist. LXX.-LXXVI. The Acts of the Councils of Carthage, A.D. 255 and 256, and the anonymous tract, De Rebaptismate, among Cyprian’s works, and in Routh’s Reliquiae Sacrae, vol. v. 283–328.

Hefele: Conciliengeschichte, I. 117–132 (second ed.).

G. E. Steitz: Ketzertaufe, in Herzog, rev. ed., VII. 652–661.

Heretical baptism was, in the third century, the subject of a violent controversy, important also for its bearing on the question of the authority of the Roman see.

Cyprian, whose Epistles afford the clearest information on this subject, followed Tertullian461 in rejecting baptism by heretics as an inoperative mock-baptism, and demanded that all heretics coming over to the Catholic church be baptized (he would not say re-baptized). His position here was due to his high-church exclusiveness and his horror of schism. As the one Catholic church is the sole repository of all grace, there can be no forgiveness of sins, no regeneration or communication of the Spirit, no salvation, and therefore no valid sacraments, out of her bosom. So far he had logical consistency on his side. But, on the other hand, he departed from the objective view of the church, as the Donatists afterwards did, in making the efficacy of the sacrament depend on the subjective holiness of the priest. "How can one consecrate water," he asks, "who is himself unholy, and has not the Holy Spirit?"  He was followed by the North African church, which, in several councils at Carthage in the years 255–6, rejected heretical baptism; and by the church of Asia Minor, which had already acted on this view, and now, in the person of the Cappadocian bishop Firmilian, a disciple and admirer of the great Origen, vigorously defended it against Rome, using language which is entirely inconsistent with the claims of the papacy.462

The Roman bishop Stephen (253–257) appeared for the opposite doctrine, on the ground of the ancient practice of his church.463  He offered no argument, but spoke with the consciousness of authority, and followed a catholic instinct. He laid chief stress on the objective nature of the sacrament, the virtue of which depended neither on the officiating priest, nor on the receiver, but solely on the institution of Christ. Hence he considered heretical baptism valid, provided only it was administered with intention to baptize and in the right form, to wit, in the name of the Trinity, or even of Christ alone; so that heretics coming into the church needed only confirmation or the ratification of baptism by the Holy Ghost. "Heresy," says he, "produces children and exposes them; and the church takes up the exposed children, and nourishes them as her own, though she herself has not brought them forth."

The doctrine of Cyprian was the more consistent from the hierarchical point of view; that of Stephen, from the sacramental. The former was more logical, the latter more practical and charitable. The one preserved the principle of the exclusiveness of the church; the other, that of the objective force of the sacrament, even to the borders of the opus operatum theory. Both were under the direction of the same churchly spirit, and the same hatred of heretics; but the Roman doctrine is after all a happy inconsistency of liberality, an inroad upon the principle of absolute exclusiveness, an involuntary concession, that baptism, and with it the remission of sin and regeneration, therefore salvation, are possible outside of Roman Catholicism.464

The controversy itself was conducted with great warmth. Stephen, though advocating the liberal view, showed the genuine papal arrogance and intolerance. He would not even admit to his presence the deputies of Cyprian, who brought him the decree of the African synod, and he called this bishop, who in every respect excelled Stephen, and whom the Roman church now venerates as one of her greatest saints, a false Christ and false apostle.465  He broke off all intercourse with the African church, as he had already with the Asiatic. But Cyprian and Firmilian, nothing daunted, vindicated with great boldness, the latter also with bitter vehemence, their different view, and continued in it to their death. The Alexandrian bishop Dionysius endeavored to reconcile the two parties, but with little success. The Valerian persecution, which soon ensued, and the martyrdom of Stephen (257) and of Cyprian (258), suppressed this internal discord.

In the course of the fourth century, however, the Roman theory gradually gained on the other, received the sanction of the oecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325, was adopted in North Africa during the Donatistic controversies, by a Synod of Carthage, 348, defended by the powerful dialectics of St. Augustin against the Donatists, and was afterwards confirmed by the Council of Trent with an anathema on the opposite view.

Note.

The Council of Trent declares (Sessio Sept., March 3, 1547, canon 4): "If any one says that the baptism, which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doth, is not true baptism: let him be anathema." The Greek church likewise forbids the repetition of baptism which has been performed in the name of the Holy Trinity, but requires trine immersion. See the Orthodox Conf. Quaest. CII. (in Schaff’s Creeds II. 376), and the Russian Catch. (II. 493), which says: "Baptism, is spiritual birth: a man is born but once, therefore he is also baptized but once." But the same Catechism declares "trine immersion" to be "most essential in the administration of baptism"(II. 491).

The Roman church, following the teaching of St. Augustin, bases upon the validity of heretical and schismatical baptism even a certain legal claim on all baptized persons, as virtually belonging to her communion, and a right to the forcible conversion of heretics under favorable circumstances.466 But as there may be some doubt about the orthodox form and intention of heretical baptism in the mind of the convert (e.g. if he be a Unitarian), the same church allows a conditional rebaptism with the formula: "If thou art not yet baptized, I baptize thee," etc.

Evangelical creeds put their recognition of Roman Catholic or any other Christian baptism not so much on the theory of the objective virtue of the sacrament, as on a more comprehensive and liberal conception of the church. Where Christ is, there is the church, and there are true ordinances. The Baptists alone, among Protestants, deny the validity of any other baptism but by immersion (in this respect resembling the Greek church), but are very far on that account from denying the Christian status of other denominations, since baptism with them is only a sign (not a means) of regeneration or conversion, which precedes the rite and is independent of it.

CHAPTER VI.

CHRISTIAN ART.

§ 75. Literature.

Comp. the Lit. on the Catacombs, ch. VII.

FR. Münter: Sinnbilder u. Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen. Altona, 1825.

Grüneisen: Ueber die Ursachen des Kunsthasses in den drei ersten Jahrhunderten. Stuttg. 1831.

Helmsdörfer: Christl. Kunstsymbolik u. Ikonographie. Frkf. 1839.

F. Piper: Mythologie u. Symbolik der christl. Kunst. 2 vols. Weimar, 1847–51. Ueber den christl. Bilderkreis. Berl. 1852 (p. 3–10). By the same: Einleitung in die monumentale Theologie. Gotha, 1867.

J. B. De Rossi (R.C.): De Christianis monumentis ijcquvn exhibentibus, in the third volume of Pitra’s "Spicilegium Solesmense." Paris, 1855. Also his great work on the Roman Catacombs (Roma Sotteranea, 1864–1867), and his Archaeol. "Bulletin" (Bulletino di Archeologia cristiana, since 1863).

A. Welby Pugin (architect and Prof. of Ecclis. Antiquities at Oscott, a convert to the R.C. Ch., d. 1852): Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume. Lond. 1844, 4

P. Raffaelle Garrucci (Jesuit): Storia delta Arte Cristiana nei primi otto secoli delta chiesa. Prato, 1872–’80, 6 vols. fol., with 500 magnificent plates and illustrations. A most important work, but intensely Romish. By the same: Il crocifisso graffito in casa dei Cesari. Rom. 1857.

Fr. Becker.: Die Darstellung Jesu Christi unter dem Bilde des Fisches auf den Monumenten der Kirche der Katakomben, erläutert. Breslau, 1866. The same: Das Spott-Crucifix der römischen Kaiserpaläste aus dem Anfang des dritten Jahrh. Breslau, 1866 (44 pp.). The same: Die Wand-und Deckengemälde der röm. Katakomben. Gera, 1876.

Abbé Jos. Al. Martigny: Diction. des Antiquités Chrétiennes. Paris, 1865, second ed., 1877. (With valuable illustrations).

F. X. Kraus (R.C.): Die christl. Kunst in ihren frühesten Anfängen. Leipzig, 1873 (219 pages and 53 woodcuts). Also several articles in his "Real-Encyklop. der. christl. Alterthümer," Freiburg i. B. 1880 sqq. (The cuts mostly from Martigny).

H. Achelis: Das Symbol d. Fisches u. d. Fischdemkmäler, Marb., 1888.

C. W. Bennett: Christian Archaeology, N. York, 1888.

§ 76. Origin of Christian Art.

Christianity owed its origin neither to art nor to science, and is altogether independent of both. But it penetrates and pervades them with its heaven-like nature, and inspires them with a higher and nobler aim. Art reaches its real perfection in worship, as an embodiment of devotion in beautiful forms, which afford a pure pleasure, and at the same time excite and promote devotional feeling. Poetry and music, the most free and spiritual arts, which present their ideals in word and tone, and lead immediately from the outward form to the spiritual substance, were an essential element of worship in Judaism, and passed thence, in the singing of psalms, into the Christian church.

Not so with the plastic arts of sculpture and painting, which employ grosser material—stone, wood, color—as the medium of representation, and, with a lower grade of culture, tend almost invariably to abuse when brought in contact with worship. Hence the strict prohibition of these arts by the Monotheistic religions. The Mohammedans follow in this respect the Jews; their mosques are as bare of images of living beings as the synagogues, and they abhor the image worship of Greek and Roman Christians as a species of idolatry.

The ante-Nicene church, inheriting the Mosaic decalogue, and engaged in deadly conflict with heathen idolatry, was at first averse to those arts. Moreover her humble condition, her contempt for all hypocritical show and earthly vanity, her enthusiasm for martyrdom, and her absorbing expectation of the speedy destruction of the world and establishment of the millennial kingdom, made her indifferent to the ornamental part of life. The rigorous Montanists, in this respect the forerunners of the Puritans, were most hostile to art. But even the highly cultivated Clement of Alexandria put the spiritual worship of God in sharp contrast to the pictorial representation of the divine. "The habit of daily view," he says, "lowers the dignity of the divine, which cannot be honored, but is only degraded, by sensible material."

Yet this aversion to art seems not to have extended to mere symbols such as we find even in the Old Testament, as the brazen serpent and the cherubim in the temple. At all events, after the middle or close of the second century we find the rude beginnings of Christian art in the form of significant symbols in the private and social life of the Christians, and afterwards in public worship. This is evident from Tertullian and other writers of the third century, and is abundantly confirmed by the Catacombs, although the age of their earliest pictorial remains is a matter of uncertainty and dispute.

The origin of these symbols must be found in the instinctive desire of the Christians to have visible tokens of religious truth, which might remind them continually of their Redeemer and their holy calling, and which would at the same time furnish them the best substitute for the signs of heathen idolatry. For every day they were surrounded by mythological figures, not only in temples and public places, but in private houses, on the walls, floors, goblets, seal-rings, and grave-stones. Innocent and natural as, this effort was, it could easily lead, in the less intelligent multitude, to confusion of the sign with the thing signified, and to many a superstition. Yet this result was the less apparent in the first three centuries, because in that period artistic works were mostly confined to the province of symbol and allegory.

From the private recesses of Christian homes and catacombs artistic representations of holy things passed into public churches ill the fourth century, but under protest which continued for a long time and gave rise to the violent image controversies which were not settled until the second Council of Nicaea (787), in favor of a limited image worship. The Spanish Council of Elvira (Granada) in 306 first raised such a protest, and prohibited (in the thirty-sixth canon) "pictures in the church (picturas in ecclessia), lest the objects of veneration and worship should be depicted on the walls." This sounds almost iconoclastic and puritanic; but in view of the numerous ancient pictures and sculptures in the catacombs, the prohibition must be probably understood as a temporary measure of expediency in that transition period.467

§ 77. The Cross and the Crucifix.

"Religion des Kreuzes, nur du verknüpfest in Einem Kranze Der Demuth und Kraft doppelte Palme zugleich."—(Schiller.).468

Comp. the works quoted in § 75, and the lists in Zöckler and Fulda.

Justus Lipsius (R.C., d. 1606, is Prof. at Louvain): De Cruce libri tres, ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles. Antw., 1595, and later editions.

Jac. Gretser (Jesuit): De Cruce Christi rebusque ad eam pertinentibus. Ingolst., 1598–1605, 3 vols. 4to; 3rd ed. revised, 1608; also in his Opera, Ratisb., 1734, Tom. I.-III.

Wm. Haslam: The Cross and the Serpent: being a brief History of the Triumph of the Cross. Oxford, 1849.

W. R. Alger: History of the Cross. Boston, 1858.

Gabr. De Mortillet: Le, Signe de la Croix avant le Christianisme. Paris, 1866.

A. Ch. A. Zestermann: Die bildliche Darstellung des Kreuzes und der Kreuzigung historisch entwickelt. Leipzig, 1867 and 1868.

J. Stockbauer (R.C.): Kunstgeschichte des Kreuzes. Schaffhausen, 1870.

O. Zöckler (Prof. in Greifswald): Das Kreuz Christi. Religionshistorische und kirchlich archaeologische Untersuchungen. Gütersloh, 1875 (484 pages, with a large list of works, pp. xiii.-xxiv.). English translation by M. G. Evans, Lond., 1878.

Ernst v. Bunsen: Das Symbol des Kreuzes bei alten Nationen und die Entstehung des Kreuzsymbols der christlichen Kirche. Berlin, 1876. (Full of hypotheses.)

Hermann Fulda: Das Kreuz und die Kreuzigung, Eine antiquarische Untersuchung. Breslau, 1878. Polemical against the received views since Lipsius,. See a full list of literature in Fulda, pp. 299–328.

E. Dobbert: Zur Enttehungsgeschichte des Kreuzes, Leipzig, 1880.

The oldest and dearest, but also the, most abused, of the primitive Christian symbols is the cross, the sign of redemption, sometimes alone, sometimes with the Alpha and Omega, sometimes with the anchor of hope or the palm of peace. Upon this arose, as early as the second century, the custom of making the sign of the cross469 on rising, bathing, going out, eating, in short, on engaging in any affairs of every-day life; a custom probably attended in many cases even in that age, with superstitious confidence in the magical virtue of this sign; hence Tertullian found it necessary to defend the Christians against the heathen charge of worshipping the cross (staurolatria).470

Cyprian and the Apostolical Constitutions mention the sign of the cross as a part of the baptismal rite, and Lactantius speaks of it as effective against the demons in the baptismal exorcism. Prudentius recommends it as a preservative against temptations and bad dreams. We find as frequently, particularly upon ornaments and tombs, the monogram of the name of Christ, X P, usually combined in the cruciform character, either alone, or with the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, "the first and the last;" in later cases with the addition "In the sign."471  Soon after Constantine’s victory over Maxentius by the aid of the Labarum (312), crosses were seen on helmets, bucklers, standards, crowns, sceptres, coins and seals, in various forms.472

The cross was despised by the heathen Romans on account of the crucifixion, the disgraceful punishment of slaves and the worst criminals; but the Apologists reminded them of the unconscious recognition of the salutary sign in the form of their standards and triumphal symbols, and of the analogies in nature, as the form of man with the outstretched arm, the flying bird, and the sailing ship.473  Nor was the symbolical use of the cross confined to the Christian church, but is found among the ancient Egyptians, the Buddhists in India, and the Mexicans before the conquest, and other heathen nations, both as a symbol of blessing and a symbol of curse.474

The cross and the Lord’s Prayer may be called the greatest martyrs in Christendom. Yet both the superstitious abuse and the puritanic protest bear a like testimony to the significance of the great fact of which it reminds us.

The crucifix, that is the sculptured or carved representation of our Saviour attached to the cross, is of much later date, and cannot be clearly traced beyond the middle of the sixth century. It is not mentioned by any writer of the Nicene and Chalcedonian age. One of the oldest known crucifixes, if not the very oldest, is found in a richly illuminated Syrian copy of the Gospels in Florence from the year 586.475  Gregory of Tours (d. 595) describes a crucifix in the church of St. Genesius, in Narbonne, which presented the crucified One almost entirely naked.476  But this gave offence, and was veiled, by order of the bishop, with a curtain, and only at times exposed to the people. The Venerable Bede relates that a crucifix, bearing on one side the Crucified, on the other the serpent lifted up by Moses, was brought from Rome to the British cloister of Weremouth in 686.477

Note.

The first symbol of the crucifixion was the cross alone; then followed the cross and the lamb—either the lamb with the cross on the head or shoulder, or the lamb fastened on the cross; then the figure of Christ in connection with the cross—either Christ holding it in his right hand (on the sarcophagus of Probus, d. 395), or Christ with the cross in the background (in the church of St. Pudentiana, built 398); at last Christ nailed to the cross.

An attempt has been made to trace the crucifixes back to the third or second century, in consequence of the discovery, in 1857, of a mock-crucifix on the wall in the ruins of the imperial palaces on the western declivity of the Palatine hill in Rome, which is preserved in the Museo Kircheriano. It shows the figure of a crucified man with the head of an ass or a horse, and a human figure kneeling before it, with the inscription: "Alexamenos worships his God."478  This figure was no doubt scratched on the wall by some heathen enemy to ridicule a Christian slave or page of the imperial household, or possibly even the emperor Alexander Severus (222–235), who, by his religious syncretism, exposed himself to sarcastic criticism. The date of the caricature is uncertain; but we know that in the second century the Christians, like the Jews before them, were charged with the worship of an ass, and that at that time there were already Christians in the imperial palace.479  After the third Century this silly charge disappears. Roman archaeologists (P. Garrucci, P. Mozzoni, and Martigny) infer from this mock-crucifix that crucifixes were in use among Christians already at the close of the second century, since the original precedes the caricature. But this conjecture is not supported by any evidence. The heathen Caecilius in Minucius Felix (ch. 10) expressly testifies the absence of Christian simulacra. As the oldest pictures of Christ, so far as we know, originated not among the orthodox Christians, but among the heretical and half heathenish Gnostics, so also the oldest known representation of the crucifix was a mock-picture from the hand of a heathen—an excellent illustration of the word of Paul that the preaching of Christ crucified is foolishness to the Greeks.

§ 78. Other Christian Symbols.

The following symbols, borrowed from the Scriptures, were frequently represented in the catacombs, and relate to the virtues and duties of the Christian life: The dove, with or without the olive branch, the type of simplicity and innocence;480 the ship, representing sometimes the church, as safely sailing through the flood of corruption, with reference to Noah’s ark, sometimes the individual soul on its voyage to the heavenly home under the conduct of the storm-controlling Saviour; the palm-branch, which the seer of the Apocalypse puts into the hands of the elect, as the sign of victory;481 the anchor, the figure of hope;482 the lyre, denoting festal joy and sweet harmony;483 the cock, an admonition to watchfulness, with reference to Peter’s fall;484 the hart which pants for the fresh water-brooks;485 and the vine which, with its branches and clusters, illustrates the union of the Christians with Christ according to the parable, and the richness and joyfulness of Christian life.486’

The phoenix, the symbol of rejuvenation and of the resurrection, is derived from the well-known heathen myth.487

§ 79  Historical and Allegorical Pictures

From these emblems there was but one step to iconographic representations. The Bible furnished rich material for historical, typical, and allegorical pictures, which are found in the catacombs and ancient monuments. Many of them (late from the third or even the second century.

The favorite pictures from the Old Testament are Adam and Eve, the rivers of Paradise, the ark of Noah, the sacrifice of Isaac, the passage through the Red Sea, the giving of the law, Moses smiting the rock, the deliverance of Jonah, Jonah naked under the gourd the translation of Elijah, Daniel in the lions’ den, the three children in the fiery furnace. Then we have scenes from the Gospels, and from apostolic and post-apostolic history, such as the adoration of the Magi, their meeting with Herod, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the healing of the paralytic, the changing water into wine, the miraculous feeding of five thousand, the ten virgins, the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry into Jerusalem, the Holy Supper, the portraits of St. Peter and St. Paul.488

The passion and crucifixion were never represented in the early monuments, except by the symbol of the cross.

Occasionally we find also mythological representations, as Psyche with wings, and playing with birds and flowers (an emblem of immortality), Hercules, Theseus, and especially Orpheus, who with his magic song quieted the storm and tamed the wild beasts.

Perhaps Gnosticism had a stimulating effect in art, as it had in theology. At all events the sects of the Carpocratians, the Basilideans, and the Manichaeans cherished art. Nationality also had something to do with this branch of life. The Italians are by nature art artistic people, and shaped their Christianity accordingly. Therefore Rome is preëminently the home of Christian art.

The earliest pictures in the catacombs are artistically the best, and show the influence of classic models in the beauty and grace of form. From the fourth century there is a rapid decline to rudeness and stiffness, and a transition to the Byzantine type.

Some writers489 have represented this primitive Christian art merely as pagan art in its decay, and even the Good Shepherd as a copy of Apollo or Hermes. But while the form is often an imitation, the spirit is altogether different, and the myths are understood as unconscious prophecies and types of Christian verities, as in the Sibylline books. The relation of Christian art to mythological art somewhat resembles the relation of biblical Greek to classical Greek. Christianity could not at once invent a new art any more than a new language, but it emancipated the old from the service of idolatry and immorality, filled it with a deeper meaning, and consecrated it to a higher aim.

The blending of classical reminiscences and Christian ideas is best embodied in the beautiful symbolic pictures of the Good Shepherd and of Orpheus.490

The former was the most favorite figure, not only in the Catacombs, but on articles of daily use, as rings, cups, and lamps. Nearly one hundred and fifty such pictures have come down to us. The Shepherd, an appropriate symbol of Christ, is usually represented as a handsome, beardless, gentle youth, in light costume, with a girdle and sandals, with the flute and pastoral staff, carrying a lamb on his shoulder, standing between two or more sheep that look confidently up to him. Sometimes he feeds a large flock on green pastures. If this was the popular conception of Christ, it stood in contrast with the contemporaneous theological idea of the homely appearance of the Saviour, and anticipated the post-Constantinian conception.

The picture of Orpheus is twice found in the cemetery of Domitilla, and once in that of Callistus. One on the ceiling in Domitilla, apparently from the second century, is especially rich: it represents the mysterious singer, seated in the centre on a piece of rock, playing on the lyre his enchanting melodies to wild and tame animals—the lion, the wolf, the serpent, the horse, the ram—at his feet—and the birds in the trees;491 around the central figure are several biblical scenes, Moses smiting the rock, David aiming the sling at Goliath (?), Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus. The heathen Orpheus, the reputed author of monotheistic hymns (the Orphica), the centre of so many mysteries, the fabulous charmer of all creation, appears here either as a symbol and type of Christ Himself,492 or rather, like the heathen Sibyl, an antitype and unconscious prophet of Christ, announcing and foreshadowing Him as the conqueror of all the forces of nature, as the harmonizer of all discords, and as ruler over life and death.

§ 80. Allegorical Representations of Christ.

Pictures of Christ came into use slowly and gradually, as the conceptions concerning his personal appearance changed. The Evangelists very wisely keep profound silence on the subject, and no ideal which human genius may devise, can do justice to Him who was God manifest in the flesh.

In the ante-Nicene age the strange notion prevailed that our Saviour, in the state of his humiliation, was homely, according to a literal interpretation of the Messianic prophecy: "He hath no form nor comeliness."493  This was the opinion of Justin Martyr,494 Tertullian,495 and even of the spiritualistic Alexandrian divines Clement,496 and Origen.497  A true and healthy feeling leads rather to the opposite view; for Jesus certainly had not the physiognomy of a sinner, and the heavenly purity and harmony of his soul must in some way have shone, through the veil of his flesh, as it certainly did on the Mount of Transfiguration. Physical deformity is incompatible with the Old Testament idea of the priesthood, how much more with the idea of the Messiah.

Those fathers, however, had the state of humiliation alone in their eye. The exalted Redeemer they themselves viewed as clothed with unfading beauty and glory, which was to pass from Him, the Head, to his church also, in her perfect millennial state.498  We have here, therefore, not an essential opposition made between holiness and beauty, but only a temporary separation. Nor did the ante-Nicene fathers mean to deny that Christ, even in the days of his humiliation, had a spiritual beauty which captivated susceptible souls. Thus Clement of Alexandria distinguishes between two kinds of beauty, the outward beauty of the flesh, which soon fades away, and the beauty of the soul, which consists in moral excellence and is permanent. "That the Lord Himself," he says, "was uncomely in aspect, the Spirit testifies by Isaiah: ’And we saw Him, and he had no form nor comeliness; but his form was mean, inferior to men.’ Yet who was more admirable than the Lord?  But it was not the beauty of the flesh visible to the eye, but the true beauty of both soul and body, which He exhibited, which in the former is beneficence; in the latter—that is, the flesh—immortality."499  Chrysostom went further: he understood Isaiah’s description to refer merely to the scenes of the passion, and took his idea of the personal appearance of Jesus from the forty-fifth Psalm, where he is represented as "fairer than the children of men." Jerome and Augustin had the same view, but there was at that time no authentic picture of Christ, and the imagination was left to its own imperfect attempts to set forth that human face divine which reflected the beauty of sinless holiness.

The first representations of Christ were purely allegorical. He appears now as a shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep,500 or carries the lost sheep on his shoulders;501 as a lamb, who bears the sin of the world;502 more rarely as a ram, with reference to the substituted victim in the history of Abraham and Isaac;503 frequently as a fisher.504  Clement of Alexandria, in his hymn, calls Christ the "Fisher of men that are saved, who with his sweet life catches the pure fish out of the hostile flood in the sea of iniquity."

The most favorite symbol seems to have been that of the fish. It was the double symbol of the Redeemer and the redeemed. The corresponding Greek Ichthys is a pregnant anagram, containing the initials of the words: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour."505  In some pictures the mysterious fish is swimming in the water with a plate of bread and a cup of wine on his back, with evident allusion to the Lord’s Supper. At the same time the fish represented the soul caught in the net of the great Fisher of men and his servants, with reference to Matt. 4:19; comp. 13:47. Tertullian connects the symbol with the water of baptism, saying:506  "We little fishes (pisciculi) are born by our Fish (secundum  jICqUS nostrum), Jesus Christ in water, and can thrive only by continuing in the water;" that is if we are faithful to our baptismal covenant, and preserve the grace there received. The pious fancy made the fish a symbol of the whole mystery of the Christian salvation. The anagrammatic or hieroglyphic use of the Greek Ichthys and the Latin Piscis-Christus belonged to the Disciplina Arcani, and was a testimony of the ancient church to the faith in Christ’s person as the Son of God, and his work as the Saviour of the world. The origin of this symbol must be traced beyond the middle of the second century, perhaps to Alexandria, where there was a strong love for mystic symbolism, both among the orthodox and the Gnostic heretics.507  It is familiarly mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian, and is found on ancient remains in the Roman catacombs, marked on the grave-stones, rings, lamps, vases, and wall-pictures508

The Ichthys-symbol went out of use before the middle of the fourth century, after which it is only found occasionally as a reminiscence of olden times.

Previous to the time of Constantine, we find no trace of an image of Christ, properly speaking, except among the Gnostic Carpocratians,509 and in the case of the heathen emperor Alexander Severus, who adorned his domestic chapel, as a sort of syncretistic Pantheon, with representatives of all religions.510  The above-mentioned idea of the uncomely personal appearance of Jesus, the entire silence of the Gospels about it, and the Old Testament prohibition of images, restrained the church from making either pictures or statues of Christ, until in the Nicene age a great change took place, though not without energetic and long-continued opposition. Eusebius gives us, from his own observation, the oldest report of a statue of Christ, which was said to have been erected by the woman with the issue of blood, together with her own statue, in memory of her cure, before her dwelling at Caesarea Philippi (Paneas).511  But the same historian, in a letter to the empress Constantia (the sister of Constantine and widow of Licinius), strongly protested against images of Christ, who had laid aside his earthly servant form, and whose heavenly glory transcends the conception and artistic skill of man.512

§ 81. Pictures of the Virgin Mary.

De Rossi: Imagines selectae Deiparae Virginis (Rome, 1863); Marriott: Catacombs (Lond. 1870, pp. 1–63); Martigny: Dict. sub "Vierge;" KRAUS: Die christl. Kunst (Leipz. 1873, p. 105); Northcote and Brownlow: Roma Sotter. (2nd ed. Lond. 1879, Pt. II. p. 133 sqq.); Withrow: Catacombs (N.Y. 1874, p. 30, 5 sqq.); Schultze: Die Marienbilder der altchristl. Kunst, and Die Katacomben (Leipz. 1882, p. 150 sqq.); Von Lehner: Die Marienverehrung in den 3 ersten Jahrh. (Stuttgart, 1881, p. 282 sqq.).

It was formerly supposed that no picture of the Virgin existed before the Council of Ephesus (431), which condemned Nestorius and sanctioned the theotokos, thereby giving solemn sanction and a strong impetus to the cultus of Mary. But several pictures are now traced, with a high degree of probability, to the third, if not the second century. From the first five centuries nearly fifty representations of Mary have so far been brought to the notice of scholars, most of them in connection with the infant Saviour.

The oldest is a fragmentary wall-picture in the cemetery of Priscilla: it presents Mary wearing a tunic and cloak, in sitting posture, and holding at her breast the child, who turns his face round to the beholder. Near her stands a young and beardless man (probably Joseph) clothed in the pallium, holding a book-roll in one hand, pointing to the star above with the other, and looking upon the mother and child with the expression of joy; between and above the figures is the star of Bethlehem; the whole represents the happiness of a family without the supernatural adornments of dogmatic reflection.513  In the same cemetery of Priscilla there are other frescos, representing (according to De Rossi and Garrucci) the annunciation by the angel, the adoration of the Magi, and the finding of the Lord in the temple. The adoration of the Magi (two or four, afterwards three) is a favorite part of the pictures of the holy family. In the oldest picture of that kind in the cemetery of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, Mary sits on a chair, holding the babe in her lap, and receiving the homage of two Magi, one on each side, presenting their gifts on a plate.514  In later pictures the manger, the ox and the ass, and the miraculous star are added to the scene.

The frequent pictures of a lady in praying attitude, with uplifted or outstretched arms (Orans or Orante), especially when found in company with the Good Shepherd, are explained by Roman Catholic archaeologists to mean the church or the blessed Virgin, or both combined, praying for sinners.515  But figures of praying men as well as women are abundant in the catacombs, and often represent the person buried in the adjacent tomb, whose names are sometimes given. No Ora pro nobis, no Ave Maria, no Theotokos or Deipara appears there. The pictures of the Orans are like those of other women, and show no traces of Mariolatry. Nearly all the representations in the catacombs keep within the limits of the gospel history. But after the fourth century, and in the degeneracy of art, Mary was pictured in elaborate mosaics, and on gilded glasses, as the crowned queen of heaven, seated on a throne, in bejewelled purple robes, and with a nimbus of glory, worshipped by angels and saints.

The noblest pictures of Mary, in ancient and modern times, endeavor to set forth that peculiar union of virgin purity and motherly tenderness which distinguish "the Wedded Maid and Virgin Mother" from ordinary women, and exert such a powerful charm upon the imagination and feelings of Christendom. No excesses of Mariolatry, sinful as they are, should blind us to the restraining and elevating effect of contemplating, with devout reverence,

"The ideal of all womanhood,

So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good,

So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure."

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHURCH IN THE CATACOMBS.

§ 82. Literature.

Comp. the works quoted in ch. VI., especially Garrucci (6 vols.), and the Table of Illustrations at the end of this volume.

I. Older works. By Bosio (Roma Sotterranea, Rom. 1632; abridged edition by P. Giovanni Severani da S. Severino, Rom. 1710, very rare); Boldetti (1720); Bottari (1737); D’AGINCOURT (1825); Röstell (1830); Marchi (1844); Maitland (The Church in the Catacombs, Lond. 1847); Louis Perret (Catacombes de Rome, etc. Paris, 1853 sqq. 5 vols., with 325 splendid plates, but with a text that is of little value, and superseded).

II. More recent works.

*Giovanni Battista de Rossi (the chief authority on the Catacombs): La Roma Sotterranea Cristiana descritta et illustrata, publ. by order of Pope Pio Nono, Roma (cromolitografia Pontificia), Tom. I. 1864, Tom. II. 1867, Tom. III. 1877, in 3 vols. fol. with two additional vols. of plates and inscriptions. A fourth volume is expected. Comp. his articles in the bimonthly "Bulletino di archeologia Cristiana," Rom. 1863 sqq., and several smaller essays. Roller calls De Rossi "le fouilleur le mieux qualifié fervent catholique, mais critique sérieux."

*J. Spencer Northcote (Canon of Birmingham) and W. R. Brownlow (Canon of Plymouth): Roma Sotteranea. London (Longmans, Green & Co., 1869; second edition, "rewritten and greatly enlarged," 1879, 2 vols. The first vol. contains the History, the second, Christian Art. This work gives the substance of the investigations of Commendatore De Rossi by his consent, together with a large number of chromo-lithographic plates and wood-engravings, with special reference to the cemetery of San Callisto. The vol. on Inscriptions is separate, see below.

F. X. Kraus (R.C.), Roma Sotterranea. Die Röm. Katakomben. Freiburg. i. B. (1873), second ed. 1879. Based upon De Rossi and the first ed. of Northcote & Brownlow.

D. de Richemont: Les catacombes de Rome. Paris, 1870.

Wharton B. Marriott, B.S.F.S.A. (Ch. of England): The Testimony of the Catacombs and of other Monuments of Christian Art from the second to the eighteenth century, concerning questions of Doctrine now disputed in the Church. London, 1870 (223 pages with illustrations). Discusses the monuments referring to the cultus of the Virgin Mary, the supremacy of the Pope, and the state after death.

F. Becker: Roms Altchristliche Cömeterien. Leipzig, 1874.

W. H. Withrow (Methodist): The Catacombs of Rome and their Testimony relative to Primitive Christianity. New York (Nelson & Phillips), 1874. Polemical against Romanism. The author says (Pref., p. 6): "The testimony of the catacombs exhibits, more strikingly than any other evidence, the immense contrast between primitive Christianity and modern Romanism."

John P. Lundy (Episc.): Monumental Christianity: or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church as Witnesses and Teachers of the one Catholic Faith and Practice. New York, 1876. New ed. enlarged, 1882, 453 pages, richly illustrated.

*John Henry Parker (Episc.): The Archaeology of Rome. Oxford and London, 1877. Parts ix. and x.: Tombs in and near Rome, and Sculpture; Part XII: The Catacombs. A standard work, with the best illustrations.

*Theophile Roller (Protest.): Les Catacombes de Rome. Histoire de l’art et des croyances religieuses pendant les premiers siècles du Christianisme. Paris, 1879–1881, 2 vols. fol, 720 pages text and 100 excellent plates en hétiogravure, and many illustrations and inscriptions. The author resided several years at Naples and Rome as Reformed pastor.

M. Armellini (R.C.): Le Catacombe Romane descritte. Roma, 1880 (A popular extract from De Rossi, 437 pages). By the same the more important work: Il Cimiterio di S. Agnese sulla via Nomentana. Rom. 1880.

Dean Stanley: The Roman Catacombs, in his "Christian Institutions." Lond. and N. York, 1881 (pp. 272–295).

Victor Schultze (Lutheran): Archaeologische Studien ueber altchristliche Monumente. Mit 26 Holzschnitten. Wien, 1880; Die Katakomben. Die altchristlichen Grabstätten. Ihre Geschichte und ihre Monumente (with 52 illustrations). Leipzig, 1882 (342 pages); Die Katakomben von San Gennaro dei Poveri in Neapel. Jena, 1877. Also the pamphlet: Der theolog. Ertrag der Katakombenforschung. Leipz. 1882 (30 pages). The last pamphlet is against Harnack’s review, who charged Schultze with overrating the gain of the catacomb-investigations (see the "Theol. Literaturzeitung," 1882.)

Bishop W. J. Kip: The Catacombs of Rome as illustrating the Church of the First Three Centuries. N. York, 1853, 6th ed., 1887(212pages).

K. Rönneke: Rom’s christliche Katakomben. Leipzig, 1886.

Comp. also Edmund Venables in Smith and Cheetham, I. 294–317; Heinrich Merz in Herzog, VII. 559–568; Theod. Mommsen on the Roman Catac. in "The Contemp. Review." vol. XVII. 160–175 (April to July, 1871); the relevant articles in the Archaeol. Dicts. of Martigny and Kraus, and the Archaeology of Bennett (1888).

III. Christian Inscriptions in the catacombs and other old monuments.

*Commendatore J. B. de Rossi: Inscriptiones Christiana Urbis Romae septimo seculo antiquiores. Romae, 1861 (XXIII. and 619 pages). Another vol. is expected. The chief work in this department. Many inscriptions also in his Roma Sott. and "Bulletino."

Edward Le Blant: Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule anterieures au VIIIme siècle. Paris, 1856 and 1865, 2 vols. By the same: Manuel d’Epigraphie chrétienne. Paris, 1869.

John McCaul: Christian Epitaphs of the First Six Centuries. Toronto, 1869. Greek and Latin, especially from Rome.

F. Becker: Die Inschriften der römischen Cömeterien. Leipzig, 1878.

*J. Spencer Northcote (R.C. Canon of Birmingham): Epitaphs of the Catacombs or Christian Inscriptions in Rome during the First Four Centuries. Lond., 1878 (196 pages).

G. T. Stokes on Greek and Latin Christian Inscriptions; two articles in the "Contemporary Review" for 1880 and 1881.

V. Schultze discusses the Inscriptions in the fifth section of his work Die Katakomben (1882), pp. 235–274, and gives the literature.

The Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum by Böckh, and Kirchhoff, and the Corpus Inscriptionium Lat, edited for the Berlin Academy by, Th. Mommsen and others, 1863 sqq. (not yet completed), contain also Christian Inscriptions. Prof. E. Hübner has added those of Spain (1871) and Britain (1873). G. Petrie has collected the Christian Inscriptions in the Irish language, ed. by Stokes. Dublin, 1870 sqq. Comp. the art. "Inscriptions," in Smith and Cheetham, I. 841.

§ 83. Origin and History of the Catacomb.

The Catacombs of Rome and other cities open a new chapter of Church history, which has recently been dug up from the bowels of the earth. Their discovery was a revelation to the world as instructive and important as the discovery of the long lost cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and of Nineveh and Babylon. Eusebius says nothing about them; the ancient Fathers scarcely allude to them, except Jerome and Prudentius, and even they give us no idea of their extent and importance. Hence the historians till quite recently have passed them by in silence.516  But since the great discoveries of Commendatore De Rossi and other archaeologists they can no longer be ignored. They confirm, illustrate, and supplement our previous knowledge derived from the more important literary remains.

The name of the Catacombs is of uncertain origin, but is equivalent to subterranean cemeteries or resting-places for the dead.517  First used of the Christian cemeteries in the neighborhood of Rome, it was afterwards applied to those of Naples, Malta, Sicily, Alexandria, Paris, and other cities.

It was formerly supposed that the Roman Catacombs were originally sand-pits (arenariae) or stone-quarries (lapidicinae), excavated by the heathen for building material, and occasionally used as receptacles for the vilest corpses of slaves and criminals.518  But this view is now abandoned on account of the difference of construction and of the soil. A few of the catacombs, however, about five out of thirty, are more or less closely connected with abandoned sand-pits.519

The catacombs, therefore, with a few exceptions, are of Christian origin, and were excavated for the express purpose of Christian burial. Their enormous extent, and the mixture of heathen with Christian symbols and inscriptions, might suggest that they were used by heathen also; but this is excluded by the fact of the mutual aversion of Christians and idolaters to associate in life and in death. The mythological features are few, and adapted to Christian ideas.520

Another erroneous opinion, once generally entertained, regarded the catacombs as places of refuge from heathen persecution. But the immense labor required could not have escaped the attention of the police. They were, on the contrary, the result of toleration. The Roman government, although (like all despotic governments) jealous of secret societies, was quite liberal towards the burial clubs, mostly of the poorer classes, or associations for securing, by regular contributions, decent interment with religious ceremonies.521  Only the worst criminals, traitors, suicides, and those struck down by lightning (touched by the gods) were left unburied. The pious care of the dead is an instinct of human nature, and is found among all nations. Death is a mighty leveler of distinctions and preacher of toleration and charity; even despots bow before it, and are reminded of their own vanity; even hard hearts are moved by it to pity and to tears. "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum."

The Christians enjoyed probably from the beginning the privilege of common cemeteries, like the Jews, even without an express enactment. Galienus restored them after their temporary confiscation during the persecution of Valerian (260).522

Being mostly of Jewish and Oriental descent, the Roman Christians naturally followed the Oriental custom of cutting their tombs in rocks, and constructing galleries. Hence the close resemblance of the Jewish and Christian cemeteries in Rome.523  The ancient Greeks and Romans under the empire were in the habit of burning the corpses (crematio) for sanitary reasons, but burial in the earth (humatio), outside of the city near the public roads, or on hills, or in natural grottos, was the older custom; the rich had their own sepulchres (sepulcra).

In their catacombs the Christians could assemble for worship and take refuge in times of persecution. Very rarely they were pursued in these silent retreats. Once only it is reported that the Christians were shut up by the heathen in a cemetery and smothered to death.

Most of the catacombs were constructed during the first three centuries, a few may be traced almost to the apostolic age.524  After Constantine, when the temporal condition of the Christians improved, and they could bury their dead without any disturbance in the open air, the cemeteries were located above ground, especially above the catacombs, and around the basilicas; or on other land purchased or donated for the purpose. Some catacombs owe their origin to individuals or private families, who granted the use of their own grounds for the burial of their brethren; others belonged to churches. The Christians wrote on the graves appropriate epitaphs and consoling thoughts, and painted on the walls their favorite symbols. At funerals they turned these dark and cheerless abodes into chapels; under the dim light of the terra-cotta lamps they committed dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and amidst the shadows of death they inhaled the breath of the resurrection and life everlasting. But it is an error to suppose that the catacombs served as the usual places of worship in times of persecution; for such a purpose they were entirely unfitted; even the largest could accommodate, at most, only twenty or thirty persons within convenient distance.525

The devotional use of the catacombs began in the Nicene age, and greatly stimulated the worship of martyrs and saints. When they ceased to be used for burial they became resorts of pious pilgrims. Little chapels were built for the celebration of the memory of the martyrs. St. Jerome relates,526 how, while a school-boy, about A.D. 350, he used to go with his companions every Sunday to the graves of the apostles and martyrs in the crypts at Rome, "where in subterranean depths the visitor passes to and fro between the bodies of the entombed on both walls, and where all is so dark, that the prophecy here finds its fulfillment: The living go down into Hades.527  Here and there a ray from above, not falling in through a window, but only pressing in through a crevice, softens the gloom; as you go onward, it fades away, and in the darkness of night which surrounds you, that verse of Virgil comes to your mind:

"Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent."528

The poet Prudentius also, in the beginning of the fifth century, several times speaks of these burial places, and the devotions held within them.529

Pope Damasus (366–384) showed his zeal in repairing and decorating the catacombs, and erecting new stair-cases for the convenience of pilgrims. His successors kept up the interest, but by repeated repairs introduced great confusion into the chronology of the works of art.

The barbarian invasions of Alaric (410), Genseric (455), Ricimer (472), Vitiges (537), Totila (546), and the Lombards (754), turned Rome into a heap of ruins and destroyed many valuable treasures of classical and Christian antiquity. But the pious barbarism of relic hunters did much greater damage. The tombs of real and imaginary saints were rifled, and cartloads of dead men’s bones were translated to the Pantheon and churches and chapels for more convenient worship. In this way the catacombs gradually lost all interest, and passed into decay and complete oblivion for more than six centuries.

In the sixteenth century the catacombs were rediscovered, and opened an interesting field for antiquarian research. The first discovery was made May 31, 1578, by some laborers in a vineyard on the Via Salaria, who were digging pozzolana, and came on an old subterranean cemetery, ornamented with Christian paintings, Greek and Latin inscriptions and sculptured sarcophagi. "In that day," says De Rossi, "was born the name and the knowledge of Roma Sotterranea." One of the first and principal explorers was Antonio Bosio, "the Columbus of this subterranean world." His researches were published after his death (Roma, 1632). Filippo Neri, Carlo Borromeo, and other restorers of Romanism spent, like St. Jerome of old, whole nights in prayer amid these ruins of the age of martyrs. But Protestant divines discredited these discoveries as inventions of Romish divines seeking in heathen sand-pits for Christian saints who never lived, and Christian martyrs who never died.530

In the present century the discovery and investigation of the catacombs has taken a new start, and is now an important department of Christian archaeology. The dogmatic and sectarian treatment has given way to a scientific method with the sole aim to ascertain the truth. The acknowledged pioneer in this subterranean region of ancient church history is the Cavalier John Baptist de Rossi, a devout, yet liberal Roman Catholic. His monumental Italian work (Roma Sotterranea, 1864–1877) has been made accessible in judicious condensations to French, German, and English readers by Allard (1871), Kraus (1873 and 1879), Northcote & Brownlow (1869 and 1879). Other writers, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, are constantly adding to our stores of information. Great progress has been made in the chronology and the interpretation of the pictures in the catacombs.

And yet the work is only begun. More than one half of ancient Christian cemeteries are waiting for future exploration. De Rossi treats chiefly of one group of Roman catacombs, that of Callistus. The catacombs in Naples, Syracuse, Girgenti, Melos, Alexandria, Cyrene, are very imperfectly known; still others in the ancient apostolic churches may yet be discovered, and furnish results as important for church history as the discoveries of Ilium, Mycenae, and Olympia for that of classical Greece.

§ 84. Description of the Catacombs.

The Roman catacombs are long and narrow passages or galleries and cross-galleries excavated in the bowels of the earth in the hills outside and around the city, for the burial of the dead. They are dark and gloomy, with only an occasional ray of light from above. The galleries have two or more stories, all filled with tombs, and form an intricate net-work or subterranean labyrinth. Small compartments (loculi) were cut out like shelves in the perpendicular walls for the reception of the dead, and rectangular chambers (cubicula) for families, or distinguished martyrs. They were closed with a slab of marble or tile. The more wealthy were laid in sarcophagi. The ceiling is flat, sometimes slightly arched. Space was economized so as to leave room usually only for a single person; the average width of the passages being 2½ to 3 feet. This economy may be traced to the poverty of the early Christians, and also to their strong sense of community in life and in death. The little oratories with altars and episcopal chairs cut in the tufa are probably of later construction, and could accommodate only a few persons at a time. They were suited for funeral services and private devotion, but not for public worship.

The galleries were originally small, but gradually extended to enormous length. Their combined extent is counted by hundreds of miles, and the number of graves by millions.531

The oldest and best known of the Roman cemeteries is that of St. Sebastian, originally called Ad Catacumbas, on the Appian road, a little over two miles south of the city walls. It was once, it is said, the temporary resting-place of the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul, before their removal to the basilicas named after them; also of forty-six bishops of Rome, and of a large number of martyrs.

The immense cemetery of Pope Callistus (218–223) on the Via Appia consisted originally of several small and independent burial grounds (called Lucinae, Zephyrini, Callisti, Hippoliti). It has been thoroughly investigated by De Rossi. The most ancient part is called after Lucina, and measures 100 Roman feet in breadth by 180 feet in length. The whole group bears the name of Callistus, probably because his predecessor, Zephyrinus "set him over the cemetery" (of the church of Rome).532  He was then a deacon. He stands high in the estimation of the Roman church, but the account given of him by Hippolytus is quite unfavorable. He was certainly a remarkable man, who rose from slavery to the highest dignity of the church.

The cemetery of Domitilla (named in the fourth century St. Petronillae, Nerei et Achillei) is on the Via Ardeatina, and its origin is traced back to Flavia Domitilla, grand-daughter or great-grand-daughter of Vespasian. She was banished by Domitian (about A.D. 95) to the island of Pontia "for professing Christ."533  Her chamberlains (eunuchi cubicularii), Nerus and Achilleus, according to an uncertain tradition, were baptized by St. Peter, suffered martyrdom, and were buried in a farm belonging to their mistress. In another part of this cemetery De Rossi discovered the broken columns of a subterranean chapel and a small chamber with a fresco on the wall, which represents an elderly matron named "Veneranda," and a young lady, called in the inscription "Petronilla martyr," and pointing to the Holy Scriptures in a chest by her side, as the proofs of her faith. The former apparently introduces the latter into Paradise.534  The name naturally suggests the legendary daughter of St. Peter.535  But Roman divines, reluctant to admit that the first pope had any children (though his marriage is beyond a doubt from the record of the Gospels), understand Petronilla to be a spiritual daughter, as Mark was a spiritual son, of the apostle (1 Pet. 5:13), and make her the daughter of some Roman Petronius or Petro connected with the family of Domitilla.

Other ancient catacombs are those of Pruetextatus, Priscilla (St. Silvestri and St. Marcelli), Basilla (S. Hermetis, Basillae, Proti, et Hyacinthi), Maximus, St. Hippolytus, St. Laurentius, St. Peter and Marcellinus, St. Agnes, and the Ostrianum (Ad Nymphas Petri, or Fons Petri, where Peter is said to have baptized from a natural well). De Rossi gives a list of forty-two greater or lesser cemeteries, including isolated tombs of martyrs, in and near Rome, which date from the first four centuries, and are mentioned in ancient records.536

The furniture of the catacombs is instructive and interesting, but most of it has been removed to churches and museums, and must be studied outside. Articles of ornament, rings, seals, bracelets, neck-laces, mirrors, tooth-picks, ear-picks, buckles, brooches, rare coins, innumerable lamps of clay (terra-cotta), or of bronze, even of silver and amber, all sorts of tools, and in the case of children a variety of playthings were inclosed with the dead. Many of these articles are carved with the monogram of Christ, or other Christian symbols. (The lamps in Jewish cemeteries bear generally a picture of the golden candlestick).

A great number of flasks and cups also, with or without ornamentation, are found, mostly outside of the graves, and fastened to the grave-lids. These were formerly supposed to have been receptacles for tears, or, from the red, dried sediment in them, for the blood of martyrs. But later archaeologists consider them drinking vessels used in the agapae and oblations. A superstitious habit prevailed in the fourth century, although condemned by a council of Carthage (397), to give to the dead the eucharistic wine, or to put a cup with the consecrated wine in the grave.537

The instruments of torture which the fertile imagination of credulous people had discovered, and which were made to prove that almost every Christian buried in the catacombs was a martyr, are simply implements of handicraft. The instinct of nature prompts the bereaved to deposit in the graves of their kindred and friends those things which were constantly used by them. The idea prevailed also to a large extent that the future life was a continuation of the occupations and amusements of the present, but free from sin and imperfection.

On opening the graves the skeleton appears frequently even now very well preserved, sometimes in dazzling whiteness, as covered with a glistening glory; but falls into dust at the touch.

§ 85. Pictures and Sculptures.

The most important remains of the catacombs are the pictures, sculptures, and epitaphs.

I. Pictures. These have already been described in the preceding chapter. They are painted al fresco on the wall and ceiling, and represent Christian symbols, scenes of Bible history, and allegorical conceptions of the Saviour. A few are in pure classic style, and betray an early origin when Greek art still flourished in Rome; but most of them belong to the period of decay. Prominence is given to pictures of the Good Shepherd, and those biblical stories which exhibit the conquest of faith and the hope of the resurrection. The mixed character of some of the Christian frescos may be explained partly from the employment of heathen artists by Christian patrons, partly from old reminiscences. The Etrurians and Greeks were in the habit of painting their tombs, and Christian Greeks early saw the value of pictorial language as a means of instruction. In technical skill the Christian art is inferior to the heathen, but its subjects are higher, and its meaning is deeper.

II. The works of sculpture are mostly found on sarcophagi. Many of them are collected in the Lateran Museum. Few of them date from the ante-Nicene age.538  They represent in relief the same subjects as the wall-pictures, as far as they could be worked in stone or marble, especially the resurrection of Lazarus, Daniel among the lions, Moses smiting the rock, the sacrifice of Isaac.

Among the oldest Christian sarcophagi are those of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine (d. 328), and of Constantia, his daughter (d. 354), both of red porphyry, and preserved in the Vatican Museum. The sculpture on the former probably represents the triumphal entry of Constantine into Rome after his victory over Maxentius; the sculpture on the latter, the cultivation of the vine, probably with a symbolical meaning.539

The richest and finest of all the Christian sarcophagi is that of Junius Bassus, Prefect of Rome, A.D. 359, and five times Consul, in the crypt of St. Peter’s in the Vatican.540  It was found in the Vatican cemetery (1595). It is made of Parian marble in Corinthian style. The subjects represented in the upper part are the sacrifice of Abraham, the capture of St. Peter, Christ seated between Peter and Paul, the capture of Christ, and Pilate washing his hands; in the lower part are the temptation of Adam and Eve, suffering Job, Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem, Daniel among the lions, and the capture of St. Paul.

§ 86. Epitaphs.

"Rudely written, but each letter

Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,

Full of all the tender pathos of the Here

and the Hereafter."

To perpetuate, by means of sepulchral inscriptions, the memory of relatives and friends, and to record the sentiments of love and esteem, of grief and hope, in the face of death and eternity, is a custom common to all civilized ages and nations. These epitaphs are limited by space, and often provoke rather than satisfy curiosity, but contain nevertheless in poetry or prose a vast amount of biographical and historical information. Many a grave-yard is a broken record of the church to which it belongs.

The Catacombs abound in such monumental inscriptions, Greek and Latin, or strangely mixed (Latin words in Greek characters), often rudely written, badly spelt, mutilated, and almost illegible, with and without symbolical figures. The classical languages were then in a process of decay, like classical eloquence and art, and the great majority of Christians were poor and illiterate people. One name only is given in the earlier epitaphs, sometimes the age, and the day of burial, but not the date of birth.

More than fifteen thousand epitaphs have been collected, classified, and explained by De Rossi from the first six centuries in Rome alone, and their number is constantly increasing. Benedict XIV. founded, in 1750, a Christian Museum, and devoted a hill in the Vatican to the collection of ancient sarcophagi. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. patronized it. In this Lapidarian Gallery the costly pagan and the simple Christian inscriptions and sarcophagi confront each other on opposite walls, and present a striking contrast. Another important collection is in the Kircherian Museum, in the Roman College, another in the Christian Museum of the University of Berlin.541  The entire field of ancient epigraphy, heathen and Christian in Italy and other countries, has been made accessible by the industry and learning of Gruter, Muratori, Marchi, De Rossi, Le Blant, Böckh, Kirchhoff, Orelli, Mommsen, Henzen, Hübner, Waddington, McCaul.

The most difficult part of this branch of archaeology is the chronology (the oldest inscriptions being mostly undated).542  Their chief interest for the church historian is their religion, as far as it may be inferred from a few words.

The key-note of the Christian epitaphs, as compared with the heathen, is struck by Paul in his words of comfort to the Thessalonians, that they should not sorrow like the heathen who have no hope, but remember that, as Jesus rose from the dead, so God will raise them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus.

Hence, while the heathen epitaphs rarely express a belief in immortality, but often describe death as an eternal sleep, the grave as a final home, and are pervaded by a tone of sadness, the Christian epitaphs are hopeful and cheerful. The farewell on earth is followed by a welcome from heaven. Death is but a short sleep; the soul is with Christ and lives in God, the body waits for a joyful resurrection: this is the sum and substance of the theology of Christian epitaphs. The symbol of Christ (Ichthys) is often placed at the beginning or end to show the ground of this hope. Again and again we find the brief, but significant words: "in peace;"543 "he" or "she sleeps in peace;"544 "live in God," or "in Christ;" "live forever."545  "He rests well." "God quicken thy spirit." "Weep not, my child; death is not eternal." "Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars, and his body rests in this tomb."546  "Here Gordian, the courier from Gaul, strangled for the faith, with his whole family, rests in peace. The maid servant, Theophila, erected this."547

At the same time stereotyped heathen epitaphs continued to be used but of course not in a polytheistic sense), as "sacred to the funeral gods," or "to the departed spirits."548  The laudatory epithets of heathen epitaphs are rare,549 but simple terms of natural affection very frequent, as "My sweetest child;" "Innocent little lamb;" "My dearest husband;" "My dearest wife;" "My innocent dove;" "My well-deserving father," or "mother."550  A. and B. "lived together" (for 15, 20, 30, 50, or even 60 years) "without any complaint or quarrel, without taking or giving offence."551  Such commemoration of conjugal happiness and commendations of female virtues, as modesty, chastity, prudence, diligence, frequently occur also on pagan monuments, and prove that there were many exceptions to the corruption of Roman society, as painted by Juvenal and the satirists.

Some epitaphs contain a request to the dead in heaven to pray for the living on earth.552  At a later period we find requests for intercession in behalf of the departed when once, chiefly through the influence of Pope Gregory I., purgatory became an article of general belief in the Western church.553  But the overwhelming testimony of the oldest Christian epitaphs is that the pious dead are already in the enjoyment of peace, and this accords with the Saviour’s promise to the penitent thief, and with St. Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.554  Take but this example: "Prima, thou livest in the glory of God, and in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ."555

Notes.

I. Selection of Roman Epitaphs.

The following selection of brief epitaphs in the Roman catacombs is taken from De Rossi, and Northcote, who give facsimiles of the original Latin and Greek. Comp. also the photographic plates in Roller, vol. I. Nos. X, XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII; and vol. II. Nos. LXI, LXII, LXV, and LXVI.

1. To dear Cyriacus, sweetest son. Mayest thou live in the Holy Spirit.

2. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. To Pastor, a good and innocent son, who lived 4 years, 5 months and 26 days. Vitalis and Marcellina, his parents.

3. In eternal sleep (somno aeternali). Aurelius Gemellus, who lived ... years and 8 months and 18 days. His mother made this for her dearest well-deserving son. In peace. I commend [to thee], Bassilla, the innocence of Gemellus.

4. Lady Bassilla [= Saint Bassilla], we, Crescentius and Micina, commend to thee our daughter Crescen [tina], who lived 10 months and ... days.

5. Matronata Matrona, who lived a year and 52 days. Pray for thy parents.

6. Anatolius made this for his well-deserving son, who lived 7 years, 7 months and 20 days. May thy spirit rest well in God. Pray for thy sister.

7. Regina, mayest thou live in the Lord Jesus (vivas in Domino Jesu).

8. To my good and sweetest husband Castorinus, who lived 61 years, 5 months and 10 days; well-deserving. His wife made this. Live in God!

9. Amerimnus to his dearest, well-deserving wife, Rufina. May God refresh thy spirit.

10. Sweet Faustina, mayest thou live in God.

11. Refresh, O God, the soul of ....

12. Bolosa, may God refresh thee, who lived 31 years; died on the 19th of September. In Christ.

13. Peace to thy soul, Oxycholis.

14. Agape, thou shalt live forever.

15. In Christ. To Paulinus, a neophyte. In peace. Who lived 8 years.

16. Thy spirit in peace, Filmena.

17. In Christ. Aestonia, a virgin; a foreigner, who lived 41 years and 8 days. She departed from the body on the 26th of February.

18. Victorina in peace and in Christ.

19. Dafnen, a widow, who whilst she lived burdened the church in nothing.

20. To Leopardus, a neophyte, who lived 3 years, 11 months. Buried on the 24th of March. In peace.

21. To Felix, their well-deserving son, who lived 23 years and 10 days; who went out of the world a virgin and a neophyte. In peace. His parents made this. Buried on the 2d of August.

22. Lucilianus to Bacius Valerius, who lived 9 years, 8 [months], 22 days. A catechumen.

23. Septimius Praetextatus Caecilianus, servant of God, who has led a worthy life. If I have served Thee [O Lord], I have not repented, and I will give thanks to Thy name. He gave up his soul to God (at the age of) thirty-three years and six months. [In the crypt of St. Cecilia in St. Callisto. Probably a member of some noble family, the third name is mutilated. De Rossi assigns this epitaph to the beginning of the third century.]

24. Cornelius. Martyr. Ep. [iscopus].

II. The Autun Inscription.

This Greek inscription was discovered A.D. 1839 in the cemetery Saint Pierre l’Estrier near Autun (Augustodunum, the ancient capital of Gallia Aeduensis), first made known by Cardinal Pitra, and thoroughly discussed by learned archaeologists of different countries. See the Spicilegium Solesmense (ed. by Pitra), vols. I.-III., Raf. Garrucci, Monuments d’ epigraphie ancienne, Paris 1856, 1857; P. Lenormant, Mémoire sur l’ inscription d’ Autun, Paris 1855; H. B. Marriott, The Testimony of the Catacombs, Lond. 1870, pp. 113–188. The Jesuit fathers Secchi and Garrucci find in it conclusive evidence of transubstantiation and purgatory, but Marriott takes pains to refute them. Comp. also Schultze, Katak. p. 118. The Ichthys-symbol figures prominently in the inscription, and betrays an early origin, but archaeologists differ: Pitra, Garrucci and others assign it to A.D. 160–202; Kirchhoff, Marriott, and Schultze, with greater probability, to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, Lenormant and Le Blant to the fifth or sixth. De Rossi observes that the characters are not so old as the ideas which they express. The inscription has some gaps which must be filled out by conjecture. It is a memorial of Pectorius to his parents and friends, in two parts; the first six lines are an acrostic (Ichthys), and contain words of the dead (probably the mother); in the second part the son speaks. The first seems to be older. Schultze conjectures that it is an old Christian hymn. The inscription begins with  jIcquvo" a [ujranivou a{g] ion [or perhaps qei'on] gevno", and concludes with mnhvseo Pektorivou, who prepared the monument for his parents. The following is the translation (partly conjectural) of Marriott (l.c. 118):

’Offspring of the heavenly Ichthys, see that a heart of holy reverence be thine, now that from Divine waters thou hast received, while yet among mortals, a fount of life that is to immortality. Quicken thy soul, beloved one, with ever-flowing waters of wealth-giving wisdom, and receive the honey-sweet food of the Saviour of the saints. Eat with a longing hunger, holding Ichthys in thine hands.’

’To Ichthys ... Come nigh unto me, my Lord [and] Saviour [be thou my Guide] I entreat Thee, Thou Light of them for whom the hour of death is past.’

’Aschandius, my Father, dear unto mine heart, and thou [sweet Mother, and all] that are mine ... remember Pectorius.’

§ 87. Lessons of the Catacombs.

The catacombs represent the subterranean Christianity of the ante-Nicene age. They reveal the Christian life in the face of death and eternity. Their vast extent, their solemn darkness, their labyrinthine mystery, their rude epitaphs, pictures, and sculptures, their relics of handicrafts worship, and martyrdom give us a lively and impressive idea of the social and domestic condition, the poverty and humility, the devotional spirit, the trials and sufferings, the faith and hope of the Christians from the death of the apostles to the conversion of Constantine. A modern visitor descending alive into this region of the dead, receives the same impression as St. Jerome more than fifteen centuries ago: he is overcome by the solemn darkness, the terrible silence, and the sacred associations; only the darkness is deeper, and the tombs are emptied of their treasures. "He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the catacombs," says Dean Stanley, not without rhetorical exaggeration, "will be nearer to the thoughts of the early church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or of Origen."556

The discovery of this subterranean necropolis has been made unduly subservient to polemical and apologetic purposes both by Roman Catholic and Protestant writers. The former seek and find in it monumental arguments for the worship of saints, images, and relics, for the cultus of the Virgin Mary, the primacy of Peter, the seven sacraments, the real presence, even for transubstantiation, and purgatory; while the latter see there the evidence of apostolic simplicity of life and worship, and an illustration of Paul’s saying that God chose the foolish, the weak, and the despised things of the world to put to shame them that are wise and strong and mighty.557

A full solution of the controversial questions would depend upon the chronology of the monuments and inscriptions, but this is exceedingly uncertain. The most eminent archaeologists hold widely differing opinions. John Baptist de Rossi of Rome, the greatest authority on the Roman Catholic side, traces some paintings and epitaphs in the crypts of St. Lucina and St. Domitilia back even to the close of the first century or the beginning of the second. On the other hand, J. H. Parker, of Oxford, an equally eminent archaeologist, maintains that fully three-fourths of the fresco-paintings belong to the latest restorations of the eighth and ninth centuries, and that "of the remaining fourth a considerable number are of the sixth century." He also asserts that in the catacomb pictures "there are no religious subjects before the time of Constantine," that "during the fourth and fifth centuries they are entirely confined to Scriptural subjects," and that there is "not a figure of a saint or martyr before the sixth century, and very few before the eighth, when they became abundant."558  Renan assigns the earliest pictures of the catacombs to the fourth century, very few (in Domitilla) to the third.559  Theodore Mommsen deems De Rossi’s argument for the early date of the Coemeterium Domitillae before A.D. 95 inconclusive, and traces it rather to the times of Hadrian and Pius than to those of the Flavian emperors.560

But in any case it is unreasonable to seek in the catacombs for a complete creed any more than in a modern grave-yard. All we can expect there is the popular elements of eschatology, or the sentiments concerning death and eternity, with incidental traces of the private and social life of those times. Heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian cemeteries have their characteristic peculiarities, yet all have many things in common which are inseparable from human nature. Roman Catholic cemeteries are easily recognized by crosses, crucifixes, and reference to purgatory and prayers for the dead; Protestant cemeteries by the frequency of Scripture passages in the epitaphs, and the expressions of hope and joy in prospect of the immediate transition of the pious dead to the presence of Christ. The catacombs have a character of their own, which distinguishes them from Roman Catholic as well as Protestant cemeteries.

Their most characteristic symbols and pictures are the Good Shepherd, the Fish, and the Vine. These symbols almost wholly disappeared after the fourth century, but to the mind of the early Christians they vividly expressed, in childlike simplicity, what is essential to Christians of all creeds, the idea of Christ and his salvation, as the only comfort in life and in death. The Shepherd, whether from the Sabine or the Galilean hills, suggested the recovery of the lost sheep, the tender care and protection, the green pasture and fresh fountain, the sacrifice of life: in a word, the whole picture of a Saviour.561  The popularity of this picture enables us to understand the immense popularity of the Pastor of Hermas, a religious allegory which was written in Rome about the middle of the second century, and read in many churches till the fourth as a part of the New Testament (as in the Sinaitic Codex). The Fish expressed the same idea of salvation, under a different form, but only to those who were familiar with the Greek (the anagrammatic meaning of Ichthys) and associated the fish with daily food and the baptismal water of regeneration. The Vine again sets forth the vital union of the believer with Christ and the vital communion of all believers among themselves.

Another prominent feature of the catacombs is their hopeful and joyful eschatology. They proclaim in symbols and words a certain conviction of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, rooted and grounded in a living union with Christ in this world.562  These glorious hopes comforted and strengthened the early Christians in a time of poverty, trial, and persecution. This character stands in striking contrast with the preceding and contemporary gloom of paganism, for which the future world was a blank, and with the succeeding gloom of the mediaeval eschatology which presented the future world to the most serious Christians as a continuation of penal sufferings. This is the chief, we may say, the only doctrinal, lesson of the catacombs.

On some other points they incidentally shed new light, especially on the spread of Christianity and the origin of Christian art. Their immense extent implies that Christianity was numerically much stronger in heathen Rome than was generally supposed.563  Their numerous decorations prove conclusively, either that the primitive Christian aversion to pictures and sculptures, inherited from the Jews, was not so general nor so long continued as might be inferred from some passages of ante-Nicene writers, or, what is more likely, that the popular love for art inherited from the Greeks and Romans was little affected by the theologians, and ultimately prevailed over the scruples of theorizers.

The first discovery of the catacombs was a surprise to the Christian world, and gave birth to wild fancies about the incalculable number of martyrs, the terrors of persecution, the subterranean assemblies of the early Christians, as if they lived and died, by necessity or preference, in darkness beneath the earth. A closer investigation has dispelled the romance, and deepened the reality.

There is no contradiction between the religion of the ante-Nicene monuments and the religion of the ante-Nicene literature. They supplement and illustrate each other. Both exhibit to us neither the mediaeval Catholic nor the modern Protestant, but the post-apostolic Christianity of confessors and martyrs, simple, humble, unpretending, unlearned, unworldly, strong in death and in the hope of a blissful resurrection; free from the distinctive dogmas and usages of later times; yet with that strong love for symbolism, mysticism, asceticism, and popular superstitions which we find in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.

§ 88. Literature.

I. Sources: The works of the Apostolic Fathers. The Apologies of Justin. The practical treatises of Tertullian. The Epistles of Cyprian. The Canons of Councils. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. The Acts of Martyrs.—On the condition of the Roman Empire: the Histories of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius, the writings of Seneca, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial.

II. Literature: W. Cave: Primitive Christianity, or the Religion of the Ancient Christians in the first ages of the Gospel. London, fifth ed. 1689.

G. Arnold: Erste Liebe, d. i. Wahre Abbildung der ersten Christen nach ihrem lebendigen Glauben und heil. Leben. Frankf. 1696, and often since.

Neander: Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christlichen Lebens (first 1823), vol. i. third ed. Hamb. 1845. The same in English by Ryland: Neander’s Memorials of Christian Life, in Bohn’s Library, 1853.

L. Coleman: Ancient Christianity exemplified in the private, domestic, social, and civil Life of the Primitive Christians, etc. Phil. 1853.

C. Schmidt: Essai historique sur la société dans le monde Romain, et sur la transformation par le Christianisme. Par. 1853. The same transl. into German by A. V. Richard. Leipz. 1857.

E. L. Chastel: Études historiques sur l’influence de la charité durant les Premiers siècles chrét. Par. 1853. Crowned by the French Académe. The same transl. into English (The Charity of the Primitive Churches), by G. A. Matile. Phila. 1857.

A. Fr. Villemain: Nouveaux essais sur l’infl. du Christianisme dans le monde Grec et Latin. Par. 1853.

Benj. Constant Martha (Member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, elected in 1872): Les Moralistes sous l’Empire romain. Paris 1854, second ed. 1866 (Crowned by the French Academy).

Fr. J. M. Th. Champagny: Les premiers siècles de la charité. Paris, 1854. Also his work Les Antonins. Paris, 1863, third ed. 1874, 3 vols.

J. Denis: Histoire des  theories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité. Paris, 1856, 2 tom.

P. Janet: Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique. Paris, 1858,·2 tom.

G. Ratzinger: Gesch. der kirchlichen Armenpflege. Freib. 1859.

W. E. H. Lecky: History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. Lond. and N. Y. 1869, 2 vols., 5th ed. Lond. 1882. German transl. by Dr. H. Jalowicz.

Marie-Louis-Gaston Boissier: La Religion romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins. Paris, 1874, 2 vols.

Bestmann: Geschichte der Christlichen Sitte. Nördl. Bd. I. 1880.

W. Gass: Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. Berlin, 1881 (vol. I. 49–107).

G. Uhlhorn: Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit in der alten Kirche. Stuttg. 1881. English translation (Christian Charity in the Ancient Church). Edinb. and N. York, 1883 (424 pages).

Charles L. Brace: Gesta Christi: or a History of humane Progress under Christianity. N. York, 1883 (500 pages).

§ 89. Moral Corruption of the Roman Empire.

Besides the Lit. quoted in § 88, comp. the historical works on the Roman Empire by Gibbon, Merivale, and Ranke; also J. J. A. Ampère’s Histoire Romaine à Rome (1856–64, 4 vols.).

Friedlaender’s Sittengeschichte Roms (from Augustus to the Antonines. Leipzig, 3 vols., 5th ed. 1881); and Marquardt and Mommsen’s Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer (Leipz. 1871, second ed. 1876, 7 vols., divided into Staatsrecht, Staatsverwaltung, Privatleben).

Christianity is not only the revelation of truth, but also the fountain of holiness under the unceasing inspiration of the spotless example of its Founder, which is more powerful than all the systems of moral philosophy. It attests its divine origin as much by its moral workings as by its pure doctrines. By its own inherent energy, without noise and commotion, without the favor of circumstance—nay, in spite of all possible obstacles, it has gradually wrought the greatest moral reformation, we should rather say, regeneration of society which history has ever seen while its purifying, ennobling, and cheering effects upon the private life of countless individuals are beyond the reach of the historian, though recorded in God’s book of life to be opened on the day of judgment.

To appreciate this work, we must first review the moral condition of heathenism in its mightiest embodiment in history.

When Christianity took firm foothold on earth, the pagan civilization and the Roman empire had reached their zenith. The reign of Augustus was the golden age of Roman literature; his successors added Britain and Dacia to the conquests of the Republic; internal organization was perfected by Trajan and the Antonines. The fairest countries of Europe, and a considerable part of Asia and Africa stood under one imperial government with republican forms, and enjoyed a well-ordered jurisdiction. Piracy on the seas was abolished; life and property were secure. Military roads, canals, and the Mediterranean Sea facilitated commerce and travel; agriculture was improved, and all branches of industry flourished. Temples, theatres, aqueducts, public baths, and magnificent buildings of every kind adorned the great cities; institutions of learning disseminated culture; two languages with a classic literature were current in the empire, the Greek in the East, the Latin in the West; the book trade, with the manufacture of paper, was a craft of no small importance, and a library belonged to every respectable house. The book stores and public libraries were in the most lively streets of Rome, and resorted to by literary people. Hundreds of slaves were employed as scribes, who wrote simultaneously at the dictation of one author or reader, and multiplied copies almost as fast as the modern printing press.564  The excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum reveal a high degree of convenience and taste in domestic life even in provincial towns; and no one can look without amazement at the sublime and eloquent ruins of Rome, the palaces of the Caesars, the Mausoleum of Hadrian, the Baths of Caracalla, the Aqueducts, the triumphal arches and columns, above all the Colosseum, built by Vespasian, to a height of one hundred and fifty feet, and for more than eighty thousand spectators. The period of eighty-four years from the accession of Nerva to the death of Marcus Aurelius has been pronounced by high authority "the most happy and prosperous period in the history of the world."565

But this is only a surface view. The inside did not correspond to the outside. Even under the Antonines the majority of men groaned under the yoke of slavery or poverty; gladiatorial shows brutalized the people; fierce wars were raging on the borders of the empire; and the most virtuous and peaceful of subjects—the Christians—had no rights, and were liable at any moment to be thrown before wild beasts, for no other reason than the profession of their religion. The age of the full bloom of the Graeco-Roman power was also the beginning of its decline. This imposing show concealed incurable moral putridity and indescribable wretchedness. The colossal piles of architecture owed their erection to the bloody sweat of innumerable slaves, who were treated no better than so many beasts of burden; on the Flavian amphitheatre alone toiled twelve thousand Jewish prisoners of war; and it was built to gratify the cruel taste of the people for the slaughter of wild animals and human beings made in the image of God. The influx of wealth from conquered nations diffused the most extravagant luxury, which collected for a single meal peacocks from Samos, pike from Pessinus, oysters from Tarentum, dates from Egypt, nuts from Spain, in short the rarest dishes from all parts of the world, and resorted to emetics to stimulate appetite and to lighten the stomach. "They eat," says Seneca, "and then they vomit; they vomit, and then they eat." Apicius, who lived under Tiberius, dissolved pearls in the wine he drank, squandered an enormous fortune on the pleasures of the table, and then committed suicide.566  He found imperial imitators in Vitellius and Heliogabalus (or Elaogabal). A special class of servants, the cosmetes, had charge of the dress, the smoothing of the wrinkles, the setting of the false teeth, the painting of the eye-brows, of wealthy patricians. Hand in hand with this luxury came the vices of natural and even unnatural sensuality, which decency forbids to name. Hopeless poverty stood in crying contrast with immense wealth; exhausted provinces, with revelling cities. Enormous taxes burdened the people, and misery was terribly increased by war, pestilence, and famine. The higher or ruling families were enervated, and were not strengthened or replenished by the lower. The free citizens lost physical and moral vigor, and sank to an inert mass. The third class was the huge body of slaves, who performed all kinds of mechanical labor, even the tilling of the soil, and in times of danger were ready to join the enemies of the empire. A proper middle class of industrious citizens, the only firm basis of a healthy community, cannot coëxist with slavery, which degrades free labor. The army, composed largely of the rudest citizens and of barbarians, was the strength of the nation, and gradually stamped the government with the character of military despotism. The virtues of patriotism, and of good faith in public intercourse, were extinct. The basest avarice, suspicion and envy, usuriousness and bribery, insolence and servility, everywhere prevailed.

The work of demoralizing the people was systematically organized and sanctioned from the highest places downwards. There were, it is true, some worthy emperors of old Roman energy and justice, among whom Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius stand foremost; all honor to their memory. But the best they could do was to check the process of internal putrefaction, and to conceal the sores for a little while; they could not heal them. Most of the emperors were coarse military despots, and some of them monsters of wickedness. There is scarcely an age in the history of the world, in which so many and so hideous vices disgraced the throne, as in the period from Tiberius to Domitian, and from Commodus to Galerius. "The annals of the emperors," says Gibbon, "exhibit a strong and various picture of human nature, which we should vainly seek among the mixed and doubtful characters of modern history. In the conduct of those monarchs we may trace the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted perfection and the meanest degeneracy of our own species."567  "Never, probably," says Canon Farrar, "was there any age or any place where the worst forms of wickedness were practised with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under the government of the Caesars."568  We may not even except the infamous period of the papal pornocracy, and the reign of Alexander Borgia, which were of short duration, and excited disgust and indignation throughout the church.

The Pagan historians of Rome have branded and immortalized the vices and crimes of the Caesars: the misanthropy, cruelty, and voluptuousness of Tiberius; the ferocious madness of Caius Caligula, who had men tortured, beheaded, or sawed in pieces for his amusement, who seriously meditated the butchery of the whole senate, raised his horse to the dignity of consul and priest, and crawled under the bed in a storm; the bottomless vileness of Nero, "the inventor of crime," who poisoned or murdered his preceptors Burrhus and Seneca, his half-brother and brother-in-law Britannicus, his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, his mistress Poppaea, who in sheer wantonness set fire to Rome, and then burnt innocent Christians for it as torches in his gardens, figuring himself as charioteer in the infernal spectacle; the swinish gluttony of Vitellins, who consumed millions of money in mere eating; the refined wickedness of Domitian, who, more a cat than a tiger, amused himself most with the torments of the dying and with catching flies; the shameless revelry of Commodus with his hundreds of concubines, and ferocious passion for butchering men and beasts on the arena; the mad villainy of Heliogabalus, who raised the lowest men to the highest dignities, dressed himself in women’s clothes, married a dissolute boy like himself, in short, inverted all the laws of nature and of decency, until at last he was butchered with his mother by the soldiers, and thrown into the muddy Tiber. And to fill the measure of impiety and wickedness, such imperial monsters were received, after their death, by a formal decree of the Senate, into the number of divinities and their abandoned memory was celebrated by festivals, temples, and colleges of priests!  The emperor, in the language of Gibbon, was at once "a priest, an atheist, and a god." Some added to it the dignity of amateur actor and gladiator on the stage. Domitian, even in his lifetime, caused himself to be called "Dominus et Deus noster," and whole herds of animals to be sacrificed to his gold and silver statues. It is impossible to imagine a greater public and official mockery of all religion.

The wives and mistresses of the emperors were not much better. They revelled in luxury and vice, swept through the streets in chariots drawn by silver-shod mules, wasted fortunes on a single dress, delighted in wicked intrigues, aided their husbands in dark crimes and shared at last in their tragic fate, Messalina the wife of Claudius, was murdered by the order of her husband in the midst of her nuptial orgies with one of her favorites; and the younger Agrippina, the mother of Nero, after poisoning her husband, was murdered by her own son, who was equally cruel to his wives, kicking one of them to death when she was in a state of pregnancy. These female monsters were likewise deified, and elevated to the rank of Juno or Venus.

From the higher regions the corruption descended into the masses of the people, who by this time had no sense for anything but "Panem et Circenses," and, in the enjoyment of these, looked with morbid curiosity and interest upon the most flagrant vices of their masters.

No wonder that Tacitus, who with terse eloquence and old Roman severity exposes the monstrous character of Nero and other emperors to eternal infamy, could nowhere, save perhaps among the barbarian Germans, discover a star of hope, and foreboded the fearful vengeance of the gods, and even the speedy destruction of the empire. And certainly nothing could save it from final doom, whose approach was announced with ever-growing distinctness by wars, insurrections, inundations, earthquakes, pestilence, famine, irruption of barbarians, and prophetic calamities of every kind. Ancient Rome, in the slow but certain process of dissolution and decay, teaches the

"... sad moral of all human tales;

’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past;

First freedom, and then glory—when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last."

§ 90. Stoic Morality

ED. Zeller: The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics. Translated from the German by O. J. Reichel. London (Longman, Green & Co.), 1870. Chs. x-xii treat of the Stoic Ethics and Religion.

F. W. Farrar (Canon of Westminster): Seekers a after God. London (Macmillan & Co.), first ed. n. d. (1869), new ed. 1877 (Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, 336 pages).

Comp. also the essays on Seneca and Paul by Fleury, Aubertin, Baur, Lightfoot, and Reuss (quoted in vol. I. 283).

Let us now turn to the bright side of heathen morals, as exhibited in the teaching and example of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch—three pure and noble characters—one a slave, the second an emperor, the third a man of letters, two of them Stoics, one a Platonist. It is refreshing to look upon a few green spots in the moral desert of heathen Rome. We may trace their virtue to the guidance of conscience (the good demon of Socrates), or to the independent working of the Spirit of God, or to the indirect influence of Christianity, which already began to pervade the moral atmosphere beyond the limits of the visible church, and to infuse into legislation a spirit of humanity and justice unknown before, or to all these causes combined. It is certain that there was in the second century a moral current of unconscious Christianity, which met the stronger religious current of the church and facilitated her ultimate victory.

It is a remarkable fact that two men who represent the extremes of society, the lowest and the highest, were the last and greatest teachers of natural virtue in ancient Rome. They shine like lone stars in the midnight darkness of prevailing corruption. Epictetus the slave, and Marcus Aurelius, the crowned ruler of an empire, are the purest among the heathen moralists, and furnish the strongest "testimonies of the naturally Christian soul."

Both belonged to the school of Zeno.

The Stoic philosophy was born in Greece, but grew into manhood in Rome. It was predestinated for that stern, grave, practical, haughty, self-governing and heroic character which from the banks of the Tiber ruled over the civilized world.569  In the Republican period Cato of Utica lived and died by his own hand a genuine Stoic in practice, without being one in theory. Seneca, the contemporary of St. Paul, was a Stoic in theory, but belied his almost Christian wisdom in practice, by his insatiable avarice, anticipating Francis Bacon as "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."570  Half of his ethics is mere rhetoric. In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius the Stoic theory and practice met in beautiful harmony, and freed from its most objectionable features. They were the last and the best of that school which taught men to live and to die, and offered an asylum for individual virtue and freedom when the Roman world at large was rotten to the core.

Stoicism is of all ancient systems of philosophy both nearest to, and furthest from, Christianity: nearest in the purity and sublimity of its maxims and the virtues of simplicity, equanimity, self-control, and resignation to an all-wise Providence; furthest in the spirit of pride, self-reliance, haughty contempt, and cold indifference. Pride is the basis of Stoic virtue, while humility is the basis of Christian holiness; the former is inspired by egotism, the latter by love to God and man; the Stoic feels no need of a Saviour, and calmly resorts to suicide when the house smokes; while the Christian life begins with a sense of sin, and ends with triumph over death; the resignation of the Stoic is heartless apathy and a surrender to the iron necessity of fate; the resignation of the Christian, is cheerful submission to the will of an all-wise and all-merciful Father in heaven; the Stoic sage resembles a cold, immovable statue, the Christian saint a living body, beating in hearty sympathy with every joy and grief of his fellow-men. At best, Stoicism is only a philosophy for the few, while Christianity is a religion for all.

§ 91. Epictetus.

Epicteti. Dissertationum ab Arriano digestarum Libri IV. Euiusdem Enchiridion et ex deperditis Sermonibus Fragmenta ... recensuit ... Joh. Schweighäuser. Lips. 1799, 1800. 5 vols. The Greek text with a Latin version and notes.

The Works of Epictetus. Consisting of his Discourses, in four books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. A translation from the Greek, based on that of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston (Little, Brown & Co.), 1865. A fourth ed. of Mrs. Carter’s translation was published in 1807 with introduction and notes.

The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Enchiridion and Fragments. Translated, with Notes, etc., by George Long. London (George Bell & Sons), 1877.

There are also other English, as well as German and French, versions.

Epictetus was born before the middle of the first century, at Hierapolis, a city in Phrygia, a few miles from Colossae and Laodicea, well known to us from apostolic history. He was a compatriot and contemporary of Epaphras, a pupil of Paul, and founder of Christian churches in that province.571  There is a bare possibility that he had a passing acquaintance with him, if not with Paul himself. He came as a slave to Rome with his master, Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman and favorite of Nero (whom he aided in committing suicide), and was afterwards set at liberty. He rose above his condition. "Freedom and slavery," he says in one of his Fragments, "are but names of virtue and of vice, and both depend upon the will. No one is a slave whose will is free." He was lame in one foot and in feeble health. The lameness, if we are to credit the report of Origen, was the result of ill treatment, which he bore heroically. When his master put his leg in the torture, he quietly said: "You will break my leg;" and when the leg was broken, he added: "Did I not tell you so?"  This reminds one of Socrates who is reported to have borne a scolding and subsequent shower from Xantippe with the cool remark: After the thunder comes the rain. Epictetus heard the lectures of Musonius Rufus, a distinguished teacher of the Stoic philosophy under Nero and Vespasian, and began himself to teach. He was banished from Rome by Domitian, with all other philosophers, before A.D. 90. He settled for the rest of his life in Nicopolis, in Southern Epirus, not far from the scene of the battle of Actium. There he gathered around him a large body of pupils, old and young, rich and poor, and instructed them, as a second Socrates, by precept and example, in halls and public places. The emperor Hadrian is reported to have invited him back to Rome (117), but in vain. The date of his death is unknown.

Epictetus led from principle and necessity a life of poverty and extreme simplicity, after the model of Diogenes, the arch-Cynic. His only companions were an adopted child with a nurse. His furniture consisted of a bed, a cooking vessel and earthen lamp. Lucian ridicules one of his admirers, who bought the lamp for three thousand drachmas, in the hope of becoming a philosopher by using it. Epictetus discouraged marriage and the procreation of children. Marriage might do well in a "community of wise men," but "in the present state of things," which he compared to "an army in battle array," it is likely to withdraw the philosopher from the service of God.572  This view, as well as the reason assigned, resembles the advice of St. Paul, with the great difference, that the apostle had the highest conception of the institution of marriage as reflecting the mystery of Christ’s union with the church. "Look at me," says Epictetus, "who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but only the earth and the heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want?  Am I not without sorrow?  Am I not without fear?  Am I not free? ... Did I ever blame God or man? ... Who, when he sees me, does not think that he sees his king and master?"  His epitaph fitly describes his character: "I was Epictetus, a slave, and maimed in body, and a beggar for poverty, and dear to the immortals."

Epictetus, like Socrates, his great exemplar, wrote nothing himself, but he found a Xenophon. His pupil and friend, Flavius Arrianus, of Nicomedia, in Bithynia, the distinguished historian of Alexander the Great, and a soldier and statesman under Hadrian, handed to posterity a report of the oral instructions and familiar conversations (diatribaiv) of his teacher. Only four of the original eight books remain. He also collected his chief maxims in a manual (Enchiridion). His biography of that remarkable man is lost.

Epictetus starts, like Zeno and Cleanthes, with a thoroughly practical view of philosophy, as the art and exercise of virtue, in accordance with reason and the laws of nature. He bases virtue on faith in God, as the supreme power of the universe, who directs all events for benevolent purposes. The philosopher is a teacher of righteousness, a physician and surgeon of the sick who feel their weakness, and are anxious to be cured. He is a priest and messenger of the gods to erring men, that they might learn to be happy even in utter want of earthly possessions. If we wish to be good, we must first believe that we are bad. Mere knowledge without application to life is worthless. Every man has a guardian spirit, a god within him who never sleeps, who always keeps him company, even in solitude; this is the Socratic daimonion, the personified conscience. We must listen to its divine voice. "Think of God more often than you breathe. Let discourse of God be renewed daily, more surely than your food." The sum of wisdom is to desire nothing but freedom and contentment, and to bear and forbear. All unavoidable evil in the world is only apparent and external, and does not touch our being. Our happiness depends upon our own will, which even Zeus cannot break. The wise man joyously acquiesces in what he cannot control, knowing that an all-wise Father rules the whole. "We ought to have these two rules always in readiness: that there is nothing good or evil except in the will; and that we ought not to lead events, but to follow them."573  If a brother wrongs me, that is his fault; my business is to conduct myself rightly towards him. The wise man is not disturbed by injury and injustice, and loves even his enemies. All men are brethren and children of God. They own the whole world; and hence even banishment is no evil. The soul longs to be freed from the prison house of the body and to return to God.

Yet Epictetus does not clearly teach the immortality of the soul. He speaks of death as a return to the elements in successive conflagrations. Seneca approaches much more nearly the Platonic and Socratic, we may say Christian, view of immortality. The prevailing theory of the Stoics was, that at the end of the world all individual souls will be resolved into the primary substance of the Divine Being.574

Epictetus nowhere alludes directly to Christianity, but he speaks once of "Galileans," who by enthusiasm or madness were free from all fear.575  He often recurs to his predecessors, Socrates, Diogenes, Zeno, Musonius Rufus. His ethical ideal is a cynic philosopher, naked, penniless, wifeless, childless, without want or desire, without passion or temper, kindly, independent, contented, imperturbable, looking serenely or indifferently at life and death. It differs as widely from the true ideal as Diogenes who lived in a tub, and sought with a lantern in daylight for "a man," differs from Christ who, indeed, had not where to lay his head, but went about doing good to the bodies and souls of men.

Owing to the purity of its morals, the Enchiridion of Epictetus was a favorite book. Simplicius, a Neo-Platonist, wrote an elaborate commentary on it; and monks in the middle ages reproduced and Christianized it. Origen thought Epictetus had done more good than Plato. Niebuhr says: "His greatness cannot be questioned, and it is impossible for any person of sound mind not to be charmed by his works." Higginson says: "I am acquainted with no book more replete with high conceptions of the deity and noble aims of man." This is, of course, a great exaggeration, unless the writer means to confine his comparison to heathen works.

§ 92. Marcus Aurelius.

Mavrkou  jAntonivnou tou' aujtokravtoro" tw'n eij" eJauto;n bibliva ib j(De Rebus suis libri xii). Ed. by Thomas Gataker, with a Latin Version and Notes (including those of Casaubon). Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1697, 2 vols. fol. The second vol. contains critical dissertations. (The first ed. appeared at Cambridge, 1652, in 1 vol.)  English translation by George Long, revised ed. London, 1880.

See the liter. quoted in § 20, above (especially Renan’s Marc. Auréle, 1882).

Marcus Aurelius, the last and best representative of Stoicism, ruled the Roman Empire for twenty years (A.D. 161–180) at the height of its power and prosperity. He was born April 26, 121, in Rome, and carefully educated and disciplined in Stoic wisdom. Hadrian admired him for his good nature, docility, and veracity, and Antoninus Pius adopted him as his son and successor. He learned early to despise the vanities of the world, maintained the simplicity of a philosopher in the splendor of the court, and found time for retirement and meditation amid the cares of government and border wars, in which he was constantly engaged. Epictetus was his favorite author. He left us his best thoughts, a sort of spiritual autobiography, in the shape of a diary which he wrote, not without some self-complacency, for his own improvement and enjoyment during the last years of his life (172–175) in the military camp among the barbarians. He died in Panonia of the pestilence which raged in the army (March 17, 180).576  His last words were: "Weep not for me, weep over the pestilence and the general misery,577 and save the army. Farewell!"  He dismissed his servants and friends, even his son, after a last interview, and died alone.

The philosophic emperor was a sincere believer in the gods, their revelations and all-ruling providence. His morality and religion were blended. But he had no clear views of the divinity. He alternately uses the language of the polytheist, the deist, and the pantheist. He worshipped the deity of the universe and in his own breast. He thanks the gods for his good parents and teachers, for his pious mother, for a wife, whom he blindly praises as "amiable, affectionate, and pure," and for all the goods of life. His motto was "never to wrong any man in deed or word."578  He claimed no perfection, yet was conscious of his superiority, and thankful to the gods that he was better than other men. He traced the sins of men merely to ignorance and error. He was mild, amiable, and gentle; in these respects the very reverse of a hard and severe Stoic, and nearly approaching a disciple of Jesus. We must admire his purity, truthfulness, philanthropy, conscientious devotion to duty, his serenity of mind in the midst of the temptations of power and severe domestic trials, and his resignation to the will of providence. He was fully appreciated in his time, and universally beloved by his subjects. We may well call him among the heathen the greatest and best man of his age.579  "It seems" (says an able French writer, Martha), "that in him the philosophy of heathenism grows less proud, draws nearer and nearer to a Christianity which it ignored or which it despised, and is ready to fling itself into the arms of the ’Unknown God.’  In the sad Meditations of Aurelius we find a pure serenity, sweetness, and docility to the commands of God, which before him were unknown, and which Christian grace has alone surpassed. If he has not yet attained to charity in all that fullness of meaning which Christianity has given to the world, he already gained its unction, and one cannot read his book, unique in the history of Pagan philosophy, without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and the gentleness of Fénélon."

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are full of beautiful moral maxims, strung together without system. They bear a striking resemblance to Christian ethics. They rise to a certain universalism and humanitarianism which is foreign to the heathen spirit, and a prophecy of a new age, but could only be realized on a Christian basis. Let us listen to some of his most characteristic sentiments:

"It is sufficient to attend to the demon [the good genius] within, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence for the demon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness and dissatisfaction with what comes from God and men."580  "Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good."581  "Do not disturb thyself. Make thyself all simplicity. Does any one do wrong?  It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has anything happened to thee?  Well; out of the universe from the beginning everything which happens has been apportioned and spun out to thee. In a word, thy life is short. Thou must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice. Be sober in thy relaxation. Either it is a well-arranged universe or a chaos huddled together, but still a universe."582  "A man must stand erect, and not be kept erect by others ."583  Have I done something for the general interest?  Well, then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to my mind, and never stop [doing good]."584  "What is thy art? to be good."585  "It is a man’s duty to comfort himself and to wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed at the delay."586  "O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return."587  "Willingly give thyself up to Clotho" [one of the fates], "allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases. Every thing is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered."588  "Consider that before long thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which thou now seest, nor any of those who are now living. For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned, and to perish, in order that other things in continuous succession may exist."589  "It is best to leave this world as early as possible, and to bid it friendly farewell."590

These reflections are pervaded by a tone of sadness; they excite emotion, but no enthusiasm; they have no power to console, but leave an aching void, without hope of an immortality, except a return to the bosom of mother nature. They are the rays of a setting, not of a rising, sun; they are the swansong of dying Stoicism. The end of that noble old Roman was virtually the end of the antique world.591

The cosmopolitan philosophy of Marcus Aurelius had no sympathy with Christianity, and excluded from its embrace the most innocent and most peaceful of his subjects. He makes but one allusion to the Christians, and unjustly traces their readiness for martyrdom to "sheer obstinacy" and a desire for "theatrical display."592  He may have had in view some fanatical enthusiasts who rushed into the fire, like Indian gymnosophists, but possibly such venerable martyrs as Polycarp and those of Southern Gaul in his own reign. Hence the strange phenomenon that the wisest and best of Roman emperors permitted (we cannot say, instigated, or even authorized) some of the most cruel persecutions of Christians, especially in Lugdunum and Vienne. We readily excuse him on the ground of ignorance. He probably never saw the Sermon on the Mount, nor read any of the numerous Apologies addressed to him.

But persecution is not the only blot on his reputation. He wasted his affections upon a vicious and worthless son, whom he raised in his fourteenth year to full participation of the imperial power, regardless of the happiness of millions, and upon a beautiful but faithless and wicked wife, whom he hastened after her death to cover with divine honors. His conduct towards Faustina was either hypocritical or unprincipled.593  After her death he preferred a concubine to a second wife and stepmother of his children.

His son and successor left the Christians in peace, but was one of the worst emperors that disgraced the throne, and undid all the good which his father had done.594

Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander; Seneca, the teacher of Nero; Marcus Aurelius, the father of Commodus.

§ 93. Plutarch.

Ploutavrcou tou' Cairwnevw" ta;  jHqikav. Ed. Tauchnitz Lips. The same with a Latin version and notes in

Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, id est, Opera, exceptis vitis, reliqua. Ed. by Daniel Wyttenbach. Oxon. 1795–1800, 8 vols. (including 2 Index vols.). French ed. by Dübner, in the Didot collection.

Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several Hands. London, 1684–’94, 5th ed. 1718. The same as corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin (Harvard University). With an introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston, 1870, 5 vols.

Octave Greard: De la moralité de Plutarque. Paris, 1866.

Richard Chenevix Trench (Archbishop of Dublin): Plutarch, his life, his Parallel Lives, and his Morals. London (Macmillan & Co.), 2nd ed. 1874.

W. Möller: Ueber die Religion des Plutarch. Kiel, 1881.

Julia Wedgwood: Plutarch and the unconscious Christianity of the first two centuries. In the "Contemporary Review" for 1881, pp. 44–60.

Equally remarkable, as a representative of "unconscious Christianity" and "seeker after the unknown God" though from a different philosophical standpoint, is the greatest biographer and moralist of classical antiquity.

It is strange that Plutarch’s contemporaries are silent about him. His name is not even mentioned by any Roman writer. What we know of him is gathered from his own works. He lived between A.D. 50 and 125, mostly in his native town of Chaeroneia, in Boeotia, as a magistrate and priest of Apollos. He was happily married, and had four sons and a daughter, who died young. His Conjugal Precepts are full of good advice to husbands and wives. The letter of consolation he addressed to his wife on the death of a little daughter, Timoxena, while she was absent from home, gives us a favorable impression of his family life, and expresses his hope of immortality. "The souls of infants," he says at the close of this letter, "pass immediately into a better and more divine state."  He spent some time in Rome (at least twice, probably under Vespasian and Domitian), lectured on moral philosophy to select audiences, and collected material for his Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans. He was evidently well-bred, in good circumstances, familiar with books, different countries, and human nature and society in all its phases. In his philosophy he stands midway between Platonism and Neo-Platonism. He was "a Platonist with an Oriental tinge."595  He was equally opposed to Stoic pantheism and Epicurean naturalism, and adopted the Platonic dualism of God and matter. He recognized a supreme God, and also the subordinate divinities of the Hellenic religion. The gods are good, the demons are divided between good and bad, the human soul combines both qualities. He paid little attention to metaphysics, and dwelt more on the practical questions of philosophy, dividing his labors between historical and moral topics. He was an utter stranger to Christianity, and therefore neither friendly nor hostile. There is in all his numerous writings not a single allusion to it, although at his time there must have been churches in every considerable city of the empire. He often speaks of Judaism, but very superficially, and may have regarded Christianity as a Jewish sect. But his moral philosophy makes a very near approach to Christian ethics.

His aim, as a writer, was to show the greatness in the acts and in the thoughts of the ancients, the former in his "Parallel Lives," the latter in his "Morals," and by both to inspire his contemporaries to imitation. They constitute together an encyclopaedia of well-digested Greek and Roman learning. He was not a man of creative genius, but of great talent, extensive information, amiable, spirit, and universal sympathy. Emerson calls him "the chief example of the illumination of the intellect by the force of morals."596

Plutarch endeavored to build up morality on the basis of religion. He is the very opposite of Lucian, who as an architect of ruin, ridiculed and undermined the popular religion. He was a strong believer in God, and his argument against atheism is well worth quoting."  There has never been," he says, "a state of atheists. You may travel over the world, and you may find cities without walls, without king, without mint, without theatre or gymnasium; but you will never find a city without God, without prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. Sooner may a city stand without foundations, than a state without belief in the gods. This is the bond of all society and the pillar of all legislation."597

In his treatise on The Wrong Fear of the Gods, he contrasts superstition with atheism as the two extremes which often meet, and commends piety or the right reverence of the gods as the golden mean. Of the two extremes he deems superstition the worse, because it makes the gods capricious, cruel, and revengeful, while they are friends of men, saviours (swth're"), and not destroyers. (Nevertheless superstitious people can more easily be converted to true faith than atheists who have destroyed all religious instincts.)

His remarkable treatise on The Delays of Divine Justice in punishing the wicked,598  would do credit to any Christian theologian. It is his solution of the problem of evil, or his theodicy. He discusses the subject with several of his relatives (as Job did with his friends), and illustrates it by examples. He answers the various objections which arise from the delay of justice and vindicates Providence in his dealings with the sinner. He enjoins first modesty and caution in view of our imperfect knowledge. God only knows best when and how and how much to punish. He offers the following considerations: 1) God teaches us to moderate our anger, and never to punish in a passion, but to imitate his gentleness and forbearance. 2) He gives the wicked an opportunity to repent and reform. 3) He permits them to live and prosper that he may use them as executioners of his justice on others. He often punishes the sinner by the sinner. 4) The wicked are sometimes spared that they may bless the world by a noble posterity. 5) Punishment is often deferred that the hand of Providence may be more conspicuous in its infliction. Sooner or later sin will be punished, if not in this world, at least in the future world, to which Plutarch points as the final solution of the mysteries of Providence. He looked upon death as a good thing for the good soul, which shall then live indeed; while the present life "resembles rather the vain illusions of some dream."

The crown of Plutarch’s character is his humility, which was so very rare among ancient philosophers, especially the Stoics, and which comes from true self-knowledge. He was aware of the native depravity of the soul, which he calls "a storehouse and treasure of many evils and maladies."599  Had he known the true and radical remedy for sin, he would no doubt have accepted it with gratitude.

We do not know how far the influence of these saints of ancient paganism, as we may call Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch, extended over the heathens of their age, but we do know that their writings had and still have an elevating and ennobling effect upon Christian readers, and hence we may infer that their teaching and example were among the moral forces that aided rather than hindered the progress and final triumph of Christianity. But this religion alone could bring about such a general and lasting moral reform as they themselves desired.

§ 94. Christian Morality.

The ancient world of classic heathenism, having arrived at the height of its glory, and at the threshold of its decay, had exhausted all the resources of human nature left to itself, and possessed no recuperative force, no regenerative principle. A regeneration of society could only proceed from religion. But the heathen religion had no restraint for vice, no comfort for the poor and oppressed; it was itself the muddy fountain of immorality. God, therefore, who in his infinite mercy desired not the destruction but the salvation of the race, opened in the midst of this hopeless decay of a false religion a pure fountain of holiness, love, and peace, in the only true and universal religion of his Son Jesus Christ.

In the cheerless waste of pagan corruption the small and despised band of Christians was an oasis fresh with life and hope. It was the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. Poor in this world’s goods, it bore the imperishable treasures of’ the kingdom of heaven. Meek and lowly in heart, it was destined, according to the promise of the Lord without a stroke of the sword, to inherit the earth. In submission it conquered; by suffering and death it won the crown of life.

The superiority of the principles of Christian ethics over the heathen standards of morality even under its most favorable forms is universally admitted. The superiority of the example of Christ over all the heathen sages is likewise admitted. The power of that peerless example was and is now as great as the power of his teaching. It is reflected in every age and every type of purity and goodness. But every period, while it shares in the common virtues and graces, has its peculiar moral physiognomy. The ante-Nicene age excelled in unworldliness, in the heroic endurance of suffering and persecution, in the contempt of death, and the hope of resurrection, in the strong sense of community, and in active benevolence.

Christianity, indeed, does not come "with observation."  Its deepest workings are silent and inward. The operations of divine grace commonly shun the notice of the historian, and await their revelation on the great day of account, when all that is secret shall be made known. Who can measure the depth and breadth of all those blessed experiences of forgiveness, peace, gratitude, trust in God, love for God and love for man, humility and meekness, patience and resignation, which have bloomed as vernal flowers on the soil of the renewed heart since the first Christian Pentecost?  Who can tell the number and the fervor of Christian prayers and intercessions which have gone up from lonely chambers, caves, deserts, and martyrs’ graves in the silent night and the open day, for friends and foes, for all classes of mankind, even for cruel persecutors, to the throne of the exalted Saviour?  But where this Christian life has taken root in the depths of the soul it must show itself in the outward conduct, and exert an elevating influence on every calling and sphere of action. The Christian morality surpassed all that the noblest philosophers of heathendom had ever taught or labored for as the highest aim of man. The masterly picture of it in the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus is no mere fancy sketch, but a faithful copy from real life.600

When the apologists indignantly repel the heathen calumnies, and confidently point to the unfeigned piety, the brotherly love, the love for enemies, the purity and chastity, the faithfulness and integrity, the patience and gentleness, of the confessors of the name of Jesus, they speak from daily experience and personal observation. "We, who once served lust," could Justin Martyr say without exaggeration, "now find our delight only in pure morals; we, who once followed sorcery, have now consecrated ourselves to the eternal good God; we, who once loved gain above all, now give up what we have for the common use, and share with every needy one; we, who once hated and killed each other; we, who would have no common hearth with foreigners for difference of customs, now, since the appearance of Christ, live with them, pray for our enemies, seek to convince those who hate us without cause, that they may regulate their life according to the glorious teaching of Christ, and receive from the all-ruling God the same blessings with ourselves."  Tertullian could boast that he knew no Christians who suffered by the hand of the executioner, except for their religion. Minutius Felix tells the heathens601: "You prohibit adultery by law, and practise it in secret; you punish wickedness only in the overt act; we look upon it as criminal even in thought. You dread the inspection of others; we stand in awe of nothing but our own consciences as becomes Christians. And finally your prisons are overflowing with criminals; but they are all heathens, not a Christian is there, unless he be an apostate."  Even Pliny informed Trajan, that the Christians, whom he questioned on the rack respecting the character of their religion, had bound themselves by an oath never to commit theft, robbery, nor adultery, nor to break their word and this, too at a time when the sins of fraud, uncleanness and lasciviousness of every form abounded all around. Another heathen, Lucian, bears testimony to their benevolence and charity for their brethren in distress, while he attempts to ridicule this virtue as foolish weakness in an age of unbounded selfishness.

The humble and painful condition of the church under civil oppression made hypocrisy more rare than in times of peace, and favored the development of the heroic virtues. The Christians delighted to regard themselves as soldiers of Christ, enlisted under the victorious standard of the cross against sin, the world, and the devil. The baptismal vow was their oath of perpetual allegiance;602 the Apostles’ creed their parole;603 the sign of the cross upon the forehead, their mark of service;604 temperance, courage, and faithfulness unto death, their cardinal virtues; the blessedness of heaven, their promised reward. "No soldier," exclaims Tertullian to the Confessors, "goes with his sports or from his bed-chamber to the battle; but from the camp, where he hardens and accustoms himself to every inconvenience. Even in peace warriors learn to bear labor and fatigue, going through all military exercises, that neither soul nor body may flag .... Ye wage a good warfare, in which the living God is the judge of the combat, the Holy Spirit the leader, eternal glory the prize."  To this may be added the eloquent passage of Minutius Felix605: "How fair a spectacle in the sight of God is a Christian entering the lists with affliction, and with noble firmness combating menaces and tortures, or with a disdainful smile marching to death through the clamors of the people, and the insults of the executioners; when he bravely maintains his liberty against kings and princes, and submits to God, whose servant he is; when, like a conqueror, he triumphs over the judge that condemns him. For he certainly is victorious who obtains what he fights for. He fights under the eye of God, and is crowned with length of days. You have exalted some of your stoical sufferers to the skies; such as Scaevola who, having missed his aim in an attempt to kill the king voluntarily burned the mistaking hand. Yet how many among us have suffered not only the hand, but the whole body to be consumed without a complaint, when their deliverance was in their own power!  But why should I compare our elders with your Mutius, or Aquilius, or Regulus, when our very children, our sons and daughters, inspired with patience, despise your racks and wild beasts, and all other instruments of cruelty?  Surely nothing but the strongest reasons could persuade people to suffer at this rate; and nothing else but Almighty power could support them under their sufferings."

Yet, on the other hand, the Christian life of the period before Constantine has been often unwarrantably idealized. In a human nature essentially the same, we could but expect the same faults which we found even in the apostolic churches. The Epistles of Cyprian afford incontestable evidence, that, especially in the intervals of repose, an abatement of zeal soon showed itself, and, on the reopening of persecution, the Christian name was dishonored by hosts of apostates. And not seldom did the most prominent virtues, courage in death, and strictness of morals, degenerate into morbid fanaticism and unnatural rigor.

§ 95. The Church and Public Amusements.

Tertullian: De Spectaculis. On the Roman Spectacles see the abundant references in Friedlaender, II. 255–580 (5th ed.)

Christianity is anything but sanctimonious gloominess and misanthropic austerity. It is the fountain of true joy, and of that peace which "passeth all understanding."  But this joy wells up from the consciousness of pardon and of fellowship with God, is inseparable from holy earnestness, and has no concord with worldly frivolity and sensual amusement, which carry the sting of a bad conscience, and beget only disgust and bitter remorse. "What is more blessed," asks Tertullian, "than reconciliation with God our Father and Lord; than the revelation of the truth, the knowledge of error; than the forgiveness of so great past misdeeds?  Is there a greater joy than the disgust with earthly pleasure, than contempt for the whole world, than true freedom, than an unstained conscience, than contentment in life and fearlessness in death?"

Contrast with this the popular amusements of the heathen: the theatre, the circus, and the arena. They were originally connected with the festivals of the gods, but had long lost their religious character and degenerated into nurseries of vice. The theatre, once a school of public morals in the best days of Greece, when Aeschylos and Sophocles furnished the plays, had since the time of Augustus room only for low comedies and unnatural tragedies, with splendid pageantry, frivolous music, and licentious dances.606  Tertullian represents it as the temple of Venus and Bacchus, who are close allies as patrons of lust and drunkenness.607  The circus was devoted to horse and chariot races, hunts of wild beasts, military displays and athletic games, and attracted immense multitudes. "The impatient crowd," says the historian of declining Rome608 "rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places, and there were many who passed a sleepless and anxious night in the adjacent porticos. From the morning to the evening careless of the sun or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of four hundred thousand, remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear for the success of the colors which they espoused; and the happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race. The same immoderate ardor inspired their clamors and their applause as often as they were entertained with the hunting of wild beasts and the various modes of theatrical representation."

The most popular, and at the same time the most inhuman and brutalizing of these public spectacles were the gladiatorial fights in the arena. There murder was practised as an art, from sunrise to sunset, and myriads of men and beasts were sacrificed to satisfy a savage curiosity and thirst for blood. At the inauguration of the Flavian amphitheatre from five to nine thousand wild beasts (according to different accounts) were slain in one day. No less than ten thousand gladiators fought in the feasts which Trajan gave to the Romans after the conquest of Dacia, and which lasted four months (A.D. 107). Under Probus (A.D. 281) as many as a hundred lions, a hundred lionesses, two hundred leopards, three hundred bears, and a thousand wild boars were massacred in a single day.609  The spectacles of the worthless Carinus (284) who selected his favorites and even his ministers from the dregs of the populace, are said to have surpassed those of all his predecessors. The gladiators were condemned criminals, captives of war, slaves, and professional fighters; in times of persecution innocent Christians were not spared, but thrown before lions and tigers. Painted savages from Britain, blonde Germans from the Rhine and Danube, negroes from Africa, and wild beasts, then much more numerous than now, from all parts of the world, were brought to the arena. Domitian arranged fights of dwarfs and women.

The emperors patronized these various spectacles as the surest means of securing the favor of the people, which clamored for "Panem et Circenses." Enormous sums were wasted on them from the public treasury and private purses. Augustus set the example. Nero was so extravagantly liberal in this direction that the populace forgave his horrible vices, and even wished his return from death. The parsimonious Vespasian built the most costly and colossal amphitheatre the world has ever seen, incrusted with marble, decorated with statues, and furnished with gold, silver, and amber. Titus presented thousands of Jewish captives after the capture of Jerusalem to the provinces of the East for slaughter in the arena. Even Trajan and Marcus Aurelius made bountiful provision for spectacles, and the latter, Stoic as he was, charged the richest senators to gratify the public taste during his absence from Rome. Some emperors as Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were so lost to all sense of dignity and decency that they delighted and gloried in histrionic and gladiatorial performances. Nero died by his own hand, with the explanation: "What an artist perishes in me."  Commodus appeared no less than seven hundred and thirty-five times on the stage in the character of Hercules, with club and lion’s skin, and from a secure position killed countless beasts and men.

The theatrical passion was not confined to Rome, it spread throughout the provinces. Every considerable city had an amphitheatre, and that was the most imposing building, as may be seen to this day in the ruins at Pompeii, Capua, Puteoli, Verona, Nismes, Autun (Augustodunum), and other places.610

Public opinion favored these demoralizing amusements almost without a dissenting voice.611  Even such a noble heathen as Cicero commended them as excellent schools of courage and contempt of death. Epictetus alludes to them with indifference. Seneca is the only Roman author who, in one of his latest writings, condemned the bloody spectacles from the standpoint of humanity, but without effect. Paganism had no proper conception of the sanctity of human life; and even the Stoic philosophy, while it might disapprove of bloody games as brutal and inhuman, did not condemn them as the sin of murder.

To this gigantic evil the Christian church opposed an inexorable Puritanic rigor in the interest of virtue and humanity. No compromise was possible with such shocking public immorality. Nothing would do but to flee from it and to warn against it. The theatrical spectacles were included in "the pomp of the devil," which Christians renounced at their baptism. They were forbidden, on pain of excommunication, to attend them. It sometimes happened that converts, who were overpowered by their old habits and visited the theatre, either relapsed into heathenism, or fell for a long time into a state of deep dejection. Tatianus calls the spectacles terrible feasts, in which the soul feeds on human flesh and blood. Tertullian attacked them without mercy, even before he joined the rigorous Montanists. He reminds the catechumens, who were about to consecrate themselves to the service of God, that "the condition of faith and the laws of Christian discipline forbid, among other sins of the world, the pleasures of the public shows."  They excite, he says, all sorts of wild and impure passions, anger, fury, and lust; while the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of meekness, peace, and purity."  What a man should not say he should not hear. All licentious speech, nay, every idle word is condemned by God. The things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, defile him also when they go in at his eyes and ears. The true wrestlings of the Christian are to overcome unchastity by chastity, perfidy by faithfulness, cruelty by compassion and charity."  Tertullian refutes the arguments with which loose Christians would plead for those fascinating amusements; their appeals to the silence of the Scriptures, or even to the dancing of David before the ark, and to Paul’s comparison of the Christian life with the Grecian games. He winds up with a picture of the fast approaching day of judgment, to which we should look forward. He inclined strongly to the extreme view, that all art is a species of fiction and falsehood, and inconsistent with Christian truthfulness. In two other treatises612 he warned the Christian women against all display of dress, in which the heathen women shone in temples, theatres, and public places. Visit not such places, says he to them, and appear in public only for earnest reasons. The handmaids of God must distinguish themselves even outwardly from the handmaids of Satan, and set the latter a good example of simplicity, decorum, and chastity.

The opposition of the Church had, of course, at first only a moral effect, but in the fourth century it began to affect legislation, and succeeded at last in banishing at least the bloody gladiatorial games from the civilized world (with the single exception of Spain and the South American countries, which still disgrace themselves by bull-fights). Constantine, even as late as 313, committed a great multitude of defeated barbarians to the wild beasts for the amusement of the people, and was highly applauded for this generous act by a heathen orator; but after the Council of Nicaea, in 325, he issued the first prohibition of those bloody spectacles in times of peace, and kept them out of Constantinople.613  "There is scarcely," says a liberal historian of moral progress, "any other single reform so important in the moral history of mankind as the suppression of the gladiatorial shows, and this feat must be almost exclusively ascribed to the Christian church. When we remember how extremely few of the best and greatest men of the Roman world had absolutely condemned the games of the amphitheatre, it is impossible to regard, without the deepest admiration, the unwavering and uncompromising consistency of the patristic denunciations."614

§ 96. Secular Callings and Civil Duties.

As to the various callings of life, Christianity gives the instruction: "Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called."615  It forbids no respectable pursuit, and only requires that it be followed in a new spirit to the glory of God and the benefit of men. This is one proof of its universal application—its power to enter into all the relations of human life and into all branches of society, under all forms of government. This is beautifully presented by the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus. Tertullian protests to the heathens:616  "We are no Brahmins nor Indian gymnosophists, no hermits, no exiles from life.617  We are mindful of the thanks we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we despise not the enjoyment of his works; we only temper it, that we may avoid excess and abuse. We dwell, therefore, with you in this world, not without markets and fairs, not without baths, inns, shops, and every kind of intercourse. We carry on commerce and war,618 agriculture and trade with you. We take part in your pursuits, and give our labor for your use."

But there were at that time some callings which either ministered solely to sinful gratification, like that, of the stage-player, or were intimately connected with the prevailing idolatry, like the manufacture, decoration, and sale of mythological images and symbols, the divination of astrologers, and all species of magic. These callings were strictly forbidden in the church, and must be renounced by the candidate for baptism. Other occupations, which were necessary indeed, but commonly perverted by the heathens to fraudulent purposes—inn-keeping, for example—were elevated by the Christian spirit. Theodotus at Ancyra made his house a refuge for the Christians and a place of prayer in the Diocletian persecution, in which he himself suffered martyrdom.

In regard to military and civil offices under the heathen government, opinion was divided. Some, on the authority of such passages as Matt. 5:39 and 26:52, condemned all war as unchristian and immoral; anticipating the views of the Mennonites and Friends. Others appealed to the good centurion of Capernaum and Cornelius of Caesarea, and held the military life consistent with a Christian profession. The tradition of the legio fulminatrix indicates that there were Christian soldiers in the Roman armies under Marcus Aurelius, and at the time of Diocletian the number of Christians at the court and in civil office was very considerable.

But in general the Christians of those days, with their lively sense of foreignness to this world, and their longing for the heavenly home, or the millennial reign of Christ, were averse to high office in a heathen state. Tertullian expressly says, that nothing was more alien to them than politics.619  Their conscience required them to abstain scrupulously from all idolatrous usages, sacrifices, libations, and flatteries connected with public offices; and this requisition must have come into frequent collision with their duties to the state, so long as the state remained heathen. They honored the emperor as appointed to earthly government by God, and as standing nearest of all men to him in power; and they paid their taxes, as Justin Martyr expressly states, with exemplary faithfulness. But their obedience ceased whenever the emperor, as he frequently did, demanded of them idolatrous acts. Tertullian thought that the empire would last till the end of the world,—then supposed to be near at hand—and would be irreconcilable with the Christian profession. Against the idolatrous worship of the emperor he protests with Christian boldness: "Augustus, the founder of the empire, would never be called Lord; for this is a surname of God. Yet I will freely call the emperor so, only not in the place of God. Otherwise I am free from him; for I have only one Lord, the almighty and eternal God, who also is the emperor’s Lord .... Far be it from me to call the emperor God, which is not only the most shameful, but the most pernicious flattery."

The comparative indifference and partial aversion of the Christians to the affairs of the state, to civil legislation and administration exposed them to the frequent reproach and contempt of the heathens. Their want of patriotism was partly the result of their superior devotion to the church as their country, partly of their situation in a hostile world. It must not be attributed to an "indolent or criminal disregard for the public welfare" (as Gibbon intimates), but chiefly to their just abhorrence of the innumerable idolatrous rites connected with the public and private life of the heathens. While they refused to incur the guilt of idolatry, they fervently and regularly prayed for the emperor and the state, their enemies and persecutors.620  They were the most peaceful subjects, and during this long period of almost constant provocation, abuse, and persecutions, they never took part in those frequent insurrections and rebellions which weakened and undermined the empire. They renovated society from within, by revealing in their lives as well as in their doctrine a higher order of private and public virtue, and thus proved themselves patriots in the best sense of the word.

The patriotism of ancient Greece and republican Rome, while it commands our admiration by the heroic devotion and sacrifice to the country, was after all an extended selfishness, and based upon the absolutism of the State and the disregard of the rights of the individual citizen and the foreigner. It was undermined by causes independent of Christianity. The amalgamation of different nationalities in the empire extinguished sectionalism and exclusivism, and opened the wide view of a universal humanity. Stoicism gave this cosmopolitan sentiment a philosophical and ethical expression in the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Terence embodied it in his famous line: "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."  But Christianity first taught the fatherhood of God, the redemption by Christ, the common brotherhood of believers, the duty of charity for all men made in the image of God. It is true that monasticism, which began to develop itself already in the third century, nursed indifference to the state and even to the family, and substituted the total abandonment of the world for its reformation and transformation. It withdrew a vast amount of moral energy and enthusiasm from the city to the desert, and left Roman society to starvation and consumption. But it preserved and nursed in solitude the heroism of self-denial and consecration, which, in the collapse of the Roman empire, became a converting power of the barbarian conquerors, and laid the foundation for a new and better civilization. The decline and fall of the Roman empire was inevitable; Christianity prolonged its life in the East, and diminished the catastrophe of its collapse in the West, by converting and humanizing the barbarian conquerors.621  St. Augustin pointed to the remarkable fact that amid the horrors of the sack of Rome by the Goths, "the churches of the apostles and the crypts of the martyrs were sanctuaries for all who fled to them, whether Christian or pagan," and "saved the lives of multitudes who impute to Christ the ills that have befallen their city."622

§ 97. The Church and Slavery.

See Lit. vol. I. § 48, especially Wallon’s Histoire de l’esclavage (Paris, new ed. 1879, 3 vols). Comp. also V. Lechler: Sklaverei und Christenthum. Leipzig, 1877, 1878; Theod. Zahn: Sklaverei und Christenthum In Der Alten Welt. Heidelberg, 1879. Overbeck: Verh. d. alten Kirche zur Sclaverei im röm. Reiche. 1875.

Heathenism had no conception of the general and natural rights of men. The ancient republics consisted in the exclusive dominion of a minority over an oppressed majority. The Greeks and Romans regarded only the free, i.e. the free-born rich and independent citizens as men in the full sense of the term, and denied this privilege to the foreigners, the laborers, the poor, and the slaves. They claimed the natural right to make war upon all foreign nations, without distinction of race, in order to subject them to their iron rule. Even with Cicero the foreigner and the enemy are synonymous terms. The barbarians were taken in thousands by the chance of war (above 100,000 in the Jewish war alone) and sold as cheap as horses. Besides, an active slave-trade was carried on in the Euxine, the eastern provinces, the coast of Africa, and Britain. The greater part of mankind in the old Roman empire was reduced to a hopeless state of slavery, and to a half brutish level. And this evil of slavery was so thoroughly interwoven with the entire domestic and public life of the heathen world, and so deliberately regarded, even by the greatest philosophers, Aristotle for instance, as natural and indispensable, that the abolition of it, even if desirable, seemed to belong among the impossible things.

Yet from the outset Christianity has labored for this end; not by impairing the right of property, not by outward violence, nor sudden revolution; this, under the circumstances, would only have made the evil worse; but by its moral power, by preaching the divine descent and original unity of all men, their common redemption through Christ, the duty of brotherly love, and the true freedom of the spirit. It placed slaves and masters on the same footing of dependence on God and of freedom in God, the Father, Redeemer, and Judge of both. It conferred inward freedom even under outward bondage, and taught obedience to God and for the sake of God, even in the enjoyment of outward freedom. This moral and religious freedom must lead at last to the personal and civil liberty of the individual. Christianity redeems not only the soul but the body also, and the process of regeneration will end in the resurrection and glorification of the entire natural world.

In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question, considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so absorbed in the transcendent importance of the higher world and in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared little for earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve only the more zealously to the glory of the Lord, that they may receive from God the higher freedom; and not to attempt to be redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be found slaves to their own caprice. From this we see that slaves, in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value the earthly freedom more than the spiritual. Tertullian declares the outward freedom worthless without the ransom of the soul from the bondage of sin. "How can the world," says he, "make a servant free?  All is mere show in the world, nothing truth. For the slave is already free, as a purchase of Christ; and the freedman is a servant of Christ. If thou takest the freedom which the world can give for true, thou hast thereby become again the servant of man, and hast lost the freedom of Christ, in that thou thinkest it bondage."  Chrysostom, in the fourth century, was the first of the fathers to discuss the question of slavery at large in the spirit of the apostle Paul, and to recommend, though cautiously, a gradual emancipation.

But the church before Constantine labored with great success to elevate the intellectual and moral condition of the slaves, to adjust inwardly the inequality between slaves and masters, as the first and efficient step towards the final outward abolition of the evil, and to influence the public opinion even of the heathens. Here the church was aided by a concurrent movement in philosophy and legislation. The cruel views of Cato, who advised to work the slaves, like beasts of burden, to death rather than allow them to become old and unprofitable, gave way to the milder and humane views of Seneca, Pliny, and Plutarch, who very nearly approach the apostolic teaching. To the influence of the later Stoic philosophy must be attributed many improvements in the slave-code of imperial Rome. But the most important improvements were made from the triumph of Constantine to the reign of Justinian, under directly Christian influences. Constantine issued a law in 315, forbidding the branding of slaves on the face to prevent the disfiguration of the figure of celestial beauty (i.e. the image of God).623  He also facilitated emancipation, in an edict of 316, by requiring only a written document, signed by the master, instead of the previous ceremony in the presence of the prefect and his lictor.

It is here to be considered, first of all, that Christianity spread freely among the slaves, except where they were so rude and degraded as to be insensible to all higher impressions. They were not rarely (as Origen observes) the instruments of the conversion of their masters, especially of the women, and children, whose training was frequently intrusted to them. Not a few slaves died martyrs, and were enrolled among the saints; as Onesimus, Eutyches, Victorinus, Maro, Nereus, Achilleus, Blandina, Potamiaena, Felicitas. Tradition makes Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, a bishop. The church of St. Vital at Ravenna—the first and noblest specimen of Byzantine architecture in Italy—was dedicated by, Justinian to the memory of a martyred slave. But the most remarkable instance is that of Callistus, who was originally a slave, and rose to the chair of St. Peter in Rome (218–223). Hippolytus, who acquaints us with his history, attacks his doctrinal and disciplinarian views, but does not reproach him for his former condition. Callistus sanctioned the marriages between free Christian women and Christian slaves. Celsus cast it up as a reproach to Christianity, that it let itself down so readily to slaves, fools, women, and children. But Origen justly saw an excellence of the new religion in this very fact, that it could raise this despised and, in the prevailing view, irreclaimable class of men to the level of moral purity and worth. If, then, converted slaves, with the full sense of their intellectual and religious superiority still remained obedient to their heathen masters, and even served them more faithfully than before, resisting decidedly only their immoral demands (like Potamiaena, and other chaste women and virgins in the service of voluptuous masters)—they showed, in this very self-control, the best proof of their ripeness for civil freedom, and at the same time furnished the fairest memorial of that Christian faith, which raised the soul, in the enjoyment of sonship with God and in the hope of the blessedness of heaven, above the sufferings of earth. Euelpistes, a slave of the imperial household, who was carried with Justin Martyr to the tribunal of Rusticus, on being questioned concerning his condition, replied: "I am a slave of the emperor, but I am also a Christian, and have received liberty from Jesus Christ; by his grace I have the same hope as my brethren."  Where the owners of the slaves themselves became Christians, the old relation virtually ceased; both came together to the table of the Lord, and felt themselves brethren of one family, in striking contrast with the condition of things among their heathen neighbors as expressed in the current proverb:  "As many enemies as slaves."624  Clement of Alexandria frequently urges that "slaves are men like ourselves," though he nowhere condemns the institution itself. That there actually were such cases of fraternal fellowship, like that which St. Paul recommended to Philemon, we have the testimony of Lactantius, at the end of our period, who writes in his Institutes, no doubt from life: "Should any say: Are there not also among you poor and rich, servants and masters, distinctions among individuals?  No; we call ourselves brethren for no other reason than that we hold ourselves all equal. For since we measure everything human not by its outward appearance, but by its intrinsic value we have notwithstanding the difference of outward relations, no slaves, but we call them and consider them brethren in the Spirit and fellow-servants in religion."625  The same writer says: "God would have all men equal .... With him there is neither servant nor master. If he is the same Father to all, we are all with the same right free. So no one is poor before God, but he who is destitute of righteousness; no one rich, but he who is full of virtues."626

The testimony of the catacombs, as contrasted with pagan epitaphs, shows that Christianity almost obliterated the distinction between the two classes of society. Slaves are rarely mentioned. "While it is impossible," says De Rossi, "to examine the pagan sepulchral inscriptions of the same period without finding mention of a slave or a freedman, I have not met with one well-ascertained instance among the inscriptions of the Christian tombs."627

The principles of Christianity naturally prompt Christian slave-holders to actual manumission. The number of slaveholders before Constantine was very limited among Christians, who were mostly poor. Yet we read in the Acts of the martyrdom of the Roman bishop Alexander, that a Roman prefect, Hermas, converted by that bishop, in the reign of Trajan, received baptism at an Easter festival with his wife and children and twelve hundred and fifty slaves, and on this occasion gave all his slaves their freedom and munificent gifts besides.628  So in the martyrology of St. Sebastian, it is related that a wealthy Roman prefect, Chromatius, under Diocletian, on embracing Christianity, emancipated fourteen hundred slaves, after having them baptized with himself, because their sonship with God put an end to their servitude to man.629  Several epitaphs in the catacombs mention the fact of manumission. In the beginning of the fourth century St. Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla, of an old Roman family, set all their slaves, seventy-three in number, at liberty, after they had received baptism.630  St. Melania emancipated eight thousand slaves; St. Ovidius, five thousand; Hermes, a prefect in the reign of Trajan, twelve hundred and fifty.631

These legendary traditions may indeed be doubted as to the exact facts in the case, and probably are greatly exaggerated; but they, are nevertheless conclusive as the exponents of the spirit which animated the church at that time concerning the duty of Christian masters. It was felt that in a thoroughly Christianized society there can be no room for despotism on the one hand and slavery on the other.

After the third century the manumission became a solemn act, which took place in the presence of the clergy and the congregation. It was celebrated on church festivals, especially on Easter. The master led the slave to the altar; there the document of emancipation was read, the minister pronounced the blessing, and the congregation received him as a free brother with equal rights and privileges. Constantine found this custom already established, and African councils of the fourth century requested the emperor to give it general force. He placed it under the superintendence of the clergy.

Notes.

H. Wallon, in his learned and able Histoire de l’esclavage dans l’antiquité (second ed. Paris, 1879, 3 vols.), shows that the gospel in such passages as Matt. 23:8; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11; 1 Cor. 12:13 sounded the death knell of slavery, though it was very long in dying, and thus sums up the teaching of the ante-Nicene church (III. 237): "Minutius Félix, Tertullien et tous ceux communauté de, nature, cette communauté de patrie dans la république du monde, en un language familier à la philosophie, mais qui trouvait parmi les chrétiens avec une sanction plus haute et un sens plus complet, une application plus sérieuse. Devant cc droit commun des hommes, fondé sur le droit divin, le prétendu droit des gens n’était plus qu’ une monstrueuse injustice."  For the views of the later fathers and the influence of the church on the imperial legislation, see ch. VIII. to X. in his third volume.

Lecky discusses the relation of Christianity to slavery in the second vol. of his History of European Morals, pp. 66–90, and justly remarks: "The services of Christianity in this sphere were of three kinds. It supplied a new order of relations, in which the distinction of classes was unknown. It imparted a moral dignity to the servile classes, and it gave an unexampled impetus to the movement of enfranchisement."

§ 98. The Heathen Family.

In ancient Greece and Rome the state was the highest object of life, and the only virtues properly recognized—wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice—were political virtues. Aristotle makes the state, that is the organized body of free citizens632 (foreigners and slaves are excluded), precede the family and the individual, and calls man essentially a "political animal."  In Plato’s ideal commonwealth the state is everything and owns everything, even the children.

This political absolutism destroys the proper dignity and rights of the individual and the family, and materially hinders the development of the domestic and private virtues. Marriage was allowed no moral character, but merely a political import for the preservation of the state, and could not be legally contracted except by free citizens. Socrates, in instructing his son concerning this institution, tells him, according to Xenophon, that we select only such wives as we hope will yield beautiful children. Plato recommends even community of women to the class of warriors in his ideal republic, as the best way to secure vigorous citizens. Lycurgus, for similar reasons, encouraged adultery under certain circumstances, requiring old men to lend their young and handsome wives to young and strong men.

Woman was placed almost on the same level with the slave. She differs, indeed, from the slave, according to Aristotle, but has, after all, really no will of her own, and is hardly capable of a higher virtue than the slave. Shut up in a retired apartment of the house, she spent her life with the slaves. As human nature is essentially the same in all ages, and as it in never entirely forsaken by the guidance of a kind Providence, we must certainly suppose that female virtue was always more or less maintained and appreciated even among the heathen. Such characters as Penelope, Nausicaa, Andromache, Antigone, Iphigenia, and Diotima, of the Greek poetry and history, bear witness of this. Plutarch’s advice to married people, and his letter of consolation to his wife after the death of their daughter, breathe a beautiful spirit of purity and affection. But the general position assigned to woman by the poets, philosophers, and legislators of antiquity, was one of social oppression and degradation. In Athens she was treated as a minor during lifetime, and could not inherit except in the absence of male heirs. To the question of Socrates: "Is there any one with whom you converse less than with the wife?" his pupil, Aristobulus, replies: "No one, or at least very few."  If she excelled occasionally, in Greece, by wit and culture, and, like Aspasia, Phryne, Laïs, Theodota, attracted the admiration and courtship even of earnest philosophers like Socrates, and statesmen like Pericles, she generally belonged to the disreputable class of the hetaerae or amicae. In Corinth they were attached to the temple of Aphrodite, and enjoyed the sanction of religion for the practice of vice.633  These dissolute women were esteemed above housewives, and became the proper and only representatives of some sort of female culture and social elegance. To live with them openly was no disgrace even for married men.634  How could there be any proper conception and abhorrence of the sin of licentiousness and adultery, if the very gods, a Jupiter, a Mars, and a Venus, were believed to be guilty of those sins!  The worst vices of earth were transferred to Olympus.

Modesty forbids the mention of a still more odious vice, which even depraved nature abhors, which yet was freely discussed and praised by ancient poets and philosophers, practised with neither punishment nor dishonor, and likewise divinely sanctioned by the example of Apollo and Hercules, and by the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede.635

The Romans were originally more virtuous, domestic, and chaste, as they were more honest and conscientious, than the Greeks. With them the wife was honored by the title domina, matrona, materfamilias. At the head of their sacerdotal system stood the flamens of Jupiter, who represented marriage in its purity, and the vestal virgins, who represented virginity. The Sabine women interceding between their parents and their husbands, saved the republic; the mother and the wife of Coriolanus by her prayers averted his wrath, and raised the siege of the Volscian army; Lucretia who voluntarily sacrificed her life to escape the outrage to her honor offered by king Tarquin, and Virginia who was killed by her father to save her from slavery and dishonor, shine in the legendary history of Rome as bright examples of unstained purity. But even in the best days of the republic the legal status of woman was very low. The Romans likewise made marriage altogether subservient to the interest of the state, and allowed it in its legal form to free citizens alone. The proud maxims of the republic prohibited even the legitimate nuptials of a Roman with a foreign queen; and Cleopatra and Berenice were, as strangers, degraded to the position of concubines of Mark Antony and Titus. According to ancient custom the husband bought his bride from her parents, and she fulfilled the coëmption by purchasing, with three pieces of copper, a just introduction to his house and household deities. But this was for her simply an exchange of one servitude for another. She became the living property of a husband who could lend her out, as Cato lent his wife to his friend Hortensius, and as Augustus took Livia from Tiberius Nero."  Her husband or master, says Gibbon,636 "was invested with the plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was approved or censured, or chastised; he exercised the jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed, that in cases of adultery or drunkenness, the sentence might be properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a person, but as a thing, that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed like other movables, by the use and possession of an entire year."

Monogamy was the rule both in Greece and in Rome, but did not exclude illegitimate connexions. Concubinage, in its proper legal sense, was a sort of secondary marriage with a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, standing below the dignity of a matron and above the infamy of a prostitute. It was sanctioned and regulated by law; it prevailed both in the East and the West from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, and was preferred to regular marriage by Vespasian, and the two Antonines, the best Roman emperors. Adultery was severely punished, at times even with sudden destruction of the offender; but simply as an interference with the rights and property of a free man. The wife had no legal or social protection against the infidelity of her husband. The Romans worshipped a peculiar goddess of domestic life; but her name Viriplaca, the appeaser of husbands, indicates her partiality. The intercourse of a husband with the slaves of his household and with public prostitutes was excluded from the odium and punishment of adultery. We say nothing of that unnatural abomination alluded to in Rom. 1:26, 27, which seems to have passed from the Etruscans and Greeks to the Romans, and prevailed among the highest as well as the lowest classes. The women, however, were almost as corrupt as their husbands, at least in the imperial age. Juvenal calls a chaste wife a "rara avis in terris."  Under Augustus free-born daughters could no longer be found for the service of Vesta, and even the severest laws of Domitian could not prevent the six priestesses of the pure goddess from breaking their vow. The pantomimes and the games of Flora, with their audacious indecencies, were favorite amusements."  The unblushing, undisguised obscenity of the Epigrams of Martial, of the Romances of Apuleius and Petronius, and of some of the Dialogues of Lucian, reflected but too faithfully the spirit of their times."637

Divorce is said to have been almost unknown in the ancient days of the Roman republic, and the marriage tie was regarded as indissoluble. A senator was censured for kissing his wife in the presence of their daughter. But the merit of this virtue is greatly diminished if we remember that the husband always had an easy outlet for his sensual passions in the intercourse with slaves and concubines. Nor did it outlast the republic. After the Punic war the increase of wealth and luxury, and the influx of Greek and Oriental licentiousness swept away the stern old Roman virtues. The customary civil and religious rites of marriage were gradually disused; the open community of life between persons of similar rank was taken as sufficient evidence of their nuptials; and marriage, after Augustus, fell to the level of any partnership, which might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. "Passion, interest, or caprice," says Gibbon on the imperial age, "suggested daily, motives for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure."638

Various remedies were tardily adopted as the evil spread, but they proved inefficient, until the spirit of Christianity gained the control of public opinion and improved the Roman legislation, which, however, continued for a long time to fluctuate between the custom of heathenism and the wishes of the church. Another radical evil of heathen family life, which the church had to encounter throughout the whole extent of the Roman Empire, was the absolute tyrannical authority of the parent over the children, extending even to the power of life and death, and placing the adult son of a Roman citizen on a level with the movable things and slaves, "whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any earthly tribunal."

With this was connected the unnatural and monstrous custom of exposing poor, sickly, and deformed children to a cruel death, or in many cases to a life of slavery and infamy-a custom expressly approved, for the public interest, even by a Plato, an Aristotle, and a Seneca!  "Monstrous offspring," says the great Stoic philosopher, "we destroy; children too, if born feeble and ill-formed, we drown. It is not wrath, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the healthy."  "The exposition of children"—to quote once more from Gibbon—"was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion .... The Roman Empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment."639

§ 99. The Christian Family.

Such was the condition of the domestic life of the ancient world, when Christianity, with its doctrine of the sanctity of marriage, with its injunction of chastity, and with its elevation of woman from her half-slavish condition to moral dignity and equality with man, began the work of a silent transformation, which secured incalculable blessings to generations yet unborn. It laid the foundation for a well-ordered family life. It turned the eye from the outward world to the inward sphere of affection, from the all-absorbing business of politics and state-life into the sanctuary of home; and encouraged the nurture of those virtues of private life, without which no true public virtue can exist. But, as the evil here to be abated, particularly the degradation of the female sex and the want of chastity, was so deeply rooted and thoroughly interwoven in the whole life of the old world, this ennobling of the family, like the abolition of slavery, was necessarily a very slow process. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the high estimate of celibacy, which in the eyes of many seemed to be the only radical escape from the impurity and misery of married life as it generally stood among the heathen. But, although the fathers are much more frequent and enthusiastic in the praise of virginity than in that of marriage, yet their views on this subject show an immense advance upon the moral standard of the greatest sages and legislators of Greece and Rome.

Chastity before marriage, in wedlock, and in celibacy, in man as well as in woman, so rare in paganism, was raised to the dignity of a cardinal virtue and made the corner-stone of the family. Many a female martyr preferred cruel torture and death to the loss of honor. When St. Perpetua fell half dead from the horns of a wild bull in the arena, she instinctively drew together her dress, which had been torn in the assault. The acts of martyrs and saints tell marvellous stories, exaggerated no doubt, yet expressive of the ruling Christian sentiment, about heroic resistance to carnal temptation, the sudden punishment of unjust charges of impurity by demoniacal possession or instant death, the rescue of courtesans from a life of shame and their radical conversion and elevation even to canonical sanctity.640  The ancient councils deal much with carnal sins so fearfully prevalent, and unanimously condemn them in every shape and form. It is true, chastity in the early church and by the unanimous consent of the fathers was almost identified with celibacy, as we shall see hereafter; but this excess should not blind us to the immense advance of patristic over heathen morals.

Woman was emancipated, in the best sense of the term, from the bondage of social oppression, and made the life and light of a Christian home. Such pure and heroic virgins as the martyred Blandina, and Perpetua, and such devoted mothers as Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica, we seek in vain among the ancient Greek and Roman maidens and matrons, and we need not wonder that the heathen Libanius, judging from such examples as the mother of his pupil Chrysostom, reluctantly exclaimed: "What women have these Christians!"  The schoolmen of the middle ages derived from the formation of woman an ingenious argument for her proper position: Eve was not taken from the feet of Adam to be his slave, nor from his head to be his ruler, but from his side to be his beloved partner.641

At the same time here also we must admit that the ancient church was yet far behind the ideal set up in the New Testament, and counterbalanced the elevation of woman by an extravagant over-estimate of celibacy. It was the virgin far more than the faithful wife and mother of children that was praised and glorified by the fathers; and among the canonized saints of the Catholic calendar there is little or no room for husbands and wives, although the patriarchs, Moses, and some of the greatest prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel), and apostles (Peter taking the lead) lived in honorable wedlock.

Marriage was regarded in the church from the beginning as a sacred union of body and soul for the propagation of civil society, and the kingdom of God, for the exercise of virtue and the promotion of happiness. It was clothed with a sacramental or semi-sacramental character on the basis of Paul’s comparison of the marriage union with the relation of Christ to his church.642  It was in its nature indissoluble except in case of adultery, and this crime was charged not only to the woman, but to the man as even the more guilty party, and to every extra-connubial carnal connection. Thus the wife was equally protected against the wrongs of the husband, and chastity was made the general law of the family life.

We have a few descriptions of Christian homes from the ante-Nicene age, one from an eminent Greek father, another from a married presbyter of the Latin church.

Clement of Alexandria enjoins upon Christian married persons united prayer and reading of the Scriptures,643 as a daily morning exercise, and very beautifully says: "The mother is the glory of her children, the wife is the glory of her husband, both are the glory of the wife, God is the glory of all together."644

Tertullian, at the close of the book which he wrote to his wife, draws the following graphic picture, which, though somewhat idealized, could be produced only from the moral spirit of the gospel and actual experience:645  "How can I paint the happiness of a marriage which the church ratifies, the oblation (the celebration of the communion) confirms, the benediction seals, angels announce, the Father declares valid. Even upon earth, indeed, sons do not legitimately marry without the consent of their fathers. What a union of two believers—one hope, one vow, one discipline, and one worship!  They are brother and sister, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. Where there is one flesh, there is also one spirit. They pray together, fast together, instruct, exhort, and support each other. They go together to the church of God, and to the table of the Lord. They share each other’s tribulation, persecution, and revival. Neither conceals anything from the other; neither avoids, neither annoys the other. They delight to visit the sick, supply the needy, give alms without constraint, and in daily zeal lay their offerings before the altar without scruple or hindrance. They do not need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express slyly their Christian joy, nor to suppress the blessing. Psalms and hymns they sing together, and they vie with each other in singing to God. Christ rejoices when he sees and hears this. He gives them his peace. Where two are together in his name, there is he; and where he is, there the evil one cannot come."

A large sarcophagus represents a scene of family worship: on the right, four men, with rolls in their hands, reading or singing; on the left, three women and a girl playing a lyre.

For the conclusion of a marriage, Ignatius646 required "the consent of the bishop, that it might be a marriage for God, and not for pleasure. All should be done to the glory of God."  In Tertullian’s time,647 as may be inferred from the passage just quoted, the solemnization of marriage was already at least a religious act, though not a proper sacrament, and was sealed by the celebration of the holy communion in presence of the congregation. The Montanists were disposed even to make this benediction of the church necessary to the validity of marriage among Christians. All noisy and wanton Jewish and heathen nuptial ceremonies, and at first also the crowning of the bride, were discarded; but the nuptial ring, as a symbol of union, was retained.

In the catacombs the marriage ceremony is frequently represented by the man and the woman standing side by side and joining hands in token of close union, as also on heathen documents. On a gilded glass of the fourth century, the couple join hands over a small nuptial altar, and around the figures are inscribed the words (of the priest): "May ye live in God."648

Mixed marriages with heathens and also with heretics, were unanimously condemned by the voice of the church in agreement with the Mosaic legislation, unless formed before conversion, in which case they were considered valid.649  Tertullian even classes such marriages with adultery. What heathen, asks he, will let his wife attend the nightly meetings of the church, and the slandered supper of the Lord, take care of the sick even in the poorest hovels, kiss the chains of the martyrs in prison rise in the night for prayer, and show hospitality to strange brethren?  Cyprian calls marriage with an unbeliever a prostitution of the members of Christ. The Council of Elvira in Spain (306) forbade such mixed marriages on pain of excommunication, but did not dissolve those already existing. We shall understand this strictness, if, to say nothing of the heathen marriage rites, and the wretchedly loose notions on chastity and conjugal fidelity, we consider the condition of those times, and the offences and temptations which met the Christian in the constant sight of images of the household gods, mythological pictures on the walls, the floor, and the furniture; in the libations at table; in short, at every step and turn in a pagan house.

Second marriage.—From the high view of marriage, and also from an ascetic over-estimate of celibacy, arose a very, prevalent aversion to re-marriage, particularly of widows. The Shepherd of Hermas allows this reunion indeed, but with the reservation, that continuance in single life earns great honor with the Lord. Athenagoras goes so far as to call the second marriage a "decent adultery."650

The Montanists and Novatians condemned re-marriage, and made it a subject of discipline.

Tertullian came forward with the greatest decision, as advocate of monogamy against both successive and simultaneous polygamy.651  He thought thus to occupy the true middle ground between the ascetic Gnostics, who rejected marriage altogether, and the Catholics, who allowed more than one.652  In the earlier period of his life, when he drew the above picture of Christian marriage, before his adoption of Montanism., he already placed a high estimate on celibacy as a superior grade of Christian holiness, appealing to 1 Cor. 7:9 and advised at least his wife, in case of his death, not to marry again, especially with a heathen; but in his Montanistic writings, "De Exhortatione Castitatis" and "De Monogamia," he repudiates second marriage from principle, and with fanatical zeal contends against it as unchristian, as an act of polygamy, nay of "stuprum" and "adulterium."  He opposes it with all sorts of acute argument; now, on the ground of an ideal conception of marriage as a spiritual union of two souls for time and eternity; now, from an opposite sensuous view; and again, on principles equally good against all marriage and in favor of celibacy. Thus, on the one hand, he argues, that the second marriage impairs the spiritual fellowship with the former partner, which should continue beyond the grave, which should show itself in daily intercessions and in yearly celebration of the day of death, and which hopes even for outward reunion after the resurrection.653  On the other hand, however, he places the essence of marriage in the communion of flesh,654 and regards it as a mere concession, which God makes to our sensuality, and which man therefore should not abuse by repetition. The ideal of the Christian life, with him, not only for the clergy, but the laity also, is celibacy. He lacks clear perception of the harmony of the moral and physical elements which constitutes the essence of marriage; and strongly as he elsewhere combats the Gnostic dualism, he here falls in with it in his depreciation of matter and corporeity, as necessarily incompatible with spirit. His treatment of the exegetical arguments of the defenders of second marriage is remarkable. The levirate law, he says, is peculiar to the Old Testament economy. To Rom. 7:2 he replies, that Paul speaks here from the position of the Mosaic law, which, according to the same passage is no longer binding on Christians. In 1 Cor. 7, the apostle allows second marriage only in his subjective, human judgment, and from regard to our sensuous infirmity; but in the same chapter (1 Cor 7:40) he recommends celibacy to all, and that on the authority of the Lord, adding here, that he also has the Holy Spirit, i.e. the principle, which is active in the new prophets of Montanism. The appeal to 1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:6, from which the right of laymen to second marriage was inferred, as the prohibition of it there related only to the clergy, he met with the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, which admitted them all both to the privileges and to the obligations of priests. But his reasoning always amounts in the end to this: that the state of original virgin purity, which has nothing at all to do with the sensual, is the best. The true chastity consists therefore not in the chaste spirit of married partners, but in the entire continence of "virgines" and "spadones." The desire of posterity, he, contrary to the Old Testament, considers unworthy of a Christian, who, in fact, ought to break away entirely from the world, and renounce all inheritance in it. Such a morality, forbidding the same that it allows, and rigorously setting as an ideal what it must in reality abate at least for the mass of mankind, may be very far above the heathen level, but is still plainly foreign to the deeper substance and the world-sanctifying principle of Christianity.

The Catholic church, indeed, kept aloof from this Montanistic extravagance, and forbade second marriage only to the clergy (which the Greek church does to this day); yet she rather advised against it, and leaned very decidedly towards a preference for celibacy, as a higher grade of Christian morality.655

As to the relation of parents and children, Christianity exerted from the beginning a most salutary influence. It restrained the tyrannical power of the father. It taught the eternal value of children as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, and commenced the great work of education on a religious and moral basis. It resisted with all energy the exposition of children, who were then generally devoured by dogs and wild beasts, or, if found, trained up for slavery or doomed to a life of infamy. Several apologists, the author to the Epistle of Diognetus, Justin Martyr,656 Minutius Felix, Tertullian, and Arnobius speak with just indignation against this unnatural custom. Athenagoras declares abortion and exposure to be equal to murder.657  No heathen philosopher had advanced so far. Lactantius also puts exposure on a par with murder even of the worst kind, and admits no excuse on the ground of pity or poverty, since God provides for all his creatures.658  The Christian spirit of humanity gradually so penetrated the spirit of the age that the better emperors, from the time of Trajan, began to direct their attention to the diminution of these crying evils; but the best legal enactments would never have been able to eradicate them without the spiritual influence of the church. The institutions and donations of Trajan, Antonins Pius, Septimius Severus, and private persons, for the education of poor children, boys and girls, were approaches of the nobler heathen towards the genius of Christianity. Constantine proclaimed a law in 315 throughout Italy "to turn parents from using a parricidal hand on their new-born children, and to dispose their hearts to the best sentiments."  The Christian fathers, councils, emperors, and lawgivers united their efforts to uproot this monstrous evil and to banish it from the civilized world.659

§ 100. Brotherly Love, and Love for Enemies.

Schaubach: Das Verhältniss der Moral des classischen Alterthums zur christlichen, beleuchtet durch vergleichende Erörterung der Lehre von der Feindesliebe, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1851, p. 59–121. Also the works of Schmidt, Chastel, Uhlhorn, etc., quoted at § 88 above.

It is generally admitted, that selfishness was the soul of heathen morality. The great men of antiquity rose above its sordid forms, love of gain and love of pleasure, but were the more under the power of ambition and love of fame. It was for fame that Miltiades and Themistocles fought against the Persians; that Alexander set out on his tour of conquest; that Herodotus wrote his history, that Pindar sang his odes, that Sophocles composed his tragedies, that Demosthenes delivered his orations, that Phidias sculptured his Zeus. Fame was set forth in the Olympian games as the highest object of life; fame was held up by Aeschylus as the last comfort of the suffering; fame was declared by Cicero, before a large assembly, the ruling passion of the very best of men.660  Even the much-lauded patriotism of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome was only an enlarged egotism. In the catalogue of classical virtues we look in vain for the two fundamental and cardinal virtues, love and humility. The very word which corresponds in Greek to humility661 signifies generally, in classical usage, a mean, abject mind. The noblest and purest form of love known to the heathen moralist is friendship, which Cicero praises as the highest good next to wisdom. But friendship itself rested, as was freely admitted, on a utilitarian, that is, on an egotistic basis, and was only possible among persons of equal or similar rank in society. For the stranger, the barbarian, and the enemy, the Greek and Roman knew no love, but only contempt and hatred. The jus talionis, the return of evil for evil, was universally acknowledged throughout the heathen world as a just principle and maxim, in direct opposition to the plainest injunctions of the New Testament.662  We must offend those who offend us, says Aeschylus.663  Not to take revenge was regarded as a sign of weakness and cowardice. To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human and common to all religions; to return good for evil is Christlike and divine, and only possible in the Christian religion.

On the other hand, however, we should suppose that every Christian virtue must find some basis in the noblest moral instincts and aspirations of nature; since Christianity is not against nature, but simply above it and intended for it. Thus we may regard the liberality, benevolence, humanity and magnanimity which we meet with in heathen antiquity, as an approximation to, and preparation for, the Christian virtue of charity. The better schools of moralists rose more or less above the popular approval of hatred of the enemy, wrath and revenge. Aristotle and the Peripatetics, without condemning this passion as wrong in itself, enjoined at least moderation in its exercise. The Stoics went further, and required complete apathy or suppression of all strong and passionate affections. Cicero even declares placability and clemency one of the noblest traits in the character of a great man,664 and praises Caesar for forgetting nothing except injuries. Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius, who were already indirectly and unconsciously under the influence of the atmosphere of Christian morality, decidedly condemn anger and vindictiveness, and recommend kindness to slaves, and a generous treatment even of enemies.

But this sort of love for an enemy, it should be remembered, in the first place, does not flow naturally from the spirit of heathenism, but is, as it were, an accident and exception; secondly, it is not enjoined as a general duty, but expected only from the great and the wise; thirdly, it does not rise above the conception of magnanimity, which, more closely considered, is itself connected with a refined form of egotism, and with a noble pride that regards it below the dignity of a gentleman to notice the malice of inferior men;665 fourthly, it is commended only in its negative aspect as refraining from the right of retaliation, not as active benevolence and charity to the enemy, which returns good for evil; and finally it is nowhere derived from a religious principle, the love of God to man, and therefore has no proper root, and lacks the animating soul.

No wonder, then, that in spite of the finest maxims of a few philosophers, the imperial age was controlled by the coldest selfishness, so that, according to the testimony of Plutarch, friendship had died out even in families, and the love of brothers and sisters was supposed to be possible only in a heroic age long passed by. The old Roman world was a world without charity. Julian the Apostate, who was educated a Christian, tried to engraft charity upon heathenism, but in vain. The idea of the infinite value of each human soul, even the poorest and humblest, was wanting, and with it the basis for true charity.

It was in such an age of universal egotism that Christianity first revealed the true spirit of love to man as flowing from the love of God, and exhibited it in actual life. This cardinal virtue we meet first within the Church itself, as the bond of union among believers, and the sure mark of the genuine disciple of Jesus. "That especially," says Tertullian to the heathen, in a celebrated passage of his Apologeticus, "which love works among us, exposes us to many a suspicion. ’Behold,’ they say, ’how they love one another!’  Yea, verily this must strike them; for they hate each other. ’And how ready they are to die for one another!’  Yea, truly; for they are rather ready to kill one another. And even that we call each other ’brethren,’ seems to them suspicious for no other reason, than that, among them, all expressions of kindred are only feigned. We are even your brethren, in virtue of the common nature, which is the mother of us all; though ye, as evil brethren, deny your human nature. But how much more justly are those called and considered brethren, who acknowledge the one God as their Father; who have received the one Spirit of holiness; who have awaked from the same darkness of uncertainty to the light of the same truth?... And we, who are united in spirit and in soul, do not hesitate to have also all things common, except wives. For we break fellowship just where other men practice it."

This brotherly love flowed from community of life in Christ. Hence Ignatius calls believers "Christ-bearers" and "God-bearers."666  The article of the Apostles’ Creed: "I believe in the communion of saints;" the current appellation of "brother" and "sister;" and the fraternal kiss usual on admission into the church, and at the Lord’s Supper, were not empty forms, nor even a sickly sentimentalism, but the expression of true feeling and experience, only strengthened by the common danger and persecution. A travelling Christian, of whatever language or country, with a letter of recommendation from his bishop,667 was everywhere hospitably received as a long known friend. It was a current phrase: In thy brother thou hast seen the Lord himself. The force of love reached beyond the grave. Families were accustomed to celebrate at appointed times the memory, of their departed members; and this was one of the grounds on which Tertullian opposed second marriage.

The brotherly love expressed itself, above all, in the most self-sacrificing beneficence to the poor and sick, to widows and orphans, to strangers and prisoners, particularly to confessors in bonds. It magnifies this virtue in our view, to reflect, that the Christians at that time belonged mostly to the lower classes, and in times of persecution often lost all their possessions. Every congregation was a charitable society, and in its public worship took regular collections for its needy members. The offerings at the communion and love-feasts, first held on the evening, afterwards on the morning of the Lord’s Day, were considered a part of worship.668  To these were added numberless private charities, given in secret, which eternity alone will reveal. The church at Rome had under its care a great multitude of widows, orphans, blind, lame, and sick,669 whom the deacon Laurentius, in the Decian persecution, showed to the heathen prefect, as the most precious treasures of the church. It belonged to the idea of a Christian housewife, and was particularly the duty of the deaconesses, to visit the Lord, to clothe him, and give him meat and drink, in the persons of his needy disciples. Even such opponents of Christianity as Lucian testify to this zeal of the Christians in labors of love, though they see in it nothing but an innocent fanaticism. "It is incredible," says Lucian, "to see the ardor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator has put into their heads that they are all brethren."670

This beneficence reached beyond the immediate neighborhood. Charity begins at home, but does not stay at, home. In cases of general distress the bishops appointed special collections, and also fasts, by which food might be saved for suffering brethren. The Roman church sent its charities great distances abroad.671  Cyprian of Carthage, who, after his conversion, sold his own estates for the benefit of the poor, collected a hundred thousand sestertia, or more than three thousand dollars, to redeem Christians of Numidia, who had been taken captive by neighboring barbarians; and he considered it a high privilege "to be able to ransom for a small sum of money him, who has redeemed us from the dominion of Satan with his own blood." A father, who refused to give alms on account of his children, Cyprian charged with the additional sin of binding his children to an earthly inheritance, instead of pointing them to the richest and most loving Father in heaven.

Finally, this brotherly love expanded to love even for enemies, which returned the heathens good for evil, and not rarely, in persecutions and public misfortunes, heaped coals of fire on their heads. During the persecution under Gallus (252), when the pestilence raged in Carthage, and the heathens threw out their dead and sick upon the streets, ran away from them for fear of the contagion, and cursed the Christians as the supposed authors of the plague, Cyprian assembled his congregation, and exhorted them to love their enemies; whereupon all went to work; the rich with their money, the poor with their hands, and rested not, till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city saved from desolation. The same self-denial appeared in the Christians of Alexandria during a ravaging plague under the reign of Gallienus. These are only a few prominent manifestations of a spirit which may be traced through the whole history of martyrdom and the daily prayers of the Christians for their enemies and persecutors. For while the love of friends, says Tertullian, is common to all men, the love of enemies is a virtue peculiar to Christians.672  "You forget," he says to the heathens in his Apology, "that, notwithstanding your persecutions, far from conspiring against you, as our numbers would perhaps furnish us with the means of doing, we pray for you and do good to you; that, if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for your poor, and that our charity spreads more alms in your streets than the offerings presented by your religion in your temples."

The organized congregational charity of the ante-Nicene age provided for all the immediate wants. When the state professed Christianity, there sprang up permanent charitable institutions for the poor, the sick, for strangers, widows, orphans, and helpless old men.673  The first clear proof of such institutions we find in the age of Julian the Apostate, who tried to check the progress of Christianity and to revive paganism by directing the high priest of Galatia, Arsacius, to establish in every town a Xenodochium to be supported by the state and also by private contributions; for, he said, it was a shame that the heathen should be left without support from their own, while "among the Jews no beggar can be found, and the godless Galilaeans" (i.e. the Christians) "nourish not only their own, but even our own poor." A few years afterwards (370) we hear of a celebrated hospital at Caesarea, founded by St. Basilius, and called after him "Basilias," and similar institutions all over the province of Cappadocia. We find one at Antioch at the time of Chrysostom, who took a practical interest in it. At Constantinople there were as many as thirty-five hospitals. In the West such institutions spread rapidly in Rome, Sicily, Sardinia, and Gaul.674

§ 101. Prayer and Fasting.

In regard to the importance and the necessity of prayer, as the pulse and thermometer of spiritual life, the ancient church had but one voice. Here the plainest and the most enlightened Christians met; the apostolic fathers, the steadfast apologists, the realistic Africans, and the idealistic Alexandrians. Tertullian sees in prayer the daily sacrifice of the Christian, the bulwark of faith, the weapon against all the enemies of the soul. The believer should not go to his bath nor take his food without prayer; for the nourishing and refreshing of the spirit must precede that of the body, and the heavenly must go before the earthly. "Prayer," says he, "blots out sins, repels temptations, quenches persecutions, comforts, the desponding, blesses the high-minded, guides the wanderers, calms the billows, feeds the poor, directs the rich, raises the fallen, holds up the falling, preserves them that stand." Cyprian requires prayer by day and by night; pointing to heaven, where we shall never cease to pray and give thanks. The same father, however, falls already into that false, unevangelical view, which represents prayer as a meritorious work and a satisfaction to be rendered to God.675  Clement of Alexandria conceives the life of a genuine Christian as an unbroken prayer. "In every place he will pray, though not openly, in the sight of the multitude. Even on his walks, in his intercourse with others, in silence, in reading, and in labor, he prays in every way. And though he commune with God only in the chamber of his soul, and call upon the Father only with a quiet sigh, the Father is near him." The same idea we find in Origen, who discourses in enthusiastic terms of the mighty inward and outward effects of prayer, and with all his enormous learning, regards prayer as the sole key to the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures.

The order of human life, however, demands special times for this consecration of the every-day business of men. The Christians generally followed the Jewish usage, observed as times of prayer the hours of nine, twelve, and three, corresponding also to the crucifixion of Christ, his death, and his descent from the cross; the cock-crowing likewise, and the still hour of midnight they regarded as calls to prayer.

With prayer for their own welfare, they united intercessions for the whole church, for all classes of men, especially for the sick and the needy, and even for the unbelieving. Polycarp enjoins on the church of Philippi to pray for all the saints, for kings and rulers, for haters and persecutors, and for the enemies of the cross. "We pray," says Tertullian, "even for the emperors and their ministers, for the holders of power on earth, for the repose of all classes, and for the delay of the end of the world."

With the free outpourings of the heart, without which living piety cannot exist, we must suppose, that, after the example of the Jewish church, standing forms of prayer were also used, especially such as were easily impressed on the memory and could thus be freely delivered. The familiar "ex pectore" and "sine monitore" of Tertullian prove nothing against this; for a prayer committed to memory may and should be at the same time a prayer of the heart, as a familiar psalm or hymn may be read or sung with ever new devotion. The general use of the Lord’s Prayer in the ancient church in household and public worship is beyond all doubt. The Didache (ch. 8) enjoins it three times a day. Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, wrote special treatises upon it. They considered it the model prayer, prescribed by the Lord for the whole church. Tertullian calls it the "regular and usual prayer, a brief summary of the whole gospel, and foundation of all the other prayers of the Christians." The use of it, however, was restricted to communicants; because the address presupposes the worshipper’s full sonship with God, and because the fourth petition was taken in a mystical sense, as referring to the holy Supper, and was therefore thought not proper for catechumens.

As to posture in prayer; kneeling or standing, the raising or closing of the eyes, the extension or elevation of the hands, were considered the most suitable expressions of a bowing spirit and a soul directed towards God. On Sunday the standing posture was adopted, in token of festive joy over the resurrection from sin and death. But there was no uniform law in regard to these forms. Origen lays chief stress on the lifting of the soul to God and the bowing of the heart before him; and says that, where circumstances require, one can worthily pray sitting, or lying, or engaged in business.

After the Jewish custom, fasting was frequently joined with prayer, that the mind, unencumbered by earthly matter, might devote itself with less distraction to the contemplation of divine things. The apostles themselves sometimes employed this wholesome discipline,676 though without infringing the gospel freedom by legal prescriptions. As the Pharisees were accustomed to fast twice in the week, on Monday and Thursday, the Christians appointed Wednesday and especially Friday, as days of half-fasting or abstinence from flesh,677 in commemoration of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus. They did this with reference to the Lord’s words: "When the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then will they fast."678

In the second century arose also the custom of Quadragesimal fasts before Easter, which, however, differed in length in different countries; being sometimes reduced to forty hours, sometimes extended to forty days, or at least to several weeks. Perhaps equally ancient are the nocturnal fasts or vigils before the high festivals, suggested by the example of the Lord and the apostles.679  But the Quatemporal fasts680 are of later origin, though founded likewise on a custom of the Jews after the exile. On special occasions the bishops appointed extraordinary fasts, and applied the money saved to charitable purposes; a usage which became often a blessing to the poor. Yet hierarchical arrogance and Judaistic legalism early intruded here, even to the entire destruction of the liberty of a Christian man.681

This rigidity appeared most in the Montanists. Besides the usual fasts, they observed special Xerophagiae682 as they were called; seasons of two weeks for eating only dry or properly uncooked food, bread, salt, and water. The Catholic church, with true feeling, refused to sanction these excesses as a general rule, but allowed ascetics to carry fasting even to extremes. A confessor in Lyons, for example, lived on bread and water alone, but forsook that austerity when reminded that he gave offence to other Christians by so despising the gifts of God.

Against the frequent over-valuation of fasting, Clement of Alexandria quotes the word of Paul: The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, therefore neither abstinence from wine and flesh, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

§ 102. Treatment of the Dead

Comp. Chapter VII. on the Catacombs.

The pious care of the living for the beloved dead is rooted in the noblest instincts of human future, and is found among all nations, ancient and modern, even among barbarians. Hence the general custom of surrounding the funeral with solemn rites and prayers, and giving the tomb a sacred and inviolable character. The profane violation of the dead and robbery of graves were held in desecration, and punished by law.683  No traditions and laws were more sacred among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans than those that guarded and protected the shades of the departed who can do no harm to any of the living. "It is the popular belief," says Tertullian, "that the dead cannot enter Hades before they are buried." Patroclus appears after his death to his friend Achilles in a dream, and thus exhorts him to provide for his speedy burial:

"Achilles, sleepest thou, forgetting me?

Never of me unmindful in my life,

Thou dost neglect me dead. O, bury me

Quickly, and give me entrance through the gates

Of Hades; for the souls, the forms of those

Who live no more, repulse me, suffering not

That I should join their company beyond

The river, and I now must wander round

The spacious portals of the House of Death."684

Christianity intensified this regard for the departed, and gave it a solid foundation by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Julian the Apostate traced the rapid spread and power of that religion to three causes: benevolence, care of the dead, and honesty.685  After the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, the Christians in Southern Gaul were much distressed because the enraged heathens would not deliver them the corpses of their brethren for burial.686  Sometimes the vessels of the church were sold for the purpose. During the ravages of war, famine, and pestilence, they considered it their duty to bury the heathen as well as their fellow-Christians. When a pestilence depopulated the cities in the reign of the tyrannical persecutor Maximinus, "the Christians were the only ones in the midst of such distressing circumstances that exhibited sympathy and humanity in their conduct. They continued the whole day, some in the care and burial of the dead, for numberless were they for whom there was none to care; others collected the multitude of those wasting by the famine throughout the city, and distributed bread among all. So that the fact was cried abroad, and men glorified the God of the Christians, constrained, as they were by the facts, to acknowledge that these were the only really pious and the only real worshippers of God."687  Lactantius says: "The last and greatest office of piety is the burying of strangers and the poor; which subject these teachers of virtue and justice have not touched upon at all, as they measure all their duties by utility. We will not suffer the image and workmanship of God to lie exposed as a prey to beasts and birds; but we will restore it to the earth, from which it had its origin; and although it be in the case of an unknown man, we will fulfil the office of relatives, into whose place, since they are wanting, let kindness succeed; and wherever there shall be need of man, there we will think that our duty is required."688

The early church differed from the pagan and even from the Jewish notions by a cheerful and hopeful view of death, and by discarding lamentations, rending of clothes, and all signs of extravagant grief. The terrors of the grave were dispelled by the light of the resurrection, and the idea of death was transformed into the idea of a peaceful slumber. No one, says Cyprian, should be made sad by death, since in living is labor and peril, in dying peace and the certainty of resurrection; and he quotes the examples of Enoch who was translated, of Simeon who wished to depart in peace, several passages from Paul, and the assurance of the Lord that he went to the Father to prepare heavenly mansions for us.689  The day of a believer’s death, especially if he were a martyr, was called the day of his heavenly birth. His grave was surrounded with symbols of hope and of victory; anchors, harps, palms, crowns. The primitive Christians always showed a tender care for the dead; under a vivid impression of the unbroken communion of saints and the future resurrection of the body in glory. For Christianity redeems the body as well as the soul, and consecrates it a temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence the Greek and Roman custom of burning the corpse (crematio) was repugnant to Christian feeling and the sacredness of the body.690  Tertullian even declared it a symbol of the fire of hell, and Cyprian regarded it as equivalent to apostasy. In its stead, the church adopted the primitive Jewish usage of burial (inhumatio),691 practiced also by the Egyptians and Babylonians. The bodies of the dead were washed, 692 wrapped in linen cloths,693 sometimes embalmed,694 and then, in the presence of ministers, relatives, and friends, with prayer and singing of psalms, committed as seeds of immortality to the bosom of the earth. Funeral discourses were very common as early as the Nicene period.695  But in the times of persecution the interment was often necessarily performed as hastily and secretly as possible. The death-days of martyrs the church celebrated annually at their graves with oblations, love feasts, and the Lord’s Supper. Families likewise commemorated their departed members in the domestic circle. The current prayers for the dead were originally only thanksgiving for the grace of God manifested to them. But they afterwards passed into intercessions, without any warrant in the reaching of the apostles, and in connection with questionable views in regard to the intermediate state. Tertullian, for instance, in his argument against second marriage, says of the Christian widow, she prays for the soul of her departed husband,696 and brings her annual offering on the day of his departure.

The same feeling of the inseparable communion of saints gave rise to the usage, unknown to the heathens, of consecrated places of common burial.697  For these cemeteries, the Christians, in the times of persecution, when they were mostly poor and enjoyed no corporate rights, selected remote, secret spots, and especially subterranean vaults, called at first crypts, but after the sixth century commonly termed catacombs, or resting-places, which have been discussed in a previous chapter.

We close with a few stanzas of the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 405), in which he gives forcible expression to the views and feelings of the ancient church before the open grave:698

"No more, ah, no more sad complaining;

Resign these fond pledges to earth:

Stay, mothers, the thick-falling tear-drops;

This death is a heavenly birth.

Take, Earth, to thy bosom so tender,—

Take, nourish this body. How fair,

How noble in death!  We surrender

These relics of man to thy care

This, this was the home of the spirit,

Once built by the breath of our God;

And here, in the light of his wisdom,

Christ, Head of the risen, abode.

Guard well the dear treasure we lend thee

The Maker, the Saviour of men:

Shall never forget His beloved,

But claim His own likeness again."

§ 103. Summary of Moral Reforms.

Christianity represents the thoughts and purposes of God in history. They shine as so many stars in the darkness of sin and error. They are unceasingly opposed, but make steady progress and are sure of final victory. Heathen ideas and practices with their degrading influences controlled the ethics, politics, literature, and the house and home of emperor and peasant, when the little band of despised and persecuted followers of Jesus of Nazareth began the unequal struggle against overwhelming odds and stubborn habits. It was a struggle of faith against superstition, of love against selfishness, of purity against corruption, of spiritual forces against political and social power.

Under the inspiring influence of the spotless purity of Christ’s teaching and example, and aided here and there by the nobler instincts and tendencies of philosophy, the Christian church from the beginning asserted the individual rights of man, recognized the divine image in every rational being, taught the common creation and common redemption, the destination of all for immortality and glory, raised the humble and the lowly, comforted the prisoner and captive, the stranger and the exile, proclaimed chastity as a fundamental virtue, elevated woman to dignity and equality with man, upheld the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie, laid the foundation of a Christian family and happy home, moderated the evils and undermined the foundations of slavery, opposed polygamy and concubinage, emancipated the children from the tyrannical control of parents, denounced the exposure of children as murder, made relentless war upon the bloody games of the arena and the circus, and the shocking indecencies of the theatre, upon cruelty and oppression and every vice infused into a heartless and loveless world the spirit of love and brotherhood, transformed sinners into saints, frail women into heroines, and lit up the darkness of the tomb by the bright ray of unending bliss in heaven.

Christianity reformed society from the bottom, and built upwards until it reached the middle and higher classes, and at last the emperor himself. Then soon after the conversion of Constantine it began to influence legislation, abolished cruel institutions, and enacted laws which breathe the spirit of justice and humanity. We may deplore the evils which followed in the train of the union of church and state, but we must not overlook its many wholesome effects upon the Justinian code which gave Christian ideas an institutional form and educational power for whole generations to this day. From that time on also began the series of charitable institutions for widows and orphans, for the poor and the sick, the blind and the deaf, the intemperate and criminal, and for the care of all unfortunate,—institutions which we seek in vain in any other but Christian countries.

Nor should the excesses of asceticism blind us against the moral heroism of renouncing rights and enjoyments innocent in themselves, but so generally abused and poisoned, that total abstinence seemed to most of the early fathers the only radical and effective cure. So in our days some of the best of men regard total abstinence rather than temperance, the remedy of the fearful evils of intemperance.

Christianity could not prevent the irruption of the Northern barbarians and the collapse of the Roman empire. The process of internal dissolution had gone too far; nations as well as individuals may physically and morally sink so low that they, are beyond the possibility of recovery. Tacitus, the heathen Stoic in the second century, and Salvianus, the Christian presbyter in the fifth, each a Jeremiah of his age, predicted the approaching doom and destruction of Roman society, looked towards the savage races of the North for fresh blood and new vigor. But the Keltic and Germanic conquerors would have turned Southern Europe into a vast solitude (as the Turks have laid waste the fairest portions of Asia), if they had not embraced the principles, laws, and institutions of the Christian church.

CHAPTER IX.

ASCETIC TENDENCIES.

§ 104. Ascetic Virtue and Piety.

Ad. Möhler (R.C.): Geschichte des Mönchthums in der Zeit seiner ersten Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung, 1836 ("Vermischte Schriften," ed. Döllinger. Regensb. 1839, II. p. 165 sqq.).

Is. Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, 4th ed. London, 1844, I. 133–299 (anti-Puseyite and anti Catholic).

H. Ruffner (Presbyt.): The Fathers of the Desert; or an Account of the Origin and Practice of Monkery among heathen nations; its passage into the church; and some wonderful Stories of the Fathers concerning the primitive Monks and Hermits. N. York, 1850. 2 vols.

Otto Zöckler (Lutheran): Kritische Geschichte der Askese. Frkf. and Erlangen, 1863 (434 pages).

P. E. Lucius Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese. Strasburg, 1879.

H. Weingarten: Ueber den Ursprung des Mönchthums im nach-Konstantinischen Zeittalter. Gotha, 1877. And his article in Herzog’s "Encykl." new ed. vol. X. (1882) p. 758 sqq. (abridged in Schaff’s Herzog, vol. II. 1551 sqq. N. Y. 1883).

Ad. Harnack: Das Mönchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte. Giessen, 1882.

The general literature on Monasticism is immense, but belongs to the next period. See vol. III. 147 sq., and the list of books in Zöckler, l.c. p. 10–16.

Here we enter a field where the early church appears most remote from the free spirit of evangelical Protestantism and modern ethics and stands nearest the legalistic and monastic ethics of Greek and Roman Catholicism. Christian life was viewed as consisting mainly in certain outward exercises, rather than an inward disposition, in a multiplicity of acts rather than a life of faith. The great ideal of virtue was, according to the prevailing notion of the fathers and councils, not so much to transform the world and sanctify the natural things and relations created by God, as to flee from the world into monastic seclusion, and voluntarily renounce property and marriage. The Pauline doctrine of faith and of justification by grace alone steadily retreated, or rather, it was never yet rightly enthroned in the general thought and life of the church. The qualitative view of morality yielded more and more to quantitative calculation by the number of outward meritorious and even supererogatory works, prayer, fasting, alms-giving, voluntary poverty, and celibacy. This necessarily brought with it a Judaizing self-righteousness and overestimate of the ascetic life, which developed, by an irresistible impulse, into the hermit-life and monasticism of the Nicene age. All the germs of this asceticism appear in the second half of the third century, and even earlier.

Asceticism in general is a rigid outward self-discipline, by which the spirit strives after full dominion over the flesh, and a superior grade of virtue.699  It includes not only that true moderation or restraint of the animal appetites, which is a universal Christian duty, but total abstinence from enjoyments in themselves lawful, from wine, animal food, property, and marriage, together with all kinds of penances and mortifications of the body. In the union of the abstractive and penitential elements, or of self-denial and self-punishment, the catholic asceticism stands forth complete in light and shade; exhibiting, on the one hand, wonderful examples of heroic renunciation of self and the world, but very often, on the other, a total misapprehension and perversion of Christian morality; the renunciation involving, more or less a Gnostic contempt of the gifts and ordinances of the God of nature, and the penance or self-punishment running into practical denial of the all-sufficient merits of Christ. The ascetic and monastic tendency rests primarily upon a lively, though in morbid sense of the sinfulness, of the flesh and the corruption of the world; then upon the desire for solitude and exclusive occupation with divine things; and finally, upon the ambition to attain extraordinary holiness and merit. It would anticipate upon earth the life of angels in heaven.700  It substitutes all abnormal, self-appointed virtue and piety for the normal forms prescribed by the Creator; and not rarely looks down upon the divinely-ordained standard with spiritual pride. It is a mark at once of moral strength and moral weakness. It presumes a certain degree of culture, in which man has emancipated himself from the powers of nature and risen to the consciousness of his moral calling; but thinks to secure itself against temptation only by entire separation from the world, instead of standing in the world to overcome it and transform it into the kingdom of God.

Asceticism is by no means limited to the Christian church, but it there developed its highest and noblest form. We observe kindred phenomena long before Christ; among the Jews, in the Nazarites, the Essenes, and the cognate Therapeutae,701 and still more among the heathens, in the old Persian and Indian religions, especially among the Buddhists, who have even a fully developed system of monastic life, which struck some Roman missionaries as the devil’s caricature of the Catholic system. In Egypt the priests of Serapis led a monastic life.702  There is something in the very climate of the land of the Pharaohs, in its striking contrast between the solitude of the desert and the fertility of the banks of the Nile, so closely bordering on each other, and in the sepulchral sadness of the people, which induces men to withdraw from the busy turmoil and the active duties of life. It is certain that the first Christian hermits and monks were Egyptians. Even the Grecian philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid abstemiousness, so that "philosopher" and "ascetic" were interchangeable terms. Several apologists of the second century had by this practical philosophy particularly the Platonic, been led to Christianity; and they on this account retained their simple dress and mode of life. Tertullian congratulates the philosopher’s cloak on having now become the garb of a better philosophy. In the show of self-denial the Cynics, the followers of Diogenes, went to the extreme; but these, at least in their later degenerate days, concealed under the guise of bodily squalor, untrimmed nails, and uncombed hair, a vulgar cynical spirit, and a bitter hatred of Christianity.

In the ancient church there was a special class of Christians of both sexes who, under the name of "ascetics" or "abstinents,"703 though still living in the midst of the community, retired from society, voluntarily renounced marriage and property, devoted themselves wholly to fasting, prayer, and religious contemplation, and strove thereby to attain Christian perfection. Sometimes they formed a society of their own, 704 for mutual improvement, an ecclesiola in ecelesia, in which even children could be received and trained to abstinence. They shared with the confessors the greatest regard from their fellow-Christians, had a separate seat in the public worship, and were considered the fairest ornaments of the church. In times of persecution they sought with enthusiasm a martyr’s death as the crown of perfection.

While as yet each congregation was a lonely oasis in the desert of the world’s corruption, and stood in downright opposition to the surrounding heathen world, these ascetics had no reason for separating from it and flying into the desert. It was under and after Constantine, and partly as the result of the union of church and state, the consequent transfer of the world into the church, and the cessation of martyrdom, that asceticism developed itself to anchoretism and monkery, and endeavored thus to save the virgin purity of the church by carrying it into the wilderness. The first Christian hermit, Paul of Thebes, is traced back to the middle of the third century, but is lost in the mist of fable; St. Anthony, the real father of monks, belongs to the age of Constantine.705  At the time of Cyprian706 there was as yet no absolutely binding vow. The early origin and wide spread of this ascetic life are due to the deep moral earnestness of Christianity, and the prevalence of sin in all the social relations of the then still thoroughly pagan world. It was the excessive development of the negative, world-rejecting element in Christianity, which preceded its positive effort to transform and sanctify the world.

The ascetic principle, however, was not confined, in its influence, to the proper ascetics and monks. It ruled more or less the entire morality and piety of the ancient and mediaeval church; though on the other hand, there were never wanting in her bosom protests of the free evangelical spirit against moral narrowness and excessive regard to the outward works of the law. The ascetics were but the most consistent representatives of the old catholic piety, and were commended as such by the apologists to the heathens. They formed the spiritual nobility, the flower of the church, and served especially as examples to the clergy.

§ 105. Heretical and Catholic Asceticism.

But we must now distinguish two different kinds of asceticism in Christian antiquity: a heretical and an orthodox or Catholic. The former rests on heathen philosophy, the latter is a development of Christian ideas.

The heretical asceticism, the beginnings of which are resisted in the New Testament itself,707 meets us in the Gnostic and Manichaean sects. It is descended from Oriental and Platonic ideas, and is based on a dualistic view of the world, a confusion of sin with matter, and a perverted idea of God and the creation. It places God and the world at irreconcilable enmity, derives the creation from an inferior being, considers the human body substantially evil, a product of the devil or the demiurge, and makes it the great moral business of man to rid himself of the same, or gradually to annihilate it, whether by excessive abstinence or by unbridled indulgence. Many of the Gnostics placed the fall itself in the first gratification of the sexual desire, which subjected man to the dominion of the Hyle.

The orthodox or catholic asceticism starts from a literal and overstrained construction of certain passages of Scripture. It admits that all nature is the work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine origin and destiny of the human body, without which there could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to eternal glory.708  It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but perfectly to control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bodily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as well as the body; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the depreciation of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from the body,709 as a means of self-redemption, after being theoretically exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of practice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny of the body and perfect redemption through Christ.

The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life. It was previously suggested by Hermas about the middle of the second century.710  Tertullian made a corresponding opposite distinction of mortal and venial sins.711  Here was a source of serious practical errors, and an encouragement both to moral laxity and ascetic extravagance. The ascetics, and afterwards the monks, formed or claimed to be a moral nobility, a spiritual aristocracy, above the common Christian people; as the clergy stood in a separate caste of inviolable dignity above the laity, who were content with a lower grade of virtue. Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter712 of the soul. How little he understood the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, may be inferred from a passage in the Stromata, where be explains the word of Christ: "Thy faith hath saved thee," as referring, not to faith simply, but to the Jews only, who lived according to the law; as if faith was something to be added to the good works, instead of being the source and principle of the holy life.713  Origen goes still further, and propounds quite distinctly the catholic doctrine of two kinds of morality and piety, a lower for all Christians, and a higher for saints or the select few.714  He includes in the higher morality works of supererogation,715 i.e. works not enjoined indeed in the gospel, yet recommended as counsels of perfection,716 which were supposed to establish a peculiar merit and secure a higher degree of blessedness. He who does only what is required of all is an unprofitable servant;717 but he who does more, who performs, for example, what Paul, in 1 Cor. 7:25, merely recommends, concerning the single state, or like him, resigns his just claim to temporal remuneration for spiritual service, is called a good and faithful servant.718

Among these works were reckoned martyrdom, voluntary poverty, and voluntary celibacy. All three, or at least the last two of these acts, in connection with the positive Christian virtues, belong to the idea of the higher perfection, as distinguished from the fulfilment of regular duties, or ordinary morality. To poverty and celibacy was afterwards added absolute obedience; and these three things were the main subjects of the consilia evangelica and the monastic vow.

The ground on which these particular virtues were so strongly urged is easily understood. Property, which is so closely allied to the selfishness of man and binds him to the earth, and sexual intercourse, which brings out sensual passion in its greatest strength, and which nature herself covers with the veil of modesty;—these present themselves as the firmest obstacles to that perfection, in which God alone is our possession, and Christ alone our love and delight.

In these things the ancient heretics went to the extreme. The Ebionites made poverty the condition of salvation. The Gnostics were divided between the two excesses of absolute self-denial and unbridled self-indulgence. The Marcionites, Carpocratians, Prodicians, false Basilidians, and Manichaeans objected to individual property, from hatred to the material world; and Epiphanes, in a book "on Justice" about 125, defined virtue as a community with equality, and advocated the community of goods and women. The more earnest of these heretics entirely prohibited marriage and procreation as a diabolical work, as in the case of Saturninus, Marcion, and the Encratites; while other Gnostic sects substituted for it the most shameless promiscuous intercourse, as in Carpocrates, Epiphanes, and the Nicolaitans.

The ancient church, on the contrary, held to the divine institution of property and marriage, and was content to recommend the voluntary renunciation of these intrinsically lawful pleasures to the few elect, as means of attaining Christian perfection. She declared marriage holy, virginity more holy. But unquestionably even the church fathers so exalted the higher holiness of virginity, as practically to neutralize, or at least seriously to weaken, their assertion of the holiness of marriage. The Roman church, in spite of the many Bible examples of married men of God from Abraham to Peter, can conceive no real holiness without celibacy, and therefore requires celibacy of its clergy without exception.

§ 106. Voluntary Poverty.

The recommendation of voluntary poverty was based on a literal interpretation of the Lord’s advice to the rich young ruler, who had kept all the commandments from his youth up: "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."719  To this were added the actual examples of the poverty of Christ and his apostles, and the community of goods in the first Christian church at Jerusalem. Many Christians, not of the ascetics only, but also of the clergy, like Cyprian, accordingly gave up all their property at their conversion, for the benefit of the poor. The later monastic societies sought to represent in their community of goods the original equality and the perfect brotherhood of men.

Yet on the other hand, we meet with more moderate views. Clement of Alexandria, for example, in a special treatise on the right use of wealth,720 observes, that the Saviour forbade not so much the possession of earthly property, as the love of it and desire for it; and that it is possible to retain the latter, even though the possession itself be renounced. The earthly, says he, is a material and a means for doing good, and the unequal distribution of property is a divine provision for the exercise of Christian love and beneficence. The true riches are the virtue, which can and should maintain itself under all outward conditions; the false are the mere outward possession, which comes and goes.

§ 107. Voluntary Celibacy.

The old catholic exaggeration of celibacy attached itself to four passages of Scripture, viz. Matt. 19:12; 22:30; 1 Cor. 7:7 sqq.; and Rev. 14:4; but it went far beyond them, and unconsciously admitted influences from foreign modes of thought. The words of the Lord in Matt. 22:30 (Luke 20:35 sq.) were most frequently cited; but they expressly limit unmarried life to the angels, without setting it up as the model for men. Rev. 14:4 was taken by some of the fathers more correctly in the symbolical sense of freedom from the pollution of idolatry. The example of Christ, though often urged, cannot here furnish a rule; for the Son of God and Saviour of the world was too far above all the daughters of Eve to find an equal companion among them, and in any case cannot be conceived as holding such relations. The whole church of the redeemed is his pure bride. Of the apostles some at least were married, and among them Peter, the oldest and most prominent of all. The advice of Paul in 1 Cor. 7 is so cautiously given, that even here the view of the fathers found but partial support; especially if balanced with the Pastoral Epistles, where marriage is presented as the proper condition for the clergy. Nevertheless he was frequently made the apologist of celibacy by orthodox and heretical writers.721  Judaism—with the exception of the paganizing Essenes, who abstained from marriage—highly honors the family life; it allows marriage even to the priests and the high-priests, who had in fact to maintain their order by physical reproduction; it considers unfruitfulness a disgrace or a curse.

Heathenism, on the contrary, just because of its own degradation of woman, and its low, sensual conception of marriage, frequently includes celibacy in its ideal of morality, and associates it with worship. The noblest form of heathen virginity appears in the six Vestal virgins of Rome, who, while girls of from six to ten years, were selected for the service of the pure goddess, and set to keep the holy fire burning on its altar; but, after serving thirty years, were allowed to return to secular life and marry. The penalty for breaking their vow of chastity was to be buried alive in the campus sceleratus.

The ascetic depreciation of marriage is thus due, at least in part, to the influence of heathenism. But with this was associated the Christian enthusiasm for angelic purity in opposition to the horrible licentiousness of the Graeco-Roman world. It was long before Christianity raised woman and the family life to the purity and dignity which became them in the kingdom of God. In this view, we may the more easily account for many expressions of the church fathers respecting the female sex, and warnings against intercourse with women, which to us, in the present state of European and American civilization, sound perfectly coarse and unchristian. John of Damascus has collected in his Parallels such patristic expressions as these: "A woman is an evil." "A rich woman is a double evil." "A beautiful woman is a whited sepulchre." "Better is a man’s wickedness than a woman’s goodness." The men who could write so, must have forgotten the beautiful passages to the contrary in the proverbs of Solomon; yea, they must have forgotten their own mothers.

On the other hand, it may be said, that the preference given to virginity had a tendency to elevate woman in the social sphere and to emancipate her from that slavish condition under heathenism, where she could be disposed of as an article of merchandise by parents or guardians, even in infancy or childhood. It should not be forgotten that many virgins of the early church devoted their whole energies as deaconesses to the care of the sick and the poor, or exhibited as martyrs a degree of passive virtue and moral heroism altogether unknown before. Such virgins Cyprian, in his rhetorical language, calls "the flowers of the church, the masterpieces of grace, the ornament of nature, the image of God reflecting the holiness of our Saviour, the most illustrious of the flock of Jesus Christ, who commenced on earth that life which we shall lead once in heaven."

The excessive regard for celibacy and the accompanying depreciation of marriage date from about the middle of the second century, and reach their height in the Nicene age.

Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, expresses himself as yet very moderately: "If any one can remain in chastity of the flesh to the glory of the Lord of the flesh" [or, according to another reading, "of the flesh of the Lord], let him remain thus without boasting;722 if he boast, he is lost, and if it be made known, beyond the bishop,723 he is ruined." What a stride from this to the obligatory celibacy of the clergy!  Yet the admonition leads us to suppose, that celibacy was thus early, in the beginning of the second century, in many cases, boasted of as meritorious, and allowed to nourish spiritual pride. Ignatius is the first to call voluntary virgins brides of Christ and jewels of Christ.

Justin Martyr goes further. He points to many Christians of both sexes who lived to a great age unpolluted; and he desires celibacy to prevail to the greatest possible extent. He refers to the example of Christ, and expresses the singular opinion, that the Lord was born of a virgin only to put a limit to sensual desire, and to show that God could produce without the sexual agency of man. His disciple Tatian ran even to the Gnostic extreme upon this point, and, in a lost work on Christian perfection, condemned conjugal cohabitation as a fellowship of corruption destructive of prayer. At the same period Athenagoras wrote, in his Apology: "Many may be found among us, of both sexes, who grow old unmarried, full of hope that they are in this way more closely united to God."

Clement of Alexandria is the most reasonable of all the fathers in his views on this point. He considers eunuchism a special gift of divine grace, but without yielding it on this account preference above the married state. On the contrary, he vindicates with great decision the moral dignity and sanctity of marriage against the heretical extravagances of his time, and lays down the general principle, that Christianity stands not in outward observances, enjoyments, and privations, but in righteousness and peace of heart. Of the Gnostics he says, that, under the fair name of abstinence, they act impiously towards the creation and the holy Creator, and repudiate marriage and procreation on the ground that a man should not introduce others into the world to their misery, and provide new nourishment for death. He justly charges them with inconsistency in despising the ordinances of God and yet enjoying the nourishment created by the same hand, breathing his air, and abiding in his world. He rejects the appeal to the example of Christ, because Christ needed no help, and because the church is his bride. The apostles also he cites against the impugners of marriage. Peter and Philip begot children; Philip gave his daughters in marriage; and even Paul hesitated not to speak of a female companion (rather only of his right to lead about such an one, as well as Peter). We seem translated into an entirely different, Protestant atmosphere, when in this genial writer we read: The perfect Christian, who has the apostles for his patterns, proves himself truly a man in this, that he chooses not a solitary life, but marries, begets children, cares for the household, yet under all the temptations which his care for wife and children, domestics and property, presents, swerves not from his love to God, and as a Christian householder exhibits a miniature of the all-ruling Providence.

But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age, we see in Clement’s own stoical and Platonizing conception of the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen, who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not think of the act of generation as anything but polluting. Hieracas, or Hierax, of Leontopolis in Egypt, who lived during the Diocletian persecution, and probably also belonged to the Alexandrian school, is said to have carried his asceticism to a heretical extreme, and to have declared virginity a condition of salvation under the gospel dispensation. Epiphanius describes him as a man of extraordinary biblical and medical learning, who knew the Bible by heart, wrote commentaries in the Greek and Egyptian languages, but denied the resurrection of the material body and the salvation of children, because there can be no reward without conflict, and no conflict without knowledge (1 Tim. 2:11). He abstained from wine and animal food, and gathered around him a society of ascetics, who were called Hieracitae.724  Methodius was an opponent of the spiritualistic, but not of the ascetic Origen, and wrote an enthusiastic plea for virginity, founded on the idea of the church as the pure, unspotted, ever young, and ever beautiful bride of God. Yet, quite remarkably, in his "Feast of the Ten Virgins," the virgins express themselves respecting the sexual relations with a minuteness which, to our modern taste, is extremely indelicate and offensive.

As to the Latin fathers: The views of Tertullian for or and against marriage, particularly against second marriage, we have already noticed.725  His disciple Cyprian differs from him in his ascetic principles only by greater moderation in expression, and, in his treatise De Habitu Virginum, commends the unmarried life on the ground of Matt. 19:12; 1 Cor. 7, and Rev. 14:4.

Celibacy was most common with pious virgins, who married themselves only to God or to Christ,726 and in the spiritual delights of this heavenly union found abundant compensation for the pleasures of earthly matrimony. But cases were not rare where sensuality, thus violently suppressed, asserted itself under other forms; as, for example, in indolence and ease at the expense of the church, which Tertullian finds it necessary to censure; or in the vanity and love of dress, which Cyprian rebukes; and, worst of all, in a desperate venture of asceticism, which probably often enough resulted in failure, or at least filled the imagination with impure thoughts. Many of these heavenly brides727 lived with male ascetics, and especially with unmarried clergyman, under pretext of a purely spiritual fellowship, in so intimate intercourse as to put their continence to the most perilous test, and wantonly challenge temptation, from which we should rather pray to be kept. This unnatural and shameless practice was probably introduced by the Gnostics; Irenaeus at least charges it upon them. The first trace of it in the church appears early enough, though under a rather innocent allegorical form, in the Pastor Hermae, which originated in the Roman church.728  It is next mentioned in the Pseudo-Clementine Epistles Ad Virgines. In the third century it prevailed widely in the East and West. The worldly-minded bishop Paulus of Antioch favored it by his own example. Cyprian of Carthage came out earnestly,729  and with all reason, against the vicious practice, in spite of the solemn protestation of innocence by these "sisters," and their appeal to investigations through midwives. Several councils at Elvira, Ancyra, Nicaea, &c., felt called upon to forbid this pseudo-ascetic scandal. Yet the intercourse of clergy with "mulieres subintroductae" rather increased than diminished with the increasing stringency of the celibate laws and has at all times more or less disgraced the Roman priesthood.

§ 108. Celibacy of the Clergy.

G. Calixtus (Luth.): De conjug. clericorum. Helmst. 1631; ed. emend. H. Ph. Kr. Henke, 1784, 2 Parts.

Lud. Thomassin (Rom. Cath., d. 1696): Vetus et Nova Ecclesiae Disciplina. Lucae, 1728, 3 vols. fol.; Mayence, 1787, also in French. P. I. L. II. c. 60–67.

Fr. Zaccaria (R.C.): Storia polemica del celibato sacro. Rom. 1774; and Nuova giustificazione del celibato sacro. Fuligno, 1785.

F. W. Carové, (Prot.): Vollstöndige Sammlung der Cölibatsgesetze. Francf. 1823.

J. Ant. & Aug. Theiner (R.C.): Die Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den Geistlichen u. ihre Folgen. Altenb. 1828; 2 vols.; second ed. Augsburg, 1845. In favor of the abolition of enforced celibacy.

Th. Fr. Klitsche (R.C.): Geschichte des Cölibats (from the time of the Apostles to Gregory VII.) Augsb. 1830.

A. Möhler: Beleuchtung der (badischen) Denkschrift zur Aufhebunq des Cölibats. In his "Gesammelte Schriften." Regensb. 1839, vol. I. 177 sqq.

C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Beitröge zur Kirchengesch. Vol. I. 122–139.

A. de Roskovany (R.C.): Cöstibatus et Breviarium ... a monumentis omnium saeculorum demonstrata. Pest, 1861. 4 vols. A collection of material and official decisions. Schulte calls it "ein gönzlich unkritischer Abdruck von Quellen."

Henry C. Lea (Prot.): An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. Philadelphia, 1867 2d ed. enlarged, Boston, 1884 (682 pp.); the only impartial and complete history down to 1880.

PROBST (R.C.): Kirchliche Disciplin, 1870.

J. Fried. von. Schulte (Prof. of jurisprudence in Bonn, and one of the leaders among the Old Catholics): Der Cölibatszwang und, lessen Aufhebung. Bonn 1876 (96 pages). Against celibacy.

All the above works, except that of Lea, are more or less controversial. Comp. also, on the Roman Cath. side, art. Celibacy, Martigny, and in Kraus, "Real-Encykl. der christl. Alterthümer" (1881) I. 304–307 by Funk, and in the new ed. of Wetzer & Welte’s "Kirchenlexicon;" on the Prot. side, Bingham, Book IV. ch. V.; Herzog2, III. 299–303; and Smith & Cheetham, I. 323–327.

As the clergy were supposed to embody the moral ideal of Christianity, and to be in the full sense of the term the heritage of God, they were required to practise especially rigid sexual temperance after receiving their ordination. The virginity of the church of Christ, who was himself born of a virgin, seemed, in the ascetic spirit of the age, to recommend a virgin priesthood as coming nearest his example, and best calculated to promote the spiritual interests of the church.

There were antecedents in heathenism to sacerdotal celibacy. Buddhism rigorously enjoined it under a penalty, of expulsion. The Egyptian priests were allowed one, but forbidden a second, marriage, while the people practiced unrestrained polygamy. The priestesses of the Delphic Apollo, the Achaian Juno, the Scythian Diana, and the Roman Vesta were virgins.

In the ante-Nicene period sacerdotal celibacy did not as yet become a matter of law, but was left optional, like the vow of chastity among the laity. In the Pastoral Epistles of Paul marriage, if not expressly enjoined, is at least allowed to all ministers of the gospel (bishops and deacons), and is presumed to exist as the rule.730  It is an undoubted fact that Peter and several apostles, as well as the Lord’s brothers, were married,731 and that Philip the deacon and evangelist had four daughters.732  It is also self-evident that, if marriage did not detract from the authority and dignity of an apostle, it cannot be inconsistent with the dignity and purity of any minister of Christ. The marriage relation implies duties and privileges, and it is a strange perversion of truth if some writers under the influence of dogmatic prejudice have turned the apostolic marriages, and that between Joseph and Mary into empty forms. Paul would have expressed himself very differently if he had meant to deny to the clergy the conjugal intercourse after ordination, as was done by the fathers and councils in the fourth century. He expressly classes the prohibition of marriage (including its consequences) among the doctrines of demons or evil spirits that control the heathen religions, and among the signs of the apostacy of the latter days.733  The Bible represents marriage as the first institution of God dating from the state of man’s innocency, and puts the highest dignity upon it in the Old and New Covenants. Any reflection on the honor and purity of the married state and the marriage bed reflects on the patriarchs, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, yea, on the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.734

There was all early departure from these Scripture views in the church under the irresistible influence of the ascetic enthusiasm for virgin purity. The undue elevation of virginity necessarily implied a corresponding depreciation of marriage.

The scanty documents of the post-apostolic age give us only incidental glimpses into clerical households, yet sufficient to prove the unbroken continuance of clerical marriages, especially in the Eastern churches, and at the same time the superior estimate put upon an unmarried clergy, which gradually limited or lowered the former.

Polycarp expresses his grief for Valens, a presbyter in Philippi, "and his wife," on account of his covetousness.735  Irenaeus mentions a married deacon in Asia Minor who was ill-rewarded for his hospitality to a Gnostic heretic, who seduced his wife.736  Rather unfortunate examples. Clement of Alexandria, one of the most enlightened among the ante-Nicene father, describes the true ideal of a Christian Gnostic as one who marries and has children, and so attains to a higher excellence, because he conquers more temptations than that of the single state.737  Tertullian, though preferring celibacy, was a married priest, and exhorted his wife to refrain after his death from a second marriage in order to attain to that ascetic purity which was impossible during their married life.738  He also draws a beautiful picture of the holy beauty of a Christian family. An African priest, Novatus—another unfortunate example—was arraigned for murdering his unborn child.739  There are also examples of married bishops. Socrates reports that not even bishops were bound in his age by any law of celibacy, and that many bishops during their episcopate begat children.740  Athanasius says:741 "Many bishops have not contracted matrimony; while, on the other hand, monks have become fathers. Again, we see bishops who have children, and monks who take no thought of having posterity." The father of Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 390) was a married bishop. and his mother, Nonna, a woman of exemplary piety, prayed earnestly for male issue, saw her future son in a prophetic vision, and dedicated him, before his birth, to the service of God, and he became the leading theologian of his age. Gregory of Nyssa (d. about 394) was likewise a married bishop, though he gave the preference to celibacy. Synesius, the philosophic disciple of Hypasia of Alexandria, when pressed to accept the bishopic, of Ptolemais (A.D. 410), declined at first, because he was unwilling to separate from his wife, and desired numerous offspring; but he finally accepted the office without a separation. This proves that his case was already exceptional. The sixth of the Apostolical Canons directs: "Let not a bishop, a priest, or a deacon cast off his own wife under pretence of piety; but if he does cast her off, let him be suspended. If he go on in it, let him be deprived." The Apostolical Constitutions nowhere prescribe clerical celibacy, but assume the single marriage of bishop, priest, and deacon as perfectly legitimate.742

The inscriptions on the catacombs bear likewise testimony to clerical marriages down to the fifth century.743

At the same time the tendency towards clerical celibacy set in very early, and made steady and irresistible progress, especially in the West. This is manifest in the qualifications of the facts and directions just mentioned. For they leave the impression that there were not many happy clerical marriages and model pastors’ wives in the early centuries; nor could there be so long as the public opinion of the church, contrary to the Bible, elevated virginity above marriage.

1. The first step in the direction of clerical celibacy was the prohibition of second marriage to the clergy, on the ground that Paul’s direction concerning "the husband of one wife" is a restriction rather than a command. In the Western church, in the early part of the third century, there were many clergymen who had been married a second or even a third time, and this practice was defended on the ground that Paul allowed remarriage, after the death of one party, as lawful without any restriction or censure. This fact appears from the protest of the Montanistic Tertullian, who makes it a serious objection to the Catholics, that they allow bigamists to preside, to baptize, and to celebrate the communion.744  Hippolytus, who had equally rigoristic views on discipline, reproaches about the same time the Roman bishop Callistus with admitting to sacerdotal and episcopal office those who were married a second and even a third time, and permitting the clergy to marry after having been ordained.745  But the rigorous practice prevailed, and was legalized in the Eastern church. The Apostolical Constitutions expressly forbid bishops, priests, and deacons to marry a second time. They also forbid clergymen to marry a concubine, or a slave, or a widow, or a divorced woman, and extend the prohibition of second marriage even to cantors, readers, and porters. As to the deaconess, she must be "a pure virgin, or a widow who has been but once married, faithful and well esteemed."746  The Apostolical Canons give similar regulations, and declare that the husband of a second wife, of a widow, a courtesan, an actress, or a slave was ineligible to the priesthood.747

2. The second step was the prohibition of marriage and conjugal intercourse after ordination. This implies the incompatibility of the priesthood with the duties and privileges of marriage. Before the Council of Elvira in Spain (306) no distinction was made in the Latin church between marriages before and after ordination.748  But that rigoristic council forbade nuptial intercourse to priests of all ranks upon pain of excommunication.749  The Council of Arles (314) passed a similar canon.750  And so did the Council of Ancyra (314), which, however, allows deacons to marry as deacons, in case they stipulated for it before taking orders.751  This exception was subsequently removed by the 27th Apostolic Canon, which allows only the lectors and cantors (belonging to the minor orders) to contract marriage.752

At the Oecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) an attempt was made, probably under the lead of Hosius, bishop of Cordova—the connecting link between Elvira and Nicaea—to elevate the Spanish rule to the dignity and authority of an oecumenical ordinance, that is, to make the prohibition of marriage after ordination and the strict abstinence of married priests from conjugal intercourse, the universal law of the Church; but the attempt was frustrated by the loud protest of Paphnutius, a venerable bishop and confessor of a city in the Upper Thebaid of Egypt, who had lost one eye in the Diocletian persecution, and who had himself never touched a woman. He warned the fathers of the council not to impose too heavy a burden on the clergy, and to remember that marriage and conjugal intercourse were venerable and pure. He feared more harm than good from excessive rigor. It was sufficient, if unmarried clergymen remain single according to the ancient tradition of the church; but it was wrong to separate the married priest from his legitimate wife, whom he married while yet a layman. This remonstrance of a strict ascetic induced the council to table the subject and to leave the continuance or discontinuance of the married relation to the free choice of every clergyman. It was a prophetic voice of warning.753

The Council of Nicaea passed no law in favor of celibacy; but it strictly prohibited in its third canon the dangerous and scandalous practice of unmarried clergymen to live with an unmarried woman,754 unless she be "a mother or sister or aunt or a person above suspicion."755  This prohibition must not be confounded with prohibition of nuptial intercourse any more than those spiritual concubines are to be identified with regular wives. It proves, however, that nominal clerical celibacy must have extensively prevailed at the time.

The Greek Church substantially retained the position of the fourth century, and gradually adopted the principle and practice of limiting the law of celibacy to bishops (who are usually taken from monasteries), and making a single marriage the rule for the lower clergy; the marriage to take place before ordination, and not to be repeated. Justinian excluded married men from the episcopate, and the Trullan Synod (A.D. 692) legalized the existing practice. In Russia (probably since 1274), the single marriage of the lower clergy was made obligatory. This is an error in the opposite direction. Marriage, as well as celibacy, should be left free to each man’s conscience.

3. The Latin Church took the third and last step, the absolute prohibition of clerical marriage, including even the lower orders. This belongs to the next period; but we will here briefly anticipate the result. Sacerdotal marriage was first prohibited by Pope Siricius (A.D. 385), then by Innocent I. (402), Leo I. (440), Gregory I. (590), and by provincial Synods of Carthage (390 and 401), Toledo (400), Orleans (538), Orange (441), Arles (443 or 452), Agde (506), Gerunda (517). The great teachers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, Jerome, Augustin, and Chrysostom, by their extravagant laudations of the superior sanctity of virginity, gave this legislation the weight of their authority. St. Jerome, the author of the Latin standard version of the Bible, took the lead in this ascetic crusade against marriage, and held up to the clergy as the ideal aim of the saint, to "cut down the wood of marriage by the axe of virginity." He was willing to praise marriage, but only as the nursery of virgins.756

Thus celibacy was gradually enforced in the West under the combined influence of the sacerdotal and hierarchical interests to the advantage of the hierarchy, but to the injury of morality.757

For while voluntary abstinence, or such as springs from a special gift of grace, is honorable and may be a great blessing to the church, the forced celibacy of the clergy, or celibacy as a universal condition of entering the priesthood, does violence to nature and Scripture, and, all sacramental ideas of marriage to the contrary notwithstanding, degrades this divine ordinance, which descends from the primeval state of innocence, and symbolizes the holiest of all relations, the union of Christ with his church. But what is in conflict with nature and nature’s God is also in conflict with the highest interests of morality. Much, therefore, as Catholicism has done to raise woman and the family life from heathen degradation, we still find, in general, that in Evangelical Protestant countries, woman occupies a far higher grade of intellectual and moral culture than in exclusively Roman Catholic countries. Clerical marriages are probably the most happy as a rule, and have given birth to a larger number of useful and distinguished men and women than those of any other class of society.758

CHAPTER X.

MONTANISM.

§ 109. Literature.

Sources:

The prophetic utterances of Montanus, Prisca (or Priscilla) and Maximilla, scattered through Tertullian and other writers, collected by F. Münter. (Effata et Oracula Montanistarum, Hafniae, 1829), and by Bonwetsch, in his Gesch. des Mont. p. 197–200.

Tertullian’s writings after A.D. 201, are the chief source, especially De Corona Militis; De Fuga in Persec.; De Cult. Feminarum; De Virg. Velandis; De Exhort. Castitatis; De Monogamia; De Paradiso; De Jejuniis; De Pudicitia; De Spectaculis; De Spe Fidelium. His seven books On Ecstasy, mentioned by Jerome, are lost. In his later anti-heretical writings (Adv. Marcionem; Adv. Valentin.; Adv. Praxean; De Anima; De Resurr. Carnis), Tertullian occasionally refers to the new dispensation of the Spirit. On the chronology of his writings see Uhlhorn: Fundamenta chronologiae Tertullianeae, (Gött. 1852), Bonwetsch: Die Schriften Tertullians nach der Zeit ihrer Abfassung (Bonn, 1878), and Harnack, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für K. gesch." No. 11.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 11, 9; IV. 33, 6 and 7. (The references to Montanism are somewhat doubtful). Eusebius: H. E. V. 3. Epipan.: Haer. 48 and 49.

The anti-Montanist writings of Apolinarius (Apollinaris) of Hierapolis, Melito of Sardes, Miltiades (peri; tou' mh; dei'n profhvthn ejn ejkstavsei lalei'n), Apollonius, Serapion, Gaius, and an anonymous author quoted by Eusebius are lost. Comp. on the sources Soyres, l.c. p. 3–24, and Bonwetsch, l c. p. 16–55.

Works:

Theoph. Wernsdorf: Commentatio de Montanistis Saeculi II. vulgo creditis haereticis. Dantzig, 1781. A vindication of Montanism as being essentially agreed with the doctrines of the primitive church and unjustly condemned. Mosheim differs, but speaks favorably of it. So also Soyres. Arnold had espoused the cause of M. before, in his Kirchen-und Ketzerhistorie.

Mosheim: De Rebus Christ. ante Const. M. p. 410–425 (Murdock’s transl I. 501–512).

Walch: Ketzerhistorie, I. 611–666.

Kirchner: De Montanistis. Jenae, 1832.

Neander: Antignosticus oder Geist aus Tertullian’s Schriften. Berlin, 1825 (2d ed. 1847), and the second ed. of his Kirchengesch. 1843, Bd. II. 877–908 (Torrey’s transl. Boston ed. vol. I. 506–526). Neander was the first to give a calm and impartial philosophical view of Montanism as the realistic antipode of idealistic Gnosticism.

A. Schwegler: Der Montanismus und die christl. Kirche des 2ten Jahrh. Tüb. 1841. Comp. his Nach-Apost. Zeitalter (Tüb. 1846). A very ingenious philosophical a-priori construction of history in the spirit of the Tübingen School. Schwegler denies the historical existence of Montanus, wrongly derives the system from Ebionism, and puts its essence in the doctrine of the Paraclete and the new supernatural epoch of revelation introduced by him. Against him wrote GEORGII in the "Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst," 1842.

Hilgenfeld: Die Glossolalie in der alten Kirche. Leipz. 1850.

Baur: Das Wesen des Montanismus nach den neusten Forschungen, in the "Theol. Jahrbücher." Tüb. 1851, p. 538 sqq.; and his Gesch. der Christl. Kirche, I. 235–245, 288–295 (3d ed. of 1863). Baur, like Schwegler, lays the chief stress on the doctrinal element, but refutes his view on the Ebionitic origin of Mont., and reviews it in its conflict with Gnosticism and episcopacy.

Niedner: K. Gesch. 253 sqq., 259 sqq.

Albrecht Ritschl: Entstehung der altkathol. Kirche, second ed. 1857, p. 402–550. R. justly emphasizes the practical and ethical features of the sect.

P. Gottwald: De Montanismo Tertulliani. Vratisl. 1862.

A. Reville: Tertullien et le Montanisme, in the "Revue des deux mondes," Nov. 1864. Also his essay in the "Nouvelle Revue de Theologic" for 1858.

R. A. Lipsius: Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanios. Wien, 1865; and Die Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte. Leipz. 1875.

Emile Ströhlin: Essai sur le Montanisme. Strasbourg, 1870.

John De Soyres: Montanism and the Primitive Church (Hulsean prize essay). Cambridge, 1878 (163 pa-es). With a useful chronological table.

G. Nathanael Bonwetsch (of Dorpat): Die Geschichte des Montanismus. Erlangen, 1881 (201 pages). The best book on the subject.

Renan: Marc-Aurèle (1882), ch. XIII. p. 207–225. Also his essay Le Montanisme, in the "Revue des deux mondes," Feb. 1881.

W. Belck: Geschichte des Montanismus. Leipzig, 1883.

Hilgenfeld: D. Ketzergesch. des Urchristenthums. Leipzig, 1884. (pp. 560–600.)

The subject is well treated by Dr. Möller in Herzog (revis. ed. Bd. X. 255–262); Bp. Hefele in Wetzer & Welter, Bd. VII. 252–268, and in his Conciliengesch. revised ed. Bd. I. 83 sqq.; and by Dr. Salmond in Smith & Wace, III. 935–945.

Comp. also the Lit. on Tertullian, § 196 (p. 818).

§ 110. External History of Montanism.

All the ascetic, rigoristic, and chiliastic elements of the ancient church combined in Montanism. They there asserted a claim to universal validity, which the catholic church was compelled, for her own interest, to reject; since she left the effort after extraordinary holiness to the comparatively small circle of ascetics and priests, and sought rather to lighten Christianity than add to its weight, for the great mass of its professors. Here is the place, therefore, to speak of this remarkable phenomenon, and not under the head of doctrine, or heresy, where it is commonly placed. For Montanism was not, originally, a departure from the faith, but a morbid overstraining of the practical morality and discipline of the early church. It was an excessive supernaturalism and puritanism against Gnostic rationalism and Catholic laxity. It is the first example of an earnest and well-meaning, but gloomy and fanatical hyper-Christianity, which, like all hyper-spiritualism, is apt to end in the flesh.

Montanism originated in Asia Minor, the theatre of many movements of the church in this period; yet not in Ephesus or any large city, but in some insignificant villages of the province of Phrygia, once the home of a sensuously mystic and dreamy nature-religion, where Paul and his pupils had planted congregations at Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis.759 The movement was started about the middle of the second century during the reign of Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, by a certain Montanus.760  He was, according to hostile accounts, before his conversion, a mutilated priest of Cybele, with no special talents nor culture, but burning with fanatical zeal. He fell into somnambulistic ecstasies, and considered himself the inspired organ of the promised Paraclete or Advocate, the Helper and Comforter in these last times of distress. His adversaries wrongly inferred from the use of the first person for the Holy Spirit in his oracles, that he made himself directly the Paraclete, or, according to Epiphanius, even God the Father. Connected with him were two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, who left their husbands. During the bloody persecutions under the Antonines, which raged in Asia Minor, and caused the death of Polycarp (155), all three went forth as prophets and reformers of the Christian life, and proclaimed the near approach of the age of the Holy Spirit and of the millennial reign in Pepuza, a small village of Phrygia, upon which the new Jerusalem was to come down. Scenes took place similar to those under the preaching of the first Quakers, and the glossolalia and prophesying in the Irvingite congregations. The frantic movement soon far exceeded the intention of its authors, spread to Rome and North Africa, and threw the whole church into commotion. It gave rise to the first Synods which are mentioned after the apostolic age.

The followers of Montanus were called Montanists, also Phrygians, Cataphrygians (from the province of their origin), Pepuziani, Priscillianists (from Priscilla, not to be confounded with the Priscillianists of the fourth century). They called themselves

spiritual Christians (peumatikoiv), in distinction from the psychic or carnal Christians (yucikoiv).

The bishops and synods of Asia Minor, though not with one voice, declared the new prophecy the work of demons, applied exorcism, and cut off the Montanists from the fellowship of the church. All agreed that it was supernatural (a natural interpretation of such psychological phenomena being then unknown), and the only alternative was to ascribe it either to God or to his great Adversary. Prejudice and malice invented against Montanus and the two female prophets slanderous charges of immorality, madness and suicide, which were readily believed. Epiphanius and John of Damascus tell the absurd story, that the sacrifice of an infant was a part of the mystic worship of the Montanists, and that they made bread with the blood of murdered infants.761

Among their literary opponents in the East are mentioned Claudius Apolinarius of Hierapolis, Miltiades, Appollonius, Serapion of Antioch, and Clement of Alexandria.

The Roman church, during the episcopate of Eleutherus (177–190), or of Victor (190–202), after some vacillation, set itself likewise against the new prophets at the instigation of the presbyter Caius and the confessor Praxeas from Asia, who, as Tertullian sarcastically says, did a two-fold service to the devil at Rome by driving away prophecy and bringing in heresy (patripassianism), or by putting to flight the Holy Spirit and crucifying God the Father. Yet the opposition of Hippolytus to Zephyrinus and Callistus, as well as the later Novatian schism, show that the disciplinary rigorism of Montanism found energetic advocates in Rome till after the middle of the third century.

The Gallic Christians, then severely tried by persecution, took a conciliatory posture, and sympathized at least with the moral earnestness, the enthusiasm for martyrdom, and the chiliastic hopes of the Montanists. They sent their presbyter (afterwards bishop) Irenaeus to Eleutherus in Rome to intercede in their behalf. This mission seems to have induced him or his successor to issue letters of peace, but they were soon afterwards recalled. This sealed the fate of the party.762

In North Africa the Montanists met with extensive sympathy, as the Punic national character leaned naturally towards gloomy and rigorous acerbity.763  Two of the most distinguished female martyrs, Perpetua and Felicitas, were addicted to them, and died a heroic death at Carthage in the persecution of Septimius Severus (203).

Their greatest conquest was the gifted and fiery, but eccentric and rigoristic Tertullian. He became in the year 201 or 202, from ascetic sympathies, a most energetic and influential advocate of Montanism, and helped its dark feeling towards a twilight of philosophy, without, however, formally seceding from the Catholic Church, whose doctrines he continued to defend against the heretics. At all events, he was not excommunicated, and his orthodox writings were always highly esteemed. He is the only theologian of this schismatic movement, which started in purely practical questions, and we derive the best of our knowledge of it from his works. Through him, too, its principles reacted in many respects on the Catholic Church; and that not only in North Africa, but also in Spain, as we may see from the harsh decrees of the Council of Elvira in 306. It is singular that Cyprian, who, with all his high-church tendencies and abhorrence of schism, was a daily reader of Tertullian, makes no allusion to Montanism. Augustin relates that Tertullian left the Montanists, and founded a new sect, which was called after him, but was, through his (Augustin’s) agency, reconciled to the Catholic congregation of Carthage.764

As a separate sect, the Montanists or Tertullianists, as they were also called in Africa, run down into the sixth century. At the time of Epiphanius the sect had many adherents in Phrygia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and in Constantinople. The successors of Constantine, down to Justinian (530), repeatedly enacted laws against them. Synodical legislation about the validity of Montanist baptism is inconsistent.765

§ 111. Character and Tenets of Montanism.

I. In doctrine, Montanism agreed in all essential points with the Catholic Church, and held very firmly to the traditional rule of faith.766  Tertullian was thoroughly orthodox according to the standard of his age. He opposed infant baptism on the assumption that mortal sins could not be forgiven after baptism; but infant baptism was not yet a catholic dogma, and was left to the discretion of parents. He contributed to the development of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, by asserting against Patripassianism a personal distinction in God, and the import of the Holy Spirit. Montanism was rooted neither, like Ebionism, in Judaism, nor, like Gnosticism, in heathenism, but in Christianity; and its errors consist in a morbid exaggeration of Christian ideas and demands. Tertullian says, that the administration of the Paraclete consists only in the reform of discipline, in deeper understanding of the Scriptures, and in effort after higher perfection; that it has the same faith, the same God, the same Christ, and the same sacraments with the Catholics. The sect combated the Gnostic heresy with all decision, and forms the exact counterpart of that system, placing Christianity chiefly in practical life instead of theoretical speculation, and looking for the consummation of the kingdom of God on this earth, though not till the millennium, instead of transferring it into an abstract ideal world. Yet between these two systems, as always between opposite extremes, there were also points of contact; a common antagonism, for example, to the present order of the world, and the distinction of a pneumatic and a psychical church.

Tertullian conceived religion as a process of development, which he illustrates by the analogy of organic growth in nature. He distinguishes in this process four stages:—(1.) Natural religion, or the innate idea of God; (2.) The legal religion of the Old Testament; (3.) The gospel during the earthly life of Christ; and (4.) the revelation of the Paraclete; that is, the spiritual religion of the Montanists, who accordingly called themselves the pneumatics, or the spiritual church, in distinction from the psychical (or carnal) Catholic church. This is the first instance of a theory of development which assumes an advance beyond the New Testament and the Christianity of the apostles; misapplying the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, and Paul’s doctrine of the growth of the church in Christ (but not beyond Christ). Tertullian, however, was by no means rationalistic in his view. On the contrary, he demanded for all new revelations the closest agreement with the traditional faith of the church, the regula fidei, which, in a genuine Montanistic work, he terms "immobilis et irreformabilis." Nevertheless he gave the revelations of the Phrygian prophets on matters of practice an importance which interfered with the sufficiency of the Scriptures.

II. In the field of practical life and discipline, the Montanistic movement and its expectation of the near approach of the end of the world came into conflict with the reigning Catholicism; and this conflict, consistently carried out, must of course show itself to some extent in the province of doctrine. Every schismatic tendency is apt to become in its progress more or less heretical.

1. Montanism, in the first place, sought a forced continuance of the miraculous gifts of the apostolic church, which gradually disappeared as Christianity became settled in humanity, and its supernatural principle was naturalized on earth.767  It asserted, above all, the continuance of prophecy, and hence it went generally under the name of the nova prophetia. It appealed to Scriptural examples, John, Agabus, Judas, and Silas, and for their female prophets, to Miriam and Deborah, and especially to the four daughters of Philip, who were buried in Hierapolis, the capital of Phrygia. Ecstatic oracular utterances were mistaken for divine inspirations. Tertullian calls the mental status of those prophets an "amentia," an "excidere sensu," and describes it in a way which irresistibly reminds one of the phenomena of magnetic clairvoyance. Montanus compares a man in the ecstasy with a musical instrument, on which the Holy Spirit plays his melodies. "Behold," says he in one of his oracles, in the name of the Paraclete, "the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man sleeps; I wake. Behold, it is the Lord who puts the hearts of men out of themselves, and who gives hearts to men."768  As to its matter, the Montanistic prophecy related to the approaching heavy judgments of God, the persecutions, the millennium, fasting, and other ascetic exercises, which were to be enforced as laws of the church.

The Catholic church did not deny, in theory, the continuance of prophecy and the other miraculous gifts, but was disposed to derive the Montanistic revelations from satanic inspirations,769 and mistrusted them all the more for their proceeding not from the regular clergy, but in great part from unauthorized laymen and fanatical women.

2. This brings us to another feature of the Montanistic movement, the assertion of the universal priesthood of Christians, even of females, against the special priesthood in the Catholic church. Under this view it may be called a democratic reaction against the clerical aristocracy, which from the time of Ignatius had more and more monopolized all ministerial privileges and functions. The Montanists found the true qualification and appointment for the office of teacher in direct endowment by the Spirit of God, in distinction from outward ordination and episcopal succession. They everywhere proposed the supernatural element and the free motion of the Spirit against the mechanism of a fixed ecclesiastical order.

Here was the point where they necessarily assumed a schismatic character, and arrayed against themselves the episcopal hierarchy. But they only brought another kind of aristocracy into the place of the condemned distinction of clergy and laity. They claimed for their prophets what they denied to the Catholic bishops. They put a great gulf between the true spiritual Christians and the merely psychical; and this induced spiritual pride and false pietism. Their affinity with the Protestant idea of the universal priesthood is more apparent than real; they go on altogether different principles.

3. Another of the essential and prominent traits of Montanism was a visionary millennarianism, founded indeed on the Apocalypse and on the apostolic expectation of the speedy return of Christ, but giving it extravagant weight and a materialistic coloring. The Montanists were the warmest millennarians in the ancient church, and held fast to the speedy return of Christ in glory, all the more as this hope began to give way to the feeling of a long settlement of the church on earth, and to a corresponding zeal for a compact, solid episcopal organization. In praying, "Thy kingdom come," they prayed for the end of the world. They lived under a vivid impression of the great final catastrophe, and looked therefore with contempt upon the present order of things, and directed all their desires to the second advent of Christ. Maximilla says: "After me there is no more prophecy, but only the end of the world."770

The failure of these predictions weakened, of course, all the other pretensions of the system. But, on the other hand, the abatement of faith in the near approach of the Lord was certainly accompanied with an increase of worldliness in the Catholic church. The millennarianism of the Montanists has reappeared again and again in widely differing forms.

4. Finally, the Montanistic sect was characterized by fanatical severity in asceticism and church discipline. It raised a zealous protest against the growing looseness of the Catholic penitential discipline, which in Rome particularly, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, to the great grief of earnest minds, established a scheme of indulgence for the grossest sins, and began, long before Constantine, to obscure the line between the church and the world. Tertullian makes the restoration of a rigorous discipline the chief office of the new prophecy.771

But Montanism certainly went to the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into Jewish legalism; while the Catholic church in rejecting the new laws and burdens defended the cause of freedom. Montanism turned with horror from all the enjoyments of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian soberness and humility. It forbade women all ornamental clothing, and required virgins to be veiled. It courted the blood-baptism of martyrdom, and condemned concealment or flight in persecution as a denial of Christ. It multiplied fasts and other ascetic exercises, and carried them to extreme severity, as the best preparation for the millennium. It prohibited second marriage as adultery, for laity as well as clergy, and inclined even to regard a single marriage as a mere concession on the part of God to the sensuous infirmity of man. It taught the impossibility of a second repentance, and refused to restore the lapsed to the fellowship of the church. Tertullian held all mortal sins (of which he numbers seven), committed after baptism, to be unpardonable,772 at least in this world, and a church, which showed such lenity towards gross offenders, as the Roman church at that time did, according to the corroborating testimony of Hippolytus, he called worse than a den of thieves," even a "spelunca maechorum et fornicatorum."773

The Catholic church, indeed, as we have already seen, opened the door likewise to excessive ascetic rigor, but only as an exception to her rule; while the Montanists pressed their rigoristic demands as binding upon all. Such universal asceticism was simply impracticable in a world like the present, and the sect itself necessarily dwindled away. But the religious earnestness which animated it, its prophecies and visions, its millennarianism, and the fanatical extremes into which it ran, have since reappeared, under various names and forms, and in new combinations, in Novatianism, Donatism, the spiritualism of the Franciscans, Anabaptism, the Camisard enthusiasm, Puritanism,  Quakerism, Quietism, Pietism, Second Adventism, Irvingism, and so on, by way of protest and wholesome reaction against various evils in the church.774

CHAPTER XI.

THE HERESIES OF THE ANTE-NICENE AGE.

§ 112. Judaism and Heathenism within the Church.

Having described in previous chapters the moral and intellectual victory of the church over avowed and consistent Judaism and heathenism, we must now look at her deep and mighty struggle with those enemies in a hidden and more dangerous form: with Judaism and heathenism concealed in the garb of Christianity and threatening to Judaize and paganize the church. The patristic theology and literature can never be thoroughly understood without a knowledge of the heresies of the patristic age, which play as important a part in the theological movements of the ancient Greek and Latin churches as Rationalism with its various types in the modern theology of the Protestant churches of Europe and America.

Judaism, with its religion and its sacred writings, and Graeco-Roman heathenism, with its secular culture, its science, and its art, were designed to pass into Christianity to be transformed and sanctified. But even in the apostolic age many Jews and Gentiles were baptized only with water, not with the Holy Spirit and fire of the gospel, and smuggled their old religious notions and practices into the church. Hence the heretical tendencies, which are combated in the New Testament, especially in the Pauline and Catholic Epistles.775

The same heresies meet us at the beginning of the second century, and thenceforth in more mature form and in greater extent in almost all parts of Christendom. They evince, on the one hand, the universal import of the Christian religion in history, and its irresistible power over all the more profound and earnest minds of the age. Christianity threw all their religious ideas into confusion and agitation. They were so struck with the truth, beauty, and vigor of the new religion, that they could no longer rest either in Judaism or in heathenism; and yet many were unable or unwilling to forsake inwardly their old religion and philosophy. Hence strange medleys of Christian and unchristian elements in chaotic ferment. The old religions did not die without a last desperate effort to save themselves by appropriating Christian ideas. And this, on the other hand, exposed the specific truth of Christianity to the greatest danger, and obliged the church to defend herself against misrepresentation, and to secure herself against relapse to the Jewish or the heathen level.

As Christianity was met at its entrance into the world by two other religions, the one relatively true, and the other essentially false, heresy appeared likewise in the two leading forms of ebionism and gnosticism, the germs of which, as already observed, attracted the notice of the apostles. The remark of Hegesippus, that the church preserved a virginal purity of doctrine to the time of Hadrian, must be understood as made only in view of the open advance of Gnosticism in the second century, and therefore as only relatively true. The very same writer expressly observes, that heresy had been already secretly working from the days of Simon Magus. Ebionism is a Judaizing, pseudo-Petrine Christianity, or, as it may equally well be called, a Christianizing Judaism; Gnosticism is a paganizing or pseudo-Pauline Christianity, or a pseudo-Christian heathenism.

These two great types of heresy are properly opposite poles. Ebionism is a particularistic contraction of the Christian religion; Gnosticism, a vague expansion of it. The one is a gross realism and literalism; the other, a fantastic idealism and spiritualism. In the former the spirit is bound in outward forms; in the latter it revels in licentious freedom. Ebionism makes salvation depend on observance of the law; Gnosticism, on speculative knowledge. Under the influence of Judaistic legalism, Christianity must stiffen and petrify; under the influence of Gnostic speculation, it must dissolve into empty notions and fancies. Ebionism denies the divinity of Christ, and sees in the gospel only a new law; Gnosticism denies the true humanity of the Redeemer, and makes his person and his work a mere phantom, a docetistic illusion.

The two extremes, however, meet; both tendencies from opposite directions reach the same result—the denial of the incarnation, of the true and abiding union of the divine and the human in Christ and his kingdom; and thus they fall together under St. John’s criterion of the antichristian spirit of error. In both Christ ceases to be mediator and reconciler and his religion makes no specific advance upon the Jewish and the heathen, which place God and man in abstract dualism, or allow them none but a transient and illusory union.

Hence, there were also some forms of error, in which Ebionistic and Gnostic elements were combined. We have a Gnostic or theosophic Ebionism the pseudo-Clementine), and a Judaizing Gnosticism (in Cerinthus and others). These mixed forms also we find combated in the apostolic age. Indeed, similar forms of religious syncretism we meet with even before the time and beyond the field of Christianity, in the Essenes, the Therapeutae, and the Platonizing Jewish philosopher, Philo.

§ 113. Nazarenes and Ebionites (Elkesaites, Mandoeans).

I. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. I. 26. Hippolytus: Refut. omnium Haer., or Philosophumena, 1. IX. 13–17. Epiphanius: Haer. 29, 30, 53. Scattered notices in Justin M., Tertullian, Origen, Hegesippus, Eusebius, and Jerome. Several of the Apocryphal Gospels, especially that of the Hebrews. The sources are obscure and conflicting. Comp. the collection of fragments from Elxai, the Gospel of the Hebrews, etc. in Hilgenfeld’s Novum Test. extra Canonem receptum. Lips. 1866,

II. Gieseler: Nazaräer u. Ebioniten (in the fourth vol. of Stäudlin’s and Tzschirner’s "Archiv." Leipz. 1820).

Credner: Ueber Essaeer und Ebioniten und einen theitweisen Zusammenhang derselben (in Winer’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." Sulzbach, 1829).

Baur: De Ebionitarum Origine et Doctrina ab Essaeis repetenda. Tüb. 1831.

Schliemann: Die Clementinen u. der Ebionitismus, Hamb. 1844, p. 362–552.

Ritschl: Ueber die Secte der Elkesaiten (in Niedner’s "Zeitschr. Hist. Theol." 1853, No. 4).

D. Chwolsohn: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus. St. Petersburg, 1856,· vols.

Uhlhorn: Ebioniten and Elkesaiten, in Herzog, new ed., vol. IV. (1879), 13 sqq. and 184 sqq.

G. Salmon: Elkesai, Elkesaites, in Smith & Wace, vol. II. (1880) p. 95 98.

M. N. Siouffi: Études sur la religion des Soubbas on Sabéens, leurs dogmes, leurs möurs. Paris, 1880.

K. Kessler: Mandaeer, in Herzog, revised ed., IX. (1881), p. 205–222.

AD. Hilgenfeld: Ketzergesch. des Urchristenthums, Leip., 1884 (421 sqq.).

The Jewish Christianity, represented in the apostolic church by Peter and James, combined with the Gentile Christianity of Paul, to form a Christian church, in which "neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature in Christ."

I. A portion of the Jewish Christians, however, adhered even after the destruction of Jerusalem, to the national customs of their fathers, and propagated themselves in some churches of Syria down to the end of the fourth century, under the name of Nazarenes; a name perhaps originally given in contempt by the Jews to all Christians as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.776  They united the observance of the Mosaic ritual law with their belief in the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus, used the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, deeply mourned the unbelief of their brethren, and hoped for their future conversion in a body and for a millennial reign of Christ on the earth. But they indulged no antipathy to the apostle Paul, and never denounced the Gentile Christians and heretics for not observing the law. They were, therefore, not heretics, but stunted separatist Christians; they stopped at the obsolete position of a narrow and anxious Jewish Christianity, and shrank to an insignificant sect. Jerome says of them, that, wishing to be Jews and Christians alike, they were neither one nor the other.

II. From these Nazarenes we must carefully distinguish the heretical Jewish Christians, or the ebionites, who were more numerous. Their name comes not, as Tertullian first intimated,777 from a supposed founder of the sect, Ebion, of whom we know nothing, but from the Hebrew word, a,b]yron, poor. It may have been originally, like "Nazarene" and "Galilean," a contemptuous designation of all Christians, the majority of whom lived in needy circumstances;778 but it was afterwards confined to this sect; whether in reproach, to denote the poverty of their doctrine of Christ and of the law, as Origen more ingeniously than correctly explains it; or, more probably, in honor, since the Ebionites regarded themselves as the genuine followers of the poor Christ and his poor disciples, and applied to themselves alone the benediction on the poor in spirit. According to Epiphanius, Ebion spread his error first in the company of Christians which fled to Pella after the destruction of Jerusalem; according to Hegesippus in Eusebius, one Thebutis, after the death of the bishop Symeon of Jerusalem, about 107, made schism among the Jewish Christians, and led many of them to apostatize, because he himself was not elected to the bishopric.

We find the sect of the Ebionites in Palestine and the surrounding regions, on the island of Cyprus, in Asia Minor, and even in Rome. Though it consisted mostly of Jews, Gentile Christians also sometimes attached themselves to it. It continued into the fourth century, but at the time of Theodoret was entirely extinct. It used a Hebrew Gospel, now lost, which was probably a corruption of the Gospel of Matthew.

The characteristic marks of Ebionism in all its forms are: degradation of Christianity to the level of Judaism; the principle of the universal and perpetual validity of the Mosaic law; and enmity to the apostle Paul. But, as there were different sects in Judaism itself, we have also to distinguish at least two branches of Ebionism, related to each other as Pharisaism and Essenism, or, to use a modern illustration, as the older deistic and the speculative pantheistic rationalism in Germany, or the practical and the speculative schools in Unitarianism.

1. The common Ebionites, who were by far the more numerous, embodied the Pharisaic legalism, and were the proper successors of the Judaizers opposed in the Epistle to the Galatians. Their doctrine may be reduced to the following propositions:

(a) Jesus is, indeed, the promised Messiah, the son of David, and the supreme lawgiver, yet a mere man, like Moses and David, sprung by natural generation from Joseph and Mary. The sense of his Messianic calling first arose in him at his baptism by John, when a higher spirit joined itself to him. Hence, Origen compared this sect to the blind man in the Gospel, who called to the Lord, without seeing him: "Thou son of David, have mercy on me."

(b) Circumcision and the observance of the whole ritual law of Moses are necessary to salvation for all men.

(c) Paul is an apostate and heretic, and all his epistles are to be discarded. The sect considered him a native heathen, who came over to Judaism in later life from impure motives.

(d) Christ is soon to come again, to introduce the glorious millennial reign of the Messiah, with the earthly Jerusalem for its seat.

2. The second class of Ebionites, starting with Essenic notions, gave their Judaism a speculative or theosophic stamp, like the errorists of the Epistle to the Colossians. They form the stepping-stone to Gnosticism. Among these belong the Elkesaites.779  They arose, according to Epiphanius, in the reign of Trajan, in the regions around the Dead Sea, where the Essenes lived. Their name is derived from their supposed founder, Elxai or Elkasai, and is interpreted: "hidden power," which (according to Gieseler’s suggestion) signifies the Holy Spirit.780  This seems to have been originally the title of a book, which pretended, like the book of Mormon, to be revealed by an angel, and was held in the highest esteem by the sect. This secret writing, according to the fragments in Origen, and in the "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, contains the groundwork of the remarkable pseudo-Clementine system.781  (See next section.)  It is evidently of Jewish origin, represents Jerusalem as the centre of the religious world, Christ as a creature and the Lord of angels and all other creatures, the Holy Spirit as a female, enjoins circumcision as well as baptism, rejects St. Paul, and justifies the denial of faith in time of persecution. It claims to date from the third year of Trajan (101). This and the requirement of circumcision would make it considerably older than the Clementine Homilies. A copy of that book was brought to Rome from Syria by a certain Alcibiades about A.D. 222, and excited attention by announcing a new method of forgiveness of sins.

3. A similar sect are the Mandaeans, from Manda, knowledge (gnw'si")also Sabians, i.e. Baptists (fromsâbi, to baptize, to wash), and Mughtasilah, which has the same meaning. On account of their great reverence for John the Baptist, they were called "Christians of John."782  Their origin is uncertain. A remnant of them still exists, in Persia on the eastern banks of the Tigris. Their sacred language is an Aramaic dialect of some importance for comparative philology.783  At present they speak Arabic and Persian. Their system is very complicated with the prevalence of the heathen element, and comes nearest to Manichaeism.784

§ 114. The Pseudo-Clementine Ebionism.

I. Sources:

1. Ta; Klhmevntia, or more accurately Klhvmento" tw'n Pevtrou ejpidhmiw'n khrugmavtwn ejpitomhv first published (without the twentieth and part of the nineteenth homily) by Cotelier in "Patres Apost." Par. 1672; Clericus in his editions of Cotelier, 1698, 1700, and 1724; again by Schwegler, Stuttg. 1847 (the text of Clericus); then first entire, with the missing portion, from a new codex in the Ottobonian Library in the Vatican, by Alb. R. M. Dressel (with the Latin trans. of Cotelier and notes), under the title: Clementis Romani quae feruntur Homiliae Viginti nunc primum integrae. Gott. 1853; and by Paul de Lagarde: Clementina Graece. Leipz. 1865.

2. Clementis Rom. Recognitiones ( jAnagnwrismoiv or  JAnagnwvsei"), in ten books, extant only in the Latin translation of Rufinus (d. 410); first published in Basel, 1526; then better by Cotelier, Gallandi, and by Gersdorf in his "Bibl. Patr. Lat." Lips. 1838. Vol. I. In Syriac, ed. by P. de Lagarde (Clementis Romani Recognitiones Syriace). Lips. 1861. An English translation of the Recognitions of Clement by Dr. Thomas Smith, in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," Edinburgh, vol. III. (1868), pp. 137–471. The work in the MSS. bears different titles, the most common is Itinerarium St. Clementis.

3. Clementine Epitome de Gestis Petri (Klhvm. ejpisk. JRwvmh" peri; tw'n pravxewn ejpidhmiw'n te kai; khrugmavtwn Pevtrou ejpitomhv), first at Paris, 1555; then critically edited by Cotelier, l.c.; and more completely with a second epitome by A. R. M. Dressel: Clementinorum Epitomae duae, with valuable critical annotations by Fr. Wieseler. Lips. 1859. The two Epitomes are only a summary of the Homilies.

II. Works.

Neander and Baur, in their works on Gnosticism (vid. the following section), and in their Church Histories.

Schliemann: Die Clementinen nebst den verwandten Schriften, u. der Ebionitismus. Hamb. 1844.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Die Clementinischen Recognitionem n. Homilien nach ihrem Ursprüng n. Inhalt. Jena, 1848. Art. by the same in the "Theol. Jahrbücher" for 1854 (483 sqq.), and 1868 (357 sqq.); and Die Apost. Väter. Halle 1853, p. 287–302.

G. Uhlhorn: Die Homilien n. Recognitionem des Clemens Romanus. Gött. 1854. Comp. the same author’s article "Clementinen," in Herzog, second ed., vol. III. (1878), p. 277–286.

Ritschl: Die Entstehung der altkath. Kirche 1857 (second ed. p. 206–270).

J. Lehmann: Die Clementinischen Schriften mit besonderer Rücksicht auf ihr liter. Verhältniss. Gotha 1869. He mediates between Hilgenfeld and Uhlhorn. (See a review by Lipsius in the "Protest. Kirchenztg," 1869, 477–482, and by Lagarde in his "Symmicta," I. 1877, pp. 2–4 and 108–112, where Lehmann is charged with plagiarism).

R. A. Lipsius: Die Quellen der römischen Petrus-Sage kritish untersucht. Kiel 1872. Lipsius finds the basis of the whole Clementine literature in the strongly anti-Pauline Acta Petri.

A. B. Lutterbeck: Die Clementinen und ihr Verh. z. Unfehlbarkeitsdogma. Giessen, 1872.

The system of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies exhibits Ebionism at once in its theosophic perfection, and in its internal dissolution. It represents rather an individual opinion, than a sect, but holds probably some connection, not definitely ascertained, with the Elkesaites, who, as appears from the "Philosophumena," branched out even to Rome. It is genuinely Ebionitic or Judaistic in its monotheistic basis, its concealed antagonism to Paul, and its assertion of the essential identity of Christianity and Judaism, while it expressly rejects the Gnostic fundamental doctrine of the demiurge. It cannot, therefore, properly be classed, as it is by Baur, among the Gnostic schools.

The twenty Clementine Homilies bear the celebrated name of the Roman bishop Clement, mentioned in Phil. 4:3, as a helper of Paul, but evidently confounded in the pseudo-Clementine literature with Flavius Clement, kinsman of the Emperor Domitian. They really come from an unknown, philosophically educated author, probably a Jewish Christian, of the second half of the second century. They are a philosophico-religious romance, based on some historical traditions, which it is now impossible to separate from apocryphal accretions. The conception of Simon as a magician was furnished by the account in the eighth chapter of Acts, and his labors in Rome were mentioned by Justin Martyr. The book is prefaced by a letter of Peter to James, bishop of Jerusalem, in which he sends him his sermons, and begs him to keep them strictly secret; and by a letter of the pseudo-Clement to the same James in which he relates how Peter, shortly before his death, appointed him (Clement) his successor in Rome, and enjoined upon him to send to James a work composed at the instance of Peter, entitled "Clementis Epitome praedicationum Petri in peregrinationibus."785 By these epistles it was evidently designed to impart to the pretended extract from the itinerant sermons and disputations of Peter, the highest apostolical authority, and at the same time to explain the long concealment of them.786

The substance of the Homilies themselves is briefly this: Clement, an educated Roman, of the imperial family, not satisfied with heathenism, and thirsting for truth, goes to Judaea, having heard, under the reign of Tiberius, that Jesus had appeared there. In Caesarea he meets the apostle Peter, and being instructed and converted by him, accompanies him on his missionary journeys in Palestine, to Tyre, Tripolis, Laodicea, and Antioch. He attends upon the sermons of Peter and his long, repeated disputations with Simon Magus, and, at the request of the apostle, commits the substance of them to writing. Simon Peter is thus the proper hero of the romance, and appears throughout as the representative of pure, primitive Christianity, in opposition to Simon Magus, who is portrayed as a "man full of enmity," and a "deceiver," the author of all anti-Jewish heresies, especially of the Marcionite Gnosticism. The author was acquainted with the four canonical Gospels, and used them, Matthew most, John least; and with them another work of the same sort, probably of the Ebionitic stamp, but now unknown.787

It has been ingeniously conjectured by Baur (first in 1831), and adopted by his pupils, that the pseudo-Clementine Peter combats, under the mask of the Magician, the apostle Paul (nowhere named in the Homilies), as the first and chief corrupter of Christianity.788  This conjecture, which falls in easily with Baur’s view of the wide-spread and irreconcilable antagonism of Petrinism and Paulinism in the primitive church, derives some support from several malicious allusions to Paul, especially the collision in Antioch. Simon Magus is charged with claiming that Christ appeared to him in a vision, and called him to be an apostle, and yet teaching a doctrine contrary to Christ, hating his apostles, and denouncing Peter, the firm rock and foundation of the church, as "self-condemned."789  But this allusion is probably only an incidental sneer at Paul. The whole design of the Homilies, and the account given of the origin, history and doctrine of Simon, are inconsistent with such an identification of the heathen magician with the Christian apostle. Simon Magus is described in the Homilies790 as a Samaritan, who studied Greek in Alexandria, and denied the supremacy of God and the resurrection of the dead, substituted Mount Gerizim for Jerusalem, and declared himself the true Christ. He carried with him a companion or mistress, Helena, who descended from the highest heavens, and was the primitive essence and wisdom. If Paul had been intended, the writer would have effectually concealed and defeated his design by such and other traits, which find not the remotest parallel in the history and doctrine of Paul, but are directly opposed to the statements in his Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles.

In the Recognitions the anti-Pauline tendency is moderated, yet Paul’s labors are ignored, and Peter is made the apostle of the Gentiles.

The doctrine which pseudo-Clement puts into the mouth of Peter, and very skillfully interweaves with his narrative, is a confused mixture of Ebionitic and Gnostic, ethical and metaphysical ideas and fancies. He sees in Christianity only the restoration of the pure primordial religion,791 which God revealed in the creation, but which, on account of the obscuring power of sin and the seductive influence of demons, must be from time to time renewed. The representatives of this religion are the pillars of the world: Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Christ. These are in reality only seven different incarnations of the same Adam or primal man, the true prophet of God, who was omniscient and infallible. What is recorded unfavorable to these holy men, the drunkenness of Noah, the polygamy of the patriarchs, the homicide of Moses, and especially the blasphemous history of the fall of Adam, as well as all unworthy anthropopathical passages concerning God, were foisted into the Old Testament by the devil and his demons. Thus, where Philo and Origen resorted to allegorical interpretation, to remove what seems offensive in Scripture, pseudo-Clement adopts the still more arbitrary hypothesis of diabolical interpolations. Among the true prophets of God, again, he gives Adam, Moses, and Christ peculiar eminence, and places Christ above all, though without raising him essentially above a prophet and lawgiver. The history of religion, therefore, is not one of progress, but only of return to the primitive revelation. Christianity and Mosaism are identical, and both coincide with the religion of Adam. Whether a man believe in Moses or in Christ, it is all the same, provided he blaspheme neither. But to know both, and find in both the same doctrine, is to be rich in God, to recognize the new as old, and the old as become new. Christianity is an advance only in its extension of the gospel to the Gentiles, and its consequent universal character.

As the fundamental principle of this pure religion, our author lays down the doctrine of one God, the creator of the world. This is thoroughly Ebionitic, and directly opposed to the dualism of the demiurgic doctrine of the Gnostics. But then he makes the whole stream of created life flow forth from God in a long succession of sexual and ethical antitheses and syzygies, and return into him as its absolute rest; here plainly touching the pantheistic emanation-theory of Gnosticism. God himself one from the beginning, has divided everything into counterparts, into right and left, heaven and earth, day and night, light and darkness, life and death. The monad thus becomes the dyad. The better came first, the worse followed; but from man onward the order was reversed. Adam, created in the image of God, is the true prophet; his wife, Eve, represents false prophecy. They were followed, first, by wicked Cain, and then by righteous Abel. So Peter appeared after Simon Magus, as light after darkness, health after sickness. So, at the last, will antichrist precede the advent of Christ. And finally, the whole present order of things loses itself in the future; the pious pass into eternal life; the ungodly, since the soul becomes mortal by the corruption of the divine image, are annihilated after suffering a punishment, which is described as a purifying fire.792  When the author speaks of eternal punishment, he merely accommodates himself to the popular notion. The fulfilling of the law, in the Ebionitic sense, and knowledge, on a half-Gnostic principle, are the two parts of the way of salvation. The former includes frequent fasts, ablutions, abstinence from animal food, and voluntary poverty; while early marriage is enjoined, to prevent licentiousness. In declaring baptism to be absolutely necessary to the forgiveness of sin, the author approaches the catholic system. He likewise adopts the catholic principle involved, that salvation is to be found only in the external church.

As regards ecclesiastical organization, he fully embraces the monarchical episcopal view. The bishop holds the place of Christ in the congregation, and has power to bind and loose. Under him stand the presbyters and deacons. But singularly, and again in true Ebionitic style, James, the brother of the Lord, bishop of Jerusalem, which is the centre of Christendom, is made the general vicar of Christ, the visible head of the whole church, the bishop of bishops. Hence even Peter must give him an account of his labors; and hence, too, according to the introductory epistles, the sermons of Peter and Clement’s abstract of them were sent to James for safe-keeping, with the statement, that Clement had been named by Peter as his successor at Rome.

It is easy to see that this appeal to a pseudo-Petrine primitive Christianity was made by the author of the Homilies with a view to reconcile all the existing differences and divisions in Christendom. In this effort he, of course, did not succeed, but rather made way for the dissolution of the Ebionitic element still existing in the orthodox catholic church.

Besides these Homilies, of which the Epitome is only a poor abridgement, there are several other works, some printed, some still unpublished, which are likewise forged upon Clement of Rome, and based upon the same historical material, with unimportant deviations, but are in great measure free, as to doctrine, from Judaistic and Gnostic ingredients, and come considerably nearer the line of orthodoxy.

The most important of these are the Recognitions of Clement, in ten books, mentioned by Origen, but now extant only in a Latin translation by Rufinus. They take their name from the narrative, in the last books, of the reunion of the scattered members of the Clementine family, who all at last find themselves together in Christianity, and are baptized by Peter.

On the question of priority between these two works, critics are divided, some making the Recognitions an orthodox, or at least more nearly orthodox, version of the Homilies;793 others regarding the Homilies as a heretical corruption of the Recognitions.794  But in all probability both works are based upon older and simpler Jewish-Christian documents, under the assumed names of Peter and Clement.795

As to their birth-place, the Homilies probably originated in East Syria, the Recognitions in Rome. They are assigned to the second half of the second century.

In a literary point of view, these productions are remarkable, as the first specimens of Christian romance, next to the "Pastor Hermae." They far surpass, in matter, and especially in moral earnestness and tender feeling, the heathen romances of a Chariton and an Achilles Tatios, of the fourth or fifth centuries. The style, though somewhat tedious, is fascinating in its way, and betrays a real artist in its combination of the didactic and historical, the philosophic and the poetic elements.

Notes.

Lagarde (in the Preface to his edition of the Clementina, p. 22) and G. E. Stietz (in the lengthy review of Lagarde in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1867, No. III p. 556 sqq), draw a parallel between the pseudo-Clementine fiction of Simon and the German story of Faust, the magician, and derive the latter from the former through the medium of the Recognitions, which were better known in the church than the homilies. George Sabellicus , about A.D. 1507, called himself Faustus junior, magus secundus. Clement’s father is called Faustus, and his two brothers, Fatistinus and Faustinianus (in the Recognitions Faustus, and Faustinus), were brought up with Simon the magician, and at first associated with him. The characters of Helena and Homunculus appear in both stories, though very differently. I doubt whether these resemblances are sufficient to establish a connection between the two otherwise widely divergent popular fictions.

§ 115. Gnosticism. The Literature.

Sources:

1. Gnostic (of the Valentinian school in the wider sense): Pistis Sopitia; Opus gnosticum e codice Coptico descriptum lat. vertit M. G Schwartze, ed. J. H. Petermann. Berl. 1851. Of the middle of the third century. An account of the fall and repentance of Sophia and the mystery of redemption. Comp. the article of Köstlin in the "Tüb. Theol. Jahrbücher," 1854.—The Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Apocalypses are to a large extent of Gnostic origin, e.g. the Acts of St. Thomas (a favorite apostle of the Gnostics), John, Peter, Paul, Philip, Matthew, Andrew, Paul and Thecla. Some of them have been worked over by Catholic authors, and furnished much material to the legendary lore of the church. They and the stories of monks were the religious novels of the early church. See the collections of the apocryphal literature of the N. T. by Fabricius, Thilo, Tischendorf, Max Bonnet, D. William Wright, G. Phillips, S. C. Malan, Zahn, and especially Lipsius: Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostelligenden (Braunschweig, 1883, 2 vols.)  Comp. the Lit. quoted in vol. I. 90 sq.; 188 sq., and in Lipsius, I. 34 sqq.

II. Patristic(with many extracts from lost Gnostic writings): Irenaeus: Adv. Hareses. The principal source, especially for the Valentinian Gnosticism. Hippolytus: Refutat. Omnium Haeresium (Philosophumena), ed. Duncker and Schneidewin. Gott. 1859. Based partly on Irenaeus, partly on independent reading of Gnostic works. Tertullian: De praeescriptionibus Haereticorum; Adv. Valentin; Scorpiace; Adv. Marcionem. The last is the chief authority for Marcionism. Clemens Alex.: Stromata. Scattered notices of great value. Origenes: Com. in Evang. Joh. Furnishes much important information and extracts from Heracleon. Epiphanius: Panavrion. Full of information, but uncritical and fanatically orthodox. Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. Theodoret: Fabulae Haer.

See Fr. Oehler’s Corpus Haereseologicum (a collection of the ancient anti-heretical works of Epiphanius, Philastrus, Augustin, etc.). Berol. 1856–1861, 5 vols.

III. Neo-Platonist: Plotinus: Pro;" tou;" gnwstikouv" (or Ennead. II. 9).

IV. Critical: R. A. Lipsius: Zur Quellen-Kritik des Epiphanios. Wien 1865. Die Quellen der äItesten Ketzergeschichte. Leipz. 1875 (258 pp.)

Ad. Harnack: Zur Quellen-Kritik der Geschichte des Gnosticismus. Leipz. 1873. Comp. his article in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für K. Gesell." for 1876, I. Also Hilgenfeld: Ketzergesch. p. 1–83.

Works:

Massuet (R.C.): Dissert. de Gnosticorum rebus, prefixed to his edition of Irenaeus; also in Stieren’s edition of Iren. vol. II. pp. 54–180.

Mosheim: Comment. de rebus ante Const. M. pp. 333 sqq.

Neander: Genet. Entwicktlung der gnost. Systeme. Berl. 1818. Comp. the more mature exposition in his Ch. Hist. He first opened a calm philosophical treatment of Gnosticism.

Jaques Matter.: Histoire critique du Gnosticisme et de son influence sur les sectes religieuses el philosophiques des six premiers siècles  Par. 1828; second ed. much enlarged. Strasb. and Par. 1844, in 3 vols.

Burton: Bampton Lectures on the Heresies of the Apost. Age. Oxf. 1830,

Möhler (R.C.): Der Ursprung des Gnosticismus. Tüb. 1831 (in his "Vermischte Schriften." I. pp. 403 sqq.)

Baur: Die christliche Gnosis in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung. Tüb. 1835. A masterly philosophical analysis, which includes also the systems of Jacob Böhme, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. Comp. his Kirchengesch. vol. I. 175–234.

Norton: History of the Gnostics. Boston, 1845.

H. Rossel: Gesch. der Untersuch. ueber den Gnostic.; in his "Theol. Nachlass." published by Neander. Berl. 1847, vol. 2nd, p. 179 sqq.

Thiersch: Kritik der N. Tlichen Schriften. Erl. 1845 (chap. 5, pp. 231 sqq. and 268 sqq.)

R. A. Lipsius: Der Gnosticismus, sein Wesen, Ursprung und Entwicklungsgang. Leipz. 1860 (from Ersch and Gruber’s "Allgem. Encycl." 1. Sect. vol. 71). Comp. his critical work on the sources of Gn. quoted above.

E. Wilh. Möller: Geschirhte des, Kosmologie in der griechischen Kirche bis auf Origenes. Mit specialuntersuchungen ueber die gnostischen Systeme. Halle, 1860 (pp. 189–473).

C. W. King: The Gnostics and their Remains (with illustrations of Gnostic symbols and works of art). Lond., 1864.

Henry L. Mansel (Dean of St. Paul’s, d. 1871): The Gnostic Heresies, ed. by J. B. Lightfoot. London, 1875.

J. B. Lightfoot: The Colossian Heresy, Excursus in his Com. on Colossians and Philemon. London, 187, 5, pp. 73–113. This is the best account of Gnosticism, written by an Englishman, but confined to the apostolic ige.

Renan: L’ église chrétienne (Paris, 1879), Chap. IX. and X. p. 140–185, and XVIII. p. 350–363.

J. L. Jacobi: Gnosis, in the new ed. of Herzog, vol. V. (1879), 204–247, condensed in Schaff’s "Rel. Encycl." 1882, vol. I. 877 sqq.

G. Salmon, in Smith and Wace, II. 678–687.

G. Koffmane: Die Gnosis nach ihrer Tendenz und Organisation. Breslau, 1881. (Theses, 33 pages).

Ad. Hilgenfeld:Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums. Liepzig, 1884 (162 sqq.).

A number of monographs on the individual Gnostics, see below.

§ 116. Meaning, Origin and Character of Gnosticism.

The Judaistic form of heresy was substantially conquered in the apostolic age. More important and more widely spread in the second period was the paganizing heresy, known by the name of Gnosticism. It was the Rationalism of the ancient church; it pervaded the intellectual atmosphere, and stimulated the development of catholic theology by opposition.

The Greek word gnosis may denote all schools of philosophical or religious knowledge, in distinction from superficial opinion or blind belief. The New Testament makes a plain distinction between true and false gnosis. The true consists in a deep insight into the essence and structure of the Christian truth, springs from faith, is accompanied by the cardinal virtues of love and humility, serves to edify the church, and belongs among the gifts of grace wrought by the Holy Spirit.796  In this sense, Clement of Alexandria and Origen aimed at gnosis, and all speculative theologians who endeavor to reconcile reason and revelation, may be called Christian Gnostics. The false gnosis797 on the contrary, against which Paul warns Timothy, and which he censures in the Corinthians and Colossians is a morbid pride of wisdom, an arrogant, self-conceited, ambitious knowledge, which puffs up, instead of edifying,798 runs into idle subtleties and disputes, and verifies in its course the apostle’s word: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."799

In this bad sense, the word applies to the error of which we now speak, and which began to show itself at least as early as the days of Paul and John. It is a one-sided intellectualism on a dualistic heathen basis. It rests on an over-valuation of knowledge or gnosis, and a depreciation of faith or pistis. The Gnostics contrasted themselves by this name with the Pistics, or the mass of believing Christians. They regarded Christianity as consisting essentially in a higher knowledge; fancied themselves the sole possessors of an esoteric, philosophical religion, which made them genuine, spiritual men, and looked down with contempt upon the mere men of the soul and of the body. They constituted the intellectual aristocracy, a higher caste in the church. They, moreover, adulterated Christianity with sundry elements entirely foreign, and thus quite obscured the true essence of the gospel.800

We may parallelize the true and false, the believing and unbelieving forms of Gnosticism with the two forms of modern Rationalism and modern Agnosticism. There is a Christian Rationalism which represents the doctrines of revelation as being in harmony with reason, though transcending reason in its present capacity; and there is an anti-Christian Rationalism which makes natural reason (ratio) the judge of revelation, rejects the specific doctrines of Christianity, and denies the supernatural and miraculous. And there is an Agnosticism which springs from the sense of the limitations of thought, and recognizes faith as the necessary organ of the supernatural and absolute;801 while the unbelieving Agnosticism declares the infinite and absolute to be unknown and unknowable and tends to indifferentism and atheism.802

We now proceed to trace the origin of Gnosticism.

As to its substance, Gnosticism is chiefly of heathen descent. It is a peculiar translation or transfusion of heathen philosophy and religion into Christianity. This was perceived by the church-fathers in their day. Hippolytus particularly, in his "Philosophumena" endeavors to trace the Gnostic heresies to the various systems of Greek philosophy, making Simon Magus, for example, dependent on Heraclitus, Valentine on Pythagoras and Plato, Basilides on Aristotle, Marcion on Empedocles; and hence he first exhibits the doctrines of the Greek philosophy from Thales down. Of all these systems Platonism had the greatest influence, especially on the Alexandrian Gnostics; though not so much in its original Hellenic form, as in its later orientalized eclectic and mystic cast, of which Neo-Platonism was another fruit. The Platonic speculation yielded the germs of the Gnostic doctrine of aeons, the conceptions of matter, of the antithesis of an ideal and a real world, of all ante-mundane fall of souls from the ideal world, of the origin of sin from matter, and of the needed redemption of the soul from the fetters of the body. We find also in the Gnostics traces of the Pythagorean symbolical use of numbers, the Stoic physics and ethics, and some Aristotelian elements.

But this reference to Hellenic philosophy, with which Massuet was content, is not enough. Since Beausobre and Mosheim the East has been rightly joined with Greece, as the native home of this heresy. This may be inferred from the mystic, fantastic, enigmatic form of the Gnostic speculation, and from the fact, that most of its representatives sprang from Egypt and Syria. The conquests of Alexander, the spread of the Greek language and literature, and the truths of Christianity, produced a mighty agitation in the eastern mind, which reacted on the West. Gnosticism has accordingly been regarded as more or less parallel with the heretical forms of Judaism, with Essenism, Therapeutism, Philo’s philosophico-religious system, and with the Cabbala, the origin of which probably dates as far back as the first century. The affinity of Gnosticism also with the Zoroastrian dualism of a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness is unmistakable, especially in the Syrian Gnostics. Its alliance with the pantheistic, docetic, and ascetic elements of Buddhism, which had advanced at the time of Christ to western Asia, is equally plain. Parsic and Indian influence is most evident in Manichaeism, while the Hellenic element there amounts to very little.

Gnosticism, with its syncretistic tendency, is no isolated fact. It struck its roots deep in the mighty revolution of ideas induced by the fall of the old religions and the triumph of the new. Philo, of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Christ, but wholly ignorant of him, endeavored to combine the Jewish religion, by allegorical exposition, or rather imposition, with Platonic philosophy; and this system, according as it might be prosecuted under the Christian or the heathen influence, would prepare the way either for the speculative theology of the Alexandrian church fathers, or for the heretical Gnosis. Still more nearly akin to Gnosticism is Neo-Platonism, which arose a little later than Philo’s system, but ignored Judaism, and derived its ideas exclusively from eastern and western heathenism. The Gnostic syncretism, however, differs materially from both the Philonic and the Neo-Platonic by taking up Christianity, which the Neo-Platonists directly or indirectly opposed. This the Gnostics regarded as the highest stage of the development of religion, though they so corrupted it by the admixture of foreign matter, as to destroy its identity.

Gnosticism is, therefore, the grandest and most comprehensive form of speculative religious syncretism known to history. It consists of Oriental mysticism, Greek philosophy, Alexandrian, Philonic, and Cabbalistic Judaism, and Christian ideas of salvation, not merely mechanically compiled, but, as it were, chemically combined. At least, in its fairly developed form in the Valentinian system, it is, in its way, a wonderful structure of speculative or rather imaginative thought, and at the same time all artistic work of the creative fancy, a Christian mythological epic. The old world here rallied all its energies, to make out of its diverse elements some new thing, and to oppose to the real, substantial universalism of the catholic church an ideal, shadowy universalism of speculation. But this fusion of all systems served in the end only to hasten the dissolution of eastern and western heathenism, while the Christian element came forth purified and strengthened from the crucible.

The Gnostic speculation, like most speculative religions, failed to establish a safe basis for practical morals. On the one side, a spiritual pride obscured the sense of sin, and engendered a frivolous antinomianism, which often ended in sensuality and debaucheries. On the other side, an over-strained sense of sin often led the Gnostics, in gIaring contrast with the pagan deification of nature, to ascribe nature to the devil, to abhor the body as the seat of evil, and to practice extreme austerities upon themselves.

This ascetic feature is made prominent by Möhler, the Roman Catholic divine. But he goes quite too far, when he derives the whole phenomenon of Gnosticism (which he wrongly views as a forerunner of Protestantism) directly and immediately from Christianity. He represents it as a hyper-Christianity, an exaggerated contempt for the world,803 which, when seeking for itself a speculative basis, gathered from older philosophemes, theosophies, and mythologies, all that it could use for its purpose.

The number of the Gnostics it is impossible to ascertain. We find them in almost all portions of the ancient church; chiefly where Christianity came into close contact with Judaism and heathenism, as in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor; then in Rome, the rendezvous of all forms of truth and falsehood; in Gaul, where they were opposed by Irenaeus; and in Africa, where they were attacked by Tertullian, and afterwards by Augustin, who was himself a Manichaean for several years. They found most favor with the educated, and threatened to lead astray the teachers of the church. But they could gain no foothold among the people; indeed, as esoterics, they stood aloof from the masses; and their philosophical societies were, no doubt, rarely as large as the catholic congregations.

The flourishing period of the Gnostic schools was the second century. In the sixth century, only faint traces of them remained; yet some Gnostic and especially Manichaean ideas continue to appear in several heretical sects of the middle ages, such as the Priscillianists, the Paulicians, the Bogomiles, and the Catharists; and even the history of modern theological and philosophical speculation shows kindred tendencies.

§ 117. The System of Gnosticism. Its Theology.

Gnosticism is a heretical philosophy of religion, or, more exactly a mythological theosophy, which reflects intellectually the peculiar, fermenting state of that remarkable age of transition from the heathen to the Christian order of things. If it were merely an unintelligible congeries of puerile absurdities and impious blasphemies, as it is grotesquely portrayed by older historians,804 it would not have fascinated so many vigorous intellects and produced such a long-continued agitation in the ancient church. It is an attempt to solve some of the deepest metaphysical and theological problems. It deals with the great antitheses of God and world, spirit and matter, idea and phenomenon; and endeavors to unlock the mystery of the creation; the question of the rise, development, and end of the world; and of the origin of evil.805  It endeavors to harmonize the creation of the material world and the existence of evil with the idea of an absolute God, who is immaterial and perfectly good. This problem can only be solved by the Christian doctrine of redemption; but Gnosticism started from a false basis of dualism, which prevents a solution.

In form and method it is, as already observed, more Oriental than Grecian. The Gnostics, in their daring attempt to unfold the mysteries of an upper world, disdained the trammels of reason, and resorted to direct spiritual intuition. Hence they speculate not so much in logical and dialectic mode, as in an imaginative, semi-poetic way, and they clothe their ideas not in the simple, clear, and sober language of reflection, but in the many-colored, fantastic, mythological dress of type, symbol, and allegory. Thus monstrous nonsense and the most absurd conceits are chaotically mingIed up with profound thoughts and poetic intuitions.

This spurious supernaturalism which substitutes the irrational for the supernatural, and the prodigy for the miracle, pervades the pseudo-historical romances of the Gnostic Gospels and Acts. These surpass the Catholic traditions in luxuriant fancy and incredible marvels. "Demoniacal possessions," says one who has mastered this literature,806 "and resurrections from the dead, miracles of healing and punishment are accumulated without end; the constant repetition of similar events gives the long stories a certain monotony, which is occasionally interrupted by colloquies, hymns and prayers of genuine poetic value. A rich apparatus of visions, angelic appearances, heavenly voices, speaking animals, defeated and humbled demons is unfolded, a superterrestrial splendor of light gleams up, mysterious signs from heaven, earthquakes, thunder and lightning frighten the impious; fire, earth, wind and water obey the pious; serpents, lions, leopards, tigers, and bears are tamed by a word of the apostles and turn upon their persecutors; the dying martyrs are surrounded by coronets, roses, lilies, incense, while the abyss opens to swallow up their enemies."

The highest source of knowledge, with these heretics was a secret tradition, in contrast with the open, popular tradition of the Catholic church. In this respect, they differ from Protestant sects, which generally discard tradition altogether and appeal to the Bible only, as understood by themselves. They appealed also to apocryphal documents, which arose in the second century in great numbers, under eminent names of apostolic or pre-Christian times. Epiphanius, in his 26th Heresy, counts the apocrypha of the Gnostics by thousands, and Irenaeus found among the Valentinians alone a countless multitude of such writings.807  And finally, when it suited their purpose, the Gnostics employed single portions of the Bible, without being able to agree either as to the extent or the interpretation of the same. The Old Testament they generally rejected, either entirely, as in the case of the Marcionites and the Manichaeans, or at least in great part; and in the New Testament they preferred certain books or portions, such as the Gospel of John, with its profound spiritual intuitions, and either rejected the other books, or wrested them to suit their ideas. Marcion, for example, thus mutilated the Gospel of Luke, and received in addition to it only ten of Paul’s Epistles, thus substituting an arbitrary canon of eleven books for the catholic Testament of twenty-seven. In interpretation they adopted, even with far less moderation than Philo, the most arbitrary and extravagant allegorical principles; despising the letter as sensuous, and the laws of language and exegesis as fetters of the mind. The number 30 in the New Testament, for instance, particularly in the life of Jesus, is made to denote the number of the Valentinian aeons; and the lost sheep in the parable is Achamoth. Even to heathen authors, to the poems of Homer, Aratus, Anacreon, they applied this method, and discovered in these works the deepest Gnostic mysteries.808  They gathered from the whole field of ancient mythology, astronomy, physics, and magic, everything which could, serve in any way to support their fancies.

The common characteristics of nearly all the Gnostic systems are (1) Dualism; the assumption of an eternal antagonism between God and matter. (2) The demiurgic notion; the separation of the creator of the world or the demiurgos from the proper God. (3) Docetism; the resolution of the human element in the person of the Redeemer into mere deceptive appearance.809

We will endeavor now to present a clear and connected view of the theoretical and practical system of Gnosticism in as it comes before us in its more fully developed forms, especially the Valentinian school.

1. The Gnostic Theology. The system starts from absoIute primal being. God is the unfathomable abyss,810 locked up within himself, without beginning, unnamable, and incomprehensible; on the one hand, infinitely exalted above every existence; yet, on the other hand, the original aeon, the sum of all ideas and spiritual powers. Basilides would not ascribe even existence to him, and thus, like Hegel, starts from absolute nonentity, which, however, is identical with absolute being.811  He began where modern Agnosticism ends.

2. Kosmology. The abyss opens; God enters upon a process of development, and sends forth from his bosom the several aeons; that is, the attributes and unfolded powers of his nature, the ideas of the eternal spirit-world, such as mind, reason, wisdom, power, truth, life.812  These emanate from the absolute in a certain order, according to Valentine in pairs with sexual polarity. The further they go from the great source, the poorer and weaker they become. Besides the notion of emanation,813 the Gnostics employed also, to illustrate the self-revelation of the absolute, the figure of the evolution of numbers from an original unit, or of utterance in tones gradually diminishing to the faint echo.814  The cause of the procession of the aeons is, with some, as with Valentine, the self-limiting love of God; with others, metaphysical necessity. The whole body of aeons forms the ideal world, or light-world, or spiritual foulness, the Pleroma, as opposed to the Kenoma, or the material world of emptiness. The one is the totality of the divine powers and attributes, the other the region of shadow and darkness. Christ belongs to the Pleroma, as the chief of the aeons; the Demiurge or Creator belongs to the Kenoma. In opposition to the incipient form of this heresy, St. Paul taught that Jesus Christ is the whole pleroma of the Godhead (Col. 1:19; 2:9), and the church the reflected pleroma of Christ (Eph. 1:22).

The material visible world is the abode of the principle of evil. This cannot proceed from God; else he were himself the author of evil. It must come from an opposite principle. This is Matter (u{lh), which stands in eternal opposition to God and the ideal world. The Syrian Gnostics, and still more the Manichaeans, agreed with Parsism in conceiving Matter as an intrinsically evil substance, the raging kingdom of Satan, at irreconcilable warfare with the kingdom of light. The Alexandrian Gnostics followed more the Platonic idea of the u{lh and conceived this as kevnwma, emptiness, in contrast with plhvrwma, the divine, vital fulness, or as the mh; o[n, related to the divine being as shadow to light, and forming the dark limit beyond which the mind cannot pass. This Matter is in itself dead, but becomes animated by a union with the Pleroma, which again is variously described. In the Manichaean system there are powers of darkness, which seize by force some parts of the kingdom of light. But usually the union is made to proceed from above. The last link in the chain of divine aeons, either too weak to keep its hold on the ideal world, or seized with a sinful passion for the embrace of the infinite abyss, falls as a spark of light into the dark chaos of matter, and imparts to it a germ of divine life, but in this bondage feels a painful longing after redemption, with which the whole world of aeons sympathizes. This weakest aeon is called by Valentine the lower Wisdom, or Achamoth,815 and marks the extreme point, where spirit must surrender itself to matter, where the infinite must enter into the finite, and thus form a basis for the real world. The myth of Achamoth is grounded in the thought, that the finite is incompatible with the absolute, yet in some sense demands it to account for itself.

Here now comes in the third principle of the Gnostic speculation, namely, the world-maker, commonly called the Demiurge,816 termed by Basilides "Archon" or world-ruler, by the Ophites. "Jaldabaoth," or son of chaos. He is a creature of the fallen aeon, formed of physical material, and thus standing between God and Matter. He makes out of Matter the visible sensible world, and rules over it. He has his throne in the planetary heavens, and presides over time and over the sidereal spirits. Astrological influences were generally ascribed to him. He is the God of Judaism, the Jehovah, who imagines himself to be the supreme and only God. But in the further development of this idea the systems differ; the anti-Jewish Gnostics, Marcion and the Ophites, represent the Demiurge as an insolent being, resisting the purposes of God; while the Judaizing Gnostics, Basilides and Valentine, make him a restricted, unconscious instrument of God to prepare the way for redemption.

3. Christology and Soteriology. Redemption itself is the liberation of the light-spirit from the chains of dark Matter, and is effected by Christ, the most perfect aeon, who is the mediator of return from the sensible phenomenal world to the supersensuous ideal world, just as the Demiurge is the mediator of apostacy from the Pleroma to the Kenoma. This redeeming aeon, called by Valentine swthvr or  jIhsou'" descends through the sphere of heaven, and assumes the ethereal appearance of a body; according to another view, unites himself with the man Jesus, or with the Jewish Messiah, at the baptism, and forsakes him again at the passion. At all events, the redeemer, however conceived in other respects, is allowed no actual contact with sinful matter. His human birth, his sufferings and death, are explained by Gnosticism after the manner of the Indian mythology, as a deceptive appearance, a transient vision, a spectral form, which he assumed only to reveal himself to the sensuous nature of man. Reduced to a clear philosophical definition, the Gnostic Christ is really nothing more than the ideal spirit of himself, as in the mythical gospel-theory of Strauss. The Holy Ghost is commonly conceived as a subordinate aeon. The central fact in the work of Christ is the communication of the Gnosis to a small circle of the initiated, prompting and enabling them to strive with clear consciousness after the ideal world and the original unity. According to Valentine, the heavenly Soter brings Achamoth after innumerable sufferings into the Pleroma, and unites himself with her—the most glorious aeon with the Iowest—in an eternal spirit-marriage. With this, all disturbance in the heaven of aeons is allayed, and a blessed harmony and inexpressible delight are restored, in which all spiritual (pneumatic) men, or genuine Gnostics, share. Matter is at last entirely consumed by a fire breaking out from its dark bosom.

4. The Anthropology of the Gnostics corresponds with their theology. Man is a microcosm consisting of spirit, body, and soul reflecting the three principles, God, Matter, and Demiurge, though in very different degrees. There are three classes of men: the spiritual,817 in whom the divine element, a spark of light from the ideal world, predominates; the material,818 bodily, carnal, physical, in whom matter, the gross sensuous principle, rules; and the psychical,819 in whom the demiurgic, quasi-divine rules; principle, the mean between the two preceding, prevails.

These three classes are frequently identified with the adherents of the three religions respectively; the spiritual with the Christians, the carnal with the heathens, the psychical with the Jews. But they also made the same distinction among the professors of any one religion, particularly among the Christians; and they regarded themselves as the genuine spiritual men in the full sense of the word; while they looked upon the great mass of Christians820 as only psychical, not able to rise from blind faith to true knowledge, too weak for the good, and too tender for the evil, longing for the divine, yet unable to attain it, and thus hovering between the Pleroma of the ideal world and the Kenoma of the sensual.

Ingenious as this thought is, it is just the basis of that unchristian distinction of esoteric and exoteric religion, and that pride of knowledge, in which Gnosticism runs directly counter to the Christian virtues of humility and love.

§ 118. Ethics of Gnosticism.

All the Gnostic heretics agree in disparaging the divinely created body, and over-rating the intellect. Beyond this, we perceive among them two opposite tendencies: a gloomy asceticism, and a frivolous antinomianism; both grounded in the dualistic principle, which falsely ascribes evil to matter, and traces nature to the devil. The two extremes frequently met, and the Nicolaitan maxim in regard to the abuse of the flesh821 was made to serve asceticism first, and then libertinism.

The ascetic Gnostics, like Marcion, Saturninus, Tatian, and the Manichaeans were pessimists. They felt uncomfortable in the sensuous and perishing world, ruled by the Demiurge, and by Satan; they abhorred the body as formed from Matter, and forbade the use of certain kinds of food and all nuptial intercourse, as an adulteration of themselves with sinful Matter; like the Essenes and the errorists noticed by Paul in the Colossians and Pastoral Epistles. They thus confounded sin with matter, and vainly imagined that, matter being dropped, sin, its accident, would fall with it. Instead of hating sin only, which God has not made, they hated the world, which he has made.

The licentious Gnostics, as the Nicolaitans, the Ophites, the Carpocratians, and the Antitactes, in a proud conceit of the exaltation of the spirit above matter, or even on the diabolical principle, that sensuality must be overcome by indulging it, bade defiance to all moral laws, and gave themselves up to the most shameless licentiousness. It is no great thing, said they, according to Clement of Alexandria, to restrain lust; but it is surely a great thing not to be conquered by Iust, when one indulges in it. According to Epiphanius there were Gnostic sects in Egypt, which, starting from a filthy, materialistic pantheism and identifying Christ with the generative powers of nature, practised debauchery as a mode of worship, and after having, as they thought, offered and collected all their strength, blasphemously exclaimed: "I am Christ." From these pools of sensuality and Satanic pride arose the malaria of a vast literature, of which, however, fortunately, nothing more than a few names has come down to us.

§ 119. Cultus and Organization.

In cultus, the Gnostic docetism and hyper-spiritualism led consistently to naked intellectual simplicity; sometimes to the rejection of all sacraments and outward means of grace; if not even, as in the Prodicians, to blasphemous self-exaltation above all that is called God and worshiped.822

But with this came also the opposite extreme of a symbolic and mystic pomp, especially in the sect of the Marcosians. These Marcosians held to a two-fold baptism, that applied to the human Jesus, the Messiah of the psychical, and that administered to the heavenly Christ, the Messiah of the spiritual; they decorated the baptistery like a banquet-hall; and they first introduced extreme unction. As early as the second century the Basilideans celebrated the feast of Epiphany. The Simonians and Carpocratians used images of Christ and of their religious heroes in their worship. The Valentinians and Ophites sang in hymns the deep longing of Achamoth for redemption from the bonds of Matter. Bardesanes is known as the first Syrian hymn-writer. Many Gnostics, following their patriarch, Simon, gave themselves to magic, and introduced their arts into their worship; as the Marcosians did in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Of the outward organization of the Gnostics (with the exception of the Manichaeans, who will be treated separately), we can say little. Their aim was to resolve Christianity into a magnificent speculation; the practical business of organization was foreign to their exclusively intellectual bent. Tertullian charges them with an entire want of order and discipline.823  They formed, not so much a sect or party, as a multitude of philosophical schools, like the modern Rationalists. Many were unwilling to separate at all from the Catholic church, but assumed in it, as theosophists, the highest spiritual rank. Some were even clothed with ecclesiastical office, as we must no doubt infer from the Apostolic Canons (51 or 50), where it is said, with evident reference to the gloomy, perverse asceticism of the Gnostics: "If a bishop, a priest, or a deacon, or any ecclesiastic abstain from marriage, from flesh, or from wine, not for practice in self-denial, but from disgust,824 forgetting that God made everything very good, that he made also the male and the female, in fact, even blaspheming the creation;825 he shall either retract his error, or be deposed and cast out of the church. A layman also shall be treated in like manner." Here we perceive the polemical attitude which the Catholic church was compelled to assume even towards the better Gnostics.

§ 120. Schools of Gnosticism.

The arbitrary and unbalanced subjectivity of the Gnostic speculation naturally produced a multitude of schools. These Gnostic schools have been variously classified.

Geographically they may be reduced to two great families, the Egyptian or Alexandrian, and the Syrian, which are also intrinsically different. In the former (Basilides, Valentine, the Ophites), Platonism and the emanation theory prevail, in the latter (Saturninus, Bardesanes, Tatian), Parsism and dualism. Then, distinct in many respects from both these is the more practical school of Marcion, who sprang neither from Egypt nor from Syria, but from Asia Minor, where St. Paul had left the strong imprint of his free gospel in opposition to Jewish legalism and bondage.

Examined further, with reference to its doctrinal character, Gnosticism appears in three forms, distinguished by the preponderance of the heathen, the Jewish, and the Christian elements respectively in its syncretism. The Simonians, Nicolaitans, Ophites, Carpocratians, Prodicians, Antitactes, and Manichaeans belong to a paganizing class; Cerinthus, Basilides, Valentine, and Justin (as also the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, though these are more properly Ebionitic), to a Judaizing; Saturninus, Marcion, Tatian, and the Encratites, to a Christianizing division. But it must be remembered here that this distinction is only relative; all the Gnostic systems being, in fact, predominantly heathen in their character, and essentially opposed alike to the pure Judaism of the Old Testament and to the Christianity of the New. The Judaism of the so-called Judaizing Gnostics is only of an apocryphal sort, whether of the Alexandrian or the Cabalistic tinge.826

The ethical point of view, from which the division might as well be made, would give likewise three main branches: the speculative or theosophic Gnostics (Basilides, Valentine), the practical and ascetic (Marcion, Saturninus, Tatian), and the antinomian and libertine (Simonians, Nicolaitans, Ophites, Carpocratians, Antitactes).

Having thus presented the general character of Gnosticism, and pointed out its main branches, we shall follow chiefly the chronological order in describing the several schools, beginning with those which date from the age of the apostles.

§ 121. Simon Magus and the Simonians.

I. Commentaries on Acts 8:9–24. Justin Martyr: Apol. I. 26 and 56. The pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions. Irenaeus, I. 23. Hippolytus, VI. 2–15, etc.

II. Simson: Leben und Lehre Simon des Magiers, in the "Zeitschrift für hist. Theologie" for 1841.

Hilgenfeld: Der Magier Simon, in the "Zeischrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie" for 1868.

Lipsius: Simon d. Mag. in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lexikon," vol. V. (1875), p. 301–321. Comp. the literature quoted there, p. 320.

Simon Magus is a historical character known to us from the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.827  He was probably a native of Gitthon, in Samaria, as Justin Martyr, himself a Samaritan, reports;828 but he may nevertheless be identical with the contemporaneous Jewish magician of the same name, whom Josephus mentions as a native of Cyprus and as a friend of Procurator Felix, who employed him to alienate Drusilla, the beautiful wife of king Azizus of Emesa, in Syria, from her husband, that he might marry her.829

Simon represented himself as a sort of emanation of the deity ("the Great Power of God"),830 made a great noise among the half-pagan, half-Jewish Samaritans by his sorceries, was baptized by Philip about the year 40, but terribly rebuked by Peter for hypocrisy and abuse of holy things to sordid ends.831  He thus affords the first instance in church history of a confused syncretism in union with magical arts; and so far as this goes, the church fathers are right in styling him the patriarch, or, in the words of Irenaeus, the "magister "and "progenitor" of all heretics, and of the Gnostics in particular. Besides him, two other contemporaneous Samaritans, Dositheus and Menander, bore the reputation of heresiarchs. Samaria was a fertile soil of religious syncretism even before Christ, and the natural birth-place of that syncretistic heresy which goes by the name of Gnosticism.

The wandering life and teaching of Simon were fabulously garnished in the second and third centuries by Catho-lics and heretics, but especially by the latter in the interest of Ebionism and with bitter hostility to Paul. In the pseudo-Clementine romances he represents all anti-Jewish heresies. Simon the Magician is contrasted, as the apostle of falsehood, with Simon Peter, the apostle of truth; he follows him, as darkness follows the light, from city to city, in company with Helena (who had previously been a prostitute at Tyre, but was now elevated to the dignity of divine intelligence); he is refuted by Peter in public disputations at Caesarea, Antioch, and Rome; at last he is ignominiously defeated by him after a mock-resurrection and mock-ascension before the Emperor Nero; he ends with suicide, while Peter gains the crown of martyrdom.832  There is a bare possibility that, like other heretics and founders of sects, he may have repaired to Rome (before Peter); but Justin Martyr’s account of the statue of Simon is certainly a mistake.833

The Gnosticism which Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and other fathers ascribe to this Simon and his followers is crude, and belongs to the earlier phase of this heresy. It was embodied in a work entitled "The Great Announcement" or "Proclamation"834 of which Hippolytus gives an analysis.835  The chief ideas are the "great power," "the great idea," the male and female principle. He declared himself an incarnation of the creative world-spirit, and his female companion, Helena, the incarnation of the receptive world-soul. Here we have the Gnostic conception of the syzygy.

The sect of the Simonians, which continued into the third century, took its name, if not its rise, from Simon Magus, worshipped him as a redeeming genius, chose, like the Cainites, the most infamous characters of the Old Testament for its heroes, and was immoral in its principles and practices. The name, however, is used in a very indefinite sense, for various sorts of Gnostics.

§ 122. The Nicolaitans.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. I. 26, 3; Clement Of Alex.: Strom. III. 4 (and in Euseb. H. E. III. 29); Hippolytus: Philos. VII. 24; Epiphanius: Haer. I. 2, 25.

The Nicolaitans are mentioned as a licentious sect in the Apocalypse 2:6, 15. They claimed as their founder Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch and one of the seven deacons of the congregation of Jerusalem (Acts 6:5). He is supposed to have apostatized from the true faith, and taught the dangerous principle that the flesh must be abused,836 that is, at least as understood by his disciples, one must make the whole round of sensuality, to become its perfect master.

But the views of the fathers are conflicting. Irenaeus (who is followed substantially by Hippolytus) gives a very unfavorable account.

"The Nicolaitanes," he says, "are the followers of that Nicolas who was one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by the apostles. They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these men is very plainly pointed out in the Apocalypse of John, where they are represented as teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. Wherefore the Word has also spoken of them thus: ’But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate.’ "

Clement of Alexandria says that Nicolas was a faithful husband, and brought up his children in purity, but that his disciples misunderstood his saying (which he attributes also to the Apostle Matthias), "that we must fight against the flesh and abuse it."837

§ 123. Cerinthus.

Iren. I. (25) 26, § 1; III. 3,§ 4; III. 11, § 1; Hippol. VII. 21; Euseb. III. 28; IV. 14. Comp. Dorner: Lehre v. der Person Christi, I. 314 sq. Art. Cerinth in "Smith and Wace," I. 447.

Cerinthus838 appeared towards the close of the first century in Asia Minor, and came in conflict with the aged Apostle John, who is supposed by Irenaeus to have opposed his Gnostic ideas in the Gospel and Epistles. The story that John left a public bath when he saw Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, fearing that the bath might fall in, and the similar story of Polycarp meeting Marcion and calling him "the first born of Satan," reveal the intense abhorrence with which the orthodox churchmen of those days looked upon heresy.839

Cerinthus was (according to the uncertain traditions collected by Epiphanius) an Egyptian and a Jew either by birth or conversion, studied in the school of Philo in Alexandria, was one of the false apostles who opposed Paul and demanded circumcision (Gal. 2:4; 2 Cor. 11:13), claimed to have received angelic revelations, travelled through Palestine and Galatia, and once came to Ephesus. The time of his death is unknown.

His views, as far as they can be ascertained from confused accounts, assign him a position between Judaism and Gnosticism proper. He rejected all the Gospels except a mutilated Matthew, taught the validity of the Mosaic law and the millennial kingdom. He was so far strongly Judaistic, and may be counted among the Ebionites; but in true Gnostic style he distinguished the world-maker from God, and represented the former as a subordinate power, as an intermediate, though not exactly hostile, being. In his Christology he separates the earthly man Jesus, who was a son of Joseph and Mary, from the heavenly Christ,840 who descended upon the man Jesus in the form of a dove at the baptism in the Jordan, imparted to him the genuine knowledge of God and the power of miracles, but forsook him in the passion, to rejoin him only at the coming of the Messianic kingdom of glory. The school of Valentine made more clearly the same distinction between the Jesus of the Jesus and the divine Saviour, or the lower and the higher Christ—a crude anticipation of the modern distinction (of Strauss) between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith. The millennium has its centre in Jerusalem, and will be followed by the restoration of all things.841

The Alogi, an obscure anti-trinitarian and anti-chiliastic sect of the second century, regarded Cerinthus as the author of the Apocalypse of John on account of the chiliasm taught in it. They ascribed to him also the fourth Gospel, although it is the best possible refutation of all false Gnosticism from the highest experimental Gnosis of faith.

Simon Magus, the Nicolaitans and Cerinthus belong to the second half of the first century. We now proceed to the more developed systems of Gnosticism, which belong to the first half of the second century, and continued to flourish till the middle of the third.

The most important and influential of these systems bear the names of Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion. They deserve, therefore, a fuller consideration. They were nearly contemporaneous, and matured during the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. Basilides flourished in Alexandria A.D. 125; Valentine came to Rome in 140; Marcion taught in Rome between 140 and 150.

§ 124. Basilides.

Besides the sources in Irenaeus, Hippolytus (L. VII. 20–27), Clemens Alex. (Strom. VII.), Eusebius (IV. 7), and Epiphanius, comp. the following monographs:

Jacobi: Basilidis philosophi Gnostici Sentent. ex Hippolyti lib. nuper reperto illustr. Berlin, 1852. Comp. his article Gnosis in Herzog, vol. V. 219–223, and in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." for 1876–77 (I. 481–544).

Uhlhorn: Das Basilidianische System. Göttingen, 1855. The best analysis.

Baur in the Tübinger "Theol. Jahrbücher" for 1856, pp. 121–162.

Hofstede de Groot: Basilides as witness for the Gospel of John, in Dutch, and in an enlarged form in German. Leipz. 1868. Apologetic for the genuineness of the fourth Gospel.

Dr. Hort in Smith and Wace, "Dictionary of Christian Biography (Lond. 1877). I. 268–281 (comp." Abrasax," p. 9–10). Very able.

Hilgenfeld, in his "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." 1878, XXI. 228–250, and the Lit. there given.

Basilides (Basileivdh") produced the first well-developed system of Gnosis; but it was too metaphysical and intricate to be popular. He claimed to be a disciple of the apostle Matthias and of an interpreter (eJrmhvneuv") of St. Peter, named Glaucias. He taught in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian (A. D. 117–138). His early youth fell in the second generation of Christians, and this gives his quotations from the writings of the New Testament considerable apologetic value. He wrote (according to his opponent, Agrippa Castor) "twenty-four books (bibliva) on the Gospel." This work was probably a commentary on the canonical Gospels, for Clement of Alexandria quotes from "the thirty-third book" of a work of Basilides which he calls Exegetica."842

His doctrine is very peculiar, especially according to the extended and original exhibition of it in the "Philosophumena." Hippolytus deviates in many respects from the statements of Irenaeus and Epiphanius, but derived his information probably from the works of Basilides himself, and he therefore must be chiefly followed.843  The system is based on the Egyptian astronomy and the Pythagorean numerical symbolism. It betrays also the influence of Aristotle; but Platonism, the emanation-theory, and dualism do not appear.

Basilides is monotheistic rather than dualistic in his primary idea, and so far differs from the other Gnostics, though later accounts make him a dualist. He starts from the most abstract notion of the absolute, to which he denies even existence, thinking of it as infinitely above all that can be imagined and conceived.844  This ineffable and unnamable God,845 not only super-existent, but non-existent,846 first forms by his creative word (not by emanation) the world-seed or world-embryo,847 that is, chaos, from which the world develops itself according to arithmetical relations, in an unbroken order, like the branches and leaves of the tree from the mustard seed, or like the many-colored peacock from the egg. Everything created tends upwards towards God, who, himself unmoved, moves all,848 and by the charm of surpassing beauty attracts all to himself.

In the world-seed Basilides distinguishes three kinds of sonship,849 of the same essence with the non-existent God, but growing weaker in the more remote gradations; or three races of children of God, a pneumatic, a psychic, and a hylic. The first sonship liberates itself immediately from the world-seed, rises with the lightning-speed of thought to God, and remains there as the blessed spirit-world, the Pleroma. It embraces the seven highest genii,850 which, in union with the great Father, form the first ogdoad, the type of all the lower circles of creation. The second sonship, with the help of the Holy Spirit, whom it produces, and who bears it up, as the wing bears the bird, strives to follow the first,851 but can only attain the impenetrable firmament,852 that is the limit of the Pleroma, and could endure the higher region no more than the fish the mountain air. The third sonship, finally, remains fixed in the world-seed, and in need of purification and redemption.

Next Basilides makes two archons or world-rulers (demiurges) issue from the world-seed. The first or great archon, whose greatness and beauty and power cannot be uttered, creates the ethereal world or the upper heaven, the ogdoad, as it is called; the second is the maker and ruler of the lower planetary heaven below the moon, the hebdomad. Basilides supposed in all three hundred and sixty-five heavens or circles of creation,853 corresponding to the days of the year, and designated them by the mystic name Abrasax, or Abraxas,854 which, according to the numerical value of the Greek letters, is equal to 365.855 This name also denotes the great archon or ruler of the 365 heavens. It afterwards came to be used as a magical formula, with all sorts of strange figures, the "Abraxas gems," of which many are still extant.

Each of the two archons, however, according to a higher ordinance, begets a son, who towers far above his father, communicates to him the knowledge received from the Holy Spirit, concerning the upper spirit-world and the plan of redemption, and leads him to repentance. With this begins the process of the redemption or return of the sighing children of God, that is, the pneumatics, to the supra-mundane God. This is effected by Christianity, and ends with the consummation, or apokatastasis of all things. Like Valentine, Basilides also properly held a threefold Christ—the son of the first archon, the son of the second archon, and the son of Mary. But all these are at bottom the same principle, which reclaims the spiritual natures from the world-seed to the original unity. The passion of Christ was necessary to remove the corporeal and psychical elements, which he brought with him from the primitive medley and confusion (suvgcusi" ajrcikhv). His body returned, after death, into shapelessness (ajmorfiva); his soul rose from the grave, and stopped in the hebdomad, or planetary heaven, where it belongs; but his spirit soared, perfectly purified, above all the spheres of creation, to the blessed first sonship (uiJovth") and the fellowship of the non-existent or hyper-existent God.

In the same way with Jesus, the first-fruits, all other pneumatic persons must rise purified to the place where they by nature belong, and abide there. For all that continues in its place is imperishable; but all that transgresses its natural limits is perishable. Basilides quotes the passage of Paul concerning the groaning and travailing of the creation expecting the revelation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19). In the process of redemption he conceded to faith (pistis) more importance than most of the Gnostics, and his definition of faith was vaguely derived from Hebrews 11:1.

In his moral teaching Basilides inculcated a moderate asceticism, from which, however, his school soon departed. He used some of Paul’s Epistles and the canonical Gospels; quoting for example, John 1:9 ("The true light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world"), to identify his idea of the world seed with John’s doctrine of the Logos is the light of the world.856  The fourth Gospel was much used and commented upon also by the Ophites, Perates, and Valentinians before the middle of the second century. The Gnostics were alternately attracted by the mystic Gnosis of that Gospel (especially the Prologue), and repelled by its historic realism, and tried to make the best use of it. They acknowledged it, because they could not help it. The other authorities of Basilides were chiefly the secret tradition of the apostle Matthias, and of a pretended interpreter of Peter, by the name of Glaucias.

His son Isidore was the chief, we may say the only important one, of his disciples. He composed a system of ethics and other books, from which Clement of Alexandria has preserved a few extracts. The Basilidians, especially in the West, seem to have been dualistic and docetic in theory, and loose, even dissolute in practice. They corrupted and vulgarized the high-pitched and artificial system of the founder. The whole life of Christ was to them a mere sham. It was Simon of Cyrene who was crucified; Jesus exchanged forms with him on the way, and, standing unseen opposite in Simon’s form, mocked those who crucified him, and then ascended to heaven. They held it prudent to repudiate Christianity in times of persecution, regarding the noble confession of martyrs as costing dearly before swine, and practiced various sorts of magic, in which the Abraxas gems did them service. The spurious Basilidian sect maintained itself in Egypt till the end of the fourth century, but does not seem to have spread beyond, except that Marcus, a native of Memphis, is reported by Sulpicius Severus to have brought some of its doctrines to Spain.

§ 125. Valentinus.

I. The sources are: 1) Fragments Of Valentinus; Ptolomey’s Epistola ad Floram; and exegetical fragments of Heracleon. 2) The patristic accounts and refutations of Irenaeus (I. 1–21 and throughout his whole work); Hippolytus (VI. 29–37); Tertullian (Adv. Valentinianos); Epiphanius, (Haer. XXXI; in Oehler’s ed. I. 305–386). The last two depend chiefly upon Irenaeus. See on the sources Lipsius and Heinrici (p. 5–148).

II. Ren. Massuet: Dissert. de Haereticis, Art. I. De Valentino, in his ed. of Irenaeus, and in Stieren’s ed. Tom. II. p. 54–134. Very learned and thorough.

George Heinrici: Die Valentinianische Gnosis und die heilige Schrift. Berlin, 1871 (192 pages).

Comp. Neander (whose account is very good, but lacks the additional information furnished by Hippolytus); Rossel, Theol. Schriften (Berlin, (1847), p. 280 sqq.; Baur, K. Gesch. I. 195–204; and Jacobi, in Herzog2, vol. V. 225–229.

Valentinus or Valentine857 is the author of the most profound and luxuriant, as well as the most influential and best known of the Gnostic systems. Irenaeus directed his work chiefly against it, and we have made it the basis of our general description of Gnosticism.858  He founded a large school, and spread his doctrines in the West. He claimed to have derived them from Theodas or Theudas, a pupil of St. Paul.859  He also pretended to have received revelations from the Logos in a vision. Hippolytus calls him a Platonist and Pythagorean rather than a Christian. He was probably of Egyptian Jewish descent and Alexandrian education.860  Tertullian reports, perhaps from his own conjecture, that he broke with the orthodox church from disappointed ambition, not being made a bishop.861  Valentine came to Rome as a public teacher during the pontificate of Hyginus (137–142), and remained there till the pontificate of Anicetus (154).862  He was then already celebrated; for Justin Martyr, in his lost "Syntagma against all Heresies," which he mentions in his "First Apology" (140), combated the Valentinians among other heretics before A.D. 140. At that time Rome had become the centre of the church and the gathering place of all sects. Every teacher who wished to exercise a general influence on Christendom naturally looked to the metropolis. Valentine was one of the first Gnostics who taught in Rome, about the same time with Cerdo and Marcion; but though he made a considerable impression by his genius and eloquence, the orthodoxy of the church and the episcopal authority were too firmly settled to allow of any great success for his vagaries. He was excommunicated, and went to Cyprus, where he died about A.D. 160.

His system is an ingenious theogonic and cosmogonic epos. It describes in three acts the creation, the fall, and the redemption; first in heaven, then on earth. Great events repeat themselves in different stages of being. He derived his material from his own fertile imagination, from Oriental and Greek speculations, and from Christian ideas. He made much use of the Prologue of John’s Gospel and the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians; but by a wild exegesis he put his own pantheistic and mythological fancies into the apostolic words, such as Logos, Only Begotten, Truth, Life, Pleroma, Ecclesia.

Valentine starts from the eternal primal Being, which he significantly calls Bythos or Abyss.863  It is the fathomless depth in which the thinking mind is lost, the ultimate boundary beyond which it cannot pass. The Bythos is unbegotten, infinite, invisible, incomprehensible, nameless, the absolute agnoston; yet capable of evolution and development, the universal Father of all beings. He continues for immeasurable ages in silent contemplation of his own boundless grandeur, glory, and beauty. This "Silence" or "Solitude" (hJ sighv) is his Spouse or suvzugo". It is the silent self-contemplation, the slumbering consciousness of the Infinite. He also calls it "Thought" (e[nnoia), and "Grace" (cariv").864  The pre-mundane Bythos includes, therefore, at least according to some members of the school, the female as well as the male principle; for from the male principle alone nothing could spring. According to Hippolytus, Valentine derived this sexual duality from the essential nature of love, and said: "God is all love; but love is not love except there is some object of affection."865  He grappled here with a pre-mundane mystery, which the Orthodox theology endeavors to solve by the doctrine of the immanent eternal trinity in the divine essence: God is love, therefore God is triune: a loving subject, a beloved object, and a union of the two. "Ubi amor, ibi trinitas."

After this eternal silence, God enters upon a process of evolution or emanation, i.e. a succession of generations of antithetic and yet supplementary ideas or principles. From the Abyss emanate thirty aeons in fifteen pairs,866 according to the law of sexual polarity, in three generations, the first called the ogdoad, the second the decad, the third the dodecad. The Aeons are the unfolded powers and attributes of the divinity. They correspond to the dynameis in the system of Basilides. God begets first the masculine, productive Mind or Reason (oJ nou'"),867 with the feminine, receptive Truth (hJ ajlhvqeia); these two produce the Word (oJ lovgo") and the Life (hJ zwhv), and these again the (ideal) Man (oJ a[nqrwpo") and the (ideal) Church (hJ ejkklhsiva). The influence of the fourth Gospel is unmistakable here, though of course the terminology of John is used in a sense different from that of its author. The first two syzygies constitute the sacred Tetraktys, the root of all things.868  The Nous and the Aletheia produce ten aeons (five pairs); the Logos and the Zoë, twelve aeons (six pairs). At last the Nous or Monogenes and the Aletheia bring forth the heavenly Christ (oJ a[vnw Cristov") and the (female) Holy Spirit (to; pneu'ma a{gion), and therewith complete the number thirty. These aeons constitute together the Pleroma, the plenitude of divine powers, an expression which St. Paul applied to the historical Christ (Col. 2:9). They all partake in substance of the life of the Abyss; but their form is conditioned by the Horos (o{ro"), the limiting power of God. This genius of limitation stands between the Pleroma and the Hysterema outside, and is the organizing power of the universe, and secures harmony.869  If any being dares to transcend its fixed boundaries and to penetrate beyond revelation into the hidden being of God, it is in danger of sinking into nothing. Two actions are ascribed to the Horos, a negative by which he limits every being and sunders from it foreign elements, and the positive by which he forms and establishes it.870  The former action is emphatically called Horos, the latter is called Stauros (cross, post), because he stands firm and immovable, the guardian of the Aeons, so that nothing can come from the Hysterema into the neighborhood of the aeons in the Pleroma.

The process of the fall and redemption takes place first in the ideal world of the Pleroma, and is then repeated in the lower world. In this process the lower Wisdom or Sophia, also called Achamoth or Chakmuth plays an important part.871  She is the mundane soul, a female aeon, the weakest and most remote member of the series of aeons (in number the twenty-eighth), and forms, so to speak, the bridge which spans the abyss between God and the real world. Feeling her loneliness and estrangement from the great Father, she wishes to unite herself immediately, without regard to the intervening links, with him who is the originating principle of the universe, and alone has the power of self-generation. She jumps, as it were by a single bound, into the depth of the eternal Father, and brings forth of herself alone an abortion (e[ktrwma),a formless and inchoate substance, 872 of which Moses speaks when he says: "The earth was without form and void." By this sinful passion she introduces confusion and disturbance into the Pleroma.873  She wanders about outside of it, and suffers with fear, anxiety, and despair on account of her abortion. This is the fall; an act both free and necessary.

But Sophia yearns after redemption; the aeons sympathize with her sufferings and aspirations; the eternal Father himself commands the projection of the last pair of aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, "for the restoration of Form, the destruction of the abortion, and for the consolation and cessation of the groans of Sophia." They comfort and cheer the Sophia, and separate the abortion from the Pleroma. At last, the thirty aeons together project in honor of the Father the aeon Soter or Jesus, "the great High Priest," "the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma," and "send him forth beyond the Pleroma as a Spouse for Sophia, who was outside, and as a rectifier of those sufferings which she underwent in searching after Christ." After many sufferings, Sophia is purged of all passions and brought back as the bride of Jesus, together with all pneumatic natures, into the ideal world. The demiurge, the fiery and jealous God of the Jews, as "the friend of the bridegroom,"874 with the psychical Christians on the border of the Pleroma, remotely shares the joy of the festival, while matter sinks back into nothing.

In Valentine’s Christology, we must distinguish properly three redeeming beings: (1) The a[nw Cristov" or heavenly Christ, who, after the fall of Sophia, emanates from the aeon monogenhv", and stands in conjunction with the female principle, the pneu'ma a{gion. He makes the first announcement to the aeons of the plan of redemption, whereupon they strike up anthems of praise and thanksgiving in responsive choirs. (2) The swthvr or  jIhsou'", produced by all the aeons together, the star of the Pleroma. He forms with the redeemed Sophia the last and highest syzygy. (3) The kavtw Cristov", the psychical or Jewish Messiah, who is sent by the Demiurge, passes through the body of Mary as water through a pipe, and is at last crucified by the Jews, but, as he has merely an apparent body, does not really suffer. With him Soter, the proper redeemer, united himself in the baptism in the Jordan, to announce his divine gnosis on earth for a year, and lead the pneumatic persons to perfection.

Notes.

Dr. Baur, the great critical historian of ancient Gnosticism and the master spirit of modern Gnosticism, ingeniously reproduces the Valentinian system in Hegelian terminology. I quote the chief part, as a fair specimen of his historic treatment, from his Kirchengeschichte, vol. I. 201 sqq. (comp. his Gnosis, p. 124 sqq.):

"Der Geist, oder Gott als der Geist an sich, geht aus sich heraus, in dieser Sebstoffenbarung Gottes entsteht die Welt, die in ihrem Unterschied von Gott auch wieder an sich mit Gott eins ist. Wie man aber auch dieses immanente Verhältniss von Gott und Welt betrachten mag, als Selbstoffenbarung Gottes oder als Weltentwicklung, es ist an sich ein rein geistiger, im Wesen des Geistes begründeter Process. Der Geist stellt in den Aeonen, die er aus sich hervorgehen lässt, sein eigenes Wesen aus sich heraus und sich gegenüber; da aber das Wesen des Geistes an sich das Denken und Wissen ist, so kann der Process seiner Selbstoffenbarung nur darin bestehen, dass er sich dessen bewusst ist, was er an sich ist. Die Aeonen des Pleroma sind die höchsten Begriffe des geistigen Seins und Lebens, die allgemeinen Denkformen, in welchen der Geist das, was er an sich ist, in bestimmter concreter Weise für das Bewusstsein ist. Mit dem Wissen des Geistes von sich, dem Selbstbewusstsein des sich von sich unterscheidenden Geistes, ist aber auch schon nicht blos ein Princip der Differenzirung, sondern, da Gott und Welt an sich Eins sind, auch ein Princip der Materialisirung des Geistes gesetzt. Je grösser der Abstand der das Bewusstsein des Geistes vermittelnden Begriffe von dem absolutes Princip ist, um so mehr ver dunkelt sich das geistige Bewusstsein, der Geiste, entäussert sich seiner selbst, er ist sich selbst nicht mehr klar und durchsichtig, das Pneumatische sinkt zum Prychischen herab, das Psychische verdichtet sich zum Materiellen, und mit dem Materiellen verbindet sich in seinem Extrem auch der Begriff des Dämonischen und Diabolischen. Da aber auch das psychische an sich pneumatischer Natur ist, und Keime des geistigen Lebens überall zurückgeblieben sind, so muss das Pneumatische die materielle Verdunklung des geistigen Bewusstseins auf der Stufe des psychischen Lebens wieder durchbrechen und die Decke abwerfen, die in der Welt des Demurg auf dem Bewusstsein des Geistes liegt. Die ganze Weltentwicklung ist die Continuität desselben geisigen Processes, es muss daher auch einen Wendepunkt geben, in welchem der Geist aus seiner Selbstentäuserung zu sich selbst zurückkehrt und wieder zum klaren Bewusstsein dessen, was er an sich ist, kommt. Dies ist der gnostische Begriff der christlichen Offenbarung. Die Wissenden im Sinne der Gnostiker, die Pneumatischen, die als solche auch das wahrhaft christliche Bewusstsein in, sich haben, sind ein neues Moment des allgemeinen geistigen Lebens, die höchste Stufe der Selbstoffenbarung Gottes und der Weltentwicklung. Diese Periode des Weltverlaufs beginnt mit der Erscheinung Christi und endet zuletzt damit, dass durch Christus und die Sophia alles Geistige in das Pleroma wieder aufgenommen wird. Da Christus, wie auf jeder Stufe der Weltentwicklung, so auch schon in den höchsten Regionen der Aeonenwelt, in welcher alles seinem Ausgangspunkt hat, and von Anfang an auf dieses Reultant des Ganzen angelegt ist, als das wiederherstellende, in der Einheit mit dem Absolutn erhaltende Princip thätig ist, so hat er in der Waltanschauung der Gnostiker durchaus die Bedeutung eines absolutn Weltprincips."

§ 126. The School of Valentinus. Heracleon, Ptolemy, Marcos, Bardesanes, Harmonius.

Of all the forms of Gnosticism, that of Valentinus was the most popular and influential, more particularly in Rome. He had a large number of followers, who variously modified his system. Tertullian says, his heresy "fashioned itself into as many shapes as a courtesan who usually changes and adjusts her dress every day."

The school of Valentinus divided chiefly into two branches, an Oriental,875 and an Italian. The first, in which Hippolytus reckons one Axionicos, not otherwise known, and Ardesianes ( jArdhsiavnh", probably the, same with Bardesanes), held the body of Jesus to be pneumatic and heavenly, because the Holy Spirit, i.e. Sophia and the demiurgic power of the Highest, came upon Mary. The  Italian school—embracing Heracleon and Ptolemy —taught that the body of Jesus was psychial, and that for this reason the Spirit descended upon him in the baptism. Some Valentinians came nearer the orthodox view, than their master.

Heracleon was personally instructed by Valentine, and probably flourished between 170 and 180 somewhere in Italy. He has a special interest as the earliest known commentator of the Gospel of John. Origen, in commenting on the same book, has preserved us about fifty fragments, usually contradicting them. They are chiefly taken from the first two, the fourth, and the eighth chapters.876  Heracleon fully acknowledges the canonical authority of the fourth Gospel, but reads his own system into it. He used the same allegorical method, as Origen, who even charges him with adhering too much to the letter, and not going deep enough into the spiritual sense. He finds in John the favorite Valentinian ideas of logos, life, light, love, conflict with darkness, and mysteries in all the numbers, but deprives the facts of historical realness. The woman of Samaria, in the fourth chapter, represents the redemption of the Sophia; the water of Jacob’s well is Judaism; her husband is her spiritual bridegroom from the Pleroma; her former husbands are the Hyle or kingdom of the devil. The nobleman in Capernaum (John 4:47) is the Demiurge, who is not hostile, but short-sighted and ignorant, yet ready to implore the Saviour’s help for his subjects; the nobleman’s son represents the psychics, who will be healed and redeemed when their ignorance is removed. The fact that John’s Gospel was held in equal reverence by the Valentinians and the orthodox, strongly favors its early existence before their separation, and its apostolic origin.877

Ptolemy is the author of the Epistle to Flora, a wealthy Christian lady, whom he tried to convert to the Valentinian system.878  He deals chiefly with the objection that the creation of the world and the Old Testament could not proceed from the highest God. He appeals to an apostolic tradition and to the words of Christ, who alone knows the Father of all and first revealed him (John 1:18). God is the only good (Matt. 19:17), and hence he cannot be the author of a world in which there is so much evil. Irenaeus derived much of his information from the contemporary followers of Ptolemy.

Another disciple of Valentine, Marcos, who taught likewise in the second half of the second century, probably in Asia Minor, perhaps also in Gaul, blended a Pythagorean and Cabbalistic numerical symbolism with the ideas of his master, introduced a ritual abounding in ceremonies, and sought to attract beautiful and wealthy women by magical arts. His followers were called Marcosians.879

The name of Colarbasus, which is often connected with Marcos, must be stricken from the list of the Gnostics; for it originated in confounding the Hebrew Kol-Arba, "the Voice of Four," i.e. the divine Tetrad at the head of the Pleroma, with a person.880

Finally, in the Valentinian school is counted also Bardesanes or Bardaisan (son of Daisan, Bardhsavnh").881  He was a distinguished Syrian scholar and poet, and lived at the court of the prince of Edessa at the close of the second and in the early part of the third century.882  But he can scarcely be numbered among the Gnostics, except in a very wide sense. He was at first orthodox, according to Epiphanius, but became corrupted by contact with Valentinians. Eusebius, on the contrary, makes him begin a heretic and end in orthodoxy. He also reports, that Bardesanes wrote against the heresy of Marcion in the Syriac language. Probably he accepted the common Christian faith with some modifications and exercised freedom on speculative doctrines, which were not yet clearly developed in the Syrian church of that period.883  His numerous works are lost, with the exception of a "Dialogue on Fate," which has recently been published in full.884  It is, however, of uncertain date, and shows no trace of the Gnostic mythology and dualism, ascribed to him. He or his son Harmonius (the accounts vary) is the father of Syrian hymnology, and composed a book of one hundred and fifty (after the Psalter), which were used on festivals, till they were superseded by the Orthodox hymns of St. Ephraem the Syrian, who retained the same metres and tunes.885  He enjoyed great reputation, and his sect is said to have spread to the Southern Euphrates, and even to China.

His son Harmonius, of Edessa, followed in his steps. He is said to have studied philosophy at Athens. He shares with Bardesanes (as already remarked) the honor of being the father of Syrian hymnology.

§ 127. Marcion and his School.

I. Justin M.: Apol. I. c. 26 and 58. He wrote also a special work against Marcion, which is lost  Irenaeus: I. 28. IV. 33 sqq. and several other passages. He likewise contemplated a special treatise against Marcion (III. 12)  Tertullian: Adv. Marcionem Libri V. Hippol. Philos. VII. 29 (ed. Duncker and Schneidewin, pp. 382–394). Epiphanius: Haer. XLII. Philaster.: Haer. XLV. The Armenian account of Esnig in his "Destruction of Heretics" (5th century), translated by Neumann, in the "Zeitschrift für histor. Theologie," Leipzig, vol. IV. 1834. Esnig gives Marcionism more of a mystic and speculative character than the earlier fathers, but presents nothing which may not be harmonized with them.

II  Neander (whose account is too charitable), Baur (I. 213–217), Möller (Gesch. der Kosmologie, 374–407), Fessler. (in Wetzer and Welte, VI. 816–821), Jacobi (in Herzog, V. 231–236), Salmon (in Smith and Wace, III. 816–824). Ad. Hilgenfeld: Cerdon und Marcion, in his "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theol." Leipz. 1881, pp. 1–37.

III. On the critical question of Marcion’s canon and the relation of his mutilated Gospel of Luke to the genuine Gospel of Luke, see the works on the Canon, the critical Introductions, and especially Volkmar: Das Evangelium Marcions, Text und Kritik (Leipz. 1852), and Sanday: The Gospels in the Second Century (London, 1876). The last two have conclusively proved (against the earlier view of Baur, Ritschl, and the author of "Supernat. Rel.") the priority of the canonical Luke. Comp. vol. I. 668.

Marcion was the most earnest, the most practical, and the most dangerous among the Gnostics, full of energy and zeal for reforming, but restless rough and eccentric. He has a remote connection with modern questions of biblical criticism and the canon. He anticipated the rationalistic opposition to the Old Testament and to the Pastoral Epistles, but in a very arbitrary and unscrupulous way. He could see only superficial differences in the Bible, not the deeper harmony. He rejected the heathen mythology of the other Gnostics, and adhered to Christianity as the only true religion; he was less speculative, and gave a higher place to faith. But he was utterly destitute of historical sense, and put Christianity into a radical conflict with all previous revelations of God; as if God had neglected the world for thousands of years until he suddenly appeared in Christ. He represents an extreme anti-Jewish and pseudo-Pauline tendency, and a magical

supranaturalism, which, in fanatical zeal for a pure primitive Christianity, nullifies all history, and turns the gospel into an abrupt, unnatural, phantomlike appearance.

Marcion was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus, and gave in his first fervor his property to the church, but was excommunicated by his own father, probably on account of his heretical opinions and contempt of authority.886  He betook himself, about the middle of the second century, to Rome (140–155), which originated none of the Gnostic systems, but attracted them all. There he joined the Syrian Gnostic, Cerdo, who gave him some speculative foundation for his practical dualism. He disseminated his doctrine by travels, and made many disciples from different nations. He is said to have intended to apply at last for restoration to the communion of the Catholic Church, when his death intervened.887  The time and place of his death are unknown. He wrote a recension of the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles, and a work on the contradictions between the Old anad New Testaments. Justin Martyr regarded him as the most formidable heretic of his day. The abhorrence of the Catholics for him is expressed in the report of Irenaeus, that Polycarp of Smyrna, meeting with Marcion in Rome, and being asked by him: "Dost thou know me?" answered: "I know the first-born of Satan."888

Marcion supposed two or three primal forces (ajrcaiv): the good or gracious God (qeo;" ajgaqov"), whom Christ first made known; the evil matter (u{lh) ruled by the devil, to which heathenism belongs; and the righteous world-maker (dhmiourgo;" divkaio"), who is the finite, imperfect, angry Jehovah of the Jews. Some writers reduce his principles to two; but he did not identify the demiurge with the hyle. He did not go into any further speculative analysis of these principles; he rejected the pagan emanation theory, the secret tradition, and the allegorical interpretation of the Gnostics; in his system he has no Pleroma, no Aeons, no Dynameis, no Syzygies, no suffering Sophia; he excludes gradual development and growth; everything is unprepared, sudden and abrupt.

His system was more critical and rationalistic than mystic and philosophical.889  He was chiefly zealous for the consistent practical enforcement of the irreconcilable dualism which he established between the gospel and the law, Christianity and Judaism, goodness and righteousness.890   He drew out this contrast at large in a special work, entitled "Antitheses."  The God of the Old Testament is harsh, severe and unmerciful as his law; he commands, "Love thy neighbor, but hate thine enemy," and returns "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;" but the God of the New Testament commands, "Love thine enemy." The one is only just, the other is good. Marcion rejected all the books of the Old Testament, and wrested Christ’s word in Matt. 5:17 into the very opposite declaration: "I am come not to fulfil the law and the prophets, but to destroy them." In his view, Christianity has no connection whatever with the past, whether of the Jewish or the heathen world, but has fallen abruptly and magically, as it were, from heaven.891  Christ, too, was not born at all, but suddenly descended into the city of Capernaum in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, and appeared as the revealer of the good God, who sent him. He has no connection with the Messiah, announced by the Demiurge in the Old Testament; though he called himself the Messiah by way of accommodation. His body was a mere appearance, and his death an illusion, though they had a real meaning.892  He cast the Demiurge into Hades, secured the redemption of the soul (not of the body), and called the apostle Paul to preach it. The other apostles are Judaizing corrupters of pure Christianity, and their writings are to be rejected, together with the catholic tradition. In over-straining the difference between Paul and the other apostles, he was a crude forerunner of the Tübingen school of critics.

Marcion formed a canon of his own, which consisted of only eleven books, an abridged and mutilated Gospel of Luke, and ten of Paul’s epistles. He put Galatians first in order, and called Ephesians the Epistle to the Laodicaeans. He rejected the pastoral epistles, in which the forerunners of Gnosticism are condemned, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Matthew, Mark, John, the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse.

Notwithstanding his violent antinomianism, Marcion taught and practiced the strictest ascetic self-discipline, which revolted not only from all pagan festivities, but even from marriage, flesh, and wine. (He allowed fish). He could find the true God in nature no more than in history. He admitted married persons to baptism only on a vow of abstinence from all sexual intercourse.893  He had a very gloomy, pessimistic view of the world and the church, and addressed a disciple as "his partner in tribulation, and fellow-sufferer from hatred."

In worship he excluded wine from the eucharist, but retained the sacramental bread, water-baptism, anointing with oil, and the mixture of milk and honey given to the newly baptized.894  Epiphanius reports that he permitted females to baptize. The Marcionites practiced sometimes vicarious baptism for the dead.895  Their baptism was not recognized by the church.

The Marcionite sect spread in Italy, Egypt, North Africa, Cyprus, and Syria; but it split into many branches. Its wide diffusion is proved by the number of antagonists in the different countries.

The most noteworthy Marcionites are Prepo, Lucanus (an Assyrian), and Apelles. They supplied the defects of the master’s system by other Gnostic speculations, and in some instances softened down its antipathy to heathenism and Judaism. Apelles acknowledged only one first principle. Ambrosius, a friend of Origen, was a Marcionite before his conversion. These heretics were dangerous to the church because of their severe morality and the number of their martyrs. They abstained from marriage, flesh and wine, and did not escape from persecution, like some other Gnostics.

Constantine forbade the Marcionites freedom of worship public and private, and ordered their meeting-houses to be handed over to the Catholic Church.896  The Theodosian code mentions them only once. But they existed in the fifth century when Theodoret boasted to have converted more than a thousand of these heretics, and the Trullan Council of 692 thought it worth while to make provision for the reconciliation of Marcionites. Remains of them are found as late as the tenth century.897  Some of their principles revived among the Paulicians, who took refuge in Bulgaria, and the Cathari in the West.

§ 128. The Ophites. The Sethites. The Peratae. The Cainites

I. Hippolytus: Philosoph. bk. V. 1–23. He begins his account of the Heresies with the Naasseni, or Ophites, and Peratae (the first four books being devoted to the systems of heathen philosophy). Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. I. 30 (ed. Stieren, I. 266 sqq.). Epiphan. Haer. 37 (in Oehler’s ed. I. 495 sqq.).

II. Mosheim: Geschichte der Schlangenbrüder. Helmstädt, 1746, ’48.

E. W. Möller: Geschichte der Kosmologie. Halle, 1860. Die ophitische Gnosis, p. 190 sqq.

Baxmann: Die Philosophumena und die Peraten, in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für die Hist. Theol." for 1860. Lipsius: Ueber das ophitische System. In "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftl. Theologie" for 1863 and ’64.

Jacobi in Herzog, new ed., vol. V. 240 sq.

George Salmon: "Cainites," in Smith and Wace, vol. I. 380–82. Articles "Ophites" and "Peratae," will probably appear in vol. IV., not yet published.

The origin of the Ophites,898 or, in Hebrew, Naasenes,899 i.e. Serpent-Brethren, or Serpent-Worshippers, is unknown, and is placed by Mosheim and others before the time of Christ. In any case, their system is of purely heathen stamp. Lipsius has shown their connection with the Syro-Chaldaic mythology. The sect still existed as late as the sixth century; for in 530 Justinian passed laws against it.

The accounts of their worship of the serpent rest, indeed, on uncertain data; but their name itself comes from their ascribing special import to the serpent as the type of gnosis, with reference to the history of the fall (Gen. 3:1), the magic rod of Moses (Ex. 4:2, 3), and the healing power of the brazen serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21:9; Comp. John 3:14). They made use of the serpent on amulets.

That mysterious, awe-inspiring reptile, which looks like the embodiment of a thunderbolt, or like a fallen angel tortuously creeping in the dust, represents in the Bible the evil spirit, and its motto, Eritis sicut Deus, is the first lie of the father of lies, which caused the ruin of man; but in the false religions it is the symbol of divine wisdom and an object of adoration; and the Eritis sicus dii appears as a great truth, which opened the path of progress. The serpent, far from being the seducer of the race, was its first schoolmaster and civilizer by teaching it the difference between good and evil. So the Ophites regarded the fall of Adam as the transition from the state of unconscious bondage to the state of conscious judgment and freedom; therefore the necessary entrance to the good, and a noble advance of the human spirit. They identified the serpent with the Logos, or the mediator between the Father and the Matter, bringing down the powers of the upper world to the lower world, and leading the return from the lower to the higher. The serpent represents the whole winding process of development and salvation.900  The Manichaeans also regarded the serpent as the direct image of Christ.901

With this view is connected their violent opposition to the Old Testament. Jaldabaoth,902 as they termed the God of the Jews and the Creator of the world, they represented as a malicious, misanthropic being. In other respects, their doctrine strongly resembles the Valentinian system, except that it is much more pantheistic, unchristian, and immoral, and far less developed.

The Ophites again branch out in several sects, especially three.

The Sethites considered the third son of Adam the first pneumatic man and the forerunner of Christ. They maintained three principles, darkness below, light above, and spirit between.

The Peratae or Peratics903 (Transcendentalists) are described by Hippolytus as allegorizing astrologers and as mystic tritheists, who taught three Gods, three Logoi, three Minds, three Men. Christ had a three-fold nature, a three-fold body, and a three-fold power. He descended from above, that all things triply divided might be saved.904

The Cainites boasted of the descent from Cain the fratricide, and made him their leader.905  They regarded the God of the Jews and Creator of the world as a positively evil being, whom to resist is virtue. Hence they turned the history of salvation upside down, and honored all the infamous characters of the Old and New Testaments from Cain to Judas as spiritual men and martyrs to truth. Judas Iscariot alone among the apostles had the secret of true knowledge, and betrayed the psychic Messiah with good intent to destroy the empire of the evil God of the Jews. Origen speaks of a branch of the Ophites, who were as great enemies of Jesus as the heathen Celsus, and who admitted none into their society who had not first cursed his name. But the majority seem to have acknowledged the goodness of Jesus and the benefit of his crucifixion brought about by the far-sighted wisdom of Judas. A book entitled "the Gospel of Judas" was circulated among them.

No wonder that such blasphemous travesty of the Bible history, and such predilection for the serpent and his seed was connected with the most unbridled antinomianism, which changed vice into virtue. They thought it a necessary part of "perfect knowledge" to have a complete experience of all sins, including even unnamable vices.

Some have identified the Ophites with the false teachers denounced in the Epistle of Jude as filthy dreamers, who "defile the flesh, and set at naught dominion, and rail at dignities," who "went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah," as "wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever." The resemblance is certainly very striking, and those heretics may have been the forerunners of the Ophites of the second century.

§ 129. Saturninus (Satornilos).

Iren. I. 24, § 1, 2; ch. 28. Hippol. VII. 3, 28 (depending on Iren.). Tert. Praesc. Haer. 46. Hegesippus in Euseb. IV. 22, 29. Epiph. Haer. XXIII. Theod. Fab. Haer. I. 3. Comp. Möller, l c., p. 367–373.

Contemporary with Basilides under Hadrian, was Saturninus or Satornilos906 in Antioch. He was, like him, a pupil of Menander. His system is distinguished for its bold dualism between God and Satan, the two antipodes of the universe, and for its ascetic severity.907  God is the unfathomable abyss, absolutely unknown (qeo;" a[gnwsto"). From him emanates by degrees the spirit-world of light, with angels, archangels, powers, and dominions. On the lowest degree, are the seven planetary spirits (a[ggeloi kosmokravtore") with the Demiurge or God of the Jews at the head. Satan, as the ruler of the hyle, is eternally opposed to the realm of light. The seven planetary spirits invade the realm of Satan, and form out of a part of the hyle the material world with man, who is filled by the highest God with a spark of light (spinqhvr). Satan creates in opposition a hylic race of men, and incessantly pursues the spiritual race with his demons and false prophets. The Jewish God, with his prophets, is unable to overcome him. Finally the good God sends the aeon Nous in an unreal body, as Soter on earth, who teaches the spiritual men by gnosis and strict abstinence from marriage and carnal food to emancipate themselves from the vexations of Satan, and also from the dominion of the Jewish God and his star-spirits, and to rise to the realm of light.

§ 130. Carpocrates.

Iren. I. 25 (24). Hippol. VII. 32 (D. & Schn. p. 398 sqq.). Clem. Alex. Strom. III. 511. Epihianius, Haer. XXV.

Carpocrates also lived under Hadrian, probably at Alexandria, and founded a Gnostic sect, called by his own name, which put Christ on a level with heathen philosophers, prided itself on its elevation above all the popular religions, and sank into unbridled immorality. The world is created by angels greatly inferior to the unbegotten Father. Jesus was the son of Joseph, and just like other men, except that his soul was steadfast and pure, and that he perfectly remembered those things which he had witnessed within the sphere of the unbegotten God. For this reason a power descended upon him from the Father, that by means of it he might escape from the creators of the world. After passing through them all, and remaining in all points free, he ascended again to the Father. We may rise to an equality with Jesus by despising in like manner the creators of the world.

The Carpocratians, say Irenaeus and Hippolytus, practiced also magical arts, incantations, and love-potions, and had recourse to familiar spirits, dream-sending demons, and other abominations, declaring that they possess power to rule over the princes and framers of this world. But they led a licentious life, and abused the name of Christ as a means of hiding their wickedness. They were the first known sect that used pictures of Christ, and they derived them from a pretended original of Pontius Pilate.908

Epiphanes, a son of Carpocrates, who died at the age of seventeen, was the founder of "monadic "Gnosticism, which in opposition to dualism seems to have denied the independent existence of evil, and resolved it into a fiction of human laws. He wrote a book on "Justice," and defined it to be equality. He taught that God gave his benefits to all men alike and in common, and thence derived the community of goods, and even of women. He was worshipped by his adherents after his death as a god, at Same in Cephalonia, by sacrifices, libations, banquets, and singing of hymns. Here we have the worship of genius in league with the emancipation of the flesh, which has been revived in modern times. But it is not impossible that Clement of Alexandria, who relates this fact, may have made a similar mistake as Justin Martyr in the case of Simon Magus, and confounded a local heathen festival of the moon known as ta;  jEpifavneia or oJ  jEpifanhv" with a festival in honor of Epiphanes.909

§ 131. Tatian and the Encratites.

I. Tatian: Lovgo" pro;"  {Ellhna" (Oratio adversus Graecos), ed. S. Worth, Oxon. 1700 (an excellent ed.); in Otto’s Corpus. Apol., vol. VI., Jenae 1851; and in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, Tom. VI. fol. 803–888. Eng. transl. by Pratten & Dods in the "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. III. (Edinb. 1867). A Commentary of St. Ephraem on Tatian’s Diatessaron (To; dia; tessavrwn), was found in an Armenian translation in the Armenian Convent at Venice, translated into Latin in 1841 by Aucher, and edited by Mösinger (Prof. of Biblical Learning in Salzburg) under the title "Evangelii Concordantis Expositio facta a Sancto Ephraemo Doctore Syro."  Venet. 1876. The Diatessaron itself was found in an Arabic translation in 1886, and published by P. Aug. Ciasca: Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae, Arabice, Rom. 1888. A new and more critical edition of the Oratio ad Gr., by Ed. Schwartz, Lips., 1888 (105 pp).

Orthodox Notices of Tatian: Iren. I. 28, 1; III. 23, 8 sqq. (in Stieren, I. 259, 551 sq.). Hippol.: VIII. 16 (very brief). Clem. Alex.: Strom. l. III. Euseb.: H. E. IV. 16, 28, 29; VI. 13. Epiphanius, Haer. 46 (Tatian) and 47 (Encratites). The recently discovered work of Macarius Magnes (Paris 1876), written about 400, contains some information about the Encratites which agrees with Epiphanius.

II. H. A. Daniel: Tatian der Apologet. Halle 1837.

James Donaldson: A Critical History of Christian Liter., etc. Lond. vol. IIIrd. (1866), which is devoted to Tatian, etc., p. 3–62.

Theod. Zahn: Tatian’s Diatessaron. Erlangen, 1881. (The first part of Forschungen zur Gesch. des neutestamntl. Kanons).

Ad. Harnack: Tatian’s Diatessaron, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." 1881, p. 471–505; Die Oratio des Tatian nebst einer Einleitung über die Zeit dieses Apologeten, in "Texte und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der altchristl. Literatur," vol. I. No. 2, p. 196–231. Leipz., 1883, and his art., "Tatian," in "Encycl. Brit." xxiii. (1888).

Fr. Xav. Funk (R.C.): Zur Chronologie Tatian’s, in the Tübing. "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1883, p. 219–234.

Tatian, a rhetorician of Syria, was converted to Catholic Christianity by Justin Martyr in Rome, but afterwards strayed into Gnosticism and died A.D. 172.910  He resembles Marcion in his anti-Jewish turn and dismal austerity. Falsely interpreting 1 Cor. 7:5, he declared marriage to be a kind of licentiousness and a service of the devil. Irenaeus says, that Tatian, after the martyrdom of Justin, apostatised from the church, and elated with the conceit of a teacher, and vainly puffed up as if he surpassed all others, invented certain invisible aeons similar to those of Valentine, and asserted with Marcion and Saturninus that marriage was only corruption and fornication. But his extant apologetic treatise against the Gentiles, and his Gospel-Harmony (recently recovered), which were written between 153 and 170, show no clear traces of Gnosticism, unless it be the omission of the genealogies of Jesus in the "Diatessaron." He was not so much anti-catholic as hyper-catholic, and hyper-ascetic. We shall return to him again in the last chapter.

His followers, who kept the system alive till the fifth century, were called, from their ascetic life, Encratites, or Abstainers, and from their use of water for wine in the Lord’s Supper, Hydroparastatae or Aquarians.911  They abstained from flesh, wine, and marriage, not temporarily (as the ancient catholic ascetics) for purposes of devotion, nor (as many modern total abstainers from intoxicating drink) for the sake of expediency or setting a good example, but permanently and from principle on account of the supposed intrinsic impurity of the things renounced. The title "Encratites," however, was applied indiscriminately to all ascetic sects of the Gnostics, especially the followers of Saturninus, Marcion, and Severus (Severians, of uncertain origin). The Manichaeans also sheltered themselves under this name. Clement of Alexandria refers to the Indian ascetics as the forerunners of the Encratites.

The practice of using mere water for wine in the eucharist was condemned by Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, and Chrysostom, and forbidden by Theodosius in an edict of 382. A certain class of modern abstinence men in America, in their abhorrence of all intoxicating drinks, have resorted to the same heretical practice, and substituted water or milk for the express ordinance of our Lord.

§ 132. Justin the Gnostic.

Hippolytus: Philos. V. 23–27 (p. 214–233), and X. 15 (p. 516–519).

Hippolytus makes us acquainted with a Gnostic by the name of Justin, of uncertain date and origin.912  He propagated his doctrine secretly, and bound his disciples to silence by solemn oaths. He wrote a number of books, one called Baruch, from which Hippolytus gives an abstract. His gnosis is mostly based upon a mystical interpretation of Genesis, and has a somewhat Judaizing cast. Hippolytus, indeed, classes him with the Naassenes, but Justin took an opposite view of the serpent as the cause of all evil in history. He made use also of the Greek mythology, especially the tradition of the twelve labors of Hercules. He assumes three original principles, two male and one female. The first is the Good Being; the second Elohim, the Father of the creation; the third is called Eden and Israel, and has a double form, a woman above the middle and a snake below. Elohim falls in love with Eden, and from their intercourse springs the spirit-world of twenty angels, ten paternal and ten maternal, and these people the world. The chief of the two series of angels are Baruch, who is the author of all good, and is represented by the tree of life in Paradise, and Naas, the serpent, who is the author of all evil, and is represented by the tree of knowledge. The four rivers are symbols of the four divisions of angels. The Naas committed adultery with Eve, and a worse crime with Adam; he adulterated the laws of Moses and the oracles of the prophets; he nailed Jesus to the cross. But by this crucifixion Jesus was emancipated from his material body, rose to the good God to whom he committed his spirit in death, and thus he came to be the deliverer.

§ 133. Hermogenes.

Tertullian: Adv. Hermogenem. Written about A.D. 206. One of his two tracts against H. is lost. Hippolytus: Philos. VIII. 17 (p. 432). Comp. Neander: Antignosticus, p. 448; Kaye: Tertullian, p. 532; Hauck: Tertullian, p. 240; Salmond: in "Smith & Wace," III. 1–3.

Hermogenes was a painter in Carthage at the end of the second and beginning of the third century. Tertullian describes him as a turbulent, loquacious, and impudent man, who "married more women than he painted."913  He is but remotely connected with Gnosticism by his Platonic dualism and denial of the creation out of nothing. He derived the world, including the soul of man, from the formless, eternal matter,914 and explained the ugly in the natural world, as well as the evil in the spiritual, by the resistance of matter to the formative influence of God. In this way only he thought he could account for the origin of evil. For if God had made the world out of nothing, it must be all good. He taught that Christ on his ascension left his body in the sun, and then ascended to the Father.915   But otherwise he was orthodox and did not wish to separate from the church.

§ 134. Other Gnostic Sects.

The ancient fathers, especially Hippolytus and Epiphanius, mention several other Gnostic sects under various designations.

1. The Docetae or Docetists taught that the body of Christ was not real flesh and blood, but merely a deceptive, transient phantom, and consequently that he did not really suffer and die and rise again. Hippolytus gives an account of the system of this sect. But the name applied as well to most Gnostics, especially to Basilides, Saturninus, Valentinus, Marcion, and the Manichaeans. Docetism was a characteristic feature of the first antichristian errorists whom St. John had in view (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7).916

2. The name Antitactae or Antitactes, denotes the licentious antinomian Gnostics, rather than the followers of any single master, to whom the term can be traced.917

3. The Prodicians, so named from their supposed founder, Prodicus, considered themselves the royal family,918and, in crazy self-conceit, thought themselves above the law, the sabbath, and every form of worship, even above prayer itself, which was becoming only to the ignorant mass. They resembled the Nicolaitans and Antitactae, and were also called Adamites, Barbelitae, Borboriani, Coddiani, Phibionitae, and by other unintelligible names.919

Almost every form of immorality and lawlessness seems to have been practiced under the sanction of religion by the baser schools of Gnosticism, and the worst errors and organized vices of modern times were anticipated by them. Hence we need not be surprised at the uncompromising opposition of the ancient fathers to this radical corruption and perversion of Christianity.

§ 135. Mani and the Manichaeans.

Sources.

I. Oriental Sources: The most important, though of comparatively late date. (a) Mohammedan (Arabic): Kitâb al Fihrist. A history of Arabic literature to 987, by an Arab of Bagdad, usually called Ibn Abi Jakub An-Nadîm; brought to light by Flügel, and published after his death by Rödiger and Müller, in 2 vols. Leipz. 1871–’72. Book IX. section first, treats of Manichaeism. Flügel’s transl. see below. Kessler calls Fihrist a "Fundstätte allerersten Ranges." Next to it comes the relation of the Mohamedan philosopher Al-Shahrastanî (d. 1153), in his History of Religious Parties and Philosophical Sects, ed. Cureton, Lond. 1842, 2 vols. (I. 188–192); German translation by Haarbrücker. Halle, 1851. On other Mohammedan sources see Kessler in Herzog2, IX. 225 sq. (b) Persian sources, relating to the life of Mani; the Shâhnâmeh (the Kings’ Book) of Firdausî, ed. by Jul. Mohl. Paris, 1866 (V. 472–475). See Kessler, ibid. 225. c) Christian Sources: In Arabic, the Alexandrian Patriarch Eutychius (d. 916), Annales, ed. Pococke. Oxon. 1628; Barhebraeus (d. 1286), in his Historia Dynastiarum, ed. Pococke. In Syriac: Ephraem Syrus (d. 393), in various writings Esnig or Esnik, an Armenian bishop of the 5th century, who wrote against Marcion and Mani (German translation from the Armenian by C. Fr. Neumann in Illgen’s "Zeitschrift für die Hist. Theol." 1834, p. 77–78).

II. Greek Sources: Eusebius (H. E. VII. 31, a brief account). Epiphanius (Haer. 66). Cyril Of Jerusal. (Catech. VI. 20 sqq.). Titus of Bostra (pro;" Manicaivou", ed. P. de Lafarde, 1859). Photius: Adv. Manichœos (Cod. 179 Biblioth.). John Of Damascus: De Haeres. and Dial.

III. Latin Sources: Archelaus (Bishop of Cascar in Mesopotamia, d. about 278): Acta Disputationis cum Manete haeresiarcha; first written in Syriac, and so far belonging to the Oriental Christian sources (Comp. Jerome, De vir. ill. 72), but extant only in a Latin translation, which seems to have been made from the Greek, edited by Zacagni (Rom. 1698) and Routh (in Reliquiae Sacrae., vol. V. 3–206), Engl. transl. in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library" (vol. XX. 272–419). These Acts purport to contain the report of a disputation between Archelaus and Mani before a large assembly, which was in fall sympathy with the orthodox bishop, but (as Beausobre first proved) they are in form a fiction from the first quarter of the fourth century (about 320) by a Syrian ecclesiastic (probably of Edessa), yet based upon Manichaean documents, and containing much information about Manichaean doctrines. They consist of various pieces, and were the chief source of information to the West. Mani is represented (ch. 12) as appearing in a many-colored cloak and trousers, with a sturdy staff of ebony, a Babylonian book under his left arm, and with a mien of an old Persian master. In his defense he quotes freely from the N. T. At the end he makes his escape to Persia (ch. 55). Comp. H. V. Zittwitz: Die Acta Archelai et Manetis untersucht, in Kahnis’ "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." 1873, No. IV. Oblasinski: Acta Disput. Arch., etc. Lips. 1874 (inaugural dissert.). Ad. Harnack: Die Acta Archelai und das Diatessaron Tatians, in "Texte und Untersuch. zur Gesch. der altchristl. Lit." vol. I. Heft. 3 (1883), p. 137–153. Harnack tries to prove that the Gospel quotations of Archelaus are taken from Tatian’s Diatessaron. Comp. also his Dogmengeschichte, I. (1886), 681–694.

St. Augustin (d. 430, the chief Latin authority next to the translation of Archelaus): Contra Epistolam Manichaei; Contra Faustum Manich., and other anti-Manichaean writings, in the 8th vol. of the Benedictine edition of his Opera. English translation in Schaff’s "Nicene and Post-Nicene Library," Vol. IV., N. York, 1887.

Comp. also the Acts of Councils against the Manich. from the fourth century onward, in Mansi and Hefele.

Modern Works:

*Isaac De Beausobre ( b. 1659 in France, pastor of the French church in Berlin, d. 1738): Histoire crit. de Manichée et du Manichéisme. Amst. 1734 and 39. 2 vols. 4º. Part of the first vol. is historical, the second doctrinal. Very full and scholarly. He intended to write a third volume on the later Manichaeans.

*F. Chr. Baur: Das Manichaeische Religionssystem nach den Quellen neu untersucht und entwickelt. Tüb. 1831 (500 pages). A comprehensive Philosophical and critical view. He calls the Manich. system a "glühend prächtiges Natur- und Weltgedicht."

Trechsel: Ueber Kanon, Kritik, und Exegese der Manichäer. Bern, 1832.

D. Chwolson: Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus. Petersb. 1856, 2 vols.

*Gust. Flügel (d. 1870): Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften. Aus dem Fihrist des Abî Jakub an-Nadîm (987). Leipz. 1862. Text, translation, and Commentary, 440 pages.

Fr. Spiegel: Eranische Alterthumskunde, vol.II. 1873, p. 185–232.

Alex. Geyler: Das System des Manichäisimus und sein Verh. zum Buddhismus. Jena, 1875.

*K. Kessler: Untersuchungen zur Genesis des manich. Rel. systems. Leipz. 1876. By the same: Mânî oder Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Religionsmischung im Semitismus. Leipz. 1882. See also his thorough art. Mâni und die Manichäer, in "Herzog," new ed., vol. IX. 223–259 (abridged in Schaff’s "Encycl." II. 1396–1398).

G. T. Stokes: Manes, and Manichaeans in "Smith and Wace," III. 792–801.

Ad. Harnack: Manichaeism, in the 9th ed. of the "Encycl. Britannica, vol. XV. (1883), 481–487.

The accounts of Mosheim, Lardner, Schröckh, Walch, Neander, Gieseler.

We come now to the latest, the best organized, the most consistent, tenacious and dangerous form of Gnosticism, with which Christianity had to wage a long conflict. Manichaeism was not only a school, like the older forms of Gnosticism, but a rival religion and a rival church. In this respect it resembled Islam which at a later period became a still more formidable rival of Christianity; both claimed to be divine revelations, both engrafted pseudo-Christian elements on a heathen stock, but the starting point was radically different: Manichaeism being anti-Jewish and dualistic, Mohammedanism, pseudo-Jewish and severely and fanatically monotheistic.

First the external history.

The origin of Manichaeism is matter of obscure and confused tradition. It is traced to Mani (Manes, Manichaeus),920 a Persian philosopher, astronomer, and painter,921 of the third century (215–277), who came over to Christianity, or rather introduced some Christian elements into the Zoroastrian religion, and thus stirred up an intellectual and moral revolution among his countrymen. According to Arabic Mohammedan sources, he was the son of Fatak (Pavtekio"), a high-born Persian of Hamadan (Ecbatana), who emigrated to Ctesiphon in Babylonia. Here he received a careful education. He belonged originally to the Judaizing Gnostic sect of the Mandaeans or Elkesaites (the Mogtasilah, i.e. Baptists); but in his nineteenth and again in his twenty-fourth year (238) a new religion was divinely revealed to him. In his thirtieth year he began to preach his syncretistic creed, undertook long journeys and sent out disciples. He proclaimed himself to be the last and highest prophet of God and the Paraclete promised by Christ (as Mohammed did six hundred years later). He began his "Epistola Fundamenti," in which he propounded his leading doctrines, with the words: "Mani, the apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are the words of salvation from the eternal and living source." He composed many books in the Persian and Syriac languages and in an alphabet of his own invention but they are all lost.922

At first Mani found favor at the court of the Persian king Shapur I. (Sapor), but stirred up the hatred of the priestly cast of the Magians. He fled to East India and China and became acquainted with Buddhism. Indeed, the name of Buddha is interwoven with the legendary history of the Manichaean system. His disputations with Archelaus in Mesopotamia are a fiction, like the pseudo-Clementine disputations of Simon Magus with Peter, but on a better historic foundation and with an orthodox aim of the writer.923

In the year 270 Mani returned to Persia, and won many followers by his symbolic (pictorial) illustrations of the doctrines, which he pretended had been revealed to him by God. But in a disputation with the Magians, he was convicted of corrupting the old religion, and thereupon was crucified, or flayed alive by order of king Behram I. (Veranes) about 277; his skin was stuffed and hung up for a terror at the gate of the city Djondishapur (or Gundeshapur), since called "the gate of Mani."924  His followers were cruelly persecuted by the king.

Soon after Mani’s horrible death his sect spread in Turkistan, Mesopotamia, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Spain. As it moved westward it assumed a more Christian character, especially in North Africa. It was everywhere persecuted in the Roman empire, first by Diocletian (A. D. 287), and afterwards by the Christian emperors. Nevertheless it flourished till the sixth century and even later. Persecution of heresy always helps heresy unless the heretics are exterminated.

The mysteriousness of its doctrine, its compact organization, the apparent solution of the terrible problem of evil, and the show of ascetic holiness sometimes were the chief points of attraction. Even such a profound and noble spirit as St. Augustin was nine years an auditor of the sect before he was converted to the Catholic church. He sought there a deeper philosophy of religion and became acquainted with the gifted and eloquent Faustus of Numidia, but was disappointed and found him a superficial charlatan. Another Manichaean, by the name of Felix, he succeeded in converting to the Catholic faith in a public disputation of two days at Hippo. His connection with Manichaeism enabled him in his polemic writings to refute it and to develop the doctrines of the relation of knowledge and faith, of reason and revelation, the freedom of will, the origin of evil and its relation to the divine government. Thus here, too, error was overruled for the promotion of truth.

Pope Leo I. searched for these heretics in Rome, and with the aid of the magistrate brought many to punishment. Valentinian III. punished them by banishment, Justinian by death. The violent and persistent persecutions at last destroyed their organization. But their system extended its influence throughout the middle ages down to the thirteenth century, reappearing, under different modifications, with a larger infusion of Christian elements, in the Priscillianists, Paulieians, Bogomiles, Albigenses, Catharists and other sects, which were therefore called "New Manichaeans." Indeed some of the leading features of Manichaeism—the dualistic separation of soul and body, the ascription of nature to the devil, the pantheistic confusion of the moral and physical, the hypocritical symbolism, concealing heathen views under Christian phrases, the haughty air of mystery, and the aristocratic distinction of esoteric and exoteric—still live in various forms even in modern systems of philosophy and sects of religion.925

§ 136. The Manichaean System.

Manichaeism is a compound of dualistic, pantheistic, Gnostic, and ascetic elements, combined with a fantastic philosophy of nature, which gives the whole system a materialistic character, notwithstanding its ascetic abhorrence of matter. The metaphysical foundation is a radical dualism between good and evil, light and darkness, derived from the Persian Zoroastrism (as restored by the school of the Magasaeans under the reign of the second Sassanides towards the middle of the second century). The prominent ethical feature is a rigid asceticism which strongly resembles Buddhism.926  The Christian element is only a superficial varnish (as in Mohammedanism). The Jewish religion is excluded altogether (while in Mohammedanism it forms a very important feature), and the Old Testament is rejected, as inspired by the devil and his false prophets. The chief authorities were apocryphal Gospels and the writings of Mani.

1. The Manichaean theology begins with an irreconcilable antagonism between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. And this is identified with the ethical dualism between good and bad. These two kingdoms stood opposed to each other from eternity, remaining unmingled. Then Satan who with his demons was born from darkness, began to rage and made an assault upon the kingdom of light. From this incursion resulted the present world, which exhibits a mixture of the two elements detached portions of light imprisoned in darkness. Adam was created in the image of Satan, but with a strong spark of light, and was provided by Satan with Eve as his companion, who represents seductive sensuousness, but also with a spark of light, though smaller than that in Adam. Cain and Abel are sons of Satan and Eve, but Seth is the offspring of Adam by Eve, and full of light. Thus mankind came into existence with different shares of light, the men with more, the women with less. Every individual man is at once a son of light and of darkness, has a good soul, and a body substantially evil, with an evil soul corresponding to it. The redemption of the light from the bonds of the darkness is effected by Christ, who is identical with the sun spirit, and by the Holy Ghost, who has his seat in the ether. These two beings attract the lightforces out of the material world, while the prince of darkness, and the spirits imprisoned in the stars, seek to keep them back. The sun and moon are the two shining ships (lucidae naves) for conducting the imprisoned light into the eternal kingdom of light. The full moon represents the ship laden with light; the new moon, the vessel emptied of its cargo; and the twelve signs of the zodiac also serve as buckets in this pumping operation.

The Manichaean christology, like the Gnostic, is entirely docetic, and, by its perverted view of body and matter, wholly excludes the idea of an incarnation of God. The teachings of Christ were compiled and falsified by the apostles in the Spirit of Judaism. Mani, the promised Paraclete, has restored them. The goal of history is an entire separation of the light from the darkness; a tremendous conflagration consumes the world, and the kingdom of darkness sinks into impotence.

Thus Christianity is here resolved into a fantastic dualistic, and yet pantheistic philosophy of nature; moral regeneration is identified with a process of physical refinement; and the whole mystery of redemption is found in light, which was always worshipped in the East as the symbol of deity. Unquestionably there pervades the Manichaean system a kind of groaning of the creature for redemption, and a deep sympathy with nature, that hieroglyphic of spirit; but all is distorted and confused. The suffering Jesus on the cross (Jesus patibilis) is here a mere illusion, a symbol of the world-soul still enchained in matter, and is seen in every plant which works upwards from the dark bosom of the earth towards the light, towards bloom and fruit, yearning after freedom. Hence the class of the "perfect" would not kill nor wound a beast, pluck a flower, nor break a blade of grass. The system, instead of being, as it pretends, a liberation of light from darkness, is really a turning of light into darkness.

2. The morality of the Manichaeans was severely ascetic, based on the fundamental error of the intrinsic evil of matter and the body; the extreme opposite of the Pelagian view of the essential moral purity of human nature.927  The great moral aim is, to become entirely unworldly in the Buddhistic sense; to renounce and destroy corporeity; to set the good soul free from the fetters of matter. This is accomplished by the most rigid and gloomy abstinence from all those elements which have their source in the sphere of darkness. It was, however, only required of the elect, not of catechumens. A distinction was made between a higher and lower morality similar to that in the catholic church. The perfection of the elect consisted in a threefold seal or preservative (signaculum).928

(a) The signaculum oris, that is, purity in words and in diet, abstinence from all animal food and strong drink, even in the holy supper, and restriction to vegetable diet, which was furnished to the perfect by the "bearers," particularly olives, as their oil is the food of light.

(b) The signaculum manuum: renunciation of earthly property, and of material and industrial pursuits, even agriculture; with a sacred reverence for the divine light-life diffused through all nature.

(c) The signaculum sinus, or celibacy, and abstinence from any gratification of sensual desire. Marriage, or rather procreation, is a contamination with corporeity, which is essentially evil.

This unnatural holiness of the elect at the same time atoned for the unavoidable daily sins of the catechumens who paid them the greatest reverence. It was accompanied, however, as in the Gnostics, with an excessive pride of knowledge, and if we are to believe the catholic opponents, its fair show not rarely concealed refined forms of vice.

3. Organization. Manichaeism differed from all the Gnostic schools in having a fixed, and that a strictly hierarchical, organization. This accounts in large measure for its tenacity and endurance. At the head of the sect stood twelve apostles, or magistri, among whom Mani and his successors, like Peter and the pope, held the chief place. Under them were seventy-two bishops, answering to the seventy-two (strictly seventy) disciples of Jesus; and under these came presbyters, deacons and itinerant evangelists.929  In the congregation there were two distinct classes, designed to correspond to the catechumens and the faithful in the catholic church: the "hearers;"930 and the "perfect," the esoteric, the priestly caste,931 which represents the last stage in the process of liberation of the spirit and its separation from the world, the transition from the kingdom of matter into the kingdom of light, or in Buddhistic terms, from the world of Sansara into Nirwana.

4. The worship of the Manichaeans was, on the whole, very simple. They had no sacrifices, but four daily prayers, preceded by ablations, and accompanied by prostrations, the worshipper turned towards the sun or moon as the seat of light. They observed Sunday, in honor of the sun, which was with them the same with the redeemer; but, contrary to the custom of the catholic Christians, they made it a day of fasting. They had weekly, monthly, and yearly fasts. They rejected the church festivals, but instead celebrated in March with great pomp the day of the martyrdom of their divinely appointed teacher, Mani.932  The sacraments were mysteries of the elect, of which even Augustin could learn very little. Hence it has been disputed whether they used baptism or not, and whether they baptized by water, or oil. Probably they practised water baptism and anointing, and regarded the latter as a higher spiritual baptism, or distinguished both as baptism and confirmation in the catholic church.933  They also celebrated a kind of holy supper, sometimes even under disguise in catholic churches, but without wine (because Christ had no blood), and regarding it perhaps, according to their pantheistic symbolism, as the commemoration of the light-soul crucified in all nature. Their sign of recognition was the extension of the right hand as symbol of common deliverance from the kingdom of darkness by the redeeming hand of the spirit of the sun.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY.

§ 137. Catholic Orthodoxy.

I. Sources: The doctrinal and polemical writings of the ante-Nicene fathers, especially Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement Of Alex., and Origen.

II. Literature: The relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History by Petravius, Münscher, Neander, Giesler, Baur, Hagenbach, Shedd, Nitzsch, Harnack (first vol. 1886; 2d ed. 1888).

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862.

Edm. De Pressensé: Heresy and Christian Doctrine, transl. by Annie Harwood. Lond. 1873.

The special literature see below. Comp. also the Lit. in Ch. XIII.

By the wide-spread errors described in the preceding chapter, the church was challenged to a mighty intellectual combat, from which she came forth victorious, according to the promise of her Lord, that the Holy Spirit should guide her into the whole truth. To the subjective, baseless, and ever-changing speculations, dreams, and fictions of the heretics, she opposed the substantial, solid realities of the divine revelation. Christian theology grew, indeed, as by inward necessity, from the demand of faith for knowledge. But heresy, Gnosticism in particular, gave it a powerful impulse from without, and came as a fertilizing thunder-storm upon the field. The church possessed the truth from the beginning, in the experience of faith, and in the Holy Scriptures, which she handed down with scrupulous fidelity from generation to generation. But now came the task of developing the substance of the Christian truth in theoretical form 934fortifying it on all sides, and presenting it in clear light before the understanding. Thus the Christian polemic and dogmatic theology, or the church’s logical apprehension of the doctrines of salvation, unfolded itself in this conflict with heresy; as the apologetic literature and martyrdom had arisen through Jewish and heathen persecution.

From this time forth the distinction between catholic and heretical, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the faith of the church and dissenting private opinion, became steadily more prominent. Every doctrine which agreed with the holy scriptures and the faith of the church, was received as catholic; that is, universal, and exclusive.935  Whatever deviated materially from this standard, every arbitrary notion, framed by this or that individual, every distortion or corruption of the revealed doctrines of Christianity, every departure from the public sentiment of the church, was considered heresy..936

Almost all the church fathers came out against the contemporary heresies, with arguments from scripture, with the tradition of the church, and with rational demonstration, proving them inwardly inconsistent and absurd.

But in doing this, while they are one in spirit and purpose, they pursue two very different courses, determined by the differences between the Greek and Roman nationality, and by peculiarities of mental organization and the appointment of Providence. The Greek theology, above all the Alexandrian, represented by Clement and Origen, is predominantly idealistic and speculative, dealing with the objective doctrines of God, the incarnation, the trinity, and christology; endeavoring to supplant the false gnosis by a true knowledge, an orthodox philosophy, resting on the Christian pistis. It was strongly influenced by Platonic speculation in the Logos doctrine. The Latin theology, particularly the North African, whose most distinguished representatives are Tertullian and Cyprian, is more realistic and practical, concerned with the doctrines of human nature and of salvation, and more directly hostile to Gnosticism and philosophy. With this is connected the fact, that the Greek fathers were first philosophers; the Latin were mostly lawyers and statesmen; the former reached the Christian faith in the way of speculation, the latter in the spirit of practical morality. Characteristically, too, the Greek church built mainly upon the apostle John, pre-eminently the contemplative "divine;" the Latin upon Peter, the practical leader of the church. While Clement of Alexandria and Origen often wander away into cloudy, almost Gnostic speculation, and threaten to resolve the real substance of the Christian ideas into thin spiritualism, Tertullian sets himself implacably against Gnosticism and the heathen philosophy upon which it rests. "What fellowship," he asks, "is there between Athens and Jerusalem, the academy and the church, heretics and Christians?"  But this difference was only relative. With all their spiritualism, the Alexandrians still committed themselves to a striking literalism; while, in spite of his aversion to philosophy, Tertullian labored with profound speculative ideas which came to their full birth in Augustin.

Irenaeus, who sprang from the Eastern church, and used the Greek language, but labored in the West, holds a kind of mediating position between the two branches of the church, and may be taken as, on the whole, the most moderate and sound representative of ecclesiastical orthodoxy in the ante-Nicene period. He is as decided against Gnosticism as Tertullian, without overlooking the speculative want betrayed in that system. His refutation of the Gnosis, 937written between 177 and 192, is the leading polemic work of the second century. In the first book of this work Irenaeus gives a full account of the Valentinian system of Gnosis; in the second book be begins his refutation in philosophical and logical style; in the third, he brings against the system the catholic tradition and the holy, scriptures, and vindicates the orthodox doctrine of the unity of God, the creation of the world, the incarnation of the Logos, against the docetic denial of the true humanity of Christ and the Ebionitic denial of his true divinity; in the fourth book he further fortifies the same doctrines, and, against the antinomianism of the school of Marcion, demonstrates the unity of the Old and New Testaments; in the fifth and last book he presents his views on eschatology, particularly on the resurrection of the body—so offensive to the Gnostic spiritualism—and at the close treats of Antichrist, the end of the world, the intermediate state, and the millennium.

His disciple Hippolytus gives us, in the "Philosophumena," a still fuller account, in many respects, of the early heresies, and traces them up to, their sources in the heathen systems of philosophy, but does not go so deep into the exposition of the catholic doctrines of the church.

The leading effort in this polemic literature was, of course, to develop and establish positively the Christian truth; which is, at the same time, to refute most effectually the opposite error. The object was, particularly, to settle the doctrines of the rule of faith, the incarnation of God, and the true divinity and true humanity of Christ. In this effort the mind of the church, under the constant guidance of the divine word and the apostolic tradition, steered with unerring instinct between the threatening cliffs. Yet no little indefiniteness and obscurity still prevailed in the scientific apprehension and statement of these points. In this stormy time, too, there were as yet no general councils to, settle doctrinal controversy by the voice of the whole church. The dogmas of the trinity and the person of Christ, did not reach maturity and final symbolical definition until the following period, or the Nicene age.

Notes on Heresy.

The term heresy is derived from ai{resi" which means originally either capture (from aiJrevw), or election, choice (from aiJrevomai), and assumed the additional idea of arbitrary opposition to public opinion and authority. In the N. Test. it designates a chosen way of life, a school or sect or party, not necessarily in a bad sense, and is applied to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Christians as a Jewish sect (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5; 28:22); then it signifies discord, arising from difference of opinion (Gal. 5:20; 1 Cor. 11:19); and lastly error (2 Pet. 2:1, aiJrevsei" ajpwleiva" destructive heresies, or sects of perdition). This passage comes nearest to the ecclesiastical definition. The term heretic (aiJretiko;" a[nqrwpo") occurs only once, Tit 3:10, and means a factious man, a sectary, a partisan, rather than an errorist.

Constantine the Great still speaks of the Christian church as a sect, hJ ai{resi" hJ kaqolikhv, hJ aJgiwtavth ai{resi" (in a letter to Chrestus, bishop of Syracuse, in Euseb, H. E. X. c. 5, § 21 and 22, in Heinichen’s ed. I, 491). But after him church and sect became opposites, the former term being confined to the one ruling body, the latter to dissenting minorities.

The fathers commonly use heresy of false teaching, in opposition to Catholic doctrine, and schism of a breach of discipline, in opposition to Catholic government. The ancient heresiologists—mostly uncritical, credulous, and bigoted, though honest and pious, zealots for a narrow orthodoxy—unreasonably multiplied the heresies by extending them beyond the limits of Christianity, and counting all modifications and variations separately. Philastrius or Philastrus, bishop. of Brescia or Brixia (d. 387), in his Liber de Haeresibus, numbered 28 Jewish and 128 Christian heresies; Epiphanius of Cyprus (d. 403), in his Panavrion. 80 heresies in all, 20 before and 60 after Christ; Augustin (d. 430), 88 Christian heresies, including Pelagianism; Proedestinatus, 90, including Pelagianism and Nestorianism. (Pope Pius IX. condemned 80 modern heresies, in his Syllabus of Errors, 1864.)  Augustin says that it is "altogether impossible, or at any rate most difficult" to define heresy, and wisely adds that the spirit in which error is held, rather than error itself, constitutes heresy. There are innocent as well as guilty errors. Moreover, a great many people are better than their creed or no-creed, and a great many are worse than their creed, however orthodox it may be. The severest words of our Lord were directed against the hypocritical orthodoxy of the Pharisees. In the course of time heresy was defined to be a religious error held in wilful and persistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared by the church in an authoritative manner, or "pertinax defensio dogmatis ecclesiae universalis judicio condemnati." Speculations on open questions of theology are no heresies Origen was no heretic in his age, but was condemned long after his death.

In the present divided state of Christendom there are different kinds of orthodoxy and heresy. Orthodoxy is conformity to a recognized creed or standard of public doctrine; heresy is a wilful departure from it. The Greek church rejects the Roman dogmas of the papacy, of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and the infallibility of the Pope, as heretical, because contrary to the teaching of the first seven oecumenical councils. The Roman church anathematized, in the Council of Trent, all the distinctive doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. Evangelical Protestants on the other hand regard the unscriptural traditions of the Greek and Roman churches as heretical. Among Protestant churches again there are minor doctrinal differences, which are held with various degrees of exclusiveness or liberality according to the degree of departure from the Roman Catholic church. Luther, for instance, would not tolerate Zwingli’s view on the Lord’s Supper, while Zwingli was willing to fraternize with him notwithstanding this difference. The Lutheran Formula of Concord, and the Calvinistic Synod of Dort rejected and condemned doctrines which are now held with impunity in orthodox evangelical churches. The danger of orthodoxy lies in the direction of exclusive and uncharitable bigotry, which contracts the truth; the danger of liberalism lies in the direction of laxity and indifferentism, which obliterates the eternal distinction between truth and error.

The apostles, guided by more than human wisdom, and endowed with more than ecclesiastical authority, judged severely of every essential departure from the revealed truth of salvation. Paul pronounced the anathema on the Judaizing teachers, who made circumcision a term of true church membership (Gal. 1:8), and calls them sarcastically "dogs" of the "concision" (Phil. 3:2, blevpete tou;" kuvna" ... th'" katatomh'"). He warned the elders of Ephesus against "grievous wolves" (luvkoi barei'") who would after his departure enter among them (Acts 20:29); and he characterizes the speculations of the rising gnosis falsely so called (yeudwvnumo" gnw'si") as "doctrines of demons" (didaskalivai daimonivwn, 1 Tim. 4:1; Comp. 6:3–20; 2 Tim. 3:1 sqq.; 4:3 sqq.). John warns with equal earnestness and severity against all false teachers who deny the fact of the incarnation, and calls them antichrists (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7); and the second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude describe the heretics in the darkest colors.

We need not wonder, then, that the ante-Nicene fathers held the gnostic heretics of their days in the greatest abhorrence, and called them servants of Satan, beasts in human shape, dealers in deadly poison, robbers, and pirates. Polycarp (Ad Phil.c. 7), Ignatius (Ad Smyrn. c. 4), Justin M. (Apol. I. c. 26), Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III. 3, 4), Hippolytus, Tertullian, even Clement of Alexandria, and Origen occupy essentially the same position of uncompromising hostility towards heresy is the fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. They regard it as the tares sown by the devil in the Lord’s field (Matt. 13:3–6 sqq). Hence Tertullian infers, "That which was first delivered is of the Lord and is true; whilst that is strange and false which was afterwards introduced" (Praescr. c. 31:  "Ex ipso ordine manifestatur, id esse dominicum et verum quod sit prius traditum, id autem extraneum et falsum quod sit posterius inmissum"). There is indeed a necessity for heresies and sects (1 Cor. 11:19), but "woe to that man through whom the offence cometh" (Matt. 18:7). "It was necessary," says Tertullian (ib. 30), "that the Lord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor."

Another characteristic feature of patristic polemics is to trace heresy, to mean motives, such as pride, disappointed ambition, sensual lust, and avarice. No allowance is made for different mental constitutions, educational influences, and other causes. There are, however, a few noble exceptions. Origen and Augustin admit the honesty and earnestness at least of some teachers of error.

We must notice two important points of difference between the ante-Nicene and later heresies, and the mode of punishing heresy.

1. The chief ante-Nicene heresies were undoubtedly radical perversions of Christian truth and admitted of no kind of compromise. Ebionism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism were essentially anti-Christian. The church could not tolerate that medley of pagan sense and nonsense without endangering its very existence. But Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Quartodecimanians, and other sects who differed on minor points of doctrine or discipline, were judged more mildly, and their baptism was acknowledged.

2. The punishment of heresy in the ante-Nicene church was purely ecclesiastical, and consisted in reproof, deposition, and excommunication. It had no effect on the civil status.

But as soon as church and state began to be united, temporal punishments, such as confiscation of property, exile, and death, were added by the civil magistrate with the approval of the church, in imitation of the Mosaic code, but in violation of the spirit and example of Christ and the apostles. Constantine opened the way in some edicts against the Donatists, A.D. 316. Valentinian I. forbade the public worship of Manichaeans (371). After the defeat of the Arians by the second Œcumenical Council, Theodosius the Great enforced uniformity of belief by legal penalties in fifteen edicts between 381 and 394. Honorius (408), Arcadius, the younger Theodosius, and Justinian (529) followed in the same path. By these imperial enactments heretics, i.e. open dissenters from the imperial state-religion, were deprived of all public offices, of the right of public worship, of receiving or bequeathing properly, of making binding contracts; they were subjected to fines, banishment, corporeal punishment, and even death. See the Theos. Code, Book XVI. tit. V. De Haereticis. The first sentence of death by the sword for heresy was executed on Priscillian and six of his followers who held Manichaean opinions (385). The better feeling of Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours protested against this act, but in vain. Even the great and good St. Augustin, although he had himself been a heretic for nine years, defended the principle of religious persecution, on a false exegesis of Cogite eos intrare, Luke 14:23 (Ep. 93 ad Vinc.; Ep. 185 ad Bonif., Retract. II. 5.). Had he foreseen the crusade against the Albigenses and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, he would have retracted his dangerous opinion. A theocratic or Erastian state-church theory—whether Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic or Protestant—makes all offences against the church offences against the state, and requires their punishment with more or less severity according to the prevailing degree of zeal for orthodoxy and hatred of heresy. But in the overruling Providence of God which brings good out of every evil, the bloody persecution of heretics—one of the darkest chapters in church history—has produced the sweet fruit of religious liberty. See vol. III. 138–146.

§ 138. The Holy Scriptures and the Canon.

The works on the Canon by Reuss, Westcott, (6th ed., 1889), Zahn, (1888). Holtzmann: Kanon u. Tradition, 1859. Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version. N. York and London, 1883; third ed. 1888. Gregory: Prolegomena to Tischendorf’s 8th ed. of the Greek Test. Lips., 1884. A. Harnack: Das N. Test. um das jahr 200. Leipz., 1889.

The question of the source and rule of Christian knowledge lies at the foundation of all theology. We therefore notice it here before passing to the several doctrines of faith.

1. This source and this rule of knowledge are the holy scriptures of the Old and New Covenants.938  Here at once arises the inquiry as to the number and arrangement of the sacred writings, or the canon, in distinction both from the productions of enlightened but not inspired church teachers, and from the very numerous and in some cases still extant apocryphal works (Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses), which were composed in the first four centuries, in the interest of heresies or for the satisfaction of idle curiosity, and sent forth under the name of an apostle or other eminent person. These apocrypha, however, did not all originate with Ebionites and Gnostics; some were merely designed either to fill chasms in the history of Jesus and the apostles by fictitious stories, or to glorify Christianity by vaticinia post eventum, in the way of pious fraud at that time freely allowed.

The canon of the Old Testament descended to the church from the Jews, with the sanction of Christ and the apostles. The Jewish Apocrypha were included in the Septuagint and passed from it into Christian versions. The, New Testament canon was gradually formed, on the model of the Old, in the course of the first four centuries, under the guidance of the same Spirit, through whose suggestion the several apostolic books had been prepared. The first trace of it appears in 2 Peter 3:15, where a collection of Paul’s epistles939 is presumed to exist, and is placed by the side of "the other scriptures."940  The apostolic fathers and the earlier apologists commonly appeal, indeed, for the divinity of Christianity to the Old Testament, to the oral preaching of the apostles, to the living faith of the Christian churches, the triumphant death of the martyrs, and the continued miracles. Yet their works contain quotations, generally without the name of the author, from the most important writings of the apostles, or at least allusions to those writings, enough to place their high antiquity and ecclesiastical authority beyond all reasonable doubt.941  The heretical canon of the Gnostic Marcion, of the middle of the second century, consisting of a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s epistles, certainly implies the existence of an orthodox canon at that time, as heresy always presupposes truth, of which it is a caricature.

The principal books of the New Testament, the four Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of Peter, and the first of John, which are designated by Eusebius as "Homologumena," were in general use in the church after the middle of the second century, and acknowledged to be apostolic, inspired by the Spirit of Christ, and therefore authoritative and canonical. This is established by the testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, of the Syriac Peshito (which omits only Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and the Revelation), the old Latin Versions (which include all books but 2 Peter, Hebrews, and perhaps James and the Fragment of Muratori;942 also by the heretics, and the heathen opponent Celsus—persons and documents which represent in this matter the churches in Asia Minor, Italy, Gaul, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. We may therefore call these books the original canon.

Concerning the other seven books, the "Antilegomena" of Eusebius, viz. the Epistle to the Hebrews,943 the Apocalypse,944 the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of Jude,—the tradition of the church in the time of Eusebius, the beginning of the fourth century, still wavered between acceptance and rejection. But of the two oldest manuscripts of the Greek Testament which date from the age of Eusebius and Constantine, one—the Sinaitic—contains all the twenty-seven books, and the other—the Vatican—was probably likewise complete, although the last chapters of Hebrews (from Heb.11:14), the Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, and Revelation are lost. There was a second class of Antilegomena, called by Eusebius "spurious" (novqa), consisting of several post-apostolic writings, viz. the catholic Epistle of Barnabas, the first Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Shepherd of Hermas, the lost Apocalypse of Peter, and the Gospel of the Hebrews; which were read at least in some churches but were afterwards generally separated from the canon. Some of them are even incorporated in the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, as the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Shepherd of Hermas (both in the original Greek) in the Codex Sinaiticus, and the first Epistle of Clement of Rome in the Codex Alexandrinus.

The first express definition of the New Testament canon, in the form in which it has since been universally retained, comes from two African synods, held in 393 at Hippo, and 397 at Carthage, in the presence of Augustin, who exerted a commanding influence on all the theological questions of his age. By that time, at least, the whole church must have already become nearly unanimous as to the number of the canonical books; so that there seemed to be no need even of the sanction of a general council. The Eastern church, at all events, was entirely independent of the North African in the matter. The Council of Laodicea (363) gives a list of the books of our New Testament with the exception of the Apocalypse. The last canon which contains this list, is probably a later addition, yet the long-established ecclesiastical use of all the books, with some doubts as to the Apocalypse, is confirmed by the scattered testimonies of all the great Nicene and post Nicene fathers, as Athanasius (d. 373), Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386), Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 389), Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), Chrysostom (d. 407), etc.945  The name Novum Testamentum,946 also Novum Instrumentum (a juridical term conveying the idea of legal validity), occurs first in Tertullian, and came into general use instead of the more correct term New Covenant. The books were currently divided into two parts, "the Gospel"947 and "the Apostle," and the Epistles, in the second part, into Catholic or General, and Pauline. The Catholic canon thus settled remained untouched till the time of the Reformation when the question of the Apocrypha and of the Antilegomena was reopened and the science of biblical criticism was born. But the most thorough investigations of modern times have not been able to unsettle the faith of the church in the New Testament, nor ever will.

2. As to the origin and character of the apostolic writings, the church fathers adopted for the New Testament the somewhat mechanical and magical theory of inspiration applied by the Jews to the Old; regarding the several books as composed with such extraordinary aid from the Holy Spirit as secured their freedom from errors (according to Origen, even from faults of memory). Yet this was not regarded as excluding the writer’s own activity and individuality. Irenaeus, for example, sees in Paul a peculiar style, which he attributes to the mighty flow of thought in his ardent mind. The Alexandrians, however, enlarged the idea of inspiration to a doubtful breadth. Clement of Alexandria calls the works of Plato inspired, because they contain truth; and he considers all that is beautiful and good in history, a breath of the infinite, a tone, which the divine Logos draws forth from the lyre of the human soul.

As a production of the inspired organs, of divine revelation, the sacred scriptures, without critical distinction between the Old and New Covenants, were acknowledged and employed against heretics as an infallible source of knowledge and an unerring rule of Christian faith and practice. Irenaeus calls the Gospel a pillar and ground of the truth. Tertullian demands scripture proof for every doctrine, and declares, that heretics cannot stand on pure scriptural ground. In Origen’s view nothing deserves credit which cannot be confirmed by the testimony of scripture.

3. The exposition of the Bible was at first purely practical, and designed for direct edification. The controversy with the Gnostics called for a more scientific method. Both the orthodox and heretics, after the fashion of the rabbinical and Alexandrian Judaism, made large use of allegorical and mystical interpretation, and not rarely lost themselves amid the merest fancies and wildest vagaries. The fathers generally, with a few exceptions, (Chrysostom and Jerome) had scarcely an idea of grammatical and historical exegesis.

Origen was the first to lay down, in connection with the allegorical method of the Jewish Platonist, Philo, a formal theory of interpretation, which he carried out in a long series of exegetical works remarkable for industry and ingenuity, but meagre in solid results. He considered the Bible a living organism, consisting of three elements which answer to the body, soul, and spirit of man, after the Platonic psychology. Accordingly, he attributed to the scriptures a threefold sense; (1) a somatic, literal, or historical sense, furnished immediately by the meaning of the words, but only serving as a veil for a higher idea; (2) a psychic or moral sense, animating the first, and serving for general edification; (3) a pneumatic or mystic, and ideal sense, for those who stand on the high ground of philosophical knowledge. In the application of this theory he shows the same tendency as Philo, to spiritualize away the letter of scripture, especially where the plain historical sense seems unworthy, as in the history of David’s crimes; and instead of simply bringing out the sense of the Bible, be puts into it all sorts of foreign ideas and irrelevant fancies. But this allegorizing suited the taste of the age, and, with his fertile mind and imposing learning, Origen was the exegetical oracle of the early church, till his orthodoxy fell into disrepute. He is the pioneer, also, in the criticism of the sacred text, and his "Hexapla" was the first attempt at a Polyglot Bible.

In spite of the numberless exegetical vagaries and differences in detail, which confute the Tridentine fiction of a "unanimis consensus patrum," there is still a certain unanimity among the fathers in their way of drawing the most important articles of faith from the Scriptures. In their expositions they all follow one dogmatical principle, a kind of analogia fidei. This brings us to tradition.

Notes on the Canon.

I. The Statements of Eusebius,

The accounts of Eusebius (d. 340) on the apostolic writings in several passages of his Church History (especially III. 25; comp. II. 22, 23; III. 3, 24; V. 8; VI. 14, 25) are somewhat vague and inconsistent, yet upon the whole they give us the best idea of the state of the canon in the first quarter of the fourth century just before the Council of Nicaea (325).

He distinguishes four classes of sacred books of the Christians (H. E. III. 25, in Heinichen’s ed. vol. I. 130 sqq.; comp. his note in vol. III. 87 sqq.).

1. Homologumena, i.e. such as were universally acknowledged (oJmologouvmena): 22 Books of the 27 of the N. T., viz.: 4 Gospels, Acts, 14 Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews), 1 Peter, 1 John, Revelation. He says: "Having arrived at this point, it is proper that we should give a summary catalogue of the afore-mentioned (III. 24) writings of the N. T. ( jAnakefalaiwvsasqai ta;" dhlwqeivsa" th'" kainh'" diaqhvkh" grafav"). First, then, we must place the sacred quaternion (or quartette, tetraktuvn) of the Gospels, which are followed by the book of the Acts of the Apostles (hJ tw'n pravxewn tw''n ajpostovlwn grafhv). After this we must reckon the Epistles of Paul, and next to them we must maintain as genuine (kurwtevon, the verb. adj. from kurovw, to ratify), the Epistle circulated as the former of John (th;n feromevnhn  jIwavnnou protevran), and in like manner that of Peter (kai; oJmoivw" th;n Pevtrou ejpistolhvn). In addition to these books, if it seem proper (ei[ge faneivh), we must place the Revelation of John (th;n ajpokavluyin  jIwavnnou), concerning which we shall set forth the different opinions in due course. And these are reckoned among those which are generally received (ejn oJmologoumevnoi")."

In bk. III. ch. 3, Eusebius speaks of "fourteen Epp." of Paul (tou' de; Pauvlou provdhloi kai; safei'" aiJ dekatevssare",) as commonly received, but adds that "some have rejected the Ep. to the Hebrews, saying that it was disputed as not being one of Paul’s epistles."

On the Apocalypse, Eusebius vacillates according as he gives the public belief of the church or his private opinion. He first counts it among the Homologumena, and then, in the same passage (III. 25), among the spurious books, but in each case with a qualifying statement (eij faneivh), leaving the matter to the judgment of the reader. He rarely quotes the book, and usually as the "Apocalypse of John," but in one place (III. 39) he intimates that it was probably written by "the second John," which must mean the "Presbyter John," so called, as distinct from the Apostle—an opinion which has found much favor in the Schleiermacher school of critics. Owing to its mysterious character, the Apocalypse is, even to this day, the most popular book of the N. T. with a few, and the most unpopular with the many. It is as well attested as any other book, and the most radical modern critics (Baur, Renan) admit its apostolic authorship and composition before the destruction of Jerusalem.

2. Antilegomena, or controverted books, yet "familiar to most people of the church" (ajntilegovmena, gnwvrima d j o{mw" toi'" polloi'",  III. 25). These are five (or seven), viz., one Epistle of James, one of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John ("whether they really belong to the Evangelist or to another John").

To these we may add (although Eusebius does not do it expressly) the Hebrews and the Apocalypse, the former as not being generally acknowledged as Pauline, the latter on account of its supposed chiliasm, which was offensive to Eusebius and the Alexandrian school.

3. Spurious Books (novqa), such as the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter, the Shepherd (Hermas), the Ep. of Barnabas, the so-called "Doctrines of the Apostles, " and the Gospel according to the Hebrews." in which those Hebrews who have accepted Christ take special delight."

To these he adds inconsistently, as already remarked, the Apocalypse of John." which some, as I said, reject (h{n tine" ajqetou'sin), while others reckon it among the books generally received (toi'" oJmologoumevnoi")." He ought to have numbered it with the Antilegomena.

These novqa, we may say, correspond to the Apocrypha of the O. T., pious and useful, but not canonical.

4. Heretical Books. These, Eusebius says, are worse than spurious books, and must be "set aside as altogether worthless and impious." Among these be mentions the Gospels of Peter, and Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew, and John, and of the other Apostles.

II. Ecclesiastical Definitions of the Canon.

Soon after the middle of the fourth century, when the church became firmly settled in the Empire, all doubts as to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and the Antilegomena of the New ceased, and the acceptance of the Canon in its Catholic shape, which includes both, became an article of faith. The first Œcumenical Council of Nicaea did not settle the canon, as one might expect, but the scriptures were regarded without controversy as the sure and immovable foundation of the orthodox faith. In the last (20th or 21st) Canon of the Synod of Gangra, in Asia Minor (about the middle of the fourth century), it is said: "To speak briefly, we desire that what has been handed down to us by the divine scriptures and the Apostolic traditions should be observed in the church." Comp. Hefele, Conciliengesch. I. 789.

The first Council which expressly legislated on the number of canonical books is that of Laodicea in Phrygia, in Asia Minor (held between A.D. 343 and 381, probably about 363). In its last canon (60 or 59), it enumerates the canonical books of the Old Testament, and then all of the New, with the exception of the Apocalypse, in the following order:

"And these are the Books of the New Testament: Four Gospels, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John; Acts of the Apostles; Seven Catholic Epistles, One of James, Two of Peter, Three of John, One of Jude; Fourteen Epistles of Paul, One to the Romans, Two to the Corinthians, One to the Galatians, One to the Ephesians, One to the Philippians, One to the Colossians, Two to the Thessalonians, One to the Hebrews, Two to Timothy, One to Titus, and One to Philemon."

This catalogue is omitted in several manuscripts and versions, and probably is a later insertion from the writings of Cyril of Jerusalem. Spittler, Herbst, and Westcott deny, Schrökh and Hefele defend, the Laodicean origin of this catalogue. It resembles that of the 85th of the Apostolical Canons which likewise omits the Apocalypse, but inserts two Epistles of Clement and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions.

On the Laodicean Council and its uncertain date see Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, revised ed. vol. I. p. 746 sqq., and Westcott, on the Canon of the N. T., second ed., p. 382 sqq.

In the Western church, the third provincial Council of Carthage (held A.D. 397) gave a full list of the canonical books of both Testaments, which should be read as divine Scriptures to the exclusion of all others in the churches. The N. T. books are enumerated in the following order: "Four Books of the Gospels, One Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Thirteen Epp. of the Apostle Paul, One Ep. of the same [Apostle] to the Hebrews, Two Epistles of the Apostle Peter, Three of John, One of James, One of Jude, One Book of the Apocalypse of John." This canon bad been previously adopted by the African Synod of Hippo regius, A.D. 393, at which Augustin, then presbyter, delivered his discourse De Fide et Symbolo. The acts of that Council are lost, but they were readopted by the third council of Carthage, which consisted only of forty-three African bishops, and can claim no general authority. (See Westcott, p. 391, Charteris, p. 20, and Hefele, II. 53 and 68, revised ed.)

Augustin, (who was present at both Councils), and Jerome (who translated the Latin Bible at the request of Pope Damasus of Rome) exerted a decisive influence in settling the Canon for the Latin church.

The Council of Trent (1546) confirmed the traditional view with an anathema on those who dissent. "This fatal decree," says Dr. Westcott (p. 426 sq.), "was ratified by fifty-three prelates, among whom was not one German, not one scholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted by special study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only be determined by the voice of antiquity."

For the Greek and Roman churches the question of the Canon is closed, although no strictly oecumenical council representing the entire church has pronounced on it. But Protestantism claims the liberty of the ante-Nicene age and the right of renewed investigation into the origin and history of every book of the Bible. Without this liberty there can be no real progress in exegetical theology.

§ 139. Catholic Tradition.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. Lib. I. c. 9, § 5; I. 10, 1; III. 3, 1, 2; III. 4, 2; IV. 33, 7. Tertull.: De Praescriptionibus Haereticorum; especially c. 13, 14, 17–19, 21, 35, 36, 40, 41; De Virgin. veland. c. 1; Adv. Prax. c. 2; on the other hand, Adv. Hermog. c. 22; De Carne Christi, c. 7; De Resurr. Carnis, c. 3. Novatian: De Trinitate 3; De Regula Fidei.Cyprian: De Unitate Eccl.; and on the other hand, Epist. 74. Origen: De Princip. lib. I. Praef. § 4–6. Cyril of Jerus.: Kathchvsei" (written 348).

J. A. Daniel: Theol. Controversen (the doctrine of the Scriptures as the source of knowledge). Halle, 1843.

J. J. Jacobi: Die Kirchl. Lehre von d. Tradition u. heil. Schrift in ihrer Entwicketung dargestellt. Berl. I. 1847.

Ph. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. p. 12 sqq.; II. 11–44. Comp. Lit. in the next section.

Besides appealing to the Scriptures, the fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian, refer with equal confidence to the "rule of faith;"948 that is, the common faith of the church, as orally handed down in the unbroken succession of bishops from Christ and his apostles to their day, and above all as still living in the original apostolic churches, like those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome. Tradition is thus intimately connected with the primitive episcopate. The latter was the vehicle of the former, and both were looked upon as bulwarks against heresy.

Irenaeus confronts the secret tradition of the Gnostics with the open and unadulterated tradition of the catholic church, and points to all churches, but particularly to Rome, as the visible centre of the unity of doctrine. All who would know the truth, says he, can see in the whole church the tradition of the apostles; and we can count the bishops ordained by the apostles, and their successors down to our time, who neither taught nor knew any such heresies. Then, by way of example, he cites the first twelve bishops of the Roman church from Linus to Eleutherus, as witnesses of the pure apostolic doctrine. He might conceive of a Christianity without scripture, but he could not imagine a Christianity without living tradition; and for this opinion he refers to barbarian tribes, who have the gospel, "sine charta et atramento," written in their hearts.

Tertullian finds a universal antidote for all heresy in his celebrated prescription argument, which cuts off heretics, at the outset, from every right of appeal to the holy scriptures, on the ground, that the holy scriptures arose in the church of Christ, were given to her, and only in her and by her can be rightly understood. He calls attention also here to the tangible succession, which distinguishes the catholic church from the arbitrary and ever-changing sects of heretics, and which in all the principal congregations, especially in the original sects of the apostles, reaches back without a break from bishop to bishop, to the apostles themselves, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God. "Come, now," says he, in his tract on Prescription, "if you would practise inquiry to more advantage in the matter of your salvation, go through the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside, in which their own authentic letters are publicly read, uttering the voice and representing the face of every one. If Achaia is nearest, you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you live near Italy, you have Rome, whence also we [of the African church] derive our origin. How happy is the church, to which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine with their blood," etc.

To estimate the weight of this argument, we must remember that these fathers still stood comparatively very near the apostolic age, and that the succession of bishops in the oldest churches could be demonstrated by the living memory of two or three generations. Irenaeus in fact, had been acquainted in his youth with Polycarp, a disciple of St. John. But for this very reason we must guard against overrating this testimony, and employing it in behalf of traditions of later origin, not grounded in the scriptures.

Nor can we suppose that those fathers ever thought of a blind and slavish subjection of private judgment to ecclesiastical authority, and to the decision of the bishops of the apostolic mother churches. The same Irenaeus frankly opposed the Roman bishop Victor. Tertullian, though he continued essentially orthodox, contested various points with the catholic church from his later Montanistic position, and laid down, though at first only in respect to a conventional custom—the veiling of virgins—the genuine Protestant principle, that the thing to be regarded, especially in matters of religion, is not custom but truth.949  His pupil, Cyprian, with whom biblical and catholic were almost interchangeable terms, protested earnestly against the Roman theory of the validity of heretical baptism, and in this controversy declared, in exact accordance with Tertullian, that custom without truth was only time-honored error.950  The Alexandrians freely fostered all sorts of peculiar views, which were afterwards rejected as heretical; and though the paravdosi" ajpostolikhv plays a prominent part with them, yet this and similar expressions have in their language a different sense, sometimes meaning simply the holy scriptures. So, for example, in the well-known passage of Clement: "As if one should be changed from a man to a beast after the manner of one charmed by Circe; so a man ceases to be God’s and to continue faithful to the Lord, when he sets himself up against the church tradition, and flies off to positions of human caprice."

In the substance of its doctrine this apostolic tradition agrees with the holy scriptures, and though derived, as to its form, from the oral preaching of the apostles, is really, as to its contents, one and the same with there apostolic writings. In this view the apparent contradictions of the earlier fathers, in ascribing the highest authority to both scripture and tradition in matters of faith, resolve themselves. It is one and the same gospel which the apostles preached with their lips, and then laid down in their writings, and which the church faithfully hands down by word and writing from one generation to another..951

§ 140. The Rule of Faith and the Apostles’ Creed.

Rufinus (d. 410): Expos. in Symbolum Apostolorum. In the Append. to Fell’s ed. of Cyprian, 1682; and in Rufini Opera, Migne’s "Patrologia," Tom. XXI. fol. 335–386.

James Ussher (Prot. archbishop of Armagh, d. 1655): De Romanae Ecclesiae Symbolo Apostolico vetere, aliisque fidei formulis. London, 1647. In his Works, Dublin 1847, vol. VII. p. 297 sqq. Ussher broke the path for a critical history of the creed on the basis of the oldest MSS. which he discovered.

John Pearson (Bp. of Chester, d. 1686): Exposition of the Creed, 1659, in many editions (revised ed. by Dr. E. Burton, Oxf. 1847; New York 1851). A standard work of Anglican theology.

Peter King (Lord Chancellor of England, d. 1733): History of the Apostles’ Creed. Lond. 1702.

Herm. Witsius (Calvinist, d. at Leyden, 1708): Exercitationes sacrae in Symbolum quod Apostolorum dicitur. Amstel. 1700. Basil. 1739. 4°. English translation by Fraser. Edinb. 1823, in 2 vols.

Ed. Köllner (Luth.): Symbolik aller christl. Confessionen. Part I. Hamb. 1837, p. 6–28.

*Aug. Hahn: Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der apostolischkatholischen [in the new ed. der alten] Kirche. Breslau, 1842 (pp. 222). Second ed. revised and enlarged by his son, G. Ludwig Hahn. Breslau, 1877 (pp. 300).

J. W. Nevin: The Apostles’ Creed, in the "Mercersburg Review," 1849. Purely doctrinal.

Pet. Meyers (R.C.): De Symboli Apostolici Titulo, Origine ei antiquissimis ecclesiae temporibus Auctoritate. Treviris 1849 (pp. 210). A learned defense of the Apostolic origin of the Creed.

W. W. Harvey: The History and Theology of the three Creeds (the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian). Lond. 1854. 2 vols.

*Charles A. Heurtley: Harmonia Symbolica. Oxford, 1858.

Michel Nicolas: Le Symbole des apôtres. Essai historie. Paris, 1867. (Sceptical).

*J. Rawson Lumby: The History of the Creeds (ante-Nicene, Nicene and Athanasian). London, 1873, 2d ed. 1880.

*C. A. Swainson: The Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed. London, 1875.

*C. P. Caspari: (Prof. in Christiania): Quellen zur Gesch. des Tauf, symbols und der Glaubensregel. Christiania, 1866–1879. 4 vols, Contains new researches and discoveries of MSS.

*F. J. A. Hort: Two Dissertations on monogenh;" qeov" and on the "Constantinopolitan Creed and other Eastern Creeds of the Fourth Century. Cambr. and Lond. 1876. Of great critical value.

F. B. Westcott: The Historic Faith. London, 1883.

Ph. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 3–42, and II. 10–73. (4th ed. 1884.

In the narrower sense, by apostolic tradition or the rule of faith (kanw;n th'" pivstew", regula fidei) was understood a doctrinal summary of Christianity, or a compend of the faith of the church. Such a summary grew out of the necessity of catechetical instruction and a public confession of candidates for baptism. It became equivalent to a symbolum, that is, a sign of recognition among catholic Christians in distinction from unbelievers and heretics. The confession of Peter (Matt. 16:16 gave the key-note, and the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19) furnished the trinitarian frame-work of the earliest creeds or baptismal confessions of Christendom.

There was at first no prescribed formula of faith binding upon all believers. Each of the leading churches framed its creed (in a sort of independent congregational way), according to its wants, though on the same basis of the baptismal formula, and possibly after the model of a brief archetype which may have come down from apostolic days. Hence we have a variety of such rules of faith, or rather fragmentary accounts of them, longer or shorter, declarative or interrogative, in the ante-Nicene writers, as Irenaeus of Lyons (180), Tertullian of Carthage (200), Cyprian of Carthage (250), Novatian of Rome (250), Origen of Alexandria (250), Gregory Thaumaturgus (270), Lucian of Antioch (300), Eusebius of Caesarea (325), Marcellus of Ancyra (340), Cyril of Jerusalem (350), Epiphanius of Cyprus (374), Rufinus of Aquileja (390), and in the Apostolic Constitutions).952  Yet with all the differences in form and extent there is a substantial agreement, so that Tertullian could say that the regula fidei was "una omnino, sola immobilis et irreformabilis." They are variations of the same theme. We may refer for illustration of the variety and unity to the numerous orthodox and congregational creeds of the Puritan churches in New England, which are based upon the Westminster standards.

The Oriental forms are generally longer, more variable and metaphysical, than the Western, and include a number of dogmatic terms against heretical doctrines which abounded in the East. They were all replaced at last by the Nicene Creed (325, 381, and 451), which was clothed with the authority of oecumenical councils and remains to this day the fundamental Creed of the Greek Church. Strictly speaking it is the only oecumenical Creed of Christendom, having been adopted also in the West, though with a clause (Filioque) which has become a wall of division. We shall return to it in the next volume.

The Western forms—North African, Gallican, Italian—are shorter and simpler, have less variety, and show a more uniform type. They were all merged into the Roman Symbol, which became and remains to this day the fundamental creed of the Latin Church and her daughters.

This Roman symbol is known more particularly under the honored name of the Apostles’ Creed. For a long time it was believed (and is still believed by many in the Roman church) to be the product of the Apostles who prepared it as a summary of their teaching before parting from Jerusalem (each contributing one of the twelve articles by higher inspiration).953  This tradition which took its rise in the fourth century, 954is set aside by the variations of the ante-Nicene creeds and of the Apostles’ Creed itself. Had the Apostles composed such a document, it would have been scrupulously handed down without alteration. The creed which bears this name is undoubtedly a gradual growth. We have it in two forms.

The earlier form as found in old manuscripts, 955is much shorter and may possibly go back to the third or even the second century. It was probably imported from the East, or grew in Rome, and is substantially identical with the Greek creed of Marcellus of Ancyra (about 340), inserted in his letter to Pope Julius I. to prove his orthodoxy, 956and with that contained in the Psalter of King Aethelstan..957  Greek was the ruling language of the Roman Church and literature down to the third century..958

The longer form of the Roman symbol, or the present received text, does not appear before the sixth or seventh century. It has several important clauses which were wanting in the former, as "he descended into hades,"959 the predicate "catholic" after ecclesiam,960  "the communion of saints,"961 and "the life everlasting."962  These additions were gathered from the provincial versions (Gallican and North African) and incorporated into the older form.

The Apostles’ Creed then, in its present shape, is post-apostolic; but, in its contents and spirit, truly apostolic. It embodies the faith of the ante-Nicene church, and is the product of a secondary inspiration, like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te deum, which embody the devotions of the same age, and which likewise cannot be traced to an individual author or authors. It follows the historical order of revelation of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, beginning with the creation and ending with the resurrection and life eternal. It clusters around Christ as the central article of our faith. It sets forth living facts, not abstract dogmas and speaks in the language of the people, not of the theological school. It confines itself to the fundamental truths, is simple, brief, and yet comprehensive, and admirably adapted for catechetical and liturgical use. It still forms a living bond of union between the different ages and branches of orthodox Christendom, however widely they differ from each other, and can never be superseded by longer and fuller creeds, however necessary these are in their place. It has the authority of antiquity and the dew of perennial youth, beyond any other document of post-apostolic times. It is the only strictly œcumenical Creed of the West, as the Nicene Creed is the only œcumenical Creed of the East.963  It is the Creed of creeds, as the Lord’s Prayer is the Prayer of prayers.

Note.

The legendary formulas of the Apostles’ Creed which appear after the sixth century, distribute the articles to the several apostles arbitrarily and with some variations. The following is from one of the pseudo-Augustinian sermons (see Hahn, p. 47 sq.):

"Decimo die post ascensionem discipulis prae timore Judaeorum congregatis Dominus promissum Paracletum misit: quo veniente ut candens ferrum inflammati omniumque linguarum peritia repleti Symbolum composuerunt.

Petrus dixit: Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem—creatorem coeli et terrae.

Andreas dixit: Et in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus—unicum Dominum nostrum.

Jacobus dixit: Qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto—natus ex Maria Virgine.

Joannes dixit: Passus sub Pontio Pilato—crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus.

Thomas dixit: Descendit ad inferna—tertia die resurrexit a mortuis.

Jacobus dixit: Adscendit ad coelos—sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis.

Philippus dixit: Inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos.

Bartholomaeus dixit: Credo in Spiritum Sanctum.

Matthaeus dixit: Sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam—Sanctorum communionem.

Simon dixit: Remissionem peccatorum.

Thaddeus dixit: Carnis resurrectionem.

Matthias dixit: Vitam aeternam."

§ 141. Variations of the Apostles’ Creed.

We present two tables which show the gradual growth of the Apostles’ Creed, and its relation to the Ante-Nicene rules of faith and the Nicene Creed in its final form.964

II. COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE APOSTLES’ CREED,

Showing The Different Stages Of Its Growth To Its Present Form. The Additions Are Shown In Brackets.

Formula Marcelli Ancryani

About A.D. 340

Formula Roma

From the 3rd or 4th Century

Formula Aquileiensis

From Rufinus (400)

Formula Recepta

Since the 6th or 7th Century

(Later additions in brackets)

The Received Text

Pisteuvw eij" qeo;n pantakravtora

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem.

Credo in Deo Patre omnipotente,

[invisibili et impassibili],

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,

[Creatorem coeli et terrae],

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

[Maker of heaven and earth].

Kai; eij" Cristo;n  jIhsou'n, to;n uiJo;n aujtou' to;n monogenh', to;n kuvrion hJmw'n,

Et in Christum Jesum, Filium ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum;

Et in Christo Jesu, unico filio ejus, Domino nostro;

Et in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum;

And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;

to;n gennhqevnta ejk Pneuvmato" aJgivou kai; Mariva" th' " parqevnou,

qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto et Maria Virgine;

qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine;

qui [conceptus] est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine;

who was [conceived] by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;

to;n ejpi; Pontivou Pilavtou staurwqevnta kai; tafevnta

cruicifixus est sub Pontio Pilato, et sepultus;

cruicifixus sub Pontio Pilato, et sepultus;

[passus] sub Pontio Pilato, cruicifixus, [mortuus], et seupultus;

[suffered] under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, [dead], and buried.

[descendit ad inferna];

[descendit ad inferna];

[He descended into Hades];

kai; th'/ trivth/ hJmevra/ ajnastavnta ejk tw'n nekrw'n,

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

the third day He rose from the dead;

ajnabavnta eij" tou;" oujranou;"

ascendit in cœlus;

ascendit in cœlus;

ascendit in coelos;

He ascended into heaven;

kai; kaqhvmenon ejn dexia'/ tou' patro;",

sedet ad dexteran Patris;

sedet ad dexteram Patris;

sedet ad dexteram Patris [omnipotentis];

and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father [Almighty];

o{qen er[cetai krivnein zw'nta" kai; nekrouv"

inde venturus judicare vivos et mortuos.

inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos.

inde venturus judicare vivos et mortuos.

from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Kai; eij"  {Agion Pneu'ma

Et in Spiritum Sanctum;

Et in Spiritu Sancto.

[Credo] in Spiritum Sanctum;

[I believe] in the Holy Ghost;

aJgivan ejkklhsivan

Sanctam Ecclesiam;

Sanctam Ecclesiam;

Sanctam Ecclesiam [catholicam], [Sanctorum communionem];

the holy [catholic] church, [the communion of saints];

ajfesin aJmartiw'n

remissionem peccatorum;

remissionem peccatorum;

remissionem peccatorum;

the forgiveness of sins;

sarko;" ajnavstasin [zwh;n aijwvnion]

carnis resurrectionem.

[hujus] carnis resurrectionem.

carnis resurrectionem; [vitam aeternam. Amen].

the resurrection of the body; [and the life everlasting Amen].

Comparative Table of the Ante-Nicent Rules of Faith,

as related to the apostles’ creed and the nicene creed.

The Apostles' Creed. (Rome.) About A.D. 340.

Later additions are in italics.

Irenaeus (Gaul.) A.D. 170.

Tertullian (North Africa.) A.D. 200.

Cyprian (Carthage) A.D. 250.

Novatian (Rome.) A.D. 250.

Origen (Alexandria.) A.D. 230.

I believe

We believe

We believe

I believe

We believe

[We believe in]

1. In God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;

1. ... in one God the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;

1 ... in one God, the Creator of the world, who produced all out of nothing ...

1. in God the Father;

1. in God the Father and Almighty Lord;

1. One God, who created and framed every thing…

Who in the last days sent

2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;

2. And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God [our Lord];

2. And in the Word, his Son, Jesus Christ;

2. in his Son Christ;

2. in the son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord God;

2. Our Lord, Jesus Christ…born of the Father before all creation…

3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary;

3. Who became flesh [of the Virgin] for our salvation;

3. Who through the Spirit and power of God the Father descended into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and born of her;

3. born of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost…

4. suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

4. and his suffering [under Pontius Pilate];

4. Was fixed on the cross [under Pontius Pilate], was dead and buried;

4. suffered in truth, died;

5. He, descended into Hades; the third day he rose from the dead;

5. and his rising from the dead;

5. rose again the third day;

5. rose from the dead;

6. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

6. and his bodily assumption into heaven;

6. was taken into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father;

6. was taken up…

7. from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

7. and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to comprehend all things under one head, ... and to execute righteous judgment over all.

7. He will come to judge the quick and the dead.

8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost;

8. And in the Holy Ghost ...

8. And in the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, the Sanctifier, sent by Christ from the Father.

8. in the Holy Ghost;

8. in the Holy Ghost (promised of old to the Church, and granted in the appointed and fitting time).

8. the Holy Ghost, united in honor and dignity with the Father and the Son.

9. the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints;

10. the forgiveness of sins;

10. I believe in the forgiveness of sins,

11. the resurrection of the body;

11. And that Christ shall come from heaven to raise all flesh … and to adjudge the impious and unjust ... to eternal fire,

11. And that Christ will, after the restoration of the flesh, receive his saints

12. and the life everlasting.965

12. and to give to the just and holy immortality and eternal glory.

12. into the enjoyment of eternal life and the promises of heaven, and judge the wicked with eternal fire.

12. and eternal life through the holy Church

The Apostles' Creed.

Gregory (Neo-Caesarean.) A.D. 270.

Lucian (Antioch.) A.D. 300.

Eusebius (Caesarea, Pal.) A.D. 325.

Cyril (Jerusalem.) A.D. 350.

Nicæno-Constantinoplitan Creed. A.D. 325 and 381.

I believe

[We believe in]

[We believe in]

We believe

We believe

We [I] believe

1. in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;

1. One God the Father;

1. one God the Father Almighty;

1. in one God the Father Almighty;

1. in one God the Father Almighty;

1.      in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;

2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;

2. One Lord…God of God, the image and likeness of the Godhead,…the Wisdom and Power which produces all creation, the true Son of the true Father…

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Wisdom, Life, Light …

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only-begotten Son, the first-born of every creature, begotten of God the Father before all ages; by whom all things were made;

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, veru God, by whom all things were made;

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; [God of God], Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father (oJmoouvsion tw'/ Patriv), by whom all things were made;

3. who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;

3. who was born of a Virgin, according to the Scriptures, and became man…

3. who for our salvation was made flesh and lived among men;

3. who was made flesh and became man;

3. who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and [of, ex] the Virgin Mary, and was made man;

4. suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

4. who suffered for us;

4. who suffered;

4. was crucified and was buried;

4. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and  suffered, and was buried;

5. He descended into Hades; the third day be rose from the dead;

5. and rose for us on the third day;

5. and rose on the third day

5. rose on the third day;

5. and on the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures;

6. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, Almighty;

6. And ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father;

6. and ascended to the Father;

6. and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father

6. and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;

7. from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

7. and again is coming with glory and power , to judge the quick and the dead;

7. and will come again with glory, to judge the quick and the dead.

7. and will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end;

7. and he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end;

8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost.

8. One Holy Ghost,…the minister of sancitifcation, in whom is revealed God the Father, who is over all things and through all things, and God the Son who is through all things — a perfect Trinity, not divided nor differing in glory, eternity, and sovereignty…

8. And in the Holy Ghost, given for consolation and sanctification and perfection to those who believe …

8. We believe also in the Holy Ghost

8. and in one Holy Ghost, the Advocate, who spake in the Prophets.

8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son, Filioque], who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the Prophets

9. the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints;

9. and in one baptism of repentance for the remission on sins;

9. And  [I believe]  in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;

10. the forgiveness of sins;

10. and in one holy Catholic Church;

10. we [I] acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;

11. the resurrection of the body;

11. and in the resurrection of the flesh;

11. and we [I] look for the resurrection of the dead;

12. and the life everlasting.

12. and in life everlasting (zwh;n aijwvnion).

12. and the life of the world to come (zwh;n tou' mevllonto" aijw'no").

The words in italics in the last column are additions of the second œcumenical Council (381); words in brackets are Western changes.

§ 142. God and the Creation.

E. Wilh. Möller: Geschichte der Kosmologie in der griechischen Kirche bis auf Origenes. Halle, 1860. p. 112–188; 474–560. The greater part of this learned work is devoted to the cosmological theories of the Gnostics.

In exhibiting the several doctrines of the church, we must ever bear in mind that Christianity entered the world, not as a logical system but as a divine-hurnan fact; and that the New Testament is not only a theological text-book for scholars but first and last a book of life for all believers. The doctrines of salvation, of course, lie in these facts of salvation, but in a concrete, living, ever fresh, and popular form. The logical, scientific development of those doctrines from the word of God and Christian experience is left to the theologians. Hence we must not be surprised to find in the period before us, even in the most eminent teachers, a very indefinite and defective knowledge, as yet, of important articles of faith, whose practical force those teachers felt in their own hearts and impressed on others, as earnestly as their most orthodox successors. The centre of Christianity is the divine-human person and the divine-human work of Christ. From that centre a change passed through the whole circle of existing religious ideas, in its first principles and its last results, confirming what was true in the earlier religion, and rejecting the false.

Almost all the creeds of the first centuries, especially the Apostles’ and the Nicene, begin with confession of faith in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of the visible and the invisible. With the defence of this fundamental doctrine laid down in the very first chapter of the Bible, Irenaeus opens his refutation of the Gnostic heresies. He would not have believed the Lord himself, if he had announced any other God than the Creator. He repudiates everything like an a priori construction of the idea of God, and bases his knowledge wholly on revelation and Christian experience.

We begin with the general idea of God, which lies at the bottom of all religion. This is refined, spiritualized, and invigorated by the manifestation in Christ. We perceive the advance particularly in Tertullian’s view of the irresistible leaning of the human soul towards God, and towards the only true God. "God will never be hidden", says he, "God will never fail mankind; he will always be recognized, always perceived, and seen, when man wishes. God has made all that we are, and all in which we are, a witness of himself. Thus he proves himself God, and the one God, by his being known to all; since another must first be proved. The sense of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same, and no other, in Egypt, in Syria, and in Pontus; for the God of the Jews all souls call their God." But nature also testifies of God. It is the work of his hand, and in itself good; not as the Gnostics taught, a product of matter, or of the devil, and intrinsically bad. Except as he reveals himself, God is, according to Irenaeus, absolutely hidden and incomprehensible. But in creation and redemption he has communicated himself, and can, therefore, not remain entirely concealed from any man.

Of the various arguments for the existence of God, we find in this period the beginnings of the cosmological and physico-theological methods. In the mode of conceiving the divine nature we observe this difference; while the Alexandrians try to avoid all anthropomorphic and anthropopathic notions, and insist on the immateriality and spirituality of God almost to abstraction, Tertullian ascribes to him even corporeality; though probably, as he considers the non-existent alone absolutely incorporeal, he intends by corporeality only to denote the substantiality and concrete personality of the Supreme Being..966

The doctrine of the unity of God, as the eternal, almighty, omnipresent, just, and holy creator and upholder of all things, the Christian church inherited from Judaism, and vindicated against the absurd polytheism of the pagans, and particularly against the dualism of tile Gnostics, which supposed matter co-eternal with God, and attributed the creation of the world to the intermediate Demiurge. This dualism was only another form of polytheism, which excludes absoluteness, and with it all proper idea of God.

As to creation: Irenaeus and Tertullian most firmly rejected the hylozoic and demiurgic views of paganism and Gnosticism, and taught, according to the book of Genesis, that God made the world, including matter, not, of course, out of any material, but out of nothing or, to express it positively, out of his free, almighty will, by his word.967  This free will of God, a will of love, is the supreme, absolutely unconditioned, and all-conditioning cause and final reason of all existence, precluding every idea of physical force or of emanation. Every creature, since it proceeds from the good and holy God, is in itself, as to its essence, good..968  Evil, therefore, is not an original and substantial. entity, but a corruption of nature, and hence can be destroyed by the power of redemption. Without a correct doctrine of creation there can be no true doctrine of redemption, as all the Gnostic systems show.

Origen’s view of an eternal creation is peculiar. His thought is not so much that of all endless succession of new worlds, as that of ever new metamorphoses of the original world, revealing from the beginning the almighty power, wisdom and goodness of God. With this is connected his Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul. He starts from the idea of an intimate relationship between God and the world and represents the latter as a necessary revelation of the former. It would be impious and absurd to maintain that there was a time when God did not show forth his essential attributes which make up his very being. He was never idle or quiescent. God’s being is identical with his goodness and love, and his will is identical with his nature. He must create according to his nature, and he will create. Hence what is a necessity is at the same time a free act. Each world has a beginning, and an end which are comprehended in the divine Providence. But what was before the first world?  Origen connects the idea of time with that of the world, but cannot get beyond the idea of an endless succession of time. God’s eternity is above time, and yet fills all time. Origen mediates the transition from God to the world by the eternal generation of the Logos who is the express image of the Father and through whom God creates first the spiritual and then the material world. And his generation is itself a continued process; God always (ajeiv) begets his Son, and never was without his Son as little as the Son is without the Father.969

§ 143. Man and the Fall.

It was the universal faith of the church that man was made in the image of God, pure and holy, and fell by his own guilt and the temptation of Satan who himself fell from his original state. But the extent of sin and the consequences of the fall were not fully discussed before the Pelagian controversy in the fifth century. The same is true of the metaphysical problem concerning the origin of the human soul. Yet three theories appear already in germ.

Tertullian is the author of traducianism,970 which derives soul and body from the parents through the process of generation..971  It assumes that God’s creation de nihilo was finished on the sixth day, and that Adam’s soul was endowed with the power of reproducing itself in individual souls, just as the first created seed in the vegetable world has the power of reproduction in its own kind. Most Western divines followed Tertullian in this theory because it most easily explains the propagation of original sin by generation,972 but it materializes sin which originates in the mind. Adam had fallen inwardly by doubt and disobedience before he ate of the forbidden fruit.

The Aristotelian theory of creationism traces the origin of each individual soul to a direct agency of God and assumes a subsequent corruption of the soul by its contact with the body, but destroys the organic unity of soul and body, and derives sin from the material part. It was advocated by Eastern divines, and by Jerome in the West. Augustin wavered between the two theories, and the church has never decided the question.

The third theory, that of pre-existence, was taught by Origen, as before by Plato and Philo. It assumes the pre-historic existence and fall of every human being, and thus accounts for original sin and individual guilt; but as it has no support in scripture or human consciousness—except in an ideal sense—it was condemned under Justinian, as one of the Origenistic heresies. Nevertheless it has been revived from time to time as an isolated speculative opinion.973

The cause of the Christian faith demanded the assertion both of man’s need of redemption, against Epicurean levity and Stoical self-sufficiency, and man’s capacity for redemption, against the Gnostic and Manichaean idea of the intrinsic evil of nature, and against every form of fatalism.

The Greek fathers, especially the Alexandrian, are very strenuous for the freedom of the will, as the ground of the accountability and the whole moral nature of man, and as indispensable to the distinction of virtue and vice. It was impaired and weakened by the fall, but not destroyed. In the case of Origen freedom of choice is the main pillar of his theological system. Irenaeus and Hippolytus cannot conceive of man without the two inseparable predicates of intelligence and freedom. And Tertullian asserts expressly, against Marcion and Hermogenes, free will as one of the innate properties of the soul,974 like its derivation from God, immortality, instinct of dominion, and power of divination.975  On the other side, however, Irenaeus, by his Pauline doctrine of the casual connection of the original sin of Adam with the sinfulness of the whole race, and especially Tertullian, by his view of hereditary sin and its propagation by generation, looked towards the Augustinian system which the greatest of the Latin fathers developed in his controversy with the Pelagian heresy, and which exerted such a powerful influence upon the Reformers, but had no effect whatever on the Oriental church and was practically disowned in part by the church of Rome.976

§144. Christ and the Incarnation.

Literature.

*Dionys. Petavius (or Denis Petau, Prof. of Theol. in Paris, d. 1652): Opus de theologicis dogmatibus, etc. Par. 1644–50, in 5 vols. fol. Later ed. of Antw. 1700; by Fr. Ant. Zacharia, Venice, 1737 (in 7 vols. fol); with additions by C. Passaglia, and C. Schrader, Rome, 1857 (incomplete); find a still later one by J. B. Thomas, Bar le Due, 1863, in 8 vols. Petau was a thoroughly learned Jesuit and the father of Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte). In the section De Trinitate (vol. II.), he has collected most of the passages of the ante-Nicene and Nicene father, and admits a progressive development of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and of the trinity, for which the Anglican, G. Bull, severely censures him.

*George Bull (Bishop of St. David’s, d. 1710): Defensio Fidei Nicaenae de aeterna Divinitate Filii Dei, ex scriptis catholic. doctorum qui intra tria ecclesiae Christianae secula floruerunt. Oxf. 1685. (Lond. 1703; again 1721; also in Bp. Bull’s complete Works, ed. by Edw. Burton, Oxf. 1827, and again in 1846 (vol. V., Part I. and II.) English translation in the "Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology," (Oxford 1851, 2 vols.). Bishop Bull is still one of the most learned and valuable writers on the early doctrine of the Trinity, but he reads the ante-Nicene fathers too much through the glass of the Nicene Creed, and has to explain and to defend the language of more than one half of his long list of witnesses.

Martini: Gesch. des Dogmas von der Gottheit Christi in den ersten vier Jahrh. Rost. 1809 (rationalistic).

Ad. Möller (R.C.): Athanasius der Gr. Mainz. 1827, second ed. 1844 (Bk 1. Der Glaube der Kirche der drei ersten Jahrh. in Betreff der Trinitaet, etc., p. 1–116).

Edw. Burton: Testimonies of the ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ. Second ed. Oxf. 1829.

*F. C. Baur ((I. 1860): Die christl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit u. Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Tüb. 1841–43. 3 vols. (I. p. 129–341). Thoroughly independent, learned, critical, and philosophical.

G. A. Meier: Die Lehre von der Trinitaet in ihrer Hist. Entwicklung. Hamb. 1844. 2 Vols. (I. p. 48-l34).

*Isaac A. Dorner: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi (1839), 2d ed. Stuttg. u. Berl. 1845–56. 2 vols. (I. pp. 122–747). A masterpiece of exhaustive and conscientious learning, and penetrating and fair criticism. Engl. translation by W. I. Alexander and D. W. Simon. Edinb. 1864, 5 vols.

Robr. Is. Wilberforce (first Anglican, then, since 1854, R.C.): The Doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in its relation to Mankind and to the Church (more doctrinal than historical). 4th ed. Lond. 1852. (Ch. V. pp. 93–147.) Republ. from an earlier ed., Philad. 1849.

Ph. Schaff: The Conflict of Trinitarianism and Unitarianism in the ante-Nicene age, in the "Bibl. Sacra." Andover, 1858, Oct.

M. F. Sadler: Emmanuel, or, The Incarnation of the Son of God the Foundation of immutable Truth. London 1867 (Doctrinal).

Henry Parry Liddon (Anglican, Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral): The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (The Bampton Lectures for 1866). London 1867, 9th ed. 1882. Devout, able, and eloquent.

Ph. Schaff: Christ and Christianity. N. Y. 1885, p. 45–123. A sketch of the history of Christology to the present time.

Comp. the relevant sections in the doctrine-histories of Hagenback, Thomasius, Harnack, etc.

The Messiahship and Divine Sonship of Jesus of Nazareth, first confessed by Peter in the name of all the apostles and the eye-witnesses of the divine glory of his person and his work, as the most sacred and precious fact of their experience, and after the resurrection adoringly acknowledged by the sceptical Thomas in that exclamation, "My Lord and my God!"—is the foundation stone of the Christian church;977 and the denial of the mystery of the incarnation is the mark of antichristian heresy.978

The whole theological energy of the ante-Nicene period concentrated itself, therefore, upon the doctrine of Christ as the God-man and Redeemer of the world. This doctrine was the kernel of all the baptismal creeds, and was stamped upon the entire life, constitution and worship of the early church. It was not only expressly asserted by the fathers against heretics, but also professed in the daily and weekly worship, in the celebration of baptism, the eucharist and the annual festivals, especially Easter. It was embodied in prayers, doxologies and hymns of praise. From the earliest record Christ was the object not of admiration which is given to finite persons and things, and presupposes equality, but of prayer, praise and adoration which is due only to an infinite, uncreated, divine being. This is evident from several passages of the New Testament,979 from the favorite symbol of the early Christians, the Ichthys,980 from the Tersanctus, the Gloria in Excelsis, the hymn of Clement of Alexandria in praise of the Logos,981 from the testimony of Origen, who says: "We sing hymns to the Most High alone, and His Only Begotten, who is the Word and God; and we praise God and His Only Begotten;"982 and from the heathen testimony of the younger Pliny who reports to the Emperor Trajan that the Christians in Asia were in the habit of singing "hymns to Christ as their God."983   Eusebius, quoting from an earlier writer (probably Hippolytus) against the heresy of Artemon, refers to the testimonies of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, and "many others" for the divinity of Christ, and asks: "Who knows not the works of Irenaeus and Melito, and the rest, in which Christ is announced as God and man?  Whatever psalms and hymns of the brethren were written by the faithful from the beginning, celebrate Christ as the Word of God, by asserting his divinity."984  The same faith was sealed by the sufferings and death of "the noble army" of confessors and martyrs, who confessed Christ to be God, and died for Christ as God.985

Life and worship anticipated theology, and Christian experience contained more than divines could in clear words express. So a child may worship the Saviour and pray to Him long before he can give a rational account of his faith. The instinct of the Christian people was always in the right direction, and it is unfair to make them responsible for the speculative crudities, the experimental and tentative statements of some of the ante-Nicene teachers. The divinity of Christ then, and with this the divinity of the Holy Spirit, were from the first immovably fixed in the mind and heart of the Christian Church as a central article of faith.

But the logical definition of this divinity, and of its relation to the Old Testament fundamental doctrine of the unity of the divine essence in a word, the church dogma of the trinity was the work of three centuries, and was fairly accomplished only in the Nicene age. In the first efforts of reason to grapple with these unfathomable mysteries, we must expect mistakes, crudities, and inaccuracies of every kind.

In the Apostolic Fathers we find for the most part only the simple biblical statements of the deity and humanity of Christ, in the practical form needed for general edification. Of those fathers Ignatius is most deeply imbued with the conviction, that the crucified Jesus is God incarnate, and indeed frequently calls him, without qualification, God.986

The scientific development of Christology begins with Justin and culminates in Origen. From Origen then proceed two opposite modes of conception, the Athanasian and the Arian; the former at last triumphs in the council of Nicaea A.D. 325, and confirms its victory in the council of Constantinople, 381. In the Arian controversy the ante-Nicene conflicts on this vital doctrine came to a head and final settlement.

The doctrine of the Incarnation involves three elements: the divine nature of Christ; his human nature; and the relation of the two to his undivided personality.

§ 145. The Divinity of Christ.

The dogma of the Divinity of Christ is the centre of interest. It comes into the foreground, not only against rationalistic Monarchianism and Ebionism, which degrade Christ to a second Moses, but also against Gnosticism, which, though it holds him to be superhuman, still puts him on a level with other aeons of the ideal world, and thus, by endlessly multiplying sons of God, after the manner of the heathen mythology, pantheistically dilutes and destroys all idea of a specific sonship. The development of this dogma started from the Old Testament idea of the word and the wisdom of God; from the Jewish Platonism of Alexandria; above all, from the Christology of Paul, and from the Logos-doctrine of John. This view of John gave a mighty impulse to Christian speculation, and furnished it ever fresh material. It was the form under which all the Greek fathers conceived the divine nature and divine dignity of Christ before his incarnation. The term Logos was peculiarly serviceable here, from its well-known double meaning of "reason" and "word," ratio and oratio; though in John it is evidently used in the latter sense alone.987

Justin Martyr developed the first Christology, though not as a novelty, but in the consciousness of its being generally held by Christians.988  Following the suggestion of the double meaning of Logos and the precedent of a similar distinction by Philo, be distinguishes in the Logos, that is, the divine being of Christ, two elements: the immanent, or that which determines the revelation of God to himself within himself;989 and the transitive, in virtue of which God reveals himself outwardly.990  The act of the procession of the Logos from God991 he illustrates by the figure of generation,992 without division or diminution of the divine substance; and in this view the Logos is the only and absolute Son of God, the only-begotten. The generation, however, is not with him an eternal act, grounded in metaphysical necessity, as with Athanasius in the later church doctrine. It took place before the creation of the world, and proceeded from the free will of God.993  This begotten ante-mundane (though it would seem not strictly eternal) Logos he conceives as a hypostatical being, a person numerically distinct from the Father; and to the agency of this person before his incarnation994 Justin attributes the creation and support of the universe all the theophanies (Christophanies) of the Old Testament, and all that is true and rational in the world. Christ is the Reason of reasons, the incarnation of the absolute and eternal reason. He is a true object of worship. In his efforts to reconcile this view with monotheism, he at one time asserts the moral unity of the two divine persons, and at another decidedly subordinates the Son to the Father. Justin thus combines hypostasianism, or the theory of the independent, personal (hypostatical) divinity of Christ, with subordinationism; he is, therefore, neither Arian nor Athanasian; but his whole theological tendency, in opposition to the heresies, was evidently towards the orthodox system, and had he lived later, he would have subscribed the Nicene creed.995  The same may be said of Tertullian and of Origen.

In this connection we must also mention Justin’s remarkable doctrine of the "Logos spermatikos," or the Divine Word disseminated among men. He recognized in every rational soul something Christian, a germ (spevrma) of the Logos, or a spark of the absolute reason. He therefore traced all the elements of truth and beauty which are scattered like seeds not only among the Jews but also among the heathen to the influence of Christ before his incarnation. He regarded the heathen sages, Socrates, (whom he compares to Abraham), Plato, the Stoics, and some of the poets and historians as unconscious disciples of the Logos, as Christians before Christ.996

Justin derived this idea no doubt from the Gospel of John 1:4, 5, 9, 10, though he only quotes one passage from it (3:3–5). His pupil Tatian used it in his Diatessaron.997

The further development of the doctrine of the Logos we find in the other apologists, in Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and especially in the Alexandrian school.

Clement of Alexandria speaks in the very highest terms of the Logos, but leaves his independent personality obscure. He makes the Logos the ultimate principle of all existence, without beginning, and timeless; the revealer of the Father, the sum of all intelligence and wisdom, the personal truth, the speaking as well as the spoken word of creative power, the proper author of the world, the source of light and life, the great educator of the human race, at last becoming man, to draw us into fellowship with him and make us partakers of his divine nature.

Origen felt the whole weight of the Christological and trinitarian problem and manfully grappled with it, but obscured it by foreign speculations. He wavered between the homo-ousian, or orthodox, and the homoi-ousian or subordinatian theories, which afterwards came into sharp conflict with each other in the Arian controversy.998  On the one hand he brings the Son as near as possible to the essence of the Father; not only making him the absolute personal wisdom, truth, righteousness, reason,999 but also expressly predicating eternity of him, and propounding the church dogma of the eternal generation of the Son. This generation he usually represents as proceeding from the will of the Father; but he also conceives it as proceeding from his essence and hence, at least in one passage, he already applies the term homo-ousios to the Son, thus declaring him coëqual in essence or nature with the Father.1000  This idea of eternal generation, however, has a peculiar form with him, from its close connection with his doctrine of an eternal creation. He can no more think of the Father without the Son, than of an almighty God without creation, or of light without radiance.1001  Hence he describes this generation not as a single, instantaneous act, but, like creation, ever going on.1002  But on the other hand he distinguishes the essence of the Son from that of the Father; speaks of a difference of substance;1003 and makes the Son decidedly inferior to the Father, calling him, with reference to John 1:1, merely qeov" without the article, that is, God in a relative or secondary sense (Deus de Deo) also deuvtero" qeov", but the Father God in the absolute sense, oJ qeov" (Deus per se), or aujtovqeo" , also the fountain and root of the divinity.1004  Hence, he also taught, that the Son should not be directly addressed in prayer, but the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.1005  This must be limited, no doubt, to absolute worship, for he elsewhere recognizes prayer to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.1006  Yet this subordination of the Son formed a stepping-stone to Arianism, and some disciples of Origen, particularly Dionysius of Alexandria, decidedly approached that heresy. Against this, however, the deeper Christian sentiment, even before the Arian controversy, put forth firm protest, especially in the person of the Roman Dionysius, to whom his Alexandrian namesake and colleague magnanimously yielded.

In a simpler way the western fathers, including here Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who labored in the West, though they were of Greek training, reached the position, that Christ must be one with the Father, yet personally distinct from him. It is commonly supposed that they came nearer the homo-ousion than the Greeks. This can be said of Irenaeus, but not of Tertullian. And as to Cyprian, whose sphere was exclusively that of church government and discipline, he had nothing peculiar in his speculative doctrines.

Irenaeus after Polycarp, the most faithful representative of the Johannean school, keeps more within the limits of the simple biblical statements, and ventures no such bold speculations as the Alexandrians, but is more sound and much nearer the Nicene standard. He likewise uses the terms "Logos"and "Son of God" interchangeably, and concedes the distinction, made also by the Valentinians, between the inward and the uttered word,1007 in reference to man, but contests the application of it to God, who is above all antitheses, absolutely simple and unchangeable, and in whom before and after, thinking and speaking, coincide. He repudiates also every speculative or a priori attempt to explain the derivation of the Son from the Father; this be holds to be an incomprehensible mystery.1008  He is content to define the actual distinction between Father and Son, by saying that the former is God revealing himself, the latter, God revealed; the one is the ground of revelation, the other is the actual, appearing revelation itself. Hence he calls the Father the invisible of the Son, and the Son the visible of the Father. He discriminates most rigidly the conceptions of generation and of creation. The Son, though begotten of the Father, is still like him, distinguished from the created world, as increate, without beginning, and eternal. All this plainly shows that Irenaeus is much nearer the Nicene dogma of the substantial identity of the Son with the Father, than Justin and the Alexandrians. If, as he does in several passages, he still subordinates the Son to the Father, be is certainly inconsistent; and that for want of an accurate distinction between the eternal Logos and the actual Christ.1009  Expressions like "my Father is greater than I," which apply only to the Christ of history, he refers also, like Justin and Origen, to the eternal Word. On the other hand, he has been charged with leaning in the opposite direction towards the Sabellian and Patripassian views, but unjustly.1010  Apart from his frequent want of precision in expression, he steers in general, with sure biblical and churchly tact, equally clear of both extremes, and asserts alike the essential unity and the eternal personal distinction of the Father and the Son.

The incarnation of the Logos Irenaeus represents both as a restoration and redemption from sin and death, and as the completion of the revelation of God and of the creation of man. In the latter view, as finisher, Christ is the perfect Son of Man, in whom the likeness of man to God, the similitudo Dei, regarded as moral duty, in distinction from the imago Dei, as an essential property, becomes for the first time fully real. According to this the incarnation would be grounded in the original plan of God for the education of mankind, and independent of the fall; it would have taken place even without the fall, though in some other form. Yet Irenaeus does not expressly say this; speculation on abstract possibilities was foreign to his realistic cast of mind.

Tertullian cannot escape the charge of subordinationism. He bluntly calls the Father the whole divine substance, and the Son a part of it;1011 illustrating their relation by the figures of the fountain and the stream, the sun and the beam. He would not have two suns, he says, but he might call Christ God, as Paul does in Rom 9:5. The sunbeam, too, in itself considered, may be called sun, but not the sun a beam. Sun and beam are two distinct things (species) in one essence (substantia), as God and the Word, as the Father and the Son. But we should not take figurative language too strictly, and must remember that Tertullian was specially interested to distinguish the Son from the Father in opposition to the Patripassian Praxeas. In other respects he did the church Christology material service. He propounds a threefold hypostatical existence of the Son (filiatio): (1) The pre-existent, eternal immanence of the Son in the Father; they being as inseparable as reason and word in man, who was created in the image of God, and hence in a measure reflects his being;1012 (2) the coming forth of the Son with the Father for the purpose of the creation; (3) the manifestation of the Son in the world by the incarnation.1013

With equal energy Hippolytus combated Patripassianism, and insisted on the recognition of different hypostases with equal claim to divine worship. Yet he, too, is somewhat trammelled with the subordination view.1014

On the other hand, according to his representation in the Philosophumena, the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and especially Callistus favored Patripassianism. The later popes, however, were firm defenders of hypostasianism. One of them, Dionysius, A.D. 262, as we shall see more fully when speaking of the trinity, maintained at once the homo-ousion and eternal generation against Dionysius of Alexandria, and the hypostatical distinction against Sabellianism, and sketched in bold and clear outlines the Nicene standard view.

§ 146. The Humanity of Christ.

Passing now to the doctrine of the Saviour’s Humanity, we find this asserted by IGNATIUS as clearly and forcibly as his divinity. Of the Gnostic Docetists of his day, who made Christ a spectre, he says, they are bodiless spectres themselves, whom we should fear as wild beasts in human shape, because they tear away the foundation of our hope.1015  He attaches great importance to the flesh, that is, the full reality of the human nature of Christ, his true birth from the virgin, and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate; he calls him God incarnate;1016 therefore is his death the fountain of life.

Irenaeus refutes Docetism at length. Christ, he contends against the Gnostics, must be a man, like us, if he would redeem us from corruption and make us perfect. As sin and death came into the world by a man, so they could be blotted out legitimately and to our advantage only by a man; though of course not by one who should be a mere descendant of Adam, and thus himself in need of redemption, but by a second Adam, supernaturally begotten, a new progenitor of our race, as divine as he is human. A new birth unto life must take the place of the old birth unto death. As the completer, also, Christ must enter into fellowship with us, to be our teacher and pattern. He made himself equal with man, that man, by his likeness to the Son, might become precious in the Father’s sight. Irenaeus conceived the humanity of Christ not as a mere corporeality, though he often contends for this alone against the Gnostics, but as true humanity, embracing body, soul, and spirit. He places Christ in the same relation to the regenerate race, which Adam bears to the natural, and regards him as the absolute, universal man, the prototype and summing up1017 of the whole race. Connected with this is his beautiful thought, found also in Hippolytus in the tenth book of the Philosophumena, that Christ made the circuit of all the stages of human life, to redeem and sanctify all. To apply this to advanced age, he singularly extended the life of Jesus to fifty years, and endeavored to prove this view from the Gospels, against the Valentinians.1018  The full communion of Christ with men involved his participation in all their evils and sufferings, his death, and his descent into the abode of the dead.

Tertullian advocates the entire yet sinless humanity of Christ against both the Docetistic Gnostics1019 and the Patripassians.1020  He accuses the former of making Christ who is all truth, a half lie, and by the denial of his flesh resolving all his work in the flesh, his sufferings and his death, into an empty show, and subverting the whole scheme of redemption. Against the Patripassians be argues, that God the Father is incapable of suffering, and is beyond the sphere of finiteness and change. In the humanity, he expressly includes the soul; and this, in his view, comprises the reason also; for he adopts not the trichotomic, but the dychotomic division. The body of Christ, before the exaltation, he conceived to have been even homely, on a misapprehension of Isa. 53:2, where the suffering Messiah is figuratively said to have "no form nor comeliness." This unnatural view agreed with his aversion to art and earthly splendor, but was not commonly held by the Christian people if we are to judge from the oldest representations of Christ under the figure of a beautiful Shepherd carrying the lamb in his arms or on his shoulders.

Clement of Alexandria likewise adopted the notion of the uncomely personal appearance of Jesus, but compensated it with the thought of the moral beauty of his soul. In his effort, however, to idealize the body of the Lord, and raise it above all sensual desires and wants, he almost reaches Gnostic Docetism.

The Christology of Origen is more fully developed in this part, as well as in the article of the divine nature, and peculiarly modified by his Platonizing view of the pre-existence and pre-Adamic fall of souls and their confinement in the prison of corporeity; but he is likewise too idealistic, and inclined to substitute the superhuman for the purely human. He conceives the incarnation as a gradual process, and distinguishes two stages in it—the assumption of the soul, and the assumption of the body. The Logos, before the creation of the world, nay, from the beginning, took to himself a human soul, which had no part in the ante-mundane apostasy, but clave to the Logos in perfect love, and was warmed through by him, as iron by fire. Then this fair soul, married to the Logos, took from the Virgin Mary a true body, yet without sin; not by way of punishment, like the fallen souls, but from love to men, to effect their redemption. Again, Origen distinguishes various forms of the manifestation of this human nature, in which the Lord became all things to all men, to gain all. To the great mass he appeared in the form of a servant; to his confidential disciples and persons of culture, in a radiance of the highest beauty and glory, such as, even before the resurrection, broke forth from his miracles and in the transfiguration on the Mount. In connection with this comes Origen’s view of a gradual spiritualization and deification of the body of Christ, even to the ubiquity which he ascribes to it in its exalted state.1021

On this insufficient ground his opponents charged him with teaching a double Christ (answering to the lower Jesus and the higher Soter of the Gnostics), and a merely temporary validity in the corporeity of the Redeemer.

Origen is the first to apply to Christ the term God-man,1022 which leads to the true view of the relation of the two natures.

§ 147. The Relation of the Divine and the Human in Christ.

The doctrine of the Mutual Relation of the divine and the human in Christ did not come into special discussion nor reach a definite settlement until the Christological (Nestorian and Eutychian) controversies of the fifth century.

Yet Irenaeus, in several passages, throws out important hints. He teaches unequivocally a true and indissoluble union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and repels the Gnostic idea of a mere external and transient connection of the divine Soter with the human Jesus. The foundation for that union he perceives in the creation of the world by the Logos, and in man’s original likeness to God and destination for permanent fellowship with Him. In the act of union, that is, in the supernatural generation and birth, the divine is the active principle, and the seat of personality; the human, the passive or receptive; as, in general, man is absolutely dependent on God, and is the vessel to receive the revelations of his wisdom and love. The medium and bond of the union is the Holy Spirit, who took the place of the masculine agent in the generation, and overshadowed the virgin womb of Mary with the power of the highest. In this connection he calls Mary the counterpart of Eve the "mother of all living" in a higher sense; who, by her believing obedience, became the cause of salvation both to herself and the whole human race,1023 as Eve by her disobedience induced the apostasy and death of mankind;—a fruitful but questionable parallel, suggested but not warranted by Paul’s parallel between Adam and Christ, afterwards frequently pushed too far, and turned, no doubt, contrary to its original sense, to favor the idolatrous worship of the blessed Virgin. Irenaeus seems1024 to conceive the incarnation as progressive, the two factors reaching absolute communion (but neither absorbing the other) in the ascension; though before this, at every stage of life, Christ was a perfect man, presenting the model of every age.

Origen, the author of the term "God-man," was also the first to employ the figure, since become so classical, of an iron warmed through by fire, to illustrate the pervasion of the human nature (primarily the soul) by the divine in the presence of Christ.

§ 148. The Holy Spirit.

Ed. Burton: Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. Oxf. 1831 (Works, vol. II).

K. F. A. Kahnis. Die Lehre vom heil. Geiste. Halle, 1847. (Pt. I. p. 149–356. Incomplete).

Neander: Dogmengeschichte, ed. by Jacobi, I. 181–186.

The doctrine of Justin Mart. is treated with exhaustive thoroughness by Semisch in his monograph (Breslau, 1840), II. 305–332. Comp. also Al. v. Engelhardt: Das Christenthum Justins (Erlangen, 1878), P. 143–147.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was far less developed, and until the middle of the fourth century was never a subject of special controversy. So in the Apostles; Creed, only one article1025 is devoted to the third person of the holy Trinity, while the confession of the Son of God, in six or seven articles, forms the body of the symbol. Even the original Nicene Creed breaks off abruptly with the words: "And in the Holy Spirit;" the other clauses being later additions. Logical knowledge appears to be here still further removed than in Christology from the living substance of faith. This period was still in immediate contact with the fresh spiritual life of the apostolic, still witnessed the lingering operations of the extraordinary gifts, and experienced in full measure the regenerating, sanctifying, and comforting influences of the divine Spirit in life, suffering, and death; but, as to the theological definition of the nature and work of the Spirit, it remained in many respects confused and wavering down to the Nicene age.

Yet rationalistic historians go quite too far when, among other accusations, they charge the early church with making the Holy Spirit identical with the Logos. To confound the functions, as in attributing the inspiration of the prophets, for example, now to the Holy Spirit, now to the Logos, is by no means to confound the persons. On the contrary, the thorough investigations of recent times show plainly that the ante-Nicene fathers, with the exception of the Monarchians and perhaps Lactantius, agreed in the two fundamental points, that the Holy Spirit, the sole agent in the application of redemption, is a supernatural divine being, and that he is an independent person; thus closely allied to the Father and the Son yet hypostatically different from them both. This was the practical conception, as demanded even by the formula of baptism. But instead of making the Holy Spirit strictly coordinate with the other divine persons, as the Nicene doctrine does, it commonly left him subordinate to the Father and the Son.

So in Justin, the pioneer of scientific discovery in Pneumatology as well as in Christology. He refutes the heathen charge of atheism with the explanation, that the Christians worship the Creator of the universe, in the second place the Son,1026 in the third rank1027 the prophetic Spirit; placing the three divine hypostases in a descending gradation as objects of worship. In another passage, quite similar, he interposes the host of good angels between the Son and the Spirit, and thus favors the inference that he regarded the Holy Ghost himself as akin to the angels and therefore a created being.1028  But aside from the obscurity and ambiguity of the words relating to the angelic host, the coordination of the Holy Ghost with the angels is utterly precluded by many other expressions of Justin, in which he exalts the Spirit far above the sphere of all created being, and challenges for the members of the divine trinity a worship forbidden to angels. The leading function of the Holy Spirit, with him, as with other apologists, is the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets.1029  In general the Spirit conducted the Jewish theocracy, and qualified the theocratic officers. All his gifts concentrated themselves finally in Christ; and thence they pass to the faithful in the church. It is a striking fact, however, that Justin in only two passages refers the new moral life of the Christian to the Spirit, he commonly represents the Logos as its fountain. He lacks all insight into the distinction of the Old Testament Spirit and the New, and urges their identity in opposition to the Gnostics.

In Clement of Alexandria we find very little progress beyond this point. Yet he calls the Holy Spirit the third member of the sacred triad, and requires thanksgiving to be addressed to him as to the Son and the Father.1030

Origen vacillates in his Pneumatology still more than in his Christology between orthodox and heterodox views. He ascribes to the Holy Spirit eternal existence, exalts him, as he does the Son, far above all creatures and considers him the source of all charisms,1031 especially as the principle of all the illumination and holiness of believers under the Old Covenant and the New. But he places the Spirit in essence, dignity, and efficiency below the Son, as far as he places the Son below the Father; and though he grants in one passage1032 that the Bible nowhere calls the Holy Spirit a creature, yet, according to another somewhat obscure sentence, he himself inclines towards the view, which, however he does not avow that the Holy Spirit had a beginning (though, according to his system, not in time but from eternity), and is the first and most excellent of all the beings produced by the Logos.1033  In the same connection he adduces three opinions concerning the Holy Spirit; one regarding him as not having an origin; another, ascribing to him no separate personality; and a third, making him a being originated by the Logos. The first of these opinions he rejects because the Father alone is without origin (ajgevnnhto"); the second he rejects because in Matt. 12:32 the Spirit is plainly distinguished from the Father and the Son; the third he takes for the true and scriptural view, because everything was made by the Logos.1034  Indeed, according to Matt. 12:32, the Holy Spirit would seem to stand above the Son; but the sin against the Holy Ghost is more heinous than that against the Son of Man, only because he who has received the Holy Spirit stands higher than he who has merely the reason from the Logos.

Here again Irenaeus comes nearer than the Alexandrians to the dogma of the perfect substantial identity of the Spirit with the Father and the Son; though his repeated figurative (but for this reason not so definite) designation of the Son and Spirit as the "hands" of the Father, by which he made all things, implies a certain subordination. He differs from most of the Fathers in referring the Wisdom of the book of Proverbs not to the Logos but to the Spirit; and hence must regard him as eternal. Yet he was far from conceiving the Spirit a mere power or attribute; he considered him an independent personality, like the Logos. "With God" says he,1035 "are ever the Word and the Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, through whom and in whom he freely made all things, to whom he said, ’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ "  But he speaks more of the operations than of the nature of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit predicted in the prophets the coming of Christ; has been near to man in all divine ordinances; communicates the knowledge of the Father and the Son; gives believers the consciousness of sonship; is fellowship with Christ, the pledge of imperishable life, and the ladder on which we ascend to God.

In the Montanistic system the Paraclete occupies a peculiarly important place. He appears there as the principle of the highest stage of revelation, or of the church of the consummation. Tertullian made the Holy Spirit the proper essence of the church, but subordinated him to the Son, as he did the Son to the Father, though elsewhere he asserts the "unitas substantiae." In his view the Spirit proceeds "a Patre per Filium," as the fruit from the root through the stem. The view of the Trinity presented by Sabellius contributed to the suppression of these subordinatian ideas.

§ 149. The Holy Trinity.

Comp. the works quoted in §144, especially Petravius, Bull, Baur, and Dorner.

Here now we have the elements of the dogma of the Trinity, that is, the doctrine of the living, only true God, Father, Son, and Spirit, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. This dogma has a peculiar, comprehensive, and definitive import in the Christian system, as a brief summary of all the truths and blessings of revealed religion. Hence the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19), which forms the basis of all the ancient creeds, is trinitarian; as is the apostolic benediction also (2 Cor. 13:14). This doctrine meets us in the Scriptures, however, not so much in direct statements and single expressions, of which the two just mentioned are the clearest, as in great living facts; in the history of a threefold revelation of the living God in the creation and government, the reconciliation and redemption, and the sanctification and consummation of the world—a history continued in the experience of Christendom. In the article of the Trinity the Christian conception of God completely defines itself, in distinction alike from the abstract monotheism of the Jewish religion, and from the polytheism and dualism of the heathen. It has accordingly been looked upon in all ages as the sacred symbol and the fundamental doctrine of the Christian church, with the denial of which the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the divine character of the work of redemption and sanctification, fall to the ground.

On this scriptural basis and the Christian consciousness of a threefold relation we sustain to God as our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, the church dogma of the Trinity arose; and it directly or indirectly ruled even the ante-Nicene theology though it did not attain its fixed definition till in the Nicene age. It is primarily of a practical religious nature, and speculative only in a secondary sense. It arose not from the field of metaphysics, but from that of experience and worship; and not as an abstract, isolated dogma, but in inseparable connection with the study of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; especially in connection with Christology, since all theology proceeds from "God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Under the condition of monotheism, this doctrine followed of necessity from the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. The unity of God was already immovably fixed by the Old Testament as a fundamental article of revealed religion in opposition to all forms of idolatry. But the New Testament and the Christian consciousness as firmly demanded faith in the divinity of the Son, who effected redemption, and of the Holy Spirit, who founded the church and dwells in believers; and these apparently contradictory interests could be reconciled only in the form of the Trinity;1036 that is, by distinguishing in the one and indivisible essence of God1037 three hypostases or persons;1038 at the same time allowing for the insufficiency of all human conceptions and words to describe such an unfathomable mystery.

The Socinian and rationalistic opinion, that the church doctrine of the Trinity sprang from Platonism1039 and Neo-Platonism1040 is therefore radically false. The Indian Trimurti, altogether pantheistic in spirit, is still further from the Christian Trinity. Only thus much is true, that the Hellenic philosophy operated from without, as a stimulating force, upon the form of the whole patristic theology, the doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity among the rest; and that the deeper minds of heathen antiquity showed a presentiment of a threefold distinction in the divine essence: but only a remote and vague presentiment which, like all the deeper instincts of the heathen mind, serves to strengthen the Christian truth. Far clearer and more fruitful suggestions presented themselves in the Old Testament, particularly in the doctrines of the Messiah, of the Spirit, of the Word, and of the Wisdom of God, and even in the system of symbolical numbers, which rests on the sacredness of the numbers three (God), four (the world), seven and twelve (the union of God and the world, hence the covenant numbers. But the mystery of the Trinity could be fully revealed only in the New Testament after the completion of the work of redemption and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The historical manifestation of the Trinity is the condition of the knowledge of the Trinity.

Again, it was primarily the œconomic or transitive trinity, which the church had in mind; that is, the trinity of the revelation of God in the threefold work of creation, redemption, and sanctification; the trinity presented in the apostolic writings as a living fact. But from this, in agreement with both reason and Scripture, the immanent or ontologic trinity was inferred; that is, an eternal distinction in the essence of God itself, which reflects itself in his revelation, and can be understood only so far as it manifests itself in his works and words. The divine nature thus came to be conceived, not as an abstract, blank unity, but as an infinite fulness of life; and the Christian idea of God (as John of Damascus has remarked) in this respect combined Jewish monotheism with the truth which lay at the bottom of even the heathen polytheism, though distorted and defaced there beyond recognition.

Then for the more definite illustration of this trinity of essence, speculative church teachers of subsequent times appealed to all sorts of analogies in nature, particularly in the sphere of the finite mind, which was made after the image of the divine, and thus to a certain extent authorizes such a parallel. They found a sort of triad in the universal law of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; in the elements of the syllogism; in the three persons of grammar; in the combination of body, soul, and spirit in man; in the three leading faculties of the soul; in the nature of intelligence and knowledge as involving a union of the thinking subject and the thought object; and in the nature of love, as likewise a union between the loving and the loved.1041  These speculations began with Origen and Tertullian; they were pursued by Athanasius and Augustin; by the scholastics and mystics of the Middle Ages; by Melanchthon, and the speculative Protestant divines down to Schleiermacher, Rothe and Dorner, as well as by philosophers from Böhme to Hegel; and they are not yet exhausted, nor will be till we reach the beatific vision. For the holy Trinity, though the most evident, is yet the deepest of mysteries, and can be adequately explained by no analogies from finite and earthly things.

As the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit were but imperfectly developed in logical precision in the ante-Nicene period, the doctrine of the Trinity, founded on them, cannot be expected to be more clear. We find it first in the most simple biblical and practical shape in all the creeds of the first three centuries: which, like the Apostles’ and the Nicene, are based on the baptismal formula, and hence arranged in trinitarian order. Then it appears in the trinitarian doxologies used in the church from the first; such as occur even in the epistle of the church at Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp.1042  Clement of Rome calls "God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit" the object of "the faith and hope of the elect."1043  The sentiment, that we rise through the Holy Spirit to the Son, through the Son to the Father, belongs likewise to the age of the immediate disciples of the apostles.1044

Justin Martyr repeatedly places Father, Son, and Spirit together as objects of divine worship among the Christians (though not as being altogether equal in dignity), and imputes to Plato a presentiment of the doctrine of the Trinity. Athenagoras confesses his faith in Father, Son, and Spirit, who are one as to power (kata; duvnamin), but whom he distinguishes as to order or dignity (tavxi") in subordinatian style. Theophilus of Antioch (180) is the first to denote the relation of the three divine persons1045 by the term Triad.

Origen conceives the Trinity as three concentric circles, of which each succeeding one circumscribes a smaller area. God the Father acts upon all created being; the Logos only upon the rational creation; the Holy Ghost only upon the saints in the church. But the sanctifying work of the Spirit leads back to the Son, and the Son to the Father, who is consequently the ground and end of all being, and stands highest in dignity as the compass of his operation is the largest.

Irenaeus goes no further than the baptismal formula and the trinity of revelation; proceeding on the hypothesis of three successive stages in the development of the kingdom of God on earth, and of a progressive communication of God to the world. He also represents the relation of the persons according to Eph. 4:6; the Father as above all, and the head of Christ; the Son as through all, and the head of the church; the Spirit as in all, and the fountain of the water of life.1046  Of a supramundane trinity of essence he betrays but faint indications.

Tertullian advances a step. He supposes a distinction in God himself; and on the principle that the created image affords a key to the uncreated original, he illustrates the distinction in the divine nature by the analogy of human thought; the necessity of a self-projection, or of making one’s self objective in word, for which he borrows from the Valentinians the term probolhv, or prolatio rei alterius ex altera,1047 but without connecting with it the sensuous emanation theory of the Gnostics. Otherwise he stands, as already observed, on subordinatian ground, if his comparisons of the trinitarian relation to that of root, stem, and fruit; or fountain, flow, and brook; or sun, ray, and raypoint, be dogmatically pressed.1048  Yet he directly asserts also the essential unity of the three persons..1049

Tertullian was followed by the schismatic but orthodox Novatian, the author of a special treatise De Trinitate, drawn from the Creed, and fortified with Scripture proofs against the two classes of Monarchians.

The Roman bishop Dionysius (A. D. 262), a Greek by birth,1050 stood nearest the Nicene doctrine. He maintained distinctly, in the controversy with Dionysius of Alexandria, at once the unity of essence and the real personal distinction of the three members of the divine triad, and avoided tritheism, Sabellianism, and subordinatianism with the instinct of orthodoxy, and also with the art of anathematizing already familiar to the popes. His view has come down to us in a fragment in Athanasius, where it is said: "Then I must declare against those who annihilate the most sacred doctrine of the church by dividing and dissolving the unity of God into three powers, separate hypostases, and three deities. This notion [some tritheistic view, not further known to us] is just the opposite of the opinion of Sabellius. For while the latter would introduce the impious doctrine, that the Son is the same as the Father, and the converse, the former teach in some sense three Gods, by dividing the sacred unity into three fully separate hypostases. But the divine Logos must be inseparably united with the God of all, and in God also the Holy Ghost must dwell so that the divine triad must be comprehended in one, viz. the all-ruling God, as in a head."1051  Then Dionysius condemns the doctrine, that the Son is a creature, as "the height of blasphemy," and concludes: "The divine adorable unity must not be thus cut up into three deities; no more may the transcendant dignity and greatness of the Lord be lowered by saying, the Son is created; but we must believe in God the almighty Father, and in Jesus Christ his Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and must consider the Logos inseparably united with the God of all; for he says, ’I and my Father are one’; and ’I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ In this way are both the divine triad and the sacred doctrine of the unity of the Godhead preserved inviolate."

§ 150. Antitrinitarians. First Class: The Alogi, Theodotus, Artemon, Paul of Samosata.

The works cited at § 144, p. 543.

Schleiermacher: Ueber den Gegensatz der sabellianischen u. athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinitaet (Werke zur Theol. Vol. II.). A rare specimen of constructive criticism (in the interest of Sabellianism).

Lobeg. Lange: Geschichte u. Lehrbegriff der Unitarier vor der nicaenischen Synode. Leipz. 1831.

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengesch. der vornicaen. Zeit (Münster, 1862), pp. 142–156; 199–203. Comp. his art. Antitrinitarier in "Wetzer und Welte, " new ed. I. 971–976.

Friedr. Nitzsch: Dogmengeschichte, Part I. (Berlin, 1870), 194–210.

Ad. Harnack: Monarchianismus. In Herzog2, vol. X. (1882), 178–213. A very elaborate article. Abridged in Schaff’s Herzog, II. 1548 sqq.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums (1884) p. 608-(628.

That this goal was at last happily reached, was in great part due again to those controversies with the opponents of the church doctrine of the Trinity, which filled the whole third century. These Antitrinitarians are commonly called Monarchians from (monarciva)1052 or Unitarians, on account of the stress they laid upon the numerical. personal unity of the Godhead.

But we must carefully distinguish among them two opposite classes: the rationalistic or dynamic Monarchians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or explained it as a mere "power" (duvnami") and the patripassian or modalistic Monarchians, who identified the Son with the Father, and admitted at most only a modal trinity, that is a threefold mode of revelation, but not a tripersonality.

The first form of this heresy, involved in the abstract Jewish monotheism, deistically sundered the divine and the human, and rose little above Ebionism. After being defeated in the church this heresy arose outside of it on a grander scale, as a pretended revelation, and with marvellous success, in Mohammedanism which may be called the pseudo-Jewish and pseudo-Christian Unitarianism of the East.

The second form proceeded from the highest conception of the deity of Christ, but in part also from pantheistic notions which approached the ground of Gnostic docetism.

The one prejudiced the dignity of the Son, the other the dignity of the Father; yet the latter was by far the more profound and Christian, and accordingly met with the greater acceptance.

The Monarchians of the first class saw in Christ a mere man, filled with divine power; but conceived this divine power as operative in him, not from the baptism only, according to the Ebionite view, but from the beginning; and admitted his supernatural generation by the Holy Spirit. To this class belong:

1. The Alogians or Alogi,1053 a heretical sect in Asia Minor about A.D. 170, of which very little is known. Epiphanius gave them this name because they rejected the Logos doctrine and the Logos Gospel, together with the Apocalypse. "What good," they said, "is the Apocalypse to me, with its seven angels and seven seals?  What have I to do with the four angels at Euphrates, whom another angel must loose, and the host of horsemen with breastplates of fire and brimstone?"  They seem to have been jejune rationalists opposed to chiliasm and all mysterious doctrines. They absurdly attributed the writings of John to the Gnostic, Cerinthus, whom the aged apostle opposed.1054  This is the first specimen of negative biblical criticism, next to Marcion’s mutilation of the canon.10552. The Theodotians; so called from their founder, the tanner Theodotus. He sprang from Byzantium; denied Christ in a persecution, with the apology that he denied only a man; but still held him to be the supernaturally begotten Messiah. He gained followers in Rome, but was excommunicated by the bishop Victor (192–202). After his death his sect chose the confessor Natalis bishop, who is said to have afterwards penitently returned into the bosom of the Catholic church. A younger Theodotus, the "money-changer," put Melchizedek as mediator between God and the angels, above Christ, the mediator between God and men; and his followers were called Melchizedekians.1056

3. The Artemonites, or adherents of Artemon or Artemos, who came out somewhat later at Rome with a similar opinion, declared the doctrine of the divinity of Christ an innovation and a relapse to heathen polytheism; and was excommunicated by Zephyrinus (202–217) or afterwards. The Artemonites were charged with placing Euclid and Aristotle above Christ, and esteeming mathematics and dialectics higher than the gospel. This indicates a critical intellectual turn, averse to mystery, and shows that Aristotle was employed by some against the divinity of Christ, as Plato was engaged for it.

Their assertion, that the true doctrine was obscured in the Roman church only from the time of Zephyrinus,1057 is explained by the fact brought to light recently through the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, that Zephyrinus (and perhaps his predecessor Victor), against the vehement opposition of a portion of the Roman church, favored Patripassianism, and probably in behalf of this doctrine condemned the Artemonites.1058

4. Paul Of Samosata, from 260 bishop of Antioch, and at the same time a high civil officer,1059 is the most famous of these rationalistic Unitarians, and contaminated one of the first apostolic churches with his heresy. He denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, and considered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man; but granted that the Logos dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messenger of God, and taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral development, to divine dignity.1060  He admitted that Christ remained free from sin, conquered the sin of our forefathers, and then became the Saviour of the race. To introduce his Christology into the mind of the people, he undertook to alter the church hymns, but was shrewd enough to accommodate himself to the orthodox formulas, calling Christ, for example, "God from the Virgin,"1061 and ascribing to him even homo-ousia with the Father, but of course in his own sense.1062

The bishops under him in Syria accused him not only of heresy but also of extreme vanity, arrogance, pompousness, avarice, and undue concern with secular business; and at a third synod held in Antioch A.D. 269 or 268, they pronounced his deposition. The number of bishops present is variously reported (70, 80, 180). Dominus was appointed successor. The result was communicated to the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and to all the churches. But as Paul was favored by the queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the deposition could not be executed till after her subjection by the emperor Aurelian in 272, and after consultation with the Italian bishops.1063

His overthrow decided the fall of the Monarchians; though they still appear at the end of the fourth century as condemned heretics, under the name of Samosatians, Paulianists, and Sabellians.

§ 151. Second Class of Antitrinitarians: Praxeas, Noëtus, Callistus, Berryllus.

The second class of Monarchians, called by Tertullian "Patripassians" (as afterwards a branch of the Monophysites was called "Theopaschites"),1064 together with their unitarian zeal felt the deeper Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ; but they sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged in the essence of the Father. They taught that the one supreme God by his own free will, and by an act of self-limitation became man, so that the Son is the Father veiled in the flesh. They knew no other God but the one manifested in Christ, and charged their opponents with ditheism. They were more dangerous than the rationalistic Unitarians, and for a number of years had even the sympathy and support of the papal chair. They had a succession of teachers in Rome, and were numerous there even at the time of Epiphanius towards the close of the fourth century.

1. The first prominent advocate of the Patripassian heresy was Praxeas of Asia Minor. He came to Rome under Marcus Aurelius with the renown of a confessor; procured there the condemnation of Montanism; and propounded his Patripassianism, to which he gained even the bishop Victor.1065  But Tertullian met him in vindication at once of Montanism and of hypostasianism with crushing logic, and sarcastically charged him with having executed at Rome two commissions of the devil: having driven away the Holy Ghost, and having crucified the Father. Praxeas, constantly appealing to Is. 45:5; Jno. 10:30 ("I and my Father are one"), and 14:9 ("He that hath seen me hath seen the Father "), as if the whole Bible consisted of these three passages, taught that the Father himself became man, hungered, thirsted, suffered, and died in Christ. True, he would not be understood as speaking directly of a suffering (pati) of the Father, but only of a sympathy (copati) of the Father with the Son; but in any case he lost the independent personality of the Son. He conceived the relation of the Father to the Son as like that of the spirit to the flesh. The same subject, as spirit, is the Father; as flesh, the Son. He thought the Catholic doctrine tritheistic.1066

2. Noëtus of Smyrna published the same view about A.D. 200, appealing also to Rom. 9:5, where Christ is called "the one God over all." When censured by a council he argued in vindication of himself, that his doctrine enhanced the glory of Christ.1067  The author of the Philosophumena places him in connection with the pantheistic philosophy of Heraclitus, who, as we here for the first time learn, viewed nature as the harmony of all antitheses, and called the universe at once dissoluble and indissoluble, originated and unoriginated, mortal and immortal; and thus Noëtus supposed that the same divine subject must be able to combine opposite attributes in itself.1068

Two of his disciples, Epigonus and Cleomenes,1069 propagated this doctrine in Rome under favor of Pope Zephyrinus.

3. Callistus (pope Calixtus I.) adopted and advocated the doctrine of Noëtus. He declared the Son merely the manifestation of the Father in human form; the Father animating the Son, as the spirit animates the body,1070 and suffering with him on the cross. "The Father," said he, "who was in the Son, took flesh and made it God, uniting it with himself and made it one. Father and Son were therefore the name of the one God, and this one person1071 cannot be two; thus the Father suffered with the Son." He considered his opponents "ditheists,"1072 and they in return called his followers "Callistians."

These and other disclosures respecting the church at Rome during the first quarter of the third century, we owe, as already observed, to the ninth book of the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, who was, however, it must be remembered, the leading opponent and rival of Callistus, and in his own doctrine of the Trinity inclined to the opposite subordinatian extreme. He calls Callistus, evidently with passion, an "unreasonable and treacherous man, who brought together blasphemies from above and below only to speak against the truth, and was not ashamed to fall now into the error of Sabellius, now into that of Theodotius" (of which latter, however, he shows no trace, but the very opposite).1073  Callistus differed from the ditheistic separation of the Logos from God, but also from the Sabellian confusion of the Father and the Son, and insisted on the mutual indwelling (pericwvrhsi") of the divine Persons; in other words, he sought the way from modalistic unitarianism to the Nicene trinitarianism; but he was not explicit and consistent in his statements. He excommunicated both Sabellius and Hippolytus; the Roman church sided with him, and made his name one of the most prominent among the ancient popes.1074

After the death of Callistus, who occupied the papal chair between 218 and 223 or 224, Patripassianism disappeared from the Roman church.

4. Beryllus of Bostra (now Bosra and Bosseret), in Arabia Petraea. From him we have only a somewhat obscure and very variously interpreted passage preserved in Eusebius.1075  He denied the personal pre-existence1076 and in general the independent divinity1077 of Christ, but at the same time asserted the indwelling of the divinity of the Father1078 in him during his earthly life. He forms, in some sense, the stepping-stone from simple Patripassianism to Sabellian modalism. At an Arabian synod in 244, where the presbyter Origen, then himself accused of heresy, was called into consultation, Beryllus was convinced of his error by that great teacher, and was persuaded particularly of the existence of a human soul in Christ, in place of which he had probably put his patrikh; qeovto", as Apollinaris in a later period put the lovgo".  He is said to have thanked Origen afterwards for his instruction. Here we have one of the very few theological disputations which have resulted in unity instead of greater division.1079

§ 152. Sabellianism.

Sources: Hippolytyus: Philos. IX. 11 (D. and Schn. p. 450, 456, 458). Rather meagre, but important. Epiphan.: Haer: 62. The fragments of letters of Dionysius of Alex. in Athanasius, De Sentent. Dion., and later writers, collected in Routh, Reliqu. sacr. Novatian: De Trinit. Euseb.: Contra Marcellum. The references in the writiings of Athanasius (De Syn.; De Decr. Nic. Syn.; Contra Arian.). Basil M.: Ep. 207, 210, 214, 235. Gregory of Naz.: lovgo" kata;  jAreivou k. Sabellivou.

Comp. Schleiermacher, Neander, Baur, Dorner, Harnack, l. c., and Zahn, Marcellus von. Ancyra (Gotha, 1867); Nitzsch, Dogmengesch. I. 206–209, 223–225.

5. Sabellius is by far the most original, profound, and ingenious of the ante-Nicene Unitarians, and his system the most plausible rival of orthodox trinitarianism. It revives from time to time in various modifications.1080  We know very little of his life. He was probably a Lybian from the Pentapolis. He spent some time in Rome in the beginning of the third century, and was first gained by Callistus to Patripassianism, but when the latter became bishop be was excommunicated.1081  The former fact is doubtful. His doctrine spread in Rome, and especially also in the Pentapolis in Egypt. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, excommunicated him in 260 or 2611082 at a council in that city, and, in vehement opposition to him declared in almost Arian terms for the hypostatical independence and subordination of the Son in relation to the Father. This led the Sabellians to complain of that bishop to Dionysius of Rome, who held a council in 262, and in a special treatise controverted Sabellianism, as well as subordinatianism and tritheism, with nice orthodox tact.1083  The bishop of Alexandria very cheerfully yielded, and retracted his assertion of the creaturely inferiority of the Son in favor of the orthodox homo-ousios. Thus the strife was for a while allayed, to be renewed with still greater violence by Arius half a century later.

The system of Sabellius is known to us only from a few fragments, and some of these not altogether consistent, in Athanasius and other fathers.

While the other Monarchians confine their inquiry to the relation of Father and Son, Sabellius embraces the Holy Spirit in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneous trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. He starts from a distinction of the monad and the triad in the divine nature. His fundamental thought is, that the unity of God, without distinction in itself, unfolds or extends itself1084 in the course of the world’s development in three different forms and periods of revelation1085 and, after the completion of redemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals himself in the giving of the law or the Old Testament economy (not in the creation also, which in his view precedes the trinitarian revelation); the Son, in the incarnation; the Holy Ghost, in inspiration. The revelation of the Son ends with the ascension; the revelation of the Spirit goes on in regeneration and sanctification. He illustrates the trinitarian relation by comparing the Father to the disc of the sun, the Son to its enlightening power, the Spirit to its warming influence. He is said also to have likened the Father to the body, the Son to the soul, the Holy Ghost to the spirit of man; but this is unworthy of his evident speculative discrimination. His view of the Logos,1086 too, is peculiar. The, Logos is not identical with the Son, but is the monad itself in its transition to triad; that is, God conceived as vital motion and creating principle, the speaking God,1087 in distinction from the silent God.1088  Each provswpon is another dialevgesqai and the three provswpa together are only successive evolutions of the Logos or the worldward aspect of the divine nature. As the Logos proceeded from God, so he returns at last into him, and the process of trinitarian development1089 closes.

Athanasius traced the doctrine of Sabellius to the Stoic philosophy. The common element is the pantheistic leading view of an expansion and contraction1090 of the divine nature immanent in the world. In the Pythagorean system also, in the Gospel of the Egyptians, and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, there are kindred ideas. But the originality of Sabellius cannot be brought into question by these. His theory broke the way for the Nicene church doctrine, by its full coordination of the three persons. He differs from the orthodox standard mainly in denying the trinity of essence and the permanence of the trinity of manifestation; making Father, Son, and Holy Ghost only temporary phenomena, which fulfil their mission and return into the abstract monad.

§ 153. Redemption.

Cotta: Histor. doctrinae de redemptione sanguine J. Chr. facta, in Gerhard: Loci theol., vol. IV. p. 105–134.

Ziegler: Hist. dogmatis de redemptione. Gott. 1791. Rationalistic.

K. Baehr.: Die Lehre der Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den drei ersten Jahrh.,  Sulz b. 1832. Against the orthodox doctrine of the satisfactio vicaria.

F. C. Baur: Die christl. Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtl. Entw. von der aeltesten Zeit bis auf die neueste. Tüb. 1838. 764 pages, (See pp. 23–67). Very learned, critical, and philosophical, but resulting in Hegelian pantheism.

L. Duncker: Des heil. Irenaeus Christologie. Gött. 1843 (p. 217 sqq.; purely objective).

Baumgarten Crusius: Compendium der christl. Dogmengeschichte. Leipz. 2d Part 1846, § 95 sqq. (p. 257 sqq.)

Albrecht Ritschl (Prof. in Göttingen): Die christl. Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, Bonn, 1870, second revised ed. 1882, sqq., 3 vols. The first vol. (pages 656) contains the history the doctrine, but devotes only a few introductory pages to our period (p. 4), being occupied chiefly with the Anselmic, the orthodox Lutheran and Calvinistic, and the modern German theories of redemption. Ritschl belonged originally to the Tübingen school, but pursues now an independent path, and lays greater stress on the ethical forces in history.

The work of the triune God, in his self-revelation, is the salvation, or redemption and reconciliation of the world: negatively, the emancipation of humanity from the guilt and power of sin and death; positively, the communication of the righteousness and life of fellowship with God. First, the discord between the Creator and the creature must be adjusted; and then man can be carried onward to his destined perfection. Reconciliation with God is the ultimate aim of every religion. In heathenism it was only darkly guessed and felt after, or anticipated in perverted, fleshly forms. In Judaism it was divinely promised, typically foreshadowed, and historically prepared. In Christianity it is revealed in objective reality, according to the eternal counsel of the love and wisdom of God, through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and is being continually applied subjectively to individuals in the church by the Holy Spirit, through the means of grace, on condition of repentance and faith. Christ is, exclusively and absolutely, the Saviour of the world, and the Mediator between God and man.

The apostolic scriptures, in the fulness of their inspiration, everywhere bear witness of this salvation wrought through Christ, as a living fact of experience. But it required time for the profound ideas of a Paul and a John to come up clearly to the view of the church; indeed, to this day they remain unfathomed. Here again experience anticipated theology. The church lived from the first on the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The cross ruled all Christian thought and conduct, and fed the spirit of martyrdom. But the primitive church teachers lived more in the thankful enjoyment of redemption than in logical reflection upon it. We perceive in their exhibitions of this blessed mystery the language rather of enthusiastic feeling than of careful definition and acute analysis. Moreover, this doctrine was never, like Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, a subject of special controversy within the ancient church. The oecumenical symbols touch it only in general terms. The Apostles’ Creed presents it in the article on the forgiveness of sins on the ground of the divine-human life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Nicene Creed says, a little more definitely, that Christ became man for our salvation,1091 and died for us, and rose again.

Nevertheless, all the essential elements of the later church doctrine of redemption may be found, either expressed or implied, before the close of the second century. The negative part of the doctrine, the subjection of the devil, the prince of the kingdom of sin and death, was naturally most dwelt on in the patristic period, on account of the existing conflict of Christianity with heathenism, which was regarded as wholly ruled by Satan and demons. Even in the New Testament, particularly in Col. 2:15, Heb. 2:14, and 1 John 3:8, the victory over the devil is made an integral part of the work of Christ. But this view was carried out in the early church in a very peculiar and, to some extent, mythical way; and in this form continued current, until the satisfaction theory of Anselm gave a new turn to the development of the dogma. Satan is supposed to have acquired, by the disobedience of our first parents, a legal claim (whether just or unjust) upon mankind, and held them bound in the chains of sin and death (Comp. Hebr. 2:14, 15). Christ came to our release. The victory over Satan was conceived now as a legal ransom by the payment of a stipulated price, to wit, the death of Christ; now as a cheat upon him,1092 either intentional and deserved, or due to his own infatuation.1093

The theological development of the doctrine of the work of Christ began with the struggle against Jewish and heathen influences, and at the same time with the development of the doctrine of the person of Christ, which is inseparable from that of his work, and indeed fundamental to it. Ebionism, with its deistic and legal spirit, could not raise its view above the prophetic office of Christ to the priestly and the kingly, but saw in him only a new teacher and legislator. Gnosticism, from the naturalistic and pantheistic position of heathendom, looked upon redemption as a physical and intellectual process, liberating the spirit from the bonds of matter, the supposed principle of evil; reduced the human life and passion of Christ to a vain show; and could ascribe at best only a symbolical virtue to his death. For this reason even Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, in their opposition to docetism, insist most earnestly on the reality of the humanity and death of Jesus, as the source of our reconciliation with God.1094

In Justin Martyr appear traces of the doctrine of satisfaction, though in very indefinite terms. He often refers to the Messianic fifty-third chapter of Isaiah..1095

The anonymous author of the Epistle to an unknown heathen, Diognetus, which has sometimes been ascribed to Justin, but is probably of much earlier date, has a beautiful and forcible passage on the mystery of redemption, which shows that the root of the matter was apprehended by faith long before a logical analysis was attempted. "When our wickedness" he says,1096 "had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward—punishment and death—was impending over us .... God himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities. He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness?  By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God?  O sweet exchange!  O unsearchable operation!  O benefits surpassing all expectation!  that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!"

Irenaeus is the first of all the church teachers to give a careful analysis of the work of redemption, and his view is by far the deepest and soundest we find in the first three centuries. Christ, he teaches, as the second Adam, repeated in himself the entire life of man, from childhood to manhood, from birth to death and hades, and as it were summed up that life and brought it under one head,1097 with the double purpose of restoring humanity from its fall and carrying it to perfection. Redemption comprises the taking away of sin by the perfect obedience of Christ; the destruction of death by victory over the devil; and the communication of a new divine life to man. To accomplish this work, the Redeemer must unite in himself the divine and human natures; for only as God could he do what man could not, and only as man could he do in a legitimate way, what man should. By the voluntary disobedience of Adam the devil gained a power over man, but in an unfair way, by fraud.1098  By the voluntary obedience of Christ that power was wrested from him by lawful means.1099  This took place first in the temptation, in which Christ renewed or recapitulated the struggle of Adam with Satan, but defeated the seducer, and thereby liberated man from his thraldom. But then the whole life of Christ was a continuous victorious conflict with Satan, and a constant obedience to God. This obedience completed itself in the suffering and death on the tree of the cross, and thus blotted out the disobedience which the first Adam had committed on the tree of knowledge. This, however, is only the negative side. To this is added, as already remarked, the communication of a new divine principle of life, and the perfecting of the idea of humanity first effected by Christ.

Origen differs from Irenaeus in considering man, in consequence of sin, the lawful property of Satan, and in representing the victory over Satan as an outwitting of the enemy, who had no claim to the sinless soul of Jesus, and therefore could not keep it in death. The ransom was paid, not to God, but to Satan, who thereby lost his right to man. Here Origen touches on mythical Gnosticism. He contemplates the death of Christ, however, from other points of view also, as an atoning sacrifice of love offered to God for the sins of the world; as the highest proof of perfect obedience to God; and as an example of patience. He singularly extends the virtue of this redemption to the whole spirit world, to fallen angels as well as men, in connection with his hypothesis of a final restoration. The only one of the fathers who accompanies him in this is Gregory of Nyssa.

Athanasius, in his early youth, at the beginning of the next period, wrote the first systematic treatise on redemption and answer to the question "Cur Deus homo?"1100  But it was left for the Latin church, after the epoch-making treatise of Anselm, to develop this important doctrine in its various aspects.

§ 154. Other Doctrines.

The doctrine of the subjective appropriation of salvation, including faith, justification, and sanctification, was as yet far less perfectly formed than the objective dogmas; and in the nature of the case, must follow the latter. If any one expects to find in this period, or in any of the church fathers, Augustin himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, as the "articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae" be will be greatly disappointed. The incarnation of the Logos, his true divinity and true humanity, stand almost unmistakably in the foreground, as the fundamental truths. Paul’s doctrine of justification, except perhaps in Clement of Rome, who joins it with the doctrine of James, is left very much out of view, and awaits the age of the Reformation to be more thoroughly established and understood. The fathers lay chief stress on sanctification and good works, and show the already existing germs of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the meritoriousness and even the supererogatory meritoriousness of Christian virtue. It was left to modern evangelical theology to develop more fully the doctrines of soteriology and subjective Christianity.

The doctrine of the church, as the communion of grace , we have already considered in the chapter on the constitution of the church,1101 and the doctrine of the sacraments, as the objective means of appropriating grace, in the chapter on worship.1102

§ 155. Eschatology. Immortality and Resurrection.

I. General Eschatology:

Chr. W Flugge: Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, Auferstchung, Gericht und Vergeltung. 3 Theile, Leipz. 1794–1800. Part III. in 2 vols. gives a history of the Christian doctriNe. Not completed.

William Rounseville Alger (Unitarian): A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. With a Complete Literature on the Subject. Philad. 1864, tenth ed. with six new chs. Boston, 1878. He treats of the patristic doctrine in Part Fourth, ch. 1. p. 394–407. The Bibliographical Index by Prof. Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, contains a classified list of over 5000 books on the subject, and is unequalled in bibliographical literature for completeness and accuracy.

Edm. Spiess: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Vorstellungen vom Zustand nach dem Tode. Jena, 1877. This book of 616 pages omits the Christian eschatology.

II. Greek and Roman Eschatology:

C. Fr. Nägelsbach: Die homerische Theologie in ihrem Zusammenhang dargestellt. Nürnberg, 1840.

The same: Die nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander. Nürnberg, 1857.

Aug Arndt: Die Ansichten der Alten über Leben, Tod und Unsterblichkeit. Frankfurt a. M. 1874.

Lehrs: Vorstellungen der Griechen über das Fortleben nach dem Tode. Second ed. 1875.

Ludwig Friedlaender: Sittengeschichte Roms, fifth ed. Leipz. 1881, vol. III. p. 681–717 (Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube).

III. Jewish Eschatology;

A. Kahle: Biblische Eschatologie des Alten Testaments. Gotha, 1870.

A. Wahl: Unsterblichkeits-und Vergeltungslehre des alttestamentlichen Hebraismus. Jena, 1871.

Dr. Ferdinand Weber (d. 1879): System der Altsynagogalen Palaestinischen Theologie aus Targum, Midrasch und Talmud. Ed. by Franz Delitzsch and Georg Schnedermann. Leipzig, 1880. See chs. XXI. 322–332; XXIV. 371–386.

Aug Wünsche: Die Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode nach apokryphen, Talmud, und Kirchenvätern  In the "Jahrbücher für Prot. Theol."  Leipz. 1880

Bissel: The Eschatology of the Apocrypha. In the " Bibliotheca Sacra,"  1879.

IV. Christian Eschatology:

See the relevant chapters in Flügge, and Alger, as above.

Dr. Edward Beecher: History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution. New York, 1878 (334 pages).

The relevant sections in the Doctrine Histories of Münscher, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Hagenbach (H. B. Smith’s ed. vol. I. 213 sqq. and 368 sqq.), Shedd, Friedrich Nitzsch (I. 397 sqq.)

A large number of monographs on Death, Hades, Purgatory, Resurrection, Future Punishment. See the next sections.

Christianity—and human life itself, with its countless problems and mysteries—has no meaning without the certainty of a future world of rewards and punishments, for which the present life serves as a preparatory school. Christ represents himself as "the Resurrection and the Life," and promises "eternal life" to all who believe in Him. On his resurrection the church is built, and without it the church could never have come into existence. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are among the fundamental articles of the early baptismal creeds. The doctrine of the future life, though last in the logical order of systematic theology, was among the first in the consciousness of the Christians, and an unfailing source of comfort and strength in times of trial and persecution. It stood in close connection with the expectation of the Lord’s glorious reappearance. It is the subject of Paul’s first Epistles, those to the Thessalonians, and is prominently discussed in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. He declares the Christians "the most pitiable," because the most deluded and uselessly self-sacrificing, "of all men," if their hope in Christ were confined to this life.

The ante-Nicene church was a stranger in the midst of a hostile world, and longed for the unfading crown which awaited the faithful confessor and martyr beyond the grave. Such a mighty revolution as the conversion of the heathen emperor was not dreamed of even as a remote possibility, except perhaps by the far-sighted Origen. Among the five causes to which Gibbon traces the rapid progress of the Christian religion he assigns the second place to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. We know nothing whatever of a future world which lies beyond the boundaries of our observation and experience, except what God has chosen to reveal to us. Left to the instincts and aspirations of nature, which strongly crave after immortality and glory, we can reach at best only probabilities; while the gospel gives us absolute certainty, sealed by the resurrection of Christ.

1. The heathen notions of the future life were vague and confused. The Hindoos, Babylonians, and Egyptians had a lively sense of immortality, but mixed with the idea of endless migrations and transformations. The Buddhists, starting from the idea that existence is want, and want is suffering, make it the chief end of man to escape such migrations, and by various mortifications to prepare for final absorption in Nirwana. The popular belief among the ancient Greeks and Romans was that man passes after death into the Underworld, the Greek Hades, the Roman Orcus. According to Homer, Hades is a dark abode in the interior of the earth, with an entrance at the Western extremity of the Ocean, where the rays of the sun do not penetrate. Charon carries the dead over the stream Acheron, and the three-headed dog Cerberus watches the entrance and allows none to pass out. There the spirits exist in a disembodied state and lead a shadowy dream-life. A vague distinction was made between two regions in Hades, an Elysium (also "the Islands of the Blessed") for the good, and Tartarus for the bad. "Poets and painters," says Gibbon, peopled the infernal regions with so many phantoms and monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so little equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was oppressed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions. The eleventh book of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and incoherent account of the infernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have embellished the picture; but even those poets, though more correct than their great model, are guilty of very strange inconsistencies."1103

Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch rose highest among the ancient philosophers in their views of the future life, but they reached only to belief in its probability—not in its certainty. Socrates, after be was condemned to death, said to his judges: "Death is either an eternal sleep, or the transition to a new life; but in neither case is it an evil;"1104 and he drank with playful irony the fatal hemlock. Plato, viewing the human soul as a portion of the eternal, infinite, all-pervading deity, believed in its pre-existence before this present life, and thus had a strong ground of hope for its continuance after death. All the souls (according to his Phaedon and Gorgias, pass into the spirit-world, the righteous into the abodes of bliss, where they live forever in a disembodied state, the wicked into Tartarus for punishment and purification (which notion prepared the way for purgatory). Plutarch, the purest and noblest among the Platonists, thought that immortality was inseparably connected with belief in an all-ruling Providence, and looked with Plato to the life beyond as promising a higher knowledge of, and closer conformity to God, but only for those few who are here purified by virtue and piety. In such rare cases, departure might be called an ascent to the stars, to heaven, to the gods, rather than a descent to Hades. He also, at the death of his daughter, expresses his faith in the blissful state of infants who die in infancy. Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions and treatise De Senectute, reflects in classical language "the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul." Though strongly leaning to a positive view, he yet found it no superfluous task to quiet the fear of death in case the soul should perish with the body. The Stoics believed only in a limited immortality, or denied it altogether, and justified suicide when life became unendurable. The great men of Greece and Rome were not influenced by the idea of a future world as a motive of action. During the debate on the punishment of Catiline and his fellow-conspirators, Julius Caesar openly declared in the Roman Senate that death dissolves all the ills of mortality, and is the boundary of existence beyond which there is no more care nor joy, no more punishment for sin, nor any reward for virtue. The younger Cato, the model Stoic, agreed with Caesar; yet before he made an end to his life at Utica, he read Plato’s Phaedon. Seneca once dreamed of immortality, and almost approached the Christian hope of the birth-day of eternity, if we are to trust his rhetoric, but afterwards he awoke from the beautiful dream and committed suicide. The elder Pliny, who found a tragic death under the lava of Vesuvius, speaks of the future life as an invention of man’s vanity and selfishness, and thinks that body and soul have no more sensation after death than before birth; death becomes doubly painful if it is only the beginning of another indefinite existence. Tacitus speaks but once of immortality, and then conditionally; and he believed only in the immortality of fame. Marcus Aurelius, in sad resignation, bids nature, "Give what thou wilt, and take back again what and when thou wilt."

These were noble and earnest, Romans. What can be expected from the crown of frivolous men of the world who moved within the limits of matter and sense and made present pleasure and enjoyment the chief end of life?  The surviving wife of an Epicurean philosopher erected a monument to him, with the inscription "to the eternal sleep."1105  Not a few heathen epitaphs openly profess the doctrine that death ends all; while, in striking contrast with them, the humble Christian inscriptions in the catacombs express the confident hope of future bliss and glory in the uninterrupted communion of the believer with Christ and God.

Yet the scepticism of the educated and half-educated could not extinguish the popular belief in the imperial age. The number of cheerless and hopeless materialistic epitaphs is, after all, very small as compared with the many thousands which reveal no such doubt, or express a belief in some kind of existence beyond the grave.1106

Of a resurrection of the body the Greeks and Romans had no conception, except in the form of shades and spectral outlines, which were supposed to surround the disembodied spirits, and to make them to some degree recognizable. Heathen philosophers, like Celsus, ridiculed the resurrection of the body as useless, absurd, and impossible.

2. The Jewish doctrine is far in advance of heathen notions and conjectures, but presents different phases of development.

(a) The Mosaic writings are remarkably silent about the future life, and emphasize the present rather than future consequences of the observance or non-observance of the law (because it had a civil or political as well as spiritual import); and hence the Sadducees accepted them, although they denied the resurrection (perhaps also the immortality of the soul). The Pentateuch contains, however, some remote and significant hints of immortality, as in the tree of life with its symbolic import;1107 in the mysterious translation of Enoch as a reward for his piety;1108 in the prohibition of necromancy;1109 in the patriarchal phrase for dying: "to be gathered to his fathers," or "to his people;"1110 and last, though not least, in the self-designation of Jehovah as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which implies their immortality, since "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."1111  What has an eternal meaning for God must itself be eternal.

(b) In the later writings of the Old Testament, especially during and after the exile, the doctrine of immortality and resurrection comes out plainly.1112  Daniel’s vision reaches out even to the final resurrection of "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth to everlasting life," and of "some to shame and everlasting contempt," and prophesies that "they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."1113

But before Christ, who first revealed true life, the Hebrew Sheol, the general receptacle of departing souls, remained, like the Greek Hades, a dark and dreary abode, and is so described in the Old Testament.1114  Cases like Enoch’s translation and Elijah’s ascent are altogether unique and exceptional, and imply the meaning that death is contrary to man’s original destination, and may be overcome by the power of holiness.

(c) The Jewish Apocrypha (the Book of Wisdom, and the Second Book of Maccabees), and later Jewish writings (the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Ezra) show some progress: they distinguish between two regions in Sheol—Paradise or Abraham’s Bosom for the righteous, and Gehinnom or Gehenna for the wicked; they emphasize the resurrection of the body, and the future rewards and punishments.

(d) The Talmud adds various fanciful embellishments. It puts Paradise and Gehenna in close proximity, measures their extent, and distinguishes different departments in both corresponding to the degrees of merit and guilt. Paradise is sixty times as large as the world, and Hell sixty times as large as Paradise, for the bad preponderate here and hereafter. According to other rabbinical testimonies, both are well nigh boundless. The Talmudic descriptions of Paradise (as those of the Koran) mix sensual and spiritual delights. The righteous enjoy the vision of the Shechina and feast with the patriarchs, and with Moses and David of the flesh of leviathan, and drink wine from the cup of salvation. Each inhabitant has a house according to his merit. Among the punishments of hell the chief place is assigned to fire, which is renewed every week after the Sabbath. The wicked are boiled like the flesh in the pot, but the bad Israelites are not touched by fire, and are otherwise tormented. The severest punishment is reserved for idolaters, hypocrites, traitors, and apostates. As to the duration of future punishment the school of Shammai held that it was everlasting; while the school of Hillel inclined to the milder view of a possible redemption after repentance and purification. Some Rabbis taught that hell will cease, and that the sun will burn up and annihilate the wicked.1115

3. The Christian doctrine of the future life differs from the heathen, and to a less extent also from the Jewish, in the following important points:

(a) It gives to the belief in a future state the absolute certainty of divine revelation, sealed by the fact of Christ’s resurrection, and thereby imparts to the present life an immeasurable importance, involving endless issues.

(b) It connects the resurrection of the body with the immortality of the soul, and thus gives concrete completion to the latter, and saves the whole individuality of man from destruction.

(c) It views death as the punishment of sin, and therefore as something terrible, from which nature shrinks. But its terror has been broken, and its sting extracted by Christ.

(d) It qualifies the idea of a future state by the doctrine of sin and redemption, and thus makes it to the believer a state of absolute holiness and happiness, to the impenitent sinner a state of absolute misery. Death and immortality are a blessing to the one, but a terror to the other; the former can hail them with joy; the latter has reason to tremble.

(e) It gives great prominence to the general judgment, after the resurrection, which determines the ultimate fate of all men according to their works done in this earthly life.

But we must distinguish, in this mysterious article, what is of faith, and what is private opinion and speculation.

The return of Christ to judgment with its eternal rewards and punishment is the centre of the eschatological faith of the church. The judgment is preceded by the general resurrection, and followed by life everlasting.

This faith is expressed in the oecumenical creeds.

The Apostles’ Creed:

"He shall come to judge the quick and the dead," and "I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting."

The Nicene Creed:

"He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end." "And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."

The Athanasian Creed, so called, adds to these simple statements a damnatory clause at the beginning, middle, and end, and makes salvation depend on belief in the orthodox catholic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, as therein stated. But that document is of much later origin, and cannot be traced beyond the sixth century.

The liturgies which claim apostolic or post-apostolic origin, give devotional expression to the same essential points in the eucharistic sacrifice.

The Clementine liturgy:

"Being mindful, therefore, of His passion and death, and resurrection from the dead, and return into the heavens, and His future second appearing, wherein He is to come with glory and power to judge the quick and the dead, and to recompense to every one according to his works."

The liturgy of James:

"His second glorious and awful appearing, when He shall come with glory to judge the quick and the dead, and render to every one according to his works."

The liturgy of Mark:

"His second terrible and dreadful coming, in which He will come to judge righteously the quick and the dead, and to render to each man according to his works."

All that is beyond these revealed and generally received articles must be left free. The time of the Second Advent, the preceding revelation of Antichrist, the millennium before or after the general judgment, the nature of the disembodied state between death and resurrection, the mode and degree of future punishment, the proportion of the saved and lost, the fate of the heathen and all who die ignorant of Christianity, the locality of heaven and hell, are open questions in eschatology about which wise and good men in the church have always differed, and will differ to the end. The Bible speaks indeed of ascending to heaven and descending to hell, but this is simply the unavoidable popular language, as when it speaks of the rising and setting sun. We do the same, although we know that in the universe of God there is neither above nor below, and that the sun does not move around the earth. The supernatural world may be very far from us, beyond the stars and beyond the boundaries of the visible created world (if it has any boundaries), or very near and round about us. At all events there is an abundance of room for all God’s children. "In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2). This suffices for faith.

§ 156. Between Death and Resurrection.

Dav. Blondel: Traité de la créance des Pères touchnt l’état des ames après cette vie. Charenton, 1651.

J. A. Baumgarten: Historia doctrinae de Statu Animarum separatarum. Hal. 1754.

Höpfner: De Origine dogm. de Purgatorio. Hal. 1792.

J. A. Ernesti: De veterum Patrum opinione de Statu Animarum a corpore sejunctar. LiPs. 1794.

Herbert Mortimer Luckock (Canon of Ely, high-Anglican): After Death. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship to the Living. London, third ed. 1881. Defends prayers for the dead.

Among the darkest points in eschatology is the middle state, or the condition of the soul between death and resurrection. It is difficult to conceive of a disembodied state of happiness or woe without physical organs for enjoyment and suffering. Justin Martyr held that the souls retain their sensibility after death, otherwise the bad would have the advantage over the good. Origen seems to have assumed some refined, spiritual corporeity which accompanies the soul on its lonely journey, and is the germ of the resurrection body; but the speculative opinions of that profound thinker were looked upon with suspicion, and some of them were ultimately condemned. The idea of the sleep of the soul (psychopannychia) had some advocates, but was expressly rejected by Tertullian.1116  Others held that the soul died with the body, and was created anew at the resurrection.1117  The prevailing view was that the soul continued in a conscious, though disembodied state, by virtue either of inherent or of communicated immortality. The nature of that state depends upon the moral character formed in this life either for weal or woe, without the possibility of a change except in the same direction.

The catholic doctrine of the status intermedius was chiefly derived from the Jewish tradition of the Sheol, from the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:19 sqq.), and from the passages of Christ’s descent into Hades.1118  The utterances of the ante-Nicene fathers are somewhat vague and confused, but receive light from the more mature statements of the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers, and may be reduced to the following points:1119

1. The pious who died before Christ from Abel or Adam down to John the Baptist (with rare exceptions, as Enoch, Moses, and Elijah) were detained in a part of Sheol,1120 waiting for the first Advent, and were released by Christ after the crucifixion and transferred to Paradise. This was the chief aim and result of the descensus ad inferos, as understood in the church long before it became an article of the Apostles’ Creed, first in Aquileja (where, however, Rufinus explained it wrongly, as being equivalent to burial), and then in Rome. Hermas of Rome and Clement of Alexandria supposed that the patriarchs and Old Testament saints, before their translation, were baptized by Christ and the apostles. Irenaeus repeatedly refers to the descent of Christ to the spirit-world as the only means by which the benefits of the redemption could be made known and applied to the pious dead of former ages.1121

2. Christian martyrs and confessors, to whom were afterwards added other eminent saints, pass immediately after death into heaven to the blessed vision of God.1122

3. The majority of Christian believers, being imperfect, enter for an indefinite period into a preparatory state of rest and happiness, usually called Paradise (comp. Luke 23:41) or Abraham’s Bosom (Luke 16:23). There they are gradually purged of remaining infirmities until they are ripe for heaven, into which nothing is admitted but absolute purity. Origen assumed a constant progression to higher and higher regions of knowledge and bliss. (After the fifth or sixth century, certainly since Pope Gregory I., Purgatory was substituted for Paradise).

4. The locality of Paradise is uncertain: some imagined it to be a higher region of Hades beneath the earth, yet "afar off" from Gehenna, and separated from it by "a great gulf" (comp. Luke 16:23, 26);1123 others transferred it to the lower regions of heaven above the earth, yet clearly distinct from the final home of the blessed.1124

5. Impenitent Christians and unbelievers go down to the lower regions of Hades (Gehenna, Tartarus, Hell) into a preparatory state of misery and dreadful expectation of the final judgment. From the fourth century Hades came to be identified with Hell, and this confusion passed into many versions of the Bible, including that of King James.

6. The future fate of the heathen and of unbaptized children was left in hopeless darkness, except by Justin and the Alexandrian fathers, who extended the operations of divine grace beyond the limits of the visible church. Justin Martyr must have believed, from his premises, in the salvation of all those heathen who had in this life followed the light of the Divine Logos and died in a state of unconscious Christianity, or preparedness for Christianity. For, he says, "those who lived with the Logos were Christians, although they were esteemed atheists, as Socrates and Heraclitus, and others like them."1125

7. There are, in the other world, different degrees of happiness and misery according to the degrees of merit and guilt. This is reasonable in itself, and supported by scripture.

8. With the idea of the imperfection of the middle state and the possibility of progressive amelioration, is connected the commemoration of the departed, and prayer in their behalf. No trace of the custom is found in the New Testament nor in the canonical books of the Old, but an isolated example, which seems to imply habit, occurs in the age of the Maccabees, when Judas Maccabaeus and his company offered prayer and sacrifice for those slain in battle," that they might be delivered from sin."1126  In old Jewish service-books there are prayers for the blessedness of the dead.1127  The strong sense of the communion of saints unbroken by death easily accounts for the rise of a similar custom among the early Christians. Tertullian bears clear testimony to its existence at his time. "We offer," he says "oblations for the dead on the anniversary of their birth," i.e. their celestial birthday.1128  He gives it as a mark of a Christian widow, that she prays for the soul of her husband, and requests for him refreshment and fellowship in the first resurrection; and that she offers sacrifice on the anniversaries of his falling asleep.1129  Eusebius narrates that at the tomb of Constantine a vast crowd of people, in company with the priests of God, with tears and great lamentation offered their prayers to God for the emperor’s soul.1130  Augustin calls prayer for the pious dead in the eucharistic sacrifice an observance of the universal church, handed down from the fathers.1131  He himself remembered in prayer his godly mother at her dying request.

This is confirmed by the ancient liturgies, which express in substance the devotions of the ante-Nicene age, although they were not committed to writing before the fourth century. The commemoration of the pious dead is an important part in the eucharistic prayers. Take the following from the Liturgy of St. James: "Remember, O Lord God, the spirits of whom we have made mention, and of whom we have not made mention, who are of the true faith,1132 from righteous Abel unto this day; do Thou Thyself give them rest there in the land of the living, in Thy kingdom, in the delight of Paradise,1133in the Bosom of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, our holy fathers; whence pain and grief and lamentation have fled away: there the light of Thy countenance looks upon them, and gives them light for evermore." The Clementine Liturgy in the eighth book of the "Apostolical Constitutions" has likewise a prayer "for those who rest in faith," in these words: "We make an offering to Thee for all Thy saints who have pleased Thee from the beginning of the world, patriarchs, prophets, just men, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, elders, deacons, subdeacons, singers, virgins, widows, laymen, and all whose names Thou Thyself knowest."

9. These views of the middle state in connection with prayers for the dead show a strong tendency to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, which afterwards came to prevail in the West through the great weight of St. Augustin and Pope Gregory I. But there is, after all, a considerable difference. The ante-Nicene idea of the middle state of the pious excludes, or at all events ignores, the idea of penal suffering, which is an essential part of the Catholic conception of purgatory. It represents the condition of the pious as one of comparative happiness, inferior only to the perfect happiness after the resurrection. Whatever and wherever Paradise may be, it belongs to the heavenly world; while purgatory is supposed to be a middle region between heaven and hell, and to border rather on the latter. The sepulchral inscriptions in the catacombs have a prevailingly cheerful tone, and represent the departed souls as being "in peace" and "living in Christ," or "in God."1134  The same view is substantially preserved in the Oriental church, which holds that the souls of the departed believers may be aided by the prayers of the living, but are nevertheless "in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness."1135

Yet alongside with this prevailing belief, there are traces of the purgatorial idea of suffering the temporal consequences of sin, and a painful struggle after holiness. Origen, following in the path of Plato, used the term "purgatorial fire,"1136 by which the remaining stains of the soul shall be burned away; but he understood it figuratively, and connected it with the consuming fire at the final judgment, while Augustin and Gregory I. transferred it to the middle state. The common people and most of the fathers understood it of a material fire; but this is not a matter of faith, and there are Roman divines1137 who confine the purgatorial sufferings to the mind and the conscience. A material fire would be very harmless without a material body. A still nearer approach to the Roman purgatory was made by Tertullian and Cyprian, who taught that a special satisfaction and penance was required for sins committed after baptism, and that the last farthing must be paid (Matt. 5:20) before the soul can be released from prison and enter into heaven.

§ 157. After Judgment. Future Punishment.

The doctrine of the Fathers on future punishment is discussed by Dr. Edward Beecher, l.c., and in the controversial works called forth by Canon Farrar’s Eternal Hope (Five Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 1877. Lond., 1879.) See especially

Dr. Pusey: "What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment?"  A Reply to Dr. Farrar’s Challenge. Oxf. and Lond., second ed. 1880 (284 pages).

Canon F. W. Farrar: Mercy and Judgment: A few last words on Christian Eschatology with reference to Dr. Pusey’s "What is of Faith?" London and N. York, 1881 (485 pages). See chs. II., III., IX.-XII. Farrar opposes with much fervor "the current opinions about Hell," and reduces it to the smallest possible dimensions of time and space, but expressly rejects Universalism. He accepts with Pusey the Romanizing view of "future purification" (instead of "probation"), and thus increases the number of the saved by withdrawing vast multitudes of imperfect Christians from the awful doom.

After the general judgment we have nothing revealed but the boundless prospect of aeonian life and aeonian death. This is the ultimate boundary of our knowledge.

There never was in the Christian church any difference of opinion concerning the righteous, who shall inherit eternal life and enjoy the blessed communion of God forever and ever. But the final fate of the impenitent who reject the offer of salvation admits of three answers to the reasoning mind: everlasting punishment, annihilation, restoration (after remedial punishment and repentance).

I. Everlasting Punishment of the wicked always was, and always will be the orthodox theory. It was held by the Jews at the time of Christ, with the exception of the Sadducces, who denied the resurrection.1138  It is endorsed by the highest authority of the most merciful Being, who sacrificed his own life for the salvation of sinners.1139

Consequently the majority of the fathers who speak plainly on this terrible subject, favor this view.

Ignatius speaks of "the unquenchable fire;"1140 Hermas, of some "who will not be saved," but "shall utterly perish," because they will not repent.1141

Justin Martyr teaches that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receive eternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages. "Briefly," he says, "what we look for, and have learned from Christ, and what we teach, is as follows. Plato said to the same effect, that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked when they came to them; we say that the same thing will take place; but that the judge will be Christ, and that their souls will be united to the same bodies, and will undergo an eternal punishment (aivwnivan kovlasin) and not, as Plato said, a period of only a thousand years (ciliontaeth' perivodon)"1142  In another place: "We believe that all who live wickedly and do not repent, will be punished in eternal fire" (ejn aijwnivw/ puriv).1143 Such language is inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin M. has been claimed.1144  He does, indeed, reject with several other ante-Nicene writers, the Platonic idea that the soul is in itself and independently immortal1145 and hints at the possibility of the final destruction of the wicked,1146 but he puts that possibility countless ages beyond the final judgment, certainly beyond the Platonic millennium of punishment, so that it loses all practical significance and ceases to give relief.

Irenaeus has been represented as holding inconsistently all three theories, or at least as hesitating between the orthodox view and the annihilation scheme. He denies, like Justin Martyr, the necessary and intrinsic immortality of the soul, and makes it dependent on God for the continuance in life as well as for life itself.1147  But in paraphrasing the apostolic rule of faith he mentions eternal punishment, and in another place he accepts as certain truth that "eternal fire is prepared for sinners," because "the Lord openly affirms, and the other Scriptures prove" it.1148  Hippolytus approves the eschatology of the Pharisees as regards the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, the judgment and conflagration, everlasting life and "everlasting punishment;" and in another place be speaks of "the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the radiating voice of the Word."1149  According to Tertullian the future punishment "will continue, not for a long time, but forever."1150  It does credit to his feelings when he says that no innocent man can rejoice in the punishment of the guilty, however just, but will grieve rather. Cyprian thinks that the fear of hell is the only ground of the fear of death to any one, and that we should have before our eyes the fear of God and eternal punishment much more than the fear of men and brief suffering.1151  The generality of this belief among Christians is testified by Celsus, who tells them that the heathen priests threaten the same "eternal punishment" as they, and that the only question was which was right, since both claimed the truth with equal confidence.1152

II. The final Annihilation of the wicked removes all discord from the universe of God at the expense of the natural immortality of the soul, and on the ground that sin will ultimately destroy the sinner, and thus destroy itself.

This theory is attributed to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, who believed only in a conditional immortality which may be forfeited; but, as we have just seen, their utterances in favor of eternal punishment are too clear and strong to justify the inference which they might have drawn from their psychology.

Arnobius, however, seems to have believed in actual annihilation; for he speaks of certain souls that "are engulfed and burned up," or "hurled down and having been reduced to nothing, vanish in the frustration of a perpetual destruction."1153

III. The Apokatastasis or final restoration of all rational beings to holiness and happiness. This seems to be the most satisfactory speculative solution of the problem of sin, and secures perfect harmony in the creation, but does violence to freedom with its power to perpetuate resistance, and Ignores the hardening nature of sin and the ever increasing difficulty of repentance. If conversion and salvation are an ultimate necessity, they lose their moral character, and moral aim.

Origen was the first Christian Universalist. He taught a final restoration, but with modesty as a speculation rather than a dogma, in his youthful work De Principiis (written before 231), which was made known in the West by the loose version of Rufinus (398).1154  In his later writings there are only faint traces of it; he seems at least to have modified it, and exempted Satan from final repentance and salvation, but this defeats the end of the theory.1155  He also obscured it by his other theory of the necessary mutability of free will, and the constant succession of fall and redemption.1156

Universal salvation (including Satan) was clearly taught by Gregory of Nyssa, a profound thinker of the school of Origen (d. 395), and, from an exegetical standpoint, by the eminent Antiochian divines Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) and Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 429), and many Nestorian bishops.1157  In the West also at the time of Augustin (d. 430) there were, as he says, "multitudes who did not believe in eternal punishment." But the view of Origen was rejected by Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustin, and at last condemned as one of the Origenistic errors under the Emperor Justinian (543).1158

Since that time universalism was regarded as a heresy, but is tolerated in Protestant churches as a private speculative opinion or charitable hope.1159

§ 158. Chiliasm.

Corrodi: Kritische Geschichte des Chiliasmus. 1781. Second ed. Zürich, 1794. 4 vols. Very unsatisfactory.

Münscher.: Lehre vom tausendjährigen Reich in den 3 ersten Jahrh. (in Henke’s "Magazin." VI. 2, p. 233 sqq.)

D. T. Taylor: The Voice of the Church on the Coming and Kingdom of the Redeemer; a History of the Doctrine of the Reign of Christ on Earth. Revised by Hastings. Second ed. Peace Dale, R. I. 1855. Pre-millennial.

W. Volck: Der Chiliasmus. Eine historisch exeget. Studie. Dorpat, 1869 Millennarian.

A. Koch: Das tausendjährige Reich. Basel, 1872. Millennarian against Hengstenberg.

C. A. Briggs: Origin and History of Premillennarianism. In the "Lutheran Quarterly Review." Gettysburg, Pa., for April, 1879. 38 pages. Anti-millennial, occasioned by the "Prophetic Conference" of Pre-millennarians, held in New York, Nov. 1878. Discusses the ante-Nicene doctrine.

Geo. N. H. Peters: The Theocratic Kingdom of our Lord Jesus, the Christ. N. York, announced for publ. in 3 vols. 1884. Pre-millennarian.

A complete critical history is wanting, but the controversial and devotional literature on the subject is very large, especially in the English language. We mention 1) on the millennial side (embracing widely different shades of opinion). (a) English and American divines: Jos. Mede (1627), Twisse, Abbadie, Beverly T. Burnet, Bishop Newton, Edward Irving, Birks, Bickersteth, Horatio and Andrew Bonar (two brothers), E. B. Elliott (Horae Apoc.), John Cumming, Dean Alford, Nathan Lord, John Lillie, James H. Brooks, E. R. Craven, Nath. West, J. A. Seiss, S. H. Kellogg, Peters, and the writings of the Second Adventists, the Irvingites, and the Plymouth Brethren. (b) German divines: Spener (Hoffnung besserer Zeiten), Peterson, Bengel (Erklärte Offenbarung Johannis, 1740), Oetinger, Stilling, Lavater, Auberlen (on Dan. and Revel.), Martensen, Rothe, von Hofmann, Löhe, Delitzsch, Volck, Luthardt. 2) On the anti-millennial side—(a) English and American: Bishop Hall, R. Baxter, David Brown (Christ’s Second Advent), Fairbairn, Urwick, G. Bush, Mos. Stuart (on Revel.), Cowles (on Dan. ind Revel.), Briggs, etc. (b) German: Gerhard, Maresius, Hengstenberg, Keil, Kliefoth, Philippi, and many others. See the articles "Millennarianism" by Semisch, and "Pre-Millennarianism" by Kellog, in Schaff-Herzog, vols. II. and III., and the literature there given.

The most striking point in the eschatology of the ante-Nicene age is the prominent chiliasm, or millennarianism, that is the belief of a visible reign of Christ in glory on earth with the risen saints for a thousand years, before the general resurrection and judgment.1160  It was indeed not the doctrine of the church embodied in any creed or form of devotion, but a widely current opinion of distinguished teachers, such as Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, and Lactantius; while Caius, Origen, Dionysius the Great, Eusebius (as afterwards Jerome and Augustin) opposed it.

The Jewish chiliasm rested on a carnal misapprehension of the Messianic kingdom, a literal interpretation of prophetic figures, and an overestimate of the importance of the Jewish people and the holy city as the centre of that kingdom. It was developed shortly before and after Christ in the apocalyptic literature, as the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4th Esdras, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Sibylline Books. It was adopted by the heretical sect of the Ebionites, and the Gnostic Cerinthus.1161

The Christian chiliasm is the Jewish chiliasm spiritualized and fixed upon the second, instead of the first, coming of Christ. It distinguishes, moreover, two resurrections, one before and another after the millennium, and makes the millennial reign of Christ only a prelude to his eternal reign in heaven, from which it is separated by a short interregnum of Satan. The millennium is expected to come not as the legitimate result of a historical process but as a sudden supernatural revelation.

The advocates of this theory appeal to the certain promises of the Lord,1162 but particularly to the hieroglyphic passage of the Apocalypse, which teaches a millennial reign of Christ upon this earth after the first resurrection and before the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.1163

In connection with this the general expectation prevailed that the return of the Lord was near, though uncertain and unascertainable as to its day and hour, so that believers may be always ready for it.1164  This hope, through the whole age of persecution, was a copious fountain of encouragement and comfort under the pains of that martyrdom which sowed in blood the seed of a bountiful harvest for the church.

Among the Apostolic Fathers Barnabas is the first and the only one who expressly teaches a pre-millennial reign of Christ on earth. He considers the Mosaic history of the creation a type of six ages of labor for the world, each lasting a thousand years, and of a millennium of rest; since with God "one day is as a thousand years." The millennial Sabbath on earth will be followed by an eighth and eternal day in a new world, of which the Lord’s Day (called by Barnabas "the eighth day") is the type.1165

Papias of Hierapolis, a pious but credulous contemporary of Polycarp, entertained quaint and extravagant notions of the happiness of the millennial reign, for which he appealed to apostolic tradition. He put into the mouth of Christ himself a highly figurative description of the more than tropical fertility of that period, which is preserved and approved by Irenaeus, but sounds very apocryphal.1166

Justin Martyr represents the transition from the Jewish Christian to the Gentile Christian chiliasm. He speaks repeatedly of the second parousia of Christ in the clouds of heaven, surrounded by the holy angels. It will be preceded by the near manifestation of the man of sin (a[nqrwpo" th'" ajnomiva") who speaks blasphemies against the most high God, and will rule three and a half years. He is preceded by heresies and false prophets.1167  Christ will then raise the patriarchs, prophets, and pious Jews, establish the millennium, restore Jerusalem, and reign there in the midst of his saints; after which the second and general resurrection and judgment of the world will take place. He regarded this expectation of the earthly perfection of Christ’s kingdom as the key-stone of pure doctrine, but adds that many pure and devout Christians of his day did not share this opinion.1168  After the millennium the world will be annihilated, or transformed.1169  In his two Apologies, Justin teaches the usual view of the general resurrection and judgment, and makes no mention of the millennium, but does not exclude it.1170  The other Greek Apologists are silent on the subject, and cannot be quoted either for or against chiliasm.

Irenaeus, on the strength of tradition from St. John and his disciples, taught that after the destruction of the Roman empire, and the brief raging of antichrist (lasting three and a half years or 1260 days), Christ will visibly appear, will bind Satan, will reign at the rebuilt city of Jerusalem with the little band of faithful confessors and the host of risen martyrs over the nations of the earth, and will celebrate the millennial sabbath of preparation for the eternal glory of heaven; then, after a temporary liberation of Satan, follows the final victory, the general resurrection, the judgment of the world, and the consummation in the new heavens and the new earth.1171

Tertullian was an enthusiastic Chiliast, and pointed not only to the Apocalypse, but also to the predictions of the Montanist prophets.1172  But the Montanists substituted Pepuza in Phrygia for Jerusalem, as the centre of Christ’s reign, and ran into fanatical excesses, which brought chiliasm into discredit, and resulted in its condemnation by several synods in Asia Minor.1173

After Tertullian, and independently of Montanism, chiliasm was taught by Commodian towards the close of the third century,1174 Lactantius,1175 and Victorinus of Petau,1176 at the beginning of the fourth. Its last distinguished advocates in the East were Methodius (d., a martyr, 311), the opponent of Origen,1177 and Apollinaris of Laodicea in Syria.

We now turn to the anti-Chiliasts. The opposition began during the Montanist movement in Asia Minor. Caius of Rome attacked both Chiliasm and Montanism, and traced the former to the hated heretic Cerinthus.1178  The Roman church seems never to have sympathized with either, and prepared itself for a comfortable settlement and normal development in this world. In Alexandria, Origen opposed chiliasm as a Jewish dream, and spiritualized the symbolical language of the prophets.1179  His distinguished pupil, Dionysius the Great (d. about 264), checked the chiliastic movement when it was revived by Nepos in Egypt, and wrote an elaborate work against it, which is lost. He denied the Apocalypse to the apostle John, and ascribed it to a presbyter of that name.1180  Eusebius inclined to the same view.

But the crushing blow came from the great change in the social condition and prospects of the church in the Nicene age. After Christianity, contrary to all expectation, triumphed in the Roman empire, and was embraced by the Caesars themselves, the millennial reign, instead of being anxiously waited and prayed for, began to be dated either from the first appearance of Christ, or from the conversion of Constantine and the downfall of paganism, and to be regarded as realized in the glory of the dominant imperial state-church. Augustin, who himself had formerly entertained chiliastic hopes, framed the new theory which reflected the social change, and was generally accepted. The apocalyptic millennium he understood to be the present reign of Christ in the Catholic church, and the first resurrection, the translation of the martyrs and saints to heaven, where they participate in Christ’s reign.1181  It was consistent with this theory that towards the close of the first millennium of the Christian era there was a wide-spread expectation in Western Europe that the final judgment was at hand.

From the time of Constantine and Augustin chiliasm took its place among the heresies, and was rejected subsequently even by the Protestant reformers as a Jewish dream.1182  But it was revived from time to time as an article of faith and hope by pious individuals and whole sects, often in connection with historic pessimism, with distrust in mission work, as carried on by human agencies, with literal interpretations of prophecy, and with peculiar notions about Antichrist, the conversion and restoration of the Jews, their return to the Holy Land, and also with abortive attempts to calculate "the times and seasons" of the Second Advent, which "the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1:7), and did not choose to reveal to his own Son in the days of his flesh. In a free spiritual sense, however, millennarianism will always survive as the hope of a golden age of the church on earth, and of a great sabbath of history after its many centuries of labor and strife. The church militant ever longs after the church triumphant, and looks "for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet. 3:13). "There remaineth a sabbath rest for the people of God." (Heb. 4:9).

CHAPTER XIII.

ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE OF THE ANTE-NICENE AGE, AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE CHURCH-FATHERS.

§ 159. Literature.

I. General Patristic Collections.

The Benedictine editions, repeatedly published in Paris, Venice, etc., are the best as far as they go, but do not satisfy the present state of criticism. Jesuits (Petavius, Sirmond, Harduin), and Dominicans (Combefis, Le Quien) have also published several fathers. These and more recent editions are mentioned in the respective sections. Of patristic collections the principal ones are:

Maxima Bibliotheca veteru Patrum, etc. Lugd. 1677, 27 tom. fol. Contains the less voluminous writers, and only in the Latin translation.

A. Gallandi (Andreas Gallandius, Oratorian, d. 1779): Bibliotheca Graeco-Latina veterum Patrum, etc. Ven. 1765–88, 14 tom. fol. Contains in all 380 ecclesiastical writers (180 more than the Bibl Max.) in Greek and Latin, with valuable dissertations and notes.

Abbé Migne (Jacques Paul, b. 1800, founder of the Ultramontane L’Univers religeux and the Cath. printing establishment at Montrouge, consumed by fire 1868): Patrologiae cursus completus sive Bibliotheca universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, oeconomica, omnium SS. Patrum, Doctorum, Scriptorumque ecelesiasticorum. Petit Montrouge (near Paris), 1844–1866 (Garnier Frères). The cheapest and most complete patristic library, but carelessly edited, and often inaccurate, reaching down to the thirteenth century, the Latin in 222, the Greek in 167 vols., reprinted from the Bened. and other good editions, with Prolegomena, Vitae, Dissertations, Supplements, etc. Some of the plates were consumed by fire in 1868. but have been replaced. To be used with great caution.

Abbé Horoy: Bibliotheca Patristica ab anno MCCXVI. usque ad Concilii Tridentini Tempora. Paris, 1879 sqq. A continuation of Migne. Belongs to mediaeval history.

A new and critical edition of the Latin Fathers has been undertaken by the Imperial Academy of Vienna in 1866, under the title: Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. The first volume contains the works of Sulpicius Severus, ed. by C. Halm, 1866; the second Minucius Felix and Jul. Firmicus Maternus, by the same, 1867; Cyprian by Hartel, 1876; Arnobius by Reifferscheid; Commodianus by Dombart; Salvianus by Pauly; Cassianus by Petscheig; Priscillian by Schepss, etc. So far 18 vols. from 1866 to 1889.

A new and critical edition of the Greek fathers is still more needed.

Handy editions of the older fathers by Oberthur, Richter, Gersdorf, etc.

Special collections of patristic fragments by Grabe (Spicilegium Patrum), Routh (Reliquiae Sacrae), Angelo Mai (Scriptorum vet. nova Collectio, Rom. 1825–’38, 10 t.; Spicilegium roman. 1839–’44, 10 t.; Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, 1852 sqq. 7 t.); Card. Pitra (Spicilegium Solesmense, 1852 sqq. 5 t.), Liverani (Spiciles Liberianum, 1865), and others.

II. Separate Collections of the ante-Nicene Fathers.

Patres Apostolici, best critical editions, one Protestant by Oscar Von Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn (ed. II. Lips. 1876–’78, in 3 parts); another by Hilgenfeld (ed. II. Lips. 1876 sqq. in several parts); one by Bp. Lightfoot (Lond. 1869 sqq.); and one, R. Catholic, by Bp. Hefele, fifth ed. by Prof Funk, Tübingen (1878 and ’81, 2 vols.). See § 161.

Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum Seculi II., Ed. Otto. Jenae, 1847–’50; Ed. III. 1876 sqq. A new critical ed. by O. v. Gebhardt and E. Schwartz. Lips. 1888 sqq.

Roberts and Donaldson: Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Edinburgh 1857–1872. 24 vols. Authorized reprint, N. York, 1885–’86, 8 vol.

III. Biographical, critical, doctrinal. Patristics and Patrology.

St. Jerome (d. 419): De Viris illustrious. Comprises, in 135 numbers, brief notices of the biblical and ecclesiastical authors, down to A.D. 393. Continuations by Gennadius (490), Isidor (636), Ildefons (667), and others.

Photius (d. 890): Muriobivblion, h{ biblioqhvkh, ed. J. Becker, Berol. 1824, 2 t. fol., and in Migne, Phot. Opera, t. III. and IV. Extracts of 280 Greek authors, heathen and Christian, whose works are partly lost. See a full account in Hergenröther’s, Photius, III. 13–31.

Bellermin (R.C.): Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (from the O. T. to A.D. 1500). Rom. 1613 and often.

Tillemont (R.C.): Memoirs pour servir à l’histoire ecclés. Par. 1693 sqq. 16 vols. The first six centuries.

L. E. Dupin (R.C. d. 1719): Nouvelle Bibliothèque des auteurs ecclesiastiques, contenant l’histoire de leur vie, etc. Par. 1688–1715, 47 vols. 8°, with continuations by Coujet, Petit-Didier to the 18th century, and Critiques of R. Simon, 61 vols., 9th ed. Par. 1698 sqq.; another edition, but incomplete, Amstel. 1690–1713, 20 vols. 4°.

Remi Ceillter (R.C. d. 1761): Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclesiastiques. Par. 1729–’63, 23 vols. 4°; new ed. with additions, Par. 1858–1865 in 14 vols. More complete and exact, but less liberal than Dupin; extends to the middle of the thirteenth century.

Will. Cave (Anglican, d. 1713): Scriptorum ecelesiasticorum Historia a Christo nato usque ad saecul. XIV. Lond. 1688–98, 2 vols.; Geneva, 1720; Colon. 1722; best edition superintended by Waterland, Oxf. 1740–43, reprinted at Basle 1741–’45. This work is arranged in the centurial style (saeculum Apostolicum, s. Gnosticuni, s. Novatianum, s. Arianum, s. Nestorianum, s. Eutychianum, s. Monotheleticum, etc.) W. Cave: Lives of the most eminent fathers of the church that flourished in the first four centuries. Best ed. revised by Henry Cary. Oxf. 1840, 3 vols.

Chas. Oudin (first a monk, then a Protestant, librarian to the University at Leyden, died 1717): Commentarius de scriptoribus ecclesiae antiquis illorumque scriptis, a Bellarmino, Possevino, Caveo, Dupin et aliis omissis, ad ann. 1460. Lips. 1722. 3 vols. fol.

John Alb. Fabricius ("the most learned, the most voluminous and the most useful of bibliographers." born at Leipsic 1668. Prof. of Eloquence at Hamburg, died 1736): Bibliotheca Graeca, sive notilia Scriptorum veterum Graecorum; ed. III. Hamb. 1718–’28, 14 vols.; ed. IV. by G. Chr. Harless, with additions. Hamb. 1790–1811, in 12 vols. (incomplete). This great work of forty years’ labor embraces all the Greek writers to the beginning of the eighteenth century, but is inconveniently arranged. (A valuable supplement to it is S. F. G. Hoffmann: Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Literatur der Griechen, Leipz. 3 vols.), 2nd ed. 1844–’45. J. A. Fabricius published also a Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae aetatis, Hamb. 173 ’46, in 6 vols. (enlarged by Mansi, Padua, 1754, 3 tom.), and a Bibliotheca ecclesiastical Hamb. 1718, in 1 vol. fol., which contains the catalogues of ecclesiastical authors by Jerome, Gennadius, Isidore, Ildefondus, Trithemius (d. 1515) and others.

C. T. G. Schönemann: Bibliotheca historico-literaria patrum Latinorum a Tertulliano usque ad Gregorina M. et Isidorum . Lips. 1792, 2 vols. A continuation of Fabricius’ Biblioth. Lat.

G. Lumper (R.C.): Historia theologico-critica de vita, scriptis et doctrina SS. Patrum trium primorum saeculorum. Aug. Vind. 1783–’99, 13 t. 8°.

A.. Möhler (R.C. d. 1838): Patrologie, oder christliche Literärgeschichte. Edited by Reithmayer. Regensb. 1840, vol. I. Covers only the first three centuries.

J. Fessler (R.C.): Institutiones patrologicae. Oenip. 1850–’52, 2vols.

J. C. F. Bähr: Geschichte der römischen Literatur. Karlsruhe, 1836, 4th ed. 1868.

Fr. Böhringer (d, 1879): Die Kirche Christi u. ihre Zeugen, oder die K. G. in Biographien. Zür. 1842 (2d ed. 1861 sqq. and 1873 sqq.), 2 vols. in 7 parts (to the sixteenth century).

Joh. Alzog (R.C., Prof. in Freiburg, d. 1878): Grundriss der Patrologie oder der älteren christl. Literärgeschichte. Frieburg, 1866; second ed. 1869; third ed. 1876; fourth ed. 1888.

James Donaldson: A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. London, 1864–’66. 3 vols. Very valuable, but unfinished.

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengeschichte der patristischen Zeit. Münster, 1866.

Adolf Ebert: Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur von ihren Anfängen bis zum Zeitalter Karls des Grossen Leipzig, 1872 (624 pages). The first vol. of a larger work on the general history of mediaeval literature. The second vol. (1880) contains the literature from Charlemagne to Charles the Bald.

Jos. Nirschl (R.C.): Lehrbuch der Patrologie und Patristik. Mainz. Vol. I. 1881 (VI. and 384).

George A. Jackson: Early Christian Literature Primers. N. York, 1879–1883 in 4 little vols., containing extracts from the fathers.

Fr. W. Farrar: Lives of the Fathers. Sketches of Church History in Biographies. Lond. and N. York, 1889, 2 vols.

IV. On the Authority and Use of the Fathers.

Dallaeus (Daillé, Calvinist): De usu Patrum in decidendis controversiis. Genev. 1656 (and often). Against the superstitious and slavish R. Catholic overvaluation of the fathers.

J. W. Eberl (R.C.): Leitfaden zum Studium der Patrologie. Augsb. 1854.

J. J. Blunt (Anglican): The Right Use of the Early Fathers. Lond. 1857, 3rd ed. 1859. Confined to the first three centuries, and largely polemical against the depreciation of the fathers, by Daillé, Barbeyrat, and Gibbon.

V. On the Philosophy of the Fathers.

H. Ritter: Geschichte der christl  Philosophie. Hamb. 1841 sqq. 2 vols.

Joh. Huber (d. 1879 as an Old Catholic): Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter. München, 1859.

A. Stöckl (R.C.): Geschichte der Philosophie der patristischen Zeit. Würz b. 1858, 2 vols.; and Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Mainz, 1864–1866. 3 vols.

Friedr. Ueberweg. History of Philosophy (Engl. transl. by Morris & Porter). N. Y. 1876 (first vol.).

VI. Patristic Dictionaries.

J. C. Suicer (d. in Zurich, 1660): Thesaurus ecclesiasticus e Patribus Graecis. Amstel., 1682, second ed., much improved, 1728. 2 vols. for. (with a new title page. Utr. 1746).

Du Cange (Car. Dufresne a Benedictine, d. 1688): Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis. Lugd. 1688. 2 vols. By the same: Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis. Par. 1681, again 1733, 6 vols. fol., re-edited by Carpenter 1766, 4 vols., and by Henschel, Par. 1840–’50, 7 vols. A revised English edition of Du Cange by E. A. Dayman was announced for publication by John Murray (London), but has not yet appeared, in 1889.

E. A. Sophocles: A glossary of Latin and Byzantine Greek. Boston, 1860, enlarged ed. 1870. A new ed. by Jos. H. Thayer, 1888.

G. Koffmane: Geschichte des Kirchlateins. Breslau, 1879 sqq.

Wm. Smith and Henry Wace (Anglicans): A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines London, Vol. I. 18771887, 4 vols. By far the best patristic biographical Dictionary in the English or any other language. A noble monument of the learning of the Church of England.

E. C. Richardson (Hartford, Conn.): Bibliographical Synapsis of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. An appendix to the Am. Ed. of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, N. York, 1887. Very complete.

§ 160. A General Estimate of the Fathers.

As Christianity is primarily a religion of divine facts, and a new moral creation, the literary and scientific element in its history held, at first, a secondary and subordinate place. Of the apostles, Paul alone received a learned education, and even he made his rabbinical culture and great natural talents subservient to the higher spiritual knowledge imparted to him by revelation. But for the very reason that it is a new life, Christianity must produce also a new science and literature; partly from the inherent impulse of faith towards deeper and clearer knowledge of its object for its own satisfaction; partly from the demands of self-preservation against assaults from without; partly from the practical want of instruction and direction for the people. The church also gradually appropriated the classical culture, and made it tributary to her theology. Throughout the middle ages she was almost the sole vehicle and guardian of literature and art, and she is the mother of the best elements of the modern European and American civilization. We have already treated of the mighty intellectual labor of our period on the field of apologetic, polemic, and dogmatic theology. In this section we have to do with patrology, or the biographical and bibliographical matter of the ancient theology and literature.

The ecclesiastical learning of the first six centuries was cast almost entirely in the mould of the Graeco-Roman culture. The earliest church fathers, even Clement of Rome, Hermas, and Hippolytus, who lived and labored in and about Rome, used the Greek language, after the example of the apostles, with such modifications as the Christian ideas required. Not till the end of the second century, and then not in Italy, but in North Africa, did the Latin language also become, through Tertullian, a medium of Christian science and literature. The Latin church, however, continued for a long time dependent on the learning of the Greek. The Greek church was more excitable, speculative, and dialectic; the Latin more steady, practical, and devoted to outward organization; though we have on both sides striking exceptions to this rule, in the Greek Chrysostom, who was the greatest pulpit orator, and the Latin Augustin, who was the profoundest speculative theologian among the fathers.

The patristic literature in general falls considerably below the classical in elegance of form, but far surpasses it in the sterling quality of its matter. It wears the servant form of its master, during the days of his flesh, not the splendid, princely garb of this world. Confidence in the power of the Christian truth made men less careful of the form in which they presented it. Besides, many of the oldest Christian writers lacked early education, and had a certain aversion to art, from its manifold perversion in those days to the service of idolatry and immorality. But some of them, even in the second and third centuries, particularly Clement and Origen, stood at the head of their age in learning and philosophical culture; and in the fourth and fifth centuries, the literary productions of an Athanasius, a Gregory, a Chrysostom, an Augustin, and a Jerome, excelled the contemporaneous heathen literature in every respect. Many fathers, like the two Clements, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and among the later ones, even Jerome and Augustin, embraced Christianity after attaining adult years; and it is interesting to notice with what enthusiasm, energy, and thankfulness they laid hold upon it.

The term "church-father" originated in the primitive custom of transferring the idea of father to spiritual relationships, especially to those of teacher, priest, and bishop. In the case before us the idea necessarily includes that of antiquity, involving a certain degree of general authority for all subsequent periods and single branches of the church. Hence this title of honor is justly limited to the more distinguished teachers of the first five or six centuries, excepting, of course, the apostles, who stand far above them all as the inspired organs of Christ. It applies, therefore, to the period of the oecumenical formation of doctrines, before the separation of Eastern and Western Christendom. The line of the Latin fathers is generally closed with Pope Gregory I. (d. 604), the line of the Greek with John of Damascus (d. about 754).

Besides antiquity, or direct connection with the formative age of the whole church, learning, holiness, orthodoxy, and the approbation of the church, or general recognition, are the qualifications for a church father. These qualifications, however, are only relative. At least we cannot apply the scale of fully developed orthodoxy, whether Greek, Roman, or Evangelical, to the ante-Nicene fathers. Their dogmatic conceptions were often very indefinite and uncertain. In fact the Roman church excludes a Tertullian for his Montanism, an Origen for his Platonic and idealistic views, an Eusebius for his semi-Arianism, also Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Theodoret, and other distinguished divines, from the list of "fathers" (Patres), and designates them merely "ecclesiastical writers" (Scriptores Ecclastici).

In strictness, not a single one of the ante-Nicene fathers fairly agrees with the Roman standard of doctrine in all points. Even Irenaeus and Cyprian differed from the Roman bishop, the former in reference to Chiliasm and Montanism, the latter on the validity of heretical baptism. Jerome is a strong witness against the canonical value of the Apocrypha. Augustin, the greatest authority of Catholic theology among the fathers, is yet decidedly evangelical in his views on sin and grace, which were enthusiastically revived by Luther and Calvin, and virtually condemned by the Council of Trent. Pope Gregory the Great repudiated the title "ecumenical bishop" as an antichristian assumption, and yet it is comparatively harmless as compared with the official titles of his successors, who claim to be the Vicars of Christ, the viceregents of God Almighty on earth, and the infallible organs of the Holy Ghost in all matters of faith and discipline. None of the ancient fathers and doctors knew anything of the modern Roman dogmas of the immaculate conception (1854) and papal infallibility (1870). The "unanimous consent of the fathers" is a mere illusion, except on the most fundamental articles of general Christianity. We must resort here to a liberal conception of orthodoxy, and duly consider the necessary stages of progress in the development of Christian doctrine in the, church.

On the other hand the theology of the fathers still less accords with the Protestant standard of orthodoxy. We seek in vain among them for the evangelical doctrines of the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, justification by faith alone, the universal priesthood of the laity; and we find instead as early as the second century a high estimate of ecclesiastical traditions, meritorious and even over-meritorious works, and strong sacerdotal, sacramentarian, ritualistic, and ascetic tendencies, which gradually matured in the Greek and Roman types of catholicity. The Church of England always had more sympathy with the fathers than the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches, and professes to be in full harmony with the creed, the episcopal polity, and liturgical worship of antiquity before the separation of the east and the west; but the difference is only one of degree; the Thirty-Nine Articles are as thoroughly evangelical as the Augsburg Confession or the Westminster standards; and even the modern Anglo-Catholic school, the most churchly and churchy of all, Ignores many tenets and usages which were considered of vital importance in the first centuries, and holds others which were unknown before the sixteenth century. The reformers were as great and good men as the fathers, but both must bow before the apostles. There is a steady progress of Christianity, an ever-deepening understanding and an ever-widening application of its principles and powers, and there are yet many hidden treasures in the Bible which will be brought to light in future ages.

In general the excellences of the church fathers are very various. Polycarp is distinguished, not for genius or learning, but for patriarchal simplicity and dignity; Clement of Rome, for the gift of administration; Ignatius, for impetuous devotion to episcopacy, church unity, and Christian martyrdom; Justin, for apologetic zeal and extensive reading; Irenaeus, for sound doctrine and moderation; Clement of Alexandria, for stimulating fertility of thought; Origen, for brilliant learning and bold speculation; Tertullian, for freshness and vigor of intellect, and sturdiness of character; Cyprian, for energetic churchliness; Eusebius, for literary industry in compilation; Lactantius, for elegance of style. Each had also his weakness. Not one compares for a moment in depth and spiritual fulness with a St. Paul or St. John; and the whole patristic literature, with all its incalculable value, must ever remain very far below the New Testament. The single epistle to the Romans or the Gospel of John is worth more than all commentaries, doctrinal, polemic, and ascetic treatises of the Greek and Latin fathers, schoolmen, and reformers.

The ante-Nicene fathers may be divided into five or six classes:

(1.) The apostolic fathers, or personal disciples of the apostles. Of these, Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius are the most eminent.

(2.) The apologists for Christianity against Judaism and heathenism: Justin Martyr and his successors to the end of the second century.

(3.) The controversialists against heresies within the church: Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, at the close of the second century and beginning of the third.

(4.) The Alexandrian school of philosophical theology: Clement and Origen, in the first half of the third century.

(5.) The contemporary but more practical North African school of Tertullian and Cyprian.

(6.) Then there were also the germs of the Antiochian school, and some less prominent writers, who can be assigned to no particular class.

Together with the genuine writings of the church fathers there appeared in the first centuries, in behalf both of heresy and of orthodoxy, a multitude of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Apocalypses, under the names of apostles and of later celebrities; also Jewish and heathen prophecies of Christianity, such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Books of Hydaspes, Of Hermas Trismegistos, and of the Sibyls. The frequent use made of such fabrications of an idle imagination even by eminent church teachers, particularly by the apologists, evinces not only great credulity and total want of literary criticism, but also a very imperfect development of the sense of truth, which had not yet learned utterly to discard the pia fraus as immoral falsehood.

Notes.

The Roman church extends the line of the Patres, among whom she further distinguishes a small number of Doctores ecclesiae emphatically so-called, down late into the middle ages, and reckons in it Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the divines of the Council of Trent, resting on her claim to exclusive catholicity, which is recognized neither by the Greek nor the Evangelical church. The marks of a Doctor Ecclesiae are: 1) eminens eruditio; 2) doctrina orthodoxa; 3) sanctitas vitae; 4) expressa ecclesiae declaratio. The Roman Church recognizes as Doctores Ecclesiae the following Greek fathers: Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and John of Damascus, and the following Latin fathers: Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, Hilarius of Poitiers, Leo I. and Gregory I., together with the mediaeval divines Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura and Bernard of Clairvaux. The distinction between doctores ecclesiae and patres eccelesiae was formally recognized by Pope Boniface VIII. in a decree of 1298, in which Ambrose, Augustin, Jerome, and Gregory the Great are designated as magni doctores ecclesiae, who deserve a higher degree of veneration. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and St. Bernard were added to the list by papal decree in 1830, Hilary in 1852, Alfonso Maria da Liguori in 1871. Anselm of Canterbury and a few others are called doctores in the liturgical service, without special decree. The long line of popes has only furnished two fathers, Leo I. and Gregory I. The Council of Trent first speaks of the "unanimis consensus patrum," which is used in the same sense as "doctrina ecclesia."

§ 161. The Apostolic Fathers.

Sources:

Patrum Apostolicorum Opera. Best editions by O. von Gebhardt, A. Harnack, Th. Zahn, Lips. 1876–’8. 3 vols. (being the third ed. of Dressel much improved); by Fr. Xav. Funk (R.C.), Tüb. 1878 and 1881, 2 vols. (being the 5th and enlarged edition of Hefele); by A. Hilgenfeld (Tübingen school): Novum Testamentum extra canonem receptum, Lips. 1866, superseded by the revised ed. appearing in parts (Clemens R., 1876; Barnabas, 1877; Hermas, 1881); and by Bishop Lightfoot, Lond. and Cambr. 1869, 1877, and 1885 (including Clement of Rome, Ignatius and Polycarp, with a full critical apparatus, English translations and valuable notes; upon the whole the best edition as far as it goes.)

Older editions by B. Cotelerius (Cotelier, R.C.), Par. 1672, 2 vols. fol., including the spurious works; republ. and ed. by J. Clericus (Le Clerc), Antw. 1698, 2nd ed. Amst. 1724, 2 vols.; Th. Ittig, 1699; Frey, Basel, 1742; R. Russel, Lond. 1746, 2 vols. (the genuine works); Hornemann, Havniae, 1828; Guil. Jacobson, Oxon. 1838, ed. IV. 1866, 2 vols. (very elegant and accurate, with valuable notes, but containing only Clemens, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Xartyria of Ign. and Polyc.); C. J. Hefele (R.C.), Tüb. 1839, ed. IV. 1855, 1 vol. (very handy, with learned and judicious prolegomena and notes); A. R. M. Dressel. Lips. 1857, second ed. 1863 (more complete, and based on new MSS. Hefele’s and Dressel’s edd. are superseded by the first two above mentioned.

English translations of the Apost. Fathers by Archbishop W. Wake (d. 1737), Lond. 1693, 4th ed. 1737, and often republished (in admirable style, though with many inaccuracies); by Alex. Roberts and James Donaldson, in the first vol. of Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Christian Library." Edinb. 1867 (superior to Wake in accuracy, but inferior in old English flavor); by Chs. H. Hoole, Lond. 1870 and 1872; best by Lightfoot (Clement R. in Appendix, 1877). An excellent German translation by H. Scholz, Gütersloh, 1865 (in the style of Luther’s Bible version).

Works:

The Prolegomena to the editions just named, particularly those of the first four.

A. Schwegler: Das nacha postolische Zeitalter, Tüb. 1846. 2 vols. A very able but hypercritical reconstruction from the Tübingen school, full of untenable hypotheses, assigning the Gospels, Acts, the Catholic and later Pauline Epistles to the post-apostolic age, and measuring every writer by his supposed Petrine or Pauline tendency, and his relation to Ebionism and Gnosticism.

A. Hilgenfeld: Die apostolischen Väter. Halle, 1853.

J. H. B. Lubkert: Die Theologie der apostolischen Väter, in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." Leipz. 1854.

Abbé Freppel (Prof. at the Sorbonne): Les Pères Apostoliques et leur epoque, second ed. Paris, 1859. Strongly Roman Catholic.

Lechler: Das Apost. u. nachapost. Zeitalter. Stuttgart, 1857, p. 476–495; 3d ed., thoroughly revised (Leipz., 1885), p. 526 -608.

James Donaldson (LL. D.): A Critical History of Christian Literature, etc. Vol. I. The Apost. Fathers. Edinburgh, 1864. The same, separately publ. under the title: The Apostolic Fathers: A critical account of their genuine writings and of their doctrines. London, 1874 (412 pages). Ignatius is omitted. A work of honest and sober Protestant learning.

George A. Jackson: The Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists of the Second Century. New York 1879. Popular, with extracts (pages 203).

J. M. Cotterill: Peregrinus Proteus. Edinburgh, 1879. A curious book, by a Scotch Episcopalian, who tries to prove that the two Epistles of Clement, the Epistle to Diognetus, and other ancient writings, were literary frauds perpetrated by Henry Stephens and others in the time of the revival of letters in the sixteenth century.

Josef Sprinzl, (R.C.): Die Theologie der apost. Väter. Wien, 1880. Tries to prove the entire agreement of the Ap. Fathers with the modern Vatican theology.

The "apostolic," or rather post-apostolic "fathers"1183 were the first church teachers after the apostles, who had enjoyed in part personal intercourse with them, and thus form the connecting link between them and the apologists of the second century. This class consists of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, and, in a broader sense, Hermas, Papias, and the unknown authors of the Epistle to Diognetus, and of the Didache.

Of the outward life of these men, their extraction, education, and occupation before conversion, hardly anything is known. The distressed condition of that age was very unfavorable to authorship; and more than this, the spirit of the primitive church regarded the new life in Christ as the only true life, the only one worthy of being recorded. Even of the lives of the apostles themselves before their call we have only a few hints. But the pious story of the martyrdom of several of these fathers, as their entrance into perfect life, has been copiously written. They were good men rather than great men, and excelled more in zeal and devotion to Christ than in literary attainments. They were faithful practical workers, and hence of more use to the church in those days than profound thinkers or great scholars could have been. "While the works of Tacitus, Sueton, Juvenal, Martial, and other contemporary heathen authors are filled with the sickening details of human folly, vice, and crime, these humble Christian pastors are ever burning with the love of God and men, exhort to a life of purity and holiness in imitation of the example of Christ, and find abundant strength and comfort amid trial and persecution in their faith, and the hope of a glorious immortality in heaven."1184

The extant works of the apostolic fathers are of small compass, a handful of letters on holy living and dying, making in all a volume of about twice the size of the New Testament. Half of these (several Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Pastor of Hermas) are of doubtful genuineness; but they belong at all events to that, obscure and mysterious transition period between the end of the first century and the middle of the second. They all originated, not in scientific study, but in practical religious feeling, and contain not analyses of doctrine so much as simple direct assertions of faith and exhortations to holy life; all, excepting Hermas and the Didache, in the form of epistles after the model of Paul’s.1185  Yet they show the germs of the apologetic, polemic, dogmatic, and ethic theology, as well as the outlines of the organization and the cultus of the ancient Catholic church. Critical research has to assign to them their due place in the external and internal development of the church; in doing this it needs very great caution to avoid arbitrary construction.

If we compare these documents with the canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, it is evident at once that they fall far below in original force, depth, and fulness of spirit, and afford in this a strong indirect proof of the inspiration of the apostles. Yet they still shine with the evening red of the apostolic day, and breathe an enthusiasm of simple faith and fervent love and fidelity to the Lord, which proved its power in suffering and martyrdom. They move in the element of living tradition, and make reference oftener to the oral preaching of the apostles than to their writings; for these were not yet so generally circulated but they bear a testimony none the less valuable to the genuineness of the apostolic writings, by occasional citations or allusions, and by the coincidence of their reminiscences with the facts of the gospel history and the fundamental doctrines of the New Testament. The epistles of Barnabas, Clement, and Polycarp, and the Shepherd of Hernias, were in many churches read in public worship.1186  Some were even incorporated in important manuscripts of the Bible.1187  This shows that the sense of the church, as to the extent of the canon, had not yet become everywhere clear. Their authority, however, was always but sectional and subordinate to that of the Gospels and the apostolic Epistles. It was a sound instinct of the church, that the writings of the disciples of the apostles, excepting those of Mark and Luke, who were peculiarly associated with Peter and Paul, were kept out of the canon of the New Testament. For by the wise ordering of the Ruler of history, there is an impassable gulf between the inspiration of the apostles and the illumination of the succeeding age, between the standard authority of holy Scripture and the derived validity of the teaching of the church. "The Bible"—to adopt an illustration of a distinguished writer1188 —"is not like a city of modern Europe, which subsides through suburban gardens and groves and mansions into the open country around, but like an Eastern city in the desert, from which the traveler passes by a single step into a barren waste." The very poverty of these post-apostolic writings renders homage to the inexhaustible richness of the apostolic books which, like the person of Christ, are divine as well as human in their origin, character, and effect.1189

§ 162. Clement of Rome.

(I.) The Epistle of Clemens Rom. to the Corinthians. Only the first is genuine, the second so-called Ep. of Cl. is a homily of later date. Best editions by Philotheos Bryennios (Tou' ejn aJgivoi" patro;" hJmw'n Klhvmento" ejpiskovpou  JRwvmh" aij duvo pro;" Karinqivou" evpistolaiv etc. JEn Kwvnstantinopovlei, 1875. With prolegomena, commentary and facsimiles at the end, 188 pp. text, and rxq v or169 prolegomena); Hilgenfeld (second ed. Leipz. 1876, with prolegomena, textual notes and conjectures); Von Gebhardt & Harnack (sec. ed. 1876, with proleg., notes, and Latin version); Funk (1878, with Latin version and notes); and Lightfoot (with notes, Lond. 1869, and Appendix containing the newly-discovered portions, and an English Version, 1877).

All the older editions from the Alexandrian MS. first published by Junius, 1633, are partly superseded by the discovery of the new and complete MS. in Constantinople, which marks an epoch in this chapter of church history.

(II.) R. A. Lipsius: De Clementis Rom. Epistola ad Corinth. priore disquisitio. Lips. 1856 (188 pages). Comp. his review of recent editions in the "Jenaer Literaturzeitung." Jan. 13, 1877.

B. H. Cowper: What the First Bishop of Rome taught. The Ep. of Clement of R. to the Cor., with an Introduction and Notes. London, 1867.

Jos. Mullooly: St. Clement Pope and Martyr, and his Basilica in Rome. Rome, second ed. 1873. The same in Italian. Discusses the supposed house and basilica of Clement, but not his works.

Jacobi: Die beiden Briefe des Clemens v. Rom., in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1876, p. 707 sqq.

Funk: Ein theologischer Fund, in the Tüb. "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1876, p. 286 sqq.

Donaldson: The New MS. of Clement of Rome. In the "Theolog. Review." 1877, p. 35 sqq.

Wieseler: Der Brief des röm. Clemens an die Kor., in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol." 1877. No. III.

Renan: Les évangiles. Paris 1877. Ch. xv. 311–338.

C. J. H. Ropes: The New MS. of Clement of Rome, in the "Presb. Quarterly and Princeton Review." N. York 1877, P. 325–343. Contains a scholarly examination of the new readings, and a comparison of the concluding prayer with the ancient liturgies.

The relevant sections in Hilgenfeld (Apost. Väter, 85–92), Donaldson (Ap. Fath., 113–190), Sprinzl (Theol. d. Apost. Väter, 21 sqq., 57 sqq.), Salmon in Smith and Wace, I. 554 sqq., and Uhlhorn in Herzog2, sub Clemens Rom. III. 248–257.

Comp. full lists of editions, translations, and discussions on Clement, before and after 1875, in the Prolegomena of von Gebhardt & Harnack, XVIII.-XXIV.; Funk, XXXII.-XXXVI.; Lightfoot, p. 28 sqq., 223 sqq., and 393 sqq., and Richardson, Synopsis, I sqq.

The first rank among the works of the post-Apostolic age belongs to the "Teaching of the Apostles," discovered in 1883.1190  Next follow the letters of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp.

I. Clement, a name of great celebrity in antiquity, was a disciple of Paul and Peter, to whom he refers as the chief examples for imitation. He may have been the same person who is mentioned by Paul as one of his faithful fellow-workers in Philippi (Phil. 4:3); or probably a Roman who was in some way connected with the distinguished Flavian family, and through it with the imperial household, where Christianity found an early lodgment.1191  His Epistle betrays a man of classical culture, executive wisdom, and thorough familiarity with the Septuagint Bible. The last seems to indicate that he was of Jewish parentage.1192  What we know with certainty is only this, that he stood at the head of the Roman congregation at the close of the first century. Yet tradition is divided against itself as to the time of his administration; now making him the first successor of Peter, now, with more probability, the third. According to Eusebius he was bishop from the twelfth year of Domitian to the third of Trajan (A. D. 92 to 101). Considering that the official distinction between bishops and presbyters was not yet clearly defined in his time, he may have been co-presbyter with Linus and Anacletus, who are represented by some as his predecessors, by others as his successors.1193

Later legends have decked out his life in romance, both in the interest of the Catholic church and in that of heresy. They picture him as a noble and highly educated Roman who, dissatisfied with the, wisdom and art of heathenism, journeyed to Palestine, became acquainted there with the apostle Peter, and was converted by him; accompanied him on his missionary tours; composed many books in his name; was appointed by him his successor as bishop of Rome, with a sort of supervision over the whole church; and at last, being banished under Trajan to the Taurian Chersonesus, died the glorious death of a martyr in the waves of the sea. But the oldest witnesses, down to Eusebius and Jerome, know nothing of his martyrdom. The Acta Martyrii Clementis (by Simon Metaphrastes) make their appearance first in the ninth century. They are purely fictitious, and ascribe incredible miracles to their hero.

It is very remarkable that a person of such vast influence in truth and fiction, whose words were law, who preached the duty of obedience and submission to an independent and distracted church, whose vision reached even to unknown lands beyond the Western sea, should inaugurate, at the threshold of the second century, that long line of pontiffs who have outlasted every dynasty in Europe, and now claim an infallible authority over the consciences of two hundred millions of Christians.1194

II. From this Clement we have a Greek epistle to the Corinthians. It is often cited by the church fathers, then disappeared, but was found again, together with the fragments of the second epistle, in the Alexandrian codex of the Bible (now in the British Museum), and published by Patricius Junius (Patrick Young) at Oxford in 1633.1195  A second, less ancient, but more perfect manuscript from the eleventh century, containing the missing chapters of the first (with the oldest written prayer) and the whole of the second Epistle (together with other valuable documents), was discovered by Philotheos Bryennios,1196 in the convent library of the patriarch of Jerusalem in Constantinople, and published in 1875.1197  Soon afterwards a Syriac translation was found in the library of Jules Mohl, of Paris (d. 1876).1198  We have thus three independent texts (A, C, S), derived, it would seem, from a common parent of the second century. The newly discovered portions shed new light on the history of papal authority and liturgical worship, as we have pointed out in previous chapters.1199

This first (and in fact the only) Epistle to the Corinthians was sent by the Church of God in Rome, at its own impulse, and unasked, to the Church of God in Corinth, through three aged and faithful Christians: Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Biton, and Fortunatus.1200  It does not bear the name of Clement, and is written in the name of the Roman congregation, but was universally regarded as his production.1201  It stood in the highest esteem in ancient times, and continued in public use in the Corinthian church and in several other churches down to the beginning of the fourth century.1202  This accounts for its incorporation in the Alexandrian Bible Codex, but it is properly put after the Apocalypse and separated from the apostolic epistles.

And this indicates its value. It is not apostolical, not inspired—far from it—but the oldest and best among the sub-apostolic writings both in form and contents. It was occasioned by party differences and quarrels in the church of Corinth, where the sectarian spirit, so earnestly rebuked by Paul in his first Epistle, had broken out afresh and succeeded in deposing the regular officers (the presbyter-bishops). The writer exhorts the readers to harmony and love, humility, and holiness, after the pattern of Christ and his apostles, especially Peter and Paul, who had but recently sealed their testimony with their blood. He speaks in the highest terms of Paul who, "after instructing the whole [Roman] world in righteousness, and after having reached the end of the West, and borne witness before the rulers, departed into the holy place, leaving the greatest example of patient endurance."1203  He evinces the calm dignity and executive wisdom of the Roman church in her original simplicity, without hierarchical arrogance; and it is remarkable how soon that church recovered after the terrible ordeal of the Neronian persecution, which must have been almost an annihilation. He appeals to the word of God as the final authority, but quotes as freely from the Apocrypha as from the canonical Scriptures (the Septuagint). He abounds in free reminiscences of the teaching of Christ and the Apostles.1204  He refers to Paul’s (First) Epistle to the Corinthians, and shows great familiarity with his letters, with James, First Peter, and especially the Epistle to the Hebrews, from which he borrows several expressions. Hence he is mentioned—with Paul, Barnabas, and Luke—as one of the supposed authors of that anonymous epistle. Origen conjectured that Clement or Luke composed the Hebrews under the inspiration or dictation of Paul.

Clement bears clear testimony to the doctrines of the Trinity ("God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who are the faith and the hope of the elect"), of the Divine dignity and glory of Christ, salvation only by his blood, the necessity of repentance and living faith, justification by grace, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the unity of the church, and the Christian graces of humility, charity, forbearance, patience, and perseverance. In striking contrast with the bloody cruelties practiced by Domitian, he exhorts to prayer for the civil rulers, that God "may give them health, peace, concord, and stability for the administration of the government be has given them."1205  We have here the echo of Paul’s exhortation to the Romans (Rom. 13) under the tyrant Nero. Altogether the Epistle of Clement is worthy of a disciple of the apostles, although falling far short of their writings in original simplicity, terseness, and force.

III. In regard to its theology, this epistle belongs plainly to the school of Paul and strongly resembles the Epistle to the Hebrews, while at the same time it betrays the influence of Peter also; both these apostles having, in fact, personally labored in the church of Rome, in whose name the letter is written, and having left the stamp of their mind upon it. There is no trace in it of an antagonism between Paulinism and Petrinism.1206  Clement is the only one of the apostolic fathers, except perhaps Polycarp, who shows some conception of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. "All (the saints of the Old Testament)," says he,1207 "became great and glorious, not through themselves, nor by their works, nor by their righteousness, but by the will of God. Thus we also, who are called by the will of God in Christ Jesus, are righteous not of ourselves, neither through our wisdom, nor through our understanding, nor through our piety, nor through our works, which we have wrought in purity of heart, but by faith, by which the almighty God justified all these from the beginning; to whom be glory to all eternity." And then Clement, precisely like Paul in Romans 6, derives sanctification from justification, and continues: "What, then, should we do, beloved brethren?  Should we be slothful in good works and neglect love?  By no means!  But with zeal and courage we will hasten to fulfil every good work. For the Creator and Lord of all things himself rejoices in his works." Among the good works he especially extols love, and describes it in a strain which reminds one of Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13: "He who has love in Christ obeys the commands of Christ. Who can declare the bond of the love of God, and tell the greatness of its beauty?  The height to which it leads is unspeakable. Love unites us with God; covers a multitude of sins; beareth all things, endureth all things. There is nothing mean in love, nothing haughty. It knows no division; it is not refractory; it does everything in harmony. In love have all the elect of God become perfect. Without love nothing is pleasing to God. In love has the Lord received us; for the love which he cherished towards us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us according to the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our soul."1208  Hence all his zeal for the unity of the church. "Wherefore are dispute, anger, discord, division, and war among you?  Or have we not one God and one Christ and one Spirit, who is poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?  Wherefore do we tear and sunder the members of Christ, and bring the body into tumult against itself, and go so far in delusion, that we forget that we are members one of another?"1209

Very beautifully also he draws from the harmony of the universe an incitement to concord, and incidentally expresses here the remarkable sentiment, perhaps suggested by the old legends of the Atlantis, the orbis alter, the ultima Thule, etc., that there are other worlds beyond the impenetrable ocean, which are ruled by the same laws of the Lord.1210

But notwithstanding its prevailing Pauline character, this epistle lowers somewhat the free evangelical tone of the Gentile apostle’s theology, softens its anti-Judaistic sternness, and blends it with the Jewish-Christian counterpart of St. James, showing that the conflict between the Pauline and Petrine views was substantially settled at the end of the first century in the Roman church, and also in that of Corinth.

Clement knows nothing of an episcopate above the presbyterate; and his epistle itself is written, not in his own name, but in that of the church at Rome. But he represents the Levitical priesthood as a type of the Christian teaching office, and insists with the greatest decision on outward unity, fixed order, and obedience to church rulers. He speaks in a tone of authority to a sister church of apostolic foundation, and thus reveals the easy and as yet innocent beginning of the papacy.1211  A hundred years after his death his successors ventured, in their own name, not only to exhort, but to excommunicate whole churches for trifling differences.

The interval between Clement and Paul, and the tran-sition from the apostolic to the apocryphal, from faith to superstition, appears in the indiscriminate use of the Jewish Apocrypha, and in the difference between Paul’s treatment of scepticism in regard to the resurrection, and his disciple’s treatment of the same subject.1212  Clement points not only to the types in nature, the changes of the seasons and of day and night, but also in full earnest to the heathen myth of the miraculous bird, the phoenix in Arabia, which regenerates itself every five hundred years. When the phoenix—so runs the fable—approaches death, it makes itself a nest of frankincense, myrrh, and other spices; from its decaying flesh a winged worm arises, which, when it becomes strong, carries the reproductive nest from Arabia to Heliopolis in Egypt, and there flying down by day, in the sight of all, it lays it, with the bones of its predecessors, upon the altar of the sun. And this takes place, according to the reckoning of the priests, every five hundred years. After Clement other fathers also used the phoenix as a symbol of the resurrection.1213

IV. As to the time of its composition, this epistle falls certainly after the death of Peter and Paul, for it celebrates their martyrdom; and probably after the death of John (about 98); for one would suppose, that if he had been living, Clement would have alluded to him, in deference to superior authority, and that the Corinthian Christians would have applied to an apostle for counsel, rather than to a disciple of the apostles in distant Rome. The persecution alluded to in the beginning of the epistle refers to the Domitian as well as the Neronian; for he speaks of "sudden and repeated calamities and reverses which have befallen us."1214  He prudently abstains from naming the imperial persecutors, and intercedes at the close for the civil rulers. Moreover, he calls the church at Corinth at that time "firmly established and ancient."1215  With this date the report of Eusebius agrees, that Clement did not take the bishop’s chair in Rome till 92 or 93.1216

§ 163. The Pseudo-Clementine Works.

The most complete collection of the genuine and spurious works of Clement in Migne’s Patrol. Graeca, Tom. I. and II.

The name of Clement has been forged upon several later writings, both orthodox and heretical, to give them the more currency by the weight of his name and position. These pseudo-Clementine works supplanted in the church of Rome the one genuine work of Clement, which passed into oblivion with the knowledge of the Greek language. They are as follows:

1. A Second Epistle to the Corinthians, falsely so called, formerly known only in part (12 chapters), since 1875 in full (20 chapters).1217  It is greatly inferior to the First Epistle in contents and style, and of a later date, between 120 and 140, probably written in Corinth; hence its connection with it in MSS.1218  It is no epistle at all, but a homily addressed to "brothers and sisters." It is the oldest known specimen of a post-apostolic sermon, and herein alone lies its importance and value.1219  It is an earnest, though somewhat feeble exhortation to active Christianity and to fidelity in persecution, meantime contending with the Gnostic denial of the resurrection. It is orthodox in sentiment, calls Christ "God and the Judge of the living and the dead," and speaks of the great moral revolution wrought by him in these words (2 Cor. 1): "We were deficient in understanding, worshipping stocks and stones, gold and silver and brass, the works of men; and our whole life was nothing else but death.... Through Jesus Christ we have received sight, putting off by his will the cloud wherein we were wrapped. He mercifully saved us.... He called us when we were not, and willed that out of nothing we should attain a real existence."

2. Two Encyclical Letters on Virginity. They were first discovered by J. J. Wetstein in the library of the Remonstrants at Amsterdam, in a Syriac Version written A.D. 1470, and published as an appendix to his famous Greek Testament, 1752.1220  They commend the unmarried life, and contain exhortations and rules to ascetics of both sexes. They show the early development of an asceticism which is foreign to the apostolic teaching and practice. While some Roman Catholic divines still defend the Clementine origin,1221 others with stronger arguments assign it to the middle or close of the second century.1222

3. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons.1223 The so-called Liturgia S. Clementis is a part of the eighth book of the Constitutions.

4. The Pseudo-Clementina, or twenty Ebionitic homilies and their Catholic reproduction, the Recognitions.1224

5. Five Decretal Letters, which pseudo-Isidore has placed at the head of his collection. Two of them are addressed to James, the Lord’s Brother, are older than the pseudo-Isidore, and date from the second or third century; the three others were fabricated by him. They form the basis for the most gigantic and audacious literary forgery of the middle ages—the Isidorian Decretals—which subserved the purposes of the papal hierarchy.1225  The first Epistle to James gives an account of the appointment of Clement by Peter as his successor in the see of Rome, with directions concerning the functions of the church-officers and the general administration of the church. The second Epistle to James refers to the administration of the eucharist, church furniture, and other ritualistic matters. They are attached to the pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions. But it is remarkable that in the Homilies James of Jerusalem appears as the superior of Peter of Rome, who must give an account of his doings, and entrust to him his sermons for safe keeping.

§ 164. Ignatius of Antioch.

Comp. §§ 17 and 45 (this vol.).

Sources:

I. The Epistles.

W. Cureton: The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of S. Ignatius to S. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. With transl. and notes. Lond. and Berl., 1845. Also in Lightfoot II. 659–676.

C. C. J. Bunsen: Die 3 ächten u. die 4 unächten Briefe des Ignatius von  Ant. Hergestellter u. verqleichender Text mit Anmerkk. Hamb., 1847.

W. Cureton: Corpus Ignatianum: a complete collection of the Ignatian Epistles, genuine, interpolated, and spurious; together with numerous extracts from them as quoted by Eccles. writers down to the tenth century; in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, an Engl. transl. of the Syriac text, copious notes, and introd. Lond. and Berl., 1849.

J. H. Petermann: S. Ignatii quae feruntur Epistolae, una cum ejusdem martyrio, collatis edd. Graecis, versionibusque Syriaca, Armeniaca, Latinis. Lips., 1849.

Theod. Zahn: Ignatii et Polycarpi Epistulae, Martyria, Fragmenta. Lips. 1876 (the second part of Patrum Apostolorum Opera, ed. Gebhardt, Harnack and Zahn). This is the best critical ed. of the shorter Greek text. Funk admits its superiority ("non hesitans dico, textum quem exhibuit Zahn, prioribus longe praestare."  Prol., p. lxxv.).

Fr. Xav. Funk: Opera Patrum Apost., vol. I. Tub., 1878.

J. B. Lightfoot: The Apost. Fathers. P. II. vol. I. and II. Lond. l885. English translations of all the Epistles of Ignatius (Syriac, and Greek in both recensions) by Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library, (1867), and by Lightfoot (1885).

Earlier Engl. translations by Whiston (1711) and Clementson (1827).

German translations by M. I. Wocher (1829) and Jos. Nirschl (Die Briefe des heil. Ign. und sein Martyrium, 1870).

II. The Martyria.

Acta Martyrii S. Ignatii (Martuvrrion tou' aJgivou iJeromavrturo"  jIgnativou tou' qeofovrou), ed. by Ussher (from two Latin copies, 1647), Cotelier (Greek, 1672), Ruinart (1689), Grabe, Ittig, Smith, Gallandi, Jacobson, Hefele, Dressel, Cureton, Mösinger, Petermann, Zahn (pp. 301 sqq.), (Funk (I. 254–265; II. 218–275), and Lightfoot (II. 473–536). A Syriac version was edited by Cureton (Corpus Ignat. 222–225, 252–255), and more fully by Mösinger (Supplementum Corporis Ignat., 1872). An Armenian Martyr. was edited by Petermann, 1849. The Martyrium Colbertinum (from the codex Colbertinus in Paris) has seven chapters. There are several later and discordant recensions, with many interpolations. The Acts of Ignatius profess to be written by two of his deacons and travelling companions; but they were unknown to Eusebius, they contradict the Epistles, they abound in unhistorical statements, and the various versions conflict with each other. Hence recent Protestant critics reject them; and even the latest Roman Catholic editor admits that they must have been written after the second century. Probably not before the fifth. Comp. the investigation of Zahn, Ign. v. Ant., p. 1–74; Funk, Proleg. p. lxxix. sqq., and Lightfoot, II. 363–536.

The patristic statements concerning Ignatius are collected by Cureton, Bunsen, Petermann, Zahn, p. 326–381, and Lightfoot, I. 127–221.

Critical Discussions.

Joh. Dallaeus (Daillé): De scriptis quae sub Dionysii Areopagitae et Ignatii nominibus circumferuntur, libri duo. Genev., 1666. Against the genuineness.

*J. Pearson: Vindiciae Ignatianae. Cambr., 1672. Also in Cleric. ed. of the Patres Apost. II. 250–440, and in Migne’s Patrol. Gr., Tom. V. Republished with annotations by E. Churton, in the Anglo-Cath. Library, Oxf., 1852, 2 vols.

*R. Rothe: Anfänge der christl. Kirche. Wittenb., 1837. I., p. 715 sqq. For the shorter Greek recension.

Baron von Bunsen (at that time Prussian ambassador in England): Ignatius von Ant. u. seine Zeit. 7 Sendschreiben an Dr. Neander. Hamb., 1847. For the Syriac version.

Baur: Die Ignatianischen Briefe u. ihr neuster Kritiker. Tüb., 1848. Against Bunsen and against the genuineness of all recensions.

Denzinger. (R.C.): Ueber die Aechtheit des bisherigen Textes der Ignatian. Briefe. Würzb., 1849.

*G. Uhlhorn: Das Verhältniss der syrischen Recension der Ignatian. Br. zu der kürzeren griechischen. Leipz., 1851 (in the "Zeitschr. für Hist. Theol."); and his article "Ignatius" in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl., vol. vi. (1856), p. 623 sqq., and in the second ed., vol. vi. 688–694. For the shorter Greek recension.

Thiersch: Kirche im Apost. Zeitalter. Frankf. u. Erl., 1852, p. 320 sqq.

Lipsius: Ueber die Aechtheit der syr. Recens. der Ignat. Br. Leipz., 1856 (in Niedner’s "Zeitschr. für Hist. Theol."). For the Syriac version. But he afterwards changed his view in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift f. wiss. Theol." 1874, p. 211.

Vaucher: Recherches critiques sur les lettres d’gnace d’Antioche. Genève, 1856.

Merx: Meletemata Ignatiana. Hal. 1861.

*Theod. Zahn: Ignatius von Antiochien. Gotha, 1873. (631 pages.)  For the short Greek recension. The best vindication. Comp. the Proleg. to his ed., 1876.

Renan: Les Évangiles (1877), ch. xxii. 485–498, and the introduction, p. x sqq. Comp. also his notice of Zahn in the "Journal des Savants" for 1874. Against the genuineness of all Ep. except Romans. See in reply Zahn, Proleg. p. x.

F. X. Funk: Die Echtheit der Ignatianischen Briefe. Tübingen 1883.

Lightfoot: St. Paul’s Ep. to the Philippians (Lond. 1873), Excurs. on the Chr. Ministry, p. 208–911, and 232–236. "The short Greek of the Ignatian letters is probably corrupt or spurious: but from internal evidence this recension can hardly have been made later than the middle of the second century." (p. 210). On p. 232, note, he expressed his preference with Lipsius for the short Syriac text. But since then he has changed his mind in favor of the short Greek recension. See his S. Ignatius and S. Polycarp, London, 1885, Vol. I., 315–414. He repeats and reinforces Zahn’s arguments.

Canon R. Travers Smith: St. Ignatius in Smith and Wace III. (1882), 209–223. For the short Greek recensiona.

On the chronology:

Jos. Nirschl: Das Todesjahr des Ignatius v. A. und die drei oriental. Feldzüge des Kaisers Trajan (1869); Adolf Harnack: Die Zeit des Ignatius und die Chronologie der Antiochenischen Bischöfe bis Tyrannus (Leipzig, 1878); and Wiessler: Die Christenverfolgungen der Caesaren (Gütersloh, 1878), p. 125 sqq.

On the theology of Ignatius, comp. the relevant sections in Möhler, Hilgenfeld, Zahn (422–494), Nirschl, and Sprinzl.

I. Life of Ignatius.

Ignatius, surnamed Theophorus,1226 stood at the head of the Church of Antioch at the close of the first century and the beginning of the second, and was thus contemporaneous with Clement of Rome and Simeon of Jerusalem. The church of Antioch was the mother-church of Gentile Christianity; and the city was the second city of the Roman empire. Great numbers of Christians and a host of heretical tendencies were collected there, and pushed the development of doctrine and organization with great rapidity.

As in the case of Rome, tradition differs concerning the first episcopal succession of Antioch, making Ignatius either the second or the first bishop of this church after Peter, and calling him now a disciple of Peter, now of Paul, now of John. The Apostolic Constitutions intimate that Evodius and Ignatius presided contemporaneously over that church, the first being ordained by Peter, the second by Paul.1227  Baronius and others suppose the one to have been the bishop of the Jewish, the other of the Gentile converts. Thiersch endeavors to reconcile the conflicting statements by the hypothesis, that Peter appointed Evodius presbyter, Paul Ignatius, and John subsequently ordained Ignatius bishop. But Ignatius himself and Eusebius say nothing of his apostolic discipleship; while the testimony of Jerome and the Martyrium Colbertinum that he and Polycarp were fellow-disciples of St. John, is contradicted by the Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp, according to which he did not know Polycarp till he came to Smyrna on his way to Rome.1228  According to later story, Ignatius was the first patron of sacred music, and introduced the antiphony in Antioch.

But his peculiar glory, in the eyes of the ancient church, was his martyrdom. The minute account of it, in the various versions of the Martyrium S. Ignatii, contains many embellishments of pious fraud and fancy; but the fact itself is confirmed by general tradition. Ignatius himself says, in his Epistle to the Romans, according to the Syriac version: "From Syria to Rome I fight with wild beasts, on water and on land, by day and by night, chained to ten leopards [soldiers],1229 made worse by signs of kindness. Yet their wickednesses do me good as a disciple; but not on this account am I justified. Would that I might be glad of the beasts made ready for me. And I pray that they may be found ready for me. Nay, I will fawn upon them, that they may devour me quickly, and not, as they have done with some, refuse to touch me from fear. Yea, and if they will not voluntarily do it, I will bring them to it by force."

The Acts of his martyrdom relate more minutely, that Ignatius was brought before the Emperor Trajan at Antioch in the ninth year of his reign (107–108), was condemned to death as a Christian, was transported in chains to Rome, was there thrown to lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of the people, and that his remains were carried back to Antioch as an invaluable treasure.1230  The transportation may be accounted for as designed to cool the zeal of the bishop, to terrify other Christians on the way, and to prevent an outbreak of fanaticism in the church of Antioch.1231  But the chronological part of the statement makes difficulty. So far as we know, from coins and other ancient documents, Trajan did not come to Antioch on his Parthian expedition till the year 114 or 115. We must therefore either place the martyrdom later,1232 or suppose, what is much more probable, that Ignatius did not appear before the emperor himself at all, but before his governor.1233  Eusebius, Chrysostom, and other ancient witnesses say nothing of an imperial judgment, and the Epistle to the Romans rather implies that Ignatius was not condemned by the emperor at all; for otherwise it would have been useless for him to forbid them to intercede in his behalf. An appeal was possible from a lower tribunal, but not from the emperor’s.

II. His Letters.

On his journey to Rome, Bishop Ignatius, as a prisoner of Jesus Christ, wrote seven epistles to various churches, mostly in Asia Minor. Eusebius and Jerome put them in the following order: (1) To the Ephesians; (2) to the Magnesians; (3) to the Trallians; (4) to the Romans; (5) to the Philadelphians; (6) to the Smyrneans; (7) to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. The first four were composed in Smyrna; the other three later in Troas. These seven epistles, in connection with a number of other decidedly spurious epistles of Ignatius, have come down to us in two Greek versions, a longer and a shorter. The shorter is unquestionably to be preferred to the longer, which abounds with later interpolations. Besides these, to increase the confusion of controversy, a Syriac translation has been made known in 1845, which contains only three of the former epistles—those to Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans—and these in a much shorter form. This version is regarded by some as an exact transfer of the original; by others, with greater probability, as a mere extract from it for practical and ascetic purposes.

The question therefore lies between the shorter Greek copy and the Syriac version. The preponderance of testimony is for the former, in which the letters are no loose patch-work, but were produced each under its own impulse, were known to Eusebius (probably even to Polycarp),1234 and agree also with the Armenian version of the fifth century, as compared by Petermann. The three Syriac epistles, however, though they lack some of the strongest passages on episcopacy and on the divinity of Christ, contain the outlines of the same life-picture, and especially the same fervid enthusiasm for martyrdom, as the seven Greek epistles.

III. His Character and Position in history.

Ignatius stands out in history as the ideal of a catholic martyr, and as the earliest advocate of the hierarchical principle in both its good and its evil points. As a writer, he is remarkable for originality, freshness and force of ideas, and for terse, sparkling and sententious style; but in apostolic simplicity and soundness, he is inferior to Clement and Polycarp, and presents a stronger contrast to the epistles of the New Testament. Clement shows the calmness, dignity and governmental wisdom of the Roman character. Ignatius glows with the fire and impetuosity of the Greek and Syrian temper which carries him beyond the bounds of sobriety. He was a very uncommon man, and made a powerful impression upon his age. He is the incarnation, as it were, of the three closely connected ideas: the glory of martyrdom, the omnipotence of episcopacy, and the hatred of heresy and schism. Hierarchical pride and humility, Christian charity and churchly exclusiveness are typically represented in Ignatius.

As he appears personally in his epistles, his most beautiful and venerable trait is his glowing love for Christ as God incarnate, and his enthusiasm for martyrdom. If great patriots thought it sweet to die for their country, he thought it sweeter and more honorable to die for Christ, and by his blood to fertilize the soil for the growth of His Church. "I would rather die for Christ," says he, "than rule the whole earth." "It is glorious to go down in the world, in order to go up into God." He beseeches the Romans: "Leave me to the beasts, that I may by them be made partaker of God. I am a grain of the wheat of God, and I would be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread of God. Rather fawn upon the beasts, that they may be to me a grave, and leave nothing of my body, that, when I sleep, I may not be burdensome to any one. Then will I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world can no longer even see my body. Pray the Lord for me, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God."1235  And further on: "Fire, and cross, and exposure to beasts, scattering of the bones, hewing of the limbs, crushing of the whole body, wicked torments of the devil, may come upon me, if they only make me partaker of Jesus Christ.... My love is crucified, and there is no fire in me, which loves earthly stuff.... I rejoice not in the food of perishableness, nor in the pleasures of this life. The bread of God would I have, which is the flesh of Christ; and for drink I wish his blood, which is imperishable love."1236

From these and similar passages, however, we perceive also that his martyr-spirit exceeds the limits of the genuine apostolic soberness and resignation, which is equally willing to depart or to remain according to the Lord’s good pleasure.1237  It degenerates into boisterous impatience and morbid fanaticism. It resembles the lurid torch rather than the clear calm light. There mingles also in all his extravagant professions of humility and entire unworthiness a refined spiritual pride and self-commendation. And, finally, there is something offensive in the tone of his epistle to Polycarp, in which he addresses that venerable bishop and apostolic disciple, who at that time must have already entered upon the years of ripe manhood, not as a colleague and brother, but rather as a pupil, with exhortations and warnings, such as: "Strive after more knowledge than thou hast." "Be wise as the serpents." "Be more zealous than thou art." "Flee the arts of the devil."1238  This last injunction goes even beyond that of Paul to Timothy: "Flee youthful lusts,"1239 and can hardly be justified by it. Thus, not only in force and depth of teaching, but also in life and suffering, there is a significant difference between an apostolic and a post-apostolic martyr.

The doctrinal and churchly views of the Ignatian epistles are framed on a peculiar combination and somewhat materialistic apprehension of John’s doctrine of the incarnation, and Paul’s idea of the church as the body of Jesus Christ. In the "catholic church"—an expression introduced by him—that is, the episcopal orthodox organization of his day, the author sees, as it were, the continuation of the mystery of the incarnation, on the reality of which he laid great emphasis against the Docetists; and in every bishop, a visible representative of Christ, and a personal centre of ecclesiastical unity, which he presses home upon his readers with the greatest solicitude and almost passionate zeal. He thus applies those ideas of the apostles directly to the outward organization, and makes them subservient to the principle and institution of the growing hierarchy. Here lies the chief importance of these epistles; and the cause of their high repute with catholics and prelatists,1240 and their unpopularity with anti-episcopalians, and modern critics of the more radical school.1241

It is remarkable that the idea of the episcopal hierarchy which we have developed in another chapter, should be first clearly and boldly brought out, not by the contemporary Roman bishop Clement,1242 but by a bishop of the Eastern church; though it was transplanted by him to the soil of Rome, and there sealed with his martyr blood. Equally noticeable is the circumstance, that these oldest documents of the hierarchy soon became so interpolated, curtailed, and mutilated by pious fraud, that it is today almost impossible to discover with certainty the genuine Ignatius of history under the hyper- and pseudo-Ignatius of tradition.

§ 165. The Ignatian Controversy.

Of all the writings of the apostolic fathers none have been so much discussed, especially in modern times, as the Ignatian Epistles. This arises partly from the importance of their contents to the episcopal question, partly from the existence of so many different versions. The latter fact seems to argue as strongly for the hypothesis of a genuine basis for all, as against the supposition of the full integrity of any one of the extant texts. Renan describes the Ignatian problem as the most difficult in early Christian literature, next to that of the Gospel of John (Les Évang. p. x).

The Ignatian controversy has passed through three periods, the first from the publication of the spurious Ignatius to the publication of the shorter Greek recension (A. D. 1495 to 1644); the second from the discovery and publication of the shorter Greek recension to the discovery and publication of the Syrian version (A. D. 1644 to 1845), which resulted in the rejection of the larger Greek recension; the third from the discovery of the Syrian extract to the present time (1845–1883), which is favorable to the shorter Greek recension.

1. The Larger Greek Recension of Seven Epistles with eight additional ones. Four of them were published in Latin at Paris, 1495, as an appendix to another book; eleven more by Faber Stapulensis, also in Latin, at Paris, 1498; then all fifteen in Greek by Valentine Hartung (called Paceus or Irenaeus) at Dillingen, 1557; and twelve by Andreas Gesner at Zurich, 1560. The Catholics at first accepted them all as genuine works of Ignatius; and Hartung, Baronius, Bellarmin defended at least twelve; but Calvin and the Magdeburg Centuriators rejected them all, and later Catholics surrendered at least eight as utterly untenable. These are two Latin letters of Ignatius to St. John and one to the Virgin Mary with an answer of the Virgin; and five Greek letters of Ignatius to Maria Castabolita, with an answer, to the Tarsenses, to the Antiochians, to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, and to the Philippians. These letters swarm with offences against history and chronology. They were entirely unknown to Eusebius and Jerome. They are worthless forgeries, clothed with the name and authority of Ignatius. It is a humiliating fact that the spurious Ignatius and his letters to St. John and the Virgin Mary should in a wretched Latin version have so long transplanted and obscured the historical Ignatius down to the sixteenth century. No wonder that Calvin spoke of this fabrication with such contempt. But in like manner the Mary of history gave way to a Mary of fiction, the real Peter to a pseudo-Peter, and the real Clement to a pseudo-Clement. Here, if anywhere, we see the necessity and use of historical criticism for the defense of truth and honesty.

2. The Shorter Greek Recension of the seven Epistles known to Eusebius was discovered in a Latin version and edited by Archbishop Ussher at Oxford, 1644 (Polycarpi et Ignatii Epistolae), and in Greek by Isaac Vossius, from a Medicean Codex in 1646, again by Th. Ruinart from the Codex Colbertinus (together with the Martyrium) in 1689. We have also fragments of a Syrian version (in Cureton), and of an Armenian version apparently from the Syrian (printed in Constantinople in 1783, and compared by Petermann). Henceforth the longer Greek recension found very few defenders (the eccentric Whiston, 1711, and more recently Fr. C. Meier, 1836), and their arguments were conclusively refuted by R. Rothe in his Anfänge, 1837, and by K. Fr. L. Arndt in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1839). It is generally given up even by Roman Catholic scholars (as Petavius, Cotelier, Dupin, Hefele, Funk). But as regards the genuineness of the shorter Greek text there are three views among which scholars are divided.

(a) Its genuineness and integrity are advocated by Pearson (Vindiciae Ignatianae, 1672, against the doubts of the acute Dallaeus), latterly by Gieseler, Möhler (R.C.), Rothe (1837), Huther (1841), Düsterdieck (1843), Dorner (1845), and (since the publication of the shorter Syriac version) by Jacobson, Hefele (R.C., 1847 and 1855), Denzinger (R.C., 1849), Petermann (1849), Wordsworth, Churton (1852), and most thoroughly by Ulhhorn, (1851 and ’56), and Zahn (1873, Ign. v. Ant. 495–541). The same view is adopted by Wieseler (1878), Funk (in Patr. Apost. 1878, Prol LX. sqq., and his monograph, 1883), Canon Travers Smith, (in Smith and Wace, 1882), and Lightfoot (1885).

(b) The friends of the three Syriac epistles (see below under No. 3) let only so many of the seven epistles stand as agree with those. Also Lardner (1743), Mosheim (1755), Neander (1826), Thiersch (1852), Lechler (1857), Robertson and Donaldson (1867), are inclined to suppose at least interpolation.

(c) The shorter recension, though older than the longer, is likewise spurious. The letters were forged in the later half of the second century for the purpose of promoting episcopacy and the worship of martyrs. This view is ably advocated by two very different classes of divines: first by Calvinists in the interest of Presbyterianism or anti-prelacy, Claudius Salmasius (1645), David Blondel (1646), Dallaeus (1666), Samuel Basnage, and by Dr. Killen of Belfast (1859 and 1883); next by the Tübingen school of critics in a purely historical interest, Dr. Baur (1835, then against Rothe, 1838, and against Bunsen, 1848 and 1853), Schwegler (1846), and more thoroughly by Hilgenfeld (1853). The Tübingen critics reject the whole Ignatian literature as unhistorical tendency writings, partly because the entire historical situation implied in it and the circuitous journey to Rome are in themselves improbable, partly because it advocates a form of church government and combats Gnostic heresies, which could not have existed in the age of Ignatius. This extreme scepticism is closely connected with the whole view of the Tübingen school in regard to the history of primitive Christianity, and offers no explanation of the stubborn fact that Ignatius was a historical character of a strongly marked individuality and wrote a number of letters widely known and appreciated in the early church. Renan admits the genuineness of the Ep. to the Romans, but rejects the six others as fabrications of a zealous partizan of orthodoxy and episcopacy about A.D. 170. He misses in them le génie, le caractère individuel, but speaks highly of the Ep. to the Romans, in which the enthusiasm of the martyr has found "son expressio la plus exaltée"(p. 489).

(d) We grant that the integrity of these epistles, even in the shorter copy, is not beyond all reasonable doubt. As the manuscripts of them contain, at the same time, decidedly spurious epistles (even the Armenian translation has thirteen epistles), the suspicion arises, that the seven genuine also have not wholly escaped the hand of the forger. Yet there are, in any case, very strong arguments for their genuineness and substantial integrity; viz. (1) The testimony of the fathers, especially of Eusebius. Even Polycarp alludes to epistles of Ignatius. (2) The raciness and freshness of their contents, which a forger could not well imitate. (3) The small number of citations from the New Testament, indicating the period of the immediate disciples of the apostles. (4) Their way of combating the Judaists and Docetists (probably Judaizing Gnostics of the school of Cerinthus), showing us Gnosticism as yet in the first stage of its development. (5) Their dogmatical indefiniteness, particularly in regard to the Trinity and Christology, notwithstanding very strong expressions in favor of the divinity of Christ. (6) Their urgent recommendation of episcopacy as an institution still new and fresh, and as a centre of congregational unity in distinction from the diocesan episcopacy of Irenaeus and Tertullian. (7) Their entire silence respecting a Roman primacy, even in the epistle to the Romans, where we should most expect it. The Roman church is highly recommended indeed, but the Roman bishop is not even mentioned. In any case these epistles must have been written before the middle of the second century, and reflect the spirit of their age in its strong current towards a hierarchical organization and churchly orthodoxy on the basis of the glory of martyrdom.

3. The Syriac Version contains only three epistles (to Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans), and even these in a much reduced form, less than half of the corresponding Greek Epistles. It has the subscription: "Here end the three epistles of the bishop and martyr Ignatius," on which, however, Bunsen lays too great stress; for, even if it comes from the translator himself, and not from a mere transcriber, it does not necessarily exclude the existence of other epistles (comp. Petermann, l.c. p. xxi.). It was discovered in 1839 and ’43 by the Rev. Henry Tattam in a monastery of the Libyan desert, together with 365 other Syriac manuscripts, now in the British Museum; published first by Cureton in 1845, and again in 1849, with the help of a third MS. discovered in 1847; and advocated as genuine by him, as also by Lee (1846), Bunsen (1847), Ritschl (1851 and 1857), Weiss (1852), and most fully by Lipsius (1856), also by E. de Pressené (1862), Böhringer (1873), and at first by Lightfoot.

Now, it is true, that all the considerations we have adduced in favor of the shorter Greek text, except the first, are equally good, and some of them even better, for the genuineness of the Syrian Ignatius, which has the additional advantage of lacking many of the most offensive passages (though not in the epistle to Polycarp).

But against the Syriac text is, in the first place, the external testimony of antiquity, especially that of Eusebius, who confessedly knew of and used seven epistles, whereas the oldest of the three manuscripts of this version, according to Cureton, belongs at the earliest to the sixth century, a period, when the longer copy also had become circulated through all the East, and that too in a Syriac translation, as the fragments given by Cureton show. Secondly, the internal testimony of the fact, that the Syriac text, on close examination, by the want of a proper sequence of thoughts and sentences betrays the character of a fragmentary extract from the Greek; as Baur (1848), Hilgenfeld (1853), and especially Uhlhorn (185l), and Zahn (1873, p. 167–241), by an accurate comparison of the two, have proved in a manner hitherto unrefuted and irrefutable. The short Syriac Ignatius has vanished like a dream. Even Lipsius and Lightfoot have given up or modified their former view. The great work of Lightfoot on Ignatius and Polycarp (1885) which goes into all the details and gives all the documents, may be regarded as a full and final settlement of the Ignatian problem in favor of the shorter Greek recension.

The only genuine Ignatius, as the question now stands, is the Ignatius of the shorter seven Greek epistles.

§ 166. Polycarp of Smyrna.

Comp § 19 and the Lit. there quoted.

S. Polycarpi, Smyrnaeorum episcopi et hieromartyris, ad Philippenses Epistola, first published in Latin by Faber Stapulensis (Paris 1498), then with the Greek original by Petrus Halloisius (Halloix), Duaei, 1633; and Jac. Usserius (Ussher), Lond. 1647: also in all the editions of the Apost. Fath., especially those of Jacobson (who compared several manuscripts), Zahn (1876), Funk (1878), and Lightfoot)1885).

Martyrium S. Polycarpi (Epistola circularis ecclesix Smyrnensis), first completed ed. in Gr. & Lat. by Archbp. Ussher, Lond. 1647, then in all the ed. of the Patr. Apost., especially that of Jacobson (who here also made use of three new codices), of Zahn, and Funk.

L. Duchesne: Vita Sancti Polycarpi Smyrnaeorum episcopi auctore Pionio Primum graece edita. Paris 1881. The same also in the second vol. of Funk’s Patr. Apost. (1881) pp. LIV. -LVIII. 315–347. It is, according to Funk, from the fourth or fifth century, and shows not what Polycarp really was, but how he appeared to the Christians of a later age.

Zahn: Ign. v. Ant. p. 495–511; and Proleg. to his ed. of Ign. and Pol. (1876), p. XLII-LV.

Donaldson: Ap. Fath. 191–247.

Renan L’église chrétienne (1879), ch. ix. and x. p. 437–466.

Lightfoot: S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, (1885), vol. I. 417–704.

Polycarp, born about A.D. 69 or earlier, a disciple of the apostle John, a younger friend of Ignatius, and the teacher of Irenaeus (between 130 and 140), presided as presbyter-bishop over the church of Smyrna in Asia Minor in the first half of the second century; made a journey to Rome about the year 154, to adjust the Easter dispute; and died at the stake in the persecution under Antoninus Pius A.D. 155, at a great age, having served the Lord six and eighty years.1243  He was not so original and intellectually active as Clement or Ignatius, but a man of truly venerable character, and simple, patriarchal piety. His disciple Irenaeus of Lyons (who wrote under Eleutherus, 177–190), in a letter to his fellow-pupil Florinus, who had fallen into the error of Gnosticism) has given us most valuable reminiscences of this "blessed and apostolic presbyter," which show how faithfully he held fast the apostolic tradition, and how he deprecated all departure from it. He remembered vividly his mode of life and personal appearance, his discourses to the people, and his communications respecting the teaching and miracles of the Lord, as he had received them from the mouth of John and other eye-witnesses, in agreement with the Holy Scriptures.1244  In another place, Irenaeus says of Polycarp, that he had all the time taught what he had learned from the apostles, and what the church handed down; and relates, that he once called the Gnostic Marcion in Rome, "the first-born of Satan."1245  This is by no means incredible in a disciple of John, who, with all his mildness, forbids his people to salute the deniers of the true divinity and humanity of the Lord;1246 and it is confirmed by a passage in the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians,1247 where he says: "Whoever doth not confess, that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist,1248 and whoever doth not confess the mystery of the cross, is of the devil; and he, who wrests the words of the Lord according to his own pleasure, and saith, there is no resurrection and judgment, is the first-born of Satan. Therefore would we forsake the empty babbling of this crowd and their false teachings, and turn to the word which hath been given us from the beginning, watching in prayer,1249 continuing in fasting, and most humbly praying God, that he lead us not into temptation,1250 as the Lord hath said: ’The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ "1251

This epistle to the Philippians consists of fourteen short chapters, and has been published in full since 1633. It is the only, document that remains to us from this last witness of the Johannean age, who wrote several letters to neighboring congregations. It is mentioned first by his pupil Irenaeus;1252 it was still in public use in the churches of Asia Minor in the time of Jerome as he reports; and its contents correspond with the known life and character of Polycarp; its genuineness there is no just reason to doubt.1253  It has little merit as a literary production, but is simple and earnest, and breathes a noble Christian spirit, It was written after the death of Ignatius (whose epistles are mentioned, c. 13) in the name of Polycarp and his presbyters; commends the Philippians for the love they showed Ignatius in bonds and his companions, and for their adherence to the ancient faith; and proceeds with simple, earnest exhortation to love, harmony, contentment, patience, and perseverance, to prayer even for enemies and persecutors; also giving special directions for deacons, presbyters, youths, wives, widows, and virgins; with strokes against Gnostic Docetic errors. Of Christ it speaks in high terms, as the Lord, who sits at the right hand of God to whom everything in heaven and earth is subject; whom every living being serves; who is coming to judge the quick and the dead; whose blood God will require of all, who believe not on him.1254  Polycarp guards with sound feeling against being considered equal with the apostles: "I write these things, brethren, not in arrogance, but because ye have requested me. For neither I, nor any other like me, can attain the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who was among you, and in the presence of the then living accurately and firmly taught the word of truth, who also in his absence wrote you an epistle,1255 from which ye may edify yourselves in the faith given to you, which is the mother of us all,1256 hope following after, and love to God and to Christ, and to neighbors leading further.1257  For when any one is full of these virtues, he fulfills the command of righteousness; for he, who has love, is far from all sin."1258  This does not agree altogether with the system of St. Paul. But it should be remembered that Polycarp, in the very first chapter, represents faith and the whole salvation as the gift of free grace.1259

The epistle is interwoven with many reminiscences of the Synoptical Gospels and the epistles of Paul, John and First Peter, which give to it considerable importance in the history of the canon.1260

The Martyrium S. Polycarpi (22 chs.), in the form of a circular letter of the church of Smyrna to the church of Philomelium in Phrygia, and all "parishes of the Catholic church," appears, from ch. 18, to have been composed before the first annual celebration of his martyrdom. Eusebius has incorporated in his church history the greater part of this beautiful memorial, and Ussher first published it complete in the Greek original, 1647. It contains an edifying description of the trial and martyrdom of Polycarp, though embellished with some marvellous additions of legendary poesy. When, for example, the pile was kindled, the flames surrounded the body of Polycarp, like the full sail of a ship, without touching it; on the contrary it shone, unhurt, with a gorgeous color, like white baken bread, or like gold and silver in a crucible, and gave forth a lovely fragrance as of precious spices. Then one of the executioners pierced the body of the saint with a spear, and forthwith there flowed such a stream of blood that the fire was extinguished by it. The narrative mentions also a dove which flew up from the burning pile; but the reading is corrupt, and Eusebius, Rufinus, and Nicephorus make no reference to it.1261  The sign of a dove (which is frequently found on ancient monuments) was probably first marked on the margin, as a symbol of the pure soul of the martyr, or of the power of the Holy Spirit which pervaded him; but the insertion of the word dove in the text suggests an intended contrast to the eagle, which flew up from the ashes of the Roman emperors, and proclaimed their apotheosis, and may thus be connected with the rising worship of martyrs and saints.

Throughout its later chapters this narrative considerably exceeds the sober limits of the Acts of the Apostles in the description of the martyrdom of Stephen and the elder James, and serves to illustrate, in this respect also, the undeniable difference, notwithstanding all the affinity, between the apostolic and the old catholic literature.1262

Notes.

I. Of all the writings of the Apostolic Fathers the Epistle of Polycarp is the least original, but nearest in tone to the Pastoral Epistles of Paul, and fullest of reminiscences from the New Testament. We give the first four chapters as specimens.

I. "Polycarp and the presbyters with him to the congregation of god which sojourns at philippi. Mercy and peace be multiplied upon you, from god almighty, and from Jesus Christ our Saviour.

1. "I have greatly rejoiced with you in the joy you have had in our Lord Jesus Christ, in receiving those examples of true charity, and having accompanied, as it well became you, those who were bound with holy chains [Ignatius and his fellow-prisoners, Zosimus and Rufus; comp. ch. 9]; who are the diadems of the truly elect of God and our Lord; and that the strong root of your faith, spoken of in the earliest times, endureth until now, and bringeth forth fruit unto our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered for our sins, but whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the pains of Hades [Acts 2:24]; in whom though ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory [I Pet. 1:8]; into which joy many desire to enter; knowing that by grace ye are saved, not by works [Eph. 2:8, 9], but by the will of God through Jesus Christ.

2. "Wherefore, girding up your loins, serve the Lord in fear [1 Pet. 1:13] and truth, as those who have forsaken the vain, empty talk and error of the multitude, and believed in Him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave him glory [1 Pet. 1:21], and a throne at His right hand [comp. Heb. 1:3; 8:1; 12:2]; to whom all things in heaven and on earth are subject. Him every spirit serves. His blood will God require of those who do not believe in Him. But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil-speaking false-witness; not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling [1 Pet. 3:9]; or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus [comp. Acts 20:35] in His teaching: Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again [Matt. 7:1, 2; Luke 6:36–38], and once more, Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God [Luke 6:20; Matt. 5:3, 10].

3. "These things, brethren, I write to you concerning righteousness, not because I take anything on myself, but because ye have invited me thereto. For neither I, nor any such as I, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul. He, when among you, accurately and steadfastly taught the word of truth in the presence of those who were then alive; and when absent from you, he wrote you a letter, which, if you carefully study, you will find to be the means of building you up in that faith which has been given you, and which, being followed by hope and preceded by love towards God, and Christ, and our neighbor, is the mother of us all [Gal. 4:26]. For if any one be inwardly possessed of these graces, be has fulfilled the command of righteousness, since he that has love is far from all sin.

4. "But the love of money is a beginning [ajrchv instead of root, jJrizh] of all kinds of evil, [1 Tim. 6:10]. Knowing, therefore, that as we brought nothing into the world, so we can carry nothing out, [1 Tim. 6:7], let us arm ourselves with the armor of righteousness; and let us teach, first of all, ourselves to walk in the commandments of the Lord. Next teach your wives to walk in the faith given to them, and in love and purity tenderly loving their own husbands in all truth, and loving all equally in all chastity; and to train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God [comp. Eph. 6:11, 13, 14]. Let us teach the widows to be discreet as respects the faith of the Lord, praying continually for all, being far from all slandering, evil-speaking, false-witnessing, love of money, and every kind of evil; knowing that they are the altar of God, that He clearly perceives all things, and that nothing is hid from Him, neither reasonings, nor reflections, nor any one of the secret things of the heart."

II. From the Martyrium Polycarpi. When the Proconsul demanded that Polycarp should swear by the genius of Caesar and renounce Christ, he gave the memorable answer:

"Eighty and six years have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I blaspheme my King who saved me" (to;n basileva mou to;n swvsantav me)?  Ch. 9.

Standing at the stake with his hands tied to the back, as the fagots were kindled, Polycarp lifted up his voice and uttered this sublime prayer as reported by disciples who heard it (ch. 14):

"Lord God Almighty, Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the grace of knowing Thee; God of angels and powers, and the whole creation, and of the whole race of the righteous who live in Thy presence; I bless Thee for deigning me worthy of this day and this hour that I may be among Thy martyrs and drink of the cup of my Lord Jesus Christ, unto the resurrection of eternal life of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit. Receive me this day into Thy presence together with them, as a fair and acceptable sacrifice prepared for Thyself in fulfillment of Thy promise, O true and faithful God. Wherefore I praise Thee for all Thy mercies; I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, through the eternal High-Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom to Thyself and the Holy Spirit, be glory both now and forever. Amen."

For a good popular description of Polycarp, including his letter and martyrdom, see The Pupils of St. John the Divine, by the Author of the Heir of Redcliffe, in Macmillan’s "Sunday Library." London 1863.

§ 167. Barnabas.

Editions.

First editions in Greek and Latin, except the first four chapters and part of the fifth, which were known only in the Latin version, by Archbishop Ussher (Oxf. 1643, destroyed by fire 1644), Luc. d’achery (Par. 1645), and Isaac Voss (Amstel. 1646).

First complete edition of the Greek original from the Codex Sinaiticus, to which it is appended, by Tischendorf in the facsimile ed. of that Codex, Petropoli, 1862, Tom. IV. 135–141, and in the Novum Testam. Sinait. 1863. The text dates from the fourth century. It was discovered by Tischendorf in the Convent of St. Catharine at Mt. Sinai, 1859, and is now in the library of St. Petersburg.

A new MS. of the Greek B. from the eleventh century (1056) was discovered in Constantinople by Bryennios, 1875, together with the Ep. of Clement, and has been utilized by the latest editors, especially by Hilgenfeld.

O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn: Patr. Ap. 1876. Gebhardt ed. the text from Cod. Sin. Harnack prepared the critical commentary. In the small ed. of 1877 the Const. Cod. is also compared.

Hefele-Funk: Patr. Ap. 1878, p. 2–59.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Barnabae Epistula. Inteqram Graece iterum edidit, veterem interpretationem Latinam, commentarium criticum et adnotationes addidit A. H. Ed. altera et valde aucta. Lips. 1877. Dedicated to Bryennios. "Orientalis Ecclesicae splendido lumini." who being prevented by the Oriental troubles from editing the new MS., sent a collation to H. in Oct. 1876 (Prol. p. xiii). The best critical edition. Comp. Harnack’s review in Schürer’s "Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1877, f. 473–’77.

J. G. Müller (of Basle): Erklärung des Barnabasbriefes. Leipz. 1869. An Appendix to De Wette’s Corn. on the N. T.

English translations by Wake (1693), Roberts and Donaldson (in Ante-Nic. Lib. 1867), Hoole (1872), Rendall (1877), Sharpe (1880, from the Sinait. MS). German translations by Hefele (1840), Scholz (1865), Mayer (1869), Riggenbach (1873).

Critical Discussions.

C. Jos. Hefele (R.C.): Das Sendschreiben des Apostels Barnabas, auf’s Neue untersucht und erklärt. Tüb. 1840.

Joh. Kayser: ueber den sogen. Barnabasbrief. Paderborn, 1866.

Donaldson: Ap. Fathers (1874), p. 248–317.

K. Wieseler: On the Origin and Authorship of the Ep. of B., in the "Jahrbuecher für Deutsche Theol.,"  1870, p. 603 sqq.

O. Braunsberger (R.C.): Der Apostel Barnabas. Sein Leben und der ihm beigelegte Brief wissenschaftlich gewürdigt. Mainz, 1876.

W. Cunningham: The Ep. of St. Barnabas. London, 1876.

Samuel Sharpe: The Ep. of B. from the Sinaitic MS. London, 1880.

J. Weiss: Der Barnabasbrief kritisch untersucht. Berlin, 1888.

Milligan in Smith and Wace, I. 260–265; Harnack in Herzog2 II. 101–105.

Other essays by Henke (1827), Rördam (1828), Ullmann (1828), Schenkel (1837), Franke (1840), Weizsäcker (1864), Heydecke (1874). On the relation of Barnabas to Justin Martyr see M. von Engelhardt: Das Christenthum Justins d. M. (1878), p. 375–394.

The doctrines of B. are fully treated by Hefele, Kayser, Donaldson, Hilgenfeld, Braunsberger, and Sprinzl.

Comp. the list of books from 1822–1875 in Harnack’s Prol. to the Leipz. ed. of Barn. Ep. p. XX sqq.; and in Richardson, Synopsis 16–19 (down to 1887).

The Catholic Epistle of Barnabas, so called, is anonymous, and omits all allusion to the name or residence of the readers. He addresses them not as their teacher, but as one among them.1263  He commences in a very general way: "All hail, ye sons and daughters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us, in peace;" and concludes: "Farewell, ye children of love and peace, The Lord of glory and all grace be with your spirit. Amen."1264  For this reason, probably, Origen called it a "Catholic" Epistle, which must be understood, however, with limitation. Though not addressed to any particular congregation, it is intended for a particular class of Christians who were in danger of relapsing into Judaizing errors.

1. Contents. The epistle is chiefly doctrinal (ch. 1–17), and winds up with some practical exhortations to walk "in the way of light," and to avoid "the way of darkness" (ch. 18–21).1265  It has essentially the same object as the Epistle to the Hebrews, though far below it in depth, originality and unction. It shows that Christianity is the all-sufficient, divine institution for salvation, and an abrogation of Judaism, with all its laws and ceremonies. Old things have passed away; all things are made new. Christ has indeed given us a law; but it is a new law, without the yoke of constraint.1266  The tables of Moses are broken that the love of Christ may be sealed in our hearts.1267  It is therefore sin and folly to assert that the old covenant is still binding. Christians should strive after higher knowledge and understand the difference.

By Judaism, however, the author understands not the Mosaic and prophetic writings in their true spiritual sense, but the carnal misapprehension of them. The Old Testament is, with him, rather a veiled Christianity, which he puts into it by a mystical allegorical interpretation, as Philo, by the same method, smuggled into it the Platonic philosophy. In this allegorical conception he goes so far, that he actually seems to deny the literal historical sense. He asserts, for example, that God never willed the sacrifice and fasting, the Sabbath observance and temple-worship of the Jews, but a purely spiritual worship; and that the laws of food did not relate at all to the eating of clean and unclean animals, but only to intercourse with different classes of men, and to certain virtues and vices. His chiliasm likewise rests on an allegorical exegesis, and is no proof of a Judaizing tendency any more than in Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. He sees in the six days of creation a type of six historical millennia of work to be followed first by the seventh millennium of rest, and then by the eighth millennium of eternity, the latter being foreshadowed by the weekly Lord’s Day. The carnal Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament is a diabolical perversion. The Christians, and not the Jews, are the true Israel of God and the righteous owners of the Old Testament Scriptures.

Barnabas proclaims thus an absolute separation of Christianity from Judaism. In this respect he goes further than any post-apostolic writer. He has been on that ground charged with unsound ultra-Paulinism bordering on antinomianism and heretical Gnosticism. But this is unjust. He breathes the spirit of Paul, and only lacks his depth, wisdom, and discrimination, Paul, in Galatians and Colossians, likewise takes an uncompromising attitude against Jewish circumcision, sabbatarianism, and ceremonialism, if made a ground of justification and a binding yoke of conscience; but nevertheless he vindicated the Mosaic law as a preparatory school for Christianity. Barnabas Ignores this, and looks only at the negative side. Yet he, too, acknowledges the new law of Christ. He has some profound glances and inklings of a Christian philosophy. He may be called an orthodox Gnostic. He stands midway between St. Paul and Justin Martyr, as Justin Martyr stands between Barnabas and the Alexandrian school. Clement and Origen, while averse to his chiliasm, liked his zeal for higher Christian knowledge and his allegorizing exegesis which obscures every proper historical understanding of the Old Testament.

The Epistle of Barnabas has considerable historical, doctrinal, and apologetic value. He confirms the principal facts and doctrines of the gospel. He testifies to the general observance of Sunday on "the eighth day," as the joyful commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, in strict distinction from the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh. He furnishes the first clear argument for the canonical authority of the Gospel of Matthew (without naming it) by quoting the passage: "Many are called, but few are chosen," with the solemn formula of Scripture quotation: "as it is written."1268  He introduces also (ch. 5) the words of Christ, that he did not come "to call just men, but sinners," which are recorded by Matthew 9:13. He furnishes parallels to a number of passages in the Gospels, Pauline Epistles, First Peter, and the Apocalypse. His direct quotations from the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Isaiah, are numerous; but he quotes also IV. Esdras and the Book of Enoch.1269

2. Authorship. The Epistle was first cited by Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, as a work of the apostolic Barnabas, who plays so prominent a part in the early history of the church.1270  Origen seems to rank it almost with the inspired Scriptures. In the Sinaitic Bible, of the fourth century, it follows as the "Epistle of Barnabas," immediately after the Apocalypse (even on the same page 135, second column), as if it were a regular part of the New Testament. From this we may, infer that it was read in some churches as a secondary ecclesiastical book, like the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Polycarp, and the Pastor of Hermas. Eusebius and Jerome likewise ascribe it to Barnabas but number it among the "spurious," or "apocryphal" writings.1271  They seem to have doubted the authority, but not the authenticity of the epistle. The historical testimony therefore is strong and unanimous in favor of Barnabas, and is accepted by all the older editors and several of the later critics.1272

But the internal evidence points with greater force to a post-apostolic writer.1273  The Epistle does not come up to the position and reputation of Barnabas, the senior companion of Paul, unless we assume that he was a man of inferior ability and gradually vanished before the rising star of his friend from Tarsus. It takes extreme ground against the Mosaic law, such as we can hardly expect from one who stood as a mediator between the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Jewish Apostles, and who in the collision at Antioch sided with Peter and Mark against the bold champion of freedom; yet we should remember that this was only a temporary inconsistency, and that no doubt a reaction afterwards took place in his mind. The author in order to glorify the grace of the Saviour, speaks of the apostles of Christ before their conversion as over-sinful,1274 and indulges in artificial and absurd allegorical fancies.1275  He also wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem when Barnabas in all probability was no more among the living, though the date of his death is unknown, and the inference from Col. 4:10 and 1 Pet. 5:13 is uncertain.

These arguments are not conclusive, it is true, but it is quite certain that if Barnabas wrote this epistle, he cannot be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and vice versa. The difference between the two is too great for the unity of the authorship. The ancient church showed sound tact in excluding that book from the canon; while a genuine product of the apostolic Barnabas1276 had a claim to be admitted into it as well as the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews or the writings of Mark and Luke.

The author was probably a converted Jew from Alexandria (perhaps by the name Barnabas, which would easily explain the confusion), to judge from his familiarity with Jewish literature, and, apparently, with Philo and his allegorical method in handling the Old Testament. In Egypt his Epistle was first known and most esteemed; and the Sinaitic Bible which contains it was probably written in Alexandria or Caesarea in Palestine. The readers were chiefly Jewish Christians in Egypt and the East, who overestimated the Mosaic traditions and ceremonies.1277

3. Time of composition. The work was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, which is alluded to as an accomplished fact;1278 yet probably before the close of the first century, certainly before the reconstruction of Jerusalem under Hadrian (120).1279

§ 168. Hermas.

Editions.

The older editions give only the imperfect Latin Version, first published by Faber Stapulensis (Par. 1513). Other Latin MSS. were discovered since. The Greek text (brought from Mt. Athos by Constantine Simonides, and called Cod. Lipsiensis) was first published by R. Anger, with a preface by G. Dindorf (Lips. 1856); then by Tischendorf, in Dressel’s Patres  Apost., Lips 1857 (p. 572–637); again in the second ed. 1863, where Tischenderf, (sic) in consequence of the intervening discovery of the Cod. Sinaiticus retracted his former objections to the originality of the Greek Hermas from Mt. Athos, which he had pronounced a mediaeval retranslation from the Latin (see the Proleg., Appendix and Preface to the second ed.). The Poimh;n o{rasi" is also printed in the fourth vol. of the large edition of the Codex Sinaiticus, at the close (pp. 142–148), Peters b. 1862. The texts from Mt. Athos and Mt. Sinai substantially agree. An Ethiopic translation appeared in Leipz. 1860, ed. with a Latin version by Ant. d’abbadie. Comp. Dillmann in the "Zeitschrift d. D. Morgenländ. Gesellschaft "for 1861; Schodde: Hêrmâ Nabî, the Ethiop. V of P. H. examined. Leipz. 1876 (criticised by Harnack in the "Theol. Lit. Ztg." 1877, fol. 58), and G. and H’s Proleg. xxxiv. sqq.

O. v. Gebhardt, and Harnack: Patrum Apost. Opera, Fascic. III. Lips. 1877. Greek and Latin. A very careful recension of the text (from the Sinaitic MS.) by v. Gebhardt, with ample Prolegomena (84 pages), and a critical and historical commentary by Harnack.

Funk’s fifth ed. of Hefele’s Patres Apost. I. 334–563. Gr. and Lat. Follows mostly the text of Von Gebhardt.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Hermae Pastor. Graece e codicibus Sinaitico et Lipsiensi ... restituit, etc. Ed. altera emendata et valde aucta. Lips. 1881. With Prolegomena and critical annotations (257 pp.). By the same: Hermae Pastor Graece integrum ambitu. Lips., 1887 (pp. 130). From the Athos and Sinaitic MSS.

S. P. Lambros (Prof. in Athens): A Collation of the Athos Codex of the Shepherd of Hermas, together with an Introduction. Translated and edited by J. A. Robinson, Cambridge, 1888.

English translations by Wake (1693, from the Latin version); F. Crombie (Vol. I. of the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library." 1867, from the Greek of the Sinait. MS.), by Charles H. Hoole (1870, from Hilgenfeld’s first ed. of 1866,) and by Robinson (1888).

Essays.

C. Reinh. Jachmann: Der Hirte der Hermas. Königsberg, 1835.

Ernst Gaâb: Der Hirte des Hermas. Basel, 1866 (pp. 203).

Theod. Zahn: Der Hirt des Hermas. Gotha 1868. (Comp. also his review of Gaâb in the Studien und Kritiken for 1868, pp. 319–349).

Charles R. Hoole (of Christ Church, Oxf.): The Shepherd of Hermas translated into English, with an Introduction and Notes. Lond., Oxf. and Cambr. 1870 (184 pages).

Gust. Heyne: Quo tempore Hermae Pastor scriptus sit. Regimonti, 1872.

J. Donaldson: The Apostolical Fathers (1874) p. 318–392.

H. M. Behm: Der Verfasser der Schrift., welche d. Titel "Hirt" führt. Rostock, 1876 (71 pp.).

Brüll: Der Hirt des Hermas. Nach Ursprung und Inhalt untersucht. Freiburg i. B. 1882. The same: Ueber den Ursprung des ersten Clemensbriefs und des Hirten des Hermas. 1882.

Ad. Link: Christi Person und Werk im Hirten des Hermas. Marburg, 1886. Die Einheit des Pastor Hermae. Mar b. 1888. Defends the unity of Hermas against Hilgenfeld.

P. Baumgärtner: Die Einheit des Hermas-Buches. Freiburg, 1889. He mediates between Hilgenfeld and Link, and holds that the book was written by one author, but at different times.

I. The Shepherd of Hermas1280 has its title from the circumstance that the author calls himself Hermas and is instructed by the angel of repentance in the costume of a shepherd. It is distinguished from all the productions of the apostolic fathers by its literary form. It is the oldest Christian allegory, an apocalyptic book, a sort of didactic religious romance. This accounts in part for its great popularity in the ancient church. It has often been compared with Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Dante’s Divina Commedia, though far inferior in literary merit and widely different in theology from either. For a long time it was only known in an old, inaccurate Latin translation, which was first published by Faber Stapulensis in 1513; but since 1856 and 1862, we have it also in the original Greek, in two texts, one hailing from Mount Athos re-discovered and compared by Lambros, and another (incomplete) from Mount Sinai.

II. Character and Contents. The Pastor Hermae is a sort of system of Christian morality in an allegorical dress, and a call to repentance and to renovation of the already somewhat slumbering and secularized church in view of the speedily approaching day of judgment. It falls into three books:1281

(1) Visions; four visions and revelations, which were given to the author, and in which the church appears to him first in the form of a venerable matron in shining garments with a book, then as a tower, and lastly as a virgin. All the visions have for their object to call Hermas and through him the church to repentance, which is now possible, but will close when the church tower is completed.

It is difficult to decide whether the writer actually had or imagined himself to have had those visions, or invented them as a pleasing and effective mode of instruction, like Dante’s vision and Bunyan’s dream.

(2)  Mandats, or twelve commandments, prescribed by a guardian angel in the garb of a shepherd.

(3)  Similitudes, or ten parables, in which the church again appears, but now in the form of a building, and the different virtues are represented under the figures of stones and trees. The similitudes were no doubt suggested by the parables of the gospel, but bear no comparison with them for beauty and significance.

The scene is laid in Rome and the neighborhood. The Tiber is named, but no allusion is made to the palaces, the court, the people and society of Rome, or to any classical work. An old lady, virgins, and angels appear, but the only persons mentioned by name are Hermas, Maximus, Clement and Grapte.

The literary merit of the Shepherd is insignificant. It differs widely from apostolic simplicity and has now only an antiquarian interest, like the pictures and sculptures of the catacombs. It is prosy, frigid, monotonous, repetitious, overloaded with uninteresting details, but animated by a pure love of nature and an ardent zeal for doing good. The author was a self-made man of the people, Ignorant of the classics and Ignored by them, but endowed with the imaginative faculty and a talent for popular religious instruction. He derives lessons of wisdom and piety from shepherd and sheep, vineyards and pastures, towers and villas, and the language and events of every-day life.

The first Vision is a fair specimen of the book, which opens like a love story, but soon takes a serious turn. The following is a faithful translation:

1. "He who had brought me up, sold me to a certain Rhoda at Rome.1282  Many years after, I met her again and began to love her as a sister. Some time after this, I saw her bathing in the river Tiber, and I gave her my hand and led her out of the river. And when I beheld her beauty, I thought in my heart, saying: ’Happy should I be, if I had a wife of such beauty and goodness.’ This was my only thought, and nothing more.

"After some time, as I went into the villages and glorified the creatures of God, for their greatness, and beauty, and power, I fell asleep while walking. And the Spirit seized me and carried me through a certain wilderness through which no man could travel, for the ground was rocky and impassable, on account of the water.

"And when I had crossed the river, I came to a plain; and falling upon my knees, I began to pray unto the Lord and to confess my sins. And while I was praying, the heaven opened, and I beheld the woman that I loved saluting me from heaven, and saying: ’Hail, Hermas!’  And when I beheld her, I said unto her: ’Lady, what doest thou here?’  But she answered and said: ’I was taken up, in order that I might bring to light thy sins before the Lord.’ And I said unto her: ’Hast thou become my accuser?’  ’No,’ said she; ’but hear the words that I shall say unto thee. God who dwells in heaven, and who made the things that are out of that which is not, and multiplied and increased them on account of his holy church, is angry with thee because thou hast sinned against me.’ I answered and said unto her: ’Have I sinned against thee?  In what way?  Did I ever say unto thee an unseemly word?  Did I not always consider thee as a lady?  Did I not always respect thee as a sister?  Why doest thou utter against me, O Lady, these wicked and foul lies?’  But she smiled and said unto me: ’The desire of wickedness has entered into thy heart. Does it not seem to thee an evil thing for a just man, if an evil desire enters into his heart?  Yea, it is a sin, and a great one (said she). For the just man devises just things, and by devising just things is his glory established in the heavens, and he finds the Lord merciful unto him in all his ways; but those who desire evil things in their hearts, bring upon themselves death and captivity, especially they who set their affection upon this world, and who glory in their wealth, and lay not hold of the good things to come. The souls of those that have no hope, but have cast themselves and their lives away, shall greatly regret it. But do thou pray unto God, and thy sins shall be healed, and those of thy whole house and of all the saints.’

2. "After she had spoken these words, the heavens were closed, and I remained trembling all over and was sorely troubled. And I said within myself: ’If this sin be set down against me, how can I be saved? or how can I propitiate God for the multitude of my sins? or with what words shall I ask the Lord to have mercy upon me?’

"While I was meditating on these things, and was musing on them in my heart, I beheld in front of me a great white chair made out of fleeces of wool; and there came an aged woman, clad in very shining raiment, and having a book in her hand, and she sat down by herself on the chair and saluted me, saying: ’Hail, Hermas!"  And I, sorrowing and weeping, said unto her: ’Hail, Lady!’  And she said unto me: ’Why art thou sorrowful, O Hermas, for thou wert wont to be patient, and good-tempered, and always smiling?  Why is thy countenance cast down?  and why art thou not cheerful?’  And I said unto her: ’O Lady, I have been reproached by a most excellent woman, who said unto me that I sinned against her.’ And she said unto me: ’Far be it from the servant of God to do this thing. But of a surety a desire after her must have come into thy heart. Such an intent as this brings a charge of sin against the servant of God; for it is an evil and horrible intent that a devout and tried spirit should lust after an evil deed; and especially that the chaste Hermas should do so-he who abstained from every evil desire, and was full of all simplicity, and of great innocence!’

3. " ’But [she continued] God is not angry with thee on account of this, but in order that thou mayest convert thy house, which has done iniquity against the Lord, and against you who art their parent. But thou, in thy love for your children (filovtekno" wjn) didst not rebuke thy house, but didst allow it to become dreadfully wicked. On this account is the Lord angry with thee; but He will heal all the evils that happened aforetime in thy house; for through the sins and iniquities of thy household thou hast been corrupted by the affairs of this life. But the mercy of the Lord had compassion upon thee, and upon thy house, and will make thee strong and establish thee in His glory. Only be not slothful, but be of good courage and strengthen thy house. For even as the smith, by smiting his work with the hammer, accomplishes the thing that he wishes, so shall the daily word of righteousness overcome all iniquity. Fail not, therefore, to rebuke thy children, for I know that if they will repent with all their heart, they will be written in the book of life, together with the saints.’

"After these words of hers were ended, she said unto me: ’Dost thou wish to hear me read?’  I said unto her: ’Yea, Lady, I do wish it.’ She said unto me: ’Be thou a hearer, and listen to the glories of God.’ Then I heard, after a great and wonderful fashion, that which my memory was unable to retain; for all the words were terrible, and beyond man’s power to bear. The last words, however, I remembered; for they were profitable for us, and gentle: ’Behold the God of power, who by his invisible strength, and His great wisdom, has created the world, and by His magnificent counsel hath crowned His creation with glory, and by His mighty word has fixed the heaven, and founded the earth upon the waters, and by His own wisdom and foresight has formed His holy church, which He has also blessed!  Behold, He removes the heavens from their places, and the mountains, and the hills, and the stars, and everything becomes smooth before His elect, that He may give unto them the blessing which He promised them with great glory and joy, if only they shall keep with firm faith the laws of God which they have received.’

4. "When, therefore, she had ended her reading, and had risen up from the chair, there came four young men, and took up the chair, and departed towards the east. Then she called me, and touched my breast, and said unto me: ’Hast thou been pleased with my reading?’  And I said unto her: ’Lady, these last things pleased me; but the former were hard and harsh.’ But she spake unto me, saying: ’These last are for the righteous; but the former are for the heathen and the apostates." While she was yet speaking with me, there appeared two men, and they took her up in their arms and departed unto the east, whither also the chair had gone. And she departed joyfully; and as she departed, she said: ’Be of good courage, O Hermas!’

III. The theology of Hermas is ethical and practical. He is free from speculative opinions and Ignorant of theological technicalities. He views Christianity as a new law and lays chief stress on practice. Herein he resembles James, but he ignores the "liberty" by which James distinguishes the "perfect" Christian law from the imperfect old law of bondage. He teaches not only the merit, but the supererogatory merit of good works and the sin-atoning virtue of martyrdom. He knows little or nothing of the gospel, never mentions the word, and has no idea of justifying faith, although he makes faith the chief virtue and the mother of virtues. He dwells on man’s duty and performance more than on God’s gracious promises and saving deeds. In a word, his Christianity is thoroughly legalistic and ascetic, and further off from the evangelical spirit than any other book of the apostolic fathers. Christ is nowhere named, nor his example held up for imitation (which is the true conception of Christian life); yet he appears as "the Son of God, and is represented as pre-existent and strictly divine.1283  The word Christian never occurs.

But this meagre view of Christianity, far from being heretical or schismatic, is closely connected with catholic orthodoxy as far as we can judge from hints and figures. Hermas stood in close normal relation to the Roman congregation (either under Clement or Pius), and has an exalted view of the "holy church," as he calls the church universal. He represents her as the first creature of God for which the world was made, as old and ever growing younger; yet he distinguishes this ideal church from the real and represents the latter as corrupt. He may have inferred this conception in part from the Epistle to the Ephesians, the only one of Paul’s writings with which he shows himself familiar. He requires water-baptism as indispensable to salvation, even for the pious Jews of the old dispensation, who received it from the apostles in Hades.1284  He does not mention the eucharist, but this is merely accidental. The whole book rests on the idea of an exclusive church out of which there is no salvation. It closes with the characteristic exhortation of the angel: "Do good works, ye who have received earthly blessings from the Lord, that the building of the tower (the church) may not be finished while ye loiter; for the labor of the building has been interrupted for your sakes. Unless, therefore, ye hasten to do right, the tower will be finished, and ye will be shut out."

Much of the theology of Hermas is drawn from the Jewish apocalyptic writings of pseudo-Enoch, pseudo-Esdras, and the lost Book of Eldad and Medad.1285  So his doctrine of angels. He teaches that six angels were first created and directed the building of the church. Michael, their chief, writes the law in the hearts of the faithful; the angel of repentance guards the penitent against relapse and seeks to bring back the fallen. Twelve good spirits which bear the names of Christian virtues, and are seen by Hermas in the form of Virgins, conduct the believer into the kingdom of heaven; twelve unclean spirits named from the same number of sins hinder him. Every man has a good and an evil genius. Even reptiles and other animals have a presiding angel. The last idea Jerome justly condemns as foolish.

It is confusing and misleading to judge Hermas from the apostolic conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.1286  That conflict was over. John shows no traces of it in his Gospel and Epistles. Clement of Rome mentions Peter and Paul as inseparable. The two types had melted into the one Catholic family, and continued there as co-operative elements in the same organization, but were as yet very imperfectly understood, especially the free Gospel of Paul. Jewish and pagan features reappeared, or rather they never disappeared, and exerted their influence for good and evil. Hence there runs through the whole history of Catholicism a legalistic or Judaizing, and an evangelical or Pauline tendency; the latter prevailed in the Reformation and produced Protestant Christianity. Hermas stood nearest to James and furthest from Paul; his friend Clement of Rome stood nearer to Paul and further off from James: but neither one nor the other had any idea of a hostile conflict between the apostles.

IV. Relation to the Scriptures. Hermas is the only one of the apostolic fathers who abstains from quoting the Old Testament Scriptures and the words of our Lord. This absence is due in part to the prophetic character of the Shepherd, for prophecy is its own warrant, and speaks with divine authority. There are, however, indications that he knew several books of the New Testament, especially the Gospel of Mark, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle to the Ephesians. The name of Paul is nowhere mentioned, but neither are the other apostles. It is wrong, therefore, to infer from this silence an anti-Pauline tendency. Justin Martyr likewise omits the name, but shows acquaintance with the writings of Paul.1287

V. Relation to Montanism. The assertion of the prophetic gift and the disciplinarian rigorism Hermas shares with the Montanists; but they arose half a century later, and there is no historic connection. Moreover his zeal for discipline does not run into schismatic excess. He makes remission and absolution after baptism difficult, but not impossible; he ascribes extra merit to celibacy and seems to have regretted his own unhappy marriage, but he allows second marriage as well as second repentance, at least till the return of the Lord which, with Barnabas, he supposes to be near at hand. Hence Tertullian as a Montanist denounced Hermas.

VI. Authorship and time of composition. Five opinions are possible. (a) The author was the friend of Paul to whom he sends greetings in Rom. 16:14, in the year 58. This is the oldest opinion and accounts best for its high authority.1288  (b) A contemporary of Clement, presbyter-bishop of Rome, A.D. 92–101. Based upon the testimony of he book itself.1289  (c) A brother of Bishop Pius of Rome (140). So asserts an unknown author of 170 in the Muratorian fragment of the canon.1290  But he may have confounded the older and younger Hermas with the Latin translator. (d) The book is the work of two or three authors, was begun under Trajan before 112 and completed by the brother of Pius in 140.1291  (e) Hermas is a fictitious name to lend apostolic authority to the Shepherd. (f) Barely worth mentioning is the isolated assertion of the Ethiopian version that the apostle Paul wrote the Shepherd under the name of Hermas which was given to him by the inhabitants of Lystra.

We adopt the second view, which may be combined with the first. The author calls himself Hermas and professes to be a contemporary of the Roman Clement, who was to send his book to foreign churches.1292  This testimony is clear and must outweigh every other. If the Hermas mentioned by Paul was a young disciple in 58, he may well have lived to the age of Trajan, and be expressly represents himself as an aged man at the time when he wrote.

We further learn from the author that he was a rather unfortunate husband and the father of bad children, who had lost his wealth in trade through his own sins and those of his neglected sons but who awoke to repentance and now came forward himself, as a plain preacher of righteousness, though without any official position, and apparently a mere layman.1293  He had been formerly a slave and sold by his master to a certain Christian lady in Rome by the name of Rhoda. It has been inferred from his Greek style that be was born in Egypt and brought up in a Jewish family.1294  But the fact that he first mistook the aged woman who represents the church, for the heathen Sibyl, rather suggests that he was of Gentile origin. We may infer the same from his complete silence about the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament. He says nothing of his conversion.

The book was probably written at the close of the first or early in the second century. It shows no trace of a hierarchical organization, and assumes the identity of presbyters and bishops; even Clement of Rome is not called a bishop.1295  The state of the church is indeed described as corrupt, but corruption began already in the apostolic age, as we see from the Epistles and the Apocalypse. At the time of Irenaeus the book was held in the highest esteem, which implies its early origin.

VII. Authority and value. No product of post-apostolic literature has undergone a greater change in public esteem. The Shepherd was a book for the times, but not for all times. To the Christians of the second and third century it had all the charm of a novel from the spirit-world, or as Bunyan’s Pilgrims’ Progress has at the present day. It was even read in public worship down to the time of Eusebius and Jerome, and added to copies of the Holy Scriptures (as the Codex Sinaiticus, where it follows after the Ep. of Barnabas). Irenaeus quotes it as "divine Scripture."1296  The Alexandrian fathers, who with all their learning were wanting in sound critical discrimination, regarded it as "divinely inspired," though Origen intimates that others judged less favorably.1297  Eusebius classes it with the "spurious," though orthodox books, like the Epistle of Barnabas, the Acts of Paul, etc.; and Athanasius puts it on a par with the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, which are useful for catechetical instruction.

In the Latin church where it originated, it never rose to such high authority. The Muratorian canon regards it as apocryphal, and remarks that "it should be read,1298 but not publicly used in the church or numbered among the prophets or the apostles." Tertullian, who took offence at its doctrine of the possibility of a second repentance, and the lawfulness of second marriage, speaks even contemptuously of it.1299  So does Jerome in one passage, though he speaks respectfully of it in another.1300  Ambrose and Augustin Ignore it. The decree of Pope Gelasius I. (about 500) condemns the book as apocryphal. Since that time it shared the fate of all Apocrypha, and fell into entire neglect. The Greek original even disappeared for centuries, until it turned up unexpectedly in the middle of the nineteenth century to awaken a new interest, and to try the ingenuity of scholars as one of the links in the development of catholic Christianity.

Note.

The Pastor Hermae has long ceased to be read for devotion or entertainment. We add some modern opinions. Mosheim (who must have read it very superficially) pronounced the talk of the heavenly spirits in Hermas to be more stupid and insipid than that of the barbers of his day, and concluded that he was either a fool or an impostor. The great historian Niebuhr, as reported by Bunsen, used to say that he pitied the Athenian [why not the Roman?] Christians who were obliged to listen to the reader of such a book in the church. Bunsen himself pronounces it "a well-meant but silly romance."

On the other hand, some Irvingite scholars, Dr. Thiersch and Mr. Gaâb, have revived the old belief in a supernatural foundation for the visions, as having been really seen and recorded in the church of Rome during the apostolic age, but afterwards modified and mingled with errors by the compiler under Pius. Gaâb thinks that Hermas was gifted with the power of vision, and inspired in the same sense as Swedenborg.

Westcott ascribes "the highest value" to the Shepherd, "as showing in what way Christianity was endangered by the influence of Jewish principles as distinguished from Jewish forms." Hist. of the Canon of the N. T p. 173 (second ed.)

Donaldson (a liberal Scotch Presbyterian) thinks that the Shepherd "ought to derive a peculiar interest from its being the first work extant, the main effort of which is to direct the soul to God. The other religious books relate to internal workings in the church—this alone specially deals with the great change requisite to living to God .... Its creed is a very short and simple one. Its great object is to exhibit the morality implied in conversion, and it is well calculated to awaken a true sense of the spiritual foes that are ever ready to assail him." (Ap. Fath., p. 339). But he also remarks (p. 336) that "nothing would more completely show the immense difference between ancient Christian feeling and modern, than the respect in which ancient, and a large number of modern Christians hold this work."

George A. Jackson (an American Congregationalist) judges even more favorably (Ap. Fath., 1879, p. 15): Reading the ’Shepherd,’ and remembering that it appeared in the midst of a society differing little from that satirized by Juvenal, we no longer wonder at the esteem in which it was held by the early Christians, but we almost join with them in calling it an inspired book."

Mr. Hoole, of Oxford, agrees with the judgment of Athanasius, and puts its literary character on the same footing as the pious but rude art of the Roman catacombs.

Dr. Salmon, of Dublin, compares Hermas with Savonarola, who sincerely believed: (a) that the church of his time was corrupt and worldly; (b) that a time of great tribulation was at hand, in which the dross should be purged away; (c) that there was still an intervening time for repentance; (d) that he himself was divinely commissioned to be a preacher of that repentance.

§ 169. Papias.

(I.) The fragments of Papias collected in Routh: Reliquiae, Sacrae, ed. II., Oxf., 1846, vol. I., 3–16. Von Gebhardt and Harnack: Patres Apost., Appendix: Papice Fragmenta, I., 180–196. English translation in Roberts and Donaldson. "Ante-Nicene Library." I., 441–448.

Passages on Papias in Irenaeus: Adv. Haer., v. 33, §§ 3, 4. Euseb. H. E. III. 36, 39; Chron. ad Olymp. 220, ed. Schöne II. 162. Also a few later notices; see Routh and the Leipz. ed. of P. A.. The Vita S. Papiae, by the Jesuit Halloix, Duaei, l633, is filled with a fanciful account of the birth, education, ordination, episcopal and literary labors of the saint, of whom very little is really known.

(II.) Separate articles on Papias, mostly connected with the Gospel question, by Schleiermacher (on his testimonies concerning Matthew and Mark in the "Studien und Kritiken" for l832, p. 735); Th. Zahn (ibid. 1866, No. IV. p. 649 sqq.); G. E. Steitz (in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1868, No. 1. 63–95, and art. Papias in Herzog’s Encyc." ed. I. vol. XI., 78–86; revised by Leimbach in ed. II. vol. XI. 194–206); James Donaldson (The Apost. Fathers 1874, p. 393–402); Bishop Lightfoot (in the "Contemporary Review" for Aug., 1875, pp. 377–403; a careful examination of the testimonies of Papias concerning the Gospels of Mark and Matthew against the misstatements in "Supernatural Religion"); Leimbach (Das Papiasfragment, 1875) Weiffenbach Das Papiasfragment, 1874 and 1878); Hilgefeld ("Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theol." 1875, 239 sqq.); Ludemann (Zur Erklärunq des Papiasfragments, in the "Jahrbücher für protest. Theol.,"  1879, p. 365 sqq.); H. Holtzmann (Papias und Johannes, in Hilgenfeld’s "Zeitschrift für wissensch. Theologie," 1880, pp. 64–77). Comp. also Westcott on the Canon of the N. T., p. 59–68.

Papias, a disciple of John1301 and friend of Polycarp, was bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, till towards the middle of the second century. According to a later tradition in the "Paschal Chronicle," he suffered martyrdom at Pergamon about the same time with Polycarp at Smyrna. As the death of the latter has recently been put back from 166 to 155, the date of Papias must undergo a similar change; and as his contemporary friend was at least 86 years old, Papias was probably born about A.D. 70, so that he may have known St. John, St. Philip the Evangelist, and other primitive disciples who survived the destruction of Jerusalem.

Papias was a pious, devout and learned student of the Scriptures, and a faithful traditionist, though somewhat credulous and of limited comprehension.1302  He carried the heavenly treasure in an earthen vessel. His associations give him considerable weight. He went to the primitive sources of the Christian faith. "I shall not regret," he says, "to subjoin to my interpretations [of the Lord’s Oracles], whatsoever I have at any time accurately ascertained and treasured up in my memory, as I have received it from the elders (para; tw'n presbutevrwn) and have recorded it to give additional confirmation to the truth, by my testimony. For I did not, like most men, delight in those who speak much, but in those who teach the truth; nor in those who record the commands of others [or new and strange commands], but in those who record the commands given by the Lord to our faith, and proceeding from truth itself. If then any one who had attended on the elders came, I made it a point to inquire what were the words of the elders; what Andrew, or what Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the disciples of our Lord; and what things Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I was of opinion that I could not derive so much benefit from books as from the living and abiding voice."1303  He collected with great zeal the oral traditions of the apostles and their disciples respecting the discourses and works of Jesus, and published them in five books under the title: "Explanation of the Lord’s Discourses."1304

Unfortunately this book, which still existed in the thirteenth century, is lost with the exception of valuable and interesting fragments preserved chiefly by Irenaeus and Eusebius. Among these are his testimonies concerning the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and the Petrine Gospel of Mark, which figure so prominently in all the critical discussions on the origin of the Gospels.1305  The episode on the woman taken in adultery which is found in some MSS. of John 7:53–8:11, or after Luke 21:38, has been traced to the same source and was perhaps to illustrate the word of Christ, John 8:15 ("I judge no man"); for Eusebius reports that Papias "set forth another narrative concerning a woman who was maliciously accused before the Lord of many sins, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews."1306  If so, we are indebted to him for the preservation of a precious fact which at once illustrates in a most striking manner our Saviour’s absolute purity in dealing with sin, and his tender compassion toward the sinner. Papias was an enthusiastic chiliast, and the famous parable of the fertility of the millennium which he puts in the Lord’s mouth and which Irenaeus accepted in good faith, may have been intended as an explanation of the Lord’s word concerning the fruit of the vine which he shall drink new in his Father’s kingdom, Matt. 26:29.1307  His chiliasm is no proof of a Judaizing tendency, for it was the prevailing view in the second century. He also related two miracles, the resurrection of a dead man which took place at the time of Philip (the Evangelist), as he learned from his daughters, and the drinking of poison without harm by Justus Barsabas.

Papias proves the great value which was attached to the oral traditions of the apostles and their disciples in the second century. He stood on the threshold of a new period when the last witnesses of the apostolic age were fast disappearing, and when it seemed to be of the utmost importance to gather the remaining fragments of inspired wisdom which might throw light on the Lord’s teaching, and guard the church against error.

But he is also an important witness to the state of the canon before the middle of the second century. He knew the first two Gospels, and in all probability also the Gospel of John, for he quoted, as Eusebius expressly says, from the first Epistle of John, which is so much like the fourth Gospel in thought and style that they stand or fall as the works of one and the same author.1308  He is one of the oldest witnesses to the inspiration and credibility of the Apocalypse of John, and commented on a part of it.1309  He made use of the first Epistle of Peter, but is silent as far as we know concerning Paul and Luke. This has been variously explained from accident or Ignorance or dislike, but best from the nature of his design to collect only words of the Lord. Hermas and Justin Martyr likewise Ignore Paul, and yet knew his writings. That Papias was not hostile to the great apostle may be inferred from his intimacy with Polycarp, who lauds Paul in his Epistle.

Notes.

The relation of Papias to the Apostle John is still a disputed point. Irenaeus, the oldest witness and himself a pupil of Polycarp, calls Papias  jIwavnnou me;n avkousth;", Polukavrpou de; eJtai'ro" (Adv. Haer. V. 33, 4). He must evidently mean here the Apostle John. Following him, Jerome and later writers (Maximus Confessor, Andrew of Crete and Anastasius Sinaita) call him a disciple of the Apostle John, and this view has been defended with much learning and acumen by Dr. Zahn (1866), and, independently of him, by Dr. Milligan (on John the Presbyter, in Cowper’s "Journal of Sacred Literature" for Oct., 1867, p. 106 sqq.), on the assumption of the identity of the Apostle John with "Presbyter John;" comp. 2 and 3 John, where the writer calls himself oJ presbuvtero". Riggenbach (on John the Ap. and John the Presbyter, in the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," 1868, pp. 319–334), Hengstenberg, Leimbach, take the same view (also Schaff in History of the Apost. Ch., 1853, p. 421).

On the other hand, Eusebius (H. E. III. 39) infers that Papias distinguishes between John the Apostle and "the Presbyter John" (oJ presbuvtero"  jIwavnnh") so called, and that he was a pupil of the Presbyter only. He bases the distinction on a fragment he quotes from the introduction to the "Explanation of the Lord’s Discourses," where Papias says that he ascertained the primitive traditions: tiv  jAndreva" h] tiv Pevtro" ei\pen [in the past tense], h] tiv Fivlippo" h] tiv qwma'" h]  jIavkwbo" h] tiv  jIwavnnh" [the Apostle] h]  Matqai'o", h] ti" e{tero" tw'n tou' kurivou maqhtw'n, a{ te  jAristivwn kai; oJ presbuvtero"  jIwavnnh", oiJ tou' kurivou [not tw'n ajpostovlwn] maqhtai;, levgousin [present tense]. Here two Johns seem to be clearly distinguished; but the Presbyter John, together with an unknown Aristion, is likewise called a disciple of the Lord (not of the Apostles). The distinction is maintained by Steitz, Tischendorf, Keim, Weiffenbach, Lüdemann, Donaldson, Westcott, and Lightfoot. In confirmation of this view, Eusebius states that two graves were shown at Ephesus bearing the name of John (III 39: duvo ejn  jEfevsw/ genevsqai mnhvmata, kai; ejkavteron  jIwavnnou ejti nu'n levgesqai). But Jerome, De Vir. ill. c. 9, suggests, that both graves were only memories of the Apostle. Beyond this, nothing whatever is known of this mysterious Presbyter John, and it was a purely critical conjecture of the anti-millennarian Dionysius of Alexandria that he was the author of the Apocalypse (Euseb. VII. 25). The substance of the mediaeval legend of "Prester John" was undoubtedly derived from another source.

In any case, it is certainly possible that Papias, like his friend Polycarp, may have seen and heard the aged apostle who lived to the close of the first or the beginning of the second century. It is therefore unnecessary to charge Irenaeus with an error either of name or memory. It is more likely that Eusebius misunderstood Papias, and is responsible for a fictitious John, who has introduced so much confusion into the question of the authorship of the Johannean Apocalypse.

§ 170. The Epistle to Diognetus.

Editions.

Epistola Ad Diognetum, ed. Otto (with Lat. transl., introduction and critical notes), ed. II. Lips. 1852.

In the Leipz. edition of the Apost. Fathers, by O. v. Gebhardt and Ad Harnack, I. 216–226; in the Tübingen ed. of Hefele-Funk, I. pp 310–333.

W. A. Hollenberg: Der Brief an Diognet. Berl. 1853.

E. M. Krenkel: Epistola, ad Diogn. Lips. 1860.

English translation: in Kitto’s "Journal of S. Lit." 1852, and in vol. I of the "Ante-Nicene Library." Edinb. 1867.

French versions by P. le Gras, Paris 1725; M. de Genoude, 1838; A. Kayser, 1856.

Discussions.

Otto: De Ep. ad Diognetum. 1852.

A. Kayser: La Lettre à Diognète 1856 (in "Révue de Théologie ").

G. J. Snoeck: Specimen theologicum exhibens introductionem in Epistolan ad Diogn. Lugd. Bat. 1861.

Donaldson: A Critical Hist. of Christian Liter., etc. Lond., 1866, II 126 sqq. He was inclined to assume that Henry Stephens, the first editor, manufactured the Ep., but gave up the strange hypothesis, which was afterwards reasserted by Cotterill in his Peregrinus Proteus, 1879.

Franz Overbeck: Ueber den pseudo-justinischen Brief an Diognet. Basel 1872. And again with additions in his Studien zur Geschichte der alten Kirche (Schloss-Chemnitz, 1875), p. 1–92. He represents the Ep. (like Donaldson) as a post-Constantinian fiction, but has been refuted by Hilgenfeld, Keim, Lipsius, and Dräseke.

Joh. Dräseke: Der Brief an Diognetos. Leipz. 1881 (207 pp.). Against Overbeck and Donaldson. The Ep. was known and used by Tertullian, and probably composed in Rome by a Christian Gnostic (perhaps Appelles). Unlikely.

Heinr. Kihn (R.C.): Der Ursprung des Briefes an Diognet. Freiburg i. B. 1882 (XV. and 168 pages).

Semisch: art. Diognet, in Herzog2 III. 611–615 (and in his Justin der Märt., 1840, vol. I. 172 sqq.); Schaff, in McClintock and Strong, III. 807 sq., and Birks, in Smith and Wace, II. 162–167.

The Ep. to D. has also been discussed by Neander, Hefele, Credner, Möhler, Bunsen, Ewald, Dorner, Hilgenfeld, Lechler, Baur, Harnack, Zahn, Funk, Lipsius, Keim (especially in Rom und das Christhum, 460–468).

1. The short but precious document called the Epistle to Diognetus was unknown in Christian literature1310 until Henry Stephens, the learned publisher of Paris, issued it in Greek and Latin in 1592, under the name of Justin Martyr.1311  He gives no account of his sources. The only Codex definitely known is the Strassburg Codex of the thirteenth century, and even this (after having been thoroughly compared by Professor Cunitz for Otto’s edition), was destroyed in the accidental fire at Strassburg during the siege of 1870.1312  So great is the mystery hanging over the origin of this document, that some modern scholars have soberly turned it into a post-Constantinian fiction in imitation of early Christianity, but without being able to agree upon an author, or his age, or his nationality.

Yet this most obscure writer of the second century is at the same time the most brilliant; and while his name remains unknown to this day, he shed lustre on the Christian name in times when it was assailed and blasphemed from Jew and Gentile, and could only be professed at the risk of life. He must be ranked with the "great unknown" authors of Job and the Epistle to the Hebrews, who are known only to God.

2. Diognetius was an inquiring heathen of high social position and culture, who desired information concerning the origin and nature of the religion of the Christians, and the secret of their contempt of the world, their courage in death, their brotherly love, and the reason of the late origin of this new fashion, so different from the gods of the Greeks and the superstition of the Jews. A Stoic philosopher of this name instructed Marcus Aurelius in his youth (about 133) in painting and composition, and trained him in Attic simplicity of life, and "whatever else of the kind belongs to Grecian discipline." Perhaps he taught him also to despise the Christian martyrs, and to trace their heroic courage to sheer obstinacy. It is quite probable that our Diognetus was identical with the imperial tutor; for he wished especially to know what enabled these Christians "to despise the world and to make light of death."1313

3. The Epistle before us is an answer to the questions of this noble heathen. It is a brief but masterly vindication of Christian life and doctrine from actual experience. It is evidently the product of a man of genius, fine taste and classical culture  It excels in fresh enthusiasm of faith, richness of thought, and elegance of style, and is altogether one of the most beautiful memorials of Christian antiquity, unsurpassed and hardly equalled by any genuine work of the Apostolic Fathers.1314

4. Contents. The document consists of twelve chapters. It opens with an address to Diognetus who is described as exceedingly desirous to learn the Christian doctrine and mode of worship in distinction from that of the Greeks and the Jews. The writer, rejoicing in this opportunity to lead a Gentile friend to the path of truth, exposes first the vanity of idols (ch. 2), then the superstitions of the Jews (ch. 3, 4); after this he gives by contrasts a striking and truthful picture of Christian life which moves in this world like the invisible, immortal soul in the visible, perishing body (ch. 5 and 6),1315 and sets forth the benefits of Christ’s coming (ch. 7). He next describes the miserable condition of the world before Christ (ch. 8), and answers the question why He appeared so late (ch. 9). In this connection occurs a beautiful passage on redemption, fuller and clearer than any that can be found before Irenaeus.1316  He concludes with an account of the blessings and moral effects which flow from the Christian faith (ch. 10). The last two chapters which were probably added by a younger contemporary, and marked as such in the MS., treat of knowledge, faith and spiritual life with reference to the tree of knowledge and the tree of life in paradise. Faith opens the paradise of a higher knowledge of the mysteries of the supernatural world.

The Epistle to Diognetus forms the transition from the purely practical literature of the Apostolic Fathers to the reflective theology of the Apologists. It still glows with the ardor of the first love. It is strongly Pauline.1317  It breathes the spirit of freedom and higher knowledge grounded in faith. The Old Testament is Ignored, but without any sign of Gnostic contempt.

5. Authorship and Time of composition. The author calls himself "a disciple of the Apostles,"1318 but this term occurs in the appendix, and may be taken in a wider sense. In the MS. the letter is ascribed to Justin Martyr, but its style is more elegant, vigorous and terse than that of Justin and the thoughts are more original and vigorous.1319  It belongs, however, in all probability, to the same age, that is, to the middle of the second century, rather earlier than later. Christianity appears in it as something still new and unknown to the aristocratic society, as a stranger in the world, everywhere exposed to calumny and persecution of Jews and Gentiles. All this suits the reign of Antoninus Pius and of Marcus Aurelius. If Diognetus was the teacher of the latter as already suggested, we would have an indication of Rome, as the probable place of composition.

Some assign the Epistle to an earlier date under Trajan or Hadrian,1320 others to the reign of Marcus Aurelius,1321 others to the close of the second century or still later.1322  The speculations about the author begin with Apollos in the first, and end with Stephens in the sixteenth century. He will probably remain unknown.1323

§ 171. Sixtus of Rome.

Enchiridion SIXTI philosophi Pythagorici, first ed. by Symphor. Champerius, Lugd. 1507 (under the title: Sixtii Xysti Anulus); again at Wittenberg with the Carmina aurea of Pythagoras, 1514; by Beatus Rhenanus, Bas. 1516; in the "Maxima Bibliotheca Vet. Patrum." Lugd. 1677, Tom. III. 335–339 (under the title Xysti vel Sexti Pythagorici philosophi ethnici Sententicae, interprete Rufino Presbytero Aquilejensi); by U. G. Siber, Lips. 1725 (under the name of Sixtus II. instead of Sixtus I.); and by Gildemeister (Gr., Lat. and Syr.),Bonn 1873.

A Syriac Version in P. Lagardii Analecta Syriaca, Lips. and Lond. 1858 (p. 1–31, only the Syriac text, derived from seven MSS. of the Brit. Museum, the oldest before A.D. 553, but mutilated).

The book is discussed in the "Max. Bibl." l. c.; by Fontaninus: Historia liter. Aquilejensis (Rom. 1742); by Fabricius, in the Bibliotheca Graeca, Tom. I. 870 sqq. (ed. Harles, 1790); by Ewald: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. VII. (Göttingen, 1859), p. 321–326; and by Tobler in Annulus Rufini, Sent. Sext. (Tübingen 1878).

Xystus, or as the Romans spelled the name, Sextus or Sixtus I., was the sixth bishop of Rome, and occupied this position about ten years under the reign of Hadrian (119–128).1324 Little or nothing is known about him except that he was supposed to be the author of a remarkable collection of moral and religious maxims, written in Greek, translated into Latin by Rufinus and extensively read in the ancient church. The sentences are brief and weighty after the manner of the Hebrew Proverbs and the Sermon on the Mount. They do not mention the prophets or apostles, or even the name of Christ, but are full of God and sublime moral sentiments, only bordering somewhat on pantheism.1325  If it is the production of a heathen philosopher, he came nearer the genius of Christian ethics than even Seneca, or Epictetus, or Plutarch, or Marcus Aurelius; but the product has no doubt undergone a transformation in Christian hands, and this accounts for its ancient popularity, and entitles it to a place in the history of ecclesiastical literature. Rufinus took great liberties as translator; besides, the MSS. vary very much.

Origen first cites in two places the Gnomae or Sententiae of Sextus  (gnw'mai Sevxtou), as a work well known and widely read among the Christians of his times, i.e., in the first half of the second century, but he does not mention that the writer was a bishop, or even a Christian. Rufinus translated them with additions, and ascribes them to Sixtus, bishop of Rome and martyr. But Jerome, who was well versed in classical literature, charges him with prefixing the name of a Christian bishop to the product of a christless and most heathenish Pythagorean philosopher, Xystus, who is admired most by those who teach Stoic apathy and Pelagian sinlessness. Augustin first regarded the author as one of the two Roman bishops Sixti, but afterwards retracted his opinion, probably in consequence of Jerome’s statement. Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus ascribe it to Xystus of Rome. Gennadius merely calls the work Xysti Sententiae. Pope Gelasius declares it spurious and written by heretics.1326  More recent writers (as Fontanini, Brucker, Fabricius, Mosheim) agree in assigning it to the elder Quintus Sextus or Sextius (Q. S. Pater), a Stoic philosopher who declined the dignity of Roman Senator offered to him by Julius Caesar and who is highly lauded by Seneca. He abstained from animal food, and subjected himself to a scrupulous self-examination at the close of every day. Hence this book was entirely ignored by modern church historians.1327  But Paul de Lagarde, who published a Syriac Version, and Ewald have again directed attention to it and treat it as a genuine work of the first Pope Xystus. Ewald puts the highest estimate on it. "The Christian conscience," he says," appears here for the first time before all the world to teach all the world its duty, and to embody the Christian wisdom of life in brief pointed sentences." .1328  But it seems impossible that a Christian sage and bishop should write a system of Christian Ethics or a collection of Christian proverbs without even mentioning the name of Christ.

Notes.

The following is a selection of the most important of the 430 Sentences of Xystus from the Bibliotheca Maxima Veterum Patrum, Tom. III. 335–339. We add some Scripture parallels:

"1. Fidelis homo, electus homo est. 2. Electus homo, homo Dei est. 3. Homo Dei est, qui Deo dIgnus est. 4. Deo dIgnus est, qui nihil indigne agit. 5. Dubius in fide, infidelis est. 6. Infidelis homo, mortuus est corpore vivente. 7. Vere fidelis est, qui non peccat, atque etiam, in minimis caute agit. 8. Non est minimum in humana vita, negligere minima. 9. Omne peccatum impietatem puta. Non enim manus, vel oculus peccat, vel aliquod huiusmodi membrum, sed male uti manu vel oculo, peccatum est. 10. Omne membrum corporis, quod invitat te contra pudicitiam agere, abjiciendum est.

Melius est uno membro vivere, quam cum duobus puniri [Comp. Matt. 5:29] ....

"15. Sapiens vir, et pecuniae contemptor, similis est Deo. 16. Rebus mundanis in causis tantum necessariis utere. 17. Quae mundi sunt, mundo et quae Dei sunt, reddantur Deo [Comp. Matt. 22:21]. 18. Certus esto, quod animam tuam fidele depositum acceperis à Deo. 19. Cum loqueris Deo, scito quod judiceris à Deo. 20. Optimam purificationem putato, nocere nemini. 21. Enim purificatur Dei verbo per sapientiam ... .

"28. Quaecumque fecit Deus, pro hominibus ea fecit. 29. Angelus minister est Dei ad hominem. 30. Tam pretiosus est homo apud Deum, quam angelus. 31. Primus beneficus est Deus: secundus est is, qui beneficii eius fit particeps homo. Vive igitur ita, tanquam qui sis secundus post Deum, et electus ab eo. 32. Habes, inquam, in te aliquid simile Dei, et ideo utere teipso velut templo Dei, propter illud quod te simile est Dei [1 Cor. 3:16, 17] ...

"40. Templum sanctum est Deo mens pii, et altare est optimum ei cor mundum et sine peccato. 41. Hostia soli Deo acceptabilis, benefacere hominibus pro Deo. 42. Deo gratiam praestat homo, qui quantum possibile est vivit secundum Deum ....

"47. Omne tempus, quo Deo non cogitas, hoc puta te perdidisse. 48. Corpus quidem tuum incedat in terra, anima autem semper sit apud Deum. 49. Intellige quae, sint bona, ut bene agas. 50. Bona cogitatio hominis Deum non latet et ideo cogitatio tua pura sit ab omni malo. 51. Dignus esto eo, qui te dignatus est filium dicere, et age omnia ut filius Dei. 52. Quod Deum patrem vocas, huius in actionibus tuis memor esto. 53.  Vir castus et sine peccato, potestatem accepit a Deo esse filius Dei [Comp. John 1:13]. 54. Bona mens chorus est Dei. 55. Mala mens chorus est daemonum malorum ....

78. Fundamentum pietatis est continentia: culmen autem pietatis amor Dei. 79. Pium hominem habeto tamquam teipsum. 80.  Opta tibi evenire non quod vis, sed quod expedit. 81.  Qualem vis esse proximum tuum tibi, talis esto et tu tais proximis [Luke 6:31,] ....

"86. Si quid non vis scire Deum, istud nec agas, nec cogites, 87. Priusquam agas quodcunque agis, cogita Deum, ut lux eius paecedat actus tuos ... .

"96.  Deus in bonis actibus hominibus dux est. 97. Neminem inimicum deputes. 98. Dilige omne quod eiusdem tecum naturae est, Deum vero plus quam animam dilige. 99. Pessimum est peccatoribus, in unum convenire cum peccant. 100.  Multi cibi impediunt castitatem, et incontinentia ciborum immundum facit hominem.  101. Animantium omnium usus quidem in cibis indifferens, abstinere vero rationabilius est. 102.  Non cibi per os inferuntur polluunt hominem, sed ea quae ex malis actibus proferuntur [Mark 7:18–21] ....

"106.  Mali nullius autor est Deus. 107. Non amplius possideas quam usus corporis poscit ....

"115.  Ratio quae in te est, vitae, tuâe lux est [Matt. 6:22]. 116. Ea pete a Deo, quae accipere ab homine non potes ...

"122. Nil pretiosum ducas, quod auferre a te possit homo malus. 123. Hoc solum bonum putato, quod Deo dignum est. 124. Quod Deo dignum est, hoc et viro bono. 125. Quicquid non convenit ad beatudinem Dei. non conveniat nomini Dei. 126. Ea debes velle, quae et Deus vult. 127. Filius Dei est, qui haec sola pretiosa ducit quae et Deus. 139. Semper apud Deum mens est sapientIs. 137. Sapientis mentem Deus inhabitat ....

"181. Sapiens vir etiamsi nudus sit, sapiens apud te habeatur. 182. Neminem propterea magni aestimes, quod pecunia divitiisque abundet. 183. Difficile est divitem salvari [Matt. 19:3] ...

"187. Age magna, non magna pollicens. 188. Non eris sapiens, si te reputaveris sapientem. 189. Non potest bene vivere qui non integre credit. 190. In tribulationibus quis sit fidelis, agnoscitur. 191. Finem vitae existima vivere secundum Deum. 192. Nihil putes malum, quod non sit turpe ... .

"198. Malitia est aegritudo animae. 199. Animae autem mors iniustitia et impietas. 200. Tunc te putato fidelem, cum passionibus animae carueris. 201. Omnibus hominibus ita utere, quasi communis omnium post Deum curator. 202.  Qui hominibus male utitur, seipso male utitur. 203. Qui nihil mali vult, fidelis est ....

"214. Verba tua pietate semper plena sint. 215. In actibus tuis ante oculos pone Deum.  216. Nefas est Deum patrem invocare, et aliquid inhonestum agere ....

"261. Ebrietatem quasi insaniam fuge. 262. Homo qui a ventre vincitur, belluae similis est. 263. Ex carne nihil oritur bonum ....

"302. Omne quod malum est, Deo inimicum est. 303. Qui sapit in te, hunc dicito esse hominem.  304. Particeps Dei est vir sapiens. 305.  Ubi est quod sapit in te, ibi est et bonum tuum.  306. Bonum in carne non quaeras. 307. Quod animae non nocet, nec homini. 308. Sapientem hominem  tanquam Dei ministrum honora post Deum ....

"390. Quaecunque dat mundus, nemo firmiter tenet. 391. Quaecumque dat Deus  nemo auferre potest.  392. Divina sapientia vera est scientia ....

"403. Animae ascensus ad Deum per Dei verbum est. 404. Sapiens sequitur Deum, et Deus animam sapientis. 405. Gaudet rex super his quos regit, gaudet ergo Deus super sapiente. Inseparabilis est et ab his quos regit ille, qui regit, ita ergo et Deus ab anima sapientis quam tuetur et regit. 406. Reqitur a Deo vir sapiens, et idcirco beatus est ... .

"424. Si non diligis Deum, non ibis ad Deum. 425. Consuesce teipsum semper respicere ad Deum. 426.  Intuendo Deum videbis Deum. 427. Videns Deum facies mentem tuam qualis est Deus. 428.  Excole quod intra te est, nec ei ex libidine corporis contumeliam facias. 429. Incontaminatum custodi corpus tuum, tanquam si indumentum acceperis à Deo, et sicut vestimentum corporis immaculatum servare stude. 430. Sapiens mens speculam est Dei."

§ 172. The Apologists. Quadratus and Aristides.

On the Apologetic Lit. in general, see § 28, p. 85 sq., and § 37, p. 104.

We now proceed to that series of ecclesiastical authors who, from the character and name of their chief writings are called Apologists. They flourished during the reigns of Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius, when Christianity was exposed to the literary as well as bloody persecution of the heathen world. They refuted the charges and slanders of Jews and Gentiles, vindicated the truths of the Gospel, and attacked the errors and vices of idolatry. They were men of more learning and culture than the Apostolic Fathers. They were mostly philosophers and rhetoricians, who embraced Christianity in mature age after earnest investigation, and found peace in it for mind and heart. Their writings breathe the same heroism, the same enthusiasm for the faith, which animated the martyrs in their sufferings and death.

The earliest of these Apologists are Quadratus and Aristides who wrote against the heathen, and Aristo of Pella, who wrote against the Jews, all in the reign of Hadrian (117–137).

Quadratus ( ) was a disciple of the apostles, and bishop (presbyter) of Athens. His Apology is lost. All we know of him is a quotation from Eusebius who says: "Quadratus addressed a discourse to Aelius Hadrian, as an apology for the religion that we profess; because certain malicious persons attempted to harass our brethren. The work is still in the hands of some of the brethren, as also in our own; from which any one may see evident proof, both of the understanding of the man, and of his apostolic faith. This writer shows the antiquity of the age in which he lived, in these passages: ’The deeds of our Saviour,’ says he, ’were always before you, for they were true miracles; those that were healed, those that were raised from the dead, who were seen, not only when healed and when raised, but were always present. They remained living a long time, not only whilst our Lord was on earth, but likewise when he left the earth. So that some of them have also lived to our own times.’ Such was Quadratus."

Aristides  was an eloquent philosopher at Athens who is mentioned by Eusebius as a contemporary of Quadratus.1329  His Apology likewise disappeared long ago, but a fragment of it was recently recovered in an Armenian translation and published by the Mechitarists in 1878.1330  It was addressed to Hadrian, and shows that the preaching of Paul in Athens had taken root. It sets forth the Christian idea of God as an infinite and indescribable Being who made all things and cares for all things, whom we should serve and glorify as the only God; and the idea of Christ, who is described as "the Son of the most high God, revealed by the Holy Spirit, descended from heaven, born of a Hebrew Virgin. His flesh he received from the Virgin, and he revealed himself in the human nature as the Son of God. In his goodness which brought the glad tidings, he has won the whole world by his life-giving preaching. [It was he who according to the flesh was born from the race of the Hebrews, of the mother of God, the Virgin Mariam.]1331  He selected twelve apostles and taught the whole world by his mediatorial, light-giving truth. And he was crucified, being pierced with nails by the Jews; and he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. He sent the apostles into all the world and instructed all by divine miracles full of wisdom. Their preaching bears blossoms and fruits to this day, and calls the whole world to illumination."

A curious feature in this document is the division of mankind into four parts, Barbarians, Greeks, Jews, and Christians.

Aristo of Pella, a Jewish Christian of the first half of the second century, was the author of a lost apology of Christianity against Judaism.1332

§ 173. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr.

Editions of Justin Martyr.

*Justini Philosophi et Martyris Opera omnia, in the Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum saeculi secundi, ed. Jo. Car. Th. de Otto, Jen. 1847, 3d ed. 1876–’81. 5 vols. 8vo. Contains the genuine, the doubtful, and the spurious works of Justin Martyr with commentary, and Maran’s Latin Version.

Older ed. (mostly incomplete) by Robt. Stephanus, Par., 1551; Sylburg, Heidelb., 1593; Grabe, Oxon., 1700 (only the Apol. I.); Prudent. Maranus, Par., 1742 (the Bened. ed.), republ. at Venice, 1747, and in Migne’s Patrol. Gr. Tom. VI. (Paris, 1857), c. 10–800 and 1102–1680, with additions from Otto. The Apologies were also often published separately, e.g. by Prof B. L. Gildersleeve, N. Y. 1877, with introduction and notes.

On the MSS. of Justin see Otto’s Proleg., p. xx. sqq., and Harnack, Texte. Of the genuine works we have only two, and they are corrupt, one in Paris, the other in Cheltenham, in possession of Rev. F. A. Fenwick (see Otto, p. xxiv.).

English translation in the Oxford "Library of the Fathers," Lond., 1861, and another by G. J. Davie in the "Ante-Nicene Library," Edinb. Vol. II., 1867 (465 pages), containing the Apologies, the Address to the Greeks, the Exhortation, and the Martyrium, translated by M. Dods; the Dialogue with Trypho, and On the Sole Government of God, trsl. by G. Reith; and also the writings of Athenagoras, trsl. by B. P. Pratten. Older translations by Wm. Reeves, 1709, Henry Brown, 1755, and J. Chevallier, 1833 (ed. II., 1851). On German and other versions see Otto, Prol. LX. sqq.

Works on Justin Martyr.

Bp. Kaye: Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin Martyr. Cambr., 1829, 3d ed., 1853.

C. A. Credner: Beiträge zur Einleitung in die bibl. Schriften. Halle, vol. I., 1832 (92–267); also in Vol. II., 1838 (on the quotations from the O. T., p. 17–98; 104–133; 157–311). Credner discusses with exhaustive learning Justin’s relation to the Gospels and the Canon of the N. T., and his quotations from the Septuagint. Comp. also his Geschichte des N. T Canon, ed. by Volkmar, 1860.

*C. Semisch: Justin der Märtyrer. Breslau, 1840 and 1842, 2 vols. Very thorough and complete up to date of publication. English translation by Ryland, Edinb., 1844, 2 vols. Comp. Semisch: Die apostol. Denkwürdigkeiten des Just. M. (Hamb. and Gotha, 1848), and his article Justin in the first ed. of Herzog, VII. (1857), 179–186.

Fr. Böhringer: Die Kirchengesch. in Biographien. Vol. I. Zürich, 1842, ed. II., 1861, p. 97–270.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Krit. Untersuchungen ueber die Evangelien Justin’s. Halle, 1850. Also: Die Ap. Gesch. u. der M. Just. in his "Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol.," 1872, p. 495–509, and Ketzergesch., 1884, pp. 21 sqq.

*J. C. Th. Otto: Zur Characteristik des heil. Justinus. Wien, 1852. His art. Justinus der Apologete, in "Ersch and Gruber’s Encyklop." Second Section, 30th part (1853), pp. 39–76. Comp. also his Prolegomena in the third ed. of Justin’s works. He agrees with Semisch in his general estimate of Justin.

C. G. Seibert: Justinus, der Vertheidiger des Christenthums vor dem Thron der Caesaren. Elberf., 1859.

Ch. E. Freppel (R.C. Bp.): Les Apologistes Chrétiens du II.e siècle. Par., 1860.

L. Schaller: Les deux Apologies de Justin M. au point de vie dogmatique. Strasb., 1861.

B. Aubé: De l’apologetique Chrétienne au II.e siècle. Par., 1861; and S. Justin philosophe et martyr, 1875.

E. de Pressensé, in the third vol. of his Histoire des trois premiers siècles, or second vol. of the English version (1870), which treats of Martyrs and Apologists, and his art. in Lichtenberger VII. (1880) 576–583.

Em. Ruggieri: Vita e dottrina di S. Giustino. Rom., 1862.

*J. Donaldson: Hist. of Ante-Nicene Christian Literature. Lond., vol. II. (1866), which treats of Justin M., pp. 62–344.

*C. Weizsäcker: Die Theologie des Märtyrers Justinus in the "Jahrbücher fur Deutsche Theologie. Gotha, 1867 (vol. XII., I. pp. 60–120).

Renan: L’église chrétienne (Par., 1879), ch. XIX., pp. 364–389, and ch. XXV. 480 sqq.

*Moritz von Engelhardt (d. 1881): Das Christenthum Justins des Märtyrers. Erlangen, 1878. (490 pages, no index.)  With an instructive critical review of the various treatments of Irenaeus and his place in history (p. 1–70). See also his art. Justin in Herzog2, VII.

G. F. Purves: The Testimony of Justin M. to Early Christianity. New York. 1888.

Adolf Stähelin: Justin der Märtyrer und sein neuster Beurtheiler. Leipzig, 1880 (67 pages). A careful review of Engelhardt’s monograph.

Henry Scott Holland: Art. Justinus Martyr, in Smith and Wace III. (1880), 560–587.

Ad. Harnack: Die Werke des Justin, in "Texte und Untersuchungen," etc. Leipz., 1882. I. 130–195.

The relation of Justin to the Gospels is discussed by Credner, Semisch, Hilgenfeld, Norton, Sanday, Westcott, Abbot; his relation to the Acts by Overbeck (1872) and Hilgenfeld; his relation to the Pauline Epistles by H. D. Tjeenk Willink (1868), Alb. Thoma (1875), and v. Engelhardt (1878).

The most eminent among the Greek Apologists of the second century is Flavius Justinus, surnamed "Philosopher and Martyr."1333  He is the typical apologist, who devoted his whole life to the defense of Christianity at a time when it was most assailed, and he sealed his testimony with his blood. He is also the first Christian philosopher or the first philosophic theologian. His writings were well known to Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Photius, and the most important of them have been preserved to this day.

I. His Life. Justin was born towards the close of the first century, or in the beginning of the second, in the Graeco-Roman colony of Flavia Neapolis, so called after the emperor Flavius Vespasian, and built near the ruins of Sychem in Samaria (now Nablous). He calls himself a Samaritan, but was of heathen descent, uncircumcised, and ignorant of Moses and the prophets before his conversion. Perhaps he belonged to the Roman colony which Vespasian planted in Samaria after the destruction of Jerusalem. His grandfather’s name was Greek (Bacchius), his father’s (Priscus) and his own, Latin. His education was Hellenic. To judge from his employment of several teachers and his many journeys, he must have had some means, though he no doubt lived in great simplicity and may have been aided by his brethren.

His conversion occurred in his early manhood. He himself tells us the interesting story.1334  Thirsting for truth as the greatest possession, he made the round of the systems of philosophy and knocked at every gate of ancient wisdom, except the Epicurean which he despised. He first went to a Stoic, but found him a sort of agnostic who considered the knowledge of God impossible or unnecessary; then to a Peripatetic, but he was more anxious for a good fee than for imparting instruction; next to a celebrated Pythagorean, who seemed to know something, but demanded too much preliminary knowledge of music, astronomy and geometry before giving him an insight into the highest truths. At last he threw himself with great zeal into the arms of Platonism under the guidance of a distinguished teacher who had recently come to his city.1335  He was overpowered by the perception of immaterial things and the contemplation of eternal ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness. He thought that he was already near the promised goal of this philosophy—the vision of God—when, in a solitary walk not far from the sea-shore, a venerable old Christian of pleasant countenance and gentle dignity, entered into a conversation with him, which changed the course of his life. The unknown friend shook his confidence in all human wisdom, and pointed him to the writings of the Hebrew prophets who were older than the philosophers and had seen and spoken the truth, not as reasoners, but as witnesses. More than this: they had foretold the coming of Christ, and their prophecies were fulfilled in his life and work. The old man departed, and Justin saw him no more, but he took his advice and soon found in the prophets of the Old Testament as illuminated and confirmed by the Gospels, the true and infallible philosophy which rests upon the firm ground of revelation. Thus the enthusiastic Platonist became a believing Christian.

To Tatian also, and Theophilus at Antioch, and Hilary, the Jewish prophets were in like manner the bridge to the Christian faith. We must not suppose, however, that the Old Testament alone effected his conversion; for in the Second Apology, Justin distinctly mentions as a means the practical working of Christianity. While he was yet a Platonist, and listened to the calumnies against the Christians, he was struck with admiration for their fearless courage and steadfastness in the face of death.1336

After his conversion Justin sought the society of Christians, and received from them instruction in the history and doctrine of the gospel. He now devoted himself wholly to the spread and vindication of the Christian religion. He was an itinerant evangelist or teaching missionary, with no fixed abode and no regular office in the church.1337  There is no trace of his ordination; he was as far as we know a lay-preacher, with a commission from the Holy Spirit; yet be accomplished far more for the good of the church than any known bishop or presbyter of his day. "Every one," says he, "who can preach the truth and does not preach it, incurs the judgment of God." Like Paul, he felt himself a debtor to all men, Jew and Gentile, that he might show them the way of salvation. And, like Aristides, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Heraclas, Gregory Thaumaturgus, he retained his philosopher’s cloak,1338 that he might the more readily discourse on the highest themes of thought; and when he appeared in early morning (as he himself tells us), upon a public walk, many came to him with a "Welcome, philosopher!"1339  He spent some time in Rome where he met and combated Marcion. In Ephesus he made an effort to gain the Jew Trypho and his friends to the Christian faith.

He labored last, for the second time, in Rome. Here, at the instigation of a Cynic philosopher, Crescens, whom he had convicted of ignorance about Christianity, Justin, with six other Christians, about the year 166, was scourged and beheaded. Fearlessly and joyfully, as in life, so also in the face of death, he bore witness to the truth before the tribunal of Rusticus, the prefect of the city, refused to sacrifice, and proved by his own example the steadfastness of which he had so often boasted as a characteristic trait of his believing brethren. When asked to explain the mystery of Christ, he replied: "I am too little to say something great of him." His last words were: "We desire nothing more than to suffer for our Lord Jesus Christ; for this gives us salvation and joyfulness before his dreadful judgment seat, at which all the world must appear."

Justin is the first among the fathers who may be called a learned theologian and Christian thinker. He had acquired considerable classical and philosophical culture before his conversion, and then made it subservient to the defense of faith. He was not a man of genius and accurate scholarship, but of respectable talent, extensive reading, and enormous memory. He had some original and profound ideas, as that of the spermatic Logos, and was remarkably liberal in his judgment of the noble heathen and the milder section of the Jewish Christians. He lived in times when the profession of Christ was a crime under the Roman law against secret societies and prohibited religious. He had the courage of a confessor in life and of a martyr in death. It is impossible not to admire his fearless devotion to the cause of truth and the defense of his persecuted brethren. If not a great man, he was (what is better) an eminently good and useful man, and worthy of an honored place in "the noble army of martyrs."1340

II. Writings. To his oral testimony Justin added extensive literary labors in the field of apologetics and polemics. His pen was incessantly active against all the enemies of Christian truth, Jews, Gentiles, and heretics.

(1) His chief works are apologetic, and still remain, namely, his two Apologies against the heathen, and his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho  The First or larger Apology (68 chapters) is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (137–161) and his adopted sons, and was probably written about A.D. 147, if not earlier; the Second or smaller Apology (25 chapters) is a supplement to the, former, perhaps its conclusion, and belongs to the same reign (not to that of Marcus Aurelius).1341  Both are a defense of the Christians and their religion against heathen calumnies and persecutions. He demands nothing but justice for his brethren, who were condemned without trial simply as Christians and suspected criminals. He appeals from the, lower courts and the violence of the mob to the highest tribunal of law, and feels confident that such wise and philosophic rulers as he addresses would acquit them after a fair hearing. He ascribes the persecutions to the instigation of the demons who tremble for their power and will soon be dethroned.

The Dialogue (142 chapters) is more than twice as large as the two Apologies, and is a vindication of Christianity from Moses and the prophets against the objections of the Jews. It was written after the former (which are referred to in ch. 120), but also in the reign of Antoninus Pius, i.e., before A.D. 161 probably about A.D. 148.1342 In the Apologies he speaks like a philosopher to philosophers; in the Dialogue as a believer in the Old Testament with a son of Abraham. The disputation lasted two days, in the gymnasium just before a voyage of Justin, and turned chiefly on two questions, how the Christians could profess to serve God, and yet break his law, and how they could believe in a human Saviour who suffered and died. Trypho, whom Eusebius calls "the most distinguished among the Hebrews of his day," was not a fanatical Pharisee, but a tolerant and courteous Jew, who evasively confessed at last to have been much instructed, and asked Justin to come again, and to remember him as a friend. The book is a storehouse of early interpretation of the prophetic Scriptures.

The polemic works, Against all Heresies, and Against Marcion, are lost. The first is mentioned in the First Apology; of the second, Irenaeus has preserved some fragments; perhaps it was only a part of the former.1343  Eusebius mentions also a Psalter of Justin, and a book On the Soul, which have wholly disappeared.

(2)  Doubtful works which bear Justin’s name, and may have been written by him: An address To the Greeks; 1344 a treatise On the Unity of God; another On the Resurrection.

(3)  Spurious works attributed to him: The Epistle to Diognetus probably of the same date, but by a superior writer, 1345 the Exhortation to the Greeks,1346 the Deposition of the True Faith, the epistle To Zenas and Serenus, the Refutation of some Theses of Aristotle, the Questions to the Orthodox, the Questions of the Christians to the Heathens, and the Questions of the Heathens to the Christians. Some of these belong to the third or later centuries.1347

The genuine works of Justin are of unusual importance and interest. They bring vividly before us the time when the church was still a small sect, despised and persecuted, but bold in faith and joyful in death. They everywhere attest his honesty and earnestness, his enthusiastic love for Christianity, and his fearlessness in its defense against all assaults from without and perversions from within. He gives us the first reliable account of the public worship and the celebration of the sacraments. His reasoning is often ingenious and convincing but sometimes rambling and fanciful, though not more so than that of other writers of those times. His style is fluent and lively, but diffuse and careless. He writes under a strong impulse of duty and fresh impression without strict method or aim at rhetorical finish and artistic effect. He thinks pen in hand, without looking backward or forward, and uses his memory more than books. Only occasionally, as in the opening of the Dialogue, there is a touch of the literary art of Plato, his old master.1348  But the lack of careful elaboration is made up by freshness and truthfulness. If the emperors of Rome had read the books addressed to them they must have been strongly impressed, at least with the honesty of the writer and the innocence of the Christians.1349

III. Theology. As to the sources of his religious knowledge, Justin derived it partly from the Holy Scriptures, partly from the living church tradition. He cites, most frequently, and generally from memory, hence often inaccurately, the Old Testament prophets (in the Septuagint), and the "Memoirs" of Christ, or "Memoirs by the Apostles," as he calls the canonical Gospels, without naming the authors.1350  He says that they were publicly read in the churches with the prophets of the Old Testament. He only quotes the words and acts of the Lord. He makes most use of Matthew and Luke, but very freely, and from John’s Prologue (with the aid of Philo whom he never names) he derived the inspiration of the Logos-doctrine, which is the heart of his theology.1351  He expressly mentions the Revelation of John. He knew no fixed canon of the New Testament, and, like Hernias and Papias, he nowhere notices Paul; but several allusions to passages of his Epistles (Romans, First Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, etc.), can hardly be mistaken, and his controversy with Marcion must have implied a full knowledge of the ten Epistles which that heretic included in his canon. Any dogmatical inference from this silence is the less admissible, since, in the genuine writings of Justin, not one of the apostles or evangelists is expressly named except John once, and Simon Peter twice, and "the sons of Zebedee whom Christ called Boanerges," but reference is always made directly to Christ and to the prophets and apostles in general.1352  The last are to him typified in the twelve bells on the border of the high priest’s garment which sound through the whole world. But this no more excludes Paul from apostolic dignity than the names of the twelve apostles on the foundation stones of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:14). They represent the twelve tribes of Israel, Paul the independent apostolate of the Gentiles.

Justin’s exegesis of the Old Testament is apologetic, typological and allegorical throughout. He finds everywhere references to Christ, and turned it into a text book of Christian theology. He carried the whole New Testament into the Old without discrimination, and thus obliterated the difference. He had no knowledge of Hebrew,1353 and freely copied the blunders and interpolations of the Septuagint. He had no idea of grammatical or historical interpretation. He used also two or three times the Sibylline Oracles and Hystaspes for genuine prophecies, and appeals to the Apocryphal Acts of Pilate as an authority. We should remember, however, that he is no more credulous, inaccurate and uncritical than his contemporaries and the majority of the fathers.

Justin forms the transition from the apostolic fathers to the church fathers properly so called. He must not be judged by the standard of a later orthodoxy, whether Greek, Roman, or Evangelical, nor by the apostolic conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, or Ebionism and Gnosticism, which at that time had already separated from the current of Catholic Christianity. It was a great mistake to charge him with Ebionism. He was a converted Gentile, and makes a sharp distinction between the church and the synagogue as two antagonistic organizations. He belongs to orthodox Catholicism as modified by Greek philosophy. The Christians to him are the true people of God and heirs of all the promises. He distinguishes between Jewish Christians who would impose the yoke of the Mosaic law (the Ebionites), and those who only observe it themselves, allowing freedom to the Gentiles (the Nazarenes); the former he does not acknowledge as Christians, the latter be treats charitably, like Paul in Romans ch. 14 and 15. The only difference among orthodox Christians which he mentions is the belief in the millennium which he held, like Barnabas, Irenaeus and Tertullian, but which many rejected. But, like all the ante-Nicene writers, be had no clear insight into the distinction between the Old Testament and the New, between the law and the gospel, nor any proper conception of the depth of sin and redeeming grace, and the justifying power of faith. His theology is legalistic and ascetic rather than evangelical and free. He retained some heathen notions from his former studies, though he honestly believed them to be in full harmony with revelation.

Christianity was to Justin, theoretically, the true philosophy,1354 and, practically, a new law of holy living and dying.1355  The former is chiefly the position of the Apologies, the latter that of the Dialogue.

He was not an original philosopher, but a philosophizing eclectic, with a prevailing love for Plato, whom be quotes more frequently than any other classical author. He may be called, in a loose sense, a Christian Platonist. He was also influenced by Stoicism. He thought that the philosophers of Greece had borrowed their light from Moses and the prophets. But his relation to Plato after all is merely external, and based upon fancied resemblances. He illuminated and transformed his Platonic reminiscences by the prophetic Scriptures, and especially by the Johannean doctrine of the Logos and the incarnation. This is the central idea of his philosophical theology. Christianity is the highest reason. The Logos is the preexistent, absolute, personal Reason, and Christ is the embodiment of it, the Logos incarnate. Whatever is rational is Christian, and whatever is Christian is rational.1356  The Logos endowed all men with reason and freedom, which are not lost by the fall. He scattered seeds ( ) of truth before his incarnation, not only among the Jews but also among the Greeks and barbarians, especially among philosophers and poets, who are the prophets of the heathen. Those who lived reasonably ( ) and virtuously in obedience to this preparatory light were Christians in fact, though not in name; while those who lived unreasonably ( ) were Christless and enemies of Christ.1357  Socrates was a Christian as well as Abraham, though he did not know it. None of the fathers or schoolmen has so widely thrown open the gates of salvation. He was the broadest of broad churchmen.

This extremely liberal view of heathenism, however, did not blind him to the prevailing corruption. The mass of the Gentiles are idolaters, and idolatry is under the control of the devil and the demons. The Jews are even worse than the heathen, because they sin against better knowledge. And worst of all are the heretics, because they corrupt the Christian truths. Nor did he overlook the difference between Socrates and Christ, and between the best of heathen and the humblest Christian. "No one trusted Socrates," he says, "so as to die for his doctrine but Christ, who was partially known by Socrates, was trusted not only by philosophers and scholars, but also by artizans and people altogether unlearned."

The Christian faith of Justin is faith in God the Creator, and in his Son Jesus Christ the Redeemer, and in the prophetic Spirit. All other doctrines which are revealed through the prophets and apostles, follow as a matter of course. Below the deity are good and bad angels; the former are messengers of God, the latter servants of Satan, who caricature Bible doctrines in heathen mythology, invent slanders, and stir up persecutions against Christians, but will be utterly overthrown at the second coming of Christ. The human soul is a creature, and hence perishable, but receives immortality from God, eternal happiness as a reward of piety, eternal fire as a punishment of wickedness. Man has reason and free will, and is hence responsible for all his actions; he sins by his own act, and hence deserves punishment. Christ came to break the power of sin, to secure forgiveness and regeneration to a new and holy life.

Here comes in the practical or ethical side of this Christian philosophy. It is wisdom which emanates from God and leads to God. It is a new law and a new covenant, promised by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and introduced by Christ. The old law was only for the Jews, the new is for the whole world; the old was temporary and is abolished, the new is eternal; the old commands circumcision of the flesh, the new, circumcision of the heart; the old enjoins the observance of one day, the new sanctifies all days; the old refers to outward performances, the new to spiritual repentance and faith, and demands entire consecration to God.

IV. From the time of Justin Martyr, the Platonic Philosophy continued to exercise a direct and indirect influence upon Christian theology, though not so unrestrainedly and naively as in his case.1358  We can trace it especially in Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and even in St. Augustin, who confessed that it kindled in him an incredible fire. In the scholastic period it gave way to the Aristotelian philosophy, which was better adapted to clear, logical statements. But Platonism maintained its influence over Maximus, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, and other schoolmen, through the pseudo-Dionysian writings which first appear at Constantinople in 532, and were composed probably in the fifth century. They sent a whole system of the universe under the aspect of a double hierarchy, a heavenly and an earthly, each consisting of three triads.

The Platonic philosophy offered many points of resemblance to Christianity. It is spiritual and idealistic, maintaining the supremacy of the spirit over matter, of eternal ideas over all temporary phenomena, and the pre-existence and immortality of the soul; it is theistic, making the supreme God above all the secondary deities, the beginning, middle, and end of all things; it is ethical, looking towards present and future rewards and punishments; it is religious, basing ethics, politics, and physics upon the authority of the Lawgiver and Ruler of the universe; it leads thus to the very threshold of the revelation of God in Christ, though it knows not this blessed name nor his saying grace, and obscures its glimpses of truth by serious errors. Upon the whole the influence of Platonism, especially as represented in the moral essays of Plutarch, has been and is to this day elevating, stimulating, and healthy, calling the mind away from the vanities of earth to the contemplation of eternal truth, beauty, and goodness. To not a few of the noblest teachers of the church, from Justin the philosopher to Neander the historian, Plato has been a schoolmaster who led them to Christ.

Notes.

The theology and philosophy of Justin are learnedly discussed by Maran, and recently by Möhler and Freppel in the Roman Catholic interest, and in favor of his full orthodoxy. Among Protestants his orthodoxy was first doubted by the authors of the "Magdeburg Centuries," who judged him from the Lutheran standpoint.

Modern Protestant historians viewed him chiefly with reference to the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Credner first endeavored to prove, by an exhaustive investigation (1832), that Justin was a Jewish Christian of the Ebionitic type, with the Platonic Logos-doctrine attached to his low creed as an appendix. He was followed by the Tübingen critics, Schwegler (1846), Zeller, Hilgenfeld, and Baur himself (1853). Baur, however, moderated Credner’s view, and put, Justin rather between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, calling him a Pauline in fact, but not in name ("er ist der Sache nach Pauliner, aber dem Namen nach will er es nicht sein"). This shaky judgment shows the unsatisfactory character of the Tübingen construction of Catholic Christianity as the result of a conflux and compromise between Ebionism and Paulinism.

Ritschl (in the second ed. of his Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 1857) broke loose from this scheme and represented ancient Catholicism as a development of Gentile Christianity, and Justin as the type of the "katholisch werde de Heidenchristenthum," who was influenced by Pauline ideas, but unable to comprehend them in their depth and fulness, and thus degraded the standpoint of freedom to a new form of legalism. This he calls a "herabgekommemer or abgeschwächter Paulinismus." Engelhardt goes a step further, and explains this degradation of Paulinism from the influences of Hellenic heathenism and the Platonic and Stoic modes of thought. He says (p. 485): "Justin was at once a Christian and a heathen. We must acknowledge his Christianity and his heathenism in order to understand him." Harnack (in a review of E., 1878) agrees with him, and lays even greater stress on the heathen element. Against this Stähelin (1880) justly protests, and vindicates his truly Christian character.

Among recent French writers, Aubé represents Justin’s theology superficially as nothing more than popularized heathen philosophy. Renan (p. 389) calls his philosophy "une sorte d’eclectisme fondé sur un rationalisme mystic." Freppel returns to Maran’s treatment, and tries to make the philosopher and martyr of the second century even a Vatican Romanist of the nineteenth.

For the best estimates of his character and merits see Neander, Semisch, Otto, von Engelhardt, Stähelin, Donaldson (II. 147 sqq.), and Holland (in Smith and Wace).

§ 174. The Other Greek Apologists. Tatian.

Lit. on the later Greek Apologists:

Otto: Corpus Apologetarum Christ. Vol. VI. (1861): Tatiani Assyrii Opera; vol. VII.: Athenagorus; vol. VIII.: Theophilus; Vol. IX.: Hermias, Quadratus, Aristides, Aristo, Miltiades, Melito, Apollinaris (Reliquiae)  Older ed. by Maranus, 1742, reissued by Migne, 1857, in Tom. VI. of his "Patrol. Gr." A new ed. by O. v. Gebhardt and E. Schwartz, begun Leipz. 1888.

The third vol. of Donaldson’s Critical History of Christ. Lit. and Doctr., etc. (Lond. 1866) is devoted to the same Apologists. Comp. also Keim’s Rom und das Christenthum (1881), p. 439–495; and on the MSS. and early traditions Harnack’s Texte, etc. Band I. Heft. 1 and 2 (1882), and Schwartz in his ed. (1888).

On Tatian see § 131, p. 493–496.

Tatian of Assyria (110–172) was a pupil of Justin Martyr whom he calls a most admirable man ( ), and like him an itinerant Christian philosopher; but unlike him he seems to have afterwards wandered to the borders of heretical Gnosticism, or at least to an extreme type of asceticism. He is charged with having condemned marriage as a corruption and denied that Adam was saved, because Paul says: "We all die in Adam." He was an independent, vigorous and earnest man, but restless, austere, and sarcastic.1359  In both respects he somewhat resembles Tertullian. Before his conversion he had studied mythology, history, poetry, and chronology, attended the theatre and athletic games, became disgusted with the world, and was led by the Hebrew Scriptures to the Christian faith.1360

We have from him an apologetic work addressed To the Greeks.1361 It was written in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, probably in Rome, and shows no traces of heresy. He vindicates Christianity as the "philosophy of the barbarians," and exposes the contradictions, absurdities, and immoralities of the Greek mythology from actual knowledge and with much spirit and acuteness but with vehement contempt and bitterness. He proves that Moses and the prophets were older and wiser than the Greek philosophers, and gives much information on the antiquity of the Jews. Eusebius calls this "the best and most useful of his writings," and gives many extracts in his Praeparatio Evangelica.

The following specimens show his power of ridicule and his radical antagonism to Greek mythology and philosophy:

Ch. 21.—Doctrines of the Christians and Greeks respecting God compared.

We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we announce that God was born in the form of a man. (ejn   ). I call on you who reproach us to compare your mythical accounts with our narrations. Athene, as they say, took the form of Deiphobus for the sake of Hector, and the unshorn Phoebus for the sake of Admetus fed the trailing-footed oxen, and the spouse of Zeus came as an old woman to Semélé. But, while you treat seriously such things, how can you deride us?  Your Asclepios died, and he who ravished fifty virgins in one night at Thespiae, lost his life by delivering himself to the devouring flame. Prometheus, fastened to Caucasus, suffered punishment for his good deeds to men. According to you, Zeus is envious, and hides the dream from men, wishing their destruction. Wherefore, looking at your own memorials, vouchsafe us your approval, though it were only as dealing in legends similar to your own. We, however, do not deal in folly, but your legends are only idle tales. If you speak of the origin of the gods, you also declare them to be mortal. For what reason is Hera now never pregnant?  Has she grown old? or is there no one to give you information?  Believe me now, O Greeks, and do not resolve your myths and gods into allegory. If you attempt to do this, the divine nature as held by you is overthrown by your own selves; for, if the demons with you are such as they are said to be, they are worthless as to character; or, if regarded as symbols of the powers of nature, they are not what they are called. But I cannot be persuaded to pay religious homage to the natural elements, nor can I undertake to persuade my neighbor. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed.

But these things we have put forth only for argument’s sake; for it is not allowable even to compare our notions of God with those who are wallowing in matter and mud."

Ch. 25.—Boastings and quarrels of the philosophers.

What great and wonderful things have your philosophers effected?  They leave uncovered one of their shoulders; they let their hair grow long; they cultivate their beards; their nails are like the claws of wild beasts. Though they say that they want nothing, yet, like Proteus [the Cynic, Proteus Peregrinus known to us from Lucian], they need a currier for their wallet, and a weaver for their mantle, and a woodcutter for their staff, and they need the rich [to invite them to banquets], and a cook also for their gluttony. O man competing with the dog [cynic philosopher], you know not God, and so have turned to the imitation of an irrational animal. You cry out in public with an assumption of authority, and take upon you to avenge your own self; and if you receive nothing, you indulge in abuse, for philosophy is with you the art of getting money. You follow the doctrines of Plato, and a disciple of Epicurus lifts up his voice to oppose you. Again, you wish to be a disciple of Aristotle, and a follower of Democritus rails at you. Pythagoras says that he was Euphorbus, and he is the heir of the doctrine of Pherecydes, but Aristotle impugns the immortality of the soul. You who receive from your predecessors doctrines which clash with one another, you the inharmonious, are fighting against the harmonious. One of you asserts "that God is body," but I assert that He is without body; "that the world is indestructible," but I assert that it is to be destroyed; "that a conflagration will take place at various times," but I say that it will come to pass once for all; "that Minos and Rhadamanthus are judges," but I say that God Himself is Judge; "that the soul alone is endowed with immortality," but I say that the flesh also is endowed with it. What injury do we inflict upon you, O Greeks?  Why do you hate those who follow the word of God, as if they were the vilest of mankind?  It is not we who eat human flesh—they among you who assert such a thing have been suborned as false witnesses; it is among you that Pelops is made a supper for the gods, although beloved by Poseidon; and Kronos devours his children, and Zeus swallows Metis."

Of great importance for the history of the canon and of exegesis is Tatian’s Diatessaron or Harmony of the Four Gospels, once widely circulated, then lost, but now measurably recovered.1362  Theodoret found more than two hundred copies of it in his diocese. Ephraem the Syrian wrote a commentary on it which was preserved in an Armenian translation by the Mechitarists at Venice, translated into Latin by Aucher (1841), and published with a learned introduction by Mösinger (1876). From this commentary Zahn has restored the text (1881). Since then an Arabic translation of the Diatessaron itself has been discovered and published by Ciasca (1888). The Diatessaron begins with the Prologue of John (In principio erat Verbum, etc.), follows his order of the festivals, assuming a two years’ ministry, and makes a connected account of the life of Christ from the four Evangelists. There is no heretical tendency, except perhaps in the omission of Christ’s human genealogies in Matthew and Luke, which may have been due to the influence of a docetic spirit. This Diatessaron conclusively proves the existence and ecclesiastical use of the four Gospels, no more and no less, in the middle of the second century.

§ 175. Athenagoras.

Otto, Vol. VII.; Migne, VI. 890–1023. Am. ed. by W. B. Owen, N. Y., 1875.

Clarisse: De Athenagorae vita, scriptis doctrina (Lugd. Bat. 1819); Donaldson, III. 107–178; Harnack, Texte, I. 176 sqq., and his art. "Athen." in Herzog2 I. 748–750; Spencer Mansel in Smith and Wace, 1. 204–207; Renan, Marc-Auréle, 382–386.

Athenagoras was "a Christian philosopher of Athens," during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A. D., 161–180), but is otherwise entirely unknown and not even mentioned by Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius. 1363  His philosophy was Platonic, but modified by the prevailing eclecticism of his age. He is less original as an apologist than Justin and Tatian, but more elegant and classical in style.

He addressed an Apology or Intercession in behalf of the Christians to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.1364  He reminds the rulers that all their subjects are allowed to follow their customs without hindrance except the Christians who are vexed, plundered and killed on no other pretence than that they bear the name of their Lord and Master. We do not object to punishment if we are found guilty, but we demand a fair trial. A name is neither good nor bad in itself, but becomes good or bad according to the character and deeds under it. We are accused of three crimes, atheism, Thyestean banquets (cannibalism), Oedipodean connections (incest). Then he goes on to refute these charges, especially that of atheism and incest. He does it calmly, clearly, eloquently, and conclusively. By a divine law, he says, wickedness is ever fighting against virtue. Thus Socrates was condemned to death, and thus are stories invented against us. We are so far from committing the excesses of which we are accused, that we are not permitted to lust after a woman in thought. We are so particular on this point that we either do not marry at all, or we marry for the sake of children, and only once in the course of our life. Here comes out his ascetic tendency which he shares with his age. He even condemns second marriage as "decent adultery." The Christians are more humane than the heathen, and condemn, as murder, the practices of abortion, infanticide, and gladiatorial shows.

Another treatise under his name, "On the Resurrection of the Dead, is a masterly argument drawn from the wisdom, power, and justice of God, as well as from the destiny of man, for this doctrine which was especially offensive to the Greek mind. It was a discourse actually delivered before a philosophical audience. For this reason perhaps he does not appeal to the Scriptures.

AlI historians put a high estimate on Athenagoras. "He writes," says Donaldson, "as a man who is determined that the real state of the case should be exactly known. He introduces similes, he occasionally has an antithesis, he quotes poetry but always he has his main object distinctly before his mind, and he neither makes a useless exhibition of his own powers, nor distracts the reader by digressions. His Apology is the best defence of the Christians produced in that age." Spencer Mansel declares him "decidedly superior to most of the Apologists, elegant, free from superfluity of language, forcible in style, and rising occasionally into great powers of description, and in his reasoning remarkable for clearness and cogency."

Tillemont found traces of Montanism in the condemnation of second marriage and the view of prophetic inspiration, but the former was common among the Greeks, and the latter was also held by Justin M. and others. Athenagoras says of the prophets that they were in an ecstatic condition of mind and that the Spirit of God "used them as if a flute-player were breathing into his flute." Montanus used the comparison of the plectrum and the lyre.

§ 176. Theophilus of Antioch.

Otto, Vol. VIII. Migne, VI. Col. 1023–1168.

Donaldson, Critical History, III. 63–106. Renan, Marc-Aur. 386 sqq.

Theod. Zahn: Der Evanqelien-commentar des Theophilus von Antiochien. Erlangen 1883 (302 pages). The second part of his Forschung zur Gesch. des neutestam. Kanons und der altkirchlichen Lit. Also his Supplementum Clementinum, 1884, p. 198–276 (in self-defense against Harnack).

Harnack, Texte, etc. Bd. I., Heft II., 282–298., and Heft. IV. (I 8., 3), 97–175 (on the Gospel Commentary cf Theoph. against Zahn).

A. Hauck: Zur Theophilusfrage, Leipz. 1844, and in Herzog,2 xv. 544.

W. Bornemann: Zur Theophilusfrage; In "Brieger’s Zeitschrift f. Kirchen-Geschte," 1888, p. 169–283

Theophilus was converted from heathenism by the study of the Scriptures, and occupied the episcopal see at Antioch, the sixth from the Apostles, during the later part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He died about A.D. 181.1365

His principal work, and the only one which has come down to us, is his three books to Autolycus, an educated heathen friend.1366  His main object is to convince him of the falsehood of idolatry, and of the truth of Christianity. He evinces extensive knowledge of Grecian literature, considerable philosophical talent, and a power of graphic and elegant composition. His treatment of the philosophers and poets is very severe and contrasts unfavorably with the liberality of Justin Martyr. He admits elements of truth in Socrates and Plato, but charges them with having stolen the same from the prophets. He thinks that the Old Testament already contained all the truths which man requires to know. He was the first to use the term "triad" for the holy Trinity, and found this mystery already in the words: Let us make man "(Gen. 1:26); for, says he, "God spoke to no other but to his own Reason and his own Wisdom," that is, to the Logos and the Holy Spirit hypostatized.1367  He also first quoted the Gospel of John by name,1368 but it was undoubtedly known and used before by Tatian, Athenagoras, Justin, and by the Gnostics, and can be traced as far back as 125 within the lifetime of many personal disciples of the Apostle. Theophilus describes the Christians as having a sound mind, practising self-restraint, preserving marriage with one, keeping chastity, expelling injustice, rooting out sin, carrying out righteousness as a habit, regulating their conduct by law, being ruled by truth, preserving grace and peace, and obeying God as king. They are forbidden to visit gladiatorial shows and other public amusements, that their eyes and ears may not be defiled. They are commanded to obey authorities and to pray for them, but not to worship them.

The other works of Theophilus, polemical and exegetical, are lost. Eusebius mentions a book against Hermogenes, in which he used proofs from the Apocalypse of John, another against Marcion and "certain catechetical books" ( Gr. ) Jerome mentions in addition commentaries on the Proverbs, and on the Gospel, but doubts their genuineness. There exists under his name though only in Latin, a sort of exegetical Gospel Harmony, which is a later compilation of uncertain date and authorship.

Notes.

Jerome is the only ancient writer who mentions a Commentary or Commentaries of Theophilus on the Gospel, but adds that they are inferior to his other books in elegance and style; thereby indicating a doubt as to their genuineness. De Vir ill. 25: La734 "Legi sub nomine eius [Theophili] in Evangelium et in Proverbia Salomonis Commentarios, (qui mihi cum superiorum voluminum [the works Contra Marcionem, Ad Autolycum, and Contra Hermogenem] elegantia et phrasi non videntur congruere." He alludes to the Gospel Commentary in two other passages (in the Pref. to his Com. on Matthew, and Ep. 121 (ad Algasiam), and quotes from it the exposition of the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1 sqq.). Eusebius may possibly have included the book in the kathchtika; bibliva which he ascribes to Theophilus.

A Latin Version of this Commentary was first published (from MSS. not indicated and since lost) by Marg. de la Bigne in Sacrae, Bibliothecae Patrum, Paris 1576, Tom. V. Col. 169–196; also by Otto in the Corp. Apol. VIII. 278–324, and with learned notes by Zahn in the second vol. of his Forschungen zur Gesch. des neutest. Kanons (1883), p. 31–85. The Commentary begins with an explanation of the symbolical import of the four Gospels as follows: "Quatuor evangelia quatuor animalibus figurata Jesum Christum demonstrant. Matthaeus enim salvatorem nostrum natum passumque homini comparavit. Marcus leonis gerens figuram a solitudine incipit dicens: ’ Vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini,’ sane qui regnat invictus. Joannes habet similitudinem aquilae, quod ab imis alta petiverit; ait enim: ’In principio erat Verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum; hoc erat in principio apud Deum; vel quia Christus resurgens volavit ad cœlos. Lucas vituli speciem gestat, ad instar salvator noster est immolatus, vel quod sacerdotii figurat officium." The position of Luke as the fourth is very peculiar and speaks for great antiquity. Then follows a brief exposition of the genealogy of Christ by Matthew with the remark that Matthew traces the origin "per reges," Luke "per sacerdotes." The first book of the Commentary is chiefly devoted to Matthew, the second and third to Luke, the fourth to John. It concludes with an ingenious allegory representing Christ as a gardener (who appeared to Mary Magdalene, John 20:15), and the church as his garden full of rich flowers) as follows (see Zahn, p. 85): "Hortus Domini est ecclesia catholica, in qua sunt rosae martyrum, lilia virginum, violae viduarum, hedera coniugum; nam illa, quae aestimabat eum hortulanum esse significabat scilicet eum plantantem diversis virtutibus credentium vitam. Amen."

Dr. Zahn, in his recent monograph (1883), which abounds in rare patristic learning, vindicates this Commentary to Theophilus of Antioch and dates the translation from the third century. If so, we would have here a work of great apologetic as well as exegetical importance, especially for the history of the canon and the text; for Theophilus stood midway between Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and would be the oldest Christian exegete. But a Nicene or post-Nicene development of theology and church organization is clearly indicated by the familiar use of such terms as regnum Christi catholicum, catholica doctrina, catholicum dogma, sacerdos, peccatum originale, monachi, saeculares, pagani. The suspicion of a later date is confirmed by the discovery of a MS. of this commentary in Brussels, with an anonymous preface which declares it to be a compilation. Harnack, who made this discovery, ably refutes the conclusions of Zahn, and tries to prove that the commentary ascribed to Theophilus is a Latin work by an anonymous author of the fifth or sixth century (470–520). Zahn (1884) defends in part his former position against Harnack, but admits the weight of the argument furnished by the Brussels MS. Hauck holds that the commentary was written after A.D. 200, but was used by Jerome. Bornemann successfully defends Harnack’s view against Zahn and Hauck, and puts the work between 450 and 700.

§ 177. Melito of Sardis.

(I.) Euseb. H. E. IV. 13, 26; V. 25. Hieron.: De Vir. ill. 24. The remains Of Melito in Routh, Reliq. acr. I. 113–153; more fully in Otto, Corp. Ap. IX. (1872), 375–478. His second Apology, of doubtful genuineness, in Cureton, Spicilegium  Syriacum, Lond. 1835 (Syriac, with an English translation), and in Pitra, Spicil. Solesm. II. (with a Latin translation by Renan, which was revised by Otto, Corp. Ap. vol. IX.); German transl. by Welte in the Tüb." Theol. Quartalschrift" for 1862.

(II) Piper in the Studien und Kritiken for 1838, p. 54 154. Uhlhorn in "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." 1866. Donaldson, III. 221–239 Steitz in Herzog2 IX. 537–539. Lightfoot in "Contemp. Review," Febr. 1876. Harnack, Texte, etc., I. 240–278. Salmon in Smith and Wace III. 894–900. Renan, Marc-Auréle, 172 sqq. (Comp. also the short notice in L’église chrét., p. 436).

Melito, bishop of Sardis,1369 the capital of Lydia, was a shining light among the churches of Asia Minor in the third quarter of the second century. Polycrates of Ephesus, in his epistle to bishop Victor of Rome (d. 195), calls him a "eunuch who, in his whole conduct, was full of the Holy Ghost, and sleeps in Sardis awaiting the episcopate from heaven (or visitation,  ,) on the day of the resurrection." The term "eunuch" no doubt refers to voluntary celibacy for the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:12)..1370  He was also esteemed as a prophet. He wrote a book on prophecy, probably against the pseudo-prophecy of the Montanists; but his relation to Montanism is not clear. He took an active part in the paschal and other controversies which agitated the churches of Asia Minor. He was among the chief supporters of the Quartadeciman practice which was afterwards condemned as schismatic and heretical. This may be a reason why his writings fell into oblivion. Otherwise he was quite orthodox according to the standard of his age, and a strong believer in the divinity of Christ, as is evident from one of the Syrian fragments (see below).

Melito was a man of brilliant mind and a most prolific author. Tertullian speaks of his elegant and eloquent genius.1371  Eusebius enumerates no less than eighteen or twenty works from his pen, covering a great variety of topics, but known to us now only by name.1372  He gives three valuable extracts. There must have been an uncommon literary fertility in Asia Minor after the middle of the second century.1373 The Apology of Melito was addressed to Marcus Aurelius, and written probably at the outbreak of the violent persecutions in 177, which, however, were of a local or provincial character, and not sanctioned by the general government. He remarks that Nero and Domitian were the only imperial persecutors, and expresses the hope that, Aurelius, if properly informed, would interfere in behalf of the innocent Christians. In a passage preserved in the "Paschal Chronicle" he says: "We are not worshipers of senseless stones, but adore one only God, who is before all and over all, and His Christ truly God the Word before all ages."

A Syriac Apology bearing his name1374 was discovered by Tattam, with other Syrian MSS. in the convents of the Nitrian desert (1843), and published by Cureton and Pitra (1855). But it contains none of the passages quoted by Eusebius, and is more an attack upon idolatry than a defense of Christianity, but may nevertheless be a work of Melito under an erroneous title.

To Melito we owe the first Christian list of the Hebrew Scriptures. It agrees with the Jewish and the Protestant canon, and omits the Apocrypha. The books of Esther and Nehemiah are also omitted, but may be included in Esdras. The expressions "the Old Books," "the Books of the Old Covenant," imply that the church at that time had a canon of the New Covenant. Melito made a visit to Palestine to seek information on the Jewish canon.

He wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse, and a "Key" ( ), probably to the Scriptures.1375

The loss of this and of his books "on the Church" and "on the Lord’s Day" are perhaps to be regretted most.

Among the Syriac fragments of Melito published by Cureton is one from a work "On Faith," which contains a remarkable christological creed, an eloquent expansion of the Regula Fidei.1376 The Lord Jesus Christ is acknowledged as the perfect Reason, the Word of God; who was begotten before the light; who was Creator with the Father; who was the Fashioner of man; who was all things in all; Patriarch among the patriarchs, Law in the law, Chief Priest among the priests, King among the kings, Prophet among the prophets, Archangel among the angels; He piloted Noah, conducted Abraham, was bound with Isaac, exiled with Jacob, was Captain with Moses; He foretold his own sufferings in David and the prophets; He was incarnate in the Virgin; worshipped by the Magi; He healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, was rejected by the people, condemned by Pilate, hanged upon the tree, buried in the earth, rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles, ascended to heaven; He is the Rest of the departed, the Recoverer of the lost, the Light of the blind, the Refuge of the afflicted, the Bridegroom of the Church, the Charioteer of the cherubim, the Captain of angels; God who is of God, the Son of the Father, the King for ever and ever.

§ 178. Apolinarius of Hierapolis. Miltiades.

Claudius Apolinarius,1377 bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, a successor of Papias, was a very active apologetic and polemic writer about A.D. 160–180. He took a leading part in the Montanist and Paschal controversies. Eusebius puts him with Melito of Sardis among the orthodox writers of the second century, and mentions four of his "many works" as known to him, but since lost, namely an "Apology" addressed to Marcus Aurelius (before 174). "Five books against the Greeks" "Two books on Truth." "Two books against the Jews." He also notices his later books "Against the heresy of the Phrygians" (the Montanists), about 172.1378

Apolinarius opposed the Quartodeciman observance of Easter, which Melito defended.1379  Jerome mentions his familiarity with heathen literature, but numbers him among the Chiliasts.1380  The latter is doubtful on account of his opposition to Montanism. Photius praises his style. He is enrolled among the saints.1381

Miltiades was another Christian Apologist of the later half of the second century whose writings are entirely lost. Eusebius mentions among them an "Apology" addressed to the rulers of the world, a treatise "against the Greeks," and another "against the Jews;" but be gives no extracts.1382  Tertullian places him between Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.1383

§ 179. Hermias.

Ermeivou filosovfou Diasurmo;" tw'n e[xw filosovfwn, Hermiae Philosophi Gentilium Philosophorum Irrisio, ten chapters. Ed. princeps with Lat. vers. Base!, 1553, Zurich, 1560. Worth added it to his Tatian, Oxf. 1700. In Otto and Maranus (Migne, vi. Col. 1167–1180).

Donaldson, III. 179–181.

Under the name of the "philosopher" Hermias  ( JErmeiva"  or  JErmiva") otherwise entirely unknown to us, we have a "Mockery of Heathen Philosophers," which, with the light arms of wit and sarcasm, endeavors to prove from the history of philosophy, by exposing the contradictions of the various systems, the truth of Paul’s declaration, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. He derives the false philosophy from the demons. He first takes up the conflicting heathen notions about the soul, and then about the origin of the world, and ridicules them. The following is a specimen from the discussion of the first topic:

"I confess I am vexed by the reflux of things. For now I am immortal, and I rejoice; but now again I become mortal, and I weep; but straightway I am dissolved into atoms. I become water, and I become air: I become fire: then after a little I am neither air nor fire: one makes me a wild beast, one makes me a fish. Again, then, I have dolphins for my brothers. But when I see myself, I fear my body, and I no longer know how to call it, whether man, or dog, or wolf, or bull, or bird, or serpent, or dragon, or chimaera. I am changed by the philosophers into all the wild beasts, into those that live on land and on water, into those that are winged, many-shaped, wild, tame, speechless, and gifted with speech, rational and irrational. I swim, fly, creep, run, sit; and there is Empedocles too, who makes me a bush."

The work is small and unimportant.1384  Some put it down to the third or fourth century; but the writer calls himself a "philosopher" (though be misrepresents his profession), has in view a situation of the church like that under Marcus Aurelius, and presents many points of resemblance with the older Apologists and with Lucian who likewise ridiculed the philosophers with keen wit, but from the infidel heathen standpoint. Hence we may well assign him to the later part of the second century.

§ 180. Hegesippus.

(I.) Euseb. H. E. II. 23; III. 11, 16, 19, 20, 32; IV. 8, 22. Collection of fragments in Grabe, Spicil. II. 203–214; Routh, Reliq. S. I. 205–219; Hilgenfeld, in his "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theol." 1876 and 1878.

(II.)  The Annotationes in Heges. Fragm. by Routh, I. 220–292 (very valuable). Donaldson: L. c. III. 182–213. Nösgen: Der Kirchl. Standpunkt des Heg. in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." 1877 (p. 193–233). Against Hilgenfeld. Zahn: Der griech. Irenaeus und der ganze Hegesippus im 16ten Jahr., ibid. p. 288–291. H. Dannreuther: Du Témoignage d’Hégésippe sur l’église chrétienne au deux premiers siècles.  Nancy 1878. See also his art. in Lichtenberger’s "Encycl." vi. 126–129. Friedr. Vogel: De Hegesippo, qui dicitur, Josephi interprete. Erlangen 1881. W. Milligan: Hegesippus, in Smith and Wace II. (1880) 875–878. C. Weizsäcker: Hegesippus, in Herzog2  V. 695–700. Caspari: Quellen, etc., III. 345–348.

The orthodoxy of Hegesippus has been denied by the Tübingen critics, Baur, Schwegler, and, more moderately by Hilgenfeld, but defended by Dorner, Donaldson, Nösgen, Weizsäcker, Caspari and Milligan.

Contemporary with the Apologists, though not of their class, were Hegesippus (d. about 180), and Dionysius of Corinth (about 170).

Hegesippus was an orthodox Jewish Christian1385 and lived during the reigns of Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius. He travelled extensively through Syria, Greece, and Italy, and was in Rome during the episcopate of Anicetus. He collected "Memorials"1386 of the apostolic and post-apostolic churches. He used written sources and oral traditions. Unfortunately this work which still existed in the sixteenth century,1387 is lost, but may yet be recovered. It is usually regarded as a sort of church history, the first written after the Acts of St. Luke. This would make Hegesippus rather than Eusebius "the father of church history." But it seems to have been only a collection of reminiscences of travel without regard to chronological order (else the account of the martyrdom of James would have been put in the first instead of the fifth book.)  He was an antiquarian rather than a historian. His chief object was to prove the purity and catholicity of the church against the Gnostic heretics and sects.

Eusebius has preserved his reports on the martyrdom of St. James the Just, Simeon of Jerusalem, Domitian’s inquiry for the descendants of David and the relatives of Jesus, the rise of heresies, the episcopal succession, and the preservation of the orthodox doctrine in Corinth and Rome. These scraps of history command attention for their antiquity; but they must be received with critical caution. They reveal a strongly Jewish type of piety, like that of James, but by no means Judaizing heresy. He was not an Ebionite, nor even a Nazarene, but decidedly catholic. There is no trace of his insisting on circumcision or the observance of the law as necessary to salvation. His use of "the Gospel according to the Hebrews" implies no heretical bias. He derived all the heresies and schisms from Judaism. He laid great stress on the regular apostolic succession of bishops. In ever city he set himself to inquire for two things: purity of doctrine and the unbroken succession of teachers from the times of the apostles. The former depended in his view on the latter. The result of his investigation was satisfactory in both respects. He found in every apostolic church the faith maintained. "The church of Corinth," he says, "continued in the true faith, until Primus was bishop there [the predecessor of Dionysius], with whom I had familiar intercourse, as I passed many days at Corinth, when I was about sailing to Rome, during which time we were mutually refreshed in the true doctrine. After coming to Rome, I stayed with Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. After Anicetus, Soter succeeded, and after him Eleutherus. In every succession, however, and in every city, the doctrine prevails according to what is announced by the law and the prophets and the Lord."1388  He gives an account of the heretical corruption which proceeded from the unbelieving Jews, from Thebuthis and Simon Magus and Cleobius and Dositheus, and other unknown or forgotten names, but "while the sacred choir of the apostles still lived, the church was undefiled and pure, like a virgin, until the age of Trajan, when those impious errors which had so long crept in darkness ventured forth without shame into open daylight."1389  He felt perfectly at home in the Catholic church of his day which had descended from, or rather never yet ascended the lofty mountain-height of apostolic knowledge and freedom. And as Hegesippus was satisfied with the orthodoxy of the Western churches, so Eusebius was satisfied with the orthodoxy of Hegesippus, and nowhere intimates a doubt.

§ 181. Dionysius of Corinth.

Euseb.: H. E. II. 25; III. 4; IV. 21, 23. Hieron.: De Vir. ill. 27.

Routh: Rel. S. I. 177–184 (the fragments), and 185–201 (the annotations). Includes Pinytus Cretensis and his Ep. ad Dion. (Eus. IV. 23).

Donaldson III. 214–220. Salmon in Smith and Wace II. 848 sq.

Dionysius was bishop of Corinth (probably the successor of Primus) in the third quarter of the second century, till about A.D. 170. He was a famous person in his day, distinguished for zeal, moderation, and a catholic and peaceful spirit. He wrote a number of pastoral letters to the congregations of Lacedaemon, Athens, Nicomedia, Rome, Gortyna in Crete, and other cities. One is addressed to Chrysophora, "a most faithful sister." They are all lost, with the exception of a summary of their contents given by Eusebius, and four fragments of the letter to Soter and the Roman church. They would no doubt shed much light on the spiritual life of the church. Eusebius says of him that he "imparted freely not only to his own people, but to others abroad also, the blessings of his divine (or inspired) industry."1390  His letters were read in the churches.

Such active correspondence promoted catholic unity and gave strength and comfort in persecution from without and heretical corruption within. The bishop is usually mentioned with honor, but the letters are addressed to the church; and even the Roman bishop Soter, like his predecessor Clement, addressed his own letter in the name of the Roman church to the church of Corinth. Dionysius writes to the Roman Christians: "To-day we have passed the Lord’s holy day, in which we have read your epistle.1391  In reading it we shall always have our minds stored with admonition, as we shall also from that written to us before by Clement." He speaks very highly of the liberality of the church of Rome in aiding foreign brethren condemned to the mines, and sending contributions to every city.

Dionysius is honored as a martyr in the Greek, as a confessor in the Latin church.

§ 182. Irenaeus

Editions of his Works.

S. Irenaei Episcopi Lugdun. Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. A. Stieren. Lips. 1853, 2 vols. The second volume contains the Prolegomena of older editors, and the disputations of Maffei and Pfaff on the Fragments of Irenaeus. It really supersedes all older ed., but not the later one of Harvey.

S. Irenaei libros quinque adversus Haereses edidit W. Wigan Harvey. Cambr. 1857, in 2 vols. Based upon a new and careful collation of the Cod. Claromontanus and Arundel, and embodying the original Greek portions preserved in the Philosoph. of Hippolytus, the newly discovered Syriac and Armenian fragments, and learned Prolegomena.

Older editions by Erasmus, Basel 1526 (from three Latin MSS. since lost, repeated 1528, 1534); Gallasius, Gen. 1570 (with the use of the Gr. text in Epiphan.); Grynaeus, Bas. 1571 (worthless); Fevardentius (Feuardent), Paris 1575, improved ed. Col. 1596, and often; Grabe, Oxf. 1702; and above all Massuet, Par. 1710, Ven. 1734, 2 vols. fol., and again in Migne’s "Patrol. Graeco-Lat." , Tom. VII. Par. 1857 (the Bened. ed., the best of the older, based on three MSS., with ample Proleg. and 3 Dissertations).

English translation by A. Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, 2 vols., in the "Ante-Nicene Library," Edinb. 1868. Another by John Keble, ed. by Dr. Pusey, for the Oxford "Library of the Fathers," 1872.

Biographical and Critical.

Ren. Massuet (R.C.): Dissertationes in Irenaei libros (de hereticis, de Irenaei vita, gestis et scriptis, de Ir. doctrina) prefixed to his edition of the Opera, and reprinted in Stieren and Migne. Also the Proleg. of Harvey, on Gnosticism, and the Life and Writings of Iren.

H. Dodwell: Dissert. in Iren. Oxon. 1689.

Tillemont: Mêmoirs, etc. III. 77–99.

Deyling: Irenaeus, evangelicae veritatis confessor ac testis. Lips. 1721. (Against Massuet.)

Stieren: Art. Irenaeus in "Ersch and Gruber’s Encykl." IInd sect. Vol. xxiii. 357–386.

J. Beaven: Life and Writings of Irenaeus. Lond. 1841.

J. M. Prat (R.C.): Histoire de St. Irenée. Lyon and Paris 1843.

L. Duncker: Des heil. Irenaeus Christologie. Gött. 1843. Very, valuable.

K. Graul: Die Christliche Kirche an der Schwelle des Irenaeischen Zeitalters. Leipz. 1860. (168 pages.)  Introduction to a biography which never appeared.

Ch. E. Freppel (bishop of Angers, since 1869): Saint Irénée et l’éloquence chrétienne dans la Gaule aux deux premiers siècles. Par. 1861.

G. Schneemann: Sancti Irenaei de ecclesiae Romanae principatu testimonium. Freib. i. Br. 1870.

Böhringer: Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, vol. II. new ed. 1873.

Heinrich Ziegler: Irenaeus der Bischof von Lyon. Berlin 1871. (320 p.)

R. A. Lipsius: Die Zeit des lrenaeus von Lyon und die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, in Sybel’s "Histor. Zeitschrift." München 1872, p. 241 sqq. See his later art. below.

A. Guilloud: St. Irenée et son temps. Lyon 1876.

Bp. Lightfoot: The Churches of Gaul, in the "Contemporary Review" for Aug. 1876.

C. J. H. Ropes: Irenaeus of Lyons, in the Andover "Bibliotheca Sacra" for April 1877, p. 284–334. A learned discussion of the nationality of Irenaeus (against Harvey).

J. Quarry: Irenaeus; his testimony to early Conceptions of Christianity.  In the "British Quarterly Review" for 1879, July and Oct.

Renan: Marc Aurèle. Paris 1882, p. 336–344.

TH. Zahn: art. Iren. in HerZog2, VII. 129–140 (abridged in Schaff-Herzog), chiefly chronological; and R. A. Lipsius in Smith and Wace III. 253–279. Both these articles are very important; that of Lipsius is fuller.

Comp. also the Ch. Hist. of Neander, and Baur, and the Patrol. of Möhler, and Alzog.

Special doctrines and relations of Irenaeus have been discussed by Baur, Dorner, Thiersch, Höfling, Hopfenmiller, Körber, Ritschl, Kirchner, Zahn, Harnack, Leimbach, Reville, Hackenschmidt. See the Lit. in Zahn’s art. in Herzog2.

A full and satisfactory monograph of Irenaeus and his age is still a desideratum.

Almost simultaneously with the apology against false religions without arose the polemic literature against the heresies, or various forms of pseudo-Christianity, especially the Gnostic; and upon this was formed the dogmatic theology of the church. At the head of the old catholic controversialists stand Irenaeus and his disciple Hippolytus, both of Greek education, but both belonging, in their ecclesiastical relations and labors, to the West.

Asia Minor, the scene of the last labors of St. John, produced a luminous succession of divines and confessors who in the first three quarters of the second century reflected the light of the setting sun of the apostolic age, and may be called the pupils of St. John. Among them were Polycarp of Smyrna, Papias of Hierapolis, Apolinarius of Hierapolis, Melito of Sardis, and others less known but honorably mentioned in the letter of Polycrates of Ephesus to bishop Victor of Rome (A. D. 190).

The last and greatest representative of this school is Irenaeus, the first among the fathers properly so called, and one of the chief architects of the Catholic system of doctrine.

I. Life and Character. Little is known of Irenaeus except what we may infer from his writings. He sprang from Asia Minor, probably from Smyrna, where he spent his youth.1392  He was born between A.D. 115 and 125..1393  He enjoyed the instruction of the venerable Polycarp of Smyrna, the pupil of John, and of other "Elders," who were mediate or immediate disciples of the apostles. The spirit of his preceptor passed over to him. "What I heard from him" says he, "that wrote I not on paper, but in my heart, and by the grace of God I constantly bring it afresh to mind." Perhaps he also accompanied Polycarp on his journey to Rome in connexion with the Easter controversy (154). He went as a missionary to Southern Gaul which seems to have derived her Christianity from Asia Minor. During the persecution in Lugdunum and Vienne under Marcus Aurelius (177), he was a presbyter there and witnessed the horrible cruelties which the infuriated heathen populace practiced upon his brethren.1394  The aged and venerable bishop, Pothinus, fell a victim, and the presbyter took the post of danger, but was spared for important work.

He was sent by the Gallican confessors to the Roman bishop Eleutherus (who ruled A.D. 177–190), as a mediator in the Montanistic disputes.1395

After the martyrdom of Pothinus he was elected bishop of Lyons (178), and labored there with zeal and success, by tongue and pen, for the restoration of the heavily visited church, for the spread of Christianity in Gaul, and for the defence and development of its doctrines. He thus combined a vast missionary and literary activity. If we are to trust the account of Gregory of Tours, he converted almost the whole population of Lyons and sent notable missionaries to other parts of pagan France.

After the year 190 we lose sight of Irenaeus. Jerome speaks of him as having flourished in the reign of Commodus, i.e., between 180 and 192. He is reported by later tradition (since the fourth or fifth century) to have died a martyr in the persecution under Septimus Severus, A.D. 202, but the silence of Tertullian, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius makes this point extremely doubtful. He was buried under the altar of the church of St. John in Lyons.1396  This city became again famous in church history in the twelfth century as the birthplace of the Waldensian martyr church, the Pauperes de Lugduno.

II. His Character and Position. Irenaeus is the leading representative of catholic Christianity in the last quarter of the second century, the champion of orthodoxy against Gnostic heresy, and the mediator between the Eastern and Western churches. He united a learned Greek education and philosophical penetration with practical wisdom and moderation. He is neither very original nor brilliant, but eminently sound and judicious. His individuality is not strongly marked, but almost lost in his catholicity. He modestly disclaims elegance and eloquence, and says that he had to struggle in his daily administrations with the barbarous Celtic dialect of Southern Gaul; but he nevertheless handles the Greek with great skill on the most abstruse subjects.1397  He is familiar with Greek poets (Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles) and philosophers (Thales, Pythagoras, Plato), whom he occasionally cites. He is perfectly at home in the Greek Bible and in the early Christian writers, as Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius, Hermas, Justin M., and Tatian.1398  His position gives him additional weight, for he is linked by two long lives, that of his teacher and grand-teacher, to the fountain head of Christianity. We plainly trace in him the influence of the spirit of Polycarp and John. "The true way to God," says he, in opposition to the false Gnosis, "is love. It is better to be willing to know nothing but Jesus Christ the crucified, than to fall into ungodliness through over-curious questions and paltry subtleties." We may trace in him also the strong influence of the anthropology and soteriology of Paul. But he makes more account than either John or Paul of the outward visible church, the episcopal succession, and the sacraments; and his whole conception of Christianity is predominantly legalistic. Herein we see the catholic churchliness which so strongly set in during the second century.

Irenaeus is an enemy of all error and schism, and, on the whole, the most orthodox of the ante-Nicene fathers.1399  We must, however, except his eschatology. Here, with Papias and most of his contemporaries, be maintains the pre-millennarian views which were subsequently abandoned as Jewish dreams by the catholic church. While laboring hard for the spread and defense of the church on earth, he is still "gazing up into heaven," like the men of Galilee, anxiously waiting for the return of the Lord and the establishment of his kingdom. He is also strangely mistaken about the age of Jesus from a false inference of the question of the Jews, John 8:57.

Irenaeus is the first among patristic writers who makes full use of the New Testament. The Apostolic Fathers reëcho the oral traditions; the Apologists are content with quoting the Old Testament prophets and the Lord’s own words in the Gospels as proof of divine revelation; but Irenaeus showed the unity of the Old and New Testaments in opposition to the Gnostic separation, and made use of the four Gospels and nearly all Epistles in opposition to the mutilated canon of Marcion.1400

With all his zeal for pure and sound doctrine, Irenaeus was liberal towards subordinate differences, and remonstrated with the bishop of Rome for his unapostolic efforts to force an outward uniformity in respect to the time and manner of celebrating Easter.1401  We may almost call him a forerunner of Gallicanism in its protest against ultramontane despotism. "The apostles have ordained," says he in the third fragment, which appears to refer to that controversy, "that we make conscience with no one of food and drink, or of particular feasts, new moons, and sabbaths. Whence, then, controversies; whence schisms?  We keep feasts but with the leaven of wickedness and deceit, rending asunder the church of God, and we observe the outward, to the neglect of the higher, faith and love." He showed the same moderation in the Montanistic troubles. He was true to his name Peaceful ( Gr. ) and to his spiritual ancestry.

III. His Writings. (1.) The most important work of Irenaeus is his Refutation of Gnosticism, in five books.1402  It was composed during the pontificate of Eleutherus, that is between the years 177 and 190.1403  It is at once the polemic theological masterpiece of the ante-Nicene age, and the richest mine of information respecting Gnosticism and the church doctrine of that age. It contains a complete system of Christian divinity, but enveloped in polemical smoke, which makes it very difficult and tedious reading. The work was written at the request of a friend who wished to be informed of the Valentinian heresy and to be furnished with arguments against it. Valentinus and Marcion had taught in Rome about A.D. 140, and their doctrines had spread to the south of France. The first book contains a minute exposition of the gorgeous speculations of Valentinus and a general view of the other Gnostic sects; the second an exposure of the unreasonableness and contradictions of these heresies; especially the notions of the Demiurge as distinct from the Creator, of the Aeons, the Pleroma and Kenoma, the emanations, the fall of Achamoth, the formation of the lower world of matter, the sufferings of the Sophia, the difference between the three classes of men, the Somatici, Psychici, and Pneumatici. The last three books refute Gnosticism from the Holy Scripture and Christian tradition which teach the same thing; for the same gospel which was first orally preached and transmitted was subsequently committed to writing and faithfully preserved in all the apostolic churches through the regular succession of the bishops and elders; and this apostolic tradition insures at the same time the correct interpretation of Scripture against heretical perversion. To the ever-shifting and contradictory opinions of the heretics Irenaeus opposes the unchanging faith of the catholic church which is based on the Scriptures and tradition, and compacted together by the episcopal organization. It is the same argument which Bellarmin, Bossuet, and Möhler use against divided and distracted Protestantism, but Protestantism differs as much from old Gnosticism as the New Testament from the apocryphal Gospels, and as sound, sober, practical sense differs from mystical and transcendental nonsense. The fifth book dwells on the resurrection of the body and the millennial kingdom. Irenaeus derived his information from the writings of Valentinus and Marcion and their disciples, and from Justin Martyr’s Syntagma.1404

The interpretation of Scripture is generally sound and sober, and contrasts favorably with the fantastic distortions of the Gnostics. He had a glimpse of a theory of inspiration which does justice to the human factor. He attributes the irregularities of Paul’s style to his rapidity of discourse and the impetus of the Spirit which is in him.1405

(2.) The Epistle to Florinus, of which Eusebius has preserved an interesting and important fragment, treated On the Unity of God, and the Origin of Evil.1406 It was written probably after the work against heresies, and as late as 190.1407  Florinus was an older friend and fellow-student of lrenaeus and for some time presbyter in the church of Rome, but was deposed on account of his apostasy to the Gnostic heresy. Irenaeus reminded him very touchingly of their common studies at the feet of the patriarchal Polycarp, when he held some position at the royal court (probably during Hadrian’s sojourn at Smyrna), and tried to bring him back to the faith of his youth, but we do not know with what effect.

(3.) On the Ogdoad1408 against the Valentinian system of Aeons, in which the number eight figures prominently with a mystic meaning. Eusebius says that it was written on account of Florinus, and that he found in it "a most delightful remark," as follows: "I adjure thee, whoever thou art, that transcribest this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by his gracious appearance, when he shall come to judge the quick and the dead, to compare what thou hast copied, and to correct it by this original manuscript, from which thou hast carefully transcribed. And that thou also copy this adjuration, and insert it in the copy." The carelessness of transcribers in those days is the chief cause of the variations in the text of the Greek Testament which abounded already in the second century. Irenaeus himself mentions a remarkable difference of reading in the mystic number of Antichrist (666 and 616), on which the historic interpretation of the book depends (Rev. 13:18).

(4.) A book On Schism, addressed to Blastus who was the head of the Roman Montanists and also a Quartodeciman.1409  It referred probably to the Montanist troubles in a conciliatory spirit.

(5.) Eusebius mentions1410 several. other treatises which are entirely lost, as Against the Greeks (or On Knowledge), On Apostolic Preaching, a Book on Various Disputes,1411 and on the Wisdom of Solomon. In the Syriac fragments some other lost works are mentioned.

(6.) Irenaeus is probably the author of that touching account of the persecution of 177, which the churches of Lyons and Vienne sent to the churches in Asia Minor and Phrygia, and which Eusebius has in great part preserved. He was an eyewitness of the cruel scene, yet his name is not mentioned, which would well agree with his modesty; the document breathes his mild Christian spirit, reveals his aversion to Gnosticism, his indulgence for Montanism, his expectation of the near approach of Antichrist. It is certainly one of the purest and most precious remains of ante-Nicene literature and fully equal, yea superior to the "Martyrdom of Polycarp," because free from superstitious relic-worship.1412

(7.) Finally, we must mention four more Greek fragments of Irenaeus, which Pfaff discovered at Turin in 1715, and first published. Their genuineness has been called in question by some Roman divines, chiefly for doctrinal reasons.1413  The first treats of the true knowledge,1414 which consists not in the solution of subtle questions, but in divine wisdom and the imitation of Christ; the second is on the eucharist;1415 the third, on the duty of toleration in subordinate points of difference, with reference to the Paschal controversies;1416 the fourth, on the object of the incarnation, which is stated to be the purging away of sin and the annihilation of all evil.1417

§ 183. Hippolytus.

(I.) S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Opera, Graece et Lat. ed. J. Afabricius, Hamb. 1716–18, 2 vols. fol.; ed. Gallandi in "Biblioth. Patrum," Ven. 1760, Vol. II.; Migne: Patr. Gr., vol. x. Col. 583–982. P. Ant. de Lagarde: Hippolyti Romani quae feruntur omnia Graece, Lips. et Lond. 1858 (216 pages). Lagarde has also published some Syriac and Arabic fragments, of Hippol., in his Analecta Syriaca (p. 79–91) and Appendix, Leipz. and Lond. 1858.

Patristic notices of Hippolytus. Euseb.: H. E. VI. 20, 22; Prudentius in the 11th of his Martyr Hymns (pervi; stefavnwn) Hieron De Vir. ill. c. 61; Photius, Cod. 48 and 121. Epiphanius barely mentions Hippol. (Haer. 31). Theodoret quotes several passages and calls him "holy Hippol. bishop and martyr" (Haer. Fab. III. 1 and Dial. I., II. and III.). See Fabricius, Hippol. I. VIII.-XX.

S. Hippolyti EpIs. et Mart. Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt, ed. Duncker et Schneidewin. Gött. 1859. The first ed. appeared under the name of Origen:  jWrigevnou" filosofuvmena h} kata; pasw'n aiJrevewn e[legco".  Origenis Philosophumena, sive omnium haeresium refutatio. E codice Parisino ninc primum ed. Emmanuel Miller. Oxon. (Clarendon Press), 1851. Another ed. by Abbe Cruice, Par. 1860. An English translation by J. H. Macmahon, in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library, " Edinb. 1868.

A MS. of this important work from the 14th century was discovered at, Mt. Athos in Greece in 1842, by a learned Greek, Minoïdes Mynas (who had been sent by M. Villemain, minister of public instruction under Louis Philippe, to Greece in search of MSS.), and deposited in the national library at Paris. The first book had been long known among the works of Origen, but had justly been already denied to him by Huet and De la Rue; the second and third, and beginning of the fourth, are still wanting; the tenth lacks the conclusion. This work is now universally ascribed to Hippolytus.

Canones S. Hippolyti Arabice e codicibus Romanis cum versione Latina, ed. D. B. de Haneberg. Monach. 1870. The canons are very rigoristic, but "certain evidence as to their authorship is wanting."

O. Bardenhewer: Des heil. Hippolyt von Rom. Commentar zum B. Daniel. Freib. i. B. 1877,

(II.) E. F. Kimmel: De Hippolyti vita et scriptis. Jen. 1839. Möhler: Patrol. p. 584 sqq. Both are confined to the older confused sources of information.

Since the discovery of the Philosophumena the following books and tracts on Hippolytus have appeared, which present him under a new light.

Bunsen: Hippolytus and his Age. Lond. 1852. 4 vols. (German in 2 vols. Leipz. 1855); 2d ed. with much irrelevant and heterogeneous matter (under the title: Christianity and Mankind). Lond. 1854. 7 vols.

Jacobi in the "Deutsche Zeitschrift," Berl. 1851 and ’53; and Art." Hippolytus" in Herzog’s Encykl. VI. 131 sqq. (1856), and in Herzog2 VI. 139–149.

Baur, in the "Theol. Jahrb." Tüb. 1853. Volkmar and Ritschl, ibid. 1854,

Gieseler, in the "Stud. u. Krit." for 1853.

Döllinger (R. Cath., but since 1870 an Old Cath.): Hippolytus und Callistus, oder die röm. Kirche in der ersten Haelfte des dritten Jahrh. Regensburg 1853. English translation by Alfred Plummer, Edinb. 1876 (360 pages). The most learned book on the subject. An apology for Callistus and the Roman see, against Hippolytus the supposed first anti-Pope.

Chr. Wordsworth (Anglican): St. Hippolytus and the Church of Rome in the earlier part of the third century. London 1853. Second and greatly enlarged edition, 1880. With the Greek text and an English version of the 9th and 10th books. The counter-part of Döllinger. An apology for Hippolytus against Callistus and the papacy.

L’abbé Cruice (chanoine hon. de Paris): Etudes sur de nouv. doc. hist. des Philosophumena. Paris 1853 (380 p.)

W. Elfe Tayler: Hippol. and the Christ. Ch. of the third century. Lond. 1853. (245 p.)

Le Normant: Controverse sur les Philos. d’ Orig. Paris 1853. In "Le Correspondant," Tom. 31 p. 509–550. For Origen as author.

G. Volkmar: Hippolytus und die röm. Zeitgenossen. Zürich 1855. (174 pages.)

Caspari: Quellen zur Gesch. des Taufsymbols und der Glaubensregel. Christiania, vol. III. 349 sqq. and 374–409. On the writings of H.

Lipsius: Quellen der ältesten Ketzergesch. Leipzig 1875.

De Smedt (R.C.): De Auctore Philosophumenon. In "Dissertationes Selectae." Ghent, 1876.

G. Salmon: Hipp. Romanus in Smith and Wace III. 85–105 (very good.)

I. Life Of Hippolytus. This famous person has lived three lives, a real one in the third century as an opponent of the popes of his day, a fictitious one in the middle ages as a canonized saint, and a literary one in the nineteenth century after the discovery of his long lost works against heresies. He was undoubtedly one of the most learned and eminent scholars and theologians of his time. The Roman church placed him in the number of her saints and martyrs, little suspecting that he would come forward in the nineteenth century as an accuser against her. But the statements of the ancients respecting him are very obscure and confused. Certain it is, that he received a thorough Grecian education, and, as he himself says, in a fragment preserved by Photius, heard the discourses of Irenaeus (in Lyons or in Rome). His public life falls in the end of the second century and the first three decennaries of the third (about 198 to 236), and he belongs to the western church, though he may have been, like Irenaeus, of Oriental extraction. At all events he wrote all his books in Greek.1418

Eusebius is the first who mentions him, and he calls him indefinitely, bishop, and a contemporary of Origen and Beryl of Bostra; he evidently did not know where he was bishop, but he gives a list of his works which he saw (probably in the library of Caesarea). Jerome gives a more complete list of his writings, but no more definite information as to his see, although he was well acquainted with Rome and Pope Damasus. He calls him martyr, and couples him with the Roman senator Apollonius. An old catalogue of the popes, the Catalogus Liberianus (about A.D. 354), states that a "presbyter" Hippolytus was banished, together with the Roman bishop Pontianus, about 235, to the unhealthy island of Sardinia, and that the bodies of both were deposited on the same day (Aug. 13), Pontianus in the cemetery of Callistus, Hippolytus on the Via Tiburtina (where his statue was discovered in 1551). The translation of Pontianus was effected by Pope Fabianus about 236 or 237. From this statement we would infer that Hippolytus died in the mines of Sardinia and was thus counted a martyr, like all those confessors who died in prison. He may, however, have returned and suffered martyrdom elsewhere. The next account we have is from the Spanish poet Prudentius who wrote in the beginning of the fifth century. He represents Hippolytus in poetic description as a Roman presbyter (therein agreeing with the Liberian Catalogue) who belonged to the Novatian party1419(which, however, arose several years after the death of Hippolytus), but in the prospect of death regretted the schism exhorted his numerous followers to return into the bosom of the catholic church, and then, in bitter allusion to his name and to the mythical Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, was bound by the feet to a team of wild horses and dragged to death over stock and stone. He puts into his mouth  his last words: "These steeds drag my limbs after them; drag Thou, O Christ, my soul to Thyself."1420  He places the scene of his martyrdom at Ostia or Portus where the Prefect of Rome happened to be at that time who condemned him for his Christian profession. Prudentius also saw the subterranean grave-chapel in Rome and a picture which represented his martyrdom (perhaps intended originally for the mythological Hippolytus).1421  But as no such church is found in the early lists of Roman churches, it may have been the church of St. Lawrence, the famous gridiron-martyr, which adjoined the tomb of Hippolytus. Notwithstanding the chronological error about the Novatian schism and the extreme improbability of such a horrible death under Roman laws and customs, there is an important element of truth in this legend, namely the schismatic position of Hippolytus which suits the Philosophumena, perhaps also his connection with Portus. The later tradition of the catholic church (from the middle of the seventh century) makes him bishop of Portus Romanus (now Porto) which lies at the Northern mouth of the Tiber, opposite Ostia, about fifteen miles from Rome.1422  The Greek writers, not strictly distinguishing the city from the surrounding country, call him usually bishop of Rome.1423

These are the vague and conflicting traditions, amounting to this that Hippolytus was an eminent presbyter or bishop in Rome or the vicinity, in the early part of the third century, that he wrote many learned works and died a martyr in Sardinia or Ostia. So the matter stood when a discovery in the sixteenth century shed new light on this mysterious person.

In the year 1551, a much mutilated marble statue, now in the Lateran Museum, was exhumed at Rome near the basilica of St. Lawrence on the Via Tiburtina (the road to Tivoli). This statue is not mentioned indeed by Prudentius, and was perhaps originally designed for an entirely different purpose, possibly for a Roman senator; but it is at all events very ancient, probably from the middle of the third century.1424  It represents a venerable man clothed with the Greek pallium and Roman toga, seated in a bishop’s chair. On the back of the cathedra are engraved in uncial letters the paschal cycle, or easter-table of Hippolytus for seven series of sixteen years, beginning with the first year of Alexander Severus (222), and a list of writings, presumably written by the person whom the statue represents. Among these writings is named a work On the All, which is mentioned in the tenth book of the Philosophumena as a product of the writer.1425  This furnishes the key to the authorship of that important work.

Much more important is the recent discovery and publication (in 1851) of one of his works themselves, and that no doubt the most valuable of them all, viz. the Philosophumena, or Refutation of all Heresies. It is now almost universally acknowledged that this work comes not from Origen, who never was a bishop, nor from the antimontanistic and antichiliastic presbyter Caius, but from Hippolytus; because, among other reasons, the author, in accordance with the Hippolytus-statue, himself refers to a work On the All, as his own, and because Hippolytus is declared by the fathers to have written a work Adversus omnes Haereses.1426  The entire matter of the work, too, agrees with the scattered statements of antiquity respecting his ecclesiastical position; and at the same time places that position in a much clearer light, and gives us a better understanding of those statements.1427 The author of the Philosophumena appears as one of the most prominent of the clergy in or near Rome in the beginning of the third century; probably a bishop, since he reckons himself among the successors of the apostles and the guardians of the doctrine of the church. He took an active part in all the doctrinal and ritual controversies of his time, but severely opposed the Roman bishops Zephyrinus (202–218) and Callistus (218–223), on account of their Patripassian leanings, and their loose penitential discipline. The latter especially, who had given public offence by his former mode of life, he attacked without mercy and not without passion. He was, therefore, if not exactly a schismatical counter-pope (as Döllinger supposes), yet the head of a disaffected and schismatic party, orthodox in doctrine, rigoristic in discipline, and thus very nearly allied to the Montanists before him, and to the later schism of Novatian. It is for this reason the more remarkable, that we have no account respecting the subsequent course of this movement, except the later unreliable tradition, that Hippolytus finally returned into the bosom of the catholic church, and expiated his schism by martyrdom, either in the mines of Sardinia or near Rome (A. D. 235, or rather 236, under the persecuting emperor Maximinus the Thracian).

II. His Writings. Hippolytus was the most learned divine and the most voluminous writer of the Roman church in the third century; in fact the first great scholar of that church, though like his teacher, Irenaeus, he used the Greek language exclusively. This fact, together with his polemic attitude to the Roman bishops of his day, accounts for the early disappearance of his works from the remembrance of that church. He is not so much an original, productive author, as a learned and skilful compiler. In the philosophical parts of his Philosophumena he borrows largely from Sextus Empiricus, word for word, without acknowledgment; and in the theological part from Irenaeus. In doctrine he agrees, for the most part, with Irenaeus, even to his chiliasm, but is not his equal in discernment, depth, and moderation. He repudiates philosophy, almost with Tertullian’s vehemence, as the source of all heresies; yet he employs it to establish his own views. On the subject of the trinity he assails Monarchianism, and advocates the hypostasian theory with a zeal which brought down upon him the charge of ditheism. His disciplinary principles are rigoristic and ascetic. In this respect also he is akin to Tertullian, though he places the Montanists, like the Quartodecimanians, but with only a brief notice, among the heretics. His style is vigorous, but careless and turgid. Caspari calls Hippolytus "the Roman Origen." This is true as regards learning and independence, but Origen had more genius and moderation.

The principal work of Hippolytus is the Philosophumena or Refutation of all Heresies. It is, next to the treatise of Irenaeus, the most instructive and important polemical production of the ante-Nicene church, and sheds much new light, not only upon the ancient heresies, and the development of the church doctrine, but also upon the history of philosophy and the condition of the Roman church in the beginning of the third century. It furthermore affords valuable testimony to the genuineness of the Gospel of John, both from the mouth of the author himself, and through his quotations from the much earlier Gnostic Basilides, who was a later contemporary of John (about A.D. 125). The composition falls some years after the death of Callistus, between the years 223 and 235. The first of the ten books gives an outline of the heathen philosophies which he regards as the sources of all heresies; hence the title Philosophumena which answers the first four books, but not the last six. It is not in the Athos-MS., but was formerly known and incorporated in the works of Origen. The second and third books, which are wanting, treated probably of the heathen mysteries, and mathematical and astrological theories. The fourth is occupied likewise with the heathen astrology and magic, which must have exercised great influence, particularly in Rome. In the fifth book the author comes to his proper theme, the refutation of all the heresies from the times of the apostles to his own. He takes up thirty-two in all, most of which, however, are merely different branches of Gnosticism and Ebionism. He simply states the heretical opinions from lost writings, without introducing his own reflection, and refers them to the Greek philosophy, mysticism, and magic, thinking them sufficiently refuted by being traced to those heathen sources. The ninth book, in refuting the doctrine of the Noëtians and Callistians, makes remarkable disclosures of events in the Roman church. He represents Pope Zephyrinus as a weak and ignorant man who gave aid and comfort to the Patripassian heresy, and his successor Callistus, as a shrewd and cunning manager who was once a slave, then a dishonest banker, and became a bankrupt and convict, but worked himself into the good graces of Zephyrinus and after his death obtained the object of his ambition, the papal chair, taught heresy and ruined the discipline by extreme leniency to offenders. Here the author shows himself a violent partizan, and must be used with caution.

The tenth book, made use of by Theodoret, contains a brief recapitulation and the author’s own confession of faith, as a positive refutation of the heresies. The following is the most important part relating to Christ:

"This Word (Logos) the Father sent forth in these last days no longer to speak by a prophet, nor willing that He should be only guessed at from obscure preaching, but bidding Him be manifested face to face, in order that the world should reverence Him when it beheld Him, not giving His commands in the person of a prophet, nor alarming the soul by an angel, but Himself present who had spoken.

"Him we know to have received a body from the Virgin and to have refashioned the old man by a new creation, and to have passed in His life through every age, in order that He might be a law to every age, and by His presence exhibit His own humanity as a pattern to all men,1428 and thus convince man that God made nothing evil, and that man possesses free will, having in himself the power of volition or non-volition, and being able to do both. Him we know to have been a man of the same nature with ourselves.

"For, if He were not of the same nature, He would in vain exhort us to imitate our Master. For if that man was of another nature, why does He enjoin the same duties on me who am weak?  And how can He be good and just?  But that He might be shown to be the same as we, He underwent toil and consented to suffer hunger and thirst, and rested in sleep, and did not refuse His passion, and became obedient unto death, and manifested His resurrection, having consecrated in all these things His own humanity, as first fruits, in order that thou when suffering mayest not despair, acknowledging thyself a man of like nature and waiting for the appearance of what thou gavest to Him.1429

"Such is the true doctrine concerning the Deity, O ye Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldaeans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Africans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts, and ye warlike Latins, and all ye inhabitants of Europe, Asia, and Africa, whom I exhort, being a disciple of the man-loving Word and myself a lover of men ( ). Come ye and learn from us, who is the true God, and what is His well-ordered workmanship, not heeding the sophistry of artificial speeches, nor the vain professions of plagiarist heretics, but the grave simplicity of unadorned truth. By this knowledge ye will escape the coming curse of the judgment of fire, and the dark rayless aspect of Tartarus, never illuminated by the voice of the Word ....

Therefore, O men, persist not in your enmity, nor hesitate to retrace your steps. For Christ is the God who is over all ( ,comp. Rom. 9:5), who commanded men to wash away sin [in baptism],1430 regenerating the old man, having called him His image from the beginning, showing by a figure His love to thee. If thou obeyest His holy commandment and becomest an imitator in goodness of Him who is good, thou wilt become like Him, being honored by Him. For God has a need and craving for thee, having made thee divine for His glory."

Hippolytus wrote a large number of other works, exegetical, chronological, polemical, and homiletical, all in Greek, which are mostly lost, although considerable fragments remain. He prepared the first continuous and detailed commentaries on several books of the Scriptures, as the Hexaëmeron (used by Ambrose), on Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the larger prophets (especially Daniel), Zechariah, also on Matthew, Luke, and the Apocalypse. He pursued in exegesis the allegorical method, like Origen, which suited the taste of his age.

Among, his polemical works was one Against Thirty-two Heresies, different from the Philosophumena, and described by Photius as a "little book,"1431 and as a synopsis of lectures which Hippolytus heard from Irenaeus. It must have been written in his early youth. It began with the heresy of Dositheus and ended with that of Noëtus.1432  His treatise Against Noëtus which is still preserved, presupposes previous sections, and formed probably the concluding part of that synopsis.1433  If not, it must have been the conclusion of a special work against the Monarchian heretics,1434 but no such work is mentioned.

The book On the Universe1435 was directed against Platonism. It made all things consist of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Man is formed of all four elements, his soul, of air. But the most important part of this book is a description of Hades, as an abode under ground where the souls of the departed are detained until the day of judgment: the righteous in a place of light and happiness called Abraham’s Bosom; the wicked in a place of darkness and misery; the two regions being separated by a great gulf. The entrance is guarded by an archangel. On the judgment day the bodies of the righteous will rise renewed and glorified, the bodies of the wicked with all the diseases of their earthly life for everlasting punishment. This description agrees substantially with the eschatology of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.1436

The anonymous work called The Little Labyrinth,1437 mentioned by Eusebius and Theodoret as directed against the rationalistic heresy of Artemon, is ascribed by some to Hippolytus, by others to Caius. But The Labyrinth mentioned by Photius as a work of Caius is different and identical with the tenth book of the Philosophumena, which begins with the words, "The labyrinth of heresies."1438

The lost tract on the Charismata1439 dealt probably with the Montanistic claims to continued prophecy. Others make it a collection of apostolical canons.

The book on Antichrist1440 which has been almost entirely recovered by Gudius, represents Antichrist as the complete counterfeit of Christ, explains Daniel’s four kingdoms as the Babylonian, Median, Grecian, and Roman, and the apocalyptic number of the beast as meaning  , i.e., heathen Rome. This is one of the three interpretations given by Irenaeus who, however, preferred Teitan.

In a commentary on the Apocalypse1441 he gives another interpretation of the number, namely Dantialos (probably because Antichrist was to descend from the tribe of Dan). The  woman in the twelfth chapter is the church; the sun with which she is clothed, is our Lord; the moon, John the Baptist; the twelve stars, the twelve apostles; the two wings on which she was to fly, hope and love. Armageddon is the valley of Jehoshaphat. The five kings (17:13) are Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, and his four successors; the sixth is the Roman empire, the seventh will be Antichrist. In his commentary on Daniel he fixes the consummation at A.D. 500, or A. M. 6000, on the assumption that Christ appeared in the year of the world 5500, and that a sixth millennium must yet be completed before the beginning of the millennial Sabbath, which is prefigured by the divine rest after creation. This view, in connection with his relation to Irenaeus, and the omission of chiliasm from his list of heresies, makes it tolerably certain that be was himself a chiliast, although he put off the millennium to the sixth century after Christ.1442

We conclude this section with an account of a visit of Pope Alexander III. to the shrine of St. Hippolytus in the church of St. Denis in 1159, to which his bones were transferred from Rome under Charlemagne.1443  "On the threshold of one of the chapels the Pope paused to ask, whose relics it contained. ’Those of St. Hippolytus,’ was the answer. ’Non credo, non credo,’ replied the infallible authority, ’the bones of St. Hippolytus were never removed from the holy city.’ But St. Hippolytus, whose dry bones apparently had as little reverence for the spiritual progeny of Zephyrinus and Callistus as the ancient bishop’s tongue and pen had manifested towards these saints themselves, was so very angry that be rumbled his bones inside the reliquary with a noise like thunder. To what lengths he might have gone if rattling had not sufficed we dare not conjecture. But the Pope, falling on his knees, exclaimed in terror, I believe, O my Lord Hippolytus, I believe, pray be quiet.’ And he built an altar of marble there to appease the disquieted saint."

Notes.

The questions concerning the literary works of Hippolytus, and especially his ecclesiastical status are not yet sufficiently solved. We add a few additional observations.

I. The List of Books on the back of the Hippolytus-statue has been discussed by Fabricius, Cave, Döllinger, Wordsworth, and Volkmar. See the three pictures of the statue with the inscriptions on both sides in Fabricius, I. 36–38, and a facsimile of the book titles in the frontispiece of Wordsworth’s work. It is mutilated and reads—with the conjectural supplements in brackets and a translation—as follows

[pro;" tou;"  jIouda] ijou".

Against the Jews.

[Peri; parqe ] niva".

On Virginity.

[Or, perhaps, eij" paroimiva"]

[Or, On the Proverbs.]

[eij" tou;" y]almouv".

On the Psalms.

[eij" th;n ej]ggastrivmuqon.

On the Ventriloquist [the witch at Endor?]

[ajpologiva] uJpe;r tou' kata;  jIwavnnhn

Apology of the Gospel according to John,

eujaggelivou kai; ajpokaluvyew".

and the Apocalypse.

Peri; carismavtwn

On Spiritual Gifts.

ajpostolikh; paravdosi"

Apostolic Tradition.

Cronikw'n [sc. Bivblo"]

Chronicles [Book of]

pro;"  {Ellhna",

Against the Greeks,

kai; pro;" Plavtwna,

and against Plato,

h[ kai; peri; tou' panto;"

or also On the All.

protreptiko;" pro;" sebhvreinan

A hortatory address to Severina. [Perhaps the Empress Severa, second wife of Elogabalus]

ajpovde[i]xi" crovnwn tou' pavsca

Demonstration of the time of the Pascha

kata; [ta]; ejn tw'/ pivnaki.

according to the order in the table.

wj/daiv [e]ij" pavsa" ta;" grafa;".

Hymns on all the Scriptures.

Peri; q[eo]u', kai; sarko;" ajnastavsew".

Concerning God, and the resurrection of the flesh.

Peri; tou' ajgaqou', kai; povqen to; kakovn

Concerning the good, and the origin of evil.

Comp. on this list Fabricius I. 79–89; Wordsworth p. 233–240; Volkmar, p. 2 sqq.

Eusebius and Jerome give also lists of the works of Hippolytus, some being the same, some different, and among the latter both mention one Against Heresies, which is probably identical with the Philosophumena. On the Canon Pasch. of Hippol. see the tables in Fabricius, I. 137–140.

II. Was Hippolytus a bishop, and where?

Hippolytus does not call himself a bishop, nor a "bishop of Rome," but assumes episcopal authority, and describes himself in the preface to the first book as "a successor of the Apostles, a partaker with them in the same grace and principal sacerdocy (ajrcieravteia), and doctorship, and as numbered among the guardians of the church." Such language is scarcely applicable to a mere presbyter. He also exercised the power of excommunication on certain followers of the Pope Callistus. But where was his bishopric?  This is to this day a point in dispute.

(1.) He was bishop of Portus, the seaport of Rome. This is the traditional opinion in the Roman church since the seventh century, and is advocated by Ruggieri (De Portuensi S. Hippolyti, episcopi et martyris, Sede, Rom. 1771), Simon de Magistris (Acta Martyrum ad Ostia Tiberina, etc. Rom. 1795), Baron Bunsen, Dean Milman, and especially by Bishop Wordsworth. In the oldest accounts, however, he is represented as a Roman "presbyter." Bunsen combined the two views on the unproved assumption that already at that early period the Roman suburban bishops, called cardinales episcopi, were at the same time members of the Roman presbytery. In opposition to this Dr. Döllinger maintains that there was no bishop in Portus before the year 313 or 314; that Hippolytus considered himself the rightful bishop of Rome, and that he could not be simultaneously a member of the Roman presbytery and bishop of Portus. But his chief argument is that from silence which bears with equal force against his own theory. It is true that the first bishop of Portus on record appears at the Synod of Arles, 314, where he signed himself Gregorius episcopus de loco qui est in Portu Romano. The episcopal see of Ostia was older, and its occupant had (according to St. Augustin) always the privilege of consecrating the bishop of Rome. But it is quite possible that Ostia and Portus which were only divided by an island at the mouth of the Tiber formed at first one diocese. Prudentius locates the martyrdom of Hippolytus at Ostia or Portus (both are mentioned in his poem). Moreover Portus was a more important place than Döllinger will admit. The harbor whence the city derived its name Portus (also Portus Ostien Portus Urbis, Portus Romae) was constructed by the Emperor Claudius (perhaps Augustus, hence Portus Augusti), enlarged by Nero and improved by Trajan (hence Portus Trajani), and was the landing place of Ignatius on his voyage to Rome (Martyr. Ign. c. 6: tou' kaloumevnou Povrtou) where he met Christian brethren. Constantine surrounded it with strong walls and towers. Ostia may have been much more important as a commercial emporium and naval station (see Smith’s Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Geogr. vol. II 501–504); but Cavalier de Rossi, in the Bulletino di Archeol., 1866, p. 37 (as quoted by Wordsworth, p. 264, secd ed.), proves from 13 inscriptions that "the site and name of Portus are celebrated in the records of the primitive [?] church," and that "the name is more frequently commemorated than that of Ostia." The close connection of Portus with Rome would easily account for the residence of Hippolytus at Rome and for his designation as Roman bishop. In later times the seven suburban bishops of the vicinity of Rome were the suffragans of the Pope and consecrated him. Finally, as the harbor of a large metropolis attracts strangers from every nation and tongue, Hippolytus might with propriety be called "bishop of the nations" (ejpivskopo" eJqnw'n). We conclude then that the Portus-hypothesis is not impossible, though it cannot be proven.

(2.) He was bishop of the Arabian Portus Romanus, now Aden on the Red Sea. This was the opinion of Stephen Le Moyne (1685), adopted by Cave, Tillemont, and Basnage, but now universally given up as a baseless conjecture, which rests on a misapprehension of Euseb. VI. 20, where Hippolytus accidentally collocated with Beryllus, bishop of Bostra in Arabia. Adan is nowhere mentioned as an episcopal see, and our Hippolytus belonged to the West, although he may have been of eastern origin, like Irenaeus.

(3.) Rome. Hippolytus was no less than the first Anti-Pope and claimed to be the legitimate bishop of Rome. This is the theory of Döllinger, derived from the Philosophumena and defended with much learning and acumen. The author of the Philosophumena was undoubtedly a resident of Rome, claims episcopal dignity, never recognized Callistus as bishop, but treated him merely as the head of a heretical school (didaskalei'on) or sect, calls his adherents "Callistians," some of whom he had excommunicated, but admits that Callistus had aspired to the episcopal throne and "imagined himself to have obtained" the object of his ambition after the death of Zephyrinus, and that his school formed the majority and claimed to be the catholic church  Callistus on his part charged Hippolytus, on account of his view of the independent personality of the Logos, with the heresy of ditheism (a charge which stung him to the quick), and probably proceeded to excommunication. All this looks towards an open schism. This would explain the fact that Hippolytus was acknowledged in Rome only as a presbyter, while in the East he was widely known as bishop, and even as bishop of Rome. Dr. Döllinger assumes that the schism continued to the pontificate of Pontianus, the successor of Callistus, was the cause of the banishment of the two rival bishops to the pestilential island of Sardinia (in 235), and brought to a close by their resignation and reconciliation; hence their bones were brought back to Rome and solemnly deposited on the same day. Their death in exile was counted equivalent to martyrdom. Dr. Caspari of Christiania who has shed much light on the writings of Hippolytus, likewise believes that the difficulty between Hippolytus and Callistus resulted in an open schism and mutual excommunication (l. c. III. 330). Langen (Gesch. der röm. Kirche, Bonn. 1881, p. 229) is inclined to accept Döllinger’s conclusion as at least probable.

This theory is plausible and almost forced upon us by the Philosophumena, but without any solid support outside of that polemical work. History is absolutely silent about an Anti-Pope before Novatianus, who appeared fifteen years after the death of Hippolytus and shook the whole church by his schism (251), although he was far less conspicuous as a scholar and writer. A schism extending through three pontificates (for Hippolytus opposed Zephyrinus as well as Callistus) could not be hidden and so soon be forgotten, especially by Rome which has a long memory of injuries done to the chair of St. Peter and looks upon rebellion against authority as the greatest sin. The name of Hippolytus is not found in any list of Popes and Anti-Popes, Greek or Roman, while that of Callistus occurs in all. Even Jerome who spent over twenty years from about 350 to 372, and afterwards four more years in Rome and was intimate with Pope Damasus, knew nothing of the see of Hippolytus, although he knew some of his writings. It seems incredible that an Anti-Pope should ever have been canonized by Rome as a saint and martyr. It is much easier to conceive that the divines of the distant East were mistaken. The oldest authority which Döllinger adduces for the designation "bishop of Rome," that of Presbyter Eustratius of Constantinople about A.D. 582 (see p. 84), is not much older than the designation of Hippolytus as bishop of Portus, and of no more critical value.

(4.) Dr. Salmon offers a modification of the Döllinger-hypothesis by assuming that Hippolytus was a sort of independent bishop of a Greek-speaking congregation in Rome. He thus explains the enigmatical expression ejqnw'n ejpiskopo", which Photius applies to Caius, but which probably belongs to Hippolytus. But history knows nothing of two independent and legitimate bishops in the city of Rome. Moreover there still remains the difficulty that Hippolytus notwithstanding his open resistance rose afterwards to such high honors in the papal church. We can only offer the following considerations as a partial solution: first, that he wrote in Greek which died out in Rome, so that his books became unknown; secondly, that aside from those attacks he did, like the schismatic Tertullian, eminent service to the church by his learning and championship of orthodoxy and churchly piety; and lastly, that be was believed (as we learn from Prudentius) to have repented of his schism and, like Cyprian, wiped out his sin by his martyrdom.

III. But no matter whether Hippolytus was bishop or presbyter in Rome or Portus, he stands out an irrefutable witness against the claims of an infallible papacy which was entirely unknown in the third century. No wonder that Roman divines of the nineteenth century (with the exception of Döllinger who seventeen years after he wrote his book on Hippolytus seceded from Rome in consequence of the Vatican decree of infallibility) deny his authorship of this to them most obnoxious book. The Abbé Cruice ascribes it to Caius or Tertullian, the Jesuit Armellini to Novatian, and de Rossi (1866) hesitatingly to Tertullian, who, however, was no resident of Rome, but of Carthage. Cardinal Newman declares it "simply incredible" that a man so singularly honored as St. Hippolytus should be the author of "that malignant libel on his contemporary popes," who did not scruple "in set words to call Pope Zephyrinus a weak and venal dunce, and Pope Callistus a sacrilegious swindler, an infamous convict, and an heresiarch ex cathedra." (Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical, 1874, p. 222, quoted by Plummer, p. xiv. and 340.)  But he offers no solution, nor can he. Dogma versus history is as unavailing as the pope’s bull against the comet. Nor is Hippolytus, or whoever wrote that "malignant libel "alone in his position. The most eminent ante-Nicene fathers, and the very ones who laid the foundations of the catholic system, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian (not to speak of Origen, and of Novatian, the Anti-Pope), protested on various grounds against Rome. And it is a remarkable fact that the learned Dr. Döllinger who, in 1853, so ably defended the Roman see against the charges of Hippolytus should, in 1870, have assumed a position not unlike that of Hippolytus, against the error of p

§ 184. Caius of Rome.

Euseb.: H. E. II. 25; III. 28, 31; VI. 20. Hieron.: De Vir. ill. 59. Theodor.: Fa b. Haer. II. 3; III. 2. Photius: Biblioth. Cod. 48. Perhaps also Martyr. Polyc., c. 22, where a Caius is mentioned as a pupil or friend of Irenaeus.

Routh: Rel. S. II. 125–158 (Comp. also I. 397–403). Bunsen: Analecta Ante-Nicaena I. 409 sq. Caspari: Quellen etc., III. 330, 349, 374 sqq. Harnack in Herzog,2 III. 63 sq. Salmon in Smith and Wace I. 384–386. Comp. also Heinichen’s notes on Euseb. II. 25 (in Comment. III. 63–67), and the Hippolytus liter., § 183, especially Döllinger. (250 sq.) and Volkmar. (60–71).

Among the Western divines who, like Irenaeus and Hippolytus, wrote exclusively in Greek, must be mentioned Caius who flourished during the episcopate of Zephyrinus in the first quarter of the third century. He is known to us only from a few Greek fragments as an opponent of Montanism and Chiliasm. He was probably a Roman presbyter. From his name,1444 and from the fact that he did not number Hebrews among the Pauline Epistles, we may infer that he was a native of Rome or at least of the West. Eusebius calls him a very learned churchman or ecclesiastic author at Rome,1445 and quotes four times his disputation with Proclus (Gr. ), the leader of one party of the Montanists.1446  He preserves from it the notice that Philip and his four prophetic daughters are buried at Hierapolis in Phrygia, and an important testimony concerning the monuments or trophies (Gr. ) of Peter and Paul, the founders of the Roman church, on the Vatican hill and the Ostian road.

This is nearly all that is certain and interesting about Caius. Jerome, as usual in his catalogue of illustrious men, merely repeats the, statements of Eusebius, although from his knowledge of Rome we might expect some additional information. Photius, on the strength of a marginal note in the MS. of a supposed work of Caius On the Universe, says that he was a "presbyter of the Roman church during the episcopate of Victor and Zephyrinus, and that he was elected bishop of the Gentiles ( )." He ascribes to him that work and also The Labyrinth, but hesitatingly. His testimony is too late to be of any value, and rests on a misunderstanding of Eusebius and a confusion of Caius with Hippolytus, an error repeated by modern critics.1447  Both persons have so much in common—age, residence, title—that they have been identified (Caius being supposed to be simply the praenomen of Hippolytus).1448  But this cannot be proven; Eusebius clearly distinguishes them, and Hippolytus was no opponent of Chiliasm, and only a moderate opponent of Montanism; while Caius wrote against the Chiliastic dreams of Cerinthus; but he did not deny, as has been wrongly inferred from Eusebius, the Johannean authorship of the Apocalypse; he probably meant pretended revelations ( ) of that heretic. He and Hippolytus no doubt agreed with the canon of the Roman church, which recognized thirteen epistles of Paul (excluding Hebrews) and the Apocalypse of John.

Caius has been surrounded since Photius with a mythical halo of authorship, and falsely credited with several works of Hippolytus, including the recently discovered Philosophumena. The Muratorian fragment on the canon of the New Testament was also ascribed to him by the discoverer (Muratori, 1740) and recent writers. But this fragment is of earlier date (A.D. 170), and written in Latin, though perhaps originally in Greek. It is as far as we know the oldest Latin church document of Rome, and of very great importance for the history of the canon.1449

§ 185. The Alexandrian School of Theology.

J. G. Michaelis: De Scholae Alexandrinae prima origine, progressu, ac praecpuis doctoribus. Hal. 1739.

H. E. Fr. Guerike: De Schola quae Alexandriae floruit catechetica commentatio historica et theologica. Hal. 1824 and ’25. 2 Parts (pp. 119 and 456). The second Part is chiefly devoted to Clement and Origen.

C. F. W. Hasselbach: De Schola, quae Alex. floruit, catech. Stettin 1826. P. 1. (against Guerike), and De discipulorum ... s. De Catechumenorum ordinibus, Ibid. 1839.

J. Matter: L’Histoire de l’ École d’Alexandrie, second ed. Par. 1840. 3 vols.

J. Simon: Histoire de I’ École d’Alexandrie. Par. 1845.

E. Vacherot: Histoire critique de l’ École d’Alexandrie. Par. 1851. 3 vols.

Neander: I. 527–557 (Am. ed.); Gieseler I. 208–210 (Am. ed.)

Ritter: Gesch. der christl. Philos. I. 421 sqq.

Ueberweg: History of Philosophy, vol. I. p. 311–319 (Engl. transl. 1875).

Redepenning in his Origenes I. 57–83, and art. in Herzog2 I. 290–292. Comp. also two arts. on the Jewish, and the New-Platonic schools of Alexandria, by M. Nicolas in Lichtenberger’s "Encyclopédie" I. 159–170.

C. H. Bigg: The Christian Platonists of Alexandria. Lond. 1886.

Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great three hundred and twenty-two years before Christ, on the mouth of the Nile, within a few hours’ sail from Asia and Europe, was the metropolis of Egypt, the flourishing seat of commerce, of Grecian and Jewish learning, and of the greatest library of the ancient world, and was destined to become one of the great centres of Christianity, the rival of Antioch and Rome. There the religious life of Palestine and the intellectual culture of Greece commingled and prepared the way for the first school of theology which aimed at a philosophic comprehension and vindication of the truths of revelation. Soon after the founding of the church which tradition traces to St. Mark, the Evangelist, there arose a "Catechetical school" under the supervision of the bishop.1450  It was originally designed only for the practical purpose of preparing willing heathens and Jews of all classes for baptism. But in that home of the Philonic theology, of Gnostic heresy, and of Neo-Platonic philosophy, it soon very naturally assumed a learned character, and became, at the same time, a sort of theological seminary, which exercised a powerful influence on the education of many bishops and church teachers, and on the development of Christian science. It had at first but a single teacher, afterwards two or more, but without fixed salary, or special buildings. The more wealthy pupils paid for tuition, but the offer was often declined. The teachers gave their instructions in their dwellings, generally after the style of the ancient philosophers.

The first superintendent of this school known to us was Pantaenus, a converted Stoic philosopher, about A.D. 180. He afterwards labored as a missionary in India, and left several commentaries, of which, however, nothing remains but some scanty fragments.1451  He was followed by Clement, to A.D. 202 and Clement, by Origen, to 232, who raised the school to the summit of its prosperity, and founded a similar one at Caesarea in Palestine. The institution was afterwards conducted by Origen’s pupils, Heraclas (d. 248), and Dionysius (d. 265), and last by the blind but learned Didymus (d. 395), until, at the end of the fourth century, it sank for ever amidst the commotions and dissensions of the Alexandrian church, which at last prepared the way for the destructive conquest of the Arabs (640). The city itself gradually sank to a mere village, and Cairo took its place (since 969). In the present century it is fast rising again, under European auspices, to great commercial importance.

From this catechetical school proceeded a peculiar theology, the most learned and genial representatives of which were Clement and Origen. This theology is, on the one hand, a regenerated Christian form of the Alexandrian Jewish religious philosophy of Philo; on the other, a catholic counterpart, and a positive refutation of the heretical Gnosis, which reached its height also in Alexandria, but half a century earlier. The Alexandrian theology aims at a reconciliation of Christianity with philosophy, or, subjectively speaking, of pistis with gnosis; but it seeks this union upon the basis of the Bible, and the doctrine of the church. Its centre, therefore, is the Divine Logos, viewed as the sum of all reason and all truth, before and after the incarnation. Clement came from the Hellenic philosophy to the Christian faith; Origen, conversely, was led by faith to speculation. The former was an aphoristic thinker, the latter a systematic. The one borrowed ideas from various systems; the other followed more the track of Platonism. But both were Christian philosophers and churchly gnostics. As Philo, long before them, in the same city, had combined Judaism with Grecian culture, so now they carried the Grecian culture into Christianity. This, indeed, the apologists and controversialists of the second century had already done, as far back as Justin the "philosopher." But the Alexandrians were more learned, and made much freer use of the Greek philosophy. They saw in it not sheer error, but in one view a gift of God, and an intellectual schoolmaster for Christ, like the law in the moral and religious here. Clement compares it to a wild olive tree, which can be ennobled by faith; Origen (in the fragment of an epistle to Gregory Thaumaturgus), to the jewels, which the Israelites took with them out of Egypt, and turned into ornaments for their sanctuary, though they also wrought them into the golden calf. Philosophy is not necessarily an enemy to the truth, but may, and should be its handmaid, and neutralize the attacks against it. The elements of truth in the heathen philosophy they attributed partly to the secret operation of the Logos in the world of reason, partly to acquaintance with the writings of Moses and the prophets.

So with the Gnostic heresy. The Alexandrians did not sweepingly condemn it, but recognized the desire for deeper religious knowledge, which lay at its root, and sought to meet this desire with a wholesome supply from the Bible itself. Their maxim was, in the words of Clement: "No faith without knowledge, no knowledge without faith;" or: "Unless you believe, you will not understand."1452  Faith and knowledge have the same substance, the saving truth of God, revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and faithfully handed down by the church; they differ only in form. Knowledge is our consciousness of the deeper ground and consistency of faith. The Christian knowledge, however, is also a gift of grace, and has its condition in a holy life. The ideal of a Christian gnostic includes perfect love as well as perfect knowledge, of God. Clement describes him as one "who, growing grey in the study of the Scriptures, and preserving the orthodoxy of the apostles and the church, lives strictly according to the gospel."

The Alexandrian theology is intellectual, profound, stirring and full of fruitful germs of thought, but rather unduly idealistic and spiritualistic, and, in exegesis, loses itself in arbitrary allegorical fancies. In its efforts to reconcile revelation and philosophy it took up, like Philo, many foreign elements, especially of the Platonic stamp, and wandered into speculative views which a later and more orthodox, but more narrow-minded and less productive age condemned as heresies, not appreciating the immortal service of this school to its own and after times.

§ 186. Clement of Alexandria.

(I.) Clementis Alex. Opera omnia Gr. et Lat. ed. Potter (bishop of Oxford). Oxon. 1715. 2 vols. Reprinted Venet. 1757. 2 vols. fol., and in Migne’s "Patr. Gr." vols. VIII. and IX., with various additions and the comments of Nic. Le Nourry. For an account of the MSS. and editions of Clement see Fabricius; Biblioth. Graeca, ed. Harles, vol. VII. 109 sqq.

Other edd. by Victorinus (Florence, 1550); Sylburg (Heidel b. 1592) Heinsius (Graeco-Latin., Leyden, 1616); Klotz (Leipz. 1831–34, 4 vols., only in Greek, and very incorrect); W. Dindorf (Oxf. 1868–69, 4 vols.).

English translation by Wm. Wilson in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vols. IV. and V. Edinb. 1867.

(II.) Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. V. 11; VI. 6, 11, 13. Hieronymus: De Vir. ill. 38; Photius: Biblioth. 109–111. See the Testimonia Veterum de Cl. collected in Potter’s ed. at the beginning of vol. I. and in Migne’s ed. VIII. 35–50.

(III.) Hofstede De Groot: Dissert. de Clem. Alex. Groning. 1826. A. F. Daehne: De gnwvsei Clem Al. Hal. 1831.

F. R. Eylert: Clem. v. Alex. als  Philosoph und Dichter. Leipz. 1832.

Bishop Kaye: Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alex. Lond. 1835.

Kling: Die Bedeutung des Clem. Alex. für die Entstehung der Theol. ("Stud. u. Krit." for 1841, No. 4).

H. J. Reinkens: De Clem. Alex. homine, scriptore, philosopho, theologo. Wratisl. (Breslau) 1851.

H. Reuter: Clementis Alex. Theol. moralis. Berl. 1853.

Laemmer.: Clem. Al. de Logo doctrina. Lips. 1855.

Abbé Cognat: Clement d’Alexandrie. Paris 1859.

J. H. Müller: Idées dogm. de Clement d’Alex. Strasb. 1861.

CH. E. Freppel. (R.C.): Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris, 1866, second ed. 1873.

C. Merk: Clemens v. Alex. in s. Abhängigkeit von der griech. Philosophie. Leipz. 1879.

Fr. Jul. Winter: Die Ethik des Clemens v. Alex. Leipz. 1882 (first part of Studien zur Gesch. der christl. Ethik).

Jacobi in Herzog2 III. 269–277, and Westcott in Smith and Wace l. 559–567.

Theod. Zahn: Supplementum Clementinum. Third Part of his Forschungen zur Gesch. des N. T. lichen Kanons. Erlangen 1884.

I. Titus Flavius Clemens1453 sprang from Greece, probably from Athens. He was born about 150, and brought up in heathenism. He was versed in all branches of Hellenic literature and in all the existing systems of philosophy; but in these he found nothing to satisfy his thirst for truth. In his adult years, therefore, he embraced the Christian religion, and by long journeys East and West he sought the most distinguished teachers, "who preserved the tradition of pure saving doctrine, and implanted that genuine apostolic seed in the hearts of their pupils." He was captivated by Pantaenus in Egypt, who, says he, "like the Sicilian bee, plucked flowers from the apostolic and prophetic meadow, and filled the souls of his disciples with genuine, pure knowledge." He became presbyter in the church of Alexandria, and about A.D. 189 succeeded Pantaenus as president of the catechetical school of that city. Here he labored benignly some twelve years for the conversion of heathens and the education of the Christians, until, as it appears, the persecution under Septimius Severus in 202 compelled him to flee. After this we find him in Antioch, and last (211) with his former pupil, the bishop Alexander, in Jerusalem. Whether he returned thence to Alexandria is unknown. He died before the year 220, about the same time with Tertullian. He has no place, any more than Origen, among the saints of the Roman church, though he frequently bore this title of honor in ancient times. His name is found in early Western martyrologies, but was omitted in the martyrology issued by Clement VIII. at the suggestion of Baronius. Benedict XIV. elaborately defended the omission (1748), on the ground of unsoundness in doctrine.

II. Clement was the father of the Alexandrian Christian philosophy. He united thorough biblical and Hellenic learning with genius and speculative thought. He rose, In many points, far above the prejudices of his age, to more free and spiritual views. His theology, however, is not a unit, but a confused eclectic mixture of true Christian elements with many Stoic, Platonic, and Philonic ingredients. His writings are full of repetition, and quite lacking in clear, fixed method. He throws out his suggestive and often profound thoughts in fragments, or purposely veils them, especially in the Stromata, in a mysterious darkness, to conceal them from the exoteric multitude, and to stimulate the study of the initiated or philosophical Christians. He shows here an affinity with the heathen mystery cultus, and the Gnostic arcana. His extended knowledge of Grecian literature and rich quotations from the lost works of poets, philosophers, and historians give him importance also in investigations regarding classical antiquity. He lived in an age of transition when Christian thought was beginning to master and to assimilate the whole domain of human knowledge. "And when it is frankly admitted" (says Dr. Westcott) "that his style is generally deficient in terseness and elegance; that his method is desultory; that his learning is undigested: we can still thankfully admire his richness of information, his breadth of reading, his largeness of sympathy, his lofty aspirations, his noble conception of the office and capacities of the Faith."

III. The three leading works which he composed during his residence as teacher in Alexandria, between the years 190 and 195, represent the three stages in the discipline of the human race by the divine Logos, corresponding to the three degrees of knowledge required by the ancient in mystagogues,1454 and are related to one another very much as apologetics, ethics, and dogmatics, or as faith, love, and mystic vision, or as the, stages of the Christian cultus up to the celebration of the sacramental mysteries. The "Exhortation to the Greeks,"1455 in three books, with almost a waste of learning, points out the unreasonableness and immorality, but also the nobler prophetic element, of heathenism, and seeks to lead the sinner to repentance and faith. The "Tutor" or "Educator"1456 unfolds the Christian morality with constant reference to heathen practices, and exhorts to a holy walk, the end of which is likeness to God. The Educator is Christ, and the children whom he trains, are simple, sincere believers. The "Stromata" or "Miscellanies,"1457 in seven books (the eighth, containing, an imperfect treatise on logic, is spurious), furnishes a guide to the deeper knowledge of Christianity, but is without any methodical arrangement, a heterogeneous mixture of curiosities of history, beauties of poetry, reveries of philosophy, Christian truths and heretical errors (hence the name). He compares it to a thick-grown, shady mountain or garden, where fruitful and barren trees of all kinds, the cypress, the laurel, the ivy, the apple, the olive, the fig, stand confusedly  grouped together, that many may remain hidden from the eye of the plunderer without escaping the notice of the laborer, who might transplant and arrange them in pleasing order. It was, probably, only a prelude to a more comprehensive theology. At the close the author portrays the ideal of the true gnostic, that is, the perfect Christian, assigning to him, among other traits, a stoical elevation above all sensuous affections. The inspiring thought of Clement is that Christianity satisfies all the intellectual and moral aspirations and wants of man.

Besides these principal works we have, from Clement  also, an able and moderately ascetic treatise, on the right use of wealth.1458  His ethical principles are those of the Hellenic philosophy, inspired by the genius of Christianity. He does not run into the excesses of asceticism, though evidently under its influence. His exegetical works,1459 as well as a controversial treatise on prophecy against the Montanists, and another on the passover, against the Judaizing practice in Asia Minor, are all lost, except some inconsiderable fragments.

To Clement we owe also the oldest Christian hymn that has come down to us; an elevated but somewhat turgid song of praise to the Logos, as the divine educator and leader of the human race.1460

§ 187. Origen.

(I.) Origenis Opera omnia Graece et Lat. Ed. Carol. et Vinc. De la Rue. Par. 1733–’59, 4 vols. fol. The only complete ed., begun by the Benedictine Charles D. L. R., and after his death completed by his nephew Vincent. Republ. in Migne’s Patrol. Gr. 1857, 8 vols., with additions from Galland (1781), Cramer (1840–44), and Mai (1854).

Other editions by J. Merlinus (ed. princeps, Par. 1512–’19, 2 vols. fol., again in Venice 1516, and in Paris 1522; 1530, only the Lat. text); by Erasmus and Beatus Rhenanus (Bas. 1536, 2 vols. fol.; 1545; 1551; 1557; 1571); by the Benedictine G. Genebrard (Par. 1574; 1604; 1619 in 2 vols. fol., all in Lat.); by Corderius (Antw. 1648, partly in Greek); by P. D. Huetius, or Huet, afterwards Bp. of Avranges (Rouen, 1668, 2 vols. fol., the Greek writings, with very learned dissertations, Origeniana; again Paris 1679; Cologne 1685); by Montfaucon (only the Hexapla, Par. 1713, ’14, 2 vols. fol., revised and improved ed. by Field, Oxf. 1875); by Lommatsch (Berol. 1837–48, 25 vols. oct.).

English translation of select works of Origen by F. Crombie in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," Edinb. 1868, and N. York 1885.

(II.)  Eusebius: Hist. Eccles. VI. 1–6 and passim. Hieronymus: De Vir. ill. 54; Ep. 29, 41, and often. Gregorius Thaumat.: Oratio panegyrica in Origenem. Pamphilus: Apologia Orig. Rufinus: De Adulteratione librorum Origenis. All in the last vol. of Delarue’s ed.

(III.) P. D. Huetius: Origeniana. Par. 1679, 2 vols. (and in Delarue’s ed. vol. 4th). Very learned, and apologetic for Origen.

G. Thomasius: Origenes. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengesch. Nürnb. 1837.

E. Rud. Redepenning: Origenes. Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. Bonn 1841 and ’46, in 2 vols. (pp. 461 and 491).

Böhringer: Origenes und sein Lehrer Klemens, oder die Alexandrinische innerkirchliche Gnosis des Christenthums. Bd. V. of Kirchengesch. in Biographieen. Second ed. Leipz. 1873.

Ch. E. Freppel, (R.C.): Origène, Paris 1868, second ed. 1875.

Comp. the articles of Schmitz in Smith’s "Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biogr." III. 46–55; Möller in Herzog2  Vol. XI. 92–109  Westcott in "Dict. of Chr. Biogr," IV. 96–142; Farrar, in "Lives of the Fathers," I. 291–330.

Also the respective sections in Bull (Defens. Fid. Nic. ch. IX. in Delarue, IV. 339–357), Neander, Baur, and Dorner (especially on Origen’s doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation); and on his Philosophy, Ritter, Huber, Ueberweg.

I. Life And Character. Origenes,1461 surnamed "Adamantius" on account of his industry and purity of character1462 is one of the most remarkable men in history for genius and learning, for the influence he exerted on his age, and for the controversies and discussions to which his opinions gave rise. He was born of Christian parents at Alexandria, in the year 185, and probably baptized in childhood, according to Egyptian custom which be traced to apostolic origin.1463  Under the direction of his father, Leonides,1464 who was probably a rhetorician, and of the celebrated Clement at the catechetical school, he received a pious and learned education. While yet a boy, be knew whole sections of the Bible by memory, and not rarely perplexed his father with questions on the deeper sense of Scripture. The father reproved his curiosity, but thanked God for such a son, and often, as he slept, reverentially kissed his breast as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Under the persecution of Septimius Severus in 202, he wrote to his father in prison, beseeching him not to deny Christ for the sake of his family, and strongly desired to give himself up to the heathen authorities, but was prevented by his mother, who hid his clothes. Leonides died a martyr, and, as his property was confiscated, he left a helpless widow with seven children. Origen was for a time assisted by a wealthy matron, and then supported himself by giving instruction in the Greek language and literature, and by copying manuscripts.

In the year 203, though then only eighteen years of age, he was nominated by the bishop Demetrius, afterwards his opponent, president of the catechetical school of Alexandria, left vacant by the flight of Clement. To fill this important office, he made himself acquainted with the various heresies, especially the Gnostic, and with the Grecian philosophy; he was not even ashamed to study under the heathen Ammonius Saccas, the celebrated founder of Neo-Platonism. He learned also the Hebrew language, and made journeys to Rome (211), Arabia, Palestine (215), and Greece. In Rome he became slightly acquainted with Hippolytus, the author of the Philosophumena, who was next to himself the most learned man of his age. Döllinger thinks it all but certain that he sided with Hippolytus in his controversy with Zephyrinus and Callistus, for he shared (at least in his earlier period) his rigoristic principles of discipline, had a dislike for the proud and overbearing bishops in large cities, and held a subordinatian view of the Trinity, but he was far superior to his older contemporary in genius, depth, and penetrating insight.1465

When his labors and the number of his pupils increased he gave the lower classes of the catechetical school into the charge of his pupil Heraclas, and devoted himself wholly to the more advanced students. He was successful in bringing many eminent heathens and heretics to the Catholic church; among them a wealthy Gnostic, Ambrosius, who became his most liberal patron, furnishing him a costly library for his biblical studies, seven stenographers, and a number of copyists (some of whom were young Christian women), the former to note down his dictations, the latter to engross them. His fame spread far and wide over Egypt. Julia Mammaea, mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, brought him to Antioch in 218, to learn from him the doctrines of Christianity. An Arabian prince honored him with a visit for the same purpose.

His mode of life during the whole period was strictly ascetic. He made it a matter of principle, to renounce every earthly thing not indispensably necessary. He refused the gifts of his pupils, and in literal obedience to the Saviour’s injunction he had but one coat, no shoes, and took no thought of the morrow. He rarely ate flesh, never drank wine; devoted the greater part of the night to prayer and study, and slept on the bare floor. Nay, in his youthful zeal for ascetic holiness, he even committed the act of self-emasculation, partly to fulfil literally the mysterious words of Christ, in Matt. 19:12, for the sake of the kingdom of God, partly to secure himself against all temptation and calumny which might arise from his intercourse with many female catechumens.1466  By this inconsiderate and misdirected heroism, which he himself repented in his riper years, he incapacitated himself, according to the canons of the church, for the clerical office. Nevertheless, a long time afterwards, in 228, he was ordained presbyter by two friendly bishops, Alexander of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus of Caesarea in Palestine, who had, even before this, on a former visit of his, invited him while a layman, to teach publicly in their churches, and to expound the Scriptures to their people.

But this foreign ordination itself, and the growing reputation of Origen among heathens and Christians, stirred the jealousy of the bishop Demetrius of Alexandria, who charged him besides, and that not wholly without foundation, with corrupting Christianity by foreign speculations. This bishop held two councils, A.D. 231 and 232, against the great theologian, and enacted, that he, for his false doctrine, his self-mutilation, and his violation of the church laws, be deposed from his offices of presbyter and catechist, and excommunicated. This unrighteous sentence, in which envy, hierarchical arrogance, and zeal for orthodoxy joined, was communicated, as the custom was, to other churches. The Roman church, always ready to anathematize, concurred without further investigation; while the churches of Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Achaia, which were better informed, decidedly disapproved it.

In this controversy Origen showed a genuine Christian meekness. "We must pity them," said he of his enemies, "rather than hate them; pray for them, rather than curse them; for we are made for blessing, and not for cursing." He betook himself to his friend, the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, prosecuted his studies there, opened a new philosophical and theological school, which soon outshone that of Alexandria, and labored for the spread of the kingdom of God. The persecution under Maximinus Thrax (235) drove him for a time to Cappadocia. Thence he went to Greece, and then back to Palestine. He was called into consultation in various ecclesiastical disputes, and had an extensive correspondence, in which were included even the emperor Philip the Arabian, and his wife. Though thrust out as a heretic from his home, he reclaimed the erring in foreign lands to the faith of the church. At an Arabian council, for example, be convinced the bishop Beryllus of his christological error, and persuaded him to retract (A. D. 244).

At last he received an honorable invitation to return to Alexandria, where, meantime, his pupil Dionysius had become bishop. But in the Decian persecution he was cast into prison, cruelly tortured, and condemned to the stake; and though he regained his liberty by the death of the emperor, yet he died some time after, at the age of sixty-nine, in the year 253 or 254, at Tyre, probably in consequence of that violence. He belongs, therefore, at least among the confessors, if not among the martyrs. He was buried at Tyre.

It is impossible to deny a respectful sympathy, veneration and gratitude to this extraordinary man, who, with all his brilliant talents and a best of enthusiastic friends and admirers, was driven from his country, stripped of his sacred office, excommunicated from a part of the church, then thrown into a dungeon, loaded with chains, racked by torture, doomed to drag his aged frame and dislocated limbs in pain and poverty, and long after his death to have his memory branded, his name anathematized, and his salvation denied;1467 but who nevertheless did more than all his enemies combined to advance the cause of sacred learning, to refute and convert heathens and heretics, and to make the church respected in the eyes of the world.

II. His Theology. Origen was the greatest scholar of his age, and the most gifted, most industrious, and most cultivated of all the ante-Nicene fathers. Even heathens and heretics admired or feared his brilliant talent and vast learning. His knowledge embraced all departments of the philology, philosophy, and theology of his day. With this he united profound and fertile thought, keen penetration, and glowing imagination. As a true divine, he consecrated all his studies by prayer, and turned them, according to his best convictions, to the service of truth and piety.

He may be called in many respects the Schleiermacher of the Greek church. He was a guide from the heathen philosophy and the heretical Gnosis to the Christian faith. He exerted an immeasurable influence in stimulating the development of the catholic theology and forming the great Nicene fathers, Athanasius, Basil, the two Gregories, Hilary, and Ambrose, who consequently, in spite of all his deviations, set great value on his services. But his best disciples proved unfaithful to many of his most peculiar views, and adhered far more to the reigning faith of the church. For—and in this too he is like Schleiermacher—he can by no means be called orthodox, either in the Catholic or in the Protestant sense. His leaning to idealism, his predilection for Plato, and his noble effort to reconcile Christianity with reason, and to commend it even to educated heathens and Gnostics, led him into many grand and fascinating errors. Among these are his extremely ascetic and almost docetistic conception of corporeity, his denial of a material resurrection, his doctrine of the pre-existence and the pre-temporal fall of souls (including the pre-existence of the human soul of Christ), of eternal creation, of the extension of the work of redemption to the inhabitants of the stars and to all rational creatures, and of the final restoration of all men and fallen angels. Also in regard to the dogma of the divinity of Christ, though he powerfully supported it, and was the first to teach expressly the eternal generation of the Son, yet he may be almost as justly considered a forerunner of the Arian heteroousion, or at least of the semi-Arian homoiousion, as of the Athanasian homoousion.

These and similar views provoked more or less contradiction during his lifetime, and were afterwards, at a local council in Constantinople in 543, even solemnly condemned as heretical.1468  But such a man might in such an age hold erroneous opinions without being a heretic. For Origen propounded his views always with modesty and from sincere conviction of their agreement with Scripture, and that in a time when the church doctrine was as yet very indefinite in many points. For this reason even learned Roman divines, such as Tillemont and Möhler have shown Origen the greatest respect and leniency; a fact the more to be commended, since the Roman church has refused him, as well as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, a place among the saints and the fathers in the stricter sense.

Origen’s greatest service was in exegesis. He is father of the critical investigation of Scripture, and his commentaries are still useful to scholars for their suggestiveness. Gregory Thaumaturgus says, he had "received from God the greatest gift, to be an interpreter of the word of God to men." For that age this judgment is perfectly just. Origen remained the exegetical oracle until Chrysostom far surpassed him, not indeed in originality and vigor of mind and extent of learning, but in sound, sober tact, in simple, natural analysis, and in practical application of the text. His great defect is the neglect of the grammatical and historical sense and his constant desire to find a hidden mystic meaning. He even goes further in this direction than the Gnostics, who everywhere saw transcendental, unfathomable mysteries. His hermeneutical principle assumes a threefold sense—somatic, psychic, and pneumatic; or literal, moral, and spiritual. His allegorical interpretation is ingenious, but often runs far away from the text and degenerates into the merest caprice; while at times it gives way to the opposite extreme of a carnal literalism, by which he justifies his ascetic extravagance.1469

Origen is one of the most important witnesses of the ante-Nicene text of the Greek Testament, which is older than the received text. He compared different MSS. and noted textual variations, but did not attempt a recension or lay down any principles of textual criticism. The value of his testimony is due to his rare opportunities and life-long study of the Bible before the time when the traditional Syrian and Byzantine text was formed.

§ 188. The Works of Origen.

Origen was an uncommonly prolific author, but by no means an idle bookmaker. Jerome says, he wrote more than other men can read. Epiphanius, an opponent, states the number of his works as six thousand, which is perhaps not much beyond the mark, if we include all his short tracts, homilies, and letters, and count them as separate volumes. Many of them arose without his cooeperation, and sometimes against his will, from the writing down of his oral lectures by others. Of his books which remain, some have come down to us only in Latin translations, and with many alterations in favor of the later orthodoxy. They extend to all branches of the theology of that day.

1. His biblical works were the most numerous, and may be divided into critical, exegetical, and hortatory.

Among the critical were the Hexapla1470 (the Sixfold Bible) and the shorter Tetrapla (the Fourfold), on which he spent eight-and-twenty years of the most unwearied labor. The Hexapla was the first polyglott Bible, but covered only the Old Testament, and was designed not for the critical restoration of the original text, but merely for the improvement of the received Septuagint, and the defense of it against the charge of inaccuracy. It contained, in six columns, the original text in two forms, in Hebrew and in Greek characters, and the four Greek versions of the Septuagint, of Aquila, of Symmachus, and of Theodotion. To these he added, in several books two or three other anonymous Greek versions.1471  The order was determined by the degree of literalness. The Tetrapla1472 contained only the four versions of Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion. The departures from the standard he marked with the critical signs asterisk (*) for alterations and additions, and obelos ( ) for proposed omissions. He also added marginal notes, e.g., explanations of Hebrew names. The voluminous work was placed in the library at Caesarea, was still much used in the time of Jerome (who saw it there), but doubtless never transcribed, except certain portions, most frequently the Septuagint columns (which were copied, for instance, by Pamphilus and Eusebius, and regarded as the standard text), and was probably destroyed by the Saracens in 653. We possess, therefore, only  some fragments of it, which were collected and edited by the learned Benedictine Montfaucon (1714), and more recentl;y by an equallt learned Anglican scholar, Dr. Field (1875).1473

His commentaries covered almost all the books of the Old and New Testaments, and contained a vast wealth of original and profound suggestions, with the most arbitrary allegorical and mystical fancies. They were of three kinds: (a) Short notes on single difficult passages for beginners;1474 all these are lost, except what has been gathered from the citations of the fathers (by Delarue under the title  [Eklogaiv Selecta). (b) Extended expositions of whole books, for higher scientific study;1475 of, these we have a number of important fragments in the original, and in the translation of Rufinus. In the Commentary on John the Gnostic exegeses of Heracleon is much used. (c) Hortatory or practical applications of Scripture for the congregation or Homilies.1476  They were delivered extemporaneously, mostly in Caesarea and in the latter part of his life, and taken down by stenographers. They are important also to the history of pulpit oratory. But we have them only in part, as translated by Jerome and Rufinus, with many unscrupulous retrenchments and additions, which perplex and are apt to mislead investigators.

2. Apologetic and polemic works. The refutation of Celsus’s attack upon Christianity, in eight books, written in the last years of his life, about 248, is preserved complete in the original, and is one of the ripest and most valuable productions of Origen, and of the whole ancient apologetic literature.1477  And yet he did not know who this Celsus was, whether he lived in the reign of Nero or that of Hadrian, while modern scholars assign him to the period A.D. 150 to 178. His numerous polemic writings against heretics are all gone.

3. Of his dogmatic writings we have, though only in the inaccurate Latin translation of Rufinus, his juvenile production, De Principiis, i.e. on the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, in four books.1478  It was written in Alexandria, and became the chief source of objections to his theology. It was the first attempt at a complete system of dogmatics, but full of his peculiar Platonizing and Gnosticizing errors, some of which he retracted in his riper years. In this work Origen treats in four books, first, of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit; in the second book, of creation and the incarnation, the resurrection and the judgment; in the third, of freedom, which he very strongly sets forth and defends against the Gnostics; in the fourth, of the Holy Scriptures, their inspiration and authority, and the interpretation of them; concluding with a recapitulation of the doctrine of the trinity. His Stromata, in imitation of the work of the same name by Clemens Alex., seems to have been doctrinal and exegetical, and is lost with the exception of two or three fragments quoted in Latin by Jerome. His work on the Resurrection is likewise lost.

4. Among his practical works may be mentioned a treatise on prayer, with an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer,1479 and an exhortation to martyrdom,1480 written during the persecution of Maximin (235–238), and addressed to his friend and patron Ambrosius.

5. Of his letters, of which Eusebius collected over eight hundred, we have, besides a few fragments, only all answer to Julius Africanus on the authenticity of the history of Susanna.

Among the works of Origen is also usually inserted the Philocalia, or a collection, in twenty-seven chapters, of extracts from his writings on various exegetical questions, made by Gregory Nazianzen and Basil the Great.1481

§ 189. Gregory Thaumaturgus.

T. S. Gregorii episcopi Neocaesariensis Opera omnia, ed. G. Vossius, Mag. 1604; better ed. by Fronto Ducaeus, Par. 1622, fol.; in Gallandi, Bibl. Vet. Patrum" (1766–77), Tom. III., p. 385–470; and in Migne. "Patrol. Gr." Tom. X. (1857), 983–1343. Comp. also a Syriac version of Gregory’s kata; mevro" pivsti" in R. de Lagarde’s Analecta Syriaca, Leipz. 1858, pp. 31–67.

II. Gregory Of Nyssa: Bivo" kai; ejgkwvmion rJhvqen eij" to;n a{gion Grhgovrion to;n qaumatourgovn. In the works of Gregory of Nyssa, (Migne, vol. 46). A eulogy full of incredible miracles, which the author heard from his grandmother.

English translation by S. D. F. Salmond, in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. xx. (1871), p. 1–156.

C. P. Caspari: Alte und neue Quellen zur Gesc. des Taufsymbols und der Glaubensregel. Christiania, 1879, p. 1–160.

Victor Ryssel: Gregorius Thaumaturgus. Sein Leben und seine Schriften. Leipzig, 1880 (160 pp.). On other biograpbical essays of G., see Ryssel, pp. 59 sqq. Contains a translation of two hitherto unknown Syriac writings of Gregory.

W. Möller in Herzog2, V. 404 sq. H. R. Reynolds in Smith & Wace, II. 730–737.

Most of the Greek fathers of the third and fourth centuries stood more or less under the influence of the spirit and the works of Origen, without adopting all his peculiar speculative views. The most distinguished among his disciples are Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria, surnamed the Great, Heraclas, Hieracas, Pamphilus; in a wider sense also Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa and other eminent divines of the Nicene age.

Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, "the wonder-worker," was converted from heathenism in his youth by Origen at Caesarea, in Palestine, spent eight years in his society, and then, after a season of contemplative retreat, labored as bishop of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus from 244 to 270 with extraordinary success. He could thank God on his death-bed, that he had left to his successor no more unbelievers in his diocese than he had found Christians in it at his accession; and those were only seventeen. He must have had great missionary zeal and executive ability. He attended the Synod of Antioch in 265, which condemned Paul of Samasota.

Later story represents him as a "second Moses," and attributed extraordinary miracles to him. But these are not mentioned till a century after his time, by Gregory of Nyssa and Basil, who made him also a champion of the Nicene orthodoxy before the Council of Nicaea. Eusebius knows nothing of them, nor of his trinitarian creed which is said to have been communicated to him by a special revelation in a vision.1482  This creed is almost too Orthodox for an admiring Pupil Of Origen, and seems to presuppose the Arian controversy (especially the conclusion). It has probably been enlarged. Another and fuller creed ascribed to him, is the work of the younger Apollinaris at the end of the fourth century.1483

Among his genuine writings is a glowing eulogy on his beloved teacher Origen, which ranks as a masterpiece of later Grecian eloquence.1484  Also a simple paraphrase of the book of Ecclesiastes.1485  To these must be added two books recently published in a Syriac translation, one on the co-equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the other on the impassibility and the possibility of God.

Notes.

I. The Declaration of faith (e[kqesi" pivstew" kata; ajpokavluyin) is said to have been revealed to Gregory in a night vision by St. John, at the request of the Virgin Mary, and the autograph of it was, at the time of Gregory of Nyssa (as he says), in possession of the church of Neocaesarea. It is certainly a very remarkable document and the most explicit statement of the doctrine of the Trinity from the ante-Nicene age. Caspari (in his Alte und neue Quellen, etc., 1879, pp. 25–64), after an elaborate discussion, comes to the conclusion that the creed contains nothing inconsistent with a pupil of Origen, and that it was written by Gregory in opposition to Sabellianism and Paul of Samosata, and with reference to the controversy between Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome on the Trinity, between A.D. 260 and 270. But I think it more probable that it has undergone some enlargement at the close by a later hand. This is substantially also the view of Neander, and of Dorner (Entwicklungsgesch. der L. v. d. Pers. Christi, I. 735–737). The creed is at all events a very remarkable production and a Greek anticipation of the Latin Quicunque which falsely goes under the name of the "Athanasian Creed." We give the Greek with a translation. See Mansi, Conc. I. 1030  Patr. Gr. X. col. 983; Caspari, l. c.; comp. the comparative tables in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 40 and 41.

Gregory Thaumat. Declaration of Faith.

Eij" Qeo;", Path;r lovgou zw'nto", sofiva" uJfestwvsh" kai; dunavmew" kai; carakth'ro" aji>divou, tevleio" teleivou gennhvtwr, Path;r UiJou' monogenou' "

There is one God, the Father of the living Word, (who is his) subsisting Wisdom and Power and eternal Impress (lmage): perfect Begetter of the Perfect [Begotten], Father of the only begotten Son.

Ei|" Kuvrio", movno" ejk monou, qe;o" ejk qeou', carakth;r kai; eijkw;n th' " qeovthto", lovgo" ejnergov", sofiva th' " tw'n o{lwn sustavsew" periektikh; kai; duvnami" th' " o{lh" ktivsew" poihtikhv, UiJo;" ajlhqino;" ajlhqinou' Patrov", ajovrato" ajoravtou kai; a[fqarto" ajfqavrtou kai; ajqavnato" ajqanavtou kai; ajivŸdio" aji>divou

There is one Lord, Only of Only, God of God, the Image and Likeness of the Godhead, the efficient Word, Wisdom comprehensive of the system of all things, and Power productive of the whole creation; true Son of the true Father, Invisible of Invisible, and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal, and Eternal of Eternal.

Kai; e{n Pneu'ma  {Agion, ejk qeou' th;n u{parxin e[con, kai; di j Uijou' pefhno;" »dhladh; toi' " ajnqrwvpoi"¼, eijkw;n tou' Uijou' teleivou teleiva, zwh;, zwvntwn aijtiva, phgh; aJgiva, aJgiovth", aJgiasmou' corhgov": ejn w\/ fanerou'tai qeo;" oJ Path;r oJ ejpi pavntwn kai; ejn pa'si kai; qeo;" oj Uiov" oJ dia; pavntwn: tria;" teleiva, dovxh/ kai aji>diovthti kai; basileiva/ mh; merizomevnh mhde; ajpallotrioumevnh.

And there is one Holy Ghost, having his existence from God, and being manifested (namely, to mankind) by the Son; the perfect Likeness of the perfect Son: Life, the Cause of the living; sacred Fount; holiness, the Bestower of sanctification; in whom is revealed God the Father, who is over all things and in all things, and God the Son, who is through all things: a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and dominion, neither divided nor alien.

Ou[te ou\n ktistovn ti h] dou'lon ejn th'/ triavdi, ou[te ejpeivsakton, wJ" provteron me;n oujc uJpavrcon, u{steron de; ejpeiselqovn: ou[te ou\n ejnevlipev  pote UiJo;" Patri;, ou[te UiJw'/ Pneu'ma ajlla; a[trepto" kai; ajnalloivwto" hJ aujth; tria;" ajeiv.

There is therefore nothing created or subservient in the Trinity, nor super-induced, as though not before existing, but introduced afterward  Nor has the Son ever been wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son, but there is unvarying and unchangeable the same Trinity forever.

II. The Miracles ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus in the fourth century, one hundred years after his death, by the enlightened and philosophic Gregory of Nyssa, and defended in the nineteenth century by Cardinal Newman of England as credible (Two Essays on Bibl. and Eccles. Miracles. Lond. 3d ed., 1873, p. 261–270), are stupendous and surpass all that are recorded of the Apostles in the New Testament.

Gregory not only expelled demons, healed the sick, banished idols from a heathen temple, but he moved large stones by a mere word, altered the course of the Armenian river Lycus, and, like Moses of old, even dried up a lake. The last performance is thus related by St. Gregory of Nyssa:  Two young brothers claimed as their patrimony the possession of a lake. (The name and location are not given.)  Instead of dividing it between them, they referred the dispute to the Wonderworker, who exhorted them to be reconciled to one another. The young men however, became exasperated, and resolved upon a murderous duel, when the man of God, remaining on the banks of the lake, by the power of prayer, transformed the whole lake into dry land, and thus settled the conflict.

Deducting all these marvellous features, which the magnifying distance of one century after the death of the saint created, there remains the commanding figure of a great and good man who made a most powerful impression upon his and the subsequent generati

§ 190. Dionysius the Great.

(I.) S. Dionysii Episcopi Alexandrini quae supersunt Operum et Episto larum fragmenta, in Migne’s "Patrol. Gr." Tom. X. Col. 1237–1344 and Addenda, Col. 1575–1602. Older collections of the fragments by Simon de Magistris, Rom. 1796, and Routh, Rel. Sacr., vol. IV. 393–454. Add Pitra, Spicil. Solesm. I. 15 sqq.—English translation by Salmond in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. xx. (1871), p. 161–266.

(II.) Eusebius: H. E. III. 28; VI. 41, 45, 46; VII. 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28. Athanasius: De Sent. Dionys. Hieronym.: De Fir. ill. 69.

(III.) Th. Förster: De Doctrina et Sententiis Dionysii Magni Episcopi Alex. Berl. 1865. And in the "Zeitschrift für hist. Theol." 1871. Dr. Dittrich (R.C.): Dionysius der Grosse von Alexandrien. Freib. i. Breisg. 1867 (130 pages). Weizsäcker in Herzog2 III. 61, 5 sq. Westcott in Smith and Wace I. 850 sqq.

Dionysius Of Alexandria —so distinguished from the  contemporary Dionysius of Rome—surnamed "the Great,"1486 was born about A.D. 190,1487 of Gentile parents, and brought up to a secular profession with bright prospects of wealth and renown, but be examined the claims of Christianity and was won to the faith by Origen, to whom he ever remained faithful. He disputes with Gregory Thaumaturgus the honor of being the chief disciple of that great teacher; but while Gregory was supposed to have anticipated the Nicene dogma of the trinity, the orthodoxy of Dionysius was disputed. He became Origen’s assistant in the Catechetical School (233), and after the death of Heraclas bishop of Alexandria (248). During the violent persecution under Decius (249–251) he fled, and thus exposed himself, like Cyprian, to the suspicion of cowardice. In the persecution under Valerian (247), he was brought before the praefect and banished, but he continued to direct his church from exile. On the accession of Gallienus he was allowed to return (260). He died in the year 265.

His last years were disturbed by war, famine and pestilence, of which he gives a lively account in the Easter encyclical of the year 263.1488  "The present time," he writes, "does not appear a fit season for a festival ... All things are filled with tears, all are mourning, and on account of the multitudes already dead and still dying, groans are daily heard throughout the city ... There is not a house in which there is not one dead ... After this, war and famine succeeded which we endured with the heathen, but we bore alone those miseries with which they afflicted us ... But we rejoiced in the peace of Christ which he gave to us alone ... Most of our brethren by their exceeding great love and affection not sparing themselves and adhering to one another, were constantly superintending the sick, ministering to their wants without fear and cessation, and healing them in Christ." The heathen, on the contrary, repelled the sick or cast them half-dead into the street. The same self-denying charity in contrast with heathen selfishness manifested itself at Carthage during the raging of a pestilence, under the persecuting reign of Gallus (252), as we learn from Cyprian.

Dionysius took an active part in the christological, chiliastic, and disciplinary controversies of his time, and showed in them moderation, an amiable spirit of concession, and practical churchly tact, but also a want of independence and consistency. He opposed Sabellianism, and ran to the brink of tritheism, but in his correspondence with the more firm and orthodox Dionysius of Rome he modified his view, and Athanasius vindicated his orthodoxy against the charge of having sowed the seeds of Arianism. He wished to adhere to Origen’s christology, but the church pressed towards the Nicene formula. There is nothing, however, in the narrative of Athanasius which implies a recognition of Roman supremacy. His last christological utterance was a letter concerning the heresy of Paul of Samosata; he was prevented from attending the Synod of Antioch in 264, which condemned and deposed Paul. He rejected, with Origen, the chiliastic notions, and induced Nepos and his adherents to abandon them, but he denied the apostolic origin of the Apocalypse and ascribed it to the "Presbyter John," of doubtful existence. He held mild views on discipline and urged the Novatians to deal gently with the lapsed and to preserve the peace of the church. He also counselled moderation in the controversy between Stephen and Cyprian on the validity of heretical baptism, though he sided with the more liberal Roman theory.

Dionysius wrote many letters and treatises on exegetic, polemic, and ascetic topics, but only short fragments remain, mostly in Eusebius. The chief books were Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and Luke; Against Sabellius (christological); On Nature (philosophical); On the Promises (against Chiliasm): On Martyrdom. He compared the style of the fourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse to deny the identity of authorship, but he saw only the difference and not the underlying unity.1489  "All the fragments of Dionysius," says Westcott, "repay careful perusal. They are uniformly inspired by the sympathy and large-heartedness which he showed in practice."

Dionysius is commemorated in the Greek church on October 3, in the Roman on November 17.

§ 191. Julius Africanus.

(I.) The fragments in Routh: Rel. Sacr. II. 221–509. Also in Gallandi, Tom. II., and Migne, "Patr. Gr., " Tom. X. Col. 35–108.

(II.) Eusebius: H. E. VI. 31. Jerome: De Vir. ill. 63. Socrates: H. E. II. 35. Photius: Bibl. 34.

(III.) Fabricius: "Bibl. Gr." IV. 240 (ed. Harles). G. Salmon in Smith and Wace I. 53–57. Ad. Harnack in Herzog2 VII. 296–298. Also Pauly’s "Real-Encykl." V. 501 sq.; Nicolai’s "Griech. Lit. Gesch." II. 584; and Smith’s "Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biogr." I. 56 sq.

Julius Africanus,1490 the first Christian chronographer and universal historian, an older friend of Origen, lived in the first half of the second century at Emmaus (Nicopolis), in Palestine,1491 made journeys to Alexandria, where he heard the lectures of Heraclas, to Edessa, Armenia and Phrygia, and was sent on an embassy to Rome in behalf of the rebuilding of Emmaus which had been ruined (221). He died about A.D. 240 in old age. He was not an ecclesiastic, as far as we know, but a philosopher who pursued his favorite studies after his conversion and made them useful to the church. He may have been a presbyter, but certainly not a bishop.1492  He was the forerunner of Eusebius, who in his Chronicle has made copious use of his learned labor and hardly gives him sufficient credit, although he calls his chronography "a most accurate and labored performance." He was acquainted with Hebrew. Socrates classes him for learning with Clement of Alexandria and Origen.

His chief work is his chronography, in five books. It commenced with the creation (B. C. 5499) and came down to the year 221, the fourth year of Elagabalus. It is the foundation of the mediaeval historiography of the world and the church. We have considerable fragments of it and can restore it in part from the Chronicle of Eusebius. A satisfactory estimate of its merits requires a fuller examination of the Byzantine and oriental chronography of the church than has hitherto been made. Earlier writers were concerned to prove the antiquity of the Christian religion against the heathen charge of novelty by tracing it back to Moses and the prophets who were older than the Greek philosophers and poets. But Africanus made the first attempt at a systematic chronicle of sacred and profane history. He used as a fixed point the accession of Cyrus, which he placed Olymp. 55, 1, and then counting backwards in sacred history, he computed 1237 years between the exodus and the end of the seventy years’ captivity or the first year of Cyrus. He followed the Septuagint chronology, placed the exodus A. M. 3707, and counted 740 years between the exodus and Solomon. He fixed the Lord’s birth in A. M. 5500, and 10 years before our Dionysian era, but he allows only one year’s public ministry and thus puts the crucifixion A. M. 5531. He makes the 31 years of the Saviour’s life the complement of the 969 years of Methuselah. He understood the 70 weeks of Daniel to be 490 lunar years, which are equivalent to 475 Julian years. He treats the darkness at the crucifixion as miraculous, since an eclipse of the sun could not have taken place at the full moon.

Another work of Africanus, called Cesti (Kestoi;) or Variegated Girdles, was a sort of universal scrap-book or miscellaneous collection of information on geography, natural history, medicine, agriculture, war, and other subjects of a secular character. Only fragments remain. Some have unnecessarily denied his authorship on account of the secular contents of the book, which was dedicated to the Emperor Alexander Severus.

Eusebius mentions two smaller treatises of Africanus, a letter to Origen, "in which he intimates his doubts on the history of Susanna, in Daniel, as if it were a spurious and fictitious composition," and "a letter to Aristides on the supposed discrepancy between the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke, in which he most clearly establishes the consistency of the two evangelists, from an account which had been handed down from his ancestors."

The letter to Origen is still extant and takes a prominent rank among the few specimens of higher criticism in the literature of the ancient church. He urges the internal improbabilities of the story of Susanna, its omission from the Hebrew canon, the difference of style as compared with the canonical Daniel, and a play on Greek words which shows that it was originally written in Greek, not in Hebrew. Origen tried at great length to refute these objections, and one of his arguments is that it would be degrading to Christians to go begging to the Jews for the unadulterated Scriptures.

The letter to Aristides on the genealogies solves the difficulty by assuming that Matthew gives the natural, Luke the legal, descent of our Lord. It exists in fragments, from which F. Spitta has recently reconstructed it.1493

§ 192. Minor Divines of the Greek Church.

A number of divines of the third century, of great reputation in their day, mostly of Egypt and of the school of Origen, deserve a brief mention, although only few fragments of their works have survived the ravages of time.

I. Heraclas and his brother Plutarch (who afterwards died a martyr) were the oldest distinguished converts and pupils of Origen, and older than their teacher. Heraclas had even before him studied the New-platonic philosophy under Ammonius Saccas. He was appointed assistant of Origen, and afterwards his successor in the Catechetical School. After the death of Demetrius, the jealous enemy of Origen, Heraclas was elected bishop of Alexandria and continued in that high office sixteen years (A. D. 233–248). We know nothing of his administration, nor of his writings. He either did not adopt the speculative opinions of Origen, or prudently concealed them, at least he did nothing to recall his teacher from exile. He was succeeded by Dionysius the Great. Eusebius says that he was "devoted to the study of the Scriptures and a most learned man, not unacquainted with philosophy," but is silent about his conduct to Origen during and after his trial for heresy.1494

II. Among the successors of Heraclas and Dionysius in the Catechetical School was Theognostus, not mentioned by Eusebius, but by Athanasius and Photius. We have from him a brief fragment on the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and a few extracts from his Hypotyposeis (Adumbrations).1495

III. Pierius probably, succeeded Theognostus while Theonas was bishop of Alexandria (d. 300), and seems to have outlived the Diocletian persecution. He was the teacher of Pamphilus, and called "the younger Origen."1496

IV. Pamphilus, a great admirer of Origen, a presbyter and theological teacher at Caesarea in Palestine, and a martyr of the persecution of Maximinus (309), was not an author himself, but one of the most liberal and efficient promoters of Christian learning. He did invaluable service to future generations by founding a theological school and collecting a large library, from which his pupil and friend Eusebius (hence called "Eusebius Pampili "), Jerome, and many others, drew or increased their useful information. Without that library the church history of Eusebius would be far less instructive than it is now. Pamphilus transcribed with his own hand useful books, among others the Septuagint from the Hexapla of Origen.1497  He aided poor students, and distributed the Scriptures. While in prison, he wrote a defense of Origen, which was completed by Eusebius in six books, but only the first remains in the Latin version of Rufinus, whom Jerome charges with wilful alterations. It is addressed to the confessors who were condemned to the mines of Palestine, to assure them of the orthodoxy of Origen from his own writings, especially on the trinity and the person of Christ.1498

V. Peter, pupil and successor of Theonas, was bishop ofAlexandria since A.D. 300, lived during the terrible times of the Diocletian persecution, and was beheaded by order of Maximinus in 311. He held moderate views on the restoration of the lapsed, and got involved in the Meletian schism which engaged much of the attention of the Council of Nicaea. Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, taking advantage of Peter’s flight from persecution, introduced himself into his diocese, and assumed the character of primate of Egypt, but was deposed by Peter in 306 for insubordination. We have from Peter fifteen canons on discipline, and a few homiletical fragments in which he rejects Origen’s views of the pre-existence and ante-mundane fall of the soul as heathenish, and contrary to the Scripture account of creation. This dissent would place him among the enemies of Origen, but Eusebius makes no allusion to it, and praises him for piety, knowledge of the Scriptures, and wise administration.1499

VI. Hieracas (Hierax), from Leontopolis in Egypt, towards the end of the third century, belongs only in a wider sense to the Alexandrian school, and perhaps had no connexion with it at all. Epiphanius reckons him among the Manichaean heretics. He was, at all events, a perfectly original phenomenon, distinguished for his varied learning, allegorical exegesis, poetical talent, and still more for his eccentric asceticism. Nothing is left of the works which he wrote in the Greek and Egyptian languages. He is said to have denied the historical reality of the fall and the resurrection of the body, and to have declared celibacy the only sure way to salvation, or at least to the highest degree of blessedness. His followers were called Hieracitae.1500

§ 193. Opponents of Origen. Methodius

(I.) Meqodivou ejpiskovpou kai; mavrturo" ta; euJriskovmena pavnta. In Gallandi’s "Vet. Patr. Biblioth." Tom. III.; in Migne’s "Patrol. Gr." Tom. XVIII. Col. 9–408; and by A. Jahn (S. Methodii Opera, et S. Methodius Platonizans, Hal. 1865, 2 pts.). The first ed. was publ. by Combefis, 1644, and more completely in 1672. English translation in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Libr.," vol. XIV. (Edinb. 1869.)

(II) Hieronymus: De Viris ill. 83, and in several of his Epp. and Comment. Epiphanius: Haer. 64. Socrates: H. E. VI. 31. Photius: Bibl. 234–237.

Eusebius is silent about Method., perhaps because of his opposition to Origen; while Photius, perhaps for the same reason, pays more attention to him than to Origen, whose De Principiis he pronounces blasphemous, Bibl 8. Gregory of Nyssa, Arethas, Leontius Byzantius, Maximus, the Martyrologium Romanum (XIV. Kal. Oct.) and the Menologium Graecum (ad diem 20 Junii), make honorable mention of him.

(III.) Leo Allatius: Diatribe de Methodiorum Scriptis, in his ed. of the Convivium in 1656. Fabric." Bibl. Gr.," ed. Harles, VII. 260 sqq. W. Möller in Herzog2, IX. 724–726. (He discusses especially the relation of Methodius to Origen.)  G. Salmon in Smith and Wace, III. 909–911.

The opposition of Demetrius to Origen proceeded chiefly from personal feeling, and had no theological significance. Yet it made a pretext at least of zeal for orthodoxy, and in subsequent opponents this motive took the principal place. This was the case, so early as the third century, with Methodius, who may be called a forerunner of Epiphanius in his orthodox war against Origen, but with this difference that he was much more moderate, and that in other respects he seems to have been an admirer of Plato whom he imitated in the dramatic dress of composition, and of Origen whom he followed in his allegorical method of interpretation. He occupied the position of Christian realism against the speculative idealism of the Alexandrian teacher.

Methodius (also called Eubulius) was bishop first of Olympus and then of Patara (both in the province of Lycia, Asia Minor on the southern coast), and died a martyr in 311 or earlier in the Diocletian persecution.1501

His principal work is his Symposium or Banquet of Ten Virgins.1502 It is an eloquent but verbose and extravagant eulogy on the advantages and blessings of voluntary virginity, which he describes as "something supernaturally great, wonderful, and glorious," and as "the best and noblest manner of life." It was unknown before Christ (the ajrcipavrqeno"). At first men were allowed to marry sisters, then came polygamy, the next progress was monogamy, with continence, but the perfect state is celibacy for the kingdom of Christ, according to his mysterious hint in Matt. 19:12, the recommendation of Paul, 1 Cor. 7:1, 7, 34, 40, and the passage in Revelation 14:1–4, where "a hundred and forty-four thousand virgins" are distinguished from the innumerable multitude of other saints (7:9).

The literary form is interesting. The ten virgins are, of course, suggested by the parable in the gospel. The conception of the Symposium and the dialogue are borrowed from Plato, who celebrated the praises of Eros, as Methodius the praises of virginity. Methodius begins with a brief dialogue between Eubulios and Eubuloin (i.e. himself) and the virgin Gregorion who was present at a banquet of the ten virgins in the gardens of Arete (i.e. personified virtue) and reports to him ten discourses which these virgins successively delivered in praise of chastity. At the end of the banquet the victorious Thecla, chief of the virgins (St. Paul’s apocryphal companion), standing on the right hand of Arete, begins to sing a hymn of chastity to which the virgins respond with the oft-repeated refrain,

I keep myself pure for Thee, O Bridegroom,

And holding a lighted torch, I go to meet Thee."1503

Then follows a concluding dialogue between Eubulios and Gregorion on the question, whether chastity ignorant of lust is preferable to chastity which feels the power of passion and overcomes it, in other words, whether a wrestler who has no opponents is better than a wrestler who has many and strong antagonists and continually contends against them without being worsted. Both agree in giving the palm to the latter, and then they betake themselves to "the care of the outward man," expecting to resume the delicate discussion on the next day.

The taste and morality of virgins discussing at great length the merits of sexual purity are very questionable, at least from the standpoint of modern civilization, but the enthusiastic praise of chastity to the extent of total abstinence was in full accord with the prevailing asceticism of the fathers, including Origen, who freed himself from carnal temptation by an act of violence against nature.

The work On the Resurrection, likewise in the form of a dialogue, and preserved in large extracts by Epiphanius and Photius, was directed against Origen and his views on creation, pre-existence, and the immateriality of the resurrection body. The orthodox speakers (Eubulios and Auxentios) maintain that the soul cannot sin without the body, that the body is not a fetter of the soul, but its inseparable companion and an instrument for good as well is evil, and that the earth will not be destroyed, but purified and transformed into a blessed abode for the risen saints. In a book On Things Created1504 he refutes Origen’s view of the eternity of the world, who thought it necessary to the conception of God as an Almighty Creator and Ruler, and as the unchangeable Being.

The Dialogue On Free Will1505 treats of the origin of matter, and strongly resembles a work on that subject (peri; th'" u{lh") of which Eusebius gives an extract and which he ascribes to Maximus, a writer from the close of the second century.1506

Other works of Methodius, mentioned by Jerome, are: Against Porphyry (10, 000 lines); Commentaries on Genesis and Canticles; De Pythonissa (on the witch of Endor, against Origen’s view that Samuel was laid under the power of Satan when he evoked her by magical art). A Homily for Palm Sunday, and a Homily on the Cross are also assigned to him. But there were several Methodii among the patristic writers.

§ 194. Lucian of Antioch.

(I.) Luciani Fragmenta in Routh, Rel. s. IV. 3–17.

(II.) Euseb. H. E. VIII. 13; IX. 6 (and Rufinus’s Eus. IX. 6). Hier  De Vir. ill. 77, and in other works. Socrat.: H. E. II. 10. Sozom.: H. E. III. 5. Epiphan.: Ancoratus, c. 33. Theodor.: H. E. I. 3. Philostorgius: H. E., II. 14, 15. Chrysostom’s Hom. in Lucian, (in Opera ed. Montfaucon, T. II. 524 sq; Migne, "Patr. Gr." I. 520 sqq.) Ruinart: Acta Mart., p. 503 sq.

(III.) Acta Sanct. Jan. VII. 357 sq. Baron. Ann. ad Ann. 311. Brief notices in Tillemont, Cave, Fabricius, Neander, Gieseler, Hefele (Conciliengesch. vol. I). Harnack: Luc. der Märt. in Herzog, VIII. (1881), pp. 767–772. J. T. Stokes, in Smith & Wace, III., 748 and 749.

On his textual labors see the critical Introductions to the Bible.

I. Lucian was an eminent presbyter of Antioch and martyr of the Diocletian persecution, renewed by Maximin. Very little is known of him. He was transported from Antioch to Nicomedia, where the emperor then resided, made a noble confession of his faith before the judge and died under the tortures in prison (311). His memory was celebrated in Antioch on the 7th of January. His piety was of the severely ascetic type.

His memory was obscured by the suspicion of unsoundness in the faith. Eusebius twice mentions him and his glorious martyrdom, but is silent about his theological opinions. Alexander of Alexandria, in an encyclical of 321, associates him with Paul of Samosata and makes him responsible for the Arian heresy; he also says that he was excommunicated or kept aloof from the church (ajposunavgwgo" e[meine) during the episcopate of Domnus, Timaeus, and Cyrillus; intimating that his schismatic condition ceased before his death. The charge brought against him and his followers is that he denied the eternity of the Logos  and the human soul of Christ (the Logos taking the place of the rational soul). Arius and the Arians speak of him as their teacher. On the other hand Pseudo-Athanasius calls him a great and holy martyr, and Chrysostom preached a eulogy on him Jan. 1, 387. Baronius defends his orthodoxy, other Catholics deny it.1507  Some distinguished two Lucians, one orthodox, and one heretical; but this is a groundless hypothesis.

The contradictory reports are easily reconciled by the assumption that Lucian was a critical scholar with some peculiar views on the Trinity and Christology which were not in harmony with the later Nicene orthodoxy, but that he wiped out all stains by his heroic confession and martyrdom.1508

II. The creed which goes by his name and was found after his death, is quite orthodox as far as it goes, and was laid with three similar creeds before the Synod of Antioch held A.D. 341, with the intention of being substituted for the Creed of Nicaea.1509  It resembles the creed of Gregorius Thaumaturgus, is strictly trinitarian and acknowledges Jesus Christ "as the Son of God, the only begotten God,1510 through whom all things were made, who was begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Whole of Whole, One of One, Perfect of Perfect, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the living Word, Wisdom, Life, True Light, Way, Truth, Resurrection, Shepherd, Door, unchangeable and unalterable, the immutable Likeness of the Godhead, both of the substance and will and power and glory of the Father, the first-born of all creation,1511 who was in the beginning with God, the Divine Logos, according to what is said in the Gospel: ’And the Word was God (John 1:1), through whom all things were made’ (ver. 3), and in whom ’all things consist’ (Col. 1:17): who in the last days came down from above, and was born of a Virgin, according to the Scriptures, and became man, the Mediator between God and man, etc.1512

III. Lucianus is known also by his critical revision of the text of the Septuagint and the Greek Testament. Jerome mentions that copies were known in his day as "exemplaria Lucianea," but in other places he speaks rather disparagingly of the texts of Lucian, and of Hesychius, a bishop of Egypt (who distinguished himself in the same field). In the absence of definite information it is impossible to decide the merits of his critical labors. His Hebrew scholarship is uncertain, and hence we do not know whether his revision of the Septuagint was made from the original.1513

As to the New Testament, it is likely that he contributed much towards the Syrian recension (if we may so call it), which was used by Chrysostom and the later Greek fathers, and which lies at the basis of the textus receptus.1514

§ 195. The Antiochian School.

Kihn (R.C.): Die Bedeutung der antioch. Schule. Weissenburg, 1856.

C. Hornung: Schola Antioch. Neostad. ad S. 1864.

Jos. Hergenröther. (Cardinal): Die Antioch. Schule. Würzb. 1866.

Diestel: Gesch. des A. Test. in, der christl. Kirche. Jena, 1869 (pp. 126–141).

W. Möller in Herzog,2 I. 454–457.

Lucian is the reputed founder of the Antiochian School of theology, which was more fully developed in the fourth century. He shares this honor with his friend Dorotheus, likewise a presbyter of Antioch, who is highly spoken of by Eusebius as a biblical scholar acquainted with Hebrew.1515  But the real founders of that school are Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus (c. A.D. 379–394), and Theodorus, bishop of Mopsuestia (393–428), both formerly presbyters of Antioch.

The Antiochian School was not a regular institution with a continuous succession of teachers, like the Catechetical School of Alexandria, but a theological tendency, more particularly a peculiar type of hermeneutics and exegesis which had its centre in Antioch. The characteristic features are, attention to the revision of the text, a close adherence to the plain, natural meaning according to the use of language and the condition of the writer, and justice to the human factor. In other words, its exegesis is grammatical and historical, in distinction from the allegorical method of the Alexandrian School. Yet, as regards textual criticism, Lucian followed in the steps of Origen. Nor did the Antiochians disregard the spiritual sense, and the divine element in the Scriptures. The grammatico-historical exegesis is undoubtedly the only safe and sound basis for the understanding of the Scriptures as of any other book; and it is a wholesome check upon the wild licentiousness of the allegorizing method which often substitutes imposition for exposition. But it may lead to different results in different hands, according to the spirit of the interpreter. The Arians and Nestorians claimed descent from, or affinity with, Lucian and his school; but from the same school proceeded also the prince of commentators among the fathers, John Chrysostom, the eulogist of Lucian and Diodorus, and the friend and fellow student of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Theodoret followed in the same line.

After the condemnation of Nestorius, the Antiochian theology continued to be cultivated at Nisibis and Edessa among the Nestorians.

Notes.

Cardinal Newman, when still an Anglican (in his book on Arians of the Fourth Century, p. 414) made the Syrian School of biblical criticism responsible for the Arian heresy, and broadly maintained that the "mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together."  But Cardinal Hergenröther, who is as good a Catholic and a better scholar, makes a proper distinction between use and abuse, and gives the following fair and discriminating statement of the relation between the Antiochian and Alexandrian schools, and the critical and mystical method of interpretation to which a Protestant historian can fully assent. (Handbuch der allgem. Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg i. B. 2nd ed. 1879, vol. I. p. 281.)

"Die Schule von Antiochien hatte bald den Glanz der Alexandrinischen erreicht, ja sogar überstrahlt. Beide konnten sich vielfach ergänzen, da jede ihre eigenthümliche Entwicklung, Haltung und Methode hatte, konnten aber auch eben wegen iherer Verschiedenheit leicht unter sich in Kampf und auf Abwege von der Kirchenlehre gerathen. Während bei den Alexandrinern eine speculativ-intuitive, zum Mystischen sich hinneigende Richtung hervortrat, war bei den Antiochenern eine logisch-reflectirende, durchaus nüchterne Verstandesrichtung vorherrschend. Während jene enge an die platonische Philosophie sich anschlossen und zwar vorherrschend in der Gestalt, die sie unter dem hellenistischen Juden Philo gewonnen hatte, waren die Antiochener einem zum Stoicismus hinneigenden Eklekticismus, dann der Aristotelischen Schule ergeben, deren scharfe Dialektik ganz ihrem Geiste zusagte. Demgemäss wurde in der alexandrinischen Schule, vorzugsweise die allegorisch-mystische Erklärung der heiligen Schrift gepflegt, in der Antiochenischen dagegen die buchstäbliche, grammatisch-logische und historische Interpretation, ohne dass desshalb der mystische Sinn und insbesondere die Typen des Alten Bundes gänzlich in Abrede gestellt worden wären. Die Origenisten suchen die Unzulänglichkeit des blossen buchstäblichen Sinnes und die Nothwendigkeit der allegorischen Auslegung nachzuweisen, da der Wortlaut vieler biblischen Stellen Falsches, Widersprechendes, Gottes Unwürdiges ergebe; sie fehlten hier durch das Uebermass des Allegorisirens und durch Verwechslung der figürlichen Redeweisen, die dem Literalsinne angehören, mit der mystischen Deutung; sie verflüchtigten oft den historischen Gehalt der biblischen Erzählung, hinter deren äusserer Schale sie einen verborgenen Kern suchen zu müssen glaubten. Damit stand ferner in Verbindung, dass in der alexandrinischen Schule das Moment des Uebervernünftigen, Unausprechlichen, Geheimnissvollen in den göttlichen Dingen stark betont wurde, während die Antiochener vor Allem das Vernunftgemässe, dem menschlichen Geiste Entsprechende in den Dogmen hervorhoben, das Christenthum als eine das menschliche Denken befriedligende Wahrheit nachzuweisen suchten. Indem sie aber dieses Streben verfolgten, wollten die hervorragen den Lehrer der antiochenischen Schule keineswegs den übernatürlichen Charakter und die Mysterien der Kirchenlehre bestreiten, sie erkannten diese in der Mehrzahl an, wie Chrysotomus und Theodoret; aber einzelne Gelehrte konnten über dem Bemühen, die Glaubenslehren leicht verständlich und begreiflich zu machen, ihren Inhalt verunstalten und zerstören."

§ 196. Tertullian and the African School.

Comp. the liter. on Montanism, §109, p. 415.

(I.) Tertulliani quae supersunt omnia. Ed. Franc. Oehler. Lips. 1853, 3 vols. The third vol. contains dissertations De Vita et Scriptis Tert. by Nic. Le Nourry, Mosheim, Noesselt, Semler, Kaye. Earlier editions by Beatus Rhenanus, Bas. 1521; Pamelius, Antwerp, 1579; Rigaltius (Rigault), Par. 1634 and Venet. 1744; Semler, Halle, 1770–3. 6 vols.; Oberthür, 1780; Leopold, in Gersdorf’s "Biblioth. patrum Eccles. Latinorum selecta"(IV-VII.), Lips. 1839–41; and Migne, Par. I 1884. A new ed. by Reifferscheid will appear in the Vienna "Corpus Scriptorum Eccles. Lat."

English transl. by P. Holmes and others in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," Edinb. 1868 sqq. 4 vols. German translation by K. A. H. Kellner. Köln, 1882, 2 vols.

(II.) Euseb. H. G. II. 2, 25; III. 20; V. 5. Jerome: De Viris Ill.c.53.

(III.) Neander: Antignosticus, Geist des Tertullianus u. Einleitung in dessen Schriften. Berl. 1825, 2d ed. 1849.

J. Kaye: Eccles. Hist. of the second and third Centuries, illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian. 3d ed. Lond. 1845.

Carl Hesselberg: Tertullian’s Lehre aus seinen Schriften entwickelt. 1. Th. Leben und Schriften. Dorpat 1848 (136 pages).

P. Gottwald: De Montanismo Tertulliani. Breslau, 1863.

Hermann Rönsch: Das Neue Testament Tertullian’s. Leipz. 1871 (731 pages.) A reconstruction of the text of the old Latin version of the N. T. from the writings of Tertullian.

Ad. Ebert: Gesch. der Christl. lat. Lit. Leipz. 1874, sqq. I. 24–41.

A. Hauck: Tertullian’s Leben und Schriften, Erlangen, 1877 (410 pages.) With judicious extracts from all his writings.

(IV.) On the chronology of Tertullian’s works see Noesselt: De vera aetate et doctrina Scriptorum Tertull. (in Oehler’s ed. III. 340–619); Uhlhorn: Fundamenta Chronologica Tertullianeae (Göttingen 1852); Bonwetsch: Die Schriften Tertullians nach der Zeit ihrer Abfassung (Bonn 1879, 89 pages); Harnack: Zur Chronologie der Schriften Tertullians (Leipz. 1878); Noeldechen: Abfassungszeit der Schriften Tertullians (Leipz. 1888).

(V.) On special points: oehninger: Tertullian und seine Auferstehungslehre Augsb. 1878, 34 pp). F. J. Schmidt: De Latinitate Tertutliani (Erlang. 1877). M. Klussmann: Curarum Tertullianearum, part. I et II. (Halle 1881). G. R. Hauschild: Tertullian’s Psychologie (Frankf. a. M. 1880, 78 pp.). By the same: Die Grundsätze u. Mittel der Wortbildung bei Tertullian (Leipz. 1881, 56 pp); Ludwig.: Tert’s Ethik. (Leipz. 1885). Special treatises on Tertullian, by Hefele, Engelhardt, Leopold, Schaff (in Herzog), Ebert, Kolberg.

The Western church in this period exhibits no such scientific productiveness as the Eastern. The apostolic church was predominantly Jewish, the ante-Nicene church, Greek, the post-Nicene, Roman. The Roman church itself was first predominantly Greek, and her earliest writers—Clement, Hermas, Irenaeus, Hippolytus—wrote exclusively in Greek. Latin Christianity begins to appear in literature at the end of the second century, and then not in Italy, but in North Africa, not in Rome, but in Carthage, and very characteristically, not with converted speculative philosophers, but with practical lawyers and rhetoricians. This literature does not gradually unfold itself, but appears at once under a fixed, clear stamp, with a strong realistic tendency. North Africa also gave to the Western church the fundamental book—the Bible in its first Latin Version, the so-called Itala, and this was the basis of Jerome’s Vulgata which to this day is the recognized standard Bible of Rome. There were, however, probably several Latin versions of portions of the Bible current in the West before Jerome.

I. Life of Tertullian.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus is the father of the Latin theology and church language, and one of the greatest men of Christian antiquity. We know little of his life but what is derived from his book and from the brief notice of Jerome in his catalogue of illustrious men. But few writers have impressed their individuality so strongly in their books as this African father. In this respect, as well as in others, he resembles St. Paul, and Martin Luther. He was born about the year 150, at Carthage, the ancient rival of Rome, where his father was serving as captain of a Roman legion under the proconsul of Africa. He received a liberal Graeco-Roman education; his writings manifest an extensive acquaintance with historical, philosophical, poetic, and antiquarian literature, and with juridical terminology and all the arts of an advocate. He seems to have devoted himself to politics and forensic eloquence, either in Carthage or in Rome. Eusebius calls him "a man accurately acquainted with the Roman laws,"1516 and many regard him as identical with the Tertyllus, or Tertullianus, who is the author of several fragments in the Pandects.

To his thirtieth or fortieth year he lived in heathen blindness and licentiousness.1517  Towards the end of the second century be embraced Christianity, we know not exactly on what occasion, but evidently from deepest conviction, and with all the fiery energy of his soul; defended it henceforth with fearless decision against heathens, Jews, and heretics; and studied the strictest morality of life. His own words may be applied to himself: "Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani." He was married, and gives us a glowing picture of Christian family life, to which we have before referred; but in his zeal for every form of self-denial, he set celibacy still higher, and advised his wife, in case he should die before her to remain a widow, or, at least never to marry an unbelieving husband; and he afterwards put second marriage even on a level with adultery. He entered the ministry of the Catholic church,1518 first probably in Carthage, perhaps in Rome, where at all events he spent some time1519 but, like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, he never rose above the rank of presbyter.

Some years after, between 199 and 203, he joined the puritanic, though orthodox, sect of the Montanists. Jerome attributes this change to personal motives, charging it to the envy and insults of the Roman clergy, from whom he himself experienced many an indignity.1520  But Tertullian was inclined to extremes from the first, especially to moral austerity. He was no doubt attracted by the radical contempt for the world, the strict asceticism, the severe discipline, the martyr enthusiasm, and the chiliasm of the Montanists, and was repelled by the growing conformity to the world in the Roman church, which just at that period, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, openly took under its protection a very lax penitential discipline, and at the same time, though only temporarily, favored the Patripassian error of Praxeas, an opponent of the Montanists. Of this man Tertullian therefore says, in his sarcastic way: He has executed in Rome two works of the devil; has driven out prophecy (the Montanistic) and brought in heresy (the Patripassian); has turned off the Holy Ghost and crucified the Father.1521  Tertullian now fought the catholics, or the psychicals, is he frequently calls them, with the same inexorable sternness with which he had combated the heretics. The departures of the Montanists, however, related more to points of morality and discipline than of doctrine; and with all his hostility to Rome, Tertullian remained a zealous advocate of the catholic faith, and wrote, even from his schismatic position, several of his most effective works against the heretics, especially the Gnostics. Indeed, as a divine, he stood far above this fanatical sect, and gave it by his writings an importance and an influence in the church itself which it certainly would never otherwise have attained.

He labored in Carthage as a Montanist presbyter and an author, and died, as Jerome says, in decrepit old age, according to some about the year 220, according to others not till 240; for the exact time, as well as the manner of his death, are unknown. His followers in Africa propagated themselves, under the name of "Tertullianists," down to the time of Augustin in the fifth century, and took perhaps a middle place between the proper Montanists and the catholic church. That he ever returned into the bosom of Catholicism is an entirely groundless opinion.

Strange that this most powerful defender of old catholic orthodoxy and the teacher of the high-churchly Cyprian, should have been a schismatic and all antagonist of Rome. But he had in his constitution the tropical fervor and acerbity of the Punic character, and that bold spirit of independence in which his native city of Carthage once resisted, through more than a hundred years’ war,1522 the rising power of the seven-hilled city on the Tiber. He truly represents the African church, in which a similar antagonism continued to reveal itself, not only among the Donatists, but even among the leading advocates of Catholicism. Cyprian died at variance with Rome on the question of heretical baptism; and Augustin, with all his great services to the catholic system of faith, became at the same time, through the anti-Peligian doctrines of sin and grace, the father of evangelical Protestantism and of semi-Protestant Jansenism.

Hippolytus presents several interesting points of contact. He was a younger contemporary of Tertullian though they never met is far as we know. Both were champions of catholic orthodoxy against heresy, and yet both opposed to Rome. Hippolytus charged two popes with heresy as well as laxity of discipline; and yet in view of his supposed repentance and martyrdom (as reported by Prudentius nearly two hundred years afterwards), he canonized in the Roman church; while such honor was never conferred upon the African, though he was a greater and more useful man.

II. Character. Tertullian was a rare genius, perfectly original and fresh, but angular, boisterous and eccentric; full of glowing fantasy, pointed wit, keen discernment, polemic dexterity, and moral earnestness, but wanting in clearness, moderation, and symmetrical development. He resembled a foaming mountain torrent rather than a calm, transparent river in the valley. His vehement temper was never fully subdued, although he struggled sincerely against it.1523  He was a man of strong convictions, and never hesitated to express them without fear or favor.

Like almost all great men, he combined strange contrarieties of character. Here we are again reminded of Luther; though the reformer had nothing of the ascetic gloom and rigor of the African father, and exhibits instead with all his gigantic energy, a kindly serenity and childlike simplicity altogether foreign to the latter. Tertullian dwells enthusiastically on the divine foolishness of the gospel, and has a sublime contempt for the world, for its science and its art; and yet his writings are a mine of antiquarian knowledge, and novel, striking, and fruitful ideas. He calls the Grecian philosophers the patriarchs of all heresies, and scornfully asks: "What has the academy to do with the church?  what has Christ to do with Plato—Jerusalem with Athens?"  He did not shrink from insulting the greatest natural gift of God to man by his "Credo quia absurdum est." And yet reason does him invaluable service against his antagonists.1524  He vindicates the principle of church authority and tradition with great force and ingenuity against all heresy; yet, when a Montanist, he claims for himself with equal energy the right of private judgment and of individual protest.1525  He has a vivid sense of the corruption of human nature and the absolute need of moral regeneration; yet he declares the soul to be born Christian, and unable to find rest except in Christ. "The testimonies of the soul, says he, "are as true as they are simple; as simple as they are popular; as popular as they are natural; as natural as they are divine." He is just the opposite of the genial, less vigorous, but more learned and comprehensive Origen. He adopts the strictest supranatural principles; and yet he is a most decided realist, and attributes body, that is, as it were, a corporeal, tangible substantiality, even to God and to the soul; while the idealistic Alexandrian cannot speak spiritually enough of God, and can conceive the human soul without and before the existence of the body. Tertullian’s theology revolves about the great Pauline antithesis of sin and grace, and breaks the road to the Latin anthropology and soteriology afterwards developed by his like-minded, but clearer, calmer, and more considerate countryman, Augustin. For his opponents, be they heathens, Jews, heretics, or Catholics, he has as little indulgence and regard as Luther. With the adroitness of a special pleader he entangles them in self-contradictions, pursues them into every nook and corner, overwhelms them with arguments, sophisms, apophthegms, and sarcasms, drives them before him with unmerciful lashings, and almost always makes them ridiculous and contemptible. His polemics everywhere leave marks of blood. It is a wonder that he was not killed by the heathens, or excommunicated by the Catholics.

His style is exceedingly characteristic, and corresponds with his thought. It is terse, abrupt, laconic, sententious, nervous, figurative, full of hyperbole, sudden turns, legal technicalities, African provincialisms, or rather antiquated or vulgar latinisms.1526  It abounds in latinized Greek words, and new expressions, in roughnesses, angles, and obscurities; sometimes, like a grand volcanic eruption, belching precious stones and dross in strange confusion; or like the foaming torrent tumbling over the precipice of rocks and sweeping all before it. His mighty spirit wrestles with the form, and breaks its way through the primeval forest of nature’s thinking. He had to create the church language of the Latin tongue.1527

In short, we see in this remarkable man both intellectually and morally, the fermenting of a new creation, but not yet quite set free from the bonds of chaotic darkness and brought into clear and beautiful order.

Notes.

I. Gems from Tertullian’s writings.

The philosophy of persecution:

"Semen Est Sanguis Christianorum." (Apol. c. 50.)

The human soul and Christianity (made for Christ, yet requiring a new birth):

"Testimonium Animae  Naturaliter. Christianae." (De Test. Anim. c. 2; see the passages quoted § 40, p. 120.)

"Fiunt, non, nascuntur Christiani." (Apol. 18. De Test. Anim. 1)

Christ the Truth, not Habit (versus traditionalism):

"Christus Veritas Est, Non Consuetudo." (De Virg. vel 1.)

General priesthood of the laity (versus an exclusive hierarchy):

"Nonne Et Laici Sacerdotes Sumus?  "(De Exhort. Cast. 7.)

Religious Liberty, an inalienable right of man (versus compulsion and persecution:

"Humani Juris Et Naturalis Potestatis Est Unicuique Quod Putaverit Colere." (Ad Scap. 2; comp. Apol. 14 and the passages quoted § 13, p. 35.)

Dr. Baur (Kirchengesch.I. 428) says: "It is remarkable how already the oldest Christian Apologists, in vindicating the Christian faith, were led to assert the Protestant principle of freedom of faith and conscience "[and we must add, of public worship], "as an inherent attribute of the conception of religion against their heathen opponents." Then he quotes Tertullian, as the first who gave clear expression to this principle.

II. Estimates of Tertullian as a man and an author.

Neander (Ch. Hist. I. 683 sq., Torrey’s translation): "Tertullian presents special claims to attention, both as the first representative of the theological tendency in the North-African church, and as a representative of the Montanistic mode of thinking. He was a man of an ardent and profound spirit, of warm and deep feelings; inclined to give himself up, with his whole soul and strength, to the object of his love, and sternly to repel everything that was foreign from this. He possessed rich and various stores of knowledge; which had been accumulated, however, at random, and without scientific arrangement. His profoundness of thought was not united with logical clearness and sobriety: an ardent, unbridled imagination, moving in a world of sensuous images, governed him. His fiery and passionate disposition, and his previous training as an advocate and rhetorician, easily impelled him, especially in controversy, to rhetorical exaggerations. When he defends a cause, of whose truth he was convinced, we often see in him the advocate, whose sole anxiety is to collect together all the arguments which can help his case, it matters not whether they are true arguments or only plausible sophisms; and in such cases the very exuberance of his wit sometimes leads him astray from the simple feeling of truth. What must render this man a phenomenon presenting special claims to the attention of the Christian historian is the fact, that Christianity is the inspiring soul of his life and thoughts; that out of Christianity an entirely new and rich inner world developed itself to his mind: but the leaven of Christianity had first to penetrate through and completely refine that fiery, bold and withal rugged nature. We find the new wine in an old bottle; and the tang which it has contracted there, may easily embarrass the inexperienced judge. Tertullian often had more within him than he was able to express: the overflowing mind was at a loss for suitable forms of phraseology. He had to create a language for the new spiritual matter,—and that out of the rude Punic Latin,—without the aid of a logical and grammatical education, and as he was hurried along in the current of thoughts and feelings by his ardent nature. Hence the often difficult and obscure phraseology; but hence, too, the original and striking turns in his mode of representation. And hence this great church-teacher, who unites great gifts with great failings, has been so often misconceived by those who could form no friendship with the spirit which dwelt in so ungainly a form."

Hase (Kirchengesch. p. 91, tenth ed.): "Die lateinische Kirche hatte fast nur Übersetzungen, bis Tertullianus, als Heide Rhetor und Sachwalter zu Rom, mit reicher griechischer Gelehrsamkeit, die auch der Kirchenvater gern sehen liess, Presbyter in seiner Vaterstadt Karthago, ein strenger, düsterer, feuriger Character, dem Christenthum aus punischem Latein eine Literatur errang, in welcher geistreiche Rhetorik, genialer so wie gesuchter Witz, der sinnliches Anfassen des Idealen, tiefes Gefühl and juridische Verstandesansicht mit einander ringen. Er hat der afrikanischen Kirche die Losung angegeben: Christus sprach: Ich bin die Wahrheit, nicht, das Herkommen. Er hat das Gottesbewusstsein in den Tiefen der Seele hochgehalten, aber ein Mann der Auctoritaet hat er die Thorheit des Evangeliums der Weltweisheit seiner Zeitgenossen, das Unglaubliche der Wunder Gottes dem gemeinen Weltverstande mit stolzer Ironie entgegengehalten. Seine Schriften, denen er unbedenklich Fremdes angeeignet und mit dent Gepraege seines Genius versehen hat, sind theils polemisch mit dem höchsten Selbstvertraun der katholischen Gesinnung gegen Heiden, Juden und Haeretiker, theils erbaulich; so jedoch, dass auch in jenen das Erbauliche, in diesen das Polemische für strenge Sitte und Zucht vorhanden ist."

Hauck (Tertullian’s Leben und Schriften, p. 1)   Unter den Schriftstellern der lateinischen Christenheit ist Tertullian einer der bedeutendsten und intressantesten. Er ist der Anfänger der lateinischen Theologie, der nicht nur ihrer Sprache seinen Stempel aufgeprägt hat, sondern sie auch an die Bahn hinwies, welche sie lange einheilt. Seine Persönlichkeit hat ebensoviel Anziehendes als Abstossendes; denn wer könnte den Ernst seines sittlichen Strebens, den Reichthum und die Lebhaftigkeit seines Geistes, die Festigkeit seiner Ueberzeugung und die stürmische Kraft seiner Beredtsamkeit verkennen? Allein ebensowenig lässt sich übersehen, dass ihm in allen Dingen das Mass fehlte. Seine Erscheinung hat nichts Edles; er war nicht frei von Bizzarem, ja Gemeinem. So zeigen ihn seine Schriften, die Denkmäler seines Lebens Er war ein Mann, der sich in unaufhörlichen Streite bewegte: sein ganzes Wesen trägt die Spuren hievon."

Cardinal Hergenröther, the first Roman Catholic church historian now living (for Döllinger was excommunicated in 1870), says of Tertullian (in his Kirchengesch. I. 168, second ed., 1879): "Strenge und ernst, oft beissend sarkastisch, in der, Sprache gedrängt und dunkel der heidnischen Philosophie durchaus abgeneigt, mit dem römischen Rechte sehr vertraut, hat er in seinen zahlreichen Schriften Bedeutendes für die Darstellung der Kirchlichen Lehre geleistet, und ungeachtet seines Uebertritts zu den Montanisten betrachteten ihn die späteren africanischen Schriftsteller, auch Cyprian, als Muster und Lehrer."

Pressensé (Martyrs and Apoloqists, p. 375): "The African nationality gave to Christianity its most eloquent defender, in whom the intense vehemence, the untempered ardor of the race, appear purified indeed, but not subdued. No influence in the early ages could equal that of Tertullian; and his writings breathe a spirit of such undying power that they can never grow old, and even now render living, controversies which have been silent for fifteen centuries. We must seek the man in his own pages, still aglow with his enthusiasm and quivering with his passion, for the details of his personal history are very few. The man is, as it were, absorbed in the writer, and we can well understand it, for his writings embody his whole soul. Never did a man more fully infuse his entire moral life into his books, and act through his words."

§ 197. The Writings of Tertullian.

Tertullian developed an extraordinary literary activity in two languages between about 190 and 220. His earlier books in the Greek language, and some in the Latin, are lost. Those which remain are mostly short; but they are numerous, and touch nearly all departments of religious life. They present a graphic picture of the church of his day. Most of his works, according to internal evidence, fill in the first quarter of the third century, in the Montanistic period of his life, and among these many of his ablest writings against the heretics; while, on the other hand, the gloomy moral austerity, which predisposed him to Montanism, comes out quite strongly even in his earliest productions.1528

His works may be grouped in three classes: apologetic; polemic or anti-heretical; and ethic or practical; to which may be added as a fourth class the expressly Montanistic tracts against the Catholics. We can here only mention the most important:

1. In the Apologetic works against heathens and Jews, he pleads the cause of all Christendom, and deserves the thanks of all Christendom. Preëminent among them is the Apologeticus (or Apologeticum).1529  It was composed in the reign of Septimius Severus, between 197 and 200. It is unquestionably one of the most beautiful monuments of the heroic age of the church. In this work, Tertullian enthusiastically and triumphantly repels the attacks of the heathens upon the new religion, and demands for it legal toleration and equal rights with the other sects of the Roman empire. It is the first plea for religious liberty, as an inalienable right which God has given to every man, and which the civil government in its own interest should not only tolerate but respect and protect. He claims no support, no favor, but simply justice. The church was in the first three centuries a self-supporting and self-governing society (as it ought always to be), and no burden, but a blessing to the state, and furnished to it the most peaceful and useful citizens. The cause of truth and justice never found a more eloquent and fearless defender in the very face of despotic power, and the blazing fires of persecution, than the author of this book. It breathes from first to last the assurance of victory in apparent defeat.

"We conquer," are his concluding words to the prefects and judges of the Roman empire, "We conquer in dying; we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued .... Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus. And yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it?  Who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines?  And, when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God’s grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood?  For that secures the remission of all offences. On this account it is that we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the Highest."

The relation of the Apologeticus to the Octavius of Minucius Felix will be discussed in the next section. But even if Tertullian should have borrowed from that author (as he undoubtedly borrowed, without acknowledgment, much matter from Irenaeus, in his book against the Valentinians), he remains one of the most original and vigorous writers.1530  Moreover the plan is different; Minucius Felix pleads for Christianity as a philosopher before philosophers, to convince the intellect; Tertullian as a lawyer and advocate before judges, to induce them to give fair play to the Christians, who were refused even a hearing in the courts.

The beautiful little tract "On the Testimony of the Soul," (6 chapters) is a supplement to the Apologeticus, and furnishes one of the strongest positive arguments for Christianity. Here the human soul is called to bear witness to the one true God: it springs from God, it longs for God; its purer and nobler instincts and aspirations, if not diverted and perverted by selfish and sinful passions, tend upwards and heavenwards, and find rest and peace only in God. There is, we may say, a pre-established harmony between the soul and the Christian religion; they are made for each other; the human soul is constitutionally Christian. And this testimony is universal, for as God is everywhere, so the human soul is everywhere. But its testimony turns against itself if not heeded.

"Every soul," he concludes, "is a culprit as well as a witness: in the measure that it testifies for truth, the guilt of error lies on it; and on the day of judgment it will stand before the court of God, without a word to say. Thou proclaimedst God, O soul, but thou didst not seek to know Him; evil spirits were detested by thee, and yet they were the objects of thy adoration; the punishments of hell were foreseen by thee, but no care was taken to avoid them; thou hadst a savor of Christianity, and withal wert the persecutor of Christians."

2. His polemic works are occupied chiefly with the refutation of the Gnostics. Here belongs first of all his thoroughly catholic tract." On the Prescription of Heretics."1531  It is of a general character and lays down the fundamental principle of the church in dealing with heresy. Tertullian cuts off all errors and neologies at the outset from the right of legal contest and appeal to the holy Scriptures, because these belong only to the catholic church as the legitimate heir and guardian of Christianity. Irenaeus had used the same argument, but Tertullian gave it a legal or forensic form. The same argument, however, turns also against his own secession; for the difference between heretics and schismatics is really only relative, at least in Cyprian’s view. Tertullian afterwards asserted, in contradiction with this book, that in religious matters not custom nor long possession, but truth alone, was to be consulted.

Among the heretics, he attacked chiefly the Valentinian Gnostics, and Marcion. The work against Marcion (A. D. 208) is his largest, and the only one in which he indicates the date of composition, namely the 15th year of the reign of Septimius Severus (A. D. 208).1532  He wrote three works against this famous heretic; the first he set aside as imperfect, the second was stolen from him and published with many blunders before it was finished. In the new work (in five books), he elaborately defends the unity of God, the Creator of all, the integrity of the Scriptures, and the harmony of the Old and New Testaments. He displays all his power of solid argument, subtle sophistry, ridicule and sarcasm, and exhausts his vocabulary of vituperation. He is more severe upon heretics than Jews or Gentiles. He begins with a graphic description of all the physical abnormities of Pontus, the native province of Marcion, and the gloomy temper, wild passions, and ferocious habits of its people, and then goes on to say:

"Nothing in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the cloud of the Euxine, colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay, more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled by Marcion’s blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator than he who has abolished the nuptial bond?  What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the Gospel to pieces?  Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day, to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found."

The tracts "On Baptism" "On the Soul," "On the Flesh of Christ," "On the Resurrection of the Flesh" "Against Hermogenes," "Against Praxeas," are concerned with particular errors, and are important to the doctrine of baptism, to Christian psychology, to eschatology, and christology.

3. His numerous Practical or Ascetic treatises throw much light on the moral life of the early church, as contrasted with the immorality of the heathen world. Among these belong the books "On Prayer" "On Penance" "On Patience,"—a virtue, which he extols with honest confession of his own natural impatience and passionate temper, and which he urges upon himself as well as others,—the consolation of the confessors in prison (Ad Martyres), and the admonition against visiting theatres (De Spectaculis), which he classes with the pomp of the devil, and against all share, direct or indirect, in the worship of idols (De Idololatria).

4. His strictly Montanistic or anti-catholic writings, in which the peculiarities of this sect are not only incidentally touched, as in many of the works named above, but vindicated expressly and at large, are likewise of a practical nature, and contend, in fanatical rigor, against the restoration of the lapsed (De Pudicitia), flight in persecutions, second marriage (De Monogamia, and De Exhortatione Castitatis), display of dress in females (De Cultu Feminarum), and other customs of the "Psychicals," as he commonly calls the Catholics in distinction from the sectarian Pneumatics. His plea, also, for excessive fasting (De Jejuniis), and his justification of a Christian soldier, who was discharged for refusing to crown his head (De Corona Militis), belong here. Tertullian considers it unbecoming the followers of Christ, who, when on earth, wore a crown of thorns for us, to adorn their heads with laurel, myrtle, olive, or with flowers or gems. We may imagine what he would have said to the tiara of the pope in his mediaeval splendor.

Notes.

The chronological order of Tertullian’s work can be approximately determined by the frequent allusions to the contemporaneous history of the Roman empire, and by their relation to Montanism. See especially Uhlhorn, Hauck, Bonwetsch, and also Bp. Kaye (in Oehler’s ed. of the Opera III. 709–718.) We divide the works into three classes, according to their relation to Montanism.

(1)  Those books which belong to the author’s catholic period before A.D. 200; viz.: Apologeticus or Apologeticum (in the autumn of 197, according to Bonwetsch; 198, Ebert; 199, Hesselberg; 200, Uhlhorn); Ad Martyres (197); Ad Nationes (probably soon after Apol.); De Testimonio Animae; De Poenitentia; De Oratione; De Baptismo (which according to cap. 15, was preceded by a Greek work against the validity of Heretical Baptism); Ad Uxorem; De Patientia; Adv. Judaeos; De Praescriptione Haereticorum; De Spectaculis (and a lost work on the same subject in the Greek language).

Kaye puts De Spectaculis in the Montanistic period.  De Praescriptione is also placed by some in the Montanistic period before or after Adv. Marcionem. But Bonwetsch (p. 46) puts it between 199 and 206, probably in 199. Hauck makes it almost simultaneous with De Baptismo. He also places De Idololatria in this period.

(2)  Those which were certainly not composed till after his transition to Montanism, between A.D. 200 and 220; viz.: Adv. Marcionem (5 books, composed in part at least in the 15th year of the Emperor Septimius Severus, i.e.  A.D. 207 or 208; comp. I. 15); De Anima; De Carne Christi; De Resurrectione Carnis; Adv. Praxean; Scorpiace (i.e. antidote against the poison of the Gnostic heresy); De Corona Militis; De Virginibus ve!andis; De Exhortatione Castitatis; De Pallio (208 or 209); De Fuga in persecutione; De Monogamia; De Jejuniis; De Pudicitia; Ad Scapulam (212); De Ecstasi (lost); De Spe Fidelium (likewise lost).

Kellner (1870) assigns De Pudicitia, De Monogamia, De Jejunio, and Adv. Praxean to the period between 218 and 222.

(3) Those which probably belong to the Montanistic period; viz.: Adv. Valentinianos; De cultu Feminarum (2 libri); Adv. Hermogenem.

§ 198.s Minucius Felix.

(I.) M. Minucii Felicis Octavius, best ed. by Car. Halm, Vienna 1867 (in vol. II. of the "Corpus Scriptorum Eccles. Latin."), and Bernh. Dombart, with German translation and critical notes, 2d ed. Erlangen 1881. Halm has compared the only MS. of this book, ormerly in the Vatican library now in Paris, very carefully ("tanta diligentia ut de nullo jam loco dubitari possit quid in codice uno scriptum inveniatur ").

Ed. princeps by Faustus Sabaeus (Rom. 1543, as the eighth book of Arnobius Adv. Gent); then by Francis Balduin (Heidelb. 1560, as an independent work). Many edd. since, by Ursinus (1583), Meursius (1598), Wowerus (1603), Rigaltius (1643), Gronovius (1709, 1743), Davis (1712), Lindner (1760, 1773), Russwurm (1824), Lübkert (1836), Muralt (1836), Migne (1844, in "Patrol." III. Col. 193 sqq.), Fr Oehler (1847, in Gersdorf’s "Biblioth. Patr. ecelesiast. selecta," vol. XIII). Kayser (1863), Cornelissen (Lugd. Bat. 1882), etc.

English translations by H. A. Holden (Cambridge 1853), and R. E. Wallis in Clark’s "Ante-Nic. Libr." vol. XIII. p. 451–517.

(II.) Jerome: De Vir. ill. c. 58, and Ep. 48 ad Pammach., and Ep. 70 ad Magn. Lactant.: Inst. Div. V. 1, 22.

(III.) Monographs, dissertations and prolegomena to the different editions of M. Fel., by van Hoven (1766, also in Lindner’s ed. II. 1773); Meier (Turin, 1824,) Nic. Le Nourry, and Lumper (in Migne, "Patr. Lat." III. 194–231; 371–652); Rören (Minuciania,) Bedburg, 1859); Behr (on the relation of M. F. to Cicero, Gera 1870); Rönsch (in Das N. T Tertull.’s, 1871, P. 25 sqq.); Paul P. de Felice (Études sur l’Octavius, Blois, 1880); Keim (in his Celsus, 1873, 151–168, and in Rom. und das Christenthum, 1881, 383 sq., and 468–486); Ad. Ebert (1874, in Gesch. der christlich-latein. Lit. I. 24–31); G. Loesche (On the relation of M. F. to Athanagoras, in the "Jahr b. für Prot. Theol." 1882, p. l68–178); RENAN (Marc-Auréle, 1882, p. 389–404); Richard Kuhn: Der Octavius des Minucius Felix. Eine heidnisch philosophische Auffassung vom Christenthum. Leipz. 1882 (71 pages). See also the art. of Mangold in Herzog2 X. 12–17 (abridged in Schaff-Herzog); G. Salmon in Smith and Wace III. 920–924.

(IV.) On the relation of Minuc. Fel. to Tertullian: Ad. Ebert: Tertullian’s Verhältniss zu Minucius Felix, nebst einem Anhang über Commodian’s Carmen apoloqeticum (1868, in the 5th vol. of the "Abhandlungen der philol. histor. Classe der K. sächs. Ges. der Wissenschaften"); W. Hartel (in Zeitschrift für d. öester. Gymnas. 1869, p. 348–368, against Ebert); E. Klusmann ("Jenaer Lit. Zeitg," 1878) Bonwetsch (in Die Schriften Tert.,  1878, p. 21;) V. Schultze (in "Jahr b. für Prot. Theol." 1881, p. 485–506; P. Schwenke (Uber die Zeit des Min. Fel. in "Jahr b. für Prot. Theol.’ " 1883, p. 263–294).

In close connection with Tertullian, either shortly before, or shortly after him, stands the Latin Apologist Minucius Felix.1533

Converts are always the most zealous, and often the most effective promoters of the system or sect which they have deliberately chosen from honest and earnest conviction. The Christian Apologists of the second century were educated heathen philosophers or rhetoricians before their conversion, and used their secular learning and culture for the refutation of idolatry and the vindication of the truths of revelation. In like manner the Apostles were Jews by birth and training, and made their knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures subservient to the gospel. The Reformers of the sixteenth century came out of the bosom of mediaeval Catholicism, and were thus best qualified to oppose its corruptions and to emancipate the church from the bondage of the papacy.1534

I. Marcus Minucius Felix belongs to that class of converts, who brought the rich stores of classical culture to the service of Christianity. He worthily opens the series of Latin writers of the Roman church which had before spoken to the world only in the Greek tongue. He shares with Lactantius the honor of being the Christian Cicero.1535  He did not become a clergyman, but apparently continued in his legal profession. We know nothing of his life except that he was an advocate in Rome, but probably of North African descent.1536

II. We have from him an apology of Christianity, in the form of a dialogue under the title Octavius.1537  The author makes with his friend Octavius Januarius, who had, like himself, been converted from heathen error to the Christian truth an excursion from Rome to the sea-bath at Ostia. There they meet on a promenade along the beach with Caecilius Natalis, another friend of Minucius, but still a heathen, and, as appears from his reasoning, a philosopher of the sceptical school of the New Academy. Sitting down on the large stones which were placed there for the protection of the baths, the two friends in full view of the ocean and inhaling the gentle sea breeze, begin, at the suggestion of Caecilius, to discuss the religious question of the day. Minucius sitting between them is to act as umpire (chaps. 1–4).

Caecilius speaks first (chs. 5–15), in defence of the heathen, and in opposition to the Christian, religion. He begins like a sceptic or agnostic concerning the existence of a God as being doubtful, but he soon shifts his ground, and on the principle of expediency and utility he urges the duty of worshipping the ancestral gods. It is best to adhere to what the experience of all nations has found to be salutary. Every nation has its peculiar god or gods; the Roman nation, the most religious of all, allows the worship of all gods, and thus attained to the highest power and prosperity. He charges the Christians with presumption for claiming a certain knowledge of the highest problems which lie beyond human ken; with want of patriotism for forsaking the ancestral traditions; with low breeding (as Celsus did). He ridicules their worship of a crucified malefactor and the instrument of his crucifixion, and even an ass’s head. He repeats the lies of secret crimes, as promiscuous incest, and the murder of innocent children, and quotes for these slanders the authority of the celebrated orator Fronto. He objects to their religion that it has no temples, nor altars, nor images. He attacks their doctrines of one God, of the destruction of the present world, the resurrection and judgment, as irrational and absurd. He pities them for their austere habits and their aversion to the theatre, banquets, and other innocent enjoyments. He concludes with the re-assertion of human ignorance of things which are above us, and an exhortation to leave those uncertain things alone, and to adhere to the religion of their fathers, "lest either a childish superstition should be introduced, or all religion should be overthrown."

In the second part (ch. 16–38), Octavius refutes these charges, and attacks idolatry; meeting each point in proper order. He vindicates the existence and unity of the Godhead, the doctrine of creation and providence, as truly rational, and quotes in confirmation the opinions of various philosophers (from Cicero). He exposes the absurdity of the heathen mythology, the worship of idols made of wood and stone, the immoralities of the gods, and the cruelties and obscene rites connected with their worship. The Romans have not acquired their power by their religion, but by rapacity and acts of violence. The charge of worshipping a criminal and his cross, rests on the ignorance of his innocence and divine character. The Christians have no temples, because they will not limit the infinite God, and no images, because man is God’s image, and a holy life the best sacrifice. The slanderous charges of immorality are traced to the demons who invented and spread them among the people, who inspire oracles, work false miracles and try in every way to draw men into their ruin. It is the heathen who practice such infamies, who cruelly expose their new-born children or kill them by abortion. The Christians avoid and abhor the immoral amusements of the theatre and circus where madness, adultery, and murder are exhibited and practiced, even in the name of the gods. They find their true pleasure and happiness in God, his knowledge and worship.

At the close of the dialogue (chs. 39–40), Caecilius confesses himself convinced of his error, and resolves to embrace Christianity, and desires further instruction on the next day. Minucius expresses his satisfaction at this result, which made a decision on his part unnecessary. Joyful and thankful for the joint victory over error, the friends return from the sea-shore to Ostia.1538

III. The apologetic value of this work is considerable, but its doctrinal value is very insignificant. It gives us a lively idea of the great controversy between the old and the new religion among the higher and cultivated classes of Roman society, and allows fair play and full force to the arguments on both sides. It is an able and eloquent defense of monotheism against polytheism, and of Christian morality against heathen immorality. But this is about all. The exposition of the truths of Christianity is meagre, superficial, and defective. The unity of the Godhead, his all-ruling providence, the resurrection of the body, and future retribution make up the whole creed of Octavius. The Scriptures, the prophets and apostles are ignored,1539 the doctrines of sin and grace, Christ and redemption, the Holy Spirit and his operations are left out of sight, and the name of Christ is not even mentioned; though we may reasonably infer from the manner in which the author repels the charge of worshipping "a crucified malefactor," that he regarded Christ as more than a mere man (ch. 29). He leads only to the outer court of the temple. His object was purely apologetic, and he gained his point.1540  Further instruction is not excluded, but is solicited by the converted Caecilius at the close, "as being necessary to a perfect training."1541  We have therefore no right to infer from this silence that the author was ignorant of the deeper mysteries of faith.1542

His philosophic stand-point is eclectic with a preference for Cicero, Seneca, and Plato. Christianity is to him both theoretically and practically the true philosophy which teaches the only true God, and leads to true virtue and piety. In this respect he resembles Justin Martyr.1543

IV. The literary form of Octavius is very pleasing and elegant. The diction is more classical than that of any contemporary Latin writer heathen or Christian. The book bears a strong resemblance to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, in many ideas, in style, and the urbanity, or gentlemanly tone. Dean Milman says that it "reminds us of the golden days of Latin prose." Renan calls it "the pearl of the apologetic literature of the last years of Marcus Aurelius." But the date is under dispute, and depends in part on its relation to Tertullian.

V. Time of composition. Octavius closely resembles Tertullian’s Apologeticus, both in argument and language, so that one book presupposes the other; although the aim is different, the former being the plea of a philosopher and refined gentleman, the other the plea of a lawyer and ardent Christian. The older opinion (with some exceptions1544) maintained the priority of Apologeticus, and consequently put Octavius after A.D. 197 or 200 when the former was written. Ebert reversed the order and tried to prove, by a careful critical comparison, the originality of Octavius.1545  His conclusion is adopted by the majority of recent German writers,1546 but has also met with opposition.1547  If Tertullian used Minucius, he expanded his suggestions; if Minucius used Tertullian, he did it by way of abridgement.

It is certain that Minucius borrowed from Cicero (also from Seneca, and, perhaps, from Athenagoras),1548 and Tertullian (in his Adv. Valent.) from Irenaeus; though both make excellent use of their material, reproducing rather than copying it; but Tertullian is beyond question a far more original, vigorous, and important writer. Moreover the Roman divines used the Greek language from Clement down to Hippolytus towards the middle of the third century, with the only exception, perhaps, of Victor (190–202). So far the probability is for the later age of Minucius.

But a close comparison of the parallel passages seems to favor his priority; yet the argument is not conclusive.1549  The priority of Minucius has been inferred also from the fact that he twice mentions Fronto (the teacher and friend of Marcus Aurelius), apparently as a recent celebrity, and Fronto died about 168. Keim and Renan find allusions to the persecutions under Marcus Aurelius (177), and to the attack of Celsus (178), and hence put Octavius between 178 and 180.1550  But these assumptions are unfounded, and they would lead rather to the conclusion that the book was not written before 200; for about twenty years elapsed (as Keim himself supposes) before the Dialogue actually was recorded on paper.

An unexpected argument for the later age of Minucius is furnished by the recent French discovery of the name of Marcus Caecilius Quinti F. Natalis, as the chief magistrate of Cirta (Constantine) n Algeria, in several inscriptions from the years 210 to 217.1551  The heathen speaker Caecilius Natalis of our Dialogue hailed from that very city (chs. 9 and 31). The identity of the two persons can indeed not be proven, but is at least very probable.

Considering these conflicting possibilities and probabilities, we conclude that Octavius was written in the first quarter of the third century, probably during the peaceful reign of Alexander Severus (A. D. 222–235). The last possible date is the year 250, because Cyprian’s book De Idolorum Vanitate, written about that time is largely based upon it.1552

§ 199. Cyprian.

Comp. § § 22, 47 and 53.

(I.) S. Cypriani Opera omnia. Best critical ed. by W. Hartel, Vindob. 1868–’71, 3 vols. oct. (in the Vienna "Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiast. Latinorum "); based upon the examination of 40 MSS.

Other edd. by Sweynheym and Pannartz, Rom. 1471 (ed. princeps), again Venice 1477; by Erasmus, Bas. 1520 (first critical ed., often reprinted); by Paul Manutius, Rom. 1563; by Morell, Par. 1564; by Rigault (Rigaltius), Par. 1648; John Fell, Bp. of Oxford, Oxon. 1682 (very good, with Bishop Pearson’s Annales Cyprianici), again Amst. 1700 and since; the Benedictine ed. begun by Baluzius and completed by Prud. Maranus, Par. 1726, 1 vol. fol. (a magnificent ed., with textual emendations to satisfy the Roman curia), reprinted in Venice, 1758, and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat." (vol. IV. Par. 18, and part of vol. V. 9–80, with sundry additions); a convenient manual ed. by Gersdorf, Lips. 1838 sq. (in Gersdorf’s "Biblioth. Patrum Lat." Pars II. and III.)

English translations by N. Marshall, Lond., 1717; in the Oxf. "Library of the Fathers," Oxf. 1840  and by R. G. Wallis in "Ante-Nicene Lib." Edinb. 1868, 2 vols. N. York ed. vol. V. (1885).

(II.) Vita Cypriani by Pontius, and the Acta Proconsularia Martyrii Cypr., both in Ruinart’s Acta Mart. II., and the former in most ed. of his works.

(III.) J. Pearson: Annales Cyprianici. Oxon. 1682, in the ed. of Fell. A work of great learning and acumen, determining the chronological order of many Epp. and correcting innumerable mistakes.

H. Dodwell: Dissertationes Cyprianicae tres. Oxon. 1684; Amst. 1700; also in Tom. V of Migne’s "Patr. Lat." col. 9–80.

A. F. Gervaise: Vie de St. Cyprien. Par. 1717.

F. W. Rettberg: Cyprianus nach seinem Leben u. Wirken. Gött. 1831.

G. A. Poole: Life and Times of Cyprian. Oxf. 1840 (419 pages). High-church Episcop. and anti-papal,

Aem. Blampignon: Vie de Cyprien. Par. 1861.

Ch. E. Freppel (Ultramontane): Saint Cyprien et l’église d’ Afrique an troisième siécle. Paris, 1865, 2d ed. 1873.

Ad. Ebert: Geschichte der christl. latein. Literatur. Leipz. 1874, vol. I. 54–61.

J. Peters (R.C.): Der heil. Cyprian. Leben u. Wirken. Regensb. 1877.

B. Fechtrup: Der h. Cyprian, Leben u. Lehre, vol. I. Münster, 1878.

Otto Ritschl: Cyprian vom Karthago und die Verfassung der Kirche. Göttingen 1885.

Articles on special topics connected with Cyprian by J. W. Nevin and Varien (both in "Mercerburg Review" for 1852 and ’53); Peters (Ultramontane: Cyprian’s doctrine on Unity of the Church in opposition to the schisms of Carthage and Rome, Luxemb 1870); Jos. Hub. Reinkens (Old Cath. Bp.: Cypr’s. Doctr. on the Unity of the Church. Würzburg, 1873).

I. Life of Cyprian.

Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop and martyr, and the impersonation of the catholic church of the middle of the third century, sprang from a noble and wealthy heathen family of Carthage, where he was born about the year 200, or earlier. His deacon and biographer, Pontius, considers his earlier life not worthy of notice in comparison with his subsequent greatness in the church. Jerome tells us, that he stood in high repute as a teacher of rhetoric.1553  He was, at all events, a man of commanding literary, rhetorical, and legal culture, and of eminent administrative ability which afterwards proved of great service to him in the episcopal office. He lived in worldly splendor to mature age, nor was he free from the common vices of heathenism, as we must infer from his own confessions. But the story, that he practised arts of magic arises perhaps from some confusion, and is at any rate unattested. Yet, after he became a Christian he believed, like Tertullian and others, in visions and dreams, and had some only a short time before his martyrdom.

A worthy presbyter, Caecilius, who lived in Cyprian’s house, and afterwards at his death committed his wife and children to him, first made him acquainted with the doctrines of the Christian religion, and moved him to read the Bible. After long resistance Cyprian forsook the world, entered the class of catechumens, sold his estates for the benefit of the poor,1554 took a vow of chastity, and in 245 or 246 received baptism, adopting, out of gratitude to his spiritual father, the name of Caecilius.

He himself, in a tract soon afterwards written to a friend,1555 gives us the following oratorical description of his conversion: While I languished in darkness and deep night, tossing upon the sea of a troubled world, ignorant of my destination, and far from truth and light, I thought it, according to my then habits, altogether a difficult and hard thing that a man could be born anew, and that, being quickened to new life by the bath of saving water, he might put off the past, and, while preserving the identity of the body, might transform the man in mind and heart. How, said I, is such a change possible?  How can one at once divest himself of all that was either innate or acquired and grown upon him?... Whence does he learn frugality, who was accustomed to sumptuous feasts?  And how shall he who shone in costly apparel, in gold and purple, come down to common and simple dress?  He who has lived in honor and station, cannot bear to be private and obscure .... But when, by the aid of the regenerating water,1556 the stain of my former life was washed away, a serene and pure light poured from above into my purified breast. So soon as I drank the spirit from above and was transformed by a second birth into a new man, then the wavering mind became wonderfully firm; what had been closed opened; the dark became light; strength came for that which had seemed difficult; what I had thought impossible became practicable."

Cyprian now devoted himself zealously, in ascetic retirement, to the study of the Scriptures and the church teachers, especially Tertullian, whom be called for daily with the words: "Hand me the master!"1557  The influence of Tertullian on his theological formation is unmistakable, and appears at once, for example, on comparing the tracts of the two on prayer and on patience, or the work of the one on the vanity of idols with the apology of the other. It is therefore rather strange that in his own writings we find no acknowledgment of his indebtedness, and, as far as I recollect, no express allusion whatever to Tertullian and the Montanists. But he could derive no aid and comfort from him in his conflict with schism.

Such a man could not long remain concealed. Only two years after his baptism, in spite of his earnest remonstrance, Cyprian was raised to the bishopric of Carthage by the acclamations of the people, and was thus at the same time placed at the head of the whole North African clergy. This election of a neophyte was contrary to the letter of the ecclesiastical laws (comp. 1 Tim. 3:6), and led afterwards to the schism of the party of Novatus. But the result proved, that here, as in the similar elevation of Ambrose, Augustin, and other eminent bishops of the ancient church, the voice of the people was the voice of God.

For the space of ten years, ending with his triumphant martyrdom, Cyprian administered the episcopal office in Carthage with exemplary energy, wisdom, and fidelity, and that in a most stormy time, amidst persecutions from without and schismatic agitations within. The persecution under Valerian brought his active labors to a close. He was sent into exile for eleven months, then tried before the Proconsul, and condemned to be beheaded. When the sentence was pronounced, he said: "Thanks be to God," knelt in prayer, tied the bandage over his eyes with his own hand, gave to the executioner a gold piece, and died with the dignity and composure of a hero. His friends removed and buried his body by night. Two chapels were erected on the spots of his death and burial. The anniversary of his death was long observed; and five sermons of Augustin still remain in memory of Cyprian’s martyrdom, Sept. 14, 258.

II. Character and Position.

As Origen was the ablest scholar, and Tertullian the strongest writer, so Cyprian was the greatest bishop, of the third century. He was born to be a prince in the church. In executive talent, he even surpassed all the Roman bishops of his time; and he bore himself towards them, also, as "frater" and "collega," in the spirit of full equality. Augustin calls him by, eminence, "the catholic bishop and catholic martyr;" and Vincentius of Lirinum, "the light of all saints, all martyrs, and all bishops." His stamp of character was more that of Peter than either of Paul or John.

His peculiar importance falls not so much in the field of theology, where he lacks originality and depth, as in church organization and discipline. While Tertullian dealt mainly with heretics, Cyprian directed his polemics against schismatics, among whom he had to condemn, though he never does in fact, his venerated teacher, who died a Montanist. Yet his own conduct was not perfectly consistent with his position; for in the controversy on heretical baptism he himself exhibited his master’s spirit of opposition to Rome. He set a limit to his own exclusive catholic principle of tradition by the truly Protestant maxims: "Consuetudo sine veritate vetustas erroris est, and, Non est de consuetudine praescribendum, sed ratione vincendum." In him the idea of the old catholic hierarchy and episcopal autocracy, both in its affinity and in its conflict with the idea of the papacy, was personally embodied, so to speak, and became flesh and blood. The unity of the church, as the vehicle and medium of all salvation, was the thought of his life and the passion of his heart. But he contended with the same zeal for an independent episcopate as for a Roman primacy; and the authority of his name has been therefore as often employed against the papacy as in its favor. On both sides he was the faithful organ of the churchly spirit of the age.

It were great injustice to attribute his high churchly principle to pride and ambition, though temptations to this spirit unquestionably beset a prominent position like his. Such principles are, entirely compatible with sincere personal humility before God. It was the deep conviction of the divine authority, and the heavy responsibility of the episcopate, which lay it the bottom both of his first "nolo episcopari, " and of subsequent hierarchical feeling. He was as conscientious in discharging the duties, as he was jealous in maintaining the rights, of his office. Notwithstanding his high conception of the dignity of a bishop, he took counsel of his presbyters in everything, and respected the rights of his people. He knew how to combine strictness and moderation, dignity and gentleness, and to inspire love and confidence as well as esteem and veneration. He took upon himself, like a father, the care of the widows and orphans, the poor and sick. During the great pestilence of 252 he showed the most self-sacrificing fidelity to his flock, and love for his enemies. He forsook his congregation, indeed, in the Decian persecution, but only, as he expressly assured them, in pursuance of a divine admonition, and in order to direct them during his fourteen months of exile by pastoral epistles. His conduct exposed him to the charge of cowardice. In the Valerian persecution he completely washed away the stain of that flight with the blood of his calm and cheerful martyrdom.

He exercised first rigid discipline, but at a later period—not in perfect consistency—he moderated his disciplinary principles in prudent accommodation to the exigencies of the times. With Tertullian he prohibited all display of female dress, which only deformed the work of the Creator; and he warmly opposed all participation in heathen amusements,—even refusing a converted play-actor permission to give instruction in declamation and pantomime. He lived in a simple, ascetic way, under a sense of the perishableness of all earthly things, and in view of the solemn eternity, in which alone also the questions and strifes of the church militant would be perfectly settled. "Only above," says he in his tract De Mortalitate, which be composed during the pestilence, "only above are true peace, sure repose, constant, firm, and eternal security; there is our dwelling, there our home. Who would not fain hasten to reach it?  There a great multitude of beloved awaits us; the numerous host of fathers, brethren, and children. There is a glorious choir of apostles there the number of exulting prophets; there the countless multitude of martyrs, crowned with victory after warfare and suffering; there triumphing virgins; there the merciful enjoying their reward. Thither let us hasten with longing desire; let us wish to be soon with them, soon with Christ. After the earthly comes the heavenly; after the small follows the great after perishableness, eternity."

III. His writings.

As an author, Cyprian is far less original, fertile and vigorous than Tertullian, but is clearer, more moderate, and more elegant and rhetorical in his style. He wrote independently only on the doctrines of the church, the priesthood, and sacrifice.

(1.) His most important works relate to practical questions on church government and discipline. Among these is his tract on the Unity of the Church (A. D. 251), that "magna charta" of the old catholic high-church spirit, the commanding importance of which we have already considered. Then eighty-one Epistles,1558 some very long, to various bishops, to the clergy and the churches of Africa and of Rome, to the confessors, to the lapsed, &c.; comprising also some letters from others in reply, as from Cornelius of Rome and Firmilian of Caesarea. They give us a very graphic picture of his pastoral labors, and of the whole church life of that day. To the same class belongs also his treatise: De Lapsis (A. D. 250) against loose penitential discipline.

(2.) Besides these he wrote a series of moral works, On the Grace of God (246); On the Lord’s Prayer (252); On Mortality (252); against worldly-mindedness and pride of dress in consecrated virgins (De Habitu Virginum); a glowing call to Martyrdom; an exhortation to liberality (De Opere el Eleemosynis, between 254 and 256), with a touch of the "opus operatum" doctrine; and two beautiful tracts written during his controversy with pope Stephanus: De Bono Patienti, and De Zelo et Livore (about 256), in which he exhorts the excited minds to patience and moderation.

(3.) Least important are his two apologetic works, the product of his Christian pupilage. One is directed against heathenism (de Idolorum Vanitate), and is borrowed in great part, often verbally, from Tertullian and Minucius Felix. The other, against Judaism (Testimonia adversus Judaeos), also contains no new thoughts, but furnishes a careful collection of Scriptural proofs of the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus.

Note.—Among the pseudo-Cyprianic writings is a homily against dice-playing and all games of chance  (Adversus Aleatores, in Hartel’s ed. III. 92–103), which has been recently vindicated for Bishop Victor of Rome (190–202), an African by birth and an exclusive high churchman. It is written in the tone of a papal encyclical and in rustic Latin. See Harnack: Der pseudo-cyprian. Tractat De Aleatoribus, Leipzig 1888. Ph. Schaff: The Oldest Papal Encyclical, in The Independent, N. York, Feb. 28, 1889.

§ 200. Novatian.

Comp. §58, p. 196 sq. and §183, p. 773.

(I.) Novatiani, Presbyteri Romani, Opera quae exstant omnia. Ed. by Gagnaeus (Par. 1545, in the works of Tertullian); Gelenius (Bas. 1550 and 1562); Pamelius (Par. 1598); Gallandi (Tom III.); Edw. Welchman (Oxf. 1724); J. Jackson (Lond. 1728, the best ed.); Migne (in "Patrol. Lat." Tom. III. col. 861–970). Migne’s ed. includes the dissertation of Lumper and the Commentary of Gallandi.

English translation by R. E. Wallis in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. II. (1869), p. 297–395; Comp. vol. I. 85 sqq.

(II.)  Euseb.: H. E. VI. 43, 44, 45. Hieron.: De Vir. ill. 66 and 70; Ep. 36 ad Damas.; Apol. adv. Ruf. II. 19. Socrates: H. E. IV. 28. The Epistles Of Cyprian and Cornelius referring to the schism of Novatian (Cypr. Ep. 44, 45, 49, 52, 55, 59, 60, 68, 69, 73). Epiphanius: Haer. 59; Socrates: H. E IV. 28. Theodor.: Haer. Fab. III. 5. Photius Biblioth. 182, 208, 280.

(III.) Walch: Ketzerhistorie II. 185–288. Schoenemann: Biblioth. Hist. Lit. Patr. Latinorum, I. 135–142. Lumper: Dissert. de Vita, Scriptis, et doctrina Nov., in Migne’s ed. III. 861–884. Neander, I. 237–248, and 687 (Am ed.)  Caspari: Quellen zur Gesch. des Taufsymbols, III. 428–430, 437–439. Jos. Langen (Old Cath.): Gesch. der röm. Kirche (Bonn 1881), p. 289–314. Harnack; Novatian in Herzog2 X. (1882), p. 652–670. Also the works on Cyprian, especially Fechtrup. See Lit. § 199. On Novatian’s doctrine of the trinity and the person of Christ see Dorner’s Entwicklungsgesch. der L. v. d. Pers. Christi (1851), I. 601–604. (Dem Tertullian nahe stehend, von ihm abhängig, aber auch ihn verflachend ist Novatian.")

Novatian, the second Roman anti-Pope (Hippolytus being probably the first), orthodox in doctrine, but schismatic in discipline, and in both respects closely resembling Hippolytus and Tertullian, flourished in the middle of the third century and became the founder of a sect called after his name.1559  He was a man of unblemished, though austere character, considerable biblical and philosophical learning, speculative talent, and eloquence.1560  He is moreover, next to Victor and Minucius Felix, the first Roman divine who used the Latin Language, and used it with skill. We may infer that at his time the Latin had become or was fast becoming the ruling language of the Roman church, especially in correspondence with North Africa and the West; yet both Novatian and his rival Cornelius addressed the Eastern bishops in Greek. The epitaphs of five Roman bishops of the third century, Urbanus, Anteros, Fabianus, Lucius, and Eutychianus (between 223 and 283), in the cemetery of Callistus are Greek, but the epitaph of Cornelius (251–253) who probably belonged to the noble Roman family of that name, is Latin ("Cornelius Martyr E. R. X.")1561

At, that time the Roman congregation numbered forty presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes, besides exorcists, readers and janitors, and an "innumerable multitude of the people," which may have amounted perhaps to about 50,000 members.1562

We know nothing of the time and place of the birth and death of Novatian. He was probably an Italian. The later account of his Phrygian origin deserves no credit, and may have arisen from the fact that he had many followers in Phrygia, where they united with the Montanists. He was converted in adult age, and received only clinical baptism by sprinkling on the sick bed without subsequent episcopal confirmation, but was nevertheless ordained to the priesthood and rose to the highest rank in the Roman clergy. He conducted the official correspondence of the Roman see during the vacancy from the martyrdom of Fabian, January 21, 250, till the election of Cornelius, March, 251. In his letter to Cyprian, written in the name of "the presbyters and deacons abiding at Rome,"1563 he refers the question of the restoration of the lapsed to a future council, but shows his own preference for a strict discipline, as most necessary in peace and in persecution, and as "the rudder of safety in the tempest."1564

He may have aspired to the papal chair to which he seemed to have the best claim. But after the Decian persecution had ceased his rival Cornelius, unknown before, was elected by a majority of the clergy and favored the lenient discipline towards the Fallen which his predecessors Callistus and Zephyrinus had exercised, and against which Hippolytus had so strongly protested twenty or thirty years before. Novatian was elected anti-Pope by a minority and consecrated by three Italian bishops.1565  He was excommunicated by a Roman council, and Cornelius denounced him in official letters as "a deceitful, cunning and savage beast." Both parties appealed to foreign churches. Fabian of Antioch sympathized with Novatian, but Dionysius of Alexandria, and especially Cyprian who in the mean time had relaxed his former rigor and who hated schism like the very pest, supported Cornelius, and the lax and more charitable system of discipline, together with worldly conformity triumphed in the Catholic church. Nevertheless the Novatian schism spread East and West and maintained its severe discipline and orthodox creed in spite of imperial persecution down to the sixth century. Novatian died a martyr according to the tradition of his followers. The controversy turned on the extent of the power of the Keys and the claims of justice to the purity of the church and of mercy towards the fallen. The charitable view prevailed by the aid of the principle that out of the church there is no salvation.

Novatian was a fruitful author. Jerome ascribes to him works On the Passover; On the Sabbath; On Circumcision; On the Priest (De Sacerdote); On Prayer; On the Jewish Meats; On Perseverance;1566 On Attilus (a martyr of Pergamus); and "On the Trinity."

Two of these books are preserved. The most important is his Liber de Trinitate (31 chs.), composed A.D. 256. It has sometimes been ascribed to Tertullian or Cyprian. Jerome calls it a "great work," and an extract from an unknown work of Tertullian on the same subject. Novatian agrees essentially with Tertullian’s subordination trinitarianism. He ably vindicates the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, strives to reconcile the divine threeness with unity, and refutes the Monarchians, especially the Sabellians by biblical and philosophical arguments.

In his Epistola de Cibus Judaicis (7 chapters) written to his flock from a place of retirement during persecution, he tries to prove by allegorical interpretation, that the Mosaic laws on food are no longer binding upon Christians, and that Christ has substituted temperance and abstinence for the prohibition of unclean animals, with the exception of meat offered to idols, which is forbidden by the Apostolic council (Acts 15).

§ 201. Commodian.

(I.) Commodianus: Instructiones adversus Gentium Deos pro Christiana Disciplina, and Carmen Apologeticum adversus Judaeos et Gentes. The Instructiones were discovered by Sirmond, and first edited by Rigault at Toul, 1650; more recently by Fr. Oehler in Gersdorf’s "Biblioth. P. Lat.," vol. XVIII., Lips. 1847 (p. 133–194,) and by Migne." Patrol." vol. V. col. 201–262.

The second work was discovered and published by Card. Pitra in the "Spicilegium Solesmense," Tom. I. Par. 1852, p. 21–49 and Excurs. 537–543, and with new emendations of the corrupt text in Tom. IV. (1858), p. 222–224; and better by Rönsch in the "Zeitschrift für hist. Theol." for 1872.

Both poems were edited together by E. Ludwig: Commodiani Carmina, Lips. 1877 and 1878; and by B. Dombart, Vienna.

English translation of the first poem (but in prose) by R. E. Wallis in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. III. (1870, pp. 434–474.

(II.) Dodwell: Dissert. de aetate Commod. Prolegg. in Migne, V. 189–200. Alzog: Patrol. 340–342. J. L. Jacobi in Schneider’s " Zeitschrift für christl. Wissenschaft und christl. Leben" for 1853, pp. 203–209. Ad. Ebert, in an appendix to his essay on Tertullian’s relation to Minucius Felix, Leipz. 1868, pp. 69–102; in his Gesch. er christl. lat. Lit., I. 86–93; also his art. in Herzog2 III. 325 sq. Leimbach, in an Easter Programme on Commodian’s Carmen apol. adv. Gentes et Judaeos, Schmalkalden, 1871 (he clears up many points). Hermann Rönsch, in the "Zeitschrift für historische Theologie" for 1872, No. 2, pp. 163–302 (he presents a revised Latin text with philological explanations). Young in Smith and Wace, I. 610–611.

Commodian was probably a clergyman in North Africa.1567  He was converted from heathenism by the study of the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament.1568  He wrote about the middle of the third century two works in the style of vulgar African latinity, in uncouth versification and barbarian hexameter, without regard to quantity and hiatus. They are poetically and theologically worthless, but not unimportant for the history of practical Christianity, and reveal under a rude dress with many superstitious notions, an humble and fervent Christian heart. Commodian was a Patripassian in christology and a Chiliast in eschatology. Hence he is assigned by Pope Gelasius to the apocryphal writers. His vulgar African latinity is a landmark in the history of the Latin language and poetry in the transition to the Romance literature of the middle ages.

The first poem is entitled "Instructions for the Christian Life," written about A.D. 240 or earlier.1569  It is intended to convert heathens and Jews, and gives also exhortations to catechumens, believers, and penitents. The poem has over twelve hundred verses and is divided into eighty strophes, each of which is an acrostic, the initial letters of the lines composing the title or subject of the section. The first 45 strophes are apologetic, and aimed at the heathen, the remaining 35 are parenetic and addressed to Christians. The first part exhorts unbelievers to repent in view of the impending end of the world, and gives prominence to chiliastic ideas about Antichrist, the return of the Twelve Tribes, the first resurrection, the millennium, and the last judgment. The second part exhorts catechumens and various classes of Christians. The last acrostic which again reminds the reader of the end of the world, is entitled "Nomen Gazaei,"1570 and, if read backwards, gives the name of the author: Commodianus mendicus Christi.1571

2. The second work which was only brought to light in 1852, is an "Apologetic Poem against Jews and Gentiles," and was written about 249. It exhorts them (like the first part of the "Instructions" to repent without delay in view of the approaching end of the world. It is likewise written in uncouth hexameters and discusses in 47 sections the doctrine of God, of man, and of the Redeemer (vers. 89–275); the meaning of the names of Son and Father in the economy of salvation (276–573); the obstacles to the progress of Christianity(574–611); it warns Jews and Gentiles to forsake their religion (612–783), and gives a description of the last things (784–1053).

The most interesting part of this second poem is the conclusion. It contains a fuller description of Antichrist than the first poem. The author expects that the end of the world will soon come with the seventh persecution; the Goths will conquer Rome and redeem the Christians; but then Nero will appear as the heathen Antichrist, reconquer Rome, and rage against the Christians three years and a-half; he will be conquered in turn by the Jewish and real Antichrist from the east, who after the defeat of Nero and the burning of Rome will return to Judaea, perform false miracles, and be worshipped by the Jews. At last Christ appears, that is God himself (from the Monarchian standpoint of the author), with the lost Twelve Tribes as his army, which had lived beyond Persia in happy simplicity and virtue; under astounding phenomena of nature he will conquer Antichrist and his host, convert all nations and take possession of the holy city of Jerusalem. The concluding description of the judgment is preserved only in broken fragments. The idea of a double Antichrist is derived from the two beasts of the Apocalypse, and combines the Jewish conception of the Antimessiah, and the heathen Nero-legend. But the remarkable feature is that the second Antichrist is represented as a Jew and as defeating the heathen Nero, as he will be defeated by Christ. The same idea of a double antichrist appears in Lactantius.1572

§ 202. Arnobius.

(I.) Arnobii (oratoris) adversus Nationes (or Gentes) libri septem. Best ed. by Reifferscheid, Vindob. 1875. (vol. IV. of the "Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum," issued by the Academy of Vienna.)

Other editions: by Faustus Sabaeus, Florence 1543 (ed. princeps); Bas. (Frobenius) 1546; Paris 1580, 1666, 1715; Antw. 1582; Rom. 1583; Genev. 1597; Lugd. Bat. 1598, 165l; by Orelli, Lips. 1816; Hildebrand, Halle, 1844; Migne, "Patrol. Lat." v. 1844, col. 350 sqq. Fr. Oehler (in Gersdorf’s "Bibl. Patr. Lat."), Lips. 1846. On the text see the Prolegg of Oehler and Reifferscheid.

English Version by A. Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell, in Clark’s "Ante-Nic. Libr." vol. XIX. (Edinb. 1871). German transl. by Benard (1842), and Alleker (1858).

(II.) Hieronymus: De Vir. ill. 79; Chron. ad ann. 325 (xx. Constantini); Ep. 46, and 58, ad Paulinum.

(III) The learned Dissertatio praevia of the Benedictine Le Nourry in Migne’s ed. v. 365–714. Neander: I. 687–689. Möhler (R.C.): Patrol. I. 906–916. Alzog (R.C.): Patrologie (3d ed), p. 205–210. Zink: Zur Kritik und Erklärung des Arnob., Bamb. 1873. Ebert, Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. I 61–70. Herzog in Herzog2  I. 692 sq. Moule in Smith and Wace I. 167–169.

Arnobius, a successful teacher of rhetoric with many pupils (Lactantius being one of them), was first an enemy, then an advocate of Christianity. He lived in Sicca, an important city on the Numidian border to the Southwest of Carthage, in the latter part of the third and the beginning of the fourth century . He was converted to Christ in adult age, like his more distinguished fellow-Africans, Tertullian and Cyprian. "O blindness," he says, in describing the great change, "only a short time ago I was worshipping images just taken from the forge, gods shaped upon the anvil and by the hammer .... When I saw a stone made smooth and smeared with oil, I prayed to it and addressed it as if a living power dwelt in it, and implored blessings from the senseless stock. And I offered grievious insult even to the gods, whom I took to be such, in that I considered them wood, stone, and bone, or fancied that they dwelt in the stuff of such things. Now that I have been led by so great a teacher into the way of truth, I know what all that is, I think worthily of the Worthy, offer no insult to the Godhead, and give every one his due .... Is Christ, then, not to be regarded as God?  And is He who in other respects may be deemed the very greatest, not to be honored with divine worship, from whom we have received while alive so great gifts, and from whom, when the day comes we expect greater gifts?"1573

The contrast was very startling indeed, if we remember that Sicca bore the epithet "Veneria," as the seat of the vile worship of the goddess of lust in whose temple the maidens sacrificed their chastity, like the Corinthian priestesses of Aphrodite. He is therefore especially severe in his exposure of the sexual immoralities of the heathen gods, among whom Jupiter himself takes the lead in all forms of vice.1574

We know nothing of his subsequent life and death. Jerome, the only ancient writer who mentions him, adds some doubtful particulars, namely that he was converted by visions or dreams, that he was first refused admission to the Church by the bishop of Sicca, and hastily wrote his apology in proof of his sincerity. But this book, though written soon after his conversion, is rather the result of an inward impulse and strong conviction than outward occasion.

We have from him an Apology of Christianity in seven books of unequal length, addressed to the Gentiles. It was written A.D. 303,1575 at the outbreak of the Diocletian persecution; for he alludes to the tortures, the burning of the sacred Scriptures and the destruction of the meeting houses, which were the prominent features of that persecution.1576  It is preserved in only one manuscript (of the ninth or tenth century), which contains also the "Octavius" of Minucius Felix.1577  The first two books are apologetic, the other five chiefly polemic. Arnobius shows great familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology and literature, and quotes freely from Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Varro. He ably refutes the objections to Christianity, beginning with the popular charge that it brought the wrath of the gods and the many public calamities upon the Roman empire. He exposes at length the absurdities and immoralities of the heathen mythology. He regards the gods as real, but evil beings.

The positive part is meagre and unsatisfactory. Arnobius seems as ignorant about the Bible as Minucius Felix. He never quotes the Old Testament, and the New Testament only once.1578  He knows nothing of the history of the Jews, and the Mosaic worship, and confounds the Pharisees and Sadducees. Yet be is tolerably familiar, whether from the Gospels or from tradition, with the history of Christ. He often refers in growing language to his incarnation, crucifixion, and exaltation. He represents him as the supreme teacher who revealed God to man, the giver of eternal life, yea, as God, though born a man, as God on high, God in his inmost nature, as the Saviour God, and the object of worship.1579  Only his followers can be saved, but he offers salvation even to his enemies. His divine mission is proved by his miracles, and these are attested by their unique character, their simplicity, publicity and beneficence. He healed at once a hundred or more afflicted with various diseases, he stilled the raging tempest, he walked over the sea with unwet foot, he astonished the very waves, he fed five thousand with five loaves, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments that remained, he called the dead from the tomb. He revealed himself after the resurrection "in open day to countless numbers of men;" "he appears even now to righteous men of unpolluted mind who love him, not in any dreams, but in a form of pure simplicity."1580

His doctrine of God is Scriptural, and strikingly contrasts with the absurd mythology. God is the author and ruler of all things, unborn, infinite, spiritual, omnipresent, without passion, dwelling in light, the giver of all good, the sender of the Saviour.

As to man, Arnobius asserts his free will, but also his ignorance and sin, and denies his immortality. The soul outlives the body but depends solely on God for the gift of eternal duration. The wicked go to the fire of Gehenna, and will ultimately be consumed or annihilated. He teaches the resurrection of the flesh, but in obscure terms.

Arnobius does not come up to the standard of Catholic orthodoxy, even of the ante-Nicene age. Considering his apparent ignorance of the Bible, and his late conversion, we need not be surprised at this. Jerome now praises, now censures him, as unequal, prolix, and confused in style, method, and doctrine. Pope Gelasius in the fifth century banished his book to the apocryphal index, and since that time it was almost forgotten, till it was brought to light again in the sixteenth century. Modern critics agree in the verdict that he is more successful in the refutation of error than in the defense of truth.

But the honesty, courage, and enthusiasm of the convert for his new faith are as obvious as the defects of his theology. If be did not know or clearly understand the doctrines of the Bible, be seized its moral tone.1581  "We have learned," he says, "from Christ’s teaching and his laws, that evil ought not to be requited with evil (comp. Matt. 5:39), that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that we should rather shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with that of another. An ungrateful world is now for a long period enjoying the benefit of Christ; for by his influence the rage of savage ferocity has been softened, and restrained from the blood of a fellow-creature. If all would lend an ear to his salutary and peaceful laws, the world would turn the use of steel to occupations of peace, and live in blessed harmony, maintaining inviolate the sanctity of treaties."1582  He indignantly asks the heathen, "Why have our writings deserved to be given to the flames, and our meetings to be cruelly broken up?  In them prayer is offered to the supreme God, peace and pardon are invoked upon all in authority, upon soldiers, kings, friends, enemies, upon those still in life, and those released from the bondage of the flesh. In them all that is said tends to make men humane, gentle, modest, virtuous, chaste, generous in dealing with their substance, and inseparably united to all that are embraced in our brotherhood."1583  He uttered his testimony boldly in the face of the last and most cruel persecution, and it is not unlikely that he himself was one of its victims.

The work of Arnobius is a rich store of antiquarian and mythological knowledge, and of African latinity.

§ 203. Victorinus of Petau.

(I.) Opera in the "Max. Biblioth. vet. Patrum." Lugd. Tom. III., in Gallandi’s "Bibl. PP.," Tom. IV.; and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," V. 281–344 (De Fabrica Mundi, and Scholia in Apoc. Joannis).

English translation by R. E. Wallis, in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," Vol. III., 388–433; N. York ed. VII. (1886).

(II.) Jerome: De. Vir. ill., 74. Cassiodor: Justit. Div. Lit., c. 9. Cave: Hist. Lit., I., 147 sq. Lumper’s Proleg., in Migne’s ed., V. 281–302, Routh: Reliq., S. I., 65; III., 455–481.

Victorinus, probably of Greek extraction, was first a rhetorician by profession, and became bishop of Petavium, or Petabio,1584 in ancient Panonia (Petau, in the present Austrian Styria). He died a martyr in the Diocletian persecution (303). We have only fragments of his writings, and they are not of much importance, except for the age to which they belong. Jerome says that he understood Greek better than Latin, and that his works are excellent for the sense, but mean as to the style. He counts him among the Chiliasts, and ascribes to him commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Canticles, the Apocalypse, a book Against all Heresies, "et multa alia." Several poems are also credited to him, but without good reason.1585

1. The fragment on the Creation of the World is a series of notes on the account of creation, probably a part of the commentary on Genesis mentioned by Jerome. The days are taken liberally. The creation of angels and archangels preceded the creation of man, as light was made before the sky and the earth. The seven days typify seven millennia; the seventh is the millennial sabbath, when Christ will reign on earth with his elect. It is the same chiliastic notion which we found in the Epistle of Barnabas, with the same opposition to Jewish sabbatarianism. Victorinus compares the seven days with the seven eyes of the Lord (Zech. 4:10), the seven heavens (comp. Ps. 33:6), the seven spirits that dwelt in Christ (Isa. 11:2, 3), and the seven stages of his humanity: his nativity, infancy, boyhood, youth, young-manhood, mature age, death. This is a fair specimen of these allegorical plays of a pious imagination.

2. The scholia on the Apocalypse of John are not without interest for the history of the interpretation of this mysterious book.1586  But they are not free from later interpolations of the fifth or sixth century. The author assigns the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian (herein agreeing with Irenaeus), and combines the historical and allegorical methods of interpretation. He also regards the visions in part as synchronous rather than successive. He comments only on the more difficult passages.1587  We select the most striking points.

The woman in ch. 12 is the ancient church of the prophets and apostles; the dragon is the devil. The woman sitting on the seven hills (in ch. 17), is the city of Rome. The beast from the abyss is the Roman empire; Domitian is counted as the sixth, Nerva as the seventh, and Nero revived as the eighth Roman King.1588  The number 666 (13:18) means in Greek Teitan1589 (this is the explanation preferred by Irenaeus), in Latin Diclux. Both names signify Antichrist, according to the numerical value of the Greek and Roman letters. But Diclux has this meaning by contrast, for Antichrist, "although he is cut off from the supernal light, yet transforms himself into an angel of light, daring to call himself light."1590  To this curious explanation is added, evidently by a much later hand, an application of the mystic number to the Vandal king Genseric (genshvriko")  who in the fifth century laid waste the Catholic church of North Africa and sacked the city of Rome.

The exposition of ch. 20:1–6 is not so strongly chiliastic, as the corresponding passage in the Commentary on Genesis, and hence some have denied the identity of authorship. The first resurrection is explained spiritually with reference to Col. 3:1, and the author leaves it optional to understand the thousand years as endless or as limited. Then he goes on to allegorize about the numbers: ten signifies the decalogue, and hundred the crown of virginity; for he who keeps the vow of virginity completely, and fulfils the precepts of the decalogue, and destroys the impure thoughts within the retirement of his own heart, is the true priest of Christ, and reigns with him; and "truly in his case the devil is bound." At the close of the notes on ch. 22, the author rejects the crude and sensual chiliasm of the heretic Cerinthus. "For the kingdom of Christ," he says, "is now eternal in the saints, although the glory of the saints shall be manifested after the resurrection."1591  This looks like a later addition, and intimates the change which Constantine’s reign produced in the mind of the church as regards the millennium. Henceforth it was dated from the incarnation of Christ.1592

§ 204. Eusebius, Lactantius, Hosius.

On Eusebius see vol. III. 871–879—Add to Lit. the exhaustive article of Bp. Lightfoot in Smith and Wace, II. (1880), p. 308–348; Dr. Salmon, on the Chron. of Eus. ibid. 354–355; and Semisch in Herzog2  IV. 390–398.

On Lactantius see vol. III. 955–959.—Add to Lit. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. I. (1874), p. 70–86; and his art. in Herzog2  VIII. 364–366; and E. S. Ffoulkes in Smith and Wace III. 613–617.

On Hosius, see § 55 p. 179 sqq.; and vol. III. 627, 635, 636.—Add to Lit. P. Bonif. Gams (R.C.): Kirchengesch. v. Spanien, Regensb. 1862 sqq, , Bd II. 137–309 (the greater part of the second vol. is given to Hosius); W. Möller in Herzog2 VI. 326–328; and T. D. C. Morse in Smith and Wace III. 162–174.

At the close of our period we meet with three representative divines, in close connection with the first Christian emperor who effected the politico-ecclesiastical revolution known as the union of church and state. Their public life and labors belong to the next period, but must at least be briefly foreshadowed here.

Eusebius, the historian, Lactantius, the rhetorician, and Hosius, the statesman, form the connecting links between the ante-Nicene and Nicene ages; their long lives—two died octogenarians, Hosius a centenarian—are almost equally divided between the two; and they reflect the lights and shades of both.1593 Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea and a man of extensive and useful learning, and a liberal theologian; Lactantius, a professor of eloquence in Nicomedia, and a man of elegant culture; Hosius, bishop of Cordova and a man of counsel and action.1594 They thus respectively represented the Holy Land, Asia Minor, and Spain; we may add Italy and North Africa, for Lactantius was probably a native Italian and a pupil of Arnobius of Sicca, and Hosius acted to some extent for the whole western church in Eastern Councils. With him Spain first emerges from the twilight of legend to the daylight of church history; it was the border land of the west which Paul perhaps had visited, which had given the philosopher Seneca and the emperor Trajan to heathen Rome, and was to furnish in Theodosius the Great the strong defender of the Nicene faith.

Eusebius, Lactantius, and Hosius were witnesses of the cruelties of the Diocletian persecution, and hailed the reign of imperial patronage. They carried the moral forces of the age of martyrdom into the age of victory. Eusebius with his literary industry saved for us the invaluable monuments of the first three centuries down to the Nicene Council; Lactantius bequeathed to posterity, in Ciceronian Latin, an exposition and vindication of the Christian religion against the waning idolatry of Greece and Rome, and the tragic memories of the imperial persecutors; Hosius was the presiding genius of the synods of Elvira (306), Nicaea (325), and Sardica (347), the friend of Athanasius in the defense of orthodoxy and in exile.

All three were intimately associated with Constantine the Great, Eusebius as his friend and eulogist, Lactantius as the tutor of his eldest son, Hosius as his trusted counsellor who probably suggested to him the idea of convening the first œcumenical synod; he was we may say for a few years his ecclesiastical prime minister. They were, each in his way, the emperor’s chief advisers and helpers in that great change which gave to the religion of the cross the moral control over the vast empire of Rome. The victory was well deserved by three hundred years of unjust persecution and heroic endurance, but it was fraught with trials and temptations no less dangerous to the purity and peace of the church than fire and sword.

All three were intimately associated with Constantine the Great, Eusebius as his friend and eulogist, Lactantius as the tutor of his eldest son, Hosius as his trusted counsellor who probably suggested to him the idea of convening the first œcumenical synod; he was we may say for a few years his ecclesiastical prime minister. They were, each in his way, the emperor’s chief advisers and helpers in that great change which gave to the religion of the cross the moral control over the vast empire of Rome. The victory was well deserved by three hundred years of unjust persecution and heroic endurance, but it was fraught with trials and temptations no less dangerous to the purity and peace of the church than fire and sword.

All three were intimately associated with Constantine the Great, Eusebius as his friend and eulogist, Lactantius as the tutor of his eldest son, Hosius as his trusted counsellor who probably suggested to him the idea of convening the first œcumenical synod; he was we may say for a few years his ecclesiastical prime minister. They were, each in his way, the emperor’s chief advisers and helpers in that great change which gave to the religion of the cross the moral control over the vast empire of Rome. The victory was well deserved by three hundred years of unjust persecution and heroic endurance, but it was fraught with trials and temptations no less dangerous to the purity and peace of the church than fire and sword.

APPENDIX TO THE REVISED EDITION, 1884.

––––––––––

With new Additions, 1889.

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.

[In the additions to the literature I have followed the method of italicizing book-titles and words in foreign languages, as in the revised edition of vols. i. and ii. The same method will be carried out in all subsequent volumes.]

Page 11. Add To Literature On Constantine The Great:

Th. Zahn: Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche. Hannover, 1876. Demetriades: Die christl. Regierung und Orthodoxie Kaiser Constantin’s des Gr. Muenchen, 1878. Th. Brieger: Constantin der Gr. als Religionspolitiker. Gotha, 1880. E. L. Cutts: Constantine the Great. Lond. And N. Y., 1881. W. Gass: Konstantin der Gr. und seine Soehne, in Herzog,2 vii. (1881), 199–207. John Wordsworth: Const. the Gr. and his Sons, in Smith and Wace, i. 623–654. Edm. Stapfer: in Lichtenberger, iii. 388–393.—Comp. also vol. ii. p. 64–74, especially on the Edicts Of Toleration (only two, not three, as formerly assumed). Victor Schultze Geschichte des Untergangs des Griechisch-roemischen Heidenthums. Jena, 1887, Vol. i. 28–68.

Page 40. Add To Lit, on the heathen sources:

Juliani imperatoris Librorum contra Christianos quae supersunt. Collegit, recensuit, prolegomenis instruxit Car. Joa. Neumann. Insunt Cyrilli Alexandrini fragmenta syriaca ab Eberh. Nestle edita. Lips., 1880. Kaiser Julian’s Buecher gegen die Christen. Nach ihrer Wiederherstellung uebersetzt von Karl Joh. Neumann. Leipzig, 1880. 53 pages. This is Fasc. iii. of Scriptorum Graecorum qui Christianam impugnaverunt religionem quae supersunt, ed. by Neumann.

Page 40, bottom of the page. Add to works on Julian the Apostate:

Alb. De Broglie (R.C.), in the third and fourth vols. of his L’église et l’empire romain au quatrième siécle. Par., 4th ed., 1868. (Very full.)  J. F. A. Muecke: Flavius Claudius Julianus. Nach den Quellen. Gotha, 1867 and 1869. 2 vols. (Full, painstaking, prolix, too much dependent on Ammianus, and partial to Julian.)  Kellerbaum: Skizze der Vorgeschichte Julians, 1877. F. Rode: Gesch. der Reaction des Kaiser Julianus gegen die christl. Kirche. Jens, 1877. (Careful, partly against Teuffel and Muecke.)  H. Adrien Naville: Julien l’apostate et sa philosophie du polythéisme. . Paris and Neuchatel, 1877. Comp. his art. in Lichtenbergers "Encyclop.," vii. 519–525. Torquati: Studii storico-critici sulla vita … di Giuliano l’Apostata. Rom., 1878. G. H. Rendall: The Emperor Julian: Paganism and Christianity. Lond., 1879. J. G. E. Hoffmann: Jul. der Abtruennige, Syrische Erzaehlungen. Leiden, 1880. (Old romances reflecting the feelings of the Eastern Christians.)  Comp. also art. on Jul. in the "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., vol. xiii. 768–770 (by Kirkup); in Herzog2, vii. 285–296 (by Harnack); in Smith and Wace, iii. 484–524 (by Prebendary John Wordsworth, very full and fair).

Page 60. Add to literature:

Tillemont: Hist. des empereurs, tom. v. A. De Broglie, l.c. Victor Schultze: Gesch. d. Untergangs des gr. roem. Heidenthums, i. 209–400.

Page 81, last line, after Muenter, 1826, add:

; by C. Bursian, Lips., 1856; C. Halm, Vienna, 1867).

Page 93. Add as footnote 3:

3 Jerome, who was a shrewd observer of men and things, and witnessed the first effects of the union of church and state, says: "Ecclesia postquam ad Christianos principes venit, potentia quidem et divitiis major, sed virtutibus minor facta.’

Page 148. Add at the bottom of the page:

H. Weingarten: Der Ursprung des Moenchthums im nachconstantinischen Zeitalter. Gotha, 1877. See also his art. in Herzog2, x. 758 sqq. Ad. Harnack: Das Moenchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte. Giessen, 1882.—Comp. vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 387 sqq.

Page 226. Add to footnote:

Ad. Franz, Marcus Aur. Cassiodorus Senator. Breslau, 1872.

Page 242, i 50, add:

See Lit. on clerical celibacy in vol. i. p. 403 sq., especially Theiner, Lea, and von Schulte.

Page 314. Add to Lit. on Leo the Great:

Friedrich (old Cath.): Zur aeltesten Geschichte des Primates in der Kirche. Bonn, 1879. Jos. Langen (old Cath.): Geschichte der roem. Kirche bis zum Pontificate Leo’s  I.  Bonn, 1881. Karl Mueller in Herzog2, viii. (1881), 551–563. C. Gore, in Smith and Wace, iii. (1882), 652–673. By the same: Leo the Great (Lond. Soc. for Promoting Christ Knowledge, 175 pages). On the literary merits of Leo, see Ebert: Geschichte der christl. Lat. Lit., vol. i. 447–449.

Page 329.

Add to § 64 the following:

VOLUME III. NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY A.D. 311-600

From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great

A.D. 311–600.

This is a reproduction of the Fifth Edition, Revised

————

PREFACE TO THE THIRD REVISION

This third volume covers the eventful period of Christian emperors, patriarchs, and ecumenical Councils, from Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great. It completes the History of Ancient Christianity, which is the common inheritance of Greek, Latin, and Evangelical Christendom.

The first edition was published in 1867, and has not undergone any important changes. But in the revision of 1884 the more recent literature was added in an Appendix.

In this edition the Appendix has been revised and enriched with the latest literature. A few changes have also been made in the text to conform it to the present state of research (e.g., pp. 29, 353, 688, 689).

The Author.

New York, July, 1889.

PREFACE

———————————

With sincere thanks to God for continued health and strength, I offer to the public a history of the eventful period of the Church from the beginning of the fourth century to the close of the sixth. This concludes my history of Ancient Christianity.

It was intended at first to condense the third period into one volume, but regard to symmetry made it necessary to divide it into two volumes of equal size with the first which appeared several years ago. This accounts for the continuous paging of the second and third volumes.

In preparing this part of my Church History for the press, I have been deprived of the stimulus of an active professorship, and been much interrupted in consequence of other labors, a visit to Europe, and the loss of a part of the manuscript, which had to be rewritten. But, on the other hand, I have had the great advantage of constant and free access to several of the best libraries of the country. Especially am I indebted to the Astor Library, and the Union Theological Seminary Library of New York, which are provided with complete sets of the Greek and Latin fathers, and nearly all other important sources of the history of the first six centuries.

I have used different editions of the fathers (generally the Benedictine), but these I have carefully indicated when they vary in the division of chapters and sections, or in the numbering of orations and epistles, as in the works of Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Jerome, Augustine, and Leo. In addition to the primary sources, I have constantly consulted the later historians, German, French, and English.

In the progress of the work I have been filled with growing admiration for the great scholars of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, who have with amazing industry and patience collected the raw material from the quarries, and investigated every nook and corner of Christian Antiquity. I need only refer to the Benedictine editors of the fathers; to the Bollandists, in the department of hagiography; to Mansi and Hardouin, in the collection of the Acts of Councils; to Gallandi, Dupin, Ceillier, Oudin, Cave, Fabricius, in patristics and literary history; to Petau’s Theologica dogmata, Tillemont’s Mémoires, Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicaenae, Bingham’s Antiquities, Walch’s Ketzerhistorie. In learning, acumen, judgment, and reverent spirit, these and similar works are fully equal, if not superior, to the best productions of the modern Teutonic press; while we cheerfully concede to the latter the superiority in critical sifting, philosophical grasp, artistic reproduction of the material, and in impartiality and freedom of spirit, without which there can be no true history. Thus times and talents supplement each other.

With all due regard for the labors of distinguished predecessors and contemporaries, I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to combine fulness of matter with condensation in form and clearness of style, and to present a truthful and lively picture of the age of Christian emperors, patriarchs, and ecumenical Councils. Whether, and how far, I have succeeded in this, competent judges will decide.

I must again express my profound obligation to my friend, the Rev. Dr. Yeomans, of Rochester, for his invaluable assistance in bringing these volumes before the public in a far better English dress than I could have given them myself. I have prepared the work in German, and have sent the copy to Leipsic, where a German edition will appear simultaneously with the American. Some portions I have myself reproduced in English, and have made considerable additions throughout in the final revision of the copy for the press. But the body of the work has been translated from manuscript by Dr. Yeomans. He has performed his task with that consummate union of faithfulness and freedom which does full justice both to the thought of the author and the language of the reader, and which has elicited the unqualified praise of the best judges for his translation of my History of the Apostolic Church, and that of the first three centuries.

The work has been, for the translator as well as for the author, truly a labor of love, which carries in it its own exceeding great reward. For what can be more delightful and profitable than to revive for the benefit of the living generation, the memory of those great and good men who were God’s own chosen instruments in expounding the mysteries of divine truth, and in spreading the blessings of Christianity over the face of the earth?

It is my wish and purpose to resume this work as soon as other engagements will permit, and to complete it according to the original plan. In the mean time I have the satisfaction of having finished the first great division of the history of Christianity, which, in many respects, is the most important, as the common inheritance of the Greek, Latin, and Evangelical churches. May God bless it as a means to promote the cause of truth, and to kindle that devotion to his service which is perfect freedom.

Philip Schaff.

5 Bible House, New York, Nov. 8, 1866.

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THIRD PERIOD

THIRD PERIOD

FROM CONSTANTINE THE GREAT TO GREGORY THE GREAT.

a. d. 311–590.

SOURCES.

I. Christian Sources: (a) The Acts Of Councils; in the Collectiones conciliorum of Hardouin, Par. 1715 sqq. 12 vols. fol.; Mansi, Flor. et Ven. 1759 sqq. 31 vols. fol.; Fuchs: Bibliothek der Kirchenversammlungen des 4ten und 5ten Jahrh. Leipz. 1780 sqq.; and Bruns: Biblioth. eccl. vol. i. Canones Apost. et Conc. saec. iv.–vii. Berol. 1839.

(b) The Imperial Laws and Decrees referring to the church, in the Codex Theodosianus, collected A.D. 438, the Codex Justinianeus, collected in 529, and the Cod. repetitae praelectionis of 534.

(c) The Official Letters of popes (in the Bullarium Romanum), patriarchs, and bishops.

(d) The writings of all the Church Fathers from the beginning of the 4th century to the end of the 6th. Especially of Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, the two Gregories, the two Cyrils, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, of the Greek church; and Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Leo the Great, of the Latin. Comp. the Benedictine Editions of the several Fathers; the Maxima Bibliotheca veterum Patrum, Lugd. 1677 sqq. (in all 27 vols. fol.), vols. iii.–xi.; Gallandi: Biblioth. vet. Patrum, etc. Ven. 1765 sqq. (14 vols. fol.), vols. iv.–xii.

(e) Contemporary Church Historians, (1) of the Greek church: Eusebius of Caesarea († about 340): the ninth and tenth books of his H. E. down to 324, and his biography of Constantine the Great, see § 2 infra; Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople: Histor. ecclesiast. libri vii, A.D. 306–439; Hermias Sozomen of Constantinople: H. eccl. l. ix, A.D. 323–423; Theodoret, bishop of Cyros in Mesopotamia: H. eccl. l. v, A.D. 325–429; the Arian Philostorgius: H. eccl. l. xii, A.D. 318–425, extant only in extracts in Photius Cod. 40; Theodorus Lector, of Constantinople, epitomizer of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, continuing the latter down to 518, preserved in fragments by Nicephorus Callistus; Evagrius of Antioch: H. eccl. l. vi, A.D. 431–594; Nicephorus Callistus (or Niceph. Callisti), about 1330, author of a church history in 23 books, to A.D. 911 (ed. Fronto Ducaeus, Par. 1630). The historical works of these Greek writers, excepting the last, are also published together under the title: Historiae ecclesiasticae Scriptores, etc., Graec. et Lat., with notes by H. Valesius (and G. Reading), Par. 1659–1673; and Cantabr. 1720, 3 vols. fol. (2) Of the Latin church historians few are important: Rufinus, presb. of Aquileia (†410), translated Eusebius and continued him in two more books to 395; Sulpicius Severus, presb. in Gaul: Hist. Sacra, l. ii, from the creation to A.D. 400; Paulus Orosius, presbyter in Spain: Historiarum libri vii. written about 416, extending from the creation to his own time; Cassiodorus, about 550: Hist. tripartite, l. xii. a mere extract from the works of the Greek church historians, but, with the work of Rufinus, the chief source of historical knowledge through the whole middle age; and Jerome († 419): De viris illustrious, or Catalogus scriptorum eccles., written about 392, continued under the same title by Gennadius, about 495, and by Isidor of Seville, about 630.

(f) For chronology, the Greek Pascavlion, or Chronicon Paschale (wrongly called Alexandrinum), primarily a table of the passovers from the beginning of the world to A.D. 354 under Constantius, with later additions down to 628. (Ed. Car. du Fresne Dom. du Cange. Par. 1688, and L. Dindorf, Bonn. 1832, 2 vols.)  The Chronicle of Eusebius and Jerome (Cronika; suggravmmata, pantodaph; iJstoriva), containing an outline of universal history down to 325, mainly after the chronography of Julius Africanus, and an extract from the universal chronicle in tabular form down to 379, long extant only in the free Latin translation and continuation of Jerome (ed. Jos. Scaliger. Lugd. Batav. 1606 and later), since 1792 known also in an Armenian translation (ed. J. Bapt. Aucher. Ven. 1818, and Aug. Mai, Script. vet. nov. coll. 1833. Tom. viii). In continuation of the Latin chronicle of Jerome, the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitania down to 455; that of the spanish bishop Idatius, to 469; and that of Marcellinus Comes, to 534. Comp. Chronica medii aevi post Euseb. atque Hieron., etc. ed. Roesler, Tüb. 1798.

II. Heathen Sources: Ammianus Marcellinus (officer under Julian, honest and impartial): Rerum gestarum libri xiv-xxxi, A.D. 353–378 (the first 13 books are lost), ed. Jac. Gronov. Lugd. Batav. 1693 fol., and J. A. Ernesti, Lips. 1778 and 1835. Eunapius (philosopher and historian; bitter against the Christian emperors): Cronikh; iJstoriva, A.D. 268–405, extant only in fragments, ed. Bekker and Niebuhr, Bonn. 1829. Zosimus (court officer under Theodosius II., likewise biassed): @Istoriva neva, l. vi, A.D. 284–410, ed. Cellarius 1679, Reitemeier 1784, and Imm. Bekker, Bonn. 1837. Also the writings of Julian the Apostate (against Christianity), Libanius and Symmachus (philosophically tolerant), &c. Comp. the literature at § 2 and 4.

LATER LITERATURE.

Besides the contemporary histories named above under 1 (e) among the sources, we should mention particularly Baronius (R.C. of the A.D.Ultramontane school, † 1607): Annales Eccles. vol. iii.–viii. (a heavy and unreadable chronicle, but valuable for reference to original documents). Tillemont (R.C. leaning to Jansenism, † 1698): Mémoires, etc., vol. vi.–xvi. (mostly biographical, minute, and conscientious). Gibbon († 1794): Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, from ch. xvii. onward (unsurpassed in the skilful use of sources and artistic composition, but skeptical and destitute of sympathy with the genius of Christianity). Schröckh (moderate Lutheran, † 1808): Christl. Kirchengesch. Theil v.–xviii. (A simple and diffuse, but thorough and trustworthy narrative). Neander (Evangel. † 1850): Allg. Gesch. der Chr. Rel. und Kirche. Hamb. vol. iv.–vi., 2d ed. 1846 sqq. Engl. transl. by Torrey, vol. ii. (Profound and genial in the genetic development of Christian doctrine and life, but defective in the political and aesthetic sections, and prolix and careless in style and arrangement). Gieseler (Protest. † 1854): Kirchengesch. Bonn. i. 2. 2d ed. 1845. Engl. transl. by Davidson, and revised by H. B. Smith, N. York, vol. i. and ii. (Critical and reliable in the notes, but meagre, dry, and cold in the text).

Isaac Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, and the Doctrines of the Oxf. Tracts for the Times. Lond. 4th ed. 1844. 2 vols. (Anti-Puseyite). Böhringer (G. Ref.): Kirchengeschichte in Biographieen, vol. i. parts 3 and 4. Zür. 1845 sq. (from Ambrose to Gregory the Great). Carwithen And Lyall: History of the Christian Church from the 4th to the 12th Cent. in the Encycl. Metrop. 1849; published separately in Lond. and Glasg. 1856. J. C. Robertson (Angl.): Hist. of the Christ. Church to the Pontificate of Gregory the Great. Lond. 1854 (pp. 166–516). H. H. Milman (Angl.): History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Lond. 1840 (New York, 1844), Book III. and IV. Milman: Hist. of Latin Christianity; including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. Lond. 1854 sqq. 6 vols., republished in New York, 1860, in 8 vols. (vol. i. a resumé of the first six centuries to Gregory I., the remaining vols. devoted to the middle ages). K. R. Hagenbach (G. Ref.):Die Christl. Kirche vom 4ten his 6ten Jahrh. Leipz. 1855 (2d vol. of his popular "Vorlesungen über die ältere Kirchengesch."). Albert de Broglie (R.C.): L’église et l’empire romain au IVme siècle. Par. 1855–’66. 6 vols. Ferd. Christ. Baur: Die Christl. Kirche vom Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts in den Hauptmomenten ihrer Entwicklung. Tüb. 1859 (critical and philosophical). Wm. Bright: A History of the Church from the Edict of Milan, A.D. 313, to the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451. Oxf. and Lond. 1860. Arthur P. Stanley: Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. Lond. 1861 (pp. 512), republished in New York from the 2d Lond. ed. 1862 (a series of graphic pictures of prominent characters and events in the history of the Greek and Russian church, but no complete history).

§ 1. Introduction and General View.

From the Christianity of the Apostles and Martyrs we proceed to the Christianity of the Patriarchs and Emperors.

The third period of the history of the Church, which forms the subject of this volume, extends from the emperor Constantine to the pope Gregory I.; from the beginning of the fourth century to the close of the sixth. During this period Christianity still moves, as in the first three centuries, upon the geographical scene of the Graeco-Roman empire and the ancient classical culture, the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. But its field and its operation are materially enlarged, and even touch the barbarians on the limit of the empire. Above all, its relation to the temporal power, and its social and political position and import, undergo an entire and permanent change. We have here to do with the church of the Graeco-Roman empire, and with the beginning of Christianity among the Germanic barbarians. Let us glance first at the general character and leading events of this important period.

The reign of Constantine the Great marks the transition of the Christian religion from under persecution by the secular government to union with the same; the beginning of the state-church system. The Graeco-Roman heathenism, the most cultivated and powerful form of idolatry, which history knows, surrenders, after three hundred years’ struggle, to Christianity, and dies of incurable consumption, with the confession: Galilean, thou hast conquered!  The ruler of the civilized world lays his crown at the feet of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. The successor of Nero, Domitian, and Diocletian appears in the imperial purple at the council of Nice as protector of the church, and takes his golden throne at the nod of bishops, who still bear the scars of persecution. The despised sect, which, like its Founder in the days of His humiliation, had not where to lay its head, is raised to sovereign authority in the state, enters into the prerogatives of the pagan priesthood, grows rich and powerful, builds countless churches out of the stones of idol temples to the honor of Christ and his martyrs, employs the wisdom of Greece and Rome to vindicate the foolishness of the cross, exerts a molding power upon civil legislation, rules the national life, and leads off the history of the world. But at the same time the church, embracing the mass of the population of the empire, from the Caesar to the meanest slave, and living amidst all its institutions, received into her bosom vast deposits of foreign material from the world and from heathenism, exposing herself to new dangers and imposing upon herself new and heavy labors.

The union of church and state extends its influence, now healthful, now baneful, into every department of our history.

The Christian life of the Nicene and post-Nicene age reveals a mass of worldliness within the church; an entire abatement of chiliasm with its longing after the return of Christ and his glorious reign, and in its stead an easy repose in the present order of things; with a sublime enthusiasm, on the other hand, for the renunciation of self and the world, particularly in the hermitage and the cloister, and with some of the noblest heroes of Christian holiness.

Monasticism, in pursuance of the ascetic tendencies of the previous period, and in opposition to the prevailing secularization of Christianity, sought to save the virgin purity of the church and the glory of martyrdom by retreat from the world into the wilderness; and it carried the ascetic principle to the summit of moral heroism, though not rarely to the borders of fanaticism and brutish stupefaction. It spread with incredible rapidity and irresistible fascination from Egypt over the whole church, east and west, and received the sanction of the greatest church teachers, of an Athanasius, a Basil, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Jerome, as the surest and shortest way to heaven.

It soon became a powerful rival of the priesthood, and formed a third order, between the priesthood and the laity. The more extraordinary and eccentric the religion of the anchorets and monks, the more they were venerated among the people. The whole conception of the Christian life from the fourth to the sixteenth century is pervaded with the ascetic and monastic spirit, and pays the highest admiration to the voluntary celibacy, poverty, absolute obedience, and excessive self-punishments of the pillar-saints and the martyrs of the desert; while in the same degree the modest virtues of every-day household and social life are looked upon as an inferior degree of morality.

In this point the old Catholic ethical ideas essentially differ from those of evangelical Protestantism and modern civilization. But, to understand and appreciate them, we must consider them in connection with the corrupt social condition of the rapidly decaying empire of Rome. The Christian spirit in that age, in just its most earnest and vigorous forms, felt compelled to assume in some measure an anti-social, seclusive character, and to prepare itself in the school of privation and solitude for the work of transforming the world and founding a new Christian order of society upon the ruins of the ancient heathenism.

In the development of doctrine the Nicene and post-Nicene age is second in productiveness and importance only to those of the apostles and of the reformation. It is the classical period for the objective fundamental dogmas, which constitute the ecumenical or old Catholic confession of faith. The Greek church produced the symbolical definition of the orthodox view of the holy Trinity and the person of Christ, while the Latin church made considerable advance with the anthropological and soteriological doctrines of sin and grace. The fourth and fifth centuries produced the greatest church fathers, Athanasius and Chrysostom in the East, Jerome and Augustine in the West. All learning and science now came into the service of the church, and all classes of society, from the emperor to the artisan, took the liveliest, even a passionate interest, in the theological controversies. Now, too, for the first time, could ecumenical councils be held, in which the church of the whole Roman empire was represented, and fixed its articles of faith in an authoritative way.

Now also, however, the lines of orthodoxy were more and more strictly drawn; freedom of inquiry was restricted; and all as departure from the state-church system was met not only, as formerly, with spiritual weapons, but also with civil punishments. So early as the fourth century the dominant party, the orthodox as well as the heterodox, with help of the imperial authority practised deposition, confiscation, and banishment upon its opponents. It was but one step thence to the penalties of torture and death, which were ordained in the middle age, and even so lately as the middle of the seventeenth century, by state-church authority, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and continue in many countries to this day, against religious dissenters of every kind as enemies to the prevailing order of things. Absolute freedom of religion and of worship is in fact logically impossible on the state-church system. It requires the separation of the spiritual and temporal powers. Yet, from the very beginning of political persecution, loud voices rise against it and in behalf of ecclesiastico-religious toleration; though the plea always comes from the oppressed party, which, as soon as it gains the power, is generally found, in lamentable inconsistency, imitating the violence of its former oppressors. The protest springs rather from the sense of personal injury, than from horror of the principle of persecution, or from any clear apprehension of the nature of the gospel and its significant words: "Put up thy sword into the sheath;" "My kingdom is not of this world."

The organization of the church adapts itself to the political and geographical divisions of the empire. The powers of the hierarchy are enlarged, the bishops become leading officers of the state and acquire a controlling influence in civil and political affairs, though more or less at the expense of their spiritual dignity and independence, especially at the Byzantine court. The episcopal system passes on into the metropolitan and patriarchal. In the fifth century the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem stand at the head of Christendom. Among these Rome and Constantinople are the most powerful rivals, and the Roman patriarch already puts forth a claim to universal spiritual supremacy, which subsequently culminates in the mediaeval papacy, though limited to the West and resisted by the constant protest of the Greek church and of all non-Catholic sects. In addition to provincial synods we have now also general synods, but called by the emperors and more or less affected, though not controlled, by political influence.

From the time of Constantine church discipline declines; the whole Roman world having become nominally Christian, and the host of hypocritical professors multiplying beyond all control. Yet the firmness of Ambrose with the emperor Theodosius shows, that noble instances of discipline are not altogether wanting.

Worship appears greatly enriched and adorned; for art now comes into the service of the church. A Christian architecture, a Christian sculpture, a Christian painting, music, and poetry arise, favoring at once devotion and solemnity, and all sorts of superstition and empty display. The introduction of religious images succeeds only after long and violent opposition. The element of priesthood and of mystery is developed, but in connection with a superstitious reliance upon a certain magical operation of outward rites. Church festivals are multiplied and celebrated with great pomp; and not exclusively in honor of Christ, but in connection with an extravagant veneration of martyrs and saints, which borders on idolatry, and often reminds us of the heathen hero-worship not yet uprooted from the general mind. The multiplication and accumulation of religious ceremonies impressed the senses and the imagination, but prejudiced simplicity, spirituality, and fervor in the worship of God. Hence also the beginnings of reaction against ceremonialism and formalism.

Notwithstanding the complete and sudden change of the social and political circumstances of the church, which meets us on the threshold of this period, we have still before us the natural, necessary continuation of the pre-Constantine church in its light and shade, and the gradual transition of the old Graeco-Roman Catholicism into the Germano-Roman Catholicism of the middle age.

Our attention will now for the first time be turned in earnest, not only to Christianity in the Roman empire, but also to Christianity among the Germanic barbarians, who from East and North threaten the empire and the entire civilization of classic antiquity. The church prolonged, indeed, the existence of the Roman empire, gave it a new splendor and elevation, new strength and unity, as well as comfort in misfortune; but could not prevent its final dissolution, first in the West (A.D. 476), afterwards (1453) in the East. But she herself survived the storms of the great migration, brought the pagan invaders under the influence of Christianity, taught the barbarians the arts of peace, planted a higher civilization upon the ruins of the ancient world, and thus gave new proof of the indestructible, all-subduing energy of her life.

In a minute history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries we should mark the following subdivisions:

1. The Constantinian and Athanasian, or the Nicene and Trinitarian age, from 311 to the second general council in 381, distinguished by the conversion of Constantine, the alliance of the empire with the church, and the great Arian and semi-Arian controversy concerning the Divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit.

2. The post-Nicene, or Christological and Augustinian age, extending to the fourth general council in 451, and including the Nestorian and Eutychian disputes on the person of Christ, and the Pelagian controversy on sin and grace.

3. The age of Leo the Great (440–461), or the rise of the papal supremacy in the West, amidst the barbarian devastations which made an end to the western Roman empire in 476.

4. The Justinian age (527–565), which exhibits the Byzantine state-church despotism at the height of its power, and at the beginning of its decline.

5. The Gregorian age (590–604) forms the transition from the ancient Graeco-Roman to the mediaeval Romano-Germanic Christianity, and will be more properly included in the church history of the middle ages.

CHAPTER I.

DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

GENERAL LITERATURE.

J. G. Hoffmann: Ruina Superstitionis Paganae. Vitemb. 1738. Tzschirner: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829. A. Beugnot: Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en occident. Par. 1835. 2 vols. Et. Chastel (of Geneva): Histoire de la destruction du paganisme dans l’empire d’orient. Par. 1850. E. v. Lasaulx: Der Untergang des Hellenismus u. die Einziehung seiner Tempelgüter durch die christl. Kaiser. Münch. 1854. F. Lübker: Der Fall des Heidenthums. Schwerin, 1856. Ch. Merivale: Conversion of The Roman Empire. New York, 1865.

§ 2. Constantine The Great. A.D. 306–337.

1. Contemporary Sources: Lactantius († 330): De mortibus persecutorum, cap. 18 sqq. Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. l. Ix. et x.; also his panegyric and very partial Vita Constantini, in 4 books (Eij" tovn bivon tou' makarivou Kwnstantivnou tou' basilevw") and his Panegyricus or De laudibus Constantini; in the editions of the hist. works of Euseb. by Valesius, Par. 1659–1673, Amstel. 1695, Cantabr. 1720; Zimmermann, Frcf. 1822; Heinichen, Lips. 1827–30; Burton, Oxon. 1838. Comp. the imperial documents in the Codex Theodos.l. xvi. also the Letters and Treatises of Athanasius († 373), and on the heathen side the Panegyric of Nazarius at Rome (321) and the Caesars of Julian († 363).

2. Later sources: Socrates: Hist. Eccl. l. i. Sozomenus: H. E. l. i et ii. Zosimus (a heathen historian and court-officer, comes et advocatus fisci, under Theodosius II.):  Jistoriva neva, l. ii. ed. Bekker, Bonn. 1837. Eusebius and Zosimus present the extremes of partiality for and against Constantine. A just estimate of his character must be formed from the facts admitted by both, and from the effect of his secular and ecclesiastical policy.

3. Modern authorities. Mosheim: De reb. Christ. ante Const. M. etc., last section (p. 958 sqq. In Murdock’s Engl. transl., vol. ii. p. 454–481). Nath. Lardner, in the second part of his great work on the Credibility of the Gospel History, see Works ed. by Kippis, Lond. 1838, vol. iv. p. 3–55. Abbé de Voisin: Dissertation critique sur la vision de Constantin. Par. 1774. Gibbon: l.c. chs. xiv. and xvii.–xxi. Fr. Gusta: Vita di Constantino il Grande. Foligno, 1786. Manso: Das Leben Constantins des Gr. Bresl. 1817. Hug (R.C.): Denkschrift zur Ehrenrettung Constant. Frieb. 1829. Heinichen: Excurs. in Eus. Vitam Const. 1830. Arendt (R.C.): Const. u. sein Verb. zum Christenthum. Tüb. (Quartalschrift) 1834. Milman: Hist. of Christianity, etc., 1840, book iii. ch. 1–4. Jacob Burckhardt: Die Zeit Const. des Gr. Bas. 1853. Albert de Broglie: L’église et l’empire romain au IVme siècle. Par. 1856 (vols. i. and ii.). A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the Hist. of the Eastern Church, 1862, Lect. vi. p. 281 sqq. (Am. Ed.). Theod. Keim: Der Uebertritt Constantins des Gr. zum Christenthum. Zürich, 1862 (an apology for Constantine’s character against Burckhardt’s view).

The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors.1  The edict of toleration was an involuntary and irresistible concession of the incurable impotence of heathenism and the indestructible power of Christianity. It left but a step to the downfall of the one and the supremacy of the other in the empire of the Caesars.

This great epoch is marked by the reign of Constantine I.2  He understood the signs of the times and acted accordingly. He was the man for the times, as the times were prepared for him by that Providence which controls both and fits them for each other. He placed himself at the head of true progress, while his nephew, Julian the Apostate, opposed it and was left behind. He was the chief instrument for raising the church from the low estate of oppression and persecution to well deserved honor and power. For this service a thankful posterity has given him the surname of the Great, to which he was entitled, though not by his moral character, yet doubtless by his military and administrative ability, his judicious policy, his appreciation and protection of Christianity, and the far-reaching consequences of his reign. His greatness was not indeed of the first, but of the second order, and is to be measured more by what he did than by what he was. To the Greek church, which honors him even as a canonized saint, he has the same significance as Charlemagne to the Latin.

Constantine, the first Christian Caesar, the founder of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire, and one of the most gifted, energetic, and successful of the Roman emperors, was the first representative of the imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of that system of policy which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and religious rights, and regards church and state as the two arms of one and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully developed by his successors, it animated the whole middle age, and is yet working under various forms in these latest times; though it has never been fully realized, whether in the Byzantine, the German, or the Russian empire, the Roman church-state, the Calvinistic republic of Geneva, or the early Puritanic colonies of New England. At the same time, however, Constantine stands also as the type of an undiscriminating and harmful conjunction of Christianity with politics, of the holy symbol of peace with the horrors of war, of the spiritual interests of the kingdom of heaven with the earthly interests of the state.

In judging of this remarkable man and his reign, we must by all means keep to the great historical principle, that all representative characters act, consciously or unconsciously, as the free and responsible organs of the spirit of their age, which moulds them first before they can mould it in turn, and that the spirit of the age itself, whether good or bad or mixed, is but an instrument in the hands of divine Providence, which rules and overrules all the actions and motives of men.

Through a history of three centuries Christianity had already inwardly overcome the world, and thus rendered such an outward revolution, as has attached itself to the name of this prince, both possible and unavoidable. It were extremely superficial to refer so thorough and momentous a change to the personal motives of an individual, be they motives of policy, of piety, or of superstition. But unquestionably every age produces and shapes its own organs, as its own purposes require. So in the case of Constantine. He was distinguished by that genuine political wisdom, which, putting itself at the head of the age, clearly saw that idolatry had outlived itself in the Roman empire, and that Christianity alone could breathe new vigor into it and furnish its moral support. Especially on the point of the external Catholic unity his monarchical politics accorded with the hierarchical episcopacy of the church. Hence from the year 313 he placed himself in close connection with the bishops, made peace and harmony his first object in the Donatist and Arian controversies and applied the predicate "catholic" to the church in all official documents. And as his predecessors were supreme pontiffs of the heathen religion of the empire, so he desired to be looked upon as a sort of bishop, as universal bishop of the external affairs of the church.3  All this by no means from mere self-interest, but for the good of the empire, which, now shaken to its foundations and threatened by barbarians on every side, could only by some new bond of unity be consolidated and upheld until at least the seeds of Christianity and civilization should be planted among the barbarians themselves, the representatives of the future. His personal policy thus coincided with the interests of the state. Christianity appeared to him, as it proved in fact, the only efficient power for a political reformation of the empire, from which the ancient spirit of Rome was fast departing, while internal, civil, and religious dissensions and the outward pressure of the barbarians threatened a gradual dissolution of society.

But with the political he united also a religious motive, not clear and deep, indeed, yet honest, and strongly infused with the superstitious disposition to judge of a religion by its outward success and to ascribe a magical virtue to signs and ceremonies. His whole family was swayed by religious sentiment, which manifested itself in very different forms, in the devout pilgrimages of Helena, the fanatical Arianism of Constantia, and Constantius, and the fanatical paganism of Julian. Constantine adopted Christianity first as a superstition, and put it by the side of his heathen superstition, till finally in his conviction the Christian vanquished the pagan, though without itself developing into a pure and enlightened faith.4

At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers5 in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune;6 and down to the end of his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus, or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy.7  His coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the Sun-god, and the inscription "Sol invictus."  Of course there inconsistencies may be referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict of 313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who, in passing from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism, have so wavered between their old and their new position that they might be claimed by both. With his every victory, over his pagan rivals, Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism, and did not receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon the bed of death.

He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers with Apollo. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and of a remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk richly embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold,8 His mind was not highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge of human nature and administrative energy and tact.

His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity rare for the time,9 and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

Yet he had great faults. He was far from being so pure and so venerable as Eusebius, blinded by his favor to the church, depicts him, in his bombastic and almost dishonestly eulogistic biography, with the evident intention of setting him up as a model for all future Christian princes. It must, with all regret, be conceded, that his progress in the knowledge of Christianity was not a progress in the practice of its virtues. His love of display and his prodigality, his suspiciousness and his despotism, increased with his power.

The very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes, which even the spirit of the age and the policy of an absolute monarch cannot excuse. After having reached, upon the bloody path of war, the goal of his ambition, the sole possession of the empire, yea, in the very year in which he summoned the great council of Nicaea, he ordered the execution of his conquered rival and brother-in-law, Licinius, in breach of a solemn promise of mercy (324).10  Not satisfied with this, he caused soon afterwards, from political suspicion, the death of the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous purposes towards his step-mother Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip II. towards Don Carlos, of Peter the Great towards his son Alexis, and of Soliman the Great towards his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?), who, after twenty years, of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of an over-heated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine’s part in it at least very doubtful.11

At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and Pagans, the Orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great both in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same consolation as Peter, whose last words were: "I trust that in respect of the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my sins."  It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred nails of the Saviour’s cross which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the one into the bit of his war-horse, the other into an ornament of his helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life bears plain marks of both. When at last on his death bed he submitted to baptism, with the remark, "Now let us cast away all duplicity," he honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which swayed his private character and public life.12

From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of Constantine’s life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the vision of the Cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor of Christianity, his baptism and death.

Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probably in the year 272, either in Britain or at Naissus (now called Nissa), a town of Dardania, in Illyricum.13 His mother was Helena, daughter of an innkeeper,14 the first wife of Constantius, afterwards divorced, when Constantius, for political reasons, married a daughter of Maximian.15  She is described by Christian writers as a discreet and devout woman, and has been honored with a place in the catalogue of saints. Her name is identified with the discovery of the cross and the pious superstitions of the holy places. She lived to a very advanced age and died in the year 326 or 327, in or near the city of Rome. Rising by her beauty and good fortune from obscurity to the splendor of the court, then meeting the fate of Josephine, but restored to imperial dignity by her son, and ending as a saint of the Catholic church: Helena would form an interesting subject for a historical novel illustrating the leading events of the Nicene age and the triumph of Christianity in the Roman empire.

Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterwards to Gaul and Britain, and in the Praetorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father and by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion of the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected them in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This respectful tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following manner: "My father revered the Christian God and uniformly prospered, while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing."  This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered, and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (A.D. 325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova, a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins.

The first public evidence of a positive leaning towards the Christian religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike,16 called by the Roman people to their aid, Constantine marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every nationality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian bridge, near Rome, where Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber.

Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise day and place cannot be fixed, but the event must have occurred shortly before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Rome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history, and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us on the one hand the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it.17  We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been clothed with a supernatural character.

The occurrence is variously described and is not without serious difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel) to stamp on the shields of his soldiers "the heavenly sign of God," that is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth against his enemy.18  Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute account on the authority of a subsequent private communication of the aged Constantine himself under oath—not, however, till the year 338, a year after the death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six years after the event.19  On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot and date are not specified), the emperor, whilst earnestly praying to the true God for light and help at this critical time, saw, together with his army,20 in clear daylight towards evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the sun) with the inscription: "By this conquer,"21 and in the following night Christ himself appeared to him while he slept, and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the cross, and with that to proceed against Maxentius and all other enemies. This account of Eusebius, or rather of Constantine himself, adds to the night dream of Lactantius the preceding vision of the day, and the direction concerning the standard, while Lactantius speaks of the inscription of the initial letters of Christ’s name on the shields of the soldiers. According to Rufinus,22 a later historian, who elsewhere depends entirely on Eusebius and can therefore not be regarded as a proper witness in the case, the sign of the cross appeared to Constantine in a dream (which agrees with the account of Lactantius), and upon his awaking in terror, an angel (not Christ) exclaimed to him: "Hoc vince." Lactantius, Eusebius, and Rufinus are the only Christian writers of the fourth century, who mention the apparition. But we have besides one or two heathen testimonies, which, though vague and obscure, still serve to strengthen the evidence in favor of some actual occurrence. The contemporaneous orator Nazarius, in a panegyric upon the emperor, pronounced March 1, 321, apparently at Rome, speaks of an army of divine warriors and a divine assistance which Constantine received in the engagement with Maxentius, but he converts it to the service of heathenism by recurring to old prodigies, such as the appearance of Castor and Pollux.23

This famous tradition may be explained either as a real miracle implying a personal appearance of Christ,24 or as a pious fraud,25 or as a natural phenomenon in the clouds and an optical illusion,26 or finally as a prophetic dream.

The propriety of a miracle, parallel to the signs in heaven which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, might be justified by the significance of the victory as marking a great epoch in history, namely, the downfall of paganism and the establishment of Christianity in the empire. But even if we waive the purely critical objections to the Eusebian narrative, the assumed connection, in this case, of the gentle Prince of peace with the god of battle, and the subserviency of the sacred symbol of redemption to military ambition, is repugnant to the genius of the gospel and to sound Christian feeling, unless we stretch the theory of divine accommodation to the spirit of the age and the passions and interests of individuals beyond the ordinary limits. We should suppose, moreover, that Christ, if he had really appeared to Constantine either in person (according to Eusebius) or through angels (as Rufinus and Sozomen modify it), would have exhorted him to repent and be baptized rather than to construct a military ensign for a bloody battle.27  In no case can we ascribe to this occurrence, with Eusebius, Theodoret, and older writers, the character of a sudden and genuine conversion, as to Paul’s vision of Christ on the way to Damascus;28 for, on the one hand, Constantine was never hostile to Christianity, but most probably friendly to it from his early youth, according to the example of his father; and, on the other, he put off his baptism quite five and twenty years, almost to the hour of his death.

The opposite hypothesis of a mere military stratagem or intentional fraud is still more objectionable, and would compel us either to impute to the first Christian emperor at a venerable age the double crime of falsehood and perjury, or, if Eusebius invented the story, to deny to the "father of church history" all claim to credibility and common respectability. Besides it should be remembered that the older testimony of Lactantius, or whoever was the author of the work on the Deaths of Persecutors, is quite independent of that of Eusebius, and derives additional force from the vague heathen rumors of the time. Finally the Hoc vince which has passed into proverbial significance as a most appropriate motto of the invincible religion of the cross, is too good to be traced to sheer falsehood. Some actual fact, therefore, must be supposed to underlie the tradition, and the question only is this, whether it was an external visible phenomenon or an internal experience.

The hypothesis of a natural formation of the clouds, which Constantine by an optical illusion mistook for a supernatural sign of the cross, besides smacking of the exploded rationalistic explanation of the New Testament miracles, and deriving an important event from a mere accident, leaves the figure of Christ and the Greek or Latin inscription: By this sign thou shalt conquer! altogether unexplained.

We are shut up therefore to the theory of a dream or vision, and an experience within the mind of Constantine. This is supported by the oldest testimony of Lactantius, as well as by the report of Rufinus and Sozomen, and we do not hesitate to regard the Eusebian cross in the skies as originally a part of the dream,29 which only subsequently assumed the character of an outward objective apparition either in the imagination of Constantine, or by a mistake of the memory of the historian, but in either case without intentional fraud. That the vision was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy success, is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing ideas of the age.30 Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers attributed many conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions. Constantine and his friends referred the most important facts of his life, as the knowledge of the approach of hostile armies, the discovery of the holy sepulchre, the founding of Constantinople, to divine revelation through visions and dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least to deny the connection of the vision of the cross with the agency of divine Providence, which controlled this remarkable turning point of history. We may go farther and admit a special providence, or what the old divines call a providentia specialissima; but this does not necessarily imply a violation of the order of nature or an actual miracle in the shape of an objective personal appearance of the Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat similar, though far less important, vision in the life of the pious English Colonel James Gardiner.31  The Bible itself sanctions the general theory of providential or prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through which divine revelations and admonitions are communicated to men.32

The facts, therefore, may have been these. Before the battle Constantine, leaning already towards Christianity as probably the best and most hopeful of the various religions, seriously sought in prayer, as he related to Eusebius, the assistance of the God of the Christians, while his heathen antagonist Maxentius, according to Zosimus,33 was consulting the sibylline books and offering sacrifice to the idols. Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he fell asleep and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the labarum,34 or rather he changed the heathen labarum into a standard of the Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ,35 which he had also put upon the shields of the soldiers. To this cross-standard, which now took the place of the Roman eagles, he attributed the decisive victory over the heathen Maxentius.

Accordingly, after his triumphal entrance into Rome, he had his statue erected upon the forum with the labarum in his right hand, and the inscription beneath: "By this saving sign, the true token of bravery, I have delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant."36  Three years afterwards the senate erected to him a triumphal arch of marble, which to this day, within sight of the sublime ruins of the pagan Colosseum, indicates at once the decay of ancient art, and the downfall of heathenism; as the neighboring arch of Titus commemorates the downfall of Judaism and the destruction of the temple. The inscription on this arch of Constantine, however, ascribes his victory over the hated tyrant, not only to his master mind, but indefinitely also to the impulse of Deity;37 by which a Christian would naturally understand the true God, while a heathen, like the orator Nazarius, in his eulogy on Constantine, might take it for the celestial guardian power of the "urbs aeterna."

At all events the victory of Constantine over Maxentius was a military and political victory of Christianity over heathenism; the intellectual and moral victory having been already accomplished by the literature and life of the church in the preceding period. The emblem of ignominy and oppression38 became thenceforward the badge of honor and dominion, and was invested in the emperor’s view, according to the spirit of the church of his day, with a magic virtue.39  It now took the place of the eagle and other field-badges, under which the heathen Romans had conquered the world. It was stamped on the imperial coin, and on the standards, helmets, and shields of the soldiers. Above all military representations of the cross the original imperial labarum shone in the richest decorations of gold and gems; was intrusted to the truest and bravest fifty of the body guard; filled the Christians with the spirit of victory, and spread fear and terror among their enemies; until, under the weak successors of Theodosius II., it fell out of use, and was lodged as a venerable relic in the imperial palace at Constantinople.

After this victory at Rome (which occurred October 27, 312), Constantine, in conjunction with his eastern colleague, Licinius, published in January, 313, from Milan, an edict of religious toleration, which goes a step beyond the edict of the still anti-Christian Galerius in 311, and grants, in the spirit of religious eclecticism, full freedom to all existing forms of worship, with special reference to the Christian.40  The edict of 313 not only recognized Christianity within existing limits, but allowed every subject of the Roman empire to choose whatever religion he preferred.41  At the same time the church buildings and property confiscated in the Diocletian persecution were ordered to be restored, and private property-owners to be indemnified from the imperial treasury.

In this notable edict, however, we should look in vain for the modern Protestant and Anglo-American theory of religious liberty as one of the universal and inalienable rights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in the Christian church itself, at that time, as before and after, declared against all compulsion in religion.42  But the spirit of the Roman empire was too absolutistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a temporary measure of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly states the motive, promised the greatest security to the public peace and the protection of all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and empire. It was, as the result teaches, but the necessary transition step to a new order of things. It opened the door to the elevation of Christianity, and specifically of Catholic hierarchical Christianity, with its exclusiveness towards heretical and schismatic sects, to be the religion of the state. For, once put on equal footing with heathenism, it must soon, in spite of numerical minority, bear away the victory from a religion which had already inwardly outlived itself.

From this time Constantine decidedly favored the church, though without persecuting or forbidding the pagan religions. He always mentions the Christian church with reverence in his imperial edicts, and uniformly applies to it, as we have already observed, the predicate of catholic. For only as a catholic, thoroughly organized, firmly compacted, and conservative institution did it meet his rigid monarchical interest, and afford the splendid state and court dress he wished for his empire. So early as the year 313 we find the bishop Hosius of Cordova among his counsellors, and heathen writers ascribe to the bishop even a magical influence over the emperor. Lactantius, also, and Eusebius of Caesarea belonged to his confidential circle. He exempted the Christian clergy from military and municipal duty (March, 313); abolished various customs and ordinances offensive to the Christians (315); facilitated the emancipation of Christian slaves (before 316); legalized bequests to catholic churches (321); enjoined the civil observance of Sunday, though not as dies Domini, but as dies Solis, in conformity to his worship of Apollo, and in company with an ordinance for the regular consulting of the haruspex (321); contributed liberally to the building of churches and the support of the clergy; erased the heathen symbols of Jupiter and Apollo, Mars and Hercules from the imperial coins (323); and gave his sons a Christian education.

This mighty example was followed, as might be expected, by a general transition of those subjects, who were more influenced in their conduct by outward circumstances, than by inward conviction and principle. The story, that in one year (324) twelve thousand men, with women and children in proportion, were baptized in Rome, and that the emperor had promised to each convert a white garment and twenty pieces of gold, is at least in accordance with the spirit of that reign, though the fact itself, in all probability, is greatly exaggerated.43

Constantine came out with still greater decision, when, by his victory over his Eastern colleague and brother-in-law, Licinius, he became sole head of the whole Roman empire. To strengthen his position, Licinius had gradually placed himself at the head of the heathen party, still very numerous, and had vexed the Christians first with wanton ridicule44 then with exclusion from civil and military office, with banishment, and in some instances perhaps even with bloody persecution. This gave the political strife for the monarchy between himself and Constantine the character also of a war of religions; and the defeat of Licinius in the battle of Adrianople in July, 324, and at Chalcedon in September, was a new triumph of the standard of the cross over the sacrifices of the gods; save that Constantine dishonored himself and his cause by the execution of Licinius and his son.

The emperor now issued a general exhortation to his subjects to embrace the Christian religion, still leaving them, however, to their own free conviction. In the year 325, as patron of the church, he summoned the council of Nice, and himself attended it; banished the Arians, though he afterwards recalled them; and, in his monarchical spirit of uniformity, showed great zeal for the settlement of all theological disputes, while he was blind to their deep significance. He first introduced the practice of subscription to the articles of a written creed and of the infliction of civil punishments for non-conformity. In the years 325–329, in connection with his mother, Helena, he erected magnificent churches on the sacred spots in Jerusalem.

As heathenism had still the preponderance in Rome, where it was hallowed by its great traditions, Constantine, by divine command as he supposed,45 in the year 330, transferred the seat of his government to Byzantium, and thus fixed the policy, already initiated by Domitian, of orientalizing and dividing the empire. In the selection of the unrivalled locality he showed more taste and genius than the founders of Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or Washington. With incredible rapidity, and by all the means within reach of an absolute monarch, he turned this nobly situated town, connecting two seas and two continents, into a splendid residence and a new Christian Rome, "for which now," as Gregory of Nazianzen expresses it, "sea and land emulate each other, to load it with their treasures, and crown it queen of cities."46  Here, instead of idol temples and altars, churches and crucifixes rose; though among them the statues of patron deities from all over Greece, mutilated by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were also gathered in the new metropolis.47  The main hall in the palace was adorned with representations of the crucifixion and other biblical scenes. The gladiatorial shows, so popular in Rome, were forbidden here, though theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes kept their place. It could nowhere be mistaken, that the new imperial residence was as to all outward appearance a Christian city. The smoke of heathen sacrifices never rose from the seven hills of New Rome except during the short reign of Julian the Apostate. It became the residence of a bishop who not only claimed the authority of the apostolic see of neighboring Ephesus, but soon outshone the patriarchate of Alexandria and rivalled for centuries the papal power in ancient Rome.

The emperor diligently attended divine worship, and is portrayed upon medals in the posture of prayer. He kept the Easter vigils with great devotion. He would stand during the longest sermons of his bishops, who always surrounded him, and unfortunately flattered him only too much. And he even himself composed and delivered discourses to his court, in the Latin language, from which they were translated into Greek by interpreters appointed for the purpose.48  General invitations were issued, and the citizens flocked in great crowds to the palace to hear the imperial preacher, who would in vain try to prevent their loud applause by pointing to heaven as the source of his wisdom. He dwelt mainly on the truth of Christianity, the folly of idolatry, the unity and providence of God, the coming of Christ, and the judgment. At times he would severely rebuke the avarice and rapacity of his courtiers, who would loudly applaud him with their mouths, and belie his exhortation by their works.49  One of these productions is still extant,50 in which he recommends Christianity in a characteristic strain, and in proof of its divine origin cites especially the fulfilment of prophecy, including the Sibylline books and the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with the contrast between his own happy and brilliant reign and the tragical fate of his persecuting predecessors and colleagues.

Nevertheless he continued in his later years true upon the whole to the toleration principles of the edict of 313, protected the pagan priests and temples in their privileges, and wisely abstained from all violent measures against heathenism, in the persuasion that it would in time die out. He retained many heathens at court and in public office, although he loved to promote Christians to honorable positions. In several cases, however, he prohibited idolatry, where it sanctioned scandalous immorality, as in the obscene worship of Venus in Phenicia; or in places which were specially sacred to the Christians, as the sepulchre of Christ and the grove of Mamre; and he caused a number of deserted temples and images to be destroyed or turned into Christian churches. Eusebius relates several such instances with evident approbation, and praises also his later edicts against various heretics and schismatics, but without mentioning the Arians. In his later years he seems, indeed, to have issued a general prohibition of idolatrous sacrifice; Eusebius speaks of it, and his sons in 341 refer to an edict to that effect; but the repetition of it by his successors proves, that, if issued, it was not carried into general execution under his reign.

With this shrewd, cautious, and moderate policy of Constantine, which contrasts well with the violent fanaticism of his sons, accords the postponement of his own baptism to his last sickness.51  For this he had the further motives of a superstitious desire, which he himself expresses, to be baptized in the Jordan, whose waters had been sanctified by the Saviour’s baptism, and no doubt also a fear, that he might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished to secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins, with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of both worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age what deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. Yet he presumed to preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops, he convened the first general council, and made Christianity the religion of the empire, long before his baptism!  Strange as this inconsistency appears to us, what shall we think of the court bishops who, from false prudence, relaxed in his favor the otherwise strict discipline of the church, and admitted him, at least tacitly, to the enjoyment of nearly all the privileges of believers, before he had taken upon himself even a single obligation of a catechumen!

When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on of hands, and then formally admitted by baptism into the full communion of the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the Arian (or properly Semi-Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom he had shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius.52  His dying testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical rather than orthodox Christianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. He meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek church fully wiped out by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony he promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk richly ornamented with gold; retained the white baptismal robe; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 22, 337, trusting in the mercy of God, and leaving a long, a fortunate, and a brilliant reign, such as none but Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. "So passed away the first Christian Emperor, the first Defender of the Faith, the first Imperial patron of the Papal see, and of the whole Eastern Church, the first founder of the Holy Places, Pagan and Christian, orthodox and heretical, liberal and fanatical, not to be imitated or admired, but much to be remembered, and deeply to be studied."53

His remains were removed in a golden coffin by a procession of distinguished civilians and the whole army, from Nicomedia to Constantinople, and deposited, with the highest Christian honors, in the church of the Apostles,54 while the Roman senate, after its ancient custom, proudly ignoring the great religious revolution of the age, enrolled him among the gods of the heathen Olympus. Soon after his death, Eusebius set him above the greatest princes of all times; from the fifth century he began to be recognized in the East as a saint; and the Greek and Russian church to this day celebrates his memory under the extravagant title of "Isapostolos," the "Equal of the apostles."55  The Latin church, on the contrary, with truer tact, has never placed him among the saints, but has been content with naming him "the Great," in just and grateful remembrance of his services to the cause of Christianity and civilization.

§ 3. The Sons of Constantine.  A.D. 337–361.

For the literature see § 2 and § 4.

With the death of Constantine the monarchy also came, for the present, to an end. The empire was divided among his three sons, Constantine II., Constans, and Constantius. Their accession was not in Christian style, but after the manner of genuine Turkish, oriental despotism; it trod upon the corpses of the numerous kindred of their father, excepting two nephews, Gallus and Julian, who were saved only by sickness and youth from the fury of the soldiers. Three years later followed a war of the brothers for the sole supremacy. Constantine II. was slain by Constans (340), who was in turn murdered by a barbarian field officer and rival, Magnentius (350). After the defeat and the suicide of Magnentius, Constantius, who had hitherto reigned in the East, became sole emperor, and maintained himself through many storms until his natural death (353–361).

The sons of Constantine did their Christian education little honor, and departed from their father’s wise policy of toleration. Constantius, a temperate and chaste, but jealous, vain, and weak prince, entirely under the control of eunuchs, women, and bishops, entered upon a violent suppression of the heathen religion, pillaged and destroyed many temples, gave the booty to the church, or to his eunuch, flatterers, and worthless favorites, and prohibited, under penalty of death, all sacrifices and worship of images in Rome, Alexandria, and Athens, though the prohibition could not be carried out. Hosts now came over to Christianity, though, of course, for the most part with the lips only, not with the heart. But this emperor proceeded with the same intolerance against the adherents of the Nicene orthodoxy, and punished them with confiscation and banishment. His brothers supported Athanasius, but he himself was a fanatical Arian. In fact, he meddled in all the affairs of the church, which was convulsed during his reign with doctrinal controversy. He summoned a multitude of councils, in Gaul, in Italy, in Illyricum, and in Asia; aspired to the renown of a theologian; and was fond of being called bishop of bishops, though, like his father, he postponed baptism till shortly before his death.

There were there, it is true, who justified this violent suppression of idolatry, by reference to the extermination of the Canaanites under Joshua.56  But intelligent church teachers, like Athanasius, Hosius, and Hilary, gave their voice for toleration, though even they mean particularly toleration for orthodoxy, for the sake of which they themselves had been deposed and banished by the Arian power. Athanasius says, for example: "Satan, because there is no truth in him, breaks in with axe and sword. But the Saviour is gentle, and forces no one, to whom he comes, but knocks and speaks to the soul: Open to me, my sister?57  If we open to him, he enters; but if we will not, he departs. For the truth is not preached by sword and dungeon, by the might of an army, but by persuasion and exhortation. How can there be persuasion where fear of the emperor is uppermost?  How exhortation, where the contradicter has to expect banishment and death?"  With equal truth Hilary confronts the emperor with the wrong of his course, in the words: "With the gold of the state thou burdenest the sanctuary of God, and what is torn from the temples, or gained by confiscation, or extorted by punishment, thou obtrudest upon God."

By the laws of history the forced Christianity of Constantius must provoke a reaction of heathenism. And such reaction in fact ensued, though only for a brief period immediately after this emperor’s death.

§ 4. Julian the Apostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. A.D. 361–363.

SOURCES.

These agree in all the principal facts, even to unimportant details, but differ entirely in spirit and in judgment; Julian himself exhibiting the vanity of self-praise, Libanius and Zosimus the extreme of passionate admiration, Gregory and Cyril the opposite extreme of hatred and abhorrence, Ammianus Marcellinus a mixture of praise and censure.

1. Heathen sources: Juliani imperatoris Opera, quae supersunt omnia, ed. by Petavius, Par. 1583; and more completely by Ezech. Spanhemius, Lips. 1696, 2 vols. fol. in one (Spanheim gives the Greek original with a good Latin version, and the Ten Books of Cyril of Alex. against Julian). We have from Julian: Misopogon (Misopwvgon, the Beard-hater, a defence of himself against the accusations of the Antiochians); Caesares (two satires on his predecessors); eight Orationes; sixty-five Epistolae (the latter separately and most completely edited, with shorter fragments, by Heyler, Mog. 1828); and Fragments of his three or seven Books kata; Cristianw'n in the Reply of Cyril. Libanius:  jEpitavfio" ejp j jIoulianw'/ , in Lib. Opp. ed. Reiske, Altenb. 1791–97. 4 vols. Mamertinus: Gratiarum actio Juliano. The relevant passages in the heathen historians Ammianus Marcellinus (I.c. lib. xxi-xxv. 3), Zosimus and Eunapius.

2. Christian Sources (all in Greek): the early church historians, Socrates (l. iii.), Sozomen (I. v. and vi.), Theodoret (I. iii.). Gregory Naz.: Orationes invectivae in Jul. duae, written some six months after the death of Julian (Opp. tom. i.). Cyril of Alex.: Contra impium Jul. libri x. (in the Opp. Cyr., ed. J. Aubert, Par. 1638, tom. vi., and in Spanheim’s ed. of the works of Julian).

LITERATURE.

Tillemont: Memoires, etc., vol. vii. p. 322–423 (Venice ed.), and Histoire des empereurs Rom. Par. 1690 sqq., vol. iv. 483–576. Abbé De la Bleterie: Vie de l’empereur Julien. Amst. 1735. 2 vols. The same in English, Lond. 1746. W. Warburton: Julian. Lond. 3d ed. 1763. Nath. Lardner: Works, ed. Dr. Kippis, vol. vii. p. 581 sqq. Gibbon: l.c. ch. xxii.–xxiv., particularly xxiii. Neander: Julian u. sein Zeitalter. Leipz. 1812 (his first historical production), and Allg. K. G., iii. (2d ed. 1846), p. 76–148. English ed. Torrey, ii. 37–67. Jondot (R.C.): Histoire de l’empereur Julien. 1817, 2 vols. C. H. Van Herwerden: De Juliano imper. religionis Christ. hoste, eodemque vindice. Lugd. Bat. 1827. G. F. Wiggers: Jul. der Abtrünnige. Leipz. 1837 (in Illgen’s Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.). H. Schulze: De philos. et moribus Jul. Strals. 1839. D. Fr. Strauss (author of the mythological "Leben Jesu"): Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Caesaren, oder Julian der Abtr. Manh. 1847 (containing a clear survey of the various opinions concerning Julian from Libanius and Gregory to Gibbon, Schlosser, Neander, and Ullmann, but hiding a political aim against King Frederick William IV. of Prussia). J. E. Auer (R.C.): Kaiser Jul. der Abtr. im Kampf mit den Kirchenvaetern seiner Zeit. Wien, 1855. W. Mangold: Jul. der Abtr. Stuttg. 1862. C. Semisch: Jul. der Abtr. Bresl. 1862. F. Lübker: Julians Kampf u. Ende. Hamb. 1864.

Notwithstanding this great conversion of the government and of public sentiment, the pagan religion still had many adherents, and retained an important influence through habit and superstition over the rude peasantry, and through literature and learned schools of philosophy and rhetoric at Alexandria, Athens, &c., over the educated classes. And now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to recover its ascendency in the Roman empire. But in the entire failure of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but interesting and instructive episode of Julian’s reign, that the policy of Constantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome discipline for a secularized church and clergy.58

Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantine the Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was therefore only six years old when his uncle died. The general slaughter of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne, could beget neither love for Constantius nor respect for his court Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of the old gods. He was systematically spoiled by false education and made the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a nominally Christian training under the direction of the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and several eunuchs; he was baptized; even educated for the clerical order, and ordained a Lector.59  He prayed, fasted, celebrated the memory of the martyrs, paid the usual reverence to the bishops, besought the blessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. Even his plays must wear the hue of devotion. But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent, wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius produced the heathen anti-Christianity of Julian; and the latter was a well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions, however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that day, covering emptiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive only to a vitiated taste. He became acquainted by degrees with the most eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Platonic philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, Aedesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius. These confirmed him in his superstitions by sophistries and sorceries of every kind. He gradually became the secret head of the heathen party. Through the favor and mediation of the empress Eusebia he visited for some months the schools of Athens (A.D. 355), where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and thus completed his transition to the Grecian idolatry.

This heathenism, however, was not a simple, spontaneous growth; it was all an artificial and morbid production. It was the heathenism of the Neo-Platonic, pantheistic eclecticism, a strange mixture of philosophy, poesy, and superstition, and, in Julian at least, in great part an imitation or caricature of Christianity. It sought to spiritualize and revive the old mythology by uniting with it oriental theosophemes and a few Christian ideas; taught a higher, abstract unity above the multiplicity of the national gods, genii, heroes, and natural powers; believed in immediate communications and revelations of the gods through dreams, visions, oracles, entrails of sacrifices, prodigies; and stood in league with all kinds of magical and theurgic arts.60  Julian himself, with all his philosophical intelligence, credited the most insipid legends of the gods, or gave them a deeper, mystic meaning by the most arbitrary allegorical interpretation. He was in intimate personal intercourse with Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, Hercules, who paid their nocturnal visits to his heated fancy, and assured him of their special protection. And he practised the art of divination as a master.61  Among the various divinities he worshipped with peculiar devotion the great king Helios, or the god of the sun, whose servant he called himself, and whose ethereal light attracted him even in tender childhood with magic force. He regarded him as the centre of the universe, from which light, life, and salvation proceed upon all creatures.62  In this view of a supreme divinity he made an approach to the Christian monotheism, but substituted an airy myth and pantheistic fancy for the only true and living God and the personal historical Christ.

His moral character corresponds with the preposterous nature of this system. With all his brilliant talents and stoical virtues, he wanted the genuine simplicity and naturalness, which are the foundation of all true greatness of mind and character. As his worship of Helios was a shadowy reflection of the Christian monotheism, and so far an involuntary tribute to the religion he opposed, so in his artificial and ostentatious asceticism we can only see a caricature of the ecclesiastical monasticism of the age which he so deeply despised for its humility and spirituality. He was full of affectation, vanity, sophistry, loquacity, and a master in the art of dissimulation. Everything he said or wrote was studied and calculated for effect. Instead of discerning the spirit of the age and putting himself at the head of the current of true progress, he identified himself with a party of no vigor nor promise, and thus fell into a false and untenable position, at variance with the mission of a ruler. Great minds, indeed, are always more or less at war with their age, as we may see in the reformers, in the apostles, nay, in Christ himself. But their antagonism proceeds from a clear knowledge of the real wants and a sincere devotion to the best interests of the age; it is all progressive and reformatory, and at last carries the deeper spirit of the age with itself, and raises it to a higher level. The antagonism of Julian, starting with a radical misconception of the tendency of history and animated by selfish ambition, was one of retrogression and reaction, and in addition, was devoted to a bad cause. He had all the faults, and therefore deserved the tragic fate, of a fanatical reactionist.

His apostasy from Christianity, to which he was probably never at heart committed, Julian himself dates as early as his twentieth year, A.D. 351. But while Constantius lived, he concealed his pagan sympathies with consummate hypocrisy, publicly observed Christian ceremonies, while secretly sacrificing to Jupiter and Helios, kept the feast of Epiphany in the church at Vienne so late as January, 361, and praised the emperor in the most extravagant style, though he thoroughly hated him, and after his death all the more bitterly mocked him.63  For ten years he kept the mask. After December, 355, the student of books astonished the world with brilliant military and executive powers as Caesar in Gaul, which was at that time heavily threatened by the German barbarians; he won the enthusiastic love of the soldiers, and received from them the dignity of Augustus. Then he raised the standard of rebellion against his suspicious and envious imperial cousin and brother-in-law, and in 361 openly declared himself a friend of the gods. By the sudden death of Constantius in the same year he became sole head of the Roman empire, and in December, as the only remaining heir of the house of Constantine,64 made his entry into Constantinople amidst universal applause and rejoicing over escape from civil war.

He immediately gave himself, with the utmost zeal, to the duties of his high station, unweariedly active as prince, general, judge, orator, high-priest, correspondent, and author. He sought to unite the fame of an Alexander, a Marcus Aurelius, a Plato, and a Diogenes in himself. His only recreation was a change of labor. He would use at once his hand in writing, his ear in hearing, and his voice in speaking. He considered his whole time due to his empire and the culture of his own mind. The eighteen short months of his reign Dec. 361-June 363) comprehend the plans of a life-long administration and most of his literary works. He practised the strictest economy in the public affairs, banished all useless luxury from his court, and dismissed with one decree whole hosts of barbers, cup-bearers, cooks, masters of ceremonies, and other superfluous officers, with whom the palace swarmed, but surrounded himself instead with equally useless pagan mystics, sophists, jugglers, theurgists, soothsayers, babblers, and scoffers, who now streamed from all quarters to the court. In striking contrast with his predecessors, he maintained the simplicity of a philosopher and an ascetic in his manner of life, and gratified his pride and vanity with contempt of the pomp and pleasures of the imperial purple. He lived chiefly on vegetable diet, abstaining now from this food, now from that, according to the taste of the god or goddess to whom the day was consecrated. He wore common clothing, usually slept on the floor, let his beard and nails grow, and, like the strict anachorets of Egypt, neglected the laws of decency and cleanliness.65  This cynic eccentricity and vain ostentation certainly spoiled his reputation for simplicity and self-denial, and made him ridiculous. It evinced, also, not so much the boldness and wisdom of a reformer, as the pedantry and folly of a reactionist. In military and executive talent and personal bravery he was not inferior to Constantine; while in mind and literary culture he far excelled him, as well as in energy and moral self-control; and, doubtless to his own credit, he closed his public career at the age at which his uncle’s began; but he entirely lacked the clear, sound common sense of his great predecessor, and that practical statesmanship, which discerns the wants of the age, and acts according to them. He had more uncommon sense than common sense, and the latter is often even more important than the former, and indispensable to a good practical statesman. But his greatest fault as a ruler was his utterly false position towards the paramount question of his time: that of religion. This was the cause of that complete failure which made his reign as trackless as a meteor.

The ruling passion of Julian, and the soul of his short but most active, remarkable, and in its negative results instructive reign, was fanatical love of the pagan religion and bitter hatred of the Christian, at a time when the former had already forever given up to the latter the reins of government in the world. He considered it the great mission of his life to restore the worship of the gods, and to reduce the religion of Jesus first to a contemptible sect, and at last, if possible, to utter extinction from the earth. To this he believed himself called by the gods themselves, and in this faith he was confirmed by theurgic arts, visions, and dreams. To this end all the means, which talent, zeal, and power could command, were applied; and the failure must be attributed solely to the intrinsic folly and impracticability of the end itself.

I. To look, first, at the positive side of his plan, the restoration and reformation of heathenism:

He reinstated, in its ancient splendor, the worship of the gods at the public expense; called forth hosts of priests from concealment; conferred upon them all their former privileges, and showed them every honor; enjoined upon the soldiers and civil officers attendance at the forsaken temples and altars; forgot no god or goddess, though himself specially devoted to the worship of Apollo, or the sun; and notwithstanding his parsimony in other respects, caused the rarest birds and whole herds of bulls and lambs to be sacrificed, until the continuance of the species became a subject of concern.66  He removed the cross and the monogram of Christ from the coins and standards, and replaced the former pagan symbols. He surrounded the statues and portraits of the emperors with the signs of idolatry, that every one might be compelled to bow before the gods, who would pay the emperors due respect. He advocated images of the gods on the same grounds on which afterwards the Christian iconolaters defended the images of the saints. If you love the emperor, if you love your father, says he, you like to see his portrait; so the friend of the gods loves to look upon their images, by which he is pervaded with reverence for the invisible gods, who are looking down upon him.

Julian led the way himself with a complete example. He discovered on every occasion the utmost zeal for the heathen religion, and performed, with the most scrupulous devotion, the offices of a pontifex maximus, which had been altogether neglected, although not formally abolished, under his two predecessors. Every morning and evening he sacrificed to the rising and setting sun, or the supreme light-god; every night, to the moon and the stars; every day, to some other divinity. Says Libanius, his heathen admirer: "He received the rising sun with blood, and attended him again with blood at his setting."  As he could not go abroad so often as he would, he turned his palace into a temple and erected altars in his garden, which was kept purer than most chapels. "Wherever there was a temple," says the same writer, "whether in the city or on the hill or the mountain top, no matter how rough, or difficult of access, he ran to it."  He prostrated himself devoutly before the altars and the images, not allowing the most violent storm to prevent him. Several times in a day, surrounded by priests and dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the wood and kindling the flames. He used the knife himself, and as haruspex searched with his own hand the secrets of the future in the reeking entrails.

But his zeal found no echo, and only made him ridiculous in the eyes of cultivated heathens themselves. He complains repeatedly of the indifference of his party, and accuses one of his priests of a secret league with Christian bishops. The spectators at his sacrifices came not from devotion, but from curiosity, and grieved the devout emperor by their rounds of applause, as if he were simply a theatrical actor of religion. Often there were no spectators at all. When he endeavored to restore the oracle of Apollo Daphneus in the famous cypress grove at Antioch, and arranged for a magnificent procession, with libation, dances, and incense, he found in the temple one solitary old priest, and this priest ominously offered in sacrifice—a goose.67

At the same time, however, Julian sought to renovate and transform heathenism by incorporating with it the morals of Christianity; vainly thinking thus to bring it back to its original purity. In this he himself unwittingly and unwillingly bore witness to the poverty of the heathen religion, and paid the highest tribute to the Christian; and the Christians for this reason not inaptly called him an "ape of Christianity."

In the first place, he proposed to improve the irreclaimable priesthood after the model of the Christian clergy. The priests, as true mediators between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, and Zeno; they should visit no taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance, wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. He borrowed almost every feature of the then prevalent idea of the Christian priesthood, and applied it to the polytheistic religion.68  Then, he borrowed from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system of orders, and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication, absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and practical applications of tasteless and immoral mythological stories!  Every temple was to have a well arranged choir, and the congregation its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them considerable sums from the public treasury, and at the same time, though fruitlessly, invited voluntary contributions. He made the noteworthy concession, that the heathens did not help even their own brethren in faith; while the Jews never begged, and "the godless Galileans," as he malignantly styled the Christians, supplied not only their own, but even the heathen poor, and thus aided the worst of causes by a good practice.

But of course all these attempts to regenerate heathenism by foreign elements were utterly futile. They were like galvanizing a decaying corpse, or grafting fresh scions on a dead trunk, sowing good seed on a rock, or pouring new wine into old bottles, bursting the bottles and wasting the wine.

II. The negative side of Julian’s plan was the suppression and final extinction of Christianity.

In this he proceeded with extraordinary sagacity. He abstained from bloody persecution, because he would not forego the credit of philosophical toleration, nor give the church the glory of a new martyrdom. A history of three centuries also had proved that violent measures were fruitless. According to Libanius it was a principle with him, that fire and sword cannot change a man’s faith, and that persecution only begets hypocrites and martyrs. Finally, he doubtless perceived that the Christians were too numerous to be assailed by a general persecution without danger of a bloody civil war. Hence he oppressed the church "gently,"69 under show of equity and universal toleration. He persecuted not so much the Christians as Christianity, by endeavoring to draw off its confessors. He thought to gain the result of persecution without incurring the personal reproach and the public danger of persecution itself. His disappointments, however, increased his bitterness, and had he returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact, Gregory Nazianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates.

He first, therefore, employed against the Christians of all parties and sects the policy of toleration, in hope of their destroying each other by internal controversies. He permitted the orthodox bishops and all other clergy, who had been banished under Constantius, to return to their dioceses, and left Arians, Apollinarians, Novatians, Macedonians, Donatists, and so on, to themselves. He affected compassion for the "poor, blind, deluded Galileans, who forsook the most glorious privilege of man, the worship of the immortal gods, and instead of them worshipped dead men and dead men’s bones."  He once even suffered himself to be insulted by a blind bishop, Maris of Chalcedon, who, when reminded by him, that the Galilean God could not restore his eyesight, answered: "I thank my God for my blindness, which spares me the painful sight of such an impious Apostate as thou."  He afterwards, however, caused the bishop to be severely punished.70  So in Antioch, also, he bore with philosophic equanimity the ridicule of the Christian populace, but avenged himself on the inhabitants of the city by unsparing satire in the Misopogon. His whole bearing towards the Christians was instinct with bitter hatred and accompanied with sarcastic mockery.71  This betrays itself even in the contemptuous term, Galileans, which he constantly applies to them after the fashion of the Jews, and which he probably also commanded to be given them by others.72  He considered them a sect of fanatics contemptible to men and hateful to the gods, and as atheists in open war with all that was sacred and divine in the world.73  He sometimes had representatives of different parties dispute in his presence, and then exclaimed: "No wild beasts are so fierce and irreconcilable as the Galilean sectarians."  When he found that toleration was rather profitable than hurtful to the church, and tended to soften the vehemence of doctrinal controversies, he proceeded, for example, to banish Athanasius, who was particularly offensive to him, from Alexandria, and even from Egypt, calling this greatest man of his age an insignificant manikin,74 and reviling him with vulgar language, because through his influence many prominent heathens, especially heathen women, passed over to Christianity. His toleration, therefore, was neither that of genuine humanity, nor that of religious indifferentism, but a hypocritical mask for a fanatical love of heathenism and a bitter hatred of Christianity.

This appears in his open partiality and injustice against the Christians. His liberal patronage of heathenism was in itself an injury to Christianity. Nothing gave him greater joy than an apostasy, and he held out the temptation of splendid reward; thus himself employing the impure means of proselyting, for which he reproached the Christians. Once he even advocated conversion by violent measures. While he called heathens to all the higher offices, and, in case of their palpable disobedience, inflicted very mild punishment, if any at all, the Christians came to be everywhere disregarded, and their complaints dismissed from the tribunal with a mocking reference to their Master’s precept, to give their enemy their cloak also with their coat, and turn the other cheek to his blows.75  They were removed from military and civil office, deprived of all their former privileges, oppressed with taxes, and compelled to restore without indemnity the temple property, with all their own improvements on it, and to contribute to the support of the public idolatry. Upon occasion of a controversy between the Arians and the orthodox at Edessa, Julian confiscated the church property and distributed it among his soldiers, under the sarcastic pretence of facilitating the Christians’ entrance into the kingdom of heaven, from which, according to the doctrine of their religion (comp. Matt. xix. 23, 24), riches might exclude them.

Equally unjust and tyrannical was the law, which placed all the state schools under the direction of heathens, and prohibited the Christians teaching the sciences and the arts.76  Julian would thus deny Christian youth the advantages of education, and compel them either to sink in ignorance and barbarism, or to imbibe with the study of the classics in the heathen schools the principles of idolatry. In his view the Hellenic writings, especially the works of the poets, were not only literary, but also religious documents to which the heathens had an exclusive claim, and he regarded Christianity irreconcilable with genuine human culture. The Galileans, says he in ridicule, should content themselves with expounding Matthew and Luke in their churches, instead of profaning the glorious Greek authors. For it is preposterous and ungrateful, that they should study the writings of the classics, and yet despise the gods, whom the authors revered; since the gods were in fact the authors and guides of the minds of a Homer, a Hesiod, a Demosthenes, a Thucydides, an Isocrates, and a Lysias, and these writers consecrated their works to Mercury or the muses.77  Hence he hated especially the learned church teachers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Apollinaris of Laodicea, who applied the classical culture to the refutation of heathenism and the defence of Christianity. To evade his interdict, the two Apollinaris produced with all haste Christian imitations of Homer, Pindar, Euripides, and Menander, which were considered by Sozomen equal to the originals, but soon passed into oblivion. Gregory also wrote the tragedy of "The Suffering Christ," and several hymns, which still exist. Thus these fathers bore witness to the indispensableness of classical literature for a higher Christian education, and the church has ever since maintained the same view.78

Julian further sought to promote his cause by literary assaults upon the Christian religion; himself writing, shortly before his death, and in the midst of his preparations for the Persian campaign, a bitter work against it, of which we shall speak more fully in a subsequent section.79

3. To the same hostile design against Christianity is to be referred the favor of Julian to its old hereditary enemy, Judaism.

The emperor, in an official document affected reverence for that ancient popular religion, and sympathy with its adherents, praised their firmness under misfortune, and condemned their oppressors. He exempted the Jews from burdensome taxation, and encouraged them even to return to the holy land and to rebuild the temple on Moriah in its original splendor. He appropriated considerable sums to this object from the public treasury, intrusted his accomplished minister Alypius with the supervision of the building, and promised, if he should return victorious from the Persian war, to honor with his own presence the solemnities of reconsecration and the restoration of the Mosaic sacrificial worship.80

His real purpose in this undertaking was certainly not to advance the Jewish religion; for in his work against the Christians he speaks with great contempt of the Old Testament, and ranks Moses and Solomon far below the pagan lawgivers and philosophers. His object in the rebuilding of the temple was rather, in the first place, to enhance the splendor of his reign, and thus gratify his personal vanity; and then most probably to put to shame the prophecy of Jesus respecting the destruction of the temple (which, however, was actually fulfilled three hundred years before once for all), to deprive the Christians of their most popular argument against the Jews, and to break the power of the new religion in Jerusalem.81

The Jews now poured from east and west into the holy city of their fathers, which from the time of Hadrian they had been forbidden to visit, and entered with fanatical zeal upon the great national religious work, in hope of the speedy irruption of the Messianic reign and the fulfilment of all the prophecies. Women, we are told, brought their costly ornaments, turned them into silver shovels and spades, and carried even the earth and stones of the holy spot in their silken aprons. But the united power of heathen emperor and Jewish nation was insufficient to restore a work which had been overthrown by the judgment of God. Repeated attempts at the building were utterly frustrated, as even a contemporary heathen historian of conceded credibility relates, by fiery eruptions from on subterranean vaults;82 and, perhaps, as Christian writers add, by a violent whirlwind, lightning, earthquake, and miraculous signs, especially a luminous cross, in the heavens,83 so that the workmen either perished in the flames, or fled from the devoted spot in terror and despair. Thus, instead of depriving the Christians of a support of their faith, Julian only furnished them a new argument in the ruins of this fruitless labor.

The providential frustration of this project is a symbol of the whole reign of Julian, which soon afterward sank into an early grave. As Caesar he had conquered the barbarian enemies of the Roman empire in the West; and now he proposed, as ruler of the world, to humble its enemies in the East, and by the conquest of Persia to win the renown of a second Alexander. He proudly rejected all proposals of peace; crossed the Tigris at the head of an army of sixty-five thousand men, after wintering in Antioch, and after solemn consultation of the oracle; took several fortified towns in Mesopotamia; exposed himself to every hardship and peril of war; restored at the same time, wherever he could, the worship of the heathen gods; but brought the army into a most critical position, and, in an unimportant nocturnal skirmish, received from a hostile arrow a mortal wound. He died soon after, on the 27th of June, 363, in the thirty-second year of his life; according to heathen testimony, in the proud repose and dignity of a Stoic philosopher, conversing of the glory of the soul (the immortality of which, however, he considered at best an uncertain opinion);84 but according to later and somewhat doubtful Christian accounts, with the hopeless exclamation: "Galilean, thou hast conquered!"85  The parting address to his friends, which Ammianus puts into his mouth, is altogether characteristic. It reminds one of the last hours of Socrates, without the natural simplicity of the original, and with a strong admixture of self-complacence and theatrical affectation. His body was taken, at his own direction, to Tarsus, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, whom he hated more than any other apostle, and a monument was erected to him there, with a simple inscription, which calls him a good ruler and a brave warrior, but says nothing of his religion.

So died, in the prime of life, a prince, who darkened his brilliant military, executive, and literary talents, and a rare energy, by fanatical zeal for a false religion and opposition to the true; perverted them to a useless and wicked end; and earned, instead of immortal honor, the shame of an unsuccessful Apostate. Had he lived longer, he would probably have plunged the empire into the sad distraction of a religious civil war. The Christians were generally expecting a bloody persecution in case of his successful return from the Persian war. We need, therefore, the less wonder that they abhorred his memory. At Antioch they celebrated his death by festal dancings in the churches and theatres.86  Even the celebrated divine and orator, Gregory Nazianzen, compared him to Pharaoh, Ahab, and Nebuchadnezzar.87  It has been reserved for the more impartial historiography of modern times to do justice to his nobler qualities, and to endeavor to excuse, or at least to account for his utterly false position toward Christianity, by his perverted education, the despotism of his predecessor, and the imperfections of the church in his day.

With Julian himself fell also his artificial, galvanized heathenism, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leaving no wreck behind," save the great doctrine, that it is impossible to swim against the stream of history or to stop the progress of Christianity. The heathen philosophers and soothsayers, who had basked in his favor, fell back into obscurity. In the dispersion of their dream they found no comfort from their superstition. Libanius charges the guilt upon his own gods, who suffered Constantius to reign twenty years, and Julian hardly twenty months. But the Christians could learn from it, what Gregory Nazianzen had said in the beginning of this reign, that the church had far more to fear from enemies within, than from without.

§ 5. From Jovian to Theodosius.  A.D. 363–392.

I. The heathen sources here, besides Ammianus Marcellinus (who unfortunately breaks off at the death of Valens), Zosimus and Eunapius (who are very partial), are: Libanius:  JUpe;r tw'n iJerw'n, or Oratio pro templis (first complete ed. by L. de Sinner, in Novus Patrum Grace. saec. iv. delectus, Par. 1842). Symmachus: Epist. x. 61 (ed. Pareus, Frcf. 1642). On the Christian side: Ambrose: Epist. xvii. and xviii. ad Valentinian. II. Prudentius: Adv. Symmachum. Augustin: De civitate Dei, l. v. c. 24–26 (on the emperors from Jovinian to Theodosius, especially the latter, whom he greatly glorifies). Socr.: l. iii. c. 22 sqq. Sozom.: l. vi. c. 3 sqq. Theodor.: l. iv. c. 1 sqq. Cod. Theodos.: l. ix.–xvi.

II. De la Bleterie: Histoire de l’empereur Jovien. Amsterd. 1740, 2 vols. Gibbon: chap. xxv–xxviii. Schröckh: vii. p. 213 sqq. Stuffken: De Theodosii M. in rem christianam meritis. Lugd. Batav. 1828

From this time heathenism approached, with slow but steady step, its inevitable dissolution, until it found an inglorious grave amid the storms of the great migration and the ruins of the empire of the Caesars, and in its death proclaimed the victory of Christianity. Emperors, bishops, and monks committed indeed manifold injustice in destroying temples and confiscating property; but that injustice was nothing compared with the bloody persecution of Christianity for three hundred years. The heathenism of ancient Greece and Rome died of internal decay, which no human power could prevent.

After Julian, the succession of Christian emperors continued unbroken. On the day of his death, which was also the extinction of the Constantinian family, the general Jovian, a Christian (363–364), was chosen emperor by the army. He concluded with the Persians a disadvantageous but necessary peace, replaced the cross in the labarum, and restored to the church her privileges, but, beyond this, declared universal toleration in the spirit of Constantine. Under the circumstances, this was plainly the wisest policy. Like Constantine, also, he abstained from all interference with the internal affairs of the church, though for himself holding the Nicene faith and warmly favorable to Athanasius. He died in the thirty-third year of his age, after a brief reign of eight months. Augustin says, God took him away sooner than Julian, that no emperor might become a Christian for the sake of Constantine’s good fortune, but only for the sake of eternal life.

His successor, Valentinian I. (died 375), though generally inclined to despotic measures, declared likewise for the policy of religious freedom,88 and, though personally an adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, kept aloof from the doctrinal controversies; while his brother and co-emperor, Valens, who reigned in the East till 378, favored the Arians and persecuted the Catholics. Both, however, prohibited bloody sacrifices89 and divination. Maximin, the representative of Valentinian at Rome, proceeded with savage cruelty against all who were found guilty of the crime of magic, especially the Roman aristocracy. Soothsayers were burnt alive, while their meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead. In almost every case recorded the magical arts can be traced to pagan religious usages.

Under this reign heathenism was for the first time officially designated as paganismus, that is, peasant-religion; because it had almost entirely died out in the cities, and maintained only a decrepit and obscure existence in retired villages.90  What an inversion of the state of things in the second century, when Celsus contemptuously called Christianity a religion of mechanics and slaves!  Of course large exceptions must in both cases be made. Especially in Rome, many of the oldest and most respectable families for a long time still adhered to the heathen traditions, and the city appears to have preserved until the latter part of the fourth century a hundred and fifty-two temples and a hundred and eighty-three smaller chapels and altars of patron deities.91  But advocates of the old religion—a Themistius, a Libanius, and a Symmachus—limited themselves to the claim of toleration, and thus, in their oppressed condition, became, as formerly the Christians were, and as the persecuted sects in the Catholic church and the Protestant state churches since have been, advocates of religious freedom.

The same toleration continued under Gratian, son and successor of Valentinian (375–383). After a time, however; under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, this emperor went a step further. He laid aside the title and dignity of Pontifex Maximus, confiscated the temple property, abolished most of the privileges of the priests and vestal virgins, and withdrew, at least in part, the appropriation from the public treasury for their support.92  By this step heathenism became, like Christianity before Constantine and now in the American republic, dependent on the voluntary system, while, unlike Christianity, it had no spirit of self-sacrifice, no energy of self-preservation. The withdrawal of the public support cut its lifestring, and left it still to exist for a time by vis inertiae alone. Gratian also, in spite of the protest of the heathen party, removed in 382 the statue and the altar of Victoria, the goddess of victory, in the senate building at Rome, where once the senators used to take their oath, scatter incense, and offer sacrifice; though he was obliged still to tolerate there the elsewhere forbidden sacrifices and the public support of some heathen festivities. Inspired by Ambrose with great zeal for the Catholic faith, he refused freedom to heretics, and prohibited the public assemblies of the Eunomians, Photinians, and Manichaeans.

His brother, Valentinian II. (383–392), rejected the renewed petition of the Romans for the restoration of the altar of Victoria (384). The eloquent and truly venerable prefect Symmachus, who, as princeps senatus and first Pontifex in Rome, was now the spokesman of the heathen party, prayed the emperor in a dignified and elegant address, but in the tone of apologetic diffidence, to make a distinction between his private religion and the religio urbis, to respect the authority of antiquity and the rights of the venerable city, which had attained the dominion of the world under the worship of the gods. But Ambrose of Milan represented to the emperor, in the firm tone of episcopal dignity and conscious success, that the granting of the petition would be a sanctioning of heathenism and a renunciation of his Christian convictions; denied, that the greatness of Rome was due to idolatry, to which indeed her subjugated enemies were likewise addicted; and contrasted the power of Christianity, which had greatly increased under persecution and had produced whole hosts of consecrated virgins and ascetics, with the weakness of heathenism, which, with all its privileges, could hardly maintain the number of its seven vestals, and could show no works of benevolence and mercy for the oppressed. The same petition was renewed in 389 to Theodosius, but again through the influence of Ambrose rejected. The last national sanctuary of the Romans had hopelessly fallen. The triumph, which the heathen party gained under the usurper Eugenius (392–394), lasted but a couple of years; and after his defeat by Theodosius, six hundred of the most distinguished patrician families, the Annii, Probi, Anicii, Olybii, Paulini, Bassi, Gracchi, &c., are said by Prudentius to have gone over at once to the Christian religion.

§ 6. Theodosius the Great and his Successors.  A.D. 392–550.

J. R. Stuffken: Diss. de Theod. M. in rem. Christ. meritis. Leyden, 1828. M. Fléchier: Histoire de Theodose le Grand. Par. 1860.

The final suppression of heathenism is usually, though not quite justly, ascribed to the emperor Theodosius I., who, on this account, as well as for his victories over the Goths, his wise legislation, and other services to the empire, bears the distinction of the Great, and deserves, for his personal virtues, to be counted among the best emperors of Rome.93  A native of Spain, son of a very worthy general of the same name, he was called by Gratian to be co-emperor in the East in a time of great danger from the threatening barbarians (379), and after the death of Valentinian, he rose to the head of the empire (392–395). He labored for the unity, of the state and the supremacy of the Catholic religion. He was a decided adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, procured it the victory at the second ecumenical council (381), gave it all the privileges of the state religion, and issued a series of rigid laws against all heretics and schismatics. In his treatment of heathenism, for a time he only enforced the existing prohibition of sacrifice for purposes of magic and divination (385), but gradually extended it to the whole sacrificial worship. In the year 391 he prohibited, under heavy fine, the visiting of a heathen temple for a religious purpose; in the following year, even the private performance of libations and other pagan rites. The practice of idolatry was therefore henceforth a political offence, as Constantius had already, though prematurely, declared it to be, and was subjected to the severest penalties.94

Yet Theodosius by no means pressed the execution of these laws in places where the heathen party retained considerable strength; he did not exclude heathens from public office, and allowed them at least full liberty of thought and speech. His countryman, the Christian poet Prudentius, states with approbation, that in the distribution of the secular offices, he looked not at religion, but at merit and talent, and raised the heathen Symmachus to the dignity of consul.95  The emperor likewise appointed the heathen rhetorician, Themistius, prefect of Constantinople, and even intrusted him with the education of his son Arcadius. He acknowledged personal friendship toward Libanius, who addressed to him his celebrated plea for the temples in 384 or 390; though it is doubtful whether he actually delivered it in the imperial presence. In short this emperor stood in such favor with the heathens, that after his death he was enrolled by the Senate, according to ancient custom, among the gods.96

Theodosius issued no law for the destruction of temples. He only continued Gratian’s policy of confiscating the temple property and withdrawing entirely the public contribution to the support of idolatry. But in many places, especially in the East, the fanaticism of the monks and the Christian populace broke out in a rage for destruction, which Libanius bitterly laments. He calls these iconoclastic monks "men in black clothes, as voracious as elephants, and insatiably thirsty, but concealing their sensuality under an artificial paleness."  The belief of the Christians, that the heathen gods were living beings, demons,97 and dwelt in the temples, was the leading influence here, and overshadowed all artistic and archaeological considerations. In Alexandria, a chief seat of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, there arose, at the instigation of the violent and unspiritual bishop Theophilus,98 a bloody conflict between heathens and Christians, in which the colossal statue and the magnificent temple of Serapis, next to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome the proudest monument of heathen architecture,99 was destroyed, without verifying the current expectation that upon its destruction the heavens would fall (391). The power of superstition once broken by this decisive blow, the other temples in Egypt soon met a similar fate; though the eloquent ruins of the works of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Roman emperors in the valley of the Nile still stand and cast their twilight into the mysterious darkness of antiquity. Marcellus, bishop of Apamea in Syria, accompanied by an armed band of soldiers and gladiators, proceeded with the same zeal against the monuments and vital centres of heathen worship in his diocese, but was burnt alive for it by the enraged heathens, who went unpunished for the murder. In Gaul, St. Martin of Tours, between the years 375 and 400, destroyed a multitude of temples and images, and built churches and cloisters in their stead.

But we also hear important protests from the church against this pious vandalism. Says Chrysostom at Antioch in the beginning of this reign, in his beautiful tract on the martyr Babylas: "Christians are not to destroy error by force and violence, but should work the salvation of men by persuasion, instruction, and love."  In the same spirit says Augustin, though not quite consistently: "Let us first obliterate the idols in the hearts of the heathen, and once they become Christians they will either themselves invite us to the execution of so good a work [the destruction of the idols], or anticipate us in it. Now we must pray for them, and not exasperate them."  Yet he commended the severe laws of the emperors against idolatry.

In the west the work of destruction was not systematically carried on, and the many ruined temples of Greece and Italy at this day prove that even then reason and taste sometimes prevailed over the rude caprice of fanaticism, and that the maxim, It is easier to tear down than to build up, has its exceptions.

With the death of Theodosius the empire again fell into two parts, which were never afterward reunited. The weak sons and successors of this prince, Arcadius in the east (395–408) and Honorius in the west (395–423), and likewise Theodosius II., or the younger (son of Arcadius, 408–450), and Valentinian III. (423–455), repeated and in some cases added to the laws of the previous reign against the heathen. In the year 408, Honorius even issued an edict excluding heathens from civil and military office;100 and in 423 appeared another edict, which questioned the existence of heathens.101  But in the first place, such laws, in the then critical condition of the empire amidst the confusion of the great migration, especially in the West, could be but imperfectly enforced; and in the next place, the frequent repetition of them itself proves that heathenism still had its votaries. This fact is witnessed also by various heathen writers. Zosimus wrote his "New History," down to the year 410, under the reign and at the court of the younger Theodosius (appearing in the high office of comes and advocatus fisci, as he styles himself), in bitter prejudice against the Christian emperors. In many places the Christians, in their work of demolishing the idols, were murdered by the infuriated pagans.

Meantime, however, there was cruelty also on the Christian side. One of the last instances of it was the terrible tragedy of Hypatia. This lady, a teacher of the Neo-Platonic philosophy in Alexandria, distinguished for her beauty, her intelligence, her learning, and her virtue, and esteemed both by Christians and by heathens, was seized in the open street by the Christian populace and fanatical monks, perhaps not without the connivance of the violent bishop Cyril, thrust out from her carriage, dragged to the cathedral, completely stripped, barbarously murdered with shells before the altar, and then torn to pieces and burnt, A.D. 415.102  Socrates, who relates this, adds: "It brought great censure both on Cyril and on the Alexandrian church."

§ 7. The Downfall of Heathenism.

The final dissolution of heathenism in the eastern empire may be dated from the middle of the fifth century. In the year 435 Theodosius II. commanded the temples to be destroyed or turned into churches. There still appear some heathens in civil office and at court so late as the beginning of the reign of Justinian I. (527–567). But this despotic emperor prohibited heathenism as a form of worship in the empire on pain of death, and in 529 abolished the last intellectual seminary of it, the philosophical school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school,103 the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece,—a striking play of history, like the name of the last west-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of the empire.

In the West, heathenism maintained itself until near the middle of the sixth century, and even later, partly as a private religious conviction among many cultivated and aristocratic families in Rome, partly even in the full form of worship in the remote provinces and on the mountains of Sicily, Sardinia,104 and Corsica, and partly in heathen customs and popular usages like the gladiatorial shows still extant in Rome in 404, and the wanton Lupercalia, a sort of heathen carnival, the feast of Lupercus, the god of herds, still celebrated with all its excesses in February, 495. But, in general, it may be said that the Graeco-Roman heathenism, as a system of worship, was buried under the ruins of the western empire, which sunk under the storms of the great migration. It is remarkable that the northern barbarians labored with the same zeal in the destruction of idolatry as in the destruction of the empire, and really promoted the victory of the Christian religion. The Gothic king Alaric, on entering Rome, expressly ordered that the churches of the apostles Peter and Paul should be spared, as inviolable sanctuaries; and he showed a humanity, which Augustin justly attributes to the influence of Christianity (even perverted Arian Christianity) on these barbarous people. The Christian name, he says, which the heathen blaspheme, has effected not the destruction, but the salvation of the city.105  Odoacer, who put an end to the western Roman empire in 476, was incited to his expedition into Italy by St. Severin, and, though himself an Arian, showed great regard to the catholic bishops. The same is true of his conqueror and successor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who was recognized by the east-Roman emperor Anastasius as king of Italy (A.D. 500), and was likewise an Arian. Thus between the barbarians and the Romans, as between the Romans and the Greeks and in a measure also the Jews, the conquered gave laws to the conquerors. Christianity triumphed over both.

This is the end of Graeco-Roman heathenism, with its wisdom, and beauty. It fell a victim to a slow but steady process of incurable consumption. Its downfall is a sublime tragedy which, with all our abhorrence of idolatry, we cannot witness without a certain sadness. At the first appearance of Christianity it comprised all the wisdom, literature, art, and political power of the civilized world, and led all into the field against the weaponless religion of the crucified Nazarene. After a conflict of four or five centuries it lay prostrate in the dust without hope of resurrection. With the outward protection of the state, it lost all power, and had not even the courage of martyrdom; while the Christian church showed countless hosts of confessors and blood-witnesses, and Judaism lives to-day in spite of all persecution. The expectation, that Christianity would fall about the year 398, after an existence of three hundred and sixty-five years,106 turned out in the fulfilment to relate to heathenism itself. The last glimmer of life in the old religion was its pitiable prayer for toleration and its lamentation over the ruin of the empire. Its best elements took refuge in the church and became converted, or at least took Christian names. Now the gods were dethroned, oracles and prodigies ceased, sibylline books were burned, temples were destroyed, or transformed into churches, or still stand as memorials of the victory of Christianity.107

But although ancient Greece and Rome have fallen forever, the spirit of Graeco-Roman paganism is not extinct. It still lives in the natural heart of man, which at this day as much as ever needs regeneration by the spirit of God. It lives also in many idolatrous and superstitious usages of the Greek and Roman churches, against which the pure spirit of Christianity has instinctively protested from the beginning, and will protest, till all remains of gross and refined idolatry shall be outwardly as well as inwardly overcome, and baptized and sanctified not only with water, but also with the spirit and fire of the gospel.

Finally the better genius of ancient Greece and Rome still lives in the immortal productions of their poets, philosophers, historians, and orators,—yet no longer an enemy, but a friend and servant of Christ. What is truly great, and noble, and beautiful can never perish. The classic literature had prepared the way for the gospel, in the sphere of natural culture, and was to be turned thenceforth into a weapon for its defence. It passed, like the Old Testament, as a rightful inheritance, into the possession of the Christian church, which saved those precious works of genius through the ravages of the migration of nations and the darkness of the middle ages, and used them as material in the rearing of the temple of modern civilization. The word of the great apostle of the Gentiles was here fulfilled: "All things are yours."  The ancient classics, delivered from the demoniacal possession of idolatry, have come into the service of the only true and living God, once "unknown" to them, but now everywhere revealed, and are thus enabled to fulfil their true mission as the preparatory tutors of youth for Christian learning and culture. This is the noblest, the most worthy, and most complete victory of Christianity, transforming the enemy into friend and ally.

CHAPTER II.

THE LITERARY TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER GREEK AND ROMAN HEATHENISM.

§ 8. Heathen Polemics. New Objections.

I. Comp. The sources at §§ 4 and 5, especially the writings of Julian The Apostate Katav Cristianw'n, and Libanius,  uJpe;r tw'n iJerw'n. Also Pseudo-lucian: Philopatris (of the age of Julian or later, comprised in the works of Lucian). Proclus (412–487): xviii ejpiceirhvmata katav cristianw'n (preserved in the counter work of Joh. Philoponus: De aeternitate mundi, ed. Venet. 1535). In part also the historical works of Eunapius and Zosimus.

II. Marqu. d’Argens: defense du paganisme par l’emper. Julien en grec et en franc. (collected from fragments in Cyril), avec des dissertat. Berl. 1764, sec. ed. Augmentée, 1767. This singular work gave occasion to two against it by G. Fr. Meier, Halle, 1764, And W. Crichton, Halle, 1765, in which the arguments of Julian were refuted anew. Nath. Lardner, in his learned collection of ancient heathen testimonies for the credibility of the Gospel History, treats also largely of Julian. See his collected works, ed. by Dr. Kippis, Lond. 1838, vol. vii. p. 581–652. Schröckh: vi. 354–385. Neander: iii. 77 sqq. (Engl. transl. of Torrey ii. 84–93).

The internal conflict between heathenism and Christianity presents the same spectacle of dissolution on the one hand and conscious power on the other. And here the Nicene age reaped the fruit of the earlier apologists, who ably and fearlessly defended the truth of the true religion and refuted the errors of idolatry in the midst of persecution.108  The literary opposition to Christianity had already virtually exhausted itself, and was now thrown by the great change of circumstances into apology for heathenism; while what was then apology on the Christian side now became triumphant polemics. The last enemy was the Neo-Platonic philosophy, as taught particularly in the schools of Alexandria and Athens even down to the fifth century. This philosophy, however, as we have before remarked,109 was no longer the product of pure, fresh heathenism, but an artificial syncretism of elements heathen and Christian, Oriental and Hellenic, speculative and theurgic, evincing only the growing weakness of the old religion and the irresistible power of the new.

Besides the old oft-refuted objections, sundry new ones came forward after the time of Constantine, in some cases the very opposite of the earlier ones, touching not so much the Christianity of the Bible as more or less the state-church system of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, and testifying the intrusion of heathen elements into the church. Formerly simplicity and purity of morals were the great ornament of the Christians over against the prevailing corruption; now it could be justly observed that, as the whole world had crowded into the church, it had let in also all the vices of the world. Against those vices, indeed, the genuine virtues of Christianity proved themselves as vigorous as ever. But the heathen either could not or would not look through the outward appearance and discriminate the wheat from the chaff. Again: the Christians of the first three centuries had confessed their faith at the risk of life, maintained it under sufferings and death, and claimed only toleration; now they had to meet reproach from the heathen minority for hypocrisy, selfishness, ambition, intolerance, and the spirit of persecution against heathens, Jews, and heretics. From being suspected as enemies to the emperor and the empire, they now came to be charged in various ways with servile and fawning submission to the Christian rulers. Formerly known as abhorring every kind of idolatry and all pomp in worship, they now appeared in their growing veneration for martyrs and relics to reproduce and even exceed the ancient worship of heroes.

Finally, even the victory of Christianity was branded as a reproach. It was held responsible by the latest heathen historians not only for the frequent public calamities, which had been already charged upon it under Marcus Aurelius and in the time of Tertullian, but also for the decline and fall of the once so mighty Roman empire. But this objection, very popular at the time, is refuted by the simple fact, that the empire in the East, where Christianity earlier and more completely prevailed, outlived by nearly ten centuries the western branch. The dissolution of the west-Roman empire was due rather to its unwieldy extent, the incursion of barbarians, and the decay of morals, which was hastened by the introduction of all the vices of conquered nations, and which had already begun under Augustus, yea, during the glorious period of the republic; for the republic would have lasted much longer if the foundations of public and private virtue had not been undermined.110 Taken from a higher point of view, the downfall of Rome was a divine judgment upon the old essentially heathen world, as the destruction of Jerusalem was a judgment upon the Jewish nation for their unbelief. But it was at the same time the inevitable transition to a new creation which Christianity soon began to rear on the ruins of heathendom by the conversion of the barbarian conquerors, and the founding of a higher Christian civilization. This was the best refutation of the last charge of the heathen opponents of the religion of the cross.

§ 9. Julian’s Attack upon Christianity.

For Literature comp. § 4 p. 39, 40.

The last direct and systematic attack upon the Christian religion proceeded from the emperor Julian. In his winter evenings at Antioch in 363, to account to the whole world for his apostasy, he wrote a work against the Christians, which survives, at least in fragments, in a refutation of it by Cyril of Alexandria, written about 432. In its three books, perhaps seven (Cyril mentions only three111), it shows no trace of the dispassionate philosophical or historical appreciation of so mighty a phenomenon as Christianity in any case is. Julian had no sense for the fundamental ideas of sin and redemption or the cardinal virtues of humility and love. He stood entirely in the sphere of naturalism, where the natural light of Helios outshines the mild radiance of the King of truth, and the admiration of worldly greatness leaves no room for the recognition of the spiritual glory of self-renunciation. He repeated the arguments of a Celsus and a Porphyry in modified form; expanded them by his larger acquaintance with the Bible, which he had learned according to the letter in his clerical education; and breathed into all the bitter hatred of an Apostate, which agreed ill with his famous toleration and entirely blinded him to all that was good in his opponents. He calls the religion of "the Galilean" an impious human invention and a conglomeration of the worst elements of Judaism and heathenism without the good of either; that is, without the wholesome though somewhat harsh discipline of the former, or the pious belief in the gods, which belongs to the latter. Hence he compares the Christians to leeches, which draw all impure blood and leave the pure. In his view, Jesus, "the dead Jew," did nothing remarkable during his lifetime, compared with heathen heroes, but to heal lame and blind people and exorcise daemoniacs, which is no very great matter.112  He was able to persuade only a few of the ignorant peasantry, not even to gain his own kinsmen.113  Neither Matthew, nor. Mark, nor Luke, nor Paul called him God. John was the first to venture so far, and procured acceptance for his view by a cunning artifice.114  The later Christians perverted his doctrine still more impiously, and have abandoned the Jewish sacrificial worship and ceremonial law, which was given for all time, and was declared irrevocable by Jesus himself.115  A universal religion, with all the peculiarities of different national characters, appeared to him unreasonable and impossible. He endeavored to expose all manner of contradictions and absurdities in the Bible. The Mosaic history of the creation was defective, and not to be compared with the Platonic. Eve was given to Adam for a help, yet she led him astray. Human speech is put into the mouth of the serpent, and the curse is denounced on him, though he leads man on to the knowledge of good and evil, and thus proves himself of great service. Moses represents God as jealous, teaches monotheism, yet polytheism also in calling the angels gods. The moral precepts of the decalogue are found also among the heathen, except the commands, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and, "Remember the Sabbath day."  He prefers Lycurgus and Solon to Moses. As to Samson and David, they were not very remarkable for valor, and exceeded by many Greeks and Egyptians, and all their power was confined within the narrow limits of Judea. The Jews never had any general equal to Alexander or Caesar. Solomon is not to be compared with Theognis, Socrates, and other Greek sages; moreover he is said to have been overcome by women, and therefore does not deserve to be ranked among wise men. Paul was an arch-traitor; calling God now the God of the Jews, now the God of the Gentiles, now both at once; not seldom contradicting the Old Testament, Christ, and himself, and generally accommodating his doctrine to circumstances. The heathen emperor thinks it absurd that Christian baptism should be able to cleanse from gross sins, while it cannot remove a wart, or gout, or any bodily evil. He puts the Bible far below the Hellenic literature, and asserts, that it made men slaves, while the study of the classics educated great heroes and philosophers. The first Christians he styles most contemptible men, and the Christians of his day he charges with ignorance, intolerance, and worshipping dead persons, bones, and the wood of the cross.

With all his sarcastic bitterness against Christianity, Julian undesignedly furnishes some valuable arguments for the historical character of the religion he hated and assailed. The learned and critical Lardner, after a careful analysis of his work against Christianity, thus ably and truthfully sums up Julian’s testimony in favor of it:

"Julian argues against the Jews as well as against the Christians. He has borne a valuable testimony to the history and to the books of the New Testament, as all must acknowledge who have read the extracts just made from his work. He allows that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus, at the time of the taxing made in Judea by Cyrenius: that the Christian religion had its rise and began to be propagated in the times of the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. He bears witness to the genuineness and authenticity of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Acts of the Apostles: and he so quotes them, as to intimate, that these were the only historical books received by Christians as of authority, and the only authentic memoirs of Jesus Christ and his apostles, and the doctrine preached by them. He allows their early date, and even argues for it. He also quotes, or plainly refers to the Acts of the Apostles, to St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians. He does not deny the miracles of Jesus Christ, but allows him to have ’healed the blind, and the lame, and demoniacs,’ and ’to have rebuked the winds, and walked upon the waves of the sea.’  He endeavors indeed to diminish these works; but in vain. The consequence is undeniable: such works are good proofs of a divine mission. He endeavors also to lessen the number of the early believers in Jesus, and yet he acknowledgeth, that there were ’multitudes of such men in Greece and Italy,’ before St. John wrote his gospel. He likewise affects to diminish the quality of the early believers; and yet acknowledgeth, that beside ’menservants, and maidservants,’ Cornelius, a Roman centurion at Caesarea, and Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, were converted to the faith of Jesus before the end of the reign of Claudius. And he often speaks with great indignation of Peter and Paul, those two great apostles of Jesus, and successful preachers of his gospel. So that, upon the whole, he has undesignedly borne witness to the truth of many things recorded in the books of the New Testament: he aimed to overthrow the Christian religion, but has confirmed it: his arguments against it are perfectly harmless, and insufficient to unsettle the weakest Christian. He justly excepts to some things introduced into the Christian profession by the late professors of it, in his own time, or sooner; but has not made one objection of moment against the Christian religion, as contained in the genuine and authentic books of the New Testament."116

The other works against Christianity are far less important.

The dialogue Philopatris, or The Patriot, is ascribed indeed to the ready scoffer and satirist Lucian (died about 200), and joined to his works; but it is vastly inferior in style and probably belongs to the reign of Julian, or a still later period;117 since it combats the church doctrine of the Trinity and of the procession of the Spirit from the Father, though not by argument, but only by ridicule. It is a frivolous derision of the character and doctrines of the Christians in the form of a dialogue between Critias, a professed heathen, and Triephon, an Epicurean, personating a Christian. It represents the Christians as disaffected to the government, dangerous to civil society, and delighting in public calamities. It calls St. Paul a half bald, long-nosed Galilean, who travelled through the air to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12, 1–4).

The last renowned representative of Neo-Platonism, Proclus of Athens (died 487), defended the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the world, and, without mentioning Christianity, contested the biblical doctrine of the creation and the end of the world in eighteen arguments, which the Christian philosopher, John Philoponus, refuted in the seventh century.

The last heathen historians, Eunapius and Zosimus, of the first half of the fifth century, indirectly assailed Christianity by a one-sided representation of the history of the Roman empire from the time of Constantine, and by tracing its decline to the Christian religion; while, on the contrary, Ammianus Marcellinus (died about 390) presents with honorable impartiality both the dark and the bright sides of the Christian emperors and of the Apostate Julian.118

§ 10. The Heathen Apologetic Literature.

After the death of Julian most of the heathen writers, especially the ablest and most estimable, confined themselves to the defence of their religion, and thus became, by reason of their position, advocates of toleration; and, of course, of toleration for the religious syncretism, which in its cooler form degenerates into philosophical indifferentism.

Among these were Themistius, teacher of rhetoric, senator, and prefect of Constantinople, and afterwards preceptor of the young emperor Arcadius; Aurelius Symmachus, rhetorician, senator, and prefect of Rome under Gratian and Valentinian II., the eloquent pleader for the altar of Victoria; and above all, the rhetorician Libanius, friend and admirer of Julian, alternately teaching in Constantinople, Nicomedia, and Antioch. These all belong to the second half of the fourth century, and represent at once the last bloom and the decline of the classic eloquence. They were all more or less devoted to the Neo-Platonic syncretism. They held, that the Deity had implanted in all men a religious nature and want, but had left the particular form of worshiping God to the free will of the several nations and individuals; that all outward constraint, therefore, was contrary to the nature of religion and could only beget hypocrisy. Themistius vindicated this variety of the forms of religion as favorable to religion itself, as many Protestants justify the system of sects. "The rivalry of different religions," says he in his oration on Jovian, "serves to stimulate zeal for the worship of God. There are different paths, some hard, others easy, some rough, others smooth, leading to the same goal. Leave only one way, and shut up the rest, and you destroy emulation. God would have no such uniformity among men .... The Lord of the universe delights in manifoldness. It is his will, that Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians should worship him, each nation in its own way, and that the Syrians again should divide into small sects, no one of which agrees entirely with another. Why should we thus enforce what is impossible?"  In the same style argues Symmachus, who withholds all direct opposition to Christianity and contends only against its exclusive supremacy.

Libanius, in his plea for the temples addressed to Theodosius I. (384 or 390), called to his aid every argument, religious, political, and artistic, in behalf of the heathen sanctuaries, but interspersed bitter remarks against the temple-storming monks. He asserts among other things, that the principles of Christianity itself condemn the use of force in religion, and commend the indulgence of free conviction.

Of course this heathen plea for toleration was but the last desperate defence of a hopeless minority, and an indirect self-condemnation of heathenism for its persecution of the Christian religion in the first three centuries.

§ 11. Christian Apologists and Polemics.

SOURCES.

I. The Greek Apologists: Eusebius Caes.: Proparaskeuh; eujaggelikhv (Preparatio evang.), and !Apovdeixi" eujaggelikhv (Demonstratio evang.); besides his controversial work against Hierocles; and his Theophany, discovered in 1842 in a Syriac version (ed. Lee, Lond. 1842). Athanasius: Kata;tw'n  JEllhvnwn (Oratio contra Gentes), and Peri; th'" ejnanqrwphvsew" tou' Lovgou (De incarnatione Verbi Dei): two treatises belonging together (Opera, ed. Bened. tom. i. 1 sqq.). Cyril of Alex.: Contra impium Julianum libri X (with extracts from the three books of Julian against Christianity). Theodoret: Graecarum affectionum curatio  (  JEllhnikw'n qerapeutikh; paqhmavtwn), disput. XII.

II. The Latin Apologists: Lactantius: Instit. divin. l. vii (particularly the first three books, de falsa religione, de origine erroris, and de falsa sapientia; the third against the heathen philosophy). Julius Firmicus Maternus: De errore profanarum religionum (not mentioned by the ancients, but edited several times in the sixteenth century, and latterly by F. Münter, Havn. 1826). Ambrose: Ep. 17 and 18 (against Symmachus). Prudentius: In Symmachum (an apologetic poem). Paul. Orosius: Adv. paganos historiarum l. vii (an apologetic universal history, against Eunapius and Zosimus). Augustine: De civitate Dei l. xxii (often separately published). Salvianus: De gubernatione Dei l. viii (the eighth book incomplete).

MODERN LITERATURE.

Comp. in part the apologetic literature at § 63 of vol. i. Also Schrökh: vii., p. 263–355. Neander: iii., 188–195 (Engl. ed. of Torrey, ii., 90–93). Döllinger (R.C.): Hdbuch der K. G., vol. I., part 2, p. 50–91.K. Werner (R.C.): Geschichte der Apolog. und polem. Literatur der christl. Theol. Schaffh. 1861–’65, 4 vols. vol. i.

In the new state of things the defence of Christianity was no longer of so urgent and direct importance as it had been before the time of Constantine. And the theological activity of the church now addressed itself mainly to internal doctrinal controversy. Still the fourth and fifth centuries produced several important apologetic works, which far outshone the corresponding literature of the heathen.

(1) Under Constantine we have Lactantius in Latin, Eusebius and Athanasius in Greek, representing, together with Theodoret, who was a century later, the close of the older apology.

Lactantius prefaces his vindication of Christian truth with a refutation of the heathen superstition and philosophy; and he is more happy in the latter than in the former. He claims freedom for all religions, and represents the transition standpoint of the Constantinian edicts of toleration.

Eusebius, the celebrated historian, collected with diligence and learning in several apologetic works, above all in his "Evangelic Preparation," the usual arguments against heathenism, and in his "Evangelic Demonstration" the positive evidences of Christianity, laying chief stress upon the prophecies.

With less scholarship, but with far greater speculative compass and acumen, the great Athanasius, in his youthful productions "against the Greeks," and "on the incarnation of the Logos" (before 325), gave in main outline the argument for the divine origin, the truth, the reasonableness, and the perfection of the Christian religion. These two treatises, particularly the second, are, next to Origen’s doctrinal work De principiis, the first attempt to construct a scientific system of the Christian religion upon certain fundamental ideas of God and world, sin and redemption; and they form the ripe fruit of the positive apology in the Greek church. The Logos, Athanasius teaches, is the image of the living, only true God. Man is the image of the Logos. In communion with him consist the original holiness and blessedness of paradise. Man fell by his own will, and thus came to need redemption. Evil is not a substance of itself, not matter, as the Greeks suppose, nor does it come from the Creator of all things. It is an abuse of freedom on the part of man, and consists in selfishness or self-love, and in the dominion of the sensuous principle over the reason. Sin, as apostasy from God, begets idolatry. Once alienated from God and plunged into finiteness and sensuousness, men deified the powers of nature, or mortal men, or even carnal lusts, as in Aphrodite. The inevitable consequence of sin is death and corruption. The Logos, however, did not forsake men. He gave them the law and the prophets to prepare them for salvation. At last he himself became man, neutralized in human nature the power of sin and death, restored the divine image, uniting us with God and imparting to us his imperishable life. The possibility and legitimacy of the incarnation lie in the original relation of the Logos to the world, which was created and is upheld by him. The incarnation, however, does not suspend the universal reign of the Logos. While he was in man, he was at the same time everywhere active and reposing in the bosom of the Father. The necessity of the incarnation to salvation follows from the fact, that the corruption had entered into human nature itself, and thus must be overcome within that nature. An external redemption, as by preaching God, could profit nothing. "For this reason the Saviour assumed humanity, that man, united with life, might not remain mortal and in death, but imbibing immortality might by the resurrection be immortal. The outward preaching of redemption would have to be continually repeated, and yet death would abide in man."119  The object of the incarnation is, negatively, the annihilation of sin and death; positively, the communication of righteousness and life and the deification of man.120  The miracles of Christ are the proof of his original dominion over nature, and lead men from nature-worship to the worship of God. The death of Jesus was necessary to the blotting out of sin and to the demonstration of his life-power in the resurrection, whereby also the death of believers is now no longer punishment, but a transition to resurrection and glory.—This speculative analysis of the incarnation Athanasius supports by referring to the continuous moral effects of Christianity, which is doing great things every day, calling man from idolatry, magic, and sorceries to the worship of the true God, obliterating sinful and irrational lusts, taming the wild manners of barbarians, inciting to a holy walk, turning the natural fear of death into rejoicing, and lifting the eye of man from earth to heaven, from mortality to resurrection and eternal glory. The benefits of the incarnation are incalculable, like the waves of the sea pursuing one another in constant succession.

(2) Under the sons of Constantine, between the years 343 and 350, Julius Firmicus Maternus, an author otherwise unknown to us,121 wrote against heathenism with large knowledge of antiquity, but with fanatical zeal, regarding it, now on the principle of Euhemerus, as a deification of mortal men and natural elements, now as a distortion of the biblical history.122  At the close, quite mistaking the gentle spirit of the New Testament, he urges the sons of Constantine to exterminate heathenism by force, as God commanded the children of Israel to proceed against the Canaanites; and openly counsels them boldly to pillage the temples and to enrich themselves and the church with the stolen goods. This sort of apology fully corresponds with the despotic conduct of Constantius, which induced the reaction of heathenism under Julian.

(3) The attack of Julian upon Christianity brought out no reply on the spot,123 but subsequently several refutations, the chief one by Cyril of Alexandria († 444), in ten books "against the impious Julian," still extant and belonging among his most valuable works. About the same time Theodoret wrote an apologetic and polemic work: "The Healing of the Heathen Affections," in twelve treatises, in which he endeavors to refute the errors of the false religion by comparison of the prophecies and miracles of the Bible with the heathen oracles, of the apostles with the heroes and lawgivers of antiquity, of the Christian morality with the immorality of the heathen world.

§ 12. Augustine’s City of God. Salvianus.

(4) Among the Latin apologists we must mention Augustine, Orosius, and Salvianus, of the fifth century. They struck a different path from the Greeks, and devoted themselves chiefly to the objection of the heathens, that the overthrow of idolatry and the ascendency of Christianity were chargeable with the misfortunes and the decline of the Roman empire. This objection had already been touched by Tertullian, but now, since the repeated incursions of the barbarians, and especially the capture and sacking of the city of Rome under the Gothic king Alaric in 410, it recurred with peculiar force. By way of historical refutation the Spanish presbyter Orosius, at the suggestion of Augustine, wrote an outline of universal history in the year 417.

Augustine himself answered the charge in his immortal work "On the city of God," that is) the church of Christ, in twenty-two books, upon which he labored twelve years, from 413 to 426, amidst the storms of the great migration and towards the close of his life. He was not wanting in appreciation of the old Roman virtues, and he attributes to these the former greatness of the empire, and to the decline of them he imputes her growing weakness. But he rose at the same time far above the superficial view, which estimates persons and things by the scale of earthly profit and loss, and of temporary success. "The City of God" is the most powerful, comprehensive, profound, and fertile production in refutation of heathenism and vindication of Christianity, which the ancient church has bequeathed to us, and forms a worthy close to her literary contest with Graeco-Roman paganism.124  It is a grand funeral discourse upon the departing universal empire of heathenism, and a lofty salutation to the approaching universal order of Christianity. While even Jerome deplored in the destruction of the city the downfall of the empire as the omen of the approaching doom of the world,125 the African father saw in it only a passing revolution preparing the way for new conquests of Christianity. Standing at that remarkable turning-point of history, he considers the origin, progress, and end of the perishable kingdom of this world, and the imperishable kingdom of God, from the fall of man to the final judgment, where at last they fully and forever separate into hell and heaven. The antagonism of the two cities has its root in the highest regions of the spirit world, the distinction of good and evil angels; its historical evolution commences with Cain and Abel, then proceeds in the progress of paganism and Judaism to the birth of Christ, and continues after that great epoch to his return in glory. Upon the whole his philosophy of history is dualistic, and does not rise to the unity and comprehensiveness of the divine plan to which all the kingdoms of this world and even Satan himself are made subservient. He hands the one city over to God, the other to the demons. Yet he softens the rigor of the contrast by the express acknowledgment of shades in the one, and rays of light in the other. In the present order of the world the two cities touch and influence each other at innumerable points; and as not all Jews were citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, so there were on the other hand true children of God scattered among the heathen like Melchisedek and Job, who were united to the city of God not by a visible, but by an invisible celestial tie. In this sublime contrast Augustine weaves up the whole material of his Scriptural and antiquarian knowledge, his speculation, and his Christian experience, but interweaves also many arbitrary allegorical conceits and empty subtleties. The first ten books he directs against heathenism, showing up the gradual decline of the Roman power as the necessary result of idolatry and of a process of moral dissolution, which commenced with the introduction of foreign vices after the destruction of Carthage; and he represents the calamities and approaching doom of the empire as a mighty preaching of repentance to the heathen, and at the same time as a wholesome trial of the Christians, and as the birth-throes of a new creation. In the last twelve books of this tragedy of history he places in contrast the picture of the supernatural state of God, founded upon a rock, coming forth renovated and strengthened from all the storms and revolutions of time, breathing into wasting humanity an imperishable divine life, and entering at last, after the completion of this earthly work, into the sabbath of eternity, where believers shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise, without end.126

Less important, but still noteworthy and peculiar, is the apologetic work of the Gallic presbyter, Salvianus, on providence and the government of the world.127  It was composed about the middle of the fifth century (440–455) in answer at once to the charge that Christianity occasioned all the misfortunes of the times, and to the doubts concerning divine providence, which were spreading among Christians themselves. The blame of the divine judgments he places, however, not upon the heathens, but upon the Christianity of the day, and, in forcible and lively, but turgid and extravagant style, draws an extremely unfavorable picture of the moral condition of the Christians, especially in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa. His apology for Christianity, or rather for the Christian faith in the divine government of the world, was also a polemic against the degenerate Christians. It was certainly unsuited to convert heathens, but well fitted to awaken the church to more dangerous enemies within, and stimulate her to that moral self-reform, which puts the crown upon victory over outward foes. "The church," says this Jeremiah of his time, "which ought everywhere to propitiate God, what does she, but provoke him to anger?128  How many may one meet, even in the church, who are not still drunkards, or debauchees, or adulterers, or fornicators, or robbers, or murderers, or the like, or all these at once, without end?  It is even a sort of holiness among Christian people, to be less vicious."  From the public worship of God, he continues, and almost during it, they pass to deeds of shame. Scarce a rich man, but would commit murder and fornication. We have lost the whole power of Christianity, and offend God the more, that we sin as Christians. We are worse than the barbarians and heathen. If the Saxon is wild, the Frank faithless, the Goth inhuman, the Alanian drunken, the Hun licentious, they are by reason of their ignorance far less punishable than we, who, knowing the commandments of God, commit all these crimes. He compares the Christians especially of Rome with the Arian Goths and Vandals, to the disparagement of the Romans, who add to the gross sins of nature the refined vices of civilization, passion for theatres, debauchery, and unnatural lewdness. Therefore has the just God given them into the hands of the barbarians and exposed them to the ravages of the migrating hordes.

This horrible picture of the Christendom of the fifth century is undoubtedly in many respects an exaggeration of ascetic and monastic zeal. Yet it is in general not untrue; it presents the dark side of the picture, and enables us to understand more fully on moral and psychological grounds the final dissolution of the western empire of Rome.

CHAPTER III.

ALLIANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC MORALS AND RELIGION.

SOURCES.

The church laws of the Christian emperors from Constantine to Justinian, collected in the Codex Theodosianus of the year 438 (edited, with a learned commentary, by Jac. Gothofredus, Lyons, 1668, in six vols. fol.; afterwards by J. D. Ritter, Lips. 1736, in seven vols.; and more recently, with newly discovered books and fragments, by G. Haenel, Bonn, 1842), and in the Codex Justinianeus of 534 (in the numerous editions of the Corpus juris civilis Romani). Also Eusebius: Vita Constant., and H. Eccl. l. x. On the other hand, the lamentations of the church fathers, especially Gregory Naz., Chrysostom, and Augustine (in their sermons), over the secularized Christianity of their time.

LITERATURE.

C. G. de Rhoer: Dissertationes de effectu religionis Christianae in jurisprudentiam Romanam. Groning. 1776. Martini: Die Einführung der christl. Religion als Staatsreligion im röm. Reiche durch Constantin. Münch. 1813. H. O. de Meysenburg: De Christ. religionis vi et effectu in jus civile. Gött. 1828. C. Riffel (R.C.): Gesch. Darstellung des Verhältnisses zwischen Kirche u. Staat. Mainz. 1838, vol. i. Troplong: De l’influence du Christianisme sur le droit civil des Romains. Par. 1843. P. E. Lind: Christendommens inflydelse paa den sociale forfatning. Kjobenh. 1852. B. C. Cooper: The Free Church of Ancient Christendom and its Subjugation by Constantine. Lond. 1851(?)

Comp. also Gibbon, chap. xx. Schröckh, several sections from vol. v. onward. Neander, iii. 273–303. Milman, Anc. Christ. Book iv. ch. 1.

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

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

The martyrs and confessors of the first three centuries, in their expectation of the impending end of the world and their desire for the speedy return of the Lord, had never once thought of such a thing as the great and sudden change, which meets us at the beginning of this period in the relation of the Roman state to the Christian church. Tertullian had even held the Christian profession to be irreconcilable with the office of a Roman emperor.129  Nevertheless, clergy and people very soon and very easily accommodated themselves to the new order of things, and recognized in it a reproduction of the theocratic constitution of the people of God under the ancient covenant. Save that the dissenting sects, who derived no benefit from this union, but were rather subject to persecution from the state and from the established Catholicism, the Donatists for an especial instance, protested against the intermeddling of the temporal power with religious concerns.130  The heathen, who now came over in a mass, had all along been accustomed to a union of politics with religion, of the imperial with the sacerdotal dignity. They could not imagine a state without some cultus, whatever might be its name. And as heathenism had outlived itself in the empire, and Judaism with its national exclusiveness and its stationary character was totally disqualified, Christianity must take the throne.

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

On the other hand, the state, as a necessary and divine institution for the protection of person and property, for the administration of law and justice, and for the promotion of earthly weal, could not possibly persist forever in her hostility to Christianity, but must at least allow it a legal existence and free play; and if she would attain a higher development and better answer her moral ends than she could in union with idolatry, she must surrender herself to its influence. The kingdom of the Father, to which the state belongs, is not essentially incompatible with the church, the kingdom of the Son; rather does "the Father draw to the Son," and the Son leads back to the Father, till God become "all in all."  Henceforth should kings again be nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers to the church,131 and the prophecy begin to be fulfilled: "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever."132

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

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

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

Nor must we think the degeneracy of the church began with her union with the state.133 Corruption and apostasy cannot attach to any one fact or personage, be he Constantine or Gregory I. or Gregory VII. They are rooted in the natural heart of man. They revealed themselves, at least in the germ, even in the apostolic age, and are by no means avoided, as the condition of America proves, by the separation of the two powers. We have among ourselves almost all the errors and abuses of the old world, not collected indeed in any one communion, but distributed among our various denominations and sects. The history of the church presents from the beginning a twofold development of good and of evil, an incessant antagonism of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the mystery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity, Christianity and Antichrist. According to the Lord’s parables of the net and of the tares among the wheat, we cannot expect a complete separation before the final judgment, though in a relative sense the history of the church is a progressive judgment of the church, as the history of the world is a judgment of the world.

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

The conversion of Constantine and the gradual establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state had first of all the important effect of giving the church not only the usual rights of a legal corporation, which she possesses also in America, and here without distinction of confessions, but at the same time the peculiar privileges, which the heathen worship and priesthood had heretofore enjoyed. These rights and privileges she gradually secured either by tacit concession or through special laws of the Christian emperors as laid down in the collections of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes.134  These were limited, however, as we must here at the outset observe, exclusively to the catholic or orthodox church.135  The heretical and schismatic sects without distinction, excepting the Arians during their brief ascendency under Arian emperors, were now worse off than they had been before, and were forbidden the free exercise of their worship even under Constantine upon pain of fines and confiscation, and from the time of Theodosius and Justinian upon pain of death. Equal patronage of all Christian parties was totally foreign to the despotic uniformity system of the Byzantine emperors and the ecclesiastical exclusiveness and absolutism of the popes. Nor can it be at all consistently carried out upon the state-church basis; for every concession to dissenters loosens the bond between the church and the state.

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

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

Among these were obligatory public services,136 such as military duty, low manual labor, the bearing of costly dignities, and in a measure taxes for the real estate of the church. The exemption,137 which had been enjoyed, indeed, not by the heathen priests alone, but at least partially by physicians also and rhetoricians, and the Jewish rulers of synagogues, was first granted by Constantine in the year 313 to the catholic clergy in Africa, and afterwards, in 319, extended throughout the empire. But this led many to press into the clerical office without inward call, to the prejudice of the state; and in 320 the emperor made a law prohibiting the wealthy138 from entering the ministry, and limiting the increase of the clergy, on the singular ground, that "the rich should bear the burdens of the world, the poor be supported by the property of the church."  Valentinian I. issued a similar law in 364. Under Valentinian II. and Theodosius I. the rich were admitted to the spiritual office on condition of assigning their property to others, who should fulfill the demands of the state in their stead. But these arbitrary laws were certainly not strictly observed.

Constantine also exempted the church from the land tax, but afterwards revoked this immunity; and his successors likewise were not uniform in this matter. Ambrose, though one of the strongest advocates of the rights of the church, accedes to the fact and the justice of the assessment of church lands;139 but the hierarchy afterwards claimed for the church a divine right of exemption from all taxation.

2. The enrichment and endowment of the church.

Here again Constantine led the way. He not only restored (in 313) the buildings and estates, which had been confiscated in the Diocletian persecution, but granted the church also the right to receive legacies (321), and himself made liberal contributions in money and grain to the support of the clergy and the building of churches in Africa,140 in the Holy Land, in Nicomedia, Antioch, and Constantinople. Though this, be it remembered, can be no great merit in an absolute monarch, who is lord of the public treasury as he is of his private purse, and can afford to be generous at the expense of his subjects. He and his successors likewise gave to the church the heathen temples and their estates and the public property of heretics; but these more frequently were confiscated to the civil treasury or squandered on favorites. Wealthy subjects, some from pure piety, others from motives of interest, conveyed their property to the church, often to the prejudice of the just claims of their kindred. Bishops and monks not rarely used unworthy influences with widows and dying persons; though Augustine positively rejected every legacy, which deprived a son of his rights. Valentinian I. found it necessary to oppose the legacy-hunting of the clergy, particularly in Rome, with a law of the year 370,141 and Jerome acknowledges there was good reason for it.142  The wealth of the church was converted mostly into real estate, or at least secured by it. And the church soon came to own the tenth part of all the landed property. This land, to be sure, had long been worthless or neglected, but under favorable conditions rose in value with uncommon rapidity. At the time of Chrysostom, towards the close of the fourth century, the church of Antioch was strong enough to maintain entirely or in part three thousand widows and consecrated virgins besides many poor, sick, and strangers.143  The metropolitan churches of Rome and Alexandria were the most wealthy. The various churches of Rome in the sixth century, besides enormous treasures in money and gold and silver vases, owned many houses and lands not only in Italy and Sicily, but even in Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt.144  And when John, who bears the honorable distinction of the Almsgiver for his unlimited liberality to the poor, became patriarch of Alexandria (606), he found in the church treasury eight thousand pounds of gold, and himself received ten thousand, though be retained hardly an ordinary blanket for himself, and is said on one occasion to have fed seven thousand five hundred poor at once.145

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

And most certainly this opulence had two sides. It was a source both of profit and of loss to the church. According to the spirit of its proprietors and its controllers, it might be used for the furtherance of the kingdom of God, the building of churches, the support of the needy, and the founding of charitable institutions for the poor, the sick, for widows and orphans, for destitute strangers and aged persons,146 or perverted to the fostering of indolence and luxury, and thus promote moral corruption and decay. This was felt by serious minds even in the palmy days of the external power of the hierarchy. Dante, believing Constantine to be the author of the pope’s temporal sovereignty, on the ground of the fictitious donation to Sylvester, bitterly exclaimed:

"Your gods ye make of silver and of gold;

And wherein differ from idolaters,

Save that their god is one—yours hundred fold?

Ah, Constantine! what evils caused to flow,

Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower

Thou on the first rich Father didst bestow!"147

§ 15. Support of the Clergy.

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

Hitherto the clergy had been entirely dependent on the voluntary contributions of the Christians, and the Christians were for the most part poor. Now they received a fixed income from the church funds and from imperial and municipal treasuries. To this was added the contribution of first-fruits and tithes, which, though not as yet legally enforced, arose as a voluntary custom at a very early period, and probably in churches of Jewish origin existed from the first, after the example of the Jewish law.148  Where these means of support were not sufficient, the clergy turned to agriculture or some other occupation; and so late as the fifth century many synods recommended this means of subsistence, although the Apostolical Canons prohibited the engagement of the clergy in secular callings under penalty of deposition.149

This improvement, also, in the external condition of the clergy was often attended with a proportional degeneracy in their moral character. It raised them above oppressive and distracting cares for livelihood, made them independent, and permitted them to devote their whole strength to the duties of their office; but it also favored ease and luxury, allured a host of unworthy persons into the service of the church, and checked the exercise of free giving among the people. The better bishops, like Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysosotom, Theodoret, Ambrose, Augustine, lived in ascetic simplicity, and used their revenues for the public good; while others indulged their vanity, their love of magnificence, and their voluptuousness. The heathen historian Ammianus gives the country clergy in general the credit of simplicity, temperance, and virtue, while he represents the Roman hierarchy, greatly enriched by the gifts of matrons, as extreme in the luxury of their dress and their more than royal banquets;150 and St. Jerome agrees with him.151  The distinguished heathen prefect, Praetextatus, said to Pope Damasus, that for the price of the bishopric of Rome he himself might become a Christian at once. The bishops of Constantinople, according to the account of Gregory Nazianzen,152 who himself held that see for a short time, were not behind their Roman colleagues in this extravagance, and vied with the most honorable functionaries of the state in pomp and sumptuous diet. The cathedrals of Constantinople and Carthage had hundreds of priests, deacons, deaconesses, subdeacons, prelectors, singers, and janitors.153

It is worthy of notice, that, as we have already intimated, the two greatest church fathers gave the preference in principle to the voluntary system in the support of the church and the ministry, which prevailed before the Nicene era, and which has been restored in modern times in the United States of America. Chrysostom no doubt perceived that under existing circumstances the wants of the church could not well be otherwise supplied, but he was decidedly averse to the accumulation of treasure by the church, and said to his hearers in Antioch: "The treasure of the church should be with you all, and it is only your hardness of heart that requires her to hold earthly property and to deal in houses and lands. Ye are unfruitful in good works, and so the ministers of God must meddle in a thousand matters foreign to their office. In the days of the apostles people might likewise have given them houses and lands; why did they prefer to sell the houses and lands and give the proceeds?  Because this was without doubt the better way. Your fathers would have preferred that you should give alms of your incomes, but they feared that your avarice might leave the poor to hunger; hence the present order of things."154  Augustine desired that his people in Hippo should take back the church property and support the clergy and the poor by free gifts.155

§ 16. Episcopal Jurisdiction and Intercession.

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

After the manner of the Jewish synagogues, and according to the exhortation of St. Paul,156 the Christians were accustomed from the beginning to settle their controversies before the church, rather than carry them before heathen tribunals; but down to the time of Constantine the validity, of the bishop’s decision depended on the voluntary, submission of both parties. Now this decision was invested with the force of law, and in spiritual matters no appeal could be taken from it to the civil court. Constantine himself, so early as 314, rejected such an appeal in the Donatist controversy with the significant declaration: "The judgment of the priests must be regarded as the judgment of Christ himself."157 Even a sentence of excommunication was final; and Justinian allowed appeal only to the metropolitan, not to the civil tribunal. Several councils, that of Chalcedon, for example, in 451, went so far as to threaten clergy, who should avoid the episcopal tribunal or appeal from it to the civil, with deposition. Sometimes the bishops called in the help of the state, where the offender contemned the censure of the church. Justinian I. extended the episcopal jurisdiction also to the monasteries. Heraclius subsequently (628) referred even criminal causes among the clergy to the bishops, thus dismissing the clergy thenceforth entirely from the secular courts; though of course holding them liable for the physical penalty, when convicted of capital crime,158 as the ecclesiastical jurisdiction ended with deposition and excommunication. Another privilege, granted by Theodosius to the clergy, was, that they should not be compelled by torture to bear testimony before the civil tribunal.

This elevation of the power and influence of the bishops was a salutary check upon the jurisdiction of the state, and on the whole conduced to the interests of justice and humanity; though it also nourished hierarchical arrogance and entangled the bishops, to the prejudice of their higher functions, in all manner of secular suits, in which they were frequently called into consultation. Chrysostom complains that "the arbitrator undergoes incalculable vexations, much labor, and more difficulties than the public judge. It is hard to discover the right, but harder not to violate it when discovered. Not labor and difficulty alone are connected with office, but also no little danger."159  Augustine, too, who could make better use of his time, felt this part of his official duty a burden, which nevertheless he bore for love to the church.160  Others handed over these matters to a subordinate ecclesiastic, or even, like Silvanus, bishop of Troas, to a layman.161

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

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

The exercise of this right of intercession, one may well suppose, often obstructed the course of justice; but it also, in innumerable cases, especially in times of cruel, arbitrary despotism, protected the interests of innocence, humanity, and mercy. Sometimes, by the powerful pleadings of bishops with governors and emperors, whole provinces were rescued from oppressive taxation and from the revenge of conquerors. Thus Flavian of Antioch in 387 averted the wrath of Theodosius on occasion of a rebellion, journeying under the double burden of age and sickness even to Constantinople to the emperor himself, and with complete success, as an ambassador of their common Lord, reminding him of the words: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."162

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

In former times many of the heathen temples and altars, with some exceptions, were held inviolable as places of refuge; and the Christian churches now inherited also this prerogative. The usage, with some precautions against abuse, was made law by Theodosius II. in 431, and the ill treatment of an unarmed fugitive in any part of the church edifice, or even upon the consecrated ground, was threatened with the penalty of death.163

Thus slaves found sure refuge from the rage of their masters, debtors from the persecution of inexorable creditors, women and virgins from the approaches of profligates, the conquered from the sword of their enemies, in the holy places, until the bishop by his powerful mediation could procure justice or mercy. The beneficence of this law, which had its root not in superstition alone, but in the nobler sympathies of the people, comes most impressively to view amidst the ragings of the great migration and of the frequent intestine wars.164

§ 17. Legal Sanction of Sunday.

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

The state, indeed, should not and cannot enforce this observance upon any one, but may undoubtedly and should prohibit the public disturbance and profanation of the Christian Sabbath, and protect the Christians in their right and duty of its proper observance. Constantine in 321 forbade the sitting of courts and all secular labor in towns on "the venerable day of the sun," as he expresses himself, perhaps with reference at once to the sun-god, Apollo, and to Christ, the true Sun of righteousness; to his pagan and his Christian subjects. But he distinctly permitted the culture of farms and vineyards in the country, because frequently this could be attended to on no other day so well;165 though one would suppose that the hard-working peasantry were the very ones who most needed the day of rest. Soon afterward, in June, 321, he allowed the manumission of slaves on Sunday;166 as this, being an act of benevolence, was different from ordinary business, and might be altogether appropriate to the day of resurrection and redemption. According to Eusebius, Constantine also prohibited all military exercises on Sunday, and at the same time enjoined the observance of Friday in memory of the death of Christ.167

Nay, he went so far, in well-meaning but mistaken zeal, as to require of his soldiers, even the pagan ones, the positive observance of Sunday, by pronouncing at a signal the following prayer, which they mechanically learned: "Thee alone we acknowledge as God; thee we confess as king; to thee we call as our helper; from thee we have received victories; through thee we have conquered enemies. Thee we thank for good received; from thee we hope for good to come. Thee we all most humbly beseech to keep our Constantine and his God-fearing sons through long life healthy and victorious."168  Though this formula was held in a deistical generalness, yet the legal injunction of it lay clearly beyond the province of the civil power, trespassed on the rights of conscience, and unavoidably encouraged hypocrisy and empty formalism.

Later emperors declared the profanation of Sunday to be sacrilege, and prohibited also the collecting of taxes and private debts (368 and 386), and even theatrical and circus performances, on Sunday and the high festivals (386 and 425).169  But this interdiction of public amusements, on which a council of Carthage (399 or 401) with reason insisted, was probably never rigidly enforced, and was repeatedly supplanted by the opposite practice, which gradually prevailed all over Europe.170

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

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

While in this way the state secured to the church the well-deserved rights of a legal corporation, the church exerted in turn a most beneficent influence on the state, liberating it by degrees from the power of heathen laws and customs, from the spirit of egotism, revenge, and retaliation, and extending its care beyond mere material prosperity to the higher moral interests of society. In the previous period we observed the contrast between Christian morality and heathen corruption in the Roman empire.171  We are now to see how the principles of Christian morality gained public recognition, and began at least in some degree to rule the civil and political life.

As early as the second century, under the better heathen emperors, and evidently under the indirect, struggling, yet irresistible influence of the Christian spirit, legislation took a reformatory, humane turn, which was carried by the Christian emperors as far as it could be carried on the basis of the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization. Now, above all, the principle of justice and equity, humanity and love, began to assert itself in the state. For Christianity, with its doctrines of man’s likeness to God, of the infinite value of personality, of the original unity of the human race, and of the common redemption through Christ, first brought the universal rights of man to bear in opposition to the exclusive national spirit, the heartless selfishness, and the political absolutism of the old world, which harshly separated nations and classes, and respected man only as a citizen, while at the same time it denied the right of citizenship to the great mass of slaves, foreigners, and barbarians.172

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

Here again the reign of Constantine is a turning point. Though an oriental despot, and but imperfectly possessed with the earnestness of Christian morality, he nevertheless enacted many laws, which distinctly breathe the spirit of Christian justice and humanity: the abolition of the punishment of crucifixion, the prohibition of gladiatorial games and cruel rites, the discouragement of infanticide, and the encouragement of the emancipation of slaves. Eusebius says he improved most of the old laws or replaced them by new ones.173 Henceforward we feel beneath the toga of the Roman lawgiver the warmth of a Christian heart. We perceive the influence of the evangelical preaching and exhortations of the father of monasticism out of the Egyptian desert to the rulers of the world, Constantine and his sons: that they should show justice and mercy to the poor, and remember the judgment to come.

Even Julian, with all his hatred of the Christians, could not entirely renounce the influence of his education and of the reigning spirit of the age, but had to borrow from the church many of his measures for the reformation of heathenism. He recognized especially the duty of benevolence toward all men, charity to the poor, and clemency to prisoners; though this was contrary to the heathen sentiment, and though he proved himself anything but benevolent toward the Christians. But then the total failure of his philanthropic plans and measures shows that the true love for man can thrive only in Christian soil. And it is remarkable, that, with all this involuntary concession to Christianity, Julian himself passed not a single law in line with the progress of natural rights and equity.174

His successors trod in the footsteps of Constantine, and to the end of the West Roman empire kept the civil legislation under the influence of the Christian spirit, though thus often occasioning conflicts with the still lingering heathen element, and sometimes temporary apostasy and reaction. We observe also, in remarkable contradiction, that while the laws were milder in some respects, they were in others even more severe and bloody than ever before: a paradox to be explained no doubt in part by the despotic character of the Byzantine government, and in part by the disorders of the time.175

It now became necessary to collect the imperial ordinances176 in a codex or corpus juris. Of the first two attempts of this kind, made in the middle of the fourth century, only some fragments remain.177  But we have the Codex Theodosianus, which Theodosius II. caused to be made by several jurists between the years 429 and 438. It contains the laws of the Christian emperors from Constantine down, adulterated with many heathen elements; and it was sanctioned by Valentinian III. for the western empire. A hundred years later, in the flourishing period of the Byzantine state-church despotism, Justinian I., who, by the way, cannot be acquitted of the reproach of capricious and fickle law-making, committed to a number of lawyers, under the direction of the renowned Tribonianus,178 the great task of making a complete revised and digested collection of the Roman law from the time of Hadrian to his own reign; and thus arose, in the short period of seven years (527–534), through the combination of the best talent and the best facilities, the celebrated Codex Justinianeus, which thenceforth became the universal law of the Roman empire, the sole text book in the academies at Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus, and the basis of the legal relations of the greater part of Christian Europe to this day.179

This body of Roman law180 is an important source of our knowledge of the Christian life in its relations to the state and its influence upon it. It is, to be sure, in great part the legacy of pagan Rome, which was constitutionally endowed with legislative and administrative genius, and thereby as it were predestined to universal empire. But it received essential modification through the orientalizing change in the character of the empire from the time of Constantine, through the infusion of various Germanic elements, through the influence of the law of Moses, and, in its best points, through the spirit of Christianity. The church it fully recognizes as a legitimate institution and of divine authority, and several of its laws were enacted at the direct instance of bishops. So the "Common Law," the unwritten traditional law of England and America, though descending from the Anglo-Saxon times, therefore from heathen Germandom, has ripened under the influence of Christianity and the church, and betrays this influence even far more plainly than the Roman code, especially in all that regards the individual and personal rights and liberties of man.

§ 19. Elevation of Woman and the Family.

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

1. In the treatment of women. From the beginning, Christianity labored, primarily in the silent way of fact, for the elevation of the female sex from the degraded, slavish position, which it occupied in the heathen world;181 and even in this period it produced such illustrious models of female virtue as Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica, who commanded the highest respect of the heathens themselves. The Christian emperors pursued this work, though the Roman legislation stops considerably short of the later Germanic in regard to the rights of woman. Constantine in 321 granted women the same right as men to control their property, except in the sale of their landed estates. At the same time, from regard to their modesty, he prohibited the summoning them in person before the public tribunal. Theodosius I. in 390 was the first to allow the mother a certain right of guardianship, which had formerly been intrusted exclusively to men. Theodosius II. in 439 interdicted, but unfortunately with little success, the scandalous trade of the lenones, who lived by the prostitution of women, and paid a considerable license tax to the state.182  Woman received protection in various ways against the beastly passion of man. The rape of consecrated virgins and widows was punishable, from the time of Constantine, with death.183

2. In the marriage laws, Constantine gave marriage its due freedom by abolishing the old Roman penalties against celibacy and childlessness.184  On the other hand, marriage now came to be restricted under heavy penalties by the introduction of the Old Testament prohibitions of marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity, which subsequently were arbitrarily extended even to the relation of cousin down to the third remove.185  Justinian forbade also marriage between godparent and godchild, on the ground of spiritual kinship. But better than all, the dignity and sanctity of marriage were now protected by restrictions upon the boundless liberty of divorce which had obtained from the time of Augustus, and had vastly hastened the decay of public morals. Still, the strict view of the fathers, who, following the word of Christ, recognized adultery alone as a sufficient ground of divorce, could not be carried out in the state.186  The legislation of the emperors in this matter wavered between the licentiousness of Rome and the doctrine of the church. So late as the fifth century we hear a Christian author complain that men exchange wives as they would garments, and that the bridal chamber is exposed to sale like a shoe on the market!  Justinian attempted to bring the public laws up to the wish of the church, but found himself compelled to relax them; and his successor allowed divorce even on the ground of mutual consent.187

Concubinage was forbidden from the time of Constantine, and adultery punished as one of the grossest crimes.188  Yet here also pagan habit ever and anon reacted in practice, and even the law seems to have long tolerated the wild marriage which rested only on mutual agreement, and was entered into without convenant, dowry, or ecclesiastical sanction.189  Solemnization by the church was not required by the state as the condition of a legitimate marriage till the eighth century. Second marriage, also, and mixed marriages with heretics and heathens, continued to be allowed, notwithstanding the disapproval of the stricter church teachers; only marriage with Jews was prohibited, on account of their fanatical hatred of the Christians.190

3. The power of fathers over their children, which according to the old Roman law extended even to their freedom and life, had been restricted by Alexander Severus under the influence of the monarchical spirit, which is unfavorable to private jurisdiction, and was still further limited under Constantine. This emperor declared the killing of a child by its father, which the Pompeian law left unpunished, to be one of the greatest crimes.191  But the cruel and unnatural practice of exposing children and selling them into slavery continued for a long time, especially among the laboring and agricultural classes. Even the indirect measures of Valentinian and Theodosius I. could not eradicate the evil. Theodosius in 391 commanded that children which had been sold as slaves by their father from poverty, should be free, and that without indemnity to the purchasers; and Justinian in 529 gave all exposed children without exception their freedom.192

§ 20. Social Reforms. The Institution of Slavery.

4. The institution of slavery193 remained throughout the empire, and is recognized in the laws of Justinian as altogether legitimate.194  The Justinian code rests on the broad distinction of the human race into freemen and slaves. It declares, indeed, the natural equality of men, and so far rises above the theory of Aristotle, who regards certain races and classes of men as irrevocably doomed, by their physical and intellectual inferiority, to perpetual servitude; but it destroys the practical value of this concession by insisting as sternly as ever on the inferior legal and social condition of the slave, by degrading his marriage to the disgrace of concubinage, by refusing him all legal remedy in case of adultery, by depriving him of all power over his children, by making him an article of merchandise like irrational beasts of burden, whose transfer from vender to buyer was a legal transaction as valid and frequent as the sale of any other property. The purchase and sale of slaves for from ten to seventy pieces of gold, according to their age, strength, and training, was a daily occurrence.195  The number was not limited; many a master owning even two or three thousand slaves.

The barbarian codes do not essentially differ in this respect from the Roman. They, too, recognize slavery as an ordinary condition of mankind and the slave as a marketable commodity. All captives in war became slaves, and thousands of human lives were thus saved from indiscriminate massacre and extermination. The victory of Stilicho over Rhadagaisus threw 200,000 Goths and other Germans into the market, and lowered the price of a slave from twenty-five pieces of gold to one. The capture and sale of men was part of the piratical system along all the shores of Europe. Anglo-Saxons were freely sold in Rome at the time of Gregory the Great. The barbarian codes prohibited as severely as the Justinian code the debasing alliance of the freeman with the slave, but they seem to excel the latter in acknowledging the legality and religious sanctity of marriages between slaves; that of the Lombards on the authority of the Scripture sentence: "Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

The legal wall of partition, which separated the slaves from free citizens and excluded them from the universal rights of man, was indeed undermined, but by no means broken down, by the ancient church, who taught only the moral and religious equality of men. We find slaveholders even among the bishops and the higher clergy of the empire. Slaves belonged to the papal household at Rome, as we learn incidentally from the acts of a Roman synod held in 501 in consequence of the disputed election of Symmachus, where his opponents insisted upon his slaves being called in as witnesses, while his adherents protested against this extraordinary request, since the civil law excluded the slaves from the right of giving testimony before a court of justice.196  Among the barbarians, likewise, we read of slaveholding churches, and of special provisions to protect their slaves.197  Constantine issued rigid laws against intermarriage with slaves, all the offspring of which must be slaves; and against fugitive slaves (A.D. 319 and 326), who at that time in great multitudes plundered deserted provinces or joined with hostile barbarians against the empire. But on the other hand he facilitated manumission, permitted it even on Sunday, and gave the clergy the right to emancipate their slaves simply by their own word, without the witnesses and ceremonies required in other cases.198  By Theodosius and Justinian the liberation of slaves was still further encouraged. The latter emperor abolished the penalty of condemnation to servitude, and by giving to freed persons the rank and rights of citizens, he removed the stain which had formerly attached to that class.199  The spirit of his laws favored the gradual abolition of domestic slavery. In the Byzantine empire in general the differences of rank in society were more equalized, though not so much on Christian principle as in the interest of despotic monarchy. Despotism and extreme democracy meet in predilection for universal equality and uniformity. Neither can suffer any overshadowing greatness, save the majesty of the prince or the will of the people. The one system knows none but slaves; the other, none but masters.

Nor was an entire abolition of slavery at that time at all demanded or desired even by the church. As in the previous period, she still thought it sufficient to insist on the kind Christian treatment of slaves, enjoining upon them obedience for the sake of the Lord, comforting them in their low condition with the thought of their higher moral freedom and equality, and by the religious education of the slaves making an inward preparation for the abolition of the institution. All hasty and violent measures met with decided disapproval. The council of Gangra threatens with the ban every one, who under pretext of religion seduces slaves into contempt of their masters; and the council of Chalcedon, in its fourth canon, on pain of excommunication forbids monasteries to harbor slaves without permission of the masters, lest Christianity be guilty of encouraging insubordination. The church fathers, so far as they enter this subject at all, seem to look upon slavery as at once a necessary evil and a divine instrument of discipline; tracing it to the curse on Ham and Canaan.200  It is true, they favor emancipation in individual cases, as an act of Christian love on the part of the master, but not as a right on the part of the slave; and the well-known passage: "If then mayest be made free, use it rather," they understand not as a challenge to slaves to take the first opportunity to gain their freedom, but, on the contrary, as a challenge to remain in their servitude, since they are at all events inwardly free in Christ, and their outward condition is of no account.201

Even St. Chrysostom, though of all the church fathers the nearest to the emancipation theory and the most attentive to the question of slavery in general, does not rise materially above this view.202  According to him mankind were originally created perfectly free and equal, without the addition of a slave. But by the fall man lost the power of self-government, and fell into a threefold bondage: the bondage of woman under man, of slave under master, of subject under ruler. These three relations he considers divine punishments and divine means of discipline. Thus slavery, as a divine arrangement occasioned by the fall, is at once relatively justified and in principle condemned. Now since Christ has delivered us from evil and its consequences, slavery, according to Chrysostom, is in principle abolished in the church, yet only in the sense in which sin and death are abolished. Regenerate Christians are not slaves, but perfectly free men in Christ and brethren among themselves. The exclusive authority of the one and subjection of the other give place to mutual service in love. Consistently carried out, this view leads of course to emancipation. Chrysostom, it is true, does not carry it to that point, but he decidedly condemns all luxurious slaveholding, and thinks one or two servants enough for necessary help, while many patricians had hundreds and thousands. He advises the liberation of superfluous slaves, and the education of all, that in case they should be liberated, they may know how to take care of themselves. He is of opinion that the first Christian community at Jerusalem, in connection with community of goods, emancipated all their slaves;203 and thus he gives his hearers a hint to follow that example. But of an appeal to slaves to break their bonds, this father shows of course no trace; he rather, after apostolic precedent, exhorts them to conscientious and cheerful obedience for Christ’s sake, as earnestly as he inculcates upon masters humanity and love. The same is true of Ambrose, Augustine, and Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna († 458).

St. Augustine, the noblest representative of the Latin church, in his profound work on the "City of God," excludes slavery from the original idea of man and the final condition of society, and views it as an evil consequent upon sin, yet under divine direction and control. For God, he says, created man reasonable and lord only over the unreasonable, not over man. The burden of servitude was justly laid upon the sinner. Therefore the term servant is not found in the Scriptures till Noah used it as a curse upon his offending son. Thus it was guilt and not nature that deserved that name. The Latin word servus is supposed to be derived from servare [servire rather], or the preservation of the prisoners of war from death, which itself implies the desert of sin. For even in a just war there is sin on one side, and every victory humbles the conquered by divine judgment, either reforming their sins or punishing them. Daniel saw in the sins of the people the real cause of their captivity. Sin, therefore, is the mother of servitude and first cause of man’s subjection to man; yet this does not come to pass except by the judgment of God, with whom there is no injustice, and who knows how to adjust the various punishments to the merits of the offenders .... The apostle exhorts the servants to obey their masters and to serve them ex animo, with good will; to the end that, if they cannot be made free from their masters, they may make their servitude a freedom to themselves by serving them not in deceitful fear, but in faithful love, until iniquity be overpassed, and all man’s principality and power be annulled, and God be all in all.204

As might be expected, after the conversion of the emperors, and of rich and noble families, who owned most slaves, cases of emancipation became more frequent.205  The biographer of St. Samson Xenodochos, a contemporary of Justinian, says of him: "His troop of slaves he would not keep, still less exercise over his fellow servants a lordly authority; he preferred magnanimously to let them go free, and gave them enough for the necessaries of life."206  Salvianus, a Gallic presbyter of the fifth century, says that slaves were emancipated daily.207  On the other hand, very much was done in the church to prevent the increase of slavery; especially in the way of redeeming prisoners, to which sometimes the gold and silver vessels of churches were applied. But we have no reliable statistics for comparing even approximately the proportion of the slaves to the free population at the close of the sixth century with the proportion in the former period.

We infer then, that the Christianity of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, though naturally conservative and decidedly opposed to social revolution and violent measures of reform, yet in its inmost instincts and ultimate tendencies favored the universal freedom of man, and, by elevating the slave to spiritual equality with the master, and uniformly treating him as capable of the same virtues, blessings, and rewards, has placed the hateful institution of human bondage in the way of gradual amelioration and final extinction. This result, however, was not reached in Europe till many centuries after our period, nor by the influence of the church alone, but with the help of various economical and political causes, the unprofitableness of slavery, especially in more northern latitudes, the new relations introduced by the barbarian conquests, the habits of the Teutonic tribes settled within the Roman empire, the attachment of the rural slave to the soil, and the change of the slave into the serf, who was as immovable as the soil, and thus, in some degree independent on the caprice and despotism of his master.

5. The poor and unfortunate in general, above all the widows and orphans, prisoners and sick, who were so terribly neglected in heathen times, now drew the attention of the imperial legislators. Constantine in 315 prohibited the branding of criminals on the forehead, "that the human countenance," as he said, "formed after the image of heavenly beauty, should not be defaced."208  He provided against the inhuman maltreatment of prisoners before their trial.209  To deprive poor parents of all pretext for selling or exposing their children, he had them furnished with food and clothing, partly at his own expense and partly at that of the state.210  He likewise endeavored, particularly by a law of the year 331, to protect the poor against the venality and extortion of judges, advocates, and tax collectors, who drained the people by their exactions.211  In the year 334 he ordered that widows, orphans, the sick, and the poor should not be compelled to appear be. fore a tribunal outside their own province. Valentinian, in 365, exempted widows and orphans from the ignoble poll tax.212  In 364 he intrusted the bishops with the supervision of the poor. Honorius did the same in 409. Justinian, in 529, as we have before remarked, gave the bishops the oversight of the state prisons, which they were to visit on Wednesdays and Fridays, to bring home to the unfortunates the earnestness and comfort of religion. The same emperor issued laws against usury and inhuman severity in creditors, and secured benevolent and religious foundations by strict laws against alienation of their revenues from the original design of the founders. Several emperors and empresses took the church institutions for the poor and sick, for strangers, widows, and orphans, under their special patronage, exempted them from the usual taxes, and enriched or enlarged them from their private funds.213  Yet in those days, as still in ours, the private beneficence of Christian love took the lead, and the state followed at a distance, rather with ratification and patronage than with independent and original activity.214

§ 21. Abolition of Gladiatorial Shows.

6. And finally, one of the greatest and most beautiful victories of Christian humanity over heathen barbarism and cruelty was the abolition of gladiatorial contests, against which the apologists in the second century had already raised the most earnest protest.215

These bloody shows, in which human beings, mostly criminals, prisoners of war, and barbarians, by hundreds and thousands killed one another or were killed in fight with wild beasts for the amusement of the spectators, were still in full favor at the beginning of the period before us. The pagan civilization here proves itself impotent. In its eyes the life of a barbarian is of no other use than to serve the cruel amusement of the Roman people, who wish quietly to behold with their own eyes and enjoy at home the martial bloodshedding of their frontiers. Even the humane Symmachus gave an exhibition of this kind during his consulate (391), and was enraged that twenty-nine Saxon prisoners of war escaped this public shame by suicide.216  While the Vestal virgins existed, it was their special prerogative to cheer on the combatants in the amphitheatre to the bloody work, and to give the signal for the deadly stroke.217

The contagion of the thirst for blood, which these spectacles generated, is presented to us in a striking example by Augustine in his Confessions.218  His friend Alypius, afterward bishop of Tagaste, was induced by some friends in 385 to visit the amphitheatre at Rome, and went resolved to lock himself up against all impressions. "When they reached the spot," says Augustine, "and took their places on the hired seats, everything already foamed with bloodthirsty delight. But Alypius, with closed eyes, forbade his soul to yield to this sin. O had he but stopped also his ears!  For when, on the fall of a gladiator in the contest, the wild shout of the whole multitude fell upon him, overcome by curiosity he opened his eyes, though prepared to despise and resist the sight. But he was smitten with a more grievous wound in the soul than the combatant in the body, and fell more lamentably .... For when he saw the blood, he imbibed at once the love of it, turned not away, fastened his eyes upon it, caught the spirit of rage and vengeance before he knew it, and, fascinated with the murderous game, became drunk with bloodthirsty joy .... He looked, shouted applause, burned, and carried with him thence the frenzy, by which he was drawn to go back, not only with those who had taken him there, but before them, and taking others with him."

Christianity finally succeeded in closing the amphitheatre. Constantine, who in his earlier reign himself did homage to the popular custom in this matter, and exposed a great multitude of conquered barbarians to death in the amphitheatre at Treves, for which he was highly commended by a heathen orator,219 issued in 325, the year of the great council of the church at Nice, the first prohibition of the bloody spectacles, "because they cannot be pleasing in a time of public peace."220  But this edict, which is directed to the prefects of Phoenicia, had no permanent effect even in the East, except at Constantinople, which was never stained with the blood of gladiators. In Syria and especially in the West, above all in Rome, the deeply rooted institution continued into the fifth century. Honorius (395–423), who at first considered it indestructible, abolished the gladiatorial shows about 404, and did so at the instance of the heroic self-denial of an eastern monk by the name of Telemachus, who journeyed to Rome expressly to protest against this inhuman barbarity, threw himself into the arena, separated the combatants, and then was torn to pieces by the populace, a martyr to humanity.221  Yet this put a stop only to the bloody combats of men. Unbloody spectacles of every kind, even on the high festivals of the church and amidst the invasions of the barbarians, as we see by the grievous complaints of a Chrysostom, an Augustine, and a Salvian, were as largely and as passionately attended as ever; and even fights with wild animals, in which human life was generally more or less sacrificed, continued,222 and, to the scandal of the Christian name, are tolerated in Spain and South America to this day.

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

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

These evil results may be summed up under the general designation of the secularization of the church. By taking in the whole population of the Roman empire the church became, indeed, a church of the masses, a church of the people, but at the same time more or less a church of the world. Christianity became a matter of fashion. The number of hypocrites and formal professors rapidly increased;223 strict discipline, zeal, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love proportionally ebbed away; and many heathen customs and usages, under altered names, crept into the worship of God and the life of the Christian people. The Roman state had grown up under the influence of idolatry, and was not to be magically transformed at a stroke. With the secularizing process, therefore, a paganizing tendency went hand in hand.

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

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

§23. Worldliness and Extravagance.

The secularization of the church appeared most strikingly in the prevalence of mammon worship and luxury compared with the poverty and simplicity of the primitive Christians. The aristocracy of the later empire had a morbid passion for outward display and the sensual enjoyments of wealth, without the taste, the politeness, or the culture of true civilization. The gentlemen measured their fortune by the number of their marble palaces, baths, slaves, and gilded carriages; the ladies indulged in raiment of silk and gold ornamented with secular or religious figures, and in heavy golden necklaces, bracelets, and rings, and went to church in the same flaunting dress as to the theatre.224 Chrysostom addresses a patrician of Antioch: "You count so and so many acres of land, ten or twenty palaces, as many baths, a thousand or two thousand slaves, carriages plated with silver and gold."225 Gregory Nazianzen, who presided for a time in the second ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, gives us the following picture, evidently rhetorically colored, yet drawn from life, of the luxury of the degenerate civilization of that period: "We repose in splendor on high and sumptuous cushions, upon the most exquisite covers, which one is almost afraid to touch, and are vexed if we but hear the voice of a moaning pauper; our chamber must breathe the odor of flowers, even rare flowers; our table must flow with the most fragrant and costly ointment, so that we become perfectly effeminate. Slaves must stand ready, richly adorned and in order, with waving, maidenlike hair, and faces shorn perfectly smooth, more adorned throughout than is good for lascivious eyes; some, to hold cups both delicately and firmly with the tips of their fingers, others, to fan fresh air upon the head. Our table must bend under the load of dishes, while all the kingdoms of nature, air, water and earth, furnish copious contributions, and there must be almost no room for the artificial products of cook and baker .... The poor man is content with water; but we fill our goblets with wine to drunkenness, nay, immeasurably beyond it. We refuse one wine, another we pronounce excellent when well flavored, over a third we institute philosophical discussions; nay, we count it a pity, if he does not, as a king, add to the domestic wine a foreign also."226  Still more unfavorable are the pictures which, a half century later, the Gallic presbyter, Salvianus, draws of the general moral condition of the Christians in the Roman empire.227

It is true, these earnest protests against degeneracy themselves, as well as the honor in which monasticism and ascetic contempt of the world were universally held, attest the existence of a better spirit. But the uncontrollable progress of avarice, prodigality, voluptuousness, theatre going, intemperance, lewdness, in short, of all the heathen vices, which Christianity had come to eradicate, still carried the Roman empire and people with rapid strides toward dissolution, and gave it at last into the hands of the rude, but simple and morally vigorous barbarians. When the Christians were awakened by the crashings of the falling empire, and anxiously asked why God permitted it, Salvian, the Jeremiah of his time, answered: "Think of your vileness and your crimes, and see whether you are worthy of the divine protection."228  Nothing but the divine judgment of destruction upon this nominally Christian, but essentially heathen world, could open the way for the moral regeneration of society. There must be new, fresh nations, if the Christian civilization prepared in the old Roman empire was to take firm root and bear ripe fruit.

§ 24. Byzantine Court Christianity.

The unnatural confusion of Christianity with the world culminated in the imperial court of Constantinople, which, it is true, never violated moral decency so grossly as the court of a Nero or a Domitian, but in vain pomp and prodigality far outdid the courts of the better heathen emperors, and degenerated into complete oriental despotism. The household of Constantius, according to the description of Libanius,229 embraced no less than a thousand barbers, a thousand cup bearers, a thousand cooks, and so many eunuchs, that they could be compared only to the insects of a summer day. This boundless luxury was for a time suppressed by the pagan Julian, who delighted in stoical and cynical severity, and was fond of displaying it; but under his Christian successors the same prodigality returned; especially under Theodosius and his sons. These emperors, who prohibited idolatry upon pain of death, called their laws, edicts, and palaces "divine," bore themselves as gods upon earth, and, on the rare occasions when they showed themselves to the people, unfurled an incredible magnificence and empty splendor.

"When Arcadius," to borrow a graphic description from a modern historian, "condescended to reveal to the public the majesty of the sovereign, he was preceded by a vast multitude of attendants, dukes, tribunes, civil and military officers, their horses glittering with golden ornaments, with shields of gold set with precious stones, and golden lances. They proclaimed the coming of the emperor, and commanded the ignoble crowd to clear the streets before him. The emperor stood or reclined on a gorgeous chariot, surrounded by his immediate attendants, distinguished by shields with golden bosses set round with golden eyes, and drawn by white mules with gilded trappings; the chariot was set with precious stones, and golden fans vibrated with the movement, and cooled the air. The multitude contemplated at a distance the snow-white cushions, the silken carpets, with dragons inwoven upon them in rich colors. Those who were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the emperor, beheld his ears loaded with golden rings, his arms with golden chains, his diadem set with gems of all hues, his purple robes, which, with the diadem, were reserved for the emperor, in all their sutures embroidered with precious stones. The wondering people, on their return to their homes, could talk of nothing but the splendor of the spectacle: the robes, the mules, the carpets, the size and splendor of the jewels. On his return to the palace, the emperor walked on gold; ships were employed with the express purpose of bringing gold dust from remote provinces, which was strewn by the officious care of a host of attendants, so that the emperor rarely set his foot on the bare pavement."230

The Christianity of the Byzantine court lived in the atmosphere of intrigue, dissimulation, and flattery. Even the court divines and bishops could hardly escape the contamination, though their high office, with its sacred functions, was certainly a protecting wall around them. One of these bishops congratulated Constantine, at the celebration of the third decennium of his reign (the tricennalia), that he had been appointed by God ruler over all in this world, and would reign with the Son of God in the other!  This blasphemous flattery was too much even for the vain emperor, and he exhorted the bishop rather to pray God that he might be worthy to be one of his servants in this world and the next.231  Even the church historian and bishop Eusebius, who elsewhere knew well enough how to value the higher blessings, and lamented the indescribable hypocrisy of the sham Christianity around the emperor,232 suffered himself to be so far blinded by the splendor of the imperial favor, as to see in a banquet, which Constantine gave in his palace to the bishops at the close of the council of Nice, in honor of his twenty years’ reign (the vicennalia), an emblem of the glorious reign of Christ upon the earth!233

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

§ 25. Intrusion of Politics into Religion.

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

Of a separation of religion and politics, of the spiritual power from the temporal, heathen antiquity knew nothing, because it regarded religion itself only from a natural point of view, and subjected it to the purposes of the all-ruling state, the highest known form of human society. The Egyptian kings, as Plutarch tells us, were at the same time priests, or were received into the priesthood at their election. In Greece the civil magistrate had supervision of the priests and sanctuaries.234  In Rome, after the time of Numa, this supervision was intrusted to a senator, and afterward united with the imperial office. All the pagan emperors, from Augustus235 to Julian the Apostate, were at the same time supreme pontiffs (Pontifices Maximi), the heads of the state religion, emperor-popes. As such they could not only perform all priestly functions, even to offering sacrifices, when superstition or policy prompted them to do so, but they also stood at the head of the highest sacerdotal college (of fifteen or more Pontifices), which in turn regulated and superintended the three lower classes of priests (the Epulones, Quindecemviri, and Augures), the temples and altars, the sacrifices, divinations, feasts, and ceremonies, the exposition of the Sibylline books, the calendar, in short, all public worship, and in part even the affairs of marriage and inheritance.

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

§ 26. The Emperor-Papacy and the Hierarchy.

And this, in point of fact, took place first under Constantine, and developed under his successors, particularly under Justinian, into the system of the Byzantine imperial papacy,236 or of the supremacy of the state over the church.

Constantine once said to the bishops at a banquet, that he also, as a Christian emperor, was a divinely appointed bishop, a bishop over the external affairs of the church, while the internal affairs belonged to the bishops proper.237  In this pregnant word he expressed the new posture of the civil sovereign toward the church in a characteristic though indefinite and equivocal way. He made there a distinction between two divinely authorized episcopates; one secular or imperial, corresponding with the old office of Pontifex Maximus, and extending over the whole Roman empire, therefore ecumenical or universal; the other spiritual or sacerdotal, divided among the different diocesan bishops, and appearing properly in its unity and totality only in a general council.

Accordingly, though not yet even baptized, he acted as the patron and universal temporal bishop of the church;238 summoned the first ecumenical council for the settlement of the controversy respecting the divinity of Christ; instituted and deposed bishops; and occasionally even delivered sermons to the people; but on the other hand, with genuine tact (though this was in his earlier period, A.D. 314), kept aloof from the Donatist controversy, and referred to the episcopal tribunal as the highest and last resort in purely spiritual matters. In the exercise of his imperial right of supervision he did not follow any clear insight and definite theory so much as an instinctive impulse of control, a sense of politico-religious duty, and the requirements of the time. His word only raised, did not solve, the question of the relation between the imperial and the sacerdotal episcopacy and the extent of their respective jurisdictions in a Christian state.

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

In general, from this time forth the prevailing view was, that God has divided all power between the priesthood and the kingdom (sacerdotium et imperium), giving internal or spiritual affairs, especially doctrine and worship, to the former, and external or temporal affairs, such as government and discipline, to the latter.239  But internal and external here vitally interpenetrate and depend on each other, as soul and body, and frequent reciprocal encroachments and collisions are inevitable upon state-church ground. This becomes manifest in the period before us in many ways, especially in the East, where the Byzantine despotism had freer play, than in the distant West.

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

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

In general the hierarchy formed a powerful and wholesome check on the imperial papacy, and preserved the freedom and independence of the church toward the temporal power. That age had only the alternative of imperial or episcopal despotism; and of these the latter was the less hurtful and the more profitable, because it represented the higher intellectual and moral interests. Without the hierarchy, the church in the Roman empire and among the barbarians would have been the football of civil and military despots. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance, that the church, at the time of her marriage with the state, had already grown so large and strong as to withstand all material alteration by imperial caprice, and all effort to degrade her into a tool. The Apostolic Constitutions place the bishops even above all kings and magistrates.240  Chrysostom says that the first ministers of the state enjoyed no such honor as the ministers of the church. And in general the ministers of the church deserved their honor. Though there were prelates enough who abused their power to sordid ends, still there were men like Athanasius, Basil, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo, the purest and most venerable characters, which meet us in the fourth and fifth centuries, far surpassing the contemporary emperors. It was the universal opinion that the doctrines and institutions of the church, resting on divine revelation, are above all human power and will. The people looked, in blind faith and superstition, to the clergy as their guides in all matters of conscience, and even the emperors had to pay the bishops, as the fathers of the churches, the greatest reverence, kiss their hands, beg their blessing, and submit to their admonition and discipline. In most cases the emperors were mere tools of parties in the church. Arbitrary laws which were imposed upon the church from without rarely survived their makers, and were condemned by history. For there is a divine authority above all thrones, and kings, and bishops, and a power of truth above all the machinations of falsehood and intrigue.

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

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

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

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

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

But the freedom of error and division was now still more restricted. In the ante-Nicene age, heresy and schism were as much hated and abhorred indeed, as afterward, yet were met only in a moral way, by word and writing, and were punished with excommunication from the rights of the church. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and even Lactantius were the first advocates of the principle of freedom of conscience, and maintained, against the heathen, that religion was essentially a matter of free will, and could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion not by outward force.241  All they say against the persecution of Christians by the heathen applies in full to the persecution of heretics by the church. After the Nicene age all departures from the reigning state-church faith were not only abhorred and excommunicated as religious errors, but were treated also as crimes against the Christian state, and hence were punished with civil penalties; at first with deposition, banishment, confiscation, and, after Theodosius, even with death.

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

In the, beginning of his reign, Constantine proclaimed full freedom of religion (312), and in the main continued tolerably true to it; at all events he used no violent measures, as his successors did. This toleration, however, was not a matter of fixed principle with him, but merely of temporary policy; a necessary consequence of the incipient separation of the Roman throne from idolatry, and the natural transition from the sole supremacy of the heathen religion to the same supremacy of the Christian. Intolerance directed itself first against heathenism; but as the false religion gradually died out of itself, and at any rate had no moral energy for martyrdom, there resulted no such bloody persecutions of idolatry under the Christian emperors, as there had been of Christianity under their heathen predecessors. Instead of Christianity, the intolerance of the civil power now took up Christian heretics, whom it recognized as such. Constantine even in his day limited the freedom and the privileges which he conferred, to the catholic, that is, the prevailing orthodox hierarchical church, and soon after the Council of Nice, by an edict of the year 326, expressly excluded heretics and schismatics from these privileges.242  Accordingly he banished the leaders of Arianism and ordered their writings to be burned, but afterward, wavering in his views of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and persuaded over by some bishops and his sister, he recalled Arius and banished Athanasius. He himself was baptized shortly before his death by an Arian bishop. His son Constantius was a fanatical persecutor both of idolatry and the Nicene orthodoxy, and endeavored with all his might to establish Arianism alone in the empire. Hence the earnest protest of the orthodox bishops, Hosius, Athanasius, and Hilary, against this despotism and in favor of toleration;243 which came, however, we have to remember, from parties who were themselves the sufferers under intolerance, and who did not regard the banishment of the Arians as unjust.

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

At last Theodosius the Great, the first emperor who was baptized in the Nicene faith, put an end to the Arian interregnum, proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Nicene creed, and at the same time enacted the first rigid penalties not only against the pagan idolatry, the practice of which was thenceforth a capital crime in the empire, but also against all Christian heresies and sects. The ruling principle of his public life was the unity of the empire and of the orthodox church. Soon after his baptism, in 380, he issued, in connection with his weak coëmperors, Gratian and Valentinian II., to the inhabitants of Constantinople, then the chief seat of Arianism, the following edict: "We, the three emperors, will, that all our subjects steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans, which has been faithfully preserved by tradition, and which is now professed by the pontiff Damasus, of Rome, and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the institution of the apostles and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe in the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of equal majesty in the holy Trinity. We order that the adherents of this faith be called Catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of other religions with the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect the heavy penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict."244  In the course of fifteen years this emperor issued at least fifteen penal laws against heretics,245 by which he gradually deprived them of all right to the exercise of their religion, excluded them from all civil offices, and threatened them with fines, confiscation, banishment, and in some cases, as the Manichaeans, the Audians, and even the Quartodecimanians, with death.

From Theodosius therefore dates the state-church theory of the persecution of heretics, and the embodiment of it in legislation. His primary design, it is true, was rather to terrify and convert, than to punish, the refractory subjects.246

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

But the better feeling of the Christian church shrank from it with horror. The bishops Ambrose of Milan,247 and Martin of Tours,248 raised a memorable protest against it, and broke off all communion with Ithacius and the other bishops who had approved the execution. Yet it should not be forgotten that these bishops, at least Ambrose, were committed against the death penalty in general, and in other respects had no indulgence for heathens and heretics.249  The whole thing, too, was irregularly done; on the one hand the bishops appeared as accusers in a criminal cause, and on the other a temporal judge admitted an appeal from the episcopal jurisdiction, and pronounced an opinion in a matter of faith. Subsequently the functions of the temporal and spiritual courts in the trial of heretics were more accurately distinguished.

The execution of the Priscillianists is the only instance of the bloody punishment of heretics in this period, as it is the first in the history of Christianity. But the propriety of violent measures against heresy was thenceforth vindicated even by the best fathers of the church. Chrysostom recommends, indeed, Christian love toward heretics and heathens, and declares against their execution, but approved the prohibition of their assemblies and the confiscation of their churches; and he acted accordingly against the Novatians and the Quartodecimanians, so that many considered his own subsequent misfortunes as condign punishment.250  Jerome, appealing to Deut. xiii. 6–10, seems to justify even the penalty of death against religious errorists.251

Augustine, who himself belonged nine years to the Manichaean sect, and was wonderfully converted by the grace of God to the Catholic church, without the slightest pressure from without, held at first the truly evangelical view, that heretics and schismatics should not be violently dealt with, but won by instruction and conviction; but after the year 400 he turned and retracted this view, in consequence of his experience with the Donatists, whom he endeavored in vain to convert by disputation and writing, while many submitted to the imperial laws.252  Thenceforth he was led to advocate the persecution of heretics, partly by his doctrine of the Christian state, partly by the seditious excesses of the fanatical Circumcelliones, partly by the hope of a wholesome effect of temporal punishments, and partly by a false interpretation of the Cogite intrare, in the parable of the great supper, Luke xiv. 23.253  "It is, indeed, better," says he, "that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected .... Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain the highest grade of religious development .... The Lord himself orders that the guests be first invited, then compelled, to his great supper."254  This father thinks that, if the state be denied the right to punish religious error, neither should she punish any other crime, like murder or adultery, since Paul, in Gal. v. 19, attributes divisions and sects to the same source in the flesh.255  He charges his Donatist opponents with inconsistency in seeming to approve the emperors’ prohibitions of idolatry, but condemning their persecution of Christian heretics. It is to the honor of Augustine’s heart, indeed, that in actual cases he earnestly urged upon the magistrates clemency and humanity, and thus in practice remained true to his noble maxim: "Nothing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love."256  But his theory, as Neander justly observes, "contains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intolerance, and persecution, even to the court of the Inquisition."257  The great authority of his name was often afterward made to justify cruelties from which he himself would have shrunk with horror. Soon after him, Leo the Great, the first representative of consistent, exclusive, universal papacy, advocated even the penalty of death for heresy.258

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

CHAPTER IV.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONASTICISM.

SOURCES.

1. Greek: Socrates: Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 23 sqq. Sozomen: H. E. l. i. c. 12–14; iii. 14; vi. 28–34. Palladius (first a monk and disciple of the younger Macarius, then bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, ordained by Chrysostom; †431): Historia Lausiaca (JIstoriva pro;" Lau'son, a court officer under Theodosius II, to whom the work was dedicated), composed about 421, with enthusiastic admiration, from personal acquaintance, of the most celebrated contemporaneous ascetics of Egypt. Theodoret (†457): Historia religiosa, seu ascetica vivendi ratio (filovqeo" iJstopiva), biographies of thirty Oriental anchorets and monks, for the most part from personal observation. Nilus the Elder (an anchoret on Mt. Sinai, † about 450): De vita ascetica, De exercitatione monastica, Epistolae 355, and other writings.

2. Latin: Rufinus (†410): Histor. Eremitica, S. Vitae Patrum. Sulpicius Severus (about 400): Dialogi III. (the first dialogue contains a lively and entertaining account of the Egyptian monks, whom he visited; the two others relate to Martin of Tours). Cassianus (†432): Institutiones coenobiales, and Collationes Patrum (spiritual conversations of eastern monks).

Also the ascetic writings of Athanasius (Vita Antonii), Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Nilus, Isidore of Pelusium, among the Greek; Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome (his Lives of anchorets, and his letters), Cassiodorus, and Gregory the Great, among the Latin fathers.

LATER LITERATURE.

L. Holstenius (born at Hamburg 1596, a Protest., then a Romanist convert, and librarian of the Vatican): Codex regularum monastic., first Rom. 1661; then, enlarged, Par. and Augsb. in 6 vols. fol. The older Greek Menologia (mhnolovgia), and Menaea (mhnai'a), and the Latin Calendaria and Martyrologia, i.e. church calendars or indices of memorial days (days of the earthly death and heavenly birth) of the saints, with short biographical notices for liturgical use. P. Herbert Rosweyde (Jesuit): Vitae Patrum, sive Historiae Eremiticae, libri x. Antw. 1628. Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur, Antw. 1643–1786, 53 vols. fol. (begun by the Jesuit Bollandus, continued by several scholars of his order, called Bollandists, down to the 11th Oct. in the calendar of saints’ days, and resumed in 1845, after long interruption, by Theiner and others). D’achery and Mabillon (Benedictines): Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti, Par. 1668–1701, 9 vols. fol. (to 1100). Pet. Helyot (Franciscan): Histoire des ordres monastiques religieux et militaires, Par. 1714–’19, 8 vols. 4to. Alban Butler (R.C.): The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal Saints (arranged according to the Catholic calendar, and completed to the 31st Dec.), first 1745; often since (best ed. Lond. 1812–’13) in 12 vols.; another, Baltimore, 1844, in 4 vols). Gibbon: Chap. xxxvii. (Origin, Progress, and Effects of Monastic Life; very unfavorable, and written in lofty philosophical contempt). Henrion (R.C.): Histoire des ordres religieux, Par. 1835 (deutsch bearbeitet von S. Fehr, Tüb. 1845, 2 vols.). F. v. Biedenfeld: Ursprung u. s. w. saemmtlicher Mönchsorden im Orient u. Occident, Weimar, 1837, 3 vols. Schmidt (R.C.): Die Mönchs-, Nonnen-, u. geistlichen Ritterorden nebst Ordensregeln u. Abbildungen., Augsb. 1838, sqq. H. H. Milman (Anglican): History of Ancient Christianity, 1844, book iii. ch. 11. H. Ruffner (Presbyterian): The Fathers of the Desert, New York, 1850, 2 vols. (full of curious information, in popular form). Count de Montalembert (R.C.): Les Moines d’Occident depuis St. Bénoit jusqu’à St. Bernard, Par. 1860, sqq. (to embrace 6 vols.); transl. into English: The Monks of the West, etc.,  Edinb. and Lond. 1861, in 2 vols. (vol. i. gives the history of monasticism before St. Benedict, vol. ii. is mainly devoted to St. Benedict; eloquently eulogistic of, and apologetic for, monasticism). Otto Zöckler: Kritische Geschichte der Askese. Frankf. a. M. 1863. Comp. also the relevant sections of Tillemont, Fleury, Schröckh (vols. v. and viii.), Neander, and Gieseler.

§ 28. Origin of Christian Monasticism. Comparison with other forms of Asceticism.

Hospinian: De origine et progressu monachatus, l. vi., Tig. 1588, and enlarged, Genev. 1669, fol. J. A. Möhler (R.C.): Geschichte des Mönchthums in der Zeit seiner Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung, 1836 (in his collected works, Regensb. vol. ii. p. 165 sqq.). Isaac Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, Lond. 1844, vol. i. p. 299 sqq. A. Vogel: Ueber das Mönchthum, Berl. 1858 (in the "Deutsche Zeitschrift für christl. Wissenschaft," etc.). P. Schaff: Ueber den Ursprung und Charakter des Mönchthums (in Dorner’s, etc. "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol.," 1861, p. 555 ff.). J. Cropp: Origenes et causae monachatus. Gott. 1863.

In the beginning of the fourth century monasticism appears in the history of the church, and thenceforth occupies a distinguished place. Beginning in Egypt, it spread in an irresistible tide over the East and the West, continued to be the chief repository of the Christian life down to the times of the Reformation, and still remains in the Greek and Roman churches an indispensable institution and the most productive seminary of saints, priests, and missionaries.

With the ascetic tendency in general, monasticism in particular is found by no means only in the Christian church, but in other religions, both before and after Christ, especially in the East. It proceeds from religious seriousness, enthusiasm, and ambition; from a sense of the vanity of the world, and an inclination of noble souls toward solitude, contemplation, and freedom from the bonds of the flesh and the temptations of the world; but it gives this tendency an undue predominance over the social, practical, and world-reforming spirit of religion. Among the Hindoos the ascetic system may be traced back almost to the time of Moses, certainly beyond Alexander the Great, who found it there in full force, and substantially with the same characteristics which it presents at the present day.259  Let us consider it a few moments.

The Vedas, portions of which date from the fifteenth century before Christ, the Laws of Menu, which were completed before the rise of Buddhism, that is, six or seven centuries before our era, and the numerous other sacred books of the Indian religion, enjoin by example and precept entire abstraction of thought, seclusion from the world, and a variety of penitential and meritorious acts of self-mortification, by which the devotee assumes a proud superiority over the vulgar herd of mortals, and is absorbed at last into the divine fountain of all being. The ascetic system is essential alike to Brahmanism and Buddhism, the two opposite and yet cognate branches of the Indian religion, which in many respects are similarly related to each other as Judaism is to Christianity, or also as Romanism to Protestantism. Buddhism is a later reformation of Brahmanism; it dates probably from the sixth century before Christ (according to other accounts much earlier), and, although subsequently expelled by the Brahmins from Hindostan, it embraces more followers than any other heathen religion, since it rules in Farther India, nearly all the Indian islands, Japan, Thibet, a great part of China and Central Asia to the borders of Siberia. But the two religions start from opposite principles. Brahmanic asceticism260 proceeds from a pantheistic view of the world, the Buddhistic from an atheistic and nihilistic, yet very earnest view; the one if; controlled by the idea of the absolute but abstract unity and a feeling of contempt of the world, the other by the idea of the absolute but unreal variety and a feeling of deep grief over the emptiness and nothingness of all existence; the one is predominantly objective, positive, and idealistic, the other more subjective, negative, and realistic; the one aims at an absorption into the universal spirit of Brahm, the other consistently at an absorption into nonentity, if it be true that Buddhism starts from an atheistic rather than a pantheistic or dualistic basis. "Brahmanism"—says a modern writer on the subject261—"looks back to the beginning, Buddhism to the end; the former loves cosmogony, the latter eschatology. Both reject the existing world; the Brahman despises it, because he contrasts it with the higher being of Brahma, the Buddhist bewails it because of its unrealness; the former sees God in all, the other emptiness in all."  Yet as all extremes meet, the abstract all-entity of Brahmanism and the equally abstract non-entity or vacuity of Buddhism come to the same thing in the end, and may lead to the same ascetic practices. The asceticism of Brahmanism takes more the direction of anchoretism, while that of Buddhism exists generally in the social form of regular convent life.

The Hindoo monks or gymnosophists (naked philosophers), as the Greeks called them, live in woods, caves, on mountains, or rocks, in poverty, celibacy, abstinence, silence: sleeping on straw or the bare ground, crawling on the belly, standing all day on tiptoe, exposed to the pouring rain or scorching sun with four fires kindled around them, presenting a savage and frightful appearance, yet greatly revered by the multitude, especially the women, and performing miracles, not unfrequently completing their austerities by suicide on the stake or in the waves of the Ganges. Thus they are described by the ancients and by modern travellers. The Buddhist monks are less fanatical and extravagant than the Hindoo Yogis and Fakirs. They depend mainly on fasting, prayer, psalmody, intense contemplation, and the use of the whip, to keep their rebellious flesh in subjection. They have a fully developed system of monasticism in connection with their priesthood, and a large number of convents; also nunneries for female devotees. The Buddhist monasticism, especially in Thibet, with its vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, its common meals, readings, and various pious exercises, bears such a remarkable resemblance to that of the Roman Catholic church that Roman missionaries thought it could be only explained as a diabolical imitation.262  But the original always precedes the caricature, and the ascetic system was completed in India long before the introduction of Christianity, even if we should trace this back to St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas.

The Hellenic heathenism was less serious and contemplative, indeed, than the Oriental; yet the Pythagoreans were a kind of monastic society, and the Platonic view of matter and of body not only lies at the bottom of the Gnostic and Manichaean asceticism, but had much to do also with the ethics of Origen and the Alexandrian School.

Judaism, apart from the ancient Nazarites,263 had its Essenes in Palestine264 and its Therapeutae in Egypt;265 though these betray the intrusion of foreign elements into the Mosaic religion, and so find no mention in the New Testament.

Lastly, Mohammedanism, though in mere imitation of Christian and pagan examples, has, as is well known, its dervises and its cloisters.266

Now were these earlier phenomena the source, or only analogies, of the Christian monasticism?  That a multitude of foreign usages and rites made their way into the church in the age of Constantine, is undeniable. Hence many have held, that monasticism also came from heathenism, and was an apostasy from apostolic Christianity, which Paul had plainly foretold in the Pastoral Epistles.267  But such a view can hardly be reconciled with the great place of this phenomenon in history; and would, furthermore, involve the entire ancient church, with its greatest and best representatives both east and west, its Athanasius, its Chrysostom, its Jerome, its Augustine, in the predicted apostasy from the faith. And no one will now hold, that these men, who all admired and commended the monastic life, were antichristian errorists, and that the few and almost exclusively negative opponents of that asceticism, as Jovinian, Helvidius, and Vigilantius, were the sole representatives of pure Christianity in the Nicene and next following age.

In this whole matter we must carefully distinguish two forms of asceticism, antagonistic and irreconcilable in spirit and principle, though similar in form: the Gnostic dualistic, and the Catholic. The former of these did certainly come from heathenism; but the latter sprang independently from the Christian spirit of self-denial and longing for moral perfection, and, in spite of all its excrescences, has fulfilled an important mission in the history of the church.

The pagan monachism, the pseudo-Jewish, the heretical Christian, above all the Gnostic and Manichaean, is based on in irreconcilable metaphysical dualism between mind and matter; the Catholic Christian Monachism arises from the moral conflict between the spirit and the flesh. The former is prompted throughout by spiritual pride and selfishness; the latter, by humility and love to God and man. The false asceticism aims at annihilation of the body and pantheistic absorption of the human being in the divine; the Christian strives after the glorification of the body and personal fellowship with the living God in Christ. And the effects of the two are equally different. Though it is also unquestionable, that, notwithstanding this difference of principle, and despite the condemnation of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, the heathen dualism exerted a powerful influence on the Catholic asceticism and its view of the world, particularly upon anchoretism and monasticism in the East, and has been fully overcome only in evangelical Protestantism. The precise degree of this influence, and the exact proportion of Christian and heathen ingredients in the early monachism of the church, were an interesting subject of special investigation.

The germs of the Christian monasticism may be traced as far back as the middle of the second century, and in fact faintly even in the anxious ascetic practices of some of the Jewish Christians in the apostolic age. This asceticism, particularly fasting and celibacy, was commended more or less distinctly by the most eminent ante-Nicene fathers, and was practised, at least partially, by a particular class of Christians (by Origen even to the unnatural extreme of self-emasculation).268  So early as the Decian persecution, about the year 250, we meet also the first instances of the flight of ascetics or Christian philosophers into the wilderness; though rather in exceptional cases, and by way of escape from personal danger. So long as the church herself was a child of the desert, and stood in abrupt opposition to the persecuting world, the ascetics of both sexes usually lived near the congregations or in the midst of them, often even in the families, seeking there to realize the ideal of Christian perfection. But when, under Constantine, the mass of the population of the empire became nominally Christian, they felt, that in this world-church, especially in such cities as Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, they were not at home, and voluntarily retired into waste and desolate places and mountain clefts, there to work out the salvation of their souls undisturbed.

Thus far monachism is a reaction against the secularizing state-church system and the decay of discipline, and an earnest, well-meant, though mistaken effort to save the virginal purity of the Christian church by transplanting it in the wilderness. The moral corruption of the Roman empire, which had the appearance of Christianity, but was essentially heathen in the whole framework of society, the oppressiveness of taxes269 the extremes of despotism and slavery, of extravagant luxury and hopeless poverty, the repletion of all classes, the decay of all productive energy in science and art, and the threatening incursions of barbarians on the frontiers—all favored the inclination toward solitude in just the most earnest minds.

At the same time, however, monasticism afforded also a compensation for martyrdom, which ceased with the Christianization of the state, and thus gave place to a voluntary martyrdom, a gradual self-destruction, a sort of religious suicide. In the burning deserts and awful caverns of Egypt and Syria, amidst the pains of self-torture, the mortification of natural desires, and relentless battles with hellish monsters, the ascetics now sought to win the crown of heavenly glory, which their predecessors in the times of persecution had more quickly and easily gained by a bloody death.

The native land of the monastic life was Egypt, the land where Oriental and Grecian literature, philosophy, and religion, Christian orthodoxy and Gnostic heresy, met both in friendship and in hostility. Monasticism was favored and promoted here by climate and geographic features, by the oasis-like seclusion of the country, by the bold contrast of barren deserts with the fertile valley of the Nile, by the superstition, the contemplative turn, and the passive endurance of the national character, by the example of the Therapeutae, and by the moral principles of the Alexandrian fathers; especially by Origen’s theory of a higher and lower morality and of the merit of voluntary poverty and celibacy. Aelian says of the Egyptians, that they bear the most exquisite torture without a murmur, and would rather be tormented to death than compromise truth. Such natures, once seized with religious enthusiasm, were eminently qualified for saints of the desert.

§ 29. Development of Monasticism.

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

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

The second stage is hermit life or anchoretism.270  It arose in the beginning of the fourth century, gave asceticism a fixed and permanent shape, and pushed it to even external separation from the world. It took the prophets Elijah and John the Baptist for its models, and went beyond them. Not content with partial and temporary retirement from common life, which may be united with social intercourse and useful labors, the consistent anchoret secludes himself from all society, even from kindred ascetics, and comes only exceptionally into contact with human affairs, either to receive the visits of admirers of every class, especially of the sick and the needy (which were very frequent in the case of the more celebrated monks), or to appear in the cities on some extraordinary occasion, as a spirit from another world. His clothing is a hair shirt and a wild beast’s skin; his food, bread and salt; his dwelling, a cave; his employment, prayer, affliction of the body, and conflict with satanic powers and wild images of fancy. This mode of life was founded by Paul of Thebes and St. Anthony, and came to perfection in the East. It was too eccentric and unpractical for the West, and hence less frequent there, especially in the rougher climates. To the female sex it was entirely unsuited. There was a class of hermits, the Sarabaites in Egypt, and the Rhemoboths in Syria, who lived in bands of at least two or three together; but their quarrelsomeness, occasional intemperance, and opposition to the clergy, brought them into ill repute.

The third step in the progress of the monastic life brings us to coenobitism or cloister life, monasticism in the ordinary sense of the word.271  It originated likewise in Egypt, from the example of the Essenes and Therapeutae, and was carried by St. Pachomius to the East, and afterward by St. Benedict to the West. Both these ascetics, like the most celebrated order-founders of later days, were originally hermits. Cloister life is a regular organization of the ascetic life on a social basis. It recognizes, at least in a measure, the social element of human nature, and represents it in a narrower sphere secluded from the larger world. As hermit life often led to cloister life, so the cloister life was not only a refuge for the spirit weary of the world, but also in many ways a school for practical life in the church. It formed the transition from isolated to social Christianity. It consists in an association of a number of anchorets of the same sex for mutual advancement in ascetic holiness. The coenobites live, somewhat according to the laws of civilization, under one roof, and under a superintendent or abbot.272  They divide their time between common devotions and manual labor, and devote their surplus provisions to charity; except the mendicant monks, who themselves live by alms. In this modified form monasticism became available to the female sex, to which the solitary desert life was utterly impracticable; and with the cloisters of monks, there appear at once cloisters also of nuns.273  Between the anchorets and the coenobites no little jealousy reigned; the former charging the latter with ease and conformity to the world; the latter accusing the former of selfishness and misanthropy. The most eminent church teachers generally prefer the cloister life. But the hermits, though their numbers diminished, never became extinct. Many a monk was a hermit first, and then a coenobite; and many a coenobite turned to a hermit.

The same social impulse, finally, which produced monastic congregations, led afterward to monastic orders, unions of a number of cloisters under one rule and a common government. In this fourth and last stage monasticism has done most for the diffusion of Christianity and the advancement of learning,274 has fulfilled its practical mission in the Roman Catholic church, and still wields a mighty influence there. At the same time it became in some sense the cradle of the German reformation. Luther belonged to the order of St. Augustine, and the monastic discipline of Erfurt was to him a preparation for evangelical freedom, as the Mosaic law was to Paul a schoolmaster to lead to Christ. And for this very reason Protestantism is the end of the monastic life.

§ 30. Nature and Aim of Monasticism.

Monasticism was from the first distinguished as the contemplative life from the practical.275  It passed with the ancient church for the true, the divine, or Christian philosophy,276 an unworldly purely apostolic, angelic life.277  It rests upon an earnest view of life; upon the instinctive struggle after perfect dominion of the spirit over the flesh, reason over sense, the supernatural over the natural, after the highest grade of holiness and an undisturbed communion of the soul with God; but also upon a morbid depreciation of the body, the family, the state, and the divinely established social order of the world. It recognizes the world, indeed, as a creature of God, and the family and property as divine institutions, in opposition to the Gnostic Manichaean asceticism, which ascribes matter as such to an evil principle. But it makes a distinction between two grades of morality: a common and lower grade, democratic, so to speak, which moves in the natural ordinances of God; and a higher, extraordinary, aristocratic grade, which lies beyond them and is attended with special merit. It places the great problem of Christianity not in the transformation, but in the abandonment, of the world. It is an extreme unworldliness, over against the worldliness of the mass of the visible church in union with the state. It demands entire renunciation, not only of sin, but also of property and of marriage, which are lawful in themselves, ordained by God himself, and indispensable to the continuance and welfare of the human race. The poverty of the individual, however, does not exclude the possession of common property; and it is well known, that some monastic orders, especially the Benedictines, have in course of time grown very rich. The coenobite institution requires also absolute obedience to the will of the superior, as the visible representative of Christ. As obedience to orders and sacrifice of self is the first duty of the soldier, and the condition of military success and renown, so also in this spiritual army in its war against the flesh, the world, and the devil, monks are not allowed to have a will of their own. To them may be applied the lines of Tennyson:278

"Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs but to do and die."

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

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

With all the austerities and rigors of asceticism, the monastic life had its spiritual joys and irresistible charms for noble, contemplative, and heaven-aspiring souls, who fled from the turmoil and vain show of the city as a prison, and turned the solitude into a paradise of freedom and sweet communion with God and his saints; while to others the same solitude became a fruitful nursery of idleness, despondency, and the most perilous temptations and ultimate ruin.279

§ 31. Monasticism and the Bible.

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

The advocates of it uniformly refer first to the examples of Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist;280 but these stand upon the legal level of the Old Testament, and are to be looked upon as extraordinary personages of an extraordinary age; and though they may be regarded as types of a partial anchoretism (not of cloister life), still they are nowhere commended to our imitation in this particular, but rather in their influence upon the world.

The next appeal is to a few isolated passages of the New Testament, which do not, indeed, in their literal sense require the renunciation of property and marriage, yet seem to recommend it as a special, exceptional form of piety for those Christians who strive after higher perfection.281

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

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

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

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

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

Monasticism, therefore, in any case, is not the normal form of Christian piety. It is an abnormal phenomenon, a humanly devised service of God,282 and not rarely a sad enervation and repulsive distortion of the Christianity of the Bible. And it is to be estimated, therefore, not by the extent of its self-denial, not by its outward acts of self-discipline (which may all be found in heathenism, Judaism, and Mohammedanism as well), but by the Christian spirit of humility and love which animated it. For humility is the groundwork, and love the all-ruling principle, of the Christian life, and the distinctive characteristic of the Christian religion. Without love to God and charity to man, the severest self-punishment and the utmost abandonment of the world are worthless before God.283

§ 32. Lights and Shades of Monastic Life.

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

The extraordinary rapidity with which this world-forsaking form of piety spread, bears witness to a high degree of self-denying moral earnestness, which even in its mistakes and vagrancies we must admire. Our age, accustomed and wedded to all possible comforts, but far in advance of the Nicene age in respect to the average morality of the masses, could beget no such ascetic extremes. In our estimate of the diffusion and value of monasticism, the polluting power of the theatre, oppressive taxation, slavery, the multitude of civil wars, and the hopeless condition of the Roman empire, must all come into view. Nor must we, by any means, measure the moral importance of this phenomenon by numbers. Monasticism from the beginning attracted persons of opposite character and from opposite motives. Moral earnestness and religious enthusiasm were accompanied here, as formerly in martyrdom, though even in larger measure than there, with all kinds of sinister motives; indolence, discontent, weariness of life, misanthropy, ambition for spiritual distinction, and every sort of misfortune or accidental circumstance. Palladius, to mention but one illustrious example, tells of Paul the Simple,284 that, from indignation against his wife, whom he detected in an act of infidelity, he hastened, with the current oath of that day, "in the name of Jesus,"285 into the wilderness; and immediately, though now sixty years old, under the direction of Anthony, he became a very model monk, and attained an astonishing degree of humility, simplicity, and perfect submission of will.

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

Looking more closely, in the first place, at anchoretism, we meet in its history unquestionably many a heroic character, who attained an incredible mastery over his sensual nature, and, like the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist, by their mere appearance and their occasional preaching, made an overwhelming impression on his contemporaries, even among the heathen. St. Anthony’s visit to Alexandria was to the gazing multitude like the visit of a messenger from the other world, and resulted in many conversions. His emaciated face, the glare of his eye, his spectral yet venerable form, his contempt of the world, and his few aphoristic sentences told more powerfully on that age and people than a most elaborate sermon. St. Symeon, standing on a column from year to year, fasting, praying, and exhorting the visitors to repentance, was to his generation a standing miracle and a sign that pointed them to heaven. Sometimes, in seasons of public calamity, such hermits saved whole cities and provinces from the imperial wrath, by their effectual intercessions. When Theodosius, in 387, was about to destroy Antioch for a sedition, the hermit Macedonius met the two imperial commissaries, who reverently dismounted and kissed his hands and feet; he reminded them and the emperor of their own weakness, set before them the value of men as immortal images of God, in comparison with the perishable statues of the emperor, and thus saved the city from demolition.286  The heroism of the anchoretic life, in the voluntary renunciation of lawful pleasures and the patient endurance of self-inflicted pains, is worthy of admiration in its way, and not rarely almost incredible.

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

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

The holy Scriptures instruct us to pray and to labor; and to pray not only mechanically with the lips, as the heathen do, but with all the heart. But Paul the Simple said daily three hundred prayers, counting them with pebbles, which he carried in his bosom (a sort of rosary); when he heard of a virgin who prayed seven hundred times a day, he was troubled, and told his distress to Macarius, who well answered him: "Either thou prayest not with thy heart, if thy conscience reproves thee, or thou couldst pray oftener. I have for six years prayed only a hundred times a day, without being obliged to condemn myself for neglect."  Christ ate and drank like other men, expressly distinguishing himself thereby from John, the representative of the old covenant; and Paul recommends to us to use the gifts of God temperately, with cheerful and childlike gratitude.287  But the renowned anchoret and presbyter Isidore of Alexandria (whom Athanasius ordained) touched no meat, never ate enough, and, as Palladius relates, often burst into tears at table for shame, that he, who was destined to eat angels’ food in paradise, should have to eat material stuff like the irrational brutes. Macarius the elder, or the Great, for a long time ate only once a week, and slept standing and leaning on a staff. The equally celebrated younger Macarius lived three years on four or five ounces of bread a day, and seven years on raw herbs and pulse. Ptolemy spent three years alone in an unwatered desert, and quenched his thirst with the dew, which he collected in December and January, and preserved in earthen vessels; but he fell at last into skepticism, madness, and debauchery.288  Sozomen tells of a certain Batthaeus, that by reason of his extreme abstinence, worms crawled out of his teeth; of Alas, that to his eightieth year he never ate bread; of Heliodorus, that he spent many nights without sleep, and fasted without interruption seven days.289  Symeon, a Christian Diogenes, spent six and thirty years praying, fasting, and preaching, on the top of a pillar thirty or forty feet high, ate only once a week, and in fast times not at all. Such heroism of abstinence was possible, however, only in the torrid climate of the East, and is not to be met with in the West.

Anchoretism almost always carries a certain cynic roughness and coarseness, which, indeed, in the light of that age, may be leniently judged, but certainly have no affinity with the morality of the Bible, and offend not only good taste, but all sound moral feeling. The ascetic holiness, at least according to the Egyptian idea, is incompatible with cleanliness and decency, and delights in filth. It reverses the maxim of sound evangelical morality and modern Christian civilization, that cleanliness is next to godliness. Saints Anthony and Hilarion, as their admirers, Athanasius the Great and Jerome the Learned, tell us, scorned to comb or cut their hair (save once a year, at Easter), or to wash their hands or feet. Other hermits went almost naked in the wilderness, like the Indian gymnosophists.290  The younger Macarius, according to the account of his disciple Palladius, once lay six months naked in the morass of the Scetic desert, and thus exposed himself to the incessant attacks of the gnats of Africa, "whose sting can pierce even the hide of a wild boar."  He wished to punish himself for his arbitrary revenge on a gnat, and was there so badly stung by gnats and wasps, that he was thought to be smitten with leprosy, and was recognized only by his voice.291  St. Symeon the Stylite, according to Theodoret, suffered himself to be incessantly tormented for a long time by twenty enormous bugs, and concealed an abscess full of worms, to exercise himself in patience and meekness. In Mesopotamia there was a peculiar class of anchorets, who lived on grass, spending the greater part of the day in prayer and singing, and then turning out like beasts upon the mountain.292  Theodoret relates of the much lauded Akepsismas, in Cyprus, that he spent sixty years in the same cell, without seeing or speaking to any one, and looked so wild and shaggy, that he was once actually taken for a wolf by a shepherd, who assailed him with stones, till he discovered his error, and then worshipped the hermit as a saint.293  It was but a step from this kind of moral sublimity to beastly degradation. Many of these saints were no more than low sluggards or gloomy misanthropes, who would rather company with wild beasts, with lions, wolves, and hyenas, than with immortal men, and above all shunned the face of a woman more carefully than they did the devil. Sulpitius Severus saw an anchoret in the Thebaid, who daily shared his evening meal with a female wolf; and upon her discontinuing her visits for some days by way of penance for a theft she had committed, he besought her to come again, and comforted her with a double portion of bread.294  The same writer tells of a hermit who lived fifty years secluded from all human society, in the clefts of Mount Sinai, entirely destitute of clothing, and all overgrown with thick hair, avoiding every visitor, because, as he said, intercourse with men interrupted the visits of the angels; whence arose the report that he held intercourse with angels.295

It is no recommendation to these ascetic eccentricities that while they are without Scripture authority, they are fully equalled and even surpassed by the strange modes of self-torture practised by ancient and modern Hindoo devotees, for the supposed benefit of their souls and the gratification of their vanity in the presence of admiring spectators. Some bury themselves—we are told by ancient and modern travellers—in pits with only small breathing holes at the top, while others disdaining to touch the vile earth, live in iron cages suspended from trees. Some wear heavy iron collars or fetters, or drag a heavy chain fastened by one end round their privy parts, to give ostentatious proof of their chastity. Others keep their fists hard shut, until their finger nails grow through the palms of their hands. Some stand perpetually on one leg; others keep their faces turned over one shoulder, until they cannot turn them back again. Some lie on wooden beds, bristling all over with iron spikes; others are fastened for life to the trunk of a tree by a chain. Some suspend themselves for half an hour at a time, feet uppermost, or with a hook thrust through their naked back, over a hot fire. Alexander von Humboldt, at Astracan, where some Hindoos had settled, found a Yogi in the vestibule of the temple naked, shrivelled up, and overgrown with hair like a wild beast, who in this position had withstood for twenty years the severe winters of that climate. A Jesuit missionary describes one of the class called Tapasonias, that he had his body enclosed in an iron cage, with his head and feet outside, so that he could walk, but neither sit nor lie down; at night his pious attendants attached a hundred lighted lamps to the outside of the cage, so that their master could exhibit himself walking as the mock light of the world.296

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

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

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

The temptations of sensuality, pride, and ambition externalized and personified themselves to the anchorets and monks in hellish shapes, which appeared in visions and dreams, now in pleasing and seductive, now in threatening and terrible forms and colors, according to the state of mind at the time. The monastic imagination peopled the deserts and solitudes with the very worst society, with swarms of winged demons and all kinds of hellish monsters.297  It substituted thus a new kind of polytheism for the heathen gods, which were generally supposed to be evil spirits. The monastic demonology and demonomachy is a strange mixture of gross superstitions and deep spiritual experiences. It forms the romantic shady side of the otherwise so tedious monotony of the secluded life, and contains much material for the history of ethics, psychology, and pathology.

Especially besetting were the temptations of sensuality, and irresistible without the utmost exertion and constant watchfulness. The same saints, who could not conceive of true chastity without celibacy, were disturbed, according to their own confession, by unchaste dreams, which at least defiled the imagination.298  Excessive asceticism sometimes turned into unnatural vice; sometimes ended in madness, despair, and suicide. Pachomius tells us, so early as his day, that many monks cast themselves down precipices, others ripped themselves up, and others put themselves to death in other ways.299

A characteristic trait of monasticism in all its forms is a morbid aversion to female society and a rude contempt of married life. No wonder, then, that in Egypt and the whole East, the land of monasticism, women and domestic life never attained their proper dignity, and to this day remain at a very low stage of culture. Among the rules of Basil is a prohibition of speaking with a woman, touching one, or even looking on one, except in unavoidable cases. Monasticism not seldom sundered the sacred bond between husband and wife, commonly with mutual consent, as in the cases of Ammon and Nilus, but often even without it. Indeed, a law of Justinian seems to give either party an unconditional right of desertion, while yet the word of God declares the marriage bond indissoluble. The Council of Gangra found it necessary to oppose the notion that marriage is inconsistent with salvation, and to exhort wives to remain with their husbands. In the same way monasticism came into conflict with love of kindred, and with the relation of parents to children; misinterpreting the Lord’s command to leave all for His sake. Nilus demanded of the monks the entire suppression of the sense of blood relationship. St. Anthony forsook his younger sister, and saw her only once after the separation. His disciple, Prior, when he became a monk, vowed never to see his kindred again, and would not even speak with his sister without closing his eyes. Something of the same sort is recorded of Pachomius. Ambrose and Jerome, in full earnest, enjoined upon virgins the cloister life, even against the will of their parents. When Hilary of Poictiers heard that his daughter wished to marry, he is said to have prayed God to take her to himself by death. One Mucius, without any provocation, caused his own son to be cruelly abused, and at last, at the command of the abbot himself, cast him into the water, whence he was rescued by a brother of the cloister.300

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

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

§ 33. Position of Monks in the Church.

As to the social position of monasticism in the system of ecclesiastical life: it was at first, in East and West, even so late as the council of Chalcedon, regarded as a lay institution; but the monks were distinguished as religiosi from the seculares, and formed thus a middle grade between the ordinary laity and the clergy. They constituted the spiritual nobility, but not the ruling class; the aristocracy, but not the hierarchy of the church. "A monk," says Jerome, "has not the office of a teacher, but of a penitent, who endures suffering either for himself or for the world."  Many monks considered ecclesiastical office incompatible with their effort after perfection. It was a proverb, traced to Pachomius: "A monk should especially shun women and bishops, for neither will let him have peace."301  Ammonius, who accompanied Athanasius to Rome, cut off his own ear, and threatened to cut out his own tongue, when it was proposed to make him a bishop.302  Martin of Tours thought his miraculous power deserted him on his transition from the cloister to the bishopric. Others, on the contrary, were ambitious for the episcopal chair, or were promoted to it against their will, as early as the fourth century. The abbots of monasteries were usually ordained priests, and administered the sacraments among the brethren, but were subject to the bishop of the diocese. Subsequently the cloisters managed, through special papal grants, to make themselves independent of the episcopal jurisdiction. From the tenth century the clerical character was attached to the monks. In a certain sense, they stood, from the beginning, even above the clergy; considered themselves preëminently conversi and religiosi, and their life vita religiosa; looked down with contempt upon the secular clergy; and often encroached on their province in troublesome ways. On the other hand, the cloisters began, as early as the fourth century, to be most fruitful seminaries of clergy, and furnished, especially in the East, by far the greater number of bishops. The sixth novel of Justinian provides that the bishops shall be chosen from the clergy, or from the monastery.

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

§ 34. Influence and Effect of Monasticism.

The influence of monasticism upon the world, from Anthony and Benedict to Luther and Loyola, is deeply marked in all branches of the history of the church. Here, too, we must distinguish light and shade. The operation of the monastic institution has been to some extent of diametrically opposite kinds, and has accordingly elicited the most diverse judgments. "It is impossible," says Dean Milman,303 "to survey monachism in its general influence, from the earliest period of its inworking into Christianity, without being astonished and perplexed with its diametrically opposite effects. Here it is the undoubted parent of the blindest ignorance and the most ferocious bigotry, sometimes of the most debasing licentiousness; there the guardian of learning, the author of civilization, the propagator of humble and peaceful religion."  The apparent contradiction is easily solved. It is not monasticism, as such, which has proved a blessing to the church and the world; for the monasticism of India, which for three thousand years has pushed the practice of mortification to all the excesses of delirium, never saved a single soul, nor produced a single benefit to the race. It was Christianity in monasticism which has done all the good, and used this abnormal mode of life as a means for carrying forward its mission of love and peace. In proportion as monasticism was animated and controlled by the spirit of Christianity, it proved a blessing; while separated from it, it degenerated and became at fruitful source of evil.

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

Monasticism promoted the downfall of heathenism and the victory of Christianity in the Roman empire and among the barbarians. It stood as a warning against the worldliness, frivolity, and immorality of the great cities, and a mighty call to repentance and conversion. It offered a quiet refuge to souls weary of the world, and led its earnest disciples into the sanctuary of undisturbed communion with God. It was to invalids a hospital for the cure of moral diseases, and at the same time, to healthy and vigorous enthusiasts an arena for the exercise of heroic virtue.304  It recalled the original unity and equality of the human race, by placing rich and poor, high and low upon the same level. It conduced to the abolition, or at least the mitigation of slavery.305  It showed hospitality to the wayfaring, and liberality to the poor and needy. It was an excellent school of meditation, self-discipline, and spiritual exercise. It sent forth most of those catholic, missionaries, who, inured to all hardship, planted the standard of the cross among the barbarian tribes of Northern and Western Europe, and afterward in Eastern Asia and South America. It was a prolific seminary of the clergy, and gave the church many of her most eminent bishops and popes, as Gregory I. and Gregory VII. It produced saints like Anthony and Bernard, and trained divines like Chrysostom and Jerome, and the long succession of schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. Some of the profoundest theological discussions, like the tracts of Anselm, and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, and not a few of the best books of devotion, like the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, have proceeded from the solemn quietude of cloister life. Sacred hymns, unsurpassed for sweetness, like the Jesu dulcis memoria, or tender emotion, like the Stabat mater dolorosa, or terrific grandeur, like the Dies irae, dies illa, were conceived and sung by mediaeval monks for all ages to come. In patristic and antiquarian learning the Benedictines, so lately as the seventeenth century, have done extraordinary service. Finally, monasticism, at least in the West, promoted the cultivation of the soil and the education of the people, and by its industrious transcriptions of the Bible, the works of the church fathers, and the ancient classics, earned for itself, before the Reformation, much of the credit of the modern civilization of Europe. The traveller in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, and even in the northern regions of Scotland and Sweden, encounters innumerable traces of useful monastic labors in the ruins of abbeys, of chapter houses, of convents, of priories and hermitages, from which once proceeded educational and missionary influences upon the surrounding hills and forests. These offices, however, to the progress of arts and letters were only accessory, often involuntary, and altogether foreign to the intention of the founders of monastic life and institutions, who looked exclusively to the religious and moral education of the soul. In seeking first the kingdom of heaven, these other things were added to them.

But on the other hand, monasticism withdrew from society many useful forces; diffused an indifference for the family life, the civil and military service of the state, and all public practical operations; turned the channels of religion from the world into the desert, and so hastened the decline of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the whole Roman empire. It nourished religious fanaticism, often raised storms of popular agitation, and rushed passionately into the controversies of theological parties; generally, it is true, on the side of orthodoxy, but often, as at the Ephesian "council of robbers," in favor of heresy, and especially in behalf of the crudest superstition. For the simple, divine way of salvation in the gospel, it substituted an arbitrary, eccentric, ostentatious, and pretentious sanctity. It darkened the all-sufficient merits of Christ by the glitter of the over-meritorious works of man. It measured virtue by the quantity of outward exercises instead of the quality of the inward disposition, and disseminated self-righteousness and an anxious, legal, and mechanical religion. It favored the idolatrous veneration of Mary and of saints, the worship of images and relics, and all sorts of superstitious and pious fraud. It circulated a mass of visions and miracles, which, if true, far surpassed the miracles of Christ and the apostles and set all the laws of nature and reason at defiance. The Nicene age is full of the most absurd monks’ fables, and is in this respect not a whit behind the darkest of the middle ages.306  Monasticism lowered the standard of general morality in proportion as it set itself above it and claimed a corresponding higher merit; and it exerted in general a demoralizing influence on the people, who came to consider themselves the profanum vulgus mundi, and to live accordingly. Hence the frequent lamentations, not only of Salvian, but of Chrysostom and of Augustine, over the indifference and laxness of the Christianity of the day; hence to this day the mournful state of things in the southern countries of Europe and America, where monasticism is most prevalent, and sets the extreme of ascetic sanctity in contrast with the profane laity, but where there exists no healthful middle class of morality, no blooming family life, no moral vigor in the masses. In the sixteenth century the monks were the bitterest enemies of the Reformation and of all true progress. And yet the greatest of the reformers was a pupil of the convent, and a child of the monastic system, as the boldest and most free of the apostles had been the strictest of the Pharisees.

§ 35. Paul of Thebes and St. Anthony.

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

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

The first known Christian hermit, as distinct from the earlier ascetics, is the fabulous Paul of Thebes, in Upper Egypt. In the twenty-second year of his age, during the Decian persecution, A.D. 250, he retired to a distant cave, grew fond of the solitude, and lived there, according to the legend, ninety years, in a grotto near a spring and a palm tree, which furnished him food, shade, and clothing,307 until his death in 340. In his later years a raven is said to have brought him daily half a loaf, as the ravens ministered to Elijah. But no one knew of this wonderful saint, till Anthony, who under a higher impulse visited and buried him, made him known to the world. After knocking in vain for more than an hour at the door of the hermit, who would receive the visits of beasts and reject those of men, he was admitted at last with a smiling face, and greeted with a holy kiss. Paul had sufficient curiosity left to ask the question, whether there were any more idolaters in the world, whether new houses were built in ancient cities and by whom the world was governed?  During this interesting conversation, a large raven came gently flying and deposited a double portion of bread for the saint and his guest. "The Lord," said Paul, "ever kind and merciful, has sent us a dinner. It is now sixty years since I have daily received half a loaf, but since thou hast come, Christ has doubled the supply for his soldiers."  After thanking the Giver, they sat down by the fountain; but now the question arose who should break the bread; the one urging the custom of hospitality, the other pleading the right of his friend as the elder. This question of monkish etiquette, which may have a moral significance, consumed nearly the whole day, and was settled at last by the compromise that both should seize the loaf at opposite ends, pull till it broke, and keep what remained in their hands. A drink from the fountain, and thanksgiving to God closed the meal. The day afterward Anthony returned to his cell, and told his two disciples: "Woe to me, a sinner, who have falsely pretended to be a monk. I have seen Elijah and John in the desert; I have seen St. Paul in paradise."  Soon afterward he paid St. Paul a second visit, but found him dead in his cave, with head erect and hands lifted up to heaven. He wrapped up the corpse, singing psalms and hymns, and buried him without a spade; for two lions came of their own accord, or rather from supernatural impulse, from the interior parts of the desert, laid down at his feet, wagging their tails, and moaning distressingly, and scratched a grave in the sand large enough for the body of the departed saint of the desert!  Anthony returned with the coat of Paul, made of palm leaves, and wore it on the solemn days of Easter and Pentecost.

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

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

The proper founder of the hermit life, the one chiefly instrumental in giving it its prevalence, was St. Anthony of Egypt. He is the most celebrated, the most original, and the most venerable representative of this abnormal and eccentric sanctity, the "patriarch of the monks," and the "childless father of an innumerable seed."308

Anthony sprang from a Christian and honorable Coptic family, and was born about 251, at Coma, on the borders of the Thebaid. Naturally quiet, contemplative, and reflective, he avoided the society of playmates, and despised all higher learning. He understood only his Coptic vernacular, and remained all his life ignorant of Grecian literature and secular science.309  But he diligently attended divine worship with his parents, and so carefully heard the Scripture lessons, that he retained them in memory.310  Memory was his library. He afterward made faithful, but only too literal use of single passages of Scripture, and began his discourse to the hermits with the very uncatholic-sounding declaration: "The holy Scriptures give us instruction enough."  In his eighteenth year, about 270, the death of his parents devolved on him the care of a younger sister and a considerable estate. Six months afterward he heard in the church, just as he was meditating on the apostles’ implicit following of Jesus, the word of the Lord to the rich young ruler: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me."311  This word was a voice of God, which determined his life. He divided his real estate, consisting of three hundred acres of fertile land, among the inhabitants of the village, and sold his personal property for the benefit of the poor, excepting a moderate reserve for the support of his sister. But when, soon afterward, he heard in the church the exhortation, "Take no thought for the morrow,"312 he distributed the remnant to the poor, and intrusted his sister to a society of pious virgins.313  He visited her only once after—a fact characteristic of the ascetic depreciation of natural ties.

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

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

In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with ever-increasing rigor. Their monotony was broken only by basket making, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fasting he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates; his drink, of water. Flesh and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, generally after sunset, and, like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted from two to five days. Friends, and wandering Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afford hospitality to travellers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.314  Sometimes the wild beasts of the forest destroyed his modest harvest, till he drove them away forever with the expostulation: "Why do you injure me, who have never done you the slightest harm?  Away with you all, in the name of the Lord, and never come into my neighborhood again."  He slept on bare ground, or at best on a pallet of straw; but often he watched the whole night through in prayer. The anointing of the body with oil he despised, and in later years never washed his feet; as if filthiness were an essential element of ascetic perfection. His whole wardrobe consisted of a hair shirt, a sheepskin, and a girdle. But notwithstanding all, he had a winning friendliness and cheerfulness in his face.

Conflicts with the devil and his hosts of demons were, as with other solitary saints, a prominent part of Anthony’s experience, and continued through all his life. The devil appeared to him in visions and dreams, or even in daylight, in all possible forms, now as a friend, now as a fascinating woman, now as a dragon, tempting him by reminding him of his former wealth, of his noble family, of the care due to his sister, by promises of wealth, honor, and renown, by exhibitions of the difficulty of virtue and the facility of vice, by unchaste thoughts and images, by terrible threatening of the dangers and punishments of the ascetic life. Once he struck the hermit so violently, Athanasius says, that a friend, who brought him bread, found him on the ground apparently dead. At another time he broke through the wall of his cave and filled the room with roaring lions, howling wolves, growling bears, fierce hyenas, crawling serpents and scorpions; but Anthony turned manfully toward the monsters, till a supernatural light broke in from the roof and dispersed them. His sermon, which he delivered to the hermits at their request, treats principally of these wars with demons, and gives also the key to the interpretation of them: "Fear not Satan and his angels. Christ has broken their power. The best weapon against them is faith and piety .... The presence of evil spirits reveals itself in perplexity, despondency, hatred of the ascetics, evil desires, fear of death .... They take the form answering to the spiritual state they find in us at the time.315  They are the reflex of our thoughts and fantasies. If thou art carnally minded, thou art their prey; but if thou rejoicest in the Lord and occupiest thyself with divine things, they are powerless .... The devil is afraid of fasting, of prayer, of humility and good works. His illusions soon vanish, when one arms himself with the sign of the cross."

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

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

Anthony distinguished himself above most of his countless disciples and successors, by his fresh originality of mind. Though uneducated and limited, he had sound sense and ready mother wit. Many of his striking answers and felicitous sentences have come down to us. When some heathen philosophers once visited him, he asked them: "Why do you give yourselves so much trouble to see a fool?"  They explained, perhaps ironically, that they took him rather for a wise man. He replied: "If you take me for a fool, your labor is lost; but if I am a wise man, you should imitate me, and be Christians, as I am."  At another time, when taunted with his ignorance, he asked: "Which is older and better, mind or learning?"  The mind, was the answer. "Then," said the hermit, "the mind can do without learning."  "My book," he remarked on a similar occasion, "is the whole creation, which lies open before me, and in which I can read the word of God as often as I will."  The blind church-teacher, Didymus, whom he met in Alexandria, he comforted with the words: "Trouble not thyself for the loss of the outward eye, with which even flies see; but rejoice in the possession of the spiritual eye, with which also angels behold the face of God, and receive his light."316  Even the emperor Constantine, with his sons, wrote to him as a spiritual father, and begged an answer from him. The hermit at first would not so much as receive the letter, since, in any case, being unable to write, he could not answer it, and cared as little for the great of this world as Diogenes for Alexander. When told that the emperor was a Christian, he dictated the answer: "Happy thou, that thou worshippest Christ. Be not proud of thy earthly power. Think of the future judgment, and know that Christ is the only true and eternal king. Practise justice and love for men, and care for the poor."  To his disciples he said on this occasion: "Wonder not that the emperor writes to me, for he is a man. Wonder much more that God has written the law for man, and has spoken to us by his own Son."

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

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

The whole Nicene age venerated in Anthony a model saint.317  This fact brings out most characteristically the vast difference between the ancient and the modern, the old Catholic and the evangelical Protestant conception of the nature of the Christian religion. The specifically Christian element in the life of Anthony, especially as measured by the Pauline standard, is very small. Nevertheless we can but admire the needy magnificence, the simple, rude grandeur of this hermit sanctity even in its aberration. Anthony concealed under his sheepskin a childlike humility, an amiable simplicity, a rare energy of will, and a glowing love to God, which maintained itself for almost ninety years in the absence of all the comforts and pleasures of natural life, and triumphed over all the temptations of the flesh. By piety alone, without the help of education or learning, he became one of the most remarkable and influential men in the history of the ancient church. Even heathen contemporaries could not withhold from him their reverence, and the celebrated philosopher Synesius, afterward a bishop, before his conversion reckoned Anthony among those rare men, in whom flashes of thought take the place of reasonings, and natural power of mind makes schooling needless.318

§ 36. Spread of Anchoretism. Hilarion.

The example of Anthony acted like magic upon his generation, and his biography by Athanasius, which was soon translated also into Latin, was a tract for the times. Chrysostom recommended it to all as instructive and edifying reading.319  Even Augustine, the most evangelical of the fathers, was powerfully affected by the reading of it in his decisive religious struggle, and was decided by it in his entire renunciation of the world.320

In a short time, still in the lifetime of Anthony, the deserts of Egypt, from Nitria, south of Alexandria, and the wilderness of Scetis, to Libya and the Thebaid, were peopled with anchorets and studded with cells. A mania for monasticism possessed Christendom, and seized the people of all classes like an epidemic. As martyrdom had formerly been, so now monasticism was, the quickest and surest way to renown upon earth and to eternal reward in heaven. This prospect, with which Athanasius concludes his life of Anthony, abundantly recompensed all self-denial and mightily stimulated pious ambition. The consistent recluse must continually increase his seclusion. No desert was too scorching, no rock too forbidding, no cliff too steep, no cave too dismal for the feet of these world-hating and man-shunning enthusiasts. Nothing was more common than to see from two to five hundred monks under the same abbot. It has been supposed, that in Egypt the number of anchorets and cenobites equalled the population of the cities.321  The natural contrast between the desert and the fertile valley of the Nile, was reflected in the moral contrast between the monastic life and the world.

The elder Macarius322 introduced the hermit life in the frightful desert of Scetis; Amun or Ammon,323 on the Nitrian mountain. The latter was married, but persuaded his bride, immediately after the nuptials, to live with him in the strictest abstinence. Before the end of the fourth century there were in Nitria alone, according to Sozomen, five thousand monks, who lived mostly in separate cells or laurae, and never spoke with one another except on Saturday and Sunday, when they assembled for common worship.

From Egypt the solitary life spread to the neighboring countries.

Hilarion, whose life Jerome has written graphically and at large,324 established it in the wilderness of Gaza, in Palestine and Syria. This saint attained among the anchorets of the fourth century an eminence second only to Anthony. He was the son of pagan parents, and grew up "as a rose among thorns."  He went to school in Alexandria, diligently attended church, and avoided the circus, the gladiatorial shows, and the theatre. He afterward lived two months with St. Anthony, and became his most celebrated disciple. After the death of his parents, he distributed his inheritance among his brothers and the poor, and reserved nothing, fearing the example of Ananias and Sapphira, and remembering the word of Christ: "Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."325  He then retired into the wilderness of Gaza, which was inhabited only by robbers and assassins; battled, like Anthony, with obscene dreams and other temptations of the devil; and so reduced his body—the "ass," which ought to have not barley, but chaff—with fastings and night watchings, that, while yet a youth of twenty years, he looked almost like a skeleton. He never ate before sunset. Prayers, psalm singing, Bible recitations, and basket weaving were his employment. His cell was only five feet high, lower than his own stature, and more like a sepulchre than a dwelling. He slept on the ground. He cut his hair only once a year, at Easter. The fame of his sanctity gradually attracted hosts of admirers (once, ten thousand), so that he had to change his residence several times, and retired to Sicily, then to Dalmatia, and at last to the island of Cyprus, where he died in 371, in his eightieth year. His legacy, a book of the Gospels and a rude mantle, he made to his friend Hesychius, who took his corpse home to Palestine, and deposited it in the cloister of Majumas. The Cyprians consoled themselves over their loss, with the thought that they possessed the spirit of the saint. Jerome ascribes to him all manner of visions and miraculous cures.

§ 37. St. Symeon and the Pillar Saints.

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

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

It is unnecessary to recount the lives of other such anchorets; since the same features, even to unimportant details, repeat themselves in all.326  But in the fifth century a new and quite original path327 was broken by Symeon, the father of the Stylites or pillar saints, who spent long years, day and night, summer and winter, rain and sunshine, frost and heat, standing on high, unsheltered pillars, in prayer and penances, and made the way to heaven for themselves so passing hard, that one knows not whether to wonder at their unexampled self-denial, or to pity their ignorance of the gospel salvation. On this giddy height the anchoretic asceticism reached its completion.

St. Symeon the Stylite, originally a shepherd on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, when a boy of thirteen years, was powerfully affected by the beatitudes, which he heard read in the church, and betook himself to a cloister. He lay several days, without eating or drinking, before the threshold, and begged to be admitted as the meanest servant of the house. He accustomed himself to eat only once a week, on Sunday. During Lent he even went through the whole forty days without any food; a fact almost incredible even for a tropical climate.328  The first attempt of this kind brought him to the verge of death; but his constitution conformed itself, and when Theodoret visited him, he had solemnized six and twenty Lent seasons by total abstinence, and thus surpassed Moses, Elias, and even Christ, who never fasted so but once. Another of his extraordinary inflections was to lace his body so tightly that the cord pressed through to the bones, and could be cut off only with the most terrible pains. This occasioned his dismissal from the cloister. He afterward spent some time as a hermit upon a mountain, with an iron chain upon his feet, and was visited there by admiring and curious throngs. When this failed to satisfy him, he invented, in 423, a new sort of holiness, and lived, some two days’ journey (forty miles) east of Antioch, for six and thirty years, until his death, upon a pillar, which at the last was nearly forty cubits high;329 for the pillar was raised in proportion as he approached heaven and perfection. Here he could never lie nor sit, but only stand, or lean upon a post (probably a banister), or devoutly bow; in which last posture he almost touched his feet with his head—so flexible had his back been made by fasting. A spectator once counted in one day no less than twelve hundred and forty-four such genuflexions of the saint before the Almighty, and then gave up counting. He wore a covering of the skins of beasts, and a chain about his neck. Even the holy sacrament he took upon his pillar. There St. Symeon stood many long and weary days, and weeks, and months, and years, exposed to the scorching sun, the drenching rain, the crackling frost, the howling storm, living a life of daily death and martyrdom, groaning under the load of sin, never attaining to the true comfort and peace of soul which is derived from a child-like trust in Christ’s infinite merits, earnestly striving after a superhuman holiness, and looking to a glorious reward in heaven, and immortal fame on earth. Alfred Tennyson makes him graphically describe his experience in a monologue to God:

’Although I be the basest of mankind,

From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,

Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet

For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,

I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamor, moan, and sob

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer:

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

* * * * * *

Oh take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.

Pain heaped ten hundredfold to this, were still

Less burthen, by ten hundredfold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crushed

My spirit flat before Thee.

O Lord, Lord,

Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,

For I was strong and hale of body then;

And though my teeth, which now are dropt away,

Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard

Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon,

I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound

Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw

An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.

Now am I feeble grown: my end draws nigh—

I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,

So that I scarce can hear the people hum

About the column’s base; and almost blind,

And scarce can recognize the fields I know.

And both my thighs are rotted with the dew,

Yet cease I not to clamor and to cry,

While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone:

Have mercy, mercy; take away my sin."

Yet Symeon was not only concerned about his own salvation. People streamed from afar to witness this standing wonder of the age. He spoke to all classes with the same friendliness, mildness, and love; only women he never suffered to come within the wall which surrounded his pillar. From this original pulpit, as a mediator between heaven and earth, he preached repentance twice a day to the astonished spectators, settled controversies, vindicated the orthodox faith, extorted laws even from an emperor, healed the sick wrought miracles, and converted thousands of heathen Ishmaelites, Iberians, Armenians, and Persians to Christianity, or at least to the Christian name. All this the celebrated Theodoret relates as an eyewitness during the lifetime of the saint. He terms him the great wonder of the world,330 and compares him to a candle on a candlestick, and to the sun itself, which sheds its rays on every side. He asks the objector to this mode of life to consider that God often uses very striking means to arouse the negligent, as the history of the prophets shows;331 and concludes his narrative with the remark: "Should the saint live longer, he may do yet greater wonders, for he is a universal ornament and honor of religion."

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

Even before his death, Symeon enjoyed the unbounded admiration of Christians and heathens, of the common people, of the kings of Persia, and of the emperors Theodosius II., Leo, and Marcian, who begged his blessing and his counsel. No wonder, that, with all his renowned humility, he had to struggle with the temptations of spiritual pride. Once an angel appeared to him in a vision, with a chariot of fire, to convey him, like Elijah, to heaven, because the blessed spirits longed for him. He was already stepping into the chariot with his right foot, which on this occasion he sprained (as Jacob his thigh), when the phantom of Satan was chased away by the sign of the cross. Perhaps this incident, which the Acta Sanctorum gives, was afterward invented, to account for his sore, and to illustrate the danger of self-conceit. Hence also the pious monk Nilus, with good reason, reminded the ostentatious pillar saints of the proverb: "He that exalteth himself shall be abased."332

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

§ 38. Pachomius and the Cloister life.

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

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

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

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

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

Pachomius, after his conversion never ate a full meal, and for fifteen years slept sitting on a stone. Tradition ascribes to him all sorts of miracles, even the gift of tongues and perfect dominion over nature, so that he trod without harm on serpents and scorpions, and crossed the Nile on the backs of crocodiles!333  Soon after Pachomius, fifty monasteries arose on the Nitrian mountain, in no respect inferior to those in the Thebaid. They maintained seven bakeries for the benefit of the anchorets in the neighboring Libyan desert, and gave attention also, at least in later days, to theological studies; as the valuable manuscripts recently discovered there evince.

From Egypt the cloister life spread with the rapidity of the irresistible spirit of the age, over the entire Christian East. The most eminent fathers of the Greek church were either themselves monks for a time, or at all events friends and patrons of monasticism. Ephraim propagated it in Mesopotamia; Eustathius of Sebaste in Armenia and Paphlagonia; Basil the Great in Pontus and Cappadocia. The latter provided his monasteries and nunneries with clergy, and gave them an improved rule, which, before his death (379), was accepted by some eighty thousand monks, and translated by Rufinus into Latin. He sought to unite the virtues of the anchorite and coenobite life, and to make the institution useful to the church by promoting the education of youth, and also (as Athanasius designed before him) by combating Arianism among the people.334  He and his friend Gregory Nazianzen were the first to unite scientific theological studies with the ascetic exercises of solitude. Chrysostom wrote three books in praise and vindication of the monastic life, and exhibits it in general in its noblest aspect.

In the beginning of the fifth century, Eastern monasticism was most worthily represented by the elder Nilus of Sinai, a pupil and venerator of Chrysostom, and a copious ascetic writer, who retired with his son from a high civil office in Constantinople to Mount Sinai, while his wife, with a daughter, travelled to an Egyptian cloister;335 and by the abbot Isidore, of Pelusium, on the principal eastern mouth of the Nile, from whom we have two thousand epistles.336  The writings of these two men show a rich spiritual experience, and an extended and fertile field of labor and usefulness in their age and generation.

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

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

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

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

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

3. The Euchites or Messalians,337 also called Enthusiasts, were roaming mendicant monks in Mesopotamia and Syria (dating from 360), who conceived the Christian life as an unintermitted prayer, despised all physical labor, the moral law, and the sacraments, and boasted themselves perfect. They taught, that every man brings an evil demon with him into the world, which can only be driven away by prayer; then the Holy Ghost comes into the soul, liberates it from all the bonds of sense, and raises it above the need of instruction and the means of grace. The gospel history they declared a mere allegory. But they concealed their pantheistic mysticism and antinomianism under external conformity to the Catholic church. When their principles, toward the end of the fourth century, became known, the persecution of both the ecclesiastical and the civil authority fell upon them. Yet they perpetuated themselves to the seventh century, and reappeared in the Euchites and Bogomiles of the middle age.

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

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

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

In the Latin church, in virtue partly of the climate, partly of the national character,338 the monastic life took a much milder form, but assumed greater variety, and found a larger field of usefulness than in the Greek. It produced no pillar saints, nor other such excesses of ascetic heroism, but was more practical instead, and an important instrument for the cultivation of the soil and the diffusion of Christianity and civilization among the barbarians.339  Exclusive contemplation was exchanged for alternate contemplation and labor. "A working monk," says Cassian, "is plagued by one devil, an inactive monk by a host."  Yet it must not be forgotten that the most eminent representatives of the Eastern monasticism recommended manual labor and studies; and that the Eastern monks took a very lively, often rude and stormy part in theological controversies. And on the other hand, there were Western monks who, like Martin of Tours, regarded labor as disturbing contemplation.

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

Ambrose, whose sister, Marcellina, was among the first Roman nuns, established a monastery in Milan,340 one of the first in Italy, and with the warmest zeal encouraged celibacy even against the will of parents; insomuch that the mothers of Milan kept their daughters out of the way of his preaching; whilst from other quarters, even from Mauritania, virgins flocked to him to be consecrated to the solitary life.341  The coasts and small islands of Italy were gradually studded with cloisters.342

Augustine, whose evangelical principles of the free grace of God as the only ground of salvation and peace were essentially inconsistent with the more Pelagian theory of the monastic life, nevertheless went with the then reigning spirit of the church in this respect, and led, with his clergy, a monk-like life in voluntary poverty and celibacy,343 after the pattern, as he thought, of the primitive church of Jerusalem; but with all his zealous commendation he could obtain favor for monasticism in North Africa only among the liberated slaves and the lower classes.344  He viewed it in its noblest aspect, as a life of undivided surrender to God, and undisturbed occupation with spiritual and eternal things. But he acknowledged also its abuses; he distinctly condemned the vagrant, begging monks, like the Circumcelliones and Gyrovagi, and wrote a book (De opere monachorum) against the monastic aversion to labor.

Monasticism was planted in Gaul by Martin of Tours, whose life and miracles were described in fluent, pleasing language by his disciple, Sulpitius Severus,345 a few years after his death. This celebrated saint, the patron of fields, was born in Pannonia (Hungary), of pagan parents. He was educated in Italy, and served three years, against his will, as a soldier under Constantius and Julian the Apostate. Even at that time he showed an uncommon degree of temperance, humility, and love. He often cleaned his servant’s shoes, and once cut his only cloak in two with his sword, to clothe a naked beggar with half; and the next night he saw Christ in a dream with the half cloak, and plainly heard him say to the angels: "Behold, Martin, who is yet only a catechumen, hath clothed me."346  He was baptized in his eighteenth year; converted his mother; lived as a hermit in Italy; afterward built a monastery in the vicinity of Poictiers (the first in France); destroyed many idol temples, and won great renown as a saint and a worker of miracles. About the year 370 he was unanimously elected by the people, against his wish, bishop of Tours on the Loire, but in his episcopal office maintained his strict monastic mode of life, and established a monastery beyond the Loire, where he was soon surrounded with eighty monks. He had little education, but a natural eloquence, much spiritual experience, and unwearied zeal. Sulpitius Severus places him above all the Eastern monks of whom he knew, and declares his merit to be beyond all expression. "Not an hour passed," says he,347 "in which Martin did not pray .... No one ever saw him angry, or gloomy, or merry. Ever the same, with a countenance full of heavenly serenity, he seemed to be raised above the infirmities of man. There was nothing in his mouth but Christ; nothing in his heart but piety, peace, and sympathy. He used to weep for the sins of his enemies, who reviled him with poisoned tongues when he was absent and did them no harm .... Yet he had very few persecutors, except among the bishops."  The biographer ascribes to him wondrous conflicts with the devil, whom he imagined he saw bodily and tangibly present in all possible shapes. He tells also of visions, miraculous cures, and even, what no oriental anchoret could boast, three instances of restoration of the dead to life, two before and one after his accession to the bishopric;348 and he assures us that he has omitted the greater part of the miracles which had come to his ears, lest he should weary the reader; but he several times intimates that these were by no means universally credited, even by monks of the same cloister. His piety was characterized by a union of monastic humility with clerical arrogance. At a supper at the court of the tyrannical emperor Maximus in Trier, he handed the goblet of wine, after he himself had drunk of it, first to his presbyter, thus giving him precedence of the emperor.349  The empress on this occasion showed him an idolatrous veneration, even preparing the meal, laying the cloth, and standing as a servant before him, like Martha before the Lord.350  More to the bishop’s honor was his protest against the execution of the Priscillianists in Treves. Martin died in 397 or 400: his funeral was attended by two thousand monks, besides many nuns and a great multitude of people; and his grave became one of the most frequented centres of pilgrimage in France.

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

§ 41. St. Jerome as a Monk.

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

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

The most zealous promoter of the monastic life among the church fathers was Jerome, the connecting link between Eastern and Western learning and religion. His life belongs almost with equal right to the history of theology and the history of monasticism. Hence the church art generally represents him as a penitent in a reading or writing posture, with a lion and a skull, to denote the union of the literary and anchoretic modes of life. He was the first learned divine who not only recommended but actually embraced the monastic mode of life, and his example exerted a great influence in making monasticism available for the promotion of learning. To rare talents and attainments,351 indefatigable activity of mind, ardent faith, immortal merit in the translation and interpretation of the Bible, and earnest zeal for ascetic piety, he united so great vanity and ambition, such irritability and bitterness of temper, such vehemence of uncontrolled passion, such an intolerant and persecuting spirit, and such inconstancy of conduct, that we find ourselves alternately attracted and repelled by his character, and now filled with admiration for his greatness, now with contempt or pity for his weakness.

Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus was born at Stridon,352 on the borders of Dalmatia, not far from Aquileia, between the years 331 and 342.353  He was the son of wealthy Christian parents, and was educated in Rome under the direction of the celebrated heathen grammarian Donatus, and the rhetorician Victorinus. He read with great diligence and profit the classic poets, orators, and philosophers, and collected a considerable library. On Sundays he visited, with Bonosus and other young friends, the subterranean graves of the martyrs, which made an indelible impression upon him. Yet he was not exempt from the temptations of a great and corrupt city, and he lost his chastity, as he himself afterward repeatedly acknowledged with pain.

About the year 370, whether before or after his literary tour to Treves and Aquileia is uncertain, but at all events in his later youth, he received baptism at Rome and resolved thenceforth to devote himself wholly, in rigid abstinence, to the service of the Lord. In the first zeal of his conversion he renounced his love for the classics, and applied himself to the study of the hitherto distasteful Bible. In a morbid ascetic frame, he had, a few years later, that celebrated dream, in which he was summoned before the judgment seat of Christ, and as a heathen Ciceronian,354 so severely reprimanded and scourged, that even the angels interceded for him from sympathy with his youth, and he himself solemnly vowed never again to take worldly books into his hands. When he woke, he still felt the stripes, which, as he thought, not his heated fancy, but the Lord himself had inflicted upon him. Hence he warns his female friend Eustochium, to whom several years afterward (A.D. 384) he recounted this experience, to avoid all profane reading: "What have light and darkness, Christ and Belial (2 Cor. vi. 14), the Psalms and Horace, the Gospels and Virgil, the Apostles and Cicero, to do with one another? ... We cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the demons at the same time."355  But proper as this warning may be against overrating classical scholarship, Jerome himself, in his version of the Bible and his commentaries, affords the best evidence of the inestimable value of linguistic and antiquarian knowledge, when devoted to the service of religion. That oath, also, at least in later life, he did not strictly keep. On the contrary, he made the monks copy the dialogues of Cicero, and explained Virgil at Bethlehem, and his writings abound in recollections and quotations of the classic authors. When Rufinus of Aquileia, at first his warm friend, but afterward a bitter enemy, cast up to him this inconsistency and breach of a solemn vow, he resorted to the evasion that he could not obliterate from his memory what he had formerly read; as if it were not so sinful to cite a heathen author as to read him. With more reason he asserted, that all was a mere dream, and a dream vow was not binding. He referred him to the prophets, "who teach that dreams are vain, and not worthy of faith."  Yet was this dream afterward made frequent use of, as Erasmus laments, to cover monastic obscurantism.

After his baptism, Jerome divided his life between the East and the West, between ascetic discipline and literary labor. He removed from Rome to Antioch with a few friends and his library, visited the most celebrated anchorets, attended the exegetical lectures of the younger Apollinaris in Antioch, and then (374) spent some time as an ascetic in the dreary Syrian desert of Chalcis. Here, like so many other hermits, he underwent a grevious struggle with sensuality, which he described ten years after with indelicate minuteness in a long letter to his virgin friend Eustochium.356  In spite of his starved and emaciated body, his fancy tormented him with wild images of Roman banquets and dances of women; showing that the monastic seclusion from the world was by no means proof against the temptations of the flesh and the devil. Helpless he cast himself at the feet of Jesus, wet them with tears of repentance, and subdued the resisting flesh by a week of fasting and by the dry study of Hebrew grammar (which, according to a letter to Rusticus,357 he was at that time learning from a converted Jew), until he found peace, and thought himself transported to the choirs of the angels in heaven. In this period probably falls the dream mentioned above, and the composition of several ascetic writings, full of heated eulogy of the monastic life.358  His biographies of distinguished anchorets, however, are very pleasantly and temperately written.359  He commends monastic seclusion even against the will of parents; interpreting the word of the Lord about forsaking father and mother, as if monasticism and Christianity were the same. "Though thy mother"—he writes, in 373, to his friend Heliodorus, who had left him in the midst of his journey to the Syrian desert—"with flowing hair and rent garments, should show thee the breasts which have nourished thee; though thy father should lie upon the threshold; yet depart thou, treading over thy father, and fly with dry eyes to the standard of the cross. This is the only religion of its kind, in this matter to be cruel .... The love of God and the fear of hell easily, rend the bonds of the household asunder. The holy Scripture indeed enjoins obedience to parents; but he who loves them more than Christ, loses his soul .... O desert, where the flowers of Christ are blooming!. O solitude, where the stones for the new Jerusalem are prepared!  O retreat, which rejoices in the friendship of God!  What doest thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world?  How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeon of cities?  Believe me, I see here more of the light."360  The eloquent appeal, however, failed of the desired effect; Heliodorus entered the teaching order and became a bishop.

The active and restless spirit of Jerome soon brought him again upon the public stage, and involved him in all the doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversies of those controversial times. He received the ordination of presbyter from the bishop Paulinus in Antioch, without taking charge of a congregation. He preferred the itinerant life of a monk and a student to a fixed office, and about 380 journeyed to Constantinople, where he heard the anti-Arian sermons of the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, and translated the Chronicle of Eusebius and the homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In 382, on account of the Meletian schism, he returned to Rome with Paulinus and Epiphanius. Here he came into close connection with the bishop, Damasus, as his theological adviser and ecclesiastical secretary,361 and was led by him into new exegetical labors, particularly the revision of the Latin version of the Bible, which he completed at a later day in the East.

At the same time he labored in Rome with the greatest zeal, by mouth and pen, in the cause of monasticism, which had hitherto gained very little foothold there, and met with violent opposition even among the clergy. He had his eye mainly upon the most wealthy and honorable classes of the decayed Roman society, and tried to induce the descendants of the Scipios, the Gracchi, the Marcelli, the Camilli, the Anicii to turn their sumptuous villas into monastic retreats, and to lead a life of self-sacrifice and charity. He met with great success. "The old patrician races, which founded Rome, which had governed her during all her period of splendor and liberty, and which overcame and conquered the world, had expiated for four centuries, under the atrocious yoke of the Caesars, all that was most hard and selfish in the glory of their fathers. Cruelly humiliated, disgraced, and decimated during that long servitude, by the masters whom degenerate Rome had given herself, they found at last in Christian life, such as was practised by the monks, the dignity of sacrifice and the emancipation of the soul. These sons of the old Romans threw themselves into it with the magnanimous fire and persevering energy which had gained for their ancestors the empire of the world. ’Formerly,’ says St. Jerome, ’according to the testimony of the apostles, there were few rich, few noble, few powerful among the Christians. Now it is no longer so. Not only among the Christians, but among the monks are to be found a multitude of the wise, the noble, and the rich.’... The monastic institution offered them a field of battle where the struggles and victories of their ancestors could be renewed and surpassed for a loftier cause, and over enemies more redoubtable. The great men whose memory hovered still over degenerate Rome had contended only with men, and subjugated only their bodies; their descendants undertook to strive with devils, and to conquer souls .... God called them to be the ancestors of a new people, gave them a new empire to found, and permitted them to bury and transfigure the glory of their forefathers in the bosom of the spiritual regeneration of the world."362

Most of these distinguished patrician converts of Jerome were women—such widows as Marcella, Albinia, Furia, Salvina, Fabiola, Melania, and the most illustrious of all, Paula, and her family; or virgins, as Eustochium, Apella, Marcellina, Asella, Felicitas, and Demetrias. He gathered them as a select circle around him; he expounded to them the Holy Scriptures, in which some of these Roman ladies were very well read; he answered their questions of conscience; he incited them to celibate life, lavish beneficence, and enthusiastic asceticism; and flattered their spiritual vanity by extravagant praises. He was the oracle, biographer, admirer, and eulogist of these holy women, who constituted the spiritual nobility of Catholic Rome. Even the senator Pammachius, son in-law to Paula and heir to her fortune, gave his goods to the poor, exchanged the purple for the cowl, exposed himself to the mockery of his colleagues, and became, in the flattering language of Jerome, the general in chief of Roman monks, the first of monks in the first of cities.363  Jerome considered second marriage incompatible with genuine holiness; even depreciated first marriage, except so far as it was a nursery of brides of Christ; warned Eustochium against all intercourse with married women; and hesitated not to call the mother of a bride of Christ, like Paula, a "mother-in-law of God."364

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

In Bethlehem he presided over a monastery till his death, built a hospital for all strangers except heretics, prosecuted his literary studies without cessation, wrote several commentaries, and finished his improved Latin version of the Bible—the noblest monument of his life—but entangled himself in violent literary controversies, not only with opponents of the church orthodoxy like Helvidius (against whom he had appeared before, in 384), Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius, but also with his long-tried friend Rufinus, and even with Augustine.365  Palladius says, his jealousy could tolerate no saint beside himself, and drove many pious monks away from Bethlehem. He complained of the crowds of monks whom his fame attracted to Bethlehem.366  The remains of the Roman nobility, too, ruined by the sack of Rome, fled to him for food and shelter. At the last his repose was disturbed by incursions of the barbarian Huns and the heretical Pelagians. He died in 419 or 420, of fever, at a great age. His remains were afterward brought to the Roman basilica of Maria Maggiore, but were exhibited also and superstitiously venerated in several copies in Florence, Prague, Clugny, Paris, and the Escurial.367

The Roman church has long since assigned him one of the first places among her standard teachers and canonical saints. Yet even some impartial Catholic historians venture to admit and disapprove his glaring inconsistencies and violent passions. The Protestant love of truth inclines to the judgment, that Jerome was indeed an accomplished and most serviceable scholar and a zealous enthusiast for all which his age counted holy, but lacking in calm self-control and proper depth of mind and character, and that he reflected, with the virtues, the failings also of his age and of the monastic system. It must be said to his credit, however, that with all his enthusiastic zeal and admiration for monasticism, he saw with a keen eye and exposed with unsparing hand the false monks and nuns, and painted in lively colors the dangers of melancholy, hypochondria, the hypocrisy and spiritual pride, to which the institution was exposed.368

§ 42. St. Paula.

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

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

She was born in 347, of the renowned stock of the Scipios and Gracchi and Paulus Aemilius,369 and was already a widow of six and thirty years, and the mother of five children, when, under the influence of Jerome, she renounced all the wealth and honors of the world, and betook herself to the most rigorous ascetic life. Rumor circulated suspicion, which her spiritual guide, however, in a letter to Asella, answered with indignant rhetoric: "Was there, then, no other matron in Rome, who could have conquered my heart, but that one, who was always mourning and fasting, who abounded in dirt,370 who had become almost blind with weeping, who spent whole nights in prayer, whose song was the Psalms, whose conversation was the gospel, whose joy was abstemiousness, whose life was fasting?  Could no other have pleased me, but that one, whom I have never seen eat?  Nay, verily, after I had begun to revere her as her chastity deserved, should all virtues have at once forsaken me?"  He afterward boasts of her, that she knew the Scriptures almost entirely by memory; she even learned Hebrew, that she might sing the psalter with him in the original; and continually addressed exegetical questions to him, which he himself could answer only in part.

Repressing the sacred feelings of a mother, she left her daughter Ruffina and her little son Toxotius, in spite of their prayers and tears, in the city, of Rome,371 met Jerome in Antioch, and made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt. With glowing devotion, she knelt before the rediscovered cross, as if the Lord were still hanging upon it; she kissed the stone of the resurrection which the angel rolled away; licked with thirsty tongue the pretended tomb of Jesus, and shed tears of joy as she entered the stable and beheld the manger of Bethlehem. In Egypt she penetrated into the desert of Nitria, prostrated herself at the feet of the hermits, and then returned to the holy land and settled permanently in the birthplace of the Saviour. She founded there a monastery for Jerome, whom she supported, and three nunneries, in which she spent twenty years as abbess, until 404.

She denied herself flesh and wine, performed, with her daughter Eustochium, the meanest services, and even in sickness slept on the bare ground in a hair shirt, or spent the whole night in prayer. "I must," said she, "disfigure my face, which I have often, against the command of God, adorned with paint; torment the body, which has participated in many idolatries; and atone for long laughing by constant weeping."  Her liberality knew no bounds. She wished to die in beggary, and to be buried in a shroud which did not belong to her. She left to her daughter (she died in 419) a multitude of debts, which she had contracted at a high rate of interest for benevolent purposes.372

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

§ 43. Benedict of Nursia.

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

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

Benedict was born of the illustrious house of Anicius, at Nursia (now Norcia) in Umbria, about the year 480, at the time when the political and social state of Europe was distracted and dismembered, and literature, morals, and religion seemed to be doomed to irremediable ruin. He studied in Rome, but so early as his fifteenth year he fled from the corrupt society of his fellow students, and spent three years in seclusion in a dark, narrow, and inaccessible grotto at Subiaco.373  A neighboring monk, Romanus, furnished him from time to time his scanty food, letting it down by a cord, with a little bell, the sound of which announced to him the loaf of bread. He there passed through the usual anchoretic battles with demons, and by prayer and ascetic exercises attained a rare power over nature. At one time, Pope Gregory tells us, the allurements of voluptuousness so strongly tempted his imagination that he was on the point of leaving his retreat in pursuit of a beautiful woman of previous acquaintance; but summoning up his courage, he took off his vestment of skins and rolled himself naked on thorns and briers, near his cave, until the impure fire of sensual passion was forever extinguished. Seven centuries later, St. Francis of Assisi planted on that spiritual battle field two rose trees, which grew and survived the Benedictine thorns and briers. He gradually became known, and was at first taken for a wild beast by the surrounding shepherds, but afterward reverenced as a saint.

After this period of hermit life he began his labors in behalf of the monastery proper. In that mountainous region he established in succession twelve cloisters, each with twelve monks and a superior, himself holding the oversight of all. The persecution of an unworthy priest caused him, however, to leave Subiaco and retire to a wild but picturesque mountain district in the Neapolitan province, upon the boundaries of Samnium and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Christianity by his preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difficulties, founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of Monte Cassino,374 the alma mater and capital of his order. Here he labored fourteen years, till his death. Although never ordained to the priesthood, his life there was rather that of a missionary and apostle than of a solitary. He cultivated the soil, fed the poor, healed the sick, preached to the neighboring population, directed the young monks, who in increasing numbers flocked to him, and organized the monastic life upon a fixed method or rule, which he himself conscientiously observed. His power over the hearts, and the veneration in which he was held, is illustrated by the visit of Totila, in 542, the barbarian king, the victor of the Romans and master of Italy, who threw himself on his face before the saint, accepted his reproof and exhortations, asked his blessing, and left a better man, but fell after ten years’ reign, as Benedict had predicted, in a great battle with the Graeco-Roman army under Narses. Benedict died, after partaking of the holy communion, praying, in standing posture, at the foot of the altar, on the 21st of March, 543, and was buried by the side of his sister, Scholastica, who had established, a nunnery near Monte Cassino and died a few weeks before him. They met only once a year, on the side of the mountain, for prayer and pious conversation. On the day of his departure, two monks saw in a vision a shining pathway of stars leading from Monte Cassino to heaven, and heard a voice, that by this road Benedict, the well beloved of God, had ascended to heaven.

His credulous biographer, Pope Gregory I., in the second book of his Dialogues, ascribes to him miraculous prophecies and healings, and even a raising of the dead.375  With reference to his want of secular culture and his spiritual knowledge, he calls him a learned ignorant and an unlettered sage.376  At all events he possessed the genius of a lawgiver, and holds the first place among the founders of monastic orders, though his person and life are much less interesting than those of a Bernard of Clairvaux, a Francis of Assisi, and an Ignatius of Loyola.377

§ 44. The Rule of St. Benedict.

The Regula Benedicti has been frequently edited and annotated, best by Holstenius: Codex reg. Monast. tom. i. p. 111–135; by Dom Marténe: Commentarius in regulam S. Benedicti literalis, moralis, historicus, Par. 1690, in 4to.; by Dom Calmet, Par. 1734, 2 vols.; and by Dom Charles Brandes (Benedictine of Einsiedeln), in 3 vols., Einsiedeln and New York, 1857. Gieseler gives the most important articles in his Ch. H. Bd. i. AbtheiI. 2, § 119. Comp. also Montalembert, l.c. ii. 39 sqq.

The rule of St. Benedict, on which his fame rests, forms an epoch in the history of monasticism. In a short time it superseded all contemporary and older rules of the kind, and became the immortal code of the most illustrious branch of the monastic army, and the basis of the whole Roman Catholic cloister life.378  It consists of a preface or prologue, and a series of moral, social, liturgical, and penal ordinances, in seventy-three chapters. It shows a true knowledge of human nature, the practical wisdom of Rome, and adaptation to Western customs; it combines simplicity with completeness, strictness with gentleness, humility with courage, and gives the whole cloister life a fixed unity and compact organization, which, like the episcopate, possessed an unlimited versatility and power of expansion. It made every cloister an ecclesiola in ecclesia, reflecting the relation of the bishop to his charge, the monarchical principle of authority on the democratic basis of the equality of the brethren, though claiming a higher degree of perfection than could be realized in the great secular church. For the rude and undisciplined world of the middle age, the Benedictine rule furnished a wholesome course of training and a constant stimulus to the obedience, self-control, order, and industry which were indispensable to the regeneration and healthy growth of social life.379

The spirit of the rule may be judged from the following sentences of the prologus, which contains pious exhortations: "Having thus," he says, "my brethren, asked of the Lord who shall dwell in his tabernacle, we have heard the precepts prescribed to such a one. If we fulfil these conditions, we shall be heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Let us then prepare our hearts and bodies to fight under a holy obedience to these precepts; and if it is not always possible for nature to obey, let us ask the Lord that he would deign to give us the succor of his grace. Would we avoid the pains of hell and attain eternal life, while there is still time, while we are still in this mortal body, and while the light of this life is bestowed upon us for that purpose, let us run and strive so as to reap an eternal reward. We must then form a school of divine servitude, in which, we trust, nothing too heavy or rigorous will be established. But if, in conformity with right and justice, we should exercise a little severity for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity, beware of fleeing under the impulse of terror from the way of salvation, which cannot but have a hard beginning. When a man has walked for some time in obedience and faith, his heart will expand, and he will run with the unspeakable sweetness of love in the way of God’s commandments. May he grant that, never straying from the instruction of the Master, and persevering in his doctrine in the monastery until death, we may share by patience in the sufferings of Christ, and be worthy to share together his kingdom."380  The leading provisions of this rule are as follows:

At the head of each society stands an abbot, who is elected by the monks, and, with their consent, appoints a provost (praepositus), and, when the number of the brethren requires, deans over the several divisions (decaniae), as assistants. He governs, in Christ’s stead, by authority and example, and is to his cloister, what the bishop is to his diocese. In the more weighty matters he takes the congregation of the brethren into consultation; in ordinary affairs only the older members. The formal entrance into the cloister must be preceded by a probation of novitiate of one year (subsequently it was made three years), that no one might prematurely or rashly take the solemn step. If the novice repented his resolution, he could leave the cloister without hindrance; if he adhered to it, he was, at the close of his probation, subjected to an examination in presence of the abbot and the monks, and then, appealing to the saints, whose relics were in the cloister, he laid upon the altar of the chapel the irrevocable vow, written or at least subscribed by his own hand, and therewith cut off from himself forever all return to the world.

From this important arrangement the cloister received its stability and the whole monastic institution derived additional earnestness, solidity, and permanence.

The vow was threefold, comprising stabilitas, perpetual adherence to the monastic order; conversio morum, especially voluntary poverty and chastity, which were always regarded as the very essence of monastic piety under all its forms; and obedientia coram Deo et sanctis ejus, absolute obedience to the abbot, as the representative of God and Christ. This obedience is the cardinal virtue of a monk.381

The life of the cloister consisted of a judicious alternation of spiritual and bodily exercises. This is the great excellence of the rule of Benedict, who proceeded here upon the true principle, that idleness is the mortal enemy of the soul and the workshop of the devil.382  Seven hours were to be devoted to prayer, singing of psalms, and meditation;383 from two to three hours, especially on Sunday, to religious reading; and from six to seven hours to manual labor in doors or in the field, or, instead of this, to the training of children, who were committed to the cloister by their parents (oblati).384

Here was a starting point for the afterward celebrated cloister schools, and for that attention to literary pursuits, which, though entirely foreign to the uneducated Benedict and his immediate successors, afterward became one of the chief ornaments of his order, and in many cloisters took the place of manual labor.

In other respects the mode of life was to be simple, without extreme rigor, and confined to strictly necessary things. Clothing consisted of a tunic with a black cowl (whence the name: Black Friars); the material to be determined by the climate and season. On the two weekly fast days, and from the middle of September to Easter, one meal was to suffice for the day. Each monk is allowed daily a pound of bread and pulse, and, according to the Italian custom, half a flagon (hemina) of wine; though he is advised to abstain from the wine, if he can do so without injury to his health. Flesh is permitted only to the weak and sick,385 who were to be treated with special care. During the meal some edifying piece was read, and silence enjoined. The individual monk knows no personal property, not even his simple dress as such; and the fruits of his labor go into the common treasury. He should avoid all contact with the world, as dangerous to the soul, and therefore every cloister should be so arranged, as to be able to carry on even the arts and trades necessary for supplying its wants.386  Hospitality and other works of love are especially commended.

The penalties for transgression of the rule are, first, private admonition, then exclusion from the fellowship of prayer, next exclusion from fraternal intercourse, and finally expulsion from the cloister, after which, however, restoration is possible, even to the third time.

§ 45. The Benedictines. Cassiodorus.

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

Benedict himself established a second cloister in the vicinity of Terracina, and two of his favorite disciples, Placidus and St. Maurus,387 introduced the "holy rule," the one into Sicily, the other into France. Pope Gregory the Great, himself at one time a Benedictine monk, enhanced its prestige, and converted the Anglo-Saxons to the Roman Christian faith, by Benedictine monks. Gradually the rule found so general acceptance both in old and in new institutions, that in the time of Charlemagne it became a question, whether there were any monks at all, who were not Benedictines. The order, it is true, has degenerated from time to time, through the increase of its wealth and the decay of its discipline, but its fostering care of religion, of humane studies, and of the general civilization of Europe, from the tilling of the soil to the noblest learning, has given it an honorable place in history and won immortal praise. He who is familiar with the imposing and venerable tomes of the Benedictine editions of the Fathers, their thoroughly learned prefaces, biographies, antiquarian dissertations, and indexes, can never think of the order of the Benedictines without sincere regard and gratitude.

The patronage of learning, however, as we have already said, was not within the design of the founder or his rule. The joining of this to the cloister life is duel if we leave out of view the learned monk Jerome, to Cassiodorus, who in 538 retired from the honors and cares of high civil office, in the Gothic monarchy of Italy,388 to a monastery founded by himself at Vivarium389 (Viviers), in Calabria in Lower Italy. Here he spent nearly thirty years as monk and abbot, collected a large library, encouraged the monks to copy and to study the Holy Scriptures, the works of the church fathers, and even the ancient classics, and wrote for them several literary and theological text-books, especially his treatise De institutione divinarum literarum, a kind of elementary encyclopaedia, which was the code of monastic education for many generations. Vivarium at one time almost rivalled Monte Cassino, and Cassiodorus won the honorary title of the restorer of knowledge in the sixth century.390

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

§ 46. Opposition to Monasticism. Jovinian.

I. Chrysostomus: Pro;" tou;" polemou'vta" toi'" ejpi; to; monavzein ejnavgousin (a vindication of monasticism against its opponents, in three books). Hieronymus: Ep. 61, ad Vigilantium (ed. Vallars. tom. i. p. 345 sqq.); Ep. 109, ad Riparium (i. 719 sqq.); Adv. Helvidium (A.D. 383); Adv. Jovinianum (A.D. 392); Adv. Vigilantium (A.D. 406). All these three tracts are in Opera Hieron. tom. ii. p. 206–402. Augustinus: De haeres. cap. 82 (on Jovinian), and c. 84 (on Helvidius and the Helvidians). Epiphanius: Haeres. 75 (on Aerius).

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

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

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

We begin with Jovinian, the most important among them, who is sometimes compared, for instance, even by Neander, to Luther, because, like Luther, he was carried by his own experience into reaction against the ascetic tendency and the doctrines connected with it. He wrote in Rome, before the year 390 a work, now lost, attacking monasticism in its ethical principles. He was at that time himself a monk, and probably remained so in a free way until his death. At all events he never married, and according to Augustine’s account, he abstained "for the present distress,"391 and from aversion to the encumbrances of the married state. Jerome pressed him with the alternative of marrying and proving the equality of celibacy with married life, or giving up his opposition to his own condition.392  Jerome gives a very unfavorable picture of his character, evidently colored by vehement bitterness. He calls Jovinian a servant of corruption, a barbarous writer, a Christian Epicurean, who, after having once lived in strict asceticism, now preferred earth to heaven, vice to virtue, his belly to Christ, and always strode along as an elegantly dressed bridegroom. Augustine is much more lenient, only reproaching Jovinian with having misled many Roman nuns into marriage by holding before them the examples of pious women in the Bible. Jovinian was probably provoked to question and oppose monasticism, as Gieseler supposes, by Jerome’s extravagant praising of it, and by the feeling against it, which the death of Blesilla (384) in Rome confirmed. And he at first found extensive sympathy. But he was excommunicated and banished with his adherents at a council about the year 390, by Siricius, bishop of Rome, who was zealously opposed to the marriage of priests. He then betook himself to Milan, where the two monks Sarmatio and Barbatian held forth views like his own; but he was treated there after the same fashion by the bishop, Ambrose, who held a council against him. From this time he and his party disappear from history, and before the year 406 he died in exile.393

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

He insisted chiefly on the first point; so that Jerome devotes the whole first book of his refutation to this point, while he disposes of all the other heads in the second. In favor of the moral equality of married and single life, he appealed to Gen. ii. 24, where God himself institutes marriage before the fall; to Matt. xix. 5, where Christ sanctions it; to the patriarchs before and after the flood; to Moses and the prophets, Zacharias and Elizabeth, and the apostles, particularly Peter, who lived in wedlock; also to Paul, who himself exhorted to marriage,394 required the bishop or the deacon to be the husband of one wife,395 and advised young widows to marry and bear children.396  He declared the prohibition of marriage and of divinely provided food a Manichaean error. To answer these arguments, Jerome indulges in utterly unwarranted inferences, and speaks of marriage in a tone of contempt, which gave offence even to his friends.397  Augustine was moved by it to present the advantages of the married life in a special work, De bono conjugali, though without yielding the ascetic estimate of celibacy.398

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

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

He went still further, however, and, with the Stoics, denied all gradations of moral merit and demerit, consequently also all gradations of reward and punishment. He overlooked the process of development in both good and evil. He went back of all outward relations to the inner mind, and lost all subordinate differences of degree in the great contrast between true Christians and men of the world, between regenerate and unregenerate; whereas, the friends of monasticism taught a higher and lower morality, and distinguished the ascetics, as a special class, from the mass of ordinary Christians. As Christ, says he, dwells in believers, without difference of degree, so also believers are in Christ without difference of degree or stages of development. There are only two classes of men, righteous and wicked, sheep and goats, five wise virgins and five foolish, good trees with good fruit and bad trees with bad fruit. He appealed also to the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, who all received equal wages. Jerome answered him with such things as the parable of the sower and the different kinds of ground, the parable of the different numbers of talents with corresponding rewards, the many mansions in the Father’s house (by which Jovinian singularly understood the different churches on earth), the comparison of the resurrection bodies with the stars, which differ in glory, and the passage: "He which soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bountifully."399

§ 47. Helvidius, Vigilantius, and Aerius.

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

Helvidius, whether a layman or a priest at Rome it is uncertain, a pupil, according to the statement of Gennadius, of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan, wrote a work, before the year 383, in refutation of the perpetual virginity of the mother of the Lord—a leading point with the current glorification of celibacy. He considered the married state equal in honor and glory to that of virginity. Of his fortunes we know nothing. Augustine speaks of Helvidians, who are probably identical with the Antidicomarianites of Epiphanius. Jerome calls Helvidius, indeed, a rough and uneducated man,400 but proves by quotations of his arguments, that he had at least some knowledge of the Scriptures, and a certain ingenuity. He appealed in the first place to Matt. i. 18, 24, 25, as implying that Joseph knew his wife not before, but after, the birth of the Lord; then to the designation of Jesus as the "first born" son of Mary, in Matt. i. 25, and Luke ii. 7; then to the many passages, which speak of the brothers and sisters of Jesus; and finally to the authority of Tertullian and Victorinus. Jerome replies, that the "till" by no means always fixes a point after which any action must begin or cease;401 that, according to Ex. xxxiv. 19, 20; Num. xviii. 15 sqq., the "first born" does not necessarily imply the birth of other children afterward, but denotes every one, who first opens the womb; that the "brothers" of Jesus may have been either sons of Joseph by a former marriage, or, according to the wide Hebrew use of the term, cousins; and that the authorities cited were more than balanced by the testimony of Ignatius, Polycarp(?), and Irenaeus. "Had Helvidius read these," says he, "he would doubtless have produced something more skilful."

This whole question, it is well known, is still a problem in exegesis. The perpetua virginitas of Mary has less support from Scripture than the opposite theory. But it is so essential to the whole ascetic system, that it became from this time an article of the Catholic faith, and the denial of it was anathematized as blasphemous heresy. A considerable number of Protestant divines,402 however, agree on this point with the Catholic doctrine, and think it incompatible with the dignity of Mary, that, after the birth of the Son of God and Saviour of the world, she should have borne ordinary children of men.

Vigilantius, originally from Gaul,403 a presbyter of Barcelona in Spain, a man of pious but vehement zeal, and of literary talent, wrote in the beginning of the fifth century against the ascetic spirit of the age and the superstition connected with it. Jerome’s reply, dictated hastily in a single night at Bethlehem in the year 406, contains more of personal abuse and low witticism, than of solid argument. "There have been," he says, "monsters on earth, centaurs, syrens, leviathans, behemoths .... Gaul alone has bred no monsters, but has ever abounded in brave and noble men,—when, of a sudden, there has arisen one Vigilantius, who should rather be called Dormitantius,404 contending in an impure spirit against the Spirit of Christ, and forbidding to honor the graves of the martyrs; he rejects the Vigils—only at Easter should we sing hallelujah; he declares abstemiousness to be heresy, and chastity a nursery of licentiousness (pudicitiam, libidinis seminarium) .... This innkeeper of Calagurris405 mingles water with the wine, and would, according to ancient art, combine his poison with the genuine faith. He opposes virginity, hates chastity, cries against the fastings of the saints, and would only amidst jovial feastings amuse himself with the Psalms of David. It is terrible to bear, that even bishops are companions of his wantonness, if those deserve this name, who ordain only married persons deacons, and trust not the chastity of the single."406  Vigilantius thinks it better for a man to use his money wisely, and apply it gradually to benevolent objects at home, than to lavish it all at once upon the poor or give it to the monks of Jerusalem. He went further, however, than his two predecessors, and bent his main efforts against the worship of saints and relics, which was then gaining ascendency and was fostered by monasticism. He considered it superstition and idolatry. He called the Christians, who worshipped the "wretched bones" of dead men, ash-gatherers and idolaters.407  He expressed himself sceptically respecting the miracles of the martyrs, contested the practice of invoking them and of intercession for the dead, as useless, and declared himself against the Vigils, or public worship in the night, as tending to disorder and licentiousness. This last point Jerome admits as a fact, but not as an argument, because the abuse should not abolish the right use.

The presbyter Aerius of Sebaste, about 360, belongs also among the partial opponents of monasticism. For, though himself an ascetic, he contended against the fast laws and the injunction of fasts at certain times, considering them an encroachment upon Christian freedom. Epiphanius also ascribes to him three other heretical views: denial of the superiority of bishops to presbyters, opposition to the usual Easter festival, and opposition to prayers for the dead.408  He was hotly persecuted by the hierarchy, and was obliged to live, with his adherents, in open fields and in caves.

CHAPTER V.

THE HIERARCHY AND POLITY OF THE CHURCH.

Comp. in part the literature in vol. i. § 105 and 110 (to which should be added now, P. A. de Lagarde: Constitutiones Apostolorum, Lips. and Lond., 1862); also Gibbon, ch. xx.; Milman: Hist. of Ancient Christianity, book iv. c. 1 (Amer. ed. p. 438 sqq.), and the corresponding sections in Bingham, Schroeckh, Plank, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, etc. (see the particular literature below).

§ 48. Schools of the Clergy.

Having in a former section observed the elevation of the church to the position of the state religion of the Roman empire, and the influence of this great change upon the condition of the clergy and upon public morality, we turn now to the internal organization and the development of the hierarchy under its new circumstances. The step of progress which we here find distinguishing the organization of this third period from the episcopal system of the second and the apostolic supervision of the first, is the rise of the patriarchal constitution and of the system of ecumenical councils closely connected with it. But we must first glance at the character and influence of the teaching order in general.

The work of preparation for the clerical office was, on the one hand, materially facilitated by the union of the church with the state, putting her in possession of the treasures, the schools, the learning, and the literature of classic heathendom, and throwing the education of the rising generation into her hands. The numerous doctrinal controversies kept the spirit of investigation awake, and among the fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries we meet with the greatest theologians of the ancient church. These gave their weighty voices for the great value of a thorough education to the clerical office, and imparted much wholesome instruction respecting the studies proper to this purpose.409  The African church, by a decree of the council of Carthage, in 397, required of candidates a trial of their knowledge and orthodoxy. A law of Justinian, of the year 541, established a similar test in the East.

But on the other hand, a regular and general system of clerical education was still entirely wanting. The steady decay of the classic literature, the gradual cessation of philosophical and artistic production, the growth of monastic prejudice against secular learning and culture, the great want of ministers in the suddenly expanded field of the church, the uneasy state of the empire, and the barbarian invasions, were so many hinderances to thorough theological preparation. Many candidates trusted to the magical virtue of ordination. Others, without inward call, were attracted to the holy office by the wealth and power of the church. Others had no time or opportunity for preparation, and passed, at the instance of the popular voice or of circumstances, immediately from the service of the state to that of the church, even to the episcopal office; though several councils prescribed a previous test of their capacity in the lower degrees of reader, deacon, and presbyter. Often, however, this irregularity turned to the advantage of the church, and gave her a highly gifted man, like Ambrose, whom the acclamation of the people called to the episcopal see of Milan even before he was baptized. Gregory Nazianzen laments that many priests and bishops came in fresh from the counting house, sunburnt from the plow, from the oar, from the army, or even from the theatre, so that the most holy order of all was in danger of becoming the most ridiculous. "Only he can be a physician," says he, "who knows the nature of diseases; he, a painter, who has gone through much practice in mixing colors and in drawing forms; but a clergyman may be found with perfect ease, not thoroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants.410  We form the saints in a day, and enjoin them to be wise, though they possess no wisdom at all, and bring nothing to their spiritual office, except at best a good will."411  If such complaints were raised so early as the end of the Nicene age, while the theological activity of the Greek church was in its bloom, there was far more reason for them after the middle of the fifth century and in the sixth, especially in the Latin church, where, even among the most eminent clergymen, a knowledge of the original languages of the Holy Scriptures was a rare exception.

The opportunities which this period offered for literary and theological preparation for the ministry, were the following:

1. The East had four or five theological schools, which, however, were far from supplying its wants.

The oldest and most celebrated was the catechetical school of Alexandria. Favored by the great literary treasures, the extensive commercial relations, and the ecclesiastical importance of the Egyptian metropolis, as well as by a succession of distinguished teachers, it flourished from the middle of the second century to the end of the fourth, when, amidst the Origenistic, Nestorian, and Monophysite confusion, it withered and died. Its last ornament was the blind, but learned and pious Didymus (340–395).

From the Alexandrian school proceeded the smaller institution of Caesarea in Palestine, which was founded by Origen, after his banishment from Alexandria, and received a new but temporary impulse in the beginning of the fourth century from his admirer, the presbyter Pamphilus, and from his friend Eusebius. It possessed the theological library which Eusebius used in the preparation of his learned works.

Far more important was the theological school of Antioch, founded about 290 by the presbyters Dorotheus and Lucian. It developed in the course of the fourth century a severe grammatico-historical exegesis, counter to the Origenistic allegorical method of the Alexandrians; now in connection with the church doctrine, as in Chrysostom; now in a rationalizing spirit, as in Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius.

The seminary at Edessa, a daughter of the Antiochian school, was started by the learned deacon, Ephraim Syrus († 378), furnished ministers for Mesopotamia and Persia, and stood for about a hundred years.

The Nestorians, at the close of the fifth century, founded a seminary at Nisibis in Mesopotamia, which was organized into several classes and based upon a definite plan of instruction.

The West had no such institutions for theological instruction, but supplied itself chiefly from cloisters and private schools of the bishops. Cassiodorus endeavored to engage Pope Agapetus in founding a learned institution in Rome, but was discouraged by the warlike disquietude of Italy. Jerome spent some time at the Alexandrian school under the direction of Didymus.

2. Many priests and bishops, as we have already observed, emanated from the monasteries, where they enjoyed the advantages of retirement from the world, undisturbed meditation, the intercourse of kindred earnest minds, and a large spiritual experience; but, on the other hand, easily sank into a monkish narrowness, and rarely attained that social culture and comprehensive knowledge of the world and of men, which is necessary, especially in large cities, for a wide field of labor.

3. In the West there were smaller diocesan seminaries, under the direction of the bishops, who trained their own clergy, both in theory and in practice, as they passed through the subordinate classes of reader, sub-deacon, and deacon.

Augustine set a good example of this sort, having at Hippo a "monasterium clericorum," which sent forth many good presbyters and bishops for the various dioceses of North Africa. Similar clerical monasteries or episcopal seminaries arose gradually in the southern countries of Europe, and are very common in the Roman Catholic church to this day.

4. Several of the most learned and able fathers of the fourth century received their general scientific education in heathen schools, under the setting sun of the classic culture, and then studied theology either in ascetic retirement or under some distinguished church teacher, or by the private reading of the Scriptures and the earlier church literature.

Thus Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen were in the high school of Athens at the same time with the prince Julian the Apostate; Chrysostom attended the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius in Antioch; Augustine studied at Carthage, Rome, and Milan; and Jerome was introduced to the study of the classics by the grammarian Donatus of Rome. The great and invaluable service of these fathers in the development and defence of the church doctrine, in pulpit eloquence, and especially in the translation and exposition of the Holy Scriptures, is the best evidence of the high value of a classical education. And the church has always, with good reason, acknowledged it.

§ 49. Clergy and Laity. Elections.

The clergy, according to the precedent of the Old Testament, came to be more and more rigidly distinguished, as a peculiar order, from the body of the laity. The ordination, which was solemnized by the laying on of hands and prayer, with the addition at a later period of an anointing with oil and balsam, marked the formal entrance into the special priesthood, as baptism initiated into the universal priesthood; and, like baptism, it bore an indefeasible character (character indelebilis). By degrees the priestly office assumed the additional distinction of celibacy and of external marks, such as tonsure, and sacerdotal vestments worn at first only during official service, then in every-day life. The idea of the universal priesthood of believers retreated in proportion, though it never passed entirely out of sight, but was from time to time asserted even in this age. Augustine, for example, says, that as all are called Christians on account of their baptism, so all believers are priests, because they are members of the one High Priest.412

The progress of the hierarchical principle also encroached gradually upon the rights of the people in the election of their pastors.413  But in this period it did not as yet entirely suppress them. The lower clergy were chosen by the bishops, the bishops by their colleagues in the province and by the clergy. The fourth canon of Nice, probably at the instance of the Meletian schism, directed that a bishop should be instituted and consecrated by all, or at least by three, of the bishops of the province. This was not aimed, however, against the rights of the people, but against elec-tion by only one bishop—the act of Meletius. For the con-sent of the people in the choice of presbyters, and especially of bishops, long remained, at least in outward form, in memory of the custom of the apostles and the primitive church. There was either a formal vote,414 particularly when there were three or more candidates before the people, or the people were thrice required to signify their confirmation or rejection by the formula: "Worthy," or "unworthy."415  The influence of the people in this period appears most prominently in the election of bishops. The Roman bishop Leo, in spite of his papal absolutism, asserted the thoroughly democratic principle, long since abandoned by his successors: "He who is to preside over all, should be elected by all."416  Oftentimes the popular will decided before the provincial bishops and the clergy assembled and the regular election could be held. Ambrose of Milan and Nectarius of Constantinople were appointed to the bishopric even before they were baptized; the former by the people, the latter by the emperor Theodosius; though in palpable violation of the eightieth apostolic canon and the second Nicene.417  Martin of Tours owed his elevation likewise to the popular voice, while some bishops objected to it on account of his small and wasted form.418  Chrysostom was called from Antioch to Constantinople by the emperor Arcadius, in consequence of a unanimous vote of the clergy and people.419  Sometimes the people acted under outside considerations and the management of demagogues, and demanded unworthy or ignorant men for the highest offices. Thus there were frequent disturbances and collisions, and even bloody conflicts, as in the election of Damasus in Rome. In short, all the selfish passions and corrupting influences, which had spoiled the freedom of the popular political elections in the Grecian and Roman republics, and which appear also in the republics of modern times, intruded upon the elections of the church. And the clergy likewise often suffered themselves to be guided by impure motives. Chrysostom laments that presbyters, in the choice of a bishop, instead of looking only at spiritual fitness, were led by regard for noble birth, or great wealth, or consanguinity and friendship.420  The bishops themselves sometimes did no better. Nectarius, who was suddenly transferred, in 381, by the emperor Theodosius, from the praetorship to the bishopric of Constantinople, even before he was baptized,421 wished to ordain his physician Martyrius deacon, and when the latter refused, on the ground of incapacity, he replied: "Did not I, who am now a priest, formerly live much more immorally than thou, as thou thyself well knowest, since thou wast often an accomplice of my many iniquities?"  Martyrius, however, persisted in his refusal, because he had continued to live in sin long after his baptism, while Nectarius had become a new man since his.422

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

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

Toward the end of the period before us the republican element in the election of bishops entirely disappeared. The Greek church after the eighth century vested the franchise exclusively in the bishops.423  The Latin church, after the eleventh century, vested it in the clergy of the cathedral church, without allowing any participation to the people. But in the West, especially in Spain and France, instead of the people, the temporal prince exerted an important influence, in spite of the frequent protest of the church.

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

§ 50. Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy.

The progress and influence of monasticism, the general exaltation of the ascetic life above the social, and of celibacy above the married state, together with the increasing sharpness of the distinction between clergy and laity, all tended powerfully toward the celibacy of the clergy. What the apostle Paul, expressly discriminating a divine command from a human counsel, left to each one’s choice, and advised, in view of the oppressed condition of the Christians in the apostolic age, as a safer and less anxious state only for those who felt called to it by a special gift of grace, now, though the stress of circumstances was past, was made, at least in the Latin church, an inexorable law. What had been a voluntary, and therefore an honorable exception, now became the rule, and the former rule became the exception. Connubial intercourse appeared incompatible with the dignity and purity of the priestly office and of priestly functions, especially with the service of the altar. The clergy, as the model order, could not remain below the moral ideal of monasticism, extolled by all the fathers of the church, and must exhibit the same unconditional and undivided devotion to the church within the bosom of society, which monasticism exhibited without it. While placed by their calling in unavoidable contact with the world, they must vie with the monks at least in the virtue of sexual purity, and thereby increase their influence over the people. Moreover, the celibate life secured to the clergy greater independence toward the state and civil society, and thus favored the interests of the hierarchy. But, on the other hand, it estranged them more and more from the sympathies and domestic relations of the people, and tempted them to the illicit indulgence of appetite, which, perhaps, did more injury to the cause of Christian morality and to the true influence of the clergy, than the advantage of forced celibacy could compensate.

In the practice of clerical celibacy, however, the Greek and the Latin churches diverged in the fourth century, and are to this day divided. The Greek church stopped halfway, and limited the injunction of celibacy to the higher clergy, who were accordingly chosen generally from the monasteries or from the ranks of widower-presbyters; while the Latin church extended the law to the lower clergy, and at the same time carried forward the hierarchical principle to absolute papacy. The Greek church differs from the Latin, not by any higher standard of marriage, but only by a closer adherence to earlier usage and by less consistent application of the ascetic principle. It is in theory as remote from the evangelical Protestant church as the Latin is, and approaches it only in practice. It sets virginity far above marriage, and regards marriage only in its aspect of negative utility. In the single marriage of a priest it sees in a measure a necessary evil, at best only a conditional good, a wholesome concession to the flesh for the prevention of immorality,424 and requires of its highest office bearers total abstinence from all matrimonial intercourse. It wavers, therefore, between a partial permission and a partial condemnation of priestly marriage.

In the East, one marriage was always allowed to the clergy, and at first even to bishops, and celibacy was left optional. Yet certain restrictions were early introduced, such as the prohibition of marriage after ordination (except in deacons and subdeacons), as well as of second marriage after baptism; the apostolic direction, that a bishop should be the husband of one wife,425 being taken as a prohibition of successive polygamy, and at the same time as an allowance of one marriage. Besides second marriage, the marrying of a concubine, a widow, a harlot, a slave, and an actress, was forbidden to the clergy. With these restrictions, the "Apostolic Constitutions" and "Canons" expressly permitted the marriage of priests contracted before ordination, and the continuance of it after ordination.426  The synod of Ancyra, in 314, permitted deacons to marry even after ordination, in case they had made a condition to that effect beforehand; otherwise they were to remain single or lose their office.427  The Synod of New Caesarea, which was held at about the same time, certainly before 325, does not go beyond this, decreeing: "If a presbyter (not a deacon) marry (that is, after ordination), he shall be expelled from the clergy; and if he practise lewdness, or become an adulterer, he shall be utterly thrust out and held to penance."428  At the general council of Nice, 325, it was proposed indeed, probably by the Western bishop Hosius,429 to forbid entirely the marriage of priests; but the motion met with strong opposition, and was rejected. A venerable Egyptian bishop, Paphnutius, though himself a strict ascetic from his youth up, and a confessor who in the last persecution had lost an eye and been crippled in the knee, asserted with impressiveness and success, that too great rigor would injure the church and promote licentiousness and that marriage and connubial intercourse were honorable and spotless things.430  The council of Gangra in Paphlagonia (according to some, not till the year 380) condemned, among several ascetic extravagances of the bishop Eustathius of Sebaste and his followers, contempt for married priests and refusal to take part in their ministry.431  The so-called Apostolic Canons, which, like the Constitutions, arose by a gradual growth in the East, even forbid the clergy, on pain of deposition and excommunication, to put away their wives under the pretext of religion.432  Perhaps this canon likewise was occasioned by the hyper-asceticism of Eustathius.

Accordingly we not unfrequently find in the Oriental church, so late as the fourth and fifth centuries, not only priests, but even bishops living in wedlock. One example is the father of the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, who while bishop had two sons, Gregory and the younger Caesarius, and a daughter. Others are Gregory of Nyssa, who, however, wrote an enthusiastic eulogy of the unmarried life, and lamented his loss of the crown of virginity; and Synesius († about 430), who, when elected bishop of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, expressly stipulated for the continuance of his marriage connection.433  Socrates, whose Church History reaches down to the year 439, says of the practice of his time, that in Thessalia matrimonial intercourse after ordination had been forbidden under penalty of deposition from the time of Heliodorus of Trica, who in his youth had been an amatory writer; but that in the East the clergy and bishops voluntarily abstained from intercourse with their wives, without being required by any law to do so; for many, he adds, have had children during their episcopate by their lawful wives.434  There were Greek divines, however, like Epiphanius, who agreed with the Roman theory. Justinian I. was utterly opposed to the marriage of priests, declared the children of such connection illegitimate, and forbade the election of a married man to the episcopal office (A.D. 528). Nevertheless, down to the end of the seventh century, many bishops in Africa, Libya, and elsewhere, continued to live in the married state, as is expressly said in the twelfth canon of the Trullan council; but this gave offence and was forbidden. From that time the marriage of bishops gradually disappears, while marriage among the lower clergy continues to be the rule.

This Trullan council, which was the sixth ecumenical435 (A.D. 692), closes the legislation of the Eastern church on the subject of clerical marriage. Here—to anticipate somewhat—the continuance of a first marriage contracted before ordination was prohibited in the case of bishops on pain of deposition, but, in accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, allowed in the case of presbyters and deacons (contrary to the Roman practice), with the Old Testament restriction, that they abstain from sexual intercourse during the season of official service, because he who administers holy things must be pure.436  The same relation is thus condemned in the one case as immoral, in the other approved and encouraged as moral; the bishop is deposed if he retains his lawful wife and does not, immediately after being ordained, send her to a distant cloister; while the presbyter or deacon is threatened with deposition and even excommunication for doing the opposite and putting his wife away.

The Western church, starting from the perverted and almost Manichaean ascetic principle, that the married state is incompatible with clerical dignity and holiness, instituted a vigorous effort at the end of the fourth century, to make celibacy, which had hitherto been left to the option of individuals, the universal law of the priesthood; thus placing itself in direct contradiction to the Levitical law, to which in other respects it made so much account of conforming. The law, however, though repeatedly enacted, could not for a long time be consistently enforced. The canon, already mentioned, of the Spanish council of Elvira in 305, was only provincial. The first prohibition of clerical marriage, which laid claim to universal ecclesiastical authority, at least in the West, proceeded in 385 from the Roman church in the form of a decretal letter of the bishop Siricius to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona in Spain, who had referred several questions of discipline to the Roman bishop for decision. It is significant of the connection between the celibacy of the clergy and the interest of the hierarchy, that the first properly papal decree, which was issued in the tone of supreme authority, imposed such an unscriptural, unnatural, and morally dangerous restriction. Siricius contested the appeal of dissenting parties to the Mosaic law, on the ground that the Christian priesthood has to stand not merely for a time, but perpetually, in the service of the sanctuary, and that it is not hereditary, like the Jewish; and he ordained that second marriage and marriage with a widow should incapacitate for ordination, and that continuance in the married state after ordination should be punished with deposition.437  And with this punishment he threatened not bishops only, but also presbyters and deacons. Leo the Great subsequently, extended the requirement of celibacy even to the subdiaconate. The most eminent Latin church fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, and even Augustine—though the last with more moderation—advocated the celibacy of priests. Augustine, with Eusebius of Vercella before him (370), united their clergy in a cloister life, and gave them a monastic stamp; and Martin of Tours, who was a monk from the first, carried his monastic life into his episcopal office. The councils of Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul followed the lead of Rome. The synod of Clermont, for example (A.D. 535), declared in its twelfth canon: "No one ordained deacon or priest may continue matrimonial intercourse. He is become the brother of her who was his wife. But since some, inflamed with lust, have rejected the girdle of the warfare [of Christ], and returned to marriage intercourse, it is ordered that such must lose their office forever."  Other councils, like that of Tours, 461, were content with forbidding clergymen, who begat children after ordination, to administer the sacrifice of the mass, and with confining the law of celibacy ad altiorem gradum.438

But the very fact of the frequent repetition of these enactments, and the necessity of mitigating the penalties of transgression, show the great difficulty of carrying this unnatural restriction into general effect. In the British and Irish church, isolated as it was from the Roman, the marriage of priests continued to prevail down to the Anglo-Saxon period.

But with the disappearance of legitimate marriage in the priesthood, the already prevalent vice of the cohabitation of unmarried ecclesiastics with pious widows and virgins "secretly brought in,"439 became more and more common. This spiritual marriage, which had begun as a bold ascetic venture, ended only too often in the flesh, and prostituted the honor of the church.

The Nicene council of 325 met the abuse in its third canon with this decree: "The great council utterly forbids, and it shall not be allowed either to a bishop, or a priest, or a deacon, or any other clergyman, to have with him a sunqeivsakto", unless she be his mother, or sister, or aunt, or some such person, who is beyond all suspicion."440  This canon forms the basis of the whole subsequent legislation of the church de cohabitatione clericorum et mulierum. It had to be repeatedly renewed and strengthened; showing plainly that it was often disobeyed. The council of Toledo in Spain, A.D. 527 or 531, ordered in its third canon: "No clergyman, from the subdeacon upward, shall live with a female, be she free woman, freed woman, or slave. Only a mother, or a sister, or other near relative shall keep his house. If he have no near relative, his housekeeper must live in a separate house, and shall under no pretext enter his dwelling. Whosoever acts contrary to this, shall not only be deprived of his spiritual office and have the doors of his church closed, but shall also be excluded from all fellowship of Catholics."  The Concilium Agathense in South Gaul, A.D. 506, at which thirty-five bishops met, decreed in the tenth and eleventh canons: "A clergyman shall neither visit nor receive into his house females not of his kin; only with his mother, or sister, or daughter, or niece may he live. Female slaves, also, and freed women, must be kept away from the house of a clergyman."  Similar laws, with penalties more or less severe, were passed by the council of Hippo, 393, of Angers, 453, of Tours, 461, of Lerida in Spain, 524, of Clermont, 535, of Braga, 563, of Orleans, 538, of Tours, 567.441  The emperor Justinian, in the twenty-third Novelle, prohibited the bishop having any woman at all in his house, but the Trullan council of 692 returned simply to the Nicene law.442  The Western councils also made attempts to abolish the exceptions allowed in the Nicene canon, and forbade clergymen all intercourse with women, except in presence of a companion.

This rigorism, however, which sheds an unwelcome light upon the actual state of things that made it necessary, did not better the matter, but rather led to such a moral apathy, that the Latin church in the middle age had everywhere to contend with the open concubinage of the clergy, and the whole energy of Gregory VII. was needed to restore in a measure the old laws of celibacy, without being sufficient to prevent the secret and, to morality, far more dangerous violations of it.443  The later ecclesiastical legislation respecting the mulieres subintroductae is more lenient, and, without limiting the intercourse of clergymen to near kindred, generally excludes only concubines and those women "de quibus possit haberi suspicio."444

§ 51. Moral Character of the Clergy in general.

Augustine gives us the key to the true view of the clergy of the Roman empire in both light and shade, when he says of the spiritual office: "There is in this life, and especially in this day, nothing easier, more delightful, more acceptable to men, than the office of bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, if the charge be administered superficially and to the pleasure of men; but nothing in the eye of God more wretched, mournful, and damnable. So also there is in this life, and especially in this day, nothing more difficult, more laborious) more hazardous than the office of bishop, or presbyter, or deacon; but nothing in the eye of God more blessed, if the battle be fought in the manner enjoined by our Captain."445  We cannot wonder, on the one hand that, in the better condition of the church and the enlarged field of her labor, a multitude of light-minded and unworthy men crowded into the sacred office, and on the other, that just the most earnest and worthy bishops of the day, an Ambrose, an Augustine, a Gregory Nazianzen, and a Chrysostom, trembled before the responsibility of the office, and had to be forced into it in a measure against their will, by the call of the church.

Gregory Nazianzen fled into the wilderness when his father, without his knowledge, suddenly consecrated him priest in the presence of the congregation (361). He afterward vindicated this flight in his beautiful apology, in which he depicts the ideal of a Christian priest and theologian. The priest must, above all, he says, be a model of a Christian, offer himself a holy sacrifice to God, and be a living temple of the living God. Then he must possess a deep knowledge, of souls, and, as a spiritual physician, heal all classes of men of various diseases of sin, restore, preserve, and protect the divine image in them, bring Christ into their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and make them partakers of the divine nature and of eternal salvation. He must, moreover, have at command the sacred philosophy or divine science of the world and of the worlds, of matter and spirit, of good and evil angels, of the all-ruling Providence, of our creation and regeneration, of the divine covenants, of the first and second appearing of Christ, of his incarnation, passion, and resurrection, of the end of all things and the universal judgment, and above all, of the mystery of the blessed Trinity; and he must be able to teach and elucidate these doctrines of faith in popular discourse. Gregory, sets forth Jesus as the perfect type of the priest, and next to him he presents in an eloquent picture the apostle Paul, who lived only for Christ, and under all circumstances and amid all trials by sea and land, among Jews and heathen, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in freedom and bonds, attested the divine power of the gospel for the salvation of the world. This ideal, however, Gregory found but seldom realized. He gives on the whole a very unfavorable account of the bishops, and even of the most celebrated councils of his day, charging them with ignorance unworthy means of promotion, ambition, flattery, pride, luxury, and worldly mindedness. He says even: "Our danger now is, that the holiest of all offices will become the most ridiculous; for the highest clerical places are gained not so much by virtue, as by iniquity; no longer the most worthy, but the most powerful, take the episcopal chair."446  Though his descriptions, especially in the satirical poem "to himself and on the bishops," composed probably after his resignation in Constantinople (A.D. 381), may be in many points exaggerated, yet they were in general drawn from life and from experience.447

Jerome also, in his epistles, unsparingly attacks the clergy of his time, especially the Roman, accusing them of avarice and legacy hunting, and drawing a sarcastic picture of a clerical fop, who, with his fine scented clothes, was more like a bridegroom than a clergyman.448  Of the rural clergy’, however, the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus bears a testimony, which is certainly reliable, to their simplicity, contentment, and virtue.449

Chrysostom, in his celebrated treatise on the priesthood,450 written probably, before his ordination (somewhere between the years 375 and 381), or while he was deacon (between 381 and 386), portrayed the theoretical and practical qualifications, the exalted duties, responsibilities, and honors of this office, with youthful enthusiasm, in the best spirit of his age. He requires of the priest, that he be in every respect better than the monk, though, standing in the world, he have greater dangers and difficulties to contend with.451  He sets up as the highest object of the preacher, the great principle stated by, Paul, that in all his discourses he should seek to please God alone, not men. "He must not indeed despise the approving demonstrations of men; but as little must he court them, nor trouble himself when his hearers withhold them. True and imperturbable comfort in his labors he finds only in the consciousness of having his discourse framed and wrought out to the approval of God."452  Nevertheless the book as a whole is unsatisfactory. A comparison of it with the "Reformed Pastor" of Baxter, which is far deeper and richer in all that pertains to subjective experimental Christianity and the proper care of souls, would result emphatically in favor of the English Protestant church of the seventeenth century.453

We must here particularly notice a point which reflects great discredit on the moral sense of many of the fathers, and shows that they had not wholly freed themselves from the chains of heathen ethics. The occasion of this work of Chrysostom was a ruse, by which he had evaded election to the bishopric, and thrust it upon his friend Basil.454  To justify this conduct, he endeavors at large, in the fifth chapter of the first book, to prove that artifice might be lawful and useful; that is, when used as a means to a good end. "Manifold is the potency of deception, only it must not be employed with knavish intent. And this should be hardly called deception, but rather a sort of accommodation (oijkonomiva), wisdom, art, or sagacity, by which one can find many ways of escape in an exigency, and amend the errors of the soul."  He appeals to biblical examples, like Jonathan and the daughter of Saul, who by deceiving their father rescued their friend and husband; and, unwarrantably, even to Paul, who became to the Jews a Jew, to the Gentiles a Gentile, and circumcised Timothy, though in the Epistle to the Galatians he pronounced circumcision useless. Chrysostom, however, had evidently learned this, loose and pernicious principle respecting the obligation of truthfulness, not from the Holy Scriptures, but from the Grecian sophists.455  Besides, he by no means stood alone in the church in this matter, but had his predecessors in the Alexandrian fathers,456 and his followers in Cassian, Jerome, and other eminent Catholic divines.

Jerome made a doubtful distinction between gumnastikw'" scribere and dogmatikw'" scribere, and, with Origen, explained the severe censure of Paul on Peter in Antioch, for example, as a mere stroke of pastoral policy, or an accommodation to the weakness of the Jewish Christians at the expense of truth.457  But Augustine’s delicate Christian sense of truth revolted at this construction, and replied that such an interpretation undermined the whole authority of Holy Scripture; that an apostle could never lie, even for a good object; that, in extremity, one should rather suppose a false reading, or wrong translation, or suspect his own apprehension; but that in Antioch Paul spoke the truth and justly censured Peter openly for his inconsistency, or for a practical (not a theoretical) error, and thus deserves the praise of righteous boldness, as Peter on the other hand, by his meek submission to the censure, merits the praise of holy humility.458

Thus in Jerome and Augustine we have the representatives of two opposite ethical views: one, unduly subjective, judging all moral acts merely by their motive and object, and sanctioning, for example, tyrannicide, or suicide to escape disgrace, or breach of faith with heretics (as the later Jesuitical casuistry does with the utmost profusion of sophistical subtlety); the other, objective, proceeding on eternal, immutable principles and the irreconcilable opposition of good and evil, and freely enough making prudence subservient to truth, but never truth subservient to prudence.

Meantime, in the Greek church also, as early as the fourth century, the Augustinian view here and there made its way; and Basil the Great, in his shorter monastic Rule,459 rejected even accommodation (oijkonomiva) for a good end, because Christ ascribes the lie, without distinction of kinds, exclusively to Satan.460  In this respect, therefore, Chrysostom did not stand at the head of his age, but represented without doubt the prevailing view of the Eastern church.

The legislation of the councils with reference to the clergy, shows in general the earnestness and rigor with which the church guarded the moral purity and dignity of her servants. The canonical age was, on the average, after the analogy of the Old Testament, the five-and-twentieth year for the diaconate, the thirtieth for the priesthood and episcopate. Catechumens, neophytes, persons baptized at the point of death, penitents, energumens (such as were possessed of a devil), actors, dancers, soldiers, curials (court, state, and municipal officials),461 slaves, eunuchs, bigamists, and all who led a scandalous life after baptism, were debarred from ordination. The frequenting of taverns and theatres, dancing and gambling, usury and the pursuit of secular business were forbidden to clergymen. But on the other hand, the frequent repetition of warnings against even the lowest and most common sins, such as licentiousness, drunkenness, fighting, and buffoonery, and the threatening of corporal punishment for certain misdemeanors, yield an unfavorable conclusion in regard to the moral standing of the sacred order.462  Even at the councils the clerical dignity was not seldom desecrated by outbreaks of coarse passion; insomuch that the council of Ephesus, in 449, is notorious as the "council of robbers."

In looking at this picture, however, we must not forget that in this, period of the sinking empire of Rome the task of the clergy was exceedingly difficult, and amidst the nominal conversion of the whole population of the empire, their number and education could not keep pace with the sudden and extraordinary expansion of their field of labor. After all, the clerical office was the great repository of intellectual and moral force for the world. It stayed the flood of corruption; rebuked the vices of the times; fearlessly opposed tyrannical cruelty; founded institutions of charity and public benefit; prolonged the existence of the Roman empire; rescued the literary treasures of antiquity; carried the gospel to the barbarians, and undertook to educate and civilize their rude and vigorous hordes. Out of the mass of mediocrities tower the great church teachers of the fourth and fifth centuries, combining all the learning, the talent, and the piety of the time, and through their immortal writings mightily moulding the succeeding ages of the world.

§ 52. The Lower Clergy.

As the authority and influence of the bishops, after the accession of Constantine, increased, the lower clergy became more and more dependent upon them. The episcopate and the presbyterate were now rigidly distinguished. And yet the memory of their primitive identity lingered. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, reminds the bishops that they owe their elevation above the presbyters, not so much to Divine institution as to ecclesiastical usage; for before the outbreak of controversies in the church there was no distinction between the two, except that presbyter is a term of age, and bishop a term of official dignity; but when men, at the instigation of Satan, erected parties and sects, and, instead of simply following Christ, named themselves of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, all agreed to put one of the presbyters at the head of the rest, that by his universal supervision of the churches, he might kill the seeds of division.463  The great commentators of the Greek church agree with Jerome in maintaining the original identity of bishops and presbyters in the New Testament.464

In the episcopal or cathedral churches the Presbyters still formed the council of the bishop. In town and country congregations, where no bishop officiated, they were more independent. Preaching, administration of the sacraments, and care of souls were their functions. In. North Africa they were for a long time not allowed to preach in the presence of the bishop; until Augustine was relieved by his bishop of this restriction. The seniores plebis in the African church of the fourth and fifth centuries were not clergymen, but civil personages and other prominent members of the congregation.465

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

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

The office of Deaconess, which, under the strict separation of the sexes in ancient times, and especially in Greece, was necessary to the completion of the diaconate, and which originated in the apostolic age,466 continued in the Eastern church down to the twelfth century. It was frequently occupied by the widows of clergymen or the wives of bishops, who were obliged to demit the married state before entering upon their sacred office. Its functions were the care of the female poor, sick, and imprisoned, assisting in the baptism of adult women, and, in the country churches of the East, perhaps also of the West, the preparation of women for baptism by private instruction.467  Formerly, from regard to the apostolic precept in 1 Tim. v. 9, the deaconesses were required to be sixty years of age.468  The general council of Chalcedon, however, in 451, reduced the canonical age to forty years, and in the fifteenth canon ordered: "No female shall be consecrated deaconess before she is forty years old, and not then without careful probation. If, however, after having received consecration, and having been some time in the service, she marry, despising the grace of God, she with her husband shall be anathematized."  The usual ordination prayer in the consecration of deaconesses, according to the Apostolic Constitutions, runs thus: "Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and woman, who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with the Spirit, and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle and the temple didst appoint women keepers of thine holy gates: look down now upon this thine handmaid, who is designated to the office of deacon, and grant her the Holy Ghost, and cleanse her from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute the work intrusted to her, to thine honor and to the praise of thine Anointed; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be honor and adoration forever. Amen."469

The noblest type of an apostolic deaconess, which has come down to us from this period, is Olympias, the friend of Chrysostom, and the recipient of seventeen beautiful epistles from him.470  She sprang from a respectable heathen family, but received a Christian education; was beautiful and wealthy; married in her seventeenth year (A.D. 384) the prefect of Constantinople, Nebridius; but in twenty months after was left a widow, and remained so in spite of the efforts of the emperor Theodosius to unite her with one of his own kindred. She became a deaconess; lived in rigid asceticism; devoted her goods to the poor; and found her greatest pleasure in doing good. When Chrysostom came to Constantinople, he became her pastor, and guided her lavish benefaction by wise counsel. She continued faithful to him in his misfortune; survived him by several years, and died in 420, lamented by all the poor and needy in the city and in the country around.

In the West, on the contrary, the office of deaconess was first shorn of its clerical character by a prohibition of ordination passed by the Gallic councils in the fifth and sixth centuries;471 and at last it was wholly abolished. The second synod of Orleans, in 533, ordained in its eighteenth canon: "No woman shall henceforth receive the benedictio diaconalis [which had been substituted for ordinatio], on account of the weakness of this sex."  The reason betrays the want of good deaconesses, and suggests the connection of this abolition of an apostolic institution with the introduction of the celibacy of the priesthood, which seemed to be endangered by every sort of female society. The adoption of the care of the poor and sick by the state, and the cessation of adult baptisms and of the custom of immersion, also made female assistance less needful. In modern times, the Catholic church, it is true, has special societies or orders of women, like the Sisters of Mercy, for the care of the sick and poor, the training of children, and other objects of practical charity; and in the bosom of Protestantism also similar benevolent associations have arisen, under the name of Deaconess Institutes, or Sisters’ Houses, though in the more free evangelical spirit, and without the bond of a vow.472  But, though quite kindred in their object, these associations are not to be identified with the office of deaconess in the apostolic age and in the ancient church. That was a regular, standing office in every Christian congregation, corresponding to the office of deacon; and has never since the twelfth century been revived, though the local work of charity has never ceased.

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

1. Stewards.473 These officers administered the church property under the supervision of the bishop, and were chosen in part from the clergy, in part from such of the laity as were versed in law. In Constantinople the "great steward" was a person of considerable rank, though not a clergyman. The council of Chalcedon enjoined upon every episcopal diocese the appointment of such officers, and the selection of them from the clergy, "that the economy of the church might not be irresponsible, and thereby the church property be exposed to waste and the clerical dignity be brought into ill repute."474  For conducting the litigation of the church, sometimes a special advocate, called the e[kdiko", or defensor, was appointed.

2. Secretaries,475 for drawing the protocols in public ecclesiastical transactions (gesta ecclesiastica). They were usually clergymen, or such as had prepared themselves for the service of the church.

3. Nurses or Parabolani,476 especially in connection with the larger church hospitals. Their office was akin to that of the deacons, but had more reference to the bodily assistance than to the spiritual care of the sick. In Alexandria, by the fifth century, these officers formed a great guild of six hundred members, and were not rarely misemployed as a standing army of episcopal domination.477  Hence, upon a complaint of the citizens of Alexandria against them, to the emperor Theodosius II., their number were reduced to five hundred. In the West they were never introduced.

4. Buriers of the Dead478 likewise belonged among these ordines minores of the church. Under Theodosius II. there were more than a thousand of them in Constantinople.

§ 53. The Bishops.

The bishops now stood with sovereign power at the head of the clergy and of their dioceses. They had come to be universally regarded as the vehicles and propagators of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the teachers and lawgivers of the church in all matters of faith and discipline. The specific distinction between them and the presbyters was carried into everything; while yet it is worthy of remark, that Jerome, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, just the most eminent exegetes of the ancient church, expressly acknowledged the original identity of the two offices in the New Testament, and consequently derive the proper episcopate, not from divine institution, but only from church usage.479

The traditional participation of the people in the election, which attested the popular origin of the episcopal office, still continued, but gradually sank to a mere formality, and at last became entirely extinct. The bishops filled their own vacancies, and elected and ordained the clergy. Besides ordination, as the medium for communicating the official gifts, they also claimed from the presbyters in the West, after the fifth century, the exclusive prerogatives of confirming the baptized and consecrating the chrism or holy ointment used in baptism.480  In the East, on the contrary, confirmation (the chrism) is performed also by the presbyters, and, according to the ancient custom, immediately follows baptism.

To this spiritual preëminence of the bishops was now added, from the time of Constantine, a civil importance. Through the union of the church with the state, the bishops became at the same time state officials of weight, and enjoyed the various privileges which accrued to the church from this connection.481  They had thenceforth an independent and legally valid jurisdiction; they held supervision of the church estates, which were sometimes very considerable, and they had partial charge even of the city, property; they superintended the morals of the people, and even of the emperor; and they exerted influence upon the public legislation. They were exempt from civil jurisdiction, and could neither be brought as witnesses before a court nor be compelled to take an oath. Their dioceses grew larger, and their power and revenues increased. Dominus beatissimus (makariwvtato"), sanctissimus (aJgiwvtato"), or reverendissimus, Beatitudo or Sanctitas tua, and similar high-sounding titles, passed into universal use. Kneeling, kissing of the hand, and like tokens of reverence, came to be shown them by all classes, up to the emperor himself. Chrysostom, at the end of the fourth century, says: "The heads of the empire (hyparchs) and the governors of provinces (toparchs) enjoy no such honor as the rulers of the church. They are first at court, in the society of ladies, in the houses of the great. No one has precedence of them."

To this position corresponded the episcopal insignia, which from the fourth century became common: the ring, as the symbol of the espousal of the bishop to the church; the crosier or shepherd’s staff (also called crook, because it was generally curved at the top); and the pallium,482, a shoulder cloth, after the example of the ephod of the Jewish high-priest, and perhaps of the sacerdotal mantle worn by the Roman emperors as pontifices maximi. The pallium is a seamless cloth hanging over the shoulders, formerly of white linen, in the West subsequently of white lamb’s wool, with four red or black crosses wrought in it with silk. According to the present usage of the Roman church the wool is taken from the lambs of St. Agnes, which are every year solemnly blessed and sacrificed by the pope in memory of this pure virgin. Hence the later symbolical meaning of the pallium, as denoting the bishop’s following of Christ, the good Shepherd, with the lost and reclaimed sheep upon his shoulders. Alexandrian tradition traced this vestment to the evangelist Mark; but Gregory Nazianzen expressly says that it was first given by Constantine the Great to the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem.483  In the East it was worn by all bishops, in the West by archbishops only, on whom, from the time of Gregory I., it was conferred by the pope on their accession to office. At first the investiture was gratuitous, but afterward came to involve a considerable fee, according to the revenues of the archbishopric.

As the bishop united in himself all the rights and privileges of the clerical office, so he was expected to show himself a model in the discharge of its duties and a follower of the great Archbishop and Archshepherd of the sheep. He was expected to exhibit in a high degree the ascetic virtues, especially that of virginity, which, according to Catholic ethics, belongs to the idea of moral perfection. Many a bishop, like Athanasius, Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Martin of Tours, lived in rigid abstinence and poverty, and devoted his income to religious and charitable objects.

But this very power and this temporal advantage of the episcopate became also a lure for avarice and ambition, and a temptation to the lordly and secular spirit. For even under the episcopal mantle the human heart still beat, with all those weaknesses and passions, which can only be overcome by the continual influence of Divine grace. There were metropolitans and patriarchs, especially in Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome, who, while yet hardly past the age of persecution, forgot the servant form of the Son of God and the poverty of his apostles and martyrs, and rivalled the most exalted civil officials, nay, the emperor himself, in worldly pomp and luxury. Not seldom were the most disgraceful intrigues employed to gain the holy office. No wonder, says Ammianus, that for so splendid a prize as the bishopric of Rome, men strive with the utmost passion and persistence, when rich presents from ladies and a more than imperial sumptuousness invite them.484  The Roman prefect, Praetextatus, declared jestingly to the bishop Damasus, who had obtained the office through a bloody battle of parties, that for such a price he would at once turn Christian himself.485  Such an example could not but shed its evil influence on the lower clergy of the great cities. Jerome sketches a sarcastic description of the Roman priests, who squandered all their care on dress and perfumery, curled their hair with crisping pins, wore sparkling rings, paid far too great attention to women, and looked more like bridegrooms than like clergymen.486  And in the Greek church it was little better. Gregory Nazianzen, himself a bishop, and for a long time patriarch of Constantinople, frequently mourns the ambition, the official jealousies, and the luxury of the hierarchy, and utters the wish that the bishops might be distinguished only by a higher grade of virtue.

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

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

Constantine the Great divided the whole empire into four praefectures (the Oriental, the Illyrian, the Italian, and the Gallic); the praefectures into vicariates, dioceses, or proconsulates, fourteen or fifteen in all;487 and each diocese again into several provinces.488  The praefectures were governed by Praefecti Praetorio, the dioceses by Vicarii, the provinces by Rectores, with various titles—commonly Praesides.

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

The lowest rank in the episcopal hierarchy was occupied by the country bishops,489 the presiding officers of those rural congregations, which were not supplied with presbyters from neighboring cities. In North Africa, with its multitude of small dioceses, these country bishops were very numerous, and stood on an equal footing with the others. But in the East they became more and more subordinate to the neighboring city bishops; until at last, partly on account of their own incompetence, chiefly for the sake of the rising hierarchy, they were wholly extinguished. Often they were utterly unfit for their office; at least Basil of Caesarea, who had fifty country bishops in his metropolitan district, reproached them with frequently receiving men totally unworthy into the clerical ranks. And moreover, they stood in the way of the aspirations of the city bishops; for the greater the number of bishops, the smaller the diocese and the power of each, though probably the better the collective influence of all upon the church. The council of Sardica, in 343, doubtless had both considerations in view, when, on motion of Hosius, the president, it decreed: "It is not permitted, that, in a village or small town, for which a single priest is sufficient, a bishop should be stationed, lest the episcopal dignity and authority suffer scandal;490 but the bishops of the eparchy (province) shall appoint bishops only for those places where bishops have already been, or where the town is so populous that it is considered worthy to be a bishopric."  The place of these chorepiscopi was thenceforth supplied either by visitators (periodeu'tai), who in the name of the bishop visited the country congregations from time to time, and performed the necessary functions, or by resident presbyters (parochi), under the immediate supervision of the city bishop.

Among the city bishops towered the bishops of the capital cities of the various provinces. They were styled in the East metropolitans, in the West usually archbishops.491 They had the oversight of the other bishops of the province; ordained them, in connection with two or three assistants; summoned provincial synods, which, according to the fifth canon of the council of Nice and the direction of other councils, were to be held twice a year; and presided in such synods. They promoted union among the different churches by the reciprocal communication of synodal acts, and confirmed the organism of the hierarchy.

This metropolitan constitution, which had gradually arisen out of the necessities of the church, became legally established in the East in the fourth century, and passed thence to the Graeco-Russian church. The council of Nice, at that early day, ordered in the fourth canon, that every new bishop should be ordained by all, or at least by three, of the bishops of the eparchy (the municipal province), under the direction and with the sanction of the metropolitan.492  Still clearer is the ninth canon of the council of Antioch, in 341: "The bishops of each eparchy (province) should know, that upon the bishop of the metropolis (the municipal capital) also devolves a care for the whole eparchy, because in the metropolis all, who have business, gather together from all quarters. Hence it has been found good, that he should also have a precedence in honor,493 and that the other bishops should do nothing without him—according to the old and still binding canon of our fathers—except that which pertains to the supervision and jurisdiction of their parishes (i.e. dioceses in the modern terminology), and the provinces belonging to them; as in fact they ordain presbyters and deacons, and decide all judicial matters. Otherwise they ought to do nothing without the bishop of the metropolis, and he nothing without the consent of the other bishops."  This council, in the nineteenth canon, forbade a bishop being ordained without the presence of the metropolitan and the presence or concurrence of the majority of the bishops of the province.

In Africa a similar system had existed from the time of Cyprian, before the church and the state were united. Every province had a Primas; the oldest bishop being usually chosen to this office. The bishop of Carthage, however, was not only primate of Africa proconsularis, but at the same time, corresponding to the proconsul of Carthage, the ecclesiastical head of Numidia and Mauretania, and had power to summon a general council of Africa.494

§ 55. The Patriarchs.

Mich. Le Quien (French Dominican, † 1788): Oriens Christianus, in quatuor patriarchatus digestus, quo exhibentur ecclesiae, patriarchae caeterique preasules totius Orientis. Opus posthumum, Par. 1740, 3 vols. fol. (a thorough description of the oriental dioceses from the beginning to 1732). P. Jos. Cautelius (Jesuit): Metropolitanarum urbium historia civilis et ecclesiastic in qua Romanae Sedis dignitas et imperatorum et regum in eam merits explicantur, Par. 1685 (important for ecclesiastical statistics of the West, and the extension of the Roman patriarchate). Bingham (Anglican): Antiquities, l. ii. c. 17. Joh. El. Theod. Wiltsch (Evangel.): Handbuch der Kirchl. Geographie u. Statistik, Berl. 1846, vol. i. p. 56 sqq. Friedr. Maassen (R.C.): Der Primat des Bischofs von Rom. u. die alten Patriarchalkirchen, Bonn, 1853. Thomas Greenwood: Cathedra Petri, a Political History of the Latin Patriarchate, Lond. 1859 sqq. (vol. i. p. 158–489). Comp. my review of this work in the Am. Theol. Rev., New York, 1864, p. 9 sqq.

Still above the metropolitans stood the five Patriarchs,495 the oligarchical summit, so to speak, the five towers in the edifice of the Catholic hierarchy of the Graeco-Roman empire.

These patriarchs, in the official sense of the word as already fixed at the time of the fourth ecumenical council, were the bishops of the four great capitals of the empire, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople; to whom was added, by way of honorary distinction, the bishop of Jerusalem, as president of the oldest Christian congregation, though the proper continuity of that office had been broken by the destruction of the holy city. They had oversight of one or more dioceses; at least of two or more provinces or eparchies.496  They ordained the metropolitans; rendered the final decision in church controversies; conducted the ecumenical councils; published the decrees of the councils and the church laws of the emperors; and united in themselves the supreme legislative and executive power of the hierarchy. They bore the same relation to the metropolitans of single provinces, as the ecumenical councils to the provincial. They did not, however, form a college; each acted for himself. Yet in important matters they consulted with one another, and had the right also to keep resident legates (apocrisiarii) at the imperial court at Constantinople.

In prerogative they were equal, but in the extent of their dioceses and in influence they differed, and had a system of rank among themselves. Before the founding of Constantinople, and down to the Nicene council, Rome maintained the first rank, Alexandria the second, and Antioch the third, in both ecclesiastical and political importance. After the end of the fourth century this order was modified by the insertion of Constantinople as the second capital, between Rome and Alexandria, and the addition of Jerusalem as the fifth and smallest patriarchate.

The patriarch of Jerusalem presided only over the three meagre provinces of Palestine;497 the patriarch of Antioch, over the greater part of the political diocese of the Orient, which comprised fifteen provinces, Syria, Phenicia, Cilicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, &c.;498 the patriarch of Alexandria, over the whole diocese of Egypt with its nine rich provinces, Aegyptus prima and secunda, the lower and upper Thebaid, lower and upper Libya, &c.;499 the patriarch of Constantinople, over three dioceses, Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, with eight and twenty provinces, and at the same time over the bishoprics among the barbarians;500 the patriarch of Rome gradually extended his influence over the entire West, two prefectures, the Italian and the Gallic, with all their dioceses and provinces.501

The patriarchal system had reference primarily only to the imperial church, but indirectly affected also the barbarians, who received Christianity from the empire. Yet even within the empire, several metropolitans, especially the bishop of Cyprus in the Eastern church, and the bishops of Milan, Aquileia, and Ravenna in the Western, during this period maintained their autocracy with reference to the patriarchs to whose dioceses they geographically belonged. In the fifth century, the patriarchs of Antioch attempted to subject the island of Cyprus, where Paul first had preached the gospel, to their jurisdiction; but the ecumenical council of Ephesus, in 431, confirmed to the church of Cyprus its ancient right to ordain its own bishops.502  The North African bishops also, with all respect for the Roman see, long maintained Cyprian’s spirit of independence, and in a council at Hippo Regius, in 393, protested against such titles as princeps sacerdotum, summus sacerdos, assumed by the patriarchs, and were willing only to allow the title of primae sedis episcopus.503

When, in consequence of the Christological controversies, the Nestorians and Monophysites split off from the orthodox church, they established independent schismatic patriarchates, which continue to this day, showing that the patriarchal constitution answers most nearly to the oriental type of Christianity. The orthodox Greek church, as well as the schismatic sects of the East, has substantially remained true to the patriarchal system down to the present time; while the Latin church endeavored to establish the principle of monarchical centralization so early as Leo the Great, and in the course of the middle age produced the absolute papacy.

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

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

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

The first ecumenical council of Nice, in 325, as yet knew nothing of five patriarchs, but only the three metropolitans above named, confirming them in their traditional rights.504  In the much-canvassed sixth canon, probably on occasion of the Meletian schism in Egypt, and the attacks connected with it on the rights of the bishop of Alexandria, that council declared as follows:

"The ancient custom, which has obtained in Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, shall continue in force, viz.: that the bishop of Alexandria have rule over all these [provinces], since this also is customary with the bishop of Rome [that is, not in Egypt, but with reference to his own diocese]. Likewise also at Antioch and in the other eparchies, the churches shall retain their prerogatives. Now, it is perfectly clear, that, if any one has been made bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great council does not allow him to be bishop."505

The Nicene fathers passed this canon not as introducing anything new, but merely as confirming an existing relation on the basis of church tradition; and that, with special reference to Alexandria, on account of the troubles existing there. Rome was named only for illustration; and Antioch and all the other eparchies or provinces were secured their admitted rights.506  The bishoprics of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch were placed substantially on equal footing, yet in such tone, that Antioch, as the third capital of the Roman empire, already stands as a stepping stone to the ordinary metropolitans. By the "other eparchies" of the canon are to be understood either all provinces, and therefore all metropolitan districts, or more probably, as in the second canon of the first council of Constantinople, only the three eparchates of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Ephesus, and Asia Minor, and Heraclea in Thrace, which, after Constantine’s division of the East, possessed similar prerogatives, but were subsequently overshadowed and absorbed by Constantinople. In any case, however, this addition proves that at that time the rights and dignity of the patriarchs were not yet strictly distinguished from those of the other metropolitans. The bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch here appear in relation to the other bishops simply as primi inter pares, or as metropolitans of the first rank, in whom the highest political eminence was joined with the highest ecclesiastical. Next to them, in the second rank, come the bishops of Ephesus in the Asiatic diocese of the empire, of Neo-Caesarea in the Pontic, and of Heraclea in the Thracian; while Constantinople, which was not founded till five years later, is wholly unnoticed in the Nicene council, and Jerusalem is mentioned only under the name of Aelia.

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

This new patriarchate was first officially recognized at the first ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381, and was conceded "the precedence in honor, next to the bishop of Rome," the second place among all bishops; and that, on the purely political consideration, that New Rome was the residence of the emperor.507  At the same time the imperial city and the diocese of Thrace (whose ecclesiastical metropolis hitherto had been Heraclea) were assigned as its district.508

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

After the council of 381, the bishop of Constantinople indulged in manifold encroachments on the rights of the metropolitans of Ephesus and Caesarea in Cappadocia, and even on the rights of the other patriarchs. In this extension of his authority he was favored by the fact that, in spite of the prohibition of the council of Sardica, the bishops of all the districts of the East continually resided in Constantinople, in order to present all kinds of interests to the emperor. These concerns of distant bishops were generally referred by the emperor to the bishop of Constantinople and his council, the suvnodo" ejndhmou'sa, as it was called, that is, a council of the bishops resident (ejndhmouvntwn) in Constantinople, under his presidency. In this way his trespasses even upon the bounds of other patriarchs obtained the right of custom by consent of parties, if not the sanction of church legislation. Nectarius, who was not elected till after that council, claimed the presidency at a council in 394, over the two patriarchs who were present, Theophilus of Alexandria and Flavian of Antioch; decided the matter almost alone; and thus was the first to exercise the primacy over the entire East. Under his successor, Chrysostom, the compass of the see extended itself still farther, and, according to Theodoret,509 stretched over the capital, over all Thrace with its six provinces, over all Asia (Asia proconsularis) with eleven provinces, and over Pontus, which likewise embraced eleven provinces; thus covering twenty-eight provinces in all. In the year 400, Chrysostom went "by request to Ephesus," to ordain there Heraclides of Ephesus, and at the same time to institute six bishops in the places of others deposed for simony.510  His second successor, Atticus, about the year 421, procured from the younger Theodosius a law, that no bishop should be ordained in the neighboring dioceses without the consent of the bishop of Constantinople.511  This power still needed the solemn sanction of a general council, before it could have a firm legal foundation. It received this sanction at Chalcedon.

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

"Following throughout the decrees of the holy fathers, and being "acquainted with the recently read canon of the hundred and fifty bishops [i.e. the third canon of the second ecumenical council of 381], we also have determined and decreed the same in reference to the prerogatives of the most holy church of Constantinople or New Rome. For with reason did the fathers confer prerogatives (ta; presbei'a) on the throne [the episcopal chair] of ancient Rome, on account of her character as the imperial city (dia; to; basileuvein); and, moved by the same consideration, the hundred and fifty bishops recognized the same prerogatives (ta; i[sa "presbei'a) also in the most holy throne of New Rome; with good reason judging, that the city, which is honored with the imperial dignity and the senate [i.e. where the emperor and senate reside], and enjoys the same [municipal] privileges as the ancient imperial Rome, should also be equally elevated in ecclesiastical respects, and be the second after he(deutevran met j ejkeivnhn.¼."

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

We have divided this celebrated Chalcedonian canon into two parts, though in the Greek text the parts are (by Kai; w{ste) closely connected. The first part assigns to the bishop of Constantinople the second rank among the patriarchs, and is simply a repetition and confirmation of the third canon of the council of Constantinople; the second part goes farther, and sanctions the supremacy, already actually exercised by Chrysostom and his successors, of the patriarch of Constantinople, not only over the diocese of Thrace, but also over the dioceses of Asia Minor and Pontus, and gives him the exclusive right to ordain both the metropolitans of these three dioceses, and all the bishops of the barbarians512 within those bounds. This gave him a larger district than any other patriarch of the East. Subsequently an edict of the emperor Justinian, in 530, added to him the special prerogative of receiving appeals from the other patriarchs, and thus of governing the whole Orient.

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

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

Just here, therefore, is the point, where the Eastern church entered into a conflict with the Western, which continues to this day. The papal delegates protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council, on the spot, in the sixteenth and last session of the council; but in vain, though their protest was admitted to record. They appealed to the sixth canon of the Nicene council, according to the enlarged Latin version, which, in the later addition, "Ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum," seems to assign the Roman bishop a position above all the patriarchs, and drops Constantinople from notice; whereupon the canon was read to them in its original form from the Greek Acts, without that addition, together with the first three canons of the second ecumenical council with their express acknowledgment of the patriarch of Constantinople in the second rank.513  After the debate on this point, the imperial commissioners thus summed up the result: "From the whole discussion, and from what has been brought forward on either side, we acknowledge that the primacy over all (pro; pavntwn ta; prwtei'a) and the most eminent rank (kai; th;n ejxeivreton timhvn) are to continue with the archbishop of old Rome; but that also the archbishop of New Rome should enjoy the same precedence of honor (ta; presbei'a th'" timh'"), and have the right to ordain the metropolitans in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace," &c. Now they called upon the council to declare whether this was its opinion; whereupon the bishops gave their full, emphatic consent, and begged to be dismissed. The commissioners then closed the transactions with the words: "What we a little while ago proposed, the whole council hath ratified;" that is, the prerogative granted to the church of Constantinople is confirmed by the council in spite of the protest of the legates of Rome.514

After the council, the Roman bishop, Leo, himself protested in three letters of the 22d May, 452; the first of which was addressed to the emperor Marcian, the second to the empress Pulcheria, the third to Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople.515  He expressed his satisfaction with the doctrinal results of the council, but declared the elevation of the bishop of Constantinople to the patriarchal dignity to be a work of pride and ambition—the humble, modest pope!—to be an attack upon the rights of other Eastern metropolitans—the invader of the same rights in Gaul!—especially upon the rights of the Roman see guaranteed by the council of Nice—on the authority of a Roman interpolation—and to be destructive of the peace of the church—which the popes have always sacredly kept!  He would hear nothing of political considerations as the source of the authority of his chair, but pointed rather to Divine institution and the primacy of Peter. Leo speaks here with great reverence of the first ecumenical council, under the false impression that that council in its sixth canon acknowledged the primacy of Rome; but with singular indifference of the second ecumenical council, on account of its third canon, which was confirmed at Chalcedon. He charges Anatolius with using for his own ambition a council, which had been called simply for the extermination of heresy and the establishment of the faith. But the canons of the Nicene council, inspired by the Holy Ghost, could be superseded by no synod, however great; and all that came in conflict with them was void. He exhorted Anatolius to give up his ambition, and reminded him of the words: Tene quod habes, ne alius accipiat coronam tuam.516

But this protest could not change the decree of the council nor the position of the Greek church in the matter, although, under the influence of the emperor, Anatolius wrote an humble letter to Leo. The bishops of Constantinople asserted their rank, and were sustained by the Byzantine emperors. The twenty-eighth canon of the Chalcedonian council was expressly confirmed by Justinian I., in the 131st Novelle (c. 1), and solemnly renewed by the Trullan council (can. 36), but was omitted in the Latin collections of canons by Prisca, Dionysius, Exiguus, and Isidore. The loud contradiction of Rome gradually died away; yet she has never formally acknowledged this canon, except during the Latin empire and the Latin patriarchate at Constantinople, when the fourth Lateran council, under Innocent III., in 1215, conceded that the patriarch of Constantinople should hold the next rank after the patriarch of Rome, before those of Alexandria and Antioch.517

Finally, the bishop of Jerusalem, after long contests with the metropolitan of Caesarea and the patriarch of Antioch, succeeded in advancing himself to the patriarchal dignity; but his distinction remained chiefly a matter of honor, far below the other patriarchates in extent of real power. Had not the ancient Jerusalem, in the year 70, been left with only a part of the city wall and three gates to mark it, it would doubtless, being the seat of the oldest Christian congregation, have held, as in the time of James, a central position in the hierarchy. Yet as it was, a reflection of the original dignity of the mother city fell upon the new settlement of Aelia Capitolina, which, after Adrian, rose upon the venerable ruins. The pilgrimage of the empress Helena, and the magnificent church edifices of her son on the holy places, gave Jerusalem a new importance as the centre of devout pilgrimage from all quarters of Christendom. Its bishop was subordinate, indeed, to the metropolitan of Caesarea, but presided with him (probably secundo loco) at the Palestinian councils.518  The council of Nice gave him an honorary precedence among the bishops, though without affecting his dependence on the metropolitan of Caesarea. At least this seems to be the meaning of the short and some. what obscure seventh canon: "Since it is custom and old tradition, that the bishop of Aelia (Jerusalem) should be honored, he shall also enjoy the succession of honor,519 while the metropolis (Caesarea) preserves the dignity allotted to her."  The legal relation of the two remained for a long time uncertain, till the fourth ecumenical council, at its seventh session, confirmed the bishop of Jerusalem in his patriarchal rank, and assigned to him the three provinces of Palestine as a diocese, without opposition.

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

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

The organization of the church in the East being so largely influenced by the political constitution, the bishop of the imperial capital could not fail to become the most powerful of the four oriental patriarchs. By the second and fourth ecumenical councils, as we have already seen, his actual preëminence was ratified by ecclesiastical sanction, and he was designated to the foremost dignity.520  From Justinian I. he further received supreme appellate jurisdiction, and the honorary title of ecumenical patriarch, which he still continues to bear.521  He ordained the other patriarchs, not seldom decided their deposition or institution by his influence, and used every occasion to interfere in their affairs, and assert his supreme authority, though the popes and their delegates at the imperial court incessantly protested. The patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria were distracted and weakened in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries by the tedious monophysite controversies, and subsequently, after the year 622, were reduced to but a shadow by the Mohammedan conquests. The patriarchate of Constantinople, on the contrary, made important advances southwest and north; till, in its flourishing period, between the eighth and tenth centuries, it embraced, besides its original diocese, Calabria, Sicily, and all the provinces of Illyricum, the Bulgarians, and Russia. Though often visited with destructive earthquakes and conflagrations, and besieged by Persians, Arabians, Hungarians, Russians, Latins, and Turks, Constantinople maintained itself to the middle of the fifteenth century as the seat of the Byzantine empire and centre of the Greek church. The patriarch of Constantinople, however, remained virtually only primus inter pares, and has never exercised a papal supremacy over his colleagues in the East, like that of the pope over the metropolitans of the West; still less has he arrogated, like his rival in ancient Rome, the sole dominion of the entire church. Toward the bishop of Rome he claimed only equality of rights and coordinate dignity.

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

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

But the Roman patriarch had yet greater advantages. In him were united, as even the Greek historian Theodoret concedes,522 all the outward and the inward, the political and the spiritual conditions of the highest eminence.

In the first place, his authority rested on an ecclesiastical and spiritual basis, reaching back, as public opinion granted, through an unbroken succession, to Peter the apostle; while Constantinople was in no sense an apostolica sedes, but had a purely political origin, though, by transfer, and in a measure by usurpation, it had possessed itself of the metropolitan rights of Ephesus523  Hence the popes after Leo appealed almost exclusively to the divine origin of their dignity, and to the primacy of the prince of the apostles over the whole church.

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

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

Further, amidst the great trinitarian and christological controversies of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the popes maintained the powerful prestige of almost undeviating ecumenical orthodoxy and doctrinal stability;524 while the see of Constantinople, with its Grecian spirit of theological restlessness and disputation, was sullied with the Arian, the Nestorian, the Monophysite, and other heresies, and was in general, even in matters of faith, dependent on the changing humors of the court. Hence even contending parties in the East were accustomed to seek counsel and protection from the Roman chair, and oftentimes gave that see the coveted opportunity to put the weight of its decision into the scale. This occasional practice then formed a welcome basis for a theory of jurisdiction. The Roma locuta est assumed the character of a supreme and final judgment. Rome learned much and forgot nothing. She knew how to turn every circumstances with consummate administrative tact, to her own advantage.

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

§ 58. The Latin Patriarch.

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

The papacy is undeniably the result of a long process of history. Centuries were employed in building it, and centuries have already been engaged upon its partial destruction. Lust of honor and of power, and even open fraud,525 have contributed to its development; for human nature lies hidden under episcopal robes, with its steadfast inclination to abuse the power intrusted to it; and the greater the power, the stronger is the temptation, and the worse the abuse. But behind and above these human impulses lay the needs of the church and the plans of Providence, and these are the proper basis for explaining the rise, as well as the subsequent decay, of the papal dominion over the countries and nations of Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

The Roman patriarchal circuit primarily embraced the ten suburban provinces, as they were called, which were under the political jurisdiction of the Roman deputy, the Vicarius Urbis; including the greater part of Central Italy, all Upper Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.526  In its wider sense, however, it extended gradually over the entire west of the Roman empire, thus covering Italy, Gaul, Spain, Illyria, southeastern Britannia, and northwestern Africa.527

The bishop of Rome was from the beginning the only Latin patriarch, in the official sense of the word. He stood thus alone, in the first place, for the ecclesiastical reason, that Rome was the only sedes apostolica in the West, while in the Greek church three patriarchates and several other episcopal sees, such as Ephesus, Thessalonica, and Corinth, shared the honor of apostolic foundation. Then again, he stood politically alone, since Rome was the sole metropolis of the West, while in the East there were three capitals of the empire, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Hence Augustine, writing from the religious point of view, once calls Pope Innocent I. the "ruler of the Western church;"528 and the emperor Justinian, on the ground of political distribution, in his 109th Novelle, where he speaks of the ecclesiastical division of the whole world, mentions only five known patriarchates, and therefore only one patriarchate of the West. The decrees of the ecumenical councils, also, know no other Western patriarchate than the Roman, and this was the sole medium through which the Eastern church corresponded with the Western. In the great theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries the Roman bishop appears uniformly as the representative and the organ of all Latin Christendom.

It was, moreover, the highest interest of all orthodox churches in the West, amidst the political confusion and in conflict with the Arian Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, to bind themselves closely to a common centre, and to secure the powerful protection of a central authority. This centre they could not but find in the primitive apostolic church of the metropolis of the world. The Roman bishops were consulted in almost all important questions of doctrine or of discipline. After the end of the fourth century they issued to the Western bishops in reply, pastoral epistles and decretal letters,529 in which they decided the question at first in the tone of paternal counsel, then in the tone of apostolic authority, making that which had hitherto been left to free opinion, a fixed statute. The first extant decretal is the Epistola of Pope Siricius to the spanish bishop Himerius, A.D. 385, which contains, characteristically, a legal enforcement of priestly celibacy, thus of an evidently unapostolic institution; but in this Siricius appeals to "generalia decreta," which his predecessor Liberius had already issued. In like manner the Roman bishops repeatedly caused the assembling of general or patriarchal councils of the West (synodos occidentales), like the synod of Axles in 314. After the sixth and seventh centuries they also conferred the pallium on the archbishops of Salona, Ravenna, Messina, Syracuse, Palermo, Arles, Autun, Sevilla, Nicopolis (in Epirus), Canterbury, and other metropolitans, in token of their superior jurisdiction.530

§ 59. Conflicts and Conquests of the Latin Patriarchate.

But this patriarchal power was not from the beginning and to a uniform extent acknowledged in the entire West. Not until the latter part of the sixth century did it reach the height we have above described.531  It was not a divine institution, unchangeably fixed from the beginning for all times, like a Biblical article of faith; but the result of a long process of history, a human ecclesiastical institution under providential direction. In proof of which we have the following incontestable facts:

In the first place, even in Italy, several metropolitans maintained, down to the close of our period, their own supreme headship, independent of Roman and all other jurisdiction.532  The archbishops of Milan, who traced their church to the apostle Barnabas, came into no contact with the pope till the latter part of the sixth century, and were ordained without him or his pallium. Gregory I., in 593, during the ravages of the Longobards, was the first who endeavored to exercise patriarchal rights there: he reinstated an excommunicated presbyter, who had appealed to him.533  The metropolitans of Aquileia, who derived their church from the evangelist Mark, and whose city was elevated by Constantine the Great to be the capital of Venetia and Istria, vied with Milan, and even with Rome, calling themselves "patriarchs," and refusing submission to the papal jurisdiction even under Gregory the Great.534  The bishop of Ravenna likewise, after 408, when the emperor Honorius selected that city for his residence, became a powerful metropolitan, with jurisdiction over fourteen bishoprics. Nevertheless he received the pallium from Gregory the Great, and examples occur of ordination by the Roman bishop.535

The North African bishops and councils in the beginning of the fifth century, with all traditional reverence for the apostolic see, repeatedly protested, in the spirit of Cyprian, against encroachments of Rome, and even prohibited all appeal in church controversies from their own to a transmarine or foreign tribunal, upon pain of excommunication.536  The occasion of this was an appeal to Rome by the presbyter Apiarius, who had been deposed for sundry offences by Bishop Urbanus, of Sicca, a disciple and friend of Augustine, and whose restoration was twice attempted, by Pope Zosimus in 418, and by Pope Coelestine in 424. From this we see that the popes gladly undertook to interfere for a palpably unworthy priest, and thus sacrificed the interests of local discipline, only to make their own superior authority felt. The Africans referred to the genuine Nicene canon (for which Zosimus had substituted the Sardican appendix respecting the appellate jurisdiction of Rome, of which the Nicene council knew nothing), and reminded the pope, that the gift of the Holy Ghost, needful for passing a just judgment, was not lacking to any province, and that he could as well inspire a whole province as a single bishop. The last document in the case of this appeal of Apiarius is a letter of the (twentieth) council of Carthage, in 424, to Pope Coelestine I., to the following purport:537 "Apiarius asked a new trial, and gross misdeeds of his were thereby brought to light. The papal legate, Faustinus, has, in the face of this, in a very harsh manner demanded the reception of this man into the fellowship of the Africans, because he has appealed to the pope and been received into fellowship by him. But this very thing ought not to have been done. At last has Apiarius himself acknowledged all his crimes. The pope may hereafter no longer so readily give audience to those who come from Africa to Rome, like Apiarius, nor receive the excommunicated into church communion, be they bishops or priests, as the council of Nice (can. 5) has ordained, in whose direction bishops are included. The assumption of appeal to Rome is a trespass on the rights of the African church, and what has been [by Zosimus and his legates] brought forward as a Nicene ordinance for it, is not Nicene, and is not to be found in the genuine copies of the Nicene Acts, which have been received from Constantinople and Alexandria. Let the pope, therefore, in future send no more judges to Africa, and since Apiarius has now been excluded for his offences, the pope will surely not expect the African church to submit longer to the annoyances of the legate Faustinus. May God the Lord long preserve the pope, and may the pope pray for the Africans."  In the Pelagian controversy the weak Zosimus, who, in opposition to the judgment of his predecessor Innocent, had at first expressed himself favorably to the heretics, was even compelled by the Africans to yield. The North African church maintained this position under the lead of the greatest of the Latin fathers, St. Augustine, who in other respects contributed more than any other theologian or bishop to the erection of the Catholic system. She first made submission to the Roman jurisdiction, in the sense of her weakness, under the shocks of the Vandals. Leo (440–461) was the first pope who could boast of having extended the diocese of Rome beyond Europe into another quarter of the globe.538  He and Gregory the Great wrote to the African bishops entirely in the tone of paternal authority without provoking reply.

In Spain the popes found from the first a more favorable field. The orthodox bishops there were so pressed in the fifth century by the Arian Vandals, Suevi, Alani, and soon after by the Goths, that they sought counsel and protection with the bishop of Rome, which, for his own sake, he was always glad to give. So early as 385, Siricius, as we have before observed, issued a decretal letter to a Spanish bishop. The epistles of Leo to Bishop Turibius of Asturica, and the bishops of Gaul and Spain,539 are instances of the same authoritative style. Simplicius (467–483) appointed the bishop Zeno of Sevilla papal vicar,540 and Gregory the Great, with a paternal letter, conferred the pallium on Leander, bishop of Sevilla.541

In Gaul, Leo succeeded in asserting the Roman jurisdiction, though not without opposition, in the affair of the archbishop Hilary of Arles, or Arelate. The affair has been differently represented from the Gallican and the ultramontane points of view.542  Hilary (born 403, died 449), first a rigid monk, then, against his will, elevated to the bishopric, an eloquent preacher, an energetic prelate, and the first champion of the freedom of the Gallican church against the pretensions of Rome, but himself not free from hierarchical ambition, deposed Celidonius, the bishop of Besançon, at a council in that city (synodus Vesontionensis), because he had married a widow before his ordination, and had presided as judge at a criminal trial and pronounced sentence of death; which things, according to the ecclesiastical law, incapacitated him for the episcopal office. This was unquestionably an encroachment on the province of Vienne, to which Besaçon belonged. Pope Zosimus had, indeed, in 417, twenty-eight years before, appointed the bishop of Arles, which was a capital of seven provinces, to be papal vicar in Gaul, and had granted him metropolitan rights in the provinces Viennensis, and Narbonensis prima and secunda, though with the reservation of causae majores.543  The metropolitans of Vienne, Narbonne, and Marseilles, however, did not accept this arrangement, and the succeeding popes found it best to recognize again the old metropolitans.544  Celidonius appealed to Leo against that act of Hilary. Leo, in 445, assembled a Roman council (concilium sacerdotum), and reinstated him, as the accusation of Hilary, who himself journeyed on foot in the winter to Rome, and protested most vehemently against the appeal, could not be proven to the satisfaction of the pope. In fact, he directly or indirectly caused Hilary to be imprisoned, and, when he escaped and fled back to Gaul, cut him off from the communion of the Roman church, and deprived him of all prerogatives in the diocese of Vienne, which had been only temporarily conferred on the bishop of Arles, and were by a better judgment (sententia meliore) taken away. He accused him of assaults on the rights of other Gallican metropolitans, and above all of insubordination toward the principality of the most blessed Peter; and he goes so far as to say: "Whoso disputes the primacy of the apostle Peter, can in no way lessen the apostle’s dignity, but, puffed up by the spirit of his own pride, he destroys himself in hell."545  Only out of special grace did he leave Hilary in his bishopric. Not satisfied with this, he applied to the secular arm for help, and procured from the weak Western emperor, Valentinian III., an edict to Aetius, the magister militum of Gaul, in which it is asserted, almost in the words of Leo, that the whole world (universitas; in Greek, oijkoumevnh) acknowledges the Roman see as director and governor; that neither Hilary nor any bishop might oppose its commands; that neither Gallican nor other bishops should, contrary to the ancient custom, do anything without the authority of the venerable pope of the eternal city; and that all decrees of the pope have the force of law.

The letter of Leo to the Gallican churches, and the edict of the emperor, give us the first example of a defensive and offensive alliance of the central spiritual and temporal powers in the pursuit of an unlimited sovereignty. The edict, however, could of course have power, at most, only in the West, to which the authority of Valentinian was limited. In fact, even Hilary and his successors maintained, in spite of Leo, the prerogatives they had formerly received from Pope Zosimus, and were confirmed in them by later popes.546  Beyond this the issue of the contest is unknown. Hilary of Arles died in 449, universally esteemed and loved, without, so far as we know, having become formally reconciled with Rome;547 though, notwithstanding this, he figures in a remarkable manner in the Roman calendar, by the side of his papal antagonist Leo, as a canonical saint. Undoubtedly Leo proceeded in this controversy far too rigorously and intemperately against Hilary; yet it was important that he should hold fast the right of appeal as a guarantee of the freedom of bishops against the encroachments of metropolitans. The papal despotism often proved itself a wholesome check upon the despotism of subordinate prelates.

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

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

Finally, the Roman bishops succeeded also in extending their patriarchal power eastward, over the praefecture of East Illyria. Illyria belonged originally to the Western empire, remained true to the Nicene faith through the Arian controversies, and for the vindication of that faith attached itself closely to Rome. When Gratian, in 379, incorporated Illyricum Orientale with the Eastern empire, its bishops nevertheless refused to give up their former ecclesiastical connection. Damasus conferred on the metropolitan Acholius, of Thessalonica, as papal vicar, patriarchal rights in the new praefecture. The patriarch of Constantinople endeavored, indeed, repeatedly, to bring this ground into his diocese, but in vain. Justinian, in 535, formed of it a new diocese, with an independent patriarch at Prima Justiniana (or Achrida, his native city); but this arbitrary innovation had no vitality, and Gregory I. recovered active intercourse with the Illyrian bishops. Not until the eighth century, under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, was East Illyria finally severed from the Roman diocese and incorporated with the patriarchate of Constantinople.548

§ 60. The Papacy.

Literature, as in § 55, and vol. i. § 110.

At last the Roman bishop, on the ground of his divine institution, and as successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, advanced his claim to be primate of the entire church, and visible representative of Christ, who is the invisible supreme head of the Christian world. This is the strict and exclusive sense of the title, Pope.549

Properly speaking, this claim has never been fully realized, and remains to this day an apple of discord in the history of the church. Greek Christendom has never acknowledged it, and Latin, only under manifold protests, which at last conquered in the Reformation, and deprived the papacy forever of the best part of its domain. The fundamental fallacy of the Roman system is, that it identifies papacy and church, and therefore, to be consistent, must unchurch not only Protestantism, but also the entire Oriental church from its origin down. By the "una sancta catholica apostolica ecclesia" of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed is to be understood the whole body of Catholic Christians, of which the ecclesia Romana, like the churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, is only one of the most prominent branches. The idea of the papacy, and its claims to the universal dominion of the church, were distinctly put forward, it is true, so early as the period before us, but could not make themselves good beyond the limits of the West. Consequently the papacy, as a historical fact, or so far as it has been acknowledged, is properly nothing more than the Latin patriarchate run to absolute monarchy.

By its advocates the papacy is based not merely upon church usage, like the metropolitan and patriarchal power, but upon divine right; upon the peculiar position which Christ assigned to Peter in the well-known words: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church."550  This passage was at all times taken as an immovable exegetical rock for the papacy. The popes themselves appealed to it, times without number, as the great proof of the divine institution of a visible and infallible central authority in the church. According to this view, the primacy is before the apostolate, the head before the body, instead of the reverse.

But, in the first place, this preëminence of Peter did not in the least affect the independence of the other apostles. Paul especially, according to the clear testimony of his epistles and the book of Acts, stood entirely upon his own authority, and even on one occasion, at Antioch, took strong ground against Peter. Then again, the personal position of Peter by no means yields the primacy to the Roman bishop, without the twofold evidence, first that Peter was actually in Rome, and then that he transferred his prerogatives to the bishop of that city. The former fact rests upon a universal tradition of the early church, which at that time no one doubted, but is in part weakened and neutralized by the absence of any clear Scripture evidence, and by the much more certain fact, given in the New Testament itself, that Paul labored in Rome, and that in no position of inferiority or subordination to any higher authority than that of Christ himself. The second assumption, of the transfer of the primacy to the Roman bishops, is susceptible of neither historical nor exegetical demonstration, and is merely an inference from the principle that the successor in office inherits all the official prerogatives of his predecessor. But even granting both these intermediate links in the chain of the papal theory, the double question yet remains open: first, whether the Roman bishop be the only successor of Peter, or share this honor with the bishops of Jerusalem and Antioch, in which places also Peter confessedly resided; and secondly, whether the primacy involve at the same time a supremacy of jurisdiction over the whole church, or be only an honorary primacy among patriarchs of equal authority and rank. The former was the Roman view; the latter was the Greek.

An African bishop, Cyprian († 258), was the first to give to that passage of the 16th of Matthew, innocently as it were, and with no suspicion of the future use and abuse of his view, a papistic interpretation, and to bring out clearly the idea of a perpetual cathedra Petri. The same Cyprian, however, whether consistently or not, was at the same time equally animated with the consciousness of episcopal equality and independence, afterward actually came out in bold opposition to Pope Stephen in a doctrinal controversy on the validity of heretical baptism, and persisted in this protest to his death.551

§ 61. Opinions of the Fathers.

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

We now pursue the development of this idea in the church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. In general they agree in attaching to Peter a certain primacy over the other apostles, and in considering him the foundation of the church in virtue of his confession of the divinity of Christ; while they hold Christ to be, in the highest sense, the divine ground and rock of the church. And herein lies a solution of their apparent self-contradiction in referring the petra in Matt. xvi. 18, now to the person of Peter, now to his confession, now to Christ. Then, as the bishops in general were regarded as successors of the apostles, the fathers saw in the Roman bishops, on the ground of the ancient tradition of the martyrdom of Peter in Rome, the successor of Peter and the heir of the primacy. But respecting the nature and prerogatives of this primacy their views were very indefinite and various. It is remarkable that the reference of the rock to Christ, which Augustine especially defended with great earnestness, was acknowledged even by the greatest pope of the middle ages, Gregory VII., in the famous inscription he sent with a crown to the emperor Rudolph: "Petra [i.e., Christ] dedit Petro [i.e., to the apostle], Petrus [the pope] diadema Rudolpho."552  It is worthy of notice, that the post-Nicene, as well as the ante-Nicene fathers, with all their reverence for the Roman see, regarded the heathenish title of Rome, urbs aeterna, as blasphemous, with reference to the passage of the woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, Rev. xvii. 3.553  The prevailing opinion seems to have been, that Rome and the Roman empire would fall before the advent of Antichrist and the second coming of the Lord.554

1. The views of the Latin fathers.

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

Optatus, bishop of Milevi, the otherwise unknown author of an anti-Donatist work about A.D. 384, is, like Cyprian, thoroughly possessed with the idea of the visible unity of the church; declares it without qualification the highest good, and sees its plastic expression and its surest safeguard in the immovable cathedra Petri, the prince of the apostles, the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who, in spite of his denial of Christ, continued in that relation to the other apostles, that the unity of the church might appear in outward fact as an unchangeable thing, invulnerable to human offence. All these prerogatives have passed to the bishops of Rome, as the successors of this apostle.555

Ambrose of Milan († 397) speaks indeed in very high terms of the Roman church, and concedes to its bishops a religious magistracy like the political power of the emperors of pagan Rome;556 yet he calls the primacy of Peter only a "primacy of confession, not of honor; of faith, not of rank,"557 and places the apostle Paul on an equality with Peter.558  Of any dependence of Ambrose, or of the bishops of Milan in general during the first six centuries, on the jurisdiction of Rome, no trace is to be found.

Jerome († 419), the most learned commentator among the Latin fathers, vacillates in his explanation of the petra; now, like Augustine, referring it to Christ,559 now to Peter and his confession.560  In his commentary on Matt. xvi., he combines the two interpretations thus: "As Christ gave light to the apostles, so that they were called, after him, the light of the world, and as they received other designations from the Lord; so Simon, because he believed on the rock, Christ, received the name Peter, and in accordance with the figure of the rock, it is justly said to him: ’I will build my church upon thee (super te),’ "  He recognizes in the Roman bishop the successor of Peter, but advocates elsewhere the equal rights of the bishops,561 and in fact derives even the episcopal office, not from direct divine institution, but from the usage of the church and from the presidency in the presbyterium.562  He can therefore be cited as a witness, at most, for a primacy of honor, not for a supremacy of jurisdiction. Beyond this even the strongest passage of his writings, in a letter to his friend, Pope Damasus (A.D. 376), does not go: "Away with the ambition of the Roman head; I speak with the successor of the fisherman and disciple of the cross. Following no other head than Christ, I am joined in the communion of faith with thy holiness, that is, with the chair of Peter. On that rock I know the church to be built."563  Subsequently this father, who himself had an eye on the papal chair, fell out with the Roman clergy, and retired to the ascetic and literary solitude of Bethlehem, where he served the church by his pen far better than he would have done as the successor of Damasus.

Augustine († 430), the greatest theological authority of the Latin church, at first referred the words, "On this rock I will build my church," to the person of Peter, but afterward expressly retracted this interpretation, and considered the petra to be Christ, on the ground of a distinction between petra (ejpi; tauvth/ th'/ pevtra/) and Petrus (su; ei| Pevtro"); a distinction which Jerome also makes, though with the intimation that it is not properly applicable to the Hebrew and Syriac Cephas.564  "I have somewhere said of St. Peter" thus Augustine corrects himself in his Retractations at the close of his life565—"that the church is built upon him as the rock; a thought which is sung by many in the verses of St. Ambrose:

’Hoc ipsa petra ecclesiae

Canente, culpam diluit.’566

(The Rock of the church himself

In the cock-crowing atones his guilt.)

But I know that I have since frequently said, that the word of the Lord, ’Thou art Petrus, and on this petra I will build my church,’ must be understood of him, whom Peter confessed as Son of the living God; and Peter, so named after this rock, represents the person of the church, which is founded on this rock and has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not said to him: ’Thou art a rock’ (petra), but, ’Thou art Peter’ (Petrus); and the rock was Christ, through confession of whom Simon received the name of Peter. Yet the reader may decide which of the two interpretations is the more probable."  In the same strain he says, in another place: "Peter, in virtue of the primacy of his apostolate, stands, by a figurative generalization, for the church .... When it was said to him, ’I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ &c., he represented the whole church, which in this world is assailed by various temptations, as if by floods and storms, yet does not fall, because it is founded upon a rock, from which Peter received his name. For the rock is not so named from Peter, but Peter from the rock (non enim a Petro petra, sed Petrus a petra), even as Christ is not so called after the Christian, but the Christian after Christ. For the reason why the Lord says, ’On this rock I will build my church’ is that Peter had said: ’Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ On this rock, which then hast confessed, says he will build my church. For Christ was the rock (petra enim erat Christus), upon which also Peter himself was built; for other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Thus the church, which is built upon Christ, has received from him, in the person of Peter, the keys of heaven; that is, the power of binding and loosing sins."567  This Augustinian interpretation of the petra has since been revived by some Protestant theologians in the cause of anti-Romanism.568  Augustine, it is true, unquestionably understood by the church the visible Catholic church, descended from the apostles, especially from Peter, through the succession of bishops; and according to the usage of his time he called the Roman church by eminence the sedes apostolica.569  But on the other hand, like Cyprian and Jerome, he lays stress upon the essential unity of the episcopate, and insists that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were committed not to a single man, but to the whole church, which Peter was only set to represent.570  With this view agrees the independent position of the North African church in the time of Augustine toward Rome, as we have already observed it in the case of the appeal of Apiarius, and as it appears in the Pelagian controversy, of which Augustine was the leader. This father, therefore, can at all events be cited only as a witness to the limited authority of the Roman chair. And it should also, in justice, be observed, that in his numerous writings he very rarely speaks of that authority at all, and then for the most part incidentally; showing that he attached far less importance to this matter than the Roman divines.571

The later Latin fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries prefer the reference of the petra to Peter and his confession, and transfer his prerogatives to the Roman bishops as his successors, but produce no new arguments. Among them we mention Maximus of Turin (about 450), who, however, like Ambrose, places Paul on a level with Peter;572 then Orosius, and several popes; above all Leo, of whom we shall speak more fully in the following section.

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

So Chrysostom, for instance, calls Ignatius of Antioch a "successor of Peter, on whom, after Peter, the government of the church devolved,"573 and in another place says still more distinctly: "Since I have named Peter, I am reminded of another Peter [Flavian, bishop of Antioch], our common father and teacher, who has inherited as well the virtues as the chair of Peter. Yea, for this is the privilege of this city of ours [Antioch], to have first (ejn ajrch'/) had the coryphaeus of the apostles for its teacher. For it was proper that the city, where the Christian name originated, should receive the first of the apostles for its pastor. But after we had him for our teacher, we, did not retain him, but transferred him to imperial Rome."574

Theodoret also, who, like Chrysostom, proceeded from the Antiochian school, says of the "great city of Antioch," that it has the "throne of Peter."575  In a letter to Pope Leo he speaks, it is true, in very extravagant terms of Peter and his successors at Rome, in whom all the conditions, external and internal, of the highest eminence and control in the church are combined.576  But in the same epistle he remarks, that the "thrice blessed and divine double star of Peter and Paul rose in the East and shed its rays in every direction;" in connection with which it must be remembered that he was at that time seeking protection in Leo against the Eutychian robber-council of Ephesus (449), which had unjustly deposed both himself and Flavian of Constantinople.

His bitter antagonist also, the arrogant and overbearing Cyril of Alexandria, descended some years before, in his battle against Nestorius, to unworthy flattery, and called Pope Coelestine "the archbishop of the whole [Roman] world."577  The same prelates, under other circumstances, repelled with proud indignation the encroachments of Rome on their jurisdiction.

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

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

First mention here belongs to the council of Sardica in Illyria (now Sofia in Bulgaria) in 343,578 during the Arian controversy. This council is the most favorable of all to the Roman claims. In the interest of the deposed Athanasius and of the Nicene orthodoxy it decreed:

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

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

(3) That the Roman bishop, in such a case of appeal, may, according to his best judgment, either institute a new trial by the bishops of a neighboring province, or send delegates to the spot with full power to decide the matter with the bishops.579

Thus was plainly committed to the Roman bishops an appellate and revisory jurisdiction in the case of a condemned or deposed bishop even of the East. But in the first place this authority is not here acknowledged as a right already existing in practice. It is conferred as a new power, and that merely as an honorary right, and as pertaining only to the bishop Julius in person.580  Otherwise, either this bishop would not be expressly named, or his successors would be named with him. Furthermore, the canons limit the appeal to the case of a bishop deposed by his comprovincials, and say nothing of other cases. Finally, the council of Sardica was not a general council, but only a local synod of the West, and could therefore establish no law for the whole church. For the Eastern bishops withdrew at the very beginning, and held an opposition council in the neighboring town of Philippopolis; and the city of Sardica, too, with the praefecture of Illyricum, at that time belonged to the Western empire and the Roman patriarchate: it was not detached from them till 379. The council was intended, indeed, to be ecumenical; but it consisted at first of only a hundred and seventy bishops, and after the recession of the seventy-six Orientals, it had only ninety-four; and even by the two hundred signatures of absent bishops, mostly Egyptian, to whom the acts were sent for their approval, the East, and even the Latin Africa, with its three hundred bishoprics, were very feebly represented. It was not sanctioned by the emperor Constantius, and has by no subsequent authority been declared ecumenical.581  Accordingly its decrees soon fell into oblivion, and in the further course of the Arian controversy, and even throughout the Nestorian, where the bishops of Alexandria, and not those of Rome, were evidently at the head of the orthodox sentiment, they were utterly unnoticed.582  The general councils of 381, 451, and 680 knew nothing of such a supreme appellate tribunal, but unanimously enacted, that all ecclesiastical matters, without exception, should first be decided in the provincial councils, with the right of appeal—not to the bishop of Rome, but to the patriarch of the proper diocese. Rome alone did not forget the Sardican decrees, but built on this single precedent a universal right. Pope Zosimus, in the case of the deposed presbyter Apiarius of Sicca (A.D. 417–418), made the significant mistake of taking the Sardican decrees for Nicene, and thus giving them greater weight than they really possessed; but he was referred by the Africans to the genuine text of the Nicene canon. The later popes, however, transcended the Sardican decrees, withdrawing from the provincial council, according to the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, the right of deposing a bishop, which had been allowed by Sardica, and vesting it, as a causa major, exclusively in themselves.

Finally, in regard to the four great ecumenical councils, the first of Nice, the first of Constantinople, that of Ephesus, and that of Chalcedon: we have already presented their position on this question in connection with their legislation on the patriarchal system.583  We have seen that they accord to the bishop of Rome a precedence of honor among the five officially coequal patriarchs, and thus acknowledge him primus inter pares, but, by that very concession, disallow his claims to supremacy of jurisdiction, and to monarchical authority over the entire church. The whole patriarchal system, in fact, was not monarchy, but oligarchy. Hence the protest of the Roman delegates and of Pope Leo against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon in 451, which coincided with that of Constantinople in 381. This protest was insufficient to annul the decree, and in the East it made no lasting impression; for the subsequent incidental concessions of Greek patriarchs and emperors, like that of the usurper Phocas in 606, and even of the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople in 680, to the see of Rome, have no general significance, but are distinctly traceable to special circumstances and prejudices.

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

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

§ 63. Leo the Great.  A.D. 440–461.

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

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

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

In the period before us, Damasus, who subjected Illyria to the Roman jurisdiction, and established the authority of the Vulgate, and Siricius, who issued the first genuine decretal letter, trod in the steps of those predecessors. Innocent I. (402–417) took a step beyond, and in the Pelagian controversy ventured the bold assertion, that in the whole Christian world nothing should be decided without the cognizance of the Roman see, and that, especially in matters of faith, all bishops must turn to St. Peter.584

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

The time and place of the birth and earlier life of Leo are unknown. His letters, which are the chief source of information, commence not before the year 442. Probably a Roman585—if not one by birth, he was certainly a Roman in the proud dignity of his spirit and bearing, the high order of his legislative and administrative talent, and the strength and energy of his will—he distinguished himself first under Coelestine (423–432) and Sixtus III. (432–440) as archdeacon and legate of the Roman church. After the death of the latter, and while himself absent in Gaul, he was elected pope by the united voice of clergy, senate, and people, and continued in that office one-and-twenty years (440–461). His feelings at the assumption of this high office, he himself thus describes in one of his sermons: "Lord, I have beard your voice calling me, and I was afraid: I considered the work which was enjoined on me, and I trembled. For what proportion is there between the burden assigned to me and my weakness, this elevation and my nothingness?  What is more to be feared than exaltation without merit, the exercise of the most holy functions being intrusted to one who is buried in sin?  Oh, you have laid upon me this heavy burden, bear it with me, I beseech you be you my guide and my support."

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

He was animated with the unwavering conviction that the Lord himself had committed to him, as the successor of Peter, the care of the whole church.586  He anticipated all the dogmatical arguments by which the power of the papacy was subsequently established. He refers the petra, on which the church is built, to Peter and his confession. Though Christ himself—to sum up his views on the subject—is in the highest sense the rock and foundation, besides which no other can be laid, yet, by transfer of his authority, the Lord made Peter the rock in virtue of his great confession, and built on him the indestructible temple of his church. In Peter the fundamental relation of Christ to his church comes, as it were, to concrete form and reality in history. To him specially and individually the Lord intrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the other apostles only in their general and corporate capacity. For the faith of Peter the Lord specially prayed in the hour of his passion, as if the standing of the other apostles would be the firmer, if the mind of their leader remained unconquered. On Peter rests the steadfastness of the whole apostolic college in the faith. To him the Lord, after his resurrection, committed the care of his sheep and lambs. Peter is therefore the pastor and prince of the whole church, through whom Christ exercises his universal dominion on earth. This primacy, however, is not limited to the apostolic age, but, like the faith of Peter, and like the church herself, it perpetuates itself; and it perpetuates itself through the bishops of Rome, who are related to Peter as Peter was related to Christ. As Christ in Peter, so Peter in his successors lives and speaks and perpetually executes the commission: "Feed my sheep."   It was by special direction of divine providence, that Peter labored and died in Rome, and sleeps with thousands of blessed martyrs in holy ground. The centre of worldly empire alone can be the centre of the kingdom of God. Yet the political position of Rome would be of no importance without the religious considerations. By Peter was Rome, which had been the centre of all error and superstition, transformed into the metropolis of the Christian world, and invested with a spiritual dominion far wider than her former earthly empire. Hence the bishopric of Constantinople, not being a sedes apostolica, but resting its dignity on a political basis alone, can never rival the Roman, whose primacy is rooted both in divine and human right. Antioch also, where Peter only transiently resided, and Alexandria, where he planted the church through his disciple Mark, stand only in a secondary relation to Rome, where his bones repose, and where that was completed, which in the East was only laid out. The Roman bishop is, therefore, the primus omnium episcoporum, and on him devolves the plenitudo potestatis, the solicitudo omnium pastorum, and communis cura universalis ecclesiae.587

Leo thus made out of a primacy of grace and of personal fitness a primacy of right and of succession. Of his person, indeed, he speaks in his sermons with great humility, but only thereby the more to exalt his official character. He tells the Romans, that the true celebration of the anniversary of his accession is, to recognize, honor, and obey, in his lowly person, Peter himself, who still cares for shepherd and flock, and whose dignity is not lacking even to his unworthy heir.588  Here, therefore, we already have that characteristic combination of humility and arrogance, which has stereotyped itself in the expressions: "Servant of the servants of God," "vicar of Christ," and even "God upon earth."   In this double consciousness of his personal unworthiness and his official exaltation, Leo annually celebrated the day of his elevation to the chair of Peter. While Peter himself passes over his prerogative in silence, and expressly warns against hierarchical assumption,589 Leo cannot speak frequently and emphatically enough of his authority. While Peter in Antioch meekly submits to the rebuke of the junior apostle Paul,590 Leo pronounces resistance to his authority to be impious pride and the sure way to hell.591  Obedience to the pope is thus necessary to salvation. Whosoever, says he, is not with the apostolic see, that is, with the head of the body, whence all gifts of grace descend throughout the body, is not in the body of the church, and has no part in her grace. This is the fearful but legitimate logic of the papal principle, which confines the kingdom of God to the narrow lines of a particular organization, and makes the universal spiritual reign of Christ dependent on a temporal form and a human organ. But in its very first application this papal ban proved itself a brutum fulmen, when in spite of it the Gallican archbishop Hilary, against whom it was directed, died universally esteemed and loved, and then was canonized. This very impracticability of that principle, which would exclude all Greek and Protestant Christians from the kingdom of heaven, is a refutation of the principle itself.

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

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

But in Gaul he met, as we have already, seen, with a strenuous antagonist in Hilary of Arles, and, though he called the secular power to his aid, and procured from the emperor Valentinian an edict entirely favorable to his claims, he attained but a partial victory.592  Still less successful was his effort to establish his primacy in the East, and to prevent his rival at Constantinople from being elevated, by the famous twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, to official equality with himself.593  His earnest protest against that decree produced no lasting effect. But otherwise he had the most powerful influence in the second stage of the Christological controversy. He neutralized the tyranny of Dioscurus of Alexandria and the results of the shameful robber-council of Ephesus (449), furnished the chief occasion of the fourth ecumenical council, presided over it by his legates (which the Roman bishop had done at neither of the three councils before), and gave the turn to the final solution of its doctrinal problem by that celebrated letter to Flavian of Constantinople, the main points of which were incorporated in the new symbol. Yet he owed this influence by no means to his office alone, but most of all to his deep insight of the question, and to the masterly tact with which he held the Catholic orthodox mean between the Alexandrian and Antiochian, Eutychian and Nestorian extremes. The particulars of his connection with this important dogma belong, however, to the history of doctrine.

Besides thus shaping the polity and doctrine of the church, Leo did immortal service to the city of Rome, in twice rescuing it from destruction.594  When Attila, king of the Huns, the "scourge of God," after destroying Aquileia, was seriously threatening the capital of the world (A. D. 452), Leo, with only two companions, crozier in hand, trusting in the help of God, ventured into the hostile camp, and by his venerable form, his remonstrances, and his gifts, changed the wild heathen’s purpose. The later legend, which Raphael’s pencil has employed, adorned the fact with a visible appearance of Peter and Paul, accompanying the bishop, and, with drawn sword, threatening Attila with destruction unless he should desist.595  A similar case occurred several years after (455), when the Vandal king Genseric, invited out of revenge by the empress Eudoxia, pushed his ravages to Rome. Leo obtained from him the promise that at least he would spare the city the infliction of murder and fire; but the barbarians subjected it to a fourteen days’ pillage, the enormous spoils of which they transported to Carthage; and afterward the pope did everything to alleviate the consequent destitution and suffering, and to restore the churches.596

Leo died in 461, and was buried in the church of St. Peter. The day and circumstances of his death are unknown.597

The literary works of Leo consist of ninety-six sermons and one hundred and seventy-three epistles, including epistles of others to him. They are earnest, forcible, full of thought, churchly, abounding in bold antitheses and allegorical freaks of exegesis, and sometimes heavy, turgid, and obscure in style. His collection of sermons is the first we have from a Roman bishops In his inaugural discourse he declared preaching to be his sacred duty. The sermons are short and simple, and were delivered mostly on high festivals and on the anniversaries of his own elevation.598  Other works ascribed to him, such as that on the calling of all nations,599 which takes a middle ground on the doctrine of predestination, with the view to reconcile the Semipelagians and Augustinians, are of doubtful genuineness.

§ 64. The Papacy from Leo I to Gregory I.  A.D. 461–590.

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

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

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

On the fall of the empire the pope became the political subject of the barbarian and heretical (for they were Arian) kings; but these princes, as most of the heathen emperors had done, allowed him, either from policy, or from ignorance or indifference, entire freedom in ecclesiastical affairs. In Italy the Catholics had by far the ascendency in numbers and in culture. And the Arianism of the new rulers was rather an outward profession than an inward conviction. Odoacer, who first assumed the kingdom of Italy (476–493), was tolerant toward the orthodox faith, yet attempted to control the papal election in 483 in the interest of the state, and prohibited, under penalty of the anathema, the alienation of church property by any bishop. Twenty years later a Roman council protested against this intervention of a layman, and pronounced the above prohibition null and void, but itself passed a similar decree against the alienation of church estates.600

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

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

Anastasius II. (496–498) indulged in a milder tone toward Constantinople, and incurred the suspicion of consent to its heresy.601

His sudden death was followed by a contested papal election, which led to bloody encounters. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric (the Dietrich of Bern in the Niebelungenlied), the conqueror and master of Italy (493–526), and, like Odoacer, an Arian, was called into consultation in this contest, and gave his voice for Symmachus against Laurentius, because Symmachus had received the majority of votes, and had been consecrated first. But the party of Laurentius, not satisfied with this, raised against Symmachus the reproach of gross iniquities, even of adultery and of squandering the church estates. The bloody scenes were renewed, priests were murdered, cloisters were burned, and nuns were insulted. Theodoric, being again called upon by the senate for a decision, summoned a council at Rome, to which Symmachus gave his consent; and a synod, convoked by a heretical king, must decide upon the pope!  In the course of the controversy several councils were held in rapid succession, the chronology of which is disputed.602  The most important was the synodus palmaris,603 the fourth council under Symmachus, held in October, 501. It acquitted this pope without investigation, on the presumption that it did not behove the council to pass judgment respecting the successor of St. Peter. In his vindication of this council—for the opposition was not satisfied with it—the deacon Ennodius, afterward bishop of Pavia († 521), gave the first clear expression to the absolutism upon which Leo had already acted: that the Roman bishop is above every human tribunal, and is responsible only to God himself.604  Nevertheless, even in the middle age, popes were deposed and set up by emperors and general councils. This is one of the points of dispute between the absolute papal system and the constitutional episcopal system in the Roman church, which was left unsettled even by the council of Trent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But with Gregory I. (590–604) a new period begins. Next to Leo I. he was the greatest of the ancient bishops of Rome, and he marks the transition of the patriarchal system into the strict papacy of the middle ages. For several reasons we prefer to place him at the head of the succeeding period. He came, it is true, with more modest claims than Leo, who surpassed him in boldness, energy, and consistency. He even solemnly protested, as his predecessor Pelagius II. had done, against the title of universal bishop, which the Constantinopolitan patriarch, John Jejunator, adopted at a council in 587;605 he declared it an antichristian assumption, in terms which quite remind us of the patriarchal equality, and seem to form a step in recession from the ground of Leo. But when we take his operations in general into view, and remember the rigid consistency of the papacy, which never forgets, we are almost justified in thinking, that this protest was directed not so much against the title itself, as against the bearer of it, and proceeded more from jealousy of a rival at Constantinople, than from sincere humility.606  From the same motive the Roman bishops avoided the title of patriarch, as placing them on a level with the Eastern patriarchs, and preferred the title of pope, from a sense of the specific dignity of the chair of Peter. Gregory is said to have been the first to use the humble-proud title: "Servant of the servants of God."   His successors, notwithstanding his protest, called themselves "the universal bishops" of Christendom. What he had condemned in his oriental colleagues as antichristian arrogance, the later popes considered but the appropriate expression of their official position in the church universal.

§ 65. The Synodical System. The Ecumenical Councils.

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

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

Above the patriarchs, even above the patriarch of Rome, stood the ecumenical or general councils,607 the highest representatives, of the unity and authority of the old Catholic church. They referred originally to the Roman empire, but afterward included the adjacent barbarian countries, so far as those countries were represented in them by bishops. They rise up like lofty peaks or majestic pyramids from the plan of ancient church history, and mark the ultimate authoritative settlement of the general questions of doctrine and discipline which agitated Christendom in the Graeco-Roman empire.

The synodical system in general had its rise in the apostolic council at Jerusalem,608 and completed its development, under its Catholic form, in the course of the first five centuries. Like the episcopate, it presented a hierarchical gradation of orders. There was, first, the diocesan or district council, in which the bishop of a diocese (in the later sense of the word) presided over his clergy; then the provincial council, consisting of the metropolitan or archbishop and the bishops of his ecclesiastical province; next, the patriarchal council, embracing all the bishops of a patriarchal district (or a diocese in the old sense of the term); then the national council, inaccurately styled also general, representing either the entire Greek or the entire Latin church (like the later Lateran councils and the council of Trent); and finally, at the summit stood the ecumenical council, for the whole Christian world. There was besides these a peculiar and abnormal kind of synod, styled suvnodo" ejndhmou'sa, frequently held by the bishop of Constantinople with the provincial bishops resident (ejndhmou'nte") on the spot.609

In the earlier centuries the councils assembled without fixed regularity, at the instance of present necessities, like the Montanist and the Easter controversies in the latter part of the second century. Firmilian of Cappadocia, in his letter to Cyprian, first mentions, that at his time, in the middle of the third century, the churches of Asia Minor held regular annual synods, consisting of bishops and presbyters. From that time we find an increasing number of such assemblies in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, and Gaul. The council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, ordained, in the fifth canon, that the provincial councils should meet twice a year: during the fast season before Easter, and in the fall.610  In regard to the other synods no direction was given.

The Ecumenical councils were not stated, but extraordinary assemblies, occasioned by the great theological controversies of the ancient church. They could not arise until after the conversion of the Roman emperor and the ascendancy of Christianity as the religion of the state. They were the highest, and the last, manifestation of the power of the Greek church, which in general took the lead in the first age of Christianity, and was the chief seat of all theological activity. Hence in that church, as well as in others, they are still held in the highest veneration, and kept alive in the popular mind by pictures in the churches. The Greek and Russian Christians have annually commemorated the seven ecumenical councils, since the year 842, on the first Sunday in Lent, as the festival of the triumph of orthodoxy611 and they live in the hope that an eighth ecumenical council shall yet heal the divisions and infirmities of the Christian world. Through their symbols of faith those councils, especially of Nice and of Chalcedon, still live in the Western church, both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant.

Strictly speaking, none of these councils properly represented the entire Christian world. Apart from the fact that the laity, and even the lower clergy, were excluded from them, the assembled bishops themselves formed but a small part of the Catholic episcopate. The province of North Africa alone numbered many more bishops than were present at either the second, the third, or the fifth general council.612  The councils bore a prevailingly oriental character, were occupied with Greek controversies, used the Greek language, sat in Constantinople or in its vicinity, and consisted almost wholly of Greek members. The Latin church was usually represented only by a couple of delegates of the Roman bishop; though these delegates, it is true, acted more or less in the name of the entire West. Even the five hundred and twenty, or the six hundred and thirty members of the council of Chalcedon, excepting the two representatives of Leo I., and two African fugitives accidentally present, were all from the East. The council of Constantinople in 381 contained not a single Latin bishop, and only a hundred and fifty Greek, and was raised to the ecumenical rank by the consent of the Latin church toward the middle of the following century. On the other hand, the council of Ephesus, in 449, was designed by emperor and pope to be an ecumenical council; but instead of this it has been branded in history as the synod of robbers, for its violent sanction of the Eutychian heresy. The council of Sardica, in 343, was likewise intended to be a general council, but immediately after its assembling assumed a sectional character, through the secession and counter-organization of the Eastern bishops.

It is, therefore, not the number of bishops present, nor even the regularity of the summons alone, which determines the ecumenical character of a council, but the result, the importance and correctness of the decisions, and, above all, the consent of the orthodox Christian world.613

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

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

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

In the first place, the call of the ecumenical councils emanated from the emperors.614  They fixed the place and time of the assembly, summoned the metropolitans and more distinguished bishops of the empire by an edict, provided the means of transit, and paid the cost of travel and the other expenses out of the public treasury. In the case of the council of Nicaea and the first of Constantinople the call was issued without previous advice or consent from the bishop of Rome.615  In the council of Chalcedon, in 451, the papal influence is for the first time decidedly prominent; but even there it appears in virtual subordination to the higher authority of the council, which did not suffer itself to be disturbed by the protest of Leo against its twenty-eighth canon in reference to the rank of the patriarch of Constantinople. Not only ecumenical, but also provincial councils were not rarely called together by Western princes; as the council of Arles in 314 by Constantine, the council of Orleans in 549 by Childebert, and—to anticipate an instance—the synod of Frankfort in 794 by Charlemagne. Another remarkable fact has been already mentioned: that in the beginning of the sixth century several Orthodox synods at Rome, for the purpose of deciding the contested election of Symmachus, were called by a secular prince, and he the heretical Theodoric; yet they were regarded as valid.

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

To this presidency of the emperor or of his commissioners the acts of the councils and the Greek historians often refer. Even Pope Stephen V. (A.D. 817) writes, that Constantine the Great presided in the council of Nice. According to Eusebius, he introduced the principal matters of business with a solemn discourse, constantly attended the sessions, and took the place of honor in the assembly. His presence among the bishops at the banquet, which he gave them at the close of the council, seemed to that panegyrical historian a type of Christ among his saints!616  This prominence of Constantine in the most celebrated and the most important of all the councils is the more remarkable, since at that time he had not yet even been baptized. When Marcian and Pulcheria appeared with their court at the council of Chalcedon, to confirm its decrees, they were greeted by the assembled bishops in the bombastic style of the East, as defenders of the faith, as pillars of orthodoxy, as enemies and persecutors of heretics; the emperor as a second Constantine, a new Paul, a new David; the empress as a second Helena; with other high-sounding predicates.617  The second and fifth general councils were the only ones at which the emperor was not represented, and in them the presidency was in the hands of the patriarchs of Constantinople.

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

For the emperor’s connection with the council had reference rather to the conduct of business and to the external affairs of the synod, than to its theological and religious discussions. This distinction appears in the well-known dictum of Constantine respecting a double episcopate, which we have already noticed. And at the Nicene council the emperor acted accordingly. He paid the bishops greater reverence than his heathen predecessors had shown the Roman senators. He wished to be a servant, not a judge, of the successors of the apostles, who are constituted priests and gods on earth. After his opening address, he "resigned the word" to the (clerical) officers of the council,618 by whom probably Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, and Hosius of Cordova—the latter as special friend of the emperor, and as representative of the Western churches and perhaps of the bishop of Rome—are to be understood. The same distinction between a secular and spiritual presidency meets us in Theodosius II., who sent the comes Candidian as his deputy to the third general council, with full power over the entire business proceedings, but none over theological matters themselves; "for"—wrote he to the council-, "it is not proper that one who does not belong to the catalogue of most holy bishops, should meddle in ecclesiastical discussions."  Yet Cyril of Alexandria presided at this council, and conducted the business, at first alone, afterward in conjunction with the papal legates; while Candidian supported the Nestorian opposition, which held a council of its own under the patriarch John of Antioch.

Finally, from the emperors proceeded the ratification of the councils. Partly by their signatures, partly by special edicts, they gave the decrees of the council legal validity; they raised them to laws of the realm; they took pains to have them observed, and punished the disobedient with deposition and banishment. This was done by Constantine the Great for the decrees of Nice; by Theodosius the Great for those of Constantinople; by Marcian for those of Chalcedon. The second ecumenical council expressly prayed the emperor for such sanction, since he was present neither in person nor by commission. The papal confirmation, on the contrary, was not considered necessary, until after the fourth general council, in 451.619  And notwithstanding this, Justinian broke through the decrees of the fifth council, of 553, without the consent, and in fact despite the intimated refusal of Pope Vigilius. In the middle ages, however, the case was reversed. The influence of the pope on the councils increased, and that of the emperor declined; or rather, the German emperor never claimed so preëminent a position in the church as the Byzantine. Yet the relation of the pope to a general council, the question which of the two is above the other, is still a point of controversy between the curialist or ultramontane and the episcopal or Gallican schools.

Apart from this predominance of the emperor and his commissioners, the character of the ecumenical councils was thoroughly hierarchical. In the apostolic council at Jerusalem, the elders and the brethren took part with the apostles, and the decision went forth in the name of the whole congregation.620  But this republican or democratic element, so to call it, had long since given way before the spirit of aristocracy. The bishops alone, as the successors and heirs of the apostles, the ecclesia docens, were members of the councils. Hence, in the fifth canon of Nice, even a provincial synod is termed "the general assembly of the bishops of the province."  The presbyters and deacons took part, indeed, in the deliberations, and Athanasius, though at the time only a deacon, exerted probably more influence on the council of Nice by his zeal and his gifts, than most of the bishops; but they had no votum decisivum, except when, like the Roman legates, they represented their bishops. The laity were entirely excluded.

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

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

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

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

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

Their doctrinal decisions were early invested with infallibility; the promises of the Lord respecting the indestructibleness of his church, his own perpetual presence with the ministry, and the guidance of the Spirit of truth, being applied in the full sense to those councils, as representing the whole church. After the example of the apostolic council, the usual formula for a decree was: Visum est Sprirtui Sancto et nobis.621  Constantine the Great, in a circular letter to the churches, styles the decrees of the Nicene council a divine command;622 a phrase, however, in reference to which the abuse of the word divine, in the language of the Byzantine despots, must not be forgotten. Athanasius says, with reference to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ: "What God has spoken by the council of Nice, abides forever."623  The council of Chalcedon pronounced the decrees of the Nicene fathers unalterable statutes, since God himself had spoken through them.624  The council of Ephesus, in the sentence of deposition against Nestorius, uses the formula: "The Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, determines through this most holy council."625  Pope Leo speaks of an "irretractabilis consensus" of the council of Chalcedon upon the doctrine of the person of Christ. Pope Gregory the Great even placed the first four councils, which refuted and destroyed respectively the heresies and impieties of Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, on a level with the four canonical Gospels.626  In like manner Justinian puts the dogmas of the first four councils on the same footing with the Holy Scriptures, and their canons by the side of laws of the realm.627  The remaining three general councils have neither a theological importance, nor therefore an authority, equal to that of those first four, which laid the foundations of ecumenical orthodoxy. Otherwise Gregory would have mentioned also the fifth council, of 553, in the passage to which we have just referred. And even among the first four there is a difference of rank; the councils of Nice and Chalcedon standing highest in the character of their results.

Not so with the rules of discipline prescribed in the canones. These were never considered universally binding, like the symbols of faith; since matters of organization and usage, pertaining rather to the external form of the church, are more or less subject to the vicissitude of time. The fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, which prohibited and declared invalid the transfer of the clergy from one place to another,628 Gregory Nazianzen, fifty-seven years later (382), reckons among statutes long dead.629  Gregory himself repeatedly changed his location, and Chrysostom was called from Antioch to Constantinople. Leo I. spoke with strong disrespect of the third canon of the second ecumenical council, for assigning to the bishop of Constantinople the first rank after the bishop of Rome; and for the same reason be protested against the twenty-eighth canon of the fourth ecumenical council.630  Indeed the Roman church has made no point of adopting all the disciplinary laws enacted by those synods.

Augustine, the ablest and the most devout of the fathers, conceived, in the best vein of his age, a philosophical view of this authority of the councils, which strikes a wise and wholesome mean between the extremes of veneration and disparagement, and approaches the free spirit of evangelical Protestantism. He justly subordinates these councils to the Holy Scriptures, which are the highest and the perfect rule of faith, and supposes that the decrees of a council may be, not indeed set aside and repealed, yet enlarged and completed by, the deeper research of a later day. They embody, for the general need, the results already duly prepared by preceding theological controversies, and give the consciousness of the church, on the subject in question, the clearest and most precise expression possible at the time. But this consciousness itself is subject to development. While the Holy Scriptures present the truth unequivocally and infallibly, and allow no room for doubt, the judgment of bishops may be corrected and enriched with new truths from the word of God, by the wiser judgment of other bishops; the judgment of the provincial council by that of a general; and the views of one general council by those of a later.631  In this Augustine presumed, that all the transactions of a council were conducted in the spirit of Christian humility, harmony, and love; but had he attended the council of Ephesus, in 431, to which he was summoned about the time of his death, he would, to his grief, have found the very opposite spirit reigning there. Augustine, therefore, manifestly acknowledges a gradual advancement of the church doctrine, which reaches its corresponding expression from time to time through the general councils; but a progress within the truth, without positive error. For in a certain sense, as against heretics, he made the authority of Holy Scripture dependent on the authority of the catholic church, in his famous dictum against the Manichaean heretics: "I would not believe the gospel, did not the authority of the catholic church compel me."632  In like manner Vincentius Lerinensis teaches, that the church doctrine passes indeed through various stages of growth in knowledge, and becomes more and more clearly defined in opposition to ever-rising errors, but can never become altered or dismembered.633

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

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

The moral character of those councils was substantially parallel with that of earlier and later ecclesiastical assemblies, and cannot therefore be made a criterion of their historical importance and their dogmatic authority. They faithfully reflect both the light and the shade of the ancient church. They bear the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. If even among the inspired apostles at the council of Jerusalem there was much debate,634 and soon after, among Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, a violent, though only temporary collision, we must of course expect much worse of the bishops of the Nicene and the succeeding age, and of a church already interwoven with a morally degenerate state. Together with abundant talents, attainments, and virtues, there were gathered also at the councils ignorance, intrigues, and partisan passions, which had already been excited on all sides by long controversies preceding and now met and arrayed themselves, as hostile armies, for open combat. For those great councils, all occasioned by controversies on the most important and the most difficult problems of theology, are, in fact, to the history of doctrine, what decisive battles are to the history of war. Just because religion is the deepest and holiest interest of man, are religious passions wont to be the most violent and bitter; especially in a time when all classes, from imperial court to market stall, take the liveliest interest in theological speculation, and are drawn into the common vortex of excitement. Hence the notorious rabies theologorum was more active in the fourth and fifth centuries than it has been in any other period of history, excepting, perhaps, in the great revolution of the sixteenth century, and the confessional polemics of the seventeenth.

We have on this point the testimony of contemporaries and of the acts of the councils themselves. St. Gregory Nazianzen, who, in the judgment of Socrates, was the most devout and eloquent man of his age,635 and who himself, as bishop of Constantinople, presided for a time over the second ecumenical council, had so bitter an observation and experience as even to lose, though without sufficient reason, all confidence in councils, and to call them in his poems "assemblies of cranes and geese."  "To tell the truth" thus in 382 (a year after the second ecumenical council, and doubtless including that assembly in his allusion) he answered Procopius, who in the name of the emperor summoned him in vain to a synod—"to tell the truth, I am inclined to shun every collection of bishops, because I have never yet seen that a synod came to a good end, or abated evils instead of increasing them. For in those assemblies (and I do not think I express myself too strongly here) indescribable contentiousness and ambition prevail, and it is easier for one to incur the reproach of wishing to set himself up as judge of the wickedness of others, than to attain any success in putting the wickedness away. Therefore I have withdrawn myself, and have found rest to my soul only in solitude."636  It is true, the contemplative Gregory had an aversion to all public life, and in such views yielded unduly to his personal inclinations. And in any case he is inconsistent; for he elsewhere speaks with great respect of the council of Nice, and was, next to Athanasius, the leading advocate of the Nicene creed. Yet there remains enough in his many unfavorable pictures of the bishops and synods of his time, to dispel all illusions of their immaculate purity. Beausobre correctly observes, that either Gregory the Great must be a slanderer, or the bishops of his day were very remiss. In the fifth century it was no better, but rather worse. At the third general council, at Ephesus, 431, all accounts agree that shameful intrigue, uncharitable lust of condemnation, and coarse violence of conduct were almost as prevalent as in the notorious robber-council of Ephesus in 449; though with the important difference, that the former synod was contending for truth, the latter for error. Even at Chalcedon, the introduction of the renowned expositor and historian Theodoret provoked a scene, which almost involuntarily reminds us of the modern brawls of Greek and Roman monks at the holy sepulchre under the restraining supervision of the Turkish police. His Egyptian opponents shouted with all their might: "The faith is gone!  Away with him, this teacher of Nestorius!"  His friends replied with equal violence: "They forced us [at the robber-council] by blows to subscribe; away with the Manichaeans, the enemies of Flavian, the enemies of the faith!  Away with the murderer Dioscurus?  Who does not know his wicked deeds?  The Egyptian bishops cried again: Away with the Jew, the adversary of God, and call him not bishop!"  To which the oriental bishops answered: "Away with the rioters, away with the murderers!  The orthodox man belongs to the council!"  At last the imperial commissioners interfered, and put an end to what they justly called an unworthy and useless uproar.637

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

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

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

1. The Concilium Nicaenum I., A.D. 325; held at Nicaea in Bithynia, a lively commercial town near the imperial residence of Nicomedia, and easily accessible by land and sea. It consisted of three hundred and eighteen bishops,638 besides a large number of priests, deacons, and acolytes, mostly from the East, and was called by Constantine the Great, for the settlement of the Arian controversy. Having become, by decisive victories in 323, master of the whole Roman empire, he desired to complete the restoration of unity and peace with the help of the dignitaries of the church. The result of this council was the establishment (by anticipation) of the doctrine of the true divinity of Christ, the identity of essence between the Son and the Father. The fundamental importance of this dogma, the number, learning, piety and wisdom of the bishops, many of whom still bore the marks of the Diocletian persecution, the personal presence of the first Christian emperor, of Eusebius, "the father of church history," and of Athanasius, "the father of orthodoxy" (though at that time only archdeacon), as well as the remarkable character of this epoch, combined in giving to this first general synod a peculiar weight and authority. It is styled emphatically "the great and holy council," holds the highest place among all the councils, especially with the Greeks,639 and still lives in the Nicene Creed, which is second in authority only to the ever venerable Apostles’ Creed. This symbol was, however, not finally settled and completed in its present form (excepting the still later Latin insertion of filioque), until the second general council. Besides this the fathers assembled at Nicaea issued a number of canons, usually reckoned twenty on various questions of discipline; the most important being those on the rights of metropolitans, the time of Easter, and the validity of heretical baptism.

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

3. The Concilium Ephesinum, A.D. 431; called by Theodosius II., in connection with the Western co-emperor Valentinian III., and held under the direction of the ambitious and violent Cyril of Alexandria. This council consisted of, at first, a hundred and sixty bishops, afterward a hundred and ninety-eight,640 including, for the first time, papal delegates from Rome, who were instructed not to mix in the debates, but to sit as judges over the opinions of the rest. It condemned the error of Nestorius on the relation of the two natures in Christ, without, stating clearly the correct doctrine. It produced, therefore, but a negative result, and is the least important of the first four councils, as it stands lowest also in moral character. It is entirely rejected by the Nestorian or Chaldaic Christians. Its six canons relate exclusively to Nestorian and Pelagian affairs, and are wholly omitted by Dionysius Exiguus in his collection.

4. The Concilium Chalcedonense, A.D. 451; summoned by the emperor Marcian, at the instance of the Roman bishop Leo; held at Chalcedon in Bithynia, opposite Constantinople; and composed of five hundred and twenty (some say six hundred and thirty) bishops.641  Among these were three delegates of the bishop of Rome, two bishops of Africa, and the rest all Greeks and Orientals. The fourth general council fixed the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ in opposition to Eutychianism and Nestorianism, and enacted thirty canons (according to some manuscripts only twenty-seven or twenty-eight), of which the twenty-eighth was resisted by the Roman legates and Leo I. This was the most numerous, and next to the Nicene, the most important of all the general councils, but is repudiated by all the Monophysite sects of the Eastern church.

5. The Concilium Constantinopolitanum II. was assembled a full century later, by the emperor Tustinian, A.D. 553, without consent of the pope, for the adjustment of the tedious Monophysite controversy. It was presided over by the patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople, consisted of only one hundred and sixty-four bishops, and issued fourteen anathemas against the three chapters,642 so called, or the christological views of three departed bishops and divines, Theodore of Mopsueste, Theodoret of Cyros, and Ibas of Edessa, who were charged with leaning toward the Nestorian heresy. The fifth council was not recognized, however, by many Western bishops, even after the vacillating Pope Vigilius gave in his assent to it, and it induced a temporary schism between Upper Italy and the Roman see. As to importance, it stands far below the four previous councils. Its Acts, in Greek, with the exception of the fourteen anathemas, are lost.

Besides these, there are two later councils, which have attained among the Greeks and Latins an undisputed ecumenical authority: the Third Council of Constantinople, under Constantine Progonatus, A.D. 680, which condemned Monothelitism (and Pope Honorius, † 638),643 and consummated the old Catholic christology; and the Second Council of Nicaea, under the empress Irene, A.D. 787, which sanctioned the image-worship of the Catholic church, but has no dogmatical importance.

Thus Nicaea—now the miserable Turkish hamlet Is-nik644—has the honor of both opening and closing the succession of acknowledged ecumenical councils.

From this time forth the Greeks and Latins part, and ecumenical councils are no longer to be named. The Greeks considered the second Trullan645 (or the fourth Constantinopolitan) council of 692, which enacted no symbol of faith, but canons only, not an independent eighth council, but an appendix to the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils (hence, called the Quinisexta sc. synodus); against which view the Latin church has always protested. The Latin church, on the other hand, elevates the fourth council of Constantinople, A.D. 869,646 which deposed the patriarch Photius, the champion of the Greek church in her contest with the Latin, to the dignity of an eighth ecumenical council; but this council was annulled for the Greek church by the subsequent restoration of Photius. The Roman church also, in pursuance of her claims to exclusive catholicity, adds to the seven or eight Greek councils twelve or more Latin general councils, down to the Vatican (1870); but to all these the Greek and Protestant churches can concede only a sectional character. Three hundred and thirty-six years elapsed between the last undisputed Graeco-Latin ecumenical council of the ancient church (A.D. 787), and the first Latin ecumenical council of the mediaeval church (1123). The authority of the papal see had to be established in the intervening centuries.647

§ 67. Books of Ecclesiastical Law.

I. Bibiliotheca juris canonici veteris, ed. Voellus (theologian of the Sorbonne) and Justellus (Justeau, counsellor and secretary to the French king), Par. 1661, 2 vols. fol. (Vol. i. contains the canons of the universal church, Greek and Latin, the ecclesiastical canons of Dionysius Exiguus, or of the old Roman church, the canons of the African church, etc. See a list of contents in Darling’s Cyclop. Bibliographica, p. 1702 sq.)

II. See the literature in vol. ii. § 56 (p. 183). The brothers Ballerini: De antiquis tum editis tum ineditis collectionibus et collectoribus canonum ad Gratianum usque in ed. Opp. Leon M. Ven., 1753 sqq. The treatises of Quesnel, Marca, Constant, Drey, Theiner, etc., on the history of the collections of canons. Comp. Ferd. Walther: Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, p. 109 sqq., 8th ed., 1839.

The universal councils, through their disciplinary enactments or canons, were the main fountain of ecclesiastical law. To their canons were added the decrees of the most important provincial councils of the fourth century, at Ancyra (314), Neo-Caesarea (314), Antioch (341), Sardica (343), Gangra (365), and Laodicea (between 343 and 381); and in a third series, the orders of eminent bishops, popes, and emperors. From these sources arose, after the beginning of the fifth century, or at all events before the council of Chalcedon, various collections of the church laws in the East, in North Africa, in Italy, Gaul, and Spain; which, however, had only provincial authority, and in many respects did not agree among themselves. A codex canonum ecclesiae universae did not exist. The earlier collections because eclipsed by two, which, the one in the West, the other in the East, attained the highest consideration.

The most important Latin collection comes from the Roman, though by descent Scythian, abbot Dionysius Exiguus,648 who also, notwithstanding the chronological error at the base of his reckoning, immortalized himself by the introduction of the Christian calendar, the "Dionysian Era."  It was a great thought of this "little" monk to view Christ as the turning point of ages, and to introduce this view into chronology. About the year 500 Dionysius translated for the bishop Stephen of Salona a collection of canons from Greek into Latin, which is still extant, with its prefatory address to Stephen.649  It contains, first, the, fifty so-called Apostolic Canons, which pretend to have been collected by Clement of Rome, but in truth were a gradual production of the third and fourth centuries;650 then the canons of the most important councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, including those of Sardica and Africa; and lastly, the papal decretal letters from Siricius (385) to Anastasius II. (498). The Codex Dionysii was gradually enlarged by additions, genuine and spurious, and through the favor of the popes, attained the authority of law almost throughout the West. Yet there were other collections also in use, particularly in Spain and North Africa.

Some fifty years after Dionysius, John Scholasticus, previously an advocate, then presbyter at Antioch, and after 564 patriarch of Constantinople, published a collection of canons in Greek,651 which surpassed the former in completeness and convenience of arrangement, and for this reason, as well as the eminence of the author, soon rose to universal authority in the Greek church. In it he gives eighty-five Apostolic Canons, and the ordinances of the councils of Ancyra (314) and Nicaea (325), down to that of Chalcedon (451), in fifty titles, according to the order of subjects. The second Trullan council (Quinisextum, of 692), which passes with the Greeks for ecumenical, adopted the eighty-five Apostolic Canons, while it rejected the Apostolic Constitutions, because, though, like the canons, of apostolic origin, they had been early adulterated. Thus arose the difference between the Greek and Latin churches in reference to the number of the so-called Apostolic canons; the Latin church retaining only the fifty of the Dionysian collection.

The same John, while patriarch of Constantinople, compiled from the Novelles of Justinian a collection of the ecclesiastical state-laws or novmoi, as they were called in distinction from the synodal church-laws or kanovne". Practical wants then led to a union of the two, under the title of Nomocanon.

These books of ecclesiastical law served to complete and confirm the hierarchical organization, to regulate the life of the clergy, and to promote order and discipline; but they tended also to fix upon the church an outward legalism, and to embarrass the spirit of progress.

CHAPTER VI.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE AND SCHISMS.

§ 68. Decline of Discipline.

The principal sources are the books of ecclesiastical law and the acts of councils. Comp. the literature at § 67, and at vol. i. § 114.

The union of the church with the state shed, in general, an injurious influence upon the discipline of the church; and that, in two opposite directions.

On the one hand it increased the stringency of discipline and led to a penal code for spiritual offences. The state gave her help to the church, lent the power of law to acts of suspension and excommunication, and accompanied those acts with civil penalties. Hence the innumerable depositions and banishments of bishops during the theological controversies of the Nicene and the following age, especially under the influence of the Byzantine despotism and the religious intolerance and bigotry of the times. Even the penalty of death was decreed, at least against the Priscillianists, though under the protest of nobler divines, who clave to the spiritual character of the church and of her weapons.652 Heresy was regarded as the most grievous and unpardonable crime against society, and was treated accordingly by the ruling party, without respect of creed.

But on the other hand discipline became weakened. With the increasing stringency against heretics, firmness against practical errors diminished. Hatred of heresy and laxity of morals, zeal for purity of doctrine and indifference to purity of life, which ought to exclude each other, do really often stand in union. Think of the history of Pharisaism at the time of Christ, of orthodox Lutheranism in its opposition to Spener and the Pietistic movement, and of prelatical Anglicanism in its conflict with Methodism and the evangelical party. Even in the Johannean age this was the case in the church of Ephesus, which prefigured in this respect both the light and shade of the later Eastern church.653  The earnest, but stiff, mechanical penitential discipline, with its four grades of penance, which had developed itself during the Dioclesian persecution,654 continued in force, it is true, as to the letter, and was repeatedly reaffirmed by the councils of the fourth century. But the great change of circumstances rendered the practical execution of it more and more difficult, by the very multiplication and high position, of those on whom it ought to be enforced. In that mighty revolution under Constantine the church lost her virginity, and allied herself with the mass of heathendom, which had not yet experienced an inward change. Not seldom did the emperors themselves, and other persons of authority, who ought to have led the way with a good example, render themselves, with all their zeal for theoretical orthodoxy, most worthy of suspension and excommunication by their scandalous conduct, while they were surrounded by weak or worldly bishops, who cared more for the favor of their earthly masters, than for the honor of their heavenly Lord and the dignity of the church. Even Eusebius, otherwise one of the better bishops of his time, had no word of rebuke for the gross crimes of Constantine, but only the most extravagant eulogies for his merits.

In the Greek church the discipline gradually decayed, to the great disadvantage of public morality, and every one was allowed to partake of the communion according to his conscience. The bishops alone reserved the right of debarring the vicious from the table of the Lord. The patriarch Nectarius of Constantinople, about 390, abolished the office of penitential priest (presbyter poenitentiarius), who was set over the execution of the penitential discipline. The occasion of this act was furnished by a scandalous occurrence: the violation of a lady of rank in the church by a worthless deacon, when she came to submit herself to public penance. The example of Nectarius was soon followed by the other oriental bishops.655

Socrates and Sozomen, who inclined to the severity of the Novatians, date the decline of discipline and of the former purity of morals from this act. But the real cause lay further back, in the connection of the church with the temporal power. Had the state been pervaded with the religious earnestness and zeal of Christianity, like the Genevan republic, for example, under the reformation of Calvin, the discipline of the church would have rather gained than lost by the alliance. But the vast Roman state could not so easily and quickly lay aside its heathen traditions and customs; it perpetuated them under Christian names. The great mass of the people received, at best, only John’s baptism of repentance, not Christ’s baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire.

Yet even under these new conditions the original moral earnestness of the church continued, from time to time, to make itself known. Bishops were not wanting to confront even the emperors, as Nathan stood before David after his fall, in fearless rebuke. Chrysostom rigidly insisted, that the deacon should exclude all unworthy persons from the holy communion, though by his vehement reproof of the immoralities of the imperial court, he brought upon himself at last deposition and exile." Though a captain," says he to those who administer the communion, "or a governor, nay, even one adorned with the imperial crown, approach [the table of the Lord] unworthily, prevent him; you have greater authority than he .... Beware lest you excite the Lord to wrath, and give a sword instead of food. And if a new Judas should approach the communion, prevent him. Fear God, not man. If you fear man, he will treat you with scorn; if you fear God, you will appear venerable even to men."656  Synesius excommunicated the worthless governor of Pentapolis, Andronicus, for his cruel oppression of the poor and contempt of the exhortations of the bishop, and the discipline attained the desired effect. The most noted example of church discipline is the encounter between Ambrose and Theodosius I. in Milan about the year 390. The bishop refused the powerful and orthodox emperor the communion, and thrust him back from the threshold of the church, because in a tempest of rage he had caused seven thousand persons in Thessalonica., regardless of rank, sex, or guilt, to be hewn down by his soldiers in horrible cruelty on account of a riot. Eight months afterward Ambrose gave him absolution at his request, after he had submitted to the public penance of the church and promised in future not to execute a death penalty until thirty days after the pronouncing of it, that he might have time to revoke it if necessary, and to exercise mercy.657  Here Ambrose certainly vindicated—though perhaps not without admixture of hierarchical loftiness—the dignity and rights of the church against the state, and the claims of Christian temperance and mercy against gross military power." Thus," says a modern historians "did the church prove, in a time of unlimited arbitrary power, the refuge of popular freedom, and saints assume the part of tribunes of the people."658

§ 69. The Donatist Schism. External History.

I. Sources. Augustine: Works against the Donatists (Contra epistolam Parmeniani, libri iii.; De baptismo, contra Donatistas, libri vii.; Contra literas Petiliani, libri iii.; De Unitate Ecclesiae, lib. unus; Contra Cresconium, grammaticum Donat., libri iv.; Breviculus Collationis cum Donatistis; Contra Gaudentium, etc.), in the 9th vol. of his Opera, ed. Bened. (Paris, 1688). Optatus Milevitanus (about 370): De schismate Donatistarum. L. E. Du Pin: Monumenta vett. ad Donatist. Hist. pertinentia, Par. 1700. Excerpta et Scripta vetera ad Donatistarum Historiam pertinentia, at the close of the ninth volume of the Bened. ed. of Augustine’s works.

II. Literature. Valesius: De schism. Donat. (appended to his ed. of Eusebius). Walch: Historie der Ketzereien, etc., vol. iv. Neander: Allg. K. G. ii. 1, p. 366 sqq. (Torrey’s Engl. translation, ii. p. 182 sqq.). A. Roux: De Augustine adversario Donat. Lugd. Bat. 1838. F. Ribbeck: Donatus u. Augustinus, oder der erste entscheidende Kampf zwischen Separatismus u. Kirche., Elberf. 1858. (The author was for a short time a Baptist, and then returned to the Prussian established church, and wrote this work against separatism.)

Donatism was by far the most important schism in the church of the period before us. For a whole century it divided the North African churches into two hostile camps. Like the schisms of the former period,659 it arose from the conflict of the more rigid and the more indulgent theories of discipline in reference to the restoration of the lapsed. But through the intervention of the Christianized state, it assumed at the same time an ecclesiastico-political character. The rigoristic penitential discipline had been represented in the previous period especially by the Montanists and Novatians, who were still living; while the milder principle and practice had found its most powerful support in the Roman church, and, since the time of Constantine, had generally prevailed.

The beginnings of the Donatist schism appear in the Dioclesian persecution, which revived that controversy concerning church discipline and martyrdom. The rigoristic party, favored by Secundus of Tigisis, at that time primate of Numidia, and led by the bishop Donatus of Casae Nigrae, rushed to the martyr’s crown with fanatical contempt of death, and saw in flight from danger, or in the delivering up of the sacred books, only cowardice and treachery, which should forever exclude from the fellowship of the church. The moderate party, at whose head stood the bishop Mensurius and his archdeacon and successor Caecilian, advocated the claims of prudence and discretion, and cast suspicion on the motives of the forward confessors and martyrs. So early as the year 305 a schism was imminent, in the matter of an episcopal election for the city of Cita. But no formal outbreak occurred until after the cessation of the persecution in 311; and then the difficulty arose in connection with the hasty election of Caecilian to the bishopric of Carthage. The Donatists refused to acknowledge him, because in his ordination the Numidian bishops were slighted, and the service was performed by the bishop Felix of Aptungis, or Aptunga, whom they declared to be a traditor, that is, one who had delivered up the sacred writings to the heathen persecutors. In Carthage itself he had many opponents, among whom were the elders of the congregation (seniores plebis), and particularly a wealthy and superstitious widow, Lucilla, who was accustomed to kiss certain relics before her daily communion, and seemed to prefer them to the spiritual power of the sacrament. Secundus of Tigisis and seventy Numidian bishops, mostly of the rigoristic school, assembled at Carthage deposed and excommunicated Caecilian, who refused to appear, and elected the lector Majorinus, a favorite of Lucilla, in his place. After his death, in 315, Majorinus was succeeded by Donatus, a gifted man, of fiery energy and eloquence, revered by his admirers as a wonder worker, and styled The Great. From this man, and not from the Donatus mentioned above, the name of the party was derived.660

Each party endeavored to gain churches abroad to its side, and thus the schism spread. The Donatists appealed to the emperor Constantine—the first instance of such appeal, and a step which they afterward had to repent. The emperor, who was at that time in Gaul, referred the matter to the Roman bishop Melchiades (Miltiades) and five Gallican bishops, before whom the accused Caecilian and ten African bishops from each side were directed to appear. The decision went in favor of Caecilian, and he was now, except in Africa, universally regarded as the legitimate bishop of Carthage. The Donatists remonstrated. A second investigation, which Constantine intrusted to the council of Arles (Arelate) in 314, led to the same result. When the Donatists hereupon appealed from this ecclesiastical tribunal to the judgment of the emperor himself, he likewise declared against them at Milan in 316, and soon afterward issued penal laws against them, threatening them with the banishment of their bishops and the confiscation of their churches.

Persecution made them enemies of the state whose help they had invoked, and fed the flame of their fanaticism. They made violent resistance to the imperial commissioner, Ursacius, and declared that no power on earth could induce them to hold church fellowship with the "rascal" (nebulo) Caecilian. Constantine perceived the fruitlessness of the forcible restriction of religion, and, by an edict in 321, granted the Donatists full liberty of faith and worship. He remained faithful to this policy of toleration, and exhorted the Catholics to patience and indulgence. At a council in 330 the Donatists numbered two hundred and seventy bishops.

Constans, the successor of Constantine, resorted again to violent measures; but neither threats nor promises made any impression on the party. It came to blood. The Circumcellions, a sort of Donatist mendicant monks, who wandered about the country among the cottages of the peasantry,661 carried on plunder, arson, and murder, in conjunction with mutinous peasants and slaves, and in crazy zeal for the martyr’s crown, as genuine soldiers of Christ, rushed into fire and water, and threw themselves down from rocks. Yet there were Donatists who disapproved this revolutionary frenzy. The insurrection was suppressed by military force; several leaders of the Donatists were executed, others were banished, and their churches were closed or confiscated. Donatus the Great died in exile. He was succeeded by one Parmenianus.

Under Julian the Apostate the Donatists again obtained, with all other heretics and schismatics, freedom of religion, and returned to the possession of their churches, which they painted anew, to redeem them from their profanation by the Catholics. But under the subsequent emperors their condition grew worse, both from persecutions without and dissensions within. The quarrel between the two parties extended into all the affairs of daily life; the Donatist bishop Faustinus of Hippo, for example, allowing none of the members of his church to bake bread for the Catholic inhabitants.

§ 70. Augustine and the Donatists. Their Persecution and Extinction.

At the end of the fourth century, and in the beginning of the fifth, the great Augustine, of Hippo, where there was also a strong congregation of the schismatics, made a powerful effort, by instruction and persuasion, to reconcile the Donatists with the Catholic church. He wrote several works on the subject, and set the whole African church in motion against them. They feared his superior dialectics, and avoided him wherever they could. The matter, however, was brought, by order of the emperor in 411, to a three days’ arbitration at Carthage, attended by two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops and two hundred and seventy-nine Donatist.662

Augustine, who, in two beautiful sermons before the beginning of the disputation, exhorted to love, forbearance and meekness, was the chief speaker on the part of the Catholics Petilian, on the part of the schismatics. Marcellinus, the imperial tribune and notary, and a friend of Augustine, presided, and was to pass the decisive judgment. This arrangement was obviously partial, and secured the triumph of the Catholics. The discussions related to two points: (1) Whether the Catholic bishops Caecilian and Felix of Aptunga were traditors; (2) Whether the church lose her nature and attributes by fellowship with heinous sinners. The balance of skill and argument was on the side of Augustine, though the Donatists brought much that was forcible against compulsion in religion, and against the confusion of the temporal and the spiritual powers. The imperial commissioner, as might be expected, decided in favor of the Catholics. The separatists nevertheless persisted in their view, but their appeal to the emperor continued unsuccessful.

More stringent civil laws were now enacted against them, banishing the Donatist clergy from their country, imposing fines on the laity, and confiscating the churches. In 415 they were even forbidden to hold religious assemblies, upon pain of death.

Augustine himself, who had previously consented only to spiritual measures against heretics, now advocated force, to bring them into the fellowship of the church, out of which there was no salvation. He appealed to the command in the parable of the supper, Luke, xiv. 23, to "compel them to come in;" where, however, the "compel" (ajnavgkason) is evidently but a vivid hyperbole for the holy zeal in the conversion of the heathen, which we find, for example, in the apostle Paul.663

New eruptions of fanaticism ensued. A bishop Gaudentius threatened, that if the attempt were made to deprive him of his church by force, he, would burn himself with his congregation in it, and vindicated this intended suicide by the example of Rhazis, in the second book of Maccabees (ch. xiv.).

The conquest of Africa by the Arian Vandals in 428 devastated the African church, and put an end to the controversy, as the French Revolution swept both Jesuitism and Jansenism away. Yet a remnant of the Donatists, as we learn from the letters of Gregory I., perpetuated itself into the seventh century, still proving in their ruins the power of a mistaken puritanic zeal and the responsibility and guilt of state-church persecution. In the seventh century the entire African church sank under the Saracenic conquest.

§ 71. Internal History of the Donatist Schism. Dogma of the Church.

The Donatist controversy was a conflict between separatism and catholicism; between ecclesiastical purism and ecclesiastical eclecticism; between the idea of the church as an exclusive community of regenerate saints and the idea of the church as the general Christendom of state and people. It revolved around the doctrine of the essence of the Christian church, and, in particular, of the predicate of holiness. It resulted in the completion by Augustine of the catholic dogma of the church, which had been partly developed by Cyprian in his conflict with a similar schism.664

The Donatists, like Tertullian in his Montanistic writings, started from an ideal and spiritualistic conception of the church as a fellowship of saints, which in a sinful world could only be imperfectly realized. They laid chief stress on the predicate of the subjective holiness or personal worthiness of the several members, and made the catholicity of the church and the efficacy of the sacraments dependent upon that. The true church, therefore, is not so much a school of holiness, as a society of those who are already holy; or at least of those who appear so; for that there are hypocrites not even the Donatists could deny, and as little could they in earnest claim infallibility in their own discernment of men. By the toleration of those who are openly sinful, the church loses, her holiness, and ceases to be church. Unholy priests are incapable of administering sacraments; for how can regeneration proceed from the unregenerate, holiness from the unholy?  No one can give what he does not himself possess. He who would receive faith from a faithless man, receives not faith but guilt.665  It was on this ground, in fact, that they rejected the election of Caecilian: that he had been ordained bishop by an unworthy person. On this ground they refused to recognize the Catholic baptism as baptism at all. On this point they had some support in Cyprian, who likewise rejected the validity of heretical baptism, though not from the separatist, but from the catholic point of view, and who came into collision, upon this question, with Stephen of Rome.666

Hence, like the Montanists and Novatians, they insisted on rigorous church discipline, and demanded the excommunication of all unworthy members, especially of such as had denied their faith or given up the Holy Scriptures under persecution. They resisted, moreover, all interference of the civil power in church affairs; though they themselves at first had solicited the help of Constantine. In the great imperial church, embracing the people in a mass, they saw a secularized Babylon, against which they set themselves off, in separatistic arrogance, as the only true and pure church. In support of their views, they appealed to the passages of the Old Testament, which speak of the external holiness of the people of God, and to the procedure of Paul with respect to the fornicator at Corinth.

In opposition to this subjective and spiritualistic theory of the church, Augustine, as champion of the Catholics, developed the objective, realistic theory, which has since been repeatedly reasserted, though with various modifications, not only in the Roman church, but also in the Protestant, against separatistic and schismatic sects. He lays chief stress on the catholicity of the church, and derives the holiness of individual members and the validity of ecclesiastical functions from it. He finds the essence of the church, not in the personal character of the several Christians, but in the union of the whole church with Christ. Taking the historical point of view, he goes back to the founding of the church, which may be seen in the New Testament, which has spread over all the world, and which is connected through the unbroken succession of bishops with the apostles and with Christ. This alone can be the true church. It is impossible that she should all at once disappear from the earth, or should exist only in the African sect of the Donatists.667  What is all that they may say of their little heap, in comparison with the great catholic Christendom of all lands?  Thus even numerical preponderance here enters as an argument; though under other circumstances it may prove too much, and would place the primitive church at a clear disadvantage in comparison with the prevailing Jewish and heathen masses, and the Evangelical church in its controversy with the Roman Catholic.

From the objective character of the church as a divine institution flows, according to the catholic view, the efficacy of all her functions, the Sacraments in particular. When Petilian, at the Collatio cum Donatistis, said: "He who receives the faith from a faithless priest, receives not faith, but guilt," Augustine answered: "But Christ is not unfaithful (perfidus), from whom I receive faith (fidem), not guilt (reatum). Christ, therefore, is properly the functionary, and the priest is simply his organ."  "My origin," said Augustine on the same occasion, "is Christ, my root is Christ, my head is Christ. The seed, of which I was born, is the word of God, which I must obey even though the preacher himself practise not what he preaches. I believe not in the minister by whom I am baptized, but in Christ, who alone justifies the sinner and can forgive guilt."668

Lastly, in regard to church discipline, the opponents of the Donatists agreed with them in considering it wholesome and necessary, but would keep it within the limits fixed for it by the circumstances of the time and the fallibility of men. A perfect separation of sinners from saints is impracticable before the final judgment. Many things must be patiently borne, that greater evil may be averted, and that those still capable of improvement may be improved, especially where the offender has too many adherents." Man," says Augustine, "should punish in the spirit of love, until either the discipline and correction come from above, or the tares are pulled up in the universal harvest."669  In support of this view appeal was made to the Lord’s parables of the tares among the wheat, and of the net which gathered together of every kind (Matt. xiii.). These two parables were the chief exegetical battle ground of the two parties. The Donatists understood by the field, not the church, but the world, according to the Saviour’s own exposition of the parable of the tares;670 the Catholics replied that it was the kingdom of heaven or the church to which the parable referred as a whole, and pressed especially the warning of the Saviour not to gather up the tares before the final harvest, lest they root up also the wheat with them. The Donatists, moreover, made a distinction between unknown offenders, to whom alone the parable of the net referred, and notorious sinners. But this did not gain them much; for if the church compromises her character for holiness by contact with unworthy persons at all, it matters not whether they be openly unworthy before men or not, and no church whatever would be left on earth.

On the other hand, however, Augustine, who, no more than the Donatists, could relinquish the predicate of holiness for the church, found himself compelled to distinguish between a true and a mixed, or merely apparent body of Christ; forasmuch as hypocrites, even in this world, are not in and with Christ, but only appear to be.671  And yet he repelled the Donatist charge of making two churches. In his view it is one and the same church, which is now mixed with the ungodly, and will hereafter be pure, as it is the same Christ who once died, and now lives forever, and the same believers, who are now mortal and will one day put on immortality’.672

With some modification we may find here the germ of the subsequent Protestant distinction of the visible and invisible church; which regards the invisible, not as another church, but as the ecclesiola in ecclesia (or ecclesiis), as the smaller communion of true believers among professors, and thus as the true substance of the visible church, and as contained within its limits, like the soul in the body, or the kernel in the shell. Here the moderate Donatist and scholarly theologian, Tychoius,673 approached Augustine; calling the church a twofold body of Christ,674 of which the one part embraces the true Christians, the other the apparent.675  In this, as also in acknowledging the validity of the Catholic baptism, Tychonius departed from the Donatists; while he adhered to their views on discipline and opposed the Catholic mixture of the church and the world. But neither he nor Augustine pursued this distinction to any clearer development. Both were involved, at bottom, in the confusion of Christianity with the church, and of the church with a particular outward organization.

§ 72. The Roman Schism of Damasus and Ursinus.

Rufinus: Hist. Eccl. ii. 10. Hieronymus: Chron. ad ann. 366. Socrates: H. E. iv. 29 (all in favor of Damasus). Faustinus et Marcellinus (two presbyters of Ursinus): Libellus precum ad Imper. Theodos. in Bibl. Patr. Lugd. v. 637 (in favor of Ursinus). With these Christian accounts of the Roman schism may be compared the impartial statement of the heathen historian Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvii. c. 3, ad ann. 367.

The church schism between Damasus and Ursinus (or Ursicinus) in Rome, had nothing to do with the question of discipline, but proceeded partly from the Arian controversy, partly from personal ambition.676  For such were the power and splendor of the court of the successor of the Galilean fisherman, even at that time, that the distinguished pagan senator, Praetextatus, said to Pope Damasus: "Make me a bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian to-morrow."677  The schism presents a mournful example of the violent character of the episcopal elections at Rome. These elections were as important events for the Romans as the elections of the emperors by the Praetorian soldiers had formerly been. They enlisted and aroused all the passions of the clergy and the people.

The schism originated in the deposition and banishment of the bishop Tiberius, for his orthodoxy, and the election of the Arian Felix678 as pope in opposition by the arbitrary will of the emperor Constantius (A.D. 355). Liberius, having in his exile subscribed the Arian creed of Sirmium, 679 was in 358 reinstated, and Felix retired, and is said to have subsequently repented his defection to Arianism. The parties, however, continued.

After the death of Liberius in 366, Damasus was, by the party of Felix, and Ursinus by the party of Liberius, elected successor of Peter. It came to repeated bloody encounters; even the altar of the Prince of Peace was desecrated, and in a church whither Ursinus had betaken himself, a hundred and thirty-seven men lost their lives in one day.680  Other provinces also were drawn into the quarrel. It was years before Damasus at last, with the aid of the, emperor, obtained undisputed possession of his office, and Ursinus was banished. The statements of the two parties are so conflicting in regard to the priority and legitimacy of election in the two cases, and the authorship of the bloody scenes, that we cannot further determine on which side lay the greater blame. Damasus, who reigned from 367 to 384) is indeed depicted as in other respects a violent man,681 but he was a man of learning and literary taste, and did good service by his patronage of Jerome’s Latin version of the Bible, and by the introduction of the Latin Psalter into the church song.682

§ 73. The Meletian Schism at Antioch.

Hieronymus: Chron. ad ann. 864. Chrysostomus: Homilia in S. Patrem nostrum Meletium, archiepiscopum magnae Antiochiae (delivered A.D. 386 or 387, in Montfaucon’s ed. of Chrysost. Opera, tom. ii. p. 518–523). Sozomen: H. E. iv. 28; vii. 10, 11. Theodor.: H. E. V. 3, 35. Socrates: H. E. iii. 9; v. 9, 17. Comp. Walch: Ketzerhistorie, part iv. p. 410 sqq.

The Meletian schism at Antioch683 was interwoven with the Arian controversies, and lasted through more than half a century.

In 361 the majority of the Antiochian church elected as bishop Meletius, who had formerly been an Arian, and was ordained by this party, but after his election professed the Nicene orthodoxy. He was a man of rich persuasive eloquence, and of a sweet and amiable disposition, which endeared him to the Catholics and Arians. But his doctrinal indecision offended the extremists of both parties. When he professed the Nicene faith, the Arians deposed him in council, sent him into exile, and transferred his bishopric to Euzoius, who had formerly been banished with Arius.684  The Catholics disowned Euzoius, but split among themselves; the majority adhered to the exiled Meletius, while the old and more strictly orthodox party, who had hitherto been known as the Eustathians, and with whom Athanasius communicated, would not recognize a bishop of Arian consecration, though Catholic in belief, and elected Paulinus, a presbyter of high character, who was ordained counter-bishop by Lucifer of Calaris.685

The doctrinal difference between the Meletians and the old Nicenes consisted chiefly in this: that the latter acknowledged three hypostases in the divine trinity, the former only three prosopa; the one laying the stress on the triplicity of the divine essence, the other on its unity.

The orthodox orientals declared for Meletius, the occidentals and Egyptians for Paulinus, as legitimate bishop of Antioch. Meletius, on returning from exile under the protection of Gratian, proposed to Paulinus that they should unite their flocks, and that the survivor of them should superintend the church alone; but Paulinus declined, since the canons forbade him to take as a colleague one who had been ordained by Arians.686  Then the military authorities put Meletius in possession of the cathedral, which had been in the hands of Euzoius. Meletius presided, as senior bishop, in the second ecumenical council (381), but died a few days after the opening of it—a saint outside the communion of Rome. His funeral was imposing: lights were borne before the embalmed corpse, and psalms sung in divers languages, and these honors were repeated in all the cities through which it passed on its transportation to Antioch, beside the grave of St. Babylas.687  The Antiochians engraved his likeness on their rings, their cups, and the walls of their bedrooms. So St. Chrysostom informs us in his eloquent eulogy on Meletius.688  Flavian was elected his successor, although Paulinus was still alive. This gave rise to fresh troubles, and excited the indignation of the bishop of Rome. Chrysostom labored for the reconciliation of Rome and Alexandria to Flavian. But the party of Paulinus, after his death in 389, elected Evarius as successor († 392), and the schism continued down to the year 413 or 415, when the bishop Alexander succeeded in reconciling the old orthodox remnant with the successor of Meletius. The two parties celebrated their union by a splendid festival, and proceeded together in one majestic stream to the church.689

Thus a long and tedious schism was brought to a close, and the church of Antioch was permitted at last to enjoy that peace which the Athanasian synod of Alexandria in 362 had desired for it in vain.690

CHAPTER VII.

PUBLIC WORSHIP AND RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS AND CEREMONIES.

I. The ancient Liturgies; the Acts of Councils; and the ecclesiastical writers of the period.

II. The archaeological and liturgical works of Martene, Mamachi, Bona, Muratori, Pelicia, Asseman, Renaudot, Binterim, and Staudenmeier, of the Roman Catholic church; and Bingham, Augusti, Siegel, Alt, Piper, Neale, and Daniel, of the Protestant.

§ 74. The Revolution in Cultus.

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

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

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

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

§ 75. The Civil and Religious Sunday.

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

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

The Christian Sabbath is, on the one hand, the continuation and the regeneration of the Jewish Sabbath, based upon God’s resting from the creation and upon the fourth commandment of the decalogue, which, as to its substance, is not of merely national application, like the ceremonial and civil law, but of universal import and perpetual validity for mankind. It is, on the other hand, a new creation of the gospel, a memorial of the resurrection of Christ and of the work of redemption completed and divinely sealed thereby. It rests, we may say, upon the threefold basis of the original creation, the Jewish legislation, and the Christian redemption, and is rooted in the physical, the moral, and the religious wants of our nature. It has a legal and an evangelical aspect. Like the law in general, the institution of the Christian Sabbath is a wholesome restraint upon the people, and a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. But it is also strictly evangelical: it was originally made for the benefit of man, like the family, with which it goes back beyond the fall to the paradise of innocence, as the second institution of God on earth; it was "a delight" to the pious of the old dispensation (Isa. lviii. 13), and now, under the new, it is fraught with the glorious memories and blessings of Christ’s resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Christian Sabbath is the ancient Sabbath baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost, regenerated, spiritualized, and glorified. It is the connecting link of creation and redemption, of paradise lost, and paradise regained, and a pledge and preparation for the saints’ everlasting rest in heaven.691

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

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

In this matter, as in others, the accession of Constantine marks the beginning of a new era, and did good service to the church and to the cause of public order and morality. Constantine is the founder, in part at least, of the civil observance of Sunday, by which alone the religious observance of it in the church could be made universal and could be properly secured. In the year 321 he issued a law prohibiting manual labor in the cities and all judicial transactions, at a later period also military exercises, on Sunday.692  He exempted the liberation of slaves, which as an act of Christian humanity and charity, might, with special propriety, take place on that day.693  But the Sunday law of Constantine must not be overrated. He enjoined the observance, or rather forbade the public desecration of Sunday, not under the name of Sabbatum or Dies Domini, but under its old astrological and heathen title, Dies Solis, familiar to all his subjects, so that the law was as applicable to the worshippers of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras, as to the Christians. There is no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ. Besides he expressly exempted the country districts, where paganism still prevailed, from the prohibition of labor, and thus avoided every appearance of injustice. Christians and pagans had been accustomed to festival rests. Constantine made these rests to synchronize, and gave the preference to Sunday, on which day Christians from the beginning celebrated the resurrection of their Lord and Saviour. This and no more was implied in the famous enactment of 321. It was only a step in the right direction, but probably the only one which Constantine could prudently or safely take at that period of transition from the rule of paganism to that of Christianity.

For the army, however, he went beyond the limits of negative and protective legislation, to which the state ought to confine itself in matters of religion, and enjoined a certain positive observance of Sunday, in requiring the Christian soldiers to attend Christian worship, and the heathen soldiers, in the open field, at a given signal, with eyes and hands raised towards heaven, to recite the following, certainly very indefinite, form of prayer: "Thee alone we acknowledge as God, thee we reverence as king, to thee we call as our helper. To thee we owe our victories, by thee have we obtained the mastery of our enemies. To thee we give thanks for benefits already received, from thee we hope for benefits to come. We all fall at thy feet, and fervently beg that thou wouldest preserve to us our emperor Constantine and his divinely beloved sons in long life healthful and victorious."694

Constantine’s successors pursued the Sunday legislation which he had initiated, and gave a legal sanction and civil significance also to other holy days of the church, which have no Scriptural authority, so that the special reverence due to the Lord’s Day was obscured in proportion as the number of rival claims increased. Thus Theodosius I. increased the number of judicial holidays to one hundred and twenty-four. The Valentinians, I. and II., prohibited the exaction of taxes and the collection of moneys on Sunday, and enforced the previously enacted prohibition of lawsuits. Theodosius the Great, in 386, and still more stringently the younger Theodosius, in 425, forbade theatrical performances, and Leo and Anthemius, in 460, prohibited other secular amusements, on the Lord’s Day.695  Such laws, however, were probably never rigidly executed. A council of Carthage, in 401, laments the people’s passion for theatrical and other entertainments on Sunday. The same abuse, it is well known, very generally prevails to this day upon the continent of Europe in both Protestant and Roman Catholic countries, and Christian princes and magistrates only too frequently give it the sanction of their example.

Ecclesiastical legislation in like manner prohibited needless mechanical and agricultural labor, and the attending of theatres and other public places of amusement, also hunting and weddings, on Sunday and on feast days. Besides such negative legislation, to which the state must confine itself, the church at the same time enjoined positive observances for the sacred day, especially the regular attendance of public worship, frequent communion, and the payment of free-will offerings (tithes). Many a council here confounded the legal and the evangelical principles, thinking themselves able to enforce by the threatening of penalties what has moral value only as a voluntary act. The Council of Eliberis, in 305, decreed the suspension from communion of any person living in a town who shall absent himself for three Lord’s Days from church. In the same legalistic spirit, the council of Sardica,696 in 343, and the Trullan council697 of 692, threatened with deposition the clergy who should unnecessarily omit public worship three Sundays in succession, and prescribed temporary excommunication for similar neglect among the laity. But, on the other hand, the councils, while they turned the Lord’s Day itself into a legal ordinance handed down from the apostles, pronounced with all decision against the Jewish Sabbatism. The Apostolic Canons and the council of Gangra (the latter, about 450, in opposition to the Gnostic Manichaean asceticism of the Eustathians) condemn fasting on Sunday.698  In the Greek church this prohibition is still in force, because Sunday, commemorating the resurrection of Christ, is a day of spiritual joy. On the same symbolical ground kneeling in prayer was forbidden on Sunday and through the whole time of Easter until Pentecost. The general council of Nicaeea, in 325, issued on this point in the twentieth canon the following decision: "Whereas some bow the knee on Sunday and on the days of Pentecost [i.e., during the seven weeks after Easter], the holy council, that everything may everywhere be uniform, decrees that prayers be offered to God in a standing posture."  The Trullan council, in 692, ordained in the ninetieth canon: "From Saturday evening to Sunday evening let no one bow the knee."  The Roman church in general still adheres to this practice.699  The New Testament gives no law for such secondary matters; the apostle Paul, on the contrary, just in the season of Easter and Pentecost, before his imprisonment, following an inward dictate, repeatedly knelt in prayer.700  The council of Orleans, in 538, says in the twenty-eighth canon: "It is Jewish superstition, that one may not ride or walk on Sunday, nor do anything to adorn the house or the person. But occupations in the field are forbidden, that people may come to the church and give themselves to prayer."701

As to the private opinions of the principal fathers on this subject, they all favor the sanctification of the Lord’s Day, but treat it as a peculiarly Christian institution, and draw a strong, indeed a too strong, line of distinction between it and the Jewish Sabbath; forgetting that they are one in essence and aim, though different in form and spirit, and that the fourth commandment as to its substance—viz., the keeping holy of one day out of seven—is an integral part of the decalogue or the moral law, and hence of perpetual obligation.702  Eusebius calls Sunday, but not the Sabbath, "the first and chief of days and a day of salvation," and commends Constantine for commanding that "all should assemble together every week, and keep that which is called the Lord’s Day as a festival, to refresh even their bodies and to stir up their minds by divine precepts and instruction."703  Athanasius speaks very highly of the Lord’s Day, as the perpetual memorial of the resurrection, but assumes that the old Sabbath has deceased.704  Macarius, a presbyter of Upper Egypt (350), spiritualizes the Sabbath as a type and shadow of the true Sabbath given by the Lord to the soul—the true and eternal Sabbath, which is freedom from sin.705  Hilary represents the whole of this life as a preparation for the eternal Sabbath of the next. Epiphanius speaks of Sunday as an institution of the apostles, but falsely attributes the same origin to the observance of Wednesday and Friday as half fasts. Ambrose frequently mentions Sunday as an evangelical festival, and contrasts it with the defunct legal Sabbath. Jerome makes the same distinction. He relates of the Egyptian coenobites that they "devote themselves on the Lord’s Day to nothing but prayer and reading the Scriptures."  But he mentions also without censure, that the pious Paula and her companions, after returning from church on Sundays, "applied themselves to their allotted works and made garments for themselves and others."  Augustine likewise directly derives Sunday from the resurrection, and not from the fourth commandment. Fasting on that day of spiritual joy he regards, like Ambrose, as a grave scandal and heretical practice. The Apostolical Constitutions in this respect go even still further, and declare: "He that fasts on the Lord’s Day is guilty of sin."  But they still prescribe the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday in addition to the Christian Sunday. Chrysostom warns Christians against sabbatizing with the Jews, but earnestly commends the due celebration of the Lord’s Day. Leo the Great, in a beautiful passage—the finest of all the patristic utterances on this subject—lauds the Lord’s Day as the day of the primitive creation, of the Christian redemption, of the meeting of the risen Saviour with the assembled disciples, of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, of the principal Divine blessings bestowed upon the world.706  But he likewise brings it in no connection with the fourth commandment, and with the other fathers leaves out of view the proper foundation of the day in the eternal moral law of God.

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

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

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

§ 76. The Church Year.

R. Hospinian: Festa Christian. (Tiguri, 1593) Genev. 1675. M. A. Nickel (R.C.): Die heil. Zeiten u. Feste nach ihrer Entstehung u. Feier in der Kath. Kirche, Mainz, 1825 sqq. 6 vols. Pillwitz: Geschichte der heil. Zeiten. Dresden, 1842. E. Ranke: Das kirchliche Pericopensystem aus den aeltesten Urkunden dargelegt. Berlin, 1847. Fr. Strauss (late court preacher and professor in Berlin): Das evangelische Kirchenjahr. Berl. 1850. Lisco: Das christliche Kirchenjahr. Berl. (1840) 4th ed. 1850. Bobertag: Das evangelische Kirchenjahr, &c. Breslau, 1857. Comp. also Augusti: Handbuch der Christlichen Archaeologie, vol. i. (1836), pp. 457–595.

After the, fourth century, the Christian year, with a cycle of regularly recurring annual religious festivals, comes forth in all its main outlines, though with many fluctuations and variations in particulars, and forms thenceforth, so to speak, the skeleton of the Catholic cultus.

The idea of a religious year, in distinction from the natural and from the civil year, appears also in Judaism, and to some extent in the heathen world. It has its origin in the natural necessity of keeping alive and bringing to bear upon the people by public festivals the memory of great and good men and of prominent events. The Jewish ecclesiastical year was, like the whole Mosaic cultus, symbolical and typical. The Sabbath commemorated the creation and the typical redemption, and pointed forward to the resurrection and the true redemption, and thus to the Christian Sunday. The passover pointed to Easter, and the feast of harvest to the Christian Pentecost. The Jewish observance of these festivals originally bore an earnest, dignified, and significant character, but in the hands of Pharisaism it degenerated very largely into slavish Sabbatism and heartless ceremony, and provoked the denunciation of Christ and the apostles. The heathen festivals of the gods ran to the opposite extreme of excessive sensual indulgence and public vice.707

The peculiarity of the Christian year is, that it centres in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and is intended to minister to His glory. In its original idea it is a yearly representation of the leading events of the gospel history; a celebration of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to revive gratitude and devotion. This is the festival part, the semestre Domini. The other half, not festal, the semestre ecclesiae, is devoted to the exhibition of the life of the Christian church, its founding, its growth, and its consummation, both is a whole, and in its individual members, from the regeneration to the resurrection of the dead. The church year is, so to speak, a chronological confession of faith; a moving panorama of the great events of salvation; a dramatic exhibition of the gospel for the Christian people. It secures to every important article of faith its place in the cultus of the church, and conduces to wholeness and soundness of Christian doctrine, as against all unbalanced and erratic ideas.708  It serves to interweave religion with the, life of the people by continually recalling to the popular mind the most important events upon which our salvation rests, and by connecting them with the vicissitudes of the natural and the civil year. Yet, on the other hand, the gradual overloading of the church year, and the multiplication of saints’ days, greatly encouraged superstition and idleness, crowded the Sabbath and the leading festivals into the background, and subordinated the merits of Christ to the patronage of saints. The purification and simplification aimed at by the Reformation became an absolute necessity.

The order of the church year is founded in part upon the history of Jesus and of the apostolic church; in part, especially in respect to Easter and Pentecost, upon the Jewish sacred year; and in part upon the natural succession of seasons; for the life of nature in general forms the groundwork of the higher life of the spirit, and there is an evident symbolical correspondence between Easter and spring, Pentecost and the beginning of harvest, Christmas and the winter solstice, the nativity of John the Baptist and the summer solstice.

The Christian church year, however, developed itself spontaneously from the demands of the Christian worship and public life, after the precedent of the Old Testament cultus, with no positive direction from Christ or the apostles. The New Testament contains no certain traces of annual festivals; but so early as the second century we meet with the general observance of Easter and Pentecost, founded on the Jewish passover and feast of harvest, and answering to Friday and Sunday in the weekly cycle. Easter was a season of sorrow, in remembrance of the passion; Pentecost was a time of joy, in memory of the resurrection of the Redeemer and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.709  These two festivals form the heart of the church year. Less important was the feast of the Epiphany, or manifestation of Christ as Messiah. In the fourth century the Christmas festival was added to the two former leading feasts, and partially took the place of the earlier feast of Epiphany, which now came to be devoted particularly to the manifestation of Christ among the Genthes. And further, in Easter the pavsca staurwvsimon and ajnastavsimon came to be more strictly distinguished, the latter being reckoned a season of joy.

From this time, therefore, we have three great festival cycles, each including a season of preparation before the feast and an after-season appropriate: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The lesser feasts of Epiphany and Ascension arranged themselves under these.710  All bear originally a christological character, representing the three stages of the redeeming work of Christ: the beginning, the prosecution, and the consummation. All are for the glorification of God in Christ.

The trinitarian conception and arrangement of the festal half of the church year is of much later origin, cotemporary with the introduction of the festival of the Trinity (on the Sunday after Pentecost). The feast of Trinity dates from the ninth or tenth century, and was first authoritatively established in the Latin church by Pope John XXII., in 1334, as a comprehensive closing celebration of the revelation of God the Father, who sent His Son (Christmas), of the Son, who died for us and rose again (Easter), and of the Holy Ghost, who renews and sanctifies us (Pentecost).711  The Greek church knows nothing of this festival to this day, though she herself, in the Nicene age, was devoted with special earnestness and zeal to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. The reason of this probably is, that there was no particular historical fact to give occasion for such celebration, and that the mystery of the holy Trinity, revealed in Christ, is properly the object of adoration in all the church festivals and in the whole Christian cultus.

But with these three great feast-cycles the ancient church was not satisfied. So early as the Nicene age it surrounded them with feasts of Mary, of the apostles, of martyrs, and of saints, which were at first only local commemorations, but gradually assumed the character of universal feasts of triumph. By degrees every day of the church year became sacred to the memory of a particular martyr or saint, and in every case was either really or by supposition the day of the death of the saint, which was significantly called his heavenly birth-day.712  This multiplication of festivals has at bottom the true thought, that the whole life of the Christian should be one unbroken spiritual festivity. But the Romish calendar of saints anticipates an ideal condition, and corrupts the truth by exaggeration, as the Pharisees made the word of God "of none effect" by their additions. It obliterates the necessary distinction between Sunday and the six days of labor, to the prejudice of the former, and plays into the hands of idleness. And finally, it rests in great part upon uncertain legends and fantastic myths, which in some cases even eclipse the miracles of the gospel history, and nourish the grossest superstition.

The Greek oriental church year differs from the Roman in this general characteristic: that it adheres more closely to the Jewish ceremonies and customs, while the Roman attaches itself to the natural year and common life. The former begins in the middle of September (Tisri), with the first Sunday after the feast of the Holy Cross; the latter, with the beginning of Advent, four weeks before Christmas. Originally Easter was the beginning of the church year, both in the East and in the West; and the Apostolic Constitutions and Eusebius call the month of Easter the "first month" (corresponding to the month Nisan, which opened the sacred year of the Jews, while the first of Tisri, about the middle of our September, opened their civil year). In the Greek church also the lectiones continuae of the Holy Scriptures, after the example of the Jewish Parashioth and Haphthoroth, became prominent and the church year came to be divided according to the four Evangelists; while in the Latin church, since the sixth century, only select sections from the Gospels, and Epistles, called pericopes, have been read. Another peculiarity of the Western church year, descending from the fourth century, is the division into four portions, of three months each, called Quatember,713 separated from each other by a three days’ fast. Pope Leo I. delivered several sermons on the quarterly Quatember fast,714 and urges especially on that occasion charity to the poor. Instead of this the Greek church has a division according to the four Gospels, which are read entire in course; Matthew next after Pentecost, Luke beginning on the fourteenth of September, Mark at the Easter fast, and John on the first Sunday after Easter.

So early as the fourth century the observance of the festivals was enjoined under ecclesiastical penalties, and was regarded as an established divine ordinance. But the most eminent church teachers, a Chrysostom, a Jerome, and an Augustine, expressly insist, that the observance of the Christian festivals must never be a work of legal constraint, but always an act of evangelical freedom; and Socrates, the historian, says, that Christ and the apostles have given no laws and prescribed no penalties concerning it.715

The abuse of the festivals soon fastened itself on the just use of them and the sensual excesses of the pagan feasts, in spite of the earnest warnings of several fathers, swept in like a wild flood upon the church. Gregory Nazianzen feels called upon, with reference particularly to the feast of Epiphany, to caution his people against public parade, splendor of dress, banquetings, and drinking revels, and says: "Such things we will leave to the Greeks, who worship their gods with the belly; but we, who adore the eternal Word, will find our only satisfaction in the word and the divine law, and in the contemplation of the holy object of our feast."716  On the other hand, however, the Catholic church, especially after Pope Gregory I. (the "pater caerimoniarum"), with a good, but mistaken intention, favored the christianizing of heathen forms of cultus and popular festivals, and thereby contributed unconsciously to the paganizing of Christianity in the Middle Age. The calendar saints took the place of the ancient deities, and Rome became a second time a pantheon. Against this new heathenism, with its sweeping abuses, pure Christianity was obliged with all earnestness and emphasis to protest.

Note. – The Reformation of the sixteenth century sought to restore the entire cultus, and with it the Catholic church year, to its primitive Biblical simplicity; but with different degrees of consistency. The Lutheran, the Anglican, and the German Reformed churches—the latter with the greater freedom—retained the chief festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, together with the system of pericopes, and in some cases also the days of Mary and the apostles (though these are passing more and more out of use); while the strictly Calvinistic churches, particularly the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, rejected all the yearly festivals as human institutions, but, on the other hand, introduced a proportionally stricter observance of the weekly day of rest instituted by God Himself. The Scotch General Assembly of August 6th, 1575, resolved: "That all days which heretofore have been kept holy, besides the Sabbath-days, such as Yule day [Christmas], saints’ days, and such others, may be abolished, and a civil penalty be appointed against the keepers thereof by ceremonies, banqueting, fasting, and such other vanities."  At first, the most of the Reformers, even Luther and Bucer, were for the abolition of all feast days, except Sunday; but the genius and long habits of the people were against such a radical reform. After the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century the strict observance of Sunday developed itself in Great Britain and North America; while the Protestantism of the continent of Europe is much looser in this respect, and not essentially different from Catholicism. It is remarkable, that the strictest observance of Sunday is found just in those countries where the yearly feasts have entirely lost place in the popular mind: Scotland and New England. In the United States, however, for some years past, the Christmas and Easter festivals have regained ground without interfering at all with the strict observance of the Lord’s day, and promise to become regular American institutions. Good Friday and Pentecost will follow. On Good Friday of the year 1864 the leading ministers of the different evangelical churches in New York (the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Dutch and German Reformed, Lutheran, Congregational, Methodist, and Baptist) freely united in the celebration of the atoning death of their common Saviour and in humiliation and prayer to the great edification of the people. It is acknowledged more and more that the observance of the great facts of the evangelical history to the honor of Christ is a common inheritance of primitive Christianity and inseparable from Christian worship." These festivals" (says Prof. Dr. Henry B. Smith in his admirable opening sermon of the Presbyterian General Assembly, N. S., of 1864, on Christian Union and Ecclesiastical Re-union), "antedate, not only our (Protestant) divisions, but also the corruptions of the Papacy; they exalt the Lord and not man; they involve a public and solemn recognition of essential Christian facts, and are thus a standing protest against infidelity; they bring out the historic side of the Christian faith, and connect us with its whole history; and all in the different denominations could unite in their observance without sacrificing any article of their creed or discipline."  There is no danger that American Protestantism will transgress the limits of primitive evangelical simplicity in this respect, and ever return to the papal Mariolatry and Hagiolatry. The Protestant churches have established also many new annual festivals, such as the feasts of the Reformation, of Harvest-home, and of the Dead in Germany; and in America, the frequent days of fasting and prayer, besides the annual Thanksgiving-day, which originated in Puritan New England, and has been gradually adopted in almost all the states of the Union, and quite recently by the general government itself, as a national institution. With the pericopes, or Scripture lessons, the Reformed church everywhere deals much more freely than the Lutheran, and properly reserves the right to expound the whole word of Scripture in any convenient order according to its choice. The Gospels and Epistles may be read as a regular part of the Sabbath service; but the minister should be free to select his text from any portion of the Canonical Scriptures; only it is always advisable to follow a system and to go, if possible, every year through the whole plan and order of salvation in judicious adaptation to the church year and the wants of the people.

§ 77. The Christmas Cycle.

Besides the general literature given in the previous section, there are many special treatises on the origin of the Christmas festival, by Bynaeus, Kindler, Ittig, Vogel, Wernsdorf, Jablonsky, Planck, Hagenbach, P. Cassel, &c. Comp. Augusti: Archaeol. i. 533.

The Christmas festival717 is the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God. It is occupied, therefore, with the event which forms the centre and turning-point of the history of the world. It is of all the festivals the one most thoroughly interwoven with the popular and family life, and stands at the head of the great feasts in the Western church year. It continues to be, in the entire Catholic world and in the greater part of Protestant Christendom, the grand jubilee of children, on which innumerable gifts celebrate the infinite love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son. It kindles in mid-winter a holy fire of love and gratitude, and preaches in the longest night the rising of the Sun of life and the glory of the Lord. It denotes the advent of the true golden age, of the freedom and equality of all the redeemed before God and in God. No one can measure the joy and blessing which from year to year flow forth upon all ages of life from the contemplation of the holy child Jesus in his heavenly innocence and divine humility.

Notwithstanding this deep significance and wide popularity, the festival of the birth of the Lord is of comparatively late institution. This may doubtless be accounted for in the following manner: In the first place, no corresponding festival was presented by the Old Testament, as in the case of Easter and Pentecost. In the second place, the day and month of the birth of Christ are nowhere stated in the gospel history, and cannot be certainly determined. Again: the church lingered first of all about the death and resurrection of Christ, the completed fact of redemption, and made this the centre of the weekly worship and the church year. Finally: the earlier feast of Epiphany afforded a substitute. The artistic religious impulse, however, which produced the whole church year, must sooner or later have called into existence a festival which forms the groundwork of all other annual festivals in honor of Christ. For, as Chrysostom, some ten years, after the introduction of this anniversary in Antioch, justly said, without the birth of Christ there were also no baptism, passion, resurrection, or ascension, and no outpouring of the Holy Ghost; hence no feast of Epiphany, of Easter, or of Pentecost.

The feast of Epiphany had spread from the East to the West. The feast of Christmas took the opposite course. We find it first in Rome, in the time of the bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words: "Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom."718  This passage implies that the festival was already existing and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380; in Alexandria, where the feast of Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430. Chrysostom, who delivered the Christmas homily in Antioch on the 25th of December, 386,719 already calls it, notwithstanding its recent introduction (some ten years before), the fundamental feast, or the root, from which all other Christian festivals grow forth.

The Christmas festival was probably the Christian transformation or regeneration of a series of kindred heathen festivals—the Saturnalia, Sigillaria, Juvenalia, and Brumalia—which were kept in Rome in the month of December, in commemoration of the golden age of universal freedom and equality, and in honor of the unconquered sun, and which were great holidays, especially for slaves and children.720  This connection accounts for many customs of the Christmas season, like the giving of presents to children and to the poor, the lighting of wax tapers, perhaps also the erection of Christmas trees, and gives them a Christian import; while it also betrays the origin of the many excesses in which the unbelieving world indulges at this season, in wanton perversion of the true Christmas mirth, but which, of course, no more forbid right use, than the abuses of the Bible or of any other gift of God. Had the Christmas festival arisen in the period of the persecution, its derivation from these pagan festivals would be refuted by the then reigning abhorrence of everything heathen; but in the Nicene age this rigidness of opposition between the church and the world was in a great measure softened by the general conversion of the heathen. Besides, there lurked in those pagan festivals themselves, in spite of all their sensual abuses, a deep meaning and an adaptation to a real want; they might be called unconscious prophecies of the Christmas feast. Finally, the church fathers themselves721 confirm the symbolical reference of the feast of the birth of Christ, the Sun of righteousness, the Light of the world, to the birth-festival of the unconquered sun,722 which on the twenty-fifth of December, after the winter solstice, breaks the growing power of darkness, and begins anew his heroic career. It was at the same time, moreover, the prevailing opinion of the church in the fourth and fifth centuries, that Christ was actually born on the twenty-fifth of December; and Chrysostom appeals, in behalf of this view, to the date of the registration under Quirinius (Cyrenius), preserved in the Roman archives. But no certainly respecting the birthday of Christ can be reached from existing data.723

Around the feast of Christmas other festivals gradually gathered, which compose, with it, the Christmas Cycle. The celebration of the twenty-fifth of December was preceded by the Christmas Vigils, or Christmas Night, which was spent with the greater solemnity, because Christ was certainly born in the night.724

After Gregory the Great the four Sundays before Christmas began to be devoted to the preparation for the coming of our Lord in the flesh and for his second coming to the final judgment. Hence they were called Advent Sundays. With the beginning of Advent the church year in the West began. The Greek church reckons six Advent Sundays, and begins them with the fourteenth of November. This Advent season was designed to represent and reproduce in the consciousness of the church at once the darkness and the yearning and hope of the long ages before Christ. Subsequently all noisy amusements and also weddings were forbidden during this season. The pericopes are selected with reference to the awakening of repentance and of desire after the Redeemer.

From the fourth century Christmas was followed by the memorial days of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr (Dec. 26), of the apostle and evangelist John (Dec. 27), and of the Innocents of Bethlehem (Dec. 28), in immediate succession; representing a threefold martyrdom: martyrdom in will and in fact (Stephen), in will without the fact (John), and in fact without the will, an unconscious martyrdom of infanthe innocence. But Christian martyrdom in general was regarded by the early church as a heavenly birth and a fruit of the earthly birth of Christ. Hence the ancient festival hymn for the day of St. Stephen, the leader of the noble army of martyrs: "Yesterday was Christ born upon earth, that to-day Stephen might be born in heaven."725  The close connection of the feast of John the, Evangelist with that of the birth of Christ arises from the confidential relation of the beloved disciple to the Lord, and from the fundamental thought of his Gospel: "The Word was made flesh."  The innocent infant-martyrs of Bethlehem, "the blossoms of martyrdom, the rosebuds torn off by the hurricane of persecution, the offering of first-fruits to Christ, the tender flock of sacrificial lambs," are at the same time the representatives of the innumerable host of children in heaven.726  More than half of the human race are said to die in infancy, and yet to children the word emphatically applies: "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  The mystery of infant martyrdom is constantly repeated. How many children are apparently only born to suffer, and to die; but in truth the pains of their earthly birth are soon absorbed by the joys of their heavenly birth, and their temporary cross is rewarded by an eternal crown.

Eight days after Christmas the church celebrated, though not till after the sixth or seventh century, the Circumcision and the Naming of Jesus. Of still later origin is the Christian New Year’s festival, which falls on the same day as the Circumcision. The pagan Romans solemnized the turn of the year, like the Saturnalia, with revels. The church teachers, in reaction, made the New Year a day of penance and prayer. Thus Augustine, in a sermon: "Separate yourselves from the heathen, and at the change of the year do the opposite of what they do. They give each other gifts; give ye alms instead. They sing worldly songs; read ye the word of God. They throng the theatre come ye to the church. They drink themselves drunken; do ye fast."

The feast of Epiphany727 on the contrary, on the sixth of January, is older, as we have already observed, than Christmas itself, and is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria. It refers in general to the manifestation of Christ in the world, and originally bore the twofold character of a celebration of the birth and the baptism of Jesus. After the introduction of Christmas, it lost its reference to the birth. The Eastern church commemorated on this day especially the baptism of Christ, or the manifestation of His Messiahship, and together with this the first manifestation of His miraculous power at the marriage at Cana. The Westem church, more Genthe-Christian in its origin, gave this festival, after the fourth century, a special reference to the adoration of the infant Jesus by the wise men from the east,728 under the name of the feast of the Three Kings, and transformed it into a festival of Genthe missions; considering the wise men as the representatives of the nobler heathen world.729  Thus at the same time the original connection of the feast with the birth of Christ was preserved. Epiphany forms the close of the Christmas Cycle. It was an early custom to announce the term of the Easter observance on the day of Epiphany by the so-called Epistolae paschales, or gravmmata pascavlia. This was done especially by the bishop of Alexandria, where astronomy most flourished, and the occasion was improved for edifying instructions and for the discussion of important religious questions of the day.

§ 78. The Easter Cycle.

Easter is the oldest and greatest annual festival of the church. As to its essential idea and observance, it was born with the Christian Sunday on the morning of the resurrection.730  Like the passover with the Jews, it originally marked the beginning of the church year. It revolves entirely about the person and the work of Christ, being devoted to the great saving fact of his passion and resurrection. We have already spoken of the origin and character of this festival,731 and shall confine ourselves here to the alterations and enlargements which it underwent after the Nicene age.

The Easter festival proper was preceded by a forty days’ season of repentance and fasting, called Quadragesima, at least as early as the year 325; for the council of Nice presupposes the existence of this season.732  This fast was an imitation of the forty days’ fasting of Jesus in the wilderness, which itself was put in typical connection with the forty days’ fasting of Moses733 and Elijah,734 and the forty years’ wandering of Israel through the desert. At first a free-will act, it gradually assumed the character of a fixed custom and ordinance of the church. Respecting the length of the season much difference prevailed, until Gregory I. (590–604) fixed the Wednesday of the sixth week before Easter, Ash Wednesday as it is called,735 as the beginning of it. On this day the priests and the people sprinkled themselves with dust and ashes, in token of their perishableness and their repentance, with the words: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou must return; repent, that thou mayest inherit eternal life."  During Quadragesima criminal trials and criminal punishments, weddings, and sensual amusements were forbidden; solemn, earnest silence was imposed upon public and private life; and works of devotion, penances and charity were multiplied. Yet much hypocrisy was practised in the fasting; the rich compensating with exquisite dainties the absence of forbidden meats. Chrysostom and Augustine are found already lamenting this abuse. During the days preceding the beginning of Lent, the populace gave themselves up to unrestrained merriment, and this abuse afterward became legitimized in all Catholic countries, especially in Italy (flourishing most in Rome, Venice, and Cologne), in the Carnival.736

The six Sundays of Lent are called Quadragesima prima, secunda, and so on to sexta. They are also named after the initial words of the introit in the mass for the day: Invocabit (Ps. xci. 15), Reminiscere, (Ps. xxv. 6), Oculi (Ps. xxxiv. 15), Laetare (Is. lxvi. 10), Judica (Ps. xliii. 1), Palmarum (from Matt. xxi. 8). The three Sundays preceding Quadragesima are called respectively Estomihi (from Ps. xxxi. 2) or Quinquagesima (i.e., Dominica quinquagesimae diei, viz., before Easter), Sexagesima, and Septuagesima; which are, however, inaccurate designations. These three Sundays were regarded as preparatory to the Lenten season proper. In the larger cities it became customary to preach daily during the Quadragesimal fast; and the usage of daily Lenten sermons (Quadragesimales, or sermones Quadragesimales) has maintained itself in the Roman church to this day.

The Quadragesimal fast culminates in the Great, or Silent, or Holy Week,737 which is especially devoted to the commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus, and is distinguished by daily public worship, rigid fasting, and deep silence. This week, again, has its prominent days. First Palm Sunday,738 which has been, in the East since the fourth century, in the West since the sixth, observed in memory of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem for His enthronement on the cross. Next follows Maundy Thursday,739 in commemoration of the institution of the Holy Supper, which on this day was observed in the evening, and was usually connected with a love feast, and also with feet-washing. The Friday of the Holy Week is distinguished from all others as Good Friday,740 the day of the Saviour’s death; the day of the deepest penance and fasting of the year, stripped of all Sunday splendor and liturgical pomp, veiled in the deepest silence and holy sorrow; the communion omitted (which had taken place the evening before), altars unclothed, crucifixes veiled, lights extinguished, the story of the passion read, and, instead of the church hymns, nothing sung but penitential psalms. Finally the Great Sabbath,741 the day of the Lord’s repose in the grave and descent into Hades; the favorite day in all the year for the administration of baptism, which symbolizes participation in the death of Christ.742  The Great Sabbath was generally spent as a fast day, even in the Greek church, which usually did not fast on Saturday.

In the evening of the Great Sabbath began the Easter Vigils,743 which continued, with Scripture reading, singing, and prayer, to the dawn of Easter morning, and formed the solemn transition from the pavsca staurwvsimon to the pavsca ajnastavsimon, and from the deep sorrow of penitence over the death of Jesus to the joy of faith in the resurrection of the Prince of life. All Christians, and even many pagans, poured into the church with lights, to watch there for the morning of the resurrection. On this night the cities were splendidly illuminated, and transfigured in a sea of fire; about midnight a solemn procession surrounded the church, and then triumphally entered again into the "holy gates," to celebrate Easter. According to an ancient tradition, it was expected that on Easter night Christ would come again to judge the world.744

The Easter festival itself745 began with the jubilant salutation, still practized in the Russian church: "The Lord is risen !" and the response: "He is truly risen!746  Then the holy kiss of brotherhood scaled the newly fastened bond of love in Christ. It was the grandest and most joyful of the feasts. It lasted a whole week, and closed with the following Sunday, called the Easter Octave,747 or White Sunday,748 when the baptized appeared in white garments, and were solemnly incorporated into the church.

§ 79. The Time of the Easter Festival.

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

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

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

The council of Arles in 314 had already decreed, in its first canon, that the Christian Passover be celebrated "uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem," and that the bishops of Rome should fix the time. But as this order was not universally obeyed, the fathers of Nicaea proposed to settle the matter, and this was the second main object of the first ecumenical council in 325. The result of the transactions on this point, the particulars of which are not known to us, does not appear in the canons (probably out of consideration for the numerous Quartodecimanians), but is doubtless preserved in the two circular letters of the council itself and the emperor Constantine.749  The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord." We would," says the circular letter of Constantine in reference to the council of Nice, "we would have nothing in common with that most hostile people, the Jews; for we have received from the Redeemer another way of honoring God [the order of the days of the week], and harmoniously adopting this method, we would withdraw ourselves from the evil fellowship of the Jews. For what they pompously assert, is really utterly absurd: that we cannot keep this feast at all without their instruction .... It is our duty to have nothing in common with the murderers of our Lord."  This bitter tone against Judaism runs through the whole letter.

At Nicaea, therefore, the Roman and Alexandrian usage with respect to Easter triumphed, and the Judaizing practice of the Quartodecimanians, who always celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, became thenceforth a heresy. Yet that practice continued in many parts of the East, and in the time of Epiphanius, about A.D. 400, there were many, Quartodecimanians, who, as he says, were orthodox, indeed, in doctrine, but in ritual were addicted to Jewish fables, and built upon the principle: "Cursed is every one who does not keep his passover on the fourteenth of Nisan."750  They kept the day with the Communion and with fasting till three o’clock. Yet they were divided into several parties among themselves. A peculiar offshoot of the Quartodecimanians was the rigidly ascetic Audians, who likewise held that the passover must be kept at the very same time (not after the same manner) with the Jews, on the fourteenth of Nisan, and for their authority appealed to their edition of the Apostolic Constitutions.

And even in the orthodox church these measures did not secure entire uniformity. For the council of Nicaea, probably from prudence, passed by the question of the Roman and Alexandrian computation of Easter. At least the Acts contain no reference to it.751  At all events this difference remained: that Rome, afterward as before, fixed the vernal equinox, the terminus a quo of the Easter full moon, on the 18th of March, while Alexandria placed it correctly on the 21st. It thus occurred, that the Latins, the very year after the Nicene council, and again in the years 330, 333, 340, 341, 343, varied from the Alexandrians in the time of keeping Easter. On this account the council of Sardica, as we learn from the recently discovered Paschal Epistles of Athanasius, took the Easter question again in hand, and brought about, by mutual concessions, a compromise for the ensuing fifty years, but without permanent result. In 387 the difference of the Egyptian and the Roman Easter amounted to fully five weeks. Later attempts also to adjust the matter were in vain, until the monk Dionysius Exiguus, the author of our Christian calendar, succeeded in harmonizing the computation of Easter on the basis of the true Alexandrian reckoning; except that the Gallican and British Christians adhered still longer to the old custom, and thus fell into conflict with the Anglo-Saxon. The introduction of the improved Gregorian calendar in the Western church in 1582 again produced discrepancy; the Eastern and Russian church adhered to the Julian calendar, and is consequently now about twelve days behind us. According to the Gregorian calendar, which does not divide the months with astronomical exactness, it sometimes happens that the Paschal full moon is put a couple of hours too early, and the Christian Easter, as was the case in 1825, coincides with the Jewish Passover, against the express order of the council of Nicaea.

§ 80. The Cycle of Pentecost.

The whole period of seven weeks from Easter to Pentecost bore a joyous, festal character. It was called Quinquagesima, or Pentecost in the wider sense,752 and was the memorial of the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of the Father, His repeated appearances during the mysterious forty days, and His heavenly headship and eternal presence in the church. It was regarded as a continuous Sunday, and distinguished by the absence of all fasting and by standing in prayer. Quinquagesima formed a marked contrast with the Quadragesima which preceded. The deeper the sorrow of repentance had been in view of the suffering and dying Saviour, the higher now rose the joy of faith in the risen and eternally living Redeemer. This joy, of course, must keep itself clear of worldly amusements, and be sanctified by devotion, prayer, singing, and thanksgiving; and the theatres, therefore, remained closed through the fifty days. But the multitude of nominal Christians soon forgot their religious impressions, and sought to compensate their previous fasting with wanton merry-making.

The seven Sundays after Easter are called in the Latin church, respectively, Quasimodo-geniti, Misericordia Domini, Jubilate, Cantate, Rogate, (or, Vocem jucunditatis), Exaudi, and Pentecoste. In the Eastern church the Acts of the Apostles are read at this season.

Of the fifty festival days, the fortieth and the fiftieth were particularly prominent. The fortieth day after Easter, always a Thursday, was after the fourth century dedicated to the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of God, and hence named Ascension Day.753  The fiftieth day, or the feast of Pentecost in the stricter sense,754 was the kernel and culminating point of this festival season, as Easter day was of the Easter cycle. It was the feast of the Holy Ghost, who on this day was poured out upon the assembled disciples with the whole fulness of the accomplished redemption; and it was at the same time the birth-day of the Christian church. Hence this festival also was particularly prized for baptisms and ordinations. Pentecost corresponded to the Jewish feast of that name, which was primarily the feast of first-fruits, and afterward became also the feast of the giving of the law on Sinai, and in this twofold import was fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and the founding of the Christian church." Both revelations of the divine law," writes Jerome to Fabiola, "took place on the fiftieth day after the passover; the one on Sinai, the other on Zion; there the mountain was shaken, here the temple; there, amid flames and lightnings, the tempest roared and the thunder rolled, here, also with mighty wind, appeared tongues of fire; there the sound of the trumpet pealed forth the words of the law, here the cornet of the gospel sounded through the mouth of the apostles."

The celebration of Pentecost lasted, at least ultimately, three days or a whole week, closing with the Pentecostal Octave, which in the Greek church (so early as Chrysostom) was called The Feast of all Saints and Martyrs,755 because the martyrs are the seed and the beauty of the church. The Latin church, on the contrary, though not till the tenth century, dedicated the Sunday after Pentecost to the Holy Trinity, and in the later times of the Middle Age, further added to the festival part of the church year the feast of Corpus Christi, in celebration of the mystery of transubstantiation, on the Thursday after Trinity. It thus invested the close of the church year with a purely dogmatic import. Protestantism has retained the feast of Trinity, in opposition to the Antitrinitarians; but has, of course, rejected the feast of Corpus Christi.

In the early church, Pentecost was the last great festival of the Christian year. Hence the Sundays following it, till Advent, were counted from Whitsunday.756  The number of the Sundays in the second half of the church year therefore varies between twenty-seven and twenty-two, according to the time of Easter. In this part of the year we find even in the old lectionaries and sacramentaries some subordinate, feasts in memory of great men of the church; such as the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the founders of the church (June 29); the feast of the chief martyr, Laurentius, the representative of the church militant (August, 10); the feast of the archangel Michael, the representative of the church triumphant (September 29).

§ 81. The Exaltation of the Virgin Mariology.

Canisius (R.C.): De Maria Virgine libri quinque. Ingolst. 1577. Lamberertini (R.C.): Comment. dum De J. Christi, matrisque ejus festis. Patav. 1751. Perrone (R.C.): De Immaculata B. V. Mariae conceptu. Rom. 1848. (In defence of the new papal dogma of the sinless conception of Mary.) F. W. Genthe: Die Jungfrau Maria, ihre Evangelien u. ihre Wunder. Halle, 1852. Comp. also the elaborate article, "Maria, Mutter des Herrn," by Steitz, in Herzog’s Protest. Real-Encycl. (vol. ix. p. 74 ff.), and the article, "Maria, die heil. Jungfrau," by Reithmayr (R.C.) in Wetzer u. Welte’s Kathol. Kirchenlex. (vi. 835 ff.); also the Eirenicon-controversy between Pusey and J. H. Newman, 1866.

Into these festival cycles a multitude of subordinate feasts found their way, at the head of which stand the festivals of the holy Virgin Mary, honored as queen of the army of saints.

The worship of Mary was originally only a reflection of the worship of Christ, and the feasts of Mary were designed to contribute to the glorifying of Christ. The system arose from the inner connection of the Virgin with the holy mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God; though certainly, with this leading religious and theological interest other motives combined. As mother of the Saviour of the world, the Virgin Mary unquestionably holds forever a peculiar position among all women, and in the history of redemption. Even in heaven she must stand peculiarly near to Him whom on earth she bore nine months under her bosom, and whom she followed with true motherly care to the cross. It is perfectly natural, nay, essential, to sound religious feeling, to associate with Mary the fairest traits of maidenly and maternal character, and to revere her as the highest model of female purity, love, and piety. From her example issues a silent blessing upon all generations, and her name and memory are, and ever will be, inseparable from the holiest mysteries and benefits of faith. For this reason her name is even wrought into the Apostles’ Creed, in the simple and chaste words: "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."

The Catholic church, however, both Latin and Greek, did not stop with this. After the middle of the fourth century it overstepped the wholesome Biblical limit, and transformed the mother of the Lord"757 into a mother of God, the humble handmaid of the Lord"758 into a queen of heaven, the "highly favored"759 into a dispenser of favors, the "blessed among women"760 into an intercessor above all women, nay, we may almost say, the redeemed daughter of fallen Adam, who is nowhere in Holy Scripture excepted from the universal sinfulness, into a sinlessly holy co-redeemer. At first she was acquitted only of actual sin, afterward even of original; though the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin was long contested, and was not established as an article of faith in the Roman church till 1854. Thus the veneration of Mary gradually degenerated into the worship of Mary; and this took so deep hold upon the popular religious life in the Middle Age, that, in spite of all scholastic distinctions between latria, and dulia, and hyrerdulia, Mariolatry practically prevailed over the worship of Christ. Hence in the innumerable Madonnas of Catholic art the human mother is the principal figure, and the divine child accessory. The Romish devotions scarcely utter a Pater Noster without an Ave Maria, and turn even more frequently and naturally to the compassionate, tender-hearted mother for her intercessions, than to the eternal Son of God, thinking that in this indirect way the desired gift is more sure to be obtained. To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Graeco-Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing, or rendering needless, the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators. Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiased historians in regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. It brings plainly to mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods; as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero-worship of Greece and Rome. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the people, that it reproduced itself in Christian forms. The popular religious want had accustomed itself even to female deities, and very naturally betook itself first of all to Mary, the highly favored and blessed mother of the divine-human Redeemer, as the worthiest object of adoration.

Let us trace now the main features in the historical development of the Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry.

The New Testament contains no intimation of any worship or festival celebration of Mary. On the one hand, Mary, is rightly called by Elizabeth, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, "the mother of the Lord"761—but nowhere "the mother of God," which is at least not entirely synonymous—and is saluted by her, as well as by the angel Gabriel, as "blessed among women;"762 nay, she herself prophesies in her inspired song, which has since resounded through all ages of the church, that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."763  Through all the youth of Jesus she appears as a devout virgin, full of childlike innocence, purity, and humility; and the few traces we have of her later life, especially the touching scene at the cross,764 confirm this impression. But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable, that she is nowhere in the New Testament excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration. On the contrary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the "mother of Jesus;"765 even her birth and her death are unknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son. In truth, there are plain indications that the Lord, with prophetic reference to the future apotheosis of His mother according to the flesh, from the first gave warning against it. At the wedding in Cana He administered to her, though leniently and respectfully, a rebuke for premature zeal mingled perhaps with maternal vanity.766  On a subsequent occasion he put her on a level with other female disciples, and made the carnal consanguinity subordinate to the spiritual kinship of the doing of the will of God.767  The well-meant and in itself quite innocent benediction of an unknown woman upon His mother He did not indeed censure, but He corrected it with a benediction upon all who hear the word of God and keep it, and thus forestalled the deification of Mary by confining the ascription within the bounds of moderation.768

In striking contrast with this healthful and sober representation of Mary in the canonical Gospels are the numerous apocryphal Gospels of the third and fourth centuries, which decorated the life of Mary with fantastic fables and wonders of every kind, and thus furnished a pseudo-historical foundation for an unscriptural Mariology and Mariolatry.769  The Catholic church, it is true, condemned this apocryphal literature so early as the Decrees of Gelasius;770 yet many of the fabulous elements of it—such as the names of the parents of Mary, Joachim (instead of Eli, as in Luke iii. 23) and Anna,771 the birth of Mary in a cave, her education in the temple, and her mock marriage with the aged Joseph772—passed into the Catholic tradition.

The development of the orthodox Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry originated as early as the second century in an allegorical interpretation of the history of the fall, and in the assumption of an antithetic relation of Eve and Mary, according to which the mother of Christ occupies the same position in the history of redemption as the wife of Adam in the history of sin and death.773  This idea, so fruitful of many errors, is ingenious, but unscriptural, and an apocryphal substitute for the true Pauline doctrine of an antitypical parallel between the first and second Adam.774  It tends to substitute Mary for Christ. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, are the first who present Mary as the counterpart of Eve, as a "mother of all living" in the higher, spiritual sense, and teach that she became through her obedience the mediate or instrumental cause of the blessings of redemption to the human race, as Eve by her disobedience was the fountain of sin and death.775  Irenaeus calls her also the "advocate of the virgin Eve," which, at a later day, is understood in the sense of intercessor.776  On this account this father stands as the oldest leading authority in the Catholic Mariology; though with only partial justice; for he was still widely removed from the notion of the sinlessness of Mary, and expressly declares the answer of Christ in John ii. 4, to be a reproof of her premature haste.777  In the same way Tertullian, Origen, Basil the Great, and even Chrysostom, with all their high estimate of the mother of our Lord, ascribe to her on one or two occasions (John ii. 3; Matt. xiii. 47) maternal vanity, also doubt and anxiety, and make this the sword (Luke ii. 35) which, under the cross, passed through her soul.778  In addition to this typological antithesis of Mary and Eve, the rise of monasticism supplied the development of Mariology a further motive in the enhanced estimate of virginity, without which no true holiness could be conceived. Hence the virginity of Mary, which is unquestioned for the part of her life before the birth of Christ, came to be extended to her whole life, and her marriage with the aged Joseph to be regarded as a mere protectorate, and, therefore, only a nominal marriage. The passage, Matt. i. 25, which, according to its obvious literal meaning (the e{w" and prwtovtoko" 779), seems to favor the opposite view, was overlooked or otherwise explained; and the brothers of Jesus,780 who appear fourteen or fifteen times in the gospel history and always in close connection with His mother, were regarded not as sons of Mary subsequently born, but either as sons of Joseph by a former marriage (the view of Epiphanius), or, agreeably to the wider Hebrew use of the term ;aj cousins of Jesus (Jerome).781  It was felt—and this feeling is shared by many devout Protestants—to be irreconcilable with her dignity and the dignity of Christ, that ordinary children should afterward proceed from the same womb out of which the Saviour of the world was born. The name perpetua virgo, ajei; parqevno", was thenceforth a peculiar and inalienable predicate of Mary. After the fourth century it was taken not merely in a moral sense, but in the physical also, as meaning that Mary conceived and produced the Lord clauso utero.782  This, of course, required the supposition of a miracle, like the passage of the risen Jesus through the closed doors. Mary, therefore, in the Catholic view, stands entirely alone in the history of the world in this respect, as in others: that she was a married virgin, a wife never touched by her husband.783

Epiphanius, in his seventy-eighth Heresy, combats the advocates of the opposite view in Arabia toward the end of the fourth century (367), as heretics under the title of Antidikomarianites, opposers of the dignity of Mary, i.e., of her perpetual virginity. But, on the other hand, he condemns, in the seventy-ninth Heresy, the contemporaneous sect of the Collyridians in Arabia, a set of fanatical women, who, as priestesses, rendered divine worship to Mary, and, perhaps in imitation of the worship of Ceres, offered little cakes (kollurivde") to her; he claims adoration for God and Christ alone. Jerome wrote, about 383, with indignation and bitterness against Helvidius and Jovinian, who, citing Scripture passages and earlier church teachers, like Tertullian, maintained that Mary bore children to Joseph after the birth of Christ. He saw in this doctrine a desecration of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he even compares Helvidius to Erostratus, the destroyer of the temple at Ephesus.784  The bishop Bonosus of Sardica was condemned for the same view by the Illyrican bishops, and the Roman bishop Siricius approved the sentence, A.D. 392.

Augustine went a step farther. In an incidental remark against Pelagius, he agreed with him in excepting Mary, "propter honorem Domini," from actual (but not from original) sin.785  This exception he is willing to make from the sinfulness of the race, but no other. He taught the sinless birth and life of Mary, but not her immaculate conception. He no doubt assumed, as afterward Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas, a sanctificatio in utero, like that of Jeremiah (Jer. i. 5) and John the Baptist (Luke i. 15), whereby, as those two men were fitted for their prophetic office, she in a still higher degree was sanctified by a special operation of the Holy Ghost before her birth, and prepared to be a pure receptacle for the divine Logos. The reasoning of Augustine backward from the holiness of Christ to the holiness of His mother was an important turn, which was afterward pursued to further results. The same reasoning leads as easily to the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary, though also, just as well, to a sinless mother of Mary herself, and thus upward to the beginning, of the race, to another Eve who never fell. Augustine’s opponent, Pelagius, with his monastic, ascetic idea of holiness and his superficial doctrine of sin, remarkably outstripped him on this point, ascribing to Mary perfect sinlessness. But, it should be remembered, that his denial of original sin to all men, and his excepting of sundry saints of the Old Testament besides Mary, such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Melchizedek, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, from actual sin,786 so that pavnte" in Rom. v. 12, in his view, means only a majority, weaken the honor he thus appears to confer upon the mother of the Lord. The Augustinian view long continued to prevail; but at last Pelagius won the victory on this point in the Roman church.787

Notwithstanding this exalted representation of Mary, there appear no clear traces of a proper worship of Mary, as distinct from the worship of saints in general, until the Nestorian controversy of 430. This dispute formed an important turning-point not only in Christology, but in Mariology also. The leading interest in it was, without doubt, the connection of the virgin with the mystery of the incarnation. The perfect union of the divine and human natures seemed to demand that Mary might be called in some sense the mother of God, qeotovko", Deipara; for that which was born of her was not merely the man Jesus, but the God-Man Jesus Christ.788  The church, however, did, of course, not intend by that to assert that she was the mother of the uncreated divine essence—for this would be palpably absurd and blasphemous—nor that she herself was divine, but only that she was the human point of entrance or the mysterious channel for the eternal divine Logos. Athanasius and the Alexandrian church teachers of the Nicene age, who pressed the unity of the divine and the human in Christ to the verge of monophysitism, had already used this expression frequently and without scruple,789 and Gregory Nazianzen even declares every one impious who denies its validity.790  Nestorius, on the contrary, and the Antiochian school, who were more devoted to the distinction of the two natures in Christ, took offence at the predicate qeotovko", saw in it a relapse into the heathen mythology, if not a blasphemy against the eternal and unchangeable Godhead, and preferred the expression Cristotovko", mater Christi. Upon this broke out the violent controversy between him and the bishop Cyril of Alexandria, which ended in the condemnation of Nestorianism at Ephesus in 431.

Thenceforth the qeotovko" was a test of orthodox Christology, and the rejection of it amounted to the beginning or the end of all heresy. The overthrow of Nestorianism was at the same time the victory of Mary-worship. With the honor of the Son, the honor also of the Mother was secured. The opponents of Nestorius, especially Proclus, his successor in Constantinople († 447), and Cyril of Alexandria († 444), could scarcely find predicates enough to express the transcendent glory of the mother of God. She was the crown of virginity, the indestructible temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Trinity, the paradise of the second Adam, the bridge from God to man, the loom of the incarnation, the sceptre of orthodoxy; through her the Trinity is glorified and adored, the devil and demons are put to flight, the nations converted, and the fallen creature raised to heaven.791  The people were all on the side of the Ephesian decision, and gave vent to their joy in boundless enthusiasm, amidst bonfires, processions, and illuminations.

With this the worship of Mary, the mother of God, the queen of heaven, seemed to be solemnly established for all time. But soon a reaction appeared in favor of Nestorianism, and the church found it necessary to condemn the opposite extreme of Eutychianism or Monophysitism. This was the office of the council of Chalcedon in 451: to give expression to the element of truth in Nestorianism, the duality of nature in the one divine-human person of Christ. Nevertheless the qeotovko" was expressly retained, though it originated in a rather monophysite view.792

§ 82. Mariolatry.

Thus much respecting the doctrine of Mary. Now the corresponding practice. From this Mariology follows Mariolatry. If Mary is, in the strict sense of the word, the mother of God, it seems to follow as a logical consequence, that she herself is divine, and therefore an object of divine worship. This was not, indeed, the meaning and purpose of the ancient church; as, in fact, it never asserted that Mary was the mother of the essential, eternal divinity of the Logos. She was, and continues to be, a created being, a human mother, even according to the Roman and Greek doctrine. But according to the once prevailing conception of her peculiar relation to deity, a certain degree of divine homage to Mary, and some invocation of her powerful intercession with God, seemed unavoidable, and soon became a universal practice.

The first instance of the formal invocation of Mary occurs in the prayers of Ephraim Syrus († 379), addressed to Mary and the saints, and attributed by the tradition of the Syrian church, though perhaps in part incorrectly, to that author. The first more certain example appears in Gregory Nazianzen († 389), who, in his eulogy on Cyprian, relates of Justina that she besought the virgin Mary to protect her threatened virginity, and at the same time disfigured her beauty by ascetic self-tortures, and thus fortunately escaped the amours of a youthful lover (Cyprian before his conversion).793  But, on the other hand, the numerous writings of Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine, furnish no example of an invocation of Mary. Epiphanius even condemned the adoration of Mary, and calls the practice of making offerings to her by the Collyridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to the soul.794  The entire silence of history respecting the worship of the Virgin down to the end of the fourth century, proves clearly that it was foreign to the original spirit of Christianity, and belongs among the many innovations of the post-Nicene age.

In the beginning of the fifth century, however, the worship of saints appeared in full bloom, and then Mary, by reason of her singular relation to the Lord, was soon placed at the head, as the most blessed queen of the heavenly host. To her was accorded the hyperdulia (uJperdouleiva)—to anticipate here the later scholastic distinction sanctioned by the council of Trent—that is, the highest degree of veneration, in distinction from mere dulia (douleiva), which belongs to all saints and angels, and from latria (latreiva), which, properly speaking, is due to God alone. From that time numerous churches and altars were dedicated to the holy Mother of God, the perpetual Virgin; among them also the church at Ephesus in which the anti-Nestorian council of 431 had sat. Justinian I., in a law, implored her intercession with God for the restoration of the Roman empire, and on the dedication of the costly altar of the church of St. Sophia he expected all blessings for church and empire from her powerful prayers. His general, Narses, like the knights in the Middle Age, was unwilling to go into battle till he had secured her protection. Pope Boniface IV. in 608 turned the Pantheon in Rome into a temple of Mary ad martyres: the pagan Olympus into a Christian heaven of gods. Subsequently even her images (made after an original pretending to have come from Luke) were divinely worshipped, and, in the prolific legends of the superstitious Middle Age, performed countless miracles, before some of which the miracles of the gospel history grow dim. She became almost coördinate with Christ, a joint redeemer, invested with most of His own attributes and acts of grace. The popular belief ascribed to her, as to Christ, a sinless conception, a sinless birth, resurrection and ascension to heaven, and a participation of all power in heaven and on earth. She became the centre of devotion, cultus, and art, the popular symbol of power, of glory, and of the final victory of catholicism over all heresies.795  The Greek and Roman churches vied throughout the Middle Age (and do so still) in the apotheosis of the human mother with the divine-human child Jesus in her arms, till the Reformation freed a large part of Latin Christendom from this unscriptural semi-idolatry and concentrated the affection and adoration of believers upon the crucified and risen Saviour of the world, the only Mediator between God and man.

A word more: respecting the favorite prayer to Mary, the angelic greeting, or the Ave Maria, which in the Catholic devotion runs parallel to the Pater Noster. It takes its name from the initial words of the salutation of Gabriel to the holy Virgin at the annunciation of the birth of Christ. It consists of three parts:

(1) The salutation of the angel (Luke i. 28):

Ave Maria, gratiae plena, Dominus tecum!

(2) The words of Elizabeth (Luke i. 42):

Benedicta tu in mulieribus796, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.

(3) The later unscriptural addition, which contains the prayer proper, and is offensive to the Protestant and all sound Christian feeling:

Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis. Amen.

Formerly this third part, which gave the formula the character of a prayer, was traced back to the anti-Nestorian council of Ephesus in 431, which sanctioned the expression mater Dei, or Dei genitrix (qeotovko").  But Roman archaeologists797 now concede that it is a much later addition, made in the beginning of the sixteenth century (1508), and that the closing words, nunc et in hora mortis, were added even after that time by the Franciscans. But even the first two parts did not come into general use as a standing formula of prayer until the thirteenth century.798  From that date the Ave Maria stands in the Roman church upon a level with the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and with them forms the basis of the rosary.

§ 83. The Festivals of Mary.

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

1. The Annunciation of Mary799 commemorates the announcement of the birth of Christ by the archangel Gabriel,800 and at the same time the conception of Christ; for in the view of the ancient church Mary conceived the Logos (Verbum) through the ear by the word of the angel. Hence the festival had its place on the 25th of March, exactly nine months before Christmas; though in some parts of the church, as Spain and Milan, it was celebrated in December, till the Roman practice conquered. The first trace of it occurs in Proclus, the opponent and successor of Nestorius in Constantinople after 430; then it appears more plainly in several councils and homilies of the seventh century.

2. The Purification of Mary801 or Candlemas, in memory of the ceremonial purification of the Virgin,802 forty days after the birth of Jesus, therefore on the 2d of February (reckoning from the 25th of December); and at the same time in memory of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and his meeting of Simeon and Anna.803  This, like the preceding, was thus originally as much a festival of Christ as of Mary, especially in the Greek church. It is supposed to have been introduced by Pope Gelasius in 494, though by some said not to have arisen till 542 under Justinian I., in consequence of a great earthquake and a destructive pestilence. Perhaps it was a Christian transformation of the old Roman lustrations or expiatory sacrifices (Februa, Februalia), which from the time of Numa took place in February, the month of purification or expiation.804  To heathen origin is due also the use of lighted tapers, with which the people on this festival marched, singing, out of the church through the city. Hence the name Candlemas.805

3. The Ascension, or Assumption rather, of Mary806 is celebrated on the 15th of August. The festival was introduced by the Greek emperor Mauritius (582–602); some say, under Pope Gelasius († 496). In Rome, after the ninth century, it is one of the principal feasts, and, like the others, is distinguished with vigil and octave.

It rests, however, on a purely apocryphal foundation.

The entire silence of the apostles and the primitive church teachers respecting the departure of Mary stirred idle curiosity to all sorts of inventions, until a translation like Enoch’s and Elijah’s was attributed to her. In the time of Origen some were inferring from Luke ii. 35, that she had suffered martyrdom. Epiphanius will not decide whether she died and was buried, or not. Two apocryphal Greek writings de transitu Mariae, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, and afterward pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Tours († 595), for the first time contain the legend that the soul of the mother of God was transported to the heavenly paradise by Christ and His angels in presence of all the apostles, and on the following morning807 her body also was translated thither on a cloud and there united with the soul. Subsequently the legend was still further embellished, and, besides the apostles, the angels and patriarchs also, even Adam and Eve, were made witnesses of the wonderful spectacle.

Still the resurrection and ascension of Mary are in the Roman church only a matter of "devout and probable opinion," not an article of faith;808 and a distinction is made between the ascensio of Christ (by virtue of His divine nature) and the assumptio of Mary (by the power of grace and merit).

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

In the Middle Age—to anticipate briefly—yet other festivals of Mary arose: the Nativity of Mary,809 after A.D. 650; the Presentation of Mary,810 after the ninth century, founded on the apocryphal tradition of the eleven years’ ascetic discipline of Mary in the temple at Jerusalem; the Visitation of Mary811 in memory of her visit to Elizabeth; a festival first mentioned in France in 1247, and limited to the western church; and the festival of the Immaculate Conception,812 which arose with the doctrine of the sinless conception of Mary, and is interwoven with the history of that dogma down to its official and final promulgation by Pope Pius IX. in 1854.

§ 84. The Worship of Martyrs and Saints.

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

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

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

The New Testament is equally ignorant of both. The expression a{gioi, sancti, saints, is used by the apostles not of a particular class, a spiritual aristocracy of the church, but of all baptized and converted Christians without distinction; because they are separated from the world, consecrated to the service of God, washed from the guilt of sin by the blood of Christ, and, notwithstanding all their remaining imperfections and sins, called to perfect holiness. The apostles address their epistles to "the saints" i.e., the Christian believers, "at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus," &c.813

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

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

Almost all the catholic saints belong to the higher degrees of the clergy or to the monastic life. And the monks were the chief promoters of the worship of saints. At the head of the heavenly chorus stands Mary, crowned as queen by the side of her divine Son; then come the apostles and evangelists, who died a violent death, the protomartyr Stephen, and the martyrs of the first three centuries; the patriarchs and prophets also of the Old Covenant down to John the Baptist; and finally eminent hermits and monks, missionaries, theologians, and bishops, and those, in general, who distinguished themselves above their contemporaries in virtue or in public service. The measure of ascetic self-denial was the measure of Christian virtue. Though many of the greatest saints of the Bible, from the patriarch Abraham to Peter, the prince of the apostles, lived in marriage, the Romish ethics, from the time of Ambrose and Jerome, can allow no genuine holiness within the bonds of matrimony, and receives only virgines and some few vidui and viduae into its spiritual nobility.814  In this again the close connection of saint-worship with monasticism is apparent.

To the saints, about the same period, were added angels as objects of worship. To angels there was ascribed in the church from the beginning a peculiar concern with the fortunes of the militant church, and a certain oversight of all lands and nations. But Ambrose is the first who expressly exhorts to the invocation of our patron angels, and represents it as a duty.815  In favor of the guardianship and interest of angels appeal was rightly made to several passages of the Old and New Testaments: Dan. x. 13, 20, 21; xii. 1; Matt. xviii. 10; Luke xv. 7; Heb. i. 14; Acts xii. 15. But in Col. ii. 18, and Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9, the worship of angels is distinctly rebuked.

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

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

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

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

"The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee;

The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee;

The noble army of Martyrs praise thee;

The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee;

The Father, of an infinite majesty;

Thine adorable, true, and only Son;

Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.

Thou art the King of glory, O Christ;

Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.

When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb;816

When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers."

In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth.817  This celebration usually took place at their graves. So the church of Smyrna annually commemorated its bishop Polycarp, and valued his bones more than gold and gems, though with the express distinction: "Christ we worship as the Son of God; the martyrs we love and honor as disciples and successors of the Lord, on account of their insurpassable love to their King and Master, as also, we wish to be their companions and fellow disciples."818  Here we find this veneration as yet in its innocent simplicity.

But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons (patroni) and intercessors (intercessores, mediatores) before the throne of grace, and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry. The saints came into the place of the demigods, Penates and Lares, the patrons of the domestic hearth and of the country. As once temples and altars to the heroes, so now churches and chapels819 came to be built over the graves of the martyrs, and consecrated to their names (or more precisely to God through them). People laid in them, as they used to do in the temple of Aesculapius, the sick that they might be healed, and hung in them, as in the temples of the gods, sacred gifts of silver and gold. Their graves were, as Chrysostom says, move splendidly adorned and more frequently visited than the palaces of kings. Banquets were held there in their honor, which recall the heathen sacrificial feasts for the welfare of the manes. Their relics were preserved with scrupulous care, and believed to possess miraculous virtue. Earlier, it was the custom to pray for the martyrs (as if they were not yet perfect) and to thank God for their fellowship and their pious example. Now such intercessions for them were considered unbecoming, and their intercession was invoked for the living.820

This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the presumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in prayers and intercessions.821  This was supposed to be warranted by some passages of Scripture, like Luke xv. 10, which speaks of the angels (not the saints) rejoicing over the conversion of a sinner, and Rev. viii. 3, 4, which represents an angel as laying the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God. But the New Testament expressly rebukes the worship of the angels (Col. ii. 18; Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9), and furnishes not a single example of an actual invocation of dead men; and it nowhere directs us to address our prayers to any creature. Mere inferences from certain premises, however plausible, are, in such weighty matters, not enough. The intercession of the saints for us was drawn as a probable inference from the duty of all Christians to pray for others, and the invocation of the saints for their intercession was supported by the unquestioned right to apply to living saints for their prayers, of which even the apostles availed themselves in their epistles.

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

Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided, whether the saints (as Jerome and others actually supposed) are present in so many places at once, or their knowledge comes through the omniscience of God, or finally it comes through the ministry of angels.822  He already makes the distinction between latreiva, or adoration due to God alone, and the invocatio (douleiva) of the saints, and firmly repels the charge of idolatry, which the Manichaean Faustus brought against the catholic Christians when he said: "Ye have changed the idols into martyrs, whom ye worship with the like prayers, and ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and flesh."  Augustine asserts that the church indeed celebrates the memory of the martyrs with religious solemnity, to be stirred up to imitate them, united with their merits, and supported by their prayers,823 but it offers sacrifice and dedicates altars to God alone. Our martyrs, says he, are not gods; we build no temples to our martyrs, as to gods; but we consecrate to them only memorial places, as to departed men, whose spirits live with God; we build altars not to sacrifice to the martyrs, but to sacrifice with them to the one God, who is both ours and theirs.824

But in spite of all these distinctions and cautions, which must be expected from a man like Augustine, and acknowledged to be a wholesome restraint against excesses, we cannot but see in the martyr-worship, as it was actually practised, a new form of the hero-worship of the pagans. Nor can we wonder in the least. For the great mass of the Christian people came, in fact, fresh from polytheism, without thorough conversion, and could not divest themselves of their old notions and customs at a stroke. The despotic form of government, the servile subjection of the people, the idolatrous homage which was paid to the Byzantine emperors and their statues, the predicates divina, sacra, coelestia, which were applied to the utterances of their will, favored the worship of saints. The heathen emperor Julian sarcastically reproached the Christians with reintroducing polytheism into monotheism, but, on account of the difference of the objects, revolted from the Christian worship of martyrs and relics, as from the "stench of graves and dead men’s bones."  The Manichaean taunt we have already mentioned. The Spanish presbyter Vigilantius, in the fifth century, called the worshippers of martyrs and relics, ashes-worshippers and idolaters,825 and taught that, according to the Scriptures, the living only should pray with and for each other. Even some orthodox church teachers admitted the affinity of the saint-worship with heathenism, though with the view of showing that all that is good in the heathen worship reappears far better in the Christian. Eusebius cites a passage from Plato on the worship of heroes, demi-gods, and their graves, and then applies it to the veneration of friends of God and champions of true religion; so that the Christians did well to visit their graves, to honor their memory there, and to offer their prayers.826  The Greeks, Theodoret thinks, have the least reason to be offended at what takes place at the graves of the martyrs; for the libations and expiations, the demi-gods and deified men, originated with themselves. Hercules, Aesculapius, Bacchus, the Dioscuri, and the like, are deified men; consequently it cannot be a reproach to the Christians that they—not deify, but—honor their martyrs as witnesses and servants of God. The ancients saw nothing censurable in such worship of the dead. The saints, our helpers and patrons, are far more worthy of such honor. The temples of the gods are destroyed, the philosophers, orators, and emperors are forgotten, but the martyrs are universally known. The feasts of the gods are now replaced by the festivals of Peter, Paul, Marcellus, Leontius, Antonins, Mauricius, and other martyrs, not with pagan pomp and sensual pleasures, but with Christian soberness and decency.827

Yet even this last distinction which Theodoret asserts, sometimes disappeared. Augustine laments that in the African church banqueting and revelling were daily practised in honor of the martyrs,828 but thinks that this weakness must be for the time indulged from regard to the ancient customs of the pagans.

In connection with the new hero-worship a new mythology also arose, which filled up the gaps of the history of the saints, and sometimes even transformed the pagan myths of gods and heroes into Christian legends.829  The superstitious imagination, visions, and dreams, and pious fraud famished abundant contributions to the Christian legendary poesy.

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

The two institutions, moreover, are closely connected and favor each other. The monks were most zealous friends of saint-worship in their own cause. The church of the fifth century already went almost as far in it as the Middle Age, at all events quite as far as the council of Trent; for this council does not prescribe the invocation of the saints, but confines itself to approving it as "good and useful" (not as necessary) on the ground of their reigning with Christ in heaven and their intercession for us, and expressly remarks that Christ is our only, Redeemer and Saviour.830  This moderate and prudent statement of the doctrine, however, has not yet removed the excesses which the Roman Catholic people still practise in the worship of the saints, their images, and their relics. The Greek church goes even further in theory than the Roman; for the confession of Peter Mogilas (which was subscribed by the four Greek patriarchs in 1643, and again sanctioned by the council of Jerusalem in 1672), declares it duty and propriety (crevo") to implore the intercession (mesiteiva) of Mary and the saints with God for us.

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

We begin with the Greek fathers. Basil the Great calls the forty soldiers who are said to have suffered martyrdom under Licinius in Sebaste about 320, not only a "holy choir," an "invincible phalanx," but also "common patrons of the human family, helpers of our prayers and most mighty intercessors with God."831

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

Gregory of Nyssa asks of St. Theodore, whom he thinks invisibly present at his memorial feast, intercessions for his country, for peace, for the preservation of orthodoxy, and begs him to arouse the apostles Peter and Paul and John to prayer for the church planted by them (as if they needed such an admonition!). He relates with satisfaction that the people streamed to the burial place of this saint in such multitudes that the place looked like an ant hill. In his Life of St. Ephraim, he tells of a pilgrim who lost himself among the barbarian posterity of Ishmael, but by the prayer, "St. Ephraim, help me!"832 and the protection of the saint, happily found his way home. He himself thus addresses him at the close: "Thou who standest at the holy altar, and with angels servest the life-giving and most holy Trinity, remember us all, and implore for us the forgiveness of sins and the enjoyment of the eternal kingdom."833

Gregory Nazianzen is convinced that the departed Cyprian guides and protects his church in Carthage more powerfully by his intercessions than he formerly did by his teachings, because he now stands so much nearer the Deity; he addresses him as present, and implores his favor and protection.834  In his eulogy on Athanasius, who was but a little while dead, he prays: "Look graciously down upon us, and dispose this people to be perfect worshippers of the perfect Trinity; and when the times are quiet, preserve us—when they are troubled, remove us, and take us to thee in thy fellowship."

Even Chrysostom did not rise above the spirit of the time. He too is an eloquent and enthusiastic advocate of the worship of the saints and their relics. At the close of his memorial discourse on Sts. Bernice and Prosdoce—two saints who have not even a place in the Roman calendar—he exhorts his hearers not only on their memorial days but also on other days to implore these saints to be our protectors: "For they have great boldness not merely during their life but also after death, yea, much greater after death.835  For they now bear the stigmata of Christ [the marks of martyrdom], and when they show these, they can persuade the King to anything."  He relates that once, when the harvest was endangered by excessive rain, the whole population of Constantinople flocked to the church of the Apostles, and there elected the apostles Peter and Andrew, Paul and Timothy, patrons and intercessors before the throne of grace.836  Christ, says he on Heb. i. 14, redeems us as Lord and Master, the angels redeem us as ministers.

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

Among the Latin fathers, Ambrose of Milan is one of the first and most decided promoters of the worship of saints. We cite a passage or two. "May Peter, who so successfully weeps for himself, weep also for us, and turn upon us the friendly look of Christ.837  The angels, who are appointed to guard us, must be invoked for us; the martyrs, to whose intercession we have claim by the pledge of their bodies, must be invoked. They who have washed away their sins by their own blood, may pray for our sins. For they are martyrs of God, our high priests, spectators of our life and our acts. We need not blush to use them as intercessors for our weakness; for they also knew the infirmity of the body when they gained the victory over it."838

Jerome disputes the opinion of Vigilantius, that we should pray for one another in this life only, and that the dead do not hear our prayers, and ascribes to departed saints a sort of omnipresence, because, according to Rev. xiv. 4, they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.839  He thinks that their prayers are much more effectual in heaven than they were upon earth. If Moses implored the forgiveness of God for six hundred thousand men, and Stephen, the first martyr, prayed for his murderers after the example of Christ, should they cease to pray, and to be heard, when they are with Christ?

Augustine infers from the interest which the rich man in hell still had in the fate of his five surviving brothers (Luke xvi. 27), that the pious dead in heaven must have even far more interest in the kindred and friends whom they have left behind.840  He also calls the saints our intercessors, yet under Christ, the proper and highest Intercessor, as Peter and the other apostles are shepherds under the great chief Shepherd.841  In a memorial discourse on Stephen, he imagines that martyr, and St. Paul who stoned him, to be present, and begs them for their intercessions with the Lord with whom they reign.842  He attributes miraculous effects, even the raising of the dead, to the intercessions of Stephen.843  But, on the other hand, he declares, as we have already observed, his inability to solve the difficult question of the way in which the dead can be made acquainted with our wishes and prayers. At all events, in Augustine’s practical religion the worship of the saints occupies a subordinate place. In his "Confessions" and "Soliloquies" he always addresses himself directly to God, not to Mary nor to martyrs.

The Spanish poet Prudentius flees with prayers and confessions of sin to St. Laurentius, and considers himself unworthy to be heard by Christ Himself.844

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

Leo the Great, in his sermons, lays great stress on the powerful intercession of the apostles Peter and Paul, and of the Roman martyr Laurentius.845

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

According to this we cannot wonder that the Virgin Mary and the saints are interwoven also in the prayers of the liturgies,846 and that their merits and intercession stand by the side of the merits of Christ as a ground of the acceptance of our prayers.

§ 85. Festivals of the Saints.

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

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

1. The feast of the two chief apostles Peter and Paul,847 on the twenty-ninth of June, the day of their martyrdom. It is with the Latins and the Greeks the most important of the feasts of the apostles, and, as the homilies for the day by Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo the Great show, was generally introduced as early as the fourth century

2. Besides this, the Roman church has observed since the fifth century a special feast in honor of the prince of the apostles and for the glorification of the papal office: the feast of the See of Peter848 on the twenty-second of February, the day on which, according to tradition, he took possession of the Roman bishopric. With this there was also an Antiochan St. Peter's day on the eighteenth of January, in memory of the supposed episcopal reign of this apostle in Antioch. The Catholic liturgists dispute which of these two feasts is the older. After Leo the Great, the bishops used to keep the Natales. Subsequently the feast of the Chains of Peter849 was introduced in memory of the chains which Peter wore, according to Acts xii. 6, under Herod at Jerusalem, and, according to the Roman legend, in the prison at Rome under Nero.

3. The feast of John, the apostle and evangelist, on the twenty-seventh of December, has already been mentioned in connection with the Christmas cycle.850

4. Likewise the feast of the protomartyr Stephen, on the twenty-sixth of December, after the fourth century.851

5. The feast of John the Baptist, the last representative of the saints before Christ. This was, contrary to the general rule, a feast of his birth, not his martyrdom, and, with reference to the birth festival of the Lord on the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated six months earlier, on the twenty-fourth of June, the summer solstice. This was intended to signify at once his relation to Christ and his well-known word: "He must increase, but I must decrease."  He represented the decreasing sun of the ancient covenant; Christ, the rising sun of the new.852  In order to celebrate more especially the martyrdom of the Baptist, a feast of the Beheading of John,853 on the twenty-ninth of August, was afterward introduced; but this never became so important and popular as the feast of his birth.

6. To be just to all the heroes of the faith, the Greek church, after the fourth century, celebrated a feast of All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost (the Latin festival of the Trinity).854  The Latin church, after 610, kept a similar feast, the Festum Omnium Sanctorum, on the first of November; but this did not come into general use till after the ninth century.

7. The feast of the Archangel Michael,855 the leader of the hosts of angels, and the representative of the church triumphant,856 on the twenty-ninth of September. This owes its origin to some miraculous appearances of Michael in the Catholic legends.857  The worship of the angels developed itself simultaneously with the worship of Mary and the saints, and churches also were dedicated to angels, and called after their names. Thus Constantine the Great built a church to the archangel Michael on the right bank of the Black Sea, where the angel, according to the legend, appeared to some ship-wrecked persons and rescued them from death. Justinian I. built as many as six churches to him. Yet the feast of Michael, which some trace back to Pope Gelasius I., A.D. 493, seems not to have become general till after the ninth century.

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

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

The Christian calendar, as to its contents, dates from the fourth and later centuries; as to its form, it comes down from classical antiquity, chiefly from the Romans, whose numerous calendars contained, together with astronomical and astrological notes, tables also of civil and religious festivals and public sports. Two calendars of Christian Rome still extant, one of the year 354, the other of the year 448,858 show the transition. The former contains for the first time the Christian week beginning with Sunday, together with the week of heathen Rome; the other contains Christian feast days and holidays, though as yet very few, viz., four festivals of Christ and six martyr days. The oldest purely Christian calendar is a Gothic one, which originated probably in Thrace in the fourth century. The fragment still extant859 contains thirty-eight days for November and the close of October, among which seven days are called by the names of saints (two from the Bible, three from the church universal, and two from the Gothic church).

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

Such tables are the groundwork of the calendar and the martyrologies. At first each community or province had its own catalogue of feasts, hence also its own calendar. Such local registers were sometimes called diptycha860 (divptuca), because they were recorded on tables with two leaves; yet they commonly contained, besides the names of the martyrs, the names also of the earlier bishops and still living benefactors or persons, of whom the priests were to make mention by name in the prayer before the consecration of the elements in the eucharist. The spread of the worship of a martyr, which usually started from the place of his martyrdom, promoted the interchange of names. The great influence of Rome gave to the Roman festival-list and calendar the chief currency in the West.

Gradually the whole calendar was filled up with the names of saints. As the number of the martyrs exceeded the number of days in the year, the commemoration of several must fall upon the same day, or the canonical hours of cloister devotion must be given up. The oriental calendar is richer in saints from the Old Testament than the occidental.861

With the calendars are connected the Martyrologia, or Acta Martyrum, Acta Sanctorum, called by the Greeks Menologia and Menaea.862  There were at first only "Diptycha" and "Calendaria martyrum," i.e., lists of the names of the martyrs commemorated by the particular church in the order of the days of their death on the successive days of the year, with or without statements of the place and manner of their passion. This simple skeleton became gradually animated with biographical sketches, coming down from different times and various authors, containing a confused mixture of history and fable, truth and fiction, piety and superstition, and needing to be used with great critical caution. As these biographies of the saints were read on their annual days in the church and in the cloisters for the edification of the people, they were called Legenda.

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

Rosweyd († 1629) also sketched, toward the close of the sixteenth century, the plan for the celebrated "Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur," which Dr. John van Bolland († 1665) and his companions and continuators, called Bollandists (Henschen, † 1681; Papenbroek, † 1714; Sollier, † 1740; Stiltinck, † 1762, and others of inferior merit), published at Antwerp in fifty-three folio volumes, between the years 1643 and 1794 (including the two volumes of the second series), under the direction of the Jesuits, and with the richest and rarest literary aids.863  This work contains, in the order of the days of the year, the biography of every saint in the Catholic calendar, as composed by the Bollandists, down to the fifteenth of October, together with all the acts of canonization, papal bulls, and other ancient documents belonging thereto, with learned treatises and notes; and that not in the style of popular legends, but in the tone of thorough historical investigation and free criticism, so far as a general accordance with the Roman Catholic system of faith would allow.864  It was interrupted in 1773 by the abolition of the order of the Jesuits, then again in 1794, after a brief resumption of labor and the publication of two more volumes (the fifty-second and fifty-third), by the French Revolution and invasion of the Netherlands and the partial destruction of the literary, material; but since 1845 (or properly since 1837) it has been resumed at Brussels under the auspices of the same order, though not with the same historical learning and critical acumen, and proceeds tediously toward completion.865  This colossal and amazing work of more than two centuries of pious industry and monkish learning will always remain a rich mine for the system of martyr and saint-worship and the history of Christian life.

§ 87. Worship of Relics. Dogma of the Resurrection. Miracles of Relics.

Comp. the Literature at § 84. Also J. Mabillon (R.C.): Observationes de sanctorum reliquiis (Praef. ad Acta s. Bened. Ordinis). Par. 1669. Barrington and Kirk (R.C.): The Faith of Catholics, &c. Lond. 1846. Vol. iii. pp. 250–307. On the Protestant side, J. H. Jung: Disquisitio antiquaria de reliqu. et profanis et sacris earumque cultu, ed. 4. Hannov. 1783.

The veneration of martyrs and saints had respect, in the first instance, to their immortal spirits in heaven, but came to be extended, also, in a lower degree, to their earthly remains or relics.866  By these are to be understood, first, their bodies, or rather parts of them, bones, blood, ashes; then all which was in any way closely connected with their persons, clothes, staff, furniture, and especially the instruments of their martyrdom. After the time of Ambrose the cross of Christ also, which, with the superscription and the nails, are said to have been miraculously discovered by the empress Helena in 326,867 was included, and subsequently His crown of thorns and His coat, which are preserved, the former, according to the legend, in Paris, and the latter in Treves.868  Relics of the body of Christ cannot be thought of, since He arose without seeing corruption, and ascended to heaven, where, above the reach of idolatry and superstition, He is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. His true relics are the Holy Supper and His living presence in the church to the end of the world.

The worship of relics, like the worship of Mary and the saints, began in a sound religious feeling of reverence, of love, and of gratitude, but has swollen to an avalanche, and rushed into all kinds of superstitious and idolatrous excess. "The most glorious thing that the mind conceives," says Goethe, "is always set upon by a throng of more and more foreign matter."

As Israel could not sustain the pure elevation of its divinely revealed religion, but lusted after the flesh pots of Egypt and coquetted with sensuous heathenism so it fared also with the ancient church.

The worship of relics cannot be derived from Judaism; for the Levitical law strictly prohibited the contact of bodies and bones of the dead as defiling.869  Yet the isolated instance of the bones of the prophet Elisha quickening by their contact a dead man who was cast into his tomb,870 was quoted in behalf of the miraculous power of relics; though it should be observed that even this miracle did not lead the Israelites to do homage to the bones of the prophet nor abolish the law of the uncleanness of a corpse.

The heathen abhorred corpses, and burnt them to ashes, except in Egypt, where embalming was the custom and was imitated by the Christians on the death of martyrs, though St. Anthony protested against it. There are examples, however, of the preservation of the bones of distinguished heroes like Theseus, and of the erection of temples over their graves.871

The Christian relic worship was primarily a natural consequence of the worship of the saints, and was closely connected with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which was an essential article of the apostolic tradition, and is incorporated in almost all the ancient creeds. For according to the gospel the body is not an evil substance, as the Platonists, Gnostics, Manichaeans held, but a creature of God; it is redeemed by Christ; it becomes by the regeneration an organ and temple of the Holy Ghost; and it rests as a living seed in the grave, to be raised again at the last day, and changed into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ. The bodies of the righteous "grow green" in their graves, to burst forth in glorious bloom on the morning of the resurrection. The first Christians from the beginning set great store by this comforting doctrine, at which the heathen, like Celsus and Julian, scoffed. Hence they abhorred also the heathen custom of burning, and adopted the Jewish custom of burial with solemn religious ceremonies, which, however, varied in different times and countries.

But in the closer definition of the dogma of the resurrection two different tendencies appeared: a spiritualistic, represented by the Alexandrians, particularly by Origen and still later by the two Gregories; the other more realistic, favored by the Apostles’ Creed,872 advocated by Tertullian, but pressed by some church teachers, like Epiphanius and Jerome, in a grossly materialistic manner, without regard to the sw'ma pveumatikovn of Paul and the declaration that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."873 The latter theory was far the more consonant with the prevailing spirit of our period, entirely supplanted the other, and gave the mortal remains of the saints a higher value, and the worship of them a firmer foundation.

Roman Catholic historians and apologists find a justification of the worship and the healing virtue of relics in three facts of the New Testament: the healing of the woman with the issue of blood by the touch of Jesus’ garment;874 the healing of the sick by the shadow of Peter;875and the same by handkerchiefs from Paul.876

These examples, as well as the miracle wrought by the bones of Elisha, were cited by Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and other fathers, to vindicate similar and greater miracles in their time. They certainly mark the extreme limit of the miraculous, beyond which it passes into the magical. But in all these cases the living and present person was the vehicle of the healing power; in the second case Luke records merely the popular belief, not the actual healing; and finally neither Christ nor the apostles themselves chose that method, nor in any way sanctioned the superstitions on which it was based.877  At all events, the New Testament and the literature of the apostolic fathers know nothing of an idolatrous veneration of the cross of Christ or the bones and chattels of the apostles. The living words and acts of Christ and the apostles so completely absorbed attention that we have no authentic accounts of the bodily appearance, the incidental externals, and transient possessions of the founders of the church. Paul would know Christ after the spirit, not after the flesh. Even the burial places of most of the apostles and evangelists are unknown. The traditions of their martyrdom and their remains date from a much later time, and can claim no historical credibility.

The first clear traces of the worship of relics appear in the second century in the church of Antioch, where the bones of the bishop and martyr Ignatius († 107) were preserved as a priceless treasure;878 and in Smyrna, where the half-burnt bones of Polycarp († 167) were considered "more precious than the richest jewels and more tried than gold."879  We read similar things in the Acts of the martyrs Perpetua and Cyprian. The author of the Apostolic Constitutions880 exhorts that the relics of the saints, who are with the God of the living and not of the dead, be held in honor, and appeals to the miracle of the bones of Elisha, to the veneration which Joseph showed for the remains of Jacob, and to the bringing of the bones of Joseph by Moses and Joshua into the promised land.881  Eusebius states that the episcopal throne of James of Jerusalem was preserved to his time, and was held in great honor.882

Such pious fondness for relics, however, if it is confined within proper limits, is very natural and innocent, and appears even in the Puritans of New England, where the rock in Plymouth, the landing place of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, has the attraction of a place of pilgrimage, and the chair of the first governor of Massachusetts is scrupulously preserved, and is used at the inauguration of every new president of Harvard University.

But toward the middle of the fourth century the veneration of relics simultaneously with the worship of the saints, assumed a decidedly superstitious and idolatrous character. The earthly remains of the martyrs were discovered commonly by visions and revelations, often not till centuries after their death, then borne in solemn processions to the churches and chapels erected to their memory, and deposited under the altar;883 and this event was annually celebrated by a festival.884  The legend of the discovery of the holy cross gave rise to two church festivals: The Feast of the Invention of the Cross885 on the third of May, which has been observed in the Latin church since the fifth or sixth century; and The Feast of the Elevation of the Cross,886 on the fourteenth of September, which has been observed in the East and the West, according to some since the consecration of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335, according to others only since the reconquest of the holy cross by the emperor Heraclius in 628. The relics were from time to time displayed to the veneration of the believing multitude, carried about in processions, preserved in golden and silver boxes, worn on the neck as amulets against disease and danger of every kind, and considered as possessing miraculous virtue, or more strictly, as instruments through which the saints in heaven, in virtue of their connection with Christ, wrought miracles of healing and even of raising the dead. Their number soon reached the incredible, even from one and the same original; there were, for example, countless splinters of the pretended cross of Christ from Jerusalem, while the cross itself is said to have remained, by a continued miracle, whole and undiminished!  Veneration of the cross and crucifix knew no bounds, but can, by no means, be taken as a true measure of the worship of the Crucified; on the contrary, with the great mass the outward form came into the place of the spiritual intent, and the wooden and silver Christ was very often a poor substitute for the living Christ in the heart.887

Relics became a regular article of trade, but gave occasion, also, for very many frauds, which even such credulous and superstitious relic-worshippers as St. Martin of Tours888 and Gregory the Great889 lamented. Theodosius I., as early as 386, prohibited this trade; and so did many councils; but without success. On this account the bishops found themselves compelled to prove the genuineness of the relics by historical tradition, or visions, or miracles.

At first, an opposition arose to this worship of dead men’s bones. St. Anthony, the father of monasticism († 356), put in his dying protest against it, directing that his body should be buried in an unknown place. Athanasius relates this with approbation,890 and he caused several relics which had been given to him to be fastened up, that they might be out of the reach of idolatry.891  But the opposition soon ceased, or became confined to inferior or heretical authors, like Vigilantius and Eunomius, or to heathen opponents like Porphyry and Julian. Julian charges the Christians, on this point, with apostasy from their own Master, and sarcastically reminds them of His denunciation of the Pharisees, who were like whited sepulchres, beautiful without, but within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.892  This opposition, of course, made no impression, and was attributed to sheer impiety. Even heretics and schismatics, with few exceptions, embraced this form of superstition, though the Catholic church denied the genuineness of their relics and the miraculous virtue of them

The most and the best of the church teachers of our period, Hilary, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, Isidore of Pelusium, Theodoret, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Leo, even those who combated the worship of images on this point, were carried along by the spirit of the time, and gave the weight of their countenance to the worship of relics, which thus became an essential constituent of the Greek and Roman Catholic religion. They went quite as far as the council of Trent,893 which expresses itself more cautiously, on the worship of relics as well as of saints, than the church fathers of the Nicene age. With the good intent to promote popular piety by sensible stimulants and tangible supports, they became promoters of dangerous errors and gross superstition.

To cite some of the most important testimonies:

Gregory Nazianzen thinks the bodies of the saints can as well perform miracles, as their spirits, and that the smallest parts of the body or of the symbols of their passion are as efficacious as the whole body.894

Chrysostom values the dust and ashes of the martyrs more highly than gold or jewels, and ascribes to them the power of healing diseases and putting death to flight.895  In his festal discourse on the translation of the relics of the Egyptian martyrs from Alexandria to Constantinople, he extols the bodies of the saints in eloquent strains as the best ramparts of the city against all visible enemies and invisible demons, mightier than walls, moats, weapons, and armies.896

"Let others," says Ambrose, "heap up silver and gold; we gather the nails wherewith the martyrs were pierced, and their victorious blood, and the wood of their cross."897  He himself relates at large, in a letter to his sister, the miraculous discovery of the bones of the twin brothers Gervasius and Protasius, two otherwise wholly unknown and long-forgotten martyrs of the persecution under Nero or Domitian.898  This is one of the most notorious relic miracles of the early church. It is attested by the most weighty authorities, by Ambrose and his younger contemporaries, his secretary and biographer Paulinus, the bishop Paulinus of Nola, and Augustine, who was then in Milan; it decided the victory of the Nicene orthodoxy over the Arian opposition of the empress Justina; yet is it very difficult to be believed, and seems at least in part to rest on pious frauds.899

The story is, that when Ambrose, in 386, wished to consecrate the basilica at Milan, he was led by a higher intimation in a vision to cause the ground before the doors of Sts. Felix and Nahor to be dug up, and there he found two corpses of uncommon size, the heads severed from the bodies (for they died by the sword), the bones perfectly preserved, together with a great quantity of fresh blood.900  These were the saints in question. They were exposed for two days to the wondering multitude, then borne in solemn procession to the basilica of Ambrose, performing on the way the healing of a blind man, Severus by name, a butcher by trade, and afterward sexton of this church. This, however, was not the only miracle which the bones performed. "The age of miracles returned," says Ambrose. "How many pieces of linen, how many portions of dress, were cast upon the holy relics and were recovered with the power of healing from that touch.901  It is a source of joy to all to touch but the extremest portion of the linen that covers them; and whoso touches is healed. We give thee thanks, O Lord Jesus, that thou hast stirred up the energies of the holy martyrs at this time, wherein thy church has need of stronger defence. Let all learn what combatants I seek, who are able to contend for us, but who do not assail us, who minister good to all, harm to none."  In his homily De inventione SS. Gervasii et Protasii, he vindicates the miracle of the healing of the blind man against the doubts of the Arians, and speaks of it as a universally acknowledged and undeniable fact: The healed man, Severus, is well known, and publicly testifies that he received his sight by the contact of the covering of the holy relics.

Jerome calls Vigilantius, for his opposition to the idolatrous veneration of ashes and bones, a wretched man, whose condition cannot be sufficiently pitied, a Samaritan and Jew, who considered the dead unclean; but he protects himself against the charge of superstition. We honor the relics of the martyrs, says he, that we may adore the God of the martyrs; we honor the servants, in order thereby to honor the Master, who has said: "He that receiveth you, receiveth me."902  The saints are not dead; for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a God of the dead, but of the living. Neither are they enclosed in Abraham’s bosom as in a prison till the day of Judgment, but they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.903

Augustine believed in the above-mentioned miraculous discovery of the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, and the healing of the blind man by contact with them, because he himself was then in Milan, in 386, at the time of his conversion,904 and was an eye-witness, not indeed of the discovery of the bones—for this he nowhere says—but of the miracles, and of the great stir among the people.905

He gave credit likewise to the many miraculous cures which the bones of the first martyr Stephen are said to have performed in various parts of Africa in his time.906  These relics were discovered in 415, nearly four centuries after the stoning of Stephen, in an obscure hamlet near Jerusalem, through a vision of Gamaliel, by a priest of Lucian; and some years afterward portions of them were transported to Uzali, not far from Utica, in North Africa, and to Spain and Gaul, and everywhere caused the greatest ado in the superstitious populace.

But Augustine laments, on the other hand, the trade in real and fictitious relics, which was driven in his day,907 and holds the miracles to be really superfluous, now that the world is converted to Christianity, so that he who still demands miracles, is himself a miracle.908  Though he adds, that to that day miracles were performed in the name of Jesus by the sacraments or by the saints, but not with the same lustre, nor with the same significance and authority for the whole Christian world.909  Thus he himself furnishes a warrant and an entering wedge for critical doubt in our estimate of those phenomena.910

§ 88. Observations on the Miracles of the Nicene Age.

Comp. on the affirmative side especially John H. Newman (now R.C., then Romanizing Anglican): Essay on Miracles, in the 1st vol. of the English translation of Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History, Oxford, 1842; on the negative, Isaac Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, Lond. 4th ed. 1844. Vol. ii. pp. 233–365. Dr. Newman previously took the negative side on the question of the genuineness of the church miracles in a contribution to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 1830.

In the face of such witnesses as Ambrose and Augustine, who must be accounted in any event the noblest and most honorable men of the early church, it is venturesome absolutely to deny all the relic-miracles, and to ascribe them to illusion and pious fraud. But, on the other hand, we should not be bribed or blinded by the character and authority of such witnesses, since experience sufficiently proves that even the best and most enlightened men cannot wholly divest themselves of superstition and of the prejudices of their age911  Hence, too, we should not ascribe to this whole question of the credibility of the Nicene miracles an undue dogmatic weight, nor make the much wider issue between Catholicism and Protestantism dependent on it.912  In every age, as in every man, light and shade in fact are mingled, that no flesh should exalt itself above measure. Even the most important periods of church history, among which the Nicene age, with all its faults, must be numbered, have the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels, and reflect the spotless glory of the Redeemer in broken colors.

The most notorious and the most striking of the miracles of the fourth century are Constantine’s vision of the cross (A.D. 312), the finding of the holy cross (A.D. 326), the frustration of Julian’s building of the temple (A.D. 363) the discovery of the relics of Protasius and Gervasius (A.D. 386), and subsequently (A.D. 415) of the bones of St. Stephen, with a countless multitude of miraculous cures in its train. Respecting the most important we have already spoken at large in the proper places.

We here offer some general remarks on this difficult subject.

The possibility of miracles in general he only can deny who does not believe in a living God and Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. The laws of nature are organs of the free will of God; not chains by which He has bound Himself forever, but elastic threads which He can extend and contract at His pleasure. The actual occurrence of miracles is certain to every believer from Holy Scripture, and there is no passage in the New Testament to limit it to the apostolic age. The reasons which made miracles necessary as outward proofs of the divine mission of Christ and the apostles for the unbelieving Jews of their time, may reappear from time to time in the unbelieving heathen and the skeptical Christian world; while spiritual miracles are continually taking place in regeneration and conversion. In itself, it is by no means unworthy and incredible that God should sometimes condescend to the weakness of the uneducated mass, and should actually vouchsafe that which was implored through the mediation of saints and their relics.

But the following weighty considerations rise against the miracles of the Nicene and post-Nicene age; not warranting, indeed, the rejection of all, yet making us at least very cautious and doubtful of receiving them in particular:

1. These miracles have a much lower moral tone than those of the Bible, while in some cases they far exceed them in outward pomp, and make a stronger appeal to our faculty of belief. Many of the monkish miracles are not so much supernatural and above reason, as they are unnatural and against reason, attributing even to wild beasts of the desert, panthers and hyenas, with which the misanthropic hermits lived on confidential terms, moral feelings and states, repentance and conversion913 of which no trace appears in the New Testament.914

2. They serve not to confirm the Christian faith in general, but for the most part to support the ascetic life, the magical virtue of the sacrament, the veneration of saints and relics, and other superstitious practices, which are evidently of later origin, and are more or less offensive to the healthy evangelical mind.915

3. The further they are removed from the apostolic age, the more numerous they are, and in the fourth century alone there are more miracles than in all the three preceding centuries together, while the reason for them, as against the power of the heathen world, was less.

4. The church fathers, with all the worthiness of their character in other respects, confessedly lacked a highly cultivated sense of truth, and allowed a certain justification of falsehood ad majorem Dei gloriam, or fraus pia, under the misnomer of policy or accommodation;916 with the solitary exception of Augustine, who, in advance of his age, rightly condemned falsehood in every form.

5. Several church fathers like Augustine, Martin of Tours, and Gregory I., themselves concede that in their time extensive frauds with the relics of saints were already practised; and this is confirmed by the fact that there were not rarely numerous copies of the same relics, all of which claimed to be genuine.

6. The Nicene miracles met with doubt and contradiction even among contemporaries, and Sulpitius Severus makes the important admission that the miracles of St. Martin were better known and more firmly believed in foreign countries than in his own.917

7. Church fathers, like Chrysostom and Augustine, contradict themselves in a measure, in sometimes paying homage to the prevailing faith in miracles, especially in their discourses on the festivals of the martyrs, and in soberer moments, and in the calm exposition of the Scriptures, maintaining that miracles, at least in the Biblical sense, had long since ceased.918

We must moreover remember that the rejection of the Nicene miracles by no means justifies the inference of intentional deception in every case, nor destroys the claim of the great church teachers to our respect. On the contrary, between the proper miracle and fraud there lie many intermediate steps of self-deception, clairvoyance, magnetic phenomena and cures, and unusual states of the human soul, which is full of deep mysteries, and stands nearer the invisible spirit-world than the everyday mind of the multitude suspects. Constantine’s vision of the cross, for example, may be traced to a prophetic dream;919 and the frustration of the building of the Jewish temple under Julian, to a special providence, or a historical judgment of God.920  The mytho-poetic faculty, too, which freely and unconsciously produces miracles among children, may have been at work among credulous monks in the dreary deserts and magnified an ordinary event into a miracle. In judging of this obscure portion of the history of the church we must, in general, guard ourselves as well against shallow naturalism and skepticism, as against superstitious mysticism, remembering that

"There are more things in heaven and on earth,

Than are dreamed of in our philosophy."

§ 89. Processions and Pilgrimages.

Early Latin dissertations on pilgrimages by J. Gretser, Mamachi, Lazari, J. H. Heidegger, etc. J. Marx (R.C.): Das Wallfahren in der katholischen Kirche, historisch-kritisch dargestellt. Trier, 1842. Comp. the relevant sections in the church archaeologies of Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, &c.

Solemn religious processions on high festivals and special occasions had been already customary among the Jews,921 and even among the heathen. They arise from the love of human nature for show and display, which manifests itself in all countries in military parades, large funerals, and national festivities.

The oppressed condition of the church until the time of Constantine made such public demonstrations impossible or unadvisable.

In the fourth century, however, we find them in the East and in the West, among orthodox and heretics,922 on days of fasting and prayer, on festivals of thanksgiving, at the burial of the dead, the induction of bishops, the removal of relics, the consecration of churches, and especially in times of public calamity. The two chief classes are thanksgiving and penitential processions. The latter were also called cross-processions, litanies.923

The processions moved from church to church, and consisted of the clergy, the monks, and the people, alternately saying or singing prayers, psalms, and litanies. In the middle of the line commonly walked the bishop as leader, in surplice, stole, and pluvial, with the mitre on his head, the crozier in his left hand, and with his right hand blessing the people. A copy of the Bible, crucifixes, banners, images and relics, burning tapers or torches, added solemn state to the procession.924

Regular annual processions occurred on Candlemas, and on Palm Sunday. To these was added, after the thirteenth century, the procession on Corpus Christi, in which the sacrament of the altar is carried about and worshipped.

Pilgrimages are founded in the natural desire to see with one’s own eyes sacred or celebrated places, for the gratification of curiosity, the increase of devotion, and the proving of gratitude.925  These also were in use before the Christian era. The Jews went up annually to Jerusalem at their high festivals as afterward the Mohammedans went to Mecca. The heathen also built altars over the graves of their heroes and made pilgrimages thither.926  To the Christians those places were most interesting and holy of all, where the Redeemer was born, suffered, died, and rose again for the salvation of the world.

Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land appear in isolated cases even in the second century, and received a mighty impulse from the example of the superstitiously pious empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. In 326, at the age of seventy-nine, she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was baptized in the Jordan, discovered the holy cross, removed the pagan abominations and built Christian churches on Calvary and Olivet, and at Bethany.927  In this she was liberally supported by her son, in whose arms she died at Nicomedia in 327. The influence of these famous pilgrims’ churches extended through the whole middle age, to the crusades, and reaches even to most recent times.928

The example of Helena was followed by innumerable pilgrims who thought that by such journeys they made the salvation of their souls more sure. They brought back with them splinters from the pretended holy cross, waters from the Jordan, earth from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and other genuine and spurious relics, to which miraculous virtue was ascribed.929

Several of the most enlightened church fathers, who approved pilgrimages in themselves, felt it necessary to oppose a superstitious estimate of them, and to remind the people that religion might be practised in any place. Gregory of Nyssa shows that pilgrimages are nowhere enjoined in the Scriptures, and are especially unsuitable and dangerous for women, and draws a very unfavorable picture of the immorality prevailing at places of such resort. "Change of place," says he, "brings God no nearer. Where thou art, God will come to thee, if the dwelling of thy soul is prepared for him."930  Jerome describes with great admiration the devout pilgrimage of his friend Paula to the East, and says that he himself, in his Bethlehem, had adored the manger and birthplace of the Redeemer;931 but he also very justly declares that Britain is as near heaven as Jerusalem, and that not a journey to Jerusalem, but a holy living there, is the laudable thing.932

Next to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other localities of the Holy Land, Rome was a preëminent place of resort for pilgrims from the West and East, who longed to tread the threshold of the princes of the apostles (limina apostolorum). Chrysostom regretted that want of time and health prevented him from kissing the chains of Peter and Paul, which made devils tremble and angels rejoice.

In Africa, Hippo became a place of pilgrimage on account of the bones of St. Stephen; in Campania, the grave of St. Felix, at Nola; in Gaul, the grave of St. Martin of Tours († 397). The last was especially renowned, and was the scene of innumerable miracles.933  Even the memory of Job drew many pilgrims to Arabia to see the ash heap, and to kiss the earth, where the man of God endured so much.934

In the Roman and Greek churches the practice of pilgrimage to holy places has maintained itself to the present day. Protestantism has divested the visiting of remarkable places, consecrated by great men or great events, of all meritoriousness and superstitious accessories, and has reduced it to a matter of commendable gratitude and devout curiosity. Within these limits even the evangelical Christian cannot view without emotion and edification the sacred spots of Palestine, the catacombs of Rome, the simple slabs over Luther and Melanchthon in the castle-church of Wittenberg, the monuments of the English martyrs in Oxford, or the rocky landing-place of the Puritanic pilgrim fathers in Massachusetts. He feels himself nearer to the spirit of the great dead; but he knows that this spirit continues not in their dust, but lives immortally with God and the saints in heaven.

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

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

The order and particular parts of the ordinary public worship of God remain the same as they were in the previous period. But the strict separation of the service of the Catechumens,935 consisting of prayer, scripture reading, and preaching, from the service of the faithful,936 consisting of the communion, lost its significance upon the universal prevalence of Christianity and the union of church and state. Since the fifth century the inhabitants of the Roman empire were now considered as Christians at least in name and confession and could attend even those parts of the worship which were formerly guarded by secrecy against the profanation of pagans. The Greek term liturgy, and the Latin term mass, which is derived from the customary formula of dismission,937 was applied, since the close of the fourth century (398), to the communion service or the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice. This was the divine service in the proper sense of the term, to which all other parts were subordinate. We shall speak of it more fully hereafter.938  We have to do at present with those parts which were introductory to the communion and belong to the service of the catechumens as well as to that of the communicants.

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

There was as yet no obligatory system of pericopes, like that of the later Greek and Roman churches. The lectio continua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bible, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection of books for the different parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, however, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degrees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,939 a more complete yearly course of selections from the New Testament for liturgical use was arranged, and the selections were called lessons or pericopes.940 In the Latin church this was done in the fifth century; in the Greek, in the eighth. The lessons941 were taken from the Gospels and from the Epistles, or the Apostle (in part also from the Prophets), and were therefore called the Gospel and the Epistle for the particular Sunday or festival. Some churches, however, had three, or even four lessons, a Gospel, an Epistle, and a section from the Old Testament and from the Acts. Many manuscripts of the New Testament contained only the pericopes or lessons for public worship,942 and many of these again, only the Gospel pericopes.943 The Alexandrian deacon Euthalius, about 460, divided the Gospel and the Apostle, excepting the Revelation, into fifty-seven portions each, for the Sundays and feast days of the year; but they were not generally received, and the Eastern church still adhered for a long time to the lectio continua. Among the Latin lectionaries still extant, the Lectionarium Gallicanum, dating from the sixth or seventh century, and edited by Mabillon, and the so-called Comes (i.e., Clergyman’s Companion) or Liber Comitis, were in especial repute. The latter is traced by tradition to the learned Jerome, and forms the groundwork of the Roman lectionary and the entire Western System of pericopes, which has passed from the Latin church into the Anglican and the Lutheran, but has undergone many changes in the course of time.944  This selection of Scripture portions was in general better fitted to the church year, but had the disadvantage of withholding large parts of the holy Scriptures from the people.

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

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

The reading of the Scripture was followed by the sermon, based either on the pericope just read, or on a whole book, in consecutive portions. We have from the greatest pulpit orators of antiquity, from Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, connected homilies on Genesis, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. But on high festivals a text was always selected suitable and usual for the occasion.945  There was therefore in the ancient church no forced conformity to the pericopes; the advantages of a system of Scripture lessons and a consecutive exposition of entire books of Scripture were combined. The reading of the pericopes belongs properly to the altar-service, and must keep its connection with the church year; preaching belongs to the pulpit, and may extend to the whole compass of the divine word.

Pulpit eloquence in the fourth and fifth centuries reached a high point in the Greek church, and is most worthily represented by Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom. But it also often degenerated there into artificial rhetoric, declamatory bombast, and theatrical acting. Hence the abuse of frequent clapping and acclamations of applause among the people.946  As at this day, so in that, many went to church not to worship God, but to hear a celebrated speaker, and left as soon as the sermon was done. The sermon, they said, we can hear only in the church, but we can pray as well at home. Chrysostom often raised his voice against this in Antioch and in Constantinople. The discourses of the most favorite preachers were often written down by stenographers and multiplied by manuscripts, sometimes with their permission, sometimes without.

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

The sermon was in general freely delivered from the bishop’s chair or from the railing of the choir (the cancelli), sometimes from the reading-desk. The duty of preaching devolved upon the bishops; and even popes, like Leo I. and Gregory I., frequently preached before the Roman congregation. Preaching was also performed by the presbyters and deacons. Leo I. restricts the right of preaching and teaching to the ordained clergy;947 yet monks and hermits preached not rarely in the streets, from pillars (like St. Symeon), roofs, or trees; and even laymen, like the emperor Constantine and some of his successors, wrote and delivered (though not in church) religious discourses to the faithful people.948

§ 91. The Sacraments in General.

G. L. Hahn: Die Lehre von den Sacramenten in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung innerhalb der abendländischen Kirche bis zum Concil von Trient. Breslau, 1864 (147 pp.). Comp. also the article Sacramente by G. E. Steitz in Herzog’s Real-Encyklopädie, vol. xiii. pp. 226–286; and Const. von Schätzler: Die Lehre von der Wirksamkeit der Sacramente ex opere operato. Munich, 1860.

The use of the word sacramentum in the church still continued for a long time very indefinite. It embraced every mystical and sacred thing (omne mysticum sacrumque signum). Tertullian, Ambrose, Hilary, Leo, Chrysostom, and other fathers, apply it even to mysterious doctrines and facts, like the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. But after the fifth century it denotes chiefly sacred forms of worship, which were instituted by Christ and by which divine blessings are mystically represented, sealed, and applied to men. This catholic theological conception has substantially passed into the evangelical churches, though with important changes as to the number and operation of the sacraments.949

Augustine was the first to substitute a clear doctrine of the nature of the sacraments for a vague notion and rhetorical exaggerations. He defines a sacrament to be a visible sign of an invisible grace or divine blessing.950  Two constituents, therefore, belong to such a holy act: the outward symbol or sensible element (the signum, also sacramentum in the stricter sense), which is visible to the eye, and the inward grace or divine virtue (the res or virtus sacramenti), which is an object of faith.951  The two, the sign and the thing signified, are united by the word of consecration.952  From the general spirit of Augustine’s doctrine, and several of his expressions, we must infer that he considered divine institution by Christ to be also a mark of such holy ordinance.953  But subsequently this important point retired from the consciousness of the church, and admitted the widening of the idea, and the increase of the number, of the sacraments.

Augustine was also the first to frame a distinct doctrine of the operation of the sacraments. In his view the sacraments work grace or condemnation, blessing or curse, according to the condition of the receiver.954  They operate, therefore, not immediately and magically, but mediately and ethically, not ex opere operato, in the later scholastic language, but through the medium of the active faith of the receiver. They certainly have, as divine institutions, an objective meaning in themselves, like the life-principle of a seed, and do not depend on the subjective condition of the one who administers them (as the Donatists taught); but they reach with blessing only those who seize the blessing, or take it from the ordinance, in faith; they bring curse to those who unworthily administer or receive them. Faith is necessary not as the efficient cause, but as the subjective condition, of the saving operation of the offered grace.955 Augustine also makes a distinction between a transient and a permanent effect of the sacrament, and thereby prepares the way for the later scholastic doctrine of the character indelebilis. Baptism and ordination impress an indelible character, and therefore cannot be repeated. He is fond of comparing baptism with the badge of the imperial service,956  which the soldier always retains either to his honor or to his shame. Hence the Catholic doctrine is: Once baptized, always baptized; once a priest, always a priest. Nevertheless a baptized person, or an ordained person, can be excommunicated and eternally lost. The popular opinion in the church already inclined strongly toward the superstitious view of the magical operation of the sacrament, which has since found scholastic expression in the opus operatum theory.

The church fathers with one accord assert a relative (not absolute) necessity of the sacraments to salvation.957  They saw in them, especially in baptism and the eucharist, the divinely appointed means of appropriating the forgiveness of sins and the grace of God. Yet with this view they firmly held that not the want of the sacraments, but only the contempt of them, was damning.958  In favor of this they appealed to Moses, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, the thief on the cross,—who all, however, belonged to the Old Testament economy—and to many Christian martyrs, who sealed their faith in Christ with their blood, before they had opportunity to be baptized and to commune. The Virgin Mary also, and the apostles, belong in some sense to this class, who, since Christ himself did not baptize, received not the Christian baptism of water, but instead were on the day of Pentecost baptized with Spirit and with fire. Thus Cornelius also received through Peter the gift of the Holy Ghost before baptism; but nevertheless submitted himself afterwards to the outward Sacrament. In agreement with this view, sincere repentance and true faith, and above all the blood-baptism of martyrdom,959 were regarded as a kind of compensation for the sacraments.

The number of the sacraments remained yet for a long time indefinite; though among the church fathers of our period baptism and the Lord’s Supper were regarded either as the only Sacraments, or as the prominent ones.

Augustine considered it in general an excellence of the New Testament over the Old, that the number of the sacraments was diminished, but their import enhanced,960 and calls baptism and the Supper, with reference to the water and the blood which flowed from the side of the Lord, the genuine or chief sacraments, on which the church subsists.961  But he includes under the wider conception of the sacrament other mysterious and holy usages, which were commended in the Scriptures,962 naming expressly confirmation,963 marriage,964 and ordination.965  Thus he already recognizes to some extent five Christian sacraments, to which the Roman church has since added penance and extreme unction.

Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Mystagogic Catechism, and Ambrose of Milan, in the six books De Sacramentis ascribed to him, mention only three sacraments: baptism, confirmation, and the Lord’s supper; and Gregory of Nyssa likewise mentions three, but puts ordination in the place of confirmation. For in the Eastern church confirmation, or the laying on of hands, was less prominent, and formed a part of the sacrament of baptism; while in the Western church it gradually established itself in the rank of an independent sacrament.

The unknown Greek author of the pseudo-Dionysian writings of the sixth century enumerates six sacraments (musthvria):966(1.) baptism, or illumination; (2.) the eucharist, or the consecration of consecrations; (3.) the consecration with anointing oil, or confirmation; (4.) the consecration of priests; (5.) the consecration of monks; (6.) the consecration of the dead, or extreme unction. Here marriage and penance are wanting; in place of them appears the consecration of monks, which however was afterwards excluded from the number of the sacraments.

In the North African, the Milanese, and the Gallican churches the washing of feet also long maintained the place of a distinct sacrament.967  Ambrose asserted its sacramental character against the church of Rome, and even declared it to be as necessary as baptism, because it was instituted by Christ, and delivered men from original sin, as baptism from the actual sin of transgression;—a view which rightly found but little acceptance.

This uncertainty as to the number of the sacraments continued till the twelfth century.968  Yet the usage of the church from the fifth century downward, in the East and in the West, appears to have inclined silently to the number seven, which was commended by its mystical sacredness. This is shown at least by the agreement of the Greek and Roman churches in this point, and even of the Nestorians and Monophysites, who split off in the fifth century from the orthodox Greek church.969

In the West, the number seven was first introduced, as is usually supposed, by the bishop Otto of Bamberg (1124), more correctly by Peter Lombard (d. 1164), the "Master of Sentences;" rationally and rhetorically justified by Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics (as recently by Möhler) from the seven chief religious wants of human life and human society;970 and finally publicly sanctioned by the council of Florence in 1439 with the concurrence of the Greek church, and established by the council of Trent with an anathema against all who think otherwise.971 The Reformation returned, in this point as in others, to the New Testament; retained none but baptism and the Lord’s Supper as proper sacraments, instituted and enjoined by Christ himself; entirely rejected extreme unction (and at first confirmation); consigned penance to the province of the inward life, and confirmation, marriage, and orders to the more general province of sacred acts and usages, to which a more or less sacramental character may be ascribed, but by no means an equality in other respects with baptism and the holy Supper.972

§ 92. Baptism.

For the Literature, see vol. i. § 37, p. 122; especially Höfling (Lutheran): Das Sacrament der Taufe. W. Wall (Anglican): The History of Infant Baptism (1705), new ed. Oxf. 1844, 4vols. C. A. G. v. Zezschwitz: System der christlich kirchlichen Katechetik. Vol. i. Leipz. 1863.

On heretical baptism in particular, See Mattes (R.C.): Ueber die Ketzertaufe, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift," for 1849, pp. 571–637, and 1850, pp. 24–69; and G. E. Steitz, art. Ketzertaufe in Herzog’s Theol. Encyclop. vol. vii. pp. 524–541 (partly in opposition to Mattes). Concerning the form of baptism, on the Baptist side, T. J. Conant: The Meaning and Use of Baptizein philologically and historically investigated. New York, 1861.

The views of the ante-Nicene fathers concerning baptism and baptismal regeneration were in this period more copiously embellished in rhetorical style by Basil the Great and the two Gregories, who wrote special treatises on this sacrament, and were more clearly and logically developed by Augustine. The patristic and Roman Catholic view on regeneration, however, differs considerably from the one which now prevails among most Protestant denominations, especially those of the more Puritanic type, in that it signifies not so much a subjective change of heart, which is more properly called conversion, but a change in the objective condition and relation of the sinner, namely, his translation from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of Christ. Some modern divines make a distinction between baptismal and moral regeneration, in order to reconcile the doctrine of the fathers with the fact that the evidences of a new life are wholly wanting in so many who are baptized. But we cannot enter here into a discussion of the difficulties of this doctrine, and must confine ourselves to a historical statement.

Gregory Nazianzen sees in baptism all blessings of Christianity combined, especially the forgiveness of sins, the new birth, and the restoration of the divine image. To children it is a seal (sfragiv") of grace and a consecration to the service of God. According to Gregory of Nyssa, the child by baptism is instated in the paradise from which Adam was thrust out. The Greek fathers had no clear conception of original sin. According to the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Chrysostom taught: We baptize children, though they are not stained with sin, in order that holiness, righteousness, sonship, inheritance, and brotherhood may be imparted to them through Christ.973

Augustine brought the operation of baptism into connection with his more complete doctrine of original sin. Baptism delivers from the guilt of original sin, and takes away the sinful character of the concupiscence of the flesh,974 while for the adult it at the same time effects the forgiveness of all actual transgressions before baptism. Like Ambrose and other fathers, Augustine taught the necessity of baptism for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, on the ground of John iii. 5, and deduced therefrom, in logical consistency, the terrible doctrine of the damnation of all unbaptized children, though he assigned them the mildest grade of perdition.975

The council of Carthage, in 318, did the same, and in its second canon rejected the notion of a happy middle state for unbaptized children. It is remarkable, however, that this addition to the second canon does not appear in all copies of the Acts of the council, and was perhaps out of some horror omitted.976

In Augustine we already find all the germs of the scholastic and Catholic doctrine of baptism, though they hardly agree properly with his doctrine of predestination, the absolute sovereignty of divine grace and the perseverance of saints. According to this view, baptism is the sacrament of regeneration, which is, negatively, the means of the forgiveness of sin, that is, both of original sin and of actual sins committed before baptism (not after it), and positively, the foundation of the new spiritual life of faith through the impartation of the gratia operans and co-operans. The subjective condition of this effect is the worthy receiving, that is, penitent faith. Since in the child there is no actual sin, the effect of baptism in this case is limited to the remission of the guilt of original sin; and since the child cannot yet itself believe, the Christian church (represented by the parents and the sponsors) here appears in its behalf, as Augustine likewise supposed, and assumes the responsibility of the education of the baptized child to Christian majority.977

As to infant baptism: there was in this period a general conviction of its propriety and of its apostolic origin. Even the Pelagians were no exception; though infant baptism does not properly fit into their system; for they denied original sin, and baptism, as a rite of purification, always has reference to the forgiveness of sins. They attributed to infant baptism an improving effect. Coelestius maintained that children by baptism gained entrance to the higher stage of salvation, the kingdom of God, to which, with merely natural powers, they could not attain. He therefore supposed a middle condition of lower salvation for unbaptized children, which in the above quoted second canon of the council of Carthage—if it be genuine—is condemned. Pelagius said more cautiously: Whither unbaptized children go, I know not; whither they do not go, I know.

But, notwithstanding this general admission of infant baptism, the practice of it was by no means universal. Forced baptism, which is contrary to the nature of Christianity and the sacrament, was as yet unknown. Many Christian parents postponed the baptism of their children, sometimes from indifference, sometimes from fear that they might by their later life forfeit the grace of baptism, and thereby make their condition the worse. Thus Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine, though they had eminently pious mothers, were not baptized till their conversion in their manhood. But they afterward regretted this. Gregory admonishes a mother: "Let not sin gain the mastery in thy child; let him be consecrated even in swaddling bands. Thou art afraid of the divine seal on account of the weakness of nature. What weakness of faith!  Hannah dedicated her Samuel to the Lord even before his birth; and immediately after his birth trained him for the priesthood. Instead of fearing human weakness, trust in God."

Many adult catechumens and proselytes likewise, partly from light-mindedness and love of the world, partly from pious prudence and superstitious fear of impairing the magical virtue of baptism, postponed their baptism until some misfortune or severe sickness drove them to the ordinance. The most celebrated example of this is the emperor Constantine, who was not baptized till he was on his bed of death. The postponement of baptism in that day was equivalent to the postponement of repentance and conversion so frequent in ours. This custom was resisted by the most eminent church teachers, but did not give way till the fifth century, when it gradually disappeared before the universal introduction of infant baptism.

Heretical baptism was now generally regarded as valid, if performed in the name of the triune God. The Roman view prevailed over the Cyprianic, at least in the Western church; except among the Donatists, who entirely rejected heretical baptism (as well as the catholic baptism), and made the efficacy of the sacrament depend not only on the ecclesiastical position, but also on the personal piety of the officiating priest.

Augustine, in his anti-Donatistic writings, defends the validity of heretical baptism by the following course of argument: Baptism is an institution of Christ, in the administration of which the minister is only an agent; the grace or virtue of the sacrament is entirely dependent on Christ, and not on the moral character of the administering agent; the unbeliever receives not the power, but the form of the sacrament, which indeed is of no use to the baptized as long as he is outside of the saving catholic communion, but becomes available as soon as he enters it on profession of faith; baptism, wherever performed, imparts an indelible character, or, as he calls it, a "character dominicus," "regius."  He compares it often to the "nota militaris," which marks the soldier once for all, whether it was branded on his body by the legitimate captain or by a rebel, and binds him to the service, and exposes him to punishment for disobedience.

Proselyted heretics were, however, always confirmed by the laying on of hands, when received into the catholic church. They were treated like penitents. Leo the Great says of them, that they have received only the form of baptism without the power of sanctification.978

The most eminent Greek fathers of the Nicene age, on the other hand, adhered to the position of Cyprian and Firmilian. Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem regarded, besides the proper form, the true trinitarian faith on the part of the baptizing community, as an essential condition of the validity of baptism. The 45th of the so-called Apostolic Canons threatens those with excommunication who received converted heretics without rebaptism. But a milder view gradually obtained even in the East, which settled at last upon a compromise.

The ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, in its seventh canon (which, however, is wanting in the Latin versions, and is perhaps later), recognizes the baptism of the Arians, the Sabbatians (a sort of Novatians, so called from their leader Sabbatius), the Quartodecimanians, the Apollinarians, but rejected the baptism of the Eunomians, "who baptize with only one immersion," the Sabellians, "who teach the Son-Fatherhood (uiJopatoriva)," the Montanists (probably because they did not at that time use the orthodox baptismal formula), and all other heretics. These had first to be exercised, then instructed, and then baptized, being treated therefore as heathen proselytes.979  The Trullan council of 692, in its 95th canon repeated this canon, and added the Nestorians, the Eutychians, and the followers of Dioscurus and Severus to the list of those heretics who may be received into the church on a mere recantation of their error. These decisions lack principle and consistency.

The catechetical instruction which preceded the baptism of proselytes and adults, and followed the baptism of children, ended with a public examination (scrutinium) before the congregation. The Creed—in the East the Nicene, in the West the Apostles’—was committed to memory and professed by the candidates or the god-parents of the children.

The favorite times for baptism for adults were Easter and Pentecost, and in the East also Epiphany. In the fourth century, when the mass of the population of the Roman empire went over from heathenism to Christianity, the baptisteries were thronged with proselytes on those high festivals, and the baptism of such masses had often a very imposing and solemn character. Children were usually incorporated into the church by baptism soon after their birth.

Immersion continued to be the usual form of baptism, especially in the East; and the threefold immersion in the name of the Trinity. Yet Gregory the Great permitted also the single immersion, which was customary in Spain as a testimony against the Arian polytheism.980

With baptism, several preparatory and accompanying ceremonies, some of them as early as the second and third centuries, were connected; which were significant, but overshadowed and obscured the original simplicity of the sacrament. These were exorcism, or the expulsion of the devil;981 breathing upon the candidates,982 as a sign of the communication of the Holy Ghost, according to John xx. 22; the touching of the ears,983 with the exclamation: Ephphatha!—from Mark vii. 34, for the opening of the spiritual understanding; the sign of the cross made upon the forehead and breast, as the mark of the soldier of Christ; and, at least in Africa, the giving of salt, as the emblem of the divine word, according to Mark ix. 50; Matt. v. 13 Col. iv. 6. Proselytes generally took also a new name, according to Rev. ii. 17.

In the act of baptism itself, the candidate first, with his face toward the west, renounced Satan and all his pomp and service,984 then, facing the east, he vowed fidelity to Christ,985 and confessed his faith in the triune God, either by rehearsing the Creed, or in answer to questions.986  Thereupon followed the threefold or the single immersion in the name of the triune God, with the calling of the name of the candidate, the deacons and deaconesses assisting. After the second anointing with the consecrated oil (confirmation), the veil was removed, with which the heads of catechumens, in token of their spiritual minority, were covered during divine worship, and the baptized person was clothed in white garments, representing the state of regeneration, purity, and freedom. In the Western church the baptized person received at the same time a mixture of milk and honey, as a symbol of childlike innocence and as a fore-taste of the communion.

§ 93. Confirmation.

Comp. the Literature of Baptism, especially Höfling, and Zezschwitz: Der Katechumenat (first vol. of his System der Katechetik). Leipzig, 1863.

Confirmation, in the first centuries, was closely connected with the act of baptism as the completion of that act, especially in adults. After the cessation of proselyte baptism and the increase of infant baptism, it gradually came to be regarded as an independent sacrament. Even by Augustine, Leo I., and others, it is expressly called sacramentum.987  This independence was promoted by the hierarchical interest, especially in the Latin church, where the performance of this rite is an episcopal function.

The catholic theory of confirmation is, that it seals and completes the grace of baptism, and at the same time forms in some sense a subjective complement to infant baptism, in which the baptized person, now grown to years of discretion, renews the vows made by his parents or sponsors in his name at his baptism, and makes himself personally responsible for them. The latter, however, is more properly a later Protestant (Lutheran and Anglican) view. Baptism, according to the doctrine of the ancient church, admits the man into the rank of the soldiers of Christ; confirmation endows him with strength and courage for the spiritual warfare.

The outward form of confirmation consists in the anointing of the forehead, the nose, the ear, and the breast with the consecrated oil, or a mixture of balsam,988 which symbolizes the consecration of the whole man to the spiritual priesthood; and in the laying on of the hands of the clergyman,989 which signifies and effects the communication of the Holy Ghost for the general Christian calling.990  The anointing takes precedence of the imposition of hands, in agreement with the Old Testament sacerdotal view; while in the Protestant church, wherever confirmation continues, it is entirely abandoned, and only the imposition of hands is retained.

In other respects considerable diversity prevailed in the different parts of the ancient church in regard to the usage of confirmation and the time of performing it.

In the Greek church every priest may administer confirmation or holy unction, and that immediately after baptism; but in the Latin church after the time of Jerome (as now in the Anglican) this function, like the power of ordination, was considered a prerogative of the bishops, who made periodical tours in their dioceses to confirm the baptized. Thus the two acts were often far apart in time.

§ 94. Ordination.

J. Morinus (R.C.): Comment. Hist. so dogm. de sacris Eccles. ordinationibus. Par. 1655, etc. Fr. Halierius (R.C.): De sacris electionibus et ordinationibus. Rom. 1749. 3 vols. fol. G. L. Hahn: l.c. p. 96 and p. 354 ff. Comp. the relevant sections in the archaeological works of Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, etc.

The ordination of clergymen991 was as early as the fourth or fifth century admitted into the number of sacraments. Augustine first calls it a sacrament, but with the remark that in his time the church unanimously acknowledged the sacramental character of this usage.992

Ordination is the solemn consecration to the special priesthood, as baptism is the introduction to the universal priesthood; and it is the medium of communicating the gifts for the ministerial office. It confers the capacity and authority of administering the sacraments and governing the body of believers, and secures to the church order, care, and steady growth to the end of time. A ruling power is as necessary in the church as in the state. In the Jewish church there was a hereditary priestly caste; in the Christian this is exchanged for an unbroken succession of voluntary priests from all classes, but mostly from the middle and lower classes of the people.

Like baptism and confirmation, ordination imparts, according to the later scholastic doctrine, a character indelebilis, and cannot therefore be repeated.993  But this of course does not exclude the possibility of suspension and excommunication in case of gross immorality or gross error. The council of Nice, in 325, acknowledged even the validity of the ordination of the schismatic Novatians.

Corresponding to the three ordines majores there were three ordinations: to the diaconate, to the presbyterate, and to the episcopate.994  Many of the most eminent bishops, however, like Cyprian and Ambrose, received the three rites in quick succession, and officiated only as bishops.

Different from ordination is installation, or induction into a particular congregation or diocese, which may be repeated as often as the minister is transferred.

Ordination was performed by laying on of hands and prayer, closing with the communion. To these were gradually added other preparatory and attendant practices; such as the tonsure995 the anointing with the chrism (only in the Latin church after Gregory the Great), investing with the insignia of the office (the holy books, and in the case of bishops the ring and staff), the kiss of brotherhood, etc. Only bishops can ordain, though presbyters assist. The ordination or consecraion of a bishop generally requires, for greater solemnity, the presence of three bishops.

No one can receive priestly orders without a fixed field of labor which yields him support.996  In the course of time further restrictions, derived in part from the Old Testament, in regard to age, education, physical and moral constitution, freedom from the bonds of marriage, etc., were established by ecclesiastical legislation.

The favorite times for ordination were Pentecost and the quarterly Quatember terms997 (i.e., the beginning of Quadragesima, the weeks after Pentecost, after the fourteenth of September, and after the thirteenth of December), which were observed, after Gelasius or Leo the Great, as ordinary penitential seasons of the church. The candidates were obliged to prepare themselves for consecration by prayer and fasting.

§ 95. The Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Comp. the Literature in vol. i. § 38 and § 102, the corresponding sections in the Doctrine Histories and Archaeologies, and the treatises of G. E. Steitz on the historical development of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the Greek church, in Dorner’s "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," for 1864 and 1865. In part also the liturgical works of Neale, Daniel, etc., cited below (§ 98), and Philip Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. Lond. Part i. 1855, Part ii. 1862. (The author, in the introduction to the second part, states as his object: "To unravel, by means of an historical survey of the ancient belief concerning the Holy Eucharist, viewed as a mystery, and of the later departures from it, the manifold confusions which have grown up around the subject, more especially since the fatal epoch of the eleventh century."  But the book treats not so much of the doctrine of the Eucharist, as of the ceremony of it, and the eucharistic sacrifice, with special reference to the Anglican church.)

The Eucharist is both a sacrament wherein God conveys to us a certain blessing, and a sacrifice which man offers to God. As a sacrament, or the communion, it stands at the head of all sacred rites; as a sacrifice it stands alone. The celebration of it under this twofold character forms the holy of holies of the Christian cultus in the ancient church, and in the greater part of Christendom at this day.998

We consider first the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrament, then the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and finally the celebration of the eucharistic communion and eucharistic sacrifice.

The doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a subject of theological controversy and ecclesiastical action till the time of Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century; whereas since then this feast of the Saviour’s dying love has been the innocent cause of the most bitter disputes, especially in the age of the Reformation, between Papists and Protestants, and among Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. Hence the doctrine of the ancient church on this point lacks the clearness and definiteness which the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, the Chalcedonian Christology, and the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology acquired from the controversies preceding them. In the doctrine of baptism also we have a much better right to speak of a consensus patrum, than in the doctrine of the holy Supper.

In general, this period, following the representatives of the mystic theory in the previous one, was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, which are inseparable in so far as a real sacrifice requires the real presence of the victim. But the kind and mode of this presence are not yet particularly defined, and admit very different views: Christ may be conceived as really present either in and with the elements (consubstantiation, impanation), or under the illusive appearance of the changed elements (transubstantiation), or only dynamically and spiritually.

In the previous period we distinguish three views: the mystic view of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus; the symbolical view of Tertullian and Cyprian; and the allegorical or spiritualistic view of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. In the present the first view, which best answered the mystic and superstitious tendency of the time, preponderated, but the second also was represented by considerable authorities.999

I. The realistic and mystic view is represented by several fathers and the early liturgies, whose testimony we shall further cite below. They speak in enthusiastic and extravagant terms of the sacrament and sacrifice of the altar. They teach a real presence of the body and blood of Christ, which is included in the very idea of a real sacrifice, and they see in the mystical union of it with the sensible elements a sort of repetition of the incarnation of the Logos. With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance. To denote this change very strong expressions are used, like metabolhv, metabavllein, metabavllesqai, metastoiceiou'sqai, metapoiei'sqai, mutatio, translatio, transfiguratio, transformatio;1000 illustrated by the miraculous transformation of water into wine, the assimilation of food, and the pervasive power of leaven.

Cyril of Jerusalem goes farther in this direction than any of the fathers. He plainly teaches some sort of supernatural connection between the body of Christ and the elements, though not necessarily a transubstantiation of the latter. Let us hear the principal passages.1001  "Then follows," he says in describing the celebration of the Eucharist, "the invocation of God, for the sending of his Spirit to make the bread the body of Christ, the wine the blood of Christ. For what the Holy Ghost touches is sanctified and transformed."  "Under the type of the bread1002 is given to thee the body, under the type of the wine is given to thee the blood, that thou mayest be a partaker of the body and blood of Christ, and be of one body and blood with him."1003  "After the invocation of the Holy Ghost the bread of the Eucharist is no longer bread, but the body of Christ."  "Consider, therefore, the bread and the wine not as empty elements, for they are, according to the declaration of the Lord, the body and blood of Christ."  In support of this change Cyril refers at one time to the wedding feast at Cana, which indicates, the Roman theory of change of substance; but at another to the consecration of the chrism, wherein the substance is unchanged. He was not clear and consistent with himself. His opinion probably was, that the eucharistic elements lost by consecration not so much their earthly substance, as their earthly purpose.

Gregory of Nyssa, though in general a very faithful disciple of the spiritualistic Origen, is on this point entirely realistic. He calls the Eucharist a food of immortality, and speaks of a miraculous transformation of the nature of the elements into the glorified body of Christ by virtue of the priestly blessing.1004

Chrysostom likewise, though only incidentally in his homilies, and not in the strain of sober logic and theology, but of glowing rhetoric, speaks several times of a union of our whole nature with the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and even of a manducatio oralis.1005

Of the Latin fathers, Hilary,1006 Ambrose,1007 and Gaudentius († 410) come nearest to the later dogma of transubstantiation. The latter says: "The Creator and Lord of nature, who produces bread from the earth, prepares out of bread his own body, makes of wine his own blood."1008

But closely as these and similar expressions verge upon the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, they seem to contain at most a dynamic, not a substantial, change of the elements into the body and the blood of Christ. For, in the first place, it must be remembered there is a great difference between the half-poetic, enthusiastic, glowing language of devotion, in which the fathers, and especially the liturgies, speak of the eucharistic sacrifice, and the clear, calm, and cool language of logic and doctrinal definition. In the second place, the same fathers apply the same or quite similar terms to the baptismal water and the chrism of confirmation, without intending to teach a proper change of the substance of these material elements into the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, they not rarely use, concerning the bread and wine, tuvpo", ajntivtupa, figura, signum, and like expressions, which denote rather a symbolical than a metabolical relation of them to the body and blood of the Lord. Finally, the favorite comparison of the mysterious transformation with the incarnation of the Logos, which, in fact, was not an annihilation of the human nature, but an assumption of it into unity with the divine, is of itself in favor of the continuance of the substance of the elements; else it would abet the Eutychian heresy.

II. The symbolical view, though on a realistic basis, is represented first by Eusebius, who calls the Supper a commemoration of Christ by the symbols of his body and blood, and takes the flesh and blood of Christ in the sixth chapter of John to mean the words of Christ, which are spirit and life, the true food of the soul, to believers.1009  Here appears the influence of his venerated Origen, whose views in regard to the sacramental aspect of the Eucharist he substantially repeats.

But it is striking that even Athanasius, "the father of orthodoxy," recognized only a spiritual participation, a self-communication of the nourishing divine virtue of the Logos, in the symbols of the bread and wine, and incidentally evinces a doctrine of the Eucharist wholly foreign to the Catholic, and very like the older Alexandrian or Origenistic, and the Calvinistic, though by no means identical with the latter.1010  By the flesh and blood in the mysterious discourse of Jesus in the sixth chapter of John, which he refers to the Lord’s Supper, he understands not the earthly, human, but the heavenly, divine manifestation of Jesus, a spiritual nutriment coming down from above, which the Logos through the Holy Ghost communicates to believers (but not to a Judas, nor to the unbelieving).1011  With this view accords his extending of the participation of the eucharistic food to believers in heaven, and even to the angels, who, on account of their incorporeal nature, are incapable of a corporeal participation of Christ.1012

Gregory Nazianzen sees in the Eucharist a type of the incarnation, and calls the consecrated elements symbols and antitypes of the great mysteries, but ascribes to them a saving virtue.1013

St. Basil, likewise, in explaining the words of Christ, "I live by the Father" (John vi. 57), against, the Arians who inferred from it that Christ was a creature, incidentally gives a spiritual meaning to the fruition of the eucharistic elements. "We eat the flesh of Christ," he says, "and drink His blood, if we, through His incarnation and human life, become partakers of the Logos and of wisdom."1014

Macarius the Elder, a gifted representative of the earlier Greek mysticism († 390), belongs to the same Symbolical school; he calls bread and wine the antitype of the body and blood of Christ, and seems to know only a spiritual eating of the flesh of the Lord.1015

Theodoret, who was acknowledged orthodox by the council of Chalcedon, teaches indeed a transformation (metabavllein) of the eucharistic elements by virtue of the priestly consecration, and an adoration of them, which certainly sounds quite Romish, but in the same connection expressly rejects the idea of an absorption of the elements in the body of the Lord, as an error akin to the Monophysite. "The mystical emblems of the body and blood of Christ," says he, "continue in their original essence and form, they are visible and tangible as they were before [the consecration];1016 but the contemplation of the spirit and of faith sees in them that which they have become, and they are adored also as that which they are to believers."1017

Similar language occurs in an epistle to the monk Caesarius ascribed to Chrysostom, but perhaps not genuine;1018 in Ephraim of Antioch, cited by Photius; and even in the Roman bishop Gelasius at the end of the fifth century (492–496).

The latter says expressly, in his work against Eutyches and Nestorius: "The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine-nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the performance of the mysteries."1019

It is remarkable that Augustine, in other respects so decidedly catholic in the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the Latin orthodoxy, follows the older African theologians, Tertullian and Cyprian, in a symbolical theory of the Supper, which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith, and in this respect stands nearest to the Calvinistic or Orthodox Reformed doctrine, while in minor points he differs from it as much as from transubstantiation and consubstantiation.1020  He was the first to make a clear distinction between the outward sign and the inward grace, which are equally essential to the conception of the sacrament. He maintains the figurative character of the words of institution, and of the discourse of Jesus, on the eating and drinking of his flesh and blood in the sixth chapter of John; with Tertullian, he calls the bread and wine "figurae" "or "signa corporis et sanguinis Christi" (but certainly not mere figures), and insists on a distinction between "that which is visibly received in the sacrament, and that which is spiritually eaten and drunk," or between a carnal, visible manducation of the sacrament, and a spiritual eating of the flesh of Christ and drinking of his blood.1021  The latter he limits to the elect and the believing, though, in opposition to the subjectivism of the Donatists, he asserts that the sacrament (in its objective import) is the body of Christ even for unworthy receivers. He says of Judas, that he only ate the bread of the Lord, while the other apostles "ate the Lord who was the bread."  In another place: The sacramentum "is given to some unto life, to others unto destruction;" but the res sacramenti, i.e., "the thing itself of which it is the sacramentum, is given to every one who is partaker of it, unto life."  "He who does not abide in Christ, undoubtedly neither eats His flesh nor drinks His blood, though he eats and drinks the sacramentum (i.e., the outward sign) of so great a thing to his condemnation."  Augustine at all events lays chief stress on the spiritual participation. "Why preparest thou the teeth and the belly?  Believe, and thou hast eaten."1022  He claims for the sacrament religious reverence, but not a superstitious dread, as if it were a miracle of magical effect.1023  He also expressly rejects the hypothesis of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which had already come into use in support of the materializing view, and has since been further developed by Lutheran divines in support of the theory of consubstantiation. "The body with which Christ rose," says he, "He took to heaven, which must be in a place .... We must guard against such a conception of His divinity as destroys the reality of His flesh. For when the flesh of the Lord was upon earth, it was certainly not in heaven; and now that it is in heaven, it is not upon earth."  "I believe that the body of the Lord is in heaven, as it was upon earth when he ascended to heaven."1024  Yet this great church teacher at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper. He says of the martyrs: "They have drunk the blood of Christ, and have shed their own blood for Christ."  He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.

Augustine’s pupil, Facundus, taught that the sacramental bread "is not properly the body of Christ, but contains the mystery of the body."  Fulgentius of Ruspe held the same symbolical view; and even at a much later period we can trace it through the mighty influence of Augustine’s writings in Isidore of Sevilla, Beda Venerabilis, among the divines of the Carolingian age, in Ratramnus, and Berengar of Tours, until it broke forth in a modified form with greater force than ever in the sixteenth century, and took permanent foothold in the Reformed churches.

Pope Leo I. is sometimes likewise numbered with the symbolists, but without good reason. He calls the communion a "spiritual food,"1025 as Athanasius had done before, but supposes a sort of assimilation of the flesh and blood of Christ by the believing participation. "What we believe, that we receive with the mouth .... The participation of the body and blood of Christ causes that we pass into that which we receive, and bear Christ in us in Spirit and body."  Voluntary abstinence from the wine in the Supper was as yet considered by this pope a sin.1026

III. The old liturgies, whose testimony on this point is as important as that of the church fathers, presuppose the actual presence of Christ in the Supper, but speak throughout in the stately language of sentiment, and nowhere attempt an explanation of the nature and mode of this presence, and of its relation to the still visible forms of bread and wine. They use concerning the consecrated elements such terms as: The holy body, The dear blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ, The sanctified oblation, The heavenly, spotless, glorious, awful, divine gifts, The awful, unbloody, holy sacrifice, &c. In the act of consecration the liturgies pray for the sending down of the Holy Ghost, that he may "sanctify and perfect"1027 the bread and wine, or that he may sanctify and make "them the body and blood of Christ,1028 or bless and make."1029

IV. As to the adoration of the consecrated elements: This follows with logical necessity from the doctrine of transubstantiation, and is the sure touchstone of it. No trace of such adoration appears, however, in the ancient liturgies, and the whole patristic literature yields only four passages from which this practice can be inferred; plainly showing that the doctrine of transubstantiation was not yet fixed in the consciousness of the church.

Chrysostom says: "The wise men adored Christ in the manger; we see him not in the manger, but on the altar, and should pay him still greater homage."1030  Theodoret, in the passage already cited, likewise uses the term proskuvnei'n, but at the same time expressly asserts the continuance of the substance of the elements. Ambrose speaks once of the flesh of Christ "which we to-day adore in the mysteries,"1031 and Augustine, of an adoration preceding the participation of the flesh of Christ.1032

In all these passages we must, no doubt, take the term proskunei'n  and adorare in the wider sense, and distinguish the bowing of the knee, which was so frequent, especially in the East, as a mere mark of respect, from proper adoration. The old liturgies contain no direction for any such act of adoration as became prevalent in the Latin church, with the elevation of the host, after the triumph of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the twelfth century.1033

§ 96. The Sacrifice of the Eucharist.

Besides the works already cited on the holy Supper, comp. Höfling: Die Lehre der ältesten Kirche vom Opfer im Leben u. Cultus der Kirche. Erlangen, 1851. The articles: Messe, Messopfer, in Wetzer u. Welte: Kirchenlexicon der kathol. Theologie, vol. vii. (1851), p. 83 ff. G. E. Steitz: Art. Messe u. Messopfer in Herzog’s Protest. Real-Encyklopädie, vol. ix. (1858), pp. 375–408. Phil. Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. Part ii. Oxf. and Lond. 1862. This last work sets out with a very full consideration of the Mosaic sacrificial cultus, and (in the Pref. p. vi.) unjustly declares all the earlier English and German works of Mede, Outram, Patrick, Magee, Bähr, Hengstenberg, and Kurtz, on this subject, entirely unsatisfactory and defective.

The Catholic church, both Greek and Latin, sees in the Eucharist not only a sacramentum, in which God communicates a grace to believers, but at the same time, and in fact mainly, a sacrificium, in which believers really offer to God that which is represented by the sensible elements. For this view also the church fathers laid the foundation, and it must be conceded they stand in general far more on the Greek and Roman Catholic than on the Protestant side of this question. The importance of the subject demands a preliminary explanation of the idea of sacrifice, and a clear discrimination of its original Christian form from its later perversion by tradition.

The idea of sacrifice is the centre of all ancient religions, both the heathen and the Jewish. In Christianity it is fulfilled. For by His one perfect sacrifice on the cross Christ has entirely blotted out the guilt of man, and reconciled him with the righteous God. On the ground of this sacrifice of the eternal High Priest, believers have access to the throne of grace, and may expect their prayers and intercessions to be heard. With this perfect and eternally availing sacrifice the Eucharist stands in indissoluble connection. It is indeed originally a sacrament and the main thing in it is that which we receive from God, not that which we give to God. The latter is only a consequence of the former; for we can give to God nothing which we have not first received from him. But the Eucharist is the sacramentum of a sacrificium, the thankful celebration of the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross, and the believing participation or the renewed appropriation of the fruits of this sacrifice. In other words, it is a feast on a sacrifice. "As oft as ye do eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come."

The Eucharist is moreover, as the name itself implies, on the part of the church a living and reasonable thank-offering, wherein she presents herself anew, in Christ and on the ground of his sacrifice, to God with prayers and intercessions. For only in Christ are our offerings acceptable to God, and only through the continual showing forth and presenting of His merit can we expect our prayers and intercessions to be heard.

In this view certainly, in a deep symbolical and ethical sense, Christ is offered to God the Father in every believing prayer, and above all in the holy Supper; i.e. as the sole ground of our reconciliation and acceptance. This is the deep truth which lies at the bottom of the Catholic mass, and gives it still such power over the religious mind.1034

But this idea in process of time became adulterated with foreign elements, and transformed into the Graeco-Roman doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. According to this doctrine the Eucharist is an unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ by the priesthood for the salvation of the living and the dead; so that the body of Christ is truly and literally offered every day and every hour, and upon innumerable altars at the same time. The term mass, which properly denoted the dismissal of the congregation (missio, dismissio) at the close of the general public worship, became, after the end of the fourth century, the name for the worship of the faithful,1035 which consisted in the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the communion. The corresponding terms of the Orientals are leitourgiva, qusiva, prosforav.

In the sacrifice of the mass the whole mysterious fulness and glory of the Catholic worship is concentrated. Here the idea of the priesthood reaches its dizzy summit; and here the devotion and awe of the spectators rises to the highest pitch of adoration. For to the devout Catholic nothing can be greater or more solemn than an act of worship in which the eternal Son of God is veritably offered to God upon the altar by the visible hand of the priest for the sins of the world. But though the Catholic worship here rises far above the vain sacrifices of heathendom and the merely typical sacrifices of Judaism, yet that old sacrificial service, which was interwoven with the whole popular life of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world, exerted a controlling influence on the Roman Catholic service of the Eucharist, especially after the nominal conversion of the whole Roman heathendom, and obscured the original simplicity and purity of that service almost beyond recognition. The sacramentum became entirely eclipsed by the sacrificium, and the sacrificium became grossly materialized, and was exalted at the expense of the sacrifice on the cross. The endless succession of necessary repetitions detracts from the sacrifice of Christ.

The Biblical support of the sacrifice of the mass is weak, and may be reduced to an unduly literal interpretation or a downright perversion of some such passages as Mal. i. 10 f.; 1 Cor. x. 21; Heb. v. 6; vii. 1 f.; xiii. 10. The Epistle to the Hebrews especially is often misapplied, though it teaches with great emphasis the very opposite, viz., the abolition of the Old Testament sacrificial system by the Christian worship, the eternal validity of the sacrifice of our only High Priest on the right hand of the Father, and the impossibility of a repetition of it (comp. x. 14; vii. 23, 24).

We pass now to the more particular history. The ante-Nicene fathers uniformly conceived the Eucharist as a thank-offering of the church; the congregation offering the consecrated elements of bread and wine, and in them itself, to God.1036  This view is in itself perfectly innocent, but readily leads to the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, as soon as the elements become identified with the body and blood of Christ, and the presence of the body comes to be materialistically taken. The germs of the Roman doctrine appear in Cyprian about the middle of the third century, in connection with his high-churchly doctrine of the clerical priesthood. Sacerdotium and sacrificium are with him correlative ideas, and a Judaizing conception of the former favored a like Judaizing conception of the latter. The priest officiates in the Eucharist in the place of Christ,1037 and performs an actual sacrifice in the church.1038  Yet Cyprian does not distinctly say that Christ is the subject of the spiritual sacrifice; rather is the mystical body of Christ, the Church, offered to God, and married with Christ.1039

The doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass is much further developed in the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers, though amidst many obscurities and rhetorical extravagances, and with much wavering between symbolical and grossly realistic conceptions, until in all essential points it is brought to its settlement by Gregory the Great at the close of the sixth century. These points are the following:

1. The eucharistic sacrifice is the most solemn mystery of the church, and fills the faithful with a holy awe. Hence the predicates qusiva fobera;, frikth;, ajnaivmakto", sacrificium tremendum, which are frequently applied to it, especially in the Oriental liturgies and homilies. Thus it is said in the liturgy of St. James: "We offer to Thee, O Lord, this awful and unbloody sacrifice."  The more surprising is it that the people should have been indifferent to so solemn an act, and that Chrysostom should lament: "In vain is the daily sacrifice, in vain stand we at the altar; there is no one to take part."1040

2. It is not a new sacrifice added to that of the cross, but a daily, unbloody repetition and perpetual application of that one only sacrifice. Augustine represents it, on the one hand, as a sacramentum memoriae a symbolical commemoration of the sacrificial death of Christ; to which of course there is no objection.1041  But, on the other hand, he calls the celebration of the communion verissimum sacrificium of the body of Christ. The church, he says, offers (immolat) to God the sacrifice of thanks in the body of Christ, from the days of the apostles through the sure succession of the bishops down to our time. But the church at the same time offers, with Christ, herself, as the body of Christ, to God. As all are one body, so also all are together the same sacrifice.1042  According to Chrysostom the same Christ, and the whole Christ, is everywhere offered. It is not a different sacrifice from that which the High Priest formerly offered, but we offer always the same sacrifice, or rather, we perform a memorial of this sacrifice.1043  This last clause would decidedly favor a symbolical conception, if Chrysostom in other places had not used such strong expressions as this: "When thou seest the Lord slain, and lying there, and the priest standing at the sacrifice," or: "Christ lies slain upon the altar."1044

3. The sacrifice is the anti-type of the Mosaic sacrifice, and is related to it as substance to typical shadows. It is also especially foreshadowed by Melchizedek’s unbloody offering of bread and wine. The sacrifice of Melchizedek is therefore made of great account by Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other church fathers, on the strength of the well-known parallel in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

4. The subject of the sacrifice is the body of Jesus Christ, which is as truly present on the altar of the church, as it once was on the altar of the cross, and which now offers itself to God through his priest. Hence the frequent language of the liturgies: "Thou art he who offerest, and who art offered, O Christ, our God."  Augustine, however, connects with this, as we have already said, the true and important moral idea of the self-sacrifice of the whole redeemed church to God. The prayers of the liturgies do the same.1045

5. The offering of the sacrifice is the exclusive prerogative of the Christian priest. Later Roman divines take the words: "This do (poiei'te) in remembrance of me," as equivalent to: "This offer," and limit this command to the apostles and their successors in office, whereas it is evidently an exhortation to all believers to the commemoration of the atoning death, the communio sacramenti, and not to the immolatio sacrificii.

6. The sacrifice is efficacious for the whole body of the church, including its departed members, in procuring the gifts which are implored in the prayers of the service.

All the old liturgies proceed under a conviction of the unbroken communion of saints, and contain commemorations and intercessions for the departed fathers and brethren, who are conceived to be, not in purgatory, but in communion with God and in a condition of progressive holiness and blessedness, looking forward in pious longing to the great day of consummation.

These prayers for an increase of bliss, which appeared afterwards very inappropriate, form the transition from the original simple commemoration of the departed saints, including the patriarchs, prophets and apostles, to intercessions for the suffering souls in purgatory, as used in the Roman church ever since the sixth century.1046  In the liturgy of Chrysostom, still in use in the Greek and Russian church, the commemoration of the departed reads. "And further we offer to thee this reasonable service on behalf of those who have departed in the faith, our ancestors, Fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Preachers, Evangelists, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, and every just spirit made perfect in the faith .... Especially the most holy, undefiled, excellently laudable, glorious Lady, the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary .... the holy John the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, the holy, glorious and all-celebrated Apostles, and all thy Saints, through whose prayers look upon us, O God. And remember all those that are departed in the hope of the resurrection to eternal life, and give them rest where the light of Thy countenance shines upon them."

Cyril of Jerusalem, in his fifth and last mystagogic Catechesis, which is devoted to the consideration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the liturgical service of God, gives the following description of the eucharistic intercessions for the departed: "When the spiritual sacrifice, the unbloody service of God, is performed, we pray to God over this atoning sacrifice for the universal peace of the church, for the welfare of the world, for the emperor, for soldiers and prisoners, for the sick and afflicted, for all the poor and needy. Then we commemorate also those who sleep, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, that God through their prayers and their intercessions may receive our prayer; and in general we pray for all who have gone from us, since we believe that it is of the greatest help to those souls for whom the prayer is offered, while the holy sacrifice, exciting a holy awe, lies before us."1047

This is clearly an approach to the later idea of purgatory in the Latin church. Even St. Augustine, with Tertullian, teaches plainly, as an old tradition, that the eucharistic sacrifice, the intercessions or suffragia and alms, of the living are of benefit to the departed believers, so that the Lord deals more mercifully with them than their sins deserve.1048  His noble mother, Monica, when dying, told him he might bury her body where he pleased, and should give himself no concern for it, only she begged of him that he would remember her soul at the altar of the Lord.1049

With this is connected the idea of a repentance and purification in the intermediate state between death and resurrection, which likewise Augustine derives from Matt. xii. 32, and 1 Cor. iii. 15, yet mainly as a mere opinion.1050  From these and similar passages, and under the influence of previous Jewish and heathen ideas and customs, arose, after Gregory the Great, the Roman doctrine of the purgatorial fire for imperfect believers who still need to be purified from the dross of their sins before they are fit for heaven, and the institution of special masses for the dead, in which the perversion of the thankful remembrance of the one eternally availing sacrifice of Christ reaches its height, and the idea of the communion utterly disappears.1051

In general, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper the sacrament continually retired behind the sacrifice. In the Roman churches in all countries one may see and hear splendid masses at the high altar, where the congregation of the faithful, instead of taking part in the communion, are mere spectators of the sacrificial act of the priest. The communion is frequently despatched at a side altar at an early hour in the morning.

§ 97. The Celebration o f the Eucharist.

Comp. the Liturgical Literature cited in the next section, especially the works of Daniel, Neale, and Freeman.

The celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and of the communion was the centre and summit of the public worship of the Lord’s day, and all other parts of worship served as preparation and accompaniment. The old liturgies are essentially, and almost exclusively, eucharistic prayers and exercises; they contain nothing besides, except some baptismal formulas and prayers for the catechumens. The word liturgy (leitourgiva), which properly embraces all parts of the worship of God, denotes in the narrower sense a celebration of the eucharist or the mass.

Here lies a cardinal difference between the Catholic and Evangelical cultus: in the former the sacrifice of the mass, in the latter the sermon, is the centre.

With all variations in particulars, especially in the introductory portions, the old Catholic liturgies agree in the essential points, particularly in the prayers which immediately precede and follow the consecration of the elements. They all (excepting some Syriac copies of certain Nestorian and Monophysite formularies) repeat the solemn Words of Institution from the Gospels,1052 understanding them not merely in a declaratory but in an operative sense; they all contain the acts of Consecration, Intercession, and Communion; all (except the Roman) invoke the Holy Ghost upon the elements to sanctify them, and make them actual vehicles of the body and blood of Christ; all conceive the Eucharist primarily as a sacrifice, and then, on the basis of the sacrifice, as a communion.

The eucharistic action in the narrower sense is called the Anaphora, or the canon missae, and begins after the close of the service of the catechumens (which consisted principally of reading and preaching, and extended to the Offertory, i.e., the preparation of the bread and wine, and the placing of it on the altar). It is introduced with the  [Anw ta;" kardiva", or Sursum corda, of the priest: the exhortation to the faithful to lift up their hearts in devotion, and take part in the prayers; to which the congregation answers: Habemus ad Dominum, "We lift them up unto the Lord."  Then follows the exhortation: "Let us give thanks to the Lord," with the response: "It is meet and right."1053

The first principal act of the Anaphora is the great prayer of thanksgiving, the eujlogiva or eujcaristiva, after the example of the Saviour in the institution of the Supper. In this prayer the priest thanks God for all the gifts of creation and of redemption, and the choir generally concludes the thanksgiving with the so-called Trisagion or Seraphic Hymn (Is. vi. 3), and the triumphal Hosanna (Matt. xx. 9): "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest: blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest."

Then follows the consecration and oblation of the elements, by the commemoration of the great facts in the life of Christ, by the rehearsing of the Words of Institution from the Gospels or from Paul, and by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, who brings to pass the mysterious change of the bread and wine into the sacramental body and blood of Christ.1054  This invocation of the Holy Ghost1055 appears in all the Oriental liturgies, but is wanting in the Latin church, which ascribes the consecration exclusively to the virtue of Christ’s Words of Institution. The form of the Words of Institution is different in the different liturgies.1056  The elevation of the consecrated elements was introduced in the Latin church, though not till after the Berengarian controversies in the eleventh century, to give the people occasion to show, by the adoration of the host, their faith in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament.

To add an example: The prayer of consecration and oblation in one of the oldest and most important of the liturgies, that of St. James, runs thus: After the Words of Institution the priest proceeds:

"Priest: We sinners, remembering His life-giving passion, His saving cross, His death, and His resurrection from the dead on the third day, His ascension to heaven, and His sitting at the right hand of Thee His God and Father, and His glorious and terrible second appearing, when He shall come in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to render to every man according to his works,—offer to Thee, O Lord, this awful and unbloody sacrifice;1057 beseeching Thee that Thou wouldst deal with us not after our sins nor reward us according to our iniquities, but according to Thy goodness and unspeakable love to men wouldst blot out the handwriting which is against us Thy suppliants, and wouldst vouchsafe to us Thy heavenly and eternal gifts, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what Thou, O God, hast prepared for them that love Thee. And reject not Thy people, O loving Lord, for my sake and on account of my sins.

He repeats thrice: For Thy people and Thy Church prayeth to Thee.

People: Have mercy upon us, O Lord God, almighty Father!

Priest: Have mercy upon us, almighty God!

Have mercy upon us, O God, our Redeemer I

Have mercy upon us, O God, according to Thy great mercy, and send upon us, and upon these gifts here present, Thy most holy Spirit, Lord, Giver of life, who with Thee the God and Father, and with Thine only begotten Son, sitteth and reigneth upon one throne, and is of the same essence and co-eternal,1058 who spoke in the law and in the prophets, and in Thy new covenant, who descended in the form of a dove upon our Lord Jesus Christ in the river Jordan, and rested upon Him, who came down upon Thy holy apostles in the form of tongues of fire in the upper room of Thy holy and glorious Zion on the day of Pentecost: send down, O Lord, the same Holy Ghost upon us and upon these holy gifts here present, that with His holy and good and glorious presence He may sanctify this bread and make it the holy body of Thy Christ.1059

People: Amen.

Priest: And this cup the dear blood of Thy Christ.

People: Amen.

Priest (in a low voice): That they may avail to those who receive them, for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life, for the sanctification of soul and body, for the bringing forth of good works, for the strengthening of Thy holy Catholic church which Thou hast built upon the rock of faith, that the gates of hell may not prevail against her; delivering her from all error and all scandal, and from the ungodly, and preserving her unto the consummation of all things."

After the act of consecration come the intercessions, sometimes very long, for the church, for all classes, for the living, and for the dead from righteous Abel to Mary, the apostles, the martyrs, and the saints in Paradise; and finally the Lord’s Prayer. To the several intercessions, and the Lord’s Prayer, the people or the choir responds Amen. With this closes the act of eucharistic sacrifice.

Now follows the communion, or the participation of the consecrated elements. It is introduced with the words: "Holy things for holy persons,"1060 and the Kyrie eleison, or (as in the Clementine liturgy) the Gloria in Excelsis: "Glory be to God on high, peace on earth, and good will to men.1061  Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: God is the Lord, and he hath appeared among us."  The bishop and the clergy communicate first, and then the people. The formula of distribution in the Clementine liturgy is simply: "The body of Christ;" "The blood of Christ, the cup of life,"1062 to which the receiver answers "Amen."  In other liturgies it is longer.1063

The holy act closes with prayers of thanksgiving, psalms, and the benediction.

The Eucharist was celebrated daily, or at least every Sunday. The people were exhorted to frequent communion, especially on the high festivals. In North Africa some communed every day, others every Sunday, others still less frequently.1064  Augustine leaves this to the needs of every believer, but says in one place: "The Eucharist is our daily bread."  The daily communion was connected with the current mystical interpretation of the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Basil communed four times in the week. Gennadius of Massilia commends at least weekly communion. In the East it seems to have been the custom, after the fourth century, to commune only once a year, or on great occasions. Chrysostom often complains of the indifference of those who come to church only to hear the sermon, or who attend the eucharistic sacrifice, but do not commune. One of his allusions to this neglect we have already quoted. Some later councils threatened all laymen with excommunication, who did not commune at least on Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

In the Oriental and North African churches prevailed the incongruous custom of infant communion, which seemed to follow from infant baptism, and was advocated by Augustine and Innocent I. on the authority of John vi. 53. In the Greek church this custom continues to this day, but in the Latin, after the ninth century, it was disputed or forbidden, because the apostle (1 Cor. xi. 28, 29) requires self-examination as the condition of worthy participation.1065

With this custom appear the first instances, and they exceptional, of a communio sub una specie; after a little girl in Carthage in the time of Cyprian had been made drunk by receiving the wine. But the withholding of the cup from the laity, which transgresses the express command of the Lord: "Drink ye all of it," and is associated with a superstitious horror of profaning the blood of the Lord by spilling, and with the development of the power of the priesthood, dates only from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was then justified by the scholastic doctrine of concomitance.

In the Greek church it was customary to dip the bread in the wine, and deliver both elements in a spoon.

The customs of house-communion and after-communion for the sick and for prisoners, of distributing the unconsecrated remainder of the bread among the non-communicants, and of sending the consecrated elements, or their substitutes,1066 to distant bishops or churches at Easter as a token of fellowship, are very old.

The Greek church used leavened bread, the Latin, unleavened. This difference ultimately led to intricate controversies.

The mixing of the wine with water was considered essential, and was explained in various mystical ways; chiefly by reference to the blood and water which flowed from the side of Jesus on the cross.

§ 98. The Liturgies. Their Origin and Contents.

J. Goar. (a learned Dominican, † 1653): Eujcolovgion, sive Rituale Graecorum, etc. Gr. et Lat. Par. 1647 (another ed. at Venice, 1740). Jos. Aloys. Assemani (R.C.): Codex Liturgicus ecclesiae universae, ... in quo continentur libri rituales, missales, pontificales, officia, dypticha, etc., ecclesiarum Occidentis et Orientis (published under the auspices of Pope Boniface XIV.). Rom. 1749–’66, 13 vols. Euseb. Renaudot (R.C.): Liturgiarum orientalium collectio. Par. 1716 (reprinted 1847), 2 vols. L. A. Muratori (R.C., † 1750): Liturgia Romana vetus. Venet. 1748, 2 vols. (contains the three Roman sacramentaries of Leo, Gelasius, and Gregory I., also the Missale Gothicum, and a learned introductory dissertation, De rebus liturgicis). W. Palmer (Anglican): Origines Liturgicae. Lond. 1832 (and 1845), 2 vols. (with special reference to the Anglican liturgy). Ths. Brett: A Collection of the Principal Liturgies used in the Christian Church in the celebration of the Eucharist, particularly the ancient (translated into English), with a Dissertation upon them. Lond. 1838 (pp. 465). W. Trollope (Anglican): The Greek Liturgy of St. James. Edinb. 1848. H. A. Daniel (Lutheran, the most learned German liturgist): Codex Liturgicus ecclesiae universae in epitomem redactus. Lips. 1847 sqq. 4 vols. (vol. i. contains the Roman, vol. iv. the Oriental Liturgies). Fr. J. Mone (R.C.): Lateinische u. Griechische Messen aus dem 2ten his 6ten Jahrhundert. Frankf. a. M. 1850 (with valuable treatises on the Gallican, African, and Roman Mass). J. M. Neale († 1866, the most learned Anglican ritualist and liturgist, who studied the Eastern liturgies daily for thirty years, and almost knew them by heart); Tetralogia liturgica; sive S. Chrysostom, S. Jacobi, S. Marci divinae missae: quibus accedit ordo Mozarabicus. Lond. 1849. The Same: The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, or according to the use of the churches of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople. Lond. 1859 f. (in the Greek original, and the same liturgies in an English translation, with an introduction and appendices, also at Lond. 1859). Comp. also Neale’s History of the Holy Eastern Church. Lond. 1850; Gen. Introd. vol. second; and his Essays on Liturgiology and Church History. Lond. 1863. (The latter, dedicated to the metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, is a collection of various learned treatises of the author from the "Christian Remembrancer" on the Roman and Gallican Breviary, the Church Collects, the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Liturgies, Liturgical Quotations, etc.)  The already cited work, of kindred spirit, by the English Episcopal divine, Freeman, likewise treats much of the old Liturgies, with a predilection for the Western, while Neale has an especial reverence for the Eastern ritual. (Comp. also Bunsen: Christianity and Mankind, Lond. 1854, vol. vii., which contains Reliquiae Liturgicae; the Irvingite work: Readings upon the Liturgy and other Divine Offices of the Church. Lond. 1848–’54; Höfling: Liturgisches Urkundenbuch. Leipz. 1854.)

Liturgy1067 means, in ecclesiastical language,1068 the order and administration of public worship in general, and the celebration of the Eucharist in particular; then, the book or collection of the prayers used in this celebration. The Latin church calls the public eucharistic service Mass, and the liturgical books,  sacramentarium, rituale, missale, also libri mysteriorum, or simply libelli.

The Jewish worship consisted more of acts than of words, but it included also fixed prayers and psalms (as Ps. 113–118) and the Amen of the congregation (Comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 16). The pagan Greeks and Romans had, in connection with their sacrifices, some fixed prayers and formulas of consecration, which, however, were not written) but perpetuated by oral tradition. The Indian literature, on the contrary, has liturgical books, and even the Koran contains prescribed forms of prayer.

The New Testament gives us neither a liturgy nor a ritual, but the main elements for both. The Lord’s Prayer, and the Words of the Institution of baptism and of the Holy Supper, are the living germs from which the best prayers and baptismal and eucharistic formulas of the church, whether oral or written, have grown. From the confession of Peter and the formula of baptism gradually arose in the Western church the Apostles’ Creed, which besides its doctrinal import, has also a liturgical office, as a public profession of candidates for baptism and of the faithful. In the Eastern church the Nicene creed is used instead. The Song of the angelic host is the ground-work of the Gloria in Excelsis. The Apocalypse is one sublime liturgic vision. With these belong also the Psalms, which have passed as a legitimate inheritance to the Christian church, and have afforded at all times the richest material for public edification.

In the ante-Nicene age we find as yet no traces of liturgical books. In each church, of course, a fixed order of worship gradually formed itself, which in apostolic congregations ran back to a more or less apostolic origin, but became enlarged and altered in time, and, until the fourth century, was perpetuated only by oral tradition. For the celebration of the sacraments, especially of the Eucharist, belonged to the Disciplina arcani, and was concealed, as the most holy thing of the church, from the gaze of Jews and heathens, and even of catechumens, for fear of profanation; through a misunderstanding of the warning of the Lord against casting pearls before swine, and after the example of the Samothracian and Eleusinian mysteries.1069  On the downfall of heathenism in the Roman empire the Disciplina arcani gradually disappeared, and the administration of the sacraments became a public act, open to all.

Hence also we now find, from the fourth and fifth centuries onward, a great number of written liturgies, and that not only in the orthodox catholic church, but also among the schismatics (as among the Nestorians, and the Monophysites). These liturgies bear in most cases apostolic names, but in their present form can no more be of apostolic origin than the so-called Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, nor nearly so much as the Apostles’ Creed. They contrast too strongly with the simplicity of the original Christian worship, so far as we can infer it from the New Testament and from the writings of the apologists and the ante-Nicene fathers. They contain also theological terms, such as oJmoouvsio" (concerning the Son of God), qeotovko" (concerning the Virgin Mary), and some of them the whole Nicene Creed with the additions of the second oecumenical council of 381, also allusions to the worship of martyrs and saints, and to monasticism, which point unmistakably to the Nicene and post-Nicene age. Yet they are based on a common liturgical tradition, which in its essential elements reaches back to an earlier time, perhaps in some points to the apostolic age, or even comes down from the Jewish worship through the channel of the Jewish Christian congregations. Otherwise their affinity, which in many respects reminds one of the affinity of the Synoptical Gospels cannot be satisfactorily explained. These old catholic liturgies differ from one another in the wording, the number, the length, and the order of the prayers, and in other unessential points, but agree in the most important parts of the service of the Eucharist. They are too different to be derived from a common original, and yet too similar to have arisen each entirely by itself.1070

All the old liturgies combine action and prayer, and presuppose, according to the Jewish custom, the participation of the people, who frequently respond to the prayers of the priest, and thereby testify their own priestly character. These responses are sometimes a simple Amen, sometimes Kyrie eleison, sometimes a sort of dialogue with the priest:

Priest: The Lord be with you!

People: And with thy spirit!

Priest: Lift—up your hearts!

People: We lift them up unto the Lord.

Priest: Let us give thanks!

People: It is meet and right.

Some parts of the liturgy, as the Creed, the Seraphic Hymn, the Lord’s Prayer, were said or sung by the priest and congregation together. Originally the whole congregation of the faithful1071 was intended to respond; but with the advance of the hierarchical principle the democratic and popular element fell away, and the deacons or the choir assumed the responses of the congregation, especially where the liturgical language was not intelligible to the people.1072

Several of the oldest liturgies, like those of St. Clement and St. James, have long since gone out of use, and have only a historical interest. Others, like those of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and the Roman, are still used, with various changes and additions made at various times, in the Greek and Latin churches. Many of their most valuable parts have passed, through the medium of the Latin mass-books, into the liturgies and agenda of the Anglican, the Lutheran, and some of the Reformed churches.

But in general they breathe an entirely different atmosphere from the Protestant liturgies, even the Anglican not excepted. For in them all the eucharistic sacrifice is the centre around which all the prayers and services revolve. This act of sacrifice for the quick and the dead is a complete service, the sermon being entirely unessential, and in fact usually dispensed with. In Protestantism, on the contrary, the Lord’s Supper is almost exclusively Communion, and the sermon is the chief matter in every ordinary service.

Between the Oriental and Occidental liturgies there are the following characteristic differences:

1. The Eastern retain the ante-Nicene division of public worship into two parts: the leitourgiva kathcoumevnwn, Missa Catechumenorum, which is mainly didactic, and the leitourgiva tw'n pistw'n, Missa Fidelium, which contains the celebration of the Eucharist proper. This division lost its primitive import upon the union of church and state, and the universal introduction of infant baptism. The Latin liturgies connect the two parts in one whole.

2. The Eastern liturgies contain, after the Words of Institution, an express Invocation of the Holy Ghost, without which the sanctification of the elements is not fully effected. Traces of this appear in the Gallican liturgies. But in the Roman liturgy this invocation is entirely wanting, and the sanctification of the elements is considered as effected by the priest’s rehearsal of the Words of Institution. This has remained a point of dispute between the Greek and the Roman churches. Gregory the Great asserts that the apostles used nothing in the consecration but the Words of Institution and the Lord’s Prayer.1073  But whence could he know this in the sixth century, since the New Testament gives us no information on the subject?  An invocatio Spiritus Sancti upon the elements is nowhere mentioned; only a thanksgiving of the Lord, preceding the Words of Institution, and forming also, it may be, an act of consecration, though neither in the sense of the Greek nor of the Roman church. The Words of Institution: "This is my body," &c., are more-over addressed not to God, but to the disciples, and express, so to speak, the result of the Lord’s benediction.1074 3. The Oriental liturgy allowed, more like the Protestant church, the use of the various vernaculars, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, &c.; while the Roman mass, in its desire for uniformity, sacrifices all vernacular tongues to the Latin, and so makes itself unintelligible to the people.

4. The Oriental liturgy is, so to speak, a symbolic drama of the history of redemption, repeated with little alteration every Sunday. The preceding vespers represent the creation, the fall, and the earnest expectation of Christ; the principal service on Sunday morning exhibits the life of Christ from his birth to his ascension; and the prayers and lessons are accompanied by corresponding symbolical acts of the priests and deacon: lighting and extinguishing candles, opening and closing doors, kissing the altar and the gospel, crossing the forehead, mouth, and breast, swinging the censer, frequent change of liturgical vestments, processions, genuflexions, and prostrations. The whole orthodox Greek and Russian worship has a strongly marked Oriental character, and exceeds the Roman in splendor and pomp of symbolical ceremonial.1075

The Roman mass is also a dramatic commemoration and representation of the history of redemption, especially of the passion and atoning death of Christ, but has a more didactic character, and sets forth not so much the objective history, as the subjective application of redemption from the Confiteor to the Postcommunio. It affords less room for symbolical action, but more for word and song, and follows more closely the course of the church year with varying collects and prefaces for the high festivals,1076 thus gaining variety. In this it stands the nearer to the Protestant worship, which, however, entirely casts off symbolical veils, and makes the sermon the centre.

Every Oriental liturgy has two main divisions. The first embraces the prayers and acts before the Anaphora or Oblation (canon Missae) to the Sursum corda; the second, the Anaphora to the close.

The first division again falls into the Mass of the Catechumens, and the Mass of the Faithful, to the Sursum corda. To it belong the Prefatory Prayer, the Introit, Ingressa, or Antiphon, the Little Entrance, the Trisagion, the Scripture Lessons, the Prayers after the Gospel, and the Expulsion of the Catechumens; then the Prayers of the Faithful, the Great Entrance, the Offertory, the Kiss of Peace, the Creed.

The Anaphora comprises the great Eucharistic Prayer of Thanksgiving, the Commemoration of the life of Jesus, the Words of Institution, the Oblation of the Elements, the Invocation of the Holy Ghost, the Great Intercession for Quick and Dead, the Lord’s Prayer, and finally the Communion with its proper prayers and acts, the Thanksgiving, and the Dismissal.1077

§ 99. The Oriental Liturgies.

There are, in all, probably more than a hundred ancient liturgies, if we reckon revisals, modifications, and translations. But according to modern investigations they may all be reduced to five or six families, which may be named after the churches in which they originated and were used, Jerusalem (or Antioch), Alexandria, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Rome.1078  Most of them belong to the Orientalchurch; for this church was in general much more productive, and favored greater variety, than the Western, which sought uniformity in organization and worship. And among the Oriental liturgies the Greek are the oldest and most important.

1. The liturgy of St. Clement. This is found in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, and, with them, is erroneously ascribed to the Roman bishop Clement.1079  It is the oldest complete order of divine service, and was probably composed in the East in the beginning of the fourth century.1080  It agrees most with the liturgy of St. James and of Cyril of Jerusalem, and may for this reason be considered a branch of the Jerusalem family. We know not in what churches, or whether at all, it was used. It was a sort of normal liturgy, and is chiefly valuable for showing the difference between the Nicene or ante-Nicene form of worship and the later additions and alterations.

The Clementine liturgy rigidly separates the service of the catechumens from that of the faithful.1081  It contains the simplest form for the distribution of the sacred elements: "The body of Christ," and "The blood of Christ, the cup of life," with the "Amen" of the congregation to each. In the commemoration of the departed it mentions no particular names of saints, not even the mother of God, who first found a place in public worship after the council of Ephesus in 431; and it omits several prefatory prayers of the priest. Finally it lacks the Nicene creed, and even the Lord’s Prayer, which is added to all other eucharistic prayers, and, according to the principles of some canonists, is absolutely necessary.1082

2. The liturgy of St. James. This is ascribed by tradition to James, the brother to the Lord, and bishop of Jerusalem.1083  It, of course, cannot have been composed by him, even considering only the Nicene creed and the expressions oJmoouvsio" and qeotovko", which occur in it, and which belong to the Nicene and post-Nicene theology. The following passage also bespeaks a much later origin: "Let us remember the most holy, immaculate, most glorious, blessed Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary, with all saints, that we through their prayers and intercessions may obtain mercy."  The first express mention of its use meets us in Proclus of Constantinople about the middle of the fifth century. But it is, as to substance, at all events one of the oldest liturgies, and must have been in use as early as the fourth century; for the liturgical quotations in Cyril of Jerusalem (in his fifth Mystagogic Catechesis), who died in 386, verbally agree with it. It was intended for the church of Jerusalem, which is mentioned in the beginning of the prayer for the church universal, as "the glorious Zion, the mother of all churches."1084

In contents and diction it is the most important of the ancient liturgies, and the fruitful mother of many, among which the liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom must be separately named.1085  It spread over the whole patriarchate of Antioch, even to Cyprus, Sicily, and Calabria, but was supplanted in the orthodox East, after the Mohammedan conquest, by the Byzantine liturgy. Only once in a year, on the 23d of October, the festival of St. James, it is yet used at Jerusalem and on some islands of Greece.1086

The Syriac liturgy of James is a free translation from the Greek; it gives the Invocation of the Holy Spirit in a larger form, the other prayers in a shorter; and it betrays a later date. It is the source of thirty-nine Monophysite liturgies, which are in use still among the schismatic Syrians or Jacobites.1087

3. The liturgy of St. Mark, or the Alexandrian liturgy. This is ascribed to the well-known Evangelist, who was also, according to tradition, the founder of the church and catechetical school in the Egyptian capital. Such origin involves, of course, a shocking anachronism, since the liturgy contains the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381. In its present form it comes probably from Cyril, bishop of Alexandria († 444), who was claimed by the orthodox, as well as the Monophysites, as an advocate of their doctrine of the person of Christ.1088  It agrees, at any rate, exactly with the liturgy which bears Cyril’s name.

It is distinguished from the other liturgies by the position of the great intercessory prayer for quick and dead before the Words of Institution and Invocation of the Holy Ghost, instead of after them. It was originally composed in Greek, and afterwards translated into Coptic and Arabic. It was used in Egypt till the twelfth century, and then supplanted by the Byzantine. The Copts still retained it. The Ethiopian canon is an offshoot from it. There are three Coptic and ten Ethiopian liturgies, which belong to the same family.1089

4. The liturgy of Edessa or Mesopotamia, or of All Apostles. This is traced to the apostles Thaddaeus (Adaeus) and Maris, and is confined to the Nestorians. From it afterwards proceeded the Nestorian liturgies: (1) of Theodore the Interpreter; (2) of Nestorius; (3) Narses the Leper; (4) of Barsumas; (5) of Malabar, or St. Thomas. The liturgy of the Thomas-Christians of Malabar has been much adulterated by the revisers of Diamper.1090

5. The liturgy of St. Basil and that of St. Chrysostom form together the Byzantine or ConstantinopolItan liturgy, and passed at the same time into the Graeco-Russian church. Both descend from the liturgy of St. James and give that ritual in an abridged form. They are living books, not dead like the liturgies of Clement and of James.

The liturgy of bishop Basil of Neo-Caesarea († 379) is read in the orthodox Greek, and Russian church, during Lent (except on Palm Sunday), on the eve of Epiphany, Easter and Christmas, and on the feast of St. Basil (1st of January). From it proceeded the Armenian liturgy.

The liturgy of St. Chrysostom († 407) is used on all other Sundays. It is an abridgment and improvement of that of St. Basil, and, through the influence of the distinguished patriarchs of Constantinople, it has since the sixth century dislodged the liturgies of St. James and St. Mark. The original text can hardly be ascertained, as the extant copies differ greatly from one another.

The present Greek and Russian ritual, which surpasses even the Roman in pomp, cannot possibly have come down in all its details from the age of Chrysostom. Chrysostom is indeed supposed, as Proclus says, to have shortened in many respects the worship in Constantinople on account of the weakness of human nature; but the liturgy which bears his name is still in the seventh century called "the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles," and appears to have received his name not before the eighth.

§ 100. The Occidental Liturgies.

The liturgies of the Western church may be divided into three classes: (1) the Ephesian family, which is traced to a Johannean origin, and embraces the Mozarabic and the Gallican liturgies; (2) the Roman liturgy, which, of course, like the papacy itself, must come down from St. Peter; (3) the Ambrosian and Aquileian, which is a mixture of the other two. We have therefore here less diversity than in the East. The tendency of the Latin church everywhere pressed strongly toward uniformity, and the Roman liturgy at last excluded all others.

1. The Old Gallican liturgy,1091 in many of its features, points back, like the beginnings of Christianity in South Gaul, to an Asiatic, Ephesian, and so far we may say Johannean origin, and took its later form in the fifth century. Among its composers, or rather the revisers, Hilary, of Poictiers is particularly named. In the time of Charlemagne it was superseded by the Roman. Gallicanism, which in church organization and polity boldly asserted its rights, suffered itself easily to be Romanized in its worship.

The Old British liturgy was without doubt identical with the Gallican, but after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons it was likewise supplanted by the Roman.

2. The Old Spanish or (though incorrectly so called) Gothic, also named Mozarabic liturgy.1092  This is in many respects allied to the Gallic, and probably came through the latter from a similar Eastern Source. It appears to have existed before the incursion of the West Goths in 409; for it shows no trace of the influence of the Arian heresy, or of the ritual system of Constantinople.1093  Its present form is attributed to Isidore of Seville and the fourth council of Toledo in 633. It maintained itself in Spain down to the thirteenth century and was then superseded by the Roman liturgy.1094

It has, like the Gallican, besides the Gospels and Epistles, lessons also from the Old Testament;1095 it differs from the Roman liturgy in the order of festivals; and it contains, before the proper sacrificial action, a homiletic exhortation. The formula Sancta Sanctis, before the communion) the fraction of the host into nine parts (in memory of the nine mysteries of the life of Christ), the daily communion, the distribution of the cup by the deacon, remind us of the oriental ritual. The Mozarabic chant has much resemblance to the Gregorian, but exhibits besides a certain independent national character.1096

3. The African liturgy is known to us only through fragmentary quotations in Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, from which we gather that it belonged to the Roman family.

4. The liturgy Of St. Ambrose.1097  This is attributed to the renowned bishop of Milan († 397), and even to St. Barnabas. It is certain, that Ambrose introduced the responsive singing of psalms and hymns, and composed several prayers, prefaces, and hymns. His successor, Simplicius (A.D. 397–400), is supposed to have made several additions to the ritual. Many elements date from the reign of the Gothic kings (A.D. 493–568), and the Lombard kings (A.D. 568–739).

The Ambrosian liturgy is still used in the diocese of Milan; and after sundry vain attempts to substitute the Roman, it was confirmed by Alexander VI. in 1497 by a special bull, as the Ritus Ambrosianus. Excepting some Oriental peculiarities, it coincides substantially with the Roman liturgy, but has neither the pregnant brevity of the Roman, nor the richness and fullness of the Mozarabic. The prayers for the oblation of the sacrificial gifts differ from the Roman; the Apostles’ Creed is not recited till after the oblation; some saints of the diocese are received into the canonical lists of the saints; the distribution of the host takes place before the Paternoster, with formulas of its own, &c.

The liturgy which was used for a long time in the patriarchate of Aquileia, is allied to the Ambrosian, and likewise stands midway between the Roman and the Oriental Gallican liturgies.

5. The Roman liturgy is ascribed by tradition, in its main features, to the Apostle Peter, but cannot be historically traced beyond the middle of the fifth century. It has without doubt slowly grown to its present form. The oldest written records of it appear in three sacramentaries, which bear the names of the three Popes, Leo, Gelasius, and Gregory.

(a) The Sacramentarium Leonianum, falsely ascribed to Pope Leo I. († 461), probably dates from the end of the fifth century, and is a planless collection of liturgical formularies. It was first edited in 1735 from a codex of Verona.1098

(b) The Sacramentarium Gelasianum, which was first printed at Rome in 1680, passes for the work of the Roman bishop Gelasius († 492–496), who certainly did compose a Sacramentarium. Many saints’ days are wanting in it, which have been in use since the seventh century.

(c) The Sacramentarium Gregorianum, edited by Muratori and others. Gregory I. (590–604) is reputed to be the proper father of the Roman Ordo et Canon Missae, which, with various additions and modifications at later periods, gradually attained almost exclusive prevalence in the Latin church, and was sanctioned by the Council of Trent.

The collection of the various parts of the Roman liturgy1099 in one book is called Missale Romanum, and the directions for the priests are called Rubricae.1100

§ 101. Liturgical Vestments.

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

The stately outward solemnity of public worship, and the strict separation of the hierarchy from the body of the laity, required corresponding liturgical vesture, after the example of the Jewish priesthood and cultus,1101 symbolical of the grades of the clergy and of the different parts of the worship.

In the Greek church the liturgical vestments and ornaments are the sticharion,1102 and the orarion, or horarion1103 for the deacon; the sticharion, the phelonion,1104 the zone,1105 the epitrachelion,1106 and the epimanikia1107 for the priest; the saccos,1108 the omophorion1109 the epigonation,1110 and the crozier1111 for the bishop. The mitre is not used by the Greeks.

The vestments in the Latin church are the amict or humeral1112 the alb (white cope or surplice),1113 the cincture,1114 the maniple,1115 the orarium or stole1116 for the priest; the chasuble,1117 the dalmatic,1118 the pectoral1119 and the mitre1120 for the bishop; the pallium for the archbishop. To these are to be added the episcopal ring and staff or crozier.

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

The Catholic ritualists of course give to the various mass-vestments a symbolical interpretation, which is in part derived from the undeniable meaning of the Jewish priestly garments,1121 but in part is arbitrary, and hence variable. The amict, for example, denotes the collecting of the mind from distraction; the alb, the righteousness and holiness of the priests; the maniple, the fruits of good works; the stole, the official power of the priest; the mitre, the clerical chieftainship; the ring, the marriage of the bishop with the church; the staff his oversight of the flock.

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

In everyday life, for the first five or six centuries the clergy universally wore the ordinary citizens’ dress; then gradually, after the precedent of the Jewish priests1122 and Christian monks, exchanged it for a suitable official costume, to make manifest their elevation above the laity. So late as the year 428, the Roman bishop Celestine censured some Gallic priests for having, through misinterpretation of Luke xii. 35, exchanged the universally used under-garment (tunica) and over-garment (toga) for the Oriental monastic dress, and rightly reminded them that the clergy should distinguish themselves from other people not so much by outward costume, as by purity of doctrine and of life.1123  Later popes and councils, however, enacted various laws and penalties respecting these externals, and the council of Trent prescribed an official dress befitting the dignity of the priesthood.1124

CHAPTER VIII.

CHRISTIAN ART.

§ 102. Religion and Art.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

§ 103. Church Architecture.

On the history of Architecture in general, comp. the works of Kugler, Kinkel, Schnaase, and others, on the plastic arts; also Kreuser: Der christliche Kirchenbau, seine Geschichte, Symbolik u. Bildnerei, Bonn, 1851. 2 vols., and the English works of Knight, Brown, Close, J. Ferguson (A Hist. of Architecture, Lond. 1865, 3 vols.), etc.

Architecture is required to provide the suitable outward theatre for the public worship of God, to build houses of God among men, where he may hold fellowship with his people, and bless them with heavenly gifts. This is the highest office and glory of the art of building. Architecture is a handmaid of devotion. A beautiful church is a sermon in stone, and its spire a finger pointing to heaven. Under the old covenant there was no more important or splendid building than the temple at Jerusalem, which was erected by divine command and after the pattern of the tabernacle of the wilderness. And yet this was only a significant emblem and shadow of what was to come.

Christianity is, indeed, not bound to place, and may everywhere worship the omnipresent God. The apostles and martyrs held the most solemn worship in modest private dwellings, and even in deserts and subterranean catacombs, and during the whole period of persecution there were few church buildings properly so called. The cause of this want, however, lay not in conscientious objection, but in the oppressed condition of the Christians. No sooner did they enjoy external and internal peace, than they built special places of devotion, which in a normal, orderly condition of the church are as necessary to public worship as special sacred times. The first certain traces of proper church buildings, in distinction from private places, appear in the second half of the third century, during the three-and-forty years’ rest between the persecution of Decius and that of Diocletian.1125 But these were destroyed in the latter persecution.

The period of church building properly begins with Constantine the Great. After Christianity was acknowledged by the state, and empowered to hold property, it raised houses of worship in all parts of the Roman empire. There was probably more building of this kind in the fourth century than there has been in an period since, excepting perhaps the nineteenth century in the United States, where, every ten years, hundreds of churches and chapels are erected, while in the great cities of Europe the multiplication of churches by no means keeps pace with the increase of population.1126  Constantine and his mother Helena led the way with a good example. The emperor adorned not only his new residential city, but also the holy Places in Palestine, and the African city Constantine, with basilicas, partly at his own expense, partly from the public treasury. His successors on the throne, excepting Julian, as well as bishops and wealthy laymen, vied with each other in building, beautifying, and enriching churches. This was considered a work pleasing to God and meritorious. Ambition and self-righteousness mingled themselves here, as they almost everywhere do, with zeal for the glory of God. Chrysostom even laments that many a time the poor are forgotten in the church buildings, and suggests that it is not enough to adorn the altar, the walls, and the floor, but that we must, above all, offer the soul a living sacrifice to the Lord.1127  Jerome also rebukes those who haughtily pride themselves in the costly gifts which they offer to God, and directs them to help needy fellow-Christians rather, since not the house of stone, but the soul of the believer is the true temple of Christ.

The fourth century saw in the city of Rome above forty great churches.1128  In Constantinople the Church of the Apostles and the church of St. Sophia, built by Constantine, excelled in magnificence and beauty, and in the fifth century were considerably enlarged and beautified by Justinian. Sometimes heathen temples or other public buildings were transformed for Christian worship. The Emperor Phocas (602–610), for example, gave to the Roman bishop Boniface IV, the Pantheon, built by Agrippa under Augustus, and renowned for its immense and magnificent dome (now called chiesa della rotonda), and it was thenceforth consecrated to the virgin Mary and the martyrs.

But generally the heathen temples, from their small size and their frequent round form, were not adapted for the Christian worship, as this is held within the building, and requires large room for the congregation, that the preaching and the Scripture-reading may be heard; while the heathen sacrifices were performed before the portico, and the multitude looked on without the sanctuary. The sanctuary of Pandrosos, on the Acropolis at Athens, holds but few persons, and even the Parthenon is not so capacious as an ordinary church. The Pantheon in Rome is an exception, and is much larger than most temples. The small round pagan temples were most easily convertible into Christian baptisteries and burial chapels. Far more frequently, doubtless, was the material of forsaken or destroyed temples applied to the building of churches.

§ 104. The Consecration of Churches.

New churches were consecrated with great solemnity by prayer, singing, the communion, eulogies of present bishops, and the depositing of relics of saints.1129  This service set them apart from all profane uses, and designated them exclusively for the service and praise of God and the edification of his people. The dedication of Solomon’s temple,1130 as well as the purification of the temple after its desecration by the heathen Syrians,1131 furnished the biblical authority for this custom. In times of persecution the consecration must have been performed in silence. But now these occasions became festivals attended by multitudes. Many bishops, like Theodoret, even invited the pagans to attend them. The first description of such a festivity is given us by Eusebius: the consecration of the church of the Redeemer at the Holy Sepulchre,1132 and of a church at Tyre.1133

After the Jewish precedent,1134 it was usual to celebrate the anniversary of the consecration.1135

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

The idea of dedication, of course, by no means necessarily involves the superstitious notion of the omnipresent God being inclosed in a definite place. On the contrary, Solomon had long before said at the dedication of the temple at Jerusalem: "Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded."  When Athanasius was once censured for assembling the congregation on Easter, for want of room, in a newly built but not yet consecrated church, he appealed to the injunction of the Lord, that we enter into our closet to pray, as consecrating every place. Chrysostom urged that every house should be a church, and every head of a family a spiritual shepherd, remembering the account which he must give even for his children and servants.1136  Not walls and roof, but faith and life, constitute the church,1137 and the advantage of prayer in the church comes not so much from a special holiness of the place, as from the Christian fellowship, the bond of love, and the prayer of the priests.1138  Augustine gives to his congregation the excellent admonition: "It is your duty to put your talent to usury; every one must be bishop in his own house; he must see that his wife, his son, his daughter, his servant, since he is bought with so great a price, continues in the true faith. The apostle’s doctrine has placed the master over the servant, and has bound the servant to obedience to the master, but Christ has paid a ransom for both."1139

§ 105. Interior Arrangement of Churches.

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

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

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

(a) The inner portico, a covered hall which belonged to the church itself, and was called provnao", or commonly, from its long, narrow shape, navrqhx, ferula, i.e., literally, staff, rod.1140  The name paradise also occurs, because on one side of the wall of the portico Adam and Eve in paradise were frequently painted,—probably to signify that the fallen posterity of Adam find again their lost paradise in the church of Christ. The inner court was the place for all the unbaptized, for catechumens, pagans, and Jews, and for members of the church condemned to light penance, who might hear the preaching and the reading of the Scriptures, but must withdraw before the administration of the Holy Supper.

(b) The outer portico, aujlhv, atrium, also locus lugentium or hiemantium, which was open, and not in any way enclosed within the sacred walls, hence not a part of the house of God properly so called. Here those under heavy penance, the "weepers"1141 as they were called, must tarry, exposed to all weather, and apply with tears to those entering for their Christian intercessions.

In this outer portico, or atrium, stood the laver,1142 in which, after the primitive Jewish and heathen custom, maintained to this day in the Roman church, the worshipper, in token of inward purification, must wash every time he entered the church.1143

After about the ninth century, when churches were no longer built with spacious porticoes, this laver was transferred to the church itself, and fixed at the doors in the form of a holywater basin, supposed to be an imitation of the brazen sea in the priest’s court of Solomon’s temple.1144  This symbolical usage could easily gather upon itself superstitious notions of the magical virtue of the holy water. Even in the pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions the consecrated water is called "a means of warding off diseases, frightening away evil spirits, a medicine for body and soul, and for purification from sins;" and though these expressions related primarily to the sacramental water of baptism as the bath of regeneration, yet they were easily applied by the people to consecrated water in general. In the Roman Catholic church the consecration of the water1145 is performed on Easter Sunday evening; in the Greco-Russian church, three times in the year.

2. The temple proper,1146 the holy place,1147 or the nave of the church,1148 as it were the ark of the new covenant. This part extended from the doors of entrance to the steps of the altar, had sometimes two or four side-naves, according to the size of the church, and was designed for the body of the laity, the faithful and baptized. The men sat on the right towards the south (in the men’s nave), the women on the left towards the north (in the women’s nave), or, in Eastern countries, where the sexes were more strictly separated, in the galleries above.1149  The monks and nuns, and the higher civil officers, especially the emperors with their families, usually had special seats of honor in semicircular niches on both sides of the altar.

About the middle of the main nave was the pulpit or the ambo,1150 or subsequently two desks, at the left the Gospel-desk, at the right the Epistle-desk, where the lector or deacon read the Scripture lessons. The sermon was not always delivered from the pulpit, but more frequently either from the steps of the altar (hence the phrase: "speaking from the rails"), or from the seat of the bishop behind the altar-table.1151

Between the reading-desks and the altar was the odeum,1152 the place for the singers, and at the right and left the seats for the lower clergy (anagnosts or readers, exorcists, acolytes). This part of the nave lay somewhat higher than the floor of the church, though not so high as the altar-choir, and hence was also called the lower choir, and the gradual, because steps (gradus) led up to it. In the Eastern church the choir and nave are scarcely separated, and they form together the naov", or temple hall; in the Western the choir and the sanctuary are put together under the name cancelli or chancel.

3. The most holy place,1153 or the choir proper;1154 called also in distinction from the lower choir, the high choir,1155 for the priests, and for the offering of the sacrifice of the Eucharist. No layman, excepting the emperor (in the east), might enter it. It was semi-circular or conchoidal1156 in form, and was situated at the eastern end of the church, opposite the entrance doors, because the light, to which Christians should turn themselves, comes from the east.1157  It was separated from the other part of the church by rails or a lattice,1158 and by a curtain, or by sacred doors called in the Greek church the picture-wall, iconostas, on account of the sacred paintings on it.1159  While in the Eastern churches this screen is still used, it in time gave place in the West to a low balustrade.

In the middle of the sanctuary stood the altar,1160 generally a table, or sometimes a chest with a lid; at first of wood, then, after the beginning of the sixth century, of stone or marble, or even of silver and gold, with a wall behind it, and an overshadowing, dome-shaped canopy,1161 above which a cross was usually fixed. The altar was hollow, and served as the receptacle for the relics of the martyrs; it was placed, where this was possible, exactly over the grave of a martyr, probably with reference to the passage in the Revelation: "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held."1162  Often a subterranean chapel or crypt1163 was built under the church, in order to have the church exactly upon the burial place of the saint, and at the same time to keep alive the memory of the primitive worship in underground vaults in the times of persecution.

The altar held therefore the twofold office of a tomb (though at the same time the monument of a new, higher life), and a place of sacrifice. It was manifestly the most holy place in the entire church, to which everything else had regard; whereas in Protestantism the pulpit and the word of God come into the foreground, and altar and sacrament stand back. Hence the altar was adorned also in the richest manner with costly cloths, with the cross, or at a later period the crucifix, with burning tapers, symbolical of Christ the light of the world,1164 and previously consecrated for ecclesiastical use,1165 with a splendid copy of the Holy Scriptures, or the mass-book, but above all with the tabernacle, or little house for preserving the consecrated host, on which in the middle ages the German stone-cutters and sculptors displayed wonderful art.

Side altars did not come into use until Gregory the Great. Ignatius,1166 Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine know of only one altar in the church. The Greek church has no more to this day. The introduction of such side altars, which however belong not to the altar space, but to the nave of the church, is connected with the progress of the worship of martyrs and relics.

At the left of the altar war, the table of prothesis,1167 on which the elements for the holy Supper were prepared, and which is still used in the Greek church; at the right the sacristy,1168 where the priests robed themselves, and retired for silent prayer. Behind the altar on the circular wall (and under the painting of Christ enthroned, if there was one) stood the bishop’s chair,1169 overlooking the whole church. On both sides of it, in a semicircle, were the seats of the presbyters. None but the clergy were allowed to receive the holy Supper within the altar rails.1170

§ 106. Architectural Style. The Basilicas.

Comp. the works on the Basilicas by P. Sarnelli (Antica Basilicografia. Neapoli, 1686), Ciampini (Rom. 1693), Guttensohn & Knapp (Monumenta di Rel. christ., ossia raccolta delle antiche chiese di Roma. Rom. 1822 sqq. 3 vols.; also in German, München, 1843), Bunsen (Die Basiliken des christlichen Roms. München, 1843, a commentary on the preceding), Von Quast (Berl. 1845), and Zestermann (Die antiken und die christlichen Basiliken. Leipz. 1847).

The history of church building, from the simple basilicas of the fourth century to the perfect Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth and fourteenth, exhibits, like the history of the other Christian arts and the sciences, a gradual subjection and transformation of previous Jewish and heathen forms by the Christian principle. The church succeeded to the inheritance of all nations, but could only by degrees purge this inheritance of its sinful adulterations, pervade it with her spirit, and subject it to her aims; for she fulfils her mission through human freedom, not in spite of it, and does not magically transform nations, but legitimately educates them.

The history of Western architecture is the richer. The East contented itself with the Byzantine style, and adhered more strictly to the forms of the round temples, baptisteries, and mausoleums; while the West, starting from the Roman basilica, developed various styles.

The style of the earliest Christian churches was not copied from the heathen temples, because, apart from their connection with idolatry, which was itself highly offensive to the Christian sentiment, they were in form and arrangement, as we have already remarked, entirely unsuitable to Christian worship. The primitive Christian architecture followed the basilicas, and hence the churches built in this style were themselves called basilicas. The connection of the Christian and heathen basilicas, which has been hitherto recognized, and has been maintained by celebrated connoisseurs,1171 has been denied by some modem investigators,1172 who have claimed for the Christian an entirely independent origin. And it is perfectly true, as concerns the interior arrangement and symbolical import of the building, that these can be ascribed to the Christian mind alone. Nor have any forensic or mercantile basilicas, to our knowledge, been transformed into Christian churches.1173  But in external architectural form there is without question an affinity, and there appears no reason why the church should not have employed this classic form.

The basilicas,1174 or royal halls, were public judicial and mercantile buildings, of simple, but beautiful structure, in the form of a long rectangle, consisting of a main hall, or main nave, two, often four, side naves,1175 which were separated by colonnades from the central space, and were somewhat lower. Here the people assembled for business and amusement. At the end of the hall opposite the entrance, stood a semicircular, somewhat elevated niche (apsis, tribune), arched over with a half-dome, where were the seats of the judges and advocates, and where judicial business was transacted. Under the floor of the tribunal was sometimes a cellar-like place of confinement for accused criminals.

In the history of architecture, too, there is a Nemesis. As the cross became changed from a sign of weakness to a sign of honor and victory, so must the basilica in which Christ and innumerable martyrs were condemned to death, become a place for the worship of the crucified One. The judicial tribune became the altar; the seat of the praetor behind it became the bishop’s chair; the benches of the jurymen became the seats of presbyters; the hall of business and trade became a place of devotion for the faithful people; the subterranean jail became a crypt or burial place, the superterrene birth-place, of a Christian martyr. To these were added other changes, especially the introduction of a cross-nave between the apse and the main nave, giving to the basilica the symbolical form of the once despised, but now glorious cross, and forming, so to speak, a recumbent crucifix. The cross with equal arms is called the Greek; that with unequal arms, in which the transept is shorter than the main nave from the entrance to the altar, the Latin. Towers, which express the heavenward spirit of the Christian religion, were not introduced till the ninth century, and were then built primarily for bells.

This style found rapid acceptance in the course of the fourth century with East and West; most of all in Rome, where a considerable number of basilicas, some in their ancient venerable simplicity, some with later alterations, are still preserved. The church of St. Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline hill affords the best view of an ancient basilica; the oldest principal church of Rome—S. Giovanni in Laterano (so named from the Roman patrician family of the Laterans), dedicated to the Evangelist John and to John the Baptist; the church of St. Paul, outside the city on the way to Ostia, which was burnt in 1823, but afterwards rebuilt splendidly in the same style, and consecrated by the pope in December, 1854; also S. Clemente, S. Agnese, and S. Lorenzo, outside the walls—are examples. The old church of St. Peter (Basilica Vaticana), which was built on the spot of this apostle’s martyrdom, the Neronian circus, and was torn down in the fifteenth century (the last remnant did not fall till 1606), surpassed all other churches of Rome in splendor and wealth, and was rebuilt, not in the same style, but, as is well known, in the Italian style of the sixteenth century.

Next to Rome, Ravenna is rich in old church buildings, among which the great basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe (in the port town, three miles from the main city, and built about the middle of the sixth century) is the most notable. The transept, as in all the churches of this city, is wanting.

In the East Roman empire there appeared even under Constantine sundry departures and transitions toward the Byzantine style. The oldest buildings there, which follow more or less the style of the Roman basilica, are the church at Tyre, begun in 313, destroyed in the middle ages, but known to us from the description of the historian Eusebius;1176 the original St. Sophia of Constantine in Constantinople; and the churches in the Holy Land, built likewise by him and his mother Helena, at, Mamre or Hebron, at Bethlehem over the birth-spot of Christ, on the Mount of Olives in memory of the ascension, and over the holy sepulchre on Mount Calvary. Justinian also sometimes built basilicas, for variety, together with his splendid Byzantine churches; and of these the church of St. Mary in Jerusalem was the finest, and was destined to imitate the temple of Solomon, but it was utterly blotted out by the Mohammedans.1177

§ 107. The Byzantine Style.

Procopius: De aedificiis Justiniani. L.i.c. 1–3. Car. Dufresne Dom. du Cange: Constantinopolis Christiana. Venet. 1729. Salzenberg und Kortüm: Altchristliche Baudenkmale Constantinopels vom V. bis XII Jahrh. (40 magnificent copperplates and illustrations). Berlin, 1854.

The second style which meets us in this period, is the Byzantine, which in the West modified the basilica style, in the East soon superseded it, and in the Russo-Greek church has maintained itself to this day. It dates from the sixth century, from the reign of the scholarly and art-loving emperor Justinian I. (527–565), which was the flourishing period of Constantinople and of the centralized ecclesiastico-political despotism, in many respects akin to the age of Louis XIV. of France.

The characteristic feature of this style is the hemispherical dome, which, like the vault of heaven with its glory, spanned the centre of the Greek or the Latin cross, supported by massive columns (instead of slender pillars like the basilicas), and by its height and its prominence ruling the other parts of the building. This dome corresponds on the one hand to the centralizing principle of the Byzantine empire,1178 but at the same time, and far more clearly than the flat basilica, to that upward striving of the Christian spirit from the earth towards the height of heaven, which afterwards more plainly expressed itself in the pointed arches and the towers of the Germanic cathedral. "While in the basilica style everything looks towards the end of the building where the altar and episcopal throne are set, and by this prevailing connection the upward direction is denied a free expression, in the dome structure everything concentrates itself about the spacious centre of the building over which, drawing the eye irresistibly upward, rises to an awe-inspiring height the majestic central dome. The basilica presents in the apse a figure of the horizon from which the sun of righteousness arises in his glory; the Byzantine building unfolds in the dome a figure of the whole vault of heaven in sublime, imposing majesty, but detracts thereby from the prominence of the altar, and leaves for it only a place of subordinate import."

The dome is not, indeed, absolutely new. The Pantheon in Rome, whose imposing dome has a diameter of a hundred and thirty-two feet, dates from the age of Augustus, b.c. 26. But here the dome rises on a circular wall, and so strikes root in the earth, altogether in character with the heathen religion. The Byzantine dome rests on few columns connected by arches, and, like the vault of heaven, freely spans the central space of the church in airy height, without shutting up that space by walls.

Around the main central dome1179 stand four smaller domes in a square, and upon each dome rises a lofty gilded cross, which in the earlier churches stands upon a crescent, hung with all sorts of chains, and fastened by these to the dome.

The noblest and most complete building of this kind is the renowned church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, which was erected in lavish Asiatic splendor by the emperor Justinian after a plan by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus (A.D. 532–537), and consecrated to the Redeemer,1180 but was transformed after the Turkish conquest into a Mohammedan mosque (Aja Sofia). It is two hundred and twenty-eight feet broad, and two hundred and fifty-two feet long; the dome, supported by four gigantic columns, rises a hundred and sixty-nine feet high over the altar, is a hundred and eight feet in diameter, and floats so freely and airily above the great central space, that, in the language of the Byzantine court biographer Procopius, it seems not to rest on terra firma, but to hang from heaven by golden chains.1181  The most costly material was used in the building; the Phrygian marble with rose-colored and white veins, the dark red marble of the Nile, the green of Laconia, the black and white spotted of the Bosphorus, the gold-colored Libyan. And when the dome reflected the brilliance of the lighted silver chandeliers, and sent it back doubled from above, it might well remind one of the vault of heaven with its manifold starry glories, and account for the proud satisfaction with which Justinian on the day of the consecration, treading in solemn procession the finished building, exclaimed: "I have outdone thee, O Solomon!"1182  The church of St. Sophia stood thenceforth the grand model of the new Greek architecture, not only for the Christian East and the Russian church, but even for the Mohammedans in the building of their mosques.

In the West the city of Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast, after Honorius, (A.D. 404) the seat of the Western empire, or of the eparchate, and the last refuge of the old Roman magnificence and art, affords beautiful monuments of the Byzantine style; especially in the church of St. Vitale, which was erected by the bishop Maximian in 547.1183

In the West the ground plan of the basilica was usually retained, with pillars and entablature, until the ninth century, and the dome and vaultings of the Byzantine style were united with it. Out of this union arose what is called the Romanesque or the round-arch style, which prevailed from the tenth to the thirteenth century, and was then, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth, followed by the Germanic or pointed-arch style, with its gigantic masterpieces, the Gothic cathedrals. From the fifteenth century eclecticism and confusion prevailed in architecture, till the modern attempts to reproduce the ancient style. The Oriental church, on the contrary, has never gone beyond the Byzantine, its productivity almost entirely ceasing with the age of Justinian. But it is possible that the Graeco Russian church will in the future develop something new.

§ 108. Baptisteries, Grave-Chapels, and Crypts.

Baptisteries or Photisteries,1184 chapels designed exclusively for the administration of baptism, are a form of church building by themselves. In the first centuries baptism was performed on streams in the open air, or in private houses. But after the public exercise of Christian worship became lawful, in the fourth century special buildings for this holy ordinance began to appear, either entirely separate, or connected with the main church (at the side of the western main entrance) by a covered passage; and they were generally, dedicated to John the Baptist. The need of them arose partly from the still prevalent custom of immersion, partly from the fact that the number of candidates often amounted to hundreds and thousands; since baptism was at that time administered) as a rule, only three or four times a year, on the eve of the great festivals (Easter, Pentecost, Epiphany, and Christmas), and at episcopal sees, while the church proper was filled with the praying congregation.

These baptismal chapels were not oblong, like the basilicas, but round (like most of the Roman temples), and commonly covered with a dome. They had in the centre, like the bathing and swimming houses of the Roman watering places, a large baptismal basin,1185 into which several steps descended. Around this stood a colonnade and a circular or polygonal gallery for spectators; and before the main entrance there was a spacious vestibule in the form of an entirely walled rectangle or oval. Generally the baptisteries had two divisions for the two sexes. The interior was sumptuously ornamented; especially the font, on which was frequently represented the symbolical figure of a hart panting for the brook, or a lamb, or the baptism of Christ by John. The earliest baptistery, of the Constantinian church of St. Peter in Rome, whose living flood was supplied from a fountain of the Vatican hill, was adorned with beautiful mosaic, the green, gold, and purple of which were reflected in the water. The most celebrated existing baptistery is that of the Lateran church at Rome, the original plan of which is ascribed to Constantine, but has undergone changes in the process of time.1186

After the sixth century, when the baptism of adults had become rare, it became customary to place a baptismal basin in the porch of the church, or in the church itself, at the left of the entrance, and, after baptism came to be administered no longer by the bishop alone, but by every pastor, each parish church contained such an arrangement. Still baptisteries also continued in use, and even in the later middle ages new ones were occasionally erected.

Finally, after the time of Constantine it became customary to erect small houses of worship or memorial chapels upon the burial-places of the martyrs, and to dedicate them to their memory.1187  These served more especially for private edification.

The subterranean chapels, or crypts, were connected with the churches built over them, and brought to mind the worship of the catacombs in the times of persecution. These crypts always produce a most earnest, solemn impression, and many of them are of considerable archaeological interest.

§ 109. Crosses and Crucifixes.

Jac. Gretser. (R.C.): De cruce Christi. 2 vols. Ingolst. 1608. Just. Lipsius: De cruce Christi. Antw. 1694. Fr. Münter: Die Sinnbilder u. Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen. Altona, 1825. C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Alter u. älteste Form der Crucifixe (in the 2d vol. of his Beiträge zur Kirchengesch., Archäologie u. Liturgik. Tübingen, 1864, p. 265 sqq.).

The cross, as the symbol of redemption, and the signing of the cross upon the forehead, the eyes, the mouth, the breast, and even upon parts of clothing, were in universal use in this period, as they had been even in the second century, both in private Christian life and in public worship. They were also in many ways abused in the service of superstition; and the nickname cross-worshippers,1188 which the heathen applied to the Christians in the time of Tertullian,1189 was in many cases not entirely unwarranted. Besides simple wooden crosses, now that the church had risen to the kingdom, there were many crosses of silver and gold, or sumptuously set with pearls and gems.1190

The conspicuous part which, according to the statements of Eusebius, the cross played in the life of Constantine, is well known: forming the instrument of his conversion; borne by fifty men, leading him to his victories over Maxentius and Licinius; inscribed upon his banners, upon the weapons of his soldiers in his palace, and upon public places, and lying in the right hand of his own statue. Shortly afterwards Julian accused the Christians of worshipping the wood of the cross. "The sign of universal detestation," says Chrysostom,1191 "the sign of extreme penalty, is now become the object of universal desire and love. We see it everywhere triumphant; we find it on houses, on roofs, and on walls, in cities and hamlets, on the markets, along the roads, and in the deserts, on the mountains and in the valleys, on the sea, on ships, on books and weapons, on garments, in marriage chambers, at banquets, upon gold and silver vessels, in pearls, in painting upon walls, on beds, on the bodies of very sick animals, on the bodies of the possessed [—to drive away the disease and the demon—], at the dances of the merry, and in the brotherhoods of ascetics."  Besides this, it was usual to mark the cross on windows and floors, and to wear it upon the forehead.1192  According to Augustine this sign was to remind believers that their calling is to follow Christ in true humility, through suffering, into glory.

We might speak in the same way of the use of other Christian emblems from the sphere of nature; the representation of Christ by a good Shepherd, a lamb, a fish, and the like, which we have already observed in the period preceding.1193

Towards the end of the present period we for the first time meet with crucifixes; that is, crosses not bare, but with the figure of the crucified Saviour upon them. The transition to the crucifix we find in the fifth century in the figure of a lamb, or even a bust of Christ, attached to the cross, sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom.1194  Afterwards the whole figure of Christ was fastened to the cross, and the earlier forms gave place to this. The Trullan council of Constantinople (the Quinisextum), A.D. 692, directed in the 82d canon: "Hereafter, instead of the lamb, the human figure of Christ shall be set up on the images."1195  But subsequently the orthodox church of the East prohibited all plastic images, crucifixes among them, and it tolerates only pictures of Christ and the saints. The earlier Latin crucifixes offend the taste and disturb devotion; but the Catholic art in its flourishing period succeeded in combining, in the figure of the suffering and dying Redeemer, the expression of the deepest and holiest anguish with that of supreme dignity. In the middle age there was frequently added to the crucifix a group of Mary, John, a soldier, and the penitent Magdalene, who on her knees embraced the post of the cross.

§ 110. Images of Christ.

Fr. Kugler: Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei seit Constantin dem Berlin, 1847, 2 vols.; and other works on the history of painting. Also C. Grüneisen: Die bildliche Darstellung der Gottheit. Stuttgart 1828. On the Iconoclastic controversies, comp. Maimbourg (R.C.): Histoire de l’hérésie de l’Iconoclastes. Par. 1679 sqq. 2 vols. Dallaeus (Calvinist): De imaginibus. Lugd. Bat. 1642. Fr. Spanheim: Historia imaginum restituta. Lugd. Bat. 1686. P. E. Jablonski († 1757): De origine imaginum Christi Domini, in Opuscul. ed. Water, Lugd. Bat. 1804, tom. iii. Walch: Ketzergesch., vols. x. and xi. J. Marx: Der Bildersturm der byzantinischen Kaiser. Trier, 1839. W. Grimm: Die Sage vom Ursprunge der Christusbilder. Berlin, 1843, L. Glückselig: Christus-Archäologie, Prag, 1863. Hefele: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. ii. Tüb. 1861 (Christusbilder, p. 254 sqq.). Comp. the liter. in Hase’s Leben Jesu, p. 79 (5th ed. 1865).

While the temple of Solomon left to the Christian mind no doubt concerning the lawfulness and usefulness of church architecture, the second commandment seemed directly to forbid a Christian painting or sculpture. "The primitive church," says even a modern Roman Catholic historian,1196 "had no images, of Christ, since most Christians at that time still adhered to the commandment of Moses (Ex. xx. 4); the more, that regard as well to the Gentile Christians as to the Jewish forbade all use of images. To the latter the exhibition and veneration of images would, of course, be an abomination, and to the newly converted heathen it might be a temptation to relapse into idolatry. In addition, the church was obliged, for her own honor, to abstain from images, particularly from any representation of the Lord, lest she should be regarded by unbelievers as merely a new kind and special sort of heathenism and creature-worship. And further, the early Christians had in their idea of the bodily form of the Lord no temptation, not the slightest incentive, to make likenesses of Christ. The oppressed church conceived its Master only under the form of a servant, despised and uncomely, as Isaiah, liii. 2, 3, describes the Servant of the Lord."

The first representations of Christ are of heretical and pagan origin. The Gnostic sect of the Carpocratians worshipped crowned pictures of Christ, together with images of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other sages, and asserted that Pilate had caused a portrait of Christ to be made.1197  In the same spirit of pantheistic hero-worship the emperor Alexander Severus (A.D. 222–235) set up in his domestic chapel for his adoration the images of Abraham, Orpheus, Apollonius, and Christ.

After Constantine, the first step towards images in the orthodox church was a change in the conception of the outward form of Christ. The persecuted church had filled its eye with the humble and suffering servant-form of Jesus, and found therein consolation and strength in her tribulation. The victorious church saw the same Lord in heavenly glory on the right hand of the Father, ruling over his enemies. The one conceived Christ in his state of humiliation (but not in his state of exaltation), as even repulsive, or at least "having no form nor comeliness;" taking too literally the description of the suffering servant of God in Is. lii. 14 and liii. 2, 3.1198  The other beheld in him the ideal of human beauty, "fairer than the children of men," with "grace poured into his lips;" after the Messianic interpretation of Ps. xlv. 3.1199

This alone, however, did not warrant images of Christ. For, in the first place, authentic accounts of the personal appearance of Jesus were lacking; and furthermore it seemed incompetent to human art duly to set forth Him in Whom the whole fulness of the Godhead and of perfect sinless humanity dwelt in unity.

On this point two opposite tendencies developed themselves, giving occasion in time to the violent and protracted image controversies, until, at the seventh ecumenical council at Nice in 787, the use and adoration of images carried the day in the church.

1. On the one side, the prejudices of the ante-Nicene period against images in painting or sculpture continued alive, through fear of approach to pagan idolatry, or of lowering Christianity into the province of sense. But generally the hostility was directed only against images of Christ; and from it, as Neander justly observes,1200 we are by no means to infer the rejection of all representations of religious subjects; for images of Christ encounter objections peculiar to themselves.

The church historian Eusebius declared himself in the strongest manner against images of Christ in a letter to the empress Constantia (the widow of Licinius and sister of Constantine), who had asked him for such an image. Christ, says he, has laid aside His earthly servant-form, and Paul exhorts us to cleave no longer to the sensible;1201 and the transcendent glory of His heavenly body cannot be conceived nor represented by man; besides, the second commandment forbids the making to ourselves any likeness of anything in heaven or in earth. He had taken away from a lady an image of Christ and of Paul, lest it should seem as if Christians, like the idolaters, carried their God about in images. Believers ought rather to fix their mental eye, above all, upon the divinity of Christ, and, for this purpose, to purify their hearts; since only the pure in heart shall see God.1202  The same Eusebius, however, relates of Constantine, without the slightest disapproval, that, in his Christian zeal, he caused the public monuments in the forum of the new imperial city to be adorned with symbolical representations of Christ, to wit, with figures of the good Shepherd and of Daniel in the lion’s den.1203  He likewise tells us, that the woman of the issue of blood, after her miraculous cure (Matt. ix. 20), and out of gratitude for it, erected before her dwelling in Caesarea Philippi (Paneas) two brazen statues, the figure of a kneeling woman, and of a venerable man (Christ) extending his hand to help her, and that he had seen these statues with his own eyes at Paneas.1204  In the same place he speaks also of pictures (probably Carpocratian) of Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul, which he had seen, and observes that these cannot be wondered at in those who were formerly heathen, and who had been accustomed to testify their gratitude towards their benefactors in this way.

The narrow fanatic Epiphanius of Cyprus († 403) also seems to have been an opponent of images. For when he saw the picture of Christ or a saint1205 on the altar-curtain in Anablatha, a village of Palestine, he tore away the curtain, because it was contrary to the Scriptures to hang up the picture of a man in the church, and he advised the officers to use the cloth for winding the corpse of some poor person.1206  This arbitrary conduct, however, excited great indignation, and Epiphanius found himself obliged to restore the injury to the village church by another curtain.

2. The prevalent spirit of the age already very decidedly favored this material representation as a powerful help to virtue and devotion, especially for the uneducated classes, whence the use of images, in fact, mainly proceeded.

Plastic representation, it is true, was never popular in the East. The Greek church tolerates no statues, and forbids even crucifixes. In the West, too, in this period, sculpture occurs almost exclusively in bas relief and high relief, particularly on sarcophagi, and in carvings of ivory and gold in church decorations. Sculpture, from its more finite nature, lies farther from Christianity than the other arts.

Painting, on the contrary, was almost universally drawn into the service of religion; and that, not primarily from the artistic impulse which developed itself afterwards, but from the practical necessity of having objects of devout reverence in concrete form before the eye, as a substitute for the sacred books, which were accessible to the educated alone. Akin to this is the universal pleasure of children in pictures.

The church-teachers approved and defended this demand, though they themselves did not so directly need such helps. In fact, later tradition traced it back to apostolic times, and saw in the Evangelist Luke the first sacred painter. Whereof only so much is true: that he has sketched in his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles vivid and faithful pictures of the Lord, His mother, and His disciples, which are surely of infinitely greater value than all pictures in color and statues in marble.1207

Basil the Great († 379) says "I confess the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh, and the holy Mary as the mother of God, who bore Him according to the flesh. And I receive also the holy apostles and prophets and martyrs. Their likenesses I revere and kiss with homage, for they are handed down from the holy apostles, and are not forbidden, but on the contrary painted in all our churches."1208  His brother, Gregory of Nyssa, also, in his memorial discourse on the martyr Theodore, speaks in praise of sacred painting, which "is wont to speak silently from the walls, and thus to do much good."  The bishop Paulinus of Nola, who caused biblical pictures to be exhibited annually at the festival seasons in the church of St. Felix, thought that by them the scenes of the Bible were made clear to the uneducated rustic, as they could not otherwise be; impressed themselves on his memory, awakened in him holy thoughts and feelings, and restrained him from all kinds of vice.1209  The bishop Leontius of Neapolis in Cyprus, who at the close of the sixth century wrote an apology for Christianity against the Jews, and in it noticed the charge of idolatry, asserts that the law of Moses is directed not unconditionally against the use of religious images, but only against the idolatrous worship of them; since the tabernacle and the temple themselves contained cherubim and other figures; and he advocates images, especially for their beneficent influences. "In almost all the world," says he, "profligate men, murderers, robbers, debauchees, idolaters, are daily moved to contrition by a look at the cross of Christ, and led to renounce the world, and practise every virtue."1210  And Leontius already appeals to the miraculous fact, that blood flowed from many of the images.1211

Owing to the difficulty, already noticed, of worthily representing Christ Himself, the first subjects were such scenes from the Old Testament as formed a typical prophecy of the history of the Redeemer. Thus the first step from the field of nature, whence the earliest symbols of Christ—the lamb, the fish, the shepherd—were drawn, was into the field of pre-Christian revelation, and thence it was another step into the province of gospel history itself. The favorite pictures of this kind were, the offering-up of Isaac—the pre-figuration of the great sacrifice on the cross; the miracle of Moses drawing forth water from the rock with his rod—which was interpreted either, according to 1 Cor. x. 4, of Christ Himself, or, more especially—and frequently, of the birth of Christ from the womb of the Virgin; the suffering Job—a type of Christ in His deepest humiliation; Daniel in the lion’s den—the symbol of the Redeemer subduing the devil and death in the underworld; the miraculous deliverance of the prophet Jonah from the whale’s belly—foreshadowing the resurrection;1212 and the translation of Elijah—foreshadowing the ascension of Christ.

About the middle of the fifth century, just when the doctrine of the person of Christ reached its formal settlement, the first representations of Christ Himself appeared, even said by tradition to be faithful portraits of the original.1213  From that time the difficulty of representing the God-Man was removed by an actual representation, and the recognition of the images of Christ, especially of the Madonna with the Child, became even a test of orthodoxy, as against the Nestorian heresy of an abstract separation of the two natures in Christ. In the sixth century, according to the testimony of Gregory of Tours, pictures of Christ were hung not only in churches but in almost every private house.1214

Among these representations of Christ there are two distinct types received in the church:

(1) The Salvator picture, with the expression of calm serenity and dignity, and of heavenly gentleness, without the faintest mark of grief. According to the legend, this was a portrait, miraculously imprinted on a cloth, which Christ Himself presented to Abgarus, king of Edessa, at his request.1215  The original is of course lost, or rather never existed, and is simply a mythical name for the Byzantine type of the likeness of Christ which appeared after the fifth century, and formed the basis of all the various representations of Christ until Raphael and Michael Angelo. These pictures present the countenance of the Lord in the bloom of youthful vigor and beauty, with a free, high forehead, clear, beaming eyes, long, straight nose, hair parted in the middle, and a somewhat reddish beard.

(2) The Ecce Homo picture of the suffering Saviour with the crown of thorns. This is traced back by tradition to St. Veronica, who accompanied the Saviour on the way to Golgotha, and gave Him her veil to wipe the sweat from His face; whereupon the Lord miraculously imprinted on the cloth the image of His thorn-crowned head.1216

The Abgarus likeness and the Veronica both lay claim to a miraculous origin, and profess to be eijkovne" ajceiropoivhtai, pictures not made with human hands. Besides these, however, tradition tells of pictures of Christ taken in a natural way by Luke and by Nicodemus. The Salvator picture in the Lateran chapel Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, which is attributed to Luke, belongs to the Edessene or Byzantine type.

With so different pretended portraits of the Lord we cannot wonder at the variations of the pictures of Christ, which the Iconoclasts used as an argument against images. In truth, every nation formed a likeness of its own, according to its existing ideals of art and virtue.

Great influence was exerted upon the representations of Christ by the apocryphal description of his person in the Latin epistle of Publius Lentulus (a supposed friend of Pilate) to the Roman senate, delineating Christ as a man of slender form, noble countenance, dark hair parted in the middle, fair forehead, clear eyes, faultless mouth and nose, and reddish beard.1217  An older, and in some points different, description is that of John of Damascus, or some other writer of the eighth century, who says: "Christ was of stately form, with beautiful eyes, large nose, curling hair, somewhat bent, in the prime of life, with black beard, and sallow complexion, like his mother."1218

No figure of Christ, in color, or bronze, or marble, can reach the ideal of perfect beauty which came forth into actual reality in the Son of God and Son of man. The highest creations of art are here but feeble reflections of the original in heaven, yet prove the mighty influence which the living Christ continually exerts even upon the imagination and sentiment of the great painters and sculptors, and which He will exert to the end of the world.

§ 111. Images of Madonna and Saints.

Besides the images of Christ, representations were also made of prominent characters in sacred history, especially of the blessed Virgin with the Child, of the wise men of the east, as three kings worshipping before the manger,1219 of the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles, particularly Peter and Paul,1220 of many martyrs and saints of the times of persecution, and honored bishops and monks of a later day.1221

According to a tradition of the eighth century or later, the Evangelist Luke painted not only Christ, but Mary also, and the two leading apostles. Still later legends ascribe to him even seven Madonnas, several of which, it is pretended, still exist; one, for example, in the Borghese chapel in the church of Maria Maggiore at Rome. The Madonnas early betray the effort to represent the Virgin as the ideal of female beauty, purity, and loveliness, and as resembling her divine Son.1222  Peter is usually represented with a round head, crisped hair and beard; Paul, with a long face, bald crown, and pointed beard; both, frequently, carrying rolls in their hands, or the first the cross and the keys (of the kingdom of heaven), the second, the sword (of the word and the Spirit).

Such representations of Christ, of the saints, and of biblical events, are found in the catacombs and other places of burial, on sarcophagi and tombstones, in private houses, on cups and seal rings, and (in spite of the prohibition of the council of Elvira in 305)1223 on the walls of churches, especially behind the altar.

Manuscripts of the Bible also, liturgical books, private houses, and even the vestments of officials in the large cities of the Byzantine empire were ornamented with biblical pictures. Bishop Asterius of Amasea in Pontus, in the second half of the fourth century, protested against the wearing of these "God-pleasing garments,"1224 and advised that it were better with the proceeds of them to honor the living images of God, and support the poor; instead of wearing the palsied on the clothes, to visit the sick; and instead of carrying with one the image of the sinful woman kneeling and embracing the feet of Jesus, rather to lament one’s own sins with tears of contrition.

The custom of prostration1225 before the picture, in token of reverence for the saint represented by it, first appears in the Greek church in the sixth century. And then, that the unintelligent people should in many cases confound the image with the object represented, attribute to the outward, material thing a magical power of miracles, and connect with the image sundry superstitious notions—must be expected. Even Augustine laments that among the rude Christian masses there are many image-worshippers,1226 but counts such in the great number of those nominal Christians, to whom the essence of the Gospel is unknown.

As works of art, these primitive Christian paintings and sculptures are, in general, of very little value; of much less value than the church edifices. They are rather earnest and elevated, than beautiful and harmonious. For they proceeded originally not from taste, but from practical want, and, at least in the Greek empire, were produced chiefly by monks. It perfectly befitted the spirit of Christianity, to begin with earnestness and sublimity, rather than, as heathenism, with sensuous beauty. Hence also its repugnance to the nude, and its modest draping of voluptuous forms; only hands, feet, and face were allowed to appear.

The Christian taste, it is well known, afterwards changed, and, on the principle that to the pure all things are pure, it represented even Christ on the cross, and the holy Child at His mother’s breast or in His mothers arms, without covering.

Furthermore, in the time of Constantine the ancient classical painting and sculpture had grievously degenerated; and even in their best days they reached no adequate expression of the Christian principle.

In this view, the loss of so many of those old works of art, which, as the sheer apparatus of idolatry, were unsparingly destroyed by the iconoclastic storms of the succeeding period, is not much to be regretted. It was in. the later middle ages, when church architecture had already reached its height, that Christian art succeeded in unfolding an unprecedented bloom of painting and sculpture, and in far surpassing, on the field of painting at least, the masterpieces of the ancient Greeks. Sculpture, which can present man only in his finite limitation, without the flush of life or the beaming eye, like a shadowy form from the realm of the dead, probably attained among the ancient Greeks the summit of perfection, above which even Canova and Thorwaldsen do not rise. But painting, which can represent man in his organic connection with the world about him, and, to a certain degree, in his unlimited depth of soul and spirit, as expressed in the countenance and the eye, has waited for the influence of the Christian principle to fulfil its perfect mission, and in the Christs of Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Beato Angelico, Correggio, and Albrecht Dürer, and the Madonnas of Raphael, has furnished the noblest works which thus far adorn the history of the art.

§ 112. Consecrated Gifts.

It remains to mention in this connection yet another form of decoration for churches, which had already been customary among heathen and Jews: consecrated gifts. Thus the temple of Delphi, for example, had become exceedingly rich through such presents of weapons, silver and golden vessels, statues, &c. In almost every temple of Neptune hung votive tablets, consecrated to the god in thankfulness for deliverance from shipwreck by him.1227  A similar custom seems to have existed among the Jews; for I Sam. xxi. implies that David had deposited the sword of the Philistine Goliath in the sanctuary. In the court of the priests a multitude of swords, lances, costly vessels, and other valuable things, were to be seen.

Constantine embellished the altar space in the church of Jerusalem with rich gifts of gold, silver, and precious stones. Sozomen tells us1228 that Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, in a time of famine, sold the treasures and sacred gifts of the church, and that afterwards some one recognized in the dress of an actress the vestment he once presented to the church.

A peculiar variety of such gifts, namely, memorials of miraculous cures,1229 appeared in the fifth century; at least they are first mentioned by Theodoret, who said of them in his eighth discourse on the martyrs: "That those who ask with the confidence of faith, receive what they ask, is plainly proved by their sacred gifts in testimony of their healing. Some offer feet, others hands, of gold or silver, and these gifts show their deliverance from those evils, as tokens of which they have been offered by the restored."  With the worship of saints this custom gained strongly, and became in the middle age quite universal. Whoever recovered from a sickness, considered himself bound first to testify by a gift his gratitude to the saint whose aid he had invoked in his distress. Parents, whose children fortunately survived the teething-fever, offered to St. Apollonia (all whose teeth, according to the legend, had been broken out with pincers by a hangman’s servant) gifts of jawbones in wax. In like manner St. Julian, for happily accomplished journeys, and St. Hubert, for safe return from the perils of the chase, were very richly endowed; but the Virgin Mary more than all. Almost every church or chapel which has a miracle-working image of the mother of God, possesses even now a multitude of golden and silver acknowledgments of fortunate returns and recoveries.

§ 113. Church Poetry and Music.

J. Rambach: Anthologie christl. Gesänge aus allen Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona, 1817–’33. H. A. Daniel: Thesaurus hymnologicus. Hal. 1841–’56, 5 vols. Edélestand du Méril: Poésies populaires latines antérieures au douzième siècle. Paris, 1843. C. Fortlage: Gesänge der christl. Vorzeit. Berlin, 1844. G. A. Königsfeld u. A. W. v. Schlegel: Altchristliche Hymnen u. Gesaenge lateinisch u. Deutsch. Bonn, 1847. Second collection by Königsfeld, Bonn, 1865. E. E. Koch: Geschichte des Kirchenlieds u. Kirchengesangs der christl., insbesondere der deutschen evangel. Kirche. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1852 f. 4 vols. (i. 10–30). F. J. Mone: Latein. Hymnen des Mittelalters (from MSS.), Freiburg, 1853–’55. (Vol. i., hymns of God and angels; ii., h. of Mary; iii., h. of saints.)  Bässler: Auswahl Alt-christl. Lieder vom 2–15ten Jahrh. Berlin, 1858. R. Ch. Trench: Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly lyrical, selected and arranged for use; with Notes and Introduction (1849), 2d ed. improved, Lond. and Cambr. 1864. The valuable hymnological works of Dr. J. M. Neale (of Sackville College, Oxford): The Ecclesiastical Latin Poetry of the Middle Ages (in Henry Thompson’s History of Roman Literature, Lond. and Glasgow., 1852, p. 213 ff.); Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences, Lond. 1851; Sequentiae ex Missalibus, 1852; Hymns of the Eastern Church, 1862, several articles in the Ecclesiologist; and a Latin dissertation, De Sequentiis, in the Essays on Liturgiology, etc., p. 359 sqq. (Comp. also J. Chandler: The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first collected, translated, and arranged, Lond. 1837.)

Poetry, and its twin sister music, are the most sublime and spiritual arts, and are much more akin to the genius of Christianity, and minister far more copiously to the purposes of devotion and edification than architecture, painting, and sculpture. They employ word and tone, and can speak thereby more directly to the spirit than the plastic arts by stone and color, and give more adequate expression to the whole wealth of the world of thought and feeling. In the Old Testament, as is well known, they were essential parts of divine worship; and so they have been in all ages and almost all branches of the Christian church.

Of the various species of religious poetry, the hymn is the earliest and most important. It has a rich history, in which the deepest experiences of Christian life are stored. But it attains full bloom in the Evangelical church of the German and English tongue, where it, like the Bible, becomes for the first time truly the possession of the people, instead of being restricted to priest or choir.

The hymn, in the narrower sense, belongs to lyrical poetry, or the poetry of feeling, in distinction from the epic and dramatic. It differs also from the other forms of the lyric (ode, elegy, sonnet, cantata, &c.) in its devotional nature, its popular form, and its adaptation to singing. The hymn is a popular spiritual song, presenting a healthful Christian sentiment in a noble, simple, and universally intelligible form, and adapted to be read and sung with edification by the whole congregation of the faithful. It must therefore contain nothing inconsistent with Scripture, with the doctrines of the church, with general Christian experience, or with the spirit of devotion. Every believing Christian can join in the Gloria in Excelsis or the Te Deum. The classic hymns, which are, indeed, comparatively few, stand above confessional differences, and resolve the discords of human opinions in heavenly harmony. They resemble in this the Psalms, from which all branches of the militant church draw daily nourishment and comfort. They exhibit the bloom of the Christian life in the Sabbath dress of beauty and holy rapture. They resound in all pious hearts, and have, like the daily rising sun and the yearly returning spring, an indestructible freshness and power. In truth, their benign virtue increases with increasing age, like that of healing herbs, which is the richer the longer they are bruised. They are true benefactors of the struggling church, ministering angels sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation. Next to the Holy Scripture, a good hymn-book is the richest fountain of edification.

The book of Psalms is the oldest Christian hymn-book, inherited by the church from the ancient covenant. The appearance of the Messiah upon earth was the beginning of Christian poetry, and was greeted by the immortal songs of Mary, of Elizabeth, of Simeon, and of the heavenly host. Religion and poetry are married, therefore, in the gospel. In the Epistles traces also appear of primitive Christian songs, in rhythmical quotations which are not demonstrably taken from the Old Testament.1230  We know from the letter of the elder Pliny to Trajan, that the Christians, in the beginning of the second century, praised Christ as their God in songs; and from a later source, that there was a multitude of such songs.1231

Notwithstanding this, we have no complete religious song remaining from the period of persecution, except the song of Clement of Alexandria to the divine Logos—which, however, cannot be called a hymn, and was probably never intended for public use—the Morning Song1232 and the Evening Song1233 in the Apostolic Constitutions, especially the former, the so-called Gloria in Excelsis, which, as an expansion of the doxology of the heavenly hosts, still rings in all parts of the Christian world. Next in order comes the Te Deum, in its original Eastern form, or the kaq j eJkavsthn hJmevran, which is older than Ambrose. The Ter Sanctus, and several ancient liturgical prayers, also may be regarded as poems. For the hymn is, in fact, nothing else than a prayer in the festive garb of poetical inspiration, and the best liturgical prayers are poetical creations. Measure and rhyme are by no means essential.

Upon these fruitful biblical and primitive Christian models arose the hymnology of the ancient catholic church, which forms the first stage in the history of hymnology, and upon which the mediaeval, and then the evangelical Protestant stage, with their several epochs, follow.

§ 114. The Poetry of the Oriental Church.

Comp. the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus hymnologicus (the Greek section prepared by B. Vormbaum); the works of J. M. Neale, quoted sub § 113; an article on Greek Hymnology in the Christian Remembrancer, for April, 1859, London; also the liturgical works quoted § 98.

We should expect that the Greek church, which was in advance in all branches of Christian doctrine and culture, and received from ancient Greece so rich a heritage of poetry, would give the key also in church song. This is true to a very limited extent. The Gloria in excelsis and the Te Deum are unquestionably the most valuable jewels of sacred poetry which have come down from the early church, and they are both, the first wholly, the second in part of Eastern origin, and going back perhaps to the third or second century.1234  But, excepting these hymns in rhythmic prose, the Greek church of the first six centuries produced nothing in this field which has had permanent value or general use.1235  It long adhered almost exclusively to the Psalms of David, who, as Chrysostom says, was first, middle, and last in the assemblies of the Christians, and it had, in opposition to heretical predilections, even a decided aversion to the public use of uninspired songs. Like the Gnostics before them, the Arians and the Apollinarians employed religious poetry and music as a popular means of commending and propagating their errors, and thereby, although the abuse never forbids the right use, brought discredit upon these arts. The council of Laodicea, about A.D. 360, prohibited even the ecclesiastical use of all uninspired or "private hymns,"1236 and the council of Chalcedon, in 451, confirmed this decree.

Yet there were exceptions. Chrysostom thought that the perverting influence of the Arian hymnology in Constantinople could be most effectually counteracted by the positive antidote of solemn antiphonies and doxologies in processions. Gregory Nazianzen composed orthodox hymns in the ancient measure; but from their speculative theological character and their want of popular spirit, these hymns never passed into the use of the church. The same may be said of the productions of Sophronius of Jerusalem, who glorified the high festivals in Anacreontic stanzas; of Synesius of Ptolemais (about A.D. 410), who composed philosophical hymns; of Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt, who wrote a paraphrase of the Gospel of John in hexameters; of Eudoxia, the wife of the emperor Theodosius II.; and of Paul Silentiarius, a statesman under Justinian I., from whom we have several epigrams and an interesting poetical description of the church of St. Sophia, written for its consecration. Anatolius, bishop of Constantinople († 458), is properly the only poet of this period who realized to any extent the idea of the church hymn, and whose songs were adapted to popular use.1237

The Syrian church was the first of all the Oriental churches to produce and admit into public worship a popular orthodox poetry, in opposition to the heretical poetry of the Gnostic Bardesanes (about A.D. 170) and his son Harmonius. Ephraim Syrus († 378) led the way with a large number of successful hymns in the Syrian language, and found in Isaac, presbyter of Antioch, in the middle of the fifth century, and especially in Jacob, bishop of Sarug in Mesopotamia († 521), worthy successors.1238

After the fifth century the Greek church lost its prejudices against poetry, and produced a great but slightly known abundance of sacred songs for public worship.

In the history of the Greek church poetry, as well as the Latin, we may distinguish three epochs: (1) that of formation, while it was slowly throwing off classical metres, and inventing its peculiar style, down to about 650; (2) that of perfection, down to 820; (3) that of decline and decay, to 1400 or to the fall of Constantinople. The first period, beautiful as are some of the odes of Gregory of Nazianzen and Sophronius of Jerusalem, has impressed scarcely any traces on the Greek office books. The flourishing period of Greek poetry coincides with the period of the image controversies, and the most eminent poets were at the same time advocates of images; pre-eminent among them being John of Damascus, who has the double honor of being the greatest theologian and the greatest poet of the Greek church.

The flower of Greek poetry belongs, therefore, in a later division of our history. Yet, since we find at least the rise of it in the fifth century, we shall give here a brief description of its peculiar character.

The earliest poets of the Greek church, especially Gregory Nazianzen, in the fourth, and Sophronius of Jerusalem in the seventh century, employed the classical metres, which are entirely unsuitable to Christian ideas and church song, and therefore gradually fell out of use.1239  Rhyme found no entrance into the Greek church. In its stead the metrical or harmonic prose was adopted from the Hebrew poetry and the earliest Christian hymns of Mary, Zacharias, Simeon, and the angelic host. Anatolius of Constantinople († 458) was the first to renounce the tyranny of the classic metre and strike out a new path. The essential points in the peculiar system of the Greek versification are the following:1240

The first stanza, which forms the model of the succeeding ones, is called in technical language Hirmos, because it draws the others after it. The succeeding stanzas are called Troparia (stanzas), and are divided, for chanting, by commas, without regard to the sense. A number of troparia, from three to twenty or more, forms an Ode, and this corresponds to the Latin Sequence, which was introduced about the same time by the monk Notker in St. Gall. Each ode is founded on a hirmos and ends with a troparion in praise of the Holy Virgin.1241  The odes are commonly arranged (probably after the example of such Psalms as the 25th, 112th, and 119th) in acrostic, sometimes in alphabetic, order. Nine odes form a Canon.1242  The older odes on the great events of the incarnation, the resurrection, and the ascension, are sometimes sublime; but the later long canons, in glorification of unknown martyrs are extremely prosaic and tedious and full of elements foreign to the gospel. Even the best hymnological productions of the East lack the healthful simplicity, naturalness, fervor, and depth of the Latin and of the Evangelical Protestant hymn.

The principal church poets of the East are Anatolius († 458), Andrew of Crete (660–732), Germanus I. (634–734), John Of Damascus († about 780), Cosmas of Jerusalem, called the Melodist (780), Theophanes (759–818), Theodore of the Studium (826), Methodius I. (846), Joseph of the Studium (830), Metrophanes of Smyrna († 900), Leo VI. (886–917), and Euthymius († 920).

The Greek church poetry is contained in the liturgical books, especially in the twelve volumes of the Menaea, which correspond to the Latin Breviary, and consist, for the most part, of poetic or half-poetic odes in rhythmic prose.1243  These treasures, on which nine centuries have wrought, have hitherto been almost exclusively confined to the Oriental church, and in fact yield but few grains of gold for general use. Neale has latterly made a happy effort to reproduce and make accessible in modern English metres, with very considerable abridgments, the most valuable hymns of the Greek church.1244

We give a few specimens of Neale’s translations of hymns of St. Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople, who attended the council of Chalcedon (451). The first is a Christmas hymn, commencing in Greek:

Mevga kai; paravdoxon qau'ma.

"A great and mighty wonder,

The festal makes secure:

The Virgin bears the Infant

With Virgin-honor pure.

The Word is made incarnate,

And yet remains on high:

And cherubim sing anthems

To shepherds from the sky.

And we with them triumphant

Repeat the hymn again:

’To God on high be glory,

And peace on earth to men!’

While thus they sing your Monarch,

Those bright angelic bands,

Rejoice, ye vales and mountains!

Ye oceans, clap your hands!

Since all He comes to ransom,

By all be He adored,

The Infant born in Bethlehem,

The Saviour and the Lord!

Now idol forms shall perish,

All error shall decay,

And Christ shall wield His sceptre,

Our Lord and God for aye."

Another specimen of a Christmas hymn by the same, commencing ejn Bhqleevm:

"In Bethlehem is He born!

Maker of all things, everlasting God!

He opens Eden’s gate,

Monarch of ages!  Thence the fiery sword

Gives glorious passage; thence,

The severing mid-wall overthrown, the powers

Of earth and Heaven are one;

Angels and men renew their ancient league,

The pure rejoin the pure,

In happy union!  Now the Virgin-womb

Like some cherubic throne

Containeth Him, the Uncontainable:

Bears Him, whom while they bear

The seraphs tremble! bears Him, as He comes

To shower upon the world

The fulness of His everlasting love!

One more on Christ calming the storm, zofera'" trikumiva", as reproduced by Neale:

"Fierce was the wild billow

Dark was the night;

Oars labor’d heavily;

Foam glimmer’d white;

Mariners trembled

Peril was nigh;

Then said the God of God

—’Peace!  It is I.’

Ridge of the mountain-wave,

Lower thy crest!

Wail of Euroclydon,

Be thou at rest!

Peril can none be—

Sorrow must fly

Where saith the Light of Light,

—’Peace!  It is I.’

Jesu, Deliverer!

Come Thou to me:

Soothe Thou my voyaging

Over life’s sea!

Thou, when the storm of death

Roars, sweeping by,

Whisper, O Truth of Truth!

– ’Peace!  It is I.’ "

§ 115. The Latin Hymn.

More important than the Greek hymnology is the Latin from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Smaller in compass, it surpasses it in artless simplicity and truth, and in richness, vigor, and fulness of thought, and is much more akin to the Protestant spirit. With objective churchly character it combines deeper feeling and more subjective appropriation and experience of salvation, and hence more warmth and fervor than the Greek. It forms in these respects the transition to the Evangelical hymn, which gives the most beautiful and profound expression to the personal enjoyment of the Saviour and his redeeming grace. The best Latin hymns have come through the Roman Breviary into general use, and through translations and reproductions have become naturalized in Protestant churches. They treat for the most part of the great facts of salvation and the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But many of them are devoted to the praises of Mary and the martyrs, and vitiated with superstitions.

In the Latin church, as in the Greek, heretics gave a wholesome impulse to poetical activity. The two patriarchs of Latin church poetry, Hilary and Ambrose, were the champions of orthodoxy against Arianism in the West.

The genius of Christianity exerted an influence, partly liberating, partly transforming, upon the Latin language and versification. Poetry in its youthful vigor is like an impetuous mountain torrent, which knows no bounds and breaks through all obstacles; but in its riper form it restrains itself and becomes truly free in self-limitation; it assumes a symmetrical, well-regulated motion and combines it with periodical rest. This is rhythm, which came to its perfection in the poetry of Greece and Rome. But the laws of metre were an undue restraint to the new Christian spirit which required a new form. The Latin poetry of the church has a language of its own, a grammar of its own, a prosody of its own, and a beauty of its own, and in freshness, vigor, and melody even surpasses the Latin poetry of the classics. It had to cast away all the helps of the mythological fables, but drew a purer and richer inspiration from the sacred history and poetry of the Bible, and the heroic age of Christianity. But it had first to pass through a state of barbarism like the Romanic languages of the South of Europe in their transition from the old Latin. We observe the Latin language under the influence of the youthful and hopeful religion of Christ, as at the breath of a second spring, putting forth fresh blossoms and flowers and clothing itself with a new garment of beauty, old words assuming new and deeper meanings, obsolete words reviving, new words forming. In all this there is much to offend a fastidious classical taste, yet the losses are richly compensated by the gains. Christianity at its triumph in the Roman empire found the classical Latin rapidly approaching its decay and dissolution; in the course of time it brought out of its ashes a new creation.

The classical system of prosody was gradually loosened, and accent substituted for quantity. Rhyme, unknown to the ancients as a system or rule, was introduced in the middle or at the end of the verse, giving the song a lyrical character, and thus a closer affinity with music. For the hymns were to be sung in the churches. This accented and rhymed poetry was at first, indeed, very imperfect, yet much better adapted to the freedom, depth, and warmth of the Christian spirit, than the stereotyped, stiff, and cold measure of the heathen classics.1245  Quantity is a more or less arbitrary and artificial device; accent, or the emphasizing of one syllable in a polysyllabic word, is natural and popular, and commends itself to the ear. Ambrose and his followers, with happy instinct, chose for their hymns the Iambic dimeter, which is the least metrical and the most rhythmical of all the ancient metres. The tendency to euphonious rhyme went hand in hand with the accented rhythm, and this tendency appears occasionally in its crude beginnings in Hilary and Ambrose, but more fully in Damasus, the proper father of this improvement.

Rhyme is not the invention of either a barbaric or an overcivilized age, but appears more or less in almost all nations, languages, and grades of culture. Like rhythm it springs from the natural esthetic sense of proportion, euphony, limitation, and periodic return.1246  It is found here and there, even in the oldest popular poetry of republican Rome, that of Ennius, for example.1247  It occurs not rarely in the prose even of Cicero, and especially of St. Augustine, who delights in ingenious alliterations and verbal antitheses, like patet and latet, spes and res, fides and vides, bene and plene, oritur and moritur. Damasus of Rome introduced it into sacred poetry.1248  But it was in the sacred Latin poetry of the middle age that rhyme first assumed a regular form, and in Adam of St. Victor, Hildebert, St. Bernard, Bernard of Clugny, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Thomas a Celano, and Jacobus de Benedictis (author of the Stabat mater), it reached its perfection in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; above all, in that incomparable giant hymn on the judgment, the tremendous power of which resides, first indeed in its earnest matter, but next in its inimitable mastery of the musical treatment of vowels. I mean, of course, the Dies irae of the Franciscan monk Thomas a Celano (about 1250), which excites new wonder on every reading, and to which no translation in any modern language can do full justice. In Adam of St. Victor, too, of the twelfth century, occur unsurpassable rhymes; e.g., the picture of the Evangelist John (in the poem: De, S. Joanne evangelista), which Olshausen has chosen for the motto of his commentary on the fourth Gospel, and which Trench declares the most beautiful stanza in the Latin church poetry:

"Volat avis sine meta

Quo nee vates nec propheta

Evolavit altius:

Tam implenda,1249 quam impleta1250

Nunquam vidit tot secreta

Purus homo purius."

The metre of the Latin hymns is various, and often hard to be defined. Gavanti1251 supposes six principal kinds of verse:

1. Iambici dimetri (as: "Vexilla regis prodeunt").

2. Iambici trimetri (ternarii vel senarii, as: "Autra deserti teneris sub annis").

3. Trochaici dimetri ("Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium," a eucharistic hymn of Thomas Aquinas).

4. Sapphici, cum Adonico in fine (as: "Ut queant axis resonare fibris").

5. Trochaici (as: "Ave maris stella").

6. Asclepiadici, cum Glyconico in fine (as: "Sacris solemniis juncta sint gaudia").

In the period before us the Iambic dimeter prevails; in Hilary and Ambrose without exception.

§ 116. The Latin Poets and Hymns.

The poets of this period, Prudentius excepted, are all clergymen, and the best are eminent theologians whose lives and labors have their more appropriate place in other parts of this work.

Hilary, bishop of Poitiers (hence Pictaviensis, † 368), the Athanasius of the West in the Arian controversies, is, according to the testimony of Jerome,1252 the first hymn writer of the Latin church. During his exile in Phrygia and in Constantinople, he became acquainted with the Arian hymns and was incited by them to compose, after his return, orthodox hymns for the use of the Western church. He thus laid the foundation of Latin hymnology. He composed the beautiful morning hymn: "Lucis largitor splendide;" the Pentecostal hymn: "Beata nobis gaudia;" and, perhaps, the Latin reproduction of the famous Gloria in excelsis. The authorship of many of the hymns ascribed to him is doubtful, especially those in which the regular rhyme already appears, as in the Epiphany hymn:

"Jesus refulsit omnium

Pius redemptor gentium."

We give as a specimen a part of the first three stanzas of his morning hymn, which has been often translated into German and English:1253

"Lucis largitor splendide,

"O glorious Father of the light,

Cuius serene lumine

From whose efflugence, calm and bright,

Post lapsa noctis tempora

Soon as hours of night are fled,

Dies refusus panditur:

The brilliance of the dawn is shed:

"To verus mundi Lucifer,

"Thou art the dark world’s truer ray:

Non is, qui parvi sideris,

No radiance of that lesser day,

Venturae lucis nuntius

That heralds, in the morn begun,

Augusto fulget lumine:

The advent of our darker sun:

"Sed toto sole clarior,

"But, brighter than its noontide gleam,

Lux ipse totus et dies,

Thyself full daylight’s fullest beam,

Interna nostri pectoris

The inmost mansions of our breast

Illuminans praecordia."

Thou by Thy grace illuminest."

Ambrose, the illustrious bishop of Milan, though some-what younger († 397), is still considered, on account of the number and value of his hymns, the proper father of Latin church song, and became the model for all successors. Such was his fame as a hymnographer that the words Ambrosianus and hymnus were at one time nearly synonymous. His genuine hymns are distinguished for strong faith, elevated but rude simplicity, noble dignity, deep unction, and a genuine churchly and liturgical spirit. The rhythm is still irregular, and of rhyme only imperfect beginnings appear; and in this respect they certainly fall far below the softer and richer melodies of the middle age, which are more engaging to ear and heart. They are an altar of unpolished and unhewn stone. They set forth the great objects of faith with apparent coldness that stands aloof from them in distant adoration; but the passion is there, though latent, and the fire of an austere enthusiasm burns beneath the surface. Many of them have, in addition to their poetical value, a historical and theological value as testimonies of orthodoxy against Arianism.1254

Of the thirty to a hundred so-called Ambrosian hymns,1255 however, only twelve, in the view of the Benedictine editors of his works, are genuine; the rest being more or less successful imitations by unknown authors. Neale reduces the number of the genuine Ambrosian hymns to ten, and excludes all which rhyme regularly, and those which are not metrical. Among the genuine are the morning hymn: "Aeterne rerum conditor;"1256 the evening hymn: "Deus creator omnium;"1257 and the Advent or Christmas hymn: "Veni, Redemptor gentium."  This last is justly considered his best. It has been frequently reproduced in modern languages,1258 and we add this specimen of its matter and form with an English version:

"Veni, Redemptor gentium,

"Come, Thou Redeemer of the earth,

Ostende partum Virginis;

Come, testify Thy Virgin Birth:

Miretur omne saeculum:

All lands admire—all times applaud:

Talis partus decet Deum.

Such is the birth that fits a God.

"Non ex virili semine,

"Begotten of no human will,

Sed mystico spiramine,

But of the Spirit, mystic still,

Verbum Dei factum est caro,

The Word of God, in flesh arrayed,

Fructusque ventris floruit.

The promised fruit to man displayed.

"Alvus tumescit Virginis,

"The Virgin womb that burden gained

Claustrum pudoris permanet,

With Virgin honor all unstained

Vexilla virtutum micant,

The banners there of virtues glow:

Versatur in templo Deus.

God in His Temple dwells below.

"Procedit e thalamo suo,

"Proceeding from His chamber free,

Pudoris aulâ regiâ,

The royal hall of chastity,

Geminae Gigas substantiae,

Giant of twofold substance, straight

Alacris ut currat viam.1259

His destined way He runs elate.

"Egressus ejus a Patre,

"From God the Father He proceeds,

Regressus ejus ad Patrem,

To God the Father back He speeds:

Excursus usque ad inferos

Proceeds—as far as very hell:

Recursus ad sedem Dei.

Speeds back—to light ineffable.

"Aequalis aeterno Patri,

"O equal to the Father, Thou!

Carnis tropaeo1260 cingere,

Gird on Thy fleshly trophy (mantle) now

Infirma nostri corporis

The weakness of our mortal state

Virtute firmans perpeti.

With deathless might invigorate.

"Praesepe jam fulget tuum,

"Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,

Lumenque nox spirat novum,

And darkness breathe a newer light,

Quod nulla nox interpolet,

Where endless faith shall shine serene,

Fideque jugi luceat."

And twilight never intervene."

By far the most celebrated hymn of the Milanese bishop, which alone would have made his name immortal, is the Ambrosian doxology, Te Deum laudamus. This, with the Gloria in excelsis, is, as already remarked, by far the most valuable legacy of the old Catholic church poetry; and will be prayed and sung with devotion in all parts of Christendom to the end of time. According to an old legend, Ambrose composed it on the baptism of St. Augustine, and conjointly with him; the two, without preconcert, as if from divine inspiration, alternately singing the words of it before the congregation. But his biographer Paulinus says nothing of this, and, according to later investigations, this sublime Christian psalm is, like the Gloria in excelsis, but a free reproduction and expansion of an older Greek hymn in prose, of which some constituents appear in the Apostolic Constitutions, and elsewhere.1261

Ambrose introduced also an improved mode of singing in Milan, making wise use of the Greek symphonies and antiphonies, and popular melodies. This Cantus Ambrosianus, or figural song, soon supplanted the former mode of reciting the Psalms and prayers in monotone with musical accent and little modulation of the voice, and spread into most of the Western churches as a congregational song. It afterwards degenerated, and was improved and simplified by Gregory the Great, and gave place to the so-called Cantus Romanus, or choralis.

Augustine, the greatest theologian among the church fathers († 430), whose soul was filled with the genuine essence of poetry, is said to have composed the resurrection hymn: "Cum rex gloriae Christus;" the hymn on the glory of paradise: "Ad perennis vitae fontem melis sitivit arida;" and others. But he probably only furnished in the lofty poetical intuitions and thoughts which are scattered through his prose works, especially in the Confessions, the materia carminis for later poets, like Peter Damiani, bishop of Ostia, in the eleventh century, who put into flowing verse Augustine’s meditations on the blessedness of heaven.1262 Damasus, bishop of Rome († 384), a friend of Jerome, likewise composed some few sacred songs, and is considered the author of the rhyme.1263

Coelius Sedulius, a native of Scotland or Ireland, presbyter in the first half of the fifth century, composed the hymns: "Herodes, hostis impie," and "A solis ortus cardine," and some larger poems.

Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius († 405), an advocate and imperial governor in Spain under Theodosius, devoted the last years of his life to religious contemplation and the writing of sacred poetry, and stands at the head of the more fiery and impassioned Spanish school. Bently calls him the Horace and Virgil of Christians, Neale, "the prince of primitive Christian poets."  Prudentius is undoubtedly the most gifted and fruitful of the old Catholic poets. He was master of the classic measure, but admirably understood how to clothe the new ideas and feelings of Christianity in a new dress. His poems have been repeatedly edited.1264  They are in some cases long didactic or epic productions in hexameters, of much historical value;1265 in others, collections of epic poems, as the Cathemerinon,1266 and Peristephanon.1267  Extracts from the latter have passed into public use. The best known hymns of Prudentius are: "Salvete, flores martyrum," in memory of the massacred innocents at Bethlehem,1268 and his grand burial hymn: "Jam moesta quiesce querela," which brings before us the ancient worship in deserts and in catacombs, and of which Herder says that no one can read it without feeling his heart moved by its touching tones.1269

We must mention two more poets who form the transition from the ancient Catholic to mediaeval church poetry.

Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian by birth, a friend of queen Radegunde (who lived apart from her husband, and presided over a cloister), the fashionable poet of France, and at the time of his death (about 600), bishop of Poitiers, wrote eleven books of poems on various subjects, an epic on the life of St. Martin of Tours, and a theological work in vindication of the Augustinian doctrine of divine grace. He was the first to use the rhyme with a certain degree of mastery and regularity, although with considerable license still, so that many of his rhymes are mere alliterations of consonants or repetitions of vowels.1270  He first mastered the trochaic tetrameter, a measure which, with various modifications, subsequently became the glory of the mediaeval hymn. Prudentius had already used it once or twice, but Fortunatus first grouped it into stanzas. His best known compositions are the passion hymns: "Vexilla regis prodeunt," and "Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium (lauream) certaminis," which, though not without some alterations, have passed into the Roman Breviary.1271  The "Vexilla regis" is sung on Good Friday during the procession in which the consecrated host is carried to the altar. Both are used on the festivals of the Invention and the Elevation of the Cross.1272  The favorite Catholic hymn to Mary: "Ave maris stella,"1273 is sometimes ascribed to him, but is of a much later date.

We give as specimens his two famous passion hymns, which were composed about 580.

Vexilla Regis Prodeunt.1274

"Vexilla regis prodeunt,

"The Royal Banners forward go:

Fulget crucis mysterium,

The Cross shines forth with mystic glow:

Quo carne carnis conditor

Where He in flesh, our flesh who made,

Suspensus est patibulo.1275

Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.

"Quo vulneratus insuper

"Where deep for us the spear was dyed,

Mucrone diro lanceae,

Life’s torrent rushing from His side:

Ut nos lavaret crimine

To wash us in the precious flood,

Manavit unda et sanguine.

Where mingled water flowed, and blood.

"Impleta sunt quae concinit

"Fulfilled is all that David told

David fideli carmine

In true prophetic song of old:

Dicens: in nationibus

Amidst the nations, God, saith he,

Regnavit a ligno Deus.

Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.

"Arbor decora et fulgida

"O Tree of Beauty!  Tree of Light!

Ornata regis purpura,

O Tree with royal purple dight!

Electa digno stipite

Elect upon whose faithful breast

Tam sancta membra tangere.

Those holy limbs should find their rest!

"Beata cuius brachiis

"On whose dear arms, so widely flung,

Pretium pependit saeculi,

The weight of this world’s ransom hung

Statera facta saeculi

The price of human kind to pay,

Praedamque tulit tartaris."1276

And spoil the spoiler of his prey!"

Pange, Lingua, Gloriosi Proelium Certaminis.1277

"Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,1278 with completed victory rife,

And above the Cross’s trophy, tell the triumph of the strife;

How the world’s Redeemer conquer’d, by surrendering of His life.

"God, his Maker, sorely grieving that the first-born Adam fell,

When he ate the noxious apple, whose reward was death and hell,

Noted then this wood, the ruin of the ancient wood to quell.

"For the work of our Salvation needs would have his order so,

And the multiform deceiver’s art by art would overthrow;

And from thence would bring the medicine whence the venom of the foe.

"Wherefore, when the sacred fulness of the appointed time was come,

This world’s Maker left His Father, left His bright and heavenly home,

And proceeded, God Incarnate, of the Virgin’s holy womb.

"Weeps the Infant in the manger that in Bethlehem’s stable stands;

And His limbs the Virgin Mother doth compose in swaddling bands,

Meetly thus in linen folding of her God the feet and hands.

"Thirty years among us dwelling, His appointed time fulfilled,

Born for this, He meets His Passion, for that this He freely willed:

On the Cross the Lamb is lifted, where His life-blood shall be spilled.

"He endured the shame and spitting, vinegar, and nails, and reed;

As His blessed side is opened, water thence and blood proceed:

Earth, and sky, and stars, and ocean, by that flood are cleansed indeed.

"Faithful Cross! above all other, one and only noble Tree!

None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thy peers may be;

Sweetest wood and sweetest iron, sweetest weight is hung on thee!1279

"Bend thy boughs, O Tree of Glory!  thy relaxing sinews bend;

For awhile the ancient rigor, that thy birth bestowed, suspend;

And the King of heavenly beauty on thy bosom gently tend.

"Thou alone wast counted worthy this world’s ransom to uphold;

For a shipwreck’d race preparing harbor, like the Ark of old:

With the sacred blood anointed from the wounded Lamb that roll’d.

"Laud and honor to the Father, laud and honor to the Son,

Laud and honor to the Spirit, ever Three and ever One:

Consubstantial, co-eternal, while unending ages run.

Far less important as a poet is Gregory I. (590–604), the last of the fathers and the first of the mediaeval popes. Many hymns of doubtful origin have been ascribed to him and received into the Breviary. The best is his Sunday hymn: "Primo dierum omnium."1280

The hymns are the fairest flowers of the poetry of the ancient church. But besides them many epic and didactic poems arose, especially in Gaul and Spain, which counteracted the invading flood of barbarism, and contributed to preserve a connection with the treasures of the classic culture. Juvencus, a Spanish presbyter under Constantine, composed the first Christian epic, a Gospel history in four books (3,226 lines), on the model of Virgil, but as to poetic merit never rising above mediocrity. Far superior to him is Prudentius († 405); he wrote, besides the hymns already mentioned, several didactic, epic, and polemic poems. St. Pontius Paulinus, bishop of Nola († 431), who was led by the poet Ausonius to the mysteries of the Muses,1281 and a friend of Augustine and Jerome, is the author of some thirty poems full of devout spirit; the best are those on the festival of S. Felix, his patron. Prosper Aquitanus († 460), layman, and friend of Augustine, wrote a didactic poem against the Pelagians, and several epigrams; Avitus, bishop of Vienne († 523), an epic on the creation and the origin of evil; Arator, a court official under Justinian, afterwards a sub-deacon of the Roman church (about 544), a paraphrase, in heroic verse, of the Acts of the Apostles, in two books of about 1,800 lines. Claudianus Mamertus,1282 Benedictus Paulinus, Elpidius, Orontius, and Draconti

CHAPTER IX.

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECUMENICAL ORTHODOXY.

§ 117. General Observations. Doctrinal Importance of the Period. Influence of the Ancient Philosophy.

The Nicene and Chalcedonian age is the period of the formation and ecclesiastical settlement of the ecumenical orthodoxy; that is, the doctrines of the holy trinity and of the incarnation and the divine-human person of Christ, in which the Greek, Latin, and evangelical churches to this day in their symbolical books agree, in opposition to the heresies of Arianism and Apollinarianism, Nestorianism and Eutychianism. Besides these trinitarian and christological doctrines, anthropology also, and soteriology, particularly the doctrines of sin and grace, in opposition to Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism were developed and brought to a relative settlement; only, however, in the Latin church, for the Greek took very little part in the Pelagian controversy.

The fundamental nature of these doctrines, the greatness of the church fathers who were occupied with them, and the importance of the result, give this period the first place after the apostolic in the history of theology. In no period, excepting the Reformation of the sixteenth century, have there been so momentous and earnest controversies in doctrine, and so lively an interest in them. The church was now in possession of the ancient philosophy and learning of the Roman empire, and applied them to the unfolding and vindication of the Christian truth. In the lead of these controversies stood church teachers of imposing talents and energetic piety, not mere book men, but venerable theological characters, men all of a piece, as great in acting and suffering as in thinking. To them theology was a sacred business of heart and life,1283 and upon them we may pass the judgment of Eusebius respecting Origen: "Their life was as their word, and their word was as their life."

The theological controversies absorbed the intellectual activity of that time, and shook the foundations of the church and the empire. With the purest zeal for truth were mingled much of the odium and rabies theologorum, and the whole host of theological passions; which are the deepest and most bitter of passions, because religion is concerned with eternal interests.

The leading personages in these controversies were of course bishops and priests. By their side fought the monks, as a standing army, with fanatical zeal for the victory of orthodoxy, or not seldom in behalf even of heresy. Emperors and civil officers also mixed in the business of theology, but for the most part to the prejudice of its free, internal development; for they imparted to all theological questions a political character, and entangled them with the cabals of court and the secular interests of the day. In Constantinople, during the Arian controversy, all classes, even mechanics, bankers, frippers, market women, and runaway slaves took lively part in the questions of Homousion and sub-ordination, of the begotten and the unbegotten.1284

The speculative mind of the Eastern church was combined with a deep religious earnestness and a certain mysticism, and at the same time with the Grecian curiosity and disputatiousness, which afterwards rather injured than promoted her inward life. Gregory Nazianzen, who lived in Constantinople in the midst of the Arian wars, describes the division and hostility which this polemic spirit introduced between parents and children, husbands and wives, old and young, masters and slaves, priests and people. "It has gone so far that the whole market resounds with the discourses of heretics, every banquet is corrupted by this babbling even to nausea, every merrymaking is transformed into a mourning, and every funeral solemnity is almost alleviated by this brawling as a still greater evil; even the chambers of women, the nurseries of simplicity, are disturbed thereby, and the flowers of modesty are crushed by this precocious practice of dispute."1285  Chrysostom, like Melanchthon at a later day, had much to suffer from the theological pugnacity of his times.

The history of the Nicene age shows clearly that the church of God carries the heavenly treasure in earthly vessels. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was likewise in fact an incessant war, in which impure personal and political motives of every kind had play, and even the best men often violated the apostolic injunction to speak the truth in love. But we must not forget that the passionate and intolerant dogmatism of that time was based upon deep moral earnestness and strong faith, and so far forth stands vastly above the tolerance of indifferentism, which lightly plays with the truth or not rarely strikes out in most vehement intolerance against the faith. (Remember the first French revolution.)  The overruling of divine Providence in the midst of these wild conflicts is unmistakable, and the victory of the truth appears the greater for the violence of error. God uses all sorts of men for his instruments, and brings evil passions as well as good into his service. The Spirit of truth guided the church through the rush and the din of contending parties, and always triumphed over error in the end.

The ecumenical councils were the open battle-fields, upon which the victory of orthodoxy was decided. The doctrinal decrees of these councils contain the results of the most profound discussions respecting the Trinity and the person of Christ; and the Church to this day has not gone essentially beyond those decisions.

The Greek church wrought out Theology and Christology, while the Latin church devoted itself to Anthropology and Soteriology. The one, true to the genius of the Greek nationality, was predominantly speculative, dialectical, impulsive, and restless; the other, in keeping with the Roman character, was practical, traditional, uniform, consistent, and steady. The former followed the stimulation of Origen and the Alexandrian school; the latter received its impulse from Tertullian and Cyprian, and reached its theological height in Jerome and Augustine. The speculative inclination of the Greek church appeared even in its sermons, which not rarely treated of the number of worlds, the idea of matter, the different classes of higher spirits, the relation of the three hypostases in the Godhead, and similar abstruse questions. The Latin church also, however, had a deep spirit of investigation (as we see in Tertullian and Augustine), took an active part in the trinitarian and christological controversies of the East, and decided the victory of orthodoxy by the weight of its authority. The Greek church almost exhausted its productive force in those great struggles, proved indifferent to the deeper conception of sin and grace, as developed by Augustine, and after the council of Chalcedon degenerated theologically into scholastic formalism and idle refinements.

The fourth and fifth centuries are the flourishing, classical period of the patristic theology and of the Christian Graeco-Roman civilization. In the second half of the fifth century the West Roman empire, with these literary treasures, went down amidst the storms of the great migration, to take a new and higher sweep in the Germano-Roman form under Charlemagne. In the Eastern empire scholarship was better maintained, and a certain connection with antiquity was preserved through the medium of the Greek language. But as the Greek church had no middle age, so it has had no Protestant Reformation.

The prevailing philosophy of the fathers was the Platonic, so far as it was compatible with the Christian spirit. The speculative theologians of the East, especially those of the school of Origen, and in the West, Ambrose and pre-eminently Augustine, were moulded by the Platonic idealism.

A remarkable combination of Platonism with Christianity, to the injury of the latter, appears in the system of mystic symbolism in the pseudo-Dionysian books, which cannot have been composed before the fifth century, though they were falsely ascribed to the Areopagite of the book of Acts (xvii. 34), and proceeded from the later school of New-Platonism, as represented by Proclus of Athens († 485). The fundamental idea of these Dionysian writings (on the celestial hierarchy; on the ecclesiastical hierarchy; on the divine names; on mystic theology; together with ten letters) is a double hierarchy, one in heaven and one on earth, each consisting of three triads, which mediates between man and the ineffable, transcendent hyper-essential divinity. This idea is a remnant of the aristocratic spirit of ancient heathenism, and forms the connecting link with the hierarchical organization of the church, and explains the great importance and popularity which the pseudo-Dionysian system acquired, especially in the mystic theology of the middle ages.1286

In Synesius of Cyrene also the Platonism outweighs the Christianity. He was an enthusiastic pupil of Hypatia, the famous female philosopher at Alexandria, and in 410 was called to the bishopric of Ptolemais, the capital of Pentapolis. Before taking orders he frankly declared that he could not forsake his philosophical opinions, although he would in public accommodate himself to the popular belief. Theophilus of Alexandria, the same who was one of the chief persecutors of the admirers of Origen, the father of Christian Platonism, accepted this doubtful theory of accommodation. Synesius was made bishop, but often regretted that he exchanged his favorite studies for the responsible and onerous duties of the bishopric. In his hymns he fuses the Christian doctrine of the Trinity with the Platonic idea of God, and the Saviour with the divine Helios, whose daily setting and rising was to him a type of Christ’s descent into Hades and ascension to heaven. The desire of the soul to be freed from the chains of matter, takes the place of the sorrow for sin and the longing after salvation.1287

As soon as theology assumed a scholastic character and began to deal more in dialectic forms than in living ideas, the philosophy of Aristotle rose to favor and influence, and from John Philoponus, A.D. 550, throughout the middle age to the Protestant Reformation, kept the lead in the Catholic church. It was the philosophy of scholasticism, while mysticism sympathized rather with the Platonic system.

The influence of the two great philosophies upon theology was beneficial or injurious, according as the principle of Christianity was the governing or the governed factor. Both systems are theistic (at bottom monotheistic), and favorable to the spirit of earnest and profound speculation. Platonism, with its ideal, poetic views, stimulates, fertilizes, inspires and elevates the reason and imagination, but also easily leads into the errors of gnosticism and the twilight of mysticism. Aristotelianism, with its sober realism and sharp logical distinctions, is a good discipline for the understanding, a school of dialectic practice, and a help to logical, systematic, methodical treatment, but may also induce a barren formalism. The truth is, Christianity itself is the highest philosophy, as faith is the highest reason; and she makes successive philosophies, as well as the arts and the sciences, tributary to herself, on the Pauline principle that "all things are hers."1288

§ 118. Sources of Theology. Scripture and Tradition.

Comp. the literature in vol. i. § 75 and § 76. Also: Eusebius: Hist. Eccl. iii. 3; vi. 25 (on the form of the canon in the Nicene age); Leander van Ess (R.C.): Chrysostomus oder Stimmen der Kirchenväter für’s Bibellesen. Darmstadt, 1824.

Vincentius Lirinensis († about 450): Commonitorium pro cathol. fidei antiquitate et universitate Adv. profanas omnium haer. novitates; frequent editions, e.g. by Baluzius (1663 and 1684), Gallandi, Coster, Kluepfel (with prolegom. and notes), Viennae, 1809, and by Herzog, Vratisl. 1839; also in connection with the Opera Hilarii Arelatensis, Rom. 1731, and the Opera Salviani, Par. 1669, and in Migne’s Patrolegis, vol. 50, p. 626 sqq.

The church view respecting the sources of Christian theology and the rule of faith and practice remains as it was in the previous period, except that it is further developed in particulars.1289  The divine Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as opposed to human writings; and the oral tradition or living faith of the catholic church from the apostles down, as opposed to the varying opinions of heretical sects together form the one infallible source and rule of faith. Both are vehicles of the same substance: the saving revelation of God in Christ; with this difference in form and office, that the church tradition determines the canon, furnishes the key to the true interpretation of the Scriptures, and guards them against heretical abuse. The relation of the two in the mind of the ancient church may be illustrated by the relation between the supreme law of a country (such as the Roman law, the Code Napoleon, the common law of England, the Constitution of the United States) and the courts which expound the law, and decide between conflicting interpretations. Athanasius, for example, "the father of orthodoxy," always bases his conclusions upon Scripture, and appeals to the authority of tradition only in proof that he rightly understands and expounds the sacred books. The catholic faith, says he, is that which the Lord gave, the apostles preached, and the fathers have preserved; upon this the church is founded, and he who departs from this faith can no longer be called a Christian.1290

The sum of doctrinal tradition was contained in what is called the Apostles’ Creed, which at first bore various forms, but after the beginning of the fourth century assumed the Roman form now commonly used. In the Greek church its place was supplied after the year 325 by the Nicene Creed, which more fully expresses the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Neither of these symbols goes beyond the substance of the teaching of the apostles; neither contains any doctrine specifically Greek or Roman.

The old catholic doctrine of Scripture and tradition, therefore, nearly as it approaches the Roman, must not be entirely confounded with it. It makes the two identical as to substance, while the Roman church rests upon tradition for many doctrines and usages, like the doctrines of the seven sacraments, of the mass, of purgatory, of the papacy, and of the immaculate conception, which have no foundation in Scripture. Against this the evangelical church protests, and asserts the perfection and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures as the record of divine revelation; while it does not deny the value of tradition, or of the consciousness of the church, in the interpretation of Scripture, and regulates public teaching by symbolical books. In the Protestant view tradition is not coordinate with Scripture, but subordinate to it, and its value depends on its agreement with the Scriptures. The Scriptures alone are the norma fidei; the church doctrine is only the norma doctrinae. Protestantism gives much more play to private judgment and free investigation in the interpretation of the Scriptures, than the Roman or even the Nicene church.1291

I. In respect to the Holy Scriptures:

At the end of the fourth century views still differed in regard to the extent of the canon, or the number of the books which should be acknowledged as divine and authoritative.

The Jewish canon, or the Hebrew Bible, was universally received, while the Apocrypha added to the Greek version of the Septuagint were only in a general way accounted as books suitable for church reading,1292 and thus as a middle class between canonical and strictly apocryphal (pseudonymous) writings. And justly; for those books, while they have great historical value, and fill the gap between the Old Testament and the New, all originated after the cessation of prophecy, and they cannot therefore be regarded as inspired, nor are they ever cited by Christ or the apostles.1293

Of the New Testament, in the time of Eusebius, the four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of John, and the first Epistle of Peter, were universally recognized as canonical,1294 while the Epistle to the Hebrews, the second and third Epistles of John, the second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of Jude were by many disputed as to their apostolic origin, and the book of Revelation was doubted by reason of its contents.1295  This indecision in reference to the Old Testament Apocrypha prevailed still longer in the Eastern church; but by the middle of the fourth century the seven disputed books of the New Testament were universally acknowledged, and they are included in the lists of the canonical books given by Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Amphilochius of Iconium, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Epiphanius; except that in some cases the Apocalypse is omitted.

In the Western church the canon of both Testaments was closed at the end of the fourth century through the authority of Jerome (who wavered, however, between critical doubts and the principle of tradition), and more especially of Augustine, who firmly followed the Alexandrian canon of the Septuagint, and the preponderant tradition in reference to the disputed Catholic Epistles and the Revelation; though he himself, in some places, inclines to consider the Old Testament Apocrypha as deutero-canonical books, bearing a subordinate authority. The council of Hippo in 393, and the third (according to another reckoning the sixth) council of Carthage in 397, under the influence of Augustine, who attended both, fixed the catholic canon of the Holy Scriptures, including the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, and prohibited the reading of other books in the churches, excepting the Acts of the Martyrs on their memorial days. These two African councils, with Augustine,1296 give forty-four books as the canonical books of the Old Testament, in the following order: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings (the two of Samuel and the two of Kings), two books of Paralipomena (Chronicles), Job, the Psalms, five books of Solomon, the twelve minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Tobias, Judith, Esther, two books of Ezra, two books of Maccabees. The New Testament canon is the same as ours.

This decision of the transmarine church however, was subject to ratification; and the concurrence of the Roman see it received when Innocent I. and Gelasius I. (A.D. 414) repeated the same index of biblical books.

This canon remained undisturbed till the sixteenth century, and was sanctioned by the council of Trent at its fourth session.

Protestantism retained the New Testament canon of the Roman church,1297 but, in accordance with the orthodox Jewish and the primitive Christian view, excluded the Apocrypha from the Old.1298

The most eminent of the church fathers speak in the strongest terms of the full inspiration and the infallible authority of the holy Scriptures, and commend the diligent reading of them even to the laity. Especially Chrysostom. The want of general education, however, and the enormous cost of books, left the people for the most part dependent on the mere hearing of the word of God in public worship; and the free private study of the Bible was repressed by the prevailing Spirit of the hierarchy. No prohibition, indeed, was yet laid upon the reading of the Bible; but the presumption that it was a book of the priests and monks already existed. It remained for a much later period, by the invention of printing, the free spirit of Protestantism, and the introduction of popular schools, to make the Bible properly a people’s book, as it was originally designed to be; and to disseminate it by Bible societies, which now print and circulate more copies of it in one year, than were made in the whole middle age, or even in the fifteen centuries before the Reformation.

The oldest manuscripts of the Bible now extant date no further back than the fourth century, are very few, and abound in unessential errors and omissions of every kind; and the problem of a critical restoration of the original text is not yet satisfactorily solved, nor can it be more than approximately solved in the absence of the original writings of the apostles.

The oldest and most important manuscripts in uncial letters are the Sinaitic (first discovered by Tischendorf in 1859, and published in 1862), the Vatican (in Rome, defective), the Alexandrian (in London); then the much mutilated codex of Ephraim Syrus in Paris, and the incomplete codex of Cambridge. From these and a few other uncial codices the oldest attainable text must be mainly gathered. Secondary sources are quotations in the fathers, the earliest versions, Stich as the Syriac Peshito and the Latin Vulgate, and the later manuscripts.1299

The faith which rests not upon the letter, but upon the living spirit of Christianity, is led into no error by the defects of the manuscripts and ancient and modern versions of the Bible, but only excited to new and deeper study.

The spread of the church among all the nations of the Roman empire, and even among the barbarians on its borders, brought with it the necessity of translating the Scriptures into various tongues. The most important of these versions, and the one most used, is the Latin Vulgate, which was made by the learned Jerome on the basis of the older Itala, and which afterwards, notwithstanding its many errors, was placed by the Roman church on a level with the original itself. The knowledge of Hebrew among the fathers was very rare; the Septuagint was considered sufficient, and even the knowledge of Greek diminished steadily in the Latin church after the invasion of the barbarians and the schism with the East, so that the Bible in its original languages became a sealed book, and remained such until the revival of learning in the fifteenth century.

In the interpretation of the Scriptures the system of allegorical exposition and imposition was in high repute, and often degenerated into the most arbitrary conceits, especially in the Alexandrian school, to which most of the great dogmatic theologians of the Nicene age belonged. In opposition to this system the Antiochian school, founded by Lucian († 311), and represented by Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and best by John Chrysostom and Theodoret, advocated a soberer grammatical and historical exegesis, and made a sharper distinction between the human and the divine elements in the Scriptures. Theodore thereby incurred the suspicion and subsequently even the condemnation of the Greek church.

Among the Latin fathers a similar difference in the interpretation of Scripture appears between the discerning depth and lively play of Augustine and the grammatical and archaeological scholarship and dogmatical superficiality of Jerome.

II. The Holy Scriptures were universally accepted as the supreme authority and infallible rule of faith. But as the Scriptures themselves were variously interpreted, and were claimed by the heretics for their views, the fathers of our period, like Irenaeus and Tertullian before them, had recourse at the same time to Tradition, as preserved from the apostles through the unbroken succession of the bishops. With them the Scriptures are the supreme law; the combined wisdom and piety of the catholic church, the organic body of the faithful, is the judge which decides the true sense of the law. For to be understood the Bible must be explained, either by private judgment or by the universal faith of Christendom.

Strictly speaking, the Holy Ghost, who is the author, is also the only infallible interpreter of the Scriptures. But it was held that the Holy Ghost is given only to the orthodox church not to heretical and schismatic sects, and that he expresses himself through assembled orthodox bishops and universal councils in the clearest and most authoritative way. "The heretics," says Hilary, "all cite the Scriptures, but without the sense of the Scriptures; for those who are outside the church can have no understanding of the, word of God."  They imagine they follow the Scriptures, while in truth they follow their own conceits, which they put into the Scriptures instead of drawing their thoughts from them.

Even Augustine, who of all the fathers stands nearest to evangelical Protestantism, on this point advocates the catholic principle in the celebrated maxim which he urges against the Manichaeans: "I would not believe the gospel, if I were not compelled by the authority of the universal church."  But he immediately adds: "God forbid that I should not believe the gospel."1300

But there are different traditions; not to speak of various interpretations of the catholic tradition. Hence the need of a criterion of true and false tradition. The semi-Pelagian divine, Vincentius, a monk and priest in the South-Gallic cloister of Lirinum († 450), 1301 otherwise little known, propounded the maxim which formed an epoch in this matter, and has since remained the standard in the Roman church: We must hold "what has been everywhere, always, and by all believed."1302  Here we have a threefold test of the ecclesiastical orthodoxy:  Catholicity of place, of time, and of number; or ubiquity, antiquity, and universal consent;1303 in other words, an article of faith must be traced up to the apostles, and be found in all Christian countries, and among all believers. But this principle can be applied only to a few fundamental articles of revealed religion, not to any of the specifically Romish dogmas, and, to have any reasonable meaning, must be reduced to a mere principle of majority. In regard to the consensus omnium, which properly includes both the others, Vincentius himself makes this limitation, by defining the condition as a concurrence of the majority of the clergy.1304  To the voice of the people neither he nor the whole Roman system, in matters of faith, pays the slightest regard. In many important doctrines, however, there is not even a consensus patrum, as in the doctrine of free will, of predestination, of the atonement. A certain freedom of divergent private opinions is the indispensable condition of all progress of thought, and precedes the ecclesiastical settlement of every article of faith. Even Vincentius expressly asserts a steady advance of the church in the knowledge of the truth, though of course in harmony with the previous steps, as a man or a tree remains identical through the various stages of growth.1305

Vincentius is thoroughly Catholic in the spirit and tendency of his work, and has not the most remote conception of the free Protestant study of the Scriptures. But on the other hand he would have as little toleration for new dogmas. He wished to make tradition not an independent source of knowledge and rule of faith by the side of the Holy Scriptures, but only to have it acknowledged as the true interpreter of Scripture, and as a bar to heretical abuse. The criterion of the antiquity of a doctrine, which he required, involves apostolicity, hence agreement with the spirit and substance of the New Testament. The church, says he, as the solicitous guardian of that which is intrusted to her, changes, diminishes, increases nothing. Her sole effort is to shape, or confirm, or preserve the old. Innovation is the business of heretics not of orthodox believers. The canon of Scripture is complete in itself, and more than sufficient.1306  But since all heretics appeal to it, the authority of the church must be called in as the rule of interpretation, and in this we must follow universality, antiquity, and consent.1307  It is the custom of the Catholics, says he in the same work, to prove the true faith in two ways: first by the authority of the holy Scriptures, then by the tradition of the Catholic church; not because the canon alone is not of itself sufficient for all things, but on account of the many conflicting interpretations and perversions of the Scriptures.1308

In the same spirit says pope Leo I.: "It is not permitted to depart even in one word from the doctrine of the Evangelists and the Apostles, nor to think otherwise concerning the Holy Scriptures, than the blessed apostles and our fathers learned and taught."1309

The catholic principle of tradition became more and more confirmed, as the authority of the fathers and councils increased and the learned study of the Holy Scriptures declined; and tradition gradually set itself in practice on a level with Scripture, and even above it. It fettered free investigation, and promoted a rigid, stationary and intolerant orthodoxy, which condemned men like Origen and Tertullian as heretics. But on the other hand the principle of tradition unquestionably exerted a wholesome conservative power, and saved the substance of the ancient church doctrine from the obscuring and confusing influence of the pagan barbarism which deluged Christendom.

I. – Trinitarian Controversies.

GENERAL LITERATURE OF THE ARIAN CONTROVERSIES.

I. Sources: On the orthodox side most of the fathers of the fourth century; especially the dogmatic and polemic works of Athanasius (Orationes c. Arianos; De decretis Nicaenae Synodi; De sententia Dionysii; Apologia c. Arianos; Apologia de fuga sua; Historia Arianorum, etc., all in tom. i. pars i. ii. of the Bened. ed.), Basil (Adv. Eunomium), Gregory Nazianzen (Orationes theologicae), Gregory Of Nyssa (Contra Eunom.), Epiphanius (Ancoratus), Hilary (De Trinitate), Ambrose (De Fide), Augustine (De Trinitate, and Contra Maximinimum Arianum), Rufinus, and the Greek church historians.

On the heretical side: The fragments of the writings of Arius (Qavleia, and two Epistolae to Eusebius of Nicomedia and Alexander of Alexandria), preserved in quotations in Athanasius, Epiphanius, Socrates, and Theodoret; comp. Fabricius: Biblioth. gr. viii. p. 309. Fragmenta Arianorum about 388 in Angelo Mai: Scriptorum veterum nova collect. Rom. 1828, vol. iii. The fragments of the Church History of the Arian Philostorgius, A.D. 350–425.

II. Works: Tillemont (R.C.): Mémoires, etc. tom. vi. pp. 239–825, ed. Paris. 1699, and ed. Ven. (the external history chiefly). Dionysius Petavius (Jesuit, † 1652): De theologicis dogmatibus, tom. ii., which treats of the divine Trinity in eight books; and in part toms. iv. and v. which treat in sixteen books of the Incarnation of the Word. This is still, though incomplete, the most learned work of the Roman church in the History of Doctrines; it first appeared at Paris, 1644–’50, in five volumes fol., then at Amsterdam, 1700 (in 6 vols.), and at Venice, 1757 (ed. Zacharia), and has been last edited by Passaglia and Schrader in Rome, 1857. J. M. Travasa (R.C.): Storia critica della vita di Ario. Ven. 1746. S. J. Maimburg: Histoire de l’Arianisme. Par. 1675. John Pearson (bishop of Chester, † 1686): An Exposition of the Creed (in the second article), 1689, 12th ed. Lond. 1741, and very often edited since by Dobson, Burton, Nichols, Chevalier, etc. George Bull (Anglican bishop of St. David’s, † 1710): Defensio fidei Nicaenae. Ox. 1685 (Opp. Lat. fol. ed. Grabe, Lond. 1703. Complete Works, ed. Burton, Oxf. 1827, and again in 1846, vol. 5th in two parts, and in English in the Anglo-Catholic Library, 1851). This classical work endeavors, with great learning, to exhibit the Nicene faith in all the ante-Nicene fathers, and so belongs more properly to the previous period. Dan. Waterland (archdeacon of Middlesex, † 1730, next to Bull the ablest Anglican defender of the Nicene faith): Vindication of Christ’s Divinity, 1719 ff., in Waterland’s Works, ed. Mildert, vols. i. ii. iii. Oxf. 1843. (Several acute and learned essays and sermons in defence of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity against the high Arianism of Dr. Sam. Clarke and Dr. Whitby.) Chr. W. F. Walch: Vollständige Historic der Ketzereien, etc. 11 vols. Leipzig, 1762 ff. Vols. ii. and iii. (exceedingly thorough and exceedingly dry). Gibbon: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xxi. A. Möhler (R.C.): Athanasius der Grosse u. die Kirche seiner Zeit. Mainz (1827); 2d ed. 1844 (Bk ii.-vi.). J. H. Newman (at the time the learned head of Puseyism, afterwards R.C.): The Arians of the Fourth Century. Lond. 1838; 2d ed. (unchanged), 1854. F. Chr. Baur: Die christl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit u. Menschwerdung in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung. 3 vols. Tübingen, 1841–’43. Vol. i. pp. 306–825 (to the council of Chalcedon). Comp. also Baur’s Kirchengesch. vom 4ten his 6ten Jahrh. Tüb. 1859, pp. 79–123. Js. A. Dorner: Entwicklungsgesch. der Lehre von der Person Christi. 1836, 2d ed. in 2 vols. Stuttg. 1845–’53. Vol. i. pp. 773–1080 (English transl. by W. L. Alexander and D. W. Simon, in Clark’s Foreign Theol. Library, Edinb. 1861). R. Wilberforce (at the time archdeacon of East Riding, afterwards R.C.): The Doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4th ed. Lond. 1852. Bishop Kaye: Athanasius and the council of Nicaea. Lond. 1853. C. Jos. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengeschichte. Freib. 1855 ff. Vol. i. p. 219 ff. Albert Prince de Broglie (R.C.): L’église et l’empire romain, au IV. siècle. Paris, 1856–’66, 6 vols. Vol. i. p. 331 sqq.; vol. ii. 1 sqq. W. W. Harvey: History and Theology of the Three Creeds. Lond. 1856, 2 vols. H. Voigt: Die Lehre des Athanasius von Alexandrien. Bremen, 1861. A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. 2d ed. 862 (reprinted in New York). Sects. ii.-vii. (more brilliant than solid). Comp. also the relevant sections in the general Church Histories of Fleury, Schröckh(vols. v. and vi.), Neander, Gieseler, and in the Doctrine Histories of Münscher-cölln, Baumgarten-Crusius, Hagenbach, Baur, Beck, Shedd.

§ 119. The Arian Controversy down to the Council of Nicaea, 318–325.

The Arian controversy relates primarily to the deity of Christ, but in its course it touches also the deity of the Holy Ghost, and embraces therefore the whole mystery of the Holy Trinity and the incarnation of God, which is the very centre of the Christian revelation. The dogma of the Trinity came up not by itself in abstract form, but in inseparable connection with the doctrine of the deity of Christ and the Holy Ghost. If this latter doctrine is true, the Trinity follows by logical necessity, the biblical monotheism being presumed; in other words: If God is one, and if Christ and the Holy Ghost are distinct from the Father and yet participate in the divine substance, God must be triune. Though there are in the Holy Scriptures themselves few texts which directly prove the Trinity, and the name Trinity is wholly wanting in them, this doctrine is taught with all the greater force in a living form from Genesis to Revelation by the main facts of the revelation of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, besides being indirectly involved in the deity of Christ and the Holy Ghost.

The church always believed in this Trinity of revelation, and confessed its faith by baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. This carried with it from the first the conviction, that this revelation of God must be grounded in a distinction immanent in the divine essence. But to bring this faith into clear and fixed knowledge, and to form the baptismal confession into doctrine, was the hard and earnest intellectual work of three centuries. In the Nicene age minds crashed against each other, and fought the decisive battles for and against the doctrines of the true deity of Christ, with which the divinity of Christianity stands or falls.

The controversies on this fundamental question agitated the Roman empire and the church of East and West for more than half a century, and gave occasion to the first two ecumenical councils of Nicaea and Constantinople. At last the orthodox doctrine triumphed, and in 381 was brought into the form in which it is to this day substantially held in all orthodox churches.

The external history of the Arian controversy, of which we first sketch the main features, falls into three stages:

1. From the outbreak of the controversy to the temporary victory of orthodoxy at the council of Nicaea; A.D. 318–325.

2. The Arian and semi-Arian reaction, and its prevalence to the death of Constantius; A.D. 325–361.

3. The final victory, and the completion of the Nicene creed; to the council of Constantinople, A.D. 381.

Arianism proceeded from the bosom of the Catholic church, was condemned as heresy at the council of Nicaea, but afterwards under various forms attained even ascendency for a time in the church, until at the second ecumenical council it was cast out forever. From that time it lost its importance as a politico-theological power, but continued as an uncatholic sect more than two hundred years among the Germanic nations, which were converted to Christianity under the Arian domination.

The roots of the Arian controversy are to be found partly in the contradictory elements of the christology of the great Origen, which reflect the crude condition of the Christian mind in the third century; partly in the antagonism between the Alexandrian and the Antiochian theology. Origen, on the one hand, attributed to Christ eternity and other divine attributes which logically lead to the orthodox doctrine of the identity of substance; so that he was vindicated even by Athanasius, the two Cappadocian Gregories, and Basil. But, on the other hand, in his zeal for the personal distinctions in the Godhead, he taught with equal clearness a separateness of essence between the Father and the Son1310 and the subordination of the Son, as a second or secondary God beneath the Father,1311 and thus furnished a starting point for the Arian heresy. The eternal generation of the Son from the will of the Father was, with Origen, the communication of a divine but secondary substance, and this idea, in the hands of the less devout and profound Arius, who with his more rigid logic could admit no intermediate being between God and the creature, deteriorated to the notion of the primal creature.

But in general Arianism was much more akin to the spirit of the Antiochian school than to that of the Alexandrian. Arius himself traced his doctrine to Lucian of Antioch, who advocated the heretical views of Paul of Samosata on the Trinity, and was for a time excommunicated, but afterwards rose to great consideration, and died a martyr under Maximinus.

Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, made earnest of the Origenistic doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son (which was afterwards taught by Athanasius and the Nicene creed, but in a deeper sense, as denoting the generation of a person of the same substance from the substance of the Father, and not of a person of different substance from the will of the Father), and deduced from it the homo-ousia or consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.

Arius,1312 a presbyter of the same city after 313, who is represented as a tall, thin, learned, adroit, austere, and fascinating man, but proud, artful, restless, and disputatious, pressed and overstated the Origenistic view of the subordination, accused Alexander of Sabellianism, and taught that Christ, while he was indeed the creator of the world, was himself a creature of God, therefore not truly divine.1313

The contest between these two views broke out about the year 318 or 320. Arius and his followers, for their denial of the true deity of Christ, were deposed and excommunicated by a council of a hundred Egyptian and Libyan bishops at Alexandria in 321. In spite of this he continued to hold religious assemblies of his numerous adherents, and when driven from Alexandria, agitated his doctrine in Palestine and Nicomedia, and diffused it in an entertaining work, half poetry, half prose: The Banquet (Qavleia), of which a few fragments are preserved in Athanasius. Several bishops, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea, who either shared his view or at least considered it innocent, defended him. Alexander issued a number of circular letters to all the bishops against the apostates and Exukontians.1314  Bishop rose against bishop, and province against province. The controversy soon involved, through the importance of the subject and the zeal of the parties, the entire church, and transformed the whole Christian East into a theological battle-field.

Constantine, the first emperor who mingled in the religious affairs of Christendom, and who did this from a political, monarchical interest for the unity of the empire and of religion, was at first inclined to consider the contest a futile logomachy, and endeavored to reconcile the parties in diplomatic style by letters and by the personal mission of the aged bishop Hosius of Spain; but without effect. Questions of theological and religious principle are not to be adjusted, like political measures, by compromise, but must be fought through to their last results, and the truth must either conquer or (for the time) succumb. Then, in pursuance, as he thought, of a "divine inspiration," and probably also with the advice of bishops who were in friendship with him,1315 he summoned the first universal council, to represent the whole church of the empire, and to give a final decision upon the relation of Christ to God, and upon some minor questions of discipline, the time of Easter, and the Meletian schism in Egypt.

§ 120. The Council of Nicaea, 325.

SOURCES.

(1) The twenty Canones, the doctrinal Symbol, and a Decree of the Council of Nicaea, and several Letters of bishop Alexander of Alexandria and the emperor Constantine (all collected in Greek and Latin in Mansi: Collect. sacrorum Conciliorum, tom. ii. fol. 635–704). Official minutes of the transactions themselves were not at that time made; only the decrees as adopted were set down in writing and subscribed by all (comp. Euseb. Vita Const. iii. 14). All later accounts of voluminous acts of the council are sheer fabrications (Comp. Hefele, i. p. 249 sqq.)

(2) Accounts of eye-witnesses, especially Eusebius, Vita Const. iii. 4–24 (superficial, rather Arianizing, and a panegyric of the emperor Constantine). The Church History of Eusebius, which should have closed with the council of Nice, comes down only to the year 324. Athanasius: De decretis Synodi Nic.; Orationes iv contra Arianos; Epist. ad Afros, and other historical and anti-Arian tracts in tom. i. and ii. of his Opera, ed. Bened. and the more important of them also in the first vol. of Thilo’s Bibliotheca Patrum Graec. dogmat. Lips. 1853. (Engl. transl. in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.)

(3) The later accounts of Epiphanius: Haer. 69; Socrates: H. E. i. 8 sqq.; Sozomen: H. E. i. 17 sqq.; Theodoret: H. E. i. 1–13; Rufinus: H. E. i. 1–6 (or lib. x., if his transl. of Eusebius be counted in). Gelasius Cyzicenus (about 476): Commentarius actorum Concilii Nicaeni (Greek and Latin in Mansi, tom. ii. fol. 759 sqq.; it professes to be founded on an old MS., but is filled with imaginary speeches). Comp. also the four Coptic fragments in Pitra: Spicilegium Solesmense, Par. 1852, vol. i. p. 509 sqq., and the Syriac fragments in Analecta Nicaena. Fragments relating to the Council of Nicaea. The Syriac text from am ancient MS. by H. Cowper, Lond. 1857.

LITERATURE.

Of the historians cited at § 119 must be here especially mentioned Tillemont (R.C.), Walch, Schröckh, Gibbon, Hefele (i. pp. 249–426), A. de Broglie (vol. ii. ch. iv. pp. 3–70), and Stanley. Besides them, Ittig: Historia concilii Nicaeni, Lips. 1712. Is. Boyle: A historical View of the Council of Nice, with a translation of Documents, New York, 1856 (in Crusé’s ed. of Euseb.’s Church History). Comp. also § 65 and 66 above, where this in connection with the other ecumenical councils has already been spoken of.

Nicaea, the very name of which speaks victory, was the second city of Bithynia, only twenty English miles from the imperial residence of Nicomedia, and easily accessible by sea and land from all parts of the empire. It is now a miserable Turkish village, Is-nik,1316 where nothing but a rude picture in the solitary church of St. Mary remains to the memory of the event which has given the place a name in the history of the world.

Hither, in the year 325, the twentieth of his reign (therefore the festive vicennalia), the emperor summoned the bishops of the empire by a letter of invitation, putting at their service the public conveyances, and liberally defraying from the public treasury the expenses of their residence in Nicaea and of their return. Each bishop was to bring with him two presbyters and three servants.1317  They travelled partly in the public post carriages, partly on horses, mules, or asses, partly on foot. Many came to bring their private disputes before the emperor, who caused all their papers, without reading them, to be burned, and exhorted the parties to reconciliation and harmony.

The whole number of bishops assembled was at most three hundred and eighteen;1318 that is, about one sixth of all the bishops of the empire, who are estimated as at least eighteen hundred (one thousand for the Greek provinces, eight hundred for the Latin), and only half as many as were at the council of Chalcedon. Including the presbyters and deacons and other attendants the number may, have amounted to between fifteen hundred and two thousand. Most of the Eastern provinces were strongly represented; the Latin church, on the contrary, had only seven delegates: from Spain Hosius of Cordova, from France Nicasius of Dijon, from North Africa Caecilian of Carthage, from Pannonia Domnus of Strido, from Italy Eustorgius of Milan and Marcus of Calabria, from Rome the two presbyters Victor or Vitus and Vincentius as delegates of the aged pope Sylvester I. A Persian bishop John, also, and a Gothic bishop, Theophilus, the forerunner and teacher of the Gothic Bible translator Ulfilas, were present.

The formal sessions began, after preliminary disputations between Catholics, Arians, and philosophers, probably about Pentecost, or at farthest after the arrival of the emperor on the 14th of June. They closed on the 25th of July, the anniversary of the accession of Constantine; though the members did not disperse till the 25th of August.1319  They were held, it appears, part of the time in a church or some public building, part of the time in the emperor’s house.

The formal opening of the council was made by the stately entrance of the emperor, which Eusebius in his panegyrical flattery thus describes:1320 "After all the bishops had entered the central building of the royal palace, on the sides of which very many seats were prepared, each took his place with becoming modesty, and silently awaited the arrival of the emperor. The court officers entered one after another, though only such as professed faith in Christ. The moment the approach of the emperor was announced by a given signal, they all rose from their seats, and the emperor appeared like a heavenly messenger of God,1321 covered with gold and gems, a glorious presence, very tall and slender, full of beauty, strength, and majesty. With this external adornment he united the spiritual ornament of the fear of God, modesty, and humility, which could be seen in his downcast eyes, his blushing face, the motion of his body, and his walk. When he reached the golden throne prepared for him, he stopped, and sat not down till the bishops gave him the sign. And after him they all resumed their seats."

How great the contrast between this position of the church and the time of her persecution but scarcely passed!  What a revolution of opinion in bishops who had once feared the Roman emperor as the worst enemy of the church, and who now greeted the same emperor in his half barbarous attire as an angel of God from heaven, and gave him, though not yet even baptized, the honorary presidency of the highest assembly of the church!

After a brief salutatory address from the bishop on the right of the emperor, by which we are most probably to understand Eusebius of Caesarea, the emperor himself delivered with a gentle voice in the official Latin tongue the opening address, which was immediately after translated into Greek, and runs thus:1322

"It was my highest wish, my friends, that I might be permitted to enjoy your assembly. I must thank God that, in addition to all other blessings, he has shown me this highest one of all: to see you all gathered here in harmony and with one mind. May no malicious enemy rob us of this happiness, and after the tyranny of the enemy of Christ [Licinius and his army] is conquered by the help of the Redeemer, the wicked demon shall not persecute the divine law with new blasphemies. Discord in the church I consider more fearful and painful than any other war. As soon as I by the help of God had overcome my enemies, I believed that nothing more was now necessary than to give thanks to God in common joy with those whom I had liberated. But when I heard of your division, I was convinced that this matter should by no means be neglected, and in the desire to assist by my service, I have summoned you without delay. I shall, however, feel my desire fulfilled only when I see the minds of all united in that peaceful harmony which you, as the anointed of God, must preach to others. Delay not therefore, my friends, delay not, servants of God; put away all causes of strife, and loose all knots of discord by the laws of peace. Thus shall you accomplish the work most pleasing to God, and confer upon me, your fellow servant,1323 an exceeding great joy."

After this address he gave way to the (ecclesiastical) presidents of the council1324 and the business began. The emperor, however, constantly, took an active part, and exercised a considerable influence.

Among the fathers of the council, besides a great number of obscure mediocrities, there were several distinguished and venerable men. Eusebius of Caesarea was most eminent for learning; the young archdeacon Athanasius, who accompanied the bishop Alexander of Alexandria, for zeal, intellect, and eloquence. Some, as confessors, still bore in their body the marks of Christ from the times of persecution: Paphnutius of the Upper Thebaid, Potamon of Heraklea, whose right eye had been put out, and Paul of Neo-Caesarea, who had been tortured with red hot iron under Licinius, and crippled in both his hands. Others were distinguished for extraordinary ascetic holiness, and even for miraculous works; like Jacob of Nisibis, who had spent years as a hermit in forests and eaves, and lived like a wild beast on roots and leaves, and Spyridion (or St. Spiro) of Cyprus, the patron of the Ionian isles, who even after his ordination remained a simple shepherd. Of the Eastern bishops, Eusebius of Caesarea, and of the Western, Hosius, or Osius, of Cordova,1325 had the greatest influence with the emperor. These two probably sat by his side, and presided in the deliberations alternately with the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch.

In reference to the theological question the council was divided in the beginning into three parties.1326

The orthodox party, which held firmly to the deity of Christ, was at first in the minority, but in talent and influence the more weighty. At the head of it stood the bishop (or "pope") Alexander of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, Macarius of Jerusalem, Marcellus of Ancyra, Rosins of Cordova (the court bishop), and above all the Alexandrian archdeacon, Athanasius, who, though small and young, and, according to later practice not admissible to a voice or a seat in a council, evinced more zeal and insight than all, and gave promise already of being the future head of the orthodox party.

The Arians or Eusebians numbered perhaps twenty bishops, under the lead of the influential bishop Eusebius of Nicemedia (afterwards of Constantinople), who was allied with the imperial family, and of the presbyter Arius, who attended at the command of the emperor, and was often called upon to set forth his views.1327  To these also belonged Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, and Menophantus of Ephesus; embracing in this remarkable way the bishops of the several seats of the orthodox ecumenical councils.

The majority, whose organ was the renowned historian Eusebius of Caesarea, took middle ground between the right and the left, but bore nearer the right, and finally went over to that side. Many of them had an orthodox instinct, but little discernment; others were disciples of Origen, or preferred simple biblical expression to a scholastic terminology; others had no firm convictions, but only uncertain opinions, and were therefore easily swayed by the arguments of the stronger party or by mere external considerations.

The Arians first proposed a creed, which however was rejected with tumultuous disapproval, and torn to pieces; whereupon all the eighteen signers of it, excepting Theonas and Secundus, both of Egypt, abandoned the cause of Arius.

Then the church historian Eusebius, in the name of the middle party, proposed an ancient Palestinian Confession, which was very similar to the Nicene, and acknowledged the divine nature of Christ in general biblical terms, but avoided the term in question, oJmoouvsio" consubstantialis, of the same essence. The emperor had already seen and approved this confession, and even the Arian minority were ready to accept it.

But this last circumstance itself was very suspicious to the extreme right. They wished a creed which no Arian could honestly subscribe, and especially insisted on inserting the expression homo-ousios, which the Arians hated and declared to be unscriptural, Sabellian, and materialistic.1328  The emperor saw clearly that the Eusebian formula would not pass; and, as he had at heart, for the sake of peace, the most nearly unanimous decision which was possible, he gave his voice for the disputed word.

Then Hosius of Cordova appeared and announced that a confession was prepared which would now be read by the deacon (afterwards bishop) Hermogenes of Caesarea, the secretary of the synod. It is in substance the well-known Nicene creed with some additions and omissions of which we are to speak below. It is somewhat abrupt; the council not caring to do more than meet the immediate exigency. The direct concern was only to establish the doctrine of the true deity of the Son. The deity of the Holy Spirit, though inevitably involved, did not then come up as a subject of special discussion, and therefore the synod contented itself on this point with the sentence: "And (we believe) in the Holy Ghost."1329  The council of Constantinople enlarged the last article concerning the Holy Ghost. To the positive part of the Nicene confession is added a condemnation of the Arian heresy, which dropped out of the formula afterwards received.

Almost all the bishops subscribed the creed, Hosius at the head, and next him the two Roman presbyters in the name of their bishop. This is the first instance of such signing of a document in the Christian church. Eusebius of Caesarea also signed his name after a day’s deliberation, and vindicated this act in a letter to his diocese. Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea subscribed the creed without the condemnatory formula, and for this they were deposed and for a time banished, but finally consented to all the decrees of the council. The Arian historian Philostorgius, who however deserves little credit,1330 accuses them of insincerity in having substituted, by the advice of the emperor, for oJmo-ouvsio" (of the same essence) the semi-Arian word oJmoi-ouvsio" (of like essence). Only two Egyptian bishops, Theonas and Secundus, persistently refused to sign, and were banished with Arius to Illyria. The books of Arius were burned and his followers branded as enemies of Christianity.1331

This is the first example of the civil punishment of heresy; and it is the beginning of a long succession of civil persecutions for all departures from the Catholic faith. Before the union of church and state ecclesiastical excommunication was the extreme penalty. Now banishment and afterwards even death were added, because all offences against the church were regarded as at the same time crimes against the state and civil society.

The two other points on which the council of Nicaea decided, the Easter question and the Meletian schism, have been already spoken of in their place. The council issued twenty canons in reference to discipline. The creed and the canons were written in a book, and again signed by the bishops. The council issued a letter to the Egyptian and Libyan bishops as to the decision of the three main points; the emperor also sent several edicts to the churches, in which he ascribed the decrees to divine inspiration, and set them forth as laws of the realm. On the twenty-ninth of July, the twentieth anniversary of his accession, he gave the members of the council a splendid banquet in his palace, which Eusebius (quite too susceptible to worldly splendor) describes as a figure of the reign of Christ on earth; he remunerated the bishops lavishly, and dismissed them with a suitable valedictory, and with letters of commendation to the authorities of all the provinces on their homeward way.

Thus ended the council of Nicaea. It is the first and most venerable of the ecumenical synods, and next to the apostolic council at Jerusalem the most important and the most illustrious of all the councils of Christendom. Athanasius calls it "a true monument and token of victory against every heresy;"  Leo the Great, like Constantine, attributes its decrees to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and ascribes even to its canons perpetual validity; the Greek church annually observes (on the Sunday before Pentecost) a special feast in memory of it. There afterwards arose a multitude of apocryphal orations and legends in glorification of it, of which Gelasius of Cyzicus in the fifth century collected a whole volume.1332

The council of Nicaea is the most important event of the fourth century, and its bloodless intellectual victory over a dangerous error is of far greater consequence to the progress of true civilization, than all the bloody victories of Constantine and his successors. It forms an epoch in the history of doctrine, summing up the results of all previous discussions on the deity of Christ and the incarnation, and at the same time regulating the further development of the Catholic orthodoxy for centuries. The Nicene creed, in the enlarged form which it received after the second ecumenical council, is the only one of all, the symbols of doctrine which, with the exception of the subsequently added filioque, is acknowledged alike by the Greek, the Latin, and the Evangelical churches, and to this, day, after a course of fifteen centuries, is prayed and sung from Sunday to Sunday in all countries of the civilized world. The Apostles’ Creed indeed, is much more generally used in the West, and by its greater simplicity and more popular form is much better adapted to catechetical and liturgical purposes; but it has taken no root in the Eastern church; still less the Athanasian Creed, which exceeds the Nicene in logical precision and completeness. Upon the bed of lava grows the sweet fruit of the vine. The wild passions and the weaknesses of men, which encompassed the Nicene council, are extinguished, but the faith in the eternal deity of Christ has remained, and so long as this faith lives, the council of Nicaea will be named with reverence and with gratitude.

§ 121. The Arian and Semi-Arian Reaction,  A.D. 325–361.

The victory of the council of Nicaea over the views of the majority of the bishops was a victory only in appearance. It had, to be sure, erected a mighty fortress, in which the defenders of the essential deity of Christ might ever take refuge from the assaults of heresy; and in this view it was of the utmost importance, and secured the final triumph of the truth. But some of the bishops had subscribed the homoousion with reluctance, or from regard to the emperor, or at best with the reservation of a broad interpretation; and with a change of circumstances they would readily turn in opposition. The controversy now for the first time fairly broke loose, and Arianism entered the stage of its political development and power. An intermediate period of great excitement ensued, during which council was held against council, creed was set forth against creed, and anathema against anathema was hurled. The pagan Ammianus Marcellinus says of the councils under Constantius: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops;" and even Athanasius rebuked the restless flutter of the clergy, who journeyed the empire over to find the true faith, and provoked the ridicule and contempt of the unbelieving world. In intolerance and violence the Arians exceeded the orthodox, and contested elections of bishops not rarely came to bloody encounters. The interference of imperial politics only poured oil on the flame, and embarrassed the natural course of the theological development.

The personal history of Athanasius was interwoven with the doctrinal controversy; he threw himself wholly into the cause which he advocated. The question whether his deposition was legitimate or not, was almost identical with the question whether the Nicene Creed should prevail.

Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea threw all their influence against the adherents of the homoousion. Constantine himself was turned by Eusebius of Caesarea, who stood between Athanasius and Arius, by his sister Constantia and her father confessor, and by a vague confession of Arius, to think more favorably of Arius, and to recall him from exile. Nevertheless he afterwards, as before, thought himself in accordance with the orthodox view and the Nicene creed. The real gist of the controversy he had never understood. Athanasius, who after the death of Alexander in April, 328,1333 became bishop of Alexandria and head of the Nicene party, refused to reinstate the heretic in his former position, and was condemned and deposed for false accusations by two Arian councils, one at Tyre under the presidency of the historian Eusebius, the other at Constantinople in the year 335 (or 336), and banished by the emperor to Treves in Gaul in 336, as a disturber of the peace of the church.

Soon after this Arius, having been formally acquitted of the charge of heresy by a council at Jerusalem (A.D. 335), was to have been solemnly received back into the fellowship of the church at Constantinople. But on the evening before the intended procession from the imperial palace to the church of the Apostles, he suddenly died (A.D. 336), at the age of over eighty years, of an attack like cholera, while attending to a call of nature. This death was regarded by many as a divine judgment; by others, it was attributed to poisoning by enemies; by others, to the excessive joy of Arius in his triumph.1334

On the death of Constantine (337), who had shortly before received baptism from the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia, Athanasius was recalled from his banishment (338) by Constantine II. († 340), and received by the people with great enthusiasm; "more joyously than ever an emperor."1335  Some months afterwards (339) he held a council of nearly a hundred bishops in Alexandria for the vindication of the Nicene doctrine. But this was a temporary triumph.

In the East Arianism prevailed. Constantius, second son of Constantine the Great, and ruler in the East, together with his whole court, was attached to it with fanatical intolerance. Eusebius of Nicomedia was made bishop of Constantinople (338), and was the leader of the Arian and the more moderate, but less consistent semi-Arian parties in their common opposition to Athanasius and the orthodox West. Hence the name Eusebians.1336  Athanasius was for a second time deposed, and took refuge with the bishop Julius of Rome (339 or 340), who in the autumn of 341 held a council of more than fifty bishops in defence of the exile and for the condemnation of his opponents. The whole Western church was in general more steadfast on the side of the Nicene orthodoxy, and honored in Athanasius a martyr of the true faith. On the contrary a synod at Antioch, held under the direction of the Eusebians on the occasion of the dedication of a church in 341,1337 issued twenty-five canons, indeed, which were generally accepted as orthodox and valid, but at the same time confirmed the deposition of Athanasius, and set forth four creeds, which rejected Arianism, yet avoided the orthodox formula, particularly the vexed homoousion.1338

Thus the East and the West were in manifest conflict.

To heal this division, the two emperors, Constantius in the East and Constans in the West, summoned a general council at Sardica in Illyria, A.D. 343.1339  Here the Nicene party and the Roman influence prevailed.1340  Pope Julius was represented by two Italian priests. The Spanish bishop Hosius presided. The Nicene doctrine was here confirmed, and twelve canons were at the same time adopted, some of which are very important in reference to discipline and the authority of the Roman see. But the Arianizing Oriental bishops, dissatisfied with the admission of Athanasius, took no part in the proceedings, held an opposition council in the neighboring city of Philippopolis, and confirmed the decrees of the council of Antioch. The opposite councils, therefore, inflamed the discord of the church, instead of allaying it.

Constantius was compelled, indeed, by his brother to restore Athanasius to his office in 346; but after the death of Constans, A.D. 350, be summoned three successive synods in favor of a moderate Arianism; one at Sirmium in Pannonia (351), one at Arelate or Arles in Gaul (353), and one at Milan in Italy, (355); he forced the decrees of these councils on the Western church, deposed and banished bishops, like Liberius of Rome, Hosius of Cordova, Hilary of Poictiers, Lucifer of Calaris, who resisted them, and drove Athanasius from the cathedral of Alexandria during divine service with five thousand armed soldiers, and supplied his place with an uneducated and avaricious Arian, George of Cappadocia (356). In these violent measures the court bishops and Eusebia, the last wife of Constantius and a zealous Arian, had great influence. Even in their exile the faithful adherents of the Nicene faith were subjected to all manner of abuse and vexation. Hence Constantius was vehemently attacked by Athanasius, Hilary, and Lucifer, compared to Pharaoh, Saul, Ahab, Belshazzar, and called an inhuman beast, the forerunner of Antichrist, and even Antichrist himself.

Thus Arianism gained the ascendency in the whole Roman empire; though not in its original rigorous form, but in the milder form of homoi-ousianism or the doctrine of similarity of essence, as opposed on the one hand to the Nicene homo-ousianism (sameness of essence), and on the other hand to the Arian hetero-ousianism (difference of essence).

Even the papal chair was desecrated by heresy during this Arian interregnum; after the deposition of Liberius, the deacon Felix II., "by antichristian wickedness," as Athanasius expresses it, was elected his successor.1341  Many Roman historians for this reason regard him as a mere anti-pope. But in the Roman church books this Felix is inserted, not only as a legitimate pope, but even as a saint, because, according to a much later legend, he was executed by Constantius, whom he called a heretic. His memory is celebrated on the twenty-ninth of July. His subsequent fortunes are very differently related. The Roman people desired the recall of Liberius, and he, weary of exile, was prevailed upon to apostatize by subscribing an Arian or at least Arianizing confession, and maintaining church fellowship with the Eusebians.1342  On this condition he was restored to his papal dignity, and received with enthusiasm into Rome (358). He died in 366 in the orthodox faith, which he had denied through weakness, but not from conviction.

Even the almost centennarian bishop Hosius was induced by long imprisonment and the threats of the emperor, though not himself to compose (as Hilary states), yet to subscribe (as Athanasius and Sozomen say), the Arian formula of the second council of Sirmium, A.D. 357, but soon after repented his unfaithfulness, and condemned the Arian heresy shortly before his death.

The Nicene orthodoxy was thus apparently put down. But now the heretical majority, having overcome their common enemy, made ready their own dissolution by divisions among themselves. They separated into two factions. The right wing, the Eusebians or Semi-Arians, who were represented by Basil of Ancyra and Gregory of Laodicea, maintained that the Son was not indeed of the same essence (oJmo-ouvsio"), yet of like essence (oJmoi-ouvsio"), with the Father. To these belonged many who at heart agreed with the Nicene faith, but either harbored prejudices against Athanasius, or saw in the term oJmo-ouvsio" an approach to Sabellianism; for theological science had not yet duly fixed the distinction of substance (oujsiva) and person (uJpovstasi"), so that the homoousia might easily be confounded with unity of person. The left wing, or the decided Arians, under the lead of Eudoxius of Antioch, his deacon Aëtius,1343 and especially the bishop Eunomius of Cyzicus in Mysia1344 (after whom they were called also Eunomians), taught that the Son was of a different essence (eJteroouvsio"), and even unlike the Father (ajnovmoio"), and created out of nothing (ejk oujk o[ntwn). They received also, from their standard terms, the names of Heterousiasts, Anomaeans, and Exukontians.

A number of councils were occupied with this internal dissension of the anti-Nicene party: two at Sirmium (the second, A.D. 357; the third, A.D. 358), one at Antioch (358), one at Ancyra (358), the double council at Seleucia and Rimini (359), and one at Constantinople (360). But the division was not healed. The proposed compromise of entirely avoiding the word ouvsia, and substituting o{moio" like, for oJmoiouvsio" of like essence, and ajnovmoio", unlike, satisfied neither party. Constantius vainly endeavored to suppress the quarrel by his imperio-episcopal power. His death in 361 opened the way for the second and permanent victory of the Nicene orthodoxy.

§ 122. The Final Victory of Orthodoxy, and the Council of Constantinople, 381.

Julian the Apostate tolerated all Christian parties, in the hope that they would destroy one another. With this view he recalled the orthodox bishops from exile. Even Athanasius returned, but was soon banished again as an "enemy of the gods," and recalled by Jovian. Now for a time the strife of the Christians among themselves was silenced in their common warfare against paganism revived. The Arian controversy took its own natural course. The truth regained free play, and the Nicene spirit was permitted to assert its intrinsic power. It gradually achieved the victory; first in the Latin church, which held several orthodox synods in Rome, Milan, and Gaul; then in Egypt and the East, through the wise and energetic administration of Athanasius, and through the eloquence and the writings of the three great Cappadocian bishops Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa.

After the death of Athanasius in 373, Arianism regained dominion for a time in Alexandria, and practised all kinds of violence upon the orthodox.

In Constantinople Gregory Nazianzen labored, from 379, with great success in a small congregation, which alone remained true to the orthodox faith during the Arian rule; and he delivered in a domestic chapel, which he significantly named Anastasia (the church of the Resurrection), those renowned discourses on the deity of Christ which won him the title of the Divine, and with it many persecutions.

The raging fanaticism of the Arian emperor Valens (364–378) against both Semi-Arians and Athanasians wrought an approach of the former party to the latter. His successor, Gratian, was orthodox, and recalled the banished bishops.

Thus the heretical party was already in reality intellectually and morally broken, when the emperor Theodosius I., or the Great, a Spaniard by birth, and educated in the Nicene faith, ascended the throne, and in his long and powerful reign (379–395) externally completed the triumph of orthodoxy in the Roman empire. Soon after his accession he issued, in 380, the celebrated edict, in which he required all his subjects to confess the orthodox faith, and threatened the heretics with punishment. After his entrance into Constantinople he raised Gregory Nazianzen to the patriarchal chair in place of Demophilus (who honestly refused to renounce his heretical conviction), and drove the Arians, after their forty years’ reign, out of all the churches of the capital.

To give these forcible measures the sanction of law, and to restore unity in the church of the whole empire, Theodosius called the second ecumenical council at Constantinople in May, 381. This council, after the exit of the thirty-six Semi-Arian Macedonians or Pneumatomachi, consisted of only a hundred and fifty bishops. The Latin church was not represented at all.1345  Meletius (who died soon after the opening), Gregory Nazianzen, and after his resignation Nectarius of Constantinople, successively presided. This preferment of the patriarch of Constantinople before the patriarch of Alexandria is explained by the third canon of the council, which assigns to the bishop of new Rome the first rank after the bishop of old Rome. The emperor attended the opening of the sessions, and showed the bishops all honor.

At this council no new symbol was framed, but the Nicene Creed, with some unessential changes and an important addition respecting the deity of the Holy Ghost against Macedonianism or Pneumatoinachism, was adopted.1346  In this improved form the Nicene Creed has been received, though in the Greek church without the later Latin addition: filioque.

In the seven genuine canons of this council the heresies of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, of the Arians or Eudoxians, of the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi, of the Sabellians, Marcellians, and Apollinarians, were condemned, and questions of discipline adjusted.

The emperor ratified the decrees of the council, and as early as July, 381, enacted the law that all churches should be given up to bishops who believed in the equal divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and who stood in church fellowship with certain designated orthodox bishops. The public worship of heretics was forbidden.

Thus Arianism and the kindred errors were forever destroyed in the Roman empire, though kindred opinions continually reappear as isolated cases and in other connections.1347

But among the different barbarian peoples of the West, especially in Gaul and Spain, who had received Christianity from the Roman empire during the ascendency of Arianism, this doctrine was perpetuated two centuries longer: among the Goths till 587; among the Suevi in Spain till 560; among the Vandals who conquered North Africa in 429 and cruelly persecuted the Catholics, till their expulsion by Belisarius in 530; among the Burgundians till their incorporation in the Frank empire in 534, and among the Longobards till the close of the sixth century. These barbarians, however, held Arianism rather through accident than from conviction, and scarcely knew the difference between it and the orthodox doctrine. Alaric, the first conqueror of Rome; Genseric, the conqueror of North Africa; Theodoric the Great, king of Italy and hero of the Niebelungen Lied, were Arians. The first Teutonic translation of the Bible came from the Arian missionary Ulfilas.

§ 123. The Theological Principles involved: Import of the Controversy.

Here should be compared, of the works before mentioned, especially Petavius (tom. sec. De sanctissima Trinitate), and Möhler (Athanasius, third book), of the Romanists, and Baur, Dorner, and Voigt, of the Protestants.

We pass now to the internal history of the Arian conflict, the development of the antagonistic ideas; first marking some general points of view from which the subject must be conceived.

To the superficial and rationalistic eye this great struggle seems a metaphysical subtilty and a fruitless logomachy, revolving about a Greek iota. But it enters into the heart of Christianity, and must necessarily affect in a greater or less degree all other articles of faith. The different views of the contending parties concerning the relation of Christ to the Father involved the general question, whether Christianity is truly divine, the highest revelation, and an actual redemption, or merely a relative truth, which may be superseded by a more perfect revelation.

Thus the controversy is conceived even by Dr. Baur, who is characterized by a much deeper discernment of the philosophical and historical import of the conflicts in the history of Christian doctrine, than all other rationalistic historians. "The main question," he says, "was, whether Christianity is the highest and absolute revelation of God, and such that by it in the Son of God the self-existent absolute being of God joins itself to man, and so communicates itself that man through the Son becomes truly one with God, and comes into such community of essence with God, as makes him absolutely certain of pardon and salvation. From this point of view Athanasius apprehended the gist of the controversy, always finally summing up all his objections to the Arian doctrine with the chief argument, that the whole substance of Christianity, all reality of redemption, everything which makes Christianity the perfect salvation, would be utterly null and meaningless, if he who is supposed to unite man with God in real unity of being, were not himself absolute God, or of one substance with the absolute God, but only a creature among creatures. The infinite chasm which separates creature from Creator, remains unfilled; there is nothing really mediatory between God and man, if between the two there be nothing more than some created and finite thing, or such a mediator and redeemer as the Arians conceive the Son of God in his essential distinction from God: not begotten from the essence of God and coeternal, but created out of nothing and arising in time. Just as the distinctive character of the Athanasian doctrine lies in its effort to conceive the relation of the Father and Son, and in it the relation of God and man, as unity and community of essence, the Arian doctrine on the contrary has the opposite aim of a separation by which, first Father and Son, and then God and man, are placed in the abstract opposition of infinite and finite. While, therefore, according to Athanasius, Christianity is the religion of the unity of God and man, according to Arius the essence of the Christian revelation can consist only in man’s becoming conscious of the difference which separates him, with all the finite, from the absolute being of God. What value, however, one must ask, has such a Christianity, when, instead of bringing man nearer to God, it only fixes the chasm between God and man?"1348

Arianism was a religious political war against the spirit of the Christian revelation by the spirit of the world, which, after having persecuted the church three hundred years from without, sought under the Christian name to reduce her by degrading Christ to the category of the temporal and the created, and Christianity to the level of natural religion. It substituted for a truly divine Redeemer, a created demigod, an elevated Hercules. Arianism proceeded from human reason, Athanasianism from divine revelation; and each used the other source of knowledge as a subordinate and tributary factor. The former was deistic and rationalistic, the latter theistic and supernaturalistic, in spirit and effect. The one made reasonableness, the other agreement with Scripture, the criterion of truth. In the one the intellectual interest, in the other the moral and religious, was the motive principle. Yet Athanasius was at the same time a much deeper and abler thinker than Arius, who dealt in barren deductions of reason and dialectic formulas.1349

In close connection with this stood another distinction. Arianism associated itself with the secular political power and the court party; it represented the imperio-papal principle, and the time of its prevalence under Constantius was an uninterrupted season of the most arbitrary and violent encroachments of the state upon the rights of the church. Athanasius, on the contrary, who was so often deposed by the emperor, and who uttered himself so boldly respecting Constantius, is the personal representative not only of orthodoxy, but also of the independence of the church with reference to the secular power, and in this respect a precursor of Gregory VII. in his contest with the German imperialism.

While Arianism bent to the changing politics of the court party, and fell into diverse schools and sects the moment it lost the imperial support, the Nicene faith, like its great champion Athanasius, remained under all outward changes of fortune true to itself, and made its mighty advance only by legitimate growth outward from within. Athanasius makes no distinction at all between the various shades of Arians and Semi-Arians, but throws them all into the same category of enemies of the catholic faith.1350

§ 124. Arianism.

The doctrine of the Arians, or Eusebians, Aëtians, Eunomians, as they were called after their later leaders, or Exukontians, Heteroousiasts, and Anomoeans, as they were named from their characteristic terms, is in substance as follows:

The Father alone is God; therefore he alone is unbegotten, eternal, wise, good, and unchangeable, and he is separated by an infinite chasm from the world. He cannot create the world directly, but only through an agent, the Logos. The Son of God is pre-existent,1351 before all creatures, and above all creatures, a middle being between God and the world, the creator of the world, the perfect image of the Father, and the executor of his thoughts, and thus capable of being called in a metaphorical sense God, and Logos, and Wisdom.1352  But on the other hand, he himself is a creature, that is to say, the first creation of God, through whom the Father called other creatures into existence; he was created out of nothing1353 (not out of the essence of God) by the will of the Father before all conceivable time; he is therefore not eternal, but had a beginning, and there was a time when he was not.1354

Arianism thus rises far above Ebionism, Socinianism, deism, and rationalism, in maintaining the personal pre-existence of the Son before all worlds, which were his creation; but it agrees with those systems in lowering the Son to the sphere of the created, which of course includes the idea of temporalness and finiteness. It at first ascribed to him the predicate of unchangeableness also,1355 but afterwards subjected him to the vicissitudes of created being.1356  This contradiction, however, is solved, if need be, by the distinction between moral and physical unchangeableness; the Son is in his nature (fuvsei) changeable, but remains good (kalov") by a free act of his will. Arius, after having once robbed the Son of divine essence,1357 could not consistently allow him any divine attribute in the strict sense of the word; he limited his duration, his power, and his knowledge, and expressly asserted that the Son does not perfectly know the Father, and therefore cannot perfectly reveal him. The Son is essentially distinct from the Father,1358 and—as Aëtius and Eunomius afterward more strongly expressed it—unlike the Father;1359 and this dissimilarity was by some extended to all moral and metaphysical attributes and conditions.1360  The dogma of the essential deity of Christ seemed to Arius to lead of necessity to Sabellianism or to the Gnostic dreams of emanation. As to the humanity of Christ, Arius ascribed to him only a human body, but not a rational soul, and on this point Apollinarius came to the same conclusion, though from orthodox premises, and with the intention of saving the unity of the divine personality of Christ.

The later development of Arianism brought out nothing really new, but rather revealed many inconsistencies and contradictions. Thus, for example, Eunomius, to whom clearness was the measure of truth, maintained that revelation has made everything clear, and man can perfectly know God; while Arius denied even to the Son the perfect knowledge of God or of himself. The negative and rationalistic element came forth in ever greater prominence, and the controversy became a metaphysical war, destitute of all deep religion, spirit. The eighteen formulas of faith which Arianism and Semi-Arianism produced between the councils of Nice and Constantinople, are leaves without blossoms, and branches without fruit. The natural course of the Arian heresy is downward, through the stage of Socinianism, into the rationalism which sees in Christ a mere man, the chief of his kind.

To pass now to the arguments used for and against this error:

1. The Arians drew their exegetical proofs from the passages of Scripture which seem to place Christ in any way in the category of that which is created,1361 or ascribe to the incarnate (not the pre-temporal, divine) Logos growth, lack of knowledge, weariness, sorrow, and other changing human affections and states of mind,1362 or teach a subordination of the Son to the Father.1363

Athanasius disposes of these arguments somewhat too easily, by referring the passages exclusively to the human side of the person of Jesus. When, for example, the Lord says he knows not the day, nor the hour of the judgment, this is due only to his human nature. For how should the Lord of heaven and earth, who made days and hours, not know them!  He accuses the Arians of the Jewish conceit, that divine and human are incompatible. The Jews say How could Christ, if he were God, become man, and die on the cross?  The Arians say: How can Christ, who was man, be at the same time God?  We, says Athanasius, are Christians; we do not stone Christ when he asserts his eternal Godhead, nor are we offended in him when he speaks to us in the language of human poverty. But it is the peculiar doctrine of Holy Scripture to declare everywhere a double thing of Christ: that he, as Logos and image of the Father, was ever truly divine, and that he afterwards became man for our salvation. When Athanasius cannot refer such terms as "made," "created," "became," to the human nature he takes them figuratively for "testified," "constituted," "demonstrated."1364

As positive exegetical proofs against Arianism, Athanasius cites almost all the familiar proof-texts which ascribe to Christ divine names, divine attributes, divine works, and divine dignity, and which it is unnecessary here to mention in detail.

Of course his exegesis, as well as that of the fathers in general, when viewed from the level of the modern grammatical, historical, and critical method, contains a great deal of allegorizing caprice and fancy and sophistical subtilty. But it is in general far more profound and true than the heretical.

2. The theological arguments for Arianism were predominantly negative and rationalizing. The amount of them is, that the opposite view is unreasonable, is irreconcilable with strict monotheism and the dignity of God, and leads to Sabellian or Gnostic errors. It is true, Marcellus of Ancyra, one of the most zealous advocates of the Nicene homoousianism, fell into the Sabellian denial of the tri-personality,1365 but most of the Nicene fathers steered with unerring tact between the Scylla of Sabellianism, and the Charybdis of Tritheism.

Athanasius met the theological objections of the Arians with overwhelming dialectical skill, and exposed the internal contradictions and philosophical absurdities of their positions. Arianism teaches two gods, an uncreated and a created, a supreme and a secondary god, and thus far relapses into heathen polytheism. It holds Christ to be a mere creature, and yet the creator of the world; as if a creature could be the source of life, the origin and the end of all creatures!  It ascribes to Christ a pre-mundane existence, but denies him eternity, while yet time belongs to the idea of the world, and is created only therewith,1366 so that before the world there was nothing but eternity. It supposes a time before the creation of the pre-existent Christ; thus involving God himself in the notion of time; which contradicts the absolute being of God. It asserts the unchangeableness of God, but denies, with the eternal generation of the Son, also the eternal Fatherhood; thus assuming after all a very essential change in God.1367  Athanasius charges the Arians with dualism and heathenism, and he accuses them of destroying the whole doctrine of salvation. For if the Son is a creature, man remains still separated, as before, from God; no creature can redeem other creatures, and unite them with God. If Christ is not divine, much less can we be partakers of the divine nature and children of God.1368

§ 125. Semi-Arianism.

The Semi-Arians,1369 or, as they are called, the Homoiousiasts,1370 wavered in theory and conduct between the Nicene orthodoxy and the Arian heresy. Their doctrine makes the impression, not of an internal reconciliation of opposites which in fact were irreconcilable, but of diplomatic evasion, temporizing compromise, flat, half and half juste milieu. They had a strong footing in the subordination of most of the ante-Nicene fathers; but now the time for clear and definite decision had come.

Their doctrine is contained in the confession which was proposed to the council of Nicaea by Eusebius of Caesarea, but rejected, and in the symbols of the councils of Antioch and Sirmium from 340 to 360. Theologically they were best represented first by Eusebius of Caesarea, who adhered more closely to his admired Origen, and later by Cyril of Jerusalem, who approached nearer the orthodoxy of the Nicene party.

The signal term of Semi-Arianism is homoi-ousion, in distinction from homo-ousion and hetero-ousion. The system teaches that Christ if; not a creature, but co-eternal with the Father, though not of the same, but only of like essence, and subordinate to him. It agrees with the Nicene creed in asserting the eternal generation of the Son, and in denying that he was a created being; while, with Arianism, it denies the identity of essence. Hence it satisfied neither of the opposite parties, and was charged by both with logical incoherence. Athanasius and his friends held, against the Semi-Arians, that like attributes and relations might be spoken of, but not like essences or substances; these are either identical or different. It may be said of one man that he is like another, not in respect of substance, but in respect of his exterior and form. If the Son, as the Semi-Arians ad-mit, is of the essence of the Father, he must be also of the same essence. The Arians argued: There is no middle being between created and uncreated being; if God the Father alone is uncreated, everything out of him, including the Son, is created, and consequently of different essence, and unlike him.

Thus pressed from both sides, Semi-Arianism could not long withstand; and even before the council of Constantinople it passed over, in the main, to the camp of orthodoxy.1371

§ 126. Revived Sabellianism. Marcellus and Photinus.

I. Eusebius Caesar.: Two books contra Marcellum (kata; Markevllou), and three books De ecclesiastica theologia (after his Demonstratio evang.). Hilary: Fragmenta, 1–3. Basil the Great: Epist. 52. Epiphanius: Haeres. 72. Retberg: Marcelliana. Gött. 1794 (a collection of the Fragments of Marcellus).

II. Montfaucon: Diatribe de causa Marcelli Ancyr. (in Collect. nova Patr. tom. ii. Par. 1707). Klose: Geschichte u. Lehre des Marcellus u. Photinus. Hamb. 1837. Möhler: Athanasius der Gr. Buch iv. p. 318 sqq. (aiming to vindicate Marcellus, as Neander also does). Baur: l.c. vol. i. pp. 525–558. Dorner: l.c. i. pp. 864–882. (Both against the orthodoxy of Marcellus.) Hefele: Conciliengesch. i. 456 sq. et passim. Willenborg: Ueber die Orthodoxie des Marc. Münster, 1859

Before we pass to the exhibition of the orthodox doctrine, we must notice a trinitarian error which arose in the course of the controversy from an excess of zeal against the Arian subordination, and forms the opposite extreme.

Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, a friend of Athanasius, and one of the leaders of the Nicene party, in a large controversial work written soon after the council of Nicaea against Arianism and Semi-Arianism, so pushed the doctrine of the consubstantiality of Christ that he impaired the personal distinction of Father and Son, and, at least in phraseology, fell into a refined form of Sabellianism.1372  To save the full divinity of Christ and his equality with the Father, he denied his hypostatical pre-existence. As to the orthodoxy of Marcellus, however, the East and the West were divided, and the diversity continues even among modem scholars. A Semi-Arian council in Constantinople, A.D. 335, deposed him, and intrusted Eusebius of Caesarea with the refutation of his work; while, on the contrary, pope Julius of Rome and the orthodox council of Sardica (343), blinded by his equivocal declarations, his former services, and his close connection with Athanasius, protected his orthodoxy and restored him to his bishopric. The counter-synod of Philippopolis, however, confirmed the condemnation. Finally even Athanasius, who elsewhere always speaks of him with great respect, is said to have declared against him.1373  The council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, declared even the baptism of the Marcellians and Photinians invalid.1374

Marcellus wished to hold fast the true deity of Christ without falling under the charge of subordinatianism. He granted the Arians right in their assertion that the Nicene doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son involves the subordination of the Son, and is incompatible with his own eternity. For this reason he entirely gave up this doctrine, and referred the expressions: Son, image, firstborn, begotten, not to the eternal metaphysical relation, but to the incarnation. He thus made a rigid separation between Logos and Son, and this is the prw'ton yeu'do" of this system. Before the incarnation there was, he taught, no Son of God, but only a Logos, and by that he understood,—at least so he is represented by Eusebius,—an impersonal power, a reason inherent in God, inseparable from him, eternal, unbegotten, after the analogy of reason in man. This Logos was silent (therefore without word) in God before the creation of the world, but then went forth out of God as the creative word and power, the drastikh; ejnevrgeia pravxew" of God (not as a hypostasis). This power is the principle of creation, and culminates in the incarnation, but after finishing the work of redemption returns again into the repose of God. The Son, after completing the work of redemption, resigns his kingdom to the Father, and rests again in God as in the beginning. The sonship, therefore, is only a temporary state, which begins with the human advent of Christ, and is at last promoted or glorified into Godhead. Marcellus reaches not a real God-Man, but only an extraordinary dynamical indwelling of the divine power in the man Jesus. In this respect the charge of Samosatenism, which the council of Constantinople in 335 brought against him, has a certain justice, though he started from premises entirely different from those of Paul of Samosata.1375  His doctrine of the Holy Spirit and of the Trinity is to a corresponding degree unsatisfactory. He speaks, indeed, of an extension of the indivisible divine monad into a triad, but in the Sabellian sense, and denies the three hypostases or persons.

Photinus, first a deacon at Ancyra, then bishop of Sirmium in Pannonia, went still further than his preceptor Marcellus. He likewise started with a strict distinction between the notion of Logos and Son,1376 rejected the idea of eternal generation, and made the divine in Christ an impersonal power of God. But while Marcellus, from the Sabellian point of view, identified the Son with the Logos as to essence, and transferred to him the divine predicates attaching to the Logos, Photinus, on the contrary, quite like Paul of Samosata, made Jesus rise on the basis of his human nature, by a course of moral improvement and moral merit, to the divine dignity, so that the divine in him is a thing of growth.

Hence Photinus was condemned as a heretic by several councils in the East and in the West, beginning with the Semi-Arian council at Antioch in 344. He died in exile in 366.1377

§ 127. The Nicene Doctrine of the Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.

Comp. the literature in §§ 119 and 120, especially the four Orations of Athanasius against the Arians, and the other anti-Arian tracts of this "father of orthodoxy."

The Nicene, Homo-ousian, or Athanasian doctrine was most clearly and powerfully represented in the East by Athanasius, in whom it became flesh and blood;1378 and next to him, by Alexander of Alexandria, Marcellus of Ancyra (who however strayed into Sabellianism), Basil, and the two Gregories of Cappadocia; and in the West by Ambrose and Hilary.

The central point of the Nicene doctrine in the contest with Arianism is the identity of essence or the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and is expressed in this article of the (original) Nicene Creed: "[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God; who is begotten the only-begotten of the Father; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, and Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father."1379

The term oJmoouvsio", consubstantial, is of course no more a biblical term,1380 than trinity;1381 but it had already been used, though in a different sense, both by heathen writers1382 and by heretics,1383 as well as by orthodox fathers.1384  It formed a bulwark against Arians and Semi-Arians, and an anchor which moored the church during the stormy time between the first and the second ecumenical councils.1385  At first it had a negative meaning against heresy; denying, as Athanasius repeatedly says, that the Son is in any sense created or produced and changeable.1386  But afterwards the homoousion became a positive testword of orthodoxy, designating, in the sense of the Nicene council, clearly and unequivocally, the veritable and essential deity of Christ, in opposition to all sorts of apparent or half divinity, or mere similarity to God. The same divine, eternal, unchangeable essence, which is in an original way in the Father, is, from eternity, in a derived way, through generation, in the Son; just as the water of the fountain is in the stream, or the light of the sun is in the ray, and cannot be separated from it. Hence the Lord says: "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; I and My Father are one."  This is the sense of the expression: "God of God," "very God of very God."  Christ, in His divine nature, is as fully consubstantial with the Father, as, in His human nature, He is with man; flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone; and yet, with all this, He is an independent person with respect to the Father, as He is with respect to other men. In this view Basil turns the term oJmoouvsio" against the Sabellian denial of the personal distinctions in the Trinity, since it is not the same thing that is consubstantial with itself, but one thing that is consubstantial with another.1387  Consubstantiality among men, indeed, is predicated of different individuals who partake of the same nature, and the term in this view might denote also unity of species in a tritheistic sense.

But in the case before us the personal distinction of the Son from the Father must not be pressed to a duality of substances of the same kind; the homoousion, on the contrary, must be understood as identity or numerical unity of substance, in distinction from mere generic unity. Otherwise it leads manifestly into dualism or tritheism. The Nicene doctrine refuses to swerve from the monotheistic basis, and stands between Sabellianism and tritheism; though it must be admitted that the usage of oujsiva and uJpovstasi"_ still wavered for a time, and the relation of the consubstantiality to the numerical unity of the divine essence did not come clearly out till a later day. Athanasius insists that the unity of the divine essence is indivisible, and that there is only one principle of Godhead.1388  He frequently illustrates the relation) as Tertullian had done before him, by the relation between fire and brightness,1389 or between fountain and stream; though in these illustrations the proverbial insufficiency of all similitudes must never be forgotten. "We must not," says he, "take the words in John xiv. 10: ’I am in the Father and the Father in Me’ as if the Father and the Son were two different interpenetrating and mutually complemental substances, like two bodies which fill one vessel. The Father is full and perfect, and the Son is the fulness of the Godhead."1390  "We must not imagine," says he in another place, "three divided substances1391 in God, as among men, lest we, like the heathen, invent a multiplicity of gods; but as the stream which is born of the fountain, and not separated from it, though there are two forms and names. Neither is the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father; for the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Son of the Father. As the fountain is not the stream, nor the stream the fountain, but the two are one and the same water which flows from the fountain into the stream; so the Godhead pours itself, without division, from the Father into the Son. Hence the Lord says: I went forth from the Father, and come from the Father. Yet He is ever with the Father, He is in the bosom of the Father, and the bosom of the Father is never emptied of the Godhead of the Son."1392

The Son is of the essence of the Father, not by division or diminution, but by simple and perfect self-communication. This divine self-communication of eternal love is represented by the figure of generation, suggested by the biblical terms Father and Son, the only-begotten Son, the firstborn.1393  The eternal generation is an internal process in the essence of God, and the Son is an immanent offspring of this essence; whereas creation is an act of the will of God, and the creature is exterior to the Creator, and of different substance. The Son, as man, is produced;1394 as God, he is unproduced or uncreated;1395 he is begotten1396 from eternity of the unbegotten1397 Father. To this Athanasius refers the passage concerning the Only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father.1398

Generation and creation are therefore entirely different ideas. Generation is an immanent, necessary, and perpetual process in the essence of God himself, the Father’s eternal communication of essence or self to the Son; creation, on the contrary, is an outwardly directed, free, single act of the will of God, bringing forth a different and temporal substance out of nothing. The eternal fatherhood and sonship in God is the perfect prototype of all similar relations on earth. But the divine generation differs from all human generation, not only in its absolute spirituality, but also in the fact that it does not produce a new essence of the same kind, but that the begotten is identical in essence with the begetter; for the divine essence is by reason of its simplicity, incapable of division, and by reason of its infinity, incapable of increase.1399  The generation, properly speaking, has no reference at all to the essence, but only to the hypostatical distinction. The Son is begotten not as God, but as Son, not as to his natura, but as to his ijdiovth", his peculiar property and his relation to the Father. The divine essence neither begets, nor is begotten. The same is true of the processio of the Holy Ghost, which has reference not to the essence, but only to the person, of the Spirit. In human generation, moreover, the father is older than the son; but in the divine generation, which takes place not in time, but is eternal, there can be no such thing as priority or posteriority of one or the other hypostasis. To the question whether the Son existed before his generation, Cyril of Alexandria answered: "The generation of the Son did not precede his existence, but he existed eternally, and eternally existed by generation."  The Son is as necessary to the being of the Father, as the Father to the being of the Son.

The necessity thus asserted of the eternal generation does not, however, impair its freedom, but is intended only to deny its being arbitrary and accidental, and to secure its foundation in the essence of God himself. God, to be Father, must from eternity beget the Son, and so reproduce himself; yet he does this in obedience not to a foreign law, but to his own law and the impulse of his will. Athanasius, it is true, asserts on the one hand that God begets the Son not of his will,1400 but by his nature,1401 yet on the other hand he does not admit that God begets the Son without will,1402 or of force or unconscious necessity. The generation, therefore, rightly understood, is an act at once of essence and of will. Augustine calls the Son "will of will."1403  In God freedom and necessity coincide.

The mode of the divine generation is and must be a mystery. Of course all human representations of it must be avoided, and the matter be conceived in a purely moral and spiritual way. The eternal generation, conceived as an intellectual process, is the eternal self-knowledge of God; reduced to ethical terms, it is his eternal and absolute love in its motion and working within himself.

In his argument for the consubstantiality of the Son, Athanasius, in his four orations against the Arians, besides adducing the proof from Scripture, which presides over and permeates all other arguments, sets out now in a practical method from the idea of redemption, now in a speculative, from the idea of God.

Christ has delivered us from the curse and power of sin, reconciled us with God, and made us partakers of the eternal, divine life; therefore he must himself be God. Or, negatively: If Christ were a creature, he could not redeem other creatures from sin and death. It is assumed that redemption is as much and as strictly a divine work, as creation.1404

Starting from the idea of God, Athanasius argues: The relation of Father is not accidental, arising in time; else God would be changeable;1405 it belongs as necessarily to the essence and character of God as the attributes of eternity, wisdom, goodness, and holiness; consequently he must have been Father from eternity, and this gives the eternal generation of the Son.1406  The divine fatherhood and sonship is the prototype of all analagous relations on earth. As there is no Son without Father, no more is there Father without Son. An unfruitful Father were like a dark light, or a dry fountain, a self-contradiction. The non-existence of creatures, on the contrary, detracts nothing from the perfection of the Creator, since he always has the power to create when he will.1407  The Son is of the Father’s own interior essence, while the creature is exterior to God and dependent on the act of his will.1408  God, furthermore, cannot be conceived without reason (a[logo"), wisdom, power, and according to the Scriptures (as the Arians themselves concede) the Son is the Logos, the wisdom, the power, the Word of God, by which all things were made. As light rises from fire, and is inseparable from it, so the Word from God, the Wisdom from the Wise, and the Son from the Father.1409  The Son, therefore, was in the beginning, that is, in the beginning of the eternal divine being, in the original beginning, or from eternity. He himself calls himself one with the Father, and Paul praises him as God blessed forever.1410

Finally Christ cannot be a proper object of worship, as he is represented in Scripture and has always been regarded in the Church, without being strictly divine. To worship a creature is idolatry.

When we attentively peruse the warm, vigorous, eloquent, and discriminating controversial writings of Athanasius and his co-laborers, and compare with them the vague, barren, almost entirely negative assertions and superficial arguments of their opponents, we cannot escape the impression that, with all their exegetical and dialectical defects in particulars, they have on their side an overwhelming preponderance of positive truth, the authority of holy Scripture, the profounder speculations of reason, and the prevailing traditional faith of the early church.1411

The spirit and tendency of the Nicene doctrine is edifying; it magnifies Christ and Christianity. The Arian error is cold and heartless, degrades Christ to the sphere of the creature, and endeavors to substitute a heathen deification of the creature for the true worship of God. For this reason also the faith in the true and essential deity of Christ has to this day an inexhaustible vitality, while the irrational Arian fiction of a half-deity, creating the world and yet himself created, long ago entirely outlived itself.1412

§ 128. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The decision of Nicaea related primarily only to the essential deity of Christ. But in the wider range of the Arian controversies the deity of the Holy Ghost, which stands and falls with the deity of the Son, was indirectly involved. The church always, indeed, connected faith in the Holy Spirit with faith in the Father and Son, but considered the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit as only an appendix to the doctrine concerning the Father and the Son, until the logical progress brought it to lay equal emphasis on the deity and personality of the Holy Ghost, and to place him with the Father and Son as an element of equal claim in the Trinity.

The Arians made the Holy Ghost the first creature of the Son, and as subordinate to the Son as the Son to the Father. The Arian trinity was therefore not a trinity immanent and eternal, but arising in time and in descending grades, consisting of the uncreated God and two created demi-gods. The Semi-Arians here, as elsewhere, approached the orthodox doctrine, but rejected the consubstantiality, and asserted the creation, of the Spirit. Thus especially Macedonius, a moderate Semi-Arian, whom the Arian court-party had driven from the episcopal chair of Constantinople. From him the adherents of the false doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit, were, after 362, called Macedonians;1413 also Pneumatomachi,1414 and Tropici.1415

Even among the adherents of the Nicene orthodoxy an uncertainty still for a time prevailed respecting the doctrine of the third person of the Holy Trinity. Some held the Spirit to be an impersonal power or attribute of God; others, at farthest, would not go beyond the expressions of the Scriptures. Gregory Nazianzen, who for his own part believed and taught the consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son, so late as 380 made the remarkable concession:1416 "Of the wise among us, some consider the Holy Ghost an influence, others a creature, others God himself,1417 and again others know not which way to decide, from reverence, as they say, for the Holy Scripture, which declares nothing exact in the case. For this reason they waver between worshipping and not worshipping the Holy Ghost,1418 and strike a middle course, which is in fact, however, a bad one."  Basil, in 370, still carefully avoided calling the Holy Ghost God, though with the view of gaining the weak. Hilary of Poictiers believed that the Spirit, who searches the deep things of God, must be divine, but could find no Scripture passage in which he is called God, and thought that he must be content with the existence of the Holy Ghost, which the Scripture teaches and the heart attests.1419

But the church could not possibly satisfy itself with only two in one. The baptismal formula and the apostolic benediction, as well as the traditional trinitarian doxologies, put the Holy Ghost on an equality with the Father and the Son, and require a divine tri-personality resting upon a unity of essence. The divine triad tolerates in itself no inequality of essence, no mixture of Creator and creature. Athanasius well perceived this, and advocated with decision the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachi or Tropici.1420  Basil did the same,1421 and Gregory of Nazianzum,1422 Gregory of Nyssa,1423 Didymus,1424 and Ambrose.1425

This doctrine conquered at the councils of Alexandria, A.D. 362, of Rome, 375, and finally of Constantinople, 381, and became an essential constituent of the ecumenical orthodoxy.

Accordingly the Creed of Constantinople supplemented the Nicene with the important addition: "And in the Holy Ghost, who is Lord and Giver of life, who with the Father is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets."1426

This declares the consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost, not indeed in words, yet in fact, and challenges for him divine dignity and worship.

The exegetical proofs employed by the Nicene fathers for the deity of the Holy Ghost are chiefly the following. The Holy Ghost is nowhere in Scripture reckoned among creatures or angels, but is placed in God himself, co-eternal with God, as that which searches the depths of Godhead (1 Cor. ii. 11, 12). He fills the universe, and is everywhere present (Ps. cxxxix. 7), while creatures, even angels, are in definite places. He was active even in the creation (Gen. i. 3), and filled Moses and the prophets. From him proceeds the divine work of regeneration and sanctification (John iii. 5; Rom. i. 4; viii. 11; 1 Cor. vi. 11; Tit. iii. 5–7; Eph. iii. 16; v. 17, 19, &c). He is the source of all gifts in the church (1 Cor. xii). He dwells in believers, like the Father and the Son, and makes them partakers of the divine life. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is the extreme sin, which cannot be forgiven (Matt. xii. 31). Lying to the Holy Ghost is called lying to God (Acts v. 3, 4). In the formula of baptism (Matt. xxviii. 19), and likewise in the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 13), the Holy Ghost is put on a level with the Father and the Son and yet distinguished from both; he must therefore be truly divine, yet at the same time a self-conscious person.1427  The Holy Ghost is the source of sanctification, and unites us with the divine life, and thus must himself be divine. The divine trinity tolerates in itself nothing created and changeable. As the Son is begotten of the Father from eternity, so the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. (The procession of the Spirit from the Son, on the contrary, is a subsequent inference of the Latin church from the consubstantiality of the Son, and was unknown to the Nicene fathers.)

The distinction between generation and procession is not particularly defined. Augustine calls both ineffable and inexplicable.1428  The doctrine of the Holy Ghost was not in any respect so accurately developed in this period, as the doctrine concerning Christ, and it shows many gaps.

§ 129. The Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creed.

We look now at the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople side by side, which sum up the result of these long controversies. We mark the differences by inclosing in brackets the parts of the former omitted by the latter, and italicizing the additions which the latter makes to the former.

The Nicene Creed of 3251429

the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 3811430

Pisteuvomen eij" e{na Qeo;n patevra pantokravtora, pavntwn oJratw'n te kai; ajoravtwn poihthvn

Pisteuvomen eij" e{na Qeo;n, patevra pantokravtora, poihth;n oujranou' kai; gh'", oJratw'n te pavntwn kai; ajoravtwn.

Kai; eij" e{na kuvrion !Ihsou'n Cristo;n, to;n uiJo;n tou' Qeou': gennhqevnta ejk tou'  patro;" »monogenh': tou't je[stin ejk th'" oujsiva" tou' patro;": Qeo;n ejk Qeou' kai;1431¼ fw'" ejk fwto;", Qeo;n ajlhqino;n ejk Qeou' ajlhqinou': gennhqenta, ouj poihqevnta, oJmoouvsion tw'/ patri;: di j ou| ta; pavnta ejgevneto »tav te ejn tw'/ oujranw'/ kai; ta; ejn th'/ gh'/:¼ to;n di j hJma'" tou;" ajnqrwvpou" kai; dia; th;n hJmetevran swthrivan katelqovnta kai; sarkwqevnta, kai; 1432 ejnanqrwphvsanta: paqovnta 1433 kai; ajnastavnta th'/ trivth/ hJmevra/, ajnelqovnta eij" tou;" 1434 oujranou;", 1435 ejrcovmenon krivnai xw'nta" kai; nekrou".

Kai; eij" e{na kuvrion jIhsou'n Cristo;n to;n uiJo;n tou' Qeou' to;n monogenh': to;n ejk tou' patrov" gennhqevnta pro; pavntwn tw'n aijwvnwn: fw'" ejk fwto;", Qeo;n ajlhqino;n ejk Qeou' ajlhqinou', gennhqevnta, ouj poihqevnta, oJmoouvsion tw'/ patri;: di j ou| ta; pavnta ejgevneto: to;n di j hJma'" tou;" ajnqrwvpou" kai; dia; th;n hJmetevran swthrivan katelqovnta ejk tw'n oujranw'n, kai; sarkwqevnta ejk pneuvmato" aJgivou kai; Mariva" th'" parqevnou, kai; ejnanqrwphvsanta: staurwqevnta te uJpevr hJmw'n ejpi; Pontivou Pilavtou, kai; paqovnta, kai; tafevnta, kai; ajnastavnta th'/ trivth/ hJmevra/ kata; ta;" grafa;", kai; ajnelqovnta eij" touv" oujranou;", kai; kaqezovmenon ejk dexiw'n tou' patro;", kai; pavlin ejrcovmenon meta; dovxh" krivnai zw'nta" kai; nekrou;": ou| th'" basileiva" oujk e[stai tevlo".

Kai; eij" to; a{gion pneu'ma.

Kai; eij" to; pneu'ma to; a]gion, to; kuvrion, to; zwopoio;n, to; ejk tou' pa-tro;" ejkporeuovmenon, to; su;n patri; kai; uiJw'/ proskunouvmenon kai; sundoxazovmenon, to; lalh'san dia; tw'n profhtw'n. Eij" mivan aJgivan kaqolikh;n kai; ajpostolikh;n ejk-klhsivan: oJmologou'men e}n bavptisma eij" a[fesin aJmartiw'n: prosdok-w'men ajnavstasin nekrw'n kai; zwh;n tou' mevllonto" aijw'no". jAmhvn.

[Tou;" de; levgonta", o{ti 1436 h\n pote o{te oujk h\n: kai;: pri;n gennhqh'nai oujk h\n: kai; o{ti ejx oujk o[ntwn ejgevneto: h] ejx eJtevra" uJpostavsew" h] oujsiva" 1437 favskonta" ei\nai: h] ktisto;n, h] trepto;n, h] ajlloiwto;n to;n uijo;n tou' Qeou': ajnaqemativzei hJ aJgiva kaqolikh; kai; ajpostolikh; 1438 ejkklhsiva. ]]

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible, and invisible.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten, i.e., of the essence of the Father, God of God, and] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made [in heaven and on earth]; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he cometh to judge the quick and the dead.

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds ( aeons ), 1439 Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven , and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary , and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered , and was buried , and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven , and sitteth on the right hand of the Father ; from thence he cometh again, with glory , to judge the quick and the dead ; whose kingdom shall have no end . 1440

"And in the Holy Ghost.

"And in the Holy Ghost, who is Lord and Giver of life, who pro-ceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic church, we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look fo r the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen . 1441

["And those who say: there was a time when he was not; and: he was not before he was made; and: he was made out of nothing, or out of another substance or thing, or the Son of God is created, or changeable, or alterable; they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church." ]

A careful comparison shows that the Constantinopolitan Creed is a considerable improvement on the Nicene, both in its omission of the anathema at the close, and in its addition of the articles concerning the Holy Ghost and concerning the church and the way of salvation. The addition: according to the Scriptures, is also important, as an acknowledgment of this divine and infallible guide to the truth. The whole is more complete and symmetrical than the Nicaenum, and in this respect is more like the Apostles’ Creed, which, in like manner, begins with the creation and ends with the resurrection and the life everlasting, and is disturbed by no polemical dissonance; but the Apostles’ Creed is much more simple in structure, and thus better adapted to the use of a congregation and of youth, than either of the others.

The Constantinopolitan Creed maintained itself for a time by the side of the Nicene, and after the council of Chalcedon in 451, where it was for the first time formally adopted, it gradually displaced the other. Since that time it has itself commonly borne the name of the Nicene Creed. Yet the original Nicene confession is still in use in some schismatic sects of the Eastern church.

The Latin church adopted the improved Nicene symbol from the Greek, but admitted, in the article on the Holy Ghost, the further addition of the well-known filioque, which was first inserted at a council of Toledo in 589, and subsequently gave rise to bitter disputes between the two

§ 130. The Nicene, Doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinitarian Terminology.

The doctrine of the essential deity and the personality of the Holy Ghost completed the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity ; and of this doctrine as a whole we can now take a closer view.

This fundamental and comprehensive dogma secured both the unity and the full life of the Christian conception of God; and in this respect it represents, as no other dogma does, the whole of Christianity. It forms a bulwark against heathen polytheism on the one hand, and Jewish deism and abstract monotheism on the other. It avoids the errors and combines the truth of these two opposite conceptions. Against the pagans, says Gregory of Nyssa, we hold the unity of essence; against the Jews, the distinction of hypostases. We do not reject all multiplicity, but only such as destroys the unity of the being, like the pagan polytheism; no more do we reject all unity, but only such unity as denies diversity and full vital action. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, furthermore, formed the true mean between Sabellianism and tritheism, both of which taught a divine triad, but at the expense, in the one case, of the personal distinctions, in the other, of the essential unity. It exerted a wholesome regulative influence on the other dogmas. It overcame all theories of emanation, established the Christian conception of creation by a strict distinction of that which proceeds from the essence of God, and is one with him, like the Son and the Spirit, from that which arises out of nothing by the free will of God, and is of different substance. It provided for an activity and motion of knowledge and love in the divine essence, without the Origenistic hypothesis of an eternal creation. And by the assertion of the true deity of the Redeemer and the Sanctifier, it secured the divine character of the work of redemption and sanctification.

The Nicene fathers did not pretend to have exhausted the mystery of the Trinity, and very well understood that all human knowledge, especially in this deepest, central dogma, proves itself but fragmentary. All speculation on divine things ends in a mystery, and reaches an inexplicable residue, before which the thinking mind must bow in humble devotion. "Man," says Athanasius, "can perceive only the hem of the garment of the triune God; the cherubim cover the rest with their wings."  In his letter to the Monks, written about 358, he confesses that the further he examines, the more the mystery eludes his understanding,1442 and he exclaims with the Psalmist: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it."1443  Augustine says in one place: "If we be asked to define the Trinity, we can only say, it is not this or that."1444  But though we cannot explain the how or why of our faith, still the Christian may know, and should know, what he believes, and what he does not believe, and should be persuaded of the facts and truths which form the matter of his faith.

The essential points of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity are these:

1. There is only one divine essence or substance.1445  Father, Son, and Spirit are one in essence, or consubstantial.1446  They are in one another, inseparable, and cannot be conceived without each other. In this point the Nicene doctrine is thoroughly monotheistic or monarchian, in distinction from tritheism, which is but a new form of the polytheism of the pagans.

The terms essence (oujsiva) and nature (fuvsi"), in the philosophical sense, denote not an individual, a personality, but the genus or species; not unum in numero, but ens unum in multis. All men are of the same substance, partake of the same human nature, though as persons and individuals they are very different.1447  The term homoousion, in its strict grammatical sense, differs from monoousion or toutoousion, as well as from heteroousion, and signifies not numerical identity, but equality of essence or community of nature among several beings. It is clearly used thus in the Chalcedonian symbol, where it is said that Christ is "consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father as touching the Godhead, and consubstantial with us [and yet individually, distinct from us] as touching the manhood."  The Nicene Creed does not expressly assert the singleness or numerical unity of the divine essence (unless it be in the first article: "We believe in one God"); and the main point with the Nicene fathers was to urge against Arianism the strict divinity and essential equality of the Son and Holy Ghost with the Father. If we press the difference of homoousion from monoousion, and overlook the many passages in which they assert with equal emphasis the monarchia or numerical unity of the Godhead, we must charge them with tritheism.1448

But in the divine Trinity consubstantiality denotes not only sameness of kind, but at the same time numerical unity; not merely the unum in specie, but also the unum in numero. The, three persons are related to the divine substance not as three individuals to their species, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Peter, John, and Paul, to human nature; they are only one God. The divine substance is absolutely indivisible by reason of its simplicity, and absolutely inextensible and untransferable by reason of its infinity; whereas a corporeal substance can be divided, and the human nature can be multiplied by generation. Three divine substances would limit and exclude each other, and therefore could not be infinite or absolute. The whole fulness of the one undivided essence of God, with all its attributes, is in all the persons of the Trinity, though in each in his own way: in the Father as original principle, in the Son by eternal generation, in the Spirit by, eternal procession. The church teaches not one divine essence and three persons, but one essence in three persons. Father, Son, and Spirit cannot be conceived as three separate individuals, but are in one another, and form a solidaric unity.1449

Many passages of the Nicene fathers have unquestionably a tritheistic sound, but are neutralized by others which by themselves may bear a Sabellian construction so that their position must be regarded as midway between these two extremes. Subsequently John Philoponus, an Aristotelian and Monophysite in Alexandria about the middle of the sixth century, was charged with tritheism, because he made no distinction between fuvsi" and uJpovstasi", and reckoned in the Trinity three natures, substances, and deities, according to the number of persons.1450

2. In this one divine essence there are three persons1451 or, to use a better term, hypostases, 1452 that is, three different modes of subsistence1453 of the one same undivided and indivisible whole, which in the Scriptures are called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.1454  These distinctions are not merely different attributes, powers, or activities of the Godhead, still less merely subjective aspects under which it presents itself to the human mind; but each person expresses the whole fulness of the divine being with all its attributes, and the three persons stand in a relation of mutual knowledge and love. The Father communicates his very life to the Son, and the Spirit is the bond of union and communion between the two. The Son speaks, and as the God-Man, even prays, to the Father, thus standing over against him as a first person towards a second; and calls the Holy Ghost "another Comforter" whom he will send from the Father, thus speaking of him as of a third person.1455

Here the orthodox doctrine forsook Sabellianism or modalism, which, it is true, made Father, Son, and Spirit strictly coordinate, but only as different denominations and forms of manifestation of the one God.

But, on the other hand, as we have already intimated, the term person must not be taken here in the sense current among men, as if the three persons were three different individuals, or three self-conscious and separately acting beings. The trinitarian idea of personality lies midway between that of a mere form of manifestation, or a personation, which would lead to Sabellianism, and the idea of an independent, limited human personality, which would result in tritheism. In other words, it avoids the monoousian or unitarian trinity of a threefold conception and aspect of one and the same being, and the triousian or tritheistic trinity of three distinct and separate beings.1456  In each person there is the same inseparable divine substance, united with the individual property and relation which distinguishes that person from the others. The word person is in reality only a make-shift, in the absence of a more adequate term. Our idea of God is more true and deep than our terminology, and the essence and character of God far transcends our highest ideas.1457

The Nicene fathers and Augustine endeavored, as Tertullian and Dionysius of Alexandria had already done, to illustrate the Trinity by analogies from created existence. Their figures were sun, ray, and light; fountain, stream, and flow; root, stem, and fruit; the colors of the rainbow;1458 soul, thought, and spirit;1459 memory, intelligence, and will;1460 and the idea of love, which affords the best illustration, for God is love.1461  Such figures are indeed confessedly insufficient as proofs, and, if pressed, might easily lead to utterly erroneous conceptions. For example: sun, ray, and light are not co-ordinate, but the two latter are merely qualities or emanations of the first. "Omne simile claudicat."1462  Analogies, however, here do the negative service of repelling the charge of unreasonableness from a doctrine which is in fact the highest reason, and which has been acknowledged in various forms by the greatest philosophers, from Plato to Schelling and Hegel, though often in an entirely unscriptural sense. A certain trinity undeniably runs through all created life, and is especially reflected in manifold ways in man, who is created after the image of God; in the relation of body, soul, and spirit; in the faculties of thought, feeling, and will; in the nature of self-consciousness;1463 and in the nature of love.1464 3. Each divine person has his property, as it were a characteristic individuality, expressed by the Greek word ijdiovth",1465 and the Latin proprietas.1466  This is not to be confounded with attribute; for the divine attributes, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, wisdom, holiness, love, etc., are inherent in the divine essence, and are the common possession of all the divine hypostases. The idiotes, on the contrary, is a peculiarity of the hypostasis, and therefore cannot be communicated or transferred from one to another.

To the first person fatherhood, or the being unbegotten, 1467 is ascribed as his property; to the second, sonship, or the being begotten;1468 to the Holy Ghost, procession.1469  In other words: The Father is unbegotten, but begetting; the Son is uncreated, but begotten; the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father (and, according to the Latin doctrine, also from the Son). But these distinctions relate, as we have said, only to the hypostases, and have no force with respect to the divine essence which is the same in all, and neither begets nor is begotten, nor proceeds, nor is sent.

4. The divine persons are in one another, mutually interpenetrate, and form a perpetual intercommunication and motion within the divine essence; as the Lord says: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me;" and "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."1470 This perfect indwelling and vital communion was afterwards designated (by John of Damascus and the scholastics) by such terms as ejnuvparxi", pericwvrhsi",1471 inexistentia, immanentia, inhabitatio, circulatio, permeatio, intercommunio, circumincessio.1472

5. The Nicene doctrine already contains, in substance, a distinction between two trinities: an immanent trinity of constitution,1473 which existed from eternity, and an economic trinity of manifestation;1474 though this distinction did not receive formal expression till a much later period. For the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are, according to the doctrine, an eternal process. The perceptions and practical wants of the Christian mind start, strictly speaking, with the trinity of revelation in the threefold progressive work of the creation, the redemption, and the preservation of the world, but reason back thence to a trinity of being; for God has revealed himself as he is, and there can be no contradiction between his nature and his works. The eternal pre-existence of the Son and the Spirit is the background of the historical revelation by which they work our salvation. The Scriptures deal mainly with the trinity of revelation, and only hint at the trinity of essence, as in the prologue of the Gospel of John which asserts an eternal distinction between God and the Logos. The Nicene divines, however, agreeably to the metaphysical bent of the Greek mind, move somewhat too exclusively in the field of speculation and in the dark regions of the intrinsic and ante-mundane relations of the Godhead, and too little upon the practical ground of the facts of salvation.

6. The Nicene fathers still teach, like their predecessors, a certain subordinationism, which seems to conflict with the doctrine of consubstantiality. But we must distinguish between, a subordinatianism of essence (oujsiva) and a subordinatianism of hypostasis, of order and dignity.1475  The former was denied, the latter affirmed. The essence of the Godhead being but one, and being absolutely perfect, can admit of no degrees. Father, Son, and Spirit all have the same divine essence, yet not in a co-ordinate way, but in an order of subordination. The Father has the essence originally and of himself, from no other; he is the primal divine subject, to whom alone absoluteness belongs, and he is therefore called preeminently God,1476 or the principle, the fountain, and the root of Godhead.1477  The Son, on the contrary, has his essence by communication from the Father, therefore, in a secondary, derivative way. "The Father is greater than the Son."  The one is unbegotten, the other begotten; the Son is from the Father, but the Father is not from the Son; fatherhood is in the nature of the case primary, sonship secondary. The same subordination is still more applicable to the Holy Ghost. The Nicene fathers thought the idea of the divine unity best preserved by making the Father, notwithstanding the triad of persons, the monad from which Son and Spirit spring, and to which they return.

This subordination is most plainly expressed by Hilary of Poictiers, the champion of the Nicene doctrine in the West.1478  The familiar comparisons of fountain and stream, sun and light, which Athanasius, like Tertullian, so often uses, likewise lead to a dependence of the Son upon the Father1479  Even the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed favors it, in calling the Son God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. For if a person has anything, or is anything, of another, he has not that, or is not that, of himself. Yet this expression may be more correctly understood, and is in fact sometimes used by the later Nicene fathers, as giving the Son and Spirit only their hypostases from the Father, while the essence of deity is common to all three persons, and is co-eternal in all.

Scriptural argument for this theory of subordination was found abundant in such passages as these: "As the Father hath life in himself (e[cei zwh;n ejn eJautw'/), so hath he given (e[dwke) to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also;"1480 "All things are delivered unto me (pavnta moi paredovqh) of my Father;"1481 "My father is greater than I."1482  But these and similar passages refer to the historical relation of the Father to the incarnate Logos in his estate of humiliation, or to the elevation of human nature to participation in the glory and power of the divine,1483 not to the eternal metaphysical relation of the Father to the Son.

In this point, as in the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, the Nicene system yet needed further development. The logical consistency of the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son, upon which the Nicene fathers laid chief stress, must in time overcome this decaying remnant of the ante-Nicene subordinationism.1484

§ 131. The Post-Nicene Trinitarian Doctrine of Augustine.

Augustine: De trinitate, libri xv., begun in 400, and finished about 415; and his anti-Arian works: Contra sermonem Arianorum; Collatio cum Maximino Arianorum episcopo; Contra Maximinum haereticum, libri ii. (all in his Opera omnia, ed. Bened. of Venice, 1733, in tom. viii. pp. 626–1004; and in Migne’s ed. Par. 1845, tom. viii. pp. 683–1098).

While the Greek church stopped with the Nicene statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Latin church carried the development onward under the guidance of the profound and devout speculative spirit of Augustine in the beginning of the fifth century, to the formation of the Athanasian Creed. Of all the fathers, next to Athanasius, Augustine performed the greatest service for this dogma, and by his discriminating speculation he exerted more influence upon the scholastic theology and that of the Reformation, than all the Nicene divines. The points in which he advanced upon the Nicene Creed, are the following:1485

1. He eliminated the remnant of subordinationism, and brought out more clearly and sharply the consubstantiality of the three persons and the numerical unity of their essence.1486

Yet he too admitted that the Father stood above the Son and the Spirit in this: that he alone is of no other, but is absolutely original and independent; while the Son is begotten of him, and the Spirit proceeds from him, and proceeds from him in a higher sense than from the Son.1487  We may speak of three men who have the same nature; but the persons in the Trinity are not three separately subsisting individuals. The divine substance is not an abstract generic nature common to all, but a concrete, living reality. One and the same God is Father, Son, and Spirit. All the works of the Trinity are joint works. Therefore one can speak as well of an incarnation of God, as of an incarnation of the Son, and the theophanies of the Old Testament, which are usually ascribed to the Logos, may also be ascribed to the Father and the Holy Ghost.

If the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity lies midway between Sabellianism and tritheism, Augustine bears rather to the Sabellian side. He shows this further in the analogies from the human spirit, in which he sees the mystery of the Trinity reflected, and by which he illustrates it with special delight and with fine psychological discernment, though with the humble impression that the analogies do not lift the veil, but only make it here and there a little more penetrable. He distinguishes in man being, which answers to the Father, knowledge or consciousness, which answers to the Son, and will, which answers to the Holy Ghost.1488  A similar trinity he finds in the relation of mind, word, and love; again in the relation of memory, intelligence, and will or love, which differ, and yet are only one human nature (but of course also only one human person).1489

2. Augustine taught the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from the Father, though from the Father mainly. This followed from the perfect essential unity of the hypostases, and was supported by some passages of Scripture which speak of the Son sending the Spirit.1490  He also represented the Holy Ghost as the love and fellowship between Father and Son, as the bond which unites the two, and which unites believers with God.1491

The Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed affirms only the processio Spiritus a Patre, though not with an exclusive intent, but rather to oppose the Pneumatomachi, by giving the Spirit a relation to the Father as immediate as that of the Son. The Spirit is not created by the Son, but eternally proceeds directly from the Father, as the Son is from eternity begotten of the Father. Everything proceeds from the Father, is mediated by the Son, and completed by the Holy Ghost. Athanasius, Basil, and the Gregories give this view, without denying procession from the Son. Some Greek fathers, Epiphanius,1492 Marcellus of Ancyra,1493 and Cyril of Alexandria,1494 derived the Spirit from the Father and the Son; while Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret would admit no dependence of the Spirit on the Son.

Augustine’s view gradually met universal acceptance in the West. It was adopted by Boëthius, Leo the Great and others. 1495 It was even inserted in the Nicene Creed by the council of Toledo in 589 by the addition of filioque, together with an anathema against its opponents, by whom are meant, however, not the Greeks, but the Arians.

Here to this day lies the main difference in doctrine between the Greek and Latin churches, though the controversy over it did not break out till the middle of the ninth century under patriarch Photius, (867). 1496 Dr. Waterland briefly sums up the points of dispute thus:1497 "The Greeks and Latins have had many and tedious disputes about the procession. One thing is observable, that though the ancients, appealed to by both parties, have often said that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, without mentioning the Son, yet they never said that he proceeded from the Father alone; so that the modern Greeks have certainly innovated in that article in expression at least, if not in real sense and meaning. As to the Latins, they have this to plead, that none of the ancients ever condemned their doctrine; that many of them have expressly asserted it; that the oriental churches themselves rather condemn their taking upon them to add anything to a creed formed in a general council, than the doctrine itself; that those Greek churches that charge their doctrine as heresy, yet are forced to admit much the same thing, only in different words; and that Scripture itself is plain, that the Holy Ghost proceeds at least by the Son, if not from him; which yet amounts to the same thing."

This doctrinal difference between the Greek and the Latin Church, however insignificant it may appear at first sight, is characteristic of both, and illustrates the contrast between the conservative and stationary theology of the East, after the great ecumenical councils, and the progressive and systematizing theology of the West. The wisdom of changing an ancient and generally received formula of faith may be questioned. It must be admitted, indeed, that the Nicene Creed has undergone several other changes which were embodied in the Constantinopolitan Creed, and adopted by the Greeks as well as the Latins. But in the case of the Filioque, the Eastern Church which made the Nicene Creed, was never consulted, and when the addition was first brought to the notice of the bishop of Rome by Charlemagne, he protested against the innovation. His successors acquiesced in it, and the Protestant churches accepted the Nicene Creed with the Filioque, though without investigation. The Greek Church has ever protested against it since the time of Photius, and will never adopt it. She makes a sharp distinction between the procession, which is an eternal and internal process in the Holy Trinity itself, and the mission, of the Spirit, which is an act of revelation in time. The Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father alone (though through the Son); but was sent by the Father and the Son on the day of Pentecost. Hence the present tense is used of the former (John 15:26), and the future of the latter (14:26; 15:26). The Greek Church is concerned for the dignity and sovereignty of the Father, as the only source and root of the Deity. The Latin Church is concerned for the dignity of the Son, as being of one substance with the Father, and infers the double procession from the double mission.

§ 132. The Athanasian Creed.

G. Joh. Voss (Reform): De tribus symbolis, diss. ii. 1642, and in his Opera Omnia, Amstel. 1701 (forming an epoch in critical investigation). Archbishop Usher: De symbolis. 1647. J. H. Heidegger (Ref.): De symbolo Athanasiano. Zür. 1680. Em. Tentzel (Luth.): Judicia eruditoram de Symb. Athan. studiose collecta. Goth. 1687. Montfaucon (R.C.): Diatribe in Symbolum Quicunque, in the Benedictine ed. of the Opera Athanasii, Par. 1698, tom. ii. pp. 719–735. Dan. Waterland (Anglican): A Critical History of the Athanasian Creed. Cambridge, 1724, sec. ed. 1728 (in Waterland’s Works, ed. Mildert, vol. iii. pp. 97–270, Oxf. 1843). Dom. M. Speroni (R.C.): De symbolo vulgo S. Athanasii. Dias. i. and ii. Patav. 1750–’51. E. Köllner (Luth.): Symbolik aller christl. Confessionen. Hamb. vol. i. 1837, pp. 53–92. W. W. Harvey (Angl.): The History and Theology of the Three Creeds. Lond. 1854, vol. ii. pp. 541–695. Ph. Schaff: The Athanasian Creed, in the Am. Theolog. Review, New York, 1866, pp. 584–625. (Comp. the earlier literature, in chronological order, in Waterland, l. c. p. 108 ff., and in Köllner).

[Comp. here the notes in Appendix, p. 1034, and the later and fuller treatment in Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, N. York, 4th ed., 1884, vol. i. 34–42; vol. ii. 66–72, with the facsimile of the oldest MS. of the Athan. Creed in the Utrecht Psalter, ii. 555 sq. The rediscovery of that MS. in 1873 occasioned a more thorough critical investigation of the whole subject, with the result that the Utrecht Psalter dates from the ninth century, and that there is no evidence that the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, in its present complete form, existed before the age of Charlemagne. The statements in this section which assume an earlier origin, must be modified accordingly. Added 1889.]

The post-Nicene or Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity reached its classic statement in the third and last of the ecumenical confessions, called the Symbolum Athanasianum, or, as it is also named from its initial words, the Symbolum Quicumque; beyond which the orthodox development of the doctrine in the Roman and Evangelical churches to this day has made no advance.1498  This Creed is unsurpassed as a masterpiece of logical clearness, rigor, and precision; and so far as it is possible at all to state in limited dialectic form, and to protect against heresy, the inexhaustible depths of a mystery of faith into which the angels desire to look, this liturgical theological confession achieves the task. We give it here in full, anticipating the results of the Christological controversies; and we append parallel passages from Augustine and other older writers, which the unknown author has used, in some cases word for word, and has woven with great dexterity into an organic whole.1499

1. Quicumque vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est, ut teneat catholicam fidem.1500

1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic [true Christian] faith

2. Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque1501 servaverit, absque dubio1502 in aeternum peribit.

2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

3. Fides autem catholica haec est, ut unum Deum in trinitate et trinitatem in unitate veneremur;1503

3. But this is the catholic faith: That we worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity;

4. Neque confundentes personas; neque substantiam separantes.1504

4. Neither confounding the persons; nor dividing the substance.

5. Alia est enim persona Patris: alia Filii: alia Spiritus Sancti.1505

5. For there is one person of the Father: another of the Son: another of the Holy Ghost.

6. Sed Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti una est divinitas: aequalis gloria, coaeterna majestas.1506

6. But the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coëternal.

7. Qualis Pater, talis Filius, talis (et) Spiritus Sanctus.1507

7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.

8. Increatus Pater: increatus Filius: increatus (et) Spiritus Sanctus.

8. The Father is uncreated: the Son is uncreated: the Holy Ghost is uncreated.

9. Immensus Pater: immensus Filius: immensus Spiritus Sanctus.1508

9. The Father is immeasurable: the Son is immeasurable: the Holy Ghost is immeasurable.

10. Aeternus Pater: aeternus Filius: aeternus (et) Spiritus Sanctus.1509

10. The Father is eternal: the Son eternal: the Holy Ghost eternal.

11. Et tamen non tree aeterni: sed unus aeternus.

11. And yet there are not three eternals; but one eternal.

12. Sicut non tres increati: nec tres immensi: sed unus increatus et unus immensus.

12. As also there are not three uncreated: nor three immeasurable: but one uncreated, and one immeasurable.

13. Similiter omnipotens Pater: omnipotens Filius: omnipotens (et) Spiritus Sanctus.

13. So likewise the Father is almighty: the Son almighty: and the Holy Ghost almighty,

14. Et tamen non tres omnipo-entes; sed unus omnipotens.  1510

14. And yet there are not three almighties: but one almighty.

15. Ita Deus Pater: Deus Filius: Deus (et) Spiritus Sanctus.1511

15. So the Father is God: the Son is God: and the Holy Ghost is God.

16. Et tamen non tres Dii; sed unus est Deus.1512

16. And yet there are not three Gods; but one God.

17. Ita Dominus Pater: Dominus Filius: Dominus (et) Spiritus Sanctus.

17. So the Father is Lord: the Son Lord: and the Holy Ghost Lord.

18. Et tamen non tres Domini; sed unus est Dominus.1513

18. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord

19. Quia sicut singulatim unamquamque personam et

19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to Deum et Dominum confiteri christiana veritate compellimur:1514 acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord

20. Ita tres Deos, aut (tres)1515 Dominos dicere catholica religione prohibemur.

20. So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say, there are three Gods, or three Lords.

21. Pater a nullo est factus; nec creatus; nec genitus.

21. The Father is made of none; neither created; nor begotten.

22. Filius a Patre solo est: 1516 non factus; nec creatus; sed genitus.

22. The Son is of the Father alone: not made; nor created; but begotten.

23. Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio: non factus; nec creatus; nec genitus (est); sed procedens.  1517

23. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son: not made; neither created; nor begotten; but proceeding.

24. Unus ergo Pater, non tres Patres: unus Filius, non tres Filii: unus Spiritus Sanctus, non tres Spiritus Sancti.1518

24. Thus there is one Father, not three Fathers: one Son, not three Sons: one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.

25. Et in hac trinitate nihil prius, aut posterius: nihil maius, aut minus.1519

25. And in this Trinity none is before or after another: none is greater or less than another.

26. Sed totae tres personae coaeternae sibi sunt et coaequales.

26. But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together, and co-equal

27. Ita, ut per omnia, sicut jam supra dictum est, et unitas in trinitate et trinitas in unitate veneranda sit.1520

27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.

28. Qui vult ergo salvos esse, ita de trinitate sentiat.

28. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.

The origin of this remarkable production is veiled in mysterious darkness. Like the Apostles’ Creed, it is not so much the work of any one person, as the production of the spirit of the church. As the Apostles’ Creed represents the faith of the ante-Nicene period, and the Nicene Creed the faith of the Nicene, so the Athanasian Creed gives formal expression to the post-Nicene faith in the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation of God. The old tradition which, since the eighth century, has attributed it to Athanasius as the great champion of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, has been long ago abandoned on all hands; for in the writings of Athanasius and his contemporaries, and even in the acts of the third and fourth ecumenical councils, no trace of it is to be found.1530  It does not appear at all in the Greek church till the eleventh or twelfth century; and then it occurs in a few manuscripts which bear the manifest character of translations, vary from one another in several points, and omit or modify the clause on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son (v. 23).1531  It implies the entire post-Nicene or Augustinian development of the doctrine of the Trinity, and even the Christological discussions of the fifth century, though it does not contain the anti-Nestorian test-word qeotovko", mother of God. It takes several passages verbally from Augustine’s work on the Trinity which was not completed till the year 415, and from the Commonitorium of Vincentius of Lerinum, 434; works which evidently do not quote the passages from an already existing symbol, but contribute them as stones to the building. On the other hand it contains no allusion to the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies, and cannot be placed later than the year 570; for at that date Venantius Fortunatus of Poictiers wrote a short commentary on it.

It probably originated about the middle of the fifth century, in the school of Augustine, and in Gaul, where it makes its first appearance, and acquires its first ecclesiastical authority. But the precise author or compiler cannot be discovered, and the various views of scholars concerning him are mere opinions.1532  From Gaul the authority of this symbol spread over the whole of Latin Christendom, and subsequently made its way into some portions of the Greek church in Europe. The various Protestant churches have either formally adopted the Athanasian Creed together with the Nicene and the Apostles’, or at all events agree, in their symbolical books, with its doctrine of the trinity and the person of Christ.1533

The Athanasian Creed presents, in short, sententious articles, and in bold antitheses, the church doctrine of the Trinity in opposition to Unitarianism and tritheism, and the doctrine of the incarnation and the divine-human person of Christ in opposition to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and thus clearly and concisely sums up the results of the trinitarian and Christological controversies of the ancient church. It teaches the numerical unity of substance and the triad of persons in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with the perfect deity and perfect humanity of Christ in one indivisible person. In the former case we have one substance or nature in three persons; in the latter, two natures in one divine-human person.

On this faith eternal salvation is made to depend. By the damnatory clauses in its prologue and epilogue the Athanasianum has given offence even to those who agree with its contents. But the original Nicene Creed contained likewise an anathema, which afterwards dropped out of it; the anathema is to be referred to the heresies, and may not be applied to particular persons, whose judge is God alone; and finally, the whole intention is, not that salvation and perdition depend on the acceptance and rejection of any theological formulary or human conception and exhibition of the truth, but that faith in the revealed truth itself, in the living God, Father, Son, and Spirit, and in Jesus Christ the God-Man and the Saviour of the world, is the thing which saves, even where the understanding may be very defective, and that unbelief is the thing which condemns; according to the declaration of the Lord: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."  In particular actual cases Christian humility and charity of course require the greatest caution, and leave the judgment to the all-knowing and just God.

The Athanasian Creed closes the succession of ecumenical symbols; symbols which are acknowledged by the entire orthodox Christian world, except that Evangelical Protestantism ascribes to them not an absolute, but only a relative authority, and reserves the right of freely investigating and further developing all church doctrines from the inexhaustible fountain of the infallible word of God.

II. The Origenistic Controversies.

I. Epiphanius: Haeres. 64. Several Epistles of Epiphanius, Theophilus of Alex., and Jerome (in Jerome’s Epp. 51 and 87–100, ed. Vallarsi). The controversial works of Jerome and Rufinus on the orthodoxy of Origen (Rufini Praefatio ad Orig. peri; ajrcw'n; and Apologia s. invectivarum in Hieron.; Hieronymi Ep. 84 ad Pammachium et Oceanum de erroribus Origenis; Apologia Adv. Rufinum libri iii, written 402–403, etc.). Palladius: Vita Johannis Chrysostomi (in Chrysost. Opera, vol. xiii. ed. Montfaucon). Socrates: H. E. vi. 3–18. Sozomenus: H. E. viii. 2–20. Theodoret: H. E. v. 27 sqq. Photius: Biblioth. Cod. 59. Mansi:

II. Huetius: Origeniana (Opera Orig. vol. iv. ed. De la Rue). Doucin: Histoire des mouvements arrivés dans l’église au sujet d’Origène. Par. 1700. Walch: Historie der Ketzereien. Th. vii. p. 427 sqq. Schröckh: Kirchengeschichte, vol. x. 108 sqq. Comp. the monographs Of Redepenning and Thomasius on Origen; and Neander: Der heil. Joh. Chrysostomus. Berl. 1848, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 121 sqq. Hefele (R.C.): Origenistenstreit, in the Kirchenlexicon of Wetzer and Welte, vol. vii. p. 847 sqq., and Conciliengeschichte, vol. ii. p. 76 sqq. O. Zöckler: Hieronymus. Gotha, 1865, p. 238 ff; 391 ff.

§133. The Orgenistic Controversy in Palestine. Epiphanius, Rufinus, and Jerome,  A.D. 394–399.

Between the Arian and the Nestorian controversies and in indirect connection with the former, come the vehement and petty personal quarrels over the orthodoxy of Origen, which brought no gain, indeed, to the development of the church doctrine, yet which have a bearing upon the history of theology, as showing the progress of orthodoxy under the twofold aspect of earnest zeal for the pure faith, and a narrow-minded intolerance towards all free speculation. The condemnation of Origen was a death blow to theological science in the Greek church, and left it to stiffen gradually into a mechanical traditionalism and formalism. We shall confine ourselves, if possible, to the points of general interest, and omit the extremely insipid and humiliating details of personal invective and calumny.

It is the privilege of great pioneering minds to set a mass of other minds in motion, to awaken passionate sympathy and antipathy, and to act with stimulating and moulding power even upon after generations. Their very errors are often more useful than the merely traditional orthodoxy of unthinking men, because they come from an honest search after truth, and provoke new investigation. One of these minds was Origen, the most learned and able divine of the ante-Nicene period, the Plato or the Schleiermacher of the Greek church. During his life-time his peculiar, and for the most part Platonizing, views already aroused contradiction, and to the advanced orthodoxy of a later time they could not but appear as dangerous heresies. Methodius of Tyre († 311) first attacked his doctrines of the creation and the resurrection; while Paulphilus († 309), from his prison, wrote an apology for Origen, which Eusebius afterwards completed. His name was drawn into the Arian controversies, and used and abused by both parties for their own ends. The question of the orthodoxy of the great departed became in this way a vital issue of the day, and rose in interest with the growing zeal for pure doctrine and the growing horror of all heresy.

Upon this question three parties arose: free, progressive disciples, blind adherents, and blind opponents.1534

1. The true, independent followers of Origen drew from his writings much instruction and quickening, without committing themselves to his words, and, advancing with the demands of the time, attained a clearer knowledge of the specific doctrines of Christianity than Origen himself, without thereby losing esteem for his memory and his eminent services. Such men were Pamphilus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus of Alexandria, and in a wider sense Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa; and among the Latin fathers, Hilary, and at first Jerome, who afterwards joined the opponents. Gregory of Nyssa, and perhaps also Didymus, even adhered to Origen’s doctrine of the final salvation of all created intelligences.

2. The blind and slavish followers, incapable of comprehending the free spirit of Origen, clave to the letter, held all his immature and erratic views, laid greater stress on them than Origen himself, and pressed them to extremes. Such mechanical fidelity to a master is always apostasy to his spirit, which tends towards continual growth in knowledge. To this class belonged the Egyptian monks in the Nitrian mountains; four in particular: Dioscurus, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Enthymius, who are known by the name of the "tall brethren,"1535 and were very learned.

3. The opponents of Origen, some from ignorance, others from narrowness and want of discrimination, shunned his speculations as a source of the most dangerous heresies, and in him condemned at the same time all free theological discussion, without which no progress in knowledge is possible, and without which even the Nicene dogma would never have come into existence. To these belonged a class of Egyptian monks in the Scetic desert, with Pachomius at their head, who, in opposition to the mysticism and spiritualism of the Origenistic monks of Nitria, urged grossly sensuous views of divine things, so as to receive the name of Anthropomorphites. The Roman church, in which Origen was scarcely known by name before the Arian disputes, shared in a general way the strong prejudice against him as an unsound and dangerous writer.

The leader in the crusade against the bones of Origen was the bishop Epiphanius of Salamis (Constantia) in Cyprus († 403), an honest, well-meaning, and by his contemporaries highly respected, but violent, coarse, contracted, and bigoted monastic saint and heresy hunter. He had inherited from the monks in the deserts of Egypt an ardent hatred of Origen as an arch-heretic, and for this hatred he gave documentary justification from the numerous writings of Origen in his Panarion, or chest of antidotes for eighty heresies, in which he branded him as the father of Arianism and many other errors.1536  Not content with this, he also endeavored by journeying and oral discourse to destroy everywhere the influence of the long departed teacher of Alexandria, and considered himself as doing God and the church the greatest service thereby.

With this object the aged bishop journeyed in 394 to Palestine, where Origen was still held in the highest consideration, especially with John, bishop of Jerusalem, and with the learned monks Rufinus and Jerome, the former of whom was at that time in Jerusalem and the latter in Bethlehem. He delivered a blustering sermon in Jerusalem, excited laughter, and vehemently demanded the condemnation of Origen. John and Rufinus resisted; but Jerome, who had previously considered Origen the greatest church teacher after the apostles, and had learned much from his exegetical writings, without adopting his doctrinal errors, yielded to a solicitude for the fame of his own orthodoxy, passed over to the opposition, broke off church fellowship with John, and involved himself in a most violent literary contest with his former friend Rufinus; which belongs to the chronique scandaleuse of theology. The schism was terminated indeed by the mediation of the patriarch Theophilus in 397, but the dispute broke out afresh. Jerome condemned in Origen particularly his doctrine of pre-existence, of the final conversion of the devils, and of demons, and his spiritualistic sublimation of the resurrection of the body; while Rufinus, having returned to the West (398), translated several works of Origen into Latin, and accommodated them to orthodox taste. Both were in fact equally zealous to defend themselves against the charge of Origenism, and to fasten it upon each other, and this not by a critical analysis and calm investigation of the teachings of Origen, but by personal denunciations and miserable invectives.1537

Rufinus was cited before pope Anastasius (398–402), who condemned Origen in a Roman synod; but he sent a satisfactory defense and found an asylum in Aquileia. He enjoyed the esteem of such men as Paulinus of Nola and Augustine, and died in Sicily (410).

§ 134. The Origenistic Controversy in Egypt and Constantinople. Theophilus and Chrysostom  A.D. 399–407.

Meanwhile a second act of this controversy was opened in Egypt, in which the unprincipled, ambitious, and intriguing bishop Theophilus of Alexandria plays the leading part. This bishop was at first an admirer of Origen, and despised the anthropomorphite monks, but afterwards, through a personal quarrel with Isidore and the "four tall brethren," who refused to deliver the church funds into his hands, he became an opponent of Origen, attacked his errors in several documents (399–403),1538 and pronounced an anathema on his memory, in which he was supported by Epiphanius, Jerome, and the Roman bishop Anastasius. At the same time he indulged in the most violent measures against the Origenistic, monks, and banished them from Egypt. Most of these monks fled to Palestine; but some: fifty, among whom were the four tall brethren, went to Constantinople, and found there a cordial welcome with the bishop John Chrysostom in 401.

In this way that noble man became involved in the dispute. As an adherent of the Antiochian school, and as a practical theologian, he had no sympathy with the philosophical speculation of Origen, but he knew how to appreciate his merits in the exposition of the Scriptures, and was impelled by Christian love and justice to intercede with Theophilus in behalf of the persecuted monks, though he did not admit them to the holy communion till they proved their innocence.

Theophilus now set every instrument in motion to overthrow the long envied Chrysostom, and employed even Epiphanius, then almost an octogenarian, as a tool of his hierarchical plans. This old man journeyed in mid-winter in 402 to Constantinople, in the imagination that by his very presence he would be able to destroy the thousand-headed hydra of heresy, and he would neither hold church fellowship with Chrysostom, who assembled the whole clergy of the city to greet him, nor pray for the dying son of the emperor, until all Origenistic heretics should be banished from the capital, and he might publish the anathema from the altar. But he found that injustice was done to the Nitrian monks, and soon took ship again to Cyprus, saying to the bishops who accompanied him to the sea shore: "I leave to you the city, the palace, and hypocrisy; but I go, for I must make great haste."  He died on the ship in the summer of 403.

What the honest coarseness of Epiphanius failed to effect, was accomplished by the cunning of Theophilus, who now himself travelled to Constantinople, and immediately appeared as accuser and judge. He well knew how to use the dissatisfaction of the clergy, of the empress Eudoxia, and of the court with Chrysostom on account of his moral severity and his bold denunciations.1539  In Chrysostom’s own diocese, on an estate "at the oak"1540 in Chalcedon, he held a secret council of thirty-six bishops against Chrysostom, and there procured, upon false charges of immorality, unchurchly conduct, and high treason, his deposition and banishment in 403.1541  Chrysostom was recalled indeed in three days in consequence of an earthquake and the dissatisfaction of the people, but was again condemned by a council in 404, and banished from the court, because, incensed by the erection of a silver statue of Eudoxia close to the church of St. Sophia, and by the theatrical performances connected with it, he had with unwise and unjust exaggeration opened a sermon on Mark vi. 17 ff., in commemoration of John the Baptist with the personal allusion: "Again Herodias rages, again she raves, again she dances, and again she demands the head of John [this was Chrysostom’s own name] upon a charger."1542  From his exile in Cucusus and Arabissus he corresponded with all parts of the Christian world, took lively interest in the missions in Persia and Scythia, and appealed to a general council. His opponents procured from Arcadius an order for his transportation to the remote desert of Pityus. On the way thither he died at Comana in Pontus, A.D. 407, in the sixtieth year of his age, praising God for everything, even for his unmerited persecutions.1543

Chrysostom was venerated by the people as a saint, and thirty years after his death, by order of Theodosius II. (438), his bones were brought back in triumph to Constantinople, and deposited in the imperial tomb. The emperor himself met the remains at Chalcedon, fell down before the coffin, and in the name of his guilty parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia, implored the forgiveness of the holy man. The age could not indeed understand and appreciate the bold spirit of Origen, but was still accessible to the narrow piety of Epiphanius and the noble virtues of Chrysostom.

In spite of this prevailing aversion of the time to free speculation, Origen always retained many readers and admirers, especially among the monks in Palestine, two of whom, Domitian and Theodorus Askidas, came to favor and influence at the court of Justinian I. But under this emperor the dispute on the orthodoxy of Origen was renewed about the middle of the sixth century in connection with the controversy on the Three Chapters, and ended with the condemnation of fifteen propositions of Origen at a council in 544.1544  Since then no one has ventured until recent times to raise his voice for Origen, and many of his works have perished.

With Cyril of Alexandria the theological productivity of the Greek church, and with Theodoret the exegetical, became almost extinct. The Greeks thenceforth contented themselves for the most part with revisions and collections of the older treasures. A church which no longer advances, goes backwards, or falls in stagnation.

III. The Christological Controversies.

Among the works on the whole field of the Christological controversies should be compared especially the already cited works of Petavius (tom. iv. De incarnatione Verbi), Walch (Ketzerhistorie, vol. v.-ix.), Baur, and Dorner. The special literature will be given at the heads of the several sections.

§ 135. General View. Alexandrian and Antiochian Schools.

The Trinity and Christology, the two hardest problems and most comprehensive dogmas of theology, are intimately connected. Hence the settlement of the one was immediately followed by the agitation and study of the other. The speculations on the Trinity had their very origin in the study of the person of Christ, and led back to it again. The point of union is the idea of the incarnation of God. But in the Arian controversy the Son of God was viewed mainly in his essential, pre-mundane relation to the Father; while in the Christological contest the incarnate historical Christ and the constitution of his divine-human person was the subject of dispute.

The notion of redemption, which forms the centre of Christian thinking, demands a Redeemer who unites in his person the nature of God and the nature of man, yet without confusion. In order to be a true Redeemer, the person must possess all divine attributes, and at the same time enter into all relations and conditions of mankind, to raise them to God. Four elements thus enter into the orthodox doctrine concerning Christ:  He is true God; be is true man; he is one person; and the divine and human in him, with all the personal union and harmony, remain distinct.

The result of the Arian controversies was the general acknowledgment of the essential and eternal deity of Christ. Before the close of that controversy the true humanity of Christ at the same time came in again for treatment; the church having indeed always maintained it against the Gnostic Docetism, but now, against a partial denial by Apollinarianism, having to express it still more distinctly and lay stress on the reasonable soul. And now came into question, further, the relation between the divine and the human natures in Christ. Origen, who gave the impulse to the Arian controversy, had been also the first to provoke deeper speculation on the mystery of the person of Christ. But great obscurity and uncertainty had long prevailed in opinions on this great matter. The orthodox Christology is the result of powerful and passionate conflicts. It is remarkable that the notorious rabies theologorum has never in any doctrinal controversy so long and violently raged as in the controversies on the person of the Reconciler, and in later times on the love-feast of reconciliation.

The Alexandrian school of theology, with its characteristic speculative and mystical turn, favored a connection of the divine and human in the act of the incarnation so close, that it was in danger of losing the human in the divine, or at least of mixing it with the divine;1545 while, conversely, the Antiochian or Syrian school, in which the sober intellect and reflection prevailed, inclined to the opposite extreme of an abstract separation of the two natures.1546  In both cases the mystery of the incarnation, the veritable and permanent union of the divine and human in the one person of Christ, which is essential to the idea of a Redeemer and Mediator, is more or less weakened or altered. In the former case the incarnation becomes a transmutation or mixture (suvgkrasi") of the divine and human; in the latter, a mere indwelling (ejnoivkhsi") of the Logos in the man, or a moral union (sunavfeia) of the two natures, or rather of the two persons.

It was now the problem of the church, in opposition to both these extremes, to assert the personal unity and the distinction of the two natures in Christ with equal solicitude and precision. This she did through the Christological controversies which agitated the Greek church for more than two hundred years with extraordinary violence. The Roman church, though in general much more calm, took an equally deep interest in this work by some of its more eminent leaders, and twice decided the victory of orthodoxy, at the fourth general council and at the sixth, by the powerful influence of the bishop of Rome.

We must distinguish in this long drama five acts:

1. The Apollinarian controversy, which comes in the close of the Nicene age, and is concerned with the full humanity of Christ, that is, the question whether Christ, with his human body and human soul (anima animans), assumed also a human spirit (nou'", pneu'ma, anima rationalis).

2. The Nestorian controversy, down to the rejection of the doctrine of the double personality of Christ by the third ecumenical council of Ephesus, A.D. 431.

3. The Eutychian controversy, to the condemnation of the doctrine of one nature, or more exactly of the absorption of the human in the divine nature of Christ; to the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon, A.D. 451.

4. The Monophysite dispute; the partial reaction towards the Eutychian theory; down to the fifth general council at Constantinople A.D. 553.

5. The Monothelite controversy, A.D. 633–680, which terminated with the rejection of the doctrine of one will in Christ by the sixth general council at Constantinople in 680, and lies this side of our period.

§ 136. The Apollinarian Heresy,  A.D. 362–381.

Sources:

I. Apollinaris: Peri; sarkwvsew"—PeriPivstew" — Peri; ajnastavsew"—Kata; kefaleion,—and controversial works against Porphyry, and Eunomius, biblical commentaries, and epistles. Only fragments of these remain in the answers of Gregory of Nyassa and Theodoret, and in Angelo Mai: Nov. Biblioth. Patrum, tom. vii. (Rom. 1854), Pars secunda, pp. 82–91 (commentary on Ezekiel), in Leontinus Byzantinus, and in the Catenae, especially the Catena in Evang. Joh., ed. Corderius, 1630.

II. Against Apollinaris: Athanasius: Contra Apollinarium, libri ii. (Peri; sarkwvsewstou' Kurivou hJmw'n  jI. C. kata;  jApollinarivou,   in Opera, tom. i. pars secunda, pp. 921–955, ed. Bened., and in Thilo’s Bibl. Patr. Gr. dogm., vol. i. pp. 862–937). This work was written about the year 372 against Apollinarianism in the wider sense, without naming, Apollinaris or his followers; so that the title above given is wanting in the oldest codices. Similar errors, though in like manner without direct reference to Apollinaris, and evading his most important tenet, were combated by Athanasius in the Epist. ad Epictetum episcopum Corinthi contra haereticos (Opp. i. ii. 900 sqq., and in Thilo, i. p. 820 sqq.), which is quoted even by Epiphanius. Gregory Of Nyssa: Lovgo" ajntirjrJhtiko;" pro;" ta;  jApollinarivou, first edited by L. A. Zacagni from the treasures of the Vatican library in the unfortunately incomplete Collectanea monumentorum veterum ecclesiae Graecae et Latinae, Romae, 1698, pp. 123–287, and then by Gallandi, Bibliotheca Vet. Patrum, tom. vi. pp. 517–577. Gregory Naz.: Epist. ad Nectarium, and Ep. i. and ii. ad Cledonium (or Orat. 46 and 51–52; comp. Ullmann’s Gregor v. Naz. p. 401 sqq.). Basilius M.: Epist. 265 (A.D. 377), in the new Bened. ed. of his Opera, Par. 1839, tom. iii. Pars ii. p. 591 sqq. Epiphanius: Haer. 77. Theodoret: Fabul. haer. iv. 8; v. 9; and Diolog. i.-Iii.

Literature.

Dion. Petavius: De incarnatione Verbi, lib. i. cap. 6 (in the fourth vol. of the Theologicorum dogmatum, pp. 24–34, ed. Par. 1650). Jac. Basnage: Dissert. de Hist. haer. Apollinar. Ultraj. 1687. C. W. F. Walch: l.c. iii. 119–229. Baur: l.c. vol. i. pp. 585–647. Dorner: l.c. i. pp. 974–1080. H. Voigt: Die Lehre des Athanasius, &c. Bremen, 1861. Pp. 306–345.

Apollinaris,1547 bishop of Laodicea in Syria, was the first to apply the results of the trinitarian discussions of the Nicene age to Christology, and to introduce the long Christological controversies. He was the first to call the attention of the Church to the psychical and pneumatic side of the humanity of Christ, and by contradiction brought out the doctrine of a reasonable human soul in him more clearly and definitely than it had before been conceived.

Apollinaris, like his father (Apollinaris the Elder, who was a native of Alexandria, and a presbyter in Laodicea), was distinguished for piety, classical culture, a scholarly vindication of Christianity against Porphyry and the emperor Julian, and adhesion to the Nicene faith. He was highly esteemed, too, by Athanasius, who, perhaps through personal forbearance, never mentions him by name in his writings against his error.

But in his zeal for the true deity of Christ, and his fear of a double personality, he fell into the error of denying his integral humanity. Adopting the psychological trichotomy, he attributed to Christ a human body, and a human (animal) soul,1548 but not a human spirit or reason;1549 putting the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit. In opposition to the idea of a mere connection of the Logos with the man Jesus, he wished to secure an organic unity of the two, and so a true incarnation; but he sought this at the expense of the most important constituent of man. He reaches only a qeo;" sarkofovro", as Nestorianism only an a[nqrwpo" qeofovro", instead of the proper qeavnqrwpo". He appealed to the fact that the Scripture says, the word was made flesh—not spirit;1550 God was manifest in the flesh, &c.; to which Gregory Nazianzen justly replied that in these passages the term savrx was used by synecdoche for the whole human nature. In this way Apollinaris established so close a connection of the Logos with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two were merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of the Logos, and a worship of his flesh. He made Christ a middle being between God and man, in whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts human were fused in the unity of a new nature.1551

Epiphanius expresses himself concerning the beginning of the controversy in these unusually lenient and respectful terms: "Some of our brethren, who are in high position, and who are held in great esteem with us and all the orthodox, have thought that the spirit (oJ nou'") should be excluded from the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, and have preferred to hold that our Lord Christ assumed flesh and soul, but not our spirit, and therefore not a perfect man. The aged and venerable Apollinaris of Laodicea, dear even to the blessed father Athanasius, and in fact to all the orthodox has been the first to frame and promulgate this doctrine. At first, when some of his disciples communicated it to us, we were unwilling to believe that such a man would put this doctrine in circulation. We supposed that the disciples had not understood the deep thoughts of so learned and so discerning a man, and had themselves fabricated things which he did not teach," &c.

So early as 362, a council at Alexandria rejected this doctrine (though without naming the author), and asserted that Christ possessed a reasonable soul. But Apollinaris did not secede from the communion of the Church, and begin to form a sect of his own, till 375. He died in 390. His writings, except numerous fragments in the works of his opponents, are lost.

Apollinaris, therefore, taught the deity of Christ, but denied the completeness (teleiovth") of his humanity, and, taking his departure from the Nicene postulate of the homoousion ran into the Arian heresy, which likewise put the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit in Christ, but which asserted besides this the changeableness (treptovth") of Christ; while Apollinaris, on the contrary, aimed to establish more firmly the unchangeableness of Christ, to beat the Arians with their own weapons, and provide a better vindication of the Nicene dogma. He held the union of full divinity with full humanity in one person, therefore, of two wholes in one whole, to be impossible.1552  He supposed the unity of the person of Christ, and at the same time his sinlessness, could be saved only by the excision of the human spirit; since sin has its seat, not in the will-less soul, nor in the body, but in the intelligent, free, and therefore changeable will or spirit of man. He also charged the Church doctrine of the full humanity of Christ with limiting the atoning suffering of Christ to the human nature, and so detracting from the atoning virtue of the work of Christ; for the death of a man could not destroy death. The divine nature must participate in the suffering throughout. His opponents, for this reason, charged him with making deity suffer and die. He made, however, a distinction between two sides of the Logos, the one allied to man and capable of suffering, and the other allied to God and exalted above all suffering. The relation of the divine pneumatic nature in Christ to the human psychical and bodily nature Apollinaris illustrated by the mingling of wine and water, the glowing fire in the iron, and the union of soul and body in man, which, though distinct, interpenetrate and form one thing.

His doctrine, however, in particulars, is variously represented, and there arose among his disciples a complex mass of opinions, some of them differing strongly from one another. According to one statement Apollinaris asserted that Christ brought even his human nature from heaven, and was from eternity e[nsarko"; according to another this was merely an opinion of his disciples, or an unwarranted inference of opponents from his assertion of an eternal determination to incarnation, and from his strong emphasizing of the union of the Logos with the flesh of Christ, which allowed that even the flesh might be worshipped without idolatry.1553

The Church could not possibly accept such a half Docetistic incarnation, such a mutilated and stunted humanity of Christ, despoiled of its royal head, and such a merely partial redemption as this inevitably involved. The incarnation of the Logos is his becoming completely man.1554  It involves, therefore, his assumption of the entire undivided nature of man, spiritual and bodily, with the sole exception of sin, which in fact belongs not to the original nature of man, but has entered from without, as a foreign poison, through the deceit of the devil. Many things in the life of Jesus imply a reasonable soul: sadness, anguish, and prayer. The spirit is just the most essential and most noble constituent of man, the controlling principle,1555 and it stands in the same need of redemption as the soul and the body. Had the Logos not assumed the human spirit, he would not have been true man at all, and could not have been our example. Nor could he have redeemed the spirit; and a half-redemption is no redemption at all. To be a full Redeemer, Christ must also be fully man, tevleio" a[nqrwpo". This was the weighty doctrinal result of the Apollinarian controversy.

Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil, and Epiphanius combated the Apollinarian error, but with a certain embarrassment, attacking it rather from behind and from the flank, than in front, and unprepared to answer duly its main point, that two integral persons cannot form one person. The later orthodox doctrine surmounted this difficulty by teaching the impersonality of the human nature of Christ, and by making the personality of Christ to reside wholly in the Logos.

The councils at Rome under Damasus, in 377 and 378, and likewise the second ecumenical council, in 381, condemned the Apollinarians.1556  Imperial decrees pursued them, in 388, 397, and 428. Some of them returned into the catholic church; others mingled with the Monophysites, for whose doctrine Apollinaris had, in some measure, prepared the way.

With the rejection of this error, however, the question of the proper relation of the divine and human natures in Christ was not yet solved, but rather for the first time fairly raised. Those church teachers proved the necessity of a reasonable human soul in Christ. But respecting the mode of the union of the two natures their views were confused and their expressions in some cases absolutely incorrect and misleading.1557  It was through the succeeding stages of the Christological controversies that the church first reached a clear insight into this great mystery:  God manifest in the flesh.

§ 137. The Nestorian Controversy,  A.D. 428–431.

Sources.

I. Nestorius:  JOmilivai, Sermones; Anathematismi. Extracts from the Greek original in the Acts of the council of Ephesus; in a Latin translation in Marius Mercator, a North African layman who just then resided in Constantinople, Opera, ed. Garnerius, Par. 1673. Pars ii, and better ed. Baluzius, Par. 1684; also in Gallandi, Bibl. vet. P. P. viii. pp. 615–735, and in Migne’s Patrol. tom. 48. Nestorius’ own account (Evagr. H. E. i. 7) was used by his friend Irenaeus (comes, then bishop of Tyre till 448) in his Tragödia s. comm. de rebus in synodo Ephesina ac in Oriente toto gestis, which, however, is lost; the documents attached to it were revised in the 6th century in the Synodicon adversus tragödiam Irenaei, in Mansi, tom. v. fol. 731 sqq. In favor of Nestorius, or at least of his doctrine, Theodoret († 457) in his works against Cyril, and in three dialogues entitled JEranisthv" (Beggar). Comp. also the fragments of Theodore of Mopsuestia, († 429).

II. Against Nestorius: Cyril of Alex.:  jAnaqematismoi;, Five Books kata; Nestorivou, and several Epistles against Nest., and Theod., in vol. vi. of Aubert’s ed. of his Opera, Par. 1638 (in Migne’s ed. t. ix.). Socrates: vii. c. 29–35 (written after 431, but still before the death of Nestorius; comp. c. 84). Evagrius: H. E. i. 2–7. Liberatus (deacon of Carthage about 553): Breviarium causes Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum (ed. Gartnier, Par. 1675, and printed in Gallandi, Bibl. vet. Patr. tom. xii. pp. 121–161). Leontinus Byzant. (monachus): De sectis; and contra Nestorium et Eutychen (in Gallandi, Bibl. tom. xii. p. 625 sqq., and 658–700). A complete collection of all the acts of the Nestorian controversy in Mansi, tom. iv. fol. 567 sqq., and tom. v. vii. ix.

Later Literature.

Petavius: Theolog. dogmatum tom. iv. (de incarnations), lib. i. c. 7 sqq. Jo. Garnier: De haeresi et libris Nestorii (in his edition of the Opera Marii Mercator. Par. 1673, newly edited by Migne, Par. 1846). Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the R. E. ch. 41. P. E. Jablonski: De Nestorianismo. Berol. 1724. Gengler (R.C.): Ueber die Verdammung des Nestorius (Tübinger Quartalschrift, 1835, No. 2). Schröckh: K. Geschichte, vol. xviii. pp. 176–312. Walch: Ketzerhist. v. 289–936. Neander: K. Gesch. vol. iv. pp. 856–992. Gieseler, vol. i. Div. ii. pp. 131 ff. (4th ed.). Baur: Dreieinigkeit, vol. i. 693–777. Dorner: Christologie, vol. ii. pp. 60–98. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengesch., vol. ii. pp. 134:ff. H. H. Milman: History of Latin Christianity, vol. i. ch. iii. pp. 195–252. (Stanley, in his History of the Eastern Church, has seen fit to ignore the Nestorian, and the other Christological controversies—the most important in the history of the Greek church!)  Comp. also W. Möller: Article Nestorius, in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl. vol. x. (1858) pp. 288–296, and the relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History.

Apollinarianism, which sacrificed to the unity of the person the integrity of the natures, at least of the human nature, anticipated the Monophysite heresy, though in a peculiar way, and formed the precise counterpart to the Antiochian doctrine, which was developed about the same time, and somewhat later by Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus (died 394), and Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (393–428), and which held the divine and human in Christ so rigidly apart as to make Christ, though not professedly, yet virtually a double person.

From this school proceeded Nestorius, the head and martyr of the Christological heresy which bears his name. His doctrine differs from that of Theodore of Mopsuestia only in being less speculative and more practical, and still less solicitous for the unity of the person of Christ.1558  He was originally a monk, then presbyter in Antioch, and after 428 patriarch of Constantinople. In Constantinople a second Chrysostom was expected in him, and a restorer of the honor of his great predecessor against the detraction of his Alexandrian rival. He was an honest man, of great eloquence, monastic piety, and the spirit of a zealot for orthodoxy, but impetuous, vain, imprudent, and wanting in sound, practical judgment. In his inaugural sermon he addressed Theodosius II. with these words: "Give me, O emperor, the earth purified of heretics, and I will give thee heaven for it; help me to fight the heretics, and I will help thee to fight the Persians."1559

He immediately instituted violent measures against Arians, Novatians, Quartodecimanians, and Macedonians, and incited the emperor to enact more stringent laws against heretics. The Pelagians alone, with whose doctrine of free will (but not of original sin) he sympathized, he treated indulgently, receiving to himself Julian of Eclanum, Coelestius, and other banished leaders of that party, interceding for them in 429 with the emperor and with the pope Celestine, though, on account of the very unfavorable reports concerning Pelagianism which were spread by the layman Marius Mercator, then living in Constantinople, his intercessions were of no avail. By reason of this partial contact of the two, Pelagianism was condemned by the council of Ephesus together with Nestorianism.

But now Nestorius himself fell out with the prevailing faith of the church in Constantinople. The occasion was his opposition to the certainly very bold and equivocal expression mother of God, which had been already sometimes applied to the virgin Mary by Origen, Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius, Basil, and others, and which, after the Arian controversy, and with the growth of the worship of Mary, passed into the devotional language of the people.1560

It was of course not the sense, or monstrous nonsense, of this term, that the creature bore the Creator, or that the eternal Deity took its beginning from Mary; which would be the most absurd and the most wicked of all heresies, and a shocking blasphemy; but the expression was intended only to denote the indissoluble union of the divine and human natures in Christ, and the veritable incarnation of the Logos, who took the human nature from the body, of Mary, came forth God-Man from her womb, and as God-Man suffered on the cross. For Christ was borne as a person, and suffered as a person; and the personality in Christ resided in his divinity, not in his humanity. So, in fact, the reasonable soul of man, which is the centre of the human personality, participates in the suffering and the death-struggle of the body, though the soul itself does not and cannot die.

The Antiochian theology, however, could not conceive a human nature without a human personality, and this it strictly separated from the divine Logos. Therefore Theodore of Mopsuestia had already disputed the term theotokos with all earnestness. "Mary," says he, "bore Jesus, not the Logos, for the Logos was, and continues to be, omnipresent, though he dwelt in Jesus in a special manner from the beginning. Therefore Mary is strictly the mother of Christ, not the mother of God. Only in a figure, per anaphoram, can she be called also the mother of God, because God was in a peculiar sense in Christ. Properly speaking, she gave birth to a man in whom the union with the Logos had begun, but was still so incomplete that he could not yet (till after his baptism) be called the Son of God."  He even declared it "insane" to say that God was born of the Virgin; "not God, but the temple in which God dwelt, was born of Mary."

In a similar strain Nestorius, and his friend Anastasius, a priest whom he had brought with him from Antioch, argued from the pulpit against the theotokon. Nestorius claimed that he found the controversy already existing in Constantinople, because some were calling Mary mother of God (qeotovko"), others, mother of Man (ajnqrwpotovko"). He proposed the middle expression, mother of Christ (Cristotovko"), because Christ was at the same time God and man. He delivered several discourses on this disputed point. "You ask," says he in his first sermon, "whether Mary may be called mother of God. Has God then a mother?  If so, heathenism itself is excusable in assigning mothers to its gods; but then Paul is a liar, for he said of the deity of Christ that it was without father, without mother, and without descent.1561  No, my dear sir, Mary did not bear God; ... the creature bore not the uncreated Creator, but the man who is the instrument of the Godhead; the Holy Ghost conceived not the Logos, but formed for him, out of the virgin, a temple which he might inhabit (John ii. 21). The incarnate God did not die, but quickened him in whom he was made flesh .... This garment, which he used, I honor on account of the God which was covered therein and inseparable therefrom; ... I separate the natures, but I unite the worship. Consider what this must mean. He who was formed in the womb of Mary, was not himself God, but God assumed him [assumsit, i.e., clothed himself with humanity], and on account of Him who assumed, he who was assumed is also called God."1562

From this word the Nestorian controversy took its rise; but this word represented, at the same time, a theological idea and a mighty religious sentiment; it was intimately connected with the growing veneration of Mary; it therefore struck into the field of devotion, which lies much nearer the people than that of speculative theology; and thus it touched the most vehement passions. The word theotokos was the watchword of the orthodox party in the Nestorian controversy, as the term homoousios had been in the Arian; and opposition to this word meant denial of the mystery of the incarnation, or of the true union of the divine and human natures in Christ.

And unquestionably the Antiochian Christology, which was represented by Nestorius, did not make the Logos truly become man. It asserted indeed, rightly, the duality of the natures, and the continued distinction between them; it denied, with equal correctness, that God, as such, could either be born, or suffer and die; but it pressed the distinction of the two natures to double personality. It substituted for the idea of the incarnation the idea of an assumption of human nature, or rather of an entire man, into fellowship with the Logos,1563 and an indwelling of Godhead in Christ.1564  Instead of God-Man,1565 we have here the idea of a mere God-bearing man;1566 and the person of Jesus of Nazareth is only the instrument or the temple,1567 in which the divine Logos dwells. The two natures form not a personal unity,1568 but only a moral unity, an intimate friendship or conjunction.1569  They hold an outward, mechanical relation to each other,1570 in which each retains its peculiar attributes,1571 forbidding any sort of communicatio idiomatum. This union is, in the first place, a gracious condescension on the part of God,1572 whereby the Logos makes the man an object of the divine pleasure; and in the second place, an elevation of the man to higher dignity and to sonship with God.1573  By virtue of the condescension there arises, in the third place, a practical fellowship of operation,1574 in which the humanity becomes the instrument and temple of the deity and the e{nwsi" scetikhv cuIminates. Theodore of Mopsuestia, the able founder of the Antiochian Christology, set forth the elevation of the man to sonship with God (starting from Luke ii. 53) under the aspect of a gradual moral process, and made it dependent on the progressive virtue and meritoriousness of Jesus, which were completed in the resurrection, and earned for him the unchangeableness of the divine life as a reward for his voluntary victory of virtue.

The Antiochian and Nestorian theory amounts therefore, at bottom, to a duality of person in Christ, though without clearly avowing it. It cannot conceive the reality of the two natures without a personal independence for each. With the theanthropic unity of the person of Christ it denies also the theanthropic unity of his work, especially of his sufferings and death; and in the same measure it enfeebles the reality of redemption.1575

From this point of view Mary, of course, could be nothing more than mother of the man Jesus, and the predicate theotokos, strictly understood, must appear absurd or blasphemous. Nestorius would admit no more than that God passed through (transiit) the womb of Mary.

This very war upon the favorite shibboleth of orthodoxy provoked the bitterest opposition of the people and of the monks, whose sympathies were with the Alexandrian theology. They contradicted Nestorius in the pulpit, and insulted him on the street; while he, returning evil for evil, procured corporal punishments and imprisonment for the monks, and condemned the view of his antagonists at a local council in 429.1576

His chief antagonist in Constantinople was Proclus, bishop of Cyzicum, perhaps an unsuccessful rival of Nestorius for the patriarchate, and a man who carried the worship of Mary to an excess only surpassed by a modern Roman enthusiast for the dogma of the immaculate conception. In a bombastic sermon in honor of the Virgin1577 he praised her as "the spotless treasure-house of virginity; the spiritual paradise of the second Adam; the workshop, in which the two natures were annealed together; the bridal chamber in which the Word wedded the flesh; the living bush of nature, which was unharmed by the fire of the divine birth; the light cloud which bore him who sat between the Cherubim; the stainless fleece, bathed in the dews of Heaven, with which the Shepherd clothed his sheep; the handmaid and the mother, the Virgin and Heaven."

Soon another antagonist, far more powerful, arose in the person of the patriarch Cyril of Alexandria, a learned, acute, energetic, but extremely passionate, haughty, ambitious, and disputatious prelate. Moved by interests both personal and doctrinal, he entered the field, and used every means to overthrow his rival in Constantinople, as his like-minded uncle and predecessor, Theophilus, had overthrown the noble Chrysostom in the Origenistic strife. The theological controversy was at the same time a contest of the two patriarchates. In personal character Cyril stands far below Nestorius, but he excelled him in knowledge of the world, shrewdness, theological learning and acuteness, and had the show of greater veneration for Christ and for Mary on his side; and in his opposition to the abstract separation of the divine and human he was in the right, though he himself pressed to the verge of the opposite error of mixing or confusing the two natures in Christ.1578  In him we have a striking proof that the value of a doctrine cannot always be judged by the personal worth of its representatives. God uses for his purposes all sorts of instruments, good, bad, and indifferent.

Cyril first wrote to Nestorius; then to the emperor, the empress Eudokia, and the emperor’s sister Pulcheria, who took lively interest in church affairs; finally to the Roman bishop Celestine; and he warned bishops and churches east and west against the dangerous heresies of his rival. Celestine, moved by orthodox instinct, flattered by the appeal to his authority, and indignant at Nestorius for his friendly reception of the exiled Pelagians, condemned his doctrine at a Roman council, and deposed him from the patriarchal chair, unless he should retract within ten days (430).

As Nestorius persisted in his view, Cyril, despising the friendly mediation of the patriarch John of Antioch, hurled twelve anathemas, or formulas of condemnation, at the patriarch of Constantinople from a council at Alexandria by order of the pope (430).1579

Nestorius replied with twelve counter-anathemas, in which he accused his opponents of the heresy of Apollinaris.1580  Theodoret of Cyros, the learned expositor and church historian, also wrote against Cyril at the instance of John of Antioch.

The controversy had now become so general and critical, that it could be settled only by an ecumenical council.

§ 138. The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus,  A.D. 431. The Compromise.

For the Acts of the Council, see Mansi (tom. iv. fol. 567–1482, and a part of tom. v.), Harduin, and Fuchs, and an extended history of the council and the transactions connected with it in Walch, Schröckh, and Hefele (ii. pp. 162–271). We confine ourselves to the decisive points.

Theodosius II., in connection with his Western colleague, Valentinian III., summoned a universal council on Pentecost, A.D. 431, at Ephesus, where the worship of the Virgin mother of God had taken the place of the worship of the light and life dispensing virgin Diana. This is the third of the ecumenical councils, and is held, therefore, by all churches, in high regard. But in moral character this council stands far beneath that of Nicaea or of the first council of Constantinople. An uncharitable, violent, and passionate Spirit ruled the transactions. The doctrinal result, also, was mainly only negative; that is to say, condemnation of Nestorianism. The positive and ecumenical character of the council was really secured only by the subsequent transactions, and the union of the dominant party of the council with the protesting minority of Oriental bishops.1581

Nestorius came first to Ephesus with sixteen bishops, and with an armed escort, as if he were going into battle. He had the imperial influence on his side, but the majority of the bishops and the prevailing voice of the people in Ephesus, and also in Constantinople, were against him. The emperor himself could not be present in person, but sent the captain of his body-guard, the comes Candidian. Cyril appeared with a numerous retinue of fifty Egyptian bishops, besides monks, parabolani, slaves, and seamen, under the banner of St. Mark and of the holy Mother of God. On his side was the archbishop Memnon of Ephesus, with forty of his Asiatic suffragans and twelve bishops from Pamphilia; and the clergy, the monks, and the people of Asia Minor were of the same sentiment. The pope of Rome—for the first time at an ecumenical council—was represented by two bishops and a priest, who held with Cyril, but did not mix in the debates, as they affected to judge between the contending parties, and thus maintain the papal authority. This deputation, however, did not come in at the beginning.1582  The patriarch John of Antioch, a friend of Nestorius, was detained on the long journey with his bishops.

Cyril refused to wait, and opened the council in the church of St. Mary with a hundred and sixty bishops1583 sixteen days after Pentecost, on the 22d of June, in spite of the protest of the imperial commissioner. Nestorius was thrice cited to appear, but refused to come until all the bishops should be assembled. The council then proceeded without him to the examination of the point in dispute, and to the condemnation of Nestorius. The bishops unanimously cried: "Whosoever does not anathematize Nestorius, let himself be anathema; the true faith anathematizes him; the holy council anathematizes him. Whosoever holds fellowship with Nestorius, let him be anathema. We all anathematize the letter and the doctrines of Nestorius. We all anathematize Nestorius and his followers, and his ungodly faith, and his ungodly doctrine. We all anathematize Nestorius," &c.1584  Then a multitude of Christological expressions of the earlier fathers and several passages from the writings of Nestorius were read, and at the close of the first session, which lasted till late in the night, the following sentence of deposition was adopted and subscribed by about two hundred bishops: "The Lord Jesus Christ, who is blasphemed by him [Nestorius], determines through this holy council that Nestorius be excluded from the episcopal office, and from all sacerdotal fellowship."1585

The people of Ephesus hailed this result with universal jubilee, illuminated the city, and accompanied Cyril with torches and censers in state to his house.1586

On the following day Nestorius was informed of the sentence of deposition in a laconic edict, in which he was called a new Judas. But he indignantly protested against the decree, and made complaint in an epistle to the emperor. The imperial commissioner declared the decrees invalid, because they were made by only a portion of the council, and he prevented as far as possible the publication of them.

A few days after, on the 26th or 27th of June, John of Antioch at last reached Ephesus, and immediately, with forty-two bishops of like sentiment, among whom was the celebrated Theodoret, held in his dwelling, under the protection of the imperial commissioner and a body-guard, a counter council or conciliabulum, yielding nothing to the haste and violence of the other, deposed Cyril of Alexandria and Memnon of Ephesus from all priestly functions, as heretics and authors of the whole disorder and declared the other bishops who voted with them excommunicate until they should anathematize the heretical propositions of Cyril.1587

Now followed a succession of mutual criminations, invectives, arts of church diplomacy and politics, intrigues, and violence, which give the saddest picture of the uncharitable and unspiritual Christianity of that time. But the true genius of Christianity is, of course, far elevated above its unworthy organs, and overrules even the worst human passions for the cause of truth and righteousness.

On the 10th of July, after the arrival of the papal legates, who bore themselves as judges, Cyril held a second session, and then five more sessions (making seven in all), now in the house of Memnon, now in St. Mary’s church, issuing a number of circular letters and six canons against the Nestorians and Pelagians.

Both parties applied to the weak emperor, who, without understanding the question, had hitherto leaned to the side of Nestorius, but by public demonstrations and solemn processions of the people and monks of Constantinople under the direction of the aged and venerated Dalmatius, was awed into the worship of the mother of God. He finally resolved to confirm both the deposition of Nestorius and that of Cyril and Memnon, and sent one of the highest civil officers, John, to Ephesus, to publish this sentence, and if possible to reconcile the contending parties. The deposed bishops were arrested. The council, that is the majority, applied again to the emperor and his colleague, deplored their lamentable condition, and desired the release of Cyril and Memnon, who had never been deposed by them, but on the contrary had always been held in high esteem as leaders of the orthodox doctrine. The Antiochians likewise took all pains to gain the emperor to their side, and transmitted to him a creed which sharply distinguished, indeed, the two natures in Christ, yet, for the sake of the unconfused union of the two (ajsuvgcuto" e{vwsi"), conceded to Mary the disputed predicate theotokos.

The emperor now summoned eight spokesmen from each of the two parties to himself to Chalcedon. Among them were, on the one side, the papal deputies, on the other John of Antioch and Theodoret of Cyros, while Cyril and Memnon were obliged to remain at Ephesus in prison, and Nestorius at his own wish was assigned to his former cloister at Antioch, and on the 25th of October, 431, Maximian was nominated as his successor in Constantinople. After fruitless deliberations, the council of Ephesus was dissolved in October, 431, Cyril and Memnon set free, and the bishops of both parties commanded to go home.

The division lasted two years longer, till at last a sort of compromise was effected. John of Antioch sent the aged bishop Paul of Emisa a messenger to Alexandria with a creed which he had already, in a shorter form, laid before the emperor, and which broke the doctrinal antagonism by asserting the duality of the natures against Cyril, and the predicate mother of God against Nestorius.1588  "We confess," says this symbol, which was composed by Theodoret, "that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and body subsisting;1589 as to his Godhead begotten of the Father before all time, but as to his manhood, born of the Virgin Mary in the end of the days for us and for our salvation; of the same essence with the Father as to his Godhead, and of the same substance with us as to his manhood;1590 for two natures are united with one another.1591  Therefore we confess one Christ, one Lord, and one Son. By reason of this union, which yet is without confusion,1592 we also confess that the holy Virgin is mother of God, because God the Logos was made flesh and man, and united with himself the temple [humanity] even from the conception; which temple he took from the Virgin. But concerning the words of the Gospel and Epistles respecting Christ, we know that theologians apply some which refer to the one person to the two natures in common, but separate others as referring to the two natures, and assign the expressions which become God to the Godhead of Christ, but the expressions of humiliation to his manhood."1593 Cyril assented to this confession, and repeated it verbally, with some further doctrinal explanations, in his answer to the irenical letter of the patriarch of Antioch, but insisted on the condemnation and deposition of Nestorius as the indispensable condition of church fellowship. At the same time he knew how to gain the imperial court to the orthodox side by all kinds of presents, which, according to the Oriental custom of testifying submission to princes by presents, were not necessarily regarded as bribes. The Antiochians, satisfied with saving the doctrine of two natures, thought it best to sacrifice the person of Nestorius to the unity of the church, and to anathematize his "wicked and unholy innovations."1594  Thus in 433 union was effected, though not without much contradiction on both sides, nor without acts of imperial force.

The unhappy Nestorius was dragged from the stillness of his former cloister, the cloister of Euprepius before the gates of Antioch, in which he had enjoyed four years of repose, from one place of exile to another, first to Arabia, then to Egypt, and was compelled to drink to the dregs the bitter cup of persecution which he himself, in the days of his power, had forced upon the heretics. He endured his suffering with resignation and independence, wrote his life under the significant title of Tragedy,1595 and died after 439, no one knows where nor when. Characteristic of the fanaticism of the times is the statement quoted by Evagrius, 1596 that Nestorius, after having his tongue gnawed by worms in punishment for his blasphemy, passed to the harder torments of eternity. The Monophysite Jacobites are accustomed from year to year to cast stones upon his supposed grave in Upper Egypt and have spread the tradition that it has never been moistened by the rain of heaven, which yet falls upon the evil and the good. The emperor, who had formerly favored him, but was now turned entirely against him, caused all his writings to be burned, and his followers to be named after Simon Magus, and stigmatized as Simonians.1597

The same orthodox zeal turned also upon the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the long deceased teacher of Nestorius and father of his error. Bishop Rabulas of Edessa († 435) pronounced the anathema upon him and interdicted his writings; and though his successor Ibas (436–457) again interested himself in Theodore, and translated several of his writings into Syriac (the ecclesiastical tongue of the Persian church), yet the persecution soon broke out afresh, and the theological school of Edessa where the Antiochian theology had longest maintained its life, and whence the Persian clergy had proceeded, was dissolved by the emperor Zeno in 489. This was the end of Nestorianism in the Roman empire.

§ 139. The Nestorians.

Jos. Sim. Assemani: De Syris Nestorianis, in his Bibliotheca Orientalis. Rom. 1719–1728, fol. tom. iii. P. ii. Ebedjesu (Nestorian metropolitan of Nisibis, † 1318): Liber Margaritae de veritate fidei (a defence of Nestorianism), in Ang. Mai’s Scrip. vet. nova collect. x. ii. 317. Gibbon: Chap. xlvii., near the end. E. Smith and H. G. O. Dwight: Researches in Armenia; with a visit to the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians of Oormiah and Salmas. 2 vols. Bost. 1833. Justin Perkins: A Residence of eight years in Persia. Andover, 1843. Wiltsch: Kirchliche Geographie u. Statistik. Berl. 1846, i. 214 ff. Geo. Percy Badger: The Nestorians and their Rituals. Illustrated (with colored plates), 2 vols. Lond. 1852. H. Newcomb: A Cyclopaedia of Missions. New York, 1856, p. 553 ff. Petermann: Article Nestorianer, in Herzog’s Theol. Encykl. vol. x. (1858), pp. 279–288.

While most of the heresies of antiquity, Arianism not excepted, have been utterly obliterated from history, and only raise their heads from time to time as individual opinions under peculiar modifications, the Christological heresies of the fifth century, Nestorianism and Monophysitism, continue in organized sects to this day. These schismatic churches of the East are the petrified remains or ruins of important chapters in the history of the ancient church. They are sunk in ignorance and superstition; but they are more accessible to Western Christianity than the orthodox Greek church, and offer to the Roman and Protestant churches an interesting field of missions, especially among the Nestorians and the Armenians.

The Nestorians differ from the orthodox Greek church in their repudiation of the council of Ephesus and of the worship of Mary as mother of God, of the use of images (though they retain the sign of the cross), of the doctrine of purgatory (though they have prayers for the dead), and of transubstantiation (though they hold the real presence of Christ in the eucharist), as well as in greater simplicity of worship. They are subject to a peculiar hierarchical organization with eight orders, from the catholicus or patriarch to the sub-deacon and reader. The five lower orders, up to the priests, may marry; in former times even the bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs had this privilege. Their fasts are numerous and strict. The feast-days begin with sunset, as among the Jews. The patriarch eats no flesh; he is chosen always from the same family; he is ordained by three metropolitans. Most of the ecclesiastical books are written in the Syriac language.

After Nestorianism was exterminated from the Roman empire, it found an asylum in the kingdom of Persia, whither several teachers of the theological school of Edessa fled. One of them, Barsumas, became bishop of Nisibis (435–489),1598 founded a new theological seminary there, and confirmed the Persian Christians in their aversion to the Cyrillian council of Ephesus, and in their adhesion to the Antiochian and Nestorian theology. They were favored by the Persian kings, from Pherozes, or Firuz, onward (461–488), out of political opposition to Constantinople. At the council of Seleucia (498) they renounced all connection with the orthodox church of the empire. They called themselves, after their liturgical language, Chaldaean or Assyrian Christians, while they were called by their opponents Nestorians. They had a patriarch, who after the year 496 resided in the double city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and after 762 in Bagdad (the capital of the Saracenic empire), under the name of Yazelich (catholicus), and who, in the thirteenth century, had no less than twenty-five metropolitans under his supervision.

The Nestorian church flourished for several centuries, spread from Persia, with great missionary zeal, to India, Arabia, and even to China and Tartary, and did good service in scholarship and in the founding of schools and hospitals. Mohammed is supposed to owe his imperfect knowledge of Christianity to a Nestorian monk, Sergius; and from him the sect received many privileges, so that it obtained great consideration among the Arabians, and exerted an influence upon their culture, and thus upon the development of philosophy and science in general.1599 Among the Tartars, in the eleventh century, it succeeded in converting to Christianity a king, the priest-king Presbyter John (Prester John) of the Kerait, and his successor of the same name.1600  But of this we have only uncertain accounts, and at all events Nestorian Christianity has since left but slight traces in Tartary and in China.

Under the Mongol dynasty the Nestorians were cruelly persecuted. The terrible Tamerlane, the scourge and the destroyer of Asia, towards the end of the fourteenth century almost exterminated them. Yet they have maintained themselves on the wild mountains and in the valleys of Kurdistan and in Armenia under the Turkish dominion to this day, with a separate patriarch, who from 1559 till the seventeenth century resided at Mosul, but has since dwelt in an almost inaccessible valley on the borders of Turkey and Persia. They are very ignorant and poor, and have been much reduced by war, pestilence, and cholera.

A portion of the Nestorians, especially those in cities, united from time to time, under the name of Chaldaeans, with the Roman church, and have a patriarch of their own at Bagdad.

And on the other side, Protestant missionaries from America have made vigorous and successful efforts, since 1833, to evangelize and civilize the Nestorians by preaching, schools, translations of the Bible, and good books.1601

The Thomas-Christians in East India are a branch of the Nestorians, named from the apostle Thomas, who is supposed to have preached the gospel on the coast of Malabar. They honor the memory of Theodore and Nestorius in their Syriac liturgy, and adhere to the Nestorian patriarchs. In the sixteenth century they were, with reluctance, connected with the Roman church for sixty years (1599–1663) through the agency of Jesuit missionaries. But when the Portuguese power in India was shaken by the Dutch, they returned to their independent position, and since the expulsion of the Portuguese they have enjoyed the free exercise of their religion on the coast of Malabar. The number of the Thomas-Christians is said still to amount to seventy thousand souls, who form a province by themselves under the British empire, governed by priests and elders.

§ 140. The Eutychian Controversy. The Council of Robbers,  A.D. 449.

Comp. the Works at § 137.

Sources.

Acts of the council of Chalcedon, of the local council of Constantinople, and of the Robber Synod of Ephesus. The correspondence between Leo and Flavian, etc. For these acts, letters, and other documents, see Mansi, Conc. tom. v. vi. and vii. (Gelasius?): Breviculus historiae Eutychianistarum a. gesta de nomine Acacii (extending to 486, in Mansi, vii. 1060 sqq.). Liberatus: Breviarium causae Nest. et Eutych. Leontinus Byzant.: Contra Nest. et Eutych. The last part of the Synodicon adv. tragödiam Irenaei (in Mansi, v. 731 sqq.). Evagrius: H. E. i. 9 sqq. Theodoret:  jEranisthv" (the Beggar) or Poluvmorfo" (the Multiformed),—a refutation of the Egyptian Eutychian system of doctrines (which begged together so much from various old heresies, as to form a now one), in three dialogues, written in 447 (Opera, ed. Schulze, vol. iv.).

Literature.

Petavius: De incarnatione Verbi, lib. i. c. 14–18, and the succeeding books, particularly iii., iv., and v. (Theolog. dogmatum, tom. iv. p. 65 sqq. ed. Par. 1650). Tillemont: Mémoires, tom. xv. pp. 479–719. C. A. Salig: De Eutychianismo ante Eutychen. Wolfenb. 1723. Walch: Ketzerhist. vol. vi. 3–640. Schröckh: vol. xviii. 433–492. Neander: Kirchengesch. iv. pp. 942–992. Baur: Gesch. der Lehre von d. Dreieinigkeit, etc. i. 800–825. Dorner: Gesch. d. Lehre v. d. Pers. Chr. ii. 99–149. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengesch. ii. pp. 295–545. W. Cunningham: Historical Theology, i. pp. 311–’15. Comp. also the Monographs of Arendt (1835) and Perthel (1848) on Leo I.

The result of the third universal council was rather negative than positive. The council condemned the Nestorian error, without fixing the true doctrine. The subsequent union of the Alexandrians and the Antiochians was only a superficial peace, to which each party had sacrificed somewhat of its convictions. Compromises are generally of short duration; principles and systems must develope themselves to their utmost consequences; heresies must ripen, and must be opened to the core. As the Antiochian theology begot Nestorianism, which stretched the distinction of the human and divine natures in Christ to double personality; so the Alexandrian theology begot the opposite error of Eutychianism or Monophysitism, which urged the personal unity of Christ at the expense of the distinction of natures, and made the divine Logos absorb the human nature. The latter error is as dangerous as the former. For if Christ is not true man, he cannot be our example, and his passion and death dissolve at last into mere figurative representations or docetistic show.

A large portion of the party of Cyril was dissatisfied with the union creed, and he was obliged to purge himself of inconsistency. He referred the duality of natures spoken of in the symbol to the abstract distinction of deity and humanity, while the two are so made one in the one Christ, that after the union all separation ceases, and only one nature is to be recognized in the incarnate Son. The Logos, as the proper subject of the one nature, has indeed all human, or rather divine-human, attributes, but without a human nature. Cyril’s theory of the incarnation approaches Patripassianism, but differs from It in making the Son a distinct hypostasis from the Father. It mixes the divine and human; but It mixes them only in Christ, and so is Christo-theistic, but not pantheistic.1602

On the other side, the Orientals or Antiochians, under the lead of John, Ibas, and especially Theodoret, interpreted the union symbol in their sense of a distinction of the two natures continuing in the one Christ even after the incarnation, and actually obtained the victory for this moderate Nestorianism, by the help of the bishop of Rome, at the council of Chalcedon.

The new controversy was opened by the party of monophysite sentiment.

Cyril died in 444. His arch-deacon, Dioscurus (Diovskoro"), who had accompanied him to the council at Ephesus, succeeded him in the patriarchal chair of Alexandria (444–451), and surpassed him in all his had qualities, while he fell far behind him in intellect and in theological capacity.1603  He was a man of unbounded ambition and stormy passion, and shrank from no measures to accomplish his designs and to advance the Alexandrian see to the supremacy of the entire East; in which he soon succeeded at the Council of Robbers. He put himself at the head of the monophysite party, and everywhere stirred the fire of a war against the Antiochian Christology.

The theological representative, but by no means the author, of the monophysite heresy which bears his name, was Eutyches,1604 an aged and respected, but not otherwise important presbyter and archimandrite (head of a cloister of three hundred monks) in Constantinople, who had lived many years in monastic seclusion, and had only once appeared in public, to raise his voice, in that procession, for the Cyrillian council of Ephesus and against Nestorius. His relation to the Alexandrian Christology is like that of Nestorius to the Antiochian; that is, he drew it to a head, brought it to popular expression, and adhered obstinately to it; but he is considerably inferior to Nestorius in talent and learning. His connection with this controversy is in a great measure accidental.

Eutyches, like Cyril, laid chief stress on the divine in Christ, and denied that two natures could be spoken of after the incarnation. In our Lord, after his birth, he worshipped only one nature, the nature of God become flesh and man.1605  The impersonal human nature is assimilated and, as It were, deified by the personal Logos, so that his body is by no means of the same substance (oJmoouvsion) with ours, but a divine body.1606  All human attributes are transferred to the one subject, the humanized Logos. Hence it may and must be said: God is born, God suffered, God was crucified and died. He asserted, therefore, on the one hand, the capability of suffering and death in the Logos-personality, and on the other hand, the deification of the human in Christ.

Theodoret, in three dialogues composed in 447, attacked this Egyptian Eutychian type of doctrine as a beggar’s basket of Docetistic, Gnostic, Apollinarian, and other heresies,1607 and advocated the qualified Antiochian Christology, i.e., the doctrine of the unfused union of two natures in one person. Dioscurus accused him to the patriarch Domnus in Antioch of dividing the one Lord Christ into two Sons of God; and Theodoret replied to this with moderation. Dioscurus, on his part, endeavored to stir up the court in Constantinople against the whole church of Eastern Asia. Domnus and Theodoret likewise betook themselves to the capital, to justify their doctrine. The controversy now broke forth with greater violence, and concentrated on the person of Eutyches in Constantinople.

At a local synod of the patriarch Flavian at Constantinople in 4481608 Eutyches was charged with his error by Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum in Phrygia, and upon his wilful refusal, after repeated challenges, to admit the dyophysitism after the incarnation, and the consubstantiality of Christ’s body with our own, he was deposed and put under the ban of the church. On his way home, he was publicly insulted by the populace. The council confessed its faith that "Christ, after the incarnation, consisted of two natures1609 in one hypostasis and in one person, one Christ, one Son, one Lord."

Both parties endeavored to gain the public opinion, and addressed themselves to distant bishops, especially to Leo I. of Rome. Leo, in 449, confirmed the decision of the council in several epistles, especially in a letter to Flavian, which forms an epoch in the history, of Christology, and in which he gave a masterly, profound, and clear analysis of the orthodox doctrine of two natures in one person.1610  But Eutyches had powerful friends among the monks and at the court, and a special patron in Dioscurus of Alexandria, who induced the emperor Theodosius II. to convoke a general council.

This synod met at Ephesus, in August, 449, and consisted of one hundred and thirty-five bishops. It occupies a notorious place in the chronique scandaleuse of church history. Dioscurus presided, with brutal violence, protected by monks and an armed soldiery; while Flavian and his friends hardly dared open their lips, and Theodoret was entirely excluded. When an explanation from Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had been the accuser of Eutyches at the council of Constantinople, was presented, many voices exclaimed: "Let Eusebius be burnt; let him be burnt alive. As he has cut Christ in two, so let him be cut in two."1611  The council affirmed the orthodoxy and sanctity of Eutyches, who defended himself in person; adopted the twelve anathematisms of Cyril; condemned dyophysitism as a heresy, and deposed and excommunicated its advocates, including Theodoret, Flavian, and Leo. The three Roman delegates (the bishops Julius and Renatus, and the deacon Hilarus) dared not even read before the council the epistle addressed to it by Leo,1612 and departed secretly, that they might not be compelled to subscribe its decisions.1613  Flavian was so grossly maltreated by furious monks that he died of his wounds a few days later, in banishment, having first appealed to a new council. In his stead the deacon Anatolius, a friend and agent of Dioscurus, was chosen patriarch of Constantinople. He, however, afterwards went over to the orthodox party, and effaced the infamy of his elevation by his exquisite Greek hymns.

The conduct of these unpriestly priests was throughout so arbitrary and tyrannical, that the second council of Ephesus has ever since been branded with the name of the "Council of Robbers."1614  "Nothing," Neander justly observes,1615 "could be more contradictory to the spirit of the gospel than the fanatical zeal of the dominant party in this council for dogmatical formulas, in which they fancied they had Christ, who is spirit and life, although in temper and act they denied Him."  Dioscurus, for example, dismissed a charge of unchastity and other vices against a bishop, with the remark: "If you have an accusation against his orthodoxy, we will receive it; but we have not come together to pass judgment concerning unchastity."1616  Thus fanatical zeal for doctrinal formulas outweighed all interests of morality, as if, as Theodoret remarks, Christ had merely prescribed a system of doctrine, and had not given also rules of life.

§ 141. The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon,  A.D. 451.

Comp. the Acta Concilii, together with the previous and subsequent epistolary correspondence, in Mansi (tom. vii.), Harduin (tom. ii.), and Fuchs, and the sketches of Evagrius: H. E. l. ii. c. 4; among later historians: Walch; Schröckh; Neander; Hefele, l.c.  The latter, ii. 392, gives the literature in detail.

Thus the party of Dioscurus, by means of the court of the weak Theodosius II., succeeded in subjugating the Eastern church, which now-looked to the Western for help.

Leo, who occupied the papal chair from 440 to 461, with an ability, a boldness, and an unction displayed by none of his predecessors, and by few of his successors, and who, moreover, on this occasion represented the whole Occidental church, protested in various letters against the Robber Synod, which had presumed to depose him; and he wisely improved the perplexed state of affairs to enhance the authority of the papal see. He wrote and acted with imposing dignity, energy, circumspection, and skill, and with a perfect mastery of the question in controversy;—manifestly the greatest mind and character of his age, and by far the most distinguished among the popes of the ancient Church. He urged the calling of a new council in free and orthodox Italy, but afterwards advised a postponement, ostensibly on account of the disquiet caused in the West by Attila’s ravages, but probably in the hope of reaching a satisfactory result, even without a council, by inducing the bishops to subscribe his Epistola Dogmatica. 1617

At the same time a political change occurred, which, as was often the case in the East, brought with it a doctrinal revolution. Theodosius died, in July, 450, in consequence of a fall from his horse; he left no male heirs, and the distinguished general and senator Marcian became his successor, by marriage with his sister Pulcheria, 1618 who favored Pope Leo and the dyophysite doctrine. The remains of Flavian were honorably interred, and several of the deposed bishops were reinstated.

To restore the peace of the empire, the new monarch, in May, 451, in his own name and that of his Western colleague, convoked a general council; not, however, to meet in Italy, but at Nicaea, partly that he might the better control it partly that he might add to its authority by the memories of the first ecumenical council. The edict was addressed to the metropolitans, and reads as follows:

"That which concerns the true faith and the orthodox religion must be preferred to all other things. For the favor of God to us insures also the prosperity of our empire. Inasmuch, now, as doubts have arisen concerning the true faith, as appears from the letters of Leo, the most holy archbishop of Rome, we have determined that a holy council be convened at Nicaea in Bithynia, in order that by the consent of all the truth may be tested, and the true faith dispassionately and more explicitly declared, that in time to come no doubt nor division may have place concerning it. Therefore let your holiness, with a convenient number of wise and orthodox bishops from among your suffragans, repair to Nicaea, on the first of September ensuing. We ourselves also, unless hindered by wars will attend in person the venerable synod."1619

Leo, though dissatisfied with the time and place of the council, yielded, sent the bishops Paschasinus and Lucentius, and the priest Boniface, as legates, who, in conjunction with the legates already in Constantinople, were to represent him at the synod, over which Paschasinus was to preside in his name.1620

The bishops assembled at Nicaea, in September, 451, but, on account of their turbulent conduct, were soon summoned to Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, that the imperial court and senate might attend in person, and repress, as far as possible, the violent outbreaks of the religious fanaticism of the two parties. Here, in the church of St. Euphemia, on a hill commanding a magnificent prospect, and only two stadia or twelve hundred paces from the Bosphorus, the fourth ecumenical council was opened on the 8th of October, and sat till the lst of November. In number of bishops it far exceeded all other councils of the ancient Church,1621 and in doctrinal importance is second only to the council of Nicaea. But all the five or six hundred bishops, except the papal delegates and two Africans, were Greeks and Orientals. The papal delegates had, therefore, to represent the whole of Latin Christendom. The imperial commissioners,1622 who conducted the external course of the proceedings, in the name of the emperor, with the senators present, sat in the middle of the church, before the screen of the sanctuary. On the left sat the Roman delegates, who, for the first time at an ecumenical council, conducted the internal proceedings, as spiritual presidents; next them sat Anatolius, of Constantinople, Maximus, of Antioch, and most of the bishops of the East;—all opponents of Eutychianism. On the right sat Dioscurus, of Alexandria (who, however, soon had to give up his place and sit in the middle), Juvenal, of Jerusalem, and the other bishops of Egypt, Illyricum, and Palestine;—the Eutychians.

The proceedings were, from the outset, very tumultuous, and the theological fanaticism of the two parties broke out at times in full blaze, till the laymen present were compelled to remind the bishops of their clerical dignity.1623  When Theodoret, of Cyrus, was introduced, the Orientals greeted him with enthusiasm, while the Egyptians cried: "Cast out the Jew, the enemy of God, the blasphemer of Christ!"  The others retorted, with equal passion: "Cast out the murderer Dioscurus!  Who is there that knows not his crimes?"  The feeling against Nestorius was so strong, that Theodoret could only quiet the council by resolving (in the eighth session) to utter the anathema against his old friend, and against all who did not call Mary "mother of God," and who divided the one Christ into two sons. But the abhorrence of Eutyches and the Council of Robbers was still stronger, and was favored by the court. Under these influences most of the Egyptians soon went over to the left, and confessed their error, some excusing themselves by the violent measures brought to bear upon them at the Robber Synod. The records of that Synod, and of the previous one at Constantinople (in 448), with other official documents, were read by the secretaries, but were continually interrupted by incidental debates, acclamations, and imprecations, in utter opposition to all our modern conceptions of parliamentary decorum, though experience is continually presenting us with fresh examples of the uncontrollable vehemence of human passions in excited assemblies.

So early as the close of the first session the decisions of the Robber Synod had been annulled, the martyr Flavian declared orthodox, and Dioscurus of Alexandria, Juvenal of Jerusalem, and other chiefs of Eutychianism, deposed. The Orientals exclaimed: "Many years to the Senate!  Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal God, have mercy upon us. Many years to the emperors!  The impious must always be overthrown!  Dioscurus, the murderer [of Flavian], Christ has deposed!  This is a righteous judgment, a righteous senate, a righteous council!"

Dioscurus was in a subsequent session three times cited in vain to defend himself against various charges of avarice, injustice, adultery, and other vices, and divested of all spiritual functions; while the five other deposed bishops acknowledged their error, and were readmitted into the council.

At the second session, on the 10th of October, Dioscurus having already departed, the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan symbol, two letters of Cyril (but not his anathemas), and the famous Epistola Dogmatica of Leo to Flavian, were read before the council amid loud applause—the bishops exclaiming: "That is the faith of the fathers!  That is the faith of the apostles!  So we all believe!  So the orthodox believe  Anathema to him who believes otherwise!  Through Leo, Peter has thus spoken. Even so did Cyril teach!  That is the true faith."1624

At the fifth and most important session, on the 22d of October, the positive confession of faith was adopted, which embraces the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan symbol, and then, passing on to the point in controversy, expresses itself as follows, almost in the words of Leo’s classical epistle:1625

"Following the holy fathers, we unanimously teach one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, complete as to his Godhead, and complete as to his manhood; truly God, and truly man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; consubstantial with the Father as to his Godhead, and consubstantial also with us as to his manhood;1626 like unto us in all things, yet without sin;1627 as to his Godhead begotten of the Father before all worlds, but as to his manhood, in these last days born, for us men and for our salvation, of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God;1628 one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, known in (of) two natures, 1629 without confusion, without conversion, without severance, and without division;1630 the distinction of the natures being in no wise abolished by their union, but the peculiarity of each nature being maintained, and both concurring in one person and hypostasis.1631  We confess not a Son divided and sundered into two persons, but one and the same Son, and Only-begotten, and God-Logos, our Lord Jesus Christ, even as the prophets had before proclaimed concerning him, and he himself hath taught us, and the symbol of the fathers hath handed down to us.

"Since now we have drawn up this decision with the most comprehensive exactness and circumspection, the holy and ecumenical synod 1632 hath ordained, that no one shall presume to propose, orally, or in writing, another faith, or to entertain or teach it to others; and that those who shall dare to give another symbol or to teach another faith to converts from heathenism or Judaism, or any heresy, shall, if they be bishops or clergymen, be deposed from their bishopric and spiritual function, or if they be monks or laymen, shall be excommunicated."

After the public reading of this confession, all the bishops exclaimed: "This is the faith of the fathers; this is the faith of the apostles; to this we all agree; thus we all think.

The symbol was solemnly ratified at the sixth session (Oct. 25th), in the presence of the emperor and the empress. The emperor thanked Christ for the restoration of the unity of faith, and threatened all with heavy punishment, who should thereafter stir up new controversies; whereupon the synod exclaimed: "Thou art both priest and king, victor in war, and teacher of the faith."

At its subsequent sessions the synod was occupied with the appeal of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, who had been deposed by the Robber Synod, and was now restored; with other cases of discipline; with some personal matters; and with the enactment of twenty-eight canons, which do not concern us here.1633

The emperor, by several edicts, gave the force of law to the decisions of the council, and commanded that all Eutychians should be banished from the empire, and their writings burned.1634  Pope Leo confirmed the doctrinal confession of the council, but protested against the twenty-eighth canon, which placed the patriarch of Constantinople on an equality with him. Notwithstanding these ratifications and rejoicings, the peace of the Church was only apparent, and the long Monophysite troubles were at hand.1635

But before we proceed to these, we must enter into a more careful exposition of the Chalcedonian Christology, which has become the orthodox doctrine of Christendom.

§ 142. The Orthodox Christology—Analysis and Criticism.

The first council of Nicaea had established the eternal preexistent Godhead of Christ. The symbol of the fourth ecumenical council relates to the incarnate Logos, as he walked upon earth and sits on the right hand of the Father, and it is directed against errors which agree with the Nicene Creed as opposed to Arianism, but put the Godhead of Christ in a false relation to his humanity. It substantially completes the orthodox Christology of the ancient Church; for the definitions added by the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies are few and comparatively unessential.

The same doctrine, in its main features, and almost in its very words (though with less definite reference to Nestorianism and Eutychianism), was adopted in the second part of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed,1636 and in the sixteenth century passed into all the confessions of the Protestant churches.1637  Like the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, it is the common inheritance of Greek, Latin, and Evangelical Christendom; except that Protestantism, here as elsewhere, reserves the right of searching, to ever new depths, the inexhaustible stores of this mystery in the living Christ of the Gospels and the apostolic writings.1638

The person of Jesus Christ in the fulness of its theanthropic life cannot be exhaustively set forth by any formulas of human logic. Even the imperfect, finite personality of man has a mysterious background, that escapes the speculative comprehension; how much more then the perfect personality of Christ, in which the tremendous antitheses of Creator and creature, Infinite and finite, immutable, eternal Being and changing, temporal becoming, are harmoniously conjoined!  The formulas of orthodoxy can neither beget the true faith, nor nourish it; they are not the bread and the water of life, but a standard for theological investigation and a rule of public teaching.1639

Such considerations suggest the true position and the just value of the Creed of Chalcedon, against both exaggeration and disparagement. That symbol does not aspire to comprehend the Christological mystery, but contents itself with setting forth the facts and establishing the boundaries of orthodox doctrine. It does not mean to preclude further theological discussion, but to guard against such erroneous conceptions as would mutilate either the divine or the human in Christ, or would place the two in a false relation. It is a light-house, to point out to the ship of Christological speculation the channel between Scylla and Charybdis, and to save it from stranding upon the reefs of Nestorian dyophysitism or of Eutychian monophysitism. It contents itself with settling, in clear outlines, the eternal result of the theanthropic process of incarnation, leaving the study of the process itself to scientific theology. The dogmatic letter of Leo, it is true, takes a step beyond this, towards a theological interpretation of the doctrine; but for this very reason it cannot have the same binding and normative force as the symbol itself.

As the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity stands midway between tritheism and Sabellianism, so the Chalcedonian formula strikes the true mean between Nestorianism and Eutychianism.

It accepts dyophysitism; and so far it unquestionably favored and satisfied the moderate Antiochian party rather than the Egyptian.1640  But at the same time it teaches with equal distinctness, in opposition to consistent Nestorianism, the inseparable unity of the person of Christ.

The following are the leading ideas of this symbol:

1. A true incarnation of the Logos, or of the second person in the Godhead.1641  The motive is the unfathomable love of God; the end, the redemption of the fallen race, and its reconciliation with God. This incarnation is neither a conversion of God into a man, nor a conversion of a man into God; neither a humanizing of the divine, nor a deification or apotheosis of the human; nor on the other hand is it a mere outward, transitory connection of the two factors; but an actual and abiding union of the two in one personal life.

It is primarily and pre-eminently a condescension and self-humiliation of the divine Logos to human nature, and at the same time a consequent assumption and exaltation of the human nature to inseparable and eternal communion with the divine person. The Logos assumes the body, soul, and spirit of man, and enters into all the circumstances and infirmities of human life on earth, with the single exception of sin, which indeed is not an essential or necessary element of humanity, but accidental to it. "The Lord of the universe," as Leo puts the matter in his epistle, "took the form of a servant; the impassible God became a suffering man; the Immortal One submitted himself to the dominion of death; Majesty assumed into itself lowliness; Strength, weakness; Eternity, mortality."  The same, who is true God, is also true man, without either element being altered or annihilated by the other, or being degraded to a mere accident.

This mysterious union came to pass, in an incomprehensible way, through the power of the Holy Ghost, in the virgin womb of Mary. But whether the miraculous conception was only the beginning, or whether it at the same time completed the union, is not decided in the Creed of Chalcedon. According to his human nature at least Christ submitted himself to the laws of gradual development and moral conflict, without which, indeed, he could be no example at all for us.

2. The precise distinction between nature and person. Nature or substance is the totality of powers and qualities which constitute a being; person is the Ego, the self-conscious, self-asserting, and acting subject. There is no person without nature, but there may be nature without person (as in irrational beings).1642  The Church doctrine distinguishes in the Holy Trinity three persons (though not in the ordinary human sense of the word) in one divine nature or substance which they have in common; in its Christology it teaches, conversely, two natures in one person (in the usual sense of person) which pervades both. Therefore it cannot be said: The Logos assumed a human person,1643 or united himself with a definite human individual: for then the God-Man would consist of two persons; but he took upon himself the human nature, which is common to all men; and therefore he redeemed not a particular man, but all men, as partakers of the same nature or substance.1644  The personal Logos did not become an individual a[nqrwpo", but savrx, flesh, which includes the whole of human nature, body, soul, and spirit. The personal self-conscious Ego resides in the Logos. But into this point we shall enter more fully below.

3. The result of the incarnation, that infinite act of divine love, is the God-Man. Not a (Nestorian) double being, with two persons; nor a compound (Apollinarian or Monophysite) middle being a tertium quid, neither divine nor human; but one person, who is both divine and human. Christ has a rational human soul, and—according to a definition afterwards added—a human will,1645 and is therefore in the full sense of the word the Son of man; while yet at the same time he is the eternal Son of God in one person, with one undivided self-consciousness.

4. The duality of the natures. This was the element of truth in Nestorianism, and on this the council of Chalcedon laid chief stress, because this council was principally concerned with the condemnation of Eutychianism or monophysitism, as that of Ephesus (431) had been with the condemnation of Nestorianism, or abstract dyophysitism. Both views, indeed, admitted the distinction of the natures, but Eutychianism denied it after the act of the incarnation, and (like Apollinarianism) made Christ a middle being, an amalgam, as it were, of the two natures, or, more accurately, one nature in which the human element is absorbed and deified.

Against this it is affirmed by the Creed of Chalcedon, that even after the incarnation, and to all eternity, the distinction of the natures continues, without confusion or conversion,1646 yet, on the other hand, without separation or division,1647 so that the divine will remain ever divine, and the human, ever human,1648 and yet the two have continually one common life, and interpenetrate each other, like the persons of the Trinity.1649

The continuance of the divine nature unaltered is involved in its unchangeableness, and was substantially conceded by all parties. The controversy, therefore, had reference only to the human nature.

And here the Scriptures are plainly not on the Eutychian side. The Christ of the Gospels by no means makes the impression of a person in whom the human nature had been absorbed, or extinguished, or even weakened by the divine; on the contrary, he appears from the nativity to the sepulchre as genuinely and truly human in the highest and fairest sense of the word. The body which he had of the substance of Mary, was born, grew, hungered and thirsted, slept and woke, suffered and died, and was buried, like any other human body. His rational soul felt joy and sorrow, thought, spoke, and acted after the manner of men. The only change which his human nature underwent, was its development to full manhood, mental and physical, in common with other men, according to the laws of growth, yet normally, without sin or inward schism; and its ennoblement and completion by its union with the divine.

5. The unity of the person.1650  This was the element of truth in Eutychianism and the later monophysitism, which, however, they urged at the expense of the human factor. There is only one and the self-same Christ, one Lord, one Redeemer. There is an unity in the distinction, as well as a distinction in the unity. "The same who is true God," says Leo, "is also true man, and in this unity there is no deceit; for in it the lowliness of man and the majesty of God perfectly pervade one another .... Because the two natures make only one person, we read on the one hand: ’The Son of man came down from heaven’ (John iii. 13), while yet the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin; and on the other: ’The Son of God was crucified and buried’ (1 Cor. ii. 8), while yet he suffered not in his Godhead as co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature."

Here again the Chalcedonian formula has a firm and clear basis in Scripture. In the gospel history this personal unity everywhere unmistakably appears. The self-consciousness of Christ is not divided. It is one and the self-same theanthropic subject that speaks, acts, and suffers, that rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of God, and shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.

The divine and the human are as far from forming a double personality in Christ, as the soul and the body in man, or as the regenerate and the natural life in the believer. As the human personality consists of such a union of the material and the spiritual natures that the spirit is the ruling principle and personal centre: so does the person of Christ consist in such a union of the human and the divine natures that the divine nature is the seat of self-consciousness, and pervades and animates the human.1651

I may refer also to the familiar ancient analogy of the fire and the iron.

6. The whole work of Christ is to be referred to his person, and not to be attributed to the one or the other nature exclusively. It is the one divine-human Christ, who wrought miracles of almighty power,—by virtue of the divine nature dwelling in him,—and who suffered and was buried,—according to his passible, human nature. The person was the subject, the human nature the seat and the sensorium, of the passion. It is by this hypostatical union of the divine and the human natures in all the stages of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, that his work and his merits acquire an infinite and at the same time a genuinely human and exemplary significance for us. Because the God-Man suffered, his death is the reconciliation of the world with God; and because he suffered as Man, he has left us an example, that we should follow his steps.1652

7. The anhypostasia, impersonality, or, to speak more accurately, the enhypostasia, of the human nature of Christ. This is a difficult point, but a necessary link in the orthodox doctrine of the one God-Man; for otherwise we must have two persons in Christ, and, after the incarnation, a fourth person, and that a human, in the divine Trinity. The impersonality of Christ’s human nature, however, is not to be taken as absolute, but relative, as the following considerations will show.

The centre of personal life in the God-Man resides unquestionably in the Logos, who was from eternity the second person in the Godhead, and could not lose his personality. He united himself, as has been already observed, not with a human person, but with human nature. The divine nature is therefore the root and basis of the personality of Christ. Christ himself, moreover, always speaks and acts in the full consciousness of his divine origin and character; as having come from the Father, having been sent by him, and, even during his earthly life, living in heaven and in unbroken communion with the Father.1653  And the human nature of Christ had no independent personality of its own, besides the divine; it had no existence at all before the incarnation, but began with this act, and was so incorporated with the preexistent Logos-personality as to find in this alone its own full self-consciousness, and to be permeated and controlled by it in every stage of its development. But the human nature forms a necessary element in the divine personality, and in this sense we may say with the older Protestant theologians, that Christ is a persona suvnqeto", which was divine and human at once.1654

Thus interpreted, the church doctrine of the enhypostasia presents no very great metaphysical or psychological difficulty. It is true we cannot, according to our modern way of thinking, conceive a complete human nature without personality. We make personality itself consist in intelligence and free will, so that without it the nature sinks to a mere abstraction of powers, qualities, and functions.1655  But the human nature of Jesus never was, in fact, alone; it was from the beginning inseparably united with another nature, which is personal, and which assumed the human into a unity of life with itself. The Logos-personality is in this case the light of self-consciousness, and the impelling power of will, and pervades as well the human nature as the divine.1656

8. Criticism and development. This Chalcedonian Christology has latterly been subjected to a rigorous criticism, and has been charged now with dualism, now with docetism, according as its distinction of two natures or its doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature has most struck the eye.1657

But these imputations neutralize each other, like the imputations of tritheism and modalism which may be made against the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity when either the tripersonality or the consubstantiality is taken alone. This, indeed, is the peculiar excellence of the creed of Chalcedon, that it exhibits so sure a tact and so wise a circumspection in uniting the colossal antitheses in Christ, and seeks to do justice alike to the distinction of the natures and to the unity of the person.1658  In Christ all contradictions are reconciled.

Within these limits there remains indeed ample scope for further Christological speculations on the possibility, reality, and mode of the incarnation; on its relation to the revelation of God and the development of man; on its relation to the immutability of God and the trinity of essence and the trinity of revelation:—questions which, in recent times especially, have been earnestly and profoundly discussed by the Protestant theologians of Germany.1659

The great want, in the present state of the Christological controversy, is, on the one hand, a closer discussion of the Pauline idea of the kenosis, the self-limitation, self-renunciation of the Logos, and on the other hand, a truly human portrait of Jesus in his earthly development from childhood to the fall maturity of manhood, without prejudice to his deity, but rather showing forth his absolute uniqueness and sinless perfection as a proof of his Godhead. Both these tasks can and should be so performed, that the enormous labor of deep and earnest thought in the ancient church be not condemned as a sheer waste of strength, but in substance confirmed, expanded, and perfected.

And even among believing Protestant scholars, who agree in the main views of the theanthropic glory of the person of Christ, opinions still diverge. Some restrict the kenosis to the laying aside of the divine form of existence, or divine dignity and glory;1660 others strain it in different degrees, even to a partial or entire emptying of the divine essence out of himself, so that the inner trinitarian process between Father and Son, and the government of the world through the Son, were partially or wholly suspended during his earthly life.1661  Some, again, view the incarnation as an instantaneous act, consummated in the miraculous conception and nativity; others as a gradual process, an ethical unification of the eternal Logos and the man Jesus in continuous development, so that the complete God-Man would be not so much the beginning as the consummation of the earthly life of Jesus.

But all these more recent inquiries, earnest, profound, and valuable as they are, have not as yet led to any important or generally accepted results, and cannot supersede the Chalcedonian Christology. The theology of the church will ever return anew to deeper and still deeper contemplation and adoration of the theanthropic person of Jesus Christ, which is, and ever will be, the sun of history, the miracle of miracles, the central mystery of godliness, and the inexhaustible fountain of salvation and life for the lost race of man.

§ 143. The Monophysite Controversies.

I. The Acta in Mansi, tom. vii.-ix. The writings already cited of Liberatus and Leontinus Byzant. Evagrius: H. E. ii. v. Nicephorus: H. E. xvi. 25. Procopius († about 552):  jAnevkdota, Hist. arcana (ed. Orelli, Lips. 1827). Facundus (bishop of Hermiane in Africa, but residing mostly in Constantinople): Pro defensione trium capitulorum, in 12 books (written A.D. 547, ed. Sirmond, Paris, 1629, and in Galland. xi. 665). Fulgentius Ferrandus (deacon in Carthage, † 551): Pro tribus capitulis (in Gall. tom. xi.). Anastasius Sinaita (bishop of Antioch, 564): JOdhgov" adv. Acephalos. Angelo Mai: Script vet. Bova collectio, tom. vii. A late, though unimportant, contribution to the history of Monophysitism (from 581 to 583) is the Church History of the Monophysite bishop John of Ephesus (of the sixth century): The Third Part of the Eccles. History of John, bishop of Ephesus, Oxford, 1853 (edited by W. Cureton from the Syrian literature of the Nitrian convent).

II. Petavius: De Incarnatione, lib. i. c. 16–18 (tom. iv. p. 74 sqq.). Walch: Bd, vi.-viii. Schröckh: Th. xviii. pp. 493–636. Neander: Kirchengeschichte, !v. 993–1038. Gieseler: i. ii. pp. 347–376 (4th ed.), and his Commentatio qua Monophysitarum veterum variae de Christi persona opiniones ... illustrantur (1835 and 1838). Baur: Geschichte der Trinitätslehre, Bd. ii. pp. 37–96. Dorner: Geschichte der Christologie, ii. pp. 150–193. Hefele (R.C.): Conciliengeschichte, ii. 545 ff. F. Rud. Hasse: Kirchengeschichte (1864), Bd. i. p. 177 ff. A. Ebrard: Handbuch der Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte (1865), Bd. i. pp. 263–279.

The council of Chalcedon did not accomplish the intended pacification of the church, and in Palestine and Egypt it met with passionate opposition. Like the council of Nicaea, it must pass a fiery trial of conflict before it could be universally acknowledged in the church. "The metaphysical difficulty," says Niedner, "and the religious importance of the problem, were obstacles to the acceptance of the ecumenical authority of the council."  Its opponents, it is true, rejected the Eutychian theory of an absorption of the human nature into the divine, but nevertheless held firmly to the doctrine of one nature in Christ; and on this account, from the time of the Chalcedonian council they were called Monophysites,1662 while they in return stigmatized the adherents of the council as Dyophysites and Nestorians. They conceded, indeed, a composite nature (miva fuvsi" suvnqeto" or miva fuvsi" ditthv), but not two natures. They assumed a diversity of qualities without corresponding substances, and made the humanity in Christ a mere accident of the immutable divine substance.

Their main argument against Chalcedon was, that the doctrine of two natures necessarily led to that of two persons, or subjects, and thereby severed the one Christ into two Sons of God. They were entirely at one with the Nestorians in their use of the terms "nature" and "person," and in rejecting the orthodox distinction between the two. They could not conceive of human nature without personality. From this the Nestorians reasoned that, because in Christ there are two natures, there must be also two independent hypostases; the Monophysites, that, because there is but one person in Christ, there can be only one nature. They regarded the nature as something common to all individuals of a species (koivnon), yet as never existing simply as such, but only in individuals. According to them, therefore, over, fuvsi" or oujsiva is in fact always an individual existence.1663

The liturgical shibboleth of the Monophysites was: God has been crucified. This they introduced into their public worship as an addition to the Trisagion: "Holy, God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, who hast been crucified for us, have mercy upon us."1664  From this they were also called Theopaschites.1665  This formula is in itself orthodox, and forms the requisite counterpart to qeotovko"1666, provided we understand by God the Logos, and in thought supply: "according to the flesh" or "according to the human nature."  In this qualified sense it was afterwards in fact not only sanctioned by Justinian in a dogmatical decree, but also by the fifth ecumenical council, though not as an addition to the Trisagion. For the theanthropic person of Christ is the subject, as of the nativity, so also of the passion; his human nature is the seat and the organ (sensorium) of the passion. But as an addition to the Trisagion, which refers to the Godhead generally, and therefore to the Father, and the Holy Ghost, as well as the Son, the formula is at all events incongruous and equivocal. Theopaschitism is akin to the earlier Patripassianism, in subjecting the impassible divine essence, common to the Father and the Son, to the passion of the God-Man on the cross; yet not, like that, by confounding the Son with the Father, but by confounding person with nature in the Son.

Thus from the council of Chalcedon started those violent and complicated Monophysite controversies which convulsed the Oriental church, from patriarchs and emperors down to monks and peasants, for more than a hundred years, and which have left their mark even to our day. They brought theology little appreciable gain, and piety much harm; and they present a gloomy picture of the corruption of the church. The intense concern for practical religion, which animated Athanasius and the Nicene fathers, abated or went astray; theological speculation sank towards barren metaphysical refinements; and party watchwords and empty formulas were valued more than real truth. We content ourselves with but a summary of this wearisome, though not unimportant chapter of the history of doctrines, which has recently received new light from the researches of Gieseler, Baur, and Dorner.1667

The external history of the controversy is a history of outrages and intrigues, depositions and banishments, commotions, divisions, and attempted reunions. Immediately after the council of Chalcedon bloody fights of the monks and the rabble broke out, and Monophysite factions went off in schismatic churches. In Palestine Theodosius (451–453) thus set up in opposition to the patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem; in Alexandria, Timotheus Aelurus1668 and Peter Mongus1669 (454–460), in opposition to the newly-elected patriarch Protarius, who was murdered in a riot in Antioch; Peter the Fuller1670 (463–470). After thirty years’ confusion the Monophysites gained a temporary victory under the protection of the rude pretender to the empire, Basiliscus (475–477), who in an encyclical letter,1671 enjoined on all bishops to condemn the council of Chalcedon (476). After his fall, Zeno (474–475 and 477–491), by advice of the patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, issued the famous formula of concord, the Henoticon, which proposed, by avoiding disputed expressions, and condemning both Eutychianism and Nestorianism alike, to reconcile the Monophysite and dyophysite views, and tacitly set aside the Chalcedonian formula (482). But this was soon followed by two more schisms, one among the Monophysites themselves, and one between the East and the West. Felix II., bishop of Rome, immediately rejected the Henoticon, and renounced communion with the East (484–519). The strict Monophysites were as ill content with the Henoticon, as the adherents of the council of Chalcedon; and while the former revolted from their patriarchs, and became Acephali,1672 the latter attached themselves to Rome. It was not till the reign of the emperor Justin I. (518–527), that the authority of the council of Chalcedon was established under stress of a popular tumult, and peace with Rome was restored. The Monophysite bishops were now deposed, and fled for the most part to Alexandria, where their party was too powerful to be attacked.

The internal divisions of the Monophysites turned especially on the degree of essential difference between the humanity of Christ and ordinary human nature, and the degree, therefore, of their deviation from the orthodox doctrine of the full consubstantiality of the humanity of Christ with ours.1673  The most important of these parties were the Severians (from Severus, the patriarch of Antioch) or Phthartolaters (adorers of the corruptible),1674 who taught that the body of Christ before the resurrection was mortal and corruptible; and the Julianists (from bishop Julian of Halicarnassus, and his contemporary Xenajas of Hierapolis) or Aphthartodocetae,1675 who affirmed the body of Christ to have been originally incorruptible, and who bordered on docetism. The former conceded to the Catholics, that Christ as to the flesh was consubstantial with us (kata; savrka oJmoouvsio" hJmi'n). The latter argued from the commingling (suvgcusi") of the two natures, that the corporeality of Christ became from the very beginning partaker of the incorruptibleness of the Logos, and was subject to corruptibleness merely kat j oijkonomivan. They appealed in particular to Jesus’ walking on the sea. Both parties were agreed as to the incorruptibleness of the body of Christ after the resurrection. The word fqorav, it may be remarked, was sometimes used in the sense of frailty, sometimes in that of corruptibleness.

The solution of this not wholly idle question would seem to be, that the body of Christ before the resurrection was similar to that of Adam before the fall; that is, it contained the germ of immortality and incorruptibleness; but before its glorification it was subject to the influence of the elements, was destructible, and was actually put to death by external violence, but, through the indwelling power of the sinless spirit, was preserved from corruption, and raised again to imperishable life. A relative immortality thus became absolute.1676  So far we may without self-contradiction affirm both the identity of the body of Christ before and after his resurrection, and its glorification after resurrection.1677

The Severians were subdivided again, in respect to the question of Christ’s omniscience, into Theodosians, and Themistians, or Agnoetae.1678  The Julianists were subdivided into Ktistolatae,1679 and Aktistetae1680 according as they asserted or denied that the body of Christ was a created body. The most consistent Monophysite was the rhetorician Stephanus Niobes (about 550), who declared every attempt to distinguish between the divine and the human in Christ inadmissible, since they had become absolutely one in him.1681  An abbot of Edessa, Bar Sudaili, extended this principle even to the creation, which be maintained would at last be wholly absorbed in God. John Philoponus (about 530) increased the confusion; starting with Monophysite principles, taking fuvsi" in a concrete instead of an abstract sense, and identifying it with uJpovstasi", he distinguished in God three individuals, and so became involved in tritheism. This view he sought to justify by the Aristotelian categories of genus, species, and individuum.1682

§ 144. The Three, Chapters, and the Fifth Ecumenical Council,  A.D. 553.

Comp., besides the literature already cited, H. Noris (R.C.): Historia Pelagiana et dissertatio de Synodo Quinta oecumen. in qua Origenis et Th. Mopsuesteni Pelagiani erroris auctorum justa damnatio, et Aquilejense schisma describitur, etc. Padua, 1673, fol., and Verona, 1729. John Garnier (R.C.): Dissert. de V. Synodo. Paris, 1675 (against Card. Noris). Hefele (R.C.): vol. ii. 775–899.—The Greek Acta of the 5th council, with the exception of the 14 anathemas and some fragments, have been lost; but there is extant an apparently contemporary Latin translation (in Mansi, tom. ix. 163 sqq.), respecting whose genuineness and completeness there has been much controversy (comp. Hefele, ii. p. 831 ff.).

The further fortunes of Monophysitism are connected with the emperor Justinian I. (527–565). This learned and unweariedly active ruler, ecclesiastically devout, but vain and ostentatious, aspired, during his long and in some respects brilliant reign of nearly thirty years, to the united renown of a lawgiver and theologian, a conqueror and a champion of the true faith. He used to spend whole nights in prayer and fasting, and in theological studies and discussions; he placed his throne under the special protection of the Blessed Virgin and the archangel Michael; in his famous Code, and especially in the Novelles, he confirmed and enlarged the privileges of the clergy; he adorned the capital and the provinces with costly temples and institutions of charity; and he regarded it as his especial mission to reconcile heretics, to unite all parties of the church, and to establish the genuine orthodoxy for all time to come. In all these undertakings he fancied himself the chief actor, though very commonly he was but the instrument of the empress, or of the court theologians and eunuchs; and his efforts to compel a general uniformity only increased the divisions in church and state.

Justinian was a great admirer of the decrees of Chalcedon, and ratified the four ecumenical councils in his Code of Roman law. But his famous wife Theodora, a beautiful, crafty, and unscrupulous woman, whom he—if we are to believe the report of Procopius1683—raised from low rank, and even from a dissolute life, to the partnership of his throne, and who, as empress, displayed the greatest zeal for the church and for ascetic piety, was secretly devoted to the Monophysite view, and frustrated all his plans. She brought him to favor the liturgical formula of the Monophysites: "God was crucified for us, so that he sanctioned it in an ecclesiastical decree (533).1684

Through her influence the Monophysite Anthimus was made patriarch of Constantinople (535), and the characterless Vigilius bishop of Rome (538), under the secret stipulation that he should favor the Monophysite doctrine. The former, however, was soon deposed as a Monophysite (536), and the latter did not keep his promise.1685  Meanwhile the Origenistic controversies were renewed. The emperor was persuaded, on the one hand, to condemn the Origenistic errors in a letter to Mennas of Constantinople; on the other hand, to condemn by an edict the Antiochian teachers most odious to the Monophysites: Theodore of Mopsuestia (the teacher of Nestorius), Theodoret of Cyros, and Ibas of Edessa (friends of Nestorius); though the last two had been expressly declared orthodox by the council of Chalcedon. Theodore he condemned absolutely, but Theodoret only as respected his writings against Cyril and the third ecumenical council at Ephesus, and Ibas as respected his letter to the Persian bishop Maris, in which he complains of the outrages of Cyril’s party in Edessa, and denies the communicatio idiomatum. These are the so-called Three Chapters, or formulas of condemnation, or rather the persons and writings designated and condemned therein.1686

Thus was kindled the violent controversy of the Three Chapters, of which it has been said that it has filled more volumes than it was worth lines. The East yielded easily to craft and force; the West resisted.1687  Pontianus of Carthage declared that neither the emperor nor any other man had a right to sit in judgment upon the dead. Vigilius of Rome, however, favored either party according to circumstances, and was excommunicated for awhile by the dyophysite Africans, under the lead of Facundus of Hermiane. He subscribed the condemnation of the Three Chapters in Constantinople, A.D. 548, but refused to subscribe the second edict of the, emperor against the Three Chapters (551), and afterwards defended them.

To put an end to this controversy, Justinian, without the concurrence of the pope, convoked at Constantinople, A.D. 553, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which consisted of a hundred and sixty-four bishops, and held eight sessions, from the 5th of May to the 2d of June, under the presidency of the patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople. It anathematized the Three Chapters; that is, the person of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret, and the letter of Ibas,1688 and sanctioned the formula "God was crucified," or "One of the Trinity has suffered," yet not as an addition to the Trisagion.1689  The dogmatic decrees of Justinian were thus sanctioned by the church. But no further mention appears to have been made of Origenism; and in truth none was necessary, since a local synod of 544 had already condemned it. Perhaps also Theodore Askidas, a friend of the Origenists, and one of the leaders of the council, prevented the ecumenical condemnation of Origen. But this is a disputed point, and is connected with the difficult question of the genuineness and completeness of the Acts of the council.1690

Vigilius at first protested against the Council, which, in spite of repeated invitations, he had not attended, and by which he was suspended; but he afterwards signified his adherence, and was permitted, after seven years’ absence, to return to Rome, but died on the journey, at Syracuse, in 555. His fourfold change of opinion does poor service to the claim of papal infallibility. His successor, Pelagius I., immediately acknowledged the council. But upon this the churches in Northern Italy, Africa, and Illyria separated themselves from the Roman see, and remained in schism till Pope Gregory I. induced most of the Italian bishops to acknowledge the council.

The result of this controversy, therefore, was the condemnation of the Antiochian theology, and the partial victory of the Alexandrian monophysite doctrine, so far as it could be reconciled with the definitions of Chalcedon. But the Chalcedonian dyophysitism afterwards reacted, in the form of dyothelitism, and at the sixth ecumenical council, at Constantinople, A.D. 680 (called also Concilium Trullanum I.), under the influence of a letter of pope Agatho, which reminds us of the Epistola Dogmatica of Leo, it gained the victory over the Monothelite view, which so far involves the Monophysite, as the ethical conception of one will depends upon the physical conception of one nature.

But notwithstanding the concessions of the fifth ecumenical council, the Monophysites remained separated from the orthodox church, refusing to acknowledge in any manner the dyophysite council of Chalcedon. Another effort of Justinian to gain them, by sanctioning the Aphthartodocetic doctrine of the incorruptibleness of Christ’s body (564), threatened to involve the church in fresh troubles; but his death soon afterwards, in 565, put an end to these fruitless and despotic plans of union. His successor Justin II. in 565 issued an edict of toleration, which exhorted all Christians to glorify the Lord, without contending about persons and syllables. Since that time the history of the Monophysites has been distinct from that of the catholic church.

§ 145. The Monophysite Sects: Jacobites, Copts, Abyssinians, Armenians, Maronites.

Euseb. Renaudot (R.C., † 1720): Historia patriarcharum Alexandrinorum Jacobitarum a D. Marco usque ad finem saec. xiii. Par. 1713. Also by the same: Liturgiarum orientalium collectio. Par. 1716, 2 vols. 4to. Jos. Sim. Assemani (R.C., † 1768): Bibliotheca orientalis. Rom. 1719 sqq., 4 vols. folio (vol. ii. treats De scriptoribus Syria Monophysitis). Michael le Quien (R.C., † 1733): Oriens Christianus. Par. 1740, 3 vols. folio (vols. 2 and 3). Veyssière De La Croze: Histoire du Christianisme d’Ethiope et d’Armenie. La Haye, 1739. Gibbon: Chapter xlvii. towards the end. Makrîzi (Mohammedan, an historian and jurist at Cairo, died 1441): Historia Coptorum Christianorum (Arabic and Latin), ed. H. T. Wetzer, Sulzbach, 1828; a better edition by F. Wüstenfeld, with translation and annotations, Göttingen, 1845. J. E. T. Wiltsch Kirchliche Statistik. Berlin, 1846, Bd. i. p. 225 ff. John Mason Neale (Anglican): The Patriarchate of Alexandria. London, 1847, 2 vols. Also: A History of the Holy Eastern Church. Lond. 1850, 2 vols. (vol. ii. contains among other things the Armenian and Copto-Jacobite Liturgy). E. Dulaurier: Histoire, dogmes, traditions, et liturgie de l’Eglise Armeniane. Par. 1859. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley: Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. New York, 1862, Lect. i. p. 92 ff. Respecting the present condition of the Jacobites, Copts, Armenians, and Maronites, consult also works of Eastern travel, and the numerous accounts in missionary magazines and other religious periodicals.

The Monophysites, like their antagonists, the Nestorians, have maintained themselves in the East as separate sects under their own bishops and patriarchs, even to the present day; thus proving the tenacity of those Christological errors, which acknowledge the full Godhead and manhood of Christ, while those errors of the ancient church, which deny the Godhead, or the manhood (Ebionism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Arianism, etc.), as sects, have long since vanished. These Christological schismatics stand, as if enchanted, upon the same position which they assumed in the fifth century. The Nestorians reject the third ecumenical council, the Monophysites the fourth; the former hold the distinction of two natures in Christ even to abstract separation, the latter the fusion of the two natures in one with a stubbornness which has defied centuries, and forbids their return to the bosom of the orthodox Greek church. They are properly the ancient national churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, in distinction from the orthodox Greek church, and the united or Roman church of the East.

The Monophysites are scattered upon the mountains and in the valleys and deserts of Syria, Armenia, Assyria, Egypt, and Abyssinia, and, like the orthodox Greeks of those countries, live mostly under Mohammedan, partly under Russian, rule. They supported the Arabs and Turks in weakening and at last conquering the Byzantine empire, and thus furthered the ultimate victory of Islam. In return, they were variously favored by the conquerors, and upheld in their separation from the Greek church. They have long since fallen into stagnation, ignorance, and superstition, and are to Christendom as a praying corpse to a living man. They are isolated fragments of the ancient church history, and curious petrifactions from the Christological battle-fields of the fifth and sixth centuries, coming to view amidst Mohammedan scenes. But Providence has preserved them, like the Jews, and doubtless not without design, through storms of war and persecution, unchanged until the present time. Their very hatred of the orthodox Greek church makes them more accessible both to Protestant and Roman missions, and to the influences of Western Christianity and Western civilization.

On the other hand, they are a door for Protestantism to the Arabs and the Turks; to the former through the Jacobites, to the latter through the Armenians. There is the more reason to hope for their conversion, because the Mohammedans despise the old Oriental churches, and must be won, if at all, by a purer type of Christianity. In this respect the American missions among the Armenians in the Turkish empire, are, like those among the Nestorians in Persia, of great prospective importance, as outposts of a religion which is destined sooner or later to regenerate the East.

With the exception of the Chalcedonian Christology, which they reject as Nestorian heresy, most of the doctrines, institutions, and rites of the Monophysite sects are common to them with the orthodox Greek church. They reject, or at least do not recognize, the filioque; they hold to the mass, or the Eucharistic sacrifice, with a kind of transubstantiation; leavened bread in the Lord’s Supper; baptismal regeneration by trine immersion; seven sacraments (yet not explicitly, since they either have no definite term for sacrament, or no settled conception of it); the patriarchal polity; monasticism; pilgrimages, and fasting; the requisition of a single marriage for priests and deacons (bishops are not allowed to marry);1691 the prohibition of the eating of blood or of things strangled.1692  On the other hand, they know nothing of purgatory and indulgences, and have a simpler worship than the Greeks and Romans. According to their doctrine, all men after death go into Hades, a place alike without sorrow or joy; after the general judgment they enter into heaven or are cast into hell; and meanwhile the intercessions and pious works of the living have an influence on the final destiny of the departed. Like the orthodox Greeks, they honor pictures and relics of the saints, but not in the same degree. Scripture and tradition are with them coordinate sources of revelation and rules of faith. The reading of the Bible is not forbidden, but is limited by the ignorance of the people themselves. They use in worship the ancient vernacular tongues, which, however, are now dead languages to them.

There are four branches of the Monophysites: the Syrian Jacobites; the Copts, including the Abyssinians; the Armemians; and the less ancient Maronites.

I. The Jacobites in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia. Their name comes down from their ecumenical1693 metropolitan Jacob, surnamed Baradai, or Zanzalus.1694  This remarkable man, in the middle of the sixth century, devoted himself for seven and thirty years (511–578), with unwearied zeal to the interests of the persecuted Monophysites. "Light-footed as Asahel,"1695 and in the garb of a beggar, he journeyed hither and thither amid the greatest dangers and privations; revived the patriarchate of Antioch; ordained bishops, priests, and deacons; organized churches; healed divisions; and thus saved the Monophysite body from impending extinction.

The patriarch bears the title of patriarch of Antioch, because the succession is traced back to Severus of Antioch; but he commonly resides in Diarbekir, or other towns or monasteries. Since the fourteenth century, the patriarch has always borne the name Ignatius, after the famous martyr and bishop of Antioch. The Jacobite monks are noted for gross superstition and rigorous asceticism. A part of the Jacobites have united with the church of Rome. Lately some Protestant missionaries from America have also found entrance among them.

II. The Copts,1696 in Egypt, are in nationality the genuine descendants of the ancient Egyptians, though with an admixture of Greek and Arab blood. Soon after the council of Chalcedon, they chose Timotheus Aelurus in opposition to the patriarch Proterius. After varying fortunes, they have, since 536, had their own patriarch of Alexandria, who, like most of the Egyptian dignitaries, commonly resides at Cairo. He accounts himself the true successor of the evangelist Mark, St. Athanasius, and Cyril. He is always chosen from among the monks, and, in rigid adherence to the traditionary nolo episcopari, he is elected against his will; he is obliged to lead a strict ascetic life, and at night is waked every quarter of an hour for a short prayer. He alone has the power to ordain, and he performs this function not by imposition of hands, but by breathing on and anointing the candidate. His jurisdiction extends over the churches of Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia, or Ethiopia. He chooses and anoints the Abuna (i.e., Our Father), or patriarch for Abyssinia. Under him are twelve bishops, some with real jurisdiction, some titular; and under these again other clergy, down to readers and exorcists. There are still extant two incomplete Coptic versions of the Scriptures, the Upper Egyptian or Thebaic, called also, after the Arabic name of the province, the Sahidic, i.e., Highland version; and the Lower Egyptian or Memphitic.1697

The Copts were much more numerous than the Catholics, whom they scoffingly nicknamed Melchites,1698 or Caesar-Christians. They lived with them on terms of deadly enmity, and facilitated the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens (641). But they were afterwards cruelly persecuted by these very Saracens,1699 and dwindled from some two millions of souls to a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand, of whom about ten thousand, or according to others from thirty to sixty thousand, live in Cairo, and the rest mostly in Upper Egypt. They now, in common with all other religious sects, enjoy toleration. They and the Abyssinians are distinguished from the other Monophysites by the Jewish and Mohammedan practice of circumcision, which is performed by lay persons (on both sexes), and in Egypt is grounded upon sanitary considerations. They still observe the Jewish law of meats. They are sunk in poverty, ignorance, and semi-barbarism. Even the clergy, who indeed are taken from the lowest class of the people, are a beggarly set, and understand nothing but how to read mass, and perform the various ceremonies. They do not even know the Coptic or old Egyptian, their own ancient ecclesiastical language. They live by farming, and their official fees. The literary treasures of their convents in the Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic languages, have been of late secured for the most part to the British Museum, by Tattam and other travellers.

Missions have lately been undertaken among them, especially by the Church Missionary Society of England (commencing in 1825), and the United Presbyterians of America, but with little success so far.1700

The Abyssinian church is a daughter of the Coptic, and was founded in the fourth century, by two missionaries from Alexandria, Frumentius and Aedesius. It presents a strange mixture of barbarism, ignorance, superstition, and Christianity. Its Ethiopic Bible, which dates perhaps from the first missionaries, includes in the Old Testament the apocryphal book of Enoch. The Chronicles of Axuma (the former capital of the country), dating from the fourth century, receive almost the same honor as the Bible. The council of Chalcedon is accounted an assembly of fools and heretics. The Abyssinian church has retained even more Jewish elements than the Coptic. It observes the Jewish Sabbath together with the Christian Sunday; it forbids the use of the flesh of swine and other unclean beasts; it celebrates a yearly feast of general lustration or rebaptizing of the whole nation; it retains the model of a sacred ark, called the ark of Zion, to which gifts and prayers are offered, and which forms the central point of public worship. It believes in the magical virtue of outward ceremonies, especially immersion, as the true regeneration. Singularly enough it honors Pontius Pilate as a saint, because be washed his hands of innocent blood. The endless controversies respecting the natures of Christ, which have died out elsewhere still rage there. The Abyssinians honor saints and pictures, but not images; crosses, but not the crucifix. Every priest carries a cross in his hand, and presents it to every one whom he meets, to be kissed. The numerous churches are small and dome-shaped above, and covered with reeds and straw. On the floor lie a number of staves and crutches, on which the people support themselves during the long service, as, like all the Orientals, they are without benches. Slight as are its remains of Christianity, Abyssinia still stands, in agriculture, arts, laws, and social condition, far above the heathen countries of Africa—a proof that even a barbaric Christianity is better than none.

The influences of the West have penetrated even to Abyssinia. The missions of the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of the Protestants in the nineteenth, have been prosecuted amidst many dangers and much self-denial, yet hitherto with but little success.1701

III. The Armenians. These are the most numerous, interesting, and hopeful of the Monophysite sects, and now the most accessible to evangelical Protestantism. Their nationality reaches back into hoary antiquity, like Mount Ararat, at whose base lies their original home. They were converted to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century, under King Tiridates, by Gregory the Enlightener, the first patriarch and ecclesiastical writer and the greatest saint of the Armenians.1702  They were provided by him with monasteries and seminaries, and afterwards by Mesrob1703 with a version of the Scriptures, made from the Greek with the help of the Syriac Peschito; which at the same time marks the beginning of the Armenian literature, since Mesrob had first to invent his alphabet. The Armenian canon has four books found in no other Bible; in the Old Testament, the History of Joseph and Asenath, and the Testament of the twelve Patriarchs, and in the New, the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul and a Third, but spurious, Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. The next oldest work in the Armenian language is the history of their land and people, by Moses Chorenensis, a half century later.

The Armenians fell away from the church of the Greek Empire in 552, from which year they date their era. The Persians favored the separation on political grounds, but were themselves thoroughly hostile to Christianity, and endeavored to introduce the Zoroastrian religion into Armenia. The Armenian church, being left unrepresented at the council of Chalcedon through the accidental absence of its bishops, accepted in 491 the Henoticon of the emperor Zeno, and at the synod of Twin (Tevin or Tovin, the capital at that time), held A.D. 595, declared decidedly for the Monophysite doctrine. The Confessio Armenica, which in other respects closely resembles the Nicene Creed, is recited by the priest at every morning service. The Armenian church had for a long time only one patriarch or Catholicus, who at first resided in Sebaste, and afterwards in the monastery of Etschmiezin (Edschmiadsin), their holy city, at the foot of Mount Ararat, near Erivan (now belonging to Russia), and had forty-two archbishops under him. At his consecration the dead hand of Gregory the Enlightener is even yet always used, as the medium of tactual succession. Afterwards other patriarchal sees were established, at Jerusalem (in 1311), at Sis, in Cilicia (in 1440), and after the fall of the Greek empire in Constantinople (1461).1704   In 637 Armenia fell under Mohammedan dominion, and belongs now partly to Turkey and partly to Russia. But the varying fortunes and frequent oppressions of their country have driven many thousands of the Armenians abroad, and they are now scattered in other parts of Russia and Turkey, as well as in Persia, India, and Austria.

The Armenians of the diaspora are mostly successful traders and brokers, and have become a nation and a church of merchant princes, holding great influence in Turkey. Their dispersion, and love of trade, their lack of political independence, their tenacious adherence to ancient national customs and rites, the oppressions to which they are exposed in foreign countries, and the influence which they nevertheless exercise upon these countries, make their position in the Orient, especially in Turkey, similar to that of the Jews in the Christian world.

The whole number of the Armenians is very variously estimated, from two and a half up to fifteen millions.1705

The Armenian church, it may be remarked, has long been divided into two parts, which, although internally very similar, are inflexibly opposed to each other. The united Armenians, since the council of Florence, A.D. 1439, have been connected with the church of Rome. To them belongs the congregation of the Mechitarists, which was founded by the Abbot Mechitar († 1749), and possesses a famous monastery on the island of San Lazzaro near Venice, from which centre it has successfully labored since 1702 for Armenian literature and education in the interest of the Roman Catholic church.1706  The schismatical Armenians hold firmly to their peculiar ancient doctrines and polity. They regard themselves as the orthodox, and call the united or Roman Armenians schismatics.

Since 1830, the Protestant Missionary, Tract, and Bible societies of England, Basle, and the United States, have labored among the Armenians especially among the Monophysite portion, with great success, The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,1707 in particular, has distributed Bibles and religious books in the Armenian and Armeno-Turkish1708 language, and founded flourishing churches and schools in Constantinople, Broosa, Nicomedia, Trebizond, Erzroom, Aintab, Kharpoot, Diarbekir, and elsewhere. Several of these churches have already endured the crucial test of persecution, and justify bright hopes for the future. As the Jewish Synagogues of the diaspora were witnesses for monotheism among idolaters, and preparatory schools of Christianity, so are these Protestant Armenian churches, as well as the Protestant Nestorian, outposts of evangelical civilization in the East, and perhaps the beginning of a resurrection of primitive Christianity in the lands of the Bible and harbingers of the future conversion of the Mohammedans.1709

IV. The youngest sect of the Monophysites, and the solitary memorial of the Monothelite controversy, are the Maronites, so called from St. Maron, and the eminent monastery founded by him in Syria (400).1710  They inhabit the range of Lebanon, with its declivities and valleys, from Tripolis on the North to the neighborhood of Tyre and the lake of Gennesaret on the South, and amount at most to half a million. They have also small churches in Aleppo, Damascus, and other places. They are pure Syrians, and still use the Syriac language in their liturgy, but speak Arabic. They are subject to a patriarch, who commonly resides in the monastery of Kanobin on Mt. Lebanon. They were originally Monothelites, even after the doctrine of one will of Christ, which is the ethical complement of the doctrine of one nature, had been rejected at the sixth ecumenical Council (A.D. 680). But after the Crusades (1182), and especially after 1596, they began to go over to the Roman church, although retaining the communion under both kinds, their Syriac missal, the marriage of priests, and their traditional fast-days, with some saints of their own, especially St: Maron.

From these came, in the eighteenth century, the three celebrated Oriental scholars, the Assemani, Joseph Simon († 1768), his brother Joseph Aloysius, and their cousin Stephen Evodius. These were born on Mt. Lebanon, and educated at the Maronite college at Rome.

There are also Maronites in Syria, who abhor the Roman church.1711

IV. The Anthropological Controversies.

WORKS ON THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY IN GENERAL.

Sources:

I. Pelagius: Expositiones in epistolas Paulinas (composed before 410); Epistola ad Demetriadem, in 30 chapters (written A.D. 413); Libellus fidei ad Innocentium I. (417, also falsely called Explanatio Symboli ad Damasum). These three works have been preserved complete, as supposed works of Jerome, and have been incorporated in the Opera of this father (tom. xi. ed. of Vallarsius). Of the other writings of Pelagius (De natura; De libero arbitrio; Capitula; Epist. ad Innocent. I., which accompanied the Libellus fidei), we have only fragments in the works of his opponents, especially Augustine. In like manner we have only fragments of the writings of Coelestius: Definitiones; Symbolum ad Zosimum; and of Julianus of Eclanum: Libri iv. ad Turbantium episcopum contra Augustini primum de nuptiis; Libri viii. ad Florum contra Augustini secundum de nuptiis. Large and literal extracts in the extended replies of Augustine to Julian

II. Augustinus: De peccatorum meritis et remissione (412); De spiritu et litera (418); De natura et gratia (415); De gestis Pelagii (417); De gratia Christi et de peccato originali (418); De nuptiis et concupiscentia (419); Contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum (420); Contra Julianum, libri vi. (421); Opus imperfectum contra Julianum (429); De gratia et libero arbitrio (426 or 427); De correptione et gratia (427) De praedestinatione sanctorum (428 or 429); De dono perseverantivae (429); and other anti-Pelagian writings, which are collected in the 10th volume of his Opera, in two divisions, ed. Bened. Par. 1690, and again Venet. 1733. (it is the Venice Bened. edition from which I have quoted throughout in this section. In Migne’s edition of Aug., Par. 1841, the anti-Pelagian writings form likewise the tenth tomus of 1912 pages.)  Hieronymus: Ep. 133 (in Vallarsi’s, and in Migne’s ed.; or, Ep. 43 in the Bened. ed.) ad Ctesiphontem (315); Dialogi contra Pelagianos, libri iii. (Opera, ed. Vallars. vol. ii. f. 693–806, and ed. Migne, ii. 495–590). P. Orosius: Apologeticus c. Pelag. libri iii. (Opera, ed. Haverkamp). Marius Mercator, a learned Latin monk in Constantinople (428–451): Commonitoria, 429, 431 (ed. Baluz. Paris, 1684, and Migne, Par. 1846). Collection of the Acta in Mansi, tom. iv.

Literature:

Gerh. Joh. Vossius: Hist. de controversiis, quas Pelagius ejusque reliquiae moverunt, libri vii. Lugd. Batav. 1618 (auct. ed. Amstel. 1655). Cardinal Henr. Norisius: Historia Pelagiana et dissert. de Synodo Quinta Oecumen. Batavii, 1673, fol. (and in Opera, Veron. 1729, i.). Garnier (Jesuit): Dissert. vii. quibus integra continentur Pelagianorum hist. (in his ed. of the Opera of Marius Mercator, i. 113). The Praefatio to the 10th vol. of the Benedictine edition of Augustine’s Opera. Corn. Jansenius († 1638): Augustinus, sive doctrina S. Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina, adv. Pelagianos et Massilienses. Lovan. 1640, fol. (He read Augustine twenty times, and revived his system in the Catholic church.)  Tillemont: Mémoires, etc. Tom. xiii. pp. 1–1075, which is entirely devoted to the life of Augustine. Ch. Wilh. Fr. Walch: Ketzerhistorie. Leipz. 1770. Bd. iv. and v. Schröckh: Kirchengeschichte. Parts xiv. and xv. (1790). G. F. Wiggers (sen.): Versuch einer pragmatischen Darstellung des Augustinismus und Pelagianismus, in zwei Theilen. Hamburg, 1833. (The first part appeared 1821 in Berlin; the second, which treats of Semi-Pelagianism, in 1833 at Hamburg. The common title-page bears date 1833. The first part has also been translated into English by Prof. Emerson, Andover, 1840). J. L. Jacobi: Die Lehre des Pelagius. Leipzig, 1842. F. Böhringer: Die Kirche Christi in Biographien. Bd. i. Th. 3, pp. 444–626, Zürich, 1845. Gieseler: Kirchengeschichte. Bd. i. Abth. 2 pp. 106–131 (4th ed. 1845, entirely favorable to Pelagianism). Neander: Kirchengeschichte. Bd. iv. (2d ed. 1847, more Augustinian). Schaff: The Pelagian Controversy, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, May, 1848 (No. xviii.). Theod. Gangauf: Metaphysische Psychologie des heiligen Augustinus. Augsb. 1852. Thorough, but not completed. H. Hart Milman: History of Latin Christianity. New York, 1860, vol. i. ch. ii. pp. 164–194. Jul. Müller: Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde. Bresl. 1838, 5th ed. 1866, 2 vols. (An English translation by Pulsford, Edinburgh.)  The same: Der Pelagianismus. Berlin, 1854. (A brief, but admirable essay.)  Hefele: Conciliengeschichte. Bd. ii. 1856, p. 91 ff. W. Cunningham: Historical Theology. Edinburgh, 1863, vol. i, pp. 321–358. Fr. Wörter (R.C.): Der Pelagianismus nach seinem Ursprung und seiner Lehre. Freiburg, 1866. Nourrisson: La philosophie de S. Augustin. Par. 1866, 2 vols. (vol. i. 452 ff.; ii. 352 ff.). Comp. also the literature in § 178, and the relevant chapters in the Doctrine-Histories of Münscher, Baumgarten-Crusius, Hagenbach, Neander, Baur, Beck, Shedd.

§ 146. Character of the Pelagian Controversy.

While the Oriental Church was exhausting her energies in the Christological controversies, and, with the help of the West, was developing the ecumenical doctrine of the person of Christ, the Latin church was occupied with the great anthropological and soteriological questions of sin and grace, and was bringing to light great treasures of truth, without either help from the Eastern church or influence upon her. The third ecumenical council, it is true, condemned Pelagianism, but without careful investigation, and merely on account of its casual connection with Nestorianism. The Greek historians, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius, although they treat of that period, take not the slightest notice of the Pelagian controversies. In this fact we see the predominantly practical character of the West, in contradistinction to the contemplative and speculative East. Yet the Christological and anthropologico-soteriological controversies are vitally connected, since Christ became man for the redemption of man. The person and the work of the Redeemer presuppose on the one hand man’s capability of redemption, and on the other his need of redemption. Manichaeism denies the former, Pelagianism the latter. In opposition to these two fundamental anthropological heresies, the church was called to develope the whole truth.

Before Augustine the anthropology of the church was exceedingly crude and indefinite. There was a general agreement as to the apostasy and the moral accountability of man, the terrible curse of sin, and the necessity of redeeming grace; but not as to the extent of native corruption, and the relation of human freedom to divine grace in the work of regeneration and conversion. The Greek, and particularly the Alexandrian fathers, in opposition to the dualism and fatalism of the Gnostic systems, which made evil a necessity of nature, laid great stress upon human freedom, and upon the indispensable cooperation of this freedom with divine grace; while the Latin fathers, especially Tertullian and Cyprian, Hilary and Ambrose, guided rather by their practical experience than by speculative principles, emphasized the hereditary sin and hereditary guilt of man, and the sovereignty of God’s grace, without, however, denying freedom and individual accountability.1712  The Greek church adhered to her undeveloped synergism,1713 which coordinates the human will and divine grace as factors in the work of conversion; the Latin church, under the influence of Augustine, advanced to the system of a divine, monergism,1714 which gives God all the glory, and makes freedom itself a result of grace; while Pelagianism, on the contrary, represented the principle of a human monergism, which ascribes the chief merit of conversion to man, and reduces grace to a mere external auxiliary. After Augustine’s death, however the intermediate system of Semi-Pelagianism, akin to the Greek synergism, became prevalent in the West.

Pelagius and Augustine, in whom these opposite forms of monergism were embodied, are representative men, even more strictly than Arius and Athanasius before them, or Nestorius and Cyril after them. The one, a Briton, more than once convulsed the world by his errors; the other, an African, more than once by his truths. They represented principles and tendencies, which, in various modifications, extend through the whole history of the church, and reappear in its successive epochs. The Gottschalk controversy in the ninth century, the Reformation, the synergistic controversy in the Lutheran church, the Arminian in the Reformed, and the Jansenistic in the Roman Catholic, only reproduce the same great contest in new and specific aspects. Each system reflects the personal character and experience of its author. Pelagius was an upright monk, who without inward conflicts won for himself, in the way of tranquil development, a legal piety which knew neither the depths of sin nor the heights of grace. Augustine, on the other hand, passed through sharp convulsions and bitter conflicts, till he was overtaken by the unmerited grace of God, and created anew to a life of faith and love. Pelagius had a singularly clear, though contracted mind, and an earnest moral purpose, but no enthusiasm for lofty ideals; and hence he found it not hard to realize his lower standard of holiness. Augustine had a bold and soaring intellect, and glowing heart, and only found peace after he had long been tossed by the waves of passion; he had tasted all the misery of sin, and then all the glory of redemption, and this experience qualified him to understand and set forth these antagonistic powers far better than his opponent, and with a strength and fulness surpassed only by the inspired apostle Paul. Indeed, Augustine, of all the fathers, most resembles, in experience and doctrine, this very apostle, and stands next to him in his influence upon the Reformers.

The Pelagian controversy turns upon the mighty antithesis of sin and grace. It embraces the whole cycle of doctrine respecting the ethical and religious relation of man to God, and includes, therefore, the doctrines of human freedom, of the primitive state, of the fall, of regeneration and conversion, of the eternal purpose of redemption, and of the nature and operation of the grace of God. It comes at last to the question, whether redemption is chiefly a work of God or of man; whether man needs to be born anew, or merely improved. The soul of the Pelagian system is human freedom; the soul of the Augustinian is divine grace. Pelagius starts from the natural man, and works up, by his own exertions, to righteousness and holiness. Augustine despairs of the moral sufficiency of man, and derives the now life and all power for good from the creative grace of God. The one system proceeds from the liberty of choice to legalistic piety; the other from the bondage of sin to the evangelical liberty of the children of God. To the former Christ is merely a teacher and example, and grace an external auxiliary to the development of the native powers of man; to the latter he is also Priest and King, and grace a creative principle, which begets, nourishes, and consummates a new life. The former makes regeneration and conversion a gradual process of the strengthening and perfecting of human virtue; the latter makes it a complete transformation, in which the old disappears and all becomes new. The one loves to admire the dignity and strength of man; the other loses itself in adoration of the glory and omnipotence of God. The one flatters natural pride, the other is a gospel for penitent publicans and sinners. Pelagianism begins with self-exaltation and ends with the sense of self-deception and impotency. Augustinianism casts man first into the dust of humiliation and despair, in order to lift him on the wings of grace to supernatural strength, and leads him through the hell of self-knowledge up to the heaven of the knowledge of God. The Pelagian system is clear, sober, and intelligible, but superficial; the Augustinian sounds the depths of knowledge and experience, and renders reverential homage to mystery. The former is grounded upon the philosophy of common sense, which is indispensable for ordinary life, but has no perception of divine things; the latter is grounded upon the philosophy of the regenerate reason, which breaks through the limits of nature, and penetrates the depths of divine revelation. The former starts with the proposition: Intellectus praecedit fidem; the latter with the opposite maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum. Both make use of the Scriptures; the one, however, conforming them to reason, the other subjecting reason to them. Pelagianism has an unmistakable affinity with rationalism, and supplies its practical side. To the natural will of the former system corresponds the natural reason of the latter; and as the natural will, according to Pelagianism, is competent to good, so is the natural reason, according to rationalism, competent to the knowledge of the truth. All rationalists are Pelagian in their anthropology; but Pelagius and Coelestius were not consistent, and declared their agreement with the traditional orthodoxy in all other doctrines, though without entering into their deeper meaning and connection. Even divine mysteries may be believed in a purely external, mechanical way, by inheritance from the past, as the history of theology, especially in the East, abundantly proves.

The true solution of the difficult question respecting the relation of divine grace to human freedom in the work of conversion, is not found in the denial of either factor; for this would either elevate man to the dignity of a self-redeemer, or degrade him to an irrational machine, and would ultimately issue either in fatalistic pantheism or in atheism; but it must be sought in such a reconciliation of the two factors as gives full weight both to the sovereignty of God and to the responsibility of man, yet assigns a preëminence to the divine agency corresponding to the infinite exaltation of the Creator and Redeemer above the sinful creature. And although Angustine’s solution of the problem is not altogether satisfactory, and although in his zeal against the Pelagian error he has inclined to the opposite extreme; yet in all essential points, he has the Scriptures, especially the Epistles of Paul, as well as Christian experience, and the profoundest speculation, on his side. Whoever reads the tenth volume of his works, which contains his Anti-Pelagian writings in more than fourteen hundred folio columns (in the Benedictine edition), will be moved to wonder at the extraordinary wealth of thought and experience treasured in them for all time; especially if he considers that Augustine, at the breaking out of the Pelagian controversy, was already fifty-seven years old, and had passed through the Manichaen and Donatist controversies. Such giants in theology could only arise in an age when this queen of the sciences drew into her service the whole mental activity of the time.

The Pelagian controversy was conducted with as great an expenditure of mental energy, and as much of moral and religious earnestness, but with less passion and fewer intrigues, than the Trinitarian and Christological conflicts in the East. In the foreground stood the mighty genius and pure zeal of Augustine, who never violated theological dignity, and, though of thoroughly energetic convictions, had a heart full of love. Yet even he yielded so far to the intolerant spirit of his time as to justify the repression of the Donatist and Pelagian errors by civil penalties.

§ 147. External History of the Pelagian Controversy,  A.D. 411–431.

Pelagius1715 was a simple monk, born about the middle of the fourth century in Britain, the extremity of the then civilized world. He was a man of clear intellect, mild disposition, learned culture, and spotless character; even Augustine. with all his abhorrence of his doctrines, repeatedly speaks respectfully of the man.1716  He studied the Greek theology, especially that of the Antiochian school, and early showed great zeal for the improvement of himself and of the world. But his morality was not so much the rich, deep life of faith, as it was the external legalism, the ascetic self-discipline and self-righteousness of monkery. It was characteristic, that, even before the controversy, he took great offence at the well-known saying of Augustine: "Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt."1717  He could not conceive, that the power to obey the commandment must come from the same source as the commandment itself. Faith, with him, was hardly more than a theoretical belief; the main thing in religion was moral action, the keeping of the commandments of God by one’s own strength. This is also shown in the introductory remarks of his letter to Demetrias, a noble Roman nun, of the gens Anicia, in which he describes a model virgin as a proof of the excellency of human nature: "As often as I have to speak concerning moral improvement and the leading of a holy life, I am accustomed first to set forth the power and quality of human nature, and to show what it can accomplish.1718  For never are we able to enter upon the path of the virtues, unless hope, as companion, draws us to them. For every longing after anything dies within us, so soon as we despair of attaining that thing."

In the year 409, Pelagius, already advanced in life, was in Rome, and composed a brief commentary on the Epistles of Paul. This commentary, which has been preserved among the works of Jerome, displays a clear and sober exegetical talent.1719  He labored quietly and peacefully for the improvement of the corrupt morals of Rome, and converted the advocate Coelestius, of distinguished, but otherwise unknown birth, to his monastic life, and to his views. It was from this man, younger, more skilful in argument, more ready for controversy, and more rigorously consistent than his teacher, that the controversy took its rise. Pelagius was the moral author, Coelestius the intellectual author, of the system represented by them.1720  They did not mean actually to found a new system, but believed themselves in accordance with Scripture and established doctrine. They were more concerned with the ethical side of Christianity than with the dogmatic; but their endeavor after moral perfection was based upon certain views of the natural power of the will, and these views proved to be in conflict with anthropological principles which had been developed in the African church for the previous ten years under the influence of Augustine.

In the year 411, the two friends, thus united in sentiment, left Rome, to escape the dreaded Gothic King Alaric, and went to Africa. They passed through Hippo, intending to visit Augustine, but found that he was just then at Carthage, occupied with the Donatists. Pelagius wrote him a very courteous letter, which Augustine answered in a similar tone; intimating, however, the importance of holding the true doctrine concerning sin. "Pray for me," he said, "that God may really make me that which you already take me to be."  Pelagius soon proceeded to Palestine. Coelestius applied for presbyters’ orders in Carthage, the very place where he had most reason to expect opposition. This inconsiderate step brought on the crisis. He gained many friends, it is true, by his talents and his ascetic zeal, but at the same time awakened suspicion by his novel opinions.

The deacon Paulinus of Milan, who was just then in Carthage, and who shortly afterwards at the request of Augustine wrote the life of Ambrose, warned the bishop Aurelius against Coelestius, and at a council held by Aurelius at Carthage in 412,1721 appeared as his accuser. Six or seven errors, he asserted he had found in the writings of Coelestius:

1. Adam was created mortal, and would have died, even if he had not sinned.

2. Adam’s fall injured himself alone, not the human race.

3. Children come into the world in the same condition in which Adam was before the fall.

4. The human race neither dies in consequence of Adam’s fall, nor rises again in consequence of Christ’s resurrection.

5. Unbaptized children, as well as others, are saved.1722

6. The law, as well as the gospel, leads to the kingdom of heaven.

7. Even before Christ there were sinless men.

The principal propositions were the second and third, which are intimately connected, and which afterwards became the especial subject of controversy.

Coelestius returned evasive answers. He declared the propositions to be speculative questions of the schools, which did not concern the substance of the faith, and respecting which different opinions existed in the church. He refused to recant the errors charged upon him, and the synod excluded him from the communion of the church. He immediately went to Ephesus, and was there ordained presbyter.

Augustine had taken no part personally in these transactions. But as the Pelagian doctrines found many adherents even in Africa and in Sicily, he wrote several treatises in refutation of them so early as 412 and 415, expressing himself, however, with respect and forbearance.1723

§ 148. The Pelagian Controversy in Palestine.

Meanwhile, in 414, the controversy broke out in Palestine, where Pelagius was residing, and where he had aroused attention by a letter to the nun Demetrias. His opinions gained much wider currency there, especially among the Origenists; for the Oriental church had not been at all affected by the Augustinian views, and accepted the two ideas of freedom and grace, without attempting to define their precise relation to each other. But just then there happened to be in Palestine two Western theologians, Jerome and Orosius; and they instituted opposition to Pelagius.

Jerome, who lived a monk at Bethlehem, was at first decidedly favorable to the synergistic theory of the Greek fathers, but at the same time agreed with Ambrose and Augustine in the doctrine of the absolutely universal corruption of sin.1724  But from an enthusiastic admirer of Origen he had been changed to a bitter enemy. The doctrine of Pelagius concerning free will and the moral ability of human nature he attributed to the influence of Origen and Rufinus; and he took as a personal insult an attack of Pelagius on some of his writings.1725  He therefore wrote against him, though from wounded pride and contempt he did not even mention his name; first in a letter answering inquiries of a certain Ctesiphon at Rome (415);1726 then more at length in a dialogue of three books against the Pelagians, written towards the end of the year 415, and soon after the acquittal of Pelagius by the synod of Jerusalem.1727  Yet in this treatise and elsewhere Jerome himself teaches the freedom of the will, and only a conditional predestination of divine foreknowledge, and thus, with all his personal bitterness against the Pelagians, stands on Semi-Pelagian ground, though Augustine eulogizes the dialogue.1728

A young Spanish ecclesiastic, Paul Orosius, was at that time living with Jerome for the sake of more extended study, and had been sent to him by Augustine with letters relating to the Origenistic and Pelagian controversy.

At a diocesan synod, convoked by the bishop John of Jerusalem in June, 415,1729 this Orosius appeared against Pelagius, and gave information that a council at Carthage had condemned Coelestius, and that Augustine had written against his errors. Pelagius answered with evasion and disparagement: "What matters Augustine to me?"  Orosius gave his opinion, that a man who presumed to speak contumeliously of the bishop to whom the whole North African church owed her restoration (alluding apparently to the settlement of the Donatist controversies), deserved to be excluded from the communion of the whole church. John, who was a great admirer of the condemned Origen, and made little account of the authority of Augustine, declared: "I am Augustine,"1730 and undertook the defence of the accused. He permitted Pelagius, although only a monk and layman, to take his seat among the presbyters.1731  Nor did he find fault with Pelagius’ assertion, that man can easily keep the commandments of God, and become free from sin, after the latter had conceded, in a very indefinite manner, that for this the help of God is necessary. Pelagius had the advantage of understanding both languages, while John spoke only Greek, Orosius only Latin, and the interpreter often translated inaccurately. After much discussion it was resolved, that the matter should be laid before the Roman bishop, Innocent, since both parties in the controversy belonged to the Western church. Meanwhile these should refrain from all further attacks on each other.

A second Palestinian council resulted still more favorably to Pelagius. This consisted of fourteen bishops, and was held at Diospolis or Lydda, in December of the same year, under the presidency of Eulogius, bishop of Caesarea, to judge of an accusation preferred by two banished bishops of Gaul, Heros and Lazarus, acting in concert with Jerome.1732  The charges were unskilfully drawn up, and Pelagius was able to avail himself of equivocations, and to condemn as folly, though not as heresy, the teachings of Coelestius, which were also his own. The synod, of which John of Jerusalem was a member, did not go below the surface of the question, nor in fact understand it, but acquitted the accused of all heresy. Jerome is justified in calling this a "miserable synod;"1733 although Augustine is also warranted in saying: "it was not heresy, that was there acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy."1734

Jerome’s polemical zeal against the Pelagians cost him dear. In the beginning of the year 416, a mob of Pelagianizing monks, ecclesiastics, and vagabonds broke into his monastery at Bethlehem, maltreated the inmates, set the building on fire, and compelled the aged scholar to take to flight. Bishop John of Jerusalem let this pass unpunished. No wonder that Jerome, even during the last years of his life, in several epistles indulges in occasional sallies of anger against Pelagius, whom he calls a second Catiline.

§ 149. Position of the Roman Church. Condemnation of Pelagianism.

The question took another turn when it was brought before the Roman see. Two North African synods, in 416, one at Carthage and one at Mileve (now Mela), again condemned the Pelagian error, and communicated their sentence to pope Innocent.1735  A third and more confidential letter was addressed to him by five North African bishops, of whom Augustine was one.1736  Pelagius also sent him a letter and a confession of faith, which, however, were not received in due time.

Innocent understood both the controversy and the interests of the Roman see. He commended the Africans for having addressed themselves to the church of St. Peter, before which it was seemly that all the affairs of Christendom should be brought; he expressed his full agreement with the condemnation of Pelagius, Coelestius, and their adherents; but he refrained from giving judgment respecting the synod of Diospolis.1737

But soon afterwards (in 417) Innocent died, and was succeeded by Zosimus, who was apparently of Oriental extraction (417–418).1738  At this juncture, a letter from Pelagius to Innocent was received, in which he complained of having suffered wrong, and gave assurance of his orthodoxy. Coelestius appeared personally in Rome, and succeeded by his written and oral explanations in satisfying Zosimus. He, like Pelagius, demonstrated with great fulness his orthodoxy on points not at all in question, represented the actually controverted points as unimportant questions of the schools, and professed himself ready, if in error, to be corrected by the judgment of the Roman bishop.

Zosimus, who evidently had no independent theological opinion whatever, now issued (417) to the North African bishops an encyclical letter accompanied by the documentary evidence, censuring them for not having investigated the matter more thoroughly, and for having aspired, in foolish, overcurious controversies, to know more than the Holy Scriptures. At the same time he bore emphatic testimony to the orthodoxy of Pelagius and Coelestius, and described their chief opponents, Heros and Lazarus, as worthless characters, whom he had visited with excommunication and deposition. They in Rome, he says, could hardly refrain from tears, that such men, who so often mentioned the gratia Dei and the adjutorium divinum, should have been condemned as heretics. Finally he entreated the bishops to submit themselves to the authority of the Roman see.1739

This temporary favor of the bishop of Rome towards the Pelagian heresy is a significant presage of the indulgence of later popes for Pelagianizing tendencies, and of the papal condemnation of Jansenism.

The Africans were too sure of their cause, to yield submission to so weak a judgment, which, moreover, was in manifest conflict with that of Innocent. In a council at Carthage, in 417 or 418, they protested, respectfully but decidedly, against the decision of Zosimus, and gave him to understand that he was allowing himself to be greatly deceived by the indefinite explanations of Coelestius. In a general African council held at Carthage in 418, the bishops, over two hundred in number, defined their opposition to the Pelagian errors, in eight (or nine) Canons, which are entirely conformable to the Augustinian view.1740  They are in the following tenor:

1. Whosoever says, that Adam was created mortal, and would, even without sin, have died by natural necessity, let him be anathema.

2. Whoever rejects infant baptism, or denies original sin in children, so that the baptismal formula, "for the remission of sins," would have to be taken not in a strict, but in a loose sense, let him be anathema.

3. Whoever says, that in the kingdom of heaven, or elsewhere, there is a certain middle place, where children dying without baptism live happy (beate vivant), while yet without baptism they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, i.e., into eternal life, let him be anathema.1741

The fourth canon condemns the doctrine that the justifying grace of God merely effects the forgiveness of sins already committed; and the remaining canons condemn other superficial views of the grace of God and the sinfulness of man.

At the same time the Africans succeeded in procuring from the emperor Honorius edicts against the Pelagians.

These things produced a change in the opinions of Zosimus, and about the middle of the year 418, he issued an encyclical letter to all the bishops of both East and West, pronouncing the anathema upon Pelagius and Coelestius (who had meanwhile left Rome), and declaring his concurrence with the decisions of the council of Carthage in the doctrines of the corruption of human nature, of baptism, and of grace. Whoever refused to subscribe the encyclical, was to be deposed, banished from his church, and deprived of his property.1742

Eighteen bishops of Italy refused to subscribe, and were deposed. Several of these afterwards recanted, and were restored.

The most distinguished one of them, however, the bishop Julian, of Eclanum, a small place near Capua in Campania, remained steadfast till his death, and in banishment vindicated his principles with great ability and zeal against Augustine, to whom he attributed all the misfortunes of his party, and who elaborately confuted him.1743  Julian was the most learned, the most acute, and the most systematic of the Pelagians, and the most formidable opponent of Augustine; deserving respect for his talents, his uprightness of life, and his immovable fidelity to his convictions, but unquestionably censurable for excessive passion and overbearing pride.1744

Julian, Coelestius, and other leaders of the exiled Pelagians, were hospitably received in Constantinople, in 429, by the patriarch Nestorius, who sympathized with their doctrine of the moral competency of the will, though not with their denial of original sin, and who interceded for them with the emperor and with pope Celestine, but in vain. Theodosius, instructed by Marius Mercator in the merits of the case, commanded the heretics to leave the capital (429). Nestorius, in a still extant letter to Coelestius,1745 accords to him the highest titles of honor, and comforts him with the examples of John the Baptist and the persecuted apostles. Theodore of Mopsuestia († 428), the author of the Nestorian Christology, wrote in 419 a book against the Augustinian anthropology, of which fragments only are left.1746

Of the subsequent life of Pelagius and Coelestius we have no account. The time and place of their death are entirely unknown. Julian is said to have ended his life a schoolmaster in Sicily, A.D. 450, after having sacrificed all his property for the poor during a famine.

Pelagianism was thus, as early as about the year 430, externally vanquished. It never formed an ecclesiastical sect, but simply a theological school. It continued to have individual adherents in Italy till towards the middle of the fifth century, so that the Roman bishop, Leo the Great, found himself obliged to enjoin on the bishops by no means to receive any Pelagian to the communion of the church without an express recantation.

At the third ecumenical council in Ephesus, A.D. 431 (the year after Augustine’s death), Pelagius (or more properly Coelestius) was put in the same category with Nestorius. And indeed there is a certain affinity between them: both favor an abstract separation of the divine and the human, the one in the person of Christ, the other in the work of conversion, forbidding all organic unity of life. According to the epistle of the council to pope Celestine, the Western Acta against the Pelagians were read at Ephesus and approved, but we do not know in which session. We are also ignorant of the discussions attending this act. In the canons, Coelestius, it is true, is twice condemned together with Nestorius, but without statement of his teachings.1747

The position of the Greek church upon this question is only negative; she has in name condemned Pelagianism, but has never received the positive doctrines of Augustine. She continued to teach synergistic or Semi-Pelagian views, without, however, entering into a deeper investigation of the relation of human freedom to divine grace.1748

§ 150. The Pelagian System: Primitive State and Freedom of Man; the Fall.

The peculiar anthropological doctrines, which Pelagius clearly apprehended and put in actual practice, which Coelestius dialectically developed, and bishop Julian most acutely defended, stand in close logical connection with each other, although they were not propounded in systematic form. They commend themselves at first sight by their simplicity, clearness, and plausibility, and faithfully express the superficial, self-satisfied morality of the natural man. They proceed from a merely empirical view of human nature, which, instead of going to the source of moral life, stops with its manifestations, and regards every person, and every act of the will, as standing by itself, in no organic connection with a great whole.

We may arrange the several doctrines of this system according to the great stages of the moral history of mankind.

I. The Primitive State of mankind, and the doctrine of Freedom.

The doctrine of the primitive state of man holds a subordinate position in the system of Pelagius, but the doctrine of freedom is central; because in his view the primitive state substantially coincides with the present, while freedom is the characteristic prerogative of man, as a moral being, in all stages of his development.

Adam, he taught, was created by God sinless, and entirely competent to all good, with an immortal spirit and a mortal body. He was endowed with reason and free will. With his reason he was to have dominion over irrational creatures; with his free will he was to serve God. Freedom is the supreme good, the honor and glory of man, the bonum naturae, that cannot be lost. It is the sole basis of the ethical relation of man to God, who would have no unwilling service. It consists according to Pelagius, essentially in the liberum arbitrium, or the possibilitas boni et mali; the freedom of choice, and the absolutely equal ability at every moment to do good or evil.1749  The ability to do evil belongs necessarily to freedom, because we cannot will good without at the same time being able to will evil. Without this power of contrary choice, the choice of good itself would lose its freedom, and therefore its moral value. Man is not a free, self-determining moral subject, until good and evil, life and death, have been given into his hand.1750

This is the only conception of freedom which Pelagius has, and to this he and his followers continually revert. He views freedom in its form alone, and in its first stage, and there fixes and leaves it, in perpetual equipoise between good and evil, ready at any moment to turn either way. It is without past or future; absolutely independent of everything without or within; a vacuum, which may make itself a plenum, and then becomes a vacuum again; a perpetual tabula rasa, upon which man can write whatsoever he pleases; a restless choice, which, after every decision, reverts to indecision and oscillation. The human will is, as it were, the eternal Hercules at the cross-road, who takes first a step to the right, then a step to the left, and ever returns to his former position. Pelagius knows only the antithesis of free choice and constraint; no stages of development, no transitions. He isolates the will from its acts, and the acts from each other, and overlooks the organic connection between habit and act. Human liberty, like every other spiritual power, has its development; it must advance beyond its equilibrium, beyond the mere ability to sin or not to sin, and decide for the one or the other. When the will decides, it so far loses its indifference, and the oftener it acts, the more does it become fixed; good or evil becomes its habit, its second nature; and the will either becomes truly free by deciding for virtue, and by practising virtue, or it becomes the slave of vice.1751  "Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin."  Goodness is its own reward, and wickedness is its own punishment. Liberty of choice is not a power, but a weakness, or rather a crude energy, waiting to assume some positive form, to reject evil and commit itself to good, and to become a moral self-control, in which the choice of evil, as in Christ, is a moral, though not a physical, impossibility. Its impulse towards exercise is also an impulse towards self-annihilation, or at least towards self-limitation. The right use of the freedom of choice leads to a state of holiness; the abuse of it, to a state of bondage under sin. The state of the will is affected by its acts, and settles towards a permanent character of good or evil. Every act goes to form a moral state or habit; and habit is in turn the parent of new acts. Perfect freedom is one with moral necessity, in which man no longer can do evil because he will not do it, and must do good because he wills to do it; in which the finite will is united with the divine in joyful obedience, and raised above the possibility of apostasy. This is the blessed freedom of the children of God in the state of glory. There is, indeed, a subordinate sphere of natural virtue and civil justice, in which even fallen man retains a certain freedom of choice, and is the artificer of his own character. But as respects his relation to God, he is in a state of alienation from God, and of bondage under sin; and from this he cannot rise by his own strength, by a bare resolution of his will, but only by a regenerating act of grace. received in humility and faith, and setting him free to practise Christian virtue. Then, when born again from above, the will of the new man co-operates with the grace of God, in the growth of the Christian life.1752

Physical death Pelagius regarded as a law of nature, which would have prevailed even without sin.1753  The passages of Scripture which represent death as the consequence of sin, he referred to moral corruption or eternal damnation.1754  Yet be conceded that Adam, if he had not sinned, might by a special privilege have been exempted from death.

II. The Fall of Adam and its Consequences.

Pelagius, destitute of all idea of the organic wholeness of the race or of human nature, viewed Adam merely as an isolated individual; he gave him no representative place, and therefore his acts no bearing beyond himself.

In his view, the sin of the first man consisted in a single, isolated act of disobedience to the divine command. Julian compares it to the insignificant offence of a child, which allows itself to be misled by some sensual bait, but afterwards repents its fault. "Rude, inexperienced, thoughtless, having not yet learned to fear, nor seen an example of virtue,"1755  Adam allowed himself to be enticed by the pleasant look of the forbidden fruit, and to be determined by the persuasion of the woman. This single and excusable act of transgression brought no consequences, either to the soul or the body of Adam, still less to his posterity who all stand or fall for themselves.

There is, therefore, according to this system, no original sin, and no hereditary guilt. Pelagius merely conceded, that Adam, by his disobedience, set a bad example, which exerts a more or less injurious influence upon his posterity. In this view he condemned at the synod of Diospolis (415) the assertion of Coelestius, that Adam’s sin injured himself alone, not the human race.1756  He was also inclined to admit an increasing corruption of mankind, though he ascribed it solely to the habit of evil, which grows in power the longer it works and the farther it spreads.1757  Sin, however, is not born with man; it is not a product of nature, but of the will.1758  Man is born both without virtue and without vice, but with the capacity for either.1759  The universality of sin must be ascribed to the power of evil example and evil custom.

And there are exceptions to it. The "all" in Rom. v. 12 is to be taken relatively for the majority. Even before Christ there were men who lived free from sin, such as righteous Abel, Abraham, Isaac, the Virgin Mary, and many others.1760  From the silence of the Scriptures respecting the sins of many righteous men, he inferred that such men were without sin.1761  In reference to Mary, Pelagius is nearer the present Roman Catholic view than Augustine, who exempts her only from actual sin, not from original.1762  Jerome, with all his reverence for the blessed Virgin, does not even make this exception but says, without qualification, that every creature is under the power of sin and in need of the mercy of God.1763

With original sin, of course, hereditary guilt also disappears; and even apart from this connection, Pelagius views it as irreconcilable with the justice of God. From this position a necessary deduction is the salvation of unbaptized infants. Pelagius, however, made a distinction between vita aeterna or a lower degree of salvation, and the regnum coelorum of the baptized saints; and he affirmed the necessity of baptism for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.1764

In this doctrine of the fall we meet with the same disintegrating view of humanity as before. Adam is isolated from his posterity; his disobedience is disjoined from other sins. He is simply an individual, like any other man, not the representative of the whole race. There are no creative starting-points; every man begins history anew. In this system Paul’s exhibitions of Adam and Christ as the representative ancestors of mankind have no meaning. If the act of the former has merely an individual significance, so also has that of the latter. If the sin of Adam cannot be imputed, neither can the merit of Christ. In both cases there is nothing left but the idea of example, the influence of which depends solely upon our own free will. But there is an undeniable solidarity between the sin of the first man and that of his posterity.

In like manner sin is here regarded almost exclusively as an isolated act of the will, while yet there is also such a thing as sinfulness; there are sinful states and sinful habits, which are consummated and strengthened by sins of act, and which in turn give birth to other sins of act.

There is a deep truth in the couplet of Schiller, which can easily be divested of its fatalistic intent:

"This is the very curse of evil deed,

That of new evil it becomes the seed."1765

Finally, the essence and root of sin is not sensuality, as Pelagius was inclined to assume (though he did not express himself very definitely on this point), but self-seeking, including pride and sensuality as the two main forms of sin. The sin of Satan was a pride that aimed at equality with God, rebellion against God; and in this the fall of Adam began, and was inwardly consummated before he ate of the forbidden fruit.

§ 151. The Pelagian System Continued: Doctrine, of Human Ability and Divine Grace.

III. The Present Moral Condition of man is, according to the Pelagian system, in all respects the same as that of Adam before the fall. Every child is born with the same moral powers and capabilities with which the first man was created by God. For the freedom of choice, as we have already seen, is not lost by abuse, and is altogether the same in heathens, Jews, and Christians, except that in Christians it is aided by grace.1766  Pelagius was a creationist, holding that the body alone is derived from the parents, and that every soul is created directly by God, and is therefore sinless. The sin of the father, inasmuch as it consists in isolated acts of will, and does not inhere in the nature, has no influence upon the child. The only difference is, that, in the first place, Adam’s posterity are born children, and not, like him, created full-grown; and secondly, they have before them the bad example of his disobedience, which tempts them more or less to imitation, and to the influence of which by far the most—but not all—succumb.

Julian often appeals to the virtues of the heathen, such as valor, chastity, and temperance, in proof of the natural goodness of human nature.

He looked at the matter of moral action as such, and judged it accordingly. "If the chastity of the heathen," he objects to Augustine’s view of the corrupt nature of heathen virtue, "were no chastity, then it might be said with the same propriety that the bodies of unbelievers are no bodies; that the eyes of the heathen could not see; that grain which grew in their fields was no grain."

Augustine justly ascribed the value of a moral act to the inward disposition or the direction of the will, and judged it from the unity of the whole life and according to the standard of love to God, which is the soul of all true virtue, and is bestowed upon us only through grace. He did not deny altogether the existence of natural virtues, such as moderation, lenity, benevolence, generosity, which proceed from the Creator, and also constitute a certain merit among men; but he drew a broad line of distinction between them and the specific Christian graces, which alone are good in the proper sense of the word, and alone have value before God.

The Holy Scriptures, history, and Christian experience, by no means warrant such a favorable view of the natural moral condition of man as the Pelagian system teaches. On the contrary, they draw a most gloomy picture of fearful corruption and universal inclination to all evil, which can only be overcome by the intervention of divine grace. Yet Augustine also touches an extreme, when, on a false application of the passage of St. Paul: "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin" (Rom. xiv. 23), he ascribes all the virtues of the heathen to ambition and love of honor, and so stigmatizes them as vices.1767  And in fact he is in this inconsistent with himself. For, according to his view, the nature which God created, remains, as to its substance, good; the divine image is not wholly lost, but only defaced; and even man’s sorrow in his loss reveals a remaining trace of good.1768

Pelagius distinguishes three elements in the idea of good: . Power, will, and act (posse, velle, and esse). The first appertains to man’s nature, the second to his free will, the third to his conduct. The power or ability to do good, the ethical constitution, is grace, and comes therefore from God, as an original endowment of the nature of man. It is the condition of volition and action, though it does not necessarily produce them. Willing and acting belong exclusively to man himself.1769  The power of speech, of thought, of sight, is God’s, gift; but whether we shall really think, speak, or see, and whether we shall think, speak, or see well or ill, depends upon ourselves.1770

Here the nature of man is mechanically sundered from his will and act; and the one is referred exclusively to God, the others to man. Moral ability does not exist over and above the will and its acts, but in them, and is increased by exercise; and thus its growth depends upon man himself. On the other hand, the divine help is indispensable even to the willing and doing of good; for God works in us both to will and to do.1771  The Pelagian system is founded unconsciously upon the deistic conception of the world as a clock, made and wound up by God, and then running of itself, and needing at most some subsequent repairs. God, in this system, is not the omnipresent and everywhere working Upholder and Governor of the world, in whom the creation lives and moves and has its being, but a more or less passive spectator of the operation of the universe.1772  Jerome therefore fairly accuses the Pelagians (without naming them) of denying the absolute dependence of man on God, and cites against them the declaration of Christ, John v. 17, concerning the uninterrupted activity of God.1773

IV. The doctrine of the Grace of God.

The sufficiency of the natural reason and will of man would seem to make supernatural revelation and grace superfluous. But this Pelagius does not admit. Besides the natural grace, as we may call his concreated ability, he assumes also a supernatural grace, which through revelation enlightens the understanding, and assists man to will and to do what is good.1774  This grace confers the negative benefit of the forgiveness of past sins, or justification, which Pelagius understands in the Protestant sense of declaring righteous, and not (like Augustine) in the Catholic sense of making righteous;1775

Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,

Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen,

So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist,

Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst."

"What were a God who only from without

Upon his finger whirled the universe about?

’Tis his within itself to move the creature;

Nature in him to warm, himself in nature;

So that what in him lives and moves and is,

Shall ever feel some living breath of his."

and the positive benefit of a strengthening of the will by the power of instruction and example. As we have been followers of Adam in sin, so should we become imitators of Christ in virtue. "In those not Christians," says Pelagius, "good exists in a condition of nakedness and helplessness; but in Christians it acquires vigor through the assistance of Christ."1776  He distinguishes different stages of development in grace corresponding to the increasing corruption of mankind. At first, he says, men lived righteous by nature (justitia per naturam), then righteous under the law (justitia sub lege), and finally righteous under grace (justitia gratiae), or the gospel.1777  When the inner law, or the conscience, no longer sufficed, the outward or Mosaic law came in; and when this failed, through the overmastering habit of sinning, it had to be assisted by the view and imitation of the virtue of Christ, as set forth in his example.1778  Julian of Eclanum also makes kinds and degrees of the grace of God. The first gift of grace is our creation out of nothing; the second, our rational soul; the third, the written law; the fourth, the gospel, with all its benefits. In the gift of the Son of God grace is completed.1779

Grace is therefore a useful external help (adjutorium) to the development of the powers of nature, but is not absolutely necessary. Coelestius laid down the proposition, that grace is not given for single acts.1780  Pelagius, it is true, condemned those who deny that the grace of God in Christ is necessary for every moment and every act; but this point was a concession wrung from him in the controversy, and does not follow logically from his premises.1781

Grace moreover, according to Pelagius, is intended for all men (not, as Augustine taught, for the elect few only), but it must first be deserved. This, however, really destroys its freedom.1782  "The heathen," he says, "are liable to judgment and damnation, because they, notwithstanding their free will, by which they are able to attain unto faith and to deserve God’s grace, make an evil use of the freedom bestowed upon them; Christians, on the other hand, are worthy of reward, because they through good use of freedom deserve the grace of God, and keep his commandments."1783

Pelagianism, therefore, extends the idea of grace too far, making it include human nature itself and the Mosaic law; while, on the other hand, it unduly restricts the specifically Christian grace to the force of instruction and example. Christ is indeed the Supreme Teacher, and the Perfect Example, but He is also High-priest and King, and the Author of a new spiritual creation. Had He been merely a teacher, He would not have been specifically distinct from Moses and Socrates, and could not have redeemed mankind from the guilt and bondage of sin. Moreover, He does not merely influence believers from without, but lives and works in them through the Holy Ghost, as the principle of their spiritual life. Hence Augustine’s wish for his opponent: "Would that Pelagius might confess that grace which not merely promises us the excellence of future glory, but also brings forth in us the faith and hope of it; a grace, which not merely admonishes to all good, but also from within inclines us thereto; not merely reveals wisdom, but also inspires us with the love of wisdom."1784  This superficial conception of grace is inevitable, with the Pelagian conception of sin. If human nature is uncorrupted, and the natural will competent to all good, we need no Redeemer to create in us a new will and a new life, but merely an improver and ennobler; and salvation is essentially the work of man. The Pelagian system has really no place for the ideas of redemption, atonement, regeneration, and new creation. It substitutes for them our own moral effort to perfect our natural powers, and the mere addition of the grace of God as a valuable aid and support. It was only by a happy inconsistency, that Pelagius and his adherents traditionally held to the church doctrines of the Trinity and the person of Christ. Logically their system led to a rationalistic Christology.1785

Pelagianism is a fundamental anthropological heresy, denying man’s need of redemption, and answering to the Ebionistic Christology, which rejects the divinity of Christ. It is the opposite of Manichaeism, which denies man’s capability of redemption, and which corresponds to the Gnostic denial of the true humanity of Christ.1786

§ 152. The Augustinian System: The Primitive State of Man, and Free Will.

Augustine (354–430) had already in his Confessions, in the year 400, ten years before the commencement of the Pelagian controversy, set forth his, deep and rich experiences of human sin and divine grace. This classical autobiography, which every theological student should read, is of universal application, and in it every Christian may bewail his own wanderings, despair of himself, throw himself unconditionally into the arms of God, and lay hold upon unmerited grace.1787  Augustine had in his own life passed through all the earlier stages of the history of the church, and had overcome in theory and in practice the heresy of Manichaeism, before its opposite, Pelagianism, appeared. By his theological refutation of this latter heresy, and by his clear development of the Biblical anthropology, he has won the noblest and most lasting renown. As in the events recorded in his Confessions he gives views of the evangelical doctrines of sin and of grace, so in the doctrines of his anti-Pelagian writings he sets forth his personal experience. He teaches nothing which he has not felt. In him the philosopher and the living Christian are everywhere fused. His loftiest metaphysical speculation passes unconsciously into adoration. The living aroma of personal experience imparts to his views a double interest, and an irresistible attraction for all earnest minds.1788

Yet his system was not always precisely the same; it became perfect only through personal conflict and practical tests. Many of his earlier views—e.g., respecting the freedom of choice, and respecting faith as a work of man—he himself abandoned in his Retractations;1789 and hence he is by no means to be taken as an infallible guide. He holds, moreover, the evangelical doctrines of sin and grace not in the Protestant sense, but, like his faithful disciples, the Jansenists, in connection with the sacramental and strict churchly system of Catholicism; he taught the necessity of baptismal regeneration and the damnation of all unbaptized children, and identified justification in substance with sanctification, though he made sanctification throughout a work of free grace, and not of human merit. It remains the exclusive prerogative of the inspired apostles to stand above the circumstances of their time, and never, in combating one error, to fall into its opposite. Nevertheless, Augustine is the brightest star in the constellation of the church fathers, and diffuses his light through the darkest periods of the middle ages, and among Catholics and Protestants alike, even to this day.1790

His anthropology may be exhibited under the three stages of the religious development of mankind, the status integritatis, the status corruptionis, and the status redemtionis.

I. The Primitive State of man, or the State of Innocence.

Augustine’s conception of paradise is vastly higher than the Pelagian, and involves a far deeper fall and a far more glorious manifestation of redeeming grace. The first state of man resembles the state of the blessed in heaven, though it differs from that final state as the undeveloped germ from the perfect fruit. According to Augustine man came from the hand of his Maker, his genuine masterpiece, without the slightest fault. He possessed freedom, to do good; reason, to know God; and the grace of God. But by this grace Augustine (not happy in the choice of his term) means only the general supernatural assistance indispensable to a creature, that he may persevere in good.1791  The relation of man to God was that of joyful and perfect obedience. The relation of the body to the soul was the same. The flesh did not yet lust against the spirit; both were in perfect harmony, and the flesh was wholly subject to the spirit. "Tempted and assailed by no strife of himself against himself, Adam enjoyed in that place the blessedness of peace with himself."  To this inward state, the outward corresponded. The paradise was not only spiritual, but also visible and material, without heat or cold, without weariness or excitement, without sickness, pains, or defects of any kind. The Augustinian, like the old Protestant, delineations, of the perfection of Adam and the blissfulness of paradise often exceed the sober standard of Holy Scripture, and borrow their colors in part from the heavenly paradise of the future, which can never be lost.1792

Yet Augustine admits that the original state of man was only relatively perfect, perfect in its kind; as a child may be a perfect child, while he is destined to become a man; or as the seed fulfils its idea as seed, though it has yet to become a tree. God alone is immutable and absolutely good; man is subject to development in time, and therefore to change. The primal gifts were bestowed on man simply as powers, to be developed in either one of two ways. Adam could go straight forward, develop himself harmoniously in untroubled unity with God, and thus gradually attain his final perfection; or he could fall away, engender evil ex nihilo by abuse of his free will, and develop himself through discords and contradictions. It was graciously made possible that his mind should become incapable of error, his will, of sin, his body, of death; and by a normal growth this possibility would have become actual. But this was mere possibility, involving, in the nature of the case, the opposite possibility of error, sin, and death.

Augustine makes the important distinction between the possibility of not sinning1793 and the impossibility of sinning.1794  The former is conditional or potential freedom from sin, which may turn into its opposite, the bondage of sin. This belonged to man before the fall. The latter is the absolute freedom from sin or the perfected holiness, which belongs to God, to the holy angels who have acceptably passed their probation, and to the redeemed saints in heaven.

In like manner he distinguishes between absolute and relative immortality.1795  The former is the impossibility of dying, founded upon the impossibility of sinning; an attribute of God and of the saints after the resurrection. The latter is the bare pre-conformation for immortality, and implies the opposite possibility of death. This was the immortality of Adam before the fall, and if he had persevered, it would have passed into the impossibility of dying; but it was lost by sin.1796

Freedom, also, Augustine holds to be an original endowment of man; but he distinguishes different kinds of it, and different degrees of its development, which we must observe, or we should charge him with self-contradiction.1797

By freedom Augustine understands, in the first place, simply spontaneity or self-activity, as opposed to action under external constraint or from animal instinct. Both sin and holiness are voluntary, that is, acts of the will, not motions of natural necessity.1798  This freedom belongs at all times and essentially to the human will, even in the sinful state (in which the will is, strictly speaking, self-willed); it is the necessary condition of guilt and punishment, of merit and reward. In this view no thinking man can deny freedom, without destroying the responsibility and the moral nature of man. An involuntary, will is as bald a self-contradiction as an unintelligent intelligence.1799

A second form of freedom is the liberum arbitrium, or freedom of choice. Here Augustine goes half-way with Pelagius; especially in his earlier writings, in opposition to Manichaeism, which denied all freedom, and made evil a natural necessity and an original substance. Like Pelagius he ascribes freedom of choice to the first man before the fall. God created man with the double capacity of sinning or not sinning, forbidding the former and commanding the latter. But Augustine differs from Pelagius in viewing Adam not as poised in entire indifference between good and evil, obedience and disobedience but as having a positive constitutional tendency to the good, yet involving, at the same time, a possibility of sinning.1800  Besides, Augustine, in the interest of grace and of true freedom, disparages the freedom of choice, and limits it to the beginning, the transient state of probation. This relative indecision cannot be at all predicated of God or the angels, of the saints or of sinners. It is an imperfection of the will, which the actual choosing of the good or the evil more or less surmounts. Adam, with the help of divine grace, without which be might will the good, indeed, but could not persevere in it, should have raised himself to the true freedom, the moral necessity of good; but by choosing the evil, he fell into the bondage of sin.1801  Augustine, however, incidentally concedes, that the liberum arbitrium still so far exists even in fallen man, that he can choose, not indeed between sin and holiness, but between individual actions within the sphere of sinfulness and of justitia civilis.1802

Finally, Augustine speaks most frequently and most fondly of the highest freedom, the free self-decision or self-determination of the will towards the good and holy, the blessed freedom of the children of God; which still includes, it is true, in this earthly life, the possibility of sinning, but becomes in heaven the image of the divine freedom, a felix necessitas boni, and cannot, because it will not, sin.1803  it is the exact opposite of the dura necessitas mali in the state of sin. It is not a faculty possessed in common by all rational minds, but the highest stage of moral development, confined to true Christians. This freedom Augustine finds expressed in that word of our Lord: "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."  It does not dispense with grace, but is generated by it; the more grace, the more freedom. The will is free in proportion as it is healthy, and healthy in proportion as it moves in the element of its true life, in God, and obeys Him of its own spontaneous impulse. To serve God is the true freedom.1804

§ 153. The Augustinian System: The Fall and its Consequences.

To understand Augustine’s doctrine of the fall of man, we must remember, first of all, that he starts with the idea of the organic unity of the human race, and with the profound parallel of Paul between the first and the second Adam;1805 that he views the first man not merely as an individual, but at the same time as the progenitor and representative of the whole race, standing to natural mankind in the same relation as that of Christ to redeemed and regenerate mankind. The history of the fall, recorded in a manner at once profound and childlike in the third chapter of Genesis, has, therefore, universal significance. In Adam human nature fell, and therefore all, who have inherited that nature from him, who were in him as the fruit in the germ, and who have grown up, as it were, one person with him.1806

But Augustine did not stop with the very just idea of an organic connection of the human race, and of the sin of Adam with original sin; he also supposed a sort of pre-existence of all the posterity of Adam in himself, so that they actually and personally sinned in him, though not, indeed, with individual consciousness. Since we were, at the time of the fall, "in lumbis Adami," the sin of Adam is "jure seminationis et germinationis," our sin and guilt, and physical death is a penalty even upon infant children, as it was a penalty upon Adam. The posterity of Adam therefore suffer punishment not for the sin of another, but for the sin which they themselves committed in Adam. This view, as we shall see farther on, Augustine founds upon a false interpretation of Rom. v. 12.

I. The Fall. The original state of man included the possibility of sinning, and this was the imperfection of that state. This possibility became reality. Why it should have been realized, is incomprehensible; since evil never has, like good, a sufficient reason. It is irrationality itself. Augustine fixes an immense gulf between the primitive state and the state of sin. But when thought has accomplished this adventurous leap, it finds his system coherent throughout.

Adam did not fall without temptation from another. That angel, who, in his pride, had turned away from God to himself, tempted man, who, standing yet in his integrity, provoked his envy. He first approached the woman, the weaker and the more credulous. The essence of the sin of Adam consisted not in the eating of the fruit; for this was in itself neither wrong nor harmful; but in disobedience to the command of God. "Obedience was enjoined by that commandment, as the virtue which, in the rational creature, is, as it were, the mother and guardian of all virtues."  The principle, the root of sin, was pride, self-seeking, the craving of the will to forsake its author, and become its own. This pride preceded the outward act. Our first parents were sinful in heart, before they had yet fallen into open disobedience. "For man never yet proceeded to an evil work, unless incited to it by an evil will."  This pride even preceded the temptation of the serpent. "If man had not previously begun to take pleasure in himself, the serpent could have had no hold upon him."

The fall of Adam appears the greater, and the more worthy of punishment, if we consider, first, the height he occupied, the divine image in which he was created; then, the simplicity of the commandment, and ease of obeying it, in the abundance of all manner of fruits in paradise; and finally, the sanction of the most terrible punishment from his Creator and greatest Benefactor.

Thus Augustine goes behind the appearance to the substance; below the surface to the deeper truth. He does not stop with the outward act, but looks chiefly at the disposition which lies at its root.

II. The Consequences of the primal sin, both for Adam and for his posterity, are, in Augustine’s view, comprehensive and terrible in proportion to the heinousness of the sin itself. And all these consequences are at the same time punishments from the righteous God, who has, by one and the same law, joined reward with obedience and penalty with sin. They are all comprehended under death, in its widest sense; as Paul says: "The wages of sin is death;" and in Gen. ii. 17 we are to understand by the threatened death, all evil both to body and to soul.

Augustine particularizes the consequences of sin under seven heads; the first four being negative, the others positive:

1. Loss of the freedom of choice,1807 which consisted in a positive inclination and love to the good, with the implied possibility of sin. In place of this freedom has come the hard necessity of sinning, bondage to evil. "The will, which, aided by grace, would have become a source of good, became to Adam, in his apostasy from God, a source of evil."

2. Obstruction of knowledge. Man was originally able to learn everything easily, without labor, and to understand everything aright. But now the mind is beclouded, and knowledge can be acquired and imparted only in the sweat of the face.

3. Loss of the grace of God, which enabled man to perform the good which his freedom willed, and to persevere therein. By not willing, man forfeited his ability, and now, though he would do good, he cannot.

4. Loss of paradise. The earth now lies under the curse of God: it brings forth thorns and thistles, and in the sweat of his face man must eat his bread.

5. Concupiscence, i.e., not sensuousness in itself, but the preponderance of the sensuous, the lusting of the flesh against the spirit. Thus God punishes sin with sin—a proposition which Julian considered blasphemy. Originally the body was as joyfully obedient to the spirit, as man to God. There was but one will in exercise. By the fall this beautiful harmony has been broken, and that antagonism has arisen which Paul describes in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. (Augustine referred this passage to the regenerate state.)  The rebellion of the spirit against God involved, as its natural punishment, the rebellion of the flesh against the spirit. Concupiscentia, therefore, is substantially the same as what Paul calls in the bad sense "flesh."  It is not the sensual constitution in itself, but its predominance over the higher, rational nature of man.1808  It is true, however, that Augustine, in his longing after an unimpeded life in the spirit, was inclined to treat even lawful appetites, such as hunger and thirst, so far as they assume the form of craving desire, as at least remotely connected with the fall.1809  Julian attributed the strength of animal desire to the animal element in the original nature of man. Augustine answered, that the superiority of man to the brute consists in the complete dominion of reason over the sensual nature, and that therefore his approach to the brute in this respect is a punishment from God. Concupiscence then is no more a merely corporeal thing than the biblical savrx, but has its seat in the soul, without which no lust arises. We must, therefore, suppose a conflict in the soul itself, a lower, earthly, self-seeking instinct, and a higher, god-like impulse.

This is the generic sense of concupiscentia: the struggle of the collective sensual and psychical desires against the god-like spirit. But Augustine frequently employs the word, as other corresponding terms are used, in the narrower sense of unlawful sexual desire. This appeared immediately after the fall, in the shame of our first parents, which was not for their nakedness itself, since this was nothing new to them, but for the lusting of the body; for something, therefore, in and of itself good (the body’s, own enjoyment, as it were), but now unlawfully rising, through the discord between body and soul. But would there then have been propagation without the fall?  Unquestionably; but it would have left the dominion of reason over the sensual desire undisturbed. Propagation would have been the act of a pure will and chaste love, and would have had no more shame about it than the scattering of seed upon the maternal bosom of the earth. But now lust rules the spirit; and Augustine in his earlier years had had bitter experience of its tyranny. To this element of sin in the act of procreation he ascribes the pains of childbirth, which in fact appear in Genesis as a consequence of the fall, and as a curse from God. Had man remained pure, "the ripe fruit would have descended from the maternal womb without labor or pain of the woman, as the fruit descends from the tree."1810

6.Physical death, with its retinue of diseases and bodily pains. Adam was indeed created mortal, that is, capable of death, but not subject to death. By a natural development the possibility of dying would have been overcome by the power of immortality; the body would have been gradually spiritualized and clothed with glory, without a violent transition or even the weakness of old age. But now man is fallen under the bitter necessity of death. Because the spirit forsook God willingly, it must now forsake the body unwillingly. With profound discernment Augustine shows that not only the actual severance of soul and body, but the whole life of sinful man is a continual dying. Even with the pains of birth and the first cry of the child does death begin. The threatening of the Lord, therefore: "In the day ye eat thereof, ye shall die," began at once to be fulfilled. For though our first parents lived many years afterwards, they immediately began to grow old and to die. Life is an unceasing march towards death, and "to no one is it granted, even for a little, to stand still, or to go more slowly, but all are constrained to go with equal pace, and no one is impelled differently from others. For he whose life has been shorter, saw therefore no shorter day than he whose life was longer. And he who uses more time to reach death, does not therefore go slower, but only makes a longer journey."

7. The most important consequence of the fall of Adam is original sin and hereditary guilt in his whole posterity; and as this was also one of the chief points of controversy, it must be exhibited at length.

§ 154. The Augustinian System: Original Sin, and the Origin of the Human Soul.

Original sin,1811 according to Augustine, is the native bent of the soul towards evil, with which all the posterity of Adam—excepting Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a pure Virgin—come into the world, and out of which all actual sins of necessity proceed. It appears principally in concupiscence, or the war of the flesh against the spirit. Sin is not merely an individual act, but also a condition, a status and habitus, which continues, by procreation, from generation to generation. Original sin results necessarily, as has been already remarked, from the generic and representative character of Adam, in whom human nature itself, and so, potentially, all who should inherit that nature, fell.1812  The corruption of the root communicates itself to the trunk and the branches. But where sin is, there is always guilt and ill-desert in the eyes of a righteous God. The whole race, through the fall of its progenitor, has become a massa perditionis. This, of course, still admits different degrees both of sinfulness and of guilt.

Original sin and guilt are propagated by natural generation. The generic character planted in Adam unfolds itself in a succession of individuals, who organically grow one out of another. As sin, however, is not merely a thing of the body, but primarily and essentially of the spirit, the question arises, on which of the current theories as to the origin and propagagation of souls Augustine based his view.

This metaphysical problem enters theology in connection with the doctrine of original sin; this, therefore, is the place to say what is needful upon it.1813  The Gnostic and pantheistic emanation-theory had long since been universally rejected as heretical. But three other views had found advocates in the church:

1. The Traducian1814 or Generation-theory teaches that the soul originates with the body from the act of procreation, and therefore through human agency. It is countenanced by several passages of Scripture, such as Gen. v. 3; Ps. li. 5; Rom. v. 12; 1 Cor. xv. 22; Eph. ii. 3; it is decidedly suitable to the doctrine of original sin; and hence, since Tertullian, it has been adopted by most Western theologians in support and explanation of that doctrine.1815

2. The Creation-theory ascribes each individual soul to a direct creative act of God, and supposes it to be united with the body either at the moment of its generation, or afterwards. This view is held by several Eastern theologians and by Jerome, who appeals to the unceasing creative activity of God (John v. 17). It required the assumption that the Soul, which must proceed pure from the hand of the Creator, becomes sinful by its connection with the naturally generated body. Pelagius and his followers were creationists.1816

3. The theory of Pre-existence, which was originated by Plato and more fully developed by Origen, supposes that the soul, even before the origin of the body, existed and sinned in another world, and has been banished in the body as in a prison,1817 to expiate that personal Adamic guilt, and by an ascetic process to be restored to its original state. This is one of the Origenistic heresies, which were condemned under Justinian. Even Gregory of Nyssa, although, like Nemesius and Cyril of Alexandria, he supposed the soul to be created before the body, compares Origen’s theory to the heathen myths and fables. Origen himself allowed that the Bible does not directly teach the pre-existence of the soul, but maintained that several passages, such as the strife between Esau and Jacob in the womb, and the leaping of John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth at the salutation of Mary, imply it. The only truth in this theory is that every human soul has from eternity existed in the thought and purpose of God.1818

Augustine emphatically rejects the doctrine of pre-existence,1819 without considering that his own theory of a generic pre-existence and apostasy of all men in Adam is really liable to similar objections. For he also hangs the whole fate of the human race on a transcendental act of freedom, lying beyond our temporal consciousness though, it is true, he places this act in the beginning of earthly history, and ascribes it to the one general ancestor, while Origen transfers it into a previous world, and views it as an act of each individual soul.1820

But between creationism and traducianism Augustine wavers, because the Scriptures do not expressly decide. He wishes to keep both the continuous creative activity of God and the organic union of body and soul.

Augustine regards this whole question as belonging to science and the schools, not to faith and the church, and makes a confession of ignorance which, in a man of his speculative genius, involves great self-denial. "Where the Scripture," he says, "renders no certain testimony, human inquiry must beware of deciding one way or the other. If it were necessary to salvation to know anything concerning it, Scripture would have said more."1821

The three theories of the origin of the soul, we may remark by way of concluding criticism, admit of a reconciliation. Each of them contains an element of truth, and is wrong only when exclusively held. Every human soul has an ideal pre-existence in the divine mind, the divine will, and we may add, in the divine life; and every human soul as well as every human body is the product of the united agency of God and the parents. Pre-existentianism errs in confounding an ideal with a concrete, self-conscious, individual pre-existence; traducianism, in ignoring the creative divine agency without which no being, least of all an immortal mind, can come into existence, and in favoring a materialistic conception of the soul; creationism, in denying the human agency, and thus placing the soul in a merely accidental relation to the body.

§ 155. Arguments for the Doctrine of Original Sin and Hereditary Guilt.

We now pass to the proofs by which Augustine established his doctrine of original sin and guilt, and to the objections urged by his opponents.

1. For Scriptural authority he appealed chiefly and repeatedly to the words in Rom. v. 12, ejf j w|/ pavnte" h{marton, which are erroneously translated by the Vulgate: in quo1822 omnes peccaverunt. As Augustine had but slight knowledge of Greek, he commonly confined himself to the Latin Bible, and here he referred the in quo to Adam (the "one man" in the beginning of the verse, which is far too remote); but the Greek ejf j w|/  must be taken as neuter and as a conjunction in the sense: on the ground that, or because, all have sinned.1823  The exegesis of Augustine, and his doctrine of a personal fall, as it were, of all men in Adam, are therefore doubtless untenable. On the other hand, Paul unquestionably teaches in this passage a causal connection between sin and death, and also a causal connection between the sin of Adam and the sinfulness of his posterity, therefore original sin. The proof of this is found in the whole parallel between Adam and Christ, and their representative relation to mankind (Comp. 1 Cor. xv. 45 ff.), and especially in the pavnte" h]marton, but not in the ejf j w| as translated by the Vulgate and Augustine. Other passages of Scripture to which Augustine appealed, as teaching original sin, were such as Gen. viii. 21; Ps. li. 7; John iii. 6; 1 Cor. ii. 14; Eph. ii. 3.

2. The practice of infant baptism in the church, with the customary formula, "for remission of sins," and such accompanying ceremonies as exorcism, presupposes the dominion of sin and of demoniacal powers even in infancy. Since the child, before the awakening of self-consciousness, has committed. no actual sin, the effect of baptism must relate to the forgiveness of original sin and guilt.1824  This was a very important point from the beginning of the controversy, and one to which Augustine frequently reverted.

Here he had unquestionably a logical advantage over the Pelagians, who retained the traditional usage of infant baptism, but divested it of its proper import, made it signify a mere ennobling of a nature already good, and, to be consistent, should have limited baptism to adults for the forgiveness of actual sins.

The Pelagians, however, were justly offended by the revolting inference of the damnation of unbaptized infants, which is nowhere taught in the Holy Scriptures, and is repugnant to every unperverted religious instinct. Pelagius inclined to assign to unbaptized infants a middle state of half-blessedness, between the kingdom of heaven appointed to the baptized and the hell of the ungodly; though on this point he is not positive.1825  He evidently makes salvation depend, not so much upon the Christian redemption, as upon the natural moral character of individuals. Hence also baptism had no such importance in his view as in that of his antagonist.

Augustine, on the authority of Matt. xxv. 34, 46, and other Scriptures, justly denies a neutral middle state, and meets the difficulty by supposing different degrees of blessedness and damnation (which, in fact, must be admitted), corresponding to the different degrees of holiness and wickedness. But, constrained by the idea of original sin, and by the supposed necessity of baptism to salvation, he does not shrink from consigning unbaptized children to damnation itself,1826 though he softens to the utmost this frightful dogma, and reduces the damnation to the minimum of punishment or the privation of blessedness.1827  He might have avoided the difficulty, without prejudice to his premises, by his doctrine of the election of grace, or by assuming an extraordinary application of the merits of Christ in death or in Hades. But the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of outward baptism to regeneration and entrance into the kingdom of God, forbade him a more liberal view respecting the endless destiny of that half of the human race which die in childhood.

We may recall, however, the noteworthy fact, that the third canon of the North-African council at Carthage in 418, which condemns the opinion that unbaptized children are saved, is in many manuscripts wanting, and is therefore of doubtful authenticity. The sternness of the Augustinian system here gave way before the greater power of Christian love. Even Augustine, De civitate Dei, speaking of the example of Melchisedec, ventures the conjecture, that God may have also among the heathen an elect people, true Israelites according to the spirit, whom He draws to Himself through the secret power of His spirit. Why, we may ask, is not this thought applicable above all to children, to whom we know the Saviour Himself, in a very special sense (and without reference to baptism) ascribes a right to the kingdom of heaven?

3. The testimony of Scripture and of the church is confirmed by experience. The inclination to evil awakes with the awaking of consciousness and voluntary activity. Even the suckling gives signs of self-will, spite, and disobedience. As moral development advances, the man feels this disposition to be really bad, and worthy of punishment, not a mere limitation or defect. Thus we find even the child subject to suffering, to sickness, and to death. It is contrary to the pure idea of God, that this condition should have been the original one. God must have created man faultless and inclined towards good. The conviction that human nature is not as it should be, in fact pervades all mankind. Augustine, in one place, cites a passage of the third book of Cicero’s Republic: "Nature has dealt with man not as a real mother, but as a step-mother, sending him into the world with a naked, frail, and feeble body, and with a soul anxious to avoid burdens, bowed down under all manner of apprehensions, averse to effort, and inclined to sensuality. Yet can we not mistake a certain divine fire of the spirit, which glimmers on in the heart as it were under ashes."  Cicero laid the blame of this on creative nature. "He thus saw clearly the fact, but not the cause, for he had no conception of original sin, because he had no knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."

§ 156. Answers to Pelagian Objections.

To these positive arguments must be added the direct answers to the objections brought against the Augustinian theory, sometimes with great acuteness, by the Pelagians, and especially by Julian of Eclanum, in the dialectic course of the controversy.

Julian sums up his argument against Augustine in five points, intended to disprove original sin from premises conceded by Augustine himself:  If man is the creature of God, he must come from the hands of God good; if marriage is in itself good, it cannot generate evil; if baptism remits all sins and regenerates, the children of the baptized cannot inherit sin; if God is righteous, he cannot condemn children for the sins of others; if human nature is capable of perfect righteousness, it cannot be inherently defective.1828

We notice particularly the first four of these points; the fifth is substantially included in the first.

1. If original sin propagates itself in generation, if there is a tradux peccati and a malum naturale, then sin is substantial, and we are found in the Manichaean error, except that we make God, who is the Father of children, the author of sin, while Manichaeism refers sin to the devil, as the father of human nature.1829

This imputation was urged repeatedly and emphatically by the sharp and clear-sighted Julian. But according to Augustine all nature is, and ever remains, in itself good, so far as it is nature (in the sense of creature); evil is only corruption of nature, vice cleaving to it. Manichaeus makes evil a substance, Augustine, only an accident; the former views it as a positive and eternal principle, the latter derives it from the creature, and attributes to it a merely negative or privative existence; the one affirms it to be a necessity of nature, the other, a free act; the former locates it in matter, in the body, the latter, in the will.1830  Augustine retorted on the Pelagians the charge of Manichaeism, for their locating the carnal lust of man in his original nature itself, and so precluding its cure. But in their view the concupiscentia carnis was not what it was to Augustine, but an innocent natural impulse, which becomes sin only when indulged to excess.

2. If evil is nothing substantial, we should expect that the baptized and regenerate, in whom its power is broken, would beget sinless children. If sin is propagated, righteousness should be propagated also.

But baptism, according to Augustine, removes only the guilt (reatus) of original sin, not the sin itself (concupiscentia). In procreation it is not the regenerate spirit that is the agent, but the nature which is still under the dominion of the concupiscentia. "Regenerate parents produce not as sons of God, but as children of the world."   All that are born need therefore regeneration through the same baptism, which washes away the curse of original sin. Augustine appeals to analogies; especially to the fact that from the seed of the good olive a wild olive grows, although the good and the wild greatly differ.1831

3. But if the production of children is not possible without fleshly lust, must not marriage be condemned?1832

No; marriage, and the consequent production of children, are, like nature, in themselves good. They belong to the mutual polarity of the sexes. The blessing: "Be fruitful and multiply," and the declaration: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh," come down from paradise itself, and generation would have taken place even without sin, yet "sine ulla libidine," as a "tranquilla motio et conjunctio vel commixtio membrorum."   Carnal concupiscence is subsequent and adventitious, existing now as an accident in the act of generation, and concealed by nature herself with shame; but it does not annul the blessing of marriage. It is only through sin that the sexual parts have become pudenda; in themselves they are honorable. Undoubtedly the regenerate are called to reduce concupiscence to the mere service of generation, that they may produce children, who shall be children of God, and therefore born again in Christ. Such desire Augustine, with reference to 1 Cor. vii. 3 ff., calls "a pardonable guilt."   But since, in the present state, the concupiscentia carnis is inseparable from marriage, it would have been really more consistent to give up the "bonum nuptiarum," and to regard marriage as a necessary evil; as the monastic asceticism, favored by the spirit of the age, was strongly inclined to do. And in this respect there was no material difference between Augustine and Pelagius. The latter went fully as far, and even farther, in his praise of virginity, as the highest form of Christian virtue; his letter to the nun Demetrias is a picture of a perfect virgin who in her moral purity proves the excellency of human nature.

4. It contradicts the righteousness of God, to suppose one man punished for the sin of another. We are accountable only, for sins which are the acts of our own will. Julian appealed to the oft-quoted passage, Ezek. xviii. 2–4, where God forbids the use of the proverb in Israel: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge," and where the principle is laid down: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."1833

On the individualizing principle of Pelagius this objection is very, natural, and is irrefragable; but in the system of Augustine, where mankind appears as an organic whole, and Adam as the representative of human nature and as including all his posterity, it partially loses its force. Augustine thus makes all men sharers in the fall, so that they are, in fact, punished for what they themselves did in Adam. But this by no means fully solves the difficulty. He should have applied his organic view differently, and should have carried it farther. For if Adam must not be isolated from his descendants, neither must original sin be taken apart from actual sin. God does not punish the one without the other. He always looks upon the life of man as a whole; upon original sin as the fruitful mother of actual sins; and he condemns a man not for the guilt of another, but for making the deed of Adam his own, and repeating the fall by his own voluntary transgression. This every one does who lives beyond unconscious infancy. But Augustine, as we have already, seen, makes even infancy subject to punishment for original sin alone, and thus unquestionably trenches not only upon the righteousness of God, but also upon his love, which is the beginning and end of his ways, and the key to all his works.

To sum up the Augustinian doctrine of sin: This fearful power is universal; it rules the species, as well as individuals; it has its seat in the moral character of the will, reaches thence to the particular actions, and from them reacts again upon the will; and it subjects every man, without exception, to the punitive justice of God. Yet the corruption is not so great as to alter the substance of man, and make him incapable of redemption. The denial of man’s capacity for redemption is the Manichaean error, and the opposite extreme to the Pelagian denial of the need of redemption. "That is still good," says Augustine, "which bewails lost good; for had not something good remained in our nature, there would be no grief over lost good for punishment."1834  Even in the hearts of the heathen the law of God is not wholly obliterated,1835 and even in the life of the most abandoned men there are some good works. But these avail nothing to salvation. They are not truly good, because they proceed from the turbid source of selfishness. Faith is the root, and love the motive, of all truly good actions, and this love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin."  Before the time of Christ, therefore, all virtues were either, like the virtues of the Old Testament saints, who hoped in the same Christ in whom we believe, consciously or unconsciously Christian; or else they prove, on closer inspection, to be comparative vices or seeming virtues, destitute of the pure motive and the right aim. Lust of renown and lust of dominion were the fundamental traits of the old Romans, which first gave birth to those virtues of self-devotion to freedom and country, so glorious in the eyes of men; but which afterwards, when with the destruction of Carthage all manner of moral corruption poured in, begot the Roman vices.1836

This view of heathen or natural morality as a specious form of vice, though true to a large extent, is nevertheless an unjust extreme, which Augustine himself cannot consistently sustain. Even he was forced to admit important moral differences among the heathen: between, for example, a Fabricius, of incorruptible integrity, and the traitor Catiline; and though he merely defines this difference negatively, as a greater and less degree of sin and guilt, yet this itself involves the positive concession, that Fabricius stands nearer the position of Christian morality, and that there exists at least relative goodness among the heathen. Moreover, he cannot deny, that there were before Christ, not only among the Israelites, but also among the Gentiles, God-fearing souls, such as Melchisedec and Job, true Israelites, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, whom God by the secret workings of His Spirit drew to Himself even without baptism and the external means of grace.1837  So the Alexandrian fathers saw scattered rays of the Logos in the dark night of heathenism; only they were far from discriminating so sharply between what was Christian and what was not Christian.

All human boasting is therefore excluded, man is sick, sick unto death out of Christ, but he is capable of health; and the worse the sickness, the greater is the physician, the more powerful is the remedy—redeeming grace.

§ 157. Augustine’s Doctrine of Redeeming Grace.

Augustine reaches his peculiar doctrine of redeeming grace in two ways. First he reasons upwards from below, by the law of contrast; that is, from his view of the utter incompetency of the unregenerated man to do good. The greater the corruption, the mightier must be the remedial principle. The doctrine of grace is thus only the positive counterpart of the doctrine of sin. In the second place he reasons downwards from above; that is, from his conception of the all-working, all-penetrating presence of God in natural life, and much more in the spiritual. While Pelagius deistically severs God and the world after the creation, and places man on an independent footing, Augustine, even before this controversy, was, through his speculative genius and the earnest experience of his life, deeply penetrated with a sense of the absolute dependence of the creature on the Creator, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. But Augustine’s impression of the immanence of God in the world has nothing pantheistic; it does not tempt him to deny the transcendence of God and his absolute independence of the world. Guided by the Holy Scriptures, he maintains the true mean between deism and pantheism. In the very beginning of his Confessions1838 he says very beautifully: ’How shall I call on my God, on my God and Lord?  Into myself must I call Him, if I call on Him; and what place is there in me, where my God may enter into me, the God, who created heaven and earth?  O Lord my God, is there anything in me, that contains Thee?  Do heaven and earth contain Thee, which Thou hast created, in which Thou didst create me?  Or does all that is, contain Thee, because without Thee there had existed nothing that is?  Because then I also am, do I supplicate Thee, that Thou wouldst come into me, I, who had not in any wise been, if Thou wert not in me?  I yet live, I do not yet sink into the lower world, and yet Thou art there. If I made my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. I were not, then, O my God, I utterly were not, if Thou wert not in me. Yea, still more, I were not, O my God, if I were not in Thee, from whom all, in whom all, through whom all is. Even so, Lord, even so."  In short, man is nothing without God, and everything in and through God. The undercurrent of this sentiment could not but carry this father onward to all the views he developed in opposition to the Pelagian heresy.

While Pelagius widened the idea of grace to indefiniteness, and reduced it to a medley of natural gifts, law, gospel, forgiveness of sins, enlightenment, and example, Augustine restricted grace to the specifically Christian sphere (and, therefore, called it gratia Christi), though admitting its operation previous to Christ among the saints of the Jewish dispensation; but within this sphere he gave it incomparably greater depth. With him grace is, first of all, a creative power of God in Christ transforming men from within. It produces first the negative effect of forgiveness of sins, removing the hindrance to communion with God; then the positive communication of a new principle of life. The two are combined in the idea of justification, which, as we have already remarked, Augustine holds, not in the Protestant sense of declaring righteous once for all, but in the Catholic sense of gradually making righteous; thus substantially identifying it with sanctification.1839  Yet, as he refers this whole process to divine grace, to the exclusion of all human merit, he stands on essentially Evangelical ground.1840  As we inherit from the first Adam our sinful and mortal life, so the second Adam implants in us, from God, and in God, the germ of a sinless and immortal life. Positive grace operates, therefore, not merely from without upon our intelligence by instruction and admonition, as Pelagius taught, but also in the centre of our personality, imparting to the will the power to do the good which the instruction teaches, and to imitate the example of Christ.1841  Hence he frequently calls it the inspiration of a good will, or of love, which is the fulfilling of the law.1842  "Him that wills not, grace comes to meet, that he may will; him that wills, she follows up, that he may not will in vain."1843  Faith itself is an effect of grace; indeed, its first and fundamental effect, which provides for all others, and manifests itself in love. He had formerly held faith to be a work of man (as, in fact, though not exclusively, the capacity of faith, or receptivity for the divine, may be said to be); but he was afterwards led, particularly by the words of Paul in 1 Cor. iv. 7: "What hast thou, that thou hast not received?" to change his view.1844  In a word, grace is the breath and blood of the new man; from it proceeds all that is truly good and divine, and without it we can do nothing acceptable to God.

From this fundamental conception of grace arise the several properties which Augustine ascribes to it in opposition to Pelagius:

First, it is absolutely necessary to Christian virtue; not merely auxiliary, but indispensable, to its existence. It is necessary "for every good act, for every good thought, for every good word of man at every moment."  Without it the Christian life can neither begin, proceed, nor be consummated. It was necessary even under the old dispensation, which contained the gospel in the form of promise. The saints before Christ lived of His grace by anticipation. "They stood," says Augustine, "not under the terrifying, convicting, punishing law, but under that grace which fills the heart with joy in what is good, which heals it, and makes it free."1845

It is, moreover, unmerited. Gratia would be no gratia if it were not gratuita, gratis data.1846  As man without grace can do nothing good, he is, of course, incapable of deserving grace; for, to deserve grace, he must do something good. "What merits could we have, while as yet we did not love God?  That the love with which we should love might be created, we have been loved, while as yet we had not that love. Never should we have found strength to love God, except as we received such a love from Him who had loved us before, and because He had loved us before. And, without such a love, what good could we do?  Or, how could we not do good, with such a love?"  "The Holy Spirit breathes where He will, and does not follow merits, but Himself produces the merits!1847  Grace, therefore, is not bestowed on man because he already believes, but that he may believe; not because he has deserved it by good works, but that he may deserve good works."  Pelagius reverses the natural relation by making the cause the effect, and the effect the cause. The ground of our salvation can only be found in God Himself, if He is to remain immutable. Augustine appeals to examples of pardoned sinners, "where not only no good deserts, but even evil deserts, had preceded."  Thus the apostle Paul, "averse to the faith, which he wasted, and vehemently inflamed against it, was suddenly converted to that faith by the prevailing power of grace, and that in such wise that he was changed not only from an enemy to a friend, but from a persecutor to a sufferer of persecution for the sake of the faith he had once destroyed. For to him it was given by Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake."  He also points to children, who without will, and therefore without voluntary merit preceding, are through holy baptism incorporated in the kingdom of grace.1848  His own experience, finally, afforded him an argument, to him irrefutable, for the free, undeserved compassion of God. And if in other passages he speaks of merits, he means good works which the Holy Ghost effects in man, and which God graciously rewards, so that eternal life is grace for grace. "If all thy merits are gifts of God, God crowns thy merits not as thy merits, but as the gifts of his grace."1849

Grace is irresistible in its effect; not, indeed, in the way of physical constraint imposed on the will, but as a moral power, which makes man willing, and which infallibly attains its end, the conversion and final perfection of its subject.1850  This point is closely connected with Augustine’s whole doctrine of predestination, and consistently leads to it or follows from it. Hence the Pelagians repeatedly raised the charge that Augustine, under the name of grace, introduced a certain fatalism. But the irresistibility must manifestly not be extended to all the influences of grace; for the Bible often speaks of grieving, quenching, lying to, and blaspheming the Holy Ghost, and so implies that grace may be resisted; and it presents many living examples of such resistance. It cannot be denied, that Saul, Solomon, Ananias, and Sapphira, and even the traitor Judas, were under the influence of divine grace, and repelled it. Augustine, therefore, must make irresistible grace identical with the specific grace of regeneration in the elect, which at the same time imparts the donum perseverantiae.1851

Grace, finally, works progressively or by degrees. It removes all the consequences of the fall; but it removes them in an order agreeable to the finite, gradually unfolding nature of the believer. Grace is a foster-mother, who for the greatest good of her charge, wisely and lovingly accommodates herself to his necessities as they change from time to time. Augustine gives different names to grace in these different steps of its development. In overcoming the resisting will, and imparting a living knowledge of sin and longing for redemption, grace is gratia praeveniens or praeparans. In creating faith and the free will to do good, and uniting the soul to Christ, it is gratia operans. Joining with the emancipated will to combat the remains of evil, and bringing forth good works as fruits of faith, it is gratia cooperans. Finally, in enabling the believer to persevere in faith to the end, and leading him at length, though not in this life, to the perfect state, in which he can no longer sin nor die, it is gratia perficiens.1852  This includes the donum perseverantiae, which is the only certain token of election.1853  "We call ourselves elect, or children of God, because we so call all those whom we see regenerate, visibly leading a holy life. But he alone is in truth what he is called, who perseveres in that from which he receives the name."  Therefore so long as a man yet lives, we can form no certain judgment of him in this respect. Perseverance till death, i.e., to the point where the danger of apostasy ceases, is emphatically a grace, "since it is much harder to possess this gift of grace than any other; though for him to whom nothing is hard, it is as easy to bestow the one as the other."

And as to the relation of grace to freedom: Neither excludes the other, though they might appear to conflict. In Augustine’s system freedom, or self-determination to good, is the correlative in man of grace on the part of God. The more grace, the more freedom to do good, and the more joy in the good. The two are one in the idea of love, which is objective and subjective, passive and active, an apprehending and a being apprehended.1854

We may sum up the Augustinian anthropology under these three heads:

1. The Primitive State: Immediate, undeveloped unity of man with God; child-like innocence; germ and condition of everything subsequent; possibility of a sinless and a sinful development.

2. The State of Sin: Alienation from God; bondage; dominion of death; with longing after redemption.

3. The State of Redemption or of Grace: Higher, mediated unity with God; virtue approved through conflict; the blessed freedom of the children of God; here, indeed, yet clogged with the remains of sin and death, but hereafter absolutely perfect, without the possibility of apostasy.

§ 158. The Doctrine of Predestination.

I. Augustinus: De praedestinatione sanctorum ad Prosperum et Hilarium (written A.D. 428 or 429 against the Semi-Pelagians); De dono perseverantiae (written in the same year and against the same opponents); De gratia et libero arbitrio (written A.D. 426 or 427 ad Valentinum et Monachos Adrumetinos); De correptione et gratia (written to the same persons and in the same year).

II  Corn. Jansenius: Augustinus. Lovan. 1640, tom. iii. Jac. Sirmond (Jesuit): Historia praedestinatiana. Par. 1648 (and in his Opera, tom. iv. p. 271). Carl Beck: Die Augustinische, Calvinistische und Lutherische Lehre von der Praedestination aus den Quellen dargestellt und mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schleiermacher’s Erwählungslehre comparativ beurtheilt. "Studien und Kritiken," 1847. J. B. Mozley: Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. Lond. 1855.

Augustine did not stop with this doctrine of sin and grace. He pursued his anthropology and soteriology to their source in theology. His personal experience of the wonderful and undeserved grace of God, various passages of the Scriptures, especially the Epistle to the Romans, and the logical connection of thought, led him to the doctrine of the unconditional and eternal purpose of the omniscient and omnipotent God. In this he found the programme of the history of the fall and redemption of the human race. He ventured boldly, but reverentially, upon the brink of that abyss of speculation, where all human knowledge is lost in mystery and in adoration.

Predestination, in general, is a necessary attribute of the divine will, as foreknowledge is an attribute of the divine intelligence; though, strictly speaking, we cannot predicate of God either a before or an after, and with him all is eternal present. It is absolutely inconceivable that God created the world or man blindly, without a fixed plan, or that this plan can be disturbed or hindered in any way by his creatures. Besides, there prevails everywhere, even in the natural life of man, in the distribution of mental gifts and earthly blessings, and yet much more in the realm of grace, a higher guidance, which is wholly independent of our will or act. Who is not obliged, in his birth in this or that place, at this or that time, under these or those circumstances, in all the epochs of his existence, in all his opportunities of education, and above all in his regeneration and sanctification, to recognize and adore the providence and the free grace of God?  The further we are advanced in the Christian life, the less are we inclined to attribute any merit to ourselves, and the more to thank God for all. The believer not only looks forward into eternal life, but also backward into the ante-mundane eternity, and finds in the eternal purpose of divine love the beginning and the firm anchorage of his salvation.1855

So far we may say every reflecting Christian must believe in some sort of election by free grace; and, in fact, the Holy Scriptures are full of it. But up to the time of Augustine the doctrine had never been an object of any very profound inquiry, and had therefore never been accurately defined, but only very superficially and casually touched. The Greek fathers, and Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Pelagius, had only taught a conditional predestination, which they made dependent on the foreknowledge of the free acts of men. In this, as in his views of sin and grace, Augustine went far beyond the earlier divines, taught an unconditional election of grace, and restricted the purpose of redemption to a definite circle of the elect, who constitute the minority of the race.1856

In Augustine’s system the doctrine of predestination is not, as in Calvin’s, the starting-point, but the consummation. It is a deduction from his views of sin and grace. It is therefore more practical than speculative. It is held in check by his sacramental views. If we may anticipate a much later terminology, it moves within the limits of infralapsarianism, but philosophically is less consistent than supralapsarianism. While the infralapsarian theory, starting with the consciousness of sin, excludes the fall—the most momentous event, except redemption, in the history of the world—from the divine purpose, and places it under the category of divine permission, making it dependent on the free will of the first man; the supralapsarian theory, starting with the conception of the absolute sovereignty of God, includes the fall of Adam in the eternal and unchangeable plan of God, though, of course, not as an end, or for its own sake (which would be blasphemy), but as a temporary means to an opposite end, or as the negative condition of a revelation of the divine justice in the reprobate, and of the divine grace in the elect. Augustine, therefore, strictly speaking, knows nothing of a double decree of election and reprobation, but recognizes simply a decree of election to salvation; though logical instinct does sometimes carry him to the verge of supralapsarianism. In both systems, however, the decree is eternal, unconditioned, and immutable; the difference is in the subject, which, according to one system, is man fallen, according to the other, man as such. It was a noble, inconsistency which kept Augustine from the more stringent and speculative system of supralapsarianism; his deep moral convictions revolted against making any allowance for sin by tracing its origin to the divine will; and by his peculiar view of the inseparable connection between Adam and the race, he could make every man as it were individually responsible for the fall of Adam. But the Pelagians, who denied this connection, charged him with teaching a kind of fatalism.

The first sin, according to Augustine’s theory, was an act of freedom, which could and should have been avoided. But once committed, it subjected the whole race, which was germinally in the loins of Adam, to the punitive justice of God. All men are only a mass of perdition,1857 and deserve, both for their innate and their actual sin, temporal and eternal death. God is but just, if He leave a great portion, nay (if all heathen and unbaptized children are lost), the greatest portion, of mankind to their deserved fate. But He has resolved from eternity to reveal in some His grace, by rescuing them from the mass of perdition, and without their merit saving them.

This is the election of grace, or predestination. It is related to grace itself, as cause to effect, as preparation to execution.1858  It is the ultimate, unfathomable ground of salvation. It is distinguished from foreknowledge, as will from intelligence; it always implies intelligence, but is not always implied in it.1859  God determines and knows beforehand what He will do; the fall of man, and the individual sins of men, He knows perfectly even from eternity, but He does not determine or will them, He only permits them. There is thus a point, where prescience is independent of predestination, and where human freedom, as it were, is interposed. (Here lies the philosophical weakness, but, on the other hand, the ethical strength of the infralapsarian system, as compared with the supralapsarian). The predetermination has reference only to good, not to evil. It is equivalent to election, while predestination, in the supralapsarian scheme, includes the decretum electionis and the decretum reprobationis. Augustine, it is true, speaks also in some places of a predestination to perdition (in consequence of sin), but never of a predestination to sin.1860  The election of grace is conditioned by no foreseen merit, but is absolutely free. God does not predestinate His children on account of their faith, for their faith is itself a gift of grace; but He predestinates them to faith and to holiness.1861

Thus also the imputation of teaching that a man may be elect, and yet live a godless life, is precluded.1862  Sanctification is the infallible effect of election. Those who are thus predestinated as vessels of mercy, may fall for a while, like David and Peter, but cannot finally fall from grace. They must at last be saved by, the successive steps of vocation, justification, and glorification, as certainly as God is almighty and His promises Yea and Amen;1863 while the vessels of wrath are lost through their own fault. To election necessarily belongs the gift of perseverance, the donum perseverantiae, which is attested by a happy death. Those who fall away, even though they have been baptized and regenerated, show thereby, that they never belonged to the number of the elect.1864  Hence we cannot certainly know in this life who are of the elect, and we must call all to repentance and offer to all salvation, though the vocation of grace only proves effectual to some.

Augustine, as, already remarked, deduced this doctrine from his view of sin. If all men are by nature utterly incompetent to good, if it is grace that works in us to will and to do good, if faith itself is an undeserved gift of grace: the ultimate ground of salvation can then be found only in the inscrutable counsel of God. He appealed to the wonderful leadings in the lives of individuals and of nations, some being called to the gospel and to baptism, while others die in darkness. Why precisely this or that one attains to faith and others do not, is, indeed, a mystery. We cannot, says he, in this life explain the readings of Providence; if we only believe that God is righteous, we shall hereafter attain to perfect knowledge.

He could cite many Scripture texts, especially the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, for his doctrine. But other texts, which teach the universal vocation to salvation, and make man responsible for his reception or rejection of the gospel, he could only explain by forced interpretations. Thus, for instance, be understands in 1 Tim. ii. 4 by the all men, whom God will have to be saved, all manner of men, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, or he wrests the sense into: All who are saved, are saved only by the will of God.1865  When he finds no other way of meeting objections, be appeals to the inscrutable wisdom of God.

Augustine’s doctrine of predestination was the immediate occasion of a theological controversy which lasted almost a hundred years, developed almost every argument for and against the doctrine, and called forth a system holding middle ground, to which we now turn.

§ 159. Semi-Pelagianism.

Comp. the Works at § 146.

Sources.

I. Joh. Cassianus († 432): Collationes Patrum xxiv, especially the xiii. In the Opera omnia, cum commentaries D. Alardi Gazaei (Gazet), Atrebati (Atrecht or Arras in France), 1628 and 1733; reprinted, with additions, in Migne’s Patrologia, tom. xlix. and l. (tom. i. pp. 478–1328), and also published several times separately. Vincentius Lirinsis († 450), Faustus Rhegiensis († 490–500), and other Semi-Pelagian writers, see Gallandi, Biblioth. tom. x., and Migne, Patrol. tom. l. and liii.

II. Augustinus: De gratia et libero arbitrio; De correptione et gratia; De praedestinatione Sanctorum; De dono perseverantiae (all in the 10th vol. of the Benedict. ed.). Prosper Aquitanus (a disciple and admirer of Augustine, † 460): Epistola ad Augustinum de reliquiis Pelagianae haereseos in Gallia (Aug. Ep. 225, and in Opera Aug. tom. x. 780), and De gratia et libero arbitrio (contra Collatorem). Hilarius: Ad Augustinum de eodem argumento (Ep. 226 among the Epp. Aug., and in tom. x. 783). Also the Augustinian writings of Avitus of Vienne, Caesarius of Arles, Fulgentius of Ruspe, and others. (Comp. Gallandi, Bibl. tom. xi.; Migne, Patrol. vol. li.)

The Acta of the Synod of Orange, A.D. 529, in Mansi, tom. viii. 711 sqq.

Literature.

Jac. Sirmond: Historia praedestinatiana. Par. 1648. Johann Geffken: Historia Semipelagianismi antiquissima (more properly antiquissimi). Gott. 1826 (only goes to the year 434). G. Fr. Wiggers: Versuch einer pragmatischen Darstellung des Semipelagianismus in seinem Kampfe gegen den Augustinismus his zur zweiten Synode zu Orange. Hamburg, 1833 (the second part of his already cited work upon Augustinianism and Pelagianism). A very thorough work, but unfortunately without index. Comp, also Walch, Schröckh, and the appropriate portions of the later works upon the history of the church and of doctrines.

Semi-Pelagianism is a somewhat vague and indefinite attempt at reconciliation, hovering midway between the sharply marked systems of Pelagius and Augustine, taking off the edge of each, and inclining now to the one, now to the other. The name was introduced during the scholastic age, but the system of doctrine, in all essential points, was formed in Southern France in the fifth century, during the latter years of Augustine’s life and soon after his death. It proceeded from the combined influence of the pre-Augustinian synergism and monastic legalism. Its leading idea is, that divine grace and the human will jointly accomplish the work of conversion and sanctification, and that ordinarily man must take the first step. It rejects the Pelagian doctrine of the moral roundness of man, but rejects also the Augustinian doctrine of the entire corruption and bondage of the natural man, and substitutes the idea of a diseased or crippled state of the voluntary power. It disowns the Pelagian conception of grace as a mere external auxiliary; but also, quite as decidedly, the Augustinian doctrines of the sovereignty, irresistibleness, and limitation of grace; and affirms the necessity and the internal operation of grace with and through human agency, a general atonement through Christ, and a predestination to salvation conditioned by the foreknowledge of faith. The union of the Pelagian and Augustinian elements thus attempted is not, however, an inward organic coalescence, but rather a mechanical and arbitrary combination, which really satisfies neither the one interest nor the other, but commonly leans to the Pelagian side.1866

For this reason it admirably suited the legalistic and ascetic piety of the middle age, and indeed always remained within the pale of the Catholic church, and never produced a separate sect.

We glance now at the main features of the origin and progress of this school.

The Pelagian system had been vanquished by Augustine, and rejected and condemned as heresy by the church. This result, however, did not in itself necessarily imply the complete approval of the Augustinian system. Many, even opponents of Pelagius, recoiled from a position so wide of the older fathers as Augustine’s doctrines of the bondage of man and the absolute election of grace, and preferred a middle ground.

First the monks of the convent of Adrumetum in North Africa differed among themselves over the doctrine of predestination; some perverting it to carnal security, others plunging from it into anguish and desperation, and yet others feeling compelled to lay more stress than Augustine upon human freedom and responsibility. Augustine endeavored to allay the scruples of these monks by his two treatises, De gratia et libero arbitrio, and De correptione et gratia. The abbot Valentinus answered these in the name of the monks in a reverent and submissive tone.1867

But simultaneously a more dangerous opposition to the doctrine of predestination arose in Southern Gaul, in the form of a regular theological school within the Catholic church. The members of this school were first called "remnants of the Pelagians,"1868 but commonly Massilians, from Massilia (Marseilles), their chief centre, and afterwards Semi-Pelagians. Augustine received an account of this from two learned and pious lay friends, Prosper, and Hilarius,1869 who begged that he himself would take the pen against it. This was the occasion of his two works, De praedestinatione sanctorum, and De dono perseverentiae, with which he worthily closed his labors as an author. He deals with these disputants more gently than with the Pelagians, and addresses them as brethren. After his death (430) the discussion was continued principally in Gaul; for then North Africa was disquieted by the victorious invasion of the Vandals, which for several decades shut it out from the circle of theological and ecclesiastical activity.

At the head of the Semi-Pelagian party stood John Cassian, the founder and abbot of the monastery at Massilia, a man of thorough cultivation, rich experience, and unquestioned orthodoxy.1870  He was a grateful disciple of Chrysostom, who ordained him deacon, and apparently also presbyter. His Greek training and his predilection for monasticism were a favorable soil for his Semi-Pelagian theory. He labored awhile in Rome with Pelagius, and afterwards in Southern France, in the cause of monastic piety, which he efficiently promoted by exhortation and example. Monasticism sought in cloistered retreats a protection against the allurements of sin, the desolating incursions of the barbarians, and the wretchedness of an age of tumult and confusion. But the enthusiasm for the monastic life tended strongly to over-value external acts and ascetic discipline, and resisted the free evangelical bent of the Augustinian theology. Cassian wrote twelve books De coenobiorum institutis, in which be first describes the outward life of the monks, and then their inward conflicts and victories over the eight capital vices: intemperance, unchastity, avarice, anger, sadness, dulness, ambition, and pride. More important are his fourteen Collationes Patrum, conversations which Cassian and his friend Germanus had had with the most experienced ascetics in Egypt, during a seven years’ sojourn there.

In this work, especially in the thirteenth Colloquy,1871 he rejects decidedly the errors of Pelagius,1872 and affirms the universal sinfulness of men, the introduction of it by the fall of Adam, and the necessity, of divine grace to every individual act. But, with evident reference to Augustine, though without naming him, he combats the doctrines of election and of the irresistible and particular operation of grace, which were in conflict with the church tradition, especially, with the Oriental theology, and with his own earnest ascetic legalism.

In opposition to both systems he taught that the divine image and human freedom were not annihilated, but only weakened, by the fall; in other words, that man is sick, but not dead, that he cannot indeed help himself, but that he can desire the help of a physician, and either accept or refuse it when offered, and that he must cooperate with the grace of God in his salvation. The question, which of the two factors has the initiative, he answers, altogether empirically, to this effect: that sometimes, and indeed usually, the human will, as in the cases of the Prodigal Son, Zacchaeus, the Penitent Thief, and Cornelius, determines itself to conversion; sometimes grace anticipates it, and, as with Matthew and Paul, draws the resisting will—yet, even in this case, without constraint—to God.1873  Here, therefore, the gratia praeveniens is manifestly overlooked.

These are essentially Semi-Pelagian principles, though capable of various modifications and applications. The church, even the Roman church, has rightly emphasized the necessity of prevenient grace, but has not impeached Cassian, who is properly the father of the Semi-Pelagian theory. Leo the Great even commissioned him to write a work against Nestorianism,1874 in which he found an excellent opportunity to establish his orthodoxy, and to clear himself of all connection with the kindred heresies of Pelagianism and Nestorianism, which were condemned together at Ephesus in 431. He died after 432, at an advanced age, and though not formally canonized, is honored as a saint by some dioceses. His works are very extensively read for practical edification.

Against the thirteenth Colloquy of Cassian, Prosper Aquitanus, an Augustinian divine and poet, who, probably on account of the desolations of the Vandals, had left his native Aquitania for the South of Gaul, and found comfort and repose in the doctrines of election amid the wars of his age, wrote a book upon grace and freedom,1875 about 432, in which he criticises twelve propositions of Cassian, and declares them all heretical, except the first. He also composed a long poem in defence of Augustine and his system,1876 and refuted the "Gallic slanders and Vincentian imputations," which placed the doctrine of predestination in the most odious light.1877

But the Semi-Pelagian doctrine was the more popular, and made great progress in France. Its principal advocates after Cassian are the following: the presbyter-monk Vicentius of Lerinum, author of the Commonitorium, in which he developed the true catholic test of doctrine, the threefold consensus, in covert antagonism to the novel doctrines of Augustinianism (about 434);1878 Faustus, bishop of Rhegium (Riez), who at the council of Arles (475) refuted the hyper-Augustinian presbyter Lucidus, and was commissioned by the council to write a work upon the grace of God and human freedom;1879 Gennadius, presbyter at Marseilles (died after 495), who continued the biographical work of Jerome, De viris illustribus, down to 495, and attributed Augustine’s doctrine of predestination to his itch for writing;1880 Arnobius the younger;1881 and the much discussed anonymous tract Praedestinatus (about 460), which, by gross exaggeration, and by an unwarranted imputation of logical results which Augustine had expressly forestalled, placed the doctrine of predestination in an odious light, and then refuted it.1882

The author of the Praedestinatus says, that a treatise had fallen into his hands, which fraudulently bore upon its face the name of the Orthodox teacher Augustine, in order to smuggle in, under a Catholic name, a blasphemous dogma, pernicious to the faith. On this account he had undertaken to transcribe and to refute this work. The treatise itself consists of three books; the first, following Augustine’s book, De haeresibus, gives a description of ninety heresies from Simon Magus down to the time of the author, and brings up, as the last of them, the doctrine of a double predestination, as a doctrine which makes God the author of evil, and renders all the moral endeavors of men fruitless;1883 the second book is the pseudo-Augustinian treatise upon this ninetieth heresy, but is apparently merely a Semi-Pelagian caricature by the same author;1884 the third book contains the refutation of the thus travestied pseudo-Augustinian doctrine of predestination, employing the usual Semi-Pelagian arguments.

A counterpart to this treatise is found in the also anonymous work, De vocatione omnium gentium, which endeavors to commend Augustinianism by mitigation, in the same degree that the Praedestinatus endeavors to stultify it by exaggeration.1885  It has been ascribed to pope Leo I. († 461), of whom it would not be unworthy; but it cannot be supposed that the work of so distinguished a man could have remained anonymous. The author avoids even the term praedestinatio, and teaches expressly, that Christ died for all men and would have all to be saved; thus rejecting the Augustinian particularism. But, on the other hand, he also rejects the Semi-Pelagian principles, and asserts the utter inability of the natural man to do good. He unhesitatingly sets grace above the human will, and represents the whole life of faith, from beginning to end, as a work of unmerited grace. He develops the three thoughts, that God desires the salvation of all men; that no one is saved by his own merits, but by grace; and that the human understanding cannot fathom the depths of divine wisdom. We must trust in the righteousness of God. Every one of the damned suffers only the righteous punishment of his sins; while no saint can boast himself in his merits, since it is only of pure grace that he is saved. But how is it with the great multitude of infants that die every year without baptism, and without opportunity of coming to the knowledge of salvation?  The author feels this difficulty, without, however, being able to solve it. He calls to his help the representative character of parents, and dilutes the Augustinian doctrine of original sin to the negative conception of a mere defect of good, which, of course, also reduces the idea of hereditary guilt and the damnation of unbaptized children. He distinguishes between a general grace which comes to man through the external revelation in nature, law, and gospel, and a special grace, which effects conversion and regeneration by an inward impartation of saving power, and which is only bestowed on those that are saved.

Semi-Pelagianism prevailed in Gaul for several decades. Under the lead of Faustus of Rhegium it gained the victory in two synods, at Arles in 472 and at Lyons in 475, where Augustine’s doctrine of predestination was condemned, though without mention of his name.

§ 160. Victory of Semi-Augustinianism. Council of Orange,  A.D. 529.

But these synods were only provincial, and were the cause of a schism. In North Africa and in Rome the Augustinian system of doctrine, though in a somewhat softened form, attained the ascendency. In the decree issued by pope Gelasius in 496 de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis (the beginning of an Index librorum prohibitorum), the writings of Augustine and Prosper Aquitanus are placed among books ecclesiastically sanctioned, those of Cassian and Faustus of Rhegium among the apocryphal or forbidden. Even in Gaul it found in the beginning of the sixth century very capable and distinguished advocates, especially in Avitus, archbishop of Vienne (490523), and Caesarius, archbishop of Arles (502–542). Associated with these was Fulgentius of Ruspe († 533), in the name of the sixty African bishops banished by the Vandals and then living in Sardinia.1886

The controversy was stirred up anew by the Scythian monks, who in their zeal for the Monophysite theopaschitism, abhorred everything connected with Nestorianism, and urged first pope Hormisdas, and then with better success the exiled African bishops, to procure the condemnation of Semi-Pelagianism.

These transactions terminated at length in the triumph of a moderate Augustinianism, or of what might be called Semi-Augustinianism, in distinction from Semi-Pelagianism. At the synod of Orange (Arausio) in the year 529, at which Caesarius of Arles was leader, the Semi-Pelagian system, yet without mention of its adherents, was condemned in twenty-five chapters or canons, and the Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace was approved, without the doctrine of absolute or particularistic predestination.1887  A similar result was reached at a synod of Valence (Valencia), held the same year, but otherwise unknown.1888

The synod of Orange, for its Augustinian decisions in anthropology and soteriology, is of great importance. But as the chapters contain many repetitions (mostly from the Bible and the works of Augustine and his followers), it will suffice to give extracts containing in a positive form the most important propositions.

Chap. 1. The sin of Adam has not injured the body only, but also the soul of man.

2. The sin of Adam has brought sin and death upon all mankind.

3. Grace is not merely bestowed when we pray for it, but grace itself causes us to pray for it.

5. Even the beginning of faith, the disposition to believe, is effected by grace.

9. All good thoughts and works are God’s gift.

10. Even the regenerate and the saints need continually the divine help.

12. What God loves in us, is not our merit, but his own gift.

13. The free will weakened1889 in Adam, can only be restored through the grace of baptism.

16. All good that we possess is God’s gift, and therefore no one should boast.

18. Unmerited grace precedes meritorious works.1890

19. Even had man not fallen, he would have needed divine grace for salvation.

23. When man sins, he does his own will; when he does good, he executes the will of God, yet voluntarily.

25. The love of God is itself a gift of God.

To these chapters the synod added a Creed of anthropology and soteriology, which, in opposition to Semi-Pelagianism, contains the following five propositions:1891

1. Through the fall free will has been so weakened, that without prevenient grace no one can love God, believe on Him, or do good for God’s sake, as he ought (sicut oportuit, implying that he may in a certain measure).

2. Through the grace of God all may, by the co-operation of God, perform what is necessary for their soul’s salvation.

3. It is by no means our faith, that any have been predestinated by God to sin (ad malum), but rather: if there are people who believe so vile a thing, we condemn them with utter abhorrence (cum omni detestatione).1892

4. In every good work the beginning proceeds not, from us, but God inspires in us faith and love to Him without merit precedent on our part, so that we desire baptism, and after baptism can, with His help, fulfil His will.

5. Because this doctrine of the fathers and the synod is also salutary for the laity, the distinguished men of the laity also, who have been present at this solemn assembly, shall subscribe these acts.

In pursuance of this requisition, besides the bishops, the Praefectus praetorio Liberius, and seven other viri illustres, signed the Acts. This recognition of the lay element, in view of the hierarchical bent of the age, is significant, and indicates an inward connection of evangelical doctrine with the idea of the universal priesthood. And they were two laymen, we must remember, Prosper and Hilarius, who first came forward in Gaul in energetic opposition to Semi-Pelagianism and in advocacy of the sovereignty of divine grace.

The decisions of the council were sent by Caesarius to Rome, and were confirmed by pope Boniface II. in 530. Boniface, in giving his approval, emphasized the declaration, that even the beginning of a good will and of faith is a gift of prevenient grace, while Semi-Pelagianism left open a way to Christ without grace from God. And beyond question, the church was fully warranted in affirming the pre-eminence of grace over freedom, and the necessity and importance of the gratia praeveniens.

Notwithstanding this rejection of the Semi-Pelagian teachings (not teachers), they made their way into the church again, and while Augustine was universally honored as a canonized saint and standard teacher, Cassian and Faustus of Rhegium remained in grateful remembrance as saints in France.1893

At the close of this period Gregory the Great represents the moderated Augustinian system, with the gratia praeveniens, but without the gratia irresistibilis and without a particularistic decretum absolutum. Through him this milder Augustinianism exerted great influence upon the mediaeeval theology. Yet the strict Augustinianism always had its adherents, in such men as Bede, Alcuin, and Isidore of Seville, who taught a gemina praedestinatio, sive electorum ad salutem, sive reproborum ad mortem; it became prominent again in the Gottschalk controversy in the ninth century, was repressed by scholasticism and the prevailing legalism; was advocated by the precursors of the Reformation, especially by Wiclif and Huss; and in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, it gained a massive acknowledgment and an independent development in Calvinism, which, in fact, partially recast it, and gave it its most consistent form.

CHAPTER X.

CHURCH FATHERS, AND THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

Comp. the general literature on the Fathers in vol. i. § 116, and the special literature in the several sections following.

I.—The Greek Fathers.

§ 161. Eusebius of C sarea.

I. Eusebius Pamphili: Opera omnia Gr. et Lat., curis variorum nempe II. Valesii, Fr. Vigeri, B. Montfaucon, Card. Angelo Maii edita; collegit et denuo recognovit J. P. Migne. Par. (Petit-Montrouge) 1857. 6 vols. (tom. xix.-xxiv. of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca). Of his several works his Church History has been oftenest edited, sometimes by itself, sometimes in connection with his Vita Constantini, and with the church histories of his successors; best by Henr. Valesius (Du Valois), Par. 1659–’73, 8 vols., and Cantabr. 1720, 3 vols., and again 1746 (with additions by G. Reading, best ed.); also (without the later historians) by E. Zimmermann, Francof. 1822; F. A. Heinichen, Lips. 1827–’8, 3 vols.; E. Burton, Oxon. 1838, 2 vols. (1845 and 1856 in 1 vol.); Schwegler, Tüb. 1852; also in various translations: In German by Stroth, Quedlinburg, 1776 ff., 2 vols.; by Closs, Stuttg. 1839; and several times in French and English; in English by Hanmer (1584), T. Shorting, and better by Chr. Fr. Cruse (an Amer. Episcopalian of German descent, died in New York, 1865): The Ecclesiastical History of Euseb. Pamph., etc., Now York, 1856 (10th ed.), and Lond. 1858 (in Bohn’s Eccles. Library). Comp. also the literary notices in Brunet, sub Euseb., and James Darling, Cyclop. Bibliograph. p. 1072 ff.

II. Biographies by Hieronymus (De viris illustr. c. 81, a brief sketch, with a list of his works), Valesius (De vita scriptisque Eusebii Caesar.), W. Cave (Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the Church, vol. ii. pp. 95–144, ed. H. Cary, Oxf. 1840), Heinichen, Stroth, Cruse, and others, in their editions of the Eccles. Hist. of Eusebius. F. C. Baur: Comparatur Eusebius Hist. eccl. parens cum parente Hist. Herodoto. Tub. 1834. Haenell: De Euseb. Caes. religionis christ. defensore. Gott. 1843. Sam. Lee: Introductory treatise in his Engl. edition of the Theophany of Eusebius, Cambr. 1843. Semisch: Art. Eusebius v. Caes. in Herzog’s Encycl. vol. iv. (1855), pp. 229–238. Lyman Coleman: Eusebius as an historian, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, 1858, pp. 78–96. (The biography by Acacius, his successor in the see of Caesarea, Socr. ii. 4, is lost.)

This third period is uncommonly rich in great teachers of the church, who happily united theological ability and practical piety, and who, by their development of the most important dogmas in conflict with mighty errors, earned the gratitude of posterity. They monopolized all the learning and eloquence of the declining Roman empire, and made it subservient to the cause of Christianity for the benefit of future generations. They are justly called fathers of the church; they belong to Christendom without distinction of denominations; and they still, especially Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greek fathers, and Augustine and Jerome among the Latin, by their writings and their example, hold powerful sway, though with different degrees of authority according to the views entertained by the various churches concerning the supremacy of the Bible and the value of ecclesiastical tradition.

We begin the series of the most important Nicene and post-Nicene divines with Eusebius of Caesarea, the "father of church history," the Christian Herodotus.

He was born about the year 260 or 270, probably in Palestine, and was educated at Antioch, and afterwards at Caesarea in Palestine, under the influence of the works of Origen. He formed an intimate friendship with the learned presbyter Pamphilus,1894 who had collected a considerable biblical and patristic library, and conducted a flourishing theological school which he had founded at Caesarea, till in 309 he died a martyr in the persecution under Diocletian.1895  Eusebius taught for a long time in this school; and after the death of his preceptor and friend, he travelled to Tyre and to Egypt, and was an eye-witness of the cruel scenes of the last great persecution of the Christians. He was imprisoned as a confessor, but soon released.

Twenty years later, when Eusebius, presiding at the council at Tyre (335 or 336), took sides against Athanasius, the bishop Potamon of Hieraclea, according to the account of Epiphanius, exclaimed in his face: "How dost thou, Eusebius, sit as judge of the innocent Athanasius?  Who can bear it?  Why! didst thou not sit with me in prison in the time of the tyrants?  They plucked out my eye for my confession of the truth; thou camest forth unhurt; thou hast suffered nothing for thy confession; unscathed thou art here present. How didst thou escape from prison?  On some other ground than because thou didst promise to do an unlawful thing [to sacrifice to idols]? or, perchance, didst thou actually do this?  "But this insinuation of cowardice and infidelity to Christ arose probably from envy and party passion in a moment of excitement. With such a stain upon him, Eusebius would hardly have been intrusted by the ancient church with the episcopal staff.1896

About the year 315, or earlier, Eusebius was chosen bishop of Caesarea,1897 where he labored till his death in 340. The patriarchate of Antioch, which was conferred upon him after the deposition of Eustathius in 331, he in honorable self-denial, and from preference for a more quiet literary life, declined.

He was drawn into the Arian controversies against his will, and played an eminent part at the council of Nicaea, where he held the post of honor at the right hand of the presiding emperor. In the perplexities of this movement he took middle ground, and endeavored to unite the opposite parties. This brought him, on the one hand, the peculiar favor of the emperor Constantine, but, on the other, from the leaders of the Nicene orthodoxy, the suspicion of a secret leaning to the Arian heresy.1898  It is certain that, before the council of Nicaea, he sympathized with Arius; that in the council he proposed an orthodox but indefinite compromise-creed; that after the council he was not friendly with Athanasius and other defenders of orthodoxy; and that, in the synod of Tyre, which deposed Athanasius in 335, he took a leading part, and, according to Epiphanius, presided. In keeping with these facts is his silence respecting the Arian controversy (which broke out in 318) in an Ecclesiastical History which comes down to 324, and was probably not completed till 326, when the council of Nicaea would have formed its most fitting close. He would rather close his history with the victory of Constantine over Licinius than with the Creed over which theological parties contended, and with which he himself was implicated. But, on the other hand, it is also a fact that he subscribed the Nicene Creed, though reluctantly, and reserving his own interpretation of the homoousion; that he publicly recommended it to the people of his diocese; and that he never formally rejected it.

The only satisfactory solution of this apparent inconsistency is to be found in his own indecision and leaning to a doctrinal latitudinarianism, not unfrequent in historians who become familiar with a vast variety of opinions in different ages and countries. On the important point of the homoousion he never came to a firm and final conviction. He wavered between the older Origenistic subordinationism and the Nicene orthodoxy. He asserted clearly and strongly with Origen the eternity of the Son, and so far was decidedly opposed to Arianism, which made Christ a creature in time; but he recoiled from the homoousion, because it seemed to him to go beyond the Scriptures, and hence he made no use of the term, either in his book against Marcellus, or in his discourses against Sabellius. Religious sentiment compelled him to acknowledge the full deity of Christ; fear of Sabellianism restrained him. He avoided the strictly orthodox formulas, and moved rather in the less definite terms of former times. Theological acumen he constitutionally lacked. He was, in fact, not a man of controversy, but of moderation and peace. He stood upon the border between the ante-Nicene theology and the Nicene. His doctrine shows the color of each by turns, and reflects the unsettled problem of the church in the first stage of the Arian controversy.1899

With his theological indecision is connected his weakness of character. He was an amiable and pliant court-theologian, and suffered himself to be blinded and carried away by the splendor of the first Christian emperor, his patron and friend. Constantine took him often into his counsels, invited him to his table, related to him his vision of the cross, showed him the famous labarum, listened standing to his occasional sermons, wrote him several letters, and intrusted to him the supervision of the copies of the Bible for the use of the churches in Constantinople.

At the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of this emperor’s reign (336), Eusebius delivered a panegyric decked with the most pompous hyperbole, and after his death, in literal obedience to the maxim: "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," he glorified his virtues at the expense of veracity and with intentional omission of his faults. With all this, however, he had noble qualities of mind and heart, which in more quiet times would have been an ornament to any episcopal see. And it must be said, to his honor, that he never claimed the favor of the emperor for private ends.

The theological and literary value of Eusebius lies in the province of learning. He was an unwearied reader and collector, and probably surpassed all the other church fathers, hardly excepting even Origen and Jerome, in compass of knowledge and of acquaintance with Grecian literature both heathen and Christian; while in originality, vigor, sharpness, and copiousness of thought, he stands far below Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories. His scholarship goes much further in breadth than in depth, and is not controlled and systematized by a philosophical mind or a critical judgment.

Of his works, the historical are by far the most celebrated and the most valuable; to wit, his Ecclesiastical History, his Chronicle, his Life of Constantine, and a tract on the Martyrs of Palestine in the Diocletian persecution. The position of Eusebius, at the close of the period of persecution, and in the opening of the period of the imperial establishment of Christianity, and his employment of many ancient documents, some of which have since been lost, give these works a peculiar value. He is temperate, upon the whole, impartial, and truth-loving—rare virtues in an age of intense excitement and polemical zeal like that in which he lived. The fact that he was the first to work this important field of theological study, and for many centuries remained a model in it, justly entitles him to his honorable distinction of Father of Church History. Yet he is neither a critical student nor an elegant writer of history, but only a diligent and learned collector. His Ecclesiastical History, from the birth of Christ to the victory of Constantine over Licinius in 324, gives a colorless, defective, incoherent, fragmentary, yet interesting picture of the heroic youth of the church, and owes its incalculable value, not to the historic art of the author, but almost entirely to his copious and mostly literal extracts from foreign, and in some cases now extinct, sources. As concerns the first three centuries, too, it stands alone; for the successors of Eusebius begin their history where he leaves off.

His Chronicle consists of an outline-sketch of universal history down to 325, arranged by ages and nations (borrowed largely from the Chronography of Julius Africanus), and an abstract of this universal chronicle in tabular form. The Greek original is lost, with the exception of unconnected fragments by Syncellus; but the second part, containing the chronological tables, was translated and continued by Jerome to 378, and remained for centuries the source of the synchronistic knowledge of history, and the basis of historical works in Christendom.1900  Jerome also translated, with several corrections and additions, a useful antiquarian work of Eusebius, the so-called Onomasticon, a description of the places mentioned in the Bible.1901

In his Life, and still more in his Eulogy, of Constantine, Eusebius has almost entirely forgotten the dignity of the historian in the zeal of the panegyrist. Nevertheless, this work is the chief source of the history of the reign of his imperial friend.1902

Next in importance to his historical works are his apologetic; namely, his Praeparatio evangelica,1903 and his Demonstratio evangelica.1904 These were both written before 324, and are an arsenal of the apologetic material of the ancient church. The former proposes, in fifteen books, to give a documentary refutation of the heathen religious from Greek writings. The latter gives, in twenty books, of which only the first ten are preserved, the positive argument for the absolute truth of Christianity, from its nature, and from the fulfilment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. The Theophany, in five books, is a popular compend from these two works, and was probably written later, as Epiphanius wrote his Anacephalaeosis after the Panarion, for more general use.1905  It is known in the Greek original from fragments only, published by Cardinal Mai,1906 and now complete in a Syriac version which was discovered in 1839 by Tattam, in a Nitrian monastery, and was edited by Samuel Lee at London in 1842.1907  To this class also belongs his apologetic tract Against Hierocles.1908

Of much less importance are the two dogmatic works of Eusebius: Against Marcellus, and Upon the Church Theology (likewise against Marcellus), in favor of the hypostatical existence of the Son.1909

His Commentaries on several books of the Bible (Isaiah, Psalms, Luke) pursue, without independence, and without knowledge of the Hebrew, the allegorical method of Origen.1910

To these are to be added, finally, some works in Biblical Introduction and Archaeology, the Onomasticon, already alluded to, a sort of sacred geography, and fragments of an enthusiastic Apology for Origen, a juvenile work which he and Pamphilus jointly produced before 309, and which, in the Origenistic controversy, was the target of the bitterest shots of Epiphanius and Jerome.1911

§ 162. The Church Historians after Eusebius.

I. The Church Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Evagrius, Philostorgius, and Theodorus Lector have been edited, with the Eccles. Hist. of Eusebius, by Valesius, Par. 1659–’73, in 3 vols. (defective reprint, Frankf. a. M. 1672–’79); best ed., Cambridge, 1720, and again 1746, in 3 vols., with improvements and additions by Guil. Reading. Best English translation by Meredith, Hanmer, and Wye Saltonstall, Cambr. 1688, 1692, and London, 1709. New ed. in Bohn’s Ecclesiastical Library, Land. 1851, in 4 vols. small 8vo.

II. F. A. Holzhausen: De fontibus, quibus Socrates, Sozomenus, ac Theodoretus in scribenda historia sacra usi sunt. Gött. 1825. G. Dangers: De fontibus, indole et dignitate librorum Theod. Lectoris et Evagrii. Gött. 1841. J. G. Dowling: An Introduction to the Critical Study of Eccl. History. Lond. 1838, p. 84 ff. F. Chr. Baur: Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tüb. 1852, pp. 7–32. Comp. P. Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church, Gen. Introd. p. 52 f.

Eusebius, without intending it, founded a school of church historians, who continued the thread of his story from Constantine the Great to the close of the sixth century, and, like him, limited themselves to a simple, credulous narration of external facts, and a collection of valuable documents, without an inkling of the critical sifting, philosophical mastery, and artistic reproduction of material, which we find in Thucydides and Tacitus among the classics, and in many a modern historian. None of them touched the history of the first three centuries; Eusebius was supposed to have done here all that could be desired. The histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret run nearly parallel, but without mutual acquaintance or dependence, and their contents are very similar.1912  Evagrius carried the narrative down to the close of the sixth century. All of them combine ecclesiastical and political history, which after Constantine were inseparably interwoven in the East; and (with the exception of Philostorgius) all occupy essentially the same orthodox stand-point. They ignore the Western church, except where it comes in contact with the East.

These successors of Eusebius are:

Socrates, an attorney or scholasticus in Constantinople, born in 380. His work, in seven books, covers the period from 306 to 439, and is valuable for its numerous extracts from sources, and its calm, impartial representation. It has been charged with a leaning towards Novatianism. He had upon the whole a higher view of the duty of the historian than his contemporaries and successors; he judged more liberally of heretics and schismatics, and is less extravagant in the praise of emperors and bishops.1913

Hermias Sozomen, a native of Palestine, a junior contemporary of Socrates, and likewise a scholasticus in Constantinople, wrote the history of the church, in nine books, from 323 to the death of Honorius in 423,1914 and hence in its subjects keeps pace for the most part with Socrates, though, as it would appear, without the knowledge of his work, and with many additions on the history of the hermits and monks, for whom he had a great predilection.1915

Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, was born at Antioch about 390, of an honorable and pious mother; educated in the cloister of St. Euprepius (perhaps with Nestorius); formed upon the writings of Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia; made bishop of Cyros, or Cyrrhos, in Syria, after 420; and died in 457. He is known to us from the Christological controversies as the most scholarly advocate of the Antiochian dyophysitism or moderate Nestorianism; condemned at Ephesus in 431, deposed by the council of Robbers in 449, acquitted in 451 by the fourth ecumenical council on condition of his condemning Nestorius and all deniers of the theotokos, but again partially condemned at the fifth long after his death. He was, therefore, like Eusebius, an actor as well as an author of church history. As bishop, he led an exemplary life, his enemies themselves being judges, and was especially benevolent to the poor. He owned nothing valuable but books, and applied the revenues of his bishopric to the public good. He shared the superstitions and weaknesses of his age.

His Ecclesiastical History, in five books, composed about 450, reaches from 325 to 429. It is the most valuable continuation of Eusebius, and, though shorter, it furnishes an essential supplement to the works of Socrates and Sozomen.

His "Historia religiosa" consists of biographies of hermits and monks, written with great enthusiasm for ascetic holiness, and with many fabulous accessories, according to the taste of the day. His "Heretical Fables,"1916 though superficial and marred by many errors, is of some importance for the history of Christian doctrine. It contains a severe condemnation of Nestorius, which we should hardly expect from Theodoret.1917

Theodoret was a very fruitful author. Besides these histories, he wrote valuable commentaries on most of the books of the Old Testament and on all the Epistles of Paul; dogmatic and polemic works against Cyril and the Alexandrian Christology, and against the heretics; an apology of Christianity against the Greek philosophy; and sermons and letters.1918

Evagrius (born about 536 in Syria, died after 594) was a lawyer in Antioch, and rendered the patriarch Gregory great service, particularly in an action for incest in 588. He was twice married, and the Antiochians celebrated his second wedding (592) with public plays. He is the last continuator of Eusebius and Theodoret, properly so called. He begins his Ecclesiastical History of six books with the council of Ephesus, 431, and closes it with the twelfth year of the reign of the emperor Maurice, 594. He is of special importance on the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; gives accounts of bishops and monks, churches and public buildings, earthquakes and other calamities; and interweaves political history, such as the wars of Chosroes and the assaults of the barbarians.1919  He was strictly orthodox, and a superstitious venerator of monks, saints, and relics.1920

Theodorus Lector, reader in the church of Constantinople about 525, compiled an abstract from Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, under the title of Historia tripartita, which is still extant in the manuscript;1921 and composed a continuation of Socrates from 431 to 518, of which fragments only are preserved in John Damascenus, Nilus, and Nicephorus Callisti.1922

Of Philostorgius, an Arian church historian (born in 368), nothing has come down to us but fragments in Photius; and these breathe so strong a partisan spirit, that the loss of the rest is not to be regretted. He described the period from the commencement of the Arian controversy to the reign of Valentinian III. A.D. 423.

The series of the Greek church historians closes with Nicephorus Callistus or Callisti (i.e., son of Callistus),1923 who lived at Constantinople in the fifteenth century. He was surprised that the voice of history had been silent since the sixth century, and resumed the long-neglected task where his predecessors had left it, but on a more extended plan of a general history of the catholic church from the beginning to the year 911. We have, however, only eighteen books to the death of emperor Phocas in 610, and a list of contents of five other books. He made large use of Eusebius and his successors, and added unreliable traditions of the later days of the Apostles, the history of Monophysitism, of monks and saints, of the barbarian irruptions, &c. He, too, ignores the Pelagian controversy, and takes little notice of the Latin church after the fifth century.1924

In the Latin church—to anticipate thus much—Eusebius found only one imitator and continuator, the presbyter and monk Rufinus, of Aquileia (330–410). He was at first a friend of Jerome, afterwards a bitter enemy. He translated, with abridgments and insertions at his pleasure, the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, and continued it to Theodosius the Great (392). Yet his continuation has little value. He wrote also biographies of hermits; an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed; and translations of several works of Origen, with emendations of offensive portions.1925

Cassiodorus, consul and monk (died about 562), composed a useful abstract of the works of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, in twelve books, under the title of Historia tripartita, for the Latin church of the middle age.

The only properly original contributions to church history from among the Latin divines were those of Jerome († 419) in his biographical and literary Catalogue of Illustrious Men (written in 392), which Gennadius, a Semi-Pelagian presbyter of South Gaul, continued to the year 495. Sulpicius Severus († 420) wrote in good style a Sacred History, or History of the Old and New Testament, from the creation down to the year 400; and Paulus Orosius (about 415) an apologetic Universal History, which hardly, however, deserves the name of a history.

§ 163. Athanasius the Great.

I. S. Athanasius: Opera omnia quae extant vel quae ejus nomine circumferuntur, etc., Gr. et lat., opera et studio monachorum ordinis S. Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri (Jac. Lopin et B. de, Montfaucon). Paris, 1698. 3 tom. fol. (or rather 2 tomi, the first in two parts). This is the most elegant and correct edition, but must be completed by two volumes of the Collectio nova Patrum, ed. B. de Montfaucon. Par. 1706. 2 tom. fol. More complete, but not so handsome, is the edition of 1777, Patav., in 4 vols. fol. (Brunet says of the latter "Édition moins belle et moins chère quo cello de Paris, mais augmentée d’un 4e vol., lequel renferme les opuscules de S. Athan., tirés de la Collectio nova du P. Montfaucon et des Anecdota de Wolf, et de plus l’interpretatio Psalmorum.")  But now both these older editions need again to be completed by the Syrian Festal Letters of Athanasius, discovered by Dr. Tattam in a Nitrian monastery in 1843; edited by W. Cureton in Syriac and English at London in 1846 and 1848 (and in English by H. Burgess and H. Williams, Oxf. 1854, in the Libr. of the Fathers); in German, with notes by F. Larson, at Leipzig in 1852; and in Syriac and Latin by Card. Angelo Mai in the Nova Patr. Bibliotheca, Rom. 1853, tom. vi. pp. 1–168. A new and more salable, though less accurate, edition of the Opera omnia Athan. (a reprint of the Benedictine) appeared at Petit-Montrouge (Par.) in J.P. Migne’s Patrologia Gr. (tom. xxv.-xxviii.), 1857, in 4 vols.

The more important dogmatic works of Athanasius have been edited separately by J. C. Thilo, in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Patrum Graec. dogmatica, Lips. 1853; and in an English translation, with explanations and indexes, by J. H. Newman, Oxf. 1842–’44 (Library of the Fathers, vols. 8, 13, 19).

II. Gregorius Naz.: Oratio panegyrica in Magnum Athanasium (Orat. xxi.). Several Vitae Athan. in the 1st vol. of the Bened. ed. of his Opera. Acta Sanctorum for May 2d. G. Hermant: La Vie d’Athanase, etc. Par. 1679. 2 vols. Tillemont: Mémoires, vol. viii. pp. 2–258 (2d ed. Par. 1713). W. Cave: Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the first Four Centuries, vol. ii. pp. 145–364 (Oxf. ed. of 1840). Schröckh: Th. xii. pp. 101–270. J. A. Möhler: Athanasius der Grosse und die Kirche seiner Zeit, besonders im Kampfe mit dem Arianismus. Mainz, 1827. 2d (title) ed. 1844. Heinrich Voigt: Die Lehre des heiligen Athanasius von Alexandria oder die kirchliche Dogmatik des 4ten Jahrhunderts auf Grund der biblischen Lehre vom Logos. Bremen, 1861. A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. New York, 1862, lecture vii. (pp. 322–358).

Athanasius is the theological and ecclesiastical centre, as his senior contemporary Constantine is the political and secular, about which the Nicene age revolves. Both bear the title of the Great; the former with the better right, that his greatness was intellectual and moral, and proved itself in suffering, and through years of warfare against mighty, errors and against the imperial court. Athanasius contra mundum, et mundus contra Athanasium, is a well-known sentiment which strikingly expresses his fearless independence and immovable fidelity to his convictions. He seems to stand an unanswerable contradiction to the catholic maxim of authority: Quod sem per, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est, and proves that truth is by no means always on the side of the majority, but may often be very unpopular. The solitary Athanasius even in exile, and under the ban of council and emperor, was the bearer of the truth, and, as he was afterwards named, the "father of orthodoxy."1926

On a martyrs’ day in 313 the bishop Alexander of Alexandria saw a troop of boys imitating the church services in innocent sport, Athanasius playing the part of bishop, and performing baptism by immersion.1927  He caught in this a glimpse of future greatness; took the youth into his care; and appointed him his secretary, and afterwards his archdeacon. Athanasius studied the classics, the Holy Scriptures, and the church fathers, and meantime lived as an ascetic. He already sometimes visited St. Anthony in his solitude.

In the year 325 he accompanied his bishop to the council of Nicaea, and at once distinguished himself there by his zeal and ability in refuting Arianism and vindicating the eternal deity of Christ, and incurred the hatred of this heretical party, which raised so many storms about his life.

In the year 3281928 he was nominated to the episcopal succession of Alexandria, on the recommendation of the dying Alexander, and by the voice of the people, though not yet of canonical age, and at first disposed to avoid the election by flight; and thus he was raised to the highest ecclesiastical dignity of the East. For the bishop of Alexandria was at the same time metropolitan of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis.

But now immediately began the long series of contests with the Arian party, which had obtained influence at the court of Constantine, and had induced the emperor to recall Arius and his adherents from exile. Henceforth the personal fortunes of Athanasius are so inseparably interwoven with the history of the Arian controversy that Nicene and Athanasian are equivalent terms, and the different depositions and restorations of Athanasius denote so many depressions and victories of the Nicene orthodoxy. Five times did the craft and power of his opponents, upon the pretext of all sorts of personal and political offences, but in reality on account of his inexorable opposition to the Arian and Semi-Arian heresy, succeed in deposing and banishing him. The first exile he spent in Treves, the second chiefly in Rome, the third with the monks in the Egyptian desert; and he employed them in the written defence of his righteous cause. Then the Arian party, was distracted, first by internal division, and further by the death of the emperor Constantius (361), who was their chief support. The pagan Julian recalled the banished bishops of both parties, in the hope that they might destroy one another. Thus, Athanasius among them, who was the most downright opposite of the Christian-hating emperor, again received his bishopric. But when, by his energetic and wise administration, he rather restored harmony in his diocese, and sorely injured paganism, which he feared far less than Arianism, and thus frustrated the cunning plan of Julian, the emperor resorted to violence, and banished him as a dangerous disturber of the peace. For the fourth time Athanasius left Alexandria, but calmed his weeping friends with the prophetic words: "Be of good cheer; it is only a cloud, which will soon pass over."  By presence of mind he escaped from an imperial ship on the Nile, which had two hired assassins on board. After Julian’s death in 362 he was again recalled by Jovian. But the next emperor Valens, an Arian, issued in 367 an edict which again banished all the bishops who had been deposed under Constantius and restored by Julian. The aged Athanasius was obliged for the fifth time to leave his beloved flock, and kept himself concealed more than four months in the tomb of his father. Then Valens, boding ill from the enthusiastic adherence of the Alexandrians to their orthodox bishop, repealed the edict.

From this time Athanasius had peace, and still wrote, at a great age, with the vigor of youth, against Apollinarianism. In the year 3731929 he died, after an administration of nearly forty-six years, but before the conclusion of the Arian war. He had secured by his testimony the final victory of orthodoxy, but, like Moses, was called away from the earthly scene before the goal was reached.

Athanasius, like many great men (from David and Paul to Napoleon and Schleiermacher), was very small of stature,1930 somewhat stooping and emaciated by fasting and many troubles, but fair of countenance, with a piercing eye and a personal appearance of great power even over his enemies.1931  His omnipresent activity, his rapid and his mysterious movements, his fearlessness, and his prophetic insight into the future, were attributed by his friends to divine assistance, by his enemies to a league with evil powers. Hence the belief in his magic art.1932  His congregation in Alexandria and the people and monks of Egypt were attached to him through all the vicissitudes of his tempestuous life with equal fidelity and veneration. Gregory Nazianzen begins his enthusiastic panegyric with the words: "When I praise Athanasius, I praise virtue itself, because he combines all virtues in himself."  Constantine the Younger called him "the man of God;" Theodoret, "the great enlightener;" and John of Damascus, the corner-stone of the church of God."

All this is, indeed, very hyperbolical, after the fashion of degenerate Grecian rhetoric. Athanasius was not free from the faults of his age. But he is, on the whole, one of the purest, most imposing, and most venerable personages in the history of the church; and this judgment will now be almost universally accepted.1933

He was (and there are few such) a theological and churchly character in magnificent, antique style. He was a man of one mould and one idea, and in this respect one-sided; yet in the best sense, as the same is true of most great men who are borne along with a mighty and comprehensive thought, and subordinate all others to it. So Paul lived and labored for Christ crucified, Gregory VII. for the Roman hierarchy, Luther for the doctrine of justification by faith, Calvin for the idea of the sovereign grace of God. It was the passion and the life-work of Athanasius to vindicate the deity of Christ, which he rightly regarded as the corner-stone of the edifice of the Christian faith, and without which he could conceive no redemption. For this truth he spent all his time and strength; for this he suffered deposition and twenty years of exile; for this he would have been at any moment glad to pour out his blood. For his vindication of this truth he was much hated, much loved, always respected or feared. In the unwavering conviction that he had the right and the protection of God on his side, he constantly disdained to call in the secular power for his ecclesiastical ends, and to degrade himself to an imperial courtier, as his antagonists often did.

Against the Arians he was inflexible, because he believed they hazarded the essence of Christianity itself, and he allowed himself the most invidious and the most contemptuous terms. He calls them polytheists, atheists, Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, spies, worse persecutors than the heathen, liars, dogs, wolves, antichrists, and devils. But he confined himself to spiritual weapons, and never, like his successor Cyril a century later, used nor counselled measures of force. He suffered persecution, but did not practise it; he followed the maxim: Orthodoxy should persuade faith, not force it.

Towards the unessential errors of good men, like those of Marcellus of Ancyra, he was indulgent. Of Origen he spoke with esteem, and with gratitude for his services, while Epiphanius, and even Jerome, delighted to blacken his memory and burn his bones. To the suspicions of the orthodoxy of Basil, whom, by the way, be never personally knew, he gave no ear, but pronounced his liberality a justifiable condescension to the weak. When he found himself compelled to write against Apollinaris, whom he esteemed and loved, he confined himself to the refutation of his error, without the mention of his name. He was more concerned for theological ideas than for words and formulas; even upon the shibboleth homoousios he would not obstinately insist, provided only the great truth of the essential and eternal Godhead of Christ were not sacrificed. At his last appearance in public, as president of the council of Alexandria in 362, he acted as mediator and reconciler of the contending parties, who, notwithstanding all their discord in the use of the terms ousia and hypostasis, were one in the ground-work of their faith.

No one of all the Oriental fathers enjoyed so high consideration in the Western church as Athanasius. His personal sojourn in Rome and Treves, and his knowledge of the Latin tongue, contributed to this effect. He transplanted monasticism to the West. But it was his advocacy of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity that, more than all, gave him his Western reputation. Under his name the Symbolum Quicunque, of much later, and probably of French, origin, has found universal acceptance in the Latin church, and has maintained itself to this day in living use. His name is inseparable from the conflicts and the triumph of the doctrine of the holy Trinity.

As an author, Athanasius is distinguished for theological depth and discrimination, for dialectical skill, and sometimes for fulminating eloquence. He everywhere evinces a triumphant intellectual superiority over his antagonists, and shows himself a veritable malleus haereticorum. He pursues them into all their hiding-places, and refutes all their arguments and their sophisms, but never loses sight of the main point of the controversy, to which he ever returns with renewed force. His views are governed by a strict logical connection; but his stormy fortunes prevented him from composing a large systematic work. Almost all his writings are occasional, wrung from him by circumstances; not a few of them were hastily written in exile.

They may be divided as follows:

1. Apologetic works in defence of Christianity. Among these are the two able and enthusiastic kindred productions of his youth (composed before 325): "A Discourse against the Greeks," and "On the Incarnation of the Divine Word,)"1934 which he already looked upon as the central idea of the Christian religion.

2. Dogmatic and Controversial works in defence of the Nicene faith; which are at the same time very important to the history of the Arian controversies. Of these the following are directed against Arianism: An Encyclical Letter to all Bishops (written in 341); On the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea (352); On the Opinion of Dionysius of Alexandria (352); An Epistle to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya (356); four Orations against the Arians (358); A Letter to Serapion on the Death of Arius (358 or 359); A History of the Arians to the Monks (between 358 and 360). To these are to be added four Epistles to Serapion on the Deity of the Holy Spirit (358), and two books Against Apollinaris, in defence of the full humanity of Christ (379).

3. Works in his own Personal Defence: An Apology against the Arians (350); an Apology to Constantius (356); an Apology concerning his Flight (De fuga, 357 or 358); and several letters.

4. Exegetical works; especially a Commentary on the Psalms, in which he everywhere finds types and prophecies of Christ and the church, according to the extravagant allegorizing method of the Alexandrian school; and a synopsis or compendium of the Bible. But the genuineness of these unimportant works is by many doubted.1935

5. Ascetic and Practical works. Chief among these are his "Life of St. Anthony," composed about 365, or at all events after the death of Anthony,1936 and his "Festal Letters," which have but recently become known.1937  The Festal Letters give us a glimpse of his pastoral fidelity as bishop, and throw new light also on many of his doctrines, and on the condition of the church in his time. In these letters Athanasius, according to Alexandrian custom, announced annually, at Epiphany, to the clergy and congregations of Egypt, the time of the next Easter, and added edifying observations on passages of Scripture, and timely exhortations. These were read in the churches, during the Easter season, especially on Palm-Sunday. As Athanasius was bishop forty-five years, he would have written that number of Festal Letters, if he had not been several times prevented by flight or sickness. The letters were written in Greek, but soon translated into Syriac, and lay buried for centuries in the dust of a Nitrian cloister, till the research of Protestant Scholarship brought them again to the light.

§ 164. Basil the Great.

I. S. Basilius Caes. Cappad. archiepisc.: Opera omnia quae exstant vel quae ejus nomine circumferuntur, Gr. et Lat. ed. Jul. Garnier, presbyter and monk of the Bened. order. Paris, 1721–’30. 3 vols. fol. Eadem ed. Parisina altera, emendata et aucta a Lud. de Sinner, Par. (Gaume Fratres) 1839, 8 tomi in 6 Partes (an elegant and convenient ed.). Reprinted also by Migne, Par. 1857, in 4 vols. (Patrol. Gr. tom xxix, xxxii.). The first edition of St. Basil was superintended by Erasmus with Froben in Basle, 1532. Comp. also Opera Bas. dogmatica selecta in Thilo’s Bibl. Patr. Gr. dogm. vol. ii. Lips. 1854 (under care of J. D. H. Goldhorn, and containing the Libri iii. adversus Eunomium, and Liber i. de Spiritu Sancto).

II. Ancient accounts and descriptions of Basil in the funeral discourses and eulogies of Gregory Naz. (Oratio xliii.), Gregory Nyss., Amphilochius, Ephraem Syrus. Garnier: Vita S. Basilii, in his edition of the Opera, tom. iii. pp. xxxviii.-ccliv. (in the new Paris ed. of 1839; or tom. i. in Migne’s reprint). Comp. also the Vitae in the Acta Sanctorum, sub Jan. 14, by Hermant, Tillemont (tom. ix.), Fabricius (Bibl. tom. ix.), Cave, Pfeiffer, Schröckh (Part xiii. pp. 8–220), Böhringer, W. Klose (Basilius der Grosse, Stralsund, 1835), and Fialon (Etude historique et littéraire sur S. Basile, Par. 1866).

The Asiatic province of Cappadocia produced in the fourth century the three distinguished church teachers, Basil and the two Gregories, who stand in strong contrast with the general character of their countrymen; for the Cappadocians are described as a cowardly, servile, and deceitful race.1938

Basil was born about the year 329,1939 at Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, in the bosom of a wealthy and pious family, whose ancestors had distinguished themselves as martyrs. The seed of piety had been planted in him by his grandmother, St. Macrina, and his mother, St. Emmelia. He had four brothers and five sisters, who all led a religious life; two of his brothers, Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, and Peter, bishop of Sebaste, and his sister, Macrina the Younger, are, like himself, among the saints of the Eastern church. He received his literary education at first from his father, who was a rhetorician; afterwards at school in Constantinople (347), where he enjoyed the instruction and personal esteem of the celebrated Libanius; and in Athens, where he spent several years, between 351 and 355,1940 studying rhetoric, mathematics, and philosophy, in company with his intimate friend Gregory Nazianzen, and at the same time with prince Julian the Apostate.

Athens, partly through its ancient renown and its historical traditions, partly by excellent teachers of philosophy and eloquence, Sophists, as they were called in an honorable sense, among whom Himerius and Proaeresius were at that time specially conspicuous, was still drawing a multitude of students from all quarters of Greece, and even from the remote provinces of Asia. Every Sophist had his own school and party, which was attached to him with incredible zeal, and endeavored to gain every newly arriving student to its master. In these efforts, as well as in the frequent literary contests and debates of the various schools among themselves, there was not seldom much rude and wild behavior. To youth who were not yet firmly grounded in Christianity, residence in Athens, and occupation with the ancient classics, were full of temptation, and might easily kindle an enthusiasm for heathenism, which, however, had already lost its vitality, and was upheld solely by the artificial means of magic, theurgy, and an obscure mysticism.1941

Basil and Gregory remained steadfast, and no poetical or rhetorical glitter could fade the impressions of a pious training. Gregory says of their studies in Athens, in his forty-third Oration:1942 "We knew only two streets of the city, the first and the more excellent one to the churches, and to the ministers of the altar; the other, which, however, we did not so highly esteem, to the public schools and to the teachers of the sciences. The streets to the theatres, games, and places of unholy amusements, we left to others. Our holiness was our great concern; our sole aim was to be called and to be Christians. In this we placed our whole glory."1943 In a later oration on classic studies Basil encourages them, but admonishes that they should be pursued with caution, and with constant regard to the great Christian purpose of eternal life, to which all earthly objects and attainments are as shadows and dreams to reality. In plucking the rose one should beware of the thorns, and, like the bee, should not only delight himself with the color and the fragrance, but also gain useful honey from the flower.1944

The intimate friendship of Basil and Gregory, lasting from fresh, enthusiastic youth till death, resting on an identity of spiritual and moral aims, and sanctified by Christian piety, is a lovely and engaging chapter in the history of the fathers, and justifies a brief episode in a field not yet entered by any church historian.

With all the ascetic narrowness of the time, which fettered even these enlightened fathers, they still had minds susceptible to science and art and the beauties of nature. In the works of Basil and of the two Gregories occur pictures of nature such as we seek in vain in the heathen classics. The descriptions of natural scenery among the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome can be easily compressed within a few pages. Socrates, as we learn from Plato, was of the opinion that we can learn nothing from trees and fields, and hence he never took a walk; he was so bent upon self-knowledge, as the true aim of all learning, that he regarded the whole study of nature as useless, because it did not tend to make man either more intelligent or more virtuous. The deeper sense of the beauty of nature is awakened by the religion of revelation alone, which teaches us to see everywhere in creation the traces of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of God. The book of Ruth, the book of Job, many Psalms, particularly the 104th, and the parables, are without parallel in Grecian or Roman literature. The renowned naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, collected some of the most beautiful descriptions of nature from the fathers for his purposes.1945  They are an interesting proof of the transfiguring power of the spirit of Christianity even upon our views of nature.

A breath of sweet sadness runs through them, which is entirely foreign to classical antiquity. This is especially manifest in Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil. "When I see," says he, for example, "every rocky ridge, every valley, every plain, covered with new-grown grass; and then the variegated beauty of the trees, and at my feet the lilies doubly enriched by nature with sweet odors and gorgeous colors; when I view in the distance the sea, to which the changing cloud leads out—my soul is seized with sadness which is not without delight. And when in autumn fruits disappear, leaves fall, boughs stiffen, stripped of their beauteous dress—we sink with the perpetual and regular vicissitude into the harmony of wonder-working nature. He who looks through this with the thoughtful eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man in the greatness of the universe."1946  Yet we find sunny pictures also, like the beautiful description of spring in an oration of Gregory Nazianzen on the martyr Mamas.1947

A second characteristic of these representations of nature, and for the church historian the most important, is the reference of earthly beauty to an eternal and heavenly principle, and that glorification of God in the works of creation, which transplanted itself from the Psalms and the book of Job into the Christian church. In his homilies on the history of the Creation, Basil describes the mildness of the serene nights in Asia Minor, where the stars, "the eternal flowers of heaven, raised the spirit of man from the visible to the invisible."  In the oration just mentioned, after describing the spring in the most lovely and life-like colors, Gregory Nazianzen proceeds: "Everything praises God and glorifies Him with unutterable tones; for everything shall thanks be offered also to God by me, and thus shall the song of those creatures, whose song of praise I here utter, be also ours .... Indeed it is now [alluding to the Easter festival] the spring-time of the world, the spring-time of the spirit, spring-time for souls, spring-time for bodies, a visible spring, an invisible spring, in which we also shall there have part, if we here be rightly transformed, and enter as new men upon a new life."  Thus the earth becomes a vestibule of heaven, the beauty of the body is consecrated an image of the beauty of the spirit.

The Greek fathers placed the beauty of nature above the works of art, having a certain prejudice against art on account of the heathen abuses of it. "If thou seest a splendid building, and the view of its colonnades would transport thee, look quickly at the vault of the heavens and the open fields, on which the flocks are feeding on the shore of the sea. Who does not despise every creation of art, when in the silence of the heart he early wonders at the rising sun, as it pours its golden (crocus-yellow) light over the horizon? when, resting at a spring in the deep grass or under the dark shade of thick trees, he feeds his eye upon the dim vanishing distance?"  So Chrysostom exclaims from his monastic solitude near Antioch, and Humboldt1948 adds the ingenious remark: "It was as if eloquence had found its element, its freedom, again at the fountain of nature in the then wooded mountain regions of Syria and Asia Minor."

In the rough times of the first introduction of Christianity among the Celtic and Germanic tribes, who had worshipped the dismal powers of nature in rude symbols, an opposition to intercourse with nature appeared, like that which we find in Tertullian to pagan art; and church assemblies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at Tours (1163) and at Paris (1209), forbid the monks the sinful reading of books on nature, till the renowned scholastics, Albert, the Great († 1280), and the gifted Roger Bacon († 1294), penetrated the mysteries of nature and raised the study of it again to consideration and honor.

We now return to the life of Basil. After finishing his studies in Athens he appeared in his native city of Caesarea as a rhetorician. But he soon after (A.D. 360) took a journey to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to become acquainted with the monastic life; and he became more and more enthusiastic for it. He distributed his property to the poor, and withdrew to a lonely romantic district in Pontus, near the cloister in which his mother Emmelia, with his sister Macrina, and other pious and cultivated virgins, were living. "God has shown me," he wrote to his friend Gregory, "a region which exactly suits my mode of life; it is, in truth, what in our happy jestings we often wished. What imagination showed us in the distance, that I now see before me. A high mountain, covered with thick forest, is watered towards the north by fresh perennial streams. At the foot of the mountain a wide plain spreads out, made fruitful by the vapors which moisten it. The surrounding forest, in which many varieties of trees crowd together, shuts me off like a strong castle. The wilderness is bounded by two deep ravines. On one side the stream, where it rushes foaming down from the mountain, forms a barrier hard to cross; on the other a broad ridge obstructs approach. My hut is so placed upon the summit, that I overlook the broad plain, as well as the whole course of the Iris, which is more beautiful and copious than the Strymon near Amphipolis. The river of my wilderness, more rapid than any other that I know, breaks upon the wall of projecting rock, and rolls foaming into the abyss: to the mountain traveller, a charming, wonderful sight; to the natives, profitable for its abundant fisheries. Shall I describe to you the fertilizing vapors which rise from the (moistened) earth, the cool air which rises from the (moving) mirror of the water?  Shall I tell of the lovely singing of the birds and the richness of blooming plants?  What delights me above all is the silent repose of the place. It is only now and then visited by huntsmen; for my wilderness nourishes deer and herds of wild goats, not your bears and your wolves. How would I exchange a place with him?  Alcmaeon, after he had found the Echinades, wished to wander no further."1949

This romantic picture shows that the monastic life had its ideal and poetic side for cultivated minds. In this region Basil, free from all cares, distractions, and interruptions of worldly life, thought that he could best serve God. "What is more blessed than to imitate on earth the choir of angels, at break of day to rise to prayer, and praise the Creator with anthems and songs; then go to labor in the clear radiance of the sun, accompanied everywhere by prayer, seasoning work with praise, as if with salt?  Silent solitude is the beginning of purification of the soul. For the mind, if it be not disturbed from without, and do not lose itself through the senses in the world, withdraws into itself, and rises to thoughts of God."  In the Scriptures he found, "as in a store of all medicines, the true remedy for his sickness."

Nevertheless, he had also to find that flight from the city was not flight from his own self. "I have well forsaken," says he in his second Epistle,1950 "my residence in the city as a source of a thousand evils, but I have not been able to forsake myself. l am like a man who, unaccustomed to the sea, becomes seasick, and gets out of the large ship, because it rocks more, into a small skiff, but still even there keeps the dizziness and nausea. So is it with me; for while I carry about with me the passions which dwell in me, I am everywhere tormented with the same restlessness, so that I really get not much help from this solitude."  In the sequel of the letter, and elsewhere, he endeavors, however, to show that seclusion from worldly business, celibacy, solitude, perpetual occupation with the Holy Scriptures, and with the life of godly men, prayer and contemplation, and a corresponding ascetic severity of outward life, are necessary for taming the wild passions, and for attaining the true quietness of the soul.

He succeeded in drawing his friend Gregory to himself. Together they prosecuted their prayer, studies, and manual labor; made extracts from the works of Origen, which we possess, under the name of Philocalia, as the joint work of the two friends; and wrote monastic rules which contributed largely to extend and regulate the coenobite life.

In the year 364 Basil was made presbyter against his will, and in 370, with the co-operation of Gregory and his father, was elected bishop of Caesarea and metropolitan of all Cappadocia. In this capacity he had fifty country bishops under him, and devoted himself thenceforth to the direction of the church and the fighting of Arianism, which had again come into power through the emperor Valens in the East. He endeavored to secure to the catholic faith the victory, first by close connection with the orthodox West, and then by a certain liberality in accepting as sufficient, in regard to the not yet symbolically settled doctrine of the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit should not be considered a creature. But the strict orthodox party, especially the monks, demanded the express acknowledgment of the divinity of the Holy Ghost, and violently opposed Basil. The Arians pressed him still more. The emperor wished to reduce Cappadocia to the heresy, and threatened the bishop by his prefects with confiscation, banishment, and death. Basil replied: "Nothing more?  Not one of these things touches me. His property cannot be forfeited, who has none; banishment I know not, for I am restricted to no place, and am the guest of God, to whom the whole earth belongs; for martyrdom I am unfit, but death is a benefactor to me, for it sends me more quickly to God, to whom I live and move; I am also in great part already dead, and have been for a long time hastening to the grave."

The emperor was about to banish him, when his son, six years of age, was suddenly taken sick, and the physicians gave up all hope. Then he sent for Basil, and his son recovered, though he died soon after. The imperial prefect also recovered from a sickness, and ascribed his recovery to the prayer of the bishop, towards whom he had previously behaved haughtily. Thus this danger was averted by special divine assistance.

But other difficulties, perplexities, and divisions, continually met him, to obstruct the attainment of his desire, the restoration of the peace of the church. These storms, and all sorts of hostilities, early wasted his body. He died in 379, two years before the final victory of the Nicene orthodoxy, with the words: "Into Thy hands, O Lord I commit my spirit; Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth."1951  He was borne to the grave by a deeply sorrowing multitude.

Basil was poor, and almost always sickly; he had only a single worn-out garment, and ate almost nothing but bread, salt, and herbs. The care of the poor and sick he took largely upon himself. He founded in the vicinity of Caesarea that magnificent hospital, Basilias, which we have already mentioned, chiefly for lepers, who were often entirely abandoned in those regions, and left to the saddest fate; he himself took in the sufferers, treated them as brethren, and, in spite of their revolting condition, was not afraid to kiss them.1952

Basil is distinguished as a pulpit orator and as a theologian, and still more as a shepherd of souls and a church ruler; and in the history of monasticism he holds a conspicuous place.1953  In classical culture he yields to none of his contemporaries, and is justly placed with the two Gregories among the very first writers among the Greek fathers. His style is pure, elegant, and vigorous. Photius thought that one who wished to become a panegyrist, need take neither Demosthenes nor Cicero for his model, but Basil only.

Of his works, his Five Books against Eunomius, written in 361, in defence of the deity of Christ, and his work on the Holy Ghost, written in 375, at the request of his friend Amphilochius, are important to the history of doctrine.1954  He at first, from fear of Sabellianism, recoiled from the strong doctrine of the homoousia; but the persecution of the Arians drove him to a decided confession. Of importance in the East is the Liturgy ascribed to him, which, with that of St. Chrysostom, is still in use, but has undoubtedly reached its present form by degrees. We have also from St. Basil nine Homilies on the history of the Creation, which are full of allegorical fancies, but enjoyed the highest esteem in the ancient church, and were extensively used by Ambrose and somewhat by Augustine, in similar works;1955 Homilies on the Psalms; Homilies on various subjects; several ascetic and moral treatises;1956 and three hundred and sixty-five Epistles,1957 which furnish much information concerning his life and times.

§ 165. Gregory of Nyssa.

I. S. Gregorius Nyssenus: Opera omnia, quae reperiri potuerunt, Gr. et Lat., nunc primum e mss. codd. edita, stud. Front. Ducaei (Fronto le Duc, a learned Jesuit). Paris, 1615, 2 vols. fol. To be added to this. Appendix Gregorii ex ed. Jac. Gretseri, Par. 1618, fol.; and the Antirrhetoricus adv. Apollinar., first edited by L. Al. Zacagni, Collectanea monum. vet. eccl. Graec. et Lat. Rom. 1698, and in Gallandi, Bibliotheca, tom. vi. Later editions of the Opera by Aeg. Morél, Par. 1638, 3 vols. fol. ("moins belle que cello de 1615, mais plus ample et plus commode ... peu correcte," according to Brunet); by Migne, Petit-Montrouge (Par.), 1858, 3 vols.; and by Franc. Oehler, Halis Saxonum, 1865 sqq. (Tom. i. continens libros dogmaticos, but only in the Greek original.)  Oehler has also commenced an edition of select treatises of Gregory of Nyasa in the original with a German version. The Benedictines of St. Maur had prepared the critical apparatus for an edition of Gregory, but it was scattered during the French Revolution. Angelo Mai, in the Nov. Patrum Biblioth. tom. iv. Pars i. pp. 1–53 (Rom. 1847), has edited a few writings of Gregory unknown before, viz., a sermon Adversus Arium et Sabellium, a sermon De Spiritu Sancto adv. Macedonianos, and a fragment De processione Spiritus S. a Filio (doubtful).

II. Lives in the Acta Sanctorum, and in Butler, sub Mart. 9. Tillemont: Mém. tom. ix. p. 561 sqq. Schröckh: Part xiv. pp. 1–147. Jul. Rupp: Gregors des Bischofs von Nyssa Leben und Meinungen. Leipz. 1834 (unsatisfactory). W. Möller: Gregorii Nyss. doctrina de hominis natura, etc. Halis, 1854, and article in Herzog’s Encykl. vol. v. p. 354 sqq.

Gregory of Nyssa was a younger brother of Basil, and the third son of his parents. Of his honorable descent he made no account. Blood, wealth, and splendor, says he, we should leave to the friends of the world; the Christian’s lineage is his affinity with the divine, his fatherland is virtue, his freedom is the sonship of God. He was weakly and timid, and born not so much for practical life, as for study and speculation. He formed his mind chiefly upon the writings of Origen, and under the direction of his brother, whom he calls his father and preceptor. Further than this his early life is unknown.

After spending a short time as a rhetorician he broke away from the world, retired into solitude in Pontus, and became enamored of the ascetic life.

Quite in the spirit of the then widely-spread tendency towards the monastic life, he, though himself married, commends virginity in a special work, as a higher grade of perfection, and depicts the happiness of one who is raised above the incumbrances and snares of marriage, and thus, as he thinks, restored to the original state of man in Paradise.1958  "From all the evils of marriage," he says, "virginity is free; it has no lost children, no lost husband to bemoan; it is always with its Bridegroom, and delights in its devout exercises, and, when death comes, it is not separated from him, but united with him forever."  The essence of spiritual virginity, however, in his opinion, by no means consists merely in the small matter of sensual abstinence, but in the purity of the whole life. Virginity is to him the true philosophy, the perfect freedom. The purpose of asceticism in general he considered to be not the affliction of the body—which is only a means—but the easiest possible motion of the spiritual functions.

His brother Basil, in 372, called him against his will from his learned ease into his own vicinity as bishop of Nyssa, an inconsiderable town of Cappadocia. He thought it better that the place should receive its honor from his brother, than that his brother should receive his honor from his place. And so it turned out. As Gregory labored zealously for the Nicene faith, he drew the hatred of the Arians, who succeeded in deposing him at a synod in 376, and driving him into exile. But two years later, when the emperor Valens died and Gratian revoked the sentences of banishment, Gregory recovered his bishopric.

Now other trials came upon him. His brothers and sisters died in rapid succession. He delivered a eulogy upon Basil, whom he greatly venerated, and he described the life and death of his beautiful and noble sister Macrina, who, after the death of her betrothed, that she might remain true to him, chose single life, and afterwards retired with her mother into seclusion, and exerted great influence over her brothers.

Into her mouth he put his theological instructions on the soul, death, resurrection, and final restoration.1959  She died in the arms of Gregory, with this prayer: "Thou, O God, hast taken from me the fear of death. Thou hast granted me, that the end of this life should be the beginning of true life. Thou givest our bodies in their time to the sleep of death, and awakest them again from sleep with the last trumpet .... Thou hast delivered us from the curse and from sin by Thyself becoming both for us; Thou hast bruised the head of the serpent, hast broken open the gates of hell, hast overcome him who had the power of death, and hast opened to us the way to, resurrection. For the ruin of the enemy and the security of our life, Thou hast put upon those who feared Thee a sign, the sign of Thy holy cross, O eternal God, to whom I am betrothed from the womb, whom my soul has loved with all its might, to whom I have dedicated, from my youth up till now, my flesh and my soul. Oh! send to me an angel of light, to lead me to the place of refreshment, where is the water of peace, in the bosom of the holy fathers. Thou who hast broken the flaming sword, and bringest back to Paradise the man who is crucified with Thee and flees to Thy mercy. Remember me also in Thy kingdom!... Forgive me what in word, deed, or thought, I have done amiss!  Blameless and without spot may my soul be received into Thy hands, as a burnt-offering before Thee!"1960

Gregory attended the ecumenical council of Constantinople, and undoubtedly, since he was one of the most eminent theologians of the time, exerted a powerful influence there, and according to a later, but erroneous, tradition, he composed the additions to the Nicene Creed which were there sanctioned.1961  The council intrusted to him, as "one of the pillars of catholic orthodoxy," a tour of visitation to Arabia and Jerusalem, where disturbances had broken out which threatened a schism. He found Palestine in a sad condition, and therefore dissuaded a Cappadocian abbot, who asked his advice about a pilgrimage of his monks to Jerusalem. "Change of place," says he, "brings us no nearer God, but where thou art, God can come to thee, if only the inn of thy soul is ready .... It is better to go out of the body and to raise one’s self to the Lord, than to leave Cappadocia to journey to Palestine."  He did not succeed in making peace, and he returned to Cappadocia lamenting that there were in Jerusalem men "who showed a hatred towards their brethren, such as they ought to have only towards the devil, towards sin, and towards the avowed enemies of the Saviour."

Of his later life we know very little. He was in Constantinople thrice afterwards, in 383, 385, and 394, and he died about the year 395.

The wealth of his intellectual life he deposited in his numerous writings, above all in his controversial doctrinal works: Against Eunomius; Against Apollinaris; On the Deity of the Son and the Holy Ghost; On the difference between ousia and hypostasis in God; and in his catechetical compend of the Christian faith.1962  The beautiful dialogue with his sister Macrina on the soul and the resurrection has been already mentioned. Besides these he wrote many Homilies, especially on the creation of the world, and of man,1963 on the life of Moses, on the Psalms, on Ecclesiastes, on the Song of Solomon, on the Lord’s Prayer, on the Beatitudes; Eulogies on eminent martyrs and saints (St. Stephen, the Forty Martyrs, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ephrem, Meletius, his brother Basil); various valuable ascetic tracts; and a biography of his sister Macrina, addressed to the monk Olympios.

Gregory was more a man of thought than of action. He had a fine metaphysical head, and did lasting service in the vindication of the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, and in the accurate distinction between essence and hypostasis. Of all the church teachers of the Nicene age he is the nearest to Origen. He not only follows his sometimes utterly extravagant allegorical method of interpretation, but even to a great extent falls in with his dogmatic views.1964  With him, as with Origen, human freedom plays a great part. Both are idealistic, and sometimes, without intending it or knowing it, fall into contradiction with the church doctrine, especially in eschatology. Gregory adopts, for example, the doctrine of the final restoration of all things. The plan of redemption is in his view absolutely universal, and embraces all spiritual beings. Good is the only positive reality; evil is the negative, the non-existent, and must finally abolish itself, because it is not of God. Unbelievers must indeed pass through a second death, in order to be purged from the filthiness of the flesh. But God does not give them up, for they are his property, spiritual natures allied to him. His love, which draws pure souls easily and without pain to itself, becomes a purifying fire to all who cleave to the earthly, till the impure element is driven off. As all comes forth from God, so must all return into him at last.

§ 166. Gregory Nazianzen.

I. S. Gregorius Theologus, vulgo Nazianzenus: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat. opera et studio monachorum S. Benedicti e congreg. S. Mauri (Clemencet). Paris, 1778, tom. i. (containing his orations). This magnificent edition (one of the finest of the Maurian editions of the fathers) was interrupted by the French Revolution, but afterwards resumed, and with a second volume (after papers left by the Maurians) completed by A. B. Caillau, Par. l837–’40, 2 vols. fol. Reprinted in Migne’s Patrolog. Graec. (tom. 35–38), Petit-Montrouge, 1857, in 4 vols. (on the separate editions of his Orationes and Carmina, see Brunet, Man. du libraire, tom. ii. 1728 sq.)

II. Biographical notices in Gregory’s Epistles and Poems, in Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Rufinus, and Suidas (s. v. Grhgovrio"). Gregorius Presbyter (of uncertain origin, perhaps of Cappadocia in the tenth century): Bivo" tou' Grhgorivou (Greek and Latin in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, tom. i. 243–304). G. Hermant: La vie de S. Basile le Grand et celle de S. Gregoire de Nazianz. Par. 1679, 2 vols. Acta Sanctorum, tom. ii. Maji, p. 373 sqq. Bened. Editores: Vita Greg. ex iis potissimum scriptis adornata (in Migne’s ed. tom. i. pp. 147–242). Tillemont: Mémoires, tom. ix. pp. 305–560, 692–731. Le Clerc: Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. xviii. pp. 1–128. W. Cave: Lives of the Fathers, vol. iii. pp. 1–90 (ed. Oxf. 1840). Schröckh: Part xiii. pp. 275–466. Carl Ullmann: Gregorius von Nazianz, der Theologe. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte des 4ten Jahrhunderts. Darmstadt, 1825. (One of the best historical monographs by a theologian of kindred spirit.)  Comp. also the articles of Hefele in Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, vol. iv. 736 ff., and Gass in Herzog’s Encykl. vol. v. 349.

Gregory Nazianzen, or Gregory the Theologian, is the third in the Cappadocian triad; inferior to his bosom friend Basil as a church ruler, and to his namesake of Nyssa as a speculative thinker, but superior to both as an orator. With them he exhibits the flower of Greek theology in close union with the Nicene faith, and was one of the champions of orthodoxy, though with a mind open to free speculation. His life, with its alternations of high station, monastic seclusion, love of severe studies, enthusiasm for poetry, nature, and friendship, possesses a romantic charm. He was "by inclination and fortune tossed between the silence of a contemplative life and the tumult of church administration, unsatisfied with either, neither a thinker nor a poet, but, according to his youthful desire, an orator, who, though often bombastic and dry, labored as powerfully for the victory of orthodoxy as for true practical Christianity."1965

Gregory Nazianzen was born about 330, a year before the emperor Julian, either at Nazianzum, a market-town in the south-western part of Cappadocia, where his father was bishop, or in the neighboring village of Arianzus.1966

In the formation of his religious character his mother Nonna, one of the noblest Christian women of antiquity, exerted a deep and wholesome influence. By her prayers and her holy life she brought about the conversion of her husband from the sect of the Hypsistarians, who, without positive faith, worshipped simply a supreme being; and she consecrated her son, as Hannah consecrated Samuel, even before his birth; to the service of God. "She was," as Gregory describes her, "a wife according to the mind of Solomon; in all things subject to her husband according to the laws of marriage, not ashamed to be his teacher and his leader in true religion. She solved the difficult problem of uniting a higher culture, especially in knowledge of divine things and strict exercise of devotion, with the practical care of her household. If she was active in her house, she seemed to know nothing of the exercises of religion; if she occupied herself with God and his worship, she seemed to be a stranger to every earthly occupation: she was whole in everything. Experiences had instilled into her unbounded confidence in the effects of believing prayer; therefore she was most diligent in supplications, and by prayer overcame even the deepest feelings of grief over her own and others’ sufferings. She had by this means attained such control over her spirit, that in every sorrow she encountered, she never uttered a plaintive tone before she had thanked God."  He especially celebrates also her extraordinary liberality and self-denying love for the poor and the sick. But it seems to be not in perfect harmony with this, that he relates of her: "Towards heathen women she was so intolerant, that she never offered her mouth or hand to them in salutation.1967  She ate no salt with those who came from the unhallowed altars of idols. Pagan temples she did not look at, much less would she have stepped upon their ground; and she was as far from visiting the theatre."  Of course her piety moved entirely in the spirit of that time, bore the stamp of ascetic legalism rather than of evangelical freedom, and adhered rigidly to certain outward forms. Significant also is her great reverence for sacred things. "She did not venture to turn her back upon the holy table, or to spit upon the floor of the church."  Her death was worthy of a holy life. At a great age, in the church which her husband had built almost entirely with his own means, she died, holding fast with one hand to the altar and raising the other imploringly to heaven, with the words: "Be gracious to me, O Christ, my King!"  Amidst universal sorrow, especially among the widows and orphans whose comfort and help she had been, she was laid to rest by the side of her husband near the graves of the martyrs. Her affectionate son says in one of the poems in which he extols her piety and her blessed end: "Bewail, O mortals, the mortal race; but when one dies, like Nonna, praying, then weep I not."

Gregory was early instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the rudiments of science. He soon conceived a special predilection for the study of oratory, and through the influence of his mother, strengthened by a dream,1968 he determined on the celibate life, that he might devote himself without distraction to the kingdom of God. Like the other church teachers of this period, he also gave this condition the preference, and extolled it in orations and poems, though without denying the usefulness and divine appointment of marriage. His father, and his friend Gregory of Nyssa were among the few bishops who lived in wedlock.

From his native town he went for his further education to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he probably already made a preliminary acquaintance with Basil; then to Caesarea in Palestine, where there were at that time celebrated schools of eloquence; thence to Alexandria, where his revered Athanasius wore the supreme dignity of the church; and finally to Athens, which still maintained its ancient renown as the seat of Grecian science and art. Upon the voyage thither he survived a fearful storm, which threw him into the greatest mental anguish, especially because, though educated a Christian, he, according to a not unusual custom of that time, had not yet received holy baptism, which was to him the condition of salvation. His deliverance he ascribed partly to the intercession of his parents, who had intimation of his peril by presentiments and dreams, and he took it as a second consecration to the spiritual office.

In Athens be formed or strengthened the bond of that beautiful Christian friendship with Basil, of which we have already spoken in the life of Basil. They were, as Gregory says, as it were only one soul animating two bodies. He became acquainted also with the prince Julian, who was at that time studying there, but felt wholly repelled by him, and said of him with prophetic foresight: "What evil is the Roman empire here educating for itself!"1969  He was afterwards a bitter antagonist of Julian, and wrote two invective discourses against him after his death, which are inspired, however, more by the fire of passion than by pure enthusiasm for Christianity, and which were intended to expose him to universal ignominy as a horrible monument of enmity to Christianity and of the retributive judgment of God.1970

Friends wished him to settle in Athens as a teacher of eloquence, but he left there in his thirtieth year, and returned through Constantinople, where he took with him his brother Caesarius, a distinguished physician,1971 to his native city and his parents’ house. At this time his baptism took place. With his whole soul he now threw himself into a strict ascetic life. He renounced innocent enjoyments, even to music, because they flatter the senses. "His food was bread and salt, his drink water, his bed the bare ground, his garment of coarse, rough cloth. Labor filled the day; praying, singing, and holy contemplation, a great part of the night. His earlier life, which was anything but loose, only not so very strict, seemed to him reprehensible; his former laughing now cost him many tears. Silence and quiet meditation were law and pleasure to him."1972  Nothing but love to his parents restrained him from entire seclusion, and induced him, contrary to talent and inclination, to assist his father in the management of his household and his property.

But he soon followed his powerful bent toward the contemplative life of solitude, and spent a short time with Basil in a quiet district of Pontus in prayer, spiritual contemplations, and manual labors. "Who will transport me," he afterwards wrote to his friend concerning this visit,1973 "back to those former days, in which I revelled with thee in privations?  For voluntary poverty is after all far more honorable than enforced enjoyment. Who will give me back those songs and vigils? who, those risings to God in prayer, that unearthly, incorporeal life, that fellowship and that spiritual harmony of brothers raised by thee to a God-like life? who, the ardent searching of the Holy Scriptures, and the light which, under the guidance of the Spirit, we found therein?"  Then he mentions the lesser enjoyments of the beauties of surrounding nature.

On a visit to his parents’ house, Gregory against his will, and even without his previous knowledge, was ordained presbyter by his father before the assembled congregation on a feast day of the year 361. Such forced elections and ordinations, though very offensive to our taste, were at that time frequent, especially upon the urgent wish of the people, whose voice in many instances proved to be indeed the voice of God. Basil also, and Augustine, were ordained presbyters, Athanasius and Ambrose bishops, against their will. Gregory fled soon after, it is true, to his friend in Pontus, but out of regard to his aged parents and the pressing call of the church, he returned to Nazianzum towards Easter in 362, and delivered his first pulpit discourse, in which he justified himself in his conduct, and said: "It has its advantage to hold back a little from the call of God, as Moses, and after him Jeremiah, did on account of their age; but it has also its advantage to come forward readily, when God calls, like Aaron and Isaiah; provided both be done with a devout spirit, the one on account of inherent weakness, the other in reliance upon the strength of him who calls."  His enemies accused him of haughty contempt of the priestly office; but he gave as the most important reason of his flight, that he did not consider himself worthy to preside over a flock, and to undertake the care of immortal souls, especially in such stormy times.

Basil, who, as metropolitan, to strengthen the catholic interest against Arianism, set about the establishment of new bishoprics in the small towns of Cappadocia, intrusted to his young friend one such charge in Sasima, a poor market town at the junction of three highways, destitute of water, verdure, and society, frequented only by rude wagoners, and at the time an apple of discord between him and his opponent, the bishop Anthimus of Tyana. A very strange way of showing friendship, unjustifiable even by the supposition that Basil wished to exercise the humility and self-denial of Gregory.1974  No wonder that, though a bishopric in itself was of no account to Gregory, this act deeply wounded his sense of honor, and produced a temporary alienation between him and Basil.1975  At the combined request of his friend and his aged father, he suffered himself indeed to be consecrated to the new office; but it is very doubtful whether he ever went to Sasima.1976  At all events we soon afterwards find him in his solitude, and then again, in 372, assistant of his father in Nazianzum. In a remarkable discourse delivered in the presence of his father in 372, he represented to the congregation his peculiar fluctuation between an innate love of the contemplative life of seclusion and the call of the Spirit to public labor.

"Come to my help," said he to his hearers,1977 "for I am almost torn asunder by my inward longing and by the Spirit. The longing urges me to flight, to solitude in the mountains, to quietude of soul and body, to withdrawal of spirit from all sensuous things, and to retirement into myself, that I may commune undisturbed with God, and be wholly penetrated by the rays of His Spirit .... But the other, the Spirit, would lead me into the midst of life, to serve the common weal, and by furthering others to further myself, to spread light, and to present to God a people for His possession, a holy people, a royal priesthood (Tit. ii. 14; 1 Pet. ii. 9), and His image again purified in many. For as a whole garden is more than a plant, and the whole heaven with all its beauties is more glorious than a star, and the whole body more excellent than one member, so also before God the whole well-instructed church is better than one well-ordered person, and a man must in general look not only on his own things, but also on the things of others. So Christ did, who, though He might have remained in His own dignity and divine glory, not only humbled Himself to the form of a servant, but also, despising all shame, endured the death of the cross, that by His suffering He might blot out sin, and by His death destroy death."

Thus he stood a faithful helper by the side of his venerable and universally beloved father, who reached the age of almost an hundred years, and had exercised the priestly office for forty-five; and on the death of his father, in 374, he delivered a masterly funeral oration, which Basil attended.1978  "There is," said he in this discourse, turning to his still living mother, "only one life, to behold the (divine) life; there is only one death—sin; for this is the corruption of the soul. But all else, for the sake of which many exert themselves, is a dream which decoys us from the true; it is a treacherous phantom of the soul. When we think so, O my mother, then we shall not boast of life, nor dread death. For whatsoever evil we yet endure, if we press out of it to true life, if we, delivered from every change, from every vortex, from all satiety, from all vassalage to evil, shall there be with eternal, no longer changeable things, as small lights circling around the great."

A short time after he had been invested with the vacant bishopric, he retired again, in 375, to his beloved solitude, and this time be went to Seleucia in Isauria, to the vicinity of a church dedicated to St. Thecla.

There the painful intelligence reached him of the death of his beloved Basil, A.D. 379. On this occasion be wrote to Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa: "Thus also was it reserved for me still in this unhappy life to hear of the death of Basil and the departure of this holy soul, which is gone out from us, only to go in to the Lord, after having already prepared itself for this through its whole life."  He was at that time bodily and mentally very much depressed. In a letter to the rhetorician Eudoxius he wrote: "You ask, how it fares with me. Very badly. I no longer have Basil; I no longer have Caesarius; my spiritual brother, and my bodily brother. I can say with David, my father and my mother have forsaken me. My body is sickly, age is coming over my head, cares become more and more complicated, duties overwhelm me, friends are unfaithful, the church is without capable pastors, good declines, evil stalks naked. The ship is going in the night, a light nowhere, Christ asleep. What is to be done?  O, there is to me but one escape from this evil case: death. But the hereafter would be terrible to me, if I had to judge of it by the present state."

But Providence had appointed him yet a great work and in exalted position in the Eastern capital of the empire. In the year 379 he was called to the pastoral charge by the orthodox church in Constantinople, which, under the oppressive reign of Arianism, was reduced to a feeble handful; and he was exhorted by several worthy bishops to accept the call. He made his appearance unexpectedly. With his insignificant form bowed by disease, his miserable dress, and his simple, secluded mode of life, he at first entirely disappointed the splendor-loving people of the capital, and was much mocked and persecuted.1979  But in spite of all he succeeded, by his powerful eloquence and faithful labor, in building up the little church in faith and in Christian life, and helped the Nicene doctrine again to victory. In memory of this success his little domestic chapel was afterwards changed into a magnificent church, and named Anastasia, the Church of the Resurrection.

People of all classes crowded to his discourses, which were mainly devoted to the vindication of the Godhead of Christ and to the Trinity, and at the same time earnestly inculcated a holy walk befitting the true faith. Even the famous Jerome, at that time already fifty years old, came from Syria to Constantinople to hear these discourses, and took private instruction of Gregory in the interpretation of Scripture. He gratefully calls him his preceptor and catechist.

The victory of the Nicene faith, which Gregory had thus inwardly promoted in the imperial city, was outwardly completed by the celebrated edict of the new emperor Theodosius, in February, 380. When the emperor, on the 24th of December of that year, entered Constantinople, he deposed the Arian bishop, Demophilus, with all his clergy, and transferred the cathedral church1980 to Gregory with the words: "This temple God by our hand intrusts to thee as a reward for thy pains."  The people tumultuously demanded him for bishop, but he decidedly refused. And in fact he was not yet released from his bishopric of Nazianzum or Sasima (though upon the latter he had never formally entered); he could be released only by a synod.

When Theodosius, for the formal settlement of the theological controversies, called the renowned ecumenical council in May, 381, Gregory was elected by this council itself bishop of Constantinople, and, amidst great festivities, was inducted into the office. In virtue of this dignity he held for a time the presidency of the council.

When the Egyptian and Macedonian bishops arrived, they disputed the validity of his election, because, according to the fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, he could not be transferred from his bishopric of Sasima to another; though their real reason was, that the election had been made without them, and that Gregory would probably be distasteful to them as a bold preacher of righteousness. This deeply wounded him. He was soon disgusted, too, with the operations of party passions in the council, and resigned with the following remarkable declaration:

"Whatever this assembly may hereafter determine concerning me, I would fain raise your mind beforehand to something far higher: I pray you now, be one, and join yourselves in love!  Must we always be only derided as infallible, and be animated only by one thing, the spirit of strife?  Give each other the hand fraternally. But I will be a second Jonah. I will give myself for the salvation of our ship (the church), though I am innocent of the storm. Let the lot fall upon me, and cast me into the sea. A hospitable fish of the deep will receive me. This shall be the beginning of your harmony. I reluctantly ascended the episcopal chair, and gladly I now come down. Even my weak body advises me this. One debt only have I to pay: death; this I owe to God. But, O my Trinity! for Thy sake only am I sad. Shalt Thou have an able man, bold and zealous to vindicate Thee?  Farewell, and remember my labors and my pains."

In the celebrated valedictory which be delivered before the assembled bishops, he gives account of his administration; depicts the former humiliation and the present triumph of the Nicene faith in Constantinople, and his own part in this great change, for which he begs repose as his only reward; exhorts his hearers to harmony and love; and then takes leave of Constantinople and in particular of his beloved church, with this address:

"And now, farewell, my Anastasia, who bearest a so holy name; thou hast exalted again our faith, which once was despised; thou, our common field of victory, thou new Shiloh, where we first established again the ark of the covenant, after it had been carried about for forty years on our wandering in the wilderness."

Though this voluntary resignation of so high a post proceeded in part from sensitiveness and irritation, it is still an honorable testimony to the character of Gregory in contrast with the many clergy of his time who shrank from no intrigues and by-ways to get possession of such dignities. He left Constantinople in June, 381, and spent the remaining years of his life mostly in solitude on his paternal estate of Arianzus in the vicinity of Nazianzum, in religious exercises and literary pursuits. Yet he continued to operate through numerous epistles upon the affairs of the church, and took active interest in the welfare and sufferings of the men around him. The nearer death approached, the more he endeavored to prepare himself for it by contemplation and rigid ascetic practice, that he "might be, and might more and more become, in truth a pure mirror of God and of divine things; might already in hope enjoy the treasures of the future world; might walk with the angels; might already forsake the earth, while yet walking upon it; and might be transported into higher regions by the Spirit."  In his poems he describes himself, living solitary in the clefts of the rocks among the beasts, going about without shoes, content with one rough garment, and sleeping upon the ground covered with a sack. He died in 390 or 391; the particular circumstances of his death being now unknown. His bones were afterwards brought to Constantinople; and they are now shown at Rome and Venice.

Among the works of Gregory stand pre-eminent his five Theological Orations in defence of the Nicene doctrine against the Eunomians and Macedonians, which he delivered in Constantinople, and which won for him the honorary title of the Theologian (in the narrower sense, i.e., vindicator of the deity of the Logos).1981  His other orations (forty-five in all) are devoted to the memory of distinguished martyrs, friends, and kindred, to the ecclesiastical festivals, and to public events or his own fortunes. Two of them are bitter attacks on Julian after his death.1982  They are not founded on particular texts, and have no strictly logical order and connection.

He is the greatest orator of the Greek church, with the exception perhaps of Chrysostom; but his oratory often degenerates into arts of persuasion, and is full of labored ornamentation and rhetorical extravagances, which are in the spirit of his age, but in violation of healthful, natural taste.

As a poet he holds a subordinate, though respectable place. He wrote poetry only in his later life, and wrote it not from native impulse, as the bird sings among the branches, but in the strain of moral reflection, upon his own life, or upon doctrinal and moral themes. Many of his orations are poetical, many of his poems are prosaic. Not one of his odes or hymns passed into use in the church. Yet some of his smaller pieces, apothegms, epigrams, and epitaphs, are very beautiful, and betray noble affections, deep feeling, and a high order of talent and cultivation.1983

We have, finally, two hundred and forty-two (or 244) Epistles from Gregory, which are important to the history of the time, and in some cases very graceful and interesting.

§ 167. Didymus of Alexandria.

I. Didymi Alexandrini Opera omnia: accedunt S. Amphilochii et Nectarii scripta quae supersunt Graece, accurante et denuo recognoscente J. P. Migne. Petit-Montrouge (Paris), 1858. (Tom. xxxix. of the Patrologia Graeca.)

II. Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 109, and Prooem. in Hoseam. Scattered accounts in Rufinus, Palladius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret.  Tillemont: Mémoires, x. 164. Fabricius: Bibl. Gr. tom. ix. 269 sqq. ed. Harless (also in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, pp. 131–140). Schröckh: Church History, vii. 74–87. Guericke: De schola Alexandrina. Hal. 1824.

Didymus, the last great teacher of the Alexandrian catechetical school, and a faithful follower of Origen, was born probably at Alexandria about the year 309. Though he became in his fourth year entirely blind, and for this reason has been surnamed Caecus, yet by extraordinary industry he gained comprehensive and thorough knowledge in philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics. He learned to write by means of wooden tablets in which the characters were engraved; and he became so familiar with the Holy Scriptures by listening to the church lessons, that he knew them almost all by heart.

Athanasius nominated him teacher in the theological school, where he zealously labored for nearly sixty years. Even men like Jerome, Rufinus, Palladius, and Isidore, sat at his feet with admiration. He was moreover an enthusiastic advocate of ascetic life, and stood in high esteem with the Egyptian anchorites; with St. Anthony in particular, who congratulated him, that, though blind to the perishable world of sense, he was endowed with the eye of an angel to behold the mysteries of God. He died at a great age, in universal favor, in 395.

Didymus was thoroughly orthodox in the doctrine of the Trinity, and a discerning opponent of the Arians, but at the same time a great venerator of Origen, and a participant of his peculiar views concerning the pre-existence of souls, and probably concerning final restoration. For this reason he was long after his death condemned with intolerant zeal by several general councils.1984

We have from him a book On the Holy Ghost, translated by Jerome into Latin, in which he advocates, with much discrimination, and in simple, biblical style, the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father, against the Semi-Arians and Pneumatomachi of his time;1985 and three books on the Trinity, in the Greek original.1986  He wrote also a brief treatise against the Manichaeans. Of his numerous exegetical works we have a commentary on the Catholic Epistles,1987 and large fragments, in part uncertain, of commentaries on the Psalms, Job, Proverbs, and some Pauline Epistles.1988

§ 168. Cyril of Jerusalem.

I. S. Cyrilus, archiepisc. Hierosolymitanus: Opera quae exstant omnia, &c., cura et studio Ant. Aug. Touttaei (Touttée), presb. et monachi Bened. e congreg. S. Mauri. Paris, 1720. 1 vol. fol. (edited after Touttée’s death by the Benedictine D. Prud. Maranus. Comp. therewith Sal. Deyling: Cyrillus Hieros. a corruptelis Touttaei aliorumque purgatus. Lips. 1728). Reprint, Venice, 1763. A new ed. by Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1857 (Patrol. Gr. tom. xxxiii., which contains also the writings of Apollinaris of Laodicea, Diodor of Tarsus, and others). The Catecheses of Cyril have also been several times edited separately, and translated into modern languages. Engl. transl. in the Oxford Library of the Fathers, vol. ii. Oxf. 1839.

II. Epiphanius: Haer. lx. 20; lxxiii. 23, 27, 37. Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 112. Socrates: H. E. ii. 40, 42, 45; iii. 20. Sozomen: iv. 5, 17, 20, 22, 25. Theodoret: H. E. ii. 26, 27; iii. 14; v. 8. The Dissertationes Cyrillianae de vita et scriptis S. Cyr. &c. in the Benedictine edition of the Opera, and in Migne’s reprint, pp. 31–822. The Acta Sanctorum, and Butler, sub mense Martii 18. Tillemont: tom. viii. pp. 428–439, 779–787. Also the accounts in the well-known patristic works of Dupin, Ceillier, Cave, Fabricius. Schröckh: Part xii. pp. 369–476.

Cyrilus, presbyter and, after 350, bishop of Jerusalem, was extensively involved during his public life in the Arian controversies. His metropolitan, Acacius of Caesarea, an Arian, who had elevated him to the episcopal chair, fell out with him over the Nicene faith and on a question of jurisdiction, and deposed him at a council in 357. His deposition was confirmed by an Arian council at Constantinople in 360.

After the death of the emperor Constantius he was restored to his bishopric in 361, and in 363 his embittered adversary, Acacius, converted to the orthodox faith. When Julian encouraged the Jews to rebuild the temple, Cyril is said to have predicted the miscarriage of the undertaking from the prophecies of Daniel and of Christ, and he was justified by the result. Under the Arian emperor Valens he was again deposed and banished, with all the other orthodox bishops, till he finally, under Theodosius, was permitted to return to Jerusalem in 379, to devote himself undisturbed to the supervision and restoration of his sadly distracted church until his death.

He attended the ecumenical council in Constantinople in 381, which confirmed him in his office, and gave him the great praise of having suffered much from the Arians for the faith. He died in 386, with his title to office and his orthodoxy universally acknowledged, clear of all the suspicions which many had gathered from his friendship with Semi-Arian bishops during his first exile.1989

From Cyril we have an important theological work, complete, in the Greek original: his twenty-three Catecheses.1990  The work consists of connected religious lectures or homilies, which he delivered while presbyter about the year 347, in preparing a class of catechumens for baptism. It follows that form of the Apostles’ Creed or the Rule of Faith which was then in use in the churches of Palestine and which agrees in all essential points with the Roman; it supports the various articles with passages of Scripture, and defends them against the heretical perversions of his time. The last five, called the Mystagogic Catecheses,1991 are addressed to newly baptized persons, and are of importance in the doctrine of the sacraments and the history of liturgy. In these he explains the ceremonies then customary at baptism: Exorcism, the putting off of garments, anointing, the short confession, triple immersion, confirmation by the anointing oil; also the nature and ritual of the holy Supper, in which he sees a mystical vital union of believers with Christ, and concerning which he uses terms verging at least upon the doctrine of transubstantiation. In connection with this he gives us a full account of the earliest eucharistic liturgy, which coincides in all essential points with such other liturgical remains of the Eastern church, as the Apostolic Constitutions and the Liturgy of St. James.

The Catecheses of Cyril are the first example of a popular compend of religion; for the catechetical work of Gregory of Nyssa (lovgo" kathchtiko;" oJ mevga") is designed not so much for catechumens, as for catechists and those intending to become teachers.

Besides several homilies and tracts of very doubtful genuineness, a homily on the healing of the cripple at Bethesda1992 and a remarkable letter to the emperor Constantius of the year 351, are also ascribed to Cyril.1993  In the letter he relates to the emperor the miraculous appearance of a luminous cross extending from Golgotha to a point over the mount of Olives (mentioned also by Socrates, Sozomen, and others), and calls upon him to praise the "consubstantial Trinity."1994

§ 169. Epiphanius.

I. S. Epiphanius: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat., Dionysius Petavius ex veteribus libris recensuit, Latine vertit et animadversionibus illustravit. Paris, 1622, 2 vols. fol. The same edition reprinted with additions at Cologne (or rather at Leipsic), 1682, and by J. P. Migne Petit-Montrouge, 1858, in 3 vols. (tom. xli.-xliii. of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca). The Panavrion or Panaria of Epiphanius, together with his Anacephalaeosis, with the Latin version of both by Petavius, has also been separately edited by Fr. Oehler, as tom. ii. and iii. of his Corpus haereseologicum, Berol. 1859–’61. (Part second of tom. iii. contains the Animadversiones of Petavius, and A. Jahn’s Symbolae ad emendanda et illustranda S. Epiphanii Panaria.)

II. Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 114, and in several of his Epistles relating to the Origenistic controversies, Epp. 66 sqq. ed. Vallarsi. Socrates: Hist. Eccl. l. vi. c. 10–14. Sozomen: H. E. viii. 11–15. Old biographies, full of fables, see in Migne’s edition, tom. i., and in Petav. ii. 318 sqq. The Vita Epiph. in the Acta Sanctorum for May, tom. iii. die 12, pp. 36–49 (also reprinted in Migne’s ed. tom. i.). Tillemont: Mémoires, tom. x. pp. 484–521, and the notes, pp. 802–809. Fr. Arm. Gervaise: L’histoire et la vie De saint Epiphane. Par. 1738. Fabricius: Biblioth. Graeca ed. Harless, tom. viii. p. 255 sqq. (also reprinted in Migne’s ed. of Epiph. i. 1 sqq.). W. Cave: Lives of the Fathers, iii. 207–236 (new Oxf. ed.). Schröckh: Th. x. 3 ff. R. Adelb. Lipsius: Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanies. Wien, 1865. (A critical analysis of the older history of heresies, in Epiph. haer. 13–57, with special reference to the Gnostic systems.)

Epiphanius,1995 who achieved his great fame mainly by his learned and intolerant zeal for orthodoxy, was born near Eleutheropolis in Palestine, between 310 and 320, and died at sea, at a very advanced age, on his way back from Constantinople to Cyprus, in 403. According to an uncertain, though not improbable tradition, he was the son of poor Jewish parents, and was educated by a rich Jewish lawyer, until in his sixteenth year he embraced the Christian religion,1996—the first example, after St. Paul, of a learned Jewish convert and the only example among the ancient fathers; for all the other fathers were either born of Christian parents, or converted from heathenism.

He spent several years in severe ascetic exercises among the hermits of Egypt, and then became abbot of a convent near Eleutheropolis. In connection with his teacher and friend Hilarion he labored zealously for the spread of monasticism in Palestine.1997

In the year 367 he was unanimously elected by the people and the monks bishop of Salamis (Constantia), the capital of the island of Cyprus. Here he wrote his works against the heretics, and took active part in the doctrinal controversies of his age. He made it his principal business to destroy the influence of the arch-heretic Origen, for whom he had contracted a thorough hatred from the anchorites of Egypt. On this mission he travelled in his old age to Palestine and Constantinople, and died in the same year in which Chrysostom was deposed and banished, an innocent sacrifice on the opposite side in the violent Origenistic controversies.1998

Epiphanius was revered even by his cotemporaries as a saint and as a patriarch of orthodoxy. Once as he passed through the streets of Jerusalem in company with bishop John, mothers brought their children to him that he might bless them, and the people crowded around him to kiss his feet and to touch the hem of his garment. After his death his name was surrounded by a halo of miraculous legends. He was a man of earnest, monastic piety, and of sincere but illiberal zeal for orthodoxy. His good nature easily allowed him to be used as an instrument for the passions of others, and his zeal was not according to knowledge. He is the patriarch of heresy-hunters. He identified Christianity with monastic piety and ecclesiastical orthodoxy and considered it the great mission of his life to pursue the thousand-headed hydra of heresy into all its hiding places. Occasionally, however, his fiery zeal consumed what was subsequently considered an essential part of piety and orthodoxy. Sharing the primitive Christian abhorrence of images, he destroyed a picture of Christ or some saint in a village church in Palestine; and at times he violated ecclesiastical order.

The learning of Epiphanius was extensive, but ill digested. He understood five languages: Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and a little Latin. Jerome, who himself knew but three languages, though he knew these far better than Epiphanius, called him the Five-tongued,1999 and Rufinus reproachfully says of him that he considered it his sacred duty as a wandering preacher to slander the great Origen in all languages and nations.2000  He was lacking in knowledge of the world and of men, in sound judgment, and in critical discernment. He was possessed of a boundless credulity, now almost proverbial, causing innumerable errors and contradictions in his writings. His style is entirely destitute of beauty or elegance.

Still his works are of considerable value as a storehouse of the history of ancient heresies and of patristic polemics. They are the following:

1. The Anchor,2001 a defence of Christian doctrine, especially of the doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the resurrection; in one hundred and twenty-one chapters. He composed this treatise A.D. 373, at the entreaty of clergymen and monks, as a stay for those who are tossed about upon the sea by heretics and devils. In it he gives two creeds, a shorter and a longer, which show that the addition made by the second ecumenical council to the Nicene symbol, in respect to the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and of the church, had already been several years in use in the church.2002  For the shorter symbol, which, according to Epiphanius, had to be said at baptism by every orthodox catechumen in the East, from the council of Nicaea to the tenth year of Valentinian and Valens (A.D. 373), is precisely the same as the Constantinopolitan; and the longer is even more specific against Apollinarianism and Macedonianism, in the article concerning the Holy Ghost. Both contain the anathemas of the Nicene Creed; the longer giving them in an extended form.

2. The Panarium, or Medicine-chest,2003 which contains antidotes for the poison of all heresies. This is his chief work, composed between the years 374 and 377, in answer to solicitations from many quarters. And it is the chief hereseological work of the ancient church. It is more extensive than any of the similar works of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus before it, and of Philastrius (or Philastrus), Augustine, Theodoret, pseudo-Tertullian, pseudo-Jerome, and the author of Praedestinatus, after it.2004  Epiphanius brought together, with the diligence of an unwearied compiler, but without logical or chronological arrangement, everything he could learn from written or oral sources concerning heretics from the beginning of the world down to his time. But his main concern is the antidote to heresy, the doctrinal refutations, in which he believed himself to be doing God and the church great service, and which, with all their narrowness and passion, contain many good thoughts and solid arguments. He improperly extends the conception of heresy over the field of all religion; whereas heresy is simply a perversion or caricature of Christian truth, and lives only upon the Christian religion. He describes and refutes no less than eighty heresies,2005 twenty of them preceding the time of Christ.2006  The pre-Christian heresies are: Barbarism, from Adam to the flood; Scythism; Hellenism (idolatry proper, with various schools of philosophy); Samaritanism (including four different sects); and Judaism (subdivided into seven parties: Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Hemerobaptists, Osseans, Nazarenes, and Herodians).2007  Among the Christian heresies, of which Simon Magus, according to ancient tradition, figures as patriarch, the different schools of Gnosticism (which may be easily reduced to about a dozen) occupy the principal space. With the sixty-fourth heresy Epiphanius begins the war upon the Origenists, Arians, Photinians, Marcellians, Semi-Arians, Pneumatomachians, Antidikomarianites, and other heretics of his age. In the earlier heresies he made large use, without proper acknowledgment, of the well-known works of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, and other written sources and oral traditions. In the latter sections he could draw more on his own observation and experience.

3. The Anacephalaeosis is simply an abridgment of the Panarion, with a somewhat different order.2008

This is the proper place to add a few words upon similar works of the post-Nicene age.

About the same time, or shortly after Epiphanius (380), Philastrius or Philastrus, bishop of Brixia (Brescia), wrote his Liber de haeresibus (in 156 chapters).2009  He was still more liberal with the name of heresy, extending it to one hundred and fifty-six systems, twenty-eight before Christ, and a hundred and twenty-eight after. He includes peculiar opinions on all sorts of subjects: Haeresis de stellis coelo affixis, haeresis de peccato Cain, haeresis de Psalterii inequalitate, haeresis de animalibus quatuor in prophetis, haeresis de Septuaginta interpretibus, haeresis de Melchisedech sacerdote, haeresis de uxoribus, et concubinis Salomonis!

He was followed by St. Augustine, who in the last years of his life wrote a brief compend on eighty-eight heresies, commencing with the Simonians and ending with the Pelagians.2010

The unknown author of the book called Praedestinatus added two more heretical parties, the Nestorians and the Predestinarians, to Augustine’s list; but the Predestinarians are probably a mere invention of the writer for the purpose of caricaturing and exposing the heresy of an absolute predestination to good and to evil.2011

4. In addition to those anti-heretical works, we have from Epiphanius a biblical archeological treatise on the Measures and Weights of the Scriptures,2012 and another on the Twelve Gems on the breastplate of Aaron, with an allegorical interpretation of their names.2013

A Commentary of Epiphanius on the Song of Songs was published in a Latin translation by Foggini in 1750 at Rome. Other works ascribed to him are lost, or of doubtful origin.

§ 170. John Chrysostom.

I. S. Joannis Chrysostomi. archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani, Opera omnia quae exstant vel quae ejus nomine circumferuntur, ad MSS. codices Gallic. etc. castigata, etc. (Gr. et Lat.). Opera et studio D. Bernardi de Montfaucon, monachi ordinis S. Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri, opem ferentibus aliis ex eodem sodalitio monachis. Paris. 1718–’38, in 13 vols. fol. The same edition reprinted at Venice, 1734–’41, in 13 vols. fol. (after which I quote in this section); also at Paris by Sinner (Gaume), 1834–’39, in 13 vols. (an elegant edition, with some additions), and by J. P. Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1859–’60, in 13 vols. Besides we have a number of separate editions of the Homilies, and of the work on the Priesthood, both in Greek, and in translations. A selection of his writings in Greek and Latin was edited by F. G. Lomler, Rudolphopoli, 1840, 1 volume. German translations of the Homilies (in part) by J. A. Cramer (Leipzig, 1748–’51), Feder (Augsburg, 1786), Ph. Mayer (Nürnberg, 1830), W. Arnoldi (Trier, 1831), Jos. Lutz (Tübingen, 1853); English translations of the Homilies on the New Testament in the Oxford Library of the Fathers, 1842–’53.

II. Palladius (a friend of Chrysostom and bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, author of the Historia Lausiaca; according to others a different person): Dialogus historicus de vita et conversatione beati Joannis Chrysostomi cum Theodoro ecclesiae Romanae diacono (in the Bened. ed. of the Opera, tom. xiii. pp. 1–89). Hieronymus: De viris illustribus, c. 129 (a very brief notice, mentioning only the work de sacerdotio). Socrates: H. E. vi. 3–21. Sozomen: H. E. viii. 2–23. Theodoret: H. E. v. 27–36. B. de Montfaucon: Vita Joannis Chrys. in his edition of the Opera, tom. xiii. 91–178. Testimonia Veterum de S. Joann. Chrys. scriptis, ibid. tom. xiii. 256–292. Tillemont: Mémoires, vol. xi. pp. 1–405. F. Stilting: Acta Sanctorum, Sept. 14 (the day of his death), tom. iv. pp. 401–709. A. Butler: Lives of Saints, sub Jan. 27. W. Cave: Lives of the Fathers, vol. iii. p. 237 ff. J. A. Fabricius: Biblioth. Gr. tom. viii. 454 sqq. Schröckh: Vol. x. p. 309 ff. A. Neander: Der heilige Chrysostomus (first 1821), 3d edition, Berlin, 1848, 2 vols. Abbé Rochet: Histoire de S. Jean Chrysostome. Par. 1866, 2 vols. Comp. also A. F. Villemain’s Tableau de l’éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle. Paris, 1854.

John, to whom an admiring posterity since the seventh century has given the name Chrysostomus, the Golden-mouthed, is the greatest expositor and preacher of the Greek church, and still enjoys the highest honor in the whole Christian world. No one of the Oriental fathers has left a more spotless reputation; no one is so much read and so often quoted by modern commentators.

He was born at Antioch, A.D. 347.2014  His father was a distinguished military officer. His mother Anthusa, who from her twentieth year was a widow, shines with Nonna and Monica among the Christian women of antiquity. She was admired even by the heathen, and the famous rhetorician Libanius, on hearing of her consistency and devotion, felt constrained to exclaim: "Ah! what wonderful women there are among the Christians."2015 She gave her son an admirable education, and early planted in his soul the germs of piety, which afterwards bore the richest fruits for himself and for the church. By her admonitions and the teachings of the Bible he was secured against the seductions of heathenism.

He received his literary training from Libanius, who accounted him his best scholar, and who, when asked shortly before his death (395) whom he wished for his successor, replied: "John, if only the Christians had not carried him away."

After the completion of his studies he became a rhetorician. He soon resolved, however, to devote himself to divine things, and after being instructed for three years by bishop Meletius in Antioch, he received baptism.

His first inclination after his conversion was to adopt the monastic life, agreeably to the ascetic tendencies of the times; and it was only by the entreaties of his mother, who adjured him with tears not to forsake her, that he was for a while restrained. Meletius made him reader, and so introduced him to a clerical career. He avoided an election to the bishopric (370) by putting forward his friend Basil, whom he accounted worthier, but who bitterly complained of the evasion. This was the occasion of his celebrated treatise On the Priesthood, in which, in the form of a dialogue with Basil, he vindicates his not strictly truthful conduct, and delineates the responsible duties of the spiritual office.2016

After the death of his mother he fled from the seductions and tumults of city life to the monastic solitude of the mountains near Antioch, and there spent six happy years in theological study and sacred meditation and prayer, under the guidance of the learned abbot Diodorus (afterwards bishop of Tarsus, † 394), and in communion with such like-minded young men as Theodore of Mopsuestia, the celebrated father of Antiochian (Nestorian) theology († 429). Monasticism was to him a most profitable school of experience and self-government; because he embraced this mode of life from the purest motives, and brought into it intellect and cultivation enough to make the seclusion available for moral and spiritual growth.

In this period he composed his earliest writings in praise of monasticism and celibacy, and his two long letters to the fallen Theodore (subsequently bishop of Mopsuestia), who had regretted his monastic vow and resolved to marry.2017  Chrysostom regarded this small affair from the ascetic stand-point of his age as almost equal to an apostasy from Christianity, and plied all his oratorical arts of sad sympathy, tender entreaty, bitter reproach, and terrible warning, to reclaim his friend to what he thought the surest and safest way to heaven. To sin, he says, is human, but to persist in sin is devilish; to fall is not ruinous to the soul, but to remain on the ground is. The appeal had its desired effect, and cannot fail to make a salutary impression upon every reader, provided we substitute some really great offence for the change of a mode of life which can only be regarded as a temporary and abnormal form of Christian practice.

By excessive self-mortifications John undermined his health, and returned about 380 to Antioch. There he was immediately ordained deacon by Meletius in 386, and by Flavian was made presbyter. By his eloquence and his pure and earnest character he soon acquired great reputation and the love of the whole church.

During the sixteen or seventeen years of his labors in Antioch he wrote the greater part of his Homilies and Commentaries, his work on the Priesthood, a consolatory Epistle to the despondent Stagirius, and an admonition to a young widow on the glory of widowhood and the duty of continuing in it. He disapproved second marriage, not as sinful or illegal, but as inconsistent with an ideal conception of marriage and a high order of piety.

After the death of Nectarius (successor of Gregory Nazianzen), towards the end of the year 397, Chrysostom was chosen, entirely without his own agency, patriarch of Constantinople. At this post he labored several years with happy effect. But his unsparing sermons aroused the anger of the empress Eudoxia, and his fame excited the envy of the ambitious patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria. An act of Christian love towards the persecuted Origenistic monks of Egypt involved him in the Origenistic controversy, and at last the united influence of Theophilus and Eudoxia overthrew him. Even the sympathy of the people and of Innocent I., the bishop of Rome, was unavailing in his behalf. He died in banishment on the fourteenth of September, A.D. 407, thanking God for all.2018  The Greeks celebrate his memorial day on the thirteenth of November, the Latins on the twenty-seventh of January, the day on which his remains in 438 were solemnly deposited in the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople with those of the emperors and patriarchs.

Persecution and undeserved sufferings tested the character of Chrysostom, and have heightened his fame. The Greek church honors him as the greatest teacher of the church, approached only by Athanasius and the three Cappadocians. His labors fall within the comparatively quiet period between the Trinitarian and the Christological controversies. He was not therefore involved in any doctrinal controversy except the Origenistic; and in that he had a very innocent part, as his unspeculative turn of mind kept him from all share in the Origenistic errors. Had he lived a few decades later he would perhaps have fallen under suspicion of Nestorianism; for he belonged to the same Antiochian school with his teacher Diodorus of Tarsus, his fellow-student Theodore of Mopsuestia, and his successor Nestorius. From this school, whose doctrinal development was not then complete, he derived a taste for the simple, sober, grammatico-historical interpretation, in opposition to the arbitrary allegorizing of the Alexandrians, while he remained entirely free from the rationalizing tendency which that school soon afterwards discovered. He is thus the soundest and worthiest representative of the Antiochian theology. In anthropology he is a decided synergist; and his pupil Cassian, the founder of Semi-Pelagianism, gives him for an authority.2019  But his synergism is that of the whole Greek church; it had no direct conflict with Augustinianism, for Chrysostom died several years before the opening of the Pelagian controversy. He opposed the Arians and Novatians, and faithfully and constantly adhered to the church doctrine, so far as it was developed; but he avoided narrow dogmatism and angry controversy, and laid greater stress on practical piety than on unfruitful orthodoxy.2020

Valuable as the contributions of Chrysostom to didactic theology may be, his chief importance and merit lie not in this department, but in homiletical exegesis, pulpit eloquence, and pastoral care. Here he is unsurpassed among the ancient fathers, whether Greek or Latin. By talent and culture he was peculiarly fitted to labor in a great metropolis. At that time a bishop, as he himself says, enjoyed greater honor at court, in the society of ladies, in the houses of the nobles, than the first dignitaries of the empire.2021  Hence the great danger, of hierarchical pride and worldly conformity, to which so many of the prelates succumbed. This danger Chrysostom happily avoided. He continued his plain monastic mode of life in the midst of the splendor of the imperial residence, and applied all his superfluous income to the support of the sick and the stranger. Poor for himself, he was rich for the poor. He preached an earnest Christianity fruitful in good works, he insisted on strict discipline, and boldly attacked the vices of the age and the hollow, worldly, hypocritical religion of the court. He, no doubt, transcended at times the bounds of moderation and prudence, as when he denounced the empress Eudoxia as a new Herodias thirsting after the blood of John; but he erred "on virtue’s side," and his example of fearless devotion to duty has at all times exerted a most salutary influence upon clergymen in high and influential stations. Neander not inaptly compares his work in the Greek church with that of Spener, the practical reformer in the Lutheran church of the seventeenth century, and calls him a martyr of Christian charity, who fell a victim in the conflict with the worldly spirit of his age.2022

In the pulpit Chrysostom was a monarch of unlimited power over his hearers. His sermons were frequently interrupted by noisy theatrical demonstrations of applause, which he indignantly rebuked as unworthy of the house of God.2023  He had trained his natural gift of eloquence, which was of the first order, in the school of Demosthenes and Libanius, and ennobled and sanctified it in the higher school of the Holy Spirit.2024  He was in the habit of making careful preparation for his sermons by the study of the Scriptures, prayer, and meditation; but he knew how to turn to good account unexpected occurrences, and some of his noblest efforts were extemporaneous effusions under the inspiration of the occasion. His ideas are taken from Christian experience and especially from the inexhaustible stores of the Bible, which he made his daily bread, and which he earnestly recommended even to the laity. He took up whole books and explained them in order, instead of confining himself to particular texts, as was the custom after the introduction of the pericopes. His language is noble, solemn, vigorous, fiery, and often overpowering. Yet he was by no means wholly free from the untruthful exaggerations and artificial antitheses, which were regarded at that time as the greatest ornament and highest triumph of eloquence, but which appear to a healthy and cultivated taste as defects and degeneracies. The most eminent French preachers, Bossuet, Massillon, and Bourdaloue, have taken Chrysostom for their model.

By far the most numerous and most valuable writings of this father are the Homilies, over six hundred in number, which he delivered while presbyter at Antioch and while bishop at Constantinople.2025  They embody his exegesis; and of this they are a rich storehouse, from which the later Greek commentators, Theodoret, Theophylact, and Oecumenius, have drawn, sometimes content to epitomize his expositions. Commentaries, properly so called, he wrote only on the first eight chapters of Isaiah and on the Epistle to the Galatians. But nearly all his sermons on Scripture texts are more or less expository. He has left us homilies on Genesis, the Psalms, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, the Acts, and all the Epistles of Paul, including the Epistle to the Hebrews. His homilies on the Pauline Epistles are especially esteemed.2026

Besides these expository sermons on whole books of the Scriptures, Chrysostom delivered homilies on separate sections or verses of Scripture, festal discourses, orations in commemoration of apostles and martyrs, and discourses on special occasions. Among the last are eight homilies Against the Jews (against Judaizing tendencies in the church at Antioch), twelve homilies Against the Anomoeans (Arians), and especially the celebrated twenty and one homilies On the Statues, which called forth his highest oratorical powers.2027  He delivered the homilies on the Statues at Antioch in 387 during a season of extraordinary public excitement, when the people, oppressed by excessive taxation, rose in rebellion, tore down the statues of the emperor Theodosius I., the deceased empress Flacilla, and the princes Arcadius and Honorius, dragged them through the streets, and so provoked the wrath of the emperor that he threatened to destroy the city—a calamity which was avoided by the intercession of bishop Flavian.

The other works of Chrysostom are his youthful treatise on the Priesthood already alluded to; a number of doctrinal and moral essays in defence of the Christian faith, and in commendation of celibacy and the nobler forms of monastic life;2028 and two hundred and forty-two letters, nearly all written during his exile between 403 and 407. The most important of the letters are two addressed to the Roman bishop Innocent I., with his reply, and seventeen long letters to his friend Olympias, a pious widow and deaconess. They all breathe a noble Christian spirit, not desiring to be recalled from exile, convinced that  there is but one misfortune,—departure from the path of piety and virtue, and filled with cordial friendship, faithful care for all the interests of the church, and a calm and cheerful looking forward to the glories of heaven.2029

The so-called Liturgy of Chrysostom, which is still in use in the Greek and Russian churches, has been already noticed in the proper place.2030

Among the pupils and admirers of Chrysostom we mention as deserving of special notice two abbots of the first half of the fifth century: the elder Nilus of Sinai, who retired with his son from one of the highest civil stations of the empire to the contemplative solitude of Mount Sinai, while his wife and daughter entered a convent  of Egypt;2031 and Isidore of Pelusium, or Pelusiota, a native of Alexandria, who presided over a convent not far from the mouth of the Nile, and sympathized with Cyril against Nestorius, but warned him against  his violent  passions.2032  They are among the worthiest representatives of ancient  monasticism, and, in a large number of letters and exegetical and ascetic treatises, they discuss, with learning, piety, judgment, and moderation, nearly all the theological and practical questions of their age.

§ 171. Cyril of Alexandria.

I. S. Cyrillus, Alex. archiepisc.: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat., cura et studio Joan. Auberti. Lutetiae, 1638, 6 vols. in 7 fol. The same edition with considerable additions by J. P. Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1859, in 10 vols. (Patrol. Gr. tom. lxviii-lxxvii.). Comp. Angelo Mai’s Nova Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. ii. pp. 1–498 (Rom. 1844), and tom. iii. (Rom. 1845), where several writings of Cyril are printed for the first time, viz.: De incarnatione Domini; Explanatio in Lucam; Homiliae; Excerpta; Fragments of Commentaries on the Psalms, and the Pauline and Catholic Epistles. (These additional works are incorporated in Migne’s edition.)  Cyrilli Commentarii in Lucca Evangelium quae supersunt, Syriace, e manuscriptis spud museum Britannicum edidit Rob. Payne Smith, Oxonii, 1858. The same also in an English version with valuable notes by R. P. Smith, Oxford, 1859, in 2 vols.

II. Scattered notices of Cyril in Socrates, Marius Mercator, and the Acts of the ecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Tillemont: Tom. xiv. 267–676, and notes, pp. 747–795. Cellier: Tom. xiii. 241 sqq. Acta Sanctorum: Jan. 28, tom. ii. A. Butler: Jan. 28. Fabricius: Biblioth. Gr. ed. Harless, vol. ix. p. 446 sqq. (The Vita of the Bollandists and the Noticia literaria of Fabricius are also reprinted in Migne’s edition of Cyril, tom. i. pp. 1–90.)  Schröckh Theil xviii. 313–354. Comp. also the Prefaces of Angelo Mai to tom. ii. of the Nova Bibl. Patrum, and of R. P. Smith to his translation of Cyril’s Commentary on Luke.

While the lives and labors of most of the fathers of the church continually inspire our admiration and devotion, Cyril of Alexandria makes an extremely unpleasant, or at least an extremely equivocal, impression. He exhibits to us a man making theology and orthodoxy the instruments of his passions.

Cyrillus became patriarch of Alexandria about the year 412. He trod in the footsteps of his predecessor and uncle, the notorious Theophilus, who had deposed the noble Chrysostom and procured his banishment; in fact, he exceeded Theophilus in arrogance and violence. He had hardly entered upon his office, when he closed all the churches of the Novatians in Alexandria, and seized their ecclesiastical property. In the year 415 he fell upon the synagogues of the very numerous Jews with armed force, because, under provocation of his bitter injustice, they had been guilty of a trifling tumult; he put some to death, and drove out the rest, and exposed their property to the excited multitude.

These invasions of the province of the secular power brought him into quarrel and continual contest with Orestes, the imperial governor of Alexandria. He summoned five hundred monks from the Nitrian mountains for his guard, who publicly insulted the governor. One of them, by the name of Ammon, wounded him with a stone, and was thereupon killed by Orestes. But Cyril caused the monk to be buried in state in a church as a holy martyr to religion, and surnamed him Thaumasios, the Admirable; yet he found himself compelled by the universal disgust of cultivated people to let this act be gradually forgotten.

Cyril is also frequently charged with the instigation of the murder of the renowned Hypatia, a friend of Orestes. But in this cruel tragedy he probably had only the indirect part of exciting the passions of the Christian populace which led to it, and of giving them the sanction of his high office.2033

From his uncle he had learned a strong aversion to Chrysostom, and at the notorious Synodus ad Quercum near Chalcedon, A.D. 403, he voted for his deposition. He therefore obstinately resisted the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch, when, shortly after the death of Chrysostom, they felt constrained to repeal his unjust condemnation; and he was not even ashamed to compare that holy man to the traitor Judas. Yet he afterwards yielded, at least in appearance, to the urgent remonstrances of Isidore of Pelusium and others, and admitted the name of Chrysostom into the diptychs2034 of his church (419), and so brought the Roman see again into communication with Alexandria.

From the year 428 to his death in 444 his life was interwoven with the Christological controversies. He was the most zealous and the most influential champion of the anti-Nestorian orthodoxy at the third ecumenical council, and scrupled at no measures to annihilate his antagonist. Besides the weapons of theological learning and acumen, he allowed himself also the use of wilful misrepresentation, artifice, violence, instigation of people and monks at Constantinople, and repeated bribery of imperial officers, even of the emperor’s sister Pulcheria. By his bribes he loaded the church property at Alexandria with debt, though he left considerable wealth even to his kindred, and adjured his successor, the worthless Dioscurus, with the most solemn religious ceremonies, not to disturb his heirs.2035

His subsequent exertions for the restoration of peace cannot wipe these stains from his character; for he was forced to those exertions by the power of the opposition. His successor Dioscurus, however (after 444), made him somewhat respectable by inheriting all his passions without his theological ability, and by setting them in motion for the destruction of the peace.

Cyril furnishes a striking proof that orthodoxy and piety are two quite different things, and that zeal for pure doctrine may coëxist with an unchristian spirit. In personal character he unquestionably stands far below his unfortunate antagonist. The judgment of the Catholic historians is bound by the authority of their church, which, in strange blindness, has canonized him.2036  Yet Tillemont feels himself compelled to admit that Cyril did much that is unworthy of a saint.2037  The estimate of Protestant historians has been the more severe. The moderate and honest Chr. W. Franz Walch can hardly give him credit for anything good;2038 and the English historian, H. H. Milman, says he would rather appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, loaded with all the heresies of Nestorius, than with the barbarities of Cyril.2039

But the faults of his personal character should not blind us to the merits of Cyril as a theologian. He was a man of vigorous and acute mind and extensive learning and is clearly to be reckoned among the most important dogmatic and polemic divines of the Greek church.2040  Of his contemporaries Theodoret alone was his superior. He was the last considerable representative of the Alexandrian theology and the Alexandrian church, which, however, was already beginning to degenerate and stiffen; and thus be offsets Theodoret, who is the most learned representative of the Antiochian school. He aimed to be the same to the doctrine of the incarnation and the person of Christ, that his purer and greater predecessor in the see of Alexandria had been to the doctrine of the Trinity a century before. But he overstrained the supranaturalism and mysticism of the Alexandrian theology, and in his zeal for the reality of the incarnation and the unity of the person of Christ, he went to the brink of the monophysite error; even sustaining himself by the words of Athanasius, though not by his spirit, because the Nicene age had not yet fixed beyond all interchange the theological distinction between oujsiva and uJpovstasi".2041

And connected with this is his enthusiastic zeal for the honor of Mary as the virgin-mother of God. In a pathetic and turgid eulogy on Mary, which he delivered at Ephesus during the third ecumenical council, he piles upon her predicates which exceed all biblical limits, and border upon idolatry.2042  "Blessed be thou," says he, "O mother of God!  Thou rich treasure of the world, inextinguishable lamp, crown of virginity, sceptre of true doctrine, imperishable temple, habitation of Him whom no space can contain, mother and virgin, through whom He is, who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed be thou, O Mary, who didst hold in thy womb the Infinite One; thou through whom the blessed Trinity is glorified and worshipped, through whom the precious cross is adored throughout the world, through whom heaven rejoices and angels and archangels are glad, through whom the devil is disarmed and banished, through whom the fallen creature is restored to heaven, through whom every believing soul is saved."2043  These and other extravagant praises are interspersed with polemic thrusts against Nestorius.

Yet Cyril did not, like Augustine, exempt the Virgin from sin or infirmity, but, like Basil, he ascribed to her a serious doubt at the crucifixion concerning the true divinity of Christ, and a shrinking from the cross, similar to that of Peter, when he was scandalized at the bare mention of it, and exclaimed: "Be it far from thee, Lord!" (Matt. xvi. 22.)  In commenting on John xix. 25, Cyril says: The female sex somehow is ever fond of tears,2044  and given to much lamentation .... It was the purpose of the holy evangelist to teach, that probably even the mother of the Lord Himself took offence2045 at the unexpected passion; and the death upon the cross, being so very bitter, was near unsettling her from her fitting mind .... Doubt not that she admitted2046 some such thoughts as these: I bore Him who is laughed at on the wood; but when He said He was the true Son of the Omnipotent God, perhaps somehow He was mistaken.2047  He said, ’I am the Life;’ how then has He been crucified? how has He been strangled by the cords of His murderers? how did He not prevail over the plot of His persecutors? why does He not descend from the cross, since He bade Lazarus to return to life, and filled all Judaea with amazement at His miracles?  And it is very natural that woman,2048 not knowing the mystery, should slide into some such trains of thought. For we should understand, that the gravity of the circumstances of the Passion was enough to overturn even a self-possessed mind; it is no wonder then if woman2049 slipped into this reasoning."  Cyril thus understands the prophecy of Simeon (Luke ii. 35) concerning the sword, which, he says, "meant the most acute pain, cutting down the woman’s mind into extravagant thoughts. For temptations test the hearts of those who suffer them, and make bare the thoughts which are in them."2050

Aside from his partisan excesses, he powerfully and successfully represented the important truth of the unity of the person of Christ against the abstract dyophysitism of Nestorius.

For this reason his Christological writings against Nestorius and Theodoret are of the greatest importance to the history of doctrine.2051  Besides these he has left us a valuable apologetic work, composed in the year 433, and dedicated to the emperor Theodosius II., in refutation of the attack of Julian the Apostate upon Christianity;2052 and a doctrinal work on the Trinity and the incarnation.2053  As an expositor he has the virtues and the faults of the arbitrary allegorizing and dogmatizing method of the Alexandrians, and with all his copiousness of thought he affords far less solid profit than Chrysostom or Theodoret. He has left extended commentaries, chiefly in the form of sermons, on the Pentateuch (or rather on the most important sections and the typical significance of the ceremonial law), on Isaiah, on the twelve Minor Prophets, and on the Gospel of John.2054  To these must now be added fragments of expositions of the Psalms, and of some of the Epistles of Paul, first edited by Angelo Mai; and a homiletical commentary on the Gospel of Luke, which likewise has but recently become known, first by fragments in the Greek original, and since complete in a Syriac translation from the manuscripts of a Nitrian monastery.2055  And, finally, the works of Cyril include thirty Easter Homilies (Homiliae paschales), in which, according to Alexandrian custom, he announced the time of Easter; several homilies delivered in Ephesus and elsewhere; and eighty-eight Letters, relating for the most part, to the Nestorian controversies.2056

§ 172. Ephraem the Syrian.

I. S. Ephraem Syrus: Opera omnia quae exstant Greece, Syriace, Latine, in sex tomos distributa, ad MSS. codices Vaticanos aliosque castigata, etc.: nunc primum, sub auspiciis S. P. Clementis XII. Pontificis Max. e Bibl. Vaticana prodeunt. Edited by the celebrated Oriental scholar J. S. Assemani (assisted by his nephew Stephen Evodius Assemani, 1732–’43, 6 vols. and the Maronite Jesuit Peter Benedict). Romae, fol. (vols. i.-iii. contain the Greek and Latin translations; vols. iv.-vi., which are also separately numbered i.-iii., the Syriac writings with a Latin version). Supplementary works edited by the Mechitarists, Venet. 1836, 4 vols. 8 vo. The hymns of Ephraem have also been edited by Aug. Hahn and Fr. L. Sieffert: Chrestomathia Syriaca sive S. Ephraemi carmina selecta, notis criticis, philologicis, historicis, et glossario locupletissimo illustr., Lips. 1825; and by Daniel: Thes. hymn. tom. iii. (Lips. 1855) pp. 139–268. German translation by Zingerle: Die heil. Muse der Syrer. Innsbruck, 1830. English translation by Henry Burgess: Select metrical Hymns and Homilies of Ephr. Syrus, transl. Lond. 1853, 2 vols. 12 mo. Comp. § 114, above.

II. Gregorius Nyss.: Vita et encomium S. Ephr. Syr. (in Opera Greg. ed. Paris. 1615, tom. ii. pp. 1027–1048; or in Migne’s ed. of Greg. tom. iii. 819–850, and in Ephr. Op. tom. i.). The Vita per Metaphrastem; several anonymous biographies; the Testimonia veterum and Judicia recentiorum; the Dissertation de rebus gestis, scriptis, editionibusque Ephr. Syr., etc., all in the first volume, and the Acta Ephraemi Syriaca auctore anonymo, in the sixth volume, of Assemani’s edition of the Opera Ephr. Jerome: Cat. vir. ill.c. 115. Sozomen: H. E. iii. c. 16; vi. 34. Theodoret: H. E. iv. 29. Acta Sanctorum for Fehr. i. (Antw. 1658), pp. 67–78. Butler: The Lives of the Saints, sub July 9. W. Cave: Lives of the Fathers, &c. Vol. iii. 404–412 (Oxford ed. of 1840). Fabricius: Bibl. Gr. (reprinted in Assemani’s ed. of the Opera i. lxiii. sqq.). Lengerke: De Ephraemo Syro S. Scripturae interprete, Hal. 1828; De Ephr. arte hermeneutica, Regiom. 1831. Alsleben: Das Leben des h. Ephraem. Berlin, 1853. E. Rödiger: Art. Ephräm in Herzog’s Encykl. vol. iv. (1855), p. 85 ff.

Before we leave the Oriental fathers, we must give a sketch of Ephraem or Ephraim2057 the most distinguished divine, orator, and poet, of the ancient Syrian church. He is called "the pillar of the church," "the teacher," "the prophet, of the Syrians," and as a hymn-writer "the guitar of the Holy Ghost."  His life was at an early date interwoven with miraculous legends, and it is impossible to sift the truth from pious fiction.

He was born of heathen parents in Mesopotamia (either at Edessa or at Nisibis) in the beginning of the fourth century, and was expelled from home by his father, a priest of the god Abnil, for his leaning to Christianity.2058  He went to the venerated bishop and confessor Jacob of Nisibis, who instructed and probably also baptized him, took him to the council of Nicaea in 325, and employed him as teacher. He soon acquired great celebrity by his sacred learning, his zealous orthodoxy, and his ascetic piety. In 363, after the cession of Nisibis to the Persians, he withdrew to Roman territory, and settled in Edessa, which about that time became the chief seat of Christian learning in Syria.2059  He lived a hermit in a cavern near the city, and spent his time in ascetic exercises, in reading, writing, and preaching to the monks and the people with great effect. He acquired complete mastery over his naturally violent temper, he denied himself all pleasures, and slept on the bare ground. He opposed the remnants of idolatry in the surrounding country, and defended the Nicene orthodoxy against all classes of heretics. He made a journey to Egypt, where he spent several years among the hermits. He also visited, by divine admonition, Basil the Great at Caesarea, who ordained him deacon. Basil held him in the highest esteem, and afterwards sent two of his pupils to Edessa to ordain him bishop; but Ephraem, in order to escape the responsible office, behaved like a fool, and the messengers returned with the report that he was out of his mind. Basil told them that the folly was on their side, and Ephraem was a man full of divine wisdom.

Shortly before his death, when the city of Edessa was visited by a severe famine, Ephraem quitted his solitary cell and preached a powerful sermon against the rich for permitting the poor to die around them, and told them that their wealth would ruin their soul, unless they made good use of it. The rich men felt the rebuke, and intrusted him with the distribution of their goods. Ephraem fitted up about three hundred beds, and himself attended to the sufferers, whether they were foreigners or natives, till the calamity was at an end. Then he returned to his cell, and a few days after, about the year 379, he expired, soon following his friend Basil.

Ephraem, says Sozomen, attained no higher clerical degree than that of deacon, but his attainments in virtue rendered him equal in reputation to those who rose to the highest sacerdotal dignity, while his holy life and erudition made him an object of universal admiration. He left many disciples who were zealously attached to his doctrines. The most celebrated of them were Abbas, Zenobius, Abraham, Maras, and Simeon, whom the Syrians regard as the glory of their country.2060

Ephraem was an uncommonly prolific author. His fertility was prophetically revealed to him in his early years by the vision of a vine which grew from the root of his tongue, spreading in every direction to the ends of the earth, and was loaded with new and heavier clusters the more it was plucked. His writings consist of commentaries on the Scriptures, homilies, ascetic tracts, and sacred poetry. The commentaries and hymns, or metrical prose, are preserved in the Syriac original, and have an independent philological value for Oriental scholars. The other writings exist only in Greek, Latin, and Armenian translations. Excellent Greek translations were known and extensively read so early as the time of Chrysostom and Jerome. His works furnish no clear evidence of his knowledge of the Greek language; some writers assert his acquaintance with Greek, others deny it.2061

His commentaries extended over the whole Bible, "from the book of creation to the last book of grace," as Gregory of Nyssa says. We have his commentaries on the historical and prophetical books of the Old Testament and the Book of Job in Syriac, and his commentaries on the Epistles of Paul in an Armenian translation.2062  They have been but little used thus far by commentators. He does not interpret the text from the original Hebrew, but from the old Syriac translation, the Peshito.2063

His sermons and homilies, of which, according to Photius, he composed more than a thousand, are partly expository, partly polemical, against Jews, heathen, and heretics.2064  They evince a considerable degree of popular eloquence; they are full of pathos, exclamations, apostrophes, antitheses, illustrations, severe rebuke, and sweet comfort, according to the subject; but also full of exaggerations, bombast, prolixity, and the superstitious of his age, such as the over-estimate of ascetic virtue, and excessive veneration of the Virgin Mary, the saints, and relics.2065  Some of his sermons were publicly read after the Bible lesson in many Oriental and even Occidental churches.2066

His hymns were intended to counteract the influence of the heretical views of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which spread widely by means of popular Syrian songs. "When Ephraem perceived," says Sozomen, "that the Syrians were charmed with the elegant diction and melodious versification of Harmonius, he became apprehensive, lest they should imbibe the same opinions; and therefore, although he was ignorant of Greek learning, he applied himself to the study of the metres of Harmonius, and composed similar poems in accordance with the doctrines of the church, and sacred hymns in praise of holy men. From that period the Syrians sang the odes of Ephraem, according to the method indicated by Harmonius."  Theodoret gives a similar account, and says, that the hymns of Ephraem combined harmony and melody with piety, and subserved all the purposes of valuable and efficacious medicine against the heretical hymns of Harmonius. It is reported that he wrote no less than three hundred thousand verses.2067  But, with the exception of his commentaries, all his Syriac works are written in verse, i.e., in lines of an equal number of syllables, and with occasional rhyme and assonance, though without regular metre.2068

II.—The Latin Fathers.

§ 173. Lactantius.

I. Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus: Opera. First edition in venerabili monasterio Sublacensi, 1465. (Brunet: "Livre précieux, qui est en même temps la première édition de Lactance, et le premier ouvrage impr. en Italia avec date.")  Later editions by J. L. Brünemann, Lips. 1739; Le Brun and N. Lenglet Du Fresnoy, Par. 1748, 2 vols. 4to; F. E. a S. Xaverio, Rom. 1754–’9, and Migne, Par. 1844, in 2 vols. A convenient manual edition by O. Fridol. Fritzsche, in Gersdorf’s Bibliotheca Patrum ecclesiast. selecta, Lips. 1842, vol. x. and xi.

II. The introductory essays to the editions. Jerome: Cat. vir. illustr. c. 80. Notices in Dupin, Ceillier, Cave (Vol. iii. pp. 373–384), Schönemann (Biblioth. Patr. Lat. i. 177 sqq.), &c. Möhler: Patrologie, i. pp. 917–933. On the Christology of Lactantius, comp. Dorner: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre Von der Person Christi. Th. i. p. 761 ff.

Firmiamus Lactantius stands among the Latin fathers, like Eusebius among the Greek, on the border between the second period and the third, and unites in his reminiscences the personal experience of both the persecution and the victory of the church in the Roman empire; yet in his theological views he belongs rather to the ante-Nicene age.

According to his own confession he sprang from heathen parents. He was probably, as some have inferred from his name, a native of Firmum (Fermo) in Italy; he studied in the school of the rhetorician and apologist Arnobius of Sicca, and on this account has been taken by some for an African; he made himself known by a poetical work called Symposion, a collection of a hundred riddles in hexameters for table amusement; and he was called to Nicomedia by Dioclesian to teach Latin eloquence. But as this city was occupied mostly by Greeks, he had few hearers, and devoted himself to authorship.2069  In his manhood, probably shortly before or during the persecution under Dioclesian, he embraced Christianity; he was witness of the cruel scenes of that persecution, though not himself a sufferer in it; and he wrote in defence of the hated and reviled religion.

Constantine subsequently (after 312) brought him to his court in Gaul, and committed to him the education of his son Crispus, whom the emperor caused to be executed in 326. At court he lived very simply, and withstood the temptations of luxury and avarice. He is said to have died in the imperial residence at Treves at a great age, about the year 330.

Jerome calls Lactantius the most learned man of his time.2070  His writings certainly give evidence of varied and thorough knowledge, of fine rhetorical culture, and particularly of eminent power of statement in clear, pure, and elegant style. In this last respect he surpasses almost all the Latin fathers, except Jerome, and has not unjustly been called the Christian Cicero.2071  His is the famous derivation of the word religion from religare, defining it as the reunion of man with God, reconciliation; answering to the nature of Christianity, and including the three ideas of an original unity, a separation by sin, and a restoration of the unity again.2072

But he is far more the rhetorician than the philosopher or theologian, and, as Jerome observes, has greater skill in the refutation of error than in the establishment of truth. The doctrinal matter of his writings, as in the case of his preceptor Arnobius, is very vague and unsatisfactory, and he does not belong to the narrower circle of the fathers, the authoritative teachers of the church. Pope Gelasius counted his works among the apocrypha, i.e., writings not ecclesiastically received.

Notwithstanding this, his Institutes, on account of their elegant style, have been favorite reading, and are said to have appeared in more than a hundred editions. His mistakes and errors in the exposition of points of Christian doctrine do not amount to heresies, but are mostly due to the crude and unsettled state of the church doctrine at the time. In the doctrine of sin he borders upon Manichaeism. In anthropology and soteriology he follows the synergism which, until Augustine, was almost universal. In the doctrine of the Trinity he was, like most of the ante-Nicene fathers, subordinationist. He taught a duplex nativitas of Christ, one at the creation, and one at the incarnation. Christ went forth from God at the creation, as a word from the mouth, yet hypostatically.2073

His most important work is his Divine Institutes, a comprehensive refutation of heathenism and defence of Christianity, designed to make Christianity better known among the cultivated classes, and to commend it by scholarship and attractive style.2074  He seems to have begun the work during the Dioclesianic persecution, but afterwards to have enlarged and improved it about the year 321; for he dedicated it to the emperor, whom he celebrates as the first Christian prince.2075

To the same apologetic purpose was his work De morte, or mortibus, persecutorum, which is of some importance to the external history of the church.2076  It describes with minute knowledge, but in vehement tone, the cruel persecutions of the Christians from Nero to Dioclesian, Galerius, and Maximinus (314), and the divine judgments on the persecutors, who were compelled to become involuntary witnesses to the indestructible power of Christianity.

In his book De opificio Dei2077 he gives observations on the organization of the human nature, and on the divine wisdom displayed in it.

In the treatise De ira Dei2078 he shows that the punitive justice of God necessarily follows from his abhorrence of evil, and is perfectly compatible with his goodness; and he closes with an exhortation to live such a life that God may ever be gracious to us, and that we may never have to fear his wrath.

We have also from Lactantius various Fragmenta and Carmina de Phoenice, de Passione Domini, de resurrectione Domini, and one hundred Aenigmata, each of three hexameters.2079

§ 174. Hilary of Poitiers.

I. S. Hilarius Pictaviensis: Opera, studio et labore monach. S. Benedicti e congreg. S. Mauri. Paris, 1693, 1 vol. fol. The same ed. enlarged and improved by Scip. Maffei, Verona, 1730, 2 vols. fol. (reprinted in Venice, 1749). Am ed. by Fr. Overthür, Wirceburgi, 1785–’88, 4 vols.; and one by Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1844–’45, in 2 vols. (Patrol. Lat. tom. ix. and x.).

II. The Praefatio et Vitae in the first vol. of the ed. of Maffei, and Migne (tom. i. 125 sqq.). Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 100. Tillemont (tom. vii.); Ceillier (tom. v.); and Butler, sub Jan. 14. Kling, in Herzog’s Encykl. vi. 84 ff. On the Christology of Hilary, comp. especially Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte, i. 1037 ff.

Hilary of Poitiers, or Pictaviensis, so named from his birth-place and subsequent bishopric in Southwestern France, and so distinguished from other men of the same name,2080 was especially eminent in the Arian controversies for his steadfast confession and powerful defence of the orthodox faith, and has therefore been styled the "Athanasius of the West."

He was born towards the end of the third century, and embraced Christianity in mature age, with his wife and his daughter Apra.2081  He found in the Holy Scriptures the solution of the riddle of life, which he had sought in vain in the writings of the philosophers. In the year 350 he became bishop of his native city, and immediately took a very decided stand against Arianism, which was at that time devastating the Gallic church. For this he was banished by Constantius to Phrygia in Asia Minor, where Arianism ruled. Here, between 356 and 361, he wrote his twelve books on the Trinity, the main work of his life.2082  He was recalled to Gaul, then banished again, and spent the last years of his life in rural retirement till his death in 368.

We have from him, besides the theological work already mentioned several smaller polemic works against Arianism, viz., On Synods, or the Faith of the Orientals (358); fragments of a history of the Synod of Ariminum and Seleucia; a tract against the Arian emperor Constantius, and one against the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan. He wrote also Commentaries on the Psalms (incomplete), and the Gospel of Matthew, which are partly a free translation of Origen,2083 and some original hymns, which place him next to Ambrose among the lyric poets of the ancient church.

Hilary was a man of thorough biblical knowledge, theological depth and acuteness, and earnest, efficient piety. He had schooled himself in the works of Origen and Athanasius, but was at the same time an independent thinker and investigator. His language is often obscure and heavy, but earnest and strong, recalling Tertullian. He had to reproduce the profound thoughts of Athanasius and other Greek fathers in the Latin language, which is far less adapted to speculation than the copious, versatile, finely-shaded Greek. The incarnation of God was to him, as it was to Athanasius, the centre of theology and of the Christian life. He had an effective hand in the development of the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and the dogma of the person of Christ. In this he was specially eminent for his fine use of the Gospel of John. But he could not get clear of subordinationism, nor call the Holy Ghost downright God. His Pneumatology, as well as his anthropology and soteriology, was, like that of all the fathers before Augustine, comparatively crude. In Christology he saw farther and deeper than many of his contemporaries. He made the distinction clear between the divine and the human in Christ, and yet held firmly to the unity of His person. He supposes a threefold birth of the Son of God: the eternal generation in the bosom of the Father, to whom the Son is equal in essence and glory; the incarnation, the humiliation of Himself to the form of a servant from the free impulse of love; and the birth of the Son of God out of the Son of Man in the resurrection, the transfiguration of the form of a servant into the form of God, at once showing forth again the full glory of God, and realizing the idea of humanity.2084

§ 175. Ambrose.

I. S. Ambrosius Mediolanensis episcopus: Opera ad manuscriptos codices Vaticanos, Gallicanos, Belgicos, &c., emendata, studio et labore monachorum ord. S. Benedicti e congreg. S. Mauri (Jac. du Fricke et Nic. de Nourry). Paris. 1686–’90, 2 vols. fol. This edition was reprinted at Venice, 1748–’51, in 4 vols. fol., and in 1781 in 8 vols. 4to, and by Abbé Migne in his Patrol., Petit-Montrouge, 1843, 2 tom. in 4 Parts with some additions. The Libri tres de officiis, and the Hexaëmeron of Ambrose have also been frequently published separately. A convenient edition of both is included in Gersdorf’s Bibliotheca Patrum Latinorum selecta, vols. viii. and ix. Lips. 1839. His hymns are found also in Daniel’s Thesaurus hymnolog tom. i. p. 12 sqq.

II. Paulinus (deacon of Milan and secretary of Ambrose): Vita S. Ambrosii (written by request of St. Augustine, derived from personal knowledge, from Marcella, sister of Ambrose, and several friends). The Vita of an anonymous writer, in Greek and Latin, in the Bened. ed. of the Opera. Both in the Appendix to tom. ii. ed. Benedictinae. Benedictini Editores: Vita Ambrosii ex ejus potissimum scriptis collecta et secundum chronologiae ordinem digesta, in the Bened. ed., in the Appendix to tom. ii., and in Migne’s reprint, tom. i. (very thorough and instructive). Comp. also the Selecta veterum testimonia de S. Ambr. in the same editions. The biographies of Hermant (1678), Tillemont (tom. x. pp. 78–306), Vagliano (Sommario degli archivescovi di Milano), Butler (sub Dec. 7), Schröckh, Böhringer, J. P. Silbert (Das Leben des heiligen Ambrosius, Wien, 1841).

Ambrose, son of the governor (praefectus) of Gaul, which was one of the three great dioceses of the Western empire, was born at Treves (Treviri) about 340, educated at Rome for the highest civil offices, and after greatly distinguishing himself as a rhetorician, was elected imperial president (praetor) of Upper Italy; whereupon Probus, prefect of Italy, gave him the remarkable advice, afterwards interpreted as an involuntary prophecy: "Go, and act not the judge, but the bishop."  He administered this office with justice and mildness, enjoying universal esteem.

The episcopal chair of Milan, the second capital of Italy, and frequently the residence of the emperors, was at that time occupied by the Cappadocian, Auxentius, the head of the Arian party in the West. Soon after the arrival of Ambrose, Auxentius died. A division then arose among the people in the choice of a successor, and a dangerous riot threatened. The governor considered it his duty to allay the storm. But while he was yet speaking to the people, the voice of a child suddenly rang out: "Let Ambrose be bishop!"  It seemed a voice of God, and Arians and Catholics cried, Amen.

Ambrose was at that time a catechumen, and therefore not even baptized. He was terrified, and seized all possible, and even most eccentric, means to escape the responsible office. He was obliged to submit, was baptized, and eight days afterwards, in 374, was consecrated bishop of Milan. His friend, Basil the Great of Caesarea, was delighted that God had chosen such a man to so important a post, who counted noble birth, wealth, and eloquence loss, that he might win Christ.

From this time forward Ambrose lived wholly for the church, and became one of the greatest bishops of ancient Christendom, full of Roman dignity, energy, and administrative wisdom, and of the unction of the Holy Ghost. He began his work with the sale of his great estates and of his gold and silver for the benefit of the poor; reserving an allowance for his pious sister Marcella or Marcellina, who in early youth had taken the vow of virginity. With voluntary poverty he associated the strictest regimen of the ascetic spirit of his time; accepted no invitations to banquets; took dinner only on Sunday, Saturday, and the festivals of celebrated martyrs; devoted the greater part of the night to prayer, to the hitherto necessarily neglected study of the Scriptures and the Greek fathers, and to theological writing; preached every Sunday, and often in the week; was accessible to all, most accessible to the poor and needy; and administered his spiritual oversight, particularly his instruction of catechumens, with the greatest fidelity.

The Arians he vigorously opposed by word and act, and contributed to the victory of the Nicene faith in the West. In this work he behaved himself towards the Arian empress Justina with rare boldness, dignity, and consistency, in the heroic spirit of an Athanasius. The court demanded the cession of a catholic church for the use of the Arians, and claimed for them equal rights with the orthodox. But Ambrose asserted the entire independence of the church towards the state, and by perseverance came off victorious in the end. It was his maxim, that the emperor is in the church, but not over the church, and therefore has no right to the church buildings.

He did not meddle in secular matters, nor ask favor of the magistracy, except when he could put in a word of intercession for the unfortunate and for persons condemned to death in those despotic times. This enabled him to act the more independently in his spiritual office, as a real prince of the church, fearless even of the emperor himself. Thus he declared to the usurper Maximus, who desired church fellowship, that he would never admit him, unless he should do sincere penance for the murder of the emperor Gratian.

When the Roman prefect, Symmachus, the noblest and most eloquent advocate of the decaying heathenism of his time, implored the emperor Valentinian, in an apology for the altar of Victory which stood in the hall of the Roman senate, to tolerate the worship and the sanctuaries of the ancient gods, Ambrose met him with an admirable reply, and prevented the granting of his request.

The most imposing appearance of our bishop against the temporal power was in his dealing with Theodosius, when this truly great, but passionate and despotic, emperor, enraged at Thessalonica for a riot, had caused many thousand innocent persons to be put to death with the guilty, and Ambrose, interesting himself for the unfortunate, like a Nathan with David, demanded repentance of the emperor, and refused him the holy communion. "How wilt thou," said he to him in the vestibule of the church, "how wilt thou lift up in prayer the hands still dripping with the blood of the murdered?  How wilt thou receive with such hands the most holy body of the Lord?  How wilt thou bring to thy mouth his precious blood?  Get thee away, and dare not to heap crime upon crime."  When Theodosius appealed to David’s murder and adultery, the bishop answered: "Well, if thou hast imitated David in sin, imitate him also in repentance."2085  The emperor actually submitted to ecclesiastical discipline, made public confession of his sin, and did not receive absolution until he had issued a law that the sentence of death should never be executed till thirty days after it was pronounced.2086

From this time the relation between Ambrose and Theodosius continued undisturbed, and the emperor is reported to have said afterwards with reference to the bishop, that he had recently found the first man who told him the truth, and that he knew only one man who was worthy to be bishop. He died in the arms of Ambrose at Milan in 395. The bishop delivered his funeral oration in which he tells, to his honor, that on his dying bed he was more concerned for the condition of the church than for himself, and says to the soldiers: "The faith of Theodosius was your victory; let your truth and faith be the strength of his sons. Where unbelief is, there is blindness, but where fidelity is, there is the host of angels."

Two years after this, Ambrose himself was fatally sick. All Milan was in terror. When he was urged to pray God for a lengthening of his life, he answered: "I have so lived among you that I cannot be ashamed to live longer; but neither do I fear to die; for we have a good Lord."  During his sickness he had miraculous intimations and heard heavenly voices, and he himself related that Christ appeared to him smiling. His notary and biographer, the deacon Paulinus, who adorns his life throughout with miraculous incidents, tells us:2087 "Not long before his death, while he was dictating to me his exposition of the Forty-third Psalm, I saw upon his head a flame in the form of a small shield; hereupon his face became white as snow, and not till some time after did it return to its natural color."  In the night of Good Friday, on Saturday, the 4th of April, 397, he died, at the age of fifty-seven years, having first spent several hours, with his hands crossed, in uninterrupted prayer. Even Jews and pagans lamented his death. On the night of Easter following many were baptized in the church where his body was exposed  Not a few of the newly baptized children saw him seated in the episcopal chair with a shining star upon his head. Even after his death he wrought miracles in many places, in proof of which Paulinus gives his own experience, credible persons, and documents.

Ambrose, like Cyprian before him, and Leo I. after him, was greatest in administration. As bishop he towered above the contemporary popes. As a theologian and author he is only a star of the second magnitude among the church fathers, yielding by far to Jerome and Augustine. We have from this distinguished prelate several exegetical, doctrinal, and ascetic works, besides homilies, orations, and letters. In exegesis he adopts the allegorical method entire, and yields little substantial information. The most important among his exegetical works are his homilies on the history of creation (Hexaëmeron, written 389), an Exposition of twenty-one Psalms (390–397), and a Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (386).2088  The Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Ambrosiaster so called or Pseudo-Ambrosius) which found its way among his works, is of uncertain authorship, perhaps the work of the Roman deacon Hilary under pope Damasus, and resembles in many respects the commentaries of Pelagius. Among his doctrinal writings his five books On Faith, three On the Holy Ghost, and six On the Sacraments (catechetical sermons on baptism, confirmation, and the eucharist) are worthy of mention. Among his ethical writings the work On Duties is the most important. It resembles in form the well-known work of Cicero on the same subject, and reproduces it in a Christian spirit. It is a collection of rules of living for the clergy, and is the first attempt at a Christian doctrine of morals, though without systematic method.2089  Besides this he composed several ascetic essays: Three books on Virgins; On Virginity; On the Institution of the Virgin; On Exhortation to Virginity; On the Fall of a Consecrated Virgin, &c., which contributed much to the spread of celibacy and monastic piety. Of his ninety-one Epistles several are of considerable historical interest.

In his exegesis and in his theology, especially in the doctrine of the incarnation and the Trinity, Ambrose is entirely dependent on the Greek fathers; most on Basil, whose Hexaëmeron he almost slavishly copied. In anthropology he forms the transition from the Oriental doctrine to the system of Augustine, whose teacher and forerunner he was. He is most peculiar in his ethics, which he has set forth in his three books De Officiis. As a pulpit orator he possessed great dignity, force, and unction, and made a deep impression on Augustine, to whose conversion he contributed a considerable share. Many mothers forbade their daughters to hear him lest he should induce them to lead a life of celibacy.

Ambrose has also a very important place in the history of worship, and did immortal service for the music and poetry of the church, as in a former section we have seen.2090  Here again, as in theology and exegesis, he brought over the treasures of the Greek church into the Latin. The church of Milan uses to this day a peculiar liturgy which is called after him the ritus Ambrosianus.

§ 176. Jerome as a Divine and Scholar.

Comp. the Literature at § 41; and especially the excellent monograph (which has since reached us) of Prof. Otto Zöckler: Hieronymus. Sein Leben und Wirken aus seinen Schriften dargestellt. Gotha, 1865.

Having already sketched the life and character of Jerome (born about 340, died in 419) in connection with the history of monasticism, we limit ourselves here to his theological and literary labors, in which he did his chief service to the church, and has gained the greatest credit to himself.

Jerome is the most learned, the most eloquent, and the most interesting author among the Latin fathers. He had by nature a burning thirst for knowledge,2091 and continued unweariedly teaching, and learning, and writing, to the end of a very long life.2092  His was one of those intellectual natures, to which reading and study are as indispensable as daily bread. He could not live without books. He accordingly collected, by great sacrifices, a library for that time very considerable and costly, which accompanied him on his journeys.2093  He further availed himself of the oral instruction of great church teachers, like Apollinaris the Elder in Laodicea, Gregory Nazianzen in Constantinople, and Didymus of Alexandria, and was not ashamed to become an inquiring pupil in his mature age. His principle in studying was, in his own words: "To read the ancients, to test everything, to hold fast the good, and never to depart from the catholic faith."2094

Besides the passion for knowledge, which is the mother of learning, he possessed a remarkable memory, a keen understanding, quick and sound judgment, an ardent temperament, a lively imagination, sparkling wit, and brilliant power of expression. He was a master in all the arts and artifices of rhetoric, and dialectics. He, far more than Lactantius, deserves the name of the Christian Cicero, though he is inferior to Lactantius in classic purity, and was not free from the faulty taste, of his time. Tertullian had, indeed, long before applied the Roman language as the organ of Christian theology; Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and Ambrose, had gone further on the same path; and Augustine has enriched the Christian literature with a greater number of pregnant sentences than all the other fathers together. Nevertheless Jerome is the chief former of the Latin church language, for which his Vulgate did a decisive and standard service similar to that of Luther’s translation of the Bible for German literature, and that of the authorized English Protestant version for English.2095

His scholarship embraced the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages and literature; while even Augustine had but imperfect knowledge of the Greek, and none at all of the Hebrew. Jerome was familiar with the Latin classics, especially with Cicero, Virgil, and Horace;2096 and even after his famous anti-Ciceronian vision (which transformed him from a more or less secular scholar into a Christian ascetic and hermit) he could not entirely cease to read over the favorite authors of his youth, or at least to quote them from his faithful memory; thus subjecting himself to the charge of inconsistency, and even of perjury, from Rufinus.2097  Equally accurate was his knowledge of the literature of the church. Of the Latin fathers he particularly admired Tertullian for his powerful genius and vigorous style, though he could not forgive him his Montanism; after him Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and Ambrose. In the Greek classics he was less at home; yet he shows acquaintance with Hesiod, Sophocles, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen. But in the Greek fathers he was well read, especially in Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, and Gregory Nazianzen; less in Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, and other doctrinal writers.

The Hebrew he learned with great labor in his mature years; first from a converted but anonymous Jew, during his five years’ ascetic seclusion in the Syrian desert of Chalcis (374–379); afterwards in Bethlehem (about 385) from the Palestinian Rabbi Bar-Anina, who, through fear of the Jews, visited him by night.2098  This exposed him to the foolish rumor among bigoted opponents, that he preferred Judaism to Christianity, and betrayed Christ in preference to the new "Barabbas."2099  He afterwards, in translating the Old Testament, brought other Jewish scholars to his aid, who cost him dear. He also inspired several of his admiring female pupils, like St. Paula and her daughter Eustochium, with enthusiasm for the study of the sacred language of the old covenant, and brought them on so far that they could sing with him the Hebrew Psalms in praise of the Lord. He lamented the injurious influence of these studies on his style, since "the rattling sound of the Hebrew soiled all the elegance and beauty of Latin speech."2100  Yet, on the other hand, he was by the same means preserved from flying off into hollow and turgid ornamentations, from which his earlier writings, such as his letters to Heliodorus and Innocentius, are not altogether free. Though his knowledge of Hebrew was defective, it was much greater than that of Origen, Epiphanius, and Ephraem Syrus, the only other fathers besides himself who understood Hebrew at all; and it is the more noticeable, when we consider the want of grammatical and lexicographical helps and of the Masoretic punctuation.2101

Jerome, who unfortunately was not free from vanity, prided himself not a little upon his learning, and boasted against his opponent Rufinus, that he was "a philosopher, a rhetorician, a grammarian, a dialectician, a Hebrew, a Greek, a Latin, three-tongued," that is, master of the three principal languages of the then civilized world.2102

All these manifold and rare gifts and attainments made him an extremely influential and useful teacher of the church; for he brought them all into the service of an earnest and energetic, though monkishly eccentric piety. They gave him superior access to the sense of the Holy Scriptures, which continued to be his daily study to extreme old age, and stood far higher in his esteem than all the classics. His writings are imbued with Bible knowledge, and strewn with Bible quotations.

But with all this he was not free from faults as glaring as his virtues are shining, which disturb our due esteem and admiration. He lacked depth of mind and character, delicate sense of truth, and firm, strong convictions. He allowed himself inconsistencies of every kind, especially in his treatment of Origen, and, through solicitude for his own reputation for orthodoxy, he was unjust to that great teacher, to whom he owed so much. He was very impulsive in temperament, and too much followed momentary, changing impressions. Many of his works were thrown off with great haste and little consideration. He was by nature an extremely vain, ambitious, and passionate man, and he never succeeded in fully overcoming these evil forces. He could not bear censure. Even his later polemic writings are full of envy, hatred, and anger. In his correspondence with Augustine, with all assurances of respect, he everywhere gives that father to feel his own superiority as a comprehensive scholar, and in one place tells him that he never had taken the trouble to read his writings, excepting his Soliloquies and "some commentaries on the Psalms."  He indulged in rhetorical exaggerations and unjust inferences, which violated the laws of truth and honesty; and he supported himself in this, with a characteristic reference to the sophist Gorgias, by the equivocal distinction between the gymnastic or polemic style and the didactic.2103  From his master Cicero he had also learned the vicious rhetorical arts of bombast, declamatory fiction, and applause-seeking effects, which are unworthy of a Christian theologian, and which invite the reproach of the divine judge in that vision: "Thou liest! thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also."

§ 177. The Works of Jerome.

The writings of Jerome, which fill eleven folios in the edition of Vallarsi, may be divided into exegetical, historical, polemic doctrinal, and polemic ethical works, and epistles.2104

I. The exegetical works stand at the head.

Among these the Vulgata,2105 or Latin version of the whole Bible, Old Testament and New, is by far the most important and valuable, and constitutes alone an immortal service.2106

Above all his contemporaries, and above all his successors down to the sixteenth century, Jerome, by his linguistic knowledge, his Oriental travel, and his entire culture, was best fitted, and, in fact, the only man, to undertake and successfully execute so gigantic a task, and a task which just then, with the approaching separation of East and West, and the decay of the knowledge of the original languages of the Bible in Latin Christendom, was of the highest necessity. Here, its so often in history, we plainly discern the hand of divine Providence. Jerome began the work during his second residence in Rome (382–385), at the suggestion of pope Damasus, who deserves much more credit for that suggestion than for his hymns. He at first intended only a revision of the Itala, the old Latin version of the Bible which came down from the second century, and the text of which had fallen into inextricable confusion through the negligence of transcribers and the caprice of correctors.2107  He finished the translation at Bethlehem, in the year 405, after twenty years of toil. He translated first the Gospels, then the rest of the New Testament, next the Psalter (which he wrought over twice, in Rome and in Bethlehem2108), and then, in irregular succession, the historical, prophetic, and poetical books, and in part the Apocrypha, which, however, he placed decidedly below the canonical books. By this "labor pius, sed periculosa praesumtio," as he called it, he subjected himself to all kinds of enmity from ignorance and blind aversion to change, and was abused as a disturber of the peace and falsifier of the Scripture;2109 but from other sources he received much encouragement. The New Testament and the Psalter were circulated and used in the church long before the completion of the whole. Augustine, for example, was using the New Testament of Jerome, and urged him strongly to translate the Old Testament, but to translate it from the Septuagint.2110  Gradually the whole version made its way on its own merits, without authoritative enforcement, and was used in the West, at first together with the Itala, and after about the ninth century alone.

The Vulgate takes the first place among the Bible-versions of the ancient church. It exerted the same influence upon Latin Christendom as the Septuagint upon Greek, and it is directly or indirectly the mother of most of the earlier versions in the European vernaculars.2111  It is made immediately from the original languages, though with the use of all accessible helps, and is as much superior to the Itala as Luther’s Bible to the older German versions. From the present stage of biblical philology and exegesis the Vulgate can be charged, indeed, with innumerable faults, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and arbitrary, dealing, in particulars;2112 but notwithstanding these, it deserves, as a whole, the highest praise for the boldness with which it went back from the half-deified Septuagint directly to the original Hebrew; for its union of fidelity and freedom; and for the dignity, clearness, and gracefulness of its style. Accordingly, after the extinction of the knowledge of Greek, it very naturally became the clerical Bible of Western Christendom, and so continued to be, till the genius of the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and England, returning to the original text, and still further penetrating the spirit of the Scriptures, though with the continual help of the Vulgate, produced a number of popular Bibles, which were the same to the evangelical laity that the Vulgate had been for many centuries to the Catholic clergy. This high place the Vulgate holds even to this day in the Roman church, where it is unwarrantably and perniciously placed on an equality with the original.2113

The Commentaries of Jerome cover Genesis, the Major and Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Job, some of the Psalms,2114 the Gospel of Matthew, and the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon.2115  Besides these he translated the Homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the Gospel of Luke, and on the Song of Solomon. Of the last he says: "While Origen in his other writings has surpassed all others, on the Song of Solomon he has surpassed himself."2116

His best exegetical labors are those on the Prophets (Particularly his Isaiah, written A.D. 408–410; his Ezekiel, A.D. 410–415; and his Jeremiah to chap. xxxii., interrupted by his death), and those on the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus, (written in 388), together with his critical Questions (or investigations) on Genesis. But they are not uniformly carried out; many parts are very indifferent, others thrown off with unconscionable carelessness in reliance on his genius and his reading, or dictated to an amanuensis as they came into his head.2117  He not seldom surprises by clear, natural, and conclusive expositions, while just on the difficult passages he wavers, or confines himself to adducing Jewish traditions and the exegetical opinions of the earlier fathers, especially of Origen, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Didymus, leaving the reader to judge and to choose. His scholarly industry, taste, and skill, however, always afford a certain compensation for the defect of method and consistency, so that his Commentaries are, after all, the most instructive we have from the Latin church of that day, not excepting even those of Augustine, which otherwise greatly surpass them in theological depth and spiritual unction. He justly observes in the Preface to his Commentary on Isaiah: "He who does not know the Scriptures, does not know the power and wisdom of God; ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ."2118

Jerome had the natural talent and the acquired knowledge, to make him the father of grammatico-historical interpretation, upon which all sound study of the Scriptures must proceed. He very rightly felt that the expositor must not put his own fancies into the word of God, but draw out the meaning of that word, and he sometimes finds fault with Origen and the allegorical method for roaming in the wide fields of imagination, and giving out the writer’s own thought and fancy for the hidden Wisdom of the Scriptures and the church.2119  In this healthful exegetical spirit he excelled all the fathers, except Chrysostom and Theodoret. In the Latin church no others, except the heretical Pelagius (whose short exposition of the Epistles of Paul is incorporated in the works of Jerome), and the unknown Ambrosiaster (whose commentary has found its way among the works of Ambrose), thought like him. But he was far from being consistent; he committed the very fault he censures in Eusebius, who in the superscription of his Commentary on Isaiah promised a historical exposition, but, forgetting the promise, fell into the fashion of Origen. Though he often makes very bold utterances, such as that on the original identity of presbyter and bishop,2120 and even shows traces of a loose view of inspiration,2121 yet he had not the courage, and was too scrupulously concerned for his orthodoxy, to break with the traditional exegesis. He could not resist the impulse to indulge, after giving the historical sense, in fantastic allegorizing, or, as he expresses himself, "to spread the sails of the spiritual understanding."2122

He distinguishes in most cases a double sense of the Scriptures: the literal and the spiritual, or the historical and the allegorical; sometimes, with Origen and the Alexandrians, a triple sense: the historical, the tropological (moral), and the pneumatical (mystical).

The word of God does unquestionably carry in its letter a living and life-giving spirit; and is capable of endless application to all times and circumstances; and here lies the truth in the allegorical method of the ancient church. But the spiritual sense must be derived with tender conscientiousness and self-command from the natural, literal meaning, not brought from without, as another sense beside, or above, or against the literal.

Jerome goes sometimes as far as Origen in the unscrupulous twisting of the letter and the history, and adopts his mischievous principle of entirely rejecting the literal sense whenever it may seem ludicrous or unworthy. For instance: By the Shunamite damsel, the concubine of the aged king David, he understands (imitating Origen’s allegorical obliteration of the double crime against Uriah and Bathsheba) the ever-virgin Wisdom of God, so extolled by Solomon;2123 and the earnest controversy between Paul and Peter he alters into a sham fight for the instruction of the Antiochian Christians who were present; thus making out of it a deceitful accommodation, over which Augustine (who took just offence at such patrocinium mendacii) drew him into an epistolary controversy characteristic of the two men."2124

It is remarkable that Augustine and Jerome, in the two exegetical questions, on which they corresponded, interchanged sides, and each took the other’s point of view. In the dispute on the occurrence in Antioch (Gal. ii. 11–14), Augustine represented the principle of evangelical freedom and love of truth, Jerome the principle of traditional committal to dogma and an equivocal theory of accommodation; while in their dispute on the authority of the Septuagint Jerome held to true progress, Augustine to retrogression and false traditionalism. And each afterwards saw his error, and at least partially gave it up.

In the exposition of the Prophets, Jerome sees too many allusions to the heretics of his time (as Luther finds everywhere allusions to the Papists, fanatics, and sectarians); and, on the other hand, with the zeal he inherited from Origen against all chiliasm, he finds far too little reference to the end of, all things in the second coming of our Lord. He limits, for example, even the eschatological discourse of Christ in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and Paul’s prophecy of the man of sin in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Among the exegetical works in the wider sense belongs the book On the Interpretation of the Hebrew Names, an etymological lexicon of the proper names of the Old and New Testaments, useful for its time, but in many respects defective, and now worthless;2125 and a free translation of the Onomasticon of Eusebius, a sort of biblical topology in alphabetical order, still valuable to antiquarian scholarship.2126

II. The historical works, some of which we have already elsewhere touched, are important to the history of the fathers and the saints to Christian literature, and to the history of morals.

First among them is a free Latin reproduction and continuation of the Greek Chronicle of Eusebius; i.e., chronological tables of the most important events of the history of the world and the church to the year 379.2127  Jerome dictated this work quite fugitively during his residence with Gregory Nazianzen in Constantinople (A.D. 380). In spite of its many errors, it formed a very useful and meritorious contribution to Latin literature, and a principal source of the scanty historical information of Western Christendom throughout the middle age. Prosper Aquitanus, a friend of Augustine and defender of the doctrines of free grace against the Semi-Pelagians in Gaul, continued the Chronicle to the year 449; later authors brought it down to the middle of the sixth century.

More original is the Catalogue of Illustrious Authors,2128 which Jerome composed in the tenth year of Theodosius (A.D. 392 and 393),2129 at the request of his friend, an officer, Dexter. It is the pioneer in the history of theological literature, and gives, in one hundred and thirty-five chapters, short biographical notices of as many ecclesiastical writers, from the apostles to Jerome himself, with accounts of their most important works. It was partly designed to refute the charge of ignorance, which Celsus, Porphyry, Julian, and other pagans, made against the Christians. Jerome, at that time, was not yet so violent a heretic-hater, and was quite fair and liberal in his estimate of such men as Origen and Eusebius.2130  But many of his sketches are too short and meagre; even those, for example, of so important men as Cyprian, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Ambrose, and Chrysostom († 407).2131  His junior cotemporary, Augustine, who had at that time already written several philosophical, exegetical, and polemic works, he entirely omits.

The Catalogue was afterwards continued in the same spirit by the Semi-Pelagian Gennadius of Marseilles, by Isidore of Seville, by Ildefonsus, and by others, into the middle age.

Jerome wrote also biographies of celebrated hermits, Paul of Thebes (A.D. 375), Hilarion, and the imprisoned Malchus (A.D. 390), in very graceful and entertaining style, but with many fabulous and superstitious accompaniments, and with extravagant veneration of the monastic life, which he aimed by these writings to promote.2132  They were read at that time as eagerly as novels. These biographies, and several necrological letters in honor of deceased friends, such as Nepotian, Lucinius, Lea, Blasilla, Paulina, Paula, and Marcella are masterpieces of rhetorical ascetic hagiography. They introduce the legend ary literature of the middle age, with its indiscriminate mixture of history and fable, and its sacrifice of historical truth to popular edification.

III. Of the polemic doctrinal and ethical works2133 some relate to the Arian controversies, some to the Origenistic, some to the Pelagian. In the first class belongs the Dialogue against the schismatic Luciferians,2134 which Jerome wrote during his desert life in Syria (A.D. 379) on the occasion of the Meletian schism in Antioch; also his translation of the work of Didymus On the Holy Ghost, begun in Rome and finished in Bethlehem. His book Against Bishop John of Jerusalem (A.D. 399), and his Apology to his former friend Rufinus, in three books (A.D. 402–403), are directed against Origenism.2135  In the third class belongs the Dialogue against the Pelagians, in three books (A.D. 415). Other polemic works, Against Helvidius (written in 383), Against Jovinian (A.D. 393), and Against Vigilantius (dictated rapidly in one night in 406), are partly doctrinal, partly ethical in their nature, and mainly devoted to the advocacy of the immaculate virginity of Mary, celibacy, vigils, relic-worship, and the monastic life.

These controversial writings, the contents of which we have already noted in the proper place, do the author, on the whole, little credit, and stand in striking contrast with his fame as one of the principal saints of the Roman church. They show an accurate acquaintance with all the arts of an advocate and all the pugilism of a dialectician, together with boundless vehemence and fanatical zealotism, which scruple over no weapons of wit, mockery, irony, suspicion, and calumny, to annihilate opponents, and which pursue them even after their death.2136  And their contents afford no sufficient compensation for these faults. For Jerome was not an original, profound, systematic, or consistent thinker, and therefore very little fitted for a didactic theologian. In the Arian controversy he would not enter into any discussion of the distinction between oujsiva and uJpovstasi", and left this important question to the decision of the Roman bishop Damasus; in the Origenistic controversy he must, in his violent condemnation of all Origenists, contradict his own former view and veneration of Origen as the greatest teacher after the Apostles; and in the Pelagian controversy he was influenced chiefly by personal considerations, and drawn half way to Augustine’s side; for while he was always convinced of the universality of sin,2137 in reference to the freedom of the will and predestination he adopted synergistic or Semi-Pelagian views, and afterwards continued in the highest consideration among the Semi-Pelagians down to Erasmus.2138

He is equally unsatisfactory as a moralist and practical divine. He had no connected system of moral doctrine, and did not penetrate to the basis and kernel of the Christian life, but moved in the outer circle of asceticism and casuistry. Following the spirit of his time, he found the essence of religion in monastic flight from the world and contempt of the natural ordinances of God, especially of marriage; and, completely reversing sound principles, he advocated even ascetic filth as an external mark of inward purity.2139  Of marriage he had a very low conception, regarding it merely as a necessary evil for the increase of virgins. From the expression of Paul in 1 Cor. vii. 1: "It is good not to touch a woman," he draws the utterly unwarranted inference: "It is therefore bad to touch one; for the only opposite of good is bad;" and he interprets the woe of the Lord upon those that are with child and those that give suck (Matt. xxiv. 19), as a condemnation of pregnancy in general, and of the crying of little children, and of all the trouble and fruit of the married life. The disagreeable fact of the marriage of Peter he endeavors to weaken by the groundless assumption that the apostle forsook his wife when he forsook his net, and, besides, that "he must have washed away the stain of his married life by the blood of his martyrdom."2140

In a letter, otherwise very beautiful and rich, to the young Nepotian,2141 he gives this advice: "Let your lodgings be rarely or never visited by women. You must either ignore alike, or love alike, all the daughters and virgins of Christ. Nay, dwell not under the same roof with them, nor trust their former chastity; you cannot be holier than David, nor wiser than Solomon. Never forget that a woman drove the inhabitants of Paradise out of their possession. In sickness any brother, or your sister, or your mother, can minister to in the lack of such relatives, the church herself maintains many aged women, whom you can at the same time remunerate for their nursing with welcome alms. I know some who are well in the body indeed, but sick in mind. It is a dangerous service in any case, that is done to you by one whose face you often see. If in your official duty as a clergyman you must visit a widow or a maiden, never enter her house alone. Take with you only those whose company does you no shame; only some reader, or acolyth, or psalm-singer, whose ornament consists not in clothes, but in good morals, who does not crimp his hair with crisping pins, but shows chastity in his whole bearing. But privately or without witnesses, never put yourself in the presence of a woman."

Such exhortations, however, were quite in the spirit of that age, and were in part founded in Jerome’s own bitter experience in his youth, and in the thoroughly corrupt condition of social life in the sinking empire of Rome.

While advocating these ascetic extravagancies Jerome does not neglect to chastise the clergy and the monks for their faults with the scourge of cutting satire. And his writings are everywhere strewn with the pearls of beautiful moral maxims and eloquent exhortations to contempt of the world and godly conduct.2142

IV. The Epistles of Jerome, with all their defects are uncommonly instructive and interesting, and, in easy flow and elegance of diction, are not inferior to the letters of Cicero. Vallarsi has for the first time put them into chronological order in the first volume of his edition, and has made the former numbering of them (even that of the Benedictine edition) obsolete. He reckons in all a hundred and fifty, including several letters from cotemporaries, such as Epiphanius, Theophilus of Alexandria, Augustine, Damasus, Pammachius, and Rufinus; some of them written directly to Jerome, and some treating of matters in which he was interested. They are addressed to friends like the Roman bishop Damasus, the senator Pammachius, the bishop Paulinus of Nola, Theophilus of Alexandria, Evangelus, Rufinus, Heliodorus, Riparius, Nepotianus, Oceanus, Avitus, Rusticus, Gaudentius, and Augustine, and some to distinguished ascetic women and maidens like Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, Furia, Fabiola, and Demetrias. They treat of almost all questions of philosophy and practical religion, which then agitated the Christian world, and they faithfully reflect the virtues and the faults and the remarkable contrasts of Jerome and of his age.

Orthodox in theology and Christology, Semi-Pelagian in anthropology, Romanizing in the doctrine of the church and tradition, anti-chiliastic in eschatology, legalistic and ascetic in ethics, a violent fighter of all heresies, a fanatical apologist of all monkish extravagancies,—Jerome was revered throughout the catholic middle age as the patron saint of Christian and ecclesiastical learning, and, next to Augustine, as maximus doctor ecclesiae; but by his enthusiastic love for the Holy Scriptures, his recourse to the original languages, his classic translation of the Bible, and his manifold exegetical merits, he also played materially into the hands of the Reformation, and as a scholar and an author still takes the first rank, and as an influential theologian the second (after Augustine), among the Latin fathers; while, as a moral character, he decidedly falls behind many others, like Hilary, Ambrose, and Leo I., and, even according to the standard of Roman asceticism, can only in a very limited sense be regarded as a saint.2143

§ 178. Augustine.

I. S. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi Opera … Post Lovaniensium theologorum recensionem [which appeared at Antwerp in 1577 in 11 vols.] castigatus [referring to tomus primus, etc.] denuo ad MSS. codd. Gallicanos, etc. Opera et studio monachorum ordinis S. Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri [Fr. Delfau, Th. Blampin, P. Coustant, and Cl. Guesnié]. Paris, 1679–1700, xi tom. in 8 fol. vols. The same edition reprinted, with additions, at Antwerp, 1700–1703, 12 parts in 9 fol.; and at Venice, 1729–’34, in xi tom. in 8 fol. (this is the edition from which I have generally quoted; it is not to be confounded with another Venice edition of 1756–’69 in xviii vols. 4to, which is full of printing errors); also at Bassano, 1807, in 18 vols.; by Gaume fratres, Paris, 1836–’39, in xi tom. in 22 parts (a very elegant edition); and lastly by J. P. Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1841–’49, in xii tom. (Patrol. Lat. tom. xxxii.-xlvii.). Migne’s edition (which I have also used occasionally) gives, in a supplementary volume (tom. xii.), the valuable Notitia literaria de vita, scriptis et editionibus Aug. from Schönemann’s Bibliotheca historico-literaria Patrum Lat. vol. ii. Lips. 1794, the Vindiciae Augustinianae of Norisius, and the writings of Augustine first published by Fontanini and Angelo Mai. But a thoroughly reliable critical edition of Augustine is still a desideratum. On the controversies relating to the merits of the Bened. edition, see the supplementary volume of Migne, xii. p. 40 sqq., and Thuillier: Histoire de la nouvelle ed. de S. Aug. par les PP. Bénédictins, Par. 1736. The first printed edition of Augustine appeared at Basle, 1489–’95; another, a. 1509, in 11 vols. (I have a copy of this edition in black letter, but without a title page); then the edition of Erasmus published by Frobenius, Bas. 1528–’29, in 10 vols. fol.: the Editio Lovaniensis, or of the divines of Louvain, Antw. 1577, in 11 vols., and often. Several works of Augustine have been often separately edited, especially the Confessions and the City of God. Compare a full list of the editions down to 1794 in Schönemann’s Bibliotheca, vol. ii. p. 73 sqq.

II. Possidius (Calamensis episcopus, a pupil and friend of Aug.): Vita Augustini (brief, but authentic, written 432, two years after his death, in tom. x. Append. 257–280, ed. Bened., and in nearly all other editions). Benedictini Editores: Vita Augustini ex ejus potissimum scriptis concinnata, in 8 books (very elaborate and extensive), in tom. xi. 1–492, ed. Bened. (in Migne’s reprint, tom. i. pp. 66–578). The biographies of Tillemont (Mém. tom. xiii.); Ellies Dupin (Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques, tom. ii. and iii.); P. Bayle (Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. Augustin); Remi Ceillier (Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclés., vol. xi. and xii.); Cave (Lives of the Fathers, vol. ii.); Kloth (Der heil. Aug., Aachen, 1840, 2 vols.); Böhringer (Kirchengeschichte in Biographien, vol. i. P. iii. p. 99 ff.); Poujoulat (Histoire de S. Aug. Par. 1843 and 1852, 2 vols.; the same in German by Fr. Hurter, Schaffh. 1847, 2 vols.); Eisenbarth (Stuttg. 1853); Ph. Schaff (St. Augustine, Berlin, 1854; English ed. New York and London, 1854); C. Bindemann (Der heil. Aug., vol. i. Berl. 1844; vol. ii. 1855, incomplete). Braune: Monica und Augustin. Grimma, 1846. Comp. also the literature at § 146, p. 783.

The Philosophy of Augustine is discussed in the larger Histories of Philosophy by Brucker, Tennemann, Rixner, H. Ritter (vol. vi. pp. 153–443), Huber (Philosophie der Kirchenväter), and in the following works: Theod. Gangauf: Metaphysische Psychologie des heil. Augustinus. 1ste Abtheilung, Augsburg, 1852. T. Théry: Le génie philosophique et littéraire de saint Augustin. Par. 1861. Abbé Flottes: Études sur saint Aug., son génie, son âme, sa philosophie. Par. 1861. Nourrisson: La philosophie de saint Augustin (ouvrage couronné par l’Institut de France), deuxième ed. Par. 1866, 2 vols.

It is a venturesome and delicate undertaking to write one’s own life, even though that life be a masterpiece of nature or of the grace of God, and therefore most worthy to be described. Of all autobiographies none has so happily avoided the reef of vanity and self-praise, and none has won so much esteem and love through its honesty and humility as that of St. Augustine.

The "Confessions," which he wrote in the forty-sixth year of his life, still burning in the ardor of his first love, are full of the fire and unction of the Holy Ghost. They are a sublime effusion, in which Augustine, like David in the fifty-first Psalm, confesses to God, in view of his own and of succeeding generations, without reserve the sins of his youth; and they are at the same time a hymn of praise to the grace of God, which led him out of darkness into light, and called him to service in the kingdom of Christ.2144  Here we see the great church teacher of all times "prostrate in the dust, conversing with God, basking in his love; his readers hovering before him only as a shadow."  He puts away from himself all honor, all greatness, all beauty, and lays them gratefully at the feet of the All-merciful. The reader feels on every hand that Christianity is no dream nor illusion, but truth and life, and he is carried along in adoration of the wonderful grace of God.

Aurelius Augustinus, born on the 13th of November, 354,2145 at Tagaste, an unimportant village of the fertile province Numidia in North Africa, not far from Hippo Regius, inherited from his heathen father, Patricius,2146 a passionate sensibility, from his Christian mother, Monica (one of the noblest women in the history of Christianity, of a highly intellectual and spiritual cast, of fervent piety, most tender affection, and all-conquering love), the deep yearning towards God so grandly expressed in his sentence: "Thou hast made us for Thee, and our heart is restless till it rests in Thee."2147  This yearning, and his reverence for the sweet and holy name of Jesus, though crowded into the background, attended him in his studies at the schools of Madaura and Carthage, on his journeys to Rome and Milan, and on his tedious wanderings through the labyrinth of carnal pleasures, Manichaean mock-wisdom, Academic skepticism, and Platonic idealism; till at last the prayers of his mother, the sermons of Ambrose, the biography of St. Anthony, and, above all, the Epistles of Paul, as so many instruments in the hand of the Holy Ghost, wrought in the man of three and thirty years that wonderful change which made him an incalculable blessing to the whole Christian world, and brought even the sins and errors of his youth into the service of the truth.2148

A son of so many prayers and tears could not be lost, and the faithful mother who travailed with him in spirit with greater pain than her body had in bringing him into the world,2149 was permitted, for the encouragement of future mothers, to receive shortly before her death an answer to her prayers and expectations, and was able to leave this world with joy without revisiting her earthly home. For Monica died on a homeward journey, in Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, in her fifty-sixth year, in the arms of her son, after enjoying with him a glorious conversation that soared above the confines of space and time, and was a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath-rest of the saints. She regretted not to die in a foreign land, because she was not far from God, who would raise her up at the last day. "Bury my body anywhere," was her last request, "and trouble not yourselves for it; only this one thing I ask, that you remember me at the altar of my God, wherever you may be."2150  Augustine, in his Confessions, has erected to Monica the noblest monument that can never perish.

If ever there was a thorough and fruitful conversion, next to that of Paul on the way to Damascus, it was that of Augustine, when, in a garden of the Villa Cassiciacum, not far from Milan, in September of the year 386, amidst the most violent struggles of mind and heart—the birth-throes of the new life—he heard that divine voice of a child: "Take, read!" and he "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14). It is a touching lamentation of his: "I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty, so old and so new; I have loved Thee late!  And lo!  Thou wast within, but I was without, and was seeking Thee there. And into Thy fair creation I plunged myself in my ugliness; for Thou wast with me, and I was not with Thee!  Those things kept me away from Thee, which had not been, except they had been in Thee!  Thou didst call, and didst cry aloud, and break through my deafness. Thou didst glimmer, Thou didst shine, and didst drive away, my blindness. Thou didst breathe, and I drew breath, and breathed in Thee. I tasted Thee, and I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burn for Thy peace. If I, with all that is within me, may once live in Thee, then shall pain and trouble forsake me; entirely filled with Thee, all shall be life to me."

He received baptism from Ambrose in Milan on Easter Sunday, 387, in company with his friend and fellow-convert Alypius, and his natural son Adeodatus (given by God). It impressed the divine seal upon the inward transformation. He broke radically with the world; abandoned the brilliant and lucrative vocation of a teacher of rhetoric, which he had followed in Rome and Milan; sold his goods for the benefit of the poor: and thenceforth devoted his rare gifts exclusively to the service of Christ, and to that service he continued faithful to his latest breath. After the death of his mother, whom he revered and loved with the most tender affection, he went a second time to Rome for several months, and wrote books in defence of true Christianity against false philosophy and the Manichaean heresy. Returning to Africa, he spent three years, with his friends Alypius and Evodius, on an estate in his native Tagaste, in contemplative and literary retirement.

Then, in 391, he was chosen presbyter against his will, by the voice of the people, which, as in the similar cases of Cyprian and Ambrose, proved to be the voice of God, in the Numidian maritime city of Hippo Regius (now Bona); and in 395 he was elected bishop in the same city. For eight and thirty years, until his death, he labored in this place, and made it the intellectual centre of Western Christendom.2151

His outward mode of life was extremely simple, and mildly ascetic. He lived with his clergy in one house in an apostolic community of goods, and made this house a seminary of theology, out of which ten bishops and many lower clergy went forth. Females, even his sister, were excluded from his house, and could see him only in the presence of others. But he founded religious societies of women; and over one of these his sister, a saintly widow, presided.2152  He once said in a sermon, that he had nowhere found better men, and he had nowhere found worse, than in monasteries. Combining, as he did, the clerical life with the monastic, he became unwittingly the founder of the Augustinian order, which gave the reformer Luther to the world. He wore the black dress of the Eastern coenobites, with a cowl and a leathern girdle. He lived almost entirely on vegetables, and seasoned the common meal with reading or free conversation, in which it was a rule that the character of an absent person should never be touched. He had this couplet engraved on the table:

"Quisquis amat dictis absentum rodere vitam,

Hanc mensam vetitam noverit esse sibi."

He often preached five days in succession, sometimes twice a day, and set it as the object of his preaching, that all might live with him, and he with all, in Christ. Wherever he went in Africa, he was begged to preach the word of salvation.2153  He faithfully administered the external affairs connected with his office, though he found his chief delight in contemplation. He was specially devoted to the poor, and, like Ambrose, upon exigency, caused the church vessels to be melted down to redeem prisoners. But he refused legacies by which injustice was done to natural heirs, and commended the bishop Aurelius of Carthage for giving back unasked some property which a man had bequeathed to the church, when his wife unexpectedly bore him children.

Augustine’s labors extended far beyond his little diocese. He was the intellectual head of the North African and the entire Western church of his time. He took active interest in all theological and ecclesiastical questions. He was the champion of the orthodox doctrine against Manichaean, Donatist, and Pelagian. In him was concentrated the whole polemic power of the catholicism of the time against heresy and schism; and in him it won the victory over them.

In his last years he took a critical review of his literary productions, and gave them a thorough sifting in his Retractations. His latest controversial works against the Semi-Pelagians, written in a gentle spirit, date from the same period. He bore the duties of his office alone till his seventy-second year, when his people unanimously elected his friend Heraclius to be his assistant and successor.

The evening of his life was troubled by increasing infirmities of body and by the unspeakable wretchedness which the barbarian Vandals spread over his country in their victorious invasion, destroying cities, villages, and churches, without mercy, and even besieging the fortified city of Hippo.2154  Yet he faithfully persevered in his work. The last ten days of his life he spent in close retirement, in prayers and tears and repeated reading of the penitential Psalms, which he had caused to be written on the wall over his bed, that he might have them always before his eyes. Thus with an act of penance he closed his life. In the midst of the terrors of the siege and the despair of his people he could not suspect what abundant seed he had sown for the future.

In the third month of the siege of Hippo, on the 28th of August, 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, in full possession of his faculties, and in the presence of many friends and pupils, he passed gently and happily into that eternity to which he had so long aspired. "O how wonderful," wrote he in his Meditations,2155 "how beautiful and lovely are the dwellings of Thy house, Almighty God!  I burn with longing to behold Thy beauty in Thy bridal-chamber .... O Jerusalem, holy city of God, dear bride of Christ, my heart loves thee, my soul has already long sighed for thy beauty! .... The King of kings Himself is in the midst of thee, and His children are within thy walls. There are the hymning choirs of angels, the fellowship of heavenly citizens. There is the wedding-feast of all who from this sad earthly pilgrimage have reached thy joys. There is the far-seeing choir of the prophets; there the number of the twelve apostles; there the triumphant army of innumerable martyrs and holy confessors. Full and perfect love there reigns, for God is all in all. They love and praise, they praise and love Him evermore .... Blessed, perfectly and forever blessed, shall I too be, if, when my poor body shall be dissolved, ... I may stand before my King and God, and see Him in His glory, as He Himself hath deigned to promise: ’Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory which I had with Thee before the world was.’ "  This aspiration after the heavenly Jerusalem found grand expression in the hymn De gloria et gaudiis Paradisi:

"Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sativit arida,"

which is incorporated in the Meditations of Augustine, and the idea of which originated in part with him, though it was not brought into poetical form till long afterwards by Peter Damiani.2156

He left no will, for in his voluntary poverty he had no earthly property to dispose of, except his library; this he bequeathed to the church, and it was fortunately preserved from the depredations of the Arian barbarians.2157

Soon after his death Hippo was taken and destroyed by the Vandals.2158  Africa was lost to the Romans. A few decades later the whole West-Roman empire fell in ruins. The culmination of the African church was the beginning of its decline. But the work of Augustine could not perish. His ideas fell like living seed into the soil of Europe, and produced abundant fruits in nations and countries of which he had never heard.2159

Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, scholastic, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full. It was his need and his delight to wrestle again and again with the hardest problems of thought, and to comprehend to the utmost the divinely revealed matter of the faith.2160  He always asserted, indeed, the primacy of faith, according to his maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum; appealing, with theologians before him, to the well-known passage of Isaiah vii. 9 (in the LXX.): "Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis."  But to him faith itself was an acting of reason, and from faith to knowledge, therefore, there was a necessary transition.2161  He constantly looked below the surface to the hidden motives of actions and to the universal laws of diverse events. The metaphysician and the Christian believer coalesced in him. His meditatio passes with the utmost ease into oratio, and his oratio into meditatio. With profundity he combined an equal clearness and sharpness of thought. He was an extremely skilful and a successful dialectician, inexhaustible in arguments and in answers to the objections of his adversaries.

He has enriched Latin literature with a greater store of beautiful, original, and pregnant proverbial sayings, than any classic author, or any other teacher of the church.2162

He had a creative and decisive hand in almost every dogma of the church, completing some, and advancing others. The centre of his system is the free redeeming grace of God in Christ, operating through the actual, historical church. He is evangelical or Pauline in his doctrine of sin and grace, but catholic (that is, old-catholic, not Roman Catholic) in his doctrine of the church. The Pauline element comes forward mainly in the Pelagian controversy, the catholic-churchly in the Donatist; but each is modified by the other.

Dr. Baur incorrectly makes freedom the fundamental idea of the Augustinian system (it much better suits the Pelagian), and founds on this view an ingenious, but only half true, comparison between Augustine and Origen. "There is no church teacher of the ancient period," says he,2163 "who, in intellect and in grandeur and consistency of view, can more justly be placed by the side of Origen than Augustine; none who, with all the difference in individuality and in mode of thought, so closely resembles him. How far both towered above their times, is most clearly manifest in the very fact that they alone, of all the theologians of the first six centuries, became the creators of distinct systems, each proceeding from its definite idea, and each completely carried out; and this fact proves also how much the one system has that is analogous to the other. The one system, like the other, is founded upon the idea of freedom; in both there is a specific act, by which the entire development of human life is determined; and in both this is an act which lies far outside of the temporal consciousness of the individual; with this difference alone, that in one system the act belongs to each separate individual himself, and only falls outside of his temporal life and consciousness; in the other, it lies within the sphere of the temporal history of man, but is only the act of one individual. If in the system of Origen nothing gives greater offence than the idea of the pre-existence and fall of souls, which seems to adopt heathen ideas into the Christian faith, there is in the system of Augustine the same overleaping of individual life and consciousness, in order to explain from an act in the past the present sinful condition of man; but the pagan Platonic point of view is exchanged for one taken from the Old Testament .... What therefore essentially distinguishes the system of Augustine from that of Origen, is only this: the fall of Adam is substituted for the pre-temporal fall of souls, and what in Origen still wears a heathen garb, puts on in Augustine a purely Old Testament form."

The learning of Augustine was not equal to his genius, nor as extensive as that of Origen and Eusebius, but still considerable for his time, and superior to that of any of the Latin fathers, with the single exception of Jerome. He had received in the schools of Madaura and Carthage a good theoretical and rhetorical preparation for the forum, which stood him in good stead also in theology. He was familiar with Latin literature, and was by no means blind to the excellencies of the classics, though he placed them far below the higher beauty of the Holy Scriptures. The Hortensius of Cicero (a lost work) inspired him during his university course with enthusiasm for philosophy and for the knowledge of truth for its own sake; the study of Platonic and Neo-Platonic works (in the Latin version of the rhetorician Victorinus) kindled in him an incredible fire;2164 though in both he missed the holy name of Jesus and the cardinal virtues of love and humility, and found in them only beautiful ideals without power to conform him to them. His City of God, his book on heresies, and other writings, show an extensive knowledge of ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, sacred and secular. He refers to the most distinguished persons of Greece and Rome; he often alludes to Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotin, Porphyry, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Virgil, to the earlier Greek and Latin fathers, to Eastern and Western heretics. But his knowledge of Greek literature was mostly derived from Latin translations. With the Greek language, as he himself frankly and modestly confesses, he had, in comparison with Jerome, but a superficial acquaintance.2165  Hebrew he did not understand at all. Hence, with all his extraordinary familiarity with the Latin Bible, he made many mistakes in exposition. He was rather a thinker than a scholar, and depended mainly on his own resources, which were always abundant.2166

§ 179. The Works of Augustine.

The numerous writings of Augustine, the composition of which extended through four and forty years, are a mine of Christian knowledge and experience. They abound in lofty ideas, noble sentiments, devout effusions, clear statements of truth, strong arguments against error, and passages of fervid eloquence and undying beauty, but also in innumerable repetitions, fanciful opinions, and playful conjectures of his uncommonly fertile brain.2167  His style is full of life and vigor and ingenious plays on words, but deficient in purity and elegance, and by no means free from wearisome prolixity and from that vagabunda loquacitas, with which his adroit opponent, Julian of Eclanum, charged him. He would rather, as he said, be blamed by grammarians, than not understood by the people; and he bestowed little care upon his style, though he many a time rises in lofty poetic flight. He made no point of literary renown, but, impelled by love to God and to the church, he wrote from the fulness of his mind and heart. The writings before his conversion, a treatise on the Beautiful (De Pulchro et Apto), the orations and eulogies which he delivered as rhetorician at Carthage, Rome, and Milan, are lost. The professor of eloquence, the heathen philosopher, the Manichaean heretic, the sceptic and freethinker, are known to us only, from his regrets and recantations in the Confessions and other works. His literary career for as commences in his pious retreat at Cassiciacum where he prepared himself for a public profession of his faith. He appears first, in the works composed at Cassiciacum, Rome, and near Tagaste, as a Christian philosopher, after his consecration to the priesthood as a theologian. Yet even in his theological works he everywhere manifests the metaphysical and speculative bent of his mind. He never abandoned or depreciated reason, he only subordinated it to faith and made it subservient to the defence of revealed truth. Faith is the pioneer of reason, and discovers the territory which reason explores.

The following is a classified view of his most important works, the contents of the most of which we have already noticed in former sections.2168

I. Autobiographical works. To these belong the Confessions and the Retractations; the former acknowledging his sins, the latter his theoretical errors. In the one he subjects his life, in the other his writings, to close criticism; and these productions therefore furnish the best standard for judging of his entire labors.2169

The Confessions are the most profitable, at least the most edifying, product of his pen; indeed, we may no doubt say, the most edifying book in all the patristic literature. They were accordingly, the most read even during his lifetime,2170 and they have been the most frequently published since.2171  A more sincere and more earnest book was never written. The historical part, to the tenth book, is one of the devotional classics of all creeds, and second in popularity only to the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis, and Bunyan’s "Pilgrim’s Progress."  Certainly no autobiography is superior to it in true humility, spiritual depth, and universal interest. Augustine’s experience, as a heathen sensualist, a Manichaean heretic, an anxious inquirer, a sincere penitent, and a grateful convert, is reflected in every human soul that struggles through the temptations of nature and the labyrinth of error to the knowledge of truth and the beauty of holiness, and after many sighs and tears finds rest ad peace in the arms of a merciful Saviour. Rousseau’s "Confessions," and Goethe’s "Truth and Poetry," though written in a radically different spirit, may be compared with Augustine’s Confessions as works of rare genius and of absorbing interest, but, by attempting to exalt human nature in its unsanctified state, they tend as much to expose its vanity and weakness, as the work of the bishop of Hippo, being written with a single eye to the glory of God, raises man from the dust of repentance to a new and imperishable life of the Spirit.2172

Augustine composed the Confessions about the year 400. The first ten books contain, in the form of a continuous prayer and confession before God, a general sketch of his earlier life, of his conversion, and of his return to Africa in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The salient points in these books are the engaging history of his conversion in Milan, and the story of the last days of his noble mother in Ostia, spent as it were at the very gate of heaven and in full assurance of a blessed reunion at the throne of glory. The last three books (and a part of the tenth) are devoted to speculative philosophy; they treat, partly in tacit opposition to Manichaeism, of the metaphysical questions of the possibility of knowing God, and the nature of time and space; and they give an interpretation of the Mosaic cosmogony in the style of the typical allegorical exegesis usual with the fathers, but foreign to our age; they are therefore of little value to the general reader, except as showing that even abstract metaphysical subjects may be devotionally treated.

The Retractations were produced in the evening of his life (427), when, mindful of the proverb: "In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin,"2173 and remembering that we must give account for every idle word,2174 he judged himself, that he might not be judged.2175  He revised in chronological order the numerous works he had written before and during his episcopate, and retracted or corrected whatever in them seemed to his riper knowledge false or obscure. In all essential points, nevertheless, his theological system remained the same from his conversion to this time. The Retractations give beautiful evidence of his love of truth, his conscientiousness, and his humility.2176

To this same class should be added the Letters of Augustine, of which the Benedictine editors, in their second volume, give two hundred and seventy (including letters to Augustine) in chronological order from A.D. 386 to A.D. 429. These letters treat, sometimes very minutely, of all the important questions of his time, and give us an insight of his cares, his official fidelity, his large heart, and his effort to become, like Paul, all things to all men.

When the questions of friends and pupils accumulated, he answered them in special works; and in this way he produced various collections of Quaestiones and Responsiones, dogmatical, exegetical, and miscellaneous (A.D. 390, 397, &c.).

II. Philosophical treatises, in dialogue; almost all composed in his earlier life; either during his residence on the country-seat Cassiciacum in the vicinity of Milan, where he spent half a year before his baptism in instructive and stimulating conversation in a sort of academy or Christian Platonic banquet with Monica, his son Adeodatus, his brother Navigius, his friend Alypius, and some cousins and pupils; or during his second residence in Rome; or soon after his return to Africa.2177

To this class belong the works: Contra Academicos libri tres (386), in which he combats the skepticism and probabilism of the New Academy,—the doctrine that man can never reach the truth, but can at best attain only probability; De vita beata (386), in which he makes true blessedness to consist in the perfect knowledge of God; De ordine,—on the relation of evil to the divine order of the world2178 (386); Soliloquia (387), communings with his own soul concerning God, the highest good, the knowledge of truth, and immortality; De immortalitate animae (387), a continuation of the Soliloquies; De quantitate animae (387), discussing sundry questions of the size, the origin, the incorporeity of the soul; De musica libri vi (387389); De magistro (389), in which, in a dialogue with his son Adeodatus, a pious and promising, but precocious youth, who died soon after his return to Africa (389), he treats on the importance and virtue of the word of God, and on Christ as the infallible Master.2179  To these may be added the later work, De anima et ejus origine (419). Other philosophical works on grammar, dialectics (or ars bene disputandi), rhetoric, geometry, and arithmetic, are lost.2180

These works exhibit as yet little that is specifically Christian and churchly; but they show a Platonism seized and consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, full of high thoughts, ideal views, and discriminating argument. They were designed to present the different stages of human thought by which he himself had reached the knowledge of the truth, and to serve others as steps to the sanctuary. They form an elementary introduction to his theology. He afterwards, in his Retractations, withdrew many things contained in them, like the Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul, and the Platonic idea that the acquisition of knowledge is a recollection or excavation of the knowledge hidden in the mind.2181  The philosopher in him afterwards yielded more and more to the theologian, and his views became more positive and empirical, though in some cases narrower also and more exclusive. Yet he could never cease to philosophize, and even his later works, especially De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei, are full of profound speculations. Before his conversion he, followed a particular system of philosophy, first the Manichaean, then the Platonic; after his conversion he embraced the Christian philosophy, which is based on the divine revelation of the Scriptures, and is the handmaid of theology and religion; but at the same time he prepared the way for the catholic ecclesiastical philosophy, which rests on the authority of the church, and became complete in the scholasticism of the middle age.

In the history of philosophy he deserves a place in the highest rank, and has done greater service to the science of sciences than any other father, Clement of Alexandria and Origen not excepted. He attacked and refuted the pagan philosophy as pantheistic or dualistic at heart; he shook the superstitions of astrology and magic; he expelled from philosophy the doctrine of emanation, and the idea that God is the soul of the world; he substantially advanced psychology; he solved the question of the origin and the nature of evil more nearly than any of his predecessors, and as nearly as most of his successors; he was the first to investigate thoroughly the relation of divine omnipotence and omniscience to human freedom, and to construct a theodicy; in short, he is properly the founder of a Christian philosophy, and not only divided with Aristotle the empire of the mediaeval scholasticism, but furnished also living germs for new systems of philosophy, and will always be consulted in the speculative establishment of Christian doctrines.

III. Apologetic works against Pagans and Jews. Among these the twenty-two books, De Civitate Dei, are still well worth reading. They form the deepest and richest apologetic work of antiquity; begun in 413, after the occupation of Rome by the Gothic king Alaric, finished in 426, and often separately published. They condense his entire theory of the world and of man, and are the first attempt at a comprehensive philosophy of universal history under the dualistic view of two antagonistic currents or organized forces, a kingdom of this world which is doomed to final destruction and a kingdom of God which will last forever.2182

IV. Religious-Theological works of a general nature (in part anti-Manichaean): De utilitate credendi, against the Gnostic exaltation of knowledge (392); De fide et symbolo, a discourse which, though only presbyter, he delivered on the Apostles’ Creed before the council at Hippo at the request of the bishops in 393; De doctrina Christiana iv libri (397; the fourth book added in 426), a compend of exegetical theology for instruction in the interpretation of the Scriptures according to the analogy of the faith; De catechizandis rudibus, likewise for catechetical purposes (400); Enchiridion, or De fide, spe et caritate, a brief compend of the doctrine of faith and morals, which he wrote in 421, or later, at the request of Laurentius; hence also called Manuale ad Laurentium.

V. Polemic-Theological works. These are the most copious sources of the history of doctrine. The heresies collectively are reviewed in the book De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum, written between 428 and 430 to a friend and deacon in Carthage, and giving a survey of eighty-eight heresies, from the Simonians to the Pelagians.2183  In the work De vera religione (390) Augustine proposed to show that the true religion is to be found not with the heretics and schismatics, but only in the catholic church of that time.

The other controversial works are directed against the particular heresies of Manichaeism, Donatism, Arianism, Pelagianism, and Semi-Pelagianism. Augustine, with all the firmness of his convictions, was free from personal antipathy, and used the pen of controversy in the genuine Christian spirit, fortiter in re, suaviter in modo. He understood Paul’s ajlhqeuvein ejn ajgavph/, and forms in this respect a pleasing contrast to Jerome, who probably had by nature no more fiery temperament than he, but was less able to control it. "Let those," he very beautifully says to the Manichaeans, "burn with hatred against you, who do not know how much pains it costs to find the truth, how hard it is to guard against error;—but I, who after so great and long wavering came to know the truth, must bear myself towards you with the same patience which my fellow-believers showed towards me while I was wandering in blind madness in your opinions."2184

1. The anti-Manichaean works date mostly from his earlier life, and in time and matter follow immediately upon his philosophical writings.2185  In them he afterwards found most to retract, because he advocated the freedom of the will against the Manichaean fatalism. The most important are: De moribus ecclesiae catholicae, et de moribus Manichaeorum, two books (written during his second residence in Rome, 388); De vera religione (390); Unde malum, et de libero arbitrio, usually simply De libero arbitrio, in three books, against the Manichaean doctrine of evil as a substance, and as having its seat in matter instead of free will (begun in 388, finished in 395); De Genesi contra Manichaeos, a defence of the biblical doctrine of creation (389); De duabus animabus, against the psychological dualism of the Manichaeans (392); Disputatio contra Fortunatum (a triumphant refutation of this Manichaean priest in Hippo in August, 392); Contra Epistolam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti (397); Contra Faustum Manichaeum, in thirty-three books (400–404); De natura boni (404), &c.

These works treat of the origin of evil; of free will; of the harmony of the Old and New Testaments, and of revelation and nature; of creation out of nothing, in opposition to dualism and hylozoism; of the supremacy of faith over knowledge; of the, authority of the Scriptures and the church; of the true and the false asceticism, and other disputed points; and they are the chief source of our knowledge of the Manichaean Gnosticism and of the arguments against it. Having himself belonged for nine years to this sect, Augustine was the better fitted for the task of refuting it, as Paul was peculiarly prepared for the confutation of the Pharisaic Judaism. His doctrine of the nature of evil is particularly valuable, He has triumphantly demonstrated for all time, that evil is not a corporeal thing, nor in any way substantial, but a product of the free will of the creature, a perversion of substance in itself good, a corruption of the nature created by God.

2. Against the Priscillianists, a sect in Spain built on Manichaean principles, are directed the book Ad Paulum Orosium contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas (411);2186 the book Contra mendacium, addressed to Consentius (420); and in part the 190th Epistle (alias Ep. 157), to the bishop Optatus, on the origin of the soul (418), and two other letters, in which he refutes erroneous views on the nature of the soul, the limitation of future punishments, and the lawfulness of fraud for supposed good purposes.

3. The anti-Donatistic works, composed between the years 393 and 420, argue against separatism, and contain Augustine’s doctrine of the church and church-discipline, and of the sacraments. To these belong: Psalmus contra partem Donati (A.D. 393), a polemic popular song without regular metre, intended to offset the songs of the Donatists; Contra epistolam Parmeniani, written in 400 against the Carthaginian bishop of the Donatists, the successor of Donatus; De baptismo contra Donatistas, in favor of the validity of heretical baptism (400); Contra literas Petiliani (about 400), against the view of Cyprian and the Donatists, that the efficacy of the sacraments depends on the personal worthiness and the ecclesiastical status of the officiating priest; Ad Catholicos Epistola contra Donatistas, vulgo De unitate ecclesiae (402); Contra Cresconium grammaticum Donatistam (406); Breviculus collationis cum Donatistis, a short account of the three-days’ religious conference with the Donatists (411); De correctione Donatistarum (417); Contra Gaudentium, Donat. Episcopum, the last anti-Donatistic work (420).2187

4. The anti-Arian works have to do with the deity of Christ and of the Holy Ghost, and with the Holy Trinity. By far the most important of these are the fifteen books De Trinitate (400–416);—the most profound and discriminating production of the ancient church on the Trinity, in no respect inferior to the kindred works of Athanasius and the two Gregories, and for centuries final to the dogma.2188  This may also be counted among the positive didactic works, for it is not directly controversial. The Collatio cum Maximino Ariano, an obscure babbler, belongs to the year 428.

5. The numerous anti-Pelagian works of Augustine are his most influential and most valuable. They were written between the years 412 and 429. In them Augustine, in his intellectual and spiritual prime, developes his system of anthropology and soteriology, and most nearly approaches the position of evangelical Protestantism: On the Guilt and the Remission of Sins, and Infant Baptism (412); On the Spirit and the Letter (413); On Nature and Grace (415); On the Acts of Pelagius (417); On the Grace of Christ, and Original Sin (418); On Marriage and Concupiscence (419); On Grace and Free Will (426); On Discipline and Grace (427); Against Julian of Eclanum (two large works, written between 421 and 429, the Second unfinished, and hence called Opus imperfectum); On the Predestination of the Saints (428); On the Gift of Perseverance (429); &c.2189

VI. Exegetical works. The best of these are: De Genesi ad literam (The Genesis word for word), in twelve books, an extended exposition of the first three chapters of Genesis, particularly the history of the creation literally interpreted, though with many mystical and allegorical interpretations also (written between 401 and 415);2190 Enarrationes in Psalmos (mostly sermons);2191 the hundred and twenty-four Homilies on the Gospel of John (416 and 417);2192 the ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (417); the Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (393); the Harmony of the Gospels (De consensu evangelistarum, 400); the Epistle to the Galatians (394); and the unfinished commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.2193

Augustine deals more in lively, profound, and edifying thoughts on the Scriptures than in proper grammatical and historical exposition, for which neither he nor his readers had the necessary linguistic knowledge, disposition, or taste. He grounded his theology less upon exegesis than upon his Christian and churchly mind, saturated with Scriptural truths.

VII. Ethical or Practical and Ascetic works. Among these belong three hundred and ninety-six Sermones (mostly very short) de Scripturis (on texts of Scripture), de tempore (festival sermons), de sanctis (in memory of apostles, martyrs, and saints), and de diversis (on various occasions), some of them dictated by Augustine, some taken down by hearers.2194  Also various moral treatises: De continentia (395); De mendacio (395), against deception (not to be confounded with the similar work already mentioned Contra mendacium, against the fraud-theory of the Priscillianists, written in 420); De agone Christiano (396); De opere monachorum, against monastic idleness (400); De bono conjugali adv. Jovinianum (400); De virginitate (401); De fide et operibus (413); De adulterinis conjugiis, on 1 Cor. vii. 10 sqq. (419); De bono viduitatis (418); De patientia (418); De cura pro mortuis gerenda, to Paulinus of Nola (421); De utilitate jejunii; De diligendo Deo; Meditationes; etc.2195

As we survey, this enormous literary labor, augmented by many other treatises and letters now lost, and as we consider his episcopal labors, his many journeys, and his adjudications of controversies among the faithful, which often robbed him of whole days, we must be really astounded at the fidelity, exuberance, energy, and perseverance of this father of the church. Surely, such a life was worth the living.

§ 180. The Influence of Augustine upon Posterity and his Relation to Catholicism and Protestantism.

Before we take leave of this imposing character, and of the period of church history in which he shines as the brightest star, we must add some observations respecting the influence of Augustine on the world since his time, and his position with reference to the great antagonism of Catholicism and Protestantism. All the church fathers are, indeed, the common inheritance of both parties; but no other of them has produced so permanent effects on both, and no other stands in so high regard with both, as Augustine. Upon the Greek church alone has he exercised little or no influence; for this church stopped with the undeveloped synergistic anthropology of the previous age.2196

1. Augustine, in the first place, contributed much to the development of the doctrinal basis which Catholicism and Protestantism hold in common against such radical heresies of antiquity, as Manichaeism, Arianism, and Pelagianism. In all these great intellectual conflicts he was in general the champion of the cause of Christian truth against dangerous errors. Through his influence the canon of Holy Scripture (including, indeed, the Old Testament Apocrypha) was fixed in its present form by the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). He conquered the Manichaean dualism, hylozoism, and fatalism, and saved the biblical idea of God and of creation and the biblical doctrine of the nature of sin and its origin in the free will of man. He developed the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, completed it by the doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and gave it the form in which it has ever since prevailed in the West, and in which it received classical expression from his school in the Athanasian Creed. In Christology, on the contrary, he added nothing, and he died shortly before the great Christological conflicts opened, which reached their ecumenical settlement at the council of Chalcedon, twenty years after his death. Yet he anticipated Leo in giving currency in the West to the important formula: "Two natures in one person."2197

2. Augustine is also the principal theological creator of the Latin-Catholic system as distinct from the Greek Catholicism on the one hand, and from evangelical Protestantism on the other. He ruled the entire theology of the middle age, and became the father of scholasticism in virtue of his dialectic mind, and the father of mysticism in virtue of his devout heart, without being responsible for the excesses of either system. For scholasticism thought to comprehend the divine with the understanding, and lost itself at last in empty dialectics; and mysticism endeavored to grasp the divine with feeling, and easily strayed into misty sentimentalism; Augustine sought to apprehend the divine with the united power of mind and heart, of bold thought and humble faith.2198  Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, are his nearest of kin in this respect. Even now, since the Catholic church has become a Roman church, he enjoys greater consideration in it than Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, or Gregory the Great. All this cannot possibly be explained without an interior affinity.2199

His very conversion, in which, besides the Scriptures, the personal intercourse of the hierarchical Ambrose and the life of the ascetic Anthony had great influence, was a transition not from heathenism to Christianity (for he was already a Manichaean Christian), but from heresy to the historical, episcopally organized church, as, for the time, the sole authorized vehicle of the apostolic Christianity in conflict with those sects and parties which more or less assailed the foundations of the gospel.2200  It was, indeed, a full and unconditional surrender of his mind and heart to God, but it was at the same time a submission of his private judgment to the authority of the church which led him to the faith of the gospel.2201  In the same spirit he embraced the ascetic life, without which, according to the Catholic principle, no high religion is possible. He did not indeed enter a cloister, like Luther, whose conversion in Erfurt was likewise essentially catholic, but he lived in his house in the simplicity of a monk, and made and kept the vow of voluntary poverty and celibacy.2202

He adopted Cyprian’s doctrine of the church, and completed it in the conflict with Donatism by transferring the predicates of unity, holiness, universality, exclusiveness, and maternity, directly to the actual church of the time, which, with a firm episcopal organization, an unbroken succession, and the Apostles’ Creed, triumphantly withstood the eighty or the hundred opposing sects in the heretical catalogue of the day, and had its visible centre in Rome. In this church he had found rescue from the shipwreck of his life, the home of true, Christianity, firm ground for his thinking, satisfaction for his heart, and a commensurate field for the wide range of his powers. The predicate of infallibility alone he does not plainly bring forward; he assumes a progressive correction of earlier councils by later; and in the Pelagian controversy he asserts the same independence towards pope Zosimus, which Cyprian before him had shown towards pope Stephen in the controversy on heretical baptism, with the advantage of having the right on his side, so that Zosimus found himself compelled to yield to the African church.2203

He was the first to give a clear and fixed definition of the sacrament, as a visible sign of invisible grace, resting on divine appointment; but he knows nothing of the number seven; this was a much later enactment. In the doctrine of baptism he is entirely Catholic,2204 though in logical contradiction with his dogma of predestination; but in the doctrine of the holy communion he stands, like his predecessors, Tertullian and Cyprian, nearer to the Calvinistic theory of a spiritual presence and fruition of Christ’s body and blood. He also contributed to promote, at least in his later writings, the Catholic faith of miracles,2205 and the worship of Mary;2206 though he exempts the Virgin only from actual sin, not from original, and, with all his reverence for her, never calls her mother of God.2207

At first an advocate of religious liberty and of purely spiritual methods of opposing error, he afterwards asserted the fatal principle of the coge intrare, and lent the great weight of his authority to the system of civil persecution, at the bloody fruits of which in the middle age he himself would have shuddered; for he was always at heart a man of love and gentleness, and personally acted on the glorious principle: "Nothing conquers but truth, and the victory of truth is love."2208

Thus even truly great and good men have unintentionally, through mistaken zeal, become the authors of much mischief.

3. But, on the other hand, Augustine is, of all the fathers, nearest to evangelical Protestantism, and may be called, in respect of his doctrine of sin and grace, the first forerunner of the Reformation. The Lutheran and Reformed churches have ever conceded to him, without scruple, the cognomen of Saint, and claimed him as one of the most enlightened witnesses of the truth and most striking examples of the marvellous power of divine grace in the transformation of a sinner. It is worthy of mark, that his Pauline doctrines, which are most nearly akin to Protestantism, are the later and more mature parts of his system, and that just these found great acceptance with the laity. The Pelagian controversy, in which he developed his anthropology, marks the culmination of his theological and ecclesiastical career, and his latest writings were directed against the Pelagian Julian and the Semi-Pelagians in Gaul, who were brought to his notice by the two friendly laymen, Prosper and Hilary. These anti-Pelagian works have wrought mightily, it is most true, upon the Catholic church, and have held in check the Pelagianizing tendencies of the hierarchical and monastic system, but they have never passed into its blood and marrow. They waited for a favorable future, and nourished in silence an opposition to the prevailing system.

Even in the middle age the better sects, which attempted to simplify, purify, and spiritualize the reigning Christianity by return to the Holy Scriptures, and the reformers before the Reformation such as Wiclif, Russ, Wessel, resorted most, after the apostle Paul, to the bishop of Hippo as the representative of the doctrine of free grace.

The Reformers were led by his writings into a deeper understanding of Paul, and so prepared for their great vocation. No church teacher did so much to mould Luther and Calvin; none furnished them so powerful weapons against the dominant Pelagianism and formalism; none is so often quoted by them with esteem and love.2209

All the Reformers in the outset, Melancthon and Zwingle among them, adopted his denial of free will and his doctrine of predestination, and sometimes even went beyond him into the abyss of supralapsarianism, to cut out the last roots of human merit and boasting. In this point Augustine holds the same relation to the Catholic church, as Luther to the Lutheran; that is, he is a heretic of unimpeachable authority, who is more admired than censured even in his extravagances; yet his doctrine of predestination was indirectly condemned by the pope in Jansenism, as Luther’s view was rejected as Calvinism by the Form of Concord.2210  For Jansenism was nothing but a revival of Augustinianism in the bosom of the Roman Catholic church.2211

The excess of Augustine and the Reformers in this direction is due to the earnestness and energy of their sense of sin and grace. The Pelagian looseness could never beget a reformer. It was only the unshaken conviction of man’s own inability, of unconditional dependence on God, and of the almighty power of his grace to give us strength for every good work, which could do this. He who would give others the conviction that he has a divine vocation for the church and for mankind, must himself be penetrated with the faith of an eternal, unalterable decree of God, and must cling to it in the darkest hours.

In great men, and only in great men, great opposites and apparently antagonistic truths live together. Small minds cannot hold them. The catholic, churchly, sacramental, and sacerdotal system stands in conflict with the evangelical Protestant Christianity of subjective, personal experience. The doctrine of universal baptismal regeneration, in particular, which presupposes a universal call (at least within the church), can on principles of logic hardly be united with the doctrine of an absolute predestination, which limits the decree of redemption to a portion of the baptized. Augustine supposes, on the one hand, that every baptized person, through the inward operation of the Holy Ghost, which accompanies the outward act of the sacrament, receives the forgiveness of sins, and is translated from the state of nature into the state of grace, and thus, qua baptizatus, is also a child of God and an heir of eternal life; and yet, on the other hand, he makes all these benefits dependent on the absolute will of God, who saves only a certain number out of the "mass of perdition," and preserves these to the end. Regeneration and election, with him, do not, as with Calvin, coincide. The former may exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without the former. Augustine assumes that many are actually born into the kingdom of grace only to perish again; Calvin holds that in the case of the non-elect baptism is an unmeaning ceremony; the one putting the delusion in the inward effect, the other in the outward form. The sacramental, churchly system throws the main stress upon the baptismal regeneration to the injury of the eternal election; the Calvinistic and Puritan system sacrifices the virtue of the sacrament to the election; the Lutheran and Anglican system seeks a middle ground, without being able to give a satisfactory theological solution of the problem. The Anglican church allows the two opposite views, and sanctions the one in the baptismal service of the Book of Common Prayer, the other in her Thirty-nine Articles, which are moderately Calvinistic.

It was an evident ordering of God, that the Augustinian system, like the Latin Bible of Jerome, appeared just in that transitional period of history, in which the old civilization was passing away before the flood of barbarism, and a new order of things, under the guidance of the, Christian religion, was in preparation. The church, with her strong, imposing organization and her firm system of doctrine, must save Christianity amidst the chaotic turmoil of the great migration, and must become a training-school for the barbarian nations of the middle age.2212

In this process of training, next to the Holy Scriptures, the scholarship of Jerome and the theology and fertile ideas of Augustine were the most important intellectual agent.

Augustine was held in so universal esteem that he could exert influence in all directions, and even in his excesses gave no offence. He was sufficiently catholic for the principle of church authority, and yet at the same time so free and evangelical that he modified its hierarchical and sacramental character, reacted against its tendencies to outward, mechanical ritualism, and kept alive a deep consciousness of sin and grace, and a spirit of fervent and truly Christian piety, until that spirit grew strong enough to break the shell of hierarchical tutelage, and enter a new stage of its development. No other father could have acted more beneficently on the Catholicism of the middle age, and more successfully provided for the evangelical Reformation than St. Augustine, the worthy successor of Paul, and the precursor of Luther and Calvin.

Had he lived at the time of the Reformation, he would in all probability have taken the lead of the evangelical movement against the prevailing Pelagianism of the Roman church. For we must not forget that, notwithstanding their strong affinity, there is an important difference between Catholicism and Romanism or Popery. They sustain a similar relation to each other as the Judaism of the Old Testament dispensation, which looked to, and prepared the way for, Christianity, and the Judaism after the crucifixion and after the destruction of Jerusalem, which is antagonistic to Christianity. Catholicism covers the entire ancient and mediaeval history of the church, and includes the Pauline, Augustinian, or evangelical tendencies which increased with the corruptions of the papacy and the growing sense of the necessity of a "reformatio in capite et membris."  Romanism proper dates from the council of Trent, which gave it symbolical expression and anathematized the doctrines of the Reformation. Catholicism is the strength of Romanism, Romanism is the weakness of Catholicism. Catholicism produced Jansenism, Popery condemned it. Popery never forgets and never learns anything, and can allow no change in doctrine (except by way of addition), without sacrificing its fundamental principle of infallibility, and thus committing suicide. But Catholicism may ultimately burst the chains of Popery which have so long kept it confined, and may assume new life and vigor.

Such a personage as Augustine, still holding a mediating place between the two great divisions of Christendom, revered alike by both, and of equal influence with both, is furthermore a welcome pledge of the elevating prospect of a future reconciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism in a higher unity, conserving all the truths, losing all the errors, forgiving all the sins, forgetting all the enmities of both. After all, the contradiction between authority and freedom, the objective and the subjective, the churchly and the personal, the organic and the individual, the sacramental and the experimental in religion, is not absolute, but relative and temporary, and arises not so much from the nature of things, as from the deficiencies of man’s knowledge and piety in this world. These elements admit of an ultimate harmony in the perfect state of the church, corresponding to the union of the divine and human natures, which transcends the limits of finite thought and logical comprehension, and is yet completely realized in the person of Christ. They are in fact united in the theological system of St. Paul, who had the highest view of the church, as the mystical "body of Christ," and "the pillar and ground of the truth," and who was at the same time the great champion of evangelical freedom, individual responsibility, and personal union of the believer with his Saviour.  We believe in and hope for one holy catholic apostolic church, one communion of saints, one fold, and one Shepherd. The more the different churches become truly Christian, or draw nearer to Christ, and the more they give real effect to His kingdom, the nearer will they come to one another. For Christ is the common head and vital centre of all believers, and the divine harmony of all discordant human sects and creeds.  In Christ, says Pascal, one of the greatest and noblest disciples of Augustine, In Christ all contradictions are solved.

LIST OF POPES AND EMPERORS

From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great, A.D. 314–590.

Comp. the lists in vol. ii. 166 sqq., and vol. iv. 205 Sqq.

This list is based upon Jaffé’s Regesta, Potthast’s Biblioth. Hist. Medii Aevi, and Cardinal Hergenröther’s list, in his Kirchengesch., third ed. (1886), vol. iii. 1057 sqq.

Date

Pope

Emperor

Date

311–314

Melchiades

Constantine I, or The Great

306 (323)–337

314–335

Silvester I

336–337

Marcus

Constantine II (in Gaul)

337–340

337–352

Julius I

Constantius II (In the East)

337–350

Constans (In Italy)

"

352–66

Liberius

357

Filix II, Antipope

Constantius Alone

350–361

Julian

361–363

Jovian

363–364

366–843

Damasus

Valentinian I

364–375

Valens

364–378

366–367

Ursicinus, Antipope

Gratian

375–383

Valentinian II (in the West)

375–392

385–398

Siricius

Theodosius

379–395

398–402

Anastasius

Arcadius (in the East)

395–408

402–417

Innocent I

Honorius (in the West)

395–423

417–418

Zosimus

Theodosius II (E.)

408–450

418–422

Bonifacius

(418 Dec. 27)

(Eulalius, Antipope)

422–432

Coelestinus I

Valentinian III (W.)

423–455

432–440

Sixtus III

440–461

Leo I the Great

Marcian (E.)

450–457

Maximus Avitus (W.)

455–457

Majorian (W.)

457–461

Leo I. (E.)

457–474

461–468

Hilarus

Severus (W.)

461–465

Vacancy (W.)

465–467

468–483

Simplicius

Anthemius (W.)

467–472

Olybrius (W.)

472–473

Glycerius (W.)

473–474

Julius Nepos (W.)

474

Conciliengeschichte, Freiburg i. B. 1855 sqq.; second revised ed. 1873 sqq., 7 vols., down to the Council of Florence (1447).

Page 353. Add to footnote:

The reign of Pope Pius IX. has added another Council to the Latin list of oecumenical Councils, that of the Vatican, 1870, which is counted as the twentieth (by Bishop Hefele, in the revised edition of his Conciliengesch., i. 60), and which decreed the infallibility of the Pope in all his official utterances, thereby superseding the necessity of future oecumencal Councils. It has given rise to the Old Catholic secession, headed by eminent scholars such as Döllinger, Reinkens, Reusch, Langen. See the author’s Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. 134 sqq.

Page 518. Add to Lit.

C. A. Hammond: Antient Liturgies (with introduction, notes, and liturgical glossary). Oxford, 1878. Ch. A. Swainson: Greek Liturgies, chiefly from Original Sources. Cambridge, 1884.

Page 541. § 103. Church Architecture:

On the history of Architecture in general, see the works of Kugler:  Geschichte der Baukunst (1859, 3 vols.); Schnaase: Gesch. der Kunst (1843–66, 8 vols.); Lübke History of Art (Eng. transl. New York, 1877, 2 vols.); Viollet Le Duc: Lectures an Architecture (London, 1877), and his numerous works in French, including Dictionnaire De l’architecture Française  (Paris, 1853–69, 10 vols.); James Fergusson: History of Architecture of all Countries from the earliest Times to the present (Lond., 1865; 2d ed., 1874, 4 vols.). On church architecture in particular: Richard Brown: Sacred Architecture; its Rise, Progress, and Present State (Lond., 1845); Kreuser: Der christl. Kirchenbau (Bonn, 1851); Hübsch: Altchristl. Kirchen (Karlsruhe, 1858–61); De Vogüé: Architecture civile et relig. du Ie au VIIe siècle (Paris, 1877, 2 vols.); Ch. E. Norton: Studies of Church Buildings in the Middle Ages (Now York, 1880). There are also special works on the basilicas in Rome, Constantinople, and Ravenna. See §§ 106 and 107.

Page 560. § 109. Crosses and Crucifixes.

Comp. the Lit. in vol. ii. §§ 75 and 77.

Page 563. Add to Lit.

Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake: The History of Our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art (with illustrations). London, 1864; second ed. 1865. 2 vols. Also the works on Christian Art, and on the Catacombs quoted in vol. ii. §§ 75 and 82.

Page 622. Add to Lit., line 3 from below:

Eugene Revillout: Le Concile de Nicée d’après les textes coptes et les diverses collections canoniques. Paris, 1881. The works on Arianism and on Athanasius include accounts of the Council of Nicaea. On the Nicene Creed and its literature, see Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. 12 sqq. and 24 sqq.; and the article of Ad. Harnack, in Herzog,2 vol. viii. (1881) 212–230, abridged in Schaff-Herzog (1886), ii. 1648 sqq.

Page 651. Add to Lit., line 13:

Theod. Zahn: Marcellus Von Ancyra. Gotha, 1867. (Zahn represents Marcellus as essentially orthodox and agreed with Irenaeus, but as seeking to gain a more simple and satisfactory conception of the truth from the Bible than the theology of the age presented. Neander, Dogmengesch., i. 275, had suggested a similar view.)  W. Möller: Art. Marcellus in Herzog2 vol. ix. (1881), 279–282. (Partly in opposition to Zahn.) E. S. Ffoulkes, in Smith and Wace, iii. 808–813. (Ignores the works of Zahn and other German writers.)

Page 689. § 132. The Athanasian Creed. Add to Lit.:

A. P. Stanley: The Athanasian Creed. Lond., 1871. E. S. Ffoulkes: The Athanasian Creed. Lond., 1872. Ch. A. Heurtley: The Athanasian Creed. Oxf., 1872. (Against Ffoulkes.) J. R. Lumby: History of the Creeds. Cambridge, 1873; second ed. 1880. The Utrecht Psalter, a facsimile ed., published in London, 1875. This contains the oldest MS. of the Athan. Creed, which by Ussher and Waterland was assigned to the sixth century, but by recent scholars to the ninth century. C. A. Swainson: The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, together with an Account o f the Growth and Reception of the Creed of St. Athanasius. Lond., 1875. (Comp. his art. Creed in Smith and Wace, i. 711.) G. D. W. Ommaney: Early History of the Athan. Creed. An Examination of Recent Theories. Lond., 1875; 2d ed. 1880. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, i. 34 sqq. and ii. 66–72, 555 sq. (With a facsimile of the oldest MS. from the Utrecht Psalter.)

Page 696.

The statements concerning the origin and age of the Athanasian Creed should be conformed to the authors views as expressed in his work on Creeds, i. 36. The latest investigations do not warrant us to trace it higher than the eighth or seventh century. The first commentary on it ascribed to Venantius Fortunatus, 570, is of doubtful genuineness, and denied to him by Gieseler, Ffoulkes, and others. The majority of recent Anglican writers, including Stanley, Swainson, and Lumby, assign the Creed to an unknown author in Gaul between A.D. 750 and 850, probably during the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814). Hardy and Ommaney plead for an earlier date. The question is not yet fully settled. The Creed consists of two parts, one on the Trinity and one on the Incarnation, which were afterward welded together by a third hand. The second part was found separately as a fragment of a sermon on the Incarnation, at Treves, in a MS. from the middle of the eighth century, and was first published by Prof. Swainson, 1871, and again in 1875.

Page 872. Add to Lit. on Eusebius:

Fr. Ad. Heinichen: Eusebii Pamphili Scripta Historica. New ed. Lips., 1868–70. 3 Tom. The third vol. (804 pages) contains Commentarii et Meletemata. The ample indexes and critical and explanatory notes make this the most useful edition of the Church History and other historical works of Eusebius. Dindorf’s ed., Lips., 1867 sqq., 4 vols., includes the two apologetic works. Best ed. of the Chronicle by Alfred Schöne: Eusebii Chronicorum libri II.  Berol. 1866 and 1875. 2 Tom., 4°. Schöne was assisted by Petermann in the Armenian Version, and by Rödiger in the Syriac Epitome. He gives also the cronografei'on suvntomon  of the year 853, the first part of which professes to be derived from the labors of Eusebius. Stein: Eusebius nach s. Leben, s. Schriften, und s. dogmatischen Charakter. Würzburg, 1859. Bishop Lightfoot: art. Eusebius of Caes. in Smith and Wace, vol. ii. (full and fair). Semisch: art. Eus. v. Caes. in Herzog,2  vol. iv. 390–398. A new translation of Eusebius, with commentary, by A. C. McGiffert, will appear, N. York, 1890.

Page 885. Add to Lit. on Athanasius:

G. R. Sievers: Athanasii Vita acephala (written before 412, first publ. by Maffei, 1738). Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. des Athan. In the "Zeitschr. für Hist. Theol." (ed. by Kahnis). Gotha, 1868, pp. 89–162. Böhringer: Athanasius und Arius, in his Kirchengesch. in Biogr. Bd. vi., new ed. Leipz., 1874. Hergenröther (R.C.): Der heil. Athanas. der Gr. Cologne, 1877 (an essay, pages 24). L. Atzberger:  Die Logoslehre des heil. Athanas. München, 1880. W. Möller: Art. Athan. in Herzog,2  i. 740–747. Lüdtke: in Wetzer and Welte, 2 i. (1882), 1534–1543. Gwatkin: Studies in Arianism. Cambr. 1882.

Page 890. Add to footnote at the bottom:

Villemain considers Athanasius the greatest man between the Apostles and Gregory VII., and says of him: "Sa vie, ses combats, son génie servirent plus à l’agrandissement du christianisme que toute la puissance de Constantin .... Athanase cherche le triomphe, et non le martyre. Tel qu’un chef de parti, tel qu’un général experimenté qui se sent nécessaire aux siens, Athan. ne s’expose que pour le succès, ne combat que pour vaincre, se retire quelque fois pour reparaître avec l’éclat d’un triomphe populaire." (Tableau de l’éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle, p. 92.)

Page 894 line 11. Add to Lit. on St. Basil:

Dörgens: Der heil. Basilius und die class. Studien. Leipz., 1857. Eug. Fialon. Étude historique et literaire sur S. Basile, suivie de l’hexaemeron. Paris, 1861. G. B. Sievers: Leben des Libanios. Berl., 1868 (p294 sqq.). Böhringer: Die drei Kappadozier oder die trinitarischen Epigonen (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Naz.), in Kirchengesch. in Biograph., new ed. Bd. vii. and viii. 1875. Weiss: Die drei grossen Kappadozier als Exegeten. Braunsberg, 1872. R. Travers Smith: St. Basil the Great. London, 1879. (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), 232 pages. Scholl: Des heil. Basil Lehre von der Gnade. Freib., 1881. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 ii. 116–121. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 282–297. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," 1889. vol. ii. 1–55.

Page 904 line 7. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nyssa:

Böhringer: Kirchengesch. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. G Herrmann: Greg. Nyss. Sententiae de salute adipiscenda. Halle, 1875. . T. Bergades: De universo et de anima hominis doctrina Gregor. Nyss. Leipz., 1876. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 v. 396–404. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, ii. 761–768. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, 723–725. On his doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, see especially Baur and Dorner. On his doctrine of the apokatastasis and relation to Origen, see Möller, G. Herrmann, and Bergades. l.c.  Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," (1889), ii. 56–83.

Page 909, line 4. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nazianzus:

A. Grenier: La vie et les poésies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1858. Böhringer: K. G. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. Abbé A. Benoît: Vie de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1877. J. R. Newman: Church of the Fathers, pp. 116–145, 551. Dabas: La femme au quatrième siècle dans les poésies de Grég. de Naz. Bordeaux, 1868. H. W. Watkins, in Smith and Wace, ii. 741–761. W. Gass, in Herzog,2 v. 392–396. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, v., 716–722. On his christology, see Neander, Baur and especially Dorner. His views on future punishment have been discussed by Farrar, and Pusey (see vol. ii. 612). Farrar:: "Lives of the Fathers," i. 491–582.

Page 920, line 22. Add:

In one of his plaintive songs from his religious retreat, after lamenting the factions of the church, the loss of youth, health, strength, parents, and friends, and his gloomy and homeless condition, Gregory thus gives touching expression to his faith in Christ as the last and only comforter:

"Thy will be done, O Lord!  That day shall spring,

When at thy word, this clay shall reappear.

No death I dread, but that which sin will bring;

No fire or flood without thy wrath I fear;

For Thou, O Christ, my King, art fatherland to me.

My wealth, and might, and rest; my all I find in Thee." 1

1 Pro;" eJauton, in Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymnol., iii., 11:

Criste; a[nax, su; dev moi pavtrh, sqevno", o[lbo", a{panta,

Soi; d j a[r j ajnayuvxaimi bivon kai; khvde j ajmeivya".

Page 924. After line 2, add to Lit. on Cyril of Jerusalem:

J. H. Newman: Preface to the Oxford transl. of Cyril in the "Library of the Fathers"(1839). E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 760–763. C. Burk, in Herzog,2 iii. 416–418.

Page 933, line 4 from below. Add to Lit. on Chrysostom:

Villemain: L’éloquence chrétienne dans le quatrième siècle. Paris 1849; new ed. 1857. P. Albert: St. Jean Chrysostôme considéré comme orateur populaire. Paris, 1858. Abbé Rochet: Histoire de S. Jean Chrysostôme. Paris, 1866. 2 vols. Th. Förster: Chrysostomus in seinem Verhältniss zur antiochenischen Schule. Gotha, 1869. W. Maggilvray: John of the Golden Mouth. Lond., 1871. Am. Thierry: S. J. Chrysostôme et l’ imperatrice Eudoxie. 2d ed. Paris, 1874. Böhringer: Johann Chrysostomus und Olympias, in his K. G. in Biogr., vol. ix., new ed., 1876. W. R. W. Stephens: St. Chrysostom: his Life and Times. London, 1872; 3d ed., 1883. F. W. Farrar, in "Lives of the Fathers," Lond., 1889, ii. 460–540.

Engl. translation of works of St. Chrys., edited by Schaff, N. York, 1889, 6 vols. (with biographical sketch and literature by Schaff).

Page 942, line 14. Add to Lit. on Cyril of Alex.:

A new ed. of Cyril’s works, including his Com. on the Minor Prophets, the Gospel of John, the Five Books against Nestorius, the Scholia on the Incarnation, etc., was prepared with great pains by Philip Pusey (son of Dr. Pusey). Oxf., 1868–81. In 5 vols  Engl. trans. in the Oxford "Library of the Fathers." 1874 sqq. See an interesting sketch of Ph. Pusey (d. 1880) and his ed. in the "Church Quarterly Review" (London), Jan., 1883, pp. 257–291.

Page 942, line 24. Add:

Hefele: Conciliengesch., vol. ii., revised ed. (1875), where Cyril figures very prominently, pp. 135, 157, 167 sqq., 247 sqq., 266 sqq., etc. C. Burk, in Herzog,2 iii. 418 sq. W. Bright: St. Cyrillus of Al., in Smith and Wace, i. 763–773.

Page 950. Add to Lit. on Ephraem:

Evangelii Concordantis Expositio facta a S. Ephraemo Doctore Syro. Venet., 1876. (A Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, found in the Mechitarist Convent at Venice in an Armenian translation, translated into Latin, 1841, by Aucher, and published with an introduction by Prof. Mösinger of Salzburg.)  Comp. also the art. Ephraem, in Herzog,2  iv. 255–261 (by Radiger, revised by Spiegel). In Smith and Wace, ii. 137–145 (by E. Venables).

Page 955. Add to Lit. on Lactantius:

English translation by W. Fletcher, in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vols. xxi. and xxii. Edinb., 1871. For an estimate of his literary merits, see Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipz., 1874 sqq., vol. i. 70–86. Ebert, in Herzog,2 viii. 364–366. Ffoulkes, in Smith and Wace, iii. 613–617.

Page 959, line 9. Add to Lit. on Hilary of Poitiers:

Reinkens: Hilarius von Poitiers. Schaffhausen, 1864. Semisch, in Herzog,2 vi. 416–427. Cazenove, in Smith and Wace, ii. 54–66, and his St. Hilary of Poitiers. Lond., 1883. (Soc. for Promot. Christian Knowledge.)  Farrar: in "Lives of the Fathers" (1889), i. 426–467.

Page 961. Add to Lit on Ambrose,

Bannard: Histoire de S. Ambroise. Paris, 1871. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit., i. 135–176 (1874). Robinson Thornton: St. Ambrose: his Life, Times, and Teaching. Lond., 1879, 215 pages (Soc. for Promoting Christ. Knowledge). Plitt, in Herzog,2 i. 331–335. J. Ll. Davies, in Smith and Wace, i. 91–99. Cunitz, in Lichtenberger, i. 229–232. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers "(1889), ii. 84–149. On the hymns of Ambrose, Comp. especially Ebert, l. c.

Page 967. Add to Lit. on Jerome:

Amédée Thierry: St. Jérôme, la société chrétienne à Rome et l’emigration romaine en terre sainte. Par., 1867. 2 vols. (He says at the close: "There is no continuation of Jerome’s work; a few more letters of Augustine and Paulinus, and night falls on the West.")  Lübeck: Hieronymus quos noverit scriptores et ex quibus hauserit. Leipzig, 1872. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipz., 1874 sqq., i. 176–203 (especially on the Latinity of Jerome, in which he places him first among the fathers). Edward L. Cutts: St. Jerome. London, 1877 (Soc. for Promot. Chr. Knowledge), 230 pages. Zöckler, in Herzog,2 vi. 103–108. Cunitz, in Lichtenberger, vii. 243–250. Freemantle, in Smith and Wace, iii. 29–50. ("Jerome lived and reigned for a thousand years. His writings contain the whole spirit of the church of the middle ages, its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was no courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy which could break through the fatal circle of bondage to received authority which was closing round manki

On Jerome as a Bible translator, comp. F. Kaulen (R.C.): Geschichte der Vulgata. Mainz, 1869. Hermann Rönsch: Itala und Vulgata. Das Sprachidiom der urchristlichen Itala und der katholischen Vulgata. 2d ed., revised. Marburg, 1875. L. Ziegler: Die latein Bibelübersetzungen vor Hieronymus und die Itala des Augustinus. München, 1879. (He maintains the existence of several Latin versions or revisions before Jerome.) Westcott’s art. "Vulgate," in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible. O. F. Fritzsche: Latein. Bibelübersetzungen, in the new ed. of Herzog, vol. viii. (1881), pp. 433–472. Westcott and Hort’s Greek Testament, vol. ii., lntrod., pp. 78–84.

Page 989, line 13. Add to Lit. on Augustine:

English translations of select works of Aug. by Dr. Pusey and others in the Oxford Library of the Fathers" : the Confessions, vol. i., 1839, 4th ed., 1853; Sermons, vol. xvi., 1844, and vol. xx., 1845; Short Treatises, vol. xxii., 1847; Expositions on the Psalms, vols. xxiv., xxv., xxx., xxxii., xxxvii., xxxix., 1847, 1849, 1850, 1853, 1854; Homilies on John, vols. xxvi. and xxix., 1848 and 1849. Another translation by Marcus Dods and others, Edinb. (T. and T. Clark), 1871–76, 15 vols., containing the City of God, the Anti-Donatist, the Anti-Pelagian, the Anti-Manichaean writings, Letters, On the Trinity, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Harmony of the Gospels, On Christian Doctrine, the Euchiridion, on Catechising, on Faith and the Creed, Lectures on John, and Confessions. The same revised with new translations and Prolegomena, edited by Philip Schaff, N. York, 1886–88, 8 vols. German translation of select writings of Aug. in the Kempten Bibliothek Der Kirchenväter, 1871–79, 8 vols.

On the same page, line 30. Substitute and add at the close of Lit.:

C. Bindemann: Der heil. Augustin. Berlin, 1844–55–69. 3 vols. Gangauf: Des heil. Aug. Lehre von Gott dem dreieinigen. Augsburg, 1866. Reinkens: Geschichtsphilosophie des heil. Augustin. Schaffhausen, 1866. Emil Feuerlein: Ueber die Stellung Augustin’s in der Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte. 1869. (In v. Sybel’s "Hist. Zeitschrift" for 1869, vol. xi., 270–313. Ernst: Die Werke und Tugenden der Ungläubigen nach Augustin. Freib., 1872. Böhringer: Aurelius Augustinus, revised ed. Leipz., 1877–78. 2 parts. Aug. Dorner: Augustinus, sein Theol. System und seine religionsphilosophische Auschauung. Berlin, 1873. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipzig, 1874 sqq., vol. i. 203–243. Edward L. Cutts: St. Augustine. London (Soc. for Prom. Christian Knowledge), 1880. H. Reuter: Augustinische Studien, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." for 1880–83 (four articles on Aug.’s doctrine of the church, predestination, the kingdom of God, etc.). Ch. H. Collett: St. Aug., a Sketch o f his Life and Writings as affecting the Controversy with Rome. Lond., 1883. W. Cunningham: S. Austin and his Place in Christian Thought (Hulsean Lectures for 1885), Cambridge, 1886 (283 pp.). James F. Spalding: The Teaching and Influence of Saint Augustine. N. York, 1886 (106 pp.). H. Reuter: Augustinische Studien, Gotha, 1887 (516 pp.; able, learned, and instructive). Ad. Harnack: Augustin’s Confessionen. Giessen, 1888 (31 pp., brief, but suggestive). F. W. Farrar, in his "Lives of the Fathers," Lond. 1889, vol. ii. 298–460.

On the Philosophy of Aug., compare besides the works quoted on same page:

Erdmann: Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos., i. 231 sqq. Ueberweg: History of Philos. Engl. transl. by Morris, vol. i. 333–346. Ferraz: De la psychologie de S. Aug. 2d ed. Paris, 1869. Schütz: Augustinum non esse ontologum. Monast., 1867. G. Loesche: De Augustino Plotinizanto in doctrina de Deo disserenda. Jenae, 1880. (68 pages.)

APPENDIX TO THE REVISED EDITION, 1884.

With new Additions, 1889.

––––––––––

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.

[In the additions to the literature I have followed the method of italicizing book-titles and words in foreign languages, as in the revised edition of vols. i. and ii. The same method will be carried out in all subsequent volumes.]

Page 11. Add To Literature On Constantine The Great:

Th. Zahn: Constantin der Grosse und die Kirche. Hannover, 1876. Demetriades: Die christl. Regierung und Orthodoxie Kaiser Constantin’s des Gr. Muenchen, 1878. Th. Brieger: Constantin der Gr. als Religionspolitiker. Gotha, 1880. E. L. Cutts: Constantine the Great. Lond. And N. Y., 1881. W. Gass: Konstantin der Gr. und seine Soehne, in Herzog,2 vii. (1881), 199–207. John Wordsworth: Const. the Gr. and his Sons, in Smith and Wace, i. 623–654. Edm. Stapfer: in Lichtenberger, iii. 388–393.—Comp. also vol. ii. p. 64–74, especially on the Edicts Of Toleration (only two, not three, as formerly assumed). Victor Schultze Geschichte des Untergangs des Griechisch-roemischen Heidenthums. Jena, 1887, Vol. i. 28–68.

Page 40. Add To Lit, on the heathen sources:

Juliani imperatoris Librorum contra Christianos quae supersunt. Collegit, recensuit, prolegomenis instruxit Car. Joa. Neumann. Insunt Cyrilli Alexandrini fragmenta syriaca ab Eberh. Nestle edita. Lips., 1880. Kaiser Julian’s Buecher gegen die Christen. Nach ihrer Wiederherstellung uebersetzt von Karl Joh. Neumann. Leipzig, 1880. 53 pages. This is Fasc. iii. of Scriptorum Graecorum qui Christianam impugnaverunt religionem quae supersunt, ed. by Neumann.

Page 40, bottom of the page. Add to works on Julian the Apostate:

Alb. De Broglie (R.C.), in the third and fourth vols. of his L’église et l’empire romain au quatrième siécle. Par., 4th ed., 1868. (Very full.)  J. F. A. Muecke: Flavius Claudius Julianus. Nach den Quellen. Gotha, 1867 and 1869. 2 vols. (Full, painstaking, prolix, too much dependent on Ammianus, and partial to Julian.)  Kellerbaum: Skizze der Vorgeschichte Julians, 1877. F. Rode: Gesch. der Reaction des Kaiser Julianus gegen die christl. Kirche. Jens, 1877. (Careful, partly against Teuffel and Muecke.)  H. Adrien Naville: Julien l’apostate et sa philosophie du polythéisme. . Paris and Neuchatel, 1877. Comp. his art. in Lichtenbergers "Encyclop.," vii. 519–525. Torquati: Studii storico-critici sulla vita … di Giuliano l’Apostata. Rom., 1878. G. H. Rendall: The Emperor Julian: Paganism and Christianity. Lond., 1879. J. G. E. Hoffmann: Jul. der Abtruennige, Syrische Erzaehlungen. Leiden, 1880. (Old romances reflecting the feelings of the Eastern Christians.)  Comp. also art. on Jul. in the "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., vol. xiii. 768–770 (by Kirkup); in Herzog2, vii. 285–296 (by Harnack); in Smith and Wace, iii. 484–524 (by Prebendary John Wordsworth, very full and fair).

Page 60. Add to literature:

Tillemont: Hist. des empereurs, tom. v. A. De Broglie, l.c. Victor Schultze: Gesch. d. Untergangs des gr. roem. Heidenthums, i. 209–400.

Page 81, last line, after Muenter, 1826, add:

; by C. Bursian, Lips., 1856; C. Halm, Vienna, 1867).

Page 93. Add as footnote 3:

3 Jerome, who was a shrewd observer of men and things, and witnessed the first effects of the union of church and state, says: "Ecclesia postquam ad Christianos principes venit, potentia quidem et divitiis major, sed virtutibus minor facta.’

Page 148. Add at the bottom of the page:

H. Weingarten: Der Ursprung des Moenchthums im nachconstantinischen Zeitalter. Gotha, 1877. See also his art. in Herzog2, x. 758 sqq. Ad. Harnack: Das Moenchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte. Giessen, 1882.—Comp. vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 387 sqq.

Page 226. Add to footnote:

Ad. Franz, Marcus Aur. Cassiodorus Senator. Breslau, 1872.

Page 242, i 50, add:

See Lit. on clerical celibacy in vol. i. p. 403 sq., especially Theiner, Lea, and von Schulte.

Page 314. Add to Lit. on Leo the Great:

Friedrich (old Cath.): Zur aeltesten Geschichte des Primates in der Kirche. Bonn, 1879. Jos. Langen (old Cath.): Geschichte der roem. Kirche bis zum Pontificate Leo’s  I.  Bonn, 1881. Karl Mueller in Herzog2, viii. (1881), 551–563. C. Gore, in Smith and Wace, iii. (1882), 652–673. By the same: Leo the Great (Lond. Soc. for Promoting Christ Knowledge, 175 pages). On the literary merits of Leo, see Ebert: Geschichte der christl. Lat. Lit., vol. i. 447–449.

Page 329. .Add to § 64 the following:

LIST OF POPES AND EMPERORS

From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great, A.D. 314–590.

Comp. the lists in vol. ii. 166 sqq., and vol. iv. 205 Sqq.

This list is based upon Jaffé’s Regesta, Potthast’s Biblioth. Hist. Medii Aevi, and Cardinal Hergenröther’s list, in his Kirchengesch., third ed. (1886), vol. iii. 1057 sqq.

Date

Pope

Emperor

Date

311–314

Melchiades

Constantine I, or The Great

306 (323)–337

314–335

Silvester I

336–337

Marcus

Constantine II (in Gaul)

337–340

337–352

Julius I

Constantius II (In the East)

337–350

Constans (In Italy)

"

352–66

Liberius

357

Filix II, Antipope

Constantius Alone

350–361

Julian

361–363

Jovian

363–364

366–843

Damasus

Valentinian I

364–375

Valens

364–378

366–367

Ursicinus, Antipope

Gratian

375–383

Valentinian II (in the West)

375–392

385–398

Siricius

Theodosius

379–395

398–402

Anastasius

Arcadius (in the East)

395–408

402–417

Innocent I

Honorius (in the West)

395–423

417–418

Zosimus

Theodosius II (E.)

408–450

418–422

Bonifacius

(418 Dec. 27)

(Eulalius, Antipope)

422–432

Coelestinus I

Valentinian III (W.)

423–455

432–440

Sixtus III

440–461

Leo I the Great

Marcian (E.)

450–457

Maximus Avitus (W.)

455–457

Majorian (W.)

457–461

Leo I. (E.)

457–474

461–468

Hilarus

Severus (W.)

461–465

Vacancy (W.)

465–467

468–483

Simplicius

Anthemius (W.)

467–472

Olybrius (W.)

472–473

Glycerius (W.)

473–474

Julius Nepos (W.)

474

Page 330, line 8 from below, read after Hefele (R.C.):

Conciliengeschichte, Freiburg i. B. 1855 sqq.; second revised ed. 1873 sqq., 7 vols., down to the Council of Florence (1447).

Page 353. Add to footnote:

The reign of Pope Pius IX. has added another Council to the Latin list of oecumenical Councils, that of the Vatican, 1870, which is counted as the twentieth (by Bishop Hefele, in the revised edition of his Conciliengesch., i. 60), and which decreed the infallibility of the Pope in all his official utterances, thereby superseding the necessity of future oecumencal Councils. It has given rise to the Old Catholic secession, headed by eminent scholars such as Döllinger, Reinkens, Reusch, Langen. See the author’s Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. 134 sqq.

Page 518. Add to Lit.

C. A. Hammond: Antient Liturgies (with introduction, notes, and liturgical glossary). Oxford, 1878. Ch. A. Swainson: Greek Liturgies, chiefly from Original Sources. Cambridge, 1884.

Page 541. § 103. Church Architecture:

On the history of Architecture in general, see the works of Kugler:  Geschichte der Baukunst (1859, 3 vols.); Schnaase: Gesch. der Kunst (1843–66, 8 vols.); Lübke History of Art (Eng. transl. New York, 1877, 2 vols.); Viollet Le Duc: Lectures an Architecture (London, 1877), and his numerous works in French, including Dictionnaire De l’architecture Française  (Paris, 1853–69, 10 vols.); James Fergusson: History of Architecture of all Countries from the earliest Times to the present (Lond., 1865; 2d ed., 1874, 4 vols.). On church architecture in particular: Richard Brown: Sacred Architecture; its Rise, Progress, and Present State (Lond., 1845); Kreuser: Der christl. Kirchenbau (Bonn, 1851); Hübsch: Altchristl. Kirchen (Karlsruhe, 1858–61); De Vogüé: Architecture civile et relig. du Ie au VIIe siècle (Paris, 1877, 2 vols.); Ch. E. Norton: Studies of Church Buildings in the Middle Ages (Now York, 1880). There are also special works on the basilicas in Rome, Constantinople, and Ravenna. See §§ 106 and 107.

Page 560. § 109. Crosses and Crucifixes.

Comp. the Lit. in vol. ii. §§ 75 and 77.

Page 563. Add to Lit.

Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake: The History of Our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art (with illustrations). London, 1864; second ed. 1865. 2 vols. Also the works on Christian Art, and on the Catacombs quoted in vol. ii. §§ 75 and 82.

Page 622. Add to Lit., line 3 from below:

Eugene Revillout: Le Concile de Nicée d’après les textes coptes et les diverses collections canoniques. Paris, 1881. The works on Arianism and on Athanasius include accounts of the Council of Nicaea. On the Nicene Creed and its literature, see Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. 12 sqq. and 24 sqq.; and the article of Ad. Harnack, in Herzog,2 vol. viii. (1881) 212–230, abridged in Schaff-Herzog (1886), ii. 1648 sqq.

Page 651. Add to Lit., line 13:

Theod. Zahn: Marcellus Von Ancyra. Gotha, 1867. (Zahn represents Marcellus as essentially orthodox and agreed with Irenaeus, but as seeking to gain a more simple and satisfactory conception of the truth from the Bible than the theology of the age presented. Neander, Dogmengesch., i. 275, had suggested a similar view.)  W. Möller: Art. Marcellus in Herzog2 vol. ix. (1881), 279–282. (Partly in opposition to Zahn.) E. S. Ffoulkes, in Smith and Wace, iii. 808–813. (Ignores the works of Zahn and other German writers.)

Page 689. § 132. The Athanasian Creed. Add to Lit.:

A. P. Stanley: The Athanasian Creed. Lond., 1871. E. S. Ffoulkes: The Athanasian Creed. Lond., 1872. Ch. A. Heurtley: The Athanasian Creed. Oxf., 1872. (Against Ffoulkes.) J. R. Lumby: History of the Creeds. Cambridge, 1873; second ed. 1880. The Utrecht Psalter, a facsimile ed., published in London, 1875. This contains the oldest MS. of the Athan. Creed, which by Ussher and Waterland was assigned to the sixth century, but by recent scholars to the ninth century. C. A. Swainson: The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, together with an Account o f the Growth and Reception of the Creed of St. Athanasius. Lond., 1875. (Comp. his art. Creed in Smith and Wace, i. 711.) G. D. W. Ommaney: Early History of the Athan. Creed. An Examination of Recent Theories. Lond., 1875; 2d ed. 1880. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, i. 34 sqq. and ii. 66–72, 555 sq. (With a facsimile of the oldest MS. from the Utrecht Psalter.)

Page 696.

The statements concerning the origin and age of the Athanasian Creed should be conformed to the authors views as expressed in his work on Creeds, i. 36. The latest investigations do not warrant us to trace it higher than the eighth or seventh century. The first commentary on it ascribed to Venantius Fortunatus, 570, is of doubtful genuineness, and denied to him by Gieseler, Ffoulkes, and others. The majority of recent Anglican writers, including Stanley, Swainson, and Lumby, assign the Creed to an unknown author in Gaul between A.D. 750 and 850, probably during the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814). Hardy and Ommaney plead for an earlier date. The question is not yet fully settled. The Creed consists of two parts, one on the Trinity and one on the Incarnation, which were afterward welded together by a third hand. The second part was found separately as a fragment of a sermon on the Incarnation, at Treves, in a MS. from the middle of the eighth century, and was first published by Prof. Swainson, 1871, and again in 1875.

Page 872. Add to Lit. on Eusebius:

Fr. Ad. Heinichen: Eusebii Pamphili Scripta Historica. New ed. Lips., 1868–70. 3 Tom. The third vol. (804 pages) contains Commentarii et Meletemata. The ample indexes and critical and explanatory notes make this the most useful edition of the Church History and other historical works of Eusebius. Dindorf’s ed., Lips., 1867 sqq., 4 vols., includes the two apologetic works. Best ed. of the Chronicle by Alfred Schöne: Eusebii Chronicorum libri II.  Berol. 1866 and 1875. 2 Tom., 4°. Schöne was assisted by Petermann in the Armenian Version, and by Rödiger in the Syriac Epitome. He gives also the cronografei'on suvntomon  of the year 853, the first part of which professes to be derived from the labors of Eusebius. Stein: Eusebius nach s. Leben, s. Schriften, und s. dogmatischen Charakter. Würzburg, 1859. Bishop Lightfoot: art. Eusebius of Caes. in Smith and Wace, vol. ii. (full and fair). Semisch: art. Eus. v. Caes. in Herzog,2  vol. iv. 390–398. A new translation of Eusebius, with commentary, by A. C. McGiffert, will appear, N. York, 1890.

Page 885. Add to Lit. on Athanasius:

G. R. Sievers: Athanasii Vita acephala (written before 412, first publ. by Maffei, 1738). Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. des Athan. In the "Zeitschr. für Hist. Theol." (ed. by Kahnis). Gotha, 1868, pp. 89–162. Böhringer: Athanasius und Arius, in his Kirchengesch. in Biogr. Bd. vi., new ed. Leipz., 1874. Hergenröther (R.C.): Der heil. Athanas. der Gr. Cologne, 1877 (an essay, pages 24). L. Atzberger:  Die Logoslehre des heil. Athanas. München, 1880. W. Möller: Art. Athan. in Herzog,2  i. 740–747. Lüdtke: in Wetzer and Welte, 2 i. (1882), 1534–1543. Gwatkin: Studies in Arianism. Cambr. 1882.

Page 890. Add to footnote at the bottom:

Villemain considers Athanasius the greatest man between the Apostles and Gregory VII., and says of him: "Sa vie, ses combats, son génie servirent plus à l’agrandissement du christianisme que toute la puissance de Constantin .... Athanase cherche le triomphe, et non le martyre. Tel qu’un chef de parti, tel qu’un général experimenté qui se sent nécessaire aux siens, Athan. ne s’expose que pour le succès, ne combat que pour vaincre, se retire quelque fois pour reparaître avec l’éclat d’un triomphe populaire." (Tableau de l’éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle, p. 92.)

Page 894 line 11. Add to Lit. on St. Basil:

Dörgens: Der heil. Basilius und die class. Studien. Leipz., 1857. Eug. Fialon. Étude historique et literaire sur S. Basile, suivie de l’hexaemeron. Paris, 1861. G. B. Sievers: Leben des Libanios. Berl., 1868 (p294 sqq.). Böhringer: Die drei Kappadozier oder die trinitarischen Epigonen (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Naz.), in Kirchengesch. in Biograph., new ed. Bd. vii. and viii. 1875. Weiss: Die drei grossen Kappadozier als Exegeten. Braunsberg, 1872. R. Travers Smith: St. Basil the Great. London, 1879. (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), 232 pages. Scholl: Des heil. Basil Lehre von der Gnade. Freib., 1881. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 ii. 116–121. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 282–297. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," 1889. vol. ii. 1–55.

Page 904 line 7. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nyssa:

Böhringer: Kirchengesch. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. G Herrmann: Greg. Nyss. Sententiae de salute adipiscenda. Halle, 1875. . T. Bergades: De universo et de anima hominis doctrina Gregor. Nyss. Leipz., 1876. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 v. 396–404. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, ii. 761–768. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, 723–725. On his doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, see especially Baur and Dorner. On his doctrine of the apokatastasis and relation to Origen, see Möller, G. Herrmann, and Bergades. l.c.  Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," (1889), ii. 56–83.

Page 909, line 4. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nazianzus:

A. Grenier: La vie et les poésies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1858. Böhringer: K. G. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. Abbé A. Benoît: Vie de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1877. J. R. Newman: Church of the Fathers, pp. 116–145, 551. Dabas: La femme au quatrième siècle dans les poésies de Grég. de Naz. Bordeaux, 1868. H. W. Watkins, in Smith and Wace, ii. 741–761. W. Gass, in Herzog,2 v. 392–396. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, v., 716–722. On his christology, see Neander, Baur and especially Dorner. His views on future punishment have been discussed by Farrar, and Pusey (see vol. ii. 612). Farrar:: "Lives of the Fathers," i. 491–582.

Page 920, line 22. Add:

In one of his plaintive songs from his religious retreat, after lamenting the factions of the church, the loss of youth, health, strength, parents, and friends, and his gloomy and homeless condition, Gregory thus gives touching expression to his faith in Christ as the last and only comforter:

"Thy will be done, O Lord!  That day shall spring,

When at thy word, this clay shall reappear.

No death I dread, but that which sin will bring;

No fire or flood without thy wrath I fear;

For Thou, O Christ, my King, art fatherland to me.

My wealth, and might, and rest; my all I find in Thee." 1

1 Pro;" eJauton, in Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymnol., iii., 11:

Criste; a[nax, su; dev moi pavtrh, sqevno", o[lbo", a{panta,

Soi; d j a[r j ajnayuvxaimi bivon kai; khvde j ajmeivya".

Page 924. After line 2, add to Lit. on Cyril of Jerusalem:

J. H. Newman: Preface to the Oxford transl. of Cyril in the "Library of the Fathers"(1839). E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 760–763. C. Burk, in Herzog,2 iii. 416–418.

Page 933, line 4 from below. Add to Lit. on Chrysostom:

Villemain: L’éloquence chrétienne dans le quatrième siècle. Paris 1849; new ed. 1857. P. Albert: St. Jean Chrysostôme considéré comme orateur populaire. Paris, 1858. Abbé Rochet: Histoire de S. Jean Chrysostôme. Paris, 1866. 2 vols. Th. Förster: Chrysostomus in seinem Verhältniss zur antiochenischen Schule. Gotha, 1869. W. Maggilvray: John of the Golden Mouth. Lond., 1871. Am. Thierry: S. J. Chrysostôme et l’ imperatrice Eudoxie. 2d ed. Paris, 1874. Böhringer: Johann Chrysostomus und Olympias, in his K. G. in Biogr., vol. ix., new ed., 1876. W. R. W. Stephens: St. Chrysostom: his Life and Times. London, 1872; 3d ed., 1883. F. W. Farrar, in "Lives of the Fathers," Lond., 1889, ii. 460–540.

Engl. translation of works of St. Chrys., edited by Schaff, N. York, 1889, 6 vols. (with biographical sketch and literature by Schaff).

Page 942, line 14. Add to Lit. on Cyril of Alex.:

A new ed. of Cyril’s works, including his Com. on the Minor Prophets, the Gospel of John, the Five Books against Nestorius, the Scholia on the Incarnation, etc., was prepared with great pains by Philip Pusey (son of Dr. Pusey). Oxf., 1868–81. In 5 vols  Engl. trans. in the Oxford "Library of the Fathers." 1874 sqq. See an interesting sketch of Ph. Pusey (d. 1880) and his ed. in the "Church Quarterly Review" (London), Jan., 1883, pp. 257–291.

Page 942, line 24. Add:

Hefele: Conciliengesch., vol. ii., revised ed. (1875), where Cyril figures very prominently, pp. 135, 157, 167 sqq., 247 sqq., 266 sqq., etc. C. Burk, in Herzog,2 iii. 418 sq. W. Bright: St. Cyrillus of Al., in Smith and Wace, i. 763–773.

Page 950. Add to Lit. on Ephraem:

Evangelii Concordantis Expositio facta a S. Ephraemo Doctore Syro. Venet., 1876. (A Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, found in the Mechitarist Convent at Venice in an Armenian translation, translated into Latin, 1841, by Aucher, and published with an introduction by Prof. Mösinger of Salzburg.)  Comp. also the art. Ephraem, in Herzog,2  iv. 255–261 (by Radiger, revised by Spiegel). In Smith and Wace, ii. 137–145 (by E. Venables).

Page 955. Add to Lit. on Lactantius:

English translation by W. Fletcher, in Clark’s "Ante-Nicene Library," vols. xxi. and xxii. Edinb., 1871. For an estimate of his literary merits, see Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipz., 1874 sqq., vol. i. 70–86. Ebert, in Herzog,2 viii. 364–366. Ffoulkes, in Smith and Wace, iii. 613–617.

Page 959, line 9. Add to Lit. on Hilary of Poitiers:

Reinkens: Hilarius von Poitiers. Schaffhausen, 1864. Semisch, in Herzog,2 vi. 416–427. Cazenove, in Smith and Wace, ii. 54–66, and his St. Hilary of Poitiers. Lond., 1883. (Soc. for Promot. Christian Knowledge.)  Farrar: in "Lives of the Fathers" (1889), i. 426–467.

Page 961. Add to Lit on Ambrose,

Bannard: Histoire de S. Ambroise. Paris, 1871. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit., i. 135–176 (1874). Robinson Thornton: St. Ambrose: his Life, Times, and Teaching. Lond., 1879, 215 pages (Soc. for Promoting Christ. Knowledge). Plitt, in Herzog,2 i. 331–335. J. Ll. Davies, in Smith and Wace, i. 91–99. Cunitz, in Lichtenberger, i. 229–232. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers "(1889), ii. 84–149. On the hymns of Ambrose, Comp. especially Ebert, l. c.

Page 967. Add to Lit. on Jerome:

Amédée Thierry: St. Jérôme, la société chrétienne à Rome et l’emigration romaine en terre sainte. Par., 1867. 2 vols. (He says at the close: "There is no continuation of Jerome’s work; a few more letters of Augustine and Paulinus, and night falls on the West.")  Lübeck: Hieronymus quos noverit scriptores et ex quibus hauserit. Leipzig, 1872. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipz., 1874 sqq., i. 176–203 (especially on the Latinity of Jerome, in which he places him first among the fathers). Edward L. Cutts: St. Jerome. London, 1877 (Soc. for Promot. Chr. Knowledge), 230 pages. Zöckler, in Herzog,2 vi. 103–108. Cunitz, in Lichtenberger, vii. 243–250. Freemantle, in Smith and Wace, iii. 29–50. ("Jerome lived and reigned for a thousand years. His writings contain the whole spirit of the church of the middle ages, its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was no courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy which could break through the fatal circle of bondage to received authority which was closing round manki

On Jerome as a Bible translator, comp. F. Kaulen (R.C.): Geschichte der Vulgata. Mainz, 1869. Hermann Rönsch: Itala und Vulgata. Das Sprachidiom der urchristlichen Itala und der katholischen Vulgata. 2d ed., revised. Marburg, 1875. L. Ziegler: Die latein Bibelübersetzungen vor Hieronymus und die Itala des Augustinus. München, 1879. (He maintains the existence of several Latin versions or revisions before Jerome.) Westcott’s art. "Vulgate," in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible. O. F. Fritzsche: Latein. Bibelübersetzungen, in the new ed. of Herzog, vol. viii. (1881), pp. 433–472. Westcott and Hort’s Greek Testament, vol. ii., lntrod., pp. 78–84.

Page 989, line 13. Add to Lit. on Augustine:

English translations of select works of Aug. by Dr. Pusey and others in the Oxford Library of the Fathers" : the Confessions, vol. i., 1839, 4th ed., 1853; Sermons, vol. xvi., 1844, and vol. xx., 1845; Short Treatises, vol. xxii., 1847; Expositions on the Psalms, vols. xxiv., xxv., xxx., xxxii., xxxvii., xxxix., 1847, 1849, 1850, 1853, 1854; Homilies on John, vols. xxvi. and xxix., 1848 and 1849. Another translation by Marcus Dods and others, Edinb. (T. and T. Clark), 1871–76, 15 vols., containing the City of God, the Anti-Donatist, the Anti-Pelagian, the Anti-Manichaean writings, Letters, On the Trinity, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Harmony of the Gospels, On Christian Doctrine, the Euchiridion, on Catechising, on Faith and the Creed, Lectures on John, and Confessions. The same revised with new translations and Prolegomena, edited by Philip Schaff, N. York, 1886–88, 8 vols. German translation of select writings of Aug. in the Kempten Bibliothek Der Kirchenväter, 1871–79, 8 vols.

On the same page, line 30. Substitute and add at the close of Lit.:

C. Bindemann: Der heil. Augustin. Berlin, 1844–55–69. 3 vols. Gangauf: Des heil. Aug. Lehre von Gott dem dreieinigen. Augsburg, 1866. Reinkens: Geschichtsphilosophie des heil. Augustin. Schaffhausen, 1866. Emil Feuerlein: Ueber die Stellung Augustin’s in der Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte. 1869. (In v. Sybel’s "Hist. Zeitschrift" for 1869, vol. xi., 270–313. Ernst: Die Werke und Tugenden der Ungläubigen nach Augustin. Freib., 1872. Böhringer: Aurelius Augustinus, revised ed. Leipz., 1877–78. 2 parts. Aug. Dorner: Augustinus, sein Theol. System und seine religionsphilosophische Auschauung. Berlin, 1873. Ebert: Gesch. der christl. lat. Lit. Leipzig, 1874 sqq., vol. i. 203–243. Edward L. Cutts: St. Augustine. London (Soc. for Prom. Christian Knowledge), 1880. H. Reuter: Augustinische Studien, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." for 1880–83 (four articles on Aug.’s doctrine of the church, predestination, the kingdom of God, etc.). Ch. H. Collett: St. Aug., a Sketch o f his Life and Writings as affecting the Controversy with Rome. Lond., 1883. W. Cunningham: S. Austin and his Place in Christian Thought (Hulsean Lectures for 1885), Cambridge, 1886 (283 pp.). James F. Spalding: The Teaching and Influence of Saint Augustine. N. York, 1886 (106 pp.). H. Reuter: Augustinische Studien, Gotha, 1887 (516 pp.; able, learned, and instructive). Ad. Harnack: Augustin’s Confessionen. Giessen, 1888 (31 pp., brief, but suggestive). F. W. Farrar, in his "Lives of the Fathers," Lond. 1889, vol. ii. 298–460.

On the Philosophy of Aug., compare besides the works quoted on same page:

Erdmann: Grundriss der Gesch. der Philos., i. 231 sqq. Ueberweg: History of Philos. Engl. transl. by Morris, vol. i. 333–346. Ferraz: De la psychologie de S. Aug. 2d ed. Paris, 1869. Schütz: Augustinum non esse ontologum. Monast., 1867. G. Loesche: De Augustino Plotinizanto in doctrina de Deo disserenda. Jenae, 1880. (68 pages.)

ADDENDA TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 1893

Page 2. Add to Literature:

The historical works of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, Theodoret, Rufinus, Jerome, and Gennadius, are translated with Introductions and Notes by various American and English scholars in the second series of the "Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church," edited by Schaff and Wace, New York and Oxford, vols. i.-iv., 1890–92.

Page 40.

Julian The Emperor, containing Gregory Nazianzen’s Two Invectives, and Libanius’ Monody, with Julian’s extant Theosophical Works. Translated by C. W. King, M. A. London, 1888. With notes and archaeological illustrations (pp. 288).

VOLUME IV. MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY FROM A.D. 590 TO 1517.

––––––––––

CHAPTER I.

General Introduction to Mediaeval Church History.

§ 1. Sources and Literature.

August Potthast: Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aoevi. Wegweiser durch die Geschichtswerke des Europäischen Mittelalters von 375–1500. Berlin, 1862. Supplement, 1868.

The mediaeval literature embraces four distinct branches;

1. The Romano-Germanic or Western Christian;

2. The Graeco-Byzantine or Eastern Christian;

3. The Talmudic and Rabbinical;

4. The Arabic and Mohammedan.

We notice here only the first and second; the other two will be mentioned in subdivisions as far as they are connected with church history.

The Christian literature consists partly of documentary sources, partly of historical works. We confine ourselves here to the most important works of a more general character. Books referring to particular countries and sections of church history will be noticed in the progress of the narrative.

I. Documentary Sources.

They are mostly in Latin—the official language of the Western Church,—and in Greek,—the official language of the Eastern Church.

(1) For the history of missions: the letters and biographies of missionaries.

(2) For church polity and government: the official letters of popes, patriarchs, and bishops.

The documents of the papal court embrace (a) Regesta (registra), the transactions of the various branches of the papal government from A.D. 1198–1572, deposited in the Vatican library, and difficult of access. (b) Epistolae decretales, which constitute the basis of the Corpus juris canonici, brought to a close in 1313. (c) The bulls (bulla, a seal or stamp of globular form, though some derive it from boulhv, will, decree) and briefs (breve, a short, concise summary), i.e., the official letters since the conclusion of the Canon law. They are of equal authority, but the bulls differ from the briefs by their more solemn form. The bulls are written on parchment, and sealed with a seal of lead or gold, which is stamped on one side with the effigies of Peter and Paul, and on the other with the name of the reigning pope, and attached to the instrument by a string; while the briefs are written on paper, sealed with red wax, and impressed with the seal of the fisherman or Peter in a boat.

(3) For the history of Christian life: the biographies of saints, the disciplinary canons of synods, the ascetic literature.

(4) For worship and ceremonies: liturgies, hymns, homilies, works of architecture sculpture, painting, poetry, music. The Gothic cathedrals are as striking embodiments of mediaeval Christianity as the Egyptian pyramids are of the civilization of the Pharaohs.

(5) For theology and Christian learning: the works of the later fathers (beginning with Gregory I.), schoolmen, mystics, and the forerunners of the Reformation.

II. Documentary Collections. Works of Mediaeval Writers.

(1) For the Oriental Church.

Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, opera Niebuhrii, Bekkeri, et al.  Bonnae, 1828–’78, 50 vols. 8vo. Contains a complete history of the East-Roman Empire from the sixth century to its fall. The chief writers are Zonaras, from the Creation to A.D. 1118; Nicetas, from 1118 to 1206; Gregoras, from 1204 to 1359; Laonicus, from 1298 to 1463; Ducas, from 1341 to 1462; Phrantzes, from 1401 to 1477.

J. A. Fabricius (d. 1736): Bibliotheca Graeca sive Notitia Scriptorum veterum Graecorum, 4th ed., by G. Chr. Harless, with additions. Hamburg, 1790–1811, 12 vols. A supplement by S. F. W. Hoffmann: Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Literatur der Griechen. Leipzig, 1838–’45, 3 vols.

(2) For the Westem Church.

Bibliotheca Maxima Patrum. Lugduni, 1677, 27 vols. fol.

Martene (d. 1739) and Durand (d. 1773): Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novus, seu Collectio Monumentorum, etc. Paris, 1717, 5 vols. fol. By the same: Veterum Scriptorum et Monumentorum Collectio ampliss. Paris, 1724–’38, 9 vols. fol.

J. A. Fabricius: Bibliotheca Latina Mediae et Infimae AEtatis. Hamb. 1734, and with supplem. 1754, 6 vols. 4to.

Abbé Migne: Patralogiae Cursus Completus, sive Bibliotheca Universalis ... Patrum, etc. Paris, 1844–’66. The Latin series (1844–’55) has 221 vols. (4 vols. indices); the Greek series (1857–66) has 166 vols. The Latin series, from tom. 80–217, contains the writers from Gregory the Great to Innocent III. Reprints of older editions, and most valuable for completeness and convenience, though lacking in critical accuracy.

Abbé Horay: Medii AEvi Bibliotheca Patristica ab anno MCCXVI usque ad Concilii Tridentini Tempora. Paris, 1879 sqq. A continuation of Migne in the same style. The first 4 vols. contain the Opera Honori III.

Joan. Domin. Mansi (archbishop of Lucca, d. 1769): Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio. Florence and Venice 1759–1798, 31 vols. fol. The best collection down to 1509. A new ed. (facsimile) publ. by Victor Palmé, Paris and Berlin 1884 sqq. Earlier collections of Councils by Labbé and Cossart (1671–72, 18 vols), Colet (with the supplements of Mansi, 1728–52, 29 vols. fol.), and Hardouin (1715, 12 vols. fol.).

C. Cocquelines: Magnum Bullarium Romanum. Bullarum, Privilegiorum ac Diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum usque ad Clementem XII. amplissima Collectio. Rom. 1738–58. 14 Tom. fol. in 28 Partes; new ed. 1847–72, in 24 vols.

A. A. Barberi: Magni Bullarii Rom. Continuatio a Clemente XIII ad Pium VIII. (1758–1830). Rom. 1835–’57, 18 vols. fol. The bulls of Gregory XVI. appeared 1857 in 1 vol.

G. H. Pertz (d. 1876): Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Hannov. 1826–1879. 24 vols. fol. Continued by G. Waitz.

III. Documentary Histories.

Acta Sanctorum Bollandistarum. Antw. Bruxellis et Tongerloae, 1643–1794; Brux. 1845 sqq., new ed. Paris, 1863–75, in 61 vols. fol. (with supplement). See a list of contents in the seventh volume for June or the first volume for October; also in the second part of Potthast, sub "Vita," pp. 575 sqq.

This monumental work of John Bolland (a learned Jesuit, 1596–1665), Godefr. Henschen (†1681), Dan. Papebroch (†1714), and their associates and followers, called Bollandists, contains biographies of all the saints of the Catholic Church in the order of the calendar, and divided into months. They are not critical histories, but compilations of an immense material of facts and fiction, which illustrate the life and manners of the ancient and mediaeval church. Potthast justly calls it a "riesenhaftes Denkmal wissenschaftlichen Strebens."  It was carried on with the aid of the Belgic government, which contributed (since 1837) 6,000 francs annually.

Caes. Baronius (d. 1607): Annales ecclesiastici a Christo nato ad annum 1198. Rom. 1588–1593, 12 vols. Continued by Raynaldi (from 1198 to 1565), Laderchi (from 1566–1571), and A. Theiner (1572–1584). Best ed. by Mansi, with the continuations of Raynaldi, and the Critica of Pagi, Lucca, 1738–’59, 35 vols. fol. text, and 3 vols. of index universalis. A new ed. by A. Theiner (d. 1874), Bar-le-Duc, 1864 sqq. Likewise a work of herculean industry, but to be used with critical caution, as it contains many spurious documents, legends and fictions, and is written in the interest and defence of the papacy.

IV. Modern Histories of the Middle Ages.

J. M. F. Frantin: Annales du moyen age. Dijon, 1825, 8 vols. 8vo.

F. Rehm: Geschichte des Mittelalters. Marbg, 1821–’38, 4 vols. 8vo.

Heinrich Leo: Geschichte des Mittelalters. Halle, 1830, 2 vols.

Charpentier: Histoire literaire du moyen age. Par. 1833.

R. Hampson: Medii aevi Calendarium, or Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, with Kalenders from the Xth to the XVth century. London, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo.

Henry Hallam (d. 1859): View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. London, 1818, 3d ed. 1848, Boston ed. 1864 in 3 vols. By the same: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Several ed., Engl. and Am. Boston ed. 1864 in 4 vols.; N. York, 1880, in 4 vols.

Charles Hardwick († l859): A History of the Christian Church. Middle Age. 3d ed. by Stubbs, London, 1872.

Henry Hart Milman († 1868): History of Latin Christianity; including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V. London and N. York, 1854, 8 vols., new ed., N. York (A. C. Armstrong & Son), 1880.

Richard Chenevix Trench (Archbishop of Dublin): Lectures on Mediaeval Church History. London, 1877, republ. N. York, 1878.

V. The Mediaeval Sections of the General Church Histories.

(a) Roman Catholic: Baronius (see above), Fleury, Möhler, Alzog, Döllinger (before 1870), Hergenröther.

(b) Protestant: Mosheim, Schröckh, Gieseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Robertson. Also Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Rom. Empire (Wm. Smith’s ed.), from ch. 45 to the close.

VI. Auxiliary.

Domin. Du Cange (Charles du Fresne, d. 1688): Glossarium ad Scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis, Paris, 1678; new ed. by Henschel, Par. 1840–’50, in 7 vols. 4to; and again by Favre, 1883 sqq.—By the same: Glossarium ad Scriptores medicae et infimae Graecitatis, Par. 1682, and Lugd. Batav. 1688, 2 vols. fol. These two works are the philological keys to the knowledge of mediaeval church history.

An English ed. of the Latin glossary has been announced by John Murray, of London: Mediaeval Latin-English Dictionary, based upon the great work of Du Cange. With additions and corrections by E. A. Dayman.

§ 2. The Middle Age. Limits and General Character.

The Middle Age, as the term implies, is the period which intervenes between ancient and modern times, and connects them, by continuing the one, and preparing for the other. It forms the transition from the Graeco-Roman civilization to the Romano-Germanic, civilization, which gradually arose out of the intervening chaos of barbarism. The connecting link is Christianity, which saved the best elements of the old, and directed and moulded the new order of things.

Politically, the middle age dates from the great migration of nations and the downfall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century; but for ecclesiastical history it begins with Gregory the Great, the last of the fathers and the first of the popes, at the close of the sixth century. Its termination, both for secular and ecclesiastical history, is the Reformation of the sixteenth century (1517), which introduces the modern age of the Christian era. Some date modern history from the invention of the art of printing, or from the discovery of America, which preceded the Reformation; but these events were only preparatory to a great reform movement and extension of the Christian world.

The theatre of mediaeval Christianity is mainly Europe. In Western Asia and North Africa, the Cross was supplanted by the Crescent; and America, which opened a new field for the ever-expanding energies of history, was not discovered until the close of the fifteenth century.

Europe was peopled by a warlike emigration of heathen barbarians from Asia as America is peopled by a peaceful emigration from civilized and Christian Europe.

The great migration of nations marks a turning point in the history of religion and civilization. It was destructive in its first effects, and appeared like the doom of the judgment-day; but it proved the harbinger of a new creation, the chaos preceding the cosmos. The change was brought about gradually. The forces of the old Greek and Roman world continued to work for centuries alongside of the new elements. The barbarian irruption came not like a single torrent which passes by, but as the tide which advances and retires, returns and at last becomes master of the flooded soil. The savages of the north swept down the valley of the Danube to the borders of the Greek Empire, and southward over the Rhine and the Vosges into Gaul, across the Alps into Italy, and across the Pyrenees into Spain. They were not a single people, but many independent tribes; not an organized army of a conqueror, but irregular hordes of wild warriors ruled by intrepid kings; not directed by the ambition of one controlling genius, like Alexander or Caesar, but prompted by the irresistible impulse of an historical instinct, and unconsciously bearing in their rear the future destinies of Europe and America. They brought with them fire and sword, destruction and desolation, but also life and vigor, respect for woman, sense of honor, love of liberty—noble instincts, which, being purified and developed by Christianity, became the governing principles of a higher civilization than that of Greece and Rome. The Christian monk Salvian, who lived in the midst of the barbarian flood, in the middle of the fifth century, draws a most gloomy and appalling picture of the vices of the orthodox Romans of his time, and does not hesitate to give preference to the heretical (Arian) and heathen barbarians, "whose chastity purifies the deep stained with the Roman debauches."  St. Augustin (d. 430), who took a more sober and comprehensive view, intimates, in his great work on the City of God, the possibility of the rise of a new and better civilization from the ruins of the old Roman empire; and his pupil, Orosius, clearly expresses this hopeful view. "Men assert," he says, "that the barbarians are enemies of the State. I reply that all the East thought the same of the great Alexander; the Romans also seemed no better than the enemies of all society to the nations afar off, whose repose they troubled. But the Greeks, you say, established empires; the Germans overthrow them. Well, the Macedonians began by subduing the nations which afterwards they civilized. The Germans are now upsetting all this world; but if, which Heaven avert, they, finish by continuing to be its masters, peradventure some day posterity will salute with the title of great princes those in whom we at this day can see nothing but enemies."

§ 3. The Nations of Mediaeval Christianity. The Kelt, the Teuton, and the Slav.

The new national forces which now enter upon the arena of church-history may be divided into four groups:

1. The Romanic or Latin nations of Southern Europe, including the Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and French. They are the natural descendants and heirs of the old Roman nationality and Latin Christianity, yet mixed with the new Keltic and Germanic forces. Their languages are all derived from the Latin; they inherited Roman laws and customs, and adhered to the Roman See as the centre of their ecclesiastical organization; they carried Christianity to the advancing barbarians, and by their superior civilization gave laws to the conquerors. They still adhere, with their descendants in Central and South America, to the Roman Catholic Church.

2. The Keltic race, embracing the Gauls, old Britons, the Picts and Scots, the Welsh and Irish with their numerous emigrants in all the large cities of Great Britain and the United States, appear in history several hundred years before Christ, as the first light wave of the vast Aryan migration from the mysterious bowels of Asia, which swept to the borders of the extreme West.1  The Gauls were conquered by Caesar, but afterwards commingled with the Teutonic Francs, who founded the French monarchy. The Britons were likewise subdued by the Romans, and afterwards driven to Wales and Cornwall by the Anglo-Saxons. The Scotch in the highlands (Gaels) remained Keltic, while in the lowlands they mixed with Saxons and Normans.

The mental characteristics of the Kelts remain unchanged for two thousand years: quick wit, fluent speech, vivacity, sprightliness, impressibility, personal bravery and daring, loyalty to the chief or the clan, but also levity, fickleness, quarrelsomeness and incapacity for self-government. "They shook all empires, but founded none."  The elder Cato says of them: "To two things are the Kelts most attent: to fighting (ars militaris), and to adroitness of speech (argute loqui)."  Caesar censures their love of levity and change. The apostle Paul complains of the same weakness. Thierry, their historian, well describes them thus: "Their prominent attributes are personal valor, in which they excel all nations; a frank, impetuous spirit open to every impression; great intelligence, but joined with extreme mobility, deficient perseverance, restlessness under discipline and order, boastfulness and eternal discord, resulting from boundless vanity."  Mommsen quotes this passage, and adds that the Kelts make good soldiers, but bad citizens; that the only order to which they submit is the military, because the severe general discipline relieves them of the heavy burden of individual self-control.2

Keltic Christianity was at first independent of Rome, and even antagonistic to it in certain subordinate rites; but after the Saxon and Norman conquests, it was brought into conformity, and since the Reformation, the Irish have been more attached to the Roman Church than even the Latin races. The French formerly inclined likewise to a liberal Catholicism (called Gallicanism); but they sacrificed the Gallican liberties to the Ultramontanism of the Vatican Council. The Welsh and Scotch, on the contrary, with the exception of a portion of the Highlanders in the North of Scotland, embraced the Protestant Reformation in its Calvinistic rigor, and are among its sternest and most vigorous advocates. The course of the Keltic nations had been anticipated by the Galatians, who first embraced with great readiness and heartiness the independent gospel of St. Paul, but were soon turned away to a Judaizing legalism by false teachers, and then brought back again by Paul to the right path.

3. The Germanic3 or Teutonic4 nations followed the Keltic migration in successive westward and southward waves, before and after Christ, and spread over Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, the Baltic provinces of Russia, and, since the Anglo-Saxon invasion, also over England and Scotland and the northern (non-Keltic) part of Ireland. In modern times their descendants peacefully settled the British Provinces and the greater part of North America. The Germanic nations are the fresh, vigorous, promising and advancing races of the middle age and modern times. Their Christianization began in the fourth century, and went on in wholesale style till it was completed in the tenth. The Germans, under their leader Odoacer in 476, deposed Romulus Augustulus—the shadow of old Romulus and Augustus—and overthrew the West Roman Empire, thus fulfilling the old augury of the twelve birds of fate, that Rome was to grow six centuries and to decline six centuries. Wherever they went, they brought destruction to decaying institutions. But with few exceptions, they readily embraced the religion of the conquered Latin provinces, and with childlike docility submitted to its educational power. They were predestinated for Christianity, and Christianity for them. It curbed their warlike passions, regulated their wild force, and developed their nobler instincts, their devotion and fidelity, their respect for woman, their reverence for all family-relations, their love of personal liberty and independence. The Latin church was to them only a school of discipline to prepare them for an age of Christian manhood and independence, which dawned in the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformation was the emancipation of the Germanic races from the pupilage of mediaeval and legalistic Catholicism.

Tacitus, the great heathen historian, no doubt idealized the barbarous Germans in contrast with the degenerate Romans of his day (as Montaigne and Rousseau painted the savages "in a fit of ill humor against their country"); but he unconsciously prophesied their future greatness, and his prophecy has been more than fulfilled.

4. The Slavonic or Slavic or Slavs5 in the East and North of Europe, including the Bulgarians, Bohemians (Czechs), Moravians, Slovaks, Servians, Croatians, Wends, Poles, and Russians, were mainly converted through Eastern missionaries since the ninth and tenth century. The Eastern Slavs, who are the vast majority, were incorporated with the Greek Church, which became the national religion of Russia, and through this empire acquired a territory almost equal to that of the Roman Church. The western Slavs, the Bohemians and Poles, became subject to the Papacy.

The Slavs, who number in all nearly 80,000,000, occupy a very subordinate position in the history of the middle ages, and are isolated from the main current; but recently, they have begun to develop their resources, and seem to have a great future before them through the commanding political power of Russia in Europe and in Asia. Russia is the bearer of the destinies of Panslavism and of the, Eastern Church.

5. The Greek nationality, which figured so conspicuously in ancient Christianity, maintained its independence down to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453; but it was mixed with Slavonic elements. The Greek Church was much weakened by the inroads of Mohammedanism) and lost the possession of the territories of primitive Christianity, but secured a new and vast missionary field in Russia.

§ 4. Genius of Mediaeval Christianity.

Mediaeval Christianity is, on the one hand, a legitimate continuation and further development of ancient Catholicism; on the other hand, a preparation for Protestantism,

Its leading form are the papacy, monasticism, and scholasticism, which were developed to their height, and then assailed by growing opposition from within.

Christianity, at its first introduction, had to do with highly civilized nations; but now it had to lay the foundation of a new civilization among barbarians. The apostles planted churches in the cities of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, and the word "pagan" i.e, villager, backwoodsman, gradually came to denote an idolater. They spoke and wrote in a language which had already a large and immortal literature; their progress was paved by the high roads of the Roman legions; they found everywhere an established order of society, and government; and their mission was to infuse into the ancient civilization a new spiritual life and to make it subservient to higher moral ends. But the missionaries of the dark ages had to visit wild woods and untilled fields, to teach rude nations the alphabet, and to lay the foundation for society, literature and art.

Hence Christianity assumed the character of a strong disciplinary institution, a training school for nations in their infancy, which had to be treated as children. Hence the legalistic, hierarchical, ritualistic and romantic character of mediaeval Catholicism. Yet in proportion as the nations were trained in the school of the church, they began to assert their independence of the hierarchy and to develop a national literature in their own language. Compared with our times, in which thought and reflection have become the highest arbiter of human life, the middle age was an age of passion. The written law, such as it was developed in Roman society, the barbarian could not understand and would not obey. But he was easily impressed by the spoken law, the living word, and found a kind of charm in bending his will absolutely before another will. Thus the teaching church became the law in the land, and formed the very foundation of all social and political organization.

The middle ages are often called "the dark ages:" truly, if we compare them with ancient Christianity, which preceded, and with modern Christianity, which followed; falsely and unjustly, if the church is made responsible for the darkness. Christianity was the light that shone in the darkness of surrounding barbarism and heathenism, and gradually dispelled it. Industrious priests and monks saved from the wreck of the Roman Empire the treasures of classical literature, together with the Holy Scriptures and patristic writings, and transmitted them to better times. The mediaeval light was indeed the borrowed star and moon-light of ecclesiastical tradition, rather than the clear sun-light from the inspired pages of the New Testament; but it was such light as the eyes of nations in their ignorance could bear, and it never ceased to shine till it disappeared in the day-light of the great Reformation. Christ had his witnesses in all ages and countries, and those shine all the brighter who were surrounded by midnight darkness.

"Pause where we may upon the desert-road,

Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode."

On the other hand, the middle ages are often called, especially by Roman Catholic writers, "the ages of faith."  They abound in legends of saints, which had the charm of religious novels. All men believed in the supernatural and miraculous as readily as children do now. Heaven and hell were as real to the mind as the kingdom of France and the, republic of Venice. Skepticism and infidelity were almost unknown, or at least suppressed and concealed. But with faith was connected a vast deal of superstition and an entire absence of critical investigation and judgment. Faith was blind and unreasoning, like the faith of children. The most incredible and absurd legends were accepted without a question. And yet the morality was not a whit better, but in many respects ruder, coarser and more passionate, than in modern times.

The church as a visible organization never had greater power over the minds of men. She controlled all departments of life from the cradle to the grave. She monopolized all the learning and made sciences and arts tributary to her. She took the lead in every progressive movement. She founded universities, built lofty cathedrals, stirred up the crusades, made and unmade kings, dispensed blessings and curses to whole nations. The mediaeval hierarchy centering in Rome re-enacted the Jewish theocracy on a more comprehensive scale. It was a carnal anticipation of the millennial reign of Christ. It took centuries to rear up this imposing structure, and centuries to take it down again.

The opposition came partly from the anti-Catholic sects, which, in spite of cruel persecution, never ceased to protest against the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy; partly from the spirit of nationality which arose in opposition to an all-absorbing hierarchical centralization; partly from the revival of classical and biblical learning, which undermined the reign of superstition and tradition; and partly from the inner and deeper life of the Catholic Church itself, which loudly called for a reformation, and struggled through the severe discipline of the law to the light and freedom of the gospel. The mediaeval Church was a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. The Reformation was an emancipation of Western Christendom from the bondage of the law, and a re-conquest of that liberty "wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. v. 1).

§ 5. Periods of the Middle Age.

The Middle Age may be divided into three periods:

1. The missionary period from Gregory I. to Hildebrand or Gregory VII., A.D. 590–1073. The conversion of the northern barbarians. The dawn of a new civilization. The origin and progress of Islam. The separation of the West from the East. Some subdivide this period by Charlemagne (800), the founder of the German-Roman Empire.

2. The palmy period of the papal theocracy from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., A.D. 1073–1294. The height of the papacy, monasticism and scholasticism. The Crusades. The conflict between the Pope and the Emperor. If we go back to the rise of Hildebrand, this period begins in 1049.

3. The decline of mediaeval Catholicism and preparation for modern Christianity, from Boniface VIII. to the Reformation, A.D. 1294–1517. The papal exile and schism; the reformatory councils; the decay of scholasticism; the growth of mysticism; the revival of letters, and the art of printing; the discovery of America; forerunners of Protestantism; the dawn of the Reformation.

These three periods are related to each other as the wild youth, the ripe manhood, and the declining old age. But the gradual dissolution of mediaevalism was only the preparation for a new life, a destruction looking to a reconstruction.

The three periods may be treated separately, or as a continuous whole. Both methods have their advantages: the first for a minute study; the second for a connected survey of the great movements.

According to our division laid down in the introduction to the first volume, the three periods of the middle ages are the fourth, fifth and sixth periods of the general history of Christianity.

FOURTH PERIOD

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THE CHURCH AMONG THE BARBARIANS FROM GREGORY I. TO GREGORY VII.

A.D. 590 to 1049.

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CHAPTER II.

CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN AND WESTERN BARBARIANS

§ 6. Character of Mediaeval Missions.

The conversion of the new and savage races which enter the theatre of history at the threshold of the middle ages, was the great work of the Christian church from the sixth to the tenth century. Already in the second or third century, Christianity was carried to the Gauls, the Britons and the Germans on the borders of the Rhine. But these were sporadic efforts with transient results. The work did not begin in earnest till the sixth century, and then it went vigorously forward to the tenth and twelfth, though with many checks and temporary relapses caused by civil wars and foreign invasions.

The Christianization of the Kelts, Teutons, and Slavonians was at the same time a process of civilization, and differed in this respect entirely from the conversion of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the preceding age. Christian missionaries laid the foundation for the alphabet, literature, agriculture, laws, and arts of the nations of Northern and Western Europe, as they now do among the heathen nations in Asia and Africa. "The science of language," says a competent judge,6  "owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian church."  The same may be said of every branch of knowledge and art of peace. The missionaries, in aiming at piety and the salvation of souls, incidentally promoted mental culture and temporal prosperity. The feeling of brotherhood inspired by Christianity broke down the partition walls between race and race, and created a brotherhood of nations.

The mediaeval Christianization was a wholesale conversion, or a conversion of nations under the command of their leaders. It was carried on not only by missionaries and by spiritual means, but also by political influence, alliances of heathen princes with Christian wives, and in some cases (as the baptism of the Saxons under Charlemagne) by military force. It was a conversion not to the primary Christianity of inspired apostles, as laid down in the New Testament, but to the secondary Christianity of ecclesiastical tradition, as taught by the fathers, monks and popes. It was a baptism by water, rather than by fire and the Holy Spirit. The preceding instruction amounted to little or nothing; even the baptismal formula, mechanically recited in Latin, was scarcely understood. The rude barbarians, owing to the weakness of their heathen religion, readily submitted to the new religion; but some tribes yielded only to the sword of the conqueror.

This superficial, wholesale conversion to a nominal Christianity must be regarded in the light of a national infant-baptism. It furnished the basis for a long process of Christian education. The barbarians were children in knowledge, and had to be treated like children. Christianity, assumed the form of a new law leading them, as a schoolmaster, to the manhood of Christ.

The missionaries of the middle ages were nearly all monks. They were generally men of limited education and narrow views, but devoted zeal and heroic self-denial. Accustomed to primitive simplicity of life, detached from all earthly ties, trained to all sorts of privations, ready for any amount of labor, and commanding attention and veneration by their unusual habits, their celibacy, fastings and constant devotions, they were upon the whole the best pioneers of Christianity and civilization among the savage races of Northern and Western Europe. The lives of these missionaries are surrounded by their biographers with such a halo of legends and miracles, that it is almost impossible to sift fact from fiction. Many of these miracles no doubt were products of fancy or fraud; but it would be rash to deny them all.

The same reason which made miracles necessary in the first introduction of Christianity, may have demanded them among barbarians before they were capable of appreciating the higher moral evidences.

I. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND.

§ 7. Literature.

I. Sources.

Gildas (Abbot of Bangor in Wales, the oldest British historian, in the sixth cent.): De excidio Britanniae conquestus, etc. A picture of the evils of Britain at the time. Best ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Lond., 1838. (English Historical Society’s publications.)

Nennius (Abbot of Bangor about 620): Eulogium Britanniae, sive Historia Britonum. Ed. Stevenson, 1838.

The Works of Gildas and Nennius transl. from the Latin by J. A. Giles, London, 1841.

*Beda Venerabilis (d. 734): Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; in the sixth vol. of Migne’s ed. of Bedae Opera Omnia, also often separately published and translated into English. Best ed. by Stevenson, Lond., 1838; and by Giles, Lond., 1849. It is the only reliable church-history of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the time of Caesar to 1154. A work of several successive hands, ed. by Gibson with an Engl. translation, 1823, and by Giles, 1849 (in one vol. with Bede’s Eccles. History).

See the Six Old English Chronicles, in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library (1848); and Church Historians of England trans. by Jos. Stevenson, Lond. 1852–’56, 6 vols.

Sir. Henry Spelman (d. 1641): Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, etc. Lond., 1639–’64, 2 vols. fol. (Vol. I. reaches to the Norman conquest; vol. ii. to Henry VIII).

David Wilkins (d. 1745): Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (from 446 to 1717), Lond., 1737, 4 vols. fol. (Vol. I. from 446 to 1265).

*Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland: edited after Spelman and Wilkins. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1869 to ’78. So far 3 vols. To be continued down to the Reformation.

The Penitentials of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Churches are collected and edited by F. Kunstmann (Die Lat. Poenitentialbücher der Angelsachsen, 1844); Wasserschleben (Die Bussordnungen der abendländ. Kirche, 1851); Schmitz (Die Bussbücher u. d. Bussdisciplin d. Kirche, 1883).

II. Historical Works.

(a) The Christianization of England.

*J. Ussher. (d. 1655): Britannicarum Eccles. Antiquitates. Dublin, 1639; London, 1687; Works ed. by Elrington, 1847, Vols. V. and VI.

E. Stillingfleet (d. 1699): Origenes Britannicae; or, the Antiqu. of the British Churches. London, 1710; Oxford, 1842; 2 vols.

J. Lingard (R.C., d. 1851): The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. London, 1806, new ed., 1845.

Karl Schrödl (R.C.): Das erste Jahrhundert der englischen Kirche. Passau & Wien, 1840.

Edward Churton (Rector of Crayke, Durham): The Early English Church. London, 1841 (new ed. unchanged, 1878).

James Yeowell: Chronicles of the Ancient British Church anterior to the Saxon era. London, 1846.

Francis Thackeray (Episcop.): Researches into the Eccles. and Political State of Ancient Britain under the Roman Emperors. London, 1843, 2 vols.

*Count De Montalembert (R.C., d. 1870): The Monks of the West. Edinburgh and London, 1861–’79, 7 vols. (Authorized transl. from the French). The third vol. treats of the British Isles.

Reinhold Pauli: Bilder aus Alt-England. Gotha, 1860.

W F. Hook: Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London, 2nd ed., 1861 sqq.

G. F. Maclear. (D. D., Head-master of King’s College School): Conversion of the West. The English. London, 1878. By the same: The Kelts, 1878. (Popular.)

William Bright (Dr. and Prof, of Eccles. Hist., Oxford): Chapters on Early English Church History  Oxford, 1878 (460 pages).

John Pryce: History of the Ancient British Church. Oxford, 1878.

Edward L. Cutts: Turning Points of English Church-History. London, 1878.

Dugald MacColl: Early British Church. The Arthurian Legends. In "The Catholic Presbyterian," London and New York, for 1880, No. 3, pp. 176 sqq.

(b) The Christianization of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.

Dr. Lanigan (R.C.): Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. Dublin, 1829.

William G. Todd (Episc., Trinity Coll., Dublin): The Church of St. Patrick: An Historical Inquiry into the Independence of the Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1844. By the same: A History of the Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1845. By the same: Book of Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland. Dublin, 1855.

Ferdinand Walter: Das alte Wales. Bonn, 1859.

John Cunningham (Presbyterian): The Church History of Scotland from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Day. Edinburgh, 1859, 2 vols. (Vol. I., chs. 1–6).

C. Innes: Sketches of Early Scotch History, and Social Progress. Edinb., 1861. (Refers to the history of local churches, the university and home-life in the mediaeval period.)

Thomas McLauchan (Presbyt.): The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, 1865.

*DR. J. H. A. Ebrard: Die iroschottische Missionskirche des 6, 7 und 8 ten Jahrh., und ihre Verbreitung auf dem Festland. Gütersloh, 1873.

Comp. Ebrard’s articles Die culdeische Kirche des 6, 7 und 8ten Jahrh., in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theologie" for 1862 and 1863.

Ebrard and McLauchan are the ablest advocates of the anti-Romish and alleged semi-Protestant character of the old Keltic church of Ireland and Scotland; but they present it in a more favorable light than the facts warrant.

*Dr. W. D. Killen (Presbyt.): The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the Earliest Period to the Present Times. London, 1875, 2 vols.

*Alex. Penrose Forbes (Bishop of Brechin, d. 1875): Kalendars of Scottish Saints. With Personal Notices of those of Alba, Laudonia and Stratchclyde. Edinburgh (Edmonston & Douglas), 1872. By the same: Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the twelfth century. Ed. from the best MSS. Edinburgh, 1874.

*William Reeves (Canon of Armagh): Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that monastery. Edinburgh, 1874.

*William F. Skene: Keltic Scotland. Edinburgh, 2 vols., 1876, 1877.

*F. E. Warren (Fellow of St. John’s Coll., Oxford): The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxford 1881 (291 pp.).

F. Loofs: Antiquae Britonum Scotorumque ecclesiae moves, ratio credendi, vivendi, etc. Lips., 1882.

Comp. also the relevant sections in the Histories Of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Hume, (Ch. I-III.), Lingard (Ch. I. VIII.), Lappenberg (Vol. I.), Green (Vol. I.), Hill Burton (Hist. of Scotland, Vol. I.); Milman’s Latin Christianity (Book IV., Ch. 3–5); Maclear’s Apostles of Mediaeval Europe (Lond. 1869), Thomas Smith’s Mediaeval Missions (Edinb. 1880).

§ 8. The Britons.

Literature: The works of Bede, Gildas, Nennius, Ussher, Bright, Pryce, quoted in § 7.

Britain made its first appearance in secular history half a century before the Christian era, when Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais across the channel, and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal city, though it was not fully subdued till the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41–54). It figures in ecclesiastical history from the conversion of the Britons in the second century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the Anglo-Saxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time, slightly differing in discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of the antagonism of race, which was ultimately overcome in England and Scotland but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The Norman conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before.

The oldest inhabitants of Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic origin, half naked and painted barbarians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by intestine factions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under different appellations, the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods, rivers, and mountains; they paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the fruits of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives. Their priests, called druids,7 dwelt in huts or caverns, amid the silence and gloom of the forest, were in possession of all education and spiritual power, professed to know the secrets of nature, medicine and astrology, and practised the arts of divination. They taught, as the three principles of wisdom: "obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of man, and fortitude under the accidents of life."  They also taught the immortality of the soul and the fiction of metempsychosis. One class of the druids, who delivered their instructions in verse, were distinguished by the title of bards, who as poets and musicians accompanied the chieftain to the battle-field, and enlivened the feasts of peace by the sound of the harp. There are still remains of druidical temples—the most remarkable at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and at Stennis in the Orkney Islands—that is, circles of huge stones standing in some cases twenty feet above the earth, and near them large mounds supposed to be ancient burial-places; for men desire to be buried near a place of worship.

The first introduction of Christianity into Britain is involved in obscurity. The legendary history ascribes it at least to ten different agencies, namely, 1) Bran, a British prince, and his son Caradog, who is said to have become acquainted with St. Paul in Rome, A.D. 51 to 58, and to have introduced the gospel into his native country on his return. 2) St. Paul. 3) St. Peter. 4) St. Simon Zelotes. 5) St. Philip. 6) St. James the Great. 7) St. John. 8) Aristobulus (Rom. xvi. 10). 9) Joseph of Arimathaea, who figures largely in the post-Norman legends of Glastonbury Abbey, and is said to have brought the holy Graal—the vessel or platter of the Lord’s Supper—containing the blood of Christ, to England. 10) Missionaries of Pope Eleutherus from Rome to King Lucius of Britain.8

But these legends cannot be traced beyond the sixth century, and are therefore destitute of all historic value. A visit of St. Paul to Britain between A.D. 63 and 67 is indeed in itself not impossible (on the assumption of a second Roman captivity), and has been advocated even by such scholars as Ussher and Stillingfleet, but is intrinsically improbable, and destitute of all evidence.9

The conversion of King Lucius in the second century through correspondence with the Roman bishop Eleutherus (176 to 190), is related by Bede, in connection with several errors, and is a legend rather than an established fact.10  Irenaeus of Lyons, who enumerates all the churches one by one, knows of none in Britain. Yet the connection of Britain with Rome and with Gaul must have brought it early into contact with Christianity. About A.D. 208 Tertullian exultingly declared "that places in Britain not yet visited by Romans were subject to Christ."11  St. Alban, probably a Roman soldier, died as the British proto-martyr in the Diocletian persecution (303), and left the impress of his name on English history.12  Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was born in Britain, and his mother, St. Helena, was probably a native of the country. In the Council of Arles, A.D. 314, which condemned the Donatists, we meet with three British bishops, Eborius of York (Eboracum), Restitutus of London (Londinum), and Adelfius of Lincoln (Colonia Londinensium), or Caerleon in Wales, besides a presbyter and deacon.13  In the Arian controversy the British churches sided with Athanasius and the Nicene Creed, though hesitating about the term homoousios.14  A notorious heretic, Pelagius (Morgan), was from the same island; his abler, though less influential associate, Celestius, was probably an Irishman; but their doctrines were condemned (429), and the Catholic faith reëstablished with the assistance of two Gallic bishops.15

Monumental remains of the British church during the Roman period are recorded or still exist at Canterbury (St. Martin’s), Caerleon, Bangor, Glastonbury, Dover, Richborough (Kent), Reculver, Lyminge, Brixworth, and other places.16

The Roman dominion in Britain ceased about A.D. 410; the troops were withdrawn, and the country left to govern itself. The result was a partial relapse into barbarism and a demoralization of the church. The intercourse with the Continent was cut off, and the barbarians of the North pressed heavily upon the Britons. For a century and a half we hear nothing of the British churches till the silence is broken by the querulous voice of Gildas, who informs us of the degeneracy of the clergy, the decay of religion, the introduction and suppression of the Pelagian heresy, and the mission of Palladius to the Scots in Ireland. This long isolation accounts in part for the trifling differences and the bitter antagonism between the remnant of the old British church and the new church imported from Rome among the hated Anglo-Saxons.

The difference was not doctrinal, but ritualistic and disciplinary. The British as well as the Irish and Scotch Christians of the sixth and seventh centuries kept Easter on the very day of the full moon in March when it was Sunday, or on the next Sunday following. They adhered to the older cycle of eighty-four years in opposition to the later Dionysian cycle of ninety-five years, which came into use on the Continent since the middle of the sixth century.17  They shaved the fore-part of their head from ear to ear in the form of a crescent, allowing the hair to grow behind, in imitation of the aureola, instead of shaving, like the Romans, the crown of the head in a circular form, and leaving a circle of hair, which was to represent the Saviour’s crown of thorns. They had, moreover—and this was the most important and most irritating difference—become practically independent of Rome, and transacted their business in councils without referring to the pope, who began to be regarded on the Continent as the righteous ruler and judge of all Christendom.

From these facts some historians have inferred the Eastern or Greek origin of the old British church. But there is no evidence whatever of any such connection, unless it be perhaps through the medium of the neighboring church of Gaul, which was partly planted or moulded by Irenaeus of Lyons, a pupil of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and which always maintained a sort of independence of Rome.

But in the points of dispute just mentioned, the Gallican church at that time agreed with Rome. Consequently, the peculiarities of the British Christians must be traced to their insular isolation and long separation from Rome. The Western church on the Continent passed through some changes in the development of the authority of the papal see, and in the mode of calculating Easter, until the computation was finally fixed through Dionysius Exiguus in 525. The British, unacquainted with these changes, adhered to the older independence and to the older customs. They continued to keep Easter from the 14th of the moon to the 20th. This difference involved a difference in all the moveable festivals, and created great confusion in England after the conversion of the Saxons to the Roman rite.

§ 9. The Anglo-Saxons.

Literature.

I. The sources for the planting of Roman Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons are several Letters of Pope Gregory I. (Epp., Lib. VI. 7, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59; IX. 11, 108; XI. 28, 29, 64, 65, 66, 76; in Migne’s ed. of Gregory’s Opera, Vol. III.; also in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 5 sqq.); the first and second books of Bede’s Eccles. Hist.; Goscelin’s Life of St. Augustin, written in the 11th century, and contained in the Acta Sanctorum of May 26th; and Thorne’s Chronicles of St. Augustine’s Abbey. See also Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., the 3d vol., which comes down to A.D. 840.

II. Of modern lives of St. Augustin, we mention Montalembert, Monks of the West, Vol. III.; Dean Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. I., and Dean Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, 1st ed., 1855, 9th ed. 1880. Comp. Lit. in Sec. 7.

British Christianity was always a feeble plant, and suffered greatly, from the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the devastating wars which followed it. With the decline of the Roman power, the Britons, weakened by the vices of Roman civilization, and unable to resist the aggressions of the wild Picts and Scots from the North, called Hengist and Horsa, two brother-princes and reputed descendants of Wodan, the god of war, from Germany to their aid, A.D. 449.18

From this time begins the emigration of Saxons, Angles or Anglians, Jutes, and Frisians to Britain. They gave to it a new nationality and a new language, the Anglo-Saxon, which forms the base and trunk of the present people and language of England (Angle-land). They belonged to the great Teutonic race, and came from the Western and Northern parts of Germany, from the districts North of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Eyder, especially from Holstein, Schleswig, and Jutland. They could never be subdued by the Romans, and the emperor Julian pronounced them the most formidable of all the nations that dwelt beyond the Rhine on the shores of the Western ocean. They were tall and handsome, with blue eyes and fair skin, strong and enduring, given to pillage by land, and piracy by sea, leaving the cultivation of the soil, with the care of their flocks, to women and slaves. They were the fiercest among the Germans. They sacrificed a tenth of their chief captives on the altars of their gods. They used the spear, the sword, and the battle-axe with terrible effect. "We have not," says Sidonius, bishop of Clermont,19 "a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than the Saxons. They overcome all who have the courage to oppose them .... When they pursue, they infallibly overtake; when they are pursued, their escape is certain. They despise danger; they are inured to shipwreck; they are eager to purchase booty with the peril of their lives. Tempests, which to others are so dreadful, to them are subjects of joy. The storm is their protection when they are pressed by the enemy, and a cover for their operations when they meditate an attack."  Like the Bedouins in the East, and the Indians of America, they were divided in tribes, each with a chieftain. In times of danger, they selected a supreme commander under the name of Konyng or King, but only for a period.

These strangers from the Continent successfully repelled the Northern invaders; but being well pleased with the fertility and climate of the country, and reinforced by frequent accessions from their countrymen, they turned upon the confederate Britons, drove them to the mountains of Wales and the borders of Scotland, or reduced them to slavery, and within a century and a half they made themselves masters of England. From invaders they became settlers, and established an octarchy or eight independent kingdoms, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia, Bernicia, and Deira. The last two were often united under the same head; hence we generally speak of but seven kingdoms or the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.

From this period of the conflict between the two races dates the Keltic form of the Arthurian legends, which afterwards underwent a radical telescopic transformation in France. They have no historical value except in connection with the romantic poetry of mediaeval religion.20

§ 10. The Mission of Gregory and Augustin. Conversion of Kent, A.D. 595–604.

With the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons, who were heathen barbarians, Christianity was nearly extirpated in Britain. Priests were cruelly massacred, churches and monasteries were destroyed, together with the vestiges of a weak Roman civilization. The hatred and weakness of the Britons prevented them from offering the gospel to the conquerors, who in turn would have rejected it from contempt of the conquered.21

But fortunately Christianity was re-introduced from a remote country, and by persons who had nothing to do with the quarrels of the two races. To Rome, aided by the influence of France, belongs the credit of reclaiming England to Christianity and civilization. In England the first, and, we may say, the only purely national church in the West was founded, but in close union with the papacy. "The English church," says Freeman, "reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic church had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament. In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English nation, both within its own island and towards the rest of the world."22

The origin of the Anglo-Saxon mission reads like a beautiful romance. Pope Gregory I., when abbot of a Benedictine convent, saw in the slave-market of Rome three Anglo-Saxon boys offered for sale. He was impressed with their fine appearance, fair complexion, sweet faces and light flaxen hair; and learning, to his grief, that they were idolaters, he asked the name of their nation, their country, and their king. When he heard that they were Angles, he said: "Right, for they have angelic faces, and are worthy to be fellow-heirs with angels in heaven."  They were from the province Deira. "Truly," he replied, "are they De-ira-ns, that is, plucked from the ire of God, and called to the mercy of Christ."  He asked the name of their king, which was AElla or Ella (who reigned from 559 to 588). "Hallelujah," he exclaimed, "the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts."  He proceeded at once from the slave market to the pope, and entreated him to send missionaries to England, offering himself for this noble work. He actually started for the spiritual conquest of the distant island. But the Romans would not part with him, called him back, and shortly afterwards elected him pope (590). What he could not do in person, he carried out through others.23

In the year 596, Gregory, remembering his interview with the sweet-faced and fair-haired Anglo-Saxon slave-boys, and hearing of a favorable opportunity for a mission, sent the Benedictine abbot Augustin (Austin), thirty other monks, and a priest, Laurentius, with instructions, letters of recommendation to the Frank kings and several bishops of Gaul, and a few books, to England.24  The missionaries, accompanied by some interpreters from France, landed on the isle of Thanet in Kent, near the mouth of the Thames.25  King Ethelbert, by his marriage to Bertha, a Christian princess from Paris, who had brought a bishop with her, was already prepared for a change of religion. He went to meet the strangers and received them in the open air; being afraid of some magic if he were to see them under roof. They bore a silver cross for their banner, and the image of Christ painted on a board; and after singing the litany and offering prayers for themselves and the people whom they had come to convert, they preached the gospel through their Frank interpreters. The king was pleased with the ritualistic and oratorical display of the new religion from distant, mighty Rome, and said: "Your words and promises are very fair; but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot forsake the religion I have so long followed with the whole English nation. Yet as you are come from far, and are desirous to benefit us, I will supply you with the necessary sustenance, and not forbid you to preach and to convert as many as you can to your religion."26  Accordingly, he allowed them to reside in the City of Canterbury (Dorovern, Durovernum), which was the metropolis of his kingdom, and was soon to become the metropolis of the Church of England. They preached and led a severe monastic life. Several believed and were baptized, "admiring," as Bede says, "the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine."  He also mentions miracles. Gregory warned Augustin not to be puffed up by miracles, but to rejoice with fear, and to tremble in rejoicing, remembering what the Lord said to his disciples when they boasted that even the devils were subject to them. For not all the elect work miracles, and yet the names of all are written in heaven.27

King Ethelbert was converted and baptized (probably June 2, 597), and drew gradually his whole nation after him, though he was taught by the missionaries not to use compulsion, since the service of Christ ought to be voluntary.

Augustin, by order of pope Gregory, was ordained archbishop of the English nation by Vergilius,28 archbishop of Arles, Nov. 16, 597, and became the first primate of England, with a long line of successors even to this day. On his return, at Christmas, he baptized more than ten thousand English. His talents and character did not rise above mediocrity, and he bears no comparison whatever with his great namesake, the theologian and bishop of Hippo; but he was, upon the whole, well fitted for his missionary work, and his permanent success lends to his name the halo of a borrowed greatness. He built a church and monastery at Canterbury, the mother-church of Anglo-Saxon Christendom. He sent the priest Laurentius to Rome to inform the pope of his progress and to ask an answer to a number of questions concerning the conduct of bishops towards their clergy, the ritualistic differences between the Roman and the Gallican churches, the marriage of two brothers to two sisters, the marriage of relations, whether a bishop may be ordained without other bishops being present, whether a woman with child ought to be baptized, how long after the birth of an infant carnal intercourse of married people should be delayed, etc. Gregory answered these questions very fully in the legalistic and ascetic spirit of the age, yet, upon the whole, with much good sense and pastoral wisdom.29

It is remarkable that this pope, unlike his successors, did not insist on absolute conformity to the Roman church, but advises Augustin, who thought that the different customs of the Gallican church were inconsistent with the unity of faith, "to choose from every church those things that are pious, religious and upright;" for "things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things."30  In other respects, the advice falls in with the papal system and practice. He directs the missionaries not to destroy the heathen temples, but to convert them into Christian churches, to substitute the worship of relics for the worship of idols, and to allow the new converts, on the day of dedication and other festivities, to kill cattle according to their ancient custom, yet no more to the devils, but to the praise of God; for it is impossible, he thought, to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds; and he who endeavors to ascend to the highest place, must rise by degrees or steps, and not by leaps.31  This method was faithfully followed by his missionaries. It no doubt facilitated the nominal conversion of England, but swept a vast amount of heathenism into the Christian church, which it took centuries to eradicate.

Gregory sent to Augustin, June 22, 601, the metropolitan pall (pallium), several priests (Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and others), many books, sacred vessels and vestments, and relics of apostles and martyrs. He directed him to ordain twelve bishops in the archiepiscopal diocese of Canterbury, and to appoint an archbishop for York, who was also to ordain twelve bishops, if the country adjoining should receive the word of God. Mellitus was consecrated the first bishop of London; Justus, bishop of Rochester, both in 604 by Augustin (without assistants); Paulinus, the first archbishop of York, 625, after the death of Gregory and Augustin.32  The pope sent also letters and presents to king Ethelbert, "his most excellent son," exhorting him to persevere in the faith, to commend it by good works among his subjects, to suppress the worship of idols, and to follow the instructions of Augustin.

§ 11. Antagonism of the Saxon and British Clergy.

Bede, II. 2; Haddan and Stubbs, III. 38–41.

Augustin, with the aid of king Ethelbert, arranged (in 602 or 603) a conference with the British bishops, at a place in Sussex near the banks of the Severn under an oak, called "Augustin’s Oak."33  He admonished them to conform to the Roman ceremonial in the observance of Easter Sunday, and the mode of administering baptism, and to unite with their Saxon brethren in converting the Gentiles. Augustin had neither wisdom nor charity enough to sacrifice even the most trifling ceremonies on the altar of peace. He was a pedantic and contracted churchman. He met the Britons, who represented at all events an older and native Christianity, with the haughty spirit of Rome, which is willing to compromise with heathen customs, but demands absolute submission from all other forms of Christianity, and hates independence as the worst of heresies.

The Britons preferred their own traditions. After much useless contention, Augustin proposed, and the Britons reluctantly accepted, an appeal to the miraculous interposition of God. A blind man of the Saxon race was brought forward and restored to sight by his prayer. The Britons still refused to give up their ancient customs without the consent of their people, and demanded a second and larger synod.

At the second Conference, seven bishops of the Britons, with a number of learned men from the Convent of Bangor, appeared, and were advised by a venerated hermit to submit the Saxon archbishop to the moral test of meekness and humility as required by Christ from his followers. If Augustin, at the meeting, shall rise before them, they should hear him submissively; but if he shall not rise, they should despise him as a proud man. As they drew near, the Roman dignitary remained seated in his chair. He demanded of them three things, viz. compliance with the Roman observance of the time of Easter, the Roman form of baptism, and aid in efforts to convert the English nation; and then he would readily tolerate their other peculiarities. They refused, reasoning among themselves, if he will not rise up before us now, how much more will he despise us when we shall be subject to his authority?  Augustin indignantly rebuked them and threatened the divine vengeance by the arms of the Saxons. "All which," adds Bede, "through the dispensation of the divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted."  For, a few years afterwards (613), Ethelfrith the Wild, the pagan King of Northumbria, attacked the Britons at Chester, and destroyed not only their army, but slaughtered several hundred34 priests and monks, who accompanied the soldiers to aid them with their prayers. The massacre was followed by the destruction of the flourishing monastery of Bangor, where more than two thousand monks lived by the labor of their hands.

This is a sad picture of the fierce animosity of the two races and rival forms of Christianity. Unhappily, it continues to the present day, but with a remarkable difference: the Keltic Irish who, like the Britons, once represented a more independent type of Catholicism, have, since the Norman conquest, and still more since the Reformation, become intense Romanists; while the English, once the dutiful subjects of Rome, have broken with that foreign power altogether, and have vainly endeavored to force Protestantism upon the conquered race. The Irish problem will not be solved until the double curse of national and religious antagonism is removed.

§ 12. Conversion of the Other Kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

Augustin, the apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, died A.D. 604, and lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph: "Here rests the Lord Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God’s assistance supported with miracles, reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king."35

He was not a great man; but he did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and civilization.

Laurentius (604–619), and afterwards Mellitus (619–624) succeeded him in his office.

Other priests and monks were sent from Italy, and brought with them books and such culture as remained after the irruption of the barbarians. The first archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of most of the Southern sees were foreigners, if not consecrated, at least commissioned by the pope, and kept up a constant correspondence with Rome. Gradually a native clergy arose in England.

The work of Christianization went on among the other kingdom of the heptarchy, and was aided by the marriage of kings with Christian wives, but was more than once interrupted by relapse into heathenism. Northumbria was converted chiefly through the labors of the sainted Aidan (d. Aug. 31, 651), a monk from the island Iona or Hii, and the first bishop of Lindisfarne, who is even lauded by Bede for his zeal, piety and good works, although he differed from him on the Easter question.36  Sussex was the last part of the Heptarchy which renounced paganism. It took nearly a hundred years before England was nominally converted to the Christian religion.37

To this conversion England owes her national unity and the best elements of her civilization.38

The Anglo-Saxon Christianity was and continued to be till the Reformation, the Christianity of Rome, with its excellences and faults. It included the Latin mass, the worship of saints, images and relics, monastic virtues and vices, pilgrimages to the holy city, and much credulity and superstition. Even kings abdicated their crown to show their profound reverence for the supreme pontiff and to secure from him a passport to heaven. Chapels, churches and cathedrals were erected in the towns; convents founded in the country by the bank of the river or under the shelter of a hill, and became rich by pious donations of land. The lofty cathedrals and ivy-clad ruins of old abbeys and cloisters in England and Scotland still remain to testify in solemn silence to the power of mediaeval Catholicism.

§ 13. Conformity to Row Established. Wilfrid, Theodore, Bede.

The dispute between the Anglo-Saxon or Roman, and the British ritual was renewed in the middle of the seventh century, but ended with the triumph of the former in England proper. The spirit of independence had to take refuge in Ireland and Scotland till the time of the Norman conquest, which crushed it out also in Ireland.

Wilfrid, afterwards bishop of York, the first distinguished native prelate who combined clerical habits with haughty magnificence, acquired celebrity by expelling "the quartodeciman heresy and schism," as it was improperly called, from Northumbria, where the Scots had introduced it through St. Aidan. The controversy was decided in a Synod held at Whitby in 664 in the presence of King Oswy or Oswio and his son Alfrid. Colman, the second success or of Aidan, defended the Scottish observance of Easter by the authority of St. Columba and the apostle John. Wilfrid rested the Roman observance on the authority of Peter, who had introduced it in Rome, and on the universal custom of Christendom. When he mentioned, that to Peter were intrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the king said: "I will not contradict the door-keeper, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them."  By this irresistible argument the opposition was broken, and conformity to the Roman observance established. The Scottish semi-circular tonsure also, which was ascribed to Simon Magus, gave way to the circular, which was derived from St. Peter. Colman, being worsted, returned with his sympathizers to Scotland, where he built two monasteries. Tuda was made bishop in his place.39

Soon afterwards, a dreadful pestilence raged through England and Ireland, while Caledonia was saved, as the pious inhabitants believed, by the intercession of St. Columba.

The fusion of English Christians was completed in the age of Theodorus, archbishop of Canterbury (669 to 690), and Beda Venerabilis ( b. 673, d. 735), presbyter and monk of Wearmouth. About the same time Anglo-Saxon literature was born, and laid the foundation for the development of the national genius which ultimately broke loose from Rome.

Theodore was a native of Tarsus, where Paul was born, educated in Athens, and, of course, acquainted with Greek and Latin learning. He received his appointment and consecration to the primacy of England from Pope Vitalian. He arrived at Canterbury May 27, 669, visited the whole of England, established the Roman rule of Easter, and settled bishops in all the sees except London. He unjustly deposed bishop Wilfrid of York, who was equally devoted to Rome, but in his later years became involved in sacerdotal jealousies and strifes. He introduced order into the distracted church and some degree of education among the clergy. He was a man of autocratic temper, great executive ability, and, having been directly sent from Rome, he carried with him double authority. "He was the first archbishop," says Bede, "to whom the whole church of England submitted."  During his administration the first Anglo-Saxon mission to the mother-country of the Saxons and Friesians was attempted by Egbert, Victberet, and Willibrord (689 to 692). His chief work is a "Penitential" with minute directions for a moral and religious life, and punishments for drunkenness, licentiousness, and other prevalent vices.40

The Venerable Bede was the first native English scholar, the father of English theology and church history. He spent his humble and peaceful life in the acquisition and cultivation of ecclesiastical and secular learning, wrote Latin in prose and verse, and translated portions of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon. His chief work is his—the only reliable—Church History of old England. He guides us with a gentle hand and in truly Christian spirit, though colored by Roman views, from court to court, from monastery to monastery, and bishopric to bishopric, through the missionary labyrinth of the miniature kingdoms of his native island. He takes the Roman side in the controversies with the British churches.41

Before Bede cultivated Saxon prose, Caedmon (about 680), first a swine-herd, then a monk at Whitby, sung, as by inspiration, the wonders of creation and redemption, and became the father of Saxon (and Christian German) poetry. His poetry brought the Bible history home to the imagination of the Saxon people, and was a faint prophecy of the "Divina Comedia" and the "Paradise Lost."42  We have a remarkable parallel to this association of Bede and Caedmon in the association of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into English (1380), and the contemporary of Chaucer, the father of English poetry, both forerunners of the British Reformation, and sustaining a relation to Protestant England somewhat similar to the relation which Bede and Caedmon sustain to mediaeval Catholic England.

The conversion of England was nominal and ritual, rather than intellectual and moral. Education was confined to the clergy and monks, and consisted in the knowledge of the Decalogue, the Creed and the Pater Noster, a little Latin without any Greek or Hebrew. The Anglo-Saxon clergy were only less ignorant than the British. The ultimate triumph of the Roman church was due chiefly to her superior organization, her direct apostolic descent, and the prestige of the Roman empire. It made the Christianity of England independent of politics and court-intrigues, and kept it in close contact with the Christianity of the Continent. The advantages of this connection were greater than the dangers and evils of insular isolation. Among all the subjects of Teutonic tribes, the English became the most devoted to the Pope. They sent more pilgrims to Rome and more money into the papal treasury than any other nation. They invented the Peter’s Pence. At least thirty of their kings and queens, and an innumerable army of nobles ended their days in cloistral retreats. Nearly all of the public lands were deeded to churches and monasteries. But the exuberance of monasticism weakened the military and physical forces of the nation

Danish and the Norman conquests. The power and riches of the church secularized the clergy, and necessitated in due time a reformation. Wealth always tends to vice, and vice to decay. The Norman conquest did not change the ecclesiastical relations of England, but infused new blood and vigor into the Saxon race, which is all the better for its mixed character.

We add a list of the early archbishops and bishops of the four principal English sees, in the order of their foundation:43

Canterbury

London

Rochester.

York

Augustin

597

Mellitus

604

Justus

604

Paulinus

625

Laurentius

604

[Cedd in Essex

654]

Romanus

624

Chad

665

Mellitus

619

Wini

666

Paulinus

633

Wilfrid, consecrated 665, in possession

669

Justus

624

Erconwald

675

Ithamar

644

Honorius

627

Waldhere

693

Damian

655

669

Deusdedit

655

Ingwald

704

Putta

669

Bosa

678

Theodore

668

Cwichelm

676

Wilfrid again

686

Brihtwald

693

Gebmund

678

Bosa again

691

Tatwin

731

Tobias

693

John

706

§ 14. The Conversion of Ireland. St. Patrick and St. Bridget.

Literature.

I. The writings of St. Patrick are printed in the Vitae Sanctorum of the Bollandists, sub March 17th; in Patricii Opuscula, ed. Warsaeus (Sir James Ware, Lond., 1656); in Migne’s Patrolog., Tom. LIII. 790–839, and with critical notes in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., Vol. II, Part II, (1878), pp. 296–323.

II. The Life of St. Patrick in the Acta Sanctorum, Mart., Tom. II. 517 sqq.

Tillemont: Mémoires, Tom. XVI. 452, 781.

Ussher: Brit. Eccl. Antiqu.

J. H. Todd: St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Dublin, 1864.

C. Joh. Greith (R.C.): Geschichte der altirischen Kirche und ihrer Verbindung mit Rom., Gallien und Alemannien, als Einleitung in die Geschichte des Stifts St. Gallen. Freiburg i. B. 1867.

Daniel de Vinné: History Of the Irish Primitive Church, together with the Life of St. Patrick. N. York, 1870

J. Francis Sherman (R.C.): Loca Patriciana: an Identification of Localities, chiefly in Leinster, visited by St. Patrick. Dublin, 1879.

F. E. Warren (Episc.): The Manuscript Irish Missal at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. London, 1879. Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxf. 1881.

Comp. also the works of Todd, McLauchan, Ebrard, Killen, and Skene, quoted in § 7, and Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 431.

The church-history of Ireland is peculiar. It began with an independent catholicity (or a sort of semi-Protestantism), and ended with Romanism, while other Western countries passed through the reverse order. Lying outside of the bounds of the Roman empire, and never invaded by Roman legions,44 that virgin island was Christianized without bloodshed and independently of Rome and of the canons of the oecumenical synods. The early Irish church differed from the Continental churches in minor points of polity and worship, and yet excelled them all during the sixth and seventh centuries in spiritual purity and missionary zeal. After the Norman conquest, it became closely allied to Rome. In the sixteenth century the light of the Reformation did not penetrate into the native population; but Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts set up by force a Protestant state-religion in antagonism to the prevailing faith of the people. Hence, by the law of re-action, the Keltic portion of Ireland became more intensely Roman Catholic being filled with double hatred of England on the ground of difference of race and religion. This glaring anomaly of a Protestant state church in a Roman Catholic country has been removed at last after three centuries of oppression and misrule, by the Irish Church Disestablishment Act in 1869 under the ministry of Gladstone.

The early history of Ireland (Hibernia) is buried in obscurity. The ancient Hibernians were a mixed race, but prevailingly Keltic. They were ruled by petty tyrants, proud, rapacious and warlike, who kept the country in perpetual strife. They were devoted to their religion of Druidism. Their island, even before the introduction of Christianity, was called the Sacred Island. It was also called Scotia or Scotland down to the eleventh century.45  The Romans made no attempt at subjugation, as they did not succeed in establishing their authority in Caledonia.

The first traces of Irish Christianity are found at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century.

As Pelagius, the father of the famous heresy, which bears his name, was a Briton, so Coelestius, his chief ally and champion, was a Hibernian; but we do not know whether he was a Christian before be left Ireland. Mansuetus, first bishop of Toul, was an Irish Scot (A.D. 350). Pope Caelestine, in 431, ordained and sent Palladius, a Roman deacon, and probably a native Briton, "to the Scots believing in Christ," as their first bishop.46  This notice by Prosper of France implies the previous existence of Christianity in Ireland. But Palladius was so discouraged that he soon abandoned the field, with his assistants for North Britain, where he died among the Picts.47  For nearly two centuries after this date, we have no authentic record of papal intercourse with Ireland; and yet during that period it took its place among the Christian countries. It was converted by two humble individuals, who probably never saw Rome, St. Patrick, once a slave, and St. Bridget, the daughter of a slave-mother.48  The Roman tradition that St. Patrick was sent by Pope Caelestine is too late to have any claim upon our acceptance, and is set aside by the entire silence of St. Patrick himself in his genuine works. It arose from confounding Patrick with Palladius. The Roman mission of Palladius failed; the independent mission of Patrick succeeded. He is the true Apostle of Ireland, and has impressed his memory in indelible characters upon the Irish race at home and abroad.

St. Patrick or Patricius (died March 17, 465 or 493) was the son of a deacon, and grandson of a priest, as he confesses himself without an intimation of the unlawfulness of clerical marriages.49  He was in his youth carried captive into Ireland, with many others, and served his master six years as a shepherd. While tending his flock in the lonesome fields, the teachings of his childhood awakened to new life in his heart without any particular external agency. He escaped to France or Britain, was again enslaved for a short period, and had a remarkable dream, which decided his calling. He saw a man, Victoricius, who handed him innumerable letters from Ireland, begging him to come over and help them. He obeyed the divine monition, and devoted the remainder of his life to the conversion of Ireland (from A.D. 440 to 493).50

"I am," he says, "greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who never had the knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God."  He speaks of having baptized many thousands of men. Armagh seems to have been for some time the centre of his missionary operations, and is to this day the seat of the primacy of Ireland, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. He died in peace, and was buried in Downpatrick (or Gabhul), where he began his mission, gained his first converts and spent his declining years.51

His Roman Catholic biographers have surrounded his life with marvelous achievements, while some modern Protestant hypercritics have questioned even his existence, as there is no certain mention of his name before 634; unless it be "the Hymn of St. Sechnall (Secundinus) in praise of St. Patrick, which is assigned to 448. But if we accept his own writings, "there can be no reasonable doubt" (we say with a Presbyterian historian of Ireland) "that he preached the gospel in Hibernia in the fifth century; that he was a most zealous and efficient evangelist, and that he is eminently entitled to the honorable designation of the Apostle of Ireland."52

The Christianity of Patrick was substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, i.e. Catholic, orthodox, monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the age of Gregory I. in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Confession he never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in matters of faith. He quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times; three times from the Apocrypha. It has been conjectured that the failure and withdrawal of Palladius was due to Patrick, who had already monopolized this mission-field; but, according to the more probable chronology, the mission of Patrick began about nine years after that of Palladius. From the end of the seventh century, the two persons were confounded, and a part of the history of Palladius, especially his connection with Pope Caelestine, was transferred to Patrick.53

With St. Patrick there is inseparably connected the most renowned female saint of Ireland, St. Bridget (or Brigid, Brigida, Bride), who prepared his winding sheet and survived him many years. She died Feb. 1, 523 (or 525). She is "the Mary of Ireland," and gave her name to innumerable Irish daughters, churches, and convents. She is not to be confounded with her name-sake, the widow-saint of Sweden. Her life is surrounded even by a still thicker cloud of legendary fiction than that of St. Patrick, so that it is impossible to separate the facts from the accretions of a credulous posterity. She was an illegitimate child of a chieftain or bard, and a slave-mother, received holy orders, became deformed in answer to her own prayer, founded the famous nunnery of Kildare (i.e. the Church of the Oak),54 foretold the birth of Columba, and performed all sorts of signs and wonders.

Upon her tomb in Kildare arose the inextinguishable flame called "the Light of St. Bridget," which her nuns (like the Vestal Virgins of Rome) kept

"Through long ages of darkness and storm" (Moore).

Six lives of her were published by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturgus, and five by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum.

Critical Note on St. Patrick.

We have only one or two genuine documents from Patrick, both written in semi-barbarous (early Irish) Latin, but breathing an humble, devout and fervent missionary spirit without anything specifically Roman, viz. his autobiographical Confession (in 25 chapters), written shortly before his death (493?), and his Letter of remonstrance to Coroticus (or Ceredig), a British chieftain (nominally Christian), probably of Ceredigion or Cardigan, who had made a raid into Ireland, and sold several of Patrick’s converts into slavery (10 chapters). The Confession, as contained in the "Book of Armagh," is alleged to have been transcribed before A.D. 807 from Patrick’s original autograph, which was then partly illegible. There are four other MSS. of the eleventh century, with sundry additions towards the close, which seem to be independent copies of the same original. See Haddan & Stubbs, note on p. 296. The Epistle to Coroticus is much shorter, and not so generally accepted. Both documents were first printed in 1656, then in 1668 in the Acta Sanctorum, also in Migne’s Patrologia (Vol. 53), in Miss Cusack’s Life of St. Patrick, in the work of Ebrard (l.c. 482 sqq.), and in Haddan & Stubbs, Councils (Vol. II., P. II., 296 sqq.).

There is a difference of opinion about Patrick’s nationality, whether he was of Scotch, or British, or French extraction. He begins his Confession: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and the least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible with the multitude (Ego Patricius, peccator, rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus apud plurimos, or, according to another reading, contemptibilis sum apud plurimos), had for my father Calpornus (or Calphurnius), a deacon (diaconum, or diaconem), the son of Potitus (al. Photius), a presbyter (filium quondam Potiti presbyteri), who lived in the village of Bannavem (or Banaven) of Tabernia; for he had a cottage in the neighborhood where I was captured. I was then about sixteen years old; but I was ignorant of the true God, and was led away into captivity to Hibernia."  Bannavem of Tabernia is, perhaps Banavie in Lochaber in Scotland (McLauchlan); others fix the place of his birth in Kilpatrick (i.e. the cell or church of Patrick), near Dunbarton on the Clyde (Ussher, Butler, Maclear); others, somewhere in Britain, and thus explain his epithet "Brito" or "Briton" (Joceline and Skene); still others seek it in Armoric Gaul, in Boulogne (from Bononia), and derive Brito from Brittany (Lanigan, Moore, Killen, De Vinné).

He does not state the instrumentality of his conversion. Being the son of a clergyman, he must have received some Christian instruction; but he neglected it till he was made to feel the power of religion in communion with God while in slavery. "After I arrived in Ireland," he says (ch. 6), "every day I fed cattle, and frequently during the day I prayed; more and more the love and fear of God burned, and my faith and my spirit were strengthened, so that in one day I said as many as a hundred prayers, and nearly as many in the night."  He represents his call and commission as coming directly from God through a vision, and alludes to no intervening ecclesiastical authority or episcopal consecration. In one of the oldest Irish MSS., the Book of Durrow, he is styled a presbyter. In the Epistle to Coroticus, he appears more churchly and invested with episcopal power and jurisdiction. It begins: "Patricius, peccator indoctus, Hiberione (or Hyberione) constitutus episcopus, certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum: inter barbaras utique gentes proselytus et profuga, ob amorem Dei."  (So according to the text of Haddan & Stubbs, p. 314; somewhat different in Migne, Patrol. LIII. 814; and in Ebrard, p. 505.)  But the letter does not state where or by whom he was consecrated.

The "Book of Armagh "contains also an Irish hymn (the oldest monument of the Irish Keltic language), called S. Patricii Canticum Scotticum, which Patrick is said to have written when he was about to convert the chief monarch of the island (Laoghaire or Loegaire).55  The hymn is a prayer for the special aid of Almighty God for so important a work; it contains the principal doctrines of orthodox Christianity, with a dread of magical influences of aged women and blacksmiths, such as still prevails in some parts of Ireland, but without an invocation of Mary and the saints, such as we might expect from the Patrick of tradition and in a composition intended as a breast-plate or corselet against spiritual foes. The following is the principal portion:

"5. I bind to myself to-day,—

The Power of God to guide me,

The Might of God to uphold me,

The Wisdom of God to teach me,

The Eye of God to watch over me,

The Ear of God to hear me,

The Word of God to give me speech.

The Hand of God to protect me,

The Way of God to go before me,

The Shield of God to shelter me,

The Host of God to defend me,

Against the snares of demons,

Against the temptations of vices,

Against the lusts of nature,

Against every man who meditates injury to me.

Whether far or near,

With few or with many.

6. I have set around me all these powers,

Against every hostile savage power,

Directed against my body and my soul,

Against the incantations of false prophets,

Against the black laws of heathenism,

Against the false laws of heresy,

Against the deceits of idolatry,

Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,

Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man.

7. Christ protect me to-day

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wound,

That I may receive abundant reward.

8. Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ within me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ at my right, Christ at my left,

Christ in the fort [i.e. at home],

Christ in the chariot-seat [travelling by land],

Christ in the poop [travelling by water].

9. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

10. I bind to myself to-day

The strong power of an invocation of the Trinity,

The faith of the Trinity in Unity,

The Creator of [the elements].

11. Salvation is of the Lord,

Salvation is of the Lord,

Salvation is of Christ;

May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us."

The fourth and last document which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a Latin "Hymn in praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall (Secundinus) which begins thus:

"Audite, omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita

Viri in Christo beati Patrici Episcopi:

Quomodo bonum ob actum simulatur angelis,

Perfectamque propter uitam aequatur Apostolis."

The poem is given in full by Haddan & Stubbs, 324–327, and assigned to "before A.D. 448 (?)," in which year Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his mission, according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440), and lasted till 493?  The hymn is first mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh."

The next oldest document is the Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned to the latter part of the sixth century, (l.c. 356–361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of St. Patrick; but it is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to St. Patrick are of later date (Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.).

It is strange that St. Patrick is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he often refers to Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology. He is also ignored by Columba and by the Roman Catholic writers, until his mediaeval biographers from the eighth to the twelfth century Romanized him, appealing not to his genuine Confession, but to spurious documents and vague traditions. He is said to have converted all the Irish chieftains and bards, even Ossian, the blind Homer of Scotland, who sang to him his long epic of Keltic heroes and battles. He founded 365 or, according to others, 700 churches, and consecrated as many bishops, and 3,000 priests (when the whole island had probably not more than two or three hundred thousand inhabitants; for even in the reign of Elizabeth it did not exceed 600,000).56  He changed the laws of the kingdom, healed the blind, raised nine persons from death to life, and expelled all the snakes and frogs from Ireland.57  His memory is celebrated March 17, and is a day of great public processions with the Irish Catholics in all parts of the world. His death is variously put in the year 455 (Tillemont), 464 or 465 (Butler, Killen), 493 (Ussher, Skene, Forbes, Haddan & Stubbs). Forbes (Kalendars, p. 433) and Skene (Keltic Scotland, II. 427 sqq.) come to the conclusion that the legend of St. Patrick in its present shape is not older than the ninth century, and dissolves into three personages: Sen-Patrick, whose day in the Kalendar is the 24th of August; Palladius, "qui est Patricius," to whom the mission in 431 properly belongs, and Patricius, whose day is the 17th of March, and who died in 493. "From the acts of these three saints, the subsequent legend of the great Apostle of Ireland was compiled, and an arbitrary chronology applied to it."

§ 15. The Irish Church after St. Patrick.

The Missionary Period.

The labors of St. Patrick were carried on by his pupils and by many British priests and monks who were driven from England by the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries.58  There was an intimate intercourse between Ireland and Wales, where British Christianity sought refuge, and between Ireland and Scotland, where the seed of Christianity, had been planted by Ninian and Kentigern. In less than a century, after St. Patrick’s death Ireland was covered with churches and convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools of clergymen and missionaries, and workshops for transscribing sacred books. Prominent among these are the monasteries of Armagh, Banchor or Bangor (558), Clonard (500), Clonmacnois (528), Derry (555), Glendolough (618).

During the sixth and seventh centuries Ireland excelled all other countries in Christian piety, and acquired the name of "the Island of Saints."  We must understand this in a comparative sense, and remember that at that time England was just beginning to emerge from Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Germany was nearly all heathen, and the French kings—the eldest sons of the Church—were "monsters of iniquity."  Ireland itself was distracted by civil wars between the petty kings and chieftains; and the monks and clergy, even the women, marched to the conflict. Adamnan with difficulty secured a law exempting women from warfare, and it was not till the ninth century that the clergy in Ireland were exempted from "expeditions and hostings" (battles). The slave-trade was in full vigor between Ireland and England in the tenth century, with the port of Bristol for its centre. The Irish piety was largely based on childish superstition. But the missionary zeal of that country is nevertheless most praiseworthy. Ireland dreamed the dream of converting heathen Europe. Its apostles went forth to Scotland, North Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy. "They covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied navigators, they landed on the most desert islands; they overflowed the Continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant visions a world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ. The poem of the Pilgrimage of St. Brandan, that monkish Odyssey so celebrated in the middle ages, that popular prelude of the Divina Commedia, shows us the Irish monks in close contact with all the dreams and wonders of the Keltic ideal."59

The missionaries left Ireland usually in companies of twelve, with a thirteenth as their leader. This duodecimal economy was to represent Christ and the twelve apostles. The following are the most prominent of these missionary bands:60

St. Columba, with twelve brethren, to Hy in Scotland, A.D. 563.

St. Mohonna (or Macarius, Mauricius), sent by Columba, with twelve companions, to the Picts.

St. Columbanus, with twelve brethren, whose names are on record, to France and Germany, A.D. 612.

St. Kilian, with twelve, to Franconia and Würzburg, A.D. 680.

St. Eloquius, with twelve, to Belgium, A.D. 680.

St. Rudbert or Rupert, with twelve, to Bavaria, A.D. 700.

St. Willibrord (who studied twelve years in Ireland), with twelve, to Friesland, A.D. 692.

St. Forannan, with twelve, to the Belgian frontier, A.D. 970.

It is remarkable that this missionary activity of the Irish Church is confined to the period of her independence of the Church of Rome. We hear no more of it after the Norman conquest.

The Irish Church during this missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries had a peculiar character, which we learn chiefly from two documents of the eighth century, namely, the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland,61 and the Litany of Angus the Culdee.62

The Catalogue distinguishes three periods and three orders of saints: secular, monastic, and eremitical.

The saints of the time of St. Patrick were all bishops full of the Holy Ghost, three hundred and fifty in number, founders of churches; they had one head, Christ, and one leader, Patrick, observed one mass and one tonsure from ear to ear, and kept Easter on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox; they excluded neither laymen nor women; because, founded on the Rock of Christ, they feared not the blast of temptation. They sprung from the Romans, Franks, Britons and Scots. This order of saints continued for four reigns, from about A.D. 440 till 543.

The second order, likewise of four reigns, till A.D. 599, was of Catholic Presbyters, three hundred in number, with few bishops; they had one head, Christ, one Easter, one tonsure, as before; but different and different rules, and they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries.

The third order of saints consisted of one hundred holy presbyters and a few bishops, living in desert places on herbs and water and the alms of the faithful; they had different tonsures and Easters, some celebrating the resurrection on the 14th, some on the 16th moon; they continued through four reigns till 665.

The first period may be called episcopal, though in a rather non-episcopal or undiocesan sense. Angus, in his Litany, invokes "seven times fifty [350] holy cleric bishops," whom "the saint [Patrick] ordained," and "three hundred pure presbyters, upon whom he conferred orders."  In Nennius the number of presbyters is increased to three thousand, and in the tripartite Life of Patrick to five thousand. These bishops, even if we greatly reduce the number as we must, had no higher rank than the ancient chorepiscopi or country-bishops in the Eastern Church, of whom there were once in Asia Minor alone upwards of four hundred. Angus the Culdee gives us even one hundred and fifty-three groups of seven bishops, each group serving in the same church. Patrick, regarding himself as the chief bishop of the whole Irish people, planted a church wherever he made a few converts and could obtain a grant from the chief of a clan, and placed a bishop ordained by himself over it. "It was a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by a federal rather than a territorial tie under regular jurisdiction. During Patrick’s life, he no doubt exercised a superintendence over the whole; but we do not see any trace of the metropolitan jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over the rest."63

The second period was monastic and missionary. All the presbyters and deacons were monks. Monastic life was congenial to the soil, and had its antecedents in the brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the Druids.64  It was imported into Ireland probably from France, either directly through Patrick, or from the monastery of St. Ninian at Galloway, who himself derives it from St. Martin of Tours.65  Prominent among these presbyter-monks are the twelve apostles of Ireland headed by St. Columba, who carried Christianity to Scotland in 563, and the twelve companions of Columbanus, who departed from Ireland to the Continent about 612. The most famous monastery was that of Bennchar, or Bangor, founded A.D. 558 by Comgall in the county of Down, on the south side of Belfast Lough. Comgall had four thousand monks under his care.66  From Bangor proceeded Columbanus and other evangelists.

By a primitive Keltic monastery we must not understand an elaborate stone structure, but a rude village of wooden huts or bothies (botha) on a river, with a church (ecclais), a common eating-hall, a mill, a hospice, the whole surrounded by a wall of earth or stone. The senior monks gave themselves entirely to devotion and the transcribing of the Scriptures. The younger were occupied in the field and in mechanical labor, or the training of the rising generation. These monastic communities formed a federal union, with Christ as their invisible head. They were training schools of the clergy. They attracted converts from the surrounding heathen population, and offered them a refuge from danger and violence. They were resorted to by English noblemen, who, according to Bede, were hospitably received, furnished with books, and instructed. Some Irish clergymen could read the Greek Testament at a time when Pope Gregory J. was ignorant of Greek. There are traces of an original Latin version of the Scriptures differing from the Itala and Vulgate, especially in Patrick’s writings.67  But "there is no trace anywhere of any Keltic version of the Bible or any part of it. St. Chrysostom’s words have been misunderstood to support such a supposition, but without ground."68  If there had been such a translation, it would have been of little use, as the people could not read it, and depended for their scanty knowledge of the word of God on the public lessons in the church.

The "Book of Armagh," compiled by Ferdomnach, a scribe or learned monk of Armagh, in 807, gives us some idea of the literary state of the Irish Church at that time.69  It contains the oldest extant memoirs of St. Patrick, the Confession of St. Patrick, the Preface of Jerome to the New Testament, the Gospels, Epistles, Apocalypse and Acts, with some prefaces chiefly taken from the works of Pelagius, and the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, with a short litany on behalf of the writer.

In the ninth century John Scotus Erigena, who died in France, 874, startled the Church with his rare, but eccentric, genius and pantheistic speculations. He had that power of quick repartee for which Irishmen are distinguished to this day. When asked by Charles the Bald at the dinner-table, what was the difference between a Scot and a Sot (quid distat inter Scottum et Sottum?), John replied: "Nothing at all but the table, please your Majesty."

§ 16. Subjection of Ireland to English and Roman Rule.

The success of the Roman mission of Augustin among the Anglo-Saxons encouraged attempts to bring the Irish Church under the papal jurisdiction and to force upon it the ritual observances of Rome. England owes a good deal of her Christianity to independent Irish and Scotch missionaries from Bangor and Iona; but Ireland (as well as Germany) owes her Romanism, in great measure, to England. Pope Honorius (who was afterwards condemned by the sixth oecumenical council for holding the Monothelite heresy) addressed to the Irish clergy in 629 an exhortation—not, however, in the tone of authoritative dictation, but of superior wisdom and experience—to conform to the Roman mode of keeping Easter. This is the first known papal encyclical addressed to that country. A Synod was held at Magh-Lene, and a deputation sent to the Pope (and the three Eastern patriarchs) to ascertain the foreign usages on Easter. The deputation was treated with distinguished consideration in Rome, and, after three years’ absence, reported in favor of the Roman cycle, which indeed rested on a better system of calculation. It was accordingly adopted in the South of Ireland, under the influence of the learned Irish ecclesiastic Cummian, who devoted a whole year to the study of the controversy. A few years afterwards Thomian, archbishop and abbot of Armagh (from 623 to 661), and the best Irish scholar of his age, introduced, after correspondence with the Pope, the Roman custom in the North, and thereby promoted his authority in opposition to the power of the abbot of Iona, which extended over a portion of Ireland, and strongly favored the old custom. But at last Abbot Adamnan likewise yielded to the Roman practice before his death (704).

The Norman conquest under William I., with the sanction of the Pope, united the Irish Church still more closely to Rome (1066). Gregory VII., in an encyclical letter to the king, clergy and laity of Ireland (1084)., boldly, challenged their obedience to the Vicar of the blessed Peter, and invited them to appeal to him in all matters requiring arbitration.

The archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, claimed and exercised a sort of supervision over the three most important sea-ports, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, on the ground that the Norman settlers applied to them for bishops and priests. Their influence was exerted in favor of conformity to Rome. Clerical celibacy was more generally introduced, uniformity in ritual established, and the large number of bishoprics reduced to twenty-three under two archbishops, Armagh for the North and Cashel for the South; while the bishop of Dublin was permitted to remain under the care of the archbishop of Canterbury. This reorganization of the polity in the interest of the aggrandizement of the hierarchy was effected about 1112 at the synod of Rathbreasail, which was attended by 58 bishops, 317 priests, a large number of monks, and King Murtogh O’Brien with his nobles.70

At last Ireland was invaded and conquered by England under Henry II., with the effectual aid of Pope Adrian IV.—the only Englishman that sat on the papal throne. In a curious bull of 1155, he justified and encouraged the intended invasion in the interest of the papacy, and sent the king the ring of investiture as Lord of Ireland calling upon that licentious monarch to "extirpate the nurseries of vice" in Ireland, to "enlarge the borders of the (Roman) Church," and to secure to St. Peter from each house "the annual pension of one penny" (equal in value in the twelfth century to at least two or three shillings of our present currency).71  Henry carried out his design in 1171, and with a strong military force easily subdued the whole Irish nation, weakened and distracted by civil wars, to British rule, which has been maintained ever since. A Synod at Armagh regarded the subjugation as a righteous judgment for the sins of the people, and especially for the slave trade. The bishops were the first to acknowledge Henry, hoping to derive benefit from a foreign régime, which freed them from petty tyrants at home. A Synod of Cashel in 1172, among other regulations, ordered that all offices of the church should hereafter in all parts of Ireland be conformed to the observances of the Church of England. A papal legate henceforward was constantly residing in Ireland. Pope Alexander III. was extremely gratified with this extension of his dominion, and in September, 1172, in the same tone of sanctimonious arrogance) issued a brief confirming the bull of Adrian, and expressing a hope that "the barbarous nation" would attain under the government of Henry "to some decency of manners;" he also wrote three epistles—one to Henry II., one to the kings and nobles of Ireland, and one to its hierarchy—enjoining obedience of Ireland to England, and of both to the see of St. Peter.72

§ 17. The Conversion of Scotland. St. Ninian and St. Kentigern.

See the works of Skene (the second vol.), Reeves, McLauchan, Ebrard, Cunningham, mentioned in § 7.

Also Dr. Reeves: The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, 1864.

Dr. Jos. Robertson: Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 1866, 2 vols.

Bishop Forbes: The Kalendars of Scottish Saints, Edinb., 1872; Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, compiled in the 12th century, Edinb., 1874.

Haddan & Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiast. Docum., Vol. II, Part I. (Oxf., 1873), pp. 103 sqq.

Scotland (Scotia) before the tenth century was comprised in the general appellation of Britain (Britannia), as distinct from Ireland (Hibernia). It was known to the Romans as Caledonia,73 to the Kelts as Alban; but the name of Scotia was exclusively appropriated to Ireland till the tenth century. The independent history of Scotland begins with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century. At first it was a purely Keltic kingdom; but in the course of time the Saxon race and feudal institutions spread over the country, and the Keltic tribes retreated to the mountains and western islands. The names of Scot and Scotch passed over to the English-speaking people and their language; while the Keltic language, formerly known as Scotch, became known as Irish.

The Keltic history of Scotland is full of fable, and a battlefield of Romanists and Protestants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who have claimed it for their respective systems of doctrine and church-polity. It must be disentangled from the sectarian issues of the Culdean controversy. The historian is neither a polemic nor an apologist, and should aim at nothing but the truth.

Tertullian says, that certain places in Britain which the Romans could not conquer were made subject to Christ. It is quite likely that the first knowledge of Christianity reached the Scots and Picts from England; but the constant wars between them and the Britons and the decline of the Roman power were unfavorable to any mission work.

The mission of Palladius to Scotland by Pope Caelestius is as vague and uncertain as his mission to Ireland by the same Pope, and is strongly mixed up with the mission of Patrick. An Irish colony from the North-Eastern part of Ulster, which had been Christianized by Patrick, settled in Scotland towards the close of the fifth century, and continued to spread along the coasts of Argyle and as far as the islands of Mull and Iona, until its progress was checked by the Northern Picts.

The first distinct fact in the church history of Scotland is the apostolate of St. Ninian at the close of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius in the East. We have little reliable information of him. The son of a British king, he devoted himself early to the ministry of Christ. He spent some time in Rome, where the Pope commissioned him to the apostolate among the heathen in Caledonia, and in Gaul with Bishop Martin of Tours, who deserves special praise for his protest against the capital punishment of heretics in the case of the Priscillianists. He began the evangelization of the Southern Picts in the Eastern districts of modern Scotland. He built a white stone church called "Candida Casa," at Whittern (Quhithern, Witerna) in Galloway, on the South-Westem border of Scotland by the sea side, and dedicated it to the memory of St. Martin, who had died in that year (397).74  This was the beginning of "the Great Monastery" ("Magnum Monasterium") or monastery of Rosnat, which exerted a civilizing and humanizing influence on the surrounding country, and annually attracted pilgrims from England and Scotland to the shrine of St. Ninian. His life has been romanized and embellished with legends. He made a newborn infant indicate its true father, and vindicate the innocence of a presbyter who had been charged by the mother with the crime of violation; he caused leeks and herbs to grow in the garden before their season; he subdued with his staff the winds and the waves of the sea; and even his relics cured the sick, cleansed the lepers, and terrified the wicked, "by all which things," says Ailred, his biographer, "the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory of Christ."

St. Kentigern (d. Nov. 13, 603), also called St. Mungo (the gracious one),75 the first bishop of Glasgow, labored in the sixth century for the conversion of the people in Cumberland, Wales, and on the Clyde, and re-converted the Picts, who had apostatized from the faith. He was the grandson of a heathen king in Cumbria or Strathclyde, the son of a Christian, though unbaptized mother. He founded a college of Culdees or secular monks, and several churches. He wore a hair shirt and garment of goat-skin, lived on bread and vegetables, slept on a rocky couch and a stony pillow, like Jacob, rose in the night to sing psalms, recited in the morning the whole psalter in a cold stream, retired to desert places during Lent, living on roots, was con-crucified with Christ on Good Friday, watched before the tomb, and spent Easter in hilarity and joy. He converted more by his silence than his speech, caused a wolf and a stag to drag the plough, raised grain from a field sown with sand, kept the rain from wetting his garments, and performed other marvels which prove the faith or superstition of his biographers in the twelfth century. Jocelyn relates also, that Kentigern went seven times to Rome, and received sundry privileges and copies of the Bible from the Pope. There is, however, no trace of such visits in the works of Gregory I., who was more interested in the Saxon mission than the Scotch. Kentigern first established his episcopal chair in Holdelm (now Hoddam), afterwards in Glasghu (Glasgow). He met St. Columba, and exchanged with him his pastoral stave.76  He attained to the age of one hundred and eighty-five years, and died between A.D. 601 and 612 (probably 603).77  He is buried in the crypt of the cathedral of St. Mungo in Glasgow, the best preserved of mediaeval cathedrals in Scotland.

St. Cuthbert (d. March 20, 687), whose life has been written by Bede, prior of the famous monastery of Mailros (Melrose), afterwards bishop of Lindisfarne, and last a hermit, is another legendary saint of Scotland, and a number of churches are traced to him or bear his name.78

§ 18. St. Columba and the Monastery of Iona.

John Jamieson (D. D.): An Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona, and of their Settlements in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Edinb., 1811 (p. 417).

Montalembert: La Moines d’ Occident, Vol. III., pp. 99–332 (Paris, 1868).

The Duke of Argyll: Iona. Second ed., London, 1871 (149 p

*Adamnan: Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy, ed. by William Reeves (Canon of Armagh), Edinburgh, 1874. (Originally printed for the Irish Archaeolog. Society and for the Bannatyne Club, Dublin, 1856).

Skene: Celtic Scotland, II. 52 sqq. (Edinb., 1877). Comp. the Lit. in § 7.

Saint Columba or Columbcille, (died June 9, 597) is the real apostle of Scotland. He is better known to us than Ninian and Kentigern. The account of Adamnan (624–704), the ninth abbot of Hy, was written a century after Columba’s death from authentic records and oral traditions, although it is a panegyric rather than a history. Later biographers have romanized him like St. Patrick. He was descended from one of the reigning families of Ireland and British Dalriada, and was born at, Gartan in the county of Donegal about A.D. 521. He received in baptism the symbolical name Colum, or in Latin Columba (Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost), to which was afterwards added cille (or kill, i.e. "of the church," or "the dove of the cells," on account of his frequent attendance at public worship, or, more probably, for his being the founder of many churches.79  He entered the monastic seminary of Clonard, founded by St. Finnian, and afterwards another monastery near Dublin, and was ordained a priest. He planted the church at Derry in 545, the monastery of Darrow in 553, and other churches. He seems to have fondly clung all his life to his native Ireland, and to the convent of Derry. In one of his elegies, which were probably retouched by the patriotism of some later Irish bard, he sings:

"Were all the tributes of Scotia [i.e. Ireland] mine,

From its midland to its borders,

I would give all for one little cell

In my beautiful Derry.

For its peace and for its purity,

For the white angels that go

In crowds from one end to the other,

I love my beautiful Derry.

For its quietness and purity,

For heaven’s angels that come and go

Under every leaf of the oaks,

I love my beautiful Derry.

My Derry, my fair oak grove,

My dear little cell and dwelling,

O God, in the heavens above I

Let him who profanes it be cursed.

Beloved are Durrow and Derry,

Beloved is Raphoe the pure,

Beloved the fertile Drumhome,

Beloved are Sords and Kells!

But sweeter and fairer to me

The salt sea where the sea-gulls cry

When I come to Derry from far,

It is sweeter and dearer to me —

Sweeter to me."80

In 563, the forty-second year of his age, Columba prompted by a passion for travelling and a zeal for the spread of Christianity,81 sailed with twelve fellow-apostles to the West of Scotland, possibly on invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was related by blood. He was presented with the island of Hy, commonly called Iona,82 near the Western coast of Scotland about fifty miles West from Oban. It is an inhospitable island, three miles and a half long and a mile and a half broad, partly cultivated, partly covered with hill pasture, retired dells, morass and rocks, now in possession of the Duke of Argyll, numbering about three hundred Protestant inhabitants, an Established Presbyterian Church, and a Free Church. The neighboring island of Staffa, though smaller and uninhabited, is more interesting to the ordinary tourist, and its Fingal’s Cave is one of the most wonderful specimens of the architectural skill of nature; it looks like a Gothic cathedral, 66 feet high, 42 feet broad, and 227 feet long, consisting of majestic basalt columns, an arched roof, and an open portal towards the ocean, which dashes in and out in a constant succession of waves, sounding solemn anthems in this unique temple of nature. Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the "Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83

By the labors of Columba and his successors, Iona has become one of the most venerable and interesting spots in the history of Christian missions. It was a light-house in the darkness of heathenism. We can form no adequate conception of the self-denying zeal of those heroic missionaries of the extreme North, who, in a forbidding climate and exposed to robbers and wild beasts, devoted their lives to the conversion of savages. Columba and his friends left no monuments of stone and wood; nothing is shown but the spot on the South of the island where he landed, and the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his servant; his bones were removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was destroyed and the monks were killed by the wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth century. The remaining ruins of Iona—a cathedral, a chapel, a nunnery, a graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Norwegian and Irish kings, and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred and sixty that (according to a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation—are all of the Roman Catholic period which succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on its fame. During the middle ages Iona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated Dr. Johnson, in his Tour to the Hebrides, approached Iona, he felt his piety grow warmer. No friend of missions can visit that lonely spot, shrouded in almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope for the ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.84

The arrival of Columba at Iona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had their name from painting their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his disciples.85  He was involved in the wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a fair type of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race."  He had the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum."  He was manly, tall and handsome, incessantly active, and had a sonorous and far-reaching voice, rolling forth the Psalms of David, every syllable distinctly uttered. He could discern the signs of the weather. Adamnan ascribes to him an angelic countenance, a prophetic fore-knowledge and miracles as great as those performed by Christ, such as changing water into wine for the celebration of the eucharist, when no wine could be obtained, changing bitter fruit into sweet, drawing water from a rock, calming the storm at sea, and curing many diseases. His biography instead of giving solid facts, teems with fabulous legends, which are told with childlike credulity. O’Donnell’s biography goes still further. Even the pastoral staff of Columba, left accidentally upon the shore of Iona, was transported across the sea by his prayers to meet its disconsolate owner when he landed somewhere in Ireland.86

Columba died beside the altar in the church while engaged in his midnight devotions. Several poems are ascribed to him—one in praise of the natural beauties of his chosen island, and a monastic rule similar to that of St. Benedict; but the "regula ac praecepta" of Columba, of which Wilfrid spoke at the synod of Whitby, probably mean discipline or observance rather than a written rule.87

The church establishment of Columba at Iona belongs to the second or monastic period of the Irish church, of which it formed an integral part. It consisted of one hundred and fifty persons under the monastic rule. At the head of it stood a presbyter-abbot, who ruled over the whole province, and even the bishops, although the episcopal function of ordination was recognized.88  The monks were a family of brethren living in common. They were divided into three classes: the seniors, who attended to the religious services, instruction, and the transcribing of the Scriptures; the middle-aged, who were the working brethren, devoted to agriculture, the tending of the cattle, and domestic labor; and the youth, who were alumni under instruction. The dress consisted of a white tunica or under garment, and a camilla or outer garment and hood made of wool. Their food was bread, milk, eggs, fish, and on Sundays and festivals mutton or beef. The doctrinal views and ecclesiastical customs as to the observance of Easter and the tonsure were the same as among the Britons and the Irish in distinction from the Roman system introduced by Augustin among the Saxons.89

The monastery of Iona, says Bede, held for a long time the pre-eminence over the monasteries and churches of the Picts and Northern Scots. Columba’s successors, he adds, were distinguished for their continency, their love of God, and strict attention to their rules of discipline, although they followed "uncertain cycles in their computation of the great festival (Easter), because they were so far away from the rest of the world, and had none to supply them with the synodical decrees on the paschal observance; wherefore they only practised such works of piety and chastity as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical, and apostolical writings. This manner of keeping Easter continued among them for a hundred and fifty years, till the year of our Lord’s incarnation 715."90

Adamnan (d. 704), the ninth successor of Columba, in consequence of a visit to the Saxons, conformed his observance of Easter to the Roman Church; but his brethren refused to follow him in this change. After his death, the community of Iona became divided on the Easter question, until the Columban monks, who adhered to the old custom, were by royal command expelled (715). With this expulsion terminates the primacy of Iona in the kingdom of the Picts.

The monastic church was broken up or subordinated to the hierarchy of the secular clergy.

§ 19. The Culdees.

After the expulsion of the Columban monks from the kingdom of the Picts in the eighth century, the term Culdee or Ceile De, or Kaledei, first appears in history, and has given rise to much controversy and untenable theories.91  It is of doubtful origin, but probably means servants or worshippers of God.92  it was applied to anchorites, who, in entire seclusion from society, sought the perfection of sanctity. They succeeded the Columban monks. They afterwards associated themselves into communities of hermits, and were finally brought under canonical rule along with the secular clergy, until at length the name of Culdee became almost synonymous with that of secular canon.

The term Culdee has been improperly applied to the whole Keltic church, and a superior purity has been claimed for it.

There is no doubt that the Columban or the Keltic church of Scotland, as well as the early Irish and the early British churches, differed in many points from the mediaeval and modern church of Rome, and represent a simpler and yet a very active missionary type of Christianity.

The leading peculiarities of the ancient Keltic church, as distinct from the Roman, are:

1. Independence of the Pope. Iona was its Rome, and the Abbot of Iona, and afterwards of Dunkeld, though a mere Presbyter, ruled all Scotland.

2. Monasticism ruling supreme, but mixed with secular life, and not bound by vows of celibacy; while in the Roman church the monastic system was subordinated to the hierarchy of the secular clergy.

3. Bishops without dioceses and jurisdiction and succession.

4. Celebration of the time of Easter.

5. Form of the tonsure.

It has also been asserted, that the Kelts or Culdees were opposed to auricular confession, the worship of saints, and images, purgatory, transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, and that for this reason they were the forerunners of Protestantism.

But this inference is not warranted. Ignorance is one thing, and rejection of an error from superior knowledge is quite another thing. The difference is one of form rather than of spirit. Owing to its distance and isolation from the Continent, the Keltic church, while superior to the churches in Gaul and Italy—at least during the sixth and seventh centuries—in missionary zeal and success, was left behind them in other things, and adhered to a previous stage of development in truth and error. But the general character and tendency of both during that period were essentially different from the genius of Protestant Christianity. We find among the Kelts the same or even greater love for monasticism and asceticism the same superstitious belief in incredible miracles, the same veneration for relics (as the bones of Columba and Aidan, which for centuries were carried from place to place), the same scrupulous and narrow zeal for outward forms and ceremonies (as the observance of the mere time of Easter, and the mode of monastic tonsure), with the only difference that the Keltic church adhered to an older and more defective calendar, and to the semi-circular instead of the circular tonsure. There is not the least evidence that the Keltic church had a higher conception of Christian freedom, or of any positive distinctive principle of Protestantism, such as the absolute supremacy of the Bible in opposition to tradition, or justification by faith without works, or the universal priesthood of all believers.93

Considering, then, that the peculiarities of the Keltic church arose simply from its isolation of the main current of Christian history, the ultimate triumph of Rome, with all its incidental evils, was upon the whole a progress in the onward direction. Moreover, the Culdees degenerated into a state of indolence and stagnation during the darkness of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Danish invasion, with its devastating and disorganizing influences. We still find them in the eleventh century, and frequently at war with the Roman clergy about landed property, tithes and other matters of self-interest, but not on matters of doctrine, or Christian life. The old Culdee convents of St. Andrews Dunkeld, Dunblane and Brechin were turned into the bishop’s chapter with the right of electing the bishop. Married Culdees were gradually supplanted by Canons-Regular. They lingered longest in Brechin, but disappeared in the thirteenth century. The decline of the Culdees was the opportunity of Rome. The Saxon priests and monks, connected with the more civilized countries, were very active and aggressive, building cathedrals, monasteries, hospitals, and getting possession of the land.

§ 20. Extinction of the Keltic Church, and Triumph of Rome under King David I.

The turning-point in the history of the Scotch church is the reign of the devout Saxon queen St. Margaret, one of the best queens of Scotland (1070–1093). She exerted unbounded influence over her illiterate husband, Malcolm III., and her sons. She was very benevolent, self-denying, well versed in the Scriptures, zealous in reforming abuses, and given to excessive fasting, which undermined her constitution and hastened her death. "ln St. Margaret we have an embodiment of the spirit of her age. What ostentatious humility, what almsgiving, what prayers!  What piety, had it only been freed from the taint of superstition!  The Culdees were listless and lazy, while she was unwearied in doing good. The Culdees met her in disputation, but, being ignorant, they were foiled. Death could not contend with life. The Indian disappears before the advance of the white man. The Keltic Culdee disappeared before the footsteps of the Saxon priest."94

The change was effected by the same policy as that of the Norman kings towards Ireland. The church was placed upon a territorial in the place of a tribal basis, and a parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy was substituted for the old tribal churches with their monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy. Moreover the great religious orders of the Roman Church were introduced and founded great monasteries as centres of counter-influence. And lastly, the Culdees were converted from secular into regular Canons and thus absorbed into the Roman system. When Turgot was appointed bishop of St. Andrews, A.D. 1107 "the whole rights of the Keledei over the whole kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews."

From the time of Queen Margaret a stream of Saxons and Normans poured into Scotland, not as conquerors but as settlers, and acquired rapidly, sometimes by royal grant, sometimes by marriage, the most fertile districts from the Tweed to the Pentland Firth. From these settlers almost every noble family of Scotland traces its descent. They brought with them English civilization and religion.

The sons and successors of Margaret enriched the church by magnificent endowments. Alexander I. founded the bishoprics of Moray and Dunkeld. His younger brother, David I., the sixth son of Malcolm III., who married Maud, a grand-niece of William the Conqueror (1110) and ruled Scotland from 1124 to 1153, founded the bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, Caithness, and Brechin, and several monasteries and religious houses. The nobility followed his example of liberality to the church and the hierarchy so that in the course of a few centuries one half of the national wealth passed into the hands of the clergy, who were at the same time in possession of all the learning.

In the latter part of David’s reign an active crusade commenced against the Culdee establishments from St. Andrews to Iona, until the very name gradually disappeared; the last mention being of the year 1332, when the usual formula of their exclusion in the election of a bishop was repeated.

Thus the old Keltic Church came to an end, leaving no vestiges behind it, save here and there the roofless walls of what had been a church, and the numerous old burying-grounds to the use of which the people still cling with tenacity, and where occasionally an ancient Keltic cross tells of its former state. All else has disappeared; and the only records we have of their history are the names of the saints by whom they were founded preserved in old calendars, the fountains near the old churches bearing their name, the village fairs of immemorial antiquity held on their day, and here and there a few lay families holding a small portion of land, as hereditary custodiers of the pastoral staff, or other relic of the reputed founder of the church, with some small remains of its jurisdiction."95

II. THE CONVERSION OF FRANCE, GERMANY, AND ADJACENT COUNTRIES.

General Literature.

I. Germany Before Christianity.

Tacitus: Germania (cap. 2, 9, 11, 27, 39–45); Annal. (XIII. 57); Hist. IV. 64).

Jac. Grimm: Deutsche, Mythologie. Göttingen, 2nd ed. 1854, 2 vols.

A. F. Ozanam: Les Germains avant le christianisme. Par. 1847.

K. Simrock. Deutsche Mythologie. Bonn, 2nd ed. 1864.

A. Planck: Die Götter und der Gottesglaube der Deutschen. In "Jahrb. für Deutsche Theol.," 1866, No. 1.

II. The Christianization Of Germany.

F. W. Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Göttingen, 1846–48. 2 vols.

C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Geschichte der Einführung des Christenthums im südwestl. Deutschland. Tübingen 1837.

H. Rückert: Culturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes in der Zeit des Uebergangs aus dem Heidenthum. Leipz. 1853, 2 Vols.

W. Krafft: Kirchengeschichte der German. Völker. Berlin 1854. (first vol.)

Hiemer (R.C.): Einführung des Christenthums in Deutschen Landen. Schaffhausen 1857 sqq. 4 vols.

Count de Montalembert (R.C.): The Monks of the West from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. Edinb. and Lond. 1861 sqq. 7 vols.

I. Friedrich (R.C., Since 1870 Old Cath.): Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Regensb. 1866, 1869, 2 vols.

Charles Merivale: Conversion of the West. The Continental Teutons. London 1878. (Popular).

G. Körber: Die Ausbreitung des Christenthums im südlichen Baden. Heidelb. 1878.

R. Cruel: Geschichte der deutschen Predigt im Mittelalter. Detmold 1879. (Chs. I. and II.)

§ 21. Arian Christianity among the Goths and other German Tribes.

I. Editions of the remains of the Gothic Bible Version of Wulfila: by H. C. von der Gabelenz and J. Loebe, Leipz. 1836–46; Massmann, 1855–57; E. Bernhardt, 1875 (with the Greek text and notes); and Stamm, 7th ed. 1878, and in fac-simile by Uppström, 1854–1868. See also Ulphilae Opera, and Schaff, Compan. to Gr. Test., p. 150.

Ulphilae Opera (Versio Bibliorum Gothica), in Migne’s Patrolog., Tom. XVIII. pp. 462–1559 (with a Gothic glossary).

II. G. Waitz: Ueber das Leben und die Lehre des Ulfila. Hanover 1840.

W. Bessel: Das Leben des Ulfilas und die Bekehrung der Gothen zum Christenthum. Götting. 1860.

W. Krafft: l.c. I. 213–326; and De Fontibus Ulfilae Arianismi. 1860.

A. Helfferich: Der west-gothische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzergeschichte. Berlin 1860.

We now proceed to the conversion of the Continental Teutons, especially those of France and Germany.

The first wholesale conversions of the Germanic or Teutonic race to the Christian religion took place among the Goths in the time when Arianism was at the height of power in the East Roman empire. The chief agents were clerical and other captives of war whom the Goths in their raids carried with them from the provinces of the Roman empire and whom they learned to admire and love for their virtue and supposed miraculous power. Constantine the Great entered into friendly relations with them, and is reported by Eusebius and Socrates to have subjected them to the cross of Christ. It is certain that some ecclesiastical organization was effected at that time. Theophilus, a bishop of the Goths, is mentioned among the fathers of the Council of Nicaea, 325.

The real apostle of the Goths is Ulifilas,96 who was consecrated bishop in 348 at Constantinople, and died there in 381, aged seventy years. He invented the Gothic alphabet, and translated the Bible into Gothic, but was an Arian, or rather a semi-Arian, who regarded Christ as a secondary God and the Holy Spirit merely as a sanctifying power.97

Arianism spread with great rapidity among the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, and Vandals. This heretical form of Christianity, however, was more a matter of accident than preference and conviction among the Germans, and soon gave way to orthodoxy when they became acquainted with it. When Alaric, the famous king of the Visigoths, captured Rome (410), he treated the city with marked leniency, which Augustin justly traced to the influence of the Christian faith even in heretical form. The Vandals, the rudest among the Teutonic tribes, made an exception; they fiercely persecuted the orthodox Christians in North Africa (since 430) and desolated this once flourishing field of the Catholic Church, the scene of the immortal labors of St. Augustin. Their kingdom was destroyed under Justinian (534), but the Catholic Church never rose from its ruins, and the weak remnant was conquered by the sword of Islâm (670).

Chrysostom made a noble effort to convert the Eastern Goths from Arianism to Catholicity, but his mission ceased after his death (407).

The conversion of the Franks to Catholic christianity and various political circumstances led to the abandonment of Arianism among the other Germanic tribes. The Burgundians who spread from the Rhine to the Rhone and Saone, embraced Catholic Christianity in 517, and were incorporated into the French kingdom in 534. The Suevi who spread from Eastern Germany into France and Spain, embraced the Catholic faith in 550. The Visigoths in Spain, through their king, Reccared the Catholic, subscribed an orthodox creed at the third Council of Toledo, A.D. 589, but the last of the Gothic kings, Roderic, was conquered by the Saracens, breaking into Spain from Africa, in the bloody battle of Xeres de la Frontera, A.D. 711.

The last stronghold of Arianism were the Longobards or Lombards, who conquered Northern Italy (still called Lombardy) and at first persecuted the Catholics. They were converted to the orthodox faith by the wise influence of Pope Gregory I. (590616), and the Catholic queen Theodelinde (d. 625) whose husband Agilulf (590–616) remained Arian, but allowed his son Adelwald to be baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church. An Arian reaction followed, but Catholicism triumphed under Grimoald (662–671), and Liutprand (773–774). Towards the close of the eighth century, Pepin and Charlemagne, in the interest of France and the papacy, destroyed the independence of the Lombards after a duration of about two hundred years, and transferred the greater part of Italy to the Eastern empire and to the Pope. In these struggles the Popes, being then (as they have been ever since) opposed from hierarchical interest to the political unity of Italy, aided the Franks and reaped the benefit.

§ 22. Conversion of Clovis and the Franks.

Gregorius Turonensis (d. 595): Historia Francorum Eccles. (till A..D. 591).

J. W. Löbell: Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit, Leipz. 1839.

A. Thierry: Recits des temps Merovingiens. Par. 1842, 2 vols.

F. W. Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Gött. 1846, I. 258–278.

Kornhack: Geschichte der Franken unter den Merovingern. Greifsw. 1863.

Montalembert, l.c. II. 219 sqq.

Comp. also Henri Martin: Histoire de France; Sir James Stephen: Lectures on the History of France (Lond. 1859); Guizot: Histoire de la civilization en France (1830 sqq.), and his Histoire de France, 1870.

The Salian Franks were the first among the Teutonic tribes which were converted to catholic or orthodox Christianity. Hence the sovereign of France is styled by the Popes "the oldest son of the church," and Rheims, where Clovis was baptized, is the holy city where most of the French kings down to Charles X. (1824) were consecrated.98  The conversion of the Franks prepared the way for the downfall of the Arian heresy among the other Germanic nations, and for the triumph of the papacy in the German empire under Charlemagne.

The old Roman civilization of Gaul, though nominally Christian, was in the last stage of consumption when the German barbarians invaded the soil and introduced fresh blood. Several savage tribes, even the Huns, passed through Gaul like a tempest, leaving desolation behind them, but the Franks settled there and changed Gaul into France, as the Anglo-Saxons changed Britain into England. They conquered the Gallo-Romans, cruelly spoiled and almost exterminated them in the North-Eastern districts. Before they accepted the Christianity of the conquered race, they learned their vices. "The greatest evil of barbarian government," says Henri Martin,99 "was perhaps the influence of the greedy and corrupt Romans who insinuated themselves into the confidence of their new masters."  To these degenerate Christians Montalembert traces the arts of oppression and the refinements of debauchery and perfidy which the heathen Germans added to their native brutality. "The barbarians derived no advantage from their contact with the Roman world, depraved as it was under the empire. They brought with them manly virtues of which the conquered race had lost even the recollection; but they borrowed, at the same time, abject and contagious vices, of which the Germanic world had no conception. They found Christianity there; but before they yielded to its beneficent influence, they had time to plunge into all the baseness and debauchery, of a civilization corrupted long before it was vanquished. The patriarchal system of government which characterized the ancient Germans, in their relations with their children and slaves as well as with their chiefs, fell into ruin in contact with that contagious depravity."100

The conversion of the Salian Franks took place under the lead of their victorious king Chlodwig or Clovis (Ludovicus, Louis), the son of Childeric and grandson of Merovig (hence the name of Merovingians). He ruled from the year 481 to his death in 511. With him begins the history not only of the French empire, its government and laws, but also of the French nation, its religion and moral habits. He married a Christian princess, Chlotilda, a daughter of the king of the Burgundians (493), and allowed his child to be baptized. Before the critical battle at Tolbiac101 near Cologne against the invasion of the Allemanni, he prayed to Jesus Christ for aid after having first called upon his own gods, and promised, in case of victory, to submit to baptism together with his warriors. After the victory he was instructed by Bishop Remigius of Rheims. When he heard the story of the crucifixion of Christ, he exclaimed: "Would I had been there with my valiant Franks to avenge him!"  On Christmas, in the year 496, he descended before the cathedral of Rheims into the baptismal basin, and three thousand of his warriors followed him as into the joys of paradise. "When they arose from the waters, as Christian disciples, one might have seen fourteen centuries of empire rising with them; the whole array of chivalry, the long series of the crusades, the deep philosophy of the schools, in one word all the heroism, all the liberty, all the learning of the later ages. A great nation was commencing its career in the world—that nation was the Franks."102

But the change of religion had little or no effect on the character of Clovis and his descendants, whose history is tarnished with atrocious crimes. The Merovingians, half tigers, half lambs, passed with astonishing rapidity from horrible massacres to passionate demonstrations of contrition, and from the confessional back again to the excesses of their native cruelty. The crimes of Clovis are honestly told by such saintly biographers as Gregory of Tours and Hincmar, who feel no need of any excuse for him in view of his services to religion. St. Remigius even advised the war of conquest against the Visigoths, because they were Arians.

"The Franks," says a distinguished Catholic Frenchman,103 "were sad Christians. While they respected the freedom of the Catholic faith, and made external profession of it, they violated without scruple all its precepts, and at the same time the simplest laws of humanity. After having prostrated themselves before the tomb of some holy martyr or confessor; after having distinguished themselves by the choice of an irreproachable bishop; after having listened respectfully to the voice of a pontiff or monk, we see them, sometimes in outbreaks of fury, sometimes by cold-blooded cruelties, give full course to the evil instincts of their savage nature. Their incredible perversity was most apparent in the domestic tragedies, the fratricidal executions and assassinations, of which Clovis gave the first example, and which marked the history of his son and grandson with an ineffaceable stain. Polygamy and perjury mingled in their daily life with a semi-pagan superstition, and in reading these bloody biographies, scarcely lightened by some transient gleams of faith or humility, it is difficult to believe that, in embracing Christianity, they gave up a single pagan vice or adopted a single Christian virtue.

"It was against this barbarity of the soul, far more alarming than grossness and violence of manners, that the Church triumphantly struggled. From the midst of these frightful disorders, of this double current of corruption and ferocity, the pure and resplendent light of Christian sanctity was about to rise. But the secular clergy, itself tainted by the general demoralization of the two races, was not sufficient for this task. They needed the powerful and soon preponderating assistance of the monastic Army. It did not fail: the church and France owe to it the decisive victory of Christian civilization over a race much more difficult to subdue than the degenerate subjects of Rome or Byzantium. While the Franks, coming from the North, completed the subjugation of Gaul, the Benedictines were about to approach from the South, and super-impose a pacific and beneficent dominion upon the Germanic barbarian conquest. The junction and union of these forces, so unequal in their civilizing power, were destined to exercise a sovereign influence over the future of our country."

Among these Benedictine monks, St. Maurus occupies the most prominent place. He left Monte Casino before the death of St. Benedict (about 540), with four companions, crossed the Alps, founded Glanfeuil on the Loire, the first Benedictine monastery in France, and gave his name to that noble band of scholars who, more than a thousand years after, enriched the church with the best editions of the fathers and other works of sacred learning.104  He had an interview with King Theodebert (the grandson of Clovis), was treated with great reverence and received from him a large donation of crown lands. Monastic establishments soon multiplied and contributed greatly to the civilization of France.105

§ 23. Columbanus and the Irish Missionaries on the Continent.

I. Sources.

The works of Columbanus in Patrick Fleming’s Collectanea sacra (Lovanii, 1667), and in Migne: Patrolog., Tom. 87, pp. 1013–1055. His life by Jonas in the Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened., Tom. II., Sec. II., 2–26. (Also in Fleming’s Coll.)

II. Works.

Lanigan (R. K.): Eccles. Hist. of Ireland (1829), II. 263 sqq.

Montalembert: Monks of the West, II. 397 sqq.

Ph. Heber: Die vorkarolingischen Glaubenshelden am Rhein, 1867.

Lütolf (R.C.): Die Glaubensboten der Schweiz vor St. Gallus. Luzern, 1871.

Ebrard: Die iroschottische Missionskirche (1873), pp. 25–31; 284–340.

Killen: Ecclesiast. Hist. of Ireland (1875), I. 41 sqq.

W. Smith and H. Wace: Dict. Christ. Biography (1877), I. 605–607.

G. Hertel: Ueber des heil. Columba Leben und Wirken, besonders seine Klosterregel. In the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1875, p. 396; and another article in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.," 1879, p. 145.

While the Latin Benedictine monks worked their way up from the South towards the heart of France, Keltic missionaries carried their independent Christianity from the West to the North of France, the banks of the Rhine, Switzerland and Lombardy; but they were counteracted by Roman missionaries, who at last secured the control over France and Germany as well as over the British Isles.

St. Columbanus106 is the pioneer of the Irish missionaries to the Continent. His life has been written with great minuteness by Jonas, a monk of his monastery at Bobbio. He was born in Leinster, A.D. 543, in which year St. Benedict, his celebrated monastic predecessor, died at Monte Casino, and was trained in the monastery of Bangor, on the coast of Down, under the direction of St. Comgall. Filled with missionary zeal, he left his native land with twelve companions, and crossed over the sea to Gaul in 590,107 or in 585,108 several years before Augustin landed in England. He found the country desolated by war; Christian virtue and discipline were almost extinct. He travelled for several years, preaching and giving an example of humility and charity. He lived for whole weeks without other food than herbs and wild berries. He liked best the solitude of the woods and eaves, where even the animals obeyed his voice and received his caresses. In Burgundy he was kindly received by King Gontran, one of the grandsons of Clovis; refused the offer of wealth, and chose a quiet retreat in the Vosges mountains, first in a ruined Roman fort at Annegray, and afterwards at Luxeuil (Luxovium). Here he established a celebrated monastery on the confines of Burgundy and Austrasia. A similar institution he founded at Fontaines. Several hundred disciples gathered around him. Luxeuil became the monastic capital of Gaul, a nursery of bishops and saints, and the mother of similar institutions.

Columbanus drew up a monastic rule, which in all essential points resembles the more famous rule of St. Benedict, but is shorter and more severe. It divides the time of the monks between ascetic exercises and useful agricultural labor, and enjoins absolute obedience on severe penalties. It was afterwards superseded by the Benedictine rule, which had the advantage of the papal sanction and patronage.109

The life of Columbanus in France was embittered and his authority weakened by his controversy with the French clergy and the court of Burgundy. He adhered tenaciously to the Irish usage of computing Easter, the Irish tonsure and costume. Besides, his extreme severity of life was a standing rebuke of the worldly priesthood and dissolute court. He was summoned before a synod in 602 or 603, and defended himself in a letter with great freedom and eloquence, and with a singular mixture of humility and pride. He calls himself (like St. Patrick) "Columbanus, a sinner," but speaks with an air of authority. He pleads that he is not the originator of those ritual differences, that he came to France, a poor stranger, for the cause of Christ, and asks nothing but to be permitted to live in silence in the depth of the forests near the bones of his seventeen brethren, whom he had already seen die. "Ah! let us live with you in this Gaul, where we now are, since we are destined to live with each other in heaven, if we are found worthy to enter there."  The letter is mixed with rebukes of the bishops, calculations of Easter and an array of Scripture quotations. At the same time he wrote several letters to Pope Gregory I., one of which only is preserved in the writings of Columbanus. There is no record of the action of the Synod on this controversy, nor of any answer of the Pope.

The conflict with the court of Burgundy is highly honorable to Columbanus, and resulted in his banishment. He reproved by word and writing the tyranny of queen Brunehild (or Brunehauld) and the profligacy of her grandson Theodoric (or Thierry II.); he refused to bless his illegitimate children and even threatened to excommunicate the young king. He could not be silenced by flattery and gifts, and was first sent as a prisoner to Besançon, and then expelled from the kingdom in 610.110

But this persecution extended his usefulness. We find him next, with his Irish friends who accompanied him, on the lake of Zurich, then in Bregenz (Bregentium) on the lake of Constance, planting the seeds of Christianity in those charming regions of German Switzerland. His preaching was accompanied by burning the heathen idols. Leaving his disciple St. Gall at Bregenz, he crossed the Alps to Lombardy, and founded a famous monastery at Bobbio. He manfully fought there the Arian heresy, but in a letter to Boniface IV. he defended the cause of Nestorius, as condemned by the Fifth General Council of 553, and called upon the Pope to vindicate the church of Rome against the charge of heresy. He speaks very boldly to the Pope, but acknowledges Rome to be "the head of the churches of the whole world, excepting only the singular prerogative of the place of the Lord’s resurrection" (Jerusalem).111  He died in Bobbio, Nov. 21, 615. The poetry of grateful love and superstitious faith has adorned his simple life with various miracles.

Columbanus was a man of considerable learning for his age. He seems to have had even some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His chief works are his Regula Monastica, in ten short chapters; seventeen Discourses; his Epistles to the Gallic Synod on the paschal controversy, to Gregory I., and to Boniface IV.; and a few poems. The following characteristic specimen of his ascetic view of life is from one of the discourses: "O mortal life!  how many hast thou deceived, seduced, and blinded!  Thou fliest and art nothing; thou appearest and art but a shade; thou risest and art but a vapor; thou fliest every day, and every day thou comest; thou fliest in coming, and comest in flying, the same at the point of departure, different at the end; sweet to the foolish, bitter to the wise. Those who love thee know thee not, and those only know thee who despise thee. What art thou, then, O human life?  Thou art the way of mortals, and not their life. Thou beginnest in sin and endest in death. Thou art then the way of life and not life itself. Thou art only a road, and an unequal road, long for some, short for others; wide for these, narrow for those; joyous for some, sad for others, but for all equally rapid and without return. It is necessary, then, O miserable human life! to fathom thee, to question thee, but not to trust in thee. We must traverse thee without dwelling in thee—no one dwells upon a great road; we but march over it, to reach the country beyond."112

Several of the disciples of Columbanus labored in eastern Helvetia and Rhaetia.

Sigisbert separated from him at the foot of the St. Gothard, crossed eastward over the Oberalp to the source of the Rhine, and laid the foundation of the monastery of Dissentis in the Grisons, which lasts to this day.

St. Gall (Gallus), the most celebrated of the pupils of Columbanus, remained in Switzerland, and became the father of the monastery and city called after him, on the banks of the river Steinach. He declined the bishopric of Constanz. His double struggle against the forces of nature and the gods of heathenism has been embellished with marvelous traits by the legendary poetry of the middle ages.113  When he died, ninety-five years old, A.D. 640, the whole surrounding country of the Allemanni was nominally Christianized. The monastery of St. Gall became one of the most celebrated schools of learning in Switzerland and Germany, where Irish and other missionaries learned German and prepared themselves for evangelistic work in Switzerland and Southern Germany. There Notker Balbulus, the abbot (died 912), gave a lasting impulse to sacred poetry and music, as the inventor or chief promoter of the mediaeval Laudes or Prosae, among which the famous "Media vita in morte sumus" still repeats in various tongues its solemn funeral warning throughout Christendom.

Fridold or Fridolin, who probably came from Scotland, preached the gospel to the Allemanni in South Germany. But his life is involved in great obscurity, and assigned by some to the time of Clovis I. (481–511), by others more probably to that of Clovis II. (638–656).

Kilian or Kyllina, of a noble Irish family, is said to have been the apostle of Franconia and the first bishop of Würzburg in the seventh century.

§ 24. German Missionaries before Boniface.

England derived its Anglo-Saxon population from Germany in the fifth century, and in return gave to Germany in the eighth century the Christian religion with a strong infusion of popery. Germany afterwards shook off the yoke of popery, and gave to England the Protestant Reformation. In the seventeenth century, England produced Deism, which was the first act of modern unbelief, and the forerunner of German Rationalism. The revival of evangelical theology and religion which followed in both countries, established new points of contact between these cognate races, which meet again on common ground in the Western hemisphere to commingle in the American nationality.

The conversion of Germany to Christianity and to Romanism was, like that of England, the slow work of several centuries. It was accomplished by missionaries of different nationalities, French, Scotch-Irish, English, and Greek. It began at the close of the second century, when Irenaeus spoke of Christian congregations in the two Germanies,114 i.e. Germania prima and secunda, on the upper and lower Rhine; and it was substantially completed in the age of Charlemagne in the eighth century. But nearly the entire North-Eastern part of Germany, which was inhabited mostly by Slavonic tribes, remained heathen till the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

We must distinguish especially three stages: 1) the preparatory labors of Italian, French, and Scotch-Irish missionaries; 2) the consolidating romanizing work of Boniface of England and his successors; 3) the forcible military conversion of the Saxons under Charlemagne. The fourth and last missionary stage, the conversion of the Prussians and Slavonic races in North-Eastern Germany, belongs to the next period.

The light of Christianity came to Germany first from the Roman empire in the Roman colonies on the Rhine. At the council of Arles in 314, there was a bishop Maternus of Cologne with his deacon, Macrinus, and a bishop of Treves by the name of Agröcius.

In the fifth century the mysterious Severinus from the East appeared among the savages on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria as an angel of mercy, walking bare-footed in mid-winter, redeeming prisoners of war, bringing food and clothing with the comfort of the Gospel to the poor and unfortunate, and won by his self-denying labors universal esteem. French monks and hermits left traces of their work at St. Goar, St. Elig, Wulfach, and other places on the charming banks of the Rhine. The efficient labors of Columbanus and his Irish companions and pupils extended from the Vosges to South Germany and Eastern Switzerland. Willebrord, an Anglo-Saxon, brought up in an Irish convent, left with twelve brethren for Holland (690) became the Apostle of the Friesians, and was consecrated by the Pope the first bishop of Utrecht (Trajectum), under the name of Clemens. He developed an extensive activity of nearly fifty years till his death (739).

When Boniface arrived in Germany he found nearly in all parts which he visited, especially in Bavaria and Thuringia, missionaries and bishops independent of Rome, and his object was fully as much to romanize this earlier Christianity, as to convert the heathen. He transferred the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon mission of Rome and the older Keltic Christianity of Patrick and Columba and their successors from England to German soil, and repeated the role of Augustin of Canterbury. The old Easter controversy disappears after Columbanus, and the chief objects of dispute were freedom from popery and clerical marriage. In both respects, Boniface succeeded, after a hard struggle, in romanizing Germany.

The leaders of the opposition to Rome and to Bonifacius among his predecessors and contemporaries were Adelbert and Clemens. We know them only from the letters of Boniface, which represent them in a very, unfavorable light. Adelbert, or Aldebert (Eldebert), was a Gaul by nation, and perhaps bishop of Soissons; at all events he labored on the French side of the Rhine, had received episcopal ordination, and enjoyed great popularity from his preaching, being regarded as an apostle, a patron, and a worker of miracles. According to Boniface, he was a second Simon Magus, or immoral impostor, who deceived the people by false miracles and relics, claimed equal rank with the apostles, set up crosses and oratories in the fields, consecrated buildings in his own name, led women astray, and boasted to have relics better than those of Rome, and brought to him by an angel from the ends of the earth. Clemens was a Scotchman (Irishman), and labored in East Franconia. He opposed ecclesiastical traditions and clerical celibacy, and had two sons. He held marriage with a brother’s widow to be valid, and had peculiar views of divine predestination and Christ’s descent into Hades. Aldebert and Clemens were condemned without a hearing, and excommunicated as heretics and seducers of the people, by a provincial Synod of Soissons, A.D. 744, and again in a Synod of Rome, 745, by Pope Zacharias, who confirmed the decision of Boniface. Aldebert was at last imprisoned in the monastery of Fulda, and killed by shepherds after escaping from prison. Clemens disappeared.115

§ 25. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany.

I. Bonifacius: Epistolae et Sermones, first ed. by Serrarius, Mogunt. 1605, then by Würdtwein, 1790, by Giles, 1842, and in Migne’s Patrol. Tom, 89, pp. 593–801 (together with Vitae, etc.). Jaffe: Monumenta Moguntina. Berol. 1866.

II. Biographies of Bonifacius. The oldest by Willibald, his pupil and companion (in Pertz, Monum. II. 33, and in Migne, l.c. p. 603); by Othlo, a German Benedictine monk of the eleventh cent. (in Migne, p. 634); Letzner (1602); Löffler (1812); Seiters (1845); Cox (1853); J. P. Müller (1870); Hope (1872); Aug. Werner Bonifacius und die Romanisirung Von Mitteleuropa. Leipz., 1875;  Pfahler(Regensb. 1880); Otto Fischer (Leipz. 1881); Ebrard: Bonif. der Zerstörer des columbanischen Kirchenthums auf dem Festlande (Gütersloh, 1882; against Fischer and very unjust to B.; see against it Zöpffel in the "Theol. Lit. Zeitg," 1882, No. 22). Cf. the respective sections in Neander, Gfrörer, Rettberg (II. 307 sqq.)

On the Councils of Bonif see Hefele: Conciliengeschichte, III. 458.

Boniface or Winfried116 surpassed all his predecessors on the German mission-field by the extent and result of his labors, and acquired the name of the Apostle of Germany. He was born about 680 from a noble family, at Kirton in Wessex the last stronghold of paganism among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. He was brought up in the convent of Nutsal near Winchester, and ordained priest at the age of thirty. He felt it his duty, to christianize those countries from which his Anglo-Saxon forefathers had emigrated. It was a formidable task, requiring a heroic courage and indomitable perseverance.

He sacrificed his splendid prospects at home, crossed the channel, and began his missionary career with two or three companions among the Friesians in the neighborhood of Utrecht in Holland (715). His first attempt was a failure. Ratbod, the king of Friesland, was at war with Charles Martel, and devastated the churches and monasteries which had been founded by the Franks, and by Willibrord.

But far from being discouraged, he was only stimulated to greater exertion. After a brief sojourn in England, where he was offered the dignity of abbot of his convent, he left again his native land, and this time forever. He made a pilgrimage to Rome, was cordially welcomed by Pope Gregory II. and received a general commission to Christianize and romanize central Europe (718). Recrossing the Alps, he visited Bavaria and Thuringia, which had been evangelized in part by the disciples of Columban, but he was coldly received because he represented their Christianity as insufficient, and required submission to Rome. He turned his steps again to Friesland where order had been restored, and assisted Willibrord, archbishop of Utrecht, for three years. In 722 he returned to Thuringia in the wake of Charles Martel’s victorious army and preached to the heathen in Hesse who lived between the Franks and the Saxons, between the middle Rhine and the Elbe. He founded a convent at Amanaburg (Amöneburg) on the river Ohm.

In 723 he paid, on invitation, a second visit to Rome, and was consecrated by Gregory II. as a missionary bishop without a diocese (episcopus regionarius). He bound himself on the grave of St. Peter with the most stringent oath of fealty to the Pope similar to that which was imposed on the Italian or suburban bishops.117

From this time his work assumed a more systematic character in the closest contact with Rome as the centre of Christendom. Fortified with letters of commendation, he attached himself for a short time to the court of Charles Martel, who pushed his schemes of conquest towards the Hessians. Aided by this secular help and the Pope’s spiritual authority, he made rapid progress. By a master stroke of missionary policy he laid the axe to the root of Teutonic heathenism; with his own hand, in the presence of a vast assembly, he cut down the sacred and inviolable oak of the Thunder-God at Geismar (not far from Fritzlar), and built with the planks an oratory or church of St. Peter. His biographer, Willibald, adds that a sudden storm from heaven came to his aid and split the oak in four pieces of equal length. This practical sermon was the death and burial of German mythology. He received from time to time supplies of books, monks and nuns from England. The whole church of England took a deep interest in his work, as we learn from his correspondence. He founded monastic colonies near Erfurt, Fritzlar, Ohrdruf, Bischofsheim, and Homburg. The victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens at Tours (732) checked the westward progress of Islâm and insured the triumph of Christianity in central Europe.

Boniface was raised to the dignity of archbishop (without a see) and papal legate by the new Pope Gregory III. (732), and thus enabled to coerce the refractory bishops.

In 738 he made his third and last pilgrimage to Rome with a great retinue of monks and converts, and received authority to call a synod of bishops in Bavaria and Allemannia. On his return he founded, in concert with Duke Odilo, four Bavarian bishoprics at Salzburg, Freising, Passau, and Ratisbon or Regensburg (739). To these he added in central Germany the sees of Würzburg, Buraburg (near Fritzlar), Erfurt, Eichstädt (742). He held several synods in Mainz and elsewhere for the organization of the churches and the exercise of discipline. The number of his baptized converts till 739 is said to have amounted to many thousands.

In 743 he was installed Archbishop of Mainz or Mayence (Moguntum) in the place of bishop Gervillius (Gewielieb) who was deposed for indulging in sporting propensities and for homicide in battle. His diocese extended from Cologne to Strasburg and even to Coire. He would have preferred Cologne, but the clergy there feared his disciplinary severity. He aided the sons of Charles Martel in reducing the Gallic clergy to obedience, exterminating the Keltic element, and consolidating the union with Rome.

In 744, in a council at Soissons, where twenty-three bishops were present, his most energetic opponents were condemned. In the same year, in the very heart of Germany, he laid the foundation of Fulda, the greatest of his monasteries, which became the Monte Casino of Germany.

In 753 he named Lull or Lullus his successor at Mainz. Laying aside his dignities, he became once more an humble missionary, and returned with about fifty devoted followers to the field of the baffled labors of his youth among the Friesians, where a reaction in favor of heathenism had taken place since the death of Willibrord. He planted his tents on the banks of the river Borne near Dockum (between Franecker and Groningen), waiting for a large number of converts to be confirmed. But, instead of that, he was assailed and slain, with his companions, by armed pagans. He met the martyr’s death with calmness and resignation, June 5, 754 or 755. His bones were deposited first at Utrecht, then at Mainz, and at last in Fulda. Soon after his death, an English Synod chose him, together with Pope Gregory and Augustin, patron of the English church. In 1875 Pope Pius IX. directed the Catholics of Germany and England to invoke especially the aid of St. Boniface in the distress of modern times.

The works of Boniface are epistles and sermons. The former refer to his missionary labors and policy, the latter exhibit his theological views and practical piety. Fifteen short sermons are preserved, addressed not to heathen, but to Christian converts; they reveal therefore not so much his missionary as his edifying activity. They are without Scripture text, and are either festal discourses explaining the history of salvation, especially the fall and redemption of man, or catechetical expositions of Christian doctrine and duty. We give as a characteristic specimen of the latter, the fifteenth sermon, on the renunciation of the devil in baptism:

Sermon XV.

"I. Listen, my brethren, and consider well what you have solemnly renounced in your baptism. You have renounced the devil and all his works, and all his pomp. But what are the works of the devil?  They are pride, idolatry, envy, murder, calumny, lying, perjury, hatred, fornication, adultery, every kind of lewdness, theft, false witness, robbery, gluttony, drunkenness, Slander, fight, malice, philters, incantations, lots, belief in witches and were-wolves, abortion, disobedience to the Master, amulets. These and other such evil things are the works of the devil, all of which you have forsworn by your baptism, as the apostle says: Whosoever doeth such things deserves death, and shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. But as we believe that, by the mercy of God, you will renounce all these things, with heart and hand, in order to become fit for grace, I admonish you, my dearest brethren, to remember what you have promised Almighty God.

II. For, first, you have promised to believe in Almighty God, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, one almighty God in perfect trinity.

III. And these are the commandments which you shall keep and fulfil: to love God, whom you profess, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourselves; for on these commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. Be patient, have mercy, be benevolent, chaste, pure. Teach your sons to fear God; teach your whole family to do so. Make peace where you go, and let him who sits in court; give a just verdict and take no presents, for presents make even a wise man blind.

IV. Keep the Sabbath and go to church-to pray, but not to prattle. Give alms according to your power, for alms extinguish sins as water does fire. Show hospitality to travelers, visit the sick, take care of widows and orphans, pay your tithes to the church, and do to nobody what you would not have done to yourself. Fear God above all. Let the servants be obedient to their masters, and the masters just to their servants. Cling to the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, and communicate them to your own children and to those whose baptismal sponsors you are. Keep the fast, love what is right, stand up against the devil, and partake from time to time of the Lord’s Supper. Such are the works which God commands you to do and fulfil.

V. Believe in the advent of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the judgment of all men. For then the impious shall be separated from the just, the one for the everlasting fire, the others for the eternal life. Then begins a life with God without death, a light without shadows, a health without sickness, a plenty without hunger, a happiness without fear, a joy with no misgivings. Then comes the eternal glory, in which the just shall shine like suns, for no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, no heart has ever dreamed, of all that which God has prepared for those whom he loves.

VI. I also remind you, my beloved brethren, that the birth-day of our Lord is approaching, in order that you may abstain from all that is worldly or lewd or impure or bad. Spit out all malice and hatred and envy; it is poison to your heart. Keep chaste even with respect to your own wives. Clothe yourselves with good works. Give alms to the poor who belong to Christ; invite them often to your feasts. Keep peace with all, and make peace between those who are at discord. If, with the aid of Christ, you will truly fulfil these commands, then in this life you can with confidence approach the altar of God, and in the next you shall partake of the everlasting bliss."118

Bonifacius combined the zeal and devotion of a missionary with worldly prudence and a rare genius for organization and administration. He was no profound scholar, but a practical statesman and a strict disciplinarian. He was not a theologian, but an ecclesiastic, and would have made a good Pope. He selected the best situations for his bishoprics and monasteries, and his far-sighted policy has been confirmed by history. He was a man of unblemished character and untiring energy. He was incessantly active, preaching, traveling, presiding over Synods, deciding perplexing questions about heathen customs and trivial ceremonies. He wrought no miracles, such as were usually expected from a missionary in those days. His disciple and biographer apologizes for this defect, and appeals as an offset to the invisible cures of souls which he performed.119

The weak spot in his character is the bigotry and intolerance which he displayed in his controversy with the independent missionaries of the French and Scotch-Irish schools who had done the pioneer work before him. He reaped the fruits of their labors, and destroyed their further usefulness, which he might have secured by a liberal Christian policy. He hated every feature of individuality and national independence in matters of the church. To him true Christianity was identical with Romanism, and he made Germany as loyal to the Pope as was his native England. He served under four Popes, Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen, and they could not have had a more devoted and faithful agent. Those who labored without papal authority were to him dangerous hirelings, thieves and robbers who climbed up some other way. He denounced them as false prophets, seducers of the people, idolaters and adulterers (because they were married and defended clerical marriage).120  He encountered from them a most determined opposition, especially in Bavaria. In connection with his servile Romanism is his pedantic legalism and ceremonialism. His epistles and sermons show a considerable knowledge of the Bible, but also a contracted legalistic spirit. He has much to say about matters of outward conformity to Roman authority and usages and about small questions of casuistry, such as whether it was right to eat horse flesh, rabbits, storks, meat offered to idols, to marry a widow after standing god-father to her son, how often the sign of the cross should be made in preaching. In his strength and his weakness, his loyalty, to Rome, and in the importance of the work he accomplished, he resembled Augustin, the Roman apostle of his Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Boniface succeeded by indomitable perseverance, and his work survived him. This must be his vindication. In judging of him we should remember that the controversy between him and his French and Scotch-Irish opponents was not a controversy between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism (which was not yet born), but between organized Catholicism or Romanism and independent Catholicism. Mediaeval Christianity was very weak, and required for its self-preservation a strong central power and legal discipline. It is doubtful whether in the barbarous condition of those times, and amid the commotions of almost constant civil wars, the independent and scattered labors of the anti-Roman missionaries could have survived as well and made as strong an impression upon the German nation as a consolidated Christianity with a common centre of unity, and authority.

Roman unity was better than undisciplined independency, but it was itself only a preparatory school for the self-governing freedom of manhood.

After Boniface had nearly completed his work, a political revolution took place in France which gave it outward support. Pepin, the major domus of the corrupt Merovingian dynasty, overthrew it with the aid of Pope Zacharias, who for his conquest of the troublesome Lombards rewarded him with the royal crown of France (753). Fifty years afterwards this political alliance of France and Germany with the Italian papacy was completed by Charlemagne and Leo III., and lasted for many centuries. Rome had the enchantment of distance, the prestige of power and culture, and promised to furnish the strongest support to new and weak churches. Rome was also the connecting link between mediaeval and ancient civilization, and transmitted to the barbarian races the treasures of classical literature which in due time led to the revival of letters and to the Protestant Reformation.

§ 26. The Pupils of Boniface. Willibald, Gregory of Utrecht, Sturm of Fulda.

Boniface left behind him a number of devoted disciples who carried on his work.

Among these we mention St. Willibald, the first bishop of Eichstädt. He was born about A.D. 700 from a noble Anglo-Saxon family and a near relative of Boniface. In his early manhood he made a pilgrimage to Rome and to the Holy Land as far as Damascus, spent several years among the Benedictines in Monte Casino, met Boniface in Rome, joined him in Germany (A.D. 740) and became bishop of Eichstädt in Bavaria in 742. He directed his attention chiefly to the founding of monasteries after the Benedictine rule. He called to his side his brother Wunnebald, his sister Walpurgis, and other helpers from England. He died July 7, 781 or 787. He is considered by some as the author of the biography of Boniface; but it was probably the work of another Willibald, a presbyter of Mainz.

Gregory, Abbot of Utrecht, was related to the royal house of the Merovingians, educated at the court, converted in his fifteenth year by a sermon of Boniface, and accompanied him on his journeys. After the death of Boniface he superintended the mission among the Friesians, but declined the episcopal dignity. In his old age he became lame, and was carried by his pupils to wherever his presence was desired. He died in 781, seventy-three years old.

Sturm, the first Abbot of Fulda (710 to Dec. 17, 779), was of a noble Bavarian family and educated by Boniface. With his approval he passed with two companions through the dense beech forests of Hesse in pursuit of a proper place for a monastery. Singing psalms, he rode on an ass, cutting a way through the thicket inhabited by wild beasts; at night after saying his prayers and making the sign of the cross he slept on the bare ground under the canopy of heaven till sunrise. He met no human being except a troupe of heathen slaves who bathed in the river Fulda, and afterwards a man with a horse who was well acquainted with the country. He found at last a suitable place, and took solemn possession of it in 744, after it was presented to him for a monastery by Karloman at the request of Boniface, who joined him there with a large number of monks, and often resorted to this his favorite monastery. "In a vast solitude," he wrote to Pope Zacharias in 751, "among the tribes entrusted to my preaching, there is a place where I erected a convent and peopled it with monks who live according to the rule of St. Benedict in strict abstinence, without flesh and wine, without intoxicating drink and slaves, earning their living with their own hands. This spot I have rightfully secured from pious men, especially from Karloman, the late prince of the Franks, and dedicated to the Saviour. There I will occasionally rest my weary limbs, and repose in death, continuing faithful to the Roman Church and to the people to which I was sent?"121

Fulda received special privileges from Pope Zacharias and his successors,122 and became a centre of German Christianity and civilization from which proceeded the clearing of the forests, the cultivation of the soil, and the education of youths. The number of Benedictine monks was increased by large re-enforcements from Monte Casino, after an Italian journey of Sturm in 747. The later years of his life were disturbed by a controversy with Lullus of Mainz about the bones of Boniface after his martyrdom (755) and by calumniations of three monks who brought upon him the displeasure of King Pepin. He was, however, reinstated in his dignity and received the remains of his beloved teacher which repose in Fulda. Charlemagne employed him as missionary among the Saxons. His bones were deposited in the convent church. Pope Innocent II. canonized him, A. D, 1139.123

§ 27. The Conversion of the Saxons. Charlemagne and Alcuin. The Heliand, and the Gospel-Harmony.

Funk: Die Unterwerfung der Sachsen unter Karl dem Gr. 1833.

A. Schaumann: Geschichte des niedersächs. Volkes. Götting. 1839.

Böttger: Die Einfahrung des Christenthums in Sachsen. Hann. 1859.

W. Giesebrecht; Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Vol. I. (1863), pp. 110 sqq.

Of all the German tribes the fierce and warlike Saxons were the last to accept the Christian religion. They differed in this respect very much from their kinsmen who had invaded and conquered England. But the means employed were also as different: rude force in one case, moral suasion in the other. The Saxons inhabited the districts of modern Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Westphalia, which were covered with dense forests. They had driven the Franks beyond the Weser and the Rhine, and they were now driven back in turn by Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne. They hated the foreign yoke of the Franks, and far-off Rome; they hated the tithe which was imposed upon them for the support of the church. They looked upon Christianity as the enemy of their wild liberty and independence. The first efforts of Ewald, Suidbert, and other missionaries were fruitless. Their conversion was at last brought about by the sword from political as well as religious motives, and was at first merely nominal, but resulted finally in a real change under the silent influence of the moral forces of the Christian religion.

Charlemagne, who became master of the French kingdom in 768, had the noble ambition to unite the German tribes in one great empire and one religion in filial communion with Rome, but he mistook the means. He employed material force, believing that people become Christians by water-baptism, though baptized against their will. He thought that the Saxons, who were the most dangerous enemies of his kingdom, must be either subdued and Christianized, or killed. He pursued the same policy towards them as the squatter sovereigns would have the United States government pursue towards the wild Indians in the Western territories. Treaties were broken, and shocking cruelties were committed on both sides, by the Saxons from revenge and for independence, by Christians for punishment in the name of religion and civilization. Prominent among these atrocities is the massacre of four thousand five hundred captives at Verden in one day. As soon as the French army was gone, the Saxons destroyed the churches and murdered the priests, for which they were in turn put to death.

Their subjugation was a work of thirty-three years, from 772 to 805. Widukind (Wittekind) and Albio (Abbio), the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, seeing the fruitlessness of the resistance, submitted to baptism in 785, with Charlemagne as sponsor.124

But the Saxons were not entirely defeated till 804, when 10,000 families were driven from house and home and scattered in other provinces. Bloody laws prohibited the relapse into heathenism. The spirit of national independence was defeated, but not entirely crushed, and broke out seven centuries afterwards in another form against the Babylonian tyranny of Rome under the lead of the Saxon monk, Martin Luther.

The war of Charlemagne against the Saxons was the first ominous example of a bloody crusade for the overthrow of heathenism and the extension of the church. It was a radical departure from the apostolic method, and diametrically opposed to the spirit of the gospel. This was felt even in that age by the more enlightened divines. Alcuin, who represents the English school of missionaries, and who expresses in his letters great respect and admiration for Charlemagne, modestly protested, though without effect, against this wholesale conversion by force, and asked him rather to make peace with the "abominable" people of the Saxons. He properly held that the heathen should first be instructed before they are required to be baptized and to pay tithes; that water-baptism without faith was of no use; that baptism implies three visible things, namely, the priest, the body, and the water, and three invisible things, namely, the Spirit, the soul, and faith; that the Holy Spirit regenerates the soul by faith; that faith is a free act which cannot be enforced; that instruction, persuasion, love and self-denial are the only proper means for converting the heathen.125

Charlemagne relaxed somewhat the severity of his laws or capitularies after the year 797. He founded eight bishoprics among the Saxons: Osnabrück, Münster, Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt. From these bishoprics and the parochial churches grouped around them, and from monasteries such as Fulda, proceeded those higher and nobler influences which acted on the mind and heart.

The first monument of real Christianity among the Saxons is the "Heliand" (Heiland, i.e., Healer, Saviour) or a harmony of the Gospels. It is a religious epos strongly resembling the older work of the Anglo-Saxon Caedmon on the Passion and Resurrection. From this it no doubt derived its inspiration. For since Bonifacius there was a lively intercourse between the church of England and the church in Germany, and the language of the two countries was at that time essentially the same. In both works Christ appears as the youthful hero of the human race, the divine conqueror of the world and the devil, and the Christians as his faithful knights and warriors. The Heliand was composed in the ninth century by one or more poets whose language points to Westphalia as their home. The doctrine is free from the worship of saints, the glorification of Peter, and from ascetic excesses, but mixed somewhat with mythological reminiscences. Vilmar calls it the only real Christian epos, and a wonderful creation of the German genius.126

A little later (about 870) Otfried, a Franconian, educated at Fulda and St. Gall, produced another poetic harmony of the Gospels, which is one of the chief monuments of old high German literature. It is a life of Christ from his birth to the ascension, and ends with a description of the judgment. It consists of fifteen thousand rhymed lines in strophes of four lines.

Thus the victory of Christianity in Germany as well as it, England, was the beginning of poetry and literature, and of true civilization,

The Christianization of North-Eastern Germany, among the Slavonic races, along the Baltic shores in Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, went on in the next period, chiefly through Bishop Otto of Bamberg, the apostle of Pomerania, and the Knights of the Teutonic order, and was completed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

III. THE CONVERSION 0F SCANDINAVIA.

General Literature.

I. Scandinavia before Christianity.

The Eddas, edit. Rask (Copenhagen, 1818); A. Munch (Christiania, 1847); Möbius (Leipzig, 1860).

N. M. Petersen: Danmarks Historie i Hedenold. Copenhagen, 1834–37, 3 vols.; Den Nordiske Mythologie, Copenhagen, 1839.

N. F. S. Grundtvig: Nordens Mythologie. Copenhagen, 1839.

Thorpe: Northern Mythology. London, 1852, 3 vols.

Rasmus B. Anderson: Norse Mythology;  Myths of the Eddas systematized and interpreted. Chicago, 1875.

II. The Christianization of Scandinavia.

Claudius Oernhjalm: Historia Sueonum Gothorumque Ecclesiae. Stockholm, 1689, 4 vols.

E. Pontoppidan: Annales Ecclesiae Danicae. Copenhagen, 1741.

F. Münter: Kirchengeschichte von Dänmark und Norwegen. Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1823–33, 3 vols.

R. Reuterdahl: Svenska kyrkans historia. Lund, 1833, 3 vols., first volume translated into German by E. T. Mayerhof, under the title: Leben Ansgars.

Fred Helweg: Den Danske Kirkes Historie. Copenhagen, 1862.

A. Jorgensen: Den nordiske Kirkes Grundloeggelse. Copenhagen, 1874.

Neander: Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, Vol. IV., pp. 1–150

§ 28. Scandinavian Heathenism.

Wheaton: History of the Northmen. London 1831.

Depping: Histoire des expeditions maritimes des Normands. Paris, 1843. 2 vols.

F. Worsaae: Account of the Danes in England, Ireland, and Scotland. London, 1852; The Danish Conquest of England and Normandy. London, 1863. These works are translated from the Danish.

Scandinavia was inhabited by one of the wildest and fiercest, but also one of the strongest and most valiant branches of the Teutonic race, a people of robbers which grew into a people of conquerors. Speaking the same language—that which is still spoken in Iceland—and worshipping the same gods, they were split into a number of small kingdoms covering the present Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Every spring, when the ice broke in the fjords, they launched their boats or skiffs, and swept, each swarm under the leadership of its own king, down upon the coasts of the neighboring countries. By the rivers they penetrated far into the countries, burning and destroying what they could not carry away with them. When autumn came, they returned home, loaded with spoil, and they spent the winter round the open hearth, devouring their prey. But in course of time, the swarms congregated and formed large armies, and the robber-campaigns became organized expeditions for conquest; kingdoms were founded in Russia, England, France, and Sicily. In their new homes, however, the Northern vikings soon forgot both their native language and their old gods, and became the strong bearers of new departures of civilization and the valiant knights of Christianity.

In the Scandinavian mythology, there were not a few ideas which the Christian missionary could use as connecting links. It was not absolutely necessary for him to begin with a mere negation; here, too, there was an "unknown God" and many traits indicate that, during the eighth and ninth centuries, people throughout Scandinavia became more and more anxious to hear something about him. When a man died, he went to Walhall, if he had been brave, and to Niflheim, if he had been a coward. In Walhall he lived together with the gods, in great brightness and joy, fighting all the day, feasting all the night. In Niflheim he sat alone, a shadow, surrounded with everything disgusting and degrading. But Walhall and Niflheim were not to last forever. A deep darkness, Ragnarokr, shall fall over the universe; Walhall and Niflheim shall be destroyed by fire; the gods, the heroes, the shadows, shall perish. Then a new heaven and a new earth shall be created by the All-Father, and he shall judge men not according as they have been brave or cowardly, but according as they have been good or bad. From the Eddas themseIves, it appears that, throughout Scandinavian heathendom, there now and then arose characters who, though they would not cease to be brave, longed to be good. The representative of this goodness, this dim fore-shadowing of the Christian idea of holiness, was Baldur, the young god standing on the rainbow and watching the worlds, and he was also the link which held together the whole chain of the Walhall gods; when he died, Ragnarokr came.

A transition from the myth of Baldur to the gospel of Christ cannot have been very difficult to the Scandinavian imagination; and, indeed, it is apparent that the first ideas which the Scandinavian heathens formed of the "White Christ" were influenced by their ideas of Baldur. It is a question, however, not yet settled, whether certain parts of the Scandinavian mythology, as, for instance, the above myths of Ragnarokr and Baldur, are not a reflex of Christian ideas; and it is quite probable that when the Scandinavians in the ninth century began to look at Christ under the image of Baldur, they had long before unconsciously remodeled their idea of Baldur after the image of Christ.

Another point, of considerable importance to the Christian missionary, was that, in Scandinavian heathendom, he had no priesthood to encounter. Scandinavian paganism never became an institution. There were temples, or at least altars, at Leire, near Roeskilde, in Denmark; at Sigtuna, near Upsall, in Sweden, and at Moere, near Drontheim, in Norway; and huge sacrifices of ninety-nine horses, ninety-nine cocks, and ninety-nine slaves were offered up there every Juul-time. But every man was his own priest. At the time when Christianity first appeared in Scandinavia, the old religion was evidently losing its hold on the individuals and for the very reason, that it had never succeeded in laying hold on the nation. People continued to swear by the gods, and drink in their honor; but they ceased to pray to them. They continued to sacrifice before taking the field or after the victory, and to make the sign of the cross, meaning Thor’s hammer, over a child when it was named; but there was really nothing in their life, national or individual, public or private, which demanded religious consecration. As, on the one side, characters developed which actually went beyond the established religion, longing for something higher and deeper, it was, on the other side, still more frequent to meet with characters which passed by the established religion with utter indifference, believing in nothing but their own strength.

The principal obstacle which Christianity had to encounter in Scandinavia was moral rather than religious. In his passions, the old Scandinavian was sometimes worse than a beast. Gluttony and drunkenness he considered as accomplishments. But he was chaste. A dishonored woman was very seldom heard of, adultery never. In his energy, he was sometimes fiercer than a demon. He destroyed for the sake of destruction, and there were no indignities or cruelties which he would not inflict upon a vanquished enemy. But for his friend, his king, his wife, his child, he would sacrifice everything, even life itself; and he would do it without a doubt, without a pang, in pure and noble enthusiasm. Such, however, as his morals were, they, had absolute sway over him. The gods he could forget, but not his duties. The evil one, among gods and men, was he who saw the duty, but stole away from it. The highest spiritual power among the old Scandinavians, their only enthusiasm, was their feeling of duty; but the direction which had been given to this feeling was so absolutely opposed to that pointed out by the Christian morality, that no reconciliation was possible. Revenge was the noblest sentiment and passion of man; forgiveness was a sin. The battle-field reeking with blood and fire was the highest beauty the earth could show; patient and peaceful labor was an abomination. It was quite natural, therefore, that the actual conflict between Christianity and Scandinavian paganism should take place in the field of morals. The pagans slew the missionaries, and burnt their schools and churches, not because they preached new gods, but because they "corrupted the morals of the people" (by averting them from their warlike pursuits), and when, after a contest of more than a century, it became apparent that Christianity would be victorious, the pagan heroes left the country in great swarms, as if they were flying from some awful plague. The first and hardest work which Christianity had to do in Scandinavia was generally humanitarian rather than specifically religious.

§ 29. The Christianization of Denmark. St. Ansgar.

Ansgarius: Pigmenta, ed. Lappenberg. Hamburg, 1844. Vita Wilehadi, in Pertz: Monumenta II.; and in Migne: Patrol. Tom. 118, pp. 1014–1051.

Rimbertus: Vita Ansgarii, in Pertz: Monumenta II., and in Migne, l.c. pp. 961–1011.

Adamus Bremensis (d. 1076): Gesta Hamenburgensis Eccl. pontificum (embracing the history of the archbishopric of Hamburg, of Scandinavia, Denmark, and Northwestern Germany, from 788–1072); reprinted in Pertz: Monumenta, VII.; separate edition by Lappenberg. Hanover, 1846.

Laurent: Leben der Erzb.  Ansgar und Rimbert. 1856.

A. Tappehorn: Leben d. h. Ansgar. 1863.

G. Dehio: Geschichte d. Erzb. Hamburg-Bremen. 1877.

H. N. A. Jensen: Schleswig-Holsteinische Kirchengeschichte, edit. A. L. J. Michelsen (1879).

During the sixth and seventh centuries the Danes first came in contact with Christianity, partly through their commercial intercourse with Duerstede in Holland, partly through their perpetual raids on Ireland; and tales of the "White Christ" were frequently told among them, though probably with no other effect than that of wonder. The first Christian missionary who visited them and worked among them was Willebrord. Born in Northumbria and educated within the pale of the Keltic Kirk he went out, in 690, as a missionary to the Frises. Expelled by them he came, about 700, to Denmark, was well received by king Yngrin (Ogendus), formed a congregation and bought thirty Danish boys, whom he educated in the Christian religion, and of whom one, Sigwald, is still remembered as the patron saint of Nuremberg, St. Sebaldus. But his work seems to have been of merely temporary effect.

Soon, however, the tremendous activity which Charlemagne developed as a political organizer, was felt even on the Danish frontier. His realm touched the Eyder. Political relations sprang up between the Roman empire and Denmark, and they opened a freer and broader entrance to the Christian missionaries. In Essehoe, in Holstein, Charlemagne built a chapel for the use of the garrison; in Hamburg he settled Heridock as the head of a Christian congregation; and from a passage in one of Alcuin’s letters127 it appears that a conversion of the Danes did not lie altogether outside of his plans. Under his successor, Lewis the Pious, Harald Klak, one of the many petty kings among whom Denmark was then divided, sought the emperor’s support and decision in a family feud, and Lewis sent archbishop Ebo of Rheims, celebrated both as a political negotiator and as a zealous missionary, to Denmark. In 822 Ebo crossed the Eyder, accompanied by bishop Halitgar of Cambray. In the following years he made several journeys to Denmark, preached, baptized, and established a station of the Danish mission at Cella Wellana, the present Welnau, near Essehoe. But he was too much occupied with the internal affairs of the empire and the opportunity which now opened for the Danish mission, demanded the whole and undivided energy of a great man. In 826 Harald Klak was expelled and sought refuge with the emperor, Ebo acting as a mediator. At Ingelheim, near Mentz, the king, the queen, their son and their whole retinue, were solemnly baptized, and when Harald shortly after returned to Denmark with support from the emperor, he was accompanied by that man who was destined to become the Apostle of the North, Ansgar.

Ansgar was born about 800 (according to general acceptation Sept. 9, 801) in the diocese of Amiens, of Frankish parents, and educated in the abbey of Corbie, under the guidance of Adalhard. Paschasius Radbertus was among his teachers. In 822 a missionary colony was planted by Corbie in Westphalia, and the German monastery of Corwey or New Corwey was founded. Hither Ansgar was removed, as teacher in the new school, and he soon acquired great fame both on account of his powers as a preacher and on account of his ardent piety. When still a boy he had holy visions, and was deeply impressed with the vanity of all earthly greatness. The crown of the martyr seemed to him the highest grace which human life could attain, and he ardently prayed that it might be given to him. The proposition to follow king Harald as a missionary, among the heathen Danes he immediately accepted, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, and accompanied by Autbert he repaired, in 827, to Denmark, where he immediately established a missionary station at Hedeby, in the province of Schleswig. The task was difficult, but the beginning was not without success. Twelve young boys were bought to be educated as teachers, and not a few people were converted and baptized. His kindness to the poor, the sick, to all who were in distress, attracted attention; his fervor as a preacher and teacher produced sympathy without, as yet, provoking resistance. But in 829 king Harald was again expelled and retired to Riustri, a possession on the mouth of the Weser, which the emperor had given to him as a fief. Ansgar was compelled to follow him and the prospects of the Danish mission became very dark, the more so as Autbert had to give up any further participation in the work on account of ill health, and return to New Corwey. At this time an invitation from the Swedish king, Björn, gave Ansgar an opportunity to visit Sweden, and he stayed there till 831, when the establishment of an episcopal see at Hamburg, determined upon by the diet of Aix-le-chapelle in 831, promised to give the Danish mission a new impulse. All Scandinavia was laid under the new see, and Ansgar was consecrated its first bishop by bishop Drago of Metz, a brother of the emperor, with the solemn assistance of three archbishops, Ebo of Rheims, Hetti of Treves and Obgar of Mentz. A bull of Gregory IV.128  confirmed the whole arrangement, and Ansgar received personally the pallium from the hands of the Pope. In 834 the emperor endowed the see with the rich monastery of Thorout, in West Flanders, south of Bruges, and the work of the Danish mission could now be pushed with vigor. Enabled to treat with the petty kings of Denmark on terms of equality, and possessed of means to impress them with the importance of the cause, Ansgar made rapid progress, but, as was to be expected, the progress soon awakened opposition. In 834 a swarm of heathen Danes penetrated with a fleet of six hundred small vessels into the Elb under the command of king Horich I., and laid siege to Hamburg. The city was taken, sacked and burnt; the church which Ansgar had built, the monastery in which he lived, his library containing a copy of the Bible which the emperor had presented to him, etc., were destroyed and the Christians were driven away from the place. For many days Ansgar fled from hiding-place to hiding-place in imminent danger of his life. He sought refuge with the bishop of Bremen, but the bishop of Bremen was jealous, because Scandinavia had not been laid under his see, and refused to give any assistance. The revenues of Thorout he lost, as the emperor, Charles the Bald, gave the fief to one of his favorites. Even his own pupils deserted him.

In this great emergency his character shone forth in all its strength and splendor; he bore what God laid upon him in silence and made no complaint. Meanwhile Lewis the German came to his support. In 846 the see of Bremen became vacant. The see of Hamburg was then united to that of Bremen, and to this new see, which Ansgar was called to fill, a papal bull of May 31, 864, gave archiepiscopal rank. Installed in Bremen, Ansgar immediately took up again the Danish mission and again with success. He won even king Horich himself for the Christian cause, and obtained permission from him to build a church in Hedeby, the first Christian church in Denmark, dedicated to Our Lady. Under king Horich’s son this church was allowed to have bells, a particular horror to the heathens, and a new and larger church was commenced in Ribe. By Ansgar’s activity Christianity became an established and acknowledged institution in Denmark, and not only in Denmark but also in Sweden, which he visited once more, 848–850.

The principal feature of his spiritual character was ascetic severity; he wore a coarse hair-shirt close to the skin, fasted much and spent most of his time in prayer. But with this asceticism he connected a great deal of practical energy; he rebuked the idleness of the monks, demanded of his pupils that they should have some actual work at hand, and was often occupied in knitting, while praying. His enthusiasm and holy raptures were also singularly well-tempered by good common sense. To those who wished to extol his greatness and goodness by ascribing miracles to him, he said that the greatest miracle in his life would be, if God ever made a thoroughly pious man out of him.129  Most prominent, however, among the spiritual features of his character shines forth his unwavering faith in the final success of his cause and the never-failing patience with which this faith fortified his soul. In spite of apparent failure he never gave up his work; overwhelmed with disaster, he still continued it. From his death-bed he wrote a letter to king Lewis to recommend to him the Scandinavian mission. Other missionaries may have excelled him in sagacity and organizing talent, but none in heroic patience and humility. He died at Bremen, Feb. 3, 865, and lies buried there in the church dedicated to him. He was canonized by Nicholas I.

Ansgar’s successor in the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen was his friend and biographer, Rimbert, 865–888. In his time all the petty kingdoms into which Denmark was divided, were gathered together under one sceptre by King Gorm the Old; but this event, in one respect very favorable to the rapid spread of Christianity, was in other respects a real obstacle to the Christian cause as it placed Denmark, politically, in opposition to Germany, which was the basis and only support of the Christian mission to Denmark. King Gorm himself was a grim heathen; but his queen, Thyra Danabod, had embraced Christianity, and both under Rimbert and his successor, Adalgar, 888–909, the Christian missionaries were allowed to work undisturbed. A new church, the third in Denmark, was built at Aarhus. But under Adalgar’s successor, Unni, 909–936, King Gorm’s fury, half political and half religious, suddenly burst forth. The churches were burnt, the missionaries were killed or expelled, and nothing but the decisive victory of Henry the Fowler, king of Germany, over the Danish king saved the Christians in Denmark from complete extermination. By the peace it was agreed that King Gorm should allow the preaching of Christianity in his realm, and Unni took up the cause again with great energy. Between Unni’s successor, Adaldag, 936–988, and King Harald Blue Tooth, a son of Gorm the Old, there grew up a relation which almost might be called a co-operation. Around the three churches in Jutland: Schleswig, Ribe and Aarhus, and a fourth in Fünen: Odense, bishoprics were formed, and Adaldag consecrated four native bishops. The church obtained right to accept and hold donations, and instances of very large endowments occurred.

The war between King Harald and the German king, Otto II., arose from merely political causes, but led to the baptism of the former, and soon after the royal residence was moved from Leire, one of the chief centres of Scandinavian heathendom, to Roeskilde, where a Christian church was built. Among the Danes, however, there was a large party which was very ill-pleased at this turn of affairs. They were heathens because heathenism was the only religion which suited their passions. They clung to Thor, not from conviction, but from pride. They looked down with indignation and dismay upon the transformation which Christianity everywhere effected both of the character and the life of the people. Finally they left the country and settled under the leadership of Palnatoke, at the mouth of the Oder, where they founded a kind of republic, Jomsborg.

From this place they waged a continuous war upon Christianity in Denmark for more than a decade, and with dreadful effect. The names of the martyrs would fill a whole volume, says Adam of Bremen. The church in Roeskilde was burnt. The bishopric of Fünen was abolished. The king’s own son, Swen, was one of the leaders, and the king himself was finally shot by Palnatoke, 991. Swen, however, soon fell out with the Joms vikings, and his invasion of England gave the warlike passions of the nation another direction.

From the conquest of that country and its union with Denmark, the Danish mission received a vigorous impulse. King Swen himself was converted, and showed great zeal for Christianity. He rebuilt the church in Roeskilde, erected a new church at Lund, in Skaane, placed the sign of the cross on his coins, and exhorted, on his death-bed, his son Canute to work for the Christianization of Denmark. The ardor of the Hamburg-Bremen archbishops for the Danish mission seemed at this time to have cooled, or perhaps the growing difference between the language spoken to the north of the Eyder and that spoken to the south of that river made missionary work in Denmark very difficult for a German preacher. Ansgar had not felt this difference; but two centuries later it had probably become necessary for the German missionary to learn a foreign language before entering on his work in Denmark.

Between England and Denmark there existed no such difference of language. King Canute the Great, during whose reign (1019–1035) the conversion of Denmark was completed, could employ English priests and monks in Denmark without the least embarrassment. He re-established the bishopric of Fünen, and founded two new bishoprics in Sealand and Skaane; and these three sees were filled with Englishmen consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury. He invited a number of English monks to Denmark, and settled them partly as ecclesiastics at the churches, partly in small missionary stations, scattered all around in the country; and everywhere, in the style of the church-building and in the character of the service the English influence was predominating. This circumstance, however, did in no way affect the ecclesiastical relation between Denmark and the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen. The authority of the archbishop, though not altogether unassailed, was nevertheless generally submitted to with good grace, and until in the twelfth century an independent Scandinavian archbishopric was established at Lund, with the exception of the above cases, he always appointed and consecrated the Danish bishops. Also the relation to the Pope was very cordial. Canute made a pilgrimage to Rome, and founded several Hospitia Danorum there. He refused, however, to permit the introduction of the Peter’s pence in Denmark, and the tribute which, up to the fourteenth century, was annually sent from that country to Rome, was considered a voluntary gift.

The last part of Denmark which was converted was the island of Bornholm. It was christianized in 1060 by Bishop Egius of Lund. It is noticeable, however, that in Denmark Christianity was not made a part of the law of the land, such as was the case in England and in Norway.

§ 30. The Christianization of Sweden.

Rimbertus: Vita Ansgarii, in Pertz: Monumenta II.

Adamus Bremensis: Gesta Ham. Eccl. Pont., in Pertz: Monumenta VII; separate edition by Lappenberg. Hanover, 1846.

Historia S. Sigfridi, in Scriptt. Rer. Suec. Medii-oevi, T. II.

Just when the expulsion of Harald Klak compelled Ansgar to give up the Danish mission, at least for the time being, an embassy was sent by the Swedish king, Björn, to the emperor, Lewis the Pious, asking him to send Christian missionaries to Sweden. Like the Danes, the Swedes had become acquainted with Christianity through their wars and commercial connections with foreign countries, and with many this acquaintance appears to have awakened an actual desire to become Christians. Accordingly Ansgar went to Sweden in 829, accompanied by Witmar. While crossing the Baltic, the vessel was overtaken and plundered by pirates, and he arrived empty handed, not to say destitute, at Björkö or Birka, the residence of King Björn, situated on an island in the Maelarn. Although poverty, and misery were very poor introduction to a heathen king in ancient Scandinavia, he was well received by the king; and in Hergeir, one of the most prominent men at the court of Birka, he found a warm and reliable friend. Hergeir built the first Christian chapel in Sweden, and during his whole life he proved an unfailing and powerful support of the Christian cause. After two years’ successful labor, Ansgar returned to Germany; but he did not forget the work begun. As soon as he was well established as bishop in Hamburg, he sent, in 834, Gautbert, a nephew of Ebo, to Sweden, accompanied by Nithard and a number of other Christian priests, and well provided with everything necessary for the work. Gautbert labored with great success. In Birka he built a church, and thus it became possible for the Christians, scattered all over Sweden, to celebrate service and partake of the Lord’s Supper in their own country without going to Duerstede or some other foreign place. But here, as in Denmark, the success of the Christian mission aroused the jealousy and hatred of the heathen, and, at last, even Hergeir was not able to keep them within bounds. An infuriated swarm broke into the house of Gautbert. The house was plundered; Nithard was murdered; the church was burnt, and Gautbert himself was sent in chains beyond the frontier. He never returned to Sweden, but died as bishop of Osnabrück, shortly before Ansgar. When Ansgar first heard of the outbreak in Sweden, he was himself flying before the fury of the Danish heathen, and for several years he was unable to do anything for the Swedish mission. Ardgar, a former hermit, now a priest, went to Sweden, and in Birka he found that Hergeir had succeeded in keeping together and defending the Christian congregation; but Hergeir died shortly after, and with him fell the last defence against the attacks of the heathen and barbarians.

Meanwhile Ansgar had been established in the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen. In 848, he determined to go himself to Sweden. The costly presents he gave to king Olaf, the urgent letters he brought from the emperor, and the king of Denmark, the magnificence and solemnity of the appearance of the mission made a deep impression. The king promised that the question should be laid before the assembled people, whether or not they would allow Christianity to be preached again in the country. In the assembly it was the address of an old Swede, proving that the god of the Christians was stronger even than Thor, and that it was poor policy for a nation not to have the strongest god, which finally turned the scales, and once more the Christian missionaries were allowed to preach undisturbed in the country, . Before Ansgar left, in 850, the church was rebuilt in Birka, and, for a number of years, the missionary labor was continued with great zeal by Erimbert, a nephew of Gautbert, by Ansfrid, born a Dane, and by Rimbert, also a Dane.

Nevertheless, although the persecutions ceased, Christianity made little progress, and when, in 935, Archbishop Unni himself visited Birka, his principal labor consisted in bringing back to the Christian fold such members as had strayed away among the heathen, and forgotten their faith. Half a century later, however, during the reign of Olaf Skotkonge, the mission received a vigorous impulse. The king himself and his sons were won for the Christian cause, and from Denmark a number of English missionaries entered the country. The most prominent among these was Sigfrid, who has been mentioned beside Ansgar as the apostle of the North. By his exertions many were converted, and Christianity became a legally recognized religion in the country beside the old heathenism. In the Southern part of Sweden, heathen sacrifices ceased, and heathen altars disappeared. In the Northern part, however, the old faith still continued to live on, partly because it was difficult for the missionaries to penetrate into those wild and forbidding regions, partly because there existed a difference of tribe between the Northern and Southern Swedes, which again gave rise to political differences.

The Christianization of Sweden was not completed until the middle of the twelfth century.

§ 31. The Christianization of Norway and Iceland.

Snorre Sturleson (d. 1241): Heimskringla (i.e. Circle of Home, written first in Icelandic), seu Historia Regum Septentrionalium, etc. Stockholm, 1697, 2 vols. The same in Icelandic, Danish, and Latin. Havn., 1777–1826; in German by Mohnike, 1835; in English, transl. by Sam. Laing. London, 1844, 3 vols. This history of the Norwegian kings reaches from the mythological age to A.D. 1177.

N. P. Sibbern: Bibliotheca Historica Dano-Norvegica. Hamburg, 1716. Fornmanna-Sögur seu Scripta Hist. Islandorum. Hafniae, 1828.

K. Maurer: Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthum. München, 1855–56, 2 vols.

Thomas Carlyle: Early Kings of Norway. London and N. York, 1875.

G. F. Maclear: The Conversion of the Northmen. London, 1879.

Christianity was introduced in Norway almost exclusively by the exertions of the kings, and the means employed were chiefly violence and tricks. The people accepted Christianity not because they had become acquainted with it and felt a craving for it, but because they were compelled to accept it, and the result was that heathen customs and heathen ideas lived on in Christian Norway for centuries after they had disappeared from the rest of Scandinavia.

The first attempt to introduce Christianity in the country was made in the middle of the tenth century by Hakon the Good. Norway was gathered into one state in the latter part of the ninth century by Harald Haarfagr, but internal wars broke out again under Harald’s son and successor, Eric. These troubles induced Hakon, an illegitimate son of Harald Haarfagr and educated in England at the court of king Athelstan, to return to Norway and lay claim to the crown. He succeeded in gaining a party in his favor, expelled Eric and conquered all Norway, where he soon became exceedingly popular, partly on account of his valor and military ability, partly also on account of the refinement and suavity of his manners. Hakon was a Christian, and the Christianization of Norway seems to have been his highest goal from the very first days of his reign. But he was prudent. Without attracting any great attention to the matter, he won over to Christianity a number of those who stood nearest to him, called Christian priests from England, and built a church at Drontheim. Meanwhile he began to think that the time had come for a more public and more decisive step, and at the great Frostething, where all the most prominent men of the country were assembled, he addressed the people on the matter and exhorted them to become Christians. The answer he received was very characteristic. They had no objection to Christianity itself, for they did not know what it meant, but they suspected the king’s proposition, as if it were a political stratagem by means of which he intended to defraud them of their political rights and liberties. Thus they not only refused to become Christians themselves, but even compelled the king to partake in their heathen festivals and offer sacrifices to their heathen gods. The king was very indignant and determined to take revenge, but just as he had got an army together, the sons of the expelled Eric landed in Norway and in the battle against them, 961, he received a deadly wound.

The sons of Eric, who had lived in England during their exile, were likewise Christians, and they took up the cause of Christianity in a very high-handed manner, overthrowing the heathen altars and forbidding sacrifices. But the impression they made was merely odious, and their successor, Hakon Jarl, was a rank heathen. The first time Christianity really gained a footing in Norway, was under Olaf Trygveson. Descended from Harald Haarfagr, but sold, while a child, as a slave in Esthonia, he was ransomed by a relative who incidentally met him and recognized his own kin in the beauty of the boy, and was educated at Moscow. Afterwards he roved about much in Denmark, Wendland, England and Ireland, living as a sea-king. In England he became acquainted with Christianity and immediately embraced it, but he carried his viking-nature almost unchanged over into Christianity, and a fiercer knight of the cross was probably never seen. Invited to Norway by a party which had grown impatient of the tyranny of Hakon Jarl, he easily made himself master of the country, in 995, and immediately set about making Christianity its religion, "punishing severely," as Snorre says, "all who opposed him, killing some, mutilating others, and driving the rest into banishment."  In the Southern part there still lingered a remembrance of Christianity from the days of Hakon the Good, and things went on here somewhat more smoothly, though Olaf more than once gave the people assembled in council with him the choice between fighting him or accepting baptism forthwith. But in the Northern part all the craft and all the energy of the king were needed in order to overcome the opposition. Once, at a great heathen festival at Moere, he told the assembled people that, if he should return to the heathen gods it would be necessary for him to make some great and awful sacrifice, and accordingly he seized twelve of the most prominent men present and prepared to sacrifice them to Thor. They were rescued, however, when the whole assembly accepted Christianity and were baptized. In the year 1000, he fell in a battle against the united Danish and Swedish kings, but though he reigned only five years, he nevertheless succeeded in establishing Christianity as the religion of Norway and, what is still more remarkable, no general relapse into heathenism seems to have taken place after his death.

During the reign of Olaf the Saint, who ruled from A.D. 1014–’30, the Christianization of the country was completed. His task it was to uproot heathenism wherever it was still found lurking, and to give the Christian religion an ecclesiastical organization. Like his predecessors, he used craft and violence to reach his goal. Heathen idols and altars disappeared, heathen customs and festivals were suppressed, the civil laws were brought into conformity with the rules of Christian morals. The country was divided into dioceses and parishes, churches were built, and regular revenues were raised for the sustenance of the clergy. For the most part he employed English monks and priests, but with the consent of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, under whose authority he placed the Norwegian church. After his death, in the battle of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, he was canonized and became the patron saint of Norway.

To Norway belonged, at that time, Iceland. From Icelandic tradition as well as from the "De Mensura Orbis" by Dicuilus, an Irish monk in the beginning of the ninth century, it appears that Culdee anchorites used to retire to Iceland as early as the beginning of the eighth century, while the island was still uninhabited. These anchorites, however, seem to have had no influence whatever on the Norwegian settlers who, flying from the tyranny of Harald Haarfagr, came to Iceland in the latter part of the ninth century and began to people the country. The new-comers were heathen, and they looked with amazement at Auda the Rich, the widow of Olaf the White, king of Dublin, who in 892 took up her abode in Iceland and reared a lofty cross in front of her house. But the Icelanders were great travellers, and one of them, Thorvald Kodranson, who in Saxony had embraced Christianity, brought bishop Frederic home to Iceland. Frederic stayed there for four years, and his preaching found easy access among the people. The mission of Thangbrand in the latter part of the tenth century failed, but when Norway, or at least the Norwegian coast, became Christian, the intimate relation between Iceland and Norway soon brought the germs which Frederic had planted, into rapid growth, and in the year 1000 the Icelandic Althing declared Christianity to be the established religion of the country. The first church was built shortly after from timber sent by Olaf the Saint from Norway to the treeless island.

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IV. THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE SLAVS.

§ 32. General Survey.

A. Regenvolscius: Systema Hist. chronol. Ecclesiarum Slavonic. Traj. ad Rhen., 1652.

A. Wengerscius: Hist. ecclesiast. Ecclesiarum Slavonic. Amst., 1689.

Kohlius: Introductio in Hist. Slavorum imprimis sacram. Altona, 1704.

J. Ch. Jordan: Origines Slavicae. Vindob., 1745.

S. de Bohusz: Recherches hist. sur l’origine des Sarmates, des Esclavons, et des Slaves, et sur les époques de la conversion de ces peuples. St. Petersburg and London, 1812.

P. J. Schafarik: Slavische Alterthümer. Leipzig, 1844, 2 vols.

Horvat: Urgeschichte der Slaven. Pest, 1844.

W. A. Maciejowsky: Essai Hist. sur l’église ehrét. primitive de deux rites chez les Slaves. Translated from Polish into French by L. F. Sauvet, Paris, 1846.

At what time the Slavs first made their appearance in Europe is not known. Latin and Greek writers of the second half of the sixth century, such as Procopius, Jornandes, Agathias, the emperor Mauritius and others, knew only those Slavs who lived along the frontiers of the Roman empire. In the era of Charlemagne the Slavs occupied the whole of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkan; the Obotrites and Wends between the Elbe and the Vistula; the Poles around the Vistula, and behind them the Russians; the Czechs in Bohemia. Further to the South the compact mass of Slavs was split by the invasion of various Finnish or Turanian tribes; the Huns in the fifth century, the Avars in the sixth, the Bulgarians in the seventh, the Magyars in the ninth. The Avars penetrated to the Adriatic, but were thrown back in 640 by the Bulgarians; they then settled in Panonia, were subdued and converted by Charlemagne, 791–796, and disappeared altogether from history in the ninth century. The Bulgarians adopted the Slavic language and became Slavs, not only in language, but also in customs and habits. Only the Magyars, who settled around the Theiss and the Danube, and are the ruling race in Hungary, vindicated themselves as a distinct nationality.

The great mass of Slavs had no common political organization, but formed a number of kingdoms, which flourished, some for a shorter, and others for a longer period, such as Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, and Russia. In a religious respect also great differences existed among them. They were agriculturists, and their gods were representatives of natural forces; but while Radigost and Sviatovit, worshipped by the Obotrites and Wends, were cruel gods, in whose temples, especially at Arcona in the island of Rügen, human beings were sacrificed, Svarog worshipped by the Poles, and Dazhbog, worshipped by the Bohemians, were mild gods, who demanded love and prayer. Common to all Slavs, however, was a very elaborate belief in fairies and trolls; and polygamy, sometimes connected with sutteeism, widely prevailed among them. Their conversion was attempted both by Constantinople and by Rome; but the chaotic and ever-shifting political conditions under which they lived, the rising difference and jealousy between the Eastern and Western churches, and the great difficulty which the missionaries experienced in learning their language, presented formidable obstacles, and at the close of the period the work was not yet completed.

§ 33. Christian Missions among the Wends.

ADAM Of BRENEN (d. 1067): Gesta Hammenb. (Hamburgensis) Eccl. Pont., in Pertz: Monumenta Germ., VII.

Helmoldus (d. 1147) and Arnoldus Lubecensis: Chronicon Slavorum sive Annales Slavorum, from Charlemagne to 1170, ed. H. Bangert. Lubecae, 1659. German translation by Laurent. Berlin, 1852.

Spieker: Kirchengeschichte der Mark Brandenburg. Berlin, 1839.

Wiggers: Kirchengeschichte Mecklenburgs. Parchim, 1840.

Giesebrecht: Wendische Geschichten. Berlin, 1843.

Charlemagne was the first who attempted to introduce Christianity among the Slavic tribes which, under the collective name of Wends, occupied the Northern part of Germany, along the coast of the Baltic, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Vistula: Wagrians in Holstein, Obotrites in Mecklenburg, Sorbians on the Saxon boundary, Wilzians in Brandenburg, etc. But in the hands of Charlemagne, the Christian mission was a political weapon; and to the Slavs, acceptation of Christianity became synonymous with political and national subjugation. Hence their fury against Christianity which, time after time, broke forth, volcano-like, and completely destroyed the work of the missionaries. The decisive victories which Otto I. gained over the Wends, gave him an opportunity to attempt, on a large scale, the establishment of the Christian church among them. Episcopal sees were founded at Havelberg in 946, at Altenburg or Oldenburg in 948, at Meissen, Merseburg, and Zeitz in 968, and in the last year an archiepiscopal see was founded at Magdeburg. Boso, a monk from St. Emmeran, at Regensburg, who first had translated the formulas of the liturgy into the language of the natives, became bishop of Merseburg, and Adalbert, who first had preached Christianity in the island of Rügen, became archbishop.

But again the Christian church was used as a means for political purposes, and, in the reign of Otto II., a fearful rising took place among the Wends under the leadership of Prince Mistiwoi. He had become a Christian himself; but, indignant at the suppression which was practiced in the name of the Christian religion, he returned to heathenism, assembled the tribes at Rethre, one of the chief centres of Wendish heathendom, and began, in 983, a war which spread devastation all over Northern Germany. The churches and monasteries were burnt, and the Christian priests were expelled. Afterwards Mistiwoi was seized with remorse, and tried to cure the evil he had done in an outburst of passion. But then his subjects abandoned him; he left the country, and spent the last days of his life in a Christian monastery at Bardewick. His grandson, Gottschalk, whose Slavic name is unknown, was educated in the Christian faith in the monastery of St. Michael., near Lüneburg; but when he heard that his father, Uto, had been murdered, 1032, the old heathen instincts of revenge at once awakened within him. He left the monastery, abandoned Christianity, and raised a storm of persecution against the Christians, which swept over all Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Holstein. Defeated and taken prisoner by Bernard of Lower Saxony, he returned to Christianity; lived afterwards at the court of Canute the Great in Denmark and England; married a Danish princess, and was made ruler of the Obotrites. A great warrior, he conquered Holstein and Pommerania, and formed a powerful Wendish empire; and on this solid political foundation, he attempted, with considerable success, to build up the Christian church. The old bishoprics were re-established, and new ones were founded at Razzeburg and Mecklenburg; monasteries were built at Leuzen, Oldenburg, Razzeburg, Lübeck, and Mecklenburg; missionaries were provided by Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen; the liturgy was translated into the native tongue, and revenues were raised for the support of the clergy, the churches, and the service.

But, as might have been expected, the deeper Christianity penetrated into the mass of the people, the fiercer became the resistance of the heathen. Gottschalk was murdered at Lentz, June 7, 1066, together with his old teacher, Abbot Uppo, and a general rising now took place. The churches and schools were destroyed; the priests and monks were stoned or killed as sacrifices on the heathen altars; and Christianity, was literally swept out of the country. It took several decades before a new beginning could be made, and the final Christianization of the Wends was not achieved until the middle of the twelfth century.

§ 34. Cyrillus and Methodius, the Apostles of the Slavs. Christianization of Moravia, Bohemia and Poland.

F. M. Pelzel et J. Dobrowsky: Rerrum Bohemic. Scriptores. Prague.

Friese: Kirchengeschichte d. Konigreichs Polen. Breslau, 1786.

Franz. Palacky: Geschichte von Böhmen. Prague, 3d ed., 1864 sqq., 5 vols. (down to 1520).

Wattenbach: Geschichte d. christl. Kirche in Böhmen und Mähren. Wien, 1849.

A. Friud: Die Kirchengesch. Böhmens. Prague, 1863 sqq.

Biographies of Cyrillus and Methodius, by J. Dobrowsky (Prague, 1823, and 1826); J. A. Ginzel (Geschichte der Slawenapostel und der Slawischen Liturgie. Leitmeritz, 1857); Philaret (in the Russian, German translation, Mitau, 1847); J. E. Biley (Prague, 1863); Dümmler and F. Milkosisch (Wien, 1870).

The Moravian Slavs were subjugated by Charlemagne, and the bishop of Passau was charged with the establishment of a Christian mission among them. Moymir, their chief, was converted and bishoprics were founded at Olmütz and Nitra. But Lewis the German suspected Moymir of striving after independence and supplanted him by Rastislaw or Radislaw. Rastislaw, however, accomplished what Moymir had only been suspected of. He formed an independent Moravian kingdom and defeated Lewis the German, and with the political he also broke the ecclesiastical connections with Germany, requesting the Byzantine emperor, Michael III., to send him some Greek missionaries.

Cyrillus and Methodius became the apostles of the Slavs. Cyrillus, whose original name was Constantinus, was born at Thessalonica, in the first half of the ninth century, and studied philosophy in Constantinople, whence his by-name: the philosopher. Afterwards he devoted himself to the study of theology, and went to live, together with his brother Methodius, in a monastery. A strong ascetic, he became a zealous missionary. In 860 he visited the Chazares, a Tartar tribe settled on the North-Eastern shore of the Black Sea, and planted a Christian church there. He afterward labored among the Bulgarians and finally went, in company with his brother, to Moravia, on the invitation of Rastislaw, in 863.

Cyrillus understood the Slavic language, and succeeded in making it available for literary purposes by inventing a suitable alphabet. He used Greek letters, with some Armenian and Hebrew, and some original letters. His Slavonic alphabet is still used with alterations in Russia, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Servia. He translated the liturgy and the pericopes into Slavic, and his ability to preach and celebrate service in the native language soon brought hundreds of converts into his fold. A national Slavic church rapidly arose; the German priests with the Latin liturgy left the country. It corresponded well with the political plans of Rastislaw, to have a church establishment entirely independent of the German prelates, but in the difference which now developed between the Eastern and Western churches, it was quite natural for the young Slavic church to connect itself with Rome and not with Constantinople, partly because Cyrillus always had shown a kind of partiality to Rome, partly because the prudence and discrimination with which Pope Nicholas I. recently had interfered in the Bulgarian church, must have made a good impression.

In 868 Cyrillus and Methodius went to Rome, and a perfect agreement was arrived at between them and Pope Adrian II., both with respect to the use of the Slavic language in religious service and with respect to the independent position of the Slavic church, subject only to the authority of the Pope. Cyrillus died in Rome, Feb. 14, 869, but Methodius returned to Moravia, having been consecrated archbishop of the Pannonian diocese.

The organization of this new diocese of Pannonia was, to some extent, an encroachment on the dioceses of Passau and Salzburg, and such an encroachment must have been so much the more irritating to the German prelates, as they really had been the first to sow the seed of Christianity among the Slavs. The growing difference between the Eastern and Western churches also had its effect. The German clergy considered the use of the Slavic language in the mass an unwarranted innovation, and the Greek doctrine of the single procession of the Holy Spirit, still adhered to by Methodius and the Slavic church, they considered as a heresy. Their attacks, however, had at first no practical consequences, but when Rastislaw was succeeded in 870 by Swatopluk, and Adrian II. in 872 by John VIII., the position of Methodius became difficult. Once more, in 879, he was summoned to Rome, and although, this time too, a perfect agreement was arrived at, by which the independence of the Slavic church was confirmed, and all her natural peculiarities were acknowledged, neither the energy of Methodius, nor the support of the Pope was able to defend her against the attacks which now were made upon her both from without and from within. Swatopluk inclined towards the German-Roman views, and Wichin one of Methodius’s bishops, became their powerful champion.

After the death of Swatopluk, the Moravian kingdom fell to pieces and was divided between the Germans, the Czechs of Bohemia, and the Magyars of Hungary; and thereby the Slavic church lost, so to speak, its very foundation. Methodius died between 881 and 910. At the opening of the tenth century the Slavic church had entirely lost its national character. The Slavic priests were expelled and the Slavic liturgy abolished, German priests and the Latin liturgy taking their place. The expelled priests fled to Bulgaria, whither they brought the Slavic translations of the Bible and the liturgy.

Neither Charlemagne nor Lewis the Pious succeeded in subjugating Bohemia, and although the country was added to the diocese of Regensburg, the inhabitants remained pagans. But when Bohemia became a dependency of the Moravian empire and Swatopluk married a daughter of the Bohemian duke, Borziwai, a door was opened to Christianity. Borziwai and his wife, Ludmilla, were baptized, and their children were educated in the Christian faith. Nevertheless, when Wratislav, Borziwai’s son and successor, died in 925, a violent reaction took place. He left two sons, Wenzeslav and Boleslav, who were placed under the tutelage of their grandmother, Ludmilla. But their mother, Drahomira, was an inveterate heathen, and she caused the murder first of Ludmilla, and then of Wenzeslav, 938. Boleslav, surnamed the Cruel, had his mother’s nature and also her faith, and he almost succeeded in sweeping Christianity out of Bohemia. But in 950 he was utterly defeated by the emperor, Otto I., and compelled not only to admit the Christian priests into the country, but also to rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, and this misfortune seems actually to have changed his mind. He now became, if not friendly, at least forbearing to his Christian subjects, and, during the reign of his son and successor, Boleslav the Mild, the Christian Church progressed so far in Bohemia that an independent archbishopric was founded in Prague. The mass of the people, however, still remained barbarous, and heathenish customs and ideas lingered among them for more than a century. Adalbert, archbishop of Prague, from 983 to 997,130 preached against polygamy, the trade in Christian slaves, chiefly carried on by the Jews, but in vain. Twice he left his see, disgusted and discouraged; finally he was martyred by the Prussian Wends. Not until 1038 archbishop Severus succeeded in enforcing laws concerning marriage, the celebration of the Lord’s Day, and other points of Christian morals. About the contest between the Romano-Slavic and the Romano-Germanic churches in Bohemia, nothing is known. Legend tells that Methodius himself baptized Borziwai and Ludmilla, and the first missionary, work was, no doubt, done by Slavic priests, but at the time of Adalbert the Germanic tendency was prevailing.

Also among the Poles the Gospel was first preached by Slavic missionaries, and Cyrillus and Methodius are celebrated in the Polish liturgy131 as the apostles of the country. As the Moravian empire under Rastislaw comprised vast regions which afterward belonged to the kingdom of Poland, it is only natural that the movement started by Cyrillus and Methodius should have reached also these regions, and the name of at least one Slavic missionary among the Poles, Wiznach, is known to history.

After the breaking up of the Moravian kingdom, Moravian nobles and priests sought refuge in Poland, and during the reign of duke Semovit Christianity had become so powerful among the Poles, that it began to excite the jealousy of the pagans, and a violent contest took place. By the marriage between Duke Mieczyslav and the Bohemian princess Dombrowka, a sister of Boleslav the Mild, the influence of Christianity became still stronger. Dombrowka brought a number of Bohemian priests with her to Poland, 965, and in the following year Mieczyslav himself was converted and baptized. With characteristic arrogance he simply demanded that all his subjects should follow his example, and the pagan idols were now burnt or thrown into the river, pagan sacrifices were forbidden and severely punished, and Christian churches were built. So far the introduction of Christianity among the Poles was entirely due to Slavic influences, but at this time the close political connection between Duke Mieczyslav and Otto I. opened the way for a powerful German influence. Mieczyslav borrowed the whole organization of the Polish church from Germany. It was on the advice of Otto I. that he founded the first Polish bishopric at Posen and placed it under the authority of the archbishop of Magdeburg. German priests, representing Roman doctrines and rites, and using the Latin language, began to work beside the Slavic priests who represented Greek doctrines and rites and used the native language, and when finally the Polish church was placed wholly under the authority of Rome, this was not due to any spontaneous movement within the church itself, such as Polish chroniclers like to represent it, but to the influence of the German emperor and the German church. Under Mieczyslav’s son, Boleslav Chrobry, the first king of Poland and one of the most brilliant heroes of Polish history, Poland, although christianized only on the surface, became itself the basis for missionary labor among other Slavic tribes.

It was Boleslav who sent Adalbert of Prague among the Wends, and when Adalbert here was pitifully martyred, Boleslav ransomed his remains, had them buried at Gnesen (whence they afterwards were carried to Prague), and founded here an archiepiscopal see, around which the Polish church was finally consolidated. The Christian mission, however, was in the hands of Boleslav, just as it often had been in the hands of the German emperors, and sometimes even in the hands of the Pope himself, nothing but a political weapon. The mass of the population of his own realm was still pagan in their very hearts. Annually the Poles assembled on the day on which their idols had been thrown into the rivers or burnt, and celebrated the memory of their gods by dismal dirges,132 and the simplest rules of Christian morals could be enforced only by the application of the most barbarous punishments. Yea, under the political disturbances which occurred after the death of Mieczyslav II., 1034, a general outburst of heathenism took place throughout the Polish kingdom, and it took a long time before it was fully put down.

§ 35. The Conversion of the Bulgarians.

Constantinus Porphyrogenitus: Life of Basilius Macedo, in Hist. Byzant. Continuatores post Theophanem. Greek and Latin, Paris, 1685.

Photii Epistola, ed. Richard. Montacutius. London, 1647.

Nicholas I.: Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum, in Mansi: Coll. Concil., Tom. XV., pp. 401–434; and in Harduin: Coll. Concil., V., pp. 353–386.

A. Pichler: Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen dem Orient und Occident. München, 1864, I., pp. 192 sqq.

Comp. the biographies of Cyrillus and Methodius, mentioned in § 34.

The Bulgarians were of Turanian descent, but, having lived for centuries among Slavic nations, they had adopted Slavic language, religion, customs and habits. Occupying the plains between the Danube and the Balkan range, they made frequent inroads into the territory of the Byzantine empire. In 813 they conquered Adrianople and carried a number of Christians, among whom was the bishop himself, as prisoners to Bulgaria. Here these Christian prisoners formed a congregation and began to labor for the conversion of their captors, though not with any great success, as it would seem, since the bishop was martyred. But in 861 a sister of the Bulgarian prince, Bogoris, who had been carried as a prisoner to Constantinople, and educated there in the Christian faith, returned to her native country, and her exertions for the conversion of her brother at last succeeded.

Methodius was sent to her aid, and a picture he painted of the last judgment is said to have made an overwhelming impression on Bogoris, and determined him to embrace Christianity. He was baptized in 863, and entered immediately in correspondence with Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople. His baptism, however, occasioned a revolt among his subjects, and the horrible punishment, which he inflicted upon the rebels, shows how little as yet he had understood the teachings of Christianity.

Meanwhile Greek missionaries, mostly monks, had entered the country, but they were intriguing, arrogant, and produced nothing but confusion among the people. In 865 Bogoris addressed himself to Pope Nicolas I., asking for Roman missionaries, and laying before the Pope one hundred and six questions concerning Christian doctrines, morals and ritual, which he wished to have answered. The Pope sent two bishops to Bulgaria, and gave Bogoris very elaborate and sensible answers to his questions.

Nevertheless, the Roman mission did not succeed either. The Bulgarians disliked to submit to any foreign authority. They desired the establishment of an independent national church, but this was not to be gained either from Rome or from Constantinople. Finally the Byzantine emperor, Basilius Macedo, succeeded in establishing Greek bishops and a Greek archbishop in the country, and thus the Bulgarian church came under the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople, but its history up to this very day has been a continuous struggle against this authority. The church is now ruled by a Holy Synod, with an independent exarch.

Fearful atrocities of the Turks against the Christians gave rise to the Russo-Turkish war in 1877, and resulted in the independence of Bulgaria, which by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 was constituted into "an autonomous and tributary principality, under the suzerainty of the Sultan," but with a Christian government and a national militia. Religious proselytism is prohibited, and religious school-books must be previously examined by the Holy Synod. But Protestant missionaries are at work among the people, and practically enjoy full liberty.

§ 36. The Conversion of the Magyars.

Joh. de Thwrocz: Chronica Hungarorum, in Schwandtner: Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, I. Vienna, 1746–8.

Vita S. Stephani, in Act. Sanctor. September.

Vita S. Adalberti, in Monument. German. IV.

Horvath: History of Hungary. Pest, 1842–46.

Aug. Theiner: Monumenta vetera historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia. Rom., 1859, 1860, 2 Tom. fol.

The Magyars, belonging to the Turanian family of nations, and allied to the Finns and the Turks, penetrated into Europe in the ninth century, and settled, in 884, in the plains between the Bug and the Sereth, near the mouth of the Danube. On the instigation of the Byzantine emperor, Leo the Wise, they attacked the Bulgarians, and completely defeated them. The military renown they thus acquired gave them a new opportunity. The Frankish king Arnulf invoked their aid against Swatopluk, the ruler of the Moravian empire. Swatopluk, too, was defeated, and his realm was divided between the victors. The Magyars, retracing their steps across the Carpathian range, settled in the plains around the Theiss and the Danube, the country which their forefathers, the Huns, once had ruled over, the, present Hungary. They were a wild and fierce race, worshipping one supreme god under the guise of various natural phenomena: the sky, the river, etc. They had no temples and no priesthood, and their sacrifices consisted of animals only, mostly horses. But the oath was kept sacred among them, and their marriages were monogamous, and inaugurated with religious rites.

The first acquaintance with Christianity the Magyars made through their connections with the Byzantine court, without any further consequences. But after settling in Hungary, where they were surrounded on all sides by Christian nations, they were compelled, in 950, by the emperor, Otto I., to allow the bishop of Passau to send missionaries into their country; and various circumstances contributed to make this mission a rapid and complete success. Their prince, Geyza, had married a daughter of the Transylvanian prince, Gyula, and this princess, Savolta, had been educated in the Christian faith. Thus Geyza felt friendly towards the Christians; and as soon as this became known, Christianity broke forth from the mass of the population like flowers from the earth when spring has come. The people which the Magyars had subdued when settling in Hungary, and the captives whom they had carried along with them from Bulgaria and Moravia, were Christians. Hitherto these Christians had concealed their religion from fear of their rulers, and their children had been baptized clandestinely; but now they assembled in great multitudes around the missionaries, and the entrance of Christianity into Hungary looked like a triumphal march.133

Political disturbances afterwards interrupted this progress, but only for a short time. Adalbert of Prague visited the country, and made a great impression. He baptized Geyza’s son, Voik, born in 961, and gave him the name of Stephanus, 994. Adalbert’s pupil, Rodla, remained for a longer period in the country, and was held in so high esteem by the people, that they afterwards would not let him go. When Stephanus ascended the throne in 997, he determined at once to establish Christianity as the sole religion of his realm, and ordered that all Magyars should be baptized, and that all Christian slaves should be set free. This, however, caused a rising of the pagan party under the head of Kuppa, a relative of Stephanus; but Kuppa was defeated at Veszprim, and the order had to be obeyed.

Stephanus’ marriage with Gisela, a relative of the emperor, Otto III., brought him in still closer contact with the German empire, and he, like Mieczyslav of Poland, borrowed the whole ecclesiastical organization from the German church. Ten bishoprics were formed, and placed under the authority of the archbishop of Gran on the Danube (which is still the seat of the primate of Hungary); churches were built, schools and monasteries were founded, and rich revenues were procured for their support; the clergy was declared the first order in rank, and the Latin language was made the official language not only in ecclesiastical, but also in secular matters. As a reward for his zeal, Stephanus was presented by Pope Silvester II. with a golden crown, and, in the year 1000, he was solemnly crowned king by the archbishop of Gran, while a papal bull conferred on him the title of "His Apostolic Majesty."  And, indeed, Stephanus was the apostle of the Magyars. As most of the priests and monks, called from Germany, did not understand the language of the people, the king himself travelled about from town to town, preached, prayed, and exhorted all to keep the Lord’s Day, the fast, and other Christian duties. Nevertheless, it took a long time before Christianity really took hold of the Magyars, chiefly on account of the deep gulf created between the priests and their flocks, partly by the difference of language, partly by the exceptional position which Stephanus had given the clergy in the community, and which the clergy soon learned to utilize for selfish purposes. Twice during the eleventh century there occurred heavy relapses into paganism; in 1045, under King Andreas, and in 1060, under King Bela.

§ 37. The Christianization of Russia.

Nestor (monk of Kieff, the oldest Russian annalist, d. 1116): Annales, or Chronicon (from the building of the Babylonian tower to 1093). Continued by Niphontes (Nifon) from 1116–1157, and by others to 1676. Complete ed. in Russ by Pogodin, 1841, and with a Latin version and glossary by Fr. Miklosisch, Vindobon, 1860. German translation by Schlözer, Göttingen, 1802–’9, 5 vols. (incomplete).

J. G. Stritter: Memoriae Populorum olim ad Danubium, etc., incolentium ex Byzant. Script. Petropoli, 1771. 4  vols. A collection of the Byzantine sources.

N. M. Karamsin: History of Russia, 12 vols. St. Petersburg, 1816–29, translated into German and French.

Ph. Strahl: Beiträge zur russ. Kirchen-Geschichte (vol. I.). Halle, 1827; and Geschichte d. russ Kirche (vol. I.). Halle, 1830 (incomplete).

A. N. Mouravieff (late chamberlain to the Czar and Under-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod): A History of the Church of Russia (to the founding of the Holy Synod in 1721). St. Petersburg, 1840, translated into English by Rev. R. W. Blackmore. Oxford, 1862.

A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the Eastern Church. Lec. IX.-XII. London, 1862.

L. Boissard: L’église de Bussie. Paris, 1867, 2 vols.

The legend traces Christianity in Russia back to the Apostle St. Andrew, who is especially revered by the Russians. Mouravieff commences his history of the Russian church with these words: "The Russian church, like the other Orthodox churches of the East, had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country. Ascending up and penetrating by the Dniepr into the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff, and ’See you,’ said he to his disciples, ’those hills?  On those hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to His name.’  Such are the words of the holy Nestor that point from whence Christian Russia has sprung."

This tradition is an expansion of the report that Andrew labored and died a martyr in Scythia,134 and nothing more.

In the ninth century the Russian tribes, inhabiting the Eastern part of Europe, were gathered together under the rule of Ruric, a Varangian prince,135 who from the coasts of the Baltic penetrated into the centre of the present Russia, and was voluntarily accepted, if not actually chosen by the tribes as their chief. He is regarded as the founder of the Russian empire, A.D. 862, which in 1862 celebrated its millennial anniversary. About the same time or a little later the Russians became somewhat acquainted with Christianity through their connections with the Byzantine empire. The Eastern church, however, never developed any great missionary activity, and when Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, in his circular letter against the Roman see, speaks of the Russians as already converted at his time (867), a few years after the founding of the empire, he certainly exaggerates. When, in 945, peace was concluded between the Russian grand-duke, Igor, and the Byzantine emperor, some of the Russian soldiers took the oath in the name of Christ, but by far the greatest number swore by Perun, the old Russian god. In Kieff, on the Dniepr, the capital of the Russian realm, there was at that time a Christian church, dedicated to Elijah, and in 955 the grand-duchess, Olga, went to Constantinople and was baptized. She did not succeed, however, in persuading her son, Svatoslav, to embrace the Christian faith.

The progress of Christianity among the Russians was slow until the grand-duke Vladimir (980–1015), a grandson of Olga, and revered as Isapostolos ("Equal to an Apostle") with one sweep established it as the religion of the country. The narrative of this event by Nestor is very dramatic. Envoys from the Greek and the Roman churches, from the Mohammedans and the Jews (settled among the Chazares) came to Vladimir to persuade him to leave his old gods. He hesitated and did not know which of the new religions he should choose. Finally he determined to send wise men from among his own people to the various places to investigate the matter. The envoys were so powerfully impressed by a picture of the last judgment and by the service in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, that the question at once was settled in favor of the religion of the Byzantine court.

Vladimir, however, would not introduce it without compensation. He was staying at Cherson in the Crimea, which he had just taken and sacked, and thence he sent word to the emperor Basil, that he had determined either to adopt Christianity and receive the emperor’s sister, Anne, in marriage, or to go to Constantinople and do to that city as he had done to Cherson. He married Anne, and was baptized on the day of his wedding, A.D. 988.

As soon as he was baptized preparations were made for the baptism of his people. The wooden image of Perun was dragged at a horse’s tail through the country, soundly flogged by all passers-by, and finally thrown into the Dniepr. Next, at a given hour, all the people of Kieff, men, women and children, descended into the river, while the grand Duke kneeled, and the Christian priests read the prayers from the top of the cliffs on the shore. Nestor, the Russian monk and annalist, thus describes the scene: "Some stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name. It was a sight wonderfully curious and beautiful to behold; and when the people were baptized each returned to his own home."

Thus the Russian nation was converted in wholesale style to Christianity by despotic power. It is characteristic of the supreme influence of the ruler and the slavish submission of the subjects in that country. Nevertheless, at its first entrance in Russia, Christianity penetrated deeper into the life of the people than it did in any other country, without, however, bringing about a corresponding thorough moral transformation. Only a comparatively short period elapsed, before a complete union of the forms of religion and the nationality took place. Every event in the history of the nation, yea, every event in the life of the individual was looked upon from a religious point of view, and referred to some distinctly religious idea. The explanation of this striking phenomenon is due in part to Cyrill’s translation of the Bible into the Slavic language, which had been driven out from Moravia and Bohemia by the Roman priests, and was now brought from Bulgaria into Russia, where it took root. While the Roman church always insisted upon the exclusive use of the Latin translation of the Bible and the Latin language in divine service, the Greek church always allowed the use of the vernacular. Under its auspices there were produced translations into the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Slavic languages, and the effects of this principle were, at least in Russia, most beneficial. During the reign of Vladimir’s successor, Jaroslaff, 1019–1054, not only were churches and monasteries and schools built all over the country, but Greek theological books were translated, and the Russian church had, at an early date, a religious literature in the native tongue of the people. Jaroslaff, by his celebrated code of laws, became the Justinian of Russia.

The Czars and people of Russia have ever since faithfully adhered to the Oriental church which grew with the growth of the empire all along the Northern line of two Continents. As in the West, so in Russia, monasticism was the chief institution for the spread of Christianity among heathen savages. Hilarion (afterwards Metropolitan), Anthony, Theodosius, Sergius, Lazarus, are prominent names in the early history of Russian monasticism.

The subsequent history of the Russian church is isolated from the main current of histoy, and almost barren of events till the age of Nikon and Peter the Great. At first she was dependent on the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1325 Moscow was founded, and became, in the place of Kieff, the Russian Rome, with a metropolitan, who after the fall of Constantinople became independent (1461), and a century later was raised to the dignity of one of the five patriarchs of the Eastern Church (1587). But Peter the Great made the Northern city of his own founding the ecclesiastical as well as the political metropolis, and transferred the authority of the patriarchate of Moscow to the "Holy Synod" (1721), which permanently resides in St. Petersburg and constitutes the highest ecclesiastical judicatory of Russia under the caesaropapal rule of the Czar, the most powerful rival of the Roman Pope.

CHAPTER III.

MOHAMMEDANISM IN ITS RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY.136

"There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his apostle."—The Koran.

"There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all."—1 Tim. ii. 5, 6.

§ 38. Literature.

See A. Sprenger’s Bibliotheca Orientalis Sprengeriana. Giessen, 1857.

W. Muir.: Life of Mahomet, Vol. I., ch. 1. Muir discusses especially the value of Mohammedan traditions.

Ch. Friedrici: Bibliotheca Orientalis. London (Trübner & Co.) 1875 sqq.

I. Sources.

1. The Koran or AL-Koran. The chief source. The Mohammedan Bible, claiming to be given by inspiration to Mohammed during the course of twenty years. About twice as large as the New Testament. The best Arabic MSS., often most beautifully written, are in the Mosques of Cairo, Damascus, Constantinople, and Paris; the largest, collection in the library of the Khedive in Cairo. Printed editions in Arabic by Hinkelmann (Hamburg, 1694); Molla Osman Ismael (St. Petersburg, 1787 and 1803); G. Flügel (Leipz., 1834); revised by Redslob (1837, 1842, 1858). Arabice et Latine, ed. L. Maraccius, Patav., 1698, 2 vols., fol. (Alcorani textus universus, with notes and refutation). A lithographed edition of the Arabic text appeared at Lucknow in India, 1878 (A. H. 1296).

The standard English translations: in prose by Geo. Sale (first publ., Lond., 1734, also 1801, 1825, Philad., 1833, etc.), with a learned and valuable preliminary discourse and notes; in the metre, but without the rhyme, of the original by J. M. Rodwell (Lond., 1861, 2d ed. 1876, the Suras arranged in chronological order). A new transl. in prose by E. H. Palmer. (Oxford, 1880, 2 vols.) in M. Müller’s "Sacred Books of the East."  Parts are admirably translated by Edward W. Lane.

French translation by Savary, Paris, 1783, 2 vols.; enlarged edition by Garcin de Tassy, 1829, in 3 vols.; another by M. Kasimirski, Paris, 1847, and 1873.

German translations by Wahl (Halle, 1828), L. Ullmann (Bielefeld, 1840, 4th ed. 1857), and parts by Hammer von Purgstall (in the Fundgruben des Orients), and Sprenger (in Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad).

2. Secondary sources on the Life of Moh. and the origin of Islâm are the numerous poems of contemporaries, especially in Ibn Ishâc, and the collections of the sayings of Moh., especially the Sahih (i.e. The True, the Genuine) of Albuchârî (d. 871). Also the early Commentaries on the Koran, which explain difficult passages, reconcile the contradictions, and insert traditional sayings and legends. See Sprenger, III. CIV. sqq.

II. Works On The Koran.

Th. Nöldeke: Geschichte des Quorâns, (History of the Koran), Göttingen, 1860; and his art. in the "Encycl. Brit., 9th ed. XVI. 597–606.

Garcin de Tassy: L’Islamisme d’après le Coran l’enseignement doctrinal et la pratique, 3d ed. Paris, 1874.

Gustav Weil: Hist. kritische Einleitung in den Koran. Bielefeld und Leipz., 1844, 2d ed., 1878.

Sir William Muir: The Corân. Its Composition and Teaching; and the Testimony it bears to the Holy Scriptures. (Allahabad, 1860), 3d ed., Lond., 1878.

Sprenger, l.c., III., pp. xviii.-cxx.

III. Biographies of Mohammed.

1. Mohammedan biographers.

Zohri (the oldest, died after the Hegira 124).

Ibn Ishâc (or Ibni Ishak, d. A. H. 151, or A.D. 773), ed. in Arabic from MSS. by Wüstenfeld, Gött., 1858–60, translated by Weil, Stuttg., 1864.

Ibn (Ibni) Hishâm (d. A. H. 213, A.D. 835), also ed. by Wüstenfeld, and translated by Weil, 1864.

Katib Al Waquidi (or Wackedee, Wackidi, d. at Bagdad A. H. 207, A.D. 829), a man of prodigious learning, who collected the traditions, and left six hundred chests of books (Sprenger, III., LXXI.), and his secretary, Muhammad Ibn Sâad (d. A. H. 230, A.D. 852), who arranged, abridged, and completed the biographical works of his master in twelve or fifteen for. vols.; the first vol. contains the biography of Moh., and is preferred by Muir and Sprenger to all others. German transl. by Wellhausen: Muhammed in Medina. From the Arabic of Vakidi. Berlin, 1882.

Tabari (or Tibree, d. A. H. 310, A.D. 932), called by Gibbon "the Livy of the Arabians."

Muir says (I., CIII.): "To the three biographies by Ibn Hishâm, by Wackidi, and his secretary, and by Tabari, the judicious historian of Mahomet will, as his original authorities, confine himself. He will also receive, with a similar respect, such traditions in the general collections of the earliest traditionists—Bokhâri, Muslim, Tirmidzi, etc.,—as may bear upon his subject. But he will reject as evidence all later authors."  Abulfeda (or Abulfida, d. 1331), once considered the chief authority, now set aside by much older sources.

*Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador (member of the Royal Asiatic Society): A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed. London (Trübner & Co.), 1870. He wrote also a "Mohammedan Commentary on the Holy Bible."  He begins with the sentence: "In nomine Dei Misericordis Miseratoris. Of all the innumerable wonders of the universe, the most marvellous is religion."

Syed Ameer Ali, Moulvé (a Mohammedan lawyer, and brother of the former): A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed. London 1873. A defense of Moh. chiefly drawn from Ibn-Hishâm (and Ibn-al Athîr (1160–1223).

2. Christian Biographies.

Dean Prideaux (d. 1724): Life of Mahomet, 1697, 7th ed. Lond., 1718. Very unfavorable.

Count Boulinvilliers: The Life of Mahomet.  Transl. from the French. Lond., 1731.

Jean Gagnier (d. 1740): La vie de Mahomet, 1732, 2 vols., etc. Amsterd. 1748, 3 vols. Chiefly from Abulfeda and the Sonna. He also translated Abulfeda.

*Gibbon: Decline and Fall, etc. (1788), chs. 50–52. Although not an Arabic scholar, Gibbon made the best use of the sources then accessible in Latin, French, and English, and gives a brilliant and, upon the whole, impartial picture.

*Gustav Weil: Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre. Stuttgart, 1843. Comp. also his translation of Ibn Ishâc, and Ibn Hishâm, Stuttgart, 1864, 2 vols.; and his Biblische Legenden der Muselmänner aus arabischen Quellen und mit jüd. Sagen verglichen. Frcf., 1845. The last is also transl. into English.

Th. Carlyle: The Hero as Prophet, in his Heroes Hero- Worship and the Heroic in History. London, 1840. A mere sketch, but full of genius and stimulating hints. He says: "We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent prophet, but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of prophets, but I esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret."

Washington Irving: Mahomet and His Followers. N. Y., 1850. 2 vols.

George Bush: The Life of Mohammed. New York (Harpers).

*SIR William MUIR (of the Bengal Civil Service): The Life of Mahomet.  With introductory chapters on the original sources for the biography of Mahomet, and on the pre-Islamite history of Arabia. Lond., 1858–1861, 4 vols. Learned, able, and fair. Abridgement in 1 vol. Lond., 1877.

*A. Sprenger: First an English biography printed at Allahabad, 1851, and then a more complete one in German, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad. Nach bisher grösstentheils unbenutzten Quellen. Berlin, 1861–’65, 2d ed. 1869, 3 vols. This work is based on original and Arabic sources, and long personal intercourse with Mohammedans in India, but is not a well digested philosophical biography.

*Theod. Nöldeke: Das Leben Muhammeds. Hanover, 1863. Comp. his elaborate art. in Vol. XVIII. of Herzog’s Real-Encycl., first ed.

E. Renan: Mahomet, et les origines de l’islamisme, in his "Etudes de l’histoire relig.," 7th ed. Par., 1864.

Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire: Mahomet et le Oran. Paris, 1865. Based on Sprenger and Muir.

Ch. Scholl: L’Islam et son Fondateur. Paris, 1874.

R. Bosworth Smith (Assistant Master in Harrow School): Mohammed and Mohammedanism. Lond. 1874, reprinted New York, 1875.

J. W. H. Stobart: Islam and its Founder. London, 1876.

J. Wellhausen: Art. Moh. in the "Encycl. Brit." 9th ed. vol. XVI. 545–565.

IV. History Of The Arabs And Turks.

Jos. von Hammer-Purgstall: Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. Pesth, 1827–34, 10 vols. A smaller ed. in 4 vols. This standard work is the result of thirty years’ labor, and brings the history down to 1774. By the same: Literaturgeschichte der Araber. Wien, 1850–’57, 7 vols.

*G. Weil: Gesch. der Chalifen. Mannheim, 1846–5l, 3 vols.

*Caussin de Perceval: Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes. Paris, 1848, 3 vols.

*Edward A. Freeman (D. C. L., LL. D.): History and Conquests of the Saracens. Lond., 1856, 3d ed. 1876.

Robert Durie Osborn (Major of the Bengal Staff Corps): Islam under the Arabs. London., 1876; Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad. London, 1877.

Sir Edward S. Creasy: History of the Ottoman Turks from the Beginning of their Empire to the present Time. Lond., 2d ed. 1877. Chiefly founded on von Hammer’

Th. Nöldeke: Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt. Leyden, 1879.

Sir Wm. Muir: Annals of the Early Caliphate. London 1883.

V. Manners And Customs Of The Mohammedans.

Joh. Ludwig Burckhardt: Travels in Nubia, 1819; Travels in Syria and Palestine, 1823; Notes on the Bedouins, 1830.

*Edw. W. Lane: Modern Egyptians. Lond., 1836, 5th ed. 1871, in 2 vols.

*Rich. F. Burton: Personal narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah, Lond. 1856, 3 vols.

C. B. Klunzinger: Upper Egypt: its People and its Products. A descriptive Account of the Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Occupations of the People of the Nile Valley, the Desert, and the Red Sea Coast. New York, 1878. A valuable supplement to Lane.

Books of Eastern Travel, especially on Egypt and Turkey. Bahrdt’s Travels in Central Africa (1857), Palgrave’s Arabia (1867), etc.

VI. Relation Of Mohammedanism To Judaism.

*Abraham Geiger: Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen?  Bonn, 1833.

Hartwig Hirschfeld: Jüdische Elemente im Koran. Berlin, 1878.

VII. Mohammedanism as a Religion, and its Relation to Christianity.

L. Maracci: Prodromus ad refutationem Alcorani. Rom., 1691, 4 vols.

S. Lee: Controversial Tracts on Christianity and Mahometanism. 1824.

J. Döllingber (R.C.): Muhammed’s Religion nach ihrer innern Entwicklung u. ihrem Einfluss auf das Leben der Völker. Regensb. 1838.

A. Möhler (R.C.): Das Verhältniss des Islam zum Christenthum (in his "Gesammelte Schriften"). Regensb., 1839.

C. F. Gerock: Versuch einer Darstellung der Christologie des Koran. Hamburg and Gotha, 1839.

J. H. Newman (R.C.): The Turks in their relation to Europe (written in 1853), in his "Historical Sketches."  London, 1872, pp. 1–237.

Dean Arthur P. Stanley: Mahometanism and its relations to the Eastern Church (in Lectures on the "History of the Eastern Church."  London and New York, 1862, pp. 360–387). A picturesque sketch.

Dean Milman: History of Latin Christianity. Book IV., chs.1 and 2. (Vol. II. p. 109).

Theod. Nöldeke: Art. Muhammed und der Islam, in Herzog’s "Real-Encyclop."  Vol. XVIII. (1864), pp. 767–820.’

*Eman. Deutsch: Islam, in his "Liter. Remains."  Lond. and N. York, 1874, pp. 50–134. The article originally appeared in the London "Quarterly Review" for Oct. 1869, and is also printed at the end of the New York (Harper) ed. of R. Bosworth Smith’s Mohammed. Reports of the General Missionary Conference at Allahabad, 1873.

J. Mühleisen Arnold (formerly chaplain at Batavia): Islam: its History, Character, and Relation to Christianity. Lond., 1874, 3d ed.

Gustav. Rösch: Die Jesusmythen des Islam, in the "Studien und Kritiken."  Gotha, 1876. (No. III. pp. 409–454).

Marcus Dods: Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ.  Lond. 2d ed. 1878.

Ch. A. Aiken: Mohammedanism as a Missionary Religion. In the "Bibliotheca Sacra," of Andover for 1879, p. 157.

Archbishop Trench: Lectures on Mediaeval Church History (Lect. IV. 45–58). London, 1877.

Henry H. Jessup (Amer. Presbyt. missionary at Beirut): The Mohammedan Missionary Problem. Philadelphia, 1879.

Edouard Sayous: Jésus Christ d’après Mahomet.  Paris 1880.

G. P. Badger: Muhámmed in Smith and Wace, III. 951–998.

§ 39. Statistics and Chronological Table.

Estimate of the Mohammedan Population (According to Keith Johnston).

In Asia,            112,739,000

In Africa,            50,416,000

In Europe,            5,974,000

Total,            169,129,000

Mohammedans Under Christian Governments.

England in India rules over        41,000,000

Russia in Central Asia rules over             6,000,000

France in Africa rules over          2,000,000

Holland in Java and Celebes rules over    1,000,000

Total,            50,000,000

A.D. Chronological Survey.

570. Birth of Mohammed, at Mecca.

610. Mohammed received the visions of Gabriel and began his career as a  prophet. (Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons).

622. The Hegira, or the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina. Beginning of the Mohammedan era.

632. (June 8) Death of Mohammed at Medina.

632. Abû Bekr, first Caliph or successor of Mohammed

636. Capture of Jerusalem by the Caliph Omar.

640. Capture of Alexandria by Omar.

711. Tharyk crosses the Straits from Africa to Europe, and calls the mountain Jebel Tharyk (Gibraltar).

732. Battle of Poitiers and Tours; Abd-er-Rahman defeated by Charles Martel; Western Europe saved from Moslem conquest.

786–809. Haroun al Rashîd, Caliph of Bagdad. Golden era of Mohammedanism. Correspondence with Charlemagne).

1063. Allp Arslan, Seljukian Turkish prince.

1096. The First Crusade. Capture of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon.

1187. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and scourge of the Crusaders, conquers at Tiberias and takes Jerusalem, (1187); is defeated by Richard Coeur de Lion at Askelon, and dies 1193. Decline of the Crusades.

1288–1326. Reign of Othman, founder of the Ottoman (Turkish) dynasty.

1453. Capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II., "the Conqueror," and founder of the greatness of Turkey. (Exodus of Greek scholars to Southern Europe; the Greek Testament brought to the West; the revival of letters.)

1492. July 2. Boabdil (or Alien Abdallah) defeated by Ferdinand at Granada; end of Moslem rule in Spain. (Discovery of’ America by Columbus).

1517. Ottoman Sultan Selim I. conquers Egypt, wrests the caliphate from the Arab line of the Koreish through Motawekkel Billah, and transfers it to the Ottoman Sultans; Ottoman caliphate never acknowledged by Persian or Moorish Moslems. (The Reformation.)

1521–1566. Solyman II., "the Magnificent," marks the zenith of the military power of the Turks; takes Belgrade (1521), defeats the Hungarians (1526), but is repulsed from Vienna (1529 and 1532).

1571. Defeat of Selim II. at the naval battle of Lepanto by the Christian powers under Don John of Austria. Beginning of the decline of the Turkish power.

1683. Final repulse of the Turks at the gates of Vienna by John Sobieski, king of Poland, 2Sept. 12; Eastern Europe saved from Moslem rule.

1792. Peace at Jassy in Moldavia, which made the Dniester the frontier between Russia and Turkey.

1827. Annihilation of the Turko-Egyptian fleet by, the combined squadrons of England, France, and Russia, in the battle of Navarino, October 20. Treaty of Adrianople, 1829. Independence of the kingdom of Greece, 1832.

1856. End of Crimean War; Turkey saved by England and France aiding the Sultan against the aggression of Russia; Treaty of Paris; European agreement not to interfere in the domestic affairs of Turkey.

1878. Defeat of the Turks by Russia; but checked by the interference of England under the lead of Lord Beaconsfield. Congress of the European powers, and Treaty of Berlin; independence of Bulgaria secured; Anglo-Turkish Treaty; England occupies Cyprus—agrees to defend the frontier of Asiatic Turkey against Russia, on condition that the Sultan execute fundamental reforms in Asiatic Turkey.

1880. Supplementary Conference at Berlin. Rectification and enlargement of the boundary of Montenegro and Greece.

§ 40. Position of Mohammedanism in Church History.

While new races and countries in Northern and Western Europe, unknown to the apostles, were added to the Christian Church, we behold in Asia and Africa the opposite spectacle of the rise and progress of a rival religion which is now acknowledged by more than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe. It is called "Mohammedanism" from its founder, or "Islâm," from its chief virtue, which is absolute surrender to the one true God. Like Christianity, it had its birth in the Shemitic race, the parent of the three monotheistic religions, but in an obscure and even desert district, and had a more rapid, though less enduring success.

But what a difference in the means employed and the results reached!  Christianity made its conquest by peaceful missionaries and the power of persuasion, and carried with it the blessings of home, freedom and civilization. Mohammedanism conquered the fairest portions of the earth by the sword and cursed them by polygamy, slavery, despotism and desolation. The moving power of Christian missions was love to God and man; the moving power of Islâm was fanaticism and brute force. Christianity has found a home among all nations and climes; Mohammedanism, although it made a most vigorous effort to conquer the world, is after all a religion of the desert, of the tent and the caravan, and confined to nomad and savage or half-civilized nations, chiefly Arabs, Persians, and Turks. It never made an impression on Europe except by brute force; it is only encamped, not really domesticated, in Constantinople, and when it must withdraw from Europe it will leave no trace behind.

Islâm in its conquering march took forcible possession of the lands of the Bible, and the Greek church, seized the throne of Constantine, overran Spain, crossed the Pyrenees, and for a long time threatened even the church of Rome and the German empire, until it was finally repulsed beneath the walls of Vienna. The Crusades which figure so prominently in the history of mediaeval Christianity, originated in the desire to wrest the holy land from the followers of "the false prophet," and brought the East in contact with the West. The monarchy and the church of Spain, with their architecture, chivalry, bigotry, and inquisition, emerged from a fierce conflict with the Moors. Even the Reformation in the sixteenth century was complicated with the Turkish question, which occupied the attention of the diet of Augsburg as much as the Confession of the Evangelical princes and divines. Luther, in one of his most popular hymns, prays for deliverance from "the murdering Pope and Turk," as the two chief enemies of the gospel137; and the Anglican Prayer Book, in the collect for Good Friday, invokes God "to have mercy upon all Turks," as well as upon "Jews, Infidels, and Heretics."138

The danger for Western Christendom from that quarter has long since passed away; the "unspeakable" Turk has ceased to be unconquerable, but the Asiatic and a part of the East European portion of the Greek church are still subject to the despotic rule of the Sultan, whose throne in Constantinople has been for more than four hundred years a standing insult to Christendom.

Mohammedanism then figures as a hostile force, as a real Ishmaelite in church history; it is the only formidable rival which Christianity ever had, the only religion which for a while at least aspired to universal empire.

And yet it is not hostile only. It has not been without beneficial effect upon Western civilization. It aided in the development of chivalry; it influenced Christian architecture; it stimulated the study of mathematics, chemistry, medicine (as is indicated by the technical terms: algebra, chemistry, alchemy); and the Arabic translations and commentaries on Aristotle by the Spanish Moors laid the philosophical foundation of scholasticism. Even the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks brought an inestimable blessing to the West by driving Greek scholars with the Greek Testament to Italy to inaugurate there the revival of letters which prepared the way for the Protestant Reformation.

Viewed in its relation to the Eastern Church which it robbed of the fairest dominions, Mohammedanism was a well-deserved divine punishment for the unfruitful speculations, bitter contentions, empty ceremonialism and virtual idolatry which degraded and disgraced the Christianity of the East after the fifth century. The essence of true religion, love to God and to man, was eaten out by rancor and strife, and there was left no power of ultimate resistance to the foreign conqueror. The hatred between the orthodox Eastern church and the Eastern schismatics driven from her communion, and the jealousy between the Greek and Latin churches prevented them from aiding each other in efforts to arrest the progress of the common foe. The Greeks detested the Latin Filioque as a heresy more deadly than Islâm; while the Latins cared more for the supremacy of the Pope than the triumph of Christianity, and set up during the Crusades a rival hierarchy in the East. Even now Greek and Latin monks in Bethlehem and Jerusalem are apt to fight at Christmas and Easter over the cradle and the grave of their common Lord and Redeemer, unless Turkish soldiers keep them in order!139

But viewed in relation to the heathenism from which it arose or which it converted, Mahommedanism is a vast progress, and may ultimately be a stepping-stone to Christianity, like the law of Moses which served as a schoolmaster to lead men to the gospel. It has destroyed the power of idolatry in Arabia and a large part of Asia and Africa, and raised Tartars and Negroes from the rudest forms of superstition to the belief and worship of the one true God, and to a certain degree of civilization.

It should be mentioned, however, that, according to the testimony of missionaries and African travelers, Mohammedanism has inflamed the simple minded African tribes with the impure fire of fanaticism and given them greater power of resistance to Christianity. Sir William Muir, a very competent judge, thinks that Mohammedanism by the poisoning influence of polygamy and slavery, and by crushing all freedom of judgment in religion has interposed the most effectual barrier against the reception of Christianity. "No system," he says, "could have been devised with more consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has sway, from the light of truth. Idolatrous Arabs might have been aroused to spiritual life and to the adoption of the faith of Jesus; Mahometan Arabia is, to the human eye, sealed against the benign influences of the gospel .... The sword of Mahomet and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth."140

This is no doubt true of the past. But we have not yet seen the end of this historical problem. It is not impossible that Islâm may yet prove to be a necessary condition for the revival of a pure Scriptural religion in the East. Protestant missionaries from England and America enjoy greater liberty under the Mohammedan rule than they would under a Greek or Russian government. The Mohammedan abhorrence of idolatry and image worship, Mohammedan simplicity and temperance are points of contact with the evangelical type of Christianity, which from the extreme West has established flourishing missions in the most important parts of Turkey. The Greek Church can do little or nothing with the Mohammedans; if they are to be converted it must be done by a Christianity which is free from all appearance of idolatry, more simple in worship, and more vigorous in life than that which they have so easily conquered and learned to despise. It is an encouraging fact that Mohammedans have, great respect for the Anglo-Saxon race. They now swear by the word of an Englishman as much as by the beard of Mohammed.

Islâm is still a great religious power in the East. It rules supreme in Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, North Africa, and makes progress among the savage tribes in the interior of the Dark Continent. It is by no means simply, as Schlegel characterized the system, "a prophet without miracles, a faith without mysteries, and a morality without love."  It has tenacity, aggressive vitality and intense enthusiasm. Every traveller in the Orient must be struck with the power of its simple monotheism upon its followers. A visit to the Moslem University in the Mosque El Azhar at Cairo is very instructive. It dates from the tenth century (975), and numbers (or numbered in 1877, when I visited it) no less than ten thousand students who come from all parts of the Mohammedan world and present the appearance of a huge Sunday School, seated in small groups on the floor, studying the Koran as the beginning and end of all wisdom, and then at the stated hours for prayer rising to perform their devotions under the lead of their teachers. They live in primitive simplicity, studying, eating and sleeping on a blanket or straw mat in the same mosque, but the expression of their faces betrays the fanatical devotion to their creed. They support themselves, or are aided by the alms of the faithful. The teachers (over three hundred) receive no salary and live by private instruction or presents from rich scholars.

Nevertheless the power of Islâm, like its symbol, the moon, is disappearing before the sun of Christianity which is rising once more over the Eastern horizon. Nearly one-third of its followers are under Christian (mostly English) rule. It is essentially a politico-religious system, and Turkey is its stronghold. The Sultan has long been a "sick man," and owes his life to the forbearance and jealousy of the Christian powers. Sooner or later he will be driven out of Europe, to Brusa or Mecca. The colossal empire of Russia is the hereditary enemy of Turkey, and would have destroyed her in the wars of 1854 and 1877, if Catholic France and Protestant England had not come to her aid. In the meantime the silent influences of European civilization and Christian missions are undermining the foundations of Turkey, and preparing the way for a religious, moral and social regeneration and transformation of the East. "God’s mills grind slowly, but surely and wonderfully fine."  A thousand years before Him are as one day, and one day may do the work of a thousand years.

§ 41. The Home, and the Antecedents of Islâm.

On the Aborigines of Arabia and its religious condition before Islam, compare the preliminary discourse of Sale, Sect.1 and 2; Muir, Vol. I. ch. 2d; Sprenger, I. 13–92, and Stobart, ch. 1.

The fatherland of Islâm is Arabia, a peninsula between the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It is covered with sandy deserts, barren hills, rock-bound coasts, fertile wadies, and rich pastures. It is inhabited by nomadic tribes and traders who claim descent from five patriarchal stocks, Cush, Shem, Ishmael, Keturah, and Esau. It was divided by the ancients into Arabia Deserta, Arabia Petraea (the Sinai district with Petra as the capital), and Arabia Felix (El-Yemen, i.e. the land on the right hand, or of the South). Most of its rivers are swelled by periodical rains and then lose themselves in the sandy plains; few reach the ocean; none of them is navigable. It is a land of grim deserts and strips of green verdure, of drought and barrenness, violent rains, clear skies, tropical heat, date palms, aromatic herbs, coffee, balsam, myrrh, frankincense, and dhurra (which takes the place of grain). Its chief animals are the camel, "the ship of the desert," an excellent breed of horses, sheep, and goats. The desert, like the ocean, is not without its grandeur. It creates the impression of infinitude, it fosters silence and meditation on God and eternity. Man is there alone with God. The Arabian desert gave birth to some of the sublimest compositions, the ode of liberty by Miriam, the ninetieth Psalm by Moses, the book of Job, which Carlyle calls "the grandest poem written by the pen of man."

The Arabs love a roaming life, are simple and temperate, courteous, respectful, hospitable, imaginative, fond of poetry and eloquence, careless of human life, revengeful, sensual, and fanatical. Arabia, protected by its deserts, was never properly conquered by a foreign nation.

The religious capital of Islâm, and the birthplace of its founder—its Jerusalem and Rome—is Mecca (or Mekka), one of the oldest cities of Arabia. It is situated sixty-five miles East of Jiddah on the Red Sea, two hundred and forty-five miles South of Medina, in a narrow and sterile valley and shut in by bare hills. It numbered in its days of prosperity over one hundred thousand inhabitants, now only about forty-five thousand. It stands under the immediate control of the Sultan. The streets are broad, but unpaved, dusty in summer, muddy in winter. The houses are built of brick or stone, three or four stories high; the rooms better furnished than is usual in the East. They are a chief source of revenue by being let to the pilgrims. There is scarcely a garden or cultivated field in and around Mecca, and only here and there a thorny acacia and stunted brushwood relieves the eye. The city derives all its fruit—watermelons, dates, cucumbers, limes, grapes, apricots, figs, almonds—from Tâif and Wady Fatima, which during the pilgrimage season send more than one hundred camels daily to the capital. The inhabitants are indolent, though avaricious, and make their living chiefly of the pilgrims who annually flock thither by thousands and tens of thousands from all parts of the Mohammedan world. None but Moslems are allowed to enter Mecca, but a few Christian travellers—Ali Bey (the assumed name of the Spaniard, Domingo Badia y Leblich, d. 1818), Burckhardt in 1814, Burton in 1852, Maltzan in 1862, Keane in 1880—have visited it in Mussulman disguise, and at the risk of their lives. To them we owe our knowledge of the place.141

The most holy place in Mecca is Al-Kaaba, a small oblong temple, so called from its cubic form.142  To it the faces of millions of Moslems are devoutly turned in prayer five times a day. It is inclosed by the great mosque, which corresponds in importance to the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome, and can hold about thirty-five thousand persons. It is surrounded by colonnades, chambers, domes and minarets. Near it is the bubbling well Zemzem, from which Hagar and Ishmael are said to have quenched their burning thirst. The Kaaba is much older than Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions it as the oldest and most honored temple in his time. It is supposed to have been first built by angels in the shape of a tent and to have been let down from heaven; there Adam worshipped after his expulsion from Paradise; Seth substituted a structure of clay and stone for a tent; after the destruction by the deluge Abraham and Ishmael reconstructed it, and their footsteps are shown.143  It was entirely rebuilt in 1627. It contains the famous Black Stone,144 in the North-Eastern corner near the door. This is probably a meteoric stone, or of volcanic origin, and served originally as an altar. The Arabs believe that it fell from Paradise with Adam, and was as white as milk, but turned black on account of man’s sins.145  It is semi-circular in shape, measures about six inches in height, and eight inches in breadth, is four or five feet from the ground, of reddish black color, polished by innumerable kisses (like the foot of the Peter-statue in St. Peter’s at Rome), encased in silver, and covered with black silk and inscriptions from the Koran. It was an object of veneration from time immemorial, and is still devoutly kissed or touched by the Moslem pilgrims on each of their seven circuits around the temple.146

Mohammed subsequently cleared the Kaaba of all relics of idolatry, and made it the place of pilgrimage for his followers. He invented or revived the legend that Abraham by divine command sent his son Ishmael with Hagar to Mecca to establish there the true worship and the pilgrim festival. He says in the Koran: "God hath appointed the Kaaba, the sacred house, to be a station for mankind," and, "Remember when we appointed the sanctuary as man’s resort and safe retreat, and said, ’Take ye the station of Abraham for a place of prayer.’  And we commanded Abraham and Ishmael, ’Purify my house for those who shall go in procession round it, and those who shall bow down and prostrate themselves.’ "147

Arabia had at the time when Mohammed appeared, all the elements for a wild, warlike, eclectic religion like the one which he established. It was inhabited by heathen star-worshippers, Jews, and Christians.

The heathen were the ruling race, descended from Ishmael, the bastard son of Abraham (Ibrahim), the real sons of the desert, full of animal life and energy. They had their sanctuary in the Kaaba at Mecca, which attracted annually large numbers of pilgrims long before Mohammed.

The Jews, after the destruction of Jerusalem, were scattered in Arabia, especially in the district of Medina, and exerted considerable influence by their higher culture and rabbinical traditions.

The Christians belonged mostly to the various heretical sects which were expelled from the Roman empire during the violent doctrinal controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. We find there traces of Arians, Sabellians, Ebionites, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monophysites, Marianites, and Collyridians or worshippers of Mary. Anchorets and monks settled in large numbers in Wady Feiran around Mount Serbal, and Justinian laid the foundation of the Convent of St. Catharine at the foot of Mount Sinai, which till the year 1859 harbored the oldest and most complete uncial manuscript of the Greek Scriptures of both Testaments from the age of Constantine. But it was a very superficial and corrupt Christianity which had found a home in those desert regions, where even the apostle Paul spent three years after his conversion in silent preparation for his great mission.

These three races and religions, though deadly hostile to each other, alike revered Abraham, the father of the faithful, as their common ancestor. This fact might suggest to a great mind the idea to unite them by a national religion monotheistic in principle and eclectic in its character. This seems to have been the original project of the founder of Islâm.

It is made certain by recent research that there were at the time and before the call of Mohammed a considerable number of inquirers at Mecca and Medina, who had intercourse with Eastern Christians in Syria and Abyssinia, were dissatisfied with the idolatry around them, and inclined to monotheism, which they traced to Abraham. They called themselves Hanyfs, i.e. Converts, Puritans. One of them, Omayah of Tâif, we know to have been under Christian influence; others seem to have derived their monotheistic ideas from Judaism. Some of the early converts of Mohammed as, Zayd (his favorite slave), Omayab, or Umaijah (a popular poet), and Waraka (a cousin of Chadijah and a student of the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians) belonged to this sect, and even Mohammed acknowledged himself at first a Hanyf.148  Waraka, it is said, believed in him, as long as he was a Hanyf, but then forsook him, and died a Christian or a Jew.149

Mohammed consolidated and energized this reform-movement, and gave it a world-wide significance, under the new name of Islâm, i.e. resignation to God; whence Moslem (or Muslim), one who resigns himself to God.

§ 42. Life and Character of Mohammed.

Mohammed, an unschooled, self-taught, semi-barbarous son of nature, of noble birth, handsome person, imaginative, energetic, brave, the ideal of a Bedouin chief, was destined to become the political and religious reformer, the poet, prophet, priest, and king of Arabia.

He was born about A.D. 570 at Mecca, the only child of a young widow named Amina.150  His father Abdallah had died a few months before in his twenty-fifth year on a mercantile journey in Medina, and left to his orphan five camels, some sheep and a slave girl.151  He belonged to the heathen family of the Hàshim, which was not wealthy, but claimed lineal descent from Ishmael, and was connected with the Koreish or Korashites, the leading tribe of the Arabs and the hereditary guardians of the sacred Kaaba.152  Tradition surrounds his advent in the world with a halo of marvellous legends: he was born circumcised and with his navel cut, with the seal of prophecy written on his back in letters of light; he prostrated himself at once on the ground, and, raising his hands, prayed for the pardon of his people; three persons, brilliant as the sun, one holding a silver goblet, the second an emerald tray, the third a silken towel, appeared from heaven, washed him seven times, then blessed and saluted him as the "Prince of Mankind."  He was nursed by a healthy Bedouin woman of the desert. When a boy of four years he was seized with something like a fit of epilepsy, which Wâckidi and other historians transformed into a miraculous occurrence. He was often subject to severe headaches and feverish convulsions, in which he fell on the ground like a drunken man, and snored like a camel.153  In his sixth year he lost his mother on the return from Medina, whither she had taken him on camel’s back to ’visit the maternal relations of his father, and was carried back to Mecca by his nurse, a faithful slave girl. He was taken care of by his aged grandfather, Abd al Motkalib, and after his death in 578 by his uncle Abu Tâlib, who had two wives and ten children, and, though poor and no believer in his nephew’s mission, generously protected him to the end.

He accompanied his uncle on a commercial journey to Syria, passing through the desert, ruined cities of old, and Jewish and Christian settlements, which must have made a deep impression on his youthful imagination.

Mohammed made a scanty living as an attendant on caravans and by watching sheep and goats. The latter is rather a disreputable occupation among the Arabs, and left to unmarried women and slaves; but he afterwards gloried in it by appealing to the example of Moses and David, and said that God never calls a prophet who has not been a shepherd before. According to tradition—for, owing to the strict prohibition of images, we have no likeness of the prophet—he was of medium size, rather slender, but broad-shouldered and of strong muscles, had black eyes and hair, an oval-shaped face, white teeth, a long nose, a patriarchal beard, and a commanding look. His step was quick and firm. He wore white cotton stuff, but on festive occasions fine linen striped or dyed in red. He did everything for himself; to the last he mended his own clothes, and cobbled his sandals, and aided his wives in sewing and cooking. He laughed and smiled often. He had a most fertile imagination and a genius for poetry and religion, but no learning. He was an "illiterate prophet," in this respect resembling some of the prophets of Israel and the fishermen of Galilee. It is a disputed question among Moslem and Christian scholars whether he could even read and write.154  Probably he could not. He dictated the Koran from inspiration to his disciples and clerks. What knowledge he possessed, he picked up on the way from intercourse with men, from hearing books read, and especially from his travels.

In his twenty-fifth year he married a rich widow, Chadijah (or Chadîdsha), who was fifteen years older than himself, and who had previously hired him to carry on the mercantile business of her former husband. Her father was opposed to the match; but she made and kept him drunk until the ceremony was completed. He took charge of her caravans with great success, and made several journeys. The marriage was happy and fruitful of six children, two sons and four daughters; but all died except little Fâtima, who became the mother of innumerable legitimate and illegitimate descendants of the prophet. He also adopted Alî, whose close connection with him became so important in the history of Islâm. He was faithful to Chadijah, and held her in grateful remembrance after her death.155  He used to say, "Chadijah believed in me when nobody else did."  He married afterwards a number of wives, who caused him much trouble and scandal. His favorite wife, Ayesha, was more jealous of the dead Chadijah than any of her twelve or more living rivals, for he constantly held up the toothless old woman as the model of a wife.

On his commercial journeys to Syria, he became acquainted with Jews and Christians, and acquired an imperfect knowledge of their traditions. He spent much of his time in retirement, prayer, fasting, and meditation. He had violent convulsions and epileptic fits, which his enemies, and at first he himself, traced to demoniacal possessions, but afterwards to the overpowering presence of God. His soul was fired with the idea of the divine unity, which became his ruling passion; and then he awoke to the bold thought that he was a messenger of God, called to warn his countrymen to escape the judgment and the damnation of hell by forsaking idolatry and worshipping the only true God. His monotheistic enthusiasm was disturbed, though not weakened, by his ignorance and his imperfect sense of the difference between right and wrong.

In his fortieth year (A.D. 610), he received the call of Gabriel, the archangel at the right hand of God, who announced the birth of the Saviour to the Virgin Mary. The first revelation was made to him in a trance in the wild solitude of Mount Hirâ, an hour’s walk from Mecca. He was directed "to cry in the name of the Lord."  He trembled, as if something dreadful had happened to him, and hastened home to his wife, who told him to rejoice, for he would be the prophet of his people. He waited for other visions; but none came. He went up to Mount Hirâ again—this time to commit suicide. But as often as he approached the precipice, he beheld Gabriel at the end of the horizon saying to him: "I am Gabriel, and thou art Mohammed, the prophet of God. Fear not!"  He then commenced his career of a prophet and founder of a new religion, which combined various elements of the three religious represented in Arabia, but was animated and controlled by the faith in Allah, as an almighty, ever-present and working will. From this time on, his life was enacted before the eyes of the world, and is embodied in his deeds and in the Koran.

The revelations continued from time to time for more than twenty years. When asked how they were delivered to him, he replied (as reported by Ayesha): "Sometimes like the sound of a bell—a kind of communication which was very severe for me; and when the sounds ceased, I found myself aware of the instructions. And sometimes the angel would come in the form of a man, and converse with me, and all his words I remembered."

After his call, Mohammed labored first for three years among his family and friends, under great discouragements, making about forty converts, of whom his wife Chadijah was the first, his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and the young, energetic Omar the most important. His daughter Fatima, his adopted son Alî, and his slave Zayd likewise believed in his divine mission. Then he publicly announced his determination to assume by command of God the office of prophet and lawgiver, preached to the pilgrims flocking to Mecca, attacked Meccan idolatry, reasoned with his opponents, answered their demand for miracles by producing the Koran "leaf by leaf," as occasion demanded, and provoked persecution and civil commotion. He was forced in the year 622 to flee for his life with his followers from Mecca to Medina (El-Medina an-Nabî, the City of the Prophet), a distance of two hundred and fifty miles North, or ten days’ journey over the sands and rocks of the desert.

This flight or emigration, called Hégira or Hidshra, marks the beginning of his wonderful success, and of the Mohammedan era (July 15, 622). He was recognized in Medina as prophet and lawgiver. At first he proclaimed toleration: "Let there be no compulsion in religion;" but afterwards he revealed the opposite principle that all unbelievers must be summoned to Islâm, tribute, or the sword. With an increasing army of his enthusiastic followers, he took the field against his enemies, gained in 624 his first victory over the Koreish with an army of 305 (mostly citizens of Medina) against a force twice as large, conquered several Jewish and Christian tribes, ordered and watched in person the massacre of six hundred Jews in one day,156 while their wives and children were sold into slavery (627), triumphantly entered Mecca (630), demolished the three hundred and sixty idols of the Kaaba, and became master of Arabia. The Koreish were overawed by his success, and now shouted: "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet."  The various tribes were melted into a nation, and their old hereditary feuds changed into a common fanatical hatred of the infidels, as the followers of all other religions were called. The last chapter of the Koran commands the remorseless extermination of all idolaters in Arabia, unless they submit within four months.

In the tenth year of the Hegira, the prophet made his last pilgrimage to Mecca at the head of forty thousand Moslems, instructed them in all important ordinances, and exhorted them to protect the weak, the poor, and the women, and to abstain from usury. He planned a large campaign against the Greeks.

But soon after his return to Medina, he died of a violent fever in the house and the arms of Ayesha, June 8, 632, in the sixty-third year of his age, and was buried on the spot where he died, which is now enclosed by a mosque. He suffered great pain, cried and wailed, turned on his couch in despair, and said to his wives when they expressed their surprise at his conduct: "Do ye not know that prophets have to suffer more than all others?  One was eaten up by vermin; another died so poor that he had nothing but rags to cover his shame; but their reward will be all the greater in the life beyond."  Among his last utterances were: "The Lord destroy the Jews and Christians!  Let his anger be kindled against those that turn the tombs of their prophets into places of worship!  O Lord, let not my tomb be an object of worship!  Let there not remain any faith but that of Islâm throughout the whole of Arabia .... Gabriel, come close to me!  Lord, grant me pardon and join me to thy companionship on high!  Eternity in paradise!  Pardon!  Yes, the blessed companionship on high!"157

Omar would not believe that Mohammed was dead, and proclaimed in the mosque of Medina: "The prophet has only swooned away; he shall not die until he have rooted out every hypocrite and unbeliever."  But Abu Bakr silenced him and said: "Whosoever worships Mohammed, let him know that Mohammed is dead; but whosoever worships God, let him know that the Lord liveth, and will never die."  Abu Bakr, whom he had loved most, was chosen Calif, or Successor of Mohammed.

Later tradition, and even the earliest biography, ascribe to the prophet of Mecca strange miracles, and surround his name with a mythical halo of glory. He was saluted by walking trees and stones; he often made by a simple touch the udders of dry goats distend with milk; be caused floods of water to well up from the parched ground, or gush forth from empty vessels, or issue from betwixt the fingers; he raised the dead; he made a night journey on his steed Borak through the air from Mecca to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to paradise and the mansions of the prophets and angels, and back again to Mecca.158  But he himself, in several passages of the Koran, expressly disclaims the power of miracles; he appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs which might diminish the merit of faith and aggravate the guilt of unbelief.159

Character of Mohammed.

The Koran, if chronologically arranged, must be regarded as the best commentary on his character. While his followers regard him to this day as the greatest prophet of God, he was long abhorred in Christendom as a wicked impostor, as the antichrist, or the false prophet, predicted in the Bible, and inspired by the father of lies.

The calmer judgment of recent historians inclines to the belief that he combined the good and bad qualities of an Oriental chief, and that in the earlier part of his life he was a sincere reformer and enthusiast, but after the establishment of his kingdom a slave of ambition for conquest. He was a better man in the period of his adversity and persecution at Mecca, than during his prosperity and triumph at Medina. History records many examples of characters rising from poverty and obscurity to greatness, and then decaying under the sunshine of wealth and power. He degenerated, like Solomon, but did not repent, like the preacher of "vanity of vanities."  He had a melancholic and nervous temperament, liable to fantastic hallucinations and alternations of high excitement and deep depression, bordering at times on despair and suicide. The story of his early and frequent epileptic fits throws some light on his revelations, during which he sometimes growled like a camel, foamed at his mouth, and streamed with perspiration. He believed in evil spirits, omens, charms, and dreams. His mind was neither clear nor sharp, but strong and fervent, and under the influence of an exuberant imagination. He was a poet of high order, and the Koran is the first classic in Arabic literature. He believed himself to be a prophet, irresistibly impelled by supernatural influence to teach and warn his fellow-men. He started with the over-powering conviction of the unity of God and a horror of idolatry, and wished to rescue his countrymen from this sin of sins and from the terrors of the judgment to come; but gradually he rose above the office of a national reformer to that of the founder of a universal religion, which was to absorb the other religions, and to be propagated by violence. It is difficult to draw the line in such a character between honest zeal and selfish ambition, the fear of God and the love of power and glory.

He despised a throne and a diadem, lived with his wives in a row of low and homely cottages of unbaked bricks, and aided them in their household duties; he was strictly temperate in eating and drinking, his chief diet being dates and water; he was not ashamed to milk his goats, to mend his clothes and to cobble his shoes; his personal property at his death amounted to some confiscated lands, fourteen or fifteen slaves, a few camels and mules, a hundred sheep, and a rooster. This simplicity of a Bedouin Sheikh of the desert contrasts most favorably with the luxurious style and gorgeous display of Mohammed’s successors, the Califs and Sultans, who have dozens of palaces and harems filled with eunuchs and women that know nothing beyond the vanities of dress and etiquette and a little music. He was easy of access to visitors who approached him with faith and reverence; patient, generous, and (according to Ayesha) as modest and bashful "as a veiled virgin."  But towards his enemies he was cruel and revengeful. He did not shrink from perfidy. He believed in the use of the sword as the best missionary, and was utterly unscrupulous as to the means of success. He had great moral, but little physical courage; he braved for thirteen years the taunts and threats of the people, but never exposed himself to danger in battle, although he always accompanied his forces.

Mohammed was a slave of sensual passion. Ayesha, who knew him best in his private character and habits, used to say: "The prophet loved three things, women, perfumes and food; he had his heart’s desire of the two first, but not of the last."  The motives of his excess in polygamy were his sensuality which grew with his years, and his desire for male offspring. His followers excused or justified him by the examples of Abraham, David and Solomon, and by the difficulties of his prophetic office, which were so great that God gave him a compensation in sexual enjoyment, and endowed him with greater capacity than thirty ordinary men. For twenty-four years he had but one wife, his beloved Chadijah, who died in 619, aged sixty-five, but only two months after her death he married a widow named Sawda (April 619), and gradually increased his harem, especially during the last two years of his life. When he heard of a pretty woman, says Sprenger, he asked her hand, but was occasionally refused. He had at least fourteen legal wives, and a number of slave concubines besides. At his death he left nine widows. He claimed special revelations which gave him greater liberty of sexual indulgence than ordinary Moslems (who are restricted to four wives), and exempted him from the prohibition of marrying near relatives.160  He married by divine command, as he alleged, Zeynab, the wife of Zayd, his adopted son and bosom-friend. His wives were all widows except Ayesha. One of them was a beautiful and rich Jewess; she was despised by her sisters, who sneeringly said: "Pshaw, a Jewess!"  He told her to reply: "Aaron is my father and Moses my uncle!"  Ayesha, the daughter of Abû Bakr, was his especial favorite. He married her when she was a girl of nine years, and he fifty-three years old. She brought her doll-babies with her, and amused and charmed the prophet by her playfulness, vivacity and wit. She could read, had a copy of the Koran, and knew more about theology, genealogy and poetry than all the other widows of Mohammed. He announced that she would be his wife also in Paradise. Yet she was not free from suspicion of unfaithfulness until he received a revelation of her innocence. After his death she was the most sacred person among the Moslems and the highest authority on religious and legal questions. She survived her husband forty-seven years and died at Medina, July 13, 678, aged sixty-seven years.161

In his ambition for a hereditary dynasty, Mohammed was sadly disappointed: he lost his two sons by Chadijah, and a third one by Mary the Egyptian, his favorite concubine.

To compare such a man with Jesus, is preposterous and even blasphemous. Jesus was the sinless Saviour of sinners; Mohammed was a sinner, and he knew and confessed it. He falls far below Moses, or Elijah, or any of the prophets and apostles in moral purity. But outside of the sphere of revelation, he ranks with Confucius, and Cakya Muni the Buddha, among the greatest founders of religions and lawgivers of nations.

§ 43. The Conquests of Islâm.

"The sword," says Mohammed, "is the key of heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven, and at the day of judgment his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim."  This is the secret of his success. Idolaters had to choose between Islâm, slavery, and death; Jews and Christians were allowed to purchase a limited toleration by the payment of tribute, but were otherwise kept in degrading bondage. History records no soldiers of greater bravery inspired by religion than the Moslem conquerors, except Cromwell’s Ironsides, and the Scotch Covenanters, who fought with purer motives for a nobler cause.

The Califs, Mohammed’s successors, who like him united the priestly and kingly dignity, carried on his conquests with the battle-cry: "Before you is paradise, behind you are death and hell."  Inspired by an intense fanaticism, and aided by the weakness of the Byzantine empire and the internal distractions of the Greek Church, the wild sons of the desert, who were content with the plainest food, and disciplined in the school of war, hardship and recklessness of life, subdued Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, embracing the classical soil of primitive Christianity. Thousands of Christian churches in the patriarchal dioceses of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, were ruthlessly destroyed, or converted into mosques. Twenty-one years after the death of Mohammed the Crescent ruled over a realm as large as the Roman Empire. Even Constantinople was besieged twice (668 and 717), although in vain. The terrible efficacy of the newly invented "Greek fire," and the unusual severity of a long winter defeated the enemy, and saved Eastern and Northern Europe from the blight of the Koran. A large number of nominal Christians who had so fiercely quarreled with each other about unfruitful subtleties of their creeds, surrendered their faith to the conqueror. In 707 the North African provinces, where once St. Augustin had directed the attention of the church to the highest problems of theology and religion, fell into the hands of the Arabs.

In 711 they crossed from Africa to Spain and established an independent Califate at Cordova. The moral degeneracy and dissensions of the Western Goths facilitated their subjugation. Encouraged by such success, the Arabs crossed the Pyrenees and boasted that they would soon stable their horses in St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome, but the defeat of Abd-er Rahman by Charles Martel between Poitiers and Tours in 732—one hundred and ten years after the Hegira—checked their progress in the West, and in 1492—the same year in which Columbus discovered a new Continent—Ferdinand defeated the last Moslem army in Spain at the gates of Granada and drove them back to Africa. The palace and citadel of the Alhambra, with its court of lions, its delicate arabesques and fretwork, and its aromatic gardens and groves, still remains, a gorgeous ruin of the power of the Moorish kings.

In the East the Moslems made new conquests. In the ninth century they subdued Persia, Afghanistan, and a large part of India. They reduced the followers of Zoroaster to a few scattered communities, and conquered a vast territory of Brahminism and Buddhism even beyond the Ganges. The Seliuk Turks in the eleventh century, and the Mongols in the thirteenth, adopted the religion of the Califs whom they conquered. Constantinople fell at last into the hands of the Turks in 1453, and the magnificent church of St. Sophia, the glory of Justinian’s reign, was turned into a mosque where the Koran is read instead of the Gospel, the reader holding the drawn scimetar in his hand. From Constantinople the Turks threatened the German empire, and it was not till 1683 that they were finally defeated by Sobieski at the gates of Vienna and driven back across the Danube.

With the senseless fury of fanaticism and pillage the Tartar Turks have reduced the fairest portions of Eastern Europe to desolation and ruin. With sovereign contempt for all other religions, they subjected the Christians to a condition of virtual servitude, treating them like "dogs," as they call them. They did not intermeddle with their internal affairs, but made merchandise of ecclesiastical offices. The death penalty was suspended over every attempt to convert a Mussulman. Apostasy from the faith is also treason to the state, and merits the severest punishment in this world, as well as everlasting damnation in the world to come.

After the Crimean war in 1856, the death penalty for apostasy was nominally abolished in the dominions of the Sultan, and in the Berlin Treaty of 1878 liberty of religion (more than mere toleration) was guaranteed to all existing sects in the Turkish empire, but the old fanaticism will yield only to superior force, and the guarantee of liberty is not understood to imply the liberty of propaganda among Moslems. Christian sects have liberty to prey on each other, but woe to them if they invade the sacred province of Islâm.162

A Mohammedan tradition contains a curious prophecy that Christ, the son of Mary, will return as the last Calif to judge the world.163  The impression is gaining ground among the Moslems that they will be unable ultimately to withstand the steady progress of Christianity and Western civilization. The Sultan, the successor of the Califs, is a mere shadow on the throne trembling for his life. The dissolution of the Turkish empire, which may be looked for at no distant future, will break the backbone of lslâm, and open the way for the true solution of the Eastern question—the moral regeneration of the Lands of the Bible by the Christianity of the Bible.

§ 44. The Koran, and the Bible.

"Mohammed’s truth lay in a sacred Book,

Christ’s in a holy Life."—Milnes (Palm-Leaves).

The Koran164 is the sacred book, the Bible of the Mohammedans. It is their creed, their code of laws, their liturgy. It claims to be the product of divine inspiration by the arch-angel Gabriel, who performed the function assigned to the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures.165  The Mohammedans distinguish two kinds of revelations: those which were literally delivered as spoken by the angel (called Wahee Matloo, or the word of God), and those which give the sense of the inspired instruction in the prophet’s own words (called Wahee Ghair Matloo, or Hadees). The prophet is named only five times, but is addressed by Gabriel all through the book with the word Say, as the recipient and sacred penman of the revelations. It consists of 114 Suras166 and 6,225 verses. Each Sura (except the ninth) begins with the formula (of Jewish origin): "In the name of Allah, the God of Mercy, the Merciful."167

The Koran is composed in imperfect metre and rhyme (which is as natural and easy in the Arabic as in the Italian language). Its language is considered the purest Arabic. Its poetry somewhat resembles Hebrew poetry in Oriental imagery and a sort of parallelism or correspondence of clauses, but it loses its charm in a translation; while the Psalms and Prophets can be reproduced in any language without losing their original force and beauty. The Koran is held in superstitious veneration, and was regarded till recently as too sacred to be translated and to be sold like a common book.168

Mohammed prepared and dictated the Koran from time to time as he received the revelations and progressed in his career, not for readers, but for hearers, leaving much to the suggestive action of the public recital, either from memory or from copies taken down by his friends. Hence its occasional, fragmentary character. About a year after his death, at the direction of Abu-Bakr, his father-in-law and immediate successor, Zayd, the chief ansar or amanuensis of the Prophet, collected the scattered fragments of the Koran "from palm-leaves, and tablets of white stone, and from the breasts of men," but without any regard to chronological order or continuity of subjects. Abu-Bakr committed this copy to the custody of Haphsa, one of Mohammed’s widows. It remained the standard during the ten years of Omar’s califate. As the different readings of copies occasioned serious disputes, Zayd, with several Koreish, was commissioned to secure the purity of the text in the Meccan dialect, and all previous copies were called in and burned. The recension of Zayd has been handed down with scrupulous care unaltered to this day, and various readings are almost unknown; the differences being confined to the vowel-points, which were invented at a later period. The Koran contains many inconsistencies and contradictions; but the expositors hold that the later command supersedes the earlier.

The restoration of the chronological order of the Suras is necessary for a proper understanding of the gradual development of Islâm in the mind and character of its author.169  There is a considerable difference between the Suras of the earlier, middle, and later periods. In the earlier, the poetic, wild, and rhapsodical element predominates; in the middle, the prosaic, narrative, and missionary; in the later, the official and legislative. Mohammed began with descriptions of natural objects, of judgment, of heaven and hell, impassioned, fragmentary utterances, mostly in brief sentences; he went on to dogmatic assertions, historical statements from Jewish and Christian sources, missionary appeals and persuasions; and he ended with the dictatorial commands of a legislator and warrior. "He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medina is the legislator and the warrior, who dictates obedience and uses other weapons than the pen of the poet and the scribe. When business pressed, as at Medina, poetry makes way for prose,170 and although touches of the poetical element occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late period against the charge of being merely a poet, yet this is rarely the case in the Medina Suras; and we are startled by finding obedience to God and the Apostle, God’s gifts and the Apostle’s, God’s pleasure and the Apostle’s, spoken of in the same breath, and epithets, and attributes, applied to Allah, openly applied to Mohammed, as in Sura IX."171

The materials of the Koran, as far as they are not productions of the author’s own imagination, were derived from the floating traditions of Arabia and Syria, from rabbinical Judaism, and a corrupt Christianity, and adjusted to his purposes.

Mohammed had, in his travels, come in contact with professors of different religions, and on his first journey with camel-drivers he fell in with a Nestorian monk of Bostra, who goes by different names (Bohari, Bahyra, Sergius, George), and welcomed the youthful prophet with a presage of his future greatness.172  His wife Chadijah and her cousin Waraka (a reputed convert to Christianity, or more probably a Jew) are said to have been well acquainted with the sacred books of the Jews and the Christians.

The Koran, especially in the earlier Suras, speaks often and highly of the Scriptures; calls them "the Book of God," "the Word of God," "the Tourât" (Thora, the Pentateuch), "the Gospel" (Ynyil), and describes the Jews and Christians as "the people of the Book," or "of the Scripture," or "of the Gospel."  It finds in the Scriptures prophecies of Mohammed and his success, and contains narratives of the fall of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Deluge, Abraham and Lot, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses and Joseph, John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary and Jesus, sometimes in the words of the Bible, but mostly distorted and interspersed with rabbinical and apocryphal fables.173

It is quite probable that portions of the Bible were read to Mohammed; but it is very improbable that he read it himself; for according to the prevailing Moslem tradition he could not read at all, and there were no Arabic translations before the Mohammedan conquests, which spread the Arabic language in the conquered countries. Besides, if he had read the Bible with any degree of care, he could not have made such egregious blunders. The few allusions to Scripture phraseology—as "giving alms to be seen of men," "none forgiveth sins but God only"—may be derived from personal intercourse and popular traditions. Jesus (Isa) is spoken of as "the Son of Mary, strengthened by the Holy Spirit."  Noah (Nûh), Abraham (Ibrahym), Moses (Mûsa), Aaron (Harun), are often honorably mentioned, but apparently always from imperfect traditional or apocryphal sources of information.174

The Koran is unquestionably one of the great books of the world. It is not only a book, but an institution, a code of civil and religious laws, claiming divine origin and authority. It has left its impress upon ages. It feeds to this day the devotions, and regulates the private and public life, of more than a hundred millions of human beings. It has many passages of poetic beauty, religious fervor, and wise counsel, but mixed with absurdities, bombast, unmeaning images, low sensuality. It abounds in repetitions and contradictions, which are not removed by the convenient theory of abrogation. It alternately attracts and repels, and is a most wearisome book to read. Gibbon calls the Koran "a glorious testimony to the unity of God," but also, very properly, an "endless, incoherent rhapsody of fable and precept and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds."175  Reiske176 denounces it as the most absurd book and a scourge to a reader of sound common sense. Goethe, one of the best judges of literary and poetic merit, characterizes the style as severe, great, terrible, and at times truly sublime. "Detailed injunctions," he says, "of things allowed and forbidden, legendary stories of Jewish and Christian religion, amplifications of all kinds, boundless tautologies and repetitions, form the body of this sacred volume, which to us, as often as we approach it, is repellent anew, next attracts us ever anew, and fills us with admiration, and finally forces us into veneration."  He finds the kernel of Islâm in the second Sura, where belief and unbelief with heaven and hell, as their sure reward, are contrasted. Carlyle calls the Koran "the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read, but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself In words;" and says of Mohammedanism: "Call it not false, look not at the falsehood of it; look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind. Above all, it has been a religion heartily believed."  But with all his admiration, Carlyle confesses that the reading of the Koran in English is "as toilsome a task" as he ever undertook. "A wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; insupportable stupidity, in short, nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran. We read it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man."  And yet there are Mohammedan doctors who are reported to have read the Koran seventy thousand times!  What a difference of national and religious taste!  Emanuel Deutsch finds the grandeur of the Koran chiefly in its Arabic diction, "the peculiarly dignified, impressive, sonorous nature of Semitic sound and parlance; its sesquipedalia verba, with their crowd of prefixes and affixes, each of them affirming its own position, while consciously bearing upon and influencing the central root, which they envelop like a garment of many folds, or as chosen courtiers move round the anointed person of the king."  E. H. Palmer says that the claim of the Koran to miraculous eloquence, however absurd it may sound to Western ears, was and is to the Arab incontrovertible, and he accounts for the immense influence which it has always exercised upon the Arab mind, by the fact, "that it consists not merely of the enthusiastic utterances of an individual, but of the popular sayings, choice pieces of eloquence, and favorite legends current among the desert tribes for ages before this time. Arabic authors speak frequently of the celebrity attained by the ancient Arabic orators, such as Shâibân Wâil; but unfortunately no specimens of their works have come down to us. The Qur’ân, however, enables us to judge of the speeches which took so strong a hold upon their countrymen."177

Of all books, not excluding the Vedas, the Koran is the most powerful rival of the Bible, but falls infinitely below it in contents and form.

Both contain the moral and religious code of the nations which own it; the Koran, like the Old Testament, is also a civil and political code. Both are oriental in style and imagery. Both have the fresh character of occasional composition growing out of a definite historical situation and specific wants. But the Bible is the genuine revelation of the only true God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself; the Koran is a mock-revelation without Christ and without atonement. Whatever is true in the Koran is borrowed from the Bible; what is original, is false or frivolous. The Bible is historical and embodies the noblest aspirations of the human race in all ages to the final consummation; the Koran begins and stops with Mohammed. The Bible combines endless variety with unity, universal applicability with local adaptation; the Koran is uniform and monotonous, confined to one country, one state of society, and one class of minds. The Bible is the book of the world, and is constantly travelling to the ends of the earth, carrying spiritual food to all races and to all classes of society; the Koran stays in the Orient, and is insipid to all who have once tasted the true word of the living God.178  Even the poetry of the Koran never rises to the grandeur and sublimity of Job or Isaiah, the lyric beauty of the Psalms, the sweetness and loveliness of the Song of Solomon, the sententious wisdom of the Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.

A few instances must suffice for illustration.

The first Sura, called "the Sura of Praise and Prayer," which is recited by the Mussulmans several times in each of the five daily devotions, fills for them the place of the Lord’s Prayer, and contains the same number of petitions. We give it in a rhymed, and in a more literal translation:

"In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

Praise be to Allah, who the three worlds made,

The Merciful, the Compassionate,

The King of the day of Fate,

Thee alone do we worship, and of Thee alone do we ask aid.

Guide us to the path that is straight —

The path of those to whom Thy love is great,

Not those on whom is hate,

Nor they that deviate!  Amen.179

"In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds!

The Compassionate, the Merciful!

King on the day of judgment!

Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help.

Guide Thou us on the right path,

The path of those to whom Thou art gracious;

Not of those with whom Thou art angered,

Nor of those who go astray."180

We add the most recent version in prose:

"In the name of the merciful and compassionate God.

Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment!  Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with; nor of those who err."181

As this Sura invites a comparison with the Lord’s Prayer infinitely to the advantage of the latter, so do the Koran’s descriptions of Paradise when contrasted with St. John’s vision of the heavenly Jerusalem:

"Joyous on that day shall be the inmates of Paradise in their employ;

In shades, on bridal couches reclining, they and their spouses:

Therein shall they have fruits, and whatever they require —

’Peace!’ shall be the word on the part of a merciful Lord.

But be ye separated this day, O ye sinners!"182

*          *          *          *          *          *           *

"The sincere servants of God

A stated banquet shall they have

Of fruits; and honored shall they be

In the gardens of delight,

Upon couches face to face.

A cup shall be borne round among them from a fountain,

Limpid, delicious to those who drink;

It shall not oppress the sense, nor shall they therewith be drunken,

And with them are the large-eyed ones with modest refraining glances,

fair like the sheltered egg."183

§ 45. The Mohammedan Religion.

lslâm is not a new religion, nor can we expect a new one after the appearance of that religion which is perfect and intended for all nations and ages. It is a compound or mosaic of preëxisting elements, a rude attempt to combine heathenism, Judaism and Christianity, which Mohammed found in Arabia, but in a very imperfect form.184  It is professedly, a restoration of the faith of Abraham, the common father of Isaac and of Ishmael. But it is not the genuine faith of Abraham with its Messianic hopes and aspirations looking directly to the gospel dispensation as its goal and fulfilment, but a bastard Judaism of Ishmael, and the post-Christian and anti-Christian Judaism of the Talmud. Still less did Mohammed know the pure religion of Jesus as laid down in the New Testament, but only a perversion and caricature of it such as we find in the wretched apocryphal and heretical Gospels. This ignorance of the Bible and the corruptions of Eastern Christianity with which the Mohammedans came in contact, furnish some excuse for their misbelief and stubborn prejudices. And yet even the poor pseudo-Jewish and pseudo-Christian elements of the Koran were strong enough to reform the old heathenism of Arabia and Africa and to lift it to a much higher level. The great and unquestionable merit of Islâm is the breaking up of idolatry and the diffusion of monotheism.

The creed of Islâm is simple, and consists of six articles: God, predestination, the angels (good and bad), the books, the prophets, the resurrection and judgment with eternal reward and eternal punishment.

God.

Monotheism is the comer-stone of the system. It is expressed in the ever-repeated sentence: "There is no god but God (Allâh, i.e., the true, the only God), and Mohammed is his prophet (or apostle)."185  Gibbon calls this a "compound of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction."  The first clause certainly is a great and mighty truth borrowed from the Old Testament (Deut. 6:4); and is the religious strength of the system. But the Mohammedan (like the later Jewish, the Socinian, and the Unitarian) monotheism is abstract, monotonous, divested of inner life and fulness, anti-trinitarian, and so far anti-Christian. One of the last things which a Mohammedan will admit, is the divinity of Christ. Many of the divine attributes are vividly apprehended, emphasized and repeated in prayer. But Allah is a God of infinite power and wisdom, not a God of redeeming love to all mankind; a despotic sovereign of trembling subjects and slaves, not a loving Father of trustful children. He is an object of reverence and fear rather than of love and gratitude. He is the God of fate who has unalterably foreordained all things evil as well as good; hence unconditional resignation to him (this is the meaning of Islâm) is true wisdom and piety. He is not a hidden, unknowable being, but a God who has revealed himself through chosen messengers, angelic and human. Adam, Noah, Abraham Moses, and Jesus are his chief prophets.186  But Mohammed is the last and the greatest.

Christ.

The Christology of the Koran is a curious mixture of facts and apocryphal fictions, of reverence for the man Jesus and denial of his divine character. He is called "the Messiah Jesus Son of Mary," or "the blessed Son of Mary."187  He was a servant and apostle of the one true God, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, i.e., the angel Gabriel (Dshebril), who afterwards conveyed the divine revelations to Mohammed. But he is not the Son of God; for as God has no wife, he can have no son.188  He is ever alone, and it is monstrous and blasphemous to associate another being with Allah.

Some of the Mohammedan divines exempt Jesus and even his mother from sin, and first proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary, for which the apocryphal Gospels prepared the way.189  By a singular anachronism, the Koran confounds the Virgin Mary with Miriam," the sister of Aaron" (Harun), and Moses (Ex. xv. 20; Num. xxi. 1). Possibly Mohammed may have meant another Aaron (since he calls Mary, "the sister of Aaron but not "of Moses"); some of his commentators, however, assume that the sister of Moses was miraculously preserved to give birth to Jesus.190

According to the Koran Jesus was conceived by the Virgin Mary at the appearance of Gabriel and born under a palm tree beneath which a fountain opened. This story is of Ebionite origin.191  Jesus preached in the cradle and performed miracles in His infancy (as in the apocryphal Gospels), and during His public ministry, or rather Allah wrought miracles through Him. Mohammed disclaims the miraculous power, and relied upon the stronger testimony of the truth of his doctrine. Jesus proclaimed the pure doctrine of the unity of God and disclaimed divine honors.

The crucifixion of Jesus is denied. He was delivered by a miracle from the death intended for Him, and taken up by God into Paradise with His mother. The Jews slew one like Him, by mistake. This absurd docetic idea is supposed to be the common belief of Christians.192

Jesus predicted the coming of Mohammed, when he said: "O children of Israel! of a truth I am God’s apostle to you to confirm the law which was given before me, and to announce an apostle that shall come after me whose name shall be Ahmed!"193  Thus the promise of the Holy Ghost, "the other Paraclete," (John xiv. 16) was applied by Mohammed to himself by a singular confusion of Paracletos (paravklhto") with Periclytos (perivkluto", heard all round, famous) or Ahmed (the glorified, the illustrious), one of the prophet’s names.194

Owing to this partial recognition of Christianity Mohammed was originally regarded not as the founder of a new religion, but as one of the chief heretics.195  The same opinion is expressed by several modern writers, Catholic and Protestant. Döllinger says: "Islâm must be considered at bottom a Christian heresy, the bastard offspring of a Christian father and a Jewish mother, and is indeed more closely allied to Christianity than Manichaeism, which is reckoned a Christian sect."196  Stanley calls Islâm an "eccentric heretical form of Eastern Christianity," and Ewald more correctly, "the last and most powerful offshoot of Gnosticism."197

The Ethics of IslÂm.

Resignation (Islâm) to the omnipotent will of Allah is the chief virtue. It is the most powerful motive both in action and suffering, and is carried to the excess of fatalism and apathy.

The use of pork and wine is strictly forbidden; prayer, fasting (especially during the whole month of Ramadhân), and almsgiving are enjoined. Prayer carries man half-way to God, fasting brings him to the door of God’s palace, alms secure admittance. The total abstinence from strong drink by the whole people, even in countries where the vine grows in abundance, reveals a remarkable power of self-control, which puts many Christian nations to shame. Mohammedanism is a great temperance society. Herein lies its greatest moral force.

Polygamy.

But on the other hand the heathen vice of polygamy and concubinage is perpetuated and encouraged by the example of the prophet. He restrained and regulated an existing practice, and gave it the sanction of religion. Ordinary believers are restricted to four wives (exclusive of slaves), and generally have only one or two. But Califs may fill their harems to the extent of their wealth and lust. Concubinage with female slaves is allowed to all without limitation. The violation of captive women of the enemy is the legitimate reward of the conqueror. The laws of divorce and prohibited degrees are mostly borrowed from the Jews, but divorce is facilitated and practiced to an extent that utterly demoralizes married life.

Polygamy and servile concubinage destroy the dignity of woman, and the beauty and peace of home. In all Mohammedan countries woman is ignorant and degraded; she is concealed from public sight by a veil (a sign of degradation as well as protection); she is not commanded to pray, and is rarely seen in the mosques; it is even an open question whether she has a soul, but she is necessary even in paradise for the gratification of man’s passion. A Moslem would feel insulted by an inquiry after the health of his wife or wives. Polygamy affords no protection against unnatural vices, which are said to prevail to a fearful extent among Mohammedans, as they did among the ancient heathen.198

In nothing is the infinite superiority of Christianity over Islâm so manifest as in the condition of woman and family life. Woman owes everything to the religion of the gospel.

The sensual element pollutes even the Mohammedan picture of heaven from which chastity is excluded. The believers are promised the joys of a luxuriant paradise amid blooming gardens, fresh fountains, and beautiful virgins. Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls of blooming youth will be created for the enjoyment of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years; and his faculties will be increased a hundred fold. Saints and martyrs will be admitted to the spiritual joys of the divine vision. But infidels and those who refuse to fight for their faith will be cast into hell.

The Koran distinguishes seven heavens, and seven hells (for wicked or apostate Mohammedans, Christians, Jews, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, hypocrites). Hell (Jahennem=Gehenna) is beneath the lowest earth and seas of darkness; the bridge over it is finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword; the pious pass over it in a moment, the wicked fall from it into the abyss.

Slavery.

Slavery is recognized and sanctioned as a normal condition of, society, and no hint is given in the Koran, nor any effort made by Mohammedan rulers for its final extinction. It is the twin-sister of polygamy; every harem is a slave-pen or a slave-palace. "The Koran, as a universal revelation, would have been a perpetual edict of servitude."  Mohammed, by ameliorating the condition of slaves, and enjoining kind treatment upon the masters, did not pave the way for its abolition, but rather riveted its fetters. The barbarous slave-trade is still carried on in all its horrors by Moslems among the negroes in Central Africa.

War.

War against unbelievers is legalized by the Koran. The fighting men are to be slain, the women and children reduced to slavery. Jews and Christians are dealt with more leniently than idolaters; but they too must be thoroughly humbled and forced to pay tribute.

§ 46. Mohammedan Worship.

"A simple, unpartitioned room,

Surmounted by an ample dome,

Or, in some Iands that favored he,

With centre open to the sky,

But roofed with arched cloisters round,

That mark the consecrated bound,

And shade the niche to Mecca turned,

By which two massive lights are burned;

With pulpit whence the sacred word

Expounded on great days is heard;

With fountains fresh, where, ere they pray,

Men wash the soil of earth away;

With shining minaret, thin and high,

From whose fine trellised balcony,

Announcement of the hour of prayer

Is uttered to the silent air:

Such is the Mosque—the holy place,

Where faithful men of every race

Meet at their ease and face to face."

(From Milnes, "Palm Leaves.")

In worship the prominent feature of Islâm is its extreme iconoclasm and puritanism. In this respect, it resembles the service of the synagogue. The second commandment is literally understood as a prohibition of all representations of living creatures, whether in churches or elsewhere. The only ornament allowed is the "Arabesque," which is always taken from inanimate nature.199

The ceremonial is very simple. The mosques, like Catholic churches, are always open and frequented by worshippers, who perform their devotions either alone or in groups with covered head and bare feet. In entering, one must take off the shoes according to the command: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."  Slippers or sandals of straw are usually provided for strangers, and must be paid for. There are always half a dozen claimants for "backsheesh"—the first and the last word which greets the traveller in Egypt and Syria. Much importance is attached to preaching.200

Circumcision is retained from the Jews, although it is not mentioned in the Koran. Friday is substituted for the Jewish Sabbath as the sacred day (perhaps because it was previously a day for religious assemblage). It is called the prince of days, the most excellent day on which man was created, and on which the last judgment will take place; but the observance is less strict than that of the Jewish Sabbath. On solemn occasions sacrifice, mostly in the nature of a thank-offering, is offered and combined with an act of benevolence to the poor. But there is no room in Islâm for the idea of atonement; God forgives sins directly and arbitrarily, without a satisfaction of justice. Hence there is no priesthood in the sense of a hereditary or perpetual caste, offering sacrifices and mediating between God and the people.201  Yet there are Mufties and Dervishes, who are as powerful as any class of priests and monks. The Mussulmans have their saints, and pray at their white tombs. In this respect, they approach the Greeks and Roman Catholics; yet they abhor the worship of saints as idolatry. They also make much account of religious processions and pilgrimages. Their chief place of pilgrimage is Mecca. Many thousands of Moslems from Egypt and all parts of Turkey pass annually through the Arabian desert to worship at the holy Kaaba, and are received in triumph on their return. The supposed tomb of Moses, also, which is transferred to the Western shore of the Dead Sea, is visited by the Moslems of Jerusalem and the neighboring country in the month of April.

Prayer with prostrations is reduced to a mechanical act which is performed with the regularity of clock work. Washing of hands is enjoined before prayer, but in the desert, sand is permitted as a substitute for water. There are five stated seasons for prayer: at day-break, near noon, in the afternoon, a little after sunset (to avoid the appearance of sun-worship), and at night-fall, besides two night prayers for extra devotion. The muëddin or muëzzin (crier) announces the time of devotion from the minaret of the mosque by chanting the "Adan" or call to prayer, in these words:

God is great!" (four times). "I bear witness that there is no god but God" (twice). "I bear witness that Mohammed is the Apostle of God" (twice). "Come hither to prayers!" (twice). "Come hither to salvation!" (twice). "God is great!  There is no other God!"  And in the early morning the crier adds: "Prayer is better than sleep!"

A devout Mussulman is never ashamed to perform his devotion in public, whether in the mosque, or in the street, or on board the ship. Regardless of the surroundings, feeling alone with God in the midst of the crowd, his face turned to Mecca, his hands now raised to heaven, then laid on the lap, his forehead touching the ground, he goes through his genuflexions and prostrations, and repeats the first Sura of the Koran and the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, which form his rosary.202  The mosques are as well filled with men, as many Christian churches are with women. Islâm is a religion for men; women are of no account; the education and elevation of the female sex would destroy the system.

With all its simplicity and gravity, the Mohammedan worship has also its frantic excitement of the Dervishes. On the celebration of the birthday of their prophet and other festivals, they work themselves, by the constant repetition of "Allah, Allah," into a state of unconscious ecstacy, "in which they plant swords in their breasts, tear live serpents with their teeth, eat bottles of glass, and finally lie prostrate on the ground for the chief of their order to ride on horseback over their bodies."203

I will add a brief description of the ascetic exercises of the "Dancing" and "Howling" Dervishes which I witnessed in their convents at Constantinople and Cairo in 1877.

The Dancing or Turning Dervishes in Pera, thirteen in number, some looking ignorant and stupid, others devout and intensely fanatical, went first through prayers and prostrations, then threw off their outer garments, and in white flowing gowns, with high hats of stiff woolen stuff, they began to dance to the sound of strange music, whirling gracefully and skilfully on their toes, ring within ring, without touching each other or moving out of their circle, performing, in four different acts, from forty to fifty turnings in one minute, their arms stretched out or raised to heaven their eyes half shut, their mind apparently lost in a sort of Nirwana or pantheistic absorption in Allah. A few hours afterward I witnessed the rare spectacle of one of these very Dervishes reeling to and fro in a state of intoxication on the street and the lower bridge of the Golden Horn.

The Howling Dervishes in Scutari present a still more extraordinary sight, and a higher degree of ascetic exertion, but destitute of all grace and beauty. The performance took place in a small, plain, square room, and lasted nearly two hours. As the monks came in, they kissed the hand of their leader and repeated with him long prayers from the Koran. One recited with melodious voice an Arabic song in praise of Mohammed. Then, standing in a row, bowing, and raising their heads, they continued to howl the fundamental dogma of Mohammedanism, Lâ ilâha ill’ Allâh for nearly an hour. Some were utterly exhausted and wet with perspiration. The exercises I saw in Cairo were less protracted, but more dramatic, as the Dervishes had long hair and stood in a circle, swinging their bodies backward and forward in constant succession, and nearly touching the ground with their flowing hair. In astounding feats of asceticism the Moslems are fully equal to the ancient Christian anchorites and the fakirs of India.

§ 47. Christian Polemics against Mohammedanism. Note on Mormonism.

See the modern Lit. in § 38.

For a list of earlier works against Mohammedanism, see J. Alb. Fabricius: Delectus argumentorum et syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Christ. Adv. Atheos, ... Judaeos et Muhammedanos ... asseruerunt. Hamb., 1725, pp. 119 sqq., 735 sqq. J. G. Walch: Bibliotheca Theolog. Selecta (Jenae, 1757), Tom. I. 611 sqq. Appendix to Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet.

Theod. Bibliander, edited at Basle, in 1543, and again in 1550, with the Latin version of the Koran, a collection of the more important works against Mohammed under the title: Machumetis Saracenorum principis ejusque successorum vitae, doctrinae, ac ipse Alcoran., I vol. fol.

Richardus (about 1300): Confutatio Alcorani, first publ. in Paris, 1511.

Joh. de Turrecremata: Tractatus contra principales errores perfidi Mahometis et Turcorum. Rom., 1606.

Lud. Maraccius (Maracci): Prodromus ad refutationem Alcorani; in quo, per IV. praecipuas verae religionis notas, mahumetanae sectae falsitas ostenditur, christianae religionis veritas comprobatur. Rom. (typis Congreg. de Propaganda Fide), 1691. 4  vols., small oct.; also Pref. to his Alcorani textus universus, Petav., 1698, 2 vols. fol.

Hadr. Reland: De Religione Mohammedica. Utrecht, 1705; 2nd ed. 1717; French transl., Hague, 1721.

W. Gass: Gennadius und Pletho. Breslau, 1844, Part I., pp. 106–181. (Die Bestreitung des Islâm im Mittelalter.)

The argument of Mohammedanism against other religions was the sword. Christian Europe replied with the sword in the crusades, but failed. Greek and Latin divines refuted the false prophet with superior learning, but without rising to a higher providential view, and without any perceptible effect. Christian polemics against Mohammed and the Koran began in the eighth century, and continued with interruptions to the sixteenth and seventeenth.

John of Damascus, who lived among the Saracens (about A.D. 750), headed the line of champions of the cross against the crescent. He was followed, in the Greek Church, by Theodor of Abukara, who debated a good deal with Mohammedans in Mesopotamia, by Samonas, bishop of Gaza, Bartholomew of Edessa, John Kantakuzenus (or rather a monk Meletius, formerly a Mohammedan, who justified his conversion, with the aid of the emperor, in four apologies and four orations), Euthymius Zigabenus, Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople. Prominent in the Latin church were Peter, Abbot of Clugny (twelfth century), Thomas Aquinas, Alanus ab Insulis, Raimundus LulIus, Nicolaus of Cusa, Ricold or Richard (a Dominican monk who lived long in the East), Savonarola, Joh. de Turrecremata.

The mediaeval writers, both Greek and Latin, represent Mohammed as an impostor and arch-heretic, who wove his false religion chiefly from Jewish (Talmudic) fables and Christian heresies. They find him foretold in the Little Horn of Daniel, and the False Prophet of the Apocalypse. They bring him in connection with a Nestorian monk, Sergius, or according to others, with the Jacobite Bahira, who instructed Mohammed, and might have converted him to the Christian religion, if malignant Jews had not interposed with their slanders. Thus he became the shrewd and selfish prophet of a pseudo-gospel, which is a mixture of apostate Judaism and apostate Christianity with a considerable remnant of his native Arabian heathenism. Dante places him, disgustingly torn and mutilated, among the chief heretics and schismatics in the ninth gulf of Hell,

"Where is paid the fee

By those who sowing discord win their burden."204

This mediaeval view was based in part upon an entire ignorance or perversion of facts. It was then believed that Mohammedans were pagans and idolaters, and cursed the name of Christ, while it is now known, that they abhor idolatry, and esteem Christ as the highest prophet next to Mohammed.

The Reformers and older Protestant divines took substantially the same view, and condemn the Koran and its author without qualification. We must remember that down to the latter part of the seventeenth century the Turks were the most dangerous enemies of the peace of Europe. Luther published, at Wittenberg, 1540, a German translation of Richard’s Confutatio Alcorani, with racy notes, to show "what a shameful, lying, abominable book the Alcoran is."  He calls Mohammed "a devil and the first-born child of Satan."  He goes into the question, whether the Pope or Mohammed be worse, and comes to the conclusion, that after all the pope is worse, and the real Anti-Christ (Endechrist). "Wohlan," he winds up his epilogue, "God grant us his grace and punish both the Pope and Mohammed, together with their devils. I have done my part as a true prophet and teacher. Those who won’t listen may leave it alone."  Even the mild and scholarly Melanchthon identifies Mohammed with the Little Horn of Daniel, or rather with the Gog and Magog of the Apocalypse, and charges his sect with being a compound of "blasphemy, robbery, and sensuality."  It is not very strange. that in the heat of that polemical age the Romanists charged the Lutherans, and the Lutherans the Calvinists, and both in turn the Romanists, with holding Mohammedan heresies.205

In the eighteenth century this view was gradually corrected. The learned Dean Prideaux still represented Mohammed as a vulgar impostor, but at the same time as a scourge of God in just punishment of the sins of the Oriental churches who turned our holy religion "into a firebrand of hell for contention, strife and violence."  He undertook his "Life of Mahomet" as a part of a "History of the Eastern Church," though he did not carry out his design.

Voltaire and other Deists likewise still viewed Mohammed as an impostor, but from a disposition to trace all religion to priestcraft and deception. Spanheim, Sale, and Gagnier began to take a broader and more favorable view. Gibbon gives a calm historical narrative; and in summing up his judgment, he hesitates whether "the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man .... From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the daemon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud."

Dean Milman suspends his judgment, saying: "To the question whether Mohammed was hero, sage, impostor, or fanatic, or blended, and blended in what proportions, these conflicting elements in his character? the best reply is the reverential phrase of Islâm: God knows.’ "206

Goethe and Carlyle swung from the orthodox abuse to the opposite extreme of a pantheistic hero-worshiping over-estimate of Mohammed and the Koran by extending the sphere of revelation and inspiration, and obliterating the line which separates Christianity from all other religions. Stanley, R. Bosworth Smith, Emanuel Deutsch, and others follow more or less in the track of this broad and charitable liberalism. Many errors and prejudices have been dispelled, and the favorable traits of Islâm and its followers, their habits of devotion, temperance, and resignation, were held up to the shame and admiration of the Christian world. Mohammed himself, it is now generally conceded, began as an honest reformer, suffered much persecution for his faith, effectually destroyed idolatry, was free from sordid motives, lived in strict monogamy during twenty-four years of his youth and manhood, and in great simplicity to his death. The polygamy which disfigured the last twelve years of his life was more moderate than that of many other Oriental despots, Califs and Sultans, and prompted in part by motives of benevolence towards the widows of his followers, who had suffered in the service of his religion.207

But the enthusiasm kindled by Carlyle for the prophet of Mecca has been considerably checked by fuller information from the original sources as brought out in the learned biographies of Weil, Nöldeke, Sprenger and Muir. They furnish the authentic material for a calm, discriminating and impartial judgment, which, however, is modified more or less by the religious standpoint and sympathies of the historian. Sprenger represents Mohammed as the child of his age, and mixes praise and censure, without aiming at a psychological analysis or philosophical view. Sir William Muir concedes his original honesty and zeal as a reformer and warner, but assumes a gradual deterioration to the judicial blindness of a self-deceived heart, and even a kind of Satanic inspiration in his later revelations. "We may readily admit," he says, "that at the first Mahomet did believe, or persuaded himself to believe, that his revelations were dictated by a divine agency. In the Meccan period of his life, there certainly can be traced no personal ends or unworthy motives to belie this conclusion. The Prophet was there, what he professed to be, ’a simple Preacher and a Warner;’ he was the despised and rejected teacher of a gainsaying people; and he had apparently no ulterior object but their reformation .... But the scene altogether changes at Medina. There the acquisition of temporal power, aggrandizement, and self-glorification mingled with the grand object of the Prophet’s previous life; and they were sought after and attained by precisely the same instrumentality. Messages from heaven were freely brought forward to justify his political conduct, equally with his religious precepts. Battles were fought, wholesale executions inflicted, and territories annexed, under pretext of the Almighty’s sanction. Nay, even baser actions were not only excused but encouraged, by the pretended divine approval or command .... The student of history will trace for himself how the pure and lofty aspirations of Mahomet were first tinged, and then gradually debased by a half unconscious self-deception, and how in this process truth merged into falsehood, sincerity into guile,—these opposite principles often co-existing even as active agencies in his conduct. The reader will observe that simultaneously with the anxious desire to extinguish idolatry and to promote religion and virtue in the world, there was nurtured by the Prophet in his own heart a licentious self-indulgence; till in the end, assuming to be the favorite of Heaven, he justified himself by ’revelations’ from God in the most flagrant breaches of morality. He will remark that while Mahomet cherished a kind and tender disposition, ’Weeping with them that wept,’ and binding to his person the hearts of his followers by the ready and self-denying offices of love and friendship, he could yet take pleasure in cruel and perfidious assassination, could gloat over the massacre of entire tribes, and savagely consign the innocent babe to the fires of hell. Inconsistencies such as these continually present themselves from the period of Mahomet’s arrival at Medina; and it is by, the study of these inconsistencies that his character must be rightly comprehended. The key, to many difficulties of this description may be found, I believe, in the chapter ’on the belief of Mahomet in his own inspiration.’  When once he had dared to forge the name of the Most High God as the seal and authority of his own words and actions, the germ was laid from which the errors of his after life freely and fatally developed themselves."208

Note on Mormonism.

Sources.

The Book of Mormon. First printed at Palmyra, N. Y., 1830. Written by the Prophet Mormon, three hundred years after Christ, upon plates of gold in the "Reformed Egyptian" (?) language, and translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jun., with the aid of Urim and Thummim, into English. As large as the Old Testament. A tedious historical romance on the ancient inhabitants of the American Continent, whose ancestors emigrated from Jerusalem b.c. 600, and whose degenerate descendants are the red Indians. Said to have been written as a book of fiction by a Presbyterian minister, Samuel Spalding.

The Doctrines and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. Contains the special revelations given to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young at different times. Written in similar style and equally insipid as the Book of Mormon.

A Catechism for Children by Elder John Jaques. Salt Lake City. 25th thousand, 1877.

We cannot close this chapter on Oriental Mohammedanism without some remarks on the abnormal American phenomenon of Mormonism, which arose in the nineteenth century, and presents an instructive analogy to the former. Joseph Smith (born at Sharon, Vt., 1805; shot dead at Nauvoo, in Illinois, 1844), the first founder, or rather Brigham Young (d. 1877), the organizer of the sect, may be called the American Mohammed, although far beneath the prophet of Arabia in genius and power.

The points of resemblance are numerous and striking: the claim to a supernatural revelation mediated by an angel; the abrogation of previous revelations by later and more convenient ones; the embodiment of the revelations in an inspired book; the eclectic character of the system, which is compounded of Jewish, heathenish, and all sorts of sectarian Christian elements; the intense fanaticism and heroic endurance of the early Mormons amidst violent abuse and persecution from state to state, till they found a refuge in the desert of Utah Territory, which they turned into a garden; the missionary zeal in sending apostles to distant lands and importing proselytes to their Eldorado of saints from the ignorant population of England, Wales, Norway, Germany, and Switzerland; the union of religion with civil government, in direct opposition to the American separation of church and state; the institution of polygamy in defiance of the social order of Christian civilization. In sensuality and avarice Brigham Young surpassed Mohammed; for he left at his death in Salt Lake City seventeen wives, sixteen sons, and twenty-eight daughters (having had in all fifty-six or more children), and property estimated at two millions of dollars.209

The government of the United States cannot touch the Mormon religion; but it can regulate the social institutions connected therewith, as long as Utah is a Territory under the immediate jurisdiction of Congress. Polygamy has been prohibited by law in the Territories under its control, and President Hayes has given warning to foreign governments (in 1879) that Mormon converts emigrating to the United States run the risk of punishment for violating the laws of the land. President Garfield (in his inaugural address, March 4, 1881) took the same decided ground on the Mormon question, saying: "The Mormon church not only offends the moral sense of mankind by sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice through the ordinary instrumentalities of law. In my judgment it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices, especially of that class which destroy the family relations and endanger social order. Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the National Government."

His successor, President Arthur, in his last message to Congress, Dec. 1884, again recommends that Congress "assume absolute political control of the Territory of Utah," and says: "I still believe that if that abominable practice [polygamy] can be suppressed by law it can only be by the most radical legislation consistent with the restraints of the Constitution."  The secular and religious press of America, with few exceptions, supports these sentiments of the chief magistrate.

Since the annexation of Utah to the United States, after the Mexican war, "Gentiles" as the Christians are called, have entered the Mormon settlement, and half a dozen churches of different denominations have been organized in Salt Lake City. But the "Latter Day Saints" are vastly in the majority, and are spreading in the adjoining Territories. Time will show whether the Mormon problem can be solved without resort to arms, or a new emigration of the Mormons.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PAPAL HIERARCHY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

§ 48. General Literature on the Papacy.

*Bullarium Magnum Romanum a Leone M. usque ad Benedictum XIV. Luxemb., 1727–1758. 19 vols., fol. Another ed., of superior typography, under the title: Bullarum ... Romanorum Pontificum amplissima Collectio, opera et studio C. Cocquelines, Rom., 1738–1758, 14 Tomi in 28 Partes fol.; new ed., 1847–’72, 24 vols. Bullarii Romani continuatio, ed. A. A. Barberi, from Clement XIII. to Gregory XVI., Rom., 1835–1857, 18 vols.

*Monumenta Germaniae Historica inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum; ed. by G. H. Pertz (royal librarian at Berlin, d. 1876), continued by G. Waitz. Hannoverae, 1826–1879, 24 vols. fol. A storehouse for the authentic history of the German empire.

*Anastasius (librarian and abbot in Rome about 870): Liber Pontificalis (or, De Vitis Roman. Pontificum). The oldest collection of biographies of popes down to Stephen VI., A.D. 885, but not all by Anastasius. This book, together with later collections, is inserted in the third volume of Muratori, Rerum Ital. Scriptores (Mediol., 1723–’51, in 25 vols. fol.); also in Migne, Patrol. L. Tom. cxxvii. (1853).

Archibald Bower (b. 1686 at Dundee, Scotland, d. 1766): The History of the Popes, from the foundation of the See of Rome to the present time. 3rd ed. Lond., 1750–’66. 7 vols., 4to. German transl. by Rambach, 1770. Bower changed twice from Protestantism to Romanism, and back again, and wrote in bitter hostility, to the papacy, but gives very ample material. Bp. Douglas of Salesbury wrote against him.

Chr. F. Walch: Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der römischen Päpste. Göttingen, 2d ed., 1758.

G. J. Planck: Geschichte des Papstthums. Hanover, 1805. 3 vols.

L. T. Spittler: Geschichte des Papstthums; with Notes by J. Gurlitt, Hamb., 1802, new ed. by H. E. G. Paulus. Heidelberg, 1826.

J. E. Riddle: The History of the Papacy to the Period of the Reformation. London, 1856. 2 vols.

F. A. Gfrörer: Geschichte der Karolinger. (Freiburg, 1848. 2 vols.); Allgemeine Kirchengeschichte (Stuttgart, 1841–’46, 4 vols.); Gregor VII. und sein Zeitalter (Schaffhausen, 1859–64, 8 vols.). Gfrörer began as a rationalist, but joined the Roman church, 1853, and died in 1861.

*Phil. Jaffé: Regesta Pontificum Roman. ad annum 1198. Berol., 1851; revised ed. by Wattenbach, etc. Lips. 1881 sqq. Continued by Potthast from 1198–1304, and supplemented by Harttung (see below). Important for the chronology and acts of the popes.

J. A. Wylie: The Papacy. Lond., 1852.

*Leopold Ranke: Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im 16 und 17ten Jahrhundert. 4 ed., Berlin, 1857. 3 vols. Two English translations, one by Sarah Austin (Lond., 1840), one by E. Foster (Lond., 1847). Comp. the famous review of Macaulay in the Edinb. Review.

Döllinger. (R.C.): Die Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. Munchen, 1863. English translation by A. Plummer, and ed. with notes by H. B. Smith. New York, 1872.

*W. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der Deutschen Kaiserzeit. Braunschweig, 1855. 3rd ed., 1863 sqq., 5 vols. A political history of the German empire, but with constant reference to the papacy in its close contact with it.

*Thomas Greenwood: Cathedra Petri. A Political History of the great Latin Patriarchate. London, 1856–’72, 6 vols.

C. de Cherrier: Histoire de la lutte des papes el des empereurs de la maison de swabe, de ces causes et des ses effets. Paris, 1858. 3 vols.

*Rud. Baxmann: Die Politik der Päpste von Gregor I. bis Gregor VII. Elberfeld, 1868, ’69. 2 vols.

*F. Gregorovius: Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vom 5. bis zum 16. Jahrh. 8 vols. Stuttgart, 1859–1873  .2 ed., 1869 ff.

A. v. Reumont: Geschichte der Stadt Rom. Berlin, 1867–’70, 3 vols.

C. Höfler (R.C.): Die Avignonischen Päpste, ihre Machtfulle und ihr Untergang. Wien, 1871.

R. Zöpffel: Die Papstwahlen und die mit ihnen im nächsten Zusammenhange stehenden Ceremonien in ihrer Entwicklung vom 11 bis 14. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, 1872.

*James Bryce (Prof. of Civil Law in Oxford): The Holy Roman Empire, London, 3rd ed., 1871, 8th ed. enlarged, 1880.

W. Wattenbach: Geschicte des römischen Papstthums. Berlin, 1876.

*Jul. von Pflugk-Harttung: Acta Pontificum Romanorum inedita. Bd. I. Urkunden der Päpste A.D. 748–1198. Gotha, 1880.

O. J. Reichel: The See of Rome in the Middle Ages. Lond. 1870.

Mandell Creighton: History of the Papacy during the Reformation. London 1882. 2 vols.

J. N. Murphy (R.C.): The Chair of Peter, or the Papacy and its Benefits. London 1883.

§ 49. Chronological Table of the Popes, Anti-Popes, and Roman Emperors from Gregory I. to Leo XIII.

We present here, for convenient reference, a complete list of the Popes, Anti-Popes, and Roman Emperors, from Pope Gregory I. to Leo XIII., and from Charlemagne to Francis II., the last of the German-Roman emperors:210

––––––––––

A.D.

POPES.

ANTI-POPES.

EMPERORS.

A.D.

(Greek Emperors)

590–604

St. Gregory I

Maurice

582

(the Great)

Phocas

602

604–606

Sabinianus

607

Boniface III

608–615

Boniface IV

Heraclius

610

615–618

Deusdedit

619–625

Boniface V

625–638

Honorius I

638(?)-640

Severinus

640–642

John IV

Constantine III

Constans II

641

642–649

Theodorus I

649–653 [655]

St. Martin I

Constantine IV

654–657

Eugenius I

(Pogonatus)

668

657–672

Vitalianus

672–676

Adeodatus

676–678

Donus or Domnus I

678–681

Agatho

682–683

Leo II

683–685

Benedict II

685–686

John V

Justinian II

685

686–687

Conon

687–692

Paschal

Leontius

694

687

Theodorus.

Tiberius III

697

687–701

Sergius I

Justinus II restored

705

701–705

John VI

Philippicus Bardanes

711

705–707

John VII

Anastasius II

713

708

Sisinnius

Theodosius III

716

708–715

Constantine I

Leo III. (the Isaurian)

718

715–731

Gregory II

731–741

Gregory III

(Charles Martel, d. 741, defeated the Saracens at Tours 732.)

741–752

Zacharias

(Pepin the Short,

752

Stephen II

Roman(Patricius).

741

752–757

Stephen III (II)

757–767

Paul I

767–768

Constantine II

Roman Emperors.

768

Philippus

768–772

Stephen IV

772–795

Adrian I

* Charlemagne

768–814

795–816

Leo III

Crowned emperor at Rome

800

816–817

Stephen V

817–824

Paschal I

* Louis the Pious (le Débonnaire)

814–840

824–827

Eugenius II

Crowned em. at Rheims

816

827

Valentinus

827–844

Gregory IV

* Lothaire I (crowned 823)

840–855

844

John (diaconus)

844–847

Sergius II

(Louis the German, King of Germany, 840–876)

847–855

Leo IV

The mythical papess Joan or John VIII

855–858

Benedict III

855

Anastasius.

* Louis II (in Italy)

855–875

858–867

Nicolas I

867–872

Adrian II

872–882

John VIII

* Charles the Bald

875–881

882–884

Marinus I

* Charles the Fat

881–887

884–885

Adrian III

885–891

Stephen VI

* Arnulf

887–899

891–896

Formosus

Crowned emperor

896

896

Boniface VI

896–897

Ste

897

Romanus

897

Theodorus II

898–900

John IX

(Louis the Child)

899

900–903

Benedict IV

903

Leo V

Louis III of Provence (in Italy)

901

903–904

Christophorus (deposed)

904–911

Sergius III

911–913

Anstasius III

Conrad I (of Franconia) King of Germany.

911–918

913–914

Lando

914–928

John X

Berengar (in Italy).

915

928–929

Leo VI

Henry I. (the Fowler) King of Germany. The House of Saxony.

918–926

929–931

Stephen VIII

931–936

John XI

936–939

Leo VII

939–942

Stephen IX

* Otto I (the Great)

936–973

942–946

Marinus II

Crowned emperor

962

946–955

Agapetus II

955–963

John XII (deposed)

963–965

Leo VIII

964

Benedict V (deposed)

965–972

John XIII

972–974

Benedict VI

* Otto II

973–983

974–983

Benedict VII

(Boniface VII?)

983–984

John XIV (murdered)

* Otto III

983–1002

984–985

Boniface VII

Crowned emperor

996

985–996

John XV

996–999

Gregory V

997–998

Calabritanus John XVI

*Henry II (the Saint, the last of the Saxon emperors).

1002–1024

998–1003

Silvester II

Crowned emperor

1014

1003

John XVII

1003–1009

John XVIII

1009–1012

Sergius IV

1012–1024

Benedict VIII

1024–1039

1012

Gregory

* Conrad II, The House of Franconia.

1024–1033

John XIX

Crowned emperor

1027

1033–1046

Benedict IX (deposed)

1044–1046

Silvester III

* Henry III

1039–1056

1045–1046

Gregory VI

Crowned emperor

1046

1046–1047

Clement II

1047–1048

Damasus II

1048–1054

Leo IX

1054–1057

Victor II

* Henry IV

1056–1106

1057–1058

Stephen X

Crowned by the Antipope Clement

1084

1058–1059

Benedict X (deposed)

1058–1061

Nicolas II

1061–1073

Alexander II

1061

Cadalous (Honorius II)

(Rudolf of Swabia rival)

1077

1073–1085

Gregory VII (Hildebrand)

1080–1100

Wibertus (Clement III)

(Hermann of Luxemburg rival)

1081

1086–1087

Victor III

1088–1099

Urban II

1099–1118

Paschal II

1100

Theodoricus

1102

Albertus

* Henry V

1106–1125

1105–1111

Maginulfus (Silvester IV)

1118–1119

Gelasius II

1118–1121

Burdinus (Gregory VIII)

* Lothaire II (the Saxon

1125–1137

1119–1124

Calixtus II

1124

Theobaldus Buccapecus (Celestine)

* Conrad III, The House of Hohenstaufen. (The Swabian emperors.)

1138–1152

1124–1130

Honorius II.

Crowned Em. at Aix

1130–1143

Innocent II

1130–1138

Anacletus II

1138

Gregory (Victor IV)

1143–1144

Celestine II

1144–1145

Lucius II

1145–1153

Eugenius III

*Frederick I (Barbarossa)

1152–1190

1153–1154

Anastasius IV

Crowned emperor

1155

1154–1159

Adrian IV

1159–1181

Alexander III

1159–1164

Octavianus (Victor IV)

Guido Cremensis (Paschal III)

1164–1168

Johannes de Struma (Calixtus III)

1168–1178

1178–1180

Landus Titinus (Innocent III)

1181–1185

Lucius III

1185–1187

Urban III

1187

Gregory VIII

1187–1191

Clement III

*Henry VI

1190–1197

1191–1198

Celestine III

1198–1216

Innocent III

Philip of Swabia and Otto IV  (rivals)

1198

*Otto IV

1209–1215

1216–1227

Honorius III

*Frederick II.

1215–1250.

1227–1241

Gregory IX

Crowned emperor

1220

1241

Celestine IV

(Henry Raspe rival)

1241–1254

Innocent IV

(William of Holland rival)

Conrad IV

1250–1254

1254–1261

Alexander IV

Interregnum

1254–1273

Richard (Earl of Cornwall)

1261–1264

Urban IV

Alfonso (King of Castile) (rivals)

1257

1265–1268

Clement IV

1271–1276

Gregory X

1276

Innocent V

Rudolf I (of Hapsburg)

1276

Adrian V

House of Austria

1272–1291

1276–1277

John XXI

1277–1280

Nicolas III

1281–1285

Martin IV

1285–1287

Honorius IV

1288–1292

Nicolas IV

Adolf (of Nassau)

1292–1298

1294

St. Celestine V (abdicated)

1294–1303

Boniface VIII

Albert I (of Hapsburg)

1298–1308

1303–1304

Benedict XI

1305–1314

Clement V211

*Henry VII (of Luxemburg)

1308–1313

1316–1334

John XXII

*Lewis IV (of Bavaria)

1314–1347

1334–1342

Benedict XII

(Frederick the Fair of Austria, rival 1314–1330)

1342–1352

Clement VI

1352–1362

Innocent VI

1362–1370

Urban V

*Charles IV (of Luxemburg)

1347–1437

1370–1378

Gregory XI

(Gunther of Schwarzburg, rival)

1378–1389

Urban VI

1378–1394

Clement VII

1389–1404

Boniface IX

Wenzel (of Luxemburg)

1378–1400

1394–1423

Benedict XIII

(deposed 1409)

1404–1406

Innocent VII

Rupert (of the Palatinate)

1400–1410

1406–1409

Gregory XII (deposed)

1410–1415

Alexander V

1410–1415

John XXIII (deposed)

Sigismund (of Luxemburg)

1410–1437

(Jobst of Moravia rival)

1417–1431

Martin V

Clement VIII

1431–1447

Eugene IV

1439–1449

Felix V

Albert II (of Hapsburg)

1438–1439

1447–1455

Nicolas

*Frederick III.212

1440–1493

1455–1458

Calixtus IV

Crowned emperor

1452

1458–1464

Pius II

1464–1471

Paul II

1471–1484

Sixtus IV

1484–1492

Innocent VIII

Maximilian I

1493–1519

1492–1503

Alexander VI.

1503

Pius III.

1503–1513

Julius II.

* Charles V

1519–1558

1513–1521

Leo X.

Crowned emperor at Bologna not in Rome

1530

1522–1523

Hadrian VI

1523–1534

Clement VII

1534–1549

Paul III

1550–1555

Julius III

1555

Marcellus II

Ferdinand I

1558–1564

1555–1559

Paul IV

1559–1565

Pius IV

1566–1572

Pius V

1572–1585

Gregory XIII

Maximilian II

1564–1576

1585–1590

Sixtus V

1590

Urban VII

1590–1591

Gregory XIV

1591

Innocent IX

1592–1605

Clement VIII

Rudolf II

1576–1612

1605

Leo XI

1605–1621

Paul V

Matthias

1612–1619

1621–1623

Gregory XV

Ferdinand II

1619–1637

1623–1644

Urban VIII

1644–1655

Innocent X

Ferdinand III

1637–1657

1655–1667

Alexander VIII

1667–1669

Clement IX

Leopold I

1657–1705

1669–1676

Clement X

1676–1689

Innocent XI

1689–1691

Alex’der VIII

1691–1700

Innocent XII

1700–1721

Clement XI

Joseph I

1705–1711

1721–1724

Innocent XIII

Charles VI.

1711–1740

1724–1730

Benedict XIII

Charles VII (of Ba

1730–1740

Clement XII

varia)

1742–1745

1740–1758

Benedict XIV

Francis I (of Lorraine)

1745–1765

1758–1769

Clement XIII

Joseph II

1765–1790

1769–1774

Clement XIV

1775–1799

Pius VI

Leopold II

1790–1792

Francis II

1792–1806

1800–1823

Pius VII

Abdication of Francis II

1806

1823–1829

Leo XII

1829–1830

Pius VIII

(Francis I, E

––––––––––

§ 50. Gregory the Great. A.D. 590–604.

Literature.

I. Gregorii M. Opera.: The best is the Benedictine ed. of Dom de Ste Marthe (Dionysius Samarthanus e congregatione St, Mauri), Par., 1705, 4 vols. fol. Reprinted in Venice, 1768–76, in 17 vols. 4to.; and, with additions, in Migne’s Patrologia, 1849, in 5 vols. (Tom. 75–79).

Especially valuable are Gregory’s Epistles, nearly 850 (in third vol. of Migne’s ed.). A new ed. is being prepared by Paul Ewald.

II. Biographies of Gregory I

(1) Older biographies: in the "Liber Pontificalis;" by Paulus Diaconus († 797), in Opera I. 42 (ed. Migne); by Johannes Diaconus (9th cent.), ibid., p. 59, and one selected from his writings, ibid., p. 242.

Detailed notices of Gregory in the writings of Gregory of Tours, Bede, Isidorus Hispal., Paul Warnefried (730).

(2) Modern biographies:

G. Lau: Gregor I. nach seinem Leben und nach seiner Lehre. Leipz., 1845.

Böhringer: Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen. Bd. I., Abth. IV. Zurich, 1846.

G. Pfahler: Gregor der Gr. und seine Zeit. Frkf a. M., 1852.

James Barmby: Gregory the Great. London, 1879. Also his art. "Gregorius I." in Smith & Wace, "Dict. of Christ. Biogr.," II. 779 (1880).

Comp. Jaffé, Neander, Milman (Book III., ch. 7, vol. II., 39 sqq.); Greenwood (Book III., chs. 6 and 7); Montalembert (Les moines d’Occident, bk. V., Engl. transl., vol. II., 69 sqq.); Baxmann (Politik der Päpste, I. 44 sqq.); Zöpffel (art. Gregor I. in the, new ed. of Herzog).

Whatever may be thought of the popes of earlier times," says Ranke,213 "they always had great interests in view: the care of oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the spread of Christianity among the northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchy. It belongs to the dignity of human existence to aim at and to execute something great; this tendency the popes kept in upward motion."

This commendation of the earlier popes, though by no means applicable to all, is eminently true of the one who stands at the beginning of our period.

Gregory the First, or the Great, the last of the Latin fathers and the first of the popes, connects the ancient with the mediaeval church, the Graeco-Roman with the Romano-Germanic type of Christianity. He is one of the best representatives of mediaeval Catholicism: monastic, ascetic, devout and superstitious; hierarchical, haughty, and ambitious, yet humble before God; indifferent, if not hostile, to classical and secular culture, but friendly to sacred and ecclesiastical learning; just, humane, and liberal to ostentation; full of missionary zeal in the interest of Christianity, and the Roman see, which to his mind were inseparably connected. He combined great executive ability with untiring industry, and amid all his official cares he never forgot the claims of personal piety. In genius he was surpassed by Leo I., Gregory VII., Innocent III.; but as a man and as a Christian, he ranks with the purest and most useful of the popes. Goodness is the highest kind of greatness, and the church has done right in according the title of the Great to him rather than to other popes of superior intellectual power.

The times of his pontificate (A.D. Sept. 3, 590 to March 12, 604) were full of trouble, and required just a man of his training and character. Italy, from a Gothic kingdom, had become a province of the Byzantine empire, but was exhausted by war and overrun by the savage Lombards, who were still heathen or Arian heretics, and burned churches, slew ecclesiastics, robbed monasteries, violated nuns, reduced cultivated fields into a wilderness. Rome was constantly exposed to plunder, and wasted by pestilence and famine. All Europe was in a chaotic state, and bordering on anarchy. Serious men, and Gregory himself, thought that the end of the world was near at hand. "What is it," says he in one of his sermons, "that can at this time delight us in this world?  Everywhere we see tribulation, everywhere we hear lamentation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down, the fields laid waste the land made desolate. Villages are empty, few inhabitants remain in the cities, and even these poor remnants of humanity are daily cut down. The scourge of celestial justice does not cease, because no repentance takes place under the scourge. We see how some are carried into captivity, others mutilated, others slain. What is it, brethren, that can make us contented with this life?  If we love such a world, we love not our joys, but our wounds. We see what has become of her who was once the mistress of the world .... Let us then heartily despise the present world and imitate the works of the pious as well as we can."

Gregory was born about A.D. 540, from an old and wealthy senatorial (the Anician) family of Rome, and educated for the service of the government. He became acquainted with Latin literature, and studied Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustin, but was ignorant of Greek. His mother Sylvia, after the death of Gordianus her husband, entered a convent and so excelled in sanctity that she was canonized. The Greek emperor Justin appointed him to the highest civil office in Rome, that of imperial prefect (574). But soon afterwards he broke with the world, changed the palace of his father near Rome into a convent in honor of St. Andrew, and became himself a monk in it, afterwards abbot. He founded besides six convents in Sicily, and bestowed his remaining wealth on the poor. He lived in the strictest abstinence, and undermined his health by ascetic excesses. Nevertheless he looked back upon this time as the happiest of his life.

Pope Pelagius II. made him one of the seven deacons of the Roman Church, and sent him as ambassador or nuntius to the court of Constantinople (579).214  His political training and executive ability fitted him eminently for this post. He returned in 585, and was appointed abbot of his convent, but employed also for important public business.

It was during his monastic period (either before or, more probably, after his return from Constantinople) that his missionary zeal was kindled, by an incident on the slave market, in behalf of the Anglo-Saxons. The result (as recorded in a previous chapter) was the conversion of England and the extension of the jurisdiction of the Roman see, during his pontificate. This is the greatest event of that age, and the brightest jewel in his crown. Like a Christian Caesar, he re-conquered that fair island by an army of thirty monks, marching under the sign of the cross.215

In 590 Gregory was elected pope by the unanimous voice of the clergy, the senate, and the people, notwithstanding his strong remonstrance, and confirmed by his temporal sovereign, the Byzantine emperor Mauricius. Monasticism, for the first time, ascended the papal throne. Hereafter till his death he devoted all his energies to the interests of the holy see and the eternal city, in the firm consciousness of being the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Christ. He continued the austere simplicity of monastic life, surrounded himself with monks, made them bishops and legates, confirmed the rule of St. Benedict at a council of Rome, guaranteed the liberty and property of convents, and by his example and influence rendered signal services to the monastic order. He was unbounded in his charities to the poor. Three thousand virgins, impoverished nobles and matrons received without a blush alms from his hands. He sent food from his table to the hungry before he sat down for his frugal meal. He interposed continually in favor of injured widows and orphans. He redeemed slaves and captives, and sanctioned the sale of consecrated vessels for objects of charity.

Gregory began his administration with a public act of humiliation on account of the plague which had cost the life of his predecessor. Seven processions traversed the streets for three days with prayers and hymns; but the plague continued to ravage, and demanded eighty victims during the procession. The later legend made it the means of staying the calamity, in consequence of the appearance of the archangel Michael putting back the drawn sword into its sheath over the Mausoleum of Hadrian, since called the Castle of St. Angelo, and adorned by the statue of an angel.

His activity as pontiff was incessant, and is the more astonishing as he was in delicate health and often confined to bed. "For a long time," he wrote to a friend in 601, "I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of gout; a kind of fire seems to pervade my whole body: to live is pain; and I look forward to death as the only remedy."  In another letter he says: "I am daily dying, but never die."

Nothing seemed too great, nothing too little for his personal care. He organized and completed the ritual of the church, gave it greater magnificence, improved the canon of the mass and the music by a new mode of chanting called after him. He preached often and effectively, deriving lessons of humility and piety, from the calamities of the times, which appeared to him harbingers of the judgment-day. He protected the city of Rome against the savage and heretical Lombards. He administered the papal patrimony, which embraced large estates in the neighborhood of Rome, in Calabria, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Dalmatia, and even in Gaul and Africa. He encouraged and advised missionaries. As patriarch of the West, he extended his paternal care over the churches in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and sent the pallium to some metropolitans, yet without claiming any legal jurisdiction. He appointed, he also reproved and deposed bishops for neglect of duty, or crime. He resolutely opposed the prevalent practice of simony, and forbade the clergy to exact or accept fees for their services. He corresponded, in the interest of the church, with nobles, kings and queens in the West, with emperors and patriarchs in the East. He hailed the return of the Gothic kingdom of Spain under Reccared from the Arian heresy to the Catholic faith, which was publicly proclaimed by the Council of Toledo, May 8, 589. He wrote to the king a letter of congratulation, and exhorted him to humility, chastity, and mercy. The detested Lombards likewise cast off Arianism towards the close of his life, in consequence partly of his influence over Queen Theodelinda, a Bavarian princess, who had been reared in the trinitarian faith. He endeavored to suppress the remnants of the Donatist schism in Africa. Uncompromising against Christian heretics and schismatics be was a step in advance of his age in liberality towards the Jews. He censured the bishop of Terracina and the bishop of Cagliari for unjustly depriving them of their synagogues; he condemned the forcible baptism of Jews in Gaul, and declared conviction by preaching the only legitimate means of conversion; he did not scruple, however, to try the dishonest method of bribery, and he inconsistently denied the Jews the right of building new synagogues and possessing Christian slaves. He made efforts, though in vain, to check the slave-trade, which was chiefly in the hands of Jews.

After his death, the public distress, which he had labored to alleviate, culminated in a general famine, and the ungrateful populace of Rome was on the point of destroying his library, when the archdeacon Peter stayed their fury by asserting that he had seen the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering above Gregory’s head as he wrote his books. Hence he is represented with a dove. He was buried in St. Peter’s under the altar of St. Andrew.

Note. Estimates of Gregory I.

Bishop Bossuet (as quoted by Montalembert, II. 173) thus tersely sums up the public life of Gregory: "This great pope ... subdued the Lombards; saved Rome and Italy, though the emperors could give him no assistance; repressed the new-born pride of the patriarchs of Constantinople; enlightened the whole church by his doctrine; governed the East and the West with as much vigor as humility; and gave to the world a perfect model of ecclesiastical government."

To this Count Montalembert (likewise a Roman Catholic) adds: "It was the Benedictine order which gave to the church him whom no one would have hesitated to call the greatest of the popes, had not the same order, five centuries later, produced St. Gregory VII .... He is truly Gregory the Great, because he issued irreproachable from numberless and boundless difficulties; because he gave as a foundation to the increasing grandeur of the Holy See, the renown of his virtue, the candor of his innocence, the humble and inexhaustible tenderness of his heart."

"The pontificate of Gregory the Great," says Gibbon (ch. 45), "which lasted thirteen years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the temper of the times."

Lau says (in his excellent monograph, pp. 302, 306): "The spiritual qualities of Gregory’s character are strikingly apparent in his actions. With a clear, practical understanding, he combined a kind and mild heart; but he was never weak. Fearful to the obstinate transgressor of the laws, on account of his inflexible justice, he was lenient to the repentant and a warm friend to his friends, though, holding, as he did, righteousness and the weal of the church higher than friendship, he was severe upon any neglect of theirs. With a great prudence in managing the most different circumstances, and a great sagacity in treating the most different characters, he combined a moral firmness which never yielded an inch of what he had recognized as right; but he never became stubborn. The rights of the church and the privileges of the apostolical see he fought for with the greatest pertinacity; but for himself personally, he wanted no honors. As much as he thought of the church and the Roman chair, so modestly he esteemed himself. More than once his acts gave witness to the humility of his heart: humility was, indeed, to him the most important and the most sublime virtue. His activity was prodigious, encompassing great objects and small ones with equal zeal. Nothing ever became too great for his energy or too small for his attention. He was a warm patriot, and cared incessantly for the material as well as for the spiritual welfare of his countrymen. More than once he saved Rome from the Lombards, and relieved her from famine .... He was a great character with grand plans, in the realization of which he showed as much insight as firmness, as much prudent calculation of circumstances as sagacious judgment of men. The influence he has exercised is immense, and when this influence is not in every respect for the good, his time is to blame, not he. His goal was always that which he acknowledged as the best. Among all the popes of the sixth and following centuries, he shines as a star of the very first magnitude."

Rud. Baxmann (l.c., I. 45 sq.): "Amidst the general commotion which the invasion of the Lombards caused in Italy, one man stood fast on his post in the eternal city, no matter how high the surges swept over it. As Luther, in his last will, calls himself an advocate of God, whose name was well known in heaven and on earth and in hell, the epitaph says of Gregory I. that he ruled as the consul Dei. He was the chief bishop of the republic of the church, the fourth doctor ecclesiae, beside the three other powerful theologians and columns of the Latin church: Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. He is justly called the pater ceremoniarum, the pater monachorum, and the Great. What the preceding centuries had produced in the Latin church for church government and dogmatics, for pastoral care and liturgy, he gathered together, and for the coming centuries he laid down the norms which were seldom deviated from."

To this we add the judgment of James Barmby, the latest biographer of Gregory (Greg., p. 191): "Of the loftiness of his aims, the earnestness of his purpose, the fervor of his devotion, his unwearied activity, and his personal purity, there can be no doubt. These qualities are conspicuous through his whole career. If his religion was of the strongly ascetic type, and disfigured by superstitious credulity, it bore in these respects the complexion of his age, inseparable then from aspiration after the highest holiness. Nor did either superstition or asceticism supersede in him the principles of a true inward religion-justice, mercy, and truth. We find him, when occasion required, exalting mercy above sacrifice; he was singularly kindly and benevolent, as well as just, and even his zeal for the full rigor of monastic discipline was tempered with much gentleness and allowance for infirmity. If, again, with singleness of main purpose was combined at times the astuteness of the diplomatist, and a certain degree of politic insincerity in addressing potentates, his aims were never personal or selfish. And if he could stoop, for the attainment of his ends, to the then prevalent adulation of the great, he could also speak his mind fearlessly to the greatest, when he felt great principles to be at stake."

§ 51. Gregory and the Universal Episcopate.

The activity, of Gregory tended powerfully to establish the authority of the papal chair. He combined a triple dignity, episcopal, metropolitan, and patriarchal. He was bishop of the city of Rome, metropolitan over the seven suffragan (afterwards called cardinal) bishops of the Roman territory, and patriarch of Italy, in fact of the whole West, or of all the Latin churches. This claim was scarcely disputed except as to the degree of his power in particular cases. A certain primacy of honor among all the patriarchs was also conceded, even by the East. But a universal episcopate, including an authority of jurisdiction over the Eastern or Greek church, was not acknowledged, and, what is more remarkable, was not even claimed by him, but emphatically declined and denounced. He stood between the patriarchal and the strictly papal system. He regarded the four patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, to whom he announced his election with a customary confession of his faith, as co-ordinate leaders of the church under Christ, the supreme head, corresponding as it were to the four oecumenical councils and the four gospels, as their common foundation, yet after all with a firm belief in a papal primacy. His correspondence with the East on this subject is exceedingly important. The controversy began in 595, and lasted several years, but was not settled.

John IV., the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, repeatedly used in his letters the title "oecumenical" or "universal bishop."  This was an honorary, title, which had been given to patriarchs by the emperors Leo and Justinian, and confirmed to John and his successors by a Constantinopolitan synod in 588. It had also been used in the Council of Chalcedon of pope Leo I.216  But Gregory I. was provoked and irritated beyond measure by the assumption of his Eastern rival, and strained every nerve to procure a revocation of that title. He characterized it as a foolish, proud, profane, wicked, pestiferous, blasphemous, and diabolical usurpation, and compared him who used it to Lucifer. He wrote first to Sabinianus, his apocrisiarius or ambassador in Constantinople, then repeatedly to the patriarch, to the emperor Mauricius, and even to the empress; for with all his monkish contempt for woman, he availed himself on every occasion of the female influence in high quarters. He threatened to break off communion with the patriarch. He called upon the emperor to punish such presumption, and reminded him of the contamination of the see of Constantinople by such arch-heretics as Nestorius.217

Failing in his efforts to change the mind of his rival in New Rome, he addressed himself to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and played upon their jealousy; but they regarded the title simply as a form of honor, and one of them addressed him as oecumenical pope, a compliment which Gregory could not consistently accept.218

After the death of John the Faster in 596 Gregory instructed his ambassador at Constantinople to demand from the new patriarch, Cyriacus, as a condition of intercommunion, the renunciation of the wicked title, and in a letter to Maurice he went so far as to declare, that "whosoever calls himself universal priest, or desires to be called so, was the forerunner of Antichrist."219

In opposition to these high-sounding epithets, Gregory called himself, in proud humility, "the servant of the servants of God."220  This became one of the standing titles of the popes, although it sounds like irony in conjunction with their astounding claims.

But his remonstrance was of no avail. Neither the patriarch nor the emperor obeyed his wishes. Hence he hailed a change of government which occurred in 602 by a violent revolution.

When Phocas, an ignorant, red-haired, beardless, vulgar, cruel and deformed upstart, after the most atrocious murder of Maurice and his whole family (a wife, six sons and three daughters), ascended the throne, Gregory hastened to congratulate him and his wife Leontia (who was not much better) in most enthusiastic terms, calling on heaven and earth to rejoice at their accession, and vilifying the memory of the dead emperor as a tyrant, from whose yoke the church was now fortunately freed.221  This is a dark spot, but the only really dark and inexcusable spot in the life of this pontiff. He seemed to have acted in this case on the infamous maxim that the end justifies the means.222  His motive was no doubt to secure the protection and aggrandizement of the Roman see. He did not forget to remind the empress of the papal proof-text: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," and to add: "I do not doubt that you will take care to oblige and bind him to you, by whom you desire to be loosed from your sins."

The murderer and usurper repaid the favor by taking side with the pope against his patriarch (Cyriacus), who had shown sympathy with the unfortunate emperor. He acknowledged the Roman church to be "the head of all churches."223  But if he ever made such a decree at the instance of Boniface III., who at that time was papal nuntius at Constantinople, he must have meant merely such a primacy of honor as had been before conceded to Rome by the Council of Chalcedon and the emperor Justinian. At all events the disputed title continued to be used by the patriarchs and emperors of Constantinople. Phocas, after a disgraceful reign (602–610), was stripped of the diadem and purple, loaded with chains, insulted, tortured, beheaded and cast into the flames. He was succeeded by Heraclius.

In this whole controversy the pope’s jealousy of the patriarch is very manifest, and suggests the suspicion that it inspired the protest.

Gregory displays in his correspondence with his rival a singular combination of pride and humility. He was too proud to concede to him the title of a universal bishop, and yet too humble or too inconsistent to claim it for himself. His arguments imply that he would have the best right to the title, if it were not wrong in itself. His real opinion is perhaps best expressed in a letter to Eulogius of Alexandria. He accepts all the compliments which Eulogius paid to him as the successor of Peter, whose very name signifies firmness and solidity; but he ranks Antioch and Alexandria likewise as sees of Peter, which are nearly, if not quite, on a par with that of Rome, so that the three, as it were, constitute but one see. He ignores Jerusalem. "The see of the Prince of the Apostles alone," he says, "has acquired a principality of authority, which is the see of one only, though in three places (quae in tribus locis unius est). For he himself has exalted the see in which he deigned to rest and to end his present life [Rome]. He himself adorned the see [Alexandria] to which he sent his disciple [Mark] as evangelist. He himself established the see in which he sat for seven years [Antioch]. Since, then, the see is one, and of one, over which by divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you I impute to myself. If you believe anything good of me, impute this to your own merits; because we are one in Him who said: ’That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that all may be one in us’ (John xvii. 21)."224

When Eulogius, in return for this exaltation of his own see, afterwards addressed Gregory as "universal pope," he strongly repudiated the title, saying: "I have said that neither to me nor to any one else (nec mihi, nec cuiquam alteri) ought you to write anything of the kind. And lo! in the preface of your letter you apply to me, who prohibited it, the proud title of universal pope; which thing I beg your most sweet Holiness to do no more, because what is given to others beyond what reason requires is subtracted from you. I do not esteem that an honor by which I know my brethren lose their honor. My honor is that of the universal Church. My honor is the solid strength of my brethren. I am then truly honored when all and each are allowed the honor that is due to them. For, if your Holiness calls me universal pope, you deny yourself to be that which you call me universally [that is, you own yourself to be no pope]. But no more of this: away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!"  He even objects to the expression, "as thou hast commanded," which had occurred in hid correspondent’s letter. "Which word, ’commanded,’ I pray you let me hear no more; for I know what I am, and what you are: in position you are my brethren, in manners you are my, fathers. I did not, therefore, command, but desired only to indicate what seemed to me expedient."225

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Gregory, while he protested in the strongest terms against the assumption by the Eastern patriarchs of the antichristian and blasphemous title of universal bishop, claimed and exercised, as far as he had the opportunity and power, the authority and oversight over the whole church of Christ, even in the East. "With respect to the church of Constantinople," he asks in one of his letters, "who doubts that it is subject to the apostolic see?"  And in another letter: "I know not what bishop is not subject to it, if fault is found in him."  "To all who know the Gospels," he writes to emperor Maurice, "it is plain that to Peter, as the prince of all the apostles, was committed by our Lord the care of the whole church (totius ecclesiae cura) .... But although the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power to bind and to loose, were intrusted to him, and the care and principality of the whole church (totius ecclesiae cura et principatus), he is not called universal bishop; while my most holy fellow-priest (vir sanctissimus consacerdos meus) John dares to call himself universal bishop. I am compelled to exclaim: O tempora, O mores!"226

We have no right to impeach Gregory’s sincerity. But he was clearly inconsistent in disclaiming the name, and yet claiming the thing itself. The real objection is to the pretension of a universal episcopate, not to the title. If we concede the former, the latter is perfectly legitimate. And such universal power had already been claimed by Roman pontiffs before Gregory, such as Leo I., Felix, Gelasius, Hormisdas, in language and acts more haughty and self-sufficient than his.

No wonder, therefore that the successors of Gregory, less humble and more consistent than he, had no scruple to use equivalent and even more arrogant titles than the one against which he so solemnly protested with the warning: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble."227  But it is a very remarkable fact, that at the beginning of the unfolding of the greatest power of the papacy one of the best of popes should have protested against the antichristian pride and usurpation of the system.

§ 52. The Writings of Gregory.

Comp. the second part of Lau’s biography, pp. 311 sqq., and Adolf Ebert: Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur, bis zum Zeitalter Karls der Grossen. Leipzig, 1874 sqq., vol. I. 516 sqq.

With all the multiplicity of his cares, Gregory found time for literary labor. His books are not of great literary merit, but were eminently popular and useful for the clergy of the middle ages.

His theology was based upon the four oecumenical councils and the four Gospels, which he regarded as the immovable pillars of orthodoxy; he also accepted the condemnation of the three chapters by the fifth oecumenical council. He was a moderate Augustinian, but with an entirely practical, unspeculative, uncritical, traditional and superstitious bent of mind. His destruction of the Palatine Library, if it ever existed, is now rejected as a fable; but it reflects his contempt for secular and classical studies as beneath the dignity of a Christian bishop. Yet in ecclesiastical learning and pulpit eloquence he had no superior in his age.

Gregory is one of the great doctors or authoritative fathers of the church. His views on sin and grace are almost semi-Pelagian. He makes predestination depend on fore-knowledge; represents the fallen nature as sick only, not as dead; lays great stress on the meritoriousness of good works, and is chiefly responsible for the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, and masses for the benefit of the souls in purgatory.

His Latin style is not classical, but ecclesiastical and monkish; it abounds in barbarisms; it is prolix and chatty, but occasionally sententious and rising to a rhetorical pathos, which he borrowed from the prophets of the Old Testament.

The following are his works:

1. Magna Moralia, in thirty-five books. This large work was begun in Constantinople at the instigation of Leander, bishop of Seville, and finished in Rome. It is a three-fold exposition of the book of Job according to its historic or literal, its allegorical, and its moral meaning.228

Being ignorant of the Hebrew and Greek languages, and of Oriental history and customs (although for some time a resident of Constantinople), Gregory lacked the first qualifications for a grammatical and historical interpretation.

The allegorical part is an exegetical curiosity he reads between or beneath the lines of that wonderful poem the history of Christ and a whole system of theology natural and revealed. The names of persons and things, the numbers, and even the syllables, are filled with mystic meaning. Job represents Christ; his wife the carnal nature; his seven sons (seven being the number of perfection) represent the apostles, and hence the clergy; his three daughters the three classes of the faithful laity who are to worship the Trinity; his friends the heretics; the seven thousand sheep the perfect Christians; the three thousand camels the heathen and Samaritans; the five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred she-asses again the heathen, because the prophet Isaiah says: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."

The moral sense, which Gregory explains last, is an edifying homiletical expansion and application, and a sort of compend of Christian ethics.

2. Twenty-two Homilies on Ezekiel, delivered in Rome during the siege by Agilulph, and afterwards revised.

3. Forty Homilies on the Gospels for the day, preached by Gregory at various times, and afterwards edited.

4. Liber Regulae Pastoralis, in four parts. It is a pastoral theology, treating of the duties and responsibilities of the ministerial office, in justification of his reluctance to undertake the burden of the papal dignity. It is more practical than Chrysostom’s "Priesthood."  It was held in the highest esteem in the Middle Ages, translated into Greek by order of the emperor Maurice, and into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, and given to the bishops in France at their ordination, together with the book of canons, as a guide in the discharge of their duties. Gregory, according to the spirit of his age, enjoins strict celibacy even upon sub-deacons. But otherwise he gives most excellent advice suitable to all times. He makes preaching one of the chief duties of pastors, in the discharge of which he himself set a good example. He warns them to guard against the besetting sin of pride at the very outset; for they will not easily learn humility in a high position. They should preach by their lives as well as their words. "He who, by the necessity of his position, is required to speak the highest things, is compelled by the same necessity to exemplify the highest. For that voice best penetrates the hearts of hearers which the life of the speaker commends, because what he commends in his speech he helps to practice by his example."  He advises to combine meditation and action. "Our Lord," he says, "continued in prayer on the mountain, but wrought miracles in the cities; showing to pastors that while aspiring to the highest, they should mingle in sympathy with the necessities of the infirm. The more kindly charity descends to the lowest, the more vigorously it recurs to the highest."  The spiritual ruler should never be so absorbed in external cares as to forget the inner life of the soul, nor neglect external things in the care for his inner life. "The word of doctrine fails to penetrate the mind of the needy, unless commended by the hand of compassion."

5. Four books of Dialogues on the lives and miracles of St. Benedict of Nursia and other Italian saints, and on the immortality of the soul (593). These dialogues between Gregory and the Roman archdeacon Peter abound in incredible marvels and visions of the state of departed souls. He acknowledges, however, that he knew these stories only from hearsay, and defends his recording them by the example of Mark and Luke, who reported the gospel from what they heard of the eye-witnesses. His veracity, therefore, is not at stake; but it is strange that a man of his intelligence and good sense should believe such grotesque and childish marvels. The Dialogues are the chief source of the mediaeval superstitions about purgatory. King Alfred ordered them to be translated into the Anglo-Saxon.

6. His Epistles (838 in all) to bishops, princes, missionaries, and other persons in all parts of Christendom, give us the best idea of his character and administration, and of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. They treat of topics of theology, morals, politics, diplomacy, monasticism, episcopal and papal administration, and give us the best insight into his manifold duties, cares, and sentiments.

7. The Gregorian Sacramentary is based upon the older Sacramentaries of Gelasius and Leo I., with some changes in the Canon of the Mass. His assertion that in the celebration of the eucharist, the apostles used the Lord’s Prayer only (solummodo), has caused considerable discussion. Probably he meant no other prayer, in addition to the words of institution, which he took for granted.

8. A collection of antiphons for mass (Liber Antiphonarius). It contains probably later additions. Several other works of doubtful authenticity, and nine Latin hymns are also attributed to Gregory. They are in the metre of St. Ambrose, without the rhyme, except the "Rex Christe, factor omnium" (which is very highly spoken of by Luther). They are simple, devout, churchly, elevated in thought and sentiment, yet without poetic fire and vigor. Some of them as "Blest Creator of the Light" (Lucis Creator optime), "O merciful Creator, hear" (Audi, beate Conditor), "Good it is to keep the fast" (Clarum decus jejunii), have recently been made familiar to English readers in free translations from the Anglo-Catholic school.229  He was a great ritualist (hence called "Master of Ceremonies"), but with considerable talent for sacred poetry and music. The "Cantus Gregorianus" so called was probably a return from the artistic and melodious antiphonal "Cantus Ambrosianus" to the more ancient and simple mode of chanting. He founded a school of singers, which became a nursery of similar schools in other churches.230

Some other writings attributed to him, as an Exposition of the First Book of Kings, and an allegorical Exposition of the Canticles, are of doubtful genuineness.

§ 53. The Papacy from Gregory I to Gregory II A.D. 604–715.

The successors of Gregory I. to Gregory II. were, with few exceptions, obscure men, and ruled but a short time. They were mostly Italians, many of them Romans; a few were Syrians, chosen by the Eastern emperors in the interest of their policy and theology.

Sabinianus (604) was as hard and avaricious as Gregory was benevolent and liberal, and charged the famine of his reign upon the prodigality of his sainted predecessor. Boniface III. (606607) did not scruple to assume the title of It universal bishop, "against which Gregory, in proud humility, had so indignantly protested as a blasphemous antichristian assumption. Boniface IV. converted the Roman Pantheon into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all the Martyrs (608). Honorius l. (625–638) was condemned by an oecumenical council and by his own successors as a Monothelite heretic; while Martin I. (649–655) is honored for the persecution he endured in behalf of the orthodox doctrine of two wills in Christ. Under Gregory II. and III., Germany was converted to Roman Christianity.

The popes followed the missionary policy of Gregory and the instinct of Roman ambition and power. Every progress of Christianity in the West and the North was a progress of the Roman Church. Augustin, Boniface, Ansgar were Roman missionaries and pioneers of the papacy. As England had been annexed to the triple crown under Gregory I., so France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia were annexed under his successors. The British and Scotch-Irish independence gave way gradually to the irresistible progress of Roman authority and uniformity. Priests, noblemen and kings from all parts of the West were visiting Rome as the capital of Christendom, and paid homage to the shrine of the apostles and to the living successor of the Galilaean fisherman.

But while the popes thus extended their spiritual dominion over the new barbarous races, they were the political subjects of the Eastern emperor as the master of Italy, and could not be consecrated without his consent. They were expected to obey the imperial edicts even in spiritual matters, and were subject to arrest and exile. To rid themselves of this inconvenient dependence was a necessary step in the development of the absolute papacy. It was effected in the eighth century by the aid of a rising Western power. The progress of Mohammedanism and its encroachment on the Greek empire likewise contributed to their independence.

§ 54. From Gregory II to Zacharias. A.D. 715–741.

Gregory II. (715–731) marks the transition to this new state of things. He quarreled with the iconoclastic emperor, Leo the Isaurian, about the worship of images. Under his pontificate, Liutprand,231 the ablest and mightiest king of the Lombards, conquered the Exarchate of Ravenna, and became master of Italy.

But the sovereignty of a barbarian and once Arian power was more odious and dangerous to the popes than that of distant Constantinople. Placed between the heretical emperor and the barbarian robber, they looked henceforth to a young and rising power beyond the Alps for deliverance and protection. The Franks were Catholics from the time of their conversion under Clovis, and achieved under Charles Martel (the Hammer) a mighty victory over the Saracens (732), which saved Christian Europe against the invasion and tyranny of Islâm. They had thus become the protectors of Latin Christianity. They also lent their aid to Boniface in the conversion of Germany.

Gregory, III. (731–741) renewed the negotiations with the Franks, begun by his predecessor. When the Lombards again invaded the territory, of Rome, and were ravaging by fire and sword the last remains of the property of the church, he appealed in piteous and threatening tone to Charles Martel, who had inherited from his father, Pepin of Herstal, the mayoralty of France, and was the virtual ruler of the realm. "Close not your ears," he says, "against our supplications, lest St. Peter close against you the gates of heaven."  He sent him the keys of the tomb of St. Peter as a symbol of allegiance, and offered him the titles of Patrician and Consul of Rome.232  This was virtually a declaration of independence from Constantinople. Charles Martel returned a courteous answer, and sent presents to Rome, but did not cross the Alps. He was abhorred by the clergy of his own country as a sacrilegious spoiler of the property of the church and disposer of bishoprics to his counts and dukes in the place of rightful incumbents.233

The negotiations were interrupted by the death of Charles Martel Oct. 21, 741, followed by that of Gregory III., Nov. 27 of the same year.

§ 55. Alliance of the Papacy with the New Monarchy of the Franks. Pepin and the Patrimony of St. Peter. A.D. 741–755.

Pope Zacharias (741–752), a Greek, by the weight of his priestly authority, brought Liutprand to terms of temporary submission. The Lombard king suddenly paused in the career of conquest, and died after a reign of thirty years (743).

But his successor, Astolph, again threatened to incorporate Rome with his kingdom. Zacharias sought the protection of Pepin the Short,234 the Mayor of the Palace, son of Charles Martel, and father of Charlemagne, and in return for this aid helped him to the crown of France. This was the first step towards the creation of a Western empire and a new political system of Europe with the pope and the German emperor at the head.

Hereditary succession was not yet invested with that religious sanctity among the Teutonic races as in later ages. In the Jewish theocracy unworthy kings were deposed, and new dynasties elevated by the interposition of God’s messengers. The pope claimed and exercised now for the first time the same power. The Mayor, or high steward, of the royal household in France was the prime minister of the sovereign and the chief of the official and territorial nobility. This dignity became hereditary in the family of Pepin of Laudon, who died in 639, and was transmitted from him through six descents to Pepin the Short, a gallant warrior and an experienced statesman. He was on good terms with Boniface, the apostle of Germany and archbishop of Mayence, who, according to the traditional view, acted as negotiator between him and the pope in this political coup d’etat.235

Childeric III., the last of the hopelessly degenerate Merovingian line, was the mere shadow of a monarch, and forced to retire into a monastery. Pepin, the ruler in fact now assumed the name, was elected at Soissons (March, 752) by the acclamation and clash of arms of the people, and anointed, like the kings of Israel, with holy oil, by Boniface or some other bishop, and two years after by the pope himself, who had decided that the lawful possessor of the royal power may also lawfully assume the royal title. Since that time he called himself "by the grace of God king of the Franks."  The pope conferred on him the title of "Patrician of the Romans" (Patricius Romanorum), which implies a sort of protectorate over the Roman church, and civil sovereignty, over her territory. For the title "Patrician," which was introduced by Constantine the Great signified the highest rank next to that of the emperor, and since the sixth century was attached to the Byzantine Viceroy, of Italy. On the other hand, this elevation and coronation was made the basis of papal superiority over the crowns of France and Germany.

The pope soon reaped the benefit of his favor. When hard pressed again by the Lombards, he called the new king to his aid.

Stephen III., who succeeded Zacharias in March, 752, and ruled till 757, visited Pepin in person, and implored him to enforce the restoration of the domain of St. Peter. He anointed him again at St. Denys, together with his two sons, and promised to secure the perpetuity of his dynasty by the fearful power of the interdict and excommunication. Pepin accompanied him back to Italy and defeated the Lombards (754). When the Lombards renewed the war, the pope wrote letter upon letter to Pepin, admonishing and commanding him in the name of Peter and the holy Mother of God to save the city of Rome from the detested enemies, and promising him long life and the most glorious mansions in heaven, if he speedily obeyed. To such a height of blasphemous assumption had the papacy risen already as to identify itself with the kingdom of Christ and to claim to be the dispenser of temporal prosperity and eternal salvation.

Pepin crossed the Alps again with his army, defeated the Lombards, and bestowed the conquered territory upon the pope (755). He declared to the ambassadors of the East who demanded the restitution of Ravenna and its territory to the Byzantine empire, that his sole object in the war was to show his veneration for St. Peter. The new papal district embraced the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, East of the Apennines, with the cities of Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Cesena, Sinigaglia, lesi, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Montefeltro, Acerra, Monte di Lucano, Serra, San Marino, Bobbio, Urbino, Cagli, Luciolo, Gubbio, Comachio, and Narni.236

This donation of Pepin is the foundation of "the Patrimony of St. Peter."  The pope was already in possession of tracts of land in Italy and elsewhere granted to the church. But by this gift of a foreign conqueror he became a temporal sovereign over a large part of Italy, while claiming to be the successor of Peter who had neither silver nor gold, and the vicar of Christ who said: "My kingdom is not of this world."  The temporal power made the papacy independent in the exercise of its jurisdiction, but at the expense of its spiritual character. It provoked a long conflict with the secular power; it involved it in the political interests, intrigues and wars of Europe, and secularized the church and the hierarchy. Dante, who shared the mediaeval error of dating the donation of Pepin back to Constantine the Great,237 gave expression to this view in the famous lines:

"Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother,

Not thy conversion, but that marriage-dower

Which the first wealthy Father took from thee."238

Yet Dante places Constantine, who "from good intent produced evil fruit," in heaven; where

"Now he knows how all the ill deduced

From his good action is not harmful to him,

Although the world thereby may be destroyed."

And he speaks favorably of Charlemagne’s intervention in behalf of the pope:

"And when the tooth of Lombardy had bitten

The Holy Church, then underneath its wings

Did Charlemagne victorious succor her."239

The policy of Pepin was followed by Charlemagne, the German, and Austrian emperors, and modern French rulers who interfered in Italian affairs, now as allies, now as enemies, until the temporal power of the papacy was lost under its last protector, Napoleon III., who withdrew his troops from Rome to fight against Germany, and by his defeat prepared the way for Victor Emanuel to take possession of Rome, as the capital of free and united Italy (1870). Since that time the pope who a few weeks before had proclaimed to the world his own infallibility in all matters of faith and morals, is confined to the Vatican, but with no diminution of his spiritual power as the bishop of bishops over two hundred millions of souls.

§ 56. Charles the Great. A.D. 768–814.

Sources.

Beati Caroli Magni Opera omnia. 2 vols. In Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Tom. 97 and 98. The first vol. contains the Codex Diplomaticus, Capitularia, and Privilegia; the second vol., the Codex Carolinus, the Libri Carolini (on the image controversy), the Epistolae, Carminâ, etc.

1. The Letters of Charles, of Einhard, and of Alcuin. Also the letters of the Popes to Charles and his two predecessors, which he had collected, and which are called the Codex Carolinus, ed. by Muratori, Cenni, ad Migne (Tom. 98, pp. 10 sqq.).

2. The Capitularies and Laws of Charlemagne, contained in the first vol. of the Leges in the Mon. Germ., ed. by Pertz, and in the Collections of Baluzius and Migne.

3. Annals. The Annales Laurissenses Majores (probably the official chronicle of the court) from 788 to 813; the Annales Einhardi, written after 829; the Annales Petaviani, Laureshamenses, Mosellani, and others, more of local than general value. All in the first and second vol. of Pertz, Monumenta Germanica Hist. Script.

4. Biographies: Einhard or Eginhard (b. 770, educated at Fulda, private secretary of Charlemagne, afterwards Benedictine monk): Vita Caroli Imperatoris (English translation by S. S. Turner, New York, 1880). A true sketch of what Charles was by an admiring and loving hand in almost classical Latin, and after the manner of Sueton’s Lives of the Roman emperors. It marks, as Ad. Ebert says (II. 95), the height of the classical studies of the age of Charlemagne. Milman (II. 508) calls it "the best historic work which had appeared in the Latin language for centuries."—Poeta Saxo: Annales de Gestis Caroli, from the end of the ninth century. An anonymous monk of St. Gall: De Gestis Caroli, about the same time. In Pertz, l.c., and Jaffe’s Monumenta Carolina (Bibl. Rer. Germ., T. IV.), also in Migne, Tom. I., Op. Caroli.

Comp. on the sources Abel’s Jahrbucher des Fränk. Reichs (Berlin, 1866) and Wattenbach’s Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1858; 4th ed. 1877–78, 2 vols.)

Literature.

J. G. Walch: Historia Canonisationis Caroli M. Jen., 1750.

Putter: De Instauratione Imp. Rom. Gött., 1766.

Gaillard: Histoire de Charlemagne. Paris, 1784, 4 vols. secd ed. 1819.

Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ch. 49.

J. Ellendorf: Die Karolinger und die Hierarchie ihrer Zeit. Essen., 1838, 2 vols.

Hegewisch: Geschichte der Regierung Kaiser Karls des Gr. Hamb., 1791.

Dippolt: Leben K. Karls des Gr. Tub., 1810.

G. P. R. James: The History of Charlemagne. London, 2nd ed. 1847.

Bähr: Gesch. der röm. Lit. im Karoling. Zeitalter. Carlsruhe, 1840.

Gfrörer: Geschichte der Karolinger. Freiburg i. B., 1848, 2 vols.

Capefigue: Charlemagne. Paris, 1842, 2 vols.

Warnkönig et Gerard: Hist. des Carolingians. Brux. and Paris, 1862, 2 vols.

Waitz: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vols. III. and IV.

W. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit. Braunschweig, 1863 sqq. (3rd ed.). Bd. I., pp. 106 sqq.

Döllinger: Kaiserthum Karls des Grossen, in the Munchener Hist. Jahrbuch for 1865.

Gaston: Histoire poetique de Charlemagne. Paris, 1865.

P. Alberdinck Thijm: Karl der Gr. und seine Zeit. Munster, 1868.

Abel: Jahrbucher des Fränkischen Reichs unter Karl d. Grossen. Berlin, 1866.

Wyss: Karl der Grosse als Gesetzgeber. Zurich, 1869.

Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, I. 419 sqq., II. 382 sqq.

Alphonse Vétault: Charlemagne. Tours, 1877 (556 pp.). With fine illustrations.

L. Stacke: Deutsche Geschichte. Leipzig, 1880. Bd. I. 169 sqq. With illustrations and maps.

Comp. also Milman: Latin Christianity, Book IV., ch. 12, and Book V., ch. 1; Ad. Ebert: Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande (1880), vol. II. 3–108. Of French writers, Guizot, and Martin, in their Histories of France; also Parke Godwin, History of France, chs. xvi. and xvii. (vol. I. 410 sqq.).

With the death of Pepin the Short (Sept. 24, 768), the kingdom of France was divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, the former to rule in the Northern, the latter in the Southern provinces. After the death of his weaker brother (771) Charles, ignoring the claims of his infant nephews, seized the sole reign and more than doubled its extent by his conquests.

Character and Aim of Charlemagne.

This extraordinary man represents the early history of both France and Germany which afterwards divided into separate streams, and commands the admiration of both countries and nations. His grand ambition was to unite all the Teutonic and Latin races on the Continent under his temporal sceptre in close union with the spiritual dominion of the pope; in other words, to establish a Christian theocracy, coëxtensive with the Latin church (exclusive of the British Isles and Scandinavia). He has been called the "Moses of the middle age," who conducted the Germanic race through the desert of barbarism and gave it a now code of political, civil and ecclesiastical laws. He stands at the head of the new Western empire, as Constantine the Great had introduced the Eastern empire, and he is often called the new Constantine, but is as far superior to him as the Latin empire was to the Greek. He was emphatically a man of Providence.

Charlemagne, or Karl der Grosse, towers high above the crowned princes of his age, and is the greatest as well as the first of the long line of German emperors from the eighth to the nineteenth century. He is the only prince whose greatness has been inseparably blended with his French name.240  Since Julius Caesar history had seen no conqueror and statesman of such commanding genius and success; history after him produced only two military heroes that may be compared with him) Frederick II. of Prussia, and Napoleon Bonaparte (who took him and Caesar for his models), but they were far beneath him in religious character, and as hostile to the church as he was friendly to it. His lofty intellect shines all the more brightly from the general ignorance and barbarism of his age. He rose suddenly like a meteor in dark midnight. We do not know even the place and date of his birth, nor the history of his youth and education.241

His Reign.

His life is filled with no less than fifty-three military campaigns conducted by himself or his lieutenants, against the Saxons (18 campaigns), Lombards (5), Aquitanians, Thuringians, Bavarians) Avars or Huns, Danes, Slaves, Saracens, and Greeks. His incessant activity astonished his subjects and enemies. He seemed to be omnipresent in his dominions, which extended from the Baltic and the Elbe in the North to the Ebro in the South, from the British Channel to Rome and even to the Straits of Messina, embracing France, Germany, Hungary, the greater part of Italy and Spain. His ecclesiastical domain extended over twenty-two archbishoprics or metropolitan sees, Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Friuli (Aquileia), Grado, Cologne, Mayence, Salzburg, Treves, Sens, Besançon, Lyons, Rouen, Rheims, Arles, Vienna, Moutiers-en-Tarantaise, Ivredun, Bordeaux, Tours, Bourges, Narbonne.242  He had no settled residence, but spent much time on the Rhine, at Ingelheim, Mayence, Nymwegen, and especially at Aix-la-Chapelle on account of its baths. He encouraged trade, opened roads, and undertook to connect the Main and the Danube by canal. He gave his personal attention to things great and small. He introduced a settled order and unity of organization in his empire, at the expense of the ancient freedom and wild independence of the German tribes, although he continued to hold every year, in May, the general assembly of the freemen (Maifeld). He secured Europe against future heathen and Mohammedan invasion and devastation. He was universally admired or feared in his age. The Greek emperors sought his alliance; hence the Greek proverb, "Have the Franks for your friends, but not for your neighbors."  The Caliph Harounal-Raschid, the mightiest ruler in the East, sent from Bagdad an embassy to him with precious gifts. But he esteemed a good sword more than gold. He impressed the stamp of his genius and achievements upon the subsequent history of Germany and France.

Appearance and Habits of Charlemagne.

Charles had a commanding, and yet winning presence. His physique betrayed the greatness of his mind. He was tall, strongly built and well proportioned. His height was seven times the length of his foot. He had large and animated eyes, a long nose, a cheerful countenance and an abundance of fine hair. "His appearance," says Eginhard, "was always stately and dignified, whether he was standing or sitting; although his neck was thick and somewhat short, and his belly rather prominent; but the symmetry of the rest of his body concealed these defects. His gait was firm, his whole carriage manly, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his size led one to expect."243

He was naturally eloquent, and spoke with great clearness and force. He was simple in his attire, and temperate in eating and drinking; for, says Eginhard, "he abominated drunkenness in anybody, much more in himself and those of his household. He rarely gave entertainments, only on great feast days, and these to large numbers of people."  He was fond of muscular exercise, especially of hunting and swimming, and enjoyed robust health till the last four years of his life, when he was subject to frequent fevers. During his meals he had extracts from Augustine’s "City of God" (his favorite book), and stories of olden times, read to him. He frequently gave audience while dressing, without sacrifice of royal dignity. He was kind to the poor, and a liberal almsgiver.

His Zeal for Education.

His greatest merit is his zeal for education and religion. He was familiar with Latin from conversation rather than books, be understood a little Greek, and in his old age he began to learn the art of writing which his hand accustomed to the sword had neglected. He highly esteemed his native language, caused a German grammar to be compiled, and gave German names to the winds and to the months.244  He collected the ancient heroic songs of the German minstrels. He took measures to correct the Latin Version of the Scriptures, and was interested in theological questions. He delighted in cultivated society. He gathered around him divines, scholars, poets, historians, mostly Anglo-Saxons, among whom Alcuin was the chief. He founded the palace school and other schools in the convents, and visited them in person. The legend makes him the founder of the University of Paris, which is of a much later date. One of his laws enjoins general education upon all male children.

His Piety.

Charles was a firm believer in Christianity and a devout and regular worshipper in the church, "going morning and evening, even after nightfall, besides attending mass."  He was very liberal to the clergy. He gave them tithes throughout the empire appointed worthy bishops and abbots, endowed churches and built a splendid cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, in which he was buried.

His respect for the clergy culminated in his veneration for the bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter. "He cherished the church of St. Peter the apostle at Rome above all other holy and sacred places, and filled its treasury with a vast wealth of gold, silver, and precious stones. He sent great and countless gifts to the popes; and throughout his whole reign the wish he had nearest at heart was to re-establish the ancient authority of the city of Rome under his care and by his influence, and to defend and protect the church of St. Peter, and to beautify and enrich it out of his own store above all other churches."245

His Vices.

Notwithstanding his many and great virtues, Charles was by, no means so pure as the poetry and piety of the church represented him, and far from deserving canonization. He sacrificed thousands of human beings to his towering ambition and passion for conquest. He converted the Saxons by force of arms; he waged for thirty years a war of extermination against them; he wasted their territory with fire and sword; he crushed out their independence; he beheaded in cold blood four thousand five hundred prisoners in one day at Verden on the Aller (782), and when these proud and faithless savages finally surrendered, he removed 10000 of their families from their homes on the banks of the Elbe to different parts of Germany and Gaul to prevent a future revolt. It was indeed a war of religion for the annihilation of heathenism, but conducted on the Mohammedan principle: submission to the faith, or death. This is contrary to the spirit of Christianity which recognizes only the moral means of persuasion and conviction.246

The most serious defect in his private character was his incontinence and disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie. In this respect he was little better than an Oriental despot or a Mohammedan Caliph. He married several wives and divorced them at his pleasure. He dismissed his first wife (unknown by name) to marry a Lombard princess, and he repudiated her within a year. After the death of his fifth wife he contented himself with three or four concubines. He is said even to have encouraged his own daughters in dissolute habits rather than give them in marriage to princes who might become competitors for a share in the kingdom, but he had them carefully educated. It is not to the credit of the popes that they never rebuked him for this vice, while with weaker and less devoted monarchs they displayed such uncompromising zeal for the sanctity of marriage.247

His Death and Burial.

The emperor died after a short illness, and after receiving the holy communion, Jan. 28, 814, in the 71st year of his age, and the 47th of his reign, and was buried on the same day in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle "amid the greatest lamentations of the people."248  Very many omens, adds Eginhard (ch. 32), had portended his approaching end, as he had recognized himself. Eclipses both of the sun and the moon were very frequent during the last three years of his life, and a black spot was visible on the sun for seven days. The bridge over the Rhine at Mayence, which he had constructed in ten years, was consumed by fire; the palace at Aix-la-Chapelle frequently trembled; the basilica was struck by lightning, the gilded ball on the roof shattered by a thunderbolt and hurled upon the bishop’s house adjoining; and the word Princeps after Karolus inscribed on an arch was effaced a few months before his decease. "But Charles despised, or affected to despise, all these things as having no reference whatever to him."

The Charlemagne of Poetry.

The heroic and legendary poetry of the middle ages represents Charles as a giant of superhuman strength and beauty, of enormous appetite, with eyes shining like the morning star, terrible in war, merciful in peace, as a victorious hero, a wise lawgiver, an unerring judge, and a Christian saint. He suffered only one defeat, at Roncesvalles in the narrow passes of the Pyrenees, when, on his return from a successful invasion of Spain, his rearguard with the flower of the French chivalry, under the command of Roland, one of his paladins and nephews, was surprised and routed by the Basque Mountaineers (778).249

The name of "the Blessed Charles" is enrolled in the Roman Calendar for his services to the church and gifts to the pope. Heathen Rome deified Julius Caesar, Christian Rome canonized, or at least beatified Charlemagne. Suffrages for the repose of his soul were continued in the church of Aix-la-Chapelle until Paschal, a schismatical pope, at the desire of Frederic Barbarossa, enshrined his remains in that city and published a decree for his canonization (1166). The act was neither approved nor revoked by a regular pope, but acquiesced in, and such tacit canonization is considered equivalent to beatification.

Notes.

I. Judgments on the Personal Character of Charlemagne.

Eginhard (whose wife Emma figures in the legend as a daughter of Charlemagne) gives the following frank account of the private and domestic relations of his master and friend (chs. 18 and 19, in Migne, Tom. XCVII. 42 sqq.):

"Thus did Charles defend and increase as well as beautify his kingdom; and here let me express my admiration of his great qualities and his extraordinary constancy alike in good and evil fortune. I will now proceed to give the details of his private life. After his father’s death, while sharing the kingdom with his brother, he bore his unfriendliness and jealousy most patiently, and, to the wonder of all, could not be provoked to be angry with him. Later" [after repudiating his first wife, an obscure person] "he married a daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards, at the instance of his mother" [notwithstanding the protest of the pope]; "but he repudiated her at the end of a year for some reason unknown, and married Hildegard, a woman of high birth, of Swabian origin [d. 783]. He had three sons by her,—Charles, Pepin, and Lewis—and as many daughters,—Hruodrud, Bertha, and Gisela."  [Eginhard omits Adelaide and Hildegard.]  "He had three other daughters besides these—Theoderada, Hiltrud, and Ruodhaid—two by his third wife, Fastrada, a woman of East Frankish (that is to say of German) origin, and the third by a concubine, whose name for the moment escapes me. At the death of Fastrada, he married Liutgard, an Alemannic woman, who bore him no children. After her death he had three [according to another reading four] concubines—Gerswinda, a Saxon, by whom he had Adaltrud; Regina, who was the mother of Drogo and Hugh; and Ethelind, by whom he had Theodoric. Charles’s mother, Berthrada, passed her old age with him in great honor; he entertained the greatest veneration for her; and there was never any disagreement between them except when he divorced the daughter of King Desiderius, whom he had married to please her. She died soon after Hildegard, after living to see three grandsons and as many grand-daughters in her son’s house, and he buried her with great pomp in the Basilica of St. Denis, where his father lay. He had an only [surviving] sister, Gisela, who had consecrated herself to a religious life from girlhood, and he cherished as much affection for her as for his mother. She also died a few years before him in the nunnery where she had passed her life. The plan which he adopted for his children’s education was, first of all, to have both boys and girls instructed in the liberal arts, to which he also turned his own attention. As soon as their years admitted, in accordance with the custom of the Franks, the boys had to learn horsemanship, and to practise war and the chase, and the girls to familiarize themselves with cloth-making, and to handle distaff and spindle, that they might not grow indolent through idleness, and he fostered in them every virtuous sentiment. He only lost three of all his children before his death, two sons and one daughter .... When his sons and his daughters died, he was not so calm as might have been expected from his remarkably strong mind, for his affections were no less strong, and moved him to tears. Again when he was told of the death of Hadrian, the Roman Pontiff, whom he had loved most of all his friends, he wept as much as if he had lost a brother, or a very dear son. He was by nature most ready to contract friendships, and not only made friends easily, but clung to them persistently, and cherished most fondly those with whom he had formed such ties. He was so careful of the training of his sons and daughters that he never took his meals without them when he was at home, and never made a journey without them; his sons would ride at his side, and his daughters follow him, while a number of his body-guard, detailed for their protection, brought up the rear. Strange to say, although they were very handsome women, and he loved them very dearly, he was never willing to marry either of them to a man, of their own nation or to a foreigner, but kept them all at home until his, death, saying that he could not dispense with their society. Hence though otherwise happy, he experienced the malignity of fortune as far as they were concerned; yet he concealed his knowledge of the rumors current in regard to them, and of the suspicions entertained of their honor."

Gibbon is no admirer of Charlemagne, and gives an exaggerated view of his worst vice: "Of his moral virtues chastity is not the most conspicuous; but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion."  But this charge of incest, as Hallam and Milman observe, seems to have originated in a misinterpreted passage of Eginhard quoted above, and is utterly unfounded.

Henry Hallam (Middle Ages I. 26) judges a little more favorably: The great qualities of Charlemagne were, indeed, alloyed by the vices of a barbarian and a conqueror. Nine wives, whom he divorced with very little ceremony, attest the license of his private life, which his temperance and frugality can hardly be said to redeem. Unsparing of blood, though not constitutionally cruel, and wholly indifferent to the means which his ambition prescribed, he beheaded in one day four thousand Saxons—an act of atrocious butchery, after which his persecuting edicts, pronouncing the pain of death against those who refused baptism, or even who ate flesh during Lent, seem scarcely worthy of notice. This union of barbarous ferocity with elevated views of national improvement might suggest the parallel of Peter the Great. But the degrading habits and brute violence of the Muscovite place him at an immense distance from the restorer of the empire.

"A strong sympathy for intellectual excellence was the leading characteristic of Charlemagne, and this undoubtedly biassed him in the chief political error of his conduct—that of encouraging the power and pretensions of the hierarchy. But, perhaps, his greatest eulogy is written in the disgraces of succeeding times and the miseries of Europe. He stands alone, like a beacon upon a waste, or a rock in the broad ocean. His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses, which could not be drawn by any weaker hand. In the dark ages of European history the reign of Charlemagne affords a solitary resting-place between two long periods of turbulence and ignominy, deriving the advantages of contrast both from that of the preceding dynasty and of a posterity for whom he had formed an empire which they were unworthy and unequal to maintain."

G. P. R. James (History of Charlemagne, Lond., 1847, p. 499): "No man, perhaps, that ever lived, combined in so high a degree those qualities which rule men and direct events, with those which endear the possessor and attach his contemporaries. No man was ever more trusted and loved by his people, more respected and feared by other kings, more esteemed in his lifetime, or more regretted at his death.

Milman (Book V. ch. 1): "Karl, according to his German appellation, was the model of a Teutonic chieftain, in his gigantic stature, enormous strength, and indefatigable activity; temperate in diet, and superior to the barbarous vice of drunkenness. Hunting and war were his chief occupations; and his wars were carried on with all the ferocity of encountering savage tribes. But he was likewise a Roman Emperor, not only in his vast and organizing policy, he had that one vice of the old Roman civilization which the Merovingian kings had indulged, though not perhaps with more unbounded lawlessness. The religious emperor, in one respect, troubled not himself with the restraints of religion. The humble or grateful church beheld meekly, and almost without remonstrance, the irregularity of domestic life, which not merely indulged in free license, but treated the sacred rite of marriage as a covenant dissoluble at his pleasure. Once we have heard, and but once, the church raise its authoritative, its comminatory voice, and that not to forbid the King of the Franks from wedding a second wife while his first was alive, but from marrying a Lombard princess. One pious ecclesiastic alone in his dominion, he a relative, ventured to protest aloud.’)

Guizot (Histoire de la civilisation en France, leçon XX.): "Charlemagne marque la limite à laquelle est enfin consommée la dissolution de l’ancien monde romain et barbare, et où commence la formation du monde nouveau."

Vétault (Charlemagne, 455, 458): "Charlemagne fut, en effet, le père du monde moderne et de la societé européenne .... Si Ch. ne peut être légitemement honoré comme un saint, il a droit du moins à la première place, parmis tous les héros, dans l’admiration des hommes; car on ne trouverait pas un autre souverain qui ait autant aimé l’humanité et lui ait fait plus de bien. Il est le plus glorieux, parce que ... il a mérite d’ être proclamé le plus honnête des grands hommes."

Giesebrecht, the historian of the German emperors, gives a glowing description of Charlemagne (I. 140): "Many high-minded rulers arose in the ten centuries after Charles, but none had a higher aim. To be ranked with him, satisfied the boldest conquerors, the wisest princes of peace. French chivalry of later times glorified Charlemagne as the first cavalier; the German burgeoisie as the fatherly friend of the people and the most righteous judge; the Catholic Church raised him to the number of her saints; the poetry of all nations derived ever new inspiration and strength from his mighty person. Never perhaps has richer life proceeded from the activity of a mortal man (Nie vielleicht ist reicheres Leben von der Wirksamkeit eines sterblichen Menschen ausgegangen)."

We add the eloquent testimony of an American author, Parke Godwin (History of France, N. Y., 1860, vol. i. p. 410): "There is to me something indescribably grand in the figure of many of the barbaric chiefs—Alariks, Ataulfs, Theodoriks, and Euriks—who succeeded to the power of the Romans, and in their wild, heroic way, endeavored to raise a fabric of state on the ruins of the ancient empire. But none of those figures is so imposing and majestic as that of Karl, the son of Pippin, whose name, for the first and only time in history, the admiration of mankind has indissolubly blended with the title the Great. By the peculiarity of his position in respect to ancient and modern times—by the extraordinary length of his reign, by the number and importance of the transactions in which he was engaged, by the extent and splendor of his conquests, by his signal services to the Church, and by the grandeur of his personal qualities—he impressed himself so profoundly upon the character of his times, that he stands almost alone and apart in the annals of Europe. For nearly a thousand years before him, or since the days of Julius Caesar, no monarch had won so universal and brilliant a renown; and for nearly a thousand years after him, or until the days of Charles V. of Germany, no monarch attained any thing like an equal dominion. A link between the old and new, he revived the Empire of the West, with a degree of glory that it had only enjoyed in its prime; while, at the same time, the modern history of every Continental nation was made to begin with him. Germany claims him as one of her most illustrious sons; France, as her noblest king; Italy, as her chosen emperor; and the Church as her most prodigal benefactor and worthy saint. All the institutions of the Middle Ages—political, literary, scientific, and ecclesiastical—delighted to trace their traditionary origins to his hand: he was considered the source of the peerage, the inspirer of chivalry, the founder of universities, and the endower of the churches; and the genius of romance, kindling its fantastic torches at the flame of his deeds, lighted up a new and marvellous world about him, filled with wonderful adventures and heroic forms. Thus by a double immortality, the one the deliberate award of history, and the other the prodigal gift of fiction, he claims the study of mankind."

II. The Canonization of Charlemagne is perpetuated in the Officium in festo Sancti Caroli Magni imperatoris et confessoris, as celebrated in churches of Germany, France, and Spain. Baronius (Annal. ad ann. 814) says that the canonization was, not accepted by the Roman church, because Paschalis was no legitimate pope, but neither was it forbidden. Alban Butler, in his Lives of Saints, gives a eulogistic biography of the "Blessed Charlemagne," and covers his besetting sin with the following unhistorical assertion: "The incontinence, into which he fell in his youth, he expiated by sincere repentance, so that several churches in Germany and France honor him among the saints."

R

SIGNUM        K + S   CAROLI GLORIOSISSIMI REGIS.

L

The monogram of Charles with the additions of a scribe in a document signed by Charles at Kufstein, Aug. 31, 790. Copied from Stacke, l.c.

§ 57. Founding of the Holy Roman Empire, A.D. 800. Charlemagne and Leo III

G. Sugenheim: Geschichte der Entstehung und Ausbildung des Kirchenstaates. Leipz. 1854.

F. Scharpff: Die Entstehung des kirchenstaats. Freib. i. B. 1860.

TH. D. Mock: De Donatione a Carolo Mag. sedi apostolicae anno 774 oblata. Munich 1861.

James Bryce: The Holy Roman Empire. Lond. & N. York (Macmillan & Co.) 6th ed. 1876, 8th ed. 1880. German translation by Arthur Winckler.

Heinrich von Sybel: Die Schenkungen der Karolinger an die Päpste. In Sybel’s "Hist. Zeitschrift," Munchen & Leipz. 1880, pp. 46–85.

Comp. Baxmann: I. 307 sqq.; Vétault: Ch. III. pp. 113 sqq. (Charlemagne, patrice des Romains-Formation des états de l’église).

Charlemagne inherited the protectorate of the temporal dominions of the pope which had been wrested from the Lombards by Pepin, as the Lombards had wrested them from the Eastern emperor. When the Lombards again rebelled and the pope (Hadrian) again appealed to the transalpine monarch for help, Charles in the third year of his sole reign (774) came to the rescue, crossed the Alps with an army—a formidable undertaking in those days—subdued Italy with the exception of a small part of the South still belonging to the Greek empire, held a triumphal entry in Rome, and renewed and probably enlarged his father’s gift to the pope. The original documents have perished, and no contemporary authority vouches for the details; but the fact is undoubted. The gift rested only on the right of conquest. Henceforward he always styled himself "Rex Francorum et Longobardorum, et Patricius Romanorum."  His authority over the immediate territory of the Lombards in Northern Italy was as complete as that in France, but the precise nature of his authority over the pope’s dominion as Patrician of the Romans became after his death an apple of discord for centuries. Hadrian, to judge from his letters, considered himself as much an absolute sovereign in his dominion as Charles in his.

In 781 at Easter Charles revisited Rome with his son Pepin, who on that occasion was anointed by the pope "King for Italy" ("Rex in Italiam"). On a third visit., in 787, he spent a few days with his friend, Hadrian, in the interest of the patrimony of St. Peter. When Leo III. followed Hadrian (796) he immediately dispatched to Charles, as tokens of submission the keys and standards of the city, and the keys of the sepulchre of Peter.

A few years afterwards a terrible riot broke out in Rome in which the pope was assaulted and almost killed (799). He fled for help to Charles, then at Paderborn in Westphalia, and was promised assistance. The next year Charles again crossed the Alps and declared his intention to investigate the charges of certain unknown crimes against Leo, but no witness appeared to prove them. Leo publicly read a declaration of his own innocence, probably at the request of Charles, but with a protest that this declaration should not be taken for a precedent. Soon afterwards occurred the great event which marks an era in the ecclesiastical and political history of Europe.

The Coronation of Charles as Emperor.

While Charles was celebrating Christmas in St. Peter’s, in the year of our Lord 800, and kneeling in prayer before the altar, the pope, as under a sudden inspiration (but no doubt in consequence of a premeditated scheme), placed a golden crown upon his head, and the Roman people shouted three times: "To Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific emperor of the Romans, life and victory!"  Forthwith, after ancient custom, he was adored by the pope, and was styled henceforth (instead of Patrician) Emperor and Augustus.250

The new emperor presented to the pope a round table of silver with the picture of Constantinople, and many gifts of gold, and remained in Rome till Easter. The moment or manner of the coronation may have been unexpected by Charles (if we are to believe his word), but it is hardly conceivable that it was not the result of a previous arrangement between him and Leo. Alcuin seems to have aided the scheme. In his view the pope occupied the first, the emperor the second, the king the third degree in the scale of earthly dignities. He sent to Charles from Tours before his coronation a splendid Bible with the inscription: Ad splendorem imperialis potentiae.251

On his return to France Charles compelled all his subjects to take a new oath to him as "Caesar."  He assumed the full title "Serenssimus Augustus a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator, Romanum gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Longobardorum."

Significance of the Act.

The act of coronation was on the part of the pope a final declaration of independence and self-emancipation against the Greek emperor, as the legal ruler of Rome. Charles seems to have felt this, and hence he proposed to unite the two empires by marrying Irene, who had put her son to death and usurped the Greek crown (797). But the same rebellion had been virtually committed before by the pope in sending the keys of the city to Pepin, and by the French king in accepting this token of temporal sovereignty. Public opinion justified the act on the principle that might makes right. The Greek emperor, being unable to maintain his power in Italy and to defend his own subjects, first against the Lombards and then against the Franks, had virtually forfeited his claim.

For the West the event was the re-establishment, on a Teutonic basis, of the old Roman empire, which henceforth, together with the papacy, controlled the history of the middle ages. The pope and the emperor represented the highest dignity and power in church and state. But the pope was the greater and more enduring power of the two. He continued, down to the Reformation, the spiritual ruler of all Europe, and is to this day the ruler of an empire much vaster than that of ancient Rome. He is, in the striking language of Hobbes, "the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."

The Relation of the Pope and the Emperor.

What was the legal and actual relation between these two sovereignties, and the limits of jurisdiction of each?  This was the struggle of centuries. It involved many problems which could only be settled in the course of events. It was easy enough to distinguish the two in theory by, confining the pope to spiritual, and the emperor to temporal affairs. But on the theocratic theory of the union of church and state the two will and must come into frequent conflict.

The pope, by voluntarily conferring the imperial crown upon Charles, might claim that the empire was his gift, and that the right of crowning implied the right of discrowning. And this right was exercised by popes at a later period, who wielded the secular as well as the spiritual sword and absolved nations of their oath of allegiance. A mosaic picture in the triclinium of Leo III. in the Lateran (from the ninth century) represents St. Peter in glory, bestowing upon Leo kneeling at his right hand the priestly stole, and upon Charles kneeling at his left, the standard of Rome.252  This is the mediaeval hierarchical theory, which derives all power from God through Peter as the head of the church. Gregory VII. compared the church to the sun, the state to the moon who derives her light from the sun. The popes will always maintain the principle of the absolute supremacy of the church over the state, and support or oppose a government—whether it be an empire or a kingdom or a republic—according to the degree of its subserviency to the interests of the hierarchy. The papal Syllabus of 1864 expresses the genuine spirit of the system in irreconcilable conflict with the spirit of modern history and civilization. The Vatican Palace is the richest museum of classical and mediaeval curiosities, and the pope himself, the infallible oracle of two hundred millions of souls, is by far the greatest curiosity in it.

On the other hand Charles, although devotedly attached to the church and the pope, was too absolute a monarch to recognize a sovereignty within his sovereignty. He derived his idea of the theocracy from the Old Testament, and the relation between Moses and Aaron. He understood and exercised his imperial dignity pretty much in the same way as Constantine the Great and Theodosius the Great had done in the Byzantine empire, which was caesaro-papal in principle and practice, and so is its successor, the Russian empire. Charles believed that he was the divinely appointed protector of the church and the regulator of all her external and to some extent also the internal affairs. He called the synods of his empire without asking the pope. He presided at the Council of Frankfort (794), which legislated on matters of doctrine and discipline, condemned the Adoption heresy, agreeably to the pope, and rejected the image worship against the decision of the second oecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) and the declared views of several popes.253  He appointed bishops and abbots as well as counts, and if a vacancy in the papacy, had occurred during the remainder of his life, he would probably have filled it as well as the ordinary bishoprics. The first act after his coronation was to summon and condemn to death for treason those who had attempted to depose the pope. He thus acted as judge in the case. A Council at Mayence in 813 called him in an official document "the pious ruler of the holy church."254

Charles regarded the royal and imperial dignity as the hereditary possession of his house and people, and crowned his son, Louis the Pious, at Aix-la-Chapelle in 813, without consulting the pope or the Romans.255  He himself as a Teuton represented both France and Germany. But with the political separation of the two countries under his successors, the imperial dignity was attached to the German crown. Hence also the designation: the holy German Roman empire.

§ 58. Survey of the History of the Holy Roman Empire.

The readiness with which the Romans responded to the crowning act of Leo proves that the re-establishment of the Western empire was timely. The Holy Roman Empire seemed to be the necessary counterpart of the Holy Roman Church. For many, centuries the nations of Europe had been used to the concentration of all secular power in one head. It is true, several Roman emperors from Nero to Diocletian had persecuted Christianity by fire and sword, but Constantine and his successors had raised the church to dignity and power, and bestowed upon it all the privileges of a state religion. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople withdrew from the Western church the protection of the secular arm, and exposed Europe to the horrors of barbarian invasion and the chaos of civil wars. The popes were among the chief sufferers, their territory, being again and again overrun and laid waste by the savage Lombards. Hence the instinctive desire for the protecting arm of a new empire, and this could only be expected from the fresh and vigorous Teutonic power which had risen beyond the Alps and Christianized by Roman missionaries. Into this empire "all the life of the ancient world was gathered; out of it all the life of the modern world arose."256

The Empire and the Papacy, The Two Ruling Powers of the Middle Ages.

Henceforward the mediaeval history of Europe is chiefly a history of the papacy and the empire. They were regarded as the two arms of God in governing the church and the world. This twofold government was upon the whole the best training-school of the barbarian for Christian civilization and freedom. The papacy acted as a wholesome check upon military despotism, the empire as a check upon the abuses of priestcraft. Both secured order and unity against the disintegrating tendencies of society; both nourished the great idea of a commonwealth of nations, of a brotherhood of mankind, of a communion of saints. By its connection with Rome, the empire infused new blood into the old nationalities of the South, and transferred the remaining treasures of classical culture and the Roman law to the new nations of the North. The tendency of both was ultimately self-destructive; they fostered, while seeming to oppose, the spirit of ecclesiastical and national independence. The discipline of authority always produces freedom as its legitimate result. The law is a schoolmaster to lead men to the gospel.

Otho the Great.

In the opening chapter of the history of the empire we find it under the control of a master-mind and in friendly alliance with the papacy. Under the weak successors of Charlemagne it dwindled down to a merely nominal existence. But it revived again in Otho I. or the Great (936–973), of the Saxon dynasty. He was master of the pope and defender of the Roman church, and left everywhere the impress of an heroic character, inferior only to that of Charles. Under Henry III. (1039–1056), when the papacy sank lowest, the empire again proved a reforming power. He deposed three rival popes, and elected a worthy, successor. But as the papacy rose from its degradation, it overawed the empire.

Henry IV. and Gregory VII.

Under Henry IV. (1056–1106) and Gregory VII. (1073–1085) the two power; came into the sharpest conflict concerning the right of investiture, or the supreme control in the election of bishops and abbots. The papacy achieved a moral triumph over the empire at Canossa, when the mightiest prince kneeled as a penitent at the feet of the proud successor of Peter (1077); but Henry recovered his manhood and his power, set up an antipope, and Gregory died in exile at Salerno, yet without yielding an inch of his principles and pretensions. The conflict lasted fifty years, and ended with the Concordat of Worms (Sept. 23, 1122), which was a compromise, but with a limitation of the imperial prerogative: the pope secured the right to invest the bishops with the ring and crozier, but the new bishop before his consecration was to receive his temporal estates as a fief of the crown by the touch of the emperor’s sceptre.

The House of Hohenstaufen.

Under the Swabian emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen (1138–1254) the Roman empire reached its highest power in connection with the Crusades, in the palmy days of mediaeval chivalry, poetry and song. They excelled in personal greatness and renown the Saxon and the Salic emperors, but were too much concerned with Italian affairs for the good of Germany. Frederick Barbarossa (Redbeard), during his long reign (1152–1190), was a worthy successor of Charlemagne and Otho the Great. He subdued Northern Italy, quarrelled with pope Alexander III., enthroned two rival popes (Paschal III., and after his death Calixtus III.), but ultimately submitted to Alexander, fell at his feet at Venice, and was embraced by the pope with tears of joy and the kiss of peace (1177). He died at the head of an army of crusaders, while attempting to cross the Cydnus in Cilicia (June 10, 1190), and entered upon his long enchanted sleep in Kyffhäuser till his spirit reappeared to establish a new German empire in 1871.257

Under Innocent III. (1198–1216) the papacy reached the acme of its power, and maintained it till the time of Boniface VIII. (1294–1303). Emperor Frederick II. (1215–1250), Barbarossa’s grandson, was equal to the best of his predecessors in genius and energy, superior to them in culture, but more an Italian than a German, and a skeptic on the subject of religion. He reconquered Jerusalem in the fifth crusade, but cared little for the church, and was put under the ban by pope Gregory IX., who denounced him as a heretic and blasphemer, and compared him to the Apocalyptic beast from the abyss.258  The news of his sudden death was hailed by pope Innocent IV. with the exclamation: "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad."  His death was the collapse of the house of Hohenstaufen, and for a time also of the Roman empire. His son and successor Conrad IV. ruled but a few years, and his grandson Conradin, a bright and innocent youth of sixteen, was opposed by the pope, and beheaded at Naples in sight of his hereditary kingdom (October 29, 1268).

Italy was at once the paradise and the grave of German ambition.

The German Empire.

After "the great interregnum" when might was right,259 the Swiss count Rudolf of Hapsburg (a castle in the Swiss canton of Aargau) was elected emperor by the seven electors, and crowned at Aachen (1273–1291). He restored peace and order, never visited Italy, escaped the ruinous quarrels with the pope, built up a German kingdom, and laid the foundation of the conservative, orthodox, tenacious, and selfish house of Austria.

The empire continued to live for more than five centuries with varying fortunes, in nominal connection with Rome and at the head of the secular powers in Christendom, but without controlling influence over the fortunes of the papacy and the course of Europe. Occasionally it sent forth a gleam of its universal aim, as under Henry VII., who was crowned in Rome and hailed by Dante as the saviour of Italy, but died of fever (if not of poison administered by a Dominican monk in the sacramental cup) in Tuscany (1313); under Sigismund, the convener and protector of the oecumenical Council at Constance which deposed popes and burned Hus (1414), a much better man than either the emperor or the contemporary popes; under Charles V. (1519–1558), who wore the crown of Spain and Austria as well as of Germany, and on whose dominions the sun never set; and under Joseph II. (1765–1790), who renounced the intolerant policy of his ancestors, unmindful of the pope’s protest, and narrowly escaped greatness.260  But the emperors after Rudolf, with a few exceptions, were no more crowned in Rome, and withdrew from Italy.261  They were chosen at Frankfort by the Seven Electors, three spiritual, and four temporal: the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, the king of Bohemia, and the Electors of the Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg (afterwards enlarged to nine). The competition, however, was confined to a few powerful houses, until in the 15th century the Hapsburgs grasped the crown and held it tenaciously, with one exception, till the dissolution. The Hapsburg emperors always cared more for their hereditary dominions, which they steadily increased by fortunate marriages, than for Germany and the papacy.

The Decline and Fall of the Empire.

Many causes contributed to the gradual downfall of the German empire: the successful revolt of the Swiss mountaineers, the growth of the independent kingdoms of Spain, France, and England, the jealousies of the electors and the minor German princes, the discovery of a new Continent in the West, the invasion of the Turks from the East, the Reformation which divided the German people into two hostile religions, the fearful devastations of the thirty years’ war, the rise of the house of Hohenzollern and the kingdom of Prussia on German soil with the brilliant genius of Frederick II., and the wars growing out of the French Revolution. In its last stages it became a mere shadow, and justified the satirical description (traced to Voltaire), that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. The last of the emperors, Francis II., in August 6th, 1806, abdicated the elective crown of Germany and substituted for it the hereditary crown of Austria as Francis I. (d. 1835).

Thus the holy Roman empire died in peace at the venerable age of one thousand and six years.

The Empire of Napoleon.

Napoleon, hurled into sudden power by the whirlwind of revolution on the wings of his military genius, aimed at the double glory of a second Caesar and a second Charlemagne, and constructed, by arbitrary force, a huge military empire on the basis of France, with the pope as an obedient paid servant at Paris, but it collapsed on the battle fields of Leipzig and Waterloo, without the hope of a resurrection. "I have not succeeded Louis Quatorze," he said, "but Charlemagne."  He dismissed his wife and married a daughter of the last German and first Austrian emperor; he assumed the Lombard crown at Milan; he made his ill-fated son "King of Rome" in imitation of the German "King of the Romans."  He revoked "the donations which my predecessors, the French emperors have made," and appropriated them to France. "Your holiness," he wrote to Pius VII., who had once addressed him as his "very dear Son in Christ," "is sovereign of Rome, but I am the emperor thereof."  "You are right," he wrote to Cardinal Fesch, his uncle, "that I am Charlemagne, and I ought to be treated as the emperor of the papal court. I shall inform the pope of my intentions in a few words, and if he declines to acquiesce, I shall reduce him to the same condition in which he was before Charlemagne."262  It is reported that he proposed to the pope to reside in Paris with a large salary, and rule the conscience of Europe under the military, supremacy of the emperor, that the pope listened first to his persuasion with the single remark: "Comedian," and then to his threats with the reply: "Tragedian," and turned him his back. The papacy utilized the empire of the uncle and the nephew, as well as it could, and survived them. But the first Napoleon swept away the effete institutions of feudalism, and by his ruthless and scornful treatment of conquered nationalities provoked a powerful revival of these very nationalities which overthrew and buried his own artificial empire. The deepest humiliation of the German nation, and especially of Prussia, was the beginning of its uprising in the war of liberation.

The German Confederation.

The Congress of Vienna erected a temporary substitute for the old empire in the German "Bund" at Frankfort. It was no federal state, but a loose confederacy of 38 sovereign states, or princes rather, without any popular representation; it was a rope of sand, a sham unity, under the leadership of Austria; and Austria shrewdly and selfishly used the petty rivalries and jealousies of the smaller principalities as a means to check the progress of Prussia and to suppress all liberal movements.

The New German Empire.

In the meantime the popular desire for national union, awakened by the war of liberation and a great national literature, made steady progress, and found at last its embodiment in a new German empire with a liberal constitution and a national parliament. But this great result was brought about by great events and achievements under the leadership of Prussia against foreign aggression. The first step was the brilliant victory of Prussia over Austria at Königgrätz, which resulted in the formation of the North German Confederation (1866). The second step was the still more remarkable triumph of united Germany in a war of self-defence against the empire of Napoleon III., which ended in the proclamation of William I. as German emperor by the united wishes of the German princes and peoples in the palace of Louis XIV. at Versailles (1870).

Thus the long dream of the German nation was fulfilled through a series of the most brilliant military and diplomatic victories recorded in modern history, by the combined genius of Bismarck, Moltke, and William, and the valor, discipline, and intelligence of the German army.

Simultaneously with this German movement, Italy under the lead of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, achieved her national unity, with Rome as the political capital.

But the new German empire is not a continuation or revival of the old. It differs from it in several essential particulars. It is the result of popular national aspiration and of a war of self-defence, not of conquest; it is based on the predominance of Prussia and North Germany, not of Austria and South Germany; it is hereditary, not elective; it is controlled by modern ideas of liberty and progress, not by mediaeval notions and institutions; it is essentially Protestant, and not Roman Catholic; it is a German, not a Roman empire. Its rise is indirectly connected with the simultaneous downfall of the temporal power of the pope, who is the hereditary and unchangeable enemy both of German and Italian unity and freedom. The new empire is independent of the church, and has officially no connection with religion, resembling in this respect the government of the United States; but its Protestant animus appears not only in the hereditary religion of the first emperor, but also in the expulsion of the Jesuits (1872), and the "Culturkampf" against the politico-hierarchical aspirations of the ultramontane papacy. When Pius IX., in a letter to William I. (1873), claimed a sort of jurisdiction over all baptized Christians, the emperor courteously informed the infallible pope that he, with all Protestants, recognized no other mediator between God and man but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The new German empire will and ought to do full justice to the Catholic church, but "will never go to Canossa."

We pause at the close of a long and weighty chapter in history; we wonder what the next chapter will be.

§ 59. The Papacy and the Empire from the Death of Charlemagne to Nicolas I A.D. 814–858).  Note on the Myth of the Papess Joan.

The power of Charlemagne was personal. Under his weak successors the empire fell to pieces, and the creation of his genius was buried in chaotic confusion; but the idea survived. His son and successor, Louis the Pious, as the Germans and Italians called him, or Louis the Gentle (le débonnaire) in French history (814–840), inherited the piety, and some of the valor and legislative wisdom, but not the genius and energy, of his father. He was a devoted and superstitious servant of the clergy. He began with reforms, he dismissed his father’s concubines and daughters with their paramours from the court, turned the palace into a monastery, and promoted the Scandinavian mission of St. Ansgar. In the progress of his reign, especially after his second marriage to the ambitious Judith, he showed deplorable weakness and allowed his empire to decay, while he wasted his time between monkish exercises and field-sports in the forest of the Ardennes. He unwisely shared his rule with his three sons who soon rebelled against their father and engaged in fraternal wars.

After his death the treaty of Verdun was concluded in 843. By this treaty the empire was divided; Lothair received Italy with the title of emperor, France fell to Charles the Bald, Germany to Louis the German. Thus Charlemagne’s conception of a Western empire that should be commensurate with the Latin church was destroyed, or at least greatly contracted, and the three countries have henceforth a separate history. This was better for the development of nationality. The imperial dignity was afterwards united with the German crown, and continued under this modified form till 1806.

During this civil commotion the papacy had no distinguished representative, but upon the whole profited by it. Some of the popes evaded the imperial sanction of their election. The French clergy forced the gentle Louis to make at Soissons a most humiliating confession of guilt for all the slaughter, pillage, and sacrilege committed during the civil wars, and for bringing the empire to the brink of ruin. Thus the hierarchy assumed control even over the civil misconduct of the sovereign and imposed ecclesiastical penance for ft.

Note. The Myth of Johanna Papissa.

We must make a passing mention of the curious and mysterious myth of papess Johanna, who is said during this period between Leo IV. (847) and Benedict III. (855) to have worn the triple crown for two years and a half. She was a lady of Mayence (her name is variously called Agnes, Gilberta, Johanna, Jutta), studied in disguise philosophy in Athens (where philosophy had long before died out), taught theology in Rome, under the name of Johannes Anglicus, and was elevated to the papal dignity as John VIII., but died in consequence of the discovery of her sex by a sudden confinement in the open street during a solemn procession from the Vatican to the Lateran. According to another tradition she was tied to the hoof of a horse, dragged outside of the city and stoned to death by the people, and the inscription was put on her grave:

"Parce pater patrum papissae edere partum."

The strange story originated in Rome, and was first circulated by the Dominicans and Minorites, and acquired general credit in the 13th and 14th centuries. Pope John XX. (1276) called himself John XXI. In the beginning of the 15th century the bust of this woman-pope was placed alongside with the busts of the other popes at Sienna, and nobody took offence at it. Even Chancellor Gerson used the story as an argument that the church could err in matters of fact. At the Council in Constance it was used against the popes. Torrecremata, the upholder of papal despotism, draws from it the lesson that if the church can stand a woman-pope, she might stand the still greater evil of a heretical pope.

Nevertheless the story is undoubtedly a mere fiction, and is so regarded by nearly all modern historians, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic. It is not mentioned till four hundred years later by Stephen, a French Dominican (who died 1261).263  It was unknown to Photius and the bitter Greek polemics during the ninth and tenth centuries, who would not have missed the opportunity to make use of it as an argument against the papacy. There is no gap in the election of the popes between Leo and Benedict, who, according to contemporary historians, was canonically elected three days after the death of Leo IV. (which occurred July 17th, 855), or at all events in the same month, and consecrated two months after (Sept. 29th). See Jaffé, Regesta, p. 235. The myth was probably an allegory or satire on the monstrous government of women (Theodora and Marozia) over several licentious popes—Sergius III., John X., XI., and XII.—in the tenth century. So Heumann, Schröckh, Gibbon, Neander. The only serious objection to this solution is that the myth would be displaced from the ninth to the tenth century.

Other conjectures are these: The myth of the female pope was a satire on John VIII. for his softness in dealing with Photius (Baronius); the misunderstanding of a fact that some foreign bishop (pontifex) in Rome was really a woman in disguise (Leibnitz); the papess was a widow of Leo IV. (Kist); a misinterpretation of the stella stercoraria (Schmidt); a satirical allegory on the origin and circulation of the false decretals of Isidor (Henke and Gfrörer); an impersonation of the great whore of the Apocalypse, and the popular expression of the belief that the mystery of iniquity was working in the papal court (Baring-Gould).

David Blondel, first destroyed the credit of this mediaeval fiction, in his learned French dissertation on the subject (Amsterdam, 1649). spanheim defended it, and Mosheim credited it much to his discredit as an historian. See the elaborate discussion of Döllinger, Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters, 2d ed. Munchen, 1863 (Engl. transl. N. Y., 1872, pp. 4–58 and pp. 430–437). Comp. also Bianchi-Giovini, Esame critico degli atti e documenti della papessa Giovanna, Mil. 1845, and the long note of Gieseler, II. 30–32 (N. Y. ed.), which sums up the chief data in the case.

§ 60. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.

I. Sources.

The only older ed. of Pseudo-Isidor is that of Jacob Merlin in the first part of his Collection of General Councils, Paris, 1523, Col., 1530, etc., reprinted in Migne’s Patrol. Tom. CXXX., Paris, 1853.

Far superior is the modem ed. of P. Hinschius: Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni. Lips. 1863. The only critical ed, taken from the oldest and best MSS. Comp. his Commentatio de, Collectione Isidori Mercatoris in this ed. pp. xi-ccxxxviii.

II. Literature.

Dav. Blondel: Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus vapulantes. Genev. 1628.

F. Knust: De Fontibus et Consilio Pseudo-Isidorianae collectionis. Gött. 1832.

A. Möhler (R.C.): Fragmente aus und uber Isidor, in his "Vermischte Schriften" (ed. by Döllinger, Regensb. 1839), I. 285 sqq.

H. Wasserschleben: Beiträge zur Gesch. der falschen Decret.  Breslau, 1844. Comp. also his art. in Herzog.

C. Jos. Hefele (R.C.): Die pseudo-Isidor. Frage, in the "Tubinger Quartalschrift, "1847.

Gfrörer: Alter, Ursprung, Zweck der Decretalen des falschen Isodorus. Freib. 1848.

Jul. Weizsäcker: Hinkmar und Pseudo-Isidor, in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift fur histor. Theol.," for 1858, and Die pseudo-isid. Frage, in Sybel’s "Hist. Zeitschrift, "1860.

C. von Noorden: Ebo, Hinkmar und Pseudo-Isidor, in Sybel’s "Hist. Zeitschrift," 1862.

Döllinger in Janus, 1869. It appeared in several editions and languages.

Ferd. Walter (R.C.): Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts aller christl. Confessionen. Bonn (1822), 13th ed. 1861. The same transl. into French, Italian, and Spanish.

J. W. Bickell: Geschichte des Kirchenrechts. Giessen, 1843, 1849.

G. Phillips (R.C.): Kirchenrecht. Regensburg (1845), 3rd ed. 1857 sqq. 6 vols. (till 1864). His Lehrbuch, 1859, P. II. 1862.

Jo. Fr. von Schulte (R.C., since 1870 Old Cath.): Das Katholische Kirchenrecht. Giessen, P. I. 1860. Lehrbuch, 1873. Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des Canonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die Gegenwart. Stuttgart, 1875 sqq.3 vols.

Aem. L. Richter: Lehrbuch des kath. und evang. Kirchenrechts. Leipz., sixth ed. by Dove, 1867 (on Pseudo-Isidor, pp. 102–133).

Henry C. Lea: Studies in Church History. Philad. 1869 (p. 43–102 on the False Decretals).

Friedr. Maassen (R.C.): Geschichte der Quellen und d. Literatur des canonischen Rechts im Abendlande. 1st vol., Gratz, 1870.

Comp. also for the whole history the great work of F. C. von Savigny: Geschichte des Röm. Rechts im Mittelalter. Heidelb. 2nd ed. 1834–’51, 7 vols.

See also the Lit. in vol. II. § 67.

During the chaotic confusion under the Carolingians, in the middle of the ninth century, a mysterious book made its appearance, which gave legal expression to the popular opinion of the papacy, raised and strengthened its power more than any other agency, and forms to a large extent the basis of the canon law of the church of Rome. This is a collection of ecclesiastical laws under the false name of bishop Isidor of Seville (died 636), hence called the "Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals."264  He was the reputed (though not the real) author of an earlier collection, based upon that of the Roman abbot, Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and used as the law-book of the church in Spain, hence called the "Hispana."  In these earlier collections the letters and decrees (Epistolae Decretales) of the popes from the time of Siricius (384) occupy a prominent place.265  A decretal in the canonical sense is an authoritative rescript of a pope in reply to some question, while a decree is a papal ordinance enacted with the advice of the Cardinals, without a previous inquiry. A canon is a law ordained by a general or provincial synod. A dogma is an ecclesiastical law relating to doctrine. The earliest decretals had moral rather than legislative force. But as the questions and appeals to the pope multiplied, the papal answers grew in authority. Fictitious documents, canons, and decretals were nothing new; but the Pseudo-Isidorian collection is the most colossal and effective fraud known in the history of ecclesiastical literature.

1. The contents of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains fifty Apostolical Canons from the collection of Dionysius, sixty spurious decretals of the Roman bishops from Clement (d. 101) to Melchiades (d. 314). The second part comprehends the forged document of the donation of Constantine, some tracts concerning the Council of Nicaea, and the canons of the Greek, African, Gallic, and Spanish Councils down to 683, from the Spanish collection. The third part, after a preface copied from the Hispana, gives in chronological order the decretals of the popes from Sylvester (d. 335) to Gregory II. (d. 731), among which thirty-five are forged, including all before Damasus; but the genuine letters also, which are taken from the Isidorian collection, contain interpolations. In many editions the Capitula Angilramni are appended.

All these documents make up a manual of orthodox doctrine and clerical discipline. They give dogmatic decisions against heresies, especially Arianism (which lingered long in Spain), and directions on worship, the sacraments, feasts and fasts, sacred rites and costumes, the consecration of churches, church property, and especially on church polity. The work breathes throughout the spirit of churchly and priestly piety and reverence.

2. The sacerdotal system. Pseudo-Isidor advocates the papal theocracy. The clergy is a divinely instituted, consecrated, and inviolable caste, mediating between God and the people, as in the Jewish dispensation. The priests are the "familiares Dei," the "spirituales," the laity the "carnales."  He who sins against them sins against God. They are subject to no earthly tribunal, and responsible to God alone, who appointed them judges of men. The privileges of the priesthood culminate in the episcopal dignity, and the episcopal dignity culminates in the papacy. The cathedra Petri is the fountain of all power. Without the consent of the pope no bishop can be deposed, no council be convened. He is the ultimate umpire of all controversy, and from him there is no appeal. He is often called "episcopus universalis" notwithstanding the protest of Gregory I.

3. The aim of Pseudo-Isidor is, by such a collection of authoritative decisions to protect the clergy against the secular power and against moral degeneracy. The power of the metropolitans is rather lowered in order to secure to the pope the definitive sentence in the trials of bishops. But it is manifestly wrong if older writers have put the chief aim of the work in the elevation of the papacy. The papacy appears rather as a means for the protection of episcopacy in its conflict with the civil government. It is the supreme guarantee of the rights of the bishops.

4. The genuineness of Pseudo-Isidor was not doubted during the middle ages (Hincmar only denied the legal application to the French church), but is now universally given up by Roman Catholic as well as Protestant historians.

The forgery is apparent. It is inconceivable that Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in Rome, should have been ignorant of such a large number of papal letters. The collection moreover is full of anachronisms: Roman bishops of the second and third centuries write in the Frankish Latin of the ninth century on doctrinal topics in the spirit of the post-Nicene orthodoxy and on mediaeval relations in church and state; they quote the Bible after the; version of Jerome as amended under Charlemagne; Victor addresses Theophilus of Alexandria, who lived two hundred years later, on the paschal controversies of the second century.266

The Donation of Constantine which is incorporated in this collection, is an older forgery, and exists also in several Greek texts. It affirms that Constantine, when he was baptized by pope Sylvester, A.D. 324 (he was not baptized till 337, by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia), presented him with the Lateran palace and all imperial insignia, together with the Roman and Italian territory.267  The object of this forgery was to antedate by five centuries the temporal power of the papacy, which rests on the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne.268  The only foundation in fact is the donation of the Lateran palace, which was originally the palace of the Lateran family, then of the emperors, and last of the popes. The wife of Constantine, Fausta, resided in it, and on the transfer of the seat of empire to Constantinople, he left it to Sylvester, as the chief of the Roman clergy and nobility. Hence it contains to this day the pontifical throne with the inscription: "Haec est papalis sedes et pontificalis."  There the pope takes possession of the see of Rome. But the whole history of Constantine and his successors shows conclusively that they had no idea of transferring any part of their temporal sovereignty to the Roman pontiff.

5. The authorship must be assigned to some ecclesiastic of the Frankish church, probably of the diocese of Rheims, between 847 and 865 (or 857), but scholars differ as to the writer.269  Pseudo-Isidor literally quotes passages from a Paris Council of 829, and agrees in part with the collection of Benedictus Levita, completed in 847; on the other hand he is first quoted by a French Synod at Chiersy in 857, and then by Hincmar of Rheims repeatedly since 859. All the manuscripts are of French origin. The complaints of ecclesiastical disorders, depositions of bishops without trial, frivolous divorces, frequent sacrilege, suit best the period of the civil wars among the grandsons of Charlemagne. In Rome the Decretals were first known and quoted in 865 by pope Nicolaus I.270

From the same period and of the same spirit are several collections of Capitula or Capitularia, i.e., of royal ecclesiastical ordinances which under the Carolingians took the place of synodical decisions. Among these we mention the collection of Ansegis, abbot of Fontenelles (827), of Benedictus Levita of Mayence (847), and the Capitula Angilramni, falsely ascribed to bishop Angilramnus of Metz (d. 701).

6. Significance of Pseudo-Isidor. It consists not so much in the novelty of the views and claims of the mediaeval priesthood, but in tracing them back from the ninth to the third and second centuries and stamping them with the authority of antiquity. Some of the leading principles had indeed been already asserted in the letters of Leo I. and other documents of the fifth century, yea the papal animus may be traced to Victor in the second century and to the Judaizing opponents of St. Paul. But in this collection the entire hierarchical and sacerdotal system, which was the growth of several centuries, appears as something complete and unchangeable from the very beginning. We have a parallel phenomenon in the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons which gather into one whole the ecclesiastical decisions of the first three centuries, and trace them directly to the apostles or their disciple, Clement of Rome.

Pseudo-Isidorus was no doubt a sincere believer in the hierarchical system; nevertheless his Collection is to a large extent a conscious high church fraud, and must as such be traced to the father of lies. It belongs to the Satanic element in the history of the Christian hierarchy, which has as little escaped temptation and contamination as the Jewish hierarchy.

§ 61. Nicolas I., April, 858-Nov. 13, 867.

I. The Epistles of Nicolas I. in Mansi’s Conc. XV., and in Migne’s Patrol. Tom. CXIX. Comp. also Jaffé, Regesta, pp. 237–254.

Hincmari (Rhemensis Archiepiscopi) Oper. Omnia. In Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 125 and 126. An older ed. by J. Sirmond, Par. 1645, 2 vols. fol.

Hugo Laemmer: Nikolaus I. und die Byzantinische Staatskirche seiner Zeit. Berlin, 1857.

A. Thiel: De Nicolao Papa. Comment. duae Hist. canonicae. Brunzberg, 1859.

Van Noorden: Hincmar, Erzbischof von Rheims. Bonn, 1863.

Hergenröther (R.C. Prof at Wurzburg, now Cardinal): Photius. Regensburg, 1867–1869, 3 vols.

Comp. Baxmann II. 1–29; Milman, Book V. ch.4 (vol. III. 24–46); Hefele, Conciliengesch. vol. IV., (2nd ed.), 228 sqq; and other works quoted § 48.

By a remarkable coincidence the publication of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals synchronized with the appearance of a pope who had the ability and opportunity to carry the principles of the Decretals into practical effect, and the good fortune to do it in the service of justice and virtue. So long as the usurpation of divine power was used against oppression and vice, it commanded veneration and obedience, and did more good than harm. It was only the pope who in those days could claim a superior authority in dealing with haughty and oppressive metropolitans, synods, kings and emperors.

Nicolas I. is the greatest pope, we may say the only great pope between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. He stands between them as one of three peaks of a lofty mountain, separated from the lower peak by a plane, and from the higher peak by a deep valley. He appeared to his younger contemporaries as a "new Elijah," who ruled the world like a sovereign of divine appointment, terrible to the evil-doer whether prince or priest, yet mild to the good and obedient. He was elected less by the influence of the clergy than of the emperor Louis II., and consecrated in his presence; he lived with him on terms of friendship, and was treated in turn with great deference to his papal dignity. He anticipated Hildebrand in the lofty conception of his office; and his energy and boldness of character corresponded with it. The pope was in his view the divinely appointed superintendent of the whole church for the maintenance of order, discipline and righteousness, and the punishment of wrong and vice, with the aid of the bishops as his executive organs. He assumed an imperious tone towards the Carolingians. He regarded the imperial crown a grant of the vicar of St. Peter for the protection of Christians against infidels. The empire descended to Louis by hereditary right, but was confirmed by the authority of the apostolic see.

The pontificate of Nicolas was marked by three important events: the controversy with Photius, the prohibition of the divorce of King Lothair, and the humiliation of archbishop Hincmar. In the first he failed, in the second and third he achieved a moral triumph.

Nicolas and Photius.

Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, of imperial descent and of austere ascetic virtue, was unjustly deposed and banished by the emperor Michael III. for rebuking the immorality of Caesar Bardas, but he refused to resign. Photius, the greatest scholar of his age, at home in almost every branch of knowledge and letters, was elected his successor, though merely a layman, and in six days passed through the inferior orders to the patriarchal dignity (858). The two parties engaged in an unrelenting warfare, and excommunicated each other. Photius was the first to appeal to the Roman pontiff. Nicolas, instead of acting as mediator, assumed the air of judge, and sent delegates to Constantinople to investigate the case on the spot. They were imprisoned and bribed to declare for Photius; but the pope annulled their action at a synod in Rome, and decided in favor of Ignatius (863). Photius in turn pronounced sentence of condemnation on the pope and, in his Encyclical Letter, gave classical expression to the objections of the Greek church against the Latin (867). The controversy resulted in the permanent alienation of the two churches. It was the last instance of an official interference of a pope in the affairs of the Eastern church.

Nicolas and Lothair.

Lothair II., king of Lorraine and the second son of the emperor Lothair, maltreated and at last divorced his wife, Teutberga of Burgundy, and married his mistress, Walrada, who appeared publicly in all the array and splendor of a queen. Nicolas, being appealed to by the injured lady, defended fearlessly the sacredness of matrimony; he annulled the decisions of synods, and deposed the archbishops of Cologne and Treves for conniving at the immorality of their sovereign. He threatened the king with immediate excommunication if he did not dismiss the concubine and receive the lawful wife. He even refused to yield when Teutberga, probably under compulsion, asked him to grant a divorce. Lothair, after many equivocations, yielded at last (865). It is unnecessary to enter into the complications and disgusting details of this controversy.

Nicolas and Hincmar.

In his controversy with Hincmar, Nicolas was a protector of the bishops and lower clergy against the tyranny of metropolitans. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, was the most powerful prelate of France, and a representative of the principle of Gallican independence. He was energetic, but ambitious and overbearing. He came three times in conflict with the pope on the question of jurisdiction. The principal case is that of Rothad, bishop of Soissons, one of his oldest suffragans, whom he deposed without sufficient reason and put into prison, with the aid of Charles the Bald (862). The pope sent his legate "from the side," Arsenius, to Charles, and demanded the restoration of the bishop. He argued from the canons of the Council of Sardica that the case must be decided by Rome even if Rothad had not appealed to him. He enlisted the sympathies of the bishops by reminding them that they might suffer similar injustice from their metropolitan, and that their only refuge was in the common protection of the Roman see. Charles desired to cancel the process, but Nicolas would not listen to it. He called Rothad to Rome, reinstated him solemnly in the church of St. Maria Maggiore, and sent him back in triumph to France (864)271 Hincmar murmured, but yielded to superior power.272

In this controversy Nicolas made use of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, a copy of which came into his hands probably through Rotbad. He thus gave them the papal sanction; yet he must have known that a large portion of this forged collection, though claiming to proceed from early popes, did not exist in the papal archives. Hincmar protested against the validity of the new decretals and their application to France, and the protest lingered for centuries in the Gallican liberties till they were finally buried in the papal absolutism of the Vatican Council of 1870.

§ 62. Hadrian II. and John VIII A.D. 867 to 882.

Mansi: Conc. Tom. XV.–XVII.

Migne: Patrol. Lat. Tom. CXXII. 1245 sqq. (Hadrian II.); Tom. CXXVI. 647 sqq. (John VIII.); also Tom. CXXIX., pp. 823 sqq., and 1054 sqq., which contain the writings of Auxilius and Vulgarius, concerning pope Formosus.

Baronius: Annal. ad ann. 867–882.

Jaffé: Regesta, pp. 254–292.

Milman: Lat. Christianity, Book V., chs.5 and 6.

Gfrörer: Allg. Kirchengesch., Bd. III. Abth. 2, pp. 962 sqq.

Baxmann: Politik der Päpste, II. 29–57.

For nearly two hundred years, from Nicolas to Hildebrand (867–1049), the papal chair was filled, with very few exceptions, by ordinary and even unworthy occupants.

Hadrian II. (867–872) and John VIII. (872–882) defended the papal power with the same zeal as Nicolas, but with less ability, dignity, and success, and not so much in the interests of morality as for self-aggrandizement. They interfered with the political quarrels of the Carolingians, and claimed the right of disposing royal and imperial crowns.

Hadrian was already seventy-five years of age, and well known for great benevolence, when he ascended the throne (he was born in 792). He inherited from Nicolas the controversies with Photius, Lothair, and Hincmar of Rheims, but was repeatedly rebuffed. He suffered also a personal humiliation on account of a curious domestic tragedy. He had been previously married, and his wife (Stephania) was still living at the time of his elevation. Eleutherius, a son of bishop Arsenius (the legate of Nicolas), carried away the pope’s daughter (an old maid of forty years, who was engaged to another man), fled to the emperor Louis, and, when threatened with punishment, murdered both the pope’s wife and daughter. He was condemned to death.

This affair might have warned the popes to have nothing to do with women; but it was succeeded by worse scenes.

John VIII. was an energetic, shrewd, passionate, and intriguing prelate, meddled with all the affairs of Christendom from Bulgaria to France and Spain, crowned two insignificant Carolingian emperors (Charles the Bald, 875, and Charles the Fat, 881), dealt very freely in anathemas, was much disturbed by the invasion of the Saracens, and is said to have been killed by a relative who coveted the papal crown and treasure. The best thing he did was the declaration, in the Bulgarian quarrel with the patriarch of Constantinople, that the Holy Spirit had created other languages for worship besides Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, although he qualified it afterwards by saying that Greek and Latin were the only proper organs for the celebration of the mass, while barbarian tongues such as the Slavonic, may be good enough for preaching.

His violent end was the beginning of a long interregnum of violence. The close of the ninth century gave a foretaste of the greater troubles of the tenth. After the downfall of the Carolingian dynasty the popes were more and more involved in the political quarrels and distractions of the Italian princes. The dukes Berengar of Friuli (888–924), and Guido of Spoleto (889–894), two remote descendants of Charlemagne through a female branch, contended for the kingdom of Italy and the imperial crown, and filled alternately the papal chair according to their success in the conflict. The Italians liked to have two masters, that they might play off one against the other. Guido was crowned emperor by Stephen VI. (V.) in February, 891, and was followed by his son, Lambert, in 894, who was also crowned. Formosus, bishop of Portus, whom John VIII. had pursued with bitter animosity, was after varying fortunes raised to the papal chair, and gave the imperial crown first to Lambert, but afterwards to the victorious Arnulf of Carinthia, in 896. He roused the revenge of Lambert, and died of violence. His second successor and bitter enemy, Stephen VII. (VI.), a creature of the party of Lambert, caused his corpse to be exhumed, clad in pontifical robes, arraigned in a mock trial, condemned and deposed, stripped of the ornaments, fearfully mutilated, decapitated, and thrown into the Tiber. But the party of Berengar again obtained the ascendency; Stephen VII. was thrown into prison and strangled (897). This was regarded as a just punishment for his conduct towards Formosus. John IX. restored the character of Formosus. He died in 900, and was followed by Benedict IV., of the Lambertine or Spoletan party, and reigned for the now unusual term of three years and a half.273

§ 63. The Degradation of the Papacy in the Tenth Century.

Sources.

Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Tom. 131–142. These vols. contain the documents and works from Pope John IX.–Gregory VI.

Liudprandus (Episcopus Cremonensis, d. 972): Antapodoseos, seu Rerum per Europam gestarum libri VI. From A.D. 887–950. Reprinted in Pertz: Monum. Germ. III. 269–272; and in Migne: Patrol. Tom. CXXXVI. 769 sqq. By the same: Historia Ottonis, sive de rebus gestis Ottonis Magni. From A.D. 960–964. In Pertz: Monum. III. 340–346; in Migne CXXXVI. 897 sqq. Comp. Koepke: De Liudprandi vita et scriptis, Berol., 1842; Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, and Giesebrecht, l.c. I. p. 779. Liudprand or Liutprand (Liuzo or Liuso), one of the chief authorities on the history of the 10th century, was a Lombard by birth, well educated, travelled in the East and in Germany, accompanied Otho I. to Rome, 962, was appointed by him bishop of Cremona, served as his interpreter at the Roman Council of 964, and was again in Rome 965. He was also sent on an embassy to Constantinople. He describes the wretched condition of the papacy as an eye-witness. His Antapodosis or Retribution (written between 958 and 962) is specially directed against king Berengar and queen Willa, whom he hated. His work on Otho treats of the contemporary events in which he was one of the actors. He was fond of scandal, but is considered reliable in most of his facts.

Flodoardus (Canonicus Remensis, d. 966): Historia Remensis; Annales; Opuscula metrica, in Migne, Tom. CXXXV.

Atto (Episcopus Vercellensis, d. 960): De presauris ecclesiasticis; Epistolae, and other books, in Migne, Tom. CXXXV.

Jaffé: Regesta, pp. 307–325.

Other sources relating more to the political history of the tenth century are indicated by Giesebrecht, I. 817, 820, 836.

Literature.

Baronius: Annales ad ann. 900–963.

V. E. Löscher.: Historie des röm. Hurenregiments. Leipzig, 1707. (2nd ed. with another title, 1725.)

Constantin Höfler (R.C.): Die deutschen Päpste. Regensburg, 1839, 2 vols.

E. Dummler: Auxilius und Vulgarius. Quellen und Forschungenzur Geschichte des Papstthums im Anfang des zehnten Jahrhunderts. Leipz. 1866. The writings of Auxilius and Vulgarius are in Migne’s Patrol., Tom. CXXIX.

C. Jos. Von Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg): Die Päpste und Kaiser in den trubsten Zeiten der Kirche, in his "Beiträge zur Kirchengesch," etc., vol. I. 27–278. Also his Conciliengeschichte, IV. 571–660 (2d ed.).

Milman: Lat. Chr.  bk. 5, chs. 11–14. Giesebrecht: Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit., I. 343 sqq. Gfrörer: III. 3, 1133–1275. Baxmann: II. 58–125. Gregorovius, Vol. III. Von Reumont, Vol. II.

The tenth century is the darkest of the dark ages, a century of ignorance and superstition, anarchy and crime in church and state. The first half of the eleventh century was little better. The dissolution of the world seemed to be nigh at hand. Serious men looked forward to the terrible day of judgment at the close of the first millennium of the Christian era, neglected their secular business, and inscribed donations of estates and other gifts to the church with the significant phrase "appropinquante mundi termino."

The demoralization began in the state, reached the church, and culminated in the papacy. The reorganization of society took the same course. No church or sect in Christendom ever sank so low as the Latin church in the tenth century. The papacy, like the old Roman god Janus, has two faces, one Christian, one antichristian, one friendly and benevolent, one fiendish and malignant. In this period, it shows almost exclusively the antichristian face. It is an unpleasant task for the historian to expose these shocking corruptions; but it is necessary for the understanding of the reformation that followed. The truth must be told, with its wholesome lessons of humiliation and encouragement. No system of doctrine or government can save the church from decline and decay. Human nature is capable of satanic wickedness. Antichrist steals into the very temple of God, and often wears the priestly robes. But God is never absent from history, and His overruling wisdom always at last brings good out of evil. Even in this midnight darkness the stars were shining in the firmament; and even then, as in the days of Elijah the prophet, there were thousands who had not bowed their knees to Baal. Some convents resisted the tide of corruption, and were quiet retreats for nobles and kings disgusted with the vanities of the world, and anxious to prepare themselves for the day of account. Nilus, Romuald, and the monks of Cluny raised their mighty voice against wickedness in high places. Synods likewise deplored the immorality of the clergy and laity, and made efforts to restore discipline. The chaotic confusion of the tenth century, like the migration of nations in the fifth, proved to be only the throe and anguish of a new birth. It was followed first by the restoration of the empire under Otho the Great, and then by the reform of the papacy under Hildebrand.

The Political Disorder.

In the semi-barbarous state of society during the middle ages, a strong central power was needed in church and state to keep order. Charlemagne was in advance of his times, and his structure rested on no solid foundation. His successors had neither his talents nor his energy, and sank almost as low as the Merovingians in incapacity and debauchery. The popular contempt in which they were held was expressed in such epithets as "the Bald," "the Fat," "the Stammerer," "the Simple," "the Lazy," "the Child."  Under their misrule the foundations of law and discipline gave way. Europe was threatened with a new flood of heathen barbarism. The Norman pirates from Denmark and Norway infested the coasts of Germany and France, burned cities and villages, carried off captives, followed in their light boats which they could carry on their shoulders, the course of the great rivers into the interior; they sacked Hamburg, Cologne, Treves, Rouen, and stabled their horses in Charlemagne’s cathedral at Aix; they invaded England, and were the terror of all Europe until they accepted Christianity, settled down in Normandy, and infused fresh blood into the French and English people. In the South, the Saracens, crossing from Africa, took possession of Sicily and Southern Italy; they are described by pope John VIII. as Hagarenes, as children of fornication and wrath, as an army of locusts, turning the land into a wilderness. From the East, the pagan Hungarians or Magyars invaded Germany and Italy like hordes of wild beasts, but they were defeated at last by Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, and after their conversion to Christianity under their saintly monarch Stephen (997–1068), they became a wall of defence against the progress of the Turks.

Within the limits of nominal Christendom, the kings and nobles quarreled among themselves, oppressed the people, and distributed bishoprics and abbeys among their favorites, or pocketed the income. The metropolitans oppressed the bishops, the bishops the priests, and the priests the laity. Bands of robbers roamed over the country and defied punishment. Might was right. Charles the Fat was deposed by his vassals, and died in misery, begging his bread (888). His successor, Arnulf of Carinthia, the last of the Carolingian line of emperors (though of illegitimate birth), wielded a victorious sword over the Normans (891) and the new kingdom of Moravia (894), but fell into trouble, died of Italian poison, and left the crown of Germany to his only legitimate son, Louis the Child (899–911), who was ruled by Hatto, archbishop of Mayence. This prelate figures in the popular legend of the "Mouse-Tower" (on an island in the Rhine, opposite Bingen), where a swarm of mice picked his bones and "gnawed the flesh from every limb," because he had shut up and starved to death a number of hungry beggars. But documentary history shows him in a more favorable light. Louis died before attaining to manhood, and with him the German line of the Carolingians (911). The last shadow of an emperor in Italy, Berengar, who had been crowned in St. Peter’s, died by the dagger of an assassin (924). The empire remained vacant for nearly forty years, until Otho, a descendant of the Saxon duke Widukind, whom Charlemagne had conquered, raised it to a new life.

In France, the Carolingian dynasty lingered nearly a century longer, till it found an inglorious end in a fifth Louis called the Lazy ("le Fainéant"), and Count Hugh Capet became the founder of the Capetian dynasty, based on the principle of hereditary succession (987). He and his son Robert received the crown of France not from the pope, but from the archbishop of Rheims.

Italy was invaded by Hungarians and Saracens, and distracted by war between rival kings and petty princes struggling for aggrandizement. The bishops and nobles were alike corrupt, and the whole country was a moral wilderness.274

The Demoralization of the Papacy.

The political disorder of Europe affected the church and paralyzed its efforts for good. The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder. The rich and powerful marquises of Tuscany and the Counts of Tusculum acquired control over the city of Rome and the papacy for more than half a century. And what is worse (incredibile, attamen verum), three bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theodora, filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards. These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure. They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness. They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem. And they gloried in their shame. Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetaerocracy.275

Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, and far less excusable.

Sergius III., the lover of Marozia (904–911), opened the shameful succession. Under the protection of a force of Tuscan soldiers he appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher who had just deposed Leo V., took possession of the papal throne, and soiled it with every vice; but he deserves credit for restoring the venerable church of the Lateran, which had been destroyed by an earthquake in 896 and robbed of invaluable treasures.276

After the short reign of two other popes, John X., archbishop of Ravenna, was elected, contrary to all canons, in obedience to the will of Theodora, for the more convenient gratification of her passion (914–928).277  He was a man of military ability and daring, placed himself at the head of an army—the first warrior among the popes—and defeated the Saracens. He then announced the victory in the tone of a general. He then engaged in a fierce contest for power with Marozia and her lover or husband, the Marquis Alberic I. Unwilling to yield any of her secular power over Rome, Marozia seized the Castle of St. Angelo, had John cast into prison and smothered to death, and raised three of her creatures, Leo VI., Stephen VII. (VIII.), and at last John XI, her own (bastard) son of only twenty-one years, successively to the papal chair (928–936).278

After the murder of Alberic I. (about 926), Marozia, who called herself Senatrix and Patricia, offered her hand and as much of her love as she could spare from her numerous paramours, to Guido, Markgrave of Tuscany, who eagerly accepted the prize; and after his death she married king Hugo of Italy, the step-brother of her late husband (932); he hoped to gain the imperial crown, but he was soon expelled from Rome by a rebellion excited by her own son Alberic II., who took offence at his overbearing conduct for slapping him in the face.279  She now disappears from the stage, and probably died in a convent. Her son, the second Alberic, was raised by the Romans to the dignity of Consul, and ruled Rome and the papacy from the Castle of St. Angelo for twenty-two years with great ability as a despot under the forms of a republic (932–954). After the death of his brother, John XI. (936), he appointed four insignificant pontiffs, and restricted them to the performance of their religious duties.

John XII.

On the death of Alberic in 954, his son Octavian, the grandson of Marozia, inherited the secular government of Rome, and was elected pope when only eighteen years of age. He thus united a double supremacy. He retained his name Octavian as civil ruler, but assumed, as pope, the name John XII., either by compulsion of the clergy and people, or because he wished to secure more license by keeping the two dignities distinct. This is the first example of such a change of name, and it was followed by his successors. He completely sunk his spiritual in his secular character, appeared in military dress, and neglected the duties of the papal office, though he surrendered none of its claims.

John XII. disgraced the tiara for eight years (955–963). He was one of the most immoral and wicked popes, ranking with Benedict IX., John XXIII., and Alexander VI. He was charged by a Roman Synod, no one contradicting, with almost every crime of which depraved human nature is capable, and deposed as a monster of iniquity.280

§ 64. The Interference of Otho the Great.

Comp., besides the works quoted in § 63, Floss: Die Papstwahl unter den Ottonen. Freiburg, 1858, and Köpke and Dummler: Otto der Grosse. Leipzig, 1876.

From this state of infamy the papacy was rescued for a brief time by the interference of Otho I., justly called the Great (936973). He had subdued the Danes, the Slavonians, and the Hungarians, converted the barbarians on the frontier, established order and restored the Carolingian empire. He was called by the pope himself and several Italian princes for protection against the oppression of king Berengar II. (or the Younger, who was crowned in 950, and died in exile, 966). He crossed the Alps, and was anointed Roman emperor by John XII. in 962. He promised to return to the holy see all the lost territories granted by Pepin and Charlemagne, and received in turn from the pope and the Romans the oath of allegiance on the sepulchre of St. Peter.

Hereafter the imperial crown of Rome was always held by the German nation, but the legal assumption of the titles of Emperor and Augustus depended on the act of coronation by the pope.

After the departure of Otho the perfidious pope, unwilling to obey a superior master, rebelled and entered into conspiracy with his enemies. The emperor returned to Rome, convened a Synod of Italian and German bishops, which indignantly deposed John XII. in his absence, on the ground of most notorious crimes, yet without a regular trial (963).281

The emperor and the Synod elected a respectable layman, the chief secretary of the Roman see, in his place. He was hurriedly promoted through the orders of reader, subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop, and consecrated as Leo VIII., but not recognized by the strictly hierarchical party, because he surrendered the freedom of the papacy to the empire. The Romans swore that they would never elect a pope again without the emperor’s consent. Leo confirmed this in a formal document.282

The anti-imperial party readmitted John XII., who took cruel revenge of his enemies, but was suddenly struck down in his sins by a violent death. Then they elected an anti-pope, Benedict V., but he himself begged pardon for his usurpation when the emperor reappeared, was divested of the papal robes, degraded to the order of deacon, and banished to Germany. Leo VIII. died in April, 965, after a short pontificate of sixteen months.

The bishop of Narni was unanimously elected his successor as John XIII. (965–972) by the Roman clergy and people, after first consulting the will of the emperor. He crowned Otho II. emperor of the Romans (973–983). He was expelled by the Romans, but reinstated by Otho, who punished the rebellious city with terrible severity.

Thus the papacy was morally saved, but at the expense of its independence or rather it had exchanged its domestic bondage for a foreign bondage. Otho restored to it its former dominions which it had lost during the Italian disturbances, but he regarded the pope and the Romans as his subjects, who owed him the same temporal allegiance as the Germans and Lombards.

It would have been far better for Germany and Italy if they had never meddled with each other. The Italians, especially the Romans, feared the German army, but hated the Germans as Northern semi-barbarians, and shook off their yoke as soon as they had a chance.283  The Germans suspected the Italians for dishonesty and trickery, were always in danger of fever and poison, and lost armies and millions of treasure without any return of profit or even military glory.284  The two nations were always jealous of each other, and have only recently become friends, on the basis of mutual independence and non-interference.

Protest Against Papal Corruption.

The shocking immoralities of the popes called forth strong protests, though they did not shake the faith in the institution itself. A Gallican Synod deposed archbishop Arnulf of Rheims as a traitor to king Hugo Capet, without waiting for an answer from the pope, and without caring for the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (991). The leading spirit of the Synod, Arnulf, bishop of Orleans, made the following bold declaration against the prostitution of the papal office: "Looking at the actual state of the papacy, what do we behold?  John [XII.] called Octavian, wallowing in the sty of filthy concupiscence, conspiring against the sovereign whom he had himself recently crowned; then Leo [VIII.] the neophyte, chased from the city by this Octavian; and that monster himself, after the commission of many murders and cruelties, dying by the hand of an assassin. Next we see the deacon Benedict, though freely elected by the Romans, carried away captive into the wilds of Germany by the new Caesar [Otho I.] and his pope Leo. Then a second Caesar [Otho II.], greater in arts and arms than the first [?], succeeds; and in his absence Boniface, a very monster of iniquity, reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter. True, he is expelled and condemned; but only to return again, and redden his hands with the blood of the holy bishop John [XIV.]. Are there, indeed, any bold enough to maintain that the priests of the Lord over all the world are to take their law from monsters of guilt like these-men branded with ignominy, illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine?  If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all priests!  Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, one so abject as not to be worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all?  What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold?  Must he not be the ’Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God?’  Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.285

"But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world. If it be true, as we are informed by, common report, that there is in Rome scarcely a man acquainted with letters,—without which, as it is written, one may scarcely be a doorkeeper in the house of God,—with what face may he who hath himself learnt nothing set himself up for a teacher of others?  In the simple priest ignorance is bad enough; but in the high priest of Rome,—in him to whom it is given to pass in review the faith, the lives, the morals, the discipline, of the whole body of the priesthood, yea, of the universal church, ignorance is in nowise to be tolerated .... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom?  Yea, not even he, the prince of the apostles, declined the rebuke of Paul, though his inferior in place, and, saith the great pope Gregory [I.], ’if a bishop be in fault, I know not any one such who is not subject to the holy see; but if faultless, let every one understand that he is the equal of the Roman pontiff himself, and as well qualified as he to give judgment in any matter.’ "286

The secretary of this council and the probable framer of this remarkable speech was Gerbert, who became archbishop of Rheims, afterwards of Ravenna, and at last pope under the name of Sylvester II. But pope John XV. (or his master Crescentius) declared the proceedings of this council null and void, and interdicted Gerbert. His successor, Gregory V., threatened the kingdom of France with a general interdict unless Arnulf was restored. Gerbert, forsaken by king Robert I., who needed the favor of the pope, was glad to escape from his uncomfortable seat and to accept an invitation of Otho III. to become his teacher (995). Arnulf was reinstated in Rheims.

§ 65. The Second Degradation of the Papacy from Otho I to Henry III. A.D. 973–1046.

I. The sources for the papacy in the second half of the tenth and in the eleventh century are collected in Muratori’s Annali d’ Italia (Milano 1744–49); in Migne’s Patrol., Tom. CXXXVII.-CL.; Leibnitz, Annales Imp. Occid. (down to A.D. 1005; Han., 1843, 3 vols.); Pertz, . Mon. Germ. (Auctores), Tom. V. (Leges), Tom. II.; Ranke, Jahrbucher des deutschen Reiches unter dem Sächs. Hause (Berlin 1837–40, 3 vols.; the second vol. by Giesebrecht and Wilmans contains the reigns of Otho II. and Otho III.). On the sources see Giesebrecht, Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit, II. 568 sqq.

II. Stenzel: Geschichte Deutschlands unter den Fränkischen Kaisern. Leipz., 1827, 1828, 2 vols.

C. F. Hock (R.C.): Gerbert oder Papst Sylvester und sein Jahrhundert. Wien, 1837.

C. Höfler (R.C.): Die deutschen Päpste. Regensb., 1839, 2 vols.

H. J. Floss (R.C.): Die Papstwahl unter den Ottonen. Freib., 1858.

C. Will: Die Anfänge der Restauration der Kirche im elften Jahrh. Marburg, 1859–’62, 2 vols.

R. Köpke und E. Dümmler: Otto der Grosse. Leipz. 1876.

Comp. Baronius (Annal.); Jaffe (Reg. 325–364); Hefele (Conciliengeschichte IV. 632 sqq., 2d ed.); Gfrörer (vol. III., P. III., 1358–1590, and vol. IV., 1846); Gregorovius (vols. III. and IV.); v. Reumont (II. 292 sqq.); Baxmann (II. 125–180); and Giesebrecht (I. 569–762, and II. 1–431).

The reform of the papacy was merely temporary. It was followed by a second period of disgrace, which lasted till the middle of the eleventh century, but was interrupted by a few respectable popes and signs of a coming reformation.

After the death of Otho, during the short and unfortunate reign of his son, Otho II. (973–983), a faction of the Roman nobility under the lead of Crescentius or Cencius (probably a son of pope John X. and Theodora) gained the upper hand.287  He rebelled against the imperial pope, Benedict VI., who was murdered (974), and elected an Italian anti-pope, Boniface VII., who had soon to flee to Constantinople, but returned after some years, murdered another imperial pope, John XIV. (983), and maintained himself on the blood-stained throne by a lavish distribution of stolen money till he died, probably by violence (985).288

During the minority of Otho III., the imperialists, headed by Alberic, Count of Tusculum, and the popular Roman party under the lead of the younger Crescentius (perhaps a grandson of the infamous Theodora), contended from their fortified places for the mastery of Rome and the papacy. Bloodshed was a daily amusement. Issuing from their forts, the two parties gave battle to each other whenever they met on the street. They set up rival popes, and mutilated their corpses with insane fury. The contending parties were related. Marozia’s son, Alberic, had probably inherited Tusculum (which is about fifteen miles from Rome).289  After the death of Alberic of Tusculum, Crescentius acquired the government under the title of Consul, and indulged the Romans with a short dream of republican freedom in opposition to the hated rule of the foreign barbarians. He controlled pope John XV.

Gregory V.

Otho III., on his way to Rome, elected his worthy chaplain and cousin Bruno, who was consecrated as Gregory V. (996) and then anointed Otho III. emperor. He is the first pope of German blood.290  Crescentius was treated with great leniency, but after the departure of the German army he stirred up a rebellion, expelled the German pope and elevated Philagathus, a Calabrian Greek, under the name of John XVI. to the chair of St. Peter. Gregory V. convened a large synod at Pavia, which unanimously pronounced the anathema against Crescentius and his pope. The emperor hastened to Rome with an army, stormed the castle of St. Angelo (the mole of Hadrian), and beheaded Crescentius as a traitor, while John XVI. by order of Gregory V. was, according to the savage practice of that age, fearfully mutilated, and paraded through the streets on an ass, with his face turned to the tail and with a wine-bladder on his head.

Sylvester II.

After the sudden and probably violent death of Gregory V. (999), the emperor elected, with the assent of the clergy and the people, his friend and preceptor, Gerbert, archbishop of Rheims, and then of Ravenna, to the papal throne. Gerbert was the first French pope, a man of rare learning and ability, and moral integrity. He abandoned the liberal views he had expressed at the Council at Rheims,291 and the legend says that he sold his soul to the devil for the papal tiara. He assumed the significant name of Sylvester II., intending to aid the youthful emperor (whose mother was a Greek princess) in the realization of his utopian dream to establish a Graeco-Latin empire with old Rome for its capital, and to rule from it the Christian world, as Constantine the Great had done during the pontificate of Sylvester I. But Otho died in his twenty-second year, of Italian fever or of poison (1002).292

Sylvester II. followed his imperial pupil a year after (1003). His learning, acquired in part from the Arabs in Spain, appeared a marvel to his ignorant age, and suggested a connection with magic. He sent to St. Stephen of Hungary the royal crown, and, in a pastoral letter to Europe where Jerusalem is represented as crying for help, he gave the first impulse to the crusades (1000), ninety years before they actually began.293

In the expectation of the approaching judgment, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Palestine to greet the advent of the Saviour. But the first millennium passed, and Christendom awoke with a sigh of relief on the first day of the year 1001.

Benedict VIII., and Emperor Henry II.

Upon the whole the Saxon emperors were of great service to the papacy: they emancipated it from the tyranny of domestic political factions, they restored it to wealth, and substituted worthy occupants for monstrous criminals.

During the next reign the confusion broke out once more. The anti-imperial party regained the ascendency, and John Crescentius, the son of the beheaded consul, ruled under the title of Senator and Patricius. But the Counts of Tusculum held the balance of power pretty evenly, and gradually superseded the house of Crescentius. They elected Benedict VIII. (1012–1024), a member of their family; while Crescentius and his friends appointed an anti-pope (Gregory).

Benedict proved a very energetic pope in the defence of Italy against the Saracens. He forms the connecting link between the Ottonian and the Hildebrandian popes. He crowned Henry II, (1014), as the faithful patron and protector simply, not as the liege-lord, of the pope.

This last emperor of the Saxon house was very devout, ascetic, and liberal in endowing bishoprics. He favored clerical celibacy. He aimed earnestly at a moral reformation of the church. He declared at a diet, that he had made Christ his heir, and would devote all he possessed to God and his church. He filled the vacant bishoprics and abbeys with learned and worthy men; and hence his right of appointment was not resisted. He died after a reign of twenty-two years, and was buried at his favorite place, Bamberg in Bavaria, where he had founded a bishopric (1007). He and his chaste wife, Kunigunde, were canonized by the grateful church (1146).294

The Tusculan Popes. Benedict IX.

With Benedict VIII. the papal dignity became hereditary in the Tusculan family. He had bought it by open bribery. He was followed by his brother John XIX., a layman, who bought it likewise, and passed in one day through all the clerical degrees.

After his death in 1033, his nephew Theophylact, a boy of only ten or twelve years of age,295 ascended the papal throne under the name of Benedict IX. (1033–1045). His election was a mere money bargain between the Tusculan family and the venal clergy and populace of Rome. Once more the Lord took from Jerusalem and Judah the stay and the staff, and gave children to be their princes, and babes to rule over them.296

This boy-pope fully equaled and even surpassed John XII. in precocious wickedness. He combined the childishness of Caligala and the viciousness of Heliogabalus.297  He grew worse as he advanced in years. He ruled like a captain of banditti, committed murders and adulteries in open day-light, robbed pilgrims on the graves of martyrs, and turned Rome into a den of thieves. These crimes went unpunished; for who could judge a pope?  And his brother, Gregory, was Patrician of the city. At one time, it is reported, he had the crazy notion of marrying his cousin and enthroning a woman in the chair of St. Peter; but the father of the intended bride refused unless he abdicated the papacy.298  Desiderius, who himself afterwards became pope (Victor III.), shrinks from describing the detestable life of this Benedict, who, he says, followed in the footsteps of Simon Magus rather than of Simon Peter, and proceeded in a career of rapine, murder, and every species of felony, until even the people of Rome became weary of his iniquities, and expelled him from the city. Sylvester III. was elected antipope (Jan., 1044), but Benedict soon resumed the papacy with all his vices (April 10, 1044), then sold it for one or two thousand pounds silver299 to an archpresbyter John Gratian of the same house (May, 1045), after he had emptied the treasury of every article of value, and, rueing the bargain, he claimed the dignity again (Nov., 1047), till he was finally expelled from Rome (July, 1048).

Gregory VI.

John Gratian assumed the name Gregory, VI. He was revered as a saint for his chastity which, on account of its extreme rarity in Rome, was called an angelic virtue. He bought the papacy with the sincere desire to reform it, and made the monk Hildebrand, the future reformer, his chaplain. He acted on the principle that the end sanctifies the means.

Thus there were for a while three rival popes. Benedict IX. (before his final expulsion) held the Lateran, Gregory VI. Maria Maggiore, Sylvester III. St. Peter’s and the Vatican.300

Their feuds reflected the general condition of Italy. The streets of Rome swarmed with hired assassins, the whole country with robbers, the virtue of pilgrims was openly assailed, even churches and the tombs of the apostles were desecrated by bloodshed.

Again the German emperor had to interfere for the restoration of order.

§ 66. Henry III and the Synod of Sutri. Deposition of three rival Popes. A.D. 1046.

Bonizo (or Bonitho, bishop of Sutri, afterwards of Piacenza, and friend of Gregory VII., d. 1089): Liber ad amicum, s. de persecutione Ecclesiae (in Oefelii Scriptores rerum Boicarum II., 794, and better in Jaffe’s Monumenta Gregoriana, 1865). Contains in lib. V. a history, of the popes from Benedict IX. to Gregory VII., with many errors.

Rodulfus Glaber (or Glaber Radulfus, monk of Cluny, about 1046): Historia sui temporis (in Migne, Tom. 142).

Desiderius (Abbot of M. Cassino, afterwards pope Victor III., d. 1080): De Miraculis a S. Benedicto aliisque monachis Cassiniensibus gestis Dialog., in "Bibl. Patr."  Lugd. XVIII. 853.

Annales Romani in Pertz, Mon. Germ. VII.

Annales Corbeienses, in Pertz, Mon. Germ. V.; and in Jaffé, Monumenta Corbeiensia, Berlin, 1864.

Ernst Steindorff: Jahrbucher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III. Leipzig, 1874.

Hefele: Conciliengesch. IV. 706 sqq. (2d ed.).

See Lit. in § 64, especially Höfler and Will.

Emperor Henry III., of the house of Franconia, was appealed to by the advocates of reform, and felt deeply the sad state of the church. He was only twenty-two years old, but ripe in intellect, full of energy and zeal, and aimed at a reformation of the church under the control of the empire, as Hildebrand afterwards labored for a reformation of the church under the control of the papacy.

On his way to Rome for the coronation he held (Dec. 20, 1046) a synod at Sutri, a small town about twenty-five miles north of Rome, and a few days afterwards another synod at Rome which completed the work.301  Gregory VI. presided at first. The claims of the three rival pontiffs were considered. Benedict IX. and Sylvester III. were soon disposed of, the first having twice resigned, the second being a mere intruder. Gregory VI. deserved likewise deposition for the sin of simony in buying the papacy; but as he had convoked the synod by order of the emperor and was otherwise a worthy person, he was allowed to depose himself or to abdicate. He did it in these words: "I, Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, do hereby adjudge myself to be removed from the pontificate of the Holy Roman Church, because of the enormous error which by simoniacal impurity has crept into and vitiated my election."  Then he asked the assembled fathers: "Is it your pleasure that so it shall be?" to which they unanimously replied: "Your pleasure is our pleasure; therefore so let it be."  As soon as the humble pope had pronounced his own sentence, he descended from the throne, divested himself of his pontifical robes, and implored pardon on his knees for the usurpation of the highest dignity in Christendom. He acted as pope de facto, and pronounced himself no pope de jure. He was used by the synod for deposing his two rivals, and then for deposing himself. In that way the synod saved the principle that the pope was above every human tribunal, and responsible to God alone. This view of the case of Gregory, rests on the reports of Bonitho and Desiderius. According to other reports in the Annales Corbeienses and Peter Damiani, who was present at Sutri, Gregory was deposed directly by the Synod.302  At all events, the deposition was real and final, and the cause was the sin of simony.

But if simony vitiated an election, there were probably few legitimate popes in the tenth century when everything was venal and corrupt in Rome. Moreover bribery seems a small sin compared with the enormous crimes of several of these Judases. Hildebrand recognized Gregory VI. by adopting his pontifical name in honor of his memory, and yet he made relentless war the sin of simony. He followed the self-deposed pope as upon chaplain across the Alps into exile, and buried him in peace on the banks of the Rhine.

Henry III. adjourned the Synod of Sutri to St. Peter’s in Rome for the election of a new pope (Dec. 23 and 24, 1046). The synod was to elect, but no Roman clergyman could be found free of the pollution of "simony and fornication."  Then the king, vested by the synod with the green mantle of the patriciate and the plenary authority of the electors, descended from his throne, and seated Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, a man of spotless character, on the vacant chair of St. Peter amid the loud hosannas of the assembly.303  The new pope assumed the name of Clement II., and crowned Henry emperor on the festival of Christmas, on which Charlemagne had been crowned. The name was a reminder of the conflict of the first Clement of Rome with Simon Magus. But he outlived his election only nine months, and his body was transferred to his beloved Bamberg. The wretched Benedict IX. again took possession of the Lateran (till July 16, 1048). He died afterwards in Grotto Ferrata, according to one report as a penitent saint, according to another as a hardened sinner whose ghost frightened the living. A third German pontiff, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, called Damasus II., was elected, but died twenty-three days after his consecration (Aug. 10, 1048), of the Roman fever, if not of poison.

The emperor, at the request of the Romans, appointed at Worms in December, 1048, Bruno, bishop of Toul, to the papal chair. He was a man of noble birth, fine appearance, considerable learning, unblemished character, and sincere piety, in full sympathy with the spirit of reform which emanated from Cluny. He accepted the appointment in presence of the Roman deputies, subject to the consent of the clergy and people of Rome.304  He invited the monk Hildebrand to accompany him in his pilgrimage to Rome. Hildebrand refused at first, because Bruno had not been canonically elected, but by the secular and royal power; but he was persuaded to follow him.

Bruno reached Rome in the month of February, 1049, in the dress of a pilgrim, barefoot, weeping, regardless of the hymns of welcome. His election was unanimously confirmed by the Roman clergy and people, and he was solemnly consecrated Feb. 12, as Leo IX. He found the papal treasury empty, and his own means were soon exhausted. He chose Hildebrand as his subdeacon, financier, and confidential adviser, who hereafter was the soul of the papal reform, till he himself ascended the papal throne in 1073.

We stand here at the close of the deepest degradation and on the threshold of the highest elevation of the papacy. The synod of Sutri and the reign of Leo IX. mark the beginning of a disciplinary reform. Simony or the sale and purchase of ecclesiastical dignities, and Nicolaitism or the carnal sins of the clergy, including marriage, concubinage and unnatural vices, were the crying evils of the church in the eyes of the most serious men, especially the disciples of Cluny and of St. Romuald. A reformation therefore from the hierarchical standpoint of the middle ages was essentially a suppression of these two abuses. And as the corruption had reached its climax in the papal chair, the reformation had to begin at the head before it could reach the members. It was the work chiefly of Hildebrand or Gregory VII., with whom the next period opens.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONFLICT OF THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCHES AND THEIR SEPARATION.

§ 67. Sources and Literature.

The chief sources on the beginning of the controversy between Photius and Nicolas are in Mansi: Conc. Tom. XV. and XVI.; in Harduin: Conc. Tom. V. Hergenröther: Monumenta Graeca ad Photium ejusque historiam pertinentia. Regensb. 1869.

I. On the Greek Side:

Photius:  jEgkuvklio" ejpistolhv   etc . and especially his Lovgo" peri; th'" tou' aJgivou Pneuvmato" mustagwgiva", etc. See Photii Opera omnia, ed. Migne. Paris, 1860–’61, 4 vols. (Patr. Gr. Tom. CI.-CIV.)  The Encycl. Letter is in Tom. II. 722–742; and his treatise on the mustagwgiva tou' aJgivou Pneuvmato" in Tom. II. 279–391.

Later champions:

Caerularius, Nicetas Pectoratus, Theophylact (12th century). Euthymius Zigabenus, Phurnus, Eustratius, and many others. In recent times Prokopovitch (1772), Zoernicav (1774, 2 vols.).

J. G. Pitzipios: L’Egl. orientale, sa séparation et sa réunion avec celle de Rome. Rome, 1855. L’Orient. Les réformes de lempire byzantin. Paris, 1858.

A. N. Mouravieff (Russ.): Question religieuse d’Orient et d’Occident. Moscow, 1856.

Guettère: La papauté schismatique. Par. 1863.

A. Picheler: Gesch. d. kirchlichen Trennung zwischen dem Orient und Occident von den ersten Anfängen his zur jüngsten Gegenwart. München, 1865, 2 Bde. The author was a Roman Catholic (Privatdocent der Theol. in München) when he wrote this work, but blamed the West fully as much as the East for the schism, and afterwards joined the Greek church in Russia.

Andronicos Dimitracopulos: !Istoriva tou' scivmato".  Lips. 1867. Also his Bivblioqhvkh ekklhs. Lips. 1866.

Theodorus Lascaris Junior: De Processione Spiritus S. Oratio Apologetica. London and Jena, 1875.

II. On the Latin (Roman Catholic) Side:

Ratramnus (Contra Graecorum Opposita); Anselm of Canterbury (De Processione Spiritus S. 1098); Petrus Chrysolanus (1112); Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), etc.

Leo Allatius (Allacci, a Greek of Chios, but converted to the Roman Church and guardian of the Vatican library, d. 1669): De ecclesiae occident. atque orient. perpetua consensione. Cologne, 1648, 4to.; new ed. 1665 and 1694. Also his Graecia orthodoxa, 1659, 2 vols., new ed. by Lämmer, Freib. i. B. 1864 sq.; and his special tracts on Purgatory (Rom. 1655), and on the Procession of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1658).

Maimburg: Hist. du schisme des Grecs. Paris, 1677, 4to.

Steph. de Altimura (Mich. le Quien): Panoplia contra schisma Graecorum. Par. 1718, 4to.

Michael le Quien (d. 1733): Oriens Christianus. Par. 1740, 3 vols. fol.

Abbé Jager: Histoire de Photius d’après les monuments originaux. 2nd ed. Par. 1845.

Luigi Tosti: Storia dell’ origine dello scisma greco. Firenze 1856. 2 vols.

H. Lämmer: Papst. Nikolaus I. und die byzantinische Staatskirche seiner Zeit. Berlin, 1857.

Ad. d’Avril: Documents relatifs aux églises de l’Orient, considerée dans leur rapports avec le saint-siége de Rome. Paris, 1862.

Karl Werner: Geschichte der Apol. und polemischen Literatur. Schaffhausen, 1864, vol. III. 3 ff.

J. Hergenröther: (Prof. of Church History in Würzburg, now Cardinal in Rome): Photius, Patriarch von Constantinopel. Sein Leben, seine Schriften und das griechische Schisma. Regensburg, 1867–1869, 3 vols.

C. Jos. von Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg): Conciliengeschichte. Freiburg i. B., vols. IV., V., VI., VII. (revised ed. 1879 sqq.)

III. Protestant writers:

J. G. Walch (Luth.): Historia controversiae Graecorum Latinorumque de Processione Sp. S. Jena, 1751.

Gibbon: Decline and Fall, etc., Ch. LX. He views the schism as one of the causes which precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East by alienating its most useful allies and strengthening its most dangerous enemies.

John Mason Neale (Anglican): A History of the Holy Eastern Church. Lond. 1850. Introd. vol. II. 1093–1169.

Edmund S. Foulkes (Anglic.): An Historical Account of the Addition of the word Filioque to the Creed of the West. Lond. 1867.

W. Gass: Symbolik der griechischen Kirche. Berlin, 1872.

H. B. Swete (Anglic.): Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,  Cambr. 1873; and History of the Doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Apost. Age to the Death of Charlemagne. Cambr. 1876.

IV. Old Catholic Writers (irenical):

Joseph Langen: Die Trinitarische Lehrdifferenz zwischen der abendländischen und der morgenländischen Kirche. Bonn, 1876.

The Proceedings of the second Old Catholic Union-Conference in Bonn, 1875, ed. in German by Heinrich Reusch; English ed. with introduction by Canon Liddon (Lond. 1876); Amer. ed. transl. by Dr. Samuel Buel, with introduction by Dr. R. Nevin (N. Y. 1876). The union-theses of Bonn are given in Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol. II., 545–550.

§ 68. The Consensus and Dissensus between the Greek and Latin Churches.

No two churches in the world are at this day so much alike, and yet so averse to each other as the Oriental or Greek, and the Occidental or Roman. They hold, as an inheritance from the patristic age, essentially the same body of doctrine, the same canons of discipline, the same form of worship; and yet their antagonism seems irreconcilable. The very affinity breeds jealousy and friction. They are equally exclusive: the Oriental Church claims exclusive orthodoxy, and looks upon Western Christendom as heretical; the Roman Church claims exclusive catholicity, and considers all other churches as heretical or schismatical sects. The one is proud of her creed, the other of her dominion. In all the points of controversy between Romanism and Protestantism the Greek Church is much nearer the Roman, and yet there is no more prospect of a union between them than of a union between Rome and Geneva, or Moscow and Oxford. The Pope and the Czar are the two most powerful rival-despots in Christendom. Where the two churches meet in closest proximity, over the traditional spots of the birth and tomb of our Saviour, at Bethlehem and Jerusalem, they hate each other most bitterly, and their ignorant and bigoted monks have to be kept from violent collision by Mohammedan soldiers.

I. Let us first briefly glance at the consensus.

Both churches own the Nicene creed (with the exception of the Filioque), and all the doctrinal decrees of the seven oecumenical Synods from A.D. 325 to 787, including the worship of images.

They agree moreover in most of the post-oecumenical or mediaeval doctrines against which the evangelical Reformation protested, namely: the authority of ecclesiastical tradition as a joint rule of faith with the holy Scriptures; the worship of the Virgin Mary, of the saints, their pictures (not statues), and relics; justification by faith and good works, as joint conditions; the merit of good works, especially voluntary celibacy and poverty; the seven sacraments or mysteries (with minor differences as to confirmation, and extreme unction or chrisma); baptismal regeneration and the necessity of water-baptism for salvation; transubstantiation and the consequent adoration of the sacramental elements; the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead, with prayers for the dead; priestly absolution by divine authority; three orders of the ministry, and the necessity of an episcopal hierarchy up to the patriarchal dignity; and a vast number of religious rites and ceremonies.

In the doctrine of purgatory, the Greek Church is less explicit, yet agrees with the Roman in assuming a middle state of purification, and the efficacy of prayers and masses for the departed. The dogma of transubstantiation, too, is not so clearly formulated in the Greek creed as in the Roman, but the difference is very small. As to the Holy Scriptures, the Greek Church has never prohibited the popular use, and the Russian Church even favors the free circulation of her authorized vernacular version. But the traditions of the Greek Church are as strong a barrier against the exercise of private judgment and exegetical progress as those of Rome.

II. The dissensus of the two churches covers the following points:

1. The procession of the Holy Spirit: the East teaching the single procession from the Father only, the West (since Augustin), the double procession from the Father and the Son (Filioque).

2. The universal authority and infallibility of the pope, which is asserted by the Roman, denied by the Greek Church. The former is a papal monarchy, the latter a patriarchal oligarchy. There are, according to the Greek theory, five patriarchs of equal rights, the pope of Rome, the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They were sometimes compared to the five senses in the body. To them was afterwards added the patriarch of Moscow for the Russian church (which is now governed by the "Holy Synod"). To the bishop of Rome was formerly conceded a primacy of honor, but this primacy passed with the seat of empire to the patriarch of Constantinople, who therefore signed himself "Archbishop of New Rome and Oecumenical Patriarch.305

3. The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, proclaimed as a dogma by the pope in 1854, disowned by the East, which, however, in the practice of Mariolatry fully equals the West.

4. The marriage of the lower clergy, allowed by the Eastern, forbidden by the Roman Church (yet conceded by the pope to the United Greeks).

5. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity. In the Greek Church the laymen receive the consecrated bread dipped in the wine and administered with a golden spoon.

6. A number of minor ceremonies peculiar to the Eastern Church, such as trine immersion in baptism, the use of leavened bread in the eucharist, infant-communion, the repetition of the holy unction (to; eujcevlion) in sickness.

Notwithstanding these differences the Roman Church has always been obliged to recognize the Greek Church as essentially orthodox, though schismatic. And, certainly, the differences are insignificant as compared with the agreement. The separation and antagonism must therefore be explained fully as much and more from an alienation of spirit and change of condition.

Note on the Eastern Orthodox Church.

For the sake of brevity the usual terminology is employed in this chapter, but the proper name of the Greek Church is the Holy Oriental Orthodox Apostolic Church. The terms mostly in use in that church are Orthodox and Oriental (Eastern). The term Greek is used in Turkey only of the Greeks proper (the Hellens); but the great majority of Oriental Christians in Turkey and Russia belong to the Slavonic race. The Greek is the original and classical language of the Oriental Church, in which the most important works are written; but it has been practically superseded in Asiatic Turkey by the Arabic, in Russia and European Turkey by the Slavonic.

The Oriental or Orthodox Church now embraces three distinct divisions:

1. The Orthodox Church in Turkey (European Turkey and the Greek islands, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine) under the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

2. The state church of Russia, formerly under the patriarch of Constantinople, then under the patriarch of Moscow, since 1725 under the Holy Synod of St. Petersburg and the headship of the Czar. This is by far the largest and most important branch.

3. The church of the kingdom of Greece under the Holy Synod of Greece (since 1833).

There are also Greek Christians in Egypt, the Sinaitic Peninsula (the monks of the Convent of St. Catharine), the islands of the AEgean Sea, in Malta, Servia, Austria, etc.

Distinct from the Orthodox Church are the Oriental Schismatics, the Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, Copts, and Abyssinians, who separated from the former on the ground of the christological controversies. The Maronites of Mount Lebanon were originally also schismatics, but submitted to the pope during the Crusades.

The United Greeks acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, but retain certain peculiarities of the Oriental Church, as the marriage of the lower clergy, the native language in worship. They are found in lower Italy, Austria, Russia, and Poland.

The Bulgarians, who likewise call themselves orthodox, and who by the treaty of Berlin in 1878 have been formed into a distinct principality, occupy an independent position between the Greek and the Roman Churches.

§ 69. The Causes of Separation.

Church history, like the world’s history, moves with the sun from East to West. In the first six centuries the Eastern or Greek church represented the main current of life and progress. In the middle ages the Latin church chiefly assumed the task of christianizing and civilizing the new races which came upon the stage. The Greek church has had no Middle Ages in the usual sense, and therefore no Reformation. She planted Christianity among the Slavonic races, but they were isolated from the progress of European history, and have not materially affected either the doctrine or polity or cultus of the church. Their conversion was an external expansion, not an internal development.

The Greek and Latin churches were never organically united under one government, but differed considerably from the beginning in nationality, language, and various ceremonies. These differences, however, did not interfere with the general harmony of faith and Christian life, nor prevent cooperation against common foes. As long and as far as the genuine spirit of Christianity directed them, the diversity was an element of strength to the common cause.

The principal sees of the East were directly founded by the apostles—with the exception of Constantinople—and had even a clearer title to apostolic succession and inheritance than Rome. The Greek church took the lead in theology down to the sixth or seventh century, and the Latin gratefully learned from her. All the oecumenical Councils were held on the soil of the Byzantine empire in or near Constantinople, and carried on in the Greek language. The great doctrinal controversies on the holy Trinity and Christology were fought out in the East, yet not without the powerful aid of the more steady and practical West. Athanasius, when an exile from Alexandria, found refuge and support in the bishop of Rome. Jerome, the most learned of the Latin fathers and a friend of Pope Damasus, was a connecting link between the East and the West, and concluded his labors in Bethlehem. Pope Leo I. was the theological master-spirit who controlled the council of Chalcedon, and shaped the Orthodox formula concerning the two natures in the one person of Christ. Yet this very pope strongly protested against the action of the Council which, in conformity with a canon of the second oecumenical Council, put him on a par with the new bishop of Constantinople.

And here we approach the secret of the ultimate separation and incurable antagonism of the churches. It is due chiefly to three causes. The first cause is the politico- ecclesiastical rivalry of the patriarch of Constantinople backed by the Byzantine empire, and the bishop of Rome in connection with the new German empire. The second cause is the growing centralization and overbearing conduct of the Latin church in and through the papacy. The third cause is the stationary character of the Greek and the progressive character of the Latin church during the middle ages. The Greek church boasts of the imaginary perfection of her creed. She still produced considerable scholars and divines, as Maximus, John of Damascus, Photius, Oecumenius, and Theophylact, but they mostly confined themselves to the work of epitomizing and systematizing the traditional theology of the Greek fathers, and produced no new ideas, as if all wisdom began and ended with the old oecumenical Councils. She took no interest in the important anthropological and soteriological controversies which agitated the Latin church in the age of St. Augustin, and she continued to occupy the indefinite position of the first centuries on the doctrines of sin and grace. On the other hand she was much distracted and weakened by barren metaphysical controversies on the abstrusest questions of theology and christology; and these quarrels facilitated the rapid progress of Islâm, which conquered the lands of the Bible and pressed hard on Constantinople. When the Greek church became stationary, the Latin church began to develop her greatest energy; she became the fruitful mother of new and vigorous nations of the North and West of Europe, produced scholastic and mystic theology and a new order of civilization, built magnificent cathedrals, discovered a new Continent, invented the art of printing, and with the revival of learning prepared the way for a new era in the history of the world. Thus the Latin daughter outgrew the Greek mother, and is numerically twice as strong, without counting the Protestant secession. At the same time the Eastern church still may look forward to a new future among the Slavonic races which she has christianized. What she needs is a revival of the spirit and power of primitive Christianity.

When once the two churches were alienated in spirit and engaged in an unchristian race for supremacy, all the little doctrinal and ritualistic differences which had existed long before, assumed an undue weight, and were branded as heresies and crimes. The bishop of Rome sees in the Patriarch of Constantinople an ecclesiastical upstart who owed his power to political influence, not to apostolic origin. The Eastern patriarchs look upon the Pope as an anti-christian usurper and as the first Protestant. They stigmatize the papal supremacy as "the chief heresy of the latter days, which flourishes now as its predecessor, Arianism, flourished in former days, and which like it, will in like manner be cast down and vanish away."306

§ 70. The Patriarch and the Pope. Photius and Nicolas.

Comp. § 61, the Lit. in § 67, especially the letters of Photius and Nicolas.

Hergenröther: Photius (Regensb. 1867–69, vol. I. 373 sqq.; 505 sqq.; and the second vol.), and his Monumenta Graeca ad Photium ejusque historiam pertinentia (Ratisb. 1869, 181 pages). Milman: Hist. of Latin Christianity, bk. V. Ch. IV. Hefele IV. 224 sqq.; 384 sqq.; 436sqq. The chief documents are also given by Gieseler II. 213 sqq. (Am. ed.)

The doctrinal difference on the procession of the Holy Spirit will be considered in the chapter on the Theological Controversies. Although it existed before the schism, it assumed a practical importance only in connection with the broader ecclesiastical and political conflict between the patriarch and the pope, between Constantinople and Rome.

The first serious outbreak of this conflict took place after the middle of the ninth century, when Photius and Nicolas, two of the ablest representatives of the rival churches, came into collision. Photius is one of the greatest of patriarchs, as Nicolas is one of the greatest of popes. The former was superior in learning, the latter in statesmanship; while in moral integrity, official pride and obstinacy both were fairly matched, except that the papal ambition towered above the patriarchal dignity. Photius would tolerate no superior, Nicolas no equal; the one stood on the Council of Chalcedon, the other on Pseudo-Isidor.

The contest between them was at first personal. The deposition of Ignatius as patriarch of Constantinople, for rebuking the immorality of Caesar Bardas, and the election of Photius, then a mere layman, in his place (858), were arbitrary and uncanonical acts which created a temporary schism in the East, and prepared the way for a permanent schism between the East and the West. Nicolas, being appealed to as mediator by both parties (first by Photius), assumed the haughty air of supreme judge on the basis of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, but was at first deceived by his own legates. The controversy was complicated by the Bulgarian quarrel. King Bogoris had been converted to Christianity by missionaries from Constantinople (861), but soon after applied to Rome for teachers, and the pope eagerly seized this opportunity to extend his jurisdiction (866).

Nicolas, in a Roman Synod (863), decided in favor of the innocent Ignatius, and pronounced sentence of deposition against Photius with a threat of excommunication in case of disobedience.307  Photius, enraged by this conduct and the Bulgarian interference, held a counter-synod, and deposed in turn the successor of St. Peter (867). In his famous Encyclical Letter of invitation to the Eastern patriarchs, he charged the whole Western church with heresy and schism for interfering with the jurisdiction over the Bulgarians, for fasting on Saturday, for abridging the time of Lent by a week, for taking milk-food (milk, cheese, and butter) during the quadragesimal fast, for enforcing clerical celibacy, and despising priests who lived in virtuous matrimony, and, most of all, for corrupting the Nicene Creed by the insertion of the Filioque, and thereby introducing two principles into the Holy Trinity.308

This letter clearly indicates all the doctrinal and ritual differences which caused and perpetuated the schism to this day. The subsequent history is only a renewal of the same charges aggravated by the misfortunes of the Greek church, and the arrogance and intolerance of old Rome.

Photius fell with the murder of his imperial patron, Michael III. (Sept. 23, 867). He was imprisoned in a convent, and deprived of society, even of books. He bore his misfortune with great dignity, and nearly all the Greek bishops remained faithful to him. Ignatius was restored after ten years of exile by the emperor Basil, the Macedonian (867–886), and entered into communication with Pope Hadrian II. (Dec. 867). He convened a general council in the church of St. Sophia (October, 869), which is numbered by the Latins as the Eighth Oecumenical Council. The pontifical legates presided and presented a formula of union which every bishop was required to sign before taking part in the proceedings, and which contained an anathema against all heresies, and against Photius and his adherents. But the council was poorly attended (the number of bishops being at first only eighteen). Photius was forced to appear in the fifth session (Oct. 20), but on being questioned he either kept silence, or answered in the words of Christ before Caiaphas and Pilate. In the tenth and last session, attended by the emperor and his sons, and one hundred and two bishops, the decrees of the pope against Photius and in favor of Ignatius were confirmed, and the anathemas against the Monothelites and Iconoclasts renewed. The papal delegates signed "with reservation of the revision of the pope."

But the peace was artificial, and broken up again immediately, after the Synod by the Bulgarian question, which involved the political as well as the ecclesiastical power of Constantinople. Ignatius himself was unwilling to surrender that point, and refused to obey when the imperious Pope John VIII. commanded, on pain of suspension and excommunication, that he should recall all the Greek bishops and priests from Bulgaria. But death freed him from further controversy (Oct. 23, 877).

Photius was restored to the patriarchal see three days after the death of Ignatius, with whom he had been reconciled. He convened a council in November, 879, which lasted till March, 880, and is acknowledged by the Orientals as the Eighth Oecumenical Council,309 but denounced by the Latins as the Pseudo-Synodus Photiana. It was three times as large as the Council of Ignatius, and held with great pomp in St. Sophia under the presidency of Photius. It annulled the Council of 869 as a fraud; it readopted the Nicene Creed with an anathema against the Filioque, and all other changes by addition or omission, and it closed with a eulogy on the unrivalled virtues and learning of Photius. To the Greek acts was afterwards added a (pretended) letter of Pope John VIII. to Photius, declaring the Filioque to be an addition which is rejected by the church of Rome, and a blasphemy which must be abolished calmly and by, degrees.310  The papal legates assented to all, and so deceived their master by false accounts of the surrender of Bulgaria that he thanked the emperor for the service he had done to the Church by this synod.

But when the pope’s eyes were opened, he sent the bishop Marinus to Constantinople to declare invalid what the legates had done contrary to his instructions. For this Marinus was shut up in prison for thirty days. After his return Pope John VIII. solemnly pronounced the anathema on Photius, who had dared to deceive and degrade the holy see, and had added new frauds to the old. Marinus renewed the anathema after he was elected pope (882). Photius denied the validity of his election, and developed an extraordinary, literary activity.

But after the death of the Emperor Basilius (886), he was again deposed by Leo VI., miscalled the Wise or the Philosopher, to make room for his youngest brother Stephen, at that time only sixteen years of age. Photius spent the last five years of his life in a cloister, and died 891. For learning, energy, position, and influence, he is one of the most remarkable men in the history of Eastern Christianity. He formulated the doctrinal basis of the schism, checked the papal despotism, and secured the independence of the Greek church. He announced in an Encyclical of 866: "God be praised for all time to come!  The Russians have received a bishop, and show a lively zeal for Christian worship."  Roman writers have declared this to be a lie, but history has proved it to be an anticipation of an important fact, the conversion of a new nation which was to become the chief support of the Eastern church, and the most formidable rival of the papacy.

Greek and Roman historians are apt to trace the guilt of the schism exclusively to one party, and to charge the other with unholy ambition and intrigue; but we must acknowledge on the one hand the righteous zeal of Nicolas for the cause of the injured Ignatius, and on the other the many virtues of Photius tried in misfortune, as well as his brilliant learning in theology, philology, philosophy, and history; while we deplore and denounce the schism as a sin and disgrace of both churches.

Notes.

The accounts of the Roman Catholic historians, even the best, are colored by sectarianism, and must be accepted with caution. Cardinal Hergenröther (Kirchengesch. I. 684) calls the Council of 879 a "Photianische Pseudo-Synode," and its acts "ein aecht byzantinisches Machwerk ganz vom Geiste des verschmitzten Photius durchdrungen."  Bishop Hefele, in the revised edition of his Conciliengesch. (IV. 464 sqq.), treats this Aftersynode, as he calls it, no better. Both follow in the track of their old teacher, Dr. Döllinger who, in his History of the Church (translated by Dr. Edward Cox, London 1841, vol. III. p. 100), more than forty years ago, described this Synod "in all its parts as a worthy sister of the Council of Robbers of the year 449; with this difference, that in the earlier Synod violence and tyranny, in the later artifice, fraud, and falsehood were employed by wicked men to work out their wicked designs."  But when in 1870 the Vatican Council sanctioned the historical falsehood of papal infallibility, Döllinger, once the ablest advocate of Romanism in Germany, protested against Rome and was excommunicated. Whatever the Latins may say against the Synod of Photius, the Latin Synod of 869 was not a whit better, and Rome understood the arts of intrigue fully as well as Constantinople. The whole controversy between the Greek and the Roman churches is one of the most humiliating chapters in the history of Christianity, and both must humbly confess their share of sin and guilt before a reconciliation can take place.

§ 71. Progress and Completion of the Schism. Cerularius.

Hergenröther: Photius, Vol. III. 653–887; Comp. his Kirchengesch. vol. I. 688 sq.; 690–694. Hefele: Conciliengesch. IV. 587; 765 sqq.; 771, 775 sqq. Gieseler: II. 221 sqq.

We shall briefly sketch the progress and consolidation of the schism.

The Difference About Tetragamy.

The fourth marriage of the emperor Leo the Philosopher (886–912), which was forbidden by the laws of the Greek church, caused a great schism in the East (905).311  The Patriarch Nicolas Mysticus solemnly protested and was deposed (906), but Pope Sergius III. (904–911), instead of siding with suffering virtue as Pope Nicolas had done, sanctioned the fourth marriage (which was not forbidden in the West) and the deposition of the conscientious patriarch.

Leo on his death-bed restored the deposed patriarch (912). A Synod of Constantinople in 920, at which Pope John X. was represented, declared a fourth marriage illegal, and made no concessions to Rome. The Emperor Constantine, Leo’s son, prohibited a fourth marriage by an edict; thereby casting a tacit imputation on his own birth. The Greek church regards marriage as a sacrament, and a necessary means for the propagation of the race, but a second marriage is prohibited to the clergy, a third marriage is tolerated in laymen as a sort of legal concubinage, and a fourth is condemned as a sin and a scandal. The pope acquiesced, and the schism slumbered during the dark tenth century. The venal Pope John XIX. (1024) was ready for an enormous sum to renounce all the claim of superiority over the Eastern patriarchs, but was forced to break off the negotiations when his treasonable plan was discovered.

Cerularius and Leo IX.

Michael Cerularius (or Caerularius),312 who was patriarch from 1043 to 1059, renewed and completed the schism. Heretofore the mutual anathemas were hurled only against the contending heads and their party; now the churches excommunicated each other. The Emperor Constantinus Monachus courted the friendship of the pope for political reasons, but his patriarch checkmated him. Cerularius, in connection with the learned Bulgarian metropolitan Leo of Achrida, addressed in 1053 a letter to John, bishop of Trani, in Apulia (then subject to the Eastern rule), and through him to all the bishops of France and to the pope himself, charging the churches of the West that, following the practice of the Jews, and contrary to the usage of Christ, they employ in the eucharist unleavened bread; that they fast on Saturday in Lent; that they eat blood and things strangled in violation of the decree of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts, ch. 15); and that during the fast they do not sing the hallelujah. He invented the new name Azymites for the heresy of using unleavened bread (azyma) instead of common bread.313  Nothing was said about the procession of the Spirit. This letter is only extant in the Latin translation of Cardinal Humbert.314

Pope Leo IX. sent three legates under the lead of the imperious Humbert to Constantinople, with counter-charges to the effect that Cerularius arrogated to himself the title of "oecumenical" patriarch; that he wished to subject the patriarchs of Alexandria and of Antioch; that the Greeks rebaptized the Latins; that, like the Nicolaitans, they permitted their priests to live in wedlock;315 that they neglected to baptize their children before the eighth day after birth; that, like the Pneumatomachi or Theomachi, they cut out of the symbol the Procession of the Spirit from the Son.316  The legates were lodged in the imperial palace, but Cerularius avoided all intercourse with them. Finally, on the 16th of July, 1054, they excommunicated the patriarch and all those who should persistently censure the faith of the church of Rome or its mode of offering the holy sacrifice. They placed the writ on the altar of the church of Hagia Sophia with the words: "Videat Deus et judicet."

Cerularius, supported by his clergy and the people, immediately answered by a synodical counter-anathema on the papal legates, and accused them of fraud. In a letter to Peter, the patriarch of Antioch (who at first acted the part of a mediator), he charged Rome with other scandals, namely, that two brothers were allowed to espouse two sisters; that bishops wore rings and engaged in warfare; that baptism was administered by a single immersion; that salt was put in the mouth of the baptized; that the images and relics of saints were not honored; and that Gregory the Theologian, Basil, and Chrysostom were not numbered among the saints. The Filioque was also mentioned.317

The charge of the martial spirit of the bishops was well founded in that semi-barbarous age. Cerularius was all-powerful for several years; he dethroned one emperor and crowned another, but died in exile (1059).

The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem adhered to the see of Constantinople. Thus the schism between the Christian East and West was completed. The number of episcopal sees at that time was nearly equal on both sides, but in the course of years the Latin church far outgrew the East.

The Latin Empire in the East. 1204–1261.

During the Crusades the schism was deepened by the brutal atrocities of the French and Venetian soldiers in the pillage of Constantinople (1204), the establishment of a Latin empire, and the appointment by the pope of Latin bishops in Greek sees.318  Although this artificial empire lasted only half a century (1204–1261), it left a legacy of burning hatred in the memories of horrible desecrations and innumerable insults and outrages, which the East had to endure from the Western barbarians. Churches and monasteries were robbed and desecrated, the Greek service mocked, the clergy persecuted, and every law of decency set at defiance. In Constantinople "a prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals."  Even Pope Innocent III. accuses the pilgrims that they spared in their lust neither age nor sex, nor religious profession, and that they committed fornication, adultery, and incest in open day (in oculis omnium), "abandoning matrons and virgins dedicated to God to the lewdness of grooms."  And yet this great pope insulted the Eastern church by the establishment of a Latin hierarchy on the ruins of the Byzantine empire.319

§ 72. Fruitless Attempts at Reunion.

The Greek emperors, hard pressed by the terrible Turks, who threatened to overthrow their throne, sought from time to time by negotiations with the pope to secure the powerful aid of the West. But all the projects of reunion split on the rock of papal absolutism and Greek obstinacy.

The Council of Lyons. A.D. 1274.320

Michael Palaeologus (1260–1282), who expelled the Latins from Constantinople (July 25, 1261), restored the Greek patriarchate, but entered into negotiations with Pope Urban IV. to avert the danger of a new crusade for the reconquest of Constantinople. A general council (the 14th of the Latins) was held at Lyons in 1273 and 1274 with great solemnity and splendor for the purpose of effecting a reunion. Five hundred Latin bishops, seventy abbots, and about a thousand other ecclesiastics were present, together with ambassadors from England, France, Germany, and other countries. Palaeologus sent a large embassy, but only three were saved from shipwreck, Germanus, ex-patriarch of Constantinople, Theophanes, metropolitan of Nicaea, and the chancellor of the empire. The pope opened the Synod (May 7, 1274) by the celebration of high mass, and declared the threefold object of the Synod to be: help for Jerusalem, union with the Greeks, and reform of the church. Bonaventura preached the sermon. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of schoolmen, who had defended the Latin doctrine of the double procession321 was to attend, but had died on the journey to Lyons (March 7, 1274), in his 49th year. The imperial delegates were treated with marked courtesy abjured the schism, submitted to the pope and accepted the distinctive tenets of the Roman church.

But the Eastern patriarchs were not represented, the people of Constantinople abhorred the union with Rome, and the death of the despotic Michael Palaeologus (1282) was also the death of the Latin party, and the formal revocation of the act of submission to the pope.

The Council at Ferrara—Florence. A.D. 1438–1439.322

Another attempt at reunion was made by John VII. Palaeologus in the Council of Ferrara, which was convened by Pope Eugenius IV. in opposition to the reformatory Council of Basle. It was afterwards transferred to Florence on account of the plague. It was attended by the emperor, the patriarch of Constantinople, and twenty-one Eastern prelates, among them the learned Bessarion of Nicaea, Mark of Ephesus, Dionysius of Sardis, Isidor of Kieff. The chief points of controversy were discussed: the procession of the Spirit, purgatory, the use of unleavened bread, and the supremacy of the pope.323  Bessarion became a convert to the Western doctrine, and was rewarded by a cardinal’s hat. He was twice near being elected pope (d. 1472). The decree of the council, published July 6, 1439, embodies his views, and was a complete surrender to the pope with scarcely a saving clause for the canonical rights and privileges of the Eastern patriarchs. The Greek formula on the procession, ex Patre per Filium, was declared to be identical with the Latin Filioque; the pope was acknowledged not only as the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, but also as "the head of the whole church and father and teacher of all Christians," but with variations in the Greek texts.324  The document of reunion was signed by the pope, the emperor, many archbishops and bishops, the representatives of all the Eastern patriarchs except that of Constantinople, who had previously died at Florence, but had left as his last sentence a disputed submission to the catholic and apostolic church of old Rome. For the triumph of his cause the pope could easily promise material aid to his Eastern ally, to pay the expenses of the deputation, to support three hundred soldiers for the protection of Constantinople, and to send, if necessary, an army and navy for the defense of the emperor against his enemies.

But when the humiliating terms of the reunion were divulged, the East and Russia rose in rebellion against the Latinizers as traitors to the orthodox faith; the compliant patriarchs openly recanted, and the new patriarch of Constantinople, Metrophanes, now called in derision Metrophonus or Matricide, was forced to resign.

After the Fall of Constantinople.

The capture of Constantinople by the Mohammedan Turks (1453) and the overthrow of the Byzantine empire put an end to all political schemes of reunion, but opened the way for papal propagandism in the East. The division of the church facilitated that catastrophe which delivered the fairest lands to the blasting influence of Islâm, and keeps it in power to this day, although it is slowly waning. The Turk has no objection to fights among the despised Christians, provided they only injure themselves and do not touch the Koran. He is tolerant from intolerance. The Greeks hate the pope and the Filioque as much as they hate the false prophet of Mecca; while the pope loves his own power more than the common cause of Christianity, and would rather see the Sultan rule in the city of Constantine than a rival patriarch or the Czar of schismatic Russia.

During the nineteenth century the schism has been intensified by the creation of two new dogmas,—the immaculate conception of Mary (1854) and the infallibility of the pope (1870). When Pius IX. invited the Eastern patriarchs to attend the Vatican Council, they indignantly refused, and renewed their old protest against the antichristian usurpation of the papacy and the heretical Filioque. They could not submit to the Vatican decrees without stultifying their whole history and committing moral suicide. Papal absolutism325 and Eastern stagnation are insuperable barriers to the reunion of the divided churches, which can only be brought about by great events and by the wonder-working power of the Spirit of God.

CHAPTER VI.

MORALS AND RELIGION.

§ 73. Literature.

I. The chief and almost only sources for this chapter are the acts of Synods, the lives of saints and missionaries, and the chronicles of monasteries. The Acta Sanctorum mix facts and legends in inextricable confusion. The most important are the biographies of the Irish, Scotch, and Anglo-Saxon missionaries, and the letters of Boniface. For the history, of France during the sixth and seventh centuries we have the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours, the Herodotus of France (d. 594), first printed in Paris, 1511, better by Ruinart, 1699; best by Giesebrecht (in German), Berlin 1851, 9th ed. 1873, 2 vols.; and Gregorii Historiae Epitomata by his continuator, Fredegar, a clergyman of Burgundy (d. about 660), ed. by Ruinart, Paris 1699, and by Abel (in German), Berlin 1849. For the age of Charlemagne we have the Capitularies of the emperor, and the historical works of Einhard or Eginard (d. 840). See Ouvres complètes d’ Eginard, réunies pour la première fois et traduites en français, par A. Teulet, Paris 1840–’43, 2 vols. For an estimate of these and other writers of our period comp. part of the first, and the second vol. of Ad. Ebert’s Allgem. Gesch. der Lit. des Mittelalters im Abendlande, Leipz. 1874 and 1880.

II. Hefele: Conciliengesch. vols. III. and IV. (from A.D. 560–1073), revised ed. 1877 and 1879.

Neander: Denkwördigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christl. Lebens. 3d ed. Hamburg, 1845, ’46, 2 vols.

Aug. Thierry: Recits des temps merovingiens. Paris 1855 (based on Gregory of Tours).

Loebell: Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit. Leipz. 1839, second ed. 1868.

Monod: Études critiques sur les sources de l’histoire mérovingienne. Paris 1872.

Lecky: History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, fifth ed. Lond. 1882, 2 vols. (part of the second vol.).

Brace: Gesta Christi, N. York, third ed. 1883, p. 107 sqq.

Comp. Guizot (Protest., d. 1874): Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe et en Prance depuis la chute de l’empire romain jusqu à la révolution française, Paris 1830; seventh ed. 1860, 5 vols. (one vol. on Europe in general).

Balmez, (a Spanish philosopher and apologist of the Roman church, d. 1848): El Protatantismo comparado con el Catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilisacion europea. Barcelona, 1842–44, 4 vols. The same in French, German, and English translations. A Roman Catholic counterpart to Guizot.

§ 74. General Character of Mediaeval Morals.

The middle age of Western Christendom resembles the period of the Judges in the history of Israel when "the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through by-ways," and when "every man did that which was right in his own eyes."326  It was a time of civil and political commotions and upheavings, of domestic wars and foreign invasions. Society was in a chaotic state and bordering on the brink of anarchy. Might was right. It was the golden age of border-ruffians, filibusters, pirates and bold adventurers, but also of gallant knights, genuine heroes and judges, like Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and Samuel of old. It presents, in striking contrasts, Christian virtues and heathen vices, ascetic self-denial and gross sensuality. Nor were there wanting idyllic episodes of domestic virtue and happiness which call to mind the charming story of Ruth from the period of the Judges.

Upon the whole the people were more religious than moral. Piety was often made a substitute or atonement for virtue. Belief in the supernatural and miraculous was universal; scepticism and unbelief were almost unknown. Men feared purgatory and hell, and made great sacrifices to gain heaven by founding churches, convents, and charitable institutions. And yet there was a frightful amount of immorality among the rulers and the people. In the East the church had to contend with the vices of an effete civilization and a corrupt court. In Italy, France and Spain the old Roman vices continued and were even invigorated by the infusion of fresh and barbaric blood. The history of the Merovingian rulers, as we learn from Bishop Gregory of Tours, is a tragedy of murder, adultery, and incest, and ends in destruction.327

The church was unfavorably affected by the state of surrounding society, and often drawn into the current of prevailing immorality. Yet, upon the whole, she was a powerful barrier against vice, and the chief, if not the only promoter of education, virtue and piety in the dark ages. From barbaric and semi-barbaric material she had to build up the temple of a Christian civilization. She taught the new converts the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments the best popular summaries of faith, piety, and duty. She taught them also the occupations of peaceful life. She restrained vice and encouraged virtue. The synodical legislation was nearly always in the right direction. Great stress was laid on prayer and fasting, on acts of hospitality, charity, and benevolence, and on pilgrimages to sacred places. The rewards of heaven entered largely as an inducement for leading a virtuous and holy life; but it is far better that people should be good from fear of hell and love of heaven than ruin themselves by immorality and vice.

A vast amount of private virtue and piety is never recorded on the pages of histor y, and is spent in modest retirement. So the wild flowers in the woods and on the mountains bloom and fade away unseen by human eyes. Every now and then incidental allusion is made to unknown saints. Pope Gregory mentions a certain Servulus in Rome who was a poor cripple from childhood, but found rich comfort and peace in the Bible, although he could not read himself, and had to ask pious friends to read it to him while he was lying on his couch; he never complained, but was full of gratitude and praise; when death drew near he requested his friends to sing psalms with him; then stopped suddenly and expired with the words: "Peace, hear ye not the praises of God sounding from heaven?"  This man’s life of patient suffering was not in vain, but a benediction to many who came in contact with it. "Those also serve who only stand and wait."

The moral condition of the middle age varied considerably. The migration of nations was most unfavorable to the peaceful work of the church. Then came the bright reign of Charlemagne with his noble efforts for education and religion, but it was soon followed, under his weak successors, by another period of darkness which grew worse and worse till a moral reformation began in the convent of Cluny, and reached the papal chair under the lead of Hildebrand.

Yet if we judge by the number of saints in the Roman Calendar, the seventh century, which is among the, darkest, was more pious than any of the preceding and succeeding centuries, except the third and fourth (which are enriched by the martyrs).

Notes.

The following is the table of saints in the Roman Calendar (according to Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints): Saints.

First Century

53

Second Century

43

Third Century

139

Fourth Century

213

Fifth Century

130

Sixth Century

123

Seventh Century

174

Eighth Century

78

Ninth Century

49

Tenth Century

28

Eleventh Century

45

Twelfth Century

54

Thirteenth Century

49

Fourteenth Century

27

Fifteenth Century

17

Sixteenth Century

24

Seventeenth Century

15

Eighteenth Century

20

In the first centuries the numerous but nameless martyrs of the Neronian and other persecutions are not separately counted. The Holy Innocents, the Seven Sleepers (in the third century), the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (fourth century,) and other groups of martyrs are counted only one each. Lecky asserts too confidently that the seventh century was the most prolific in saints, and yet the most immoral. It is strange that the number of saints should have declined from the seventh century, while the church increased, and that the eighteenth century of infidelity should have produced five more saints than the seventeenth century. It would therefore be very unsafe to make this table the basis for

§ 75. Clerical Morals.

1. Social Position. The clergy stood, during the middle ages, at the head of society, and shared with kings and nobles the rule of the people. They had the guardianship of the souls and consciences of men, and handled the keys of the kingdom of heaven. They possessed nearly all the learning, but it was generally very limited, and confined to a little Latin without any Greek. Some priests descended from noble and even royal blood, others from slaves who belonged to monasteries. They enjoyed many immunities from public burdens, as military duty and taxation. Charlemagne and his successors granted to them all the privileges which the Eastern emperors from the time of Constantine had bestowed upon them. They could not be sued before a civil court, and had their own episcopal tribunals. No lay judge could apprehend or punish an ecclesiastic without the permission of his bishop.

They were supported by the income from landed estates, cathedral funds, and the annual tithes which were enacted after the precedent of the Mosaic law. Pepin, by a decree of 764, imposed the payment of tithes upon all the royal possessions. Charlemagne extended it to all lands, and made the obligation general by a capitulary in 779. The tithes were regarded as the minimum contribution for the maintenance of religion and the support of the poor. They were generally paid to the bishop, as the administrator of all ecclesiastical goods. Many nobles had their own domestic chaplains who depended on their lords, and were often employed in degrading offices, as waiting at table and attending to horses and hounds.

2. Morals. The priests were expected to excel in virtue as well as in education, and to commend their profession by an exemplary life. Upon the whole they were superior to their flock, but not unfrequently they disgraced their profession by scandalous immorality. According to ancient discipline every priest at his ordination was connected with a particular church except missionaries to heathen lands. But many priests defied the laws, and led an irregular wandering life as clerical tramps. They were forbidden to wear the sword, but many a bishop lost his life on the battle field and even some popes engaged in warfare. Drunkenness and licentiousness were common vices. Gregory of Tours mentions a bishop named Cautinus who, when intoxicated, had to be carried by four men from the table. Boniface gives a very unfavorable but partizan account of the French and German clergymen who acted independently of Rome. The acts of Synods are full of censures and punishments of clerical sins and vices. They legislated against fornication, intemperance, avarice, the habits of hunting, of visiting horse-races and theatres, and enjoined even corporal punishments.328

Clerical immorality reached the lowest depth in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Rome was a sink of iniquity, and the popes themselves set the worst example. But a new reform began with the Hildebrandian popes.

3. Canonical Life. Chrodegang, bishop of Metz (A.D. 760), reformed the clergy by introducing, or reviving, after the example of St. Augustin, the "canonical" or semi-monastic life. The bishop and lower clergymen lived in the same house, near the cathedral, ate at the same table, prayed and studied together, like a family of monks, only differing from them in dress and the right of holding property or receiving fees for official services. Such an establishment was called Chapter,329 and the members of it were called Canons.330

The example was imitated in other places. Charlemagne made the canonical life obligatory on all bishops as far as possible. Many chapters were liberally endowed. But during the civil commotions of the Carolingians the canonical life degenerated or was broken up.

4. Celibacy. In the East the lower clergy were always allowed to marry, and only a second marriage is forbidden. In the West celibacy was the prescribed rule, but most clergymen lived either with lawful wives or with concubines. In Milan all the priests and deacons were married in the middle of the eleventh century, but to the disgust of the severe moralists of the time.331  Hadrian II. was married before he became pope, and had a daughter, who was murdered by her husband, together with the pope’s wife, Stephania (868).332  The wicked pope Benedict IX. sued for the daughter of his cousin, who consented on condition that he resign the papacy (1033).333  The Hildebrandian popes, Leo IX. and Nicolas II., made attempts to enforce clerical celibacy all over the West. They identified the interests of clerical morality and influence with clerical celibacy, and endeavored to destroy natural immorality by enforcing unnatural morality. How far Gregory VII. succeeded in this part of his reform, will be seen in the next period.

§ 76. Domestic Life.

The purity and happiness of home-life depend on the position of woman, who is the beating heart of the household. Female degradation was one of the weakest spots in the old Greek and Roman civilization. The church, in counteracting the prevailing evil, ran into the opposite extreme of ascetic excess as a radical cure. Instead of concentrating her strength on the purification and elevation of the family, she recommended lonely celibacy as a higher degree of holiness and a safer way to heaven.

Among the Western and Northern barbarians she found a more favorable soil for the cultivation of Christian family life. The contrast which the heathen historian Tacitus and the Christian monk Salvian draw between the chastity of the Teutonic barbarians and the licentiousness of the Latin races is overdrawn for effect, but not without foundation. The German and Scandinavian tribes had an instinctive reverence for the female sex, as being inspired by a divinity, possessed of the prophetic gift, and endowed with secret charms. Their women shared the labors and dangers of men, emboldened them in their fierce battles, and would rather commit suicide than submit to dishonor. Yet the wife was entirely in the power of her husband, and could be bought, sold, beaten, and killed.

The Christian religion preserved and strengthened the noble traits, and developed them into the virtues of chivalry; while it diminished or abolished evil customs and practices. The Synods often deal with marriage and divorce. Polygamy, concubinage, secret marriages, marriages with near relatives, mixed marriages with heathens or Jews or heretics were forbidden; the marriage tie was declared sacred and indissoluble (except by adultery); sexual intemperance restrained and forbidden on Sundays and during Lent; the personal independence of woman and her rights of property were advanced. The Virgin Mary was constantly held up to the imagination as the incarnation of female parity and devotion. Not unfrequently, however, marriages were dissolved by mutual consent from mistaken ascetic piety. When a married layman entered the priesthood or a convent, he usually forsook his wife. In a Roman Synod of 827 such separation was made subject to the approval of the bishop. A Synod of Rouen, 1072, forbade husbands whose wives had taken the veil, to marry another. Wives whose husbands had disappeared were forbidden by the same Synod to marry until the fact of death was made certain.334

Upon the whole, the synodical legislation on the subject of marriage was wise, timely, restraining, purifying, and ennobling in its effect. The purest and brightest chapter in the history of Pope Nicolas I. is his protection of injured innocence in the person of the divorced wife of King Lothair of Lorraine.335

§ 77. Slavery.

See the Lit. in vol. I. § 48 (p. 444), and in vol. II. § 97 (p. 347). Comp. also Balmes (R.C.): Protestantism and Catholicism compared in their effects on the Civilization of Europe. Transl. from the spanish. Baltimore 1851, Chs. xv.-xix. Brace: Gesta Christi, Ch. xxi.

History is a slow but steady progress of emancipation from the chains which sin has forged. The institution of slavery was universal in Europe during the middle ages among barbarians as well as among civilized nations. It was kept up by natural increase, by war, and by the slave-trade which was carried on in Europe more or less till the fifteenth century, and in America till the eighteenth. Not a few freemen sold themselves into slavery for debt, or from poverty. The slaves were completely under the power of their masters, and had no claim beyond the satisfaction of their physical wants. They could not bear witness in courts of justice. They could be bought and sold with their children like other property. The marriage tie was disregarded, and marriages between freemen and slaves were null and void. In the course of time slavery was moderated into serfdom, which was attached to the soil. Small farmers often preferred that condition to freedom, as it secured them the protection of a powerful nobleman against robbers and invaders. The condition of the serfs, however, during the middle ages was little better than that of slaves, and gave rise to occasional outbursts in the Peasant Wars, which occurred mostly in connection with the free preaching of the Gospel (as by Wiclif and the Lollards in England, and by Luther in Germany), but which were suppressed by force, and in their immediate effects increased the burdens of the dependent classes. The same struggle between capital and labor is still going on in different forms.

The mediaeval church inherited the patristic views of slavery. She regarded it as a necessary evil, as a legal right based on moral wrong, as a consequence of sin and a just punishment for it. She put it in the same category with war, violence, pestilence, famine, and other evils. St. Augustin, the greatest theological authority of the Latin church, treats slavery as disturbance of the normal condition and relation. God did not, he says, establish the dominion of man over man, but only over the brute. He derives the word servus, as usual, from servare (to save the life of captives of war doomed to death), but cannot find it in the Bible till the time of the righteous Noah, who gave it as a punishment to his guilty son Ham; whence it follows that the word came "from sin, not from nature."  He also holds that the institution will finally be abolished when all iniquity shall disappear, and God shall be all in all.336

The church exerted her great moral power not so much towards the abolition of slavery as the amelioration and removal of the evils connected with it. Many provincial Synods dealt with the subject, at least incidentally. The legal right of holding slaves was never called in question, and slaveholders were in good and regular standing. Even convents held slaves, though in glaring inconsistency with their professed principle of equality and brotherhood. Pope Gregory the Great, one of the most humane of the popes, presented bondservants from his own estates to convents, and exerted all his influence to recover a fugitive slave of his brother.337  A reform Synod of Pavia, over which Pope Benedict VIII., one of the forerunners of Hildebrand, presided (A.D. 1018), enacted that sons and daughters of clergymen, whether from free-women or slaves, whether from legal wives or concubines, are the property of the church, and should never be emancipated.338  No pope has ever declared slavery incompatible with Christianity. The church was strongly conservative, and never encouraged a revolutionary or radical movement looking towards universal emancipation.

But, on the other hand, the Christian spirit worked silently, steadily and irresistibly in the direction of emancipation. The church, as the organ of that spirit, proclaimed ideas and principles which, in their legitimate working, must root out ultimately both slavery and tyranny, and bring in a reign of freedom, love, and peace. She humbled the master and elevated the slave, and reminded both of their common origin and destiny. She enjoined in all her teaching the gentle and humane treatment of slaves, and enforced it by the all-powerful motives derived from the love of Christ, the common redemption and moral brotherhood of men. She opened her houses of worship as asylums to fugitive slaves, and surrendered them to their masters only on promise of pardon.339  She protected the freedmen in the enjoyment of their liberty. She educated sons of slaves for the priesthood, with the permission of their masters, but required emancipation before ordination.340  Marriages of freemen with slaves were declared valid if concluded with the knowledge of the condition of the latter.341  Slaves could not be forced to labor on Sundays. This was a most important and humane protection of the right to rest and worship.342  No Christian was permitted by the laws of the church to sell a slave to foreign lands, or to a Jew or heathen. Gregory I. prohibited the Jews within the papal jurisdiction to keep Christian slaves, which he considered an outrage upon the Christian name. Nevertheless even clergymen sometimes sold Christian slaves to Jews. The tenth Council of Toledo (656 or 657) complains of this practice, protests against it with Bible passages, and reminds the Christians that "the slaves were redeemed by the blood of Christ, and that Christians should rather buy than sell them."343  Individual emancipation was constantly encouraged as a meritorious work of charity well pleasing to God, and was made a solemn act. The master led the slave with a torch around the altar, and with his hands on the altar pronounced the act of liberation in such words as these: "For fear of Almighty God, and for the care of my soul I liberate thee;" or: "In the name and for the love of God I do free this slave from the bonds of slavery."

Occasionally a feeble voice was raised against the institution itself, especially from monks who were opposed to all worldly possession, and felt the great inconsistency of convents holding slave-property. Theodore of the Studium forbade his convent to do this, but on the ground that secular possessions and marriage were proper only for laymen.344  A Synod of Chalons, held between 644 and 650, at which thirty-eight bishops and six episcopal representatives were present, prohibited the selling of Christian slaves outside of the kingdom of Clovis, from fear that they might fall into the power of pagans or Jews, and he introduces this decree with the significant words: "The highest piety and religion demand that Christians should be redeemed entirely from the bond of servitude."345  By limiting the power of sale, slave-property was raised above ordinary property, and this was a step towards abolishing this property itself by legitimate means.

Under the combined influences of Christianity, civilization, and oeconomic and political considerations, the slave trade was forbidden, and slavery gradually changed into serfdom, and finally abolished all over Europe and North America. Where the spirit of Christ is there is liberty.

Notes.

In Europe serfdom continued till the eighteenth century, in Russia even till 1861, when it was abolished by the Czar Alexander II. In the United States, the freest country in the world, strange to say, negro slavery flourished and waxed fat under the powerful protection of the federal constitution, the fugitive slave-law, the Southern state-laws, and "King Cotton," until it went out in blood (1861–65) at a cost far exceeding the most liberal compensation which Congress might and ought to have made for a peaceful emancipation. But passion ruled over reason, self-interest over justice, and politics over morals and religion. Slavery still lingers in nominally Christian countries of South America, and is kept up with the accursed slave-trade under Mohammedan rule in Africa, but is doomed to disappear from the bounds of civilization.

§ 78. Feuds and Private Wars. The Truce of God.

A. Kluckhohn: Geschichte des Gottesfriedens. Leipzig 1857.

Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force. Essays on the Wager of Law—the Wager of Battle—the Ordeal—Torture. Phila. 1866 (407 pages).

Among all barbarians, individual injury is at once revenged on the person of the enemy; and the family or tribe to which the parties belong identify themselves with the quarrel till the thirst for blood is satiated. Hence the feuds346 and private wars, or deadly quarrels between families and clans. The same custom of self-help and unbridled passion prevails among the Mohammedan Arabs to this day.

The influence of Christianity was to confine the responsibility for a crime to its author, and to substitute orderly legal process for summary private vengeance. The sixteenth Synod of Toledo (693) forbade duels and private feuds.347  The Synod of Poitiers, A.D. 1000, resolved that all controversies should hereafter be adjusted by law and not by force.348  The belligerent individuals or tribes were exhorted to reconciliation by a sealed agreement, and the party which broke the peace was excommunicated. A Synod of Limoges in 1031 used even the more terrible punishment of the interdict against the bloody feuds.

These sporadic efforts prepared the way for one of the most benevolent institutions of the middle ages, the so-called "Peace" or "Truce of God."349  It arose in Aquitania in France during or soon after a terrible famine in 1033, which increased the number of murders (even for the satisfaction of hunger) and inflicted untold misery upon the people. Then the bishops and abbots, as if moved by divine inspiration (hence "the Peace of God"), united in the resolution that all feuds should cease from Wednesday evening till Monday morning (a feriae quartae vespera usque ad secundam feriam, incipiente luce) on pain of excommunication.350  In 1041 the archbishop Raimbald of Arles, the bishops Benedict of Avignon and Nitard of Nice, and the abbot Odilo of Clugny issued in their name and in the name of the French episcopate an encyclical letter to the Italian bishops and clergy, in which they solemnly implore them to keep the heaven-sent Treuga Dei, already introduced in Gaul, namely, to observe peace between neighbors, friends or foes on four days of the week, namely, on Thursday, on account of Christ’s ascension, on Friday on account of his crucifixion, on Saturday in memory of his burial, on Sunday in memory of his resurrection. They add: "All who love this Treuga Dei we bless and absolve; but those who oppose it we anathematize and exclude from the church. He who punishes a disturber of the Peace of God shall be acquitted of guilt and blessed by all Christians as a champion of the cause of God."

The peace-movement spread through all Burgundy and France, and was sanctioned by the Synods of Narbonne (1054), Gerundum in Spain (1068), Toulouse (1068), Troyes (1093), Rouen (1096), Rheims (1136), the Lateran (1139 and 1179), etc. The Synod of Clermont (1095), under the lead of Pope Urban II., made the Truce of God the general law of the church. The time of the Truce was extended to the whole period from the first of Advent to Epiphany, from Ashwednesday to the close of the Easter week, and from Ascension to the close of the week of Pentecost; also to the various festivals and their vigils. The Truce was announced by the ringing of bells.351

§ 79. The Ordeal.

Grimm: Deutsche Rechtsalterthömer, Göttingen 1828, p. 908 sqq. Hildenbrand: Die Purgatio canonica et vulgaris, Mönchen 1841. Unger: Der gerichtliche Zweikampf, Göttingen 1847. Philipps: Ueber die Ordalien, Mönchen 1847. Dahn: Studien zur Gesch. der Germ. Gottesurtheile, Mönchen 1867. Pfalz: Die german. Ordalien, Leipz. 1865. Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force, Philad. 1866, p. 175–280. (I have especially used Lea, who gives ample authorities for his statements.)  For synodical legislation on ordeals see Hefele, Vols. III. and IV.

Another heathen custom with which the church had to deal, is the so-called Judgment of God or Ordeal, that is, a trial of guilt or innocence by a direct appeal to God through nature.352  It prevailed in China, Japan, India,  Egypt (to a less extent in Greece and Rome), and among the barbaric races throughout Europe.353

The ordeal reverses the correct principle that a man must be held to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty, and throws the burden of proof upon the accused instead of the accuser. It is based on the superstitious and presumptuous belief that the divine Ruler of the universe will at any time work a miracle for the vindication of justice when man in his weakness cannot decide, and chooses to relieve himself of responsibility by calling heaven to his aid. In the Carlovingian Capitularies the following passage occurs: "Let doubtful cases be determined by the judgment of God. The judges may decide that which they clearly know, but that which they cannot know shall be reserved for the divine judgment. He whom God has reserved for his own judgment may not be condemned by human means."

The customary ordeals in the middle ages were water-ordeals and fire-ordeals; the former were deemed plebeian, the latter (as well as the duel), patrician. The one called to mind the punishment of the deluge and of Pharaoh in the Red Sea; the other, the future punishment of hell. The  water-ordeals were either by hot water,354  or by cold water;355 the fire-ordeals were either by hot iron,356 or by pure fire.357  The person accused or suspected of a crime was exposed to the danger of death or serious injury by one of these elements: if he escaped unhurt—if he plunged his arm to the elbow into boiling water, or walked barefoot upon heated plough-shares, or held a burning ball of iron in his hand, without injury, he was supposed to be declared innocent by a miraculous interposition of God, and discharged; otherwise he was punished.

To the ordeals belongs also the judicial duel or battle ordeal. It was based on the old superstition that God always gives victory to the innocent.358  It was usually allowed only to freemen. Aged and sick persons, women, children, and ecclesiastics could furnish substitutes, but not always. Mediaeval panegyrists trace the judicial duel back to Cain and Abel. It prevailed among the ancient Danes, Irish, Burgundians, Franks, and Lombards, but was unknown among the Anglo-Saxons before William the Conqueror, who introduced it into England. It was used also in international litigation. The custom died out in the sixteenth century.359

The mediaeval church, with her strong belief in the miraculous, could not and did not generally oppose the ordeal, but she baptized it and made it a powerful means to enforce her authority over the ignorant and superstitious people she had to deal with. Several councils at Mainz in 880, at Tribur on the Rhine in 895, at Tours in 925, at Mainz in 1065, at Auch in 1068, at Grau in 1099, recognized and recommended it; the clergy, bishops, and archbishops, as Hincmar of Rheims, and Burckhardt of Worms, and even popes like Gregory VII. and Calixtus II. lent it their influence. St. Bernard approved of the cold-water process for the conviction of heretics, and St. Ivo of Chartres admitted that the incredulity of mankind sometimes required an appeal to the verdict of Heaven, though such appeals were not commanded by, the law of God. As late as 1215 the ferocious inquisitor Conrad of Marburg freely used the hot iron against eighty persons in Strassburg alone who were suspected of the Albigensian heresy. The clergy prepared the combatants by fasting and prayer, and special liturgical formula; they presided over the trial and pronounced the sentence. Sometimes fraud was practiced, and bribes offered and taken to divert the course of justice. Gregory of Tours mentions the case of a deacon who, in a conflict with an Arian priest, anointed his arm before he stretched it into the boiling caldron; the Arian discovered the trick, charged him with using magic arts, and declared the trial null and void; but a Catholic priest, Jacintus from Ravenna, stepped forward, and by catching the ring from the bubbling caldron, triumphantly vindicated the orthodox faith to the admiring multitude, declaring that the water felt cold at the bottom and agreeably warm at the top. When the Arian boldly repeated the experiment, his flesh was boiled off the bones up to the elbow.360

The Church even invented and substituted new ordeals, which were less painful and cruel than the old heathen forms, but shockingly profane according to our notions. Profanity and superstition are closely allied. These new methods are the ordeal of the cross, and the ordeal of the eucharist. They were especially used by ecclesiastics.

The ordeal of the cross361 is simply a trial of physical strength. The plaintiff and the defendant, after appropriate religious ceremonies, stood with uplifted arm before a cross while divine service was performed, and victory depended on the length of endurance. Pepin first prescribed this trial, by a Capitulary of 752, in cases of application by a wife for divorce. Charlemagne prescribed it in cases of territorial disputes which might arise between his sons (806). But Louis-le-Débonnaire, soon after the death of Charlemagne, forbade its continuance at a Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 816, because this abuse of the cross tended to bring the Christian symbol into contempt. His son, the Emperor Lothair, renewed the prohibition. A trace of this ordeal is left in the proverbial allusion to an experimentum crucis.

A still worse profanation was the ordeal of consecrated bread in the eucharist with the awful adjuration: "May this body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be a judgment to thee this day."362  It was enjoined by a Synod of Worms, in 868, upon bishops and priests who were accused of a capital crime, such as murder, adultery, theft, sorcery. It was employed by Cautinus, bishop of Auvergne, at the close of the sixth century, who administered the sacrament to a Count Eulalius, accused of patricide, and acquitted him after he had partaken of it without harm. King Lothair and his nobles took the sacrament in proof of his separation from Walrada, his mistress, but died soon afterwards at Piacenza of a sudden epidemic, and this was regarded by Pope Hadrian II. as a divine punishment. Rudolfus Glaber records the case of a monk who boldly received the consecrated host, but forthwith confessed his crime when the host slipped out of his navel, white and pure as before. Sibicho, bishop of Speier, underwent the trial to clear himself of the charge of adultery (1049). Even Pope Hildebrand made use of it in self-defense against Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa, in 1077. "Lest I should seem," he said "to rely rather on human than divine testimony, and that I may remove from the minds of all, by immediate satisfaction, every scruple, behold this body of our Lord which I am about to take. Let it be to me this day a test of my innocence, and may the Omnipotent God this day by his judgment absolve me of the accusations if I am innocent, or let me perish by sudden death, if guilty."  Then the pope calmly took the wafer, and called upon the trembling emperor to do the same, but Henry evaded it on the ground of the absence of both his friends and his enemies, and promised instead to submit to a trial by the imperial diet.

The purgatorial oath, when administered by wonder-working relics, was also a kind of ordeal of ecclesiastical origin. A false oath on the black cross in the convent of Abington, made from the nails of the crucifixion, and derived from the Emperor Constantine, was fatal to the malefactor. In many cases these relics were the means of eliciting confessions which could not have been obtained by legal devices.

The genuine spirit of Christianity, however, urged towards an abolition rather than improvement of all these ordeals. Occasionally such voices of protest were raised, though for a long time without effect. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, in the beginning of the sixth century, remonstrated with Gundobald for giving prominence to the battle-ordeal in the Burgundian code. St. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, before the middle of the ninth century (he died about 840) attacked the duel and the ordeal in two special treatises, which breathe the gospel spirit of humanity, fraternity and peace in advance of his age.363  He says that the ordeals are falsely called judgments of God; for God never prescribed them, never approved them, never willed them; but on the contrary, he commands us, in the law and the gospel, to love our neighbor as ourselves, and has appointed judges for the settlement of controversies among men. He warns against a presumptuous interpretation of providence whose counsels are secret and not to be revealed by water and fire. Several popes, Leo IV. (847–855), Nicolas I. (858–867), Stephen VI. (885–891), Sylvester II. (999–1003), Alexander II. (1061–1073), Alexander III. (1159–1181), Coelestin III. (1191–1198), Honorius III. (1222), and the fourth Lateran Council (1215), condemned more or less clearly the superstitious and frivolous provocation of miracles.364  It was by their influence, aided by secular legislation, that these God-tempting ordeals gradually disappeared during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the underlying idea survived in the torture which for a long time took the place of the ordeal.

§ 80. The Torture.

Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force (Philad. 1866), p. 281–391.  Paul Lacroix: Manners, Customs, and Dress of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance Period (transl. from the French, N. York 1874), p. 407–434. Brace. Gesta Christi, ch. XV.

The torture rests on the same idea as the ordeal.365  It is an attempt to prove innocence or guilt by imposing a physical pain which no man can bear without special aid from God. When the ordeal had fulfilled its mission, the torture was substituted as a more convenient mode and better fitted for an age less superstitious and more sceptical, but quite as despotic and intolerant. It forms one of the darkest chapters in history. For centuries this atrocious system, opposed to the Mosaic legislation and utterly revolting to every Christian and humane feeling, was employed in civilized Christian countries, and sacrificed thousands of human beings, innocent as well as guilty, to torments worse than death.

The torture was unknown among the Hindoos and the Semitic nations, but recognized by the ancient Greeks and Romans, as a regular legal proceeding. It was originally confined to slaves who were deemed unfit to bear voluntary testimony, and to require force to tell the truth.366  Despotic emperors extended it to freemen, first in cases of crimen laesae majestatis. Pontius Pilate employed the scourge and the crown of thorns in the trial of our Saviour. Tiberius exhausted his ingenuity in inventing tortures for persons suspected of conspiracy, and took delight in their agony. The half-insane Caligula enjoyed the cruel spectacle at his dinner-table. Nero resorted to this cruelty to extort from the Christians the confession of the crime of incendiarism, as a pretext of his persecution, which he intensified by the diabolical invention of covering the innocent victims with pitch and burning them as torches in his gardens. The younger Pliny employed the torture against the Christians in Bithynia as imperial governor. Diocletian, in a formal edict, submitted all professors of the hated religion to this degrading test. The torture was gradually developed into a regular system and embodied in the Justinian Code. Certain rules were prescribed, and exemptions made in favor of the learned professions, especially the clergy, nobles, children below fourteen, women during pregnancy, etc. The system was thus sanctioned by the highest legal authorities. But opinions as to its efficiency differed. Augustus pronounced the torture the best form of proof. Cicero alternately praises and discredits it. Ulpian, with more wisdom, thought it unsafe, dangerous, and deceitful.

Among the Northern barbarians the torture was at first unknown except for slaves. The common law of England does not recognize it. Crimes were regarded only as injuries to individuals, not to society, and the chief resource for punishment was the private vengeance of the injured party. But if a slave, who was a mere piece of property, was suspected of a theft, his master would flog him till he confessed. All doubtful questions among freemen were decided by sacramental purgation and the various forms of ordeal. But in Southern Europe, where the Roman population gave laws to the conquering barbarians, the old practice continued, or revived with the study of the Roman law. In Southern France and in Spain the torture was an unbroken ancestral custom. Alfonso the Wise, in the thirteenth century, in his revision of Spanish jurisprudence, known as Las Siete Partidas, retained the torture, but declared the person of man to be the noblest thing on earth,367 and required a voluntary confession to make the forced confession valid. Consequently the prisoner after torture was brought before the judge and again interrogated; if be recanted, he was tortured a second, in grave cases, a third time; if he persisted in his confession, he was condemned. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the system of torture, was generally introduced in Europe, and took the place of the ordeal.

The church, true to her humanizing instincts, was at first hostile to the whole system of forcing evidence. A Synod of Auxerre (585 or 578) prohibited the clergy to witness a torture.368  Pope Gregory I. denounced as worthless a confession extorted by incarceration and hunger.369  Nicolas I. forbade the new converts in Bulgaria to extort confession by stripes and by pricking with a pointed iron, as contrary to all law, human and divine (866)370 Gratian lays down the general rule that "confessio cruciatibus extorquenda non est."

But at a later period, in dealing with heretics, the Roman church unfortunately gave the sanction of her highest authority to the use of the torture, and thus betrayed her noblest instincts and holiest mission. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) inspired the horrible crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, and the establishment of the infamous ecclesiastico-political courts of Inquisition. These courts found the torture the most effective means of punishing and exterminating heresy, and invented new forms of refined cruelty worse than those of the persecutors of heathen Rome. Pope Innocent IV., in his instruction for the guidance of the Inquisition in Tuscany and Lombardy, ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices (1252).371  This was an ominous precedent, which did more harm to the reputation of the papacy than the extermination of any number of heretics could possibly do it good. In Italy, owing to the restriction of the ecclesiastical power by the emperor, the inquisition could not fully display its murderous character. In Germany its introduction was resisted by the people and the bishops, and Conrad of Marburg, the appointed Inquisitor, was murdered (1233). But in Spain it had every assistance from the crown and the people, which to this day take delight in the bloody spectacles of bullfights. The Spanish Inquisition was established in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by papal sanction (1478), reached its fearful height under the terrible General Inquisitor Torquemada (since 1483), and in its zeal to exterminate Moors, Jews, and heretics, committed such fearful excesses that even popes protested against the abuse of power, although with little effect. The Inquisition carried the system of torture to its utmost limits. After the Reformation it was still employed in trials of sorcery and witchcraft until the revolution of opinion in the eighteenth century swept it out of existence, together with cruel forms of punishment. This victory is due to the combined influence of justice, humanity, and tolerance.

Notes.

I. "The whole system of the Inquisition," says Lea (p. 331), "was such as to render the resort to torture inevitable. Its proceedings were secret; the prisoner was carefully kept in ignorance of the exact charges against him, and of the evidence upon which they were based. He was presumed to be guilty, and his judges bent all their energies to force him to confess. To accomplish this, no means were too base or too cruel. Pretended sympathizers were to be let into his dungeon, whose affected friendship might entrap him into an unwary admission; officials armed with fictitious evidence were directed to frighten him with assertions of the testimony obtained against him from supposititious witnesses; and no resources of fraud or guile were to be spared in overcoming the caution and resolution of the poor wretch whose mind had been carefully weakened by solitude, suffering, hunger, and terror. From this to the rack and estrapade the step was easily taken, and was not long delayed."  For details see the works on the Inquisition. Llorente (Hist. crit. de l’Inquisition d’Espagne IV. 252, quoted by Gieseler III. 409 note 11) states that from 1478 to the end of the administration of Torquemada in 1498, when he resigned, "8800 persons were burned alive, 6500 in effigy, and 90,004 punished with different kinds of penance. Under the second general-inquisitor, the Dominican, Diego Deza, from 1499 to 1506, 1664 persons were burned alive, 832 in effigy, 32,456 punished. Under the third general-inquisitor, the Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, Francis Ximenes de Cisneros, from 1507 to 1517, 2536 were burned alive, 1368 in effigy, 47,263 reconciled."  Llorente was a Spanish priest and general secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid (from 1789–1791), and had access to all the archives, but his figures, as he himself admits, are based upon probable calculations, and have in some instances been disproved. He states, e.g. that in the first year of Torquemada’s administration 2000 persons were burned, and refers to the Jesuit Mariana (History of Spain), but Mariana means that during the whole administration of Torquemada "duo millia crematos igne."  See Hefele, Cardinal Ximenes, p. 346. The sum total of persons condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition during the 330 years of its existence, is stated to be 30,000. Hefele (Kirchenlexikon, v. 656) thinks this sum exaggerated, yet not surprising when compared with the number of witches that were burnt in Germany alone. The Spanish Inquisition pronounced its last sentence of death in the year 1781, was abolished under the French rule of Joseph Napoleon, Dec. 4, 1808, restored by Ferdinand VII. 1814, again abolished 1820, and (after another attempt to restore it) in 1834. Catholic writers, like Balmez (I.c. chs. xxxvi. and xxxvii.) and Hefele (Cardinal Ximenes, p. 257–389, and in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchen-Lexicon, vol. V. 648–659), charge Llorente with inaccuracy in his figures, and defend the Catholic church against the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, as this was a political rather than ecclesiastical institution, and had at least the good effect of preventing religious wars. But the Inquisition was instituted with the express sanction of Pope Sixtus IV. (Nov. 1, 1478), was controlled by the Dominican order and by Cardinals, and as to the benefit, the peace of the grave-yard is worse than war. Hefele adds, however (V. 657): "Nach all’ diesen Bemerkungen sind wir öbrigens weit entfernt, der Spanichen Inquisition an sich das Wort reden zu wollen, vielmehr bestreiten wir der weltlichen Gewalt durchaus die Befugniss, das Gewissen zu knebeln, und sind von Herzensgrund aus jedem staatlichen Religionszwang abhold, mag er von einem Torquemada in der Dominikanerkutte, oder von einem Bureaucraten in der Staatsuniform ansgehen. Aber das wollten wir zeigen, dass die Inquisition das schaendliche Ungeheuer nicht war, wozu es Parteileidenschaft und Unwissenheit häufig stempeln wollten."

II. The torture was abolished in England after 1640, in Prussia 1740, in Tuscany 1786, in France 1789, in Russia 1801, in various German states partly earlier, partly later (between 1740 and 1831), in Japan 1873. Thomasius, Hommel, Voltaire, Howard, used their influence against it. Exceptional cases of judicial torture occurred in the nineteenth century in Naples, Palermo, Roumania (1868), and Zug (1869). See Lea, p. 389 sqq., and the chapter on Witchcraft in Lecky’s History of Rationalism (vol. I. 27–154). The extreme difficulty of proof in trials of witchcraft seemed to make a resort to the torture inevitable. English witchcraft reached its climax during the seventeenth century, and was defended by King James I., and even such wise men as Sir Matthew Hale, Sir Thomas Browne, and Richard Baxter. When it was on the decline in England it broke out afresh in Puritan New England, created a perfect panic, and led to the execution of twenty-seven persons. In Scotland it lingered still longer, and as late as 1727 a woman was burnt there for witchcraft. In the Canton Glarus a witch was executed in 1782, and another near Danzig in Prussia in 1836. Lecky concludes his chapter with an eloquent tribute to those poor women, who died alone, hated, and unpitied, with the prospect of exchanging their torments on earth with eternal torments in hell.

I add a noble passage on torture from Brace’s Gesta Christi, p. 274 sq. "Had the ’Son of Man’ been in body upon the earth during the Middle Ages, hardly one wrong and injustice would have wounded his pure soul like the system of torture. To see human beings, with the consciousness of innocence, or professing and believing the purest truths, condemned without proof to the most harrowing agonies, every groan or admission under pain used against them, their confessions distorted, their nerves so racked that they pleaded their guilt in order to end their tortures, their last hours tormented by false ministers of justice or religion, who threaten eternal as well as temporal damnation, and all this going on for ages, until scarce any innocent felt themselves safe under this mockery of justice and religion—all this would have seemed to the Founder of Christianity as the worst travesty of his faith and the most cruel wound to humanity. It need not be repeated that his spirit in each century struggled with this tremendous evil, and inspired the great friends of humanity who labored against it. The main forces in mediaeval society, even those which tended towards its improvement, did not touch this abuse. Roman law supported it. Stoicism was indifferent to it; Greek literature did not affect it; feudalism and arbitrary power encouraged a practice which they could use for their own ends; and even the hierarchy and a State Church so far forgot the truths they professed as to employ torture to support the ’Religion of Love.’  But against all these powers were the words of Jesus, bidding men ’Love your enemies’ ’Do good to them that despitefully use you!’ and the like commands. working everywhere on individual souls, heard from pulpits and in monasteries, read over by humble believers, and slowly making their way against barbaric passion and hierarchic cruelty. Gradually, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the books containing the message of Jesus circulated among all classes, and produced that state of mind and heart in which torture could not be used on a fellow-being, and in which such an abuse and enormity as the Inquisition was hurled to the earth."

§ 81. Christian Charity.

See the Lit. in vol. II. § 88, p. 311 sq. Chastel: Études historiques sur l’influence de la charité (Paris 1853, English transl., Philad. 1857—for the first three centuries). Häser: Geschichte der christl. Krankenpflege und Pflegerschaften (Berlin 1857). Ratzinger: Gesch. der christl. Armenpflege (Freib. 1869, a new ed. announced 1884). Morin: Histoire critique de la pauvreté (in the "Mémoirs de l’ Académie des inscript." IV). Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, ch. 4th (II. 62 sqq.). Uhlhorn: Christian Charity in the Ancient Church (Stuttgart, 1881; Engl. transl. Lond. and N. York 1883), Book III., and his Die Christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 1884. (See also his art. in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift för K. G." IV. 1). B. Riggenbach: Das Armenwesen der Reformation (Basel 1883). Also the articles Armenpflege in Herzog’s "Encycl."2  vol. I. 648–663; in Wetzer and Welte’s "Kirchenlex."2 vol. I. 1354–1375; Paupérisme in Lichtenberger X. 305–312; and Hospitals in Smith and Cheetham I. 785–789.

From the cruelties of superstition and bigotry we gladly turn to the queen of Christian graces, that "most excellent gift of charity," which never ceased to be exercised wherever the story of Christ’s love for sinners was told and his golden rule repeated. It is a "bond of’ perfectness" that binds together all ages and sections of Christendom. It comforted the Roman empire in its hoary age and agonies of death; and it tamed the ferocity of the barbarian invaders. It is impossible to overestimate the moral effect of the teaching and example of Christ, and of St. Paul’s seraphic praise of charity upon the development of this cardinal virtue in all ages and countries. We bow with reverence before the truly apostolic succession of those missionaries, bishops, monks, nuns, kings, nobles, and plain men and women, rich or poor, known and unknown, who, from gratitude to Christ and pure love to their fellow-men, sacrificed home, health, wealth, life itself, to humanize and Christianize savages, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to entertain the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to call on the prisoner, to comfort the dying. We admire and honor also those exceptional saints who, in literal fulfillment or misunderstanding of the Saviour’s advice to the rich youth, and in imitation of the first disciples at Jerusalem, sold all their possessions and gave them to the poor that they might become perfect. The admiration is indeed diminished, but not destroyed, if in many cases a large measure of refined selfishness was mixed with self-denial, and when the riches of heaven were the sole or chief inducement for choosing voluntary poverty on earth.

The supreme duty of Christian charity was inculcated by all faithful pastors and teachers of the gospel from the beginning. In the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages it was exercised by regular contributions on the Lord’s day, and especially at the communion and the agape connected with it. Every congregation was a charitable society, and took care of its widows and orphans, of strangers and prisoners, and sent help to distant congregations in need.372

After Constantine, when the masses of the people flocked into the church, charity assumed an institutional form, and built hospitals and houses of refuge for the strangers, the poor, the sick, the aged, the orphans.373  They appear first in the East, but soon afterwards also in the West. Fabiola founded a hospital in Rome, Pammachius one in the Portus Romanus, Paulinus one in Nola. At the time of Gregory I. there were several hospitals in Rome; he mentions also hospitals in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. These institutions were necessary in the greatly enlarged sphere of the church, and the increase of poverty, distress, and disaster which at last overwhelmed the Roman empire. They may in many cases have served purposes of ostentation, superseded or excused private charity, encouraged idleness, and thus increased rather than diminished pauperism. But these were abuses to which the best human institutions are subject.

Private charity continued to be exercised in proportion to the degree of vitality in the church. The great fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries set an illustrious example of plain living and high thinking, of self-denial and liberality, and were never weary in their sermons and writings in enjoining the duty of charity. St. Basil himself superintended his extensive hospital at Caesarea, and did not shrink from contact with lepers; St. Gregory Nazianzen exhorted the brethren to be "a god to the unfortunate by imitating the mercy of God," for there is "nothing so divine as beneficence;" St. Chrysostom founded several hospitals in Constantinople, incessantly appealed to the rich in behalf of the poor, and directed the boundless charities of the noble widow Olympias. St. Ambrose, at once a proud Roman and an humble Christian, comforted the paupers in Milan, while he rebuked an emperor for his cruelty; Paulinus of Nola lived in a small house with his wife, Theresiâ and used his princely wealth for the building of a monastery, the relief of the needy, the ransoming of prisoners, and when his means were exhausted, he exchanged himself with the son of a widow to be carried away into Africa; the great Augustin declined to accept as a present a better coat than he might give in turn to a brother in need; St. Jerome founded a hospice in Bethlehem from the proceeds of his property, and induced Roman ladies of proud ancestry to sell their jewels, silk dresses, and palaces, for the poor, and to exchange a life of luxurious ease for a life of ascetic self-denial. Those examples shone like brilliant stars through the darkness of the middle ages.

But the same fathers, it must be added, handed to the middle ages also the disturbing doctrine of the meritorious nature and atoning efficacy of charity, as "covering a multitude of sins," and its influence even upon the dead in purgatory. These errors greatly stimulated and largely vitiated that virtue, and do it to this day.374

The Latin word caritas, which originally denotes dearness or costliness (from carus, dear), then esteem, affection, assumed in the church the more significant meaning of benevolence and beneficence, or love in active exercise, especially to the poor and suffering among our fellow-men. The sentiment and the deed must not be separated, and the gift of the hand derives its value from the love of the heart. Though the gifts are unequal, the benevolent love should be the same, and the widow’s mite is as much blessed by God as the princely donation of the rich. Ambrose compares benevolence in the intercourse of men with men to the sun in its relation to the earth. "Let the gifts of the wealthy," says another father, "be more abundant, but let not the poor be behind him in love."  Very often, however, charity was contracted into mere almsgiving. Praying, fasting, and almsgiving were regarded (as also among the Jews and Mohammedans) as the chief works of piety; the last was put highest. For the sake of charity it is right to break the fast or to interrupt devotion.

Pope Gregory the Great best represents the mediaeval charity with its ascetic self-denial, its pious superstitions and utilitarian ingredients. He lived in that miserable transition period when the old Roman civilization was crumbling to pieces and the new civilization was not yet built up on its ruins. "We see nothing but sorrow," he says, "we hear nothing but complaints. Ah, Rome! once the mistress of the world, where is the senate? where the people?  The buildings are in ruins, the walls are falling. Everywhere the sword!  Everywhere death!  I am weary of life!  "But charity remained as an angel of comfort. It could not prevent the general collapse, but it dried the tears and soothed the sorrows of individuals. Gregory was a father to the poor. He distributed every month cart-loads of corn, oil, wine, and meat among them. What the Roman emperors did from policy to keep down insurrection, this pope did from love to Christ and the poor. He felt personally guilty when a man died of starvation in Rome. He set careful and conscientious men over the Roman hospitals, and required them to submit regular accounts of the management of funds. He furnished the means for the founding of a Xenodochium in Jerusalem. He was the chief promoter of the custom of dividing the income of the church into four equal parts, one for the bishop, one for the rest of the clergy, one for the church buildings, one for the poor. At the same time he was a strong believer in the meritorious efficacy of almsgiving for the living and the dead. He popularized Augustin’s notion of purgatory, supported it by monkish fables, and introduced masses for the departed (without the so-called thirties, i.e. thirty days after death). He held that God remits the guilt and eternal punishment, but not the temporal punishment of sin, which must be atoned for in this life, or in purgatory. Thus be explained the passage about the fire (1 Cor. 3:11) which consumes wood, hay, and stubble, i.e. light and trifling sins such as useless talk, immoderate laughter, mismanagement of property. Hence, the more alms the better, both for our own salvation and for the relief of our departed relatives and friends. Almsgiving is the wing of repentance, and paves the way to heaven. This idea ruled supreme during the middle ages.

Among the barbarians in the West charitable institutions were introduced by missionaries in connection with convents, which were expected to exercise hospitality to strangers and give help to the poor. The Irish missionaries cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the heathen to whom they preached the gospel, and founded "Hospitalia Scotorum."  The Council of Orleans, 549, shows acquaintance with Xenodochia in the towns. There was a large one at Lyons. Chrodegang of Metz and Alcuin exhort the bishops to found institutions of charity, or at least to keep a guest-room for the care of the sick and the stranger. A Synod at Aix in 815 ordered that an infirmary should be built near the church and in every convent. The Capitularies of Charlemagne extend to charitable institutions the same privileges as to churches and monasteries, and order that "strangers, pilgrims, and paupers" be duly entertained according to the canons.

The hospitals were under the immediate supervision of the bishop or a superintendent appointed by him. They were usually dedicated to the Holy Spirit, who was represented in the form of a dove in some conspicuous place of the building. They received donations and legacies, and were made the trustees of landed estates. The church of the middle ages was the largest property-holder, but her very wealth and prosperity became a source of temptation and corruption, which in the course of time loudly called for a reformation.

After we have made all reasonable deduction for a large amount of selfish charity which looked to the donor rather than the recipient, and for an injudicious profusion of alms which encouraged pauperism instead of enabling the poor to help themselves by honest work, we still have left one of the noblest chapters in the history of morals to which no other religion can furnish a parallel. For the regular gratuitous distribution of grain to the poor heathen of Rome, who under Augustus rose to 200,000, and under the Antonines to 500,000, was made from the public treasury and dictated by selfish motives of state policy; it called forth no gratitude; it failed of its object, and proved, together with slavery and the gladiatorial shows for the amusement of the people, one of the chief demoralizing influences of the empire.375

Finally, we must not forget that the history of true Christian charity remains to a large part unwritten. Its power is indeed felt everywhere and every day; but it loves to do its work silently without a thought of the merit of reward. It follows human misery into all its lonely griefs with personal sympathy as well as material aid, and finds its own happiness in promoting the happiness of others. There is luxury in doing good for its own sake. "When thou doest alms," says the Lord, "let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee."376

Notes.

Uhlhorn closes his first work with this judgment of mediaeval charity (p. 396 sq. of the English translation): "No period has done so much for the poor as the middle ages. What wholesale distribution of alms, what an abundance of institutions of the most various kinds, what numbers of hospitals for all manner of sufferers, what a series of ministrant orders, male and female, knightly and civil, what self-sacrifice and devotedness!  In the mediaeval period all that we have observed germinating in the ancient Church, first attains its maturity. The middle ages, however, also appropriated whatever tendencies existed toward a one-sided and unsound development. Church care of the poor entirely perished, and all charity became institutional; monks and nuns, or members of the ministrant orders, took the place of the deacons—the diaconate died out. Charity became one-sidedly institutional and one-sidedly ecclesiastical. The church was the mediatrix of every exercise of charity, she became in fact the sole recipient, the sole bestower; for the main object of every work of mercy, of every distribution of alms, of every endowment, of all self-sacrifice in the service of the needy, was the giver’s own salvation. The transformation was complete. Men gave and ministered no longer for the sake of helping and serving the poor in Christ, but to obtain for themselves and theirs, merit, release from purgatory, a high degree of eternal happiness. The consequence was, that poverty was not contended with, but fostered, and beggary brought to maturity; so that notwithstanding the abundant donations, the various foundations, the well-endowed institutions, distress was after all not mastered. Nor is it mastered yet. "The poor ye have always with you" (John 12:8). Riggenbach (l.c.) maintains that in the middle ages hospitals were mere provision-houses (Versorgungshäuser), and that the Reformation first asserted the principle that they should be also houses of moral reform (Rettungshäuser and Heilanstalten).

Lecky, who devotes a part of the fourth chapter of his impartial humanitarian History of European Morals to this subject, comes to the following conclusion (II. 79, 85): "Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man, the principle of charity .... The greatest things are often those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of mankind, it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world. It has indissolubly united, in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed in every parish a religious minister who, whatever may be his other functions, has at least been officially charged with the superintendence of an organization of charity, and who finds in this office one of the most important as well as one of the most legitimate sources of his power."

CHAPTER VII.

MONASTICISM.

See the Lit. on Monasticism in vol. II. 387, and III. 147 sq.

§ 82. Use of Convents in the Middle Ages.

The monks were the spiritual nobility of the church, and represented a higher type of virtue in entire separation from the world and consecration to the kingdom of God. The patristic, ideal of piety passed over into the middle ages; it is not the scriptural nor the modern ideal, but one formed in striking contrast with preceding and surrounding heathen corruption. The monkish sanctity is a flight from the world rather than a victory over the world, an abstinence from marriage instead of a sanctification of marriage, chastity, outside rather than inside the order of nature, a complete suppression of the sensual passion in the place of its purification and control. But it had a powerful influence over the barbaric races, and was one of the chief converting and civilizing agencies. The Eastern monks lost themselves in idle contemplation and ascetic extravagances, which the Western climate made impossible; the Western monks were, upon the whole, more sober, practical, and useful. The Irish and Scotch convents became famous for their missionary zeal, and furnished founders of churches and patron saints of the people.

Convents were planted by the missionaries among all the barbarous nations of Europe, as fast as Christianity progressed. They received special privileges and endowments from princes, nobles, popes, and bishops. They offered a quiet retreat to men and women who were weary of the turmoil of life, or had suffered shipwreck of fortune or character, and cared for nothing but to save their souls. They exercised hospitality to strangers and travelers, and were a great blessing in times when traveling was difficult and dangerous.377  They were training schools of ascetic virtue, and the nurseries of saints. They saved the remnants of ancient civilization for future use. Every large convent had a library and a school. Scribes were employed in copying manuscripts of the ancient classics, of the Bible, and the writings of the fathers. To these quiet literary monks we are indebted for the preservation and transmission of nearly all the learning, sacred and secular, of ancient times. If they had done nothing else, they would be entitled to the lasting gratitude of the church and the world.

During the wild commotion and confusion of the ninth and tenth centuries, monastic discipline went into decay. Often the very richs of convents, which were the reward of industry and virtue, became a snare and a root of evil. Avaricious laymen (Abba-comites) seized the control and perpetuated it in their families. Even princesses received the titles and emoluments of abbesses.

§ 83. St. Benedict. St. Nilus. St. Romuald.

Yet even in this dark period there were a few shining lights.

St. Benedict of Aniane (750–821), of a distinguished family in the south of France, after serving at the court of Charlemagne, became disgusted with the world, entered a convent, founded a new one at Aniane after the strict rule of St. Benedict of Nursia, collected a library, exercised charity, especially during a famine, labored for the reform of monasticism, was entrusted by Louis the Pious with the superintendence of all the convents in Western France, and formed them into a "congregation," by bringing them under one rule. He attended the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817. Soon after his death (Feb. 12, 821) the fruits of his labors were destroyed, and the disorder became worse than before.378

St. Nilus the younger,379 of Greek descent, born at Rossano in Calabria380 (hence Nilus Rossanensis), enlightened the darkness of the tenth century. He devoted himself, after the death of his wife, about 940, to a solitary life, following the model of St. Anthony and St. Hilarion, and founded several convents in Southern Italy. He was often consulted by dignitaries, and answered, like St. Anthony, without respect of person. He boldly rebuked Pope Gregory V. and Emperor Otho III. for bad treatment of an archbishop. When the emperor afterwards offered him any favor he might ask, Nilus replied: "I ask nothing from you but that you would save your soul; for you must die like every other man, and render an account to God for all your good and evil deeds."  The emperor took the crown from his head, and begged the blessing of the aged monk. When a dissolute nobleman, who comforted himself with the example of Solomon, asked Nilus, whether that wise king was not saved, the monk replied: "We have nothing to do with Solomon’s fate; but to us it is said, ’Every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’  We do not read of Solomon that he ever repented like Manasseh."  To questions of idle curiosity he returned no answer, or he answered the fool according to his folly. So when one wished to know what kind of an apple Adam and Eve ate, to their ruin, he said that it was a crab-apple. In his old age he was driven from Calabria by invaders, and founded a little convent, Crypta Ferrata, near the famous Tusculum of Cicero. There he died peacefully when about ninety-six years old, in 1005.381

St. Romuald, the founder of the order of Camaldoli, was born early in the tenth century at Ravenna, of a rich and noble family, and entered the neighboring Benedictine convent of Classis, in his twentieth year, in order to atone, by a severe penance of forty days, for a murder which his father had committed against a relative in a dispute about property. He prayed and wept almost without ceasing. He spent three years in this convent, and afterwards led the life of a roaming hermit. He imposed upon himself all manner of self-mortification, to defeat the temptations of the devil. Among his devotions was the daily repetition of the Psalter from memory; a plain hermit, Marinus, near Venice, had taught him this mechanical performance and other ascetic exercises with the aid of blows. Wherever he went, he was followed by admiring disciples. He was believed to be endowed with the gift of prophecy and miracles, yet did not escape calumny. Emperor Otho III. paid him a visit in the year 1000 on an island near Ravenna. Romuald sent missionaries to heathen lands, and went himself to the border of Hungary with a number of pupils, but returned when he was admonished by a severe sickness that he was not destined for missionary life. He died in the convent Valle de Castro in 1027.382

According to Damiani, who wrote his life fifteen years after his death, Romuald lived one hundred and twenty years, twenty in the world, three in a convent, ninety-seven as a hermit.383

The most famous of Romuald’s monastic retreats is Campo Maldoli, or Camaldoli in the Appennines, near Arezzo in Tuscany, which he founded about 1009. It became, through the influence of Damiani, his eulogist and Hildebrand’s friend, the nucleus of a monastic order, which combined the cenobitic and eremitic life, and was distinguished by great severity. Pope Gregory XVI. belonged to this order.

§ 84. The Convent of Cluny.

Marrier and Duchesne: Bibliotheca Cluniacensis. Paris 1614 fol. Holsten.: Cod. Regul. Mon. II. 176. Lorain: Essay historique sur l’ abbaye de Cluny. Dijon 1839. Neander III. 417 sqq. 444 sq. Friedr. Hurter (Prot, minister in Schaffhausen, afterwards R. Cath.): Gesch. Papst Innocenz des Dritten (second ed. Hamb. 1844), vol. IV. pp. 22–55.

After the decay of monastic discipline during the ninth and tenth centuries, a reformation proceeded from the convent of Cluny in Burgundy, and affected the whole church.384

It was founded by the pious Duke William of Aquitania in 910, to the honor of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the basis of the rule of St. Benedict.

Count Bruno (d. 927) was the first abbot, and introduced severe discipline. His successor Odo (927–941), first a soldier, then a clergyman of learning, wisdom, and saintly character, became a reformer of several Benedictine convents. Neander praises his enlightened views on Christian life, and his superior estimate of the moral, as compared with the miraculous, power of Christianity. Aymardus (Aymard, 941–948), who resigned when he became blind, Majolus (Maieul to 994), who declined the papal crown, Odilo, surnamed "the Good" (to 1048), and Hugo (to 1109), continued in the same spirit. The last two exerted great influence upon emperors and popes, and inspired the reformation of the papacy and the church. It was at Cluny that Hildebrand advised Bishop Bruno of Toul (Leo IX.), who had been elected pope by Henry III., to seek first a regular election by the clergy in Rome; and thus foreshadowed his own future conflict with the imperial power. Odilo introduced the Treuga Dei and the festival of All Souls. Hugo, Hildebrand’s friend, ruled sixty years, and raised the convent to the summit of its fame.

Cluny was the centre (archimonasterium) of the reformed Benedictine convents, and its head was the chief abbot (archiabbas). It gave to the church many eminent bishops and three popes (Gregory VII., Urban II., and Pascal II.). In the time of its highest prosperity it ruled over two thousand monastic establishments. The daily life was regulated in all its details; silence was imposed for the greater part of the day, during which the monks communicated only by signs; strict obedience ruled within; hospitality and benevolence were freely exercised to the poor and to strangers, who usually exceeded the number of the monks. During a severe famine Odilo exhausted the magazines of the convent, and even melted the sacred vessels, and sold the ornaments of the church and a crown which Henry II. had sent him from Germany. The convent stood directly under the pope’s jurisdiction, and was highly favored with donations and privileges.385  The church connected with it was the largest and richest in France (perhaps in all Europe), and admired for its twenty-five altars, its bells, and its costly works of art. It was founded by Hugo, and consecrated seventy years afterwards by Pope Innocent II. under the administration of Peter the Venerable (1131).

The example of Cluny gave rise to other monastic orders, as the Congregation of the Vallombrosa (Vallis umbrosa), eighteen miles from Florence, founded by St. John Gualbert in 1038, and the Congregation of Hirsau in Württemberg, in 1069.

But the very fame and prosperity of Cluny proved a temptation and cause of decline. An unworthy abbot, Pontius, wasted the funds, and was at last deposed and excommunicated by the pope as a robber of the church. Peter the Venerable, the friend of St. Bernard and kind patron of the unfortunate Abelard, raised Cluny by his wise and long administration (1122–1156) to new life and the height of prosperity. He increased the number of monks from 200 to 460, and connected 314 convents with the parent institution. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and all their clergy, two patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, the king of France, the emperor of Constantinople, and many dukes, counts and knights with their dependents were entertained in the buildings of Cluny.386  This was the end of its prosperity. Another decline followed, from which Cluny never entirely recovered. The last abbots were merely ornamental, and wasted two-thirds of the income at the court of France. The French Revolution of 1789 swept the institution out of existence, and reduced the once famous buildings to ruins; but restorations have since been made.387

A similar reformation of monasticism and of the clergy was attempted and partially carried out in England by St. Dunstan (925-May 19, 988), first as abbot of Glastonbury, then as bishop of Winchester and London, and last as archbishop of Canterbury (961) and virtual ruler of the kingdom. A monk of the severest type and a churchman of iron will, he enforced the Benedictine rule, filled the leading sees and richer livings with Benedictines, made a crusade against clerical marriage (then the rule rather than the exception), hoping to correct the immorality of the priests by abstracting them from the world, and asserted the theocratic rule of the church over the civil power under Kings Edwy and Edgar; but his excesses called forth violent contentions between the monks and the seculars in England. He was a forerunner of Hildebrand and Thomas à Becket.388

CHAPTER VIII.

CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

Comp. vol. II. § 57, and vol. III. § 68.

§ 85. The Penitential Books.

I. The Acts of Councils, the Capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors, and the Penitential Books, especially that of Theodore of Canterbury, and that of Rome. See Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 99, fol. 901–983.

II. Friedr. Kunstmann (R.C.): Die latein. Pönitentialbücher der Angelsachsen. Mainz 1844. F. W. H. Wasserschleben: Bussordnungen der abendländ. Kirche. Halle 1851. Steitz: Das röm. Buss-Sacrament. Frankf. 1854. Frank (R.C.): Die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Mainz 1867. Probst (R.C.): Sacramente und Sacramentalien. Tübingen 1872. Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. III. Oxf. 1871. H. Jos. Schmitz (R.C.): Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche.  Nach handschriftl. Quellen. Mainz 1883 (XVI. and 864 p.). Comp. the review of this book by Wasserschleben in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung," 1883, fol. 614 sqq.

Bingham, Bk XIV. Smith and Cheetham, II. 608 sqq. (Penitential Books). Herzog,2 III. 20 sqq. (Bussbücher). Wetzer and Welte2 II. 209–222 (Beichtbücher); II. 1561–1590 (Bussdisciplin).

Comp. Lit. in § 87.

The discipline of the Catholic church is based on the power of the keys intrusted to the apostles and their successors, and includes the excommunication and restoration of delinquent members. It was originally a purely spiritual jurisdiction, but after the establishment of Christianity as the national religion, it began to affect also the civil and temporal condition of the subjects of punishment. It obtained a powerful hold upon the public mind from the universal belief of the middle ages that the visible church, centering in the Roman papacy, was by divine appointment the dispenser of eternal salvation, and that expulsion from her communion, unless followed by repentance and restoration, meant eternal damnation. No heresy or sect ever claimed this power.

Discipline was very obnoxious to the wild and independent spirit of the barbaric races. It was exercised by the bishop through synodical courts, which were held annually in the dominions of Charlemagne for the promotion of good morals. Charlemagne ordered the bishops to visit their parishes once a year, and to inquire into cases of incest, patricide, fratricide, adultery, and other vices contrary to the laws of God.389  Similar directions were given by Synods in Spain and England. The more extensive dioceses were divided into several archdeaconries. The archdeacons represented the bishops, and, owing to this close connection, they possessed a power and jurisdiction superior to that of the priests. Seven members of the congregation were entrusted with a supervision, and had to report to the inquisitorial court on the state of religion and morals. Offences both ecclesiastical and civil were punished at once with fines, fasting, pilgrimages, scourging, imprisonment. The civil authorities aided the bishops in the exercise of discipline. Public offences were visited with public penance; private offences were confessed to the priest, who immediately granted absolution on certain conditions.

The discipline of the Latin church in the middle ages is laid down in the so-called "Penitential Books."390  They regulate the order of penitence, and prescribe specific punishments for certain sins, as drunkenness, fornication, avarice, perjury, homicide, heresy, idolatry. The material is mostly derived from the writings of the fathers, and from the synodical canons of Ancyra (314), Neocaesarea (314), Nicaea (325), Gangra (362), and of the North African, Frankish, and Spanish councils down to the seventh century. The common object of these Penitentials is to enforce practical duties and to extirpate the ferocious and licentious passions of heathenism. They present a very dark picture of the sins of the flesh. They kept alive the sense of a moral government of God, who punishes every violation of his law, but they lowered the sense of guilt by fostering the pernicious notion that sin may be expiated by mechanical exercises and by the payment of a sum of money.

There were many such books, British, Irish, Frankish, Spanish, and Roman. The best known are the Anglo-Saxon penitentials of the seventh and eighth centuries, especially that of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (669–690). He was a Greek by birth, of Tarsus in Cilicia, and reduced the disciplinary rules of the East and West to a system. He was not the direct author of the book which bears his name, but it was drawn up under his direction, published during his life-time and by his authority, and contains his decisions in answer to various questions of a priest named Eoda and other persons on the subject of penance and the whole range of ecclesiastical discipline. The genuine text has recently been brought to light from early MSS. by the combined labors of German and English scholarship.391  The introduction and the book itself are written in barbarous Latin. Traces of the Greek training of Theodore may be seen in the references to St. Basil and to Greek practices. Next to Theodore’s collection there are Penitentials under the name of the venerable Bede (d. 735), and of Egbert, archbishop of York (d. 767).392

The earliest Frankish penitential is the work of Columban, the Irish missionary (d. 615). He was a severe monastic disciplinarian and gave prominence to corporal punishment among the penalties for offences. The Cummean Penitential (Poenit. Cummeani) is of Scotch-Irish origin, and variously assigned to Columba of Iona (about 597), to Cumin, one of his disciples, or to Cummean, who died in Columban’s monastery at Bobbio (after 711). Haltigar, bishop of Cambray, in the ninth century (about 829) published a "Roman Penitential," professedly derived from Roman archives, but in great part from Columban, and Frankish sources. An earlier work which bears the name "Poenitentiale Romanum," from the first part of the eighth century, has a more general character, but its precise origin is uncertain. The term "Roman" was used to designate the quality of a class of Penitentials which enjoyed a more than local authority.393  Rabanus Maurus (d. 855) prepared a "Liber Poenitentitae" at the request of the archbishop Otgar of Mayence (841). Almost every diocese had its own book of the kind, but the spirit and the material were substantially the same.

Notes.

As specimens of these Penitential Books, we give the first two chapters from the first book of the Poenitentiale Theodori (Archbishop of Canterbury), as printed in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Eccles. Doc. relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. IIIrd. p. 177 sqq. We insert a few better readings from other MSS. used by Wasserschleben.

I. De Crapula et Ebrietate.

1. Si quis Episco pus aut aliquis ordinatus in consuetudine vitium habuerit ebrietatis, aut desinat aut deponatur.

2. Si monachus pro ebrietate vomitum facit, XXX. dies peniteat.

3. Si presbiter aut diaconus pro ebrietate, XL. dies peniteat.

4. Si vero pro infirmitate aut quia longo tempore se abstinuerit, et in consuetudine non erit ei multum bibere vel manducare, aut pro gaudio in Natale Domini aut in Pascha aut pro alicujus Sanctorum commemoratione faciebat, et tunc plus non accipit quam decretum est a senioribus, nihil nocet. Si Episcopus juberit, non nocet illi, nisi ipse similiterfaciat.

5. Si laicus fidelis pro ebrietate vomitum facit, XV. dies peniteat.

6. Qui vero inebriatur contra Domini interdictum, si votum sanctitatis habuerit VII. dies in pane et aqua, LXX. sine pinguedine peniteat; laici sine cervisa [cervisia].

7. Qui per nequitiam inebriat alium, XL. dies peniteat.

8. Qui pro satietate vomitum facit, III. diebus [dies] peniteat.

9. Si cum sacrificio communionis, VII. dies peniteat; si infirmitatis causa, sine culpa.

II. De Fornicatione.

1. Si quis fornicaverit cum virgine, I. anno peniteat. Si cum marita, IIII. annos, II. integros, II alios in XL. mis. III. bus., et III dies in ebdomada peniteat.

2. Qui sepe cum masculo aut cum pecude fornicat, X. annos ut peniteret judicavit.

3. Rem aliud. Qui cum pecoribus coierit, XV. annos peniteat.

4. Qui coierit cum masculo post XX. annum, XV. annos peniteat.

5. Si masculus cum masculo fornicaverit, X. annos peniteat.

6. Sodomitae VII. annos peniteat [peniteant]; molles [et mollis] sicut adultera.

7. Item hoc; virile scelus semel faciens IIII annos peniteat; si in consuetudine fuerit, ut Basilius dicit, XV. Si sine, sustinens unum annum ut mulier. Si puer sit, primo II. bus annis; si iterat IIII.

8. Si in femoribus, annum I. vel. III. XL. mas.

9. Si se ipsum coinguinat, XL. dies [peniteat.]

10. Qui concupiscit fornicari [fornicare] sed non potest, XL. dies vel XX. peniteat. Si frequentaverit, si puer sit, XX. dies, vel vapuletur.

11. Pueri qui fornicantur inter se ipsos judicavit ut vapulentur.

12. Mulier cum muliere fornicando [si ... fornicaverit], III. annos peniteat.

13. Si sola cum se ipsa coitum habet, sic peniteat.

14. Una penitentia est viduae et puellae. Majorem meruit quae virum habet, si fornicaverit.

15. Qui semen in os miserit, VII annos peniteat: hoc pessimum malum. Alias ab eo judicatum est ut ambo usque in finem vitae peniteant; vel XXII. annos, vel ut superius VII.

16. Si cum matre quis fornicaverit, XV. annos peniteat, et nunquam, mutat [mutet] nisi Dominicis diebus: et hoc tam profanum incertum [incestum] ab eo similiter alio modo dicitur ut cum peregrinatione perenni VII. annos peniteat.

17. Qui cum sorore fornicatur, XV. annos peniteat, eo modo quo superius de matre dicitur, sed et istud XV. alias in canone confirmavit; unde non absorde XV. anni ad matrem transeunt qui scribuntur.

18. Qui sepe fornicaverit, primus canon judicavit X. annos penitere; secundus canon VII.; sed pro infirmitate hominis, per consilium dixerunt III. annos penitere.

19. Si frater cum fratre naturali fornicaverit per commixtionem carnis, XV. annos ab omni carne abstineat.

20. Si mater cum filio suo parvulo fornicationem imitatur, III. annos se abstineat a carne, et diem unum jejunet in ebdomada, id est, usque ad vesperum.

21. Qui inludetur fornicaria cogitatione, peniteat usque dum cogitatio superetur.

22. Qui diligit feminam mente, veniam petat ab eo [a Deo] id est, de amore et amicitia si dixerit si non est susceptus ab ea, VII. dies peniteat."

The remaining chapters of the first book treat De Avaritia Furtiva; De Occisione Hominum [De Homicidio]; De his qui per Heresim decipiuntur; De Perjurio; De multis et diversis Malis; De diverso Lapso servorum Dei; De his qui degraduntur vel ordinari non possunt; De Baptizatis his, qualiter peniteant; De his qui damnant Dominicam et indicta jejunia ecclesiae Dei; De communione Eucharistiae, vel Sacrificio; De Reconciliatione; De Penitentia Nubentium specialiter; De Cultura Idolorum. The last chapter shows how many heathen superstitions prevailed in connection with gross immorality, which the church endeavored to counteract by a mechanical legalism. The second book treats De Ecclesiae Ministerio; De tribus gratlibus; De Ordinatione; De Baptismo et Confirmatione; De Missa Defunctorum, etc.

§ 86. Ecclesiastical Punishments. Excommunication, Anathema, Interdict.

Friedrich Kober (R.C.): Der Kirchenbann nach den Grundsätzen des canonischen Rechts dargestellt. Tübingen 1857 (560 pages). By the same author: Die Suspension der Kirchendiener. Tüb. 1862.

Henry C. Lea: Excommunication, in his Studies in Church History (Philadelphia 1869), p. 223–475.

The severest penalties of the church were excommunication, anathema, and interdict. They were fearful weapons in the hands of the hierarchy during the middle ages, when the church was believed to control salvation, and when the civil power enforced her decrees by the strong arm of the law. The punishment ceases with repentance, which is followed by absolution. The sentence of absolution must proceed from the bishop who pronounced the sentence of excommunication; but in articulo mortis every priest can absolve on condition of obedience in case of recovery.

1. Excommunication was the exclusion from the sacraments, especially the communion. In the dominions of Charlemagne it was accompanied with civil disabilities, as exclusion from secular tribunals, and even with imprisonment and seizure of property. A bishop could excommunicate any one who refused canonical obedience. But a bishop could only be excommunicated by the pope, and the pope by no power on earth.394  The sentence was often accompanied with awful curses upon the bodies and souls of the offender. The popes, as they towered above ordinary bishops, surpassed them also in the art of cursing, and exercised it with shocking profanity. Thus Benedict VIII., who crowned Emperor Henry II. (A.D. 1014), excommunicated some reckless vassals of William II., Count of Provence, who sought to lay unhallowed hands upon the property of the monastery of St. Giles,395 and consigned them to Satan with terrible imprecations, although be probably thought he was only following St. Peter’s example in condemning Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus.396

"Hardened sinners" (says Lea) "might despise such imprecations, but their effect on believers was necessarily unutterable, when, amid the gorgeous and impressive ceremonial of worship, the bishop, surrounded by twelve priests bearing flaming candles, solemnly recited the awful words which consigned the evil-doer and all his generation to eternal torment with such fearful amplitude and reduplication of malediction, and as the sentence of perdition came to its climax, the attending priests simultaneously cast their candles to the ground and trod them out, as a symbol of the quenching of a human soul in the eternal night of hell. To this was added the expectation, amounting almost to a certainty, that Heaven would not wait for the natural course of events to confirm the judgment thus pronounced, but that the maledictions would be as effective in this world as in the next. Those whom spiritual terrors could not subdue thus were daunted by the fearful stories of the judgment overtaking the hardened sinner who dared to despise the dread anathema."

2. The Anathema is generally used in the same sense as excommunication or separation from church communion and church privileges. But in a narrower sense, it means the "greater" excommunication,397 which excludes from all Christian intercourse and makes the offender an outlaw; while the "minor" excommunication excludes only from the sacrament. Such a distinction was made by Gratian and Innocent III. The anathema was pronounced with more solemn ceremonies. The Council of Nicaea, 335, anathematized the Arians, and the Council of Trent, 1563, closed with three anathemas on all heretics.

3. The Interdict398 extended over a whole town or diocese or district or country, and involved the innocent with the guilty. It was a suspension of religion in public exercise, including even the rites of marriage and burial; only baptism and extreme unction could be performed, and they only with closed doors. It cast the gloom of a funeral over a country, and made people tremble in expectation of the last judgment. This exceptional punishment began in a small way in the fifth century. St. Augustin justly reproved Auxilius, a brother bishop, who abused his power by excommunicating a whole family for the offence of the head, and Pope Leo the Great forbade to enforce the penalty on any who was not a partner in the crime.399  But the bishops and popes of the middle ages, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, thought otherwise, and resorted repeatedly to this extreme remedy of enforcing obedience. They had some basis for it in the custom of the barbarians to hold the family or tribe responsible for crimes committed by individual members.

The first conspicuous examples of inflicting the Interdict occurred in France. Bishop Leudovald of Bayeux, after consulting with his brother bishops, closed in 586 all the churches of Rouen and deprived the people of the consolations of religion until the murderer of Pretextatus, Bishop of Rouen, who was slain at the altar by a hireling of the savage queen Fredegunda, should be discovered.400  Hincmar of Laon inflicted the interdict on his diocese (869), but Hincmar of Rheims disapproved of it and removed it. The synod of Limoges (Limoisin), in 1031, enforced the Peace of God by the interdict in these words which were read in the church: "We excommunicate all those noblemen (milites) in the bishopric of Limoges who disobey the exhortations of their bishop to hold the Peace. Let them and their helpers be accursed, and let their weapons and horses be accursed!  Let their lot be with Cain, Dathan, and Abiram!  And as now the lights are extinguished, so their joy in the presence of angels shall be destroyed, unless they repent and make satisfaction before dying."  The Synod ordered that public worship be closed, the altars laid bare, crosses and ornaments removed, marriages forbidden; only clergymen, beggars, strangers and children under two years could be buried, and only the dying receive the communion; no clergyman or layman should be shaved till the nobles submit. A signal in the church on the third hour of the day should call all to fall on their knees to pray. All should be dressed in mourning. The whole period of the interdict should be observed as a continued fast and humiliation.401

The popes employed this fearful weapon against disobedient kings, and sacrificed the spiritual comforts of whole nations to their hierarchical ambition. Gregory VII. laid the province of Gnesen under the interdict, because King Bolislaw II. had murdered bishop Stanislaus of Cracow with his own hand. Alexander II. applied it to Scotland (1180), because the king refused a papal bishop and expelled him from the country. Innocent III. suspended it over France (1200), because king Philip Augustus had cast off his lawful wife and lived with a concubine.402  The same pope inflicted this punishment upon England (March 23, 1208), hoping to bring King John (Lackland) to terms. The English interdict lasted over six years during which all religious rites were forbidden except baptism, confession, and the viaticum.

Interdicts were only possible in the middle ages when the church had unlimited power. Their frequency and the impossibility of full execution diminished their power until they fell into contempt and were swept out of existence as the nations of Europe outgrew the discipline of priestcraft and awoke to a sense of manhood.

§ 87. Penance and Indulgence.

Nath. Marshall (Canon of Windsor and translator of Cyprian, d. 1729): The Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church for the first 400 years after Christ, together with its declension from the fifth century downward to its present state. London 1714. A new ed. in the "Lib. of Anglo-Cath. Theol."  Oxford 1844.

Eus. Amort: De Origine, Progressu, Valore ac Fructu Indulgentiarum. Aug. Vindel. 1735 fol.

Muratori: De Redemtione Peccatorum et de Indulgentiarum Origine, in Tom. V. of his Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi. Mediol. 1741.

Joh. B. Hirscher (R.C.): Die Lehre vom Ablass. Tübingen, 5th ed. 1844.

G. E. Steitz: Das römische Buss-Sacrament, nach seinem bibl. Grunde und seiner gesch. Entwicklung. Frankf a. M. 1854 (210 pages).

Val. Gröne (R.C.): Der Ablass, seine Geschichte und Bedeutung in der Heilsökonomie. Regensb. 1863.

Domin. Palmieri (R.C.): Tractat. de Poenit. Romae 1879.

George Mead: Art. Penitence, in Smith and Cheetham II. 1586–1608. Wildt, (R.C.): Ablass, in Wetzer and Welte2 I. 94–111; Beichte and Beichtsiegel, II. 221–261. Mejer in Herzog2 I. 90–92. For extracts from sources comp. Gieseler II. 105 sqq.; 193 sqq.; 515 sqq. (Am. ed.)

For the authoritative teaching of the Roman church on the Sacramentum Poenitentiae see Conc. Trident. Sess. XIV. held 1551.

The word repentance or penitence is an insufficient rendering for the corresponding Greek metanoia, which means a radical change of mind or conversion from a sinful to a godly life, and includes, negatively, a turning away from sin in godly sorrow (repentance in the narrower sense) and, positively, a turning to Christ by faith with a determination to follow him.403  The call to repent in this sense was the beginning of the preaching both of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ.404

In the Latin church the idea of repentance was externalized and identified with certain outward acts of self-abasement or self-punishment for the expiation of sin. The public penance before the church went out of use during the seventh or eighth century, except for very gross offences, and was replaced by private penance and confession.405  The Lateran Council of 1215 under Pope Innocent III. made it obligatory upon every Catholic Christian to confess to his parish priest at least once a year.406

Penance, including auricular confession and priestly absolution, was raised to the dignity of a sacrament for sins committed after baptism. The theory on which it rests was prepared by the fathers (Tertullian and Cyprian), completed by the schoolmen, and sanctioned by the Roman church. It is supposed that baptism secures perfect remission of past sins, but not of subsequent sins, and frees from eternal damnation, but not from temporal punishment, which culminates in death or in purgatory. Penance is described as a "laborious kind of baptism," and is declared by the Council of Trent to be necessary to salvation for those who have fallen after baptism, as baptism is necessary for those who have not yet been regenerated.407

The sacrament of penance and priestly, absolution includes three elements: contrition of the heart, confession by the mouth, satisfaction by good works.408  On these conditions the priest grants absolution, not simply by a declaratory but by a judicial act. The good works required are especially fasting and almsgiving. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Compostella, and other sacred places were likewise favorite satisfactions. Peter Damiani recommended voluntary self-flagellation as a means to propitiate God. These pious exercises covered in the popular mind the whole idea of penance. Piety was measured by the quantity of good works rather than by quality of character.

Another mediaeval institution must here be mentioned which is closely connected with penance. The church in the West, in her zeal to prevent violence and bloodshed, rightly favored the custom of the barbarians to substitute pecuniary compensation for punishment of an offence, but wrongly applied this custom to the sphere of religion. Thus money, might be substituted for fasting and other satisfactions, and was clothed with an atoning efficacy. This custom seems to have proceeded from the church of England, and soon spread over the continent.409  It degenerated into a regular traffic, and became a rich source for the increase of ecclesiastical and monastic property.

Here is the origin of the indulgences so called, that is the remission of venial sins by the payment of money and on condition of contrition and prayer. The practice was justified by the scholastic theory that the works of supererogation of the saints constitute a treasury of extra-merit and extra-reward which is under the control of the pope. Hence indulgence assumed the special meaning of papal dispensation or remission of sin from the treasury of the overflowing merits of saints, and this power was extended even to the benefit of the dead in purgatory.410

Indulgences may be granted by bishops and archbishops in their dioceses, and by the pope to all Catholics. The former dealt with it in retail, the latter in wholesale. The first instances of papal indulgence occur in the ninth century under Paschalis I. and John VIII. who granted it to those who had fallen in war for the defence of the church. Gregory VI. in 1046 promised it to all who sent contributions for the  repair of the churches in Rome. Urban II., at the council of Clermont (1095), offered to the crusaders "by the authority of the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul," plenary indulgence as a reward for a journey to the Holy Land. The same offer was repeated in every crusade against the Mohammedans and heretics. The popes found it a convenient means for promoting their power and filling their treasury. Thus the granting of indulgences became a periodical institution. Its abuses culminated in the profane and shameful traffic of Tetzel under Leo X. for the benefit of St. Peter’s church, but were overruled in the Providence of God for the Reformation and a return to the biblical idea of repentance.

Note.

The charge is frequently made against the papal court in the middle ages that it had a regulated scale of prices for indulgences, and this is based on the Tax Tables of the Roman Chancery published from time to time. Roman Catholic writers (as Lingard, Wiseman) say that the taxes are merely fees for the expedition of business and the payment of officials, but cannot deny the shameful avarice of some popes. The subject is fully discussed by Dr. T. L. Green (R.C.), Indulgences, Sacramental Absolutions, and the Tax-Tables of the Roman Chancery and Penitentiary, considered, in reply to the Charge of Venality, London (Longmans) 1872, and, on the Protestant side, by Dr. Richard Gibbings (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in the University of Dublin), The Taxes of the Apostolic Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins in the Church of Rome, Dublin 1872. Gibbings reprints the Taxae Sacrae Poenitentiariae Romanae from the Roman ed. of 1510 and the Parisian ed. of 1520, which cover 21 pages in Latin, but the greater part of the book (164 pages) is an historical introduction and polemical discussion.

CHAPTER IX.

CHURCH AND STATE.

Comp. vol. III. ch. III. and the Lit. there quoted

§ 88. Legislation.

Mediaeval Christianity is not a direct continuation of the ante-Nicene Christianity in hostile conflict with the heathen state, but of the post-Nicene Christianity in friendly union with a nominally Christian state. The missionaries aimed first at the conversion of the rulers of the barbarian races of Western and Northern Europe. Augustin, with his thirty monks, was provided by Pope Gregory with letters to princes, and approached first King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in Kent. Boniface leaned on the pope and Charles Martel. The conversion of Clovis decided the religion of the Franks. The Christian rulers became at once the patrons of the church planted among their subjects, and took Constantine and Theodosius for their models. They submitted to the spiritual authority of the Catholic church, but aspired to its temporal government by the appointment of bishops, abbots, and the control over church-property. Hence the frequent collisions of the two powers, which culminated in the long conflict between the pope and the emperor.

The civil and ecclesiastical relations of the middle ages are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to study or understand the one without the other. In Spain, for instance, the synods of Toledo were both ecclesiastical councils and royal parliaments; after the affairs of the church were disposed of, the bishops and nobles met together for the enactment of civil laws, which were sanctioned by the king. The synods and diets held under Charlemagne had likewise a double character. In England the bishops were, and are still, members of the House of Lords, and often occupied seats in the cabinet down to the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who was Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. The religious persecutions of the middle ages were the joint work of church and state.

This union has a bright and a dark side. It was a wholesome training-school for barbarous races, it humanized and ennobled the state; but it secularized the church and the clergy, and hindered the development of freedom by repressing all efforts to emancipate the mind from the yoke of despotic power. The church gained a victory over the world, but the world gained also a victory over the church. St. Jerome, who witnessed the first effects of the marriage of the church with the Roman empire, anticipated the experience of later ages, when he said: "The church by its connection with Christian princes gained in power and riches, but lost in virtues."411  Dante, who lived in the golden age of the mediaeval hierarchy, and believed the fable of the donation of Constantine to Sylvester, traced the ills of the church to "that marriage-dower" which the first wealthy pope received from the first Christian emperor.

The connection of the ecclesiastical and civil powers is embodied in the legislation which regulates the conduct of man in his relations to his fellow-men, and secures social order and national welfare. It is an index of public morals as far as it presupposes and fixes existing customs; and where it is in advance of popular sentiment, it expresses a moral ideal in the mind of the lawgivers to be realized by the educational power of legal enactments.

During the middle ages there were three systems of jurisprudence: the Roman law, the Barbaric law, and the Canon law. The first two proceeded from civil, the third from ecclesiastical authority. The civil law embodies the records and edicts of emperors and kings, the enactments of diets and parliaments, the decisions of courts and judges. The ecclesiastical law embodies the canons of councils and decretals of popes. The former is heathen in origin, but improved and modified by Christianity; the latter is the direct production of the church, yet as influenced by the state of mediaeval society. Both rest on the union of church and state, and mutually support each other, but it was difficult to draw the precise line of difference, and to prevent occasional collisions of jurisdiction.

§ 89. The Roman Law.

See vol. III. §§ 13 and 18, pp. 90 sqq. And 107 sqq.

Fr. K. von Savigny (Prof. of jurisprudence in Berlin, d. 1861) Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter. Berlin 1815–’31 6 vols. Chapter 44 of Gibbon on Roman law. Ozanam: Hist. of the Civilization in the Fifth Century, ch. V. (vol. I. 136–158 in Glyn’s transl. Lond. 1868). Milman: Lat. Christ. Bk III. ch.5  (vol. 1. 479 sqq. N. York ed.)

The Justinian code (527–534) transmitted to the middle ages the legislative wisdom and experience of republican and imperial Rome with the humanizing improvements of Stoic philosophy and the Christian religion, but at the same time with penal laws against every departure from the orthodox Catholic creed, which was recognized and protected as the only religion of the state. It maintained its authority in the Eastern empire. It was partly preserved, after the destruction of the Western empire among the Latin inhabitants of Italy, France, and Spain, in a compilation from the older Theodosian code (429438), which contained the post-Constantinian laws, with fragments from earlier collections.

In the twelfth century the Roman law (after the discovery of a copy of the Pandects at Amalfi in 1135, which was afterwards transferred to Florence) began to be studied again with great enthusiasm. A famous school of civil law was established at Bologna. Similar schools arose in connection with the Universities at Paris, Naples, Padua, and other cities. The Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis), in connection with the ecclesiastical or canon law (Corpus juris canonici), was gradually adopted all over the Continent of Europe, and the Universities granted degrees in both laws conjointly.

Thus Rome, substituting the law for the sword, ruled the world once more for centuries, and subdued the descendants of the very barbarians who had destroyed her empire. The conquered gave laws to the conquerors, mindful of the prophetic line of Virgil:

"Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento."

Notes.

The anti-heretical part of the Roman law, on which persecution was based, is thus summed up by Dean Milman (Bk III. ch. 5): "A new class of crimes, if not introduced by Christianity, became multiplied, rigorously defined, mercilessly condemned. The ancient Roman theory, that the religion of the State must be the religion of the people, which Christianity had broken to pieces by its inflexible resistance, was restored in more than its former rigor. The code of Justinian confirmed the laws of Theodosius and his successors, which declared certain heresies, Manicheism and Donatism, crimes against the State, as affecting the common welfare. The crime was punishable by confiscation of all property, and incompetency to inherit or to bequeath. Death did not secure the hidden heretic from prosecution; as in high treason, he might be convicted in his grave. Not only was his testament invalid, but inheritance could not descend through him. All who harbored such heretics were liable to punishment; their slaves might desert them, and transfer themselves to an orthodox master. The list of proscribed heretics gradually grew wider. The Manicheans were driven still farther away from the sympathies of mankind; by one Greek constitution they were condemned to capital punishment. Near thirty names of less detested heretics are recited in a law of Theodosius the younger, to which were added, in the time of Justinian, Nestorians, Eutychians, Apollinarians. The books of all these sects were to be burned; yet the formidable number of these heretics made no doubt the general execution of the laws impossible. But the Justinian code, having defined as heretics all who do not believe the Catholic faith, declares such heretics, as well as Pagans, Jews, and Samaritans, incapable of holding civil or military offices, except in the lowest ranks of the latter; they could attain to no civic dignity which was held in honor, as that of the defensors, though such offices as were burdensome might be imposed even on Jews. The assemblies of all heretics were forbidden, their books were to be collected and burned, their rites, baptisms, and ordinations prohibited. Children of heretical parents might embrace orthodoxy; the males the parent could not disinherit, to the females he was bound to give an adequate dowry. The testimony of Manicheans, of Samaritans, and Pagans could not be received; apostates to any of these sects and religions lost all their former privileges, and were liable to all penalties."

§ 90. The Capitularies of Charlemagne.

Steph. Baluzius (Baluze, Prof. of Canon law in Paris, d. 1718): Regum Francorum Capitularia, 1677; new ed. Paris, 1780, 2 vols. Pertz: Monumenta Germaniae historica, Tom. III (improved ed. of the Capitularia). K. Fr. Eichhorn: Deutsche Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte, Göttingen, 1808, 4 Parts; 5th ed. 1844. J. Grimm: Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, Göttingen 1828. Giesebrecht (I. 800) calls this an "unusually rich collection with profound glances into the legal life of the German people."  W. Dönniges: Das deutsche Staatsrecht und die deutsche Reichsverfassung, Berlin 1842. F. Walther: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, second ed. Bonn 1857. J. Hillebrand: Lehrbuch der deutschen Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte, Leipzig 1856. O. Stobbe: Geschichte der deutschen Rechtsquellen, Braunschweig, 1860 (first Part). W. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, third ed. Braunschweig 1863 sqq. Bd I. 106–144.

The first and greatest legislator of the Germanic nations is Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire (800–814). What Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, and Justinian did for the old Roman empire on the basis of heathen Rome and the ancient Graeco-Latin church, Charlemagne did for the new Roman Empire in the West on the basis of Germanic customs and the Latin church centred in the Roman papacy. He was greater, more beneficial and enduring in his influence as a legislator than as a soldier and conqueror.412  He proposed to himself the herculean task to organize, civilize and Christianize the crude barbarian customs of his vast empire, and he carried it out with astonishing wisdom. His laws are embodied in the Capitularia, i.e. laws divided into chapters. They are the first great law-book of the French and Germans.413  They contain his edicts and ordinances relating to ecclesiastical, political, and civil legislation, judicial decisions and moral precepts. The influence of the church and the Christian religion is here more direct and extensive than in the Roman Code, and imparts to it a theocratic element which approaches to the Mosaic legislation. The Roman Catholic church with her creed, her moral laws, her polity, was the strongest bond of union which held the Western barbarians together and controlled the views and aims of the emperor. He appears, indeed, as the supreme ruler clothed with sovereign authority. But he was surrounded by the clergy which was the most intelligent and influential factor in legislation both in the synod and in the imperial diet. The emperor and his nobles were under the power of the bishops, and the bishops were secular lords and politicians as well as ecclesiastics. The ecclesiastical affairs were controlled by the Apocrisiarius414 (a sort of minister of worship); the secular affairs, by the Comes palatii;415 both were aided in each province by a delegated bishop and count who were to work in harmony. On important questions the pope was consulted.416  The legislation proceeded from the imperial will, from ecclesiastical councils, and from the diet or imperial assembly. The last consisted of the dignitaries of church and state, the court officials, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, etc., and convened every spring. The emperor was surrounded at his court by the most eminent statesmen, clergymen and scholars, from whom he was anxious to learn without sacrificing his right to rule. His court was a school of discipline and of that gentlemanly courtesy and refinement which became a distinguishing feature of chivalry, and Charlemagne shone in poetry as the first model cavalier.

The legislation of the Carolingian Capitularies is favorable to the clergy, to monasteries, to the cause of good morals and religion. The marriage tie is protected, even among slaves; the license of divorce restrained; divorced persons are forbidden to marry again during the life-time of the other party. The observance of Sunday is enjoined for the special benefit of the laboring classes. Ecclesiastical discipline is enforced by penal laws in cases of gross sins such as incest. Superstitious customs, as consulting soothsayers and the Scriptures for oracles, are discouraged, but the ordeal is enjoined. Wholesome moral lessons are introduced, sometimes in the language of the Scriptures: the people are warned against perjury, against feud, against shedding Christian blood, against the oppression of the poor (whose cause should be heard by the judges before the cause of the rich). They are exhorted to learn the Apostles’ Creed and to pray, to love one another and to live in peace, "because they have one Father in heaven."  Cupidity is called "a root of all evil."  Respect for the dead is encouraged. Hospitality is recommended for the reason that he who receives a little child in the name of Christ, receives him.

This legislation was much neglected under the weak successors of Charlemagne, but remains a noble monument of his intentions.

§ 91. English Legislation.

Wilkin: Leges Anglo-Saxonicae (1721). Thorpe: Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (London 1840). Matthew Hale: History of the Common Law (6th ed. by Runnington, 1820). Reeve: History of the English Law (new ed. by Finalson l869, 3 vols.). Blackstone: Commentaries on the Laws of England (London 1765, many ed. Engl. and Amer.). Burn: Ecclesiastical Law (9th ed. by Phillimore, 1842, 4 vols.). Phillimore: Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England (Lond. 1873, 2 vols.). Wm. Strong (Justice of the Supreme Court of the U. S.): Two Lectures upon the Relations of Civil Law to Church Property (N. York 1875).

England never accepted the Roman civil law, and the canon law only in part. The island in its isolation was protected by the sea against foreign influence, and jealous of it. It built up its own system of jurisprudence on the basis of Anglo-Saxon habits and customs. The English civil law is divided into Common Law or lex non scripta (i.e. not written at first), and Statute Law or lex scripta. They are related to each other as oral tradition and the Bible are in theology. The Common Law embodies the ancient general and local customs of the English people, handed down by word of mouth from time immemorial, and afterwards recorded in the decisions of judges who are regarded as the living oracles of interpretation and application, and whose decisions must be adhered to in similar cases of litigation. It is Anglo-Saxon in its roots, and moulded by Norman lawyers, under the influence of Christian principles of justice and equity. Blackstone, the standard expounder of English law, says, "Christianity is a part of the Common Law of England."417  Hence the laws against religious offences, as blasphemy, profane swearing, desecration of the Lord’s Day, apostasy from Christianity, and heresy.418

The Christian character of English legislation is due in large measure to the piety of the Anglo-Saxon kings, especially Alfred the Great (849–901), and Edward III., the Confessor 1004–1066, canonized by Alexander III., 1166), who prepared digests of the laws of the realm. Their piety was, of course, ascetic and monastic, but enlightened for their age and animated by the spirit of justice and charity. The former is styled Legum Anglicanarum Conditor, the latter Legum Anglicanarum Restitutor.

Alfred’s Dome-Book or Liber justicialis was lost during the irruption of the Danes, but survived in the improved code of Edward the Confessor. Alfred was for England what Charlemagne was for France and Germany, a Christian ruler, legislator, and educator of his people. He is esteemed "the wisest, best, and greatest king that ever reigned in England."  Although he was a great sufferer from epilepsy or some similar bodily infirmity which seized him suddenly from time to time and made him despair of life, he performed, like St. Paul in spite of his thorn in the flesh, an incredible amount of work. The grateful memory of his people ascribed to him institutions and laws, rights and privileges which existed before his time, but in many respects he was far ahead of his age. When he ascended the throne, "hardly any one south of the Thames could understand the ritual of the church or translate a Latin letter."  He conceived the grand scheme of popular national education. For this end he rebuilt the churches and monasteries which had been ruined by the Danes, built new ones, imported books from Rome, invited scholars from the Continent to his court, translated with their aid Latin works (as Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy) into the Anglo-Saxon, collected the laws of the country, and remodelled the civil and ecclesiastical organization of his kingdom.

His code is introduced with the Ten Commandments and other laws taken from the Bible. It protects the stranger in memory of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt; it gives the Christian slave freedom in the seventh year, as the Mosaic law gave to the Jewish bondman; it protects the laboring man in his Sunday rest; it restrains blood thirsty passions of revenge by establishing bots or fines for offences; it enjoins the golden rule (in the negative form), not to do to any man what we would not have done to us.419

"In all these words of human brotherhood, of piety, and the spirit of justice, of pity and humanity, uttered by the barbaric lawgivers of a wild race, there speaks a great Personality—the embodiment of the highest sympathy and most disinterested virtue of mankind. It cannot be said indeed that these religious influences, so apparently genuine, produced any powerful effect on society in Anglo-Saxon England, though they modified the laws. Still they began the history of the religious forces in England which, though obscured by much formalism and hypocrisy and weakened by selfishness, have yet worked out slowly the great moral and humane reforms in the history of that country, and have tended with other influences to make it one of the great leaders of modern progress."420

Notes.

John Richard Green, in his posthumous work, The Conquest of England (N. York ed. 1884, p. 179 sq.), pays the following eloquent and just tribute to the character of King Aelfred (as he spells the name): "Aelfred stands in the forefront of his race, for he is the noblest as he is the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable in the English temper, of its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, of the reserve and self-control that give steadiness and sobriety to a wide outlook and a restless daring, of its temperance and fairness, its frankness and openness, its sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and reverent religion. Religion, indeed, was the groundwork of Aelfred’s character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere, throughout his writings that remain to us, the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But of the narrowness, the want of proportion, the predominance of one quality over another, which commonly goes with an intensity of religious feeling or of moral purpose, he showed no trace. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, not only did his temper take no touch of asceticism, but a rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color and charm to his life .... Little by little men came to recognize in Aelfred a ruler of higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen a king who lived only for the good of his people .... ’I desire,’ said the king, ’to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works. His aim has been more than fulfilled .... While every other name of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of Aelfred remains familiar to every English child.’

CHAPTER X.

WORSHIP AND CEREMONIES.

Comp. vol. III. ch. VII., and Neander III. 123–140; 425–455 (Boston ed.).

§ 92. The Mass.

Comp. vol. III. § 96–101 and the liturgical Lit. there quoted; also the works on Christian and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, e.g. Siegel III. 361–411.

The public worship centered in the celebration of the mass as an actual, though unbloody, repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. In this respect the Eastern and Western churches are fully agreed to this day. They surround this ordinance with all the solemnity of a mysterious symbolism. They differ only in minor details.

Pope Gregory I. improved the Latin liturgy, and gave it that shape which it substantially retains in the Roman church.421  He was filled with the idea that the eucharist embodies the reconciliation of heaven and earth, of eternity and time, and is fraught with spiritual benefit for the living and the pious dead in one unbroken communion. When the priest offers the unbloody sacrifice to God, the heavens are opened, the angel are present, and the visible and invisible worlds united.422

Gregory introduced masses for the dead,423 in connection with the doctrine of purgatory which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the departed, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are supposed to be prepared for heaven; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the dying, or provided by friends.424  They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by prayers of the living, "especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory."425

The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses, where the priest celebrates without attendants.426  This destroys the original character of the institution as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: "No presbyter, as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly, for how will he say sursum corda! or Dominus vobiscum! when there is no one with him?"  A reformatory Synod of Paris, 829, prohibits these masses, and calls them a "reprehensible practice," which has crept in "partly through neglect, partly through avarice."427

The mysterious character of the eucharist was changed into the miraculous and even the magical with the spread of the belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. But the doctrine was contested in two controversies before it triumphed in the eleventh century.428

The language of the mass was Greek in the Eastern, Latin in the Western church. The Latin was an unknown tongue to the barbarian races of Europe. It gradually went out of use among the descendants of the Romans, and gave place to the Romanic languages. But the papal church, sacrificing the interests of the people to the priesthood, and rational or spiritual worship429 to external unity, retained the Latin language in the celebration of the mass to this day, as the sacred language of the church. The Council of Trent went so far as to put even the uninspired Latin Vulgate practically on an equality with the inspired Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.430

§ 93. The Sermon.

As the chief part of divine service was unintelligible to the people, it was all the more important to supplement it by preaching and catechetical instruction in the vernacular tongues. But this is the weak spot in the church of the middle ages.431

Pope Gregory I. preached occasionally with great earnestness, but few popes followed his example. It was the duty of bishops to preach, but they often neglected it. The Council of Clovesho, near London, which met in 747 under Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, for the reformation of abuses, decreed that the bishops should annually visit their parishes, instruct and exhort the abbots and monks, and that all presbyters should be able to explain the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the mass, and the office of baptism to the people in the vernacular.432  A Synod of Tours, held in the year 813, and a Synod of Mainz, held under Rabanus Maurus in 847, decreed that every bishop should have a collection of homilies and translate them clearly "in rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, i.e. into French (Romance) or German," "in order that all may understand them."433

The great majority of priests were too ignorant to prepare a sermon, and barely understood the Latin liturgical forms. A Synod of Aix, 802, prescribed that they should learn the Athanasian and Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer with exposition, the Sacramentarium or canon of the mass, the formula of exorcism, the commendatio animae, the Penitential, the Calendar and the Roman cantus; they should learn to understand the homilies for Sundays and holy days as models of preaching, and read the pastoral theology of Pope Gregory. This was the sum and substance of clerical learning.434  The study of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures was out of the question, and there was hardly a Western bishop or pope in the middle ages who was able to study the divine oracles in the original.

The best, therefore, that the priests and deacons, and even most of the bishops could do was to read the sermons of the fathers. Augustin had given this advice to those who were not skilled in composition. It became a recognized practice in France and England. Hence the collection of homilies, called Homiliaria, for the Gospels and Epistles of Sundays and holy days. They are mostly patristic compilations. Bede’s collection, called Homilice de Tempore, contains thirty-three homilies for the summer, fifteen for the winter, twenty-two for Lent, besides sermons on saints’ days. Charlemagne commissioned Paulus Diaconus or Paul Warnefrid (a monk of Monte Cassino and one of his chaplains, the historian of the Lombards, and writer of poems on saints) to prepare a Homiliarium (or Omiliarius) about A.D. 780, and recommended it for adoption in the churches of France. It follows the order of Sundays and festivals, is based on the text of the Vulgate, and continued in use more or less for several centuries.435  Other collections were made in later times, and even the Reformed church of England under Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary to provide ignorant clergymen with two Books of Homilies adapted to the doctrines of the Reformation.

In this connection we must allude again to the poetic reproductions of the Bible history, namely, the divine epos of Caedmon, the Northumbrian monk (680), the Saxon Heliand" (Heiland, i.e. Saviour, about 880), and the "Christ" or Gospel Harmony of Otfrid (a pupil of Rabanus Maurus, about 870). These works were effective popular sermons on the history of redemption, and are at the same time the most valuable remains of the Anglo-Saxon and old high German dialects of the Teutonic language.436

It was, however, not till the Reformation of the sixteenth century that the sermon and the didactic element were restored and fully recognized in their dignity and importance as regular and essential parts of public worship. I say, worship, for to expound the oracles of God, and devoutly to listen to such exposition is or ought to be worship both on the part of the preacher and on the part of the hearer, as well as praying and singing.

§ 94. Church Poetry. Greek Hymns and Hymnists.

See the Lit. in vol. III. § 113 (p. 575 sq.) and § 114 (p. 578), and add the following:

Cardinal Pitra: Hymnographie de l’église grecque. Rome 1867. By the same: Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, T. I. Par. 1876.

Wilhelm Christ et M. Paranikas: Anthologia Graeca carminum Christianorum. Lips. 1871. CXLIV and 268 pages. The Greek text with learned Prolegomena in Latin. Christ was aided by Paranikas, a member of the Greek church. Comp. Christ: Beiträge zur kirchlichen Literatur der Byzantiner. München 1870.

[?]. L. Jacobi (Prof. of Church Hist. in Halle): Zur Geschichte der griechischen Kirchenliedes (a review of Pitra’s Analecta), in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch., "vol. V. Heft 2, p. 177–250 (Gotha 1881).

For a small selection of Greek hymns in the original see the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1855), and Bässler’s Auswahl altchristlicher Lieder (1858), p. 153–166.

For English versions see especially J. M. Neale: Hymns of the Eastern Church (Lond. 1862, third ed. 1866, 159 pages; new ed. 1876, in larger print 250 pages); also Schaff: Christ in Song (1869), which gives versions of 14 Greek (and 73 Latin) hymns. German translations in Bässler, l.c. p. 3–25.

[Syrian Hymnology. To the lit. mentioned vol. III. 580 add: Gust. Bickell: S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, additis prolegomenis et supplemento lexicorum syriacorum edidit, vertit, explicavit. Lips.] 1866. Carl Macke: Hymnen aus dem Zweiströmeland. Dichtungen des heil. Ephrem des Syrers aus dem syr. Urtext in’s Deutsche übertragen, etc. Mainz 1882. 270 pages. Macke is a pupil of Bickell and a successor of Zingerle as translator of Syrian church poetry.]

The general church histories mostly neglect or ignore hymnology, which is the best reflection of Christian life and worship.

The classical period of Greek church poetry extends from about 650 to 820, and nearly coincides with the iconoclastic controversy. The enthusiasm for the worship of saints and images kindled a poetic inspiration, and the chief advocates of that worship were also the chief hymnists.437  Their memory is kept sacred in the Eastern church. Their works are incorporated in the ritual books, especially the Menaea, which contain in twelve volumes (one for each month) the daily devotions and correspond to the Latin Breviary.438  Many are still unpublished and preserved in convent libraries. They celebrate the holy Trinity and the Incarnation, the great festivals, and especially also the Virgin Mary, the saints and martyrs, and sacred icons.

The Greek church poetry is not metrical and rhymed, but written in rhythmical prose for chanting, like the Psalms, the hymns of the New Testament, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum. The older hymnists were also melodists and composed the music.439  The stanzas are called troparia;440 the first troparion is named hirmos, because it strikes the tune and draws the others after it.441  Three or more stanzas form an ode; three little odes are a triodion; nine odes or three triodia form a canon. The odes usually end with a doxology (doxa) and a stanza in praise of Mary the Mother of God (theotokion).442  A hymn with a tune of its own is called an idiomelon.443

This poetry fills, according to Neale, more than nine tenths or four fifths of the Greek service books. It has been heretofore very little known and appreciated in the West, but is now made accessible.444  It contains some precious gems of genuine Christian hymns, buried in a vast mass of monotonous, bombastic and tasteless laudations of unknown confessors and martyrs, and wonder-working images.445

The Greek church poetry begins properly with the anonymous but universally accepted and truly immortal Gloria in Excelsis of the third century.446  The poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), and Synesius of Cyrene (d. about 414), who used the ordinary classical measures, are not adapted and were not intended for public worship.447

The first hymnist of the Byzantine period, is Anatolius patriarch of Constantinople (d. about 458). He struck out the new path of harmonious prose, and may be compared to Venantius Fortunatus in the West.448

We now proceed to the classical period of Greek church poetry.

In the front rank of Greek hymnists stands St. John Of Damascus, surnamed Mansur (d. in extreme old age about 780). He is the greatest systematic theologian of the Eastern church and chief champion of image-worship against iconoclasm under the reigns of Leo the Isaurian (717–741), and Constantinus Copronymus (741–775). He spent a part of his life in the convent of Mar Sâba (or St. Sabas) in the desolate valley of the Kedron, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.449  He was thought to have been especially inspired by the Virgin Mary, the patron of that Convent, to consecrate his muse to the praise of Christ. He wrote a great part of the Octoechus, which contains the Sunday services of the Eastern church. His canon for Easter Day is called "the golden Canon" or "the queen of Canons," and is sung at midnight before Easter, beginning with the shout of joy, "Christ is risen," and the response, "Christ is risen indeed."  His memory is celebrated December 4.450

Next to him, and as melodist even above him in the estimation of the Byzantine writers, is St. Cosmas Of Jerusalem, called the Melodist. He is, as Neale says, "the most learned of the Greek poets, and the Oriental Adam of St. Victor."  Cosmas and John of Damascus were foster-brothers, friends and fellow-monks at Mar Sâba, and corrected each other’s compositions. Cosmas was against his will consecrated bishop of Maiuma near Gaza in Southern Palestine, by John, patriarch of Jerusalem. He died about 760 and is commemorated on the 14th of October. The stichos prefixed to his life says:

"Where perfect sweetness dwells, is Cosmas gone;

But his sweet lays to cheer the church live on."451

The third rank is occupied by St. Theophanes, surnamed the Branded,452 one of the most fruitful poets. He attended the second Council of Nicaea (787). During the reign of Leo the Arminian (813) he suffered imprisonment, banishment and mutilation for his devotion to the Icons, and died about 820. His "Chronography" is one of the chief sources for the history of the image-controversy.453

The following specimen from Adam’s lament of his fall is interesting:

"Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,

By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:

O me! so ruined by the serpent’s hate!

O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!

So mad that bitter lot to choose!

Beguil’d of all I had to lose!

Must I then, gladness of my eyes, —

Must I then leave thee, Paradise,

And as an exile go?

And must I never cease to grieve

How once my God, at cool of eve,

Came down to walk below?

O Merciful! on Thee I call:

O Pitiful! forgive my fall!"

The other Byzantine hymnists who preceded or succeeded those three masters, are the following. Their chronology is mostly uncertain or disputed.

Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Heracleus (610–641), figures in the beginning of the Monotheletic controversy, and probably suggested the union formula to that emperor. He is supposed by Christ to be the author of a famous and favorite hymn Akathistos, in praise of Mary as the deliverer of Constantinople from the siege of the Persians (630), but it is usually ascribed to Georgius Pisida.454

Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem (629), celebrated in Anacreontic metres the praises of Christ, the apostles, and martyrs, and wrote idiomela with music for the church service 455

Maximus The Confessor (580–662), the leader and martyr of the orthodox dyotheletic doctrine in the Monotheletic controversy, one of the profoundest divines and mystics of the Eastern Church, wrote a few hymns.456

Germanus (634–734), bishop of Cyzicus, then patriarch of Constantinople (715), was deposed, 730, for refusing to comply with the iconoclastic edicts of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717–741), and died in private life, aged about one hundred years. He is "regarded by the Greeks as one of their most glorious Confessors" (Neale). Among his few poetical compositions are stanzas on Symeon the Stylite, on the prophet Elijah, on the Decollation of John the Baptist, and a canon on the wonder-working Image in Edessa.457

Andrew Of Crete (660–732) was born at Damascus, became monk at Jerusalem, deacon at Constantinople, archbishop of Crete, took part in the Monotheletic Synod of 712, but afterwards returned to orthodoxy. In view of this change and his advocacy of the images, he was numbered among the saints. He is regarded as the inventor of the Canons. His "Great Canon" is sung right through on the Thursday of Mid-Lent week, which is called from that hymn. It is a confession of sin and an invocation of divine mercy. It contains no less than two hundred and fifty (Neale says, three hundred) stanzas.458

John of Damascus reduced the unreasonable length of the canons.

Another Andrew, called  jAndreva" Purov" or Purrov", is credited with eight idiomela in the Menaea, from which Christ has selected the praise of Peter and Paul as the best.459

Stephen The Sabaite (725–794) was a nephew of John of Damascus, and spent fifty-nine years in the convent of Mar Sâba, which is pitched, like an eagle’s nest, on the wild rocks of the Kedron valley. He is commemorated on the 13th of July. He struck the key-note of Neale’s exquisite hymn of comfort, "Art thou weary," which is found in some editions of the Octoechus. He is the inspirer rather than the author of that hymn, which is worthy of a place in every book of devotional poetry.460

Romanus, deacon in Berytus, afterwards priest in Constantinople, is one of the most original and fruitful among the older poets. Petra ascribes to him twenty-five hymns. He assigned him to the reign of Anastasius I. (491–518), but Christ to the reign of Anastasius II. (713–719), and Jacobi with greater probability to the time of Constantinus Pogonatus (681–685).461

Theodore Of The Studium (a celebrated convent near Constantinople) is distinguished for his sufferings in the iconoclastic controversy, and died in exile, 826, on the eleventh of November. He wrote canons for Lent and odes for the festivals of saints. The spirited canon on Sunday of Orthodoxy in celebration of the final triumph of image-worship in 842, is ascribed to him, but must be of later date as he died before that victory.462

Joseph Of The Studium, a brother of Theodore, and monk of that convent, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica (hence also called Thessalonicensis), died in prison in consequence of tortures inflicted on him by order of the Emperor Theophilus (829–842). He is sometimes confounded (even by Neale) with Joseph Hymnographus; but they are distinguished by Nicephorus and commemorated on different days.463

Theoctistus Of The Studium (about 890) is the author of a "Suppliant Canon to Jesus," the only thing known of him, but the sweetest Jesus-hymn of the Greek Church.464

Joseph, called Hymnographus (880), is the most prolific, most bombastic, and most tedious of Greek hymn-writers. He was a Sicilian by birth, at last superintendent of sacred vessels in a church at Constantinople. He was a friend of Photius, and followed him into exile. He is credited with a very large number of canons in the Mencaea and the Octoechus.465

Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople (784), was the chief mover in the restoration of Icons and the second Council of Nicaea (787). He died Feb. 25, 806. His hymns are Unimportant.466

EUTHYMIUS, usually known as Syngelus or Syncellus (died about 910), is the author of a penitential canon to the Virgin Mary, which is much esteemed in the East.467

Elias, bishop of Jerusalem about 761, and Orestes, bishop of the same city, 996–1012, have been brought to light as poets by the researches of Pitra from the libraries of Grotta Ferrata, and other convents.

In addition to these may be mentioned Methodius (846)468 Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 891), Metrophanes of Smyrna (900), Leo VI., or the Philosopher, who troubled the Eastern Church by a fourth marriage (886–917), Symeon Metaphrastes (Secretary and Chancellor of the Imperial Court at Constantinople, about 900), Kasias, Nilus Xanthopulus, Joannes Geometra, and Mauropus (1060). With the last the Greek hymnody well nigh ceased. A considerable number of hymns cannot be traced to a known author.469

We give in conclusion the best specimens of Greek hymnody as reproduced and adapted to modern use by Dr. Neale.

’Tis the Day of Resurrection.

( jAnastavsew" hJmevra.)

By St. John of Damascus.

’Tis the Day of Resurrection,

Earth, tell it out abroad!

The Passover of gladness,

The Passover of God!

From death to life eternal,

From earth unto the sky,

Our Christ hath brought us over,

With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil,

That we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal

Of resurrection light:

And, listening to His accents,

May hear, so calm and plain,

His own "All hail!"—and hearing,

May raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be!

Let earth her song begin!

Let the round world keep triumph,

And all that is therein:

In grateful exultation

Their notes let all things blend,

For Christ the Lord hath risen,

Our joy that hath no end.

––––––––––

Jesu, name all names above.

(!Ihsou' glukuvtate.)

By St. Theoctistus of the Studium.

Jesu, name all names above,

Jesu, best and dearest,

Jesu, Fount of perfect love,

Holiest, tenderest, nearest!

Jesu, source of grace completest,

Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest,

Jesu, Well of power divine,

Make me, keep me, seal me Thine!

Jesu, open me the gate

Which the sinner entered,

Who in his last dying state

Wholly on Thee ventured.

Thou whose wounds are ever pleading,

And Thy passion interceding,

From my misery let me rise

To a home in Paradise!

Thou didst call the prodigal;

Thou didst pardon Mary:

Thou whose words can never fall

Love can never vary,

Lord, amidst my lost condition

Give—for Thou canst give—contrition!

Thou canst pardon all mine ill

If Thou wilt: O say, "I will!"

Woe, that I have turned aside

After fleshly pleasure!

Woe, that I have never tried

For the heavenly treasure!

Treasure, safe in homes supernal;

Incorruptible, eternal!

Treasure no less price hath won

Than the Passion of the Son!

Jesu, crowned with thorns for me,

Scourged for my transgression!

Witnessing, through agony,

That Thy good confession;

Jesu, clad in purple raiment,

For my evils making payment;

Let not all thy woe and pain,

Let not Calvary be in vain!

When I reach Death’s bitter sea,

And its waves roll higher,

Help the more forsaking me,

As the storm draws nigher:

Jesu, leave me not to languish,

Helpless, hopeless, full of anguish!

Tell me,—"Verily, I say,

Thou shalt be with me to-day!"

Art thou weary?

(Kovpon te kai; kavmaton.)

By St. Stephen The Sabaite.

Art thou weary, art thou languid,

Art thou sore distrest?

"Come to me"—saith One—"and coming

Be at rest!"

Hath He marks to lead me to Him,

If He be my Guide?

"In His feet and hands are wound-prints,

And His side."

Is there diadem, as Monarch,

That His brow adorns?

"Yea, a crown in very surety,

But of thorns!"

If I find Him, if I follow,

What His guerdon here?

"Many a sorrow, many a labor,

Many a tear."

If I still hold closely to Him,

What hath He at last?

Sorrow vanquished, labor ended,

Jordan past!"

If I ask Him to receive me,

Will He say me nay?

Not till earth, and not till heaven

Pass away!"

Finding, following, keeping, struggling

Is He sure to bless?

Angels, martyrs, prophets, virgins,

Answer, Yes!"

§ 95. Latin Hymnody. Literature.

See vol. III. 585 sqq. The following list covers the whole mediaeval period of Latin hymnody.

I. Latin Collections.

The Breviaries and Missals. The hymnological collections of Clichtovaeus (Paris 1515, Bas. 1517 and 1519.), Cassander (Col. 1556), Ellinger (Frankf. a. M. 1578), Georg Fabricius (Poetarum Veterum ecclesiasticorum Opera, Bas. 1564). See the full titles of Breviaries and these older collections in Daniel, vol. I. XIII-XXII. and vol. II. VIII-XIV.

Cardinal Jos. Maria Thomasius (Tomasi, 1649–1713, one of the chief expounders of the liturgy and ceremonies of the Roman church): Opera Omnia. Rom. 1741 sqq., 7 vols. The second volume, p. 351–403, contains the Hymnarium de anni circulo, etc., for which he compared the oldest Vatican and other Italian MSS. of hymns down to the eighth century. The same vol. includes the Breviarium Psalterii. The fourth (1749) contains the Responsorialia et antiphonaria Romanae ecclesia, and the sixth vol. (1751) a collection of Missals. Thomasius is still very valuable. Daniel calls his book "fons primarius."

Aug. Jak. Rambach (Luth. Pastor in Hamburg, b. 1777, d. 1851): Anthologie christlicher Gesänge aus alien Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona and Leipzig 1817–1833, 6 vols. The first vol. contains Latin hymns with German translations and notes. The other volumes contain only German hymns, especially since the Reformation. Rambach was a pioneer in hymnology.

Job. Kehrein (R.C.): Lat. Anthologie aus den christl. Dichtern des Mittelalters. Frankfurt a. m. 1840. See his larger work below.

[John Henry Newman, Anglican, joined the Rom. Ch. 1845]: Hymni Ecclesiae. Lond. (Macmillan) 1838; new ed. 1865 (401 pages). Contains only hymns from the Paris, Roman, and Anglican Breviaries. The preface to the first part is signed "J. H. N." and dated Febr. 21, 1838, but no name appears on the title page. About the same time Card. N. made his translations of Breviary hymns, which are noticed below, sub. III.

H. A. Daniel (Lutheran, d. 1871): Thesaurus Hymnologicus. Lips. 1841–1856, 5 Tomi. The first, second, fourth and fifth vols. contain Lat. hymns, the fourth Greek and Syrian h. A rich standard collection, but in need of revision

P. J. Mone (R. Cath. d. 1871): Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters. Freiburg i. B. 1853–’55, 3 vols. From MSS with notes. Contains in all 1215 hymns divided into three divisions of almost equal size; (1) Hymns to God and the angels (461 pages); (2) Hymns to the Virgin Mary, (457 pages); (3) Hymns to saints (579 pages).

D. Ozanam: Documents inédits pour servir a l’histoire littéraire de l’Italie. Paris 1850. Contains a collection of old Latin hymns, reprinted in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat." vol. 151, fol. 813–824.

Joseph Stevenson: Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church; with an Interlinear Anglo-Saxon Gloss, from a MS. of the eleventh century in Durham Library. 1851 (Surtees Soc.).

J. M. Neale (Warden of Sackville College, high Anglican, d. 1866): Sequentiae ex Missalibus Germanicis, Anglicis, Gallicis, aliisque medii aevi collectae. Lond. 1852. 284 pages. Contains 125 sequences.

Felix Clément: Carmina e Poetis Christianis excerpta. Parisiis (Gaume Fratres) 1854. 564 pages. The Latin texts of hymns from the 4th to the 14th century, with French notes.

R. Ch. Trench (Archbishop of Dublin): Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly Lyrical. Lond. and Cambridge, 1849; 2d ed. 1864; 3rd ed. revised and improved, 1874. (342 pages). With an instructive Introduction and notes.

Ans. Schubiger: Die Sängerschule St. Gallens vom 8ten bis 12ten Jahrh. Einsiedeln 1858. Gives sixty texts with the old music and facsimiles.

P. Gall Morel (R.C.): Lat. Hymnen des Mittelalters, grösstentheils aus Handschriften schweizerischer Klöster. Einsiedeln (Benziger) 1868 (341 pages). Mostly Marienlieder and Heiligenlieder (p. 30–325). Supplementary to Daniel and Mone.

Phil. Wackernagel (Luth., d. 1877): Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des XVII. Jahrh. Leipz. 1864–1877, 5 vols. (the last vol. ed. by his two sons). This is the largest monumental collection of older German hymns; but the first vol. contains Latin hymns and sequences from the fourth to the sixteenth century.

Karl Bartsch (Prof of Germ. and Romanic philology in Rostock): Die lateinischen Sequenzen des Mittelalters in musikalischer und rhythmischer Beziehung dargestellt. Rostock 1868.

Chs. Buchanan Pierson: Sequences from the Sarum Missal. London 1871.

Joseph Kehrein (R.C.): Lateinische Sequenzen des Mittelalters aus Handschriften und Drucken. Mainz 1873 (620 pages). The most complete collection of Sequences (over 800). He divides the sequences, like Mone the hymns, according to the subject (Lieder an Gott, Engellieder, Marienlieder, Heiligenlieder). Comp. also his earlier work noticed above.

Francis A. March: Latin Hymns, with English Notes. N. York, 1874.

W. McIlvaine: Lyra Sacra Hibernica. Belfast, 1879. (Contains hymns of St. Patrick, Columba, and Sedulius).

E. Dümmler: Poëtae Latini Aevi Carolini. Berol. 1880–’84, 2 vols. Contains also hymns, II. p. 244–258.

Special editions of Adam of St. Victor: L. Gautier: La aeuvres poétiques d’ Adam de S. Victor. Par. 1858 and 1859, 2 vols. Digby S. Wrangham (of St. John’s College, Oxford): The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor. Lond. 1881, 3 vols. (The Latin text of Gautier with E. Version in the original metres and with short notes). On the Dies Irae see the monograph of Lisco (Berlin 1840). It has often been separately published, e.g. by Franklin Johnson, Cambridge, Mass. 1883. So also the Stabat Mater, and the hymn of Bernard of Cluny De Contemptu Mundi (which furnished the thoughts for Neale’s New Jerusalem hymns). The hymns of St. Bernard, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, are in the complete editions of their works. For St. Bernard see Migne’s "Patrol. Lat." vol. 184, fol. 1307–1330; for Abelard, vol. 178, fol. 1759–1824.

II. Historical and Critical.

Polyc. Leyser: Historia Poëtarum et Poëmatum Medii Aevi. Halae 1721.

Friedr. Münter: Ueber die älteste christl. Poesie. Kopenhagen 1806.

Edélstand Du Méril: Poésies populaires Latines anterieures au douzième siècle. Paris 1843. Poésies populaire’s Latines du moyen âge. Paris 1847.

Trench: Introd. to his S. Lat. Poetry. See above.

Baehr: Die christl. Dichter und Geschichtschreiber Roms. Karlsruhe 1836 , 2nd ed., revised, 1872 (with bibliography).

Edward Emil Koch: Geschichte des Kirchenlieds und Kirchengesangs in der christlichen, insbesondere der deutschen evangel. Kirche. Stuttgart, third ed. rev. and enlarged 1866–1876, 7 vols. This very instructive and valuable work treats of Latin hymnology, but rather superficially, in vol. I. 40–153.

Ad. Ebert: Allgem. Gesch. der Lit. des Mittelalters im Abendlande, vol. I. (Leipz. 1874), the third book (p. 516 sqq.), and vol. II. (1880) which embraces the age of Charlemagne and his successors.

Joh. Kayser (R.C.): Beiträge zur Geschichte und Erklärung der ältesten Kirchenhymnen. Paderborn, 2d ed. 1881. 477 pages, comes down only to the sixth century and closes with Fortunatus. See also his article Der Text des Hymnus Stabat Mater dolorosa, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift" for 1884, No. I. p. 85–103.

III. English translations.

John Chandler (Anglican, d. July 1, 1876): The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first collected, translated and arranged. London 1837. Contains 108 Latin hymns with Chandler’s translations.

Richard Mant (Lord Bishop of Down and Connor, d. Nov. 2, 1848): Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary. 1837. New ed. Lond. and Oxf. 1871. (272 pages)

John Henry Newman:] Verses on Various Occasions. London 1868 (reprinted in Boston, by Patrick Donahue). The Preface is dated Dec. 21, 1867, and signed J. H. N. The book contains the original poems of the Cardinal, and his translations of the Roman Breviary Hymns and two from the Parisian Breviary, which, as stated in a note on p. 186, were all made in 1836–38, i.e. eight years before he left the Church of England.

Isaac Williams (formerly of Trinity College, Oxford, d. 1865): Hymns translated from the Parisian Breviary. London 1839.

Edward Caswall (Anglican, joined the R.C. Church 1847, d. Jan. 2, 1878): Lyra Catholica. Containing all the Breviary and Missal Hymns together with some other hymns. Lond. 1849. (311 pages). Reprinted N. Y. 1851. Admirable translations. They are also included in his Hymns and Poems, original and translated. London 2d ed. 1873.

John David Chambers (Recorder of New Sarum): Lauda Syon. Ancient Latin Hymns in the English and other Churches, translated into corresponding metres. Lond. 1857 (116 pages.)

J. M. Neale: Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences. Lond. 1862; 3d ed. 1867. (224 pages). Neale is the greatest master of free reproduction of Latin as well as Greek hymns. He published also separately his translation of the new Jerusalem hymns: The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, Monk of Cluny, on the Celestial Country. Lond. 1858, 7th ed. 1865, with the Latin text as far as translated (48 pages). Also Stabat Mater Speciosa, Full of Beauty stood the Mother (1866).

The Seven Great Hymns of the Mediaeval Church. N. York (A. D. F. Randolph & Co.) 1866; seventh ed. enlarged, 1883. 154 pages. This anonymous work (by Judge C. C. Nott, Washington) contains translations by various authors of Bernard’s Celestial Country, the Dies Irae, the Mater Dolorosa, the Mater Speciosa, the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Vexilla Regis, and the Alleluiatic Sequence of Godescalcus. The originals are also given.

Philip Schaff: Christ in Song. N. Y. 1868; Lond. 1869. Contains translations of seventy-three Latin hymns by various authors.

W. H. Odenheimer and Frederic M. Bird: Songs of the Spirit. N. York 1871. Contains translations of twenty-three Latin hymns on the Holy Spirit, with a much larger number of English hymns. Erastus C. Benedict (Judge in N. Y., d. 1878): The Hymn of Hildebert and other Mediaeval Hymns, with translations. N. York 1869.

Abraham Coles (M. D.): Latin Hymns, with Original Translations. N. York 1868. Contains 13 translations of the Dies Irae, which were also separately published in 1859.

Hamilton M. Macgill, D. D. (of the United Presb. Ch. of Scotland): Songs of the Christian Creed and Life selected from Eighteen Centuries. Lond. and  Edinb. 1879. Contains translations of a number of Latin and a few Greek hymns with the originals, also translations of English hymns into Latin.

The Roman Breviary. Transl. out of Latin into English by John Marquess of Bute, K. T. Edinb. and Lond. 1879, 2 vols. The best translations of the hymns scattered through this book are by the ex-Anglicans Caswall and Cardinal Newman. The Marquess of Bute is himself a convert to Rome from the Church of England.

D. F. Morgan: Hymns and other Poetry of the Latin Church. Oxf. 1880. 100 versions arranged according to the Anglican Calendar.

Edward A. Washburn (Rector of Calvary Church, N. Y. d. Feb. 2, 1881): Voices from a Busy Life. N. York 1883. Contains, besides original poems, felicitous versions of 32 Latin hymns, several of which had appeared before in Schaff’s Christ in Song.

Samuel W. Duffield: The Latin Hymn Writers and their Hymns (in course of preparation and to be published, New York 1885. This work will cover the entire range of Latin hymnology, and include translations of the more celebrated hymns).

IV. German translations of Latin hymns: (Mostly accompanied by the original text) are very numerous, e.g. by Rambach, 1817 sqq. (see above); C. Fortlage (Gesänge christl. Vorzeit, 1844); Karl Simrock (Lauda Sion, 1850); Ed. Kauffer (Jesus-Hymnen, Sammlung altkirchl. lat. Gesänge, etc. Leipz. 1854, 65 pages); H. Stadelmann (Altchristl. Hymnen und Lieder. Augsb. 1855); Bässler (1858); J. Fr. H. Schlosser (Die Kirche in ihren Liedern, Freiburg i. B. 1863, 2 vols); G. A. Königsfeld (Lat. Hymnen und Gesänge, Bonn 1847, new series, 1865, both with the original and notes).

§ 96. Latin Hymns and Hymnists.

The Latin church poetry of the middle ages is much better known than the Greek, and remains to this day a rich source of devotion in the Roman church and as far as poetic genius and religious fervor are appreciated. The best Latin hymns have passed into the Breviary and Missal (some with misimprovements), and have been often reproduced in modern languages. The number of truly classical hymns, however, which were inspired by pure love to Christ and can be used with profit by Christians of every name, is comparatively small. The poetry of the Latin church is as full of Mariolatry and hagiolatry as the poetry of the Greek church. It is astonishing what an amount of chivalrous and enthusiastic devotion the blessed Mother of our Lord absorbed in the middle ages. In Mone’s collection the hymns to the Virgin fill a whole volume of 457 pages, the hymns to saints another volume of 579 pages, while the first volume of only 461 pages is divided between hymns to God and to the angels. The poets intended to glorify Christ through his mother, but the mother overshadows the child, as in the pictures of the Madonna. She was made the mediatrix of all divine grace, and was almost substituted for Christ, who was thought to occupy a throne of majesty too high for sinful man to reach without the aid of his mother and her tender human sympathies. She is addressed with every epithet of praise, as Mater Dei, Dei Genitrix, Mater summi Domini, Mater misericordiae, Mater bonitatis, Mater dolorosa, Mater jucundosa, Mater speciosa, Maris Stella, Mundi domina, Mundi spes, Porta paradisi, Regina coeli, Radix gratiae, Virgo virginum, Virgo regia Dei. Even the Te Deum was adapted to her by the distinguished St. Bonaventura so as to read "Te Matrem laudamus, Te Virginem confitemur."470

The Latin, as the Greek, hymnists were nearly all monks; but an emperor (Charlemagne?) and a king (Robert of France) claim a place of honor among them.

The sacred poetry of the Latin church may be divided into three periods: 1, The patristic period from Hilary (d. 368) and Ambrose (d. 397) to Venantius Fortunatus (d. about 609) and Gregory I. (d. 604); 2, the early mediaeval period to Peter Damiani (d. 1072); 3, the classical period to the thirteenth century. The first period we have considered in a previous volume. Its most precious legacy to the church universal is the Te Deum laudamus. It is popularly ascribed to Ambrose of Milan (or Ambrose and Augustin jointly), but in its present completed form does not appear before the first half of the sixth century, although portions of it may be traced to earlier Greek origin; it is, like the Apostles’ Creed, and the Greek Gloria in Excelsis, a gradual growth of the church rather than the production of any individual.471 The third period embraces the greatest Latin hymnists, as Bernard of Morlaix (monk of Cluny about 1150), Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Adam of St. Victor (d. 1192), Bonaventura (d. 1274), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Thomas a Celano (about 1250), Jacopone (d. 1306), and produced the last and the best Catholic hymns which can never die, as Hora Novisasima; Jesu dulcis memoria; Salve caput cruentatum; Stabat Mater; and Dies Irae. In this volume we are concerned with the second period.

Venantius Fortunatus, of Poitiers, and his cotemporary, Pope Gregory I., form the transition from the patristic poetry of Sedulius and Prudentius to the classic poetry of the middle ages.

Fortunatus (about 600)472 was the fashionable poet of his day. A native Italian, he emigrated to Gaul, travelled extensively, became intimate with St. Gregory of Tours, and the widowed queen Radegund when she lived in ascetic retirement, and died as bishop of Poitiers. He was the first master of the trochaic tetrameter, and author of three hundred poems, chief among which are the two famous passion hymns:

"Vexilla regis prodeunt,"

"The Royal Banners forward go;"

and

"Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis,"

"Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle."

Both have a place in the Roman Breviary.473

Gregory I. (d. 604), though far inferior to Fortunatus in poetic genius, occupies a prominent rank both in church poetry and church music. He followed Ambrose in the metrical form, the prayer-like tone, and the churchly spirit, and wrote for practical use. He composed about a dozen hymns, several of which have found a place in the Roman Breviary.474  The best is his Sunday hymn:

"Primo dierum omnium,"

"On this first day when heaven on earth,"

or, as it has been changed in the Breviary,

"Primo die quo Trinitas,"

"To-day the Blessed Three in One

Began the earth and skies;

To-day a Conqueror, God the Son,

Did from the grave arise;

We too will wake, and, in despite

Of sloth and languor, all unite,

As Psalmists bid, through the dim night

Waiting with wistful eyes."475

The Venerable Bede (d. 735) wrote a beautiful ascension hymn

"Hymnum canamus gloriae,"

"A hymn of glory let us sing;"

and a hymn for the Holy innocents,

"Hymnum canentes Martyrum,"

"The hymn of conquering martyrs raise."476

Rabanus Maurus, a native of Mainz (Mayence) on the Rhine, a pupil of Alcuin, monk and abbot in the convent of Fulda, archbishop of Mainz from 847 to 856, was the chief Poet of the Carolingian age, and the first German who wrote Latin hymns. Some of them have passed into the Breviary.477

He is probably the author of the pentecostal Veni, Creator Spiritus.478  It outweighs all his other poems. It is one of the classical Latin hymns, and still used in the Catholic church on the most solemn occasions, as the opening of Synods, the creating of popes and the crowning of kings. It was invested with a superstitious charm. It is the only Breviary hymn which passed into the Anglican liturgy as part of the office for ordaining priests and consecrating bishops.479  The authorship has been variously ascribed to Charlemagne,480 to Gregory the Great,481 also to Alcuin, and even to Ambrose, without any good reason. It appears first in 898, is found in the MS. containing the Poems of Rabanus Maurus, and in all the old German Breviaries; it was early and repeatedly translated into German482 and agrees very well in thought and expression with his treatise on the Holy Spirit.483

We give the original with two translations.484

Veni, Creator Spiritus,

Mentes tuorum visita.

Imple superna gratia

Quo tu creasti pectora.

Creator, Spirit, Lord of Grace,

O make our hearts Thy dwelling-place,

And with Thy might celestial aid

The souls of those whom Thou hast made.

Qui Paracletus diceris,

Donum Dei altissimi,

Fons vivus, ignis, charitas,

Et spiritalis unctio.

Come from the throne of God above,

O Paraclete, O Holy Dove,

Come, Oil of gladness, cleansing Fire,

And Living Spring of pure desire.

Tu septiformis munere,

Dextrae Dei tu digitus,

Tu rite Promissum Patris,

Sermone ditans guttura.

O Finger of the Hand Divine,

The sevenfold gifts of Grace are Thine,

And touched by Thee the lips proclaim

All praise to God’s most holy Name.

Accende lumen sensibus,

Infunde amorem cordibus;

Infirma nostri corporis,

Virtute firmans perpetim.485

Then to our souls Thy light impart,

And give Thy Love to every heart

Turn all our weakness into might,

O Thou, the Source of Life and Light.

Hostem repellas longius,

Pacemque dones protinus.

Ductore sic te praevio,

Vitemus omne noxium.

Protect us from the assailing foe,

And Peace, the fruit of Love, bestow;

Upheld by Thee, our Strength and Guide,

No evil can our steps betide.

Per te sciamus, da Patrem,

Noscamus atque Filium,

Te utriusque Spiritum,

Credamus omni tempore.

Spirit of Faith, on us bestow

The Father and the Son to know;

And, of the Twain, the Spirit, Thee;

Eternal One, Eternal Three.

[Sit laus Patri cum Filio,

Sancto simul Paracleto,

Nobisque mittat Filius

Charisma Sancti Spiritus.]486

To God the Father let us sing;

To God the Son, our risen King;

And equally with These adore

The Spirit, God for evermore.

[Praesta hoc Pater piissime,

Patrique compar unice,

Cum Spiritu Paracleto,

Regnans per omne saeculum.] See note above.

O Holy Ghost, Creator come!

Thy people's minds pervade;

And fill, with Thy supernatural grace,

The souls which Thou hast made.

Kindle our senses to a flame,

And fill our hearts with love,

And, through our bdies' weakness,

still

Pour valor from above!

Thou who art called the Paraclete,

The gift of God most high–

Thou living fount, and fire and love,

Our spirit's pure ally;

Drive further off our enemy,

And straightway give us peace;

That with Thyself as such a guide,

We may from evil cease.

Thou sevenfold giver of all good;

Finger of God's right hand;

Thou promise of the Father, rich

In words for every land;

Through Thee may we the Father

know,

And thus confess the Son;

For Thee, from both the Holy

Ghost,

We praise while time shall run.

In this connection we mention the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the other great pentecostal hymn of the middle ages. It is generally ascribed to King Robert of France (970–1031), the son and success or of Hugh Capet.487  He was distinguished for piety and charity, like his more famous successor, St. Louis IX., and better fitted for the cloister than the throne. He was disciplined by the pope (998) for marrying a distant cousin, and obeyed by effecting a divorce. He loved music and poetry, founded convents and churches, and supported three hundred paupers. His hymn reveals in terse and musical language an experimental knowledge of the gifts and operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. It is superior to the companion hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. Trench calls it "the loveliest" of all the Latin hymns, but we would give this praise rather to St. Bernard’s Jesu dulcis memoria ("Jesus, the very thought of Thee"). The hymn contains ten half-stanzas of three lines each with a refrain in ium. Each line has seven syllables, and ends with a double or triple rhyme; the third line rhymes with the third line of the following half-stanza. Neale has reproduced the double ending of each third line (as "brilliancy"—"radiancy").

Veni, Sancte Spiritus,

Et emittee coelitus

Lucis tuae radium.

Holy Spirit, God of light!

Come, and on our inner sight

Pour Thy bright and heavenly ray!

Veni, Pater pauperum,

Veni, dator munerum,

Veni, lumen cordium.

Father of the lowly! come;

Here, Great Giver! be Thy home,

Sunshine of our hearts, for aye!

Consolator optime,

Dulcis hospes animae,

Dulce refrigerium:

Inmost Comforter and best!

Of our souls the dearest Guest,

Sweetly all their thirst allay;

In labore requies,

In aestu temperies,

In fletu solatium.

In our toils be our retreat,

Be our shadow in the heat,

Come and wipe our tears away.

O lux beatissima,

Reple cordis intima,

Tuorum fidelium.

O Thou Light, all pure and blest!

Fill with joy this weary breast,

Turning darkness into day.

Sine tuo numine

Nihil est in homine

Nihil est innoxium,

For without Thee nought we find,

Pure or strong in human kind,

Nought that has not gone astray.

Lava quod est sordidum,

Riga quod est aridum,

Sana quod est saucium.

Wash us from the stains of sin,

Gently soften all within,

Wounded spirits heal and stay.

Flecte quod est rigidum,

Fove quod est languidum,

Rege quod est devium.

What is hard and stubborn bend,

What is feeble soothe and tend,

What is erring gently sway.

Da tuis fidelibus,

In te confitentibus,

Sacrum septenarium;

To Thy faithful servants give,

Taught by Thee to trust and live,

Sevenfold blessing from this day;

Da virtutis meritum,

Da salutis exitum,

Da perenne gaudium.488

Make our title clear, we pray,

When we drop this mortal clay;

Then,—O give us joy for aye.489

The following is a felicitous version by an American divine.490

Come, O Spirit!  Fount of grace!

From thy heavenly dwelling-place

One bright morning beam impart:

Come, O Father of the poor;

Come, O Source of bounties sure;

Come, O Sunshine of the heart!

O! thrice blessed light divine!

Come, the spirit’s inmost shrine

With Thy holy presence fill;

Of Thy brooding love bereft,

Naught to hopeless man is left;

Naught is his but evil still.

Comforter of man the best!

Making the sad soul thy guest;

Sweet refreshing in our fears,

In our labor a retreat,

Cooling shadow in the heat,

Solace in our falling tears.

Wash away each earthly stain,

Flow o’er this parched waste again,

Real the wounds of conscience sore,

Bind the stubborn will within,

Thaw the icy chains of sin,

Guide us, that we stray no more.

Give to Thy believers, give,

In Thy holy hope who live,

All Thy sevenfold dower of love;

Give the sure reward of faith,

Give the love that conquers death,

Give unfailing joy above.

Notker, surnamed the Older, or Balbulus ("the little Stammerer, "from a slight lisp in his speech), was born about 850 of a noble family in Switzerland, educated in the convent of St. Gall, founded by Irish missionaries, and lived there as an humble monk. He died about 912, and was canonized in 1512.491

He is famous as the reputed author of the Sequences (Sequentiae), a class of hymns in rythmical prose, hence also called Proses (Prosae). They arose from the custom of prolonging the last syllable in singing the Allelu-ia of the Gradual, between the Epistle and the Gospel, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the rood-loft (organ-loft), that he might thence sing the Gospel. This prolongation was called jubilatio or jubilus, or laudes, on account of its jubilant tone, and sometimes sequentia (Greek ajkolouqiva), because it followed the reading of the Epistle or the Alleluia. Mystical interpreters made this unmeaning prolongation of a mere sound the echo of the jubilant music of heaven. A further development was to set words to these notes in rythmical prose for chanting. The name sequence was then applied to the text and in a wider sense also to regular metrical and rhymed hymns. The book in which Sequences were collected was called Sequentiale.492

Notker marks the transition from the unmeaning musical sequence to the literary or poetic sequence. Over thirty poems bear his name. His first, attempt begins with the line

"Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus."

More widely circulated is his Sequence of the Holy Spirit:

"Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia."

"The grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us."493

The best of all his compositions, which is said to have been inspired by the sight of the builders of a bridge over an abyss in the Martinstobe, is a meditation on death (Antiphona de morte):

"Media vita in morte sumus:

Quem quaerimus adiutorem nisi te, Domine,

Qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris?

Sancte Deus, sancte fortis,

Sancte et misericors Salvator:

Amarae morti ne tradas nos."494

This solemn prayer is incorporated in many burial services. In the Book of Common Prayer it is thus enlarged:

"In the midst of life we be in death:

Of whom may we seek for succour, but of Thee,

O Lord, which for our sins justly art moved?

Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,

O holy and most merciful Saviour,

Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.

Shut not up thy merciful eyes to our prayers:

But spare us, Lord most holy,

O God most mighty,

O holy and merciful Saviour,

Thou most worthy Judge eternal,

Suffer us not, at our last hour,

For any pains of death,

To fall from Thee."495

Peter Damiani (d. 1072), a friend of Hildebrand and promoter of his hierarchical refrms, wrote a solemn hymn on the day of death:

"Gravi me terrore pulsas vitae dies ultima,"496

"With what heavy fear thou smitest."

He is perhaps also the author of the better known descriptive poem on the Glory and Delights of Paradise, which is usually assigned to St. Augustin:

"Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida,

Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima:

Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur exsul frui patria."497

The subordinate hymn-writers of our period are the following:498

Isidor of Seville (Isidoris Hispalensis, 560–636). A hymn on St. Agatha: "Festum insigne prodiit."

Cyxilla of Spain. Hymnus de S. Thurso et sociis: Exulta nimium turba fidelium."

Eugenius of Toledo. Oratio S. Eugenii Toletani Episcopi: "Rex Deus."

Paulus Diaconus (720–800), of Monte Casino, chaplain of Charlemagne, historian of the Lombards, and author of a famous collection of homilies. On John the Baptist ("Ut queant laxis),499 and on the Miracles of St. Benedict (Fratres alacri pectore).

Odo of Cluny (d. 941). A hymn on St. Mary Magdalene day, "Lauda, Mater Ecclesiae," translated by Neale: "Exalt, O mother Church, to-day, The clemency of Christ, thy Lord."  It found its way into the York Breviary.

Godescalcus (Gottschalk, d. about 950, not to be confounded with his predestinarian namesake, who lived in the ninth century), is next to Notker, the best writer of sequences or proses, as "Laus Tibi, Christe" ("Praise be to Thee, O Christ"), and Coeli enarrant ("The heavens declare the glory"), both translated by Neale.

Fulbert Of Chartres (died about 1029) wrote a paschal hymn adopted in several Breviaries: "Chorus novae Jerusalem" ("Ye choirs of New Jerusalem"), translated by Neale.

A few of the choicest hymns of our period, from the sixth to the twelfth century are anonymous.500  To these belong:

"Hymnum dicat turba fratrum."  A morning hymn mentioned by Bede as a fine specimen of the trochaic tetrameter.

"Sancti venite."  A communion hymn.

"Urbs beata Jerusalem."501  It is from the eighth century, and one of those touching New Jerusalem hymns which take their inspiration from the last chapter of St. John’s Apocalypse, and express the Christian’s home-sickness after heaven. The following is the first stanza (with Neale’s translation):

"Urbs beata Jerusalem,

Dicta pacis visio,

Quae construitur in coelo

Vivis ex lapidibus,

Et angelis coronata

Ut sponsata comite."

Blessed City, Heavenly Salem,

Vision dear of Peace and Love,

Who, of living stones upbuilded,

Art the joy of Heav'n above,

And, with angel cohorts circled,

As a bride to earth dost move!"

"Apparebit repentina."  An alphabetic and acrostic poem on the Day of Judgment, based on Matt. 25:31–36; from the seventh century; first mentioned by Bede, then long lost sight of; the forerunner of the Dies Irae, more narrative than lyrical, less sublime and terrific, but equally solemn. The following are the first lines in Neale’s admirable translation:502

"That great Day of wrath and terror,

That last Day of woe and doom,

Like a thief that comes at midnight,

On the sons of men shall come;

When the pride and pomp of ages

All shall utterly have passed,

And they stand in anguish, owning

That the end is here at last;

And the trumpet’s pealing clangor,

Through the earth’s four quarters spread,

Waxing loud and ever louder,

Shall convoke the quick and dead:

And the King of heavenly glory

Shall assume His throne on high,

And the cohorts of His angels

Shall be near Him in the sky:

And the sun shall turn to sackcloth,

And the moon be red as blood,

And the stars shall fall from heaven,

Whelm’d beneath destruction’s flood.

Flame and fire, and desolation

At the Judge’s feet shall go:

Earth and sea, and all abysses

Shall His mighty sentence know."

"Ave, Maris Stella." This is the favorite mediaeval Mary hymn, and perhaps the very best of the large number devoted to the worship of the "Queen of heaven," which entered so deeply into the piety and devotion of the Catholic church both in the East and the West. It is therefore given here in full with the version of Edward Caswall.503

"Ave, Maris Stella,504

Dei Mater alma

Atque semper Virgo,

Felix coeli porta.

Hail, thou Star-of-Ocean,

Portal of the sky,

Ever-Virgin Mother

Of the Lord Most High!

Sumens illud Ave

Gabrielis ore,

Funda nos in pace,

Mutans nomen Evae.505

Oh, by Gabriel’s Ave

Uttered long ago

Eva’s name reversing,

’Stablish peace below!

Solve vincla reis

Profer lumen coecis,

Mala nostra pelle,

Bona cuncta posce.

Break the captive’s fetters,

Light on blindness pour,

All our ills expelling,

Every bliss implore.

Monstra te esse matrem,506

Sumat per te precem,

Qui pro nobis natus

Tulit esse tuus.

Show thyself a mother,

Offer Him our sighs,

Who, for us Incarnate,

Did not thee despise.

Virgo singularis,

Inter omnes mitis,

Nos culpis solutos

Mites facet castos.

Virgin of all virgins!

To thy shelter take us—

Gentlest of the gentle!

Chaste and gentle make us.

Vitam praesta puram

Iter para tutum,

Ut videntes Iesum

Semper collaetemur.

Still as on we journey,

Help our weak endeavor,

Till with thee and Jesus,

We rejoice for ever.

Sit laus Deo Patri,

Summo Christo decus,

Spiritui Sancto

Honor trinus et unus.

Through the highest heaven

To the Almighty Three,

Father, Son, and Spirit,

One same glory be.

The Latin hymnody was only, for priests and monks, and those few who understood the Latin language. The people listened to it as they do to the mass, and responded with the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, which passed from the Greek church into the Western litanies. As the modern languages of Europe developed themselves out of the Latin, and out of the Teutonic, a popular poetry arose during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and afterwards received a powerful impulse from the Reformation. Since that time the Protestant churches, especially in Germany and England, have produced the richest hymnody, which speaks to the heart of the people in their own familiar tongue, and is, next to the Psalter, the chief feeder of public and private devotion. In this body of evangelical hymns the choicest Greek and Latin hymns in various translations, reproductions, and transformations occupy an honored place and serve as connecting links between past and modern times in the worship of the same God and Saviour.

§ 97. The Seven Sacraments.

Mediaeval Christianity was intensely sacramental, sacerdotal and hierarchical. The ideas of priest, sacrifice, and altar are closely connected. The sacraments were regarded as the channels of all grace and the chief food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. The child was saluted into this world by the sacrament of baptism; the old man was provided with the viaticum on his journey to the other world.

The chief sacraments were baptism and the eucharist. Baptism was regarded as the sacrament of the new birth which opens the door to the kingdom of heaven the eucharist as the sacrament of sanctification which maintains and nourishes the new life.

Beyond these two sacraments several other rites were dignified with that name, but there was no agreement as to the number before the scholastic period. The Latin sacramentum, like the Greek mystery (of which it is the translation in the Vulgate), was long used in a loose and indefinite way for sacred and mysterious doctrines and rites. Rabanus Maurus and Paschasius Radbertus count four sacraments, Dionysius Areopagita, six; Damiani, as many as twelve. By the authority chiefly of Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas the sacred number seven was at last determined upon, and justified by various analogies with the number of virtues, and the number of sins, and the necessities of human life.507

But seven sacraments existed as sacred rites long before the church was agreed on the number. We find them with only slight variations independently among the Greeks under the name of "mysteries" as well as among the Latins. They are, besides baptism and the eucharist (which is a sacrifice as well as a sacrament): confirmation, penance (confession and absolution), marriage, ordination, and extreme unction.

Confirmation was closely connected with baptism as a sort of supplement. It assumed a more independent character in the case of baptized infants and took place later. It may be performed in the Greek church by any priest, in the Latin only by the bishop.508

Penance was deemed necessary for sins after baptism.509

Ordination is the sacrament of the hierarchy and indispensable for the government of the church.

Marriage lies at the basis of the family and society in church and state, and was most closely and jealously guarded by the church against facility of divorce, against mixed marriages, and marriages between near relatives.

Extreme unction with prayer (first mentioned among the sacraments by a synod of Pavia in 850, and by Damiani) was the viaticum for the departure into the other world, and based on the direction of St. James 5:14, 15 (Comp. Mark 6:13; 16:18). At first it was applied in every sickness, by layman as well as priest, as a medical cure and as a substitute for amulets and forms of incantation; but the Latin church afterwards confined it to of extreme danger.

The efficacy of the sacrament was defined by the scholastic term ex opere operato, that is, the sacrament has its intended effect by virtue of its institution and inherent power, independently of the moral character of the priest and of the recipient, provided only that it be performed in the prescribed manner and with the proper intention and provided that the recipient throw no obstacle in the way.510

Three of the Sacraments, namely baptism, confirmation, and ordination, have in addition the effect of conferring an indelible character.511  Once baptized always baptized, though the benefit may be forfeited for ever; once ordained always ordained, though a priest may be deposed and excommunicated.

§ 98. The Organ and the Bell.

To the external auxiliaries of worship were added the organ and the bell.

The Organ,512 in the sense of a particular instrument (which dates from the time of St. Augustin), is a development of the Syrinx or Pandean pipe, and in its earliest form consisted of a small box with a row of pipes in the top, which were inflated by the performer with the mouth through means of a tube at one end. It has in the course of time undergone considerable improvements. The use of organs in churches is ascribed to Pope Vitalian (657–672). Constantine Copronymos sent an organ with other presents to King Pepin of France in 767. Charlemagne received one as a present from the Caliph Haroun al Rashid, and had it put up in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. The art of organ-building was cultivated chiefly in Germany. Pope John VIII. (872–882) requested Bishop Anno of Freising to send him an organ and an organist.

The attitude of the churches towards the organ varies. It shared to some extent the fate of images, except that it never was an object of worship. The poetic legend which Raphael has immortalized by one of his master-pieces, ascribes its invention to St. Cecilia, the patron of sacred music. The Greek church disapproves the use of organs. The Latin church introduced it pretty generally, but not without the protest of eminent men, so that even in the Council of Trent a motion was made, though not carried, to prohibit the organ at least in the mass. The Lutheran church retained, the Calvinistic churches rejected it, especially in Switzerland and Scotland; but in recent times the opposition has largely ceased.513

The Bell is said to have been invented by Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) in Campania;514 but he never mentions it in his description of churches. Various sonorous instruments were used since the time of Constantine the Great for announcing the commencement of public worship. Gregory of Tours mentions a "signum" for calling monks to prayer. The Irish used chiefly hand-bells from the time of St. Patrick, who himself distributed them freely. St. Columba is reported to have gone to church when the bell rang (pulsante campana) at midnight. Bede mentions the bell for prayer at funerals. St. Sturm of Fulda ordered in his dying hours all the bells of the convent to be rung (779). In the reign of Charlemagne the use of bells was common in the empire. He encouraged the art of bel-founding, and entertained bell-founders at his court. Tancho, a monk of St. Gall, cast a fine bell, weighing from four hundred to five hundred pounds, for the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the East, church bells are not mentioned before the end of the ninth century.

Bells, like other church-furniture, were consecrated for sacred use by liturgical forms of benediction. They were sometimes even baptized; but Charlemagne, in a capitulary of 789, forbids this abuse.515  The office of bell-ringers516 was so highly esteemed in that age that even abbots and bishops coveted it. Popular superstition ascribed to bells a magical effect in quieting storms and expelling pestilence. Special towers were built for them.517  The use of church bells is expressed in the old lines which are inscribed in many of them:

"Lauda Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum,

Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festaque honoro."518

§ 99. The Worship of Saints.

Comp. vol. III. §§ 81–87 (p. 409–460).

The Worship of Saints, handed down from the Nicene age, was a Christian substitute for heathen idolatry and hero-worship, and well suited to the taste and antecedents of the barbarian races, but was equally popular among the cultivated Greeks. The scholastics made a distinction between three grades of worship: 1) adoration (latreiva), which belongs to God alone; 2) veneration (douleiva), which is due to the saints as those whom God himself has honored, and who reign with him in heaven; 3) special veneration (uJperdouleiva), which is due to the Virgin Mary as the mother of the Saviour and the queen of all saints. But the people did not always mind this distinction, and the priests rather encouraged the excesses of saint-worship. Prayers were freely addressed to the saints, though not as the givers of the blessings desired, but as intercessors and advocates. Hence the form "Pray for us" (Ora pro nobis).

The number of saints and their festivals multiplied very rapidly. Each nation, country, province or city chose its patron saint, as Peter and Paul in Rome, St. Ambrose in Milan, St. Martin, St. Denys (Dionysius) and St. Germain in France, St. George in England, St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Boniface in Germany, and especially the Virgin Mary, who has innumerable localities and churches under her care and protection. The fact of saintship was at first decided by the voice of the people, which was obeyed as the voice of God. Great and good men and women who lived in the odor of sanctity and did eminent service to the cause of religion as missionaries or martyrs or bishops or monks or nuns, were gratefully remembered after their death; they became patron saints of the country or province of their labors and sufferings, and their worship spread gradually over the entire church. Their relics were held sacred; their tombs were visited by pilgrims. The metropolitans usually decided on the claims of saintship for their province down to A.D. 1153.519  But to check the increase and to prevent mistakes, the popes, since Alexander III. A.D. 1170, claimed the exclusive right of declaring the fact, and prescribing the worship of a saint throughout the whole (Latin) Catholic church.520  This was done by a solemn act called canonization. From this was afterwards distinguished the act of beatification, which simply declares that a departed Catholic Christian is blessed (beatus) in heaven, and which within certain limits permits (but does not prescribe) his veneration.521

The first known example of a papal canonization is the canonization of Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg (d. 973), by John XV. who, at a Lateran synod composed of nineteen dignitaries, in 993, declared him a saint at the request of Luitolph (Leuthold), his successor in the see of Augsburg, after hearing his report in person on the life and miracles of Ulrich. His chief merit was the deliverance of Southern Germany from the invasion of the barbarous Magyars, and his devotion to the interests of his large diocese. He used to make tours of visitation on an ox-cart, surrounded by a crowd of beggars and cripples. He made two pilgrimages to Rome, the second in his eighty-first year, and died as an humble penitent on the bare floor. The bull puts the worship of the saints on the ground that it redounds to the glory of Christ who identifies himself with his saints, but it makes no clear distinction between the different degrees of worship. It threatens all who disregard this decree with the anathema of the apostolic see.522

A mild interpretation of the papal prerogative of canonization reduces it to a mere declaration of a fact preceded by a careful examination of the merits of a case before the Congregation of Rites. But nothing short of a divine revelation can make such a fact known to mortal man. The examination is conducted by a regular process of law in which one acts as Advocatus Diaboli or accuser of the candidate for canonization, and another as Advocatus Dei. Success depends on the proof that the candidate must have possessed the highest sanctity and the power of working miracles either during his life, or through his dead bones, or through invocation of his aid. A proverb says that it requires a miracle to prove a miracle. Nevertheless it is done by papal decree on such evidence as is satisfactory to Roman Catholic believers.523

The question, how the saints and the Virgin Mary can hear so many thousands of prayers addressed to them simultaneously in so many different places, without being clothed with the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, did not disturb the faith of the people. The scholastic divines usually tried to solve it by the assumption that the saints read those prayers in the omniscient mind of God. Then why not address God directly?

In addition to the commemoration days of particular saints, two festivals were instituted for the commemoration of all the departed.

The Festival of All Saints524 was introduced in the West by Pope Boniface IV. on occasion of the dedication of the Pantheon in Rome, which was originally built by Agrippa in honor of the victory of Augustus at Actium, and dedicated to Jupiter Vindex; it survived the old heathen temples, and was presented to the pope by the Emperor Phocas, A.D. 607; whereupon it was cleansed, restored and dedicated to the service of God in the name of the ever-Virgin Mary and all martyrs. Baronius tells us that at the time of dedication on May 13 the bones of martyrs from the various cemeteries were in solemn procession transferred to the church in twenty-eight carriages.525  From Rome the festival spread during the ninth century over the West, and Gregory IV. induced Lewis the Pious in 835 to make it general in the Empire. The celebration was fixed on the first of November for the convenience of the people who after harvest had a time of leisure, and were disposed to give thanks to God for all his mercies.

The Festival of All Souls526 is a kind of supplement to that of All Saints, and is celebrated on the day following (Nov. 2). Its introduction is traced to Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, in the tenth century. It spread very soon without a special order, and appealed to the sympathies of that age for the sufferings of the souls in purgatory. The worshippers appear in mourning; the mass for the dead is celebrated with the "Dies irae, Dies illa," and the oft-repeated "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine."  In some places (e.g. in Munich) the custom prevails of covering the graves on that day with the last flowers of the season.

The festival of Michael the Archangel,527 the leader of the angelic host, was dedicated to the worship of angels,528 on the 29th of September.529  It rests on no doctrine and no fact, but on the sandy foundation of miraculous legends.530  We find it first in the East. Several churches in and near Constantinople were dedicated to St. Michael, and Justinian rebuilt two which had become dilapidated. In the West it is first mentioned by a Council of Mentz in 813, as the "dedicatio S. Michaelis," among the festivals to be observed; and from that time it spread throughout the Church in spite of the apostolic warning against angelolatry (Col. 2:18; Rev. 19:10; 22:8, 9).531

§ 100. The Worship of Images. Literature. Different Theories.

Comp. Vol. II., chs. vi. (p.266 sqq.) and vii. (p. 285); Vol. III. §§109–111 (p. 560 sqq.).

(I.) John of Damascus (chief defender of image-worship, about 750): Lovgoi ajpologhtikoi; pro;" tou;" diabavllonta" ta;" aJgiva" eijkovna" (ed. Le Quien I. 305). Nicephorus (Patriarch of Constantinople, d. 828): Breviarium Hist. (to A.D. 769), ed. Petavius, Paris, 1616. Theophanes (Confessor and almost martyr of image-worship, d. c. 820): Chronographia, cum notis Goari et Combefisii, Par., 1655, Ven. 1729, and in the Bonn ed. of the Byzant. historians, 1839, Tom. I. (reprinted in Migne’s "Patrol. Graeca," Tom. 108). The later Byzantine historians, who notice the controversy, draw chiefly from Theophanes; so also Anastasius (Historia Eccles.) and Paulus Diaconus (Historia miscella and Hist. Longobardorum).

The letters of the popes, and the acts of synods, especially the Acta Concilii Nicaeni II. (A.D. 787) in Mansi, Tom. XIII., and Harduin, Tom. IV.

M. H. Goldast: Imperialia Decreta de Cultu Imaginum in utroque imperio promulgata. Frankf., 1608.

The sources are nearly all on the orthodox side. The seventh oecumenical council (787) ordered in the fifth session that all the books against images should be destroyed.

(II.) J. Dalleus (Calvinist): De Imaginibus. Lugd. Bat., 1642.

L. Maimbourg (Jesuit): Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes. Paris, 1679 and 1683, 2 vols. (Hefele, III. 371, calls this work "nicht ganz zuverlässig," not quite reliable).

Fr. Spanheim (Calvinist): Historia Imaginum restituta. Lugd. Bat. 1686 (in Opera, II. 707).

Chr. W. Fr. Walch (Lutheran): Ketzerhistorie. Leipz., 1762 sqq., vol. X. (1782) p. 65–828, and the whole of vol. XI. (ed. by Spittler, 1785). Very thorough, impartial, and tedious.

F. Ch. Schlosser:  Geschichte der bilderstürmenden Kaiser des oströmischen Reichs. Frankf. a. M., 1812.

J. Marx (R.C.): Der Bilderstreit der Byzant. Kaiser. Trier, 1839.

Bishop Hefele: Conciliengesch. vol III. 366–490; 694–716 (revised ed., Freib. i. B. 1877).

R. Schenk: Kaiser Leo III. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Bilderstreites. Halle, 1880.

General Church Histories: 1) R. Cath.: Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, Alzog, Hergenröther (I. 121–143; 152–168). 2) Protest.: Basnage, Gibbon (ch. 49), Schröckh (vol. XX.), Neander (III. 197–243; 532–553, Bost. ed.; fall and fair); Gieseler (II. 13–19, too short).

The literature on the image-controversy is much colored by the doctrinal stand-point of the writers. Gibbon treats it with cold philosophical indifference, and chiefly in its bearing on the political fortunes of the Byzantine empire.

With the worship of saints is closely, connected a subordinate worship of their images and relics. The latter is the legitimate application of the former. But while the mediaeval churches of the East and West—with the exception of a few protesting voices—were agreed on the worship of saints, there was a violent controversy about the images which kept the Eastern church in commotion for more than a century (A.D. 724–842), and hastened the decline of the Byzantine empire.

The abstract question of the use of images is connected with the general subject of the relation of art to worship. Christianity claims to be the perfect and universal religion; it pervades with its leavening power all the faculties of man and all departments of life. It is foreign to nothing which God has made. It is in harmony with all that is true, and beautiful, and good. It is friendly to philosophy, science, and art, and takes them into its service. Poetry, music, and architecture achieve their highest mission as handmaids of religion, and have derived the inspiration for their noblest works from the Bible. Why then should painting or sculpture or any other art which comes from God, be excluded from the use of the Church?  Why should not Bible history as well as all other history admit of pictorial and sculptured representation for the instruction and enjoyment of children and adults who have a taste for beauty?  Whatever proceeds from God must return to God and spread his glory.

But from the use of images for ornament, instruction and enjoyment there is a vast step to the worship of images, and experience proves that the former can exist without a trace of the latter. In the middle ages, however, owing to the prevailing saint-worship, the two were inseparable. The pictures were introduced into churches not as works of art, but as aids and objects of devotion. The image-controversy was therefore a, purely practical question of worship, and not a philosophical or artistic question. To a rude imagination an ugly and revolting picture served the devotional purpose even better than one of beauty and grace. It was only towards the close of the middle ages that the art of Christian painting began to produce works of high merit. Moreover the image-controversy was complicated with the second commandment of the decalogue which clearly and wisely forbids, if not all kinds of figurative representations of the Deity, at all events every idolatrous and superstitious use of pictures. It was also beset by the difficulty that we have no authentic pictures of Christ, the Madonna and the Apostles or any other biblical character.

We have traced in previous volumes the gradual introduction of sacred images from the Roman Catacombs to the close of the sixth century. The use of symbols and pictures was at first quite innocent and spread imperceptibly with the growth of the worship of saints. The East which inherited a love for art from the old Greeks, was chiefly devoted to images, the Western barbarians who could not appreciate works of art, cared more for relics.

We may distinguish three theories, of which two came into open conflict and disputed the ground till the year 842.

1. The theory of Image-Worship. It is the orthodox theory, denounced by the opponents as a species of idolatry,532 but strongly supported by the people, the monks, the poets, the women, the Empresses Irene and Theodora, sanctioned by the seventh oecumenical Council (787) and by the popes (Gregory II., Gregory III. and Hadrian I). It maintained the right and duty of using and worshipping images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, but indignantly rejected the charge of idolatry, and made a distinction (often disregarded in practice) between a limited worship due to pictures,533 and adoration proper due to God alone.534  Images are a pictorial Bible, and speak to the eye even more eloquently than the word speaks to the ear. They are of special value to the common people who cannot read the Holy Scriptures. The honors of the living originals in heaven were gradually transferred to their wooden pictures on earth; the pictures were reverently kissed and surrounded by the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense; and prayers were thought to be more effective if said before them. Enthusiasm for pictures went hand in hand with the worship of saints, and was almost inseparable from it. It kindled a poetic inspiration which enriched the service books of the Greek church. The chief hymnists, John of Damascus, Cosmas of Jerusalem, Germanus, Theophanes, Theodore of the Studium, were all patrons of images, and some of them suffered deposition, imprisonment, and mutilation for their zeal; but the Iconoclasts did not furnish a single poet.535

The chief argument against this theory was the second commandment. It was answered in various ways. The prohibition was understood to be merely temporary till the appearance of Christ, or to apply only to graven images, or to the making of images for idolatrous purposes.

On the other hand, the cherubim over the ark, and the brazen serpent in the wilderness were appealed to as examples of visible symbols in the Mosaic worship. The incarnation of the Son of God furnished the divine warrant for pictures of Christ. Since Christ revealed himself in human form it can be no sin to represent him in that form. The significant silence of the Gospels concerning his personal appearance was supplied by fictitious pictures ascribed to St. Luke, and St. Veronica, and that of Edessa. A superstitious fancy even invented stories of wonder-working pictures, and ascribed to them motion, speech, and action.

It should be added that the Eastern church confines images to colored representations on a plane surface, and mosaics, but excludes sculptures and statues from objects of worship. The Roman church makes no such restriction.

2. The Iconoclastic theory occupies the opposite extreme. Its advocates were called image-breakers.536  It was maintained by the energetic Greek emperors, Leo III. and his son Constantine, who saved the tottering empire against the invasion of the Saracens; it was popular in the army, and received the sanction of the Constantinopolitan Synod of 754. It appealed first and last to the second commandment in the decalogue in its strict sense as understood by the Jews and the primitive Christians. It was considerably strengthened by the successes of the Mohammedans who, like the Jews, charged the Christians with the great sin of idolatry, and conquered the cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in spite of the sacred images which were relied on for protection and miraculous interposition. The iconoclastic Synod of 754 denounced image-worship as a relapse into heathen idolatry, which the devil had smuggled into the church in the place of the worship of God alone in spirit and in truth.

The iconoclastic party, however, was not consistent; for it adhered to saint-worship which is the root of image-worship, and instead of sweeping away all religious symbols, it retained the sign of the cross with all its superstitious uses, and justified this exception by the Scripture passages on the efficacy of the cross, though these refer to the sacrifice of the cross, and not to the sign.

The chief defect of iconoclasm and the cause of its failure was its negative character. It furnished no substitute for image-worship, and left nothing but empty walls which could not satisfy the religious wants of the Greek race. It was very different from the iconoclasm of the evangelical Reformation, which put in the place of images the richer intellectual and spiritual instruction from the Word of God.

3. The Moderate theory sought a via media between image-worship and image-hatred, by distinguishing between the sign and the thing, the use and the abuse. It allowed the representation of Christ and the saints as aids to devotion by calling to remembrance the persons and facts set forth to the eye. Pope Gregory I. presented to a hermit at his wish a picture of Christ, of Mary, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, with a letter in which he approves of the natural desire to have a visible reminder of an object of reverence and love, but at the same time warned him against superstitious use. "We do not," he says, "kneel down before the picture as a divinity, but we adore Him whose birth or passion or sitting on the throne of majesty is brought to our remembrance by the picture."  The same pope commended Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, for his zeal against the adoration of pictures, but disapproved of his excess in that direction, and reminded him of the usefulness of such aids for the people who had just emerged from pagan barbarism and could not instruct themselves out of the Holy Scriptures. The Frankish church in the eighth and ninth centuries took a more decided stand against the abuse, without, however, going to the extent of the iconoclasts in the East.

In the course of time the Latin church went just as far if not further in practical image-worship as the Eastern church after the seventh oecumenical council. Gregory II. stoutly resisted the iconoclastic decrees of the Emperor Leo, and made capital out of the controversy for the independence of the papal throne. Gregory III. followed in the same steps, and Hadrian sanctioned the decree of the second council of Nicaea. Image-worship cannot be consistently opposed without surrendering the worship of saints.

The same theories and parties reappeared again in the age of the Reformation: the Roman as well as the Greek church adhered to image-worship with an occasional feeble protest against its abuses, and encouraged the development of fine arts, especially in Italy; the radical Reformers (Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox) renewed the iconoclastic theory and removed, in an orderly way, the pictures from the churches, as favoring a refined species of idolatry and hindering a spiritual worship; the Lutheran church (after the example set by Luther and his friend Lucas Kranach), retained the old pictures, or replaced them by new and better ones, but freed from former superstition. The modern progress of art, and the increased mechanical facilities for the multiplication of pictures have produced a change in Protestant countries. Sunday School books and other works for old and young abound in pictorial illustrations from Bible history for instruction; and the masterpieces of the great religious painters have become household ornaments, but will never be again objects of worship, which is due to God alone.

Notes.

The Council of Trent, Sess. XXV. held Dec. 1563, sanctions, together with the worship of saints and relics, also the "legitimate use of images" in the following terms: "Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshiped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images."  The Profession of the Tridentine Faith teaches the same in art. IX. (See Schaff, Creeds, II. p. 201, 209).

The modern standards of the Eastern Church reiterate the decision of the seventh (Ecumenical Council. The Synod of Jerusalem, or the Confession of Dositheus, includes pictures of Christ, the mother of God, the saints and the holy angels who appeared to some of the patriarchs and prophets, also the symbolic representation of the Holy Spirit under the form of a dove, among the objects of worship (proskunou'men kai; timw'men kai; ajspazovmeqa). See Schaff, l.c. II. 436. The Longer Russian Catechism, in the exposition of the second commandment (Schaff, II. 527), thus speaks of this subject:

"What is an icon (eijkwvn)?

"The word is Greek, and means an image or representation. In the Orthodox Church this name designates sacred representations of our Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, his immaculate Mother, and his saints.

"Is the use of holy icons agreeable to the second commandment?

It would then, and then only, be otherwise, if any one were to make gods of them; but it is not in the least contrary to this commandment to honor icons as sacred representations, and to use them for the religious remembrance of God’s works and of his saints; for when thus used icons are books, writen(sic) with the forms of persons and things instead of letters. (See Greg. Magn. lib. ix. Ep. 9, ad Seren. Epis.).

"What disposition of mind should we have when we reverence icons?

"While we look on them with our eyes, we should mentally look to God and to the saints, who are represented on them."

§ 101. The Iconoclastic War, and the Synod of 754.

The history of the image-controversy embraces three periods: 1) The war upon images and the abolition of image-worship by the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 726–754. 2) The reaction in favor of image-worship, and its solemn sanction by the second Council of Nicaea, A.D. 754–787. 3) The renewed conflict of the two parties and the final triumph of image-worship, A.D. 842.

Image-worship had spread with the worship of saints, and become a general habit among the people in the Eastern church to such an extent that the Christian apologists had great difficulty to maintain their ground against the charge of idolatry constantly raised against them, not only by the Jews, but also by the followers of Islam, who could point to their rapid successes in support of their abhorrence of every species of idolatry. Churches and church-books, palaces and private houses, dresses and articles of furniture were adorned with religious pictures. They took among the artistic Greeks the place of the relics among the rude Western nations. Images were made to do service as sponsors in the name of the saints whom they represented. Fabulous stories of their wonder-working power were circulated and readily believed. Such excesses naturally called forth a reaction.

Leo III., called the Isaurian (716–741), a sober and energetic, but illiterate and despotic emperor, who by his military talents and successes had risen from the condition of a peasant in the mountains of Isauria to the throne of the Caesars, and delivered his subjects from the fear of the Arabs by the new invention of the "Greek fire," felt himself called, as a second Josiah, to use his authority for the destruction of idolatry. The Byzantine emperors did not scruple to interfere with the internal affairs of the church, and to use their despotic power for the purpose. Leo was influenced by a certain bishop Constantinus537 of Nakolia in Phrygia, and by a desire to break the force of the Mohammedan charge against the Christians. In the sixth year of his reign he ordered the forcible baptism of Jews and Montanists (or Manichaeans); the former submitted hypocritically and mocked at the ceremony; the latter preferred to set fire to their meeting-houses and to perish in the flames. Then, in the tenth year (726),538 he began his war upon the images. At first he only prohibited their worship, and declared in the face of the rising opposition that he intended to protect the images against profanation by removing them beyond the reach of touch and kiss. But in a second edict (730), he commanded the removal or destruction of all the images. The pictured walls were to be whitewashed. He replaced the magnificent picture of Christ over the gate of the imperial palace by a plain cross. He removed the aged Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and put the iconoclastic Anastasius in his place.

These edicts roused the violent opposition of the clergy, the monks, and the people, who saw in it an attack upon religion itself. The servants who took down the picture from the palace gate were killed by the mob. John of Damascus and Germanus, already known to us as hymnists, were the chief opponents. The former was beyond the reach of Leo, and wrote three eloquent orations, one before, two after the forced resignation of Germanus, in defence of image-worship, and exhausted the argument.539  The islanders of the Archipelago under the control of monks rose in open rebellion, and set up a pretender to the throne; but they were defeated, and their leaders put to death. Leo enforced obedience within the limits of the Eastern empire, but had no power among the Christian subjects of the Saracens, nor in Rome and Ravenna, where his authority was openly set at defiance. Pope Gregory II. told him, in an insulting letter (about 729), that the children of the grammar-school would throw their tablets at his head if he avowed himself a destroyer of images, and the unwise would teach him what he refused to learn from the wise540. Seventy years afterwards the West set up an empire of its own in close connection with the bishop of Rome.

Constantine V., surnamed Copronymos,541 during his long reign of thirty-four years (741–775), kept up his father’s policy with great ability, vigor and cruelty, against popular clamor, sedition and conspiracy. His character is very differently judged according to the doctrinal views of the writers. His enemies charge him with monstrous vices, heretical opinions, and the practice of magical arts; while the iconoclasts praise him highly for his virtues, and forty years after his death still prayed at his tomb. His administrative and military talents and successes against the Saracens, Bulgarians, and other enemies, as well as his despotism and cruelty (which he shares with other Byzantine emperors) are beyond dispute.

He called an iconoclastic council in Constantinople in 754, which was to be the seventh oecumenical, but was afterwards disowned as a pseudo-synod of heretics. It numbered three hundred and thirty subservient bishops under the presidency of Archbishop Theodosius of Ephesus (the son of a former emperor), and lasted six months (from Feb. 10th to Aug. 27th); but the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, being under Moslem rule, could not attend, the see of Constantinople was vacant, and Pope Stephen III. disregarded the imperial summons. The council, appealing to the second commandment and other Scripture passages denouncing idolatry (Rom. 1:23, 25; John 4:24), and opinions of the Fathers (Epiphanius, Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, etc.), condemned and forbade the public and private worship of sacred images on pain of deposition and excommunication, but (inconsistently) ordered at the same time that no one should deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments ornamented with figures, and formally declared its agreement with the six oecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan and idolatrous. Those who make pictures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates of image-worship, even the great John of Damascus under the name of Mansur, who is called a traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures. The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (o{ro") and a brief introduction, which are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Nicene Council.542

The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred images were ruthlessly destroyed and replaced by white-wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals. The bishops and clergy submitted; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and blasphemers, and were subjected to imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities, even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761–775) are Petrus Kalabites (i.e. the inhabitant of a hut, kaluvbh), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of Auxentius, opposite Constantinople (called "the new Stephanus," to distinguish him from the proto-martyr). The emperor made even an attempt to abolish the convents.543

§ 102. The Restoration of Image-Worship by the Seventh Oecumenical Council, 787.

Leo IV., called Chazarus (775–780), kept up the laws against images, though with more moderation. But his wife Irene of Athens distinguished for beauty, talent, ambition and intrigue, was at heart devoted to image-worship, and after his death and during the minority of her son Constantine VI. Porphyrogenitus, labored with shrewdness and perseverance for its restoration (780–802). At first she proclaimed toleration to both parties, which she afterwards denied to the iconoclasts. She raised the persecuted monks to the highest dignities, and her secretary, Tarasius, to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, with the consent of Pope Hadrian, who was willing to overlook the irregularity of the sudden election of a layman in prospect of his services to orthodoxy. She removed the iconoclastic imperial guard, and replaced it by one friendly to her views.

But the crowning measure was an oecumenical council, which alone could set aside the authority of the iconoclastic council of 754. Her first attempt to hold such a council at Constantinople in 786 completely failed. The second attempt, owing to more careful preparations, succeeded.

Irene convened the seventh oecumenical council in the year 787, at Nicaea, which was less liable to iconoclastic disturbances than Constantinople, yet within easy reach of the court, and famous as the seat of the first and weightiest oecumenical council. It was attended by about three hundred and fifty bishops,544 under the presidency of Tarasius, and held only eight sessions from September 24 to October 23, the last in the imperial palace of Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. sent two priests, both called Peter, whose names stand first in the Acts. The three Eastern patriarchs, who were subject to the despotic rule of the Saracens, could not safely leave their homes; but two Eastern monks, John, and Thomas, who professed to be syncelli of two of these patriarchs and to have an accurate knowledge of the prevailing orthodoxy of Egypt and Syria, were allowed to sit and vote in the place of those dignitaries, although they had no authority from them, and were sent simply by a number of their fellow-monks.545

The Nicene Council nullified the decrees of the iconoclastic Synod of Constantinople, and solemnly sanctioned a limited worship (proskynesis) of images.546

Under images were understood the sign of the cross, and pictures of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of angels and saints. They may be drawn in color or composed of Mosaic or formed of other suitable materials, and placed in churches, in houses, and in the street, or made on walls and tables, sacred vessels and vestments. Homage may be paid to them by kissing, bowing, strewing of incense, burning of lights, saying prayers before them; such honor to be intended for the living objects in heaven which the images represented. The Gospel book and the relics of martyrs were also mentioned among the objects of veneration.

The decree was fortified by a few Scripture passages about the Cherubim (Ex. 25:17–22; Ezek. 41:1, 15, 19; Heb. 9:1–5), and a large number of patristic testimonies, genuine and forged, and alleged miracles performed by images.547  A presbyter testified that he was cured from a severe sickness by a picture of Christ. Bishop after bishop, even those who had been members of the Synod of 754, renounced his iconoclastic opinions, and large numbers exclaimed together: "We all have sinned, we all have erred, we all beg forgiveness."  Some professed conscientious scruples, but were quieted when the Synod resolved that the violation of an oath which was contrary to the law of God, was no perjury. At the request of one of the Roman delegates, an image was brought into the assembly, and reverently kissed by all. At the conclusion, the assembled bishops exclaimed unanimously: "Thus we believe. This is the doctrine of the apostles. Anathema upon all who do not adhere to it, who do not salute the images, who call them idols, and who charge the Christians with idolatry. Long life to the emperors!  Eternal memory to the new Constantine and the new Helena!  God protect their reign!  Anathema upon all heretics!  Anathema especially upon Theodosius, the false bishop of Ephesus, as also upon Sisinnius and Basilius!  The Holy Trinity has rejected their doctrines."  Then follows an anathema upon other distinguished iconoclasts, and all who do not confess that Christ’s humanity has a circumscribed form, who do not greet the images, who reject the ecclesiastical traditions, written or unwritten; while eternal memory is given to the chief champions of image-worship, Germanus of Constantinople, John of Damascus, and George of Cyprus, the heralds of truth. 548

The decrees of the Synod were publicly proclaimed in an eighth session at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son, and, signed by them; whereupon the bishops, with the people and soldiers, shouted in the usual form: "Long live the Orthodox queen-regent."  The empress sent the bishops home with rich presents.

The second Council of Nicaea stands far below the first in moral dignity and doctrinal importance, and occupies the lowest grade among the seven oecumenical synods; but it determined the character of worship in the oriental church for all time to come, and herein lies its significance. Its decision is binding also upon the Roman church, which took part in it by two papal legates, and defended it by a letter of Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne in answer to the Libri Carolini. Protestant churches disregard the council because they condemn image-worship as a refined form of idolatry and as a fruitful source of superstition; and this theory is supported by the plain sense of the second commandment, the views of the primitive Christians, and, negatively, by the superstitions which have accompanied the history of image-worship down to the miracle-working Madonnas of the nineteenth century. At the same time it may be readily conceded that the decree of Nicaea has furnished aid and comfort to a low and crude order of piety which needs visible supports, and has stimulated the development of Christian art. Iconoclasm would have killed it. It is, however, a remarkable fact that the Catholic Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the Protestant Lucas Kranach and Albrecht Dürer, were contemporaries of the Reformers, and that the art of painting reached its highest perfection at the period when image-worship for a great part of Christendom was superseded by the spiritual worship of God alone.

A few months after the Nicene Council, Irene dissolved the betrothal of her son, the Emperor Constantine, to Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne, which she herself had brought about, and forced him to marry an Armenian lady whom he afterward cast off and sent to a convent.549  From this time dates her rupture with Constantine. In her ambition for despotic power, she rendered him odious by encouraging his bad habits, and at last incapable of the throne by causing his eyes to be plucked out, while he was asleep, with such violence that he died of it (797). It is a humiliating fact that Constantine the Great, the convener of the first Nicene Council, and Irene, the convener of the second and last, are alike stained with the blood of their own offspring, and yet honored as saints in the Eastern church, in whose estimate orthodoxy covers a multitude of sins.550  She enjoyed for five years the fruit of unnatural cruelty to her only child. As she passed through the streets of Constantinople, four patricians marched on foot before her golden chariot, holding the reins of four milk-white steeds. But these patricians conspired against their queen and raised the treasurer Nicephorus to the throne, who was crowned at St. Sophia by the venal patriarch. Irene was sent into exile on the Isle of Lesbos, and had to earn her bread by the labors of her distaff as she had done in the days of her youth as an Athenian virgin. She died of grief in 803. With her perished the Isaurian dynasty. Startling changes of fortune were not uncommon among princes and patriarchs of the Byzantine empire.

§ 103. Iconoclastic Reaction, and Final Triumph of Image-Worship, A.D. 842.

Walch, X. 592–828. Hefele, IV. 1–6; 38–47; 104–109.

During the five reigns which succeeded that of Irene, a period of thirty-eight years, the image-war was continued with varying fortunes. The soldiers were largely iconoclastic, the monks and the people in favor of image-worship. Among these Theodore of the Studium was distinguished by his fearless advocacy and cruel sufferings under Leo V., the Armenian (813–820), who was slain at the foot of the altar. Theophilus (829–842) was the last and the most cruel of the iconoclastic emperors. He persecuted the monks by imprisonment, corporal punishment, and mutilation.551

But his widow, Theodora, a second Irene, without her vices,552 in the thirteenth year of her regency during the minority of Michael the Drunkard, achieved by prudent and decisive measures the final and permanent victory of image-worship. She secured absolution for her deceased husband by the fiction of a death-bed repentance, although she had promised him to make no change. The iconoclastic patriarch, John the Grammarian, was banished and condemned to two hundred lashes; the monk Methodius of opposite tendency (honored as a confessor and saint) was put in his place; the bishops trembled and changed or were deposed; the monks and the people were delighted. A Synod at Constantinople (the acts of it are lost) reënacted the decrees of the seven oecumenical Councils, restored the worship of images, pronounced the anathema upon all iconoclasts, and decided that the event should be hereafter commemorated on the first Sunday in Lent by a solemn procession and a renewal of the anathema on the iconoclastic heretics.

On the 19th of February, 842, the images were again introduced into the churches of Constantinople. It was the first celebration of the "Sunday of Orthodoxy,"553 which afterwards assumed a wider meaning, as a celebration of victory over all heresies. It is one of the most characteristic festivals of the Eastern church. The old oecumenical Councils are dramatically represented, and a threefold anathema is pronounced upon all sorts of heretics such as atheists, antitrinitarians, upon those who deny the virginity of Mary before or after the birth of Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the immortality of the soul, who reject the mysteries (sacraments), the traditions and councils, who deny that orthodox princes rule by divine appointment and receive at their unction the Holy Ghost, and upon all iconoclasts. After this anathema follows the grateful commemoration of the orthodox confessors and "all who have fought for the orthodox faith by their words, writings, teaching, sufferings, and godly example, as also of all the protectors and defenders of the Church of Christ."  In conclusion the bishops, archimandrites and priests kiss the sacred icons.554

§ 104. The Caroline Books and the Frankish Church on Image-Worship.

I. Libri Carolini, first ed. by Elias Philyra (i.e., Jean du Tillet, or Tilius, who was suspected of Calvinism, but afterwards became bishop of Meaux), from a French (Paris) MS., Paris, 1549; then by Melchior Goldast in his collection of imperial decrees on the image-controversy, Francof., 1608 (67 sqq.), and in the first vol. of his Collection of Constitutiones imperiales, with the addition of the last ch. (lib. IV., c. 29), which was omitted by Tilius; best ed. by Ch. A. Heumann, Hanover, 1731, under the title: Augusta Concilii Nicaeni II. Censura, h. e., Caroli Magni de impio imaginum cultu libri IV., with prolegomena and notes. The ed. of Abbé Migne, in his "Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 98, f. 990–1248 (in vol. II. of Opera Caroli M.), is a reprint of the ed. of Tilius, and inferior to Heumann’s ed. ("Es ist zu bedauern," says Hefele, III. 696, "dass Migne, statt Besseres, entschieden Geringeres geboten hat, als man bisher schon besass".)

II. Walch devotes the greater part of the eleventh vol. to the history of image-worship in the Frankish Church from Pepin to Louis the Pious. Neander, III. 233–243; Gieseler, II. 66–73; Hefele, III 694–716; Hergenröther, I. 553–557. Floss: De suspecta librorum Carolinorum fide. Bonn, 1860. Reifferscheid: Narratio de Vaticano librorum Carolinorum Codice. Breslau, 1873.

The church of Rome, under the lead of the popes, accepted and supported the seventh oecumenical council, and ultimately even went further than the Eastern church in allowing the worship of graven as well as painted images. But the church in the empire of Charlemagne, who was not on good terms with the Empress Irene, took a position between image-worship and iconoclasm.

The question of images was first discussed in France under Pepin in a synod at Gentilly near Paris, 767, but we do not know with what result.555  Pope Hadrian sent to Charlemagne a Latin version of the acts of the Nicene Council; but it was so incorrect and unintelligible that a few decades later the Roman librarian Anastasius charged the translator with ignorance of both Greek and Latin, and superseded it by a better one.

Charlemagne, with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin, prepared and published, three years after the Nicene Council, an important work on image-worship under the title Quatuor Libri Carolini (790).556  He dissents both from the iconoclastic synod of 754 and the anti-iconoclastic synod of 787, but more from the latter, which he treats very disrespectfully.557  He decidedly rejects image-worship, but allows the use of images for ornament and devotion, and supports his view with Scripture passages and patristic quotations. The spirit and aim of the book is almost Protestant. The chief thoughts are these: God alone is the object of worship and adoration (colondus et adorandus). Saints are only to be revered (venerandi). Images can in no sense be worshipped. To bow or kneel before them, to salute or kiss them, to strew incense and to light candles before them, is idolatrous and superstitious. It is far better to search the Scriptures, which know nothing of such practices. The tales of miracles wrought by images are inventions of the imagination, or deceptions of the evil spirit. On the other hand, the iconoclasts, in their honest zeal against idolatry, went too far in rejecting the images altogether. The legitimate and proper use of images is to adorn the churches and to perpetuate and popularize the memory of the persons and events which they represent. Yet even this is not necessary; for a Christian should be able without sensual means to rise to the contemplation of the virtues of the saints and to ascend to the fountain of eternal light. Man is made in the image of God, and hence capable of receiving Christ into his soul. God should ever be present and adored in our hearts. O unfortunate memory, which can realize the presence of Christ only by means of a picture drawn in sensuous colors. The Council of Nicaea committed a great wrong in condemning those who do not worship images.

The author of the Caroline books, however, falls into the same inconsistency as the Eastern iconoclasts, by making an exception in favor of the sign of the cross and the relics of saints. The cross is called a banner which puts the enemy to flight, and the honoring of the relics is declared to be a great means of promoting piety, since the saints reign with Christ in heaven, and their bones will be raised to glory; while images are made by men’s hands and return to dust.

A Synod in Frankfort, A.D. 794, the most important held during the reign of Charlemagne, and representing the churches of France and Germany, in the presence of two papal legates (Theophylactus and Stephanus), endorsed the doctrine of the Libri Carolini, unanimously condemned the worship of images in any form, and rejected the seventh oecumenical council.558  According to an old tradition, the English church agreed with this decision.559

Charlemagne sent a copy of his book, or more probably an extract from it (85 Capitula or Capitulare de Imaginibus) through Angilbert, his son-in-law, to his friend Pope Hadrian, who in a long answer tried to defend the Eastern orthodoxy of Nicaea with due respect for his Western protector, but failed to satisfy the Frankish church, and died soon afterwards (Dec. 25, 795).560

A Synod of Paris, held under the reign of Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis the Pious, in the year 825, renewed the protest of the Frankfort Synod against image-worship and the authority of the second council of Nicaea, in reply to an embassy of the Emperor Michael Balbus, and added a slight rebuke to the pope.561

Notes.

The Caroline Books, if not written by Charlemagne, are at all events issued in his name; for the author repeatedly calls Pepin his father, and speaks of having undertaken the work with the consent of the priests in his dominion (conniventia sacerdotum in regno a Deo nobis concesso). The book is first mentioned by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims in the ninth century as directed against the pseudo-Synodus Graecorum (the second Nicene Council), and he quotes a passage from a copy which he saw in the royal palace. The second mention and quotation was made by the papal librarian Augustin Steuchus (d. 1550) from a very old copy in the Bibliotheca Palatina. As soon as it appeared in print, Flavius and other Protestant polemics used it against Rome. Baronius, Bellarmin, and other Romanists denied the genuineness, and ascribed the book to certain heretics in the age of Charlemagne, who sent it to Rome to be condemned; some declared it even a fabrication of the radical reformer Carlstadt!  But Sirmond and Natalis Alexander convincingly proved the genuineness. More recently Dr. Floss (R.C.) of Bonn, revived the doubts (1860), but they are permanently removed since Professor Reifferscheid (1866) discovered a new MS. from the tenth century in the Vatican library which differs from the one of Steuchus, and was probably made in the Cistercian Convent at Marienfeld in Westphalia. "Therefore," writes Bishop Hefele in 1877 (III. 698), "the genuineness of the Libri Carolini is hereafter no longer to be questioned (nicht mehr zu beanstanden)."

§ 105. Evangelical Reformers. Agobardus of Lyons, and Claudius of Turin.

I. Agobardus: Contra eorum superstitionem qui picturis et imaginibus SS. adorationis obsequium deferendum putant. Opera ed. Baluzius Par. 1666, 2 vols., and Migne, "Patrol. Lat." vol. 104, fol. 29–351. Histoire litter. de la France, IV. 567 sqq. C. B. Hundeshagen: De Agobardi vita et scriptis. Pars I. Giessae 1831; and his article in Herzog2 I. 212 sq. Bähr: Gesch. der röm. Lit. in Karoliny. Zeitalter, p. 383–393. Bluegel: De Agobardi archiep. Lugd. vita et scriptis. Hal. 1865. Simson: Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen. Leipz. 1874 and ’76. C. Deedes in Smith and Wace, I. 63–64. Lichtenberger, I. 119.

II. Claudius: Opera in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat." vol. 104, fol. 609–927. Commentaries on Kings, Gal., Ephes., etc., Eulogium Augustini, and Apologeticum. Some of his works are still unpublished. Rudelbach: Claudii Tur. Ep. ineditorum operum specimina, praemissa de ejus doctrina scriptisque dissert. Havniae 1824. C. Schmidt: Claudius v. Turin in Illgen’s "Zeitschrift f. die Hist. Theol."  1843. II. 39; and his art. in Herzog2, III. 243–245.

III. Neander, III. 428–439 (very full and discriminating on Claudius); Gieseler, II. 69–73 (with judicious extracts); Reuter: Geschichte der Aufklärung im Mittelalter, vol. I. (Berlin 1875), 16–20 and 24–41.

The opposition to image-worship and other superstitious practices continued in the Frankish church during the ninth century.

Two eminent bishops took the lead in the advocacy of a more spiritual and evangelical type of religion. In this they differed from the rationalistic and destructive iconoclasts of the East. They were influenced by the writings of Paul and Augustin, those inspirers of all evangelical movements in church history; with this difference, however, that Paul stands high above parties and schools, and that Augustin, with all his anti-Pelagian principles, was a strong advocate of the Catholic theory of the church and church-order.

Agobard (in Lyonese dialect Agobaud or Aguebaud), a native of Spain, but of Gallic parents, and archbishop of Lyons (816–841), figures prominently in the political and ecclesiastical history of France during the reign of Louis the Pious. He is known to us already as an opponent of the ordeal, the judicial duel and other heathen customs.562  His character presents singular contrasts. He was a rigid ecclesiastic and sacerdotalist, and thoroughly orthodox in dogma (except that he denied the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures); but, on the other hand, a sworn enemy of all superstition, and advocate of liberal views in matters of worship.563  He took part in the rebellion of Lothaire against his father Louis in 833, which deprived him of his bishopric and left a serious stain on his character, but he was afterwards reconciled to Louis and recovered the bishopric. He opposed Adoptionism as a milder form of the Nestorian heresy. He attacked the Jews, who flocked to Lyons in large numbers, and charges them with insolent conduct towards the Christians. In this he shared the intolerance of his age. But, on the other hand, he wrote a book against image-worship.564  He goes back to the root of the difficulty, the worship of saints. He can find no authority for such worship. The saints themselves decline it. It is a cunning device of Satan to smuggle heathen idolatry, into the church under pretext of showing honor to saints. He thus draws men away from a spiritual to a sensual worship. God alone should be adored; to him alone must we present the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart. Angels and holy men who are crowned with victory, and help us by their intercessions, may be loved and honored, but not worshiped. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man" (Jer. 17:5). We may look with pleasure on their pictures, but it is better to be satisfied with the simple symbol of the cross (as if this were not liable to the same abuse). Agobart approves the canon of Elvira, which forbade images altogether. He says in conclusion: "Since no man is essentially God, save Jesus our Saviour, so we, as the Scripture commands, shall bow our knees to his name alone, lest by giving this honor to another we may be estranged from God, and left to follow the doctrines and traditions of men according to the inclinations of our hearts."565

Agobard was not disturbed in his position, and even honored as a saint in Lyons after his death, though his saintship is disputed.566  His works were lost, until Papirius Masson discovered a MS. copy and rescued it from a bookbinder’s hands in Lyons (1605).

Claudius, bishop of Turin (814–839), was a native of Spain, but spent three years as chaplain at the court of Louis the Pious and was sent by him to the diocese of Turin. He wrote practical commentaries on nearly all the books of the Bible, at the request of the emperor, for the education of the clergy. They were mostly extracted from the writings of Augustin, Jerome, and other Latin fathers. Only fragments remain. He was a great admirer of Augustin, but destitute of his wisdom and moderation.567

He found the Italian churches full of pictures and picture-worshipers. He was told that the people did not mean to worship the images, but the saints. He replied that the heathen on the same ground defend the worship of their idols, and may become Christians by merely changing the name. He traced image-worship and saint-worship to a Pelagian tendency, and met it with the Augustinian view of the sovereignty of divine grace. Paul, he says, overthrows human merits, in which the monks now most glory, and exalts the grace of God. We are saved by grace, not by works. We must worship the Creator, not the creature. "Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone, is an idolater."  The departed saints themselves do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by prayers, but not after death. He attacked also the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, going beyond Charlemagne and Agobard. He met the defence by carrying it to absurd conclusions. If we worship the cross, he says, because Christ suffered on it, we might also worship every virgin because he was born of a virgin, every manger because he was laid in a manger, every ship because he taught from a ship, yea, every ass because he rode on an ass into Jerusalem. We should bear the cross, not adore it. He banished the pictures, crosses and crucifixes from the churches, as the only way to kill superstition. He also strongly opposed the pilgrimages. He had no appreciation of religious symbolism, and went in his Puritanic zeal to a fanatical extreme.

Claudius was not disturbed in his seat; but, as he says himself, he found no sympathy with the people, and became "an object of scorn to his neighbors," who pointed at him as "a frightful spectre."  He was censured by Pope Paschalis I. (817–824), and opposed by his old friend, the Abbot Theodemir of the diocese of Nismes, to whom he had dedicated his lost commentary on Leviticus (823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ireland, about 827), and by Bishop Jonas of Orleans (840), who unjustly charged him with the Adoptionist and even the Arian heresy. Some writers have endeavored, without proof, to trace a connection between him and the Waldenses in Piedmont, who are of much later date.568

Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims, and Wallafrid Strabo still maintained substantially the moderate attitude of the Caroline books between the extremes of iconoclasm and image-worship. But the all-powerful influence of the popes, the sensuous tendency and credulity of the age, the ignorance of the clergy, and the grosser ignorance of the people combined to secure the ultimate triumph of image-worship even in France. The rising sun of the Carolingian age was obscured by the darkness of the tenth century.

CHAPTER XI.

DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES.

§ 106. General Survey.

Our period is far behind the preceding patristic and the succeeding scholastic in doctrinal importance, but it mediates between them by carrying the ideas of the fathers over to the acute analysis of the schoolmen, and marks a progress in the development of the Catholic system. It was agitated by seven theological controversies of considerable interest.

1. The controversy about the single or double Procession of the Holy Spirit. This belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity and was not settled, but divides to this day the Greek and Latin churches.

2. The Monotheletic controversy is a continuation of the Eutychian and Monophysitic controversies of the preceding period. It ended with the condemnation of Monotheletism and an addition to the Chalcedonian Christology, namely, the doctrine that Christ has two wills as well as two natures.

3. The Adoptionist controversy is a continuation of the Nestorian. Adoptionism was condemned as inconsistent with the personal union of the two natures in Christ.

4 and 5. Two Eucharistic controversies resulted in the general prevalence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

6. The Predestinarian controversy between Gottschalk and Hincmar tended to weaken the influence of the Augustinian system, and to promote semi-Pelagian views and practices.

7. The Image-controversy belongs to the history of worship rather than theology, and has been discussed in the preceding chapter.569

The first, second, and seventh controversies affected the East and the West; the Adoptionist, the two Eucharistic, and the Predestinarian controversies were exclusively carried on in the West, and ignored in the East.

§ 107. The Controversy on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.

See the Lit. in § 67 p. 304 sq. The arguments for both sides of the question were fully discussed in the Union Synod of Ferrara-Florence, 1438–’39; see Hefele: Conciliengesch. VII. P. II. p. 683 sqq.; 706 sqq.; 712 sqq.

The Filioque-controversy relates to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation of the trinitarian controversies of the Nicene age. It marks the chief and almost the only important dogmatic difference between the Greek and Latin churches. It belongs to metaphysical theology, and has far less practical value than the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men. But it figures very largely in history, and has occasioned, deepened, and perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom. The single word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest, and most nearly related churches divided since the ninth century, and still forbids a reunion. The Eastern church regards the doctrine of the single procession as the corner-stone of orthodoxy, and the doctrine of the double procession as the mother of all heresies. She has held most tenaciously to her view since the fourth century, and is not likely ever to give it up. Nor can the Roman church change her doctrine of the double procession without sacrificing the principle of infallibility.

The Protestant Confessions agree with the Latin dogma, while on the much more vital question of the papacy they agree with the Eastern church, though from a different point of view. The church of England has introduced the double procession of the Spirit even into her litany.570  It should be remembered, however, that this dogma was not a controverted question in the time of the Reformation, and was received from the mediaeval church without investigation. Protestantism is at perfect liberty to go back to the original form of the Nicene Creed if it should be found to be more in accordance with the Scripture. But the main thing for Christians of all creeds is to produce "the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control."

Let us first glance at the external history of the controversy.

1. The New Testament. The exegetical starting-point and foundation of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit is the word of our Lord in the farewell address to his disciples: When the Paraclete (the Advocate) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth (or, goeth forth) from the Father, he shall bear witness of me."571

On this passage the Nicene fathers based their doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit,572 as his personal property or characteristic individuality573 while the unbegotten Fatherhood574 belongs to the person of the Father, and the eternal generation575 to the person of the Son.

Our Lord says neither that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, nor that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. But in several other passages of the same farewell addresses he speaks of the Spirit as being sent by the Father and the Son, and promises this as a future event which was to take place after his departure, and which actually did take place on the day of Pentecost and ever since.576

On these passages is based the doctrine of the mission of the Spirit.577  This is regarded as a temporal or historical act, and must be distinguished from the eternal procession in the Trinity itself. In other words, the procession belongs to the Trinity of essence, and is an intertrinitarian process (like the eternal generation of the Son), but the mission belongs to the Trinity of revelation in the historical execution of the scheme of redemption. In this exegesis the orthodox divines of the Greek and Latin churches are agreed. They differ on the source of the procession, but not on the mission.

Modern exegetes, who adhere closely to the grammatical sense, and are not governed by dogmatic systems, incline mostly to the view that no metaphysical distinction is intended in those passages, and that the procession of the Spirit from the Father, and the mission of the Spirit by the Father and the Son, refer alike to the same historic event and soteriological operation, namely, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and his continued work in the church and in the heart of believers. The Spirit "proceeds" when he "is sent" on his divine mission to glorify the Son and to apply the redemption to men. The Saviour speaks of the office and work of the Spirit rather than of his being and essence. Nevertheless there is a difference which must not be overlooked. In the procession, the Spirit is active: in the mission, he is passive; the procession is spoken of in the present tense (ejkporeuvetai) as a present act, the mission in the future tense (pevmyw) as a future act, so that the former seems to belong to the eternal Trinity of essence, the latter to the historical or economical Trinity of revelation. Now God indeed reveals himself as he actually is, and we may therefore reason back from the divine office of the Spirit to his divine nature, and from his temporal mission to his eternal relation. Yet it may be questioned whether such inference justifies the doctrine of a double procession in the absence of any express Scripture warrant.578

2. The Nicene Creed, in its original form of 325, closes abruptly with the article: "And [we believe] into the Holy Spirit.579  In the enlarged form (which is usually traced to the Council of Constantinople, 381, and incorporated in its acts since 451, but is found earlier in Epiphanius, 373, and Cyril of Jerusalem, 362, we have the addition: "the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father," etc.580  This form was generally adopted in the Eastern churches since the Council of Chalcedon, 451 (at which both forms were recited and confirmed), and prevails there to this day unaltered. It is simply the Scripture phrase without any addition, either of the Greek "alone," or of the Latin "and from the Son."  The Greek church understood the clause in an exclusive sense, the Latin church, since Augustin and Leo I., in an incomplete sense.581

The Latin church had no right to alter an oecumenical creed without the knowledge and consent of the Greek church which had made it; for in the oecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople the Western church was scarcely represented, at Nicaea only by one bishop (Hosius of Spain), in the second not at all; and in the Council of Chalcedon the delegates of Pope Leo I. fully agreed to the enlarged Greek form of the Nicene symbol, yet without the Filioque, which was then not thought of, although the doctrine of the double procession was already current in the West. A departure from this common symbolical standard of the most weighty oecumenical councils by a new addition, without consent of the other party, opened the door to endless disputes.

The Enlargement of the Nicene Creed.

The third national Synod of Toledo in Spain, A.D. 589, held after the conversion of King Reccared to the Catholic faith, in its zeal for the deity of Christ against the Arian heresy which lingered longest in that country, and without intending the least disrespect to the Eastern church, first inserted the clause Filioque in the Latin version of the Nicene Creed.582  Other Spanish synods of Toledo did the same.583

From Spain the clause passed into the Frankish church. It was discussed at the Synod of Gentilly near Paris in 767, but we do not know with what result.584  The Latin view was advocated by Paulinus of Aquileja (796),585 by Alcuin (before 804), and by Theodulf of Orleans.586  It was expressed in the so-called Athanasian Creed, which made its appearance in France shortly before or during the age of Charlemagne.587  The clause was sung in his chapel. He brought the matter before the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 809, which decided in favor of the double procession.588  He also sent messengers to Pope Leo III., with the request to sanction the insertion of the clause in the Nicene Creed. The pope decided in favor of the doctrine of the double procession, but protested against the alteration of the creed, and caused the Nicene Creed, in its original Greek text and the Latin version, to be engraved on two tablets and suspended in the Basilica of St. Peter, as a perpetual testimony against the innovation.589  His predecessor, Hadrian I., had a few years before (between 792 and 795) defended the Greek formula of John of Damascus and patriarch Tarasius, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.590  But the violent assault of Photius upon the Latin doctrine, as heretical, drove the Latin church into the defensive. Hence, since the ninth century, the, Filioque was gradually introduced into the Nicene Creed all over the West, and the popes themselves, notwithstanding their infallibility, approved what their predecessors had condemned.591

The coincidence of the triumph of the Filioque in the West with the founding of the new Roman Empire is significant; for this empire emancipated the pope from the Byzantine rule.

The Greek church, however, took little or no notice of this innovation till about one hundred and fifty years later, when Photius, the learned patriarch of Constantinople, brought it out in its full bearing and force in his controversy with Nicolas I., the pope of old Rome.592  He regarded the single procession as the principal part of the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit on which the personality and deity of the Spirit depended, and denounced the denial of it as heresy and blasphemy. After this time no progress was made for the settlement of the difference, although much was written on both sides. The chief defenders of the Greek view, after the controversy with Photius, were Theophylactus, Euthymius Zigabenus, Nicolaus of Methone, Nicetus Choniates, Eustratius, and in modern times, the Russian divines, Prokovitch, Zoernicav, Mouravieff, and Philaret. The chief defenders of the Latin doctrine are Aeneas, bishop of Paris,593 Ratramnus (or Bertram), a monk of Corbie, in the name of the French clergy in the ninth century,594 Anselm of Canterbury (1098),595 Peter Chrysolanus, archbishop of Milan (1112),596 Anselm of Havelberg (1120),597 and Thomas Aquinas (1274),598 and in more recent times, Leo Alacci, Michael Le Quien, and Cardinal Hergenröther.599

§ 108. The Arguments for and against the Filioque.

We proceed to the statement of the controverted doctrines and the chief arguments.

I. The Greek and Latin churches agree in holding-

(1) The personality and deity of the third Person of the holy Trinity.

(2) The eternal procession (ejkpovreusi", processio) of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity.

(3) The temporal mission (pevmyi", missio) of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, beginning with the day of Pentecost, and continued ever since in the church.

II. They differ on the source of the eternal procession of the Spirit, whether it be the Father alone, or the Father and the Son. The Greeks make the Son and the Spirit equally dependent on the Father, as the one and only source of the Godhead; the Latins teach an absolute co-ordination of the three Persons of the Trinity as to essence, but after all admit a certain kind of subordination as to dignity and office, namely, a subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to both. The Greeks approach the Latins by the admission that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son (this was the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus); the Latins approach the Greeks by the admission that the Spirit proceeds chiefly (principaliter) from the Father (Augustin). But little or nothing is gained by this compromise. The real question is, whether the Father is the only source of the Deity, and whether the Son and the Spirit are co-ordinate or subordinate in their dependence on the Father.

1. The Greek doctrine in its present shape. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (ejk movnou tou' patrov"), as the beginning (ajrchv), cause or root (aijtiva, rjizh, causa, radix), and fountain (phghv) of the Godhead, and not from the Son.600

John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about A.D. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator.601  The same formula, Ex Patre per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh oecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius and the later Eastern controversialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.602

The arguments for the Greek doctrine are as follows:

(a) The words of Christ, John 15:26, understood in an exclusive sense. As this is the only passage of the Bible in which the procession of the Spirit is expressly taught, it is regarded by the Greeks as conclusive.

(b) The supremacy or monarchia of the Father. He is the source and root of the Godhead. The Son and the Spirit are subordinated to him, not indeed in essence or substance (oujsiva), which is one and the same, but in dignity and office. This is the Nicene subordinatianism. It is illustrated by the comparison of the Father with the root, the Son with the stem, the Spirit with the fruit, and such analogies as the sun, the ray, and the beam; the fire, the flame, and the light.

(c) The analogy of the eternal generation of the Son, which is likewise from the Father alone, without the agency of the Spirit.

(d) The authority of the Nicene Creed, and the Greek fathers, especially Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and John of Damascus. The Antiochean school is clearly on the Greek side; but the Alexandrian school leaned to the formula through the Son (dia; tou' uiJou', per Filium). The Greeks claim all the Greek fathers, and regard Augustin as the inventor of the Latin dogma of the double procession.

The Latin doctrine is charged with innovation, and with dividing the unity of the Godhead, or establishing two sources of the Deity. But the Latins replied that the procession was from one and the same source common to both the Father and the Son.

2. The Latin theory of the double procession is defended by the following arguments:

(a) The passages where Christ says that he will send the Spirit from the Father (John 15:26; 16:7); and that the Father will send the Spirit in Christ’s name (14:26); and where he breathes the Spirit on his disciples (20:22). The Greeks refer all these passages to the temporal mission of the Spirit, and understand the insufflation to be simply a symbolical act or sacramental sign of the pentecostal effusion which Christ had promised. The Latins reply that the procession and the mission are parallel processes, the one ad intra, the other ad extra.

(b) The equality of essence (oJmoousiva) of the Father and Son to the exclusion of every kind of subordinationism (since Augustin) requires the double procession. The Spirit of the Father is also the Spirit of the Son, and is termed the Spirit of Christ. But, as already remarked, Augustin admitted that the Spirit proceeds chiefly from the Father, and this after all is a kind of subordination of dignity. The Father has his being (oujsiva) from himself, the Son and the Spirit have it from the Father by way of derivation, the one by generation, the other by procession.

(c) The temporal mission of the Spirit is a reflection of his eternal procession. The Trinity of revelation is the basis of all our speculations on the Trinity of essence. We know the latter only from the former.

(d) The Nicene Creed and the Nicene fathers did not understand the procession from the Father in an exclusive sense, but rather in opposition to the Pneumatomachi who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Some Greek fathers, as Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John of Damascus, teach the Latin doctrine. This is not the case exactly. The procession of the Spirit "through the Son," is not equivalent to the procession "from the Son," but implies a subordination.

(e) The Latin fathers are in favor of Filioque, especially Ambrose, Augustin, Jerome, Leo I., Gregory I.603

(f) The insertion of the Filioque is as justifiable as the other and larger additions to the Apostles’ Creed and to the original Nicene Creed of 325, and was silently accepted, or at least not objected to by the Greek church until the rivalry of the Patriarch of Constantinople made it a polemical weapon against the Pope of Rome. To this the Greeks reply that the other additions are consistent and were made by common consent, but the Filioque was added without the knowledge and against the teaching of the East by churches (in Spain and France) which had nothing to do with the original production.

This controversy of the middle ages was raised from the tomb by the Old Catholic Conference held in Bonn, 1875, under the lead of the learned historian, Dr. Döllinger of Munich, and attended by a number of German Old Catholic, Greek and Russian, and high Anglican divines. An attempt was made to settle the dispute on the basis of the teaching of the fathers before the division of the Eastern and Western churches, especially the doctrine of John of Damascus, that is, the single procession of the Spirit from the Father mediated through the Son. The Filioque was surrendered as an unauthorized and unjustifiable interpolation.

But the Bonn Conference has not been sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority, and forms only an interesting modern episode in the, history of this controversy, and in the history of the Old Catholic communion.604

§ 109. The Monotheletic Controversy.

Literature.

(I.) Sources: Documents and acts of the first Lateran Synod (649), and the sixth oecumenical Council or Concilium Trullanum I., held in Constantinople (680), in Mansi, X. 863 sqq. and XI. 187 sqq.

Anastasius (Vatican librarian, about 870): Collectanea de iis quae spectant ad controv. et histor. monothelit. haeret., first ed. by Sirmond, Par. 1620, in his Opera, III., also in Bibl. Max. PP. Lugd. XII. 833; and in Gallandi, XIII.; also scattered through vols. X. and XI. of Mansi. See Migne’s ed. of Anastas. in "Patrol. Lat." vols. 127–129.

Maximus Confessor: Opera, ed. Combefis, Par. 1675, Tom. II. 1–158, and his disputation with Pyrrhus, ib. 159 sqq. Also in Migne’s reprint, "Patrol. Gr." vol. 91.

Theophanes: Chronographia, ed. Bonn. (1839), p. 274 sqq.; ed. Migne, in vol. 108 of his "Patrol. Graeca" (1861).

(II.) Franc. Combefisius (Combefis, a learned French Dominican, d. 1679): Historia haeresis Monothelitarum ac vindiciae actorum Sexti Synodi, in his Novum Auctuarium Patrum, II. 3 sqq. Par. 1648, fol. 1–198.

Petavius: Dogm. Theol. Tom. V. l. IX. c. 6–10.

Jos. Sim. Assemani, in the fourth vol. of his Bibliotheca Juris Orientalis. Romae 1784.

CH. W. F. Walch: Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX. 1–666 (Leipzig 1780). Very dry, but very learned.

Gibbon (Ch. 47, N. Y. ed. IV. 682–686, superficial). Schröckh, vol. XX. 386 sqq. Neander, III. 175–197 (Boston ed.), or III. 353–398 (Germ. ed.). Gieseler, I. 537–544 (Am. ed.).

The respective sections in Baur: Gesch. der Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeii und Menschwerdung (Tüb. 1841–’43, 3 vols.), vol. II. 96–128; Dorner: Entwicklungsgesch. der Lehre v. d. Person Christi (second ed. 1853), II. 193–305; Nitzsch: Dogmengesch. I. 325 sqq.; and Hefele: Conciliengeschichte (revised ed. 1877) III. 121–313. Also W. Möller. in Herzog2 X. 792–805.

The literature on the case of Honorius see in the next section.

§ 110. The Doctrine of Two Wills in Christ.

The Monotheletic or one-will controversy is a continuation of the Christological contests of the post-Nicene age, and closely connected with the Monophysitic controversy.605

This question had not been decided by the ancient fathers and councils, and passages from their writings were quoted by both parties. But in the inevitable logic of theological development it had to be agitated sooner or later, and brought to a conciliar termination.

The controversy had a metaphysical and a practical aspect.

The metaphysical and psychological aspect was the relation of will to nature and to person. Monotheletism regards the will as an attribute of person, Dyotheletism as an attribute of nature. It is possible to conceive of an abstract nature without a will; it is difficult to conceive of a rational human nature without impulse and will; it is impossible to conceive of a human person without a will. Reason and will go together, and constitute the essence of personality. Two wills cannot coexist in an ordinary human being. But as the personality of Christ is complex or divine-human, it may be conceived of as including two consciousnesses and two wills. The Chalcedonian Christology at all events consistently requires two wills as the necessary complement of two rational natures; in other words, Dyotheletism is inseparable from Dyophysitism, while Monotheletism is equally inseparable from Monophysitism, although it acknowledged the Dyophysitism of Chalcedon. The orthodox doctrine saved the integrity and completeness of Christ’s humanity by asserting his human will.606

The practical aspect of the controversy is connected with the nature of the Redeemer and of redemption, and was most prominent with the leaders. The advocates of Monotheletism were chiefly concerned to guard the unity of Christ’s person and work. They reasoned that, as Christ is but one person, he can only have one will; that two wills would necessarily conflict, as in man the will of the flesh rebels against the Spirit; and that the sinlessness of Christ is best secured by denying to him a purely human will, which is the root of sin. They made the pre-existing divine will of the Logos the efficient cause of the incarnation and redemption, and regarded the human nature of Christ merely as the instrument through which he works and suffers, as the rational soul works through the organ of the body. Some of them held also that in the perfect state the human will of the believer will be entirely absorbed in the divine will, which amounts almost to a pantheistic absorption of the human personality in the divine.

The advocates of Dyotheletism on the other hand contended that the incarnation must be complete in order to have a complete redemption; that a complete incarnation implies the assumption of the human will into union with the pre-existing divine will of the Logos; that the human will is the originating cause of sin and guilt, and must therefore be redeemed, purified, and sanctified; that Christ, without a human will, could not have been a full man, could not have been tempted, nor have chosen between good and evil, nor performed any moral and responsible act.

The Scripture passages quoted by Agatho and other advocates of the two-will doctrine, are Matt. 26:39 ("Not as I will, but as Thou wilt"); Luke 22:42 ("Not my will, but thine be done"); John 6:38 ("I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me"). For the human will were quoted Luke 2:51 ("he was subject" to his parents); Phil. 2:8 ("obedient unto death"), also John 1:43; 17:24; 19:28; Matt. 27:34; for the divine will, Luke 13:34; John 5:21.

These Scripture passages, which must in the end decide the controversy, clearly teach the human will of Jesus, but the other will from which it is distinguished, is the will of his heavenly Father, to which he was obedient unto death. The orthodox dogma implies the identity of the divine will of Christ with the will of God the Father, and assumes that there is but one will in the divine tripersonality. It teaches two natures and one person in Christ, but three persons and one nature in God. Here we meet the metaphysical and psychological difficulty of conceiving of a personality without a distinct will. But the term personality is applied to the Deity in a unique and not easily definable sense. The three Divine persons are not conceived as three individuals.

The weight of argument and the logical consistency on the basis of the Chalcedonian Dyophysitism, which was acknowledged by both parties, decided in favor of the two-will doctrine. The Catholic church East and West condemned Monotheletism as a heresy akin to Monophysitism. The sixth oecumenical Council in 680 gave the final decision by adopting the following addition to the Chalcedonian Christology:607

"And we likewise preach two natural wills in him [Jesus Christ], and two natural operations undivided, inconvertible, inseparable, unmixed, according to the doctrine of the holy fathers; and the two natural wills [are] not contrary (as the impious heretics assert), far from it! but his human will follows the divine will, and is not resisting or reluctant, but rather subject to his divine and omnipotent will.608  For it was proper that the will of the flesh should be moved, but be subjected to the divine will, according to the wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of the God Logos, so is also the natural will of his flesh the proper will of the Logos, as he says himself: ’I came from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me’ (John 6:38). …  Therefore we confess two natural wills and operations, harmoniously united for the salvation of the human race."609

The theological contest was carried on chiefly in the Eastern church which had the necessary learning and speculative talent; but the final decision was brought about by the weight of Roman authority, and Pope Agatho exerted by his dogmatic epistle the same controlling influence over the sixth oecumenical Council, as Pope Leo I. had exercised over the fourth. In this as well as the older theological controversies the Roman popes—with the significant exception of Honorius—stood firmly on the side of orthodoxy, while the patriarchal sees of the East were alternately occupied by heretics as well as orthodox.

The Dyotheletic decision completes the Christology of the Greek and Roman churches, and passed from them into the Protestant churches; but while the former have made no further progress in this dogma, the latter allows a revision and reconstruction, and opened new avenues of thought in the contemplation of the central fact and truth of the divine-human personality of Christ.

§ 111. History of Monotheletism and Dyotheletism.

The triumph of Dyotheletism was the outcome of a bitter conflict of nearly fifty years (633 to 680). The first act reaches to the issue of the Ekthesis (638), the second to the issue of the Type (648), the third and last to the sixth oecumenical Council (680). The theological leaders of Monophysitism were Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Arabia (known to us only from a few fragments of his writings), Sergius and his successors Pyrrhus and Paul in the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria; the political leaders were the Emperors Heraclius and Constans II.

The champions of the Dyotheletic doctrine were Sophronius of Palestine, Maximus of Constantinople, and the popes Martin and Agatho of Rome; the political supporter, the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668–685).

1. The strife began in a political motive, but soon assumed a theological and religious aspect. The safety of the Byzantine empire was seriously threatened, first by the Persians, and then by the Arabs, and the danger was increased by the division among Christians. The Emperor Heraclius (610–640) after his return from the Persian campaign desired to conciliate the Monophysites, who were more numerous than the orthodox in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt.610  He hoped, by a union of the parties, to protect these countries more effectually against the Mohammedan invaders. The Monophysites took offence at the catholic inference of two energies (ejnevrgeiai) in the person of Christ. The emperor consulted Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople (since 610), who was of Syrian (perhaps Jacobite) descent. They agreed upon the compromise-formula of "one divine-human energy" (miva qeandrikh; ejnevrgeia).611  Sergius secured the consent of Pope Honorius (625–638), who was afterwards condemned for heresy. Cyrus, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, published the formula (633), and converted thousands of Monophysites.612

But Sophronius, a learned and venerable monk in Palestine, who happened to be in Alexandria at that time, protested against the compromise-formula as a cunning device of the Monophysites. When he became patriarch of Jerusalem (in 633 or 634), he openly confessed, in a synodical letter to the patriarchs, the doctrine of Dyotheletism as a necessary part of the Chalcedonian Christology. It is one of the most important documents in this controversy.613

A few years afterwards, the Saracens besieged and conquered Jerusalem (637); Sophronius died and was succeeded by a Monotheletic bishop.

In the year 638 the Emperor issued, as an answer to the manifesto of Sophronius, an edict drawn up by Sergius, under the title Exposition of the Faith (e[kqesi" th'" pivstew"), which commanded silence on the subject in dispute, but pretty clearly decided in favor of Monotheletism. It first professes the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation in the Chalcedonian sense, and then forbids the use of the terms "one" or "two energies" (miva or duvo ejnevrgeiai) since both are heretically interpreted, and asserts one will (qevlhma) in Christ.614

2. Two synods of Constantinople (638 and 639) adopted the Ekthesis. But in the remote provinces it met with powerful resistance. Maximus Confessor became the champion of Dyotheletism in the Orient and North Africa, and Pope Martinus I. in the West. They thoroughly understood the controversy, and had the courage of martyrs for their conviction.

Maximus was born about 580 of a distinguished family in Constantinople, and was for some time private secretary of the Emperor Heraclius, but left this post of honor and influence in 630, and entered a convent in Chrysopolis (now Scutari). He was a profound thinker and able debater. When the Monotheletic heresy spread, he concluded to proceed to Rome, and passing through Africa be held there, in the presence of the imperial governor and many bishops, a remarkable disputation with Pyrrhus, who had succeeded Sergius in the see of Constantinople, but was deposed and expelled for political reasons. This disputation took place in July, 645, but we do not know in what city of Africa. It sounded all the depths of the controversy and ended with the temporary conversion of Pyrrhus to Dyotheletism.615

About the same time, several North-African synods declared in favor of the Dyotheletic doctrine.

In the year 648 the Emperor Constans II. (642–668) tried in vain to restore peace by means of a new edict called Typos or Type, which commanded silence on the subject under dispute without giving the preference to either view.616  It set aside the Ekthesis and declared in favor of neutrality. The aim of both edicts was to arrest the controversy and to prevent a christological development beyond the fourth and fifth oecumenical councils. But the Type was more consistent in forbidding all controversy not only about one energy (miva ejnevrgeia), but also about one will (e{n qevlhma). Transgressors of the Type were threatened with deposition; if clergymen, with excommunication; if monks, with the loss of dignity and place, of military or civil officers.

3. An irrepressible conflict cannot be silenced by imperial decrees. Pope Martin I., formerly Apocrisiarios of the papal see at Constantinople, and distinguished for virtue, knowledge and personal beauty, soon after his election (July 5th, 649), assembled the first Lateran Council (Oct., 649), so called from being held in the Lateran basilica in Rome. It was attended by one hundred and five bishops, anathematized the one-will doctrine and the two imperial edicts, and solemnly sanctioned the two-will doctrine. It anticipated substantially the decision of the sixth oecumenical council, and comes next to it in authority on this article of faith.617

The acts of this Roman council, together with an encyclical of the pope warning against the Ekthesis and the Type, were sent to all parts of the Christian world. At the same time, the pope sent a Greek translation of the acts to the Emperor Constans II., and politely informed him that the Synod had confirmed the true doctrine, and condemned the heresy. Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paulus had violated the full humanity of Christ, and deceived the emperors by the Ekthesis and the Type.

But the emperor, through his representative, Theodore Calliopa, the exarch of Ravenna, deposed the pope as a rebel and heretic, and removed him from Rome (June, 653). He imprisoned him with common criminals in Constantinople, exposed him to cold, hunger, and all sorts of injuries, and at last sent him by ship to a cavern in Cherson on the Black Sea (March, 655). Martin bore this cruel treatment with dignity, and died Sept. 16, 655, in exile, a martyr to his faith in the doctrine of two wills.

Maximus was likewise transported to Constantinople (653), and treated with even greater cruelty. He was (with two of his disciples) confined in prison for several years, scourged, deprived of his tongue and right hand, and thus mutilated sent, in his old age, to Lazica in Colchis on the Pontus Euxinus, where he died of these injuries, Aug. 13, 662. His two companions likewise died in exile.

The persecution of these martyrs prepared the way for the triumph of their doctrine. In the meantime province after province was conquered by the Saracens.

§ 112. The Sixth Oecumenical Council. A.D. 680.

Constans II. was murdered in a bath at Syracuse (668). His son, Constantine IV. Pogonatus (Barbatus, 668–685), changed the policy of his father, and wished to restore harmony between the East and the West. He stood on good or neutral terms with Pope Vitalian (6 57–672), who maintained a prudent silence on the disputed question, and with his successors, Adeodatus (672–676), Donus or Domnus (676–678), and Agatho (678–681).

After sufficient preparations, he called, in concert with Agatho, a General Council. It convened in the imperial palace at Constantinople, and held eighteen sessions from Nov. 7, 680, to Sept. 16, 681. it is called the Sixth Oecumenical, and also the First Trullan Synod, from the name of the hall or chapel in the palace.618  The highest number of members in attendance was one hundred and seventy-four, including three papal legates (two priests and one deacon). The emperor presided in person, surrounded by civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries. The acts are preserved in the Greek original and in two old Latin versions.619

After a full discussion of the subject on both sides, the council, in the eighteenth and last session, defined and sanctioned the two-will doctrine, almost in the very language of the letter of Pope Agatho to the emperor.620  Macarius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who adhered to Monotheletism, was deposed.

The epistle of Agatho is a worthy sequel of Leo’s Epistle to the Chalcedonian Council, and equally clear and precise in stating the orthodox view. It is also remarkable for the confidence with which it claims infallibility for the Roman church, in spite of the monotheletic heresy of Pope Honorius (who is prudently ignored). Agatho quotes the words of Christ to Peter, Luke 22:31, 32, in favor of papal infallibility, anticipating, as it were, the Vatican decision of 1870.621

But while the council fully endorsed the dyotheletic view of Agatho, and clothed it with oecumenical authority, it had no idea of endorsing his claim to papal infallibility; on the contrary, it expressly condemned Pope Honorius I. as a Monotheletic heretic, together with Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus, and Theodore of Pharan.

Immediately after the close of the council, the emperor published the decision, with an edict enforcing it and anathematizing all heretics from Simon Magus down to Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pope Honorius, who in all was their follower and associate, and confirmed the heresy.622  The edict forbids any one hereafter to teach the doctrine of one will and one energy under penalty of deposition, confiscation, and exile.

Pope Agatho died Jan. 10, 682; but his successor, Leo II., who was consecrated Aug. 17 of the same year, confirmed the sixth council, and anathematized all heretics, including his predecessor, Honorius, who, instead of adorning the apostolic see, dared to prostitute its immaculate faith by profane treason, and all who died in the same error.623

§ 113. The Heresy of Honorius.

J. von Döllinger (Old Cath.): Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. München, 1863. The same translated by A. Plummer: Fables respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages; Am ed. enlarged by Henry B. Smith, N. York, 1872. (The case of Honorius is discussed on pp. 223–248 Am. ed.; see German ed. p. 131 sqq.).

Schneemann (Jesuit): Studien über die Honoriusfrage. Freiburg i. B, 1864.

Paul Bottala (S. J.): Pope Honorius before the Tribunal of Reason and History. London, 1868.

P. Le Page Renouf: The Condemnation of Pope Honorius. Lond., 1868. The Case of Honorius reconsidered. Lond. 1870.

Maret (R.C.): Du Concil et de la paix relig. Par. 1869.

A. Gratry (R.C.): Four Letters to the Bishop of Orleans (Dupanloup) and the Archbishop of Malines (Dechamps), 1870. Several editions in French, German, English. He wrote against papal infallibility, but recanted on his death-bed.

A. de Margerie: Lettre au R. P. Gratry sur le Pape Honorius et le Bréviaire Romain. Nancy, 1870.

Jos. von Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg and Member of the Vatican Council): Causa Honorii Papae. Neap., 1870. Honorius und das sechste allgemeine Concil. Tübingen, 1870. (The same translated by Henry B. Smith in the "Presbyt. Quarterly and Princeton Review, "N. York, April, 1872, p. 273 sqq.). Conciliengeschichte, Bd. III. (revised ed., 1877), pp. 145 sqq., 167 sqq., 290 sqq.

Job. Pennachi (Prof. of Church Hist. in the University of Rome): De Honorii I. Romani Pontificis causa in Concilio VI. ad Patres Concilii Vaticani. Romae, 1870. 287 pp. Hefele calls this the most important vindication of Honorius from the infallibilist standpoint. It was distributed among all the members of the Vatican Council; while books in opposition to papal infallibility by Bishop Hefele, Archbishop Kenrick, and others, had to be printed outside of Rome.

A. Ruckgaber: Die Irrlehre des Honorius und das Vatic. Concil. Stuttgart, 1871.

Comp. the literature in Hergenröther; Kirchengesch., III. 137 sqq.

The connection of Pope Honorius I. (Oct. 27, 625, to Oct. 12, 638) with the Monotheletic heresy has a special interest in its bearing upon the dogma of papal infallibility, which stands or falls with a single official error, according to the principle: Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It was fully discussed by Catholic scholars on both sides before and during the Vatican Council of 1870, which proclaimed that dogma, but could not alter the facts of history. The following points are established by the best documentary evidence:

1. Honorius taught and favored in several official letters (to Sergius, Cyrus, and Sophronius), therefore ex cathedra, the one-will heresy. He fully agreed with Sergius, the Monotheletic patriarch of Constantinople. In answer to his first letter (634), he says: "Therefore we confess one will (qevlhma, voluntas) of our Lord Jesus Christ."624  He viewed the will as an attribute of person, not of nature, and reasoned: One willer, therefore only one will. In a second letter to Sergius, he rejects both the orthodox phrase: "two energies," and the heterodox phrase: "one energy" (ejnevrgeia, operatio), and affirms that the Bible clearly teaches two natures, but that it is quite vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies; for Christ by virtue of his one theandric will showed many modes of operation and activity.625  The first letter was decidedly heretical, the second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638) and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic doctrine.626

The only thing which may and must be said in his excuse is that the question was then new and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the orthodox dogma of two natures required the doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years longer.

Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters to be a later Greek forgery.627  Others admit their genuineness, but distort them into an orthodox sense by a nonnatural exegesis.628  Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic, that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions.629  But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably Monotheletic. And this is the verdict not only of Protestants,630 but also of Gallican and other liberal Catholic historians.631

2. Honorius was condemned by the sixth oecumenical Council as "the former pope of Old Rome," who with the help of the old serpent had scattered deadly error.632  This anathema was repeated by the seventh oecumenical Council, 787, and by the eighth, 869. The Greeks, who were used to heretical patriarchs of New Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, felt no surprise, and perhaps some secret satisfaction at the heresy of a pope of Old Rome.

Here again ultramontane historians have resorted to the impossible denial either of the genuineness of the act of condemnation in the sixth oecumenical Council,633 or of the true meaning of that act.634  The only consistent way for papal infallibilists is to deny the infallibility of the oecumenical Council as regards the dogmatic fact.635  In this case it would involve at the same time a charge of gross injustice to Honorius.

3. But this last theory is refuted by the popes themselves, who condemned Honorius as a heretic, and thus bore testimony for papal fallibility. His first success or, Severinus, had a brief pontificate of only three months. His second successor, John IV., apologized for him by putting a forced construction on his language. Agatho prudently ignored him.636  But his successor, Leo II., who translated the acts of the sixth Council from Greek into Latin, saw that he could not save the honor of Honorius without contradicting the verdict of the council in which the papal delegates had taken part; and therefore he expressly condemned him in the strongest language, both in a letter to the Greek emperor and in a letter to the bishops of Spain, as a traitor to the Roman church for trying to subvert her immaculate fate. Not only so, but the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius was inserted in the confession of faith which every newly-elected pope had to sign down to the eleventh century, and which is embodied in the Liber Diurnus, i.e. the official book of formulas of the Roman church for the use of the papal curia.637  In the editions of the Roman Breviary down to the sixteenth century his name appears, yet without title and without explanation, along with the rest who had been condemned by the sixth Council. But the precise facts were gradually forgotten, and the mediaeval chroniclers and lists of popes ignore them. After the middle of the sixteenth century the case of Honorius again attracted attention, and was urged as an irrefutable argument against the ultramontane theory. At first the letter of Leo II. was boldly, rejected as a forgery as well as those of Honorius;638 but this was made impossible when the Liber Diurnus came to light.

The verdict of history, after the most thorough investigation from all sides and by all parties remains unshaken. The whole church, East and West, as represented by the official acts of oecumenical Councils and Popes, for several hundred years believed that a Roman bishop may err ex cathedra in a question of faith, and that one of them at least had so erred in fact. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed papal infallibility in the face of this fact, thus overruling history by dogmatic authority. The Protestant historian can in conscience only follow the opposite principle: If dogma contradicts facts, all the worse for the dogma.

Notes.

Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned and impartial Roman Catholic historians, thus states, after a lengthy discussion, his present view on the case of Honorius (Conciliengesch., vol. III. 175, revised ed. 1877), which differs considerably from the one he had published before the Vatican decree of papal infallibility (in the first ed. of his Conciliengesch., vol. III. 1858, p. 145 sqq., and in big pamphlet on Honorius, 1870). It should be remembered that Bishop Hefele, like all his anti-infallibilist colleagues, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council for the sake of unity and peace.

"Die beiden Briefe des Papstes Honorius, wie wir sie jetzt haben, sind unverfälscht und zeigen, dass Honorius von den beiden monotheletischen Terminis ejn qevlhma und miva ejnevrgeia den erstern (im ersten Brief) selbst gebrauchte, den anderen dagegen, ebenso auch den orthodoxen Ausdruck duvo ejnevrgeiai nicht angewendet wissen wollte. Hat er auch Letzteres (die, Missbilligung des Ausdruckes duvo ejnevrg.) im zweiten Brief wiederholt, so hat er doch in demselben selbst zwei natürliche Energien in Christus anerkannt und in beiden Briefen sich so ausgedrückt, dass man annehmen muss, er habe nicht den menschlichen Willen überhaupt, sondern nur den Verdorbenen menschlichen Willen in Chistus geläugnet, aber obgleich orthodoz denkend, die monotheletische Tendenz des Sergius nicht gehörig durchschaut und sich missverständlich ausgedrückt, so dass seine Briefe, besonders der erste, den Monotheletismus zu bestätigen schienen und damit der Häresie Factisch Vorschub leisteten. In dieser Weise erledigt sich uns die Frage nach der Orthodoxie des Papstes Honorius, und wir halten sonach den Mittelweg zwischen denen, welche ihn auf die gleiche Stufe mit Sergius von Constantinopel und Cyrus von Alexandrien stellen und den Monotheleten beizählen wollten, und denen, welche durchaus keine Makel an ihn duldend in das Schicksal der nimium probantes verfallen sind, so dass sie lieber die Aechtheit der Acten des sechsten allgemeinen Concils und mehrerer anderer Urkunden läugnen, oder auch dem sechsten Concil einen error in facto dogmatico zuschreiben wollten."  Comp. his remarks on p. 152; "Diesen Hauptgedanken muss ich auch jetzt noch festhalten, dass Honorius im Herzen richtig dachte, sich aber unglücklich ausdrückte, wenn ich auch in Folge wiederholter neuer Beschäftigung mit diesem Gegenstand und unter Berücksichtigung dessen, was Andere in neuer Zeit zur Vertheidigung des Honorius geschrieben haben, manches Einzelne meiner früheren Aufstellungen nunmehr modificire oder völlig aufgebe, und insbesondere über den ersten Brief des Honorius jetzt milder urtheile als früher."

Cardinal Hergenröther (Kirchengeschichte, vol. I. 358, second ed. Freiburg i. B. 1879) admits the ignorance rather than the heresy of the pope. "Honorius," he says, "zeigt wohl Unbekanntschaft mit dem Kern der Frage, aber keinerlei häretische oder irrige Auffassung. Er unterscheidet die zwei unvermischt qebliebenen Naturen sehr genau und verstösst gegen kein einziges Dogma der Kirche."

§ 114. Concilium Quinisextum. A.D. 692.

Mansi., XI. 930–1006. Hefele, III. 328–348. Gieseler,I. 541 sq.

Wm. Beveridge (Bishop of St. Asaph, 1704–1708): Synodicon, sive Pandectae canonum. Oxon. 1672–82. Tom. I. 152–283. Beveridge gives the comments of Theod. Balsamon, Joh. Zonaras, etc., on the Apostolical Canons.

Assemani (R.C.): Bibliotheca juris orientalis. Rom 1766, Tom. V. 55–348, and Tom. I. 120 and 408 sqq. An extensive discussion of this Synod and its canons.

The pope of Old Rome had achieved a great dogmatic triumph in the sixth oecumenical council, but the Greek church had the satisfaction of branding at least one pope as a heretic, and soon found an opportunity to remind her rival of the limits of her authority.

The fifth and sixth oecumenical councils passed doctrinal decrees, but no disciplinary canons. This defect was supplied by a new council at Constantinople in 692, called the Concilium Quinisextum,639 also the Second Trullan Council, from the banqueting hall with a domed roof in the imperial palace where it was held.640

It was convened by the Emperor Justinian II. surnamed Rinotmetos,641 one of the most heartless tyrants that ever disgraced a Christian throne. He ruled from 685–695, was deposed by a revolution and sent to exile with a mutilated nose, but regained the throne in 705 and was assassinated in 711.642

The supplementary council was purely oriental in its composition and spirit. It adopted 102 canons, most of them old, but not yet legally or oecumenically sanctioned. They cover the whole range of clerical and ecclesiastical life and discipline, and are valid to this day in the Eastern church. They include eighty-five apostolic canons so called (thirty-five more than were acknowledged by the Roman church), the canons of the first four oecumenical councils, and of several minor councils, as Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, etc.; also the canons of Dionysius the Great of Alexandria, Peter of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzum, Amphilochius of Iconium, Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Gennadius of Constantinople, and an anti-Roman canon of Cyprian of Carthage. The decretals of the Roman bishops are ignored.

The canons were signed first, by the emperor; the second place was left blank for the pope, but was never filled; then follow the names of Paul of Constantinople, Peter of Alexandria, Anastasius of Jerusalem, George of Antioch (strangely after that of the patriarch of Jerusalem), and others, in all 211 bishops and episcopal representatives, all Greeks and Orientals, of whom 43 had been present at the sixth oecumenical council.

The emperor sent the acts of the Trullan Council to Sergius of Rome, and requested him to sign them. The pope refused because they contained some chapters contrary to ecclesiastical usage in Rome. The emperor dispatched the chief officer of his body guard with orders to bring the pope to Constantinople. But the armies of the exarch of Ravenna and of the Pentapolis rushed to the protection of the pope, who quieted the soldiers; the imperial officer had to hide himself in the pope’s bed, and then left Rome in disgrace.643  Soon afterwards Justinian II. was dethroned and sent into exile. When he regained the crown with the aid of a barbarian army (705), he sent two metropolitans to Pope John VII. with the request to call a council of the Roman church, which should sanction as many of the canons as were acceptable. The pope, a timid man, simply returned the copy. Subsequent negotiations led to no decisive result.

The seventh oecumenical Council (787) readopted the 102 canons, and erroneously ascribed them to the sixth oecumenical Council.

The Roman church never committed herself to these canons except as far as they agreed with ancient Latin usage. Some of them were inspired by an anti-Roman tendency. The first canon repeats the anathema on Pope Honorius. The thirty-sixth canon, in accordance with the second and fourth oecumenical Councils, puts the patriarch of Constantinople on an equality of rights with the bishop of Rome, and concedes to the latter only a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of jurisdiction. Clerical marriage of the lower orders is sanctioned in canons 3 and 13, and it is clearly hinted that the Roman church, by her law of clerical celibacy, dishonors wedlock, which was instituted by God and sanctioned by the presence of Christ at Cana. But second marriage is forbidden to the clergy, also marriage with a widow (canon 3), and marriage after ordination (canon 6). Bishops are required to discontinue their marriage relation (canon 12). Justinian had previously forbidden the marriage of bishops by a civil law. Fasting on the Sabbath in Lent is forbidden (canon 55) in express opposition to the custom in Rome. The second canon fixes the number of valid apostolical canons at eighty-five against fifty of the Latin church. The decree of the Council of Jerusalem against eating blood and things strangled (Acts 15) is declared to be of perpetual force, while in the West it was considered merely as a temporary provision for the apostolic age, and for congregations composed of Jewish and Gentile converts. The symbolical representation of Christ under the figure of the lamb in allusion to the words of John the Baptist is forbidden as belonging to the Old Testament, and the representation in human form is commanded (canon 82).

These differences laid the foundation for the great schism between the East. and the West. The supplementary council of 692 anticipated the action of Photius, and clothed it with a quasi-oecumenical authority.

§ 115. Reaction of Monotheletism. The Maronites.

The great oecumenical councils, notably that of Chalcedon gave rise to schismatic sects which have perpetuated themselves for a long time, some of them to the present day.

For a brief period Monotheletism was restored by Bardanes or Philippicus, who wrested the throne from Justinian II. and ruled from 711 to 713. He annulled the creed of the sixth oecumenical Council, caused the names of Sergius and Honorius to be reinserted in the diptycha among the orthodox patriarchs, and their images to be again set up in public places. He deposed the patriarch of Constantinople and elected in his place a Monotheletic deacon, John. He convened a council at Constantinople, which set aside the decree of the sixth council and adopted a Monotheletic creed in its place. The clergy who refused to sign it, were deposed. But in Italy he had no force to introduce it, and an attempt to do so provoked an insurrection.

The Emperor Anastasius II. dethroned the usurper, and made an end to this Monotheletic episode. The patriarch John accommodated himself to the new situation, and wrote an abject letter to the Pope Constantine, in which he even addressed him as the head of the church, and begged his pardon for his former advocacy of heresy.

Since that time Dyotheletism was no more disturbed in the orthodox church.

But outside of the orthodox church and the jurisdiction of the Byzantine rulers, Monotheletism propagated itself among the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon under the lead of abbot John Marun (Marwvn), their first patriarch (d. 701). The maronites,644 as they were called after him, maintained their independence of the Greek empire and the Saracens, and adhered to the Monotheletic doctrine till the time of the crusades, when they united themselves with the Roman church (1182), retaining, however, the celebration of the communion under both kinds, the Syrian liturgy, the marriage of the lower clergy, their own fast-days, and their own saints.

§ 116. The Adoptionist Controversy. Literature.

I. Sources.

The sources are printed in Harduin, Vol. IV., Mansi, XIII., and in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius (1777), reprinted by Migne (in his "Patrol. Lat.," vols. 100 and 101), with historical and dogmatical dissertations.

(1.) The writings of the Adoptionists: a letter of Elipandus Ad Fide lem, Abbatem, A.D. 785, and one to Alcuin. Two letters of the spanish bishops—one to Charlemagne, the other to the Gallican bishops. Felicis Libellus contra Alcuinum; the Confessio Fidei Felicis; fragments of a posthumous book of Felix addressed Ad Ludovicum Pium, Imperat.

(2.) The orthodox view is represented in Beatus et Etherius: Adv. Elipandum libri II. Alcuin: Seven Books against Felix, Four Books against Elipandus, and several letters, which are best edited by Jaffé in Biblioth. rer. Germ. VI. Paulinus (Bishop of Aquileja): Contra Felicem Urgellitanum libri tres. In Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 99, col. 343–468. Agobard of Lyons: Adv. Dogma Felicis Episc. Urgellensis, addressed to Louis the Pious, in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 104, col. 29–70. A letter of Charlemagne (792) to Elipandus and the bishops of Spain. The acts of the Synods of Narbonne (788), Ratisbon (792), Francfort (794), and Aix-la-Chapelle (799).

II. Works.

(1.) By Rom. Cath. Madrisi (Congreg. Orat.): Dissertationes de Felicis et Elipandi haeresi, in his ed. of the Opera Paulini Aquil., reprinted in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vol. 99( col. 545–598). Against Basnage. Enhueber (Prior in Regensburg): Dissert. dogm. Hist. contra Christ. Walchium, in Alcuin’s Opera, ed. Frobenius, reprinted by Migne (vol. 101, col. 337–438). Against Walch’s Hist. Adopt., to prove the Nestorianism of the Adoptionists. Frobenius: Diss. Hist. de haer. Elip. et Felicis, in Migne’s ed., vol. 101, col. 303–336. Werner: Gesch. der Apol. und polem. Lit. II. 433 sqq. Gams: Kirchengesch. Spaniens (Regensb., 1874), Bd. II. 2. (Very prolix.) Hefele: Conciliengesch., Bd. III. 642–693 (revised ed. of 1877). Hergenröther: Kirchengesch., 2nd ed., 1879, Bd. I. 558 sqq. Bach: Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters (Wien, 1873), I. 103–155.

(2.) By Protestants. Jac. Basnage: Observationes historicae circa Felicianam haeresin, in his Thesaurus monum. Tom. II. 284 sqq. Chr. G. F. Walch: Historia Adoptianorum, Göttingen, 1755; and his Ketzergeschichte, vol. IX. 667 sqq. (1780). A minute and accurate account. See also the Lit. quoted by Walch.

Neander, Kirchengeschichte, vol. III., pp. 313–339, Engl. transl. III. 156–168. Gieseler, vol. II., P. I., p. 111 sqq.; Eng. transl. II. 75–78. Baur: Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes, Tübingen, 1842, vol. II., pp. 129–159. Dorner: Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, second ed., Berlin, 1853, vol. II., pp. 306–330. Helfferich: Der Westgothische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzergeschichte, Berlin, 1880. Niedner: Lehrbuch der christl. K. G., Berlin, 1866, pp. 424–427. J. C. Robertson: History of the Christian Church from 590 to 1122 (Lond., 1856), p. 154 sqq. Milman: Lat. Christ. II. 498–500; Baudissin: Eulogius und Alvar, Leipz., 1872. Schaff, in Smith and Wace, I. (1877), pp. 44–47. W. Möller, in Herzog2 I. 151–159.

§ 117. History of Adoptionism.

The Adoptionist controversy is a revival of the Nestorian controversy in a modified form, and turns on the question whether Christ, as to his human nature, was the Son of God in essence, or only by adoption. Those who took the latter view were called Adoptionists.645  They taught that Christ as to his divinity is the true Son646 of God, the Only-Begotten of the Father; but as man he is his adopted Son,647 the First-Born of Mary. They accepted the Chalcedonian Christology of one person and two natures, but by distinguishing a natural Son of God and an adopted Son of God, they seemed to teach two persons or a double Christ, and thus to run into the Nestorian heresy.

The orthodox opponents held that Christ was the one undivided and indivisible Son of God; that the Virgin Mary gave birth to the eternal Son of God, and is for this reason called "the mother of God;" that sonship is founded on the person, not on the nature; and that Adoptionism leads to two Christs and to four persons in the Trinity.

Both parties displayed a degree of patristic learning which one would hardly expect in this period of the middle ages.

The history of this movement is confined to the West (Spain and Gaul); while all the older Christological controversies originated and were mainly carried on and settled in the East. It arose in the Saracen dominion of Spain, where the Catholics had to defend the eternal and essential Sonship of Christ against the objections both of the Arians and the Mohammedans.

The Council of Toledo, held in 675, declared in the preface to the Confession of Faith, that Christ is the Son of God by, nature, not by adoption.648  But about a century afterwards Elipandus, the aged Archbishop of Toledo, and primate of that part of Spain which was under Mohammedan rule, endeavored to modify the orthodox doctrine by drawing a distinction between a natural and an adopted sonship of Christ, and by ascribing the former to his divine, the latter to his human nature. He wished to save the full humanity of Christ, without, however, denying his eternal divinity. Some historians assert that he was influenced by a desire to avoid the Mohammedan objection to the divinity of Christ;649 but the conflict of the two religions was too strong to admit of any compromise. He may have read Nestorian writings.650  At all events, he came to similar conclusions.

Having little confidence in his own opinions, Elipandus consulted Felix, bishop of Urgel651 in Catalonia, in that part of Spain which, since 778, was incorporated with the dominion of Charlemagne. Felix was more learned and clear-headed than Elipandus, and esteemed, even by his antagonist Alcuin, for his ability and piety. Neander regards him as the originator of Adoptionism; at all events, he reduced it to a formulated statement.

Confirmed by his friend, Elipandus taught the new doctrine with all the zeal of a young convert, although he was already eighty years of age; and, taking advantage of his influential position, he attacked the orthodox opponents with overbearing violence. Etherius, Bishop of Osma or Othma (formerly his pupil), and Beatus, a presbyter, and after Alcuin abbot at Libana in Asturia,652 took the lead in the defence of the old and the exposure of the new Christology. Elipandus charged them with confounding the natures of Christ, like wine and water, and with scandalous immorality, and pronounced the anathema on them.

Pope Hadrian, being informed of these troubles, issued a letter in 785 to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as rank Nestorianism.653  But the letter had no effect; the papal authority plays a subordinate role in this whole controversy. The Saracen government, indifferent to the theological disputes of its Christian subjects, did not interfere.

But when the Adoptionist heresy, through the influence of Felix, spread in the French portion of Spain, and even beyond the Pyrenees into Septimania, creating a considerable commotion among the clergy, the Emperor Charlemagne called a synod to Regensburg (Ratisbon) in Bavaria, in 792, and invited the Bishop of Urgel to appear, that his case might be properly investigated. The Synod condemned Adoptionism as a renewal of the Nestorian heresy.

Felix publicly and solemnly recanted before the Synod, and also before Pope Hadrian, to whom he was sent. But on his return to Spain he was so much reproached for his weakness, that, regardless of his solemn oath, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and re-affirmed his former opinions.

Charlemagne, who did not wish to alienate the spanish portion of his kingdom, and to drive it into the protection of the neighboring Saracens, directed Alcuin, who in the mean time had come to France from England, to send a mild warning and refutation of Adoptionism to Felix. When this proved fruitless, and when the Spanish bishops, under the lead of Elipandus, appealed to the justice of the emperor, and demanded the restoration of Felix to his bishopric, he called a new council at Frankfort on the Main in 794, which was attended by about three hundred (?) bishops, and may be called "universal," as far as the West is concerned.654  As neither Felix nor any of the Adoptionist bishops appeared in person, the council, under the lead of Alcuin, confirmed the decree of condemnation passed at Ratisbon.

Subsequently Felix wrote an apology, which was answered and refuted by Alcuin. Elipandus reproached Alcuin for having twenty thousand slaves (probably belonging to the convent of Tours), and for being proud of wealth. Charles sent Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons and other bishops to the Spanish portion of his kingdom, who succeeded, in two visits, in converting the heretics (according to Alcuin, twenty thousand).

About that time a council at Rome, under Leo III., pronounced, on very imperfect information, a fresh anathema, erroneously charging that the Adoptionists denied to the Saviour any other than a nuncupative Godhead.

Felix himself appeared, 799, at a Synod in Aix-la-Chapelle, and after a debate of six days with Alcuin, he recanted his Adoptionism a second time. He confessed to be convinced by some passages, not of the Scriptures, but of the fathers (especially Cyril of Alexandria, Leo I., and Gregory I.), which he had not known before, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith.655  He spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Archbishop of Lyons, and died in 818. He left, however, a paper in which the doctrine of Adoptionism is clearly stated in the form of question and answer; and Agobard, the successor of Leidrad, felt it his duty to refute it.

Elipandus, under the protection of the government of the Moors, continued openly true to his heretical conviction. But Adoptionism lost its vitality with its champions, and passed away during the ninth century. Slight traces of it are found occasionally during the middle ages. Duns Scotus (1300) and Durandus a S. Porciano (1320) admit the term Filius adoptivus in a qualified sense.656  The defeat of Adoptionism was a check upon the dyophysitic and dyotheletic feature in the Chalcedon Christology, and put off indefinitely the development of the human side in Christ’s Person. In more recent times the Jesuit Vasquez, and the Lutheran divines G. Calixtus and Walch, have defended the Adoptionists as essentially orthodox.

§ 118. Doctrine of Adoptionism.

The doctrine of Adoptionism is closely allied in spirit to the Nestorian Christology; but it concerns not so much the constitution of Christ’s person, as simply the relation of his humanity to the Fatherhood of God. The Adoptionists were no doubt sincere in admitting at the outset the unity of Christ’s person, the communication of properties between the two natures, and the term Theotokos (though in a qualified sense) as applied to the Virgin Mary. Yet their view implies an abstract separation of the eternal Son of God and the man Jesus of Nazareth, and results in the assertion of two distinct Sons of God. It emphasized the dyophysitism and dyotheletism of the orthodox Christology, and ran them out into a personal dualism, inasmuch as sonship is an attribute of personality, not of nature. The Adoptionists spoke of an adoptatus homo instead of an adoptata natura humana, and called the adopted manhood an adopted Son. They appealed to Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Augustin, and Isidore of Seville, and the Mozarabic Liturgy, which was used in Spain.657  Sometimes the term adoptio is indeed applied to the Incarnation by earlier writers, and in the Spanish liturgy, but rather in the sense of assumptio or ajnavlhyi", i.e.  the elevation of the human nature, through Christ, to union with the Godhead.658  They might, with better reason, have quoted Theodore of Mopsuestia as their predecessor; for his doctrine of the uiJo;" qetov" is pretty much the same as their Filius Dei adoptivus.659

The fundamental point in Adoptionism is the distinction of a double Sonship in Christ—one by nature and one by grace, one by generation and one by adoption, one by essence and one by title, one which is metaphysical and another which is brought about by an act of the divine will and choice. The idea of sonship is made to depend on the nature, not on the person; and as Christ has two natures, there must be in him two corresponding Sonships. According to his divine nature, Christ is really and essentially (secundum naturam or genere) the Son of God, begotten from eternity; but according to his human nature, he is the Son of God only nominally (nuncupative) by adoption, or by divine grace. By nature he is the Only-Begotten Son of God;660 by adoption and grace he is the First-Begotten Son of God.661

The Adoptionists quoted in their favor mainly John 14:28 Luke 1:80; 18:19; Mark 13:32; John 1:14; 10:35; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 11:3; 1 John 3:2; Deut. 18:15; Ps. 2: 8; 22:23, and other passages from the Old Testament, which they referred to the Filius primogenitus et adoptivus; while Ps. 60:4 (ex utero ante Luciferum genui te); 44:2; Is. 45:23; Prov. 8:25, were understood to apply to the Filius unigenitus. None of these passages, which might as well be quoted in favor of Arianism, bear them out in the point of dispute. Christ is nowhere called the "adopted" Son of God. Felix inferred from the adoption of the children of God, that they must have an adoptive head. He made use of the illustration, that as a son cannot have literally two fathers, but may have one by birth and the other by adoption, so Christ, according to his humanity, cannot be the Son of David and the Son of God in one and the same sense; but he may be the one by nature and the other by adoption.662

It is not clear whether he dated the adopted Sonship of Christ from his exaltation663 or from his baptism,664 or already from his birth.665  He speaks of a double birth of Christ, compares the baptism of Christ with the baptism or regeneration of believers, and connects both with the spiritualis generatio per adoptionem;666 but, on the other hand, he seems to trace the union of the human nature with the divine to the womb of the Virgin.667

The Adoptionists, as already remarked, thought themselves in harmony with the Christology of Chalcedon, and professed faith in one divine person in two full and perfect natures;668 they only wished to bring out their views of a double Sonship, as a legitimate consequence of the doctrine of two natures.

The champions of orthodoxy, among whom Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne, was the most learned and able, next to him Paulinus of Aquileja, and Agobard of Lyons, unanimously viewed Adoptionism as a revival or modification of the Nestorian heresy, which was condemned by the third Oecumenical Council (431).669

Starting from the fact of a real incarnation, the orthodox party insisted that it was the eternal, only begotten Son of God, who assumed human nature from the womb of the Virgin, and united it with his divine person, remaining the proper Son of God, notwithstanding this change.670  They quoted in their favor such passages as John 3:16; Rom. 8:32; Eph. 5:2; Acts 3:13–15.

The radical fault of this heresy is, that it shifts the whole idea of Sonship from the person to the nature. Christ is the Son of God as to his person, not as to nature. The two natures do not form two Sons, since they are inseparably united in the one Christ. The eternal Son of God did not in the act of incarnation assume a human personality, but human nature. There is therefore no room at all for an adoptive Sonship. The Bible nowhere calls Christ the adopted Son of God. Christ is, in his person, from eternity or by nature what Christians become by grace and regeneration.

In condemning Monotheletism, the Church emphasized the duality of natures in Christ; in condemning Adoptionism, she emphasized the unity of person. Thus she guarded the catholic Christology both against Eutychian and Nestorian departures, but left the problem of the full and genuine humanity of Christ unsolved. While he is the eternal Son of God, he is at the same time truly and fully the Son of man. The mediaeval Church dwelt chiefly on the divine majesty of Christ, and removed him at an infinite distance from man, so that he could only be reached through intervening mediators; but, on the other hand, she kept a lively, though grossly realistic, remembrance of his passion in the daily sacrifice of the mass, and found in the worship of the tender Virgin-Mother with the Infant-Saviour on her protecting arm a substitute for the contemplation and comfort of his perfect manhood. The triumph of the theory of transubstantiation soon followed the defeat of Adoptionism, and strengthened the tendency towards an excessive and magical supernaturalism which annihilates the natural, instead of transforming it.

Note.

The learned Walch defends the orthodoxy of the Adoptionists, since they did not say that Christ, in his two-fold Sonship, was alius et alius, a[llo" kai; a[llo" (which is the Nestorian view), but that he was Son aliter et aliter, a[llw" kai; a[llw". Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX., pp. 881, 904. Baur (II., p. 152) likewise justifies Adoptionism, as a legitimate inference from the Chalcedonian dogma, but on the assumption that this dogma itself includes a contradiction. Neander, Dorner, Niedner, Hefele, and Möller concede the affinity of Adoptionism with Nestorianism, but affirm, at the same time, the difference and the new features in Adoptionism (see especially Dorner II., p. 309 sq.).

§ 119. The Predestinarian Controversy.

Comp. vol. III., §§ 158–160, pp. 851 sqq.

Literature.

I. The sources are: (1) The remains of the writings of Gottschalk, viz., three Confessions (one before the Synod of Mainz, two composed in prison), a poetic Epistle to Ratramnus, and fragment of a book against Rabanus Maurus. Collected in the first volume of Mauguin (see below), and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 121, col. 348–372.

(2) The writings of Gottschalk’s friends: Prudentius: Epist. ad Hincmarum, and Contra Jo. Scotum; Ratramnus: De Praedest., 850; Servatus Lupus: De tribus Questionibus (i.e., free will, predestination, and the extent of the atonement), 850; Florus Magister: De Praed. contra J. Scot.; Remigius: Lib. de tribus Epistolis, and Libellus de tenenda immobiliter Scripturae veritate. Collected in the first vol. of Mauguin, and in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," vols. 115, 119 and 121. A poem of Walafrid Strabo on Gottschalk, in Migne, Tom. 114, col. 1115 sqq.

(3) The writings of Gottschalk’s opponents: Rabanus Maurus (in Migne, Tom. 112); Hincmar of Rheims: De Praedestinatione et Libero Arbitrio, etc. (in Migne, Tom. 125 and 126); Scotus Erigena: De Praedest. Dei contra Gottescalcum, 851 (first ed. by Mauguin, 1650, and in 1853 by Floss in Migne, Tom. 122). See also the Acts of Councils in Mansi, Tom. XIV. and XV.

II. Works of historians: Jac. Ussher (Anglican and Calvinist): Gotteschalci et Praedestinatianae controversiae ab eo motto Historia. Dublin, 1631; Hanover, 1662; and in the Dublin ed. of his works.

Gilb. Mauguin (Jansenist, d. 1674): Vet. Auctorum, qui IX. saec. de Praedest. et Grat. scripserunt, Opera et Fragm. plurima nunc primum in lucem edita, etc. Paris, 1650, 2 Tom. In the second volume he gives the history and defends the orthodoxy of Gottschalk.

L. Cellot (Jesuit): Hist. Gotteschalci praedestinatiani. Paris, 1655, fol. Against Gottschalk and Mauguin.

J. J. Hottinger (Reformed): Fata doctrinae de Praedestinatione et Gratia Dei. Tiguri, 1727. Also his Dissertation on Gottschalk, 1710.

Card. Noris: Historia Gottesc., in his Opera. Venice, 1759, Tom. III.

F. Monnier: De Gotteschalci et Joan. Erigenae Controversia. Paris, 1853.

Jul. Weizsäcker (Luth.): Das Dogma von der göttl. Vorherbestimmung im 9ten Jahrh., in Dorner’s "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theol." Gotha, 1859, p. 527–576.

Hefele (R. Cath.): Conciliengesch. IV. 130–223 (second ed., 1879).

V. Borrasch: Der Mönch Gottschalk v. Orbais, sein Leben u. seine Lehre. Thorn, 1868.

Kunstmann: Hrabanus Maurus (Mainz, 1841); Spingler: Rabanus Maurus (Ratisbon, 1856); and C. v. Noorden: Hinkmar v. Rheims (Bonn, 1863); H. Schrörs: Hincmar Erzbisch v. R. (Freil. B. 1884).

See also Schröckh, vol. XXIV. 1–126; Neander, Gieseler, Baur, in their Kirchengeschichte and their Dogmengeschichte; Bach (Rom. Cath.), in his Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, I. 219–263; Guizot: Civilization in France, Lect. V.; Hardwick: Middle Age, 161–165; Robertson, II. 288–299; Reuter, Rel. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, I. 43–48; and Möller in Herzog2, V. 324–328.

Gottschalk or Godescalcus,671 an involuntary monk and irregularly ordained priest, of noble Saxon parentage, strong convictions, and heroic courage, revived the Augustinian theory, on one of the most difficult problems of speculative theology, but had to suffer bitter persecution for re-asserting what the great African divine had elaborated and vindicated four centuries before with more depth, wisdom and moderation.

The Greek church ignored Augustin, and still more Gottschalk, and adheres to this day to the anthropology of the Nicene and ante-Nicene fathers, who laid as great stress on the freedom of the will as on divine grace. John of Damascus teaches an absolute foreknowledge, but not an absolute foreordination of God, because God cannot foreordain sin, which he wills not, and which, on the contrary, he condemns and punishes; and he does not force virtue upon the reluctant will.

The Latin church retained a traditional reverence for Augustin, as her greatest divine, but never committed herself to his scheme of predestination.672  It always found individual advocates, as Fulgentius of Ruspe, and Isidore of Seville, who taught a two-fold predestination, one of the elect unto life eternal, and one of the reprobate unto death eternal. Beda and Alcuin were Augustinians of a milder type. But the prevailing sentiment cautiously steered midway between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism, giving the chief weight to the preceding and enabling grace of God, yet claiming some merit for man’s consenting and cooperating will.673  This compromise may be called Semi-Augustinianism, as distinct from Semi-Pelagianism. It was adopted by the Synod of Orange (Arausio) in 529, which condemned the Semi-Pelagian error (without naming its adherents) and approved Augustin’s views of sin and grace, but not his view of predestination, which was left open. It was transmitted to the middle ages through Pope Gregory the Great, who, next to Augustin, exerted most influence on the theology of our period; and this moderated and weakened Augustinianism triumphed in the Gottschalk controversy.

The relation of the Roman church to Augustin in regard to predestination is similar to that which the Lutheran church holds to Luther. The Reformer held the most extreme view on divine predestination, and in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will, against Erasmus, he went further than Augustin before him and Calvin after him;674 yet notwithstanding his commanding genius and authority, his view was virtually disowned, and gave way to the compromise of the Formula of Concord, which teaches both an absolute election of believers and a sincere call of all sinners to repentance. The Calvinistic Confessions, with more logical consistency, teach an absolute predestination as a necessary sequence of Divine omnipotence and omniscience, but confine it, like Augustin, to the limits of the infralapsarian scheme, with an express exclusion of God from the authorship of sin. Supralapsarianism, however, also had its advocates as a theological opinion. In the Roman church, the Augustinian system was revived by the Jansenists, but only to be condemned.

§ 120. Gottschalk and Babanus Maurus.

Gottschalk, the son of Count Berno (or Bern), was sent in his childhood by his parents to the famous Hessian convent of Fulda as a pious offering (oblatus). When he had attained mature age, he denied the validity of his involuntary tonsure, wished to leave the convent, and brought his case before a Synod of Mainz in 829. The synod decided in his favor, but the new abbot, Rabanus Maurus, appealed to the emperor, and wrote a book, De Oblatione Puerorum, in defence of the obligatory character of the parental consecration of a child to monastic life. He succeeded, but allowed Gottschalk to exchange Fulda for Orbais in the diocese of Soissons in the province of Rheims. From this time dates his ill feeling towards the reluctant monk, whom he called a vagabond, and it cannot be denied that Rabanus appears unfavorably in the whole controversy.

At Orbais Gottschalk devoted himself to the study of Augustin and Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533), with such ardent enthusiasm that he was called Fulgentius.675  He selected especially the passages in favor of the doctrine of predestination, and recited them to his fellow-monks for hours, gaining many to his views. But his friend, Servatus Lupus, warned him against unprofitable speculations on abstruse topics, instead of searching the Scriptures for more practical things. He corresponded with several scholars’ and made a pilgrimage to Rome. On his return in 847 or 848, he spent some time with the hospitable Count Eberhard of Friuli, a son-in-law of the Emperor Louis the Pious, met there Bishop Noting of Verona, and communicated to him his views on predestination. Noting informed Rabanus Maurus, who had in the mean time become archbishop of Mainz, and urged him to refute this new heresy.

Rabanus Maurus wrote a letter to Noting on predestination, intended against Gottschalk, though without naming him.676  He put the worst construction upon his view of a double predestination, and rejected it for seven reasons, chiefly, because it involves a charge of injustice against God; it contradicts the Scriptures, which promise eternal reward to virtue; it declares that Christ shed his blood in vain for those that are lost; and it leads some to carnal security, others to despair. His own doctrine is moderately Augustinian. He maintains that the whole race, including unbaptized children, lies under just condemnation in consequence of Adam’s sin; that out of this mass of corruption God from pure mercy elects some to eternal life, and leaves others, in view of their moral conduct, to their just punishment. God would have all men to be saved, yet he actually saves only a part; why he makes such a difference, we do not know and must refer to his hidden counsel. Foreknowledge and foreordination are distinct, and the latter is conditioned by the former. Here is the point where Rabanus departs from Augustin and agrees with the Semi-Pelagians. He also distinguishes between praesciti and praedestinati. The impenitent sinners were only foreknown, not foreordained. He admitted that "the punishment is foreordained for the sinner," but denied that "the sinner is foreordained for punishment."677  He supported his view with passages from Jerome, Prosper, Gennadius, and Augustin.678

Gottschalk saw in this tract the doctrine of the Semi-Pelagian Gennadius and Cassianus rather than of "the most catholic doctor" Augustin. He appeared before a Synod at Mainz, which was opened Oct. 1, 848, in the presence of the German king, and boldly professed his belief in a two-fold predestination, to life and to death, God having from eternity predestinated his elect by free grace to eternal life, and quite similarly all reprobates, by a just judgment for their evil deserts, to eternal death.679  The offensive part in this confession lies in the words two-fold (gemina) and quite similarly (similiter omnino), by which he seemed to put the two foreordinations, i.e. election and reprobation, on the same footing; but he qualified it by a reference to the guilt and future judgment of the reprobate. He also maintained against Rabanus that the Son of God became man and died only for the elect. He measured the extent of the purpose by the extent of the effect. God is absolutely unchangeable, and his will must be fulfilled. What does not happen, cannot have been intended by him.

The details of the synodical transaction are unknown, but Rabanus, who presided over the Synod, gives as the result, in a letter to Hincmar, that Gottschalk was condemned, together with his pernicious doctrine (which he misrepresents), and handed over to his metropolitan, Hincmar, for punishment and safe-keeping.

§ 121. Gottschalk and Hincmar.

Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, a most influential, proud and intolerant prelate, was ill-disposed towards Gottschalk, because he had been somewhat irregularly (though not invalidly) ordained to the priesthood by a rural bishop (chorepiscopus), Rigbold of Rheims, without the knowledge of his own bishop of Soissons, and gone on travels without permission of his abbot.680  He treated the poor monk without mercy. Gottschalk was summoned before a synod of Chiersy (in palatio Carisiaco)681  in the spring of 849. He refused to recant, and was condemned as an incorrigible heretic, deposed from the priesthood, publicly scourged for obstinacy, according to the rule of St. Benedict, compelled to burn his books, and shut up in the prison of a convent in the province of Rheims.682  According to the report of eye-witnessses, he was scourged "most atrociously" and "nearly to death," until half dead he threw his book, which contained the proofs of his doctrine from the Scriptures and the fathers, into the fire. It is a relief to learn that St. Remigius, archbishop of Lyons, expressed his horror at the "unheard of impiety and cruelty" of this treatment of the miserabilis monachus, as Gottschalk is often called by his friends.

In his lonely prison at Hautvilliers, the condemned monk composed two confessions, a shorter and a longer one, in which he strongly re-asserted his doctrine of a double predestination. He appealed to Pope Nicolas, who seems to have had some sympathy with him, and demanded a reinvestigation, which, however, never took place. He also offered, in reliance on the grace of God, to undergo the fiery ordeal before the king, the bishops and monks, to step successively into four cauldrons of boiling water, oil, fat and pitch, and then to walk through a blazing pile; but nobody could be found to accept the challenge. Hincmar refused to grant him in his last sickness the communion and Christian burial) except on condition of full recantation.683  Gottschalk scorned the condition, died in his unshaken faith, and was buried in unconsecrated soil after an imprisonment of twenty years (868 or 869).

He had the courage of his convictions. His ruling idea of the unchangeableness of God reflected itself in his inflexible conduct. His enemies charged him with vanity, obstinacy, and strange delusions. Jesuits (Sirmond, Peteau, Cellot) condemn him and his doctrine; while Calvinists and Jansenists (Ussher, Hottinger, Mauguin) vindicate him as a martyr to the truth.

§ 122. The Contending Theories on Predestination, and the Victory of Semi-Augustinianism.

During the imprisonment of Gottschalk a lively controversy, was carried on concerning the point in dispute, which is very creditable to the learning of that age, but after all did not lead to a clear and satisfactory settlement. The main question was whether divine predestination or foreordination which all admitted as a necessary element of the Divine perfection, was absolute or relative; in other words, whether it embraced all men and all acts, good and bad, or only those who are saved, and such acts as God approves and rewards. This question necessarily involved also the problem of the freedom of the human will, and the extent of the plan of redemption. The absolute predestinarians denied, the relative predestinarians affirmed, the freedom of will and the universal import of Christ’s atoning death.

The doctrine of absolute predestination was defended, in substantial agreement with Gottschalk, though with more moderation and caution, by Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, Ratramnus, monk of Corbie, Servatus Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, and Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, and confirmed by the Synod of Valence, 855, and also at Langres in 859.

The doctrine of free will and a conditional predestination was advocated, in opposition to Gottschalk, by Archbishop Rabanus Maurus of Mainz, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, and Bishop Pardulus of Laon, and confirmed at a synod of Chiersy, 853, and in part again at Savonnières, near Toul, in 859.

A third theory was set forth by John Scotus Erigena, intended against Gottschalk, but was in fact still more against the orthodox view, and disowned by both parties.

I. The doctrine of an Absolute and Two-Fold Predestination.

Gottschalk professed to follow simply the great Augustin. This is true; but he gave undue disproportion to the tenet of predestination, and made it a fundamental theological principle, inseparable from the immutability of God; while with Augustin it was only a logical inference from his anthropological premises. He began where Augustin ended. To employ a later (Calvinistic) terminology, he was a supralapsarian rather than an infralapsarian. He held a two-fold predestination of the elect to salvation, and of the reprobate to perdition; not in the sense of two separate predestinations, but one predestination with two sides (gemina, i.e. bipartita), a positive side (election) and a negative side (reprobation). He could not conceive of the one without the other; but he did not teach a predestination of the sinner to sin, which would make God the author of sin. In this respect he was misrepresented by Rabanus Maurus.684  In his shorter Confession from his prison, he says: "I believe and confess that God foreknew and foreordained the holy angels and elect men to unmerited eternal life, but that he equally (pariter) foreordained the devil with his host and with all reprobate men, on account of their foreseen future evil deeds, by a just judgment, to merited eternal death."  He appeals to passages of the Scriptures, to Augustin, Fulgentius, and Isidor, who taught the very same thing except the pariter. In the larger Confession, which is in the form of a prayer, he substitutes for equally the milder term almost or nearly (propemodum), and denies that God predestinated the reprobates to sin. "Those, O God," he says, "of whom thou didst foreknow that they would persist by their own misery in their damnable sins, thou didst, as a righteous judge, predestinate to perdition."  He spoke of two redemptions, one common to the elect and the reprobate, another proper and special for the elect only. In similar manner the Calvinists, in their controversy, with the Arminians, maintained that Christ died efficiently only for the elect, although sufficiently for all men.

His predestinarian friends brought out the difference in God’s relation to the good and the evil more clearly. Thus Ratramnus says that God was the author (auctor) as well as the ruler (ordinator) of good thoughts and deeds, but only the ruler, not the author, of the bad. He foreordained the punishment of sin, not sin itself (poenam, not peccatum). He directs the course of sin, and overrules it for good. He used the evil counsel of Judas as a means to bring about the crucifixion and through it the redemption. Lupus says that God foreknew and permitted Adam’s fall, and foreordained its consequences, but not the fall itself. Magister Florus also speaks of a praedestinatio gemina, yet with the emphatic distinction, that God predestinated the elect both to good works and to salvation, but the reprobate only to punishment, not to sin. He was at first ill-informed of the teaching of Gottschalk, as if he had denied the meritum damnationis. Remigius censured the "temerity" and "untimely loquacity" of Gottschalk, but defended him against the inhuman treatment, and approved of all his propositions except the unqualified denial of freedom to do good after the fall, unless he meant by it that no one could use his freedom without the grace of God. He subjected the four chapters of Hincmar to a severe criticism. On the question whether God will have all men to be saved without or with restriction, and whether Christ died for all men or only for the elect, he himself held the particularistic view, but was willing to allow freedom of opinion, since the church had not decided that question, and the Bible admitted of different interpretations.685

The Synod of Valence, which met at the request of the Emperor Lothaire in 855, endorsed, in opposition to Hincmar and the four chapters of the Synod of Chiersy, the main positions of the Augustinian system as understood by Remigius, who presided.686  It affirms a two-fold predestination ("praedestinationem electorum ad vitam et praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem"), but with such qualifications and distinctions as seemed to be necessary to save the holiness of God and the moral responsibility of man. The Synod of Langres in the province of Lyons, convened by Charles the Bald in 859, repeated the doctrinal canons of Valence, but omitted the censure of the four chapters of Chiersy, which Charles the Bald had subscribed, and thus prepared the way for a compromise.

We may briefly state the system of the Augustinian school in the following propositions:

(1) All men are sinners, and justly condemned in consequence of Adam’s fall.

(2) Man in the natural state has no freedom of choice, but is a slave of sin. (This, however, was qualified by Remigius and the Synod of Valence in the direction of Semi-Pelagianism.)

(3) God out of free grace elected from eternity and unalterably a part of mankind to holiness and salvation, and is the author of all their good deeds; while he leaves the rest in his inscrutable counsel to their merited damnation.

(4) God has unalterably predestinated the impenitent and persistent sinner to everlasting punishment, but not to sin, which is the guilt of man and condemned by God.

(5) Christ died only for the elect.

Gottschalk is also charged by his opponents with slighting the church and the sacraments, and confining the effect of baptism and the eucharist to the elect. This would be consistent with his theory. He is said to have agreed with his friend Ratramnus in rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation. Augustin certainly did not teach transubstantiation, but he checked the logical tendency of Predestinarianism by the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the visible historical church as the mediatrix of salvation.687

II. The doctrine of a Conditional and Single Predestination.

Rabanus and Hincmar, who agreed in theology as well as in unchristian conduct towards Gottschalk, claimed to be Augustinians, but were at heart Semi-Pelagians, and struck a middle course, retaining the Augustinian premises, but avoiding the logical consequences. Foreknowledge (praescientia) is a necessary attribute of the omniscient mind of God, and differs from foreordination or predestination (praedestinatio), which is an attribute of his omnipotent will. The former may exist without the latter, but not the latter without the former. Foreknowledge is absolute, and embraces all things and all men, good and bad; foreordination is conditioned by foreknowledge, and refers only to what is good. God foreknew sin from eternity, but did not predestinate it; and so he foreknew the sinners, but did not predestinate them to sin or death; they are simply praesciti, not praedestinati. There is therefore no double predestination, but only one predestination which coincides with election to eternal life. The fall of Adam with its consequences falls under the idea of divine permission. God sincerely intends to save all men without distinction, and Christ shed his blood for all; if any are lost, they have to blame themselves.

Hincmar secured the confirmation of his views by the Synod of Chiersy, held in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, 853, It adopted four propositions:688

(1) God Almighty made man free from sin, endowed him with reason and the liberty of choice, and placed him in Paradise. Man, by the abuse of this liberty, sinned, and the whole race became a mass of perdition. Out of this massa perditionis God elected those whom he by grace predestinated unto life eternal; others he left by a just judgment in the mass of perdition, foreknowing that they would perish, but not foreordaining them to perdition, though he foreordained eternal punishment for them.689  This is Augustinian, but weakened in the last clause.

(2) We lost the freedom of will through the fall of the first man, and regained it again through Christ. This chapter, however, is so vaguely worded that it may be understood in a Semi-Pelagian as well as in an Augustinian sense.690

(3) God Almighty would have all men without exception to be saved, although not all are actually saved. Salvation is a free gift of grace; perdition is the desert of those who persist in sin.

(4) Jesus Christ died for all men past, present and future, though not all are redeemed by the mystery of his passion, owing to their unbelief.

The last two propositions are not Augustinian, but catholic, and are the connecting link between the catholic orthodoxy and the Semi-Pelagian heresy.

Hincmar defended these propositions against the objections of Remigius and the Synod of Valence, in two books on Predestination and Free Will (between 856 and 863). The first is lost, the second is preserved. It is very prolix and repetitious, and marks no real progress. He made several historical blunders, and quoted freely from the pseudo-Augustinian Hypomnesticon, which he thought presented Augustin’s later and better views.

The two parties came to a sort of agreement at the National Synod of France held at Toucy, near Toul, in October, 860, in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, King Lothaire II., and Charles of Provence, and the bishops of fourteen ecclesiastical provinces.691  Hincmar was the leading man, and composed the synodical letter. He still maintained his four propositions, but cleared himself of the suspicion of Semi-Pelagianism. The first part of the synodical letter, addressed to all the faithful, gives a summary of Christian doctrine, and asserts that nothing can happen in heaven and earth without the will or permission of God; that he would have all men to be saved and none lost; that he did not deprive man after the fall of free will, but heals and supports it by grace; that Christ died on the cross for all men; that in the end all the predestinated who are now scattered in the massa perditionis, will be gathered into the fulness of the eternal church in heaven.

Here ended the controversy. It was a defeat of predestinarianism in its rigorous form and a substantial victory of Semi-Augustinianism, which is almost identical with Semi-Pelagianism except that it gives greater prominence to divine grace.

Practically, even this difference disappeared. The mediaeval church needed the doctrine of free will and of universal call, as a basis for maintaining the moral responsibility, the guilt and merit of man, and as a support to the sacerdotal and sacramental mediation of salvation; while the strict predestinarian system, which unalterably determines the eternal fate of every soul by a pre-temporal or ante-mundane decree, seemed in its logical consequences to neutralize the appeal to the conscience of the sinner, to cut off the powerful inducement of merit and reward, to limit the efficacy of the sacraments to the elect, and to weaken the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

But while churchly and sacerdotal Semi-Augustinianism or covert Semi-Pelagianism triumphed in France, where Hincmar had the last word in the controversy, it was not oecumenically sanctioned. Pope Nicolas, who was dissatisfied with Hincmar on hierarchical grounds, had some sympathy with Gottschalk, and is reported to have approved the Augustinian canons of the Synods of Valence and Langres in regard to a "two-fold predestination" and the limitation of the atonement.692

Thus the door was left open within the Catholic church itself for a revival of strict Augustinianism, and this took place on a grand scale in the sixteenth century.

Notes.

The Gottschalk controversy was first made the subject of historical investigation and critical discussion in the seventeenth century, but was disturbed by the doctrinal antagonism between Jansenists (Jansen, Mauguin) and Jesuits (Sirmond, Cellot). The Calvinistic historians (Ussher, Hottinger) sided with Gottschalk and the Jansenists. The controversy has been more calmly and impartially considered by the Protestant historians of the nineteenth century, but with a slight difference as to the limits and the result of the controversy; some representing it merely as a conflict between a stricter and a milder type of Augustinianism (Neander, Kurtz), others as a conflict between Augustinianism and a revived and triumphant Semi-Pelagianism (Baur, Weizsäcker). The former view is more correct. Semi-Pelagianism was condemned by the Synod of Orange (Arausio), 529; again by the Synod of Valence in the same year, and by Pope Boniface II., 530, and has ever since figured in the Roman catalogue of heresies. The Catholic Church cannot sanction what she has once condemned.

Both parties in the contest of the ninth century (leaving the isolated Scotus Erigena out of view) appealed to Augustin as the highest patristic authority in the Latin church. Both agreed in the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology, i.e. in the doctrine of a universal fall in Adam, and a partial redemption through Christ; both maintained that some men are saved by free grace, that others are lost by their own guilt; and both confined the possibility of salvation to the present life and to the limits of the visible church (which leads logically to the horrible and incredible conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the human race, including all unbaptized infants, are eternally lost). But the Augustinian party went back to absolute predestination, as the ultima ratio of God’s difference of dealing with the saved and the lost, or the elect and the reprobate; while the Semi-Augustinian party sought the difference rather in the merits or demerits of men, and maintained along-side with a conditional predestination the universal benevolence of God and the universal offer of saving grace (which, however, is merely assumed, and not at all apparent in this present life). The Augustinian scheme is more theological and logical, the Semi-Augustinian more churchly and practical. Absolute predestinarianism starts from the almighty power of God, but is checked by the moral sense and kept within the limits of infralapsarianism, which exempts the holy God from any agency in the fall of the race, and fastens the guilt of sin upon man. Relative predestinarianism emphasizes the responsibility and salvability of all men, but recognizes also their perfect dependence upon divine grace for actual salvation. The solution of the problem must be found in the central idea of the holy love of God, which is the key-note of all his attributes and works.

The practical difference between the catholic Semi-Augustinianism and the heterodox Semi-Pelagianism is, as already remarked, very small. They are twin-sisters; they virtually ignore predestination, and lay the main stress on the efficacy of the sacramental system of the historical church, as the necessary agency for regeneration and salvation.

The Lutheran system, as developed in the Formula of Concord, is the evangelical counterpart of the Catholic Semi-Augustinianism. It retains also its sacramental feature (baptismal regeneration and the eucharistic presence), but cuts the root of human merit by the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Calvinism is a revival of Augustinianism, but without its sacramental and sacerdotal checks.

Arminianism, as developed in the Reformed church of Holland and among the Wesleyan Methodists, and held extensively in the Church of England, is an evangelical counterpart of Semi-Pelagianism, and differs from Lutheranism by teaching a conditional election and freedom of the will sufficient to accept as well as to reject the universal offer of saving grace.

§ 123. The Doctrine of Scotus Erigena.

A complete ed. of the works of Scotus Erigena by H. J. Floss, 1853, in Migne’s "P. L.," Tom. 122. The book De Praedestinatione in col. 355–440. Comp. the monographs on S. E. by Hjort (1823), Staudenmaier (1834), Taillandier (1843), Christlieb (1860, and his art. in Herzog2 XIII. 788 sqq.), Hermens (1861), Huber (1861); the respective sections in Schröckh, Neander, Baur (on the Trinity), Dorner (on Christology); and in the Histories of Philosophy by Ritter, Erdmann, and Ueberweg. Also Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 51–64 (a discussion of Erigena’s views on the relation of authority and reason).

At the request of Hincmar, who was very anxious to secure learned aid, but mistook his man, John Scotus Erigena wrote a book on Predestination (in 850), and dedicated it to Hincmar and his friend Pardulus, Bishop of Laon. This most remarkable of Scotch-Irishmen was a profound scholar and philosopher, but so far ahead of his age as to be a wonder and an enigma. He shone and disappeared like a brilliant meteor. We do not know whether he was murdered by his pupils in Malmsbury (if he ever was called to England), or died a natural death in France (which is more likely). He escaped the usual fate of heretics by the transcendental character of his speculations and by the protection of Charles the Bald, with whom he was on such familiar terms that he could answer his saucy question at the dinner-table: "What is the difference between a Scot and a sot?" with the quick-witted reply: "The table, your Majesty."  His system of thought was an anachronism, and too remote from the spirit of his times to be properly understood and appreciated. He was a Christian Neo-Platonist, a forerunner of Scholasticism and Mysticism and in some respects of Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. With him church authority resolves itself into reason, theology into philosophy, and true philosophy is identical with true religion. Philosophy is, so to say, religion unveiled and raised from the cloudy region of popular belief to the clear ether of pure thought.693

From this alpine region of speculation he viewed the problem of predestination and free will. He paid due attention to the Scriptures and the fathers. He often quotes St. Augustin, and calls him, notwithstanding his dissent, "the most acute inquirer and asserter of truth."694  But where church authority contradicts reason, its language must be understood figuratively, and, if necessary, in the opposite sense.695  He charges Gottschalk with the heresy of denying both divine grace and human freedom, since he derived alike the crimes which lead to damnation, and the virtues which lead to eternal life, from a necessary and compulsory predestination. Strictly speaking, there is in God neither before nor after, neither past nor future;696 and hence neither fore-knowledge nor fore-ordination, except in an anthropopathic sense. He rejects a double predestination, because it would carry a contradiction into God. There is only one predestination, the predestination of the righteous, and this is identical with foreknowledge.697  For in God knowledge and will are inseparable, and constitute his very being. The distinction arises from the limitation of the human mind and from ignorance of Greek; for prooravw means both praevideo and praedestino. There is no such thing as predestination to sin and punishment; for sin is nothing real at all, but simply a negation, an abuse of free will;698 and punishment is simply the inner displeasure of the sinner at the failure of his bad aims. If several fathers call sinners praedestinati, they mean the reverse, as Christ called Judas amice instead of inimice, and as lucus is called a non lucendo. Sin lies outside of God, and does not exist for him at all; he does not even foreknow it, much less foreordain it; for knowing and being are identical with him.699  But God has ordered that sin punishes itself; he has established immutable laws, which the sinner cannot escape. Free will is the very essence of man, and was not lost by the fall; only the power and energy of will are impaired. But Erigena vindicates to man freedom in the same sense in which he vindicates it to God, and identifies it with moral necessity. His pantheistic principles lead him logically to universal restoration.700

This appears more clearly from his remarkable work, De Divisione Naturae, where he develops his system. The leading idea is the initial and final harmony of God and the universe, as unfolding itself under four aspects: 1) Natura creatrix non creata, i.e. God as the creative and uncreated beginning of all that exists; 2) Natura creatrix creata, i.e. the ideal world or the divine prototypes of all things; 3) Natura creata non creans, i.e. the created, but uncreative world of time and sense, as the reflex and actualization of the ideal world; 4) Natura nec creata nec creans, i.e. God as the end of all creation, which, after the defeat of all opposition, must return to him in an ajpokatavstasi" tw'n pavntwn. "The first and the last form," he says, "are one, and can be understood only of God, who is the beginning and the end of all things."

The tendency of this speculative and mystical pantheism of Erigena was checked by the practical influence of the Christian theism which entered into his education and personal experience, so that we may say with a historian who is always just and charitable: "We are unwilling to doubt, that he poured out many a devout and earnest prayer to a redeeming God for his inward illumination, and that he diligently sought for it in the sacred Scripture, though his conceptual apprehension of the divine Being seems to exclude such a relation of man to God, as prayer presupposes."701

Hincmar had reason to disown such a dangerous champion, and complained of the Scotch "porridge."702  John Scotus was violently assailed by Archbishop Wenilo of Sens, who denounced nineteen propositions of his book (which consists of nineteen chapters) as heretical, and by Bishop Prudentius, who increased the number to seventy-seven. He was charged with Pelagianism and Origenism, and censured for substituting philosophy for theology, and sophistical subtleties for sound arguments from Scripture and tradition. Remigius thought him insane. Florus Magister likewise wrote against him, and rejected as blasphemous the doctrine that sin and evil were nonentities, and therefore could not be the subjects of divine foreknowledge and foreordination. The Synod of Valence (855) rejected his nineteen syllogisms as absurdities, and his whole book as a "commentum diaboli potius quam argumentum fidei."  His most important work, which gives his whole system, was also condemned by a provincial Synod of Sens, and afterwards by Pope Honorius III. in 1225, who characterized it as a book "teeming with the vermin of heretical depravity," and ordered all copies to be burned. But, fortunately, a few copies survived for the study of later ages.

§ 124. The Eucharistic Controversies. Literature.

The general Lit. on the history of the doctrine of the Eucharist, see in vol. I., § 55, p. 472, and II. 241.

Add the following Roman Catholic works on the general Subject: Card. Jo. de Lugo (d. 1660): Tractatus de venerabili Eucharistiae Sacramento, in Migne’s "Cursus Theol. Completus," XXIII. Card. Wiseman: Lectures on the Real Presence. Lond., 1836 and l842. Oswald: Die dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sacramenten der katholischen Kirche. Münster, 3rd ed., 1870, vol. I. 375–427.

On the Protestant side: T. K. Meier: Versuch einer Gesch. der Transsubstantiationslehre. Heilbronn, 1832. Ebrard: Das Dogma v. heil. Abendmahl und seine Gesch. Frankf. a. M., 1845 and ’46, 2 vols. Steitz: Arts. on Radbert, Ratramnus, and Transubstantiation in Herzog. Schaff: Transubstantiation in "Rel. Encycl." III. 2385.

Special Lit. on the eucharistic controversies in the ninth and eleventh centuries.

I. Controversy between Ratramnus and Paschasius Radbertus.

(1) Paschasius Radbertus: Liber de Corpore et Sanguine Domini, dedicated to Marinus, abbot of New Corbie, 831, second ed., 844, presented to Charles the Bald; first genuine ed. by Nic. Mameranus, Colon. 1550; best ed. by Martene and Durand in "Veter. Script. et Monum. amplissima Collectio," IX. 367.—Comm. in Matth. (26:26); Epistola ad Fridegardum, and treatise De Partu Virginis. See S. Pasch. Radb.: Opera omnia in Tom. 120 of Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," Par. 1852.

Haimo: Tract. de Corp. et Sang. Dom. (a fragment of a Com. on 1 Cor.), in D’Achery, "Spicil." I. 42, and in Migne, "P. L.," Tom. 118, col. 815–817. Hincmar: Ep. ad Carol. Calv. de cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, c. 9. In Migne, T. 125, col. 915 sqq.

(2) Ratramnus: De Corpore et Sanguine Domini liber ad Carolum Calvum Reg. Colon., 1532 (under the name of Bertram), often publ. by Reformed divines in the original and in translations (from 1532 to 1717 at Zürich, Geneva, London, Oxford, Amsterdam), and by Jac. Boileau, Par., 1712, with a vindication of the catholic orthodoxy of Ratramnus. See Ratramni Opera in Migne," P. L.," Tom. 121, col. 10–346.

Rabanus Maurus: Poenitentiale, cap. 33. Migne," P. L." Tom. 110, col. 492, 493. Walafrid Strabo: De Rebus Eccls., c. 16, 17. See extracts in Gieseler, II. 80–82.

(3) Discussions of historians: Natalis Alexander, H. Eccl. IX. and X., Dissert. X. and XIII. Neander, IV. 458–475, Germ. ed., or III. 495–501, Engl. transl., Bost. ed. Gieseler, II. 79–84, N. Y. ed. Baur: Vorlesungen über Dogmengesch. II. 161–175.

II. Controversy between Berengar and Lanfranc.

(1) LANFRANCUS: De Eucharistiae Sacramento contra Berengarium lib., Basil,. 1528, often publ., also in "Bibl. PP. Lugd.," XVIII. 763, and in Migne," Patrol. Lat.," Tom. 150 (1854), col. 407–442.

(2) Berengarius: De Sacra Coena adv. Lanfrancum liber posterior, first publ. by A. F. & F. Th. Vischer. Berol., 1834 (from the MS. in Wolfenbüttel, now in Göttingen. Comp. Lessing: Berengarius Turon. oder Ankündigung eines wichtigen Werkes desselben. Braunschweig, 1770). H. Sudendorf: Berengarius Turonensis oder eine Sammlung ihn betreffender Briefe. Hamburg and Gotha, 1850. Contains twenty-two new documents, and a full list of the older sources.

(3) Neander: III. 502–530 (E. Tr. Bost. ed.; or IV. 476–534 Germ. ed.). Gieseler: II. 163–173 (E. Tr. N. York ed.). Baur: II. 175–198. Hardwick: Middle Age, 169–173 (third ed. by Stubbs). Milman: III. 258 sqq. Robertson: II. 609 sqq. (small ed., IV. 351–367). Jacobi: Berengar, in Herzog2 II. 305–311. Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 91 sqq. Hefele: IV. 740 sqq. (ed. 1879).

§ 125. The Two Theories of the Lord’s Supper.

The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper became the subject of two controversies in the Western church, especially in France. The first took place in the middle of the ninth century between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus, the other in the middle of the eleventh century between Berengar and Lanfranc. In the second, Pope Hildebrand was implicated, as mediator between Berengar and the orthodox party.

In both cases the conflict was between a materialistic and a spiritualistic conception of the sacrament and its effect. The one was based on a literal, the other on a figurative interpretation of the words of institution, and of the mysterious discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John. The contending parties agreed in the belief that Christ is present in the eucharist as the bread of life to believers; but they differed widely in their conception of the mode of that presence: the one held that Christ was literally and corporeally present and communicated to all communicants through the mouth; the other, that he was spiritually present and spiritually communicated to believers through faith. The transubstantiationists (if we may coin this term) believed that the eucharistic body of Christ was identical with his historical body, and was miraculously created by the priestly consecration of the elements in every sacrifice of the mass; their opponents denied this identity, and regarded the eucharistic body as a symbolical exhibition of his real body once sacrificed on the cross and now glorified in heaven, yet present to the believer with its life-giving virtue and saving power.

We find both these views among the ancient fathers. The realistic and mystical view fell in more easily with the excessive supernaturalism and superstitious piety of the middle age, and triumphed at last both in the Greek and Latin churches; for there is no material difference between them on this dogma.703  The spiritual theory was backed by the all-powerful authority of St. Augustin in the West, and ably advocated by Ratramnus and Berengar, but had to give way to the prevailing belief in transubstantiation until, in the sixteenth century, the controversy was revived by the Reformers, and resulted in the establishment of three theories: 1) the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, re-asserted by the Council of Trent; 2) the Lutheran theory of the real presence in the elements, retaining their substance;704 and 3) the Reformed (Calvinistic) theory of a spiritual real or dynamic presence for believers. In the Roman church (and herein the Greek church fully agrees with her), the doctrine of transubstantiation is closely connected with the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, which forms the centre of worship.

It is humiliating to reflect that the, commemorative feast of Christ’s dying love, which should be the closest bond of union between believers, innocently gave rise to the most violent controversies. But the same was the case with the still more important doctrine of Christ’s Person. Fortunately, the spiritual benefit of the sacrament does not depend upon any particular human theory of the mode of Christ’s presence, who is ever ready to bless all who love him.

§ 126. The Theory of Paschasius Radbertus.

Paschasius Radbertus (from 800 to about 865), a learned, devout and superstitious monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie or Corvey in France705 is the first who clearly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation as then believed by many, and afterwards adopted by the Roman Catholic church. He wrote a book "on the Body and Blood of the Lord," composed for his disciple Placidus of New Corbie in the year 831, and afterwards reedited it in a more popular form, and dedicated it to the Emperor Charles the Bald, as a Christmas gift (844). He did not employ the term transubstantiation, which came not into use till two centuries later; but he taught the thing, namely, that "the substance of bread and wine is effectually changed (efficaciter interius commutatur) into the flesh and blood of Christ," so that after the priestly consecration there is "nothing else in the eucharist but the flesh and blood of Christ," although "the figure of bread and wine remain" to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. The change is brought about by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, who created the body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin without cohabitation, and who by the same almighty power creates from day to day, wherever the mass is celebrated, the same body and blood out of the substance of bread and wine. He emphasizes the identity of the eucharistic body with the body which was born of the Virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven; yet on the other hand he represents the sacramental eating and drinking as a spiritual process by faith.706  He therefore combines the sensuous and spiritual conceptions.707  He assumes that the soul of the believer communes with Christ, and that his body receives an imperishable principle of life which culminates at last in the resurrection. He thus understood, like several of the ancient fathers, the words of our Saviour: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54).

He supports his doctrine by the words of institution in their literal sense, and by the sixth chapter of John. He appealed also to marvellous stories of the visible appearances of the body and blood of Christ for the removal of doubts or the satisfaction of the pious desire of saints. The bread on the altar, he reports, was often seen in the shape of a lamb or a little child, and when the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel descended from heaven with a knife, slaughtered the lamb or the child, and let his blood run into a cup!708

Such stories were readily believed by the people, and helped to strengthen the doctrine of transubstantiation; as the stories of the appearances of departed souls from purgatory confirmed the belief in purgatory.

The book of Radbert created a great sensation in the West, which was not yet prepared to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation without a vigorous struggle. Radbert himself admits that some of his contemporaries believed only in a spiritual communion of the soul with Christ, and substituted the mere virtue of his body and blood for the real body and blood, i.e., as he thinks, the figure for the verity, the shadow for the substance.709

His opponents appealed chiefly to St. Augustin, who made a distinction between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between a false material and a true spiritual fruition of his body and blood. In a letter to the monk Frudegard, who quoted several passages of Augustin, Radbert tried to explain them in his sense. For no divine of the Latin church dared openly to contradict the authority of the great African teacher.

§ 127. The Theory of Ratramnus.

The chief opponent of transubstantiation was Ratramnus,710 a contemporary monk at Corbie, and a man of considerable literary reputation. He was the first to give the symbolical theory a scientific expression. At the request of King Charles the Bald he wrote a eucharistic tract against Radbert, his superior, but did not name him.711  He answered two questions, whether the consecrated elements are called body and blood of Christ after a sacramental manner (in mysterio), or in the literal sense; and whether the eucharistic body is identical with the historical body which died and rose again. He denied this identity which Radbert had strongly asserted; and herein lies the gist of the difference. He concluded that the elements remain in reality as well as for the sensual perception what they were before the consecration, and that they are the body and blood of Christ only in a spiritual sense to the faith of believers.712  He calls the consecrated bread and wine figures and pledges of the body and blood of Christ. They are visible tokens of the Lord’s death, that, remembering his passion, we may become partakers of its effect. He appealed to the discourse in the sixth chapter of John, as well as Radbert; but, like Augustin, his chief authority, he found the key to the whole chapter in John 6:63, which points from the letter to the spirit and from the carnal to the spiritual understanding.713  The souls of believers are nourished in the communion by the Word of God (the Logos), which dwells in the natural body of Christ, and which dwells after an invisible manner in the sacrament. Unbelievers cannot receive Christ, as they lack the spiritual organ. He refers to the analogy of baptism, which is justly called a fount of life. Viewed by the senses, it is simply a fluid element; but by the consecration of the priest the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit is added to it, so that what properly is corruptible water becomes figuratively or in mystery a healing virtue.714

It is consistent with this view that Ratramnus regarded the sacrifice of the mass not as an actual (though unbloody) repetition, but only as a commemorative celebration of Christ’s sacrifice whereby Christians are assured of their redemption. When we shall behold Christ face to face, we shall no longer need such instruments of remembrance.

John Scotus Erigena is also reported to have written a book against Radbert at the request of Charles the Bald. Hincmar of Rheims mentions among his errors this, that in the sacrament of the altar the true body and blood of Christ were not present, but only a memorial of them.715  The report may have arisen from a confusion, since the tract of Ratramnus was at a later period ascribed to Scotus Erigena.716  But he expresses his view incidentally in other writings from which it appears that he agreed with Ratramnus and regarded the eucharist only as a typical representation of a spiritual communion with Christ.717  In his book De Divisione Naturae, he teaches a mystic ubiquity of Christ’s glorified humanity or its elevation above the limitations of space. Neander infers from this that he held the eucharistic bread and wine to be simply symbols of the deified, omnipresent humanity of Christ which communicates itself, in a real manner, to believing soul.718  At all events the hypothesis of ubiquity excludes a miraculous change of the elements, and gives the real presence a christo-pantheistic aspect. The Lutheran divines used this hypothesis in a modified form (multipresence, or multivolipresence, dependent on the will of Christ) as a dogmatic support for their doctrine of the real presence.

Among the divines of the Carolingian age who held the Augustinian view and rejected that of Radbert, as an error, were Rabanus Maurus, Walafrid Strabo, Christian Druthmar, and Florus Magister. They recognized only a dynamic and spiritual, not a visible and corporeal presence, of the body of Christ, in the sacrament.719

On the other hand, the theory of Radbert was accepted by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, Bishop Haimo of Halberstadt, and other leading ecclesiastics. It became more and more popular during the dark post-Carolingian period. Bishop Ratherius of Verona (about 950), who, however, repelled all curious questions about the mode of the change, and even the learned and liberal-minded Gerbert (afterwards Pope Sylvester II., from 999 to 1003), defended the miraculous transformation of the eucharistic elements by the priestly consecration. It is characteristic of the grossly sensuous character of the theology of the tenth century that the chief point of dispute was the revolting and indecent question whether the consecrated elements pass from the communicant in the ordinary way of nature. The opponents of transubstantiation affirmed this, the advocates indignantly denied it, and fastened upon the former the new heretical name of "Stercorianists."  Gerbert called stercorianism a diabolical blasphemy, and invented the theory that the eucharistic body and blood of Christ do not pass in noxios et superfluos humores, but are preserved in the flesh for the final resurrection.720

Radbertus was canonized, and his memory, is celebrated since 1073, on the 26th of April in the diocese of Soissons.721  The book of Ratramnus, under the supposed authorship of Scotus Erigena, was twice condemned in the Berengar controversy (1050 and 1059), and put in the Tridentine Index of prohibited books .722

Notes.

In connection with this subject is the subordinate controversy on the delicate question whether Christ, admitting his supernatural conception, was born in the natural way like other children, or miraculously (clauso utero). This question troubled the pious curiosity of some nuns of Vesona (?), and reached the convent of Corbie. Paschasius Radbertus, following the lead of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, defended the theory that the holy Virgin remained virgo in partu and post partum, and used in proof some poetic passages on the hortus conclusus and fons signatus in Cant. 4:12, and the porta clausa Domini in Ezek. 44:2. The whole incarnation is supernatural, and as the conception so the birth of Christ was miraculous. He was not subject to the laws of nature, and entered the world "sine dolore et sine gemitu et sine ulla corruptione carnis."  See Radbert’s tract De Partu Virginis in his Opera, ed. Migne, col. 1365–1386.

Ratramnus, in his book De eo quod Christus ex Virgine natus est (in D’Achery, "Spicilegium," I., and in Migne, Tom. 121, col. 82–102), likewise taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, but assumed that Christ came into the world in the natural way ("naturaliter per aulam virgineam" or "per virginalis januam vulvae"). The conception in utero implies the birth ex utero. But he does not controvert or name Radbert, and uses the same Scripture passages for his view. He refers also to the analogy of Christ’s passing through the closed doors on the day of the resurrection. He quotes from Augustin, Jerome, Pope Gregory, and Bede in support of his view. He opposes only the monstrous opinion that Christ broke from the womb through some unknown channel ("monstruose de secreto ventris incerto tramite luminis in auras exisse, quod non est nasci, sed erumpi." Cap. 1, col. 83). Such an opinion, he thinks, leads to the docetic heresy, and to the conclusion that "nec vere natus Christus, nec vere genuit Maria."

§ 128. The Berengar Controversy.

While the doctrine of a corporeal presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist made steady progress in the public opinion of Western Christendom in close connection with the rising power of the priesthood, the doctrine of a spiritual presence and participation by faith was re-asserted by way of reaction in the middle of the eleventh century for a short period, but condemned by ecclesiastical authority. This condemnation decided the victory of transubstantiation.

Let us first review the external history of the controversy, which runs into the next period (till 1079).

Berengar (c. 1000–1088), a pupil of Fulbert of Chartres (d. 1029), was canon and director of the cathedral school in Tours, his native city, afterwards archdeacon of Angers, and highly esteemed as a man of rare learning and piety before his eucharistic views became known.723  He was an able dialectician and a popular teacher. He may be ranked among the forerunners of a Christian rationalism, who dared to criticize church authority and aimed to reconcile the claims of reason and faith.724  But he had not the courage of a martyr, and twice recanted from fear of death. Nor did he carry out his principle. He seems to have been in full accord with catholic orthodoxy except on the point of the sacrament. He was ascetic in his habits and shared the prevailing respect for monastic life, but saw clearly its danger. "The hermit," he says with as much beauty as truth, in an Exhortatory Discourse to hermits who had asked his advice, "is alone in his cell, but sin loiters about the door with enticing words and seeks admittance. I am thy beloved—says she—whom thou didst court in the world. I was with thee at the table, slept with thee on thy couch; without me, thou didst nothing. How darest thou think of forsaking me?  I have followed thy every step; and dost thou expect to hide away from me in thy cell?  I was with thee in the world, when thou didst eat flesh and drink wine; and shall be with thee in the wilderness, where thou livest only on bread and water. Purple and silk are not the only colors seen in hell,—the monk’s cowl is also to be found there. Thou hermit hast something of mine. The nature of the flesh, which thou wearest about thee, is my sister, begotten with me, brought up with me. So long as the flesh is flesh, so long shall I be in thy flesh. Dost thou subdue thy flesh by abstinence?—thou becomest proud; and lo! sin is there. Art thou overcome by the flesh, and dost thou yield to lust? sin is there. Perhaps thou hast none of the mere human sins, I mean such as proceed from sense; beware then of devilish sins. Pride is a sin which belongs in common to evil spirits and to hermits."725

By continued biblical and patristic studies Berengar came between the years 1040 and 1045 to the conclusion that the eucharistic doctrine of Paschasius Radbertus was a vulgar superstition contrary to the Scriptures, to the fathers, and to reason. He divulged his view among his many pupils in France and Germany, and created a great sensation. Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, to whose diocese he belonged, and Frollant, bishop of Senlis, took his part, but the majority was against him. Adelmann, his former fellow-student, then arch-deacon at Lüttich (Liège), afterwards bishop of Bresci, remonstrated with him in two letters of warning (1046 and 1048).

The controversy was fairly opened by Berengar himself in a letter to Lanfranc of Bec, his former fellow-student (1049). He respectfully, yet in a tone of intellectual superiority, perhaps with some feeling of jealousy of the rising fame of Bec, expressed his surprise that Lanfranc, as he had been informed by Ingelram of Chartres, should agree with Paschasius Radbertus and condemn John Scotus (confounded with Ratramnus) as heretical; this showed an ignorance of Scripture and involved a condemnation of Ambrose (?), Jerome, and Augustin, not to speak of others. The letter was sent to Rome, where Lanfranc then sojourned, and caused, with his co-operation, the first condemnation of Berengar by a Roman Synod held under Pope Leo IX. in April, 1050, and attended mostly by Italian bishops. At the same time he was summoned before another Synod which was held at Vercelli in September of the same year; and as he did not appear,726 he was condemned a second time without a hearing, and the book of Ratramnus on the eucharist was burned. "If we are still in the figure," asked one member indignantly (probably Peter Damiani), "when shall we have the thing?"  A Synod of Paris in October, 1050 or 1051, is said to have confirmed this judgment and threatened Berengar and his friends with the severest punishment, even death; but it is uncertain whether such a Synod was held.727

After a short interval of silence, he was tried before a Synod of Tours in 1054 under Leo IX.,728 but escaped condemnation through the aid of Hildebrand who presided as papal representative, listened calmly to his arguments and was perfectly satisfied with his admission that the consecrated bread and wine are (in a spiritual sense) the body and blood of Christ.729  At the same time he was invited by Hildebrand to accompany him to Rome for a final settlement.

Confiding in this powerful advocate, Berengar appeared before a Lateran council held in 1059, under Nicolas II., but was bitterly disappointed. The assembled one hundred and thirteen bishops, whom he compares to "wild beasts," would not listen to his notion of a spiritual communion, and insisted on a sensuous participation of the body and blood of Christ. The violent and bigoted Cardinal Humbert, in the name of the Synod, forced on him a formula of recantation which cuts off all spiritual interpretation and teaches a literal mastication of Christ’s body.730  Berengar was weak enough from fear of death to accept this confession on his knees, and to throw his books into the fire.731  "Human wickedness," he says, "extorted from human weakness a different confession, but a change of conviction can be effected only by the agency of Almighty God."  He would rather trust to the mercy of God than the charity of his enemies, and found comfort in the pardon granted to Aaron and to St. Peter.

As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real conviction more boldly than ever. He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later.732  Lanfranc attacked him in his book on the eucharist, and Berengar replied very sharply in his chief work on the Lord’s Supper (between 1063 and 1069.)733  His friends gradually withdrew, and the wrath of his enemies grew so intense that he was nearly killed at a synod in Poitiers (1075 or 1076).

Hildebrand who in the mean time had ascended the papal throne as Gregory VlI., summoned Berengar once more to Rome in 1078, hoping to give him peace, as he had done at Tours in 1054. He made several attempts to protect him against the fanaticism of his enemies. But they demanded absolute recantation or death. A Lateran Council in February, 1079, required Berengar to sign a formula which affirmed the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape.734  He imprudently appealed to his private interviews with Gregory, but the pope could no longer protect him without risking his own reputation for orthodoxy, and ordered him to confess his error. Berengar submitted. "Confounded by the sudden madness of the pope," he says, "and because God in punishment for my sins did not give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground and confessed with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly pronounce against me the sentence of excommunication, and that, as a necessary consequence, the populace would hurry me to the worst of deaths."  The pope, however, remained so far true to him that he gave him two letters of recommendation, one to the bishops of Tours and Angers, and one to all the faithful, in which he threatened all with the anathema who should do him any harm in person or estate, or call him a heretic.735

Berengar returned to France with a desponding heart and gave up the hopeless contest. He was now an old man and spent the rest of his life in strict ascetic seclusion on the island of St. Côme (Cosmas) near Tours, where he died in peace 1088. Many believed that he did penance for his heresy, and his friends held an annual celebration of his memory on his grave. But what he really regretted was his cowardly treason to the truth as he held it. This is evident from the report of his trial at Rome which he drew up after his return.736  It concludes with a prayer to God for forgiveness, and to the Christian reader for the exercise of charity. "Pray for me that these tears may procure me the compassion of the Almighty."

His doctrine was misrepresented by Lanfranc and the older historians, as denying the real presence.737  But since the discovery of the sources it is admitted also by Roman Catholics that, while he emphatically rejected transubstantiation, he held to a spiritual real presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist.

This explains also the conduct of Gregory VII., which is all the more remarkable, as he was in every other respect the most strenuous champion of the Roman church and the papal power. This great pope was more an ecclesiastic than a theologian. He was willing to allow a certain freedom on the mysterious mode of the eucharistic presence and the precise nature of the change in the elements, which at that time had not yet been authoritatively defined as a change of substance. He therefore protected Berengar, with diplomatic caution, as long and as far as he could without endangering his great reforms and incurring himself the suspicion of heresy.738  The latest known writing of Berengar is a letter on the death of Gregory (1085), in which he speaks of the pope with regard, expresses a conviction of his salvation, and excuses his conduct towards himself.

Berengar was a strange compound of moral courage and physical cowardice. Had he died a martyr, his doctrine would have gained strength; but by his repeated recantations he injured his own cause and promoted the victory of transubstantiation.

Notes. Hildebrand and Berengar.

Sudendorf’s Berengarius Turonensis (1850) is, next to the discovery and publication of Berengar’s De Sacra Coena (1834), the most important contribution to the literature on this chapter.739  Dr. Sudendorf does not enter into the eucharistic controversy, and refers to the account of Stäudlin and Neander as sufficient; but he gives 1) a complete chronological list of the Berengar literature, including all the notices by friends and foes (p. 7–68); 2) an account of Gaufried Martell, Count of Anjou, stepfather of the then-ruling Empress Agnes of Germany, and the most zealous and powerful protector of Berengar (p. 69–87); and 3) twenty-two letters bearing on Berengar, with notes (p. 88–233). These letters were here published for the first time from manuscripts of the royal library at Hanover, contained in a folio volume entitled: "Codex epistolaris Imperatorum, Regum, Pontificum, Episcoporum."  They throw no new light on the eucharistic doctrine of Berengar; but three of them give us interesting information on his relation to Hildebrand.

1. A letter of Count Gaufried of Anjou (d. 1060) to Cardinal Hildebrand, written in March, 1059, shortly before the Lateran Synod (April, 1059), which condemned Berengar (p. 128 and 215). The Count calls here, with surprising boldness and confidence, on the mighty Cardinal to protect Berengar at the approaching Synod of Rome, under the impression that he thoroughly agreed with him, and had concealed his real opinion at Tours. He begins thus: "To the venerable son of the church of the Romans, H.[ildebrand]. Count Gauf. Bear thyself not unworthy of so great a mother. B.[erengar] has gone to Rome according to thy wishes and letters of invitation. Now is the time for thee to act with Christian magnanimity (nunc magnanimitate christiana tibi agendum est), lest Berengar have the same experience with thee as at Tours [1054], when thou camest to us as delegate of apostolic authority. He expected thy advent as that of an angel. Thou wast there to give life to souls that were dead, and to kill souls that should live .... Thou didst behave thyself like that person of whom it is written [John 19:38]: ’He was himself a disciple of Jesus, but secretly from fear of the Jews.’  Thou resemblest him who said [Luke 23:22]: ’I find no cause of death in him,’ but did not set him free because he feared Caesar. Thou hast even done less than Pilate, who called Jesus to him and was not ashamed to bear witness: I find no guilt in him .. . To thee applies the sentence of the gospel [Luke 9:26]: ’Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall I be ashamed before my heavenly Father.’  To thee applies the word of the Lord [Luke 11:52]: ’Woe unto you, for ye took away the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and hindered those that were entering.’... Now the opportune time has come. Thou hast Berengar present with the pope. If thou again keepest silence on the error of those fools, it is clear that thou formerly didst not from good reasons wait for the proper time, but from weakness and fear didst not dare to defend the cause of the innocent. Should it come to this, which God forbid, we would be wholly disappointed in our great hope placed on thee; but thou wouldst commit a monstrous injustice to thyself, yea even to God. By thee the Orient with all its perverseness would be introduced into the Occident; instead of illuminating our darkness, thou wouldest turn our light into darkness according to the best of thy ability. All those who excel in erudition and judge the case according to the Scriptures, bore testimony that Berengar has the right view according to the Scriptures .... That popular delusion [of transubstantiation] leads to pernicious heresy. The resurrection of the body, of which Paul says that the corruptible must put on the incorruptible, cannot stand, if we contend that the body of Christ is in a sensuous manner broken by the priest and torn with the teeth (sensualiter sacerdotum manibus frangi, dentibus atteri). Thou boastest of thy Rome that she was never conquered in faith and military glory. Thou wilt put to shame that glory, if, at this time when God has elevated thee above all others at the papal see, that false doctrine, that nursery of the most certain heresy, by thy dissimulation and silence should raise its head. Leave not thine honor to others, by retiring to the corner of disgraceful silence."

2. A letter of Berengar to Pope Gregory VII. from the year 1077, in which he addresses him as "pater optime," and assures him of his profound reverence and love (p. 182 and 230). He thanks him for a letter of protection he had written to his legate, Bishop Hugo of Die (afterwards Archbishop of Lyons), but begs him to excuse him for not attending a French council of his enemies, to which he had been summoned. He expresses the hope of a personal conference with the pope (opportunitatem vivendi praesentiam tuam et audiendi), and concludes with the request to continue his patronage. "Vel [i.e. Valeat] Christianitas tua, pater optime, longo parvitati meae tempore dignum sede apostolica patrocinium impensura."  The result of this correspondence is unknown. Berengar’s hope of seeing and hearing the pope was fulfilled in 1078, when he was summoned to the Council in Rome; but the result, as we have seen, was his condemnation by the Council with the pope’s consent.

3. A letter of Berengar to Archbishop Joscelin of Bordeaux, written in a charitable Christian spirit after May 25, 1085, when Gregory VII. died (p. 196 and 231). It begins thus: "The unexpected death of our G. [regory] causes me no little disturbance (G. nostri me non parum mors inopinato [a] perturbat)."  The nostri sounds rather too familiar in view of Gregory’s conduct in 1079, but must be understood of the personal sympathy shown him before and after in the last commendatory letters. B. then goes on to express confidence in the pope’s salvation, and forgives him his defection, which he strangely compares with the separation of Barnabas from Paul. "Sed, quantum mihi videor novisse hominem, de salute hominis certum constat, quicquid illi prejudicent, qui, secundum dominicam sententiam [Matt. 23:24], culicem culantes, camelum sorbent. In Christo lesu, inquit Apostolus [Gal. 6:15], neque circumcisio est aliquid, neque preputium, sed nova creatura. Quod illum fuisse, quantum illum noveram, de misericordia presumo divina. Discessit a Paulo Barnabas [Acts 15:39, 40], ut non cum illo secundum exteriorem commaneret hominem, nec minus tamen secundum interiorem hominem Barnabas in libro vitae permansit."  In remembrance of Gregory’s conduct in forcing him at the Roman Council in 1079 to swear to a formula against his conviction, he asserts that the power of the keys which Christ gave to Peter (Matt. 16:19) is limited. The binding must not be arbitrary and unjust. The Lord speaks through the prophet to the priests (per prophetam ad prelatos): "I will curse your blessings (Mal. 2:2: maledicam benedictionibus vestris)."  From this it follows necessarily that He also blesses their curses (Ex quo necessarium constat, quod etiam benedicat maledictionibus talium). Hence the Psalmist says (Ps. 109:28): "Let them curse, but bless thou."  The blessed Augustin, in his book on the Words of the Lord, says: "Justice solves the bonds of injustice;" and the blessed Gregory [I.] says [Homil. XXVI.]: "He forfeits the power to bind and to loose, who uses it not for the benefit of his subjects, but according to his arbitrary will (ipsa hac ligandi atque solvendi potestate se privat, qui hanc non pro subditorum moribus, sed pro suae voluntatis motibus exercet)."  Berengar thus turns the first Gregory against the seventh Gregory.

Hildebrand’s real opinion on the eucharistic presence can only be inferred from his conduct during the controversy. He sincerely protected Berengar against violence and persecution even after his final condemnation; but the public opinion of the church in 1059 and again in 1079 expressed itself so strongly in favor of a substantial or essential change of the eucharistic elements, that he was forced to yield. Personally, he favored a certain freedom of opinion on the mode of the change, provided only the change itself was admitted, as was expressly done by Berengar. Only a few days before the Council of 1078 the pope sought the opinion of the Virgin Mary through an esteemed monk, and received as an answer that nothing more should be held or required on the reaI presence than what was found in the Holy Scriptures, namely, that the bread after consecration was the true body of Christ. So Berengar reports; see Mansi, XIX. 766; Gieseler, II. 172; Neander, III. 519. (The charge of Ebrard that the pope acted hypocritically and treacherously towards B., is contradicted by facts).

The same view of a change of the elements in a manner inexplicable and therefore indefinable, is expressed in a fragment of a commentary on Matthew by a certain "Magister Hildebrand," published by Peter Allix (in Determinatio Ioannis praedicatoris de, modo existendi Corp. Christi in sacramento altaris. Lond., 1686)." In this fragment," says Neander, III. 511, "after an investigation of the different ways in which the conversio of the bread into the body of Christ may be conceived, the conclusion is arrived at, that nothing can be decided with certainty on this point; that the conversio therefore is the only essential part of the doctrine, namely, that bread and wine become body and blood of Christ, and that with regard to the way in which that conversion takes place, men should not seek to inquire. This coincides with the view which evidently lies at the basis of the cardinal’s proceedings. But whether the author was this Hildebrand, must ever remain a very doubtful question, since it is not probable, that if a man whose life constitutes an epoch in history wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, it should have been so entirely forgotten."  Sudendorf, however (p. 186), ascribes the fragment to Pope Hildebrand.

§ 129. Berengar’s Theory of the Lord’s Supper.

The chief source is Berengar’s second book against Lanfranc, already quoted. His first book is lost with the exception of a few fragments in Lanfranc’s reply.

Berengar attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and used against it nearly every argument: it is not only above reason, but against reason and against the testimony of the senses; it involves a contradiction between subject and predicate, and between substance and its qualities, which are inseparable; it is inconsistent with the fact of Christ’s ascension and presence in heaven; it virtually assumes either a multiplication or an omnipresence of his body, which contradicts the necessary limitations of corporeality.740  There can be only one body of Christ, and only one sacrifice of Christ. The stories of the appearances of blood on the altar, be treated with scorn, from which some of his enemies inferred that he denied all miracles. He called the doctrine of transubstantiation an absurdity (ineptio) and an insane folly of the populace (vecordia vulgi).

To this notion of a corporeal or material presence on the altar, he opposed the idea of a spiritual or dynamic presence and participation. His positive view agrees essentially with that of Ratramnus; but he went beyond him, as Calvin went beyond Zwingli. He endeavors to save the spiritual reality without the carnal form. He distinguishes, with St. Augustin and Ratramnus, between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between the visible symbol or sacramentum and the thing symbolized or the res sacramenti. He maintains that we cannot literally eat and drink Christ’s body and blood, but that nevertheless we may have real spiritual Communion by faith with the flesh, that is, with the glorified humanity of Christ in heaven. His theory is substantially the same as that of Calvin.741  The salient points are these:

1) The elements remain in substance as well as in appearance, after the consecration, although they acquire a new significance. Hence the predicate in the words of institution must be taken figuratively, as in many other passages, where Christ is called the lion, the lamb, the door, the vine, the corner-stone, the rock, etc.742  The discourse in the sixth chapter of John is likewise figurative, and does not refer to the sacrament at all, but to the believing reception of Christ’s death.743

2) Nevertheless bread and wine are not empty, symbols, but in some sense the body and blood of Christ which they represent. They are converted by being consecrated; for whatever is consecrated is lifted to a higher sphere and transformed. They do not lose their substance after consecration; but they lose their emptiness, and become efficacious to the believer. So water in baptism remains water, but becomes the vehicle of regeneration. Wherever the sacramentum is, there is also the res sacramenti.

3) Christ is spiritually present and is spiritually received by faith. Without faith we can have no real communion with him, nor share in his benefits. "The true body of Christ," he says in a letter to Adelmann," is placed on the altar, but spiritually to the inner man and to those only who are members of Christ, for spiritual manducation. This the fathers teach openly, and distinguish between the body and blood of Christ and the sacramental signs of the body and blood. The pious receive both, the sacramental sign (sacramentum) visibly, the sacramental substance (rem sacramenti) invisibly; while the ungodly receive only the sacramental sign to their own judgment."

4) The communion in the Lord’s Supper is a communion with the whole undivided person of Christ, and not with flesh and blood as separate elements. As the whole body of Christ was sacrificed in death, so we receive the whole body in a spiritual manner; and as Christ’s body is now glorified in heaven, we must spiritually ascend to heaven."744

Here again is a strong point of contact with Calvin, who likewise taught such an elevation of the soul to heaven as a necessary condition of true communion with the life-giving power of Christ’s humanity. He meant, of course, no locomotion, but the sursum corda, which is necessary in every act of prayer. It is the Holy, Spirit who lifts us up to Christ on the wings of faith, and brings him down to us, and thus unites heaven and earth.

A view quite similar to that of Berengar seems to have obtained about that time in the Anglo-Saxon Church, if we are to judge from the Homilies of Aelfric, which enjoyed great authority and popularity.745

§ 130. Lanfranc and the Triumph of Transubstantiation.

The chief opponent of Berengar was his former friend, Lanfranc, a native of Pavia (b. 1005), prior of the Convent of Bet in Normandy (1045), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (1070–1089), and in both positions the predecessor of the more distinguished Anselm.746  He was, next to Berengar, the greatest dialectician of his age, but used dialectics only in support of church authority and tradition, and thus prepared the way for orthodox scholasticism. He assailed Berengar in a treatise of twenty-three chapters on the eucharist, written after 1063, in epistolary form, and advocated the doctrine of transubstantiation (without using the term) with its consequences.747  He describes the change as a miraculous and incomprehensible change of the substance of bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ.748  He also teaches (what Radbert had not done expressly) that even unworthy communicants (indigne sumentes) receive the same sacramental substance as believers, though with opposite effect.749

Among the less distinguished writers on the Eucharist must be mentioned Adelmann, Durandus, and Guitmund, who defended the catholic doctrine against Berengar. Guitmund (a pupil of Lanfranc, and archbishop of Aversa in Apulia) reports that the Berengarians differed, some holding only a symbolical presence, others (with Berengar) a real, but latent presence, or a sort of impanation, but all denied a change of substance. This change he regards as the main thing which nourishes piety. "What can be more salutary," he asks," than such a faith?  Purely receiving into itself the pure and simple Christ alone, in the consciousness of possessing so glorious a gift, it guards with the greater vigilance against sin; it glows with a more earnest longing after all righteousness; it strives every day to escape from the world ... and to embrace in unclouded vision the fountain of life itself."750

From this time on, transubstantiation may be regarded as a dogma of the Latin church. It was defended by the orthodox schoolmen, and oecumenically sanctioned under Pope Innocent III. in 1215.

With the triumph of transubstantiation is closely connected the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity, which gradually spread in the twelfth century,751  and the adoration of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, which dates from the eleventh century, was enjoined by Honorius III. in 1217, and gave rise to the Corpus Christi festival appointed by Urban IV., in 1264. The withdrawal of the cup had its origin partly in considerations of expediency, but chiefly in the superstitious solicitude to guard against profanation by spilling the blood of Christ. The schoolmen defended the practice by the doctrine that the whole Christ is present in either kind.752  It strengthened the power of the priesthood at the expense of the rights of the laity and in plain violation of the command of Christ: "Drink ye all of it" (Matt. 26:27).

The doctrine of transubstantiation is the most characteristic tenet of the Catholic Church of the middle age, and its modern successor, the Roman Church. It reflects a magical supernaturalism which puts the severest tax upon the intellect, and requires it to contradict the unanimous testimony of our senses of sight, touch and taste. It furnishes the doctrinal basis for the daily sacrifice of the mass and the power of the priesthood with its awful claim to create and to offer the very body and blood of the Saviour of the world. For if the self-same body of Christ which suffered on the cross, is truly present and eaten in the eucharist, it must also be the self-same sacrifice of Calvary which is repeated in the mass; and a true sacrifice requires a true priest, who offers it on the altar. Priest, sacrifice, and altar form an inseparable trio; a literal conception of one requires a literal conception of the other two, and a spiritual conception of one necessarily leads to a spiritual conception of all.

Notes.

A few additional remarks must conclude this subject, so that we need not return to it in the next volume.

1. The scholastic terms transsubstantiatio, transsubstantiare (in Greek metousivwsi", Engl. transubstantiation, Germ. Wesensverwand-lung), signify a change of one substance into another, and were introduced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The phrase substantialiter converti was used by the Roman Synod of 1079 (see p. 559). Transsubstantiatio occurs first in Peter Damiani (d. 1072) in his Expos. can. Missae (published by Angelo Mai in "Script. Vet. Nova Coll." VI. 215), and then in the sermons of Hildebert, archbishop of Tours (d. 1134); the verb transsubstantiare first in Stephanus, Bishop of Autun (1113–1129), Tract. de Sacr. Altaris, c. 14 ("panem, quem accepi, in corpus meum transsubstantiavi"), and then officially in the fourth Lateran Council, 1215. See Gieseler, II. ii. 434 sq. (fourth Germ. ed.). Similar terms, as mutatio, transmutatio, transformatio, conversio, transitio, had been in use before. The corresponding Greek noun metousivwsi" was formally accepted by the Oriental Church in the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogilas, 1643, and later documents, yet with the remark that the word is not to be taken as a definition of the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. See Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 382, 427, 431, 495, 497 sq. Similar expressions, such as metabolhv, metabavllein, metapoiei'n, had been employed by the Greek fathers, especially by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and John of Damascus. The last is the chief authority quoted in the Russian Catechism (see Schaff, l.c. II. 498).

All these terms attempt to explain the inexplicable and to rationalize the irrational—the contradiction between substance and accidents, between reality and appearance. Transubstantiation is devotion turned into rhetoric, and rhetoric turned into irrational logic.

2. The doctrine of transubstantiation was first strongly expressed in the confessions of two Roman Synods of 1059 and 1079, which Berengar was forced to accept against his conscience; see p. 557 and 559. It was oecumenically sanctioned for the whole Latin church by the fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III., A.D. 1215, in the creed of the Synod, cap. 1: "Corpus et sanguis [Christi] in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, TRANSSUBSTAN-TIATIS PANE IN CORPUS ET VINO IN SANGUINEM, POTESTATE DIVINA, ut ad perficiendum mysterium unitatis accipiamus ipsi de suo, quod accepit ipse de nostro. Et hoc utique sacramentum nemo potest conficere, nisi sacerdos, qui fuerit rite ordinatus secundum claves Ecclesiae, quas ipse concessit Apostolis et eorum successoribus lesus Christus."

The Council of Trent, in the thirteenth session, 1551, reaffirmed the doctrine against the Protestants in these words: "that, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord (conversionem fieri totius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis Christi Domini), and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is by the holy Catholic Church suitably and properly called Transubstantiation."  The same synod sanctioned the adoration of the sacrament (i.e. Christ on the altar under the figure of the elements), and anathematizes those who deny this doctrine and practice. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 130–139.

3. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of scholastic divines, has given the clearest poetic expression to the dogma of transubstantiation in the following stanzas of his famous hymn, "Lauda Sion Salvatorem," for the Corpus Christi Festival:

"Dogma datur Christianis,

Quod in carnem transit panis,

Et vinum in sanguinem.

Quod non capis, quod non

Animosa firmat fides

Praeter rerum ordinem.

"Hear what holy Church maintaineth,

That the bread its substance changeth

Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.

Doth it pass thy comprehending?

Faith, the law of sight transcending,

Leaps to things not understood.

"Sub diversis speciebus,

Signis tantum et non rebus,

Latent res eximiae.

Caro cibus, sanguis potus,

Manet tamen Christus totus,

Sub utraque specie.

Here, in outward signs, are hidden

Priceless things, to sense forbidden;

Signs, not things, are all we see:

Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine:

Yet is Christ, in either sign,

All entire, confess’d to be.

"A sumente non concisus,

Non confractus, non divisus,

Integer accipitur.

Sumit unus, sumunt mille,

Quantum isti, tantum ille,

Nec sumitus consumitur.

They, too, who of Him partake,

Sever not, nor rend, nor break,

But entire, their Lord receive.

Whether one or thousands eat,

All receive the self-same meat,

Nor the less for others leave.

"Sumunt boni, sumunt mali,

Sorte tamen inaequali

Vitae vel interitus.

Mors est malis, vita bonis:

Vide, paris sumptionis

Quam sit dispar exitus."

Both the wicked and the good

Eat of this celestial Food;

But with ends how opposite!

Here ’tis life, and there tis death;

The same yet issuing to each

In a difference infinite."

See the Thes. Hymnol. of Daniel, II. 97–100, who calls St. Thomas "summus laudator venerabilis sacramenti," and quotes the interesting, but opposite judgments of Möhler and Luther. The translation is by Edward Caswall (Hymns and Poems, 2nd ed., 1873, and previously in Lyra Catholica, Lond., 1849, p. 238). The translation of the last two stanzas is not as felicitous as that of the other two. The following version preserves the double rhyme of the original:

"Eaten, but without incision,"

"Here alike the good and evil,

Broken, but without division,

High and low in social level,

Each the whole of Christ receives:

Take the Feast for woe or weal:

Thousands take what each is taking,

Wonder! from the self-same eating,

Each one breaks what all are breaking,

Good and bad their bliss are meeting

None a lessened body leaves.

Or their doom herein they seal."

4. The doctrine of transubstantiation has always been regarded by Protestants as one of the fundamental errors and grossest superstitions of Romanism. But we must not forget the underlying truth which gives tenacity to error. A doctrine cannot be wholly false, which has been believed for centuries not only by the Greek and Latin churches alike, but as regards the chief point, namely, the real presence of the very body and blood of Christ—also by the Lutheran and a considerable portion of the Anglican communions, and which still nourishes the piety of innumerable guests at the Lord’s table. The mysterious discourse of our Saviour in the synagogue of Capernaum after the miraculous feeding of the multitude, expresses the great truth which is materialized and carnalized in transubstantiation. Christ is in the deepest spiritual sense the bread of life from heaven which gives nourishment to believers, and in the holy communion we receive the actual benefit of his broken body and shed blood, which are truly present in their power; for his sacrifice, though offered but once, is of perpetual force to all who accept it in faith. The literal miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is spiritually carried on in the vital union of Christ and the believer, and culminates in the sacramental feast. Our Lord thus explains the symbolic significance of that miracle in the strongest language; but he expressly excludes the carnal, Capernaitic conception, and furnishes the key for the true understanding, in the sentence: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63).

CHAPTER XII.

HERETICAL SECTS.

§ 131. The Paulicians.

I. Petrus Siculus (imperial commissioner in Armenia, about 870): Historia Manichaeorum, qui Pauliciani dicuntur ( JIstoriva peri; th'" kenh'" kai; mataiva" aiJrevsew" tw'n Maniccaivwn tw'n kai; Paulikianw'n legomevnwn). Gr. Lat. ed. Matth. Raderus. Ingolst., 1604. Newly ed. by J. C. L. Gieseler. Göttingen, 1846, with an appendix, 1849. Photius (d. 891): Adv. recentiors Manichaeos, lib. IV. Ed. by J. Chr. Wolf. Hamburg, 1722; in Gallandii "Bibl. PP." XIII. 603 sq., and in Photii Opera ed. Migne, Tom. II., col. 9–264 (reprint of Wolf). For the history of the sect after A.D. 870 we must depend on the Byzantine historians, Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Cedrenus.

II. Mosheim: Century IX., ch. V. Schroeckh: vols. XX. 365 sqq., and XXIII. 318 sqq. Gibbon: Ch. LIV. (vol. V. 534–554). F. Schmidt: Historia Paulicianorum Orientalium. Kopenhagen, 1826. Gieseler: Untersuchungen über die Gesch. der Paulicianer, in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1829, No. I., 79 sqq.; and his Church History, II. 21 sqq., and 231 sqq. (Germ. ed. II. 1, 13 and 400). Neander, III. 244–270, and 586–592. Baur: Christl. K. im Mittelalter, p. 22–25. Hergenröther, I. 524–527. Hardwick, Middle Age, p. 78–84. Robertson, II. 164–173 (revised ed. IV. 117–127). C. Schmidt, in Herzog2 XI. 343–348. A. Lombard: Pauliciens, Bulgares et Bons-hommes en Orient et Occident. Genève, 1879.

The Monothelites, the Adoptionists, the Predestinarians, and the Berengarians moved within the limits of the Catholic church, dissented from it only in one doctrine, and are interwoven with the development of’ catholic orthodoxy which has been described in the preceding chapter. But there were also radical heretical sects which mixed Christianity with heathen notions, disowned all connection with the historic church, and set themselves up against it as rival communities. They were essentially dualistic, like the ancient Gnostics and Manichaeans, and hence their Catholic opponents called them by the convenient and hated name of New Manichaeans; though the system of the Paulicians has more affinity with that of Marcion. They appeared first in the East, and spread afterwards by unknown tracks in the West. They reached their height in the thirteenth century, when they were crushed, but not annihilated, by a crusade under Pope Innocent III.

These sects have often been falsely represented753 as forerunners of Protestantism; they are so only in a purely negative sense, while in their positive opinions they differ as widely from the evangelical as from the Greek and Roman creed. The Reformation came out of the bosom of Mediaeval Catholicism, retained its oecumenical doctrines, and kept up the historic continuity.

The Paulicians754 are the most important sect in our period. They were confined to the territory of the Eastern church. They flourished in Armenia, where Christianity came in conflict with Parsism and was mixed with dualistic ideas. They probably inherited some traditions of the Manichaeans and Marcionites.

I. Their name is derived by their Greek opponents755 from two brothers, Paul and John sons of a Manichaean a woman Kallinike, in Samosata; but, more probably, by modern historians756 from their preference for St. Paul whom they placed highest among the Apostles. They borrowed the names of their leading teachers from his disciples (Sylvanus, Titus, Timothy, Tychicus, Epaphroditus), and called their congregations after his (Corinth, Philippi, Achaia, etc.). They themselves preferred simply the name "Christians" (Cristianoiv, Cristopoli'tai), in opposition to the professors of the Roman state-religion ( JRwmaivou").

II. The founder of the sect is Constantine a Syrian from a Gnostic (Marcionite) congregation in Mananalis near Samosata. Inspired by the epistles of St. Paul and pretending to be his genuine disciple, he propagated under the name of Sylvanus dualistic doctrines in Kibossa in Armenia and in the regions of Pontus and Cappadocia, with great success for twenty-seven years, until the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668–685) sent an officer, Symeon, for his arrest and execution. He was stoned to death in 684, and his congregation scattered. But Symeon was struck and converted by the serene courage of Constantine-Sylvanus, revived the congregation, and ruled it under the name of Titus. When Justinian II. heard of it, he condemned him and the other leaders to death by fire (690), according to the laws against the Manichaeans.

But in spite of repeated persecution and inner dissensions, the sect spread throughout Asia Minor. When it decayed, a zealous reformer rose in the person of Sergius, called Tychieus, the second founder of the sect (801–835). He had been converted by a woman, visited the old congregations and founded new ones, preached and wrote epistles, opposed the antinomian practices of Baanes, called "the Filthy" (oJ rJuparov"), and introduced strict discipline. His followers were called Sergiotes in distinction from the Baanites.

The fate of the sect varied with the policy of the Greek emperors. The iconoclastic Leo the Isaurian did not disturb them, and gave the leader of the sect, Gegnaesius, after a satisfactory examination by the patriarch, a letter of protection against persecution; but the wily heretic had answered the questions in a way that deceived the patriarch. Leo the Armenian (813–820) organized an expedition for their conversion, pardoning the apostates and executing the constant. Theodora, who restored the worship of images, cruelly persecuted them, and under her short reign one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames (844). Perhaps this large number included many iconoclasts.

Provoked by these cruelties, the Paulicians raised the standard of revolt under the lead of Karbeas. He fled with five thousand to the Saracens, built a strong fort, Tephrica,757 on the Arab frontier, and in alliance with the Moslems made successful military invasions into the Byzantine territory. His son-in-law, Chrysocheres, proceeded as far as Ephesus, and turned the cathedral into a stable (867), but was killed by the Greeks in 871, and the sect had to submit to the Emperor Basil the Macedonian. He sent among them the monk Petrus Siculus, who thus became acquainted with their doctrines and collected the materials for his work.

After this the sect lost its political significance, and gradually disappeared from history. Many were transferred to Philippopolis in Thrace about 970, as guards of the frontier, and enjoyed toleration. Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118) disputed with their leaders, rewarded the converts, and punished the obstinate. The Crusaders found some remains in 1204, when they captured Constantinople.

III. The doctrines and practices of the Paulicians are known to us only from the reports of the orthodox opponents and a few fragments of the epistles of Sergius. They were a strange mixture of dualism, demiurgism, docetism, mysticism and pseudo-Paulinism, and resemble in many respects the Gnostic system of Marcion.

(1) Dualism was their fundamental principle.758  The good God created the spiritual world; the bad God or demiurge created the sensual world. The former is worshipped by the Paulicians, i.e. the true Christians, the latter by the "Romans" or Catholics.

(2) Contempt of matter. The body is the seat of evil desire, and is itself impure. It holds the divine soul as in a prison.

(3) Docetism. Christ descended from heaven in an ethereal body, passed through the womb of Mary as through a channel, suffered in appearance, but not in reality, and began the process of redemption of the spirit from the chains of matter.

(4) The Virgin Mary was not "the mother of God," and has a purely external connection with Jesus. Peter the Sicilian says, that they did not even allow her a place among the good and virtuous women. The true theotokos is the heavenly Jerusalem, from which Christ came out and to which he returned.

(5) They rejected the Old Testament as the work of the Demiurge, and the Epistles of Peter. They regarded Peter as a false apostle, because he denied his master, preached Judaism rather than Christianity, was the enemy of Paul (Gal. 2:11) and the pillar of the Catholic hierarchy. They accepted the four Gospels, the Acts, fourteen Epistles of Paul, and the Epistles of James, John and Jude. At a later period, however, they seem to have confined themselves, like Marcion, to the writings of Paul and Luke, adding to them probably the Gospel of John. They claimed also to possess an Epistle to the Laodiceans; but this was probably identical with the Epistle to the Ephesians. Their method of exposition was allegorical.

(6) They rejected the priesthood, the sacraments, the worship of saints and relics, the sign of the cross (except in cases of serious illness), and all externals in religion. Baptism means only the baptism of the Spirit; the communion with the body and blood of Christ is only a communion with his word and doctrine.

In the place of priests (iJerei'"  and presbuvteroi) the Paulicians had teachers and pastors (didavskaloi and poimevne"), companions or itinerant missionaries (sunevkdhmoi), and scribes (nwtavrioi). In the place of churches they had meeting-houses called "oratories" (proseucaiv); but the founders and leaders were esteemed as "apostles" and "prophets."  There is no trace of the Manichaean distinction between two classes of the electi and credentes.

(7) Their morals were ascetic. They aimed to emancipate the spirit from the power of the material body, without, however, condemning marriage and the eating of flesh; but the Baanites ran into the opposite extreme of an antinomian abuse of the flesh, and reveled in licentiousness, even incest. In both extremes they resembled the Gnostic sects. According to Photius, the Paulicians were also utterly deficient in veracity, and denied their faith without scruple on the principle that falsehood is justifiable for a good end.

§ 132. The Euchites and other Sects in the East.

I. Michael Psellus (a learned Constantinopolitan, 11th cent.): Diavlogo" peri; ejnergeiva" daimovnwn, ed. Gaulmin. Par. 1615; also by J. F. Boissonade. Norimbergae, 1838. Cedrenus (in the 11th cent.): Histor. Compend. (ed. Bonn. I. 514).—On the older Euchites and Messalians see Epiphanius (Haer. 80), Theodoret (Hist. Eccl. IV. 10), John of Damascus (De Haer., c. 80), Photius (Bibl. cod. 52), and Walch: Ketzer-Historie, III. 481 sqq. and 536 sqq.

II. Schnitzer: Die Euchiten im elften Jahrh., in Stirm’s "Studien der evang. Geistlichkeit Würtemberg’s," vol. XI., H. I. 169. Gieseler, II. 232 sq. Neander, III. 590 sqq., comp. II. 277 sqq.

The Euchites were mystic monks with dualistic principles derived from Parsism. They held that a demon dwells in every man from his birth, and can be expelled only by unceasing silent prayer, which they exalted above every spiritual exercise. Hence their name.759  They were also called Enthusiasts by the people on account of their boasted ecstasies, in which they fancied that they received special revelations. Psellus calls them "devil-worshippers."  They despised all outward forms of worship. Rumor charged them with lewdness and infanticide in their secret assemblies; but the same stories were told of the early Christians, and deserve no credit.

They appear in the eleventh century in Mesopotamia and Armenia, in some connection with the Paulicians. They were probably the successors of the older Syrian Euchites or Messalians of the fourth and fifth centuries, who in their conceit had reached the height of ascetic perfection, despised manual labor and all common occupations, and lived on alms—the first specimens of mendicant friars.

From the Euchites sprang towards the close of the eleventh century the Bogomiles (the Slavonic name for Euchites),760 and Catharists (i.e. the Purists, Puritans), and spread from Bulgaria into the West. They will occupy our attention in the next period.

Another Eastern sect, called Thondracians (from the village Thondrac), was organized by Sembat, a Paulician, in the province of Ararat, between 833 and 854. They sprang from the Paulicians, and in spite of persecution made numerous converts in Armenia, among them a bishop, Jacob, in 1002, who preached against the corruptions in the Armenian church, but was branded, exposed to public scorn, imprisoned, and at last killed by his enemies.761

Little is known of the sect of the Athingians who appeared in Upper Phrygia.762  They seem to have been strongly Judaistic. They observed all the rites of the law except circumcision, for which they substituted baptism. Neander conjectures, that they were the successors of the Colossian errorists opposed by St. Paul.

§ 133. The New Manichaeans in the West.

I. The chief sources for the sects of the Middle Age belong to the next period, namely, the letters of Pope Innocent III., Honorius III., Bernhard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable; the acts of Councils; the chronicles; and the special writings against them, chiefly those of the Dominican monk Reinerius Sacchoni of Lombardy (d. 1259), who was himself a heretic for seventeen years. The sources are collected in the "Maxima Biblioth. Patr." (Lugd., 1677, Tom. XXII., XXIV.); in Martene and Durand’s "Thesaurus novus anecdotorum" (Par., 1682); in Muratori’s "Rerum Italic. Scriptores" (Mediol., 1723 sqq.); in Bouquet’s "Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France" (Par., 1738 sqq.), etc. See the Lit. in Hahn I. 23 sqq.

II. J. Conr. Fuesslin: Neue unparth. Kirchen-und Ketzerhistorie der mittleren Zeit. Frankf, 1770. 2 Parts.

Chr. U. Hahn: Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, besonders im 11., 12. und 13. Jahrh., nach den Quellen bearbeitet.  Stuttgart, 1845–’50, 3 vols. The first vol. contains the History of the New Manichaeans.

C. Schmidt: Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares. Paris, 1849, 2 vols.

Razki: Bogomili i Catareni. Agram, 1869.

Neander, III. 592–606. Gieseler, II. 234–239. Hardwick, p. 187–190. Robertson, II. 417–424.

The heretical sects in the West are chiefly of three distinct classes: 1) the dualistic or Manichaean; 2) the pantheistic and mystic; 3) the biblical (the Waldenses). Widely differing among themselves, they were united in hatred of the papal church and the sacerdotal system. They arose from various causes: the remains of heathen notions and older heresies; opposition to the corruptions of the church and the clergy; the revolt of reason against tyrannical authority; and popular thirst for the word of God. They spread with astonishing rapidity during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from Bulgaria to Spain, especially through Italy and Southern France, and called forth all the energies of the papacy at the zenith of its power (under Innocent III.) for their forcible suppression. One only survived the crusade, the Waldenses, owing to their faithful adherence to the positive truths of the Scriptures.

In the West the heretical tendency in organized form made its first appearance during the eleventh century, when the corruption of the church and the papacy had reached its height. It appeared to that age as a continuation or revival of the Manichaean heresy.763  The connecting link is the dualistic principle. The old Manichaeans were never quite extirpated with fire and sword, but continued secretly in Italy and France, waiting for a favorable opportunity to emerge from obscurity. Nor must we overlook the influence from the East. Paulicians were often transported under Byzantine standards from Thrace and Bulgaria to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily, and spread the seed of their dualism and docetism and hatred of the ruling church.764

New Manichaeans were first discovered in Aquitania and Orleans, in 1022, in Arras, 1025, in Monteforte near Turin, 1030, in Goslar, 1025. They taught a dualistic antagonism between God and matter, a docetic view of the humanity of Christ, opposed the worship of saints and images, and rejected the whole Catholic church with all the material means of grace, for which they substituted a spiritual baptism, a spiritual eucharist, and a symbol of initiation by the imposition of hands. Some resolved the life of Christ into a myth or symbol of the divine life in every man. They generally observed an austere code of morals, abstained from marriage, animal food, and intoxicating drinks. A pallid, emaciated face was regarded by the people as a sign of heresy. The adherents of the sect were common people, but among their leaders were priests, sometimes in disguise. One of them, Dieudonné, precentor of the church in Orleans, died a Catholic; but when three years after his death his connection with the heretics was discovered, his bones were dug up and removed from consecrated ground.

The Oriental fashion of persecuting dissenters by the faggot and the sword was imitated in the West. The fanatical fury of the people supported the priests in their intolerance. Thirteen New Manichaeans were condemned to the stake at Orleans in 1022. Similar executions occurred in other places. At Milan the heretics were left the choice either to bow before the cross, or to die; but the majority plunged into the flames.

A few men rose above the persecuting spirit of the age, following the example of St. Martin of Tours, who had vigorously protested against the execution of the Priscillianists at Treves. Wazo, bishop of Liège, about 1047, raised his voice for toleration when he was asked for his opinion concerning the treatment of the heretics in the diocese of Châlons-sur-Marne. Such doctrines, he said, must be condemned as unchristian; but we are bound to bear with the teachers after the example of our Saviour, who was meek and humble and came not to strive, but rather to endure shame and the death of the cross. The parable of the wheat and the tares teaches us to wait patiently for the repentance of erring neighbors. "We bishops," he tells his fellow-bishops, "should remember that we did not receive, at our ordination, the sword of secular power, the vocation to slay, but only the vocation to make alive."  All they had to do was to exclude obstinate heretics from the communion of the church and to guard others against their dangerous doctrines.765

CHAPTER XIII.

THE STATE OF LEARNING.

§ 134. Literature.

Comp. the list of works in vol. II. 621 sqq.

I. The ecclesiastical writers of this period are collected for the first time by Migne, the Greek in his Patrologia Graeca, Tom. 90 (Maximus Confessor) to 136 (Eustathius); the Latin in his Patrologia Latina, Tom. 69 (Cassiodorus) and 75 (Gregory I.) to 148 (Gregory VII.).

II. General works: Du Pin, Ceillier, and Cave, and the bibliographical works of Fabricius (Biblioth. Graeca, and Bibl. Latina); especially the Histoire Générale des auteurs sacrés ecclésiastiques by the Benedictine Dom Remy Ceillier (1688–1761), first ed., 1729–63, in 23 vols.; revised ed. by Abbé Bauzon, Paris, 1857–’62, in 14 vols. 4to. This ed. comes down to St. Bernard and Peter the Lombard. Tom. XI., XII. and XIII. cover the 6th century to the 11th.

A. H. L. Heeren (Prof. in Göttingen): Geschichte der classischen Literatur im Mittelalter. Göttingen, 1822. 2 Parts. The first part goes from the beginning of the Middle Age to the 15th century.

Henry Hallam: State of Europe in the Middle Ages. Ch. IX. (New York ed. of 1880, vol. III. 254 sqq.); and his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries. Part I., Ch.1  (N. York ed. of 1880, vol. I., p. 25–103).

Hermann Reuter: Geschichte der relig. Aufklärung in Mittelalter. Berlin, 1875, 2 vols.

III. Special works.

(1) Learning and Literature in the East: Leo Allatius: Graeciae orthodoxae Scriptores. Rom., 1652–’59, 2 vols. The Byzantine Historians, ed. by Niebuhr and others, Gr. and Lat. Bonn, 1828–’78, 50 vols., 8vo. Monographs on Photius, especially Hergenröther (the third volume), and on John of Damascus by Langen (1879), etc.; in part also Gass: Symbolik der griech. Kirche (1872).

(2) Literature in the Latin church: Johann Christ. Felix Bähr: Geschichte der römischen Literatur.  Carlsruhe, 1836 sqq.; 4th revised ed., 1868–’72, 4 vols. The 4th vol. embraces the Christian Roman literature to the age of Charlemagne. This formerly appeared in three supplementary vols., 1836, 1837 and 1840, the third under the title: Gesch. der röm. Lit. im karolingischen Zeitalter (619 pages).—Wilhelm S. Teuffel: Geschichte der römischen Literatur. Leipzig, 1870, 4th ed. edited by L. Schwabe, 1882. Closes with the middle of the eighth century. Adolph Ebert: Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande. Leipzig, 1874–’80, 2 vols.

Comp. also Léon Maitre: Les écoles episcopales et monastiques de l’occident depuis Charlemagne jusqu’ à Philippe-Auguste, 1866. H. Jos. Schmitz: Das Volksschulwesen im Mittelalter. Frankf a. M., 1881.

(3) For Italy: Muratori: Antiquitates italicae medii aevi (Mediol., 1738–’42, 6 vols. fol.), and Rerum italicarum Scriptores praecipui ab anno D. ad MD. (Mediol., 1723–’51, 29 vols. fol.). Tirabsoschi (a very learned Jesuit): Storia della letteratura italiana, antica e moderna. Modena, 177l-’82, and again 1787–’94; another ed. Milan, 1822–26, 16 vols. Gregorovius: Geschichte ’der Stadt Rom. im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 1859 sqq., 3rd ed. 1874 sqq., 8 vols.

(4) For France: the Benedictine Histoire litteraire de la France. Paris, 1733–’63, 12 vols. 4to., continued by members of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1814 sqq.—Bouquet: Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Paris, 1738–1865, 22 vols. fol.; new ed. 1867 sqq. Guizot: Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe et en France depuis la chute de l’empire romain jusqu’ à la revolution française. Paris, 1830, 6 vols., and many editions, also two English translations.—Ozanam: La civilisation chrétienne chez les Francs. Paris, 1849.

(5) For Spain: The works of Isidore of Seville. Comp. Balmez: European Civilization, in Spanish, Barcelona, 1842–44, in 4 vols.; transl. into French and English (against Guizot and in the interest of Romanism).

(6) For England: The works and biographies of Bede, Alcuin, Alfred. Monumenta Historica Brittannica, ed. by Petrie, Sharpe, and Hardy. Lond., 1848 (the first vol. extends to the Norman conquest). Rerum Britannicarum medii xvi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain. London, 1858–1865, 55 vols. 8vo. Comp. J. R. Lumby: Greek Learning in the Western Church during the Seventh and Eighth Centuries. Cambridge, 1878.

(7) For Germany: The works and biographies of Bonifacius, Charlemagne, Rabanus Maurus. The Scriptores in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, ed. Pertz and others, Han., 1826 sqq. (from 500 to 1500); also in a small ed. Scriptores rer. Germ. in usum scholarum, 1840–1866, 16 vols. 8vo. Wilhelm Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter his zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1858, 4th ed., 1877–’78, 2 vols.

(8) On the era of Charlemagne in particular: J. J. Ampere: Histoire littéraire de la France avant Charlemagne (second ed., 1867, 2 vols.), and Histoire litteraire de la France sous Charlemagne et durant les Xe et XIe siècles. Paris, 1868.—Bähr: De litter. studiis a Carolo M. revocatis ac schola Palatina. Heidelb., 1856.—J. Bass Mullinger: The Schools of Charles the Great, and the Restoration of Education in the Ninth Century. London, 1877.—Ebert: Die liter. Bewegung zur Zeit Karls des Gr., in "Deutsche Rundschau," XI. 1877. Comp. also Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, I. 427 sqq., and the works quoted on p. 236. The poetry of the Carolingian age is collected in two magnificent volumes by E. Dümmler.: Poëtae Latini Aevi Carolini. Berlin, 2 vols. in 3 parts, 1880–’84 (in the Scriptorum series of the Mon. Germania).

§ 135. Literary Character of the Early Middle Ages.

The prevailing character of this period in sacred learning is a faithful traditionalism which saved the remains of the ancient classical and Christian literature, and transferred them to a new soil. The six centuries which intervene between the downfall of the West Roman Empire (476) and the age of Hildebrand (1049–1085), are a period of transition from an effete heathen to a new Christian civilization, and from patristic to scholastic theology. It was a period of darkness with the signs of approaching daylight. The fathers were dead, and the schoolmen were not yet born. The best that could be done was to preserve the inheritance of the past for the benefit of the future. The productive power was exhausted, and gave way to imitation and compilation. Literary industry took the place of independent investigation.

The Greek church kept up the connection with classical and patristic learning, and adhered closely to the teaching of the Nicene fathers and the seven oecumenical councils. The Latin church bowed before the authority of St. Augustin and St. Jerome. The East had more learning; the West had more practical energy, which showed itself chiefly in the missionary field. The Greek church, with her head turned towards the past, tenaciously maintains to this day the doctrinal position of the eighth century; the Latin church, looking to the future, passed through a deep night of ignorance, but gathered new strength from new blood. The Greek church presents ancient Christianity at rest; while the Latin church of the middle ages is Christianity in motion towards the modern era.

§ 136. Learning in the Eastern Church.

The Eastern church had the advantage over the Western in the knowledge of the Greek language, which gave her direct access to the Greek Testament, the Greek classics, and the Greek fathers; but, on the other hand, she had to suffer from the Mohammedan invasions, and from the intrigues and intermeddling of a despotic court.

The most flourishing seats of patristic learning, Alexandria and Antioch, were lost by the conquests of Islam. The immense library at Alexandria was burned by order of Omar (638), who reasoned: "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God (the Koran), they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed."766  In the eighth century, however, the Saracens themselves began to cultivate learning, to translate Greek authors, to collect large libraries in Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova. The age of Arabic learning continued about five hundred years, till the irruption of the Moguls. It had a stimulating effect upon the scholarship of the church, especially upon the development of scholastic philosophy, through the writings of Averroës of Cordova (d. 1198), the translator and commentator of Aristotle.

Constantinople was the centre of the literary, activity of the Greek church during the middle ages. Here or in the immediate vicinity (Chalcedon, Nicaea) the oecumenical councils were held; here were the scholars, the libraries, the imperial patronage, and all the facilities for the prosecution of studies. Many a library was destroyed, but always replaced again.767  Thessalonica and Mount Athos were also important seats of learning, especially in the twelfth century.

The Latin was the official language of the Byzantine court, and Justinian, who regained, after a divorce of sixty years, the dominion of ancient Rome through the valor of Belisarius (536), asserted the proud title of Emperor of the Romans, and published his code of laws in Latin. But the Greek always was and remained the language of the people, of literature, philosophy, and theology.

Classical learning revived in the ninth century under the patronage of the court. The reigns of Caesar Bardas (860–866), Basilius I. the Macedonian (867–886), Leo VI. the Philosopher (886–911), who was himself an author, Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (911–959), likewise an author, mark the most prosperous period of Byzantine literature. The family of the Comneni, who upheld the power of the sinking empire from 1057 to 1185, continued the literary patronage, and the Empress Eudocia and the Princess Anna Comnena cultivated the art of rhetoric and the study of philosophy.

Even during the confusion of the crusades and the disasters which overtook the empire, the love for learning continued; and when Constantinople at last fell into the hands of the Turks, Greek scholarship took refuge in the West, kindled the renaissance, and became an important factor in the preparation for the Reformation.

The Byzantine literature presents a vast mass of learning without an animating, controlling and organizing genius. "The Greeks of Constantinople," says Gibbon,768  with some rhetorical exaggeration, "held in their lifeless hands the riches of the fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony: they read, they praised, they compiled; but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity; and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy or literature has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original fancy, and even of successful imitation .... The leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athanasius and Chrysostom."

The theological controversies developed dialectical skill, a love for metaphysical subtleties, and an over-estimate of theoretical orthodoxy at the expense of practical piety. The Monotheletic controversy resulted in an addition to the christological creed; the iconoclastic controversy determined the character of public worship and the relation of religion to art.

The most gifted Eastern divines were Maximus Confessor in the seventh, John of Damascus in the eighth, and Photius in the ninth century. Maximus, the hero of Monotheletism, was an acute and profound thinker, and the first to utilize the pseudo-Dyonysian philosophy in support of a mystic orthodoxy. John of Damascus, the champion of image-worship, systematized the doctrines of the orthodox fathers, especially the three great Cappadocians, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa, and produced a monumental work on theology which enjoys to this day the same authority in the Greek church as the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas in the Latin. Photius, the antagonist of Pope Nicolas, was the greatest scholar of his age, who read and digested with independent judgment all ancient heathen and Christian books on philology, philosophy, theology, canon law, history, medicine, and general literature. In extent of information and fertility of pen he had a successor in Michael Psellus (d. 1106).

Exegesis was cultivated by Oecumenius in the tenth, Theophylact in the eleventh, and Euthymius Zygabenus in the twelfth century. They compiled the valuable exegetical collections called "Catenae."769  Simeon Metaphrastes (about 900) wrote legendary biographies and eulogies of one hundred and twenty-two saints. Suidas, in the eleventh century, prepared a Lexicon, which contains much valuable philological and historical information770  The Byzantine historians, Theophanes, Syncellus, Cedrenus, Leo Grammaticus, and others, describe the political and ecclesiastical events of the slowly declining empire. The most eminent scholar of the twelfth century, was Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica, best known as the commentator of Homer, but deserving a high place also as a theologian, ecclesiastical ruler, and reformer of monasticism.

§ 137. Christian Platonism and the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings.

Literature.

I. Best ed. of Pseudo-Dionysius in Greek and Latin by Balthasar Corderius (Jesuit), Antwerp, 1634; reprinted at Paris, 1644; Venice, 1755; Brixiae, 1854; and by Migne, in "Patrol. Gr.," Tom. III. and IV., Paris, 1857, with the scholia of Pachymeres, St. Maximus, and various dissertations on the life and writings of Dionysius. French translations by Darboy (1845), and Dulac (1865). German transl. by Engelhardt (see below). An English transl. of the Mystical Theology in Everard’s Gospel Treasures, London, 1653.

II. Older treatises by Launoy: De Areopagiticis Hilduini (Paris, 1641); and De duabus Dionysiis (Par., 1660). Père Sirmond: Dissert. in qua ostenditur Dion. Paris. et Dion.  Areop. discrimen (Par., 1641). J. Daillé: De scriptis quo sub Dionys. Areop. et Ignatii Antioch. nominibus circumferuntur (Geneva, 1666, reproduced by Engelhardt).

III. Engelhardt: Die angeblichen Schriften des Areop. Dion. übersetzt und mit Abhandl. begleitet (Sulzbach, 1823); De Dion. Platonizante (Erlangen, 1820); and De Origine script. Dion. Areop. (Erlangen, 1823). Vogt: Neuplatonismus und Christenthum. Berlin, 1836. G. A. Meyer: Dionys. Areop. Halle, 1845. L. Montet: Les livres du Pseudo-Dionys., 1848. Neander: III. 169 sqq.; 466 sq. Gieseler: I. 468; II. 103 sq. Baur: Gesch. der Lehre v. der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes, II. 251–263. Dorner: Entw. Gesch. der L. v. d. Pers. Christi, II. 196–203. Fr. Hipler: Dionys. der Areopagite. Regensb., 1861. E. Böhmer: Dion. Areop., 1864. Westcott: Dion. Areop. in the "Contemp. Review" for May, 1867 (with good translations of characteristic passages). Joh. Niemeyer: Dion. Areop. doctrina philos. et theolog. Halle, 1869. Dean Colet: On the Hierarchies of Dionysius. 1869. J. Fowler: On St. Dion. in relation to Christian Art, in the "Sacristy," Febr., 1872. Kanakis: Dionys. der Areop. nach seinem Character als Philosoph. Leipz., 1881. Möller in "Herzog"2 III. 617 sqq.; and Lupton in "Smith & Wace," I. 841 sqq. Comp. the Histories of Philosophy by Ritter, II. 514 sqq., and Ueberweg (Am. ed.), II. 349–352.

The Real and the Ficitious Doinysius.

The tendency to mystic speculation was kept up and nourished chiefly through the writings which exhibit a fusion of Neo-Platonism and Christianity, and which go under the name of Dionysius Areopagita, the distinguished Athenian convert of St. Paul (Acts 17:34). He was, according to a tradition of the second century, the first bishop of Athens.771  In the ninth century, when the French became acquainted with his supposed writings, he was confounded with St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris and patron saint of France, who lived and died about two hundred years after the Areopagite.772  He thus became, by a glaring anachronism, the connecting link between Athens and Paris, between Greek philosophy and Christian theology, and acquired an almost apostolic authority. He furnishes one of the most remarkable examples of the posthumous influence of unknown authorship and of the power of the dead over the living. For centuries he was regarded as the prince of theologians. He represented to the Greek and Latin church the esoteric wisdom of the gospel, and the mysterious harmony between faith and reason and between the celestial and terrestrial hierarchy.

Pseudo-Dionysius is a philosophical counterpart of Pseudo-Isidor: both are pious frauds in the interest of the catholic system, the one with regard to theology, the other with regard to church polity; both reflect the uncritical character of mediaeval Christianity; both derived from the belief in their antiquity a fictitious importance far beyond their intrinsic merits. Doubts were entertained of the genuineness of the Areopagitica by Laurentius Valla, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan; but it was only in the seventeenth century that the illusion of the identity of Pseudo-Dionysius with the apostolic convert and the patron-saint of France was finally dispelled by the torch of historical criticism. Since that time his writings have lost their authority and attraction; but they will always occupy a prominent place among the curiosities of literature, and among the most remarkable systems of mystic philosophy.

Authorship.

Who is the real author of those productions?  The writer is called simply Dionysius, and only once.773  He repeatedly mentions an unknown Hierotheos, as his teacher; but he praises also "the divine Paul," as the spiritual guide of both, and addresses persons who bear apostolic names, as Timothy, Titus, Caius, Polycarp, and St. John. He refers to a visit he made with Hierotheos, and with James, the brother of the Lord (ajdelfovqeo"), and Peter, "the chief and noblest head of the inspired apostles," to gaze upon the (dead) body of her (Mary) who was "the beginning of life and the recipient of God;" on which occasion Hierotheos gave utterance to their feelings in ecstatic hymns. It is evident then that he either lived in the apostolic age and its surroundings, or that he transferred himself back in imagination to that age.774  The former alternative is impossible. The inflated style, the reference to later persons (as Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria), the acquaintance with Neo-Platonic ideas, the appeal to the "old tradition" (ajrcai'a paravdosi") of the church as well as the Scriptures, and the elaborate system of church polity and ritual which he presupposes, clearly prove his post-apostolic origin. He was not known to Eusebius or Jerome or any ecclesiastical author before 533. In that year his writings were first mentioned in a conference between orthodox bishops and heretical Severians at Constantinople under Justinian I.775  The Severians quoted them as an authority for their Monophysitic Christology and against the Council of Chalcedon; and in reply to the objection that they were unknown, they asserted that Cyril of Alexandria had used them against the Nestorians. If this be so, they must have existed before 444, when Cyril died; but no trace can be found in Cyril’s writings. On the other hand, Dionysius presupposes the christological controversies of the fifth century, and shows a leaning to Monophysitic views, and a familiarity with the last and best representatives of Neo-Platonism, especially with Proclus, who died in Athens, A.D. 485. The resemblance is so strong that the admirers of Dionysius charged Proclus with plagiarism.776  The writer then was a Christian Neo-Platonist who wrote towards the close of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century in Greece or in Egypt, and who by a literary fiction clothed his religious speculations with the name and authority of the first Christian bishop of Athens.777

In the same way the pseudo-Clementine writings were assigned to the first bishop of Rome.

The Fortunes of Pseudo-Dionysius.

Pseudo-Dionysius appears first in the interest of the heretical doctrine of one nature and one will in the person of Christ.778  But he soon commended himself even more to orthodox theologians. He was commented on by Johannes Scythopolitanus in the sixth century, and by St. Maximus Confessor in the seventh. John of Damascus often quotes him as high authority. Even Photius, who as a critic doubted the genuineness, numbers him among the great church teachers and praises his depth of thought.779

In the West the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were first noticed about 590 by Pope Gregory I., who probably became acquainted with them while ambassador at Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. mentions them in a letter to Charlemagne. The Emperor Michael II. the Stammerer, sent a copy to Louis the Pious, 827. Their arrival at St. Denis on the eve of the feast of the saint who reposed there, was followed by no less than nineteen miraculous cures in the neighborhood. They naturally recalled the memory of the patron-saint of France, and were traced to his authorship. The emperor instructed Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, to translate them into Latin; but his scholarship was not equal to the task. John Scotus Erigena, the best Greek scholar in the West, at the request of Charles the Bald, prepared a literal translation with comments, about 850, and praised the author as "venerable alike for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly mysteries" with which he dealt.780  Pope Nicolas I. complained that the work had not been sent to him for approval," according to the custom of the church" (861); but a few years later Anastasius, the papal librarian, highly commended it (c. 865).

The Areopagitica stimulated an intuitive and speculative bent of mind, and became an important factor in the development of scholastic and mystic theology. Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Grosseteste, and Dionysius Carthusianus wrote commentaries on them, and drew from them inspiration for their own writings.781  The Platonists of the Italian renaissance likewise were influenced by them.

Dante places Dionysius among the theologians in the heaven of the sun:

"Thou seest next the lustre of that taper,

Which in the flesh below looked most within

The angelic nature and its ministry."782

Luther called him a dreamer, and this was one of his heretical views which the Sorbonne of Paris condemned.

The Several Writings.

The Dionysian writings, as far as preserved, are four treatises addressed to Timothy, his "fellow-presbyter," namely: 1) On the Celestial Hierarchy (peri; th'" oujraniva" iJerarciva"). 2) On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (peri; th'" ejkklhsiastikh'" iJerarciva"). 3) On the Divine Names (peri; qeivwn ojnomavtwn). 4) On Mystic Theology (peri; mustikh'" qeologiva"). To these are added ten letters addressed to various persons of the apostolic age.783

The System of Dionysius.

These books reveal the same authorship and the same system of mystic symbolism, in which Neo-Platonism and Christianity are interwoven. The last phase of Hellenic philosophy which heretofore had been hostile to the church, is here made subservient to it. The connecting ideas are the progressive revelation of the infinite, the hierarchic triads, the negative conception of evil, and the striving of man after mystic union with the transcendent God. The system is a counterpart of the Graeco-Jewish theology, of Philo of Alexandria, who in similar manner mingled the Platonic philosophy with the Mosaic religion. The Areopagite and Philo teach theology in the garb of philosophy; both appeal to Scripture, tradition, and reason; both go behind the letter of the Bible and the facts of history to a deeper symbolic and allegoric meaning; both adulterate the revealed truths by foreign elements. But Philo is confined to the Old Testament, and ignores the New, which was then not yet written; while the system of the Areopagite is a sort of philosophy of Christianity.

The Areopagite reverently ascends the heights and sounds the depths of metaphysical and religious speculation, and makes the impression of profound insight and sublime spirituality; and hence he exerted such a charm upon the great schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. But he abounds in repetitions; he covers the poverty of thought with high-sounding phrases; he uses the terminology of the Hellenic mysteries;784 and his style is artificial, turgid, involved, and monotonous.

The unity of the Godhead and the hierarchical order of the universe are the two leading ideas of the Areopagite. He descends from the divine unity through a succession of manifestations to variety, and ascends back again to mystic union with God. His text, we may say, is the sentence of St. Paul: "From God, and through God, and unto God, are all things" (Rom. 11:36).

He starts from the Neo-Platonic conception of the Godhead, as a being which transcends all being and existence785 and yet is the beginning and the end of all existence, as unknowable and yet the source of all reason and knowledge, as nameless and inexpressible and yet giving names to all things, as a simple unity and yet causing all variety. He describes God as "a unity of three persons, who with his loving providence penetrates to all things, from super-celestial essences to the last things of earth, as being the beginning and cause of all beings, beyond all beginning, and enfolding all things transcendentally in his infinite embrace."  If we would know God, we must go out of ourselves and become absorbed in Him. All being proceeds from God by a sort of emanation, and tends upward to him.

The world forms a double hierarchy, that is, as he defines it, "a holy order, and science, and activity or energy, assimilated as far as possible to the godlike and elevated to the imitation of God in proportion to the divine illuminations conceded to it."  There are two hierarchies, one in heaven, and one on earth, each with three triadic degrees.

The celestial or supermundane hierarchy consists of angelic beings in three orders: 1) thrones, cherubim, and seraphim, in the immediate presence of God; 2) powers, mights, and dominions; 3) angels (in the narrower sense), archangels, and principalities.786  The first order is illuminated, purified and perfected by God, the second order by the first, the third by the second.

The earthly or ecclesiastical hierarchy is a reflex of the heavenly, and a school to train us up to the closest possible communion with God. Its orders form the lower steps of the heavenly ladder which reaches in its summit to the throne of God. It requires sensible symbols or sacraments, which, like the parables of our Lord, serve the double purpose of revealing the truth to the holy and hiding it from the profane. The first and highest triad of the ecclesiastical hierarchy are the sacraments of baptism which is called illumination (fwvtisma), the eucharist (suvnaxi", gathering, communion), which is the most sacred of consecrations, and the holy unction or chrism which represents our perfecting. Three other sacraments are mentioned: the ordination of priests, the consecration of monks, and the rites of burial, especially the anointing of the dead. The three orders of the ministry form the second triad.787  The third triad consists of monks, the holy laity, and the catechumens.

These two hierarchies with their nine-fold orders of heavenly and earthly ministrations are, so to speak, the machinery of God’s government and of his self-communication to man. They express the divine law of subordination and mutual dependence of the different ranks of beings.

The Divine Names or attributes, which are the subject of a long treatise, disclose to us through veils and shadows the fountain-head of all life and light, thought and desire. The goodness, the beauty, and the loveliness of God shine forth upon all created things, like the rays of the sun, and attract all to Himself. How then can evil exist?  Evil is nothing real and positive, but only a negation, a defect. Cold is the absence of heat, darkness is the absence of light; so is evil the absence, of goodness. But how then can God punish evil?  For the answer to this question the author refers to another treatise which is lost.788

The Mystic Theology briefly shows the way by which the human soul ascends to mystic union with God as previously set forth under the Divine Names. The soul now rises above signs and symbols, above earthly conceptions and definitions to the pure knowledge and intuition of God.

Dionysius distinguishes between cataphatic or affirmative theology)789 and apophatic or negative theology.790  The former descends from the infinite God, as the unity of all names, to the finite and manifold; the latter ascends from the finite and manifold to God, until it reaches that height of sublimity where it becomes completely passive, its voice is stilled, and man is united with the nameless, unspeakable, super-essential Being of Beings.

The ten Letters treat of separate theological or moral topics, and are addressed, four to Caius, a monk (qerapeuvth"), one to Dorotheus, a deacon (leitourgov"), one to Sosipater, a priest (iJereuv"), one to Demophilus, a monk, one to Polycarp (called iJeravrch", no doubt the well-known bishop of Smyrna), one to Titus (iJeravrch", bishop of Crete), and the tenth to John, "the theologian," i.e. the Apostle John at Patmos, foretelling his future release from exile.

Dionysian Legends.

Two legends of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings have passed in exaggerated forms into Latin Breviaries and other books of devotion. One is his gathering with the apostles around the death-bed of the Virgin Mary.791  The other is the exclamation of Dionysius when he witnessed at Heliopolis in Egypt the miraculous solar eclipse at the time of the crucifixion:792 "Either the God of nature is suffering, or He sympathizes with a suffering God."793  No such sentence occurs in the writings of Dionysius as his own utterance; but a similar one is attributed by him to the sophist Apollophanes, his fellow-student at Heliopolis.794

The Roman Breviary has given solemn sanction, for devotional purposes, to several historical errors connected with Dionysius the Areopagite: 1) his identity with the French St. Denis of the third century; 2) his authorship of the books upon "The Names of God," upon "The Orders in Heaven and in the Church," upon "The Mystic Theology," and "divers others," which cannot have been written before the end of the fifth century; 3) his witness of the supernatural eclipse at the time of the crucifixion, and his exclamation just referred to, which he himself ascribes to Apollophanes. The Breviary also relates that Dionysius was sent by Pope Clement of Rome to Gaul with Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon; that he was tortured with fire upon a grating, and beheaded with an axe on the 9th day of October in Domitian’s reign, being over a hundred years old, but that "after his head was cut off, he took it in his hands and walked two hundred paces, carrying it all the while!"795

§ 138. Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church.

The ancient Roman civilization began to decline soon after the reign of the Antonines, and was overthrown at last by the Northern barbarians. The treasures of literature and art were buried, and a dark night settled over Europe. The few scholars felt isolated and sad. Gregory, of Tours (540–594) complains, in the Preface to his Church History of the Franks, that the study of letters had nearly perished from Gaul, and that no man could be found who was able to commit to writing the events of the times.796

"Middle Ages" and "Dark Ages" have become synonymous terms. The tenth century is emphatically called the iron age, or the saeculum obscurum.797  The seventh and eighth were no better.798  Corruption of morals went hand in hand with ignorance. It is re-ported that when the papacy had sunk to the lowest depth of degradation, there was scarcely a person in Rome who knew the first elements of letters. We hear complaints of priests who did not know even the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. If we judge by the number of works, the seventh, eighth and tenth centuries were the least productive; the ninth was the most productive; there was a slight increase of productiveness in the eleventh over the tenth, a much greater one in the twelfth, but again a decline in the thirteenth century.799

But we must not be misled by isolated facts into sweeping generalities. For England and Germany the tenth century was in advance of the ninth. In France the eighth and ninth centuries produced the seeds of a new culture which were indeed covered by winter frosts, but not destroyed, and which bore abundant fruit in the eleventh and twelfth.

Secular and sacred learning was confined to the clergy and the monks. The great mass of the laity, including the nobility, could neither read nor write, and most contracts were signed with the mark of the cross. Even the Emperor Charlemagne wrote only with difficulty. The people depended for their limited knowledge on the teaching of a poorly educated priesthood. But several emperors and kings, especially Charlemagne and Alfred, were liberal patrons of learning and even contributors to literature.

Scarcity of Libraries.

One of the chief causes of the prevailing ignorance was the scarcity of books. The old libraries were destroyed by ruthless barbarians and the ravages of war. After the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, the cultivation and exportation of Egyptian papyrus ceased, and parchment or vellum, which took its place, was so expensive that complete copies of the Bible cost as much as a palace or a farm. King Alfred paid eight acres of land for one volume of a cosmography. Hence the custom of chaining valuable books, which continued even to the sixteenth century. Hence also the custom of erasing the original text of manuscripts of classical works, to give place to worthless monkish legends and ascetic homilies. Even the Bible was sometimes submitted to this process, and thus "the word of God was made void by the traditions of men."800

The libraries of conventual and cathedral schools were often limited to half a dozen or a dozen volumes, such as a Latin Bible or portions of it, the liturgical books, some works of St. Augustin and St. Gregory, Cassiodorus and Boëthius, the grammars of Donatus and Priscianus, the poems of Virgil and Horace. Most of the books had to be imported from Italy, especially from Rome.

The introduction of cotton paper in the tenth or eleventh century, and of linen paper in the twelfth, facilitated the multiplication of books.801

§ 139. Educational Efforts of the Church.

The mediaeval church is often unjustly charged with hostility to secular learning. Pope Gregory I. is made responsible for the destruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina and the classical statues in Rome. But this rests on an unreliable tradition of very late date.802  Gregory was himself, next to Isidore of Seville (on whom he conferred the pall, in 599), the best scholar and most popular writer of his age, and is lauded by his biographers and Gregory of Tours as a patron of learning. If he made some disparaging remarks about Latin grammar and syntax, in two letters addressed to bishops, they must be understood as a protest against an overestimate of these lower studies and of heathen writers, as compared with higher episcopal duties, and with that allegorical interpretation of the Bible which he carried to arbitrary excess in his own exposition of Job.803  In the Commentary on Kings ascribed to him, he commends the study of the liberal arts as a useful and necessary means for the proper understanding of the Scriptures, and refers in support to the examples of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul.804  We may say then that he was an advocate of learning and art, but in subordination and subserviency to the interests of the Catholic church. This has been the attitude of the papal chair ever since.805

The preservation and study of ancient literature during the entire mediaeval period are due chiefly to the clergy and monks, and a few secular rulers. The convents were the nurseries of manuscripts.

The connection with classical antiquity was never entirely broken. Boëthius (beheaded at Pavia, c. 525), and Cassiodorus (who retired to the monastery, of Viviers, and died there about 570), both statesmen under Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, form the connecting links between ancient and mediaeval learning. They were the last of the old Romans; they dipped the pen of Cicero and Seneca in barbaric ink,806 and stimulated the rising energies of the Romanic and Germanic nations: Boëthius by his "Consolation of Philosophy" (written in prison),807 Cassiodorus by his encyclopedic "Institutes of Divine Letters," a brief introduction to the profitable study of the Holy Scriptures.808  The former looked back to Greek philosophy; the latter looked forward to Christian theology. The influence of their writings was enhanced by the scarcity of books beyond their intrinsic merits.

Boëthius has had the singular fortune of enjoying the reputation of a saint and martyr who was put to death, not for alleged political treason, but for defending orthodoxy against the Arianism of Theodoric. He is assigned by Dante to the fourth heaven in company with Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Gratian, Peter the Lombard, Dionysius the Areopagite, and other great teachers of the church:

"The saintly soul that maketh manifest

The world’s deceitfulness to all who hear well,

Is feasting on the sight of every good.

The body, whence it was expelled, is lying

Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom

And exile rose the soul to such a peace."809

And yet it is doubtful whether Boëthius was a Christian at all. He was indeed intimate with Cassiodorus and lived in a Christian atmosphere, which accounts for the moral elevation of his philosophy. But, if we except a few Christian phrases,810 his "Consolation" might almost have been written by a noble heathen of the school of Plato or Seneca. It is an echo of Greek philosophy; it takes an optimistic view of life; it breathes a beautiful spirit of resignation and hope, and derives comfort from a firm belief in God; in an all-ruling providence, and in prayer, but is totally silent about Christ and his gospel.811  It is a dialogue partly in prose and partly in verse between the author and philosophy in the garb of a dignified woman (who sets as his celestial guide, like Dante’s Beatrice). The work enjoyed an extraordinary popularity throughout the middle ages, and was translated into several languages, Greek, Old High German (by Notker of St. Gall), Anglo-Saxon (by King Alfred), Norman English (by Chaucer), French (by Meun), and Hebrew (by Ben Banshet). Gibbon admires it all the more for its ignoring Christianity, and calls it "a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author. The celestial guide whom he had so long invoked at Rome and Athens, now condescended to illumine his dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her salutary balm .... From the earth Boëthius ascended to heaven in search of the Supreme Good; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance and destiny, of prescience and freewill, of time and eternity; and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government."812

Greek And Hebrew Learning.

The original languages of the Scriptures were little understood in the West. The Latin took the place of the Greek as a literary and sacred language, and formed a bond of union among scholars of different nationalities. As a spoken language it rapidly degenerated under the influx of barbaric dialects, but gave birth in the course of time to the musical Romanic languages of Southern Europe.

The Hebrew, which very few of the fathers (Origen and Jerome) had understood, continued to live in the Synagogue, and among eminent Jewish grammarians and commentators of the Old Testament; but it was not revived in the Christian Church till shortly before the Reformation. Very few of the divines of our period (Isidore, and, perhaps, Scotus Erigena), show any trace of Hebrew learning.

The Greek, which had been used almost exclusively, even by writers of the Western church, till the time of Tertullian and Cyprian, gave way to the Latin. Hence the great majority of Western divines could not read even the New Testament in the original. Pope Gregory did not know Greek, although he lived several years as papal ambassador in Constantinople. The same is true of most of the schoolmen down to the sixteenth century.

But there were not a few honorable exceptions.813  The Monotheletic and Iconoclastic controversies brought the Greek and the Latin churches into lively contact. The conflict between Photius and Nicolas stimulated Latin divines to self-defence.

As to Italy, the Greek continued to be spoken in the Greek colonies in Calabria and Sicily down to the eleventh century. Boëthius was familiar with the Greek philosophers. Cassiodorus often gives the Greek equivalents for Latin technical terms.814

Several popes of this period were Greeks by birth, as Theodore I. (642), John VI. (701), John VII. (705), Zachary (741); while others were Syrians, as John V. (685), Sergius I. (687), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I. (708), Gregory III. (731). Zachary translated Gregory’s "Dialogues" from Latin into Greek. Pope Paul I. (757–768) took pains to spread a knowledge of Greek and sent several Greek books, including a grammar, some works of Aristotle, and Dionysius the Areopagite, to King Pepin of France. He provided Greek service for several monks who had been banished from the East by the iconoclastic emperor Copronymus. Anastasius, librarian of the Vatican, translated the canons of the eighth general Council of Constantinople (869) into Latin by order of Pope Hadrian II.815

Isidore of Seville (d. 636) mentions a learned Spanish bishop, John of Gerona, who in his youth had studied seven years in Constantinople. He himself quotes in his "Etymologies" from many Greek authors, and is described as "learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew."

Ireland was for a long time in advance of England, and sent learned missionaries to the sister island as well as to the Continent. That Greek was not unknown there, is evident from Scotus Erigena.

England derived her knowledge of Greek from Archbishop Theodore, who was a native of Tarsus, educated in Athens and appointed by the pope to the see of Canterbury (A.D. 668).816  He and his companion Hadrian,817 an Italian abbot of African descent, spread Greek learning among the clergy. Bede says that some of their disciples were living in his day who were as well versed in Greek and Latin as in their native Saxon. Among these must be mentioned Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, and Tobias, bishop of Rochester (d. 726).818  The Venerable Bede (d. 735) gives evidence of Greek knowledge in his commentaries,819 his references to a Greek Codex of the Acts of the Apostles, and especially in his book on the Art of Poetry.820  In France, Greek began to be studied under Charles the Great. Alcuin (d. 804) brought some knowledge of it from his native England, but his references may all have been derived from Jerome and Cassiodorus.821  Paulus Diaconus frequently uses Greek words. Charlemagne himself learned Greek, and the Libri Carolini show a familiarity with the details of the image-controversy of the Greek Church. His sister Giesela, who was abbess of Challes near Paris, uses a few Greek words in Latin letters,822 in her correspondence with Alcuin, though these may have been derived from the Latin.

The greatest Greek scholar of the ninth century, and of the whole period in the West was John Scotus Erigena (850), who was of Irish birth and education, but lived in France at the court of Charles the Bald. He displays his knowledge in his Latin books, translated the pseudo-Dionysian writings, and attempted original Greek composition.

In Germany, Rabanus Maurus, Haymo of Halberstadt, and Walafrid Strabo had some knowledge of Greek, but not sufficient to be of any material use in the interpretation of the Scriptures.

The Course of Study.823

Education was carried on in the cathedral and conventual schools, and these prepared the way for the Universities which began to be founded in the twelfth century.

The course of secular learning embraced the so-called seven liberal arts, namely, grammar, dialectics (logic), rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The first three constituted the Trivium, the other four the Quadrivium.824  Seven, three, and four were all regarded as sacred numbers. The division is derived from St. Augustin,825 and was adopted by Boëthius and Cassiodorus. The first and most popular compend of the middle ages was the book of Cassiodorus, De Septem Disciplinis.826

These studies were preparatory to sacred learning, which was based upon the Latin Bible and the Latin fathers.

The Chief Theologians.

A few divines embraced all the secular and religious knowledge of their age. In Spain, Isidore of Seville (d. 636) was the most learned man at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century. His twenty books of "Origins" or "Etymologies" embrace the entire contents of the seven liberal arts, together with theology, jurisprudence, medicine, natural history, etc., and show familiarity with Plato, Aristotle, Boëthius, Demosthenes, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Anacreon, Herodotus, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Juvenal, Caesar, Livy, Sallust.827  The Venerable Bede occupied the same height of encyclopaedic knowledge a century later. Alcuin was the leading divine of the Carolingian age. From his school proceeded RABANUS MAURUS, the founder of learning and higher education in Germany.828  Scotus Erigena (d. about 877) was a marvel not only of learning, but also of independent thought, in the reign of Charles the Bald, and showed, by prophetic anticipation, the latent capacity of the Western church for speculative theology.829  With Berengar and Lanfranc, in the middle of the eleventh century, dialectical skill was applied in opposing and defending the dogma of transubstantiation.830  The doctrinal controversies about adoptionism, predestination, and the real presence stimulated the study of the Scriptures and of the fathers, and kept alive the intellectual activity.

Biblical Studies.

The literature of the Latin church embraced penitential books, homilies, annals, translations, compilations, polemic discussions, and commentaries. The last are the most important, but fall far below the achievements of the fathers and reformers.

Exegesis was cultivated in an exclusively practical and homiletical spirit and aim by Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin, Claudius of Turin, Paschasius Radbertus, Rabanus Maurus, Haymo, Walafrid Strabo, and others. The Latin Vulgate was the text, and the Greek or Hebrew seldom referred to. Augustin and Jerome were the chief sources. Charlemagne felt the need of a revision of the corrupt text of the Vulgate, and entrusted Alcuin with the task. The theory of a verbal inspiration was generally accepted, and opposed only by Agobard of Lyons who confined inspiration to the sense and the arguments, but not to the "ipsa corporalia verba."

The favorite mode of interpretation was the spiritual, that is, allegorical and mystical. The literal, that is, grammatico-historical exegesis was neglected. The spiritual interpretation was again divided into three ramifications: the allegorical proper, the moral, and the anagogical831 corresponding to the three cardinal virtues of the Christian: the first refers to faith (credenda), the second to practice or charity (agenda), the third to hope (speranda, desideranda). Thus Jerusalem means literally or historically, the city in Palestine; allegorically, the church; morally, the believing soul; anagogically, the heavenly Jerusalem. The fourfold sense was expressed in the memorial verse:

"Litera Gesta docet; quid Credas, Allegoria;

Moralis, quid Agas; quo Tendas, Anagogia."

Notes.

St. Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, who was first (like Cyprian, and Ambrose) a distinguished layman, and father of four children, before he became a monk, and then a bishop, wrote in the middle of the fifth century (he died c. 450) a brief manual of mediaeval hermeneutics under the title Liber Formularum Spiritalis Intelligentiae (Rom., 1564, etc., in Migne’s "Patrol." Tom. 50, col. 727–772). This work is often quoted by Bede and is sometimes erroneously ascribed to him. Eucherius shows an extensive knowledge of the Bible and a devout spirit. He anticipates many favorite interpretations of mediaeval commentators and mystics. He vindicates the allegorical method from the Scripture itself, and from its use of anthropomorphic and anthropopathic expressions which can not be understood literally. Yet he allows the literal sense its proper place in history as well as the moral and mystical. He identifies the Finger of God (Digitus Dei) with the Spirit of God (cap. 2; comp. Luke 11:20 with Matt. 12:28), and explains the several meanings of Jerusalem (ecclesia, vel anima, cap. 10), ark (caro Dominica, corda sanctorum Deo plena, ecclesia intra quam salvanda clauduntur), Babylon (mundus, Roma, inimici), fures (haeretici et pseudoprophetae, gentes, vitia), chirographum, pactum, praeputium, circumcisio, etc. In the last chapter he treats of the symbolical significance of numbers, as 1=Divine Unity; 2=the two covenants, the two chief commandments; 3=the trinity in heaven and on earth (he quotes the spurious passage 1 John 5:7); 4=the four Gospels, the four rivers of Paradise; 5=the five books of Moses, five loaves, five wounds of Christ (John 20:25); 6=the days of creation, the ages of the world; 7=the day of rest, of perfection; 8=the day of resurrection; 10=the Decalogue; 12=the Apostles, the universal multitude of believers, etc.

The theory of the fourfold interpretation was more fully developed by Rabanus Maurus (776–856), in his curious book, Allegoriae in Universam Sacram Scripturam (Opera, ed. Migne, Tom. VI. col. 849–1088). He calls the four senses the four daughters of wisdom, by whom she nourishes her children, giving to beginners drink in lacte historiae, to the believers food in pane allegoriae, to those engaged in good works encouragement in refectione tropologiae, to those longing for heavenly rest delight in vino anagogiae. He also gives the following definition at the beginning of the treatise: "Historia ad aptam rerum gestarum narrationem pertinet, quae et in superficie litterae continetur, et sic intelligitur sicut legitur. Allegoria vero aliquid in se plus continet, quod per hoc quod locus [loquens] de rei veritate ad quiddam dat intelligendum de fidei puritate, et sanctae Ecclesiae mysteria, sive praesentia, sive futura, aliud dicens, aliud significans, semper autem figmentis et velatis ostendit. Tropologia quoque et ipsa, sicut allegoria, in figuratis, sive dictis, sive factis, constat: sed in hoc ab allegoria distat quod Allegoria quidem fidem, Tropologia vero aedificat moralitem. Anagogia autem, sive velatis, sive apertis dictis, de aeternis supernae patriae gaudiis constat, et quae merces vel fidem rectam, vel vitam maneat sanctam, verbis vel opertis, vel apertis demonstrat. Historia namque perfectorum exempla quo narrat, legentem ad imitationem sanctitatis excitat; Allegoria in fidei revelatione ad cognitionem veritatis; Tropologia in instructione morum ad amorem virtutis; Anagogia in manifestatione sempiternorum gaudiorum ad desiderium aeternae felicitatis. In nostrae ergo animae domo Historia fundamentum ponit; Allegoria parietes erigit; Anagogia tectum supponit; Tropologia vero tam interius per affectum quam exterius per effectum boni operis, variis ornatibus depingit."

§ 140. Patronage of Letters by Charles the Great, and Charles the Bald.

Comp. §§ 56, 90, 134 (pp. 236, 390, 584).

Charlemagne stands out like a far-shining beacon-light in the darkness of his age. He is the founder of a new era of learning, as well as of a new empire. He is the pioneer of French and German civilization. Great in war, he was greater still as a legislator and promoter of the arts of peace. He clearly saw that religion and education are the only solid and permanent basis of a state. In this respect he rose far above Alexander the Great and Caesar, and is unsurpassed by Christian rulers.

He invited the best scholars from Italy and England to his court,—Peter of Pisa, Paul Warnefrid, Paulinus of Aquileia, Theodulph of Orleans, Alcuin of York.832  They formed a sort of royal academy of sciences and arts, and held literary symposiacs. Each member bore a nom de plume borrowed from the Bible or classic lore: the king presided as "David" or "Solomon"; Alcuin, a great admirer of Horace and Virgil, was "Flaccus" Angilbert (his son-in-law) was "Homerus"; Einhard (his biographer), "Bezaleel," after the skilful artificer of the Tabernacle (Ex. 31:2); Wizo, "Candidus"; Arno, "Aquila"; Fredegisus, "Nathanael"; Richbod, "Macarius," etc. Even ladies were not excluded: the emperor’s sister, Gisela, under the name "Lucia"; his learned cousin, Gundrad, as "Eulalia;" his daughter, Rotrude, as "Columba."  He called Alcuin, whom he first met in Italy (781), his own "beloved teacher," and he was himself his most docile pupil. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and put all sorts of questions to him in his letters, even on the most difficult problems of theology. He learned in the years of his manhood the art of writing, the Latin grammar, a little Greek (that he might compare the Latin Testament with the original), and acquired some knowledge of rhetoric, dialectics, mathematics and astronomy. He delighted in reading the poets and historians of ancient Rome, and Augustin’s "City of God."  He longed for a dozen Jeromes and Augustins, but Alcuin told him to be content since the Creator of heaven and earth had been pleased to give to the world only two such giants. He had some share in the composition of the Libri Carolini, which raised an enlightened protest against the superstition of image-worship. Poems are also attributed to him or to his inspiration. He ordered Paul Warnefrid (Paulus Diaconus) to prepare a collection of the best homilies of the Latin fathers for the use of the churches, and published it with a preface in which he admonished the clergy to a diligent study of the Scriptures. Several Synods held during his reign (813) at Rheims, Tours, Chalons, Mainz, ordered the clergy to keep a Homiliarium and to translate the Latin sermons clearly into rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, so that all might understand them.

Charles aimed at the higher education not only of the clergy, but also of the higher nobility, and state officials. His sons and daughters were well informed. He issued a circular letter to all the bishops and abbots of his empire (787), urging them to establish schools in connection with cathedrals and convents. At a later period he rose even to the grand but premature scheme of popular education, and required in a capitulary (802) that every parent should send his sons to school that they might learn to read. Theodulph of Orleans (who died 821) directed the priests of his diocese to hold school in every town and village,833 to receive the pupils with kindness, and not to ask pay, but to receive only voluntary gifts.

The emperor founded the Court or Palace School (Schola Palatina) for higher education and placed it under the direction of Alcuin.834  It was an imitation of the Paedagogium ingenuorum of the Roman emperors. It followed him in his changing residence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Worms, Frankfurt, Mainz, Regensburg, Ingelheim, Paris. It was not the beginning of the Paris University, which is of much later date, but the chief nursery of educated clergymen, noblemen and statesmen of that age. It embraced in its course of study all the branches of secular and sacred learning.835  It became the model of similar schools, old and new, at Tours, Lyons, Orleans, Rheims, Chartres, Troyes, Old Corbey and New Corbey, Metz, St. Gall, Utrecht, Lüttich.836  The rich literature of the Carolingian age shows the fruits of this imperial patronage and example. It was, however, a foreign rather than a native product. It was neither French nor German, but essentially Latin, and so far artificial. Nor could it be otherwise; for the Latin classics, the Latin Bible, and the Latin fathers were the only accessible sources of learning, and the French and German languages were not yet organs of literature. This fact explains the speedy decay, as well as the subsequent revival in close connection with the Roman church.

The creations of Charlemagne were threatened with utter destruction during the civil wars of his weak successors. But Charles the Bald, a son of Louis the Pious, and king of France (843–877), followed his grandfather in zeal for learning, and gave new lustre to the Palace School at Paris under the direction of John Scotus Erigena, whom he was liberal enough to protect, notwithstanding his eccentricities. The predestinarian controversy, and the first eucharistic controversy took place during his reign, and called forth a great deal of intellectual activity and learning, as shown in the writings of Rabanus Maurus, Hincmar, Remigius, Prudentius, Servatus Lupus, John Scotus Erigena, Paschasius Radbertus, and Ratramnus. We find among these writers the three tendencies, conservative, liberal, and speculative or mystic, which usually characterize periods of intellectual energy and literary productivity.

After the death of Charles the Bald a darker night of ignorance and barbarism settled on Europe than ever before. It lasted till towards the middle of the eleventh century when the Berengar controversy on the eucharist roused the slumbering intellectual energies of the church, and prepared the way for the scholastic philosophy and theology of the twelfth century.

The Carolingian male line lasted in Italy till 875, in Germany till 911, in France till 987.

§ 141. Alfred the Great, and Education in England.

Comp. the Jubilee edition of the Whole Works of Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays illustrative of the History, Arts and Manners of the Ninth Century. London, 1858, 2 vols. The biographies of Alfred, quoted on p. 395, and Freemann’s Old English History 1859.

In England the beginning of culture was imported with Christianity by Augustin, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who brought with him the Bible, the church books, the writings of Pope Gregory and the doctrines and practices of Roman Christianity; but little progress was made for a century. Among his successors the Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus (668–690), was most active in promoting education and discipline among the clergy. The most distinguished scholar of the Saxon period is the Venerable Bede (d. 735), who, as already stated, represented all historical, exegetical and general knowledge of his age. Egbert, archbishop of York, founded a flourishing school in York (732), from which proceeded Alcuin, the teacher and friend of Charlemagne.

During the invasion of the heathen Danes and Normans many churches, convents and libraries were destroyed, and the clergy itself relapsed into barbarism so that they did not know the meaning of the Latin formulas which they used in public worship.

In this period of wild confusion King Alfred the Great (871–901), in his twenty-second year, ascended the throne. He is first in war and first in peace of all the Anglo-Saxon rulers. What Charlemagne was for Germany and France, Alfred was for England. He conquered the forces of the Danes by land and by sea, delivered his country from foreign rule, and introduced a new era of Christian education. He invited scholars from the old British churches in Wales, from Ireland, and the Continent to influential positions. He made collections of choice sentences from the Bible and the fathers. In his thirty-sixth year he learned Latin from Asser, a monk of Wales, who afterwards wrote his biography. He himself, no doubt with the aid of scholars, translated several standard works from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon, and accompanied them with notes, namely a part of the Psalter, Boëthius on the Consolation of Philosophy, Bede’s English Church History, Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Theology, Augustin’s Meditations, the Universal History of Orosius, and Aesop’s Fables. He sent a copy of Gregory’s Pastoral Theology to every diocese for the benefit of the clergy. It is due to his influence chiefly that the Scriptures and service-books at this period were illustrated by so many vernacular glosses.

He stood in close connection with the Roman see, as the centre of ecclesiastical unity and civilization. He devoted half of his income to church and school. He founded a school in Oxford similar to the Schola Palatina; but the University of Oxford, like those of Cambridge and Paris, is of much later date (twelfth or thirteenth century). He seems to have conceived even the plan of a general education of the people.837  Amid great physical infirmity (he had the epilepsy), he developed an extraordinary activity during a reign of twenty-nine years, and left an enduring fame for purity, and piety of character and unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people.838

His example of promoting learning in the vernacular language was followed by Aelfric, a grammarian, homilist and hagiographer. He has been identified with the archbishop Aelfric of Canterbury (996–1009), and with the archbishop Aelfric of York (1023–1051), but there are insuperable difficulties in either view. He calls himself simply "monk and priest."  He left behind him a series of eighty Anglo-Saxon Homilies for Sundays and great festivals, and another series for Anglo-Saxon Saints’ days, which were used as an authority in the Anglo-Saxon Church.839

CHAPTER XIV.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS.

[This chapter, with the exception of the last four sections, has been prepared under my direction by the Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, M. A., from the original sources, with the use of the best modern authorities, and has been revised, completed and adapted to the plan of the work.—P. S.

§ 142. Chronological List of the Principal Ecclesiastical Writers from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century.

I. Greek Authors.

St. Maximus Confessor

c. 580–662840

St. John of Damascus

c. 676–754841

Photius

c. 805–891842

Simeon Metaphrastes

10th century.

Oecumenius

10th century.

Theophylact

11th century.

Michael Psellus

c. 1020–c. 1106

Euthymius Zigabenus

12th century.

Eustathius of Thessalonica

12th century

Nicetas Acominatos

d. c. 1126

I. Latin Authors.

Cassiodorus

c. 477–c. 580

St. Gregory of Tours

538–594

St. Gregory the Great

c. 540–604843

St. Isidore of Seville

c. 560–636

The Venerable Bede (Baeda)

674–735844

Paulus Diaconus (Paul Warnefrid)

c. 725–800

St. Paulinus of Aquileia

c. 726–804

Alcuin

735–804845

Liudger

c. 744–809

Theodulph of Orleans

-821

Eigil

-822

Amalarius

-837

Claudius of Turin

-839846

Agobard of Lyons

779–840847

Einhard (Eginhard)

c. 770–840

Smaragdus

-c. 840

Jonas of Orleans

-844

Rabanus Maurus

c. 776–856848

Haymo

c. 778–853

Walafrid Strabo

c. 809–849

Florus of Lyons

-c. 860

Servatus Lupus

805–862

Druthmar

c. 860

St. Paschasius Radbertus

c. 790–865849

Ratramnus

-c. 868850

Hincmar of Rheims

c. 806–882851

Johannes Scotus Erigena

c. 815–877852

Anastasius

-886

Ratherius of Verona

c. 890–974

Pope Sylvester II. (Gerbert)

-1003853

Fulbert of Chartres

c. 950–1029

Peter Damiani

1007–1072

Bere

§ 143. St. Maximus Confessor.

I. Maximus Confessor: Opera in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. XC., XCI., reprint of ed. of Fr. Combefis, Paris, 1673 (only the first two volumes ever appeared), with a few additional treatises from other sources. There is need of a complete critical edition.

II. For his life and writings see his Acta in Migne, XC. col. 109–205; Vita Maximi (unknown authorship) col. 67–110; Acta Sanctorum, under Aug. 13; Du Pin (Eng. transl., Lond. 1693 sqq. ), VI. 24–58; Ceillier (second ed., Paris, 1857 sqq. ), XI. 760–772.

III. For his relation to the Monotheletic controversy see C. W. Franz Walch: Historie der Kezerien, etc., IX. 60–499, sqq.; Neander: III. 171 sqq.; this History, IV. 409, 496–498. On other aspects see J. N. Huber: Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter. München, 1859. Josef Bach: Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters. Wien, 1873–75, 2 parts, I. l5–49. Cf. Weser: Maximi Confesoris de incarnatione et deificatione doctrina. Berlin, 1869.

As a sketch of St. Maximus Confessor (c. 580-Aug. 13, 662) has been elsewhere given,856 it is only necessary in this place to pass in review his literary activity, and state briefly his theological position.

Notwithstanding his frequent changes of residence, Maximus is one of the most prolific writers of the Greek Church, and by reason of his ability, stands in the front rank. Forty-eight of his treatises have been printed, others exist in MS., and some are lost. By reason of his pregnant and spiritual thoughts he has always been popular with his readers, notwithstanding his prolixity and frequent obscurity of which even Photius and Scotus Erigena complain.

His Works may be divided into five classes.

I. Exegetical. A follower of the Alexandrian school, he does not so much analyze and expound as allegorize, and make the text a starting point for theological digressions. He wrote (1) Questions [and Answers] upon difficult Scripture passages,857 sixty-five in number addressed to Thalassius, a friend who had originally asked him the questions. The answers are sometimes very short, sometimes rich speculative essays. Thus he begins with a disquisition upon evil. Unless one is expert in allegorical and mystical writings, the answers of Maximus will be hard reading. He seems to have felt this himself, for he added explanatory notes in different places.858  (2) Questions, seventy-five in number, similar to the preceding, but briefer and less obscure. (3) Exposition of Psalm LIX.859  (4) The Lord’s Prayer.860  Both are very mystical.

II. Scholia upon Dionysius Areopagita and Gregory Nazianzen, which were translated by Scotus Erigena (864).861

III. Dogmatical and polemical. (1) Treatises.862  The first twenty-five are in defense of the Orthodox dyotheletic doctrine (i.e. that there are in Christ two perfect natures, two wills and two operations) against the Severians. One treatise is on the Holy Trinity; another is on the procession of the Holy Spirit; the rest are upon cognate topics. (2) Debate with Pyrrhus (held July, 645) upon the Person of Christ, in favor of two wills.863  It resulted in Pyrrhus’ retraction of his Monotheletic error. This work is easier to read than most of the others. (3) Five Dialogues on the Trinity.864  (4) On the Soul.865

IV. Ethical and ascetic. (1) On asceticism866 a dialogue between an abbot and a young monk, upon the duties of the monastic life. A famous treatise, very simple, clear and edifying for all Christians. It insists upon love to God, our neighbors and our enemies, and the renunciation of the world. (2) Chapters upon Charity,867 four in number, of one hundred aphorisms, each, ascetic, dogmatic and mystical, added to the preceding, but not all are upon charity. There are Greek scholia upon this book. (3) Two Chapters, theological and oeconomical,868 each of one hundred aphorisms, upon the principles of theology. (4) Catena,869 five chapters of one hundred aphorisms each, upon theology.

V. Miscellaneous. (1) Initiation into the mysteries,870 an allegorical exposition of the Church and her worship. Incidentally it proves that the Greek liturgy has not changed since the seventh century. (2) Commonplaces,871 seventy-one sections, containing texts of Scripture and quotations from the Fathers, arranged under heads. (3) Letters872 forty-five in number, on theological and moral matters; several are on the Severian heresy, others supply biographical details. Many of his letters exist in MS. only. (4) Hymns,873 three in number.

Maximus was the pupil of Dionysius Areopagita, and the teacher of John of Damascus and John Scotus Erigena, in the sense that he elucidated and developed the ideas of Dionysius, and in turn was an inspiration and guide to the latter. John of Damascus has perpetuated his influence in the Greek Church to the present day. Scotus Erigena introduced some of his works to Western Europe. The prominent points of the theology of Maximus are these:874 Sin is not a positive quality, but an inborn defect in the creature. In Christ this defect is supplied, new life is imparted, and the power to obey the will of God is given. The Incarnation is thus the Divine remedy for sin’s awful consequences: the loss of free inclination to good, and the loss of immortality. Grace comes to man in consequence of Christ’s work. It is not the divine nature in itself but in union with the human nature which is the principle of atoning and saving grace. God is the fountain of all being and life, the alpha and omega of creation. By means of the Incarnation he is the Head of the kingdom of grace. Christ is fully Man, and not only fully God. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. Opposed to the Monophysites and Monothelites, Maximus exerts all his ingenuity to prove that the difference of natures in Christ requires two wills, a human and a divine will, not separated or mixed, but in harmony. Christ was born from eternity from the Father, and in time from the Virgin, who was the veritable Mother of God. Christ’s will was a natural, human will, one of the energies of his human nature. The parallel to this union of the divine and human in Christ is the human soul wrought upon by the Holy Spirit. The divine life begins in faith, rules in love, and comes to its highest development in the contemplative life. The Christian fulfils the command to pray without ceasing, by constantly directing his mind to God in true piety and sincere aspiration. All rational essences shall ultimately be re-united with God, and the final glorification of God will be by the complete destruction of all evil.

An interesting point of a humane interest is his declaration that slavery is a dissolution, introduced by sin, of the original unity of human nature, and a denial of the original dignity of man, created after the image of God.

§ 144. John of Damascus.

Cf. §§ 89 and 103.

I. Joannes Damascenus: Opera omnia in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. XCIV.-XCVI. (reprint, with additions, of Lequien’s ed. Paris, 1712. 2 vols. fol. 2d ed. Venice, 1748).

II. John of Jerusalem: Vita Damasceni (Migne, XCIV. col. 429–489); the Prolegomena of Leo Allatius (l.c. 118–192). Perrier: Jean Damascène, sa vie et ses écrits. Paris, 1862. F. H. J. Grundlehner: Johannes Damascenus. Utrecht, 1876 (in Dutch). Joseph Langen (Old-Catholic professor at Bonn): Johannes von Damaskus. Gotha, 1879. J. H. Lupton: St. John of Damascus. London, 1882. Cf. Du Pin, V. 103–106; Ceillier, XII., 67–99; Schroeckh, XX., 222–230; Neander, iii. passim; Felix Nève: Jean de D. et son influence en Orient sous les premiers khalifs, in "Revue Belge et etrangère," July and August, 1861.

I. Life. John of Damascus, Saint and Doctor of the Eastern Church, last of the Greek Fathers,875 was born in the city of Damascus in the fourth quarter of the seventh century.876  His common epithet of Chrysorrhoas (streaming with gold) was given to him because of his eloquence, but also probably in allusion to the river of that name, the Abana of Scripture, the Barada of the present day, which flows through his native city, and makes it a blooming garden in the desert. Our knowledge of his life is mainly derived from the semi-legendary account of John of Jerusalem, who used an earlier Arabic biography of unknown authorship and date.877

The facts seem to be these. He sprang from a distinguished Christian family with the Arabic name of Mansur (ransomed). His father, Sergius, was treasurer to the Saracenic caliph, Abdulmeled (685–705), an office frequently held by Christians under the caliphs. His education was derived from Cosmas, a learned Italian monk, whom Sergius had ransomed from slavery. He made rapid progress, and early gave promise of his brilliant career. On the death of his father he was taken by the caliph into his service and given an even higher office than his father had held.878  When the emperor Leo the Isaurian issued his first edict against images (726)879, he prepared a circular letter upon the subject which showed great controversial ability and at once raised him to the position of leader of the image worshippers. This letter and the two which followed made a profound impression. They are classical, and no one has put the case better.880  John was perfectly safe from the emperor’s rage, and could tranquilly learn that the letters everywhere stirred up the monks and the clergy to fanatical opposition to Leo’s decrees. Yet he may well have found his position at court uncomfortable, owing to the emperor’s feelings towards him and his attempts at punishment. However this may be, shortly after 730 John is found as a monk in the Convent of St. Sabas, near the shore of the Dead Sea, ten miles southeast from Jerusalem. A few years later he was ordained priest.881  His last days were spent in study and literary labor. In the closing decade of his life he is said to have made a journey through Palestine, Syria, and even as far as Constantinople, for the purpose of exciting opposition to the iconoclastic efforts of the Emperor Copronymus. He died at St. Sabas; the exact date is not known, probably 754.882  The Greek Church commemorates him upon Dec. 4th (or Nov. 29 in some Menologies); the Latin upon May 6.

Many legends are told of him. The most famous is that Leo the Isaurian, enraged at his opposition to the iconoclastic edicts, sent to the caliph a letter addressed to himself which purported to have come from John, and was written in imitation of his hand and style, in which the latter proposed to the emperor to capture Damascus—a feat easily accomplished., the writer said, because of the insufficient guard of the city. Moreover, in the business he could count upon his support. The letter was of course a forgery, but so clever that when the caliph showed John the letter he acknowledged the similarity of the writing, while he denied the authorship. But the caliph in punishment of his (supposed) treachery had his right hand cut off, and, as was the custom, hung up in a public place. In answer to John’s request it was, however, given to him in the evening, ostensibly for burial. He then put the hand to the stump of his arm, prostrated himself before an image of the Virgin Mary in his private chapel, and prayed the Virgin to cause the parts to adhere. He fell asleep: in a vision the Virgin told him that his prayer had been granted, and he awoke to find it true. Only a scar remained to tell the story of his mutilation. The miracle of course convinced the caliph of the innocence of his servant, and he would fain have retained him in office, but John requested his absolute dismission.883  This story was manifestly invented to make out that the great defender of image-worship deserved a martyr’s crown.884

Other legends which have more of a basis of fact relate to his residence in the convent of St. Sabas. Here, it is said., he was enthusiastically received, but no one would at first undertake the instruction of so famous a scholar. At length an old monk undertook it, and subjected him to the most humiliating tests and vexatious restrictions, which he bore in a very saintly way. Thus he sent him once to Damascus to sell a load of convent-made baskets at double their real value, in order that his pride might be broken by the jeers and the violence of the rabble. He was at first insulted; but at last a man who had been formerly his servant, bought out of compassion the baskets at the exorbitant price, and the saint returned victorious over vanity and pride. He was also put to the most menial services. And, what must have been equally trying, he was forbidden to write prose or poetry. But these trials ended on a hint from the Virgin Mary who appeared one night to the old monk and told him that John was destined to play a great part in the church. He was accordingly allowed to follow the bent of his genius and put his immense learning at the service of religion.

II. Writings. The order of his numerous writings885 is a mere matter of conjecture. It seems natural to begin with those which first brought their author into notice, and upon which his fame popularly rests. These were his three Orations,886 properly circular letters, upon image worship, universally considered as the ablest presentation of the subject from the side of the image-worshippers. The first887 appeared probably in 727, shortly after the Emperor Leo the Isaurian had issued his edict forbidding the worship of "images," by which term was meant not sculptures, but in the Greek Church pictures exclusively; the second888 after Leo’s edict of 730 ordering the destruction of the images; and the third889 at some later time.

In the first of these three letters John advanced these arguments: the Mosaic prohibitions of idolatry were directed against representations of God, not of men, and against the service of images, not their honor. Cherubim made by human hands were above the mercy-seat. Since the Incarnation it is allowable to represent God himself. The picture is to the ignorant what the book is to the learned. In the Old Testament there are signs to quicken the memory and promote devotion (the ark, the rod of Aaron, the brazen serpent). Why should the sufferings and miracles of Christ not be portrayed for the same purposes?  And if Christ and the Virgin have their images, why should not the saints have theirs?  Since the Old Testament Temple contained cherubim and other images, churches may be adorned with images of the saints. If one must not worship an image, then one must not worship Christ, for he is the image of the Father. If the shadows and handkerchiefs of apostles had healing properties, why can one not honor the representations of the saints?  It is true there is nothing about such worship in the Holy Scriptures, but Church ordinances depend for authority on tradition no less than on Scripture. The passages against images refer to idols. "The heathens dedicate their images to demons, whom they call gods; we dedicate ours to the incarnate God and his friends, through whom we exorcise demons."  He ends his letter with a number of patristic quotations of greater or less relevancy, to each of which he appends a comment. The second letter, which is substantially a repetition of the first, is characterized by, a violent attack upon the Emperor, because of his deposition and banishment of Germanus, the patriarch of Constantinople. It closes with the same patristic quotations, and a few new ones. The third letter is almost necessarily a repetition of the preceding, since it goes over the same ground. It likewise looks upon the iconoclasts as the servants of the devil. But it bears marks of more care in preparation, and its proofs are more systematically arranged and its quotations more numerous.890

For his writings in favor of images he was enthusiastically lauded by the second Nicene Council (787).891

But the fame of John of Damascus as one of the greatest theologians of history rests chiefly on his work entitled the Fount of Knowledge.892  It is made up of three separate and complete books, which yet were designed to go together and constitute in outline a cyclopaedia of Christian theology and of all other kinds of knowledge.893  It is dedicated to Cosmas, bishop of Maiuma, his foster-brother and fellow-student under the old monk. Its date is after 743, the year of Cosmas’s consecration. In it the author avows that he has introduced nothing which had not been previously said, and herein is its value: it epitomizes Greek theology.

The first part of the trilogy, "Heads of Philosophy,"894 commonly called, by the Latin title, Dialectica, is a series of short chapters upon the Categories of Aristotle and the Universals of Porphyry, applied to Christian doctrines. The Dialectica is found in two forms, one with sixty-eight, and the other with only fifteen chapters. The explanation is probably the well-known fact that the author carefully revised his works before his death.895  The longer form is therefore probably the later. Its principal value is the light it throws upon the Church terminology of the period, and its proof that Christians preceded the Arabs in their study of Aristotle, by one hundred years. The second part of the trilogy, the "Compendium of Heresies,"896 is a description of one hundred and three heresies, compiled mostly from Epiphanius, but with two sections, on the Mohammedans and Iconoclasts, which are probably original. A confession of faith closes the book. The third, the longest, and by far the most important member of the trilogy is "An accurate Summary of the Orthodox Faith."897  The authors drawn upon are almost exclusively Greek. Gregory Nazianzen is the chief source. This part was apparently divided by John into one hundred chapters, but when it reached Western Europe in the Latin translation of John Burgundio of Pisa, made by order of Pope Eugenius III. (1150),898 it was divided into four books to make it correspond in outward form to Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Accepting the division into four books, their contents may be thus stated: bk. I., Theology proper. In this he maintains the Greek Church doctrine of the single procession of the Holy Spirit. bk. II. Doctrines of Creation (severally of angels, demons, external nature, paradise, man and all his attributes and capacities); and of Providence, foreknowledge and predestination. In this part he shows his wide acquaintance with natural science. bk. III. Doctrine of the Incarnation. bk. IV. Miscellaneous subjects. Christ’s passion, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, session; the two-fold nature of Christ; faith; baptism; praying towards the East; the Eucharist; images; the Scriptures; Manichaeism; Judaism; virginity; circumcision; Antichrist; resurrection.

The entire work is a noteworthy application of Aristotelian categories to Christian theology. In regard to Christology he repudiates both Nestorianism and Monophysitism, and teaches that each nature in Christ possessed its peculiar attributes and was not mixed with the other. But the divine in Christ strongly predominated over the human. The Logos was bound to the flesh through the Spirit, which stands between the purely divine and the materiality of the flesh. The human nature of Jesus was incorporated in the one divine personality of the Logos (Enhypostasia). John recognizes only two sacraments, properly so called, i.e. mysteries instituted by Christ—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In the latter the elements are at the moment when the Holy Ghost is called upon, changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, but how is not known. He does not therefore teach transubstantiation exactly, yet his doctrine is very near to it. About the remaining five so-called sacraments he is either silent or vague. He holds to the perpetual virginity of Mary, the Mother of our Lord, and that her conception of Christ took place through the ear. He recognizes the Hebrew canon of twenty-two books, corresponding to the twenty-two Hebrew letters, or rather twenty-seven, since five of these letters have double forms. Of the Apocrypha he mentions only Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, and these as uncanonical. To the New Testament canon he adds the Apostolical Canons of Clement. The Sabbath was made for the fleshly Jews—Christians dedicate their whole time to God. The true Sabbath is the rest from sin. He extols virginity, for as high as angels are above men so high is virginity above marriage. Yet marriage is a good as preventive of unchastity and for the sake of propagation. At the end of the world comes Antichrist, who is a man in whom the devil lives. He persecutes the Church, kills Enoch and Elijah, who are supposed to appear again upon the earth, but is destroyed by Christ at his second coming.899  The resurrection body is like Christ’s, in that it is immutable, passionless, spiritual, not held in by material limitation, nor dependent upon food. Otherwise it is the same as the former. The fire of hell is not material, but in what it consists God alone knows.

His remaining works are minor theological treatises, including a brief catechism on the Holy Trinity; controversial writings against Mohammedanism (particularly interesting because of the nearness of their author to the beginnings of that religion), and against Jacobites, Manichaeans, Nestorians and Iconoclasts; homilies,900 among them an eulogy upon Chrysostom; a commentary on Paul’s Epistles, taken almost entirely from Chrysostom’s homilies; the sacred Parallels, Bible sentences with patristic illustrations on doctrinal and moral subjects, arranged in alphabetical order, for which a leading word in the sentence serves as guide. He also wrote a number of hymns which have been noticed in a previous section.901

Besides these there is a writing attributed to him, The Life of Barlaam and Joasaph902 the story of the conversion of the only son of an Indian King by a monk (Barlaam). It is a monastic romance of much interest and not a little beauty. It has been translated into many languages, frequently reprinted, and widely circulated.903  Whether John of Damascus wrote it is a question. Many things about it seem to demand an affirmative answer.904  His materials were very old, indeed pre-Christian, for the story is really a repetition of the Lalita Vistara, the legendary life of Buddha.905

Another writing of dubious authorship is the Panegyric on St. Barbara,906 a marvellous tale of a suffering saint. Competent judges assign it to him.907  These two are characteristic specimens of monastic legends in which so much pious superstition was handed down from generation to generation.

III. Position. John of Damascus considered either as a Christian office-holder under a Mohammedan Saracenic Caliph, as the great defender of image-worship, as a learned though credulous monk, or as a sweet and holy poet, is in every way an interesting and important character. But it is as the summarizer of the theology of the Greek fathers that he is most worthy of attentive study; for although he seldom ventures upon an original remark, he is no blind, servile copyist. His great work, the "Fount of Knowledge," was not only the summary of the theological discussions of the ancient Eastern Church, which was then and is to-day accepted as authoritative in that communion, but by means of the Latin translation a powerful stimulus to theological study in the West. Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and other schoolmen are greatly indebted to it. The epithets, "Father of Scholasticism" and "Lombard of the Greeks" have been given to its author. He was not a scholastic in the proper meaning of that term, but merely applied Aristotelian dialects to the treatment of traditional theology. Yet by so doing he became in truth the forerunner of scholasticism.

An important but incidental service rendered by this great Father was as conserver of Greek learning. "The numerous quotations, not only from Gregory Nazianzen, but from a multitude of Greek authors besides would provide a field of Hellenic literature sufficient for the wants of that generation. In having so provided it, and having thus become the initiator of a warlike but ill-taught race into the mysteries of an earlier civilization, Damascenus is entitled to the praise that the elder Lenormant awarded him of being in the front rank of the master spirits from whom the genius of the Arabs drew its inspiration."908

One other interesting fact deserves mention. It was to John of Damascus that the Old Catholics and Oriental and Anglo-Catholics turned for a definition of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father and Son which should afford a solid basis of union.909  "He restored unity to the Triad, by following the ancient theory of the Greek church, representing God the Father as the ajrchv, and in this view, the being of the Holy Spirit no less than the being of the Son as grounded in and derived from the Father. The Holy Spirit is from the Father, and the Spirit of the Father; not from the Son, but still the Spirit of the Son. He proceeds from the Father the one ajrchv of all being, and he is communicated through the Son; through the Son the whole creation shares in the Spirit’s work; by himself he creates, moulds, sanctifies all and binds all together."910

§ 145. Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.

I. Photius: Opera omnia, in Migne, "Patrol. Gr." Tom. CI.-CIV. (1860). Also Monumenta Graeca ad Photium ejusgue historiam pertinentia, ed. Hergenröther. Regensburg, 1869.

II. David Nicetas: Vita Ignatii, in Migne, CV., 488–573. The part which relates to Photius begins with col. 509; partly quoted in CI. iii. P. De H. E. (anonymous): Histoire de Photius. Paris, 1772. Jager: Histoire de Photius. Paris, 1845, 2d ed., 1854. L. Tosti: Storia dell’ origine dello scisma greco. Florence, 1856, 2 vols. A. Pichler: Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen Orient und Occident. Munich, 1864–65, 2 vols. J. Hergenröther: Photius, Patriarch von Constantinopel. Sein Leben, seine Schriften und das griechische Schisma. Regensburg, 1867–69, 3 vols. (The Monumenta mentioned above forms part of the third vol.)  Cf. Du Pin, VII., 105–110; Ceillier, XII., 719–734.

Photius was born in Constantinople in the first decade of the ninth century. He belonged to a rich and distinguished family. He had an insatiable thirst for learning, and included theology among his studies, but he was not originally a theologian. Rather he was a courtier and a diplomate. When Bardas chose him to succeed Ignatius as Patriarch of Constantinople he was captain of the Emperor’s body-guard. Gregory of Syracuse, a bitter enemy of Ignatius, in five days hurried him through the five orders of monk, lector, sub-deacon, deacon, and presbyter, and on the sixth consecrated him patriarch. He died an exile in an Armenian monastery, 891.

As the history of Photius after his elevation to the patriarchate has been already treated,911 this section will be confined to a brief recital of his services to literature, sacred and secular.912

The greatest of these was his so-called Library,913 which is a unique work, being nothing less than notices, critiques and extracts of two hundred and eighty works of the most diverse kinds, which he had read. Of the authors quoted about eighty are known to us only through this work. The Library was the response to the wish of his brother Tarasius, and was composed while Photius was a layman. The majority of the works mentioned are theological, the rest are grammatical, lexical, rhetorical, imaginative, historical, philosophical, scientific and medical. No poets are mentioned or quoted, except the authors of three or four metrical paraphrases of portions of Scripture. The works are all in Greek, either as originals or, as in the case of a few, in Greek translations. Gregory the Great and Cassian are the only Latin ecclesiastical writers with whom Photius betrays any intimate acquaintance. As far as profane literature is concerned, the Library makes the best exhibit in history, and the poorest in grammar. Romances are mentioned, also miscellanies. In the religious part of his work Chrysostom and Athanasius are most prominent. Of the now lost works mentioned by Photius the most important is by an anonymous Constantinopolitan author of the first half of the seventh century, who in fifteen books presented testimonies in favor of Christianity by different Greek, Persian, Thracian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Chaldean and Jewish scholars.

Unique and invaluable as the Library is, it has been criticized because more attention is given to some minor works than to other important ones; the criticisms are not always fair or worthy; the works spoken of are really few, while a much larger anthology might have been made; and again there is no order or method in the selection. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the object of the work was to mention only those books which had been read in the circle to which he and his brother belonged, during the absence of the latter; that it was hastily prepared, and was to have been followed by a second.914  Taking these facts into consideration there is nothing but praise to be given to the great scholar who in a wholly undesigned fashion has laid posterity under heavy obligation by jotting down his criticisms upon or making excerpts of the more important works which came under his observation during a comparatively short space of time.

Among the Greek fathers, he esteems most highly Athanasius, Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Ephraem, Cyril of Alexandria, the fictitious Dionysius the Areopagite, and Maximus; among the Latin fathers, Leo. I. and Gregory I. He recognizes also Ambrose, Augustin, and Jerome as fathers, but often disputes their views. Of the ante-Nicene writers he has a rather low opinion, because they did not come up to his standard of orthodoxy; he charges Origen with blasphemous errors, and Eusebius with Arianism.

One of the earlier works of Photius, perhaps his earliest, was his Greek Lexicon,915 which he began in his youth and completed before the Library, although he revised it from time to time. He made use of the glossaries and lexica of former workers, whose names he has preserved in his Library, and has been in turn used by later lexicographers, e.g. Suidas (ninth century). Photius designed to remove the difficulties in the reading of the earlier and classic Greek profane and sacred literature. To this end he paid particular attention to the explanation of the old Attic expressions and figures of speech.

The most important of the theological works of Photius is the Amphilochian Questions 916 — so called because these questions had been asked by his friend, Amphilochius, metropolitan of Lyzikus. The work consists of three hundred and twenty-four discussions, mostly in biblical exegesis, but also dogmatical, philosophical, mythological, grammatical, historical, medical, and scientific. Like the other works of Photius it displays rare learning and ability. It was composed during his first exile, and contains many complaints of lack of books and excerpts. It has no plan, is very disjointed, unequal, and evidently was written at different times. Many of the answers are taken literally from the works of others. The same question is sometimes repeatedly discussed in different ways.917

Although it is doubtful whether Photius composed a complete commentary on any book of the Old Testament, it is very likely that he wrote on the Gospels and on Romans, Corinthians and Hebrews, since in the printed and unprinted catenae upon these books there are found many citations of Photius.918  No such commentary as a unit, however, now exists.

Two canonical works are attributed to Photius, "A Collection of Canons" and "A Collection of Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws."919  To these some add a third. The second of these works, the Nomocanon, is authoritative on canonical law in the Greek Church.920  The word "Nomocanon" itself is the Greek name for a combination of ecclesiastical laws (kanovne") and secular, especially imperial, law (novmoi). Photius made such a collection in 883, on the basis of earlier collections. It contains (1) the canons of the seven universally accepted oecumenical councils (325–787), of the Trullan council of 692 (Quinisexta), the synods of 861 and 879; and (2) the laws of Justinian relative to the Greek Church. Photius was not only a collector of canonical laws, but also a legislator and commentator. The canons of the councils held by him in 861 and 879, and his canonical letters or decretals had a great and permanent influence upon Greek canonical law. The Nomocanon was enlarged and commented on by Balsamon in the twelfth century, and is usually published in connection with these commentaries. It is used in the orthodox church of Russia under the name Kormczia Kniga, i.e., "The Book for the Pilot."  As in his other works, he builded upon the foundations of his predecessors.

The historical and dogmatico-polemical writings of Photius may be divided into two classes, those against the Paulicians or Manichaeans, and those against the Roman Church. In the first class are four books which bear in the editions the general title "Against the new Manichaeans."921  The first is a history of the old and new Manichaeans, written during Photius’ first patriarchate, and apparently largely borrowed from a contemporary author; the remaining three are polemical treatises upon the new Manichaeans, in which biblical rather than philosophical arguments are relied upon, and mostly those which had already been used against the Manichaeans.

The works against the Latin Church embrace (1) The Mystagogia, or doctrine of the Holy Spirit; his most important writing against the Latins.922  It is a discussion of the procession alone, not of the personality and divinity, of the Holy Spirit, for upon these latter points there was no difference between the Latin and Greek Churches. It appears to be entirely original with Photius.923  It is characterized by acuteness and great dialectical skill. There exists an epitome of this book,924 but it is doubtful whether Photius himself made it. (2) A collection925 of ten questions and answers upon such matters as, "In what respects have the Romans acted unjustly?"  "How many and what true patriarchs are not recognized by the Romans, except compromisingly?"  "Which emperor contends for the peace of the Church?"  The collection has great historical interest, since it embraces materials which otherwise would be entirely lost. (3) Treatise against the Roman primacy. (4) Tractate against the Franks, from which there are extracts in the Kormczaia Kniga of the Oriental Slavs, which was extensively circulated in the thirteenth century, and enjoys among the Russians great authority as a book of canonical law. It has been attributed to Photius, but in its present shape is not his.926  (5) His famous Encyclical Letter to the Eastern Patriarchs, written in 867.927

The genuine works of Photius include besides those already mentioned three books of letters928 of different contents, private and public, written generally in verbose style; homilies,929 two printed entire and two in fragments and twenty unprinted; several poems930 and moral sentences, probably a compilation. Several other works attributed to Photius are only of doubtful genuineness.

§ 146. Simeon Metaphrastes.

I. Simeon Metaphrastes: Opera omnia, in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. cxiv.-cxvi.

II. Panegyric by Psellus, in Migne, CXIV. col. 200–208; Leo Allatius: De Symeonum scriptis, in Migne, CXIV. col. 19–148; and the Preface to Migne’s ed. Cf. Du Pin, VIII. 3; Ceillier, XII. 814–819.

This voluminous author probably lived in Constantinople during the reigns of Leo the Philosopher (886–911) and Constantine Porphyrogenitus (911–959).931  He was the Imperial Secretary, High Chancellor and Master of the Palace. When somewhat advanced in years he was sent by the Emperor Leo on a mission to the Cretan Arabs for the purpose, which was accomplished, of turning them from their proposed campaign against the Thessalonians. It was on this journey that he met on the island of Pharos, an anchorite, who suggested to him the writing of the lives of the saints and martyrs.

To this collection Simeon owes his fame.932  He apparently never carried out his original plan, which was to cover the year, for the genuine Lives of his now extant are nearly all of September (the first month of the Greek Church year), October, November and December. The remaining months have very few. But how many he wrote cannot be determined. Allatius credits him with only one hundred and twenty-two. MSS. attributed to him are found in the libraries of Munich, Venice, Florence, Madrid, Paris, London and elsewhere. The character of his work is sufficiently indicated by his epithet Simeon the Paraphraser, given to him because he turned "the ancient lives of the saints into another sort of a style than that wherein they were formerly written."933  He used old material in most cases, and sometimes he did no more than edit it, at other times he re-wrote it, with a view to make it more accurate or attractive. Some of the lives are, however, original compositions. His work is of very unequal value, and as his credulity led him to admit very doubtful matter, it must be used with caution. However, he deserves thanks for his diligence in rescuing from obscurity many now illustrious names.

Besides the Lives, nine Epistles, several sermons, orations, hymns, and a canonical epitome bear his name.934  The Simeonis Chronicon is probably the work of a Simeon of the twelfth century.

§ 147. Oecumenius.

I. Oecumenius: Opera omnia, in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. CXVIII., CXIX., col. 726, reprint of ed. of Hentenius. Paris, 1630–31, 2 vols. fol. Ceillier, XII. 913, 914.

Oecumenius was bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, toward the close of the 10th century, and wrote a commentary upon the Acts, the Epistles of Paul and the Catholic Epistles, which is only a catena, drawn from twenty-three Fathers and writers of the Greek Church,935 with an occasional original comment. The work displays taste and judgment.

§ 148. Theophylact.

I. Theophylact: Opera omnia, in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. CXXIII.-CXXVI., reprint of ed. Of de Rubeis. Venice, 1754–63, 4 vols. fol. Du Pin, IX. 108, 109; Neander, III. 584–586; Ceillier, XIII. 554–558.

Theophylact, the most learned exegete of the Greek Church in his day, was probably born at Euripus,936 on the Island of Euboea, in the Aegean Sea. Very little is known about him. He lived under the Greek Emperors Romanus IV. Diogenes (1067–1071), Michael VII. Ducas Parapinaces (1071–1078), Nicephorus III. Botoniates (1078–1081), Alexius I. Comnenus (1081–1118). The early part of his life he spent in Constantinople; and on account of his learning and virtues was chosen tutor to Prince Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the son of Michael Ducas. From 1078 until after 1107 he was archbishop of Achrida and metropolitan of Bulgaria. He ruled his diocese in an independent manner, but his letters show the difficulties he had to contend with. It is not known when he died.

His fame rests upon his commentary937 on the Gospels, Acts, Pauline, and Catholic Epistles; and on Hosea, Jonah, Nahum and Habakkuk, which has recently received the special commendation of such exegetes as De Wette and Meyer. It is drawn from the older writers, especially from Chrysostom, but Theophylact shows true exegetical insight, explaining the text clearly and making many original remarks of great value.

Besides his commentary, his works embrace orations on the Adoration of the Cross,938 the Presentation of the Virgin939 and on the Emperor Alexius Comnenus;940 a treatise on the Education Of Princes;941 a History of Fifteen Martyrdoms942 and an Address on the Errors of the Latin Church.943  Two of these call for further mention. The Education of Princes is addressed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It is in two books, of which the first is historical and discourses upon the parents of the prince, the second discusses his duties and trials. It was formerly a very popular work. It is instructive to compare it with the similar works by Paulinus, Alcuin, and Smaragdus.944  The Address is the most interesting work of Theophylact. It is written in a singularly conservative and moderate strain, although it discusses the two great matters in dispute between the Greek and Latin Churches,—the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the bread of the Eucharist. Of these matters Theophylact considered the first only important, and upon it took unhesitatingly the full Greek position of hostility to the Latins. Yet his fairness comes out in the remark that the error of the Latins may be due to the poverty of their language which compelled them to "employ the same term to denote the causality of the communication of the Holy Spirit and the causality of his being. The Latins, he observed, moreover, might retain the less accurate forms of expression in their homiletic discourses, if they only guarded against misconception, by carefully explaining their meaning. It was only in the confession of faith in the symbol, that perfect clearness was requisite."945  In regard to the bread of the Eucharist the Latins held that it should be unleavened, the Greeks that it should be leavened. Each church claimed to follow the usage of Christ. Theophylact admitted that Christ used unleavened bread, but maintained that His example in this respect is not binding, for if it were in this then it would be in everything connected with the Supper, and it would be necessary to use barley bread and the wine of Palestine, to recline at table and to hold the Supper in a ball or upper room. But there is such a thing as Christian liberty, and the kind of bread to be used is one of the things which this liberty allows. Upon both these points of fierce and long controversy he counseled continual remembrance of the common Christian faith and the common Christian fellowship.

§ 149. Michael Psellus.

I. Michael Psellus: Opera, in Migne, Patrol. Gr., Tom. CXXII., col. 477–1358. His Hist. Byzant. et alia opuscula, ed. by Constantin Sathas. Paris, 1874.

II. Leo Allatius: Diatriba de Psellis, in Migne, l.c., col. 477–536. Ceillier, XIII. 335–337.

Michael Psellus, the third of the five of that name mentioned by Allatius, was born of a consular and patrician family in Constantinople about 1020. He took naturally to study, and denied himself the amusements and recreations of youth in order that he might make all the more rapid progress. Having completed his studies at Athens, he returned to Constantinople, and was appointed chief professor of philosophy. Constantine Monomachus invited him to his court, and entrusted him with secular business. He then turned his attention from philosophy and rhetoric to theology, physics, medicine, mathematics, astronomy and military science. In short, he explored the entire domain of knowledge, and as his memory was tenacious, he was able to retain everything he studied. "It has been said that in him human nature yielded up its inmost powers in order that he might ward off the downfall of Greek learning."946  He was made the tutor of Michael Ducas, the future emperor, who when he came to the throne retained him in his councils. Psellus, of course, took the Greek position upon the Filioque question, and thwarted the movement of Peter, bishop of Anagni, to establish peace between the Greek and Latin churches. When Michael Ducas was deposed (1078), he was deprived of his professorship, and so he retired to a monastery, where he died. The last mention of him is made in 1105.

Psellus was a prolific author, but many of his writings are unprinted, and many are lost.947  Of the theological works which have been printed the most important are:

(1) Exposition of the Song of Songs,948 a paraphrase in verse with a commentary and excerpts from Gregory of Nyssa, Nilus, and Maximus.

(2) A Learned Miscellany,949 in 157 paragraphs, in which nearly everything is treated of, from the relations of the persons of the Trinity to the rise of the Nile and the changes of the weather. It is one of those prodigies of learning which really indicate the comparative ignorance of the past, and are now mere curiosities.

(3) The Operations of Demons,950 an attack, in the form of a dialogue, upon the Euchites, whom he charges with revolting and disgusting crimes, under the prompting of demons. But he passes on to discuss the subject more broadly and resting on the testimony of a certain monk who had actually seen demons he teaches their perpetual activity in human affairs; that they can propagate their species; and go anywhere at will under either a male or female form. From them come diseases and innumerable woes. The book is very curious, and has permanent value as a contribution to the demonology of the Middle Ages.

Twelve letters of Psellus have been printed.951  His panegyric upon Simeon Metaphrastes has already been mentioned.952  He wrote a criticism of the eloquence of Gregory the Theologian, Basil, and Chrysostom,953 and celebrated these Fathers also in verse.954

Besides certain legal and philosophical treatises he wrote a poem on Doctrine,955 and a metrical Synopsis of Law.956

§ 150. Euthymius Zigabenus.

I. Euthymius Zigabenus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Patrol. Gr., Tom, CXXVIII.-CXXXI.

II. See the Prolegomena in Migne. Ceillier, XIV. 150–155.

Euthymius Zigabenus (or Zigadenus) was a learned and able Greek monk of the order of St. Basil in the convent of the Virgin Mary near Constantinople, and enjoyed the marked favor of the emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118) and his wife Anna.957  Being requested by Alexius to refute the Bogomiles, who had become alarmingly numerous, he was led to prepare an extensive work upon heresy, entitled The Panoply.958  Among the heretics he included the Pantheists, Jews, the Pope and the Latins. His materials were the decisions of councils and the Greek Fathers and other writers, including some otherwise unknown.959  In this important work and in separate treatises960 he imparts much valuable historical information respecting the Bogomiles, Massalians, Armenians, Paulicians, and even about the Jews and Mohammedans, although it is evident that he was not well informed about the last, and was much prejudiced against them. Like other Greeks, he finds the latter heretical upon the procession of the Holy Spirit and upon the bread of the Eucharist. Besides the Panoply, Euthymius wrote commentaries upon the Psalms,961 much dependent upon Chrysostom, and on the Gospels,962 more independent and exhibiting exegetical tact which in the judgment of some puts him next to Theophylact.

§ 151. Eustathius of Thessalonica.

I. Eustathius: Opera omnia in Migne, Patrol. Gr. Tom. CXXXV. col. 517; CXXXVI. col. 764 (reprint of L. F. Tafel’s ed. of the Opuscula. Frankfort, 1832, and appendix to De Thessalonica. Berlin, 1839. Tafel published a translation of Eustathius’ ’ jEpivskeyi" bivou monacikou'. Betrachtungen über den Mönchstand. Berlin, 1847. The valuable De capta Thessalonica narratio was reprinted from Tafel in a vol. of the "Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae" (Bonn, 1842, pp. 365–512), accompanied with a Latin translation.

II. The funeral orations by Euthymius of Neopatria and Michael Choniates in Migne, Patrol. Gr. CXXXVI. col. 756–764, and CXL. col. 337–361. Fabricius: Bibliotheca Graeca, ed. Harless, XI. 282–84. Neander, IV. 530–533, and his essay, Characteristik des Bustathius von Thessalonich in seiner reformatorischen Richtung, 1841, reprinted in his "Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen," Berlin, 1851, pp. 6–21, trans. in Kitto’s "Journal of Sacred Literature," vol. IV., pp. 101 sqq.

Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica and metropolitan, the most learned man of his day, was born in Constantinople, and lived under the Greek emperors from John Comnenus to Isaac II. Angelus, i.e., between 1118 and 1195. His proper name is unknown, that of Eustathius having been assumed on taking monastic vows. His education was carried on in the convent of St. Euphemia, but he became a monk in the convent of St. Florus. He early distinguished himself for learning, piety and eloquence, and thus attracted the notice of the Emperor Manuel, who made him successively tutor to his son John, deacon of St. Sophia and master of petitions, a court position. In the last capacity he presented at least one petition to the Emperor, that from the Constantinopolitans during a severe drought.963

To this period of his life probably belong those famous commentaries upon the classic authors,964 by which alone he was known until Tafel published his theological and historical works. But Providence designed Eustathius to play a prominent part in practical affairs, and so the Emperor Manuel appointed him bishop of Myra,965 the capital of Lycia in Asia Minor, and ere he had entered on this office transferred him to the archbishopric of Thessalonica (1175). He was a model bishop, pious, faithful, unselfish, unsparing in rebuke and wise in counsel, "one of those pure characters so rarely met among the Greeks—a man who well knew the failings [superstition, mock-holiness and indecorous frivolity] of his nation and his times, which he was more exempt from than any of his contemporaries.966  His courage was conspicuous on several occasions. The Emperor Manuel in a Synod at Constantinople in 1180 attempted to have abrogated the formula of adjuration, "Anathema to Mohammed’s God, of whom he says that he neither begat nor was begotten," which all who came over from Mohammedanism to Christianity had to repeat. Manuel argued that this formula was both blasphemous and prejudicial to the spread of Christianity in Islam. But Eustathius dared to brave the emperor’s rage and deny the truth of this argument. The result was a modification of the formula.967  Although Manuel threatened to impeach Eustathius, he really did not withdraw his favor, and the archbishop was summoned to preach the sermon at the emperor’s funeral.968  When in 1185 Thessalonica was sacked by Count Alduin acting under William II. of Sicily, Eustathius remained in the city and by direct personal effort procured some alleviation of the people’s sufferings, and defended their worship against the fanatical Latins.969  Again, he interposed his influence to keep the Thessalonians from the rapacity of the imperial tax-gatherers. But notwithstanding his high character and unsparing exertions on behalf of Thessalonica there were enough persons there who were incensed against him by his plain speaking to effect his banishment. This probably happened during the reign of the infamous Andronicus (1180–1183), who was unfriendly to Eustathius. A brief experience of the result of his absence led to his recall, and he ended his days in increased esteem. It is strange indeed to find Eustathius and Calvin alike in their expulsion and recall to the city they had done so much to save.

His writings upon practical religious topics have great interest and value. Besides sermons upon Psalm xlviii.,970 on an auspicious year,971 four during Lent,972 in which he specially inveighs against the lax marital customs, and five on different martyrs,973 he wrote an enthusiastic treatise in praise of monasticism974 if properly used, while at the same time he faithfully rebuked the common faults of the monks, their sloth, their hypocrisy and their ignorance, which had made the very name of monk a reproach. To the Stylites,975 he was particularly plain in setting forth their duty. By reason of their supposed sanctity they were sought by all classes as oracles. He seeks therefore to impress them with their responsibility, and tells them always to speak fearlessly, irrespective of person; not flattering the strong nor domineering the weak. He addressed also the laity, not only in the sermons already mentioned, but in separate treatises,976 and with great earnestness and tenderness exhorted them to obedience to their lawful rulers, and rebuked them for their hypocrisy, which was the crying sin of the day, and for their vindictiveness. He laid down the true gospel principle: love is the central point of the Christian life. His letters977 of which 75 have been published, give us a vivid picture of the time, and bear unconscious testimony to his virtue. To his Interpretation of the Pentecostal hymn of John of Damascus Cardinal Mai accords the highest praise.978

§ 152. Nicetas Acominatos.

I. Nicetas Choniates: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXXXIX., col. 287—CXL., col. 292. His History was edited by Immanuel Bekker in Scriptores Byzantinae. Bonn, 1835.

II. See Allatius in Migne, CXXXIX., col. 287–302. Ceillier, XIV. 1176, 1177. Karl Ullmann: Die Dogmatik der griechischen Kirche im 12. Jahrhundert, reprinted from the "Studien und Kritiken," 1833.

Nicetas Acominatos, also called Choniates, to denote his birth at Chonae the old Colossae in Phrygia, was one of the great scholars and authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He was educated at Constantinople, studied law and early rose to prominence at the imperial court. He married a descendant of Belisarius; and at the time when Constantinople was taken by the crusaders (1204) he was governor of Philippopolis. He fled to Nicaea, and there died about 1216. It was during this last period of his life that he composed his Treasury of Orthodoxy,979 for the consolation and instruction of his suffering fellow-religionists. This work was in twenty-seven books, but only five have been published complete, and that only in the Latin translation of Peter Morel, made from the original MS. brought to Paris from Mt. Athos.980  Cardinal Mai has, however, given fragments of Books vi. viii. ix. x. xii. xv. xvii. xx. xxiii. xxiv. xxv., and these Migne has reprinted with a Latin translation. The work is, like the Panoply of Euthymius, a learned text-book of theology and a refutation of heresy, but it has more original matter in it, and being written by a layman and a statesman is more popular.

Book 1st is a statement of Gentile philosophy and of the errors of the Jews. Book 2d treats of the Holy Trinity, and of angels and men. Book 3d of the Incarnate Word. From Book 4th to the end the several heresies are described and combated. Nicetas begins with Simon Magus and goes down to his own day.

But his fame really rests upon his History,981 which tells the story of Byzantine affairs from 1117 to 1205; and is an able and reliable book. The closing portions interestingly describe the destruction or mutilation of the monuments in Constantinople by the Latins.

§ 153. Cassiodorus.

I. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator: Opera omnia, in Migne, "Patrol. Lat." Tom. LXIX. col. 421-LXX. Reprint of ed. of the Benedictine Jean Garet, Rouen, 1679, 2 vols. 2d ed., Venice, 1729. The Chronicon was edited from MSS. by Theodor Mommsen, Leipzig, 1861, separately published from Abhandlungen der königlichsächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Historische Klasse. Bd. III. The Liber de rhetorica, a part of his Institutiones, was edited by C. Halm, Leipzig, 1863.

II. Vita, by Jean Garet, in Migne, LXIX., col. 437–484, and De vita monastica dissertatio by the same, col. 483–498. Denis de Sainte-Marthe: Vie de Cassiodore. Paris, 1694. Olleris: Cassiodore conservateur des livres de l’antiquité latine. Paris, 1841. A. Thorbecke: Cassiodorus Senator. Heidelberg, 1867. A. Franz: Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorius Senator. Breslau, 1872. Ignazio Ciampi: I. Cassiodori nel V. e nel VI. secolo. Imola, 1876. Cf. Du Pin, V. 43–44. Ceillier, XI. 207–254. Teuffel, 1098–1104. A. Ebert, I. 473–490.

Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator982, whose services to classical literature can not be over-estimated, was descended from an old Roman family, famous for its efficiency in state affairs. He was born about 477, at Scyllacium in Bruttium, the present Squillace in Calabria, the extreme southwest division of Italy. His father, whose name was Cassiodorus also, was pretorian prefect to Theodoric, and senator. The son, in recognition of his extraordinary abilities, was made quaestor when about twenty years of age, and continued in the service of Theodoric, as private secretary and indeed prime minister, being also with him on terms of friendship, until the latter’s death, Aug. 30, 526. He directed the administration of Amalasontha, the daughter of Theodoric, during the minority of her son Athalaric, and witnessed her downfall (535), but retained his position near the throne under Theodatus and Vitiges. He was also consul and three times pretorian prefect. He labored earnestly to reconcile the Romans to their conquerors.

But about 540 he withdrew from the cares and dangers of office, and found in the seclusion of his charming paternal domains in Bruttium abundant scope for his activities in the pursuit of knowledge and the preservation of learning. He voluntarily closed one chapter of his life, one, too, full of honor and fame, and opened another which, little as he expected it, was destined to be of world-wide importance. Cassiodorus the statesman became Cassiodorus the monk, and unwittingly exchanged the service of the Goths for the service of humanity. The place of his retirement was the monastery of Viviers (Monasterium Vivariense), at the foot of Mt. Moseius,983 in southwestern Italy, which he had himself founded and richly endowed. Upon the mountain he built another monastery (Castellense) in which the less accomplished monks seem to have lived, while the society of Viviers was highly cultivated and devoted to literature. Those monks who could do it were employed in copying and correcting classical and Christian MSS., while the others bound books, prepared medicine and cultivated the garden.984  He moved his own large library to the monastery and increased it at great expense. Thus Viviers in that sadly confused and degenerate time became an asylum of culture and a fountain of learning. The example he set was happily followed by other monasteries, particularly by the Benedictine, and copying of MSS. was added to the list of monastic duties. By this means the literature of the old classical world has come down to us. And since the initiation of the movement was given by Cassiodorus he deserves to be honored as the link between the old thought and the new. His life thus usefully spent was unusually prolonged. The year of his death is uncertain, but it was between 570 and 580.

The Works of Cassiodorus are quite numerous. They are characterized by great erudition, ingenuity and labor, but disfigured by an incorrect and artificial style. Some were written while a statesman, more while a monk.985

1. The most important is the Miscellany,986 in twelve books, a collection of about four hundred rescripts and edicts issued by Cassiodorus in the King’s name while Quaestor and Magister officiorum, and in his own name while Pretorian prefect. He gives also in the sixth and seventh books a collection of formulas for the different offices, an idea which found imitation in the Middle Age. From the Miscellany a true insight into the state of Italy in the period can be obtained. One noticeable feature of these rescripts is the amount of animation and variety which Cassiodorus manages to give their naturally stiff and formal contents. This he does by ingeniously changing the style to suit the occasion and often by interweaving a disquisition upon some relevant theme. The work was prepared at the request of friends and as a guide to his successors, and published between 534 and 538.

2. His Ecclesiastical History, called Tripartita,987 is a compilation. His own part in it is confined to a revision of the Latin condensation of Sozomen, Socrates and Theodoret, made by Epiphanius Scholasticus. It was designed by Cassiodorus to supply the omissions of Rufinus’ translation of Eusebius, and was indeed with Rufinus the monastic text-book on church history in the Middle Age. But it is by no means a model work, being obscure, inaccurate and confused.

3. The Chronicle,988 the earliest of his productions, dating from 519, is a consular list drawn from different sources, with occasional notes of historical events. Prefaced to the list proper, which goes from Junius Brutus to Theodoric, is a very defective list of Assyrian (!), Latin and Roman Kings.

4. The Computation of Easter, written in 562.989

5. Origin and History of the Goths, originally in twelve books, but now extant only in the excerpt of Jordanis.990  In it Cassiodorus reveals his great desire to cultivate friendship between the Goths and the Romans. It dates from about 534.

6. Exposition of the Psalter.991  This is by far the longest, as it was in the Middle Age the most influential, of his works. It was prepared in Viviers, and was begun before but finished after the Institutes992 (see below). Its chief source is Augustin. The exposition is thorough in its way. Its peculiarities are in its mystic use of numbers, and its drafts upon profane science, particularly rhetoric.993

7. Institutions of Sacred and Secular Letters,994 from 644, in two books,995 which are commonly regarded as independent works. The first book is a sort of theological encyclopaedia, intended by Cassiodorus primarily for his own monks. It therefore refers to different authors which were to be found in their library. It is in thirty-three chapters—a division pointing to the thirty-three years of our Lord’s life—which treat successively of the books of the Bible, what authors to read upon them, the arrangement of the books, church history and its chief writers, and the scheme he had devised for usefully employing the monks in copying MSS., or, if not sufficiently educated, in manual labor of various kinds. In the second book he treats in an elementary way of the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy).

8. On Orthography,996 a work of his ninety-third year,997 and a mere collection of extracts from the pertinent literature in his library.

9. The Soul,998 written at the request of friends shortly after the publication of his Miscellany. It is rather the product of learning than of thought. It treats of the soul, its nature, capacities and final destiny.

10. Notes upon some verses in the Epistles, Acts of the Apostles, and Apocalypse999 This was a product of his monastic period, strangely forgotten in the Middle Age. It was unknown to Garet, but found at Verona and published by Maffei in 1702. Besides these a Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus orationis is attributed to him and so published.1000  But its authorship is doubtful.

§ 154. St. Gregory of Tours.

I. St. Georgius Florentius Gregorius: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. LXXI. (reprint of Ruinart’s ed. Paris, 1699). The best critical edition of Gregory’s great work, Historiae Francorum libri decem, is by W. Arndt and Br. Krusch. Hannover, 1884 (Gregorii Turonensis opera pars I. in "Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum," T. I., pars I. in the great "Monumenta Germaniae historica" series), and of his other works that by H. L. Bordier, Libri miraculorum aliaque opera minora, or with the French title, Les livres des miracles et autres opuscules de Georges Florent Grégoire, evêque de Tours. Paris, 1857- 64, 4 vols., of which the first three have the Latin text and a French translation on opposite pages, and the last, containing the De cursu stellarum and the doubtful works, the Latin only. There are several translations of the Historia Francorum into French (e.g., by Guizot. Paris, 1823, new ed. 1861, 2 vols.; by H. L. Bordier, 1859–61, 2 vols. ), and into German (e.g., by Giesebrecht, Berlin, 1851, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1878, as part of Pertz, "Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit"). The De cursu stellarum was discovered and first edited by F. Hasse, Breslau, 1853.

II. The Lives of Gregory, by Odo of Cluny (d. 943, valuable, ) Migne, l.c., and by Joannes Egidius (Jean Gilles of Tours, 16th cent., of small account) are given by Bordier, l.c. IV. 212–237. Modern biographies and sketches of Gregory are: C. J. Kries: De Gregorii Turonensis Episcopi vita et scriptis. Breslau, 1839. J. W. Löbell: Gregor von Tours. Leipzig, 1839, 2d ed. 1869. Gabriel Monod: Grégorie de Tours, in Tome III."  Bibliothèque de l’École des hautes études."  Paris, 1872 (pp. 21–146). Cf. Du Pin, V. 63. Ceillier, XI, 365–399. Hist. Lit. de la France, III. 372–397. Teuffel, pp. 1109–10. Wattenbach, I. 70 sqq. Ebert, I. 539–51. L. von Ranke: Weltgeschichte, 4ter Theil, 2te Abtheilung (Leipzig, 1883), pp. 328–368, mainly a discussion of the relation of Gregory’s Historia to Fredegar’s Historia Epitomata and to the Gesta regum Francorum. He maintains that they are independent. Cf. W. Arndt’s preface (30pp.) to edition mentioned above.

Georgius Florentius, or as he called himself on his consecration Gregorius, after his mother’s grand-father, the sainted bishop of Langres, was born in Arverna (now Clermont),1001 the principal city of Auvergne, Nov. 30., 538. His family was of senatorial rank on both sides, and its position and influence are attested by the number of bishops that belonged to it. His father (Florentius) apparently died early, and his mother (Armentaria) removed to Burgundy, her native country, but his uncle Gallus, bishop of Auvergne, who died in 554, and Avitus the successor of Gallus, cared for his education. He entered the church in discharge of a vow made at the shrine of St. Illidius, the patron saint of Arverna, during a severe and supposed fatal illness. In 563 he was ordained deacon by Avitus, and served in some ecclesiastical capacity at the court of Sigebert king of Austrasia, until in 573, at the unanimous request of the clergy and people of that city, the king appointed him bishop of Tours. Although loath to take so prominent and responsible a position, he at last consented, was consecrated by Egidius, archbishop of Rheims, and welcomed by Fortunatus in an official, which yet had more real feeling in it than such productions usually have, and was a true prophecy of Gregory’s career.

Tours was the religious centre of Gaul. The shrine of St. Martin was the most famous in the land and so frequented by pilgrims that it was the source of an immense revenue. In Alcuin’s day (eighth century) the monastery of Tours owned 20,000 serfs, and was the richest in the kingdom. Tours was also important as the frontier city of Austrasia, particularly liable to attack. The influences which secured the position to Gregory were probably personal. Several facts operated to bring it about. First, that all but five of the bishops of Tours had been members of his family (Euphronius whom he succeeded was his mother’s cousin), and further, that he was in Tours on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Martin to recover his health about the time of Euphronius’ death, and by his life there secured the love of the people. Add to this his travels, his austerities, his predominant love for religion, and his election is explained.1002  Gregory found the position no sinecure. War broke out between Sigebert and the savage Chilperic, and Tours was taken by the latter in 575. Confusion and anarchy prevailed. Churches were destroyed, ecclesiastics killed. Might made right, and the weak went to the wall. But in that dark and tempestuous time Gregory of Tours shines like a beacon light. The persecuted found in him a refuge; the perplexed a guide; the wicked king a determined opponent. Vigilant, sleepless, untiring in his care for Tours he averted an attempt to tax it unjustly; he maintained the sanctuary rights of St. Martin against all avengers; and he put an end to partisan strifes. His influence was exerted in the neighboring country. Such was his well earned repute for holiness founded upon innumerable services that the lying accusation of Leudastes at the council of Braine (580) excited popular indignation and was refuted by his solemn declaration of innocence.1003

In 584 Chilperic died. Tours then fell to Guntram, king of Orleans, until in 587 it was restored to Childebert, the son of Sigebert. The last nine years of Gregory’s life were comparatively quiet. He enjoyed the favor of Guntram and Childebert, did much to beautify the city of Tours, built many churches, and particularly the church of St. Martin (590). But at length the time of his release came, and on Nov. 17, 594, he went to his reward. His saintship was immediately recognized by the people he had served, and the Latin Church formally beatified and canonized him. His day in the calendar is November l7.

The Works of Gregory were all produced while bishop. Their number attests his diligence, but their style proves the correctness of his own judgment that he was not able to write good Latin. Only one is of real importance, but that is simply inestimable, as it is the only abundant source for French history of the fifth and sixth centuries. It is the Ecclesiastical History of the Franks, in ten books,1004 begun in 576, and not finished until 592. By reason of it Gregory has been styled the Herodotus of France. It was his object to tell the history of his own times for the benefit of posterity, although he was aware of his own unfitness for the task. But like the chroniclers of the period he must needs begin with Adam, and it is not till the close of the first book that the history of Gaul properly begins. The last five books tell the story of the events in Gregory’s own life-time, and have therefore most value. Gregory is not a model historian, but when speaking of facts within his experience he is reliable in his statements, and impartial in his narrative, although partial in his judgments.

Gregory gives at the close of his Ecclesiastical History a catalogue of his writings, all of which have been preserved, with the exception of the commentary on the Psalms, of which only the preface and the titles of the chapters are now extant.1005  The complete list is as follows:1006 The Miracles of St. Martin, in four books, begun in 574, finished 594; the miracles were recorded by direction of Gregory’s mother, who appeared to him in a vision; The Passion of St. Julian the Martyr, written between 582 and 586; The Martyr’s Glory, written about 586; The Confessor’s Glory, about 588; The Lives of the Fathers, written at different times and finished in 594. The last is the most interesting and important of these hagiographical works, which do not call for further mention.1007  The Course of the Stars, or as Gregory calls it, The Ecclsiastical Circuit, is a liturgical work, giving the proper offices at the appearance of the most important stars.

§ 155. St. Isidore of Seville.

I. St. Isidorus Hispalensis Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. LXXXI.-LXXXIV. (reprint of F. Arevalo’s ed. Rome, 1797–1803, 7 vols., with the addition of the Collectio canonum ascribed to Isidore). Migne’s Tom. LXXXV. and LXXXVI. contain the Liturgia Mozarabica secundum regulam beati Isidori. Editions of separate works: De libris iii. sententiarum. Königsburg, 1826, 1827, 2 parts. De nativitate Domini, passione et resurrectione, regno atque judicio, ed. A. Holtzmann, Carlsruhe, 1836. De natura rerum liber, ed. G. Becker, Berlin, 1857.

II. Besides the Prolegomena of Arevalo, which fill all Tom. LXXXI., see Vita S. Isidori, LXXXII., col. 19–56. P. B. Gams: Kirchengeschichte von spanien. Regensburg, 1862–1879, 5 parts. (II. 2, 102 sqq). J.C.E. Bourret: L’école chrétienne de Seville sous la monarchie des Visigoths. Paris, 1855. C. F. Montalembert: Les moines d’ occident. Paris, 1860–67, 5 vols. (II. 200–218), Eng. trans. Monks of the West. Boston, 1872, 2 vols. (I. 421–424). Hugo Hertzberg: Die Historien und die Chroniken des Isidorus von Sevilla, 1ste, Th. Die Historien. Göttingen, 1874. "Die Chroniken" appeared in Forschungen zur deutchen Geschichte, 1875, XIV. 289–362. Chevalier: Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen âge. Paris, 1877, sqq. II. 112, sqq. Du Pin, VI. 1–5; Ceillier, XI. 710–728; CLARKE, II. 364–372; Bähr, IV. I. pp. 270–286; Teuffel, pp. 1131–1134; Ebert, I. 555–568.

Isidore of Seville, saint and doctor of the Latin Church, was born about 560 either at Carthagena or Seville. He was the youngest child of an honored Roman family of the orthodox Christian faith. His father’s name was Severianus. His eldest brother, Leander, the well-known friend of Gregory the Great, and the successful upholder of the Catholic faith against Arianism, was archbishop of Seville, the most prominent see in Spain, from about 579 to 600; another brother, Fulgentius, was bishop of Astigi (Ecija) in that diocese, where his sister, Florentina, was a nun.1008  Isidore is called Senior to distinguish him from Isidore of Pax Julia, now Beja (Isidorus Pacensis), and Junior to distinguish him from Isidore of Cordova. His parents died apparently while he was quite young. At all events he was educated by his brother Leander. In the year 600 he succeeded his brother in the archiepiscopate of Seville. In this position he became the great leader of the Spanish Church, and is known to have presided at two, councils, the second council of Seville, opened November 13, 619, and the fourth council of Toledo, opened December 5, 633.1009  The first of these was of local interest, but the other was much more important. It was the largest ever held in Spain, being attended by all the six metropolitans, fifty-six bishops and seven bishops’ deputies. It has political significance because it was called by King Sisenand, who had just deposed Suintila, the former king. Sisenand was received by the council with great respect. He threw himself before the bishops and with tears asked their prayers. He then exhorted them to do their duty in correcting abuses. Of the seventy-five canons passed by the council several are of curious interest. Thus it was forbidden to plunge the recipient of baptism more than once under the water, because the Arians did it three times to indicate that the Trinity was divided (c. 6). It was not right to reject all the hymns written by Hilary and Ambrose and employ only Scriptural language in public worship (c. 13). If a clergyman is ever made a judge by the king he must exact an oath from the king that no blood is to be shed in his court (c. 31). By order of King Sisenand the clergy were freed from all state taxes and services (c. 47). Once a monk always a monk, although one was made so by his parents (c. 49) 1010  While compulsory conversion of the Jews was forbidden, yet no Jew converted by force was allowed to return to Judaism (c. 57). Very strenuous laws were passed relative to both the baptized and the unbaptized Jews (c. 58–66). The king was upheld in his government and the deposed king and his family perpetually excluded from power. When Isidore’s position is considered it is a probable conjecture that these canons express his opinions and convictions upon the different matters.

Warned by disease of death’s approach, Isidore began the distribution of his property. For the last six months of his life he dispensed alms from morn till night. His end was highly edifying. Accompanied by his assembled bishops he had himself carried to the church of St. Vincent the Martyr, and there, having publicly confessed his sins, prayed God for forgiveness. He then asked the pardon and prayers of those present, gave away the last thing he owned, received the Holy Communion, and was carried to his cell, in which he died four days later, Thursday, April 4, 636.1011  He was immediately enrolled among the popular saints and in the 15th council of Toledo (688) is styled "excellent doctor," and by Benedict XIV. (April 25, 1722) made a Doctor of the Church.

Isidore of Seville was the greatest scholar of his day. He was well read in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, in profane as well as in sacred and patristic literature. He was also a vigorous and dignified prelate, admired for his wondrous eloquence and beloved for his private virtues. He did much for education, especially of the clergy, and established at Seville a highly successful school, in which he himself taught. But his universal fame rests upon his literary works, which embrace every branch of knowledge then cultivated, and which though almost entirely compilations can not be too highly praised for their ability and usefulness. He performed the inestimable service of perpetuating learning, both sacred and secular. It is a striking testimony to his greatness that works have been attributed to him with which he had nothing to do, as the revision of the Mozarabic Liturgy and of Spanish ecclesiastical, and secular laws, and especially the famous Pseudo-Isidorian decretals.

His Works may be divided loosely into six classes. We have two lists of them, one by his friend and colleague Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, and the other by his pupil, Ildefonsus of Toledo. No strict division of these works is possible, because as will be seen several of them belong in parts to different classes.

I. Biblical. This class embraces, 1. Scripture Allegorics,1012 allegorical explanations, each in a single sentence, of 129 names and passages in the Old Testament, and of 211 in the New Testament; a curious and, in its way, valuable treatise, compiled from the older commentaries. 2. Lives and Deaths of Biblical Saints.1013  Very brief biographies of sixty-four Old Testament and twenty-one New Testament worthies. 3. Introductions in the Old and New Testaments,1014 a very general introduction to the entire Bible, followed by brief accounts of the several books, including Esdras and Maccabees. The four Gospels, the epistles, of Paul, Peter and John are treated together in respective sections. Acts comes between Jude and Revelation. It was compiled from different authors. 4. Scripture Numbers1015 (1–16, 18–20, 24, 30, 40, 46, 50, 60), mystically interpreted. Thus under one, the church is one, the Mediator is one. Under two, there are two Testaments, two Seraphim, two Cherubim. 5. Questions on the Old and New Testaments,1016 a Biblical catechism of forty-one questions and answers. Some are very trivial. 6. Expositions of Holy Mysteries, or Questions on the Old Testament,1017 a paraphrase of Genesis, and notes upon Joshua, Judges, the four books of Kings, Ezra and Maccabees. The work is compiled from Origen, Victorinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, Fulgentius, Cassianus and Gregory the Great. A summary of each chapter of the books mentioned is given. The exposition is allegorical.

II. Dogmatic. 1. The Catholic Faith defended against the Jews.1018  A treatise in two books, dedicated to his sister Florentina, the nun. In the first book he marshals the Scripture prophecies and statements relative to Christ, and shows how they have been verified. In the second book in like manner he treats of the call of the Gentiles, the unbelief of the Jews and their consequent rejection, the destruction of Jerusalem, the abolition of the ceremonial law, and closes with a brief statement of Christian doctrine. The work was doubtless an honest attempt to win the Jews over to Christianity, and Spain in the 7th century was full of Jews. Whatever may have been its success as an apology, it was very popular in the Middle Age among Christians, and was translated into several languages.1019  2. Three books of Sentences,1020 compiled from Augustin and Gregory the Great’s Moralia. This work is a compend of theology, and is Isidore’s most important production in this class. Its influence has been incalculable. Innumerable copies were made of it during the Middle Age, and it led to the preparation of similar works, e.g., Peter Lombard’s Sentences.1021  3. Synonyms, in two books;1022 the first is a dialogue between sinful and despairing Man and Reason (or the Logos), who consoles him, rescues him from despair, shows him that sin is the cause of his misery, and sets him on the heavenly way. The second is a discourse by Reason upon vices and their opposite virtues.1023

4. The Order of Creation.1024  It treats of the Trinity, the creation, the devil and demons, paradise, fallen man, purgatory, and the future life.

III. Ecclesiastic and monastic. 1. The Ecclesiastical Offices, i.e., the old Spanish liturgy.1025  It is dedicated to his brother Fulgentius, and is in two books, for the most part original. The first is called "the origin of the offices," and treats of choirs, psalms, hymns and other topics in ecclesiastical archaeology. Under the head "sacrifice"1026 Isidore expresses his view of the Lord’s Supper, which is substantially that "Body and Blood" denote the consecrated elements, but not that these are identical with the Body and Blood of our Lord. The second book, "the origin of the ministry," treats of the different clerical grades; also of monks, penitents, virgins, widows, the married, catechumens, the rule of faith, baptism, chrism, laying on of hands and confirmation. 2. A Monastic Rule.1027  It was designed for Spanish monasteries, drawn from old sources, and resembles the Benedictine, with which, however, it is not identical. It throws much light upon the contemporary Spanish monasticism, as it discusses the situation of the monastery, the choice of the abbot, the monks, their duties, meals, festivals, fasts, dress, punishment, sickness and death. It recalls the somewhat similar Institutes of Cassiodorus already mentioned.1028

IV. Educational and philosophical. 1. Twenty books of Etymologies.1029  This is his greatest work, and considering its date truly an astonishing work. Caspar Barth’s list of the one hundred and fifty-four authors quoted in it shows Isidore’s wide reading. Along with many Christian writers are the following classic authors: Aesop, Anacreon, Apuleius, Aristotle, Boëthius, Caesar, Cato, Catullus, Celsus, Cicero, Demosthenes, Ennius, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Lucan, Lucretius, Martial, Ovid, Persius, Pindar, Plato, Plautus, Pliny, Quintilian, Sallust, Suetonius, Terence, Varro, Virgil.1030  It is a concise encyclopedia of universal learning, embracing the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), and medicine, law, chronology, angelology, mineralogy, architecture, agriculture and many other topics. Although much of his information is erroneous, and the tenth book, that of Etymology proper, is full of absurdities, the work as a whole is worthy of high praise. It was authoritative throughout Europe for centuries and repeatedly copied and printed. Rabanus Maurus drew largely upon it for his De Universo. 2. The Differences, or the proper signification of terms,1031 in two books. The first treats of the differences of words. It is a dictionary of synonyms and of words which sound somewhat alike, arranged alphabetically. The second book treats of the differences of things, and is a dictionary of theology, brief yet comprehensive. 3. On the Nature of Things,1032 in forty-eight chapters, dedicated to King Sisebut (612–620), who had given him the subject. It is a sort of natural philosophy, treating of the divisions of time, the heavens and the earth and the waters under the earth. It also has illustrative diagrams. Like Isidore’s other works it is a skilful compilation from patristic and profane authors,1033 and was extremely popular in the Middle Age.

V. Historical. 1. A Chronicle,1034 containing the principal events in the world from the creation to 616. It is divided into six periods or ages, corresponding to the six days of creation, a division plainly borrowed from Augustin.1035  Its sources are Julius Africanus, Eusebius, Jerome, and Victor of Tunnena.1036  2. History of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi,1037 brought down to 61. A work which, like Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks, is the only source for certain periods. It has been remarked1038 that Isidore, like Cassiodorus, in spite of his Roman origin, had a high regard for the Goths. 3. Famous Men1039 a continuation of Gennadius’ appendix to Jerome’s work with the same title. It sketches forty-six authors, beginning with Bishop Hosius of Cordova, and extending to the beginning of the seventh century.

VI. Miscellaneous. Under this head come thirteen brief Letters1040 and minor works of doubtful genuineness. There are also numerous spurious works which bear his name, among which are hymns.

§ 156. The Venerable Bede (Baeda).

I. Venerabilis Baeda: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. XC.-XCV., substantially a reprint of Dr. J. A. Giles’ edition. London, 1843–1844, 12 vols. His Ecclesiastical History (Historica ecclesiastica) has been often edited, e.g. by John Smith, Cambridge, 1722; Joseph Stevenson, London, 1838, and in the Monumenta historica Britannica I. 1848; George H. Moberley, Oxford, 1869; Alfred Holder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882. Books III.-V. 24 were separately ed. by John E. B. Mayor and John R. Lumby, Cambridge, 1878. The best known English translation of the History is Dr. Giles’ in his edition, and since 1844 in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library. His scientific writings are contained in Thomas Wright: Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages. London, 1841. Marshall translated his Explanation of the Apocalypse, London, 1878. For further bibliographical information regarding the editions of Bede’s History, see Giles’ ed. ii. 5–8.

II. Biographies are contained in the above-mentioned editions. Hist. V. 24, and the letter on his death by Cuthbert (Giles’ trans. in Bohn, pp. xviii.-xxi.) are the best original sources. The old Vitae given in the complete editions are almost worthless. Modern works are Henrik Gehle: Disputatio historico-theologica de Bedae venerabilis presbyteri Anglo-Saxonis vita et scriptis. Leyden, 1838. Carl Schoell: De ecclesiasticae Britonum Scotorumque historiae fontibus. Berlin, 1851. Karl Werner: Beda der Ehrwürdige und seine Zeit. Wien, 1875. 2d ed. (unchanged), 1881. Geo.  F. Browne: The Venerable Bede. London, 1879. Cf. Du Pin, VI. 89–91. Cave, II. 241–245. Ceillier, XII. 1–19. Clarke, II. 426–429. Bähr, IV. 175–178, 292–298. Ebert, I. 595–611.

The Venerable Bede (properly Baeda) is never spoken of without affectionate interest, and yet so uneventful was his useful life that very little can be said about him personally. He was born in 673, probably in the village of Jarrow, on the south bank of the Tyne, Northumbria, near the Scottish border. At the age of seven, being probably an orphan, he was placed in the monastery of St. Peter, at Wearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, which had been founded by Benedict Biscop in 674. In 682 he was transferred to the newly-founded sister monastery of St. Paul, five miles off, at Jarrow.1041  He is not known ever to have gone away from it farther than to the sister monastery and to visit friends in contiguous places, such as York. The stories of his visit to Rome and professorship at Cambridge scarcely deserve mention. His first teacher was Benedict Biscop, a nobleman who at twenty-five became a monk and freely put his property and his learning at the public service. Biscop traveled five times to Rome and each time returned, like Ethelbert and Alcuin subsequently, laden with rich literary spoils and also with pictures and relics. Thus the library at Wearmouth became the largest and best appointed in England at the time.1042  It was Biscop’s enterprise and liberality which rendered it possible that Bede’s natural taste for learning should receive such careful culture. So amid the wealth of books he acquired Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and laid up a rich store of multifarious knowledge. Such was his character and attainments that at nineteen, six years before the then canonical age, he was ordained deacon, and at thirty a priest. He thus describes his mode of life: "All the remaining time of my life [i.e., after leaving Wearmouth] I spent in that, monastery [of Jarrow], wholly applying myself to the study of Scripture, and amidst observance of regular discipline and the daily care of singing in the church. I always took delight in learning, teaching and writing.1043  He declined to be abbot because the office, as he said, demands close attention, and therefore cares come which impede the pursuit of learning. As it was, the "pursuit of learning" took up only a portion of his time, for the necessary duties of a monk were many,1044 and such a man as Bede would be frequently required to preach. It appears that he published nothing before he was thirty years old, for he says himself: "From which time [i.e., of his taking priest’s orders] till the fifty-ninth year of my age, I have made it my business, for the use of me and mine, to compile out of the works of the venerable Fathers, and to interpret and explain according to their meaning these following pieces."1045  Then follows his list of his works. The result of such study and writing was that Bede became the most learned man of his time, and also the greatest of its authors. Yet he was also one of the humblest and simplest of men.

He died on Wednesday, May 26, 735, of a complaint accompanied with asthma, from which he had long suffered. The circumstances of his death are related by his pupil Cuthbert.1046  During Lent of the year 735 Bede carried on the translation of the Gospel of John and "some collections out of the Book of Notes" of Archbishop Isidore of Seville. The day before he died he spent in dictating his translations, saying now and then, "Go on quickly, I know not how long I shall hold out, and whether my Maker will not soon take me away."  He progressed so far with his rendering of John’s Gospel that at the third hour on Wednesday morning only one chapter remained to be done. On being told this he said, "Take your pen, and make ready, and write fast."  The scribe did so, but at the ninth hour Bede said to Cuthbert, ’ "I have some little articles of value in my chest, such as pepper, napkins and incense: run quickly, and bring the priests of our monastery to me, that I may distribute among them the gifts which God has bestowed on me. The rich in this world are bent on giving gold and silver and other precious things. But I, in charity, will joyfully give my brothers what God has given unto me."  He spoke to every one of them, admonishing and entreating them that they would carefully say masses and prayers for him, which they readily promised; but they all mourned and wept, especially because he said, "they should no more see his face in this world."  They rejoiced for that he said, "It is time that I return to Him who formed me out of nothing: I have lived long; my merciful Judge well foresaw my life for me; the time of my dissolution draws nigh; for I desire to die and to be with Christ."  Having said much more, he passed the day joyfully till the evening, and the boy [i.e., his scribe] said, "Dear master, there is yet one sentence not written."  He answered, "Write quickly."  Soon after the boy said, "It is ended."  He replied, "It is well, you have said the truth. It is ended. Receive my head into your hands, for it is a great satisfaction to me to sit facing my holy place, where I was wont to pray, that I may also sitting call upon my Father."  And thus on the pavement of his little cell, singing, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," when he had named the Holy Ghost, he breathed his last, and so departed to the heavenly kingdom."

Bede’s body was buried in the church at Jarrow, but between 1021 and 1042 it was stolen and removed to Durham by Elfred, a priest of its cathedral, who put it in the same chest with the body of St. Cuthbert. In 1104 the bodies were separated, and in 1154 the relics of Bede were placed in a shrine of gold and silver, adorned with jewels. This shrine was destroyed by an ignorant mob in Henry VIII’s time (1541), and only a monkish inscription remains to chronicle the fact that Bede was ever buried there.

The epithet, "Venerable," now so commonly applied to Bede, is used by him to denote a holy man who had not been canonized, and had no more reference to age than the same name applied to-day to an archdeacon in the Church of England. By his contemporaries he was called either Presbyter or Dominus. He is first called the Venerable in the middle of the tenth century.

Bede’s Writings are very numerous, and attest the width and profundity of his learning, and also the independence and soundness of his judgment. "Having centred in himself and his writings nearly all the knowledge of his day, he was enabled before his death, by promoting the foundation of the school of York, to kindle the flame of learning in the West at the moment that it seemed both in Ireland and in France to be expiring. The school of York transmitted to Alcuin the learning of Bede, and opened the way for culture on the continent, when England under the terrors of the Danes was relapsing into barbarism."  His fame, if we may judge from the demand for his works immediately after his death, extended wherever the English missionaries or negotiators found their way."1047

Bede himself, perhaps in imitation of Gregory of Tours,1048 gives a list of his works at the conclusion of his History.1049  There are few data to tell when any one of them was composed. The probable dates are given in the following general account and enumeration of his genuine writings. Very many other, writings have been attributed to him.1050

I. Educational treatises. (a) On orthography1051 (about 700). The words are divided alphabetically. (b) On prosody1052 (702). (c) On the Biblical figures and tropes.1053  (d) On the nature of things1054 (702), a treatise upon natural philosophy. (e) On the times1055 (702). (f) On the order of times1056 (702). (g) On the computation of time1057 (726). (h) On the celebration of Easter.1058  (i) On thunder.1059

II. Expository works. These are compilations from the Fathers, which originally were carefully assigned by marginal notes to their proper source, but the notes have been obliterated in the course of frequent copying. He wrote either on the whole or a part of the Pentateuch, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Tobit, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse.1060  His comments are of course made upon the Latin Bible, but his scholarship comes out in the frequent correction and emendation of the Latin text by reference to the original. The most frequent subject of remark is the want of an article in the Latin, which gave rise to frequent ambiguity.1061  Throughout he shows himself a careful textual student.1062

III. Homilies.1063  These are mostly doctrinal and objective. The fact that they were delivered to a monastic audience explains their infrequent allusion to current events or to daily life. They are calm and careful expositions of passages of Scripture rather than compact or stirring sermons.

IV. Poetry.1064  Most of the poetry attributed to him is spurious. But a few pieces are genuine, such as the hymn in his History upon Virginity, in honor of Etheldrida, the virgin wife of King Egfrid;1065 the metrical version of the life of Saint Cuthbert and of the Passion of Justin Martyr, and some other pieces. The Book of Hymns, of which he speaks in his own list of his writings, is apparently lost.

V. Epistles.1066  These are sixteen in number. The second, addressed to the Archbishop Egbert of York, is the most interesting. It dates from 734, and gives a word-picture of the time which shows how bad it was.1067  Even the archbishop himself comes in for faithful rebuke. Bede had already made him one visit and expected to make him another, but being prevented wrote to him what he desired to tell him by word of mouth. The chief topics of the letter are the avarice of the bishops and the disorders of the religious houses. After dwelling upon these and kindred topics at considerable length, Bede concludes by saying that if he had treated drunkenness, gluttony, luxury and other contagious diseases of the body politic his letter would have been immoderately long. The third letter, addressed to the abbot of Plegwin, is upon the Six Ages of the World. Most of the remainder are dedicatory.

VI. Hagiographies.1068  (a) Lives of the five holy abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Benedict, Ceolfrid, Easterwine, Sigfrid and Huetberct. The work is divided into two books, of which the first relates to Benedict. (b) The prose version of the Life of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The poetical version already spoken of, is earlier in time and different in character in as much as it dwells more upon Cuthbert’s miracles. The prose version has for its principal source an older life of Cuthbert still extant, and relates many facts along with evident fictions. Great pains were bestowed upon it and it was even submitted for criticism, prior to publication, to the monks of Lindisfarne. (c) The life of Felix of Nola, Confessor, a prose version of the life already written by Paulinus of Nola. (d) Martyrology. It is drawn from old Roman sources, and shows at once the learning and the simplicity of its author.

VII. Ecclesiastical History of England.1069  This is Bede’s great work. Begun at the request of King Ceolwulf, it was his occupation for many years, and was only finished a short time before his death. It consists of five books and tells in a simple, clear style the history of England from the earliest times down to 731. The first twenty-two chapters of the first book are compiled from Orosius and Gildas, but from the mission of Augustin in the 23d chapter (A.D. 596) it rests upon original investigation. Bede took great pains to ensure accuracy, and he gives the names of all persons who were helpful to him. The History is thus the chief and in many respects the only source for the church history of England down to the eighth century. In it as in his other books Bede relates a great many strange things; but he is careful to give his authorities for each statement. It is quite evident, however, that he believed in these "miracles," many of which are susceptible of rational explanation. It is from this modest, simple, conscientious History that multitudes have learned to love the Venerable Bede.

§ 157. Paul the Deacon.

I. Paulus Winfridus Diaconus: Opera omnia in Migne, Tom. XCV., col. 413–1710. Editions of Paul’s separate works: Historia Langobardorum in: Monumenta Germanicae historica. Scriptores rerum langobardorum et italicarum. Saec. VI.-IX. edd. L. Bethmann et G. Waitz, Hannover, 1878, pp. 45–187. Historia romano in: Monum. Germ. Hist. auctor. antiquissimor. Tom. II. ed. H. Droysen, Berlin, 1879. Gesta episcoporum Mettensium in: Mon. Germ. Hist. Script. Tom. II. ed. Pertz, pp. 260–270. Homiliae in: Martène et Durand, Veterum scriptorum collectio, Paris, 1733, Tom. IX. Carmina (both his and Peter’s) in: Poetae latini aevi Carolini, ed. E. Dümmler, Berlin, 1880, I. 1. pp 27–86. Translations: Die Langobardengeschichte, übertsetzt Von Karl von Spruner, Hamburg, 1838; Paulus Diaconus und die übrigen Geschichtschreiber der Langobarden, übersetzt von Otto Abel, Berlin, 1849.

II. Felix Dahn: Paulus Diaconus. I. Abtheilung, Leipzig, 1876. Each of the above mentioned editions contains an elaborate introduction in which the life and works of Paul are discussed, e.g. Waitz ed. Hist. pp. 12–45. For further investigations see Bethmann: Paulus Diaconus’ Leben und Schriften, and Die Geschichtschreibung der Langobarden, both in Pertz’s "Archiv der Gesellsch. für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde." Bd. X. Hannover, 1851; Bauch: Ueber die historia romana des Paulus Diaconus, eine Quellenuntersuchung, Göttingen, 1873; R. Jacobi: Die Quellen der Langobardengeschichte des Paulus Diaconus, Halle, 1877; and Mommsen: Die Quellen der Langobardengeschichte des Paulus Diaconus in: Neues Archiv der Gesellsch. für ältere Geschichtskunde, Bd. V. pp. 51 sqq. Du Pin, VI. 115–116. Ceillier, XII. l141–148. Ebert, II. 36–56.

Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus), the historian of the Lombards, was the son of Warnefrid and Theudelinda. Hence he is frequently called Paul Warnefrid. He was descended from a noble Lombard family and was born in Forum Julii (Friuli, Northern Italy), probably between 720 and 725. His education was completed at the court of King Liutprand in Pavia. His attainments included a knowledge of Greek, rare in that age. Under the influence of Ratchis, Liutprand’s successor (744–749), he entered the church and became a deacon. King Desiderius (756–774) made him his chancellor,1070 and entrusted to his instruction his daughter Adelperga, the wife of Arichis, duke of Benevento. In 774 the Lombard kingdom fell, and Paul after residing for a time at the duke’s court entered the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. There he contentedly lived until fraternal love led him to leave his beloved abode. In 776 his brother, Arichis, having probably participated in Hruodgaud’s rebellion, was taken prisoner by Charlemagne, carried into France, and the family estates were confiscated. This brought the entire family to beggary.1071

Paul sought Charlemagne; in a touching little poem of twenty-eight lines, probably written in Gaul in 782, he set the pitiful case before him1072 and implored the great king’s clemency.

He did not plead in vain. He would then at once have returned to Monte Cassino, but Charlemagne, always anxious to retain in his immediate service learned and brilliant men., did not allow him to go. He was employed as court poet, teacher of Greek, and scribe, and thus exerted great influence. His heart was, however, in his monastery, and in 787 he is found there. The remainder of his life was busily employed in literary labors. He died, April 13, probably in the year 800, with an unfinished work, the history of the Lombards, upon his hands.

Paul was a Christian scholar, gentle, loving, and beloved; ever learning and disseminating learning. Although not a great man, he was a most useful one, and his homilies and histories of the Lombards are deservedly held in high esteem.

His Works embrace histories, homilies, letters, and poems.

I. Histories. (1) Chief in importance is the History of the Lombards.1073  It is divided into six books, and carries the history of the Lombards from their rise in Scandinavia down to the death of Liutprand in 744. It was evidently Paul’s intention to continue and revise the work, for it has no preface or proper conclusion; moreover, it has manifest slips in writing, which would have been corrected by a final reading. It is therefore likely that he died before its completion. It is not a model of historical composition, being discursive, indefinite as to chronology, largely a compilation from known and unknown sources, full of legendary and irrelevant matter. Nevertheless it is on the whole well arranged and exhibits a love of truth, independence and impartiality. Though a patriot, Paul was not a partisan. He can see some good even in his hereditary foes. The popularity of the History in the Middle Age is attested by the appearance of more than fifteen editions of it and of ten continuations.

(2) Some scholars1074 consider the History of the Lombards the continuation of Paul’s Roman History,1075 which he compiled (c. 770) for Adelperga from Eutropius (Breviarum historiae Romanae);1076 Jerome, Orosius (Historia adversus Paganos),1077 Aurelius Victor (De Caesaribus historia), Jordanis (De breviatione chronicorum),1078 Prosper (Chronicon),1079 Bede and others. The Historia is in sixteen books, of which the first ten are mere excerpts of Eutropius, with insertions from other sources. The last six carry the history from Valens, where Eutropius ends, down to Justinian. The plan of these latter books is the same as that of the former: some author is excerpted, and in the excerpts are inserted extracts from other writers. The History is worthless to us, but in the Middle Age it was extremely popular. To the sixteen books of Paul’s were added eight from the Church History of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, and the whole called Historia Miscella, and to it Landulph Sagax wrote an appendix, which brings the work down to 813.

Besides these histories several other briefer works in the same line have come down to us.

(3) Life of St. Gregory the Great,1080 a compilation from Bede’s Church History of England, and Gregory’s own works.

(4) A short History of the bishopric of Metz.1081  It was written about 784, at the request of Angilram, bishop of Metz. It is in good part only a list of names. In order to please Charlemagne, Paul inserted irrelevantly a section upon that monarch’s ancestry.

II. Homilies.1082  A collection made by request of Charlemagne, and which for ten centuries was in use in the Roman Church. It is in three series. 1. Homilies upon festivals, two hundred and two in number, all from the Fathers. 2. Homilies upon saints’ days, ninety-six in number. 3. Homilies, five in number. Many of the second series and all of the last appear to be original.

III. Letters,1083 four in number, two to Charlemagne, one each to Adalhard, abbot of Corbie, in France, and to the abbot Theudemar.

IV. Poems, including epitaphs.1084 From the first stanza of De Sancto Joanne Baptista, Guido of Arezzo took the names of the musical notes.

§ 158. St. Paulinus of Aquileia.

I. Sanctus Paulinus, patriarcha Aquileiensis: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. XCIX. col. 9–684, reprint of Madrisius’ ed., Venice, 1737, folio, 2d ed. 1782. His poems are given by Dümmler: Poet. Lat. aevi Carolini I. (Berlin, 1880), pp. 123–148.

II. Vita Paulini, by Madrisius in Migne’s ed. col. 17–130. Cf. Du Pin, VI. 124. Ceillier, XII. 157–164. Hist. litt. de la France, IV. 284–295; Bähr: Geschichte der römischen Literatur im Karolingischen Zeitalter, Carlsruhe, 1840 (pp. 88, 356–359); Ebert, II., 89–91.

Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, was born about 7261085 in Forum Julii, now Friuli, near Venice. He entered the priesthood, was employed in teaching and arrived at eminence as a scholar. He played a prominent part in the affairs of his country, and his services in suppressing a Lombard insurrection met, in the year 776, with recognition and reward by Charlemagne, who gave him an estate and in 787 elevated him to the patriarchal see of Aquileia.1086  He carried on a successful mission among the Carinthians, a tribe which lived near Aquileia, and also another among their neighbors, the Avari (the Huns).1087  He opposed with vigor the Adoptionists, and his writings contributed much to the extinction of the sect. He lived entirely for God and his church, and won the hearts of his spiritual children. Perhaps the most striking proof of his virtue is the warm friendship which existed between himself and Alcuin. The latter is very, enthusiastic in his praise of the learning and accomplishments of Paulinus. Charlemagne seems to have valued him no less.1088  With such encouragement Paulinus led a busy and fruitful life, participating in synods and managing wisely his see until his death on January 11, 804.1089  Very, soon thereafter he was popularly numbered among the saints,1090 and stories began to be told of his miraculous powers.1091  His bones were deposited in the high altar of the collegiate church of Friuli, or as the place was called Civitas Austriae. The church underwent repairs, and his bones were for a time laid by those of the martyr Donatus, but at length on January 26, 1734, they were separated and with much pomp placed in the chapel under the choir of the great basilica of Friuli.1092

The writings of Paulinus comprise (1) Brief treatise against Elipandus,1093 archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, who is generally regarded as the father of Adoptionism. It was issued in the name of the council of Frankfort-on-the-Main (794), and sent into Spain. It was first published by Jean de Tillet, in 1549. (2) Three books against Felix of Urgel,1094 also against the Adoptionists. It was prepared in 796 by order of Charlemagne, and probably submitted to Alcuin, agreeably to the author’s request.1095  It is the most important work of Paulinus, though by no means the best in point of style. The Felix addressed was bishop of Urgel and the leader of the Adoptionists. Paulinus refutes the heretics by quotations of Scripture and the Fathers. The work is elaborately annotated by Madrisius, and thus rendered much more intelligible.1096  (3) A deliverance by the council of Friuli, held in 796, upon the Trinity and the Incarnation.1097  (4) An exhortation to virtue,1098 addressed to Henry, count or duke of Friuli. It was written about 795, and consists of sixty-six chapters upon the virtues to be practiced and the vices to be shunned by the duke. The style is excellent. The work was once claimed for Augustin, but this is now conceded to be an error. Nine of the chapters (x.-xv. xvii.-xix. ) are copied from The contemplative life, a work by Pomerius, a Gallican churchman of the fifth century. On the other hand, chapters xx.-xlv. have been plagiarized in an Admonitio ad filium spiritualem which was long supposed to be by Basil the Great.1099

(5) Epistles. (a) To Heistulfus,1100 who had murdered his wife on a charge of adultery preferred against her by a man of bad character. It was written from Frankfort, in 794, during the council mentioned above. Paulinus sternly rebukes Heistulfus for his crime, and tells him that if he would be saved he must either enter a monastery or lead a life of perpetual penitence, of which he gives an interesting description. The letter passed into the Canon Law about 866.1101  It has been falsely attributed to Stephen V.1102  (b) To Charlemagne,1103 an account of the council of Altinum1104 in 803. (c) Fragments of three other letters to Charlemagne, and of one (probably) to Leo III.1105

(6) Verses. (a) The rule of faith,1106 a poem of one hundred and fifty-one hexameters, devoid of poetical merit, in which along with a statement of his belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation Paulinus gives a curious description of Paradise and of Gehenna, and to the latter sends the heretics, several of whom he names. (b) Hymns and verses,1107 upon different subjects. (c) A poem on duke Eric.1108

(7) A Mass.1109

(8) The preface to a tract upon repentance1110 which enjoins confession to God in tender words.

(9) A treatise upon baptism.1111

§ 159. Alcuin.

I. Beatus Flaccus Albinus seu Alcuinus: Opera omnia, Migne, Tom. C. CI., reprint of the ed. of Frobenius. Ratisbon, 1772, 2 vols. fol. Monumenta Alcuiniana, a P. Jaffé preparata, ed. Wattenbach et Dümmler (vol. vi. Bibliotheca rerum germanicarum). Berlin, 1773. It contains his letters, poems and life of Willibrord. His poems (Carmina) have been separately edited by E. Dümmler in Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, I. 1. 169–351, and some additional poetry is given in Addenda, Tom. II. 692.

II. Vita (Migne, C. col. 89–106), anonymous, but probably by a monk of Ferrières, based upon information given by Sigulf, Alcuin’s pupil and successor as abbot of Ferrières. De vita B. F. Albini seu Alcuini commentatio (col. 17–90), by Froben, for the most part an expansion of the former by the introduction of discussions upon many points. Eulogium historicum Beati Alcuini (CI. col. 1416–1442), by Mabillon. Of interest and value also are the Testimonia veterum et quorumdam recentiorum scriptorum (col. 121–134), brief notices of Alcuin by contemporaries and others.

III. Modern biographies and more general works in which Alcuin is discussed. Friedrich Lorentz: Alcuin’s Leben, Halle, 1829, Eng, trans. by Jane Mary Slee, London, 1837. Francis Monnier: Alcuin et son influence littéraire, religieuse et politique chez les France, Paris, 1853, 2d ed. entitled Alcuin et Charlemagne, Paris, 1864. Karl Werner: Alcuin and sein Jahrhundert, Paderborn, 1876, 2d ed. (unchanged), 1881. J. Bass Mullinger: The schools of Charles the Great, London, 1877. Cf. Du Pin, VI. 121–124. Ceiller, XII. 165–214. Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 295–347. Clarke, II. 453–459. Bähr, 78–84; 192–195; 302–341. Wattenbach, 3d ed. I. 123 sqq; Ebert, II. 12–36. Guizot: History of Civilization, Eng. trans, , Bohn’s ed. ii. 231–253. The art. Alcuin by Bishop Stubbs in Smith and Wace, Dict. Chr. Biog. (i. 73–76), deserves particular mention.

Flaccus Albinus, or, as he is commonly called in the Old English form, Alcuin1112 ("friend of the temple"), the ecclesiastical prime minister of Charlemagne, was born in Yorkshire about 735. He sprang from a noble Northumbrian family, the one to which Willibrord, apostle of the Frisians, belonged, and inherited considerable property, including the income of a monastic society on the Yorkshire coast.1113  At tender age he was taken to the famous cathedral school at York, and there was educated by his loving and admiring friends, Egbert, archbishop of York (732–766) and founder of the school, and Ethelbert, its master. With the latter he made several literary journeys on the continent, once as far as Rome, and each time returned laden with MS. treasures, secured, by a liberal expenditure of money, from different monasteries. Thus they greatly enlarged the library which Egbert had founded.1114  In 766 Ethelbert succeeded Egbert in the archbishopric of York, and appointed Alcuin, who had previously been a teacher, master of the cathedral school, ordained him a deacon, Feb. 2, 767, and made him one of the secular canons of York minster. In 767 he had Liudger for a pupil. Some time between the latter year and 780,1115 Ethelbert sent him to Italy on a commission to Charlemagne, whom he met, probably at Pavia. In 780 Ethelbert retired from his see and gave over to Alcuin the care of the library, which now was without a rival in England. Alcuin gives a catalogue of it,1116 thus throwing welcome light upon the state of learning at the time. In 780 Alcuin again visited Rome to fetch the pallium for Eanbald, Ethelbert’s successor.

On his return he met Charlemagne at Parma (Easter, 781), and was invited by him to become master of the School of the Palace. This school was designed for noble youth, was attached to the court, and held whenever the court was. Charlemagne and his family and courtiers frequently attended its sessions, although they could not be said to be regular scholars. The invitation to teach this school was a striking recognition of the learning and ability of Alcuin, and as he perceived the possibilities of the future thus unexpectedly opened to him he accepted it, although the step involved a virtual abnegation of his just claim upon the archiepiscopate of York. In the next year (782), having received the necessary permission to go from his king and archbishop, he began his work. The providential design in this event is unmistakable. Just at the time when the dissensions of the English kings practically put a stop to educational advance in England, Alcuin, the greatest teacher of the day, was transferred to the continent in order that under the fostering and stimulating care of Charlemagne he might rescue it from the bondage of ignorance. But the effort taxed his strength. Charlemagne, although he attended his instruction and styles him "his dear teacher," at the same time abused his industry and patience, and laid many very heavy burdens upon him.1117  Alcuin had not only to teach the Palatine school, which necessitated his moving about with the migratory court to the serious interruption of his studies, but to prepare and revise books for educational and ecclesiastical uses, and in general to superintend the grand reformatory schemes of Charlemagne. How admirably he fulfilled his multifarious duties, history attests. The famous capitulary of 7871118 which Charlemagne issued and which did so much to advance learning, was of his composition. The Caroline books,1119 which were quite as remarkable in the sphere of church life, were his work, at least in large measure. For his pecuniary support and as a mark of esteem Charlemagne gave him the monasteries of St. Lupus at Troyes and Bethlehem at Ferrières, and the cell of St. Judecus on the coast of Picardy (St. Josse sur mer). But the care of these only added to his burdens. In 789 he went to England on commission from Charlemagne to King Offa of Mercia, and apparently desired to remain there. Thence in 792 he sent in the name of the English bishops a refutation of image-worship. But in 793 Charlemagne summoned him to his side to defend the church against the heresy of Adoptionism and image-worship, and he came. In 794 he took a prominent part, although simply a deacon, in the council of Frankfort, which spoke out so strongly against both, and in 799, at the council of Aachen, he had a six days’ debate with Felix, the leader of the Adoptionists, which resulted in the latter’s recantation. In his negotiations with the Adoptionists he had the invaluable aid of the indefatigable monk, Benedict, of Nursia. In 796, Charlemagne gave him in addition to the monasteries already mentioned that of St. Martin at Tours and in 800 those of Cormery and Flavigny. The monastery of Tours1120 owned twenty thousand serfs and its revenue was regal. To it Alcuin retired, although he would have preferred to go to Fulda.1121  There he did good work in reforming the monks, regulating the school and enlarging the library. His most famous pupil during this period of his life was Rabanus Maurus. In the year of his death he established a hospice at Duodecim Pontes near Troyes; and just prior to this event he gave over the monastery of Tours to his pupil Fredegis, and that of Ferrières to another pupil, Sigulf It is remarkable that he died upon the anniversary on which he had desired to die, the Festival of Pentecost, May 19, 804. He was buried in the church of St. Martin, although in his humility he had requested to be buried outside of it.

One of his important services to religion was his revision of the Vulgate (about 802) by order of Charlemagne, on the basis of old and correct MSS., for he probably knew little Greek and no Hebrew. This preserved a good Vulgate text for some time.

Alcuin was of a gentle disposition, willing, patient and humble, and an unwearied student. He had amassed all the treasures of learning then accessible. He led his age, yet did not transcend it, as Scotus Erigena did his. He was not a deep thinker, rather he brought out from his memory the thoughts of others. He was also mechanical in his methods. Yet he was more than a great scholar and teacher, he was a leader in church affairs, not only on the continent, but, as his letters show, also in England. Charlemagne consulted him continually, and would have done better had he more frequently followed his advice. Particularly is this true respecting missions. Alcuin saw with regret that force had been applied to induce the Saxons to submit to baptism. He warned Charlemagne that the result would be disastrous. True Christians can not be made by violence, but by plain preaching of the gospel in the spirit of love. He would have the gospel precepts gradually unfolded to the pagan Saxons, and then as they grew in knowledge would require from them stricter compliance. Alcuin gave similar council in regard to the Huns.1122  His opinions upon other practical points1123 are worthy of mention. Thus, he objected to the employment of bishops in military affairs, to capital punishment, to the giving up of persons who had taken refuge in a church, and to priests following a secular calling. He was zealous for the revival of preaching and for the study of the Bible. On the other hand he placed a low estimate upon pilgrimages, and preferred that the money so spent should be given to the poor.1124

Writings.—The works of Alcuin are divided into nine classes.

I. Letters.1125  A striking peculiarity of these letters is their address. Alcuin and his familiar correspondents, following an affectation of scholars in the middle age, write under assumed names.1126  Among his correspondents are kings, patriarchs, bishops and abbots. The value of these letters is very great. They throw light upon contemporary history, and such as are private, and these are numerous, allow us to look into Alcuin’s heart. Many of them, unfortunately, are lost, and some are known to exist unprinted, as in the Cotton collection. Those now printed mostly date from Tours, and so belong to his closing years. They may be roughly divided into three groups:1127 (1) those to English correspondents. These show how dear his native land was to Alcuin, and how deeply interested he was in her affairs. (2) Those to Charlemagne, a large and the most important group.1128  Alcuin speaks with freedom, yet always with profound respect. (3) Those to his bosom friend, Arno of Salzburg.

II. Exegetical Miscellany.1129  (a) Questions and answers respecting the interpretation of Genesis. (b) Edifying and brief exposition of the Penitential Psalms, Psalm CXVIII and the Psalm of Degrees. (c) Short commentary on Canticles. (d) Commentary on Ecclesiastes. (e) A literal, allegorical and moral Interpretation of the Hebrew names of our Lord’s ancestors (in which he makes much out of the symbolism of the numbers). (f) Commentary on portions of John’s Gospel. (g) On Titus, Philemon, Hebrews.1130  These comments, are chiefly derived from the Fathers, and develop the allegorical and moral sense of Scripture. That on John’s Gospel is the most important. The plan of making a commentary out of extracts was quickly followed and was indeed the only plan in general use in the Middle Age.

III. Dogmatic Miscellany.1131  (a) The Trinity, written in 802, dedicated to Charlemagne, a condensed statement of Augustin’s teaching on the subject. It was the model for the "Sentences" of the twelfth century. It is followed by twenty-eight questions and answers on the Trinity. (b) The Procession of the Holy Spirit, similarly dedicated and made up of patristic quotations. (c) Brief treatise against the heresy of Felix (Adoptionism). (d) Another against it in seven books. (e) A treatise against Elipandus in four books. (f) Letter against Adoptionism, addressed to some woman. These writings on Adoptionism are very able and reveal learning and some independence.

IV. Liturgical and Ethical Works.1132  (a) The Sacraments, a collection of mass-formulae, from the use of Tours. (b) The use of the Psalms, a distribution of the Psalms under appropriate headings so that they can be used as prayers, together with explanations and original prayers: a useful piece of work. (c) Offices for festivals, the Psalms sang upon the feast days, with prayers, hymns, confessions and litanies: a sort of lay-breviary, made for Charlemagne. (d) A letter to Oduin, a presbyter, upon the ceremony of baptism. (e) Virtues and vices, dedicated to Count Wido, compiled from Augustin. (f) The human soul, addressed in epistolary form to Eulalia (Gundrada), the sister of Adalhard, abbot of Corbie, in France. (g) Confession of sins, addressed to his pupils at St. Martin’s of Tours.

V. Hagiographical Works.1133  (a) Life of St. Martin of Tours, rewritten from Sulpicius Severus. (b) Life of St. Vedast, bishop of Atrebates (Arras), and (c) Life of the most blessed presbyter Requier, both rewritten from old accounts. (d) Life of St. Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, his own ancestor, in two books, one prose, the other verse. This is an original work, and valuable as history.

VI. Poems.1134  The poetical works of Alcuin are very numerous, and of very varied character, including prayers, inscriptions for books, churches, altars, monasteries, etc., epigrams, moral exhortations, epistles, epitaphs, enigmas, a fable,1135 and a long historical poem in sixteen hundred and fifty-seven lines upon the bishops and saints of the church of York from its foundation to the accession of Eanbald.1136  It is very valuable. In its earlier part it rests upon Bede, but from the ten hundred and seventh line to the close upon original information. It seems to have been written by Alcuin in his youth at York. Its style is evidently influenced by Virgil and Prudentius.

VII. Pedagogical Works.1137  (a) Grammar. (b) Orthography. (c) Rhetoric. (d) Dialectics. (e) Dialogue between Pippin and Alcuin1138  (f) On the courses and changes of the moon and the intercalary day (Feb. 24th). These works admit us into Alcuin’s school-room, and are therefore of great importance for the study of the learning of his day.

VIII. Dubious Works.1139 (a) A confession of faith, in four parts, probably his. (b) Dialogue between teacher and pupils upon religion. (c) Propositions. (d) Poems.

IX. Pretended Works1140 (a) The holy days. (b) Four homilies. (c) Poems.

§ 160. St. Liudger.

I. S. Liudgerus, Minigardefordensis Episcopus: Opera, in Migne, Tom. XCIX. col. 745–820.

II. The old Lives of S. Liudger are four in number. They are found in Migne, but best in Die Vitae Sancti Liudgeri ed. Dr. Wilhelm Diekamp. Münster, 1881 (Bd. IV. of the series: Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster). Dr. Diekamp presents revised texts and ample prolegomena and notes. (1) The oldest Vita (pp. 3–53) is by Altfrid, a near relative of Liudger and his second successor in the see of Münster. It was written by request of the monks of Werden about thirty years after Liudger’s death, rests directly upon family and other contemporary testimony, and is the source of all later Lives. He probably divided his work into two books, but as the first book is in two parts, Leibnitz, Pertz and Migne divide the work into three books, of which the first contains the life proper, the second the miracles wrought by the saint himself, and the third those wrought by his relics. (2) Vita Secunda (pp. 54–83) was written by a monk of Werden about 850. The so-called second book of this Life really belongs to (3) Vita tertia (pp. 85–134.)  (2) Follows Altfrid, but adds legendary and erroneous matter. (3) Written also by a Werden monk about 890, builds upon (1) and (2) and adds new matter of a legendary kind. (4) Vita rythmica (pp. 135–220), written by a Werden monk about 1140. Biographies of Liudger have been recently written in German by Luise von Bornstedt (Münster, 1842); P. W. Behrends (Neuhaldensleben u. Gardelegen, 1843); A. Istvann (Coesfeld, 1860); A. Hüsing (Münster, 1878); L. Th. W. Pingsmann (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1879). Cf. Diekamp’s full bibliography, pp. CXVIII.-CXMI. For literary criticism see Ceillier, XII. 218. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 57–59. Ebert, II. 107, 338, 339.

Liudger, or Ludger, first bishop of Münster, was born about 744 at Suecsnon (now Zuilen) on the Vecht, in Frisia. His parents, Thiadgrim and Liafburg, were earnest Christians. His paternal grandfather, Wursing, had been one of Willibrord’s most zealous supporters (c. 5).1141  He early showed a pious and studious disposition (c. 7). He entered the cloister school of Utrecht, taught by the abbot Gregory, whose biographer he became, laid aside his secular habit and devoted himself to the cause of religion. His proficiency in study was such that Gregory made him a teacher (c. 8). During the year 767 he received further instruction from Alcuin at York, and was ordained a deacon (c. 9). In 768 he was in Utrecht; but for the next three years and a half with Alcuin, although Gregory had been very loath to allow him to go the second time. He would have staid longer if a Frisian trader had not murdered in a quarrel a son of a count of York. The ill feeling which this event caused, made it unsafe for any Frisian to remain in York, and so taking with him "many books" (copiam librorum), he returned to Utrecht (c. 10). Gregory had died during his absence (probably in 771), and his successor was his nephew, Albric, a man of zeal and piety. Liudger was immediately on his return to York pressed into active service. He was sent to Deventer on the Yssel in Holland, where the, saintly English missionary Liafwin had just died. A horde of pagan Saxons had devastated the place, burnt the church and apparently undone Liafwin’s work (c. 13). Liudger was commissioned to rebuild the church and to bury the body of Liafwin, which was lost. Arrived at the spot he was at first unsuccessful in finding the body, and was about to rebuild the church without further search when Liafwin appeared to him in a vision and told him that his body was in the south wall of the church, and there it was found (c. 14). Albric next sent him to Frisia to destroy the idols and temples there. Of the enormous treasure taken from the temples Charlemagne gave one-third to Albric. In 777 Albric was consecrated bishop at Cologne, and Liudger at the same time ordained a presbyter.

For the next seven years Liudger was priest at Doccum in the Ostergau, where Boniface had died, but during the three autumn months of each year he taught in the cloister school at Utrecht (c. 15). At the end of this period Liudger was fleeing for his life, for the pagan Wutukint, duke of the Saxons, invaded Frisia, drove out the clergy, and set up the pagan altars. Albric died of a broken heart, unable to stand the cruel blow. Liudger with two companions, Hildigrim and Gerbert, retired to Rome, where for two and a half years he lived in the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino (c. 18). There he not only had a pleasant retreat but also opportunity to study the working of the Benedictine rule. He did not, however, take monastic vows.

His fame for piety and learning had meanwhile reached the ears of Charlemagne,—probably through Alcuin,—and so on his return the emperor assigned to his care five Frisian districts (Hugmerchi, Hunusga, Fuulga, Emisga, Fedirga) upon the eastern side of the river Labekus (Lauwers), and also the island of Bant. His success as missionary induced him to undertake an enterprise in which even Willibrord had failed. He sailed over the German Ocean to Heligoland, then called Fosetelant (the land of the god Fosete). His confidence was justified by events. He made many converts, among them the son of the chief of the island who became a priest and a missionary. Shortly after on the mainland there was another irruption of pagans from East Frisia, and the usual disheartening scenes of burnt churches, scattered congregations, and martyred brethren were enacted. But once more the Christian faith conquered (c. 19). Charlemagne’s continued regard for Liudger was proved by his gift to him of the abbey Lothusa (probably Zele, near Ghent in Belgium), in order that its revenues might contribute to his support, or that being far from Frisia he might retreat thither in times of danger; and further by his appointment of him to the bishopric of Mimigernaford (later form Mimigardevord, now Münster, so called from the monasterium which he built there), in Westphalia, which was now sufficiently christianized to be ruled ecclesiastically. He still had under his care the five districts already named, although so far off. At first these charges were held by him as a simple presbyter, and in that capacity he carried out one of his darling purposes and built the famous monastery of Werden1142 on the Ruhr, formerly called Diapanbeci. But persuaded by Hildebald he became the first bishop of Münster (c. 20). The year of this event is unknown, but it was between 802 and 805.1143  Tireless in his activity he died in the harness. On Sunday, March 26, 809, he preached and performed mass at Coesfeld and at Billerbeck. In the evening he died (Acta II. c. 7). He was buried at Werden, which thus became a shrine of pilgrims.

The only extant writing of Liudger is his Life of St. Gregory,1144 which gives a pleasing picture of the saint, in whose school at Utrecht many famous men, including bishops, were trained. Twelve of its twenty-two chapters are taken up with Boniface. Much of the matter is legendary. He also wrote a life of Albric,1145 which is lost. His connection with Helmstedt is purely imaginary. The Liudger Monastery there was not founded by him, for it dates from the tenth century. The colony of monks may, however, have well come from Werden, and have therefore given the name Liudger to the monastery.

§ 161. Theodulph of Orleans.

I. Theodulph, Aurelianensis episcopus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CV. col. 187–380. His Carmina are in Dümmler’s Poëtae Lat. aev. Car. I. 2. pp. 437–58l, 629, 630.

II. L. Baunard: Théodulfe, Orleans, 1860. Rzehulka: Theodulf, Breslau, 1875 (Dissertation). Cf. the general works, Mabillon: Analecta, Paris, 1675. Tom. I. pp. 386 sqq.; Tiraboschi: Historia della letteratura italiana new ed. Florence. 1805–18, 20 parts, III. l. pp. 196–205 (particularly valuable for its investigation of the obscure points of Theodulph’s life). Du Pin, VI. 124; Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 459–474; Ceillier, XII. 262–271, Bähr, 91–95, 359, 860; Ebert, II. 70–84.

Theodulph, bishop of Orleans, one of the most useful churchmen of the Carolingian period, was probably born in Spain,1146 past the middle of the eighth century. In 788 he attracted the notice of Charlemagne, who called him into France and made him abbot of Fleury and of Aignan, both Benedictine monasteries in the diocese of Orleans, and later bishop of Orleans. He stood in high favor with his king and was entrusted with important commissions. He participated in the council of Frankfort (794); was made missus dominicus1147 in 798; accompanied Charlemagne to Rome, sat as one of the judges in the investigation of the charges against Leo III. (800) and received from the supreme pontiff the pallium (801).1148  He succeeded Alcuin (804) as first theological imperial counsellor. In 809 he sat in the council of Aix la Chapelle and by request of the emperor collected the patristic quotations in defence of the Filioque clause. In 811 he was witness to the emperor’s will. Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son and successor, for a time showed him equal honor and confidence, for instance in appointing him to meet Pope Stephen V. when he came to the coronation at Rheims (816). But two years afterwards he was suspected, it would seem without good reason, of complicity in king Bernard’s rebellion, and on Easter 818 was deposed and imprisoned at Angers, in the convent either of St. Aubin or of St. Serge. He stoutly persisted in his declaration of innocence, and in 821 he was released and reinstated, but died1149 on his way back or shortly after his arrival in Orleans, and was buried in Orleans Sept. 19, 821.

Theodulph was an excellent prelate; faithful, discreet and wise. He greatly deplored the ignorance of his clergy and earnestly labored to elevate them. To this end he established many schools, and also wrote the Capitula ad presbyteros parochicae suae mentioned below. In this work he was particularly successful. The episcopal school of Orleans was famous for the number, beauty and accuracy of the MSS. it produced. In his educational work he enjoyed the assistance of the accomplished poet Wulfin. Theodulph was himself a scholar, well read both in secular and religious literature.1150  He had also a taste for architecture, and restored many convents and churches and built the splendid basilica at Germigny, which was modelled after that at Aix la Chapelle. His love for the Bible comes out not only in the revision of the Vulgate he had made, and practically in his exhortation to his clergy to expound it, but also in those costly copies of the Bible which are such masterpieces of calligraphy.1151  He was moreover the first poet of his day, which however is not equivalent to saying that he had much genius. His productions, especially his didactic poems, are highly praised and prized for their pictures of the times, rather than for their poetical power. From one of his minor poems the interesting fact comes out that he had been married and had a daughter called Gisla, who was the wife of a certain Suavaric.1152

The extant prose works of Theodulph are: 1. Directions to the priests of his diocese,1153 written in 797. They are forty-six in number and relate to the general and special duties of priests. The following are some of the more instructive directions: Women must not approach the altar during the celebration of mass (c. 6). Nothing may be kept in the churches except holy things (c. 8). No one save priests and unusually holy laity may be buried in churches (c. 9). No woman is allowed to live in the house with a priest (c. 12). Priests must not get drunk or frequent taverns (c. 13). Priests may send their relatives to monastic schools (c. 19). They may keep schools themselves in which free instruction is given (c. 20). They must teach everybody the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed (c. 22). No work must be done on the Lord’s Day (c. 24). Priests are exhorted to prepare themselves to preach (c. 28). Daily, honest confession of sins to God ensures pardon; but confession to a priest is also enjoined in order that through his counsels and prayers the stain of sin may be removed (c. 30). True charity consists in the union of good deeds and a virtuous life (c. 34). Merchants should not sell their souls for filthy lucre (c. 35). Regulations respecting fasting (c. 36–43). All should come to church to celebrate mass and hear the preaching, and no one should eat before communicating (c. 46). 2. To the same, a treatise upon sins and their ecclesiastical punishment; and upon the administration of extreme unction.1154  3. The Holy Spirit.1155  The collection of patristic passages in defense of the Filioque, made by order of Charlemagne (809), as mentioned above. It has a metrical dedication to the emperor. 4. The ceremony of baptism,1156 written in 812 in response to Charlemagne’s circular letter on baptism which Magnus, archbishop of Sens (801–818), had forwarded to him. It consists of eighteen chapters, which minutely describe all the steps in the ceremony of baptism. 5. Fragments of two sermons.1157

The Poetical works of Theodulph are divided into six books.1158  The first is entirely devoted to one poem; The exhortation to judges,1159 in which besides describing a model judge and exhorting all judges to the discharge of their duties he relates his own experiences while missus and thus gives a most interesting picture of the time.1160  The second book contains sixteen pieces, including epitaphs, and the verses which he wrote in the front of one of his illuminated Bibles giving a summary in a line of each book, and thus revealing his Biblical scholarship. The verses are prefaced in prose with a list of the books. The third book contains twelve pieces, including the verses to Gisla already mentioned. The fourth book contains nine pieces, the most interesting of which are c.1 on his favorite authors, and c.2 on the seven liberal arts,—grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, music, geometry and astrology. The fifth book contains four pieces: Consolation for the death of a certain brother, a fragment On the seven deadly sins, An exhortation to bishops, and four lines which express the evangelical sentiment that only by a holy life is heaven gained; without it pilgrimages avail nothing. The sixth book contains thirty pieces. Ten other poems appear in an appendix in Migne.1161

§ 162. St. Eigil.

I. Sanctus Eigil, Fuldensis abbas: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CV. col. 381–444. His Carmina are in Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, ed. Dümmler I. 2  (Berlin, 1881).

II. S. Eigilis vita auctore Candido monacho Fuldensi, in Migne CV. col. 383–418.  Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 475–478. Ceillier, XII. 272, 273. Ebert, II. Cf. Carl Schwartz: Uebersetzung und Bemerkungen zu Eigil’s Nachrichten über die Gründung und Urgeschichte des Klosters Fulda. Fulda, 1858.

Eigil was a native of Noricum, the name then given to the country south of the Danube, around the rivers Inn and Drave, and extending on the south to the banks of the Save. In early childhood, probably about 760, he was placed in the famous Benedictine monastery of Fulda in Hesse, whose abbot, its founder Sturm (Sturmi, Sturmin), was his relative. There Eigil lived for many years as a simple monk, beloved and respected for piety and learning. Sturm was succeeded on his death (779) by Baugolf, and on Baugolf’s resignation Ratgar became abbot (802). Ratgar proved to be a tyrant,1162 and expelled Eigil because he was too feeble to work. In 817, Ratgar was deposed, and the next year (818) Eigil was elected abbot. A few months afterwards, Ratgar appeared as a suppliant for readmission to the monastery. "It was not in Eigil’s power to grant this request, but his influence was used to gain for it a favorable response at court [i.e. with Louis the Pious], and Ratgar for thirteen years longer lived a submissive and penitent member of the community which had suffered so much at his hands.1163  This single incident in the life of Eigil goes far to prove his right to the title of saint.

Loath as he had been to accept the responsible position of abbot in a monastery which was in trouble, he discharged its duties with great assuiduity. He continued Ratgar’s building operations, but without exciting the hatred and rebellion of his monks. On the contrary, Fulda once more prospered, and when he died, June 15, 822, he was able to give over to his successor and intimate friend, Rabanus Maurus, a well ordered community.

The only prose writing of Eigil extant is his valuable life of Sturm.1164  It was written by request of Angildruth, abbess of Bischofheim, and gives an authentic account of the founding of Fulda. Every year on Sturm’s day (Dec. 17) it was read aloud to the monks while at dinner. Eigil’s own biography was written by Candidus, properly Brunn, whom Ratgar had sent for instruction to Einhard at Seligenstadt, and who was principal of the convent school under Rabanus Maurus. The biography is in two parts, the second being substantially only a repetition in verse of the first.1165

§ 163. Amalarius.

I. Symphosius Amalarius: Opera omnia in Migne, Tom. CV. col. 815–1340. His Carmina are in Dümmler, Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, I.

II Du Pin, VII. 79, l58–160. Ceillier, XII. 221–223. Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 531–546. Clarke, II. 471–473. Bähr, 380–383. Hefele, IV. 10, 45, 87, 88. Ebert, II. 221, 222.

Amalarius was a deacon and priest in Metz, and died in 837, as abbot of Hornbach in the same diocese. It is not known when or where he was born. During the deposition of Agobard (833–837), Amalarius was head of the church at Lyons. He was one of the ecclesiastics who enjoyed the friendship of Louis the Pious, and took part in the predestination controversy, but his work against Gottschalk, undertaken at Hincmar’s request, is lost. He was prominent in councils. Thus he made the patristic compilation from the Fathers (particularly from Isidore of Seville) and councils upon the canonical life, which was presented at the Diet at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817,1166 and partly that upon image-worship in the theological congress of Paris, presented Dec. 6, 825. In 834, as representative of Agobard, he held a council at Lyons and discoursed to the members for three days upon the ecclesiastical offices, as explained in his work mentioned below. The majority approved, but Florus of Lyons did not, and sent two letters to the council at Diedenhofen, calling attention to Amalarius insistence upon the use of the Roman order and his dangerous teaching: that there was a threefold body of Christ, (1) the body which he had assumed, (2) the body which he has in us so long as we live, (3) the body which is in the dead. Hence the host must be divided into three parts, one of which is put in the cup, one on the paten and one on the altar, corresponding to these three forms respectively. Farther he was charged with teaching that the bread of the Eucharist stood for the body, the wine for the soul of Christ, the chalice for his sepulchre, the celebrant for Joseph of Arimathea, the archdeacon for Nicodemus, the deacons for the apostles, the sub-deacons for the women at the sepulchre. But the council had business in hand of too pressing a character to admit of their investigating these charges. Not discouraged, Florus sent a similar letter to the council of Quiercy (838), and by this council the work of Amalarius was censured.1167

His writings embrace (1) Rules for the canonical life,1168 already referred to. It treats of the duties of ecclesiastics of all grades.

(2) Four books upon The ecclesiastical offices.1169  It was written by request of Louis the Pious, to whom it is dedicated, and was completed about 820. In order to make it better, Amalarius pursued special investigations in Tours, at the monastery of Corbie, and even went to Rome. In 827 he brought out a second and greatly improved edition. In its present shape the work is important for the study of liturgics, since it describes minutely the exact order of service as it was observed in the Roman church in the ninth century. If Amalarius had been content to have given merely information it would have been better for his reputation. As it was he attempted to give the reasons and the meanings of each part of the service, and of each article in any way connected with the service, and hence was led into wild and often ridiculous theorizing and allegorizing. Thus the priest’s alb signifies the subduing of the passions, his shoes, upright walking; his cope, good works; his surplice, readiness to serve his neighbors; his handkerchief, good thoughts, etc.

(3) On the order of the anthems,1170 i.e.  in the Roman service. It is a compilation of the antiphones of the Roman and French. churches.

(4) Eclogues on the office of the Mass,1171 meaning again the Roman mass. This insistence upon the Roman order was directed against Archbishop Agobard of Lyons, who had not only not adopted the Roman order, but had expurgated the liturgy of his church of everything which in his judgment savored of false doctrine or which was undignified in liturgical expression.

(5) Epistles.1172  The first letter, addressed to Jeremiah, archbishop of Sens, on the question whether one should write Jhesus or Jesus. The second is Jeremiah’s reply, deciding in favor of Jhesus. In the third, Amalarius asks Jonas of Orleans whether one should use I H C or I H S as a contraction of Jesus. Jonas favored I H S. The fourth is on the Eucharist. Rantgarius is his correspondent. Amalarius maintains the Real Presence. He says the first cup at supper signified the Old Testament sacrifices, the figure of the true blood, which was in the second cup. The fifth letter is to Hetto, a monk, who had asked whether "seraphin" or "seraphim" is the correct form. Amalarius replies with learned ignorance that both are correct, for "seraphin" is neuter and "seraphim," masculine!  The sixth is the most important of the series. It is addressed to a certain Guntrad, who had been greatly troubled because Amalarius had spit shortly after having partaken of the Eucharist, and therefore had voided a particle of the body of Christ. Amalarius, in his reply, says that he had so much phlegm in his throat that he was obliged to spit very frequently. He did not believe, however, that God would make that which helped his bodily injure his spiritual health. He then goes on to say that the true honor of the body of Christ is by the inner man, into which it enters as life. Hence if one who inwardly revered the host should accidentally or unavoidably spit out a fragment of the host he must not be judged as thereby dishonoring the body of Christ. He thus touches, without passing judgment upon, the position of the Stercoranists. The last letter is only a fragment and is so different in style from the former that it probably is not by Amalaritius of Metz.

§ 164. Einhard.

I. Einhardus: Opera in Migne, Tom. CIV. col. 351–610; and Vita Caroli in Tom. XCVII. col. 25–62; also complete Latin and French ed. by A. Teulet: OEuvres complètes d’Éginhard, réunies pour la première fois et traduites en français. Paris, 1840–43, 2 vols. The Annales and Vita of Migne’s ed. are reprinted from Pertz’s Monumenta Germaniae historica (I. 135–189 and II. 433–463, respectively); separate ed. of the Vita, Hannover, 1839. The best edition of the Epistolae and Vita, is in Philipp Jaffé: Monumenta Carolina, Berlin, 1867, pp. 437–541; and of the Passio Marcellini et Petri is in Ernest Dümmler; Poëtae Latini aevi Carolini, Tom. II. (Berlin, 1884), pp. 125–135. Teulet’s translation of Einhard’s complete works has been separately issued, Paris, 1856. Einhard’s Vita Caroli has been translated into German by J. L. Ideler, Hamburg, 1839, 2 vols. (with very elaborate notes), and by Otto Abel, Berlin, 1850; and into English by W. Glaister, London, 1877, and by Samuel Epes Turner, New York, 1880. Einhard’s Annales have been translated by Otto Abel (Einhard’s Jahrbücher), Berlin, 1850.

II. Cf. the prefaces and notes in the works mentioned above. Also Ceillier, XII. 352–357. Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 550–567. Bähr, 200–214. Ebert, II. 92–104. Also J. W. Ch. Steiner: Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt und ehemal Abtei Seligenstadt. Aschaffenburg, 1820.

Einhard (or Eginhard),1173 the biographer of Charlemagne and the best of the historians of the Carolingian age, was the son of Einhard and Engilfrita, and was born about 770, in that part of the Valley of the Main which belongs to Hesse-Darmstadt. His family was noble and his education was conducted in the famous Benedictine monastic school of St. Boniface at Fulda, to which his parents sent gifts.1174  About 792 the abbot Baugolf sent him to the court of Charlemagne, in order that his already remarkable attainments might be increased and his ability find ample scope. The favorable judgment and prophecy of Baugolf were justified by events. He soon won all hearts by his amiable disposition and applause by his versatile learning. He married Imma, a maiden of noble family, sister of Bernharius, bishop of Worms, and with her lived very happily for many years.1175  She bore him a son named Wussin who became a monk at Fulda. He enjoyed the Emperor’s favor to a marked degree,1176 and figured in important and delicate matters. Thus he was sent in 806 to Rome to obtain the papal signature to Charlemagne’s will dividing the empire among his sons.1177  Again in 813 it was he who first suggested the admission of Louis to the co-regency. He superintended the building operations of Charlemagne, e.g. at Aix la Chapelle (Aachen), according to the ideas of Vitruvius, whom he studied diligently.1178  His skill as a craftsman won him the academic title of Bezaleel.1179  He pursued his studies and gathered a fine library of classic authors. He edited the court annals.1180  Charlemagne’s death (814) did not alter his position. Louis the Pious retained him as councillor and appointed him in 817 instructor to his son Lothair. When trouble broke out (830) between father and son he did his best to reconcile them.

Although a layman he had received at different times since 815 a number of church preferments. Louis made him abbot of Fontenelle in the diocese of Rouen, of St. Peter’s of Blandigny and St. Bavon’s at Ghent, of St. Servais’ at Maestricht, and head of the church of St. John the Baptist at Pavia. On Jan. 11, 815, Louis gave Einhard and Imma the domains of Michelstadt and Mulinheim in the Odenwald on the Main; and on June 2 of that year he is first addressed as abbot.1181  As the political affairs of the empire became more complicated he withdrew more and more from public life, and turned his attention to literature. He resigned the care of the abbey of Fontenelle in 823, and after administrating other abbeys sought rest at Michelstadt. There he built a church in which he put (827) the relics of the saints Marcellinus and Petrus which had been stolen from the church of St. Tiburtius near Rome.1182  A year later, however, he removed to Mulinheim, which name he changed to Seligenstadt; there he built a splendid church and founded a monastery. After his unsuccessful attempt to end the strife between Louis and Lothair he retired altogether to Seligenstadt. About 836 he wrote his now lost work upon the Worship of the Cross, which he dedicated to Servatus Lupus.1183  In 836 his wife died. His grief was inconsolable, and aroused the commiseration of his friends;1184 and even the emperor Louis made him a visit of condolence.1185  But he carried his burden till his death on March 14, 840. He is honored as a saint in the abbey of Fontenelle on February 20. His epitaph was written by Rabanus Maurus.

He and his wife were originally buried in one sarcophagus in the choir of the church in Seligenstadt, but in 1810 the sarcophagus was presented by the Grand Duke of Hesse to the count of Erbach, who claims descent from Einhard as the husband of Imma, the reputed daughter of Charlemagne. The count put it in the famous chapel of his castle at Erbach in the Odenwald.

Einhard was in stature almost a dwarf, but in mind he was in the esteem of his contemporaries a giant. His classical training fitted him to write an immortal work, the Life of Charlemagne. His position at court brought him into contact on terms of equality with all the famous men of the day. In youth he sat under Alcuin, in old age he was himself the friend and inspirer of such a man as Servatus Lupus. His life seems to have been on the whole favored, and although a courtier, he preserved his simplicity and purity of character.

His Writings embrace:

1. The Life of the Emperor Charlemagne.1186  This is one of the imperishable works in literature. It is a tribute of sincere admiration to one who was in many respects the greatest statesman that ever lived. It was Einhard’s ambition to do for Charlemagne what Suetonius had done for Augustus. Accordingly he attempted an imitation of Suetonius in style and as far as possible in contents,1187 and it is high praise to say that Einhard has not failed. The Life is the chief source of knowledge about Charlemagne personally, and it is so written as to carry the stamp of candor and truth, so that his private life stands revealed and his public life sufficiently outlined. Einhard began it soon after Charlemagne’s death (814) and finished it about 820. It quickly attained a wide-spread and enthusiastic reception.1188  It was looked upon as a model production. Later writers drew freely upon it and portions were rendered into verse.1189  It is not, however, entirely free from inaccuracies, as the critical editions show.

2. The Annals of Lorsch.1190  Einhard edited and partly rewrote them from 741 to 801,1191 and wrote entirely those from 802 to 829. These annals give a brief record of the events of each year from the beginning of Pepin’s reign till the withdrawal of Einhard from court.

3. Account of the removal of the relics of the blessed martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus.1192  This is a very extraordinary narrative of fraud and cunning and "miracles." In brief it very candidly states that the relics were stolen by Deusdona, a Roman deacon, Ratleik, Einhard’s representative and Hun, a servant of the abbey of Soissons. But after they had been safely conveyed from Rome they were openly exhibited, and very many "miracles" were wrought by them, and it was to relate these that the book was written.

4. The Passion of Marcellinus and Petrus1193 is a poem of three hundred and fifty-four trochaic tetrameters. It has been attributed to Einhard, but the absence of all allusion to the removal of the relics of these saints renders the authorship very doubtful. 1194

5. Letters.1195  There are seventy-one in all; many of them defective. They are mostly very brief and on matters of business. Several are addressed to Louis and Lothair, and one to Servatus Lupus on the death of his (Einhard’s) wife, which deserves particular attention.

§ 165. Smaragdus.

I. Smaragdus, abbas monasterii Sancti Michaelis Virdunensis: Opera omnia in Migne, Tom. CII. cols. 9–980: with Pitra’s notes, cols. 1111–1132. His Carmina are in Dümmler, Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, I. 605–619.

II. Hauréau: Singularités historiques et littéraires. Paris, 1861 (pp. 100 sqq.) H. Keil: De grammaticis quibusdam latinis infimae aetatis (Program) . Erlangen, 1868. Hist. Lit. de la France, IV. 439–447. Ceillier, XII. 254–257. Bähr, 362–364. Ebert, II. 108–12.

Of the early life of Smaragdus nothing is known. He joined the Benedictine order of monks, and after serving as principal of the convent school was elected about 805 abbot of the monastery on Mt. Castellion. Sometime later he moved his monks a few miles away and founded the monastery of St. Mihiel on the banks of the Meuse, in the diocese of Verdun. He was a man of learning and of practical activity. In consequence he was highly esteemed by the two monarchs under whom he lived, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. The former employed him to write the letter to Pope Leo III. in which was communicated the decision of the council of Aix la Chapelle (809) respecting the adoption of the Filioque, and sent him to Rome with the commissioners to lay the matter before the pope. He acted as secretary, and drew up the protocol. Louis the Pious showed him equal consideration, richly endowed his monastery, and in 824 appointed him to act with Frotharius, bishop of Toul (813837) as arbitrator between Ismund, abbot of Milan, and his monks. Smaragdus died about 840.

His writings show diligence and piety, but no originality. His published works in prose are: (1) Collections of Comments on the Epistle and Gospel for each holy day in the year, 1196 an uncritical but comprehensive compilation from numerous ecclesiastical writers, prepared for the use of preachers, and described by the author as a liber comitis. (2) The monk’s diadem, 1197 a collection in one hundred chapters of ascetic rules and reflections concerning the principal duties and virtues of the monastic life. It is for the most part a compilation. The sources are the Collectiones patrum of Cassian and the writings of Gregory the Great. Smaragdus made it after his elevation to the abbotship and enjoined its daily evening reading upon his monks.1198  It proved to be a very popular work, was widely circulated during the Middle Age, and has been repeatedly published .1199  (3) Commentary upon the rule of St. Benedict 1200 undertaken in aid of the monastic reforms instituted by the council of Aix la Chapelle (817). It is characterized by great strictness. (4) The Royal way1201  dedicated to Louis the Pious while king of Aquitania.1202  it consists of thirty-two chapters of moral and spiritual counsels, which if faithfully followed will conduct an earthly king into the heavenly kingdom. The work is really only an adaptation of the Diadem to the wants of the secular life. (5) Acts of the Roman conference,1203 the protocol already alluded to. (6) Epistle of Charles the Great to Leo the Pope upon the procession of the Holy Spirit,1204 the letter mentioned above. (7) Epistle of Frotharius and Smaragdus to the Emperor Louis,1205 the report of the arbitrators. (8) A larger grammar or a commentary upon Donatus.1206  His earliest work, written at the request of his scholars, probably between 800 and 805. It is still unprinted, except a small portion.1207  There yet remain in MS. a Commentary on the Prophets, and a History of the Monastery of St. Michael 1208  Smaragdus also wrote poetry. Besides a hymn to Christ,1209 there have been preserved his metrical introductions to his Collections and Commentary on the rule of St. Benedict, of which the first has twenty-nine lines in hexameter, and the second thirty-seven distichs.

§ 166. Jonas of Orleans.

I. Jonas, Aurelianensis episcopus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CVI. col. 117–394.

II. Du Pin, VII. 3, 4. Ceillier, XII. 389–394. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 20–31. Bähr, 394–398. Ebert, II. 225–230.

Jonas was a native of Aquitania, and in 821 succeeded Theodulph as archbishop of Orleans. In the first year of his episcopate he reformed the convent at Mici, near Orleans, and thereby greatly extended its usefulness. His learning in classical and theological literature joined to his administrative ability made him a leader in important councils, and also led to his frequent employment by Louis the Pious on delicate and difficult commissions. Thus the emperor sent him to examine the administration of the law in certain districts of his empire, and in 835 to the monasteries of Fleury and St. Calez in Le Mains. His most conspicuous service was, however, in connection with the gathering of bishops and theologians held at Paris in Nov. 825 to consider the question of image-worship. The emperor sent him and Jeremiah, archbishop of Sens, to Rome to lay before the pope that part of the collection of patristic quotations on the subject made by Halitgar and Amalarius, which was most appropriate. 1210  The issue of this transaction is unknown. He was the leading spirit in the reform council of Paris (829), and probably drew up its acts;1211 and again at Diedenhofen, where, on March 4, 835, he dictated the protocol of Ebo’s deposition.1212  He died at Orleans in 843 or 844.

His Writings are interesting and important, although few.

1. The layman’s rule of life,1213 in three books, composed in 828 for Mathfred, count of Orleans, who had requested instruction how to lead a godly life while in the bonds of matrimony. The first and last books are general in their contents, but the second is for the most part specially addressed to married people. As might be expected Jonas takes strong ground against vice in all its forms and so his work has great value in the history of ethics. It is very likely that the second book was composed first.1214

2. The Kings rule of life,1215 written about 829 and dedicated to Pepin. Both the above-mentioned works are little more than compilations from the Bible and the fathers, especially from Augustin, but the author’s own remarks throw a flood of light upon the sins and follies of his time.1216

3. The Worship of Images.1217  This is his chief work, and a very important one. It is in three books, and was written against Claudius of Turin. It was nearly finished at the time of the latter’s death (839), and then laid aside since Jonas fancied that the bold position of Claudius would scarcely be assumed by any one else. But when he found that the pupils and followers of Claudius were propagating the same opinions he took up his book again and finished it about 842. It had been begun at the request of Louis the Pious; but he having died in 840, Jonas dedicated the work to his son, Charles the Bald, in a letter in which the above-mentioned facts about its origin are stated. Jonas opposes Claudius with his own weapons of irony and satire, gives his portrait in no flattering colors and even ridicules his latinity. The first book defends the use of images (pictures), the invocation and worship of the saints, the doctrine of their intercession, and the veneration due to their relics, but asserts that the French do not worship images. The second book defends the veneration of the cross, and the third pilgrimages to Rome.

4. History of the translation of the relics of Saint Hubert.1218  Hubert, patron saint of hunters, died in 727 as first bishop of Liége, and was buried there in St. Peter’s church. In 744 he was moved to another portion of the church, but in 825 bishop Walcand of Liége removed his relics to the monastery of Andvin which he had reestablished, and it is this second translation which Jonas describes.

§ 167. Rabanus Maurus.

I. Rabanus Maurus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CVII.-CXII. His Carmina are in Dümmler’s Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, II. 159–258. Migne’s edition is a reprint, with additions, of that of Colvenerius, Cologne, 1617, but is not quite complete, for Dümmler gives new pieces, and others are known to exist in MS.

II. The Prolegomena in Migne, CVII. col. 9–106, which contains the Vitae by Mabillon, Rudolf, Raban’s pupil, and by Trithemius. Johann Franz Buddeus: Dissertatio de vita ac doctrina Rabani Mauri Magnentii, Jena, 1724. Friedrich Heinrich Christian Schwarz: Commentatio de Rabano Mauro, primo Germaniae praeceptore (Program). Heidelberg, 1811. Johann Konrad Dahl: Leben und Schriften des Erzbischofs Rabanus Maurus. Fulda, 1828. Nicolas Bach: Hrabanus Maurus; der Schöpfer des deutschen Schulwesens (Program). Fulda, 1835. Friedrich Kunstmann: Hrabanus Magnentius Maurus. Mainz, 1841. Theodor Spengler: Leben des heiligen Rhabanus Maurus. Regensburg, 1856. Köhler: Hrabanus Maurus und die Schule zu Fulda (Dissertation). Leipzig, 1870. Richter: Babanus Maurus. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Paedagogik im Mittelalter (Program). Malchin, 1883. Cf. E. F. J. Dronke: Codex dip Fuld. Cassel, 1850. J. Bass Mullinger: The Schools of Charles the Great. London, 1877, pp. 188–157. J. F. Böhmer: Regesten zur Gesch. d. Mainzer Erzbischöfe, ed. C. Will. 1. Bd. A.D. 742–1160. Innsbruck, 1877.

III. Du Pin, VII. 160–166. Ceillier, XII. 446–476. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 151–203. Bähr, 415–447. Ebert, II. 120–145.

His Life.

Magnentius Hrabanus Maurus is the full name, as written by himself,1219 of one of the greatest scholars and teachers of the Carolingian age. He was born in Mainz1220 about 776. At the age of nine he was placed by his parents in the famous Benedictine monastery of Fulda, in the Grand-duchy of Hesse, which was then in a very flourishing condition under Baugolf (780–802). There he received a careful education both in sacred and secular learning, for Baugolf was himself a classical scholar. Raban took the monastic vows, and in 801 was ordained deacon. In 802 Baugolf died and was succeeded by Ratgar. The new abbot at first followed the example of his predecessor, and in order to keep up the reputation of the monastery for learning he sent the brightest of the inmates to Tours to receive the instruction of Alcuin, not only in theology but particularly in the liberal arts. Among them was Raban, who indeed had a great desire to go. The meeting of the able and experienced, though old, wearied and somewhat mechanical teacher, and the fresh, vigorous, insatiable student, was fraught with momentous consequences for Europe. Alcuin taught Raban far more than book knowledge; he fitted him to teach others, and so put him in the line of the great teachers—Isidore, Bede, Alcuin. Between Alcuin and Raban there sprang up a very warm friendship, but death removed the former in the same year in which Raban returned to Fulda (804), and so what would doubtless have been a most interesting correspondence was limited to a single interchange of letters.1221

Raban was appointed principal of the monastery’s school. In his work he was at first assisted by Samuel, his fellow-pupil at Tours, but when the latter was elected bishop of Worms Raban carried on the school alone. The new abbot, Ratgar, quickly degenerated into a tyrant with an architectural mania. He begrudged the time spent in study and instruction. Accordingly he chose very effective measures to break up the school. He took the books away from the scholars and even from their principal, Raban Maur.1222  In 807 the monastery was visited with a malignant fever, and a large proportion of the monks, especially of the younger ones, died, and many left. Thus by death and defection the number was reduced from 400 to 150, but those who remained had to work all the harder. It was probably during this period of misrule and misery that Raban made his journey to Palestine, to which, however, he only once alludes.1223  On December 23, 814, he was ordained priest.1224

In 817 Ratgar was deposed and Raban’s friend Eigil elected in his place.1225  With Eigil a better day dawned for the monastery. Raban was now unhampered in teaching and able once more to write. The school grew so large that it had to be divided. Those scholars who were designed for the secular life were taught in a separate place outside the monastery. The library was also much increased.

In 822 Eigil died and Raban was elected his successor. He proved a good leader in spiritual affairs. He took personal interest in the monks, and frequently preached to them. He paid particular attention to the education of the priests. He compiled books for their especial benefit, and as far as possible taught in the school, particularly on Biblical topics. The principal of the school under him was Canadidus, already mentioned as the biographer of Eigil.1226  His most famous pupils belong to this period: Servatus Lupus, Walahfrid Strabo (826–829) and Otfrid. He showed his passion for collecting relics, which he enshrined in a very costly way. He also built churches and extended the influence of Fulda by colonizing his monks in different places, adding six affiliated monasteries to the sixteen already existing.

In the spring of 842 Raban laid down his office and retired to the "cell" on the Petersberg, in the neighborhood of Fulda. There he thought he should be able to end his days in literary activity undisturbed by the cares of office. To this end he called in the aid of several assistants and so worked rapidly. But he was too valuable a man to be allowed to retire from active life. Accordingly on the death of Otgar, archbishop of Mainz (April 21, 847), he was unanimously elected by the chapter, the nobility and the people of Mainz his successor. He reluctantly consented, and was consecrated June 26, 847. In October of that year he held his first synod in the monastery of St. Alban’s, Mainz. It was a provincial council by command of Louis the German. Among the notables present were his suffragans, Samuel of Worms, his former fellow-teacher, Ebo of Hildesheim, Haymo of Halberstadt, his fellow-student under Alcuin, and also Ansgar of Hamburg, who had come to plead for the Northern mission. This synod renewed the command to the priests to preach. In this act Raban is recognized. On October 1, 848, a second synod was held at Mainz, which is memorable as the first in which the Gottschalk matter was discussed. Gottschalk had been a pupil at Fulda and his course had incurred the anger of Raban, who accordingly opposed him in the council. The result was that the synod decided adversely to Gottschalk and sent him for judgment to Hincmar. In the Annals of Fulda begun by Enhard (not to be confounded with Einhard), and continued by Rudolf, it is gratefully recorded that during the great famine in Germany in 850 Raban fed more than 300 persons daily in the village of Winzel.1227  In October, 851 or 852, Raban presided over a third synod at Mainz, which passed a number of reform canons; such as one forbidding the clergy to hunt, and another anathematizing a layman who withdrew from a priest who had been married, thinking it wrong to receive the eucharist from such a one.1228

Raban died at Mainz Feb. 4, 456, and was buried in the monastery of St. Alban’s. He wrote his own epitaph which is modest yet just. In 1515 Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg removed his bones to Halle.

His Position And Influence.

Raban was one of the most eminent men in the ninth century for virtue, piety and scholarship. As pupil he was unremitting in his pursuit of learning; as teacher he was painstaking, inspiring and instructive; as abbot he strove to do his whole duty; as archbishop he zealously contended for the faith regardless of adversaries; according to his own motto, "When the cause is Christ’s, the opposition of the bad counts for naught." He bore his honors modestly, and was free from pride or envy. While willing to yield to proper demands and patient of criticism, he was inflexible and rigorous in maintaining a principle. He had the courage to oppose alone the decision of the council of 829 that a monk might leave his order. He denied the virtues of astrology and opposed trial by ordeal. He early declared himself a friend of Louis the Pious and plainly and earnestly rebuked the unfilial conduct of his sons. After the death of Louis he threw in his fortune with Lothair and the defeat of the latter at Fontenai, June 25, 841, was a personal affliction and may have hastened his resignation of the abbotship, which took place in the spring of the following year. The relations, however, between him and his new king, Louis the German, were friendly. Louis called him to his court and appointed him archbishop of Mainz.

Raban’s permanent fame rests upon his labors as teacher and educational writer. From these he has won the proud epithet, Primus Germaniae Praeceptor. The school at Fulda became famous for piety and erudition throughout the length and breadth of the Frankish kingdom. Many noble youth, as well as those of the lower classes, were educated there and afterwards became the bishops and pastors of the Church of Germany. No one was refused on the score of poverty. Fulda started the example, quickly followed in other monasteries, of diligent Bible study. And what is much more remarkable, Raban was the first one in Germany to conduct a monastic school in which many boys were trained for the secular life.1229  It is this latter action which entitles him to be called the founder of the German school system. The pupils of Raban were in demand elsewhere as teachers; and princes could not find a better school than his for their sons. One of the strongest proofs of its excellence is the fact that Einhard, himself a former pupil at Fulda, and now a great scholar and teacher, sent his son Wussin there, and in a letter still extant exhorts his son to make diligent use of his rare advantages, and above all to attend to what is said by that "great orator," Raban Maur.1230  Raban’s encyclopaedia, The Universe, attests his possession of universal learning and of the power to impart it to others. So, while Alcuin was his model, he enlarged upon his master’s conception of education, and in himself and his works set an example whose influence has never been lost.

His Writings.

Raban was a voluminous author. But like the other writers of his time, he made mostly compilations from the Fathers and the later ecclesiastics. He was quick to respond to the needs of his day, and to answer questions of enquiring students. He betrays a profound acquaintance with the Holy Scripture. His works may be divided into seven classes.

I. Biblical. (1) Commentaries upon the whole Bible, except Ezra, Nehemiah, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, the Minor Prophets, Catholic Epistles and Revelation. He commented also on the Apocryphal books, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and Maccabees.1231  These commentaries were probably in part compiled by his pupils, under his direction. They preserved a knowledge both of the Bible and of the Fathers in an age when books were very scarce and libraries still rarer. A single fact very strikingly brings out this state of things. Frechulf, bishop of Lisieux, in urging Raban to comment on the Pentateuch, states that in his diocese there were very few books of any kind, not even a whole Bible, much less any complete exposition of it.1232  Raban thus gives his views of biblical interpretation:1233 "If any one would master the Scriptures he must first of all diligently find out the amount of history, allegory, anagoge and trope there may be in the part under consideration. For there are four senses to the Scriptures, the historical, the allegorical, the tropological and the anagogical, which we call the daughters of wisdom. Through these Wisdom feeds her children. To those who are young and beginning to learn she gives the milk of history; to those advancing in the faith the bread of allegory; those who are truly and constantly doing good so that they abound therein she satisfies with the savory repast of tropology; while, finally, those who despise earthly things and ardently desire the heavenly she fills to the full with the wine of anagoge."

In accordance with these principles his commentaries’ except that of Matthew, the earliest issued (819), contain very little proper exegesis, but a great deal of mystical and spiritual interpretation. The labor in their composition must have been considerable, but he carried it on for twenty years. He did not always copy the exact language of his sources, but reproduced it in his own words. He was particular to state the place of his excerpts. Each successive commentary had a separate dedication. Thus, those on Judith and Esther were dedicated to the empress Judith, because, he says, she resembled the Hebrew heroines; that on Chronicles to Louis the Pious, her husband, as a guide in government; that on Maccabees to Louis the German; that on Jeremiah to Lothair.

(2) He also prepared a commentary in the same style upon the Biblical hymns sung in morning worship.1234

(3) Scripture Allegories1235 a conveniently arranged dictionary, in alphabetical order of terms which were defined allegorically. Thus, "Annus is the time of grace, as in Isaiah [lxi. 2], ’the acceptable year of the Lord.’ Also, the multitude of the redeemed, as in Job iii. 6, ’let it not be joined unto the days of the year’ among the elect who are saved. Also the eternity of Christ, as in Psalm cii. 24, ’thy years are throughout all generations,’ because the eternity of God lasts forever. It also signifies our life, as in Psalm xc. 9, ’our years are thought upon as if a cobweb’ (Vulg.) i.e., our life rushes along in emptiness and corruption."1236

(4) The life of Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha.1237  It includes the related sections of our Lord’s life and the legendary history of the sisters, and is in its way an interesting work. But he confounds Mary the sister of Lazarus with Mary of Magdala, and the latter again with the woman that was a sinner. Hence after declaring that Mary was a miracle of beauty he is obliged to touch upon her unchastity prior to her meeting with Christ.

II. Educational. (1) The Institutes of the clergy.1238  This important work was written in 819 in answer to numerous requests. It is in three books, prefaced by a poetical epigram. The prose preface gives an outline of the work, and states its sources. The work is very largely directly compiled from Augustin’s De doctrina Christiana, Cassiodorus’ Institutiones, and Gregory’s Cura pastoralis. The first book of Raban’s Institutes relates to ecclesiastical orders, clerical vestments, the sacraments,1239 and the office of the mass. The second book relates to the canonical hours, the litany, fasting, alms, penance, the feasts, prayers for the dead, singing of psalms and hymns, reading of the Scriptures, the creed and gives a list of the heresies. The third book treats of the education requisite to make an efficient servant of the church. It is noteworthy that he lays primary stress upon a knowledge of the Scriptures,1240 and gives directions for their study and explanation. He then passes on to discuss the components of education as then conducted, i.e. the seven liberal arts, and closes with directions how to speak and teach with the best results. He properly remarks that the preacher should have regard to the age, sex, and failings of his audience. He is to come forth as God’s spokesman, and if he is truly a man of God he will be upheld by divine power. This is the proper spirit. Man is nothing. God is everything. "Let him who glorieth glory in Him in whose hand both we and our sermons are."1241

(2) On Computation.1242  It was written in 820, and is in the form of a dialogue between a master and his disciple. Much of it was copied verbatim from Bede’s De temporum ratione, Isidore’s Etymologies, and Boëthius’ Arithmetic. But the resulting work marked an advance in instruction in the important matter of computing numbers, times and seasons.

(3) The Universe.1243  Isidore of Seville had already set the example of preparing an encyclopedia of universal knowledge, and Raban in his Universe merely reproduces Isidore’s Etymologies, with some difference in the arrangement of the material, and with the addition of allegorical and spiritual matter, interpretations of the names and words, together with many quotations of Scripture. The work was one of the early fruits of his learned leisure, being written about 844. It is in twenty-two books, the number in the Hieronymian canon of the Old Testament, and is dedicated to Haymo of Halberstadt, and to King Louis. It begins with the doctrine of God, and the first five books relate to religion and worship. The remaining books relate to secular things, ranging from man himself, considered as an animal, through the beasts to the starry heavens, time and the divisions of time, the waters on and under the earth, the clouds above it, and the earth itself. He then speaks of mountains and valleys and divers places; of public buildings and their parts; of philosophy and linguistics, stones and metals, weights and measures, diseases and remedies, trees and plants, wars and triumphs, shows and games, pictures and colors, dress and ornaments, food and drink, vehicles and harness.

(4) Excerpt from Priscian’s Grammar,1244 an abridged edition of a standard grammar. It is almost entirely confined to prosody, but it served to introduce Priscian into schools.1245

(5) The holy orders, divine sacraments and priestly garments.1246

(6) Ecclesiastical discipline.1247  The last two treatises, made during the author’s archiepiscopate, are merely extracts from the Institutes, with slight alterations.

(7) The parts of the human body, in Latin and German.1248  This glossary, was drawn up by Walahfrid Strabo from Raban’s lectures. At the end are the months and the winds in Latin and German.1249

(8) The invention of languages1250 [letters], a curious collection of alphabets—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Scythian and Runic, with the names of the supposed inventors. The little tract also includes the commonest abbreviations and monograms.

III. Occasional writings, i.e., upon current questions and in answer to questions. (1) The oblation of boys,1251 the famous treatise in which Raban argued against the position the Mainz Council of 829 had taken in allowing Gottschalk to leave his order. Gottschalk produced two arguments, the first that it was not right to compel a person to remain a monk just because his parents had in his infancy, or immature youth put him in a monastery. The second was that the oblation of a minor must be established by a properly qualified witness, and that in his case only Saxons could give such testimony, since, according to Saxon law, it was illegal to deprive a Saxon of his liberty on the testimony of a non-Saxon. Raban tries to refute him upon both points. He shows that both the Scriptures and the Fathers by precept and example allow of the consecration of children, and in relation to the second point he rejoins:  As if the service of Christ deprived a man of his liberty and nobility!"1252  But the real objection to Gottschalk’s second argument was the latter’s assertion that Frankish testimony could not be received. This roused Raban’s patriotism and incited his eloquence. "Who does not know," he says, "that the Franks were Christians long before the Saxons?  Yet the latter, contrary to all human and divine law, arrogate to themselves the right to reject Frankish testimony."1253  Having thus answered Gottschalk, he proves by the Bible his third argument, that a vow to God must not be broken. His final point is that monasticism is a divine institution. In this treatise he does not name Gottschalk, but the reference is unmistakeable. His whole conduct towards the unfortunate Gottschalk was intolerant.

(2) The reverence of children to their parents, and of subjects to their king.1254  This was addressed to Louis the Pious after his deposition and imprisonment in the year 833. By Biblical quotations he shows that God has commanded children to honor their parents and subjects their kings, and has put his curse upon those who do not. Then coming directly to the point he makes the application to the existing circumstances, and calls the sons of Louis to obedience. He defends Louis against the charge of homicide in executing Bernard; and finally addressing the emperor he comforts him in his sorrow and counsels him to exercise clemency when he is restored to power. The whole treatise does great credit to Raban’s head and heart.

(3) On the degrees of relationship within which marriage is permissible.1255

(4) Magic arts.1256  Raban was singularly free from the superstitions of his time, for in the second part of this tract, written in 842, he takes strong ground against necromancy in all its forms, of which he gives an interesting catalogue, and while explaining the appearance of ghosts, evil spirits and similar supposed existences on the ground of demoniac influence, he yet admits the possibility that the senses may be deceived. Curiously enough, he cites in point the appearance of Samuel to Saul. He denies the reality of Samuel’s appearance and holds that Saul was deceived by the devil; for two reasons, (1) the real Samuel, the man of God, would not have permitted the worship which Saul paid to the supposed Samuel; (2) the real Samuel was in Abraham’s bosom; he would, therefore, not say to the impious king, "To-morrow thou shalt be with me."1257

(4) A Response to certain Canonical Questions of the Suffragan Bishop Reginald.1258

(5) Whether it is permissible for a suffragan bishop to ordain priests and deacons with the consent of his bishop.1259  He replies in the affirmative.

IV. Writings upon Penance. (1) Two Penitentials.1260  They give the decisions of councils respecting penance. (2) Canonical questions relating to penance.1261  (3) The virtues and vices and the satisfaction for sin.1262

V. Miscellaneous. (1) Homilies.1263  There are two collections, the first seventy in number upon the principal feasts and on the virtues; the second, one hundred and sixty-three upon the Gospels and Epistles. The first collection must have been made earlier than 826, for it is dedicated to bishop Haistulf, who died in that year. The most of these homilies were doubtless actually delivered by Raban. The sermons of Leo the Great, Augustin, Alcuin and others have been liberally drawn on, and so the homilies are compilations in great measure, like the rest of his works. Yet a few are apparently original and have the greatest interest, inasmuch as they treat of the vices then current and so furnish a picture of the times.1264

(2) Treatise on the Soul.1265  It is an extract with slight additions from Cassiodorus’ De Anima, as he acknowledges in his preface to king Lothair. To it are appended extracts from the De disciplina Romanae militiae of Flavius Vegetius Renatus. The reason given for this strange appendix is "the frequent incursions of the Barbarians." The treatise was perhaps the last product of Rabanus.1266

(3) A martyrology.1267  The saints for the different days are noted, in most cases merely the name is given, in others there are short sketches. Its principal source is Jerome. It was prepared at the request of Ratleik, who stole the relics of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus for Einhard; and is prefaced by a short poem addressed to the abbot Grimold.

(4) The vision of God, purity of heart and mode of penance.1268  Three books dedicated to the abbot Bonosus (Hatto). The first is mostly extracted from Augustin’s De vivendo Deo; the second and the third from other old sources.

(5) The Passion of our Lord,1269 a brief and pious meditation upon our Lord’s sufferings.

VI. Letters. (1) A letter to Bishop Humbert upon lawful degrees of relationship between married persons.1270  (2) Seven miscellaneous letters.1271  Epist. i. to suffragan bishop Regimbald on discipline. Epist. iii. to Eigil against Radbertus’s view of the Lord’s Supper. Epist. iv. v. vi. to Hincmar, Notingus and Count Eberhard upon predestination. Epist. vii. to Louis the German; the acts of the Mainz council of 848. Epist. viii. on Gottschalk, a synodical letter to Hincmar.

VII. Poems. Raban was no poetic genius; yet he had carefully studied prosody and he was able to write verses to his friends and for different occasions.1272  He also wrote some epitaphs, including his own. His most extraordinary production is a long poem, "The praise of the Cross." This was begun at the suggestion of Alcuin in Tours, but not completed until 815. It is a monument of misdirected skill and patience. He presents twenty-eight drawings by his friend Hatto. Some are geometrical, others are of persons or objects. The page on which is the drawing is filled in by a stanza of the poem, the letters of which are regularly spaced and some are purposely arranged in prominent and peculiar positions so that they catch the eye and form other words. Each stanza is followed by an explanatory section in prose, and the second book is a prose treatise upon the subject. The whole is prefaced by three poems; the first pleads for the intercession of Alcuin, the second is the dedication to the Pope, and the third, "The figure Of Caesar" is the dedication to Louis the Pious. Alcuin had written a poem, "On the Holy Cross," upon a somewhat similar plan. So that the suggestion may have come from him, but the idea may be traced to Fortunatus. This poem of Raban Maur was very popular in the Middle Age and was considered a marvel of ingenuity.

The hymns of Raban are few in number, for although many have been attributed to him his right to most of them is very doubtful.

§ 168. Haymo.

I. Haymo, Halberstatensis episcopus: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXVI.-CXVIII.

II. Paul Anton: De vita et doctrina Haymonis, Halle, 1700, 2d ed. 1705; C. G. Derling: Comm. Hist. de Haymone, Helmstädt, 1747. Ceillier XII. 434–439. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 111–126. Bähr, 408–413.

Haymo (Haimo, Aymo, Aimo) was a Saxon, and was probably born about 778. He took monastic vows at Fulda, was sent by, his abbot (Ratgar) with his intimate friend Rabanus Maurus in 803 to Tours to study under Alcuin; on his return he taught at Fulda until in 839 he was chosen abbot of Hirschfeld. In 841 he was consecrated bishop of Halberstadt. In 848 he sat in the Council of Mayence which condemned Gottschalk. He founded at considerable expense the cathedral library of Halberstadt, which unfortunately was burnt in 1179. He died March 27, 853. He was an excellent scholar. As an exegete he was simple and clear, but rather too verbal.

His writings are voluminous, and were first published by the Roman Catholics in the Reformation period (1519–36). They teach a freer and less prejudiced Catholic theology than the Tridentine. Thus he denies that Peter founded the Roman church, that the pope has universal supremacy, and rejects the Paschasian doctrine of transubstantiation. His works consist principally of (1) Commentaries.1273  He wrote or compiled upon the Psalms, certain songs in the Old Testament, Isaiah, the Minor Prophets, Canticles, Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse.

Besides these commentaries, (2) Homilies,1274 upon the festivals of the church year and (3) Miscellanies, "The Body and Blood of the Lord,"1275 which is an extract from his commentary on 1st Cor., "Epitome of sacred history,"1276 substantially though not entirely an extract from Rufinus’ Latin translation of Eusebius’ "Ecclesiastical history," and an ascetic piece in three books, "The love for the heavenly country."1277

§ 169. Walahfrid Strabo.

I. Walafridus Strabus, Fuldensis monachus: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXIII.-CXIV. His Carmina have been edited in a very thorough manner by Ernst Dümmler: Poetae Latini aevi Carolini. Tom. II. (Berlin, 1884), pp. 259–473.

II. For his life see the Preface of Dümmler and Ebert, II. 145–166. Cf. also for his works besides Ebert, Ceillier, XII. 410–417; Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 59–76; Bähr, pp. 100–105, 398–401.

Walahfrid, poet and commentator, theologian and teacher, was born of obscure parentage in Alemannia about 809, and educated in the Benedictine abbey school of Reichenau on the island in Lake Constance. His cognomen Strabus or, generally, Strabo was given to him because he squinted, but was by himself assumed as his name.1278  From 826 to 829 he studied at Fulda under Rabanus Maurus. There he formed a friendship with Gottschalk, and there he appears to have lived all alone in a cell, the better perhaps to study.1279  On leaving Fulda he went to Aix la Chapelle, and was befriended by Hilduin, the lord chancellor, who introduced him to the emperor Louis the Pious. The latter was much pleased with him and appreciating his scholarship made him tutor to his son Charles. The empress Judith was also particularly friendly to him. In 838 Louis the Pious appointed him abbot of Reichenau, but two years later Louis the German drove him from his post and he went to Spires, where he lived until 842, when the same Louis restored him to his abbotship, probably at the solicitation of Grimald, his chancellor.1280  In 849 he went over to France on a diplomatic mission from Louis the German to Charles the Bald, but died on August 18th of that year while crossing the Loire, and was buried at Reichenau.1281

Walahfrid was a very amiable, genial and witty man, possessed remarkable attainments in both ecclesiastical and classical literature, and was moreover a poet with a dash of genius, and in this latter respect is a contrast to the merely mechanical versifiers of the period. He began writing poetry while a mere boy, and in the course of his comparatively brief life produced many poems, several of them of considerable length.

His Writings embrace

1. Expository Works. 1. Glosses,1282 i.e., brief notes upon the entire Latin Bible, including the Apocrypha; a very meritorious compilation, made especially from Augustin, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and Bede, with very many original remarks. This work was for five hundred years honored by the widest use in the West. Peter Lombard quotes it as "the authority" without further designation; and by many its notes have been given equal weight with the Bible text they accompany. It was one of the earliest printed works, notwithstanding its extent.1283  2. Exposition of the first twenty Psalms,1284 rather allegorical than really explanatory. 3. Epitome of Rabanus Maurus’ Commentary on Leviticus.1285  This work is an indication of Walahfrid’s reverence for his great teacher. 4. Exposition of the Four Evangelists.1286  It was formerly printed among the works of Jerome. The notes are brief and designed to bring out the "inner sense." 5. The beginnings and growth of the divine offices.1287  This valuable and original work upon the archeology of the liturgy was written about 840 at the request of Reginbert, the learned librarian of the abbey of Reichenau, who desired more accurate information upon the origin of the different parts of the liturgy. The supplementary character of the work explains its lack of system. Walahfrid treats in disconnected chapters of temples and altars; bells; the derivation of several words for holy places; the use of "pictures," as ornaments and aids to devotion, but not as objects of worship; the things fitting divine worship; "the sacrifices of the New Testament" (in this chap., No. XVI., he dissents from the transubstantiation theory of Radbertus, saying, Christ "after the Paschal supper gave to his disciples the sacrament of his body and blood in the substance of the bread and wine and taught them to celebrate [the sacrament] in memory of his passion"1288); then follow a number of chapters upon the Eucharist; sacred vestments; canonical hours and hymns; baptisms; titles, &c. The work closes with a comparison of ecclesiastical and secular dignities.

II. A Homily on the Fall of Jerusalem.1289  Walahfrid gives Josephus’ account of the fall of the city and then proceeds to the spiritual application of our Lord’s prophetic discourse (Matt. xxiv.).

III. Biographies. 1. Life of the Abbot St. Gall,1290 the apostle of Switzerland (d. 645 or 646). It is not original, but a rewriting of the life by Wettin, Walahfrid’s honored teacher at Reichenau. Walahfrid reproduced the same in verse.1291  2. Life of St. Othmar, abbot of St. Gall,1292 similarly reproduced. 3. The prologue to his edition of Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, which gives valuable information about Einhard.1293

IV. Poetry. 1. The Vision of Wettin.1294  This is the oldest of his poems, dating according to his own assertion from his eighteenth year1295 (i.e., c. 826). It is not original, but a versification, with additions, of the prose work of Heito. The ultimate source is Wettin himself, who relates what he saw (October 824) on his journey, under angelic guidance, to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The fact that Wettin was very sick at the time explains the occasion of the vision and his reading its contents, but the poem is interesting not only in itself, but as a precursor of Dante’s Divine Comedy.1296  2. The Life and Death of St. Mammes,1297 an ascetic from childhood, who preached to the wild sheep gathered by a strange impulse in a little chapel. This extraordinary performance attracted adverse notice from the authorities. Mammes was accused of witchcraft and, on refusing to sacrifice to the gods, also of atheism. His enemies vainly attempted to kill him by fire, by wild beasts, and by stoning. Finally he was peacefully called from life by the voice of God. 3. The Life and Death of St. Blaithmaic, abbot of Hy and martyr.1298  It relates how an Irish crown prince embraced an ascetic life in childhood and attained a martyr’s crown on the island of Hy. 4. Garden-culture,1299 a curious poem upon the plants in the convent garden. 5. On the Image of Tetricus1300 (Dietrich), an ingenious poem in laudation of Louis the Pious and his family.1301  6. Miscellaneous Poems,1302 including epistles, epigrams, inscriptions and hymns.

§ 170. Florus Magister, of Lyons.

I. Florus, diaconus Lugdunensis: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXIX. ol. 9–424. His poems are given by Dümmler: Poet. Lat. aev. Carolini, II. (Berlin, 1884), pp. 507–566.

II. Bach: Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters, Wien, 1873–1875, 2 Abth. I. 240. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 213–240. Ceillier, XII. 478–493. Bähr, 108, 109; 447–453. Ebert, II. 268–272.

Florus was probably born in the closing year of the eighth century and lived in Lyons during the reigns of Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald and Louis II. He was head of the cathedral school, on which account he is commonly called Florus Magister. He was also a deacon or sub-deacon. He enjoyed a wide reputation for learning, virtue and ability. He stood in confidential relations with his bishop, Agobard, and with some of the most distinguished men of his time. His library was a subject of remark and wonder for its large size.1303

Like every other scholar under Charles the Bald, he made his contribution to the Eucharistic and Predestination controversies. In the former he took the side of Rabanus Maurus and Ratramnus against the transubstantiation theory of Paschasius Radbertus; in the latter he opposed Johannes Scotus Erigena, without, however, going entirely over to the side of Gottschalk. He sat in the council of Quiercy (849), the first one called by Hincmar in the case of Gottschalk. He died about 860.

His complete works are:

1. A patristic cento on the election of Bishops,1304 written in 834, to show that in primitive Christian times the bishops were always chosen by the free vote of the congregation and the clergy. Therefore the interference of the king in such elections, which was one of the growing evils of the time, was unwarranted by tradition and only defensible on the plea of necessity to preserve the union between Church and State.

2. An Exposition of the Mass,1305 compiled, according to his own express statement, for the most part, from Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustin, and other Fathers.

3. A Treatise against Amalarius,1306 in which he supports Agobard against Amalarius, who had explained the liturgy in a mystical and allegorical manner.1307

4. A Martyrology,1308 a continuation of Bede’s.

5. Sermon on Predestination.1309

6. A treatise against Scotus Erigena’s errors,1310 written in 852 in the name of the church of Lyons. He calls attention to Erigena’s rationalistic treatment of the Scriptures and the Fathers; rejects the definition of evil as negation; insists that faith in Christ and an inner revelation are necessary to a right understanding of the Scriptures. It is noticeable that while he censures Erigena for his abuse of secular science, he claims that it has its proper use.1311

7. St. Augustin’s Exposition of the Pauline Epistles,1312 long attributed to Bede.

8. Capitulary collected from the Law and the Canons.1313

9. Miscellaneous Poems,1314 which prove him to have had a spark of true poetic genius.1315

10. There is also extant a letter which he wrote to the empress Judith.1316

§ 171. Servatus Lupus.

I. Beatus Servatus Lupus: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXIX. col. 423–694 (a reprint of the edition of Baluze. Paris, 1664, 2d ed. 1710). The Homilies and hymns given by Migne (col. 693–700) are spurious.

II. Notitia historica et bibliographica in Servatum Lupum by Baluze, in Migne, l.c. col. 423–6. Nicolas: Étude sur les lettres de Servai Loup, Clermont Ferrant, 1861; Franz Sprotte: Biographie des Abtes Servatus Lupus von Ferrières, Regensburg, 1880. Du Pin, VII. 169–73. Ceillier, XII. 500–514. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 255–272. Bähr, 456–461. Ebert, II. 203–209. J. Bass Mullinger: The Schools of Charles the Great. London, 1877, pp. 158–170. For Lupus’ part in the different councils he attended, see Hefele: Conciliengeschichte, IV. passim.

Lupus, surnamed Servatus,1317 was descended from a prominent family. He was born in Sens (70 miles S. E. of Paris) in the year 805 and educated in the neighboring Benedictine monastery of SS. Mary and Peter anciently called Bethlehem, at Ferrières, then under abbot Aldrich, who in 829 became archbishop of Sens, and died early in 836. He took monastic vows, was ordained a deacon and then taught in the convent-school until in 830 on advice of Aldrich he went to Fulda. Einhard, whose life of Charlemagne had already deeply impressed him,1318 was then abbot of Seligenstadt, only a few miles away, but his son Wussin was being educated at Fulda, and it was on a visit that he made to see his son that Lupus first met him. With him and with the abbot of Fulda, the famous Rabanus Maurus, he entered into friendship. It was he who incited Rabanus to make his great compilation upon the Epistles of Paul;1319 and to him Einhard dedicated his now lost treatise De adoranda cruce.1320  He pursued his studies at Fulda and also gave instruction until the spring of 836, when he returned to Ferrières.1321  He then took priest’s orders and taught grammar and rhetoric in the abbey school. In 837 he was presented at the court of Louis the Pious, and by special request of the empress Judith appeared the next year (Sept. 22, 838).1322  The favor showed him led him naturally to expect speedy preferment, but he was doomed to disappointment. In the winter of 838 and 839 he accompanied Odo, who had succeeded Aldrich, to Frankfort,1323 where the emperor Louis spent January and February, 839. Louis died in 840 and was succeeded by Charles the Bald. In 842 Charles deposed Odo because of his connection with Lothair, and by request of the emperor the monks elected Lupus their abbot, Nov. 22, 842,1324 and the emperor confirmed the election. It was with difficulty that Odo was removed. The year 844 was an eventful one with Lupus. The monks of Ferrières were bound yearly to supply money and military service to Charles, and Lupus had to take the field in person.1325  In this year he went against the rebellious Aquitanians. On June 14th he was taken prisoner by them in the battle of Angoulême, but released after a few days by intervention of Turpio, count of Angoulême, and on July 3d he was back again in Ferrières. Later on he was sent by Charles, with Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, to visit the monasteries of Burgundy, and at the close of the year he sat in the council of Verneuil, and drew up the canons.1326  Can. XII. is directed against the king’s seizure on ecclesiastical property. His own special grievance was that Charles had rewarded the fidelity of a certain Count Odulf by allowing him the revenues of the cell or monastery of St. Judocus on the coast of Picardy (St. Josse sur mer), which had belonged to Alcuin, but was given to Ferrières by Louis the Pious, and the loss of which greatly crippled his already expensive monastery.1327  It was not, however, until 849 that the cell was restored. This is the more strange because Charles had a high regard for his learning and diplomatic skill, as is shown by his employment of Lupus in delicate public business. Thus in 847 Lupus sat in the peace congress at Utrecht between Lothair, Louis and Charles the Bald. In midsummer 849 Charles sent him to Leo IV. at Rome concerning the ecclesiastical encroachments of the Breton Duke Nominoi. In the spring of 853 he sat in the council of Soissons and took Hincmar’s side regarding the deposition of those priests whom Ebo had ordained, after his own deposition in 835. In the same year he attended the convocation of the diocese of Sens and there sided with Prudentius against Hincmar’s deliverances in the Gottschalk controversy. It is supposed that he was also at the council of Quiercy, 857, because his Admonitio1328 is written in the spirit of the deliberations of that council respecting the troubles of the times. In 858 he was sent on diplomatic business to Louis the German. But in the same year he was forced by the exigencies of the times to deposit the abbey’s valuables with the monks of St. Germain Auxerrois for safe keeping. In 861 Foleric of Troyes offered protection to his monastery. In 862 he was at Pistes, and drew up the sentence of the Council against Robert, archbishop of Mans. As after this date all trace of Lupus is lost, his death during that year is probable,

Servatus Lupus was one of the great scholars of the ninth century. But he gained knowledge under great difficulties, for the stress of circumstances drove him out of the seclusion he loved, and forced him to appear as a soldier, although he knew not how to fight, to write begging letters instead of pursuing his studies, and even to suffer imprisonment. Yet the love of learning which manifested itself in his childhood and increased with his years, notwithstanding the poor educational arrangements at Ferrières,1329 became at length a master passion and dominated his thoughts.1330  It mattered not how pressing was the business in hand, he would not let business drive study out of his mind. He set before him the costly and laborious project of collecting a library of the Latin classics, and applied to all who could assist him, even to the pope (Benedict III.). He was thankful for the loan of codices, so that by comparison he might make a good text. He was constantly at work upon the classics and gives abundant evidence of the culture which such study produces, in his "uncommon skill in the lucid exposition of a subject."1331

His Works are very few. Perhaps the horrible confusion of the period hindered authorship, or like many another scholar he may have shrunk from the labor and the after criticism. In his collected works the first place is occupied by his

1. Letters,1332 one hundred and thirty in number. They prove the high position he occupied, for his correspondents are the greatest ecclesiastics of his day, such as Raban Maur, Hincmar of Rheims, Einhard, Radbert, Ratramn and Gottschalk. His letters are interesting and instructive.1333

2. The Canons of Verneuil, 844.1334  See above.

3. The Three Questions, in 852.1335  They relate to free will, the two-fold predestination, and whether Christ died for all men or only for the elect. It was his contribution to the Gottschalk controversy in answer to Charles the Bald’s request. In general he sides with Gottschalk, or rather follows Augustin. In tone and style the book is excellent.

4. Life of St. Maximinus, bishop of Treves.1336  It is in fifteen chapters and was written in 839. It is only a working over of an older Vita, and the connection of Lupus with it is questionable.1337

5. Life of St. Wigbert, in thirty chapters, written in 836 at the request of Bun, abbot of Hersfeld.1338  It tells the interesting story of how Wigbert came from England to Germany at the request of Boniface, how he became abbot of Fritzlar, where he died in 747, how he wrought miracles and how miracles attended the removal of his relics to Hersfeld and were performed at his tomb.

§ 172. Druthmar.

I. Christianus Druthmarus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CVI. col. 1259–1520.

II. Ceillier, XII. 419–423. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 84–90. Bähr, 401–403.

Christian Druthmar was born in Aquitania in the first part of the ninth century. Before the middle of the century he became a monk of the Benedictine monastery of old Corbie.1339  About 850 he was called thence to the abbey of Stavelot-Malmédy, in the diocese of Liège, to teach the Bible to the monks.1340  It is not known whether he died there or returned to Corbie.

He was a very superior scholar for his age, well versed in Greek and with some knowledge of Hebrew. Hence his epithet, the "Grammarian" (i.e. Philologist). His fame rests upon his Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel,1341 a work distinguished for its clearness of statement, and particularly noticeable for its insistence upon the paramount importance of the historic sense, as the foundation of interpretation.1342  To such a man the views of Paschasius Radbertus upon the Lord’s Supper could have no attraction. Yet an attempt has been persistently made to show that in his comments upon Matt. 26:26–28, he teaches transubstantiation. Curiously enough, his exact language upon this interesting point cannot be now determined beyond peradventure, because every copy of the first printed edition prepared by Wimphelin de Schelestadt, Strassburg 1514, has perished, and in the MS. in possession of the Cordelier Fathers at Lyons the critical passage reads differently from that in the second edition, by the Lutheran, Johannes Secerius, Hagenau 1530. In the Secerius text, now printed in the Lyons edition of the Fathers, and in Migne, the words are, 26:26, "Hoc est corpus meum. Id est, in sacramento" ("This is my body. That is, in the sacrament," or the sacramental sign as distinct from the res sacramenti, or the substance represented). Matt. 26:28, Transferens spiritaliter corpus in panem, vinum in sanguinem ("Transferring spiritually body into bread, wine into blood").1343  In the MS. the first passage reads: "Id est, vere in sacramento subsistens" ("That is, truly subsisting in the sacrament"); and in the second the word "spiritaliter "is omitted. The Roman Catholics now generally admit the correctness of the printed text, and that the MS. has been tampered with, but insist that Druthmar is not opposed to the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist.

The brief expositions of Luke and John1344 are probably mere notes of Druthmar’s expository lectures on those books, and not the works he promises in his preface to Matthew.1345

§ 173. St. Paschasius Radbertus.

I. Sanctus Paschasius Radbertus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXX.

II. Besides the Prolegomena in Migne, see Melchior Hausher: Der heilige Paschasius Radbertus. Mainz 1862. Carl Rodenberg: Die Vita Walae als historische Quelle (Inaugural Dissertation). Göttingen 1877. Du Pin, VII. 69–73, 81. Ceillier, XII. 528–549. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 287–314. Bähr, 233, 234, 462–471. Ebert, II. 230–244.

Radbertus, surnamed Paschasius,1346 the famous promulgator of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, was born of poor and unknown parents, about 790, in or near the city of Soissons in France. His mother died while he was a very little child, and as he was himself very sick he was "exposed" in the church of Soissons. The nuns of the Benedictine abbey of Our Lady in that place had compassion upon him and nursed him back to health.1347  His education was conducted by the adjoining Benedictine monks of St. Peter, and he received the tonsure, yet for a time he led a secular life. His thirst for knowledge and his pious nature, however, induced him to take up again with the restraints of monasticism, and he entered (c. 812) the Benedictine monastery at Corbie, in Picardy, then under abbot Adalhard. There he applied himself diligently to study and to the cultivation of the monastic virtues, and so successfully that he soon won an enviable reputation for ascetic piety and learning. He was well read in classical literature, particularly familiar with Virgil, Horace and Terence, and equally well read in the Fathers. He knew Greek and perhaps a little Hebrew. His qualifications for the post of teacher of the monastery’s school were, therefore, for that day unusual, and he brought the school up to a high grade of proficiency. Among his famous pupils were Adalhard the Younger, St. Ansgar, Odo, bishop of Beauvais, and Warinus, abbot of New Corbie. He preached regularly and with great acceptance and was strict in the observance by himself and others, of the Benedictine rule.

In the year 822 he accompanied his abbot, Adalhard, and the abbot’s brother and successor, Wala, to Corbie in Saxony, in order to establish there the monastery which is generally known as New Corbie. In 826 Adalbard died, and Wala was elected his successor. With this election Radbertus probably had much to do; at all events, he was deputed by the community to secure from Louis the Pious the confirmation of their choice. This meeting with the emperor led to a friendship between them, and Louis on several occasions showed his appreciation of Radbertus. Thus in 831 he sent him to Saxony to consult with Ansgar about the latter’s northern mission, and several times asked his advice. Louis took the liveliest interest in Radbertus’s eucharistic views, and asked his ecclesiastics for their opinion.

In 844 Radbertus was elected abbot of his monastery. He was then, and always remained, a simple monk, for in his humility, and probably also because of his view of the Lord’s Supper, he refused to be ordained a priest. His name first appears as abbot in the Council of Paris, Feb. 14, 846. He was then able to carry through a measure which gave his monastery freedom to choose its abbot and to govern its own property.1348  These extra privileges are proofs that the favor shown toward him by Louis was continued by his sons. Radbertus was also present in the Council of Quiercy in 849, and joined in the condemnation of Gottschalk. Two years later (851) he resigned his abbotship. He had been reluctant to take the position, and had found it by no means pleasant. Its duties were so multiform and onerous that he had little or no time for study; besides, his strict discipline made his monks restive. But perhaps a principal reason for retiring was the fact that one of his monks, Ratramnus, had ventured to criticize, publicly and severely, his position upon the Eucharist; thus stirring up opposition to him in his own monastery.

Immediately upon his resignation, Radbertus went to the neighboring abbey of St. Riquier, but shortly returned to Corbie, and took the position of monk under the new abbot. His last days were probably his pleasantest. He devoted himself to the undisturbed study of his favorite books and to his beloved literary labors. On April 26, 865,1349 he breathed his last. He was buried in the Chapel of St. John. In the eleventh century miracles began to be wrought at his tomb. Accordingly he was canonized in 1073, and on July 12th of that year his remains were removed with great pomp to St. Peter’s Church at Corbie.

The fame of Paschasius Radbertus rests upon his treatise on The body and blood of the Lord,1350 which appeared in 831, and in an improved form in 844. His arguments in it and in the Epistle to Frudegard1351 on the same subject have already been handled at length in this volume.1352  His treatise on The birth by the Virgin,1353 i.e. whether Christ was born in the ordinary manner or not, has also been sufficiently noticed.1354

Besides these Radbertus wrote, 1. An Exposition of the Gospel of Matthew.1355  He explained this Gospel in his sermons to the monks. At their request, he began to write out his lectures, and completed four of the twelve books before his election as abbot, but was then compelled to lay the work aside. The monks at St. Riquier’s requested its continuance, and it finally was finished. The special prefaces to each book are worth attentive reading for their information concerning the origin and progress of the commentary, and for the views they present upon Biblical study in general. As the prologue states, the principal sources are Jerome, Ambrose, Augustin, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, and Bede.1356  Of these, Jerome was most used. His excerpts are not always literal. He frequently alters and expands the expressions.1357  Radbertus was particular to mark on the margin of his pages the names of the authors drawn upon, but in transcribing his marks have been obliterated. His interpretation is rather more literal than was customary, in his day, and he enlivens his pages with allusions to passing events, dwelling especially upon the disorders of the time, the wickedness of the clergy and monks, the abuses of the confessional, and the errors of the Adoptionists, Claudius of Turin and of Scotus Erigena. He also frequently quotes classic authors.1358

2. An Exposition of Psalm XLIV1359  It was written for the nuns of Soissons, to whom he owed his life, and the dedication to them is an integral part of the first of its four books. It is allegorical and very diffuse, but edifying.

3. An Exposition of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.1360  This was the fruit of his old age, and once more, as in his early manhood, he deplored the vices, both lay and clerical, which disgraced his times. His allusion to the Norman incursions in the neighborhood of Paris,1361 which took place in 857, proves that he must have written the work after that date. In his prologue, Radbertus states that he had never read a commentary on Lamentations written by a Latin author. Hence his information must have been derived from Greek sources, and he was unacquainted with the similar work by Rabanus Maurus. He distinguished a triple sense, a literal, spiritual, and a moral, and paid especial regard to types and prophecies, as he considered that there were prophecies in Lamentations which referred to his own day.

4. Faith, Hope and Love.1362  This work is preceded by an acrostic poem, the first letters of each line forming the name "Radbertus Levita." Each of the three books is devoted to one of the Christian virtues. Radbertus wrote the treatise at the request of abbot Wala, for the instruction of the younger monks. The book on faith is remarkable for its statement that faith precedes knowledge, thus antedating the scholastics in their assertion, which is most pregnantly put in the famous expression of Anselm, Credo ut intelligam.1363  The third book, On Love, is much later than the others on account of the author’s distractions.

5. Life of Adalhard,1364 the first abbot of New Corbie. It is a panegyric rather than a strict biography, but contains much interesting and valuable information respecting the abbot and the founding of the German monastery of Corbie. The model for the work is the funeral oration of Ambrose upon Valentinian II. Its date is 826, the year of Adalhard’s death. It contains much edifying matter.

6. Life of Wala,1365 the brother of Adalhard at Old Corbie, and his successor. It is in the peculiar form of conversations. In the first book the interlocutors are Paschasius, as he calls himself, and four fellow Corbie monks—Adeodatus, Severus, Chremes, Allabicus; and in the second, Paschasius, Adeotatus and Theophrastus. These names are, like Asenius, as he calls Wala, manifestly pseudonyms. He borrowed the idea of such a dialogue from Sulpicius Severus, who used it in his life of St. Martin of Tours. The date of the book is 836, the year of Wala’s death.

7. The Passion of Rufinus and Valerius,1366 who were martyrs to the Christian faith, at or near Soissons, in the year 287. In this work he uses old materials, but weakens the interest of his subject by his frequent digressions and long paraphrases.

§ 174. Patramnus.

I. Ratramnus, Corbeiensis monachus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXXI. The treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini was first published by Johannes Praël under the title Bertrami presbyteri ad Carolum Magnum imperatorum, Cologne, 1532. It was translated into German, Zürich 1532, and has repeatedly appeared in English under the title, The Book of Bertram the Priest, London 1549, 1582, 1623, 1686, 1688 (the last two editions are by Hopkins and give the Latin text also), 1832; and Baltimore., U. S. A., 1843. The best edition of the original text is by Jacques Boileau, Paris, 1712, reprinted with all the explanatory matter in Migne.

II. For discussion and criticism see the modern works, Du Pin, VII. passim; Ceillier, XII. 555–568. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 332–351. Bähr, 471–479. Ebert, II. 244–247. Joseph Bach: Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters, Wien, 1873–75, 2 parts (I. 193 sqq.); Joseph Schwane: Dogmengeschichte der mittleren Zeit, Freiburg in Br., 1882 (pp. 631 sqq.) Also Neander, III. 482, 497–501, 567–68.

Of Ratramnus1367 very little is known. He was a monk of the monastery of Corbie, in Picardy, which he had entered at some time prior to 835, and was famed for his learning and ability. Charles the Bald frequently appealed to his judgment, and the archbishop of Rheims gave over to him the defense of the Roman Church against Photius. He participated in the great controversies upon Predestination and the Eucharist. He was an Augustinian, but like his fellows he gathered his arguments from all the patristic writers. In his works he shows independence and ingenuity. One of his peculiarities is, that like Bishop Butler in the Analogy, he does not name those whom he opposes or defends. He was living in 868; how long thereafter is unknown.

He was not a prolific author. Only six treatises have come down to us.

1. A letter upon the cynocephali.1368  It is a very curious piece, addressed to the presbyter Rimbert who had answered his queries in regard to the cynocephali, and had asked in return for an opinion respecting their position in the scale of being. Ratramnus replied that from what he knew about them he considered them degenerated descendants of Adam, although the Church generally classed them with beasts. They may even receive baptism by being rained upon.1369

2. How Christ was born.1370  In this treatise Ratramnus refutes the theory of some Germans that Christ issued from the body of the Virgin Mary in some abnormal way.1371  He maintains on the contrary, that the birth was one of the ordinary kind, except that his mother was before it, during it, and after it a Virgin1372 because her womb, was closed. He compares Christ’s birth to his issuing from the sealed tomb and going through closed doors.1373  The book is usually regarded as a reply to the De partu virginis of Radbertus, but there is good reason to consider it independent of and even earlier than the latter.1374

3. The soul (De anima). It exists in MS. in several English libraries, but has never been printed. It is directed against the view of Macarius (or Marianus) Scotus, derived from a misinterpreted sentence of Augustin that the whole human race had only one soul. The opinion was condemned by the Lateran council under Leo X. (1512–17).

4. Divine predestination.1375  It was written about 849 at the request of Charles the Bald, who sought Ratramnus’ opinion in the Gottschalk controversy. Ratramnus defended Gottschalk, although he does not mention his name, maintaining likewise a two-fold predestination, regardless of the fact that the synods of Mayence (848) and of Quiercy (849) had condemned it, and Gottschalk had been cruelly persecuted by Hincmar of Rheims. In the first book Ratramnus maintains the predestination of the good to salvation by an appeal to the patristic Scriptural quotations and interpretations upon this point, particularly those of Augustin. In the second book he follows the same method to prove that God has predestinated the bad to eternal damnation. But this is not a predestination to sin. Rather God foresees their determination to sin and therefore withholds his help, so that they are lost in consequence of their own sins.

5. Four books upon the Greeks’ indictment of the Roman Church.1376  Like the former work, it was written by request. In 967 Photius addressed a circular letter to the Eastern bishops in which he charged the Roman Church with certain errors in faith and practice: e.g., the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the celibacy of the clergy, the Sabbath and Lent fasts. Nicholas I. called upon his bishops to refute this charge. Hincmar of Rheims commissioned Odo of Beauvais to write an apologetic treatise, but his work not proving satisfactory he next asked Ratramnus. The work thus produced is very famous. The first three books are taken up with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; but in the fourth he branches out upon a general defense of the ecclesiastical practices of the Latin Church. He does this in an admirable, liberal and Christian spirit. In the first chapter of the fourth book he mildly rebukes the Greeks for prescribing their peculiar customs to others, because the difference in such things is no hindrance to the unity of the faith which Paul enjoins in 1 Cor. i. 10. This unity he finds in the faith in the Trinity, the birth of Christ from a Virgin, his sufferings, resurrection, ascension, session at God’s right hand, return to judgment, and in the baptism into Father, Son and Holy Spirit.1377  In the first three chapters of the book he proves this proposition by a review of the condition of the Early Church. He then passes on to defend the Roman customs.1378

6. The Body and Blood of the Lord.1379  This is the most valuable writing of Ratramnus. It is a reply to Paschasius Radbert’s book with the same title.1380  It is dedicated to Charles the Bald who had requested (in 944) his opinion in the eucharistic controversy. Without naming Radbert, who was his own abbot, he proceeds to investigate the latter’s doctrines. The whole controversy has been fully stated in another section.1381

The book has had a strange fate. It failed to turn the tide setting so strongly in favor of the views of Radbertus, and was in the Middle Age almost forgotten. Later it was believed to be the product of Scotus Erigena and as such condemned to be burnt by the council of Vercelli (1050). The first person to use it in print was John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, who in writing against Oecolampadius quotes from it as good Catholic authority.1382  This called the attention of the Zwinglian party to it and they quickly turned the weapon thus furnished against the Catholics. In the same year in which it was published at Cologne (1532), Leo Judae made a German translation of it (Zürich, 1532) which was used by the Zürich ministers in proof that the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was no novelty.1383  But the fact that it had such a cordial reception by the Reformed theologians made it suspicious in Catholic eyes. The Council of Trent pronounced it a Protestant forgery, and in 1559 it was put upon the Index. The foremost Catholic theologians such as Bellarmin and Allan agreed with the Council. A little later (1571) the theologians of Louvain (or Douay) came to the defense of the book. In 1655 Sainte Beuve formally defended its orthodoxy. Finally Jacques Boileau (Paris, 1712) set all doubt at rest, and the book is now accepted as a genuine production of Ratramnus.

It remains but to add that in addition to learning, perspicuity and judgment Ratramnus had remarkable critical power. The latter was most conspicuously displayed in his exposure of the fraudulent character of the Apocryphal tale, De nativitate Virginis, and of the homily of Pseudo-Jerome, De assumptione Virginis, both of which Hincmar of Rheims had copied and sumptuously bound.

§ 175. Hincmar of Rheims.

I. Hincmarus, Rhemensis archiepiscopus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXXV.-CXXVI., col. 648. First collected edition by Sirmond. Paris, 1645.

II. Prolegomena in Migne, CXXV. Wolfgang Friedrich Gess: Merkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben und Schriften Hincmars, Göttingen, 1806. Prichard: The life and times of Hincmar, Littlemore, 1849. Carl von Noorden: Hinkmar, Erzbischof von Rheims, Bonn, 1863. Loupot: Hincmar, évêque de Reins, sa vie, ses oeuvres, son influence, Reims, 1869. Auguste: Vidieu: Hincmar de Reims, Paris, 1875. Heinrich Schrörs: Hincmar, Erzbischof von Reims, Freiburg im Br., 1884 (588 pages).

III. Cf. also Flodoard: Historia ecclesia, Remensis, in Migne, CXXXV., col. 25–328 (Book III., col. 137–262, relates to Hincmar); French trans. by Lejeune, Reims, 1854, 2 vols. G. Marlot: Histoire de Reims, Reims, 1843–45, 3 vols. F. Monnier: Luttes politiques et religieuses sous les Carlovingiens, Paris, 1852. Max Sdralek: Hinkmar von Rheims kanonistisches Gutachten über die Ehescheidung des Königs Lothar II. Freiburg im Br., 1881. Du Pin, VII. 10–54. Ceillier, XII. 654–689, Hist. Lit. de la France, V., 544–594 (reprinted in Migne, CXXV. col. 11–44). Bähr, 507–523. Ebert, II. 247–257. Hefele: Conciliengeschichte, 2d ed. IV. passim.

Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, was born of noble and distinguished ancestry, probably in the province of that name,1384 in the year 806. His name is also spelled Ingumar, Ingmer and Igmar. He was educated in the Benedictine monastery of St. Denis, near Paris, under abbot Hilduin. When the latter was appointed (822) chancellor to Louis the Pious he took young Hincmar to court with him. There his talents soon brought him into prominence, while his asceticism obtained for him the especial favor of Louis the Pious. This interest he used to advance the cause of reform in the monastery of St. Denis, which had become lax in its discipline, and when the Synod of Paris in 829 appointed a commission to bring this about he heartily co-operated with it, and entered the monastery as a monk. In 830, Hilduin was banished to New Corbie, in Saxony, for participation in the conspiracy of Lothair against Louis the Pious. Hincmar had no part in or sympathy with the conspiracy, yet out of love for Hilduin he shared his exile. Through his influence with Louis, Hilduin was pardoned and re-instated in his abbey after only a year’s absence. Hincmar for the next nine or ten years lived partly at the abbey and partly at court. He applied himself diligently to study, and laid up those stores of patristic learning of which he afterwards made such an effective use. In 840 Charles the Bald succeeded Louis, and soon after took him into his permanent service, and then began that eventful public life which was destined to render him one of the most famous of churchmen. After his ordination as priest in 844, Charles the Bald gave him the oversight of the abbeys of St. Mary’s, at Compiegne, and of St. Germer’s, at Flaix. He also gave him an estate,1385 which he made over to the hospice of St. Denis, on his elevation to the archiepiscopate. In December, 844, Hincmar took a prominent part in the council at Verneuil, and in April of the following year at the council of Beauvais he was elected by the clergy and people of Rheims to be their archbishop. This choice being ratified by Charles the Bald, and the permission of his abbot being received, he was consecrated by Rothad, bishop of Soissons, archbishop of Rheims and metropolitan, May 3, 845.

No sooner had he been established in his see and had secured from Charles the restitution of all property that belonged to it, than trouble broke out. His diocese had fallen into more or less disorder in consequence of the ten years which had elapsed between Ebo’s deposition and his election. Hincmar’s first trouble came from Ebo, who contested Hincmar’s election, on the ground that he was still archbishop. But the council of Paris in 846 affirmed Hincmar’s election, and, in 847, Leo IV. sent him the pallium. The first difficulty being overcome, a second presented itself. For a few months in 840 Ebo had occupied his old see by force, and during this time bid ordained several priests. Hincmar degraded them and the council of Soissons in 853 approved his act. But naturally his course was opposed. The leader of the malcontents was Wulfad, one of the deposed priests. The matter was not disposed of until 868, when Pope Hadrian decided practically in favor of the deposed priests, for while exonerating Hincmar of all blame, at the same time he confirmed the election of Wulfad (866) as archbishop of Bourges.

Another trouble came from Rothad, bishop of Soissons, who had consecrated him, and who was one of his suffragans. Rothad had deposed a priest, for unchastity and the deposition was confirmed by an episcopal council. Hincmar took the ground that Rothad, being only a suffragan bishop, had no right of deposition, and also no right to call a council. He also brought formal charges of disobedience against him and demanded the reinstatement of the deposed priest. Rothad persistently refusing compliance was then himself deposed (861). Both parties appealed to the pope, who at last (January 21, 865) decided in Rothad’s favor and re-instated him.1386

In 863 Hincmar refused to give his assent as metropolitan to the elevation of Hilduin, brother of Günther of Cologne, to the bishopric of Cambrai. Hilduin had been nominated to this position by Lothair, but Hincmar said that he was unfit, and the pope approved of his action.

His longest and hardest fight was with his nephew and namesake, Hincmar, bishop of Laon. The latter was certainly very insubordinate and disobedient both to his metropolitan and his king. In consequence Hincmar of Rheims deposed him (871) and the king took him prisoner and blinded him. Pope Hadrian II. (d. 872) defended him but accomplished nothing. Pope John VIII. also pleaded his cause, and in 878 gave him permission to recite mass. He died in 882.

These controversies, and those upon Predestination and the Eucharist, and his persecution of Gottschalk, elsewhere treated at length,1387 have tended to obscure Hincmar’s just reputation as a statesman. Yet he was unquestionably the leader in the West Frankish kingdom, and by, his wisdom and energy preserved the state during a sadly disordered time. His relations with Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald and Carloman were friendly. He crowned several queens of the Carolingian family, and in 869 Charles the Bald. He also solemnized their marriages. In 859 he headed the German delegation to Louis, and in 860 conducted the peace deliberations at Coblenz. He took the side of Charles the Bald in his fight with Rome, and in 871 wrote for him a very violent letter to Pope Hadrian II.1388  It may be said that in state politics he was more successful than in church politics. He preserved his king from disgrace, and secured his independence, but he was unable to secure for himself the papal sanction at all times, and the much coveted honor of the primacy of France which John VIII., in 876, gave to Ansegis, archbishop of Sens.

One of the most important facts about these Hincmarian controversies is that in them for the first time the famous pseudo-Isidorian decretals1389 are quoted; and that by all parties. Whether Hincmar knew of their fraudulent character may well be questioned, for that he had little if any critical ability is proved by his belief in two literary forgeries, an apocryphal tale of the birth of the Virgin, and a homily upon her assumption,1390 attributed to Jerome. The fraud was exposed by Ratramnus. His use of the decretals was arbitrary. He quoted them when they would help him, as against the pope in contending for the liberty of the Frankish Church. He ignored them when they opposed his ideas, as in his struggle with his nephew, because in their original design they asserted the independence of bishops from their metropolitans.

Hincmar was not only a valiant fighter, but also a faithful shepherd. He performed with efficiency all the usual duties of a bishop, such as holding councils, hearing complaints, settling difficulties, laying plans and carrying out improvements. He paid particular attention to education and the promotion of learning generally. He was himself a scholar and urged his clergy to do all in their power to build up the schools. He also gave many books to the libraries of the cathedral at Rheims and the monastery of St. Remi, and had many copied especially for them. His own writings enriched these collections. His attention to architecture was manifested in the stately cathedral of Rheims, begun by Ebo, but which he completed, and in the enlargement of the monastery of St. Remi.

The career of this extraordinary man was troubled to its very end. In 881 he came in conflict with Louis the Third by absolutely refusing to consecrate one of the king’s favorites, Odoacer, bishop of Beauvais. Hincmar maintained that he was entirely unfit for the office, and as the Pope agreed with him Odoacer was excommunicated. In the early part of the following year the dreaded Normans made their appearance in the neighborhood of Rheims. Hincmar bethought himself of the precious relics of St. Remi and removed them for safety’s sake to Epernay when he himself fled thither. There he died, Dec. 21, 882. He was buried two days after at Rheims.

Looking back upon Hincmar through the vista of ten centuries, he stands forth as the determined, irrepressible, tireless opponent of both royal and papal tyranny over the Church. He asserted the liberty of the Gallican Church at a time when the State on the one hand endeavored to absorb her revenues and utilize her clergy in its struggles and wars, and the Pope on the other hand strove to make his authority in ecclesiastical matters supreme. That Hincmar was arrogant, relentless, self-seeking, is true. But withal he was a pure man, a stern moralist, and the very depth and vigor of his belief in his own opinions rendered him the more intolerant of the opinions of opponents, as of those of the unfortunate Gottschalk. The cause he defended was a just and noble one, and his failure to stem the tide setting toward anarchy in Church and State was fraught with far-reaching consequences.

His Writings.

His writings reveal his essentially practical character. They are very numerous, but usually very short. In contents they are designed for the most part to answer a temporary purpose. This makes them all the more interesting to the historian, but in the same degree of less permanent importance. The patristic learning they exhibit is considerable, and the ability great; but the circumstances of his life as prelate precluded him from study and quiet thought, so he was content to rely upon the labors of others and reproduce and adapt their arguments and information to his own design. Only the more important can be here mentioned. Some twenty-three writings are known to be lost.1391

I. Writings in the Gottschalk Controversy.1392

1. The first was in 855, Divine Predestination and the Freedom of the Will. It was in three books. All has perished, except the prefatory epistle to Charles the Bald.1393

2. At the request of this king he wrote a second treatise upon the same subject.1394

3. In 857 he refuted the charge made against him by Gottschalk and Ratramnus that in altering a line of a hymn from "Te, trina Deitas," to "Te, sancta Deitas," he showed a Sabellian leaning.1395

II. Writings in the Hincmar of Laon Controversy.1396  They consist of letters from each disputant to the other, formal charges against Hincmar of Laon, the sentence of his deposition, the synodical letter to Pope Hadrian II. and the letter of Hincmar of Laon to the same.

III. Writings relative to political and social affairs.

1. The divorce of king Lothair and queen Theutberga.1397  This treatise dates from 863 and is the reply to thirty questions upon the general subject asked Hincmar by different bishops. It reveals his firm belief in witches, sorcery and trial by ordeal, and abounds in interesting and valuable allusions to contemporary life and manners.1398

2. Addresses and prayers at the coronation of Charles the Bald, his son Louis II. the Stammerer, his daughter Judith, and his wife Hermintrude.1399

3. The personal character of the king and the royal administration.1400  It is dedicated to Charles the Bald, and is avowedly a compilation. The Scriptures and the Fathers, chiefly Ambrose, Augustin, and Gregory the Great are its sources. Its twenty-three chapters are distributed by Hincmar himself1401 under three heads:

(a) the royal person and office in general [chaps. 1–15]; (b) the discretion to be shown in the administration of justice [chaps. 16–28]; (c) the duty of a king in the unsparing punishment of rebels against God, the Church and the State, even though they be near relatives [chaps. 29–33]. It was composed in a time of frequent rebellion, and therefore the king had need to exercise severity as well as gentleness in dealing with his subjects.1402  Hincmar delivers himself with great plainness and gives wise counsels.

4. The vices to be shunned and the virtues to be exercised.1403  Another treatise designed for the guidance of Charles the Bald, compiled chiefly from Gregory the Great’s Homilies and Morals. Its occasion was Charles’s request of Hincmar to send him Gregory the Great’s letter to king Reccared, when the latter came over to Catholicism. Hincmar’s treatise is a sort of appendix. It begins with a reference to the letter’s allusion to the works of mercy, and then out of Gregory’s writings Hincmar proceeds to treat of these works and their opposite vices. In chaps. 9 and 10 Hincmar discusses the eucharist and shows his acceptance of the view of Paschasius Radbertus.

5, 6. Treatises upon rape, a common offense in those lawless days.1404

7. To the noblemen of the Kingdom for the instruction of King Carloman1405  It was Hincmar’s response to the highly complimentary request of the Frankish nobles, that he draw up some instructions for the young King Carloman, on his accession in 882. It was therefore one of the last pieces the old statesman prepared.

IV. Writings upon ecclesiastical affairs. 1. The Capitularies of 852, 874, 877, 881.1406  2. A defense of the liberties of the church, addressed to Charles.1407  It is in three parts, called respectively Quaterniones, Rotula and Admonitio; the first sets forth the necessity of the independence of the Church of the State, and quotes the ancient Christian Roman imperial laws on the subject. The second is on the trial of charges against the clergy as laid down in synodical decrees and papal decisions. The third is an exhortation to the king to respect ecclesiastical rights.

3. The crimination of priests, a valuable treatise upon the way in which their trials should be conducted, as shown by synodical decrees and quotations from Gregory the Great and others.1408

4. The case of the presbyter Teutfrid, who had stolen Queen Imma’s tunic, a golden girdle set with gems, an ivory box, and other things.1409  The treatise deals with the ecclesiastico-legal aspects of the case, and shows how the criminal should be treated. Gregory the Great is freely quoted.

V. Miscellaneous. 1. Exposition of Psalm civ. 17.1410  In the Vulgate the second clause of the verse reads, "the nest of the stork is their chief." The treatise was written in answer to Louis the German’s question as to the meaning of these words. He begins with a criticism of the text, in which he quotes the Septuagint rendering, the exposition of Jerome, Augustin, Prosper and Cassiodorus. The meaning he advocates is that the nest of the stork surpasses that of the little birds of which it is the chief or leader. The treatise is particularly interesting for its manner of dealing with one of the so-called Scripture difficulties,

2. The vision of Bernold.1411  This interesting little story dates from 877, the year of Charles the Bald’s death. Bernold lived in Rheims, and was known to Hincmar. He had a vision after he had been four days at the point of death, which he related to his confessor, and the confessor to Hincmar, who for obvious reasons published it. Bernold regained his health, and was therefore a living witness to the accuracy of his story. In his vision he went to "a certain place," i.e. purgatory, in which he found forty-one bishops, ragged and dirty, exposed alternately to extreme cold and scorching heat. Among them was Ebo, Hincmar’s predecessor, who immediately implored Bernold to go to their parishioners and clergy and tell them to offer alms, prayers and the sacred oblation for them. This he did, and on his return found the bishops radiant in countenance, as if just bathed and shaved, dressed in alb, stole and sandals, but without chasubles. Leaving them, Bernold went in his vision to a dark place, where he saw Charles the Bald sitting in a heap of putrefaction, gnawed by worms and worn to a mere skeleton. Charles called him by name and implored him to help him. Bernold asked how he could. Then Charles told him that he was suffering because he had not obeyed Hincmar’s counsels, but if Bernold would secure Hincmar’s help he would be delivered. This Bernold did, and on his return he found the king clad in royal robes, sound in flesh and amid beautiful surroundings. Bernold went further and encountered two other characters—Jesse, an archbishop, and a Count Othar, whom he helped by going to the earth and securing the prayers, alms and oblations of their friends. He finally came across a man who told him that in fourteen years he would leave the body and go back to the place he was then in for good, but that if he was careful to give alms and to do other good works he would have a beautiful mansion. A rustic of stern countenance expressed his lack of faith in Bernold’s ability to do this, but was silenced by the first man. Whereupon Bernold asked for the Eucharist, and when it was given to him he drank almost half a goblet of wine, and said, "I could eat some food, if I had it." He was fed, revived and recovered. Hincmar, in relating this vision, calls attention to its similarity to those told in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, in the writings of St. Boniface, and to that of Wettin, which Walahfrid Strabo related.1412  He ends by exhorting his readers to be more fervent in their prayers, and especially to pray for king Charles and the other dead.

3. The life of St. Remigius,1413 the patron saint of Rheims. This is an expansion of Fortunatus’ brief biography by means of extracts from the Gesta Francorum, Gregory of Tours, and legendary and traditional sources, and particularly by means of moralizing and allegorizing. The length of the book is out of all proportion to its value or interest. To the life he adds an Encomium of St. Remigius.1414  The object of these two books is not to produce history or criticism, but an edifying work and to exalt the church of Rheims by exalting its patron. Perhaps also he would hint that the gift which Chlodwig made to Remigius might be acceptably imitated.1415

4. Hincmar appears as a genuine historian in the third part of the Bertinian Annals,1416 so called because first published from a MS. found in the convent of St. Bertin. These Annals of the West Frankish Kingdom begin with the year 741 and go down to 882. Hincmar wrote them from 861 to 882. He evidently felt the responsibility of the work he conducted, for he put every fact down in a singularly impartial manner, especially when it is remembered that he was himself an important part of contemporary history.1417

5. Letters.1418  These are fifty-five in number, and are upon weighty matters; indeed they are official documents, and not familiar correspondence.

6. Poems..1419  They are very few and devoid of poetical merit1420

§ 176. Johannes Scotus Erigena.

I. Johannes Scotus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXXII. (1853). H. J. Floss prepared this edition, which is more complete than any other, for Migne’s series. The De divisione naturae was separately edited by C. B. Schlüter, Münster, 1838, who reprints in the same vol. (pp. 593–610) thirteen religious poems of Scotus as edited by Cardinal Mai (Class. Auct. V. 426 sqq.). B. Hauréau has edited Scotus’s commentary on Marcianus Capella, Paris, 1861; and Cardinal Mai, his commentary on the Heavenly Hierarchy of Dionysius Areopagita in Appendix at opera edita ab Mai, Rome, 1871. There is an excellent German translation of the De Div. Nat. by L. Noack (Erigena über die Eintheilung der Natur, mit einer Schlussabhandlung Berlin, 1870–4, Leipzig, 1876, 3 pts.),

II. Besides the Prolegomena and notes of the works already mentioned, see Peder Hjort: J. S. E., oder von dem Ursprung einer christlichen Philosophie und ihrem heiligen Beruf, Copenhagen, 1823. F. A. Staudenmaier: J. S. E., u. d. Wissenschaft s. Zeit., vol. I. (all published), Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1834. St. Réné Taillandier: S. E. et la philosophie scholastique, Strasbourg, 1843. N. Möller: J. S. E. u. s. Irrthümer, Mayence, 1844. Theodor Christlieb Leben u. Lehre d. J. S. E., Gotha, 1860; comp. also his article in Herzog,2 XIII. 788–804 (1884). Johannes Huber: J. S. E. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie im Mittelalter, Munich, 1861. A. Stöckl: De J. S. E., Münster, 1867. O. Hermens: Das Leben des J. S. E., Jena, 1869. R. Hoffmann: De J. S. E. vita et doctrina, Halle, 1877 (pp. 37). Cf. Baur: Geschichte der Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, II. 263–344. Dorner: Gesch. d. Lehre v. d. Person Christi, II. 344–359. Neander, III. 461–466.

III. On particular points. Torstrick: Philosophia Erigenae; 1. Trinitatis notio, Göttingen, 1844. Francis Monnier: De Gothescalci et J. S. E. controversia, Paris, 1853. W. Kaulich: Das speculative System des J S. E., Prag, 1860. Meusel: Doctrina J. S. E. cum Christiana comparavit, Budissae (Bautzen), 1869. F. J. Hoffmann: Der Gottes u. Schöpfungsbegriff des J. S. E., Jena, 1876. G. Anders: Darstellung u. Kritik d. Ansicht dass d. Kategorien nicht auf Gott anwendbar seien, Sorau, 1877 (pp. 37). G. Buchwald: Der Logosbegriff de J. S. E., Leipzig, 1884. For his logic see Prantl: Geschichte d. Logik im Abendlande, Leipzig, 1855–70, 4 vols. (II. 20–37). For his philosophy in general see B. Hauréau: Histoire de la philosophie scholastique, Paris, 1850, 2 vols., 2d ed. 1872–81, (chap. viii). F. D. Maurice: Mediaeval Philosophy, London, 1856, 2d ed. 1870 (pp. 45–79). F. Ueberweg: History of Philosophy, Eng. trans. I., 358–365. Reuter.: Geschichte d. religiösen Aufklärung im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1875–1877, 2 vols. (I. 51–64). J. Bass Mullinger.: The Schools of Charles the Great, London, 1877 (pp. 171–193). Also Du Pin, VII. 82–84. Ceillier, XII. 605–609. Hist. Lit. de la France, V. 416–429. Bähr., 483–500. Ebert, II. 257–267.

His Life.

Of Johannes Scotus Erigena, philosopher and theologian, one of the great men of history, very little is known. His ancestry, and places of birth, education, residence and death are disputed. Upon only a few facts of his life, such as his position at the court of Charles the Bald, and his literary works, can one venture to speak authoritatively.

He was born in Ireland1421 between 800 and 815, educated in, one of its famous monastic schools, where the Greek Fathers, particularly Origen, were studied as well as the Latin. He went to France about 843, attracted the notice of Charles the Bald, and was honored with his friendship.1422  The king appointed him principal of the School of the Palace, and frequently deferred to his judgment. John Scotus was one of the ornaments of the court by reason of his great learning, his signal ability both as teacher and philosopher, and his blameless life. He was popularly regarded as having boundless knowledge, and in reality his attainments were uncommon. He knew Greek fairly well and often introduces Greek words into his writings. He owed much to Greek theologians, especially Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus.1423  He was acquainted with the Timaes of Plato in the translation of Chalcidus and with the Categories of Aristotle.1424  He was also well read in Augustin, Boëthius, Cassiodorus and Isidore. He took a leading part in the two great doctrinal controversies of his age, on predestination and the eucharist,1425 and by request of Charles the Bald translated into Latin the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. The single known fact about his personal appearance is that, like Einhard, he was of small stature. He died about 877, probably shortly after Charles the Bald.

His Writings.

Besides the treatise upon Predestination and the translation of Dionysius, already discussed,1426 Scotus Erigena wrote:

1. A translation of the Obscurities of Gregory Nazianzen, by Maximus Confessor.1427  This was made at the instance of Charles the Bald, in 864.

2. Expositions of the Heavenly Hierarchy, the, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and the Mystical Theology of Dionysius.1428

3. Homily upon the prologue to John’s Gospel.1429

4. A commentary upon John’s Gospel.1430  Only four fragments of it have as yet been found.

5. A commentary upon the Dialectic of Martianus Capella. This has been published by Hauréau.1431

6. The outgoing and in-coming of a soul to God.1432  Of this only a small fragment has as yet been found.

7 The vision of God. This is in MS. at St. Omer and not yet printed.

8. Verses.1433  Among them are some Greek verses, with a self- made Latin interlinear translation. He introduces both single Greek words and verses similarly interlineated into his other poems.

9. The great work of Scotus Erigena is The Division of Nature.1434  It consists of five books in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and a disciple. The latter, generally speaking, represents the ecclesiastical conscience, but always in the end echoes his teacher. The style is lively and the range of topics embraces the most important theological cosmological and anthropological questions. The work was the first practical attempt made in the West to unite philosophy and theology. As in the dedication to Wulfad, the well-known opponent of Hincmar, John calls him simply "brother," the work must have been written prior to 865, the Year of Wulfad’s elevation to the archiepiscopate of Bourges.1435

His Theological Teaching.

In the Division of Nature Scotus Erigena has embodied his theology and philosophy. By the term "Nature" he means all that is and is not.1436  The latter expression he further interprets as including, 1st, that which is above the reach of our senses or our reason; 2d, that which though known to those higher in the scale of being is not known to those lower; 3d, that which is yet only potentially existent, like the human race in Adam, the plant in the seed, etc.; 4th, the material which comes and goes and therefore is not truly existent like the intelligible; 5th, sin as being the loss of the Divine image.1437  Nature is divided into four species: (1) that which creates and is not created, (2) that which is created and creates, (3) that which is created and does not create, (4) that which neither creates nor is created. The first three divisions are a Neo-Platonic and Christian modification of the three-fold ontological division of Aristotle:1438 the unmoved and the moving, the moved and moving, and the moved and not moving. The fourth form was suggested by the Pseudo-Dionysian doctrine of the return of all things to God.

One of the fundamental ideas of his theology is the identity of true philosophy and true religion. Both have the same divine source.1439  "True religion" and authority, i.e. the Church doctrine, are however not with him exactly identical, and in a conflict between them he sides with the former. In his use of Scripture he follows the allegorical method. He puts the Fathers almost upon a level with the Sacred Writers and claims that their wisdom in interpreting Scripture must not be questioned. At the same time he holds that it is permissible, especially when the Fathers differ among themselves, to select that interpretation of Scripture which most recommends itself to reason as accordant with Scripture.1440  It is, he says, the province of reason to bring out the hidden meaning of the text, which is manifold, inexhaustible, and striking like a peacock’s feathers.1441  It is interesting to note in this connection that John Scotus read the New Testament in the original Greek, and the Old Testament in Jerome’s version, not in the Septuagint.1442  And it is still more interesting to know that he prayed most earnestly for daily guidance in the study of the Scriptures.1443

The doctrinal teaching of Scotus Erigena can be reduced, as he himself states, to three heads. (1) God, the simple and at the same time the multiform cause of all things; (2) Procession from God, the divine goodness showing itself in all that is, from general to particular; (3) Return to God, the manifold going back into the one.

First Head. God, or Nature, which creates but is not created. a. The Being of God in itself considered. God is the essence of all things, alone truly is,1444 and is the beginning, middle and end of all things.1445  He is incomprehensible.1446  While the predicates of essence, truth, goodness, wisdom, &c., can be, according to the "affirmative" theology, applied to God, it can only be done metaphorically, because each such predicate has an opposite, while in God there is no opposition. Hence the "negative" theology correctly maintains they can not be.1447  Neither can self-consciousness be predicated of God.1448  Although not even the angels can see the essence of God, yet his being (i.e. the Father) can be seen in the being of things; his wisdom (i.e. the Son) in their orderly arrangement, and his life (i.e. the Holy Spirit) in their constant motion.1449  God is therefore an essence in three substances. Scotus Erigena takes up the doctrine of John of Damascus concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit and applies it to the relation of the Son to the Father:  "As the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, so is the Son born of the Father through the Holy Spirit."1450  In the old patristic fashion he compares the Three Persons to light, heat and radiance united in the flame. But he understood under "persons" no real beings, only names of the aspects and relations under which God’s being comes out. God realizes himself in creation, and in every part of it, yet he does not thereby yield the simplicity of his essence. He is still removed from all, subsists outside of and above the world, which has no independent existence apart from God, but is simply his manifestation. He is both the substance and the accidents of all that exists. "God therefore is all and all is God."1451  But God reveals himself to the creature. He appeared first to the pious in visions, but this was only occasional.1452  He then appeared constantly in the form of the different virtues.1453  The intellect is itself a theophany; and so is the whole world, visible and invisible.1454

2. The Procession from God or Nature. a. Nature which creates and is created, or the primordial ideas of the world and their unity in the Logos. God is the nature and essence of the world. Creation is the effect of the divine nature, which as cause eternally produces its effects, indeed is itself in the primordial ideas the first forms and grounds of things.1455  As the pure Being of God cannot immediately manifest itself in the finite, it is necessary that God should create the prototypes in which he can appear. In creation God passes through these prototypes or primordial causes into the world of visible creatures. So the Triune God enters the finite, not only in the Incarnation, but in all created existences. Our life is God’s life in us. As remarked above, we know God because in us he reveals himself. These prototypes have only subjective existence, except as they find their unity in the Logos.1456  Under the influence of the Holy Spirit they produce the external world of time and space.

b. Nature, which is created and does not create, or the phenomenal world and its union in man. In the Logos all things existed from eternity. Creation is their appearance in time. The principle of the development of the primordial ideas is the Holy Spirit.1457  The materiality of the world is only apparent, space and time only exist in the mind. The "nothing" from which God made the heavens and the earth was his own incomprehensible essence.1458  The whole phenomenal world is but the shadow of the real existence.1459  Man is the centre of the phenomenal world, uniting in himself all the contradictions and differences of creation.1460  His intellect has the power to grasp the sensuous and intelligible, and is itself the substance of things.1461  So all nature is created in man, and subsists in him,1462 because the idea of all its parts is implanted in him. The divine thought is the primary, the human the secondary substance of things.1463

Paradise is to be interpreted spiritually. Adam is not so much an historical personage as the human race in its preëxistent condition. Man was never sinless, for sin, as a limitation and defect, is not accidental or temporal, but original in the creation and nature of man.1464

c. The union of divinity and created existence, or the Godman. Scotus Erigena shows upon this point the duality of’ his system. On the one hand he presents Christ as an historical character, with body, mind, soul, spirit, in short the union of the entire sensible and intellectual qualities of the creature.1465  But on the other hand he maintains that the Incarnation was an eternal and necessary fact,1466 and that it came about through an ineffable and multiplex theophany in the consciousness of men and angels.1467

3. The return to God, or the completion of the world in Nature, which creates not and is not created. a. The return to God according to its pre-temporal idea, or the doctrine of predestination. There is only one true predestination, viz. to holiness. There is no foreknowledge of the bad. God has completest unity and simplicity; hence his being is not different from his knowledge and will; and since he has full liberty, the organization of his nature is free. But this organization is at the same time to the world law and government, i.e. its predestination; and because God is himself goodness, the predestination can only be to good. The very character of wickedness,—it is opposed to God, not substantial in nature, a defect mixed up with the good, transitory, yet essential to the development of the world,—renders it unreal and therefore not an object of divine knowledge. God does not know the bad as such, but only as the negation of the good. "God’s knowledge is the revelation of his essence, one and the same thing with his willing and his creating. As evil cannot be derived from the divine causality, neither can it be considered as an object of divine knowledge."1468  Nor is there any divine predestination or foreknowledge respecting the punishment of the bad, for this ensues in consequence of their violation of law. They punish themselves.1469  Hell is in the rebellious will. Predestination is, in brief, the eternal law and the immutable order of nature, whereby the elect are restored from their ruin and the rejected are shut up in their ruin.1470

b. The return of all things to God considered according to their temporal principles, or the doctrine of salvation. There are only a few scattered remarks upon this subject in Scotus Erigena. Christ is the Saviour by what he is in himself, not by what he does. His death is important as the means of resurrection; which began with the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, because then all things began to return to their union in their primordial causes, and this return constitutes salvation. The consequences of salvation are therefore felt by angels as well as men, and even by inanimate things.1471  Salvation, as far as we are concerned, consists in speculative knowledge. We unite ourselves with God by virtue of contemplation.1472

c. The return of all things to God considered according to their future completion. All things came out from God, all things go back to God. This is the law of creation. The foundation of this return is the return of man to the Logos. The steps are, 1st, deliverance from the bodily forms; 2d, resurrection and the abrogation of sex; 3d, the transformation of body into spirit; 4th, the return to the primordial causes; 5th, the recession of nature, along with these causes, into God. But this, of course, implies that God alone will exist forever, and that there can be no eternal punishment. Scotus Erigena tries in vain to escape both these logical conclusions.1473

His Philosophy.

Ueberweg thus states Scotus Erigena’s philosophical position and teachings:1474 "The fundamental idea, and at the same time the fundamental error, in Erigena’s doctrine is the idea that the degrees of abstraction correspond with the degrees in the scale of real existence. He hypostasizes the Tabula Logica. The universals are before and also in the individual objects which exist, or rather the latter are in the former: the distinction between these (Realistic) formulae appears not yet developed in his writings .... He is throughout a Realist. He teaches, it is true, that grammar and rhetoric, as branches of dialectic or aids to it, relate only to words, not to things, and that they are therefore not properly sciences; but he co-ordinates dialectic itself with ethics, physics and theology, defining it as the doctrine of the methodical form of knowledge, and assigning to it in particular, as its work, the discussion of the most general conceptions or logical categories (predicaments); which categories he by no means regards as merely subjective forms or images, but as the names of the highest genera of all created things ....

"The most noteworthy features in his theory of the categories are his doctrine of the combination of the categories with each other, and his attempt to subsume them under the conceptions of motion and rest; as also his identification of the categories of place with definition in logic, which, he says, is the work of the understanding. The dialectical precepts which relate to the form or method of philosophising are not discussed by him in detail; the most essential thing in his regard is the use of the four forms, called by the Greeks division, definition, demonstration and analysis. Under the latter he understands the reduction of the derivative and composite to the simple, universal and fundamental; but uses the term also in the opposite to denote the unfolding of God in creation."

His Influence and Importance.

Scotus Erigena was considered a heretic or a madman while he lived, and this fact joined to the other that his views were far in advance of his age, caused his influence to be at first much less than might have been expected. He passed into almost complete obscurity before he died, as the conflicting reports of his later years show. Yet he did wield a posthumous influence. His idea of the unity of philosophy and theology comes up in Anselm and Thomas Aquinas; his speculation concerning primordial causes in Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus. From him Amalrich of Bena, and David of Dinanto drew their pantheism; and various mystical sects of the Middle Ages were inspired by him. The Church, ever watchful for orthodoxy, perceived that his book, De Divisione Naturae, was doing mischief. Young persons, even in convents read it eagerly. Everywhere it attracted notice. Accordingly a council, at Sens, formally condemned it, and then the Pope (Honorius III.) ordered, by a bull of Jan. 23, 1225, the destruction of all copies that could be found, styling it "a book teeming with the worms of heretical depravity."1475  This order probably had the desired effect. The book passed out of notice. But in 1681 Thomas Gale issued it in Oxford. Again the Roman Church was alarmed, and Gregory XIII., by bull of April 3, 1685, put it on the Index.

Scotus Erigena was a man of rare originality and mental vigor. His writings are full of ideas and bold arguments. His strongly syllogistic mode of developing his theme was all his own, and the emphasis he put upon logic proves his superiority to his age. Unlike the scholastics, who meekly bowed to tradition, he treated it with manly independence. To his "disciple" he said: "Let no authority terrify thee.1476  Hence it is erroneous to call him "the Father of Scholasticism;" rather is he the founder of Speculative Philosophy.1477  The scholastics drew from him, but he was not a scholastic. The mystics drew from him, but he was not a mystic. As a pathfinder it was not given to him to thoroughly explore the rich country he traversed. But others eagerly pressed in along the way he opened. He is one of the most interesting figures among the mediaeval writers. He demands study and he rewards it. De Divsione Naturae is a master-piece, and, as Baur well says, "an organized system which comprehends the highest speculative ideas."1478

Note on the country of birth and death of Scotus Erigena.

The statement that John was born in Ireland rests upon the interpretation of his name. Scotus is indefinite, since it was used of both Ireland and Scotland, the former country being called Scotia Major. But Erigena is most probably a corruption of  JIerou’  [sc. nhvsou] gena, Hierugena, which John, with his fondness for using Greek words on all occasions, added to his original name to indicate his birth in the "holy isle," or "isle of saints," a common designation of Ireland. The derivation is the more probable since he himself calls Maximus Confessor Graiga-gena, to indicate the latter’s birth in Greece. By his contemporaries and in the oldest codices he is called Joannes Scotus or Scottus,1479 but in the oldest MSS. of his translation of Dionysius Joanna Ierugena.1480  In course of time, owing to his scribes’ ignorance of Greek, the epithet was written Eriugena, Erygena, and finally Erigena. Another derivation of the epithet, which has less to commend it, is from  jIevrnh ˆ gevna,  jIevrnh being the Greek name for Ireland. But this leaves the disappearance of the first v to be accounted for. The far-fetched explanations of Erigena either from Ayr, a city on the west coast of Scotland, or Ergene in Hereford, a shire in England on the south Welsh border, and gena, may be dismissed without discussion.

The absence of authentic information to the contrary makes it probable that Scotus Erigena died in France. But there is a tradition that he was called by Alfred the Great into England and made abbot of Malmesbury, and there died a violent death at the hands of his scholars. It is inherently improbable that a conservative and loyal son of the church like Alfred, would invite to any position so eccentric, if not heretical, a man as Scotus Erigena. Charles the Bald died in 877. It is not likely that Erigena would leave France before that date, but then he was at least sixty-two, and hence rather old to change his residence. A reference to Asser’s biography of King Alfred affords a rational explanation of the tradition. Asser says that Alfred invited from Gaul a priest and monk named John, who was remarkable for energy, talent and learning, in order that the king might profit by his conversation. A few pages further on, Asser calls this John an old Saxon, and says that Alfred appointed him the first abbot of Athelney, and that he was almost murdered by hired ruffians. Mon. Hist. Brit. vol. i. [1848], pp. 489, 493, 4 Eng. trans. Six Old English Chronicles in Bohn’s "Antiquarian Library," pp. 70, 80, 81. It needed only that the fame of John Scotus should reach England for the John of Asser’s biography to be confounded with him, and thus the story arose as it is found in Ingulph, William of Malmesbury, and Matthew Paris.

§ 177. Anastasius.

I. Anastasius Bibliothecarius: Opera omnia in Migne, Tom. CXXVII.-CXXIX. col. 744.

II. The Prolegomena in Migne, CXXVII. Ceillier, XII. 712–718. Bähr, 261–271.

Anastasius, librarian of the Roman Church, hence surnamed the "Librarian," to distinguish him from others of the same name, was abbot of the monastery of Sancta Maria trans Tiberim under Nicolas I. (858–867). He was sent in 869 to Constantinople as ambassador to arrange a marriage between the daughter of Louis II. and a son of Basil the Macedonian. While there the eighth oecumenical council was in session, and by his knowledge of Greek he was very useful to the Papal ambassador in attendance. He brought back with him the canons of the council and at the request of Hadrian II. translated them into Latin. He died, according to Baronius, in 886.

He has been identified by some (e.g. Fabricius1481 and Hergenröther1482) with the Cardinal presbyter Anastasius who was deposed and excommunicated in 850, anathematized in 853, but elected pope in 855 in opposition to Benedict III. whom he imprisoned. He was deposed in 856 and died in 879. Those who accept the statement are obliged to suppose that for some reason Nicolas and Louis II. condoned his fault and Hadrian II. continued him in favor. The name Anastasius is too common in Church history to render it necessary or safe to resort to such an improbable identification.

The fame of Anastasius rests upon his numerous translations from the Greek and his supposed connection with the Liber Pontificalis.1483  His style is rude and semi-barbarous, but he brought to the knowledge of the Latins much information about the Greeks. He translated the canons of the sixth, seventh and eighth oecumenical councils;1484 the Chronology of Nicephorus;1485 the collection of documents in Greek for the history of Monotheletism which John the Deacon had made;1486 and the lives of several saints.1487 He also compiled and translated from Nicephorus, George Syncellus, and Theophanus Confessor a church history, which has been incorporated with the so-called Historia Miscella of Paulus Diaconus.

His original writings now extant consist of a valuable historical introduction to the translation of the canons of the Eighth Oecumenical Council, a preface to that of the Collectanea, three letters (two to Charles the Bald and one to archbishop Ado),1488 and probably the life of Pope Nicolas I.1489 in the Liber Pontificalis.

§ 178. Ratherius of Verona.

I. Ratherius, Veronensis episcopus: Opera omnia, in Migne, Tom. CXXXVI. col. 9–768 (reprint of ed. by Peter and, Jerome Balterini, Verona, 1765).

II. See Vita by Ballerini in Migne, l.c. col. 27–142. Albrecht Vogel: Ratherius von Verona und das 10. Jahrhundert. Jena, 1854, 2 vols. Cf. his art. in Herzog2, XII. 503–506. Du Pin, VIII. 20–26.Ceillier, XII. 846–860. Hist. de la France, VI. 339–383. Bähr, 546–553.

Ratherius (Rathier) was born of noble ancestry at or near Liège in 890 (or 891) and educated at the convent of Lobbes. He became a monk, acquired much learning and in 931 was consecrated bishop of Verona. By his vigorous denunciation of the faults and failings of his clergy, particularly of their marriages or, as he called them, adulteries, he raised a storm of opposition. When Arnold of Bavaria took Verona (934), king Hugo of Italy deposed him for alleged connivance with Arnold and held him a close prisoner at Pavia from February, 935, until August, 937, when he was transferred to the oversight of the bishop of Como.

In the early part of 941 Ratherius escaped to Southern France, was tutor in a rich family of Provence, and in 944 re-entered the monastery of Lobbes. Two years later he was restored to his see of Verona; whence he was driven again in 948. From 953 to 955 he was bishop of Liège. On his deposition he became abbot of Alna, a dependency of the monastery of Lobbes, where he stirred up a controversy upon the eucharist by his revival of Paschasian views. In 961 he was for the third time bishop of Verona, but having learned no moderation from his misfortunes he was forced by, his indignant clergy to leave in 968. He returned to Liège and the abbotship of Alna. By money he secured other charges, and even for a year (971) forcibly held the abbotship of Lobbes. On April 25, 974, he died at the court of the count of Namur.

Ratherius "deserves in many respects to be styled the Tertullian of his time."1490 Some see in his castigation of vice the zeal of a Protestant reformer, but his standpoint was different. He was learned and ambitious, but also headstrong and envious. His works are obscure in style, but full of information. The chief are

1. The Combat, also called Preliminary discourses, in six books.1491  It treats in prolix style of the different occupations and relations in life, and dwells particularly upon the duties of bishops. It was the fruit of his prison-leisure (935–937), when he was without books and friends.

2. On contempt for canonical law.1492  It dates from 961, and is upon the disorders in his diocese, particularly his clergy’s opposition to his dispensation of its revenues. In all this Ratherius sees contempt of the canons which he cites.

3. A conjecture of a certain quality.1493  This is a vigorous defense of his conduct, written in 966. Fourteen of his Letters and eleven of his Sermons have been printed.1494  In the first letter he avows his belief in transubstantiation.

§ 179. Gerbert (Sylvester II.).

I. Silvester II. Papa (Gerbertus): Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXXXIX. col. 57–350. Contains also the biographical and literary notices of Natalis Alexander, Fabricius, and the Bened. Hist. Lit. de la France. OEuvres de Gerbert par A. Olleris. Clermont, 1867. Pertz: Monum. Germ. Tom. V. Script. III. contains Gerberti archiep. Remensis Acta Concilii Remensis, and the Libri IV. Historiarum of Richerus monachus S. Remigii. Richer was a pupil of Gerbert, and his history of France was first edited by Pertz.

II. Abr. Bzovius: Sylvester vindicatus. Rom., 1629. Hist. Lit. de la France, VI., 559–614. C. F. Hock: Gerbert oder Papst Sylvester und sein Jahrh. Wien, 1837. Max Büdinger: Ueber Gerberts wissenschaftl. und polit. Stellung. Marburg, 1851. Gfrörer: Allgem. Kirchengeschichte, Bd. III. Abth. 3. Wilmanns: Jahrbücher des deutschen Reichs unter Otto III. Berlin, 1840. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Bd. I. 613–616; 712–715: 842 (3d ed. 1865). Hefele: Conciliengesch. Bd. IV. 637 and passim. (2d ed. 1879). A. Olleris: Vie de Gerbert. Clermont-Ferrand, 1867.  Eduard Barthelémy: Gerbert, étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages, suivie de la traduction de ses lettres. Paris, 1868. Loupot: Gerbert, sa vie et ses écrits. Lille, 1869. Karl Werner: Gerbert von Aurillac. Wien, 1878. Hauck: Silvester II., in Herzog, XIV. 233–240. Comp. also Ceillier, XII. 901–9II. Neander: III. 371–374, and Reuter: Aufklärung in Mittelalter, I. 78–84.

Gerbert, the scholar and philosopher in the Fisherman’s chair, and the brightest light in the darkness of the tenth century was born before 950, of low parentage, in or near Aurilac in Auvergne, and educated as a monk in the Benedictine convent of that place. He accompanied Count Borel of Barcelona to Spain and acquired there some knowledge of Arabic learning, but probably only through Latin translations. He also visited Rome (968) in company of his patron Borel, and attracted the attention of Pope John XIII., who recommended him to Emperor Otho the Great. He afterwards became the tutor and friend of the youthful Otho III., and inspired him with the romantic and abortive scheme of re-establishing the Graeco-Roman empire of Constantine the Great in the city of Rome. He was ambitious and fond of basking in the sunshine of imperial and royal favor.

Gerbert became master of the cathedral school of Rheims and acquired great fame as a scholar and teacher. He collected rare and valuable books on every subject. He was intensely interested in every branch of knowledge, divine and human, especially in mathematics, astronomy, physics, and music; he first introduced the Arabic numerals and the decimal notation into France, and showed his scientific and mechanical genius by the construction of astronomical instruments and an organ blown by steam. At the same time he was a man of affairs, a statesman and politician.1495

In 972 he obtained through imperial favor the abbey, of Bobbio, but was involved in contentions with the neighboring nobles and left in disgust, though retaining his dignity. "All Italy," he wrote to a friend, "appears to me a Rome, and the morals of the Romans are the horror of the world." He returned to his position at Rheims, attracted pupils from near and far and raised the cathedral school to the height of prosperity. He was the secretary of the council held in the basilica of St. Basolus near Rheims in 991, and gave shape to the flaming speech of the learned bishop Arnulf of Orleans against the assumptions and corruptions of the papacy.1496  No Gallican could have spoken more boldly. By the same synod Arnulf, archbishop of Rheims, an illegitimate son of one of the last Carolingian kings, was deposed on the charge of treason against Hugh Capet, and Gerbert was chosen in his place, at the desire of the king. But his election was disputed, and he assumed an almost schismatical attitude towards Rome. He was deposed, and his rival Arnulf, with the aid of the pope, reinstated by a Council of Senlis or Rheims (996).1497  He now left France and accepted an invitation of his pupil Otho III. to Magdeburg, followed him to Italy (996), was by imperial favor made archbishop of Ravenna (998), and a year afterwards raised to the papal throne as Sylvester II. He was the first French pope. The three R’s (Rheims, Ravenna, Rome) mark his highest dignities, as expressed in the line ascribed to him:

"Scandit ab R. Gerbertus in R., fit postea papa vigens R."

As Gerbert of Rheims he had advocated liberal views and boldly attacked the Roman Antichrists who at that time were seated in the temple of God; but as Sylvester II. he disowned his Gallican antecedents and supported the claims of the papacy.1498  He did, however, nothing remarkable during his short and troublesome pontificate (between 999–1003), except crown King Stephen of Hungary and give the first impulse, though prematurely, to the crusades at a time when hundreds of pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land in expectation of the end of the world after the lapse of the first Christian millennium.1499

His character has been very differently judged. The papal biographers of the later middle ages malignantly represent him as a magician in league with the devil, and his life and pontificate as a series of monstrous crimes.1500  This story arose partly from his uncommon learning and supposed contact with Mohammedanism, partly from his former antagonistic position to Rome. Some modern historians make him an ambitious intriguer.1501

His literary labors are chiefly mathematical.1502  His theological works are few and unimportant, and do not rise above the superstition of his age. His short treatise, "De Corpore et Sanguine Domini," is a defense of the doctrine of transubstantiation as taught by Paschasius Radbertus, with the additional notion that the consecrated elements are not digested like other food (as the Stercorianists held), but are imperishable spiritual nourishment for the inner man, and constitute the germ of the future resurrection body.1503  Where words give out there is the more room for faith.1504

In his sermon De informatione episcoporum, if genuine,1505 he presents the high theocratic view of the middle ages, raises the episcopate far above royalty,1506 and attacks the common traffic in ecclesiastical dignities (simony), but maintains also that all bishops share with Peter the care of Christ’s flock.1507  This indicates that the tract was written before his elevation to the papacy, and that he did not hold the ultramontane or Vatican doctrine of papal absolutism.

His Epistles to popes, emperors, kings, queens, archbishops and other dignitaries., shed light on the history of the times, and show his high connections, and his genius for politics and intrigue.1508  They are mostly short, and include also some letters of Otho III. The longest and most interesting is addressed to Queen Adelaide, wife of Hugo Capet, and the suffragans of the diocese of Rheims,1509 in defense of his ordination as archbishop of Rheims in opposition to his rival Arnulf, whom he afterwards reinstated in his see as soon as he became pope.1510

§ 180. Fulbert of Chartres.

I. Sanctus Fulbertus, Carnotensis episcopus: Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXLI. col. 163–374. They were first printed by Masson at Paris, 1585.

II. Du Pin, IX. 1–6. Ceillier, XIII. 78–89. Hist. Lit. de la France, VII. 261–279 (reprinted in Migne, l.c. col. 167–184). Neander III. passim. Reuter: Gesch. der Rel. Aufklärung in Mittelalter (1875), I. 89–91. J. B. Souchet: Hist. du diocèse et de, la ville de Chartres. Chartres, 1867–1876.4  vols. Cf. Karl Werner: Gerbert von Aurillac. Wien, 1878. A. Vogel in Herzog2 IV. 707 sq.

The most distinguished pupils of Gerbert were the Emperor Otho III., King Robert of France, Richer, the historian of France, and Fulbert of Chartres, the most renowned teacher of his age. They represent the rise of a new zeal for learning which began to dispel the darkness of the tenth century. France took the lead, Italy followed.

Fulbert, called by his admiring disciples "the Socrates of the Franks," was born of poor and obscure parents, probably at Chartres, about 950, and educated in the cathedral school of Rheims by Gerbert. He founded a similar school at Chartres, which soon acquired a brilliant reputation and rivalled that of Rheims. About 1003 he was elected chancellor of the church of Chartres, and in 1007 its bishop. When the cathedral burned down (1020), he received contributions from all parts of France and other countries for its reconstruction, but did not live to finish it. He was involved in the political and ecclesiastical disturbances of his country, opposed the use of the sword by the bishops, and the appropriation of church property, and sale of offices by the avaricious laity. He lost the favor of the court by his opposition to the intrigues of Queen Constantia. He died April 10, 1029.1511

Fulbert’s fame rests chiefly on his success as a living teacher. This is indicated by his surname.1512  He was not an original thinker, but knew how to inspire his pupils with enthusiasm.1513  His personality was greater than his learning. He wisely combined spiritual edification with intellectual instruction, and aimed at the eternal welfare of his students. He used to walk with them at eventide in the garden and to engage in familiar conversations on the celestial country; sometimes he was overcome by his feelings, and adjured them with tears, never to depart from the path of truth and to strive with all might after that heavenly home.1514

His ablest pupil was Berengar of Tours, the vigorous opponent of transubstantiation, and it has sometimes been conjectured that he derived his views from him.1515  But Fulbert adhered to the traditional orthodoxy, and expressed himself against innovations, in letters to his metropolitan, Leutberich, archbishop of Sens. He regarded the real presence as an object of faith and adoration rather than of curious speculation, but thought that it is not more difficult to believe in a transformation of substance by Divine power than in the creation of substance.1516  He was a zealous worshipper of the saints, especially of the Virgin Mary, and one of the first who celebrated the festival of her Nativity.

The works of Fulbert consist of one hundred and thirty-nine (or 138) Letters, including some letters of his correspondents;1517 nine Sermons;1518 twenty-seven Hymns and Poems,,1519 and a few minor compositions, including probably a life of St. Autbert.1520  His letters have considerable interest and importance for the history of his age. The longest and most important letter treats of three doctrines which he regarded as essential and fundamental, namely, the trinity, baptism, and the eucharist.1521

From the school of Gerbert at Rheims proceeded the school of Fulbert at Chartres, and from this again the school of Berengar at Tours—all equally distinguished for popularity and efficiency. They in turn were succeeded by the monastic school of Lanfranc at Bec, who came from Italy, labored in France, opposed Berengar, his rival, and completed his career in England as archbishop of Canterbury. He was excelled by his pupil and successor, Anselm, the second Augustin, the father of Catholic scholasticism. With him began a new and important chapter in the development of theology.

§ 181. Rodulfus Glaber. Adam of Bremen.

I. Rodulfus Glaber (Cluniacnesis monachus): Opera, in Migne, Tom. CXLII. col. 611–720. The Historia sui temporis or Historia Francorum is also printed in part, with textual emendations by G. Waitz, in the Monum. Germ. Script., ed. by Pertz, Tom. VII. 48–72, and the Vita Willelmi abbatis in Tom. IV. 655–658. Comp. Ceillier: XIII. 143–147. Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen. Potthast: Biblioth. Hist. medii aevi, p. 521.

II. Adamus Bremensis: Gesta Hammaburgenais ecclesiae Pontificum, seu Historia ecclesiastica. Libri IV. Best. ed. by Lappenberg in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Scriptores, Tom. VII. 267–389. German translation by Laurent, with introduction by Lappenberg, Berlin, 1850 (in "Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit;" XI. Jahrh. B. VII.). In Migne, Tom. CXLVI. col. 433–566 (reprinted from Pertz).—Comp. Giesebrecht: Wendische Geschichte, III. 316 sqq.; Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen (first ed. p. 252 sqq.); Koppmann: Die mittelalterlichen Geschichtsquellen in Bezug auf Hamburg (1868); Potthast, l.c p. 100; C. Bertheau in Herzog2 I. 140 sqq. Of older notices see Ceillier, XIV. 201–206.

Among the historical writers of the eleventh century, Rodulfus Glaber, and Adam of Bremen deserve special mention, the one for France, the other for the North of Europe.

Rodulfus Glaber1522 was a native of Burgundy, sent to a convent in early youth by his uncle, and expelled for bad conduct; but he reformed and joined the strict Benedictine school of Cluny. He lived a while in the monastery of St. Benignus, at Dijon, then at Cluny, and died about 1050.

His chief work is a history of his own time, from 1000–1045, in five books. Though written in barbarous Latin and full of inaccuracies, chronological blunders, and legendary miracles, it is an interesting and indispensable source of information, and gives vivid pictures of the corrupt morals of that period.1523  He wrote also a biography of St. William, abbot of Dijon, who died 1031.1524

Adam of Bremen, a Saxon by birth, educated (probably) at Magdeburg, teacher and canon of the chapter at Bremen (1068), composed, between 1072 and 1076, a history of the Bishops of Hamburg-Bremen.1525  This is the chief source for the oldest church history of North Germany and Scandinavia, from 788 to the death of Adalbert, who was archbishop of Bremen from 1045–1072. Adam drew from the written sources in the rich library, of the church at Bremen, and from oral traditions.1526  He went to the Danish King Sven Estrithson, who "preserved the whole history of the barbarians in his memory as in a book." He is impartial and reliable, but neglects the chronology, . He may almost be called the Herodotus of the North except for his want of simplicity. He was familiar with Virgil, Horace, Lucian, and formed his style chiefly after Sallust; hence his artificial brevity and sententiousness.1527  He ranks with the first historians of the middle ages.1528

§ 182. St. Peter Damiani.

I. Beati Petri Damiani (S. R. E. cardinalis Episcopi Ostiensis Ordinis S. Benedicti) Opera omnia in quatuor tomos distributa, studio et labora Domni Constantini Cajetani (of Montecassino), first publ. Rom. 1606–’13; in Paris, 1663; in Venice, 1783. Reprinted with Vitae and Prolegomena in Migne’s "Patrol. Lat.," Tom. CXLIV. and CXLV. (1853). Tom. I. 1060 cols.; Tom. II. 1224 cols.

II. Three biographies of Damiani, one by his pupil, Joannes monachus, who, however, only describes his monastic character. See Migne, I. 47–204. Acta Sanctorum (Bolland.), for February 23, Tom. III. 406–427. Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Bened., Saec. VI. Also the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, ed. Mabillon, Tom. IV., lib. LVIII.-LXII. (which extend from A.D. 1039–1066, and notice the public acts of Damiani in chronological order).

III. Jac. Laderchi: Vita S. Petri Damiani S. R. E. Cardinalis. Rom. 1702. 3 Tom. Albr. Vogel: Peter Damiani. Jena, 1856. Comp. his art. in Herzog2 III. 466 sqq. F. Neukirch: Das Leben des Peter Dam. Göttingen, 1876. Jos. Kleinermanns (R.C.): Petrus Damiani in s. Leben und Wirken, nach den Quellen dargestellt. Steyl, 1882. Comp. also Ceillier, XIII. 296–324. Neander, III. 382, 397 and passim; Gfrörer Gregor. VII, Bd. I.; Höfler: Die deutschen Paepste; Will: Die Anfänge der Restauration der Kirche im elfte Jahrh.; Giesebrecht: Gesch. der deutschen Kaizerzeit, vol. II.; Hefele: Conciliengesch., vol. IV.

I. Life. Peter Damianus or Damiani (1007–1072),1529 a friend of Hildebrand and zealous promoter of the moral reform of the clergy, was a native of Ravenna, had a very hard youth, but with the help of his brother Damianus (whose name he adopted),1530 he was enabled to study at Ravenna, Faenza and Parma. He acquired honor and fortune as a teacher of the liberal arts in his native city. In his thirtieth year he suddenly left the world and became a hermit at Fonte Avellano near Gubbio (Eugubium) in Umbria, following the example of his countryman, Romuald, whose life he described.1531  He soon reached the height of ascetic holiness and became abbot and disciplinarian of the hermits and monks of the whole surrounding region. Even miracles were attributed to him.

He systematized and popularized a method of meritorious self-flagellation in connection with the recital of the Psalms; each Psalm was accompanied with a hundred strokes of a leathern thong on the bare back, the whole Psalter with fifteen thousand strokes. This penance became a rage, and many a monk flogged himself to death to the music of the Psalms for his own benefit, or for the release of souls in purgatory. The greatest expert was Dominicus, who wore an iron cuirass around his bare body (hence called Loricatus), and so accelerated the strokes that he absolved without a break twelve Psalters; at last he died of exhaustion(1063).1532  Even noble women ardently practiced "hoc purgatorii genus," as Damiani calls it. He defended this self-imposed penance against the opponents as a voluntary imitation of the passion of Christ and the sufferings of martyrs, but he found it necessary also to check unnatural excesses among his disciples, and ordered that no one should be forced to scourge himself, and that forty Psalms with four thousand strokes at a time should be sufficient as a rule.

The ascetic practice which he encouraged by word and example, had far-reaching consequences; it became a part of the monastic discipline among Dominicans1533 and Franciscans, and assumed gigantic proportions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially during the reign of the Black Death (1349), when fraternities of Flagellants or Cross-bearers, moved by a spirit of repentance, preceded by crosses, stripped to the waist, with faces veiled, made pilgrimages through Italy, Germany and England and scourged themselves, while chanting the penitential psalms, twice a day for thirty-three days, in memory of the thirty-three years of our Lord’s life.1534

Damiani became the leader of the strict monastic party which centred at Cluny and labored, from the sacerdotal and theocratic point of view, for a reformation of the clergy and the church at a time of their deepest degradation and corruption. He compared the condition of his age to that of Sodom and Gomorrah; he opposed simony and the concubinage of priests, as the two chief sources of evil. He advocated a law which punished simony with deposition, and which prohibited the laity from hearing mass said by married priests. Such a law was enacted by the Lateran Council of 1059. He also condemned in the clergy the practice of bearing arms, although even Pope Leo IX., in 1053, led an army against the pillaging Normans. He firmly maintained that a priest should not draw the sword even in defense of the faith, but contend only with the Word of God and the weapon of the Spirit.

A man of such talent, piety and energy could not remain hidden in the desert. He was drawn to Rome, and against his will chosen bishop of Ostia and Cardinal of the Roman church by Stephen X. in 1058. He narrowly escaped the triple crown in 1061. He was the spiritual counsellor and censor of the Hildebrandian popes (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Stephen X., Nicolas II., Alexander II.), and of Hildebrand himself. He was employed on important missions at Milan, Florence, Montecassino, Cluny, Mainz, Frankfort. He helped to put down the papal schism of Cadalous.1535  He had the confidence of the Emperor Henry III. whom he highly praise as a second David, became confessor of the widowed Empress Agnes, and prevented the divorce of her son Henry IV. from his wife Bertha. He resigned his bishopric, but was again called out from his retreat by Hildebrand; hence he called him his holy Satan, and also the lord of the pope.1536  He despised the vanities and dignities of high office. He preferred his monastic cell in the Apennines, where he could conquer his own world within, recite the Psalter, scourge himself, and for a change write satires and epigrams, and make wooden spoons. "What would the bishops of old have done," he said, "had they to endure the torments which now attend the episcopate?  To ride forth constantly accompanied by troops of soldiers with swords and lances, to be girt about with armed men, like a heathen general!  Every day royal banquets, every day parade!  The table loaded with delicacies for voluptuous guests; while the poor pine away with famine!"

His last work was to heal a schism in the church of his native city. On his return he died of fever at Faenza, Feb. 23, 1072, one year before Hildebrand ascended the papal chair to carry out the reforms for which Damiani had prepared the way with narrow, but honest, earnest and unselfish devotion.

II. The Works of Damiani consist of Epistles, Sermons, Lives of Saints, ascetic tracts, and Poems. They are a mirror of the church of his age.

1. The Epistles are divided into eight books. They are addressed (a) to contemporary Roman Bishops (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Nicolas II., Alexander II., and the Anti-pope Cadalous or Honorius II.); (b) to the Cardinal Bishops, and to Cardinal Hildebrand in particular; (c) to Patriarchs and to the Archbishops of Ravenna and Cologne; (d) to various Bishops; (e) to Archpresbyters, Archdeacons, Presbyters and other clergy. They give a graphic picture of the corruptions of the church in his times, and are full of zeal for a moral reform. He subscribes himself "Petrus peccator monachus." The letters to the anti-pope Cadalous show his power of sarcasm; he tells him that his very name from cado, to fall, and laov", people, was ominous, that he deserved a triple deposition, that his new crime was adultery and simony of the worst sort, that he had sold his own church (Parma) and bought another, that the church was desecrated to the very top by such adulteries. He prophesied his death within one year, but Cadalous outlived it, and Damiani defended his prophecy as applying to moral death.

2. Sermons, seventy-four in number.1537  They are short and treat of church festivals, apostles, the Virgin Mary, martyrs, saints, relics, and enjoin a churchly and ascetic piety.

3. Lives of Saints, of the Benedictine order, namely, Odilo of Cluny, Romuald, Rodulphus, and Dominicus Loricatus (the hero of self-flagellation), whose examples are held up for imitation.1538

4. Dogmatic Discussions, De Fide Catholica; Contra Judaeos; Dialogus inter Judaeum et Christianum; De Divina Omnipotentia; De Processione Spiritus Sancti (against the Greeks), etc.1539

5. Polemic and ascetic treatises. The most important is the Liber Gomorrhianus (1051), a fearless exposure of clerical immorality which appeared to him as bad as the lewdness of Sodom and Gomorrah (hence the title).1540  It is addressed to Pope Leo IX. and calls on him to exercise his authority in removing the scandals. The Liber Gratissimus, addressed to Henry, archbishop of Ravenna, is directed against simony.1541  He wrote also tracts on the contempt of the world, on monastic perfection, on the life of hermits, on sacerdotal celibacy, against intemperance, against avarice, etc.1542

6. On Miracles and Apparitions.1543

7. On the Pictures of the chief Apostles, especially Peter and Paul.1544

8. Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, and other liturgical topics.1545

9. Exegetical Fragments on the Old and New Testaments.1546

10  Poems, satires, epigrams and Prayers.1547  His best hymn is on the glory of Paradise, based on poetic prose of St. Augustin: "Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sativit arida."1548

VOLUME V. THE MIDDLE AGES GROM GREGORY VII., 1049, to BONIFACE VIII., 1294

by

DAVID S. SCHAFF, D.D.

————

PREFACE

It was the constant hope of Dr. Philip Schaff, the author of the History of the Christian Church, that he might live to finish the treatment of the Middle Ages, to which he had devoted one volume, covering the years 600–1050. He frequently said, during the last years of his life, "If I am able to accomplish this, my History of the Christian Church will be measurably complete and I will be satisfied then to stop." He entered upon the task and had completed his studies on the pontificates of Gregory VII. and Alexander III., when his pen was laid aside and death overtook him, Oct. 20, 1893. The two volumes found lying open on his study table, as he had left them the day before, Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying and a volume of Hurter’s Life of Innocent III., showed the nature of his thoughts in his last hours.

Dr. Schaff’s distinction as a writer on Church History dated from the year 1851 when his History of the Apostolic Church appeared, first in its original German form, Mercersburg, Pa., pp. xvi, 576, and Leipzig, 1853, and then in English translation, New York and Edinburgh, 1853, 1854. Before that time, he had shown his taste for historical studies in his tract on What is Church History? translated by Dr. John W. Nevin, Phila., 1846, pp. 128, and the address on the Principle of Protestantism, which he delivered at his inauguration as professor in the theological seminary at Mercersburg, 1844. This address was published in its German form and in an English translation by Dr. Nevin, Chambersburg, 1845.

Dr. Schaff continued his publications in this department with the issue of his History of the Christian Church 1–600, in 2 volumes, N. Y., 1858–1867. In the meantime, his attention had been called to the subjects of biblical literature and exegesis, and his labors resulted in the publication of the American edition of Lange’s Commentary in 25 volumes and other works. In 1887 he issued his Creeds of Christendom in 3 volumes. Left free to devote himself to the continuation of his History, which he was inclined to regard as his chief literary work, he found it necessary, in order to keep abreast of the times and to present a fresh treatment, to begin his studies again at the very beginning and consequently the series, to which this volume belongs, is an independent work written afresh and differing in marked features from its predecessors. For example, the first volume, on the Apostolic age, devotes an extensive treatment to the authorship and dates of the Apostolic writings to which scarcely any space was given in the History of the Apostolic Church of 1851 and the History of the Apostolic Church of 1858–1867. The treatment was demanded by the new attitude of scholarship to the questions presented by the Apostolic age.

Dr. Schaff lived to prepare six volumes of this new work, three on early Christianity, one on mediaeval Christianity, and two on the Protestant Reformation. It is of some interest that Dr. Schaff’s last writing was a pamphlet on the Reunion of Christendom, pp. 71, a subject which he treated with warm practical sympathy and with materials furnished by the studies of the historian. The substance of the pamphlet had been used as a paper read before the Parliament of Religions at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago. It was a great satisfaction to him to have the Faculty of the Berlin University,—where he had spent part of his student life, 1840–1841, and which had conferred on him the doctorate of divinity in 1854,—bear testimony in their congratulatory letter on the semicentennial of his professorial career that his "History of the Christian Church is the most notable monument of universal historical learning produced by the school of Neander" (Life Of Philip Schaff, p. 467).

The further treatment of the Middle Ages, Dr. Schaff left to his son, the author of this volume. It was deemed by him best to begin the work anew, using the materials Dr. Schaff had left as the basis of the first four chapters.

The delay in the issue of the present volume is due chiefly to the requirements of study and in part to the difficulty in getting all the necessary literature. The author has felt unwilling to issue the volume without giving to it as thorough study as it was possible for him to give. This meant that he should familiarize himself not only with the mediaeval writings themselves but with the vast amount of research which has been devoted to the Middle Ages during the last quarter of a century and more. As for the literature, not a little of it has been, until recently, inaccessible to the student in this country. At Lane seminary, where the author was a professor, he found in the library an unusually well selected collection of works on the mediaeval period made fifty years ago by the wise judgment of two of its professors, Calvin E. Stowe and the late George E. Day, who made tours in Europe for the purpose of making purchases for its shelves. He also owes a debt to the Rev. Dr. Henry Goodwin Smith, for some time professor in the seminary and its librarian, for his liberal use of the library funds in supplementing the works in the mediaeval department. In passing, it may be also said that the Cincinnati Public Library, by reason of a large permanent fund given more than a half century ago for the purchase of theological works and by the wise selection of such men as Professor George E. Day, is unusually rich in works for the historical student, some of which may perhaps not be duplicated in this country.

On removing to the Western Theological seminary, the author found its librarian, Professor James A. Kelso, most ready to fill up the shelves of the mediaeval department so that it now possesses all the more important works both original and secondary. To the librarians of the two Roman Catholic libraries of Cincinnati and to other librarians the author is indebted for the courtesy of the free use of their collections.

An explanation is due for devoting an entire volume to the middle period of the Middle Ages, 1050–1294, when it was the intention of Dr. Philip Schaff to embrace it and the third period of the Middle Ages, 1294–1517, in a single volume. It is doubtful whether Dr. Schaff, after proceeding with his studies, would have thought it wise to attempt to execute his original purpose. However this might have been, to have confined the treatment of 500 years to the limits of a single volume would have meant to do a relative injustice and, in the light of recent study, to have missed a proper proportion. To the first 600 years, 1–590, the History devotes three volumes. Dr. Schaff intended to devote three volumes to the Protestant Reformation, two of which he lived to prepare. The intervening 900 years deserve an equal amount of space. The period covered by this volume is of great importance. Here belong the Crusades, the rejuvenation of monasticism by the mendicant orders, the development of the canon law, the rise of the universities, the determined struggles of the papacy with the empire, the development of the Inquisition, the settlement of the sacramental system, and some of the most notable characters the Christian Church has produced. No one can fully understand the spirit and doctrinal system of the Roman communion without knowing this period. Nor can any one, without such knowledge, fully understand the meaning of the Protestant Reformation, for the Reformation was a protest against the mediaeval theology and mediaeval practices. The best evidence for the truth of the latter statement is found in the work of the learned Dominican Denifle, entitled Luther und Lutherthum, and the Protestant rejoinders to its assaults.

A partial list of the more modern works show the amount of study that has recently been spent upon this period. Among the great collections of mediaeval documents, besides the older ones by Mabillon, Muratori, and Migne, are the Monumenta Germaniae, intended to give an exhaustive collection of mediaeval German writers, the series of collections of the papal documents called the Regesta, edited by Jaffé, Potthast, Auvray, Berger, and others, the Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, a collection of documents edited by Denifle and Chatelain of the highest importance for the study of the university system, the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, the remarkable collection of mediaeval sacred poetry edited by Dreves and Blume filling about 15 volumes, the Boehmer-Friedberg edition of the Canon Law, and the Rolls Series, containing the writers of mediaeval England. To such works must be added the new editions of Schoolmen, Albertus Magnus by Borgnet, Bonaventura by Peltier, Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and the editions of such writers as Caesar of Heisterbach, De Voragine, Salimbene, and Etienne de Bourbon. Among the recent students who have made a specialty of this period are Giesebrecht, Gregorovius, Scheffer-Boichorst, Karl Mueller, Hauck, Deutsch, Lempp, and other Protestants of Germany, and among German Catholic scholars Doellinger, Father Denifle, Ehrle, Knoepfler, Schwane, Schulte, Funk, and Felder. In France we have Rémusat, Hauréau, Chevalier, Vacandard, Sabatier, Alphandéry. In England and America, we have Dr. Henry Charles Lea, who deserves to be mentioned first, the late Bp. Stubbs, R. L. Poole, Rashdall, Bridges, the editors of the Rolls Series, such as Brewer and Luard, and Prof. D. C. Munro, O. T. Thatcher, and Shailer Mathews.

Except in rare cases, the quotations are taken from the original works, whether they were written in the Middle Ages or are modern discussions. An exception is the History of the City of Rome by Gregorovius. It has required severe discipline to check the inclination to extend the notes to a far greater length than they have been carried, especially in such chapters as those on the sacramental system and the Schoolmen. In the tables of literature, the more important modern works have at times been indicated by a star, *.

In the preparation of the volume for the press, efficient aid has been rendered by the Rev. David E. Culley, fellow and tutor in the Western Theological seminary, whose literary and historical tastes and sober judgment have been confirmed by studies abroad.

The second part of this volume, carrying the history from Boniface VIII. to the Reformation, is in an advanced stage of preparation.

In closing, the author indulges the hope that Dr. Philip Schaff’s spirit of toleration may be found permeating this volume, and its general historic judgments to be such as Dr. Schaff himself would have expressed.

DAVID S. SCHAFF.

The Western Theological Seminary,

Allegheny, Pa

THE MIDDLE AGES.

THE PAPAL THEOCRACY IN CONFLICT WITH THE SECULAR POWER.

FROM GREGORY VII. TO BONIFACE VIII.

A. D. 1049–1294.

THE FIFTH PERIOD OF CHURCH HISTORY.

§ 1. General Literature.

Sources: J. P. Migne: Patrologiae cursus completus, etc. The Latin series containing the writings of the "Fathers, Doctors, and Writers of the Latin Church from Tertullian to Innocent III.," 221 vols. Paris, 1844–1864. Indispensable. The writers of the 11th century begin with vol. 139.—Philip Labbaeus, S. J., d. 1667: Sacrosancta concilia ad regiam editionem exacta, 18 vols. Paris, 1662 sqq. Labbaeus lived to see vol. IX. in print. Completed by Gabriel Cossart. This collection has been used in places in this volume. —John D. Mansi, abp. of Lucca, d. 1769: Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 31 vols., Florence and Venice, 1759–1798. Extends to the Council of Florence, 1439. New facsimile ed. with continuation. Paris, 1901 sqq. Thus far 38 vols., 0–37, reaching to 1735.—L. A. Muratori, d. 1750: Rerum Italicarum scriptores, 500–1600, 25 vols. Milan, 1723–1761, with supplemental vols., Florence, 1748, 1770, Venice, 1771, in all 31 parts. Repub. and ed. by G. Carducci et V. Fiorini, Citta di Castello 1902 sqq.—Monumenta Germaniae historica, ed. by G. H. Pertz, d. 1870, and his coeditors and successors, Wattenbach, Böhmer, etc. More than 50 vols. Han., 1826 sqq. They cover the whole history of the empire and papacy.—Scriptores rerum Germanicarum for use in schools and drawn from the preceding, ed. by Pertz, 42 vols. Han., 1840–1894.—Die Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, ed. by Pertz, etc., in German trans, 92 vols. Berlin and Leipzig, 1849–1892.—The Rolls Series, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, 97 vols., London, 1858–1891, contains splendid edd. of William of Malmesbury, Roger of Wendover, Ralph of Coggeshall, Richard of Hoveden, Matthew Paris (7 vols.), Grosseteste, and other English mediaeval writers.—Bohn’s Antiq. Library, 41 vols. London, 1848–1864 sqq., gives translations of M. Paris, Richard of Hoveden, etc.—J. F. Böhmer: Regesta imperii, 1198–1254. New ed. by J. Ficker and Winkelmann, Innsbruck, 1881–1894. Regesta pontificum romanorum from St. Peter to Innocent III., ed. by Jaffé, d. 1878, Berlin, 1851, pp. 951; 2d ed. by Wattenbach, Löwenthal, Kaltenbrunner, and Ewald, vol. I. Lips., 1885, from Peter to Innocent II., 64–1143; vol. II. Lips., 1888 from Coelestin II. to Innocent III., 1143–1198. —Continuation by Aug. Potthast, from Innocent III., to Benedict XI., 1198–1304, 2 vols. pp. 2157, Berlin, 1873, 1875.—J. Von Pflugk Harttung: Acta pontificum rom. inedita, 3 vols. Tübing. 1881–1888. Carl Mirbt: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des röm. Katholizismus, 2d ed. Tübing. 1901, pp. 482. Very convenient and valuable, giving the original Latin documents.—Shailer Mathews: Select Mediaeval Docts. etc., illustr. the Hist. Of the Church and Empire, 754–1254, N. Y. 1892.—Heinrich Denifle, O. P., archivarius of the Vatican Library, d. 1905, and Franz Ehrle, S. J.: Archiv für Literaturund Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, Freib. im Br. 1885 sqq. Many important documents were published here for the first time.—Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken herausgegeben vom Koenigl-Preussichen Historischen Institut in Rom., thus far 8 vols. 1897–1905.

Secondary Works: Histoire Littéraire de la France, 1733 sqq. Dicty. of Natl. Biogr., ed. by Leslie Stephen, 63 vols. with Supplem., London, 1885–1903,—Wetzer-Welte: Kirchen Lexikon, 2d ed. 12 vols. Freib. im Br. 1882–1901.—Herzog: Realencyklopaedia für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, ed. by A. Hauck, 3d ed. 1896 sqq. Thus far 18 vols.—W. Giesebrecht: Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 3 vols. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1890.—Döllinger-Friedrich: Das Papstthum, Munich, 1892. A revision of Döllinger’s The Pope and the Council, which appeared in 1869 under the pseudonym Janus, as a protest against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility about to be taken up at the Vatican Council.—Ferdinand Gregorovius: Geschichte der Stadt Rom. im Mittelalter, Engl. trans. from the 4th German, ed. 1886–1893, Stuttg., by Annie Hamilton, 8 vols. (13 parts), London, 1894–1902. The most valuable general work of the Middle Ages.—James Bryce: The Holy Roman Empire, new ed. London, 1904, pp. 575. Thorough and lucid.—Carl J. von Hefele, Bishop of Rottenburg, d. 1893: Conciliengeschichte to 1536, 2d ed. 9 vols. Freib. im Br. 1873–1890. Vols. V.-VII. in 2d ed. by A. Knöpfler. Vols. VIII. IX. were prepared by Cardinal Hergenröther.—A. Hauck: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 4 vols. Leipzig, 1887–1903; vols. I. II 4th ed. 1904.—Gibbon: Decline and Fall of Rome, ed. by J. B. Bury, 7 vols. London, 1897–1900.—Leopold Von Ranke: Weltgeschichte to 1453, 9 vols. Leipzig, 1883–1888.—The Church Histories of Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Die christl. Kirche des Mittelalters, 1861, Milman, Hagenbach, K. Hase, Rich. C. Trench: Med. Ch. History, 1877. The Manuals of Church History of Hefele-Knöpfler, 3d ed. 1902, F. X. Funk, 4th ed. 1902, W. Möller Engl. trans. 3 vols. 1898–1900, Karl Muller, 2 vols. 1892–1902, Hergenröther, rev. by J. P. Kirsch, 4th ed. 1902 sqq. Loofs, 1901, Hans Von Schubert, 1904, Geo. P. Fisher, 1887, H. C. Sheldon, 5 vols. N. Y. 1890, A. C. Zenos, Phil. 1899, A. H. Newman, 2 vols. 1900 sqq. The Histories of Christian Doctrine, of Harnack Engl. trans. from 3d Ger. ed. 7 vols. Boston, 1897–1900. Loofs, 3d ed. 1893, Geo. P. Fisher, 1896, Seeberg, 2 vols. 1895, H. C. Sheldon, 2 vols. 4th ed. 1905.—Hallam: Hist. of the Middle Ages.—Guizot: Hist. of Civilization from the Fall of the Rom. Emp. to the French Revolution.—Lecky: Hist. of Rationalism in Europe and European Morals.—H. Weingarten: Zeittafeln und Ueberblicke zur Kirchengeschichte, 6th ed. by Arnold, Leipzig, 1905.

For Literature: A. Potthast: Bibliotheca Historica medii aevi, Wegweiser durch die Geschichtswerke des europäischen Mittelalters bis 1500, 2 vols. Berlin, 1864–1868, 2d ed. Berlin, 1896. A work of great industry and value.—U. Chevalier: Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen âge, Paris, 1877–1886, Supplem. 1888.—W. Wattenbach: Deutsche Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, to 1250, 2 vols. Berlin, 1858, 6th ed. 1893 sq.

For other works relating to the whole period of the Middle Ages, see vol. IV. 1–4.

§ 2. Introductory Survey.

The fifth period of general Church history, or the second period of mediaeval Church history, begins with the rise of Hildebrand, 1049, and ends with the elevation of Boniface VIII. to the papal dignity, 1294.

In this period the Church and the papacy ascend from the lowest state of weakness and corruption to the highest power and influence over the nations of Europe. It is the classical age of Latin Christianity: the age of the papal theocracy, aiming to control the German Empire and the kingdoms of France, Spain, and England. It witnessed the rise of the great Mendicant orders and the religious revival which followed. It beheld the full flower of chivalry and the progress of the crusades, with the heroic conquest and loss of the Holy Land. It saw the foundations laid of the great universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford. It was the age of scholastic philosophy and theology, and their gigantic efforts to solve all conceivable problems and by dialectical skill to prove every article of faith. During its progress Norman and Gothic architecture began to rear the cathedrals. All the arts were made the handmaids of religion; and legendary poetry and romance flourished. Then the Inquisition was established, involving the theory of the persecution of Jews and heretics as a divine right, and carrying it into execution in awful scenes of torture and blood. It was an age of bright light and deep shadows, of strong faith and stronger superstition, of sublime heroism and wild passions, of ascetic self-denial and sensual indulgence, of Christian devotion and barbarous cruelty.1  Dante, in his Divina Commedia, which "heaven and earth" combined to produce, gives a poetic mirror of Christianity and civilization in the thirteenth and the opening years of the fourteenth century, when the Roman Church was at the summit of its power, and yet, by the abuse—of that power and its worldliness, was calling forth loud protests, and demands for a thorough reformation from all parts of Western Christendom.

A striking feature of the Middle Ages is the contrast and co-operation of the forces of extreme self-abnegation as represented in monasticism and extreme ambition for worldly dominion as represented in the papacy.2  The former gave moral support to the latter, and the latter utilized the former. The monks were the standing army of the pope, and fought his battles against the secular rulers of Western Europe.

The papal theocracy in conflict with the secular powers and at the height of its power is the leading topic. The weak and degenerate popes who ruled from 900–1046 are now succeeded by a line of vigorous minds, men of moral as well as intellectual strength. The world has had few rulers equal to Gregory VII. 1073–1085, Alexander III. 1159–1181, and Innocent III. 1198–1216, not to speak of other pontiffs scarcely second to these masters in the art of government and aspiring aims. The papacy was a necessity and a blessing in a barbarous age, as a check upon brute force, and as a school of moral discipline. The popes stood on a much higher plane than the princes of their time. The spirit has a right to rule over the body; the intellectual and moral interests are superior to the material and political. But the papal theocracy carried in it the temptation to secularization. By the abuse of opportunity it became a hindrance to pure religion and morals. Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, but he also said, "My kingdom is not of this world." The pope coveted both kingdoms, and he got what he coveted. But he was not able to hold the power he claimed over the State, and aspiring after temporal authority lost spiritual power. Boniface VIII. marks the beginning of the decline and fall of the papal rule; and the seeds of this decline and fall were sown in the period when the hierarchy was in the pride of its worldly might and glory.

In this period also, and chiefly as the result of the crusades, the schism between the churches of the East and the West was completed. All attempts made at reconciliation by pope and council only ended in wider alienation.

The ruling nations during the Middle Ages were the Latin, who descended from the old Roman stock, but showed the mixture of barbaric blood and vigor, and the Teutonic. The Italians and French had the most learning and culture. Politically, the German nation, owing to its possession of the imperial crown and its connection with the papacy, was the most powerful, especially under the Hohenstaufen dynasty. England, favored by her insular isolation, developed the power of self-government and independent nationality, and begins to come into prominence in the papal administration. Western Europe is the scene of intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political activities of vast import, but its arms and devotion find their most conspicuous arena in Palestine and the East.

Finally this period of two centuries and a half is a period of imposing personalities. The names of the greatest of the popes have been mentioned, Gregory VII., Alexander III., and Innocent III. Its more notable sovereigns were William the Conqueror, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II., and St. Louis of France. Dante the poet illumines its last years. St. Bernard, Francis d’Assisi, and Dominic, the Spaniard, rise above a long array of famous monks. In the front rank of its Schoolmen were Anselm, Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Duns Scotus. Thomas à Becket and Grosseteste are prominent representatives of the body of episcopal statesmen. This combination of great figures and of great movements gives to this period a variety of interest such as belongs to few periods of Church history or the history of mankind.

CHAPTER I.

THE HILDEBRANDIAN POPES. A.D. 1049–1073.

§ 3. Sources and Literature on Chapters I. and II.

See the general literature on the papacy in vol. IV. 202 sqq.; and the list of mediaeval popes, 205 sqq.

I. Sources For The Whole Period from 1049 to 1085:—

Migne: Patrol. Lat., vols. 140–148.—Damiani Epistolae, in Migne, vol. 144.—Bonizo or Bonitho (Bishop of Sutri, 1091; prisoner of Henry IV., 1082; a great admirer of Gregory VII.): Liber ad amicum, sive de persecutione ecclesiae (in Jaffé’s Monum. Gregor., p. 628 sqq., where he is charged with falsehood; but see Giesebrecht and Hefele, IV. 707). Phil. Jaffé (d. 1870): Regesta Pontif. Rom., pp. 366–443, 2d ed. I. 629–649.—Jaffé: Monumenta Gregoriana (see below).—K. Francke: Libelli de lite imperatorum et Pontificum Saeculi XI. et XII. conscripti, 3 vols. Hannov. 1891–1897, contains the tractarian lit. of the Hildebrandian age. On other sources, see Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, II. 220 sqq. and Mirbt: Publizistik, 6–95.

II. Works on the Whole Period from 1049 to 1085: —

Höfler: Deutsche Päpste, Regensb., 1839 sqq., 3 vols.—C. Will: Anfänge der Restauration der Kirche im 11ten, Jahrh., Marburg, 1859–1862, 2 parts.—Ths. Greenwood: Cathedra Petri, books X. and XI. London, 1861.—Giesebrecht: Gesch. der deutschen Kaizerzeit, vols. II. and III. (Braunschweig, 5th ed. 1881).—Rud. Baxmann: Die Politik der Päpste von Gregor I. bis auf Gregor VII., Elberfeld, 1868, 1869. 2 vols. vol. II. 186–434.—Wattenbach: Geschichte des röm. Papstthums, Berlin, 1876 (pp. 97–136).—Gregorovius: Hist. of the City Of Rome.—Hefele: Conciliengeschichte, IV. 716–900, and V. 1–185.—L. v. Ranke: Weltgeschichte, vol. VII.—Bryce: Holy Roman Empire.—Freeman: Hist. of Norman Conq. of England, vol. IV. Oxford, 1871, and Hist. of Sicily.—F. Neukirch: Das Leben des Petrus Damiani bis 1059, Gött., 1875.—J. Langen: Geschichte der röm. Kirche von Gregor VII. bis Innocent III., Bonn, 1893.—Hauck: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, vols. III. IV.—W. F. Barry: The Papal Monarchy from 590–1303, N. Y. 1902.

III. Special Sources and Works on Hildebrand:—

His letters (359), the so-called Registrum, in Migne, vol. 148, Mansi, XX. 60–391, and best in Jaffé, Monumenta Gregoriana, Berol., 1865, 712 pp. (in "Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum," vol. II.). The first critical edition. Jaffé gives the Registrum in eight books, with fifty-one additional letters collected from MSS., and Bonithonis episcopi Sutrini ad amicum. Gregory’s biographies by Cardinal Petrus of Pisa, Bernried, Amalric, Lambert, etc., in Muratori: Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. III.; and Watterich: Pontif. Boni. Vitae, Lips., 1862, I. 293 sqq.; Acta Sanct. Maii, die 25, VI. 102–159.

Modern works: Joh. Voigt (Prof. of Hist. in Königsberg, d. 1863): Hildebrand als Papst Gregorius VII. und sein Zeitalter, 1815, 2d ed. Weimar, 1846, pp. 625. The first attempt at an impartial estimate of Gregory from the Protestant historical standpoint. The first edition was translated into French and Italian, and gave rise to a remarkable Latin correspondence with Clemens Villecourt, bishop of La Rochelle, which is printed in the preface to the second edition. The bishop tried to convert Voigt to the Catholic Church, but in vain.—Sir Roger Greisly: The Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII., London, 1832, pp. 372. Impartial, but unimportant.—J. W. Bowden: The Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII. London, 1840, 2 Vols. pp. 374 and 411. —- Ard. Newman: Hist. Essays, II. 249–336.—Sir James Stephen: Hildebrand, in "Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography," 1849, 4th ed. London, 1860, pp. 1–58. He calls "Hildebrand the very impersonation of papal arrogance and of spiritual despotism."—Söltl: Gregor VII., Leipzig, 1847.—Floto: Kaiser Heinrich IV. und sein Zeitalter. Stuttg., 1865, 1856, 2 vols. Sides with Henry IV.—Helfenstein: Gregor VII. Bestrebungen nach den Streitschriften seiner Zeit., Frankfurt, 1856.—A. F. Gfrörer (first a rationalist, then a convert to ’Rome, 1853; d. 1861): Papst Greg. VII. und sein Zeitalter. 7 vols. Schaffhausen, 1859–1861.—Giesebrecht: l.c., vol. III.—A. F. Villemain: Hist. de Grégoire VII. 2 vols. Paris, 1873. Engl. trans. by J. B. Brockley, 2 vols. London, 1874.—S. Baring-Gould, in "The Lives of the Saints" for May 25, London, 1873.—W. Martens: Die Besetzung des päpstlichen Stuhls unter den Kaisern Heinrich III und Heinrich IV. 1887; *Gregor VII., sein Leben und Wirken, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1894.—W. R. W. Stephens: Hildebrand and his Times, London, 1888.—O. Delarc: S. Gregoire VII. et la réforme de l’église au XI. siècle, 3 vols. Paris, 1889.—C. Mirbt (Prof. in Marburg): Die Stellung Augustins in der Publizistik des Gregorianischen Kirchenstreits, Leipzig, 1888. Shows the influence of St. Augustine on both parties in the Gregorian controversy over the relation of Church and State; Die Wahl Gregors VII., Marburg, 1892; *Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII., Leipzig, 1894, pp. 629. An exhaustive treatment of the copious tractarian Lit. of the Hildebrandian age and its attitude on the various objects of Gregory’s policy; art. Gregor VII., in Herzog, VII. 96–113.—Marvin R. Vincent: The Age of Hildebrand, N. Y. 1896.—Also J. Greving: Paul von Bernried’s Vita Gregorii VII., Berlin, 1893, pp. 172.

§ 4. Hildebrand and his Training.

The history of the period begins with a survey of the papacy as the controlling power of Western Christendom. It embraces six stages: 1. The Hildebrandian popes, 1049–1073. 2. Gregory VII., 1073–1085, or the assertion of the supreme authority of the papacy in human affairs. 3. From Gregory’s death to the Concordat of Worms, 1122, or the settlement of the controversy over investiture. 4. From the Concordat of Worms to Innocent III., 1198. 5. The Pontificate of Innocent III., 1198–1216, or the papacy at its height. 6. From Innocent III. to Boniface VIII., 1216–1294, or the struggle of the papacy with Frederick II. and the restoration of peace between the papacy and the empire.

The papacy had reached its lowest stage of weakness and degeneracy when at Sutri in 1046, under the influence of Henry III., two popes were deposed and a third was forced to abdicate.3  But the worthless popes, who prostituted their office and outraged the feelings of Christendom during the tenth and the first half of the eleventh century, could not overthrow the papacy any more than idolatrous kings could overthrow the Jewish monarchy, or wicked emperors the Roman Empire. In the public opinion of Europe, the papacy was still a necessary institution established by Christ in the primacy of Peter for the government and administration of the church. There was nothing to take its place. It needed only a radical reformation in its head, which would be followed by a reformation of the members. Good men all over Europe anxiously desired and hoped that Providence would intervene and rescue the chair of Peter from the hands of thieves and robbers, and turn it once more into a blessing. The idea of abolishing the papacy did not occur to the mind of the Christians of that age as possible or desirable.

At last the providential man for effecting this necessary reformation appeared in the person of Hildebrand, who controlled five successive papal administrations for twenty-four years, 1049–1073, then occupied the papal chair himself for twelve years, 1073–1085, and was followed by like-minded successors. He is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of popes, and one of the most remarkable men in history. He excited in his age the highest admiration and the bitterest hatred. Opinions about his principles and policy are still divided; but it is impossible to deny his ability, energy, earnestness, and achievements.

Hildebrand was of humble and obscure origin, but foreordained to be a prince of the Church. He was of small stature, and hence called "Hildebrandellus" by his enemies, but a giant in intellect and character. His figure was ungainly and his voice feeble; but his eyes were bright and piercing, bespeaking penetration, a fiery spirit, and restless activity. His early life is involved in obscurity. He only incidentally alludes to it in his later Epistles, and loved to connect it with the supernatural protection of St. Peter and the Holy Virgin. With a monkish disregard of earthly relations, he never mentions his family. The year of his birth is unknown. The veneration of friends and the malice of enemies surrounded his youth with legends and lies. He was the son of a peasant or goatherd, Bonizo, living near Soana, a village in the marshes of Tuscany, a few miles from Orbitello. The oft-repeated tradition that he was the son of a carpenter seems to have originated in the desire to draw a parallel between him and Jesus of Nazareth. Of his mother we know nothing. His name points to Lombard or German origin, and was explained by his contemporaries as hell-brand or fire-brand.4  Odilo, the abbot of Cluny, saw sparks of fire issuing from his raiment, and predicted that, like John the Baptist, he would be "great in the sight of the Lord."

He entered the Benedictine order in the convent of St. Mary on the Aventine at Rome, of which his maternal uncle was abbot. Here he had a magnificent view of the eternal city.5  Here he was educated with Romans of the higher families.6  The convent was under the influence of the reformatory spirit of Cluny, and the home of its abbots on their pilgrimages to Rome. He exercised himself in severe self-discipline, and in austerity and rigor he remained a monk all his life. He cherished an enthusiastic veneration for the Virgin Mary. The personal contemplation of the scandalous contentions of the three rival popes and the fearful immorality in the capital of Christendom must have raised in his earnest soul a deep disgust. He associated himself with the party which prepared for a reformation of the hierarchy.

His sympathies were with his teacher and friend, Gregory VI. This pope had himself bought the papal dignity from, the wretched Benedict IX., but he did it for the benefit of the Church, and voluntarily abdicated on the arrival of Henry III. at the Synod of Sutri, 1046. It is strange that Hildebrand, who abhorred simony, should begin his public career in the service of a simonist; but he regarded Gregory as the only legitimate pope among the three rivals, and followed him, as his chaplain, to Germany into exile.

"Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."7

He visited Worms, Spires, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, the old seats of the empire, and spent much time at the court of Henry III., where he was very kindly treated. After the death of Gregory at Cologne, 1048, Hildebrand went to Cluny, the nursery of a moral reformation of monasticism. According to some reports, he had been there before. He zealously gave himself to ascetic exercises and ecclesiastical studies under the excellent abbot Hugo, and became prior of the convent. He often said afterwards that he wished to spend his life in prayer and contemplation within the walls of this sacred retreat.

But the election of Bishop Bruno of Toul, the cousin of Emperor Henry III., to the papal chair, at the Diet of Worms, brought him on the stage of public action. "Reluctantly," he said, "I crossed the Alps; more reluctantly I returned to Rome." He advised Bruno (either at Cluny or at Besancon) not to accept the triple crown from the hands of the emperor, but to await canonical election by the clergy and people of Rome. He thus clearly asserted, for the first time, his principle of the supremacy of the Church over the State.

Bruno, accompanied by Hildebrand, travelled to Rome as a pilgrim, entered the city barefoot, was received with acclamations, canonically elected, and ascended the papal chair on Feb. 12, 1049, as Leo IX.

From this time on, Hildebrand was the reigning spirit of the papacy. He understood the art of ruling through others, and making them feel that they ruled themselves. He used as his aide-de-camp Peter Damiani, the severe monk and fearless censor of the immoralities of the age, who had conquered the world within and helped him to conquer it without, in the crusade against simony and concubinage, but died, 1072, a year before Hildebrand became pope.8

§ 5. Hildebrand and Leo IX. 1049–1054.

The moral reformation of the papacy began with Hildebrand as leader.9  He resumed the work of the emperor, Henry III., and carried it forward in the interest of the hierarchy. He was appointed cardinal-subdeacon, treasurer of the Roman Church, and abbot of St. Paul’s. He was repeatedly sent as delegate to foreign countries, where he acquired an extensive knowledge of affairs. He replenished the empty treasury and became wealthy himself through the help of a baptized Jew, Benedictus Christianus, and his son Leo, who did a prosperous banking business. But money was to him only a means for exalting the Church. His great object was to reform the clergy by the destruction of two well-nigh universal evils: simony (Acts 8:18), that is. the traffic in ecclesiastical dignities, and Nicolaitism (Rev. 2:6, 15), or the concubinage of the priests. In both respects he had the full sympathy of the new pope, and was backed by the laws of the Church. The reformation was to be effected in the regular way of synodical legislation under the personal direction of the pope.

Leo, accompanied by Hildebrand, held several synods in Italy, France, and Germany. He was almost omnipresent in the Church, and knew how to combine monastic simplicity with papal dignity and splendor. He was believed to work miracles wherever he went, and to possess magic powers over birds and beasts.

In his first synod, held in Rome at Easter, 1049, simony was prohibited on pain of excommunication, including the guilty bishops and the priests ordained by them. But it was found that a strict prosecution would well-nigh deprive the churches, especially those of Rome, of their shepherds. A penance of forty days was, therefore, substituted for the deposition of priests. The same synod renewed the old prohibitions of sexual intercourse of the clergy, and made the concubines of the Roman priests servants of the Lateran palace. The almost forgotten duty of the tithe was enjoined upon all Christians.

The reformatory synods of Pavia, Rheims, and Mainz, held in the same year, legislated against the same vices, as also against usury, marriage in forbidden degrees, the bearing of arms by the clergy. They likewise revealed a frightful amount of simony and clerical immorality. Several bishops were deposed.10  Archbishop Wido of Rheims narrowly escaped the same fate on a charge of simony. On his return, Leo held synods in lower Italy and in Rome. He made a second tour across the Alps in 1052, visiting Burgundy, Lorraine, and Germany, and his friend the emperor. We find him at Regensburg, Bamberg, Mainz, and Worms. Returning to Rome, he held in April, 1053, his fourth Easter Synod. Besides the reform of the Church, the case of Berengar and the relation to the Greek Church were topics of discussion in several of these synods. Berengar was condemned, 1050, for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. It is remarkable with what leniency Hildebrand treated Berengar and his eucharistic doctrine, in spite of the papal condemnation; but he was not a learned theologian. The negotiation with the Greek Church only ended in greater separation.11

Leo surrounded himself with a council of cardinals who supported him in his reform. Towards the close of his pontificate, he acted inconsistently by taking up arms against the Normans in defense of Church property. He was defeated and taken prisoner at Benevento, but released again by granting them in the name of St. Peter their conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. The Normans kissed his toe, and asked his absolution and blessing. He incurred the censure of the strict reform party. Damiani maintained that a clergyman dare not bear arms even in defense of the property of the Church, but must oppose invincible patience to the fury of the world, according to the example of Christ.

Leo spent his remaining days in grief over his defeat. He died at Rome, April 19, 1054, in his fifty-third year, after commending his soul to God in a German prayer of humble resignation, and was buried near the tomb of Gregory I. As he had begun the reformation of the Church, and miracles were reported, he was enrolled in the Calendar of Saints. Desiderius, afterwards Victor III., wrote, "All ecclesiastical interests were reformed by Leo and in him a new light arose in the world."

§ 6. Victor II. and Stephen IX. (X.). 1055–1058.

Hildebrand was absent in France when Leo died, and hurried to Rome. He could find no worthy successor in Italy, and was unwilling to assume the burden of the papacy himself. He cast his eye upon Gebhard, bishop of Eichstädt, the ablest, richest, and most influential prelate of Germany, who was warmly devoted to the emperor. He proceeded at the head of a deputation, appointed by the clergy and people, to the German court, and begged the emperor to raise Gebhard to the papal chair. After long delay, Gebhard was elected at a council in Regensburg, March, 1055, and consecrated in St. Peter’s at Rome, April 13, as Victor II. He continued the synodical war against simony, but died as early as July 28, 1057, at Arezzo, of a fever. He was the last of the German popes.

The cardinal-abbot of Monte Cassino was elected and consecrated as Stephen IX. (X.), Aug. 3, 1057, by the clergy and people of Rome, without their consulting the German court; but he died in the following year, March 29, 1058.

In the meantime a great change had taken place in Germany. Henry III. died in the prime of manhood, Oct. 5, 1056, and left a widow as regent and a son of six years, the ill-fated Henry IV. The long minority reign afforded a favorable opportunity for the reform party to make the papacy independent of the imperial power, which Henry III. had wisely exerted for the benefit of the Church, yet at the expense of her freedom.

The Roman nobility, under the lead of the counts of Tusculum, took advantage of Hildebrand’s absence in Germany to reassert its former control of the papacy by electing Benedict X. (1058–1060). But this was a brief intermezzo. On his return, Hildebrand, with the help of Duke Godfrey, expelled the usurping pope, and secured, with the consent of the empress, the election of Gerhard, bishop of Florence, a strong reformer, of ample learning and irreproachable character, who assumed the name of Nicolas II. at his consecration, Jan. 25, 1059. Benedict was deposed, submitted, and obtained absolution. He was assigned a lodging in the church of St. Agnes, where he lived for about twenty years.

§ 7. Nicolas II. and the Cardinals. 1059–1061.

The pontificate of Nicolas II. was thoroughly under the control of Hildebrand, who became archdeacon and chancellor of the Roman Church in August or September, 1059. His enemies said that he kept Nicolas like an ass in the stable, feeding him to do his work. Peter Damiani calls him the lord of the pope, and said that he would rather obey the lord of the pope than the lord-pope himself.12  He also grimly calls Hildebrand his "holy Satan,"13 because he had sometimes to obey him against his will, as when he desired to lay down his bishopric at Ostia and retire to a convent, but was not permitted to do so. He disliked the worldly splendor which Hildebrand began to assume in dress and mode of living, contrary to his own ascetic principles.

Two important steps were made in the progress of the hierarchy,—a change in the election of the pope, and an alliance with the Normans for the temporal protection of the pope.

Nicolas convened a Lateran Council in April, 1059, the largest held in Rome down to that time. It consisted of a hundred and thirteen bishops and a multitude of clergymen; but more than two-thirds of the prelates were Italians, the rest Burgundians and Frenchmen. Germany was not represented at all. Berengar was forced at this synod to submit to a formula of recantation (which he revoked on his return to France). He calls the bishops "wild beasts," who would not listen to his idea of a spiritual communion, and insisted on a Capernaitic manducation of the body of Christ.14

A far-reaching act of this council was the transfer of the election of a pope to the "cardinal-bishops" and "cardinal-clergy."15  At the pope’s death the initiative was to be taken by the cardinal-bishops. In case they agreed they were to call in the cardinal-clergy. In case of agreement between both these classes of functionaries they were to present the candidate to the Roman clergy and people for ratification. The stress thus laid upon the cardinal-bishops is a new thing, and it is evident that the body of cardinals was accorded a place of importance and authority such as it had not enjoyed before. Its corporate history may be said to begin with these canons. The election of the pope was made its prerogative. The synod further prescribed that the pope should be chosen from the body of Roman clergy, provided a suitable candidate could be found among their number. In usual cases, Rome was designated as the place of holding the election. The cardinals, however, were granted liberty to hold it otherwheres. As for the emperor, the language of the canons leaves it uncertain whether any part was accorded to him in the ratification of the elected pope. His name is mentioned with respect, but it would seem that all that was intended was that he should receive due notification of the election of the new pontiff. The matter was, therefore, taken entirely out of the emperor’s hands and lodged in the college of cardinals.16  As Henry was still young and not yet invested with the imperial dignity, it was a favorable opportunity for the papal circle to secure the perpetual control of the papal office for the Romans and the Roman clergy. With rare exceptions, as in the case of the period of the Avignon exile, the election of the pope has remained in the hands of the Romans ever since.

The alliance which Nicolas entered into, 1059, with the Normans of Southern Italy, was the second act in the long and notable part which they played in the history of the papacy. Early in the eleventh century four brothers of the house of Hauteville, starting from Normandy, began their adventurous career in Italy and Sicily. They were welcomed as crusaders liberating the Christian population from the rule of the Saracens and its threatened extension. The kingdom their arms established was confirmed by the apostolic see, and under the original dynasty, and later under the house of Anjou, had a larger influence on the destinies of the papacy for three centuries than did Norman England and the successors of William the Conqueror. Robert Guiscard, who had defeated the army of Leo IX., and held him a prisoner for nine months, was confirmed by Nicolas as duke of Apulia and Calabria. The duchy became a fief of Rome by an obligation to pay yearly twelve dinars for every yoke of oxen and to defend the Holy See against attacks upon its authority. Robert’s brother, Roger, d. 1101, began the conquest of Sicily in earnest in 1060 by the seizure of Messina, and followed it up by the capture of Palermo, 1071, and Syracuse, 1085. He was called Prince of Sicily and perpetual legate of the Holy See. One of his successors, Roger II., 1105–1154, was crowned king of Sicily at Palermo by the authority of the anti-pope Anacletus II. A half century later the blood of this house became mingled with the blood of the house of Hohenstaufen in the person of the great Frederick II. In the prominent part they took we shall find these Norman princes now supporting the plans of the papacy, now resisting them.

About the same time the Hautevilles and other freebooting Normans were getting a foothold in Southern Italy, the Normans under William the Conqueror, in 1066, were conquering England. To them England owes her introduction into the family of European nations, and her national isolation ceases.17

§ 8. The War against Clerical Marriage.

The same Lateran Council of 1059 passed severe laws against the two heresies of simony and Nicolaitism. It threatened all priests who were unwilling to give up their wives or concubines with the loss of their benefices and the right of reading mass, and warned the laity against attending their services. "No one," says the third of the thirteen canons, "shall hear mass from a priest who to his certain knowledge keeps a concubine or a subintroducta mulier."

These severe measures led to serious disturbances in Northern Italy, especially in the diocese of Milan, where every ecclesiastical office from the lowest to the highest was for sale, and where marriage or concubinage was common among priests of all grades, not excluding the archbishop.18  Sacerdotal marriage was regarded as one of the liberties of the church of St. Ambrose, which maintained a certain independence of Rome, and had a numerous and wealthy clergy. The Milanese defended such marriage by Scripture texts and by a fictitious decision of Ambrose, who, on the contrary, was an enthusiast for celibacy. Candidates for holy orders, if unmarried, were asked if they had strength to remain so; if not, they could be legally married; but second marriages were forbidden, and the Levitical law as to the virginity of the bride was observed. Those who remained single were objects of suspicion, while those who brought up their families in the fear of God were respected and eligible to the episcopate. Concubinage was regarded as a heinous offense and a bar to promotion.19

But the Roman Church and the Hildebrandian party reversed the case, and denounced sacerdotal marriage as unlawful concubinage. The leader of this party in Lombardy was Anselm of Baggio (west of Milan), a zealous and eloquent young priest, who afterwards became bishop of Lucca and then pope (as Alexander II.). He attacked the immorality of the clergy, and was supported by the lowest populace, contemptuously called "Pataria" or "Patarines," i.e. "Ragbags."20  Violent and sanguinary tumults took place in the churches and streets. Peter Damiani, a sincere enthusiast for ascestic holiness, was sent as papal legate to Milan. He defended the Pataria at the risk of his life, proclaimed the supremacy of the Roman see, and exacted a repudiation of all heretical customs.

This victory had great influence throughout Lombardy. But the strife was renewed under the following pope and under Gregory VII., and it was not till 1093 that Urban II. achieved a permanent triumph over Nicolaitism at a great council at Piacenza.

§ 9. Alexander II. and the Schism of Cadalus. 1061–1073.

Pope Nicolas II. died July 27, 1061. The cardinals elected, in some unknown place outside of Rome, Anselm, bishop of Lucca, Sept. 30, 1061. He was conducted to Rome in the following night by Norman soldiers, and consecrated, Oct. 1, as Alexander II. His first act was to administer the oath of fealty to Richard, the Norman leader.

The anti-Hildebrandian party of the Roman nobles, headed by Count Girard of Galeria (an excommunicated robber), with the aid of the disaffected Lombard clergy, and the young emperor Henry IV., elected Cadalus (or Cadalous), bishop of Parma, anti-pope. He was consecrated Oct. 28, 1061, as Honorius II., and maintained a schism of ten years. He had been repeatedly charged with simony, and had the sympathy and support of the married or concubinary clergy and the simoniacal laity, who hoped that his success would lead to a modification of discipline and legalization of clerical marriage. The opposition thus became an organized party, and liable to the charge of heresy, which was considered worse than carnal sin. Damiani and Humbert defended the principle that a priest who is guilty of simony or concubinage, and believes himself innocent, is more criminal than he who knows himself to be guilty. Damiani hurled the fiercest denunciation of a Hebrew prophet against the anti-pope. Cadalus entered Rome with an armed force, and maintained himself in the castle of St. Angelo for two years; but at length he sought safety in flight without a single follower, and moved to Parma. He died in 1072. His party was broken up.

Alexander held a council at Mantua, May 31, 1064, and was universally recognized as the legitimate pope; while Cadalus was anathematized and disappeared from history.

During the pontificate of Alexander, the war against simony and Nicolaitism went on under the lead of Hildebrand and Damiani with varying success. The troubles in Lombardy were renewed. Archbishop Wido of Milan sided with Cadalus and was excommunicated; he apologized, did penance, and resumed office. After his death in 1071 the strife broke out again with disgraceful scenes of violence. The Patarine party, supported with gold by the pope, gained the ascendancy after the death of Cadalus. The Normans repelled the Mohammedan aggression and won Southern Italy and Sicily for the Church of Rome.

This good service had some weight on the determination of Hildebrand to support the claim of William of Normandy to the crown of England, which was a master-stroke of his policy; for it brought that island into closer contact with Rome, and strengthened the papal pretension to dispose of temporal thrones. William fought under a banner blessed by the pope, and founded the Norman dynasty in England, 1066. The conquest was concluded at Winchester by a solemn coronation through three papal delegates, Easter, 1070.

But in Germany there arose a powerful opposition, not indeed to the papacy, which was the common ground of all parties, but to the Hildebrandian policy. This led to the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV. Alexander threatened Henry with excommunication in case he persisted in his purpose to divorce his queen Bertha.

CHAPTER II.

GREGORY VII, 1073–1085.

See literature in § 3.

§ 10. Hildebrand elected Pope. His Views on the Situation.

Alexander II. died April 21, 1073, and was buried in the basilica of St. John in Lateran on the following day. The city, usually so turbulent after the death of a pope, was tranquil. Hildebrand ordered a three days’ fast with litanies and prayers for the dead, after which the cardinals were to proceed to an election. Before the funeral service was closed, the people shouted, "Hildebrand shall be pope!"  He attempted to ascend the pulpit and to quiet the crowd, but Cardinal Hugo Candidus anticipated him, and declared:, "Men and brethren, ye know how since the days of Leo IX. Hildebrand has exalted the holy Roman Church, and defended the freedom of our city. And as we cannot find for the papacy a better man, or even one that is his equal, let us elect him, a clergyman of our Church, well known and thoroughly approved amongst us." The cardinals and clergy exclaimed in the usual formula, "St. Peter elects Gregory (Hildebrand) pope."21

This tumultuary election was at once legalized by the cardinals. He was carried by the people as in triumph to the church of S. Petrus ad Vincula, clothed with the purple robe and tiara, and declared elected, as "a man eminent in piety and learning, a lover of equity and justice, firm in adversity, temperate in prosperity, according to the apostolic precept (1 Tim. 3:2), ’without reproach ... temperate, soberminded, chaste, given to hospitality, ruling his house well’ ... already well brought up and educated in the bosom of this mother Church, for his merits advanced to the office of archdeacon, whom now and henceforth we will to be called Gregory, Pope, and Apostolic Primate."22

It was eminently proper that the man who for nearly a quarter of a century had been the power behind the throne, should at last be pope in name as well as in fact. He might have attained the dignity long before, if he had desired it. He was then about sixty years old, when busy men begin to long for rest. He chose the name Gregory in memory of his departed friend whom he had accompanied as chaplain into exile, and as a protest against the interference of the empire in the affairs of the Church.23  He did not ask the previous confirmation of the emperor, but he informed him of his election, and delayed his consecration long enough to receive the consent of Henry IV., who in the meantime had become emperor. This was the last case of an imperial confirmation of a papal election.24

Hildebrand was ordained priest, May 22, and consecrated pope, June 29, without any opposition. Bishop Gregory of Vercelli, the German chancellor of Italy, attended the consecration. The pope informed his friends, distinguished abbots, bishops, and princes of his election; gave expression to his feelings and views on his responsible position, and begged for their sympathy and prayers.25

He was overwhelmed, as he wrote to Duke Godfrey of Lorraine (May 6, 1073), by the prospect of the task before him; he would rather have died than live in the midst of such perils; nothing but trust in God and the prayers of good men could save him from despair; for the whole world was lying in wickedness; even the high officers of the Church, in their thirst for gain and glory, were the enemies rather than the friends of religion and justice. In the second year of his pontificate, he assured his friend Hugo of Cluny (Jan. 22, 1075) that he often prayed God either to release him from the present life, or to use him for the good of mother Church, and thus describes the lamentable condition of the times: —

"The Eastern Church fallen from the faith, and attacked by the infidels from without. In the West, South, or North, scarcely any bishops who have obtained their office regularly, or whose life and conduct correspond to their calling, and who are actuated by the love of Christ instead of worldly ambition. Nowhere princes who prefer God’s honor to their own, and justice to gain. The Romans, Longobards, and Normans among whom I live, as I often told them, are worse than Jews and heathens. And when I look to myself, I feel oppressed by such a burden of sin that no other hope of salvation is left me but in the mercy of Christ alone."26

This picture is true, and we need not wonder that he often longed to retire to the quiet retreat of a convent. He adds in the same letter that, if it were not for his desire to serve the holy Church, he would not remain in Rome, where he had spent twenty years against his wish. He was thus suspended between sorrow and hope, seized by a thousand storms, living as a dying man. He compared himself to a sailor on the high seas surrounded by darkness. And he wrote to William the Conqueror, that unwillingly he had ascended into the ship which was tossed on a billowy sea, with the violence of the winds and the fury of storms with hidden rocks beneath and other dangers rising high in air in the distance.27

The two features which distinguished Gregory’s administration were the advocacy of papal absolutism and the promotion of moral reforms. In both these respects Gregory left an abiding impression upon the thought and practice of Latin Christendom. Even where we do not share his views we cannot help but admire his moral force and invincible courage.

§ 11. The Gregorian Theocracy.

The Hildebrandian or Gregorian Church ideal is a theocracy based upon the Mosaic model and the canon law. It is the absolute sovereignty of the Church in this world, commanding respect and obedience by her moral purity and ascetic piety. By the Church is meant the Roman Catholic organization headed by the pope as the vicar of Christ; and this hierarchical organization is identified with the Kingdom of God, in which men are saved from sin and death, and outside of which there is no ordinary salvation. No distinction is made between the Church and the Kingdom, nor between the visible and invisible Church. The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church has been to popes as visible and tangible as the German Empire, or the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice. Besides this Church no other is recognized, not even the Greek, except as a schismatic branch of the Roman.

This ideal is the growth of ages. It was prepared for by pseudo-Isidor in the ninth, and by St. Augustine in the fifth century.

St. Augustine, the greatest theological authority of the Middle Ages, first identified the visible Catholic Church with the City or Kingdom of God. In his great apologetic work, De Civitate Dei, he traced the relation of this Kingdom to the changing and passing kingdoms of this world, and furnished, we may say, the programme of the mediaeval theocracy which, in theory, is adhered to by the Roman Church to this day.28  But Augustine was not an ecclesiastic like Cyprian and the popes. He was more interested in theology than Church policy; he had little to say about the papacy, and made a suggestive distinction between "the true body of Christ" and "the mixed body of Christ," which led the way to the Protestant distinction (first made by Zwingli) between the visible and invisible Church.29  In the Hildebrandian controversy he is quoted by both parties, and more frequently than any other father; but neither Gregory nor his most zealous adherents could quote Augustine in favor of their hierocratic theory of the apostolic right to depose temporal sovereigns.

The pseudo-Isidorian Decretals went further: they identified the Catholic Church with the dominion of the papal hierarchy, and by a series of literary fictions carried this system back to the second century; notwithstanding the fact that the Oriental Church never recognized the claims of the bishops of Rome beyond that of a mere primacy of honor among equal patriarchs.

Gregory VII. actualized this politico-ecclesiastical system more fully than any previous pope, and as far as human energy and prudence would admit. The glory of the Church was the all-controlling passion of his life. He held fast to it in the darkest hours, and he was greatest in adversity. Of earlier popes, Nicolas I. and Leo I. came nearest to him in lofty pretensions. But in him papal absolutism assumed flesh and blood. He was every inch a pope. He anticipated the Vatican system of 1870; in one point he fell short of it, in another point he went beyond it. He did not claim infallibility in theory, though he assumed it in fact; but he did claim and exercise, as far as he could, an absolute authority over the temporal powers of Christendom, which the popes have long since lost, and can never regain.

Hildebrand was convinced that, however unworthy personally, he was, in his official character, the successor of Peter, and as such the vicar of Christ in the militant Church.30  He entirely identified himself with Peter as the head of the apostolic college, and the keeper of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; but he forgot that in temporal affairs Peter was an humble subject under a hostile government, and exhorted the Christians to honor the king (1 Pet. 2:17) at a time when a Nero sat on the throne. He constantly appealed to the famous words of Christ, Matt. 16:18, 19, as if they were said to himself. The pope inherits the lofty position of Peter. He is the Rock of the Church. He is the universal bishop, a title against which the first Gregory protested as an anti-Christian presumption. He is intrusted with the care of all Christendom (including the Greek Church, which never acknowledged him). He has absolute and final jurisdiction, and is responsible only to God, and to no earthly tribunal. He alone can depose and reinstate bishops, and his legates take precedence of all bishops. He is the supreme arbiter in questions of right and wrong in the whole Christian world. He is above all earthly sovereigns. He can wear the imperial insignia. He can depose kings and emperors, and absolve subjects from their oath of allegiance to unworthy sovereigns.

These and similar claims are formulated in a document of twenty-seven brief propositions preserved among Gregory’s letters, which are of doubtful genuineness, but correctly express his views,31 and in a famous letter to Hermann, bishop of Metz.

Among his favorite Scripture quotations, besides the prophecy about Peter (Matt. 16:18, 19), are two passages from the Old Testament: the words of the prophet Samuel to Saul, which suited his attitude to rebellious kings (1 Sam. 15:23): "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim; because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected thee from being king;" and the words of the prophet Jeremiah (48:10): "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood." He meant the spiritual sword chiefly, but also the temporal, if necessary. He would have liked to lead an army of soldiers of St. Peter for the conquest of the Holy Land, and the subjection of all rebellious monarchs. He projected the first crusade, which his second successor carried out.

We must consider more particularly his views on the relation of Church and State. Public opinion in the Middle Ages believed neither in co-ordination nor separation of the two powers, but in the subordination of one to the other on the basis of union. Church and State were inseparably interwoven from the days of Charlemagne and even of Constantine, and both together constituted the Christian commonwealth, respublica Christiana. There was also a general agreement that the Church was the spiritual, the State, the temporal power.

But the parties divided on the question of the precise boundary line.32  The papal party maintained the theocratic superiority of the Church over the State: the imperial party maintained the caesaropapistic superiority of the State, or at least the equality of the two powers. It was a conflict between priestcraft and statecraft, between sacerdotium and imperium, the clergy and the laity. The imperialists emphasized the divine origin and superior antiquity of the civil government, to which even Christ and the Apostles were subject; the hierarchical party disparaged the State, and put the Church above it even in temporal affairs, when they conflicted with the spiritual. Emperors like Otto I. and Henry III. deposed and elected popes; while popes like Gregory VII. and Innocent III. deposed and elected emperors.

Gregory compares the Church to the sun, the State to the moon, which borrows her light from the sun.33  The episcopal dignity is above the kingly and imperial dignity, as heaven is above the earth. He admits the necessity of the State for the temporal government of men; but in his conflict with the civil power he takes the pessimistic view that the State is the product of robbery, murder, and all sorts of crimes, and a disturbance of the original equality, which must be restored by the priestly power. He combined the highest view of the Church and the papacy with the lowest view of the State and the empire.34

His theory of the papal power could not have been more explicitly stated than when, writing to Sancho, king of Aragon, he said that Jesus, the king of glory, had made Peter lord over the kingdoms of the world. This principle he consistently acted upon.35  Henry IV. of Germany he twice deposed and absolved his subjects from allegiance to him. He concluded his second excommunication of Henry IV., at the synod in Lent, March 7, 1080, with this startling peroration: —

"And now, O ye princes and fathers, most holy Apostles Peter and Paul, deal ye with us in such wise that all the world may know and understand that, having the power to bind and to loose in heaven, you have the like power to take away empires, kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, earldoms, and all manner of human rights and properties .... Having such mighty power in spiritual things, what is there on earth that may transcend your authority in temporal things?  And if ye judge the angels, who are high above the proudest of princes, what may ye not do unto those beneath them?  Let the kings and princes of the earth know and feel how great ye are—how exalted your power!  Let them tremble to despise the commands of your Church!

"But upon the said Henry do judgment quickly, that all men may know that it is not by fortune or chance, but by your power, that he has fallen!  May he thus be confounded unto repentance, that his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord!"

This is the extreme of hierarchical arrogance and severity. Gregory always assumed the air of supreme authority over kings and nobles as well as bishops and abbots, and expects from them absolute obedience.

Sardinia and Corsica he treated as fiefs.36  To the Spanish princes, in 1073, he wrote that from of old Spain had belonged to St. Peter, and that it belonged to no mortal man but to the Apostolic see. For had not the Holy See made a grant of Spanish territory to a certain Evulus on condition of his conquering it from pagan hands?37  Alfonso of Castile and Sancho of Aragon, he reminded that St. Paul had gone to Spain and that seven bishops, sent by Paul and Peter, had founded the Christian Church in Spain.38  Philip I., king of France, he coolly told, that every house in his kingdom owed Peter’s Pence, and he threatened the king, in case he did not desist from simony, to place his realm under the interdict.39  A few months later in a letter to Manasses, archbishop of Rheims, he called the king a rapacious wolf, the enemy of God and religion.40  He summoned the king of Denmark, Sueno, to recognize the dependence of his kingdom upon Rome and to send his son to Rome that he might draw the sword against the enemies of God, promising the son a certain rich province in Italy for his services.41  Boleslav, duke of Poland, he admonished to pay certain monies to the king of Russia, whose son, as we are informed in another letter, had come to Rome, to secure his throne from the pope.42  The Hungarian king, Solomon, was reminded that King Stephen had given his kingdom to St. Peter and that it belonged of right to Rome, 43 and he was sharply rebuked for having received his crown from the king of the Germans as a fief and not having sought it from Rome. On Demetrius, duke of Dalmatia, Gregory conferred the royal title on condition of his rendering a yearly payment of two hundred pieces of silver to himself and his papal successors. To Michael, Byzantine emperor, he wrote, expressing the hope that the Church of Constantinople as a true daughter might be reconciled to its mother, the Church of Rome.44  In other communications to the emperor, Gregory made propositions concerning a crusade to rescue the Holy Land.

For William the Conqueror, Gregory expressed great affection, addressing him as "best beloved," carissime, but solemnly reminded him that he owed his promotion to the throne of England to the favor of the Roman see and bidding him be prompt in the payment of Peter’s Pence.45  The proud Englishman replied that he owed his crown to God and his own sword, not to the pope. He was willing to pay Peter’s Pence which his predecessors had paid, but fealty he refused to pay as his predecessors had refused to pay it.46

Unbiblical and intolerable as is Hildebrand’s scheme of papal absolutism as a theory of abiding validity, for the Middle Ages it was better that the papacy should rule. It was, indeed, a spiritual despotism; but it checked a military despotism which was the only alternative, and would have been far worse. The Church, after all, represented the moral and intellectual interests over against rude force and passions. She could not discharge her full duty unless she was free and independent. The princes of the Middle Ages were mostly ignorant and licentious despots; while the popes, in their official character, advocated the cause of learning, the sanctity of marriage, and the rights of the people. It was a conflict of moral with physical power, of intelligence with ignorance, of religion with vice.

The theocratic system made religion the ruling factor in mediaeval Europe, and gave the Catholic Church an opportunity to do her best. Her influence was, upon the whole, beneficial. The enthusiasm for religion inspired the crusades, carried Christianity to heathen savages, built the cathedrals and innumerable churches, founded the universities and scholastic theology, multiplied monastic orders and charitable institutions, checked wild passions, softened manners, stimulated discoveries and inventions, preserved ancient classical and Christian literature, and promoted civilization. The papacy struck its roots deep in the past, even as far back as the second century. But it was based in part on pious frauds, as the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and the false Donation of Constantine.

The mediaeval theocracy was at best a carnal anticipation of the millennial reign, when all the kingdoms of this world shall obey the peaceful sceptre of Christ. The papacy degenerated more and more into a worldly institution and an intolerable tyranny over the hearts and minds of men. Human nature is too noble to be ruled by despotism, and too weak to resist its temptations. The State has divine authority as well as the Church, and the laity have rights as well as the clergy. These rights came to the front as civilization advanced and as the hierarchy abused its power. It was the abuse of priestly authority for the enslavement of men, the worldliness of the Church, and the degradation and profanation of religion in the traffic of indulgences, which provoked the judgment of the Reformation.

§ 12. Gregory VII. as a Moral Reformer. Simony and Clerical Marriage.

Gregory VII. must be viewed not only as a papal absolutist, but also as a moral reformer. It is the close connection of these two characters that gives him such pre-eminence in history, and it is his zeal for moral reform that entitles him to real respect; while his pretension to absolute power he shares with the most worthless popes.

His Church ideal formed a striking contrast to the actual condition of the Church, and he could not actualize it without raising the clergy from the deep slough of demoralization to a purer and higher plane.

His reforms were directed against simony and Nicolaitism. What he had done as Hildebrand, by way of advice, he now carried out by official authority.

In the war on simony he was altogether right from the standpoint of Protestant as well as Roman Catholic ethics. The traffic in ecclesiastical dignities was an unmitigated nuisance and scandal, and doubly criminal if exercised by bishops and popes.

In his war on Nicolaitism, Gregory was sustained by ancient laws of the Roman Church, but not by the genuine spirit of Christianity. Enforced clerical celibacy has no foundation in the Bible, and is apt to defeat the sacerdotal ideal which it was intended to promote. The real power and usefulness of the clergy depend upon its moral purity, which is protected and promoted by lawful matrimony, the oldest institution of God, dating from the paradise of innocence.

The motives of Gregory in his zeal for sacerdotal celibacy were partly monkish and partly hierarchical. Celibacy was an essential part of his ascetic ideal of a priest of God, who must be superior to carnal passions and frailties, wholly devoted to the interests of the Church, distracted by no earthly cares, separated from his fellow-men, and commanding their reverence by angelic purity. Celibacy, moreover, was an indispensable condition of the freedom of the hierarchy. He declared that he could not free the Church from the rule of the laity unless the priests were freed from their wives. A married clergy is connected with the world by social ties, and concerned for the support of the family; an unmarried clergy is independent, has no home and aim but the Church, and protects the pope like a standing army.

Another motive for opposing clerical marriage was to prevent the danger of a hereditary caste which might appropriate ecclesiastical property to private uses and impoverish the Church. The ranks of the hierarchy, even the chair of St. Peter, were to be kept open to self-made men of the humblest classes, but closed against hereditary claimants. This was a practical recognition of the democratic principle in contrast with the aristocratic feudalism of the Middle Ages. Hildebrand himself, who rose from the lowest rank without patronage to the papal throne, was the best illustration of this clerical democracy.

The power of the confessional, which is one of the pillars of the priesthood, came to the aid of celibacy. Women are reluctant to intrust their secrets to a priest who is a husband and father of a family.

The married priests brought forward the example of the priests of the Old Testament. This argument Damiani answered by saying that the Hebrew priest was forbidden to eat before offering sacrifices at the altar. How much more unseemly it would be for a priest of the new order to soil himself carnally before offering the sacraments to God!  The new order owed its whole time to the office and had none left for marriage and the family life (1 Cor. 7:32). Only an unmarried man who refuses to gratify carnal lusts can fulfil the injunction to be a temple of God and avoid quenching the Spirit (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19).47

These motives controlled also the followers of Gregory and the whole hierarchy, and secured the ultimate triumph of sacerdotal celibacy. The question of abolishing it has from time to time been agitated, and in the exceptional cases of the Maronites and United Greeks the popes have allowed single marriage in deference to old custom and for prudential reasons. Pope Pius II., before he ascended the papal chair (1458–1464), said that good reasons required the prohibition of clerical marriage, but better reasons required its restoration. The hierarchical interest, however, has always overruled these better reasons. Whatever may have been the advantages of clerical celibacy, its evils were much greater. The sexual immorality of the clergy, more than anything else, undermined the respect of the people for their spiritual guides, and was one of the chief causes of the Reformation, which restored honorable clerical marriage, created a pastoral home with its blessings, and established the supremacy of conscience over hierarchical ambition.

From the standpoint of a zealous reformer like Gregory, the morals of the clergy were certainly in a low condition. No practice did he condemn with such burning words as the open marriage of priests or their secret cohabitation with women who were to all intents and purposes their wives. Contemporary writers like Damiani, d. 1072, in his Gomorrhianus, give dark pictures of the lives of the priests. While descriptions of rigid ascetics are to be accepted with caution, the evidence abounds that in all parts of Latin Christendom the law of priestly celibacy was ignored.48  Modern Catholic historians, like Hefele49 and Funk,50 (do not hesitate to adduce the proofs of this state of affairs. The pope Benedict IX., according to friendly testimony, was thinking of taking a wife openly.51  The legislation, opening with the canons of the Roman synod of 1049 held by Leo IX., and emphasized at the Roman synod of 1059 held under Nicholas II., was given by Gregory VII. such a prominence that one might have supposed the very existence of the Church depended upon the enforcement of clerical celibacy. There were bishops even in Italy who openly permitted the marriage of priests, as was the case with Kunibert of Turin.52  In Germany, Bishop Poppo of Toul did not conceal his quasi-marital relations which Gregory denounced as fornication,53 and the bishops of Spires and Lausanne had hard work clearing themselves in public synods from a like charge. Married priests were denominated by synods and by Gregory VII. as "incontinent" or "concubinary priests."54  Gregory spoke of Germany as afflicted with the "inveterate disease of clerical fornication."55  And what was true of Italy and Germany was true of England.

§ 13. The Enforcement of Sacerdotal Celibacy.

Literature, special works: Henry C. Lea: A Hist. Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, Phil. 1867, 2d ed. Boston, 1884.—A. Dresdner: Kultur und Sittengeschichte der italienischen Geistlichkeit im 10 und 11 Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1890.—Mirbt: Publizistik, pp. 239–342; Hefele, V. 20 sqq. The chief contemporary sources are Damiani de coelibatu sacerdotum, addressed to Nicolas II. and Gomorrhianus, commended by Leo IX., and other writings,—Gregory VII.’s Letters. Mirbt gives a survey of this literature, pp. 274–342.

Gregory completed, with increased energy and the weight of official authority, the moral reform of the clergy as a means for securing the freedom and power of the Church. He held synod after synod, which passed summary laws against simony and Nicolaitism, and denounced all carnal connection of priests with women, however legitimate, as sinful and shameful concubinage. Not contented with synodical legislation, he sent letters and legates into all countries with instructions to enforce the decrees. A synod in Rome, March, 1074, opened the war. It deposed the priests who had bought their dignity or benefices, prohibited all future sacerdotal marriage, required married priests to dismiss their wives or cease to read mass, and commanded the laity not to attend their services. The same decrees had been passed under Nicolas II. and Alexander II., but were not enforced. The forbidding of the laity to attend mass said by a married priest, was a most dangerous, despotic measure, which had no precedent in antiquity. In an encyclical of 1079 addressed to the whole realm of Italy and Germany, Gregory used these violent words, "If there are presbyters, deacons, or sub-deacons who are guilty of the crime of fornication (that is, living with women as their wives), we forbid them, in the name of God Almighty and by the authority of St. Peter, entrance into the churches, introitum ecclesiae, until they repent and rectify their conduct."

These decrees caused a storm of opposition. Many clergymen in Germany, as Lambert of Hersfeld reports, denounced Gregory as a madman and heretic: he had forgotten the words of Christ, Matt. 19:11, and of the Apostle, 1 Cor. 7:9; he wanted to compel men to live like angels, and, by doing violence to the law of nature, he opened the door to indiscriminate licentiousness. They would rather give up their calling than their wives, and tauntingly asked him to look out for angels who might take their place. The bishops were placed in a most embarrassing position. Some, like Otto of Constance, sympathized with the married clergy; and he went so far as to bid his clergy marry.56  Others, like St. Altmann of Passau, were enthusiasts for sacerdotal celibacy. Others, like Siegfrid of Mainz, took a double attitude.57  Archbishop Anno of Cologne agreed with the Hildebrandian principle, but deemed it impracticable or inopportune. When the bishops lacked in zeal, Gregory stirred up the laity against the simoniacal and concubinary priests. He exhorted a certain Count Albert (October, 1074) to persist in enforcing the papal orders, and commanded Duke Rudolf of Swabia and Duke Bertolf of Carinthia, January, 1075, to prevent by force, if necessary, the rebellious priests from officiating, no matter what the bishops might say who had taken no steps to punish the guilty. He thus openly encouraged rebellion of the laity against the clergy, contrary to his fundamental principle of the absolute rule of the hierarchy. He acted on the maxim that the end sanctifies the means. Bishop Theodoric of Verdun, who at first sided in the main with Gregory, but was afterwards forced into the ranks of his opponents, openly reproached him for these most extraordinary measures as dangerous to the peace of the Church, to the safety of the clerical order, and even to the Christian faith. Bishop Henry of Spires denounced him as having destroyed the episcopal authority, and subjected the Church to the madness of the people. When the bishops, at the Diet of Worms, deposed him, January, 1076, one of the reasons assigned was his surrender of the Church to the laity.

But the princes who were opposed to Henry IV. and deposed him at Tribur (1076), professed great zeal for the Roman Church and moral reform. They were stigmatized with the Milanese name of Patarini. Even Henry IV., though he tacitly protected the simoniacal and concubinary clergy and received their aid, never ventured openly to defend them; and the anti-pope Clement III., whom he elected 1080, expressed with almost Hildebrandian severity his detestation of clerical concubinage, although he threatened with excommunication the presumptuous laymen who refused to take the sacrament from immoral priests. Bishop Benzo, the most bitter of imperialists, did not wish to be identified with the Nicolaitan heretics.

A contemporary writer, probably a priest of Treves, gives a frightful picture of the immediate results of this reform, with which he sympathized in principle. Slaves betrayed masters and masters betrayed slaves, friends informed against friends, faith and truth were violated, the offices of religion were neglected, society was almost dissolved. The peccant priests were exposed to the scorn and contempt of the laity, reduced to extreme poverty, or even mutilated by the populace, tortured and driven into exile. Their wives, who had been legally married with ring and religious rites, were insulted as harlots, and their children branded as bastards. Many of these unfortunate women died from hunger or grief, or committed suicide in despair, and were buried in unconsecrated earth. Peasants burned the tithes on the field lest they should fall into the hands of disobedient priests, trampled the host under foot, and baptized their own children.58

In England, St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, d. 988, had anticipated the reforms of Hildebrand, but only with temporary success. William the Conqueror made no effort to enforce sacerdotal celibacy, except that the charge of concubinage was freely used as a pretext for removing Anglo-Saxon prelates to make room for Norman rivals. Lanfranc of Canterbury was a Hildebrandian, but could not prevent a reformatory council at Winchester in 1076 from allowing married priests to retain their wives, and it contented itself with the prohibition of future marriages. This prohibition was repeated at a council held in London, 1102, when Anselm occupied the see of Canterbury. Married priests were required to dismiss their wives, and their children were forbidden to inherit their fathers’ churches. A profession of chastity was to be exacted at ordination to the subdiaconate and the higher orders. But no punishment was prescribed for the violation of these canons. Anselm maintained them vigorously before and after his exile. A new council, called by King Henry at London, 1108, a year before Anselm’s death, passed severe laws against sacerdotal marriage under penalties of deposition, expulsion from the Church, loss of property, and infamy. The temporal power was pledged to enforce this legislation. But Eadmer, the biographer of Anselm, sorrowfully intimates that the result was an increase of shocking crimes of priests with their relatives, and that few preserved that purity with which Anselm had labored to adorn his clergy.

In Spain, which was as much isolated from the Continent by the Pyrenees as England by the sea, clerical celibacy was never enforced before this period. The Saracenic invasion and subsequent struggles of the Christians were unfavorable to discipline. A canon of Compostella, afterwards bishop of Mondonego, describes the contemporary ecclesiastics at the close of the eleventh century as reckless and violent men, ready for any crime, prompt to quarrel, and occasionally indulging in mutual slaughter. The lower priests were generally married; but bishops and monks were forbidden by a council of Compostella, in 1056, all intercourse with women, except with mothers, aunts, and sisters wearing the monastic habit. Gregory VII. sent a legate, a certain Bishop Amandus, to Spain to introduce his reforms, 1077. A council at Girona, 1078, forbade the ordination of sons of priests and the hereditary transmission of ecclesiastical benefices. A council at Burgos, 1080, commanded married priests to put away their wives. But this order seems to have been a dead letter until the thirteenth century, when the code of laws drawn up by Alfonso the Wise, known as "Las Siete Partidas," punished sacerdotal marriage with deprivation of function and benefice, and authorized the prelates to command the assistance of the secular power in enforcing this punishment. "After this we hear little of regular marriage, which was replaced by promiscuous concubinage or by permanent irregular unions."59

In France the efforts of reform made by the predecessors of Gregory had little effect. A Paris synod of 1074 declared Gregory’s decrees unbearable and unreasonable.60  At a stormy synod at Poitiers, in 1078, his legate obtained the adoption of a canon which threatened with excommunication all who should listen to mass by a priest whom they knew to be guilty of simony or concubinage. But the bishops were unable to carry out the canon without the aid of the secular arm. The Norman clergy in 1072 drove the archbishop of Rouen from a council with a shower of stones. William the Conqueror came to his aid in 1080 at a synod of Lillebonne, which forbade ordained persons to keep women in their houses. But clerical marriages continued, the nuptials were made public, and male children succeeded to benefices by a recognized right of primogeniture. William the Conqueror, who assisted the hopeless reform in Normandy, prevented it in his subject province of Britanny, where the clergy, as described by Pascal II., in the early part of the twelfth century, were setting the canons at defiance and indulging in enormities hateful to God and man.

At last, the Gregorian enforcement of sacerdotal celibacy triumphed in the whole Roman Church, but at the fearful sacrifice of sacerdotal chastity. The hierarchical aim was attained, but not the angelic purity of the priesthood. The private morals of the priest were sacrificed to hierarchical ambition. Concubinage and licentiousness took the place of holy matrimony. The acts of councils abound in complaints of clerical immorality and the vices of unchastity and drunkenness. "The records of the Middle Ages are full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy."61  The corruption again reached the papacy, especially in the fifteenth century. John XXIII. and Alexander VI. rivaled in wickedness and lewdness the worst popes of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

§ 14. The War over Investiture.

The other great reform-scheme of Gregory aimed at the complete emancipation of the Church from the bondage of the secular power. His conception of the freedom of the Church meant the slavery of the State. The State exercised control over the Church by selling ecclesiastical dignities, or the practice of simony, and by the investiture of bishops and abbots; that is, by the bestowal of the staff and ring.62  These were the insignia of ecclesiastical authority; the staff or crosier was the symbol of the spiritual rule of the bishop, the ring the symbol of his mystical marriage with the Church.

The feudal system of the Middle Ages, as it developed itself among the new races of Europe from the time of Charlemagne, rested on land tenure and the mutual obligations of lord and vassal, whereby the lord, from the king down to the lowest landed proprietor, was bound to protect his vassal, and the vassal was bound to serve his lord. The Church in many countries owned nearly or fully one-half of the landed estate, with the right of customs, tolls, coinage of money, etc., and was in justice bound to bear part of the burden attached to land tenure. The secular lords regarded themselves as the patrons of the Church, and claimed the right of appointing and investing its officers, and of bestowing upon them, not only their temporalia, but also the insignia of their spiritual power. This was extremely offensive to churchmen. The bishop, invested by the lord, became his vassal, and had to swear an oath of obedience, which implied the duty of serving at court and furnishing troops for the defense of the country. Sometimes a bishop had hardly left the altar when his liege-lord commanded him to gird on the sword. After the death of the bishop, the king or prince used the income of the see till the election of a successor, and often unduly postponed the election for his pecuniary benefit, to the injury of the Church and the poor. In the appointments, the king was influenced by political, social, or pecuniary considerations, and often sold the dignity to the highest bidder, without any regard to intellectual or moral qualifications. The right of investiture was thus closely connected with the crying abuse of simony, and its chief source.

No wonder that Gregory opposed this investiture by laymen with all his might. Cardinal Humbert had attacked it in a special book under Victor II. (1057), and declared it an infamous scandal that lay-hands, above all, female hands, should bestow the ring and crosier. He insisted that investiture was a purely spiritual function, and that secular princes have nothing to do with the performance of functions that have something sacramental about them. They even commit sacrilege by touching the garments of the priest. By the exercise of the right of investiture, princes, who are properly the defenders of the Church, had become its lords and rulers. Great evils had arisen out of this practice, especially in Italy, where ambitious priests lingered about the antechambers of courts and practised the vice of adulation, vitium adulationis.63

The legislation against lay appointments was opened at the Synod of Rheims, 1049, under the influence of Leo IX. It declared that no priest should be promoted to office without the election of clergy and people. Ten years later, 1059, the Synod of Rome pronounced any appointment of cleric or presbyter to benefice invalid, which was made by a layman.64  The following year, 1060, the French synods of Tours and Vienne extended the prohibition to bishops. It remained for Gregory to stir up all Europe over the question who had the right of investiture.

By abolishing this custom, Gregory hoped to emancipate the clergy from the vassalage of the State, and the property of the Church from the feudal supervision of the prince, as well as to make the bishops the obedient servants of the pope.

The contest continued under the following popes, and was at last settled by the compromise of Worms (1122). The emperor yielded only in part; for to surrender the whole property of the Church to the absolute power of the pope, would have reduced civil government to a mere shadow. On the other hand, the partial triumph of the papacy contributed very much to the secularization of the Church.

§ 15. Gregory VII. and Henry IV.

The conflict over investiture began at a Roman synod in Lent (Feb. 24–28), 1075, and brought on the famous collision with Henry IV., in which priestcraft and kingcraft strove for mastery. The pope had the combined advantages of superior age, wisdom, and moral character over this unfortunate prince, who, when a mere boy of six years (1056), had lost his worthy father, Henry III., had been removed from the care of his pious but weak mother, Agnes, and was spoilt in his education. Henry had a lively mind and noble impulses, but was despotic and licentious. Prosperity made him proud and overbearing, while adversity cast him down. His life presents striking changes of fortune. He ascended and descended twice the scale of exaltation and humiliation. He first insulted the pope, then craved his pardon; he rebelled again against him, triumphed for a while, was twice excommunicated and deposed; at last, forsaken and persecuted by his own son, he died a miserable death, and was buried in unconsecrated earth. The better class of his own subjects sided against him in his controversy with the pope. The Saxons rose in open revolt against his tyranny on the very day that Hildebrand was consecrated (June 29, 1073).

This synod of 1075 forbade the king and all laymen having anything to do with the appointment of bishops or assuming the right of investiture.65  A synod held in November, 1075, positively forbade bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics receiving ecclesiastical appointments from king or any temporal lord whatsoever. At the same synod, Gregory excommunicated five counsellors of Henry for practising simony.66

The king, hard pressed by the rebellious Saxons, at first yielded, and dismissed the five counsellors; but, as soon as he had subdued the rebellion (June 5, 1075), he recalled them, and continued to practice shameful simony. He paid his soldiers from the proceeds of Church property, and adorned his mistresses with the diamonds of sacred vessels. The pope exhorted him by letter and deputation to repent, and threatened him with excommunication. The king received his legates most ungraciously, and assumed the tone of open defiance. Probably with his knowledge, Cencius, a cousin of the imperial prefect in Rome, shamefully maltreated the pope, seized him at the altar the night before Christmas, 1075, and shut him up in a tower; but the people released him and put Cencius to flight.

Henry called the bishops and abbots of the empire to a council at Worms, under the lead of Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz, Jan. 24, 1076. This council deposed Gregory without giving him even a hearing, on the ground of slanderous charges of treason, witchcraft, covenant with the devil, and impurity, which were brought against him by Hugo Blancus (Hugh Leblanc), a deposed cardinal. It was even asserted that he ruled the Church by a senate of women, Beatrix, Matilda of Tuscany, and Agnes, the emperor’s mother. Only two bishops dared to protest against the illegal proceeding. The Ottos and Henry III. had deposed popes, but not in such a manner.

Henry secured the signatures of the disaffected bishops of Upper Italy at a council in Piacenza. He informed Gregory of the decree of Worms in an insulting letter: —

"Henry, king, not by usurpation, but by God’s holy ordinance, to Hildebrand, not pope, but a false monk. How darest thou, who hast won thy power through craft, flattery, bribery, and force, stretch forth thy hand against the Lord’s anointed, despising the precept of the true pope, St. Peter: ’Fear God, honor the king?’  Thou who dost not fear God, dishonorest me whom He has appointed. Condemned by the voice of all our bishops, quit the apostolic chair, and let another take it, who will preach the sound doctrine of St. Peter, and not do violence under the cloak of religion. I, Henry, by the grace of God, king, with all my bishops, say unto thee, Come down, come down!"67

At the same time Henry wrote to the cardinals and the Roman people to aid him in the election of a new pope. Roland, a priest of Parma, brought the letter to Rome at the end of February, as Gregory was just holding a synod of a hundred and ten bishops, and concluded his message with the words. "I tell you, brethren, that you must appear at Pentecost before the king to receive from his hands a pope and father; for this man here is not pope, but a ravening wolf." This produced a storm of indignation. The prelates drew swords and were ready to kill him on the spot; but Gregory remained calm, and protected him against violence.

On the next day (February 22) the pope excommunicated and deposed Henry in the name of St. Peter, and absolved his subjects from their oath of obedience. He published the ban in a letter to all Christians. The sentence of deposition is as follows: —

"Blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, incline thine ear unto me, and hear me, thy servant, whom from childhood thou didst nurse and protect against the wicked to this day. Thou and my lady, the mother of God, and thy brother, St. Paul, are my witnesses that the holy Roman Church has drawn me to the helm against my will, and that I have not risen up like a robber to thy seat. Rather would I have been a pilgrim my whole life long than have snatched to myself thy chair on account of temporal glory and in a worldly spirit .... By thy intercession God has intrusted me with the power to bind and to loose on earth and in heaven.

"Therefore, relying on this trust, for the honor and security of the Church, in the name of the Almighty Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I do prohibit Henry, king, son of Henry the emperor, from ruling the kingdom of the Teutons and of Italy, because with unheard-of pride he has lifted himself up against thy Church; and I release all Christians from the oath of allegiance to him which they have taken, or shall take, and I forbid that any shall serve him as king. For it is fitting that he who will touch the dignity of the Church should lose his own. And inasmuch as he has despised obedience by associating with the excommunicate, by many deeds of iniquity, and by spurning the warnings which I have given him for his good, I bind him in the bands of anathema; that all nations of the earth may know that thou art Peter, and that upon thy rock the Son of the living God hath built His Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."68

The empress-widow was present when the anathema was pronounced on her son. At the same time the pope excommunicated all the German and Italian bishops who had deposed him at Worms and Piacenza.

This was a most critical moment, and the signal for a deadly struggle between the two greatest potentates in Christendom. Never before had such a tremendous sentence been pronounced upon a crowned head. The deposition of Childeric by Pope Zacharias was only the sanction of the actual rule of Pepin. Gregory threatened also King Philip of France with deposition, but did not execute it. Now the heir of the crown of Charlemagne was declared an outlaw by the successor of the Galilean fisherman, and Europe accepted the decision. There were not wanting, indeed, voices of discontent and misgivings about the validity of a sentence which justified the breaking of a solemn oath. All conceded the papal right of excommunication, but not the right of deposition. If Henry had commanded the respect and love of his subjects, he might have defied Gregory. But the religious sentiment of the age sustained the pope, and was far less shocked by the papal excommunication and deposition of the king than by the royal deposition of the pope. It was never forgotten that the pope had crowned Charlemagne, and it seemed natural that his power to bestow implied his power to withhold or to take away.69

Gregory had not a moment’s doubt as to the justice of his act. He invited the faithful to pray, and did not neglect the dictates of worldly prudence. He strengthened his military force in Rome, and reopened negotiations with Robert Guiscard and Roger. In Northern Italy he had a powerful ally in Countess Matilda, who, by the recent death of her husband and her mother, had come into full possession of vast dominions, and furnished a bulwark against the discontented clergy and nobility of Lombardy and an invading army from Germany.70

When Henry received the tidings of the sentence of excommunication and deposition, he burst into a furious rage, abused Gregory as a hypocrite, heretic, murderer, perjurer, adulterer, and threatened to fling back the anathema upon his head. William, bishop of Utrecht, had no scruples in complying with the king’s wishes, and from the pulpit of his cathedral anathematized Gregory as "a perjured monk who had dared to lift up his head against the Lord’s anointed." Henry summoned a national council to Worms on Whitsunday (May 15) to protest against the attempt of Gregory to unite in one hand the two swords which God had separated.71  This was the famous figure for the spiritual and temporal power afterwards often employed by the popes, who claimed that God had given both swords to the Church,—the spiritual sword, to be borne by her; the temporal, to be wielded by the State for the Church, that is, in subjection and obedience to the Church.

The council at Worms was attended by few bishops, and proved a failure. A council in Mainz, June 29, turned out no better, and Henry found it necessary to negotiate. Saxony was lost; prelates and nobles deserted him. A diet at Tribur, an imperial castle near Mainz, held Oct. 16, 1076, demanded that he should submit to the pope, seek absolution from him within twelve months from the date of excommunication, at the risk of forfeiting his crown. He should then appear at a diet to be held at Augsburg on Feb. 2, 1077, under the presidency of the pope. Meanwhile he was to abide at Spires in strict privacy, in the sole company of his wife, the bishop of Verdun, and a few servants chosen by the nobles. The legates of Gregory were treated with marked respect, and gave absolution to the excommunicated bishops, including Siegfried of Mainz, who submitted to the pope.

Henry spent two dreary months in seclusion at Spires, shut out from the services of the Church and the affairs of the State. At last he made up his mind to seek absolution, as the only means of saving his crown. There was no time to be lost; only a few weeks remained till the Diet of Augsburg, which would decide his fate.

§ 16. Canossa. 1077.

The winter of 1076–1077 was one of the coldest and longest within the memory of men—the Rhine being frozen to a solid mass from November till April—and one of the most memorable in history—being marked by an event of typical significance. The humiliation of the head of the German Empire at the feet of the bishop of Rome at Canossa means the subjection of the State to the Church and the triumph of the Hildebrandian policy.

A few days before Christmas, Henry IV. left Spires on a journey across the Alps as a penitent, seeking absolution from the pope. He was accompanied by his wife with her infant son Conrad (born August, 1071) and one faithful servant. Bertha, daughter of the margrave Odo of Turin and Adelheid of Susa, was betrothed to Henry in 1055 at Zürich, and married to him, July 13, 1066. She was young, beautiful, virtuous, and amiable; but he preferred to live with mistresses; and three years after the marriage he sought a divorce, with the aid of the unprincipled archbishop Siegfried of Mainz. The pope very properly refused his consent. The king gave up his wicked intention, and became attached to Bertha. She was born to love and to suffer, and accompanied him as a comforting angel through the bitter calamities of his life.

The royal couple passed through Burgundy and Susa under the protection of Count William and the mother of Bertha, and crossed Mont Cenis. The queen and her child were carried up and lowered down the icy slopes in rough sledges of oxhide; some horses were killed, but no human lives lost. When Henry reached the plains of Lombardy, he was received with joy by the anti-Hildebrandian party; but he hurried on to meet the successor of Peter, who alone could give him absolution.

He left his wife and child at Reggio, and, accompanied by his mother-in-law and a few friends, he climbed up the steep hill to Canossa, where Gregory was then stopping on his journey to the Diet at Augsburg, waiting for a safe-conduct across the Alps.

Canossa, now in ruins, was an impregnable fortress of the Countess Matilda, south of Reggio, on the northern slope of the Apennines, surrounded by three, walls, and including a castle, a chapel, and a convent.72

The pope had already received a number of excommunicated bishops and noblemen, and given or promised them absolution after the case of the chief sinner against the majesty of St. Peter should be decided.

Henry arrived at the foot of the castle-steep, Jan. 21, 1077, when the cold was severe and the ground covered with snow. He had an interview with Matilda and Hugo, abbot of Cluny, his godfather, and declared his willingness to submit to the pope if he was released from the interdict. But Gregory would only absolve him on condition that he would surrender to him his crown and forever resign the royal dignity. The king made the last step to secure the mercy of the pope: he assumed the severest penances which the Church requires from a sinner, as a sure way to absolution. For three days, from the 25th to the 28th of January, he stood in the court between the inner walls, as a penitent suppliant, with bare head and feet, in a coarse woolen shirt, shivering in the cold, and knocked in vain for entrance at the gateway, which still perpetuates in its name. "Porta di penitenza," the memory of this event.73

The stern old pope, as hard as a rock and as cold as the snow, refused admittance, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of Matilda and Hugo, till he was satisfied that the cup of humiliation was drained to the dregs, or that further resistance would be impolitic. He first exacted from Henry, as a condition of absolution, the promise to submit to his decision at the approaching meeting of the German nobles under the presidency of the pope as arbiter, and to grant him and his deputies protection on their journey to the north. In the meantime he was to abstain from exercising the functions of royalty.74

The king made the promise, and two bishops and several nobles, in his behalf, swore upon sacred relics that he would keep it. Hugo, being a monk, could not swear, but pledged his word before the all-seeing God. Hugo, the bishops, nobles, and the Countess Matilda and Adelheid signed the written agreement, which still exists.

After these preliminaries, the inner gate was opened. The king, in the prime of life, the heir of many crowned monarchs, and a man of tall and noble presence, threw himself at the feet of the gray-haired pope, a man of low origin and of small and unimpressive stature, who by his word had disarmed an empire. He burst into tears, and cried "Spare me, holy father, spare me!"  The company were moved to tears; even the iron pope showed signs of tender compassion. He heard the confession of Henry, raised him up, gave him absolution and his apostolic blessing, conducted him to the chapel, and sealed the reconciliation by the celebration of the sacrifice of the mass.

Some chroniclers add the following incident, which has often been repeated, but is very improbable. Gregory, before partaking of the sacrament, called upon God to strike him dead if he were guilty of the crimes charged on him, and, after eating one-half of the consecrated wafer unharmed, he offered the other half to Henry, requesting him to submit to the same awful ordeal; but the king declined it, and referred the whole question to the decision of a general council.75

After mass, the pope entertained the king courteously at dinner and dismissed him with some fatherly warnings and counsels, and with his renewed apostolic blessing.

Henry gained his object, but at the sacrifice of his royal dignity. He confessed by his act of humiliation that the pope had a right to depose a king and heir of the imperial crown, and to absolve subjects from the oath of allegiance. The head of the State acknowledged the temporal supremacy of the Church. Canossa marks the deepest humiliation of the State and the highest exaltation of the Church,—we mean the political papal Church of Rome, not the spiritual Church of Christ, who wore a crown of thorns in this world and who prayed on the cross for his murderers.

Gregory acted on the occasion in the sole interest of the hierarchy. His own friends, as we learn from his official account to the Germans, deemed his conduct to be "tyrannical cruelty, rather than apostolic severity." He saw in Henry the embodiment of the secular power in opposition to the ecclesiastical power, and he achieved a signal triumph, but only for a short time. He overshot his mark, and was at last expelled from Rome by the very man against whom he had closed the gate.

His relation to Matilda was political and ecclesiastical. The charge of his enemies that he entertained carnal intimacy with her is monstrous and incredible, considering his advanced age and unrelenting war against priestly concubinage.76  The countess was the most powerful princess in Northern Italy, and afforded to the pope the best protection against a possible invasion of a Northern army. She was devoted to Hildebrand as the visible head of the Church, and felt proud and happy to aid him. In 1077 she made a reversionary grant of her dominions to the patrimony of Peter, and thus increased the fatal gift of Constantine, from which Dante derives the evils of the Church. She continued the war with Henry, and aided Conrad and Henry V. in the rebellion against their father. In the political interest of the papacy she contracted, in her fifty-fifth year, a second marriage with Guelph, a youth of eighteen, the son of the Duke of Bavaria, the most powerful enemy of Henry IV. (1089); but the marriage, it seems, was never consummated, and was dissolved a few years afterwards (1095). She died, 1115. It is supposed by many that Dante’s Matilda, who carried him over the river Lethe to Beatrice, is the famous countess;77 but Dante never mentions Gregory VII., probably on account of his quarrel with the emperor.

Canossa has become a proverbial name for the triumph of priestcraft over kingcraft.78  Streams of blood have been shed to wipe out the disgrace of Henry’s humiliation before Hildebrand. The memory of that scene was revived in the Culturkampf between the State of Prussia and the Vatican from 1870 to 1887. At the beginning of the conflict, Prince Bismarck declared in the Prussian Chambers that "he would never go to Canossa"; but ten years afterwards he, found it politic to move in that direction, and to make a compromise with Leo XIII., who proved his equal as a master of diplomacy. The anti-papal May-laws were repealed, one by one, till nothing is left of them except the technical Anzeigepflicht, a modern term for investiture. The Roman Church gained new strength in Prussia and Germany from legal persecution, and enjoys now more freedom and independence than ever, and much more than the Protestant Church, which has innocently suffered from the operation of the May-laws.

§ 17. Renewal of the Conflict. Two Kings and Two Popes.

The result of Canossa was civil war in Germany and Italy king against king, pope against pope, nobles against nobles, bishops against bishops, father against son, and son against father. It lasted several years. Gregory and Henry died in exile. Gregory was defeated by Henry, Henry by his own rebellious son. The long wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines originated in that period. The Duke Guelph IV. of Bavaria was present at Forchheim when Henry was deposed, and took up arms against him. The popes sided with the Guelphs against the Hohenstaufen emperors and the Ghibellines.

The friends and supporters of Henry in Lombardy and Germany were dissatisfied, and regarded his humiliation as an act of cowardice, and the pope’s conduct as an insult to the German nation and the royal crown. His enemies, a small number of Saxon and Swabian nobles and bishops, assembled at Forchheim, March 13, 1077, and, in the presence of two legates of the pope, but without his express authority, offered the crown of Germany to Rudolf, Duke of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law, but on two important conditions (which may be traced to the influence of the pope’s legates), namely, that he should denounce a hereditary claim to the throne, and guarantee the freedom of ecclesiastical appointments. He was crowned March 26, at Mainz, by Archbishop Siegfried, but under bad omens: the consecrated oil rail short, the Gospel was read by a simoniacal deacon, the citizens raised a tumult, and Rudolf had to make his escape by night with Siegfried, who never returned. He found little support in Southern Germany, and went to Henry’s enemies in Saxony.

Henry demanded from the pope the ban over the robber of his crown, but in vain. He refused him the promised safe-conduct to Germany, acted as king, crossed the Alps, and defeated Rudolf in a battle at Melrichstadt in Franconia, Aug. 7, 1078, but was defeated by him near Mühlheim in Thuringia, Jan. 27, 1080, in a decisive battle, which Rudolf regarded as a divine decision, and which inclined the pope in his favor.

After long hesitation, Gregory, in a Synod of Rome, March 7, 1080, ventured upon the most extraordinary act even for a man in the highest position. Invoking the aid of St. Peter and St. Paul, he fulminated a second and severer ban against Henry and all his adherents, deprived him again of his kingdoms of Germany and Italy, forbade all the faithful to obey him, and bestowed the crown of Germany (not of Italy) on Rudolf. The address was at once a prayer, a narrative, and a judgment, and combined cool reflection with religious fervor. It rests on the conviction that the pope, as the representative of Peter and Paul, was clothed with supreme authority over the world as well as the Church.79

Gregory hazarded a prophecy, which was falsified by history, that before the day of St. Peter and St. Paul (June 29), Henry would either lose his life or his throne. After the close of the synod, he sent to Rudolf (instead of the iron crown of Charlemagne, which was in possession of Henry) a diadem with the characteristic inscription: —

"Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolpho."80

A reconciliation was now impossible. Henry replied to the papal ban by the election of an anti-pope. A council of about thirty German and Italian bishops met at Brixen in the Tyrol, June 26, 1080, and deposed Gregory on the frivolous charges of ambition, avarice, simony, sorcery, and the Berengarian heresy. Cardinal Hugo Candidus and twenty-seven bishops (of Brixen, Bamberg, Coire, Freisingen, Lausanne, etc.) signed the document. At the same time they elected the excommunicated Archbishop Wibert of Ravenna pope, under the name of Clement III. He was a man of talent, dignity, and unblemished character, but fell into the hands of simonists and the enemies of reform. Henry acknowledged him by the usual genuflexion, and promised to visit Rome in the following spring, that he might receive from him the imperial crown. Wibert returned to Ravenna with the papal insignia and great pomp.

This was the beginning of a double civil war between rival popes and rival kings, with all its horrors. Gregory counted on the Saxons in Germany, Countess Matilda in Northern Italy, and the Normans in Southern Italy.

Henry was defeated Oct. 15, 1080, on the banks of the Elster, near Naumburg; but Rudolf was mortally wounded by Godfrey of Bouillon, the hero of Jerusalem,81 and lost his right hand by another enemy. He died the same evening, exclaiming, as the story goes: "This is the hand with which I swore fidelity to my lord, King Henry." But, according to another report, he said, when he heard of the victory of his troops: "Now I suffer willingly what the Lord has decreed for me." His body with the severed hand was deposited in the cathedral at Merseburg.82

Rudolf’s death turned his victory into a defeat. It was regarded in that age as a judgment of God against him and the anti-pope. His friends could not agree upon a successor till the following summer, when they elected Count Hermann of Luxemburg, who proved incompetent. In the spring of 1081 Henry crossed the Alps with a small army to depose Gregory, whose absolution he had sought a few years before as a penitent at Canossa. He was welcomed in Lombardy, defeated the troops of Matilda, and appeared at the gates of Rome before Pentecost, May 21. Gregory, surrounded by danger, stood firm as a rock and refused every compromise. At his last Lenten synod (end of February, 1081) he had renewed his anathemas, and suspended those bishops who disobeyed the summons. Nothing else is known of this synod but sentences of punishment. In his letter of March 15, 1081, to Hermann, bishop of Metz, he justified his conduct towards Henry, and on April 8 he warned the Venetians against any communication with him and his adherents. "I am not afraid," he said, "of the threats of the wicked, and would rather sacrifice my life than consent to evil."

Henry, not being permitted by the Romans to enter their city, as he had hoped, and not being prepared for a siege, spent the summer in Upper Italy, but returned to Rome in Lent, 1082, and again with a larger force at Easter, 1083, and conquered the city and the Church of St. Peter in June. Gregory was intrenched in the Castle of St. Angelo, and fulminated anew his anathema upon Henry and his followers (June 24). Henry answered by causing Wibert to be enthroned in St. Peter’s (June 28), but soon left Rome with Wibert (July 1), promising to return. He had probably come to a secret understanding with the Roman nobility to effect a peaceful compromise with Gregory; but the pope was inexorable. In the spring of 1084 Henry returned and called a synod, which deposed and excommunicated Gregory. Wibert was consecrated on Palm Sunday as Pope Clement III., in the Lateran, by two excommunicated bishops of Modena and Arezzo (instead of the bishops of Ostia, Albano, and Porto). Henry and his wife, Bertha, received from him the imperial crown in St. Peter’s at Easter, March 31, 1084. He left Rome with Wibert (May 21), leaving the defense of the city in the hands of the Romans. He never returned.

In the meantime Gregory called to his aid the Norman chief, Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard. This bold adventurer approached from the south with a motley force of Normans, Lombards, Apulians, and Saracens, amounting to thirty thousand foot and six thousand horse, arrived in Rome, May 27, 1084, liberated the pope, and entered with him the Lateran. He now began such a pillage and slaughter as even the barbarians had not committed. Half the city was reduced to ruins; many churches were demolished, others turned into forts; women and maidens, even nuns, were outraged, and several thousand citizens sold into slavery. The survivors cursed the pope and his deliverer. In the words of a contemporary, the cruelty of the Normans gained more hearts for the emperor than a hundred thousand pieces of gold. Rome was a ghost of her former self. When Hildebert of Tours visited her more than ten years later, he saw only ruins of her greatness.83  This was, indeed, a fearful judgment, but very different from the one which Gregory a few years before had invoked upon Henry.

Many confused reports were circulated about the fate of Gregory VII. His faithful friend, the Countess of Tuscany, assembled troops, sent emissaries in all directions, and stirred up distrust and hatred against Henry in Germany. The following letter remains as evidence of her zeal for Gregory: —

"Matilda, such as she is by the grace of God, if she be anything, to all the faithful residing in the Teutonic kingdom, greeting.

"We would have you know that Henry, the false king, has stolen the seal of the Lord Pope Gregory. Wherefore, if ye are told anything contrary to the words of our envoys, hold it false, and believe not Henry’s lies. Further, he has carried away with him the Bishop of Porto, because that man was once familiar with the Lord Pope. If by his help he should attempt anything with you or against you, be sure this bishop is a false witness, and give no credit to those who shall tell you to the contrary. Know that the Lord Pope has already conquered Sutri and Nepi; Barabbas the robber, that is to say, Henry’s pope, has fled like himself. Farewell. Beware of the snares of Henry."

§ 18. Death of Gregory VII.

Gregory was again in possession of the Lateran, but he left the scene of melancholy desolation, accompanied by Guiscard and a few cardinals and Roman nobles. He went first to Monte Cassino and then to Salerno. The descent from Canossa to Salerno was truly a via dolorosa. But the old pope, broken in body, was unbroken in spirit.

He renewed the ban against Henry and the anti-pope at the close of 1084, and sent a letter to the faithful in Germany, stating that the words of the Psalmist, Quare fremuerunt gentes (Ps. 2:1, 2), were fulfilled, that the kings of the earth have rebelled against Christ and his apostle Peter to destroy the Christian religion, but could not seduce those who trusted in God. He called upon them to come to the rescue of the Church if they wished to gain the remission of sins and eternal salvation. This is his last written document.

His mind remained clear and firm to the end. He recommended Cardinal Desiderius of Monte Cassino (Victor III.) as his successor, and next to him Otto, bishop of Ostia (Urban II.). He absolved all his enemies, except Henry and Wibert. "the usurper of the apostolic see."84  He died, May 25, 1085, with the words which best express the meaning of his public life and character: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile."85  "Nay," said one of the bishops, "in exile thou canst not die, who, as the vicar of Christ and his Apostles, hast received all the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Ps. 2:8).

Robert Guiscard, his protector, died a few weeks afterwards (July 17, 1085).

The body of Gregory, clad in the pontifical vestments, was buried in the church of St. Matthew at Salerno, which he had consecrated shortly before. A plain stone marked his grave till John of Procida—although a zealous Ghibelline—erected a sumptuous chapel over it.86  His name was inserted in the Calendar on the 25th of May, 1584, by Gregory XIII., without a formal canonization; Paul V. ordered a festival, in 1609, for the new saint; and Benedict XIII., in 1728, ordered its general observance. The emperor of Germany, the king of France, and other sovereigns opposed the celebration; but if ever a pope deserved canonization for devotion to the papal theocracy, it was Hildebrand. The eighth centenary of his death was celebrated in the Roman Church, May 25, 1885.

Gregory was, in his own time, and has been since, the subject both of the highest praise and of the severest censure. Modern historians agree in giving him credit for the honesty and courage of his convictions, and concede the purity and loftiness of his motives and aims. He is the typical representative of papal absolutism in the Middle Ages in conflict with imperial absolutism. He combined personal integrity, consummate statesmanship, and monastic contempt of the world. He lived and moved in the idea of the Old Testament theocracy, and had no conception of the free spirit of the gospel. He was a man of blood and iron, an austere monk, inaccessible to feelings of tenderness, when acting in his official capacity as the head of the Roman hierarchy; yet he showed singular liberality in his treatment of Berengar, and protested against the use of torture. His piety was absorbed in devotion to the hierarchy, to St. Peter, and to the Virgin Mary. He was unscrupulous in the choice of means for his end, and approved of civil war for the triumph of the Roman Church.

The lofty principles he espoused he was willing to stake his life upon. No pope has ever used the term "righteousness" more frequently than he used it. No pope has ever employed the figure of warfare to describe the conflict he was engaged in more frequently than he employed it.87  No man was ever more convinced of the soundness of his cause. He found his authority in the Scriptures and freely used them to convince others, quoting certain passages again and again, such as 1 Sam. 15:23, which is found quoted in his writings nineteen times.88  He found in Matt. 16: 18 the certain warrant for the papal supremacy and excepted no person from the jurisdiction of Peter’s successors.89  As an advocate of papal absolutism and as a moral reformer he has left an abiding impress upon the thought and the practice of Roman Christendom. Even where we are farthest from sharing his views, we may admire the man of fearless courage and moral conviction.

His spirit still moves in the curia, which adheres to the theocratic theory, without the ability of carrying it into practice. The papal Syllabus of 1864 denies that "the Roman pontiffs have exceeded the limits of their power" (§ V. 23), and asserts the superiority of the Church over the State "in litigated questions of jurisdiction" (§ VI. 54). The politico-ecclesiastical encyclicals of Leo XIII. (Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, and Libertas praestantissimum naturae donum, June 20, 1888) reasserted substantially, though moderately and cautiously, the Gregorian theory of Church and State.

Ranke, in his last years, wrote of Gregory:90 "His hierarchical system rests upon the endeavor to make the clergical order the basis of all human existence. This makes intelligible its two characteristic and fundamental principles, the command of celibacy and the prohibition of lay investiture. By the first it was intended to build up out of the lower clergy a body isolated from all the personal and family relationships of human society. By the second it was intended to insure the higher clergy against all interference from the civil power. The great hierarch thought out well the platform on which he placed himself. He met a demand of the age to see in the priest, as it were, a being belonging to a higher order. All that he says betrays dignity, force, and logical connection .... His activity, which left nothing untouched, was of a very human sort, while at the same time it embraced religious ideals. The hierarchical principle constituted his real life."

Gregorovius, who carries on a sustained comparison between Gregory and Napoleon, praises Gregory’s genius and moral vigor. He says:91 "Gregory was the heir of the ancient aims of the papacy. But his unexampled genius as ruler and statesman is his own, and no one either in ancient Rome or in modern times has ever reached to his revolutionary daring .... His dying words reveal the fundamental basis of his character, which was great and manly. To this grand spirit, a character almost without an equal, belongs a place among the rulers of the earth, men who have moved the world by a violent yet salutary influence. The religious element, however, raises him to a far higher sphere than that to which secular monarchs belong. Beside Gregory, Napoleon sinks to an utter poverty of ideas."

Let us hope that Gregory felt in his heart some of that Christian love and meekness whose commendation closes one of his letters to Hermann, archbishop of Metz,92  the most drastic expression of papal absolutism he ever made. He wrote: "If the virtue of love be neglected, no matter what good anyone may do, he will wholly lack the fruit of salvation. To do these things in humility and to love God and our neighbor as we ought, this presupposes the mercy of him who said, Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Whosoever humbly follows him shall pass from the kingdom of submission which passes away, to the kingdom of true liberty which abides forever."

CHAPTER III.

THE PAPACY FROM THE DEATH OF GREGORY VII. TO THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS. A.D. 1085–1122.

§ 19. Victor III. and Urban II. 1086–1099.

Compare the chapter on the Crusades.

At the death of Gregory, his imperial enemy was victorious in Germany, and had recovered part of Saxony; Lombardy remained loyal to the empire; Matilda was prostrated by grief and sickness; the anti-pope Wibert (Clement III., 1080–1100) continued to occupy a part of Rome (the Lateran palace and the castle of St. Angelo); Roger, the new duke of the Normans, spent his whole force in securing for himself the sole rule over Calabria and Apulia against his brother Bohemund. There was a papal interregnum of twelve months.

At last the excellent Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino, who had raised that convent to the height of its prosperity, was elected to succeed his friend Gregory, May 24, 1086. He accepted after long delay, but ruled only eighteen months as Victor III. He loved monastic solitude, and died Sept. 16, 1087.

He was followed by Otto (Odo), cardinal-bishop of Ostia, a Frenchman, formerly prior of Cluny, and one of the intimate counsellors of Hildebrand. He assumed the name Urban II., and ruled from March 12, 1088, to July 29, 1099. He followed in the steps of Gregory, but with more caution and adaptation to circumstances. He spent his pontificate mostly outside of Rome, but with increasing moral influence. He identified himself with the rising enthusiasm for the holy war of the Cross against the Crescent. This was an immense gain for the papacy, which reaped all the credit and benefit of that extraordinary movement.

He took a noble stand in favor of the sanctity of marriage against the licentious King Philip I. of France, who cast away his legitimate wife, Bertha, 1092, and held adulterous intercourse with Bertrada of Montfort, the runaway wife of the rude Count Fulco of Anjou. This public scandal led to several synods. The king was excommunicated by a synod at Autun in Burgundy, Oct. 16, 1094, and by the Synod of Clermont in 1095. He afterwards dismissed Bertrada, and was absolved by the pope.

Urban continued the war with Henry IV. without scruple as to the means. He encouraged the rebellion of his eldest son, Conrad, a weak and amiable man, who fled for protection to the Countess Matilda, was crowned king of Italy at Monza, and paid the pope the homage of holding his stirrup (the officium stratoris) at Cremona (1095). Urban, who had been consecrated pope outside of Rome, was able, 1088, with the aid of the Normans, to enter the city and possess himself of all its parts except the castle of St. Angelo, which remained in the hands of the followers of Wibert. Wibert had been in possession of St. Peter’s, which he held as a fortress against Victor III. The streets of the papal city resounded with the war-cries of the two papal armies, while pope and anti-pope anathematized one another. Urban died at Florence in 1101.

The pope arranged an unnatural matrimonial alliance between the widowed countess and the young Guelph of Bavaria, whose father was the most powerful of the emperor’s enemies in Germany. It was a purely political match, which made neither party happy, and ended in a divorce (1095). But it gave the papal party a political organization, and opened the long-continued war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which distracted every city in Italy, and is said to have caused seventy-two hundred revolutions and more than seven hundred atrocious murders in that country.93  Every Italian was born to an inheritance of hatred and revenge, and could not help sharing in the conflict of factions headed by petty tyrants. The Guelphs defended the pope against the emperor, and also the democracy against the aristocracy in the city government. They were strong in pulling down, but were unable to create a new State. The Ghibellines maintained the divine origin and independent authority of the State in all things temporal against the encroachments of the papacy. The party strife continued in Italy long after the German emperor had lost his power. Dante was at first a Guelph, but in mature life joined the Ghibellines and became the most formidable opponent of Pope Boniface VIII.

Urban was able to hold a synod at Piacenza in Lombardy, where Henry IV. had his chief support, during Lent, 1095. It was attended by four thousand priests and monks and over thirty thousand laymen, and the meeting had to be held in the open field. The pope permitted Praxedis (Adelheid), the second wife of Henry IV., to recite the filthy details of acts of impurity to which she had been subjected by her husband, endorsed her shameless story, absolved her from all uncleanness, and remitted every penitential observance, "because she had not blushed to make a public and voluntary confession of her involuntary transgression."94  After thus sealing the damnation of Henry, the synod renewed the laws against simony and Nicolaitism. Wibert, the anti-pope, was put under anathema, and his consecrations were declared invalid. The Catholic faith in the true and essential presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist was asserted against the heresy of Berengar.

More important was the Synod of Clermont in France, Nov. 18–28, 1095, which inaugurated the first crusade. Here Urban preached the most effective sermon on record, and reached the height of his influence.

He passed in triumphal procession, surrounded by princes and prelates, through France and Italy. He exhorted the people everywhere to repent of their sins and to prove the sincerity of their conversion by killing as many enemies of the cross as they could reach with their swords. When he reached Rome the anti-pope had been driven away by the Crusaders. He was enabled to celebrate the Christmas festival of 1096 with unusual magnificence, and held two synods in the Lateran, January, 1097, and April, 1099. He died, July 29, 1099, a fortnight after the capture of Jerusalem (July 15) by the Crusaders.

§ 20. Pascal II. and Henry V. 1099–1118.

The letters of Paschalis II. in Migne, 163.—W. Schum: Die Politik Papst Paschalis II. gegen Kaiser Heinrich V. Erfurt, 1877. —- G. Peiser: Der deutsche Investiturstreit unter Heinrich V. bis 1111. Berlin, 1883.—Gregorovius Iv., Hauck Iii., Pflugk-Harttung: Die Bullen der Päpste. Gotha, 1901, pp. 234–263.—Mirbt, art. Paschalis II in Herzog, XIV. 717–725, and the literature there given.

Pascal II., a monk of Cluny and disciple of Hildebrand, but less firm and consistent, was elected in July, 1099, and reigned till 1118. Clement III., the anti-pope, died in September, 1100, weary of the world, and left a reputation of integrity, gentleness, and dignity. The imperialist clergy of Rome elected another anti-pope, Sylvester IV., who soon disappeared noiselessly from the stage.

Pascal gained a complete victory over Henry IV. by supporting the wicked rebellion of his second son, Henry V., the last of the Salic or Franconian line of emperors, 1104–1126.

The unfortunate father died under the anathema in misery at Liège (Lüttich), Aug. 7, 1106. The people of the city which had remained faithful to him, lamented his death; but the papal agents commanded the bishop of Liège to remove his body from consecrated ground to an island in the Maas. Henry V. had not lost all feeling for his father, and complied with his dying request for burial in the imperial sepulchre at Spires. The clergy and the citizens accompanied the funeral procession to the cathedral of St. Mary, which the departed sovereign had himself built and richly endowed. He was buried with all honors. But when Bishop Gebhard, one of his fiercest persecutors, who was absent at the time, heard of it, he caused the body to be forthwith exhumed and removed, and interdicted all services in the church till it should be purified of all pollution. The people, however, could not be deterred from frequent visits to the unconsecrated chapel where the dishonored remains of their monarch and patron were deposited. At last the pope dissolved the ban, on the assurance of Henry V. that his father had professed sincere repentance, and his body was again deposited in the cathedral, Aug. 7, 1111. By his moral defects and his humiliation at Canossa, Henry IV. had promoted the power of the papal hierarchy, and yet, by his continued opposition after that act, he had prevented its complete triumph. Soon after his death an anonymous writer gave eloquent and touching expression to his grief over the imperial lord whom he calls his hope and comfort, the pride of Rome, the ornament of the empire, the lamp of the world, a benefactor of widows and orphans, and a father of the poor.95

Pascal had to suffer for his unscrupulous policy. When Henry V. came into full possession of his power, he demanded the right of investiture over all the churches of the empire, and coronation at Rome. The pope was imprisoned and so hard pressed by Henry, that he resolved to buy the spiritual freedom of the Church by a sacrifice of its temporal possessions (except the patrimony of Peter). A compact to this effect between him and the emperor was signed provisionally, April, 1111. Henry was crowned emperor of the Romans in St. Peter’s. But after his return to Germany, a Lateran synod rejected the compact, March, 1112. The pope represented to the synod that, while in the custody of the emperor, with many bishops and cardinals, he had conceded to him the right of investiture to avoid greater evils, and had promised him immunity from excommunication. He confessed that the concession was wrong, and left it with the synod to improve the situation. He made in the sixth session (March 23) a solemn profession of the Catholic faith in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, the Canons of the Apostles, the four Oecumenical Synods of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, and the decrees of Gregory VII. and Urban II. against lay-investiture and all other crimes which they had condemned. Then the synod, while the pope kept silent, resolved to annul the treaty which he had been forced to make with King Henry. All exclaimed, "Amen, Amen, fiat, fiat." Twelve archbishops, a hundred and fourteen bishops, fifteen cardinal-priests, and eight cardinal-deacons signed the decree.

The zealous Gregorians wished to go further and to declare lay-investiture a heresy (which would imply that Pope Pascal was a heretic). A French Synod of Vienne, Sept. 16, 1112, passed three decrees: 1) Investiture by a layman is a heresy; 2) the enforced compact of Pascal with Henry is null and void; 3) King Henry, who came to Rome under the pretext of peace, and betrayed the pope with a Judas-kiss, is cut off from holy Church until he gives complete satisfaction. The decisions were submitted to the pope, who approved them, October 20 of the same year, to avert a schism. Other provincial synods of France, held by papal legates, launched anathemas against the "tyrant of Germany."

But Henry defied the pope, who had pledged himself never to excommunicate him on account of investiture. After the death of Countess Matilda, July 24, 1115, he hastened for a third time to Italy, and violently seized the rich possessions which she had bequeathed to the chair of St. Peter. Pascal fled to Benevento, and called the Normans to his aid, as Gregory VII. had done. Henry celebrated the Easter festival of 1117 in Rome with great pomp, caused the empress to be crowned, showed himself to the people in his imperial purple, and amused them with shows and processions; but in the summer he returned to Germany, after fruitless negotiations with the pope. He lived to conclude the Concordat of Worms. He was an energetic, but hard, despotic, and unpopular ruler.

Pascal died, Jan. 21, 1118, in the castle of St. Angelo, and was buried in the church of St. John in Lateran. He barely escaped the charge of heresy and schism. He privately condemned, and yet officially supported, lay-investiture, and strove to satisfy both his own conscience and his official duty to the papacy. The extreme party charged him with the sin of Peter, and exhorted him to repent; milder judges, like Ivo of Chartres and Hildebert of Le Mans, while defending the Hildebrandian principle of the freedom of the Church, excused him on the ground that he had yielded for a moment in the hope of better times and from the praiseworthy desire to save the imprisoned cardinals and to avoid bloodshed; and they referred to the example of Paul, who circumcised Timothy, and complied with the wish of James in Jerusalem to please the Jewish Christians.

§ 21. The Concordat of Worms. 1122.

Ekkehardus Uraugiensis: Chronica (best ed. by Waiz in Mon. Germ. Script., VI. 260).—Ul. Robert: Étude sur les actes du pape Calixte II. Paris, 1874.—E. Bernheim: Zur Geschichte des Wormser Concordats. Göttingen, 1878.—M. Maurer: Papst Calixt II. München, 1886.—Giesebrecht, III. 931–959.—Ranke, VIII. 111–126.—Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 311–384; Bullaire et histoire de Calixte II. Paris, 1891.—D. Schafer: Zur Beurtheilung des Wormser Konkordats. Berlin, 1905.

The Gregorian party elected Gelasius a cardinal-deacon, far advanced in age. His short reign of a year and four days was a series of pitiable misfortunes. He had scarcely been elected when he was grossly insulted by a mob led by Cencius Frangipani and cast into a dungeon. Freed by the fickle Romans, he was thrown into a panic by the sudden appearance of Henry V. at the gates, and fled the city, attempting to escape by sea. The Normans came to his rescue and he was led back to Rome, where he found St. Peter’s in the hands of the anti-pope. A wild riot again forced him to flee and when he was found he was sitting in a field near St. Paul’s, with no companions but some women as his comforters. He then escaped to Pisa and by way of Genoa to France, where he died at Cluny, 1119. The imperialist party had elected an anti-pope, Gregory VIII., who was consecrated at Rome in the presence of Henry V., and ruled till 1121, but was taken captive by the Normans, mounted on a camel, paraded before Calixtus amid the insults and mockeries of the Roman mob, covered with dust and filth, and consigned to a dungeon. He died in an obscure monastery, in 1125, "still persevering in his rebellion." Such was the state of society in Rome.

Calixtus II., the successor of Gelasius, 1119–1124, was elected at Cluny and consecrated at Vienne. He began his rule by renewing the sentence of excommunication against Henry; and in him the emperor found his match. After holding the Synod of Rheims, which ratified the prohibition of lay investiture, he reached Rome, 1120. Both parties, emperor and pope, were weary of the long struggle of fifty years, which had, like the Thirty Years’ War five centuries later, kept Central Europe in a state of turmoil and war. At the Diet of Würzburg, 1121, the men of peace were in the majority and demanded a cessation of the conflict and the calling of a council.

Calixtus found it best to comply, however reluctantly, with the resolution of the German Diet, and instructed his legates to convoke a general council of all the bishops of France and Germany at Mainz for the purpose of restoring concord between the holy see and the empire. The assembly adjourned from Mainz to Worms, the city which became afterwards so famous for the protest of Luther. An immense multitude crowded to the place to witness the restoration of peace. The sessions lasted more than a week, and closed with a solemn mass and the Te Deum by the cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who gave the kiss of peace to the emperor.

The Concordat of Worms was signed, Sept. 23, 1122. It was a compromise between the contending parties. It is the first of the many concordats which the popes have since that time concluded with various sovereigns and governments, and in which they usually make some concession to the civil power. If they cannot carry out their principle, they agree to a modus vivendi.

The pope gained the chief point, namely, the right of investiture by delivery of the ring and crosier (the symbols of the spiritual power) in all the churches of the empire, and also the restoration of the properties and temporalities of the blessed Peter which had passed out of the possession of the holy see during the late civil wars.

On the other hand, the pope granted to the emperor that the elections to all bishoprics and abbeys of the empire should be made in the emperor’s presence, without simony or any kind of corruption; that in cases of dispute the emperor should be at liberty to decide in favor of the person who, in his judgment, had the best claim; and that the candidate thus elected should receive from the emperor the temporalities of his see or abbey by the delivery of a rod or sceptre (the symbol of the temporal power), but without bargain or valuable consideration of any kind, and ever after render unto the sovereign all such duties and services as by law he was bound to render. But the temporalities belonging to the Roman see were exempt from these stipulations.

There are some ambiguities and uncertainties in this treaty which opened the way for future contention. The emperor surrenders the right of investiture (with ring and crosier), and yet takes it back again in a milder form (with the sceptre). The question whether consecration is to precede or to follow investiture was left undecided, except outside of Germany, i.e. in Italy and Burgundy, where investiture with the regalia by the sceptre was to take place within six months after the consecration. Nothing is said about heirs and successors. Hence the concordat might be understood simply as a treaty between Calixtus and Henry, a temporary expedient, an armistice after half a century of discord between Church and State. After their deaths both the papal tiara and the imperial crown became again apples of discord.

The Concordat of Worms was confirmed by the Ninth Oecumenical Synod (according to the Roman counting), or First Oecumenical Council of the West, held in the Lateran from March 18 to April 6, 1123. It is also called the First Lateran Council. Over three hundred bishops and abbots were present, or, according to other reports, five hundred or even nine hundred and ninety-seven. The documents of Worms were read, approved by all, and deposited in the archives of the Roman Church.

NOTES.

The text of the Concordatum Wormatiense or Pactum Calixtinum is preserved in the Vatican, and in the Chronicle of Ekkehard (abbot of Aura, near Kissingen, from 1108 to 1125). It has been repeatedly published by Baronius, Annales; Goldast, Constitutiones Imperiales; Leibnitz, Corpus juris diplomaticum; in Gieseler’s Church History; in German translation, by Hefele-Knöpfler, Conciliengesch. V. 373; and also by Pertz, in the Monumenta Germaniae Legum, II. 75 sq. (who gives the various readings from seven MSS. of Ekkehard’s Chronica), and Mirbt, Quellen, 115, 116. It is as follows:—

"In nomine sanctae et individuae Trinitatis.

"Ego Heinricus Dei gratia Romanorum Imperator Augustus pro amore Dei et s. Romanae Ecclesiae et domini P. Calixti, et pro remedio animae meae, dimitto Deo et ss. ejus Apostolis Petro et Paulo, sanctaeque catholicae Ecclesiae omnem investituram per annulum et baculum, et concedo, in omnibus Ecclesiis canonicam fieri electionem et liberam consecrationem. Possessiones et regalia b. Petri, quae a principio hujus discordiae usque ad hodiernam diem, sive patris mei tempore, sive etiam meo, ablata sunt, quae habeo, s. Romanae Ecclesiae restituo, quae autem non habeo, ut, restituantur, fideliter juvabo. Possessiones etiam omnium Ecclesiarum aliarum, et Principum, et aliorum tam clericorum quam laicorum, quae in guerra ista amissae sunt, consilio Principum, vel justitia, quas habeo, reddam, quas non habeo, ut reddantur, fideliter juvabo. Et do veram pacem domino Papae Calixto, sanctaeque Romanae Ecclesiae, et omnibus, qui in parte ipsius sunt vel fuerunt. Et in quibus s. Romana Ecclesia mihi auxilium postulaverit, fideliter juvabo; et de quibus mihi fecerit querimoniam, debitam sibi faciam justitiam.

"Ego Calixtus Episcopus, servus servorum Dei, tibi dilecto filio Heinrico, Dei gratia Romanorum Imperatori Augusto, concedo, electiones Episcoporum et Abbatum Teutonici regni, qui ad regnum pertinent, in praesentia tua fieri absque simonia et aliqua violentia; ut si qua inter partes discordia emerserit, Metropolitani et Comprovincialum consilio vel judicio, saniori parti assensum et auxilium praebeas. Electus autem regalia per sceptrum a te recipiat, et quae ex his jure tibi debet, faciat. Ex aliis vero partibus Imperii consecratus infra sex menses regalia per sceptrum a te recipiat, et quae ex his jure tibi debet, faciat, exceptis omnibus, quae ad Romanam Ecclesiam pertinere noscuntur. De quibus vero querimoniam mihi feceris, secundum officii mei debitum auxilium tibi praestabo. Do tibi veram pacem et omnibus, qui in parte tua sunt, aut fuerunt tempore hujus discordiae. Data anno dominicae Incarnationis MCXXII. IX Kal. Octobr."

Then follow the signatures.

§ 22. The Conflict of the Hierarchy in England. William the Conqueror and Lanfranc.

The Domesday or Doomesday Book (Liber judicii; Book of judgment; Liber de Wintonia, because deposited in the cathedral at Winchester, now in the Charter House at Westminster, published in facsimile, 1783 and 1861).

It was prepared between 1080 and 1086 by the "justiciaries" of William the Conqueror for the purpose of ascertaining the taxable wealth and military strength of the conquered country and securing a full and fair assessment. It contains, among other things, a list of the bishops, churches, religious houses, great men, etc. See Freeman’s Norman Conquest, V. 1–52 and 733–740. He says (Preface, viii.): "The stores of knowledge in Domesday are boundless" (for secular history, rather than church history).—The Gesta Wilhelmi by William of Poitiers, a chaplain and violent partisan of the Conqueror. Also the chronicles of William of Jumièges, Ordericus Vitalis, in Migne, 188, Eng. Trans. 4 vols. Bohn’s Libr.

Lanfranc (thirty-fourth archbishop of Canterbury, 1005–1089): Vita and (55) Epistolae, in his Opera, edited by D’Achery (Paris, 1648), Giles (Oxford, 1844, in 2 vols.), and Migne, 150.—H. Böhmer , Die Fälschungen Lanfranks von Cant. Leipzig, 1902.

*Eadmer (monk of Canterbury, pupil and biographer of Anselm): Vita Sancti Anselmi, and Historia Novorum, both in Anselm’s Opera (ed. Migne, 158, 159, and in Rolls Series, 1884).—The biographies of Anselm by Frank (Tübingen, 1842), Hasse (Leipzig, 1843, vol. I. 235–455), Remusat (Paris, 1853; German translation by Wurzbach, 1854), Dean Church (London, 1875), Rule (London, 1883), Hook (in 2d vol. of Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, London, 1861–1874), Rigg, 1896, Welch, 1901.

*William of Malmesbury (b.a. 1096, d. 1143, son of a Norman father and Saxon mother, monk and librarian in the abbey of Malmesbury): De Gestis Regum Anglorum (a history of England from the Anglo-Saxon Conquest to the end of the reign of Henry I., 1129); Historiae Novellae (a continuation till 1151); De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum (history of the English Church till 1123). Edited by Savile, in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores, London, 1596; best ed. in Rolls Series, English translation by John Sharpe, edited by Giles, in Bohn’s "Antiquarian Library," London, 1847.

The Works of Henry of Huntingdon, William of Newburgh, Gervaise of Canterbury, Ralph of Coggeshall, Richard of Hoveden, Matthew Paris, etc., as ed. in the Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, called the Rolls Series, London, 1858 sqq. These works ed. by Stubbs, Luard, and other competent Eng. scholars are indispensable.

J. N. Aug. Thierry (1795–1856): Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands, de ses causes et de ses suites en Angleterre, en Écosse, et en Irlande et sur le continent. 5e éd. entièrement revue et augmentée. Paris, 1839, 4 vols. The first edition was published, 1825, in 3 vols., a 6th ed. in 1843, etc. English translation by Hazlitt, 1847.

Edw. A. Freeman (Professor of History in Oxford): History of the Norman Conquest. Oxford, 1867–1876 (vols. II., III., IV., and V. See Index, vol. VI.). And his Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First. Oxford, 1882, 2 vols. (see Index, sub Anselm). An exhaustive treatment of that period by a master in historic research and erudition, with model indexes.

Bishop Stubbs furnishes authentic information in his Constitutional History of England, 6th ed. 3 vols. 1897; Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History to the Reign of Edward I. (1870); Memorials of St. Dunstan (1874).

H. Gee and W. J. Hardy: Documents illustrative of Eng. Ch. Hist., London, 1896.

W. R. W. Stephens: The Eng. Ch. 1066–1272. London, 1891.

Milman (bk. VIII. ch. VIII.) briefly touches upon this important chapter of the Church history of England. Hardwick (Church History of the Middle Ages) ignores it. Robertson notices the principal facts. Dean Hook gives the Lives of Lanfranc and Anselm (II. 73–168 and 169–276).

The conflict between the pope and the emperor for supremacy was repeated, on a smaller scale, in England, between the archbishop of Canterbury and the king, and was settled for a season in favor of the hierarchy, several years before the Concordat of Worms. The struggle for the freedom of the Church was indirectly also a struggle for the freedom of the State and the people from the tyranny of the crown. Priestcraft prevailed over kingcraft, then aristocracy over absolute monarchy in the Magna Charta, and at last the people over both.

The Anglo-Saxon kings and nobles enriched the Church of England, their alma mater, by liberal grants of real estate amounting to about one-third of the land, and thus conferred upon it great political influence. The bishops ranked with the nobles, and the archbishops with princes, next to the king. The archbishop of Canterbury was usually intrusted with the regency during the absence of the sovereign on the Continent.

But for this very reason the British sovereigns of the different dynasties tried to keep the Church in a state of dependence and subserviency, by the election of bishops and the exercise of the right of investiture. They filled the vacant bishoprics with their chaplains, so that the court became a nursery of prelates, and they occasionally arrogated to themselves such titles as "Shepherd of Shepherds," and even "Vicar of Christ." In one word, they aspired to be popes of England long before Henry VIII. blasphemously called himself, "Supreme Head of the Church of England."

Under the later kings of the Saxon line the Church had degenerated, and was as much in need of reform as the churches on the Continent. The ascetic reforms of Dunstan took no deep root and soon passed away. Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) was a monastic saint, but a stranger and shadow in England, with his heart in Normandy, the home of his youth. The old Saxon literature was forgotten, and the clergy was sunk in ignorance.96  No ecclesiastical synod broke the slumber. The priests were married or lived in concubinage. Simony was freely exercised.

The Norman Conquest aroused England to new life and activity. It marks the greatest change in English history since the Anglo-Saxon conquest. It left its impress upon the language, literature, architecture, laws and institutions of the country, without, however, breaking the continuity. The Normans, though a foreign, were yet a kindred race, of Teutonic stock, Romanized and Gallicanized in France. From savage pirates they had been changed into semi-civillized Christians, without losing their bravery and love of adventure, which they showed in the crusades and the conquest of England. They engrafted the French language and manners upon the Anglo-Saxon trunk, and superinduced an aristocratic element on the democratic base. It took a long time for the two nationalities and languages to melt into one.

The amalgamation was an enrichment. The happy combination of Saxon strength and endurance with Norman enterprise and vivacity, in connection with the insular position and the capacity for self-government fostered thereby, prepared the English race for the dominion of the seas and the founding of successful colonies in all continents.97

The Norman kings were as jealous of their rights and as much opposed to papal superiority as the German emperors. Their instincts and interests were caesaropapistic or Erastian. But the Church kept them in check. The Hildebrandian ideas of reform were advocated and carried out in part by two of the most eminent scholars and monks of the age, Lanfranc (1005–1089) and Anselm (1033–1109), who followed each other in the see of Canterbury. They were both of Italian birth,—one from the Lombard city of Pavia, the other from Aosta,—and successively abbots and teachers of the famous convent of Bee in the diocese of Rouen.

William I. of Normandy, surnamed "the Conqueror," the natural son of, "Robert the Devil" and the daughter of a tanner, and the first king of the Norman dynasty (1066–1087), enforced his pretension to the English throne under the consecrated banner of Pope Alexander II. by the defeat of Harold in the battle on the hill of Senlac, near Hastings, Oct. 14, 1066. Five years afterwards he made Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury. He had formerly banished him from Normandy for opposing his marriage with Matilda of Flanders, as being within the forbidden degrees. He overtook the abbot as he was leaving the convent on a lame horse, and hurried him on. The abbot said, "Give me a better horse, and I shall go faster." This cool request turned the duke’s wrath into laughter and good-will. He was reconciled, and employed him to obtain the pope’s sanction of the marriage, and the removal of the interdict from his territories.

Lanfranc was a moderate Hildebrandian. He had been the chief promoter of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Berengarian controversy; while Hildebrand protected Berengar as long as he could.98  He was zealous for clerical celibacy, substituted monks for secular canons in cathedrals, and prohibited, through the Council of Winchester in 1076, the ordination of married priests, but allowed the rural clergy to retain their wives. He did not fully sustain the pope’s claim to temporal authority, and disobeyed the frequent summons to appear at Rome. He lived, upon the whole, on good terms with the king, although he could not effect anything against his will. He aided him in his attempt to Normanize the English Church. He was intrusted with the regency when the duke was absent on the Continent. He favored the cause of learning, and rebuilt the cathedral of Canterbury, which had burnt down.

William was a despot in Church and State, and rather grew harder and more reckless of human suffering in his later years. His will was the law of the land. Freeman places him both "among the greatest of men" and "among the worst of men."99  His military genius and statesmanship are undoubted; but he was utterly unscrupulous in the choice of means. He had a strong sense of religion and reverence for the Church, and was liberal to her ministers; he did not, like his son, keep the benefices vacant and rob her revenues; he did not practise simony, and, so far, he fell in with the Hildebrandian reform.100  But he firmly insisted on the right of investiture. He declared that he would not allow a single bishop’s staff to pass out of his hands. He held his own even against Hildebrand. He felt that he owed his crown only to God and to his own sword. He was willing to pay Peter’s pence to the pope as alms, but not as tribute, and refused to swear allegiance to Gregory VII.

He made full use of the right of a victor. He subjected the estates of the Church to the same feudal obligations as other lands. He plundered religious houses. He deposed Archbishop Stigand and other Saxon bishops to make room for Norman favorites, who did not even understand the language of the people. These changes were not begun till 1070, when Stigand was tried before the papal legates who had placed the crown on William’s head. The main charges were simony and that he had received the pall from the usurping pope, Benedict X. William left only one Englishman, the simple-minded Wulfstan of Worcester, in possession of his see. He gradually extended the same system to abbacies and lower dignities. He allowed no synod to convene and legislate without his previous permission and subsequent confirmation of its decrees, no pope to be acknowledged in England without his will, no papal letters to be received and published without his consent. No ecclesiastic was to leave the kingdom without his permission, and bishops were forbidden to excommunicate a noble for adultery or any capital crime without the previous assent of the king. In these ways the power of the clergy was limited, and a check put upon the supremacy of Rome over the English Church. Lanfranc seems to have fully sympathized with these measures. For after the death of Alexander II., who had been his pupil at Bec, he seems to have treated the popes, especially Gregory VII., coolly. Gregory wrote him several letters threatening him with suspension and for his absence from the synods which were convening in Rome.101

On the other hand, the law was passed in William’s reign remanding ecclesiastical suits to separate tribunals,102 a law which afterwards gave occasion for much contention. The bishops’ court henceforth used the canon law instead of the common English law used in the shire courts. Another important movement in William’s reign, sanctioned by synodal authority,103 was the removal of episcopal seats to larger towns, the Church conforming itself to the changes of geography. Chichester took the place of Selsey, Salisbury of Sherborne, Chester of Lichfield, Lincoln of Dorchester, 1085, Bath of Wells, 1088, and Norwich of Thetford, 1094, which had taken the place of Elmham, 1078. Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, nephew of the Conqueror, prepared the liturgical service called the Sarum use, which was adopted in other dioceses than his own, and later became one of the chief sources of the Book of Common Prayer.

§ 23. William Rufus and Anselm.

William II., commonly called William Rufus or the Red (for his red hair), the third son and first successor of the Conqueror, ruled from 1087 to 1100. He bought Normandy from his brother Robert to enable him to make a crusade. This is the only good thing he did, besides appointing Anselm primate of England. He inherited all the vices and none of the virtues of his father. He despised and hated the clergy. It was said of him that, "he feared God but little, and man not at all." He was not a sceptic or infidel, as some represent him, but profane and blasphemous. He believed in God, like the demons, but did not tremble. He defied the Almighty. When he recovered from a severe sickness, he said: "God shall never see me a good man; I have suffered too much at his hands." He doubted his justice, and mocked at the ordeals. He declared publicly that neither St. Peter nor any other saint had any influence with God, and that he would not ask them for aid. He used to swear "by the holy face of Lucca."104  He was not married, but indulged in gross and shameless debaucheries. The people said of him that he rose a worse man every morning, and lay down a worse man every evening.

He had promised Lanfranc at his coronation to exercise justice and mercy and to protect the freedom of the Church, but soon forgot his vow, and began systematically to plunder the Church and to oppress the clergy. He robbed the bishoprics and abbeys of their income by leaving them vacant or selling them to the highest bidders. Within four years he changed thirty cemeteries into royal parks to satisfy his passion for bunting, which at last cost him his life. He used to say: "The bread of Christ is rich; the kings have given to the Church one-half of its income: why should I not try to win it back?"

He kept the see of Canterbury vacant for nearly four years (1089–1093). At last he yielded, under the influence of a severe sickness, to the pressure of the better class of bishops and noblemen, and elected Anselm, who was then in England, and well known as a profound theologian and saintly character. A greater contrast can scarcely be imagined. While William Rufus delighted in witnessing the tortures of innocent men and animals, Anselm was singularly tenderhearted: he saved the life of a hare which was chased by the hunters and had sought protection under his horse; he saw a worthy object for prayer in the sufferings of a bird tortured by a thoughtless child.105  Yet, with all his gentleness, he could be firm and unyielding in the defence of truth and righteousness.

The primacy was forced upon Anselm in spite of his remonstrance. He foresaw a hard struggle. He compared himself to an old and feeble sheep, and the king to a young, wild bull. Thus yoked, he was to draw the plough of the Church of England, with the prospect of being torn to pieces by the ferocity of the bull.106  He was received with intense enthusiasm at Canterbury by the clergy, the monks, and the people, and was consecrated on the second Sunday of Advent, 1093. He began at once to restore discipline according to the principles of Hildebrand, though with more moderation and gentleness.

A short time elapsed before the relations between the king and the prelate became strained. Anselm supported Urban II.; William leaned to the anti-pope Clement III. The question of investiture with the pallium at once became a matter of dispute. The king at first insisted upon Anselm’s receiving it from Clement and then claimed the right to confer it himself. Anselm refused to yield and received it, 1095, from Urban’s legate, who brought the sacred vestment to England in a silver casket. The archbishop gave further offence to the king by the mean way, as was said, in which he performed his feudal obligations.107  William decided to try him in his court. To this indignity Anselm would, of course, not submit. It was the old question whether an English ecclesiastic owed primary allegiance to the pope or to the crown.108  The archbishop secured the king’s reluctant permission, 1097, to go to Rome. But William’s petty spirit pursued the departing prelate by ordering Anselm’s baggage searched at Dover. He seized the revenues of Canterbury, and Anselm’s absence was equivalent to exile. Eadmer reports a remarkable scene before Anselm’s departure.109  At his last interview with William he refused to leave the king’s presence until he had given him his blessing. "As a spiritual father to his son, as Archbishop of Canterbury to the king of England," he said, "I would fain before I go give you God’s blessing." To these words the king made reply that he did not decline the priestly blessing. It was the last time they met.

Anselm was most honorably received by the pope, who threatened the king with excommunication, and pronounced an anathema on all laymen who exercised the right of investiture and on all clergymen who submitted to lay-investiture.110

The Red King was shot dead by an arrow,—nobody knows whether by a hunter or by an assassin, Aug. 2, 1100, while hunting in the New Forest. "Cut off without shrift, without repentance, he found a tomb in the Old Minster of Winchester; but the voice of clergy and people, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence which Rome had feared to pronounce. He received the more unique brand of popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given for the soul of the one baptized and anointed ruler, whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt."111

§ 24. Anselm and Henry I.

At the death of the Red King, one archbishopric, four bishoprics, and eleven abbeys were without pastors. Henry I., his younger brother, surnamed Beauclerc, ascended the throne (1100–1135). He connected the Norman blood with the imperial house of Germany by the marriage of his daughter Matilda to Henry V. After the emperor’s death, Matilda was privately married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou (1128), and became the mother of Henry II., the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.

King Henry I. is favorably known by his strict administration of justice. He reconciled the clergy by recalling Anselm from exile, but soon renewed the investiture controversy. He instituted bishops and abbots, and summoned Anselm to consecrate them, which he steadfastly refused to do. He sent him into a second exile (1103–1106).112  The queen, Maud the Good, who had an extraordinary veneration for the archbishop, strove to mediate between him and her husband, and urged Anselm to return, even at the sacrifice of a little earthly power, reminding him that Paul circumcised Timothy, and went to the temple to conciliate the Jewish brethren.

Pascal II. excommunicated the bishops who had accepted investiture from Henry. But the king was not inclined to maintain a hostile attitude to Anselm. They had an interview in Normandy and appealed to the pope, who confirmed the previous investitures of the king on condition of his surrendering the right of investiture in future to the Church. This decision was ratified at Bec, Aug. 26, 1106. The king promised to restore to Anselm the profits of the see during his absence, to abstain from the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys, and to remit all fines to the clergy. He retained the right of sending to vacant sees a congé d’élire, or notice to elect, which carried with it the right of nomination. Anselm now proceeded to consecrate bishops, among them Roger of Salisbury, who was first preferred to Henry’s notice because he "began prayers quickly and closed them speedily."113

Anselm returned to England in triumph, and was received by the queen at the head of the monks and the clergy. At a council held at Westminster in 1107,114 the king formally relinquished the privilege of investiture, while the archbishop promised to tolerate the ceremony of homage (which Urban II. had condemned). The synodical canons against clerical marriage were renewed and made more rigorous (1102, 1107, 1108); but the pope consented for a time that the sons of priests might be admitted to orders, for the remarkable reason, as Eadmer reports, that "almost the greater and the better part of the English clergy" were derived from this class.115

During the remaining years of his life, Anselm enjoyed the friendship and respect of the king, and during the latter’s absence on the Continent in 1108, he was intrusted with the regency and the care of the royal family. He was canonized by the voice of the English people long before the formal canonization by the pope.116

After his death, in April, 1109, the primacy remained vacant till 1114, when it was conferred upon Ralph of Escures, bishop of Rochester, who had administered its affairs during the interval. He is described as a learned, cheerful, affable, good-humored, facetious prelate. He was called "nugax," but his jests and repartees have not been recorded. He and his two Norman successors, William of Corbeuil, 1123–1136. and Theobald, 1139–1161, lived on good terms with the king and his successor, Stephen. Thomas Becket, an English man, resumed, in 1162, the controversy between the mitre and the crown with greater energy, but less wisdom, than Anselm.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PAPACY FROM THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS TO INNOCENT III. A.D. 1122–1198.

On the historical sources for this period down to the middle of the thirteenth century, see Wattenbach: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, II. 217–442.

§ 25. Innocent II., 1130–1143, and Eugene III., 1145–1153.

Innocent II.: Epistolae et Privilegia, in Migne, Patrol., Tom. 179, fol. 54636; his biographies in Muratori (Rer. Ital., Tom. II. and III.) and Watterich (Pontif. Rom. Vitae, II. 174 sq.).—Anacletus (antipapa): Epistolae et Privil., in Migne, Tom. 179, fol. 687–732.—Eugenius III.: Epistolae, etc., in Migne, 180, 1013–1614.—The Works of St. Bernard, edited by Mabillon, and reprinted in Migne’s Patrol. (Tom. 182–185, Paris, 1855); Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. Hist., XII. 11, etc.; Bohn’s Trans. IV.

Jaffé: Geschichte des deutschen Reichs unter Lothar von Sachsen. Berlin, 1843.—Mirbt, art. Innocent II. in Herzog, IX. 108 sqq.—E. Mühlbacher: Die streitige Papstwahl d. J. 1130. Innsbruck, 1876.—W. Bernhardi: Konrad III. Leipzig, 1883, 2 vols.—Hefele-Knöpfler, Bd. V. 385–532.—Giesebrecht, Bd. IV. 54 sqq.—Gregorovius, IV. 403 sqq. Hauck, IV. 130 sqq.—The Biographies of St. Bernard.

Calixtus II. was followed by Honorius II., whose rule of six years, 1124–1130, was an uneventful one. After his death a dangerous schism broke out between Innocent II., 1130–1143, and Anacletus II., 1130–1138, who represented two powerful Roman families, the Frangipani, or Breadmakers,117 and the Pierleoni.

Innocent, formerly cardinal-legate of Urban II. and mediator of the Concordat of Worms, enjoyed the reputation of superior learning and piety, which even his opponents could not dispute. He had also the advantage of a prior election, but of doubtful legal validity, since it was effected only by a minority of cardinals, who met in great hurry in an unknown place to anticipate the rival candidate.118

Anacletus was a son of Pierleone, Petrus Leonis, and a grandson of Leo, a baptized Jewish banker, who had acquired great financial, social, and political influence under the Hildebrandian popes. A Jewish community with a few hundred members were tolerated in Trastevere and around the island of the Tiber as a monumental proof of the truth of Christianity, and furnished some of the best physicians and richest bankers, who helped the nobility and the popes in their financial troubles. Anacletus betrayed his Semitic origin in his physiognomy, and was inferior to Innocent in moral character; but he secured an election by a majority of cardinals and the support of the principal noble families and the Roman community. With the help of the Normans, he took possession of Rome, banished his opponent, deposed the hostile cardinals, and filled the college with his friends.

Innocent was obliged to flee to France, and received there the powerful support of Peter of Cluny and Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest monks and oracles of their age. He was acknowledged as the legitimate pope by all the monastic orders and by the kings of France and England.

Lothaire II. (III.) of Saxony, 1125–1137, to whom both parties appealed, decided for Innocent, led him and St. Bernard to Rome by armed force, and received in turn from the pope the imperial crown, June 4, 1133.

But after Lothaire’s departure, Anacletus regained possession of Rome, with the help of the Norman duke, Roger, and the party of the rival emperor, Conrad III. He made Roger II. king of Sicily, and thus helped to found a kingdom which lasted seven hundred and thirty years, till it was absorbed in the kingdom of Italy, 1860. Innocent retired to Pisa (1135). Lothaire made a second expedition to Italy and defeated Roger II. Bernard again appeared at Rome and succeeded in strengthening Innocent’s position. At this juncture Anacletus died, 1138. The healing of the schism was solemnly announced at the Second Lateran Council, 1139. War soon after broke out between Innocent and Roger, and Innocent was taken prisoner. On his release he confirmed Roger as king of Sicily. Lothaire had returned to Germany to die, 1137. Innocent had granted to him the territories of Matilda for an annual payment. On this transaction later popes based the claim that the emperor was a papal vassal.

After the short pontificates of Coelestin II., 1143–1144, and Lucius II., 1144–1145, Eugene III., a pupil and friend of St. Bernard, was elected, Feb. 15, 1145, and ruled till July 8, 1153. He wore the rough shirt of the monks of Citeaux under the purple. He had to flee from Rome, owing to the disturbances of Arnold of Brescia, and spent most of his time in exile. During his pontificate, Edessa was lost and the second crusade undertaken. Eugene has his chief interest from his connection with St. Bernard, his wise and loyal counsellor, who addressed to him his famous treatise on the papacy, the de consideratione.119

§ 26. Arnold of Brescia.

Otto (Bishop of Freising, or Freisingen, d. 1158): De Gestis Friderici I. (lib. II. 20).—Gunther (Ligurinus): De Gestis Friderici I., an epos written 1187 (lib. III. vers. 262 sqq.).—Gerhoh (provost of Reichersberg, d. 1169): De investigatione Antichristi, edited by Scheibelberger. Lincii, 1875.—John of Salisbury: Historia Pontificalis (written c. 1162, recently discovered), in Mon. Germ. Script., XX. c. 31, p. 537.—St. Bernard: Epist., Migne, 195, 196, 198.—Walter Map (archdeacon of Oxford, 1196): De Nugis Curialium, ed. Wright, pp. 41 and 43. The sources are all hostile to Arnold and the Arnoldists.

J. D. Köler: De Arnoldo Brixiensi dissert. Göttingen, 1742.—Guadagnini: Apologia di Arnaldo da Brescia. Pavia, 1790, 2 vols.—K. Beck: A. v. Brescia. Basel, 1824.—H. Francke: Arnold von Brescia und seine Zeit. Zürich, 1825 (eulogistic).—Bent: Essay sur A.D. Brescia. Genève, 1856.—Federico Odorici: Arnaldo da Brescia. 1861. Georges Guibal: Arnauld de Brescia et les Hohenstaufen ou la question du pouvoir temporel de la papauté du moyen age. Paris, 1868.—*Giesebrecht: Arnold von Brescia. München, 1873 (in the Reports of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences). Comp. his Gesch. der d. Kaiserzeit, IV. 314 sqq.—A. Di Giovanni De Castro: Arnaldo da Brescia e la revoluzione romana dell XII. secolo. Livorno, 1875.—A. Hausrath: Arnold von Brescia. Leipzig, 1891.—Deutsch, A. von Brescia, in Herzog, II. 117–122;—Gregorovius, IV. 479 sqq. The Lives of St. Bernard, especially Vacandard and Neander-Deutsch.

During the pontificates of Innocent II., Eugene III., and Adrian IV. occurred the interesting episode of Arnold of Brescia, an unsuccessful ecclesiastical and political agitator, who protested against the secularization of the Church, and tried to restore it to apostolic poverty and apostolic purity. These two ideas were closely connected in his mind. He proclaimed the principle that the Church and the clergy, as well as the monks, should be without any temporal possessions, like Christ and the Apostles, and live from the tithes and the voluntary offerings of the people. Their calling is purely spiritual. All the things of this earth belong to the laity and the civil government.

He practised what he taught, and begged his daily bread from house to house. He was a monk of severe ascetic piety, enthusiastic temper, popular eloquence, well versed in the Scriptures, restless, radical, and fearless.120  He agreed with the Catholic orthodoxy, except on the doctrines of the eucharist and infant baptism; but his views on these sacraments are not known.121

With this ecclesiastical scheme he combined a political one. He identified himself with the movement of the Romans to emancipate themselves from the papal authority, and to restore the ancient republic. By giving all earthly power to the laity, he secured the favor of the laity, but lost the influence of the clergy. It was the political complication which caused his ruin.

Arnold was a native of Brescia in Lombardy, and an ordained reader in the Church. He was a pupil of Abaelard, and called armor-bearer to this Goliath.122  He sympathized with his spirit of independence and hostility to Church authority, and may have been influenced also (as Neander assumes) by the ethical principles of that magnetic teacher. He certainly, at a later period, sided with him against St. Bernard, who became his bitter enemy. But with the exception of the common opposition to the hierarchy, they differed very widely. Abaelard was a philosopher, Arnold, a politician; Abaelard, a speculative thinker, Arnold, a practical preacher; Abaelard, a rationalist, Arnold, an enthusiast. The former undermined the traditional orthodoxy, the latter attacked the morals of the clergy and the temporal power of the Church. Arnold was far below Abaelard in intellectual endowment, but far more dangerous in the practical drift of his teaching, which tended to pauperize the Church and to revolutionize society. Baronius calls him "the father of political heresies."

In his ascetic zeal for the moral reform of the clergy, Arnold was in sympathy with the Hildebrandian party, but in his views of the temporal power of the pope, he went to the opposite extreme. Hildebrand aimed at the theocratic supremacy of the Church over the State; Arnold sought the welfare of the Church in her complete separation from the State and of the clerical office from secular entanglements. Pascal II., we may say, had prepared the way for this theory when he was willing to sacrifice the investiture to the emperor. The Hildebrandian reform had nearly passed away, and the old corruptions reappeared. The temporal power of the Church promoted the worldliness of the clergy. The author of the Historia Pontificalis says that Arnold’s doctrine agreed with the Gospel, but stood in crying contrast with the actual condition of things. St. Bernard, his opponent, was as much opposed as he to the splendor and luxury of bishops, the secular cares of the popes, and expressed a wish that he might see the day when "the Church, as in olden times, should cast her net for souls, and not for money."123  All the monastic orders protested against the worldliness of the Church, and realized the principle of apostolic poverty within the wall of convents. But Arnold extended it to the secular clergy as well, and even went so far as to make poverty a condition of salvation for priests and monks.124

Arnold’s sermons gained great popular applause in Lombardy, and caused bitter disputes between the people and the bishop of Brescia. He was charged before the Lateran Synod of 1139 with inciting the laity against the clergy, was deposed as a schismatic (not as a heretic), commanded to be silent, and was expelled from Italy.

He went again to France and was entangled in the controversy of Abaelard with Bernard. Pope Innocent condemned both Abaelard and Arnold to silence and seclusion in a convent, 1140. Abaelard, weary of strife and life, submitted and retired to the convent of Cluny, where two years later he died in peace.125  But Arnold began in Paris a course of public lectures against the worldliness and immorality of the clergy. He exposed especially the avarice of the bishops. He also charged St. Bernard with unholy ambition and envy against scholars. Bernard called him a man whose speech was honey, whose doctrine was poison. At his request the king expelled Arnold from France.

Arnold fled to Zürich and was kindly received and protected by the papal legate, Cardinal Guido, his former fellow-student in Paris.126  But Bernard pursued him even there and denounced him to the bishop of Constance.

After a few years of unknown exile, Arnold appeared in Rome as the leader of a political movement. Innocent II. had allowed him to return to Italy; Eugene III. had pardoned him on condition of his doing penance in the holy places of Rome. But after the flight of this pope to France, Arnold preached again the doctrine of apostolic poverty, called the popes and cardinals Pharisees and scribes, and their church a house of merchandise and den of robbers. He was protected by the Roman senate, and idolized by the people. The Romans had renounced the papal authority, expelled the pope, substituted a purely secular government after the ancient model, and invited Conrad III. to assume the rôle of Constantine I. or Justinian. They lost themselves in dreams of government. The tradition of the old Roman rule controlled the Middle Ages in various forms: it lived as a universal monarchy in the German Empire, as a universal theocracy in the papacy; as a short-lived republic in the Roman people. The modern Italians who oppose the temporal power of the pope are more sensible: they simply claim the natural right of the Italian people to govern themselves, and they confine the dominion of Rome to Italy.

Arnold stepped out of the ecclesiastical into the political sphere, and surrounded the new republic with the halo of religion. He preached in his monastic gown, on the ruins of the Capitol, to the patres conscripti, and advised them to rebuild the Capitol, and to restore the old order of senators and knights. His emaciated face gave him a ghost-like appearance and deepened the effect of his eloquence.

But the republican experiment failed. The people were at last forced into submission by the interdict of Pope Adrian IV. Arnold was banished from Rome, 1154, and soon afterwards hanged by order of Emperor Frederick I., who hated democracy and republicanism. His body was burnt and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber, 1155, lest his admirers should worship his bones.127

Arnold’s was a voice of protest against the secular aims of the papacy and the worldliness of the clergy which still has its hearers. "So obstinate is the ban of the Middle Ages under which Rome is still held," says Gregorovius, "that the soul of a heretic of the twelfth century has not yet found rest, but must still haunt Rome." The Catholic Bishop Hefele refused to class him among "real heretics."128  In 1883 Brescia raised a monument to its distinguished son.

The Arnoldists continued for some time to defend the doctrines of their master, and were declared heretics by a council of Verona, 1184, after which they disappeared.

But the idea of apostolic poverty and the opposition to the temporal power of the papacy reappeared among the Spirituals of the Franciscan order. Arnold’s political scheme of restoring the Roman republic was revived two hundred years later by Cola di Rienzi (1347), but with no better success; for Rienzi was murdered, his body burnt, and the ashes were scattered to the winds (1354).

§ 27. The Popes and the Hohenstaufen.

I. Principal Sources:

(1) The Regesta of the popes from Anastasius IV. to Innocent III. (1153–1198) by Jaffé-Wattenbach (ed. 1886).—The Opera of these popes in Migne’s Patrol. Lat.—The Vitae of the popes by Platina, Watterich, etc.

(2) Otto (half-brother of King Conrad III. and uncle of Frederick Barbarossa, and partial to him, bishop of Freising, or Freisingen, in Upper Bavaria, d. 1158): De Gestis Friderici I., finished by his pupil Rahewin or Reguin. Best ed. by Waitz, 1884. Also his Chronicle (De duabus Civitatibus, after the model of Augustin’s De Civitate Dei), continued by Otto of St. Blasien (in the Black Forest) till 1209. First critical ed. by R. Wilmans in Mon. Ger. Scr., XX. 83–493.—Gunther Ligurinus wrote in 1187 a Latin epic of 6576 verses on the deeds of the Emperor Frederick I. till 1160. See Wattenbach’s Geschichtsquellen, II. 241 sqq

II. Works on the Hohenstaufen Period:

Jaffé: Geschichte des deutschen Reichs unter Konrad III., Hanover, 1845.—Fr. von Raumer: Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. Leipzig, 1823. 4th ed. 1871. —W. Zimmermann: Die Hohenstaufen oder der Kampf der Monarchie gegen den Papst und die republ. Freiheit. Stuttgart, 1838. 2d ed. 1865, 2 vols.—G. De Cherrier: Histoire de la lutte des papes et des empereurs de la maison de Souabe. Paris, 1841, 4 vols.—*Hermann Reuter (Professor of Church History in Göttingen, d. 1888): Alexander III. und die Kirche seiner Zeit. 1845. 2d ed. thoroughly rewritten, Leipzig, 1860–1864; 3 vols. (A work of fifteen years’ study.)—Schirrmacher Kaiser Friedrich II. Göttingen, 1859–1864, 4 vols.; Die letzten Hohenstaufen. Göttingen, 1871.—P. Scheffer-Boichorst: K. Friedrichs I. letzter Streit mit der Kurie. Berlin, 1866.—H. Prutz: K. Friedrich I. Danzig, 1871–1874, 3 vols.—Del Guidice: Il guidizio e la condanna di Corradino. Naples, 1876.—Ribbeck: Friedr. I. und die römische Kurie. Leipzig, 1881.—Ugo Balzani: The Popes and the Hohenstaufen. London and New York, 1888 (pp. 261).—Giesebrecht, Bryce, 167 sqq.; Gregorovius, IV. 424 sqq.; Hauck, IV.;— Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 533 sqq.

With Conrad III. the powerful family of the Hohenstaufen ascended the imperial throne and occupied it from 1138 till 1254. They derive the name from the family castle Hohenstaufen, on a hill in the Rough Alp near Göppingen in Swabia.129  They were descended from a knight, Friedrich von Büren, in the eleventh century, and his son Friedrich von Staufen, a faithful adherent of Emperor Henry IV., who made him duke of Swabia (1079), and gave him his daughter Agnes in marriage. They were thus connected by blood with the antagonist of Pope Hildebrand, and identified with the cause of the Ghibellines against the Guelphs in their bloody feuds in Germany and Italy. Henry VI., 1190–1197, acquired by marriage the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. His son, Frederick II., raised his house to the top of its prosperity, but was in his culture and taste more an Italian than German prince, and spent most of his time in Italy.

The Hohenstaufen or Swabian emperors maintained the principle of imperialism, that is, the dignity and independence of the monarchy, as a divine institution, against papal sacerdotalism on the one hand, and against popular liberty on the other.

They made common cause with the popes, and served their purposes in the crusades: three of them, Conrad III., Frederick I., and Frederick II., undertook crusades against the Saracens; Conrad III. engaged in the second, which was a failure; Frederick I. perished in Syria; Frederick II. captured Jerusalem. The Hohenstaufen made also common cause with the popes against political and doctrinal dissent: Barbarossa sacrificed and punished by death Arnold of Brescia as a dangerous demagogue; and Frederick II., though probably himself an unbeliever, persecuted heretics.

But on the question of supremacy of power, the Hohenstaufen were always in secret or open war with the popes, and in the end were defeated. The conflict broke out under Frederick Barbarossa, who after long years of contention died at peace with the Church. It was continued by his grandson Frederick II. who died excommunicated and deposed from his throne by the papacy. The dynasty went out in tragic weakness in Conradin, the last male representative, who was beheaded on the charge of high treason, 1268. This conflict of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen was more imposing than the conflict waged by Henry IV. with Gregory and his successors because of the higher plane on which it was fought and the greater ability of the secular antagonists engaged. Lasting more than one hundred years, it forms one of the most august spectacles of the Middle Ages, and furnishes some of the most dramatic scenes in which kings have ever figured. The historian Gregorovius has felt justified in saying that "this Titanic war of the Middle Ages filled and connected the centuries and formed the greatest spectacle of all ages."

After the fall of the Hohenstaufen, the German Empire maintained, till its death in 1806, a nominal connection with the papacy, but ceased to be the central political power of Europe, except in the period of the Reformation under Charles V., 1519–1558, when it was connected with the crowns of Austria, the Low Countries, and Spain, and the newly discovered lands of America, and when that mighty monarch, true to his Austrian and Spanish descent, retarded the Protestant movement for national independence and religious freedom. The new German Empire, founded on the ruins of the old and the defeat of France (1870), is ruled by a hereditary Protestant emperor.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

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A.D.

POPES

THE HOHENSTAUFEN

A.D.

1130–1143

Innocent II.

Conrad III.

1138–1152

1143–1144

Coelestine II.

Crowned emperor at Aix la Chapelle by the papal legates.

1144–1145

Lucius II.

1145–1153

Eugene III.

Frederick I. (Barbarossa).

1152–1190

1153–1154

Anastasius IV.

(Nephew of Conrad.)

1154–1159

Adrian IV.

Crowned emperor by Adrian IV.

1155

1159–1181

Alexander III.

1181–1185

Lucius III.

1185–1187

Urban III.

1187

Gregory VIII.

1187–1191

Clement III.

Henry VI.

1190–1197

1191–1198

Coelestine III.

(Son of Barbarossa.)

Crowned emperor by  Coelestine III

1191

King of Sicily.

1194

1198–1216

Innocent III.

Otto IV

1209–1215

Crowned by Innocent III

1209

Deposed by the Lateran Council

1215

1216–1227

Honorius III.

Frederick II

1227–1241

Gregory IX.

(Son of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily)

1241

Coelestine IV.

Crowned emperor by Honorius III

1220

1241–1254

Innocent IV.

Conrad IV

1250–1254

(Second son of Frederick II)

Crowned king of the Romans

1237

Excommunicated, 1252, and again 1254

1254–1261

Alexander IV.

Interregnum

1254–1273

1261–1264

Urban IV.

Conradin

1265–1268

Clement IV.

(Son of Conrad, the last of the Hohenstaufen, b. 1252)

Beheaded.

1268

––––––––––

§ 28. Adrian IV. and Frederick Barbarossa.

Lives of Hadrian in Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. I. III.—Migne, vol. 188.—Otto of Freising.—William of Newburgh, 2 vols. London, 1856.—R. Raby: Pope Hadrian IV. London, 1849.—Tarleton: Nicolas Breakspear, Englishman And Pope, 1896.—L. Ginnell: The Doubtful Grant of Ireland of Pope Adrian IV. to Henry II., 1899.—O. J. Thatcher: Studies  conc. Adrian IV. Chicago, 1903. pp. 88.—Reuter: Alex. III., vol. I. 1–48, 479–487.

Eugene III. was followed by Anastasius IV., whose rule lasted only sixteen months.

His successor was Nicolas Breakspear, the first and the only Englishman that has (thus far) worn the tiara. He was the son of a poor priest of St. Albans. He went to France in pursuit of bread and learning, became a monk, prior, and abbot of the convent of St. Rufus, between Arles and Avignon. He studied theology and canon law. Eugene III. made him cardinal-bishop of Albano, and sent him as legate to Norway and Sweden, where he organized the Church and brought it into closer contact with Rome.

He occupied the papal chair as Adrian IV., from 1154 to 1159, with great ability and energy. A beggar raised to the highest dignity in Christendom!  The extremes of fortune met in this Englishman. Yet he felt happier in his poverty than in his power. He declared soon after his consecration that "the papal chair was full of thorns and the papal mantle full of holes and so heavy as to load down the strongest man." And after some experience in that high office, he said: "Is there a man in the world so miserable as a pope?  I have found so much trouble in St. Peter’s chair that all the bitterness of my former life appears sweet in comparison."130

The Romans, under the lead of Arnold, requested him to resign all claim to temporal rule; but he refused, and after a bloody attack made by an Arnoldist upon one of the cardinals in the open street, he laid—for the first time in history—the interdict on the city. By this unbloody, yet awful and most effective, weapon, he enforced the submission of the people. He abolished the republican government, expelled Arnold and his adherents, and took possession of the Lateran.

At this time, Frederick I., called Barbarossa (Redbeard) by the Italians from the color of his beard, one of the bravest, strongest, and most despotic of German emperors,—the sleeper in Kyffhäuser,131— made, with a powerful army, his first expedition to Italy to receive the iron crown of royalty from the Lombards and the golden crown of empire from the pope (1154).

The pope demanded, as the first condition of his coronation, the surrender of Arnold. With this Barbarossa willingly complied and ordered the execution of the popular agitator. In his first interview with Adrian, he kissed the pope’s toe, but neglected the ceremony of holding the stirrup on descending from his palfrey. Adrian felt indignant and refused to give him the kiss of peace. When informed that this was an old custom, Barbarossa on the following day complied with it, but in an ambiguous way by holding the left stirrup instead of the right. He took forcible possession of Trastevere, and was solemnly invested, anointed, and crowned, according to the prescribed ritual, in St. Peter’s, amid the acclamations of the curia, the clergy, and the army (June 13, 1155). An insurrection of the Roman people was speedily suppressed, the emperor leading the charge into the rebel ranks. But on the next morning he retired with the pope to the Tiburtine hills. He was reluctantly compelled by the want of supplies and by rumors of rebellion in Lombardy to return with his army. The pope, shut out from Rome, without foreign or domestic ally, retired to Benevento, was besieged there by King William of Sicily (son and successor of Roger II.) and forced by desertion and famine to submit to the terms of the conqueror by investing him with the kingdom of Sicily, the duchy of Apulia, and the principality of Capua. This involved him in a controversy with the emperor, who regarded Apulia and Capua as parts of the empire. He protested against the divorce from his first, and the marriage to his second, wife, 1156.

To these occasions of offence Adrian added another which Frederick would not bear. It was evoked by the ill-treatment done by robbers to the archbishop of Lund on his way from Rome through Germany to his Scandinavian diocese.132  Adrian spoke of Frederick’s empire as a benefice, beneficium, a word which meant either a fief or a gift. In either case the implication was offensive to the Germans, and they chose to interpret it as a claim that the emperor held his empire as a fief of the apostolic see. Two legates, rent by Adrian, attempted to soften down the meaning of the imprudent expression.

The pope was too much of a hierarch and Frederick too much of an emperor to live in peace. In 1158 Frederick led his army across the Alps to reduce Milan and other refractory Lombard cities to submission. Having accomplished this, he assembled a diet on the plain of Roncaglia, near Piacenza, which is memorable for the decision rendered by Bologna jurists, that the emperor held his empire by independent divine right and not by the will of the pope. This was the most decisive triumph the empire had won since the opening of the conflict with Henry IV. But the decision of professors of law did not change the policy of the papacy.

Adrian again gave offence by denying the emperor’s right to levy a tax for military purposes, fodrum, on estates claimed by the papacy and demanded that he should recognize the papal claim of feudal rights over the Matilda grant, Sardinia, Corsica, Ferrara, and the duchy of Spoleto. Frederick proudly retorted that instead of owing fealty to the pope, the popes owed fealty to the emperor, inasmuch as it was by the gift of the emperor Constantine that Pope Sylvester secured possession of Rome. A war of letters followed. Adrian was intending to punish his imperial foe with excommunication when he was struck down by death at Anagni. He was buried in St. Peter’s in an antique sarcophagus of red granite which is still shown. So ended the career of a man who by his moral character and personal attractions had lifted himself up from the condition of a child of a poor cleric to the supreme dignity of Christendom, and ventured to face the proudest monarch as his superior and to call the imperial crown a papal beneficium.133

This English pope, who laid the city of Rome under the interdict, which no Italian or German pope had dared to do, presented Ireland to the crown of England, on the ground that all the islands of the Christian world belong to the pope by virtue of Constantine’s donation. The curious bull Laudabiliter, encouraging Henry II. to invade and subjugate the land and giving it to him and to his heirs for a possession, may not be genuine, but the authorization was certainly made by Adrian as John of Salisbury, writing about 1159, attests, and it was renewed by Alexander III. and carried out, 1171.134  The loyal sons of Ireland will hardly want to have a second trial of an English pope.

§ 29. Alexander III. in Conflict with Barbarossa.

See the literature in § 27, especially Reuter’s Alex. III.—Vita Alexandri auctore Bosone Card., in Watterich, II. 377 sqq.—Migne, Tom. 200.—The Regesta of Alexander III. in Jaffé-Wattenbach’s Reg. Pont. Rom., pp. 145–418; and of the anti-popes, Victor IV., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III., ibid., pp. 418–430.—Milman, bk. VIII. chs. VIII. and IX.—Greenwood, bk. XII. chs. III.–VII.—Gregorovius, IV. 525 sqq.; Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 570–720.—Moritz Meyer: Die Wahl Alex. III. und Victors IV. Göttingen, 1871.—Edw. A. Freeman: Frederick the First, King of Italy, in his "Historical Essays," London, 1871, pp. 252–282.—P. Scheffer-Boichorst; Friedrich I. letzte Streit mit der Kurie, 1866.—Wattenbach, 167 sqq.; Hauck, IV. 227–311.—Gietl: Die Sentenzen Rolands, nachmals Alexander III. Freib., 1891.

With Alexander III. (1159–1181) the conflict between Caesarism and sacerdotalism, which had begun under Adrian, assumed a more serious character. It was not a war for destruction, but for supremacy on the one hand and submission on the other. "Who shall be the greater?" that was the question. It was the old contention between Church and State under a new phase. Caesar and pope were alike Catholic Christians as far as they had any religion at all. They were indispensable to each other. The emperor or king needed a pope, as a kind of chief chaplain and father confessor for the control of the consciences of his subjects; the pope needed the secular arm of an emperor for the protection of the property and rights of the Church and the prosecution of heretics. The emperors elected anti-popes, and the popes supported rival emperors. It was the ambition of the Hohenstaufen to keep Germany and Italy united; it was the interest of the popes to keep them separated, and to foment division in Germany and in Italy, according to the maxim. "Divide et impera."

On the 7th of September, 1159, Cardinal Roland, the chancellor of the Roman curia and a distinguished canonist, ascended the papal chair as Alexander III. He had previously been professor at Bologna, and written the first work on the Decretum Gratiani. He had been created cardinal by Eugene III. He had once offended Barbarossa by the question: "From whom does the emperor receive his dignity if not from the pope?"  He had also advised Adrian to excommunicate the emperor. He was a scholar, a statesman, and a vigorous champion of the Hildebrandian theocracy. He had an unusually long pontificate of twenty-one years, and is the most conspicuous pope between Gregory VII. and Innocent III. He had a checkered career of fortune and misfortune in a conflict with the emperor and four anti-popes; but he consistently adhered to his principles, and at last triumphed over his enemies by moral force and the material aid of the Normans in the south and the Lombards in the north.

The election of Roland by fourteen cardinals was immediately followed by the election of Cardinal Octavian of St. Cecilia, the imperial anti-pope, who called himself Victor IV., and at once took possession of the Vatican. Roland was consecrated at Ninfa, Octavian in the convent of Farfa. They were quartered in the Campagna, a few miles distant from each other, and published contradictory reports with charges of disgraceful violence at the election.135

The emperor, who was then besieging the city of Cremona, being appealed to by both parties (though with different feelings), and using a right exercised by Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, Charlemagne, and Otto, summoned a council at Pavia to investigate and decide the case, 1160.136  The rival popes were invited by messengers to appear in person. Octavian, who was always an imperialist, accepted the invitation. Roland distrusted the emperor, and protested against his right to call a council without his permission. He said that he honored him as a special defender of the Church above all other princes, but that God had placed the pope above kings.

The partisan council, which consisted chiefly of bishops from Germany and North Italy, after a grave debate, unanimously decided in favor of Octavian, and excommunicated Roland, Feb. 11, 1160. The emperor paid the customary honors to Victor IV., held his stirrup and kissed his toe. Alexander issued from Anagni a counter-excommunication against the anti-pope and the emperor, March 24, 1160. He thereby encouraged revolt in Lombardy and division in Germany. Another schism rent the Church.

The rival popes dispatched legates to all the courts of Europe. France, Spain, and England sided with Alexander. He took refuge in France for three years (1162–1165), and was received with enthusiasm. The kings of France and England, Louis VII. and Henry II., walked on either side of his horse, holding the bridle, and conducting him into the town of Courcy on the Loire. Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Norway, and Sweden supported Victor. Italy was divided: Rome and Tuscany were under the power of the emperor; Sicily favored the Gregorian pope; the flourishing commercial and manufacturing cities of Lombardy were discontented with the despotic rule of Barbarossa, who was called the destroyer of cities. He put down the revolt with an iron hand; he razed Milan to the ground after a long and atrocious siege, scattered the population, and sent the venerated relics of the Magi to the cathedral of Cologne, March, 1162.

Victor IV. died in April, 1164. Pascal III. was elected his successor without regard to the canonical rules. At the request of the emperor, he canonized Charles the Great (1165).

Alexander III. put himself at the head of the Lombard league against the emperor; city after city declared itself for him. In September, 1165, he returned to Italy with the help of Sicily, and French and English gold, and took possession of Rome.

In November, 1166, Frederick crossed the Alps a fourth time, with a strong army, marched to Rome, captured the Leonine city, put Pascal III. in possession of St. Peter’s, and was crowned again, with Beatrice, Aug. 1, 1167. Alexander defended the city on the other side of the Tiber, but soon withdrew to Benevento. The emperor, victorious over armies, found a more formidable enemy in the Roman fever, which made fearful ravages among his bishops, noblemen, and soldiers. He lost in a few weeks his bravest knights and two thousand men by the plague. He broke up his camp in great haste, and marched to Pavia (September, 1167).137  He found all Lombardy in league against him, and recrossed the Alps for safety, alone and almost a fugitive, but with unbroken spirit and a determination to return.

The second anti-pope died, Sept. 20, 1168, and with him the power of the schism collapsed. Calixtus III. was elected his successor, but he was a mere shadow, 1168–1178.138

Barbarossa undertook a fifth campaign to Italy in 1174. He destroyed Susa, and, descending through Piedmont, besieged the new city of Alessandria, which was named in honor of Alexander III., and strongly fortified. Here he found determined resistance. His forces were weakened by a severe winter. He was forsaken by his strongest ally, the Saxon duke, Henry the Lion. He fought a pitched battle against the Lombards, near Legnano, May 29, 1176. He rushed, as usual, into the thickest of the fight, but was defeated after terrible slaughter, and lost his shield, banner, cross, lance, and coffers of silver and gold. He retired with the remnant of his army to Pavia. He was left without a single ally, and threatened in Germany by the dangerous rivalry of Henry the Lion. He now took serious steps towards a reconciliation with Alexander, the spiritual head of his enemies.

The emperor sent Archbishop Christian of Mainz (his chancellor, ablest general, and diplomat), Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg, Bishop Conrad of Worms, and Protonotary Wortwin to Anagni, with full powers to treat with the pope (October, 1176). Alexander received the commissioners with marked respect, and in private conferences, lasting over a fortnight, he arranged with them the preliminary terms of peace, which were to be ratified at Venice during a personal interview between him and the emperor.

The pope, provided with a safe-conduct by the emperor, left Anagni on Christmas, 1176, in company with his cardinals and the two commissioners of the kingdom of Sicily, Archbishop Romuald of Salerno and Count Roger of Andria, and arrived at Venice, March 24, 1177. The emperor tarried at Chioggia, near Venice, till July 23. The peace negotiations between the pope and the imperial commissioners began in May and lasted till July. They were conducted on the basis of the previous negotiations in Anagni.

§ 30. The Peace of Venice. 1177.

The negotiations resulted in the Peace of Venice, which was embodied in twenty-eight articles.139  Alexander was acknowledged as legitimate pope. Calixtus, the anti-pope, was remanded to an abbey, while his cardinals were reduced to the positions they had occupied before their appointment to the curia. Beatrice was acknowledged as Frederick’s legal wife, and his son Henry as king of the Romans. Rome and the patrimonium were restored to the pope, and Spoleto, the Romagna, and Ancona were recognized as a part of the empire.

The peace was ratified by one of the most solemn congresses of the Middle Ages. Absolved from the ban, and after eighteen years of conflict, the emperor met the pope in front of St. Mark’s, July 24, 1177. A vast multitude filled the public square. The pope in his pontifical dress sitting upon a throne in front of the portal of the cathedral must have had mingled with his feelings of satisfaction reminiscences of his painful fortunes since the time he was elected to the tiara. Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other dignitaries occupied lower seats according to their rank.

The emperor, on arriving in the magnificent gondola of the doge, with a train of prelates and nobles, was received by a procession of priests with banners and crosses, and the shouts of the people. He slowly proceeded to the cathedral. Overcome with feelings of reverence for the venerable pope, he cast off his mantle, bowed, and fell at his feet.140  Alexander, in tears, raised him up,141 and gave him the kiss of peace and his benediction. Thousands of voices responded by singing the Te Deum.142

Then the emperor, taking the hand of the pope, walked with him and the doge into the church, made rich offerings at the altar, bent his knees, and received again the apostolic benediction.

On the next day (the 25th), being the feast of St. James, the pope, at the emperor’s request, celebrated high mass, and preached a sermon which he ordered the patriarch of Aquileia to translate at once into German. The emperor accompanied him from the altar to the door, and paid him the customary homage of holding the stirrup.143  He offered to conduct his palfrey by the bridle across the piazza to the bark; but the pope dispensed with this menial service of a groom, taking the will for the deed, and gave him again his benediction.

This is the authentic account of contemporary writers and eye-witnesses. They make no mention of the story that the emperor said to the pope, "I do this homage to Peter, not to thee," and that the pope quickly replied, "To Peter and to me."

The hierarchical imagination has represented this interview as a second Canossa. In Venetian pictures the pope is seen seated on a throne, and planting his foot on the neck of the prostrate emperor, with the words of Ps. 91:13: —

"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder:

The young lion and the serpent shalt thou trample under feet."144

There is as much difference between the scenes of Venice and Canossa as there is between the characters of Barbarossa and Henry IV. Barbarossa was far superior, morally as well as intellectually, to his Salian predecessor, and commanded the respect of his enemies, even in his defeat. He maintained his dignity and honorably kept his word.

Delegates and letters were sent to all parts of Christendom with the glad tidings of peace. The emperor left Venice toward the end of September for Germany by a roundabout way, and the pope for Anagni on the 15th of October. After an exile of ten years, Alexander made a triumphal entry into Rome, March 12, 1178.

He convened, according to previous agreement with the emperor, a synod to ratify the pacification of Christendom, and to remove certain evils which had multiplied during the schism. The Third Lateran or the Eleventh Oecumenical Council was held in the Constantinian Basilica at Rome during Lent, 1179. It numbered about three hundred bishops, besides many abbots and other dignitaries,145 and exhibited the Roman hierarchy in its glory, though it was eclipsed afterwards by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The details of the transactions are unknown, except twenty-seven chapters which were adopted in the third and last session.

The council, in order to prevent rival elections, placed the election of popes exclusively in the hands of cardinals, to be decided by a majority of two-thirds, and threatened with excommunication and deposition any one who should dare to accept an election by a smaller number of votes.146  The ordinations of the anti-popes (Octavian, Guido, and John of Struma) were declared invalid. No one was to be elected bishop who was not at least thirty years of age and of legitimate birth. To check the extravagance of prelates on their visitation journeys, the archbishops were limited to forty or fifty horses on those occasions, the cardinals to twenty-five, the bishops to twenty or thirty, the archdeacons to five or seven. Ordained clergymen must dismiss their concubines, or forfeit their benefices. Unnatural licentiousness was to be punished by expulsion from the priesthood and confinement in a convent. The council prepared the way for a crusade against the heretics in the South of France, and promised to those who should engage in it the same plenary indulgence for two years as had been granted to the crusaders against the Moslems.

Soon after the synod, Alexander was again driven into exile by the Roman republic. He died at Cività Castellana, Aug. 30, 1181, having reigned longer than any pope before or after him, except Sylvester I., 314–385, Adrian I., 772–795, Pius VII., 1800–1823, Pius IX., 1846–1878, and Leo XIII., 1878–1903. When Alexander’s remains were being carried to Rome for burial, the populace insulted his memory by pelting the coffin with stones and mud.147  Alexander had with signal constancy and devotion to the Gregorian principles maintained the conflict with Barbarossa. He supported Thomas à Becket in his memorable conflict with Henry II. In 1181 he laid the interdict upon Scotland because of the refusal of its king, William, to acknowledge the canonical election of John to the see of St. Andrews. Upon Louis VII. of France he conferred the Red Rose for the support he had received from that sovereign in the days of his early exile. He presided over the Third Lateran Council and prepared the way for the crusade against the Cathari and Albigenses.

His aged and feeble successor, Lucius III., was elected, Sept. 1, 1181, by the cardinals alone. The Romans, deprived of their former share in the election, treated him with barbarous cruelty; they captured twenty or twenty-six of his partisans at Tusculum, blinded them, except one, crowned them with paper mitres inscribed with the names of cardinals, mounted them on asses, and forced the priest whom they had spared to lead them in this condition to "Lucius, the wicked simoniac." He died in exile at Verona where he held an important synod.

It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest popes—as Gregory VII., Urban II., Innocent II., Eugene III., Adrian IV., Alexander III., and three of his successors—could not secure the loyalty of their own subjects, and were besieged in Rome or compelled to flee. Adrian IV. said to his countryman and friend, John of Salisbury, "Rome is not the mother, but the stepmother of the Churches." The Romans were always fluctuating between memories of the old republic and memories of the empire; now setting up a consul, a senator, a tribune; now welcoming the German emperor as the true Augustus Caesar; now loyal to the pope, now driving him into exile, and ever selling themselves to the highest bidder. The papal court was very consistent in its principles and aims, but as to the choice of means for its end it was subject to the same charge of avarice and venality, whether at Rome or in exile. Even Thomas Becket, the staunchest adherent of Alexander III., indignantly rebuked the cardinals for their love of gold.

Emperor Frederick survived his great rival nearly ten years, and died by drowning in a little river of Asia Minor, 1190, while marching on the third crusade.

Barbarossa was a man of middle size, bright countenance, fair complexion, yellow hair and reddish beard, a kind friend and placable enemy, strictly just, though often too severe, liberal in almsgiving, attentive to his religious duties, happy in his second marriage, of the noblest type of mediaeval chivalry, the greatest sovereign of the twelfth century, a hero in fact and a hero in romance.148  He came into Italy with the sword of Germany in one hand and the Justinian code in the other, but failed in subduing the political independence of the Lombard cities, and in his contest with the spiritual power of Alexander. The German imagination has cherished his memory in song and story, placing him next in rank to Charles the Great among the Roman emperors, exaggerating his virtues, condoning his faults, which were those of his age, and hoping for his return to restore the unity and power of Germany.

§ 31. Thomas Becket and Henry II of England.

For the extensive Becket literature, see Robertson, in "The Contemporary Review," 1866, I. (Jan.) 270–278, and Ulysse Chevalier, in his Répertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age (Paris, 1886), s. v. "Thomas," fol. 2207–2209.

I. Sources: —

*Materials for the History of Thomas `a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Edited by James Craigie Robertson (Canon of Canterbury, d. 1882) and J. Brigstocke Sheppard, LL. D. London, 1875–1885, 7 vols. This magnificent work is part of a series of Rerum Britannic. Medii Aevi Scriptores, or "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," published under direction of the Master of the Rolls and popularly known as the "Rolls Series." It embraces all the important contemporary materials for the history of Thomas. Vols. I.-IV. contain the contemporary Vitae (by William of Canterbury, Benedict of Peterborough, Edward Grim, Roger of Pontigny, William Fitz-Stephen, John of Salisbury, Alan of Tewkesbury, and Herbert of Bosham, etc.); vols. V.-VII., the Epistolae, i.e. the whole correspondence relating to Thomas.

This collection is much more accurate, complete, and better arranged (especially in the Epistles) than the older collection of Dr. Giles (Sanctus Thomas Cantuariensis, London, 1845–1846, 8 vols., reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia, Tom. 190), and the Quadrilogus or Historia Quadripartita (Lives by four contemporary writers, composed by order of Pope Gregory XI., first published, 1495, then by L. Christian Lupus or Wolf, Brussels, 1682, and Venice, 1728).

Thómas Saga Erkibyskups. A Life of Archb. Th. Becket in Icelandic, with Engl. transl., notes, and glossary, ed. by Eiríkr Magnússon. London, 1875, and 1883, 2 vols. Part of the "Chronicles and Memorials," above quoted.

Garnier of Pont Sainte-Maxence: La Vie de St. Thomas le martir. A metrical life, in old French, written between 1172 and 1174, published by Hippeau, and more recently by Professor Bekker, Berlin, 1844, and Paris, 1859.

The Life And Martyrdom Of Thomas Becket by Robert of Gloucester. Ed. By W. H. Black. London, 1845 (p. 141). A Biography In Alexandrine verse, written in the thirteenth century.

II. Modern Works: —

Richard Hurrell Froude (one of the originators of the Oxford Anglo-Catholic movement, d. 1836): Remains. London, 1838, 4 vols. The second vol., part II., contains a history of the contest between Thomas à Becket and Henry II., in vindication of the former. He was assisted by J. H. (late Cardinal) Newman.

A. F. Ozanam: Deux Chanceliers d’Angleterre, Bacon de Verulam et Saint Thomas de Cantorbéry. Paris, 1836.

J. A. Giles: The Life And Letters Of Thomas à Becket. London, 1846, 2 vols.

F. J. Buss (Rom. Cath.): Der heil. Thomas und sein Kampf für die Freiheit der Kirche. Mainz, 1856.

John Morris (Rom. Cath. Canon of Northampton): The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket. London, 1859.

*James Craigie Robertson: Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. London, 1859. Accurate, but unfavorable to Becket.

*Edw. A. Freeman: St. Thomas of Canterbury and his Biographers. A masterly article in the "National Review" for April, 1860, reprinted in his "Historical Essays," London, 1871, pp. 99–114. Comp. the summary in his History of the Norman Conquest, V. 660 sqq., and his articles against Froude, noticed below.

*James Anthony Froude: Life and Times of Thomas Becket. First published in "The Nineteenth Century" for 1877, then in book form, London and New York, 1878 (pp. 160). Against the Roman and Anglo-Catholic overestimate of St. Thomas. This book is written in brilliant style, but takes a very unfavorable view of Becket (opposite to that of his elder brother, R. H. Froude), and led to a somewhat personal controversy with Professor Freeman, who charged Froude with habitual inaccuracy, unfairness, and hostility to the English Church, in, "The Contemporary Review" for 1878 (March, April, June, and September). Froude defended himself in "The Nineteenth Century" for April, 1879, pp. 618–637, to which Freeman replied in Last Words on Mr. Froude, in "The Contemporary Review" for May, 1879, pp. 214–236.

*R. A. Thompson: Thomas Becket, Martyr, London, 1889.—A. S. Huillier: St. Thomas de Cantorbèry, 2 vols., Paris, 1892.

*Edwin A. Abbott: St. Thomas of Canterbury. His Death and Miracles, 2 vols., London, 1888. This work grew out of studies in preparation of a critical commentary of the Four Gospels. It takes the early narratives of Thomas à Becket, sets them side by side, and seeks to show which are to be accepted upon the basis of disagreements in regard to event or verbal expression. It also presents the details in which Dean Stanley and Tennyson are alleged to have been misled. The criticism is able, stimulating, and marked by self-confidence in determining what events really did occur, and how much is to be discarded as unhistoric. The discussion has all the merits and demerits of the strict critical method.

III. Becket is more or less fully treated by Milman: Latin Christianity, bk. VIII. ch. VIII.—Dean Stanley: Historical Memorials of Canterbury, Am. ed., 1889.—Reuter: Alexander III., I. 237 sqq., 530 sqq. Dean Hook: Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, II. 354–508. Greenwood: Cathedra Petri, bk. XII. ch. VII.—William Stubbs: The Constitutional Hist. of England, 6th ed., 3 vols., Oxford, 1897, and Select Charters and Other Illustrations of the English Constit. Hist., 8th ed., Oxford, 1900.—Gee and Hardy: Documents Illustrative of Engl. Ch. Hist., London, 1896.—F. W. Maitland: Rom. Canon Late in the Ch. of England, London, 1898, 134–147.—W. R. W. Stephens: The English Church (1066–1272), London, 1901, 157–190. The Histories of Lingard, Green, etc.

Lord Tennyson has made Becket the subject of a historical drama, 1884.

During the pontificate of Alexander III., the papal hierarchy achieved an earlier and greater triumph over the king of England than over the emperor of Germany.

Thomas Becket, or Thomas à Becket, or St. Thomas of Canterbury, is, next to Alexander and Barbarossa, the most prominent historical figure in the twelfth century, and fills a chapter of thrilling interest in the history of England. He resumed the conflict of Anselm with the crown, and by his martyrdom became the most popular saint of the later Middle Ages.

The materials for his history, from his birth in London to his murder in his own cathedral by four knights of the royal household, are abundant. We have six or seven contemporary biographies, besides fragments, legends, and "Passions," state papers, private letters, and a correspondence extending over the whole Latin Church. But his life is surrounded by a mist of romantic legends and theological controversies. He had extravagant admirers, like Herbert of Bosham, and fierce opponents, like Gilbert Foliot, in his own day; and modern biographers still differ in the estimate of his character, according to their creed and their views on the question of Church and State, some regarding him as a hero and a saint, others as a hypocrite and a traitor. We must judge him from the standpoint of the twelfth century.

Becket was born in London, Dec. 21, 1118, during the reign of Henry I. He was the son of Gilbert Becket, a merchant in Cheapside, originally from Rouen, and of Matilda or Rose, a native of Caen in Normandy.149

In the later legend his father appears as a gallant crusader and his mother as a Saracen princess, who met in the East and fell in love with each other. Matilda helped Gilbert to escape from captivity, and then followed him alone to England. Knowing only two English words, "London" and "Gilbert," she wandered through the streets of the city, till at last she found her beloved in Cheapside as by a miracle, was baptized and married to him in St. Paul’s with great splendor. She had dreams of the future greatness and elevation of her infant son to the see of Canterbury.

Becket was educated at Merton Abbey in Surrey and in the schools of London. At a later period he attended the universities of Paris, Bologna, and Auxerre, and studied there chiefly civil and canon law, without attaining to special eminence in learning. He was not a scholar, but a statesman and an ecclesiastic.

He made his mark in the world and the Church by the magnetism of his personality. He was very handsome, of tall, commanding presence, accomplished, brilliant, affable, cheerful in discourse, ready and eloquent in debate, fond of hunting and hawking, and a proficient in all the sports of a mediaeval cavalier. He could storm the strongest castle and unhorse the stoutest knight.

Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, 1139–1161, took him into his service, 1142; sent him to Bologna, where Gratian then taught canon law; employed him in delicate missions with the papal court; made him archdeacon (1154), and bestowed upon him other profitable benefices, as the provostship of Beverly, a number of churches, and several prebends. When charged, as archbishop, with ingratitude to the king, who had raised him from "poverty," he proudly referred to this accumulation of preferments, and made no attempt to abolish the crying evil of plurality, which continued till the Reformation. Many a prosperous ecclesiastic regarded his parishes simply as sources of income, and discharged the duties by proxy through ignorant and ill-paid priests.

King Henry II., 1154–1189, in the second year of his reign, raised Becket, then only thirty-seven years of age, at Theobald’s instance, to the chancellorship of England. The chancellor was the highest civil dignitary, and held the custody of nearly all the royal grants and favors, including vacant bishoprics, abbacies, chaplaincies, and other ecclesiastical benefices.

Henry, the first of the proud Plantagenets, was an able, stirring, and energetic monarch. He kept on his feet from morning till evening, and rarely sat down. He introduced a reign of law and severe justice after the lawless violence and anarchy which had disturbed the reign of the unfortunate Stephen.150  But he was passionate, vindictive, and licentious. He had frequent fits of rage, during which he behaved like a madman. He was the most powerful sovereign in Western Europe. His continental dominions were more extensive than those of the king of France, and embraced Maine and Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, reaching from Flanders to the foot of the Pyrenees. He afterwards (1171) added Ireland by conquest, with the authority of Popes Adrian IV. and Alexander III. His marriage to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had been divorced for infidelity from King Louis VII. of France, enriched his realm, but involved him in protracted wars with France and in domestic troubles. Eleanor was jealous of her rivals,151 incited her sons, Geoffrey and Richard, to rebel against their father, was imprisoned in 1173, and released after Henry’s death in 1189 by his successor, Richard I., Coeur de Lion, who made her regent on his departure for the Holy Land. She afterwards retired to the abbey of Fontevrault, and died about 1203.

Becket occupied the chancellorship for seven years (1155–1162). He aided the king in the restoration of order and peace. He improved the administration of justice. He was vigorous and impartial, and preferred the interests of the crown to those of the clergy, yet without being hostile to the Church. He was thoroughly loyal to the king, and served him as faithfully as he had served Theobald, and as he afterwards served the pope. Thorough devotion to official duty characterized him in all the stations of his career.

He gave to his high office a prominence and splendor which it never had before. He was as magnificent and omnipotent as Wolsey under Henry VIII. He was king in fact, though not in name, and acted as regent during Henry’s frequent absences on the Continent. He dressed after the best fashion, surrounded himself with a brilliant retinue of a hundred and forty knights, exercised a prodigal hospitality, and spent enormous sums upon his household and public festivities, using in part the income of his various ecclesiastical benefices, which he retained without a scruple. He presided at royal banquets in Westminster Hall. His tables were adorned with vessels of gold, with the most delicate and sumptuous food, and with wine of the choicest vintage. He superintended the training of English and foreign nobles, and of the young Prince Henry. He was the favorite of the king, the army, the nobility, the clergy, and the people.

The chancellor negotiated in person a matrimonial alliance (three years before it was consummated) between the heir of the crown (then a boy of seven years) and a daughter of the king of France (a little lady of three). He took with him on that mission two hundred knights, priests, standard-bearers, all festively arrayed in new attire, twenty-four changes of raiment, all kinds of dogs and birds for field sports, eight wagons, each drawn by five horses, each horse in charge of a stout young man dressed in a new tunic. Coffers and chests contained the chancellor’s money and presents. One horse, which preceded all the rest, carried the holy vessels of his chapel, the holy books, and the ornaments of the altar. The Frenchmen, seeing this train, exclaimed, "How wonderful must be the king of England, whose chancellor travels in such state!"  In Paris he freely distributed his gold and silver plate and changes of raiment,—to one a robe, to another a furred cloak, to a third a pelisse, to a fourth a war-horse. He gained his object and universal popularity.

When, notwithstanding his efforts to maintain peace, war broke out between France and England, the chancellor was the bravest warrior at the head of seven hundred knights, whom he had enlisted at his own expense, and he offered to lead the storming party at the siege of Toulouse, where King Louis was shut up; but the scruples of Henry prevented him from offering violence to the king of France. He afterwards took three castles which were deemed impregnable, and returned triumphant to England. One of his eulogists, Edward Grim, reports to his credit: "Who can recount the carnage, the desolation, which he made at the head of a strong body of soldiers?  He attacked castles, razed towns and cities to the ground, burned down houses and farms without a touch of pity, and never showed the slightest mercy to any one who rose in insurrection against his master’s authority." Such cruelty was quite compatible with mediaeval conceptions of piety and charity, as the history of the crusades shows.

Becket was made for the court and the camp. Yet, though his life was purely secular, it was not immoral. He joined the king in his diversions, but not in his debaucheries. Being in deacon’s orders, he was debarred from marriage, but preserved his chastity at a profligate court. This point is especially mentioned to his credit; for chastity was a rare virtue in the Middle Ages.

All together, his public life as chancellor was honorable and brilliant, and secures him a place among the distinguished statesmen of England. But a still more important career awaited him.152

§ 32. The Archbishop and the King.

Compare §§ 22–24 (pp. 80 sqq.).

A year after the death of Theobald, April 18, 1161, Becket was appointed by the king archbishop of Canterbury. He accepted reluctantly, and warned the king, with a smile, that he would lose a servant and a friend.153  The learned and energetic Bishop Gilbert Foliot of Hereford (afterwards of London) remarked sarcastically, perhaps from disappointed ambition, that "the king had wrought a miracle in turning a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint."

Becket was ordained priest on the Saturday after Pentecost, and consecrated archbishop on the following day with great magnificence in Westminster Abbey, June 3, 1162. His first act was to appoint the Sunday after Whitsunday as a festival of the Holy Trinity in the Church of England. He acknowledged Alexander III. as the rightful pope, and received from him the pallium through his friend, John of Salisbury.

He was the first native Englishman who occupied the seat of the primate since the Norman Conquest; for Lanfranc and Anselm were Italians; Ralph of Escures, William Of Corbeuil, and Theobald of Bec were Normans or Frenchmen. There is, however, no ground for the misleading theory of Thierry that Becket asserted the cause of the Saxon against the Norman. His contest with the king was not a contest between two nationalities, but between Church and State. He took the same position on this question as his Norman predecessors, only with more zeal and energy. He was a thorough Englishman. The two nations had at that time, by intermarriage, social and commercial intercourse, pretty well coalesced, at least among the middle classes, to which he belonged.154

With the change of office, Becket underwent a radical and almost sudden transformation. The foremost champion of kingcraft became the foremost champion of priestcraft; the most devoted friend of the king, his most dangerous rival and enemy; the brilliant chancellor, an austere and squalid monk. He exchanged the showy court dress for haircloth infested with vermin, fed on roots, and drank nauseous water. He daily washed, with proud humility and ostentatious charity, the feet of thirteen dirty beggars, and gave each of them four pieces of silver. He doubled the charities of Theobald, as Theobald had doubled the charities of his predecessor. He wandered alone in his cloister, shedding tears of repentance for past sins, frequently inflicted stripes on his naked back, and spent much time in prayer and reading of the Scriptures. He successfully strove to realize the ideal of a mediaeval bishop, which combines the loftiest ecclesiastical pretensions with personal humility, profuse charity, and ascetic self-mortification. He was no hypocrite, but his sanctity, viewed from the biblical and Protestant standpoint, was artificial and unnatural.

His relation to the king was that of the pope to the emperor. Yea, we may say, as he had outkinged the king as chancellor, so he outpoped the pope as archbishop. He censured the pope for his temporizing policy. He wielded the spiritual sword against Henry with the same gallantry with which he had wielded the temporal sword for him. He took up the cause of Anselm against William Rufus, and of Gregory VII. against Henry IV., but with this great difference, that he was not zealous for a moral reformation of the Church and the clergy, like Hildebrand and Anselm, but only for the temporal power of the Church and the rights and immunities of the clergy. He made no attempt to remove the scandal of pluralities of which he had himself been guilty as archdeacon and chancellor, and did not rebuke Henry for his many sins against God, but only for his sins against the supremacy of the hierarchy.

The new archbishop was summoned by Pope Alexander III. to a council at Tours in France, and was received with unusual distinction (May, 1163). The council consisted of seventeen cardinals, a hundred and twenty-four bishops, four hundred and fourteen abbots; the pope presided in person; Becket sat at his right, Roger of York at his left. Arnolf of Lisieux in Normandy preached the opening sermon on the unity and freedom of the Church, which were the burning questions of the day. The council unanimously acknowledged the claims of Alexander, asserted the rights and privileges of the clergy, and severely condemned all encroachments on the property of the Church.

This was the point which kindled the controversy between the sceptre and the crozier in England. The dignity of the crown was the sole aim of the king; the dignity of the Church was the sole aim of the archbishop. The first rupture occurred over the question of secular taxation.

Henry determined to transfer the customary payment of two shillings on every hide of land to his own exchequer. Becket opposed the enrolment of the decree on the ground that the tax was voluntary, not of right. Henry protested, in a fit of passion, "By the eyes of God, it shall be enrolled!"  Becket replied, "By the eyes of God, by which you swear, it shall never be levied on my lands while I live!"

Another cause of dispute was the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The king demanded that all clerics accused of gross misdemeanors be tried by the civil court. A certain clerk, Philip of Broi, had been acquitted of murder in the bishop’s court. The king was indignant, but Philip refused to plead in the civil court. The matter was taken up by the archbishop, but a light sentence imposed.

The king summoned a Parliament at Westminster, and demanded in the name of equal justice, and in accordance with "ancient customs" (of the Norman kings), that all clerks accused of heinous crimes should be immediately degraded, and be dealt with according to law, instead of being shielded by their office. This was contrary to the right of the priest to be tried only in the court of his bishop, where flagellation, imprisonment, and degradation might be awarded, but not capital punishment.

Becket and the bishops agreed that the king’s demand was an infringement of the canon law and argued the case from Scripture. Joab, and Abiathar the priest, were guilty of putting Adonijah to death. Joab was punished, but the priest suffered no other punishment than deposition from office. Nahum 1:9 was quoted as against a double tribunal for clerks. According to the Septuagint version, this passage declares that God does not give two judgments in the same case.

The king hastily broke up the Parliament, deprived Becket of the custody of the royal castles, and of the education of his son. The bishops advised the archbishop to yield; at first he refused, though an angel from heaven should counsel such weakness; but at last he made a concession to the king at Woodstock, and promised to obey in good faith the customs of the realm. He yielded at the persuasion of the pope’s almoner, Philip de Eleeomosyna, who was bribed by English gold.155

The king summoned a great council of the realm to Clarendon, a royal palace a few miles from Salisbury, for the ratification of the concession (Jan. 25, 1164). The two archbishops, twelve bishops, and thirty-nine lay-barons were present. Sixteen famous statutes were enacted, under the name of The Clarendon Constitutions, as laws of England. They are as follows:156—

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.

I. Of the advowson and presentation (de advocatione et presentatione) to churches: if any dispute shall arise between laics, or between clerks and laics, or between clerks, let it be tried and decided in the court of our lord the king.

II. Churches in the king’s fee (de feudo domini Regis) shall not be given in perpetuity without his consent and license.

III. Clerks accused of any crime shall be summoned by the king’s justiciaries into the king’s court to answer there for whatever the king’s court shall determine they ought to answer there; and in the ecclesiastical court, for whatever it shall be determined that they ought to answer there; yet so that the king’s justiciaries shall send into the court of holy Church to see in what way the matter shall there be handled; and if the clerk shall confess or be convicted, the Church for the future shall not protect him.157

IV. No archbishop, bishop, or other exalted person shall leave the kingdom without the king’s license; and if they wish to leave it, the king shall be empowered, if he pleases, to take security from them, that they will do no harm to the king or kingdom, either in going or remaining, or in returning.

V. Persons excommunicated are not to give bail, ad remanentiam, nor to make oath, but only to give bail and pledge that they will stand by the judgment of the Church where they are absolved.

VI. Laics shall not be accused, save by certain and legal accusers and witnesses in presence of the bishop, so that the archdeacon may not lose his rights, or anything which accrues to him therefrom. And if those who are arraigned are such that no one is willing or dares to accuse them, the sheriff, on demand from the bishop, shall cause twelve loyal men of the village to swear before the bishop that they will declare the truth in that matter according to their conscience.

VII. No one who holds of the king in chief, nor any of his domestic servants, shall be excommunicated, nor his lands be put under an interdict, until the king shall be consulted, if he is in the kingdom; or, if he is abroad, his justiciary, that he may do what is right in that matter, and so that whatever belongs to the king’s court may therein be settled, and the same on the other hand of the ecclesiastical court.

VIII. Appeals, if they arise, must be made from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop; and if the archbishop shall fail in administering justice, the parties shall come before our lord the king, that by his precept the controversy may be terminated in the archbishop’s court, so that it may not proceed further without the consent of our lord the king.

IX. If a dispute shall arise between a clerk and a laic, or between a laic and a clerk, about a tenement, which the clerk wishes to claim as eleemosynary, but the laic claims as lay fee, it shall be settled by the declaration of twelve qualified men, through the agency of the king’s capital judiciary, whether the tenement is eleemosynary or lay fee, in presence of the king’s judiciaries. And if it shall be declared that it is eleemosynary, it shall be pleaded in the ecclesiastical court; but, if a lay fee, unless both shall claim the tenement of the same bishop or baron, it shall be pleaded in the king’s court; but if both shall claim of that fee from the same bishop or baron, it shall be pleaded in his court, yet so that the same declaration above-named shall not deprive of seizing him who before was seized, until he shall be divested by the pleadings.

X. If any man belonging to a city, castle, borough, or king’s royal manor shall be summoned by the archdeacon or bishop to answer for a crime, and shall not comply with the summons, it shall be lawful to place him under an interdict, but not to excommunicate him, until the king’s principal officer of that place be informed thereof, that he may justify his appearing to the summons; and if the king’s officer shall fail in that matter, he shall be at the king’s mercy, and the bishop shall forthwith coerce the party accused with ecclesiastical discipline.

XI. The archbishops, bishops, and all other persons of the kingdom, who hold of the king in chief, shall hold their possessions of the king as barony, and answer for the same to the king’s justiciaries and officers, and follow and observe all the king’s customs and rectitudes; and be bound to be present, in the judgment of the king’s court with the barons, like other barons, until the judgment proceeds to mutilation or death.

XII. When an archbishopric, bishopric, abbacy, or priory on the king’s domain shall be vacant, it shall be in his hand, and he shall receive from it all the revenues and proceeds, as of his domains. And when the time shall come for providing for that church, our lord the king shall recommend the best persons to that church, and the election shall be made in the king’s chapel, with the king’s consent, and the advice of the persons of the kingdom whom he shall have summoned for that purpose. And the person elected shall there do homage and fealty to our lord the king, as to his liege lord, of life and limb, and of his earthly honors saving his orders, before he is consecrated.

XIII. If any of the king’s nobles shall have refused to render justice to an archbishop or bishop or archdeacon, for himself or any of his men, our lord the king shall justice them. And if by chance any one shall have deforced our lord the king of his rights, the archbishops, bishops, and archdeacons shall justice him that he may render satisfaction to the king.

XIV. The chattels of those who are in forfeiture to the king shall not be detained by the Church or the cemetery, in opposition to the king’s justice, for they belong to the king, whether they are found in the Church or without.

XV. Pleas for debts which are due, whether with the interposition of a pledge of faith or not, belong to the king’s court.

XVI. The sons of rustics shall not be ordained without the consent of the lord, in whose land they are known to have been born.

These Constitutions were drawn up in the spirit and language of feudalism, under the inspiration of the king, by Archbishop Roger of York, Bishop Foliot of London (the chief enemies of Becket), Bishop Joceline of Salisbury, Richard de Luci (the king’s chief judiciary), and Joceline of Baliol. They are restrictions on the immunities of the clergy; the last is an invasion of the rights of the people, but is based on the canonical exclusion of slaves from the clerical order without the consent of their masters. They subject the clergy equally with the laity to the crown and the laws of the land. They reduce the Church to an imperium in imperio, instead of recognizing her as a distinct and independent imperium. They formulate in the shape of legal enactments certain "ancient customs" (consuetudines) which date from the time of William the Conqueror, and were conceded by Lanfranc; but they infringe at many points on the ancient privileges of the Church, and are inconsistent with the hierarchical principle of the exemption of the clergy from temporal jurisdiction. And this was the chief point of the quarrel between the king and the archbishop.

In the present state of civilization there can be no doubt that the clergy should obey the same laws and be subject to the same penalties as the laity. But we must not overlook the fact that in the Middle Ages the clerical exemption had a humanitarian as well as a hierarchical feature, and involved a protest against barbarous punishments by mutilation of the human body, man being made in the image of God. It prepared the way for a mitigation of the criminal code for the benefit of the whole people, the laity as well as the clergy. This explains the large amount of popular sympathy with the cause of Becket.

Becket gave a qualified assent. On his return to Canterbury he changed his mind and imposed upon himself severe penances, and sought and obtained the pope’s absolution from his oath. But Alexander, hard pressed by Barbarossa and the anti-pope, and anxious to keep the good will of Henry, tried to please both parties. He granted, at the request of Henry, legatine commission over all England to Archbishop Roger of York, the rival of the primate of Canterbury. He also afterwards authorized the coronation of Henry’s eldest son by the archbishop of York in the Abbey of Westminster (June 18, 1170), although such coronation was the exclusive privilege of the archbishop of Canterbury. This aggravated the difficulty with the king, and brought on the final crisis.

In the meantime the Clarendon Constitutions were carried out. Clergymen convicted of crime in the king’s court were condemned and punished like laymen.

Becket attempted to flee to the pope, and sailed for the Continent, but was brought back by the sailors on account of adverse winds. This was a violation of the law which forbade bishops to leave the country without royal permission.

He was summoned before a great council of bishops and nobles at the royal castle of Northampton in the autumn of 1164, and charged with misconduct in secular affairs while chancellor and archbishop. But his courage rose with the danger. He refused to answer, and appealed to the pope. The council ordered him cited to Rome on the charges of perjury at Clarendon and of commanding his suffragans to disregard the Constitutions. The bishops he met with a haughty refusal when they advised him to resign. He was to be arrested, but he threatened the peers with excommunication if they pronounced the sentence. He took the bold course of making his escape to the Continent in the disguise of a monk, at midnight, accompanied by two monks and a servant, and provided with his episcopal pall and seal.

The king seized the revenues of the archbishop, forbade public prayers for him, and banished him from the kingdom, ordered the banishment of all his kinsmen and friends, including four hundred persons of both sexes, and suspended the payment of Peter’s pence to the pope.

Becket spent fully six years in exile, from October, 1164, to December, 1170. King Louis of France, an enemy of Henry and admirer of Becket, received him with distinction and recommended him to the pope, who, himself in exile, resided at Sens. Becket met Alexander, laid before him the Constitutions of Clarendon, and tendered his resignation. The pope condemned ten as a violation of ecclesiastical privileges, and tolerated six as less evil than the rest. He tenderly rebuked Becket for his weakness in swearing to them, but consoled him with the assurance that he had atoned for it by his sufferings. He restored to him the archiepiscopal ring, thus ratifying his primacy, promised him his protection, and committed him to the hospitable care of the abbot of Pontigny, a Cistercian monastery about twelve leagues distant from Sens. Here Becket lived till 1166, like a stern monk, on pulse and gruel, slept on a bed of straw, and submitted at midnight to the flagellation of his chaplain, but occasionally indulged in better diet, and retained some of his former magnificence in his surroundings. His sober friend, John of Salisbury, remonstrated against the profuse expenditure.

Becket proceeded to the last extremity of pronouncing, in the church of Vezelay, on Whitsuntide, 1166, the sentence of excommunication on all the authors and defenders of the Constitutions of Clarendon. He spared the king, who then was dangerously ill, but in a lower tone, half choked with tears, he threatened him with the vengeance of God, and his realm with the interdict. He announced the sentence to the pope and all the clergy of England, saying to the latter, "Who presumes to doubt that the priests of God are the fathers and masters of kings, princes, and all the faithful?"

The wrath of Henry knew no bounds. He closed the ports of England against the bearers of the instrument of excommunication, threatening them with shameful mutilation, hanging, and burning. He procured the expulsion of Becket from Pontigny, who withdrew to a monastery near the archiepiscopal city of Sens. He secured through his ambassadors several concessions from Alexander, who was then in exile at Benevento. The pope was anxious to retain the support of the king, and yet he wrote soothing letters to Becket, assuring him that the concessions were to be only temporary. Becket answered with indignation, and denounced the papal court for its venality and rapacity. "Your gold and silver," he wrote to the cardinals, "will not deliver you in the day of the wrath of the Lord."

The king now determined to use the permission received from the pope several years before, but afterwards revoked,158 and have his son crowned by Roger, archbishop of York. This humiliating infringement upon the rights of the primate stirred Becket’s blood afresh. He repeated his excommunication. Like Gregory VII., he applied the words, "Cursed is he that refraineth his sword from blood," to the spiritual weapon. He even commanded the bishops of England to lay the whole kingdom under interdict and to suspend the offices of religion (except baptism, penance, and extreme unction), unless the king should give full satisfaction before the feast of purification, Nov. 2, 1170.159

These extreme measures were not without effect. Several bishops began to waver and change from the king’s cause to that of the archbishop. The king himself was alarmed at the menace of the interdict. The pope pursued his temporizing policy, and counselled concessions by both parties.

The king and the archbishop suddenly made peace in a respectful personal interview at Fretteville (Freteval), a castle between Tours and Chartres, July 22, 1170. Henry said nothing about the Clarendon Constitutions, but made the offer that Becket should crown his daughter-in-law (the daughter of the king of France), and should on that occasion repeat the coronation of his son. Becket laid the blame on the shoulders of Henry’s counsellors, and showed moderation and prudence. The king did not offer the kiss of peace, nor did the archbishop demand it.

But while Becket was willing to pardon the king, he meant to exercise his spiritual authority over his evil counsellors, and especially over the archbishop of York and the bishops of London and Salisbury. These prelates had recently officiated at the coronation of Henry’s son. And it was this coronation, even more than the original and more important dispute about the immunity of the clergy, that led to the catastrophe.

After prolonged negotiations with the papal court and the king, Becket returned to his long-neglected flock, Dec. 1, 1170. On landing at Sandwich (instead of Dover, where he was expected), he was surprised by enemies, who searched his baggage, and demanded that he should withdraw his excommunication of the bishops who were then at Dover. He refused. On his way to Canterbury the country clergy and people met him, cast down their garments, chanting, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." He rode to the cathedral with a vast procession, amid the ringing of the bells, and preached on the text, "Here we have no abiding city."

The excommunicated prelates of York, London, and Salisbury sought the protection of the king, who was then at a castle near Bayeux in Normandy. He said: "If all are to be excommunicated who officiated at my son’s coronation, by the eyes of God, I am equally guilty." One of the prelates (perhaps Roger of York) remarked, "As long as Thomas lives, you will never be at peace." Henry broke out into one of his constitutional fits of passion, and dropped the fatal words: "A fellow that has eaten my bread, has lifted up his heel against me; a fellow that I loaded with benefits, dares insult the king; a fellow that came to court on a lame horse, with a cloak for a saddle, sits without hindrance on the throne itself. By the eyes of God, is there none of my thankless and cowardly courtiers who will deliver me from the insults of this low-born and turbulent priest?"  With these words he rushed out of the room.

§ 33. The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Dec. 29, 1170.

On the murder of Becket we have the reports of five eye-witnesses, Edward Grim (a Saxon monk of Cambridge), William Fitz-Stephen (Becket’s chaplain), John of Salisbury (his faithful friend), William of Canterbury, and the anonymous author of a Lambeth MS. Two other biographers, Herbert of Bosham and Roger of Pontigny, though absent from England at that time, were on intimate terms with Becket, and took great pains to ascertain the facts to the minutest details.

Four warlike knights of high birth and large estate, chamberlains to the king,160— Sir Reginald Fitz-Urse ("Son of the Bear," whom Becket had originally introduced to the court), Sir William. de Tracy (of royal blood), Hugh de Moreville (judiciary of Northumberland and Cumberland), and Sir Richard le Bret or Breton (commonly known as Brito161), eagerly caught at the king’s suggestion, and resolved to carry it out in the spirit of passionate loyalty, at their own risk, as best they could, by imprisonment, or exile, or, if necessary, by murder. They seem to have had no premeditated plan except that of signal vengeance. Without waiting for instructions, they at once departed on separate routes for England, and met at the castle of Saltwood, which belonged to the see of Canterbury, but was then occupied by Randulf of Broc. They collected a band of about a dozen armed men, and reached St. Augustine’s abbey outside of the walls of Canterbury, early on the 29th of December, which was a Tuesday.

On the morning of that fatal day, Becket had forebodings of his death, and advised the clergy to escape to Sandwich before daylight. He attended mass in the cathedral, confessed to two monks, and received three scourgings, as was his custom. At the banquet he drank more freely than usual, and said to the cupbearer, "He who has much blood to shed, must drink much." After dinner he retired to his private room and sat on his bed, talking to his friends, John of Salisbury, William Fitz-Stephen, and Edward Grim. He was then still in full vigor, being in the fifty-third year of his age, retaining his dignified aspect and the lustre of his large eyes.

At about four that afternoon, the knights went to the archbishop’s palace, leaving their weapons behind, and concealing their coats of mail by the ordinary cloak and gown. They demanded from him, in the name of the king, the absolution of the excommunicated bishops and courtiers. He refused, and referred them to the pope, who alone could absolve them. He declared: "I will never spare a man who violates the canons of Rome or the rights of the Church. My spirituals I hold from God and the pope; my temporals, from the king. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." The knights said, "You speak in peril of your life." Becket replied: "Come ye to murder me in my own house?  You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die. You threaten me in vain; were all the swords in England hanging over my head, you could not terrify me from my obedience to God and my lord the pope. I defy you, and will meet you foot to foot in the battle of the Lord." During the altercation, Becket lost command over his fiery temper. His friend, John of Salisbury, gently censured him for his exasperating tone. The knights quitted the room and called their men to arms.

A few minutes before five the bell tolled for vespers. Urged by his friends, the archbishop, with his cross carried before him, went through the cloisters to the cathedral. The service had begun, the monks were chanting the psalms in the choir, the church was filled with people, when two boys rushed up the nave and created a panic by announcing that armed men were breaking into the cloister. The attendants of Becket, who had entered the church, shut the door and urged him to move into the choir for safety. "Away, you cowards!" he said, "by virtue of your obedience, I command you not to shut the door; the church must not be turned into a fortress." He was evidently prepared and eager for martyrdom. He himself reopened the door, and dragged the excluded monks into the building, exclaiming, "Come in, come in—faster, faster!"  The monks and priests were terror-stricken and fled in every direction, to the recesses and side-chapels, to the roof above, and the crypt below. Three only remained faithful,—Canon Robert of Merton, Chaplain William Fitz-Stephen, and the clerk Edward Grim.162  One of the monks confesses that he ran with clasped hands up the steps as fast as his feet would carry him.

Becket proceeded to the high altar and archiepiscopal chair, in which he and all his predecessors from time immemorial had been enthroned. There, no doubt, he wished to gain the crown of martyrdom. It was now about five in the winter evening; the shades of night were gathering, and the lamps on the altars shed only a dim light in the dark cathedral. The tragedy which followed was finished in a few minutes.

In the meantime the knights, clad in mail which covered their faces up to their eyes, and with drawn swords, followed by a motley group of ruffians, provided with hatchets, rushed into the cathedral and shouted: "Where is the traitor?  Where is the archbishop?"163  Becket replied, descending the steps of the altar and facing his enemies, "Behold me, no traitor, but a priest of God!"  They again demanded the absolution of the bishops and his surrender to the king’s justice. "I cannot do otherwise than I have done," he said, and turning to Fitz-Urse, who was armed with a sword and an axe, he added; "Reginald, you have received many favors at my hands: come you to me and into my church armed!"  The knights tried to drag him out of the sanctuary, not intending to kill him there; but he braced himself against the pillar between the altars of the Virgin, his special patroness, and St. Benedict, whose rule he followed, and said: "I am ready to die. May the Church through my blood obtain peace and liberty!  I charge you in the name of God Almighty that you hurt no one here but me." In the struggle, he grappled with De Tracy and threw him to the pavement. He called Fitz-Urse (who had seized him by the collar of his long cloak) a miserable wretch, and wrenched the cloak from his grasp, saying, "Off, thou pander, thou!"164  The soldier, maddened by the foul epithet, waving the sword over his head, struck the first blow, and dashed off his cap. Tracy, rising from the pavement, aimed at his head; but Edward Grim, standing by, interposed his arm, which was almost severed, and then he sank back against the wall. Becket received blow after blow in an attitude of prayer. As he felt the blood trickling down his face, he bowed his neck for the death-blow, clasped his hands, and said in a low voice: "I commend my cause and the cause of the Church to God, to St. Denis, the martyr of France, to St. Alfege, and to the saints of the Church.165  In the name of Christ and for the defence of his Church, I am ready to die. Lord, receive my spirit."

These were his last words. The next blow felled him to his knees, the last laid him on the floor at the foot of the altar of St. Benedict. His hands were still joined as if in prayer. Richard the Breton cut off the upper part of his skull, which had received the sacred oil. Hugh of Horsea, the subdeacon, trampled upon his neck, thrust his sword into the ghastly wound, and scattered the blood and the brains over the pavement.166  Then he said, "Let us go, let us go; the traitor is dead; he will rise no more."

The murderers rushed from the church through the cloisters into the palace for plunder; while a violent thunder-storm broke over the cathedral. They stole about two thousand marks in gold and silver, and rode off on Becket’s fine horses in the thick darkness of the night.

The body of Thomas was buried in the crypt. The remains of his blood and brains were sacredly kept. His monkish admirers discovered, to their amazement and delight, that the martyr, who had once been arrayed in purple and fine linen, wore on his skin under his many garments the coarsest haircloth abounding with vermin. This seemed to betray the perfection of ascetic sanctity according to mediaeval notions.167  The spot of his "martyrdom" is still shown close to the entrance of the cathedral from the cloister.

§ 34. The Effects of Becket’s Murder.

The atrocious murder sent a thrill of horror throughout the Christian world. The moment of Becket’s death was his triumph. His exalted station, his personal virtues, the sacrilege,—all contributed to deepen the impression. At first opinion was divided, as he had strong enemies, even at Canterbury. A monk declared that Becket paid a just penalty for his obstinacy others said, "He wished to be king and more than king; the archbishop of York dared to preach that Becket "perished, like Pharaoh, in his pride."

But the torrent of public admiration soon silenced all opposition. Miracles took place at his tomb, and sealed his claim to the worship of a saint and martyr. "The blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the devils are cast out, even the dead are raised to life." Thus wrote John of Salisbury, his friend.168  Remarkable cures, no doubt, took place; credulity and fraud exaggerated and multiplied them. Within a few years after the murder, two collections of his miracles were published, one by Benedict, prior of Canterbury (afterwards abbot of Peterborough), and one by William, monk of Canterbury.169  According to these reports, the miracles began to occur the very night of the archbishop’s death. His blood had miraculous efficacy for those who drank it.170

Two years after his death, Feb. 21, 1173, Becket was solemnly canonized by Alexander III., who had given him only a lukewarm support in his contest with the king. There is scarcely another example of such an early recognition of saintship; but public sentiment had anticipated it. At a council in Westminster the papal letters of canonization were read. All the bishops who had opposed Becket were present, begged pardon for their offence, and acquiesced in the pope’s decision. The 29th of December was set apart as the feast of "St. Thomas of Canterbury."

King Henry II., as the supposed author of the monstrous crime, was branded with a popular excommunication. On the first news, he shut himself up for three days in his chamber, rolled himself in sackcloth and ashes, and obstinately refused food and comfort. He lived secluded for five weeks, exclaiming again and again, "Alas, alas that it ever happened!"  He issued orders for the apprehension of the murderers, and despatched envoys to the pope to exculpate, himself and to avert the calamity of excommunication and, an interdict. After long delay a reconciliation took place in the cathedral of Avranches in Normandy, before the papal legates, the archbishop of Rouen, and many bishops and noblemen, May 22, 1172.171  Henry swore on the holy Gospels that he had neither commanded nor desired the death of Becket, that it caused him more grief than the death of his father or his mother, and that he was ready to make full satisfaction. He pledged himself to abrogate the Statutes of Clarendon; to restore the church of Canterbury to all its rights and possessions; to undertake, if the pope should require it, a three years’ crusade to Jerusalem or Spain, and to support two hundred knights in the Holy Land. After these pledges he said aloud: "Behold, my lord legates, my body is in your hands; be assured that whatever you order, whether to go to Jerusalem or to Rome or to St. James [at Compostella in Spain], I am ready to obey." He was led by the bishops into the church and reconciled. His son, who was present, promised Cardinal Albert to make good his father’s pledges. This penance was followed by a deepest humiliation at Canterbury.

Two years later, July 12, 1174, the king, depressed by disasters and the rebellion of his wife and his sons, even made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Becket. He dismounted from his horse as he came in sight of the towers of Canterbury, walked as a penitent pilgrim in a woollen shirt, with bare and bleeding feet, through the streets, knelt in the porch of the cathedral, kissed the sacred stone on which the archbishop had fallen, threw himself prostrate before the tomb in the crypt, and confessed to the bishops with groans and tears his deep remorse for the hasty words which had led to the murder. Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, once Becket’s rival and enemy, announced to the monks and bystanders the king’s penitence and intention to restore the rights and property of the Church, and to bestow forty marks yearly on the monastery to keep lamps burning at the martyr’s tomb. The king, placing his head and shoulders on the tomb, submitted to the degrading punishment of scourging, and received five stripes from each bishop and abbot, and three stripes from each of the eighty monks. Fully absolved, he spent the whole night on the bare ground of the crypt in tears and prayers, imploring the forgiveness of the canonized saint in heaven whom he had persecuted on earth.

No deeper humiliation of king before priest is recorded in history. It throws into the shade the submission of Theodosius to Ambrose, of Edgar to Dunstan, of Barbarossa to Alexander, and even the scene at Canossa.

Fifty years after the martyrdom, Becket’s relics were translated with extraordinary solemnity from the tomb in the crypt to the costly shrine of Becket, which blazed with gold and jewels, in the reconstructed Canterbury cathedral (1220). And now began on the largest scale that long succession of pilgrimages, which for more than three hundred years made Canterbury the greatest sacred resort of Western Christendom, next to Jerusalem and Rome. It was more frequented than Loreto in Italy and Einsiedeln in Switzerland. No less than a hundred thousand pilgrims were registered at Canterbury in 1420. From all parts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, from France and the far north, men and women flocked to the shrine: priests, monks, princes, knights, scholars, lawyers, merchants, mechanics, peasants. There was scarcely an English king, from Henry II. to Henry VIII., who did not from motives of piety or policy pay homage to the memory of the saint. Among the last distinguished visitors were John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s, and Erasmus, who visited the shrine together between the years 1511 and 1513, and King Henry VIII. and Emperor Charles V., who attended the last jubilee in 1520. Plenary indulgences were granted to the pilgrims. Some went in December, the month of his martyrdom; a larger number in July, the month of the translation of his relics. Every fiftieth year a jubilee lasting fifteen days was celebrated in his honor. Six such jubilees were celebrated,—1270, 1320, 1370, 1420, 1470, 1520. The offerings to St. Thomas exceeded those given to any other saint, even to the holy Virgin.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, who lived two centuries after Becket’ martyrdom, has immortalized these pilgrimages in his Canterbury Tales, and given us the best description of English society at that time.

The pilgrimages promoted piety, social intercourse, superstition, idleness, levity, and immorality, and aroused moral indignation among many serious and spiritually minded men.

The superstitious idolatry of St. Thomas was continued down to the time of the Reformation, when it was rudely but forever crushed out. Henry VIII. cited Becket to appear in court to answer to the charges of treason and rebellion. The case was formally argued at Westminster. His guilt was proved, and on the 10th of June, 1538, St. Thomas was condemned as a "rebel and a traitor to his prince." The rich shrine at Canterbury was pillaged; the gold and jewels were carried off in two strong coffers, and the rest of the treasure in twenty-six carts. The jewels went into the hands of Henry VIII., who wore the most precious of them, a diamond, the "Regale of France," in the ring on his thumb; afterwards it glittered in the golden, "collar" of his daughter, the bigoted Queen Mary. A royal proclamation explained the cause and mode of Becket’s death, and the reasons for his degradation. All festivals, offices, and prayers in his name were forbidden. The site of his shrine has remained vacant to this day.

The Reformation prepared the way for a more spiritual worship of God and a more just appreciation of the virtues and faults of Thomas Becket than was possible in the age in which he lived and died,—a hero and a martyr of the papal hierarchy, but not of pure Christianity, as recorded in the New Testament. To the most of his countrymen, as to the English-speaking people at large, his name has remained the synonym for priestly pride and pretension, for an arrogant invasion of the rights of the civil estate. To a certain class of English High Churchmen he remains, like Laud of a later age, the martyr of sacerdotal privilege, the unselfish champion of the dowered rights of the Church. The atrocity of his taking-off no one will choose to deny. But the haughty assumption of the high prelate had afforded pretext enough for vehement indignation and severe treatment. Priestly robes may for a time conceal and even protect pride from violence, but sooner or later it meets its just reward. The prelate’s superiority involved in Becket’s favorite expression, "saving the honor of my order," was more than a king of free blood could be expected to bear.

This dramatic chapter of English history may be fitly closed with a scene from Lord Tennyson’s tragedy which presents the personal quality that brought about Thomas à Becket’s fall.172

John of Salisbury.

Thomas, I would thou hadst returned to England

Like some wise prince of this world from his wars,

With more of olive-branch and amnesty

For foes at home—thou hast raised the world against thee.

Becket.

Why, John, my kingdom is not of this world.

John of Salisbury.

If it were more of this world it might be

More of the next. A policy of wise pardon

Wins here as well as there. To bless thine enemies —

Becket.

Ay, mine, not Heaven’s.

John of Salisbury.

And may there not be something

Of this world’s leaven in thee too, when crying

On Holy Church to thunder out her rights

And thine own wrong so piteously. Ah, Thomas,

The lightnings that we think are only Heaven’s

Flash sometimes out of earth against the heavens.

The soldier, when he lets his whole self go

Lost in the common good, the common wrong,

Strikes truest ev’n for his own self. I crave

Thy pardon—I have still thy leave to speak.

Thou hast waged God’s war against the King; and yet

We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may,

Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites

And private hates with our defence of Heaven.

CHAPTER V.

INNOCENT III. AND HIS AGE. A.D. 1198–1216.

§ 35. Literature.

Sources: Innocentii III. Opp. omnia, in Migne, 4 vols. 214–217; three vols. contain Innocent’s official letters; a 4th, his sermons, the de contemptu mundi, and other works.—S. Baluzius: Epistolarum Inn. III. libri undecim, 2 vols. Paris, 1682.—Böhmer: Regesta imperii 1198–1254, new ed. by J. Ficker, Innsbruck, 1881.—Potthast: Regesta, pp. 1–467, 2041–2056—Gesta Innoc. III. auctore anonymo sed coaevo (a contemporary Life, about 1220), in Migne, 214, pp. xvii-ccxxviii, and Baluzius.—Mansi, XXII.—Mirbt: Quellen, 125–136, gives some of the characteristic passages. For the older edd. of Inn.’s letters and other works, see Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aevi, I. 520, 650.

Modern Works: Friedrich von Hurter (1787–1886): Geschichte Papst Innocenz des Dritten und seiner Zeitgenossen, 2 vols. Hamburg, 1833–1835; 3d ed. 4 vols. 1841–1844 (trans. into French and Italian). The last two volumes are devoted to the monastic orders and the Eccles. and social conditions of the thirteenth century. An exhaustive work full of enthusiastic admiration for Innocent and his age. Hurter wrote it while antistes or pastor of the Reformed Church in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and was led by his studies to enter, with his family, the Roman Catholic communion in 1844 and became imperial counsellor and historiographer of Austria. Gfrörer, likewise a Protestant, dazzled by the splendor of the Gregorian papacy in the preparation of his Life of Gregory VII., was also led to join the Roman communion.—Jorry: Hist. du pape Inn. III.; Paris, 1853.—F. F. Reinlein: Papst Inn. III. und seine Schrift de contemptu mundi, Erlangen, 1871; also Inn. III nach s. Beziehung zur Unfehlbarkeitsfrage, Erlangen, 1872.—H. Elkan: Die Gesta Inn. III. im Verhältniss zu d. Regesten desselben Papstes, Heidelberg, 1876.—Fr. Deutsch: Papst Inn. III. und s. Einfluss auf d. Kirche, Bresl., 1876.—Leop. Delisle: Mémoire sur les actes d’Inn. III, suivi de l’itinéraire de ce pontife, Paris, 1877.—J. N. Brischar, Roman Catholic: Papst Inn. III. und s. Zeit, Freib. im Br. 1883.—J. Langen: Gesch. d. röm. Kirche von Gregor. VII. bis Inn. III., Bonn, 1893; also Hefele-Knöpfler, vol. V.—the Works on the Hohenstaufen and the Crusades.—Ranke: Weltgesch., VIII. 274 sqq.—the Histories of Rome by Reumont, Bryce, and Gregorovius,—Hauck: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, IV. 658–745.—T. F. Tout: The Empire and the Papacy, 918–1272, N. Y. 1898.—H. Fisher: The Med. Empire, 2 vols. London, 1898.—For fuller lit., see Chevalier; Répertoire, pp. 1114 sq. and Suppl. 2659, and art. Inn. III., by Zöpffel-Mirbt, in Herzog, IX. 112–122.

§ 36. Innocent’s Training and Election.

The brilliant pontificate of Innocent III., 1198–1216, lasted as long as the combined and uneventful reigns of his five predecessors: Lucius III., 1181–1185; Urban III., 1185–1187; Gregory VIII. less than two months, 1187; Clement III., 1187–1191; Coelestin III., 1191–1198. It marks the golden age of the mediaeval papacy and one of the most important eras in the history of the Catholic Church. No other mortal has before or since wielded such extensive power. As the spiritual sovereign of Latin Christendom, he had no rival. At the same time he was the acknowledged arbiter of the political destinies of Europe from Constantinople to Scotland. He successfully carried into execution the highest theory of the papal theocracy and anticipated the Vatican dogmas of papal absolutism and infallibility. To the papal title "vicar of Christ," Innocent added for the first time the title "vicar of God." He set aside the decisions of bishops and provincial councils, and lifted up and cast down kings. He summoned and guided one of the most important of the councils of the Western Church, the Fourth Lateran, 1215, whose acts established the Inquisition and fixed transubstantiation as a dogma. He set on foot the Fourth Crusade, and died making preparation for another. On the other hand he set Christian against Christian, and by undertaking to extirpate religious dissent by force drenched parts of Europe in Christian blood.

Lothario, Innocent’s baptismal name, was born about 1160 at Anagni, a favorite summer resort of the popes. He was the son of Count Trasmondo of the house of the Conti de Segni, one of the ruling families of the Latium.173  It furnished nine popes, of whom Innocent XIII. was the last. He studied theology and canon law at Paris and Bologna, and became proficient in scholastic learning. Through the influence of three uncles, who were cardinals, he was rapidly promoted, and in 1190, at the age of twenty-nine, was appointed cardinal-deacon by one of them, Pope Clement III. Though the youngest member of the curia, he was at once assigned a place of responsibility.

During the pontificate of Coelestin III., a member of the house of the Orsini which was unfriendly to the Conti, Lothario withdrew into retirement and devoted himself to literature. The chief fruit of this seclusion is the work entitled The Contempt of the World or the Misery of the Mortal Estate.174  It might well have been followed, as the author says in the prologue, by a second treatise on the dignity of man’s estate. To this time belongs also a work on the sacrifice of the mass.175  After his elevation to the papal throne, Innocent composed an Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms. While pope he preached often both in Rome and on his journeys. His sermons abound in mystical and allegorical figures. Of his letters more than five hundred are preserved.

The Contempt of the World is an ascetic plaint over the sinfulness and woes of this present life. It proceeds upon the basis of Augustine’s theory of total depravity. The misery of man is described from the helplessness of infancy to the decrepitude of age and the sufferings of the future estate. Pessimistic passages are quoted from Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and also from Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal. Three master passions are constantly tormenting man,—avarice, lust, and ambition,—to which are added the innumerable ailments of the body and troubles of the soul. The author deplores the fate of masters and servants, of the married and the unmarried, of the good and the bad, the rich and the poor. "It is just and natural that the wicked should suffer; but are the righteous one whit better off?  Here below is their prison, not their home or their final destiny. As soon as a man rises to a station of dignity, cares and trouble increase, fasting is abridged, night watches are prolonged, nature’s constitution is undermined, sleep and appetite flee, the vigor of the body gives way to weakness, and a sorrowful end is the close of a sorrowful life."176  In the case of the impenitent, eternal damnation perpetuates the woes of time. With a description of these woes the work closes, reminding the reader of the solemn cadences of the Dies Irae of Thomas of Celano and Dante’s Inferno.177

Called forth from retirement to the chief office in Christendom, Innocent had an opportunity to show his contempt of the world by ruling it with a strong and iron hand. The careers of the best of the popes of the Middle Ages, as well as of ecclesiastics like Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Canterbury, reveal the intimate connection between the hierarchical and ascetic tendencies. Innocent likewise displayed these two tendencies. In his treatise on the mass he anticipated the haughty assumption of the papacy, based on the rock-foundation of Peter’s primacy, which as pope he afterwards displayed.

On the very day of Coelestin’s burial, the college of cardinals unanimously chose Lothario pope. Like Gregory I., Gregory VII., Alexander III., and other popes, he made a show of yielding reluctantly to the election. He was ordained priest, and the next day, February 22, was consecrated bishop and formally ascended the throne in St. Peter’s.

The coronation ceremonies were on a splendid scale. But the size of Rome, whose population at this time may not have exceeded thirty-five thousand, must be taken into account when we compare them with the pageants of the ancient city.178  At the enthronization in St. Peter’s, the tiara was used which Constantine is said to have presented to Sylvester, and the words were said, "Take the tiara and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the vicar on earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, whose honor and glory shall endure throughout all eternity." Then followed the procession through the city to the Lateran. The pope sat on a white palfrey and was accompanied by the prefect of the city, the senators and other municipal officials, the nobility, the cardinals, archbishops, and other church dignitaries, the lesser clergy and the popular throng—all amidst the ringing of bells, the chanting of psalms, and the acclamations of the people. Along the route a singular scene was presented at the Ghetto by a group of Jews, the rabbi at their head carrying a roll of the Pentateuch, who bowed low as they saluted their new ruler upon whose favor or frown depended their protection from the populace, yea, their very life. Arrived at the Lateran, the pope threw out handfuls of copper coins among the people with the words, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee." The silver key of the palace and the golden key of the basilica were then put into his hands, and the senate did him homage. A banquet followed, the pope sitting at a table alone.179  Upon such pomp and show of worldly power the Apostles, whose lot was poverty, would have looked with wonder, if they had been told that the central figure of it all was the chief personality in the Christian world.

When he ascended the fisherman’s throne, Innocent was only thirty-seven years old, the youngest in the line of popes up to that time. Walter von der Vogelweide gave expression to the fear which his youth awakened when he wrote, O wê der bâbest ist ze june, hilf hêrre diner kristenheit. "Alas!  the pope is so young. Help, Lord, thy Christian world." The new pontiff was well formed, medium in stature,180 temperate in his habits, clear in perception, resolute in will, and fearless in action. He was a born ruler of men, a keen judge of human nature, demanding unconditional submission to his will, yet considerate in the use of power after submission was once given,—an imperial personality towering high above the contemporary sovereigns in moral force and in magnificent aims of world-wide dominion.

§ 37. Innocent’s Theory of the Papacy.

The pope with whom Innocent is naturally brought into comparison is Hildebrand. They were equally distinguished for moral force, intellectual energy, and proud assertion of prelatic prerogative. Innocent was Hildebrand’s superior in learning, diplomatic tact, and success of administration, but in creative genius and heroic character he was below his predecessor. He stands related to his great predecessor as Augustus to Julius. He was heir to the astounding programme of Hildebrand’s scheme and enjoyed the fruits of his struggles. Their personal fortunes were widely different. Gregory was driven from Rome and died in exile. To Innocent’s good fortune there seemed to be no end, and he closed his pontificate in undisputed possession of authority.

Innocent no sooner ascended the papal chair than he began to give expression to his conception of the papal dignity. Throughout his pontificate he forcibly and clearly expounded it in a tone of mingled official pride and personal humility. At his coronation he preached on the faithful and wise servant. "Ye see," he said, "what manner of servant it is whom the Lord hath set over his people, no other than the viceregent of Christ, the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man. He judges all and is judged by none. But he, whom the pre-eminence of dignity exalts, is humbled by his vocation as a servant, that so humility may be exalted and pride be cast down; for God is against the high-minded, and to the lowly He shows mercy; and whoso exalteth himself shall be abased."

Indeed, the papal theocracy was Innocent’s all-absorbing idea. He was fully convinced that it was established of God for the good of the Church and the salvation of the world. As God gave to Christ all power in heaven and on earth, so Christ delegated to Peter and his successors the same authority. Not man but God founded the Apostolic see.181  In his famous letter to the patriarch of Constantinople, Nov. 12, 1199,182 he gave an elaborate exposition of the commission to Peter. To him alone the command had been given, "Feed my sheep." On him alone it had been declared, "I will build my church." The pope is the vicar of Christ, yea of God himself.183  Not only is he intrusted with the dominion of the Church, but also with the rule of the whole world. Like Melchizedek, he is at once king and priest. All things in heaven and earth and in hell are subject to Christ. So are they also to his vicar. He can depose princes and absolve subjects from the oath of allegiance. He may enforce submission by placing whole nations under the interdict. Peter alone went to Jesus on the water and by so doing he gave illustration of the unique privilege of the papacy to govern the whole earth. For the other disciples stayed in the ship and so to them was given rule only over single provinces. And as the waters were many on which Peter walked, so over the many congregations and nations, which the waters represent, was Peter given authority—yea over all nations whatsoever (universos populos).184  In this letter he also clearly teaches papal infallibility and declares that Peter’s successor can never in any way depart from the Catholic faith.

Gregory VII.’s illustration, likening the priestly estate (sacerdotium) to the sun, and the civil estate (regnum or imperium) to the moon, Innocent amplified and emphasized. Two great lights, Innocent said, were placed by God in the firmament of heaven, and to these correspond the "pontifical authority and the regal authority," the one to rule over souls as the sun rules over the day, the other to rule over the bodies of men as the moon rules over the night. And as the moon gets its light from the sun, and as it is also less than the sun both in quality and in size, and in the effect produced, so the regal power gets its dignity and splendor from the pontifical authority which has in it more inherent virtue.185  The priest anoints the king, not the king the priest, and superior is he that anoints to the anointed.186  Princes have authority in separate lands; the pontiff over all lands. The priesthood came by divine creation; the kingly power by man’s manipulation and violence.187  "As in the ark of God," so he wrote to John of England, "the rod and the manna lay beside the tables of the law, so at the side of the knowledge of the law, in the breast of the pope, are lodged the terrible power of destruction and the genial mildness of grace." Innocent reminded John that if he did not lift his foot from off the Church, nothing would check his punishment and fall.188  Monarchs throughout Europe listened to Innocent’s exposition and obeyed. His correspondence abounds with letters to the emperor, the kings of Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, France, England, the Danes, Aragon, and to other princes, teaching them their duty and demanding their submission.

Under Innocent’s rule, the subjection of the entire Christian world to the Roman pontiff seemed to be near realization. But the measures of force which were employed in the Latin conquest of Constantinople, 1204, had the opposite effect from what was intended. The overthrow of the Byzantine empire and the establishment of a Latin empire in its stead and the creation of a new hierarchy of Constantinople only completed the final alienation of the Greek and Latin churches. To Innocent III. may not be denied deep concern in the extension of Christendom. But the rigorous system of the Inquisition which he set on foot begat bitterness and war of churchman against Christian dissenter and of Christian against Mohammedan. More blood was shed at the hand of the Church during the pontificate of Innocent, and under his immediate successors carrying out his policy, than in any other age except during the papal counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The audacious papal claim to imperialism corrected itself by the policy employed by Innocent and his successors to establish the claim over the souls and bodies of men and the governments of the earth.189

§ 38. Innocent and the German Empire.

Additional Literature.—Ed. Winkelmann: Philip von Schwaben und Otto IV. von Braunschweig, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1873–1878.—R. Schwemer: Innocent III. und d. deutsche Kirche während des Thronstreites von 1198–1208, Strassburg, 1882.

The political condition of Europe was favorable to Innocent’s assertion of power. With the sudden death of Henry VI., Sept. 28, 1197, at the early age of thirty-two, the German empire was left without a ruler. Frederick, the Emperor’s only son, was a helpless child. Throughout Italy a reaction set in against Henry’s hard and oppressive rule. The spirit of national freedom was showing itself, and a general effort was begun to expel the German princes and counts from Italian soil.

Innocent III. has been called by Ranke Henry’s real successor.190  Taking advantage of the rising feeling of Italian nationality, the pope made it his policy to separate middle and lower Italy from the empire, and, in fact, he became the deliverer of the peninsula from foreign agents and mercenaries. He began his reign by abolishing the last vestiges of the authority of the empire in the city of Rome. The city prefect, who had represented the emperor, took the oath of allegiance to the pope, and Innocent invested him with a mantle and silver cup. The senator likewise acknowledged Innocent’s authority and swore to protect the Roman see and the regalia of St. Peter.

The pope quickly pushed his authority beyond the walls of Rome. Spoleto, which for six centuries had been ruled by a line of German dukes, Assisi, Perugia, and other cities, submitted. Mark of Anweiler, the fierce soldier of Henry VI., could not withstand the fortunate diplomacy and arms of Innocent, and the Romagna, with Ravenna as its centre, yielded. A Tuscan league was formed which was favorably disposed to the papal authority. Florence, Siena, Pisa, and other cities, while refusing to renounce their civic freedom, granted privileges to the pope. Everywhere Innocent had his legates. Such full exercise of papal power over the State of the Church had not before been known.

To confirm her son Frederick’s title to the crown of Sicily, his mother delivered the kingdom over to the pope as a papal fief. She survived her imperial consort only a year, and left a will appointing Innocent the guardian of her child. The intellectual training and political destinies of the heir of the Hohenstaufen were thus intrusted to the hereditary foe of that august house. Innocent was left a free hand to prosecute his trust as he chose.191

In Germany, Innocent became the umpire of the imperial election. The electors were divided between two aspirants to the throne, Philip of Swabia, the brother of Henry VI., who was crowned at Mainz, and Otto, the son of Henry the Lion, who was crowned at Aachen by Adolf, archbishop of Cologne. Otto was the nephew of Richard Coeur de Lion and John of England, who supported his claims with their gold and diplomacy. Both parties made their appeal to Rome, and it is not a matter of surprise that Innocent’s sympathies were with the Guelf, Otto, rather than with the Hohenstaufen. Moreover, Philip had given offence by occupying, as duke of Tuscany, the estates of Matilda.

Innocent made the high claim that the German throne depended for its occupant "from the beginning and ultimately" upon the decision of the papal see. Had not the Church transferred the empire from the East to the West?  And had not the Church itself conferred the imperial crown,192 passing by the claims of Frederick and pronouncing Philip "unworthy of empire?"  Innocent decided in 1201 in favor of Otto, "his dearest son in Christ who was himself devoted to the Church and on both sides was descended from devout stock." The decision inured to Rome’s advantage. By the stipulation of Neuss, subsequently repeated at Spires, 1209, Otto promised obedience to the pope and renounced all claim to dominion in the State of the Church and also to Naples and Sicily. This written document was a dangerous ratification of the real or pretended territorial rights and privileges of the papacy from Constantine and Pepin down.

Civil war broke out, and when the tide of success turned in Philip’s favor, the pope released him from the sentence of excommunication and was about to acknowledge him as emperor193 when the murderous sword of Otto of Wittelsbach, in 1208, brought Philip’s career to a tragic end. The year following Otto was crowned in St. Peter’s, but he forgot his promises and proceeded to act out the independent policy of the rival house of the Hohenstaufen.194  He laid heavy hand upon Central Italy, distributing rich estates and provinces among his vassals and sequestrating the revenues of the clergy. He then marched to Southern Italy, the territory of Frederick, and received the surrender of Naples.

All that Innocent had gained seemed in danger of being lost. Prompt measures showed him equal to the emergency. He wrote that the stone he had erected to be the head of the corner had become a rock of offence. Like Rachel he mourned over his son whom he lamented to have made king. Otto was excommunicated and a meeting of magnates at Nürnberg, 1211, declared him deposed, and, pronouncing in favor of Frederick, sent envoys to Palermo to convey to him the intelligence. Otto crossed the Alps to reclaim his power, but it was too late. Frederick started north, stopping at Rome, where Innocent saw him for the first and last time, April, 1212. He was elected and crowned king at Frankfurt, December, 1212, and was recognized by nearly all the princes at Eger the year following. Before setting out from Italy he had again recognized Sicily as a fief of Rome. At Eger he disavowed all imperial right to the State of the Church.195

Otto joined in league with John of England and the Flemish princes against Philip Augustus of France; but his hopes were dashed to the ground on the battlefield of Bouvines, Belgium, 1415. His authority was thenceforth confined to his ancestral estate. He died 1218. Innocent had gained the day. His successors were to be defied by the young king, Frederick, for nearly half a century.

With equal spirit and decision, Innocent mingled in the affairs of the other states of Europe. In France, the controversy was over the sanctity of the marriage vow. Philip Augustus put away his second wife,196 a Danish princess, a few months after their marriage, and took the fair Agnes of Meran in her stead. The French bishops, on the plea of remote consanguinity, justified the divorce. But Innocent, listening to the appeals of Ingeborg, and placing France under the interdict, forced the king to take her back.197

The Christian states of the Spanish peninsula felt the pontiff’s strong hand. The kingdom of Leon was kept under the interdict five years till Alfonso IX. consented to dismiss his wife on account of blood relationship. Pedro, king of Aragon, a model of Spanish chivalry, received his crown at Rome in 1204 and made his realm a fief of the Apostolic see. Sancho, king of the newly risen kingdom of Portugal, was defeated in his effort to break away from the pope’s suzerainty.

In the North, Sweden accepted Innocent’s decision in favor of the house of Schwerker, and the Danish king, who was attempting to reduce the tribes along the Baltic to Christianity, was protected by the pope’s threat of interdict upon all molesting his realm. The king of England was humbled to the dust by Innocent’s word. To the king of Scotland a legate was sent and a valuable sword. Even Iceland is said to have been the subject of Innocent’s thought and action.

In the Southeast, Johannitius of Bulgaria received from Innocent his crown after bowing before his rebuke for having ventured to accept it from Philip of Swabia. Ottoker, prince of Bohemia, was anointed by the papal legate, and Emmeric of Hungary made a vow to lead a crusade, which his brother Andrew executed. Thus all the states of Europe west of Russia were made to feel the supremacy of the papal power. The conquest of Constantinople and the Holy Land, as we shall see, occupied an equal share of attention from this tireless and masterful ruler, and the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, 1205, was regarded as a signal triumph for the papal policy.

§ 39. Innocent and King John of England.

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise;

This fortress, built by nature for herself,

Against infection, and the hand of war;

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth."

—Shakespeare, Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1.

Additional Literature.—The Chronicle of Roger of Wendover (the first of the St. Alban annalists) and the revision and continuation of the same by Matthew Paris (a monk of St. Alban’s, the last and greatest of the monastic historians of England), ed. by H. R. Luard in Rolls Series, 7 vols. London, 1872–1883, vol. II. Engl. vol. II. trans. of Wendover by J. A. Giles, Bohn’s Lib. 2 vols. London, 1849; of M. Paris by Giles, 3 vols. London, 1852–1854.—Memorials of Walter of Coventry, ed. by Stubbs, 2 vols. 1872 sq.—Radulph of Coggeshall: Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. by J. Stevenson, 1875. The Annals of Waverley, Dunstable, and Burton, all in the Rolls Series.—W. Stubbs: The Constitutional Hist. of England, 6th ed. 3 vols. Oxford, 1897, and Select Charters, etc., 8th ed. Oxford, 1900, pp. 270–306.—Gee and Hardy: Documents, London, 1896.—R. Gneist: Hist. of the Engl. Court, Engl. trans. 2 vols. London, 1886, vol. I. 294–332.—E. Gütschow: Innocent III. und England, Munich, 1904, pp. 198.—The Histories of Lingard (R. C.), Green, Milman, Freeman (Norman Conquest, vol. V.).—For Stephen Langton, Dean Hook: Lives of the Abp. of Canterbury, and art. Langton, in Dict. of Natl. Biog.—Also W. Hunt, art. John, in Dict. of Natl. Biog. XXIX. 402–417.—Sir James H. Ramsey: The Angevin Empire, 1154–1216, London, 1903. He calls John a brutal tyrant, hopelessly depraved, without ability in war or politics.

Under Innocent, England comes, if possible, into greater prominence in the history of the papacy than during the controversy in the reign of Alexander III., a generation before. Then the English actors were Henry II. and Thomas à Becket. Now they are Henry’s son John and Becket’s successor Stephen Langton. The pope was victorious, inflicting the deepest humiliation upon the English king; but he afterwards lost the advantage he had gained by supporting John against his barons and denouncing the Magna Charta of English popular rights. The controversy forms one of the most interesting episodes of English history.

John, surnamed Sansterre or Lackland, 1167–1216, succeeded his brother Richard I. on the throne, 1199. A man of decided ability and rapid in action but of ignoble spirit, low morals, and despotic temper, he brought upon his realm such disgrace as England before or since has not suffered. His reign was a succession of wrongs and insults to the English people and the English church.

John had joined Richard in a revolt against their father, sought to displace his brother on the throne during his captivity after the Third Crusade, and was generally believed by contemporaries to have put to death his brother Geoffrey’s son, Arthur of Brittany, who would have been Richard’s successor if the law of primogeniture had been followed. He lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine to the English. Perjury was no barrier to the accomplishment of his plans. He set aside one wife and was faithless to another. No woman was too well born to be safe against his advances. He plundered churches and convents to pay his debts and satisfy his avarice, and yet he never undertook a journey without hanging charms around his neck.198

Innocent came into collision with John over the selection of a successor to Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury, who died 1205.199  The monks of Canterbury, exercising an ancient privilege, chose Reginald one of their number. With the king’s support, a minority proceeded to another election and chose the king’s nominee, John de Grey, bishop of Norwich. John was recognized by the suffragan-bishops and put into possession by the king.

An appeal was made by both parties to Rome, Reginald appearing there in person. After a delay of a year, Innocent set aside both elections and ordered the Canterbury monks, present in Rome, to proceed to the choice of another candidate. The choice fell upon Stephen Langton, cardinal of Chrysogonus. Born on English soil, Stephen was a man of indisputable learning and moral worth. He had studied in Paris and won by his merits prebends in the cathedral churches of Paris and York. The metropolitan dignity could have been intrusted to no shoulders more worthy of wearing it.200  While he has no title to saintship like à Becket, or to theological genius like Anselm, Langton will always occupy a place among the foremost of England’s primates as a faithful administrator and the advocate of English popular liberties.

The new archbishop received consecration at the pope’s own hand, June 17, 1207, and held his office till his death, 1228.201  The English king met the notification with fierce resistance, confiscated the property of the Canterbury chapter, and expelled the monks as guilty of treason. Innocent replied with the threat of the interdict. The king swore by God’s teeth202 to follow the censure, if pronounced, with the mutilation of every Italian in the realm appointed by Innocent, and the expulsion of all the prelates and clergy. The sentence was published by the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, March 22, 1208.203  They then fled the kingdom.

The interdict at once took effect, casting a deep gloom over the nation. The church bells remained unrung. The church buildings were closed. The usual ministrations of the priesthood remained unperformed. The great doors of the monasteries were left unopened, and worshippers were only admitted by secret passages. Penance was inflicted upon the innocent as well as the erring. Women, after childbirth, presented themselves for purification outside the church walls. The dead were refused burial in consecrated ground, and the service of the priest was withheld.

John, although he had seen Philip Augustus bend under a similar censure, affected unconcern, and retaliated by confiscating the property of the higher clergy and convents and turning the inmates out of doors with little more than the clothes on their backs. The concubines of the priests were forcibly removed and purchased their ransom at heavy expense. A Welshman accused of murdering a priest was ordered by the king dismissed with the words, "Let him go, he has killed my enemy." The relatives of the fugitive bishops were thrown into prison.

In 1209 Innocent added to the interdict the solemn sentence of the personal anathema against the king.204  The bishops who remained in England did not dare publish it, "becoming like dumb dogs not daring to bark."205  John persisted in his defiant mood, continued to eke out his vengeance upon the innocent, and sought to divert the attention of his subjects by negotiations and wars with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Geoffrey, archdeacon of Norwich, who had been in his service and now felt he could no longer so remain, was thrown into prison and there allowed to languish to death, covered from shoulders to feet with a cope of lead.206

One more weapon lay in the pope’s power. In 1212 John was declared unworthy of his throne, and deposed. His subjects were absolved from the obligation of allegiance, and Christian princes were summoned to execute the sentence and take the crown. Gregory VII. had resorted to the same precarious measure with Henry IV. and been defeated. The bull was published at Soissons by Langton and the exiled bishops. Philip of France was quick to respond to the summons and collected an army. But the success of the English fleet checked the fear of an immediate invasion of the realm.

The nation’s suspense, however, was taxed almost beyond the point of endurance. The king’s arbitrary taxes and his amours with the wives and daughters of the barons aroused their determined hatred. Pressed from different sides, John suddenly had a meeting at Dover with the pope’s special envoy, the subdeacon Pandulf.207  The hermit, Peter of Wakefield, had predicted that within three days of Ascension Day the king would cease to reign. Perhaps not without dread of the prediction, and not without irony to checkmate the plans of the French monarch, John gave in his submission, and on May 15, 1213, on bended knee, delivered up to Pandulf his kingdom and consented to receive it back again as a papal fief. Five months later the act was renewed in the presence of Nicolas, cardinal-archbishop of Tusculum, who had been sent to England with legatine authority. In the document which John signed and swore to keep, he blasphemously represented himself as imitating him "who humbled himself for us even unto death." This notorious paper ran as follows: —

"We do freely offer and grant to God and the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and the holy Roman Church, our mother, and to our Lord the pope Innocent and his Catholic successors, the whole realm of England and the whole realm of Ireland with all their rights and appurtenances for the remission of our sins and those of all our race, as well quick as dead; and from now receiving back and holding these, as a feudal dependent, from God and the Roman Church, do and swear fealty for them to our Lord the pope Innocent and his Catholic successors and the Roman Church."208

John bound himself and England for all time to pay, in addition to the usual Peter’s pence, 1000 marks annually to the Apostolic see, 700 for England and 300 for Ireland. The king’s signature was witnessed by the archbishop of Dublin, the bishop of Norwich, and eleven noblemen. John also promised to reimburse the outlawed bishops, the amount finally settled upon being 40,000 marks.

Rightly does Matthew Paris call this the "detestable and lamentable charter."209  But although national abasement could scarcely further go, it is probable that the sense of shame with which after generations have regarded John’s act was only imperfectly felt by that generation of Englishmen.210  As a political measure it succeeded, bringing as it did keen disappointment to the warlike king of France. The interdict was revoked in 1214, after having been in force more than six years.

The victory of Innocent was complete. But in after years the remembrance of the dishonorable transaction encouraged steadfast resistance to the papal rule in England. The voice of Robert Grosseteste was lifted up against it, and Wyclif became champion of the king who refused to be bound by John’s pledge. Writing to one of John’s successors, the emperor Frederick II. called upon him to remember the humiliation of his predecessor John and with other Christian princes resist the intolerable encroachments of the Apostolic see.

§ 40. Innocent and Magna Charta.

An original manuscript of the Magna Charta, shrivelled with age and fire, but still showing the royal seal, is preserved in the British Museum. A facsimile is given in the official edition of the Statutes of the Realm. Stubbs gives the Latin text in Select Charters, etc., 296–306.

In his treatment of the Great Charter, the venerable instrument of English popular rights, Innocent, with monarchical instinct, turned to the side of John and against the cause of popular liberty. Stephen Langton, who had released John from the ban of excommunication, espoused the popular cause, thereby incurring the condemnation of the pope. The agreement into which the barons entered to resist the king’s despotism was treated by him with delay and subterfuge. Rebellion and civil war followed. As he had before been unscrupulous in his treatment of the Church, so now to win support he made fulsome religious promises he probably had no intention of keeping. To the clergy he granted freedom of election in the case of all prelates, greater and less. He also made a vow to lead a crusade. After the battle of Bouvines, John found himself forced to return to England, and was compelled by the organized strength of the barons to meet them at Runnymede, an island in the Thames near Windsor, where he signed and swore to keep the Magna Charta, June 15, 1215.

This document, with the Declaration of Independence, the most important contract in the civil history of the English-speaking peoples, meant defined law as against uncertain tradition and the arbitrary will of the monarch. It was the first act of the people, nobles, and Church in combination, a compact of Englishmen with the king. By it the sovereign agreed that justice should be denied or delayed to no one, and that trial should be by the peers of the accused. No taxes were to be levied without the vote of the common council of the realm, whose meetings were fixed by rule. The single clause bearing directly upon the Church confirmed the freedom of ecclesiastical elections.

After his first paroxysms of rage, when he gnawed sticks and straw like a madman,211 John called to his aid Innocent, on the ground that he had attached his seal under compulsion. In fact, he had yielded to the barons with no intention of keeping his oath. The pope made the fatal mistake of taking sides with perjured royalty against the reasonable demands of the nation. In two bulls212 he solemnly released John from his oath, declaring that "the enemy of the human race had, by his crafty arts, excited the barons against him." He asserted that the "wicked audacity of the barons tended to the contempt of the Apostolic see, the detriment of kingly prerogative, the disgrace of the English nation, and the endangering of the cross." He praised John for his Christian submission to the will of the supreme head of Christendom, and the pledge of annual tribute, and for his vow to lead a crusade. As for the document itself, he "utterly reprobated and condemned it" as "a low and base instrument, yea, truly wicked and deserving to be reprobated by all, especially because the king’s assent was secured by force."213  Upon pain of excommunication he forbade its observance by the king, and pronounced it, null and void for all time."214

The sentence of excommunication which Innocent fulminated against the refractory barons, Langton refused to publish. For his disobedience the pope suspended him from his office, Nov. 4, 1215, and he was not allowed to resume it till 1219, when Innocent had been in his grave three years. London, which supported the popular cause, was placed under the interdict, and the prelates of England who took the popular side Innocent denounced, as worse than Saracens, worse than those open enemies of the cross."215

The barons, in self-defence, called upon the Dauphin of France to accept the crown. He landed in England, but was met by the papal ban.216  During the struggle Innocent died, but his policy was continued by his successor. Three months later, Oct. 19, 1216, John died at Newark, after suffering the loss of his goods in crossing the Wash. He was thrown into a fever, but the probable cause of his death was excess in eating and drinking.217  He was buried at his own request in Worcester cathedral. In his last moments he received the sacrament and commended his children to the protection of the pope, who had stood by him in his last conflict.

§ 41. The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.

Literature.—Works of Innocent, Migne, 217.—Mansi, xxii.—Labbaeus, xi.—Potthast, Regesta, I. 437 sqq., gives a summary of the canons of the council.—Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 872 sqq.—Hurter, II. 538 sqq.—Lea: Hist. of the Inquisition, passim.

The Fourth Lateran, otherwise known as the Twelfth Oecumenical Council, was the closing act of Innocent’s pontificate, and marks the zenith of the papal theocracy. In his letter of convocation,218 the pope announced its object to be the reconquest of Palestine and the betterment of the Church. The council was held in the Lateran and had three sittings, Nov. 11, 20, 30, 1215. It was the most largely attended of the synods held up to that time in the west. The attendance included 412 bishops, 800 abbots and priors, and a large number of delegates representing absent prelates. There were also present representatives of the emperor Frederick II., the emperor Henry of Constantinople, and the kings of England, France, Aragon, Hungary, Jerusalem, and other crowned heads.219

The sessions were opened with a sermon by the pope on Luke 22:15, "With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." It was a fanciful interpretation of the word "Passover," to which a threefold sense was given: a physical sense referring to the passage of Jerusalem from a state of captivity to a state of liberty, a spiritual sense referring to the passage of the Church from one state to a better one, and a heavenly sense referring to the transition from the present life to the eternal glory. The deliverances are grouped under seventy beads, and a special decree bearing upon the recovery of Jerusalem. The headings concern matters of doctrine and ecclesiastical and moral practice. The council’s two most notable acts were the definition of the dogma of transubstantiation and the establishment of the institution of the Inquisition against heretics.

The doctrinal decisions, contained in the first two chapters, give a comprehensive statement of the orthodox faith as it concerns the nature of God, the Incarnation, the unity of the Church, and the two greater sacraments. Here transubstantiation is defined as the doctrine of the eucharist in the universal Church, "outside of which there is no possibility of salvation."220

The council expressly condemned the doctrine of Joachim of Flore, that the substance of the Father, Son, and Spirit is not a real entity, but a collective entity in the sense that a collection of men is called one people, and a collection of believers one Church. It approved the view of Peter the Lombard whom Joachim had opposed on the ground that his definition would substitute a quaternity for the trinity in the Godhead.221

Amaury of Bena, a teacher in Paris accused of pantheistic teachings, was also condemned by name. He had been accused and appeared before the pope at Rome in 1204, and recalled his alleged heresy.222  He or his scholars taught that every one in whom the Spirit of God is, becomes united with the body of Christ and cannot sin.

The treatment of heretics received elaborate consideration in the important third decree.223  The ecclesiastical and moral regulations were the subject of sixty-seven decrees. The rank of the patriarchal sees is fixed, Rome having the first place.224  It was an opportune moment for an array of these dignitaries, as Innocent had established a Latin succession in the Eastern patriarchates which had not already been filled by his predecessors. To avoid the confusion arising from the diversity of monastic rules, the establishment of monastic orders was thenceforth forbidden.225

The clergy are warned against intemperance and incontinence and forbidden the chase, hunting dogs and falcons, attendance upon theatrical entertainments, and executions, duelling, and frequenting inns. Prescriptions are given for their dress. Confession is made compulsory at least once a year, and imprisonment fixed as the punishment of priests revealing the secrets of the confessional. The tenure of more than one benefice is forbidden except by the pope’s dispensation. New relics are forbidden as objects of worship, except as they might receive the approbation of the pope. Physicians are bidden, upon threat of excommunication, to urge their patients first of all to summon a priest, as the well-being of the soul is of more value than the health of the body. Jews and Saracens are enjoined to wear a different dress from the Christians, lest unawares carnal intercourse be had between them. The Jews are bidden to keep within doors during passion week and excluded from holding civil office.226

The appointment of a new crusade was the council’s last act, and it was set to start in 1217. Christians were commanded to refrain from all commercial dealings with the Saracens for four years. To all contributing to the crusade, as well as to those participating in it, full indulgence was promised, and added eternal bliss.227  Another important matter which was settled, as it were in a committee room of the council, was the appeal of Raymund VI., count of Toulouse, for redress from the rapacity of Simon de Montfort, the fierce leader of the crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France.

The doctrinal statements and ecclesiastical rules bear witness to the new conditions upon which the Church had entered, the Latin patriarchs being in possession in the East, and heresy threatening its unity in Southern France and other parts of the West.

Innocent III. survived the great council only a few months and died scarcely fifty-six years old, without having outlived his authority or his fame. He had been fortunate in all his undertakings. The acts of statecraft, which brought Europe to his feet, were crowned in the last scene at the Lateran Council by the pious concern of the priest. To his successors he bequeathed a continent united in allegiance to the Holy See and a Church strengthened in its doctrinal unity. Notwithstanding his great achievements combining mental force and moral purpose, the Church has found no place for Innocent among its canonized saints.

The following are a few testimonies to his greatness:—

Gregorovius declares228 that, although he was

"Not a creative genius like Gregory I. and Gregory VII., he was one of the most important figures of the Middle Ages, a man of earnest, sterling, austere intellect, a consummate ruler, a statesman of penetrating judgment, a high-minded priest filled with religious fervor, and at the same time with an unbounded ambition and appalling force of will, a true idealist on the papal throne, yet an entirely practical monarch and a cool-headed lawyer .... No pope has ever had so lofty and yet so real consciousness of his power as Innocent III., the creator and destroyer of emperors and kings."

Ranke says:229 —

"A superstitious reverence such as Friedrich Hurter renders to him in his remarkable book I am not at all able to accord. Thus much, however, is certain. He stands in the foremost rank of popes, having world-wide significance. The task which he placed before himself he was thoroughly equal to. Leaving out a few dialectic subtleties, one will not find in him anything that is really small. In him was fulfilled the transition of the times."

Baur gives this opinion:230 —

"With Innocent III. the papacy reached its height and in no other period of its long history did it enjoy such an undisturbed peace and such a glorious development of its power and splendor. He was distinguished as no other in this high place not only by all the qualities of the ruler but by personal virtues, by high birth and also by mind, culture, and learning."231

Hagenbach:232 —

"Measured by the standard of the papacy, Innocent is beyond controversy the greatest of all the popes. Measured by the eternal law of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that which here seems great and mighty in the eyes of the world, seems little in the kingdom of heaven, and amongst those things which call forth wonder and admiration, only that will stand which the Spirit of God, who never wholly withdraws from the Church, wrought in his soul. How far such operation went on, and with what result, who but God can know?  He alone is judge."

CHAPTER VI.

THE PAPACY FROM THE DEATH OF INNOCENT III. TO BONIFACE VIII. 1216–1294.

Literature: The Chronicles of this period, e.g. M. Paris, ed. by Luard the Franciscan Salimbene, ed. by A. Bertani, Parma, 1857; Engl. trans. by Coulton, Lond., 1906.—Richard a St. Germano: chronicon rerum per orbem gestarum, 1189–1243; the chronicon Placentinum and Chron. de rebus in Italia gestis, ed. by Huillard-Bréholles, Paris, 1856. For Honorius III., Opera omnia, ed. by Horay in Medii aevi bibliotheca patristica, I.-V., Paris, 1879–1883, and Regesta, ed. by the order of Leo XIII., by P. Presutti, Rome, 1888, 1 vol. For Gregory IX., Opera omnia, Antwerp, 1572. Fifteen volumes of Gregory’s letters are in MS. in the Vatican: Les Registres de Grégoire IX., 1227–1235, Recueil des bulles publiées d’après les MSS. originaux du Vatican par  L. Auvray, Paris, 1896. For Innocent IV., Registres d’Innocent IV., ed. by E. Berger, 3 vols. Paris, 1884–1897.—The Regesta of Potthast and Böhmer.—Lives of the Popes, in Muratori (two), and by Platina.—Mansi: Councils, XXIII.

C. Höfler: Kaiser Friedrich II., Munich, 1844.—Ed. Winkelmann: Gesch. Kaisers Friedrichs II., etc., 2 vols., Berlin and Reval, 1863–1865.—T. L. Kington: Hist. of Fred. II., Emp. of the Romans, 2 vols., London, 1862.—F. W. Schirrmacher: Kaiser Fried. II., 3 vols. Götting., 1859–1865.—Huillard-Bréholles: Historia diplomatica Friderici II, etc., 6 vols., two parts each, Paris, 1852–1861. A great work. Vol. I. gives the life of Frederick, the other volumes documents.—Huillard-Bréholles: Vie et correspondance de la Vigne, ministre de l’empéreur Fred. II., Paris, 1866.—E. Winkelmann: Kaiser Friedrich II., 2 vols. Leipzig, 1896 sq.—P. Balan: Storia di Gregorio IX. e di suoi tempi, 3 vols., Modena, 1872 sq.—Chambrier: Die letzten Hohenstaufen u. das Papstthum, Basel, 1876.—Raumer: Gesch. der Hohenstaufen, 5th ed., Leipzig, 1878. Vol. V.—J. Zeller: L’emp. Fred. II. et la chute de l’emp. Germ. du moyen âge, Paris, 1885.—J. Felten: Papst Gregor IX., Freib. im Br., 1886.—Ugo Balzani: The Popes and the Hohenstaufen, London, 1888.—C. Köhler: D. Verhältniss Fried. II. zu den Päpsten seiner Zeit., Breslau, 1888.—J. Clausen: Papst Honorius III., Bonn, 1895.—H. Fisher: The Mediaeval Empire, 2 vols. London, 1898.—F. Fehling: Fried. II. und die römischen Kardinäle, Berlin, 1901.—H. Krabbo: Die Besetzung der deutschen Bisthümer unter der Regierung Kaiser Fried. II., 1212–1250, Berlin, 1901.—Th. Franz: Der grosse Kampf zwischen Kaiserthum und Papstthum zur Zeit des Hohenstaufen, Fried. II., Berlin, 1903. Not important.—W. Knebel: Kaiser Fried. II. und Papst Honorius III., 1220–1227, Münster, 1905, pp. 151.—Hefele, V.—Wattenbach, 196–211.—Gregorovius, V.—Ranke, VIII.—Freeman: The Emp. Fred. II. in his Hist. Essays, 1st series, pp. 283–313, London, 1871.—Art. Fred. II., by Funk, in Wetzer-Welte, IV. 2029–2035, and arts. in Herzog, Gregory IX., by Mirbt, and Honorius III., and Innocent IV., by Schulz, with the copious Lit. there given. Also, Das Briefbuch des Thomas von Gasta, Justitiars Fried. II. in Quellen u. Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, Rome, 1895.

§ 42. The Papal Conflict with Frederick II Begun.

Between the death of Innocent III. and the election of Boniface VIII., a period of eighty years, sixteen popes sat on the throne, several of whom were worthy successors of the greatest of the pontiffs. The earlier half of the period, 1216–1250, was filled with the gigantic struggle between the papacy and Frederick II., emperor of Germany and king of Sicily. The latter half, 1250–1294, was marked by the establishment of peace between the papacy and empire, and the dominance of the French, or Norman, influence over the papacy.

Scarcely was Innocent in his grave when Frederick II. began to play his distinguished rôle, and to engage the papacy in its last great struggle with the empire—a desperate struggle, as it proved to be, in which the empire was at last completely humbled. The struggle kept Europe in turmoil for nearly forty years, and was waged with three popes,—Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Innocent IV., the last two, men of notable ability. During all this time Frederick was the most conspicuous figure in Christendom. The struggle was carried on not only in the usual ways of diplomacy and arms, but by written appeals to the court of European opinion.

Frederick II., the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, was born near Ancona, 1194. His father, Henry VI., had joined Sicily to the empire by his marriage with the Norman princess Constance, through whom Frederick inherited the warm blood of the south. By preference and training, as well as birth, he was a thorough Italian. He tarried on German soil only long enough to insure his crown and to put down the rebellion of his son.233  He preferred to hold his court at Palermo, which in his letters he called "the Happy City." The Romans elected him king in 1196, and at his father’s death a year later he became king of Sicily. The mother soon followed, and by her will "the child of Apulia," as Frederick was called, a boy then in his fourth year, passed under the guardian care of Innocent III. After Otto’s star had set, he was crowned king at Frankfurt, 1212, and at Aachen, 1215. Frederick was not twenty when Innocent’s career came to an end.

Honorius III., 1216–1227, was without the ambition or genius of his predecessor Innocent III. He confirmed the rules and witnessed the extraordinary growth of the two great mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. He crowned Peter of Courtenay, emperor of Byzantium, the only Byzantine emperor to receive his crown in Rome.234  The pope’s one passion was the deliverance of Jerusalem. To accomplish this, he was forced to look to Frederick. To induce him to fulfill the vow made at his coronation, in 1215, to lead a crusade, was the main effort of his pontificate. The year 1217, the date set for the crusade to start, passed by. Honorius fixed date after date with Frederick, but the emperor had other plans and found excuses for delay. In 1220 he and his wife Constantia received the imperial crown at the hands of the pope in Rome.235  For the second time Frederick took the cross. He also seemed to give proof of piety by ratifying the privileges of the Church, announcing his determination to suppress heresy, and exempting all churches and clerics from taxation. In the meantime his son Henry had been elected king of the Romans, and by that act and the pope’s subsequent ratification the very thing was accomplished which it had been Innocent’s shrewd policy to prevent; namely, the renewal of the union of the empire and the kingdom of Sicily in one hand. Frederick was pursuing his own course, but to appease Honorius he renewed the pledge whereby Sicily was to remain a fief of the papal see.

The fall of Damietta,236 in 1221, was adapted to fire a sincere crusader’s zeal; but Frederick was too much engaged in pleasure and absorbed in his scheme for extending his power in Italy to give much attention to the rescue of the holy places. In hope of inflaming his zeal and hastening the departure of the crusade, Honorius encouraged the emperor’s marriage with Iolanthe, daughter of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and heiress of the crown.237  The nuptials were no sooner celebrated than Frederick assumed the title of king of Jerusalem; but he continued to show no sign of making haste. His aggravating delays were enough to wear out a more amiable disposition than even Honorius possessed. A final agreement was made between them in 1225, which gave the emperor a respite of two years more, and he swore upon penalty of excommunication to set forth October, 1227. Four months before the date appointed for the crusade Honorius died.

The last year of Honorius’s reign, Frederick entered openly upon the policy which involved him in repeated wars with the papacy and the towns of Northern Italy. He renewed the imperial claims to the Lombard cities. Upon these claims the Apostolic see could not look with complacency, for, if realized, they would have made Frederick the sovereign of Italy and cramped the temporal power of the papacy within a limited and at best an uncertain area.

§ 43. Gregory IX. and Frederick II. 1227–1241.

An antagonist of different metal was Gregory IX., 1227–1241. Innocent III., whose nephew he was, seemed to have risen again from the grave in him. Although in years he was more than twice as old as the emperor,238 Gregory was clearly his match in vigor of mind and dauntless bravery, and greatly his superior in moral purpose. In asserting the exorbitant claims of the papacy he was not excelled by any of the popes. He was famed for eloquence and was an expert in the canon law.

Setting aside Frederick’s spurious pretexts for delaying the crusade, Gregory in the first days of his pontificate insisted upon his fulfilling his double pledge made at his coronation in 1215 and his coronation as emperor in Rome, 1220.239  Frederick at last seemed ready to comply. The crusaders assembled at Brindisi, and Frederick actually set off to sea accompanied by the pope’s prayers. Within three days of leaving port the expedition returned, driven back by an epidemic, as Frederick asserted, or by Frederick’s love of pleasure, as Gregory maintained.

The pope’s disappointment knew no bounds. He pronounced against Frederick the excommunication threatened by Honorius.240  As the sentence was being read in the church at Anagni, the clergy dashed their lighted tapers to the floor to indicate the emperor’s going out into darkness. Gregory justified his action in a letter to the Christian princes, and spoke of Frederick as "one whom the Holy See had educated with much care, suckled at its breast, carried on its shoulders, and whom it has frequently rescued from the hands of those seeking his life, whom it has brought up to perfect manhood at much trouble and expense, exalted to the honors of kingly dignity, and finally advanced to the summit of the imperial station, trusting to have him as a wand of defence and the staff of our old age." He declared the plea of the epidemic a frivolous pretence and charged Frederick with evading his promises, casting aside all fear of God, having no respect for Jesus Christ. Heedless of the censures of the Church, and enticed away to the usual pleasures of his kingdom, he had abandoned the Christian army and left the Holy Land exposed to the infidels.241

In a vigorous counter appeal to Christendom, Frederick made a bold protest against the unbearable assumption of the papacy, and pointed to the case of John of England as a warning to princes of what they might expect. "She who calls herself my mother," he wrote, "treats me like a stepmother." He denounced the secularization of the Church, and called upon the bishops and clergy to cultivate the self-denial of the Apostles.

In 1228 the excommunication was repeated and places put under the interdict where the emperor might be. Gregory was not without his own troubles at Rome, from which he was compelled to flee and seek refuse at Perugia.

The same year, as if to show his independence of papal dictation and at the same time the sincerity of his crusading purpose, the emperor actually started upon a crusade, usually called the Fifth Crusade. On being informed of the expedition, the pope excommunicated, him for the third time and inhibited the patriarch of Jerusalem and the Military Orders from giving him aid. The expedition was successful in spite of the papal malediction, and entering Jerusalem Frederick crowned himself king in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus we have the singular spectacle of the chief monarch of Christendom conducting a crusade in fulfillment of a vow to two popes while resting under the solemn ban of a third. Yea, the second crusader who entered the Holy City as a conqueror, and the last one to do so, was at the time not only resting under a triple ban, but was excommunicated a fourth time on his return from his expedition to Europe. He was excommunicated for not going, he was excommunicated for going, and he was excommunicated on coming back, though it was not in disgrace but in triumph.

The emperor’s troops bearing the cross were met on their return to Europe by the papal army whose banners were inscribed with the keys. Frederick’s army was victorious. Diplomacy, however, prevailed, and emperor and pope dined together at Anagni (Sept. 1, 1230) and arranged a treaty.

The truce lasted four years, Gregory in the meantime composing, with the emperor’s help, his difficulties with the municipality of Rome. Again he addressed Frederick as "his beloved son in Christ." But formal terms of endearment did not prevent the renewal of the conflict, this time over Frederick’s resolution to force his authority upon the Lombard cities. This struggle engaged him in war with the papacy from this time forward to his death, 1235–1250. After crushing the rebellion of his son Henry in the North, and seeing his second son Conrad crowned, the emperor hastened south to subdue Lombardy.242  "Italy," he wrote in answer to the pope’s protests, 1236, "Italy is my heritage, as all the world well knows." His arms seemed to be completely successful by the battle of Cortenuova, 1237. But Gregory abated none of his opposition. "Priests are fathers and masters of kings and princes," he wrote, "and to them is given authority over men’s bodies as well as over their souls." It was his policy to thwart at all hazards Frederick’s designs upon upper Italy, which he wanted to keep independent of Sicily as a protection to the papal state. The accession of the emperor’s favorite son Enzio to the throne of Sardinia, through his marriage with the princess Adelasia, was a new cause of offence to Gregory.243  For Sardinia was regarded as a papal fief, and the pope had not been consulted in the arrangements leading to the marriage. And so for the fifth time, in 1239, Gregory pronounced upon the emperor the anathema.244  The sentence charged him with stirring up sedition against the Church in Rome from which Gregory had been forced to flee in the conflicts between the Ghibelline and Guelf parties, with seizing territory belonging to the Holy See, and with violence towards prelates and benefices.245

A conflict with the pen followed which has a unique place in the history of the papacy. Both parties made appeal to public opinion, a thing which was novel up to that time. The pope compared246 the emperor to the beast in the Book of Revelation which "rose out of the sea full of words of blasphemy and had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and like a leopard in its other parts, opens its mouth in blasphemies against God’s name, his dwelling place, and the saints in heaven. This beast strives to grind everything to pieces with his claws and teeth of iron and to trample with his feet on the universal world." He accused Frederick of lies and perjuries, and called him "the son of lies, heaping falsehood on falsehood, robber, blasphemer, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the dragon emitting waters of persecution from his mouth like a river." He made the famous declaration that "as the king of pestilence, Frederick had openly asserted that the world had been deceived by three impostors,247 — Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed, two of these having died in glory and Jesus having been suspended on the cross. Moreover, he had denied the possibility of God’s becoming incarnate of a virgin."248

This extensive document is, no doubt, one of the most vehement personal fulminations which has ever proceeded from Rome. Epithets could go no further. It is a proof of the great influence of Frederick’s personality and the growing spirit of democracy in the Italian cities that the emperor was not wholly shunned by all men and crushed under the dead weight of such fearful condemnations.

In his retort,249 not to be behind his antagonist in Scripture quotations, Frederick compared Gregory to the rider on the red horse who destroyed peace on the earth. As the pope had called him a beast, bestia, so he would call him a wild beast, belua, antichrist, a second Balaam, who used the prerogative of blessing and cursing for money. He declared that, as God had placed the greater and lesser lights in the heavens, so he had placed the priesthood, sacerdotium, and the empire, imperium, on the earth. But the pope had sought to put the second light into eclipse by denying the purity of Frederick’s faith and comparing him to the beast rising out of the sea. Indignantly denying the accusation of the three impostors, he declared his faith in the "only Son of God as coequal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, begotten from the beginning of all worlds. Mohammed’s body is suspended in the air, but his soul is given over to the torments of hell."

Gregory went further than words and offered to the count of Artois the imperial crown, which at the instance of his brother, Louis IX. of France, the count declined. The German bishops espoused Frederick’s cause. On the other hand, the mendicant friars proved true allies of the pope. The emperor drove the papal army behind the walls of Rome. In spite of enemies within the city, the aged pontiff went forth from the Lateran in solemn procession, supplicating deliverance and accompanied by all the clergy, carrying the heads of the Apostles Peter and Paul.250  When Frederick retreated, it seemed as if the city had been delivered by a miracle. However untenable we may regard the assumptions of the Apostolic see, we cannot withhold admiration from the brave old pope.

Only one source of possible relief was left to Gregory, a council of the whole Church, and this he summoned to meet in Rome in 1241. Frederick was equal to the emergency, and with the aid of his son Enzio checkmated the pope by a manoeuvre which, serious as it was for Gregory, cannot fail to appeal to the sense of the ludicrous. The Genoese fleet conveying the prelates to Rome, most of them from France, Northern Italy, and Spain, was captured by Enzio, and the would-be councillors, numbering nearly one hundred and including Cardinal Otto, a papal legate, were taken to Naples and held in prison.251  In his letter of condolence to the imprisoned dignitaries the pope represents them as awaiting their sentence from the new Pharaoh.252  Brilliant as was the coup de main, it was destined to return to trouble the inventor. And the indignity heaped by Frederick upon the prelates was at a later time made a chief charge against him.

Gregory died in the summer of 1241, at an age greater than the age of Leo XIII. at that pope’s death. But he died, as it were, with his armor on and with his face turned towards his imperial antagonist, whose army at the time lay within a few hours of the city. He had fought one of the most strenuous conflicts of the Middle Ages. To the last moment his intrepid courage remained unabated. A few weeks before his death he wrote, in sublime confidence in the papal prerogative: "Ye faithful, have trust in God and hear his dispensations with patience. The ship of Peter will for a while be driven through storms and between rocks, but soon, and at a time unexpected, it will rise again above the foaming billows and sail on unharmed, over the placid surface."

The Roman communion owes to Gregory IX. the collection of decretals which became a part of its statute book.253  He made the Inquisition a permanent institution and saw it enforced in the city of Rome. He accorded the honors of canonization to the founders of the mendicant orders, St. Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Spain.

§ 44. The First Council of Lyons and the Close of Frederick’s Career. 1241–1250.

Additional Literature.—Mansi, XXIII. 605 sqq.; Hefele, V. 105 sqq.— C. Rodenberg: Inn. IV. und das Königreich Sicilien, Halle, 1892.—H. Weber: Der Kampf zwischen Inn. IV. und Fried. II. Berlin, 1900.—P. Aldinger: Die Neubesetzung der deutschen Bisthümer unter Papst Inn. IV., Leipzig, 1900.—J. Maulbach: Die Kardinäle und ihre Politikum die Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts, 1243–1268, Bonn, 1902.

Gregory’s successor, Coelestin IV., survived his election less than three weeks. A papal vacancy followed, lasting the unprecedented period of twenty months. The next pope, Innocent IV., a Genoese, was an expert in the canon law and proved himself to be more than the equal of Frederick in shrewdness and quickness of action. At his election the emperor is reported to have exclaimed that among the cardinals he had lost a friend and in the pope gained an enemy. Frederick refused to enter into negotiations looking to an agreement of peace until he should be released from the ban. Innocent was prepared to take up Gregory’s conflict with great energy. All the weapons at the command of the papacy were brought into requisition: excommunication, the decree of a general council, deposition, the election of a rival emperor, and the active fomenting of rebellion in Frederick’s dominions. Under this accumulation of burdens Frederick, like a giant, attempted to bear up, but in vain.254  All Western Christendom was about to be disturbed by the conflict. Innocent’s first move was to out-general his antagonist by secretly leaving Rome. Alexander III. had set the precedent of delivering himself by flight. In the garb of a knight he reached Civita Vecchia, and there met by a Genoese galley proceeded to Genoa, where he was received with the ringing of bells and the acclamation, "Our soul is escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowler." Joined by cardinals, he continued his journey to Lyons, which, though nominally a city of the empire, was by reason of its proximity to France a place of safe retreat.

The pope’s policy proved to be a master stroke. A deep impression in his favor was made upon the Christian world by the sight of the supreme pontiff in exile.255  The division of European sentiment is shown by the method which a priest of Paris resorted to in publishing Innocent’s sentence of excommunication against the emperor. "I am not ignorant," he said, "of the serious controversy and unquenchable hatred that has arisen between the emperor and the pope. I also know that one has done harm to the other, but which is the offender I do not know. Him, however, as far as my authority goes, I denounce and excommunicate, that is, the one who harms the other, whichever of the two it be, and I absolve the one which suffers under the injury which is so hurtful to the cause of Christendom."

Innocent was now free to convoke again the council which Frederick’s forcible measures had prevented from assembling in Rome. It is known as the First Council of Lyons, or the Thirteenth Oecumenical Council, and met in Lyons, 1245. The measures the papal letter mentioned as calling for action were the provision of relief for the Holy Land and of resistance to the Mongols whose ravages had extended to Hungary, and the settlement of matters in dispute between the Apostolic see and the emperor. One hundred and forty prelates were present. With the exception of a few representatives from England and one or two bishops from Germany, the attendance was confined to ecclesiastics from Southern Europe.256  Baldwin, emperor of Constantinople, was there to plead his dismal cause. Frederick was represented by his able counsellor, Thaddeus of Suessa.

Thaddeus promised for his master to restore Greece to the Roman communion and proceed to the Holy Land in person. Innocent rejected the promises as intended to deceive and to break up the council. The axe, he said, was laid at the root, and the stroke was not to be delayed. When Thaddeus offered the kings of England and France as sureties that the emperor would keep his promise, the pope sagaciously replied that in that case he would be in danger of having three princes to antagonize. Innocent was plainly master of the situation. The council was in sympathy with him. Many of its members had a grudge against Frederick for having been subjected to the outrage of capture and imprisonment by him.

At one of the first sessions the pope delivered a sermon from the text, "See, ye who pass this way, was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow?"  He dwelt upon five sorrows of the Church corresponding to the five wounds of Christ: the savage cruelty of the Mongols or Tartars, the schism of the Greeks, the growth of heresy, the desolation of Jerusalem, and the active persecution of the Church by the emperor. The charges against Frederick were sacrilege and heresy. As for the charge of heresy, Thaddeus maintained that it could be answered only by Frederick in person, and a delay of two weeks was granted that he might have time to appear. When he failed to appear, Innocent pronounced upon him the ban and declared him deposed from his throne. The deliverance set forth four grave offences; namely, the violation of his oath to keep peace with the Church, sacrilege in seizing the prelates on their way to the council, heresy, and withholding the tribute due from Sicily, a papal fief. Among the grounds for the charge of heresy were Frederick’s contempt of the pope’s prerogative of the keys, his treaty with the Sultan on his crusade, allowing the name of Mohammed to be publicly proclaimed day and night in the temple, having intercourse with Saracens, keeping eunuchs over his women, and giving his daughter in marriage to Battacius, an excommunicated prince. The words of the fell sentence ran as follows: —

"Seeing that we, unworthy as we are, hold on earth the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said to us in the person of St. Peter, ’whatsoever ye shall bind on earth,’ etc., do hereby declare Frederick, who has rendered himself unworthy of the honors of sovereignty and for his crimes has been deposed from his throne by God, to be bound by his sins and cast off by the Lord and we do hereby sentence and depose him; and all who are in any way bound to him by an oath of allegiance we forever release and absolve from that oath; and by our apostolic authority, we strictly forbid any one obeying him. We decree that any who gives aid to him as emperor or king shall be excommunicated; and those in the empire on whom the selection of an emperor devolves, have full liberty to elect a successor in his place."257

Thaddeus appealed from the decision to another council.258  His master Frederick, on hearing what was done, is said to have asked for his crown and to have placed it more firmly on his head. In vain did the king of France, meeting Innocent at Cluny, make a plea for the emperor, finding, as the English chronicler said, "but very little of that humility which he had hoped for in that servant of the servants of God." Frederick’s manifesto in reply to the council’s act was addressed to the king of England and other princes, and reminded them of the low birth of the prelates who set themselves up against lawful sovereigns, and denied the pope’s temporal authority. He warned them that his fate was likely to be theirs and announced it as his purpose to fight against his oppressors. It had been his aim to recall the clergy from lives of luxury and the use of arms to apostolic simplicity of manners. When this summons was heeded, the world might expect again to see miracles as of old. True as these principles were, and bold and powerful as was their advocate, the time had not yet come for Europe to espouse them, and the character of Frederick was altogether too vulnerable to give moral weight to his words.259

The council’s discussions of measures looking to a new crusade did not have any immediate result. The clergy, besides being called upon to give a twentieth for three years, were instructed to see to it that wills contained bequests for the holy enterprise.

One of the interesting figures at the council was Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, who protected against ecclesiastical abuses in England, such as the appointment of unworthy foreigners to benefices, and the exorbitant exactions for the papal exchequer. The pope gave no relief, and the English bishops were commanded to affix their seals confirming King John’s charter of tribute.260  The only notable achievement of the council of Lyons was the defeat of Frederick. Innocent followed it up with vigorous measures. Frederick’s manifesto he answered with the reassertion of the most extravagant claims. The bishop of Rome was intrusted with authority to judge kings. If, in the Old Testament, priests deposed unworthy monarchs, how much more right had the vicar of Christ so to do. Innocent stirred up the flames of rebellion in Sicily and through the mendicant orders fanned the fires of discontent in Germany. Papal legates practically usurped the government of the German Church from 1246 to 1254. In the conflict over the election of bishops to German dioceses, Innocent usually gained his point, and in the year 1247–1248 thirteen of his nominees were elected.261  At the pope’s instigation Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, was chosen emperor, 1246, to replace Frederick, and at his death, a year later, William of Holland.

In Italy civil war broke out. Here the mendicant orders were also against him. He met the elements of revolt in the South and subdued them. Turning to the North, success was at first on his side but soon left him. One fatality followed another. Thaddeus of Suessa fell, 1248. Peter de Vinea, another shrewd counsellor, had abandoned his master. Enzio, the emperor’s favorite son, was in prison.262  Utter defeat fell upon him before Parma and forced him to abandon all Lombardy. As if there had not been cursings enough, Innocent, in 1247, had once more launched the anathema against him. Frederick’s career was at an end. He retired to Southern Italy, a broken man, and died near Lucera, an old Samnite town, Dec. 13, 1250. His tomb is at the side of the tomb of his parents in the cathedral of Palermo. He died absolved by the archbishop of Palermo and clothed in the garb of the Cistercians.263

Stupor mundi, the Wonder of the World—this is the title which Matthew Paris applies to Frederick II.264  Europe had not seen his equal as a ruler since the days of Charlemagne. For his wide outlook, the diversity of his gifts, and the vigor and versatility of his statecraft he is justly compared to the great rulers.265  Morally the inferior of his grandfather, Barbarossa, Frederick surpassed him in intellectual breadth and culture. He is the most conspicuous political figure of his own age and the most cosmopolitan of the Middle Ages. He was warrior, legislator, statesman, man of letters. He won concessions in the East and was the last Christian king of Jerusalem to enter his realm. He brought order out of confusion in Sicily and Southern Italy and substituted the uniform legislation of the Sicilian Constitutions for the irresponsible jurisdiction of ecclesiastical court and baron. It has been said he founded the system of centralized government266 and prepared the way for the monarchies of later times. He struck out a new path by appealing to the judgment of Christendom. With an enlightenment above his age, he gave toleration to Jew and Mohammedan.

In his conflict with the pope, he was governed, not by animosity to the spiritual power, but by the determination to keep it within its own realm. In genuine ideal opposition to the hierarchy he went farther than any of his predecessors.267  Döllinger pronounced him the greatest and most dangerous foe the papacy ever had.268  Gregory and Innocent IV. called him "the great dragon" and declared he deserved the fate of Absalom. And yet he did not resort to his grandfather’s measures and set up an anti-pope.269  Perhaps he refrained from so doing in sheer disdain.

It has been surmised that Frederick was not a Christian. Gregory charged him specifically with blasphemy. But Frederick as specifically disavowed the charge of making Christ an impostor, and swore fealty to the orthodox faith.270  If he actually threw off the statement of the three impostors as charged, it must be regarded as the intemperate expression of a mood.271  Neander expresses the judgment that Frederick denied revealed religion. Schlosser withholds from him all religious and moral faith. Ranke and Freeman leave the question of his religious faith an open one. Hergenröther makes the distinction that as a man he was an unbeliever, as a monarch a strict Catholic. Gregorovius holds that he cherished convictions as sincerely catholic as those professed by the Ghibelline Dante. Fisher emphasizes his singular detachment from the current superstitious of his day.272  Huillard-Bréholles advances the novel theory that his movement was an attempt to usurp the sovereign pontificate and found a lay papacy and to combine in himself royalty and papal functions.

Frederick was highly educated, a friend of art and learning. He was familiar with Greek, Latin, German, French, and Arabic, as well as Italian. He founded the University of Naples. He was a precursor of the Renaissance and was himself given to rhyming. He wrote a book on falconry.273  It was characteristic of the man that while he was besieging Milan in 1239, he was sending orders back to Sicily concerning his forests and household concerns, thus reminding us of Napoleon and his care for his capital while on his Russian and other campaigns. Like other men of the age, he cultivated astrology. Michael Scott was his favorite astrologer. To these worthy traits, Frederick added the luxurious habits and apparently the cruelty of an Oriental despot. Inheriting the island of which the Saracens had once been masters, he showed them favor and did not hesitate to appropriate some of their customs. He surrounded himself with a Saracenic bodyguard274 and kept a harem.275

Freeman’s judgment must be regarded as extravagant when he says that "in mere genius, in mere accomplishments, Frederick was surely the greatest prince that ever wore a crown."276  Bryce pronounces him "one of the greatest personages in history."277  Gregorovius declares that, with all his faults he was the most complete and gifted character of his century." Dante, a half-century after his death, puts the great emperor among the heresiarchs in hell. When the news of his death reached Innocent IV., that pontiff wrote to the Sicilians that heaven and hell rejoiced at it. A juster feeling was expressed by the Freiburger Chronicle when it said, "If he had loved his soul, who would have been his equal?"278

§ 45. The Last of the Hohenstaufen.

Additional Literature.—Letters of Urban IV. in Mansi, vol. XXIII. Potthast: Regesta, 1161–1650.—Les Registres of Alexander IV., Recueil des bulles de ce pape d’après les MSS. originaux des archives du Vatican, Paris, 1886, of Urban IV., Paris, 1892, of Clement IV., Paris, 1893–1904.—*Döllinger: Der Uebergang des Papstthums an die Franzosen, in Akademische Vorträge, III. pp. 212–222, Munich, 1891. Lives of the popes in Muratori and Platina.

The death of Frederick did not satisfy the papacy. It had decreed the ruin of the house of the Hohenstaufen. The popes denounced its surviving representatives as "the viperous brood" and, "the poisonous brood of a dragon of poisonous race."

In his will, Frederick bade his son Conrad accord to the Church her just rights and to restore any he himself might have unjustly seized but on condition that she, as a merciful and pious mother, acknowledge the rights of the empire. His illegitimate son, the brilliant and princely Manfred, he appointed his representative in Italy during Conrad’s absence.

Innocent broke up from Lyons in 1251, little dreaming that, a half century later, the papacy would remove there to pass an exile of seventy years.279  After an absence of six years, he entered Rome, 1253. The war against Frederick he continued by offering the crown of Sicily to Edmund, son of the English Henry III. Conrad descended to Italy and entered Naples, making good his claim to his ancestral crown. But the pope met him with the sentence of excommunication. Death, which seemed to be in league with the papacy against the ill-fated German house, claimed Conrad in 1254 at the age of 26. He left an only son, Conradin, then two years old.280

Conrad was soon followed by Innocent to the grave, 1254. Innocent lies buried in Naples. He was the last of the great popes of an era that was hastening to its end. During the reign, perhaps, of no other pope had the exactions of Rome upon England been so exorbitant and brazen. Matthew Paris charged him with making the Church a slave and turning the papal court into a money changer’s table. To his relatives, weeping around his death-bed, he is reported to have exclaimed. "Why do you weep, wretched creatures?  Do I not leave you all rich?"

Under the mild reign of Alexander IV., 1254–1261, Manfred made himself master of Sicily and was crowned king at Palermo, 1258.

Urban IV., 1261–1264, was consecrated at Viterbo and did not enter Rome during his pontificate. He was a shoemaker’s son and the first Frenchman for one hundred and sixty years to occupy the papal throne. With him the papacy came under French control, where it remained, with brief intervals, for more than a century. Urban displayed his strong national partisanship by his appointment of seven French cardinals in a conclave of seventeen. The French influence was greatly strengthened by his invitation to Charles of Anjou, youngest brother of Louis IX. of France, to occupy the Sicilian throne, claiming the right to do so on the basis of the inherent authority of the papacy and on the ground that Sicily was a papal fief. For centuries the house of Anjou, with Naples as its capital, was destined to be a disturbing element in the affairs, not only of Italy, but of all Europe.281  It stood for a new alliance in the history of the papacy as their ancestors, the Normans, had done in the age of Hildebrand. Called as supporter and ward of the papacy, Charles of Anjou became dictator of its policy and master of the political situation in Italy.

Clement IV., 1265–1268, one of the French cardinals appointed by Urban, had a family before he entered a Carthusian convent and upon a clerical career. He preached a crusade against Manfred, who had dared to usurp the Sicilian throne, and crowned Charles of Anjou in Rome, 1266. Charles promised to pay yearly tribute to the Apostolic see. A month later, Feb. 26, 1266, the possession of the crown of Sicily was decided by the arbitrament of arms on the battlefield of Benevento, where Manfred fell.

On the youthful Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., the hopes of the proud German house now hung. His title to the imperial throne was contested from the first. William of Holland had been succeeded, by the rival emperors, the rich Duke Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., elected in 1257 by four of the electors, and Alfonso of Castile, elected by the remaining three.282  Conradin marched to Italy to assert his rights, 1267, was met by the papal ban, and, although received by popular enthusiasm even in Rome, he was no match for the tried skill of Charles of Anjou. His fortunes were shattered on the battlefield of Tagliacozzo, Aug. 23, 1268. Taken prisoner, he was given a mock trial. The Bolognese lawyer, Guido of Suzarra, made an ineffective plea that the young prince had come to Italy, not as a robber but to claim his inheritance. The majority of the judges were against the death penalty, but the spirit of Charles knew no clemency, and at his instance Conradin was executed at Naples, Oct. 29, 1268. The last words that fell from his lips, as he kneeled for the fatal stroke, were words of attachment to his mother, "O mother, what pain of heart do I make for you!"

With Conradin the male line of the Hohenstaufen became extinct. Its tragic end was enacted on the soil which had always been so fatal to the German rulers. Barbarossa again and again met defeat there; and in Southern Italy Henry VI., Frederick II., Conrad, Manfred, and Conradin were all laid in premature graves.

At Conradin’s burial Charles accorded military honors, but not religious rites. The Roman crozier had triumphed over the German eagle. The Swabian hill, on which the proud castle of the Hohenstaufen once stood, looks down in solemn silence upon the peaceful fields of Württemberg and preaches the eloquent sermon that "all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass." The colossal claims of the papacy survived the blows struck again and again by this imperial family, through a century. Italy had been exposed for three generations and more to the sword, rapine, and urban strife. Europe was weary of the conflict. The German minnesingers and the chroniclers of England and the Continent were giving expression to the deep unrest. Partly as a result of the distraction bordering on anarchy, the Mongols were threatening to burst through the gates of Eastern Germany. It was an eventful time. Antioch, one of the last relics of the Crusaders in Asia Minor, fell back to the Mohammedans in 1268. Seven years earlier the Latin empire of Constantinople finally reverted to its rightful owners, the Greeks.

In the mighty duel which has been called by the last great Roman historian283 the grandest spectacle of the ages, the empire had been humbled to the dust. But ideas survive, and the principle of the sovereign right of the civil power within its own sphere has won its way in one form or another among European peoples and their descendants. And the fate of young Conradin was not forgotten. Three centuries later it played its part in the memories of the German nation, and through the pictures of his execution distributed in Martin Luther’s writings contributed to strengthen the hand of the Protestant Reformer in his struggle with the papacy, which did not fail.

§ 46. The Empire and Papacy at Peace. 1271–1294.

Popes.—Gregory X., 1271–1276; Innocent V., Jan. 21-June 22, 1276; Adrian V., July 12-Aug. 16, 1276; John XXI., 1276–1277; Nicolas III., 1277–1280; Martin IV., 1281–1285; Honorius IV., 1285–1287; Nicolas IV., 1288–1292; Coelestin V., July 5-Dec. 13, 1294.

Literature.—Potthast: Regest., pp. 1651–1922. Les Registres de Grégoire X. et Jean XXI., 3 vols., Paris, 1892–1898, de Nicolas III., Paris, 1904, d’Honorius IV., Paris, 1886, de Nicolas IV., Paris, 1880. Lives of the above popes in Muratori: Rer. Ital. scr., vol. III.—Mansi: Councils, XXIV.—Hefele, VI. 125 sqq.—Turinaaz, La patrie et la famille de Pierre de Tarantaise, pape sous le nom d’Innocent V., Nancy, 1882.—H. Otto: Die Beziehungen Rudolfs von Hapsburg zu Papst Gregor X., Innsbruck, 1895.—A. Demski: Papst Nicolas III., Münster, 1903, pp. 364.—R. Sternfeld: Der Kardinal Johann Gaëtan Orsini, Papst Nic. III., 1244–1277, Berlin, 1905, pp. 376. Reviewed at length by Haller in "Theol. Literaturzeitung," 1906, pp. 173–178.—H. Finke: Concilienstudien zur Gesch. des 13ten Jahrhunderts, Münster, 1891.—For Coelestin V., Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., Münster, 1902; H. Schulz, Peter von Murrhone, 1894; and Celidonio, Vita di S. Pietro del Morrone, 1896.—The articles on the above popes in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog (Gregory X, by Mirbt, Coelestin V., Innocent V., Honorius IV., etc., by Hans Schulz).—The Histories of Gregorovius, Ranke, etc.

The death of Clement IV. was followed by the longest interregnum the papacy has known, lasting thirty-three months, Nov. 29, 1268, to Sept. 1, 1271. It was due largely to the conflict between the French and Italian parties in the conclave and was prolonged in spite of the stern measures taken by the municipality of Viterbo, where the election occurred. Cardinals were even imprisoned. The new pope, Gregory X., archdeacon of Liège, was not an ordained priest. The news reached him at Acre while he was engaged in a pilgrimage. A man of peaceful and conciliatory spirit, he is one of the two popes of the thirteenth century who have received canonization. Pursuing the policy of keeping the empire and the kingdom of Southern Italy apart, and setting aside the pretensions of Alfonso of Castile,284 he actively furthered the election of Rudolf of Hapsburg to the imperial throne.

The elevation of Rudolf inaugurated a period of peace in the relations of the papacy and the empire. Gregory X. had gained a brilliant victory. The emperor was crowned at Aachen, Oct. 24, 1273. The place of the Hohenstaufen was thus taken by the Austrian house of Hapsburg, which has continued to this day to be a reigning dynasty and loyal to the Catholic hierarchy. In the present century its power has been eclipsed by the Hohenzollern, whose original birth seat in Württemberg is a short distance from that of the Hohenstaufen.285  The establishment of peace by Rudolf’s election is celebrated by Schiller in the famous lines:286—

"Then was ended the long, the direful strife,

That time of terror, with no imperial lord."

Rudolf was a man of decided religious temper, was not ambitious to extend his power, and became a just and safe ruler. He satisfied the claims of the papacy by granting freedom to the chapters in the choice of bishops, by promising to protect the Church in her rights, and by renouncing all claim to Sicily and the State of the Church. In a tone of moderation Gregory wrote: "It is incumbent on princes to protect the liberties and rights of the Church and not to deprive her of her temporal property. It is also the duty of the spiritual ruler to maintain kings in the full integrity of their authority."

The emperor remained on good terms with Gregory’s successors, Innocent V., a Frenchman, Adrian V., a Genoese, who did not live to be consecrated, and John XXI., the only priest from Portugal who has worn the tiara. Their combined reigns lasted only eighteen months. John died from the falling of a ceiling in his palace in Viterbo.

The second Council of Lyons, known also as the Fourteenth Oecumenical Council, was called by Gregory and opened by him with a sermon. It is famous for the attempt made to unite the Greek and Western Churches and the presence of Greek delegates, among them Germanus, formerly patriarch of Constantinople. His successor had temporarily been placed in confinement for expressing himself as opposed to ecclesiastical union. A termination of the schism seemed to be at hand. The delegates announced the Greek emperor’s full acceptance of the Latin creed, including the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son and the primacy of the bishop of Rome. The Apostles’ Creed was sung in Greek and Latin. Papal delegates were sent to Constantinople to consummate the union; but the agreement was rejected by the Greek clergy. It is more than surmised that the Greek emperor, Michael Palaeologus, was more concerned for the permanency of the Greek occupation of Constantinople than for the ecclesiastical union of the East and the West upon which the hearts of popes had been set so long.

Other important matters before the council were the rule for electing a pope, and the reception of a delegation of Mongols who sought to effect a union against the Mohammedans. Several members of the delegation received baptism. The decree of the Fourth Lateran, prohibiting new religious orders, was reaffirmed.

The firm and statesmanlike administration of Nicolas III. checked the ambition of Charles of Anjou, who was plotting for the Greek crown. He was obliged to abjure the senatorship of Rome, which he had held for ten years, and to renounce the vicariate of Tuscany. Bologna for the first time acknowledged the papal supremacy. Nicolas has been called the father of papal nepotism,287 and it is partly for his generosity to his relatives that, before the generation had passed away, Dante put him in hell:288—

"To enrich my whelps, I laid my schemes aside

My wealth I’ve stowed,—my person here."

Again, in 1281, the tiara passed to a Frenchman, a man of humble birth, Martin IV. Charles was present at Viterbo when the election took place and was active in securing it.289  Martin showed himself completely complaisant to the designs of the Angevin house and Charles was once more elected to the Roman senatorship. Seldom had a pope been so fully the tool of a monarch.290  In Southern Italy Frenchmen were everywhere in the ruling positions. But this national insult was soon to receive a memorable rebuke.

In resentment at the hated French régime, the Sicilians rose up, during Easter week, 1282, and enacted the bloody massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers. All the Normans on the island, together with the Sicilian wives of Normans, were victims of the merciless vengeance. The number that fell is estimated at from eight to twenty thousand. The tragedy gets its name from the tradition that the Sicilians fell to their work at the ringing of the vesper bell.291  Charles’s rule was thenceforward at an end on the Panormic isle. Peter of Aragon, who married Constance, the daughter of Manfred and the granddaughter of Frederick II., was crowned king. For nearly two hundred years thereafter the crowns of Sicily and Naples were kept distinct.

Not to be untrue to Charles, Martin hurled the anathema at the rebels, placed Aragon and Sicily under the interdict, and laid Christendom under a tribute of one-tenth for a crusade against Peter. The measures were in vain, and Charles’s galleys met with defeat off the coast of Calabria. Charles and Martin died the same year, 1285, the latter, like Gregory X., at Perugia.

After an interregnum of ten months, Nicolas IV. ascended the papal throne, the first Franciscan to be elevated to the office. His reign witnessed the evacuation of Ptolemais or Acre, the last possession of the Crusaders in Syria. Nicolas died in the midst of futile plans to recover the Holy Places.

Another interregnum of twenty-seven months followed, April 4, 1292 to July 5, 1294, when the hermit Peter de Murrhone, Coelestin V., was raised to the papal throne, largely at the dictation of Charles II. of Naples. His short reign forms a curious episode in the annals of the papacy. His career shows the extremes of station from the solitude of the mountain cell to the chief dignity of Europe. He enjoyed the fame of sanctity and founded the order of St. Damian, which subsequently honored him by taking the name of Coelestines. The story ran that he had accomplished the unprecedented feat of hanging his cowl on a sunbeam. At the time of his elevation to the papal throne Coelestin was seventy-nine.

An eye-witness, Stefaneschi, has described the journey to the hermit’s retreat by three bishops who were appointed to notify him of his election. They found him in a rude hut in the mountains, furnished with a single barred window, his hair unkempt, his face pale, and his body infirm. After announcing their errand they bent low and kissed his sandals. Had Peter been able to go forth from his anchoret solitude, like Anthony of old, on his visits to Alexandria, and preach repentance and humility, he would have presented an exhilarating spectacle to after generations. As it is, his career arouses pity for his frail and unsophisticated incompetency to meet the demands which his high office involved.

Clad in his monkish habit and riding on an ass, the bridle held by Charles II. and his son, Peter proceeded to Aquila, where he was crowned, only three cardinals being present. Completely under the dominance of the king, Coelestin took up his residence in Naples. Little was he able to battle with the world, to cope with the intrigues of factions, and to resist the greedy scramble for office which besets the path of those high in position. In simple confidence Coelestin gave his ear to this counsellor and to that, and yielded easily to all applicants for favors. His complaisancy to Charles is seen in his appointment of cardinals. Out of twelve whom he created, seven were Frenchmen, and three Neapolitans. It would seem as if he fell into despair at the self-seeking and worldliness of the papal court, and he exclaimed, "O God, while I rule over other men’s souls, I am losing the salvation of my own." He was clearly not equal to the duties of the tiara. In vain did the Neapolitans seek by processions to dissuade him from resigning. Clement I. had abjured his office, as had also Gregory VI. though at the mandate of an, emperor. Peter issued a bull declaring it to be the pope’s right to abdicate. His own abdication he placed on the ground "of his humbleness, the quest of a better life and an easy conscience, on account of his frailty of body and want of knowledge, the badness of men, and a desire to return to the quietness of his former state." The real reason for his resigning is obscure. The story went that the ambitious Cardinal Gaëtani, soon to become Coelestin’s successor, was responsible for it. He played upon the hermit’s credulity by speaking through a reed, inserted through the wall of the hermit’s chamber, and declared it to be heaven’s will that his reign should come to an end.292  As the Italians say, the story, if not true, was well invented, si non è vero è ben trovato.

In abandoning the papacy the departing pontiff forfeited all freedom of movement. He attempted to flee across the Adriatic, but in vain. He was kept in confinement by Boniface VIII. in the castle of Fumone, near Anagni, until his death, May 19, 1296. What a world-wide contrast the simplicity of the hermit’s reign presents to the violent assertion and ambitious designs of Boniface, the first pope of a new period!

Coelestin’s sixth centenary was observed by pious admirers in Italy.293  Opinions have differed about him. Petrarch praised his humility. Dante, with relentless severity held him up as an example of moral cowardice, the one who made the great renunciation.

"Behold! that abject one appeared in view

Who, mean of soul, the great refusal made."294

Vidi e cenobbi la ombra di colui

Che fece per viltate il gran rifuto.

A new era for the papacy was at hand.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CRUSADES.

"No idle fancy was it when of yore

Pilgrims in countless numbers braved the seas,

And legions battled on the farthest shore,

Only to pray at Thy sepulchral bed,

Only in pious gratitude to kiss

The sacred earth on which Thy feet did tread."

Uhland, An den Unsichtbaren.

§ 47. Literature on the Crusades as a Whole.

Sources.—First printed collection of writers on the Crusades by Jac. Bongars: Gesta Dei (and it might be added, et diaboli) per Francos, sive orientalium expeditionum, etc., 2 vols. Hanover, 1611. Mostly reports of the First Crusade and superseded.—The most complete collection, edited at great expense and in magnificent style, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades publié par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, viz. Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols. Paris, 1841–1895; Histt. Orientaux, 4 vols. 1872–1898; Histt. Grecs, 2 vols. 1875–1881; Documents Arméniens, 1869. The first series contains, in vols. I., II., the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum of William of Tyre and the free reproduction in French entitled L’Estoire de Eracles Empéreur et la Conqueste de la terre d’ Outremer. Vol. III. contains the Gesta Francorum; the Historia de Hierolosymitano itinere of Peter Tudebodus, Hist. Francorum qui ceperunt Jherusalem of Raymund of Aguilers or Argiles; Hist. Jherusolymitana or Gesta Francorum Jherusalem perigrinantium 1095–1127, of Fulcher of Chartres; Hist. Jherusol. of Robert the Monk, etc. Vol. IV. contains Hist. Jherusolem. of Baldric of Dol (Ranke, VIII 82, speaks highly of Baldric as an authority); Gesta Del per Francos of Guibert of Nogent; Hist. Hier. of Albert of Aachen, etc. Vol. V. contains Ekkehardi Hierosolymita and a number of other documents. Migne’s Latin Patrology gives a number of these authors, e.g., Fulcher and Petrus Tudebodus, vol. 155; Guibert, vol. 156; Albert of Aachen and Baldric, vol. 166; William of Tyre, vol. 201.—Contemporary Chronicles of Ordericus Vitalis, Roger of Hoveden, Roger of Wendover, M. Paris, etc.—Reports of Pilgrimages, e.g., Count Riant: Expéditions et pèlerinages des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte au temps des Croisades, Paris, 1865, 1867; R. Röhricht: Die Pilgerfahrten nach d. heil. Lande vor den Kreuzzügen, 1875; Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heil. Lande, new ed. Innsbruck, 1900; H. Schrader: D. Pilgerfahrten nach. d. heil. Lande im Zeitalter vor den Kreuzzügen, Merzig, 1897. Jaffé: Regesta.—Mansi: Concilia.—For criticism of the contemporary writers see Sybel, Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzugs, 2d ed. 1881, pp. 1–143.—H. Prutz (Prof. in Nancy, France): Quellenbeiträge zur Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, Danzig, 1876.—R. Röhricht: Regesta regni Hierosolymitani 1097–1291, Innsbruck, 1904, an analysis of 900 documents.

Modern Works.—*Friedrich Wilken (Libr. and Prof. in Berlin, d. 1840): Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, 7 vols. Leipzig, 1807–1832.—J. F. Michaud: Hist. des croisades, 3 vols. Paris, 1812, 7th ed. 4 vols. 1862. Engl. trans. by W. Robson, 3 vols., London, 1854, New York, 1880.—*Röhricht (teacher in one of the Gymnasia of Berlin, d. 1905; he published eight larger works on the Crusades): Beitäge zur Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, 2 vols. Berlin, 1874–1878; D. Deutschen im heil. lande, Innsbruck, 1894; Gesch. d. Kreuzzüge, Innsbruck, 1898.—B. Kugler (Prof. in Tübingen): Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, illustrated, Berlin, 1880, 2d ed. 1891.—A. De Laporte: Les croisades et le pays latin de Jérusalem, Paris, 1881.—*Prutz: Kulturgesch. der Kreuzzüge, Berlin, 1883.—Ed. Heyck: Die Kreuzzüge und das heilige Land, Leipzig, 1900.—Histories in English by Mills, London, 1822, 4th ed. 2 vols. 1828; Keightley, London. 1847; Proctor, London, 1858; Edgar, London, 1860; W. E. Dutton, London, 1877; G. W. Cox, London, 1878; J. I. Mombert, New York, 1891; *Archer and Kingsford: Story of the Crus., New York, 1895; J. M. Ludlow: Age of the Crusades, New York, 1896; Art. Kreuzzüge by Funk in Wetzer-Welte, VII. 1142–1177.—Ph. Schaff in "Ref. Quarterly Rev." 1893, pp. 438–459.—J. L. Hahn: Ursachen und Folgen der Kreuzzüge, Greifswald, 1859.—Chalandon: Essai sur le régne d’Alexis Comnène, Paris, 1900.—*A. Gottlob: D. päpstlichen Kreuzzugs-Steuren des 13. Jahrhunderts, Heiligenstadt, 1892, pp. 278; Kreuzablass und Almosenablass, Stuttgart, 1906, pp. 314.—Essays on the Crusades by Munro, Prutz, Diehl, Burlington, 1903.—H. C. Lea: Hist. of Auric. Confession and Indulgences, vol. III.—See also *Gibbon, LVIII-LIX; Milman; Giesebrecht: Gesch. d. deutschen Kaiserzeit; Ranke: Weltgesch., VIII. pp. 88–111, 150–161, 223–262, 280–307; IX. 93–98; Finlay: Hist. of the Byznt. and Gr. Empires, 1057–1453; Hopf: Gesch. Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters, etc., Leipzig, 1868; Besant And Palmer: Hist. of Jerusalem, London, 1890; Guy Le Strange: Palestine under the Moslems, London, 1890.

The Poetry of the Crusades is represented chiefly by Raoul De Caen in Gestes de Tancrède; Torquato Tasso, the Homer of the Crusades, in La Jerusalemme liberata; Walter Scott: Tales of the Crusades, Talisman, Quentin Durward, etc. The older literature is given in full by Michaud; Bibliographie des Croisades, 2 vols. Paris, 1822, which form vols. VI., VII, of his Histoire des Croisades.

The First Crusade.

Sources.—See Literature above. Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitorum by an anonymous writer who took part in the First Crusade, in Bongars and Recueil des Croisades. See above. Also Hagenmeyer’s critical edition, Anonymi Gesta Francorum, Heidelberg, 1890.—Robertus, a monk of Rheims: Hist. Hierosolymitana, in Bongars, Rec., and Migne, vol. 155.—Baldrich, abp. of Dol: Hist. Hierosol., in Bongars, and Rec.—Raymund de Aguilers, chaplain to the count of Toulouse: Hist. Francorum, 1095–1099, in Bongars, Rec., and Migne, vol. 155. See Clem. Klein: Raimund von Aguilers, Berlin, 1892.—Fulcher, chaplain to the count of Chartres and then to Baldwin, second king of Jerusalem: Gesta Francorum Jerusalem perigrinantium to 1125, in Bongars, Rec., and Migne, vol. 155.—Guibert, abbot of Nogent: Gesta Dei per Francos, to 1110, in Bongars, Rec., Migne, vol. 156.—Albertus of Aachen (Aquensis): Hist. Hierosol. expeditionis, to 1121, in Bongars, Rec., Migne, vol. 166. See B. Kugler: Albert von Aachen, Stuttgart, 1885.—William of Tyre, abp. of Tyre, d. after 1184: Hist. rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, Basel, 1549, under the title of belli sacri historia, in Bongars, Rec., Migne, vol. 201, Engl. trans. by Wm. Caxton, ed. by Mary N. Colvin, London, 1893.—Anna Comnena (1083–1148): Alexias, a biogr. of her father, the Greek emperor, Alexis I., in Rec., Migne, Pat. Graeca, vol. 131; also 2 vols. Leipzig, 1884, ed. by Reifferscheid; also in part in Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremite, pp. 303–314.—Ekkehard of Urach: Hierosolymita seu libellus de oppressione, liberatione ac restauratione sanctae Hierosol., 1095–1187, in Rec., and Migne, vol. 154, and Hagenmeyer: Ekkehard’s Hierosolymita, Tübingen, 1877, also Das Verhältniss der Gesta Francorum zu der Hiersol. Ekkehards in "Forschungen zur deutschen Gesch.," Göttingen, 1876, pp. 21–42.—Petrus Tudebodus, of the diocese of Poitiers: Hist. de Hierosolymitano itinere, 1095–1099, largely copied from the Gesta Francorum, in Migne, vol. 155, and Recueil.—Radulphus Cadomensis (Raoul of Caen): Gesta Tancredi, 1099–1108, Migne, vol. 155, and Recueil.—Riant: Inventaire critique des lettres Hist. des croisades, I., II., Paris, 1880.—H. Hagenmeyer: Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes quae supersunt, etc., 1088–1100, Innsbruck, 1901. See the translation of contemporary documents in Trans. and Reprints, etc., published by Department of History of Univ. of Penn., 1894.

The Poetry of the First Crusade: La Chanson d’Antioche, ed. by Paulin Paris, 2 vols. Paris, 1848. He dates the poem 1125–1138, and Nouvelle Étude sur la Chanson d’Antioche, Paris, 1878.—La Conquête de Jérusalem, ed. by C. Hippeau, Paris, 1868. — Roman du Chevalier au Cygne et Godefroi de Bouillon.

Modern Works.—*H. Von Sybel: Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzugs, Düsseldorf, 1841, 3d ed. Leipzig, 1900. The Introduction contains a valuable critical estimate of the contemporary accounts. Engl. trans. of the Introd. and four lectures by Sybel in 1858, under the title, The Hist. and Lit. of Crusades, by Lady Duff Gordon, London, 1861.—J. F. A. Peyre: Hist. de la première croisade, Paris, 1859.—*Hagenmeyer: Peter der Eremite, Leipzig, 1879; Chron. de la premiére croisade, 1094–1100, Paris, 1901.—Röhricht: Gesch. des ersten Kreuzzuges, Innsbruck, 1901.—F. Chalandon: Essai sur le règne d’Alexis I. Comnène, 1081–1118, Paris, 1900.—Paulot: Un pape Français, Urbain II., Paris, 1902.—D. C. Munro: The Speech of Urban at Clermont. "Am. Hist. Rev." 1906, pp. 231–242.—Art. in Wetzer-Welte, by Funk, Petrus von Amiens, Vol. IX.

§ 48. Character and Causes of the Crusades.

"’O, holy Palmer!’ she began, —

For sure he must be sainted man

Whose blessed feet have trod the ground

Where the Redeemer’s tomb is found."

Marmion, V. 21.

The Crusades were armed pilgrimages to Jerusalem under the banner of the cross. They form one of the most characteristic chapters of the Middle Ages and have a romantic and sentimental, as well as a religious and military, interest. They were a sublime product of the Christian imagination, and constitute a chapter of rare interest in the history of humanity. They exhibit the muscular Christianity of the new nations of the West which were just emerging from barbarism and heathenism. They made religion subservient to war and war subservient to religion. They were a succession of tournaments between two continents and two religions, struggling for supremacy,—Europe and Asia, Christianity and Mohammedanism. Such a spectacle the world has never seen before nor since, and may never see again.295

These expeditions occupied the attention of Europe for more than two centuries, beginning with 1095. Yea, they continued to be the concern of the popes until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Columbus signed an agreement April 17, 1492, to devote the proceeds of his undertaking beyond the Western seas to the recovery of the holy sepulchre. Before his fourth and last journey to America he wrote to Alexander VI., renewing his vow to furnish troops for the rescue of that sacred locality.296  There were seven greater Crusades, the first beginning in 1095, the last terminating with the death of St. Louis, 1270. Between these dates and after 1270 there were other minor expeditions, and of these not the least worthy of attention were the tragic Crusades of the children.

The most famous men of their age were identified with these movements. Emperors and kings went at the head of the armies,—Konrad III., Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II., Richard I. of England, Louis VII., Philip Augustus and Louis IX. of France, Andrew of Hungary. Fair women of high station accompanied their husbands or went alone to the seats of war, such as Alice of Antioch, Queen Eleanor of France, Ida of Austria, Berengaria, wife of Richard, and Margaret, queen of Louis IX. Kings’ sons shared the same risks, as Frederick of Swabia, Sigurd, and Edward, son of Henry III., accompanied by Eleanor, his wife. Priests, abbots, and higher ecclesiastics fought manfully in the ranks and at the head of troops.297  The popes stayed at home, but were tireless in their appeals to advance the holy project. With many of the best popes, as Honorius III. and Gregory X., the Crusades were their chief passion. Monks, like Peter the Hermit, St. Bernard, and Fulke of Neuilly, stirred the flames of enthusiasm by their eloquence. But if some of the best men of Europe and those most eminent in station went on the Crusades, so also did the lowest elements of European society,—thieves, murderers, perjurers, vagabonds, and scoundrels of all sorts, as Bernard bears witness.298  So it has been in all wars.

The crusading armies were designated by such titles as the army "of the cross," "of Christ," "of the Lord," "of the faith."299  The cross was the badge of the Crusaders and gave to them their favorite name. The Crusaders were called the soldiers of Christ300 pilgrims, peregrini, and "those signed with the cross," crucisignati or signatores. Determining to go on a crusade was called, "taking the cross" or, "taking the sign of the cross."301

Contemporaries had no doubt of the Crusades being a holy undertaking, and Guibert’s account of the First Crusade is called, "The Deeds of God, accomplished through the Franks," Gesta Dei per Francos.

Those who fell under Eastern skies or on their way to the East received the benefits of special indulgence for sins committed and were esteemed in the popular judgment as martyrs. John VIII., 872–882, pressed by the Saracens who were devastating Italy, had promised to soldiers fighting bravely against the pagans the rest of eternal life and, as far as it belonged to him to give it, absolution from sins.302  This precedent was followed by Urban II., who promised the first Crusaders marching to Jerusalem that the journey should be counted as a substitute for penance.303  Eugenius, 1146, went farther, in distinctly promising the reward of eternal life. The virtue of the reward was extended to the parents of those taking part in Crusades. Innocent III. included in the plenary indulgence those who built ships and contributed in any way, and promised to them "increase of eternal life." God, said the abbot Guibert, chronicler of the First Crusade, invented the Crusades as a new way for the laity to atone for their sins, and to merit salvation.304

The rewards were not confined to spiritual privileges. Eugenius III., in his exhortations to the Second Crusade, placed the Crusaders in the same category with clerics before the courts in the case of most offences.305  The kings of France, from 1188 to 1270 joined with the Holy See in granting to them temporal advantages, exemption from debt, freedom from taxation and the payment of interest. Complaint was frequently made by the kings of France that the Crusaders committed the most offensive crimes under cover of ecclesiastical protection. These complaints called forth from Innocent IV., 1246, and Alexander IV., 1260, instructions to the bishops not to protect such offenders. William of Tyre, in his account of the First Crusade, and probably reading into it some of the experiences of a later date, says (bk. I. 16), "Many took the cross to elude their creditors."306

If it is hard for us to unite the idea of war and bloodshed with the achievement of a purely religious purpose, it must be remembered that no such feeling prevailed in the Middle Ages. The wars of the period of Joshua and the Judges still formed a stimulating example. Chrysostom, Augustine, and other Church Fathers of the fifth century lifted up their voices against the violent destruction of heathen temples which went on in Egypt and Gaul; but whatever compunction might have been felt for the wanton slaying of Saracens by Christian armies in an attitude of aggression, the compunction was not felt when the Saracens placed themselves in the position of holding the sacred sites of Palestine.

Bernard of Clairvaux said, pagans must not be slain if they may by other means be prevented from oppressing the faithful. However, it is better they should be put to death than that the rod of the wicked should rest on the lot of the righteous. The righteous fear no sin in killing the enemy of Christ. Christ’s soldier can securely kill and more safely die. When he dies, it profits him; when he slays, it profits Christ. The Christian exults in the death of the pagan because Christ is glorified thereby. But when he himself is killed, he has reached his goal.307  The conquest of Palestine by the destruction of the Saracens was considered a legal act justified by the claim which the pope had by reason of the preaching of the Apostles in that country and its conquest by the Roman empire.308

In answer to the question whether clerics might go to war, Thomas Aquinas replied in the affirmative when the prize was not worldly gain, but the defence of the Church or the poor and oppressed.309

To other testimonies to the esteem in which the Crusaders were held may be added the testimony of Matthew Paris. Summing up the events of the half-century ending with 1250, he says:310 "A great multitude of nobles left their country to fight faithfully for Christ. All of these were manifest martyrs, and their names are inscribed in indelible characters in the book of life." Women forced their husbands to take the cross.311  And women who attempted to hold their husbands back suffered evil consequences for it.312  Kings who did not go across the seas had a passion for the holy sepulchre. Edward I. commanded his son to take his heart and deposit it there, setting apart £2000 for the expedition. Robert Bruce also wanted his heart to find its last earthly resting-place in Jerusalem.

The Crusades began and ended in France. The French element was the ruling factor, from Urban II., who was a native of Châtillon, near Rheims, and Peter of Amiens, to St. Louis.313  The contemporary accounts of the Crusades are for the most part written by Frenchmen. Guibert of Nogent and other chroniclers regard them as especially the work of their countrymen. The French expression, outre-mer, was used for the goal of the Crusades.314  The movement spread through all Europe from Hungary to Scotland. Spain alone forms an exception. She was engaged in a crusade of her own against the Moors; and the crusades against the Saracens in the Holy Land and the Moors in Spain were equally commended by an oecumenical council, the First Lateran (can. 13). The Moors were finally expelled from Granada under Ferdinand and Isabella, and then, unwearied, Spain entered upon a new crusade against Jews and heretics at home and the pagan Indians of Mexico and Peru. In Italy and Rome, where might have been expected the most zeal in the holy cause, there was but little enthusiasm.315

The aim of the Crusades was the conquest of the Holy Land and the defeat of Islam. Enthusiasm for Christ was the moving impulse, with which, however, were joined the lower motives of ambition, avarice, love of adventure, hope of earthly and heavenly reward. The whole chivalry of Europe, aroused by a pale-faced monk and encouraged by a Hildebrandian pope, threw itself steel-clad upon the Orient to execute the vengeance of heaven upon the insults and barbarities of Moslems heaped upon Christian pilgrims, and to rescue the grave of the Redeemer of mankind from the grasp of the followers of the False Prophet. The miraculous aid of heaven frequently intervened to help the Christians and confound the Saracens.316

The Crusaders sought the living among the dead. They mistook the visible for the invisible, confused the terrestrial and the celestial Jerusalem, and returned disillusioned.317  They learned in Jerusalem, or after ages have learned through them, that Christ is not there, that He is risen, and ascended into heaven, where He sits at the head of a spiritual kingdom. They conquered Jerusalem, 1099, and lost it, 1187; they reconquered, 1229, and lost again, 1244, the city in which Christ was crucified. False religions are not to be converted by violence, they can only be converted by the slow but sure process of moral persuasion. Hatred kindles hatred, and those who take the sword shall perish by the sword. St. Bernard learned from the failure of the Second Crusade that the struggle is a better one which is waged against the sinful lusts of the heart than was the struggle to conquer Jerusalem.

The immediate causes of the Crusades were the ill treatment of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem and the appeal of the Greek emperor, who was hard pressed by the Turks. Nor may we forget the feeling of revenge for the Mohammedans begotten in the resistance offered to their invasions of Italy and Gaul.318  In 841 they sacked St. Peter’s, and in 846 threatened Rome for the second time, and a third time under John VIII. The Normans wrested a part of Sicily from the Saracens at the battle of Cerame, 1063, took Palermo, 1072, Syracuse, 1085, and the rest of Sicily ten years later. A burning desire took hold of the Christian world to be in possession of —

"those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross."

Shakespeare.

From an early day Jerusalem was the goal of Christian pilgrimage. The mother of Constantine, Helena, according to the legend, found the cross and certainly built the church over the supposed site of the tomb in which the Lord lay. Jerome spent the last period of his life in Bethlehem, translating the Scriptures and preparing for eternity. The effect of such examples was equal to the station and fame of the pious empress and the Christian scholar. In vain did such Fathers as Gregory of Nyssa,319 Augustine, and even Jerome himself, emphasize the nearness of God to believers wherever they may be and the failure of those whose hearts are not imbued with His spirit to find Him even at Jerusalem.

The movement steadily grew. The Holy Land became to the imagination a land of wonders, filled with the divine presence of Christ. To have visited it, to have seen Jerusalem, to have bathed in the Jordan, was for a man to have about him a halo of sanctity. The accounts of returning pilgrims were listened to in convent and on the street with open-mouthed curiosity. To surmount the dangers of such a journey in a pious frame of mind was a means of expiation for sins.320  Special laws were enacted in the pilgrim’s behalf. Hospitals and other beneficent institutions were erected for their comfort along the main route and in Jerusalem.

Other circumstances gave additional impulse to the movement, such as the hope of securing relics of which Palestine and Constantinople were the chief storehouses; and the opportunity of starting a profitable trade in silk, paper, spices, and other products of the East.

These pilgrimages were not seriously interrupted by the Mohammedans after their conquest of Jerusalem by Omar in 637, until Syria and Palestine passed into the hands of the sultans of Egypt three centuries later. Under Hakim, 1010, a fierce persecution broke out against the Christian residents of Palestine and the pilgrims. It was, however, of short duration and was followed by a larger stream of pilgrims than before. The favorite route was through Rome and by the sea, a dangerous avenue, as it was infested by Saracen pirates. The conversion of the Hungarians in the tenth century opened up the route along the Danube. Barons, princes, bishops, monks followed one after the other, some of them leading large bodies of pious tourists. In 1035 Robert of Normandy went at the head of a great company of nobles. He found many waiting at the gates of Jerusalem, unable to pay the gold bezant demanded for admission, and paid it for them. In 1054 Luitbert, bishop of Cambray, is said to have led three thousand pilgrims. In 1064 Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, was accompanied by the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Regensburg and twelve thousand pilgrims.321  In 1092 Eric, king of the Danes, made the long journey. A sudden check was put upon the pilgrimages by the Seljukian Turks, who conquered the Holy Land in 1076. A rude and savage tribe, they heaped, with the intense fanaticism of new converts, all manner of insults and injuries upon the Christians. Many were imprisoned or sold into slavery. Those who returned to Europe carried with them a tale of woe which aroused the religious feelings of all classes.

The other appeal, coming from the Greek emperors, was of less weight.322  The Eastern empire had been fast losing its hold on its Asiatic possessions. Romanus Diogenes was defeated in battle with the Turks and taken prisoner, 1071. During the rule of his successor, an emir established himself in Nicaea, the seat of the council called by the first Constantine, and extended his rule as far as the shores of the sea of Marmora. Alexius Comnenus, coming to the throne 1081, was less able to resist the advance of Islam and lost Antioch and Edessa in 1086. Thus pressed by his Asiatic foes, and seeing the very existence of his throne threatened, he applied for help to the west. He dwelt, it is true, on the desolations of Jerusalem; but it is in accordance with his imperial character to surmise that he was more concerned for the defence of his own empire than for the honor of religion.

This dual appeal met a response, not only in the religious spirit of Europe, but in the warlike instincts of chivalry; and when the time came for the chief figure in Christendom, Urban II., to lift up his voice, his words acted upon the sensitive emotions as sparks upon dry leaves.323

Three routes were chosen by the Crusaders to reach the Holy Land. The first was the overland route by way of the Danube, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. The second, adopted by Philip and Richard in the Third Crusade, was by the Mediterranean to Acre. The route of the last two Crusades, under Louis IX., was across the Mediterranean to Egypt, which was to be made the base of operations from which to reach Jerusalem.

§ 49. The Call to the Crusades.

"the romance

Of many colored Life that Fortune pours

Round the Crusaders."

Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets.

The call which resulted in the first expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem was made by Pope Urban II. at the Council of Clermont, 1095. Its chief popular advocate was Peter the Hermit.

The idea of such a movement was not born at the close of the eleventh century. Gregory VII., appealed to by Michael VII. of Constantinople, had, in two encyclicals, 1074,324 urged the cause upon all Christians, and summoned them to go to the rescue of the Byzantine capital. He reminded them that the pagans had forced their way almost up to the walls of the city and killed many thousands of their brethren like cattle.325  He also repeatedly called attention to the project in letters to the counts of Burgundy and Poitiers and to Henry IV. His ulterior hope was the subjection of the Eastern churches to the dominion of the Apostolic see. In the year 1074 he was able to announce to Henry IV. that fifty thousand Christian soldiers stood ready to take up arms and follow him to the East, but Gregory was prevented from executing his design by his quarrel with the emperor.

There is some evidence that more than half a century earlier Sergius IV., d. 1012, suggested the idea of an armed expedition against the Mohammedans who had "defiled Jerusalem and destroyed the church of the Holy Sepulchre." Earlier still, Sylvester II., d. 1003, may have urged the same project.326

Peter the Hermit, an otherwise unknown monk of Amiens, France, on returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, spread its tale of woes and horrors.327  In Jerusalem he had seen the archbishop, Simeon, who urged him to carry to Europe an appeal for help against the indignities to which the Christians were subjected. While asleep in the church of the Holy Sepulchre and after prayer and fasting, Peter had a dream in which Christ appeared to him and bade him go and quickly spread the appeal that the holy place might be purged.328  He hurried westward, carrying a letter from Simeon, and secured the ear of Urban at Rome. This is the story as told by William of Tyre and by Albert of Aachen before him. Alleged dreams and visions were potent forces during the First Crusade, and it is altogether likely that many a pilgrim, looking upon the desolation of Jerusalem, heard within himself the same call which Peter in imagination or in a real dream heard the Lord making to him.

Urban listened to Peter’s account as he had listened to the accounts of other returning pilgrims. He had seen citizens of Jerusalem itself with his own eyes, and exiles from Antioch, bewailing the plight of those places and begging for alms.329  Peter, as he journeyed through Italy and across the Alps,330 proclaimed the same message. The time for action had come.

At the Council of Piacenza, in the spring of 1095, envoys were present from the emperor Alexius Comnenus and made addresses, invoking aid against the advancing Turks.331  In the following November the famous Council of Clermont, Southern France, was held, which decreed the First Crusade.332  The council comprised a vast number of ecclesiastics and laymen, especially from France. Urban II. was present in person. On the day of the opening there were counted fourteen archbishops, two hundred and fifty bishops, and four hundred abbots. Thousands of tents were pitched outside the walls. On the ninth day, the pope addressed the multitude from a platform erected in the open air. It was a fortunate moment for Urban, and has been compared to Christmas Day, 800, when Charlemagne was crowned.333  The address was the most effective sermon ever preached by a pope or any other mortal. It stirred the deepest feelings of the bearers and was repeated throughout all Europe.334

At Clermont, Urban was on his native soil and probably spoke in the Provençal tongue, though we have only Latin reports. When we recall the general character of the age and the listening throng, with its mingled feelings of love of adventure and credulous faith, we cannot wonder at the response made to the impassioned appeals of the head of Christendom. Urban reminded his hearers that they, as the elect of God, must carry to their brethren in the East the succor for which they had so often cried out. The Turks, a "Persian people, an accursed race,"335 had devastated the kingdom of God by fire, pillage, and sword and advanced as far as the Arm of St. George (the Hellespont). Jerusalem was laid waste. Antioch, once the city of Peter, was under their yoke. As the knights loved their souls, so they should fight against the barbarians who had fought against their brothers and kindred.336  Christ himself would lead the advancing warriors across sea and mountains. Jerusalem, "the navel of the world," and the land fruitful above all others, a paradise of delights, awaited them.337  "The way is short, the toil will be followed by an incorruptible crown."338

A Frenchman himself, Urban appealed to his hearers as Frenchmen, distinguished above all other nations by remarkable glory in arms, courage, and bodily prowess. He appealed to the deeds of Charlemagne and his son Lewis, who had destroyed pagan kingdoms and extended the territory of the Church.

To this moving appeal the answer came back from the whole throng, "God will sit, God will sit."339  "It is," added the pope, "it is the will of God. Let these words be your war-cry when you unsheathe the sword. You are soldiers of the cross. Wear on your breasts or shoulders the blood-red sign of the cross. Wear it as a token that His help will never fail you, as the pledge of a vow never to be recalled."340  Thousands at once took the vow and sewed the cross on their garments or branded it upon their bare flesh. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, knelt at Urban’s feet, asking permission to go, and was appointed papal legate. The next day envoys came announcing that Raymund of Toulouse had taken the vow. The spring of 1096 was set for the expedition to start. Urban discreetly declined to lead the army in person.341

The example set at Clermont was followed by thousands throughout Europe. Fiery preachers carried Urban’s message. The foremost among them, Peter the Hermit, traversed Southern France to the confines of Spain and Lorraine and went along the Rhine. Judged by results, he was one of the most successful of evangelists. His appearance was well suited to strike the popular imagination. He rode on an ass, his face emaciated and haggard, his feet bare, a slouched cowl on his head,342 and a long mantle reaching to his ankles, and carrying a great cross. In stature he was short.343  His keen wit,344 his fervid and ready, but rude and unpolished, eloquence,345 made a profound impression upon the throngs which gathered to hear him.346  His messages seemed to them divine.347  They plucked the very hairs from his ass’ tail to be preserved as relics. A more potent effect was wrought than mere temporary wonder. Reconciliations between husbands and wives and persons living out of wedlock were effected, and peace and concord established where there were feud and litigation. Large gifts were made to the preacher. None of the other preachers of the Crusade, Volkmar, Gottschalk, and Emich,348 could compare with Peter the Hermit for eloquence and the spell he exercised upon the masses. He was held in higher esteem than prelates and abbots.349  And Guibert of Nogent says that he could recall no one who was held in like honor.350

In a few months large companies were ready to march against the enemies of the cross.

A new era in European history was begun.351  A new passion had taken hold of its people. A new arena of conquest was opened for the warlike feudal lord, a tempting field of adventure and release for knight and debtor, an opportunity of freedom for serf and villein. All classes, lay and clerical, saw in the expedition to the cradle of their faith a solace for sin, a satisfaction of Christian fancy, a heaven appointed mission. The struggle of states with the papacy was for the moment at an end. All Europe was suddenly united in a common and holy cause, of which the supreme pontiff was beyond dispute the appointed leader.

§ 50. The First Crusade and the Capture of Jerusalem.

"And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,

Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee’s flood,

Nor my eyes see the cross which He bowed Him to bear,

Nor my knees press Gethsemane’s garden of prayer,

Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near

To the meek and the lowly and penitent here;

And the voice of Thy Love is the same even now,

As at Bethany’s tomb or on Olivet’s brow."

Whittier.

The 15th of August, 1096, the Feast of the Assumption, fixed by the Council of Clermont for the departure of the Crusaders, was slow in coming. The excitement was too intense for the people to wait. As early as March throngs of both sexes and all ages began to gather in Lorraine and at Treves, and to demand of Peter the Hermit and other leaders to lead them immediately to Jerusalem.352  It was a heterogeneous multitude of devout enthusiasts and idle adventurers, without proper preparation of any kind. The priest forsook his cell, the peasant left his plough and placed his wife and children on carts drawn by oxen, and thus went forth to make the journey and to fight the Turk. At the villages along the route the children cried out, "Is this Jerusalem, is this Jerusalem?"  William of Malmesbury wrote (IV. 2), "The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship with lice, the Dane his drinking party, the Norwegian his raw fish. Fields were deserted of their husbandmen; whole cities migrated .... God alone was placed before their eyes."

The unwieldy bands, or swarms, were held together loosely under enthusiastic but incompetent leaders. The first swarm, comprising from twelve thousand to twenty thousand under Walter the Penniless,353 marched safely through Hungary, but was cut to pieces at the storming of Belgrade or destroyed in the Bulgarian forests. The leader and a few stragglers were all that reached Constantinople.

The second swarm, comprising more than forty thousand, was led by the Hermit himself. There were knights not a few, and among the ecclesiastics were the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishops of Chur and Strassburg. On their march through Hungary they were protected by the Hungarian king; but when they reached the Bulgarian frontier, they found one continuous track of blood and fire, robbery and massacre, marking the route of their predecessors. Only a remnant of seven thousand reached Constantinople, and they in the most pitiful condition, July, 1096. Here they were well treated by the Emperor Alexius, who transported them across the Bosphorus to Asia, where they were to await the arrival of the regular army. But they preferred to rove, marauding and plundering, through the rich provinces. Finally, a false rumor that the vanguard had captured Nicaea, the capital of the Turks in Asia Minor, allured the main body into the plain of Nicaea, where large numbers were surrounded and massacred by the Turkish cavalry. Their bones were piled into a ghastly pyramid, the first monument of the Crusade. Walter fell in the battle; Peter the Hermit had fled back to Constantinople before the battle began, unable to control his followers. The defeat of Nicaea no doubt largely destroyed Peter’s reputation.354

A third swarm, comprising fifteen thousand, mostly Germans under the lead of the monk Gottschalk, was massacred by the Hungarians.

Another band, under count Emich of Leiningen, began its career, May, 1096, by massacring and robbing the Jews in Mainz and other cities along the Rhine. Albert of Aachan,355 who describes these scenes, does not sympathize with this lawlessness, but saw a divine judgment in its almost complete annihilation in Hungary. This band was probably a part of the swarm, estimated at the incredible number of two hundred thousand,356 led by banners bearing the likeness of a goose and a goat, which were considered as bearers of the divine Spirit.357  Three thousand horsemen, headed by some noblemen, attended them, and shared the spoils taken from the Jews.358  When they arrived at the Hungarian frontier they had to encounter a regular army. A panic seized them, and a frightful carnage took place.

These preliminary expeditions of the first Crusade may have cost three hundred thousand lives.

The regular army consisted, according to the lowest statements, of more than three hundred thousand. It proceeded through Europe in sections which met at Constantinople and Nicaea. Godfrey, starting from lower Lorraine, had under him thirty thousand men on foot and ten thousand horse. He proceeded along the Danube and by way of Sofia and Philipoppolis, Hugh of Vermandois went by way of Rome, where he received the golden banner, and then, taking ship from Bari to Durazzo, made a junction with Godfrey in November, 1096, under the walls of Constantinople. Bohemund, with a splendid following of one hundred thousand horse and thirty thousand on foot,359 took the same route from Bari across the Adriatic. Raymund of Toulouse, accompanied by his countess, Elvira, and the papal legate, bishop Adhemar,360 traversed Northern Italy on his way eastward. The last of the main armies to start was led by Robert, duke of Normandy, and Stephen of Blois, who crossed the Alps, received the pope’s blessing at Lucca, and, passing through Rome, transported their men across the Adriatic from Bari and Brindisi.

Godfrey of Bouillon361 was accompanied by his brothers, Baldwin and Eustace. Hugh, count of Vermandois, was a brother of Philip I. of France. Robert of Normandy was the eldest son of William the Conqueror, and had made provision for his expedition by pledging Normandy to his brother, William Rufus, for ten thousand marks silver. Raymund, count of Toulouse, was a veteran warrior, who had a hundred thousand horse and foot at his command, and enjoyed a mingled reputation for wealth, wisdom, pride, and greed. Bohemund, prince of Tarentum, was the son of Robert Guiscard. His cousin, Tancred, was the model cavalier. Robert, count of Flanders, was surnamed, "the Sword and Lance of the Christians." Stephen, count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, was the owner of three hundred and sixty-five castles. These and many other noblemen constituted the flower of the French, Norman, and Italian nobility.

The moral hero of the First Crusade is Godfrey of Bouillon, a descendant of Charlemagne in the female line, but he had no definite command. He had fought in the war of emperor Henry IV. against the rebel king, Rudolf of Swabia, whom he slew in the battle of Mölsen, 1080. He had prodigious physical strength. With one blow of his sword he clove asunder a horseman from head to saddle. He was as pious as he was brave, and took the cross for the single purpose of rescuing Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel. He used his prowess and bent his ancestral pride to the general aim. Contemporary historians call him a holy monk in military armor and ducal ornament. His purity and disinterestedness were acknowledged by his rivals.

Tancred, his intimate friend, likewise engaged in the enterprise from pure motives. He is the poetic hero of the First Crusade, and nearly approached the standard of "the parfite gentil knyght" of Chaucer. He distinguished himself at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, and was one of the first to climb the walls of Jerusalem. He died in Antioch, 1112. His deeds were celebrated by Raoul de Caen and Torquato Tasso.362

The emperor Alexius, who had so urgently solicited the aid of Western Europe, became alarmed when he saw the hosts arriving in his city. They threatened to bring famine into the land and to disturb the order of his realm. He had wished to reap the benefit of the Crusade, but now was alarmed lest he should be overwhelmed by it. His subtle policy and precautions were felt as an insult by the Western chieftains. In diplomacy he was more than their match. They expected fair dealing and they were met by duplicity. He held Hugh of Vermandois in easy custody till he promised him fealty. Even Godfrey and Tancred, the latter after delay, made the same pledge. Godfrey declined to receive the emperor’s presents for fear of receiving poison with his munificence.

The Crusaders had their successes. Nicaea was taken June 19, 1097, and the Turks were routed a few weeks later in a disastrous action at Dorylaeum in Phrygia, which turned into a more disastrous flight. But a long year elapsed till they could master Antioch, and still another year came to an end before Jerusalem yielded to their arms. The success of the enterprise was retarded and its glory diminished by the selfish jealousies and alienation of the leaders which culminated in disgraceful conflicts at Antioch. The hardships and privations of the way were terrible, almost beyond description. The Crusaders were forced to eat horse flesh, camels, dogs, and mice, and even worse.363  The sufferings from thirst exceeded, if possible, the sufferings from hunger. To these discouragements was added the manifest treachery of the Greek emperor at the capture of Nicaea.364

During the siege of Antioch, which had fallen to the Seljuks, 1084, the ranks were decimated by famine, pestilence, and desertion, among the deserters being Stephen of Chartres and his followers. Peter the Hermit and William of Carpentarius were among those who attempted flight, but were caught in the act of fleeing and severely reprimanded by Bohemund.365  Immediately after the first recapture of the city, through the treachery of Phirouz, an Armenian, the Crusaders were themselves besieged by an army of two hundred thousand under Kerboga of Mosul. Their languishing energies were revived by the miraculous discovery of the holy lance, which pierced the Saviour’s side. This famous instrument was hidden under the altar of St. Peter’s church. The hiding place was revealed in a dream to Peter Barthelemy, the chaplain of Raymund of Toulouse.366  The sacred weapon was carried in front of the ranks by Raymund of Agiles, one of the historians of the Crusade, and it aroused great enthusiasm. Kerboga withdrew and the city fell into the Crusaders’ hands, June 28, 1098.367  Bohemund appropriated it to himself as his prize. Baldwin, after the fall of Nicaea, had done the same with Edessa, which became the easternmost citadel of the Crusaders. Others followed the examples of these leaders and went on independent expeditions of conquest. Of those who died at Antioch was Adhemar.

The culmination of the First Crusade was the fall of Jerusalem, July 15, 1099. It was not till the spring following the capture of Antioch, that the leaders were able to compose their quarrels and the main army was able again to begin the march. The route was along the coast to Caesarea and thence southeastward to Ramleh. Jerusalem was reached early in June. The army was then reduced to twenty thousand fighting men.368  In one of his frescos in the museum at Berlin, representing the six chief epochs in human history, Kaulbach has depicted with great effect the moment when the Crusaders first caught sight of the Holy City from the western hills. For the religious imagination it was among the most picturesque moments in history as it was indeed one of the most solemn in the history of the Middle Ages. The later narratives may well have the essence of truth in them, which represent the warriors falling upon their knees and kissing the sacred earth. Laying aside their armor, in bare feet and amid tears, penitential prayers, and chants, they approached the sacred precincts.369

A desperate but futile assault was made on the fifth day. Boiling pitch and oil were used, with showers of stones and other missiles, to keep the Crusaders at bay. The siege then took the usual course in such cases. Ladders, scaling towers, and other engines of war were constructed, but the wood had to be procured at a distance, from Shechem. The trees around Jerusalem, cut down by Titus twelve centuries before, had never been replaced. The city was invested on three sides by Raymund of Toulouse, Godfrey, Tancred, Robert of Normandy, and other chiefs. The suffering due to the summer heat and the lack of water was intense. The valley and the hills were strewn with dead horses, whose putrefying carcasses made life in the camp almost unbearable. In vain did the Crusaders with bare feet, the priests at their head, march in procession around the walls, hoping to see them fall as the walls of Jericho had fallen before Joshua.370  Help at last came with the arrival of a Genoese fleet in the harbor of Joppa, which brought workmen and supplies of tools and food.

Friday, the day of the crucifixion, was chosen for the final assault. A great tower surmounted by a golden cross was dragged alongside of the walls and the drawbridge let down. At a critical moment, as the later story went, a soldier of brilliant aspect371 was seen on the Mount of Olives, and Godfrey, encouraging the besiegers, exclaimed: "It is St. George the martyr. He has come to our help." According to most of the accounts, Letold of Tournay372  was the first to scale the walls. It was noticed that the moment of this crowning feat was three o’clock, the hour of the Saviour’s death.

The scenes of carnage which followed belong to the many dark pages of Jerusalem’s history and showed how, in the quality of mercy, the crusading knight was far below the ideal of Christian perfection. The streets were choked with the bodies of the slain. The Jews were burnt with their synagogues. The greatest slaughter was in the temple enclosure. With an exaggeration which can hardly be credited, but without a twinge of regret or a syllable of excuse, it is related that the blood of the massacred in the temple area reached to the very knees and bridles of the horses.373  "Such a slaughter of the pagans had never been seen or heard of. The number none but God knew."374

Penitential devotions followed easily upon the gory butchery of the sword. Headed by Godfrey, clad in a suit of white lined, the Crusaders proceeded to the church of the Holy Sepulchre and offered up prayers and thanksgivings. William of Tyre relates that Adhemar and others, who had fallen by the way, were seen showing the path to the holy places. The devotions over, the work of massacre was renewed. Neither the tears of women, nor the cries of children, nor the protests of Tancred, who for the honor of chivalry was concerned to save three hundred, to whom he had promised protection—none of these availed to soften the ferocity of the conquerors.

As if to enhance the spectacle of pitiless barbarity, Saracen prisoners were forced to clear the streets of the dead bodies and blood to save the city from pestilence. "They wept and transported the dead bodies out of Jerusalem," is the heartless statement of Robert the Monk.375

Such was the piety of the Crusaders. The religion of the Middle Ages combined self-denying asceticism with heartless cruelty to infidels, Jews, and heretics. "They cut down with the sword," said William of Tyre, "every one whom they found in Jerusalem, and spared no one. The victors were covered with blood from head to foot." In the next breath, speaking of the devotion of the Crusaders, the archbishop adds, "It was a most affecting sight which filled the heart with holy joy to see the people tread the holy places in the fervor of an excellent devotion." The Crusaders had won the tomb of the Saviour and gazed upon a fragment of the true cross, which some of the inhabitants were fortunate enough to have kept concealed during the siege.

Before returning to Europe, Peter the Hermit received the homage of the Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem, who remembered his visit as a pilgrim and his services in their behalf. This was the closing scene of his connection with the Crusades.376  Returning to Europe, he founded the monastery at Huy, in the diocese Liège, and died, 1115. A statue was dedicated to his memory at Amiens, June 29, 1854. He is represented in the garb of a monk, a rosary at his waist, a cross in his right hand, preaching the First Crusade.

Urban II. died two weeks after the fall of Jerusalem and before the tidings of the event had time to reach his ears.

No more favorable moment could have been chosen for the Crusade. The Seljukian power, which was at its height in the eleventh century, was broken up into rival dynasties and factions by the death of Molik Shah, 1092. The Crusaders entered as a wedge before the new era of Moslem conquest and union opened.

Note on the Relation of Peter the Hermit to the First Crusade.

The view of Peter the Hermit, presented in this work, does not accord with the position taken by most of the modern writers on the Crusades. It is based on the testimony of Albert of Aachen and William of Tyre, historians of the First Crusade, and is, that Peter visited Jerusalem as a pilgrim, conversed with the patriarch Simeon over the desolations of the city, had a dream in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, returned to Europe with letters from Simeon which he presented to the pope, and then preached through Italy and beyond the Alps, and perhaps attended the Council of Clermont, where, however, he took no prominent part.

The new view is that there occurrences were fictions. It was first set forth by von Sybel in his work on the First Crusade, in 1841. Sybel’s work, which marks an epoch in the treatment of the Crusades, was suggested by the lectures of Ranke, 1837.377  Its author, after a careful comparison of the earliest accounts, announced that there is no reliable evidence that Peter was the immediate instigator of the First Crusade, and that not to him but to Urban II. alone belongs the honor of having originated the movement. Peter did not make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, meet Urban, or preach about the woes of the Holy City prior to the assembling of the Synod of Clermont.

These views, with some modification, have been advocated by Hagenmeyer in his careful and scholarly work on Peter the Hermit and in other writings on the First Crusade.378  In our own country the same view has been set forth by eminent scholars. Professor Oliver J. Thatcher, in an article on the Latin Sources of the First Crusade,379 says, "The stories about Peter the Hermit, his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his visions there, his journey to the pope at Rome, his successful appeals to Urban to preach a crusade, and Peter’s commanding position as one of the great preachers and leaders of the Crusade, all are found to be without the least foundation in fact." Dr. Dana C. Munro has recently declared that the belief that Peter was the instigator of the First Crusade has long since been abandoned.380

It is proper that the reasons should be given in brief which have led to the retention of the old view in this volume. The author’s view agrees with the judgment expressed by Archer, Story of the Crusades, p. 27, that the account of Albert of Aachen "is no doubt true in the main."

Albert of Aachen wrote his History of Jerusalem about 1120–1125,381 that is, while many of the Crusaders were still alive who took part in the siege of Jerusalem, 1099. William, archbishop of Tyre, was born probably in Jerusalem about 1130. He was a man of learning, acquainted with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic; well read in the Bible, as his quotations show, and travelled in Europe. He is one of the ablest of the mediaeval historians, and his work is the monumental history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was by his residence thoroughly acquainted with Palestine. It is not unworthy of mention that William’s History represents the "office of the historian to be not to write what pleases him, but the material which the time offers," bk. XXIII. From the sixteenth to the twenty-third book he writes from personal observation. William stands between the credulous enthusiasm of the first writers on the Crusades and the cold scepticism of some modern historians.

The new view, setting aside these two witnesses, bases its conclusion on the strictly contemporary accounts. These are silent about any part Peter took in the movement leading to the First Crusade prior to the Council of Clermont. They are: (1) the Gesta Francorum, written by an unknown writer, who reached Jerusalem with the Crusaders, wrote his account about 1099, and left the original, or a copy of it, in Jerusalem. (2) Robert the Monk, who was in Jerusalem, saw a copy of the Gesta, and copied from it. His work extends to 1099. He was present at the Council of Clermont. (3) Raymund, canon of Agiles, who accompanied the Crusaders to Jerusalem. (4) Fulcher of Chartres, who was present at Clermont, continued the history to 1125, accompanied the Crusaders to Jerusalem, and had much to do with the discovery of the holy lance. (5) The priest Tudebodus, who copied from the Gesta before 1111 and added very little of importance. (6) Ekkehard of Urach, who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 1101. (7) Radulph of Caen, who in 1107 joined Tancred and related what he heard from him. (8) Guibert of Nogent, who was present at Clermont and wrote about 1110. (9) Baldric of Dol, who was at Clermont and copied from the Gesta in Jerusalem.

Another contemporary, Anna Comnena, b. 1083, is an exception and reports the activity of Peter prior to the Council of Clermont, and says he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but was not permitted by the Turks to enter. He then hastened to Europe and preached about the woes of the city in order to provide a way to visit it again. Hagenmeyer is constrained by Anna’s testimony to concede that Peter actually set forth on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but did not reach the city.

The silence of nine contemporary writers is certainly very noticeable. They had the means of knowing the facts. Why, then, do we accept the later statements of Albert of Aachen and William of Tyre?  These are the considerations.

1. The silence of contemporary writers is not a final argument against events. Eusebius, the chief historian of the ancient Church, utterly ignores the Catacombs. Silence, said Dr. Philip Schaff, referring to the Crusades, "is certainly not conclusive," "Reformed Ch. Rev." 1893, p. 449. There is nothing in the earlier accounts contradictory to Peter’s activity prior to the Clermont synod. One and another of the writers omit important events of the First Crusade, but that is not a sufficient reason for our setting those events aside as fictitious. The Gesta has no account of Urban’s speech at Clermont or reference to it. Guibert and Fulcher leave out in their reports of Urban’s speech all reference to the appeal from Constantinople. Why does the Gesta pass over with the slightest notice Peter’s breaking away from Germany on his march to Constantinople?  This author’s example is followed by Baldric, Tudebod, Fulcher, and Raymund of Agiles. These writers have not a word to say about Gottschalk, Volkmar, and Emich. As Hagenmeyer says, pp. 129, 157, no reason can be assigned for these silences, and yet the fact of these expeditions and the calamities in Hungary are not doubted.

2. The accounts of Albert of Aachen and of William of Tyre are simply told and not at all unreasonable in their essential content. William definitely makes Peter the precursor of Urban. He was, he said, "of essential service to our lord the pope, who determined to follow him without delay across the mountains. He did him the service of a forerunner and prepared the minds of men in advance so that he might easily win them for himself." There is no indication in the archbishop’s words of any purpose to disparage Urban’s part in preparing for the Crusade. Urban followed after John the Baptist. William makes Urban the centre of the assemblage at Clermont and gives to his address great space, many times the space given to the experiences of Peter, and all honor is accorded to the pope for the way in which he did his part, bk. I. 16.

3. Serious difficulties are presented in the theory of the growth of the legend of Peter’s activity. They are these: (1) Albert of Aachen lived close to the events, and at the most twenty-five years elapsed between the capture of Jerusalem and his writing. (2) There is nothing in Peter’s conduct during the progress of the Crusade to justify the growth of an heroic legend around him. The very contrary was the case. Moreover, neither Albert nor William know anything about Peter before his pilgrimage. Hagenmeyer has put the case in the proper light when he says, "Not a single authority suggests that Peter enjoyed any extraordinary repute before his connection with the Crusade. On the contrary, every one that mentions his name connects it with the Crusade," p. 120. (3) It is difficult to understand how the disposition could arise on the part of any narrator to transfer the credit of being the author of the Crusade from a pope to a monk, especially such a monk as Peter turned out to be. In reference to this consideration, Archer, p. 26, has well said, "There is little in the legend of Peter the Hermit which may not very well be true, and the story, as it stands, is more plausible than if we had to assume that tradition had transferred the credit from a pope to a simple hermit." (4) We may very well account for Anna Comnena’s story of Peter’s being turned back by the Turks by her desire to parry the force of his conversation with the Greek patriarch Simeon. It was her purpose to disparage the Crusade. Had she admitted the message of Simeon through Peter to the pope, she would have conceded a strong argument for the divine approval upon the movement. As for Anna, she makes mistakes, confusing Peter once with Adhemar and once with Peter Barthelemy.

(5) All the accounts mention Peter. He is altogether the most prominent man in stirring up interest in the Crusade subsequent to the council. Hagenmeyer goes even so far as to account for his success by the assumption that Peter made telling use of his abortive pilgrimage, missglückte Pilgerfahrt. As already stated, Peter was listened to by "in immense throngs;" no one in the memory of the abbot of Nogent had enjoyed so much honor. "He was held in higher esteem than prelates and abbots," says Robert the Monk. As if to counteract the impression upon the reader, these writers emphasize that Peter’s influence was over the rude and lawless masses, and, as Guibert says, that the bands which followed him were the dregs of France. Now it is difficult to understand how a monk, before unknown, who had never been in Jerusalem, and was not at the Council of Clermont, could at once work into his imagination such vivid pictures of the woe and wails of the Christians of the East as to attain a foremost pre-eminence as a preacher of the Crusade.

(6) Good reasons can be given for the omission of Peter’s conduct prior to the Council of Clermont by the earliest writers. The Crusade was a holy and heroic movement. The writers were interested in magnifying the part taken by the chivalry of Europe. Some of them were with Peter in the camp, and they found him heady, fanatical, impracticable, and worse. He probably was spurned by the counts and princes. Many of the writers were chaplains of these chieftains, -Raymund, Baldwin, Tancred, Bohemund. The lawlessness of Peter’s bands has been referred to. The defeat at Nicaea robbed Peter of all glory and position he might otherwise have had with the main army when it reached Asia.382  In Antioch he brought upon himself disgrace for attempting flight, being caught in the act by Tancred and Bohemund. The Gesta gives a detailed account of this treachery, and Guibert383 compares his flight to an angel falling from heaven. It is probably with reference to it that Ekkehard says, "Many call him hypocrite."384  Strange to say, Albert of Aachen and William of Tyre omit all reference to his treacherous flight.385  It is not improbable that, after the experiences they had of the Hermit in the camp, and the disregard and perhaps the contempt in which he was held by the princes, after his inglorious campaign to Constantinople and Nicaea, the early writers had not the heart to mention his services prior to the council. Far better for the glory of the cause that those experiences should pass into eternal forgetfulness.

Why should legend then come to be attached to his memory?  Why should not Adhemar have been chosen for the honor which was put upon this unknown monk who made so many mistakes and occupied so subordinate a position in the main crusading army?  Why stain the origin of so glorious a movement by making Peter with his infirmities and ignoble birth responsible for the inception of the Crusade?  It would seem as if the theory were more probable that the things which led the great Crusaders to disparage, if not to ridicule, Peter induced the earlier writers to ignore his meritorious activity prior to the Council of Clermont. After the lapse of time, when the memory of his follies was not so fresh, the real services of Peter were again recognized. For these reasons the older portrait of Peter has been regarded as the true one in all its essential features.

§ 51. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1099–1187.

Literature.—G. T. De Thaumassière: Assises et bons usages du royaume de Jérusalem, etc., Paris, 1690, 1712; Assises de Jérusalem, in Recueil des Historiens des croisades, 2 vols., Paris, 1841–1843.—Hody: Godefroy de Bouillon et les rois Latins de Jérus., 2d ed., Paris, 1859.—Röhricht: Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani, Innsbruck, 1893; Gesch. des Königreichs Jerus. 1100–1291, Innsbruck, 1898.—Lane-Poole: Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerus., N. Y., 1898. The first biography of Saladin in English, written largely from the standpoint of the Arab historians.—C. R. Conder: The Latin Kingd. of Jerus., London, 1899.—F. Kühn: Gesch. der ersten Patriarchen von Jerus., Leipzig, 1886.—Funk: art. Jerusalem, Christl. Königreich, in "Wetzer-Welte," VI. p. 1335 sqq.

Eight days after the capture of the Holy City a permanent government was established, known as the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfrey was elected king, but declined the title of royalty, unwilling to wear a crown of gold where the Saviour had worn a crown of thorns.386  He adopted the title Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. The kingdom from its birth was in need of help, and less than a year after the capture of the city the patriarch Dagobert made an appeal to the "rich" German nation for reënforcements.387  It had a perturbed existence of less than a century, and in that time witnessed a succession of nine sovereigns.

Godfrey extended his realm, but survived the capture of Jerusalem only a year, dying July 18, 1100. He was honored and lamented as the most disinterested and devout among the chieftains of the First Crusade. His body was laid away in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, where his reputed sword and spurs are still shown. On his tomb was the inscription:, Here lies Godfrey of Bouillon, who conquered all this territory for the Christian religion. May his soul be at rest with Christ."388

With the Latin kingdom was established the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem. The election of Arnulf, chaplain to Robert of Normandy, was declared irregular, and Dagobert, or Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, was elected in his place Christmas Day, 1099.389  Latin sees were erected throughout the land and also a Latin patriarchate of Antioch. Dagobert secured large concessions from Godfrey, including the acknowledgment of his kingdom as a fief of the patriarch. After the fall of Jerusalem, in 1187, the patriarchs lived in Acre.390

The constitution and judicial procedure of the new realm were fixed by the Assizes of Jerusalem. These were deposited under seal in the church of the Holy Sepulchre and are also called the Letters of the Holy Sepulchre.391  They were afterwards lost, and our knowledge of their contents is derived from the codes of Cyprus and the Latin kingdom of Constantinople, which were founded upon the Jerusalem code.

These statutes reproduced the feudal system of Europe. The conquered territory was distributed among the barons, who held their possessions under the king of Jerusalem as overlord. The four chief fiefs were Jaffa and Ascalon, Kerat, east of the Jordan, Galilee, and Sidon. The counts of Tripoli and Edessa and the prince of Antioch were independent of the kingdom of Jerusalem. A system of courts was provided, the highest being presided over by the king. Trial by combat of arms was recognized. A second court provided for justice among the burgesses. A third gave it to the natives. Villeins or slaves were treated as property according to the discretion of the master, but are also mentioned as being subject to the courts of law. The slave and the falcon were estimated as equal in value. Two slaves were held at the price of a horse and three slaves at the price of twelve oxen. The man became of age at twenty-five, the woman at twelve. The feudal system in Europe was a natural product. In Palestine it was an exotic.

The Christian occupation of Palestine did not bring with it a reign of peace. The kingdom was torn by the bitter intrigues of barons and ecclesiastics, while it was being constantly threatened from without. The inner strife was the chief source of weakness. The monks settled down in swarms over the country, and the Franciscans became the guardians of the holy places. The illegitimate offspring of the Crusaders by Moslem women, called pullani, were a degenerate race, marked by avarice, faithlessness, and debauchery.392

Godfrey was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, count of Edessa, who was crowned at Bethlehem. He was a man of intelligence and the most vigorous of the kings of Jerusalem. He died of a fever in Egypt, and his body was laid at the side of his brother’s in Jerusalem.

During Baldwin’s reign, 1100–1118, the limits of the kingdom were greatly extended.393  Caesarea fell in 1101, St. Jean d’Acre, otherwise known as Ptolemais, in 1104, and Berytus, or Beyrut, in 1110. Sidon capitulated to Sigurd, son of the king of Norway, who had with him ten thousand Crusaders. One-third of Asia Minor was reduced, a part of the territory reverting to the Greek empire. Damascus never fell into European hands. With the progress of their arms, the Crusaders reared strong castles from Petra to the far North as well as on the eastern side of the Jordan. Their ruins attest the firm purpose of their builders to make their occupation permanent. "We who were Westerners," said Fulcher of Chartres, "are now Easterners. We have forgotten our native land." It is proof of the attractiveness of the cause, if not also of the country, that so many Crusaders sought to establish themselves there permanently. Many who went to Europe returned a second time, and kings spent protracted periods in the East.

During Baldwin’s reign most of the leaders of the First Crusade died or returned to Europe. But the ranks were being continually recruited by fresh expeditions. Pascal II., the successor of Urban II., sent forth a call for recruits. The Italian cities furnished fleets, and did important service in conjunction with the land forces. The Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese established quarters of their own in Jerusalem, Acre, and other cities. Thousands took the cross in Lombardy, France, and Germany, and were led by Anselm, archbishop of Milan, Stephen, duke of Burgundy, William, duke of Aquitaine, Ida of Austria, and others. Hugh of Vermandois, who had gone to Europe, returned. Bohemund likewise returned with thirty-four thousand men, and opposed the Greek emperor. At least two Christian armies attempted to attack Islam in its stronghold at Bagdad.

Under Baldwin II., 1118–1131, the nephew of Baldwin I., Tyre was taken, 1124. This event marks the apogee of the Crusaders’ possessions and power.

In the reign of Fulke of Anjou, 1131–1143, the husband of Millicent, Baldwin II.’s daughter, Zengi, surnamed Imaded-din, the Pillar of the Faith, threatened the very existence of the Frankish kingdom.

Baldwin III., 1143–1162, came to the throne in his youth.394  His reign witnessed the fall of Edessa into Zengi’s hands, 1144, and the progress of the Second Crusade, as also the rise of Zengi’s son, Nureddin, the uncle of Saladin, who conquered Damascus, 1154.

Amalric, or Amaury, 1162–1173, carried his arms and diplomacy into Egypt, and saw the fall of the Fatimite dynasty which had been in power for two centuries. The power in the South now became identified with the splendid and warlike abilities of Saladin, who, with Nureddin, healed the divisions of the Mohammedans, and compacted their power from Bagdad to Cairo. Henceforth the kingdom of Jerusalem stood on the defensive. The schism between the Abassidae and the Fatimites had made the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 possible.

Baldwin IV., 1173–1184, a boy of thirteen at his accession, was, like Uzziah, a leper. Among the regents who conducted the affairs of the kingdom during his reign was the duke of Montferrat, who married Sybilla, the king’s sister. In 1174 Saladin, by the death of Nureddin, became caliph of the whole realm from Damascus to the Nile, and started on the path of God, the conquest of Jerusalem.

Baldwin V., 1184–1186, a child of five, and son of Sybilla, was succeeded by Guy of Lusignan, Sybilla’s second husband. Saladin met Guy and the Crusaders at the village of Hattin, on the hill above Tiberius, where tradition has placed the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount. The Templars and Hospitallers were there in force, and the true cross was carried by the bishop of Acre, clad in armor. On July 5, 1187, the decisive battle was fought. The Crusaders were completely routed, and thirty thousand are said to have perished. Guy of Lusignan, the masters of the Temple395 and the Hospital, and Reginald of Châtillon, lord of Kerak, were taken prisoners by the enemy. Reginald was struck to death in Saladin’s tent, but the king and the other captives were treated with clemency.396  The true cross was a part of the enemy’s booty. The fate of the Holy Land was decided.

On Oct. 2, 1187, Saladin entered Jerusalem after it had made a brave resistance. The conditions of surrender were most creditable to the chivalry of the great commander. There were no scenes of savage butchery such as followed the entry of the Crusaders ninety years before. The inhabitants were given their liberty for the payment of money, and for forty days the procession of the departing continued. The relics stored away in the church of the Holy Sepulchre were delivered up by the conqueror for the sum of fifty thousand bezants, paid by Richard I.397

Thus ended the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Since then the worship of Islam has continued on Mount Moriah without interruption. The Christian conquests were in constant danger through the interminable feuds of the Crusaders themselves, and, in spite of the constant flow of recruits and treasure from Europe, they fell easily before the unifying leadership of Saladin.

After 1187 a line of nominal kings of Jerusalem presented a romantic picture in European affairs. The last real king, Guy of Lusignan, was released, and resumed his kingly pretension without a capital city. Conrad of Montferrat, who had married Isabella, daughter of Amalric, was granted the right of succession. He was murdered before reaching the throne, and Henry of Champagne became king of Jerusalem on Guy’s accession to the crown of Cyprus. In 1197 the two crowns of Cyprus and Jerusalem were united in Amalric II. At his death the crown passed to Mary, daughter of Conrad of Montferrat. Mary’s husband was John of Brienne. At the marriage of their daughter, Iolanthe, to the emperor Frederick II., that sovereign assumed the title, King of Jerusalem.

§ 52. The Fall of Edessa and the Second Crusade.

Literature.—Odo of Deuil (near Paris), chaplain of Louis VII.: De profectione Ludovici VII. in Orientem 1147–1149 in Migne, 185, translated by Guizot: Collection, XXIV. pp. 279–384.—Otto of Freising, d. 1158, half brother of Konrad III. and uncle of Fred. Barbarossa: Chronicon, bk. VII., translated in Pertz-Wattenbach, Geschichtschreiber der Deutschen Vorzeit, Leipzig, 1881. Otto accompanied the Crusade.—Kugler: Gesch. des 2ten Kreuzzuges, Stuttgart, 1866.—The De consideratione and De militibus Christi of Bernard and the Biographies of Bernard by Neander, ed. by Deutsch, II. 81–116; Morison, Pp. 366–400; Storrs, p. 416 sqq.; Vacandard, II. 270–318, 431 sqq. F. Marion Crawford has written a novel on this Crusade: Via Crucis, a Story of the Second Crusade, N. Y., 1899.

The Second Crusade was led by two sovereigns, the emperor Konrad III. and Louis VII. of France, and owed its origin to the profound impression made in Europe by the fall of Edessa and the zealous eloquence of St. Bernard. Edessa, the outer citadel of the Crusader’s conquests, fell, December, 1144. Jocelyn II., whose father, Jocelyn I., succeeded Baldwin as proprietor of Edessa, was a weak and pleasure-loving prince. The besiegers built a fire in a breach in the wall, a piece of which, a hundred yards long, cracked with the flames and fell. An appalling massacre followed the inrush of the Turks, under Zengi, whom the Christians called the Sanguinary.398

Eugenius III. rightly regarded Zengi’s victory as a threat to the continuance of the Franks in Palestine, and called upon the king of France to march to their relief. The forgiveness of all sins and life eternal were promised to all embarking on the enterprise who should die confessing their sins.399  The pope also summoned Bernard to leave his convent, and preach the crusade. Bernard, the most conspicuous personage of his age, was in the zenith of his fame. He regarded the summons as a call from God,400 and proved to be a leader worthy of the cause.

At Easter tide, 1146, Louis, who had before, in remorse for his burning the church at Vitry with thirteen hundred persons, promised to go on a crusade, assembled a great council at Vézelai. Bernard was present and made such an overpowering impression by his address that the bearers pressed forward to receive crosses. He himself was obliged to out his robe to pieces to meet the demand.401  Writing to Eugenius, he was able to say that the enthusiasm was so great that "castles and towns were emptied of their inmates. One man could hardly be found for seven women, and the women were being everywhere widowed while their husbands were still alive."

From France Bernard proceeded to Basel and Constance and the cities along the Rhine, as far as Cologne. As in the case of the First Crusade, a persecution was started against the Jews on the Rhine by a monk, Radulph. Bernard firmly set himself against the fanaticism and wrote that the Church should attempt to gain the Jews by discussion, and not destroy them by the sword.

Thousands flocked to hear the fervent preacher, who added miraculous healings to the impression of his eloquence. The emperor Konrad himself was deeply moved and won. During Christmas week at Spires, Bernard preached before him an impassionate discourse. "What is there, O man," he represented Christ as saying, seated in judgment upon the imperial hearer at the last day,—"What is there which I ought to have done for thee and have not done?"  He contrasted the physical prowess,402 the riches, and the honors of the emperor with the favor of the supreme judge of human actions. Bursting into tears, the emperor exclaimed: "I shall henceforth not be found ungrateful to God’s mercy. I am ready to serve Him, seeing I am admonished by Him." Of all his miracles Bernard esteemed the emperor’s decision the chief one.

Konrad at once prepared for the expedition. Seventy thousand armed men, seven thousand of whom were knights, assembled at Regensburg, and proceeded through Hungary to the Bosphorus, meeting with a poor reception along the route. The Greek emperor Manuel and Konrad were brothers-in-law, having married sisters, but this tie was no protection to the Germans. Guides, provided by Manuel, "children of Belial" as William of Tyre calls them, treacherously led them astray in the Cappadocian mountains.403  Famine, fever, and the attacks of the enemy were so disastrous that when the army fell back upon Nicaea, not more than one-tenth of its original number remained.

Louis received the oriflamme from Eugenius’s own hands at St. Denis, Easter, 1147, and followed the same route taken by Konrad. His queen, Eleanor, famed for her beauty, and many ladies of the court accompanied the army. The two sovereigns met at Nicaea and proceeded together to Ephesus. Konrad returned to Constantinople by ship, and Louis, after reaching Attalia, left the body of his army to proceed by land, and sailed to Antioch.

At Antioch, Eleanor laid herself open to the serious charge of levity, if not to infidelity to her marriage vow. She and the king afterward publicly separated at Jerusalem, and later were divorced by the pope. Eleanor was then joined to Henry of Anjou, and later became the queen of Henry II. of England. Konrad, who reached Acre by ship from Constantinople, met Louis at Jerusalem, and in company with Baldwin III. the two sovereigns from the West offered their devotions in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. At a council of the three held under the walls of Acre,404 they decided to direct their arms against Damascus before proceeding to the more distant Edessa. The route was by way of Lake Tiberias and over the Hermon. The siege ended in complete failure, owing to the disgraceful quarrels between the camps and the leaders, and the claim of Thierry, count of Flanders, who had been in the East twice before, to the city as his own. Konrad started back for Germany, September, 1148. Louis, after spending the winter in Jerusalem, broke away the following spring. Bernard felt the humiliation of the failure keenly, and apologized for it by ascribing it to the judgment of God for the sins of the Crusaders and of the Christian world. "The judgments of the Lord are just," he wrote, "but this one is an abyss so deep that I dare to pronounce him blessed who is not scandalized by it."405  As for the charge that he was responsible for the expedition, Bernard exclaimed, "Was Moses to blame, in the wilderness, who promised to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land?  Was it not rather the sins of the people which interrupted the progress of their journey?"

Edessa remained lost to the Crusaders, and Damascus never fell into their power.

§ 53. The Third Crusade. 1189–1192.

For Richard I.: Itinerarium perigrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. by Stubbs, London, 1864, Rolls Series, formerly ascribed to Geoffrey de Vinsauf, but, since Stubbs, to Richard de Templo or left anonymous. Trans. in Chronicles of the Crusades, Bohn’s Libr., 1870. The author accompanied the Crusade.—De Hoveden, ed. by Stubbs, 4 vols., London, 1868–1871; Engl. trans. by Riley, vol. II. pp. 63–270.—Giraldus Cambrensis: Itinerarium Cambriae, ed. by Brewer and Dimock, London, 7 vols. 1861–1877, vol. VI., trans. by R. C. Hoare, London, 1806.—Richard De Devizes: Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi, etc., London, 1838, trans. in Bohn’s Chron. of the Crusades.—Roger Wendover.—De Joinville: Crusade of St. Louis, trans. in Chron. of the Crus.

For full list of authorities on Richard see art. Richard by Archer in Dict. of Vat. Biog. — G. P. R. James: Hist. of the Life of B. Coeur de Lion, new ed. 2 vols. London, 1854. —T. A. Archer: The Crusade of Richard I., being a collation of Richard de Devizes, etc., London, 1868.—Gruhn: Der Kreuzzug Richard I., Berlin, 1892.

For Frederick Barbarossa: Ansbert, an eye-witness: Hist. de expeditione Frid., 1187–1196, ed. by Jos. Dobrowsky, Prague, 1827.—For other sources, see Wattenbach: Deutsche Geschichtsquellen, II. 303 sqq., and Potthast: Bibl. Hist., II. 1014, 1045, etc.—Karl Fischer: Gesch. des Kreuzzugs Fried. I., Leipzig, 1870.—H. Prutz: Kaiser Fried. I., 3 vols. Dantzig, 1871–1873.—Von Raumer: Gesch. der Hohenstaufen, vol. II. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1878.—Giesebrecht: Deutsche Kaiserzeit, vol. V.

For Saladin: Baha-ed-din, a member of Saladin’s court, 1145–1234, the best Arabic Life, in the Recueil, Histt. Orientaux, etc., III., 1884, and in Palestine, Pilgrim’s Text Soc., ed. by Sir C. W. Wilson, London, 1897.—Marin: Hist. de Saladin, sulthan d’Égypte et de Syrie, Paris, 1758.—Lane-Poole: Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem, New York, 1898, a full list and an estimate of Arab authorities are given, pp. iii-xvi.

See also the general Histories of the Crusades and Ranke: Weltgesch., VIII.

The Third Crusade was undertaken to regain Jerusalem, which had been lost to Saladin, 1187. It enjoys the distinction of having had for its leaders the three most powerful princess of Western Europe, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, king of France, and the English king Richard I., surnamed Coeur de Lion, or the Lion-hearted.406  It brought together the chivalry of the East and the West at the time of its highest development and called forth the heroism of two of the bravest soldiers of any age, Saladin and Richard. It has been more widely celebrated in romance than any of the other Crusades, from the songs of the mediaeval minstrels to Lessing in his Nathan the Wise and Walter Scott in Talisman. But in spite of the splendid armaments, the expedition was almost a complete failure.

On the news of Saladin’s victories, Urban III. is alleged to have died of grief.407  An official summons was hardly necessary to stir the crusading ardor of Europe from one end to the other. Danes, Swedes, and Frisians joined with Welshmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans in readiness for a new expedition. A hundred years had elapsed since the First Crusade, and its leaders were already invested with a halo of romance and glory. The aged Gregory VIII., whose reign lasted less than two months, 1187, spent his expiring breath in an appeal to the princes to desist from their feuds. Under the influence of William, archbishop of Tyre, and the archbishop of Rouen, Philip Augustus of France and Henry II. of England laid aside their quarrels and took the cross. At Henry’s death his son Richard, then thirty-two years of age, set about with impassioned zeal to make preparations for the Crusade. The treasure which Henry had left, Richard augmented by sums secured from the sale of castles and bishoprics.408  For ten thousand marks he released William of Scotland from homage, and he would have sold London itself, so he said, if a purchaser rich enough had offered himself.409  Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, supported his sovereign, preaching the Crusade in England and Wales, and accompanied the expedition.410  The famous Saladin tax was levied in England, and perhaps also in France, requiring the payment of a tithe by all not joining the Crusade.

Richard and Philip met at Vézelai. Among the great lords who joined them were Hugh, duke of Burgundy, Henry II., count of Champagne, and Philip of Flanders. As a badge for himself and his men, the French king chose a red cross, Richard a white cross, and the duke of Flanders a green cross.

In the meantime Frederick Barbarossa, who was on the verge of seventy, had reached the Bosphorus. Mindful of his experiences with Konrad III., whom he accompanied on the Second Crusade, he avoided the mixed character of Konrad’s army by admitting to the ranks only those who were physically strong and had at least three marks. The army numbered one hundred thousand, of whom fifty thousand sat in the saddle. Frederick of Swabia accompanied his father, the emperor.

Setting forth from Ratisbon in May, 1189, the German army had proceeded by way of Hungary to Constantinople. The Greek emperor, Isaac Angelus, far from regarding the Crusaders’ approach with favor, threw Barbarossa’s commissioners into prison and made a treaty with Saladin.411  He coolly addressed the western emperor as "the first prince of Germany." The opportunity was afforded Frederick of uniting the East and West once more under a single sceptre. Wallachians and Servians promised him their support if he would dethrone Isaac and take the crown. But though there was provocation enough, Frederick refused to turn aside from his purpose, the reconquest of Jerusalem,412 and in March, 1190, his troops were transferred across the Bosphorus. He took Iconium, and reached Cilicia. There his career was brought to a sudden termination on June 10 in the waters of the Kalycadnus river into which he had plunged to cool himself.413  His flesh was buried at Antioch, and his bones, intended for the crypts of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, were deposited in the church of St. Peter, Tyre. A lonely place, indeed, for the ashes of the mighty monarch, and far removed from those of his great predecessor, Charlemagne at Aachen!  Scarcely ever has a life so eminent had such a tragic and deplored ending. In right imperial fashion, Frederick had sent messengers ahead, calling upon Saladin to abandon Jerusalem and deliver up the true cross. With a demoralized contingent, Frederick of Swabia reached the walls of Acre, where he soon after became a victim of the plague, October, 1190.

Philip and Richard reached the Holy Land by the Mediterranean. They sailed for Sicily, 1190, Philip from Genoa, Richard from Marseilles. Richard found employment on the island in asserting the rights of his sister Joan, widow of William II. of Sicily, who had been robbed of her dower by William’s illegitimate son, Tancred. "Quicker than priest can chant matins did King Richard take Messina."414  In spite of armed disputes between Richard and Philip, the two kings came to an agreement to defend each other on the Crusades. Among the curious stipulations of this agreement was one that only knights and the clergy were to be allowed to play games for money, and the amount staked on any one day was not to exceed twenty shillings.

Leaving Sicily,415 whence Philip had sailed eleven days before, Richard proceeded to Cyprus, and as a punishment for the ill treatment of pilgrims and the stranding of his vessels, he wrested the kingdom in a three weeks’ campaign from Isaac Comnenus. The English at their occupation of Cyprus, 1878, might well have recalled Richard’s conquest. On the island, Richard’s nuptials were consummated with Berengaria of Navarre, whom he preferred to Philip’s sister Alice, to whom he had been betrothed. In June he reached Acre. "For joy at his coming," says Baha-ed-din, the Arab historian, "the Franks broke forth in rejoicing, and lit fires in their camps all night through. The hosts of the Mussulmans were filled with fear and dread."416

Acre, or Ptolemais, under Mount Carmel, had become the metropolis of the Crusaders, as it was the key to the Holy Land. Christendom had few capitals so gay in its fashions and thronged with such diverse types of nationality. Merchants were there from the great commercial marts of Europe. The houses, placed among gardens, were rich with painted glass. The Hospitallers and Templars had extensive establishments.

Against Acre, Guy of Lusignan had been laying siege for two years. Released by Saladin upon condition of renouncing all claim to his crown and going beyond the seas, he had secured easy absolution from the priest from this solemn oath. Baldwin of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, and the justiciar Ranulf of Glanvill had arrived on the scene before Richard. "We found our army," wrote the archbishop’s chaplain,417 "given up to shameful practices, and yielding to ease and lust, rather than encouraging virtue. The Lord is not in the camp. Neither chastity, solemnity, faith, nor charity are there—a state of things which, I call God to witness, I would not have believed if I had not seen it with my own eyes."

Saladin was watching the besiegers and protecting the garrison. The horrors of the siege made it one of the memorable sieges of the Middle Ages.418  It was carried on from the sea as well as on the land. Greek fire was used with great effect by the Turks.419  The struggle was participated in by women as well as the men. Some Crusaders apostatized to get the means for prolonging life.420  With the aid of the huge machine Check Greek, and other engines constructed by Richard in Sicily, and by Philip, the city was made to surrender, July, 1191. By the terms of the capitulation the city’s stores, two hundred thousand pieces of gold, fifteen hundred prisoners, and the true cross were to pass into the hands of the Crusaders.

The advance upon Jerusalem was delayed by rivalries between the armies and their leaders. Richard’s prowess, large means, and personal popularity threw Philip into the shade, and he was soon on his way back to France, leaving the duke of Burgundy as leader of the French. The French and Germans also quarrelled.421  A fruitful source of friction was the quarrel between Guy of Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat over the crown of Jerusalem, until the matter was finally settled by Conrad’s murder and the recognition of Guy as king of Cyprus, and Henry of Champagne, the nephew of both Richard and Philip Augustus, as king of Jerusalem.

A dark blot rests upon Richard’s memory for the murder in cold blood of twenty-seven hundred prisoners in the full sight of Saladin’s troops and as a punishment for the non-payment of the ransom money. The massacre, a few days before, of Christian captives, if it really occurred, in part explains but cannot condone the crime.422

Jaffa and Ascalon became the next points of the Crusaders’ attack, the operations being drawn out to a wearisome length. Richard’s feats of physical strength and martial skill are vouched for by eye-witnesses, who speak of him as cutting swathes through the enemy with his sword and mowing them down, "as the reapers mow down the corn with their sickles." So mighty was his strength that, when a Turkish admiral rode at him in full charge, Richard severed his neck and one shoulder by a single blow. But the king’s dauntless though coarse courage was not joined to the gifts of a leader fit for such a campaign.423  His savage war shout, "God and the Holy Sepulchre aid us," failed to unite the troops cloven by jealousies and to establish military discipline. The camps were a scene of confusion. Women left behind by Richard’s order at Acre came up to corrupt the army, while day after day "its manifold sins, drunkenness, and luxury increased." Once and perhaps twice Richard came so near the Holy City that he might have looked down into it had he so chosen.424  But, like Philip Augustus, he never passed through its gates, and after a signal victory at Joppa he closed his military achievements in Palestine. A treaty, concluded with Saladin, assured to the Christians for three years the coast from Tyre to Joppa, and protection to pilgrims in Jerusalem and on their way to the city. In October, 1192, the king, called back by the perfidy of his brother John, set sail from Acre amid the laments of those who remained behind, but not until he had sent word to Saladin that he intended to return to renew the contest.

The exploits of the English king won even the admiration of the Arabs, whose historian reports how he rode up and down in front of the Saracen army defying them, and not a man dared to touch him. Presents passed between him and Saladin.425  One who accompanied the Third Crusade ascribes to him the valor of Hector, the magnanimity of Achilles, the prudence of Odysseus, the eloquence of Nestor, and equality with Alexander. French writers of the thirteenth century tell how Saracen mothers, long after Richard had returned to England, used to frighten their children into obedience or silence by the spell of his name, so great was the dread he had inspired. Destitute of the pious traits of Godfrey and Louis IX., Richard nevertheless stands, by his valor, muscular strength, and generous mind, in the very front rank of conspicuous Crusaders.

On his way back to England he was seized by Leopold, duke of Austria, whose enmity he had incurred before Joppa. The duke turned his captive over to the emperor, Henry VI., who had a grudge to settle growing out of Sicilian matters. Richard was released only on the humiliating terms of paying an enormous ransom and consenting to hold his kingdom as a fief of the empire. Saladin died March 4, 1193, by far the most famous of the foes of the Crusaders. Christendom has joined with Arab writers in praise of his chivalric courage, culture, and magnanimity.426  What could be more courteous than his granting the request of Hubert Walter for the station of two Latin priests in the three churches of the Holy Sepulchre, Nazareth, and Bethlehem?427

The recapture of Acre and the grant of protection to the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem were paltry achievements in view of the loss of life, the long months spent in making ready for the Crusade, the expenditure of money, and the combination of the great nations of Europe. In this case, as in the other Crusades, it was not so much the Saracens, or even the splendid abilities of Saladin, which defeated the Crusaders, but their feuds among themselves. Never again did so large an army from the West contend for the cross on Syrian soil.

§ 54. The Children’s Crusades.

"The rich East blooms fragrant before us;

All Fairy-land beckons us forth,

We must follow the crane in her flight o’er the main,

From the posts and the moors of the North."

Charles Kingsley, The Saint’s Tragedy.

Literature.—For the sources, see Wilken: Gesch. der Kreuzzüge, VI. 71–83.—Des Essards: La Croisade des enfants, Paris, 1875. — Röhricht, Die Kinderkreuzzüge, in Sybel, Hist. Zeitschrift, vol. XXXVI., 1876.—G. Z. Gray: The Children’s Crusade, N. Y., 1872, new ed. 1896.—Isabel S. Stone: The Little Crusaders, N. Y., 1901.—Hurter: Innocent III., II. 482–489.

The most tragic of the Crusader tragedies were the crusades of the children. They were a slaughter of the innocents on a large scale, and belong to those mysteries of Providence which the future only will solve.

The crusading epidemic broke out among the children of France and Germany in 1212. Begotten in enthusiasm, which was fanned by priestly zeal, the movement ended in pitiful disaster.

The French expedition was led by Stephen, a shepherd lad of twelve, living at Cloyes near Chartres. He had a vision, so the rumor went, in which Christ appeared to him as a pilgrim and made an appeal for the rescue of the holy places. Journeying to St. Denis, the boy retailed the account of what he had seen. Other children gathered around him. The enthusiasm spread from Brittany to the Pyrenees. In vain did the king of France attempt to check the movement. The army increased to thirty thousand, girls as well as boys, adults as well as children.428  Questioned as to where they were going, they replied, "We go to God, and seek for the holy cross beyond the sea." They reached Marseilles, but the waves did not part and let them go through dryshod as they expected.429

The centres of the movement in Germany were Nicholas, a child of ten, and a second leader whose name has been lost. Cologne was the rallying point. Children of noble families enlisted. Along with the boys and girls went men and women, good and bad.

The army under the anonymous leader passed through Eastern Switzerland and across the Alps to Brindisi, whence some of the children sailed, never to be heard from again. The army of Nicholas reached Genoa in August, 1212. The children sang songs on the way, and with them has been wrongly associated the tender old German hymn:

"Fairest Lord Jesus,

Ruler of all nature,

O Thou of man and God, the son,

Thee will I cherish,

Thee will I honor,

Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown."

The numbers had been reduced by hardship, death, and moral shipwreck from twenty to seven thousand. At Genoa the waters were as pitiless as they were at Marseilles. Some of the children remained in the city and became, it is said, the ancestors of distinguished families.430  The rest marched on through Italy to Brindisi, where the bishop of Brindisi refused to let them proceed farther. An uncertain report declares Innocent III. declined to grant their appeal to be released from their vow.

The fate of the French children was, if possible, still more pitiable. At Marseilles they fell a prey to two slave dealers, who for "the sake of God and without price" offered to convey them across the Mediterranean. Their names are preserved,—Hugo Ferreus and William Porcus. Seven vessels set sail. Two were shipwrecked on the little island of San Pietro off the northwestern coast of Sardinia. The rest reached the African shore, where the children were sold into slavery.

The shipwreck of the little Crusaders was commemorated by Gregory IX., in the chapel of the New Innocents, ecclesia novorum innocentium, which he built on San Pietro. Innocent III. in summoning Europe to a new crusade included in his appeal the spectacle of their sacrifice. "They put us to shame. While they rush to the recovery of the Holy Land, we sleep."431  Impossible as such a movement might seem in our calculating age, it is attested by too many good witnesses to permit its being relegated to the realm of legend,432 and the trials and death of the children of the thirteenth century will continue to be associated with the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem at the hand of Herod.

§ 55. The Fourth Crusade and the Capture of Constantinople. 1200–1204.

Literature.—Nicetas Acominatus, Byzantine patrician and grand logothete. During the Crusaders’ investment of Constantinople his palace was burnt, and with his wife and daughter he fled to Nicaea: Byzantina Historia, 1118–1206, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, histor. Grecs, vol. I., and in Migne, Patr. Gr., vols. 139, 140.—Geoffroi de Villehardouin, a prominent participant in the Crusade, d. 1213?: Hist. de la Conquête de Constantinople avec la continuation de Henri de Valenciennes, earliest ed., Paris, 1585, ed. by Du Cange, Paris, 1857, and N. de Wailly, Paris, 1871, 3d ed. 1882, and E. Bouchet, with new trans., Paris, 1891. For other editions, See Potthast, II. 1094. Engl. trans. by T. Smith, London, 1829.—Robert de Clary, d. after 1216, a participant in the Crusade: La Prise de Constant., 1st ed. by P. Riant, Paris, 1868.—Guntherus Alemannus, a Cistercian, d. 1220?: Historia Constantinopolitana, in Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. 212, 221–265, and ed. by Riant, Geneva, 1875, and repeated in his Exuviae Sacrae, a valuable description, based upon the relation of his abbot, Martin, a participant in the Crusade.—Innocent III. Letters, in Migne, vols. 214–217.—Charles Hopf: Chroniques Graeco-Romanes inédites ou peu connues, Berlin, 1873. Contains De Clary, the Devastatio Constantinopolitana, etc.—C. Klimke: D. Quellen zur Gesch. des 4ten Kreuzzuges, Breslau, 1875.—Short extracts from Villehardouin and De Clary are given in Trans. and Reprints, published by University of Pennsylvania, vol. III., Philadelphia, 1896.

Paul De Riant: Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae, Geneva, 1877–1878, 2 vols.—Tessier: Quatrième Croisade, la diversion sur Zara et Constantinople, Paris, 1884.—E. Pears: The Fall of Constantinople, being the Story of the Fourth Crusade, N. Y., 1886.—W. Nordau: Der vierte Kreuzzug, 1898.—A. Charasson: Un curé plébéien au XIIe Siècle, Foulques, Prédicateur de la IVe Croisade, Paris, 1905.—Gibbon, LX., LXI.—Hurter: Life of Innocent III., vol. I.—Ranke: Weltgesch., VIII. 280–298.—C. W. C. Oman: The Byzantine Empire, 1895, pp. 274–306.—F. C. Hodgson: The Early History of Venice, from the Foundation to the Conquest of Constantinople, 1204, 1901. An appendix contains an excursus on the historical sources of the Fourth Crusade.

It would be difficult to find in history a more notable diversion of a scheme from its original purpose than the Fourth Crusade. Inaugurated to strike a blow at the power which held the Holy Land, it destroyed the Christian city of Zara and overthrew the Greek empire of Constantinople. Its goals were determined by the blind doge, Henry Dandolo of Venice. As the First Crusade resulted in the establishment of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, so the Fourth Crusade resulted in the establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople.

Innocent III., on ascending the papal throne, threw himself with all the energy of his nature into the effort of reviving the crusading spirit. He issued letter after letter433 to the sovereigns of England, France, Hungary, and Sicily.434  He also wrote to the Byzantine emperor, urging him to resist the Saracens and subject the Greek church to its mother, Rome.435  The failure of preceding crusades was ascribed to the sins of the Crusaders. But for them, one Christian would have chased a thousand, or even ten thousand, and the enemies of the cross would have disappeared like smoke or melting wax.

For the expense of a new expedition the pope set apart one-tenth of his revenue, and he directed the cardinals to do the same. The clergy and all Christians were urged to give liberally. The goods and lands of Crusaders were to enjoy the special protection of the Holy See. Princes were instructed to compel Jewish money-lenders to remit interest due from those going on the expedition. Legates were despatched to Genoa, Pisa, and Venice to stir up zeal for the project; and these cities were forbidden to furnish to the Saracens supplies of arms, food, or other material. A cardinal was appointed to make special prayers for the Crusade, as Moses had prayed for Israel against the Amalekites.

The Cistercian abbot, Martin, preached in Germany;436 and the eloquent Fulke of Neuilly, receiving his commission from Innocent III.,437 distinguished himself by winning thousands of recruits from the nobility and populace of Burgundy, Flanders, and Normandy. Under his preaching, in 1199, Count Thibaut of Champagne,438 Louis of Blois, Baldwin of Flanders, and Simon de Montfort took the vow. So also did Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, who accompanied the expedition, and became its spicy historian. As in the case of the First Crusade, the armament was led by nobles, and not by sovereigns.

The leaders, meeting at Soissons in 1200, sent a deputation to Venice to secure transportation for the army. Egypt was chosen as the point of landing and attack, it being held that a movement would be most apt to be successful which cut off the Saracens’ supplies at their base in the land of the Nile.439

The Venetian Grand Council agreed to provide ships for 9000 esquires, 4500 knights, 20,000 foot-soldiers, and 4500 horses, and to furnish provisions for nine months for the sum of 85,000 marks, or about $1,000,000 in present money.440  The agreement stated the design of the enterprise to be "the deliverance of the Holy Land." The doge, Henry Dandolo, who had already passed the limit of ninety years, was in spite of his age and blindness full of vigor and decision.441

The crusading forces mustered at Venice. The fleet was ready, but the Crusaders were short of funds, and able to pay only 50,000 marks of the stipulated sum. Dandolo took advantage of these straits to advance the selfish aims of Venice, and proposed, as an equivalent for the balance of the passage money, that the Crusaders aid in capturing Zara.442  The offer was accepted. Zara, the capital of Dalmatia and the chief market on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, belonged to the Christian king of Hungary. Its predatory attacks upon Venetian vessels formed the pretext for its reduction.443  The threat of papal excommunication, presented by the papal legate, did not check the preparations; and after the solemn celebration of the mass, the fleet set sail, with Dandolo as virtual commander.

The departure of four hundred and eighty gayly rigged vessels is described by several eye-witnesses444 and constitutes one of the most important scenes in the naval enterprise of the queen of the Adriatic.

Zara was taken Nov. 24, 1202, given over to plunder, and razed to the ground. No wonder Innocent wrote that Satan had been the instigator of this destructive raid upon a Christian people and excommunicated the participants in it.445

Organized to dislodge the Saracens and reduced to a filibustering expedition, the Crusade was now to be directed against Constantinople. The rightful emperor, Isaac Angelus, was languishing in prison with his eyes put out by the hand of the usurper, Alexius III., his own brother. Isaac’s son, Alexius, had visited Innocent III. and Philip of Swabia, appealing for aid in behalf of his father. Philip, claimant to the German throne, had married the prince’s sister. Greek messengers appeared at Zara to appeal to Dandolo and the Crusaders to take up Isaac’s cause. The proposal suited the ambition of Venice, which could not have wished for a more favorable opportunity to confirm her superiority over the Pisans and Genoans, which had been threatened, if not impaired, on the Bosphorus.

As a compensation, Alexius made the tempting offer of 200,000 marks silver, the maintenance for a year of an army of 10,000 against the Mohammedans, and of 500 knights for life as a guard for the Holy Land, and the submission of the Eastern Church to the pope. The doge fell in at once with the proposition, but it was met by strong voices of dissent in the ranks of the Crusaders. Innocent’s threat of continued excommunication, if the expedition was turned against Constantinople, was ignored. A few of the Crusaders, like Simon de Montfort, refused to be used for private ends and withdrew from the expedition.446

Before reaching Corfu, the fleet was joined by Alexius in person. By the end of June, 1203, it had passed through the Dardanelles and was anchored opposite the Golden Horn. After prayers and exhortations by the bishops and clergy, the Galata tower was taken. Alexius III. fled, and Isaac was restored to the throne.

The agreements made with the Venetians, the Greeks found it impossible to fulfil. Confusion reigned among them. Two disastrous conflagrations devoured large portions of the city. One started in a mosque which evoked the wrath of the Crusaders.447  The discontent with the hard terms of the agreement and the presence of the Occidentals gave Alexius Dukas, surnamed Murzuphlos from his shaggy eyebrows, opportunity to dethrone Isaac and his son and to seize the reins of government. The prince was put to death, and Isaac soon followed him to the grave.

The confusion within the palace and the failure to pay the promised reward were a sufficient excuse for the invaders to assault the city, which fell April 12, 1204.448  Unrestrained pillage and riot followed. Even the occupants of convents were not exempted from the orgies of unbridled lust. Churches and altars were despoiled as well as palaces. Chalices were turned into drinking cups. A prostitute placed in the chair of the patriarchs in St. Sophia, sang ribald songs and danced for the amusement of the soldiery.449

Innocent III., writing of the conquest of the city, says: —

"You have spared nothing that is sacred, neither age nor sex. You have given yourselves up to prostitution, to adultery, and to debauchery in the face of all the world. You have glutted your guilty passions, not only on married women, but upon women and virgins dedicated to the Saviour. You have not been content with the imperial treasures and the goods of rich and poor, but you have seized even the wealth of the Church and what belongs to it. You have pillaged the silver tables of the altars, you have broken into the sacristies and stolen the vessels."450

To the revolt at these orgies succeeding ages have added regret for the irreparable loss which literature and art suffered in the wild and protracted sack. For the first time in eight hundred years its accumulated treasures were exposed to the ravages of the spoiler, who broke up the altars in its churches, as in St. Sophia, or melted priceless pieces of bronze statuary on the streets and highways.451

Constantinople proved to be the richest of sacred storehouses, full of relics, which excited the cupidity and satisfied the superstition of the Crusaders, who found nothing inconsistent in joining devout worship and the violation of the eighth commandment in getting possession of the objects of worship.452  With a credulity which seems to have asked no questions, skulls and bones of saints, pieces of wearing apparel, and other sacred objects were easily discovered and eagerly sent to Western Europe, from the stone on which Jacob slept and Moses’ rod which was turned into a serpent, to the true cross and fragments of Mary’s garments.453  What California was to the world’s supply of gold in 1849 and the mines of the Transvaal have been to its supply of diamonds—that the capture of Constantinople was to the supply of relics for Latin Christendom. Towns and cities welcomed these relics, and convents were made famous by their possession. In 1205 bishop Nivelon of Soissons sent to Soissons the head of St. Stephen, the finger that Thomas thrust into the Saviour’s side, a thorn from the crown of thorns, a portion of the sleeveless shirt of the Virgin Mary and her girdle, a portion of the towel with which the Lord girded himself at the Last Supper, one of John the Baptist’s arms, and other antiquities scarcely less venerable. The city of Halberstadt and its bishop, Konrad, were fortunate enough to secure some of the blood shed on the cross, parts of the sponge and reed and the purple robe, the head of James the Just, and many other trophies. Sens received the crown of thorns. A tear of Christ was conveyed to Seligencourt and led to a change of its name to the Convent of the Sacred Tear.454  Amiens received John the Baptist’s head; St. Albans, England, two of St. Margaret’s fingers. The true cross was divided by the grace of the bishops among the barons. A piece was sent by Baldwin to Innocent III.

Perhaps no sacred relics were received with more outward demonstrations of honor than the true crown of thorns, which Baldwin II. transferred to the king of France for ten thousand marks of silver.455  It was given free passage by the emperor Frederick II. and was carried through Paris by the French king barefoot and in his shirt. A part of the true cross and the swaddling clothes of Bethlehem were additional acquisitions of Paris.

The Latin Empire of Constantinople, which followed the capture of the city, lasted from 1204 to 1261. Six electors representing the Venetians and six representing the Crusaders met in council and elected Baldwin of Flanders, emperors.456  He was crowned by the papal legate in St. Sophia and at once set about to introduce Latin priests and subdue the Greek Church to the pope.

The attitude of Innocent III. to this remarkable transaction of Christian soldiery exhibited at once his righteous indignation and his politic acquiescence in the new responsibility thrust upon the Apostolic see.457  He appointed the Venetian, Thomas Morosini, archbishop; and the Latin patriarchate, established with him, has been perpetuated to this day, and is an almost unbearable offence to the Greeks.458  If Innocent had followed Baldwin’s suggestions, he would have convoked an oecumenical council in Constantinople.

The last of the Latin emperors, Baldwin III., 1237–1261, spent most of his time in Western Europe making vain appeals for money. After his dethronement, in l261, by Michael Palaeologus he presents a pitiable spectacle, seeking to gain the ear of princes and ecclesiastics. For two hundred years more the Greeks had an uncertain tenure on the Bosphorus. The loss of Constantinople was bound to come sooner or later in the absence of a moral and muscular revival of the Greek people. The Latin conquest of the city was a romantic episode, and not a stage in the progress of civilization in the East; nor did it hasten the coming of the new era of letters in Western Europe. It widened the schism of the Greek and the Latin churches. The only party to reap substantial gain from the Fourth Crusade was the Venetians.459

§ 56. Frederick II. and the Fifth Crusade. 1229.

Röhricht: Studien zur Gesch. d. V. Kreuzzuges, Innsbruck, 1891.—Hauck, IV. 752–764, and the lit., §§ 42, 49.

Innocent III.’s ardor for the reconquest of Palestine continued unabated till his death. A fresh crusade constituted one of the main objects for which the Fourth Lateran Council was called. The date set for it to start was June 1, 1217, and it is known as the Fifth Crusade. The pope promised £30,000 from his private funds, and a ship to convey the Crusaders going from Rome and its vicinity. The cardinals joined him in promising to contribute one-tenth of their incomes and the clergy were called upon to set apart one-twentieth of their revenues for three years for the holy cause. To the penitent contributing money to the crusade, as well as to those participating in it, full indulgence for sins was offered.460  A brief, forbidding the sale of all merchandise and munitions of war to the Saracens for four years, was ordered read every Sabbath and fast day in Christian ports.

Innocent died without seeing the expedition start. For his successor Honorius III., its promotion was a ruling passion, but he also died without seeing it realized.

In 1217 Andreas of Hungary led an army to Syria, but accomplished nothing. In 1219 William of Holland with his Germans, Norwegians, and Danes helped John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem, to take Damietta. This city, situated on one of the mouths of the Nile, was a place of prime commercial importance and regarded as the key of Egypt. Egypt had come to be regarded as the proper way of military approach to Palestine. Malik-al-Kameel, who in 1218 had succeeded to power in Egypt, offered the Christians Jerusalem and all Palestine, except Kerak, together with the release of all Christian prisoners, on condition of the surrender of Damietta. It was a grand opportunity of securing the objects for which the Crusaders had been fighting, but, elated by victory and looking for help from the emperor, Frederick II., they rejected the offer. In 1221 Damietta fell back into the hands of Mohammedans.461

The Fifth Crusade reached its results by diplomacy more than by the sword. Its leader, Frederick II., had little of the crusading spirit, and certainly the experiences of his ancestors Konrad and Barbarossa were not adapted to encourage him. His vow, made at his coronation in Aachen and repeated at his coronation in Rome, seems to have had little binding force for him. His marriage with Iolanthe, granddaughter of Conrad of Montferrat and heiress of the crown of Jerusalem, did not accelerate his preparations to which he was urged by Honorius III. In 1227 he sailed from Brindisi; but, as has already been said, he returned to port after three days on account of sickness among his men.462

At last the emperor set forth with forty galleys and six hundred knights, and arrived in Acre, Sept. 7,1228. The sultans of Egypt and Damascus were at the time in bitter conflict. Taking advantage of the situation, Frederick concluded with Malik-al-Kameel a treaty which was to remain in force ten years and delivered up to the Christians Jerusalem with the exception of the mosque of Omar and the Temple area, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the pilgrim route from Acre to Jerusalem.463  On March 19, 1229, the emperor crowned himself with his own hand in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The same day the archbishop of Caesarea pronounced, in the name of the patriarch of Jerusalem, the interdict over the city.464

Recalled probably by the dangers threatening his kingdom, Frederick arrived in Europe in the spring of 1229, but only to find himself for the fourth time put under the ban by his implacable antagonist, Gregory. In 1235 Gregory was again appealing to Christendom to make preparations for another expedition, and in his letter of 1239, excommunicating the emperor for the fifth time, he pronounced him the chief impediment in the way of a crusade.465

It was certainly a singular spectacle that the Holy City should be gained by a diplomatic compact and not by hardship, heroic struggle, and the intervention of miracle, whether real or imagined. It was still more singular that the sacred goal should be reached without the aid of ecclesiastical sanction, nay in the face of solemn papal denunciation.

Frederick II. has been called by Freeman an unwilling Crusader and the conquest of Jerusalem a grotesque episode in his life.466  Frederick certainly had no compunction about living on terms of amity with Mohammedans in his kingdom, and he probably saw no wisdom in endangering his relations with them at home by unsheathing the sword against them abroad.467  Much to the disgust of Gregory IX. he visited the mosque of Omar in Jerusalem without making any protest against its ritual. Perhaps, with his freedom of thought, he did not regard the possession of Palestine after all as of much value. In any case, Frederick’s religion—whatever he had of religion—was not of a kind to flame forth in enthusiasm for a pious scheme in which sentiment formed a prevailing element.

Gregory’s continued appeals in 1235 and the succeeding years called for some minor expeditions, one of them led by Richard of Cornwall, afterwards German emperor-elect. The condition of the Christians in Palestine grew more and more deplorable and, in a battle with the Chorasmians, Oct. 14, 1244, they met with a disastrous defeat, and thenceforth Jerusalem was closed to them.

§ 57. St. Louis and the Last Crusades. 1248, 1270.

Literature. —Jehan de Joinville, d. 1319, the next great historical writer in old French after Villehardouin, companion of St. Louis on his first Crusade: Hist. de St. Louis, 1st ed. Poitiers, 1547; by Du Cange, 1668; by Michaud in Mémoires à l’hist. de France, Paris, 1857, I. 161–329, and by de Wailly, Paris, 1868. For other edd. see Potthast, Bibl., I. 679–681. Engl. trans., M. Th. Johnes, Haford, 1807, included in Chronicles of the Crusades, Bohn’s Libr. 340–556, and J. Hutton, London, 1868. Tillemont: Vie de St. Louis, publ. for the first time, Paris, 1847–1851, 6 vols.—Scholten: Gesch. Ludwigs des Heiligen, ed. by Junkemann and Janssen, 2 vols. Münster, 1850–1855.—Guizot: St. Louis and Calvin, Paris, 1868.—Mrs. Bray: Good St. Louis and his Times, London, 1870.—Wallon: St. Louis et son Temps, 3d ed. Tours, 1879. — St. Pathus: Vie de St. Louis, publiée par F. Delaborde, Paris, 1899.—F. Perry: St. Louis, Most Christian King, London, 1901.—Lane-Poole: Hist. of Egypt in the M. A., N. Y., 1901.

One more great Crusader, one in whom genuine piety was a leading trait, was yet to set his face towards the East and, by the abrupt termination of his career through sickness, to furnish one of the most memorable scenes in the long drama of the Crusades. The Sixth and Seventh Crusades owe their origin to the devotion of Louis IX., king of France, usually known as St. Louis. Louis combined the piety of the monk with the chivalry of the knight, and stands in the front rank of Christian sovereigns of all times.468  His religious zeal showed itself not only in devotion to the confessional and the mass, but in steadfast refusal, in the face of threatened torture, to deviate from his faith and in patient resignation under the most trying adversity. A considerate regard for the poor and the just treatment of his subjects were among his traits. He washed the feet of beggars and, when a Dominican warned him against carrying his humility too far, he replied, "If I spent twice as much time in gaming and at the chase as in such services, no man would rise up to find fault with me."

On one occasion, when he asked Joinville if he were called upon to choose between being a leper and committing mortal sin, which his choice would be, the seneschal replied, "he would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper." The next day the king said to him, "How could you say what you did?  There is no leper so hideous as he who is in a state of mortal sin. The leprosy of the body will pass away at death, but the leprosy of the soul may cling to it forever."

The sack of Jerusalem by the Chorasmians,469 who were being pushed on from behind by the Mongols, was followed by the fall of Gaza and Ascalon. It was just one hundred years since the news of the fall of Edessa had stirred Europe, but the temper of men’s minds was no longer the same. The news of disasters in Palestine was a familiar thing. There was now no Bernard to arouse the conscience and give directions to the feelings of princes and people. The Council of Lyons in 1245 had for one of its four objects the relief of the holy places. A summons was sent forth by pope and council for a new expedition, and the usual gracious offers were made to those who should participate in the movement. St. Louis responded. During a sickness in 1245 and at the moment when the attendants were about to put a cloth on his face thinking he was dead, the king had the cross bound upon his breast.

On June 12, 1248, Louis received at St. Denis from the hand of the papal legate the oriflamme, and the pilgrim’s wallet and staff. He was joined by his three brothers, Robert, count of Artois, Alphonso, count of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou. Among others to accompany the king were Jean de Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, whose graphic chronicle has preserved the annals of the Crusade.470  The number of the troops is given at thirty-two thousand. Venetian and Genoese fleets carried them to Cyprus, where preparations had been made on a large scale for their maintenance. Thence they sailed to Egypt. Damietta fell, but after this first success, the campaign was a dismal disaster. Louis’ benevolence and ingenuousness were not combined with the force of the leader. He was ready to share suffering with his troops but had not the ability to organize them.471  His piety could not prevent the usual vices from being practised in the camps.472

Leaving Alexandria to one side, and following the advice of the count of Artois, who argued that whoso wanted to kill a snake should first strike its head, Louis marched in the direction of the capital, Cairo, or Babylon, as it was called. The army was harassed by a sleepless foe, and reduced by fevers and dysentery. The Nile became polluted with the bodies of the dead.473  At Mansourah the Turks dealt a crushing defeat. On the retreat which followed, the king and the count of Poitiers were taken prisoners. The count of Artois had been killed. The humiliation of the Crusaders had never been so deep.

The king’s patient fortitude shone brightly in these misfortunes. Threatened with torture and death, he declined to deviate from his faith or to yield up any of the places in Palestine. For the ransom of his troops, he agreed to pay 500,000 livres, and for his own freedom to give up Damietta and abandon Egypt. The sultan remitted a fifth part of the ransom money on hearing of the readiness with which the king had accepted the terms.

Clad in garments which were a gift from the sultan, and in a ship meagrely furnished with comforts, the king sailed for Acre. On board ship, hearing that his brother, the count of Anjou, and Walter de Nemours were playing for money, he staggered from his bed of sickness and throwing the dice, tables, and money into the sea, reprimanded the count that he should be so soon forgetful of his brother’s death and the other disasters in Egypt, as to game.474  At Acre, Louis remained three years, spending large sums upon the fortifications of Jaffa, Sidon, and other places. The death of Blanche, his mother, who had been acting as queen-regent during his absence, induced him to return to his realm.

Like Richard the Lion-hearted, Louis did not look upon Jerusalem. The sultan of Damascus offered him the opportunity and Louis would have accepted it but for the advice of his councillors,475 who argued that his separation from the army would endanger it, and pointing to the example of Richard, persuaded the king that it would be beneath his dignity to enter a city he could not conquer. He set sail from Acre in the spring of 1254. His queen, Margaret, and the three children born to them in the East, were with him. It was a pitiful conclusion to an expedition which once had given promise of a splendid consummation.

So complete a failure might have been expected to destroy all hope of ever recovering Palestine. But the hold of the crusading idea upon the mind of Europe was still great. Urban IV. and Clement III. made renewed appeals to Christendom, and Louis did not forget the Holy Land. In 1267, with his hand upon the crown of thorns, he announced to his assembled prelates and barons his purpose to go forth a second time in holy crusade.

In the meantime the news from the East had been of continuous disaster at the hand of the enemy and of discord among the Christians themselves. In 1258 forty Venetian vessels engaged in conflict with a Genoese fleet of fifty ships off Acre with a loss of seventeen hundred men. A year later the Templars and Hospitallers had a pitched battle. In 1263 Bibars, the founder of the Mameluke rule in Egypt, appeared before Acre. In 1268 Antioch fell.

In spite of bodily weakness and the protest of his nobles, Louis sailed in 1270.476  The fleet steered for Tunis,477 probably out of deference to Charles of Anjou, now king of Naples, who was bent upon forcing the sultan to meet his tributary obligations to Sicily.478  Sixty thousand men constituted the expedition, but disaster was its predestined portion. The camp was scarcely pitched on the site of Carthage when the plague broke out. Among the victims was the king’s son, John Tristan, born at Damietta, and the king himself. Louis died with a resignation accordant with the piety which had marked his life. He ordered his body placed on a bed of ashes; and again and again repeated the prayer, "Make us, we beseech thee, O Lord, to despise the prosperity of this world and not to fear any of its adversities." The night of August 24 his mind was upon Jerusalem, and starting up from his fevered sleep, he exclaimed, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! we will go." His last words, according to the report of an attendant, were, "I will enter into thy house, O Lord, I will worship in thy holy sanctuary, I will glorify Thy name, O Lord."479  The next day the royal sufferer passed to the Jerusalem above. His body was taken to France and laid away in St. Denis.480  In 1297 the good king was canonized, the only one of the prominent participants in the Crusades to attain to that distinction, unless we except St. Bernard.

§ 58. The Last Stronghold of the Crusaders in Palestine.

With Louis the last hope of Christian tenure of any part of Palestine was gone. At his death the French army disbanded.

In 1271 Edward, son and heir of Henry III. of England, reached Acre by way of Tunis. His expedition was but a wing of Louis’s army. A loan of 30,000 marks from the French king enabled him to prepare the armament. His consort Eleanor was with him, and a daughter born on the Syrian coast was called Joan of Acre. Before returning to England to assume the crown, he concluded an empty treaty of peace for ten years.

Attempts were made to again fan the embers of the once fervid enthusiasm into a flame, but in vain. Gregory X., who was in the Holy Land at the time of his election to the papal chair, carried with him westward a passionate purpose to help the struggling Latin colonies in Palestine. Before leaving Acre, 1272, he preached from Ps. 137:5, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." His appeals, issued a day or two after his coronation, met with little response. The Council of Lyons, 1274, which he convened, had for its chief object the arrangements for a Crusade. Two years later Gregory died, and the enterprise was abandoned.

In 1289 Tripoli was lost, and the bitter rivalry between the Military Orders hastened the surrender of Acre, 1291,481 and with it all Christian rule in Syria was brought to an end. The Templars and Hospitallers escaped. The population of sixty thousand was reduced to slavery or put to the sword. For one hundred and fifty years Acre had been the metropolis of Latin life in the East. It had furnished a camp for army after army, and witnessed the entry and departure of kings and queens from the chief states of Europe. But the city was also a byword for turbulence and vice. Nicolas IV. had sent ships to aid the besieged, and again called upon the princes of Europe for help; but his call fell on closed ears.

As the Crusades progressed, a voice was lifted here and there calling in question the religious propriety of such movements and their ultimate value. At the close of the twelfth century, the abbot Joachim complained that the popes were making them a pretext for their own aggrandizement, and upon the basis of Joshua 6:26; 1 Kings 16:24, he predicted a curse upon an attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. "Let the popes," he said, "mourn over their own Jerusalem—that is, the universal Church not built with hands and purchased by divine blood, and not over the fallen Jerusalem."482  Humbert de Romanis, general of the Dominicans, in making out a list of matters to be handled at the Council of Lyons, 1274, felt obliged to refute no less than seven objections to the Crusades. They were such as these. It was contrary to the precepts of the New Testament to advance religion by the sword; Christians may defend themselves, but have no right to invade the lands of another; it is wrong to shed the blood of unbelievers and Saracens; and the disasters of the Crusades proved they were contrary to the will of God.483

Raymundus Lullus, after returning from his mission to North Africa, in 1308, declared484 "that the conquest of the Holy Land should be attempted in no other way than as Christ and the Apostles undertook to accomplish it—by prayers, tears, and the offering up of our own lives. Many are the princes and knights that have gone to the Promised Land with a view to conquer it, but if this mode had been pleasing to the Lord, they would assuredly have wrested it from the Saracens before this. Thus it is manifest to pious monks that Thou art daily waiting for them to do for love to Thee what Thou hast done from love to them."

The successors of Nicolas IV., however, continued to cling to the idea of conquering the Holy Land by arms. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they made repeated appeals to the piety and chivalry of Western Europe, but these were voices as from another age. The deliverance of Palestine by the sword was a dead issue. New problems were engaging men’s minds. The authority of the popes—now in exile in Avignon, now given to a luxurious life at Rome, or engaged in wars over papal territory—was incompetent to unite and direct the energies of Europe as it had once done. They did not discern the signs of the times. More important tasks there were for Christendom to accomplish than to rescue the holy places of the East.

Erasmus struck the right note and expressed the view of a later age. Writing at the very close of the Middle Ages making an appeal485 for the proclamation of the Gospel by preaching and speaking of wars against the Turks, he said, "Truly, it is not meet to declare ourselves Christian men by killing very many but by saving very many, not if we send thousands of heathen people to hell, but if we make many infidels Christian; not if we cruelly curse and excommunicate, but if we with devout prayers and with our hearts desire their health, and pray unto God, to send them better minds."486

§ 59. Effects of the Crusades.

"... The knights’ bones are dust

And their good swords are rust;

Their souls are with the saints, we trust."

Coleridge.

Literature.—A. R. L. Heeren: Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge für Europa, Göttingen, 1808; French trans., Paris, 1808.—Maxime de Choiseul-Daillecourt: De l’influence des croisades sur l’état des peuples de l’Europe, Paris, 1809. Crowned by the French Institute, it presents the Crusades as upon the whole favorable to civil liberty, commerce, etc.—J. L. Hahn: Ursachen und Folgen der Kreuzzüge, Greifsw., 1859.—G. B. Adams: Civilization during the M. A., N. Y., 1894, 258–311. See the general treatments of the Crusades by Gibbon, Wilken, Michaud, Archer-Kingsford, 425–451, etc., and especially Prutz (Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge and The Economic Development of Western Europe under the Influence of the Crusades in Essays on the Crusades, Burlington, 1903), who in presenting the social, political, commercial, and literary aspects and effects of the Crusades lays relatively too much stress upon them.

The Crusades failed in three respects. The Holy Land was not won. The advance of Islam was not permanently checked. The schism between the East and the West was not healed. These were the primary objects of the Crusades.

They were the cause of great evils. As a school of practical religion and morals, they were no doubt disastrous for most of the Crusaders. They were attended by all the usual demoralizing influences of war and the sojourn of armies in an enemy’s country. The vices of the Crusading camps were a source of deep shame in Europe. Popes lamented them. Bernard exposed them. Writers set forth the fatal mistake of those who were eager to make conquest of the earthly Jerusalem and were forgetful of the heavenly city. "Many wended their way to the holy city, unmindful that our Jerusalem is not here." So wrote the Englishman, Walter Map, after Saladin’s victories in 1187.

The schism between the East and the West was widened by the insolent action of the popes in establishing Latin patriarchates in the East and their consent to the establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople. The memory of the indignities heaped upon Greek emperors and ecclesiastics has not yet been forgotten.

Another evil was the deepening of the contempt and hatred in the minds of the Mohammedans for the doctrines of Christianity. The savagery of the Christian soldiery, their unscrupulous treatment of property, and the bitter rancors in the Crusading camps were a disgraceful spectacle which could have but one effect upon the peoples of the East. While the Crusades were still in progress, the objection was made in Western Europe, that they were not followed by spiritual fruits, but that on the contrary the Saracens were converted to blasphemy rather than to the faith. Being killed, they were sent to hell.487

Again, the Crusades gave occasion for the rapid development of the system of papal indulgences, which became a dogma of the mediaeval theologians. The practice, once begun by Urban II. at the very outset of the movement, was extended further and further until indulgence for sins was promised not only for the warrior who took up arms against the Saracens in the East, but for those who were willing to fight against Christian heretics in Western Europe. Indulgences became a part of the very heart of the sacrament of penance, and did incalculable damage to the moral sense of Christendom. To this evil was added the exorbitant taxations levied by the popes and their emissaries. Matthew Paris complains of this extortion for the expenses of Crusades as a stain upon that holy cause.488

And yet the Crusades were not in vain. It is not possible to suppose that Providence did not carry out some important, immediate and ultimate purpose for the advancement of mankind through this long war, extending over two hundred years, and involving some of the best vital forces of two continents. It may not always be easy to distinguish between the effects of the Crusades and the effects of other forces active in this period, or to draw an even balance between them. But it may be regarded as certain that they made far-reaching contributions to the great moral, religious, and social change which the institutions of Europe underwent in the latter half of the Middle Ages.

First, the Crusades engaged the minds of men in the contemplation of a high and unselfish aim. The rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was a religious passion, drawing attention away from the petty struggles of ecclesiastics in the assertion of priestly prerogative, from the violent conflict of papacy and empire, and from the humdrum casuistry of scholastic and conventual dispute.489  Even Gibbon490 admits that "the controlling emotion with the most of the Crusaders was, beyond question, a lofty ideal of enthusiasm."

Considered in their effects upon the papacy, they offered it an unexampled opportunity for the extension of its authority. But on the other hand, by educating the laity and developing secular interests, they also aided in undermining the power of the hierarchy.

As for the political institutions of Europe, they called forth and developed that spirit of nationality which resulted in the consolidation of the states of Europe in the form which they have since retained with little change. When the Crusades began, feudalism flourished. When the Crusades closed, feudalism was decadent throughout Europe, and had largely disappeared from parts of it. The need petty knights and great nobles had to furnish themselves with adequate equipments, led to the pawn or sale of their estates and their prolonged absence gave sovereigns a rare opportunity to extend their authority. And in the adjoining camps of armies on Syrian soil, the customs and pride of independent national life were fostered.

Upon the literature and individual intelligence of Western Europe, the Crusades, no doubt, exerted a powerful influence, although it may not be possible to weigh that influence in exact balances. It was a matter of great importance that men of all classes, from the emperor to the poorest serf, came into personal contact on the march and in the camp. They were equals in a common cause, and learned that they possessed the traits of a common humanity, of which the isolation of the baronial hall kept them ignorant. The emancipating effect which travel may always be expected to exert, was deeply felt.491  The knowledge of human customs and geography was enlarged. Richard of Hoveden is able to give the distances from place to place from England to the Holy Land. A respectable collection of historical works grew out of the expeditions, from the earliest annalists of the First Crusade, who wrote in Latin, to Villehardouin and John de Joinville who wrote in French. The fountains of story and romance were struck, and to posterity were contributed the inspiring figures of Godfrey, Tancred, and St. Louis—soldiers who realized the ideal of Christian chivalry.

As for commerce, it would be hazardous to say that the enterprise of the Italian ports would not, in time, have developed by the usual incentives of Eastern trade and the impulse of marine enterprise then astir. It cannot be doubted, however, that the Crusades gave to commerce an immense impetus. The fleets of Marseilles and the Italian ports were greatly enlarged through the demands for the transportation of tens of thousands of Crusaders; and the Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians were busy in traffic at Acre, Damietta, and other ports.492

In these various ways the spell of ignorance and narrowing prejudice was broken, and to the mind of Western Europe a new horizon of thought and acquisition was opened, and remotely within that horizon lay the institutions and ambitions of our modern civilization.

After the lapse of six centuries and more, the Crusades still have their stirring lessons of wisdom and warning, and these are not the least important of their results. The elevating spectacle of devotion to an unselfish aim has seldom been repeated in the history of religion on so grand a scale. This spectacle continues to be an inspiration. The very word "crusade" is synonymous with a lofty moral or religious movement, as the word "gospel" has come to be used to signify every message of good.

The Crusades also furnish the perpetual reminder that not in localities is the Church to seek its holiest satisfaction and not by the sword is the Church to win its way; but by the message of peace, by appeals to the heart and conscience, and by teaching the ministries of prayer and devout worship is she to accomplish her mission. The Crusader kneeling in the church of the Holy Sepulchre learned the meaning of the words, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?  He is not here, He is risen." And all succeeding generations know the meaning of these words better for his pilgrimage and his mistake.

Approaching the Crusades in enthusiasm, but differing from them as widely as the East is from the West in methods and also in results, has been the movement of modern Protestant missions to the heathen world which has witnessed no shedding of blood, save the blood of its own Christian emissaries, men and women, whose aims have been not the conquest of territory, but the redemption of the race.493

§ 60. The Military Orders.

Literature.—The sources are the Rules of the orders and the scattered notices of contemporary chroniclers. No attempt is made to give an exhaustive list of the literature.—P. H. Helyot: Histoire des ordres monastiques, religieux et militaires, 8 vols. Paris, 1719.—Perrot. Coll. Hist. des ordres de chivalrie, etc., 4 vols. Paris, 1819. Supplementary vol. by Fayolle, 1846.—Bielenfeld: Gesch. und Verfassung aller geistlichen und weltlichen Ritterorden, 2 vols. Weimar, 1841.—F. C. Woodhouse: The Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages, London, 1879.—G. Uhlhorn: Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1884.—Hurter: Life of Innocent III., vol. IV. 313 sqq.—The general Histories of the Crusades.—Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England.

For the Knights of St. John: Abbe Vertot: Hist. des chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, etc., 4 vols. Paris, 1726, and since.—Taafe: History of the Knights of Malta, 4 vols. London, 1852.—L. B. Larking: The Knights Hospitallers in England, London, 1857.—A. Winterfeld: Gesch. des Ordens St. Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem, Berlin, 1859.—H. Von Ortenburg: Der Ritterorden des hl. Johannis zu Jerusalem, 2 vols. Regensb. 1866.—Genl. Porter: Hist. of the Knights of Malta of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, London, 1883.—Von Finck: Uebersicht über die Gesch. des ritterlichen Ordens St. Johannis, Berlin, 1890.—G. Hönnicke: Studien zur Gesch. des Hospitalordens, 1099–1162, 1897.—*J. D. Le Roulx: De prima origine Hospitaliorum Hierosol., Paris, 1885; Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers St. Jean de Jérusalem, 3 vols., Paris, 1894; Les Hospitaliers en Terre Sainte et à Chypre, 1100–1310, Paris, 1904, pp. 440.—J. Von Pflugk-Harttung: Die Anfänge des Johanniterordens in Deutschland, Berlin, 1899, and Der Johanniter und der Deutsche Orden im Kampfe Ludwigs des Baiern mit der Kirche, Leipzig, 1900. Knöpfler: Johanniter in Weltzer-Welte, VI. 1719–1803. For other Lit. see Le Roulx: Les Hospitaliers, pp. v-xiii.

For the Knights Templars: The literature is very abundant. Bernard Of Clairvaux: De laude novae militiae, ad milites templi, Migne, 182, pp. 921–940.—Dupuy: Hist. des Templiers, Paris, 1650.—F. Wilcke: Gesch. des Tempelherren Ordens, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1827, 2d ed. Halle, 1860.—*C. H. Maillard De Chambure: Règle et Statuts secrets des Templiers, Paris, 1840 (from three old French MSS.).—W. Havemann: Gesch. des Ausgangs des Tempelherren Ordens, Stuttgart, 1846. Michelet: Procès des Templiers, 2 vols. Paris, 1841–1851.—Boutaric: Clement V. Philippe le Bel et les Templiers, Paris, 1874, and Documents inédites de Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1861.—*Henri de Curzon: La Règle du Temple, Paris, 1886.—*H. Prutz: Geheimlehre und Geheimstatuten des Tempelherren Ordens, Berlin, 1879, Entwicklung und Untergang des Tempelherrenordens, Berlin, 1888.—K. Schottmüller: D. Untergang des Templer-Ordens, 2 vols. Berlin, 1887.—W. Cunningham: Growth of English Industry, London, 1890.—J. Gmelin: Schuld oder Unschuld des Templerordens, Stuttgart, 1893.—*Döllinger: Der Untergang des Tempelordens in his "Akadem. Vorträge," Munich, 1891, III. 245–274, the last public address the author delivered before the Academy of Sciences of Munich.—A. Grange: Fall of the Knights Templars, "Dublin Review," 1895, pp. 329 sqq.—G. Schnürer: D. ursprüngliche Templerregel, Freib. 1903.—Mansi, XXI. 359–372, also gives the Rule of the Templars as set forth at the Synod of Troyes, 1128.—J. A. Froude: The Knights Templars in Short Essays.—Hefele-Knöpfler, VI.—*Funk: Templer in Wetzer-Welte, XI. pp. 1311–1345.—H. C. Lea: Hist. of the Inquisition, III. and Absolution Formula of the Templars, Amer. Soc. of Ch. Hist. Papers, V. 37–58.

For the Teutonic Knights: Strehlke: Tabulae ordinis teutonicae.—Hennes: Codex diplomaticus ordinis S. Mariae Theutonicorum, 2 vols. Mainz, 1845–1861.—E. Hennig: Die Statuten des deutschen Ordens, Würzburg, 1866.—M. Perlbach: Die Statuten des Deutschordens, Halle, 1890.—Joh. Voigt: Geschichte des Deutschen Ritter-Ordens, 2 vols. Berlin, 1857–1859.—H. Prutz: Die Besitzungen des deutschen Ordens im heiligen Lande, Leipzig, 1877.—C. Herrlich: Die Balley Brandenburg, etc., Berlin, 1886.—C. Lempens: Geschichte d. Deutschen Ordens u. sr. Ordensländer Preussen u. Livland, 1904.—Ranke: Univ. Hist., VIII. 455–480.—Uhlhorn: Deutschorden, in Herzog, IV.

"And by the Holy Sepulchre

I’ve pledged my knightly sword

To Christ, His blessed church, and her,

The mother of our Lord."

Whittier, Knights of St. John.

A product of the Crusades and their most important adjunct were the three great Military Orders, the Knights of St. John, the Knight Templars, and the Teutonic Knights. They combined monastic vows with the profession of arms. Their members were fighting monks and armed almoners. They constituted a standing army of Crusaders and were the vigilant guardians of Latin institutions in Palestine for nearly two centuries. The Templars and the Knights of St. John did valiant service on many a battle-field in Palestine and Asia Minor.494  In 1187 they shared in the disastrous defeat of the Christian forces at Tiberias. From that time their strength was concentrated at Acre.495  After the fall of Acre, 1291, the three orders retired to Europe, holding the Turks in check for two centuries longer in the South and extending civilization to the provinces on the Baltic in the North. They combined the element of romance, corresponding to the chivalric spirit of the age, with the element of philanthropy corresponding to its religious spirit.

These orders speedily attained to great popularity, wealth, and power. Kings did them honor. Pope after pope extended their authority and privileges. Their grand masters were recognized as among the chief personages of Christendom. But with wealth and popularity came pride and decay. The strength of the Knights of St. John and the Templars was also reduced by their rivalry which became the scandal of Europe, and broke out into open feuds and pitched battles as before Acre, 1241 to 1243 and in 1259.496  After the fall of Acre, which was ascribed in large part to their jealousy, Nicholas IV. sought to combine them.497  The Knights of St. John were predominantly a French order, the Teutonic Knights exclusively a German order. The Templars were oecumenical in their constituency.

I. The order of the Knights of St. John, or the Hospitallers,498 derived its name from the church of St. John the Baptist in Jerusalem.499  It seems to have grown out of a hospital in the city erected for the care of sick and destitute pilgrims. As early as the time of Charlemagne a hospital existed there. Before the year 1000 a cloister seems to have been founded by the Normans close by the church of the Holy Sepulchre known as St. Maria de Latina, with accommodations for the sick.500  About 1065 or 1070 a hospital was built by a merchant from Amalfi, Maurus.501  At the time of the capture of Jerusalem, Gerard stood at the head of one of these institutions. Gerard seems to have come from Southern France.502  He prescribed for his brotherhood a mantle of black with a white cross. Godfrey of Bouillon liberally endowed it and Baldwin further enriched it with one-tenth of the booty taken at the siege of Joppa. Gerard died in 1120 and was succeeded by Raymund du Puy, who gave the order great fame and presided over it for forty years.503

The order increased with astonishing rapidity in numbers, influence, and wealth. Gifts were received from all parts of Europe, the givers being remembered in prayers offered up in Jerusalem. Raymund systematized the rules of the brotherhood and gave it a compact organization and in 1113 it gained papal sanction through Pascal II. At that time there were affiliated houses at St. Giles, Asti, Pisa, Otranto, and Tarentum.504  In 1122 Calixtus II. made the important announcement that those giving protection to pilgrims were entitled to the same reward as the pilgrims themselves and all who gave to the Hospital in the earthly Jerusalem, should receive the joys of the heavenly. Bull followed bull, granting the order privileges. Innocent III. exempted the members from excommunication at the hand of bishops and made the order amenable solely to the pope. Anastasius IV., 1154, gave them the right to build churches, chapels, and graveyards in any locality.505

The military feature of the organization was developed after the philanthropic feature of nursing and caring for unfortunate pilgrims and it quickly became the dominant feature. Raymund du Puy makes a clear distinction in the order between cleric and lay brethren. Innocent II., 1130, speaks of its members as priests, knights, and lay brethren, the last taking no vows. In its perfected organization the order was divided into three classes, knights, chaplains, and serving brethren. The knights and chaplains were bound by the threefold pledge of charity, poverty, and obedience.506  The military brothers or knights formed the majority of the order and from them the officials were elected.507  The hospital work was not abandoned. In 1160 John of Wizburg states from personal observation that more than two thousand sick were cared for in the hospital of Jerusalem, and that in a single day forty deaths occurred. After the transfer of the order to Rhodes, the knights continued to carry on hospital work.

After Clement IV., 1267, the title of the chief official was "Grand master of the Hospital of Jerusalem and Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ." The distinctive dress of the order was, after 1259, a red mantle with a white Maltese cross worn on the left breast that "God through this emblem might give faith and obedience and protect us and all our Christian benefactors from the power of the devil." Its motto was pro fide, "for the faith."508  The whole body was divided about 1320 into seven langues or provinces, Provence, France, Auvergne, Italy, Germany, Aragon, England. Castile was added in 1464. Affiliated houses in Europe and the East sent two-thirds of their income to Jerusalem.509  One of the interesting rules of the order was that the knights always went two and two and carried their own light with them.

After the fall of Acre, the Hospitallers established themselves on the island of Cyprus and in 1310 removed to the island of Rhodes, where massive walls and foundations continue to attest the labor expended upon their fortifications and other buildings. From Rhodes, as a base, they did honorable service.

Under the grand master La Valette, the Knights bravely defended Malta against the fleet of Suleymon the Magnificent until Europe felt the thrill of relief caused by the memorable defeat of the Turkish fleet by Don John at Lepanto, 1571. From that time the order continued to decay.510

II. The Knight Templars511 before the fall of Acre had, if possible, a more splendid fame than the Knights of St. John; but the order had a singularly tragic ending in 1312, and was dissolved under moral charges of the most serious nature. From the beginning they were a military body. The order owes its origin to Hugo de Payens (or Payns) and Godfrey St. Omer, who entered Jerusalem riding on one horse, 1119. They were joined by six others who united with them in making a vow to the patriarch of Jerusalem to defend by force of arms pilgrims on their way from the coast to Jerusalem.

Baldwin II. gave the brotherhood quarters in his palace on Mount Moriah, near the site of Solomon’s temple, whence the name Templars is derived. Hugo appeared at the council of Troyes in 1128,512 and made such persuasive appeals at the courts of France, England, and Germany, that three hundred knights joined the order. St. Bernard wrote a famous tract in praise of the "new soldiery."513  He says: "Never is an idle word, or useless deed, or immoderate laughter or murmur, if it be but in a whisper, among the Templars allowed to go unpunished. They take no pleasure in the absurd pastime of hawking. Draughts and dice they abhor. Ribald songs and stage plays they eschew as insane follies. They cut their hair close; they are begrimed with dirt and swarthy from the weight of their armor and the heat of the sun. They never dress gayly, and wash seldom. They strive to secure swift and strong horses, but not garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, thinking of battle and victory, not of pomp and show. Such has God chosen to vigilantly guard the Holy Sepulchre."514

The order spread with great rapidity.515  Matthew Paris, no doubt, greatly exaggerates when he gives the number of their houses in the middle of the thirteenth century as nine thousand.516  Their annual revenues have been estimated as high as 54,000,000 francs.517  The order was divided into provinces, five of them in the east—Jerusalem, Tripolis, Antioch, Cyprus, and the Morea; and eleven in the west—France, Aquitaine, Provence, Aragon, Portugal, Lombardy, Hungary, England, Upper and Lower Germany, Sicily, and perhaps a twelfth, Bohemia. Popes, beginning with Honorius II., heaped favors upon them. They were relieved from paying taxes of all sorts. They might hold services twice a year in churches where the interdict was in force. Their goods were placed under the special protection of the Holy See. In 1163 Alexander III. granted them permission to have their own priests.518

Like the Hospitallers, the Templars took the triple vow and, in addition, the vow of military service and were divided into three classes: the knights who were of noble birth, the men at arms or serving brethren (fratres servientes, armigeri), and chaplains who were directly amenable to the pope. The dress of the knights was a white mantle with a red cross, of the serving brethren a dark habit with a red cross. The knights cropped their hair short and allowed their beards to grow. They were limited to three horses, except the grand master who was allowed four, and were forbidden to hunt except the lion, the symbol of the devil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour.519  The order had for its motto "not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name, O Lord, give the glory."520  The members in cloister observed the regular conventual hours for prayer, and ate at a common table. If money was found in the effects of a deceased brother, his body was denied all prayer and funeral services and placed in unconsecrated ground like a slave.521  They were bidden to flee from the kisses of women and never to kiss a widow, virgin, mother, sister, or any other female.522  On account of their poverty, two ate from the same dish, but each had his own portion of wine to himself.523

The head of the order was called Grand Master, was granted the rank of a prince, and included in the invitations to the oecumenical councils, as, for example, the Fourth Lateran and the second council of Lyons. The Master of the Temple in England was a baron with seat in Parliament.

The Templars took part in all the Crusades except the first and the crusade of Frederick II., from which they held aloof on account of the papal prohibition. Their discipline was conspicuous on the disastrous march of the French from Laodicea to Attalia and their valor at the battle of Hattim, before Gaza524 and on many other fields.525  The order degenerated with riches and success.526  To drink like a Templar, bibere templariter, became proverbial for fast living. Their seal, representing the two founders entering Jerusalem in poverty on one horse, early came to misrepresent their real possessions.

A famous passage in the history of Richard of England set forth the reputation the Templars had for pride. When Fulke of Neuilly was preaching the Third Crusade, he told Richard he had three daughters and called upon him to provide for them in marriage. The king exclaimed, "Liar, I have no daughters." "Nay, thou hast three evil daughters, Pride, Lust, and Luxury," was the priest’s reply. Turning to his courtiers, Richard retorted, "He bids me marry my three daughters. Well, so be it. To the Templars, I give my first-born, Pride, to the Cistercians my second-born, Lust, and to the prelates the third, Luxury."527

The order survived the fall of Acre less than twenty years. After finding a brief refuge in Cyprus the knights concentrated their strength in France, where the once famous organization was suppressed by the violent measures of Philip the Fair and Clement V. The story of the suppression belongs to the next period.

III. The order of the Teutonic Knights528 never gained the prominence in Palestine of the two older orders. During the first century of its existence, its members devoted themselves to the maintenance and care of hospitals on the field of battle. They seldom appeared until the historic mission of the order opened in the provinces of what is now northeastern Germany which were reduced to subjection and to a degree of civilization by its arms and humanizing efforts.

The order dates from 1190, when a hospital was erected in a tent under the walls of Acre by pilgrims from Bremen and Lübeck. Frederick of Swabia commended it, and Clement III. sanctioned it, 1191.529  It was made a military order in 1198 by a bull of Innocent III.530 and in 1221 Honorious III. conferred upon it the privileges enjoyed by the Hospitallers and Templars. The order was made up almost exclusively of German elements.531  The members took the triple vow. Their dress was a white mantle with a black cross. Women were affiliated with some of the hospitals, as at Bremen. The first possession of the order in Europe was a convent at Palermo, the gift of Henry VI., 1197. Its first hospital in Germany was St. Kunigunde, at Halle. Subsequently its hospitals extended from Bremen and Lübeck to Nürnberg and further south. Its territory was divided into bailiwicks, balleyen, of which there were twelve in Germany. The chief officer, called Grand Master, had the dignity of a prince of the empire.

Under Hermann von Salza (1210–1239), the fourth grand master, the order grew with great rapidity. Von Salza was a trusted adviser of Frederick II., and received the privilege of using the black eagle in the order’s banner. Following the invitation of the monk Christian and of Konrad of Morovia, 1226, to come to their relief against the Prussians, he diverted the attention and activity of the order from the Orient to this new sphere. The order had the promise of Culmland and half of its conquests for its assistance.

After the fall of Acre, the headquarters were transferred to Venice and in 1309 to Marienburg on the Vistula, where a splendid castle was erected. Henceforth the knights were occupied with the wild territories along the Baltic and southwards, whose populations were still in a semi-barbaric state. In the hour when the Templars were being suppressed, this order was enjoying its greatest prosperity. In 1237 it absorbed the Brothers of the Sword.532

At one time the possessions of the Teutonic knights included fifty cities such as Culm, Marienburg, Thorn, and Königsberg, and lands with a population of two million. Its missionary labors are recorded in another chapter. With the rise of Poland began the shrinkage of the order, and in the battle of Tannenberg, 1410, its power was greatly shaken. In 1466 it gave up large blocks of territory to Poland, including Marienburg, and the grand master swore fealty to the Polish king. The order continued to hold Prussia and Sameland as fiefs. But the discipline had become loose, as was indicated by the popular saying, "Dressing and undressing, eating and drinking, and going to bed are the work the German knights do."533  In 1511 the margrave, Albrecht of Brandenburg, was made grand master and refused to be a vassal of Poland. Following the counsel of Luther, he laid down the mantle and cross of the order, married 1523, and laid the foundation of the greatness of the duchy of Prussia, which he made hereditary in his family, the Hohenzollern.534  The black eagle passed to the Prussian coat of arms.535

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MONASTIC ORDERS.

§ 61. The Revival of Monasticism.

Literature.—The Letters of Anselm, Bernard, Peter the Venerable, William of Thierry, Hildegard, etc.—Abaelard: Hist. calamitatum, his autobiography, Migne, 178.—Honorius of Autun: De vita claustrali, Migne, 172, 1247 sqq.—Bernard: De conversione ad clericos sermo, in Migne, 182, 853–59, and De praecepto et dispensatione, 851–953.—The Treatments of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, etc., in their Summas.—Petrus Venerablis: De miraculis, in Migne, 189. Caesar of Heisterbach (ab. 1240): Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. by J. Strange, 2 vols. Col. 1851. Excerpts in German trans. by A. Kaufmann, 2 parts, Col. 1888 sq.—Thos. à Chantimpré (d. about 1270): Bonum universale de apibus, a comparison of a convent to a beehive. Excerpts in German by A. Kaufmann, Col. 1899; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, 5 vols. London, 1865–69.—Jacobus de Voragine: Legenda aurea, English by W. Caxton (about 1470), Temple classics ed. 7 vols. London, 1890. — William of St. Amour (d. 1272): De periculis novissorum temporum in Denifle Chartularium Univ., Paris, vol. 1.

The Lives of Anselm, Bernard, William of Thierry, Francis, Dominic, Norbert, etc.—H. Helyot (Franciscan, d. 1716): Hist. des ordres monastiques, religieux et militaires et des congrégations séculières de l’une et de l’autre sexe qui ont été établies jusqu’ àprésent, 8 vols. Paris, 1714–19; Germ. trans., 8 vols. Leip. 1753–56. He gives a long list of the older authorities.—Mrs. Jamieson: Legends of the Monastic Orders, London, 1850.—A. Butler: Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, 12 vols. Dublin, 1868 sqq.—Sir William Dugdale: Monasticon anglicanum, ed. by J. Caley, etc., 8 vols. London, 1846. Based on the ed. of 1817.—T. D. Fosbroke: Brit. Monasticism, or Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England, London, 1803, 3d ed. 1845.—Montalembert: Les moins d’occident depuis St. Benoit jusqu’ à St. Bernard, Paris, 1860–77; EngI. trans., 7 vols. London, 1861 sqq.—O. T. Hill: Engl. Monasticism, Its Rise and Influence, London, 1867.—S. R. Maitland: The Dark Ages, ed. by Fred. Stokes, 5th ed., London, 1890.—Wishart: Short Hist. of Monks and Monasticism, Trenton, 1900.—E. L. Taunton: The Engl. Black Monks of St. Benedict, 2 vols. London, 1897.—A. Gasquet: Engl. Monastic Life, London, 1904, and since.—Hurter: Innocent III., vol. IV. 84–311.—J. C. Robertson: View of Europe during the Middle Ages, in introd. to his Life of Chas. V.—H. Von Eicken: Gesch. und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887.—A. Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars, London, no date, 7th ed., chap. Daily Life in a Med. Monastery, 113–166.—Harnack: Monasticism, Giessen, 1882, 5th ed. 1901, trans. by C. R. Gillett, N. Y., 1895.—Stephens: Hist. of the Engl. Church, chap. XIV. (Monastic Orders).—Hauck, III. 441–516, IV. 311–409.—Littledale: Monachism, ’in Enc. Brit.—Denifle: Luther und Lutherthum, Mainz, 1904 sq., draws in his treatment of monasticism, upon his great resources of mediaeval scholarship.

The glorious period of monasticism fell in the Middle Ages, and more especially in the period that is engaging our attention. The convent was the chief centre of true religion as well as of dark superstition. With all the imposing movements of the age, the absolute papacy, the Crusades, the universities, the cathedrals and scholasticism, the monk was efficiently associated. He was, with the popes, the chief promoter of the Crusades. He was among the great builders. He furnished the chief teachers to the universities and numbered in his order the profoundest of the Schoolmen. The mediaeval monks were the Puritans, the Pietists, the Methodists, the Evangelicals of their age.536  All these classes of Christians have this in common, that they make earnest with their religion, and put it into zealous practice.

If it be compared with the monachism of the earlier period of the Church, the mediaeval institution will be found to equal it in the number of its great monks and to exceed it in useful activity. Among the distinguished Fathers of the Post-Nicene period who advocated monasticism were St. Anthony of Egypt, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Benedict of Nursia. In the Middle Ages the list is certainly as imposing. There we have Anselm, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus among the Schoolmen, St. Bernard and Hugo de St. Victor, Eckart, and Tauler among the mystics, Hildegard and Joachim of Flore among the seers, the authors of the Dies irae and Stabat mater and Adam de St. Victor among the hymnists, Anthony of Padua, Bernardino of Siena, Berthold of Regensburg and Savonarola among the preachers, and in a class by himself, Francis d’Assisi.

Of the five epochs in the history of monasticism two belong to the Middle Ages proper.537  The appearance of the hermit and the development of the eremite mode of life belong to the fourth century. Benedict of Nursia of the sixth century, and his well-systematized rule, mark the second epoch. The development of the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century marks the last epoch. The two between are represented by the monastic revival, starting from the convent of Cluny as a centre in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the rise and spread of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. Cluny was for a century almost the only reforming force in Western Europe till the appearance of Hildebrand on the stage, and he himself was probably trained in the mother convent. Through its offshoots and allied orders Cluny continued to be a burning centre of religious zeal for a century longer. Then, at a time of monastic declension, the mendicant orders, brought into existence by St. Francis d’Assisi and Dominic of Spain, became the chief promoters of one of the most notable religious revivals that has ever swept over Europe.

The work done by men like William of Hirschau, Bruno and Norbert in Germany, Bernard and Peter the Venerable in France, and St. Francis in Italy, cannot be ignored in any true account of the onward progress of mankind. However much we may decline to believe that monasticism is a higher form of Christian life, we must give due credit to these men, or deny to a series of centuries all progress and good whatsoever.

The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediaeval period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet and undisturbed repose"; fraternae pacis amicus, "friend of brotherly peace."

The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were "converted"—that is, determined to enter a convent. Now the decision was made at a burial.538  Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,539 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.540  Caesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and revealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.541

There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.542  Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conventual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict it to them, when it forbade the practice of receiving motley as a price of admission to the vow.543  The monk proved to be stronger than the knight and the institution of chivalry decayed before the institution of monasticism which still survives.

By drawing to themselves the best spirits of the time, the convents became in their good days, from the tenth well into the thirteenth century, hearthstones of piety, and the chief centres of missionary and civilizing agencies. When there was little preaching, the monastic community preached the most powerful sermon, calling men’s thoughts away from riot and bloodshed to the state of brotherhood and religious reflection.544  The motto aratro et cruce, "by the cross and the plough," stood in their case for a reality. The monk was a pioneer in the cultivation of the ground, and, after the most scientific fashion then known, taught agriculture, the culture of the vine and fish, the breeding of cattle, and the culture of wool. He built roads and the best buildings. In intellectual and artistic concerns the convent was the chief school of the times. It trained architects, painters, and sculptors. There the deep problems of theology and philosophy were studied; there manuscripts were copied, and when the universities arose, the convent furnished them with their first and their most renowned teachers. In northeastern Germany and other parts of Europe and in Asia it was the outer citadel of church profession and church activity.

So popular was the monastic life that religion seemed to be in danger of running out into monkery and society of being transformed into an aggregation of convents. The Fourth Lateran sought to counteract this tendency by forbidding the establishment of new orders.545  But no council was ever more ignorant of the immediate future. Innocent III. was scarcely in his grave before the Dominicans and Franciscans received full papal sanction.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the important change was accomplished whereby all monks received priestly ordination. Before that time it was the exception for a monk to be a priest. Extreme unction and absolution had been administered in the convent by unordained monks.546  With the development of the strict theory of sacerdotalism, these functions were forbidden to them, as by the ninth oecumenical council, 1123. The synod of Nismes, thirty years earlier, 1096, thought it answered objections to the new custom sufficiently by pointing to Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, and Augustine as cases of monks who had priestly ordination. On the other hand the active movement within the convents to take a larger part in the affairs of society was resisted by oecumenical councils, as, for example, the Second Lateran, 1139, which forbade monks practising as physicians or lawyers.

The monastic life was praised as the highest form of earthly existence. The convent was compared to Canaan547 and treated as the shortest and surest road to heaven. The secular life, even the life of the secular priest, was compared to Egypt. The passage to the cloister was called conversion, and the monks converts, conversi, or the religious.548  They reached the Christian ideal. Renouncing the vow was pronounced turning to the company of the lost, to the lion’s mouth, and to the realm of blackness and death.549

Bishop Otto of Freising speaks of the monks as, spending their lives like angels in heavenly purity and holiness. They live together one in heart and soul, give themselves at one signal to sleep, lift up as by one impulse their lips in prayer and their voices in reading.... They go so far, that while they are refreshing the body at table, they listen to the reading of the Scriptures.... They give up their own wills, their earthly possessions, and their parents, and, following the command of the Gospel and Christ, constantly bear their cross by mortifying the flesh, being all the while full of heavenly homesickness."550

The enthusiastic advocacy of the monastic life can only be explained by a desire to get relief from the turbulence of the social world and a sincere search after holiness. There is scarcely a letter of Anselm in which he does not advocate its superior advantages. It was not essential to become a monk to reach salvation, but who, he writes, "can attain to it in a safer or nobler way, he who seeks to love God alone or he who joins the love of the world with the love of God?"551  He loses no opportunity to urge laymen to take the vow. He appeals to his kinsmen according to the flesh to become his kinsmen in the Spirit.552

Bernard was not at peace till he had all his brothers and his married sister within cloistral walls.

Honorius of Autun, in his tract on the cloistral life,553 after declaring that it was instituted by the Lord himself, calls the convent a shore for those tired on the sea, a refuge for the traveller from the cold and anxieties of the world, a bed for the weary to rest on, an asylum for those fleeing from the turmoils of the state, a school for infants learning the rule of Christ, a gymnasium for those who would fight against vices, a prison career for the criminal from the broad way till he goes into the wide hall of heaven, a paradise with different trees full of fruits and the delights of Scripture.

The monastic life was the angelic life. "Are ye not already like the angels of God, having abstained from marriage," exclaimed St. Bernard, in preaching to his monks,554 and this was the almost universal representation of the age.

Kings and princes desired to be clad in the monastic habit as they passed into the untried scenes of the future. So Frederick II., foe of the temporal claims of the papacy as he was, is said to have died in the garb of the Cistercians. So did Roger II. of Sicily, 1163, and Roger III., 1265. William of Nevers was clad in the garb of the Carthusian order before he expired. Louis VI. of France passed away stretched on ashes sprinkled in the form of a cross. So did Henry, son of Henry II. of England, expire, laid on a bed of ashes, 1184. William the Conqueror died in a priory with a bishop and abbot standing by.555

It was the custom in some convents, if not in all, to lay out the monks about to die on the floor, which was sometimes covered with matting. First they rapped on the death table. Waiting the approach of death, the dying often had wonderful visions of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. The imagination at such times was very vivid, and the reports which the dying gave on returning for a moment to consciousness seem to have been generally accepted.556

The miraculous belonged to the monk’s daily food. He was surrounded by spirits. Visions and revelations occurred by day and by night.557  Single devils and devils in bands were roaming about at all hours in the cloistral spaces, in the air and on foot, to deceive the unwary and to shake the faith of the vigilant. The most elaborate and respectable accounts of monks, so beset, are given by Peter the Venerable in his work on Miracles, by Caesar of Heisterbach, and Jacobus de Voragine. Caesar’s Dialogue of Miracles and Voragine’s Golden Legend are among the most entertaining storybooks ever written. They teem with legends which are accepted as true. They simply reflect the feeling of the age, which did not for a moment doubt the constant manifestation of the supernatural, especially the pranks and misdemeanors of the evil one and his emissaries.

Peter the Venerable gives a graphic picture of how these restless foes pulled the bedclothes off from sleeping monks and, chuckling, carried them to a distance, how they impudently stood by, making fun while the modest monastic attended to the necessities of nature,558 and how they threw the faithful to the ground, as at night they went about through convent precincts making "holy thefts of prayer."559  Peter tells a good story of a poor monk who suddenly saw before him an immense demon standing at his bedside, who with difficulty bore his weight with his wings. Two others appeared at once and exclaimed to the first, "What are you doing here?"  "I can do nothing," was the reply, "on account of the protection which is given by the cross and the holy water and the singing of psalms. I have labored all night and can do nothing." The two replied, "We have come from forcing a certain Gaufrid to commit adultery and the head of a monastery to fornicate with a boy, and you, idle rogue, do something, too, and cut off the foot of this monk which is hanging outside his bed." Seizing a pickaxe which was lying under the bed, the demon struck with all his might, but the monk with equal celerity drew in his foot and turned to the back side of the bed and so escaped the blow. Thereupon the demons took their departure.560

It is fair to suppose that many of these experiences were mere fancies of the brain growing out of attacks of indigestion or of headache, which was a common malady of convents.561

The assaults of the devil were especially directed to induce the monk to abandon his sacred vow. Writing to a certain Helinand, Anselm mentions the four kinds of assault he was wont to make. The first was the assault through lust of the pleasures of the world, when the novice, having recently entered the convent, began to feel the monotony of its retired life. In the second, he pushed the question why the monk had chosen that form of life rather than the life of the parish priest. In the third, he pestered him with the question why he had not put off till late in life the assumption of the vow, in the meantime having a good time, and yet in the end getting all the benefits and the reward of monkery. And last of all, the devil argued why the monk had bound himself at all by a vow, seeing it was possible to serve God just as acceptably without a vow. Anselm answered the last objection by quoting Ps. 76:11, and declaring the vow to be in itself well pleasing to God.562

It is unfair to any institution to base our judgment of its merits and utility upon its perversions. The ideal Benedictine and Franciscan monk, we should be glad to believe, was a man who divided his time between religious exercises and some useful work, whether it was manual labor or teaching or practical toil of some other kind. There were, no doubt, multitudes of worthy men who corresponded to this ideal. But there was another ideal, and that ideal was one from which this modern age turns away with unalloyed repugnance. The pages of Voragine and the other retailers of the conventual life are full of repulsive descriptions which were believed in their day, and presented not only a morbid view of life but a view utterly repulsive to sound morality and to the ideal. A single instance will suffice. In the curious legend of St. Brandon the Irish saint, whose wanderings on the ocean have been connected with America, we have it reported that he found an island whereon was an abbey in which twenty-four monks lived. They had come from Ireland and had been living on the island eighty years when they welcomed St. Brandon and his twelve companions. In all this time they had been served from above every week day with twelve loaves of bread, and on Sabbaths with double that number, and they had the same monotonous fare each day, bread and herbs. None of them had ever been sick. They had royal copes of cloth of gold and went in processions. They celebrated mass with lighted tapers, and they said evensong. And in all those eighty years they had never spoken to one another a single word!  What an ideal that was to set up for a mortal man!  Saying mass, keeping silence, going in processions with golden copes day in and day out for eighty long years, every proper instinct of nature thus buried, the gifts of God despised, and life turned into an indolent, selfish seclusion!  And yet Voragine, himself an archbishop, relates that "Brandon wept for joy of their holy conversation."563

Gifts of lands to monastic institutions were common, especially during the Crusades. He who built a convent was looked upon as setting up a ladder to heaven.564  Battle Abbey, or the Abbey of St. Martin of the Place of Battle, as the full name is, was built by William the Conqueror on the battle-field of Hastings and finally dedicated by Anselm, 1094. The Vale Royal in Cheshire, the last Cistercian home founded in England, was established by Edward I. in fulfilment of a vow made in time of danger by sea on his return from Palestine. He laid the first stone, 1277, and presented the home with a fragment of the true cross and other relics.

Most of the monastic houses which became famous, began with humble beginnings and a severe discipline, as Clairvaux, Citeaux, Hirschau, and the Chartreuse. The colonies were planted for the most part in lonely regions, places difficult of access, in valley or on mountain or in swamp. The Franciscans and Dominicans set a different example by going into the cities and to the haunts of population, howbeit also choosing the worst quarters. The beautiful names often assumed show the change which was expected to take place in the surroundings, such as Bright Valley or Clairvaux, Good Place or Bon Lieu, the Delights or Les Delices (near Bourges), Happy Meadow or Felix Pré, Crown of Heaven or Himmelskrone, Path to Heaven or Voie du Ciel.565 Walter Map, writing in the last part of the twelfth century, lingers on the fair names of the Cistercian convents, which, he says, "contain in themselves a divine and prophetic element, such as House of God, Gate of Salvation," etc.566

With wealth came the great abbeys of stone, exhibiting the highest architecture of the day. The establishments of Citeaux, Cluny, the Grande Chartreuse, and the great houses of Great Britain were on an elaborate scale. No pains or money were spared in their erection and equipment. Stained glass, sculpture, embroidery, rich vestments, were freely used.567  A well-ordered house had many parts,—chapel, refectory, calefactory, scriptorium for writing, locutorium for conversation, dormitory, infirmary, hospital.568  Not a single structure, but an aggregation of buildings, was required by the larger establishments. Cluny, in 1245, was able to accommodate, at the same time, the pope, the king of France, and the emperor of Constantinople, together with their retinues. Matthew Paris says Dunfermline Abbey, Scotland, was ample enough to entertain, at the same time, three sovereigns without inconvenience the one to the other. The latest conveniences were introduced into these houses, the latest news there retailed. A convent was, upon the whole, a pretty good place to be in, from the standpoint of worldly well-being. What the modern club house is to the city, that the mediaeval convent was apt to be, so far as material appointments went. In its vaults the rich deposited their valuables. To its protection the oppressed fled for refuge. There, as at Westminster, St. Denis, and Dunfermline, kings and princes chose to be buried. And there, while living, they were often glad to sojourn, as the most notable place of comfort and ease they could find on their journeys.

The conventual establishment was intended to be a self-sufficient corporation, a sort of socialistic community doing all its own work and supplying all its own stuffs and food.569  The altruistic principle was supposed to rule. They had their orchards and fields, and owned their own cattle. Some of them gathered honey from their own hives, had the fattest fish ponds, sheared and spun their own wool, made their own wine, and brewed their own beer. In their best days the monks set a good example of thrift. The list of minor officials in a convent was complete, from the cellarer to look after the cooking and the chamberlain to look after the dress of the brethren, to the cantor to direct the singing and the sacristan to care for the church ornaments. In the eleventh century the custom was introduced of associating lay brethren with the monasteries, so that in all particulars these institutions might be completely independent. Nor was the convent always indifferent to the poor.570  But the tendency was for it to centre attention upon itself, rather than to seek the regeneration and prosperity of those outside its walls.

Like many other earthly ideals, the ideal of peace, virtue, and happy contentment aimed at by the convent was not reached, or, if approached in the first moments of overflowing ardor, was soon forfeited. For the method of monasticism is radically wrong. Here and there the cloister was the "audience chamber of God." But it was well understood that convent walls did not of themselves make holy. As, before, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine had borne testimony to that effect, so now also did different voices. Ivo of Chartres (d. 1116) condemns the monks who were filled with the leaven of pride and boast of their ascetic practices and refers to such passages as 1 Tim. 4:8 and Rom. 14:17. The solitudes of the mountains and forests, he says, will not make men holy, who do not carry with them rest of soul, the Sabbath of the heart, and elevation of mind. Peter of Cluny wrote to a hermit that his separation from the world would not profit unless he built a strong wall against evil in his own heart, and that wall was Christ the Saviour. Without this protection, retirement to solitude, mortifications of the body, and journeyings in distant lands, instead of availing, would bring temptations yet more violent. Every mode of life, lay and clerical, monastic and eremitic, has its own temptations.

But prosperity was invariably followed by rivalry, arrogance, idleness, and low morals. If Otto of Freising gives unstinted praise to the cloistral communities, his contemporary, Anselm of Havelberg,571 condemns the laziness and gossip of the monks within and without the convent walls. Elizabeth of Schoenau and Hildegard of Bingen, while they looked upon the monastic life as the highest form of earthly existence, saw much that was far from ideal in the lives of monks and nuns.572  There is a chronique scandaleuse of the convents as dark and repulsive as the chronique scandaleuse of the papacy during the pornocracy, and under the last popes of the Middle Ages. In a letter to Alexander III., asking him to dissolve the abbey of Grestian, the bishop of the diocese, Arnulf, spoke of all kinds of abuses, avarice, quarrelling, murder, profligacy. William of Malmesbury,573 writing in 1125, gives a bad picture of the monks of Canterbury. The convent of Brittany, of which Abaelard was abbot, revealed, as he reports in his autobiography, a rude and shocking state of affairs. Things got rapidly worse after the first fervor of the orders of St. Francis and Dominic was cooled. Teachers at the universities, like William of St. Amour of Paris (d. 1270), had scathing words for the monkish insolence and profligacy of his day, as will appear when we consider the mendicant orders. Did not a bishop during the Avignon captivity of the papacy declare that from personal examination he knew a convent where all the nuns had carnal intercourse with demons?  The revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden (d. 1375), approved at the councils of Constance and Basel, reveal the same low condition of monastic virtue. Nicolas of Clemanges (d. 1440) wrote vigorous protests against the decay of the orders, and describes in darkest colors their waste, gluttony, idleness, and profligacy. He says a girl going into a convent might as well be regarded as an abandoned woman at once. It was true, as Caesar of Heisterbach had said in a homily several centuries before, "Religion brought riches and riches destroyed religion."574

The institution of monasticism, which had included the warmest piety and the highest intelligence of the Middle Ages in their period of glory, came to be, in the period of their decline, the synonym for superstition and the irreconcilable foe of human progress. And this was because there is something pernicious in the monastic method of attempting to secure holiness, and something false in its ideal of holiness. The monks crushed out the heretical sects and resented the Renaissance. Their example in the period of early fervor, adapted to encourage thrift, later promoted laziness and insolence. Once praiseworthy as educators, they became champions of obscurantism and ignorance. Chaucer’s prior, who went on the pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, is a familiar illustration of the popular opinion of the monks in England in the fourteenth century: —

"He was a lord full fat and in good point;

His eyen stepe and rolling in his head

That stemed as a fornice of a led;

His botes souple, his hors in gret estat,

Now certainly he was a sayre prelat.

He was not pale as a forpined gost;

A fat swan loved he best of any rost;

His palfrey was as broune as is a bery."

And yet it would be most unjust to forget the services which the monastery performed at certain periods in the history of mediaeval Europe, or to deny the holy purpose of their founders. The hymns, the rituals, and the manuscripts prepared by mediaeval monks continue to make contribution to our body of literature and our Church services. An age like our own may congratulate itself upon its methods of Church activity, and yet acknowledge the utility of the different methods practised by the Church in another age. We study the movements of the past, not to find fault with methods which the best men of their time advocated and which are not our own, but to learn, and become, if possible, better fitted for grappling with the problems of our own time.

§ 62. Monasticism and the Papacy.

Monasticism and the papacy, representing the opposite extremes of abandonment of the world and lordship over the world, strange to say, entered into the closest alliance. The monks came to be the standing army of the popes, and were their obedient and valorous champions in the battles the popes waged with secular rulers. Some of the best popes were monastic in their training, or their habits, or both. Gregory VII. was trained in the Benedictine convent on the Aventine, Victor III. proceeded from Monte Cassino, Urban II. and Pascal II. from Cluny, Adrian IV. from St. Albans. Eugenius III., the pupil of St. Bernard, continued after he was made pope to wear the shirt of the monks of Citeaux next to his body. Innocent III. wrote the ascetic work, Contempt of the World.575

One monastic order after the other was founded from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. The organizing instinct and a pious impulse dotted Christendom with new convents or rebuilt old ones from Mt. Carmel to northern Scotland.576  Innocent III., after the manner in which the modern Protestant justifies the denominational distinctions of Protestantism, likened these various orders to troops clad in different kinds of armor and belonging to the same army. "Such variety, " he said, "does not imply any division of allegiance to Christ, but rather one mind under a diversity of form."577  So Peter of Blois writing to the abbot of Eversham said, that as out of the various strings of the harp, harmony comes forth, so out of the variety of religious orders comes unity of service. One should no less expect to find unity among a number of orders than among the angels or heavenly bodies. A vineyard bears grapes both black and white. A Christian is described in Holy Writ as a cedar, a cypress, a rose, an olive tree, a palm, a terebinth, yet they form one group in the Lord’s garden.578

It was the shrewd wisdom of the popes to encourage the orders, and to use them to further the centralization of ecclesiastical power in Rome. Each order had its own monastic code, its own distinctive customs. These codes, as well as the orders, were authorized and confirmed by the pope, and made, immediately or more loosely, subject to his sovereign jurisdiction. The mendicant orders of Sts. Francis and Dominic were directly amenable to the Holy See. The Fourth Lateran, in forbidding the creation of new orders, was moved to do so by the desire to avoid confusion in the Church by the multiplication of different rules. It commanded all who wished to be monks to join one of the orders already existing. The orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, founded in the face of this rule, became the most faithful adherents the papacy ever had, until the Society of Jesus arose three centuries later.

The papal favor, shown to the monastic orders, tended to weaken the authority of the bishops, and to make the papacy independent of the episcopal system. Duns Scotus went so far as to declare that, as faith is more necessary for the world than sacramental ablution in water, so the body of monks is more important than the order of prelates. The monks constitute the heart, the substance of the Church. By preaching they start new life, and they preach without money and without price. The prelates are paid.579

Papal privileges and exemptions were freely poured out upon the orders, especially upon the Mendicants. They were the pets of the popes. They were practically given freedom to preach and dispense the sacrament in all places and at all times, irrespective of the bishops and their jurisdiction. The constant complaints and clashing which resulted, led to endless appeals of monasteries against the decisions of bishops, which flowed in a constant stream to Rome, and gave the members of the curia a rare chance to ply their trade.580  The convents, by their organization and wealth, and by the number of their constituents, who were free to go to Rome and spend an indefinite time there, were able to harass and to wear out the patience of their opponents, the bishops, or prolong the cases till their death.581

The riches, luxury,582 and power of the great convents became proverbial. In Lorraine and other parts of Europe they were the leading influence.583  Abbots often took precedence of bishops, just as the general chapters of the orders,584 made up of representatives from the farthest East to the Atlantic, were more imposing than the diocesan and even the provincial councils.

A little earlier than our period the abbot of Weissenburg was able to muster as many men as his diocesan bishop of Spires, and the three abbots of Reichenau, St. Gall, and Kempten, three times as many as the bishop of the extensive diocese of Constance.585  In the twelfth century the abbot of Fulda claimed precedence over the great archbishop of Cologne. Beginning with John XVIII. (1004–1009) the abbots were not seldom vested with the insignia of the episcopal office. The English abbots of St. Albans, Bardney, Westminster, and the heads of other English abbeys were mitred.586  They were great personages; they sat in oecumenical councils; the bells were rung as they passed; they engaged in the hunt, had their horses and armed retinues, and entertained on an elaborate scale. The abbot of St. Albans ate from a silver plate, and even ladies of rank were invited to share the pleasures of repasts at English abbeys.

Thus, by wealth and organization and by papal favor, the monastic orders were in a position to overshadow the episcopate. Backed by the pope they bade defiance to bishops, and in turn they enabled the papacy most effectually to exercise lordship over the episcopate.

In the struggle with the heretical sects the orders were the uncompromising champions of orthodoxy, and rendered the most effective assistance to the popes in carrying out their policy of repression. In the Inquisition they were the chief agents which the papacy had. They preached crusades against the Albigenses and were prominent in the ranks of the crusaders. In the work of bloody destruction, they were often in the lead, as was Arnold of Citeaux. Everywhere from Germany to Spain the leading Inquisitors were monks.

Again, in the relentless struggle of the papacy with princes and kings, they were always to be relied upon. Here they did valiant service for the papacy, as notably in the struggle against the emperor, Frederick II., when they sowed sedition and organized revolt in Germany and other parts of his empire.

Once more, as agents to fill the papal treasury, they did efficient and welcome service to the Holy See. In this interest they were active all over Europe. The pages of English chroniclers are filled with protests against them on the score of their exactions from the people.587  The pope treated the orders well, and in turn was well served by them. They received high favors, and they had the rare grace of showing gratitude.

The orders of this period may be grouped in five main families: the family which followed the Benedictine rule, the family which followed the so-called Augustinian rule, the Carmelites, the hermit orders of which the Carthusians were the chief, and the original mendicant orders,588 the Franciscans and Dominicans.

§ 63. The Monks of Cluny.

Literature.—See Lit. vol. IV, pp. 367 and 861; Mabillon: Ann. ord. S. Bened., III.-V., Paris, 1706–1708; Statuta Cluniacensia, Migne, 189, 1023–47.—Bernard et Bruel: Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluni, to 1300, 6 vols. Paris, 1876–93; Consuetudines monasticae, vol. I.; Consuet. Farfenses, ed. by Albers, Stuttgart, 1900. The consuetudines are statutes and customs which convents adopted supplementary to the Rules of their orders. These of Farfa, a convent in Italy, were taken down from Odilo of Cluny and enforced at Farfa.

The Lives of St. Bernard.—C. A. Wilkens: Petrus der Ehrwürdige, Leipzig, 1857, 277 pp.—M. Kerker; Wilhelm der Selige, Abt zu Hirschau, Tübingen, 1863.—Witten: Der Selige Wilhelm, Abt von Hirschau, Bonn, 1890.—Champly: Hist. de l’abbaye de Cluny, Mâcon, 1866.—L’Huillier: Vie de Hugo, Solesmes, 1887.—K. Sackur: Die Cluniacenser bis zur Mitte des 11ten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. Halle, 1892–94.—H. Kutter: Wilhelm von St. Thierry, ein Representant der mittelalterlichen Frömmigkeit, Giessen, 1898.—Maitland: The Dark Ages, 1890, pp. 350–491.—Hauck, vol. III.—Art. Hirschau, in Herzog, VIII. 138 sqq.

The convent of Cluny,589 located twelve miles northwest of Mâcon, France, stood at the height of its influence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Founded in 910 by Duke William of Aquitaine, and directed by a succession of wise abbots, it gained an eminence, second only to that of Monte Cassino among the monasteries of the West, and became the nursery of a monastic revival which spread over Europe from the Adriatic to Scotland.

No religious locality in the Latin church enjoyed a purer fame than Cluny. Four of its abbots, Odo, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugh, attained the dignity of canonized saints. Three popes were among its monks, Gregory VII.,590 Urban II. , and Pascal II., and the antipope Anacletus II. Gelasius II., driven from Rome, 1118, took refuge within its walls and died there lying on ashes and there was buried. The cardinals who elected Calixtus II., his successor, met at Cluny. Kings joined with popes in doing it honor.

The Cluniacs re-enforced the rule of St. Benedict in the direction of greater austerity. In Lorraine and Germany the Cluny influence began to be felt after the monastic reform, led by such men as Abbot Gerhard of Brogne in the tenth century, had run its course.591  Such monastic leaders as William, abbot of St. Benignus at Dijon, Poppo, abbot of Stablo and Limburg, and William of Hirschau represented the Benedictine rule and were in full sympathy with Cluny. Hirschau in the Black Forest became a centre of Cluniac influence in Southern Germany and one of the chief centres of intelligence of the age.592  Its abbot William, 1069–91, a vigorous disciplinarian and reformer, had received a thorough scholastic training at the convent of St. Emmeram, Regensburg. He was in correspondence with Anselm and visited Gregory VII. in Rome about the year 1075. The convent became a Gregorian stronghold in the controversy over the right of investiture. With the rule of Cluny before him William, in 1077, drew up a similar code for Hirschau, known as the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, and introduced the white dress of the Cluniacs which gave rise to the sneer that the monks were cleansing their garments instead of their hearts.593  Under William the Conqueror the Cluniacs established themselves in England at Barnstaple. William thought so well of them that he offered to one of their number, Hugh, the supervision of the religious affairs of the realm. The second house in England was the important establishment, St. Pancras at Lewes, set up by Gundrada and the Earl of Warren, the Conqueror’s son-in-law, 1077.594  Bermondsey, Wenlock, and Thetford were other important houses. The Cluniac houses in England were called priories and their heads priors or deans.595  Hugo, who held the position of abbot of Cluny for sixty years, 1048–1109, was the friend of Gregory VII. and during his administration Cluny was visited by Urban II., one of Hugo’s disciples, after the adjournment of the synod of Clermont. Hugo began the erection of the great basilica in 1089, which was dedicated by Innocent II. in 1131. It was the next greatest church after St. Peter’s in the West.

Under Pontius, the seventh abbot, 1109–22, the current of decay ran deep and strong. The convent had become rich in lands and goods. The plain furnishings had been discarded for rich appointments, and austerity of habits gave way to self-indulgence. Papal favors were heaped upon Pontius, and Pascal, his godfather, sent him the dalmatic.596  Calixtus II. put his own ring on Pontius’ finger, gave him the right to exercise the prerogatives of cardinal, and the monks of Cluny the right to celebrate service with closed doors, while the interdict was in force in the diocese.

Pontius gave way completely to worldly ambition, and assumed the title of archabbot, which was the exclusive prerogative of the head of the convent of Monte Cassino. Charges were made against him by the bishop of Macon and, forced to resign, he set his face towards Jerusalem as a pilgrim. The pilgrimage did not arouse any feelings of submission, and on his return the deposed abbot made an effort to seize his former charge. He forced the convent gates and compelled the monks to swear him fealty. The sacred vessels of gold and silver were melted down and divided among the wild intruders. The devastation was then carried beyond the convent walls to the neighboring estates. The anathema was laid upon Pontius by Honorius II., and, summoned to Rome, he was thrown into prison, where he died, impenitent, 1126. This was one of the most notorious cases of monastic malversation of office in the Middle Ages.

Peter the Venerable had been elected abbot of Cluny during Pontius’ absence in the East and filled the office for nearly forty years, 1122–57. He was the friend of St. Bernard, one of the most eminent of the mediaeval monks and one of the most attractive ecclesiastical personages of his age. Born in Auvergne and trained in a Cistercian convent, he was only twenty-eight when he was made abbot. Under his administration Cluny regained its renown. In addition to the study of the Bible, Peter also encouraged the study of the classics, a course which drew upon him bitter attacks. He visited the Cluniac houses abroad in England and Spain.

On the tenth anniversary of his official primacy, Peter welcomed two hundred priors and twelve hundred and twelve members of the order at Cluny. Four hundred and sixty monks constituted the family of the mother house. No less than two thousand convents are said to have acknowledged the Cluniac rule, two of which were at Jerusalem and Mt. Tabor. In 1246 Peter introduced through a General Chapter seventy six new rules, re-enforcing and elaborating the Benedictine code already in force. 597  The use of meat was entirely forbidden except to the weak and infirm, and also the use of all confections made with honey, spices, and wine.

To the labors of abbot Peter added the activity of an author. He wrote famous tracts to persuade the Jews and Mohammedans, and against the heretic Peter de Bruys. His last work was on miracles,598in which many most incredible stories of the supernatural are told as having occurred in convents.

It was while this mild and wise man held office, that Abaelard knocked at Cluny for admission and by his hearty permission spent within its walls the last weary hours of his life.

During Peter’s incumbency St. Bernard made his famous attack against the self-indulgence of the Cluniacs. Robert, a young kinsman of Bernard, had transferred his allegiance from the Cistercian order to Cluny. Bernard’s request that he be given up Pontius declined to grant. What his predecessor had declined to do, Peter did. Perhaps it was not without feeling over the memory of Pontius’ action that Bernard wrote, comparing599 the simple life at Citeaux with the laxity and luxury prevailing at Cluny.

This tract, famous in the annals of monastic controversial literature, Bernard opened by condemning the lack of spirituality among his own brethren, the Cistercians. "How can we," he exclaims, "with our bellies full of beans and our minds full of pride, condemn those who are full of meat, as if it were not better to eat on occasion a little fat, than be gorged even to belching with windy vegetables!"  He then passed to an arraignment of the Cluniacs for self-indulgence in diet, small talk, and jocularity. At meals, he said, dish was added to dish and eggs were served, cooked in many forms, and more than one kind of wine was drunk at a sitting. The monks preferred to look on marble rather than to read the Scriptures. Candelabra and altar cloths were elaborate. The art and architecture were excessive. The outward ornamentations were the proof of avarice and love of show, not of a contrite and penitent heart. He had seen one of them followed by a retinue of sixty horsemen and having none of the appearance of a pastor of souls. He charged them with taking gifts of castles, villas, peasants, and slaves, and holding them against just complainants.600  In spite of these sharp criticisms Peter remained on terms of intimacy with Bernard. He replied without recrimination, and called Bernard the shining pillar of the Church. A modification of the rule of St. Benedict, when it was prompted by love, he pronounced proper. But he and Bernard, he wrote, belonged to one Master, were the soldiers of one King, confessors of one faith. As different paths lead to the same land, so different customs and costumes, with one inspiring love, lead to the Jerusalem above, the mother of us all. Cluniacs and Cistercians should admonish one another if they discerned errors one in the other, for they were pursuing after one inheritance and following one command. He called upon himself and Bernard to remember the fine words of Augustine, "have charity, and then do what you will, "habe charitatem et fac quicquid vis.601  What could be more admirable?  Where shall we go for a finer example of Christian polemics?

After Peter’s death the glory of Cluny declined.602  Six hundred years later, 1790, the order was dissolved by the French Government. The Hotel de Cluny, the Cluniac house in Paris, once occupied by the abbot, now serves as a museum of Mediaeval Art and Industry under the charge of the French government.603

The piety of Western Christendom owes a lasting debt to Cluny for the hymn "Jerusalem the Golden," taken from the de contemptu mundi written by Bernard of Cluny, a contemporary of Peter the Venerable and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.604

Jerusalem the Golden,

With milk and honey blest,

Beneath thy contemplation

Sink heart and voice opprest.

I know not, oh, I know not

What social joys are there,

What radiancy of glory,

What light beyond compare.

§ 64. The Cistercians.

Literature.—Exordium parvum ordinis Cisterciensiae, Migne, 166. Exordium magnum ord. Cisterc., by Conrad of Eberbach, d. 1220; Migne, 185.—Manriquez: Ann. ord. Cisterc., 4 vols. Lyons, 1642.—Mabillon: Ann. ord. St. Benedict, Paris, 1706–1708.—P. Guignard: Les monuments primitifs de la règle Cistercienne, publiés d’après les manuscripts de l’abbaye de Citeaux, Dijon, 1878, pp. cxii. 656.—Pierre le Nain: Essai de l’hist. de l’ordre de Citeaux, Paris, 1696.—J. H. Newman: The Cistercian Saints of England, London, 1844.—Franz Winter: Die Cistercienser des nord-östlichen Deutschlands bis zum Auftreten der Bettelorden, 3 vols. Gotha, 1868–1871.—L. Janauschek: Origines Cisterciensium, Vienna, 1877.—B. Albers: Untersuchungen zu den ältesten Mönchsgewohnheiten. Ein Beitrag zur Benedictinerordensregel der X-XIIten Jahrhunderte, Munich, 1905.—Sharpe: Architecture of the Cisterc., London, 1874.—Cisterc. Abbeys of Yorkshire, in "Fraser’s Mag.," September, 1876.—Dean Hodges: Fountains Abbey, The Story of a Mediaeval Monastery, London, 1904.—Deutsch: art. Cistercienser, in Herzog, IV. 116–127; art. Harding, in "Dict. Natl. Biogr.," XXIV. 333–335; the Biographies of St. Bernard. For extended Lit. see the work of Janauschek.

With the Cluniac monks the Cistercians divide the distinction of being the most numerous and most useful monastic order of the Middle Ages,605 until the Mendicant Friars arose and distanced them both. They are Benedictines and claim the great name of St. Bernard, and for that reason are often called Bernardins in France. Two popes, Eugenius III. and Benedict XII., proceeded from the order. Europe owes it a large debt for its service among the half-barbarian peasants of Eastern France, Southern Germany, and especially in the provinces of Northeastern Germany. Its convents set an example of skilled industry in field and garden, in the training of the vine, the culture of fish, the cultivation of orchards, and in the care of cattle.606

The founder, Robert Molêsme, was born in Champagne, 1024, and after attempting in vain to introduce a more rigorous discipline in several Benedictine convents, retired to the woods of Molêsme and in 1098 settled with twenty companions on some swampy ground near Citeaux,607 twelve miles from Dijon. Here Eudes, duke of Burgundy,608 erected a building, which went at first by the name of the New Monastery, novum monasterium.

Alberic, Robert’s successor, received for the new establishment the sanction of Pascal II., and placed it under the special care of the Virgin. She is said to have appeared to him in the white dress of the order.609

Under the third abbot, Stephen Harding, an Englishman, known as St. Stephen, who filled the office twenty-five years (1110–1134),610 the period of prosperity set in. In 1113 Bernard with thirty companions entered the convent, and the foundation of four houses followed, 1113–1115,—La Ferté, Potigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond,—which continued to have a rank above all the other Cistercian houses subsequently founded.

New houses followed rapidly. In 1130 there were 30 Cistercian convents, in 1168, 288. A rule was framed forbidding the erection of new establishments, but without avail, and their number in the fourteenth century had risen to 738.611  The order, though never the recipient of such privileges as were dispensed to Cluny, was highly honored by some of the popes. Innocent III. showed them special favor, and promised them the precedence in audiences at Rome.612

The carta charitatis, the Rule of Love, the code of the Cistercians, dates from Harding’s administration and was confirmed by Calixtus II.—1119. It commanded the strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, but introduced a new method of organization for the whole body. In contrast to the relaxed habits of the Cluniacs, the mode of life was made austerely simple. The rule of silence was emphasized and flesh forbidden, except in the case of severe illness. The conventual menu was confined to two dishes. All unnecessary adornment of the churches was avoided, so that nothing should remain in the house of God which savored of pride or superfluity. The crosses were of wood till the statutes of 1157 allowed them to be of gold. Emphasis was placed upon manual labor as an essential part of monastic life. A novice at Clairvaux writes enthusiastically of the employment of the monks, whom he found with hoes in the gardens, forks and rakes in the meadows, sickles in the fields, and axes in the forest.613  In some parts they became large landowners and crowded out the owners of small plats.614  At a later period they gave themselves to copying manuscripts.615  Their schools in Paris, Montpellier (1252), Toulouse (1281), Oxford (1282), Metz, and other places were noted, but with the exception of Bernard they developed no distinguished Schoolmen or writers as did the mendicant orders.616  They were not given to the practice of preaching or other spiritual service among the people.617  The general chapter, 1191, forbade preaching in the parish churches and also the administration of baptism. The order became zealous servants of the pope and foes of heresy. The abbot Arnold was a fierce leader of the Crusades against the Albigenses.

Following the practice introduced at the convent of Hirschau, the Cistercians constituted an adjunct body of laymen, or conversi.618  They were denied the tonsure and were debarred from ever becoming monks. The Cistercian dress was at first brown and then white, whence the name Gray Monks, grisei. The brethren slept on straw in cowl and their usual day dress.

The administration of the Cistercians was an oligarchy as compared with that of the Cluniacs. The abbot of Cluny was supreme in his order, and the subordinate houses received their priors by his appointment. Among the Cistercians each convent chose its own head. At the same time the community of all the houses was insured by the observance of the Rule of 1119, and by yearly chapters, which were the ultimate arbiters of questions in dispute. The five earliest houses exercised the right of annual visitation, which was performed by their abbots over five respective groups. A General Council of twenty-five consisted of these five abbots and of four others from each of the five groups. The General Chapters were held yearly and were attended by all the abbots within a certain district. Those at remote distances attended less frequently: the abbots from Spain, every two years; from Sweden and Norway, every three years; from Scotland, Ireland, Hungary, and Greece, every four years; and from the Orient, every seven years. It became a proverb that "The gray monks were always on their feet."

The Cistercians spread over all Western Europe. The Spanish orders of Alcantara and Calatrava adopted their rule. The first Cistercian house in Italy was founded 1120 at Tiglieto, Liguria, and in Germany at Altenkamp about 1123.619  In England the order got a foothold in 1128, when William Gifford, bishop of Winchester, founded the house of Waverley in Surrey.620  Among the prominent English houses were, Netley near Southampton, founded by Henry III., Rivaulx, and Fountains,621 the greatest abbey in Northern England. In 1152 there were fifty Cistercian houses in England.622  Melrose Abbey, Scotland, also belonged to this order.

Of all the Cistercian convents, Port Royal has the most romantic history. Founded in 1204 by Mathilda de Garlande in commemoration of the safe return of her husband from the Fourth Crusade, it became in the seventeenth century a famous centre of piety and scholarship. Its association with the tenets of the Jansenists, and the attacks of Pascal upon the Jesuits, brought on its tragic downfall. The famous hospice, among the snows of St. Gotthard, is under the care of St. Bernard monks.

In the thirteenth century the power of the Cistercians yielded to the energy of the orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. It was not a rare thing for them to pass over to the newer monastic organizations.623  In 1335 Benedict XIII. enacted regulations in the interest of a severe discipline, and in 1444 Eugenius IV. felt called upon to summon the General Chapter to institute a rigid reform. With the Reformation many of the houses were lost to the order in England and Germany. The Trappists started a new movement towards severity within the order. The French Revolution suppressed the venerable organization in 1790. The buildings at Citeaux, presided over by a succession of sixty-two abbots, are now used as a reformatory institution.

§ 65. St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Virtus in pace acquiritur, in pressura probatur, approbatur in victoria, St. Bernard.624

Literature.—The Works of St. Bernard, ed. by Mabillon, 2 vols. Paris, 1667, reprinted with additions in Migne, 182–185, Engl. trans. by Saml. J. Eales, London, 1889, 2 vols.—Xenia Bernardina, a Memorial ed. by Cistercian convents of Austro-Hungary, 6 vols. Vienna, 1891. Leop. Janauschek: Bibliographia Bernardina, Vienna, 1891. The tract De consideratione, trans. by Bp. J. H. Reinkens, Münster, 1870.

Biographies.—Contemporary, in Migne, vol. 185: I. the so-called Vita prima, in six parts, by William of Thierry (while Bernard was still living), Gaufrid of Clairvaux, and Ernald, abbot of Bona Vallis; II. the Vita secunda, by Alanus of Auxerre; III. Fragments collected by Gaufrid; IV.—a Life, by John The Hermit, full of legendary materials.—Modern, by Neander, Berlin, 1813, 1848, 1868, new ed. with Introd. and Notes, by * S. M. Deutsch, 2 vols. Gotha, 1889. Engl. trans. London, 1843.—Ellendorf, Essen, 1837.—Abbé T. Ratisbonne, 2 vols. Paris, 1841, etc. Full of enthusiasm for Bernard as a saint.—* J. C. Morison, London, 1863; rev. ed. 1868, 1884. Cool and impartial.—Capefigue, Paris, 1866.—Chevallier, 2 vols. Lille, 1888.—Hofmeister, Berlin, 1891.—Eales (Rom. Cath.), London, 1891.—*Richard S. Storrs, 1892, stimulating and eloquent.—*L’Abbé E. Vacandard, 2 vols. Paris, 1895, 2d ed. 1897. A thorough study following a number of previous presentations in magazines and brochures.—J. Lagardère, Besançon, 1900.—Deutsch, art. Bernhard, in Herzog, II. 623–639. Also H. Kutter: Wilhelm von St. Thierry, ein Representant der mittelalterlichen Frömmigkeit, Giessen, 1898. For other literature see chapters, Mystical Theology and Hymns.

St. Bernard, 1090–1153, founder and abbot of the convent of Clairvaux, was the model monk of the Middle Ages, the most imposing figure of his time, and one of the best men of all the Christian centuries. He possessed a magnetic personality, a lively imagination, a rich culture, and a heart glowing with love for God and man. Although not free from what might now be called ecclesiastical rigor, he was not equalled by any of his contemporaries in services for the Church and man. "In his countenance," according to the contemporary biographer who knew him well, "there shone forth a pureness not of earth but of heaven, and his eyes had the clearness of an angel’s and the mildness of a dove’s eyes."625  There is no spotless saint in this world, and Bernard was furthest from claiming perfection, but he came as near the mediaeval ideal of ascetic holiness as any man of his century.626

In the twelfth century there were at least two other ecclesiastics of the first order of genius, Anselm and Innocent III. The former passed away a few years after the century opened. Innocent began his papal reign two years before it went out. Anselm has pre-eminence as a profound theological thinker and dialectician. Innocent ruled the world, as pope never ruled it before or since. Between the two fall the intellectual genius and activity of Bernard, combining some of the qualities of Anselm and Innocent. As a mystical theologian he is allied to Anselm, whose Meditations give him a high place in the annals of devotional literature. And Bernard was also a statesman, although he did not attain the eminence of Innocent and shrank from participation in public affairs which were so much to the taste of the great pope. Contemporary with himself was Peter Abaelard, whose brilliant mind won for him enviable fame as a teacher and thinker. But Abaelard never won the confidence of his own age, and is not to be compared with Bernard in moral dignity.

By preference a monk, Bernard figured, with almost equal prominence, in the history of the papacy, the Crusades, mysticism, monasticism, and hymnology. In the annals of monasticism, the pulpit, and devotional literature he easily occupies a place in the front rank. He was called the "honey-flowing doctor," doctor mellifluus.  Twenty years after his death he was canonized by Alexander III. as "shining preeminently in his own person by virtue of sanctity and religion, and in the whole Church by the light of his doctrine and faith."627 Pius VIII., in 1830, admitted him to the select company of the doctors of the Church. Both Calvin and Luther, who ridiculed the Schoolmen as a body, held him in high regard.628

Bernard was descended from a noble family of Burgundy, and was born at Fontaines near Dijon. He was one of seven children, six of whom were sons. His mother, Aletha, like Nonna and Monica, was a deeply pious woman and planted in the son the seeds of religious faith.629  Carried away for a time with enthusiasm for scholastic learning, the son was overwhelmed, while on a lonely journey, with religious impressions, and, entering a chapel, resolved to dedicate himself wholly to God. He entered the convent of Citeaux, two of his brothers following him at once, and the rest later into the monastic life.

This was in 1113 that Bernard cast in his lot with the Cistercians, and the event proved to be an epoch in the history of that new community. His diet was bread and milk or a decoction of herbs.630  He devoted himself to the severest asceticism till he was reduced almost to a shadow, and his feet became so swollen from standing at devotions as almost to refuse to sustain his body. In after years, Bernard reproached himself for this intemperate self-mortification which unfitted his body for the proper service of the Lord. But his spirit triumphed over his physical infirmities.631  While he was engaged in work in the fields, it soared aloft to heavenly things. He studied the Scriptures and the Fathers. His writings betray acquaintance with the classics and he quotes Seneca, Ovid, Horace, and other classical writers. The works of nature also furnished him with lessons, and he seems to have approached the modern estimate of nature as an aid to spiritual attainment. "Thou wilt find," he wrote,632 "something greater in the woods than in books. The trees and rocks will teach thee what thou canst not hear from human teachers. And dost thou not think thou canst suck honey from the rocks and oil from the hardest stones!"  This seems to lose its weight in view of what one of Bernard’s biographers relates. Bernard travelled the whole day alongside the Lake of Geneva, and was so oblivious to the scenery that in the evening, at Lausanne, he was obliged to inquire what they had seen on the journey. We are probably justified in this case in ascribing an ascetic purpose to the monkish writer.633

In 1115, in company with twelve companions, Bernard founded Clairvaux—Claravallis, Clear Valley—in a locality which before had been called Wormwood, and been the seat of robbers. William of St. Thierry, Bernard’s close friend and biographer, is in doubt whether the name vallis absinthialis came from the amount of wormwood which grew there or from the bitter sufferings sustained by the victims of the robbers.634  But he does not fail to draw the contrast between the acts of violence for which the place was once notorious, and the peace which reigned in it after Bernard and his companions set up their simple house. Then he says, "the hills began to distil sweetness, and fields, before sterile, blossomed and became fat under the divine benediction."635

In this new cloistral retreat Bernard preached, wrought miracles, wrote innumerable letters,636 received princes and high ecclesiastics. From there he went forth on errands of high import to his age. The convent soon had wide fame, and sent off many shoots.637

William of St. Thierry638 draws an attractive picture of Clairvaux, which at this long distance compels a feeling of rest. William says: —

I tarried with him a few days, unworthy though I was, and whichever way I turned my eyes, I marvelled and thought I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and also the old pathways of the Egyptian monks, our fathers, marked with the recent footsteps of the men of our time left in them. The golden ages seemed to have returned and revisited the world there at Clairvaux.... At the first glance, as you entered, after descending the hill, you could feel that God was in the place; and the silent valley bespoke, in the simplicity of its buildings, the genuine humility of the poor of Christ dwelling there. The silence of the noon was as the silence of the midnight, broken only by the chants of the choral service, and the sound of garden and field implements. No one was idle. In the hours not devoted to sleep or prayer, the brethren kept busy with hoe, scythe, and axe, taming the wild land and clearing the forest. And although there was such a number in the valley, yet each seemed to be a solitary.639

Here is another description by the novice, Peter de Roya, writing from Clairvaux:640 —

"Its monks have found a Jacob’s ladder with angels upon it, descending to provide help to the bodies of the monks that they fail not in the way, and also ascending, and so controlling the monks’ minds that their bodies may be glorified. Their song seems to be little less than angelic, but much more than human.... It seems to me I am hardly looking upon men when I see them in the gardens with hoe, in the fields with forks and rakes and sickles, in the woods with axe, clad in disordered garments—but that I am looking on a race of fools without speech and sense, the reproach of mankind. However, my reason assures me that their life is with Christ in the heavens."

Bernard, to whom monastic seclusion was the highest ideal of the Christian life, bent his energies to induce his friends to take the vow. Its vigils and mortifications were the best means for developing the two cardinal virtues of love and humility.641  His persistent effort to persuade his sister Humblina shocks our sense of what is due to the sacred ties of nature, but was fully justified by the examples of St. Anthony and Benedict of Nursia. Humblina was married to a husband of rank and had a family. When she appeared one day at Clairvaux, Bernard refused to go down to see her, for he had insisted before on her taking the veil and she had declined. Now she finally communicated to him the bitter cry, "If my brother despises my body, let not the servant of God despise my soul."642  Bernard then heeded and again called upon her to renounce the vanities of the world and lay aside the luxuries of dress and ornaments. Returning to her household, Humblina, after two years, and with her husband’s consent, retired to the convent of Juilly, where she spent the remainder of her days.

Bernard’s attack upon the conventual establishment of Cluny was born of mistaken zeal. If of the two men Peter the Venerable appears to much better advantage in that controversy, it was different when it came to the treatment of the Jews. Here Peter seems to have completely laid aside his mild spirit, while Bernard displays a spirit of humaneness and Christian charity far beyond his age. In the controversy with Abaelard, a subject which belongs to another chapter, the abbot of Clairvaux stands forth as the churchman who saw only evil in views which did not conform strictly to the doctrinal system of the Church.

Bernard was a man of his age as well as a monastic. He fully shared the feelings of his time about the Crusades. In 1128, at the Synod of Troyes, his voice secured recognition for the Knight Templars, "the new soldiery."  The ignoble failure of the Second Crusade, which he had preached with such warmth, 1146, called forth from him a passionate lament over the sins of the Crusaders, and he has given us a glimpse into the keen pangs he felt over the detractions that undertaking called forth.643  The ill issue was not his fault. He himself was like Moses, who led the people towards the Holy Land and not into it. The Hebrews were stiff-necked. Were not the Crusaders stiff-necked also and unbelieving, who in their hearts looked back and hankered after Europe?  Is it any wonder that those who were equally guilty should suffer a like punishment with the Israelites?  To the taunt that he had falsely represented himself as having delivered a message from God in preaching the Crusade, he declared the testimony of his conscience was his best reply. Eugenius, too, could answer that taunt by what he had seen and heard. But, after all was said, it was a great honor to have the same lot with Christ and suffer being unjustly condemned (Ps. 69:9).

When, at a later time, Bernard was chosen at Chartres to lead another Crusade, the choice was confirmed by the pope, but the Cistercians refused to give their consent.644

In the reigns of Innocent II. and Eugenius III. Bernard stood very near the papacy. He did more than any other single individual to secure the general recognition of Innocent II. as the rightful pope over his rival, Anacletus II. He induced the king of France to pronounce in favor of Innocent. Bent on the same mission, he had interviews with Henry I. of England at Chartres, and the German emperor at Liége. He entertained Innocent at Clairvaux, and accompanied him to Italy. It was on this journey that so profound were the impressions of Bernard’s personality and miracles that the people of Milan fell at his feet and would fain have compelled him to ascend the chair of St. Ambrose. On his third journey to Rome, in 1138,645 Bernard witnessed the termination of the papal schism. In a famous debate with Peter of Pisa, the representative of Anacletus, he used with skill the figure of the ark for the Church, in which Innocent, all the religious orders, and all Europe were found except Anacletus and his two supporters, Roger of Sicily and Peter of Pisa. But an attempt, he said, was being made to build another ark by Peter of Pisa. If the ark of Innocent was not the true ark, it would be lost and all in it. Then would the Church of the East and the Church of the West perish. France and Germany would perish, the Spaniards and the English would perish, for they were with Innocent. Then Roger, alone of all the princes of the earth, would be saved and no other.646

Eugenius III. had been an inmate of Clairvaux and one of Bernard’s special wards. The tract de consideratione647 which, at this pope’s request, Bernard prepared on the papal office and functions is unique in literature, and, upon the whole, one of the most interesting treatises of the Middle Ages. Vacandard calls it "an examination, as it were, of the pope’s conscience."648  Here Bernard exhorts his spiritual son, whom he must address as "most holy father," and whom he loves so warmly, that he would follow him into the heavens or to the depths, whom he received in poverty and now beholds surrounded with pomp and riches. Here he pours out his concern for the welfare of Eugenius’s soul and the welfare of the Church under his administration. He adduces the distractions of the papal court, its endless din of business and legal arbitrament, and calls upon Eugenius to remember that prayer, meditation, and the edification of the Church are the important matters for him to devote himself to. Was not Gregory piously writing upon Ezekiel while Rome was exposed to siege from the barbarians!  Teacher never had opportunity to impress lessons upon a scholar more elevated in dignity, and Bernard approached it with a high sense of his responsibility.649

As a preacher, Bernard excels in the glow of his imagination and the fervor of his passion. Luther said, "Bernard is superior to all the doctors in his sermons, even to Augustine himself, because he preaches Christ most excellently."650  In common with his other writings, his sermons abound in quotations from the Scriptures.651  They are not pieces of careful logical statement nor are they keen analyses of the states of conscience, but appeals to the highest impulses of the religious nature. His discourse on the death of his brother Gerard is a model of tender treatment652 as his address before Konrad was of impassioned fervor.653  The sermons on the Canticles preached within convent walls abound in tropical allegory, but also in burning love to the Saviour. One of the most brilliant of modern pulpit orators has said, "the constant shadow of things eternal is over all Bernard’s sermons."654  His discourses, so speaks his biographer Gaufrid, were congruous to the conditions of his hearers. To rustic people he preached as though he had always been living in the country and to all other classes as though he were most carefully studying their occupations. To the erudite he was scholarly; to the uneducated, simple. To the spiritually minded he was rich in wise counsels. He adapted himself to all, desiring to bring to all the light of Christ.655

The miraculous power of Bernard is so well attested by contemporary accounts that it is not easy to deny it except on the assumption that all the miraculous of the Middle Ages is to be ascribed to mediaeval credulity. Miracles meet us in almost every religious biographer of the Middle Ages. The biographer of Boniface, the apostle of Germany, found it necessary to apologize for not having miracles to relate of him. But the miracles of Bernard seem to be vouched for as are no other mediaeval works of power. The cases given are very numerous. They occurred on Bernard’s journeys in Toulouse and Italy, nearer home in France, and along the Rhine from Basel northward. William of St. Thierry, Gaufrid, and other contemporaries relate them in detail. His brothers, the monks Gerard and Guido, agree that he had more than human power. Walter Map, the Englishman who flourished in the latter years of Bernard’s life and later, speaks in the same breath of Bernard’s miracles and his eloquence.656  But what, to say the least, is equally important, Bernard himself makes reference to them and marvelled at his power. Miracles, he said, had been wrought of old by saintly men and also by deceivers, but he was conscious neither of saintliness nor of fraud.657  He is reported as recognizing his power, but as being reluctant to speak of it.658  In a letter to the Toulousans, after his visit in their city, he reminded them that the truth had been made manifest in their midst through him, not only in speech but in power.659  And appealing to the signs which had accompanied his preaching the Second Crusade, he speaks of his religious shrinking which forbade his describing them.660

These miracles were performed at different periods of Bernard’s life and, as has been said, in different localities. The bishop of Langres, a near relative, says that the first miracle he saw Bernard perform was upon a boy with an ulcer on his foot. In answer to the boy’s appeal, Bernard made the sign of the cross and the child was healed. A mother met him carrying her child which had a withered hand and crooked arm. The useless members were restored and the child embraced its mother before the bystanders.661  A boy in Charletre, ten years old, unable to move his head and carried on a pillow, was healed and shown to Bernard four years afterwards.

Sometimes Bernard placed his hand upon the patient, sometimes made the sign of the cross, sometimes offered prayer, sometimes used the consecrated wafer or holy water.662  In Milan many persons possessed with evil spirits were healed.663  As for the miracles performed on his tour along the Rhine from Constance and Basel to Cologne, when he was engaged in preaching the Second Crusade, Hermann, bishop of Constance, with nine others kept a record of them, declaring the very stones would cry out if they were not recorded.664  After a sermon at Basel, says Gaufrid, a woman, who was mute, approached Bernard and after he had uttered a prayer, she spoke. A lame man walked and a blind man received his sight.665  Thirty men, moved by the sight of Bernard’s healing power, accompanied him back from Germany to France to take the monastic vow.666

Abaelard and his pupil, Berengar, were exceptions to their age in expressing doubts about the genuineness of contemporary miracles, but they do not charge Bernard by name with being self-deceived or deceiving others. Morison, a writer of little enthusiasm, no credulity, and a large amount of cool, critical common sense, says that Bernard’s "miracles are neither to be accepted with credulity nor denied with fury."667  Neander recognized the superior excellence of the testimony,668 refused to pronounce a sentence denying their genuineness, and seeks to explain them by the conditions of the age and the imposing personality of Bernard as in the case of those possessed with evil spirits.669  A presumption against the miracles of Bernard, which can hardly be put aside, is the commonness of miracles in the mediaeval convent and in the lives of eminent men like Norbert, not to speak of the miracles wrought at shrines, as at the shrine of Thomas à Becket and by contact with relics. On the other hand, there are few mortal men whom miracles would so befit as Bernard.

Bernard’s activity was marked, all through, by a practical consideration for the needs of life, and his writings are full of useful suggestions adapted to help and ameliorate human conditions. He was a student by preference, but there were men in his day of more scholastic attainments than he. And yet in the department of speculative and controversial theology his writings also have their value. In his work on the Freedom of the Will670 he advocated the position that the power to do good was lost by sin, and prevenient grace is required to incline the will to holiness. In his controversy with Abaelard he developed his views on the Trinity and the atonement. In some of his positions he was out of accord with the theology and practice of the Roman Communion. He denied the immaculate conception of Mary671 and accepted foot washing as one of the sacraments. In his views on baptism he was as liberal as the most liberal of his age in declaring that baptism was not indispensable to salvation when the opportunity is not afforded.672

Severe at times as Bernard, the Churchman, from the standpoint of this tolerant age seems to be, the testimonies to his exalted moral eminence are too weighty to be set aside. Bernard’s own writings give the final and abundant proof of his ethical quality. It shines through his works on personal religion, all those treatises and sermons which give him a place in the front rank of the mystics of all ages.673

William of St. Thierry, himself no mean theological writer, felt that in visiting Bernard’s cell he had been "at the very altar of God."674  Joachim of Flore praised him in enthusiastic language and evidently regarded him as the model monk.675  The impression upon Hildegard, the prophetess of the Rhine, was the same.676  In his Memoir of St. Malachy, Bernard, as has been said, put, an image of his own beautiful and ardent soul."677  No one but a deeply religious character could have written such a life. Malachy, the Irish archbishop, visited Clairvaux twice and on the second visit he remained to die, 1148. Bernard wrote:—

"Though he came from the West, he was truly the dayspring on high to us. With psalms and hymns and spiritual songs we followed our friend on his heavenward journey. He was taken by angels out of our hands. Truly he fell asleep. All eyes were fixed upon him, yet none could say when the spirit took its flight. When he was dead, we thought him to be alive; while yet alive, we thought him to be dead.678  The same brightness and serenity were ever visible. Sorrow was changed into joy, faith had triumphed. He has entered into the joy of the Lord, and who am I to make lamentation over him?  We pray, O Lord, that he who was our guest may be our leader, that we may reign with Thee and him for evermore. Amen."

Bernard’s sense of personal unworthiness was a controlling element in his religious experience. In this regard he forms a striking contrast to the self-confidence and swagger of Abaelard. He relied with childlike trust upon the divine grace. In one of his very last letters he begged his friend the abbot of Bonneval to be solicitous in prayer to the Saviour of sinners in his behalf. His last days were not without sorrow. His trusted secretary was found to have betrayed his confidence, and used his seal for his own purposes. William of St. Thierry and other friends had been passing away. Bernard’s last journey was to Metz to compose a dispute between bishop Stephen and the duke of Lorraine. Deutsch, perhaps the chief living authority on Bernard, says: "Religious warmth, Genialitaet, is the chief thing in his character and among his gifts."679 Harnack pays this tribute to him, that "he was the religious genius of the twelfth century, the leader of his age in religion."680  "Bernard," said Luther,—and he was not easily deceived by monkish pretension,—"Bernard loved Jesus as much as any one can."681  Ray Palmer has imparted to his version of Bernard’s hymn its original religious fervor,

"Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts,

Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men,

From the best bliss which earth imparts

We turn unfilled to Thee again."

The encomium of Bernard’s early biographer Alanus is high praise, but probably no man since the Apostles has deserved it more: "The majesty of his name was surpassed by his lowliness of heart,"682

vincebat tamen sublimitatem nominis humilitas cordis.

§ 66. The Augustinians, Carthusians, Carmelites, and other Orders.

Among the greater orders which came into existence before 1200 are the Augustinians, the Premonstrants, the Carthusians, and the Carmelites.

1. The Augustinians were a distinct family from the Benedictines, followed the so-called rule of St. Augustine, and were divided into the canons regular of St. Augustine and the mendicant friars of St. Augustine.

The bodies of canons regular were numerous, but their organization was not compact like that of the stricter monastic orders.683  They were originally communities of secular clerics, and not conventual associations. They occupied a position between the strict monastic existence and an independent clerical life. Their origin can be assigned to no exact date. As early as the eleventh century a rule, ascribed to St. Augustine, appeared in several forms. It was professed by the clerical groups forming the cathedral chapters, and by bodies of priests associated with other churches of prominence.684  The various church services, as, for example, the service of song, and the enforced rule of celibacy, encouraged or demanded a plurality of clergymen for a church.

Moved by the strong impulse in the direction of conventual communities, these groups inclined to the communal life and sought some common rule of discipline. For it they looked back to Augustine of Hippo, and took his household as their model. We know that Augustine had living with him a group of clerics. We also know that he commended his sister for associating herself with other women and withdrawing from the world, and gave her some advice. But so far as is known Augustine prescribed no definite code such as Benedict afterwards drew up, either for his own household or for any other community.

About 750 Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, drew up a code for his cathedral chapter, whom he enjoined to live together in common,685 and here and there in Germany isolated communities of this kind were formed.

In the twelfth century we find many groups of clerics who adopted what began to be known as the rule of St. Augustine.686  Under Innocent III. organizations were formed by William Langlois of the Paris University, and others under the name canons regular to live distinctly under this code. Innocent IV.687 and Alexander IV., 1256, definitely recognized the rule.

The Augustinian rule established a community of goods. Even gifts went into the common fund. The clerics ate together and slept in one dormitory. They wore a common dress, and no one on returning his suit to the clothing room retained any peculiar right to it. The papal attempts to unite these groups into a close organization proved to be in vain.688  In England the Augustinian canons had charge of Carlisle cathedral.

The Augustinian hermits, or Austin friars, as they were called in England, were monastics in the true sense. They arose after the canons regular,689 adopted the rule of St. Augustine, and were mendicants. In the closing period of the Middle Ages they were addicted to preaching. To this order John of Staupitz and Luther belonged.690

The rule of St. Augustine was also adopted with modification by the Premonstrants, the Gilbertines of England,691 and other orders, and was made the basis by Dominic of his first rule.

2. The Premonstrants adopted the Augustinian rule, were called from their dress White Canons, and grew with great rapidity.692  They had houses from Livland to Palestine, and from Great Britain to Spain. Their founder, Norbert, born about 1080 in Xantes, on the Lower Rhine, was a great preacher and one of the most influential men of his age. Thrown from his horse during a storm, he determined to devote himself in earnest to religion. He gave up his position in the Cologne Cathedral and entered the Benedictine Convent of Sigeberg. Norbert then travelled about in Germany and France as a preacher of repentance,693 calling the people together by a sheep’s bell. With others like-minded with himself he settled, 1119, in the woods at Coucy, near Laon, France, giving the spot the name of Praemonstratum, or Prémontré, the designated field,694 with reference to his having been directed to it by a higher power. The order secured papal sanction 1126, and received, like other orders, special papal privileges. Innocent III. bespoke the special intercession of the Premonstrants as he did that of the Cistercians. The first rule forbade meat and eggs, cheese and milk. As in the case of the Cistercians, their meals were limited to two dishes. At a later date the rule against meat was modified. Lay brethren were introduced and expected to do the work of the kitchen and other manual services. The theological instruction was confined to a few prayers, and the members were not allowed to read books.695

Norbert in 1126 was made archbishop of Magdeburg and welcomed the opportunity to introduce the order in Northeastern Germany. He joined Bernard in supporting Innocent II. against the antipope Anacletus II. He died 1134, at Magdeburg, and was canonized in 1582. Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux praised the order and Norbert himself as a man who stood near to God.696  Miracles were ascribed to him, but Abaelard ridiculed the claim.

The almost incredible number of one thousand houses is claimed for this order in its flourishing period. There was also an order of Premonstrant nuns, which is said to have numbered ten thousand women during Norbert’s lifetime.697  Their earliest settlement in England was at Newhouse, Lincolnshire, 1143. Norbert and Bruno, the Carthusian, were the only Germans who established monastic orders in this period.698

3. More original and strict were the Carthusians,699 who got their name from the seat of their first convent, Chartreuse, Cartusium, fourteen miles from Grenoble, southeast of Lyons. They were hermits, and practised an asceticism excelling in severity any of the other orders of the time.700  The founder, St. Bruno, was born in Cologne, and became chancellor of the cathedral of Rheims. Disgusted with the vanities of the world,701 he retired with some of his pupils to a solitary place, Saisse Fontaine, in the diocese of Langres, which he subsequently exchanged for Chartreuse.702  The location was a wild spot in the mountains, difficult of access, and for a large part of the year buried in snow. Bruno was called by Urban II. to Rome, and after acting as papal adviser, retired to the Calabrian Mountains and established a house. There he died, 1101. He was canonized 1514. In 1151 the number of Carthusian houses was fourteen, and they gradually increased to one hundred and sixty-eight. The order was formally recognized by Alexander III., 1170.

The first Carthusian statutes were committed to writing by the fifth prior Guigo, d. 1137. The rule now in force was fixed in 1578, and reconfirmed by Innocent XI., 1682.703  The monks lived in cells around a central church, at first two and two, and then singly.704  They divided their time between prayer, silence, and work, which originally consisted chiefly in copying books. The services celebrated in common in the church were confined to vespers and matins. The other devotions were performed by each in seclusion. The prayers were made in a whisper so as to avoid interfering with others. They sought to imitate the Thebaid anchorites in rigid self-mortification. Peter the Venerable has left a description of their severe austerities. Their dress was thin and coarse above the dress of all other monks.705  Meat, fat, and oil were forbidden; wine allowed, but diluted with water. They ate only bean-bread. They flagellated themselves once each day during the fifty days before Easter, and the thirty days before Christmas. When one of their number died, each of the survivors said two psalms, and the whole community met and took two meals together to console one another for the loss.706  No woman was allowed to cross the threshold. For hygienic purposes, the monks bled themselves five times a year, and were shaved six times a year.707  They avoided adornment in their churches and church dignities.708  They borrowed books from Cluny and other convents for the purpose of copying them.709  The heads of the Carthusian convents are called priors, not abbots. In its earlier history the order received highest praise from Innocent III. and Peter the Venerable, Bernard, and Peter of Celle. Bernard shrank from interrupting their holy quiet by letters, and lauded their devotion to God. So at a later time Petrarch, after a visit to their convent in Paris, penned a panegyric of the order.

In England the Carthusians were not popular.710  They never had more than eleven houses. The first establishment was founded by Henry II., at Witham, 1180. The famous Charterhouse in London (a corruption of the French Chartreuse), founded in 1371, was turned into a public school, 1611. In Italy the more elaborate houses of the order were the Certosa di San Casciano near Florence, the Certosa at Pisa, and the Certosa Maria degli Angeli in Rome.711

In recent times the monks of the Chartreuse became famous for the Chartreuse liqueur which they distilled. In its preparation the young buds of pine trees were used.

4. The Carmelites, or the Order of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Mt. Carmel, had their origin during the Crusades, 1156.712  The legend carries their origin back to Elijah, whose first disciples were Jonah, Micah, and Obadiah. Obadiah’s wife became the first abbess of the female community. Their history has been marked by much division within the order and bitter controversies with other orders.

Our first trustworthy notice is derived from Phocas, a Greek monk, who visited Mt. Carmel in 1185. Berthold of Calabria, a Crusader, made a vow under the walls of Antioch that in case the Christians were victorious over Zenki, he would devote himself to the monastic life. The prayer was answered, and Berthold with ten companions established himself on Mt. Carmel.713  The origin of the order became the subject of a violent dispute between the Carmelites and the Jesuits. The Jesuit Papebroch precipitated it in 1668 by declaring that Berthold was the founder. He was answered by the Carmelite Daniel714 and others who carried the origin back to Elijah. Appeal was made to Innocent XII., who, in 1698, in the bull redemptoris, commanded the two orders to maintain silence till the papal chair should render a decision. This has not yet been done.715

The community received its rule about 1208 from Albert, afterwards patriarch of Constantinople. It was confirmed by Honorius III., 1226. Its original sixteen articles gave the usual regulations against eating meat, enjoined daily silence, from vespers to tierce (6 P. M. to 9 A. M.), and provided that the monks live the hermit’s life in cells like the Carthusians. The dress was at first a striped garment, white and black, which was afterwards changed for brown.

With the Christian losses in Palestine, the Carmelites began to migrate westwards. In 1238 they were in Cyprus, and before the middle of the thirteenth century they were settled in far Western Europe. The first English house was at Alnwick, and a general chapter was held at Aylesford, 1246.

From the general of the order, Simon Stock, an Englishman (1245–65), dates the veneration of the scapulary,716 a jacket which he received from the Virgin Mary. It exempts, so the story runs, those who die with it on, from the fires of purgatory. Mary promised to go down to purgatory every Saturday, and release those who have worn it. The story is included in the Breviary,717 and was pronounced true and to be believed by all, by Benedict XIV. In 1322 John XXII., in obedience to a vision, issued the famous bull Sabbatina, which promised to all entering the order, deliverance from purgatory by Mary, the first Saturday after their decease.718

After the success of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Carmelites, with the sanction of Innocent IV., adopted the practice of mendicancy, 1245, and the coenobite life was substituted for life in solitary cells. The rules concerning clothing and food were relaxed to meet the climatic conditions of Europe.

A division took place in the order in 1378. The wing, holding to the stricter rule as confirmed by Innocent IV., is known as the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance. Both wings have their respective generals. The Carmelite name most famous in the annals of piety is that of St. Theresa, the Spanish saint who joined herself to the Carmelites, 1533. She aided in founding seventeen convents for women and fourteen for monks. This new branch, the Barefoot Carmelites, spread to different parts of Europe, Mt. Carmel, Africa, Mexico, and other countries. The monks wear leathern sandals, and the nuns a light shoe.719

Of the other numerous monastic orders, the following may be mentioned. The Antonites, or Brothers of the Hospital of St. Antonius720 are named after the Egyptian hermit, St. Anthony. The founder, Gaston, prayed to St. Anthony for the deliverance of his son from a disease, then widely prevalent, and called St. Anthony’s fire, morbus sacer. The prayer was answered, and the father and his son devoted themselves to a religious life. The order was sanctioned by Urban II., 1095, and was intended to care for the sick and poor. In 1118 it received from Calixtus II. the church of St. Didier de Mothe, containing St. Anthony’s bones. In 1218 Honorius III. gave the members permission to take monastic vows, and in 1296 Boniface VIII. imposed on them the Augustinian rule. They had houses in France, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. It used to be the custom on St. Anthony’s day to lead horses and cattle in front of their convent in Rome to receive a form of blessing. 721

The Trinitarians, ordo sanctissima Trinitatis de redemptione captivorum, had for their mission the redemption of Christian captives out of the hands of the Saracens and Moors. Their founder was John of Matha (1160–1213). The order was also called the ordo asinorum, Order of the Asses, from the fact that its members rode on asses and never on horseback.722The order of Font Evraud (Fontis Ebraldi in Poitiers) had the peculiarity that monks and nuns were conjoined in associated cloisters, and that the monks were under the supervision of an abbess. The abbess was regarded as the representative of the Virgin Mary, and the arrangement as in conformity with the word of Christ, placing John under the care of Mary. A church built between the male and female cloisters was used in common. The order was founded by Robert d’ Abrissel (d. 1117), whom Urban II. heard preach, and commissioned as a preacher, 1096. Robert was born in Brittany, and founded, 1095, a convent at Craon. He was a preacher of great popular power. The nuns devoted themselves especially to the reclamation of fallen women.723  A special rule forbade the nuns to care for their hair, and another rule commanded them to shave their heads three times a year.724

The Order of Grammont, founded by Stephen of Auvergne, deserves mention for the high rank it once held in France. It enjoyed the special patronage of Louis VII. and other French sovereigns, and had sixty houses in France. It was an order of hermits. Arrested while on a pilgrimage, by sickness, Stephen was led by the example of the hermits of Calabria to devote himself to the hermit life. These monks went as far in denying themselves the necessities of life as it is possible to do and yet survive,725 but monks and nuns became notorious for licentiousness and prostitution.726

The Brothers of the Sack727 wore a dress of rough material cut in the shape of a bag. They had convents in different countries, including England, where they continued to have houses till the suppression of the monasteries. They abstained entirely from meat, and drunk only water. The Franciscans derisively called them Bushmen (Boscarioli). They were indefatigable beggars. The Franciscan chronicler, Salimbene,728 is sure Gregory X. was divinely inspired in abolishing the order, for "Christian folk were wearied and burdened with the multitude of beggars."

§ 67. Monastic Prophets.

St. Hildegard and Joachim of Flore.

Literature.—Hildegard’s works in Migne, vol. 197, and some not there given in Pitra: Analecta sacra. For a list see Preger: Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, I. 13–36.—Lives by Godefrid and Theodorich, contemporaries in Migne.—Dahl, Mainz, 1832.—Clarius, with translation of Hildegard’s letters, 2 vols. Regensburg, 1854.—Richaud, Aix, 1876.—J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg, 1897.—P. Franche, Paris, 1903.—Benrath, in Herzog, VIII. 71 sq.—Hildegard’s Causae et curae, ed. by Kaiser, Leipzig, 1903, is a sort of mediaeval manual of medicine.

Joachim’s published works, Liber concordiae novi et veteris Testamenti, Venice, 1519; Expositio in Apocalypsin and Psalterium decem chordarum, Venice, 1527. The errors of Joachim are given in Mansi, xxii. 981 and Denifle: Chartularium Univ., Par I. 272–275.—Salimbene: Chronicon, Parma, 1857; Coulton’s trans., London, 1906.—Luna Consentinus, d. 1224, perhaps an amanuensis: Synopsis virtutum b. Joach. in Ughelli, Italia sacra, IX. 205 sqq.—Gervaise: Hist. de l’abbé Joachim, 2 vols. Paris, 1745.—Reuter: Gesch. der Aufklärung, 1877, pp. 191–218.—Renan in Nouvelles études d’hist. rel., Paris, 1884, pp. 217–323.—*Denifle: Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni, in Archiv für Lit.- und Kirchengesch., 1885, pp. 49–142. *Döllinger: Die Papstfabeln des Mittelalters, 2d ed. by J. Friedrich, Stuttgart, 1890; Engl. trans. of 1st ed. by H. B. Smith, N. Y., 1872, pp. 364–391.—*Artt: Joachim, in Wetzer-Welte by Ehrle, VI. 1471–1480, and in Herzog by Deutsch, IX. 227–232.—*E. Schott: Die Gedanken Joachims in Brieger’s Zeitschrift, 1902, pp. 157–187.

The monasteries also had their prophets. Men’s minds, stirred by the disasters in Palestine, and by the spread of heresy in Europe, here and there saw beyond the prevailing ritual of church and convent to a new era in which, however, neither hierarchy nor convent would be given up. In the twelfth century the spirit of prophecy broke out almost simultaneously in convents on the Rhine and in Southern Italy. Its chief exponents were Hildegard of Bingen, Elizabeth of Schoenau, and Joachim, the abbot of Flore.729  They rebuked the clerical corruption of their time, saw visions, and Joachim was the seer of a new age.

Hildegard (1098–1179), abbess of the Benedictine convent of Disebodenberg, near Bingen on the Rhine, was the most prominent woman in the church of her day.730  What Bernard of Clairvaux was to France, that, though in a lesser degree, she was to Germany. She received letters from four popes, Eugenius, Anastasius, Adrian, and Alexander III., from the emperors Konrad III. and Frederick Barbarossa, from Bernard and many ecclesiastics in high office as well as from persons of humble position. Her intercessions were invoked by Frederick, by Konrad for his son,731 and by Bernard. Persons from afar were moved to seek her aid, as for example the patriarch of Jerusalem who had heard that a "divine force operated in and through her."732  Her convent was moved from Disebodenberg to Rupertsberg and she finally became abbess of the convent of Eibingen.

Infirm of body, Hildegard was, by her own statement, the recipient of visions from her childhood. As she wrote to St. Bernard, she saw them "not with the external eye of sense but with the inner eye."  The deeper meanings of Scripture touched her breast and burnt into her soul like a flame."733  Again she said that, when she was forty-two years old, a fiery light of great brightness, coming from the open heavens, transfused her brain and inflamed her whole heart and breast like a flame, as the sun lightens everything upon which his rays fall.734  What she saw, she saw not in dreams nor in sleep nor in a frenzied state nor in hidden places but while she was awake and in pure consciousness, using the eyes and ears of her inner man according to the will of God.735  Eugenius III., on a visit to Treves, 1148, investigated her revelations, recognized the genuineness of her miracles, and encouraged her to continue in her course.736  Bernard spoke of her fame of making known heavenly secrets through the illumination of the Holy Ghost.

It is reported by contemporaries of this godly woman that scarcely a sick person came to her without being healed.737  Her power was exerted in the convent and outside of it and upon persons of both sexes. People from localities as distant as Sweden sought her healing power. Sometimes the medium used was a prayer, sometimes a simple word of command, sometimes water which, as in one case, healed paralysis of the tongue.

As a censor of the Church, Hildegard lamented the low condition of the clergy, announced that the Cathari would be used to stir up Christendom to self-purification, called attention to the Scriptures and the Catholic faith as the supreme fonts of authority, and bade men look for salvation not to priests but to Christ.

She was also an enthusiastic student of nature. Her treatises on herbs, trees, and fishes are among the most elaborate on natural objects of the Middle Ages. She gives the properties of no less than two hundred and thirteen herbs or their products, and regarded heat and cold as very important qualities of plant life. They are treated with an eye to their medicinal virtue. Butter, she says, is good for persons in ill health and suffering from feverish blood and the butter of cows is more wholesome than the butter of sheep and goats. Licorice,738 which is mildly heating, gives a clear voice and a suave mind, clarifies the eyes, and prepares the stomach for the process of digestion. The "basilisca," which is cold, if placed under the tongue, restores the power of speech to the palsied and, when cooked in wine with honey added, will cure fevers provided it is drunk frequently during the night.739

A kindred spirit to Hildegard was Elizabeth of Schoenau, who died 1165 at the age of thirty-six.740  She was an inmate of the convent of Schoenau, not far from Bingen, and also had visions which were connected with epileptic conditions. In her visions she saw Stephen, Laurentius, and many of the other saints. In the midst of them usually stood "the virgin of virgins, the most glorious mother of God, Mary."741  When she saw St. Benedict, he was in the midst of his monkish host, monachalis turba. Elizabeth represented herself as being "rapt out of the body into an ecstasy."742  In the interest of purity of life she did not shrink from rebuking even the archbishop of Treves and from pronouncing the Apostolic chair possessed with pride and filled with iniquity and impiety. On one occasion she saw Christ sitting at the judgment with Pilate, Judas, and those who crucified him on his left hand and also, alas! a great company of men and women whom she recognized as being of her order.743  Hildegard and Elizabeth have a place in the annals of German mysticism.

Joachim of Flore,744 d. 1202, the monastic prophet of Southern Europe, exercised a wide influence by his writings, especially through the adoption of his views by the Spiritual wing of the Franciscan order. He was first abbot of the Cistercian convent of Corazza in Calabria, and then became the founder and abbot of St. John in Flore. Into this convent he introduced a stricter rule than the rule of the Cistercians. It became the centre of a new order which was sanctioned by Coelestin III., 1196.

Joachim enjoyed the reputation of a prophet during his lifetime.745  He had the esteem of Henry VI., and was encouraged in his exegetical studies by Lucius III. and other popes. After his death his views became the subject of conciliar and papal examination. The Fourth Lateran condemned his treatment of the Trinity as defined by Peter the Lombard. Peter had declared that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit constitute a certain supreme essence, quaedam summa res, and this, according to Joachim, involved a substitution of a quaternity for the Trinity. Those who adopted Joachim’s view were condemned as heretics, but Joachim and the convent of Flore were distinctly excepted from condemnation.746

Joachim’s views on the doctrine of the Trinity are of slight importance. The abbot has a place in history by his theory of historical development and his eschatology. His opinions are set forth in three writings of whose genuineness there is no question, an exposition of the Psalms, an exposition of the Apocalypse, and a Concord of the Old and New Testaments.747

Interwoven with his prophecies is Joachim’s theory of historical development. There are three ages in history. The Old Testament age has its time of beginning and bloom. So has that of the New Testament. But a third age is to follow. The basis for this theory of three periods is found in a comparison of the Old and New Testaments, a comparison which reveals a parallelism between the leading periods of the history of Israel and the periods of Christian history. This parallelism was disclosed to Joachim on an Easter night, and made as clear as day.

The first of the three ages was the age of the Father, the second the age of the Son, of the Gospel, and the sacraments, the third, the age of the Holy Spirit which was yet to come. The three were represented by Peter, Paul, and John. The first was an age of law, the second of grace, the third of more grace. The first was characterized by fear, the second by faith, the third was to be marked by charity. The first was the age of servants, the second of freedmen, the third of friends. The first brought forth water, the second wine, the third was to bring forth oil. The first was as the light of the stars, the second of the dawn, the third of the perfect day. The first was the age of the married, and corresponded to the flesh; the second of priests, with the elements of the flesh and the Spirit mixed; the third of monks, and was to be wholly spiritual. Each of these ages had a beginning, a maturity, and an end.748  The first began with Adam, and entered upon its maturity with Abraham. The second began in the days of Elijah, and entered upon its maturity with Christ. The third began in the days of St. Benedict in the sixth century. Its maturity had already begun in the days of Joachim himself. The consummation was to begin in 1260.

The Gospel of the letter is temporal not eternal, and gives way in the third period to the Eternal Gospel, Rev. 14:6. Then the spiritual meaning of the Gospel will be fully known. Joachim did not mean to deny the permanent authority of the two Testaments, when he put into his third period the full understanding of them, in the spiritual sense, and the complete embodiment of their teachings in life and conduct. The Eternal Gospel he described, not as a newly written revelation, but as the spiritual and permanent message of Christ’s Gospel, which is hidden under the surface of the letter. This Gospel he also called the Spiritual Gospel, and the Gospel of the Kingdom.749  It was to be preached in the whole earth and the Jews, Greeks, and the larger part of mankind, were to be converted. A spiritual Church would result,750 by which was meant, not a church separate from the papacy, but a church purified. The Eternal Gospel was to be proclaimed by a new order, the "little ones of Christ."751  In his Apocalypse, Joachim speaks of two prophets of this new order.752  This prediction was subsequently applied to Francis and Dominic.

It was in the conception of the maturition of the periods as much as in the succession of the periods that the theory of development is brought out.753  In the development of the parallels between the history of Israel and the Christian Church, Joachim discovered a time in each to correspond to the seven seals of the Apocalypse. The first seal is indicated in the Old Testament by the deliverance from Egypt, in the New by the resurrection of Christ; the second seal respectively by the experiences in the wilderness and the persecutions of the ante-Nicene Church; the third by the wars against the Canaanites and the conflict with heresy from Constantine to Justinian; the fourth by the peril from the Assyrians and the age lasting to Gregory III., d. 741 the fifth by the Babylonian oppression and the troubles under the German emperors; and the sixth by the exile, and the twelfth Christian century with all the miseries of that age, including the violence of the Saracens, and the rise of heretics. The opening of the seventh seal was near at hand, and was to be followed by the Sabbatic rest.

Joachim was no sectary. He was not even a reformer. Like many of his contemporaries he was severe upon the vices of the clergy of his day. "Where is quarrelling," he exclaims, "where fraud, except among the sons of Juda, except among the clergy of the Lord?  Where is crime, where ambition, except among the clergy of the Lord?"754  His only remedy was the dawning of the third age which he announced. He waged no polemic against the papacy,755 submitted himself and his writings dutifully to the Church,756 and called the church of Peter the throne of Christ. He was a mystical seer who made patient biblical studies,757 and saw in the future a more perfect realization of the spiritual Church, founded by Christ, exempt from empty formalism and bitter disputes.

An ecclesiastical judgment upon Joachim’s views was precipitated by the Franciscan Gerardus of Borgo San Donnino, who wrote a tract called the Introduction to the Eternal Gospel,758 expounding what he considered to be Joachim’s teachings. He declared that Joachim’s writings were themselves the written code of the Eternal Gospel,759 which was to be authoritative for the third age, as the Old and New Testaments were authoritative for the ages of the Father and the Son. Of this last age the abbot of Flore was the evangelist.

When Gerard’s work appeared, in 1254, it created a great stir and was condemned by professors at Paris, the enemies of the Franciscans, William of St. Amour among the number. The strict wing of the Franciscans, the Spirituals, adopted some of Joachim’s views and looked upon him as the prophet of their order. Articles of accusation were brought before Innocent IV. His successor, Alexander IV., in 1255 condemned Gerardo and his book without, however, passing judgment upon Joachim.760  Gerardo and other Spirituals were thrown into prison, where Gerardo died eighteen years after. John of Parma was deposed from his office as head of the Franciscans for his Joachimism. The Franciscan chronicler Salimbene was also for a while a disciple of Joachim, and reports that the prophet predicted that the order of the Friars Minor should endure to the end while the order of Preachers should pass away.761  In 1263 a synod of Arles condemned the writings of Joachim. A century after Joachim’s death, the Franciscan Spirituals, John Peter Olivi and Ubertino da Casale, were identified with his views. The traces of Joachimism are found throughout the Middle Ages to their close. Joachim was the millenarian prophet of the Middle Ages.

§ 68. The Mendicant Orders.

For literature, see §§ 69, 72.

A powerful impulse was imported into monasticism and the life of the mediaeval Church by the two great mendicant orders,762 the Dominicans and the Franciscans, who received papal sanction respectively in 1216 and 1223. In their first period they gained equally the esteem of scholars, princes, and popes, and also the regard of the masses, though not without a struggle.763  Dante praised them; great ecclesiastics like Grosseteste welcomed their coming to England as the dawn of a new era. Louis IX. would have divided his body between them. But it has been questioned whether the good services which they rendered in the first years of their career are not more than counterbalanced by their evil activity in later periods when their convents became a synonym for idleness, insolence, and ignorance.

The appearance of these two organizations was without question one of the most momentous events of the Middle Ages,764 and marks one of the notable revivals in the history of the Christian Church. They were the Salvation Army of the thirteenth century, and continue to be powerful organizations to this day. At the time when the spirit of the Crusades was waning and heresies were threatening to sweep away the authority, if not the very existence of the hierarchy, Francis d’Assisi and Dominic de Guzman, an Italian and a Spaniard, united in reviving the religious energies and strengthening the religious organization of the Western Church. As is usually the case in human affairs, the personalities of these great leaders were more powerful than solemnly enacted codes of rules. They started monasticism on a new career. They embodied Christian philanthropy so that it had a novel aspect. They were the sociological reformers of their age. They supplied the universities and scholastic theology with some of their most brilliant lights. The prophecies of Joachim of Flore were regarded as fulfilled in Francis and Dominic, who were the two trumpets of Moses to arouse the world from its slumber, the two pillars appointed to support the Church. The two orders received papal recognition in the face of the recent decree of the Fourth Lateran against new monastic orders.

Two temperaments could scarcely have differed more widely than the temperaments of Francis and Dominic. Dante has described Francis as an Ardor, inflaming the world with love; Dominic as a Brightness, filling it with light.

The one was all seraphical in Ardor,

The other by his wisdom upon earth

A Splendor was of light cherubical.765

Neither touched life on so many sides as did Bernard. They were not involved in the external policies of states. They were not called upon to heal papal schisms, nor were they brought into a position to influence the papal policy. But each excelled the monk of Clairvaux as the fathers of well-disciplined and permanent organizations.

Francis is the most unpretentious, gentle, and lovable of all monastic saints.766  Dominic was cold, systematic, austere. Francis is greater than his order, and moves through his personality. Dominic was a master disciplinarian, and has exerted his influence through the rules of his order. Francis has more the elements of a Christian apostle, Dominic of an ecclesiastical statesman. Francis we can only think of as mingling with the people and breathing the free air of the fields; Dominic we think of easily as lingering in courts and serving in the papal household. Francis’ lifework was to save the souls of men; Dominic’s lifework was to increase the power of the Church. The one sought to carry the ministries of the Gospel to the masses; the other to perpetuate the integrity of Catholic doctrine. Francis has been celebrated for the humbleness of his mind and walk; Dominic was called the hammer of the heretics.

It is probable that on at least three occasions the two leaders met.767  In 1217 they were both at Rome, and the curia proposed the union of the two brotherhoods in one organization. Dominic asked Francis for his cord, and bound himself with it, saying he desired the two orders to be one. Again, 1218, they met at the Portiuncula, Francis’ beloved church in Assisi, and on the basis of what he saw, Dominic decided to embrace mendicancy, which his order adopted in 1220. Again in 1221 they met at Rome, when Cardinal Ugolino sought to manipulate the orders in the interest of the hierarchy. This Francis resented, but in vain,

It was the purpose neither of Francis nor Dominic to reform existing orders, or to revive the rigor of rules half-obeyed. It may be doubted whether Francis, at the outset, had any intention of founding an organization. His object was rather to start a movement to transform the world as with leaven. They both sought to revive Apostolic practice.

The Franciscan and Dominican orders differed from the older orders in five important particulars.

The first characteristic feature was absolute poverty. Mendicancy was a primal principle of their platforms. The rules of both orders, the Franciscans leading the way, forbade the possession of property. The corporation, as well as the individual monk, was pledged to poverty. The intention of Francis was to prohibit forever the holding of corporate property as well as individual property among his followers.768

The practice of absolute poverty had been emphasized by preachers and sects in the century before Francis and Dominic began their careers, and sects, such as the Humiliati, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and the Poor Men of Lyons, were advocating it in their time. Robert d’Abrissel, d. 1117, had for his ideal to follow "the bare Christ on the cross, without any goods of his own."769  One of the biographers of Bernard of Thiron, d. 1117, calls him "Christ’s poor man," pauper Christi, and says that this "man, poor in spirit, followed unto death the Poor Lord."770  Likewise the followers of Norbert, the founder of the Premonstrant order, were called the "poor men of Christ," pauperes Christi. Of another itinerant preacher, Vitalis of Savigny, who lived about the same time, his biographer said that he decided to bear Christ’s light yoke by walking in the steps of the Apostles.771  The minds of select men and classes of men were deeply moved in the thirteenth century to follow closely the example of the Apostles, and they regarded Christ as having taught and practised absolute poverty. Arnold of Brescia’s mind worked in the same direction, as did also the heretical sects of Southern France and Northern Italy. The imitation of Christ lay near to their hearts, and it remained for Francis of Assisi to realize most fully this pious ideal of the thirteenth century.772

The second feature was their devotion to practical activities in society. The monk had fled into solitude from the day when St. Anthony retired to the Thebaid desert. The Black and Gray Friars, as the Dominicans and Franciscans were called from the colors of their dress, threw themselves into the currents of the busy world. To lonely contemplation they joined itinerancy in the marts and on the thoroughfares.773  They were not satisfied with warring against their own flesh. They made open warfare upon the world. They preached to the common people. They relieved poverty. They listened to the complaints of the oppressed.774

A third characteristic of the orders was the lay brotherhoods which they developed, the third order, called Tertiaries, or the penitential brothers, fratres de poenitentia.775 Convents, like Hirschau, had before initiated laymen into monastic service. But the third order of the Franciscans and Dominicans were lay folk who, while continuing at their usual avocations, were bound by oath to practise the chief virtues of the Gospel. There was thus opened to laymen the opportunity of realizing some of that higher merit belonging theretofore only to the monastic profession. Religion was given back to common life.

A fourth feature was their activity as teachers in the universities. They recognized that these new centres of education were centres of powerful influence, and they adapted themselves to the situation. Twenty years had scarcely elapsed before the Franciscans and Dominicans entered upon a career of great distinction at these universities. Francis, it is true, had set his face against learning, and said that demons had more knowledge of the stars than men could have. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. To a novice he said, "If you have a psaltery, you will want a breviary; and if you have a breviary, you will sit on a high chair like a prelate, and say to your brother, ’Bring me a breviary.’ "  To another he said, "The time of tribulation will come when books will be useless and be thrown away."776  But from Alexander IV. and his successors the Franciscans received special privileges for establishing schools, and, in spite of vigorous opposition, both orders gained entrance to the University of Paris. The Dominicans led the way, and established themselves very early at the seats of the two great continental universities, Paris and Bologna.777  Their convent at Paris, St. Jacques, established in 1217, they turned into a theological school. Carrying letters of recommendation from Honorius III., they were at first well received by the authorities of the university. The Franciscans established their convent in Paris, 1230. Both orders received from the chancellor of Paris license to confer degrees, but their arrogance and refusal to submit to the university regulations soon brought on bitter opposition. The popes took their part, and Alexander IV.778 commanded the authorities to receive them to the faculty. Compliance with this bull was exceedingly distasteful, for the friars acknowledged the supreme authority of a foreign body. The populace of Paris and the students hooted them on the streets and pelted them with missiles. It seemed to Humbert, the general of the Dominicans, as if Satan, Leviathan, and Belial had broken loose and agreed to beset the friars round about and destroy, if possible, the fruitful olive which Dominic, of most glorious memory, had planted in the field of the Church.779  In 1257 Alexander IV. could congratulate all parties that tranquillity had been established.780

At Paris and Oxford, Cologne, and other universities, they furnished the greatest of the Schoolmen. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Durandus, were Dominicans; John of St. Giles, Alexander Hales, Adam Marsh, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, Ockham, and Roger Bacon were of the order of St. Francis. Among other distinguished Franciscans of the Middle Ages were the exegete Nicolas of Lyra, the preachers Anthony of Padua, David of Augsburg, Bernardino of Siena, and Bertholdt of Regensburg (d. 1272); the missionaries, Rubruquis and John of Monte Corvino; the hymn-writers, Thomas of Celano and Jacopone da Todi. Among Dominicans were the mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, Las Casas, the missionary of Mexico, and Savonarola.

The fifth notable feature was the immediate subjection of the two orders to the Apostolic see. The Franciscans and Dominicans were the first monastic bodies to vow allegiance directly to the pope. No bishop, abbot, or general chapter intervened between them and him. The two orders became his bodyguard and proved themselves to be the bulwark of the papacy. Such organized support the papacy had never had before. The legend represents Innocent III. as having seen in a vision the structure of the Lateran supported by two monks.781  These were Francis and Dominic, and the facts of history justified the invention. They helped the pope to establish his authority over the bishops.782  And wherever they went, and they were omnipresent in Europe, they made it their business to propound the principle of the supremacy of the Holy See over princes and nations and were active in strengthening this supremacy. In the struggle of the empire with the papacy, they became the persistent enemies of Frederick II. who, as early as 1229, banished the Franciscans from Naples. When Gregory IX. excommunicated Frederick in 1239, he confided to the Franciscans the duty of publishing the decree amidst the ringing of bells on every Sunday and festival day. And when, in 1245, Innocent IV. issued his decree against Frederick, its announcement to the public ear was confided to the Dominicans.

Favor followed favor from the Roman court. In 1222 Honorius III. granted, first to the Dominicans and then to the Franciscans, the notable privilege of conducting services in their churches in localities where the interdict was in force.783  Francis’ will, exhorting his followers not to seek favors from the pope, was set aside. In 1227 Gregory IX. granted his order the right of general burial in their churches784 and a year later repeated the privilege conceded by Honorius785 granting them the right of celebrating mass in all their oratories and churches.786  They were exempted from episcopal authority and might hear confessions at any place. The powerful Gregory IX. from the very beginning of his pontificate, showed the orders great favor.787

Orthodoxy had no more zealous champions than the Franciscans and Dominicans. They excelled all other orders as promoters of religious persecution and hunters of heretics. In Southern France they wiped out the stain of heresy with the streams of blood which flowed from the victims of their crusading fanaticism. They were the leading instruments of the Inquisition. Torquemada was a Dominican, and so was Konrad of Marburg. As early as 1232 Gregory IX. confided the execution of the Inquisition to the Dominicans, but the order of Francis demanded and secured a share in the gruesome work. Under the lead of Duns Scotus the Franciscans became the unflagging champions of the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary which was pronounced a dogma in 1854, as later the Jesuits became the unflagging champions of the dogma of papal infallibility.

The rapid growth of the two orders in number and influence was accompanied by bitter rivalry. The disputes between them were so violent that in 1255 their respective generals had to call upon their monks to avoid strife. The papal privileges were a bone of contention, one order being constantly suspicious lest the other should enjoy more favor at the hand of the pope than itself.

Their abuse of power called forth papal briefs restricting their privileges. Innocent IV. in 1254, in what is known among the orders as the "terrible bull,"788 revoked the permission allowing them to admit others than members of the orders to their services on festivals and Sundays and also the privilege of hearing confession except as the parochial priest gave his consent. Innocent, however, was no sooner in his grave than his successor, Alexander IV., announced himself as the friend of the orders, and the old privileges were renewed.

The pretensions of the mendicant friars soon became unbearable to the church at large. They intruded themselves into every parish and incurred the bitter hostility of the secular clergy whose rights they usurped, exercising with free hand the privilege of hearing confessions and granting absolution. It was not praise that Chaucer intended when he said of the Franciscan in his Canterbury Tales,—He was an easy man to give penance.

These monks also delayed a thorough reformation of the Church. They were at first reformers themselves and offered an offset to the Cathari and the Poor Men of Lyons by their Apostolic self-denial and popular sympathies. But they degenerated into obstinate obstructors of progress in theology and civilization. From being the advocates of learning, they became the props of popular ignorance. The virtue of poverty was made the cloak for vulgar idleness and mendicancy for insolence.

These changes set in long before the century closed in which the two orders had their birth. Bishops opposed them. The secular clergy complained of them. The universities ridiculed and denounced them for their mock piety and vices. William of St. Amour took the lead in the opposition in Paris. His sharp pen compared the mendicants to the Pharisees and Scribes and declared that Christ and his Apostles did not go around begging. To work was more scriptural than to beg.789  They were hypocrites and it remained for the bishops to purge their dioceses of them. Again and again, in after years, did clergy, bishops, and princes appeal to the popes against their intrusive insolence, but, as a rule, the popes were on their side.

The time came in the early part of the fifteenth century when the great teacher Gerson, in a public sermon, enumerated as the four persecutors of the Church, tyrants, heretics, antichrist, and the Mendicants.790

§ 69. Franciscan Literature.

I. St. Francis: Works in Latin text, ed. by Wadding, Antwerp, 1623, by de la Haye, Paris, 1841, Col., 1849, Paris, 1880-Quaracchi, 1904.—Bernardo da Fivizzano: Oposcoli di S. Fr. d’Assise, Florence, 1880. Gives the Latin text and Ital. trans., the Rule of 1223, St. Francis’ will, letters, etc.—French trans. by Ed. d’Alencon: Les Opuscules de S. François, Paris, 1905.—H. Böhmer: Analekten zur Gesch. des Franc. von Assisi, Francisci opuscula, regula poenitentium, etc., mit einer Einleittung, Tübingen, 1904.—Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. by Father Paschal Robinson, Phil., 1906.

Lives.—1. Thomas of Celano: Vita prima, written 1228 at the command of Gregory IX., to justify the canonization of Francis, Rome, 1880.—2. Th. of Celano: Vita secunda, written about 1247 and revealing the struggles within the Franciscan order, ed. by Fivizzano, Rome, 1880. Both lives ed. by H. G. Rosedale: Thomas de Celano, St. F. d’Assisi with a crit. Introd. containing a description with every extant version in the original Latin, N. Y., 1904. Also Ed. d’Alençon: Th. a Celano, S. Franc. Assisiensis vita et miracula, etc., pp. lxxxvii, 481, Rome, 1906.—Fr. of Assisi according to Th. of Celano. His descriptions of the Seraphic Father, 1229–1257, Introd. by H. G. Rosedale, Lond., 1904.—3. Legenda trium sociorum, the Legend of the Three Companions, Leo, Angelo, and Rufino, intimate associates of Francis. Written in 1246 and first publ. in full by the Bollandists as an appendix to Celano’s Lives, Louvaine, 1768, Rome, 1880. It has been preserved in a mutilated condition. The disputes within the order account for the expurgation of parts to suit the lax or papal wing.—4. Speculum perfectionis seu S. Francesci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima, auctore fratre Leone, nunc primum edidit, Paul Sabatier, Paris, 1898; also ed. by Ed. Lemmens, Quaracchi, 1901. Sabatier dates it 1227. Eng. trans. by Constance, Countess de la Warr, Lond., 1902. See note below.—5. Legenda major, or Aurea legenda major, by Bonaventura, in Peltier’s ed., and Quaracchi, 1898, Engl. trans., Douai, 1610, and by Miss Lockhart with Pref. by Card. Manning, Lond., 3d ed., 1889. Written in obedience to the order of the Franciscan Chapter and approved by it at Pisa, 1263. Here the legendary element is greatly enlarged. Once treated as the chief authority, it is now relegated to a subordinate place, as it suppresses the distinctive element represented by Francis’ will.—6. Liber conformitatum, by Bartholomew Albericus of Pisa, d. 1401. Institutes forty comparisons between Francis and Christ. Luther called it der Barfussmönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran, The owls’ looking-glass and Koran of the Barefoot monks.—7. Actus B. Francesci et sociorum ejus, ed. Sabatier, Paris, 1902. A collection of sayings and acts of Francis, handed down from eye-witnesses and others, hitherto unpubl. and to be dated not later than 1328.—8. Legenda of Julian of Spires. About 1230.—9. Legenda of Bernard of Bess, publ. in the Analecta Franciscana III., Quaracchi, near Florence. A compilation.—10. Francisci beati sacrum commercium cum domina paupertate, with an Ital. trans. by Ed. d’Alençon, Rome, 1900. Engl. trans., The Lady Poverty, by Montgomery Carmichael, N. Y., 1902. Goes back, at least, to the 13th century, as Ubertino da Casale was acquainted with it.—11. The Fioretti, or Little Flowers of St. Francis, first publ., 1476, ed. Sabatier, Paris, 1902, pp. xvi., 250. Engl. trans. by Abby L. Alger, Boston, 1887, and Woodroffe, London, 1905. Belongs to the 14th century. A collection of legends very popular in Italy. Sabatier says none of them are genuine, but that they perfectly reveal the soul of St. Francis,—12. Fratris Fr. Bartholi de Assisio Tractatus de indulgentia S. Mariae de Portiuncula, ed. Sabatier, Paris, 1900. Belongs to the 14th century. See Lit.-zeitung, 1901, 110 sqq.—13. Regula antiqua fratrum et sororum de poenitentia seu tertii ordinis S. Francisci, nunc primum ed., Sabatier, Paris, 1901. See S. Minocchi: La Leggenda antica. Nuova fonte biogr. di S. Francesco d’Assisi tratto da un codice Vaticana, Florence, 1905, pp. 184. Unfavorably noticed by Lempp, in Lit.-zeitung, 1906, p. 509, who says that the contents of the MS. were for the most part drawn from the Speculum perfectionis.

Modern Biographies.—By Chavin De Malan, Paris, 1841, 2d ed., 1845.—K. Hase, Leip. 1856, 2d ed., 1892. First crit. biog.—Mrs. Oliphant, Lond., 1870.—Magliano, 2 vols., Rome, 1874, Eng. trans., N. Y., 1887.—L. de Chérancé, Paris, 1892, Engl. trans., 1901.—Henry Thode, Berlin, 1885, 1904.—*Paul Sabatier, a Protestant pastor: Vie de S. François d’Assise, Paris, 1894. 33d ed., 1906. Crowned by the French Academy. Engl. trans. by L. S. Houghton, N. Y., 1894. I use the 27th ed.—W. J. Knox-Little, Lond., 1896.—P. Doreau, Paris, 1903, p. 648.—A. Barine: S. Fr. d’Assisi et le légende des trois Compagnons, Paris, 1901.—J. Herkless: Francis and Dominic, N. Y., 1904.—H. v. Redern, Schwerin, 1905.—*G. Schnürer: Franz von Assisi. Die Vertiefung des religiösen Lebens im Abendlande zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, Munich, 1905.—Nino Tamassia: S. Francesco d’Assisi e la sua leggenda, Padua, 1906, p. 216.—F. Van Ortroy: Julien de Spire, biographe de St. François, Brussels, 1890.—J. E. Weis: Julian von Speier, d. 1285, Munich, 1900.—Ed. Lempp: Frère Elie de Cortona, Paris, 1901.—H. Tilemann: Speculum perfectionis und Legenda trium sociorum, Ein Beitrag zur Quellenkritik der Gesch. des hl. Franz. von Assisi, Leip. 1902.—Potthast: Bibl. Hist., II. 1319 sqq. gives a list of ninety biographies. For further Lit. see Zöckler in Herzog, VI. 197–222, and "Engl. Hist. Rev." 1903, 165 sqq., for a list and critical estimate of the lit., W. Goetz: Die Quellen zur Gesch. des hl. Franz von Assisi, Gotha, 1904. First published in Brieger’s Zeitschrift and reviewed in Lit.-zeitung, 1905, pp. 8–10.

II. The Franciscans: Earliest Chronicles.—Jordanus Da Giano: de primitivorum fratrum in Teutoniam missorum conversatione et vita memorabilia, for the years 1207–1238, in Analecta Franciscana, pp. 1–19.—Thomas of Eccleston, a Franciscan: de adventu Minorum in Angliam, 1224–1250 in the Analecta Franciscana and best in Monumenta Franciscana, ed. by J. S. Brewer, with valuable Preface, London, 1858, Engl. trans. by Cuthbert, London, 1903. The volume also contains the Letters of Adam de Marisco, etc.; vol. II., ed. by Richard Howlett, with Preface, contains fragments of Eccleston and other English documents bearing on the Franciscans.—Analecta Franciscana sive chronica aliaque documenta ad historiam Minorum spectantia, Quaracchi, 1885.—Bullarium Franciscanum sive Romanorum pontificum constitutiones, epistolae, diplomata, etc., vols. I.-IV., Rome, 1759, ed. by J. H. Sbaraglea and Rossi, vols. V., VII., Rome, 1898–1904, ed. by Conrad Eubel; the collection extends to 1378.—Seraphicae legationis textus originales, Quaracchi, 1897, containing the Rule of 1223 and other documents. Luke Wadding: Annales Minorum, 7 vols., Lyons, 1625–1648, the most valuable history of the order.—Denifle and Ehrle give valuable materials and criticisms in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengeschichte d. Mittelalters, vol. I. 145 sqq.; 509–569, III. 553 sqq.; VI. 1I sqq., Berlin, 1885–1891.—Karl Müller: Die Anfänge des Minoriten-ordens und der Bussbruderschaften, Freib., 1885.—A. G. Little: The Grey-friars in Oxford, Oxford, 1891.—Eubel: Die avignonesische Obedienz der Mendikanten-Orden, etc., zur Zeit des grossen Schismas beleuchtet durch die von Clement VII. und Benedict XIII. an dieselben gerichteten Schreiben, Paderborn, 1900.—Pierre Madonnet: Les origines de l’ordre de poenitentia, Freib., 1898; also Les règles et le gouvernement de l’ordre de poenitentia am XIIIe siècle (1212–1234), Paris, 1902.—F. X. Seppelt: Der Kampf der Bettelorden an der Universität Paris in der Mitte des 13ten Jahrh. Heiligenstadt, 1892.—F. Glaser: Die franziskanische Bewegung. Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. sozialer Reformideen im Mittelalter, Stuttg., 1903.—H. Felder: Gesch. der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden bis c. 1250, Freib., 1904, pp. 557. Ricard St. Clara: St. Claire d’Assise, Paris, 1895.—E. Wauer: Entstehung und Ausbreitung des Klarissenordens besonders in deutschen Minoritenprovinzen, Leip., 1906.—E. Knoth: Ubertino da Casale, Marburg, 19 Bibliothek zu Breslau befindlichen handschrift-lichen Aufzeichnungen von Reden und Tractaten Capistrans, etc., 2 Parts, Breslau, 1903–1905.—L. de Chérancé: St. Antoine de Padoue, Paris, 1906.—Helyot: Relig. Orders, VII. 1–421.—Lea. Hist. of the Inquisition, I. 242–304.—M. Creighton: The Coming of the Friars, in Lectures and Addresses, pp. 69–84.—A. Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars.—Stevenson: Life of Grosseteste, London, 1899, pp. 59–87.—Hauck, IV. 366–483.

Note on the recent literature on St. Francis. A phenomenal impulse was given to the study of the life of St. Francis by the publication of Sabatier’s biography in 1804. This biography, Karl Müller placed "at the summit of modern historical workmanship.," Lit.-zeitung, 1895, pp. 179–186. It showed a mastery of the literature before unknown and a profound sympathy with the spirit of the Italian saint. It has revolutionized the opinion of Protestants in regard to him, and has given to the world a correct picture of the real Francis. Strange that a Protestant pastor should have proved himself the leading modern student of Francis and one of his most devoted admirers!  Sabatier has followed up his first work with tireless investigations into the early literature and history of St. Francis and the Franciscans, giving up his pastorate, making tour after tour to Italy, and spending much time in Assisi, where he is held in high esteem, and is pointed out as one of the chief sights of the place. He has been fortunate in his discoveries of documents and, as an editor, he has created a new Franciscan literature. His enthusiasm and labors have stimulated a number of scholars in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland to make a specialty of the early Franciscan literature such as Minocchi, Madonnet, Müller, Lempp, and Schnürer. His Life of St. Francis has been put on the Index because it is said to misrepresent Catholic customs.

While Sabatier’s presentation of Francis’ career and character may be said to have gained general acceptance, except among Franciscans, there is a large difference of opinion in regard to the dates of the early documents and their original contents. This literary aspect of the subject has become greatly complicated by the publication of manuscripts which differ widely from one another and the divergent criticisms of scholars. This confusion has been likened by Müller, Lit.-zeitung, 1902, p. 593, and Lempp, Lit. zeitung, 1906, p. 509, to a thicket through which it is almost impossible to see a path. The confusion grows out of the determined policy of Gregory IX. and the conventual wing of the early Franciscans to destroy all materials which show that Francis was opposed to a strict discipline within the order and insisted upon the rule of absolute poverty. The Franciscan chapter of 1264 ordered all biographies of Francis, written up to that time, destroyed, except the biography by Bonaventura. St. Francis’ insistence upon the rule of absolute poverty, the original Rule, and his will, were to be utterly effaced. The new study, introduced by the clear eye of Sabatier, has gone back of this date, 1264, and rescued the portrait of the real Francis.

The attention of scholars is chiefly concentrated on the Speculum perfectionis published by Sabatier, 1898, and the original Rule of the Franciscan Tertiaries. The Speculum perfectionis is a life of Francis and, according to Sabatier (Introd. li.), is the first biography, dating back to 1227. The discovery of the document is one of the most interesting and remarkable of recent historical discoveries. The way it came to be found was this:—

Materials for the Life of Francis are contained in a volume entitled Speculum vitae St. Francisci et sociorum ejus, published first at Venice, 1504, and next at Paris, 1509. In studying the Paris edition of 1509, Sabatier discovered 118 chapters ascribed to no author and differing in spirit and style from the other parts. He used the document in the construction of his biography and was inclined to ascribe it to the three companions of Francis,—Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. See Vie de S. François, pp. lxxii. sq. At a later time he found that in several MSS. these chapters were marked as a distinct document. In the MS. in the Mazarin library he found 124 distinctive chapters. In these are included the 16 of the Paris edition of 1509. These chapters Sabatier regards as a distinct volume, the Speculum perfectionis, written by Leo, the primary composition bearing on Francis’ career and teachings. The date for its composition is derived from the Mazarin MS. which gives the date as MCCXXVIII. This date Sabatier finds confirmed by indications in the document itself, p. xxii. etc.

This sympathetic, lucid, and frank narrative puts Francis in a new light, as a martyr to the ambitious designs of Gregory IX. who set aside the rule of absolute poverty which was most dear to Francis’ heart and placed over him a representative of his own papal views. Leo, so Sabatier contends (Introd. p. li.), wrote his work immediately after the announcement by Elias of Cortona of the intention to erect an imposing cathedral over the "Little Poor Man."  Leo was unable to suppress his indignation and so uttered his protest against the violent manipulation of Francis’ plan and memory.

Serious objection has been raised to Sabatier’s date of the Speculum perfectionis. In agreement with Minocchi,—Tilemann, Goetz, and others have adopted the date given in the Ognissanti (a convent in Florence) MS. namely MCCCXVII, and by a careful study of the other lives of Francis conclude that the Speculum is a compilation. Some of its contents, however, they agree, antedate Thomas a Celano’s Vita secunda or second Life of Francis or are still older. Müller, Lit.-zeitung, 1899, 49–52, 1902, p. 598, and Lempp, while not accepting the early date of 1227, place the document in the first half of the 13th century and regard it as an authority of the first rank, eine Quelle ersten Ranges. It shows a deep penetration into the real mind and soul of Francis, says Lempp, Lit.-zeitung, 1905, pp. 9 sq. Tilemann also ascribes to the document the highest value. For the numerous articles in Reviews, by Minocchi, van Ortroy, etc., see Tilemann, Speculum perfectionis, p. 4.

If Sabatier has given us the real Francis of history, as there is reason to believe he has, then the spectacle of Francis’ loss of authority by the skilled hand of Cardinal Ugolino, Gregory IX., is one of the most pathetic spectacles in history and Francis stands out as one of the most unselfish and pure-minded men of the Christian centuries.

§ 70. St. Francis d’Assisi.

"Not long the period from his glorious birth,

When, with extraordinary virtue blest,

This wondrous sun began to comfort earth,

Bearing, while yet a child, his father’s ire,

For sake of her whom all as death detest,

And banish from the gate of their desire,

Before the court of heaven, before

His father, too, he took her for his own;

From day to day, then loved her more and more,

Twelve hundred years had she remained, deprived

Of her first spouse, deserted and unknown,

And unsolicited till he arrived.

*************

But lest my language be not clearly seen,

Know, that in speaking of these lovers twain,

Francis and Poverty henceforth, I mean."

—Dante, Paradiso XI., Wright’s trans.

High up in the list of hagiography stands the name of Francis of Assisi, the founder of the order of the Franciscans. Of all the Italian saints, he is the most popular in Italy and beyond it.791

Francesco,—Francis,—Bernardone, 1182–1226, was born and died in Assisi. His baptismal name was Giovanni, John, and the name Francis seems to have been given him by his father, Pietro Bernardone, a rich dealer in textile fabrics, with reference to France, to which he made business journeys. Francis studied Latin and was imperfectly acquainted with the art of writing. He had money to spend, and spent it in gayeties. In a war between Assisi and Perugia he joined the ranks, and was taken prisoner. When released, he was twenty-two. During an illness which ensued, his religious nature began to be stirred. He arose from his bed disgusted with himself and unsatisfied with the world. Again he enlisted, and, starting to join Walter of Brienne in Southern Italy, he proceeded as far as Spoleto. But he was destined for another than a soldier’s career. Turning back, and moved by serious convictions, he retired to a grotto near Assisi for seclusion. He made a pilgrimage to Rome, whether to do penance or not, is not known. His sympathies began to go out to the poor. He met a leper and shrank back in horror at first, but, turning about, kissed the leper’s hand, and left in it all the money he had. He frequented the chapels in the suburbs of his native city, but lingered most at St. Damian, an humble chapel, rudely furnished, and served by a single priest. This became to his soul a Bethel. At the rude altar he seemed to hear the voice of Christ. In his zeal he took goods from his father and gave them to the priest. So far as we know, Francis never felt called upon to repent of this act. Here we have an instance of a different moral standard from our own. How different, for example, was the feeling of Dr. Samuel Johnson, when, for an act of disobedience to his father, he stood, as a full-grown man, a penitent in the rain in the open square of Litchfield, his head uncovered!

The change which had overcome the gay votary of pleasure brought upon Francis the ridicule of the city and his father’s relentless indignation. He was cast out of his father’s house. Without any of those expressions of regret which we would expect from a son under similar circumstances, he renounced his filial obligation in public in these words: "Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernardone father, but now I desire to serve God and to say nothing else than ’Our Father which art in heaven.’ "  Henceforth Francis was devoted to the religious life. He dressed scantily, took up his abode among the lepers, washing their sores, and restored St. Damian, begging the stones on the squares and streets of the city. This was in 1208.

Francis now received from the Benedictine abbot of Mt. Subasio the gift of the little chapel, Santa Maria degli Angeli.792  Under the name of the Portiuncula—Little Portion—it became the favorite shrine of the saint and his early companions. There Francis had most of his visions, and there he died.793  In later years he secured from Honorius III. the remarkable concession of plenary indulgence for every one visiting the chapel between vespers of Aug. 1 to vespers of Aug. 2 each year. This made the Portiuncula a shrine of the first rank.

In 1209 Francis heard the words, "Preach, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Provide neither silver nor gold, nor brass in your purses."  Throwing away his staff, purse, and, shoes, he made these Apostolic injunctions the rule of his life. He preached repentance and gathered about him Bernardo di Quintavallo, Egidio, and other companions. The three passages commanding poverty and taking up the cross, Matt. xvi:24–26; xix:21; Luke ix:1–6, were made their Rule.794  The Rule meant nothing less than full obedience to the Gospel. The Lesser Brethren, fratres minores, for such came to be their name, begged from door to door, where they could not earn their bread, went barefoot795 and slept in hay lofts, leper hospitals, and wherever else they could find lodgment.

They were to preach, but especially were they to exemplify the precepts of the Gospel in their lives. Living was the most important concern, more important than sermons and than learning. Learning, Francis feared, would destroy humility. To a woman who came to him for alms he gave a copy of the New Testament, which they read at matins, the only book in the convent at the time. The convent did not even possess a breviary.796  A life of good works and sympathies was what Francis was seeking to emphasize. In his will, Francis calls himself an illiterate, idiota. Thomas à Celano also speaks of him in the same way. The word seems to have had the double sense of a man without education and a man with little more than a primary education. It was also used of laymen in contrast to clerics. Francis’ education was confined to elemental studies, and his biographers are persistent in emphasizing that he was taught directly of God.797  Two writings in Francis’ handwriting are in existence, one in Assisi and one in Spoleto.798

In 1210 Francis and some of his companions went to Rome, and were received by Innocent III.799  The English chronicler reports that the pope, in order to test his sincerity, said, "Go, brother, go to the pigs, to whom you are more fit to be compared than to men, and roll with them, and to them preach the rules you have so ably set forth."  Francis obeyed, and returning said, "My Lord, I have done so."800  The pope then gave his blessing to the brotherhood and informally sanctioned their rule, granted them the tonsure, and bade them go and preach repentance.

The brotherhood increased rapidly. The members were expected to work. In his will Francis urged the brethren to work at some trade as he had done. He compared an idle monk to a drone.801  The brethren visited the sick, especially lepers, preached in ever extending circles, and went abroad on missionary journeys. Francis was ready to sell the very ornaments of the altar rather than refuse an appeal for aid. He felt ashamed when he saw any one poorer than himself.802  At this time occurred one of the most remarkable episodes of Francis’ career. He entered into marriage with Poverty. He called Poverty his bride, mother, sister, and remained devoted to her with the devotion of a knight.803  The story runs thus. Francis, with some companions, went out in search of Poverty. Two old men pointed out her abode on a high mountain. There Poverty, seated "on the throne of her neediness," received them and Francis praised her as the inseparable companion of the Lord, and "the mistress and queen of the virtues."  Poverty replied that she had been with Adam in paradise, but had become a homeless wanderer after the fall until the Lord came and made her over to his elect. By her agency the number of believers was greatly increased, but after a while her sister Lady Persecution withdrew from her. Believers lost their fortitude. Then monks came and joined her, but her enemy Avarice, under the name of Discretion, made the monks rich. Finally monasticism yielded completely to worldliness, and Poverty removed wholly from it. Francis now joined himself to Poverty, who gave him and his companions the kiss of peace and descended the mountain with them. A new era was begun. Henceforth the pillow of the friends was a stone, their diet bread and water, and their convent the world.804

In 1212 Clara of Sciffi entered into the horizon of Francis’ life. She was twelve years his junior and sixteen when she first heard him preach at the Cathedral of Assisi. The sermon entered her soul. With Francis’ aid she escaped from her father’s house, and was admitted to vows by him.805  He conducted her to a house of Benedictine nuns. A younger sister, Agnes, followed Clara. The Chapel of St. Damian was set apart for them, and there the order of Clarisses was inaugurated. Clara outlived Francis, and in 1253 expired in the presence of brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginefro.

In 1217 Francis was presented to Honorius III. and the curia. At the advice of Cardinal Ugolino, later Gregory IX., he prepared himself and memorized the sermon. Arrived in the pontiff’s presence, he forgot what he had prepared and delivered an impromptu discourse, which won the assembly.

Francis made evangelistic tours through Italy which were extended to Egypt and Syria 1219. Returning from the East the little Poor Man, il poverello, found a new element had been introduced into the brotherhood through the influence of the stern disciplinarian Ugolino. This violent change made the rest of the years a time of bitter, though scarcely expressed, sorrow for him. Passing through Bologna in 1220, he was pained to the depths at seeing a house being erected for the brothers. Cardinal Ugolino had determined to manipulate the society in the interest of the curia. He had offered Francis his help, and Francis had accepted the offer. Under the cardinal’s influence, a new code was adopted in 1221, and still a third in 1223 in which Francis’ distinctive wishes were set aside. The original Rule of poverty was modified, the old ideas of monastic discipline introduced, and a new element of absolute submission to the pope added. The mind of Francis was too simple and unsophisticated for the shrewd rulers of the church. The policy of the ecclesiastic henceforth had control of the order.806  Francis was set aside and a minister-general, Pietro di Catana, a doctor of laws and a member of the nobility was put at the head of the society. This was the condition of affairs Francis found on his return from Syria. He accepted it and said to his brethren, "From henceforth I am dead for you. Here is brother Peter di Catana whom you and I will obey," and prostrating himself, he promised the man who had superseded him obedience and submission.807

This forced self-subordination of Francis offers one of the most touching spectacles of mediaeval biography. Francis had withheld himself from papal privileges. He had favored freedom of movement. The skilled hand of Ugolino substituted strict monastic obedience. Organization was to take the place of spontaneous devotion. Ugolino was, no doubt, Francis’ real as well as professed friend. He laid the foundation of the cathedral in Assisi to his honor, and canonized him two years after his death. But Francis’ spirit he did not appreciate. Francis was henceforth helpless to carry out his original ideas,808 and yet, without making any outward sign of insubordination, he held tenaciously to them to the end.

These ideas are reaffirmed in Francis’ famous will. This document is one of the most affecting pieces in Christian literature. Here Francis calls himself "little brother," frater parvulus. All he had to leave the brothers was his benediction, the memory of the early days of the brotherhood, and counsels to abide by the first Rule. This Rule he had received from no human teacher. The Almighty God himself had revealed it unto him, that he ought to live according to the mode of the Holy Gospel. He reminded them how the first members loved to live in poor and abandoned churches. He bade them not accept churches or houses, except as it might be in accordance with the rule of holy poverty they had professed. He forbade their receiving bulls from the papal court, even for their personal protection. At the same time, he pledged his obedience to the minister-general and expressed his purpose to go nowhere and do nothing against his will "for he is my lord."  Through the whole of the document there runs a chord of anguish.809

Francis’ heart was broken. Never strong, his last years were full of infirmities. Change of locality brought only temporary relief. The remedial measures of the physician, such as the age knew, were employed. An iron, heated to white heat, was applied to Francis’ forehead. Francis shrank at first, but submitted to the treatment, saying, "Brother Fire, you are beautiful above all creatures, be favorable to me in this hour."  He jocosely called his body, Brother Ass.810  The devotion of the people went beyond all bounds. They fought for fragments of his clothing, hairs from his head, and even the parings of his nails.

Two years before his death Francis composed the Canticle to the Sun, which Renan has called the most perfect expression of modern religious feeling.811  It was written at a time when he was beset by temptations, and blindness had begun to set in. The hymn is a pious outburst of passionate love for nature. It soars above any other pastorals of the Middle Ages. Indeed Francis’ love for nature is rare in the records of his age, and puts him into companionship with that large modern company who see poems in the clouds and hear symphonies in flowers. He loved the trees, the stones, birds, and the plants of the field. Above all things he loved the sun, created to illuminate our eyes by day, and the fire which gives us light in the night time, for "God has illuminated our eyes by these two, our brothers."

Francis had a message for the brute creation and preached to the birds. "Brother birds," he said on one occasion, "you ought to love and praise your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all things that can be of use to you. You have neither to sow, nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you."  And the birds curved their necks and looked at him as if to thank him. He would have had the emperor make a special law against killing or doing any injury to, our sisters, the birds."812  Later tradition narrated very wonderful things about his power over nature,813 as for example the taming of the fierce wolf of Gubbio. He was the terror of the neighborhood. He ran at Francis with open mouth, but laid himself down at Francis’ feet like a lamb at his words, "Brother Wolf, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to do no evil to me or to any man."  Francis promised him forgiveness for all past offences on condition of his never doing harm again to human being. The beast assented to the compact by lowering his head and kneeling before him. He became the pet of Gubbio.

The last week of his life, the saint had repeated to him again and again the 142d Psalm, beginning with the words, "I cry with my voice unto Jehovah," and also his Canticle to the Sun. He called in brothers Angelo and Leo to sing to him about sister Death.814  Elias of Cortona, who had aided the Roman curia in setting aside Francis’ original Rule, remonstrated on the plea that the people would regard such hilarity in the hour of death as inconsistent with saintship. But Francis replied that he had been thinking of death for two years, and now he was so united with the Lord, that he might well be joyful in Him.815  And so, as Thomas à Celano says, "he met death singing."816  At his request they carried him to the Portiuncula chapel. On his way he asked that his bed be turned so that once more his face might be towards Assisi. He could no longer see, but he could pray, and so he made a supplication to heaven for the city.817  At the church he broke bread with the brethren, performing the priestly service with his own lips. On Oct. 3, 1226, to use Brother Leo’s words, he "migrated to the Lord Jesus Christ whom he had loved with his whole heart, and followed most perfectly."

Before the coffin was closed, great honors began to be heaped upon the saintly man. The citizens of Assisi took possession of the body, and Francis’ name has become the chief attraction of the picturesque and somnolent old town. He was canonized two years later.818  The services were held in Assisi, July 26, 1228, Gregory IX. being present. The following day, the pontiff laid the corner stone of the new cathedral to Francis’ memory. It was dedicated by Innocent IV. in 1243, and Francis’ body was laid under the main altar.819  The art of Cimabue and Giotto has adorned the sanctuary within. The statuary of the modern sculptor, Dupré, in front, represents the great mendicant in the garb of his order with arms crossed over his chest, and his head bowed. Francis was scarcely dead when Elias of Cortona made the astounding announcement of the stigmata. These were the marks which Francis is reported to have borne on his body, corresponding to the five wounds on Christ’s crucified body. In Francis’ case they were fleshy, but not bloody excrescences. The account is as follows. During a period of fasting and the most absorbed devotion, Christ appeared to Francis on the morning of the festival of the Holy Cross, in the rising sun in the form of a seraph with outstretched wings, nailed to the cross. The vision gone, Francis felt pains in his hands and side. He had received the stigmata. This occurred in 1224 on the Verna,820 a mountain on the Upper Arno three thousand feet above the sea.

The historical evidence for the reality of these marks is as follows. It was the day after Francis’ death that Elias of Cortona, as vicar of the order, sent letters in all directions to the Franciscans, announcing the fact that he had seen the stigmata on Francis’ body. His letter contained these words: "Never has the world seen such a sign except on the Son of God. For a long time before his death, our brother had in his body five wounds which were truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands and feet have marks as of nails, without and within, a kind of scars, while from his side, as if pierced by a lance, a little blood oozed."  The Speculum Perfectionis, perhaps the first biography of Francis, refers to them incidentally, but distinctly, in the course of a description of the severe temptations by which Francis was beset.821  Thomas à Celano, not later than 1230, describes them more at length, and declares that a few saw them while Francis was still alive. Gregory IX. in 1237 called upon the whole Church to accept them, and condemned the Dominicans for calling their reality in question.822  The first portrait of Francis, dating from 1236, exhibits the marks.

On the other hand, a very strong argument against their genuineness is the omission of all reference to them by Gregory IX. in his bull canonizing Francis, 1228. Francis’ claim to saintship, we would think, could have had no better authentication, and the omission is inexplicable.823

Three explanations have been given of the stigmata on the supposition that Francis’ body really bore the scars. 1. They were due to supernatural miracle. This is the Catholic view. In 1304 Benedict XI. established a festival of the stigmata. 2. They were the product of a highly wrought mental state proceeding from the contemplation of Christ on the cross. This is the view of Sabatier.824  3. The third explanation treats them as a pious fraud practised by Francis himself, who from a desire to feel all the pains Christ felt, picked the marks with his own fingers.825  Such a course seems incredible. In the absence of a sufficient moral reason for the impression of the stigmata, it is difficult for the critical mind to accept them. On the other hand, the historical attestation is such that an effort is required to deny them. So far as we know, Francis never used the stigmata to attest his mission.826

The study of the career of Francis d’Assisi, as told by his contemporaries, and as his spirit is revealed in his own last testament, makes the impression of purity of purpose and humility of spirit,—of genuine saintliness. He sought not positions of honor nor a place with the great. With simple mind, he sought to serve his fellow-men by republishing the precepts of the Gospel, and living them out in his own example. He sought once more to give the Gospel to the common people, and the common people heard him gladly. He may not have possessed great strength of intellect. He lacked the gifts of the ecclesiastical diplomat, but he certainly possessed glowing fervor of heart and a magnetic personality, due to consuming love for men. He was not a theological thinker, but he was a man of practical religious sympathies to which his deeds corresponded. He spoke and acted as one who feels full confidence in his divinely appointed mission.827  He spoke to the Church as no one after him did till Luther came.

Few men of history have made so profound an impression as did Francis. His personality shed light far and near in his own time. But his mission extends to all the centuries. He was not a foreigner in his own age by any protest in matters of ritual or dogma, but he is at home in all ages by reason of his Apostolic simplicity and his artless gentleness. Our admiration for him turns not to devotion as for a perfect model of the ideal life. Francis’ piety, after all, has a mediaeval glow. But, so far as we can know, he stands well among those of all time who have discerned the meaning of Christ’s words and breathed His spirit. So Harnack can call him the "wonderful saint of Assisi," and Sabatier utter the lofty praise, that it was given to him to divine the superiority of the spiritual priesthood."828

The Canticle of The Sun

O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to Thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing!

Praised be my Lord God with all His creatures, and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he and shines with a very great splendor: O Lord he signifies to us Thee!

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which He has set clear and lovely in heaven.

Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind and for air and cloud, calms and all weather by the which Thou upholdest life in all creatures.

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean.

Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom Thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong.

Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colors, and grass.

Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for His love’s sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, for Thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a crown.

Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin!  Blessed are they who are found walking by the most holy will, for the second death shall have no power to do them harm.

Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto Him and serve Him with great humility.829

§ 71. The Franciscans.

"Sweet Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!"

—Tennyson.

The Brethren Minor—fratres minores, or Minorites, the official title of the Franciscans—got their name from the democratic faction in Assisi, the Minores, whom Francis at a time of feud reconciled to the party of the aristocrats. Before the curia at Rome, Francis insisted upon the application of the name as a warning to the members not to aspire after positions of distinction.830  They spread rapidly in Italy and beyond; but before the generation had passed away to which Francis belonged, the order was torn by internal strife, growing out of the attempt to conserve the principles originally laid down by Francis. The history of no other order has anything to show like this protracted conflict within its own membership over a question of principle. The protracted dispute has an almost unique place in the polemic theology of the Middle Ages.

According to the Rule of 1210 and Francis’ last will they were to be a free brotherhood devoted to evangelical poverty and Apostolic practice, rather than a close organization bound by precise rules.831  Innocent III. counselled him to take for his model the rule of the older orders, but Francis declined and went his own path. He builded upon a few texts of Scripture. From 1216, when Cardinal Ugolino became associated with the order as patron and counsellor, a new influence was felt, and rigid discipline was substituted for the freer organization of Francis.

At the chapter of 1217, the decision was made to send missionaries beyond the confines of Italy. Elias of Cortona, once a mattress-maker in Assisi and destined to be notorious for setting aside Francis’ original plan, led a band of missionaries to Syria. Others went to Germany, Hungary, France, Spain and England. As foreign missionaries, the Franciscans showed dauntless enterprise, going south to Morocco and east as far as Pekin. They enjoy the distinction of having accompanied Columbus on his second journey to the New World and were subsequently most active in the early American missions from Florida to California and from Quebec along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes and southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Rule of 1221, by its lack of unity and decision, betrays two influences at work, one proceeding from Ugolino and one from Francis. There are signs of the struggle which had already begun several years before. The Rule placed a general at the head of the order and a governing body was constituted, consisting of the heads of the different houses. Poverty, however, is still enjoined and the duty of labor is emphasized that the members might be saved from becoming idlers. The sale of the products of their labor was forbidden except as it might benefit the sick.

The Rule of 1223, which is briefer and consists of twelve chapters, repeats the preceding code and was solemnly approved by the pope November 29 of the same year. This code goes still further in setting aside the distinguished will of Francis. The mendicant character of the order is strongly emphasized. But obedience to the pope is introduced and a cardinal is made its protector and guardian. The Roman Breviary is ordered to be used as the book of daily worship. Monastic discipline has taken the place of biblical liberty. The strong hand of the hierarchy is evident. The freedom of the Rule of 1210 has disappeared.832  Peter di Catana was made superior of the order, who, a few months later, was followed by Elias of Cortona. Francis’ appeal in his last testament to the original freedom of his brotherhood and against the new order of things, the papal party did all in its power to suppress altogether.

The Clarisses, the Minorite nuns, getting their name from Clara of Sciffi who was canonized in 1255, were also called Sisters of St. Damian from the Church of St. Damian. Francis wrote a Rule for them which enforced poverty833 and made a will for Clara which is lost. The sisters seem at first to have supported themselves by the toil of their hands, but, by Francis’ advice soon came to depend upon alms.834  The rule was modified in 1219 and the order was afterwards compelled to adopt the Benedictine rule.835

The Tertiaries, or Brothers and Sisters of Penitence,836 were the third order of St. Francis, the Clarisses being reckoned as the second, and received papal recognition for the first time in the bull of Nicolas IV., 1289.837  It is doubtful whether Francis ever prescribed for them a definite rule. Of the existence of the Tertiaries during his life there is no doubt. They are called by Gregory IX. in 1228 the Brothers of the Third Order of St. Francis.838  The Rule of 1289 is made for a lay corporation, and also for a conventual association from which latter, married persons are excluded. The purpose of Francis included all classes of laics, men and women, married and unmarried. His object was to put within the reach of laymen the higher practice of virtue and order of merit associated with the monastic life. It is quite probable that Francis took his idea from the Humiliati, known as the Poor Men of Lombardy, Pauperes Lombardici, or perhaps from the Waldenses, known as the Poor Men of Lyons and also well known in Northern Italy in Francis’ day. The Humiliati had groups of laymen in the twelfth century living according to semi-conventual rules. In 1184 they were condemned by Lucius III. There seem to have been three grades, the lay Humiliati, who in the ordinary avenues of life observed specific ascetic practices; second, those who were living in convents as monks or nuns; and third, canons, who were priests and lived together in common. These three grades were sanctioned by Innocent III. in 1201 and were protected by later popes, as for example Innocent IV.839

It is possible that Francis’ first plan was for an organization of laymen, and that the idea of an organization of monks developed later in his mind. The division of the Franciscans into three grades was permanently established by the chapter of 1221.840  The earliest rule of the Tertiaries in thirteen chapters sets forth the required style of dress, the asceticisms they were to practise, and the other regulations they were to observe. They were to abstain from all oaths except in exceptional cases, provided for by the pope, to make confession three times a year, have if possible the advice of the diocesan in making their wills, receive to their number no one accused of heresy, and were neither to use deadly weapons nor to carry them.841  Women, if married, were not to be admitted without the consent of their husbands, and all who had families were enjoined to care for them as a part of the service of God (VI. 6).842  The Tertiaries still exist in the Roman Catholic Church.

To follow the history of the Franciscans from 1223, the stricter party, who sought to carry out Francis’ practice of strict Apostolic poverty and his views as set forth in his last will, were known as the Observants, or Spirituals, or Zealots. The party, favoring a relaxation of Francis’ Rule and supported by Gregory IX., were often called the Conventuals from occupying convents of their own, especially more pretentious buildings in cities.843  Now the one party, now the other was in the ascendant. The popes were against the Observants. The inward discord lasted throughout the thirteenth century and far into the fourteenth844 and was suppressed, rather than allayed, for the first time by Leo X., who separated the Franciscans into two orders. In the meantime Observants continued to agitate the scheme of St. Francis, and some of them laid down their lives as martyrs for their principles.

The matter in dispute among the Franciscans was the right of the order as a corporation to hold property in fee simple. The papal decisions in favor of such tenure began with the bull of Gregory IX., 1230. It allowed the order to collect money through "faithful men" appointed for districts, these monies to be applied to the rearing of conventual buildings, to missions, and other objects, and to be held in trust for the givers. This privilege was elaborated by Innocent IV., 1245, and was made to include the possession of books, tools, houses, and lands. Innocent made the clear distinction between tenure in fee simple and tenure for use and granted the right of tenure for use. By this was meant that the order might receive gifts and bequests and hold them indefinitely as for the donors. This was equivalent to perpetual ownership, and might be compared to modern thousand-year leases. Innocent also made the tenure of all property within the order subject to the immediate supervision of the pope.

Determined resistance was offered by the Observants to these papal decrees, and they were persecuted by Elias of Cortona, who vigorously pushed the papal policy. But they were strong and Elias was deposed from the headship of the order by the chapter of 1227. He was reinstated in 1232, but again deposed in 1239. He espoused the cause of Frederick II., and died 1253.

One of the leading men of the wing true to Francis was Brother Leo, the author of what is probably the first biography of Francis, the Speculum Perfectionis, the Mirror of Perfection. When the project was bruited of erecting the great church at Assisi over Francis’ remains and Elias placed a marble vessel on the site to receive contributions, Leo, who regarded the project as a profanation of the memory of the saint, dashed the vessel to pieces. For this act he was banished, amidst tumult, from Assisi.845

It seemed for a while doubtful which party would gain the upper hand. The Observants were in power under John of Parma, general of the order for ten years, 1247–1257, when he was obliged to resign and retire into strict monastic seclusion. John was followed by Bonaventura, 1257–1274, the great Schoolman, who, in the main, cast his influence on the side of the Conventuals. The Observants became identified with the dreams of Joachim of Flore and applied his prophecy of a new religious order to themselves. These views became a new source of discord and strife lasting for more than a century. Bonaventura pronounced against the adoption of Joachim’s views by condemning Gerardo Borgo’s Introduction to Joachim’s writings. The Life of St. Francis, written by Bonaventura at the mandate of the General Chapter of Narbonne, 1260, and declared the authoritative biography of the saint by the Chapter of 1263, suppressed Francis’ will and other materials favorable to the contention of the Observants, and emphasized the churchly and disciplinary elements of the order. The Observants, from this time on, fought a brave but hopeless battle. They could not successfully wage war against the policy pushed by the papal court.

The report that Gregory X., through the acts of the council of Lyons, 1274, intended to force the order to hold property, stirred opposition into a flame and a number of the Observants were thrown into prison, including Angelo Clareno, an influential author. Nicholas III., in the bull Exiit qui seminat,846 1279, again made a clear distinction between owning property in fee simple and its tenure for use, and confirmed the latter right. He insisted upon the principle that the pope is the ultimate owner of the property of the order. The bull expressly annulled St. Francis’ prohibition forbidding the order to seek privileges from the pope. The Franciscan general, Bonagratia, and his two successors, accepted the bull, but Peter Olivi, d. 1298, who had acquired wide influence through his writings, violently opposed it. Coelestin V. sought to heal the division by inviting the Observants to join the order of the Coelestin hermits which he had founded, and Angelo Clareno, who had been released from prison, took this course. It was opposed by Olivi and the Observant preacher Ubertino da Casale,847 d. after 1330, who remained through much persecution true to the original principles of Francis.

And so the century in which Francis was born went out with the controversy still going on with unabated warmth. A somewhat new aspect was given to the controversy in the fourteenth century. The dogmatic question was then put into the foreground, whether Christ and his Apostles practised absolute poverty or not. In 1323 John XXII. sought to put a final stop to the dissension by giving papal authority to the statement that they did not practise absolute poverty. Thus the underlying foundation of the strict Franciscan Rule was taken away.

In another respect the Franciscans departed from the mind of their founder. Francis disparaged learning. In 1220 he reprimanded and then cursed Pietro Staccia, a doctor of laws, for establishing a Franciscan school at Bologna. On hearing of a famous doctor, who had entered the order, he is reported to have said, "I am afraid such doctors will be the destruction of my vineyard. True doctors are they who with the meekness of wisdom exhibit good works for the betterment of their neighbors."  To Anthony of Padua, Francis wrote—and the genuineness of the letter is not disputed—"I am agreed that you continue reading lectures on theology to the brethren provided that kind of study does not extinguish in them the spirit of humility and prayer."848  But Francis’ followers departed from his teachings and adapted themselves to the current of that wonderful thirteenth century, established schools in their convents and were well settled, before the century was half gone, at the chief centres of university culture. In 1255 an order called upon Franciscans, going out as missionaries, to study Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages.

The order spread rapidly from Palestine to Ireland.849  It was introduced into France by Pacifico and Guichard of Beaujolais, a brother-in-law of the French king. The first successful attempt to establish branches in Germany was made, 1221, by Caesar of Spires, who had been converted by Elias of Cortona on his journey to Syria. He was accompanied by twelve priests and thirteen laymen, among them, Thomas of Celano and Jordan of Giano upon whose account we depend for the facts. The company separated at Trent, met again at Augsburg, and then separated once more, carrying their propaganda along the Rhine and to other parts of the country. Houses were established at Mainz, Worms, Spires, and Cologne which in 1522 were united into a custody. The year following four German custodies were added.850  Caesar of Spires, the flaming apostle of the order in Germany, belonged to the Observant wing, and had to suffer severe persecution and was put to death in prison.

As for England, nine Franciscans, four of them clerics, only one of whom was in priest’s orders, landed at Dover, 1224, and went to Canterbury, and then to London. The account of their early labors on English soil, by Thomas of Eccleston, a contemporary,851 is one of the freshest and most absorbing relations of English affairs in the Middle Ages. At Canterbury they were entertained by the monks of Feskamp, and at London by the Black Friars. At Oxford they received a warm welcome. Grosseteste announced their advent with a sermon from the words, "They that sat in darkness have seen a great light."  It was as if the door to a new religious era had been opened. Of their settlement in St. Ebbe’s parish, Oxford, it was said that "there was sown a grain of mustard seed which grew to be greater than all the trees."  They were quickly settled at Cambridge, Norwich, Northampton, Yarmouth, and other centres. They were the first popular preachers that England had seen, and the first to embody a practical philanthropy.852  The condition of English villages and towns at that day was very wretched. Skin diseases were fearfully prevalent, including leprosy. Destructive epidemics spread with great rapidity. Sanitary precautions were unknown. Stagnant pools and piles of refuse abounded.853

Partly from necessity and partly from pure choice these ardent religionists made choice of quarters in the poorest and most neglected parts of the towns. In Norwich they settled in a swamp through which the city sewerage passed. At Newgate, now a part of London, they betook themselves to Stinking Lane. At Cambridge they occupied the decayed gaol.

No wonder that such zeal received recognition. The people soon learned to respect the new apostles. Adam Marsh joined them, and he and Grosseteste, the most influential English ecclesiastic of his day, lectured in the Franciscan school at Oxford. The burgesses of London and other towns gave them lands, as did also the king, at Shrewsbury. In 1256 the number of English friars had increased to 1242, settled in forty-nine different localities.854  The Franciscans also gave an impetus to learning; they set up schools, as at Oxford, where Robert Grosseteste delivered lectures for them. Most of the great English Schoolmen belonged to the Franciscan order. Eccleston describes the godly lives of the early English Franciscans, their abstinence, and their lightheartedness.855  Less than fifty years after their advent, one of their number, Robert Kilwarby, was sitting in the archepiscopal chair of Canterbury; to another Franciscan, Bonaventura, was offered the see of York, which he declined.

In time, the history of the Franciscans followed the usual course of human prosperity.856  They fell from their first estate. With honors and lands came demoralization. They gained an unsavory reputation as collectors of papal revenues. Matthew Paris’ rebukes of their arrogance date back as far as 1235, and he said that Innocent IV. turned them from fishers of men into fishers of pennies. At the sequestration of the religious houses by Henry VIII., the Franciscan convent of Christ’s Church, London, was the first to fall, 1532.857

§ 72. St. Dominic and the Dominicans.

Literature.—The earliest Life by Jordanus, Dominic’s successor as head of the order: de principiis ordinis praedicatorum in Quétif-Echard, who gives five other early biographies (Bartholomew of Trent, 1244–1251, Humbert de Romanis, 1250, etc.), and ed. by J. J. Berthier, Freib., i. Schw., 1892.—H. D. Lacordaire, d. 1861: Vie de S. Dominique, Paris, 1840, 8th ed. 1882. Also Hist. Studies of the Order of S. Dom. 1170-1221, Engl. trans., N. Y., 1869.—E. Caro: S. Dom. et les Dominicains, Paris, 1853.—A. T. Drane: Hist. of St. Dom., Founder of the Friar Preachers, London, 1891.—Balme et Lelaidier: Cartulaire ou hist. diplomatique de S. Dom., Paris, 1892.—J. Guiraud: S. Dom., Paris, 2d ed., 1899.—For titles of about thirty lives, see Potthast, II. 1272.—Quétif-Echard: Script. ord. Praedicatorum, 2 vols. Paris, 1719–1721.—Ripoll and Bermond: Bullarium ord. Praed., 8 vols. Rome, 1737 sqq.—Mamachi: Annal. ord. Praed., Rome, 1756.—Monumenta ord. fratrum Praed. hist., ed. by B. M. Reichert, Louvaine and Rome, 10 vols., 1897–1901. Vol. III. gives the acts of the general chapters of the order, 1220–1308.—A. Danzas: Etudes sur les temps primitifs de l’ordre de S. Dom., Paris, 1873–1885.—*Denifle: Die Constitutionen des Predigerordens vom Jahre 1228, and Die Constitutionen des Raymunds von Peñaforte 1238–1241 in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., 1885, pp. 165–227 and 1889, 530–565.—Helyot: Bel. Orders.—Lea: Hist. of Inquisition, I. 242–304, etc. Wetzer-Welte, art. Dominicus, III. 1931–1945.—W. Lescher: St. Dominic and the Rosary, London, 1902.—H. Holzapfel: S. Dom. und der Rosenkranz, Munich, 1903.

The Spaniard, Dominic, founder of the order of preachers, usually called the Dominicans,858 lacks the genial personal element of the saint of Assisi, and his career has little to correspond to the romantic features of his contemporary’s career. Dominic was of resolute purpose, zealous for propagating the orthodox faith, and devoted to the Church and hierarchy. His influence has been through the organization he created, and not through his personal experiences and contact with the people of his age. This accounts for the small number of biographies of him as compared with the large number of Francis.

Domingo, or Dominic, was born 1170 at Calaroga, Spain, and died Aug. 6, 1121, in Bologna.859  His mother, Juana of Aza, is worshipped as a saint in the Dominican ritual. At seven the son passed under the priestly instruction of an uncle. Ten years were subsequently spent at Palencia in the study of philosophy and theology, and he is said to have excelled as a student. About 1195, he was made canon at Osma, which gives its name to the episcopal diocese, within whose bounds he was born. In 1203 he accompanied his bishop, Diego d’Azeveda, to France860 on a mission to secure a bride for the son of Alfonzo VIII. of Castile. This and subsequent journeys across the Pyrenees brought him into contact with the Albigenses and the legates despatched by Innocent III. to take measures to suppress heresy in Southern France. Dominic threw himself into the movement for suppressing heresy and started upon a tour of preaching. At Prouille in the diocese of Toulouse, he erected an asylum for girls to offset the schools established by the Albigenses, for the training of the daughters of impoverished noblemen. He was on intimate terms with Simon de Montfort, but, so far as is known, he took no active part in the Albigensian crusade except as a spiritual adviser.861  His attempt to establish a mission for the conversion of heretics received the support of Fulke, bishop of Toulouse, who in 1215 granted him one-sixth of the tithes of his diocese. Among the first to ally themselves to Dominic was Peter Cellani, a citizen of Toulouse, who gave him a house.

An epoch in Dominic’s career was his visit in Rome during the sessions of the Fourth Lateran Council, when he received encouragement from Innocent III. who declined to assent to the proposal of a new order and bade him adopt one of the existing monastic constitutions.862  Dominic chose the rule of the canons regular of St. Augustine,863 adopted the black dress of the Augustinians, and built the convent of St. Romanus at Toulouse. He was again in Rome from September, 1216, to Easter, 1217. Honorius II. in 1216 approved the organization, and confirmed it in the possession of goods and houses. An unreliable tradition states that Honorius also conferred upon Dominic the important office of Master of the Palace, magister palatii. The office cannot be traced far beyond Gregory IX.864

The legendary accounts of his life represent the saint at this time as engaged in endless scourgings and other most rigorous asceticisms. Miracles, even to the raising of the dead, were ascribed to him.

In 1217 Dominic sent out monks to start colonies. The order took quick root in large cities,—Paris, Bologna, and Rome,—the famous professor of canon law at Paris, Reginald, taking its vows. Dominic himself in 1218 established two convents in Spain, one for women in Madrid and one for men at Seville. The first Dominican house in Paris, the convent of St. Jacques, gave the name Jacobins to the Dominicans in France and Jacobites to the party in the French Revolution which held its meetings there. In 1224 St. Jacques had one hundred and twenty inmates. The order had a strong French element and included in its prayers a prayer for the French king. From France, the Dominicans went into Germany. Jordanus and other inmates of St. Jacques were Germans. They quickly established themselves, in spite of episcopal prohibitions and opposition from other orders, in Cologne, Worms, Strassburg, Basel, and other German cities.865  In 1221 the order was introduced into England, and at once settled in Oxford.866  The Blackfriars Bridge, London, carries in its name the memory of their great friary in that city.

The first General Chapter was held 1220 in Bologna. Dominic preached with much zeal in Northern Italy. He died, lying on ashes, at Bologna, Aug. 6, 1221, and lies buried there in the convent of St. Nicholas, which has been adorned by the art of Nicholas of Pisa and Michael Angelo. As compared with the speedy papal recognition of Francis and Anthony of Padua, the canonization of the Spanish saint followed tardily, thirteen years after his death, July 13, 1234.867

At the time of Dominic’s death, the preaching friars had sixty convents scattered in the provinces of Provence, Northern France, Spain, Lombardy, Italy, England, Germany, and Hungary, each of which held its own chapter yearly. To these eight provinces, by 1228, four others had been added, Poland, Denmark, Greece, and Jerusalem.868  Combined they made up the General Chapter. Each of the provinces was presided over by a provincial or provincial prior, and the convents by a prior or sub prior. The title and dignity of abbot were not assumed. At the head of the whole body stands a grand-master.869  Privilege after privilege was conferred by the Holy See, including the important right to preach anywhere and everywhere.870  The constitutions of 1228 are the earliest we possess, but they are not the oldest. They were revised under Raymund de Peñaforte, the third general.871

Mendicancy was made the rule of the order at the first General Chapter, 1220.872  The example of St. Francis was followed, and the order, as well as the individual monk, renounced all right to possess property. The mendicant feature was, however, never emphasized as among the Franciscans. It was not a matter of conscience with the Dominicans, and the order was never involved in divisions over the question of holding property. The obligation of corporate poverty was wholly removed by Sixtus IV., 1477. Dominic’s last exhortation to his followers was that, they should have love, do humble service, and live in voluntary poverty."873  But the precept never seems to have been taken much to heart by them.

Unlike the man of Assisi, Dominic did not combine manual labor with the other employments of his monks. For work with their hands he substituted study and preaching. The Dominicans were the first monastics to adopt definite rules of study. When Dominic founded St. Jacques in Paris, and sent seventeen of his order to man that convent, he instructed them to "study and preach." Cells were constructed at Toulouse for study.874  A theological course of four years in philosophy and theology was required before a license was given to preach,875 and three years more of theological study followed it.

Preaching and the saving of souls were defined as the chief aim of the order.876  Humbert de Romanis, its fifth general, declared that the end of the order was not study, but that study was most necessary for preaching and the salvation of souls. Study, said another, is ordained for preaching, and preaching for the salvation of men, and this is the final end.877  No one was permitted to preach outside the cloister until he was twenty-five.878  And for preaching they were not to receive money or other gifts, except food. As Vincent Ferrer and Savonarola were the most renowned of the Dominican preachers of the Middle Ages, so Lacordaire was their most renowned orator in the nineteenth century. The mission of the Dominicans was predominantly with the upper classes. They represented the patrician element among the orders.

The annals of the Inquisition give to the Dominican order large space. The Dominicans were the most prominent and zealous, "inquisitors of heretical depravity." Dante had this in mind when he characterized Dominic as "Good to his friends, dreadful, to his enemies," "Benigno ai suoi ed ai nimici crudo."879

In 1232 the conduct of the Inquisition was largely committed to their care. Northern France, Spain, and Germany fell to their lot.880  The stern Torquemada was a Dominican, and the atrocious measures which were afterwards employed to spy out and punish ecclesiastical dissent, have left an indelible blot upon the name of the order. The student of history must regard those efforts to maintain the orthodox faith as heartless, even though it may not have occurred to the participants to so consider them. The order’s device, given by Honorius, was a dog bearing a lighted torch in his mouth, the dog to watch, the torch to illuminate the world. The picture in their convent S. Maria Novella, at Florence, represents the place the order came to occupy as hunters of heretics. It portrays dogs dressed in the Dominican colors, black and white, chasing away foxes, which stand for heretics, while pope and emperor, enthroned and surrounded by counsellors, look on with satisfaction at the scene. It was in connection with his effort to exterminate heresy that Dominic founded, in 1220, the "soldiery of Christ," composed of men and women, married and unmarried. Later, the order called itself the Brothers and Sisters of Penitence, or the Third Order, or Tertiaries of St. Dominic. As was the case with the Franciscan Tertiaries, some of them lived a conventual life.

The rosary also had a prominent place in the history of the Dominicans. An untrustworthy tradition assigns to Dominic its first use. During the crusades against the Albigenses, Mary, so the story runs, appeared to Dominic, and bade him use the rosary as a means for the conversion of the heretics. It consists of fifteen pater nosters and one hundred and fifty ave Marias, told off in beads. The Dominicans early became devotees of the rosary, but soon had rivals in the Carmelites for the honor of being the first to introduce it. The notorious Dominican inquisitor and hunter of witches, Jacob Sprenger, founded the first confraternity of the rosary. Pius V. ascribed the victory of Lepanto, 157l, to its use. In recent times Pius IX. and Leo XIII. have been ardent devotees of the rosary. Leo, in his encyclical of Sept. 1, 1883, ascribed its introduction to the great Dominic, as a balm for the wounds of his contemporaries." This encyclical represents Mary as "placed on the highest summit of power and glory in heaven … who is to be besought that, by her intercession, her devout Son may be appeased and softened as to the evils which afflict us."881

Leo XIII. paid highest honor to the Dominicans when he pronounced Thomas Aquinas the authoritative teacher of Catholic theology and morals, and the patron of Catholic schools.

CHAPTER IX.

MISSIONS.

§ 73. Literature and General Survey.

Literature: I. For Northeastern Germany. – H. Hahn: Gesch. d. kathol. Mission, 5 vols., Col., 1857–1865.—G. F. Maclear: Hist. of Christ. Missions during the M. A., London, 1863.—C. A. H. Kalkar: Gesch. d. röm.-kathol. Mission, German trans., Erlang., 1867.—Th. Smith: Med. Missions, Edinburg, 1880.—P. Tschackert: Einführung d. Christenthums in Preussen, in Herzog, IX. 25 sqq.—Lives of Otto of Bamberg by Ebo and Herbord (contemporaries) in Jaffé; Bibl. Rerum Germanic., Berlin, 1869, vol. V. trans. in Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Leipzig, 1869.—Otto’s Letters in Migne, vol. 173.—Mod. Lives by F. X. Sulzbeck, Regensb., 1865, and J. A. Zimmermann, Freib. im Br., 1875.—For copious Lit. see Potthast: Bibl. Hist., II. 1504 sq.—For Vicelinus, see Chronica Slavorum Helmodi (a friend of Vicelinus), ed. by Pertz, Hann., 1868. Trans. by Wattenbach in Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Leipzig, 1888.—Winter: Die Praemonstratenser d. 12ten Jahrhunderts und ihre Bedeutung für das nordöstl. Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zur Gesch. der Christianisirung und Germanisirung des Wendenlandes, Leipzig, 1865. Also Die Cisterzienser des nordöstl. Deutschlands, 3 vols., Gotha, 1868.—E. O. Schulze: D. Kolonisierung und Germanisirung der Gebiete zw. Saale und Elbe, Leipzig, 1896.—Edmund Krausch: Kirchengesch. der Wendenlande, Paderb., 1902.—Hauck. III. 69–150, 623–655.—Ranke: Weltgesch., VIII. 455–480.—The arts. Albert of Riga, Otto von Bamberg, Vicelinus, and Wenden in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog. See Lit. under Teutonic Knights, p. 296.

II. For The Mohammedans. – Works on Francis d’assisi, see § 69.—For Raymundus Lullus: Beati Raymundi Lulli doctoris illuminati et martyrisopera, ed. by John Salzinger, Mainz, 1721–1742, 10 vols. (VII., X. wanting). His Ars magna (opera quae ad artem universalem pertinent), Strassburg, 1598. Last ed., 1651. Recent ed. of his Poems Obras rimadas, Palma, 1859. For the ed., of Raymund’s works publ. at Palma but not completed see Wetzer-Welte, Raim. Lullus, X. 747–749.—Lives by Perroquet, Vendome, 1667; Löw, Halle, 1830.—*A. Helfferich: R. Lull und die Anfänge der Catalonischen Literatur, Berlin, 1858; W. Brambach, Karlsr., 1893; André, Paris, 1900.—*S. M. Zwemer: Raymund Lull, First Missionary to the Moslems, New York, 1902.—Lea: Hist. of the Inquis., III. 563–590.—Reusch: Der Index, etc., I. 26–33.—Zöckler, in Herzog, XI. 706–716.

III. For The Mongols. – D’Ohson: Hist. des Mongols, Paris, 1824.—H. H. Howorth: Hist. of the Mongols, 3 vols., London, 1876–1880.—Abbé Huc: Le Christianisme en Chine, en Tartare et en Thibet, Paris, 1857.—Külb: Gesch. der Missionsreisen nach der Mongolei während des 13ten und 14ten Jahrhunderts, 3 vols., Regensb., 1860.—Col. Henry Yule: Travels and Life of Marco Polo, London, 1871; Rev. ed. by H. Cordier, New York, 1903.—R. K. Douglas (Prof. of Chinese in King’s Col., London): Life of Jenghiz Khan.—Gibbon, chaps. XLVII., LXIV.; Ranke, VIII. 417–455; and arts. Rubruquis, Mongolen, etc., in Herzog, Wetzer-Welte.

The missionary operations of this period display little of the zeal of the great missionary age of Augustine, Columba, and Boniface, and less of achievement. The explanation is to be found in the ambitions which controlled the mediaeval church and in the dangers by which Europe was threatened from without. In the conquest of sacred localities, the Crusades offered a substitute for the conversion of non-Christian peoples. The effort of the papacy to gain supreme control over all mundane affairs in Western Christendom, also filled the eye of the Church. These two movements almost drained her religious energies to the full. On the other hand the Mongols, or Tartars, breaking forth from Central Asia with the fierceness of evening wolves, filled all Europe with dread, and one of the chief concerns of the thirteenth century was to check their advance into the central part of the continent. The heretical sects in Southern France threatened the unity of the Church and also demanded a share of attention which might otherwise have been given to efforts for the conversion of the heathen.

Two new agencies come into view, the commercial trader and the colonist, corresponding in this century to the ships and trains of modern commerce and the labors of the geographical explorer in Africa and other countries. Along the shores of the Baltic, at times, and in Asia the tradesman and the explorer went in advance of the missionary or along the same routes. And in the effort to subdue the barbarous tribes of Northeastern Germany to the rules of Christendom, the sword and colonization played as large a part as spiritual measures.

The missionary history of the age has three chapters, among the pagan peoples of Northeastern Germany and along the Baltic as far as Riga, among the Mohammedans of Northern Africa, and among the Mongols in Central and Eastern Asia. The chief missionaries whose names have survived are Otto of Bamberg and Vicelinus who labored in Northeastern Europe, Rubruquis, and John of Monte Corvino who travelled through Asia, Francis d’Assisi and Raymundus Lullus who preached in Africa.

The treatment which the Jews received at the hand of the Church also properly belongs here.

§ 74. Missions in Northeastern Germany.

At the beginning of this period the Wends,882 who were of Slavic origin, were the ruling population in the provinces along the Baltic from Lübeck to Riga with elements in the territory now covered by Pommerania, Brandenburg intermingled, and parts of Saxony, which were neither German nor Slavic but Lithuanian.883   Charlemagne did not attempt conquest beyond the river Elbe. The bishoprics of Würzburg, Mainz, Halberstadt, Verden, and Bremen-Hamburg, bordering on the territories of these tribes, had done little or nothing for, their conversion. Under Otto I. Havelberg, Meissen, Merseburg, and other dioceses were established to prosecute this work. At the synod of Ravenna, 967, Otto made the premature boast that the Wends had been converted.

The only personality that looms out above the monotonous level of Wendish history is Gottschalk, who was converted in England and bound together a number of tribes in an extensive empire. He was interested in the conversion of his people, and churches and convents were built at Mecklenburg, Lübeck, Oldenburg, and other centres. But with Gottschalk’s murder, in 1066, the realm fell to pieces and the Wend tribes from that time on became the object of conquest to the dukes of Poland and Saxony. Attempts to Christianize them were met with violent resistance. Wends and Germans hated one another.884  These barbarous tribes practised polygamy, infanticide,885 burned the bodies of their dead, had their sacred springs, graves, and idols.

Two centuries were required to bring the territories occupied by these peoples, and now for the most part inhabited by Germans, under the sway of the Church. The measures employed were the instructions of the missionary, the sword as wielded by the Teutonic Knights, and the colonization of the lands with German colonists. The sacraments and ritual of the Church were put in the forefront as conditions of union with the Church. The abolition of barbarous customs was also insisted upon. The bishopric and the convent were made the spiritual citadels of the newly evangelized districts.

The first to labor among the Wends, who was actuated by true missionary zeal, was the Spanish Cistercian, Bernard. He was without any knowledge of the language and his bare feet and rude monastic garb were little adapted to give him an entrance to the people whose priests were well clad.

Bernard was followed by Otto, bishop of Bamberg, 1102–1139, who made his first tour at Bernard’s instance. He won the title of Apostle of Pommerania. In 1124 he set his face towards the country, furnished with the blessing of Honorius II. and well supplied with clerical helpers. He won the goodwill of the Pommeranian duke, Wratislaw, who, in his youth, as a prisoner of war, had received baptism. The baptism of seven thousand at Pyritz has a special interest from its hearing on the practice of immersion followed at that time. Tanks were sunk into the earth, the rims rising knee high above the ground. Into these, as the chronicler reports,886 it was easy to descend. Tent-coverings were drawn over each of them. Otto instructed the people in the seven sacraments887 and insisted upon the abandonment of polygamy and infanticide.

At Stettin he destroyed the temple of the god Triglar, and sent the triple head of the idol to Rome as a sign of the triumph of the cross.

In 1128 Otto made a second tour to Pommerania. He spoke through an interpreter. His instructions were followed by the destruction of temples and the erection of churches. He showed his interest in the material as well as spiritual well-being of the people and introduced the vine into the country.888  His work was continued by Norbert of Magdeburg and the Premonstrants.

Vicelinus, d. 1154, the next most important name in the history of missions among the Wends, preached in the territory now covered by Holstein and the adjoining districts. He had spent three years in study at Paris and was commissioned to his work by Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen-Hamburg. The fierce wars of Albert the Bear, of North Saxony, 1133–1170, and Henry the Lion, 1142–1163, against the Wagrians and Abotrites, the native tribes, were little adapted to prepare the way for Christianity. Vicelinus founded the important convent of Segeberg which became a centre of training for missionaries. Lübeck accepted Christianity, and in 1148 Vicelinus was ordained bishop of Oldenburg.

The German missionaries went as far as Riga. The sword played a prominent part in the reduction of the local tribes. Under papal sanction, crusade followed crusade. The Livonians received their first knowledge of Christianity through Meinhard, d. 1196,889 who had been trained at Segeberg. He had been preceded by Bremen merchants and set forth on his mission in a Bremen merchant vessel. He was ordained bishop of the new diocese of Uexkull whose name was changed in 1202 to the diocese of Riga.

Meinhard’s successor, the Cistercian Berthold, sought at first to win his way by instruction and works of charity, but was driven away by violence. He returned in 1198, at the head of a crusade which Coelestin had ordered. After his death on the field of battle his successor, bishop Albert of Apeldern, entered the country in 1199 at the head of another army. The lands were then thrown open to colonists. With the sanction of Innocent III., Albert founded the order of the Brothers of the Sword. Their campaigns opened the way for the church in Esthaonia and Senegallen. In 1224 the see of Dorpat was erected, which has given its name to the university of Dorpat.

Eastern Prussia, lying along the Weichsel, was visited in 1207 by the German abbot, Gottfried. Two of the native princes were converted by Christian, a monk from Pommerania, donated their lands to the Church, and travelled to Rome, where they received baptism. Christian was made bishop of Prussia between 1212 and 1215. An invitation sent to the Teutonic Knights to aid in the conversion of the tribes was accepted by their grand-master, Hermann of Salza, in 1228. In 1217 Honorius III. had ordered a crusade, and in 1230 Gregory IX. renewed the order. The Teutonic Knights were ready enough to further religious encroachment by the sword, promised, as they were, a large share in the conquered lands. From 1230 to 1283 they carried on continual wars. They established themselves securely by building fortified towns such as Kulm and Thorn, 1231, and Königsberg, 1255. A stream of German colonists followed where they conquered. In 1243 Innocent IV. divided Prussia into four sees, Kulm, Pomesania, Sameland, and Ermeland. It was arranged that the bishops were to have one-third of the conquered territory. In 1308 the German Knights seized Danzig at the mouth of the Weichsel and a year later established their headquarters at Marienburg.890  By the battle of Tannenberg, 1410, and the Peace of Thorn, 1466, they lost Prussia west of the Weichsel, and thereafter their possessions were confined to Eastern Prussia. The history of the order closed when the grand-master, Albrecht of Brandenburg, accepted the Reformation and made the duchy hereditary in his family.

§ 75. Missions among the Mohammedans.

Two important names are associated with the missions among the Mohammedans, Francis of Assisi and Raymundus Lullus, and with their labors, which were without any permanent results, the subject is exhausted. The Crusades were adapted to widen the gulf between the Christians and the Mohammedans, and to close more tightly the ear of the followers of the False Prophet to the appeals of the Christian emissary.

Franciscan friars went in 1213 to Morocco and received the martyr’s crown, but left no impression upon the Mohammedans.891  St. Francis made his tour to Syria and Egypt in 1219, accompanied by eleven companions. The accounts are meagre and uncertain.892  Francis landed at Acre and proceeded to the crusading camp under the walls of Damietta, where he is represented as preaching before the sultan and to the Mohammedan troops. The story is told that the sultan was so much touched by Francis’ preaching that he gave the Franciscan friars admission to the Holy Sepulchre, without payment of tribute.

Raymundus Lullus, 1235?-1315, devoted his life to the conversion of Mohammedans and attested his zeal by a martyr’s death. He was one of the most noteworthy figures produced during the Middle Ages in Southwestern Europe. He made three missionary tours to Africa and originated the scheme for establishing chairs at the universities to teach the Oriental languages and train missionaries. He also wrote many tracts with the aim of convincing unbelievers of the truth of Christianity.

Lullus was born in Palma on the island of Majorca. His father had gained distinction by helping to wrest the Balearic islands from the Saracens. The son married and had children, but led a gay and licentious life at court and devoted his poetic gifts to erotic sonnets. At the age of thirty-one he was arrested in his wild career by the sight of a cancer on the breast of a woman, one of the objects of his passion, whom he pursued into a church, and who suddenly exposed her disease. He made a pilgrimage to Campostella, and retired to Mt. Randa on his native island. Here he spent five years in seclusion, and in 1272 entered the third order of St. Francis. He became interested in the conversion of Mohammedans and other infidels and studied Arabic under a Moor whom he had redeemed from slavery. A system of knowledge was revealed to him which he called "the Universal Science," ars magna or ars generalis. With the aid of the king of Aragon he founded, in 1276 on Majorca, a college under the control of the Franciscans for the training of missionaries in the Arabic and Syriac tongues.

Lullus went to Paris to study and to develop his Universal Science. At a later period he returned and delivered lectures there. In 1286 he went to Rome to press his missionary plans, but failed to gain the pope’s favor. In 1292 he set sail on a missionary tour to Africa from Genoa. In Tunis he endeavored in vain to engage the Mohammedan scholars in a public disputation. A tumult arose and Lullus narrowly escaped with his life. Returning to Europe, he again sought to win the favor of the pope, but in vain. In 1309 he sailed the second time for Tunis, and again he sought to engage the Mohammedans in disputation. Offered honors if he would turn Mohammedan, he said, "And I promise you, if you will turn and believe on Jesus Christ, abundant riches and eternal life."

Again violently forced to leave Africa, Lullus laid his plans before Clement V. and the council of Vienne, 1311. Here he presented a refutation of the philosophy of Averrhoes and pressed the creation of academic chairs for the Oriental languages. Such chairs were ordered erected at Avignon, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, and Bologna to teach Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic.893

Although nearly eighty years old the indefatigable missionary again set out for Tunis. His preaching at Bougia led, as before, to tumults, and Lullus was dragged outside of the city and stoned. Left half dead, he was rescued by Christian seamen, put on board a ship, and died at sea. His bones are preserved at Palma.

For a period of nearly fifty years this remarkable man had advocated measures for carrying the Gospel to the Mohammedans. No impression, so far as we know, was made by his preaching or by his apologetic writings upon unbelievers, Jew or Mohammedan, but with his name will always be associated the new idea of missionary institutes where men, proposing to dedicate themselves to a missionary career, might be trained in foreign languages. But Lullus was more than a glowing advocate of missions. He was a poet and an expert scholastic thinker.894  Spain has produced no Schoolman so famous. He was a prolific author, and in his application of thought to the physical sciences, he has been compared to his fellow Franciscan, Roger Bacon.895

His Universal Science he applied to medicine and law, astrology and geography, grammar and rhetoric, as well as to the solution of theological problems.896  It was a key to all the departments of thought, celestial and terrestrial. Ideas he represented by letters of the alphabet which were placed in circles and other mathematical diagrams. By the turning of the circles and shifting of lines these ideas fall into relations which display a system of truth. The word "God," for example, was thus brought into relation with nine letters, B-K, which represented nine qualities: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, volition, virtue, truth, and glory. Or the letters B-K represented nine questions, such as, what, quid; from what, de quo; why, quare; how much, quantum. Being applied to God, they afford valid definitions, such as "God’s existence is a necessity." This kaleidoscopic method, it is not improbable, Lullus drew from Jewish and Arabic, sources, and he himself called it Cabalistic.

The philosophy of Lullus found a number of adherents who were called Lullists. It was taught at the universities of Valencia and Aragon. Giordano Bruno drew from it. Eymericus, the inquisitor, became the bitter foe of the Lullists, arraigned their leader’s teachings before the Roman court, and exhibited a bull of Gregory XI. (1372) condemning them as heretical.897  Philip II. read some of the Majorcan’s writings and left annotated copies in the Escurial library. Lullus’ works were included in the Index of Paul IV., 1559, but ordered removed from the list by the council of Trent. A papal decision of 1619 forbade Lullus’ doctrine as dangerous. In 1847 Pius IX. approved an office for the "holy Raymundus Lullus" in Majorca, where he is looked upon as a saint. The Franciscans have, since the time of Leo X., commemorated the Spaniard’s memory in their Breviary.

§ 76. Missions among the Mongols.

Central Asia and what is now the Chinese Empire were almost as unknown to Western Europe in the twelfth century as the lake region of Central Africa was before the journeys of Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley. To the Nestorians, with their schools at Edessa and Nisibis, naturally belonged the task of spreading the Gospel in Central and Eastern Asia. They went as far as China, but after the ninth century their schools declined and a period of stagnation set in. Individual Nestorians reached positions of influence in Asiatic courts as councillors or physicians and Nestorian women became mothers of Mongol chiefs. But no Asiatic tribe adopted their creed.

In the twelfth century the brilliant delusion gained currency throughout Europe of the existence in Central Asia of a powerful Christian theocracy, ruled over by the Presbyter John, usually called Prester-John.898  The wildest rumors were spread concerning this mysterious personage who was said to combine the offices of king and priest. According to Otto of Freisingen, a certain bishop of Gabala in 1145 had brought Eugenius III. the information that he was a Nestorian Christian, was descended from one of the three Wise Men, and had defeated the Mohammedans in a great battle.899  A letter, purporting to come from this ruler and addressed to the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople, related that John received tribute from seventy kings, and had among his subjects the ten tribes of Israel, entertained at his table daily twelve archbishops and twenty bishops, and that his kingdom was overflowing with milk and honey.900  Gradually his dominions were reported to extend to Abyssinia and India.

To put themselves into communication with this wonderful personage and bring him into subjection to Rome engaged the serious attention of several popes. Alexander III., 1177, sent his physician Philip with commission to inform the king of the faith of Western Christendom. He also addressed him in a letter as his "most dear son in Christ, John, king of the Indies and most holy of priests." The illusion abated as serious efforts to find the kingdom were made. Rubruquis wrote back to Europe from the region where John was reported to have ruled that few could be found who knew anything about Prester-John and that the stories which had been told were greatly exaggerated. He added that a certain ruler, Coirchan, had been followed by a Nestorian shepherd, called John. It has been conjectured by Oppert that the word "Coirchan," through the Syrian Juchanan, became known as John in Europe. A prince of that name whom the Chinese call Tuliu Tasha fled from China westwards, and established a kingdom in Central Asia. Nestorians were among his subjects. Chinese tradition has it that the prince was a Buddhist. Thus dwindles away a legend which, to use Gibbon’s language, "long amused the credulity of Europe."

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Asia witnessed the establishment of the vast Mongol empire. Scarcely ever has military genius among uncivilized peoples had more wonderful display than in its founders, Zenghis Khan and his successors, especially Kublai and Mangu.901  The empire stretched from the Chinese Sea to the Dnieper, and from Bagdad to the Arctic. Their armies were the terror of Europe. What the Mohammedans had accomplished in Spain it was feared the Mongols would do for the whole continent. They destroyed Moscow and advanced as far as Cracow in Poland, and Buda Pesth in Hungary, 1241. The empire rapidly disintegrated, and was divided into four main sections: the empire of the Great Khan, including China and Thibet; the empire of Central Asia; Persia, extending to the Caucasus, and the loose kingdom of the Golden Horde in Russia and Siberia.902  The first council of Lyons, in 1245, had as one of its objects to provide a defence against the imminent menace of these Tartars,903 as they were called, and a delegation of sixteen of them appeared at the second council of Lyons, 1274, in the hope of forming an alliance against the Saracens.

The Church sent forth several deputations of missionaries to these tribes, some of whom were received at the court of the Great Khan. The most fearless and adventuresome of their number was William Rubruquis, or Ruysbroeck, the Livingstone of his age, who committed to writing a vivid account of his experiences. John of Monte Corvino ventured as far as Pekin, then known in Europe as Cambaluc and among the Mongols as Khanbaligh, "the city of the Khan."

Merciless as they were in battle, the Mongols were tolerant in religion. This was due in part to the absence among them of any well-defined system of worship. Mangu Khan, in answer to the appeals of Rubruquis, said, "We Mongols believe that there is only one God, in whom we live and die. But as God has given to the hand different fingers, so He has given to men different ways to Himself. To you Christians he has given the Holy Scriptures; to us, soothsayers and diviners."

Kublai showed the same spirit when he said to Marco Polo, "There are four prophets who are worshipped by the four different tribes on the earth. Christians look upon Christ as their God, the Saracens upon Mohammed, the Jews upon Moses, and the heathen upon Sogomombar-Khan (Buddha). I esteem and honor all four and pray that He who is supreme amongst them may lend me His help." Alexander Severus perhaps did no better when he placed side by side statues of Abraham, Christ, and Orpheus and other pagan gods. It was not till after the contact of the missionaries with the Mongols that the khans of the East adopted Buddhism, while the tribes of Persia and the West chose the rites of Islam.

In 1245 Innocent IV. despatched four Dominicans to the Mongol chief in Persia and three Franciscans to the Great Khan himself. The next effort was due to Louis IX., then engaged in his first Crusade. Ambassadors from the Mongol chief of Tartary visited the French king at Cyprus.904  Louis returned the compliment by sending back two Dominicans in 1248, and, two years later, two Franciscans, and, in the pious hope of seeing the Tartars converted, he also sent a present of a tent embroidered with representations of Scriptural scenes and so constructed as to have the shape, when put up, of a chapel. It is from one of these two Franciscans, Rubruquis, that our first reliable information of the Mongols is drawn. He found Nestorian priests using the Syriac liturgy, which they did not understand, and joining with the Mohammedans and Buddhists in offering a blessing over the khan’s cups. Rubruquis reached Karkorum and had a hospitable reception at the court of Mangu Khan. One of Mangu’s secretaries was a Christian, another a Mohammedan, the third a Buddhist. A religious disputation was held in the khan’s presence. After Rubruquis had asserted that all God’s commandments are contained in the Scriptures, he was asked whether he thought Mangu kept them. The missionary adroitly replied that "it was his desire to lay before the khan all God’s commandments and then the khan would be able to judge for himself whether he kept them or not."

The Mongolian chiefs in Persia and the Christians were joint enemies of the Caliph of Egypt, and after the Mongolian conquest of the caliphate of Bagdad, embassies were sent by the pope to Persia, and Dominican and Franciscan convents established in that land; but after their adoption of Islam in the fourteenth century, the Mongols persecuted the Christians and the convents were destroyed.

In Central Asia among the Jagatai Mongols events took the same course. At first, 1340, permission was granted to the missionaries to prosecute their work. John of Marignola preached and baptized converts. These Mongols afterwards also adopted Mohammedanism and persecuted the Christians.

In the Mongol empire of China the efforts gave larger promise of fruitfulness. Nicolo and Maffei Polo905 carried a request from Kublai Khan to Gregory X. for missionaries to instruct his people in Christianity and European habits. Two Dominicans accompanied the Polos on their return journey, Marco Polo being of the party. The missionaries did not reach their destination. Three years later Franciscans were sent. John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan sent out by Nicholas IV., reached the court of the Great Khan at Cambaluc, and in 1303 was joined by Arnold, a Franciscan from Cologne. They translated the New Testament and the Psalms into the Tartar language, bought and trained one hundred and fifty boys, built two churches, one of them close to the palace and overtopping it, and baptized six thousand converts. In 1307 John was made archbishop of Pekin, archiepiscopus Cambalensis, and died 1330. The khans passed over to the Buddhist faith and in 1368 the Ming dynasty which raised itself to power abolished Christianity. It remained for the Jesuits three hundred years later to renew missionary operations in China.

§ 77. The Jews.

Literature: The Works of Peter the Venerable, and Bernard, in Migne, and the English Chroniclers, William of Newburgh, Walter of Coventry, Matthew Paris, etc., in the Rolls Series.—T. Basnage: Hist. des Juifs depuis Jésus Christ, 5 vols. Rotterdam, 1706.—D. Blossius Tovey: Anglia Judaica or Hist. Antiquities of the Jews in Engl., Oxford, 1738.—Depping: Les Juifs dans le moyen âge, Paris, 1834.—E. H. Lindo: Hist. of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, London, 1848.—Halley: Les Juifs en France, etc., Paris, 1845.—Margoliouth: Hist. of the Jews in Great Britain, 3 vols. London, 1851.—H. H. Milman: Hist. of the Jews, 3 vols. London, 1863.—José Amador de los Rios: Historia social, politica y religiosa de los Judios de Espana y Portugal, 3 vols. Madrid, 1875, 1876.—H. Graetz (Prof. at Breslau, d. 1891): Gesch. der Juden von den aeltesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 3d ed., Leipzig, 1888–1894, 11 vols.; Engl. trans. by Bella Löwy, London, 5 vols. 1891–1892.—J. Jacobs: The Jews of Angevin England. Documents and Records from Latin and Hebrew Sources, London, 1893.—I. Abrahams: Jewish Life in the M. A., London, 1896.—E. Rodocanachi: Le Saint Siège et les Juifs, Paris, 1891.—Döllinger: Die Juden in Europa in Akad. Vorträge, I. 208–241.—Lea: Chapters from the Relig. Hist. of Spain, Phil., 1890, pp. 437–469—Hefele: IV.-VI.—Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals.—Janssen: Hist. of the German People, II. 73 sqq. The Lives of St. Bernard.—D. S. Schaff: The Treatment of the Jews in the Middle Ages, Bibliotheca Sacra, 1903, pp. 547–571.

Would that it might be said of the mediaeval church that it felt in the well-being of the Jews, the children of Abraham according to the flesh, a tithe of the interest it manifested in the recovery of the holy places of their ancient land. But this cannot be said. Though popes, bishops, and princes, here and there, were inclined to treat them in the spirit of humanity, the predominant sentiment of Europe was the sentiment of hatred and disdain. The very nations which were draining their energies to send forth armaments to reconquer the Holy Sepulchre joined in persecuting the Jews.

Some explanation is afforded by the conduct of the Jews themselves. Their successful and often unscrupulous money dealings, the flaunting of their wealth, their exclusive social tendencies, their racial haughtiness, and their secretiveness, strained the forbearance of the Christian public to the utmost.906  The edicts of councils and civil edicts put it beyond reasonable question that, in an offensive way, they showed contempt for the rites and symbols of the Christian faith. The provocation was great, but it does not justify a treatment of the Jewish people in all parts from Bohemia to the Atlantic which lacked the elements of common humanity. The active efforts that were made for their conversion seem to betray fully as much of the spirit of churchly arrogance as of the spirit of Christian charity. Peter the Venerable, in the prologue to his tract addressed to the Jews, said, "Out of the whole ancient world, you alone were not ignorant of Christ; yea, all peoples have listened, and you alone do not hear. Every language has confessed him, and you alone deny. Others see him, hear him, apprehend him, and you alone remain blind, and deaf, and stony of heart."

The grounds upon which the Jews were persecuted were three: 1. Their fathers had crucified Christ, and the race, predestined to bear the guilt and the punishment of the deed, was receiving its merited portion; 2. They perpetrated horrible atrocities upon Christian children, and mocked the host and the cross; 3. They imposed upon the Christians by exacting exorbitant rates of interest. In no Christian state were they safe. They were aliens in all, and had the rights of citizenship in none. The "enemies of Christ" and "the perfidious" were common names for them, and canonists and theologians use the latter expression. The ritual of Good Friday contained the words, "Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews."907  The Decretals of Gratian, the Third and Fourth Lateran and other councils class together under one and the same canon the Jews and the Saracens.908  Such eminent men as Peter the Venerable have more good to say of the Saracen than of the Jew.

Three classes are to be taken into account in following the treatment of the Jews,—the popes, including the prelates, the princes, and the mass of the people with their priests.

Taking the popes one by one, their utterances were, upon the whole, opposed to inhumane measures and uniformly against the forced baptism of the Jews. Gregory the Great protected them against frenzied persecution in Southern Italy. Innocent IV., 1247, denied the charge of child murder brought against them, and threatened with excommunication Christians oppressing them.909  Martin IV., in 1419, issued a bull in which he declared that he was following his predecessors in commanding that they be not interrupted in their synagogal worship, or compelled to accept baptism, or persecuted for commercial transactions with Christians. On the other hand, the example of Innocent III. gave countenance to the severest measures, and Eugenius IV. quickly annulled the injunctions of his predecessor, Martin IV.

As for the princes, the Jews were regarded as being under their peculiar jurisdiction. At will, they levied taxes upon them, confiscated their goods, and expelled them from their realms. It was to the interest of princes to retain them as sources of revenue, and for this reason they were inclined to protect them against the violence of blind popular prejudice and rage. Frederick II. imposed upon them perpetual slavery as a vengeance upon them for the crucifixion.910

The inception of the Crusades was accompanied by violent outbursts against the Jews. Innocent III., in 1216, established the permanent legal basis of their persecution. Their expulsion from Spain, in 1492, represents the culminating act in the mediaeval drama of their sufferings. England, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Hungary joined in their persecution. In Italy they suffered least. Tens of thousands were burned or otherwise put to death. They were driven, at one time or another, from almost every country. The alternative of baptism or death was often presented to them. The number of those who submitted to death was probably larger than the number who accepted baptism. Most of those, however, who accepted baptism afterwards openly returned to the faith of their fathers or practised its rites in secret.911

It is an interesting fact that, during these centuries of persecution, the Jews, especially in Spain and France, developed an energetic literary activity. Gerschom, Raschi, and the Kimchis belong to France. The names of Maimonides and Benjamin of Tudela head a long list of scholarly Spanish Jews. The pages of Graetz are filled with the names and achievements of distinguished students in medicine and other departments of study.912

The path of anti-Semitism was early struck by Church and Christian state. The mediaeval legislation followed closely the precedent of earlier enactments.913  The synod of Elvira, 306, forbade Christians to eat with Jews and intermarry with them. Theodosius II., 439, excluded them from holding public office. The civil edicts, offering the alternative of baptism or death, were inaugurated by King Sisibut of Spain. When princes, as in Lyons, protected Jewish merchants, prelates violently protested, as did Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, apostle as he was in some particulars of modern enlightenment.914  Among the enactments of this period are the following: The Jews were forbidden to employ Christian nurses, servants, or laborers, to publicly sell meat, to work on Sundays or feast days, to employ Christian physicians,915 or to practise usury, and were commanded to make a money payment to the priest at Easter, and to wear a distinguishing patch or other object on their garments. On the other hand, Christians were forbidden to attend Jewish funerals and marriages, and were punished for borrowing from Jews.

None of the regulations was so humiliating as the one requiring the Jew to wear a distinguishing costume or a distinguishing patch upon his garments. This patch was ordered placed on the chest, or on both chest and back, so that the wearer might be distinguished from afar, as of old the leper was known by his cry "unclean," and that Christians might be prevented from ignorantly having carnal connection with the despised people. At the instance of Stephen Langton the synod of Oxford, 1222, prescribed a woollen patch, and Edward I., 1275, ordered the yellow patch worn by all over seven. Louis IX. ordered that the color of the patch should be red or saffron, the king of England that it should be yellow. Its size and shape were matters of minute enactment. The Fourth Lateran gave the weight of its great authority to this regulation about dress, and decreed that it should be enforced everywhere. Dr. Graetz pronounces this law the culminating blow in the humiliation of his kinsmen. He declares that Innocent III. brought more misery upon the Jews than all their enemies had done before, and charges him with being the first pope who turned the inhuman severity of the Church against them.916

The position Innocent took was that God intended the Jews to be kept, like Cain, the murderer, to wander about on the earth designed by their guilt for slavery till the time should come in the last days for their conversion.917

With this view, the theologians coincided. Peter the Venerable, a half-century before Innocent, presented the case in the same aspect as did the great pope, and launched a fearful denunciation against the Jews. In a letter to Louis VII. of France, he exclaimed, "What would it profit to fight against enemies of the cross in remote lands, while the wicked Jews, who blaspheme Christ, and who are much worse than the Saracens, go free and unpunished. Much more are the Jews to be execrated and hated than the Saracens; for the latter accept the birth from the Virgin, but the Jews deny it, and blaspheme that doctrine and all Christian mysteries. God does not want them to be wholly exterminated, but to be kept, like the fratricide Cain, for still more severe torment and disgrace. In this way God’s most just severity has dealt with the Jews from the time of Christ’s passion, and will continue to deal with them to the end of the world, for they are accursed, and deserve to be."918  He counselled that they be spoiled of their ill-gotten gains and the money derived from their spoliation be applied to wrest the holy places from the Saracens.

Of a different mind was Bernard. When the preparations were being made for the Second Crusade, and the monk Radulf went up and down the Rhine, inflaming the people against the Jews, the abbot of Clairvaux set himself against the "demagogue," as Neander called Radulf.919  He wrote a burning epistle to the archbishop of Mainz, reminding him that the Lord is gracious towards him who returns good for evil. "Does not the Church," he exclaimed, "triumph more fully over the Jews by convincing and converting them from day to day than if she once and for all should slay them by the edge of the sword!"  How bitter the prejudice was is seen in the fact that when Bernard met Radulf face to face, it required all his reputation for sanctity to allay the turbulence at Mainz.920

Turning to England we find William of Newburgh, Roger de Hoveden, and other chroniclers. approving the Jewish persecutions. Richard of Devizes921 speaks of "sacrificing the Jews to their father, the devil," and of sending "the bloodsuckers with blood to hell." Matthew Paris, in some of his references, seems not to have been in full sympathy with the popular animosity.

Among great English ecclesiastics the Jews had at least two friendly advocates in Hugh of Lincoln and Robert Grosseteste. Grosseteste laid down the principle that the Jews were not to be exterminated, on the grounds that the law had been given through them, and that, after passing through their second captivity, they would ultimately, in accordance with the eleventh chapter of Romans, embrace Christianity. He, however, declared that Cain was the type of the Jews, as Abel was the type of Christ. For the sake of God’s mercy, they should be preserved, that Christ might be glorified; but for the sake of God’s justice, they were to be held in captivity by the princes, that they might fulfil the prediction concerning Cain, and be vagabonds and wanderers on the earth. They should be forcibly prevented from pursuing the occupation of usurers.922  The bishop was writing to the dowager countess of Winchester, who had offered a refuge on her lands to the Jews expelled by Simon de Montfort from Leicester. That he was not altogether above the prejudices of his age is vouched for by a letter, also written in 1244, in which he calls upon his archdeacons to prevent Jews and Christians living side by side. Grosseteste’s predecessor, Hugh of Lincoln, protected the Jews when they were being plundered and massacred in 1190, and Jews showed their respect by attending his funeral.923

No charge was too serious to be laid at the door of the Jews. When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1348, it did not occur to any one to think of the Saracens as the authors of that pestilence. The Jew was guilty. In Southern France and Spain, so the wild rumor ran, he had concocted poisons which were sent out wholesale and used for contaminating fountains. From Barcelona and Seville to the cities in Switzerland and Germany the unfortunate people had to suffer persecution for the alleged crime. In Strassburg, 1349, the entire Hebrew population of two thousand was seized, and as many as did not consent to baptism, were burnt in their own graveyard and their goods confiscated. In Erfurt and other places the entire Jewish population was removed by fire or expulsion.

The canonical regulations against usury gave easy excuse for declaring debts to the Jews not binding. Condemned by Tertullian and Cyprian, usury was at first forbidden to laymen as well as clerics, as by the synod of Elvira; but at the council of Nice, 325, the prohibition was restricted to the clergy. Later Jerome, Augustine, and Leo I. again applied the prohibition to all Christians. Gratian received it into the canon law. Few subjects claimed so generally the attention of the mediaeval synods as usury.924  Alexander III., at the Third Lateran, 1179, went so far as to declare usury forbidden by the Old Testament as well as by the New Testament. Clement V. put the capstone on this sort of legislation by declaring, at the council of Vienne, 1311, null and void all state and municipal laws allowing usury and pronouncing it heresy to deny that usury is sin. No distinction was made between rates of interest. All interest was usurious. The wonder is that, with such legislation on the Church’s statute-books, any borrower should have felt bound by a debt to a Jew.

Eugenius III. offered all enlisting in the Second Crusade exemption from interest due Jewish creditors. Gregory IX. made the same offer to later Crusaders.

The charge was frequently repeated against the Jews that they were guilty of the murder of Christian children for ritualistic purposes, especially at the time of the Passover. This almost incredible crime again and again stirred the Christian population into a frenzy of excitement which issued in some of the direst miseries the Jewish people were called upon to endure.925

In France, Philip Augustus, using as a pretext the alleged crucifixion of a Christian child, in 1182, expelled the Jews from his realm and confiscated their goods. The decree of expulsion was repeated by Louis IX. in the year before he set out on his last crusade, by Philip the Fair in 1306 and 1311, and by other French monarchs, but it was never so strictly enforced as in Spain. Louis IX. also ordered all copies of the Targum destroyed. In 1239 Gregory IX. issued a letter to the archbishops of France, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and England, commanding the same thing.926

In Germany, from the First Crusade on, the Jews were subjected to constant outbreaks, but usually enjoyed the protection of the emperors against popular fury. In the fifteenth century, they were expelled from Saxony 1432, Spires and Zürich 1435, Mainz 1438, and other localities.

In England the so-called Jewries of London, Lincoln, Oxford, and three or four other cities represented special tribunals and modes of organization, with which the usual courts of the land had nothing to do.927  From the reign of Henry II., 1133–1189, when the detailed statements of Jewish life in England begin, bishops, priests, and convents were ready to borrow from the Jews. Nine Cistercian convents were mortgaged to the famous Aaron of Lincoln, who died 1187. He boasted that his money had built St. Albans, a boast which Freeman uses to prove the intolerable arrogance of the Jews. The arm of St. Oswald of Peterboro was held by a Jew in pawn. The usual interest charged was two pence a week on the pound, or forty-three per cent a year. And it went as high as eighty per cent. The promissory note is preserved which Herbert, pastor of Wissenden, gave to Aaron of Lincoln for 120 marks at two pence a week.928  The Jews were tallaged by the king at pleasure. They belonged to him, as did the forests.929  The frequency and exorbitance of the exactions under John and Henry III. are notorious. At the time of the levy of 1210 many left the kingdom. It was at that time that the famous case occurred of the Jew of Bristol, already referred to, whose teeth John ordered pulled out, one each day, till he should make over to the royal treasury ten thousand marks. The description that Matthew Paris gives is highly interesting, but it was not till four centuries had elapsed, that another historian, Thomas Fuller, commenting upon this piece of mediaeval dentistry, had the hardihood to say, this Jew, "yielding sooner, had saved his teeth, or, stubborn longer, had spared his money; now having both his purse and his jaw empty by the bargain. Condemn we here man’s cruelty, and admire Heaven’s justice; for all these sums extorted from the Jews by temporal kings axe but paying their arrearages to God for a debt they can never satisfy; namely, the crucifying of Christ." Old prejudices die hard.

Henry III.’s exactions became so intolerable that in 1255 the Jews begged to be allowed to leave the realm. This request, to rely again upon Matthew Paris, the king refused, and then, like "another Titus or Vespasian," farmed them out to his rich brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, that, "as he himself had excoriated them, so Richard might eviscerate them."930

The English Crusaders, starting on the Third Crusade, freely pillaged the Jews, indignant, as the chroniclers relate, that they should have abundance and to spare while they, who were hurrying on the long journey to Jerusalem, had not enough for their barest wants.931  It was at this time, on the evening of the coronation of Richard I., that the horrible massacre occurred in which neither sex nor age was spared. At York, five hundred were shut up in the castle, and the men, in despair, after putting to death their own wives and daughters, were many of them burned to death.932

English communities were roused to a lamentable pitch of excitement by the alleged crucifixion of Christian boys. Among the more notorious cases were William of Norwich 1144, Harold of Gloucester 1168, Robert of Edmonsbury 1181, and Hugh of Lincoln 1255. Although these children were popularly known as saints, none of them have been canonized by the Church. The alleged enormities perpetrated upon Hugh of Lincoln, as given by Matthew Paris, are too shocking to be enumerated at length. The same chronicler interjects the statement that the deed was "said often to have occurred." In the excitement over little Hugh, eighteen Jews were gibbeted.933  The marvel is that the atrocious charge was believed, and that no protest against the belief has come down to us from those days.

Some English Jews, under pressure of fear, submitted to baptism, and some also of their free will. The first case of the latter kind, so far as I know, is given by Anselm.934  The convert became a monk. An isolated case occurred here and there of a Christian turning Jew. A deacon was hanged for this offence.935

The last act in the history of the Jews in mediaeval England was their banishment by Edward I. in 1290. From that time until the Caroline age, England was free from Jewish inhabitants. Cromwell added to his fame by giving them protection in London.

The treatment the Jews received in Spain is justly regarded as the most merciless the race received in the Middle Ages. Edward I. protected against plunder the sixteen thousand Jews whom he banished from England. But Ferdinand of Spain, when he issued the fell decree for his Jewish subjects to leave Spain, apparently looked on without a sign of pity. Spain, through its Church councils, had been the leader in restrictive legislation. The introduction of the Inquisition made the life of this people more and more severe, although primarily its pitiless regulations had no application to them. Persecutions filled the land with ungenuine proselytes, the conversos, and these became subject to the inquisitorial court.

The final blow given by Ferdinand and Isabella fell in 1492, the year of the discovery of the New World, in a part of which was to be put into practice religious toleration as it was never before practised on the earth. The edict expelled all unbaptized Jews from Spain. Religious motives were behind it, and religious agents executed it. The immediate occasion was the panic aroused by the alleged crucifixion of the child of La Guardia—el santo niño de la Guardia—one of the most notorious cases of alleged child murder by the Jews.936  Lope de Vega and other Spanish writers have made the case famous in Spanish literature. Ferdinand, according to Llorente, moved by the appeals of a Jewish embassy and Spanish grandees, was about to modify his sentence, when Torquemada, hastening into the presence of the king and his consort, presented the crucifix, exclaiming, "Judas Iscariot sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Your majesties are about to sell him for three thousand ducats. Here he is, take him and sell him."

The number of Jews who emigrated from Spain, in the summer of 1492, is estimated at 170,000 to 400, 000.937  They went to Italy, Morocco, and the East, and, invited by king Manuel, 100,000 passed into Portugal. But here their tarrying was destined to be short. In 1495 an edict offered them the old alternative of baptism or death, and children under fourteen were taken forcibly from their parents, and the sacred Christian rite was administered to them. Ten years later two thousand of the alleged ungenuine converts were massacred in cold blood.

Such was the drama of sufferings through which the Jews were made to pass during the mediaeval period in Western Europe. As against this treatment, what efforts were made to win the Jews by appeals to the gospel?  But the question might well be asked whether any appeals could be expected to win them when such a spirit of persecution prevailed. How could love and such hostility go together?  The attempts to convince them were made chiefly through tracts and disputations. Anselm, while he did not direct his treatise on the atonement, cur deus homo, to the Jews, says, that his argument was sufficient to persuade both Jew and pagan. Grosseteste sought to show the fulfilment of the old law and to prove the divinity of Christ in his de cessatione legalium, written in 1231.938  The most famous of these tracts was written by Peter the Venerable. In Migne’s edition it fills more than one hundred and forty columns, and would make a modern book of more than three hundred pages of the ordinary size. Its heading, little adapted to win the favor of the people to whom it was addressed, ran "A Tract against the Inveterate Hardness of the Jews" (inveteratam duritiem). The author proceeded to show from the Hebrew Scriptures the divinity of Christ, at the same time declaring that "to the blind even the light is as night and the sun as the shades of darkness."

Some idea can be gotten of the nature of some of Peter’s arguments from one of the many Scripture texts adduced to prove that Christ is the Son of God, Isa. lxvi. 9: "Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth?  saith Jehovah. Shall I that caused to bring forth shut the womb?  saith thy God." "What could be more clear, O Jews," adds the author, "in proving the generation of the Son of God?  For if God begat, so far as He begat, He is necessarily Father, and the Son of God, so far as He is begotten, is necessarily Son." In taking up the proof that the Messiah has already come, Peter naïvely says that "if the Jew shall presume to think when the argument is finished that he lives, Peter holds the sword of Goliath, and, standing over the Jew’s prostrate form, will use the weapon for his destruction, and ’with its edge’ cleave his blasphemous head in twain."939

If the mild abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, approached the Jews in such an arrogant tone, what was to be expected from other writers, like Peter of Blois who wrote upon the Perfidy of the Jews?

Public disputations were resorted to in Southwestern Europe. Not a few Jews, "learned men, physicians, authors, and poets," to use the language of Graetz,940 adopted the Christian faith from conviction, and "became as eager in proselyting as though they had been born Dominicans." At the public disputations, representative rabbis and chosen Christian controversialists disputed. Jewish proselytes often represented the Christian side. The most famous of these disputations, the disputation of Tortosa, extended through a year and nine months, 1413–1414, and held sixty-eight sittings. Many baptisms are reported to have followed this trial of argumentative strength, and Benedict XIII. announced his conclusions in a bull forbidding forced baptism, as opposed to the canons of the church, but insisting on the Jews wearing the distinctive patch, and enacting that they should listen to three Christian sermons every year,—on Easter, in Advent, and in midsummer. Raymundus Lullus appealed for the establishment of chairs in Hebrew with an eye to the conversion of the Jews, as did also the Dominican Raymundus of Peñaforte. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the propaganda of the eloquent preacher Vincent Ferrer was crowned with success, and the lowest estimates place the number who received baptism under his influence at twenty thousand. The most distinguished of the Spanish converts was Rabbi Solomon Helevi, 1353–1435, who occupied the archiepiscopal chair of Burgos. The Christian scholar Nicolas of Cusa, if not born a Jew, was of Jewish descent.

In London there was an attempt to reach the Jews by a sort of university settlement, the domus conversorum, intended for the protection of Jewish proselytes. It was established in 1233, and an annual grant of seven hundred marks from the royal exchequer promised for its maintenance; but no reports have come down to us of its usefulness.

These efforts relieve, it is true, the dark picture, but relieve it only a little. The racial exclusiveness of the Jew, and the defiant pride which Christendom associates with him when he attains to prosperity, still render it difficult to make any impression upon him by the presentation of the arguments for Christianity. There have been converts. Neander was a Jew born. So were Paulus Cassel and Adolf Saphir. Delitzsch had a Jew for one of his parents. Döllinger is authority for the statement that thirty years ago there were two thousand Christians in Berlin of Jewish descent. There is fortunately no feeling to-day, at least in the church of the West, that it should come to the aid of Providence in executing vengeance for the crucifixion of Christ, a thought which ruled the Christian mind in the Middle Ages. In view of the experience of the medieval church, if for no other reason, the mode of treatment suggested to the modern church is by the spirit of brotherly confidence and Christian love.

CHAPTER X.

HERESY AND ITS SUPPRESSION.

§ 78. Literature for the Entire Chapter.

General Works: Flacius Illyricus: Catalogus testium veritatis qui ante nostram aetatem reclamarunt papae, Basel, 1556.—Du Plessis d’argentré: Coll. judiciorum de novis erroribus qui ab initio XII. saec. usque ad 1632 in ecclesia postscripti sunt et notati, 3 vols. Paris, 1728.—*Döllinger: Beiträge zur Sektengesch. des Mittelalters, Munich, 1890. A most valuable work. Part II., pp. 736, contains original documents, in the collection of which Döllinger spent many years and made many journeys.—Paul Fredericq: Corpus documentorum haer. pravitatis Neerlandicae, 5 vols. Ghent, 1889 sqq.—Caesar of Heisterbach: Dialogus.—Etienne De Bourbon: Anecdotes Historiques, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, Paris, 1877.—Map: De nugis curialium, Wright’s ed. Epp. Innocentii III., Migne, 214–216.—Jacques de Vitry: Hist. orientalis, Douai, 1672, and in Martene and Durand, Thes. anecd., 5 vols. Paris, 1717.—Arnold: Unpartheiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, Frankf., 1729.—Füsslin: Kirchen- und Ketzergesch. der mittleren Zeit, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1770–1774.—Mosheim: Versuch einer unparthei. Ketzergesch., Helmstädt, 1746.—Hahn: Gesch. der Ketzer im Mittelalter, 3 vols. Stuttg., 1845–1847.—A. Jundt: Hist. du panthéisme pop. au moyen âge, Paris, 1876.—*LEA: Hist. of the Inquisition, 3 vols. N. Y., 1888. On the sects, I. 67–208.—M. F. Tocco: L’eresia net medio evo, Florence, 1884.—P. Alphandéry: Les idées morales chez les Hetérédoxes Latins au début du XIII siècle, Paris, 1903.—Hefele-Knöpfler, vol. V.—A. H. Newman: Recent Researches concerning Med. Sects in Papers of Amer. Soc. of Ch. Hist. 1892, IV. 167–221.

For The Cathari, § 80 — Bonacursus (at first a Catharan teacher): Vita haereticorum seu contra Catharos (1190?), Migne, 204. 775–792.—Ecbertus (canon of Cologne about 1150): Sermones XIII. adv. Catharorum errores, Migne, 195. —- Ermengaudus: Contra haeret., Migne, 204, 1235–1275.—Moneta Cremonensis (1240): Adv. Catharos et Valdenses, Rome, 1763.—Rainerius Sacchone (d. about 1263, was a leader among the Cathari for seventeen years, then became a Dominican and an active inquisitor): De Catharibus et Leonistis seu pauperibus de Lugduno in Martène-Durand, Thes. Anecd., V. 1759–1776.—Bernardus Guidonis: Practica inquisitionis hereticae pravitatis, ed. by Douais, Paris, 1886.—C. Douais, bp. of Beauvais: Documents pour servir à l’Hist. de l’inquis. dans le Languedoc, 2 vols. Paris, 1900. Trans. and Reprints, by Univ. of Phila., III. No. 6.—*C. Schmidt: Hist. et Doctr. de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, 2 vols. Paris, 1849.

For The Petrobrusians, etc.,

For The Beguines And Beghards, § 83: Bernardus Guy: pp. 141 sqq., 264–268.—Fredericq, II. 9 sqq., 72 sqq.—Döllinger, II. 378–416, 702 sqq.—*J. L. Mosheim: De Beghardis et Beguinabus, Leipzig, 1790.—G. Uhlhorn: D. christl. Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter, pp. 376–394.—H. Delacroix: Le Mysticisme speculatif en Allemagne au 14e siècle, Paris, 1900, pp. 52–134.—Ullmann: Reformers before the Reformation. — LEA: II. 350 sqq.—*Haupt, art. Beguinen und Begharden in Herzog, II. 516–526, and art. Beguinen in Wetzer-Welte, II. 204 sqq.

For The Waldenses, § 84, the works of Rainerius, Moneta, Bernardus Guy.—Döllinger: Beiträge.—Bernardus, Abbas Fontis Calidi (d. about 1193): Adv. Waldensium sectam, Migne, 204. 793–840.—Alanus ab Insulis (d. about 1202): Adv. haeret. Waldenses, Judaeos et Paganos, Migne, 210. 377–399;—Rescriptum haeresiarcharum Lombardiae ad Leonistas in Alemannia, by the so-called "Anonymous of Passau" (about 1315), ed. by Preger in Beiträge zur Gesch. der Waldesier im Mittelalter, Munich, 1876. Gieseler, in his De Rainerii Sacchone, Götting., 1834, recognized this as a distinct work.—Etienne de Bourbon, pp. 290–296, etc.—David of Augsburg: Tractatus de inquis. haereticorum, ed. by Preger, Munich, 1878. Döllinger gives parts of Bernard Guy’s Practica, II. 6–17, etc., the Rescriptum, II. 42–52, and David of Augsburg, II. 351–319.—Also Fredericq, vols. I., II.

Mod. Works, § 84: Perrin: Hist. des Vaudois, Geneva, 1619, in three parts,—the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and the Ten Persecutions of the Vaudois. The Phila. ed. (1847) contains an introd. by Professor Samuel Miller of Princeton.—Gilles: Hist. Eccles. des églises réf. en quelques vallées de Piémont, Geneva, 1648.—Morland: Hist. of the evang. Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, London, 1658. —- Leger: Hist. générale des églises evang. des Vallées, etc., Leyden, 1669, with large maps of the three Waldensian valleys and pictures of the martyrdoms. Leger, a leading Waldensian pastor, took refuge in Leyden from persecution.—Peyran: Hist. Defence of the Waldenses, London, 1826.—Gilly (canon of Durham): Waldensian Researches, London, 1831.—Muston: Hist. des Vaudois, Paris, 1834; L’Israel des Alpes, Paris, 1851, Engl. trans., 2 vols. London, 1857, — Blair: Hist. of the Waldenses, 2 vols. Edinb., 1833.—Monastier: Hist. de l’église vaudoise, 2 vols. Lausanne, 1847.—*A. W. Dieckhoff: Die Waldenser im Mittelalter, Götting. 1861.—*J. J. Herzog: Die romanischen Waldenser, Halle, 1853.—Maitland: Facts and Documents of the Waldenses, London, 1862.—F. Palacky: Die Beziehungen der Waldenser zu den ehemaligen Sekten in Böhmen, Prague, 1869.—*Jaroslav Goll: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der Böhmischen Brüder, Prague, 1878–1882.—*H. Haupt: Die relig. Sekten in Franken vor der Reformation, Würz b. 1882; Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis, Würzb., 1885; Waldenserhtum und Inquisition im südöstlichen Deutschland, Freib., 1890; Der Waldensische Ursprung d. Codex Teplensis, Würzb., 1886.—Montet: Hist. litt. des Vaudois du Piémont, Paris, 1885.—*L. Keller: Die Waldenser und die deutschen Bibelübersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886.—*F. Jostes: Die Waldenser und die vorluth. deutsche Bibelübersetzung, Munich, 1885; Die Tepler Bibelübersetzung, Münster, 1886.—*Preger: Das Verhältniss der Taboriten zu den Waldesiern des 14ten Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1887; Die Verfassung der französ. Waldesier, etc., Munich, 1890.—*K. Muller. Die Waldenser und ihre einzelnen Gruppen bis zum Anfang des 14ten Jahrhunderts, Gotha, 1886.—*E. COMBA: Hist. des Vaudois d’Italie avant la Réforme, Paris, 1887, new ed. 1901, Engl. trans., London, 1889.—Sofia Bompiani  A Short Hist. of the Ital. Waldenses, N. Y. 1897. See also Lea: Inquis., vol. II.—E. E. Hale: In his Name, Boston, 1887, a chaste tale of the early Waldenses in Lyons.—H. C. Vedder: Origin and Early Teachings of the Waldenses in "Am. Jour. of Theol.," 1900, pp. 465–489.

For The Crusades Against The Albigenses, § 85: Innocent III.’s Letters, Migne, 214–216. The Abbot Pierre de Vaux de Cernay in Rec. Hist. de France, XXI. 7 sqq.—Hurter: Inn. III. vol. II. 257–349, 379–389, 413–432.—Hefele-Knöpfler: V. 827–861, etc.—Lea: I. 114–209.—A. Luchaire: Inn. III. et la croisade des Albigeois, Paris, 1905. —Mandell Creighton: Simon de Montfort, in Hist. Biog.

For The Inquisition, §§ 86, 87, see Douais, Bernard Guy, and other sources and the works of Döllinger, Schmidt, Lea, Hurter (II. 257–269), Hefele, etc., as cited above.—Mirbt: Quellen zur Gesch. des Papstthums, 2d ed., pp. 126–146; — Doct. de modo proced. c. haeret., in Martene-Durand, Thes. anecd., V. 1795–1822.—Nic. Eymericus (inquis. general of Spain, d. 1399): Directorium inquisitorum, ed. F. Pegna, Rome, 1578. For MSS. of Eymericus, see Denifle: Archiv, 1886, pp. 143 sqq.—P. Fredericq: Corpus documentorum inquis. haer. prav. Neerlandicae, 5 vols. Ghent, 1889–1902. Vol. I. opens with the year 1025.—Lud. A Paramo (a Sicilian inquisitor): De orig. et progressu officii s. inguis., Madrid, 1698.—P. Limborch: Hist. inquis., Amster., 1692, includes the important liber sententiarum inquis. Tolosonae, Engl. trans., 2 vols. London, 1731.—J. A. Llorente (secretary of the Madrid Inquis. 1789–1791): Hist. critique de l’inquis. d’Espagne (to Ferdinand VII.), 4 vols. Paris, 1817. Condens. Engl. trans., Phil. 1843.—Rule: Hist. of the Inquis., 2 vols. London, 1874.—F. Hoffmann: Gesch. der Inquis. (down to the last cent.), 2 vols. Bonn, 1878.—C. Molinier: L’Inquis. dans le midi de la France au 13e et 14e siècle, Paris, 1881.—Ficker: Die gesetzl. Einführung der Todesstrafe für Ketzerei in Mittheilungen für Oester. Geschichtsforschung, 1880, pp. 188 sqq.—J. Havet: L’hérésie et le bras séculier aut moyen âge, Paris, 1881.—Tamburini: Storia generale dell’ Inquisizione, 4 vols.—L. Tanon: L’Hist. des tribunaux de l’Inquis. en France, Paris, 1893.—HENNER: Beiträge zur Organization und Kompetenz der päpstlichen Ketzergerichte, . Leipzig, 1893.—Graf von Hoensbroech: Das Papstthum, etc., Leipzig, 1900; 4th ed., 1901. Chap. on the Papacy and the Inquis., I. 1–206.—P. Flade: Das römische Inquisitionsverfahren in Deutschland bis zu den Hexenprocessen, Leipzig, 1902.—Hurter: art. Inquisition in Wetzer-Welte, VI. 765 sqq., and Herzog, IX. 152–167.—E. L. Th. Henke: Konrad von Marburg, Marb., 1861.—B. Kaltner: Konrad v. Marburg u. d. Inquis. in Deutschland, Prague, 1882.—R. Schmidt: Die Herkunft des Inquisitionsprocesses, Freib. i. Breig. 1902.—C. H. Haskins: Robert le Bougre and the Beginnings of the Inquis. in Northern France in "Amer. Hist. Rev.," 1902, pp. 421–437, 631–653.—The works on canon law by Hinschius, Friedberg, and Ph. Hergenröther (R. C.), pp. 126, 601–610.—E. Vacandard: L’inquisition, Etude Hist. et crit. sur le pouvoir coercitif de l’église, Paris, 1907, pp. 340.

§ 79. The Mediaeval Dissenters.

The centralization of ecclesiastical authority in the papacy was met by a widespread counter-movement of religious individualism and dissent. It was when the theocratic programme of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. was being pressed most vigorously that an ominous spiritual revolt showed itself in communities of dissenters. While the crusading armaments were battling against the infidel abroad, heretical depravity, to use the official term, arose in the Church at home to disturb its peace.

For nearly five hundred years heresy had been unknown in Western Europe. When Gregory the Great converted the Arians of Spain and Lombardy in the latter part of the sixth century, it was supposed that the last sparks of heresy were extinguished. In the second half of the eleventh century here and there, in Milan, Orleans, Strassburg, Cologne, and Mainz, little flames of heresy shot forth; but they were quickly put out and the Church went on its way again in peace. In the twelfth century, heresy again broke out simultaneously in different parts of Europe, from Hungary to the Pyrenees and northwards to Bremen. The two burning centres of the infection were Milan in Northern Italy and Toulouse in Southern France. The Church authorities looked on with alarm, and, led by the pope, proceeded to employ vigorous measures to stamp out the threatening evil. Jacques of Vitry, after visiting Milan, called it a pit of heretics, fovea haereticorum, and declared that there was hardly a person left to resist the spiritual rebels, so numerous were they in that city.941  At different points in Lombardy the clergy were actually driven out and Piacenza remained three years without a priest. In Viterbo, in the very vicinity of Rome, the Patarenes were in the majority in 1205, as Innocent III. testified. But it was in Languedoc that the situation was most alarming, and there papal armies were marshalled to crush out the contagion.

The dissenting movement started with the people and not with the schools or princes, much provocation as the princes had for showing their resentment at the avarice and worldliness of the clergy and their invasion of the realm of civil authority. The vast majority of those who suffered punishment as heretics were of the common people. Their ignorance was a constant subject of gibe and derision as they stood for trial before the ecclesiastical tribunals. The heresy of a later period, the fifteenth century, differs in this regard, having scholars among its advocates.

Our knowledge of the mediaeval sectaries and their practices is drawn almost wholly from the testimonies of those who were arrayed against them. These testimonies are found in tracts, manuals for the treatment of heresy, occasional notices of ecclesiastical writers like Salimbene, Vitry, Etienne de Bourbon, Caesar of Heisterbach, or Matthew Paris, in the decrees of synods and in the records of the heresy trials themselves. These last records, written down by Catholic hands, have come down to us in large numbers.942  Interesting as they are, they must be accepted with caution as the statements of enemies. As for Catharan literature, a single piece has survived943 and it is a painful recollection that, where so many suffered the loss of goods, imprisonments, and death for their religious convictions, only a few lines remain in their own handwriting to depict their faith and hopes.

The exciting cause of this religious revolt is to be looked for in the worldliness and arrogance of the clergy, the formalism of the Church’s ritual, and the worldly ambitions of the papal policy. In their depositions before the Church inquisitors, the accused called attention to the pride, cupidity, and immorality of the priests. Tanchelm, Henry of Lausanne, and other leaders directed their invectives against the priests and bishops who sought power and ease rather than the good of the people.

Underneath all this discontent was the spiritual hunger of the masses. The Bible was not an altogether forgotten book. The people remembered it. Popular preachers like Bernard of Thiron, Robert of Abrissel and Vitalis of Savigny quoted its precepts and relied upon its authority. There was a hankering after the Gospel which the Church did not set forth. The people wanted to get behind the clergy and the ritual of the sacraments to Christ himself, and, in doing so, a large body of the sectaries went to the extreme of abandoning the outward celebration of the sacraments, and withdrew themselves altogether from priestly offices. The aim of all the sects was moral and religious reformation. The Cathari, it is true, differed in a philosophical question and were Manichaeans, but it was not a question of philosophy they were concerned about. Their chief purpose was to get away from the worldly aims of the established church, and this explains their rapid diffusion in Lombardy and Southern France.944

A prominent charge made against the dissenters was that they put their own interpretations upon the Gospels and Epistles and employed these interpretations to establish their own systems and rebuke the Catholic hierarchy. Special honor was given by the Cathari to the Gospel of John, and the Waldensian movement started with an attempt to make known the Scriptures through the vulgar tongue. The humbler classes knew enough about clerical abuses from their own observation; but the complaints of the best men of the times were in the air, and these must also have reached their ears and increased the general restlessness. St. Bernard rebuked the clergy for ambition, pride, and lust. Grosseteste called clerics antichrists and devils. Walter von der Vogelweide, among the poets, spoke of priests as those —

"Who make a traffic of each sacrament

The mass’ holy sacrifice included."

These men did not mean to condemn the priestly office, but it should occasion no surprise that the people made no distinction between the office and the priest who abused the office.

The voices of the prophets were also heard beyond the walls of the convent,—Joachim of Flore and Hildegard. Of an independent ecclesiastical movement they had no thought. But they cried out for clerical reform, and the people, after long waiting, seeing no signs of a reform, found hope of relief only in separatistic societies and groups of believers. The prophetess on the Rhine, having in mind the Cathari, called upon all kings and Christians to put down the Sadducees and heretics who indulged in lust, and, in the face of the early command to the race to go forth and multiply, rejected marriage. But to her credit, it is to be said, that at a time when heretics were being burnt at Bonn and Cologne, she remonstrated against the death penalty for the heretic on the ground that in spite of his heresy he bore the image of God.945  She would have limited the punishment to the sequestration of goods.

It is also most probable that the elements of heresy were introduced into Central and Western Europe from the East. In the Byzantine empire the germs of early heresies continued to sprout, and from there they seem to have been carried to the West, where they were adopted by the Manichaean Cathari and Albigenses. Travelling merchants and mercenaries from Germany, Denmark, France, and Flanders, who had travelled in the East or served in the Byzantine armies, may have brought them with them on their return to their homes.

The matters in which the heretical sects differed from the Catholic Church concerned doctrine, ritual, and the organization of the Church. Among the dogmas repudiated were transubstantiation and the sacerdotal theory of the priesthood. The validity of infant baptism was also quite widely denied, and the Cathari abandoned water baptism altogether. The worship of the cross and other images was regarded as idolatry. Oaths and even military service were renounced. Bernard Guy, inquisitor-general of Toulouse and our chief authority for the heretical beliefs current in Southern France in the fourteenth century, says946 that the doctrine of transubstantiation was denied on the ground that, if Christ’s body had been as large as the largest mountain, it would have been consumed long before that time. As for adoring the cross, thorns and spears might with equal propriety be worshipped, for Christ’s body was wounded by a crown of thorns and a lance. The depositions of the victims of the Inquisition are the simple statements of unlettered men. In the thousands of reports of judicial cases, which are preserved, charges of immoral conduct are rare.

A heretic, that is, one who dissented from the dogmatic belief of the Catholic Church, was regarded as worse than a Saracen and worse than a person of depraved morals. In a sermon, issued by Werner of St. Blasius about 1125, the statement is made that the "holy Catholic Church patiently tolerates those who live ill, male viventes, but casts out from itself those who believe erroneously, male credentes."947  The mediaeval Church, following the Fathers, did not hesitate to apply the most opprobrious epithets to heretics. The synod of Toulouse, 1163, refering to the heretics in Gascony, compared them to serpents which, just for the very reason that they conceal themselves, are all the more destructive to the simpleminded in the Lord’s vineyard. Perhaps the most frequent comparison was that which likened them to Solomon’s little foxes which destroy the vines.948  Peter Damiani949 and others liken them to the foxes whose tails Samson bound together and drove forth on their destructive mission. Innocent III. showed a preference for the comparison to foxes, but also called heretics scorpions, wounding with the sting of damnation, locusts like the locusts of Joel hid in the dust with vermin and countless in numbers, demons who offer the poison of serpents in the golden chalice of Babylon, and he called heresy the black horse of the Apocalypse on which the devil rides, holding the balances. Heresy is a cancer which moves like a serpent.950

The Fourth Lateran also used the figure of Samson’s foxes, whose faces had different aspects, but whose tails were bound together for one and the same fell purpose.951  Gregory IX.,952 speaking of France, declared that it was filled with a multitude of venomous reptiles and the poison of the heresies. Etienne de Bourbon, writing in the last years of the twelfth century, said that, heretics are dregs and depravity, and for that reason cannot return to their former faith except by a divine miracle, even as cinders, which cannot be made into silver, or dregs into wine."953  St. Bernard likened heretics to dogs that bite and foxes that deceive.954  Free use was made of the withered branch of John 15:6, which was to be cast out and burnt, and of the historical examples of the destruction of the Canaanites and of Korah, Dothan, and Abiram. Thomas Aquinas put heretics in the same category with coin clippers who were felons before the civil tribunal. Earthquakes, like the great earthquake in Lombardy of 1222, and other natural calamities were ascribed by the orthodox to God’s anger against heresy.955

The principle of toleration was unknown, or at best only here and there a voice was raised against the death penalty, as in the case of Hildegard, Rupert of Deutz,956 and Peter Cantor, bishop of Paris.957  Bernard went farther and admonished Eugenius III. against the use of force in the treatment of heretics958 and in commenting upon Cant. II. 15, "take me the foxes that spoil the vines," he said, that they should be caught not by arms but by arguments, and be reconciled to the Church in accordance with the purpose of Him who wills all men to be saved. He added that a false Catholic does more harm than an open heretic.959  The opinion came to prevail, that what disease is to the body that heresy is to the Church, and the most merciful procedure was to cut off the heretic. No distinction was made between the man and the error. The popes were chiefly responsible for the policy which acted upon this view. The civil codes adopted and pronounced death as the heretic’s "merited reward," poena debita.960  Thomas Aquinas and the theologians established it by arguments. Bernard Guy expressed the opinion of his age when he declared that heresy can be destroyed only when its advocates are converted or burnt. To extirpate religious dissent, the fierce tribunal of the Inquisition was established. The last measure to be resorted to was an organized crusade, waged under the banner of the pope, which shed the blood of the mediaeval dissenters without pity and with as little compunction as the blood of Saracens in the East.

The confusion, which reigned among the Church authorities concerning the sectaries, and also the differences which existed among the sectaries themselves, appear from the many names by which they were known. The most elaborate list is given in the code of Frederick II. 1238,961  and enumerates nineteen different sects, among which the most familiar are Cathari, Patarenes, Beguines, Arnoldists, and Waldenses. But the code did not regard this enumeration as exhaustive, and adds to the names "all heretics of both sexes, whatever be the term used to designate them." And in fact the list is not exhaustive, for it does not include the respectable group of Northern Italy known as the Humiliati, or the Ortlibenses of Strassburg, or the Apostolicals of Belgium. One document speaks of no less than seventy-two, and Salimbene of one hundred and thirty different sects.962   The council of Verona, 1183, condemned, "first of all the Cathari and Patarenes and those who falsely called themselves Humiliati or Poor Men of Lyons, also the Passagini, Josephini, and Arnoldists, whom we put under perpetual Anathema." The lack of compact organization explains in part the number of these names, some of which were taken from localities or towns and did not indicate any differences of belief or practice from other sectaries. The numbers of the heretics must be largely a matter of conjecture. A panic took hold of the Church authorities, and some of the statements, like those of Innocent III., must be regarded as exaggerations, as are often the rumors about a hostile army in a panic-stricken country, awaiting its arrival. Innocent pronounced the number of heretics in Southern France innumerable.963  According to the statement of Neumeister, a heretical bishop who was burnt, the number of Waldensian heretics in Austria about 1300 was eighty thousand.964  The writer, usually designated "the Passau Anonymous," writing about 1315, said there was scarcely a land in which the Waldenses had not spread. The Cathari in Southern France mustered large armies and were massacred by the thousands. Of all these sects, the only one which has survived is the very honorable body, still known as the Waldenses.

The mediaeval dissenters have sometimes been classed with the Protestants. The classification is true only on the broad ground of their common refusal to be bound by the yoke of the Catholic hierarchy. Some of the tenets of the dissenters and some of their practices the Protestant Reformation repudiated, fully as much as did the established Church of the Middle Ages. Interesting as they are in themselves and by reason of the terrible ordeals they were forced to undergo, the sects were side currents compared with the great stream of the Catholic Church, to which, with all its abuses and persecuting enormities, the credit belongs of Christianizing the barbarians, developing learning, building cathedrals, cultivating art, furnishing hymns, constructing theological systems, and in other ways contributing to the progress of mankind. That which makes them most interesting to us is their revolt against the priesthood, in which they all agreed, and the emphasis they laid upon purity of speech and purity of life. Their history shows many good men, but no great personality. Peter Waldo is the most notable among their leaders.

A clear classification of the mediaeval heretics is made difficult if not impossible by the uncertainty concerning the opinions held by some of them and also by the apparent confusion of one sect with another by mediaeval writers.

The Cathari, or Manichaean heretics, form a class by themselves. The Waldenses, Humiliati, and probably the Arnoldists, represent the group of evangelical dissenters. The Amauricians and probably the Ortlibenses were pantheistic. he isolated leaders, Peter de Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, Eudo, and Tanchelm, were preachers and iconoclasts—using the term in a good sense—rather than founders of sects. The Beguines and Beghards represented a reform movement within the Church, one wing going off into paths of doctrinal heresy and lawlessness, and incurring thereby the anathemas of the ecclesiastical authorities.

§ 80. The Cathari.

The most widely distributed of the heretical sects were the Cathari. The term comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure, and has given to the German its word for heretic, Ketzer. It was first used by the Cathari themselves.965  A grotesque derivation, invented by their enemies, associated the sect with the cat, whose form it was the pleasure of the devil to assume.966  From their dualistic tenets they were called New Manichaeans. From the quarter they inhabited in Milan, called Pataria, or the abode of the junk dealers, they received the name Patarenes.967

In Southern France they were called Albigenses, from the town of Albi, one of the centres of their strength. From the territory in Eastern Europe, whence their theological tenets were drawn, they were known as Bulgari, Bugares, or Bugres.968  Other titles were given to them in France, such as Tessarants, Textores, from their strength among the weavers and industrial classes, or Publicani and Poplicani, a corruption of Paulicians.969

It was the general belief of the age that the Cathari derived their doctrinal views from heretical sects of Eastern Europe and the Orient, such as the Paulicians and Bogomili. This was brought out in the testimony of members of the sect at their trials, and it has in its favor the official recognition which leaders from Eastern Europe, Bosnia, and Constantinople gave to the Western heretics. The Paulicians had existed since the fifth century in Asia Minor, and had pushed their way to Constantinople.970  The Bogomili, who were of later origin, had a position of some prominence in Constantinople in the early part of the twelfth century.971  It is also possible that seeds of Manichaean and Arian heresy were left in Italy and Southern France after these systems were supposed to be stamped out in those regions.

The Paulicians rejected the Old Testament and taught a strict dualism. The Bogomili held to the Sabellian Trinity, rejected the eucharist, and substituted for baptism with water a ritual of prayer and the imposition of hands. Marriage they pronounced an unclean relationship. The worship of images and the use of the cross were discarded.

It was in the early years of the eleventh century, that the first reports of the appearance of heresy were bruited about here and there in Italy and Southern France. About the year 1000 a certain Leuthard, claiming to be inspired, appeared in the diocese of Châlons, destroying crosses and denouncing tithes. In 1012 Manichaean separatists appeared for the first time in Germany, at Mainz,972 and in 1022 at Orleans, where King Robert and his consort Constance were present at their trial. Fifteen were tried, and thirteen remained steadfast and perished in the flames. Constance is said to have struck one of them, her former confessor, with a staff and to have put out one of his eyes.973  Heretics appeared at Liège in 1025. About the same time a group was discovered in Treves who denied transubstantiation and rejected infant baptism.974  The castle of Monteforte near Turin became a stronghold for them, and in 1034 Heribert, archbishop of Milan, seized some of their number, including their leader Gerard. They all accepted death in the flames rather than adore a cross. In 1052 they appeared at Goslar, where the guilty were discerned by their refusal to kill a chicken. With these notices, and a few more like them, the rumor of heresy is exhausted for nearly a century.

About the middle of the twelfth century, heresy suddenly appeared again at Liége, and prosecutions were begun. In 1145 eight men and three women were burnt at Cologne. The firmness of the victims was exemplified in the case of a young woman, who was held back for a time with the promise of marriage, but, on seeing her coreligionists burnt, broke from her keepers and, hiding her face in her dress, threw herself into the flames. And so, Caesar of Heisterbach goes on to say, she descended with her fellow-heretics to hell.975  At Rheims, 1157, and again at Cologne in 1163 we hear of trials and burnings, but thereafter the Cathari are no more heard of in Germany.

Their only appearance in England was at Oxford, 1161, when more than thirty illiterate Germans, men and women, strove to propagate their errors. They were reported as "detesting" marriage, the eucharist, baptism, and the Catholic Church, and as having quoted Matt. 5:10, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." A council of bishops ordered them branded on the forehead and flogged.976  Henry II. would not allow heretics to be burnt to death, though offences in his reign against the forest laws were punished with blinding and castration.977

In France the Cathari were strong enough in 1167 to hold a council at St. Felix de Caraman near Toulouse. It was attended by Nicetas of Constantinople, to whom the title of pope was given. He was accompanied by a Catharan bishop, Marcus of Lombardy.978   Contemporary reports represent the number of heretics as very large. They were compared by William of Newburgh to the sand of the sea, and were said by Walter Map to be infinite in number in Aquitaine and Burgundy.979   By the end of the twelfth century they were reported to have followers in nearly 1000 cities.980   The Dominican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves.981  Joachim of Flore stated that they were sending out their emissaries like locusts.982  Such statements are not to be taken too seriously, but they indicate a widespread religious unrest. Men did not know whereunto heresy might grow. In Southern France the priests were the objects of ridicule. In that region, as well as in many of the cities of Lombardy, the Cathari had schools for girls and boys.

Agreed as the Cathari were in opposing many customs and doctrines of the established Church, they were divided among themselves and broken up into sects,—seventy-two, according to one document.983  Chief among them were the Albanenses and Concorrezzi, deriving their names from two Lombard towns, Alba and Concorreggio, near Monza.984  A position intermediate between them was occupied by the Bagnolenses, so called from the Italian town of Bagnolo, near Lodi. This third party had a bishop whose authority was acknowledged by the Cathari in Mantua, Brescia, and Bergamo.985

The differences between the Albanenses and Concorrezzi were of a theological character and concerned the nature of God and the origin of matter. The Albanenses were strict dualists. Matter is eternal and the product of the evil god. Paul speaks of the things, which are seen, as dung. The Concorrezzi seem to have rejected dualism and to have regarded evil as the creation of Lucifer, the highest of the angels.

In matters of ritual and practical conduct, and in antagonism to the Church establishment, all groups of the Cathari were agreed. Since Schmidt wrote his History of the Cathari, it has been common to represent Catharism as a philosophical system,986 but it is difficult to understand the movement from this standpoint. How could an unlettered folk, as they were, be concerned primarily or chiefly with a metaphysical construction?  Theirs was not a philosophy, but a daily faith and practice. This view alone makes it possible to understand how the movement gained such rapid and widespread acceptance in the well-ordered and prosperous territory of Southern France, a territory in which Cluny had exercised its influence and was located.

The Cathari agreed—to use the expression of their opponents—in vituperating the established Church and in calling its adherents Romanists. There are two Churches, they held,—one of the wicked and one of the righteous. They themselves constituted the Church of the righteous, outside of which there is no salvation,987 having received the imposition of hands and done penance according to the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. Its fruits proved that the established Church was not the true Church. The true Church endures persecution, does not prescribe it. The Roman Church sits in the place of rule and is clothed in purple and fine linen. The true Church teaches first. The Roman Church baptizes first. The true Church has no dignitaries, prelates, cardinals, archdeacons, or monks. The Roman Church is the woman of the Apocalypse, a harlot, and the pope anti-Christ.

The depositions at their trials indicate that the Cathari made much use of the Scriptures. The treatises of Bonacursus, Ermengaudus, and other writers in refutation of Catharan teachings abound in quotations of Scripture, a fact indicating the regard the heretics had for them. They put spiritual interpretations upon the miracles and freely allegorized parables. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man who fell among the thieves was Adam, whose spirit, at God’s command, descended from heaven to earth and fell among thieves in this lower world.988  The priest and the Levite were Melchizedek and Aaron, who went the "same way," that is, could not help him. The Old Testament they discredited, pronouncing it the work of the devil. Its God is an evil god.989

The Catharan doctrine seems to have highly exalted Christ, though it denied the full reality of his human nature. He was created in heaven and was not born on the earth, but passed through Mary as through a pipe. He neither ate material food nor drank material drink. As for John the Baptist, he was one of the major demons and was damned for doubting when he sent to Christ the question, "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?"990

A strange account of the fall of the angels was current in Southern France. Satan ascended to heaven and waited in vain thirty-two years for admittance. He was then noticed and admitted by the porter. Hidden from the Father, he remained among the angels a year before he began to use his art to deceive. He asked them whether they had no other glory or pleasure besides what he saw. When they replied they had not, he asked whether they would not like to descend to his world and kingdom, promising to give them gifts, fields, vineyards, springs, meadows, fruits, gold, silver, and women. Then he began to praise woman and the pleasures of the flesh. When they inquired more particularly about the women, the devil said he would descend and bring one back with him. This he did. The woman was decked in jewels and gold and beautiful of form. The angels were inflamed with passion, and Satan seeing this, took her and left heaven. The angels followed. The exodus continued for nine days and nights, when God closed up the fissure which had been made.991

The Cathari divided themselves into two classes, the Perfecti  and the Credentes,  or Believers. The Perfect were those who had received the rite of the consolamentum , and were also called bons hommes,992  good men, or good Christians, or the Girded, vestiti ,993  from the fact that after receiving the consolamentum they bound themselves with a cord. The number of the Good Men, Rainerius, about 1250, gave as four thousand. The Credentes corresponded, in a general way, to the catechumens of the early Church, and placed all their hope in the consolamentum, which they looked forward to receiving. By a contract, called the convenenza , the Catharan officials pledged themselves to administer the consolamentum to the Credentes in their last hours.

The consolamentum took the place of baptism and meant more. Its administration was treated by the Catholic authorities as equivalent to an initiation into heresy — haereticatio, as it was called. The usual form in which the court stated the charge of heresy was, "He has submitted to heretication."994  The rite, which women also were allowed to administer, was performed with the laying on of hands and the use of the Gospel of John, which was imposed upon the head or placed at the candidate’s breast.995  The candidate made a confession of all his sins of thought, word, work, and vision, and placed his faith and hope in God and the consolamentum which he was about to receive. The kiss of peace followed.996

The Perfect had a monopoly of salvation. Those not receiving the consolamentum were considered lost or passed at death into another body and returned to the earth. The rite involved not only the absolution of all previous sins but of sins that might be committed thereafter. However, relapse was possible and sometimes occurred.997  At death, the spirit was reunited with the soul, which had been left behind in heaven. There is no resurrection of the body. The administration of the consolamentum seems to have been confined to adults until the fourteenth century, when it was administered to sick children. Those who submitted to it were said to have, made a good ending."998

The consolamentum involved the renunciation of the seven sacraments. Baptism with water was pronounced a material and corruptible thing, the work of the evil god. Even little children were not saved who received absolution and imposition of bands.999  The baptism of the established Church was the baptism of John the Baptist, and John’s baptism was an invention of the devil.1000  Christ made a clear distinction between baptism with water and the baptism of power, Acts 1:5. The latter he promised to the Church.

As for the eucharist, the Cathari held that God would not appoint the consecrated host as a medium of grace, nor can God be in the host, for it passes through the belly, and the vilest part of the body.1001  For the mass was substituted consecrated bread before the common meal. This bread was often kept for months. There was also, in some quarters, a more solemn celebration twelve times a year, called the apparellamentum, and the charge was very frequently made that the accused had attended this feast.1002  Some deposed that they were eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood while they were listening to the words of Scripture. Among the requirements made of those who received the consolamentum were that they should not touch women, eat animal food, kill animals, take oaths, or favor war and capital punishment.

The marriage bed was renounced as contrary to God’s law, and some went so far as to say openly that the human body was made by the devil. The love of husband and wife should be like the love of Christ for the Church, without carnal desire. The command to avoid looking on a woman, Matt. 5:27, 28, was taken literally, and the command to leave husband and wife was interpreted to mean the renunciation of sexual cohabitation. Witnesses condemned marriage absolutely,1003 and no man or woman living in sexual relations could be saved. The opinion prevailed, at least among some Catharan groups, that the eating of the forbidden fruit in Eden meant carnal cohabitation.1004

As for animal nourishment, not only were all meats forbidden, but also eggs and cheese. The reason given was that these were the product of carnal intercourse.1005  The words of Peter on the housetop, Acts 10:14, were also quoted. The Cathari, however, allowed themselves fish, in view of Christ’s example in feeding the multitude and his example after his resurrection, when he gave fish to his disciples. The killing of animals, birds, and insects, except frogs and serpents, was also forbidden.1006  The ultimate ground for this refusal to kill animal life was stated by one of the Inquisitorial manuals to be a belief in metempsychosis, the return of the souls of the dead in the bodies of animals.

The condemnation of capital punishment was based on such passages as: "Give place unto wrath, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," Rom. 12:19; and the judicial execution of heretics and criminals was pronounced homicide, a survival from the Old Testament and the influence of its evil god. The Cathari quoted Christ’s words, "Ye have heard how it hath been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."1007  One of the charges made against the established Church was that it countenanced war and marshalled armies.

The interdiction of oaths was in obedience to the words of Christ, and was in the interest of strict integrity of speech.1008

The Cathari also renounced priestly vestments, altars, and crosses as idolatrous. They called the cross the mark of the beast, and declared it had no more virtue than a ribbon for binding the hair. It was the instrument of Christ’s shame and death, and therefore not to be used.1009  Thorns or a spear would be as appropriate for religious symbols as the cross.

They also rejected, as might have been expected, the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences.1010

In addition to the consolamentum, the Cathari practised two rites called the melioramentum and the endura.1011  The melioramentum, which is adduced again and again in the judicial sentences, was a veneration of the officials administering the consolamentum, and consisted of a threefold salutation. The Catholics regarded it as a travesty of the adoration of the host.1012

The endura, which has been called the most cruel practice the history of asceticism has to show, was a voluntary starvation unto death by those who had received the consolamentum. Sometimes these rigorous religionists waited for thirteen days for the end to come,1013 and parents are said even to have left their sick children without food, and mothers to have withdrawn the breast from nursing infants in executing the rite. The reports of such voluntary suicide are quite numerous.

Our knowledge of the form of Church government practised by the Cathari is scant. Some of the groups of Italy and Languedoc had bishops. The bishop had as assistants a "major" and a "minor" son and a deacon, the two former taking the bishop’s place in his absence.1014  Assemblies were held, as in 1241, on the banks of the Larneta, under the presidency of the heretical bishop of Albi, Aymeri de Collet. A more compact organization would probably have been adopted but for the measures of repression everywhere put in force against the sect.

The steadfast endurance of the Catharan dissenters before hostile tribunals and in the face of death belong to the annals of heroism and must call forth our admiration as it called forth the wonder of contemporaries like Bernard.1015  We live, said Everwin of Steinfeld,1016 —

"A hard and wandering life. We flee from city to city like sheep in the midst of wolves. We suffer persecution like the Apostles and the martyrs because our life to holy and austere. It is passed amidst prayers, abstinence, and labors, but everything is easy for us because we are not of this world."

Dr. Lea, the eminent authority on the Inquisition, has said (I. 104) that no religion can show a more unbroken roll of victims who unshrinkingly and joyfully sought death in its most abhorrent form in preference to apostasy than the Cathari. Serious as some of the errors were which they held, nevertheless their effort to cultivate piety by other methods than the Church was offering calls for sympathy. Their rupture with the established organization can be to a Protestant no reason for condemnation; and their dependence upon the Scriptures and their moral tendencies must awaken within him a feeling of kinship. He cannot follow them in their rejection of baptism and the eucharist. In the repudiation of judicial oaths and war, they anticipated some of the later Christian bodies, such as the Quakers and Mennonites.

§ 81. Peter de Bruys and Other Independent Leaders.

Independent of the Cathari and yet sharing some of their views and uniting with them in protest against the abuses of the established Church, were Peter de Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, and other leaders. Peter and Henry exercised their influence in Southern France. Tanchelm and Eudo preached in Flanders and Brittany. At least three of them died in prison or otherwise suffered death by violence. Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable, Otto of Freising, and other contemporary Catholic writers are very severe upon them and speak contemptuously of their followers as drawn from the ignorant classes.

Tanchelm, a layman, preached in the diocese of Cologne and westwards to Antwerp and Utrecht. There was at the time only a single priest in Antwerp, and he living in concubinage. Tanchelm pronounced the sacraments of no avail when performed by a priest of immoral life and is said to have turned "very many from the faith and the sacraments."1017  He surrounded himself with an armed retinue and went through the country carrying a sword and preceded by a flag. Success turned his head. According to his contemporary, Abaelard, he gave himself out to be the Son of God.1018  He went through the public ceremony of marrying the Virgin Mary, with her portrait before him. The people are said by Norbert’s biographer to have drunk the water Tanchelm washed in. He was imprisoned by the archbishop of Cologne, made his escape, and was killed by a priest, 1115. His preaching provoked the settlement of twelve Premonstrants in Antwerp, and Norbert himself preached in the Netherlands, 1124.

The movement in Brittany was led by Eudo de l’Etoile, who also pretended to be the Son of God. He was one of the sect of the Apostolicals, a name given to heretical groups in France and Belgium whose members refused flesh and repudiated marriage and other sacraments.1019  Eudo died in prison about 1148.

The movement led by Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne was far more substantial. Both leaders were men of sound sense and ability. Of the personal fortunes of Peter, nothing more is known than that he was a priest, appeared as a reformer about 1105 in Southern France, and was burnt to death, 1126. Peter the Venerable has given us a tolerably satisfactory account of his teachings and their effect.1020

Of Henry of Lausanne, Peter’s successor, we know more.1021  He was a Benedictine monk, endowed with an unusual gift of eloquence. His name is associated with Lausanne because, as Bernard tells us, he at one time lived there. The place of his birth is not known. Abandoning the convent, he preached in the diocese of Le Mans during the absence of its bishop, Hildebert, in Rome, and by his permission. Henry won the people, but drew upon himself the hostility of the clergy whose vices he denounced. The bishop, on his return, expelled Henry from his diocese. The evangelist then went to Lausanne and from there to Southern France, joining in the spiritual crusade opened by Peter de Bruys. He practised poverty and preached it to the laity. One of the results of his preaching was that women of loose morals repented and young men were persuaded to marry them. Cardinal Alberic, sent to stamp out the Henrician heresy, called to his aid St. Bernard, the bishop of Chartres and other prelates. According to Bernard’s biographer, miracles attended Bernard’s activity.1022  Henry was seized and imprisoned. What his end was, is not known.

Peter the Venerable, at the outset of his treatise, laid down five errors of the Petrobrusians which he proposed to show the falseness and wickedness of. (1) The baptism of persons before they have reached the years of discretion is invalid. Believers’ baptism was based upon Mark 16:16, and children, growing up, were rebaptized. (2) Church edifices and consecrated altars are useless. (3) Crosses should be broken up and burnt. (4) The mass is nothing in the world. (5) Prayers, alms, and other good works are unavailing for the dead. These heresies the good abbot of Cluny called the five poisonous bushes, quinque vigulta venenata, which Peter de Bruys had planted. He gives half of his space to the refutation of the heresy about baptism.

Peter and Henry revived the Donatistic view that piety is essential to a legitimate priesthood. The word "Church" signifies the congregation of the faithful and consists in the unity of the assembled believers and not in the stones of the building.1023  God may be worshipped as acceptably in the marketplace or a stable as in a consecrated edifice. They preached on the streets and in the open places. As for the cross, as well might a halter or a sword be adored. Peter is said to have cooked meat in the fire made by the crosses he piled up and burnt at St. Gilles, near the mouth of the Rhone. Song, they said, was fit for the tavern, but not for the worship of God. God is to be worshipped with the affections of the heart and cannot be moved by vocal notes or wood by musical modulations.1024

The doctrine of transubstantiation was distinctly renounced, and perhaps the Lord’s Supper, on the ground that Christ gave up his body on the night of the betrayal once for all.1025  Peter not only called upon the priests to marry, but according to Peter the Venerable, he forced unwilling monks to take wives.

St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable,1026 opposing the heretical view about infant baptism, laid stress upon Christ’s invitation to little children and his desire to have them with him in heaven. Peter argued that for nearly five hundred years Europe had had no Christian not baptized in infancy, and hence according to the sectaries had no Christians at all. If it had no Christians, then it had no Church; if no Church, then no Christ. And if this were the case, then all our fathers perished; for, being baptized in infancy, they were not baptized at all. Peter and Henry laid chief stress upon the four Gospels, but it does not appear that they set aside any part of the Scriptures.1027

The synod of Toulouse, 1119, in condemning as heretics those who rejected the Lord’s Supper, infant baptism, and priestly ordination, condemned the Petrobrusians, though Peter de Bruys is not mentioned by name. Those who hung upon the preaching of Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne were soon lost among the Cathari and other sects.1028  Bernard’s description of the religious conditions in Southern France is no doubt rhetorical, but shows the widespread disaffection which prevailed at that time against the Church. He says that churches were without worshippers, the people without priests, and Christians without Christ. The sanctuary of the Lord was no longer regarded as sacred or the sacraments as holy. The festival days were deprived of their solemnities. The children were debarred from life by the denial of baptism, and souls were hurried to the last tribunal, unreconciled by penance and unfortified by the communion.

§ 82. The Amaurians and Other Isolated Sects.

Occupying a distinct place of their own were the pantheistic coteries of dissenters, the Amaurians and Ortlibenses, and perhaps other groups, like the Passagians and Speronistae, of which we know scarcely more than the names.

The Amaurians, or Amauricians,1029 derived their origin from the speculations of the Paris professor, Amaury of Bena, a town in the diocese of Chartres. Innocent III. cited him to appear at Rome and condemned his views. On his return to Paris, the university obliged him to publicly confess his errors. He died about 1204. His followers were condemned by a synod, held in Paris, 1209.

From the detailed account given by Caesar of Heisterbach, we learn that a number of Amaury’s followers were seized and examined by the bishops. Eight priests and William the Goldsmith, called also one of the seven apostles, were burnt. Four other priests were condemned to lifelong imprisonment. Amaury’s bones were exhumed and thrown into a field.1030

The Amaurians seem to have relied for their pantheistic views upon John Scotus Erigena, whose work, De divisione naturae, was also condemned at the synod of Paris, 1209. Amaury’s system was also condemned by the Fourth Lateran, which represented him as holding that God was all things, deus erat omnia. To this he added the two doctrines that every Christian must believe that he is a member of Christ’s body, this faith being as necessary to salvation as the faith in Christ’s birth and death; and that to him who abides in love, sin is not reckoned. God becomes incarnate in believers who are members of Christ’s body, as He became incarnate in the body of Jesus. God was as much in the body of Ovid as He was in the body of Augustine. Christ is no more in the consecrated bread than in any other bread or object. The Amaurians denied the resurrection of the body, and said that heaven and hell are states of the soul. The sinner carries hell in himself, even as a mouth holds a bad tooth.1031  The believer can no more sin than can the Holy Spirit who dwells in him. The pope is antichrist and the Roman Church, Babylon. The relics of the martyrs are nothing but dust.

From these statements the conclusion is to be drawn that Amaury and his followers insisted upon the liberty of the Spirit working independently of outer rites and dwelling in the heart. The Fourth Lateran, in its second canon, declared that the father of lies had so blinded Amaury’s mind that his doctrine was the raving of an insane man rather than a heresy. Amaury absorbed Joachism, for he speaks of three ages, the ages of the Father and the Son, and the age of the Spirit, which was the last age, had begun in Amaury’s time, and would continue to the consummation of all things. Amaury’s followers seem to have become merged with the Brethren of the Free Spirit.1032

The synod of Paris, which condemned the Amaurians, also condemned David of Dinant, and ordered one of his works, the Quarternuli, burnt. His writings were also forbidden by the statutes of the University of Paris of 1215, which forbade the reading of some of the works of Aristotle, Amaury the heretic, and Maurice of Spain.1033  David seems to have been a professor at Paris and died after 1215. He shared the pantheism of Amaury, was quoted by Albertus Magnus, and his speculations have been compared with the system of Spinoza.1034

Belonging to the same class were the followers of Ortlieb of Strassburg, called Ortlibenses, Ortilibarii, Oriliwenses, Ortoleni,1035 and by other similar names. Some of their number were probably among the many heretics burnt in Strassburg, 1212. They were charged with holding that the world is eternal and God is immanent in all things. He did not have a Son, till Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary. They denied the resurrection of the body. The death and resurrection of Christ had only a symbolic import. The body of Christ is no more in the eucharistic bread than in any other bread. The established Church was the courtesan of the Apocalypse. The four Gospels are the chief parts of the Scriptures. They allowed marriage but condemned carnal cohabitation. The Ortlibenses were, like the Amaurians, spiritualists, and said that a man must follow the guidance of the Spirit who dwells in him.1036  They were a part of that extensive group designated by the general name of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who fill so large a place as late as the fifteenth century.

The Passagii, or Passageni, a sect whose name is first mentioned in the acts of the synod of Verona, seem to have been unique in that they required the literal observance of the Mosaic law, including the Jewish Sabbath and circumcision. It is possible they are identical with the Circumcisi spoken of in the code of Frederick II. As late as 1267 and 1274 papal bulls call for the punishment of heretics who had gone back to Jewish rites, and the Passagii1037 may be referred to.

The Luciferans1038 were so called on account of the prominence they gave Lucifer as the prince of the lost angels and the maker of the material world and the body, and not because they worshipped Lucifer. It is doubtful whether they were a distinct sect. The name was applied without precision to Cathari and others who held that Lucifer was unjustly cast out of heaven. Heretics of this name were burnt in Passau and Saltzburg, 1312–1315 and 1338, and as late as 1395 in other parts of Austria.

As for the Warini, Speronistae, and Josephini, who are also mentioned in the Frederican code, we know nothing more than the names.1039

§ 83. The Beguines and Beghards.

While the Cathari and Waldenses were engaging the attention of the Church authorities in Southern Europe, communities, called Beguines and Beghards, were being formed along the lower Rhine and in the territories adjacent to it. They were lay associations intended at first to foster a warmer type of piety than they found in the Church.1040  Their aims were closely allied to the aims of the Tertiaries of St. Francis, and at a later period they were merged with them. Long before the close of the thirteenth century, some of these communities developed immoral practices and heretical tenets, which called forth the condemnation of pope and synods.

The Beguines, who were chiefly women, seem to have derived their origin and their name from Lambert le Bègue, a priest of Liége, who died about 1177.1041  In a document of that year he is said to have preached to women and girls the value of chastity by word and example.1042  It was a time when priestly concubinage in Holland was general. Like Peter Valdez, Lambert gave up his goods, sought to make known the Scriptures to the people, and founded in Liége the hospital of St. Christopher and a house for women which in derision was called the beguinage. The women renounced their goods and lived a semi-conventual life, but took no vows and followed none of the approved monastic Rules. Houses were established in Flanders, France, and especially in Germany, as for example at Valenciennes, 1212, Douai, 1219, Antwerp, 1230, Ghent, 1233, Frankfurt, 1242. In 1264 St. Louis built a beguinage in Paris which he remembered in his will. The beguinage of Ghent was a small town in itself, with walls, infirmary, church, cemetery, and conventual dwellings. According to Matthew Paris, writing of the year 1250, their number in Germany, especially in the vicinity of Cologne, was countless.1043  Their houses were often named after their founders, as the Schelenhaus in Cologne, after Herman Schele, the Burgenhaus in Strassburg (1292), after a widow by the name of Burga. Other secular names were given, such as the Golden Frog, zum goldenen Frosch, the Wolf, zum Wolf, the Eagle, zum Adler.1044

The communities supported themselves by spinning, weaving, caring for the sick, and other occupations. Some of the houses forbade begging. Some of them, as those in Cologne, were afterwards turned into hospitals. As a rule they practised mendicancy and went about in the streets crying Brod durch Gott,  "Bread for the sake of God." They wore a distinctive dress.1045

The earliest community of Beghards known to us is the community of Löwen, 1220. The Beghards practised mendicancy and they spread as far as Poland and Switzerland. It was not long till they were charged with loose tendencies, a disregard of the hierarchy, and heresy. Neither the Beguines as a body nor the Beghards ever received distinct papal sanction.1046

Both associations were the objects of synodal enactment as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. The synod of Mainz, 1259, warned the Beghards against going through the streets, crying, "Bread for God’s sake," and admonished them to put aside offensive peculiarities and not to mingle with Beguines. Another synod of Mainz, 1261, referred to scandals among the Beguines. A synod of Cologne, a year later, condemned their unchurchly independence and bade them confess to priests on pain of excommunication. In 1310 synods, held at Treves and Mainz, forbade clerics entering beguinages on any pretext whatever and forbade Beghards explaining the Bible to the ignorant.1047

The communities became more and more the objects of suspicion, and a sharp blow was struck at them in 1312 by Clement V. and the council of Vienne. The council forbade their communal mode of life, and accused them of heresies.1048  They were accused of refusing to adore the host and of holding that it is possible to reach a state of perfection in this world. A person reaching this state is under no obligation to fast and pray, but may yield himself without sin to all the appetites of the body.1049

Clement’s bull erred by its failure to discriminate between heretical and orthodox communities, a defect which was corrected by John XXII. This pope expressly gave protection to the orthodox communities. In the fourteenth century, the number of houses increased very rapidly in Germany and by 1400 there was scarcely a German town which had not its beguinage. Up to that date, fifty-seven had been organized in Frankfurt, and in the middle of the fifteenth century there were one hundred and six such houses in Cologne and sixty in Strassburg. In 1368 Erfurt had four hundred Beguines and Beghards.1050

In the earlier part of the fourteenth century, the Beguines appeared in Southern France, where the Inquisition associated them closely with the Tertiaries of St. Francis and accused them of adopting the views of John Peter Olivi.1051

In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the Inquisition broke up many of the houses in Germany, their effects being equally divided between itself, the poor, and the municipality. Gregory XI., 1377, recognized that many of the Beghards were leading good lives. Boniface IX., 1394, made a sharp distinction between the communities and classed the heterodox Beghards with Lollards and Swestriones.1052  But to other "Beghards and Beguines, who practised voluntary poverty"1053 and devoted themselves to the good of the people, he gave papal recognition. To avoid persecution, many of them took refuge with the Franciscans and enrolled themselves as Tertiaries of the Franciscan order. With the Reformation the Beghards and Beguines for the most part disappear as separate communities.1054

These sectaries were in part forerunners and contemporaries of other communities with a pious and benevolent design developed in Holland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with which German mysticism is closely associated.

§ 84. The Waldenses.

"O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings

Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings;

A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay,

Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!"

Whittier, The Vaudois Teacher.

Distinct from the Cathari and other sects in origin and doctrine, but sharing with them the condemnation of the established Church, were the Waldenses. The Cathari lived completely apart from the Catholic Church. The Waldenses, leaning upon the Scriptures, sought to revive the simple precepts of the Apostolic age. They were the strictly biblical sect of the Middle Ages. This fact, and the pitiless and protracted persecutions to which they were subjected, long ago won the sympathies of the Protestant churches. They present a rare spectacle of the survival of a body of believers which has come up out of great tribulation.

Southern France was their first home, but they were a small party as compared with the Albigenses in those parts. From France they spread into Piedmont, and also into Austria and Germany, as recent investigations have clearly brought out. In Italy, they continue to this day in their ancestral valleys and, since 1870, endowed with full rights of citizenship. In Austria, they kept their light burning as in a dark place for centuries, had a close historic connection with the Hussites and Bohemian Brethren, and prepared, in some measure, the way for the Anabaptists in the time of the Reformation.

The Waldenses derive their origin and name from Peter Waldus or Valdez,1055 who died before 1218, as all the contemporary writers agree. They were also called Poor Men of Lyons, from the city on the Rhone where they originated, and the Sandalati or Sandalled, from the coarse shoes they wore.1056

The name by which they were known among themselves was Brethren or the Poor of Christ,1057 based probably upon Matt. 5:3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." According to the Anonymous writer of Passau, writing in the early years of the fourteenth century, some already in his day carried the origin of the sect back to the Apostles. Until recently all Waldensian writers have claimed for it Apostolic origin or gone at least as far back as the seventh century. Professor Comba, of the Waldensian school in Florence, has definitely given up this theory in deference to the investigations of Dieckhoff, Herzog, and other German scholars.

Of Waldo’s life little is known. A prosperous merchant of Lyons, he was aroused to religious zeal by the sudden death of a leading citizen of the city, of which he was a witness, and by a ballad he heard sung by a minstrel on the public square. The song was about St. Alexis, the son of wealthy parents who no sooner returned from the marriage altar than, impressed by the claims of celibacy, he left his bride, to start on a pilgrimage to the East. On his return he called on his relatives and begged them to give him shelter, but they did not recognize who he was till they found him dead. The moral drawn from the tale was: life is short, the times are evil, prepare for heaven.

Waldo sought counsel from a priest, who told him there were many ways to heaven, but if he would be perfect, he must obey Christ’s precepts, and go and sell all that he had and give to the poor, and follow him. It was the text that had moved Anthony of Egypt to flee from society. Waldo renounced his property, sent his two daughters to the convent of Fontevrault, gave his wife a portion of his goods, and distributed the remainder to the poor. This was about 1170.

His rule of life, Waldo drew from the plain precepts of the Bible. He employed Bernard Ydros and Stephen of Ansa to translate into the vernacular the Gospels and other parts of the Scriptures, together with sayings of the Fathers. He preached, and his followers, imitating his example, preached in the streets and villages, going about two by two.1058  When the archbishop of Lyons attempted to stop them, they replied that "they ought to obey God, rather than men."

Very unexpectedly the Waldenses made their appearance at the Third Lateran council, 1179, at least two of their number being present. They besought Alexander III. to give his sanction to their mode of life and to allow them to go on preaching. They presented him with a copy of their Bible translation. The pope appointed a commission to examine them. Its chairman, Walter Map, an Englishman of Welsh descent and the representative of the English king, has left us a curious account of the examination. He ridicules their manners and lack of learning.1059  They fell an easy prey to his questionings, like birds, as he says, who do not see the trap or net, but think they have a safe path. He commenced with the simplest of questions, being well aware, as he said, that a donkey which can eat much oats does not disdain milk diet. On asking them whether they believed in the persons of the Trinity they answered, "Yes." And "in the Mother of Christ?"  To this they also replied "Yes." At that the committee burst out laughing at their ignorance, for it was not proper to believe in, but to believe on, Mary. "Being poor themselves, they follow Christ who was poor,—nudi nudum Christum sequentes. Certainly it is not possible for them to take a more humble place, for they have scarcely learned to walk. If we admit them, we ourselves ought to be turned out." This vivacious committee-man, who delighted so much in chit-chat, as the title of his book indicates, further says that the Waldenses went about barefooted, clad in sheep-skins, and had all things common like the Apostles.

Without calling the Waldenses by name, the council forbade them to preach. The synod of Verona, 1184, designated them as "Humiliati, or Poor Men of Lyons," and anathematized them, putting them into the same category with the Cathari and Patarines. Their offence was preaching without the consent of the bishops.

Although they were expelled from Lyons and excommunicated by the highest authority of the Church, the Waldenses ceased not to teach and preach. They were called to take part in disputations at Narbonne (1190) and other places. They were charged with being in rebellion against the ecclesiastical authorities and with daring to preach, though they were only laymen. Durandus of Huesca, who had belonged to their company, withdrew in 1207 and took up a propaganda against them. He went to Rome and secured the pope’s sanction for a new order under the name of the "Catholic Poor" who were bound to poverty; the name, as is probable, being derived from the sect he had abandoned.

Spreading into Lombardy, they met a party already organized and like-minded. This party was known as the Humiliati. Its adherents were plain in dress and abstained from oaths and falsehood and from lawsuits. The language, used by the Third Oecumenical council and the synod of Verona, identified them with the Poor Men of Lyons.1060  Originally, as we know from other sources, the two groups were closely affiliated. It is probable that Waldo and his followers on their visits in Lombardy won so much favor with the older sect that it accepted Waldo’s leadership. At a later date, a portion of the Humiliati associated themselves in convents, and received the sanction of Innocent III. It seems probable that they furnished the model for the third order of St. Francis.1061  One portion of the Humiliati early became known as the Poor Men of Lombardy and had among their leaders, John of Roncho. A portion of them, if not all, were treated by contemporaries as his followers and called Runcarii.1062  Contemporary writers treat the two groups as parts of the same body and distinguish them as the Ultramontane and the Lombard Poor Men or as the Ultramontane and Italic Brethren.1063

A dispute arose between the Humiliati and the Poor Men of Lyons as to their relation to one another and to Peter Waldo, which led to a conference, in 1218, at Bergamo. Each party had six representatives.1064  The two points of discord were the eucharist and whether Waldo was then in paradise. The Lombards contended that the validity of the sacrament depended upon the good character of the celebrant. The question about Waldo and a certain Vivetus was, whether they had gone to heaven without having made satisfaction before their deaths for all their sins.1065  The Lyonnese claimed that Waldo was in paradise and made the recognition of this fact a condition of union with the Lombard party. The controversy at Bergamo points to a definite rejection of Waldo’s leadership by the Lombard Waldenses. Salve Burce, 1235, who ridiculed the Waldensians on the ground of their recent origin, small number, and lack of learning, compared the Poor Men of Lombardy and the Poor Men of Lyons with the two Catharan sects, the Albanenses and the Concorrezzi, and declared the four were as hostile, one to the other, as fire and water.1066  This is an isolated testimony and not to be accepted. But it is the charge, so often repeated since by the Catholic Church, that Protestantism means division and strife.

In the crusades against heretics, in Southern France, the Waldenses were included, but their sufferings were small compared with those endured by the Albigenses. Nor do they seem to have furnished many victims to the Inquisition in the fourteenth century. Although Bernard Guy opened his trials in 1308, it was not till 1316 that a Waldensian was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and another to death by burning. Three years later, twenty-six were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and three to death in the flames.1067  In 1498, Louis XII. granted them limited toleration. During the Reformation period, in 1545, twenty-two villages inhabited by the French Waldenses were pillaged and burnt by order of the parliament of Provence.

It was in Italy and Austria that the Waldenses furnished their glorious spectacle of unyielding martyrdom. From France they overflowed into Piedmont, partly to find a refuge in its high valleys, seamed by the mountain streams of the Perouse, the Luserne, and the Angrogne. There, in the Cottian Alps, they dwelt for some time without molestation. They had colonies as far south as Calabria, and the emigration continued in that direction till the fifteenth century.1068  But the time of persecution came. In 1209, Otto IV. issued an edict of banishment and in 1220 Thomas, count of Savoy, threatened with fines all showing them hospitality. But their hardy industry made them valuable subjects and for a hundred years there was no persecution in the valleys unto death. The first victim at the stake perished, 1312.

Innocent VIII., notorious for his official recognition of witchcraft, was the first papal persecutor to resort to rigorous measures. In 1487, he announced a crusade, and called upon Charles VIII. of France and the duke of Savoy to execute the decree. Everything the Waldenses had endured before, as Leger says, was as "roses and flowers" compared with what they were now called upon to suffer. Innocent furnished an army of eighteen-thousand. The Piedmontese Waldenses were forced to crouch up higher into the valleys, and were subject to almost incredible hardship. The most bitter sufferings of this Israel of the Alps were reserved for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after they had accepted the Reformation.1069  It was of the atrocious massacres perpetrated at that time that Milton exclaimed,

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints,

Whose bones he scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."

The history of the Waldensian movement in different parts of Germany and Austria has scarcely less interest than the Franco-Italian movement. It had a more extensive influence by preparing the way for other separatist and evangelical movements. It is supposed that a translation of parts of the Scriptures belonging to the Waldenses was in circulation in Metz at the end of the twelfth century. Copies were committed to the flames. It is also supposed that Waldenses were among the heretics ferreted out in Strassburg in 1212, eighty of whom were burnt, twelve priests and twenty-three women being of the number. The Waldenses spread as far north as Königsberg and Stettin and were found in Swabia, Poland, Bavaria, and especially in Bohemia and the Austrian diocese of Passau.1070

They were subjected to persecution as early as in 1260. Fifty years later there were at least forty-two Waldensian communities in Austria and a number of Waldensian schools. Neumeister, a bishop of the Austrian heretics, who suffered death with many others in 1315, testified that in the diocese of Passau alone the sect had over eighty thousand adherents.1071  In 1318 Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors were despatched to Bohemia and Poland to help the authorities in putting the heresy down. Bohemia had become the most important centre of Waldensianism. With these Austrian heretics the Poor Men of Lombardy kept up a correspondence1072 and they received from them contributions.

In spite of persecutions, the German Waldenses continued to maintain themselves to the fifteenth century.

The Austrian dissenters were active in the distribution of the Scriptures. And Whittier has based his poem of the Vaudois Teacher upon the account of the so-called Anonymous writer of Passau of the fourteenth century. He speaks of the Waldenses as going about as peddlers to the houses of the noble families and offering first gems and other goods and then the richest gem of all, the Word of God. This writer praised their honesty, industry, and sobriety. Their speech, he said, was free from oaths and falsehoods.

We have thus three types of Waldenses: the Poor Men of Lyons, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and the Austrian Waldensians.1073  As for their dissent from the established Church, it underwent in some particulars, in their later periods, a development, and on the other hand there was developed a tendency to again approach closer to the Church.1074

In their earliest period the Waldenses were not heretics, although the charge was made against them that they claimed to be "the only imitators of Christ." Closely as they and the Cathari were associated geographically and by the acts of councils, papal decrees, and in literary refutations of heresy, the Waldenses differ radically from the Cathari. They never adopted Manichaean elements. Nor did they repudiate the sacramental system of the established Church and invent strange rites of their own. They were also far removed from mysticism and have no connection with the German mystics as some of the other sectaries had. They were likewise not Protestants, for we seek in vain among them for a statement of the doctrine of justification by faith. It is possible, they held to the universal priesthood of believers. According to de Bourbon and others, they declared all good men to be priests. They placed the stress upon following the practice of the Apostles and obeying the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, and they did not know the definition which Luther put on the word "justification." They approached more closely to an opinion now current among Protestants when they said, righteousness is found only in good men and good women.1075

The first distinguishing principle of the Waldenses bore on daily conduct and was summed up in the words of the Apostles, "we ought to obey God rather than men." This the Catholics interpreted to mean a refusal to submit to the authority of the pope and prelates. All the early attacks against them contain this charge.1076  Alanus sought to refute the principle by adducing Christ’s submission to the authority of Pilate, John 19:11, and by arguing that the powers that be are ordained of God. This was, perhaps, the first positive affirmation of a Scriptural ground for religious independence made by the dissenting sects of the Middle Ages. It contains in it, as in a germ, the principle of full liberty of conscience as it was avowed by Luther at Worms.

The second distinguishing principle was the authority and popular use of the Scriptures. Here again the Waldenses anticipated the Protestant Reformation without realizing, as is probable, the full meaning of their demand. The reading of the Bible, it is true, had not yet been forbidden, but Waldo made it a living book and the vernacular translation was diligently taught. The Anonymous writer of Passau said he had seen laymen who knew almost the entire Gospels of Matthew and Luke by heart, so that it was hardly possible to quote a word without their being able to continue the text from memory.

The third principle was the importance of preaching and the right of laymen to exercise that function. Peter Waldo and his associates were lay evangelists. All the early documents refer to their practice of preaching as one of the worst heresies of the Waldenses and an evident proof of their arrogance and insubordination. Alanus calls them false preachers, pseudo-praedicatores. Innocent III., writing, in 1199, of the heretics of Metz, declared their desire to understand the Scriptures a laudable one but their meeting in secret and usurping the function of the priesthood in preaching as only evil. Alanus, in a long passage, brought against the Waldenses that Christ was sent by the Father and that Jonah, Jeremiah, and others received authority from above before they undertook to preach, for "how shall they preach unless they be sent." The Waldenses were without commission. To this charge, the Waldenses, as at the disputation of Narbonne, answered that all Christians are in duty bound to spread the Gospel in obedience to Christ’s last command and to James 4:17, "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."1077  The denial of their request by Alexander III., 1179, did not discourage them from continuing to preach in the highway and house and, as they had opportunity, in the churches.1078

The Waldenses went still further in shocking old-time custom and claimed the right to preach for women as well as for men, and when Paul’s words enjoining silence upon the women were quoted, they replied that it was with them more a question of teaching than of formal preaching and quoted back Titus 2:3, "the aged women should be teachers of good things." The abbot Bernard of Fontis Calidi, in contesting the right of laics of both sexes to preach, quoted the Lord’s words commanding the evil spirit to hold his peace who had said, "Thou art the Holy One of God," Mark 1:25. If Christ did not allow the devil to use his mouth, how could he intend to preach through a Waldensian?1079  In one of the lists of errors, ascribed to the Waldenses, is their rejection of the universities of Paris, Prague, and Vienna and of all university study as a waste of time.1080

It was an equally far-reaching principle when the Waldenses declared that it was spiritual endowment, or merit, and not the Church’s ordination which gave the right to bind and loose, to consecrate and bless.1081  This was recognized by their opponents as striking at the very root of the sacerdotal system. They charged against them the definite affirmation of the right of laymen to baptize and to administer the Lord’s Supper. No priest, continuing in sin, could administer the eucharist, but any good layman might.1082  The charge was likewise made that women were allowed the function also, and Rainerius says that no one rose up to deny the charge. It was also charged that the Waldenses allowed laymen to receive confessions and absolve.1083  Differences on this point among the Waldenses were brought out at the conference at Bergamo.

As for the administration of baptism, there were also differences of view between the Waldenses of Italy and those of France. There was a disposition, in some quarters at least, to deny infant baptism and to some extent the opinion seems to have prevailed that infants were saved without baptism.1084  Whatever the views of the early Waldenses were at the time of the Reformation, according to the statement of Morel, they left the administration of the sacraments to the priests. The early documents speak of the secrecy observed by the Waldenses, and it is possible more was charged against them than they would have openly acknowledged.

To the affirmation of these fundamental principles the Waldenses, on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount, added the rejection of oaths,1085 the condemnation of the death penalty,1086 and some of them purgatory and prayers for the dead.1087  There are but two ways after death, the Waldenses declared, the way to heaven and the way to hell.1088

The Waldenses regarded themselves, as Professor Comba has said, as a church within the Church, a select circle. They probably went no further, though they were charged with pronouncing the Roman Church the Babylonian harlot, and calling it a house of lies.1089  As early as the thirteenth century, the Waldenses were said, as by de Bourbon, to be divided like the Cathari into the Perfect and Believers, but this may be a mistake. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Southern France they elected a superintendent, called Majoralis omnium, whom, according to Bernard Guy, they obeyed as the Catholics did the pope, and they also had presbyters and deacons. In other parts they had a threefold ministry, under the name of priests, teachers, and rectors.1090

From the first, the Lyonnese branch had a literature of its own and in this again a marked contrast is presented to the Cathari. Of the early Waldensian translation of the Bible in Romaunt, there are extant the New Testament complete and the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. A translation in French had preceded this Waldensian version.1091   The German translation of the Bible found at Tepl, Bohemia, may have been of Waldensian origin.1092

The Nobla Leyczon,1093 dating from the early part of the thirteenth century and the oldest extant piece of Waldensian literature next to the version of the Bible, is a religious poem of four hundred and seventy-nine lines. It has a strictly practical purpose. The end of the world is near, man fell, Noah was spared, Abraham left his own country, Israel went down to Egypt and was delivered by Moses. Christ preached a better law, he trod the path of poverty, was crucified, and rose again. The first line ran "10 brothers, listen to a noble teaching." The poem closes with the scene of the Last Judgment and an exhortation to repent.

Through one channel the Waldenses exercised an influence over the Catholic Church. It was through the Waldensian choice of poverty. They made the, "profession of poverty," as Etienne de Bourbon calls it, or "the false profession of poverty," as Bernard Guy pronounced it. By preaching and by poverty they strove after evangelical perfection, as was distinctly charged by these and other writers. Francis d’Assisi took up with this ideal and was perhaps more immediately the disciple of the obscure Waldensians of Northern Italy than can be proved in so many words. The ideal of Apostolic poverty and practice was in the air and it would not detract from the services of St. Francis, if his followers would recognize that these dissenters of Lyons and Italy were actuated by his spirit, and thus antedated his propaganda by nearly half a century.1094

Note: Lit. bearing on the early Waldenses. For the titles, see § 79.—A new era in the study of the history and tenets of the Waldenses was opened by Dieckhoff, 1851, who was followed by Herzog, 1853. More recently, Preger, Karl Müller, Haupt, and Keller have added much to our knowledge in details, and in clearing up disputed points. Comba, professor in the Waldensian college at Florence, accepts the conclusions of modern research and gives up the claim of ancient origin, even Apostolic origin being claimed by the older Waldensian writers. The chief sources for the early history of the sect are the abbot Bernard of Fontis Calidi, d. 1193; the theologian Alanus de Insulis, d. about 1200; Salve Burce (whose work is given by Döllinger), 1235; Etienne de Bourbon, d. 1261, whose work is of an encyclopedic character, a kind of ready-reference book; the Rescriptum haeresiarcharum written by an unknown priest, about 1316, called the Anonymous of Passau; an Austrian divine, David of Augsburg, d. 1271; and the Inquisitor in Southern France, Bernard Guy, d. 1331. Other valuable documents are given by Döllinger, in his Beiträge, vol. II. These writers represent a period of more than a hundred years. In most of their characterizations they agree, and upon the main heresies of the Waldenses the earliest writers are as insistent as the later.

The Waldensian MSS., some of which date back to the thirteenth century, are found chiefly in the libraries of Cambridge, Dublin (Trinity College), Paris, Geneva, Grenoble, and Lyons. The Dublin Collection was made by Abp. Ussher who purchased in 1634 a number of valuable volumes from a French layman for five hundred and fifty francs. The Cambridge MSS. were procured by Sir Samuel Morland, Cromwell’s special envoy sent to Turin to check the persecutions of the Waldenses.

§ 85. The Crusades against the Albigenses.

The mediaeval measures against heretics assumed an organized form in the crusades against the Albigenses, before the institution of the Inquisition received its full development. To the papacy belongs the whole responsibility of these merciless wars. Toulouse paid a bitter penalty for being the head centre of heresy.1095  According to Innocent III., the larger part of its nobility was infected with heretical depravity, so that heresy was entrenched in castles as well as professed in the villages.1096  The count of Toulouse, the first lay peer of France,—owing fealty to it for Provence and Languedoc,—brought upon himself the full wrath and punishments of the Apostolic see for his unwillingness to join in the wars against his own subjects. A member of the house led one of the most splendid of the armies of the first Crusade to Jerusalem. At the opening of the Albigensian crusades the court of Toulouse was one of the gayest in Europe. At their close it was a spectacle of desolation.

Councils, beginning with the synod of Toulouse, 1119, issued articles against heresy and called upon the secular power to punish it. Mild measures were tried and proved ineffectual, whether they were the preaching and miracles of St. Bernard, 1147, or the diplomatic address of papal legates. Sixty years after Bernard, St. Dominic entered upon a tour of evangelism in the vicinity of Toulouse, and some heretics were won; but in spite of Dominic, and synodal decrees, heresy spread and continued to defy the Church authorities.

It remained for Innocent III. to direct the full force of his native vigor against the spreading contagion and to execute the principles already solemnly announced by oecumenical and local councils. To him heretics were worse than the infidel who had never made profession of Christianity. While Christendom was sending armaments against the Saracens, why should it not send an armament to crush the spiritual treason at home?  In response to papal appeals, at least four distinct crusades were set on foot against the sectaries in Southern France. These religious wars continued thirty years. Priests and abbots went at the head of the armies and, in the name of religion, commanded or justified the most atrocious barbarities. One of the fairest portions of Europe was laid waste and the counts of Toulouse were stripped by the pope of their authority and territory.

The long conflict was fully opened when Innocent called upon Louis VII. to take the field, that "it might be shown that the Lord had not given him the sword in vain," and promised him the lands of nobles shielding heresy.1097  Raymund VI., who was averse to a policy of repression against his Catharan subjects, was excommunicated by Innocent’s legate, Peter of Castelnau, and his lands put under interdict. Innocent called him a noxious man, vir pestilens,1098 and threatened him with all the punishments of the future world. He threatened to call upon the princes to proceed against him with arms and take his lands. "The hand of the Lord will descend upon thee more severely, and show thee that it is hard for one who seeks to flee from the face of His wrath which thou hast provoked."

A crisis was precipitated in 1208 by the murder of Peter of Castelnau by two unknown assassins.1099  Again, the supreme pontiff fulminated the sentence of excommunication against the Tolosan count, and made the expulsion of all heretics from his dominions the condition of withdrawing suspicion against him as the possible murderer of Peter.1100  Nowhere else was the intrepid energy of Innocent more signally displayed!  A crusade was announced. The connections of Raymund with France through his uncle, Louis VII., and with Aragon through Pedro, whose sister he had married, interposed difficulties. And the crusade went on. The Cistercians, at their General Chapter, decided to preach it. Princes and people from France, Flanders, and even Germany swelled the ranks. The same reward was promised to those who took the cross against the Cathari and Waldenses, as to those who went across the seas to fight the intruder upon the Holy Sepulchre.

In a general epistle to the faithful, Innocent wrote: —

"O most mighty soldiers of Christ, most brave warriors; Ye oppose the agents of anti-Christ, and ye fight against the servants of the old serpent. Perchance up to this time ye have fought for transitory glory, now fight for the glory which is everlasting. Ye have fought for the body, fight now for the soul. Ye have fought for the world, now do ye fight for God. For we have not exhorted you to the service of God for a worldly prize, but for the heavenly kingdom, which for this reason we promise to you with all confidence."1101

Awed by the sound of the coming storm, Raymund offered his submission and promised to crush out heresy. The humiliating spectacle of Raymund’s penance was then enacted in the convent church of St. Gilles. In the vestibule, naked to the waist, he professed compliance with all the papal conditions. Sixteen of the count’s vassals took oath to see the hard vow was kept and pledged themselves to renew the oath every year, upon pain of being classed with heretics. Then holding the ends of a stole, wrapped around the penitent’s neck like a halter, the papal legate led Raymund before the altar, the count being flagellated as he proceeded.1102

Raymund’s submission, however, did not check the muster of troops which were gathering in large numbers at Lyons.1103  In the ranks were seen the archbishops of Rheims, Sens, and Rouen; the bishops of Autun, Clermont, Nevers, Baseur, Lisieux, and Chartres; with many abbots and other clergy. At their side were the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers, St. Pol, Auxerre, Geneva, and Poitiers, and other princes. The soldier, chosen to be the leader, was Simon de Montfort. Simon had been one of the prominent leaders of the Fourth Crusade, and was a zealous supporter of the papacy. He neglected not to hear mass every day, even after the most bloody massacres in the campaigns in Southern France. His contemporaries hailed him as another Judas Maccabaeus and even compared him to Charlemagne.1104

In spite of the remonstrance of Raymund, who had joined the army, the papal legate, Arnold of Citeaux, refused to check its march. Béziers was stormed and horrible scenes followed. The wild soldiery heeded well the legate’s command, "Fell all to the ground. The Lord knows His own."1105  Neither age nor sex was spared. Church walls interposed no protection and seven thousand were put to death in St. Magdalen’s church alone. Nearly twenty thousand were put to the sword. According to the reports of the papal legates, Milo and Arnold, the "divine vengeance raged wonderfully against the city.1106  …Ours spared neither sex nor condition. The whole city was sacked, and the slaughter was very great."

At Carcassonne the inhabitants were allowed to depart, the men in their shirts, the women in their chemises, carrying with them, as the chronicler writes, nothing else except their sins, nihil secum praeter peccata portantes. Dread had taken hold of the country, and village after village was abandoned by the fleeing inhabitants. Raymund was again put under excommunication at a council held at Avignon.1107  The conquered lands were given to Montfort. The war continued, and its atrocities, if possible, increased. New recruits appeared in response to fresh papal appeals, among them six thousand Germans.1108  At the stronghold of Minerve, one hundred and forty of the Albigensian Perfect were put to death in the flames. The ears, noses, and lips of prisoners were cut off.

Again, in 1211, the count of Toulouse sought to come to an agreement with the legates. But the terms, which included the razing to the ground of all his castles, were too humiliating. The crusade was preached again. All the territory of Toulouse had been overrun and it only remained for the crusaders to capture the city itself.

Pedro of Aragon, fresh from his crushing victory over the Moors at Novas de Tolosa, now interceded with the pope for his brother-in-law. The synod of Lavaur, 1213, appointed referee by Innocent, rejected the king’s propositions. Pedro then joined Raymund, but fell at the disastrous defeat of Muret the same year, 1213. It was a strange combination whereby the king of Aragon, who had won the highest distinction a year before as a hero of the Catholic faith, was killed in the ranks of those who were rebels to the papal authority.1109  The day after, the victor, Montfort, barefoot, went to church, and ordered Pedro’s battle-horse an armorial trappings sold and the proceeds distributed to the poor.1110  By the council of Montpellier, 1215, the whole land, including Toulouse, was granted to Montfort, and the titles conferred on him of count of Toulouse, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, and duke of Narbonne.1111

The complications in Southern France were one of the chief questions brought before the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Raymund was present and demanded back his lands, inasmuch as he had submitted to the Church; but by an overwhelming majority, the synod voted against him and Montfort was confirmed in the possession of his conquests.1112  When Raymund’s son made a personal appeal to Innocent for his father, the pope bade him "love God above all things and serve Him faithfully, and not stretch forth his hand against others’ territory" and gave him the cold promise that his complaints against Montfort would be heard at a future council.1113

The further progress of the Albigensian campaigns requires only brief notice here, for they were converted into a war of territorial plunder. In 1218, Montfort fell dead under the walls of Toulouse, his head crushed by a stone. In the reign of Honorius, whose supreme concern was a crusade in the East, the sectaries reasserted themselves, and Raymund regained most of his territory. But the pope was relentless, and again the sentence of excommunication was launched against the house of Toulouse.

In 1226, Louis VIII. took the cross, supported by the French parliament as well as by the Church. Thus the final chapter in the crusades was begun, a war of the king of France for the possession of Toulouse. Louis died a few months later. Arnold of Citeaux, for nearly twenty years their energetic and iron-hearted promoter, had preceded him to the grave. Louis IX. took up the plans of his royal predecessor, and in 1229 the hostilities were brought to a close by Raymund’s accepting the conditions proposed by the papal legate.

Raymund renounced two-thirds of his paternal lands in favor of France. The other third was to go at his death to his daughter who subsequently married Louis IX.’s brother, and, in case there was no issue to the marriage, it was to pass to the French crown, and so it did at the death of Jeanne, the last heir of the house of Toulouse. Thus the domain of France was extended to the Pyrenees.

Further measures of repression were directed against the remnants of the Albigensian heresy, for Raymund VII. had promised to cleanse the land of it. The machinery of the Inquisition was put into full action as it was perfected by the great inquisitorial council of Toulouse, 1229. The University of Toulouse received papal sanction, and one of its chief objects was announced to be "to bring the Catholic faith in those regions into a flourishing state."1114  In 1244, the stronghold of Montségur was taken, the last refuge of the Albigenses. Two hundred of the Perfect were burned.

The papal policy had met with complete but blighting success and, after the thirteenth century, heresy in Southern France was almost like a noiseless underground stream. Languedoc at the opening of the wars had been one of the most prosperous and cultured parts of Europe. At their close its villages and vineyards were in ruins, its industries shattered, its population impoverished and decimated. The country that had given promise of leading Europe in a renaissance of intellectual culture fell behind her neighbors in the race of progress. Protestant generations, that have been since sitting in judgment upon the barbarous measures, conceived and pushed by the papacy, have wondered whether another movement, stirred by the power of the Gospel, will not yet arise in the old domain that responded to the religious dissent and received the warm blood of the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and of Peter de Bruys and his followers.

The Stedinger. While the wars against the Albigenses were going on, another people, the Stedinger, living in the vicinity of Bremen and Oldenburg, were also being reduced by a papal crusade. They represented the spirit of national independence rather than doctrinal dissent and had shown an unwillingness to pay tithes to the archbishop of Bremen. When a husband put a priest to death for an indignity to his wife, the archbishop Hartwig II. announced penalty after penalty but in vain. Under his successor, Gerhard (1219–1258), the refractory peasants were reduced to submission. A synod of Bremen, in 1230, pronounced them heretics, and Gregory IX., accepting the decision, called upon a number of German bishops to join in preaching and prosecuting a crusade. The same indulgence was offered to the crusaders in the North as to those who went on the Church’s business to Palestine. The first campaign in 1233 was unsuccessful, but a second carried all the horrors of war into the eastern section of the Stedingers’ territory. In 1231 another army led by a number of princes completely defeated this brave people at Altenesch. Their lands were divided between the archbishop of Bremen and the count of Oldenburg.

§ 86. The Inquisition. Its Origin and Purpose.

The measures for the repression and extermination of heresy culminated in the organized system, known as the Inquisition. Its history presents what is probably the most revolting spectacle in the annals of civilized Europe.1115  The representatives of the Church appear, sitting as arbiters over human destiny in this world, and in the name of religion applying torture to countless helpless victims, heretics, and reputed witches, and pronouncing upon them a sentence which, they knew, involved perpetual imprisonment or death in the flames. The cold heartlessness, with which the fate of the heretic was regarded, finds some excuse in the pitiless penalties which the civil tribunals of the Middle Ages meted out for civil crimes, such as the breaking of the victim on the wheel, burning in caldrons of oil, quartering with horses, and flaying alive, or the merciless treatment of princes upon refractory subjects, as when William the Conqueror at Alençon punished the rebels by chopping off the hands and feet of thirty-two of the citizens and throwing them over the walls. It is nevertheless an astounding fact that for the mercy of Christ the Church authorities, who should have represented him, substituted relentless cruelties. In this respect the dissenting sectaries were infinitely more Christian than they.

It has been argued in extenuation of the Church that she stopped with the decree of excommunication and the sentence to lifelong imprisonment and did not pronounce the sentence of death. And the old maxim is quoted as true of her in all times, that the Church abhors blood—ecclesia non sitit sanguinem. The argument is based upon a pure technicality. The Church, after sitting in judgment, turned the heretics over to the civil authorities, knowing full well that, as night follows day, the sentence of death would follow her sentence of excommunication.1116  Yea, the Church, through popes and synodal decrees, again and again threatened, with her disfavor and fell spiritual punishments, princes and municipalities not punishing heresy. The Fourth Lateran forbade priests pronouncing judgments of blood and being present at executions, but at the very same moment, and at the pope’s persistent instigation, crusading armies were drenching the soil of Southern France with the blood of the Albigenses. A writer of the thirteenth century says in part truly, in part speciously, "our pope does not kill nor condemn any one to death, but the law puts to death those whom the pope allows to be put to death, and they kill themselves who do those things which make them guilty of death."1117

The official designation of the Inquisitorial process was the Inquisition of heretical depravity.1118  Its history during the Middle Ages has three main chapters: the persecution of doctrinal heretics down to 1480, the persecution of witches in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Spanish Inquisition organized in 1480.1119  The Inquisition with its penalties had among its ardent advocates the best and most enlightened men of their times, Innocent III., Frederick II., Louis IX., Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas. A parallel is found in the best Roman emperors, who lent themselves to the bloody repression of the early Church. The good king, St. Louis, declared that when a layman heard the faith spoken against, he should draw his sword and thrust it into the offender’s body up to the hilt.1120

The Inquisition was a thoroughly papal institution, wrought out in all its details by the popes of the thirteenth century, beginning with Innocent III. and not ending with Boniface VIII. In his famous manual for the treatment of heresy the Inquisitor, Bernard Guy, a man who in spite of his office elicits our respect,1121 declares that the "office of the Inquisition has its dignity from its origin for it is derived, commissioned, and known to have been instituted by the Apostolic see itself." This was the feeling of the age.

Precedent enough there was for severe temporal measures. Constantine banished the Arians and burned their books. Theodosius the Great fixed death as the punishment for heresy. The Priscillianists were executed in 385. The great authority of Augustine was appealed to and his fatal interpretation of the words of the parable "Compel them to come in,"1122 justifying force in the treatment of the Donatists, was made to do service far beyond what that father probably ever intended. From the latter part of the twelfth century, councils advocated the death penalty, popes insisted upon it, and Thomas Aquinas elaborately defended it. Heresy, so the theory and the definitions ran, was a crime the Church could not tolerate. It was Satan’s worst blow.

Innocent III. wrote that as treason was punished with death and confiscation of goods, how much more should these punishments be meted out to those who blaspheme God and God’s Son. A crime against God, so he reasoned, is surely a much graver misdemeanor than a crime against the secular power.1123

The calm discussion, to which the eminent theologian, Thomas Aquinas, subjects the treatment due heretics, was made at least a quarter of a century after the Inquisition was put into full force. Leaning back upon Augustine and his interpretation of "compel them to come in," he declared in clearest terms that heretics deserved not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but to be excluded from the earth by judicial death.1124  Errors in geometry do not constitute mortal guilt, but errors in matters of faith do. As falsifiers of coin are put to death, much more may they justly be put to death who perform the more wicked act of corrupting the faith. The heretic of whose reclamation the Church despairs, it delivers over to the secular tribunal to be executed out of the world. The principle was that those who were baptized were under the immediate jurisdiction of the Church and the Church might deal with them as it saw fit. It was not till the fourteenth century, that the jurisdiction of the Church and the pope was extended to the heathen by Augustinus Triumphus, d. 1328,1125 and other papal writers. Sovereigns were forbidden by the council of Vienne, 1312, to allow their Mohammedan subjects to practise the rites of their religion.1126

The legislation, fixing the Inquisition as a Church institution and elaborating its powers, began with the synod of Tours in 1163 and the oecumenical council of 1179. A large step in advance was made by the council of Verona, 1184. The Fourth Lateran, 1215, and the council of Toulouse, 1229, formally established the Inquisition and perfected the organization. Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Alexander IV. enforced its regulations and added to them. From first to last the popes were its chief promoters.

The synod of Tours, 1163, called upon the bishops and clergy to forbid the Catholics from mingling with the Albigenses and from having commercial dealings with them and giving them refuge. Princes were instructed to imprison them and confiscate their goods. The Third Lateran, 1179, extended the punishments to the defenders of heretics and their friends. It gave permission to princes to reduce heretics to slavery and shortened the time of penance by two years for those taking up arms against them. At the council of Verona, 1184, pope Lucius III. and the emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, joined in making common cause in the sacred undertaking and announced their attitude in the cathedral. Frederick had the law of the empire against heretics recited and threw his glove down upon the floor as a token that he would enforce it. Then Lucius announced the decree of the council, which enjoined bishops to visit, at least once a year, all parts of their sees, to try all suspects, and to turn them, if guilty, over to the civil authorities. Princes were ordered to take an oath to support the Church against heresy upon pain of forfeiting their dignities. Cities, refusing to punish offenders, were to be cut off from other cities and, if episcopal seats, were to be deprived of that honor.

Innocent III., the most vigorous of persecutors, was no sooner on the throne than he began to wage war against heretical infection. In one letter after another, he struck at it and commended military armaments for its destruction. The Fourth Lateran gave formal and final expression to Innocent’s views. The third canon opens with an anathematization of heretics of all names. It again enjoined princes to swear to protect the faith on pain of losing their lands. To all taking part in the extermination of heretics—ad haereticorum exterminium — was offered the indulgence extended to the Crusaders in Palestine. All "believers" and also the entertainers, defenders, and friends of heretics were to be excommunicated and excluded from receiving their natural inheritance.1127  Bishops were instructed to go through their dioceses once or twice a year in person or through representatives for the purpose of detecting heresy, and in case of neglect, they were to be deposed.

For more than a century after Innocent, the enforcement of the rules for the detection and punishment of heretics form the continual subject of bulls issued by the Apostolic see and of synodal action especially in Southern France and Spain. Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. alone issued more than one hundred such bulls.1128

The regulations for the episcopal supervision of the Inquisition were completed at the synod of Toulouse, 1229. Bishops were commanded to appoint a priest and laymen to ferret out heretics—inquirant haereticos—in houses and rooms. They were authorized to go outside their sees and princes outside of their realms to do this work. But no heretic was to be punished till he had been tried before the bishop’s tribunal. Princes were ordered to destroy the domiciles and refuges of heretics, even if they were underground. If heretics were found to reside on their lands without their knowledge, such princes were to be punished. Men above fourteen and women above twelve were obliged to swear to inform on heretics. And all, wishing to avoid the charge of heresy, were bound to present themselves at the confessional at least once a year. As a protection against heretical infection, boys above the age of seven were obliged to go to church every Sabbath and on festival days that they might learn the credo, the pater noster, and the ave Maria.

The legislation of the state showed its full sympathy with the rules of the Church. Peter of Aragon, 1197, banished heretics from his dominions or threatened them with death by fire. In 1226, Don Jayme I. of Aragon forbade all heretics entering his kingdom. He was the first prince to prohibit the Bible in the vernacular Romancia, 1234. From another source, whence we might have expected better things, came a series of severe edicts. At his coronation, 1220, Frederick II. spoke of heretics as the viperous sons of perfidy, and placed them under the ban of the empire.1129  This law was renewed at Ravenna, 1232, and later in 1238, 1239. The goods of heretics were to be confiscated and to be diverted from their children, on the ground that it was a far graver thing to offend against the spiritual realm than to offend a temporal prince. Four years later, 1224, the emperor condemned them to the penalty of being burned, or having their tongues torn out at the discretion of the judge.1130  The Sicilian Constitutions of 1231 made burning alive in the sight of the people the punishment for heretics previously condemned by the Church.1131

The princes and cities of Italy followed Frederick’s example. In Rome, after 1231, and at the demand of Gregory IX., the senator took oath to seize heretics pointed out by the Inquisition, and to put them to death within eight days of the ecclesiastical sentence. In Venice, beginning with 1249, the doge included in his oath the pledge to burn heretics. In France, the rules of the Inquisition were fully recognized in Louis IX.’s laws of 1228. The two great codes of Germany, the Sachsenspiegel and the Schwabenspiegel, ordered heretics burned to death.1132   A prince not burning heretics was himself to be treated as a heretic. In England, the act for the burning of heretics—de comburendo haeretico— was not passed till a century later, 1401.

That the Church fully accepted Frederick’s severe legislation, is attested by the action of Honorius III. who sent the emperor’s edict of 1220 to Bologna with instructions that it be taught as part of the canon law. Frederick’s subsequent legislation was commended by popes and bishops,1133  and ordered to be inscribed in municipal statute books.

To more efficiently carry out the purpose of the Inquisition, the trial and punishment of heresy were taken out of the hands of the bishops and put into the hands of the monastic orders by Gregory IX. As early as 1227, this pope appointed a Dominican of Florence to proceed against the heretical bishop, Philip Paternon. In 1232, the first Dominicans were appointed inquisitors in Germany and Aragon.1134  In 1233, Gregory took the decisive step of substituting the Dominicans for the bishops as agents of the Inquisition, giving as his reason, the multitude of cares by which the bishops were burdened.1135  The Inquisitors were thus made a distinct clan, disassociated from the pastoral care of souls. The friars were empowered to deprive suspected priests of their benefices, and to call to their aid the secular arm in suppressing heresy. From their judgment there was no appeal except to the papal court. The Franciscans were afterwards joined with the Dominicans in this work in parts of Italy, in France, and later in Sardinia and Syria and Palestine. Complaint was made by bishops of this interference with their prerogatives,1136 and, in 1254, Innocent IV. listened to the complaint so far as to decree that no death penalty should be pronounced without consulting with them. The council of Vienne ordered the prisons containing heretics to be guarded by two gaolers, one appointed by the Inquisitor and one by the bishop.

One more step remained to be taken. By the famous bull ad exstirpanda, of 1252, Innocent IV. authorized torture as a measure for extorting confessions. The merciless use of this weapon was one of the most atrocious features of the whole procedure.

The Inquisitors, in spite of papal authority, synodal action, and state legislation, did not always have an easy path. In 1235, the citizens of Narbonne drove them out of their city. In 1242, a number were murdered in Avignon, whom Pius IX., in 1866, sought to recompense by giving them the honor of canonization as he had done the year before to the bloodiest of Inquisitors, the Spaniard Arbues, d. 1485. Parma, according to Salimbene,1137 was placed, in 1279, under interdict for three years, the punishment for the act of "certain fools" who broke into the convent of the Dominicans and killed one or two friars in retribution for their having burned for heresy a certain noble lady and her maid. The distinguished Inquisitor, Peter of Verona, otherwise known as Peter Martyr, was murdered at Como, 1252. In Germany the resistance of the Inquisition was a frequent occurrence and more than one of its agents atoned for his activity by a violent death. Of these, Konrad of Marburg was the most notorious.

Down to the very close of the Middle Ages, the pages of history were disfigured by the decrees of popes and synods, confirming death as the penalty for heresy, and for persons supposed to be possessed with witchcraft. The great council of Constance, 1415, did not get away from this atmosphere, and ordered heretics punished even by the flames,—puniantur ad ignem. And the bull of Leo X., 1520, condemning Luther, cursed as heresy the Reformer’s liberal statement that the burning of heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit.

To the great humiliation of the Protestant churches, religious intolerance and even persecution unto death were continued long after the Reformation. In Geneva, the pernicious theory was put into practice by state and church, even to the use of torture and the admission of the testimony of children against their parents, and with the sanction of Calvin. Bullinger, in the second Helvetic Confession, announced the principle that heresy should be punished like murder or treason. The treatment of the Anabaptists is a great blot on the page of the Reformation, Strassburg being the only centre that tolerated them. Cranmer persuaded Edward VI. to burn women. Elizabeth saw the death penalty executed upon Puritans. The spirit of intolerance was carried across the seas, and was as strong in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the American colonies, with some exceptions, as it was in Europe. The execution of Quakers in Boston, and of persons accused of witchcraft in Salem, together with the laws of Virginia and other colonies, were the unfortunate survivals of the vicious history of the Middle Ages, which forgot Christ’s example as he wept over Jerusalem, and the Apostle’s words, "vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith the Lord.

So far as we know, the Roman Catholic Church has never officially revoked the theory and practice of the mediaeval popes and councils, but on the contrary the utterances of Pius IX. and Leo XIII. show the same spirit of vicious reprobation for Protestants and their agencies.

§ 87. The Inquisition. Its Mode of Procedure and Penalties.

The Inquisition was called the Holy Office—sanctum officium— from the praiseworthy work it was regarded as being engaged in. Its chief officials, the Inquisitors, were exempted by Alexander IV., 1259, and Urban IV., 1262, from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, whether bishops, archbishops, or papal legates, except the jurisdiction of the Apostolic1138 see, and from all interference by the secular power. They also enjoyed the right to excommunicate, lay the interdict, and to absolve their agents for acts of violence.1139  The methods of procedure offend against all our modern ideas of civil justice. The testimony of wives and children was valid or required1140 and also of persons known to be criminals. Suspicion and public rumor were sufficient grounds of complaint, seizure, and formal proceedings, a principle clearly stated by the council of Toulouse, 1229, in its eighteenth canon, and recognized by the state. The Sicilian Constitutions of 1231, ordered that heretics be diligently hunted out and, when there "was only the slightest suspicion of guilt," they were to be taken before the bishop.1141  The intention, as opposed to the outward commission, was made a sufficient ground of accusation. The Inquisitor might at the same time be police, prosecutor, and judge.

It is due to Innocent III. to say that he did not invent the inquisitorial mode of procedure, but drew it from the practice already in vogue in the state.1142

A party, not answering a citation within a year, was declared a heretic even when no proofs were advanced. Likewise, one who harbored a heretic forty days after a warning was served was treated as a heretic.1143  At the trials, the utmost secrecy was observed and names of the accusers were not divulged. In commending this measure of secrecy, Paramo declared that the example was set by God himself in carrying out the first inquisition, in the garden of Eden, to defeat the subtlety of Satan who otherwise might have communicated with Adam and Eve.

Penitent heretics, if there was any doubt of their sincerity, were obliged to change their places of abode and, according to the synod of Toulouse, if they belonged to the Perfect, had to do so in all cases. The penances imposed were fines, which were allowed by papal decree as early as 1237 and 1245, pilgrimages, and wearing of two crosses on the left and right side of the body called the poena confusibilis.

The pilgrimage to Jerusalem was forbidden by a synod of Narbonne, 1243, which referred to a recent papal deliverance prohibiting it, that the sacred places might be protected against the infection of heresy. Young women were often excused from wearing the crosses, as it might interfere with their prospects of marriage. According to French law, pregnant women condemned to death, were not executed till after the birth of the child.

Local synods in Southern France ordered heretics and their defenders excommunicated every Sunday and that sentence should be pronounced amidst the ringing of bells and with candles extinguished. And as a protection against heresy, the bells were to be rung every evening.

Imprisonment for life was ordered by Gregory IX., 1229, for all induced to return to the faith through fear of punishment.1144  The prisons in France were composed of small cells. The expenditures for their erection and enlargement were shared by the bishop and the Inquisitors. French synods spoke of the number sentenced to life-imprisonment as so great that hardly stones enough could be found for the prison buildings.1145  The secular authorities destroyed the heretic’s domicile, confiscated his goods,1146 and pronounced the death penalty.

The rules for the division of confiscated property differed in different localities. In Venice, after prolonged negotiations with the pope, it was decided that they should pass to the state.1147  In the rest of Italy they became, in equal parts, the property of the state, the Inquisition, and the curia; and in Southern France, of the state, the Inquisitors, and the bishop. Provision was made for the expenses of the Inquisition out of the spoils of confiscated property. The temptation to plunder became a fruitful ground for spying out alleged heretics. Once accused, they were all but helpless. Synods encouraged arrests by offering a fixed reward to diligent spies.

Not satisfied with seeing the death penalty executed upon the living, the Inquisition made war upon the dead, and exhumed the bodies of those found to have died in heresy and burned them.1148  This relentless barbarity reminds us of the words, perhaps improperly ascribed to Charles V. who, standing at Luther’s grave, is reported to have refused to touch the Reformer’s bones, saying, "I war with the living, not with the dead." The council of Verona, 1184, ordered relapsed heretics to be turned over forthwith to the secular authorities.1149

In the period before 1480 the Inquisition claimed most of its victims in Southern France. Douais has given us a list of seventeen Inquisitors-general who served from 1229 to 1329.1150  The sentences pronounced by Bernard de Caux, called the Hammer of the Heretics, 1244–1248 give the names of hundreds who were adjudged to the loss of goods or perpetual imprisonment, or both.1151

During the administration of Bernard Guy, as inquisitor of Toulouse, 1306–1323, forty-two persons were burnt to death, sixty-nine bodies were exhumed and burnt, three hundred and seven were imprisoned, and one hundred and forty-three were condemned to wear crosses.1152  A single instance may suffice of a day’s doings by the Inquisition. On May 12, 1234, six young men, twelve men, and eleven women were burnt at Toulouse.

In the other parts of France, the Inquisition was not so vigorously prosecuted. It included, as we have seen, the order of the Templars. In 1253 the Dominican provincial of Paris was made the supreme Inquisitor. Among the more grim Inquisitors of France was the Dominican Robert le Petit, known as Le Bougre from his having been a Patarene.1153  Gregory IX. appointed him inquisitor-general, 1233, and declared God had "given him such special grace that every hunter feared his horn."1154  The French king gave him his special aid and a royal bodyguard to attend him. He had hundreds of victims in Western Burgundy and the adjoining regions. In one term of two or three months, he burnt fifty of both sexes.1155  At Cambrai he burnt twenty, at Douai ten. His last deed was to burn at Mt. Aimé in 1239, twenty-seven, or according to another account more than one hundred and eighty—"a holocaust very great and pleasing to God" as the old chronicler put it.1156  In 1239 he was himself consigned to perpetual imprisonment for his misdeeds.

In the Spanish kingdom of Aragon, the number of heretics does not seem to have been large. In 1232 the archbishop of Tarragona was ordered by Gregory IX. to proceed against heretics in conjunction with the Dominicans.1157  One of the most famous of all Inquisitors, the Spanish Dominican, Eymericus, was appointed Inquisitor-general 1357, was deposed 1360, and reappointed 1366. He died in exile. His Directorium inquisitorum, written 1376, is the most famous treatise on the mode of treating heresy. Heretics, in his judgment, were justly offered the alternative of submission or the stake. The small number of the victims under the earlier Inquisition in Spain was fully made up in the series of holocausts begun under Ferdinand in 1480.

In Northern and Central Italy, the Inquisition was fully developed, the first papal commissioners being the bishops of Brescia and Modena, 1224. The cases of heresy in Southern Italy were few and isolated. In Rome, the first pyres were lighted in 1231, in front of St. Maria Maggiore. From that year on, and at the demand of Gregory IX., the Roman senator took an oath to execute heretics within eight days of their conviction by the ecclesiastical court. The houses sheltering them were to be pulled down. The sentence condemning heretics was read by the Inquisitor on the steps of the Capitol in the presence of the senator.1158  At a later period the special order of San Giovanni Decollato—John, the Beheaded—was formed in Rome, whose members accompanied the condemned to the place of death.

In Germany, the Inquisition did not take full hold till the crusade against witchcraft was started. The Dominicans were formally appointed to take charge of the business in 1248. Of sixty-three papal Inquisitors, known by name, ten were Franciscans, two Augustinians, one of the order of Coelestin, and the rest Dominicans.1159  The laws of Frederick II. were renewed or elaborated by Rudolf, 1292, and other emperors,1160 and the laws of the Church by many provincial councils.1161  The bishops of Treves, Mainz, and Cologne interfered at times with the persecution of the Beghards and Beguines, and appealed, as against the papal Inquisitors, to their rights, as recognized in the papal bulls of 1259 and 1320. After the murder of Konrad of Marburg, Gregory IX. called upon them in vain to prosecute heretics with vigor. In fact the Germans again and again showed their resentment and put Inquisitors to death.1162

The centres of heresy in Germany were Strassburg, as early as 1212, Cologne, and Erfurt. The number of victims is said to have been very large and at least five hundred can be accounted for definitely in reported burnings.1163  Banishment, hanging, and drowning were other forms of punishment practised. In 1368 the Inquisitor, Walter Kerlinger, banished two hundred families from Erfurt alone. The prisons to which the condemned were consigned were wretched places, the abode of filth, vermin, and snakes.1164

As Torquemada stands out as the incorporation of all that is inhuman in the Spanish Inquisition, so in the German does Konrad of Marburg.

This Dominican ecclesiastic, whom Gregory IX. called the "Lord’s watch-dog," first came into prominence at the court of Louis IV. of Thuringia on the Wartburg, the old castle which was the scene of the contests of the Minnesingers, and was destined to be made famous by Luther’s confinement after the diet of Worms, 1521. Konrad became confessor of Louis’ wife, the young and saintly Elizabeth. The daughter of King Andreas II. of Hungary, she was married to the Landgrave of Thuringia in 1221, at the age of fourteen. At his death at Brindisi, on his way to the Holy Land, in 1227, she came more completely under the power of Konrad. Scarcely any scene in Christian history exhibits such wanton and pitiless cruelty to a spiritual ward as he displayed to the tender woman who yielded him obedience. From the Wartburg, where she was adored for her charities and good works, she removed to Marburg. There Konrad subjected her to daily castigations and menial services, deprived her gradually of all her maids of honor, and separated her from her three children. On one occasion when she visited a convent of nuns at Oldenburg, a thing which was against their rigid rule, Konrad made Elizabeth and her attendant lie prostrate and receive a severe scourging from friar Gerhard while he himself looked on and repeated the Miserere. This, the most honored woman of mediaeval Germany, died of her castigations in 1231. Four years later she was canonized, and the St. Elizabeth church was begun which still stands to her memory in Marburg.

The year of Elizabeth’s death, Gregory IX. invested Konrad with a general inquisitorial authority and right to appoint his own assistants and call upon the secular power for aid. Luciferans, so called, and other heretics were freely burned. It was Konrad’s custom to burn the offenders the very day their sentences were pronounced.1165  A reign of terror broke out wherever he went. He was murdered in 1233, on his way back to Marburg from the diet of Mainz. After his death Gregory declared him to be a man of consummate virtue, a herald of the Christian faith. Konrad was buried at the side of Elizabeth, but the papal inquisition in Germany did not recover for many a year from the blow given to it by his merciless hardness of heart. And so, as the Annals of Worms remarked, "Germany was freed from the abominable and unheard-of tribunal of that man."1166

In the Lowlands, Antwerp, Brussels, and other cities were lively centres of heresy and afforded a fine opportunity for the Inquisitor. The lists of the accused and of those executed in the flames and by other means include Waldenses, Beguines, Beghards, Apostolicals, Lollards, and other sectaries. Their sufferings have been given a splendid memorial in the volumes of Fredericq. Holland’s baptism of blood on a grand scale was reserved for the days of Philip II. and the Duke of Alva in the sixteenth century.

In England, the methods of the Inquisition never had any foothold. When the papal agents arrived to prosecute the Templars, King Edward forbade the use of torture as contrary to the common law of the realm. The flogging of the Publicani, who are said to have made a single English convert, has already been referred to. In 1222 a deacon, who had turned Jew, was hanged.1167  The parliamentary act for burning heretics, passed in 1401, was directed against the followers of Wyclif and the Lollards. It was not till the days of Henry VIII. that the period of prosecutions and burnings in England for heresy fully began.

CHAPTER XI.

UNIVERSITIES AND CATHEDRALS.

§ 88. Schools.

Literature: John of Salisbury: Metalogicus, Migne, 199. 823–946.—Guibert of Nogent: De vita sua, I. 4–7; Migne, 153. 843–850.—A. H. L. Heeren: Gesch. d. class. Lit. im MlA., 2 vols. Götting., 1822.—S. R. Maitland: The Dark Ages, Essays on the State of Rel. and Lit., 800–1200 A.D., Lond., 1845, 5th ed. 1890.—H. Heppe: D. Schulwesen d. MlA., etc., Marb., 1860.—Schaarschmidt: J. Saresberiensis (John of Salisbury), Leip., 1862.—Léon Maître: Les écoles épiscopales el monastiques de l’occident, 768–1180 A.D., Paris, 1866.—E. Michaud: G. de Champeaux et les écoles de Paris au 12e siècle, Paris, 1867.—J. B. Mullinger: The Schools of Chas. the Great, Lond., 1877; Hist. of the Univ. of Cambr. to 1535, Cambr., 1873.—*R. L. Poole: The School of Chartres, being chap. IV of his Illustr. of the Hist. of Med. Thought.—*F. A. Specht: Gesch. d. Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland von d. ältesten Zeiten bis zur Mitte des 13ten Jahrh., Stuttg., 1885.—*A. and G. Schmid: Gesch. d. Erziehung bis auf unsere Zeit, pp. 94–333, Stuttg., 1892.—Miss Drane: Christ. Schools and Scholars, Lond., 2d ed. 1881. —*J. E. Sandys: A Hist. of Class. Scholarship from 600 b.c. to the end of the M. A., Cambr., 1903.—Mirbt: Publizistik im Zeitalter Greg. VII., pp. 104 sqq.—Rashdall: Universities, vol. I.

Education and the advance of true religion are inseparable. The history of literary culture in this period is marked by the remarkable awakening which started in Western Europe in the latter part of the eleventh century and the rise of the universities in the twelfth century. The latter was one of the most important events in the progress of the intellectual development of the race. The renaissance of the eleventh century showed itself in a notable revival of interest in schools, in the appearance of eminent teachers, in a renewed study of the classics, and in an enlarged sweep of the human mind.

The municipal schools of the Roman Empire were swept away by the barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries, and few vestiges of them were left. The weight of opinion in the Church had been hostile to Pagan learning from the time of Tertullian and Jerome and culminated in Justinian’s act, closing the university of Athens. But it is doubtful whether the old Roman schools would have withstood the shock from the assaults of Goth, Vandal, and Hun, even had Church teachers been friendly to classical literature.

The schools of the earlier Middle Ages were associated with the convents and cathedrals, and it was not till the thirteenth century that the municipal school appeared again, and then it was in the far North, in Germany, and the Lowlands. The first name in the history of the new education is Cassian who founded the convent school of St. Victor, Marseilles, 404. But it was to Benedict of Nursia that Western Europe owed the permanent impulse to maintain schools. The Benedictine Rule made education an adjunct of religion, provided for the training of children by members of the order, and for the transcription of manuscripts. To the Benedictines, especially to the Cistercians, are our libraries indebted for the preservation of the works of classical and patristic writers.

The wise policy of Charlemagne in establishing the Palace school, a sort of normal school for the German Empire, and in issuing his Capitularies bearing on education, and the policy of Alfred in England, gave a fresh impulse to learning by the patronage of royalty. Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne, Asser in England, and John Scotus Erigena at the court of Charles the Bold, were some of the more eminent teachers. It is possible the education was not confined to clerics, for convents had two kinds of schools, the one, the interior, for oblates intended for the monastery, and the exterior school which seems to have had a more general character. The cathedral schools had for their primary, if not for their sole purpose, the training of youth for cathedral positions—canonici puri. The main, if not the exclusive, purpose of education was to prepare men for the priesthood and the convent.1168  In the eleventh century all the convents and cathedrals in Germany had schools,1169 — Corvey on the Weser and Hildesheim being noted; and, in Italy, the schools of Milan and Parma were well known.

But in that century the centre of education shifted to France. The schools at Bec, Rheims, Orleans, Laon, and Paris had no rivals and their fame attracted students, even monks, priests, and bishops, from England and Germany.1170 The fame of Rheims, where Gerbert, afterwards Sylvester II., d. 1003, had won the title of "restorer of studies," gave way to the greater fame of Bec, under Lanfranc and Anselm. Students were drawn from afar and, in the judgment of the glowing panegyrist, Ordericus Vitalis, Athens, in its most flourishing period, would have honored Lanfranc in every branch of learning.1171 These two priors were followed by a succession of teachers whom Ordericus calls "careful pilots and skilful charioteers." Seldom has so splendid a compliment been paid a teacher by a man risen to eminence as was paid by Alexander II. to Lanfranc,1172  on Lanfranc’s visit to Rome, after he was made archbishop of Canterbury. Rising to welcome him with open arms, the pope remarked to the bystanders that he received Lanfranc as his teacher, at whose feet he had sat, rather than as archbishop. Guibert of Nogent, who died about 1120, is authority for the statement that teachers were very rare in France in his early years, but, at the time when he was writing, every considerable town in France had a teacher.1173 That mothers were anxious to have their sons educated is evident from the example of Guibert’s statement concerning his own mother.

As in the earlier period of the Middle Ages, so in this middle period, the idea of universal education was not thought of. Nor was there anything such as we call belles lettres and general literature.1174  All literature had an immediate bearing on religious subjects.1175  Such men as Walter Map and John of Salisbury, who approach nearest our modern idea of men of letters, were clerics. The founders of convents, like Herlouin, founder of Bec, were often men who could neither read nor write. Ordericus says that during the reigns of six dukes, before Lanfranc went to Bec, scarce a single Norman devoted himself to studies. Duke William of Aquitaine, d. 1030, however, was educated from childhood and was said to have spent his nights in reading till sleep overcame him, and to have had a collection of books.1176

The most brilliant teachers of this era were Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, and, above all, Abaelard. They all belonged to France. In their cases, the school followed the teacher and students went not so much to a locality as to an educator. More and more, however, the interest centred in Paris, which had a number of schools,—the Cathedral school, St. Genevieve, St. Victor, St. Denis.1177  Our knowledge of these men is derived chiefly from Abaelard and John of Salisbury. John studied in France for twelve years, 1137–1149, and sat under them all. His descriptions of the studies of the age, and the methods and rivalries of teachers, are given in the Metalogicus.

William of Champeaux, d. 1121, the pupil of Anselm of Laon, won fame at the Cathedral school of Paris, but lost his position by clash with the brilliant abilities of Abaelard. He retired to St. Victor and spent the last eight years of his life in the administration of the see of Chalons. He was an extreme realist.

The teaching of Anselm of Laon and his brother Ralph drew students from as far south as Milan and from Bremen in the North. The brothers were called by John of Salisbury the "splendid luminaries of Gaul,"1178 and "doctor of doctors" was an accepted appellation of Anselm. This teacher, d. 1117, perhaps the pupil of Anselm of Bec, had Abaelard among his hearers and won his contumely. But John of Salisbury’s praise, and not Abaelard’s contempt, must determine our judgment of the man. His glossa interlinearis, a periphrastic commentary on the Vulgate, was held in high esteem for several centuries.1179

Bernard of Chartres, about 1140, was celebrated by John of Salisbury as the "most overflowing spring of letters in Gaul in recent times" and, the most perfect Platonist of our age."1180  He acknowledged his indebtedness to the ancient writers in these words, "We are as dwarfs mounted on the shoulders of giants, so that we are able to see more and further than they; but this is not on account of any keenness of sight on our part or height of our bodies, but because we are lifted up upon those giant forms. Our age enjoys the gifts of preceding ages, and we know more, not because we excel in talent, but because we use the products of others who have gone before."1181

William of Conches, d. 1152 (?), got his name from the Norman hamlet in which he was born. Like his teacher, Bernard of Chartres, he laid stress upon a thorough acquaintance with grammar as the foundation of all learning, and John of Salisbury seems to have written the Metalogicus to vindicate the claims his teachers made for the fundamental importance of this study as opposed to dialectics. But he was advocating a losing cause. Scholasticism was crushing out the fresh sprouts of humanism.1182  William of Conches took liberties with received opinions and denied that Eve was literally created from Adam’s rib. The root of his teachings Poole finds in William’s own words, "through knowledge of the creature we attain to the knowledge of the Creator."1183

The studies continued, at least theoretically, to follow the scheme of the old trivium, including grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and the quadrivium, including arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. These branches had a wider scope than we associate with some of the titles. Grammar, for example, with Bernard of Chartres, included much more than technical rules and the fundamental distinctions of words. It took in the tropes and figures of speech, analyzed the author’s body of thought, and brought out the allusions to nature, science, and ethical questions. The teaching extended far beyond the teaching of the Capitularies of Charlemagne. Nevertheless, all these studies were the vestibule of theology and valuable only as an introduction to it. Jacob of Vitry, d. 1244, comparing the seven liberal arts with theology,1184 said, "Logic is good for it teaches us to distinguish truth from falsehood, grammar is good for it teaches how to speak and write correctly; rhetoric is good for it teaches how to speak elegantly and to persuade. Good too are geometry which teaches us how to measure the earth, arithmetic or the art of computing which enables us to estimate the brevity of our days, music which reminds us of the sweet chant of the blessed, astronomy which leads us to consider the heavenly bodies shining resplendently before God. But far better is theology which alone can be called a liberal art, since it alone delivers the human soul from its woes."

Innocent III., through the canons of the Fourth Lateran, ordered all cathedrals to have teachers of grammar and lectors in theology, and offered the rewards of high office only to those who pursued hard study with the sweat of the brow.1185  He had in mind only candidates of theology.

The text-books in use for centuries were still popular, such as Cassiodorus, the Isagoge of Porphyry, Aristotle on the Categories; and his De interpretatione, Boethius on Music and the Consolations of Philosophy, Martianus Capella and the grammars of Priscian and Donatus.1186  A new movement, however, was distinctly perceptible, and nothing is more sure proof of it than the open use of the classics by some of the leading educators in their lectures and their use in the writings of the time.

The condemnation, passed by Jerome on the ancient classics, was adopted by Cassian and handed down to the later generations. The obscurantists had the field with little or few exceptions for centuries. It is not to Alcuin’s credit that, in his latter years, he turned away from Virgil as a collection of "lying fables" and, in a letter to a novice, advised him not to assoil his mind with that poet’s rank luxuriance.1187  It was argued by Leo, in his reply to Arnulf of Orleans, 991, that the Apostle Peter was not acquainted with such writers as Plato, Virgil, and Terence, or any of the pseudo-philosophers, and God had from the beginning not chosen orators and philosophers but ignorant and rustic men as His agents.1188  Peter the Venerable raised his voice against them. But such warnings1189 were not sufficient to induce all men to hold themselves aloof from the fascinations of the Latin writers.

Gerbert taught Virgil, Statius, Terence, Juvenal, Persius, Horace, and Lucan.1190  From these he passed on to the department of philosophy. Peter Damiani compared the study of the poets and philosophers to the spoiling of the Egyptians. They served to sharpen the understanding; the study of the writers of the Church to build a tabernacle to God. Anselm of Bee recommended the study of Virgil and other classics, counselling the exclusion of such treatises as contained suggestions of evil.1191  John of Salisbury’s teachers were zealous in reading such writings. John, who in the small compass of the Metalogicus quotes no less than seven classical poets, Statius, Martian, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, and Persius, and some of these a number of times, says that if you search in Virgil and Lucan, you will be sure to find the essence of philosophy, no matter what philosophy you may profess.1192  He complained of the old school who compared the student of the classic poets and historians to the slow-going ass, and laughed at him as duller than a stone.1193  Abaelard gave to Virgil the esteem due a prophet. Peter of Blois, d. 1204, the English archdeacon, quotes Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Curtius, Tacitus, Suetonius, Seneca (Letters), and other writers. Grosseteste was familiar with Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and other classics. But the time for the full Renaissance had not yet come. In the earliest statutes of the University of Paris the classics were excluded from the curriculum of studies. The subtle processes of the Schoolmen, although they did not altogether ignore the classic compositions, could construct the great theological systems without their aid, though they drew largely and confidently upon Aristotle.

The Discipline of the schools was severe. A good flogging was considered a wholesome means of educational advancement. It drove out the evil spirits of intellectual dulness and heaviness. Degere sub virga, to pass under the rod, was another expression for getting an education. At a later date, the ceremony of inducting a schoolmaster included the presentation of a rod and required him, at least in England, to show his prowess by flogging a boy publicly.1194  If the case of Guibert of Nogent was a typical one, then the process of getting an education was indeed a painful piece of physical experience.

Guibert’s account of his experiences is the most elaborate description we have of mediaeval school life, and one of the most interesting pieces of schoolboys’ experience in literature.1195  The child, early sent to school by his widowed mother, was unmercifully beaten with fist and rod by his teacher, a man who had learned grammar in his advanced years. Though the teacher was an indifferent grammarian, Guibert testifies to the vigor of his moral purpose and the wholesome moral impression he made upon his pupils. The whipping came every day. But the child’s ardor for learning did not grow cold. On returning to his home one evening and loosening his shirt, his mother saw the welts and bruises on his shoulders, for he had been beaten black and blue that day;1196 she suggested, in indignation and pity, that her boy give up preparation for the priesthood, and offered to give him the equipment for the career of a knight. But Guibert, greatly excited, resented any such suggestion.

At Cluny the pupils slept near the masters, and if they were obliged to get up at night, it was not till they had the permission of a master. If they committed any offence in singing the Psalms or other songs, in going to bed, or in any other way, they were punished in their shirts, by the prior or other master, with switches prepared beforehand.1197

But there were not wanting teachers who protested against this method. Anselm urged the way of affection and confidence and urged that a skilful artificer never fashioned his image out of gold plate by blows alone. With wise and gentle hand he pressed it into shape. Ceaseless beating only brutalizes. To an abbot who said "day and night we do not cease to chastise the children confided to our care and yet they grow worse and worse," Anselm replied: "Indeed!  And when they are grown up, what will they become?  Stupid dolts. A fine education that, which makes brutes of men!... If you were to plant a tree in your garden and were to enclose it on all sides, so that it could not extend its branches, what would you find when, at the end of several years, you set it free from its bounds?  A tree whose branches were bent and scraggy, and would it not be your fault for having so unreasonably confined it?"1198

The principle ruled that an education was free to all whose circumstances did not enable them to pay for it. Others paid their way. Fulbert of Chartres took a fee from the rapidly increasing number of students, regarding philosophy as worth what was paid for it. But this practice was regarded as exceptional and met with opposition.1199  The words of Alcuin, "If you desire to study, you will have what you seek without money," were inscribed on the convent of St. Peter at Salzburg.1200  It was the boast that the care given to the humblest scholar at Cluny was as diligent as the care given to children in the palace.1201

§ 89. Books and Libraries.

Literature: E. Edwards: Libraries and Founders of Libraries, Lond., 1865.—T. Gottlieb: Mittetalt. Bibliotheken, Leip., 1890.—F. A. Gasquet: Notes on Med. Libraries, Lond., 1891.—E. M. Thompson: Hd. book of Gr. and Lat. Palaeography, Lond., 1893. Contains excellent facsimiles of med. MSS., etc.—J. W. CLARK: Libraries in the Med. and Renaiss. Periods, Cambr., 1894.—G. R. Putnam: Books and their Makers, 476–1709, 2 vols. N. Y., 1896 sq. See his elaborate list of books on monastic education, libraries, etc., I. xviii. sqq.—Mirbt: Publizistik in Zeitalter Greg. VII., pp. 96 sqq. and 119 sqq.—*Maitland: The Dark Ages.—*W. Wattenbach: D. Schriftwesen in Mittelalter, 3d ed., Leip., 1896.—Art. Bibliothek in Wetzer-Welte, II. 783 sqq. Transl. and Reprints of Univ. of Pa. II. 3.

Books and schools go together and both are essential to progress of thought in the Church. The mediaeval catalogue of the convent of Muri asserts strongly the close union of the intellectual and religious life. It becomes us, so it ran, always to copy, adorn, improve, and annotate books, because the life of the spiritual man is nothing without books.1202

Happy was the convent that possessed a few volumes.1203  The convent and the cathedral were almost the sole receptacles for books. Here they were most safe from the vandalism of invaders and the ravages of fire, so frequent in the Middle Ages; and here they were accessible to the constituency which could read. It was a current saying, first traced to Gottfried, canon of St. Barbe-en-Auge, that a convent without a library is like a fortress without arms.1204  During the early Middle Ages, there were small collections of books at York, Fulda, Monte Cassino, and other monasteries. They were greatly prized, and ecclesiastics made journeys to get them, as did Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, who made five trips to Italy for that purpose. During the two centuries and more after Gregory VII., the use and the number of books increased; but it remained for the zeal of Petrarch in the fourteenth century to open a new era in the history of libraries. The period of the Renaissance which followed witnessed an unexampled avidity for old manuscripts which the transition of scholars from Constantinople made it possible to satisfy.

To the convents of Western Europe, letters and religion owe a lasting debt, not only for the preservation of books, but for their multiplication. The monks of St. Benedict have the first place as the founders of libraries and guardians of patristic and classical literature. Their Rules required them to do a certain amount of reading each day, and at the beginning of Lent each received a book from the cloistral collection and was expected to read it "straight through." This direction shines as a light down through the history of the monastic institutions, though many a convent probably possessed no books and some of them had little appreciation of their value.

A collection of several hundred books was relatively as large a library as a collection of hundreds of thousands of volumes would be now. Fleury, in the twelfth century, had 238 volumes, St. Riquier 258.1205  The destruction of the English monastery of Croyland in the eleventh century involved the loss of "300 original and more than 400 smaller volumes." The conventual buildings were destroyed in the night by fire. The interesting letter of the abbot Ingulph, relating the calamity, speaks of beautiful manuscripts, illuminated with pictures and adorned with crosses of gold. The good abbot, after describing the loss of the chapel, infirmary, and other parts of the buildings, went on to say "our cellar and the very casks, full of beer, were also burnt up."1206

Catalogues are preserved from this period. Edwards gives a list of thirty-three mediaeval catalogues of English libraries.1207  The catalogue of Prüfening in Salzburg, 1158, prepared by, "one who was a born librarian,"1208 arranged the volumes in three classes: copies of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and modern writers. The books, most frequently found, were the Bible, or parts of it, the liturgical books,—Augustine, Gregory the Great, Jerome, and Ambrose,—and among the writers of the Carlovingian age, Bede and Alcuin. The catalogue of Corbie, Picardy, dating from the twelfth century, gives 39 copies of Augustine, 16 of Jerome, 13 of Bede, 15 of Boethius, and 5 of Cicero, as well as copies of Terence, Livy, Pliny, and Seneca.1209  Of later mediaeval writers, the works of Anselm, Bernard, Hugo, and Abaelard are found most often, but many collections were without a single recent writer. The otherwise rich collection of St. Michelsberg, in Bamberg, had only a single recent work, the Meditations of Anselm. The Prüfening library had a copy each, of Anselm, Hugo, Abaelard, the Lombard and Gratian. Classical authors were common. The library at Durham had copies of Cicero, Terence, Virgil, Horace, Claudian, Statius, Sallust, Suetonius, Quintilian and other Latin authors.1210  Sometimes the classics were catalogued by themselves as at Neumünster.

Gifts of books were regarded as worthy benefactions. Peter, bishop of Paris, before starting out for the Holy Land, gave 300 works over to the care of the convent of St. Victor.1211  Grosseteste willed his collection to the Oxford Franciscans.1212  Gerbert, afterwards Sylvester II., says that the liberality of friends enabled him to buy a number of books in Rome, Italy, and Flanders.1213  The admiring chronicler treats it as a claim to fame, that Theodoric secured, for his abbey of St. Evroult, the books of the Old and New Testaments and an entire set of Gregory the Great. Others followed his good example and secured the works of Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, and other Fathers.1214  Peter the Venerable declared that at Cluny books, notably the works of Augustine, were held more precious than gold.1215

Libraries were sometimes given with the stipulation that the books should be loaned out. This was the case with Jacob of Carnarius who, in 1234, gave his library to the Dominicans of Vercelli on this condition. In 1270, Stephen, at one time archdeacon of Canterbury, donated his books to Notre Dame, Paris, on condition of their being loaned to poor theological students, and Peter of Joigny, 1297, bequeathed his collection directly to poor students.1216  In the following century Petrarch left his books to St. Marks, Venice, and Boccaccio willed his possessions of this kind to the Augustinian friars of Florence.

Manuscripts were sometimes offered at the altar or at the shrines of saints as offerings for the healing of the giver’s soul,—pro remedio animae suae.1217 On the other hand, in cases of emergency, books were put in pawn or sold. William of Longchamps, bishop of Ely, 1190, pawned 13 copies of the Gospels for the redemption of Richard I.1218 The abbot Diemo of Lorsch, 1139, needing money to pay for military equipments, sold three books ornamented with gold and precious stones.1219 Here and there, a tax was levied for the benefit of a library, as in the case of Evesham, 1215, and the synod of Lyons the same year adopted a like expedient.1220 Prince Borwin of Rostock, in 1240, gave the monastery of Dargun a hide of land, the proceeds of which were to be used for the needs of the library.1221

Of all books, copies of the Scriptures were held in highest esteem. They were often bound in covers, inlaid with gold and silver, and sometimes ornamented with precious stones and richly illuminated. Paul, abbot of St. Albans, placed in the abbey-library eight Psalters and two Gospels highly ornamented with gold and gems, as well as a copy of the Collects, a copy of the Epistles, and 28 other books. In 1295, the dean of St. Paul’s found in the cathedral 12 copies of the Gospels adorned with jewels, and a thirteenth copy kept in a case with relics.1222

Books were kept first in armaria or horizontal presses and the librarian was called armarius. About the fourteenth century shelves were introduced along the cloistral walls.1223  As early as the thirteenth century books were fastened by chains to protect them from being stolen by eager readers.1224  The statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1350, required that certain books remain continually in the library, chained to their places, for the use of the fellows. This custom was still in vogue in England in the sixteenth century, when copies of the English Bible were kept chained to the reading desks in the churches. The old Benedictine rule was still enforced for the distribution of books. Lanfranc’s statutes for the English Benedictines, 1070, required the return of the books by the monks the first Sunday in Lent. They were then to be laid out on the floor and distributed for the ensuing year, one book to each monk. Any one failing to read his book was obliged to fall on his face and confess his neglect.1225  The loan of books was not uncommon. Bernard borrowed and lent as did Peter the Venerable.1226  The Cistercians provided for such loans to outside parties and the synod of Paris, 1212, insisted that convents should not recede from this good practice which it pronounced a work of mercy.

The book-room, or scriptorium, was part of a complete conventual building. It served as a place of writing and of transcribing manuscripts. Sometimes a monk had his own little book-room, called scriptoriolum, or kept books in his cell. Nicholas, Bernard’s secretary, described his little room as next to the infirmary and "filled with choice and divine books."1227  Peter of Celle, successor to John of Salisbury in the see of Chartres, spoke of his scriptoriolum as filled with books, where he could be free from the vanity and vexations of the world. The place had been assigned to him, he said, for reading, writing, meditating, praying, and adoring the Lord.1228

Abbots themselves joined to their other labors the work of the copyist. So it was with Theodoric of St. Evroult, 1050–1057, a skilful scribe who, according to Ordericus Vitalis,1229 left "splendid monuments of his calligraphic skill," in copies of the Collects, Graduale, and Antiphonary which were deposited in the convent collection. Theodoric also secured the services of others to copy commentaries and the heptateuch.1230  Convents were concerned to secure expert transcribers. Copying was made a special feature of St. Albans by the abbot Paul, 1077–1093. He secured money for a scriptorium and brought scribes from a distance. In the latter part of the eleventh century, Hirschau in Southern Germany was noted for this kind of activity, through its abbot William, who saw that twelve good copyists were trained for his house. These men made many copies and William is said to have presented books to every convent he reformed. The scribe, Othlo of Emmeram, of the same century, has left us a list of the books he gave away.1231

Diligence as a copyist sometimes stood monks in good stead when they came to face the realities of the future world. Of such an one, Ordericus makes mention.1232  This monk had copied with his own hand a bulky volume of Scripture, but he was a man of many moral offences. When the evil spirits laid claim to his soul, the angels produced the holy volume which the monk had transcribed. Every letter was counted and balanced against a sin. At last, it was found the letters had a majority of one. The devils tried to scrape up another sin, but in vain, and the Lord permitted the fortunate monk to return to the body and do proper penance.

Copying was sometimes prescribed as a punishment for cloistral offences and the Carthusian rules withheld wine from the monk who was able to copy and would not ply his art. It seems at times to have been a most confining and wearisome task. Lewis, a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, had some of this feeling when he appended to a transcription of Jerome’s commentary on Daniel the following words and claimed the prayers of the reader: —

Dum scripsit friguit, et quod cum lumine solis

Scribere non potuit, perfecit lumine noctis.

"When he wrote he froze, and what he could not complete by the light of day, he finished by the light of the night."1233

The price of books continued to be high till the invention of the printing-press. A count of Anjou paid for a copy of the homilies of Haimo of Halberstadt 200 sheep and a large quantity of provisions. In 1274, a finely written Bible sold for 50 marks, about $l70, when labor cost a shilling a day. Maitland computed that it would take a monk ten months to transcribe the Bible and that the labor would be worth to-day £60 or £70.1234  The prices, however, were often greatly reduced, and Richard of Bury, in his Philobiblion, says that he purchased from the convent of St. Albans 32 volumes for £50.

The copyists, like the builders of the cathedrals, usually concealed their names. It was a custom with them to close their task by appending some pious or, at times, some witty sentiment. A line, frequently appended, ran, finito libro, sit laus et gloria Christo.  "The book is finished. Praise and honor be to Christ." The joy authors often feel at the completion of their writings was felt by a scribe when he wrote, libro completo, saltat scriptor pede leto.  "Now the book is done, the scribe dances with glad foot." Another piously expressed his feelings when he wrote, dentur pro penna scriptori caelica regna.  "May the heavenly reward be given to the scribe for his work with the quill."1235

The pleasures of converse with books in the quiet of a library are thus attractively set forth by a mediaeval theologian, left alone in the convent when the other monks had gone off for recreation: —

"Our house is empty save only myself and the rats and mice who nibble in solitary hunger. There is no voice in the hall, no footstep on the stairs .... I sit here with no company but books, dipping into dainty honeycombs of literature. All minds in the world’s literature are concentrated in a library. This is the pinnacle of the temple from which we may see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. I keep Egypt and the Holy Land in the closet next to the window. On the side of them are Athens and the empire of Rome. Never was such an army mustered as I have here. No general ever had such soldiers as I have. No kingdom ever had half such illustrious subjects as mine or subjects half as well disciplined. I can put my haughtiest subjects up or down as it pleases me .... I call Plato and he answers "here,"—a noble and sturdy soldier; "Aristotle," "here,"—a host in himself. Demosthenes, Pliny, Cicero, Tacitus, Caesar. "Here," they answer, and they smile at me in their immortality of youth. Modest all, they never speak unless spoken to. Bountiful all, they never refuse to answer. And they are all at peace together .... All the world is around me, all that ever stirred human hearts or fired the imagination is harmlessly here. My library cases are the avenues of time. Ages have wrought, generations grown, and all their blossoms are cast down here. It is the garden of immortal fruits without dog or dragon."

§ 90. The Universities.

Literature: Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by H. Denifle, O. P. and A. Chatelain, adjunct librarian of the Sorbonne, 4 vols. Paris, 1889–1897. This magnificent work gives the documents bearing on the origin, organization, customs, and rules of the University of Paris from 1200–1452; and forms one of the most valuable recent contributions to the study of the Middle Ages.—Auctarium Chartularii Univ. Paris., ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, 2 vols. Paris, 1893–1897. It gives the documents bearing on the Hist. of the English "nation" in Paris from 1393–1466.—Denifle: Urkunden zur Gesch. der mittelalt. Universitäten, in Archiv für Lit.- und Kirchengesch., V. 167 sqq., 1889.—Engl. trans. of the charter of Fred. Barbarossa, 1158; the Privilege of Philip Augustus, 1200; the charter of Frederick II. founding the Univ. of Naples; the Regulations of Robert de Courçon, 1215, etc., are given in the Trans. and Reprints of the Dep. of Hist., Univ. of Penn. — C. E. Bulaeus (Du Boulay): Hist. univ. Paris., etc., a Carolo Magno ad nostra tempora (1600), 6 vols. Paris, 1665–1678. A splendid work, but wrong in its description of the origin of the university and some matters of its organization.—F. C. von Savigny, Prof. in Berlin, d. 1861: Gesch. des röm. Rechts im M. A., Heidel., 2d ed., 1834, vol. III.—J. H. Newman: Office and Work of Universities, London, 1856, vol. III of his Hist. Sketches. An exaggerated estimate of medieval culture. I. Döllinger: D. Universitäten sonst und jetzt, in his Akad. Vorträge, Nordl., 1889.—*Denifle: D. Entstehung d. Universitäten d. Mittelalters bis 1400, Berlin, 1885, pp. 814. Marks an epoch in the treatment of the subject; is full of learning and original research, but repetitious and contentious. Denifle intended to write three more volumes.—*S. S. Laurie: The Rise and Constit. of Universities, etc., Camb., 1892.—G. Compayré: Abelard and Origin and Early Hist. of Universities, N. Y., 1898.—*H. Rashdall: The Universities of Europe in the M. A., 2 vols., Oxford, 1895. —P. SCHAFF: The Univ. Past, Present and Future, in Lit. and Poetry, pp. 256–278.

The university appears in Europe as an established institution in the twelfth century. It quickly became the restless centre of intellectual and literary life, the workshop of learning and scientific progress. Democratic in its constitution, it received men from every rank and sent them forth with new ideas and equipped to be the leaders of their age.

Origin. — The universities were a product of the mediaeval mind, to which nothing in the ancient world, in any adequate way, corresponded. They grew up on the soil of the cathedral and conventual studies, but there was no organic continuity between them and the earlier schools. They were of independent growth, coming into being in response to a demand, awakened by the changed circumstances of life and the revival of thought in Europe. No clatter and noise announced their coming, but they were developed gradually from imperfect beginnings into thoroughly organized literary corporations.

Nor were the universities the immediate creation of the Church. Church authority did not bring them into being as it did the Crusades. All that can be said is that the men who wrought at their foundations and the lower superstructures were ecclesiastics and that popes were wise enough early to become their patrons and, as in the case of Paris, to take the reins of their general administration into their own hands. The time had come for a specialization of studies in the departments of human knowledge, the arts, law, medicine, and theology, which last, according to Jacob of Vitry, "alone can be called a liberal art, since it alone delivers the human soul from its woes."

The universities owed their rise to the enthusiasm of single teachers1236 whose dialectic skill and magnetism attracted students wherever they happened to be. Bologna through Irnerius and other teachers, and Paris through a group of men, of whom Abaelard was the most prominent figure, were the centres where the university idea had its earliest and most substantial realization. These teachers satisfied and created a demand for specialization in education.

Due credit must not be withheld from the guilds whose organization furnished a pattern for the university, especially in the case of Bologna. The university was the literary guild, representing a like-minded community of intellectual interests and workers. It is also possible that some credit must be given to Arabic influences, as in the case of the school of medicine at Salerno.

The first universities arose in Italy, the earliest of all being Salerno and Bologna. These were followed by Paris and other French universities. England came next, and then Spain. Prague was the first to embody the idea in Central Europe. The distinctively German universities do not date beyond the second half of the fourteenth century, Vienna, 1365, Erfurt, 1379, Heidelberg, 1385, Cologne, 1388. The three Scotch universities, St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, were established in the fifteenth century. That century also witnessed the birth of the far northern Universities of Copenhagen and Upsala. By the end of the fifteenth century there were nearly eighty of these academic institutions. Some of these passed out of existence and some never attained to more than a local celebrity.

Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge, and other universities owed their existence to no papal or royal charter. Toulouse, 1229 and Rome, 1244 were the first to be founded by papal bulls. The University of Naples was founded by the emperor, Frederick II., 1224. The Spanish Universities of Palencia, 1212, Salamanca, 1230, and Seville, 1254, were established by the kings of Castile. Prague, 1347, was founded by a double charter from the pope and Charles IV. Some universities had their origin in disaffection prevailing in universities already established: Padua started in a defection of students from Bologna; Cambridge, in 1209, in a defection of students from Oxford, and Leipzig, in 1409, grew out of the dissatisfaction of the German "nation" with its treatment at Prague. Heidelberg is the earliest institution of papal creation which went over to the Reformation.1237

Organization. — A university originally signified not a body of studies or a place where studies were prosecuted, but an aggregation of teachers and students—universitas magistrorum et scholarium. The term "university" was used of any group of persons and was a common expression for "Your body" or "all of you"—universitas vestra.1238 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was frequently applied to guilds. The literary guild, or university, denoted the group of persons carrying on studies. The equivalent in the Middle Ages for the term "university," as we use it, was studium and studium generale, "study" or, "general study." Thus the University of Bologna was called studium Bononie or Bononiense,—as it is still called studio Bolognese in Italy, Paris, studium Parisiense, Oxford, studium Oxoniense. The addition "general" had reference to students, not to a variety of branches of knowledge, and denoted that the studium was open to students from every quarter.1239  By the fifteenth century the term "university" had come to have its present meaning. The designation of a seat of learning as alma or alma mater dates from the thirteenth century.

A full university requires at least four faculties, the arts—now known at the German universities as the faculty of philosophy,—law, medicine, and theology. This idea was not embodied in the earliest foundations and some of the universities remained incomplete during their entire existence. Salerno was a medical school. Bologna was for more than a century only a school of law. Salamanca, the most venerable of existing Spanish educational institutions, did not have a faculty of theology till the end of the fourteenth century.1240  Paris, which began as a seat of theological culture, had no formal provision for the study of civil law till the seventeenth century, although civil law was taught there before 1219.1241  Nearly one half of the universities did not include theology in the list of studies. The Italian universities were, almost without an exception, at first confined to the study of jurisprudence and medicine. The reason for this may have been a purpose not to come into collision with the episcopal and conventual schools, which existed for the training of priests. The faculty of the arts, the lowest of the faculties, included the seven studies covered by the trivium and quadrivium, but was at a later period expanded so as to include metaphysical, linguistic, historic, and other studies not covered by the study of law, medicine, and theology. Theology was known as the highest and master study. Alexander IV., writing to Paris, 1256, said that theology ruled over the other studies like a mistress, and they followed her as servants.1242

The university had its own government, endowments, and privileges. These privileges, or bills of rights, were of great value, giving the body of teachers and students protection from the usual police surveillance exercised by municipalities and included their exemption from taxation, from military service except in cases of exigency, and from the usual modes of trial before the municipal authorities. Suits brought against members of the University of Paris were tried before the bishop of Paris. In Bologna, such suits were tried before the professor of the accused student or the bishop. By the privilege of Philip Augustus, 1200, the chattels of students at Paris were exempt from seizure by the civil officer. The university was a state within the state, a free republic of letters.1243  The master and students formed, as it were, a separate class. When they felt that their rights were abused, they resorted to what was called cessation, cessatio, a suspension of the functions of the university or even removal to some other locality. In 1229 the University of Paris suspended for two years on account of the delay of Queen Blanche to give redress for the violent death of two students during the carnival. Many professors left Paris till not a single one of fame remained. The bishop of Paris launched excommunications against the chief offenders; but the university was victorious and the king made apology for the injuries inflicted and the pope revoked the ecclesiastical censures. Gregory IX., 1231, confirmed this privilege of suspending lectures.1244  This feature survives in the German universities which cling to Lehrfreiheit, the professor’s liberty to teach, as conscience dictates, without fear of interference from the state.

The Model Universities.—In the administration of their affairs the universities followed Bologna and Paris as models. In Bologna the students were in control, in Paris the masters in conjunction with the students. As for their relation to the pope and the authority of the Church, Bologna was always free, antipapal and anticlerical, as compared with her younger sister in France. The democratic principle had large recognition. The first element to be noticed is the part played by the different faculties. In Paris the faculties were fully organized by the middle of the thirteenth century. In 1281, the university as a body promised to defend each of its faculties.1245  Long before that time each faculty passed upon its own degrees, regulated its own lectures, and performed other special acts.

The second element was the part which the so-called nations had in the administration. In Bologna there were four nations, the Italians, English,1246 Provençals, and Germans. The students of Paris were likewise divided into four groups, representing France, Picardy (including the Netherlands), Normandy, and England, the last giving place, in 1430, to Germany. The distinctive organization at Paris goes back to the early years of the thirteenth century.1247  At first floating colonies brought together by national and linguistic affinities, the nations were developed into corporate organizations, each with a code of its own. They were in turn divided into provinces. An elective official, known as the rector, stood at the head of the whole corporation. At Bologna he was called, as early as 1194, "rector of the associations," rector societatum. He directed the affairs of the university in conjunction with a board of counsellors representing the provinces.

The first record calling the head of the University of Paris rector1248 occurs in a bull of Alexander IV., 1259, but the office, no doubt, existed long before. He was chosen by the proctors or presidents of the four nations. The rector had to be a master of arts and might be a layman, but must be a celibate. He performed on great occasions, and wore a striking costume. He was responsible to the body whose agent he was. The Paris rector was addressed as "your amplitude," vestra amplitudo.

At Paris there was also a chancellor, and he was the older officer. He stood at the head of the chapter of Notre Dame and was called interchangeably chancellor of the cathedral and chancellor of Paris. To him belonged the prerogative of giving the license to teach and confer degrees. His authority was recognized, time and again, by the popes, and also restricted by papal decree, so that what he lost the rector gained.1249  In Bologna, by the decree of Honorius III., 1219, the archdeacon of the diocese conferred the degrees.1250

Degrees.—By 1264, at latest, each faculty at Paris had its own dean1251 and exercised the right to grant the license to teach in its own department. Such license,—jus docendi, or legendi,—when conferred by Bologna or Paris, carried with it the right to teach everywhere,—jus ubique docendi. Gregory IX., 1233, and other popes conferred the same prerogative upon the masters of Toulouse and other universities but it seems doubtful whether their degrees were respected. Even a degree from Oxford did not carry the right of lecturing at Paris without a reëxamination. When Alexander IV. granted to the masters of Salamanca the right of teaching everywhere, Bologna and Paris were expressly excepted.1252

The question of mediaeval degrees offers much difficulty. There seem to have been three stages: bachelor, or baccalaureus, licentiate, and doctor or master. They corresponded to the three grades in the guilds: apprentice, assistant, and master. The bachelors were received after examination and did subordinate lecturing. The degree was not merely a testimonial of work done, but a certificate entitling the holder to ply the trade of reading or teaching. The titles, master, magister, doctor, dominus, and professor, scholasticus, were synonymous. "Doctor" was the usual title at Bologna, and "master" at Paris, but gradually "doctor" came to be used chiefly of the graduates in canon law at Paris, and "master" of graduates in theology.1253  In his charter of 1224, Frederick spoke of the "doctors and masters in each faculty," no doubt using the words as synonyms. The test for the degrees was called the "determination," determinance, the main part of which was the presentation of a thesis and its defence against all comers.

Eight years was fixed by Robert de Courcon, 1215, as the period of preparation for the theological doctorate, but in the beginning of the fourteenth century it was extended to fourteen years. In the department of jurisprudence a course of eight years,—in medicine a course of six years,—was required.

Teachers and Studies.—The teaching was done at first in convents and in private quarters. In 1253 there were twelve professors of theology in Paris, nine of them teaching in convents and belonging to the orders. University buildings were of slow growth, and the phenomenon presented by such great universities as Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, starting out fully equipped with large endowments and buildings, was unknown in the Middle Ages. Professors and students had to make their own way and at first no provision was made by king or municipality for salaries. The professor lived by lecture fees and the gifts of rich students. Later, endowments were provided, and cities provided funds for the payment of salaries.1254  Colleges were at first bursaries, or hostels, where students lived together, gratuitous provision being made for their support.1255  The earliest endowment of this kind, which still exists, is the college of the Sorbonne at Paris, founded by Robert of Sorbon, 1257, for sixteen secular students, four from each nation. The term "secular" was used in distinction from conventual. Another famous college was the college of Navarre on St. Genevieve, founded by the queen of Philip the Fair, Jeanne of Navarre, 1304. Rashdall, I. 478–517, gives a list of more than sixty colleges, or bursaries, founded in Paris before 1500. From being places of residence for needy students, the colleges came to include masters, as at Oxford and Cambridge. At Bologna the college system was never developed to the same extent as at Paris and in England.

With rare exceptions, the teachers in all the faculties were ecclesiastics, or, if laymen, unmarried. John XXII., in 1331, granted a dispensation to a married man to teach medicine in Paris, but it was an exception. Not till 1452 was the requirement of celibacy modified for the faculty of medicine in Paris, and till 1479 for Heidelberg; and not till a later date were the legal professors of Paris and Bologna exempted from this restriction. The Reformation at once effected a change in the universities under Protestant influence.1256

The lectures were given in Latin and students as well as masters were required to use Latin in conversation. Learning of any kind was regarded as too sacred a thing to be conveyed in the vulgar dialects of Europe.1257  The studies at the University of Paris were authoritatively prescribed by the papal legate, Robert de Courcon, 1215.1258  Gregory IX., 1231, also took part in stating what the text-books should be. The classics had no place. Certain works of Aristotle were forbidden, as were also, at a later date, the writings of Amauri of Bena, David of Dinant, and other supposed or real heretics. Gregory IX. warned the divinity students against affecting philosophy, and to be satisfied with becoming "theodocts."1259

Attendance and Discipline.—The attendance at the mediaeval universities has been a matter of much dispute. Some of the figures seem to be incredibly large.1260  No matriculation books exist for the earliest periods, and not till the end of the fourteenth century do we have actual records of the number of graduations in Paris. Odefridus, a writer of the thirteenth century, gives the number of students at Bologna two generations before, as 10,000. Paris was reported to have had 25,000 students, and Oxford as many as 30,000,1261 or at one time, to follow Wyclif, 60,000. Speaking of his own times Wyclif, however, gives the more reasonable figure, 3000. In his days of unobscured fame, Abaelard lectured to 3000 hearers, and this figure does not seem to be exaggerated when we consider the great attraction of his personality. In any estimate, it must be remembered that the student body included boys and also men well up in years. Rashdall makes 1500 to 3000 the maximum number for Oxford.1262

There was no such thing as university discipline in the thirteenth century, as we understand discipline. The testimonies are unanimous that the students led a wild life.1263  Many of them were mere boys, studying in the department of arts. There were no dormitories, and the means of communication then at hand did not make it possible for parents to exercise the checks upon absent sons such as they may exercise to-day. Felix Platter, d. 1614, states in his autobiography that, as late as the middle of the sixteenth century, it required twenty days to make the journey from Basel to the school of Montpellier. At Paris students were excused from the payment of fees on account of the long distances from which they had come, the journeys often requiring several months and involving perils from robbers.1264  Complaint was made in Paris, 1218, of scholars who broke into houses, carrying off girls and women; and in 1269 a public proclamation denounced gangs of students who broke into houses, ravished women, and committed robberies and "many other enormities hateful to God."1265  In Paris the inns—tabernae — were numerous. English students were noted for their drinking, and "to drink like an Englishman and to sing like a Norman" became proverbial.1266  The duel was a common way of settling disputes, and Gregory IX., 1231, forbade students going through the streets carrying arms.1267

The rescript given by Frederick Barbarossa to Bologna, 1158, presented a picture of students as those "who exile themselves through love of learning and wear themselves out in poverty." The facts do not support any rosy picture of social equality, such as we would expect in an ideal democracy. The number who were drawn to the universities from love of adventure and novelty must have been large. The nobleman had his special quarters and his servants, while the poor student begged his bread. It was the custom of the chancellor of Oxford to issue licenses for the needy to beg.1268  At Bologna the rich occupied the first seats.1269  Robert of Courçon commended the gift of garments and other articles to needy scholars.

The mediaeval universities were the centres of the ideals and hopes of the younger generation. There, the seeds were sown of the ecclesiastical and intellectual movements of after times and of the revolutions which the conservative groups pronounced scientific novelties and doctrinal heresies.

A mediaeval writer pronounced the three chief forces for the maintenance of the Catholic faith to be the priesthood, the empire, and the university. This was not always the case. From Paris went forth some of the severest attacks on the theory of papal absolutism, and from there, a century later, the reformers, Gerson and D’Ailly, proceeded. Hussitism was begotten at Prague. Wyclif’s teachings made Oxford a seat of heresy. Wittenberg, the last of the mediaeval universities to open its doors, protected and followed Luther. Basel, Pius II.’s creation, Heidelberg, Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, and other universities became the bulwarks of the new ideas. On the other hand, the Sorbonne, Louvaine, and Cologne ordered Luther’s works burnt. As an agent of culture and the onward progress of mankind, the Middle Ages made no contribution to modern times comparable in usefulness to the university.

§ 91. The University of Bologna.

Literature: Muratori: Antiqq. Ital., III. 884 sqq. Important documents bearing on the state of learning in Italy. —Acta nationis Germanicae univ. Bononiensis, ed. E. Friedländer et C. Malagola, Berl., 1887.—Carlo Malagola: Statuti delta università e dei collegi dello studio Bolognese, p. 524, Bologna, 1888.—Denifle: D. Statutem d. Juristen Univ. Bologna, 1317–1347, in Archiv. für Lit. -und Kirchengesch., III. 196–409 1887. Superseded by Malagola.—Giacomo Cassani (Prof. of Canon Law, Bologna): Dell’ antico Studio di Bologna a sua origine, Bologna, 1888.—H. Fitting: Die Anfänge der Rechtsschule zu Bologna, Berl., 1888.—Savigny (see above) gives a full account with special reference to the study of Roman law, but must be supplemented and corrected by Denifle: Universitäten, etc.—For publications called forth by the eighth centenary, 1888, see P. Schaff: Lit. and Poetry, p. 278. For full Lit., see Rashdall, I. 89–91.

Bologna is the most venerable of European universities. Salerno, which preceded it in time, became sufficiently famous as a medical school to call forth from Petrarch the praise of being the fountain-head of medicine,—fons medicinae,—but its career was limited to two centuries.1270  The origin of Salerno is lost in obscurity. There seems to be no sufficient evidence to show that the school owed its origin to the convent of Monte Cassino which was eighty miles away. It was the outgrowth of the awakened interest in medicine in Southern Italy in which Greek and Arabic influences had a part.

In 1888, Bologna celebrated its eight hundredth anniversary and continues to be one of the most flourishing schools of Southern Europe. As early as the thirteenth century, the tradition was current that Theodosius II., in 433, had granted to it a charter. But its beginnings go no further back than the latter part of the eleventh or the earlier years of the twelfth century. At that period Irnerius, d. about 1130, was teaching the code of Justinian1271 and a little later the Camaldulensian monk, Gratian, taught canon law in the convent of St. Felix. These two masters of jurisprudence, civil and ecclesiastical, are looked upon as the fathers of the university.

Bologna became the chief school for the study of both laws in Europe. The schools of arts added 1221, of medicine 1260, and theology 1360—by a bull of Innocent VI.—never obtained the importance of the school of law.

On a visit to the city in 1155 Frederick Barbarossa granted the university recognition and in 1158, on the field of Roncaglia, gave it its first charter.1272  This is the oldest piece of university legislation. Thenceforth Bologna was a second and better Berytus, the nurse of jurisprudence, legum nutrix, and adopted the proud device, Bononia docet—"Bologna teaches." To papal patronage she owed little or nothing, and in this respect as in others her history did not run parallel with the University of Paris.1273  Students flocked to her by hundreds and thousands from all parts of Western Europe.

The student body, which was in control, was at first divided into four "universities" or guilds. The statutes of the German "nation" have been preserved and declare as its object fraternal charity, mutual association, the care of the sick and support of the needy, the conduct of funerals, the termination of quarrels, and the proper escort of students about to take the examination for the degree of doctor.1274  By the fourteenth century, the four "universities" had given place to the two groups called the Ultramontanes and the Cismontanes, each of which was subdivided into smaller groups presided over by counsellors, conciliarii.

The rectors of the faculties were elected for two years and were required to be secular clerics, unmarried, and wearing the clerical habit. The ceremonies of installation included the placing of a hood on their heads. The two rectors of the two jurist "universities" gave place to a single rector after the middle of the fourteenth century.

The professors took oaths to the student bodies, to follow their codes. If they wished to be absent from their duties, they were obliged to get leave of absence from the rectors. They were required to begin and close their lectures promptly at the ringing of the bell under penalty of a fine and were forbidden to skip any part of the text-books or postpone the answer to questions to the end of the lecture hour. Another rule required them to cover a certain amount of ground in a given period.1275  The professors were kept in awe by the threat which the student body held over them of migrating when there was cause for dissatisfaction. This sort of boycott was exercised a number of times as when Bolognese students decamped and departed to Vicenza 1204, Padua 1222, and for the last time to Siena 1321.

The professors, at first, were dependent upon fees and at times stopped their lectures because of the failure of the students to pay up. The jurist, Odefridus of Bologna, announced on one occasion that he would not lecture in the afternoons of the ensuing term because, "the scholars want to profit but not to pay." Professorial appointments were at first in the hands of the student body but afterwards became the prerogative of the municipality. This change was due in part to the obligation undertaken by the city government to pay fixed salaries.1276  Strange to say, about the middle of the thirteenth century, the professorships at Bologna became largely hereditary.

A noticeable, though not exceptional, feature of Bologna was the admission of learned women to its teaching chairs. Novella d’Andrea, 1312–1366, the daughter of the celebrated jurist Giovanni d’Andrea, lectured on philosophy and law, but behind a curtain, lest her face should attract the attention of the students from their studies. Among other female professors have been Laura Bassi, d. 1778, doctor and professor of philosophy and mathematics; Chlotilda Tambroni, who expounded the Greek classics, 1794–1817; and Giuseppina Cattani, who, until a few years ago, lectured on pathology. In Salerno, also, women practised medicine and lectured, as did Trotula, about 1059, who wrote on the diseases of women. In Paris, as we have been reminded by Denifle, the daughters of one Mangold taught theology in the latter part of the eleventh century.1277

On the other hand, due care was taken to protect the students of Bologna against the wiles of women. The statutes of its college, founded by Cardinal Albornoz, 1367, for Spanish students, forbade them dancing because "the devil easily tempts men to evil through this amusement," and also forbade women to "enter the premises because a woman was the head of sin, the right hand of the devil, and the cause of the expulsion from paradise."1278

A graduate of civil law was required at Bologna to have studied seven years, and of canon law six years. To become a doctor of both laws, utriusque juris, a term of ten years was prescribed. In 1292, Nicholas IV. formally granted the Bolognese doctors the right to lecture everywhere, a right they had exercised before. The promotion to the doctorate was accompanied with much pageantry an involved the candidate in large outlay for gifts and banquets.1279

The class rooms in canon and civil jurisprudence at Bologna became synonymous with traditional opinions. There was no encouragement of originality. With the interpretation of the text-books, which had been handed down, the work of the professor was at an end. This conservatism Dante may have had in mind when he made the complaint that in Bologna only the Decretals were studied. And Roger Bacon exclaimed that "the study of jurisprudence has for forty years destroyed the study of wisdom [that is philosophy, the sciences, and theology], yes, the church itself and all departments."1280  When the Renaissance came, it did not start with Bologna or any of the other Italian universities but in the courts of princes and popes and especially in the city of Florence. The universities produced no Savonarola and encouraged no religious or doctrinal reform.

Note. – An account of the brilliant celebration of the eighth centenary of Bologna, 1888, is given by Philip Schaff: The University, etc., in Lit. and Poetry, pp. 265–278. On that occasion Dr. Schaff represented the University of New York. The exercises were honored by the presence of Humbert and the queen of Italy. The ill-fated Frederick III. of Germany sent from his sick-room a letter of congratulation, as in some sense the heir of Frederick Barbarossa. The clergy were conspicuous by their absence from the celebration, although among the visitors was Father Gavazzi, the ex-Barnabite friar, who in 1848 fired the hearts of his fellow-citizens, the Bolognese, for the cause of Italian liberty and unity and afterwards became the eloquent advocate of a new evangelical movement for his native land, abroad as well as at home. A contrast was presented at the five hundredth anniversary of the University of Heidelberg, 1886, which Dr. Schaff also attended, and which was inaugurated by a solemn religious service and sermon.

§ 92. The University of Paris.

Literature: The works of Bulaeus, Denifle, Rashdall, etc., as given in § 90. Vol. I. of the Chartularium gives the official documents bearing on the history of the Univ. from 1200–1286 with an Introd. by Denifle.—Crevier: Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, 7 vols. Paris, 1761, based on Bulaeus.—P. Feret: La Faculté de Theol. de Paris et ses docteurs les plus celèbres au moyen âge, 5 vols. Paris, 1894 sqq.—A. Luchaire: L’univ. de Paris sous Phil. Auguste, Paris, 1899.—C. Gross: The Polit. Infl. of the Univ. of Paris in the M. A., in Am. Hist. Rev., 1901, pp. 440–446.—H. Felder: Gesch. der wissenschaftl. Studien im Franziskanerorden bis c. 1250, Freib., 1904.—F. X. Seppelt: D. Kampf d. Bettelorden an d. Univ. zu Paris in d. Mitte d. 13ten Jahrh., Breslau, 1905.—Rashdall: Universities, I. 270–557, and the table of Lit. there given.

The lustre of the University of Paris filled all Western Europe as early as the first years of the thirteenth century. It continued to be the chief seat of theological and general learning till the Reformation. In 1231 Gregory IX. called Paris "the parent of the sciences, another Kerieth Sepher, a city of letters, in which, as in a factory of wisdom, the precious stones and gold of wisdom are wrought and polished for the Church of Christ."1281  In the same strain Alexander IV., 1256, eulogized the university1282 as "that most excellent state of letters, a famous city of the arts, a notable school of erudition, the highest factory of wisdom,—officina sapientiae — and the most efficient gymnasium of study. There, a clear spring of the sciences breaks forth at which the peoples of all nations drink." Three hundred years later, in 1518, Luther, in his protest to Cajetan, expressed his willingness to have his case go before the University of Paris to which he referred, "as the parent of studies and from antiquity ever the most Christian University and that in which theology has been particularly cultivated."

The old tradition, which traced the origin of the university back to Charlemagne, the pride of the French has been slow to abandon. Du Boulay devoted an entire volume to its assumed history before the year 1000. Not even was Abaelard its founder. The most that can be said is, that that brilliant teacher prepared the way for the new institution,1283 whose beginnings belong to the period 1150–1170.

From its earliest era of development, the university received the recognition of royalty and the favor of popes who were quick to discern its future importance. In the year 1200 Philip Augustus, king of France, conferred upon it a valuable privilege, granting the students and teaching body independent rights over against the municipal government. Among its venerable documents are communications from Innocent III., his legate, Robert of Courçon, Honorius III. and Gregory IX., 1231. From that time on, the archives abound in papal letters and communications addressed to the pope by the university authorities.

In Paris, as has already been said, the masters were the controlling body. The first use of the expression "university of masters and scholars" occurs in 1221.1284  The earliest example of statutes is found in a bull of Innocent III., written about 1209.1285  Later, Innocent recognized the corporate rights of the body when he permitted it to have a representative at Rome and ordered an expelled master to be readmitted. The statutes of Robert of Courçon, 1215, prescribed text-books and other regulations. A university seal was used as early as 1221.1286  Disputes between the university and the chancellor of the cathedral and other church authorities of Paris date back as far as 1213.

There has been much difference of opinion as to what was the original norm of the organization of the university. Denifle, the leading modern authority, insists against Du Boulay that it was the four faculties and not the "nations," and he finds the faculties developed in the earliest years of the thirteenth century.1287  Some association of masters existed as early as 1170, about which time, John of Celle, abbot of St. Albans, 1195–1214, was admitted into its membership.1288  In 1207, Innocent III. spoke of the "body of masters," and in 1213 he recognized the right of the masters to insist upon the conferring of the license to teach upon the candidates whom they presented. The chancellor was left no option in the matter.1289  In the middle of the thirteenth century, his authority was still more curtailed by the withdrawal of some of the masters to the hill of St. Genevieve on the western bank of the Seine. The abbot of St. Genevieve, who began to be styled, "Chancellor of St. Genevieve" in 1255, assumed the right to confer licensures or degrees and the right was recognized by papal decree.1290

The four nations seem to have been developed out of the demand for discipline among the students of cognate regions and for mutual protection against the civil authorities. It is quite possible the example set in Bologna had some influence in Paris.

The bull of Gregory IX., 1231, parens scientiarum, called by Denifle the "magna charta of the university," recognized and sealed its liberties. It was called forth by the suspension of lectures which had lasted two years. The trouble originated in a brawl in an inn, which developed into a fight between gown and town. The police of the city, with the assent of Queen Blanche, interfered, and killed several of the students. The professors ordered a "cessation" and, when they found that justice was not done, adjourned the university for six years. Some of them emigrated to England and were employed at Oxford and Cambridge.1291  Others settled down at other schools in France. The trouble was brought to an end by Gregory IX., who ratified the right of the masters to secede, and called upon Blanche to punish the offending officials, forbade the chancellor to have any prisons, and the bishop from imposing mulcts or imprisoning students.

It is possible that the office of rector goes back as far as 1200, when an official was called "the head of the Paris scholars."1292  As early as 1245 the title appears distinctly and the rector is distinguished from the proctors.1293  At a later time it was the proper custom, in communicating with the university, to address the "rector and the masters." The question of precedence as between the rector and other high dignitaries, such as the bishop and chancellor of Paris, was one which led to much dispute and elbowing. Du Boulay, himself an ex-rector, takes pride in giving instances of the rector’s outranking archbishops, cardinals, papal nuncios, peers of France, and other lesser noteworthies at public functions.1294

The faculties came to be presided over by deans, the nations by proctors. In the management of the general affairs of the university, the vote was taken by faculties.

The liberties, which the university enjoyed in its earlier history, were greatly curtailed by Louis XI. and by his successors in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The university was treated to sharp rebukes for attempting to interfere with matters that did not belong to it. The right of cessation was withdrawn and the free election of the rectors denied.1295  The police of the city were invested with larger jurisdiction, and the sovereign’s will was made a controlling element.

The fame of the University of Paris came from its schools of arts and theology. The college of the Sorbonne, originally a bursary for poor students of theology, afterwards gave its name to the theological department. It was founded by Robert of Sorbon, the chaplain of St. Louis, the king himself giving part of the site for its building. In the course of time, its halls came to be used for disputations, and the decisions of the faculty obtained a European reputation. Theological students of twenty-five years of age, who had studied six years, and passed an examination, were eligible for licensure as bachelors. For the first three years they read on the Bible and then on the Sentences of the Lombard. These readers were distinguished as Biblici and Sententiarii.  The age limit for the doctorate was thirty-five.

One of the most interesting chapters in the history of the university is the struggle over the admission of the mendicant friars in the middle of the thirteenth century. The papacy secured victory for the friars. And the unwilling university was obliged to recognize them as a part of its teaching force.

The struggle broke out first at the time of the "cessation," 1229, when, as it would seem, the Dominicans secretly favored the side of the civil magistrates against the university authorities, and poisoned the court against them. The Dominicans were established in Paris, 1217 and the Franciscans, 1220, and both orders, furnished with letters of commendation by Honorius III., were at first well received, so the masters themselves declared in a document dated 1254.1296  But they soon began to show arrogance and to demand the right to degrees for their students without promising submission to the statutes of the university. One of the first two Dominican masters to teach at the university was the Englishman, John of Giles. After preaching on poverty in St. Jacques, John descended from the pulpit and put on the Dominican robes.

At the "cessation" of 1251 the two Dominicans and one Franciscan, who were recognized as masters by the university, refused to join with the other authorities, and, after the settlement of the difficulty, the two Dominicans were refused readmittance. A statute was passed forbidding admission to the fellowship, consortium, of the university for those who refused to take the oath to obey its rules. The friars refused to obey the statute and secured from Alexander IV. an order requiring the university to receive them, and setting aside all sentences passed against them.1297

The friction continued, and the seculars sought to break the influence of the Franciscans by pointing out the heresies of Joachim of Flore. The friars retorted by attacking William of St. Amour whose work, The Perils of the Last Times, was a vigorous onslaught upon mendicancy as contrary to Apostolic teaching. William’s book, which called out refutations from Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, was burnt, and refusing to recant, the author was suspended from teaching and banished from France.1298  The friars were hooted on the streets and beaten. By 1257 tranquillity was restored, as we are assured by Alexander IV. Thus the papacy made repayment to the university for its readiness from of old to accept its guidance by depriving the institution of its liberties.1299

From the middle of the fourteenth century, the University of Paris played no mean part in the political affairs of France. More than once she spoke before the court and before the peers of the realm, and more than once was she rebuked for her unsolicited zeal.1300  French kings themselves styled her "the daughter of the king." She was actively zealous in the persecution of Joan of Arc.1301

As a factor in the religious history of Europe, the university figured most prominently during the Western schism—1378–1418. She suggested the three ways of healing the rupture and, to accomplish this result, sent her agents through Western Europe to confer with the kings and other powers. Under the guidance of her chancellors, Gerson and D’Ailly, the discussions of the Reformatory councils of Pisa and Constance were directed, which brought the papal schism to an end. The voting by nations at Constance was her triumph.

As for disputes on distinctly doctrinal questions, the university antagonized John XXII. and his heresy, denying the beatific vision at death. In 1497 she exacted from all candidates for degrees an oath accepting the dogma of the immaculate conception. When the Protestant Reformation came, she decided against that movement and ordered the books of Luther burnt.

§ 93. Oxford and Cambridge.

Literature: Anthony Wood (1632–1695): Hist. et Antiquitates Univ. Oxoniensis, 2 vols. Oxford, 1674. A trans. from MS. by Wase and Peers, under the supervision of Dr. Fell from Wood’s English MS. Wood was dissatisfied with the translation and rewrote his work, which was published a hundred years after his death with a continuation by John Gutsch: The Hist. and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the Univ. of Oxf., 2 vols. Oxford, 1786–1790. Also: The Hist. and Antiquities of Oxf., now first published in English from the original MS. in the Bodleian Library, 2 vols. Oxford, 1792–1796. By the same: Athenae Oxonienses, 2 vols. London, 1691–1692, 3d ed., by Ph. Bliss, 1813–1820, 4 vols. The last work is biographical, and gives an account of the Oxonian writers and bishops from 1500–1690.

Oxford Historical Society’s Publications, 45 vols. Contents: University Register, 1449–1463, 1505–1671, ed. by W. C. Boase, 5 vols.; Hearne’s Collectanea, 1705–1719, 6 vols.; Early History of Oxford (727–1100); Memorials of Merton College, etc.—V. A. HUBER: D. Engl. Universitäten, 2 vols. Cassel, 1839. Engl. trans. by F. W. Newman, a brother of the cardinal, 3 vols. London, 1848.—C. Jeafferson: Annals of Oxford, 2 vols. 2d ed. London, 1871.—H. C. M. Lyte: Hist. of the Univ. of Oxf. from the Earliest Times to 1530, Oxford, 1886.—H. C. Brodrick: Hist. of the Univ. of Oxf., London, 1887.—Rashdall: Universities, II. 319–542.—Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars, pp. 262–302.—Thomas Fuller: Hist. of the Univ. of Cambr. ed. by Pritchard and Wright, Cambridge, 1840.—C. H. Cooper: Annals of Cambr., 4 vols. 1842–1852; Memorials of Cambr., 3 vols. 1884.—Mullinger: Hist. of the Univ. of Cambr. from the earliest times to the accession of Charles I., 2 vols. Cambridge, 1873–1883; Hist. of the Univ. of Cambr., London, 1887, an abridgment of the preceding work. For extensive Lit., see Rashdall, II. 319 sqq., 543 sq.

Next to Paris in age and importance, as a school of philosophy and theology, is the University of Oxford, whose foundation tradition falsely traces to King Alfred. The first historical notice of Oxenford, or Oxford, occurs in 912. Three religious institutions were founded in the town, from any one of which or all of which the school may have had its inception: the priory of St. Frideswyde, Osseney abbey, and the church of the canons regular of St. George’s in the Castle. The usually accepted view connects it with the first. But it is possible the university had its real beginning in a migration from Paris in 1167. This view is based upon a statement of John of Salisbury, that France had expelled her alien scholars and an order of Henry II. forbidding clerks to go to the Continent or to return from it without a license from the justiciar.1302  Before that time, however, there was teaching in Oxford.

The first of the teachers, Thibaut d’Estampes, Theobaldus Stampensis, moved from St. Stephen’s abbey, Caen, and taught in Oxford between 1117 and 1121. He had a school of from sixty to a hundred pupils, and called himself an Oxford master, magister oxenfordiae. He was ridiculed by a monk as a "petty clerk" tantillus clericellus, one of those "wandering chaplains, with pointed beards, curled hair, and effeminate dress, who are ashamed of the proper ecclesiastical habit and the tonsure," and was also accused of being "occupied with secular literature."

The University of Cambridge, which first appears clearly in 1209,1303 did not gain a position of much rank till the fifteenth century and can show no eminent teacher before that time. The first papal recognition dates from the bull of Gregory IX., 1233, which mentions a chancellor.1304

During the Reformation period, Cambridge occupied a position of note and influence equal to Oxford. Fisher, bishop of Rochester, martyred by Henry VIII. and one of the freest patrons of learning, was instrumental in the foundation of two colleges, Christs, 1505, and St. John, 1511. Among its teachers were Erasmus, and later Bucer and Fagius, the Continental Reformers. Tyndale, the translator of the first printed English New Testament, and Thomas Bilney, both of them martyrs, were its scholars. So were the three martyrs, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, though they were burnt at Oxford. During the Elizabethan period, the university was a stronghold of Puritanism with Cartwright and Travers occupying chairs. Cudworth and the Neo-Platonists flourished there. And in recent years its chairs have been filled by such representatives of the historical and exegetical schools as Bishop Lightfoot, Westcott, his successor at Durham, Ellicott, bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and John Anthony Hort.

Oxford and Cambridge differ from the Continental universities in giving prominence to undergraduate studies and in the system of colleges and halls, and also in the closer vital relations they sustain to the Church.

In 1149 the Italian, Vacarius, introduced the study of civil law in Oxford, if we are to follow the doubtful testimony of Gervaise of Canterbury, though it is more probable that he delivered his lectures in the household of the archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald.1305  He wrote, it is said, a digest of laws "sufficient for deciding all legal problems which are wont to be discussed in the schools."

One of the very earliest notices of Oxford as a seat of study is found in a description by Giraldus Cambrensis, the Welsh traveller and historian. About the year 1185 he visited the town and read "before the faculties, doctors, and students" his work on the Topography of Ireland.1306  The school was evidently of some importance to attract such a man. Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford, is called by Giraldus "an Oxford master." The first degree known to have been conferred was given to Edmund Rich, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. From Geraldus it is evident that the masters were grouped in faculties. As early as 1209 and in consequence of the hanging of three students by the mayor, there was a migration of masters and students, said to have been three thousand in number, from which the University of Cambridge had its beginning.1307

The University of Oxford was less bound by ecclesiastical authority than Paris. An unsuccessful attempt was made by the bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese it was located, to assert supervisory authority. The bull of Innocent IV., issued 1254, was the nearest approach to a papal charter and confirmed the university in its "immunities and ancient customs." In 1201 a chancellor is mentioned for the first time. From the beginning this official seems to have been elected by the university. He originally held his office for a term of two years. At the present time the chancellor is an honorary dignitary who does not pretend to reside in Oxford.

In 1395, the university was exempted by papal bull from all control of bishops or legati nati.  This decree was revoked in 1411 in consequence of the disturbances with Wyclif and his followers, but, in 1490, Sixtus IV. again renewed the exemption from ecclesiastical authority.

The university was constantly having conflicts with the town and its authorities. The most notable one occurred in 1354. As usual, it originated in a tavern brawl, the keeper of the place being supported not only by his fellow-townsmen but by thousands from the neighboring country.1308  The chancellor fled. The friars brought out the host and placed it between the combatants, but it was crushed to the earth and a scholar put to death while he was clinging to the friar who held it. Much blood was shed. The townsmen, bent upon paying off old scores, broke into twenty college inns and halls and pillaged them. Even the sanctity of the churches was not respected, and the scholars were hunted down who sought shelter in them. The students left the city. The chancellor appealed the case to the king, and through his authority and the spiritual authority of the bishop the town corporation was forced to make reparation. The place was put under interdict for a year. Officials were punished and restitution of goods to the students was made. The interdict was withdrawn only on condition that the mayor, bailiffs, and sixty burghers should appear in St. Mary’s church on the anniversary of the breaking out of the riot, St. Scholastica’s day, and do penance for the slaughtered students, each burgher laying down a penny on the high altar, the sum to be divided equally between poor students and the curate. It was not till 1825, that the university agreed to forego the spectacle of this annual penance which had been kept up for nearly five centuries. Not for several years did the university assume its former aspect.1309  Among the students themselves peace did not always reign. The Irish contingent was banished, 1413, by act of parliament for turbulence.1310

The arrival of the Dominicans and Franciscans, as has been said in other places, was an event of very great interest at Oxford, but they never attained to the independent power they reached in Paris. They were followed by the Carmelites, the Augustinians, and other orders.

The next important event was the controversy over Wyclif and the doctrines and persons of the Lollards, which filled the years of the last quarter of the fourteenth century and beyond.

At the English universities the college system received a permanent development. Endowments, established by the liberality of bishops, kings, and other personalities, furnished the nucleus for corporations and halls consisting of masters and students, each with a more or less distinct life of it sown. These college bodies and their buildings continue to impart to Oxford and Cambridge a mediaeval aspect and to recall on every hand the venerable memories of past centuries. Twenty-one of these colleges and five halls remain in Oxford. The oldest are University College founded by a bequest of William of Durham at his death, 1249; Merton, 1264; Balliol founded by the father of the Scotch king, 1266; Exeter, 1314; Oriel, 1324; Queen’s College, 1340; the famous New College, 1379, founded by William of Wykenham, bishop of Winchester; All Souls, 1438; Magdalen, 1448, where Wolsey was fellow. Among the illustrious men who taught at Oxford, in the earlier periods, were Edmund Rich, Roger Bacon, Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, Duns Scotus, Ockam, Bradwardine, Richard of Armagh, Wyclif.

As a centre of theological training, Oxford has been closely identified with some of the most important movements in the religious history of England. There Wyclif preached his doctrine and practical reforms. There the Humanists, Grocyn, Colet, and Linacre taught. The school was an important religious centre in the time of the Reformation, in the Commonwealth period, and the period of the Restoration. Within its precincts the Wesleys and Whitefield studied and the Methodist movement had its birth, and there, in the first half of the last century, Pusey, Keble, and Newman exerted the spell of their influence, and the Tractarian movement was started and fostered. Since the year 1854 Oxford and Cambridge have been open to Dissenters. All religious tests were abolished 187l. In 1885 the spiritual descendants of the Puritans, the Independents, established Mansfield College, in Oxford, for the training of ministers.

Note.—List of Mediaeval Universities.1311

Before 1100, Salerno.

1100–1200.—Bologna, 1150?; Paris, 1160?; Oxford, 1170?; Reggio and Modena.

1200–1300.—Vicenza, 1204; Cambridge, 1209; Palencia, Spain, 1212, by Alfonzo VIII. of Castile, abandoned; Arezzo, 1215; Padua, 1222; Naples, 1224; Vercelli, 1228; Toulouse, 1229, by Gregory IX.; Salamanca, 1230, by Ferdinand III. of Castile and confirmed by Alexander IV., 1254; Curia Romana, 1244, by Pope Innocent IV.; Piacenza, Italy, 1248; Seville, 1254, by Alfonso X. of Castile; Montpellier, 1289, by Nicolas IV.; Alcala, 1293, by Sancho of Aragon, transferred 1837 to Madrid; Pamiers, France, 1295, by Boniface VIII.

1300–1400.—Lerida, 1300, by James II. of Aragon and Sicily; Rome, 1303, by Boniface VIII.; Angers, 1305; Orleans, 1306, by Philip the Fair and Clement V.; Perugia, 1308, by Clement V.; Lisbon, 1309, by King Diniz, transferred to Coimbra; Dublin, 1312, chartered by Clement V. but not organized; Treviso, 1318; Cahors, 1332, by John XXII.; Grenoble, 1339, by Benedict XII.; Verona, 1339, by Benedict XII.; Pisa, 1343, by Clement VI.; Valladolid, 1346, by Clement VI.; Prague, 1347, by Clement VI. and Charles IV.; Perpignan, 1349, by Peter IV. of Aragon, confirmed by Clement VII., 1379; Florence, 1349, by Charles IV.; Siena, 1357, by Charles IV.; Huesca, 1359; Pavia, 1361, by Charles IV. and by Boniface VIII., 1389; Vienna, 1365, by Rudolf IV. and Urban V.; Orange, 1365; Cracow, 1364, by Casimir III. of Poland and Urban V.; Fünfkirchen, Hungary, 1365, by Urban V.; Orvieto, 1377; Erfurt, 1379, by Clement VII.; Cologne, 1385, Urban VI.; Heidelberg, 1386, by the Elector Ruprecht of the Palatinate and Urban VI.; Lucca, 1387; Ferrara, 1391; Fermo, 1398.

1400–1500.—Würzburg, 1402; Turin, 1405; Aix, in Provence, 1409; Leipzig, 1409; St. Andrews, 1411; Rostock, 1419; Dôle, 1423; Louvain, Belgium, 1425; Poictiers, 1431; Caen, 1437; Catana, Sicily, 1444; Barcelona, 1450; Valence, France, 1452; Glasgow, 1453; Greifswald, 1455; Freiburg im Breisgau, 1455; Basel, 1459; Nantes, 1460; Pressburg, 1465; Ingolstadt, 1472; Saragossa, 1474; Copenhagen, 1475; Mainz, 1476; Upsala, 1477; Tübingen, 1477; Parma, 1482; Besançon, 1485; Aberdeen, 1494; Wittenberg, 1502, by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony.

§ 94. The Cathedrals.

Literature: J. Fergusson: Hist. of Architecture in All Countries, 2 vols. 1865–1867, and since.—Sir G. G. Scott: The Rise and Devel. of Med. Arch., London, 1879.—Viollet-Le Duc: Lectures on Arch., Engl. trans., 2 vols. London, 1877.—T. R. Smith: Arch. Gothic and Renaissance, N. Y., 1880.—B. Ferree: Christ. Thought in Arch., in Papers of Am. Soc. of Ch. Hist., 1892, pp. 113–140.—F. X. Kraus: Gesch. der christl. Kunst, 2 vols. Freib., 1896–1900.—F. Bond: Engl. cathedrals, London, 1899.—R. STURGIS: Dict. of Arch. and Building, 3 vols. N. Y., 1901 sq.—Art. Kirchenbau by Hauck, in Herzog, X. 774–793. P. Lacroix: The Arts of the Middle Ages, Engl. trans., London.—Ruskin: Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps of Arch., and other writings. This enthusiastic admirer of architecture, especially the Gothic, judged art from the higher standpoint of morality and religion.

The cathedrals of the Middle Ages were the expression of religious praise and devotion and entirely the product of the Church. No other element entered into their construction. They were hymns in stone, and next to the universities are the most imposing and beneficent contribution the mediaeval period made to later generations. The soldiery of the Crusades failed in its attempt at conquest. The builders at home wrought out structures which have fed the piety and excited the admiration of all ages since. They were not due to the papacy but to the devotion of cities, nobles, and people.

It was a marked progress from the triclinia, or rooms in private houses, and crypts, in which the early Christians worshipped, to the cathedral of St. Sophia, at the completion of which Justinian is said to have exclaimed, "O Solomon, I have excelled thee."  And what a change it was from the huts and rude temples of worship of Central and Northern Europe to the splendid structures dedicated to Christian worship,—the worship which Augustine of Canterbury, and Boniface, and St. Ansgar had introduced among the barbarous Northern tribes!

It is also characteristic that the great mediaeval structures were not palaces or buildings devoted to commerce, although the Gothic palace of the doges, in Venice, and the town halls of Brussels, Louvaine, and other cities of Belgium and Holland are extensive and imposing. They were buildings devoted to religion, whether cathedral or conventual structures. They were often, as in France, placed on an elevation or in the centre of the city, and around them the dwellings clustered as if for protection.

The great cathedrals became a daily sermon, bearing testimony to the presence of God and the resurrection of Christ. They served the people as a Bible whose essential teachings they beheld with the eye. Through the spectacle of their walls and soaring spires, their thoughts were uplifted to spiritual things. Their ample spaces, filled or dimly lit with the sunlight piercing through stained-glass windows, reminded them of the glory of the life beyond, which makes itself known through varied revelations to the lonely and mysterious existence of the earth. The strong foundations and massive columns and buttresses typified the stability of God’s throne, and that He hath made all things through the word of His power.

Their construction occupied years and, in cases, centuries were necessary to complete them. Who can estimate the prayers and pious devotion which the laying of the first stones called forth, and which continued to be poured out till the last layer of stones was laid on the towers or fitted into the finial?  Their sculpture and stained-glass windows, frescoes, and paintings presented scenes from Scripture and the history of the Church. There, kings and queens, warriors, and the men whom the age pronounced godly were laid away in sepulture, a custom continued after the modern period had begun, as in the case of Luther and Melanchthon, whose ashes rest in the Castle Church of Wittenberg. In spite of frequent fires consuming parts of the great churches or the entire buildings, they were restored or reconstructed, often several times, as in the case of the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Norwich. Central towers collapsed, as in the case of Winchester, Peterborough, Lincoln, and other English cathedrals, but they were rebuilt. In the erection of these churches princes and people joined, and to further this object they gave their contributions of material and labor. The women of Ulm gave up all their ornaments to advance the work upon the cathedral of that city, and to the construction of the cathedral in Cologne Germans in all lands contributed.

The eleventh century is the beginning of one of the most notable periods of architecture in the world’s history, lasting for nearly three centuries. It has a distinct character of its own and in its service high talent was consecrated. The monks may be said to have led the way by their zeal to erect strong, ample, and beautiful cloistral establishments. These called forth in France the ambition of the bishops to surpass them. Two styles of architecture are usually distinguished in this period, the Romanesque, called in England also the Norman, and the Gothic. Writers on architecture make a number of subdivisions and some have included all the architecture of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries under the title Gothic, or Christian Pointed. During these centuries Europe, from the South to far Northern Scotland and Sweden, was dotted with imposing structures which on the one hand vied with St. Sophia of Constantinople, and on the other have been imitated but not equalled since.

In Rome as late as the thirteenth century, when Honorius III. began the construction of San Lorenzo, the old basilica style continued to rule. The Romanesque style started from Northern Italy and, in the beginning of the eleventh century, crossed the Alps, where it had its most glorious triumphs. In Italy, the cathedral of Pisa represents the blending of the old and the new, the cruciform shape and the dome. In Germany, the cathedrals of Spires, Worms, and Mainz belong to this period, and in England its earlier cathedrals, or portions of them, like Winchester, begun about 1070, Worcester about 1084, Peterborough about 1120, Norwich about 1096, Ely about 1083, Durham about 1099.

For the fundamental ground plan of the basilica was substituted the form of the cross. The size of the choir was increased and the choir was elevated. It was the age of the priesthood, and sacerdotalism was represented in the enlargement of the altar, in increased and rich stalls for the clergy, and spaces at the rear of the altar. These features also belong to the preceding period, but now receive greater emphasis. The large end of the cross, or nave, especially in the English cathedrals, was greatly extended so that the altar and its furniture were seen from afar, for the chief doors were in that end, which faced the west. In England, the transepts, or arms of the cross, became long and spacious. The tower became a prominent feature, and buttresses were added to the walls. In Italy, the tower took the shape of a campanile, which was built in addition to the dome, and was sometimes a separate building and never an essential part of it. The vaulted and groined roof took the place of the flat roof.

The Gothic style, so called in Italy from its reputed barbaric features, found altogether its highest development in the North, and started in Northern France. It is the grandest style of church architecture ever wrought out. It was shown in the height of the church walls and in spires struggling to reach to the very throne of God itself. The vault of the cathedral of Amiens is 147 feet above the floor, of Beauvais 157 feet, of Cologne 155 feet. This style developed the pointed arch, perpendicular lines, the lancet window. It had some of the features of the Lombardy poplars, soaring, stern, solemn. In its strong, ramparted buttresses, its towers, and its massive columns, it represented the hardihood and strength of the northern forest. Its pointed roofs were adapted to receive the storms of snow common to the North. Its flying buttresses and elaborate carvings within, and its splendid entrances, especially in the French cathedrals, typified the richness of Christian promise and hope.

The Gothic style started in France in the thirteenth century. Notable examples are found in Rheims, begun 1211, Amiens, Laon, and in Notre Dame, Paris, begun in 1163. The arches are less pointed than in England and the portals are on a much grander scale and more highly ornamented. At Notre Dame we have one of the finest specimens of flying buttresses. In its case and most cases of French Gothic there are towers. The cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, and Rheims have unfinished towers. The Sainte Chapelle in Paris is a splendid piece of pure Gothic.

In Germany, fine examples of Gothic are found in the church at Marburg dedicated to St. Elizabeth, in Nürnberg, Bamberg, Freiburg, Strassburg, and other cities. The cathedral of Cologne is said to be the most perfect specimen of Gothic in existence. Its choir was begun in 1248, Konrad of Hochsteden laying the corner-stone in the presence of the newly elected emperor, William of Holland, and many princes. The choir was dedicated in 1322. By 1437 one of the towers was finished up to one-third of its present height. At the time of the Reformation the roof was covered with boards. In the nineteenth century the original plans were discovered and the completion of the edifice, including the two spires, was made a national undertaking. The work was finished in 1880.

England is rich in memorials of mediaeval architecture which began with the arrival of the Normans. The nation’s life is interwoven with them, and Westminster Abbey is perhaps the most august place of sepulture in the world. In addition to the cathedrals already mentioned, Lincoln, Canterbury, York, Salisbury, and other great churches were begun in this period. Addition after addition was made till the noble churches of England got their final shape. The tower is one of the prominent features of the English cathedral, Lichfield being probably the most important with spires. The finest outside impression is made by Salisbury and Lincoln minsters. Many of these cathedrals were built by Benedictine monks, such as Canterbury, Durham, Ely, and Norwich, and by the canons regular of St. Augustine, as Carlisle and Bristol. Lincoln, Chichester, Salisbury, York, St. David’s, and others were served by secular priests.

The architects of Scotland seem to have come from England and to have built after English models. The noblest of her mediaeval churches are Glasgow, St. Andrews, Dumblane, and Elgin, and among her convents, Kelso, Dryburgh, Holyrood, and Melrose.

In Spain, great minsters at Toledo, Burgos, and other cities were built in Gothic style in the thirteenth century, and Seville, which offers the largest floor surface of all the Christian churches, and is also of the same type, was begun in 1401 and completed 1520.

In Italy, Gothic was never fully at home. The cathedrals of Milan, Florence, and Siena are regarded as its finer specimens. Siena was begun in 1243. The minster of Milan was not begun till 1385. It is the largest Christian church after Seville and St. Peter’s. Its west façade is out of accord with the rest of the structure, which is pure Gothic. It is built of white marble and soars up to the clouds in hundreds of spires. Within full sight of the Milan cathedral are the Alps, crowned with snow and elevated far above the din of human traffic and voices; and in comparison with those mightier cathedrals of God, the creations of man seem small even as man himself seems small in comparison with his Maker.

CHAPTER XII.

SCHOLASTIC AND MYSTIC THEOLOGY.

§ 95. Literature and General Introduction.

Literature: I.—The works Of Anselm, Abaelard, Peter The Lombard, Hugo Of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and other Schoolmen.

II.—R. D. Hampden (bishop of Hereford, d. 1868): The Scholastic Philos. considered in its Relation to Christ. Theol., Bampton Lectures, Oxf., 1832, 3d ed. 1848.—B. Haureau: De la philos. scholast., 2 vols. Paris, 1850.—W. Kaulich: Gesch. d. scholast. Philos., Prag, 1863.—C. Prantl: Gesch. d. Logik im Abendlande, 4 vols. Leip., 1861–1870:—P. D. Maurice (d. 1872): Med. Philos., London, 1870.—*A. Stöckl (Rom. Cath.): Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters, Mainz, 3 vols. 1864–1866. Vol. I. covers the beginnings of Scholasticism from Isidore of Seville to Peter the Lombard; Vol. II., the period of its supremacy; Vol. III., the period of its decline down to Jesuitism and Jansenism.—R. Reuter (Prof. of Ch. Hist. at Göttingen, d. 1889): Gesch. d. Rel. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, 2 vols. Berlin, 1875–1877. Important for the sceptical and rationalistic tendencies of the M. A.—TH. Harper: The Metaphysics of the School, London, 1880.—K. Werner (Rom. Cath.): D. Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters, 4 vols. Wien, 1881–1887. Begins with Duns Scotus.—The relevant chapters in the Histories of Doctrine, by Harnack, Loofs, Fisher, Seeberg, Sheldon, and the Rom. Cath. divines, and J. Bach: Dogmengesch. d. Mittelalters, 2 vols. 1873–1875, and *J. Schwane: Dogmengesch. d. mittleren Zeit, 1882.—The Histories of Philos. by Ritter, Erdmann, Ueberweg-Heinze, and Scholasticism, by Prof. Seth, in Enc. Brit. XXI. 417–431.

Scholasticism is the term given to the theology of the Middle Ages. It forms a distinct body of speculation, as do the works of the Fathers and the writings of the Reformers. The Fathers worked in the quarries of Scripture and, in conflict with heresy, wrought out, one by one, its teachings into dogmatic statements. The Schoolmen collected, analyzed and systematized these dogmas and argued their reasonableness against all conceivable objections. The Reformers, throwing off the yoke of human authority, and disparaging the Schoolmen, returned to the fountain of Scripture, and restated its truths.

The leading peculiarities of Scholasticism are that it subjected the reason to Church authority and sought to prove the dogmas of the Church independently by dialectics. As for the Scriptures, the Schoolmen accepted their authority and show an extensive acquaintance with their pages from Genesis to Revelation. With a rare exception, like Abaelard, they also accepted implicitly the teaching of the Fathers as accurately reflecting the Scriptures. A distinction was made by Alexander of Hales and others between the Scriptures which were treated as truth, veritas, and the teaching of the Fathers, which was treated as authority, auctoritas.

It was not their concern to search in the Scriptures for new truth or in any sense to reopen the investigation of the Scriptures. The task they undertook was to confirm what they had inherited. For this reason they made no original contributions to exegesis and biblical theology. They did not pretend to have discovered any new dogmas. They were purveyors of the dogma they had inherited from the Fathers.

It was the aim of the Schoolmen to accomplish two things,—to reconcile dogma and reason, and to arrange the doctrines of the Church in an orderly system called summa theologiae. These systems, like our modern encyclopaedias, were intended to be exhaustive. It is to the credit of the human mind that every serious problem in the domains of religion and ethics was thus brought under the inspection of the intellect. The Schoolmen, however, went to the extreme of introducing into their discussions every imaginable question,—questions which, if answered, would do no good except to satisfy a prurient curiosity. Anselm gives the best example of treatises on distinct subjects, such as the existence of God, the necessity of the Incarnation, and the fall of the devil. Peter the Lombard produced the most clear, and Thomas Aquinas the most complete and finished systematic bodies of divinity.

With intrepid confidence these busy thinkers ventured upon the loftiest speculations, raised and answered all sorts of doubts and ran every accepted dogma through a fiery ordeal to show its invulnerable nature. They were the knights of theology, its Godfreys and Tancreds. Philosophy with them was their handmaid,—ancilla,—dialectics their sword and lance.

In a rigid dialectical treatment, the doctrines of Christianity are in danger of losing their freshness and vital power, and of being turned into a theological corpse. This result was avoided in the case of the greatest of the mediaeval theologians by their religious fervor. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura were men of warm piety and, like Augustine, they combined with the metaphysical element a mystical element, with the temper of speculation the habit of meditation and prayer.

He is far from the truth who imagines the mediaeval speculations to be mere spectacular balloonings, feats of intellectual acrobatism. They were, on the contrary, serious studies pursued with a solemn purpose. The Schoolmen were moved with a profound sense of the presence of God and the sacrifice of the cross, and such treatments as the ethical portions of Thomas Aquinas’ writings show deep interest in the sphere of human conduct. For this reason, as well as for the reason that they stand for the theological literature of more than two centuries, these writings live, and no doubt will continue to live.1312

Following Augustine, the Schoolmen started with the principle that faith precedes knowledge—fides praecedit intellectum. Or, as Anselm also put it, "I believe that I may understand; I do not understand that I may believe" credo ut intelligam, non intelligo ut credam. They quoted as proof text, Isa. 7:9. "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established."  Abaelard was an exception, and reversed the order, making knowledge precede faith; but all arrived at the same result. Revelation and reason, faith and science, theology and philosophy agree, for they proceed from the one God who cannot contradict himself.

In addition to the interest which attaches to Scholasticism as a distinct body of intellectual effort, is its importance as the ruling theology in the Roman Catholic Church to this day. Such dogmas as the treatment of heresy, the supremacy of the Church over the State, the immaculate conception, and the seven sacraments, as stated by the Schoolmen, are still binding, or at any rate, they have not been formally renounced. Leo XIII. bore fresh witness to this when, in his encyclical of Aug. 4, 1879, he pronounced the theology of Thomas Aquinas the standard of Catholic orthodoxy, and the safest guide of Christian philosophy in the battle of faith with the scepticism of the nineteenth century.

The Scholastic systems, like all the distinctive institutions and movements of the Middle Ages, were on an imposing scale. The industry of their authors cannot fail to excite amazement. Statement follows statement with tedious but consequential necessity and precision until chapter is added to chapter and tome is piled upon tome, and the subject has been looked at in every possible aspect and been exhausted. Duns Scotus produced thirteen folio volumes, and perhaps died when he was only thirty-four. The volumes of Albertus Magnus are still more extensive. These theological systems are justly compared with the institution of the mediaeval papacy, and the creations of Gothic architecture, imposing, massive, and strongly buttressed. The papacy subjected all kingdoms to its divine authority. Architecture made all materials and known mechanical arts tributary to worship. The Schoolmen used all the forces of logic and philosophy to vindicate the orthodox system of theology, but they used much wood and straw in their constructions, as the sounder exegesis and more scriptural theology of the Reformers and these later days have shown.

§ 96. Sources and Development of Scholasticism.

The chief feeders of Scholasticism were the writings of Augustine and Aristotle. The former furnished the matter, the latter the form; the one the dogmatic principles, the other the dialectic method.

The Augustine, who ruled the thought of the Middle Ages, was the churchly, sacramentarian, anti-Manichaean, and anti-Donatist theologian. It was the same Augustine, and yet another, to whom Luther and Calvin appealed for their doctrines of sin and grace. How strange that the same mighty intellect who helped to rear the structure of Scholastic divinity should have aided the Reformers in pulling it down and rearing another structure, at once more Scriptural and better adapted to the practical needs of life!

Aristotle was, in the estimation of the Middle Ages, the master philosophical thinker. The Schoolmen show their surpassing esteem for him in calling him again and again "the philosopher."  Dante excluded both him and Virgil as pagans from paradise and purgatory and placed them in the vestibule of the inferno, where, however, they are exempt from actual suffering. Aristotle was regarded as a forerunner of Christian truth, a John the Baptist in method and knowledge of natural things—precursor Christi in naturalibus. Until the thirteenth century, his works were only imperfectly known. The Categories and the de interpretatione were known to Abaelard and other Schoolmen in the Latin version of Boethius, and three books of the Organon to John of Salisbury. His Physics and Metaphysics became known about 1200, and all his works were made accessible early in the thirteenth century through the mediation of the Arab philosophers, Avicenna, d. 1037, Averrhoes, d. 1198, and Abuacer, d. 1185, and through Jewish sources. Roger Bacon laments the mistakes of translations made from the Arabic, by Michael Scot, Gerard of Cremona, and others.1313

At first the Stagyrite was looked upon with suspicion or even prohibited by the popes and synods as adapted to breed heresy and spiritual pride.1314  But, from 1250 on, his authority continued supreme. The saying of Gottfried of St. Victor became current in Paris.

Every one is excluded and banned

Who does not come clad in Aristotle’s armor.1315

The Reformers shook off his yoke and Luther, in a moment of temper at the degenerate Schoolmen of his day, denounced him as "the accursed pagan Aristotle" and in his Babylonish Captivity called the mediaeval Church "the Thomistic or Aristotelian Church."

The line of the Schoolmen begins in the last year of the eleventh century with Roscellinus and Anselm. Two centuries before, John Scotus Erigena had anticipated some of their discussions of fundamental themes, and laid down the principle that true philosophy and true religion are one. But he does not seem to have had any perceptible influence on Scholastic thought. The history divides itself into three periods: the rise of Scholasticism, its full bloom, and its decline.1316  To the first period belong Anselm, d. 1109, Roscellinus, d. about 1125, Abaelard, d. 1142, Bernard, d. 1153, Hugo de St. Victor, d. 1161, Richard of St. Victor, d. 1173, and Gilbert of Poictiers, d. 1154. The chief names of the second period are Peter the Lombard, d. 1160, Alexander of Hales, d. 1243, Albertus Magnus, d. 1280, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, Bonaventura, d. 1274, Roger Bacon, d. 1294, and Duns Scotus, d. 1308. To the period of decline belong, among others, Durandus, d. 1334, Bradwardine, d. 1349, and Ockam, d. 1367. England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain made contributions to this galaxy of men. Gabriel Biel, professor at Tübingen, who died 1495, is usually called the last of the Schoolmen. Almost all the great Schoolmen were monks.

The two centuries included between the careers of Anselm and Duns Scotus show decided modifications of opinion on important questions such as the immaculate conception, and in regard to the possibility of proving from pure reason such doctrines as the incarnation and the Trinity. These two doctrines Thomas Aquinas, as well as Duns Scotus and Ockam, declared to be outside the domain of pure ratiocination. Even the existence of God and the immortality of the soul came to be regarded by Duns Scotus and the later Schoolmen as mysteries which were to be received solely upon the authority of the Church. The argument from probability was emphasized in the last stages of Scholastic thought as it had not been before.

In their effort to express the minutest distinctions of thought, the Schoolmen invented a new vocabulary unknown to classical Latin, including such words as ens, absolutum identitas quidditas, haecceitas, aliquiditas, aleitas.1317  The sophistical speculations which they allowed themselves were, for the most part, concerned with the angels, the Virgin Mary, the devil, the creation, and the body of the resurrection. Such questions as the following were asked and most solemnly discussed by the leading Schoolmen. Albertus Magnus asked whether it was harder for God to create the universe than to create man and whether the understandings of angels are brighter in the morning or in the evening. "Who sinned most, Adam or Eve?" was a favorite question with Anselm, Hugo de St. Victor,1318 and others. Alexander of Hales attempted to settle the hour of the day at which Adam sinned and, after a long discussion, concluded it was at the ninth hour, the hour at which Christ expired. Bonaventura debated whether several angels can be in one place at the same time, whether one angel can be in several places at the same time, and whether God loved the human race more than He loved Christ.1319  Anselm, in his work on the Trinity, asked whether God could have taken on the female sex and why the Holy Spirit did not become incarnate. Of the former question, Walter of St. Victor, speaking of Peter the Lombard, very sensibly said that it would have been more rational for him to have asked why the Lombard did not appear on earth as an ass than for the Lombard to ask whether God could have become incarnate in female form. The famous discussion over the effect the eating of the host would have upon a mouse will be taken up in connection with the Lord’s Supper. Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and others pondered over the problem. It was asked by Robert Pullen whether man in the resurrection will receive back the rib he lost in Eden, and whether a man will recover all the clippings of his finger nails.

Such endless discussions have been ridiculed as puerile and frivolous, though, as has already been said, they grew out of the desire to be exhaustive. At last and justly, they brought Scholasticism into disrepute. While it was losing itself in the clouds and mists of things transcendental, it neglected the earth at its feet. As the papacy passed sentence upon itself by intolerable ambition, so Scholasticism undermined its authority by intellectual sophistries and was set aside by the practical interests of the Renaissance and Humanism and by simple faith, searching through the Scriptures, to reach the living sympathy of Christ.1320

§ 97. Realism and Nominalism.

The underlying philosophical problem of the Scholastic speculations was the real and independent existence of general or generic concepts, called universalia or universals. Do they necessarily involve substantial being?  On this question the Schoolmen were divided into two camps, the Realists and the Nominalists.1321  The question, which receives little attention now, was regarded as most important in the Middle Ages.

Realism taught that the universals are not mere generalizations of the mind but have a real existence. Following Plato, as he is represented by Aristotle, one class of Realists held that the universals are creative types, exemplars in the divine mind. Their view was stated in the expression—universalia ante rem — that is, the universals exist before the individual, concrete object. The Aristotelian Realists held that the universals possess a real existence, but exist only in individual things. This was the doctrine of universalia in re. Humanity, for example, is a universal having a real existence. Socrates partakes of it, and he is an individual man, distinct from other men. Anselm, representing the Platonic school, treated the universal humanity as having independent existence by itself. Duns Scotus, representing the second theory, found in the universal the basis of all classification and gives to it only in this sense a real existence.

The Nominalists taught that universals or general conceptions have no antecedent existence. They are mere names—nomina, flatus vocis, voces — and are derived from a comparison of individual things and their qualities. Thus beauty is a conception of the mind gotten from the observation of objects which are beautiful. The individual things are first observed and the universal, or abstract conception, is derived from it. This doctrine found statement in the expression universalia post rem, the universal becomes known after the individual. A modification of this view went by the name of Conceptualism, or the doctrine that universals have existence as conceptions in the mind, but not in real being.1322

The starting-point for this dialectical distinction may have been a passage in Porphyry’s Isagoge, as transmitted by Boethius. Declining to enter into a discussion of the question, Porphyry asks whether the universals are to be regarded as having distinct substantial existence apart from tangible things or whether they were only conceptions of the mind, having substantial existence only in tangible things.1323  The distinction assumed practical importance when it was applied to such theological doctrines as the Trinity, the atonement, and original sin.

The theory of Realism was called in question in the eleventh century by Roscellinus, a contemporary of Anselm and the teacher of Abaelard, who, as it would seem, advocated Nominalism.1324  Our knowledge of his views is derived almost exclusively from the statements of his two opponents, Anselm and Abaelard. He was serving as canon of Compiegne in the diocese of Soissons, 1092, when he was obliged to recant his alleged tritheism, which he substituted for the doctrine of the Trinity.

The views of this theologian called forth Anselm’s treatise on the Trinity, and Abaelard despised him as a quack dialectician.1325  Anselm affirmed that Roscellinus’ heretical views on the Trinity were the immediate product of his false philosophical principle, the denial that universals have real existence. Roscellinus called the three persons of the Godhead three substances, as Scotus Erigena had done before. These persons were three distinct beings equal in power and will, but each separate from the other and complete in himself, like three men or angels. These three could not be one God in the sense of being of the same essence, for then the Father and the Holy Spirit would have had to become incarnate as well as the Son.

Defending the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, Anselm proceeded on the basis of strict realism and declared that the three persons represented three relations and not three substances. Fountain, brook, and pond are three; yet the same water is in each one and we could not say the brook is the fountain or the fountain is the pond. The water of the brook may be carried through a pipe, but in that case it would not be the fountain which was carried through, nor the pond. So in the same way, the Godhead became incarnate without involving the incarnation of the Father and Holy Spirit.

The decision of the synod of Soissons and Anselm’s argument drove Nominalism from the field and it was not again publicly avowed till the fourteenth century when it was revived by the energetic and practical mind of Ockam, by Durandus and others. It was for a time fiercely combated by councils and King Louis XI., but was then adopted by many of the great teachers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

§ 98. Anselm of Canterbury.

Literature: The Works of Anselm. First complete ed. by Gerberon, Paris, 1675, reprinted in Migne, vols. 158, 159.—Anselm’s opuscula, trans. Chicago, 1903, pp. 288.—Anselm’s Devotions, trans. by Pusey, Oxf., 1856, London, 1872, and by C. C. J. Webb., London, 1903.—Trans. of Cur Deus homo in Anc. and Mod. Library, London.—The Life of Anselm by his secretary and devoted friend Eadmer: de vita Anselmi and Historia novorum in Migne, and ed. by Rule in Rolls series, London, 1884.—John of Salisbury’s Life, written to further Anselm’s canonization by Alexander III., Migne, 199: 1009–1040, is based upon Eadmer.—William Of Malmesbury in Gesta Pontificum adds some materials.—Modern Lives, by *F. R. Hasse, 2 vols. Leip., 1843–1852, Abrdg. trans. by *W. Turner, London, 1850. One of the best of Hist. monographs.—*C. De Remusat: Paris, 1853, last ed., 1868.—*Dean R. W. Church (d. 1890): London, new ed., 1877 (good account of Anselm’s career, but pays little attention to his philosophy and theology).—M. Rule: 2 vols. London, 1883, eulogistic and ultramontane.—P. Ragey: 2 vols. Paris, 1890.—J. M. Rigg: London, 1896.—A. C. Welch, Edinburgh, 1901.—*W. R. W. Stephens in Dict. Natl. Biog., II. 10–31.—P. Schaff, in Presb. and Ref’d Review, Jan., 1894.—*Ed. A. Freeman: The Reign of William Rufus, 2 vols. London, 1882.—H. Böhmer: Kirche u. Staat in England u. in der Normandie im XI. u. XIIten Jahrh., Leip., 1899.—Anselm’s philosophy is discussed by Ritter, Erdmann, and Ueberweg-Heinze in their Histories of Philos.; his theology is treated by Baur: Gesch. d. Christl. Lehre. von d. Versöhnung, Tübingen, 1838, 142–189.—Ritschl: Rechtfertigung u. Versöhnung, and in the Histories of Doctrine.—Kölling: D. satisfactio vicaria, 2 vols., Gütersloh, 1897–1899. A vigorous presentation of the Anselmic view.—Leipoldt: D. Begriff meritum in Anselm, in Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1904.—Le Chanoine Porée: Hist. de l’Abbaye du Bec, Paris, 1901.

Anselm of Canterbury, 1033–1109, the first of the great Schoolmen, was one of the ablest and purest men of the mediaeval Church. He touched the history of his age at many points. He was an enthusiastic advocate of monasticism. He was archbishop of Canterbury and fought the battle of the Hildebrandian hierarchy against the State in England. His Christian meditations give him a high rank in its annals of piety. His profound speculation marks one of the leading epochs in the history of theology and won for him a place among the doctors of the Church. While Bernard was greatest as a monk, Anselm was greatest as a theologian. He was the most original thinker the Church had seen since the days of Augustine.1326

Life.—Anselm was born at Aosta, in Piedmont, at the foot of the great St. Bernard, which divides Italy from western Switzerland.1327  He had a pious mother, Ermenberga. His father, Gundulf, a worldly and rude nobleman, set himself violently against his son’s religious aspirations, but on his death-bed himself assumed the monastic garb to escape perdition.

In his childish imagination, Anselm conceived God Almighty as seated on a throne at the top of the Alps, and in a dream, he climbed up the mountain to meet Him. Seeing, on his way, the king’s maidens engaged in the harvest field, for it was Autumn, neglecting their work he determined to report their negligence to the king. The lad was most graciously received and asked whence he came and what he desired. The king’s kindness made him forget all about the charges he was intending to make. Then, refreshed with the whitest of bread, he descended again to the valley. The following day he firmly believed he had actually been in heaven and eaten at the Lord’s table. This was the story he told after he had ascended the chair of Canterbury.

A quarrel with his father led to Anselm’s leaving his home. He set his face toward the West and finally settled in the Norman abbey of Le Bec, then under the care of his illustrious countryman Lanfranc. Here he studied, took orders, and, on Lanfranc’s transfer to the convent of St. Stephen at Caen, 1063, became prior, and, in 1078, abbot. At Bec he wrote most of his works. His warm devotion to the monastic life appears in his repeated references to it in his letters and in his longing to get back to the convent after he had been made archbishop.

In 1093, he succeeded Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury. His struggle with William Rufus and Henry I. over investiture has already been described (pp. 88–93). During his exile on the Continent he attended a synod at Bari, where he defended the Latin doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit against the Greek bishops who were present.1328

The archbishop’s last years in England were years of quiet, and he had a peaceful end. They lifted him from the bed and placed him on ashes on the floor. There, "as morning was breaking, on the Wednesday before Easter," April 21, 1109, the sixteenth year of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his life, he slept in peace, as his biographer Eadmer says, "having given up his spirit into the hands of his Creator."  He lies buried in Canterbury Cathedral at the side of Lanfranc.

Anselm was a man of spotless integrity, single devotion to truth and righteousness, patient in suffering, and revered as a saint before his official canonization in 1494.1329  Dante associates him in Paradise with Nathan, the seer, and Chrysostom, both famous for rebuking vice in high places, and with the Calabrian prophet, Joachim.1330

Writings.—Anselm’s chief works in the departments of theology are his Monologium and Proslogium, which present proofs for God’s existence, and the Cur Deus homo, "Why God became Man," a treatise on the atonement. He also wrote on the Trinity against Roscellinus; on original sin, free will, the harmony of foreknowledge and foreordination, and the fall of the devil. To these theological treatises are to be added a number of writings of a more practical nature, homilies, meditations, and four hundred and twelve letters in which we see him in different relations, as a prelate of the Church, a pastor, as a teacher giving advice to pupils, and as a friend.1331  His correspondence shows him in his human relations. His meditations and prayers reveal the depth of his piety. His theological treatises betray the genius of his intellect. In extent they are far less voluminous than the works of Thomas Aquinas and other Schoolmen of the later period.

Theology.—Anselm was one of those rare characters in whom lofty reason and childlike faith work together in perfect harmony. Love to God was the soul of his daily life and love to God is the burning centre of his theology. It was not doubt that led him to speculation, but enthusiasm for truth and devotion to God. His famous proposition, which Schleiermacher adopted as a motto for his own theology, is that faith precedes knowledge—fides praecedit intellectum. Things divine must be a matter of experience before they can be comprehended by the intellect. "He who does not believe," Anselm said, "has not felt, and he who has not felt, does not understand."1332  Christ must come to the intellect through the avenue of faith and not to faith through the avenue of intellect.1333  On the other hand, Anselm declared himself against blind belief, and calls it a sin of neglect when he who has faith, does not strive after knowledge.1334

These views, in which supernaturalism and rationalism are harmonized, form the working principle of the Anselmic theology. The two sources of knowledge are the Bible and the teaching of the Church which are in complete agreement with one another and are one with true philosophy.1335  Anselm had a profound veneration for the great African teacher, Augustine, and his agreement with him in spirit and method secured for him the titles "the second Augustine" and the, Tongue of Augustine."

Anselm made two permanent contributions to theology, his argument for the existence of God and his theory of the atonement.

The ontological argument, which he stated, constitutes an epoch in the history of the proofs for God’s existence. It was first laid clown in the Monologium or Soliloquy, which he called the example of meditation on the reasonableness of faith, but mixed with cosmological elements. Starting from the idea that goodness and truth must have an existence independent of concrete things, Anselm ascends from the conception of what is relatively good and great, to Him who is absolutely good and great.

In the Proslogium, or Allocution, the ontological argument is presented in its purest form. Anselm was led to its construction by the desire to find out a single argument, sufficient in itself, to prove the divine existence. The argument was the result of long reflection and rooted in piety and prayer. Day and night the author was haunted with the idea that God’s existence could be so proved. He was troubled over it to such a degree that at times he could not sleep or take his meals. Finally, one night, during vigils, the argument stood clearly before his mind in complete outline. The notes were written down while the impression was still fresh in Anselm’s mind. The first copy was lost; the second was inadvertently broken to pieces.

Anselm’s argument, which is the highest example of religious meditation and scholastic reasoning, is prefaced with an exhortation and the words, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand, for of this I feel sure, that, if I did not believe, I would not understand."

The reasoning starts from the idea the mind has of God, and proceeds to the affirmation of the necessity of God’s objective existence. The mind has a concept of something than which nothing greater can be conceived.1336  This even the fool has, when he says in his heart, "there is no God, " Ps. 14:1. He grasps the conception when he listens, and what he grasps is in his mind. This something, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist solely in the mind. For, if it existed solely in the mind, then it would be possible to think of it as existing also in reality (objectively), and that would be something greater.1337  This is impossible. This thing, therefore, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists both in the mind and in reality. This is God. "So truly," exclaims Anselm, "dost Thou exist, O Lord God, that it is not possible to conceive of Thee as not existing. For, if any mind could conceive of anything better than Thou art, then the creature would ascend above the Creator and become His judge, which is supremely absurd. Everything else besides Thyself can be conceived of as not existing."

The syllogism, compact as its presentation is and precise as its language seems to be, is nevertheless defective, as a logical statement. It begs the question. It offends against the principle that deductions from a definition are valid only on the supposition that the thing defined exists. The definition and the statement of God’s existence are in the major premise, "there is something than which nothing greater can be conceived."  And yet it was the objective existence of this being, Anselm wanted to prove. Setting this objection aside, there is the other fatal objection that objective existence is not a predicate. Objective being is implied when we affirm anything. This objection was stated by Kant.1338  Again, Anselm confused, as synonymous, understanding a thing and having a conception in the understanding.1339

The reasoning of the Proslogium was attacked by the monk Gaunilo of Marmontier, near Bec, in his Liber pro insipiente. He protested against the inference from the subjective conception to objective reality on the ground that by the same method we might argue from any of our conceptions to the reality of the thing conceived, as for example for the existence of a lost island, the Atlantis. "That, than which nothing greater can be thought," does not exist in the mind in any other way than does the perfection of such an island. The real existence of a thing must be known before we can predicate anything of it. Gaunilo’s objection Anselm answered by declaring that the idea of the lost island was not a necessary conception while that of the highest being was, and that it was to it alone his argument applied.

Untenable as Anselm’s argument is logically, it possesses a strong fascination, and contains a great truth. The being of God is an intuition of the mind, which can only be explained by God’s objective existence. The modern theory of correlation lends its aid to corroborate what was, after all, fundamental in the Anselmic presentation, namely, that the idea of God in the mind must have corresponding to it a God who really exists. Otherwise, we are left to the mystery which is perhaps still greater, how such an idea could ever have taken firm and general hold of the human mind.1340

The doctrine of the atonement.—With the Cur Deus homo, "Why God became Man," a new chapter opens in the development of the doctrine of the atonement. The treatise, which is in the form of a dialogue, is the author’s most elaborate work, and he thought the argument sufficient to break down the objections of Jew and Pagan to the Christian system.

Anselm was the first to attempt to prove the necessity of the incarnation and death of the Son of God by the processes of pure reason. He argued that the world cannot be redeemed by an arbitrary decree of God, nor through man or angel. Man is under the domination of the devil, deserves punishment, and is justly punished; but the devil torments him without right,1341 for he does not do it by the authority of God, but from malice. The handwriting of ordinances against the sinner (Col. 2:14) is not a note due the devil, but the sentence of God that he who sinned should be the servant of sin.

God cannot allow his original purpose to be thwarted. Sin must be forgiven, but how?  Man owes subjection to God’s will. Sin is denying to God the honor due him.1342  Satisfaction must be rendered to justice before there can be forgiveness. Bare restitution, however, is not a sufficient satisfaction. For his "contumely," man must give back more than he has taken. He must compensate God’s honor.1343  Just as he who has inflicted a wound must not only heal the wound, but pay damages to satisfy the demands of violated honor.

All sin, then, must either receive punishment or be covered by satisfaction. Can man make this satisfaction?  No. Were it possible for him to lead a perfectly holy life, from the moment he became conscious of his debt, he would be simply doing his duty for that period. The debt of the past would remain unsettled. But sin, having struck at the roots of man’s being, he is not able to lead a perfect life.

God’s justice, then, man is not able to satisfy. Man ought, but cannot. God need not, but does. For, most foreign to God would it be to allow man, the most precious of his creatures, to perish. But as God himself must make the satisfaction, and man ought to make it, the satisfaction must be made by one who is both God and man, that is, the God-man.1344

To make satisfaction, the God-man must give back to God something he is not under obligation to render. A life of perfect obedience he owes. Death he does not owe, for death is the wages of sin, and he had no sin. By submitting to death, he acquired merit. Because this merit is infinite in value, being connected with the person of the infinite Son of God, it covers the infinite guilt of the sinner and constitutes the satisfaction required.

Anselm concludes his treatise with the inquiry why the devil and his angels are not saved by Christ. His answer is that they did not derive their guilt and sinful estate through a single individual as men do from Adam. Each sinned for himself. For this reason each would have to be saved for himself by a God-angel. In declaring the salvation of fallen angels to be impossible, Anselm closes with the words, "I do not say that this is impossible as though the value of Christ’s death were not great enough to be sufficient for all the sins of men and fallen angels, but because of a reason in the unchangeable nature of things which stands in the way of the salvation of the lost angels."1345

It is the merit of Anselm’s argument that, while Athanasius and Augustine had laid stress upon the article that through Christ’s sufferings atonement was made, Anselm explained the necessity of those sufferings. He also did the most valuable service of setting aside the view, which had been handed down from the Fathers, that Christ’s death was a ransom-price paid to Satan. Even Augustine had asserted the rights of the devil. Again, Anselm laid proper stress upon the guilt of sin. He made earnest with it, not as a mistake, but as a violation of law, a derogation from the honor due to God.

The subject of the atonement was not exhausted by the argument of the Cur Deus homo. No one theory can comprehend its whole meaning. Certain biblical features have been made prominent since his day which Anselm did not emphasize. Each creative age has its own statement of theology, and now one aspect and now another aspect of the unchangeable biblical truth is made prominent. The different theories must be put into their proper places as fragments of the full statement of truth. Anselm regarded the atonement from the legal rather than from the moral side of the divine nature. The attribute of justice is given a disproportionate emphasis. Man’s relation to God is construed wholly as the relation of a subordinate to a superior. The fatherhood of God has no adequate recognition. The actor in human redemption is God, the sovereign and the judge. Anselm left out John 3:16 and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.1346

Anselm as a mystic.—In Anselm, mysticism was combined with scholasticism, pious devotion with lofty speculation, prayer with logical analysis. His deeply spiritual nature manifests itself in all his writings, but especially in his strictly devotional works, his Meditations and Prayers.1347  They are in danger of suffering neglect in the attention given to Anselm’s theological discussions.

The Schoolman’s spiritual reflections abound in glowing utterances from the inner tabernacle of his heart. Now he loses himself in the contemplation of the divine attributes, now he laments over the deadness and waywardness of man. Now he soars aloft in strains of praise and adoration, now he whispers low the pleadings for mercy and pardon. At one moment he surveys the tragedy of the cross or the joys of the redeemed; at another the terrors of the judgment and hopeless estate of the lost. Such a blending of mellow sentiment with high speculations is seldom found. No one of the greater personages of the Middle Ages, except Bernard, excels him in the mystical element; and he often reminds us of Bernard, as when he exclaims, "O good Jesus, how sweet thou art to the heart of him who thinks of thee and loves thee."1348  Or again, when he exclaims in his tenth meditation, "O benign Jesus, condescending Lord, holy Master, sweet in mouth, sweet in heart, sweet in ear, inscrutably, unutterably gentle, self-sacrificing, merciful, wise, mighty, most sweet and lovely"—valde dulcis et suavis. The soaring grandeur of Anselm’s thoughts may be likened to the mountains of the land of his birth, and the pure abundance of his spiritual feeling to the brooks and meadows of its valleys. He quotes again and again from Scripture, and its language constitutes the chief vehicle of his thoughts.

In the first meditation, Anselm makes the famous comparison of human life to the passage over a slender bridge, spanning a deep, dark abyss whose bed is full of all kinds of foul and ghastly things.1349  The bridge is a single foot in width. What anguish would not take hold of one obliged to cross over it, with eyes bandaged and arms tied, so as not to be able even to use a staff to feel one’s way!  And how greatly would not the anguish be increased, if great birds were flying in the air, intent on swooping down and defeating the purpose of the traveller!  And how much more anguish would be added if at every step a tile should fall away from behind him!  The ravine is hell, measureless in its depth, horribly dark with black, dismal vapors!1350  And the perilous bridge is the present life. Whosoever lives ill falls into the abyss. The tiles are the single days of a man’s existence here below. The birds are malign spirits. We, the travellers, are blinded with ignorance and bound with the iron difficulty of doing well. Shall we not turn our eyes unto the Lord "who is our light and our salvation, of whom shall we be afraid?"  Ps. 27:1.

The Prayers are addressed to the Son and Spirit as well as to the Father. To these are added petitions to the Virgin, on whom Anselm bestows the most fulsome titles, and to the saints. In this Anselm was fully the child of his age.

These devotional exercises, the liturgy of Anselm’s soul, are a storehouse of pious thought to which due appreciation has not been accorded. The mystical element gives him a higher place than his theological treatises, elevated and important as they are.1351

§ 99. Peter Abaelard.

Literature: Works of Abaelard: ed. first by Duchesne, Paris, 1616. Cousin: Ouvrages inédites d’Abélard, Paris, 1836, containing the Dialectica and Sic et Non; also the Opera omnia, 2 vols. Paris, 1849–1859. Reprod. in Migne, vol. 178.—R. Stölzle: De unitate et trinitate divina, first ed., Freib. im Br., 1891.—Ed. of his Letters by R. Rawlinson, Lond., 1718. Engl. trans. of Letters of Abaelard and Heloise, in Temple Classics.

Biographical: Abaelard’s Autobiography: Hist. calamitatum, in Migne, 178. 113–180.—Berengar: Apologeticus contra Bernardum, etc., in Migne, 178. 1856–1870.—Bernard’s letters as quoted below.—Otto of Freising: De Gestis Frid., 47 sqq.—John of Salisbury: Metalog. and Hist. Pontificalis.—Modern Lives by A. F. Gervaise, Paris, 1728; Cousin, in the Ouvrages, 1836; Wilkins, Göttingen, 1855; Ch. de Rémusat, Paris, 1845, 2 vols., new ed., 1855; O. I. de Rochely (Abél. et le rationalisme moderne), Paris 1867; Bonnier (Abél. et S. Bernard), Paris, 1862; Vacandard (P. Abél. et sa lutte avec S. Bernard), Paris, 1881; *S. M. Deutsch (P. Abael, ein kritischer Theologe des 12ten Jahrh., the best exposition of Abaelard’s system, Leip., 1883; A. Hausrath, Leip., 1893; Joseph McCabe, London, 1901.—E. Kaiser: P. Abél. Critique, Freib., 1901.—The story of Abaelard and Heloise has been specially told by Mad. Guizot, 2 vols., Paris 1839; Jacobi, Berl., 1850; Wright, New York, 1853; Kahnis, Leip., 1865, etc.—Compayré, Abél. and the Orig. and Early His. of Universities.—R. L. Poole: P. Abailard in Illustrations of Med. Thought, Lond., 1884, pp. 136–167.—Stöckl: Phil. des Mittelalters, I. 218–272.—Denifle: D. Sentenzen d. Abael. und die Bearbeitungen seiner Theologie vor Mitte des 12ten Jahrh. in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., etc., 1885, pp. 402–470, 584–624; Hefele, Councils, V. 451–488.—The Histories of Philos. of Ueberweg-Heinze and Ritter — The Lives of St. Bernard by Neander, I. 207–297; II. 1–44; Morison, 254–322; Vacandard, II. 120–181.—The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, Harnack, Loofs, Fisher, Seeberg, Sheldon.

During the first half of the twelfth century, Peter Abaelard, 1079–1142, was one of the most conspicuous characters of Europe. His fame was derived from the brilliance of his intellect. He differed widely from Anselm. The latter was a constructive theologian; Abaelard, a critic. Anselm was deliberate, Abaelard, impulsive and rash. Anselm preferred seclusion; Abaelard sought publicity. Among teachers exercising the spell of magnetism over their hearers, Abaelard stands in the front rank and probably has not been excelled in France. In some of his theological speculations he was in advance of his age. His personal misfortunes give to his biography a flavor of romance which belongs to no other Schoolman. A man of daring thought and restless disposition, he was unstable in his mental beliefs and morally unreliable. Our main authority for his career is the Story of Misfortunes, Historia calamitatum, written by his own hand, (Migne, 178. 113–180,) in the form of a letter.

The eldest son of a knight, Abaelard was born at the village of Palais or le Pallet, a few miles from Nantes. His original name was Pierre de Palais. Both his parents entered convents. Abaelard had for his first teacher Roscellinus. He listened to William of Champeaux, then at the head of the cathedral school at Paris, and soon began with confidence to refute William’s positions.1352  He then established independent schools at Melun and Corbeil. After a period of sickness, spent under his father’s roof, he returned to Paris. He again listened to William on rhetoric, but openly announced himself as an antagonist of his views, and taught on Mt. Genevieve, then covered with vineyards. Abaelard represents himself as having drawn almost the last scholar away from the cathedral school to Genevieve. We next find him under Anselm of Laon, who, with his brother Radulf, had made the school of Laon famous. Again Abaelard set himself up against his teacher, describing him as having a wonderful flow of words, but no thoughts. When he lit a fire, he filled the whole house with smoke.1353  He was like the barren fig tree with the promise of leaves and nothing more. Abaelard started at Laon counter lectures on Ezekiel.

Now the opportunity of his life came and he was called to preside over the cathedral school at Paris. William of Champeaux had retired to St. Victor and then had been made bishop. The years that immediately followed were the most brilliant in Abaelard’s career. All the world seemed about to do him homage. Scholars from all parts thronged to hear him. He lectured on philosophy and theology. He was well read in classical and widely read in sacred literature. His dialectic powers were ripe and, where arguments failed, the teacher’s imagination and rhetoric came to the rescue. His books were read not only in the schools and convents, but in castles and guildhouses. William of Thierry said1354 they crossed the seas and overleaped the Alps. When he visited towns, the people crowded the streets and strained their necks to catch a glimpse of him. His remarkable influence over men and women must be explained not by his intellectual depth so much as by a certain daring and literary art and brilliance. He was attractive of person, and Bernard may have had this in mind when he says, Abaelard was outwardly a John though he had the heart of a Herod.1355  His statements were clear. He used apt analogies and quoted frequently from Horace, Ovid, and other Latin poets. To these qualities he added a gay cheerfulness which expressed itself in compositions of song and in singing, which made him acceptable to women, as in later years Heloise reminded him.1356

In the midst of this popularity came the fell tragedy of his life, his connection with Heloise, whom Remusat has called "the first of women."1357  This, the leading French woman of the Middle Ages, stands forth invested with a halo as of queenly dignity, while her seducer forfeits by his treatment of her the esteem of all who prefer manly strength and fidelity to gifts of mind, however brilliant.

Heloise was probably the daughter of a canon and had her home in Paris with her uncle, Fulbert, also a canon. When Abaelard came to know her, she was seventeen, attractive in person and richly endowed in mind. Abaelard prevailed upon Fulbert to admit him to his house as Heloise’s teacher. Heloise had before been at the convent of Argenteuil. The meetings between pupil and tutor became meetings of lovers. Over open books, as Abaelard wrote, more words of love were passed than of discussion and more kisses than instruction. The matter was whispered about in Paris. Fulbert was in rage. Abaelard removed Heloise to his sister’s in Brittany, where she bore a son, called Astralabius.1358  Abaelard expressed readiness to have the nuptial ceremony performed, though in secret, in order to placate Fulbert. Open marriage was eschewed lest he should himself suffer loss to his fame, as he himself distinctly says.1359

The Story of Misfortunes leaves no doubt that what he was willing to do proceeded from fear and that he was not actuated by any sense of honor toward Heloise or proper view of woman or of marriage. What accord, he wrote, "has study with nurses, writing materials with cradles, books and desks with spinning wheels, reeds and ink with spindles!  Who, intent upon sacred and philosophical reflections could endure the squalling of children, the lullabies of nurses and the noisy crowd of men and women!  Who would stand the disagreeable and constant dirt of little children!"

Abaelard declared a secret marriage was performed in obedience to the demands of Heloise’s relatives. At best it was a mock ceremony, for Heloise persisted in denying she was Abaelard’s wife. With mistaken but splendid devotion, she declined to marry him, believing that marriage would interrupt his career. In one of her letters to him she wrote: "If to you, the name of wife seems more proper, to me always was more dear the little word friend, or if you do not deem that name proper, then the name of concubine or harlot, concubina vel scortum. I invoke God as my witness that, if Augustus had wished to give me the rule over the whole world by asking me in marriage, I would rather be your mistress, meretrix, than his empress, imperatrix. Thy passion drew thee to me rather than thy friendship, and the heat of desire rather than love."1360

Abaelard removed Heloise to Argenteuil and she assumed the veil. He visited her in secret and now Fulbert took revenge. Entering into collusion with Abaelard’s servant, he fell upon him at night and mutilated him. Thus humiliated, Abaelard entered the convent of St. Denis, 1118,—not from any impulse of piety but from expediency.1361  He became indifferent to Heloise.

New trials fell upon his chequered career—charges of heresy. He was arraigned for Sabellian views on the Trinity at Soissons, 1121, before the papal legate. Roscellinus, his old teacher, opened the accusations. Abaelard complains that two enemies were responsible for the actual trial and its issue, Alberic and Lotulf, teachers at Rheims. He was obliged to commit his book to the flames1362 and to read publicly a copy of the Athanasian Creed.

Again he got himself into difficulty by opposing the current belief, based upon Bede’s statement, that Dionysius or St. Denis, the patron of France, was the Dionysius converted by Paul at Athens. The monks of St. Denis would not tolerate him. He fled, retracted his utterance, and with the permission of Suger, the new abbot of St. Denis, settled in a waste tract in Champagne and built an oratory which he called after the third person of the Trinity, the Paraclete. Students again gathered around him, and the original structure of reeds and straw was replaced by a substantial building of stone. But old rivals, as he says, again began to pursue him just as the heretics pursued Athanasius of old, and "certain ecclesiastics"—presumably Norbert, the founder of the Premonstrants, and Bernard of Clairvaux—were stirred up against him. Abaelard, perhaps with not too much self-disparagement, says of himself that, in comparison to them, he seemed to be as an ant before a lion. It was under these circumstances that he received the notice of his election as abbot of the monastery of St. Gildas on the sea, in his native Brittany. He went, declaring that "the envy of the Francians drove him to the West, as the envy of the Romans drove Jerome to the East."

The monks of St. Gildas are portrayed by Abaelard as a band of unmitigated ruffians. They had their wives and children settled upon the convent’s domains. They treated their new abbot with contempt and violence, twice, at least, attempting his life. On one occasion it was by drugging the chalice. He complained of the barrenness of the surroundings. Bernard described him as an abbot without discipline. In sheer despair, Abaelard fled and in "striving to escape one sword I threw myself upon another," he said. At this point the autobiography breaks off and we know little of its author till 1136.1363

In the meantime the nuns of Argentueil were driven out of their quarters. In 1127, Abaelard placed Heloise in charge of the Paraclete, and under her management it became prosperous. He had observed a cold silence for a protracted period, but now and again visited the Paraclete and delivered sermons to the nuns. Heloise received the Story of Misfortunes, and, in receiving it, wrote, addressing him as "her lord or rather father, her husband or rather brother, from his handmaid or rather daughter, his consort or rather sister."  Her first two letters have scarcely, if ever, been equalled in the annals of correspondence in complete abandonment of heart and glowing expressions of devotion. She appealed to him to send her communications. Had she not offered her very being on the altar for his sake!  Had she not obeyed him in everything, and in nothing would she offend him!

Abaelard replied to Heloise as the superior of the nuns of the Paraclete. She was to him nothing more. He preached to her sermons on prayer, asked for the intercession of the nuns on his behalf, and directed that his body be laid away in the Paraclete. He rejoiced that Heloise’s connection with himself prevented her from entering into marriage and giving birth to children. She had thereby been forced into a higher life and to be the mother of many spiritual daughters. Heloise plied him with questions about hard passages in the Scriptures and about practical matters of daily living and monastic dress, —a device to secure the continuance of the correspondence. Abaelard replied by giving rules for the nuns which were long and severe. He enjoined upon them, above all else, the study of the Scriptures, and called upon them to imitate Jerome who took up Hebrew late in life. He sent them sermons, seven of which had been delivered in the Paraclete. He proposed that there should be a convent for monks close by the Paraclete. The monks and nuns were to help each other. An abbot was to stand at the head of both institutions. The nuns were to do the monks’ washing and cooking, milk the cows, feed the chickens and geese.

In 1137 and again in 1139, we find Abaelard suddenly installed at St. Genevieve and enjoying, for a while, meteoric popularity. John of Salisbury was one of his pupils. How the change was brought about does not fully appear. But Abaelard was not destined to have peace. The final period of his restless career now opens. Bernard was at that time the most imposing religious personality of Europe, Abaelard was its keenest philosophical thinker. The one was the representative of churchmanship and church authority, the other of freedom of inquiry. A clash between these two personalities was at hand. It cannot be regarded as an historical misfortune that these two men met on the open field of controversy and on the floor of ecclesiastical synods. History is most true to herself when she represents men just as they were. She is a poor teacher, when she does not take opportunity to reveal their infirmities as well as their virtues.

Abaelard was as much to blame for bringing on the conflict by his self-assertive manner as Bernard was to blame by unnecessarily trespassing upon Abaelard’s territory. William, abbot of St. Thierry, addressed a letter to Bernard and Geoffrey, bishop of Chalons, announcing that Abaelard was again teaching and writing doctrinal novelties. These were not matters of mean import, but concerned the doctrine of the Trinity, the person of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God’s grace. They were even receiving favor in the curia at Rome. William adduced no less than thirteen errors.1364

The first open sign of antagonism was a letter written by Abaelard, brimming over with self-conceit. On a visit to Heloise at the Paraclete, Bernard had taken exception to the use of the phrase "supersubstantial bread" in the Lord’s Prayer, instead of "daily bread" as given by Luke. Abaelard heard of the objection from Heloise, and, as if eager to break a lance with Bernard, wrote to him, showing he was in error. He became sarcastic, pointing out that, at Clairvaux, novelties were being practised which were otherwise unknown to the Church. New hymns were sung and certain intercessory prayers left out as if the Cistercian monks did not stand in need of intercession also.1365

So far as we know, Bernard did not answer this letter. After some delay, he acted upon the request of William of Thierry. He visited Abaelard in Paris and sought to secure from him a promise that he would retract his errors.1366

The difference was brought to open conflict at the synod of Sens, 1141, where Abaelard asked that his case might be presented, and that he might meet Bernard in argument. Arnold of Brescia seems to have been among those present.1367  Bernard was among friends and admirers. Abaelard had few friends, and was from the first looked upon with suspicion. Bernard had come to the synod to lay the whole weight of his influence against Abaelard. He had summoned the bishops as friends of Christ, whose bride called to them out of the thicket of heresies. He wrote to the cardinals and to Innocent II., characterizing Abaelard as a ravenous lion, and a dragon. With Arnold as his armor-bearer at his side, Abaelard stood like another Goliath calling out against the ranks of Israel, while Bernard felt himself a youth in dialectical skill.

At a preliminary meeting with the bishops, Bernard went over the case and it seems to have been decided, at least in an informal way, that Abaelard should be condemned.1368  The next day Bernard publicly presented the charges, but, to the great surprise of all, Abaelard declined to argue his case and appealed it to the pope. Passing by Gilbert of Poictiers, Abaelard is said to have whispered Horace’s line,

"Look well to your affairs now that your neighbor’s house is burning."

Nam tua res agitur, paries eum proximus ardet.

To Rome the case must go. Abaelard no doubt felt that he had nothing to hope for from the prelates.1369  From Innocent II., whose side he had espoused against the antipope, Anacletus, he might expect some favor and he had friends in the curia. The synod called upon the supreme pontiff to brand Abaelard’s heresies with perpetual condemnation—perpetua damnatione — and to punish their defenders. The charges, fourteen in number, concerned the Trinity, the nature of faith, the power and work of Christ, and the nature of sin.1370  Bernard followed up the synodal letter with a communication to the pope, filling forty columns in Migne, and letters to cardinals, which are full of vehement charges against the accused man. Abaelard and Arnold of Brescia were in collusion. Abaelard had joined himself with Arius in ascribing degrees within the Trinity, with Pelagius in putting free will before grace, and with Nestorius in separating the person of Christ. In name and exterior a monk, he was at heart a heretic. He had emerged from Brittany as a tortuous snake from its hole and, as in the case of the hydra, seven heads appeared where before there had been but one.1371  In his letter to the pope, he declared the only thing Abaelard did not know was the word nescio, "I do not know."

The judgment was swift in coming and crushing when it came. Ten days were sufficient. The fourteen articles were burned by the pope’s own hand in front of St. Peter’s in the presence of the cardinals. Abaelard himself was declared to be a heretic and the penalty of perpetual silence and confinement was imposed upon him. The unfortunate man had set out for Rome and was hardly well started on his journey, when the sentence reached him. He stopped at Cluny, where he met the most useful friend of his life, Peter the Venerable. At Peter’s intercession, Innocent allowed the homeless scholar to remain in Cluny whence the pope himself had gone forth.

Following Peter’s counsel, Abaelard again met Bernard face to face. In a defence of his orthodoxy, addressed to Heloise, he affirmed his acceptance of all the articles of the Church from the article on the Trinity to the resurrection of the dead. As it was with Jerome, so no one could write much without being misunderstood.

But his turbulent career was at an end. He was sent by Peter to St. Marcellus near Chalons for his health, and there he died April 21, 1142, sixty-three years old. His last days in Cluny are described by Peter in a letter written to Heloise, full of true Christian sympathy. He called Abaelard a true philosopher of Christ. One so humble in manner he had not seen. He was abstinent in meat and drink. He read continually and prayed fervently. Faithfully he had committed his body and soul to his Lord Redeemer for time and eternity. "So Master Peter finished his days and he who was known in almost the whole world for his great erudition and ability as a teacher died peacefully in Him who said ’Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart,’ and he is, as we must believe, gone to Him."

Abaelard’s body was carried to the Paraclete and there given rest. Twenty-two years later, Heloise was laid at his side. The inscription placed over the tomb ran, "The Socrates of the Gauls, the great Plato of the Occidentals, our Aristotle, who was greater or equal to him among the logicians!  Abaelard was the prince of the world’s scholars, varied in talent, subtle and keen, conquering all things by his mental force. And then he became a conqueror indeed, when, entering Cluny, be passed over to the true philosophy of Christ."1372  At a later time the following inscription was placed over the united dust of these remarkable and unfortunate personages, "Under this marble lie the founder of this convent, P. Abaelard and the first abbess Heloise, once joined by studies, mind, love, forbidden marriage,—infaustis nuptiis, —and penitence and now, as we hope, in eternal felicity."

At the destruction of the Paraclete during the French Revolution, 1792, the marble sarcophagus was removed to Paris and in 1816 it was transferred to the cemetery of Père la Chaise. There it remains, the chief object of interest in that solemn place of the dead, attracting Frenchmen and visitors from distant lands who commemorate, with tears of sympathy and a prayer over the mistakes of mortals, the unfortunate lovers.

§ 100. Abaelard’s Teachings and Theology.

Furnished with brilliant talents, Abaelard stands in the front rank of French public teachers. But he was a creature of impulse and offensively conscious of his own gifts and acquirements. He lacked the reverent modesty and equilibrium which become greatness. He was deficient in moral force to lift him above the whips and stings of fortune, or rather the calamities of his own making. He seems to have discerned no goal beyond his own selfish ambition. As Neander has said, if he had been a man of pure moral character, he would have accomplished more than he did in the domain of scholarly study. A man of the highest type could not have written his Story of Misfortunes in the tone that Abaelard wrote. He shows not a sign of repentance towards God for his treatment of Heloise. When he recalls that episode, it is not to find fault with himself, and it is not to do her any reparation.

His readiness to put himself in opposition to his teachers and to speak contemptuously of them and to find the motive for such opposition in envy, indicates also a lack of the higher moral sentiment. It is his own loss of fame and position that he is continually thinking of, and lamenting. Instead of ascribing his misfortunes to his own mistakes and mistemper, he ascribes them to the rivalry and jealousy of others.1373  His one aim in his troubles seems to have been to regain his popularity.

Abaelard’s writings are dialectic, ethical, and theological treatises, poems and letters to Heloise, and his autobiography. His chief theological works are a Commentary on the Romans, the Introduction to Theology, and a Christian Theology, the last two being mainly concerned with the Trinity, a colloquy between a philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian and the Sic et Non, Yes and No. In the last work the author puts side by side in one hundred and fifty-eight chapters a collection of quotations from the Fathers which seem to be or really are contradictory. The compiler does not offer a reconciliation. The subjects on which the divergent opinions are collated range from the abstruse problem of the Trinity and the person of Christ to the questions whether Eve alone was seduced or Adam with her, whether Adam was buried on Calvary (the view taken by Ambrose and Jerome) or not (Isidore of Seville), and whether Adam was saved or not. His chief writing on Ethics was the Scito te ipsum, "Know thyself."

In some of his theological conceptions Abaelard was in advance of his age. The new seeds of thought which he let fall have germinated in recent times. His writings show that, in the twelfth century also, the critical sense had a representative.

1. In the conflict over Realism and Nominalism Abaelard occupied an intermediate position. On the one hand he ridiculed the nominalism of Roscellinus, and on the other he controverted the severe realism of William of Champeaux. He taught that the universal is more than a word, vox. It is an affirmation, sermo.1374  That which our thinking finds to be common, he declared to be real, and the forms of things existed in the divine mind before the creation.

2. Of much more interest are Abaelard’s views of the ultimate seat of religious authority and of inspiration. Although his statements at times seem to be contradictory, the conclusion is justified that he was an advocate of a certain freedom of criticism and inquiry, even though its results contradicted the authority of the Church. He recognized the principle of inspiration, but by this he did not mean what Gregory the Great taught, that the biblical authors were altogether passive. They exercised a measure of independence, and they were kept from all mistakes.

The rule upon which he treated the Fathers and the Scriptures is set forth in the Prologue of the Sic et Non.1375  In presenting the contradictory opinions of the Fathers he shows his intellectual freedom, for the accredited belief was that their statements were invariably consistent. Abaelard pronounced this a mistake. Did not Augustine retract some of his statements?  Their mistakes, however, and the supposed mistakes of the Scriptures may be only imaginary, due to our failure to understand what they say. Paul, in saying that Melchisedek has neither father nor mother, only meant that the names of his parents were not given in the Old Testament. The appearance of Samuel to Saul at the interview with the witch of Endor was only a fancy, not a reality. Prophets did not always speak with the Spirit of God, and Peter made mistakes. Why should not the Fathers also have made mistakes?  The authority of Scripture and the Fathers does not preclude critical investigation. On the contrary, the critical spirit is the proper spirit in which to approach them. "In the spirit of doubt we approach inquiry, and by inquiry we find out the truth, as He, who was the Truth said, ’Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.’ "1376

The mystical and the philosophical elements, united in Anselm, were separated in Abaelard. But Abaelard followed the philosophical principle further than Anselm. He was a born critic, restless of mind, and anxious to make an innovation. In him the inquisitive temper was in the ascendant over the fiducial. Some writers even treat him as the forerunner of modern rationalism. In appearance, at least, he started from a principle the opposite of Anselm’s, namely, "nothing is to be believed, until it has been understood."1377  His definition of faith as a presumption of things not seen1378 was interpreted by Bernard and other contemporaries to mean that faith was an uncertain opinion. What Abaelard probably meant was, that faith does not rest upon authority, but upon inquiry and experience. There are times, however, when he seems to contradict himself and to set forth the opposite principle. He says, "We believe in order to know, and unless ye believe, ye cannot know."1379  His contemporaries felt that he was unsound and that his position would overthrow the authority of the Church.1380

The greater doctrines of the Trinity and the existence of God, Abaelard held, could not be proved as necessary, but only as probable. In opposition to the pruriency of Scolasticism, he set up the principle that many things pertaining to God need neither to be believed, nor denied, for no danger is involved in the belief or denial of them.1381  He gives as examples, whether God will send rain on the morrow or not, and whether God will grant pity to a certain most wicked man or not. On the other hand be declared that to affirm that we cannot understand what has been taught about the Trinity is to say that the sacred writers themselves did not understand what they taught.1382  As for the Catholic faith, it is necessary for all, and no one of sound mind can be saved without it.1383

3. In his statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, Abaelard laid himself open to the charge both of modalism and Arianism. It called forth Bernard’s severest charges. Abaelard made no contribution to the subject. The idea of the Trinity he derived from God’s absolute perfections. God, as power, is the Father; as wisdom, He is the Son; as love, the Spirit. The Scriptures are appealed to for this view. The Father has put all things in His power, Acts 1:7. The Son, as Logos, is wisdom. The Holy Spirit is called good, Ps. 143:10, and imparts spiritual gifts. The figure gave much umbrage, by which he compared the three persons of the Trinity to the brass of which a seal is made, the form of the seal, and the seal itself proceeding from, or combining the brass and the form. "The brass itself which is the substance of the brazen seal, and the seal itself of which the brass is the substance, are essentially one; yet the brass and the seal are so distinct in their properties, that the property of the brass is one, and the property of the brazen seal another." These are ultimately three things: the brass, aes, the brass capable of sealing, sigillabile, and the brass in the act of sealing, sigillans.

4. In his treatment of the atonement, Abaelard has valuable original elements.1384  Strange to say, he makes no reference to Anselm’s great treatise. Man, Abaelard said, is in the power of the devil, but the devil has no right to this power. What rights does a slave have over another slave whom he leads astray?  Christ not only did not pay any price to the devil for man’s redemption, he also did not make satisfaction to divine justice and appease God’s wrath. If the fall of Adam needed satisfaction by the death of some one, who then would be able to satisfy for the death of Christ?  In the life and death of the Redeemer, God’s purpose was to manifest. His love and thus to stir up love in the breast of man, and to draw man by love back to Himself. God might have redeemed man by a word, but He chose to set before man an exhibition of His love in Christ. Christ’s love constitutes the merit of Christ. The theory anticipates the modern moral influence theory of the atonement, so called.

5. Abaelard’s doctrine of sin likewise presents features of difference from the view current in his time.1385  The fall occurred when Eve resolved to eat the forbidden fruit, that is, after her desire was aroused and before the actual partaking of the fruit.1386

The seat of sin is the intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.1387  Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio, is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong. In this consciousness of right or wrong lies the guilt. Those who put Christ to death from a feeling that they were doing right, did not sin, or, if they sinned, sinned much less grievously than if they had resisted their conscience and not put him to death. How then was it that Christ prayed that those who crucified him might be forgiven?  Abaelard answers by saying that the punishment for which forgiveness was asked was temporal in its nature.

The logical deduction from Abaelard’s premises would have been that no one incurs penalty but those who voluntarily consent to sin. But from this he shrank back. The godless condition of the heathen he painted in darkest colors. He, however, praised the philosophers and ascribed to them a knowledge through the Sibylline books, or otherwise, of the divine unity and even of the Trinity.1388  Bernard wrote to Innocent II. that, while Abaelard labored to prove Plato a Christian, he proved himself to be a pagan. Liberal as he was in some of his doctrinal views, he was wholly at one with the Church in its insistence upon the efficiency of the sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Because Abaelard stands outside of the theological circle of his day, he will always be one of the most interesting figures of the Middle Ages. His defect was in the lack of moral power. The student often finds himself asking the question, whether his statements were always the genuine expression of convictions. But for this lack of moral force, he might have been the Tertullian of the Middle Ages, whom he is not unlike in dash and original freshness of thought. The African Father, so vigorous in moral power, the Latin Church excludes from the number of the saints on account of his ecclesiastical dissent. Abaelard she cannot include on account of moral weakness.1389  Had he been willing to suffer and had he not retracted all the errors charged against him, he might have been given a place among the martyrs of thought.1390  As it is, his misfortunes arouse our sympathy for human frailties which are common; his theology and character do not awaken our admiration.

§ 101. Younger Contemporaries of Abaelard.

Literature: For Gilbert (Gislebertus) of Poictiers. His Commentaries on Boethius, De trinitate are in Migne, 64. 1266 sqq. T he De sex principiis, Migne, 188. 1250–1270. For his life: Gaufrid of Auxerre, Migne, 185. 595 sqq.—Otto of Freising, De gestis Frid., 50–57.—J. of Salisbury, Hist. pontif., VIII.—Poole, in Illustr. of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 167–200. Hefele, V. 503–508, 520–524.—Neander-Deutsch, St. Bernard, II. 130–144.

For John of Salisbury, Works in Migne, vols. 190, 199, and J. A. Giles, Oxford, 1848, 5 vols.—Hist. pontificalis romanus, in Mon. German., vol. XX.—Lives by Reuter, Berlin, 1842.—*C. Schaarschmidt, Joh. Saresbriensis nach Leben und Studien, Schriften und Philosophie, Leip., 1862, and art. in Herzog, IX. 313–319.—Denimuid, Paris, 1873.—Schubert: Staatslehre J. von Sal., Berlin, 1897.—Stubbs, in Study of Med. and Mod. Hist., Lectt. VI., VII.—Poole, in Illustr. etc., pp. 201–226, and Dict. of Natl. Biogr., XXIX. 439–446.

Among Abaelard’s younger contemporaries and pupils were Gilbert of Poictiers, John of Salisbury, and Robert Pullen, theologians who were more or less influenced by Abaelard’s spirit of free inquiry. Peter the Lombard, d. 1164, also shows strong traces of Abaelard’s teaching, especially in his Christology.1391

Gilbert of Poictiers, 1070–1154, is better known by his public trial than by his writings, or any permanent contributions to theology. Born at Poictiers, he studied under Bernard of Chartres, William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon, and Abaelard. He stood at the head of the cathedral school in Chartres for ten years, and in 1137 began teaching in Paris. In 1142 he was made bishop of Poictiers. His two principal works are De sex principiis, an exposition of Aristotle’s last six categories, which Aristotle himself left unexplained, and a commentary on the work on the Trinity, ascribed to Boethius. They occupy only a few pages in print.

Gilbert’s work on the Trinity involved him in a trial for heresy, in which Bernard was again a leading actor.1392  The case was brought before the synods of Paris, 1147, and Rheims, 1148. According to Otto of Freising, Gilbert was a man of earnest purpose. It was his dark and abstruse mode of statement and intense realism that exposed him to the accusation of unorthodoxy.

Some of Gilbert’s pupils were ready to testify against him, but sufficient evidence of tritheism were not forthcoming at Paris and the pope, who presided, adjourned the case to Rheims. At Rheims, Bernard who had been appointed prosecutor offended some of the cardinals by his methods of conducting the prosecution. Both Otto of Freising and John of Salisbury1393 state that a schism was threatened and only averted by the good sense of pope Eugenius.

To the pope’s question whether Gilbert believed that the highest essence, by virtue of which, as he asserted, each of the three persons of the Trinity was God, was itself God, Gilbert replied in the negative.1394  Gilbert won the assembly by his thorough acquaintance with the Fathers. The charge was declared unproven and Gilbert was enjoined to correct the questionable statements in the light of the fourth proposition brought in by Bernard. The accused continued to administer his see till his death. Otto of Freising concludes his account by saying, that either Bernard was deceived as to the nature of Gilbert’s teaching as David was deceived by Mephibosheth, 2 Sam. 9:19 sqq., or that Gilbert covered up his real meaning by an adroit use of words to escape the judgment of the Church. With reference to his habit of confusing wisdom with words Walter of St. Victor called Gilbert one of the four labyrinths of France.

John of Salisbury, about 1115–1180, was the chief literary figure and scholar among the Englishmen of the twelfth century, and exhibits in his works the practical tendency of the later English philosophy.1395  He was born at Salisbury and of plebeian origin. He spent ten or twelve years in "divers studies" on the Continent, sat at the feet of Abaelard on Mt. Genevieve, 1136, and heard Gilbert of Poictiers, William of Conches, Robert Pullen, and other renowned teachers. A full account of the years spent in study is given in his Metalogicus. Returning to England, he stood in a confidential relation to archbishop Theobald. At a later time he espoused Becket’s cause and was present in the cathedral when the archbishop was murdered. He had urged the archbishop not to enter his church. In 1176 he was made bishop of Chartres. He says he crossed the Alps no less than ten times on ecclesiastical business.

By his reminiscences and miscellanies, John contributed, as few men did, to our knowledge of the age in which he lived. He had the instincts of a Humanist, and, had he lived several centuries later, would probably have been in full sympathy with the Renaissance. His chief works are the Metalogicus, the Polycraticus, and the Historia pontificalis. The Polycraticus is a treatise on the principles of government and philosophy, written for the purpose of drawing attention away from the trifling disputes and occupations of the world to a consideration of the Church and the proper uses of life.1396  He fortified his positions by quotations from the Scriptures and classical writers, and shows that the Church is the true conservator of morality and the defender of justice in the State. He was one of the best-read men of his age in the classics.1397

In the Metalogicus, John calls a halt to the casuistry of Scholasticism and declares that the reason is apt to err as well as the senses. Dialectics had come to be used as an exhibition of mental acumen, and men, like Adam du Petit Pont, made their lectures as intricate and obscure as possible, so as to attract students by the appearance of profundity. John declared that logic was a vain thing except as an instrument, and by itself as useless as the "sword of Hercules in a pygmy’s hand." He emphasized the importance of knowledge that can be put to use, and gave a long list of things about which a wise man may have doubts, such as providence and human fortune, the origin of the soul, the origin of motion, whether all sins are equal and equally to be punished. God, he affirmed, is exalted above all that the mind can conceive, and surpasses our power of ratiocination.1398

The Historia pontificalis is an account of ecclesiastical matters falling under John’s own observation, extending from the council at Rheims, 1148, to the year 1152.

§ 102. Peter the Lombard and the Summists.

Literature: Works of P. Lombard, Migne, vols. 191, 192.—Protois, P. Lomb. son épôque, sa vie, ses écrits et son influence, Paris, 1881. Contains sermons not found in Migne.—Kögel: P. Lomb. in s. Stellung zur Philos. des Mittelalters, Leip., 1897.—*O. Baltzer: D. Sentenzen d. P. Lomb., irhe Quellen und ihre dogmengeschichtl. Bedeutung, Leip., 1902. —*Denifle: D. Sentenzen Abaelards, etc., in Archiv, 1885, pp. 404 sqq.—Arts. Lombardus, in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 1916–1923, and *Herzog, by Seeberg, XI. 630–642.—Stöckl, Philos. des Mittelalters, I. 390–411. The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, pp. 160 sqq., Bach, Harnack, Fisher, etc.

Peter the Lombard is the father of systematic theology in the Catholic Church. He produced the most useful and popular theological text-book of the Middle Ages, as Thomas Aquinas produced the most complete theological system. In method, he belongs to the age of the great theologians of the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism was at its height. In point of time, he has his place in the twelfth century, with whose theologians, Bernard, Abaelard, Gilbert, Hugo of St. Victor, and others, he was personally acquainted. Peter was born at Novara, in Northern Italy, and died in Paris about 1164.1399  After studying in Bologna, he went to France and attended the school of St. Victor and the cathedral school in Paris, and came under the influence of Abaelard. He afterwards taught in Paris. Walter Map, describing his experiences in France, calls him "the famous theologian." In 1159 he was made bishop of Paris.

His monumental work, the Four Books of Sentences, libri quatuor sententiarum, covers, in a systematic way, the whole field of dogmatic theology, as John of Damascus had done four hundred years before in his summary of the Orthodox Faith. It won for its author the title, the Master of Sentences, magister sententiarum. Other systems of theology under the name of sentences had preceded the Lombard’s treatise. Such a work was ascribed to Abaelard by St. Bernard.1400  This was probably a mistake. It is certain, however, that Abaelard’s scholars—Roland (afterwards Alexander III.), while he was professor at Bologna, 1142, and Omnebene—produced such works and followed Abaelard’s threefold division of faith, charity, and the sacraments.1401  Of more importance were the treatises of Anselm of Laon, Robert Pullen,1402 and Hugo of St. Victor, who wrote before the Lombard prepared his work. Robert Pullen, who died about 1147, was an Englishman and one of the first teachers at Oxford, then went to Paris, where he had John of Salisbury for one of his hearers about 1142, enjoyed the friendship of St. Bernard, came into favor at Rome, and was appointed cardinal by Coelestin II.

The Lombard’s work is clear, compact, and sententious, moderate and judicial in spirit, and little given to the treatment of useless questions of casuistry. In spite of some attacks upon its orthodoxy, it received wide recognition and was used for several centuries as a text-book, as Calvin’s Institutes, at a later period, was used in the Protestant churches. Down to the sixteenth century, every candidate for the degree of B. A. at Paris was obliged to pass an examination in it. Few books have enjoyed the distinction of having had so many commentaries written upon them. One hundred and sixty are said to be by Englishmen, and one hundred and fifty-two by members of the order of St. Dominic. The greatest of the Schoolmen lectured and wrote commentaries upon it, as Alexander Hales, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Durandus, and Ockam.1403

Not uninfluenced by the method pursued by Abaelard in the Sic et Non, the Lombard collated statements from the Fathers and he set about making his compilation to relieve the student from the task and toil of searching for himself in the Fathers.1404  Augustine furnished more than twice as many quotations as all the other Fathers together.1405  The Lombard went further than Abaelard and proposed to show the harmony existing between the patristic statements. In the arrangement of his material and for the material itself he drew largely upon Abaelard, Gratian, and Hugo of St. Vector,1406 without, however, quoting them by name. Upon Hugo he drew for entire paragraphs.

The Sentences are divided into four parts, treating of the triune God, created beings and sin, the incarnation, the Christian virtues and the decalogue, and the sacraments with some questions in eschatology. The author’s method is to state the doctrine taught by the Church, to confirm it from Scripture, then to adduce the opinions of the Fathers and, if they seemed to be in conflict, to reconcile them. His ultimate design was to lift up the light of truth in its candlestick, and he assures us his labor had cost him much toil and sweat of the brow.1407

The Lombard’s arguments for the divine existence are chiefly cosmological. God’s predestination of the elect is the cause of good in them and is not based upon any foreseen goodness they may have. Their number cannot be increased or diminished. On the other hand, God does not take the initiation the condemnation of the lost. Their reprobation follows as a consequence upon the evil in them which is foreseen.1408

In the second book, the Lombard makes the famous statement which he quotes from Augustine, and which has often been falsely ascribed as original to Matthew Henry, that the woman was not taken from Adam’s head, as if she were to rule over him or from his feet as if she were to be his slave, but from his side that she might be his consort. By the Fall man suffered injury as from a wound, vulneratio, not deprivation of all virtue. Original sin is handed down through the medium of the body and becomes operative upon the soul by the soul’s contact with the body. The root of sin is concupiscence, concupiscentia. The Lombard was a creationist.1409  God knew man would fall. Why He did not prevent it, is not known.

In his treatment of the atonement, Peter denied that Christ’s death was a price paid to the devil. It is the manifestation of God’s love, and by Christ’s love on the cross, love is enkindled within us. Here the Lombard approaches the view of Abaelard. He has nothing to say in favor of Anselm’s view that the death of Christ was a payment to the divine honor.1410

In his treatment of the sacraments, the Lombard commends immersion as the proper form of baptism, triune or single.1411  Baptism destroys the guilt of original sin. The Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, and the elements are transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Water is to be mixed with the wine, the water signifying the people redeemed by Christ’s passion.

It is remarkable that a work which came into such general esteem, and whose statements are so carefully guarded by references to Augustine, should have been attacked again and again as heretical, as at the synod of Tours, 1163, and at the Third Lateran, 1179; but at neither was any action taken. Again at the Fourth Lateran, 1215, Peter’s statement of the Trinity was attacked. Peter had said that the Father, Son, and Spirit were "a certain highest being," and that the substance neither begets nor is begotten, nor does it proceed from anything.1412  Joachim charged that he substituted a quaternity for the Trinity and called him a heretic, but the council took another view and pronounced in favor of Peter’s orthodoxy. Walter of St. Victor went so far as to accuse the author of the Sentences with Sabellianism, Arianism, and "novel heresies."1413  In spite of such charges no one can get as clear an idea of mediaeval theology in a succinct form as in Peter Lombard unless it be in the Breviloquium of Bonaventura.

The last and one of the clearest of the Summists of the twelfth century was Alanus de Insulis, Alain of Lille, who was born at Lille, Flanders, and died about 1202.1414  His works were much read, especially his allegorical poems, Anticlaudianus and De planctu naturae.

In the Rules of Sacred Theology Alanus gives one hundred and twenty-five brief expositions of theological propositions. In the five books on the Catholic Faith,1415 he considers the doctrine of God, creation and redemption, the sacraments, and the last things. The Church is defined as the congregation of the faithful confessing Christ and the arsenal of the sacraments.1416  Alanus’ work, Against Heretics, has already been used in the chapters on the Cathari and Waldenses.

Another name which may be introduced here is Walter of St. Victor, who is chiefly known by his characterization of Abaelard, Gilbert of Poictiers, Peter the Lombard, and the Lombard’s pupil, Peter of Poictiers, afterwards chancellor of the University of Paris, as the four labyrinths of France. He likened their reasoning to the garrulity of frogs, — ranarum garrulitas,—and declared that, as sophists, they had unsettled the faith by their questions and counterquestions. Walter’s work has never been printed. He succeeded Richard as prior of the convent of St. Victor. He died about 1180.1417

§ 103. Mysticism.

Literature: The Works of St. Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Rupert of Deutz, and also of Anselm, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, all in Migne’s Patrology.—G. Arnold: Historie und Beschreibung d. myst. Theologie, Frankf., 1703.—H. Schmid: D. Mysticismus des Mittelalters, Jena, 1824.—J. Görres (Prof. of Hist. in Munich, founder of German ultramontanism, d. 1848): D. christl. Mystik, 4 vols. Regensb., 1836–1842. A product of the fancy rather than of sober historical investigation.—A. Helfferich: D. christl. Mystik, etc., 2 parts, Gotha, 1842. —R. A. Vaughn: Hours with the Mystics, Lond., 1856, 4th ed., no date, with preface by Wycliffe Vaughan .—Ludwig Noack: D. christl. Mystik nach ihrem geschichtl. Entwickelungsgang, 2 parts, Königsb., 1863.—J. Hamberger: Stimmen der Mystik, etc., 2 parts, Stuttg., 1857.—W. Preger: Gesch. der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, 3 vols. Leip., 1874–1893. The Mysticism of the twelfth and thirteenth cents. is given, vol. I 1–309.—Carl du Prel: D. Philosophie der Mystik, Leip., 1885.—W. R. Inge: Christ. Mysticism, Lond., 1899.—The Lives of Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, etc.—The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, Harnack, etc.

Side by side with the scholastic element in mediaeval theology was developed the mystical element. Mysticism aims at the immediate personal communion of the soul with the Infinite Spirit, through inward devotions and spiritual aspirations, by abstraction rather than by logical analysis, by adoration rather than by argument, with the heart rather than with the head, through the spiritual feelings rather than through intellectual prowess, through the immediate contact of the soul with God rather than through rites and ceremonies. The characteristic word to designate the activity of the mystic is devotion; of the scholastic, speculation. Mysticism looks less for God without and more for God within the breast. It relies upon experience rather than upon definitions.1418  Mysticism is equally opposed to rationalism and to ritual formalism.

In the Apostle John and also in Paul we have the mystical element embodied. The centre of John’s theology is that God is love. The goal of the believer is to abide in Christ and to have Christ abide in him. The true mystic has felt. He is no visionary nor a dabbler in occultism. Nor is he a recluse. Neither the mystics of this period nor Eckart and Tauler of a later period seclude themselves from the course of human events and human society. Bernard and the theologians of St. Victor did not lose themselves in the absorption of ecstatic exercises, though they sought after complete and placid composure of soul under the influence of love for Christ and the pure contemplation of spiritual things. "God," said St. Bernard, "is more easily sought and found by prayer than by disputation." "God is known," said both Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor, "so far as He is loved." Dante placed Bernard still higher than Thomas Aquinas, the master of scholastic thought, and was led by him through prayer to the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity with which his Divine Comedy closes.1419

Augustine furnished the chief materials for the mystics of the Middle Ages as he did for the scholastics. It was he who said, "Thou hast made us for thyself and the heart is restless till it rests in Thee." For Aristotle, the mystics substituted Dionysius the Areopagite, the Christian Neo-Platonist, whose works were made accessible in Latin by Scotus Erigena.1420  The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Schoolmen, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura.

The Middle Ages took Rachel and Leah, Mary and Martha as the representatives of the contemplative and the active life, the conventual and the secular life, and also of the mystic and scholastic methods. Through the entire two periods of seven years, says Peter Damiani,1421 Jacob was serving for Rachel. Every convert must endure the fight of temptation, but all look forward to repose and rest in the joy of supreme contemplation; that is, as it were, the embraces of the beautiful Rachel. These two periods stand for the Old and New Testament, the law and the grace of the Gospel. He who keeps the commandments of both at last comes into the embraces of Rachel long desired.

Richard of St. Victor devotes a whole treatise to the comparison between Rachel and Leah. Leah was the more fertile, Rachel the more comely. Leah represented the discipline of virtue, Rachel the doctrine of truth. Rachel stands for meditation, contemplation, spiritual apprehension, and insight; Leah for weeping, lamentation, repining, and grief. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. So reason, after the pangs of ratiocination, dies in giving birth to religious devotion and ardor.1422

This comparison was taken from Augustine, who said that Rachel stands for the joyous apprehension of the truth and, for that reason, was said to have a good face and beautiful form.1423  St. Bernard spoke of the fellowship of the active and contemplative life as two members of the same family, dwelling together as did Mary and Martha.1424

The scholastic theology was developed in connection with the school and the university, the mystic in connection with the convent. Clairvaux and St. Victor near Paris were the hearth-stones of mysticism. Within cloistral precincts were written the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages, and the eucharistic hymns of Thomas Aquinas are the utterances of the mystic and not of the Schoolman.

The leading mystical divines of this period were Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, and Rupert of Deutz. Mystical in their whole tendency were also Joachim of Flore, Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schönau, who belong in a class by themselves.

§ 104. St. Bernard as a Mystic.

For literature, see § 65, also, Ritschl: Lesefrüchte aus d. hl. Bernard, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1879, pp. 317–335.—J. Ries (Rom. Cath.): D. geistliche Leben nach der Lehre d. hl. Bernard, Freib., 1906, p. 327.

The works of Bernard which present his mystical theology are the Degrees of Humility and Pride, a sermon addressed to the clergy, entitled Conversion, the treatise on Loving God, his Sermons on the Canticles, and his hymns. The author’s intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is shown on almost every page. He has all the books at his command and quotation follows quotation with great rapidity. Bernard enjoyed the highest reputation among his contemporaries as an expounder of the inner life, as his letters written in answer to questions show. Harnack calls him the religious genius of the twelfth century, the leader of his age, the greatest preacher Germany had ever heard. In matters of religious contemplation he called him a new Augustine, Augustinus redivivus.1425

The practical instinct excluded the speculative element from Bernard as worldly ambition excluded the mystical element from Abaelard. Bernard had the warmest respect for the Apostle Paul and greatly admired Augustine as "the mightiest hammer of the heretics" and "the pillar of the Church."1426  Far more attractive is he as a devotional theologian, descanting on the excellencies of love and repeating Paul’s words. "Let all your things be done in love," 1 Cor. 16:14, than as a champion of orthodoxy and writing, "It is better that one perish than that unity perish."1427

Prayer and personal sanctity, according to Bernard, are the ways to the knowledge of God, and not disputation. The saint, not the disputant, comprehends God.1428  Humility and love are the fundamental ethical principles of theology. The conventual life, with its vigils and fastings, is not an end but a means to develop these two fundamental Christian virtues.1429  Every convent he regarded as a company of the perfect, collegium perfectorum, but not in the sense that all the monks were perfect.1430

The treatise on Loving God asserts that God will be known in the measure in which He is loved. Writing to Cardinal Haimeric, who had inquired "why and how God is to be loved," Bernard replied. "The exciting cause of love to God, is God Himself. The measure of love to God is to love God without measure.1431  The gifts of nature and the soul are adapted to awaken love. But the gifts involved in the soul’s relation to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom the unbeliever does not know, are inexpressibly more precious and call upon man to exercise an infinite and measureless love, for God is infinite and measureless. The soul is great in the proportion in which it loves God."1432

Love grows with our apprehension of God’s love. As the soul contemplates the cross it is itself pierced with the sword of love, as when it is said in the Canticles, II. 5. "I am sick from love." Love towards God has its reward, but love loves without reference to reward. True love is sufficient unto itself. To be fully absorbed by love is to be deified.1433  As the drop of water dropped into wine seems to lose its color, and taste, and as the iron held in the glowing flame loses its previous shape and becomes like the flame, and as the air, transfused by the light of the sun, becomes itself like the light, and seems to be as the sun itself, even so all feeling in the saint is wholly transfused by God’s will, and God becomes all and in all.

In Bernard’s eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Solomon, we have a continuous apostrophe to love, the love of God and the soul’s love to God. As sermons they stand out like the Petite Carême of Massillon among the great collections of the French pulpit. Bernard reached only the first verse of the third chapter. His exposition, which is written in Latin, revels in the tropical imagery of this favorite book of the Middle Ages. Everything is allegorized. The very words are exuberant allegories. And yet there is not a single sensual or unchaste suggestion in all the extended treatment. As for the historical and literal meaning, Bernard rejects all suggestion of it as unworthy of Holy Scripture and worthy only of the Jews, who have this veil before their faces.1434  The love of the Shulamite and her spouse is a figure of the love between the Church and Christ, though sometimes the soul, and even the Virgin Mary, is put in the place of the Shulamite. The kiss of SS. 1:2 is the Holy Spirit whom the second person of the Trinity reveals.1435  The breasts of the bride, 4:5, are the goodness and longsuffering which Christ feels and dispenses, Rom. 2:4. The Canticles are a song commemorating the grace of holy affection and the sacrament of eternal matrimony.1436  It is an epithalamial hymn; no one can hear who does not love, for the language of love is a barbarous tongue to him who does not love, even as Greek is to one who is not a Greek.1437  Love needs no other stimulus but itself. Love loves only to be loved again.

Rhapsodic expressions like these welled up in exuberant abundance as Bernard spoke to his audiences at different hours of the day in the convent of Clairvaux. They are marked by no progress of thought. Aphoristic statement takes the place of logic. The same spiritual experiences find expression over and over again. But the treatment is always devout and full of unction, and proves the justice of the title, "the honey-flowing doctor,"—doctor mellifluus — given to the fervid preacher.

The mysticism of St. Bernard centres in Christ. It is by contemplation of Him that the soul is filled with knowledge and ecstasy. The goal which the soul aspires to is that Christ may live in us, and our love to God become the all-controlling affection. Christ is the pure lily of the valley whose brightness illuminates the mind. As the yellow pollen of the lily shines through the white petals, so the gold of his divinity shines through his humanity. Bethlehem and Calvary, the birth and passion of Christ, controlled the preacher’s thought. Christ crucified was the sum of his philosophy.1438  The name of Jesus is like oil which enlightens, nourishes, and soothes. It is light, food, and medicine. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, and in the heart, joy.1439

Bernard was removed from the pantheistic self-deletion of Eckart and the imaginative extravagance of St. Theresa. From Madame Guyon and the Quietists of the seventeenth century, he differed in not believing in a state of pure love in the present life. Complete obedience to the law of love is impossible here unless it be in the cases of some of the martyrs.1440  His practical tendencies and his common sense kept him from yielding himself to a life of self-satisfied contemplation and commending it. The union with God and Christ is like the fellowship of the disciples in the primitive Church who were together with one heart and one soul, Acts 4:32. The union is not by a confusion of natures, but by a concurrence of wills.1441

§ 105. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor.

Literature for Hugo.—Works, first publ. Paris, 1618, 1625, etc. Migne, vols. 175–177.—Lives by A. Hugonin in Migne, 175. XV-CXXV. In Hist. Lit. de France, reprinted in Migne, 175. CXXVI. sqq.—*A. Liebner: Hugo von St. V. und d. Theol. Richtungen s. Zeit., Leip., 1832.—B. Haureau: Hugues de S. V. avec deux opuscules inédits, Paris, 1859. new ed. 1886.—A. Mignon: Les origines de la scholastique et Hugues de St. V., 2 vols. Paris, 1896.—Kilgenstein: D. Gotteslehre d. Hugo von St. V., Würzb., 1897.—Denifle: D. Sentenzen Z. von St. Victor, in Archiv, etc., for 1887, pp. 644 sqq.—Stökl, pp. 352–381.

For Richard.—Works, first publ. Venice, 1506. Migne, vol. 196.—J. G. V. Engelhardt: Rich. von St. V., Erlangen,—Liebner: Rich. à S. Victore de contemp. doctrina, Gött., 1837–1839, 2 parts.—Kaulich: D. Lehren des H. und Rich. von St. Victor, Prag., 1864.—Art. in Dict. Of Natl. Biogr., Preger, Vaughan, Stökl, Schwane, etc.

In Hugo of St. Victor, d. 1141, and more fully in his pupil, Richard of St. Victor, d. 1173, the mystical element is modified by a strong scholastic current. With Bernard mysticism is a highly developed personal experience. With the Victorines it is brought within the limits of careful definition and becomes a scientific system. Hugo and Richard confined their activity to the convent, taking no part in the public controversies of the age.1442

Hugo, the first of the great German theologians, was born about 1097 in Saxony.1443  About 1115 he went to Paris in the company of an uncle and became an inmate of St. Victor. He was a friend of St. Bernard. Hugo left behind him voluminous writings. He was an independent and judicious thinker, and influenced contemporary writers by whom he is quoted. His most important works are on Learning, the Sacraments, a Summa,1444 and a Commentary on the Coelestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite. He wrote commentaries on Romans, Ecclesiastes, and other books of the Bible, and also a treatise on what would now be called Biblical Introduction.1445  He recognized a triple sense of Scripture, historical, allegorical, and anagogical, and was inclined to lay more stress than was usual in that period upon the historical sense. An illustration of these three senses is given in the case of Job. Job belonged to the land of Uz, was rich, was overtaken by misfortune, and sat upon the dunghill scraping his body. This is the historical sense. Job, whose name means the suffering one, dolens, signifies Christ who left his divine glory, entered into our misery, and sat upon the dunghill of this world, sharing our weaknesses and sorrows. This is the allegorical sense. Job signifies the penitent soul who makes in his memory a dunghill of all his sins and does not cease to sit upon it, meditate, and weep. This is the anagogical sense.

From Hugo dates the careful treatment of the doctrine of the sacraments upon the basis of Augustine’s definition of a sacrament as a visible sign of an invisible grace. His views are given in the chapter on the Sacramental System.

The mystical element is prominent in all of Hugo’s writings.1446  The soul has a threefold power of apprehension and vision, the eye of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation. The faculty of contemplation is concerned with divine things, but was lost in the fall when also the eye of reason suffered injure, but the eye of the flesh remained unimpaired. Redemptive grace restores the eye of contemplation. This faculty is capable of three stages of activity: cogitatio, or the apprehension of objects in their external forms; meditatio, the study of their inner meaning and essence; and contemplatio, or the clear, unimpeded insight into the truth and the vision of God. These three stages are likened unto a fire of green fagots. When it is started and the flame and smoke are intermingled so that the flame only now and then bursts out, we have cogitatio. The fire burning into a flame, the smoke still ascending, represents meditatio. The bright glowing flame, unmixed with smoke, represents contemplatio. The carnal heart is the green wood from which the passion of concupiscence has not yet been dried out.1447

In another place Hugo compares the spirit, inflamed with desire and ascending to God, to a column of smoke losing its denseness as it rises. Ascending above the vapors of concupiscence, it is transfused with light from the face of the Lord and comes to behold Him.1448  When the heart is fully changed into the fire of love, we know that God is all in all. Love possesses God and knows God. Love and vision are simultaneous.

The five parts of the religious life, according to Hugo, are reading, reflection, prayer, conduct, and contemplation.1449  The word "love" was not so frequently on Hugo’s pen as it was on St. Bernard’s. The words he most often uses to carry his thought are contemplation and vision, and he has much to say of the soul’s rapture, excessus or raptus. The beatitude, "The pure in heart shall see God," is his favorite passage, which he quotes again and again to indicate the future beatific vision and the vision to which even now the soul may arise. The first man in the state of innocence lived in unbroken vision of God.

They who have the spirit of God, have God. They see God. Because the eye has been illuminated, they see God as He is, separate from all else and by Himself. It is the intellectual man that partakes of God’s bliss, and the more God is understood the more do we possess Him. God made man a rational creature that he might understand and that by understanding he might love, by loving possess, and by possessing enjoy.1450

More given to the dialectical method and more allegorical in his treatment of Scripture than Hugo, was Richard of St. Victor. Richard is fanciful where Hugo is judicious, extravagant where Hugo is self-restrained, turgid where Hugo is calm.1451  But he is always stimulating. Of his writings many are extant, but of his life little is known. He was a Scotchman, became subprior of St. Victor, 1162, and then prior. While he was at St. Victor, the convent was visited by Alexander III, and Thomas á Becket. In his exegetical works on the Canticles, the Apocalypse, and Ezekiel, Richard’s exuberant fancy revels in allegorical interpretations. As for the Canticles, they set forth the contemplative life as Ecclesiastes sets forth the natural and Proverbs the moral life. Jacob corresponds to the Canticles, for he saw the angels ascending and descending. Abraham corresponds to the Proverbs and Isaac to Ecclesiastes.1452  The Canticles set forth the contemplative life, because in that book the advent and sight of the Lord are desired.

In the department of dogmatics Richard wrote Emmanuel, a treatise directed to the Jews,1453 and a work on the Incarnation, addressed to St. Bernard, 1454in which, following Augustine, he praised sin as a happy misdemeanor,—felix culpa,—inasmuch as it brought about the incarnation of the Redeemer.1455  His chief theological work was on the Trinity. Here he starts out by deriving all knowledge from experience, ratiocination, and faith. Dialectics are allowed full sweep in the attempt to join knowledge and faith. Richard condemned the pseudo-philosophers who leaned more on Aristotle than on Christ, and thought more of being regarded discoverers of new things than of asserting established truths.1456  Faith is set forth as the essential prerequisite of Christian knowledge. It is its starting-point and foundation.1457  The author proves the Trinity in the godhead from the idea of love, which demands different persons and just three because two persons, loving one another, will desire a third whom they shall love in common.

Richard’s distinctively mystical writings won for him the name of the great contemplator, magnus contemplator. In the Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation or Benjamin the Less, the prolonged comparison is made between Leah and Rachel to which reference has already been made. The spiritual significance of their two nurses and their children is brought down to Benjamin. Richard even uses the bold language that Benjamin killed his mother that he might rise above natural reason.1458

In Benjamin the Greater, or the Grace of Contemplation, we have a discussion of the soul’s processes, as the soul rises "through self and above self" to the supernal vision of God. Richard insists upon the soul’s purification of itself from all sin as the condition of knowing God. The heart must be imbued with virtues, which Richard sets forth, before it can rise to the highest things, and he who would attempt to ascend to the height of knowledge must make it his first and chief study to know himself perfectly.1459

Richard repeats Hugo’s classification of cogitatio, meditatio, and contemplatio. Contemplation is the mind’s free, clear, and admiring vision of the wonders of divine wisdom.1460  It includes six stages, the last of them being "contemplation above and aside from reason," whereby the mysteries of the Trinity are apprehended. In transgressing the limits of itself, the soul may pass into a state of ecstasy, seeing visions, enjoying sublimated worship and inexpressible sweetness of experience. This is immediate communion with God. The third heaven, into which Paul was rapt, is above reason and to be reached only by a rapturous transport of the mind—per mentis excessum. It is "above reason and aside from reason."1461  Love is the impelling motive in the entire process of contemplation and "contemplation is a mountain which rises above all worldly philosophy." Aristotle did not find out any such thing, nor did Plato, nor did any of the company of the philosophers.1462

Richard magnifies the Scriptures and makes them the test of spiritual states. Everything is to be looked upon with suspicion which does not conform to the letter of Scripture.1463

The leading ideas of these two stimulating teachers are that we must believe and love and sanctify ourselves in order that the soul may reach the ecstasy and composure of contemplation or the knowledge of God. The Scriptures are the supreme guide and the soul by contemplation reaches a spiritual state which the intellect and argumentation could ever bring it to.

Rupert of Deutz.—Among the mystics of the twelfth century no mean place belongs to Rupert of Deutz.1464  A German by nationality, he was made abbot of the Benedictine convent of Deutz near Cologne about 1120 and died 1136. He came into conflict with Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux through a report which represented them as teaching that God had decreed evil, and that, in sinning, Adam had followed God’s will. Rupert answered the errors in two works on the Will of God and the Omnipotence of God. He even went to France to contend with these two renowned teachers.1465  Anselm of Laon he found on his death-bed. With William he held an open disputation.

Rupert’s chief merit is in the department of exegesis. He was the most voluminous biblical commentator of his time. He magnified the Scriptures. In one consecutive volume he commented on the books of the Old Testament from Genesis to Chronicles, on the four Major Prophets, and the four evangelists.1466  The commentary on Genesis alone occupies nearly four hundred columns in Migne’s edition. Among his other exegetical works were commentaries on the Gospel and Revelation of St. John, the Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, and especially the Canticles and Matthew. In these works he follows the text conscientiously and laboriously, verse by verse. The Canticles Rupert regarded as a song in honor of the Virgin Mary, but he set himself against the doctrine that she was conceived without sin. The commentary opens with an interpretation of Cant. 1:2, thus: " ’Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’ What is this exclamation so great, so sudden?  Of blessed Mary, the inundation of joy, the force of love, the torrent of pleasure have filled thee full and wholly intoxicated thee and thou hast felt what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man, and thou hast said, ’Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’ for thou didst say to the angel ’Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be unto me according to thy word.’ What was that word?  What did he say to thee?  ’Thou hast found grace,’ he said, ’with the Lord. Behold thou shalt conceive and bare a son.’... Was not this the word of the angel, the word and promise of the kiss of the Lord’s mouth ready to be given?" etc.1467

Rupert also has a place in the history of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and it is an open question whether or not he substituted the doctrine of impanation for the doctrine of transubstantiation.1468

CHAPTER XIII.

SCHOLASTICISM AT ITS HEIGHT.

§ 106. Alexander of Hales.

Literature: For general works on Scholasticism see § 95. Alex. of Hales: Summa universae theologiae, Venice, 1475, Nürnberg, 1482, Basel, 1502, Cologne, 1611, 4 vols.—Wadding: Annal. Min., III.—Stöckl: Phil. des Mittelalters, II. 313–326.—K. Müller: Der Umschwung in der Lehre Soon der Busse, etc., Freib., 1892.—The Doctrinal Histories of Schwane, Harnack, Seeberg, etc., Dict. of Natl. Biogr., I. 272 sq.

The culmination of Scholasticism falls in the thirteenth century. It is no longer as confident in the ability of reason to prove all theological questions as it was in the days of Anselm and Abaelard a hundred years before. The ethical element comes into prominence. A modified realism prevails. The syllogism is elaborated. The question is discussed whether theology is a science or not. The authority of Aristotle becomes, if possible, more binding. All his writings have become available through translations. The teachings of Averrhoes, Avicenna, and other Arabic philosophers are made known. The chief Schoolmen belong to one of the two great mendicant orders. To the Franciscan order belonged Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and Raymundus Lullus. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were Dominicans. All these men had to do with the universities.

Alexander of Hales (Halesius or Halensis), called by his pupils the Irrefragable Doctor—doctor irrefragabilis — and the king of theologians—monarcha theologorum — was born at Hales, Gloucestershire, England, and died in Paris, 1245. After reaching the dignity of archdeacon, he went to Paris to prosecute his studies. He entered the order of St. Francis, 1222, and was the first Franciscan to obtain the degree of doctor and to teach in the University of Paris, which he continued to do till 1238.

Alexander was the first Schoolman to whom all the writings of Aristotle were accessible. His chief work, the System of Universal Theology, was completed by one of his pupils, 1252.1469  His method was to state the affirmative and negative of a question1470 and then to give the solution. In worldly things, knowledge proceeds from rational conviction; in spiritual things, faith precedes knowledge. Theology is, therefore, rather a body of wisdom—sapientia —than a science—scientia; not so much knowledge drawn from study as knowledge drawn from experience.1471  Alexander had a most important part in the definition of some of the characteristic mediaeval dogmas, which passed into the doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. He declared for the indelible character of baptism and ordination. By elaborate argument he justified the withdrawal of the cup from the laity and stated the new doctrine of penance. He is especially famous for having defined the fund of merit—thesaurus meritorum — the vicious doctrine upon which the practice of distributing and selling indulgences was based. He was one of the first to make the distinction between attritio or imperfect repentance, due to fear, timor servilis, and contritio or perfect repentance based upon higher motives. In all these matters he had a controlling influence over the later Schoolmen.1472

§ 107. Albertus Magnus.

Literature: Works. Complete ed. by, Jammy, Lyons, 1651, 21 vols.; revised by Augusti Borgnet, 38 vols. Paris, 1890. Dedicated to Leo XIII., containing a Life and valuable indexes. The De vegetabilibus, ed. by Meyer and Jessen, Berl., 1867.—Com. on Job, ed. by M. Weiss, Freib., 1904.—Fullest monograph J. Sighart: Alb. Mag., sein Leben und seine Wissenschaft, Regensb., 1857, based upon the compilation of Peter de Prussia: Vita B. Alb., doctoris magni ex ordine Praedicatorum, etc., Col., 1486.—Sighart gives a list of the biogr. notices from Thomas of Chantimpré, 1261.—d’Assaily: Alb. le Grand, Paris, 1870.—G. von Hertling: Alb. Mag., Beiträge zu s. Würdigung, Col., 1880; Alb. Mag. in Gesch. und Sage, Col., 1880, and his art. in Wetzer-Welte, I. 414–419.—Ueberweg-Heinze.—Stöckl, II. 353–421.—Schwane, pp. 46 sqq. etc.—Preger: Deutsche Mystik, I. 263–268.—Harnack, Seeberg.

The most learned and widely read man of the thirteenth century was Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great. His encyclopaedic attainments were unmatched in the Middle Ages, and won for him the title, Universal Doctor—doctor universalis. He was far and away the greatest of German scholars and speculators of this era.

Albert (1193–1280) was born at Lauingen in Bavaria, studied in Padua, and, about 1223, entered the order of the Dominicans, influenced thereto by a sermon preached by its second general, Jordanus. He taught in Freiburg, Hildesheim, Strassburg, Regensburg, and other cities. At Cologne, which was his chief headquarters,1473 he had among his pupils Thomas Aquinas.1474  He seems to have spent three years in teaching at Paris about 1245. In 1254 he was chosen provincial of his order in Germany. Two years later we find him in Rome, called by Alexander IV. for counsel in the conflict over the mendicant orders with William of St. Amour.

He was made bishop of Regensburg, an office he laid down in 1262.1475  His presence at the council of Lyons, 1274, is doubtful.1476  One of his last acts was to go to Paris and defend the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, after that theologian’s death. He died at the age of eighty-seven, in Cologne, where he is buried in the St. Andreas Church.

Albert was small of stature and the story is told of his first appearance in the presence of the pope; that the pope, thinking he was kneeling, bade him stand on his feet. A few years before his death he became childish, and the story runs that the archbishop, Siegfried, knocking at the door of his cell, exclaimed, "Albert, are you here?" and the reply came, "Albert is not here. He used to be here. He is not here any more." In early life, Albert was called the dumb ox on account of his slowness in learning, and the change of his intellectual power was indicated by the bon mot. "Albert was turned from all ass to a philosopher and from a philosopher to an ass." In 1880, the six hundredth anniversary of his death, a statue was erected to his memory at his birthplace.

Albertus Magnus was a philosopher, naturalist, and theologian; a student of God, nature, and man. He knew no Greek, but was widely read in the Latin classics as well as in the Fathers. He used the complete works of Aristotle, and was familiar with the Arabic philosophers whom at points he confuted.1477  He also used the works of the Hebrews, Isaac Israeli, Maimonides, and Gabirol.1478  His large indebtedness to Aristotle won for him the title, Aristotle’s ape,—simia Aristotelis — but unjustly, for he often disagreed with his teacher.1479

He traversed the whole area of the physical sciences. No one for centuries had been such a student of nature. He wrote on the vegetable kingdom, geography, mineralogy, zoology, astronomy, and the digestive organs. The writings on these themes are full of curious items of knowledge and explanations of natural phenomena. His treatise on meteors, De meteororibus, for example, which in Borgnet’s edition fills more than three hundred pages (IV. 477–808), takes up at length such subjects as the comets, the milky way, the cause of light in the lower strata of air, the origin of the rivers, the winds, lightning, thunder and cyclones, the rainbow, etc. In the course of his treatment of rivers, Albert speaks of great cavities in the earth and spongy regions under its flat surface. To the question, why the sun was made, if the prior light was sufficient to render it possible to speak of "morning and evening" on the first days of creation, he replied, "that as the earlier light amply illuminated the upper parts of the universe so the sun was fitted to illuminate the lower parts, or rather it was in order that the day might be made still more bright by the sun; and if it be asked what became of the prior light, the answer is that the body of the sun, corpus solis, was formed out of it, or at any rate that the prior light was in the same part of the heavens where the sun is located, not as though it were the sun but in the sense that it was so united with the sun as now no more to be specially distinguished from it."1480

Albert saw into a new world. His knowledge is often at fault, but sometimes his statements are prophetic of modern discovery. For example, he said that the poles of the earth were too cold to be inhabited. He knew about the sleep of plants and many of the laws of the vegetable world. He was indefatigable in experimentation, the forerunner of the modern laboratory worker, and had much to do with arsenic, sulphur, and other chemical substances. He knew about gunpowder, but got his knowledge from others.1481  The succeeding age associated his name, as also the name of Roger Bacon, with magic and the dark arts, but probably without sufficient reason.

The world has had few such prolific writers as Albertus Magnus. In Borgnet’s edition of thirty-eight volumes, there are, excluding, the valuable indexes, no less than 27,014 pages of two columns each. These writings may be said to take up not only every topic of physical knowledge but to discuss every imaginable subject in religion and philosophy. His activity combined the travail of the original thinker with the toil of the compiler. Twelve volumes in Borgnet’s edition are devoted to philosophy and the natural sciences, one to sermons, one to a commentary on Dionysius the Areopagite, ten to commentaries on books of the Old and New Testaments, and fourteen to theology. He freely used some of his predecessors among the Schoolmen as Anselm, Bernard, and Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, as well as the Fathers and the Greek and Arabic philosophers.

Albert’s chief theological works are a Commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard, a Study of Created Things1482 and an independent summa of theology, which was left unfinished, and stopped with the discussion of sin. These three works, in many subjects of which they treat, run parallel. But each is fresh, elaborate, and has its own peculiar arrangement. The Study of Created Things, or System of Nature is an attempt, whose boldness has never been exceeded, to explain the great phenomena of the visible universe above and below, eternity and time, the stars and the motion of the heavens, angels and devils, man, his soul and body, the laws of his nutrition, sleep, reason, intellect, and other parts of his constitution, and events to which he is subject.

Albert’s commentaries cover the Psalms in three volumes, the Lamentations, Daniel, the Minor Prophets, Baruch, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse. His commentary on the Worthy Woman of Proverbs 31:10–31 is drawn out to two hundred pages of two columns each.

Theology, Albert defined to be a science in the truest sense, and what is more, it is wisdom.1483  It is the practical science of those things that pertain to salvation. The being of God is not susceptible of positive a priori proof. It may be proved in an indirect way from the impossible absurdities which would follow from the denial of it.1484  The existence of God is not, properly speaking, an article of theology, but an antecedent of all articles. In his Summa he quotes Anselm’s definition. "God is greater than anything else that can be conceived." The objection was made to it that what is above what can be conceived we cannot grasp. He answers the objection by showing that God can be known by positive affirmation and by negation. The cosmological proof was most to Albert’s mind, and he argued at length the proposition that motion demands a prime mover. Matter cannot start itself into motion.1485

The Trinity is matter of revelation. Philosophy did not find it out.1486  Albert, however, was not prevented from entering into an elaborate speculative treatment of the doctrine.

Following Augustine, Anselm, and Richard of St. Victor, he argued for the procession of the Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father as a necessity,1487 and laid stress upon love as the chief principle within the sphere of the persons of the godhead.

The usual scholastic list of questions about the angels, good and bad, is treated by Albert with great exhaustiveness. A number of angels, he decides, cannot be in one and the same place at the same time, not because of the spatial inconvenience it might seem to imply, but on account of the possibility of the confusion of activity it might involve. He concludes it to be impossible for an angel to be in more than one place at the same time. He discussed at length the language and vocal organs of the angels.1488  Especially elaborate is his treatment of the fall, and the activity and habitation of Lucifer and the demons. In pruriency he is scarcely behind some of the other Schoolmen. Every possible question that might occur to the mind had to be answered. Here are some of the questions. "Do the lost sin in hell?"  "Do they wish any good?"  "Is a smoky atmosphere a congenial element for the demons?"  "What are the age and stature of those who rise from the dead?"  "Does the sight of the pains of the lost diminish the glory of the beatified?"  To this last question he replied that such sight will increase the joy of the angels by calling forth renewed thanks for their redemption.1489  The serious problem of what it was into which the devil fell occupied Albert’s careful and prolonged argumentation several times.1490  The views of the Universal doctor on demonology will be taken up in another chapter. In another place also we shall speak of his answer to the question, what effect the eating of the host has upon a mouse.

The chief and ultimate cause of the creation of man is that he might serve God in his acts, praise God with his mouth, and enjoy God with his whole being. A second cause is that he might fill up the gaps left by the defection of the angels.1491  In another place Albert explains the creation of man and angels to be the product of God’s goodness.1492

Of all the panegyrists of the Virgin Mary before Alphonso da Liguori, none was so fulsome and elaborate as Albert. Of the contents of his famous treatise, The Praises of Mary,—de laudibus B. Mariae Virginis, 1493 — which fills eight hundred and forty-one pages in Borgnet’s edition, a synopsis is given in the section on the Worship of Mary. In the course of this treatment no less than sixty different passages from the Canticles are applied to Mary. Albert leaves her crowned at her assumption in the heavens. One of the questions this indefatigable theologian pursued with consequential precision was Eve’s conception before she sinned.

As for the ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages, the pope is to Albert God’s viceregent, vested with plenary power.1494

Albert astounds us by the industry and extent of his theological thought and labor and the versatility of his mind. Like all the Schoolmen he sought to exhaust the topics he discusses, and looks at them in every conceivable aspect. There is often something chaotic in his presentation of a theme, but he is nevertheless wonderfully stimulating. It remained for Albert’s greater pupil, Thomas Aquinas, to bring a clearness and succinctness to the statement of theological problems, theretofore unreached. Albert treated them with the insatiable curiosity of the student, the profundity of the philosopher, and the attainments of a widely read scholar. Thomas added the skill of the dialectic artist and a pronounced practical and ethical purpose.

§ 108  Thomas Aquinas.

Literature: I. Works.—U. Chevalier: Répertoire under Thomas Aq., pp. 1200–1206, and Supplem., pp. 2823–2827. — S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici opera omnia, jussu impensaque Leonis XIII., P. M., edita, Romae ex typographia polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, vols. 1–11, 1882–1902, to be completed in 25 vols. For this edition, called from Leo’s patronage editio Leonina, a papal appropriation has been made of 300,000 lire. See vol. I., p. xxv.—Older edd., Rome, 1570, 18 vols. by order of Pius V., and Venice, 1592–1594; Antwerp, by C. Morelles, 1612 sqq., 18 vols.; Paris, 1660, 23 vols.; Venice, 1786–1790, 28 vols.; with 30 dissertations by B. M. de Rubeis, Naples, 1846–1848, 19 vols.; Parma, 1852 sqq.; Paris, 1871—1880, 33 vols. by Fretté and Maré.—The Summa theologica has been often separately published as by Migne, 4 vols. Paris, 1841, 1864; *Drioux, 15 vols. Paris, 1853–1856; with French trans., and 8 vols. Paris, 1885. Among the very numerous commentators of the Summa are Cajetan, d. 1534, given in the Leonine ed., Melchior Canus, d. 1560, Dominicus Soto, d. 1560, Medina, d. 1580, Bannez, d. 1604, Xantes Moriales, d. 1666, Mauritius de Gregorii, d. 1666, all Dominicans; Vasquez, d. 1604, Suarez, d. 1617, Jesuits. The most prolix commentaries are by barefooted Carmelites of Spain, viz. the cursus theologicus of Salamanca, 19 vols. repub. at Venice, 1677 sqq., and the Disputationes collegii complutensis at Alcala in 4 vols. repub. at Lyons, 1667 sqq. —See Werner: D. hl. Thomas, I. 885 sqq.—P. A. Uccelli’s ed. of the contra Gentiles, Rome, 1878, from autograph MSS. in the Vatican, contains a facsimile of Thomas’ handwriting which is almost illegible.—Engl. trans. of the Aurea Catena, Oxford, 1865, 6 vols., and the Ethics by J. Rickaby, N. Y., 1896.—Fr. Satolli, in Summam Theol. d. Th. Aq. praelectiones, Milan, 1884–1888.—L. Janssen: Summa Theol. ad modum commentarii in Aquinatis Summam praesentis aevi studii aptatam, Freib. im Br., 5 vols. 1902.—La théol. affective ou St. Th. d’Aq. médité en vue de prédication, by L. Bail, Paris, 12 vols.

II. Lives, etc.—The oldest Life is by William de Thoco, who knew Thomas personally, reprinted in the ed. Leonina, vol. I. Documents in Chartularium parisiensis.—F. B. de Rubeis: De gestis et scriptis ac doctrina S. Th. Aq. dissertationes crit. et apolog., reprinted in the Leonina.—P. A. Touron: Paris, 1737.—J. Bareille: 1846, 4th ed. 1862.—*Karl Werner, Rom. Cath. Prof. at St. Pölten, Austria: D. heilige Th. von Aquino, 5 vols. 1858–1859, Regensb. Learned, exhaustive, but ill digested.—R. B. Vaughan Rom. Cath. abp. of Sydney: Life and Labors of St. Th. of Aquino, 2 vols. Lond., 187I-1872, based on Werner.—Cicognani: Sulla vita de S. Tomasio, Engl. trans., 1882.—P. Cavenaugh: Life of Th. Aq., the Angelic Doctor. N. Y., 1890.—Didiot: Le docteur angélique S. Th. d’Aq., Bruges, 1894.—Jourdain: Le Phil. de S. Th. d’Aq., 2 vols. Paris, 1861.—*F. X. Leitner: D. hl. Th. von Aq. über d. unfehlbare Lehramt d. Papstes, Freib., 1872.—J. J. Baumann: D. Staatslehre des hl. Th. von Aq., Leip., 1873.—Schötz: Thomas Lexicon (explanation of technical terms), Paderb., 1881.—Eicken. D Philos. d. Th. von Aq. und. d. Kultur d. Neuzeit:, Halle, 1886, 54 pp.; also Th. von Aq. und Kant, ein Kampf zweier Welten, Berlin, 1901.—*F. H. Reusch, Old-Cath.: D. Fälschungen in dem Traktat des Th. von Aq. gegen die Griechen, München, 1889.—F. Tessen-Wesiersky: D. Grundlagen d. Wunderbegriffs n. Th. von Aq. Paderb., 1899, p. 142.—J. Guttmann: D. Verhältniss des Th. von Aq. zum Judenthum und zur jüdischen Literatur, 1891.—Wittmann: D. Stellung d. hl. Th. von Aq. zu Avencebrol, Münster, 1900.—De Groot: Leo: XIII. und der hl. Th. von Aq., Regensb., 1897.—M. Grabmann: D. Lehre d. hl. Th. v. Aq. v. d. Kirche als Gotteswerk, Regensb., 1903.—J. Göttler: D. hl. Th. v. Aq. u. d. vortridentin. Thomisten ueb. d. Wirkgn. d Busssakramentes, 1904.—Stöckl: Philos. d. Mittelalters, II. 421–728. The Histt. of Doctr. of Schwane, Harnack, III. 422–428, etc., and Loofs, pp. 284–304.—Lane-Poole: Illustrations etc., pp. 226 sqq.—Baur: D. Christl. Kirche des M. A., 312–354. —The art. in Wetzer-Welte, XI. 1626–1661.—T. O’Gorman: Life and Works of St. Th. Aq. in Papers of Am. Soc. of Ch. Hist., 1893, pp. 81–97.—D. S. Schaff: Th. Aq. and Leo XIII. in Princeton Rev., 1904, pp. 177–196.—Art. Th. Aq. and Med. Thought. in Dubl. Rev. Jan., 1906.

In an altar piece by Traini, dating from 1341, in the church of St. Caterina, Pisa, Thomas Aquinas is represented as seated in the centre with a book open before him. At the top of the cloth the artist has placed Christ, on one side of him Matthew, Luke, and Paul and on the other, Moses, John, and Mark. Below Thomas Aquinas, and on the left side, Aristotle is represented standing and facing Thomas. Aristotle holds an open volume which is turned towards the central figure. On the right hand Plato is represented, also standing and facing Thomas with an open volume. At the foot of the cloth there are three groups. One at each corner consists of monks looking up admiringly at Thomas. Between them, Averrhoes is represented reclining and holding a closed book. This remarkable piece of art represents with accuracy the central place which has been accorded to Thomas Aquinas in the mediaeval theology. Arabic philosophy closes its mission now that the great exponent of Christian theology has come. The two chief philosophers of the unaided reason offer to him the results of their speculations and do him homage. The body of monks admire him, and Christ, as it were, commends him.

Thomas Aquinas, called the Angelic doctor,—doctor angelicus, — 1225–1274, is the prince of the Schoolmen, and next to St. Augustine, the most eminent divine of the Latin Church. He was a man of rare genius, wisdom, and purity of life. He had an unrivalled power of orderly and vigorous statement. Under his hand the Scholastic doctrines were organized into a complete and final system. He expounded them with transparent clearness, and fortified them with powerful arguments derived from Scripture, tradition, and reason. Mystical piety and a sound intellect were united in him. As compared with many of the other Schoolmen, notably with Duns Scotus, Thomas was practical rather than speculative. Popes and councils have repeatedly acknowledged his authority as a teacher of Catholic theology. Thomas was canonized by John XXII., 1823, and raised to the dignity of "doctor of the church," 1567. In 1879, Leo XIII. commended him as the corypheus and prince of all the Schoolmen, and as the safest guide of Christian philosophy in the battle of faith and reason against the sceptical and revolutionary tendencies of the nineteenth century,1495 who "set to rest once for all the discord between faith and reason, exalting the dignity of each and yet keeping them in friendly alliance." In 1880 this pope pronounced him the patron of Catholic schools. In the teachings of Thomas Aquinas we have, with one or two exceptions, the doctrinal tenets of the Latin Church in their perfect exposition as we have them in the Decrees of the council of Trent in their final statement.

Thomas of Aquino was born about 1220 in the castle of Rocca Sicca—now in ruins—near Aquino in the territory of Naples. Through his father, the count of Aquino, he was descended from a princely house of Lombardy. His mother was of Norman blood and granddaughter of the famous Crusader Tancred. At five the boy was sent to the neighboring convent of Monte Cassino from which he passed to the University of Naples. In 1243 he entered the Dominican order, a step his family resented. His brothers who were serving in the army of Frederick II. took the novice by force and kept him under guard in the paternal castle for more than a year. Thomas employed the time of his confinement in studying the Bible, the Sentences of the Lombard, and the works of Aristotle.

We next find him in Cologne under Albertus Magnus. That great Schoolman, recognizing the genius of his pupil, is reported to have said, "He will make such a roaring in theology that he will be heard through all the earth."1496  He accompanied Albertus to Paris and in 1248 returned to Cologne as teacher. He again went to Paris and won the doctor’s degree. William de St. Amour’s attack upon the monastic orders drew from him a defence as it also did from Bonaventura. Thomas was called to Anagni to represent the case of the orders. His address called forth the commendation of Alexander IV., who, in a letter to the chancellor of the University of Paris, spoke of Thomas as a man conspicuous by his virtues and of encyclopaedic learning. In 1261, Thomas left the teacher’s chair in Paris and taught successively in Bologna, Rome, and other Italian cities. Urban IV. and Clement IV. honored him with their confidence. The years 1272–1274 he spent at Naples. He died on his way to the oecumenical council of Lyons, March 7, 1274, only forty-eight years of age, in the Cistercian convent of Fossa Nuova near Terracina. Dante and Villani report he was poisoned by order of Charles of Anjou, but the earliest accounts know nothing of this. The great teacher’s body was taken to Toulouse, except the right arm which was sent to the Dominican house of Saint Jacques, Paris, whence, at a later date, it was removed to Rome.

The genuine writings of Thomas Aquinas number more than sixty, and fall into four classes. The philosophical works are commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics, Metaphysics, Politics, and other treatises. His exegetical works include commentaries on Job, the first fifty-one Psalms, Canticles, Isaiah, the Lamentations, the Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul. The exposition of the Gospels, known as the Golden Chain,—aurea catena,1497 — consists of excerpts from the Fathers. A number of Thomas’ sermons are also extant. The apologetic works are of more importance. The chief among them are works designed to convince the Mohammedans and other unbelievers,1498 and to promote the union of the Greeks and Latins, and a treatise against the disciples of Averrhoes.1499

Thomas’ works on dogmatic theology and ethics are the most important of his writings. The earliest was a commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. Here belong Expositions of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the decalogue, the Angelic salutation, and the sacraments. Thomas gave his first independent systematic treatment of the entire realm of theology in his Compendium theologiae. The subject was presented under the heads of the three cardinal virtues,—faith, hope, and charity. His master-work is his Summa theologica which he did not live to finish and which is supplemented by compilations from the author’s commentary on the Lombard. Thomas also made important contributions to the liturgy and to hymnology. In 1264 at the request of Urban IV., he prepared the office for the festival of Corpus Christi, in which were incorporated the Pange lingua, Lauda Sion, and other hymns.1500

With Augustine and John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas shares the distinction of being one of the three master theological minds of the Western world. What John of Damascus did for the theology of the Greek Church, that Thomas did for the theology of the mediaeval Church. He gave to it its most perfect form. His commanding eminence rests upon his clearness of method and his well-balanced judgment rather than upon his originality of thought.1501  He was not a great scholar and, like Augustine, he knew no Hebrew and little Greek. Abaelard Bonaventura, and Albertus Magnus seem to show a wider familiarity than he with the ancient authors, patristic and profane, but they differ widely. He leaned much upon Albertus Magnus.1502  Albertus had an eye more for the works of nature, Thomas for moral action. As was the case with the other Schoolmen, so Thomas had as his chief authorities Augustine and Aristotle, quoting the latter as "the philosopher." He was in full sympathy with the hierarchical system and the theology of the mediaeval Church and at no point out of accord with them.

The Summa theologica, true to its author’s promise, avoids many of the idle discussions of his predecessors and contemporaries.1503  The treasures of the school and Church are here gathered together, sifted, and reduced to an elaborate but inspiring and simple structure. The three books treat respectively of God, man, and the Redeemer, the sacraments being included under the last head. The matter is disposed of in 518 divisions, called questions, and these are divided into 2652 articles. Each article states the negative and positive sides of the proposition under discussion, the arguments for and against it, and then the author’s solution. The same uniform threefold method of treatment is pursued throughout. This method would become insufferably monotonous but for the precision of Thomas’ statement and the interest of the materials. Each article is a finished piece of literary art. Here is an example on the simplicity of God.1504  The question is asked whether God is body, utrum Deus sit corpus. In favor of an affirmative reply is: 1. The consideration that God seems to have a body, for a body has three dimensions, and the Scriptures ascribe to God, height, depth, and length, Job 11:8. 2. Whatever has a figure, has a body. God seems to have a figure, Gen. 1:26, for He said, "Let Us make man in our image." 3. Everything that has parts, has a body. A hand, Job 40:4, and eyes, Ps. 25:15, are ascribed to God. 4. God has a seat and throne, Isa. 6:1. 5. God has a local termination which men may approach, Ps. 24:5.

But on the other hand must be noted what is said in John 4:24, "God is Spirit." The absolute God, therefore, is not a body. 1 No body moves that is not before moved and God is the first mover. 2. God is the first entity, primum ens. 3. God is the noblest among entities.

The answers to the objections are: 1. That the Scripture passages, attributing to God bodily parts, are figurative. 2. The expression "image of God" is used simply to indicate God’s superior excellency over man and man’s excellence over the beasts. 3. The ascription of corporeal senses, such as the eye, is a way of expressing God’s intelligence.

Theological speculation is, with Thomas, not an exhibition of theological acumen, but a pious employment pursued with the end of knowing and worshipping God. It is in keeping with this representation that, on his way to Paris, he is reported to have exclaimed, he would not give Chrysostom on Matthew for all the city. It is also related that during his last years in Naples the Lord, appearing to him, asked what reward he desired, for he had written well on theological questions. Thomas replied. "None other, Lord, but Thyself."

Thomas made a clearer distinction between philosophy and religion, reason and revelation, than had been made before by any of the Schoolmen. The reason is not competent by its own powers to discover the higher truths pertaining to God, such as the doctrine of the Trinity.1505  The ideas which the natural mind can reach are the praeambula fidei, that is, the ideas which pertain to the vestibule of faith. Theology utilizes the reason, not, it is true, to prove faith, for such a process would take away the merit of faith, but to throw light on doctrines which are furnished by revelation.1506  Theology is the higher science, both because of the certainty of its data and on account of the superior excellence of its subject-matter.1507   There is no contradiction between philosophy and theology. Both are fountains of knowledge. Both come from the same God.

As between the Scriptures and the Fathers, Thomas makes a clear distinction. The Church uses both to arrive at and expound the truth. The Scriptures are necessary and final. The testimony of the Fathers is probable. Thomas’ controlling purpose is to properly present the theology of the Church as he found it and nothing more.1508

Philosophy and theology pursue different methods in searching after truth.1509  In philosophy, knowledge based upon the visible creation goes before faith. In theology, or the doctrina fidei, faith looking to God as He is in Himself, precedes knowledge. The existence of God is not exclusively a matter of faith. It has been demonstrated by philosophers by irrefragable proofs. Anselm’s ontological argument, Thomas rejected on the ground that a conception in the mind—esse intellectu — is something different from real existence—esse in re. He adduced four cosmological arguments, and the argument from design.1510  The cosmological arguments are: 1. Motion presupposes an original mover. 2. An infinite series of causes, it is impossible to conceive. Therefore, there must be a First Cause. 3. The conditional demands that which is absolute, and 4. that which is imperfect implies that which is perfect as its standard. As for the teleological argument, objects and events have the appearance of being controlled by an overruling design as an arrow being shot by an archer.1511

Creation was not a necessity for God on account of any deficiency within Himself. It was the expression of His love and goodness. With Aristotle, Thomas agrees that by the natural reason the world cannot be proved to have had a beginning.1512  The first four things to be created were the realm of spirits, the empyrean, time, and earthly matter. The garden of Eden was a real place. Geographers do not locate it. It is secluded by the barriers of mountains, seas, and a certain tempestuous region.1513

In discussing the origin of evil, Thomas says that, in a perfect world, there will be all possible grades of being. The weal of the whole is more important than the well-being of any part. By the permission of evil, the good of the whole is promoted. Many good things would be wanting but for evil. As life is advanced by corruption in the natural world, so, for example, patience is developed by persecution.

The natural order cannot bind God. His will is free. He chooses not to work contrary to the natural order, but He works outside of it, praeter ordinem.1514  The providence of God includes what to us seems to be accidental. The man digging finds a treasure. To him the discovery is an accident. But the master, who set him to work at a certain place, had this in view.

From the divine providence, as the starting-point, the decree of predestination is elaborated. Thomas represented the semi-Pelagian standpoint. The elect are substituted for the angels who lost their first estate,1515 even as the Gentiles were substituted for the Jews. The number of the elect is unknown, but they are the minority of the race. Reprobation is not a positive act of God. God’s decree is permissive. God loves all men. He leaves men to themselves, and those who are lost, are lost by their own guilt. God’s decree of election includes the purpose to confer grace and glory.

In his treatment of the angels, Thomas practised a commendable self-restraint, as compared with Bonaventura and other Summists.

When he takes up man, the Angelic doctor is relatively most elaborate. In the discussion of man’s original condition and his state after the Fall, many questions are proposed which dialectical dexterity must answer in view of the silence of Scripture. Here are examples. Could Adam in his state of innocence see the angels?  Did he have the knowledge of all things?  Did he need foods?  Were the children born in his state of innocence confirmed in righteousness and had they knowledge of that which is perfect?  Would original sin have passed down upon Adam’s posterity, if Adam had refused to join Eve in sinning?1516

Thomas rejected the traducian view as heretical, and was a creationist.1517  Following Peter the Lombard, he held that grace was a superadded gift to Adam, over and above the natural faculties and powers of the soul and body.1518  This gift disposed man to love God above all things.1519

Man’s original righteousness, but for the Fall, would have passed down upon Adam’s posterity. The cause of sin was an inordinate love of self.1520  Original sin is a disorder of the moral constitution, and shows itself in concupiscence, that is irrational desire. It has become a fixed condition of the race, a corrupt disposition of the soul,—habitus corruptus,—just as sickness is a corrupt condition of the body. The corruption of nature, however, is partial,—a wound, not a total deadness of the moral nature.

Thomas approaches the subject of Christ and redemption by saying that "our Saviour, Jesus Christ, has shown us the way of truth in himself, the way by which we are able to attain through resurrection to the beatitude of immortal life."1521  Three main questions are taken up: the person of the Saviour, the sacraments, which are the channels of salvation, and the goal or immortal life. The Anselmic view of the atonement is adopted. The infinitude of human guilt makes it fitting that the Son of God should make atonement. God was not, however, shut up to this method. He can forgive sin as He pleases. Thomas takes up all the main data of Christ’s life, from the conception to the crucifixion. Justification is not a progressive process, but a single instantaneous act.1522  Faith, working by love, lays hold of this grace.

Scarcely any teaching of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas arouses so much revolt in the Christian theology of this age as the teaching about the future estate of unbaptized children dying in infancy. These theologians agree in denying to them all hope of future bliss. They are detained in hell for the sin of Adam, being in no wise bound to Christ in His passion and death by the exercise of faith and love, as the baptized and the patriarchs of the Old Testament are. The sacrament of faith, that is, baptism, not being applied to them, they are forever lost. Baptism liberates from original sin, and without baptism there is no salvation.1523

The doctrine of the sacraments, as expounded by Thomas, is, in all particulars, the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Christ won grace. The Church imparts it. The sacraments are visible signs of invisible things, as Augustine defined them. The number is seven, corresponding to the seven cardinal virtues and the seven mortal sins. They are remedies for sin, and make for the perfecting of man in righteousness.1524  The efficacy lies in a virtue inherent in the sacrament itself, and is not conditioned by faith in the recipient. Three of the sacraments —baptism, confirmation, and ordination—have an indelible character. Every conceivable question pertaining to the sacraments is taken up by Thomas and solved. The treatment of baptism and the eucharist occupies no less than two hundred and fifty pages of Migne’s edition, IV. 600–852.

Baptism, the original form of which was immersion, cleanses from original sin and incorporates into the body of Christ. Children of Jews and infidels are not to be baptized without the consent of their parents.1525  Ordination is indispensable to the existence of the Church. In the Lord’s Supper the glorified body of the Redeemer is wholly present essentially, but not quantitatively. The words of Christ, "This is my body" are susceptible of only one interpretation—the change of the elements into the veritable body and blood of Christ. The substance of the bread undergoes change. The dimensions of the bread, and its other accidents, remain. The whole body is in the bread, as the whole body is also in the wine.1526

Penance is efficacious to the removing of guilt incurred after baptism. Indulgences have efficacy for the dead as well as the living. Their dispensation belongs primarily to the pope, as the head of the Church. The fund of merit is the product chiefly of the superabounding merit of Christ, but also of the supererogatory works of the saints.1527

In regard to the Last Things, the fire of hell will be physical. The blessed will be able to contemplate the woes of the lost without sorrow, and are led, as Albertus had said, by the sight of these woes to praise God supremely for their own redemption. Their beatitude is not increased by this vision. The body of the resurrection will be the same, even to the bowels.1528

In his consideration of ethics, Thomas Aquinas rises far above the other mediaeval writers, and marks an epoch in the treatment of the subject. He devotes to it nearly two hundred questions, or one-third of his entire system of theology. Here his references to the "philosopher" are very frequent.1529  It is Thomas’ merit that he proceeds into details in analyzing the conduct of daily life.1530  To give an example, he discusses the question of drunkenness, and, with Aristotle, decides that it is no excuse for crime.1531  Thomas, however, also allows himself to be led into useless discussions where sophistry has free play, as when he answers the questions, whether a "man should love his child more than his father," or "his mother more than his father."

Thomas opens his ethical treatment with a discussion of the highest good, that is, blessedness,—beatitudo,—which does not consist in riches, honor, fame, power, or pleasure.1532  Riches only minister to the body, and the more we have of them, the more are they despised, on account of their insufficiency to meet human needs; as our Lord said of the waters of the world, that whoever drinks of them shall thirst again, John 4:13. Blessedness consists in nothing else than the vision of God as He is in Himself.1533  Satisfaction is a necessary concomitant of blessedness, as warmth is a concomitant of fire.

The virtues are the three religious virtues infused by God,—faith, hope, and love; and the four philosophical or cardinal virtues,—prudence, righteousness, endurance, and continence. These are treated at great length.1534  The ethical sections conclude with discussions bearing on the habits of the clerical profession. In committing the same sins as laymen do, clerics sin more grievously. "Ought they to live of alms?"  This and a multitude of other questions of the same kind are handled with all gravity and metaphysical precision. The essence of Christian perfection is love.1535

In his theory of Church and State also Thomas did not rise above his age.1536  He fixed the theological statement concerning the supremacy of the spiritual realm, the primacy of the pope, and the right to punish heretics with death. His views are laid down in his Summa, and in three other writings, on the Rule of Princes,1537 the Errors of the Greeks, and the contra Gentes. Thomas’ argument is that the State exists to secure for man the highest end of his being, the salvation of his soul, as well as for his material well-being in this life. He shows no concern for the separate European states and nationalities.1538  As the head of the mystical body of Christ, the pope is supreme over the civil estate, even as the spiritual nature is superior to man’s physical nature. Christian kings owe him subjection, as they owe subjection to Christ himself, for the pope is Peter’s successor and the vicar of Christ.1539  The monarchia Christi has taken the place of the old Roman imperium.

As for the Church itself, Rome is the mistress and mother of all churches. To obey her is to obey Christ. This is according to the decision of the holy councils and the holy Fathers.1540  The unity of the Church presupposes a supreme centre of authority.1541  To the pope, it belongs to determine what is of faith. Yea, subjection to him is necessary to salvation.1542  High churchmanship could no further go.

In his declarations about heresy and its treatment, Thomas materially assisted in making the persecution of heretics unto death the settled policy of the Church and the State. At any rate he cleared away all objections as far as it was possible to clear them away. Heresy, as has already been said, he taught, is a crime to be punished like coin-clipping. No one may be compelled to enter the Church, but once having entered it and turned heretic, he must, if necessary, be forced by violent measures to obey the faith—haeretici sunt compellendi ut fidem teneant. It will thus be seen from this survey, which is supplemented in the chapters on the sacraments, the future state and Mariology, that the theology of the Angelic doctor and the theology of the Roman Catholic Church are identical in all particulars except the immaculate conception. He who understands Thomas understands the mediaeval theology at its best and will be in possession of the doctrinal system of the Roman Church.

Thomas Aquinas was elevated by the Dominican order to the position of authoritative teacher in 1286. His scholars were numerous, but his theology was not universally accepted.

Some of his statements were condemned by the University of Paris as early as 1277, and about 1285 William of Ware,1543 trained at Oxford, which was a citadel of the Franciscans, wrote against the eminent Dominican. Soon after the death of the Franciscan Duns Scotus, the differences between him and Thomas were emphasized, and involved the two orders in controversy for centuries. No less than eighty-six theological differences between these two teachers were tabulated.1544

The theology of Thomas Aquinas controlled Dante. The first printed commentary on the Summa was written by Cardinal Cajetan, Venice, 1507–1522. The Thomists lost by the decree of the immaculate conception of Mary, 1854. That doctrine had been the chief bone of contention between them and the Franciscans. The decision of Leo XIII., making Thomas’ theology and philosophy the standard for all Catholic teaching, has again, as it were, equalized matters.

The Protestant Reformers, in their indignation against the Scholastic theology, could not do justice to Thomas Aquinas. Luther went so far as to call his Summa the quintessence of all heresies, meaning papal doctrines. He spoke of him as "the fountain and original soup of all heresy, error, and Gospel havoc, as his books bear witness."1545  "You are much to be condemned," Luther said to Prierias. "for daring to obtrude upon us, as articles of faith, the opinions of that sainted man, Thomas, and his frequent false conclusions." On one occasion, he compared Thomas to the star of the book of Revelation which fell from heaven, the empty speculations of Aristotle to the smoke of the bottomless pit, the universities to the locusts, and Aristotle himself to his master Apollyon.1546

Such polemic extravagances have long since yielded to a more just, historical estimate of this extraordinary man. Thomas merits our admiration by his candor and clearness as a systematic theologian, and by his sincerity and purity as an ethical thinker. In the great fundamentals of the Christian system he was scriptural and truly catholic. His errors were the errors of his age above which he was not able to rise, as three centuries later the clear and logical Protestant theologian, John Calvin, was not able in some important particulars to rise above the beliefs current in his time, and that in spite of his diligent study of the Scriptures and wide acquaintance with their teachings.

The papal estimate, as given expression to in the encyclicals of Leo XIII., is a practical denial of any progress in theology since the thirteenth century, and in effect ignores the scientific discoveries of ages. From the standpoint of an unalterable Catholic orthodoxy, Leo made no mistake in fixing upon Thomas Aquinas as the model expounder of Christian doctrine. Protestants differ, regarding no theologian since the Apostles as infallible. They have no expectation that the Schoolman’s argumentation will settle the theological and religious unrest of these modern days, which grows out of biblical theories and scientific and religious studies of which that great teacher never dreamed, and worldwide problems which never entered into his mind.

The present age is not at all concerned with many of the curious questions which Thomas and the other Schoolmen proposed. Each studious age has its own problems to settle and its own phases of religious doubt to adjust its fundamental teaching to. The mediaeval systems can no more be expected to meet the present demands of theological controversy than the artillery used on the battlefield of Crécy can meet the demands of modern warfare.1547  The rights of private judgment are being asserted more and more, and, as there is some reason to suppose, even within the pale of the Roman communion. In the broader communion of the whole Church, we are glad to think that both Leo XIII., the wise pope, and Thomas Aquinas, the clear-eyed Schoolman, occupy a high place as members of the company of the eminent Churchmen of all ages; but this is not because they were free from mistakes to which our fallible human nature makes us subject, but because in the essential matters of the Christian life they were expounders of the Gospel.

§ 109. Bonaventura.

Literature: Works. —edd. Strassburg, 1482; Nürnberg 1499, 4 vols.; Rome, 1588–1596, 8 vols. Lyons, 1668, 7 vols. Venice, 1751, 13 vols.; Paris, A. C. Peltier, ed., 1864–1871, 15 vols., and Quaracchi, 1882–1902, prepared by the Franciscans. —B. Bonelli: Prodromus ad omnia opp. S. Bon., Bassani, 1767. —W. A. Hollenberg: Studien zum Bon., Berlin, 1862.—A. M. da Vicenza: D. heil. Bon., Germ. trans. from the Italian, Paderborn, 1874.—J. Richard: Etude sur le mysticisme speculatif de S. Bon., Heidelberg, 1869.—A trans. of the Meditations of Bon. on the Life of Christ by W. H. Hutchings, London, 1881.—A. Margerie: Essai sur la Phil. de S. Bon., Paris, 1855.—J. Krause: Lehre d. heil. Bon. über die Natur der geistl. und körperl. Wesen, Paderborn, 1888.—L. de Chérancé: S. Bonaventure, Paris, 1899.—Stöckl, II. 880–915.—The Doctrinal Histories of Schwane, etc.—Preger: Deutsche Mystik, I. 51–43. For other Lit. see Potthast, II. 1216.

Contemporary with Thomas Aquinas, even to dying the same year, was John Bonaventura. Thomas we think of only as theologian. Bonaventura was both a theologian and a distinguished administrator of the affairs of his order, the Franciscans. The one we think of as precise in his statements, the other as poetical in his imagery. Bonaventura 1221–1274, called the Seraphic doctor,—doctor seraphicus,—was born in Tuscany. The change from his original name, John Fidanza, was due to his recovery from a sickness at the age of four, in answer to the intercession of Francis d’Assisi. When the child began to show signs of recovery, his mother exclaimed, O buon ventura, good fortune!  This is the saint’s own story.1548

The boy entered the Franciscan order, 1238. After having spent three years in Paris under Alexander of Hales, the teacher is reported to have said, "in brother Bonaventura Adam seems not to have sinned." He taught in Paris, following John of Parma, on John’s promotion to the office of general of the order of the Franciscans, 1247. He lived through the conflict between the university and the mendicant orders, and in answer to William de St. Amour’s tract, de periculis novissimorum temporum, attacking the principle of mendicancy, Bonaventura wrote his tract on the Poverty of Christ.1549

In 1257, he was chosen head of the Franciscan order in succession to John of Parma. He took a middle position between the two parties which were contending in the Franciscan body and has been called the second founder of the order. By the instruction of the first Franciscan general council at Narbonne, 1260, he wrote the Legenda S. Francisi, the authoritative Franciscan Life of the saint.1550  It abounds in miracles, great and small. In his Quaestiones circa regulam and in letters he presents a picture of the decay of the Franciscans from the ideal of their founders. He narrowly escaped being closely identified with English Church history, by declining the see of York, 1265. In 1273 he was made cardinal-bishop of Albano. To him was committed a share in the preparations for the council of Lyons, but he died soon after the opening of the council, July 14, 1274. The sacrament of extreme unction was administered by the pope and the funeral took place in the presence of the solemn assembly of dignitaries gathered from all parts of Christendom. He was buried at Lyons.1551  He was canonized in 1482 and declared a "doctor of the church," 1587.

Gerson wrote a special panegyric of Bonaventura and said that he was the most profitable of the doctors, safe and reliable in teaching, pious and devout. He did not minister to curiosity nor mix up secular dialectics and physics with theological discussion.1552  Dante places him at the side of Thomas Aquinas,

"who with pure interest

Preferred each heavenly to each earthly aim."1553

These two distinguished men will always be brought into companionship.1554  Stöckl, the historian of mediaeval theology, calls them the illuminating stars on the horizon of the thirteenth century.1555  Neither of them rose so high above his contemporaries as did Bernard a hundred years before. But both cast lustre upon their age and are the most illustrious names of their respective orders, after Francis and Dominic themselves. Thomas had the keener mind, excelling in power of analysis. Bonaventura indulged the habit of elaboration. The ethical element was conspicuous in Thomas, the mystical in Bonaventura. Thomas was the more authoritative teacher, Bonaventura the more versatile writer. Both were equally champions of the theology and organization of the mediaeval Church.

Bonaventura enjoyed a wide fame as a preacher.1556  He was also a poet, and has left the most glowing panegyric of Mary in the form of psalms as well as in prose.

Of his theological writings the most notable is his Commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard.1557  His Breviloquium and Centiloquium are next in importance. The Breviloquium,1558 which Funk calls the best mediaeval compend of theology, takes up the seven chief questions: the Trinity, creation, sin, the incarnation, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the sacramental medium, and the final state. The Preface gives a panegyric of the Scriptures and states the author’s views of Scriptural interpretation. Like all the Schoolmen, Bonaventura had a wide acquaintance with Scripture and shows an equipoise of judgment which usually keeps him from extravagance in doctrinal statement. However, he did not rise above his age and he revelled in interrogations about the angels, good and evil, which seem to us to be utterly trivial and have no bearing on practical religion. He set himself to answer more than one hundred of these, and in Peltier’s edition, his angelology and demonology occupy more than two hundred pages of two columns each.1559  The questions discussed are such as these: Could God have made a better world? could He have made it sooner than He did? can an angel be in several places at the same time? can several angels be at the same time in the same place?1560 was Lucifer at the moment of his creation corrupt of will? did he belong to the order of angels? is there a hierarchy among the fallen angels? have demons a foreknowledge of contingent events?1561  Descending to man, Bonaventura discusses whether sexual intercourse took place before the fall, whether the multiplication of men and women was intended to be equal, which of the two sinned the more grievously, the man or the woman.

Bonaventura differs from Thomas in giving proof that the world is not eternal. The mark of a foot, which represents created matter, is not of the same duration as the foot itself, for the mark was made at some time by the foot. And, following Plato as against Aristotle, he declared that matter not only in its present form but also in its essence is not eternal. The world is not thinkable without man, for it has all the marks of a habitation fitted up for a human being. Christ would not have become incarnate without sin.

In the doctrine of the immaculate conception, Bonaventura agreed with Thomas in denying to Mary freedom from original sin and disagreed with his fellow Franciscan, Duns Scotus, whose teaching has become dogma in the Roman Catholic communion.

It is as a mystic and as the author of the life of St. Francis, rather than as a dogmatician that Bonaventura has a characteristic place among the Schoolmen.1562  He evidently drew from the mystics of St. Victor, used their terminology1563 and did not advance beyond them. His mysticism has its finest statement in his Journey of the Mind to God.1564  Upon this pilgrimage of the soul to the highest divine mysteries, no one can enter without grace from above. Nor can the journey be continued without earnest prayer, pure meditation, and a holy life. Devout prayer is the mother and beginning of the upward movement towards God. Contemplation leads us first outside ourselves to behold the works of God in the visible world. It then brings us back to consider God’s image in ourselves arid at last we rise above ourselves to behold the divine being as He is in Himself.1565  Each of these activities is twofold, so that there are six steps in the progress of the soul. In the final step, the soul contemplates the Trinity and God’s absolute goodness.

Beyond these six steps is the state of rapture, the ecstatic vision, as the Sabbath day of rest followed the six days of labor. The doorway to this mystical life is Christ. The experience, which the soul shall have hereafter, is an ocean of beatific ecstasy. No one can know it but the one who receives it; he only receive it who desires it; be only desire it who is inflamed by the baptizing fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a grace not a doctrine, a desire not a concept, a habit of prayer not a studious task, a bride not a teacher. It is of God not of man, a flame of ardent love, transferring us into the presence and being of God.1566  As in the case of Bernard, so also in the case of Bonaventura, this mystical tendency found expression in devout hymns.

§ 110. Duns Scotus.

Literature: Works.—Complete ed. by Luke Wadding, 12 vols., Lyons, 1639, with a Life by Wadding, and the glosses of Hugh MacCaghwell (Hugo Cavellus, d. 1626), abp. of Armagh, Maurice O’Fihely, abp. of Tuam, etc. *New ed., 26 vols., Paris, 1891–1895, with some changes.—The Opus Oxoniense, Vienna, 1481, ed. by MacCaghwell together with the Reportata Parisiensia and Quaestiones Quodlibetales and a Life, Antwerp, 1620.—The Quaestiones Quodlibet., Venice, 1474, 1505, Paris, 1513.—The Logical Treatises were publ. at Barcelona, 1475, Venice, 1491–1493, and ed. by O’Fihely, 1504.—Duns’ system was expounded by Angelo Vulpi in Sacr. theol. Summa Joan. Scoti, 12 vols., Naples, 1622–1640. For biogr. and analytic works publ. before 1800, see Rigg in Dict. Of Natl. Biog. XVI. 216 sqq.—Baumgarten-Crusius: De theol. Scoti, Jena, 1826.—Schneid: D. Körperlehre des J. Duns Sc. und ihr Verhältniss zum Thomismus und Atomismus, Mainz, 1879.—*C. Werner: J. Duns Sc., Vienna, 1881, also S. Thomas von Aquino, III, 3–101.—Kahl: D. Primat des Willens bei Augustinus, Duns Sc. und Des Cartes, Strassb., 1886.—*R. Seeberg: D. Theologie des J. Duns Sc., Leip., 1900; also his art. in Herzog, 3d ed. and his Dogmengesch., II. 129 sqq.—Renan: art. Scotus, in Hist. Lit. de France, vol. XXV.—*Döllinger: art. in Wetzer-Welte, X. 2123–2133.—J. M. Rigg: in Dict. Natl. Biog., XVI. 216–220.—*Schwane: Dogmengesch., pp. 74–76, etc.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., III. 459 sqq.—*A. Ritschl: Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, I. 58–86; Gesch. des Pietismus, I. 470.—P. Minges: Ist Duns Scotus Indeterminist?  Münster, 1905, p. 139.—The Histt. of Philos.

The last of the scholastic thinkers of the first rank and the most daring of mediaeval logicians is John Duns Scotus. With his death the disintegration of scholastic theology begins. This remarkable man, one of the intellectual prodigies of the race, may have been under forty years of age when death overtook him. His dialectic genius and ingenuity won for him the title of the Subtle doctor, doctor subtilis. His intellectual independence is shown in the freedom with which he subjected his predecessors to his searching and often sophistical criticisms. Anselm, the St. Victors, Albert the Great, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and other Schoolmen he does not hesitate to mention by name and to assail their views. The discussions of Thomas Aquinas are frequently made the subject of his attack. Duns became the chief theological ornament of the Franciscan order and his theology was defended by a distinct school, which took his name, the Scotists. This school and the Thomists, who followed the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, are the leading schools of theology produced in the Middle Ages and came into violent controversy.

Duns’ mind was critical rather than constructive. The abstruseness of his style offers difficulties almost insuperable to the comprehension of the modern student.1567  He developed no complete system.1568  It was his characteristic to disturb faith and to open again questions to which Thomas Aquinas and other Schoolmen were supposed to have given final statements. The sharp distinction he made between faith and knowledge, dogma and reason, and his use of the arguments from silence and probability, undermined confidence in the infallibility of the Church and opened the way for the disrepute into which scholasticism fell. Duns denied that the being of God and other dogmas can be proved by the reason, and he based their acceptance solely upon the authority of the Church. The analytic precision, as well as lucid statement of Thomas and Peter the Lombard, are wanting in the Subtle doctor, and the mystical element, so perceptible in the writings of Anselm, Thomas, and Bonaventura, gives way to a purely speculative interest.

What a contrast Duns presents to the founder of his order, Francis d’Assisi, the man of simple faith and creed, and popular speech and ministries!  Of all the Schoolmen, Duns wandered most in the labyrinth of metaphysical subtleties, and none of them is so much responsible as he for the current opinion that mediaeval theology and fanciful speculation are interchangeable terms. His reputation for specious ratiocination has given to the language the term, "dunce."1569

Of his personal history scarcely anything is known, and his extensive writings furnish not a single clew. Even the time and place of his entering the Franciscan order cannot be made out with certainty. The only fixed date in his career is the date which brought it to a close. He died at Cologne, Nov. 8, 1308. The date of his birth is placed between 1265–1274.1570

England, Scotland, and Ireland have contended for the honor of being the Schoolman’s native land, with the probability in favor of England. Irishmen since the fifteenth century have argued for Dun, or Down, in Ulster. Scotchmen plead for Dunse in Berwickshire, while writers, unaffected by patriotic considerations, for the most part agree upon Dunstane in Northumberland.1571  The uncertain tradition runs that he studied at Merton College, Oxford, and became teacher there on the transfer of William of Ware to Paris. In 1304, he was in the French capital, where he won the doctor’s degree. In 1308, be was transferred by the general of his order to Cologne, where he died soon after. The story ran that he was buried alive.1572  In 1707, the Franciscans tried in vain to secure his canonization. A monument, reared to Duns in the Franciscan church at Cologne, 1513, bore this inscription:—

Scotia gave me birth, England nursed me,

Gaul educated me, Cologne holds my ashes.1573

Among the stories told of Duns Scotus is the following, behind which more wisdom hides than is found in whole chapters of his labored discussions. On one occasion he stopped to speak to an English farmer on the subject of religion. The farmer, who was engaged in sowing, turned and said:  "Why do you speak to me?  If God has foreknowledge that I will be saved, I will be saved whether I do good or ill."  Duns replied: Then, if God has foreknowledge that grain will grow out of this soil, it will grow whether you sow or withhold your hand. You may as well save yourself the labor you are at."

The works of Duns Scotus include commentaries on Aristotle, an extended commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard, called the Opus oxoniense, his theological lectures delivered at Paris, known as the Reportata parisiensia1574 and his Quaestiones quodlibetales, being sundry discussions on theological and philosophical problems. A commentary on Genesis and one on the Gospels, sermons and other writings of doubtful or denied authenticity are ascribed to Duns.1575

In philosophy Duns was a moderate realist. The universals are not intellectual fictions, fictiones intellectus. Our ideas presuppose their reality.1576  The universal is gotten by abstraction and by noting points of agreement in individuals, and in a certain sense it is a creation of the mind. The individual has its individuality, or haecceitas, not by reason of its differentiation from something else but by its own real essence, or quidditas. A stone is an individual by reason of something positive, intrinsic within itself. The individual is the final form of being, ultima realitas entis.

Theology is a practical science and its chief value is in furnishing to the will the materials of faith to lighten it on the path of virtuous action.

The Scriptures contain what is to be believed, but the authority of the Church establishes what these truths are. Articles of faith are to be accepted, not because they are demonstrable by reason. Reason is unreliable or, at best, obscure and many truths it cannot prove, such as the soul’s immortality, the unity of God, and transubstantiation. A doctrine such as the descent into hell, which is not found in the Scriptures is, nevertheless, to be accepted because it is found in the Apostles’ Creed. Other truths the Church possesses which are not found in the Scriptures. Our belief in the Scriptures rests ultimately on the authority of the Church.1577  The doctrines in which Duns differed most from his predecessors were the doctrines of God and transubstantiation. In his treatment of God, Duns shows himself to be the most positive of determinists. The controlling element in the divine nature is the will of God, and to submit to the will of God is the highest goal the human will can reach. Here he differs widely from Thomas Aquinas, who places God’s intelligence above His will. The sufficient explanation of God’s action is His absolute will.1578  God is good because God wills to be so. The will of God might have made what is now bad good, had God so chosen. He can do all things except what is logically absurd.1579  He could have saved Judas after he was condemned, but He cannot make a stone holy or change an event which has already happened.

The will of God determines the salvation of men. The predestination of the elect is an act purely of God’s determination. The non-elect are reprobated in view of their foreseen demerit. On the other hand, Duns seems to hold fast to the doctrine that the elect merit the eternal reward by good works. Without attempting to exhaust the apparent contradiction between divine foreordination and human responsibility, he confesses the mystery attaching to the subject.1580

Sin is not infinite, for it is connected with finite beings. Original righteousness was a superadded gift, forfeited through the first sin. Eve’s sin was greater than Adam’s, for Adam shrank from offending Eve—Eve sought to be equal with God. Man’s freedom consists in his ability to choose the contrary. Original sin consists in the loss of original righteousness which Adam owed to God.1581  Sin does not pass down to Adam’s descendants by way of infection. Duns separated from Augustine in denying the doctrine of moral inability, the servum arbitrium. It belongs to the very nature of the will to be free. This freedom, however, the will can lose by repeated volitions. Sin is inherent in the will alone, and concupiscence is only an inclination of the will to desire objects of pleasure immoderately.1582

The ultimate questions why God permitted evil, and how He could foreknow evil would occur without also predetermining it, find their solution only in God’s absolute will. God willed, and that must suffice for the reason.

The infinite value of the atonement likewise finds its explanation in the absolute will of God. Christ died as a man, and for that reason his merit of itself was not infinite. An angel, or a man, free from original sin, might have made efficient atonement if God had so willed. Nothing in the guilt of sin made it necessary for the Son of God to die. God determined to accept Christ’s obedience and, in view of it, to impart grace to the sinner. Duns follows closely Anselm’s theory, whose principles he carefully states.1583

In his treatment of transubstantiation, Duns vigorously attacked the view of Thomas Aquinas as a transition of the body of Christ into the bread. He argued that if there were such transition, then at celebrations of the eucharist during the three days of Christ’s burial the elements would have been changed into his dead body. To avoid this difficulty he enunciated the theory that the body of Christ, as of every man, has more than one form, that is, in addition to the rational soul, a forma mixti sive corporeitatis, which is joined to matter and constitutes it a human body. Into this corporal form of Christ, corporeitas, the elements are transmuted and this form remained with Christ’s corpse in the grave. Duns declared that the doctrine of transubstantiation cannot be proved with certainty from the Scriptures, nor at all by the reason. He then argued that it is more probable than any other theory because the Church has accepted it, and the dogma is most in keeping with God’s omnipotence. The dogma must be accepted on the authority of the Church.1584

The doctrine upon whose development the Subtle doctor had altogether the most influence is the doctrine of the immaculate conception, which he taught in the form in which it was proclaimed a dogma, by Pius IX., 1854. Departing from the statements of Anselm, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, Duns taught that Mary was conceived without sin. His theory is presented at length in the chapter on the Virgin Mary. The story ran that, in championing this theory, at a public disputation at Paris, he controverted Thomas’ position with no less than two hundred arguments.1585  Duns’ frequent attacks upon Thomas’ statements were the sufficient cause of controversy between the followers of the two teachers, and this controversy belongs to the number of the more bitter controversies that have been carried on within the Roman Catholic communion. It was a contest, however, not between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, but between two eminent teachers equally in good standing, and between the two orders they represented.

Döllinger expressed the opinion that the controversy was turned into a blessing for theology by keeping it from "stagnation and petrifaction," and into a blessing for the Church, which took under its protection both systems and kept each from arrogating to itself the right of final authority.

The common view in regard to the place of Duns Scotus in the history of doctrine is that he was a disturber of the peace. Without adding any element of permanent value to theological thought, he shook to its base the scholastic structure upon which Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians had wrought for nearly two centuries. The opinion will, no doubt, continue to prevail that Duns was a master in intellectual ingenuity, but that his judgment was unsound.1586  It is fair to say that Seeberg of Berlin, in his recent elaborate and thorough monograph on the theology of Duns Scotus, takes an entirely different view. To him Duns was not a disturber of theological thought, but the head of a new period of development and worthy of equal honor with Thomas Aquinas. Yea, he ascribes to him a more profound and extensive influence upon theology than Thomas exerted. He broke a new path, and "was a historical figure of epoch-making importance."1587

By his speculative piquancy, on the one hand, Duns strengthened the desire of certain groups in Europe for a saner method of theological discussion; and on the other hand stimulated pious minds along the Rhine to search along a better way after personal piety, as did Tauler and the German mystics. The succeeding generation of Schoolmen was brought by him as their leader into a disputatious attitude. What else could be expected when Duns, contrary to the fundamental principles of Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and other divines, did not shrink from declaring a thing might at the same time be true in philosophy and false in theology?1588

Ockam, who shared Duns’ determinism, called him "the doctor of our order."  In the dispute over the immaculate conception in the fifteenth century no divine was more quoted than he. A century later Archbishop MacCaghwell and other Irish theologians warmly expatiated upon his powers, wrote his biography, and edited his works.

One of the works of the Reformation was to dethrone Duns Scotus from his seat of authority as a teacher. Richard Layton wrote to Cromwell, 1535, "We have set Dunce in Bocardo and banished him from Oxford forever, and he is now made a common servant to every man fast nailed up upon posts in all houses of common easement."1589  Luther called him the "most arrant of sophists," and he made him responsible for a revival of Pelagianism and exalting the consequent value of good works by emphasizing the freedom of the will and the natural powers.1590  Duns had no presentiment of any other order than the papal and said nothing looking toward a reformation in doctrine.

Among the contemporaries with whom Duns had theological affinity were Henry of Ghent and the Englishman, Richard Middleton. Henry of Ghent, named doctor solemnis, a celebrated teacher in Paris, was born at Ghent and died, 1293, in Paris or Tournay. His Quodlibeta and Summa were published in Paris, 1518 and 1520.1591  At points Henry combated Thomas Aquinas and prepared the way for Duns Scotus, who adopts some of Henry’s views. Henry’s discussions run far into the region of abstruse metaphysics. He leaned to Platonism and was a realist.

Richard Middleton was supposedly a predecessor of Duns at Oxford. Little is known of his life. He was a Franciscan, a scholar at Paris, and was appointed by the general of his order to examine into the doctrines of Peter Olivi, 1278–1288. He died about 1307. His commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard survived him.1592  Middleton was known at Paris as doctor solidus. At the council of Constance he was cited as an authority against Wyclif. His name is inscribed on the tomb of Duns Scotus at Cologne, and the tradition runs that Duns was his pupil. In his teachings regarding the will, which he defined as the noblest of the soul’s faculties, he may have influenced Duns, as Seeberg attempts to prove. Middleton compared the mind to a servant who carries a light in front of his master and does nothing more than to show his master the way, while his master commands and directs as he pleases.

§ 111. Roger Bacon.

Literature: Works.—Among the early publications were Speculum alchymiae, Nurnb., 1541, Engl. trans. London, 1597; De mirabili potestate artis et naturae, Paris, 1542, Engl. trans. 1659; De retardandis senectutis accidentibus, Oxford, 1590, Engl. trans.; The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth, by the great mathematician and physician, Roger Bacon, ed. by R. Browne, London, 1683; Opus majus (six books only), by Samuel Jebb, London, 1733, reprinted Venice, 1750; Opus minus and Opus tertium, with valuable Preface by J. S. Brewer, London, 1859, Rolls Series; Opus majus, with valuable Preface, by J. H. Bridges, all the seven books, 3 vols., London, 1900.

Biographical: Emile Charles: B. Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines, Paris, 1861.—L. Schneider; R. Bacon, etc., Augsb., 1873-the Prefaces of BREWER and BRIDGES as above.—Professor R. Adamson, in "Ency. Britt." III. 218–222, and Dict. of Natl. Biog., II. 374–378. White: Warfare of Science and Theol. I. 386–393.

Duns Scotus was a Schoolman and nothing more. Roger Bacon, his contemporary, belongs to a different order of men, though one of the greatest theological thinkers of his age. He did not take up the great questions of theology and seek to justify them by dialectical processes. The most he did was to lay down principles for the study of theology; but it is as the pioneer of modern science and the scientific method of experiment that he has his distinguished place in the mediaeval galaxy of great minds. The fact that he had to suffer for his boldness of speech by imprisonment and enforced silence increases the interest felt in his teachings. His method of thought was out of accord with the prevailing method of his times. He was far ahead of his age, a seer of another era when the study of nature was to be assigned its proper place of dignity, and theology ceased to be treated as a field for dialectical ingenuity.

Born in Somersetshire, England, Roger Bacon, called the Wonderful doctor, mirabilis doctor, 1214(?)-1294, studied in Oxford, where he came into close contact with Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh, whom he often mentions with admiration. He went to Paris about 1240, continued his studies, and entered the Franciscan order. He speaks in his Opus tertium of having been engaged more than twenty years in the study of the languages and science, and spending £2000 in these studies and the purchase of books and instruments, or £600 or £700 present value.1593   He went back to Oxford, but was recalled to Paris by his order, at the head of which Bonaventura then stood, and placed in more or less strict confinement, 1257. At first he was denied the privilege of writing, but was allowed to give instruction to young students in the languages.

Clement IV. who, before his elevation to the papal chair and as legate in England, had been his friend, requested copies of his writings. In about eighteen months, 1264–1266, Bacon prepared the Opus majus and then its two appendages, the Opus minus and the Opus tertium, and sent them to the pope. In 1268, he was again in Oxford. In 1278, he was relegated to closer confinement on account of "certain suspected " about which we are not more particularly informed, adduced by the Franciscan general, Jerome of Ascoli, afterwards Nicolas IV. He was set free again in 1292, as we know. His body lies buried in the Franciscan church of Oxford. It was said that his books were nailed to the walls of the library at Oxford and left to perish. The story may be dismissed as untrue, but it indicates the estimate put upon the scholar’s writings.

If we were to depend upon the influence he had upon his age, Roger Bacon would have no place here. At best he was thought of as a dabbler in the dark arts and a necromancer. He had no place of authority among his contemporaries, and the rarest notice of him is found for several centuries. D’Ailly, without quoting his name, copied a large paragraph from him about the propinquity of Spain and India which Columbus used in his letter to Ferdinand, 1498. It was not till the Renaissance that his name began to be used. Since the publication of his writings by Samuel Jebb, 1733, he has risen more and more into repute as one who set aside the fantastical subtleties of scholasticism for a rational treatment of the things we see and know, and as the scientific precursor of the modern laboratory and modern invention. Prophetic foresight of certain modern inventions is ascribed to him, but unjustly. He, however, expounded the theory of the rays of light, proved the universe to be spherical, and pronounced the smallest stars larger than the earth.1594  With Anaxagoras, he ascribed the Nile to the melting of the snows in Ethiopia.1595  He was not the inventor of gunpowder of which the Arabs knew.

Bacon’s works, so far as they are published, combine the study of theology, philosophy, and what may be called the physical sciences. His Opus majus in seven books, the Opus minus, and Opus tertium are measurably complete. Of his Scriptum principale or Compendium studii philosophiae, often referred to in the writings just mentioned, only fragments were written, and of these only portions are left. The work was intended to be in four volumes and to include a treatment of grammar and logic, mathematics, physics, and last metaphysics and morals. The Communio naturalium and other treatises are still in manuscript.

The Opus majus in its list of subjects is the most encyclopaedic work of the Middle Ages. It takes up as separate departments the connection of philosophy and theology, astronomy including geography, astrology, barology, alchemy, agriculture, optics or perspective, and moral philosophy, medicine and experimental science, scientia experimentalis.

By agriculture, he meant the study of the vegetable and animal worlds, and such questions as the adaptation of soil to different classes of plants. In the treatment of optics he presents the construction of the eye and the laws of vision. Mathematics are the foundation of all science and of great value for the Church. Alchemy deals with liquids, gases, and solids, and their generation. A child of his age, Bacon held that metals were compound bodies whose elements can be separated.1596  In the department of astrology, in accordance with the opinions prevailing in his day, he held that the stars and planets have an influence upon all terrestrial conditions and objects, including man. Climate, temperament, motion, all are more or less dependent upon their potency. As the moon affects the tides, so the stars implant dispositions good and evil. This potency influences but does not coerce man’s free will. The comet of 1264, due to Mars, was related to the wars of England, Spain, and Italy.1597  In the department of optics and the teachings in regard to force, he was far ahead of his age and taught that all objects were emitting force in all directions. Experimental science governs all the preceding sciences. Knowledge comes by reasoning and experience. Doubts left by reasoning are tried by experience, which is the ultimate test of truth.

The practical tendency of Bacon’s mind is everywhere apparent. He was an apostle of common sense. Speaking of Peter of Maricourt of Paris, otherwise unknown, he praises him for his achievements in the science of experimental research and said: "Of discourses and battles of words he takes no heed. Through experiment he gains knowledge of natural things, medical, chemical, indeed of everything in the heavens and the earth. He is ashamed that things should be known to laymen, old women, soldiers, and ploughmen, of which he is himself ignorant."  He also confessed he had learned incomparably more from men unlettered and unknown to the learned than he had learned from his most famous teachers.1598

Bacon attacked the pedantry of the scholastic method, the frivolous and unprofitable logomachy over questions which were above reason and untaught by revelation. Again and again he rebuked the conceit and metaphysical abstruseness of the theological writers of his century, especially Alexander of Hales and also Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. He used, at length, Alfarabius, Avicenna, Algazel, and other Arabic philosophers, as well as Aristotle. Against the pride and avarice and ignorance of the clergy he spoke with unmeasured severity and declared that the morals of Seneca and his age were far higher than the morals of the thirteenth century except that the ancient Romans did not know the virtues of love, faith, and hope which were revealed by Christ.1599  He quoted Seneca at great length. Such criticism sufficiently explains the treatment which the English Franciscan received.

This thirteenth-century phiIosopher pronounced the discussion over universals and individuals foolish and meaningless. One individual is of more value than all the universals in the world. A universal is nothing but the agreement between several objects, convenientia plurium individuorum convenientia individui respectu alterius. That which is common between two men and which an ass or a pig does not possess, is their universal.

In the department of philology,1600 and in the interest of a correction of the Vulgate and a new translation of Aristotle is works, he urged the study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek. He carried down the history of the translations of the Bible to Jerome.

He recommended the study of comparative religions which he arranges in six classes,—Pagan, Idolater, Tartar (Buddhist), Saracen, Jew, and Christian,—and concludes that there can be only one revelation and one Church because there is only one God.1601  He finds in miracles especially the power to forgive sins, the chief proof of Christ’s divinity, and gives six reasons for accepting the testimony of the Christian writers; namely, sanctity, wisdom, miraculous powers, firmness under persecution, uniformity of faith, and their success in spite of humble origin. It is characteristic of this philosopher that in this treatment he avails himself of the information brought to Europe by William Rubruquis whom he quotes.1602

He regarded philosophy as having been revealed to the Jewish patriarchs, and the Greek philosophy as having been under the guidance of providence, nay, as having been a divine gift, as Augustine said of Socrates.1603  Aristotle is the great phiIosopher, and philosophy leads to the threshold of revealed truth, and it is the duty of Christians to avail themselves of it.1604  As Solomon, a type of Christ, employed Hiram and other outside workers at the temple, so the Church should utilize heathen philosophers.1605  He gives five reasons why the early Church did not make use of Greek philosophy except for the regulation of the calendar and its music,1606 a proposition which would seem very crude to the present advocates of the theory of the dependence of the Apostolic writers upon Hellenic modes of thought. Bacon magnified the supreme authority of the Scriptures in which all truth strikes its roots and which laymen should read. All sciences and knowledge are to be subordinated to the Catholic Church, which is the appointed guardian of human interests. Theology is the science which rules over all the others.1607  It seems almost incongruous that Bacon should have brought his Opus majus to a close by arguing for the "sacrament of the altar" as containing in itself the highest good, that is, the union of God with man. In the host the whole of the Deity is contained.

The admirable editor of Bacon’s Opus majus, Dr. Bridges, has compared Bacon’s procedure to a traveller in a new world, who brings back specimens of produce with the view of persuading the authorities of his country to undertake a more systematic exploration.1608  Without entering into the discussion of those great themes which the other Schoolmen so much delighted in, Bacon asserted the right principle of theological study which excludes from prolonged discussion subjects which have no immediate bearing upon the interests of daily life or personal faith, and pronounced as useless the weary systems which were more the product of human ingenuity in combining words than of a clear, spiritual purpose. To him Abaelard is not to be compared. Abaelard was chiefly a scholastic metaphysician; Bacon an observer of nature. Abaelard gives the appearance of being a vain aspirant after scholastic honors; Bacon of being a patient and conscientious investigator.

Professor Adamson and Dr. Bridges, two eminent Baconian scholars, have placed Roger Bacon at the side of such thinkers as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. A close student of the Middle Ages, Coulton, has recently gone so far as to pronounce him a greater intellect than Thomas Aquinas.1609  The honor accorded to him in these recent days in circles of scientific research is as genuine as the honor given to the Angelic doctor in the Catholic communion. There is, however, danger of ascribing to him too much. Nevertheless, this forerunner of modern investigation may by common verdict, though unhonored in his own age, come to be placed higher as a benefactor of mankind than the master of metaphysical subtlety, Duns Scotus, who spoke to his age and its immediate successors with authority.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM.

§ 112. Literature on the Sacraments.

Literature:—General Works: The Writings of Abaelard, Hugo of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, Alb. Magnus, Th. Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and other Schoolmen.—G. L. Hahn: Lehre von d. Sakramenten, Breslau, 1864.—*J. Schwane: Dogmengesch. der mittleren Zeit, 787–1517, Frei b. 1882, pp. 579–693.—J. H. Oswald: D. dogmatische Lehre von d. hl. Sakramenten d. kathol. Kirche, 5th ed., Munich, 1894. The Histories of Christ. Doctr. of Fisher, pp. 254–263; Harnack, II. 462–562; Loofs, pp. 298–304; Seeberg, II. 107 sqq.—Hergenröther-Kirsch: Kirchengesch., II. 682–701. The works on Canon Law of Hinschius; P. Hergenröther (Rom. Cath.), pp. 667–684; Friedberg, pp. 374–495.—Hefele-Knöpfler, V. VI.—The art. Sakrament in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog.—D. S. Schaff: The Sacramental Theory of the Med. Ch. in "Princeton Rev.," 1906, pp. 206–236.

On the Eucharist, §§ 115, 116: Dalgairns: The Holy Communion, its Philos., Theol., and Practice, Dublin, 1861.—F. S. Renz: D. Gesch. d. Messopfer-Begriffs, etc., 1st vol., Alterthum und Mittelalter, Munich, 1901.—J. Smend: Kelchversagung und Kelchspendung in d. abendländ. Kirche, Götting., 1898.—A. Franz: D. Messe im deutschen Mittelalter, Freib., 1902.—Artt. Communion, Messe, Transubstantiation in Wetzer-Welte and Abendmahl and Kindercommunion in Herzog.

On Penance and Indulgences, §§ 117, 118: Joan Morinus: Comment. hist. de disciplina in administratione sacr. poenitentiae, Paris, 1651.—F. Beringer, S. J., transl. fr. the French by J. Schneider: D. Ablässe, ihr Wesen und Gebrauch, 12th ed., Paderb., 1900.—*K. Müller: D. Umschwung in der Lehre von d. Busse während d. 12ten Jahrhunderts, Freib., 1892.—H. C. Lea: A Formulary of the Papal Penitentiary in the 13th Century, Phil., 1892; *A Hist. of Auricular Confession and Indulgences, 3 vols. Phil., 1896.—* TH. Brieger: D. Wesen des Ablasses am Ausgange des Mittelalters, Leipzig., 1897.—A. Kurtz: D. kathol. Lehre vom Ablass vor und nach dem Auftreten Luthers, Paderb., 1900.—C. M. Roberts: Hist. of Confession until it developed into Auric. Conf. A.D. 1215, London, 1901.—* W. Köhler: Dokumente zum Ablassstreit vom 1517, Tübing., 1902. Very convenient, containing thirty-two of the most important documents on the subject and including Jacob von Juterbocks, Tract. de indulgentiis, c. 1451, and excerpts from the Coelifodina, 1502.—* A. Gottlob: Kreuzablass u. Almosenablass, Stuttg., 1906.—A. M. Koeninger: D. Beicht nach Caesarius von Heisterbach, Mun., 1906.—Artt. Ablass, *Bussdisciplin by Funk, II. 1562–1590. and Busse, II. 1590–1614, in Wetzer-Welte and *Indulgenzen by Th. Brieger in Herzog, IX. 76–94. For other Lit. see Brieger’s art. in Herzog

On Extreme Unction, etc., § 119: See artt. Oelung and Ordo in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 716 sqq., 1027 sqq., and Oelung by Kattenbusch and Priesterweihe in Herzog, XIV. 304 sqq., XVI. 47 sqq. For marriage, the works on Christian Ethics.—Von Eicken: Gesch. u. System der mittelalterl. Weltanschauung, pp. 437–487, Stuttg., 1887.—The artt. Ehe in Herzog, V. 182 sqq. and Wetzer-Welte, IV. 142–231 (including a number of subjects pertaining to marriage).

On Grace and the Future State, §§ 120, 121: Anselm: De conceptu virginali et originale peccato, Migne, 168. 431–467.—P. Lombardus: Sent., II. 31, etc.—H. Of St. Victor: De sacramentis, I. 7, Migne, 176. 287–306. —Alb. Magnus: In Sent., II. 31 sqq., etc., Borgnet’s ed., XXVII.—Bonaventura: In Sent., II., etc.; Peltier’s ed., III.—Th. Aquinas: Summa, II. 71–90, III. 52 sqq.; Supplem., LXIX. sqq., Migne, IV. 1215–1459—Duns Scotus: Reportata. XXIV.-XXVI., etc. The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, pp. 393–493, Harnack, Loofs, Seeberg. Sheldon.

§ 113. The Seven Sacraments.

As the doctrines of the Trinity and the person of Christ were wrought out in the Nicene and post-Nicene periods, so the Schoolmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries wrought out the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments. At no point were the mediaeval theologians more industrious or did they put forth keener speculative force. For the Roman Catholic communion, the results of this speculation continue to be of binding authority. The theologians most prominent in developing the sacramental system were Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Alexander of Hales, and Thomas Aquinas. Hugo wrote the first treatise on the sacraments, De sacramentis. Thomas Aquinas did little more than to reformulate in clear statement the views propounded by Hugo, Peter the Lombard, and especially by Alexander of Hales, and with him the development comes to an end.1610  The substance of his statement was adopted by the councils of Ferrara, 1439, and Trent, 1560.

Through the influence of Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, the number of the sacraments was fixed at seven,—baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, ordination, marriage.1611  Bernard had spoken of many sacraments and enumerated ten, including footwashing and the investiture of bishops and abbots. Abaelard had named five, —baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, marriage, and extreme unction. Hugo de St. Victor in his Summa also seems to recognize only five, —baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, and extreme unction,1612 but in his work on the Sacraments, in which he brought together all he had said on the subjects in other writings, he enumerated thirty. Here, evidently, the word is taken in a wide meaning and is almost synonymous with a religious rite. Hugo divided the sacraments into three classes,—sacraments which are necessary to salvation, baptism and the eucharist, those which have a sanctifying effect such as holy water and the use of ashes on Ash Wednesday, and a third class which prepares for the other sacraments. He called the sprinkling with water a sacrament.1613  Thomas Aquinas also ascribed a quasi-sacramental character to such rites, quaedam sacramentalia.1614

The uncertainty concerning the number of the sacraments was a heritage from the Fathers. Augustine defined any sacred rite a sacrament. The Third Lateran, 1179, used the term in a wide sense and included the investiture of bishops and burial among the sacraments. The Catholic Church today makes a distinction between certain sacred rites, called sacramentalia, and the seven sacraments.1615  Thomas gave as the reason for this number seven—that three is the number of the Deity, four of creation, and seven represents the union of God and man.1616

Ingenious and elaborate attempts were made to correlate the seven sacraments to all of man’s spiritual maladies and to show their "congruity" or adaptation to meet all the requirements of fallen and redeemed human nature.1617  Baptism corresponds to the defect of spiritual life, confirmation to mental weakness found in those recently born, the eucharist to the temptation to fall into sin,—labilitas animi ad peccandum,—penance to sins committed after baptism, extreme unction to the remainders of sin not cleared away by penance, ordination to the lost condition of mankind, matrimony to concupiscence, and the liability of mankind to become extinct by natural death.

The number seven also corresponds to the seven virtues,—baptism, extreme unction, and the eucharist to faith, hope, and love, ordination to enlightenment, penance to righteousness, marriage to continence, and confirmation to endurance. Bonaventura elaborates at length a stimulating comparison to a military career. The sacraments furnish grace for the spiritual struggle and strengthen the warrior on the various stages of his conflict. Baptism equips him on entering the conflict, confirmation encourages him in its progress, extreme unction helps him at the finish, the eucharist and penance renew his strength, orders introduce new recruits into the ranks, and marriage prepares men to be recruits. Augustine had compared the sacraments to the badges and rank conferred upon the soldier, a comparison Thomas Aquinas took up.1618

The sacraments were not needed in man’s estate of innocence. Marriage which was then instituted was a "function of nature" and nothing more. There were sacraments under the old covenant as well as under the new. The Schoolmen follow Augustine in declaring that the former prefigure the grace to come and the sacraments of the New Testament confer grace.1619  With Albertus Magnus and other Schoolmen it was a favorite question why woman was not circumcised.1620

In defining what a sacrament is—quid est sacramentum — the Schoolmen started with Augustine’s definition that a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace,1621 but went beyond him in the degree of efficiency they ascribe to it. Beginning with Hugo, they assert in unmistakable language that the sacraments, or outward symbols, contain and confer grace,—continere et conferre gratiam, —the language afterwards used by the council of Trent. They have a virtue inherent in themselves. The favorite figure for describing their operation is medicine. Hugo1622 said, God is the physician, man is the invalid, the priest is the minister or messenger, grace is the antidote, the sacrament is the vase. The physician gives, the minister dispenses, the vase contains, the spiritual medicine which cures the invalid. If, therefore, the sacraments are the vases of spiritual grace, they do not cure of themselves. Not the bottle, but the medicine, cures the sick. Bonaventura entitled his chapters on the sacraments "Sacramental Medicine."1623

The sacraments are remedies which the great Samaritan brought for the wounds of original and actual sin. They are more than visible signs and channels of grace. They do more than signify. They sanctify. They are the efficient cause of gracious operations in the recipient. The interior effects, Thomas Aquinas says, are due to Christ,1624 or, as he says in another place, to the blessing of Christ and the administration of the priest conjoined. The mode of this efficacy is ex opere operato. This expression, used by William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, Thomas adopted and says again and again that the sacraments make righteous and confer grace, ex opere operato, that is by a virtue inherent in themselves.1625

By this, Thomas Aquinas does not mean that the religious condition of the recipient is a matter of indifference, but that the sacrament imparts its virtue, if need be, without the operation of an active faith. The tendency of Protestant writers has been to represent the Schoolmen as ascribing a magical virtue to the visible sacramental symbol, if not irrespective of the divine appointment, then certainly irrespective of the attitude of the recipient. Such is not the view of the Schoolmen. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between the original cause of grace, which is God, and the instrumental cause, which is the sacrament. The virtue of the latter depends upon God’s appointment and operation.1626  The benefits of Christ’s atonement pass over to the faithful through faith and the sacraments.1627  The Church, said Bonaventura, received the sacraments from Christ and dispenses them to the salvation of the faithful.1628  The sacraments are efficacious only to those who are of a religious disposition.

Duns Scotus, whose opinions were set aside at the council of Ferrara for those of Thomas Aquinas, insisted that God can confer grace apart from the sacraments, and their efficacy is dependent upon an action of the will. They act indirectly, not directly. Duns controverted Thomas’ view that the sacrament is a visible sign containing supernatural virtue in itself absolutely.1629  The sacraments involve a psychological process in the soul. As symbols, they remind the soul of God’s grace and attract it. A good state of the heart, however, is not a meritorious cause of their efficacy. For their reception, it is sufficient if there be no moral impediment, obex, that is, no impeding indisposition.1630  It is the excellency of the sacraments of the new law, Duns says, that the very reception of them is a sufficient disposition to grace.1631

The relation the priest sustains to the sacraments is a vital one, and except in extraordinary cases his ministration is essential. Their efficacy does not depend upon the priest’s personal character, provided only he administer according to the rite of the Church.1632  An immoral priest may confer sacramental grace. To use the mediaeval illustration, pure water may be conveyed through a leaden pipe as truly as through a silver pipe. Even if the intention of conferring grace is absent from the mind of the officiating priest, the efficacy of the sacrament is not destroyed. The priest acts in the name of the Church, and in uttering the words of sacramental appointment he gives voice to the intention of the Church. This intention is sufficient for the perfection of the sacrament in any given case. Ultimately, it is Christ who works the effect of the sacrament and not the priest through any virtue of his own.1633  Here, too, Thomas followed Augustine.

On this point also, Duns differed from the great Dominican by declaring that "a virtual intention" on the part of the celebrant is essential to the efficacy of the sacrament. He illustrates his position by a pilgrim on the way to the shrine of St. James. The pilgrim may not think of St. James during the whole progress of his journey, but he starts out with "a virtual intention" to go to his shrine and keeps on the way. So a priest, during the progress of the sacramental celebration, may allow his mind to wander and forget what he is doing, but he has the virtual intention of performing the rite.1634

The sacraments may be "useful," said Bonaventura, if performed outside of the Church, provided the recipient afterwards enter "holy mother Church." This he illustrates by Augustine’s comparison of the sacraments to the four rivers of paradise. The rivers flowed into different lands. But neither to Mesopotamia nor Egypt did they carry the felicity of life, though they were useful.1635  So it is with the sacraments when administered outside of the pale of the true Church.

The sacraments are not all of equal necessity. Baptism alone is indispensable to eternal life. Baptism and the eucharist are the mightiest, but of all the most mighty—potissimum — is the eucharist, and for three reasons: 1. It contains Christ himself after a substantial manner. 2. The other sacraments are preparatory to it. 3. All the faithful partake of it—adults who are baptized, as well as those who are in orders. Three sacraments have an indelible character,—baptism, ordination, and confirmation. Their mark cannot be effaced nor may they be repeated. They are related to salvation as food is related to life. The other four sacraments are necessary to salvation only in the way a horse is necessary to a journey.1636

The Schoolmen were not fully agreed as to the author of some of the sacraments. Peter the Lombard expressly said that extreme unction was instituted by the Apostles. Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas held they were all instituted by Christ.1637

Hugo of St. Victor said, God might have saved man without the sacraments but no man can be saved who rejects them.1638  They were to the mediaeval mind the essential food of the religious life, and, in building up the sacramental system, the mediaeval theologian felt he was fortifying the very fabric of the Church. In the authority to administer them lay the power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, to pass the judgment of bliss or woe for this life and for the life to come. This sacramental theory, based now upon a false now upon a one-sided interpretation of Scripture, and compactly knit by argumentation, substituted the mechanical efficiency of sacramental grace for the Saviour into whose immediate presence the soul has a right to approach through penitence of heart and prayer. The sacramental system became the Church’s Babylonish captivity, as Luther called it in his famous tract, in which the rights and liberty of the Christian believer are fettered by the traditions of men.

§ 114. Baptism and Confirmation.

Baptism is the door to the other sacraments and to the kingdom of heaven.1639  It is essential to salvation, except for persons who desire to be baptized and have not the opportunity to receive the rite. The desire on their part to be regenerated by water and the Holy Spirit is certain evidence that the heart is already regenerated. For the necessity of baptism, Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen rely upon John 3:3, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Of all the sacraments the most necessary, baptism effects regeneration, nay, it is regeneration itself.1640  It removes the guilt and the punishment due original sin and all sins actually committed.1641  The ablution of water signifies the ablution from guilt, and the freezing of water, to use the strange figure of Thomas Aquinas, the subtraction of all punishment. Baptism also has the positive effect of conferring grace, an effect which is symbolized by the clearness of water.

The validity of the sacrament requires the full use of the threefold name of the Trinity. Hugo of St. Victor differs from the later Schoolmen on this point, although in doubt whether the use of the name of Christ alone or the name of God alone be not sufficient. Bernard had allowed the use of the formula "I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the true and holy cross." These men wrote before the Fourth Lateran Council. Bonaventura and Thomas acknowledged that, in early times, the Church had often been satisfied with baptism into the name of Christ, the Trinity being, in such cases, understood. But since the deliverance of the Fourth Lateran, the omission of a single syllable from the trine formula invalidated baptism.1642  Exorcism, unction with oil, and the giving of salt were prescribed to be used in the solemnization of the rite. Exorcism expelled demons and prevented them from impeding the recipient’s salvation. Salt, put into the ears, signified the reception of the new doctrine, into the nostrils, its approbation, and into the mouth, confession. Oil signified the fitting of the recipient to fight demons.

The proper administrator of baptism is the priest, but, in cases of necessity, laymen may baptize, male or female, and parents may baptize their own children.1643  For in the kingdom of heaven there is neither male nor female. But a woman must administer the rite privately, even as she is not allowed to speak in public. Yea, Thomas Aquinas went so far as to say that an unbaptized man may, in case of necessity, lawfully administer baptism, for Christ is free to use the agent he pleases, and it is he who baptizes inwardly, John 1:33. The main reason for allowing such baptism is to extend the limits of salvation as far as possible.1644

Children are proper subjects of baptism because they are under the curse of Adam. As the mother nourishes her offspring in the womb before it can nourish itself, so in the bosom of mother Church infants are nourished, and they receive salvation through the act of the Church.1645  A child cannot be baptized before it is born; it is of the essence of baptism that water be applied to the body.1646  It was the view of Thomas Aquinas and most of the Schoolmen that it is unlawful to baptize the children of Jews and pagans without the consent of the parents. Duns Scotus was an exception and permitted the forcible baptism of the children of Jews, yea of adult Jews.1647

The definition of baptism excludes all unbaptized children, dying in infancy, from heaven. The question is discussed by that mystic and lovable divine, Hugo of St. Victor, whether the children of Christian parents may be saved who happen to be put to death in a city besieged by pagans and die unbaptized. He leaves it unanswered, remarking that there is "no authority for saying what will become of them."1648  Duns Scotus makes it plain that children yet unborn are under the law of sin, not because they are connected with the bodies of their mothers, but because of their own bodies. He mercifully excepts from the law of perdition unborn infants whose mothers suffer martyrdom or blood baptism.1649  The Reformers, Zwingli excepted, shared the views of the mediaeval theology that unbaptized children dying in infancy are lost. At a later date, about 1740, Isaac Watts and other Protestant theologians, as a relief from the agonizing thought that the children of non-Christian parents dying in infancy are lost and suffer conscious torment, elaborated the view that they are annihilated. It remained for a still later Protestant period to pronounce in favor of the salvation of all such children in view of the superabounding fullness of the atonement and our Lord’s words, "for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Water is essential to baptism. The Schoolmen agreed that wine, oil, or other liquid will not do. Duns Scotus said in regard to baptism in beer that its validity would depend upon a scientific test whether the beer continued to be a species of water or not.1650  The Lombard declared without qualification for immersion as the proper mode. Thomas Aquinas refers to it as the more general practice of his day and prefers it as the safer mode, as did also Bonaventura and Duns Scotus.1651  At any rate, the water must be applied to the head, for this is the most important part of man, standing as it does for the immortal agent. Both trine immersion, the custom of the Greek Church, and single immersion are valid. Trine immersion symbolizes the three persons of the Trinity and the three days of the Lord’s burial; single immersion the unity of the Deity and the uniqueness of Christ’s death. Synods, as late as the synod of Tarragona, 1391, spoke of the submersion of children in baptism.

The sacrament of confirmation corresponds to the adult period as baptism does to the child period (1 Cor. 13:11). It completes, as it were, the earlier ordinance and confers the graces of strength and hardihood. The baptized thus become full Christians.1652  The Schoolmen differed as to whether the sacrament was instituted immediately by Christ or by the Apostles or by the councils of the Church. Thomas Aquinas took the view that it was founded by Christ, being implied in the promise of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7).

The rite is performed by the bishop, who is the successor of the Apostles, who uses the words,  "I sign thee with the sign of the cross, I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Chrism, or sacred oil, which is the symbol of the Spirit, is applied, and the cross is signed upon the forehead, the most prominent part of the body.1653  It is there shame shows itself when young Christians lack the courage to acknowledge their profession.

§ 115. The Eucharist.

The eucharist, called by the Schoolmen the crown of the sacraments and the sacrament of the altar, was pronounced both a sacrament and a sacrifice. In the elaboration of the doctrine, scholastic theology reached the highest point of its speculation. Albertus Magnus devoted to it a distinct treatise and Thomas Aquinas nearly four hundred columns of his Summa. In practice, the celebration of this sacrament became the chief religious function of the Church.1654  The festival of Corpus Christi, commemorating it, was celebrated with great solemnity. The theory of the transmutation of the elements and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity were among the chief objects of the attacks of the Reformers.

The fullest and clearest presentation of the eucharist was made by Thomas Aquinas. He discussed it in every possible aspect. Where Scripture is silent and Augustine uncertain, the Schoolman’s speculative ability, though often put to a severe test, is never at a loss. The Church accepted the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrificial meaning of the sacrament, and it fell to the Schoolmen to confirm these doctrines by all the metaphysical weapons at their command. And even where we are forced by the silence or clear meaning of Scripture to regard their discussion as a vain display of intellectual ingenuity, we may still recognize the solemn religious purpose by which they were moved. Who would venture to deny this who has read the devotional hymn of Thomas Aquinas which presents the outgoings of his soul to the sacrificial oblation of the altar?

Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium.

Sing my tongue the mystery telling.1655

The culminating point in the history of the mediaeval doctrine of the eucharist was the dogmatic definition of transubstantiation by the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Thenceforth it was heresy to believe anything else. The definition ran that "the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power."1656  The council did not foist upon the Church a new doctrine. It simply formulated the prevailing belief.

The word "transubstantiation" is not used by Hugo of St. Victor and the earlier Schoolmen. They used "transition" and "conversion," the latter being the favorite term. The word "transubstantiation" seems to have been first used by Hildebert of Tours, d. 1134.1657  According to Duns Scotus, the doctrine cannot be proved with certainty from the Scriptures and must be accepted upon the basis of the decision of the Church.1658  The passages, chiefly relied upon for proving the doctrine, are John 6 and the words of institution, "this is my body," in which the verb is taken in its literal sense. Rupert of Deutz is the only Schoolman of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries who dissented from it. He seems to have taught the theory of impanation.1659

Three names, applied to the eucharist, had special significance.1660  It is a sacrifice because it repeats Christ’s oblation on the cross. It is a communion because it presents the unity of the Church. It is a viaticum because it is heavenly manna for pilgrims on their way to heaven. Thomas Aquinas also uses the term of John of Damascus, assumption, because the sacrament lifts us up into the Deity of Christ, and calls it hostia, or the host, because it contains Christ himself, who is the oblation of our salvation.1661  It was also called the mass.

The elements to be used are wheaten bread, either leavened or unleavened. Water is to be mixed with the wine as Christ probably mixed them, following the custom in Palestine. Water symbolizes the people, and the wine symbolizes Christ, and their combination the union of the people with Christ. The mixture likewise represents the scene of the passion. Thomas Aquinas also finds in the water flowing in the desert, 1 Cor. 10:4, a type of this custom. He relied much, as did Albertus Magnus1662  before him, upon the words of Prov. 9:5, Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled for you. But the admixture of the two elements is not essential. The synods of Cologne, 1279, Lambeth, 1281, etc., prescribed two or three drops of water as sufficient.

At the moment of priestly consecration, the elements of bread and wine are converted into the very body and blood of Christ. The substance of the bread and wine disappears. The "accidents"—species sensibiles — remain, such as taste, color, dimensions, and weight. What becomes of the substance of the two elements? asks Peter the Lombard. There are three possible answers. First, the substance passes into the four original elements or into the body and blood of Christ. Second, it is annihilated. Third, it remains in part or in whole. Duns Scotus adopted the second explanation, the substance is annihilated.1663  The Lombard, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas adopted the view that the substance is converted into the body and blood of Christ. Against the theory of annihilation Thomas used the illustration that it does not follow because air, from which fire is generated, is not here nor there, that it has been annihilated. The change on the altar is altogether supernatural. The body of Christ is in the sacrament not quantitatively, per modum quantitatis, but in substance; not in its dimensions, but by a sacramental virtue, ex vi sacramenti, in a way peculiar to this sacrament. It is on the altar and is apprehended by faith only.1664

Upon the basis of the separate existence of substance and "accidents" the Schoolmen proceeded to perfect their theory. What the substance of bread is, if it is not its nutritive power, and how it is possible to think of bread without those qualities which make it bread to us, the practical mind cannot understand. Scholastic dialectics professed to understand it, but the statements are nothing more than a fabric of mystifying terms and gratuitous assumptions. Wyclif thoroughly exposed the fallacious reasoning.

Thomas Aquinas went so far as to declare that, though the substance of bread and wine disappears, these elements continue to preserve the virtue of their substance.1665  Luther said the Schoolmen might as well have set up a theory of transaccidentation as of transubstantiation. Thomas Aquinas anticipated his objection and argued that by a providential arrangement this was not so for three reasons: 1. It is not the custom for men to eat human flesh and drink human blood, and we would revolt from eating Christ’s blood and flesh under the form of bread and wine. 2. The sacrament would become a laughing stock to infidels if Christ were eaten in his own form. 3. Faith is called forth by the enveilment of the Lord within the forms of bread and wine. The body of Christ is not broken or divided by the teeth except in a sacramental way.1666  Creation, said this great Schoolman, is easier to understand than transubstantiation, for creation is out of nothing, but in the sacrament the substance of bread and wine disappear while the accidents remain.

A second statement elaborated by the Schoolmen is that the whole Christ is in the sacrament, divinity and humanity, —flesh, bones, nerves, and other constituents, —and yet the body of Christ is not there locally or in its dimensions.1667

This is the so-called doctrine of concomitance, elaborated by Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, and other Schoolmen with great subtilty. According to this doctrine the divinity of Christ and his body are never separated. Wherever the body is, there is also the divinity, whether it be in heaven or on the altar. The determination of this point was of importance because the words of institution mention only Christ’s body.

A third integral part of the scholastic treatment of the eucharist was the assertion that the whole Christ is in each of the elements,1668 a view which offered full justification for the withdrawal of the cup from the laity. Anselm had taken this view, that the entire Christ is in each element, but he was having no reference to the withdrawal of the cup.1669

Two serious questions grew out of this definition; namely, whether the elements which our Lord blessed on the night of his betrayal were his own body and blood and what it was the disciples ate when they partook of the eucharist during the time of our Lord’s burial. To the second question the reply was given that, if the disciples partook of the eucharist in that period, they partook of the real body. Here Duns Scotus brought to bear his theory that a thing may have a number of forms and that God can do what to us seems to be most unreasonable. As for the first question, Hugo of St. Victor shrank from discussing it on the sensible ground that such divine mysteries were to be venerated rather than discussed.1670  The other Schoolmen boldly affirmed that Christ partook of his own body and blood and gave them to the disciples. "He had them in His hands and in His mouth." This body, according to Thomas, was "immortal and not subject to pain."1671  Thomas quoted with approval the lines:1672 —

The King, seated with the twelve at the table,

Holds Himself in His hands. He, the Food, feeds upon Himself.

This monstrous conception involved a further question. Did Judas partake of the true body and blood of the Lord?  This the Schoolmen answered in the negative. The traitor took only natural and unblessed bread. Leaning upon St. Augustine, they make the assertion, upon a manipulation of Luke 22 and John 13 according to which Christ distributed the bread and the wine before Judas took the sop, that the sop, or immersed morsel, was delusive. Judas was deceived.1673

Another curious but far-reaching question occupied the minds of Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and other Schoolmen. Does a mouse, in eating the consecrated host, actually partake of its consecrated substance?  Thomas argued in this way: the body and blood of Christ would not be withdrawn, if the consecrated host should be cast into the mire, for God allowed Christ’s body even to be crucified. As for mice, they were not created to use the bread as a sacrament, and so they cannot eat Christ’s body after a sacramental manner, sacramentaliter, but only the accidents of the elements, per accidens, just as a man would eat who took the consecrated host but did not know it was consecrated.1674  Bonaventura, quoting Innocent III., took the more reasonable view that the body of Christ is withdrawn under such circumstances. Peter the Lombard had said that an animal does not take the body of Christ in eating the bread. But what it does take and eat, God alone knows. Duns Scotus took up the similar question, what occurs to an ass drinking the water consecrated for baptism and sensibly called it a subtilitas asinina, an asinine refinement, for the virtue of ablution inhering in such water an ass could not drink.1675  To the theory of transubstantiation, Rupert of Deutz has been referred to as an exception. John of Paris was deprived of his chair at the University of Paris for likening the union of Christ’s body and the bread to the coexistence of the divine and human natures in Christ’s person. He died, 1306, while his case was being tried at Rome. Ockam tentatively developed the theory of impanation whereby Christ’s body and the bread are united in one substance, but he expressed his readiness to yield to the dogma of the Church.

The sacrificial aspect of the eucharist was no less fully developed. In Hugo of St. Victor we hear nothing of a repetition of the sacrifice on the cross. He speaks of the mass as being a transmission of our prayers, vows, and offerings—oblationes — to God.1676  Peter the Lombard said the sacrifice on the altar is of a different nature from the sacrifice on the cross, nevertheless it is a true sacrifice. The later Schoolmen, following Alexander of Hales, laid stress on the sacrificial element. The eucharist is an unbloody but "real immolation" performed by the priest.

The altar represents the cross, the priest represents Christ in whose person and power he pronounces the words of consecration,1677 and the celebration represents the passion on the cross. The priest’s chief function is to consecrate the body and blood of Christ.1678

The sacrifice may be offered daily, just as we stand daily in need of the fruits of Christ’s death and as we pray for daily food. And because Christ was on the cross from nine till three o’clock, it is proper that it should be offered between those hours, at any rate during the daytime and not in the night, for Christ said, "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: for the night cometh, when no man can work," John 9:4.

To the discussion of the twofold effect of the eucharist as a sacrament and as a sacrifice, the Schoolmen also give much attention. Like the other sacraments, the eucharist has the virtue of conferring grace of itself.1679  As a sacrament it inures to our nourishment and perfection in Christ; as a sacrifice to the removal of sins venial and mortal. As a sacrament it benefits those who partake; as a sacrifice its benefits accrue also to persons who do not partake, living and dead.1680  For this position Thomas Aquinas quotes side by side the words of our Lord, Luke 22 and Matt. 26, "which is shed for you" and "which is shed for many for the remission of sins," the latter passage being taken to include parties not present in the benefits of the sacrifice on the altar.

§ 116. Eucharistic Practice and Superstition.

The celebration of the eucharist is the central part of the service of the Latin Church. Thomas Aquinas said it is to be celebrated with greater solemnity than the other sacraments because it contains the whole mystery of our salvation. He gives the meaning of the various ceremonies, 1681 such as the signing with the cross, the priest’s turning his face to the people a certain number of times with reference to Christ’s appearances after the resurrection, the use of incense, the stretching forth of the priest’s arms, the breaking of the bread, and the rinsing of the mouth after the wine has been taken. How important the prescriptions were considered to be, may be inferred from the careful attention this great Schoolman gives to them. If a fly, he says, or a spider, be found in the wine after consecration, the insect must be taken out, carefully washed and burnt, and then the water, mingled with ashes, must be thrown into the sacrary. If poison be found in the consecrated wine, the contents of the cup are to be poured out and kept in a vessel among the relics.1682

The priest’s fitness to consecrate the elements lies in the sacerdotal power conferred upon him at his ordination. He consecrates the elements not in his own name but as the minister of Christ, and he does not cease to be a minister by being bad, malus.1683  He alone is the mediator between God and the people, so that it lies not within the power of a layman to administer the eucharist. The Angelic doctor declares that, while in the other sacraments the benefits accrue through the use of the elements, in the eucharist the benefit consists in the consecration of the elements by the priest and not in their use by the people.1684

Ecclesiastical analysis and definition could go no farther in divesting the simple memorial meal instituted by our Lord of the element of immediate communion between the believer and the Saviour, and changing it as it were into a magical talisman. It would be disingenuous to ignore that with the Schoolmen the devotional element has a most prominent place in their treatment of the eucharist. Especially when they are treating it as a sacrifice is emphasis laid upon devotion on the part of the participants.1685  But, after this is said, the Protestant Christian still feels that they did not appreciate in any adequate degree, the place of faith as the necessary organ of receiving the divine grace extended through this sacred ordinance. The definition which the mediaeval theologians gave to the Church and the mediatorial power they associated with the priesthood precluded them from estimating faith at its true worth.1686

The theory of the sacrificial efficacy of the mass encouraged superstition. It exalted the sacerdotal prerogative of the priest1687 who had it in his power to withhold or give this viaticum, the spiritual food for pilgrims looking forward to heaven. The people came to look to him rather than to Christ, for could he not by the utterance of his voice effect the repetition of the awful sacrifice of the cross!  The frequent repetition of the mass became a matter of complaint. Albertus Magnus speaks of women attending mass every day from levity and not in a spirit of devotion who deserved rebuke.1688  Councils again and again forbade its being celebrated more than once a day by the same priest, except on Christmas and Easter, and in case of burial. Masses had their price and priests there were who knew how to sell them and to frighten people into making provision for them in their wills.1689

The elevation and adoration of the host were practised in the Latin Church as early as the twelfth century. Honorius III., 1217, made obligatory the ringing of a bell at the moment the words of institution were uttered that the worshippers might fall on their knees and adore the host. The Lambeth synod of 1281 ordered the church bells to be rung at the moment of consecration so that the laboring man on the field and the woman engaged in her domestic work might bow down and worship. Synods prescribed that the pyx, the receptacle for the host, be made of gold, silver, ivory, or, at least, of polished copper. A light was kept burning before it perpetually. In case a crumb of the bread or a drop of the wine fell upon the cloth or the priest’s garments, the part was to be cut out and burnt and the ashes thrown into the sacrary. And if the corporale, the linen cover prescribed for the altar, should be wet in the blood, it was to be washed out three times and the water drunk by a priest. If a drop happened to fall on a stone or a piece of wood or hard earth, the priest or some pious person was to lick it up.

The festival of the eucharist, Corpus Christi, celebrated the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday, had its origin in the vision of Juliana, a nun of Liege, who saw the full moon, representing the church year, with one spot on its surface. This spot indicated the Church’s neglect to properly honor the real presence. She made her vision known to the bishop of Liege and the archdeacon, James Pantaleon. A celebration was appointed for the diocese, and when James became pope, under the name of Urban IV., he prescribed, in 1264, the general observance of the festival. John XXII. inaugurated the procession wherein, on Corpus Christi day, the host was carried about the streets with great solemnities.1690  The liturgical service used on Corpus Christi was prepared by Thomas Aquinas at the appointment of Urban IV. Two important changes occurred in this period in the distribution of the elements,—the abandonment of the communion of children and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity.

The communion of children practised in the early Church, and attested by Augustine and still practised in the Greek Church, seems to have been general as late as the reign of Pascal II. Writing in 1118, Pascal said it was sufficient to give the wine to children and the very sick, as they are not able to assimilate the bread. In their case the bread was to be dipped into the wine.1691  Just how the change took place is unknown. Odo, bishop of Paris, 1175, forbade the communion of children. The synod of Treves, 1227, denied to them the bread, and the synod of Bordeaux, 1255, the wine as well as the bread. The greater Schoolmen do not treat the subject. The Supplement of Thomas Aquinas’ Theology says that the extreme unction and the eucharist were not administered to children because both sacraments required real devotion in the recipients.1692

The denial of the cup to the laity, the present custom of the Roman Catholic Church, became common in the thirteenth century. It was at first due to the fear of profanation by spilling the consecrated blood of Christ. At the same time the restriction to the bread was regarded as a wholesome way of teaching the people that the whole Christ is present in each of the elements. Among other witnesses in the twelfth century to the distribution of both the bread and the wine to the laity are Rupert of Deutz and pope Pascal II. Pascal urged that this custom be forever preserved.1693  But it is evident that there was already at that time divergence of practice. The Englishman, Robert Pullen, d. ab. 1150, refers to it and condemned the dipping of the host into the wine as a Judas communion, with reference to John 13:26.1694

By the middle of the thirteenth century the feeling had grown strong enough for a great authority, Alexander of Hales, to condemn the giving of the cup to the laity and on the doctrinal ground that the whole Christ is in each of the elements. As a means of instructing the people in this doctrine he urged that the cup be denied. But Albertus Magnus, his contemporary, has no hint justifying the practice.1695  Thomas Aquinas followed Alexander, giving as his chief reason the danger of profanation by spilling the sacred contents of the chalice. It is sufficient, he said, for the priest to partake of the cup, for the full benefit accrues by the participation of a single element, communio sub una specie.1696  Christ distributed bread only and not drink to the five thousand.

The usage gradually spread. The chapter of the Cistercians in 1261 forbade monks, nuns, and lay brethren of the order to take the cup. The few Councils which expressed themselves on the subject were divided.1697

The council of Constance threatened with excommunication all who distributed the wine to the laity. It spoke of many "perils and scandals" attending the distribution of the wine. Gerson, who voted for the enactment, urged the danger of spilling the wine, of defilement to the sacred vessels from their contact with laymen’s hands and lips, the long beards of laymen, the possibility of the wine’s turning to vinegar while it was being carried to the sick, or being corrupted by flies, or frozen by the cold, the difficulty of always purchasing wine, and the impossibility of providing cups for ten thousand or twenty thousand communicants on Easter. The council of Trent reaffirmed the withdrawal of the cup as an enactment the Church was justified in making. Gregory II. had commanded the use of a single chalice at communion.1698

Some strange customs came into vogue in the distribution of the wine, such as the use of a reed or straw, which were due to veneration for the sacred element. Many names were given to this instrument, such as fistula, tuba, canna, siphon, pipa, calamus. The liturgical directions required the pope to drink through a fistula on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. He still follows this custom at the public mass. The practice maintained itself in some parts of the Lutheran Church as in Hamburg and vicinity, and Brandenburg down to the eighteenth century.1699

Another custom was the practice of cleaning the mouth with a rinsing cup of unconsecrated wine, after one or both the elements had been received, and called in German the Spülkelch. A synod of Soissons of the twelfth century enjoined all to rinse their mouths after partaking of the elements. Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1281, enjoined priests to instruct the people that in partaking of the bread they were partaking of the whole Christ, and that what was given them in the cup was only wine, given that they might the more easily swallow the sacred body.1700  The custom of taking a meal immediately after the sacrament, dating back to the fifth century, is also found in this period.1701

This treatment of the mediaeval theory of the eucharist would be incomplete without giving some of the marvellous stories which bear witness to the excessive reverence for the sacred host and blood. One of the most famous, the story of the monk, who was cured of doubts by seeing the host exude blood, is told by Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura,1702 and others. Cases when real blood was seen in the chalice were not infrequent. The host sometimes remained uninjured amid the ashes of a burnt church.1703  Caesar of Heisterbach relates several cases when a snow-white dove was seen sitting near the chalice at the celebration of the mass and a number of cases of the appearance of Christ in visible form in the very hands of the consecrating priest. Thus one of the monks, present when the mass was being said by Herman, abbot of Himmelrode, saw after the consecration of the host the Christ as a child in the abbot’s hands. The child rose to the height of the cross and then was reduced again in size to the dimensions of the host, which was eaten by the abbot.1704  The same writer narrates that a certain monk, Adolf, of the Netherlands, after consecrating the host, saw in his hands the virgin carrying the child, Christ, in her arms. Turning the host, he saw on the other side a lamb. Turning it back again, he saw Christ on the cross. Then there was nothing left but the visible form of the bread, which the pious monk ate. The writer goes on to say that Adolf did not feel full joy over this vision, for he kept a concubine.1705  A Fleming woman of the town of Thorembais, who had been refused the sacrament by a priest, was visited the same night by Christ himself, who gave her the host with his own hands.1706

At a church dedication in Anrode, the invited priests engaged in conviviality and while they were dancing around the altar, the pyx was overthrown and the five hosts it contained scattered. The music was at once stopped and search was made but without result. The people were then put out of the building and every corner was searched till at last the hosts were found on a ledge in the wall where the angel had placed them.1707

Perhaps the most remarkable case related by the chronicler of Heisterbach is that of the bloody host of St. Trond, Belgium. This he had himself seen, and he speaks of it as a miracle which should be recorded for the benefit of many after generations. In 1223 a woman in Harbais, in the diocese of Liège, kissed her lover with the host in her mouth, in the hope that it would inflame his love for her. She then found she could not swallow the host and carefully wrapped it up in a napkin. In her agony, she finally revealed her experience to a priest who called in the bishop of Livland who happened to be in the town. Together they went to the place where the host was concealed and lo! there were three drops of fresh blood on the cloth. The abbot of Trond was called in and it was then found that half of the host was flesh and half bread. The bishop thought so highly of the relic that he attempted to carry off two of the drops of blood, but sixty armed men interfered. The sacred blood was then put in a vase and deposited among the relics of the church of St. Trond.1708  This case was fully believed by Caesar, and he expresses no doubt about the many other cases he reports.

Another case related by Etienne of Bourbon1709 is of a farmer who, wanting to be rich, followed the advice of a friend and placed the host in one of his beehives. The bees with great reverence made a miniature church, containing an altar, on which they placed the sacred morsel. All the bees from the neighborhood were attracted and sang beautiful melodies. The rustic went out, expecting to find the hives overflowing with honey but, to his amazement, found them all empty except the one in which the host had been deposited. The bees attacked him fiercely. He repaired to the priest, who, after consulting with the bishop, went in procession to the hive and found the miniature church with the altar and carried it back to the village church while the bees, singing songs, flew away.

These stories, which might be greatly multiplied, attest the profound veneration in which the host was held and the crude superstitions which grew up around it in the convent and among the people. The simple and edifying communion meal of the New Testament was set aside by mediaeval theology and practice for an unreasonable ecclesiastical prodigy.

§ 117. Penance and Indulgences.

The sacrament of penance was placed in close connection with baptism by the Schoolmen, as it was later by the council of Trent, which called it a "sort of laborious baptism."1710  Baptism serves for the deletion of original sin; penance for the deletion of mortal sins committed after baptism. Using Tertullian’s illustration, the Schoolmen designated penance the second plank thrown out to the sinner after shipwreck as baptism is the first.1711  In daily religious life, penance became the chief concern of the people and also the chief instrumentality of the priesthood in securing and strengthening its authority. The treatment given to it by the Schoolmen is even more elaborate than the treatment they give to the eucharist.1712

One feature in which this sacrament differs from the others is the amount of positive activity it requires from those who seek the grace involved in it. Contrition, confession to the priest, and the performance of good works prescribed by the priest were the conditions of receiving this grace. Everything depends upon God, and yet everything depends upon the subjection of the penitent to the priest and his act of absolution. It is in connection with this sacrament that the doctrine of the keys comes to its full rights. Here a man is absolved from sin and reunited with the Church, and reconciled to Christ through the mediation of the sacerdotal key.1713

Two perversions of Scripture were the largest factors in developing the theory of meritorious penance. The first was the false interpretation of John 20:23, "Whosoever sins ye forgive they are forgiven, and whosoever sins ye retain they are retained."  The passage was interpreted to mean that Christ conferred upon the Apostles and the Church judicial authority to forgive sins. The Protestant theory is that this authority is declarative. The second factor was the Vulgate’s translation of the New Testament for the word "repent," poenitentiam agite, "do penance," as if repentance were a meritorious external exercise, and not a change of disposition, which is the plain meaning of the Greek word metanoevw, "to change your mind."1714

The confusion of the New Testament idea and the Church’s doctrine is evident enough from the twofold meaning Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas give to the thing called penance. Baptism, they said, is a sacrament, but penance is both a sacrament and a virtuous state of the mind. In the New Testament the latter is intended. The theologians added all the mechanism of penance.1715

At the close of the twelfth century a complete change was made in the doctrine of penance. The theory of the early Church, elaborated by Tertullian and other Church fathers, was that penance is efficient to remove sins committed after baptism, and that it consisted in certain penitential exercises such as prayer and alms. The first elements added by the mediaeval system were that confession to the priest and absolution by the priest are necessary conditions of pardon. Peter the Lombard did not make the mediation of the priest a requirement, but declared that confession to God was sufficient. In his time, he says, there was no agreement on three aspects of penance: first, whether contrition for sin was not all that was necessary for its remission; second, whether confession to the priest was essential; and third, whether confession to a layman was insufficient. The opinions handed down from the Fathers, he asserts, were diverse, if not antagonistic.1716

Alexander of Hales marks a new era in the history of the doctrine. He was the first of the Schoolmen to answer clearly all these questions, and to him more than to any other single theologian does the Catholic Church owe its doctrine of penance. Thomas Aquinas confirmed what Alexander taught.1717

In distinction from baptism, which is a regeneration, Thomas Aquinas declared penance to be a restoration to health and he and Bonaventura agreed that it is the efficacious remedy for mortal sins. Thomas traced its institution back to Christ, who left word that "penance and remission of sins should be preached from Jerusalem," Luke 24:47. James had this institution in mind when he called upon Christians to confess their sins one to another.1718  Penance may be repeated, for we may again and again lose our love to God.

Penance consists of four elements: contrition of heart, confession with the mouth, satisfaction by works, and the priest’s absolution. The first three are called the substance of penance and are the act of the offender. The priest’s absolution is termed the form of penance.1719

1. Contrition was defined as the sorrow of the soul for its sins, an aversion from them, and a determination not to commit them again. The Lombard and Gratian taught that such contrition, being rooted in love, is adequate for the divine pardon without confession to a priest or priestly absolution.1720

At the side of the doctrine of contrition the Schoolmen, beginning with Alexander Hales, placed the novel doctrine of attrition, which was most fully emphasized by Duns Scotus. Attrition is the negative element in contrition, a sort of half repentance, a dread of punishment, Galgenreue, "scaffold-repentance," as the Germans call it.1721  This state of the heart the Schoolmen found represented in the experience of the prodigal at the moment when the father went out to meet him. According to this doctrine, a man may be forgiven and saved who is actuated simply by the fear of hell and punishment and has neither faith nor filial love in his heart. All he is required to do is to diligently go through the other steps of the process of penance, and the priest’s pardon will be forthcoming.1722

2. Confession to the priest, the second element in penance, is defined by Thomas Aquinas as the making-known of the hidden disease of sin in the hope of getting pardon.1723  Not even the pope has the right to grant a dispensation from it any more than he may offer salvation from original sin without baptism.1724  It covers mortal sins. For the remission of venial sins, confession is not necessary. The Church makes daily supplication for such offences and that is sufficient. They do not separate the soul either from God or the Church.1725  They are simply a sluggish movement of the affections toward God, not an aversion to Him. They are removed by holy water and other minor rites.

By the action of the Fourth Lateran, 1215, confession to the priest at least once a year was made a test of orthodoxy. Beginning with Alexander of Hales, the Schoolmen vindicate the positions that confession, to be efficacious, must be made to the priest, and that absolution by the priest is an essential condition of the sinner’s pardon. Bonaventura, after devoting much time to the question, "Whether it is sufficient to confess our sins to God," answered it in the negative. At greater length than Peter the Lombard had done, he quoted the Fathers to show that there was no unanimity among them on the question. But he declared that, since the decision of the Fourth Lateran, all are to be adjudged heretics who deny that confession to the priest is essential. Before that decision, such denial was not heresy.1726

Confession must be made to the priest as Christ’s vicar. In case of necessity, no priest being available, a layman may also hear confession.1727  By such confession the offender may be reconciled to God but not to the Church, and in order to be so reconciled and admitted to the other sacraments he must also, as opportunity offers, confess again to the priest.

Priests were forbidden to look at the face of a woman at the confessional, and severe punishments were prescribed for betraying its secrets, even to degradation from office and life-long confinement in a convent.1728  The mendicant monks were confirmed by Clement IV. and Martin IV. in their right to shrive everywhere. A contemporary declared that the whole of the Jordan ran into their mouths.1729

3.  Satisfaction, the third element in penance, is imposed by the priest as the minister of God and consists of prayer, pilgrimages, fastings, payments of money, and other good works. These penal acts are medicines for spiritual wounds and a compensation to God for offences against Him, as Thomas Aquinas,1730 following Anselm, taught. The priest is the judge of what the act of satisfaction shall be. Among the more notable cases of public penance were those of Henry II. after Becket’s death, Philip I. of France, and Raymund of Toulouse.

Satisfaction differs from contrition and confession in the very important particular that one person can perform it for another. To prove this point, Thomas Aquinas used the words of the Apostle when he said, "Bear ye one another’s burdens."  Gal. 6:2.

4. The fourth element in the sacrament of penance was the formal sentence of absolution pronounced by the priest. This function, which Schwane calls the main part of the sacrament of penance,1731 or the power of the keys, potestas clavium, belongs primarily and in its fulness to the pope and then, by distribution, to bishops and priests. Its use opens and shuts the kingdom of heaven to immortal souls.

§ 118. Penance and Indulgences.

The year 1200 marks the dividing line between opinions differing most widely on the meaning of the priests absolution. Peter the Lombard represented the prevailing view of the earlier period when he pronounced the absolution, a declarative announcement. Alexander of Hales represented the later period, when he pronounced it a judicial sentence. According to Peter, God alone remits sins. It was the Lord who restored the lepers to health, not the priests to whom be sent them. They did nothing more than bear witness to the healthy condition of the lepers. The priest’s prerogative is ended when he "shows or declares those who are bound and those who are loosed."1732  This view of the Master of Sentences the later theology set aside.

Before the end of the thirteenth century, the petitional form of absolution was in general, though not exclusive, used and the priest made intercession for the grace of forgiveness upon the offender.1733  After that, the positive forensic form was substituted, "I absolve thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," the form which Thomas Aquinas vindicated against all others.1734  Hugo of St. Victor had advocated this form and pronounced the contrary form more laughable and frivolous than worthy of refutation. He was followed by Richard of St. Victor who emphasized the distinction between the priest’s right to remit the punishment of sin and God’s prerogative which is to forgive the guilt of sin.1735  The priest’s absolution effects the deletion of sin. He acts towards the sinner as Christ did toward Lazarus when he said, "Loose him and let him go."

The absolution from certain offences was reserved to the bishops, such as murder, sacrilege in the use of the eucharist or the baptismal water, perjury, poisoning, and letting children die without being baptized.1736  Other offences came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the papal chair, such as the abuse of the person of a priest or monk, the burning of church buildings, and falsifying of papal documents.

In the article of death, the sacrament of absolution is in no case to be refused. At such times works of satisfaction cannot be required, even as they were not required of the thief on the cross.

The extent to which absolution is efficacious called forth careful discussion and statement. Does it cover guilt as well as punishment and does it extend to the punishments of purgatory?  The answer to these questions also was positive and distinct from the time of Alexander of Hales. Peter the Lombard was the last of the prominent Schoolmen to declare that the priest did not give absolution for guilt. The later Schoolmen with one consent oppose him at this point and teach that the priest absolves both from the guilt and the punishments of sin in this world and in purgatory. Thomas Aquinas asserted that, "if the priest cannot remit these temporal punishments,—for the punishments of purgatory are temporal,—then he cannot remit at all and this is contrary to the words of the Gospel to Peter that whatsoever he should loose on earth should be loosed in heaven."1737

The ultimate and, as it proved, a most vicious form of priestly absolution was the indulgence. An indulgence is a remission of the guilt and punishment of sin by a mitigation or complete setting aside of the works of satisfaction which would otherwise be required. A lighter penalty was substituted for a severer one.1738  Gottlob1739 has recently divided indulgences into three classes: (1) indulgences which are secured by going on a crusade; (2) such as are secured by the payment of money for some good church cause, and (3) such as are secured by the visiting of certain churches.

Towards the close of this period this substitution usually took the form of a money-payment. For a lump sum absolution for the worst offences might be secured. It became a tempting source of gain to churches and the Roman curia, which they were quick to take advantage of. The dogmatic justification of this method of remission found positive expression before the practice became general. Alexander of Hales here again has the distinction of being the first to give it careful definition and unequivocal emphasis. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the other Schoolmen follow him closely and add little. Thomas Aquinas declared it impious to say the Church might not dispense indulgences.1740

The first known case occurred about 1016 when the archbishop of Arles gave an indulgence of a year to those participating in the erection of a church building.1741  The Crusades furnished the popes the occasion to issue indulgences on a magnificent scale. Urban II,’s indulgence, 1095, granting plenary absolution to all taking the journey to Jerusalem was the first of a long series of such papal franchises. That journey, Urban said, should be taken as a substitute for all penance. Granted at first to warriors fighting against the infidel in the Holy Land, they were extended so as to include those who fought against the Slavs, as by Eugenius III., 1147, against the Stedinger, Albigenses, and the Hussites, 1425, and against all enemies whatsoever of the papacy, such as Frederick II. and Manfred. Innocent II., in 1135, promised full remission to those who fought the battle of the papal chair against Roger of Sicily, and the anti-pope, Anacletus II. In these cases such expressions are used as "remission and indulgence of penances," "relaxation or remission from the imposed penance," "the relaxation of the imposed satisfaction," and also "a lightening or remission of sins."1742

The free-handed liberality with which these franchises were dispensed by bishops became so much of a scandal that the Lateran council of 1215 issued a sharp decree to check it. More than half a century before, in 1140, Abaelard had condemned the abuse of this prerogative by bishops and priests who were governed in its lavish exercise by motives of sordid cupidity.1743

The construction of bridges over rivers, the building of churches, and the visiting of shrines were favorite and meritorious grounds for the gifts of indulgence. Innocent III., 1209, granted full remission for the building of a bridge over the Rhone; Innocent IV. for rebuilding the cathedrals of Cologne, 1248, and Upsala, 1250, which had suffered from fire.1744  According to Matthew Paris, Gregory IX., in 1241, granted an indulgence of forty days to all worshipping the crown of thorns and the cross in the chapel at Paris and, in 1247, the bishop of Norwich, speaking for the English prelates, announced a remission of all penances for six years and one hundred and forty days to those who would worship the Holy Blood at Westminster.1745  Indulgences for building bridges and roads were common in England.1746

To the next period belongs the first cases of indulgence granted in connection with the Jubilee Year by Boniface VIII., 1300. Among the more famous indulgences granted to private parties and localities was the Portiuncula indulgence giving remission to all visiting the famous Franciscan shrine at Assisi on a certain day of the year,1747 and the Sabbatina, granting to all entering the Carmelite order or wearing the scapulary deliverance from purgatory the Saturday after their death.1748

The practice of dispensing indulgences grew enormously. Innocent III. dispensed five during his pontificate. Less than one hundred years later, Nicolas IV., in his reign of two years, 1288–1290, dispensed no less than four hundred. By that time they had become a regular item of the papal exchequer.

On what grounds did the Church claim the right to remit the works of penance due for sins or, as Alexander of Hales put it, grant abatement of the punishment due sin?1749The statement was this: Christ’s passion is of infinite merit. Mary and the saints also by their works of patience laid up merit beyond what was required from them for heaven. These supererogatory works or merits of the saints and of Christ are so abundant that they would more than suffice to pay off the debts of all the living.1750  Together they constitute the thesaurus meritorum, or fund of merits; and this is at the disposal of the Church by virtue of her nuptial union with Christ, Col. 1:24. This fund is a sort of bank account, upon which the Church may draw at pleasure. Christ relaxed the punishment due the woman taken in adultery, not requiring her to do the works of satisfaction which her offences would, under ordinary circumstances, have called for. So, likewise, may the pope, who is Christ’s viceregent, release from sin by drawing upon the fund of merit. Thus the indulgence takes the place of the third element of penance, works of satisfaction.

These statements of the Schoolmen received explicit papal confirmation at the hands of Clement VI. in 1343. This pontiff not only declared that this "heap of treasure,"—cumulus thesauri,—consisting of the merits of "the blessed mother of God and the saints," is at the disposal of the successors of Peter, but he made, if possible, the more astounding assertion that the more this storehouse is drawn upon, the more it grows.1751  Like the wood of the true cross, it has the power of infinite self-expansion. It is, however, fair to say that the papal briefs granting this saving grace almost invariably gave it on condition of contrition and confession of the recipient.1752

Down to the latter part of the thirteenth century, the theory prevailed that an indulgence dispensed with the usual works of penance by substituting some other act. Before the fourteenth century, another step was taken, and the indulgence was regarded as directly absolving from the guilt and punishment of sins, culpa et poena peccatorum. It was no longer a mitigation or abatement of imposed penance. It immediately set aside or remitted that which acts of penance had been designed to remove; namely, guilt and penalty. It is sufficient for the Church to pronounce offences remitted. Wyclif made a bold attack against the indulgence "from guilt and punishment," a culpa et poena, in his Cruciata. Now that it is no longer possible to maintain the spuriousness of such papal indulgences, some Roman Catholic writers construe the offensive phrase to mean "from the penalty of guilt," a poena culpae.

Such was the general indulgence given by pope Coelestin V., 1294, to all who should on a certain day of the year enter the church of St. Mary de Collemayo in which he had been consecrated.1753  This view had been stated almost thirty years before by Thomas of Chantimpré.1754  And, about 1280, Peter of Olivi declared the indulgence granted to the Portiuncula church to be an "indulgence for all sins and from all guilt and penalty."1755  It is evident from these documents that, at the close of the thirteenth century, the formula a culpa et poena, "from guilt and punishment," was quite familiar.

Boniface VIII. probably included the guilt of sin when he announced "full pardon for all sins," and succeeding popes used the form constantly.1756  John XXIII., at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was especially prodigal in the distribution of this kind of indulgence and in vain did the council of Constance attempt to put some check upon the practice. Tetzel was following the custom of two centuries when he offered "remission and indulgence of guilt and penalty."

As for the application of the sacrament of penance to souls in purgatory, Alexander of Hales argued that, if the sacrament did not avail for them, then the Church prays in vain for the dead. Such souls are still under the cognizance of the Church, that is, subject to its tribunal,—de foro ecclesiae.1757  Altars and chapels, called in England chantries, were built and endowed by persons for the maintenance of a priest, in whole or in part, to pray and offer up masses for their souls after their departure from this life. The further treatment of the subject belongs properly to the period just preceding the Reformation. It is sufficient to say here, that Sixtus IV., in 1476, definitely connected the payment of money with indulgences, and legislated that, by fixed sums paid to the papal collectors, persons on earth may redeem their kindred in purgatory. Thus for gold and silver the most inveterate criminal might secure the deliverance of a father or mother from purgatorial pain, and neither contrition nor confession were required in the transaction.1758  Such was the ultimate conclusion of the sacramental doctrine of penance, the sacrament to whose treatment the Schoolmen devoted most time and labor. The council of Trent reasserted the Church’s right to grant indulgences.1759  But what could seem to be more agreeable to the plain statements of Scripture than that men have the right of immediate access to Christ, who said, "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out," and what more repugnant to its plain teachings than to make confession to a priest and the priest’s absolution conditions of receiving pardon!

The superstitious, practical extravagances, which grew out of this most unbiblical penitential theory of the Middle Ages, are reported in the pages of the popular writers of the age, such as Caesar of Heisterbach and De Voragine, who express no dissent as they relate the morbid tales. Here are two of them as told by De Voragine which are to be taken as samples of a large body of similar literature. A bishop, by celebrating thirty masses, helped out of purgatory a poor soul who was frozen in a block of ice. In the second case, a woman who had neglected, before dying, to make a confession to the priest, was raised from her bier by the prayer of St. Francis d’Assisi. She went and confessed to the priest and then had the satisfaction of lying down in peace and dying over again.1760

§ 119. Extreme Unction, Ordination, and Marriage.

Extreme Unction,—unctio infirmorum,—the fifth in the list of the sacraments, is administered to those who are in peril of death, and is supposed to be referred to by James 5:14. "Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."  The earlier view, represented by Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, and also by Bonaventura, was that the sacrament is of Apostolic institution. Thomas Aquinas traced it directly to Christ. Many things, he said, were spoken by Christ to the Apostles which are not contained in the Gospels.1761  Thomas was followed by Duns Scotus and the council of Trent. The effect of the sacrament is to remit venial sins and the remainders of sin left after penance, and to heal the body. It may be repeated. Extreme unction as well as the eucharist is to be denied to children on the ground that their bodily diseases are not caused by sin.1762  Some Councils restricted it to those over fourteen.1763  The element used is oil, consecrated by the bishop, and it is to be touched to the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet, and loins.

Ordination conveys sacramental grace to seven orders of the ministry: presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, and ostiarii or door-keepers. These seven correspond to the seven graces of the Spirit mentioned in 1 Cor. 12. The first three orders were instituted by Christ; the last four by the Church.1764  The bishops do not constitute a distinct order, but are of the order of the priesthood. The episcopate is an office, a function; and as Peter Lombardus and Thomas Aquinas say again and again, it is not an order. Consecration to it has no sacramental character. The Schoolmen do not fail to insist upon the superior dignity of the bishop, but sacramental grace is exhibited in its highest form in empowering the priest to celebrate the mass. For the sake of "fulness" there are placed above the priesthood, the episcopate, patriarchate, and papacy.1765

The tonsure, a requirement for admittance to orders, is a sign of rule and perfection, for it is made in a circle. It also indicates that the mind is withdrawn from temporal things and fixed upon the contemplation of divine things.1766

According to Thomas Aquinas, there is more reason for regarding ordination a sacrament than for ascribing a sacramental character to the other six sacred ordinances, for ordination confers the power of administering the others. Its efficacious potency resides chiefly with the person dispensing the sacrament.1767  From him grace is transmitted. The form or the symbols, used in the ceremony, are of subordinate or little importance. In fact, the symbols are scarcely referred to by Councils or Schoolmen in this period.1768

Ordination confers an indelible character upon those admitted to any of the orders. Its virtue is not affected by the character of the person ordained.1769

As for the validity of the sacramental acts of heretic and schismatic clergymen, great difference of opinion existed. The problem was so difficult as to appear to Gratian and Peter the Lombard insoluble or almost so. The difficulty was increased by the acts of Councils, condemning as invalid the ordinations of anti-popes and the ordinations performed by bishops whom anti-popes had appointed.1770  The statements of Thomas Aquinas are difficult to understand. He made a distinction between the power—potestas — of ordination and the jurisdiction to perform the sacrament. Schismatic or heretic bishops retain the power; otherwise when such a bishop is reconciled to the Church, he would be ordained over again, which is not the case.1771  But they have not the jurisdiction. As the bishop by his promotion to the episcopate receives no sacramental grace, so, as bishop, he possesses no indelible character. He is ordained not directly for God but for the mystical body of Christ. And those whom a schismatic bishop ordains do not in reality receive ordination, for they are ordained in the face of the prohibition of the Church.

As far as we can understand the Angelic doctor’s position it is: the Church may withdraw from a bishop his right to confer orders while at the same time he retains the episcopal power to confer them. He insisted most strenuously on the permanence of the "bishop’s power" received at consecration. The solution of the problem is of far-reaching importance, for it has a bearing on the sacramental efficacy of the acts of many priests who have been cut off from the Latin Church and the ecclesiastical titles of schismatic bodies, such as the Old-Catholics and the Jansenist Church of Holland.

Marriage has the last place among the sacraments because it has the least of spirituality connected with it.1772  At first, the bed was undefiled, conception was without passion, and parturition without pain. Since the fall, marriage has become a remedy against lust and a medicine for unholy desire.1773  At first it signified the union of the soul with God. Since it became a sacrament, it signifies, in addition, the union of Christ and the Church and the union of two natures in one person. The Vulgate’s false translation of Ephes. 5:31, "this is a great sacrament," confirmed the Schoolmen in placing matrimony among the sacraments. That which constitutes the sacramental element is the verbal consent of the parties, and also, as Thomas Aquinas thought, the priest’s Benediction.1774

Thomas was inclined to permit marriage for boys after the age of fourteen and girls after the age of twelve.1775  According to the same authority, children are to follow the social condition of the mother.1776  The impediments to marriage were carefully catalogued and discussed. Their number was put at twelve, such as kinship, mistake, vows, and misrepresentation, and couched in the lines which Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas quote:—

error, conditio, votum, cognatio crimen,

cultus disparitas,1777 vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas,

si sis affinis, si forte coire nequibis

haec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant.

The Fourth Lateran modified some of the more severe restrictions of marriage within the limits of consanguinity, but declared children illegitimate whose parents were within the forbidden limits, even though the ceremony were performed in the church. The Councils of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries give frequent rules for marriage. They were to be performed before the Church and only after public announcement. The children of parties marrying unbelievers and the offspring of clandestine marriages were made illegitimate.1778

Death dissolves marriage and the surviving party has the right to marry again to the fourth time or even more often. Otherwise the marriage bond is perpetual—vinculum matrimonii est perpetuum. This follows from two considerations: marriage involves the training of the children and is a symbol of the union between Christ and the Church. Matrimony becomes absolutely binding only upon copulation. Before that has taken place, one party or the other may go into an order and in this case the other party has the right to marry again.

Divorce was allowed for one cause only, fornication. The Schoolmen supported this position from the words of Christ. Divorce, however, is a separation, not a release with license to marry again. Marriage can never be annulled by the act of man. What God hath joined together, no man can put asunder.1779  Only after the death of the offending party may the innocent party enter again into a marriage contract.1780  The second and subsequent marriages are a sacrament as the first marriage is.

§ 120. Sin and Grace.

Sin.—The Schoolmen are unanimous in affirming that the infection of original sin has passed down upon all Adam’s descendants and involved them all in guilt and eternal death. Following Augustine, Anselm called the race a sinning mass—peccatrix massa. By the Fall, man’s body, or flesh, was made, like the beast, subject to carnal appetites and the mind, in turn, became infected with these appetites.1781  If man had not sinned, his nature would have been propagated as it was originally created by God. In condemning Abaelard, the synod of Sens, 1141, condemned the heresy that Adam’s guilt does not pass down to his posterity.

Man does not secure his sinful nature by imitation of Adam, but by inheritance through generation from Adam. The flesh is tainted, being conceived in concupiscence, and concupiscence is both a taint and guilt. Nay, it is original sin, as the Lombard says.1782  Before the first sin, the man and the woman came together without the passion of concupiscence and the bed was undefiled; but, after the Fall, they could not join in marital intercourse without libidinous lust.1783  These are the views of all the Schoolmen, yet they agree in rejecting the doctrine of traducianism.1784  The flesh only is carried down from parent to child, not the spirit.

Original sin is defined by Alexander of Hales and by Thomas Aquinas as the want or the "deficiency of original righteousness."1785  It involves the loss of superadded grace and a wounding of the natural powers.1786  This wound, or original sin, is a lasting quality or condition of depravity—a habitus corruptionis or vitium — like a bodily disease. It is not merely a defect. It is a depraved tendency—inordinata dispositio. In another place, Thomas defines original sin to be in substance concupiscence or lust and in form a defect of original righteousness.1787  God cannot be the author of sin because sin is an offence against order.

Thomas taught that the taint of original sin is inherited not from the mother but from the father who is the active agent in generation. If Eve only had sinned and not Adam, the children would not have inherited the taint. On the other hand, if Adam had sinned and Eve remained innocent, their descendants would have inherited original sin.1788  According to Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, and others, pride was the original root of sin.1789

At much length, the Schoolmen elaborate upon the sin against the Holy Ghost and the seven "capital or principal" offences,1790 the number of which they base on Proverbs 6:16, "These six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto Him."  The question as to whether there would have been any admixture of the sexes if Adam had not sinned was answered in the affirmative, in view of the command to be fruitful and to replenish the earth. Bonaventura also elaborately discussed the question whether the number of male and female descendants would have been equal had man not sinned. This he also answered in the affirmative, partly on the ground that no woman would have been without a husband and no husband without a wife, for in paradise there would be neither polygamy or polyandry. He also based his conclusion upon Aristotle’s reason for the unequal conception of male and female children which is now due to some weakness or other peculiarity on the part of one of the parents.1791  The ultimate purpose in the birth of children, had our first parents remained innocent, was that they might fill up the number of the elect angels.

Another question which was discussed with much warmth was which of the two sinned the more grievously, Adam or Eve, a question Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, and other great Schoolmen united in attempting to solve—a question which arose quite naturally from Paul’s statement, 1 Tim. 2:14, that the woman was beguiled and not the man. The conclusion reached was that the preponderance of guilt was with Eve. The Lombard is inclined to be lenient with Adam and makes out that when he yielded to the persuasions of his wife, he was actuated by sympathy and was unwilling to give her pain by refusing her request. He was inexperienced in the divine severity and his sin was a venial, not a mortal fault. In fact this theologian distinctly gives it as his belief that Adam would not have given way to the temptation of the devil.1792  Eve sinned by pride, desiring to be equal with God. Adam was not seduced by the devil at all and had in mind the mercy of God and intended later to make confession of his sin, and secure absolution. Eve’s sin was the more grievous for she sinned against herself, against God, and against her neighbor. Adam sinned against himself and God, but not against his neighbor. Hugo of St. Victor said that the woman believed that God was moved by envy in forbidding them to eat the fruit of the tree. Adam knew this to be false. His sin was in consenting to his wife and not correcting her.1793  Albertus Magnus seems inclined to draw a more even balance. In that which pertained to the essence of sin, he said, Eve was the greater offender, but if we look at Adam’s endowment and at other circumstances, Adam was the greater offender.1794  Bonaventura laid down the proposition that the gravity of sin depends upon three things: ingratitude, lust, and the corruption which follows the sinful act.1795  Applying these rules to the Fall, he declared that, so far as ingratitude goes, Adam’s sin was the greater and, so far as lust goes, the woman’s sin was the greater. As for the evil consequences flowing from the sin, Adam sinned the more grievously as the cause of damnation to his posterity and Eve the more grievously as the occasion of such damnation. But as Eve was also the occasion of Adam’s sinning, her sin and guilt must be pronounced the greater.

Grace.—In the doctrine of grace, the mediaeval theology used the terminology of Augustine but makes the impression of departing from him in the direction of semi-Pelagianism.1796  The treatment which Thomas Aquinas gave to two elements he found in the African father, namely, freewill which man preserves after the Fall, and the doctrine of merit, has the appearance of a de-Augustinianizing tendency. In reality Thomas taught that all that is good in man is from God and he can have no merit before God except by the prearrangement of a divine decree.1797  In no other sense is an act of righteousness—that is, the doing of what we owe—to be called a meritorious act. Without the grace of the Holy Spirit it is not possible to merit eternal life. Man is not even able to make the preparation necessary to receive the light of grace. Prevenient grace is essential to beget in him the disposition to holiness,—interior voluntas. The number of the elect is fixed even to the persons of the saved, and persevering grace is given to those who remain steadfast to the end. Man cannot even know the truth without help from above.1798

Thomas distinguished two kinds of merit or meritorious works: the merit which comes by the proper use of our natural gifts, — meritum de congruo,—and the merit which comes from the proper use of the gifts of grace,—meritum de condigno. In his original state, man was enabled by the superadded gift of grace to love God above all things. In the fallen state, grace is required to restore this ability, and no works of this second sort can be done without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Such statements as these could be multiplied almost indefinitely. There is, however, notwithstanding these clear statements, a tone in Thomas’ treatment which makes the impression that he modified strict Augustinianism and made a place for the real merit of works, and in this the Catholic Church follows him.

As for the satisfaction of Christ, Thomas Aquinas followed Anselm in holding that Christ’s death was not a price paid to the devil.1799  He did not lay down a very exact definition of the mode in which the atonement was made efficacious; but he laid stress upon the merit which Christ won by the assent of his own will to the will of God. He does not speak of the propitiation of Christ in the way Abaelard and Peter the Lombard1800 did as an exercise of love drawing man to God. The love and obedience of Christ are efficient, through the sufferings he endured on the cross, in reconciling man to God and redeeming man from the power of the devil.

Thomas very clearly states the consequences of Christ’s atonement. The first is that thereby man comes to know how great the love of God is, and is provoked to love God in return.1801  By the cross Christ set an example of humility, righteousness, and other virtues. He also taught men the necessity of keeping free from sin, overcoming the devil, and conquering death by dying to sin and the world. God might have pardoned man without the satisfaction of the cross, for all things are possible with Him. This was in opposition to Anselm’s position that God could have redeemed man in no other way than by the cross.

Bonaventura went further in opposition to Anselm and distinctly asserted that God could have liberated and saved the race otherwise than He did. He might have saved it by the way of pity—per viam misericordiae —in distinction from the way of justice. And in choosing this way he would have done no injury to the claims of justice.1802  His chapter on this subject he closes with the words, "It would be dangerous for me to put a limit on God’s power to redeem, for He is able to do above what we are able to think."

No distinction was made by the mediaeval theologians between the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of sanctification, such as is made by Protestant theologians. Justification was treated as a part of the process of making the sinner righteous, and not as a judicial sentence by which he was declared to be righteous. Sanctification was so thoroughly involved in the sacramental system that we must look for its treatment in the chapters on the seven sacraments, the instrumentalities of sanctification; or under the head of the Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love, as in Bonaventura’s treatment.1803  Thomas Aquinas discusses it under the head of the atonement and in special chapters entitled "the division of grace,"1804 by which he means the distinction between prevenient, or preparatory, and cooperant grace,—gratia gratis data, or the grace which is given freely, and the gratis gratum faciens, or the grace which makes righteous.

Justification, says Thomas, is an infusion of grace.1805  Four things are required for the justification of the sinner: the infusion of grace, the movement of the freewill to God in faith, the act of the freewill against sin, and the remission of sins. As a person, turning his back upon one place and receding from it, reaches another place, so in justification the will made free at once hates sin and turns itself to God.

Setting aside the distinction between justification and sanctification, there seems to be complete religious accord between Thomas Aquinas, the prince of the Schoolmen, and our Protestant view of redeeming grace as being from beginning to end the gracious act of God in view of the death of Christ. His theory of the sacraments, it is true, seems to modify this position. But this is an appearance rather than a reality. For the sacraments have their efficacious virtue by reason of God’s prior and gracious enactment attaching efficacy to them.

Faith.—In its definition of faith, the mediaeval theology came far short of the definition given by the Reformers. The Schoolmen1806 begin their discussion with the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews 11:1, that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and define faith as the grace by which things which are not seen are believed. And they scarcely get beyond this definition. Although several of Paul’s statements in the Epistle to the Romans are quoted by Thomas Aquinas, neither he nor the other Schoolmen rise to the idea that it is upon the basis of faith that a man is justified. Faith is a virtue, not a justifying principle, and is treated at the side of hope and love. These are called the "theological virtues" because they relate immediately to God and are founded ultimately upon the testimony of His Word alone. Christian faith works by love and is not a grace unless it be conjoined with love. The devils have intellectual faith without love, for they believe and tremble.

Faith manifests itself in three ways, in believing God, in trusting God, and believing in God.1807  To believe God is to believe that He is. To trust God is to accept what He says as true. These two kinds of faith the devils have. To believe in God is to love God in believing, to go to Him believing, to be devoted to Him in believing, and to be incorporated with His members. This knowledge of faith is more certain than other knowledge because it is based upon God’s Word and is enlightened by the light which proceeds from the Word.

The Schoolmen insist that without faith it is impossible to please God, and preachers, like Honorius of Autun, declared that as a fish cannot live without water, so no one can be saved without faith.1808  And yet Thomas Aquinas scarcely gets beyond the definition that faith is an assent of the intellect, assensus intellectus.1809  However, love and faith, he says, are so closely conjoined that love may be called a form of faith, a mode of its expression,1810 and without love faith is dead. A sufficient faith in Christ demands four things, said the Lombard: assent to his nativity, his death, his resurrection, and his coming again for judgment.1811  Thomas requires an explicit acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity even by the Old Testament saints, for the Trinity was revealed in the beginning when God said, "Let us make man in our own image."  There can be no belief in the incarnation without belief in the Trinity. Faith ceases when the mind disbelieves a single article of the faith.1812  He who disbelieves a single one of the articles of the Apostles’ Creed has no faith at all.1813  After quoting Rom. 4:5, this great theologian stops with saying, that, in justification, an act of faith is required to the extent that a man believe that God is the justifier of men through the atonement of Christ.1814

The Schoolmen did not understand Paul. The Reformers were obliged to re-proclaim the doctrine of justifying faith as taught in the epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. On the other hand, it is the merit of the Schoolmen that they emphasize the principle, that true faith worketh by love and that all other faith is vain, inanis. The failure of Protestant theologians always to set this forth distinctly has exposed the Protestant doctrine to the charge that faith is sufficient, even if it be unaccompanied by good works, or works of love towards God and man.1815  The fault of the Schoolmen lay chiefly in their unscriptural and dangerous theory of sacramental grace which led to the substitution of a series of outward exercises, recommended by the priest, for simple trust in Christ’s free grace.

§ 121. The Future State.

The unseen world of spirits was divided by the mediaeval theology into five distinct regions or abodes,—receptacula animarum,—as Thomas Aquinas calls them—heaven, hell, purgatory, the limbus patrum, or the temporary abode of the Old Testament saints, and the limbus infantum, or the abode of children who die without being baptized.

Hell, the place of punishment or eternal dolors,1816 is the lake of sulphur and fire in which lost men and demons suffer eternal torment. It is a region of jet darkness, a deep prison as compared with heaven, into which the demons are thrust down.1817  The longings and passions of those confined there go on continually burning and are never satisfied. Its fires burn but do not consume. No other heat can compare with its heat.1818  The Schoolmen are agreed that the passages of Scripture, bearing on the fire of hell, are not figurative. The fire is material fire which afflicts both the spirits and bodies of the lost.1819  The degree of torture is according to the desert.

The limbus patrum corresponds to Abraham’s bosom in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the place where the worthies of the Old Testament dwelt till Christ descended into hades and released them. Before that time they enjoyed exemption from pain. Since then they have enjoyed heavenly bliss. Circumcision released them from original sin. Hell and this locality are probably in the same region or, at any rate, contiguous.1820  The view, that the patriarchs remained in hades till Christ’s death, goes back to Hermas and Clement of Alexandria.

The limbus puerorum or infantum is the abode of children dying in infancy without having been baptized. They are there for original sin which only baptism can wash away.1821  According to Thomas Aquinas, this region is probably a little lower than the limbus patrum. These children are free from pain, but are like the lost in being deprived of the vision of God and physical light. Theirs is the punishment of eternal death,—supplicium mortis aeternae,—but their damnation is the lightest of all—omnium levissima. They have no hope of beatitude. God, in His justice, provides that they never make any advance nor go back, that they neither have joy nor grief. They remain forever unchanged.1822  Such is the hopeless doom to which the great Dominican and the great Franciscan theologians of the Middle Ages consigned all children dying unbaptized. Strange that the Schoolmen, in the interest of a more merciful doctrine, did not use Christ’s blessed words, "Suffer the little children to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of God."  But they did not. The doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of the necessity of water baptism for salvation were carried to their extreme logical conclusions without regard for the superabounding grace of God. So also Augustine had taught and so most of the Reformers taught at a later time.

Christ’s descent into hades was carefully discussed by the Schoolmen. It occurred as soon as his soul was separated from the body at his death. He was in the infernal regions during the three days of his burial, but did not assume their pains. The reason for this visit was twofold, says Bonaventura, —to release the Old Testament saints and to confound the adversaries of the Gospel, the demons.1823  Thomas Aquinas tried to show that, when Job said, Job 17:16, "my hope shall go down to the bars of Sheol," or into the "deepest hell," as the Vulgate puts it, he meant that he went no farther than the limbus patrum and not to the abode of the lost.1824  Christ descended into hades, according to Thomas,1825 for a threefold purpose, to deliver us from the necessity of going there ourselves; to release the Hebrew saints by breaking the bars of hell—vectes inferni,—that is, by "spoiling principalities and powers," Col. 2:15; and third, to make show of his divinity—manifestatio divinitatis — to the demons by preaching, 1 Pet. 3:19, and by enlightening those dark spaces with his presence, as it is said, Ps. 24:7, "Lift up your doors, O ye princes, and the king of glory shall come in."  Here again the Vulgate is responsible for a mistake, the word "gates" being translated "princes."1826  Christ’s descent into hades did not help the unbaptized children. After this life it is too late to acquire grace.1827

Purgatory is a sort of reformatory school for baptized Catholics who are not good enough at death to go directly to heaven. They are there in that intermediate region for actual transgressions,1828 whose guilt the sacrament of penance and extreme unction had not fully removed. The existence of purgatory is based mainly upon 2 Mac. 12:40 and the universal teaching of the Church.1829  Its inhabitants belong to the communion of saints and are within the reach of human intercession. Masses for the dead are instituted to meet their case. For infants in the limbus puerorum, such intercessory works are of no avail. But one who has been baptized in infancy or manhood, no matter how flagitious or criminal his career may have been, for him there is hope, nay there is certainty, that in time he will pass out of purgatory into the company of the blessed.

Heaven includes three kinds of rewards, said Bonaventura: the substantial reward or the vision of God; the consubstantial or the glorification of the body to which belong the qualities of transpicuity, lightness, agility, and impassibility which are granted in the degree we exercise love here on earth;1830 and the accidental reward or the ornament of the aureole given for preaching and leading others to salvation, for virginal purity and martyrdom.

The bliss of heaven, said Thomas Aquinas, consists in the immediate vision of God.1831  It is a state from which there will be no lapse. The beatified know what is occurring on earth, hear the prayers that ascend to them, and by their merits intercede for their brethren here. St. Bernard, in his homilies on the Canticles,1832 and Anselm1833 give us lofty descriptions of the blessedness of the heavenly estate. And the satisfaction and glory of the soul in heaven has never been quite so well portrayed as in the poem of Bernard of Cluny:—

O sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect,

O sweet and blessed country, that eager hearts expect;

Jesus in mercy bring us to that sweet land of rest,

To be with God the Father and Spirit ever blest.

It remained for Dante to give to the chilling scholastic doctrines of purgatory and the lower regions a terrible reality in poetical form and imagery and also to describe the beatific vision of paradise.

The remarkable vision which a certain Englishman, Turchill, had of the future world, as related at length by Roger of Wendover1834 and others, reveals the crass popular ideas of the future state. St. Julian appeared to this honest laborer, and took him off to "the middle of the world," where they entered a church which, as Turchill was told, received the souls of all those who had recently died. Mary, through her intercession, had brought it about that all souls born again should, as soon as they left the body, be taken to this church and so be freed from the attacks of demons. Near one of the church walls was the entrance to hell through which came a most foul stench. Stretching from another wall was the great lake of purgatorial fire in which souls were immersed, some to their knees, some to their necks. And above the lake was a bridge, paved with thorns and stakes, over which all had to pass before they could arrive at the mount of joy. Those who were not assisted by special masses walked over the bridge very slowly and with excruciating pain. On the mount was a great and most wonderful church which seemed to be large enough to contain all the inhabitants of the world. St. Nicolas, St. James, and other saints had charge of the church of Mary and the purgatorial lake and bridge. Turchill also saw St. Peter in the church of Mary and before him the souls were brought to receive sentence. The devil and his angels were there to hurry off to the infernal regions those whose evil deeds tipped the balances. Turchill was also taken by a certain St. Domninus to behold the sports the devils indulge in. Coming to the infernal realm, they found iron seats, heated to a white heat and with nails driven in them, on which an innumerable multitude was sitting. Devils were sitting around against the walls poking fun at the unfortunate beings for the evils they had been guilty of in this life. Men of different occupations and criminal practices, the soldier, tradesman, priest, the adulterer, thief, and usurer, were then brought forth and made to enact over again their wicked deeds, after which their flesh was fiercely torn by the demons and burnt, but again restored. Such are the popular pictures which form the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno.

Of all the gruesome religious tales of the Middle Ages, the tales representing the devil as torturing the naked soul were among the most gruesome. The common belief was that the soul, an entity with form as the Schoolmen defined it, is at death separated from the body. Caesar of Heisterbach tells of an abbot of Morimond with whose soul the demons played ball, rolling it from hill to hill, across the valley between, until God allowed the soul to enter the body again. This was before the abbot became a monk.

Another of these stories, told by Caesar of Heisterbach,1835 concerned a student to whom the devil gave a stone. As long as the student held it in his hand, he had supernatural knowledge. When he died, his body was taken to the church, and while his fellow-students stood around it singing, the devil carried his soul to hell. There the demons played ball with it. Their sharp claws stuck deep into it and gave it unspeakable pain. But, at the intercession of the saints, the Lord rescued the soul and reunited it with the body and the young man suddenly arose from his bier. In telling his experience he related that his soul had been like a round piece of glass through which he could see on every side. Fortunately, the fellow was scared badly enough to go to a convent and do sound penance. Bernard of Thiron bore witness that he saw the devils carry an unfaithful monk’s soul out of the window.1836

The severity of the purgatorial pains is vouched for in this story by Thomas of Chantimpré,1837 for which he quotes Albertus Magnus. A good man, after suffering from a severe sickness for a year, had this alternative offered him by an angel: to go to purgatory and suffer for three days or endure for a year longer his sickness and then go directly to glory. He chose the first. So his soul took its departure, but the purgatorial agony of a day seemed like the pains of ages and the sufferer was glad to have the opportunity of returning to his body, which was still unburied, and endure his sickness for another year.

Such stories are numerous and reveal the coarse theology which was current in convent and among the people.

CHAPTER XV.

POPE AND CLERGY.

§ 122. The canon Law.

Literature: Decretum Gratiani emendatum et notationibus illustratum. Una cum glossis, Gregorii XIII. Pont. Max. jussu editum, 6 vols. Rome, 1582.—Corpus juris canonici, ed. J. H. Boehmer, 2 vols. Halle 1747, with Introductions by Boehmer on Gratian’s Decretum, I. 1–42, and the later collections of decretals, II. 1–34.—Best critical ed. by A. L. Richter, 2 vols. Leip., 1839, revised ed. by E. Friedburg Leip., 1879–1881, 2 vols. (vol. I., Decret. Gratiani, vol. II., Decretalium collectiones). —J. Fr. von Schulte (Old-Cath. Prof. in Bonn): D. Gesch. der Quellen und Lit. des kanonischen Rechts von Gratian bis auf die Gegenwart, 3 vols. Stuttg., 1875–1880. —Dodd: Hist. of canon Law, Oxf., 1884. —T. Hinschius: D. Kirchenrecht d. Katholiken und Protestanten, etc., 6 vols. Berl., 1869–1897. —E. Friedberg: Lehrbuch des kath. und evangel. Kirchenrechts, 6th ed., Leip., 1903. —A. von Kirchenheim: Kirchenrecht, Bonn, 1900. —P. Hergenröther (Rom. Cath.): Lehrbuch d. kathol. Rechts, 2d. ed., Freib., 1905. —Other works by Walter, 14th ed., 1877. —Richter-Dove, 8th ed., Leip., Phillimore: The Eccles. Law of the Ch. of Engl., 2 vols. London, 1873, Supplem., 1876.—F. W. Maitland: Rom. Can. Law in the Ch. of Engl., Lond., 1898.—The artt. in Herzog, vol. X. Kanonen-Sammlungen, Kanonisches Rechtsbuch, Kirchenrecht. —Stubbs: Const. Hist. of Engl., II. 170 sqq., III. 295–388.—For extensive list of works on canon Law, see Friedberg: Kirchenrecht, pp. 3–11, and Hergenröther: Kirchenrecht, pp. 15 sqq.

Not the least of the characteristic and imposing products of the mediaeval Church was the gigantic fabric of the canon law.1838  It is embodied in a series of collections containing enactments of Councils and papal decretals, beginning with the collection of Gratian in the twelfth century and ending with the decretals of John XXII. in the fourteenth century. The canon law became the legal buttress of the papal theocracy and remained the ruling code till the Reformation.

The science of canon law looks back to Gratian as its father, and Bologna was the chief centre for its study. Although works on the subject were produced in other lands, Italy, through her universities, was far in the lead in their production till late in the fifteenth century.1839

Under the Roman state, the religious laws—the jus sacrum, jus pontificium — were not a distinct body of legislation . In the Christian Church the conception of a distinct and superior divine law existed from the beginning. The formulation of a written code followed the meeting of Christian synods and their regulations. As the jurisdiction of the hierarchy and the institution of the mediaeval papacy were developed, this legislation came to include civil obligations and all civil penalties except the death penalty.1840  The Church encroached more and more upon the jurisdiction of the civil court. Conflict was inevitable. Not only was the independence of civil law as a distinct branch of procedure threatened, but even its very existence. It was not till the fourteenth century that the secular governments were able successfully to resist such encroachments and to regain some of the just prerogatives of which the civil courts had been robbed. "Oh, that the canon law might be purged from the superfluities of the civil law and be ordered by theology," exclaimed Roger Bacon, writing in the thirteenth century. "Then would the government of the Church be carried on honorably and suitably to its high position."1841

Gratian’s work was preceded by the Penitential Books and a number of imperfect collections of ecclesiastical decisions, the chief of which were, two books of synodal cases by Regino d. 915, the collections of Burchard, bishop of Worms d. 1025, Anselm of Lucca d. 1086, Cardinal Deusdedit about 1087, and Ivo of Chartres d. 1117.1842  The pseudo-Isidorian decretals also belong to this class and they were much used, especially by Burchard.

The work of Gratian superseded these earlier compilations, and it enjoys the honor of being the monumental work on canon law. Gratian, a Camaldulensian monk, and an Italian by birth, taught at the convent of St. Felix, Bologna, at the same time that Irnerius was teaching civil law in the same city. No details of his life have been handed down. His biography is his great compilation which was made about 1140–1150. Its original title, A Concordance of Differing canons, concordantia canonum discordantium, has given way to the simple title, Decretum, the Book of Decrees. The work was a legal encyclopaedia, and at once became the manual in its department, as the Sentences of the Lombard, Gratian’s contemporary, became the manual of theology.1843  This recognition was not due to formal, papal, or synodal sanction, for it never received any. It was issued again and again by learned commentators, the first being one of Gratian’s pupils, Paucapalea. These editors and commentators were called Summists or Glossarists. The official Roman edition was prepared by a papal commission of thirty-five members and issued by Gregory XIII. in 1582. Gregory declared the text to be forever authoritative, but he did not pronounce upon the contents of Gratian’s work.1844

Gratian’s aim was to produce a work in which all real or apparent contradictions between customs and regulations in vogue in the Church should be removed or explained. This he secured by exclusion and by comments, called the dicta Gratiani, sayings of Gratian. The work is divided into three parts. The first, in one hundred and one sections or distinctiones, treats of the sources of canon law, councils and the mode of their convention, the authority of decretals, the election of the Roman pontiff, the election and consecration of bishops, the papal prerogative, papal legates, the ordination of the clergy, clerical celibacy, and kindred topics. The second, in thirty-six sections or causae, discusses different questions of procedure, such as the ordination and trial of bishops and the lower clergy, excommunication, simony, clerical and church property, marriage, heresy, magic, and penance. The third part is devoted to the sacraments of the eucharist and baptism and the consecration of churches. The scholastic method is pursued. A statement is made and objections, if any, are then formally refuted by citation of synodal acts and the testimony of the Fathers, popes, and other churchmen. The first distinction opens with the statement that the human race is governed by two principles, natural law and customs. Then a number of questions are propounded such as what is law, what are customs, what kinds of law there are, what is natural law, civil law, and the law of nations?

Gratian’s volume was soon found to require supplement. The two centuries following its appearance were most fruitful in papal decrees, especially in the pontificates of Alexander III., Innocent III., and Gregory IX. These centuries also witnessed the Lateran and other important Councils. The deliverances of popes and synods, made subsequently to the age of Gratian, were called extravagantes or fugitives.1845  Five compilations, called "the old compilations," were made from 1191 to 1226.1846  The third of these, issued by authority of Innocent III. and containing his decretals, was sent by that pontiff to the university of Bologna to be included in its course of instruction. This compilation was the first book of canon law having papal sanction.

The demand for a complete collection of these materials induced Gregory IX. to commit the task of gathering them into a single volume to his chaplain Raymund de Pennaforte.1847  The work, usually called Decretales Gregorii IX, was finished and sent to Paris and Bologna in 1234 with the direction that it be used for purposes of instruction, and in the trial of cases. The preparation of other compilations was strictly forbidden. Gregory’s collection comprises 185 titles and 1871 decretals and follows the fivefold division of Bernard of Pavia’s work.1848

A new collection, called the Sixth Book, liber sextus — or, as by English writers, the Sext,—was issued by the authority of Boniface VIII., 1298, and carried the collections of Gratian and Gregory IX. into Boniface’s reign. In 1314, Clement V. issued another collection, which included his own decretals and the decrees of the council of Vienne and was called the Seventh Book, liber septimus, or the Clementines. In 1317, John XXII. officially sent Clement’s collection to the universities of Bologna and Paris. Subsequent to the publication of the Clementines, twenty of John’s own decretals were added. In 1500 John Chappuis, in an edition of the liber sextus and the Clementines, added the decretals of John and seventy-one of other popes. This series of collections, namely, Gratian’s Decretum, Gregory IX,’s Decretales, the Sext, the Clementines, and the Extravagantes of John XXII., constitutes the official body of canon law—corpus juris canonici — and was published in the edition of Gregory XllI.

The canon law attempted the task of legislating in detail for all phases of human life—clerical, ecclesiastical, social, domestic—from the cradle to the grave by the sacramental decisions of the priesthood. It invaded the realm of the common law and threatened to completely set it aside. The Church had not only its own code and its specifically religious penalties, but also its own prisons.

This body of law was an improvement upon the arbitrary and barbaric severity of princes. It, at least, started out from the principles of justice and humanity. But it degenerated into an attempt to do for the individual action of the Christian world what the Pharisees attempted to do for Jewish life. It made the huge mistake of substituting an endless number of enactments, often the inventions of casuistry, for inclusive, comprehensive moral principles. It put a crushing restraint upon the progress of thought and bound weights, heavy to be borne, upon the necks of men. It had the virtues and all the vices of the papal system. It protected the clergy in the commission of crimes by demanding that they be tried in ecclesiastical courts for all offences whatsoever. It became a mighty support for the papal claims. It confirmed and perpetuated the fiction of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals and perpetrated new forgeries. It taught that the decisions of Rome are final.1849  As Christ is above the law, even so is the pope.1850  Döllinger closes his examination of the Decretum, by pronouncing it; "filled through and through with forgery and error" and says "it entered like a mighty wedge into the older structural organization of the Church and split it apart. "

The canon law also gave its sanction to the devilish principle of ecclesiastical compulsion, declaring that physical force is to be used to coerce ecclesiastical dissidents. It justified wars against the enemies of religion and the persecution of heretics, even as Sarah, the type of the heavenly Jerusalem, persecuted her handmaid Hagar. And it declared, with Urban II., that he who kills one who is under the sentence of excommunication is not to be dealt with as a murderer.1851  These principles, set forth in clear statements, were advocated by Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen and asserted by the greatest of the popes.

At last the legalistic tyranny became too heavy for the enlightened conscience of Europe to bear, as was the case with the ceremonial law in the days of the Apostles, against which Peter protested at the council of Jerusalem and Paul in his Epistles. The Reformers raised their voices in protest against it. Into the same flames which consumed the papal bull at Wittenberg, 1520, Luther threw a copy of the canon law, the one representing the effrontery of an infallible pope, the other the intolerable arrogance of a human lawgiver in matters of religion, and both destructive of the liberty of the individual. In his Address to the Christian Nobles, Luther declared that it did not contain two lines adapted to instruct a religious man and that it includes so many dangerous regulations that the best disposition of it is to make of it a dung heap.

Even in the Catholic world its enactments have been largely superseded by the canons of the council of Trent, the papal decretals issued since, and the concordats between Catholic princes and the papal see. By virtue of his official infallibility, the pope may at any time supersede them by decisions and dispensations of his own.

The words of Goethe may be applied to the canon law:—

Es erben sich Gesetz und Rechte

Wie eine ewige Krankheit fort

Sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte

Und schleichen sich von Ort zu Ort

Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage.

§ 123. The Papal Supremacy in Church and State.

Literature: See the chapp. on Gregory VII. and Innocent III., and the works there cited.—Bernard: de consideratione, Migne, 182. 727–808.—Th. Aquinas: de regimine principum, and contra errores Graecorum. The latter ed. by *F. H. Reusch, d. 1900: D. Fälschungen in d. Tractat. d. Th. v Aq. gegen die Griechen, Munich, 1889.—The writings of Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., Gregory IX., etc. Corpus juris canonum, Friedberg’s ed.—*Mirbt: Quellen des Papstthums. —C. Lux: Constitutionum Apostolicarum de generali beneficiorum reservatione, 1265–1378, ... collectio et interpr., Wratislav, 1904.—Maassen: Primat des Bischofs von Rom, Bonn, 1853.—Schulte: D. Macht des röm. Papstthums, Prag, 2d ed., 1871,—*Döllinger-Friedrich: D. Papstthum, Munich, 1892.—*F. X. Leitner: D. hl. Th. von Aquino ueber d. unfehlbare Lehramt d. Papstes, Franf., 1872. Leitner wrote in opposition to Döllinger, and his work is of much importance,—*Bryce: Holy Rom. Emp., VI-XI.—G. B. Adams: Civilizat. during the M. A. chap. X.—W. Barry: The Papal Monarchy, 590–1303, N. Y., 1902. —*J. Haller: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, Berlin, 1903.—*A. Hauck: D. Gedanke der päpstl. Weltherrschaft bis auf Bonifaz VIII., Leip., 1904.—Ranke: Weltgesch., vol. VI.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., II. 392–419. The manuals on Canon Law by Friedberg, Hinschius, Hergenröther.

The papal assumptions of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. have already been presented (pp. 27 sqq., 152 sqq.). A large part of the history of this period is occupied by popes in the effort to realize the papal theocracy, from the opening struggle of Gregory VII. with Henry IV. to the death of Conradin, the Hohenstaufen. Their most vigorous utterances, so far as they are known, were not to summon men and nations to acts of Christian charity, but to enforce the papal jurisdiction. It is not the purpose here to repeat what has already been said, but to set forth the institution of the papacy as a realized fact and the estimate put upon it by Schoolmen and by the popular judgment.

Among the forty-one popes who occupied the chair of St. Peter from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., some, as has become evident, were men of rare ability, and occupy a place of first prominence as rulers. There were no scandals in the papal household such as there had been during the preceding period. No emperors from the North were required to descend upon Rome and remove pontiffs incompetent by reason of youth or profligacy. On the other hand, Rome had no reputation as a centre either of piety or of letters. Convents became noted for religious warmth, and Bologna, Paris, and other localities acquired a fame for intellectual culture, but Rome’s reputation was based solely upon her authority as a seat of ecclesiastical prerogative.

The sin of the popes was hierarchical pride, and yet we cannot help but be attracted by those imposing figures whose ideals of universal dominion equalled in ambition the boldest projects of the greater Roman emperors, but differed widely from theirs in the moral element which entered into them.1852

In this period the loftiest claims ever made for the papacy were realized in Western Europe. The pope was recognized as supreme in the Church over all bishops, and with some exceptions as the supreme ruler in temporal affairs. Protest there was against the application of both prerogatives, but the general sentiment of Europe supported the claims. To him belonged fulness of authority in both realms—plenitudo potestatis.

The Pope and the Church. – favorite illustration used by Innocent III. to support the claim of supremacy in the Church was drawn from the relation the head sustains to the body. As the head contains the plenitude of the forces of the body, and has dominion over it, so Peter’s successor, as the head of the Church, possesses the fulness of her prerogatives and the right of rule over her. The pope calls others to share in the care of the Church, but in such a way that there is no loss of authority to the head.1853  Innocent II., in opening the second Lateran Council, had used the same figure, and declared that no ecclesiastical dignity was lawfully held except by permission of the Roman pontiff. According to Gregory VII., he can depose and appoint bishops as he wills. The principle that the Apostolic see is subject to no human jurisdiction, stated by Gelasius, 493, was accepted by Bernard, though Bernard protested against the pope’s making his arbitrary will the law of the Church.1854  The Roman church, said Lanfranc, 1072, is, as it were, the sum of all churches, and all other churches are, as it were, parts of it. The arrangement of all church matters is only authoritative when approved by Peter’s successors.1855

The Fourth Lateran formally pronounced the Roman Church the mother and teacher of all believers, and declared its bishop to be above the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria in rank and authority. Leo IX., d. 1054, asserted this pretension against Caerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople.1856  Innocent III. vindicated it by substituting a Latin patriarch for the Greek patriarch in that venerable see. The second council of Lyons, 1274, demanded that the Greeks should sign a document acknowledging the "full primacy" of the Roman pontiff and his right to rule over the universal Church.

This theory of papal absolutism found full theological and canonical recognition from Thomas Aquinas and Gratian. Gratian declared that to disobey the pope is to disobey God.1857  Thomas reasoned that, as the bishop is head of a diocese, so there must of necessity be a supreme head uniting all dioceses and guaranteeing pure morals and teaching within the Church. The Church triumphant has one ruler, so also must the Church militant have one ruler, the pope. To the pope is committed the plenitude of power and the prelacy over the whole Church. To him belongs the right of determining what are matters of faith.1858

Bonaventura took the same ground. The pope is supreme in all matters pertaining to the Church. He is the source of authority in all that belongs to prelatic administration, yea his authority extends from the highest to the humblest member of the Church.1859  Great bishops might have their disputes with the Apostolic see, but, in the end, they yielded to its claim of supreme jurisdiction. So it was with Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. He declared, "I know and know full well, that our lord, the pope, has authority to freely act concerning all ecclesiastical benefices."1860

Clement IV. was simply expressing the general opinion of Latin Christendom, when he claimed for the Roman pontiff the "full right to dispose of all churches, ecclesiastical dignities, positions, and benefices."1861

Theoretically it is a disputed point whether an oecumenical council or the pope was regarded as supreme. But, in fact, popes controlled the legislation of the general Councils in this period as though they were supreme, and they fixed the legislation of the Church, as was the case with Gregory IX. The relative authority of pope and council did not become an urgent question till the thirteenth century.

The pope also claimed the right to levy taxes at will on all portions of the Church. This claim, definitely made by the popes of the second half of the thirteenth century, led to the scandalous abuses of the fourteenth century which shocked the moral sense of Christendom and finally called forth the Reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel.

Beginning with Innocent III., it became the fixed custom for the pope to speak of himself as the vicar of Christ and the vicar of God. He was henceforth exclusively addressed as "holiness" or "most holy"—sanctitas or sanctissimus.1862

The Pope and the Individual. – For Cyprian’s motto, "there is no salvation outside of the Church," was substituted, there is no salvation outside of the Roman Church. It was distinctly stated that all who refuse subjection to the pope are heretics.1863  From the pope’s authority to loose and bind no human being is exempted. Nothing is exempted from his jurisdiction.1864

The Pope and the State. – England, Poland, Norway, and Sweden, Portugal, Aragon, Naples, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, not to speak of portions of Central Italy, were in this period, for a longer or shorter time, fiefs of the Apostolic see. In 1299, the same claim was made over Scotland. The nations from Edessa to Scotland and from Castile to Riga were reminded that Rome was the throbbing centre of divinely bequeathed authority. The islands of the West were its to bestow. To Peter was given, so Innocent wrote, not only the universal Church, but the whole earth that he might rule it.1865  His practice, as we have seen, followed his pen. There was a time when the pope recognized the superior authority of the emperor, as did Gregory the Great in 593.1866  Peter Damiani, writing in the age of Gregory VII., recognized the distinction and coordination of the two swords and the two realms.1867  But another conception took its place, the subordination of all civil authority under the pope. To depose princes, to absolve subjects from allegiance, to actively foment rebellion as against Frederick II., to divert lands as in Southern France, to give away crowns, to extort by threat of the severest ecclesiastical penalties the payment of tribute, to punish religious dissenters with perpetual imprisonment or turn them over to the secular authorities, knowing death would be the punishment, to send and consecrate crusading armies, and to invade the realm of the civil court, usurp its authority, and annul a nation’s code, as in the case of Magna Charta,—these were the high prerogatives actually exercised by the papacy. The decision rendered on the field of Roncaglia by the jurists of Bologna, asserting the independent rights of the empire, was only an episode, and popes snapped their fingers at the academic impertinence. Now and then the wearers of the tiara were defeated, but they never ceased to insist upon the divine claims of their office. In vain did emperors, like Frederick II., appeal to the Scriptures as giving no countenance to the principle that popes have the right to punish kings and deprive them of their kingdoms.

The declarations of the popes were clear and positive. The figures employed by Gregory VII., comparing the two realms to gold and lead, sun and moon, soul and body, Innocent elaborated and pressed. Gregory asserted that it rested upon him to give account for all the kingdoms of God. 1868  To him had been committed universal dominion—regimen universale.1869 Innocent III. found in Melchizedek, the priest-king, the full type of the pope combining in himself the sacerdotal and regal functions.

Men of less originality and moral power could do no more than reaffirm the claims of these two master rulers and repeat their metaphors. Of these no one had more self-assurance than Gregory IX., who, at an age when most men are decrepit, bravely opposed to Frederick II,’s plans the fiction of the Donation of Constantine. Was not the Roman sceptre committed to the Apostolic see by the first Christian emperor, and did not the Apostolic see transfer the empire from the Greeks to the Germans, Charlemagne and Frederick himself being the successors of Arcadius, Valentinian, Theodosius, and the other Christian emperors of Rome.1870  But Innocent IV., 1254, returned to the position assumed by Hildebrand, that the papacy does not depend upon Constantine for secular dominion, as Peter received it directly from God.1871

When the struggle with the Hohenstaufen had been brought to a close, and peace established by the elevation of Rudolf of Hapsburg to the imperial throne, Gregory X. wrote to Rudolf: "If the sacred chair is vacant, the empire lacks the dispenser of salvation; if the throne is empty, the Church is defenceless before her persecutors. It is the duty of the Church’s ruler to maintain kings in their office, and of kings to protect the rights of the Church."  This was a mild statement of the supremacy of the Apostolic see. It remained for Boniface VIII., in his famous bull, unam sanctam, 1302, to state exactly, though somewhat brusquely, what his predecessors from Hildebrand, and indeed from Nicolas I., had claimed—supreme right to both swords, the spiritual and the temporal, with the one ruling the souls of men and with the other their temporal concerns.

These claims were advocated in special treatises by Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, two of the foremost churchmen of all the Christian centuries. Bernard was the friend of popes and the ruling spirit of Europe during the pontificates of Innocent II. and Eugenius III. the mightiest moral force of his age. Thomas Aquinas wrote as a theologian and with him began the separate treatment of the papacy in systems of theology. In his Rule of Princes and against the Errors of the Greeks, Thomas unequivocally sets forth the supremacy of the Apostolic see over the State as well as in the universal Church. As for Bernard, both Ultramontane and Gallican claim his authority, but there are expressions in his work addressed to Eugenius III., De consideratione, which admit of no other fair interpretation than that the pope is supreme in both realms.

Bernard’s treatise, filling eighty compact columns in the edition of Migne, summons Eugenius, whom he addresses as his spiritual son, to reflect in four directions: upon himself, upon that which is beneath him, upon that which is around about him, and upon that which is above him. Such a voice of warning and admonition has seldom been heard by the occupant of a throne. The author was writing, probably, in the very last year of his life.

Meditating upon himself, it became the pope to remember that he was raised to his office not for the sake of ruling but of being a prophet, not to make show of power but to have care of the churches. The pope is greatest only as he shows himself to be a servant. As pontiff, he is heir of the Apostles, the prince of bishops. He is in the line of the primacy of Abel, Abraham, Melchizedek, Moses, Aaron, Samuel, and Peter. To him belong the keys. Others are intrusted with single flocks, he is pastor of all the sheep and the pastor of pastors. Even bishops he may depose and exclude from the kingdom of heaven. And yet Eugenius is a man. Pope though he is, he is vile as the vilest ashes. Change of position effected no change of person. Even the king, David, became a fool.

The things beneath the pope are the Church and all men to whom the Gospel should be preached.

The things around about the pope are the cardinals and the entire papal household. Here, greed and ambition are to be rebuked, the noise of appealed judicial cases is to be hushed, worthy officials are to be chosen. The Romans are a bad set, flattering the pontiff for what they can make out of his administration. A man who strives after godliness they look upon as a hypocrite.

The faithful counsellor waxed eloquent in describing the ideal pope. He is one of the bishops, not their lord. He is the brother of all, loving God. He is set to be a pattern of righteousness, a defender of the truth, the advocate of the poor, the refuge of the oppressed. He is the priest of the Highest, the vicar of Christ, the anointed of the Lord, the God of Pharaoh; that is, he has authority over disobedient princes.

Bernard distinctly grants the two swords to the pope, who himself draws the spiritual sword and by his wink commands the worldly sword to be unsheathed.1872  It is true he lays stress upon Peter’s Apostolic simplicity and poverty. Peter wore no gems, was attended by no bodyguard, and sat on no white horse. In adopting such outward show "the popes had followed Constantine, not the Apostle."  It is also true that Bernard follows his generation in making the pope the viceregent of God on earth.1873

The views of Thomas Aquinas have already received notice (p. 673). His statements are so positive as to admit of no doubt as to their meaning. In the pope resides the plenitude of power. To the Roman Church obedience is due as to Christ.1874  These are assertions made in his treatise against the errors of the Greeks written at a time when the second council of Lyons was impending and measures were being taken to heal the schism between the East and the West. The pope is both king and priest, and the temporal realm gets its authority from Peter and his successors.1875  Thomas went further still. He declared for the infallibility of the pope. In confirmation of this view he quoted spurious writings of Cyril, but also genuine passages from the Fathers.1876

The popular opinion current among priests and monks was no doubt accurately expressed by Caesar of Heisterbach at the beginning of the thirteenth century when he compared the Church to the firmament, the pope to the sun, the emperor to the moon, the bishops to the stars, the clergy to the day, and the laity to the night.

We stand amazed at the vastness of such claims, but there can be no doubt that they were sincerely believed by popes who asserted them and by theologians and people. The supremacy of the Roman pontiff in the Church and over the State was a fixed conviction. The passage, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s, quoted to-day for the separation of the two realms, was quoted then but with another interpretation. The Church was defined, as it had been defined by Augustine, as the university of believers by Hugo of St. Victor,1877 — universitas fidelium, — or as the congregation of the faithful confessing Christ and the arsenal of the sacraments by Alanus de Insulis.1878  But the idea of the individual liberty of the Christian and his immediate responsibility to Christ, as revealed through the New Testament, had no hold. As a temporary expedient, the fiction of papal sovereignty had some advantage in binding together the disturbed and warring parts of European society. The dread of the decisions of the supreme pontiff held wild and lawless temporal rulers in check. But the theory, as a principle of divine appointment and permanent application, is untenable and pernicious. The states of Europe have long since outgrown it and the Protestant communions of Christendom can never be expected to yield obedience to one who claims to be the vicar of Christ, however willing they may be to show respect to any Roman bishop who exhibits the spirit of Christ as they did to Leo XIII.

§ 124. The Pope and the Curia.

Literature: For the election of a pope.—The text of the laws of Nicolas II. and Gregory X. is given in Mirbt: Quellen, 57 sqq., 146, Friedberg’s ed. of Gratian, I. 78 sq.—W. C. Cartwright: The Papal Conclave, Edinb., 1868.—Zöpffel: D. Papstwahlen etc. vom 11–15. Jahrh., Götting., 1871.—T. A. Trollope: The Papal Conclaves as they were and as they are, Lond., 1876.—L. Lector: Le conclave, etc., Paris, 1894.—Hefele-Knöpfler, IV. 800–826; VI. 146 sqq.—Schwane: Dogmengesch., pp. 522–589.—Friedberg: Kirchenrecht, pp. 165 sqq.—Hergenröther, Kirchenrecht, pp. 267–302.—Artt. Papstwahl., in Herzog, XI. 213–217, by Hinschius and Wetzer-Welte, IX. 1442–1461.

For the financial policy of the curia.—B. P. Woker: D. kirchl. Finanzwesen d. Päpste, Nördl., 1878.—Fabre: Le libre censuum de l’église Romaine, Paris, 1892.—*M. Tangl: D. Taxenwesen der päpstl. Kanzlei vom 13. bis zur Mitte des 15. Jahrh., Innsbr., 1892.—*J. P. Kirsch: Die Finanzverwaltung des Kardinalkollegiums im XIII. und XIV. Jahrh., Munster, 1895.—*P. M. Baumgarten: Untersuchungen und Urkunden über die Camera Collegii Cardinalium, 1295–1437, Leip., 1898.—*A. Gottlob: D. päpstl. Kreuzzugssteuern des 13. Jahrh., Heiligens., 1892; *D. Servitientaxe im 13. Jahrh., Stuttg., 1903.—*O. Jensen: D. englische Peterspfennig, Heidelb., 1903.—Haller: Papsttum u. Kirchenreform, Berlin, 1903.—Hurter: Inn. III., IV. 161 sqq.—For add’l lit. bearing on the financial policy of the popes, especially in the 14th century, see Part II. of this vol. under John XXII.

The curia is the designation given to the cardinals and minor officials of the papal household. Its importance increased greatly in this period through the centralization of authority in Rome. The pope was forced to employ an army of notaries, advocates, procurators, and other officials to share, with him the burdens of the vast amount of business brought to his attention.

In a restricted sense, the word "curia" is applied to the college of cardinals. This body came to sustain to the pope a relation similar to the relation sustained by the chapter to the bishop and a cabinet to a prince. At the oecumenical councils of Lyons, 1245 and 1274, its members were given precedence over all other ecclesiastical dignitaries.

The legislation fixing the mode of choosing the pope originated in this period with Nicolas II., speaking through the council of Rome 1059, and Gregory X., speaking through the second council of Lyons, 1274. From the ninth century, the emperor had claimed the right to confirm or veto papal elections, a right set aside under the influence of Gregory VII. The law of Nicolas, conforming to Gregory’s views, confined the right of election to the cardinals, and this became their primary function. It marks an important step in the complete independence of the papacy, though it was not strictly enforced till after its confirmation by Alexander III, at the Third Lateran, 1179. A majority of two-thirds of the cardinals was made necessary for an election. An important provision made papal elections conducted outside the city of Rome valid.

More precise regulations were shown to be necessary by the long pontifical vacancy of nearly three years following the death of Clement IV. (d. 1268). The law, as perfected under Gregory X., is, with slight modifications, still in force. It provides that, within ten days of a pope’s decease and in the same building where he expired, the cardinals shall assemble to choose a successor. The conclave, —from clavis, meaning key,—or room of meeting, has given its name to the assembly itself. During the progress of the vote, the assembled ecclesiastics are kept secluded from the outside world and receive food through a window. If after three days no conclusion has been reached, the fare is reduced to a single dish for supper and a single dish for dinner. Should eight days pass without a choice, the fare is reduced to bread and wine. The secular authorities are intrusted with the duty of guarding the conclave against interruption and violence.

The committees, or congregations, into which the cardinals are now grouped is of late origin. The oldest, the Holy Office or Congregation of the Inquisition, was established 1542. The red hat was conferred upon them, as a sign of their office, by Innocent IV., 1245; the purple mantle, two hundred years later, by Paul II., 1464. They wear a sapphire ring and by the enactment of Urban VIII., 1630, are addressed as "Eminence."  In 1586 their number was limited by Sixtus V. to seventy. The exact membership within this limit is dependent upon the pleasure of the reigning pontiff. The largest number at any time was under Pius IV., 1559, when there were seventy-six. In the latter half of the thirteenth century the number often ran very low and at one time was reduced to seven. Since Urban VI., 1378–1382, none but a cardinal has been elevated to the papal dignity. The pope’s right to abdicate is based upon the precedents of Gregory VI., 1046, Coelestin V., 1294, and Gregory XII., 1415.

The pope’s coronation and enthronement were an occasion of increasing pomp and ostentation and were usually celebrated with a procession through the city from St. Peter’s to the Lateran in which the nobility and civil authorities as well as the pope and the higher and lower clergy took part. The tiara, or triple crown, seems not to have been used till the reign of Urban V., 1362–1372. This crown is regarded as symbolical of the pope’s rule over heaven, earth, and the lower world; or of his earthly power and his power to loose for time and eternity; or of Rome, the Western patriarchate and the whole earth.

To this period belongs the development of the system of papal legates which proved to be an important instrumentality in the extention of the pope’s jurisdiction. These officials are constantly met with from the pontificate of Gregory VII. Clement IV. likened them to the Roman proconsuls. They were appointed to represent the Apostolic see on special occasions, and took precedence of the bishops in the regions to which they were sent, presided at synods, and claimed for themselves the respect due to the pope himself.

Gregory VII., in commending a legate, quoted Luke 10:16, "whosoever heareth you, heareth me also."1879  He was represented by Cardinal Hugo in Spain and by other legates in Sardinia, France, Denmark, Poland, and England.1880  Hildebrand himself had represented the popes on special missions, and Adrian IV. won distinction by his successful administration of the legatine office in Northern Europe. Papal legates were present at the coronation of William the Conqueror, 1070.

Legates had the reputation of living like princes and depended for their support upon the countries to which they were despatched. Their encroachment upon the prerogatives of the episcopate and their demands for money called forth bitter complaint from one end of Europe to the other. Barbarossa wrote Adrian IV., refusing to receive the papal legates because they came to him as plunderers and not as priests.1881  John of Salisbury and Matthew Paris joined St. Bernard in condemning their assumption and rapacity. Bernard succeeded in finding only two cases of incorruptible legates. One, Martin, who had been sent to Dacia, returned to Italy so poor that he could with difficulty get to Florence and would have had to foot it from there to Rome but for the loan of a horse. Bernard felt his description would be regarded as an idle tale, a legate coming back from the land of gold without gold and traversing the land of silver without possessing silver!  The other case was the legate Gaufrid of Aquitaine who would not accept even fish and vegetables without paying for them so that no one might be able to say, "we have made Abraham rich," Gen. 14:23.1882

Salimbene, the genial Franciscan chronicler, also gives us a dark picture of papal legates of Northern Italy, some of whom he had known personally. He gives the names of twelve, four of whom he specially accuses of unchastity, including Ugolino, afterwards Gregory IX., and mentioning some of their children by name. Two of them were hard drinkers. He makes the general charge that legates "rob the churches and carry off whatsoever they can."1883

As the ultimate legal tribunal of Western Europe, the papal court assumed an importance never dreamed of before. Innumerable cases of appeal were brought before it. If the contestants had money or time, no dispute was too trivial to be contested at Rome. Appeals poured in from princes and kings, chapters and bishops, convents and abbots. Burchard of Ursperg says1884 that there was not a diocese or parish which did not have a case pending at Rome, and all parties who went had their hands full of gold and silver. There was a constant procession of litigants to the Eternal City, so that it once more became literally true that all roads led to Rome. The hours of daylight, as Bernard lamented, were not long enough for these disputes, and the hearings were continued into the night.1885  Appeals were encouraged by the curia, who found in them an inexhaustible source of revenue. Bernard, writing to Eugenius, lamented the time the chief bishop of Christendom took from his proper duties, and consumed upon the hearing of common lawsuits and personal complaints. The halls of the papal palace rang with the laws of Justinian rather than the precepts of the Lord. Bernard himself recognized the right of appeal as an incontestable privilege, but would have limited it to the complaints of widows and the poor, and excluded disputes over property.1886

The expression ad calendas Graecas became proverbial in Rome for delays of justice till one party or the other was dead or, worn out by waiting, gave what was demanded. The following example, given by Bernard, will indicate the extent to which the right of appeal was carried. A marriage ceremony in Paris was suddenly checked by a complainant appearing at the altar and making appeal to Rome against the marriage on the ground that the bride had been promised to him. The priest could not proceed, and bride and bridegroom had to live apart until the case was argued before the curia. So great did the curia’s power become that its decision was regarded as determining what was sound doctrine and what was heresy.1887

In the thirteenth century, the papal exchequer gained an offensive notoriety through the exactions of the curia, but it was not till the fourteenth century, during the period of the Avignon exile, that they aroused a clamorous protest throughout Europe. The increased expenses of the papal household called for large sums, and had to be met. The supreme pontiff has a claim upon the entire communion over which he presides, and the churches recognized its justice. It was expressed by Pascal II. when he wrote to Anselm of Canterbury, 1101: "You know well our daily necessities and our want of means. The work of the Roman church inures to the benefit of all the churches, and every church which sends her gifts thereby recognizes not only that they are in debt to her but to the whole of Christendom as well."1888  It was the scandalous abuse of this just claim that called forth bitter complaint.

As bearing on the papal revenues early in the thirteenth century, a ledger account of the income of Innocent III. has come down to us, prepared by his chamberlain, Cencius, afterwards made a cardinal.1889 Of the 633 bishoprics therein listed, 330 paid tribute of one kind or another to Rome. In addition to gifts of money, all sorts of articles are catalogued—vegetables, wine, grain, fish, wood, wax, linen, yokes of oxen, horses.—Convents, churches, and hospitals made contributions to the pope’s wants. The abbot of Reichenau, at his induction, sent two white horses, a breviary, and a book of the Gospels. A hospital in the see of Terouanne sent 100 herrings, St. Basil’s, in Rome, two loads of fish.

In the latter half of the thirteenth century, the administration of the papal finances was reduced to a system, and definite rules were adopted for the division of the revenues between the pope and the college of cardinals. We are restricted to a single tax list1890 for this period, while for the first half of the fourteenth century we have a number of detailed and highly interesting ledger accounts which give the exact prices levied for papal privileges of all sorts. There, we have fiscal contracts drawn up between prelates and papal officials and receipts such as would be expected in a careful banking system. These lists and other sources of information enable us to conclude what methods were practised from 1250–1300.

The sources from which the papal treasury drew its revenues were the annual tributes of feudal states, called census, payments made by prelates and other holders of church benefices called servitia, visitationes, and annates; and the occasional taxes levied upon the Church at large, or sections of it, for crusades and other special movements. To these usual sources of revenue are to be added assessments for all sorts of specific papal concessions and indulgences.1891

The servitia,1892 visitationes, and annates, originally freewill offerings of the clergy, had come by the end of the thirteenth century to be recognized as obligatory assessments. The annates were payments made by papal appointees of a portion of a year’s income of benefices which the pope reserved to himself the right of filling, such as prebends, canonries, and other livings. The portion was usually one-half. The visitationes were payments made by prelates; that is, archbishops, bishops, and abbots on their visits in Rome.1893  These visits were made at fixed periods, the time being settled by law. The prelates, on taking their oath of office, obligated themselves to make them.

The servitia1894 were gifts of money paid by archbishops, bishops, and abbots at their confirmation in office. They constituted a large source of revenue. The amounts to be paid in each case were computed upon the basis of a year’s income. Once fixed they remained fixed and obligatory until new valuations were made.1895  The levy was usually, though not uniformly, one-third of a year’s income.1896  The exact origin of this form of tribute is not known, but it was recognized as custom, having the force of law before the reign of Nicolas III. (1277–1280), and probably as early as the middle of the thirteenth century.1897  The tax was usually paid by the prelates on their visit in Rome, when the appointment was confirmed. Sometimes the obligation of payment was made through a commercial house.1898

The census included the taxes paid by the State of the Church, the assessments paid by convents and churches under the special protection of the Apostolic see, the tributes of the vassal—states, Naples, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and England, and the income of Peter’s Pence. The tribute of 1000 marks, promised by John for England and Ireland, was over and above the amounts due from Peter’s Pence. The tribute of Sicily in 1272, amounting to 8000 oz. of gold, was divided into two equal parts by Gregory X., one part going to the cardinals. In 1307, a demand was made upon Charles II. of Naples for back payments on this account amounting to the enormous sum of 93,340 oz. of gold. In 1350, the amount due was 88,852 oz.1899

The custom of paying Peter’s Pence, or a stipulated amount for every household, was in vogue in England, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Northern Germany, and Poland, but was never introduced into France though Gregory VII. attempted to collect it there but failed.1900  Robert Guiscard, in 1059, pledged for Sicily twelve denarii for every yoke of oxen to be paid for all time.1901  Far-off Greenland also added its contributions to this tax and it was paid under Olaf, bishop of Gardar, 1246.1902

During the second half of the thirteenth century, the custom was developed of dividing the revenues from visitationes, servitia, and census between the pope and the college of cardinals.1903  Up to that time the cardinals had depended upon benefices held in their own names and the tributes of castles and towns in the papal territory set aside for them by popes. To these sources of revenue were added during the thirteenth century livings in foreign lands which they administered, if administered at all, through vicars. A number of benefices were often held by a member of the curia, but the abuse of pluralities did not reach its largest proportions till the latter half of the fifteenth century. In 1291, Benedict Gaetani (Boniface VIII.) cardinal of S. Nicolas in Carcere, held, in addition to that living, two archdeaneries and two churches in France, three churches in Rome and prebend stalls in Langres, Chartres, Lyons, Paris, Anagni, Todi, Terouanne, and St. Peter’s in Rome.

The half portion, accruing to the cardinals, was divided equally between those dignitaries. In case a cardinal was suspended his portion was divided equally between the papal treasury and the other cardinals. It became customary at the close of the thirteenth century, in appointing a cardinal, to announce that he was entitled to a share of the servitia.1904

During the absence of a cardinal on legatine business or for other reasons, he ceased to participate in the fund.

These revenues were handled by two treasurers: a papal treasurer, or chamberlain, and a treasurer for the college of cardinals.1905  The latter held his office for life. The two offices were never vested in the same person. Each treasurer, at least from the time of Benedict XII. in the fourteenth century, kept his own set of books and at times copies of the papal ledgers were made and turned over to the cardinals. To such a system had the finances been reduced that, as early as the reign of Boniface VIII., the Registers of preceding pontiffs were consulted.1906  In the period 1295–1298, the college of cardinals received as their share, coin amounting to 85,431 gold florins, a sum equal in face value to $200,000.1907

To the pope’s own exchequer went the additional sums accruing from annates as defined above, the special taxes imposed by the pope at will, and the gifts for special papal favors. The crusades against the Saracens and Frederick II. were an inviting pretext for special taxation. They were the cause of endless friction especially in France and England, where the papal mulcts were most frequent and most bitterly complained of. The first papal levy for revenue in France seems to have been in 1188. As early as 1247 such a levy upon church property was met by a firm protest. In 1269, Louis IX. issued the pragmatic sanction which forbade papal taxes being put on church property in France without the sovereign’s consent. One of the most famous levies of mediaeval England was the Saladin tax, for a crusade against the Saracens.

The curia was already, in the time of St. Bernard, notorious for its rapacity. No sums could satisfy its greed, and upon it was heaped the blame for the incessant demands which went out from Rome. Bernard presents a vivid, if perhaps overcolored, picture of this hungry horde of officials and exclaims: "When has Rome refused gold?  Rome has been turned from a shrine into a place of traffic. The Germans travel to Rome with their pack animals laden with treasure. Silver has become as plentiful as hay. It is to Eugenius’ credit that he has turned his face against such gifts. The curia is responsible. They have made Rome a place of buying and selling. The ’Romans,’ for this was the distinctive name given to this body of officials, are a pack of shameless beggars and know not how to decline silver and gold. They are dragons and scorpions, not sheep."1908

The English chronicler, Matthew Paris, writing a century later, has on almost every other page of his chronicle a complaint against the exactions of the papal tax gatherers. One might easily get the impression from his annals, that the English Church and people existed chiefly to fill the Roman treasury. The curia, he said, was like a gulf swallowing up the resources of all classes and the revenues of bishops and abbots.1909  The contemporary Italian chronicler Salimbene has biting words for the luxury and idleness of the cardinals and reports the invectives of Hugh de Digne delivered at the council of Lyons, 1245.1910

Bernard of Cluny and other poets of the time lashed the Curia for its simony.1911  Everything at Rome had its price. Poems, ascribed to Walter Map, abound in bitter invective against the wide-open mouths of the cardinals which only money could fill. In one of them, the Ruin of Rome, the city is compared to the waters between Scylla and Charybdis, more capacious of gold than of ships."

"The meeting place of our pirates, the cardinals"

Ibi latrat Scylla rapax et Charybdis auri capax

Potius quam navium, ibi cursus galearum

Et concursus piratarum, id est cardinalium.

There, at that deep gulf, are the Syrtes and Sirens who threaten the whole world with shipwreck, the gulf which has the mouth of a man but the heart of a devil. There the cardinals sell the patrimony, wearing the aspect of Peter and having the heart of Nero, looking like lambs and having the nature of wolves.1912  In a conversation, purporting to have occurred between Thomas Aquinas and the pope, the pope said, as he showed the theologian the papal treasure-room, "Thomas, Peter could now no longer say as he once said to the lame man "silver and gold have I none.’ "  "Nor," was Thomas’ reply, "has his successor the power now to lay his hand on the lame man and heal him."

§ 125. Bishops.

Although the episcopate lost some of its ancient prestige through the centralization of power in the papacy, the incumbents of the great sees were fully as powerful as the greater secular princes. The old theory, that all bishops are the successors of Peter, had a waning number of open advocates. Bernard said1913 that, like the pope, they were pastors and porters of the kingdom of heaven and fountains of authority, but, in power and rank, they were inferior to the pope who is the immediate successor of the prince of the Apostles. A hundred years later Grosseteste still held to the equal dignity of all bishops as being successors of Peter.1914

By the law of Gregory IX., archbishops took an oath of allegiance to the pope, and Martin V. (1417–1431) extended it so as to include all bishops. Gregory IX. and other popes made this oath the ground of demands for military service. Long before this, in 1139, Innocent II. had addressed the bishops as occupying a relation to the papal see such as vassals occupy to their prince. They were to be known as "bishops by the grace of God and the Apostolic see."1915  Innocent III. distinctly stated that bishops receive their authority by the grace of the pope in whom resides the fulness of authority.1916  The confirmation of bishops by the pope was made a fixed rule by Nicolas III. (1277–1280).1917  And the ancient right which bishops had exercised of resigning their sees was now denied and the privilege made dependent upon the pope’s dispensation.

After the Concordat of Worms, 1122, the appointment of bishops by princes and other lay patrons, in theory, ceased. Pope after pope declared the right of election belonged to the cathedral chapters. But, in fact, the elections were not free. Princes ignored the rights of the chapters and dictated the nominees, or had unsatisfactory elections set aside by appealing to Rome. In France and Spain, a royal writ was required before an election could be had and the royal acceptance of the candidate was interposed as a condition of consecration. In England, in spite of the settlement between Anselm and Henry I., the rights of the chapters were constantly set aside, and disputed elections were a constant recurrence. By John’s charter, the election took place in the chapter house of the cathedral, and the king might exercise the right of nomination and confirmation.1918  In the case of disputed elections, the pope acted as umpire and might set aside all candidates and order a new election, as did Innocent III., in the case of Stephen Langton. The Fourth Lateran established the rule that a chapter, failing to reach a conclusion in three months, forfeited the right of election.

The law requiring a bishop to be at least thirty years old1919 and of legitimate birth was often set aside. Geoffrey, natural son of Henry II., was appointed bishop of Lincoln before he was twenty and for six years he enjoyed the revenues of the see without being ordained priest. He was afterwards made archbishop of York. Gerlach of Nassau was made archbishop at twenty. We have in this period no case quite so flagrant as that of Hugh of Vermandois, about 930, who, after poisoning the archbishop of Rheims, put his own son, a child of five, into the office. Disregard of the age-limit reached its height in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The larger sees were a tempting prize to noblemen, and Innocent III. felt it necessary to emphasize merit as a qualification for the episcopal office as against noble birth.

The important right of canonization was withdrawn from the bishops by Alexander III., 1181, and its exercise thenceforth restricted to the pope. Bishops were not popular material for sainthood. Otto of Bamberg is a shining exception.

From the time of Otto the Great, German bishops had the rank of princes.1920  In France, England, and other countries, they were raised to the dignity of the peerage. The three German sees of Treves, Mainz, and Cologne probably enjoyed larger revenues and authority than any other sees in Western Christendom. They gave to the territory along the Rhine the name of the "priests’ alley."  Their three prelates were among the seven electors of the empire. In Northern Germany, the see of Bremen retained its relative importance. Lund was the metropolitan see of Denmark and Scandinavia. In France, the ancient archbishoprics of Lyons and Rheims perpetuated the rank and influence of an earlier period. In England, after the see of Canterbury, Lincoln was the most influential diocese.

The cathedral and collegiate chapters grew in importance. In the earlier part of this period, it was still the custom for the canons belonging to a chapter to live under the same roof and eat at the same table. In the thirteenth century a great change took place. With the increasing wealth of the churches, the chapters threatened to assert the rights of distinct corporations, and to become virtually independent of the bishops.1921  Prebends or stalls—stallum in choro—were furnished with endowments of their own. The sons of nobles coveted and secured these places which brought emolument and influence without work. The canons lived apart by themselves, supported by the revenues of their stalls and their portion of the cathedral income. No places were more often filled by papal appointment in the way of reservation and expectance.1922

The archdeacon, still called as of old, "the bishop’s eye," assisted the bishop in matters of diocesan administration, visited churches, made investigation of the sacred robes and vessels, adjudicated disputes, presided over synods, and, as provided for by the English Constitutions of Otho, instructed the clergy on the sacraments and other subjects. This official threatened to assume the rank of bishop-coadjutor, or even to become independent of the bishop.1923  His duties are frequently dwelt upon by English, German, and French synods. The large dioceses employed a plurality of them. As early as the eleventh century, the see of Treves had five, Cologne six, and Halberstadt thirty.1924  After the Norman Conquest, the English dioceses adopted the system. Lincoln included the archdeaconries of Lincoln, Leicester, Stow, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Northampton, Oxford, and Bedford. Archdeacons were often appointed at an early age, and it became the custom for them to go abroad to pursue the study of canon law before entering upon the duties of their office. They were inclined to allow themselves more liberties than other ecclesiastics, and John of Salisbury propounded the question whether an archdeacon could be saved. Among the better known of the English archdeacons were Thomas à Becket, Walter Map, archdeacon of Oxford, and Peter of Blois, archdeacon of London. Peter complained to Innocent III. that he received no financial support from the 120 churches of London.

A hard struggle was carried on to remove the hand of the secular power from church funds. Synods, local and oecumenical, threatened severest penalties upon any interference of this kind. In 1209, Otto IV. renounced the old right of spoliation—jus spolii or jus exuviarum,—whereby the secular prince might seize the revenues of vacant sees and livings, and appropriate them to himself. The Church was exempted by Innocent III. from all civil taxation at the hands of laymen, except as it was sanctioned by pope or bishop, and lay patrons were enjoined against withholding or seizing for their own use church livings to which they had the right of appointment.1925  The goods, laid aside by clerics from their livings, were the property of the Church,1926 and in case a priest died intestate, it was, in some parts, the privilege of the bishop to administer his estate. Priests were exempt from personal taxation. For prescribed taxes, free gifts so called, were substituted. Peter of Blois commended the piety of certain princes who declined to levy taxes upon churches and other ecclesiastical institutions, even for necessary expenditures, such as the repair of city walls; but met them, if not from their own resources, from booty taken from enemies.1927

Besides the usual income accruing from landed endowments and tithes, the bishop had other sources of revenue. He might at pleasure levy taxes for the spiritual needs of his see,1928 and appropriate the first year’s income of newly appointed priests. Other additions, from the eleventh century on, came in the way of fees and collections for indulgences and gifts at the dedication of churches and altars, and the benediction of cemeteries. Abaelard speaks of the throngs which assembled on such festal occasions, and the large offerings which were, in part, payments for the relaxation of penances.1929

As for the pastoral fidelity and morals of the bishops, there was much ground for complaint, and there are also records of exemplary prelates. As a whole, the prelates were a militant class. No pope of this age wore armor as did John XII., and, at a later time, Julius II., though there were few if any pontiffs, who did not encourage war under the name of religion. Bishops and abbots were often among the bravest warriors and led their troops into the thickest of the fight both on European soil and under Syrian suns. Monks and priests wore armor and went into battle. When the pope asked for the release of the fighting bishop of Beauvais, whom Richard Coeur de Lion had seized, Richard sent him the bishop’s coat of mail clotted with blood and the words taken from the story of Joseph, "We found this. Is it not thy son’s coat?"  Archbishop Christian of Mainz (d. 1183) is said to have felled, with his own hand, nine antagonists in the Lombard war, and to have struck out the teeth of thirty others. Absalom and Andrew of Lund were famous warriors.1930  So were Odo of Bayeux, Roger of York, and Geoffrey, his successor, and many other English prelates. The abbot Henry, afterwards archbishop of Narbonne, went at the head of the armies sent against the Albigenses, and did more, wearing the monk’s garb, to encourage bloodshed than he could have done in military dress.

The chastity of the bishops was often open to just suspicion. The Christian, already referred to, a loyal supporter of Barbarossa, kept a harem.1931  When the confirmation of Geoffrey Riddel to the see of Ely was being prosecuted at the papal court, and Geoffrey was absent, the bishop of Orleans facetiously explained his absence by saying, "He hath married a wife, and therefore he cannot come."1932  The case of Henry of Liége, prince-bishop of Liége, is perhaps the most notorious case. He was cited before Gregory X. at the second council of Lyons, and forced to resign. He was an illiterate, and could not read the book presented to him. For thirty years he had led a shameless life. Two abbesses and a nun were among his concubines and he boasted of having had fourteen children in twenty-two months. The worst seems to have occurred before he was made priest. Innocent IV. had been his strong friend. Salimbene tells the popular tale of his day that the saintly Cistercian, Geoffroi de Péronne, came back from the other world and announced that if he had accepted the bishopric of Tournai, as the pope urged him to do, he would have been burning in hell. From the pages of this chronicler we have the pictures of many unworthy prelates given to wine and pleasure, but also of some who were model pastors.1933

The prelates of Germany had no better reputation than those of Italy, and Caesar of Heisterbach1934 reports the conversation of a Paris clerk, who declared that he "could believe all things, but it was not possible for him to believe that any German bishop could be saved."  When asked the reason for such a judgment, he replied, that the German prelates carried both swords, waged wars, and were more concerned about the pay of soldiers than the salvation of the souls committed to them.

The other side to this picture is not so apt to be presented. Chroniclers are more addicted to point out the scandalous lives of priests than to dwell upon clerical fidelity. There were faithful and good bishops and abbots. The names of Anselm of Canterbury and Hugh of Lincoln, Bernard and Peter the Venerable only need to be mentioned to put us on our guard against accepting the cases of unworthy and profligate prelates which have been handed down as indicating a universal rule.

§ 126. The Lower Clergy.

The cure of souls—regimen animarum — was pronounced by the Fourth Lateran, following Gregory the Great, to be the art of arts, and bishops were admonished to see to it that men capable in knowledge and of fit morals be appointed to benefices. The people were taught to respect the priest for the sake of his holy office and the fifth commandment was adduced as divine authority for submission to him.1935

The old rule was repeated, making the canonical age for consecration to the priesthood twenty-five. Councils and popes laid constant stress upon the priest’s moral obligations, such as integrity, temperance in the use of strong drink,1936 simplicity in diet and dress, abstinence from the practice of usury.1937  He was forbidden to frequent taverns, to play at dice, to attend theatrical and mimic performances, and to allow dances in church buildings and church yards.

The old rules were renewed, debarring from the sacerdotal office persons afflicted with bodily defects, and Innocent III. complained of the bishop of Angoulême for ordaining a priest who had lost a thumb.1938

Beginning with the twelfth century, the number of parishes increased with great rapidity both in the rural districts and in the towns. In German cities the division of the old parishes was encouraged by the citizens, as in Freiburg, Mainz, Worms, and Lübeck, and they insisted upon the right of choosing their pastor.1939  On the other hand, the convents were busy establishing churches and, in Germany, there were thousands under their control.1940  The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a busy time of church building.

What occurred in Germany occurred also in England. But here the endowment of churches and chapels by devout and wealthy laymen was more frequent. Such parishes, it is true, often fell to the charge of the orders, but also a large share of them to the charge of the cathedral chapters and bishops.

Clerical incomes varied fully as much in those days as they do now, if not more. The poorer German priests received from one-tenth to one-twentieth of the incomes of more fortunate rectors and canons.1941  The Fourth Lateran made small salaries responsible for a poorly trained ministry.

The clergy depended for their maintenance chiefly upon the income from lands and the tithe. The theory was that the tenth belonged to the Church, "for the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof."  The principle was extended to include the tithe of the fish-catch, the product of the chase, and the product of commerce.1942  The clergy also received fees for special Sacerdotal services from baptism to burial and rites pertaining to the soul after death. Such fees became general after the twelfth century, but not without vigorous protests against them. The Second Lateran and other synods1943 forbade priests making charges for the administration of baptism, marriage, extreme unction, and other rites, and for sepulture. The ground was taken by Innocent III. that, while gifts for such services were proper, they should be spontaneous and not forced. The Fourth Lateran bade laymen see they were not overlooked.

Priests receiving their benefices from laymen were likened to thieves who came not in by the door but climbed in some other way. The lay patron had the right of nomination—presentatio. To the bishop belonged the right of confirmation—concessio. Laymen venturing to confer a living without the consent of the ecclesiastical authority exposed themselves to the sentence of excommunication.1944  Stories were current of clerics who had bought their way to ordination and to benefices, who afterwards gnawed through their tongues in remorse.1945  The system of pluralities was practised in spite of the decrees of oecumenical and local synods.1946

The ideal of a faithful priest was not a preacher but one who administered the sacraments and other solemn rites upon the living and the dead. Restricted as the education of the priest was, it greatly surpassed that of his lay brother, and it was not so meagre as it has often been represented. There were writers who held up the ignorance of the clergy to scorn, but it is dangerous to base wide generalizations on such statements. Statements of another kind can be adduced to show that a class of priests had literary interests as wide as the age was familiar with. The schools that existed were for the training of the clergy. Synods assumed that clerics could read and prescribed that they should read their breviaries even while travelling on journeys. Peter of Blois urged them to read the Scriptures, which he called David’s harp, a plough working up the fallow field of the heart, and which he compared to drink, medicine, balsam, and a weapon. He also warned priests against allowing themselves "to be enticed away by the puerilities of heathen literature and the inventions of philosophers."  When the universities arose, a large opportunity was offered for culture and the students who attended them were clerics or men who were looking forward to holy orders. The synod of Cologne, 1260, probably struck the medium in regard to the culture of the clergy, when it declared that it did not demand eminent learning of clerics but that they know how to read and properly sing the church service.

The function of parish-preaching was not altogether neglected. Bishops were enjoined by the Fourth Lateran to appoint men capable of preaching in all cathedral and conventual churches. In the eleventh century there was scarcely a German parish in which there was not some preaching during the year, and subsequent to that time, sermons were delivered regularly.1947  The sermons were sometimes in Latin and sometimes in German. Those which are preserved abound in stories and practical lessons and show more dependence upon the Fathers than upon the Scriptures. In England and other parts of Europe sermonizing was a less common practice. English priests were required to give expositions of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the evangelical precepts, the seven works of mercy, the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven sacraments, and to cover these subjects once a quarter. Grosseteste called upon them to be diligent in visiting the sick night and day, to preach, and to carefully read the Scriptures that they might be able to give a reason for the hope that was in them.1948  In the regions infected with the Albigensian heresy, instruction was ordered given to children in the articles of the Catholic faith. The mendicant monks started out as preachers and supplied a popular demand. The ignorance of the priesthood at times called for inhibitions of preaching, as by the synod of Oxford, 1281.

Not the least important among the priest’s functions was the supervision of wills that the Church might come in for seemly remembrance. State laws in conflict with this custom were set aside. Abuses were recognized by synods, and the synod of Paris, 1212, ordered that laymen should not be compelled to make provision in their wills for the payment of thirty mortuary masses. The priest’s signature insured the validity of a will, and some synods made the failure to call in a priest to attest the last testament a ground of excommunication.1949

Turning to the priest as a member of society, the Church, with unwavering emphasis, insisted upon his independence of the secular tribunal. In the seventh century, Heraclius had granted to the clergy, even in the case of criminal offences, the right of trial in ecclesiastical courts. The Isidorian fiction fully stated this theory. These and other privileges led many to enter the minor clerical orders who had no intention of performing ecclesiastical functions. Council after council pronounced the priest’s person inviolate and upon no other matter was Innocent III. more insistent.1950  Violence offered to a priest was punished with the anathema, and civil authorities venturing to cite clerics to appear before them incurred the same penalty.1951  Such legislation did not, however, bring complete immunity from injury or exempt church property from spoliation. In England, Thomas à Becket is the most noteworthy example. A bishop of Caithness had his tongue cut out. A Spanish bishop received the same treatment at the hands of a king of Aragon. In Germany, Bishop Dietrich of Naumburg, a learned man, was murdered, 1123; as were also Conrad, bishop of Utrecht, 1099; Arnold bishop of Merseburg, 1126, and other bishops. Lawrence, archdeacon of York, was murdered in the vestibule of his church by a knight. The life of Norbert of Magdeburg was attempted twice.1952  The principle which the Church recognized in the punishment of clerical crimes was laid down by Coelestin III., 1192. Theft, homicide, perjury, or other "mortal crimes" were punished with deposition. If the priest persisted in committing offences, he was excommunicated and, at last, turned over to the state for punishment.1953  There was no little complaint against the application of the canon law. Roger Bacon complained bitterly against the time given to its study in Bologna. He declared its study was obliterating the distinction between the clerical and lay professions. The doctors of law called themselves clerks though they had not the tonsure and took to themselves wives. He demanded that, if clergymen and laymen were to be subjected to the same law, it should be the law of England for Englishmen, and of France for Frenchmen and not the law of Lombardy.

Clerical manners were a constant subject of conciliar action. Ordination afforded no immunity from vanity and love of ostentation. The extravagance of bishops and other clergy in dress and ornaments gave rise to much scandal. The Third Lateran sought to check vain display by forbidding a retinue of more than 40 or 50 horse to archbishops, 25 to cardinals, and 20 or 30 to bishops. Archdeacons were reduced to the paltry number of 5 or 7 and deans to 2. There was some excuse for retinues in an age of violence with no provision for public police. The chase had its peculiar fascination and bishops were forbidden to take hounds or falcons with them on their journeys of visitation. Dogs and hunting were in localities denied to clergymen altogether.1954

The fondness of the clergy for gay apparel was often rebuked. In Southern France, clergymen ventured to wear red and green colors and to substitute for the close-fitting garment the graceful and flowing open robe. They followed the fashions of the times in ornamenting themselves with buckles and belts of gold and silver and hid the tonsure by wearing their hair long. They affected the latest styles of shoes and paraded about in silk gloves and gilded spurs, with gilded breastbands on their horses and on gilded saddles.1955

Full as the atmosphere of the age was of war-clamor, and many warring prelates as there were, the legislation of the Church was against a fighting clergy. The wearing of swords and dirks and of a military dress was repeatedly forbidden to them. Wars for the extermination of heresy were in a different category from feuds among Catholic Christians. It was in regard to the former that Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, said, "As for the enemies of Christ, we shall slay them and purify the face of the earth, that the whole world may be subject to one Catholic Church and become one fold and one shepherd."1956  Priests were prohibited from attending executions, and also tournaments and duels, on the ground that these contests presented the possibility of untimely death to the contestants. In case a combatant received a mortal wound he was entitled to the sacrament but was denied ecclesiastical burial.1957  The Fourth Lateran solemnly enjoined ecclesiastics against pronouncing the death sentence or executing it, and the same council forbade surgery also, so far as it involved cutting and burning, to deacons and subdeacons as well as to priests.

The period opens with the dark picture of clerical morals by Peter Damiani who likened them to the morals of the Cities of the Plain. Bernard, a hundred years later, in condemning clergymen for the use of military dress, declared they had neither the courage of the soldier nor the virtues of the clergyman.1958  A hundred years later still Grosseteste, in describing the low moral and religious state of the English people, made the immoral lives of the clergy responsible for it.

Dice were played even on the altars of Notre Dame, Paris,1959 and dice-playing is often forbidden to priests in the acts of synods. Wine-drinking to excess was also a fault of the clergy, and Salimbene knew Italian clerics who sold wine and kept taverns.1960  According to Caesar of Heisterbach, wine often flowed at the dedication of churches. A Devonshire priest was accustomed to brew his beer in the church-building.

The most famous passage of all is the passage in which Jacob de Vitry describes conditions in Paris. Fornication among clergymen, he says, was considered no sin. Loose women paraded the streets and, as it were by force, drew them to their lodgings. And if they refused, the women pointed the finger at them, crying "Sodomites."  Things were so bad and the leprosy so incurable that it was considered honorable to have one or more concubines. In the same building, school was held upstairs and prostitutes lived below. In the upper story masters read and in the lower story loose women plied their trade. In one part of the building women and their procurors disputed and in another part the clergy held forth in their disputations.1961

The Fourth Lateran arraigned bishops for spending the nights in revelry and wantonness. The archbishopric of Rouen was occupied for 113 years by three prelates of scandalous fame. Two of them were bastards of the ducal house and all rivalled or excelled the barons round about in turbulence and license. A notorious case in high places was that of the papal legate, Cardinal John of Crema. He held a council which forbade priests and the lower clergy to have wives or concubines; but, sent to the bishop of Durham to remonstrate with him over the debauchery which ruled in his palace, the cardinal himself yielded to a woman whom the bishop provided. The bishop regarded it as a jest when he pointed out the cardinal in the act of fornication.

Marriage and concubinage continued to be practised by the clergy in spite of the Hildebrandian legislation. Innocent III. agreed with Hildebrand that a priest with a family is divided in his affections and cannot give to God and the Church his full allegiance in time and thought.1962  Writers, like Salimbene and Caesar of Heisterbach, were severe on married priests. According to the Fourth Lateran, bishops not only violated the canons of the Church themselves by committing the "crime of the flesh," as Gregory VII. called it, but winked at their violation by priests for a money-compensation. A common saying among priests was, si non caste, caute; that is, "if not chaste, at least cautious."  In this way Paul’s words were misinterpreted when he said, "If they cannot contain, let them marry."  Bonaventura, who knew the facts, declared "that very many of the clergy are notoriously unchaste, keeping concubines in their houses and elsewhere or notoriously sinning here and there with many persons."1963

Conditions must have been bad indeed, if they equalled the priestly customs of the fourteenth century and the example set by the popes in the latter half of the fifteenth. Who will forget the example and mistresses of the first and only Scotch cardinal, Archbishop Beaton, who condemned Patrick Hamilton and Wishart to death!  Were not the Swiss Reformers Bullinger and Leo Jud sons of priests, and was not Zwingli, in spite of his offence against the law of continence, in good standing so long as he remained in the papal communion!

The violation of the ecclesiastical law of celibacy was, however, by no means in all cases a violation of the moral law. Without the ceremony of marriage, many a priest lived honorably with the woman he had chosen, and cared for and protected his family. The Roman pontiff’s ordinance, setting aside an appointment of the Almighty, was one of the most offensive pieces of papal legislation and did unspeakable injury to the Church.

§ 127. The Councils.

The legislation of the oecumenical and local synods of this age gives the most impressive evidence of the moral ideals of the Church and its effort to introduce moral reforms. The large number of councils, as compared with the period just before 1050, was a healthy sign.1964  Their time was largely taken up with disciplinary and moral subjects. They legislated upon the relation of the Church to the empire, and the election of the pope, against simony and clerical marriage, upon heresy and measures for its repression, upon the crusades and the truce of God, on the details of clerical conduct and dress, and upon the rites of worship. The doctrine of transubstantiation, defined at the Fourth Lateran, was the only doctrine which was added by oecumenical authority to the list of the great dogmas handed down from the early Church.

At one period one subject, and at another, another subject, was prominent. The character of the legislation also differed with the locality. The synods in Rome, during the latter half of the eleventh century, discussed clerical celibacy, simony, and investiture by laymen. The synods of Southern France and Spain, from the year 1200, abound in decrees upon the subject of heresy. The synods of England and Germany were more concerned about customs of worship and clerical conduct.

A notable feature is the attendance of popes on synods held outside of Rome. Leo IX. attended synods in France and Germany, as well as in Italy. Urban II. presided at the great synod of Clermont, 1095. Innocent II. attended a number of synods outside of Rome. Alexander III. was present at the important synod of Tours, where Thomas à Becket sat at his right. Lucius III. presided at the council of Verona, 1184. Innocent IV. and Gregory X. were present at the first and second councils of Lyons. Such synods had double weight from the presence of the supreme head of Christendom. The synods may be divided into three classes: —

I.  Local Synods, 1050–1122.—The synods held in this, the Hildebrandian period, were a symptom of a new era in Church history. The chief synods were held in Rome and, beginning with 1049, they carried through the reformatory legislation, enforcing clerical celibacy and forbidding simony. The legislation against lay-investiture culminated in the Lenten synods at Rome, 1074 and 1075, presided over by Gregory VII. Local synods, especially in France and England, repeated this legislation. The method of electing a pope was settled by the Roman synod held by Nicolas, and confirmed by the Third Lateran, 1179. The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, as advocated by Berengar, d. 1088, called forth action at Rome and Vercelli, 1050, and again at Rome, 1059 and 1079. The legislation bearing on the conquest of the Holy Places was inaugurated at Piacenza and more seriously at the synod of Clermont, both held in 1095.

II.  The Oecumenical Councils.—Six general councils were held within a period of one hundred and fifty years, 1123–1274, as against eight held between 325–869, or a period of five hundred years. The first four go by the name of the Lateran Councils, from the Lateran in Rome, where they assembled. The last two were held in Lyons. They were called by the popes, and temporal sovereigns had nothing to do in summoning them.1965  They were presided over by popes, and the dockets of business were prepared by papal direction. The pope ratified their decrees. The first canon of the First Lateran ran, "by the authority of the Apostolic see, we forbid," etc., — auctoritate sedis apostol. prohibemus. It is true that the assent of the assembled prelates was assumed or, if expressly mentioned, the formula ran, "with the assent of the holy synod," or "the holy synod being in session,"—sacro approbante concilio, or sacro praesente concilio. So it was with the Fourth Lateran. The six oecumenical councils are:—

1. The First Lateran, 1123, called by Calixtus II., is listed by the Latins as the Ninth oecumenical council. Its chief business was to ratify the Concordat of Worms. It was the first oecumenical council to forbid the marriage of priests. It renewed Urban II.’s legislation granting indulgences to the Crusaders.

2. The Second Lateran, 1139, opened with an address by Innocent II., consummated the close of the recent papal schism and pronounced against the errors of Arnold of Brescia.

3. The Third Lateran, 1179, under the presidency of Alexander III., celebrated the restoration of peace between the Church and the empire and, falling back on the canon of the Second Lateran, legislated against the Cathari and Patarenes. It ordered separate churches and burial-grounds for lepers. Two hundred and eighty-seven, or, according to other reports, three hundred or three hundred and ninety-six bishops attended.

4. The Fourth Lateran or Twelfth oecumenical, 1215, marks an epoch in the Middle Ages. It established the Inquisition and formulated the doctrine of transubstantiation, the two most far-reaching decrees of the mediaeval Church. Innocent III. dominated the council, and its disciplinary and moral canons are on a high plane and would of themselves have made the assemblage notable. It was here that the matter of Raymund of Toulouse was adjudicated, and here the crusade was appointed for 1217 which afterwards gave Frederick II. and Innocent’s two immediate successors so much trouble. A novel feature was the attendance of a number of Latin patriarchs from the East, possessing meagre authority, but venerable titles. The decisions of the council were quoted as authoritative by Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas.1966

5. The First council of Lyons, 1245, presided over by Innocent IV., has its fame from the prosecution and deposition of the emperor Frederick II. It also took up the distressed condition of Jerusalem and the menace of the Tartars to Eastern Europe.

6. The Second council of Lyons or the Fourteenth oecumenical, 1274, was summoned by Gregory X., and attended by five hundred bishops and one thousand other ecclesiastics. Gregory opened the sessions with an address as Innocent III. had opened the Fourth Lateran and Innocent IV. the First council of Lyons. The first of its thirty-one canons reaffirmed the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. It repeated the legislation of the Fourth Lateran, prohibiting the institution of new monastic orders. The council’s chief significance was the attempt to reunite the churches of the West and the East, the latter being represented by an imposing delegation.

These oecumenical assemblages have their importance from the questions they discussed and the personalities they brought together. They had an important influence in uniting all parts of Western Christendom and in developing the attachment to the Apostolic see, as the norm of Church unity.

III. Local Synods, 1122–1294.—Some of the local synods of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are of even more importance than some of the oecumenical councils of the same period. If they were to be characterized for a single subject of legislation, it would be the repression of heresy. Some of them had far more than a local significance, as, for example, the synod of Tours, 1163, when Spain, Sicily, Italy, England, Scotland, and Ireland were represented as well as France. Alexander III. and seventeen cardinals were present. The synod legislated against heresy.

The synod of Verona, 1184, passed a lengthy and notable decree concerning the trial and punishment of heretics. It heard the plea of the Waldenses, but declined to grant it.

The synod of Treves, 1227, passed important canons bearing on the administration of the sacraments.

The synod of Toulouse, 1229, presided over by the papal legate, celebrated the close of the Albigensian crusades and perfected the code of the Inquisition. It has an unenviable distinction among the great synods on account of its decree forbidding laymen to have the Bible in their possession.

These synods were great events, enlightening the age and stirring up thought. Unwholesome as were their measures against ecclesiastical dissent and on certain other subjects, their legislation was, upon the whole, in the right direction of purity of morals and the rights of the people.

§ 128. Church and Clergy in England.

Literature: I. The works of William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover, M. Paris, Richard of Hoveden, John of Salisbury, Walter Map, Giraldus Cambrensis, Ordericus Vitalis, Peter of Blois, Grosseteste, etc.

II. Phillimore: The Eccles. Law of Engl., 2 vols. Lond., 1873, Supplem., 1870.—Stubbs: Select Charters of Engl. Const. Hist., 8th ed., Oxf., 1896; Constit. Hist. of Engl., 6th ed., 1897, 3 vols.—Gee and Hardy: Documents Illustr. of Engl. Ch. Hist., Lond., 1896.—F. W. Maitland: Rom. Canon Law in the Ch. of Engl., Lond., 1898.—Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars.—H. D. Traill: Social England, a Record of the Progress of the People, etc., 2 vols. Lond., 2d ed., 1894.—W. R. W. Stephens: A Hist. of the Engl. Church, 1066–1272, Lond., 1901. Freeman: The Norman Conquest and William Rufus.—Histt. of England and the Ch. of England, etc.—Dict. of Nat. Biogr.

With the Norman Conquest the Roman curia began to manifest anxious concern for the English Church and to reach out for her revenues. Reverent as the Saxon kings had been towards the pope, as was shown in their visits to Rome and the payment of Peter’s Pence, the wild condition of the country during the invasions of the Danes offered little attraction to the Church rulers of the South. Henry Of Huntingdon called the England of his day—the twelfth century—"Merrie England"1967 and said that Englishmen were a free people, free in spirit and free in tongue, with even more freedom in giving, having abundance for themselves and something to spare for their neighbors across the sea. The Romans were quick to find this out and treated the English Church as a rich mine to be worked. It is probable that in no other part of Christendom were such constant and unblushing demands made upon church patronage and goods.1968  On the other hand, in no country was so persistent a struggle maintained for popular rights in Church and state against the impositions both of pope and crown.

Among the first distinct papal encroachments upon the liberties of the English Church were the appointment of legates and the demand that the archbishop go to Rome to receive the pallium. The first legates to England seem to have been sent at the invitation of William the Conqueror, 1070, to take up the case of Stigand, the Saxon archbishop of Canterbury, who had espoused the cause of the antipope. It was not long before the appointment of foreign legates was resisted and the pope, after the refusal to receive several of his representatives, was forced to yield and made it a rule to associate the legatine authority with the archbishops of Canterbury and York,—a rule, however, which had many exceptions. The legates of English birth were called legati nati in distinction from the foreign appointees, called le nati a latere.

The pope’s right to interfere in the appointment of bishops and to fill benefices was asserted soon after the Conqueror’s death. In such matters, the king showed an almost equally strong hand. Again and again the pope quashed the elections of chapters either upon his own motion or at the king’s appeal. Eugenius III. set aside William, canonically chosen archbishop of York. Stephen Langton 1207, Edmund Rich 1234, the Franciscan Kilwardby 1273, Peckham 1279, and Reynolds 1313, all archbishops of Canterbury, were substituted for the candidates canonically elected. Bonaventura was substituted for William Langton, elected archbishop of York, 1264. Such cases were constantly recurring. Bishops, already consecrated, were set aside by the pope in virtue of his "fulness of power," as was the case when Richard de Bury, d. 1345, was substituted for Robert Graystanes in the see of Durham.

This violence, done to the rights of the chapters, led to a vast amount of litigation. Almost every bishop had to fight a battle at Rome before he obtained his see. Between 1215–1264 not fewer than thirty cases of contested episcopal elections were carried to Rome. It was a bad day when the pope or the king could not find a dissident minority in a chapter and, through appeals, secure a hearing at Rome and finally a reversal of the chapter’s decision. Of the four hundred and seventy decretals of Alexander III., accepted by Gregory IX., about one hundred and eighty were directed to England.1969

The regular appointment to benefices was also invalidated by the pernicious custom of papal reservations which threatened even in this period to include every high office in the English Church. A little later, in 1317, the supreme pontiff reserved for his own appointment the sees of Worcester, Hereford, Durham, and Rochester; in 1320 Lincoln and Winchester; in 1322, 1323 Lichfield and Winchester; 1325 Carlisle and Norwich; 1327 Worcester, Exeter, and Hereford.1970

Another way by which the pope asserted his overlordship in the English Church was the translation of a bishop from one see to another. This, said Matthew Paris (V. 228), "became custom so that one church seemed to be the paramour of the other."

The English clergy and the barons looked upon these practices with disfavor, and, as at the Mad Parliament, 1258, demanded the freedom of capitular elections. The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164, clearly expressed the national opposition, but the pope continued to go his own way.

The convents, for the most part, escaped papal interference in the election of their abbots. The reason is to be sought in the support which the orders gave to the pope in his struggle to reduce the episcopate to subjection. Nor did the crown venture to interfere, repelled, no doubt, by the compact organization of the monastic orders, the order rising to the defence of an attacked abbey.

The participation of the English bishops in the House of Lords was based originally upon the tax of scutage. From this followed their equal right to deliberate upon public affairs with the barons. At a time when this body contained less than forty lay peers, it included twenty bishops and twenty-six abbots. Most of the bishops and abbots, it would seem, had houses in London, which had taken the place of Winchester as the centre of national life.1971  As the emoluments of the higher ecclesiastical dignities increased, they were sought and secured by noblemen for their sons and by members of the royal house. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, d. 1097, was the brother of William the Conqueror. Two of Stephen’s nephews were made respectively bishop of Durham and archbishop of York. Ethelmar, brother of Henry III., received the see of Winchester, 1250,1972 and the archbishopric of Canterbury was provided for Henry’s uncle, Boniface. Geoffrey, son of Henry II., was made bishop of Lincoln when a lad, and afterwards transferred to York. Among the men of humble birth who rose to highest ecclesiastical rank were Edmund Rich and Robert Kilwardby.

The honors of canonization were reached by Hugh of Lincoln, Rich of Canterbury, and Richard of Wyche, bishop of Chichester, not to speak of Anselm and Thomas à Becket. The cases of proud and warring prelates were numerous, and the custom whereby bishops held the chief offices at the court was not adapted to develope the religious virtues. Richard Flambard, bishop of Durham under William Rufus, Hugh, bishop of Lichfield, 1188–1195, and Peter des Roches of Winchester, 1205–1238, supporter of John, are among the more flagrant examples of prelates who brought no virtues to their office and learned none. William Longchamp, bishop of Ely and favorite of Richard I., was followed by a retinue of 1000 men.1973  The council of London, 1237, presided over by the cardinal legate, Otho, reminded the bishops of their duty to "sow the word of life in the field of the Lord."  And, lest they should forget their responsibilities, they were to listen twice a year to the reading of their oath of consecration.

The English chapters were divided almost equally between the two classes of clergy, monks and seculars. To the former class belonged Canterbury, Winchester, Durham, Norwich, Coventry, Rochester, Worcester, Ely, and Bath. The chapters of York, London, Exeter, Lichfield, Wells, Hereford, Lincoln, Salisbury, Llandaff, St. Asaph, St. David’s, and Chichester were made up of secular clergy. As the chapters asserted the rights of distinct corporations, their estates were treated as distinct from those of the bishop. It not infrequently happened that the bishop lost all influence in his chapter. The dean, in case the canons were seculars, and the prior, in case they were monks, actually supplanted the bishop in the control of the cathedral when the bishop and canons were hostile to each other. The Fourth Lateran, however, recognized the superior right of the bishop to enter the church and conduct the service. The Third Lateran ordered questions in the chapter settled by a majority vote, no matter what the traditional customs had been.

The pope and the English sovereign vied with one another in appropriating the revenues of the English Church, though it is probable the pope outdid the king. In William Rufus’ reign, a high ecclesiastic was no sooner dead than a royal clerk took inventory of his goods and rents, and appropriated them for the crown. The evil was so great in Stephen’s reign that the saying ran that "Christ and his saints slept."  Sees were kept vacant that the crown might sequester their revenues. The principle of taxing ecclesiastical property cannot awaken just criticism. Levies for military equipment on the basis of scutage go back into the Saxon period. In the latter half of the twelfth century a new system came into vogue, and a sum of money was substituted. The first levy on the moveables of the clergy including tithes and offerings, called the spiritualia, seems to have been made in 1188 by Henry II. This was the famous Saladin tax intended for use against the Turks.1974  For the ransom of Richard I. even the sacred vessels and books of the clergy were taxed. Under John the taxation was on an elaborate scale, but it became even more exacting under Henry III., 1216–1272. In 1294 Edward I. threatened to outlaw the clergy if they refused to grant him a half of their revenues for his war with France. The dean of St. Paul’s remonstrated with the king for this unheard-of demand, and fell dead from the shock which the exhibition of the king’s wrath made upon him. Unwilling as the clergy may have been to pay these levies, it is said they seldom refused a tenth when parliament voted its just share. The taxes for crusades were made directly by the popes, and also through the sovereign. As late as 1288, Nicolas IV. granted Edward I. a tenth for six years for a crusade.1975

The papal receipts from England came from three sources—Peter’s Pence, the tribute of John, and special taxations. Peter’s Pence, which seems to have started with Offa II., king of Mercia, in the eighth century and was the first monetary tribute of the English people to Rome, was originally a free gift but subsequently was treated as a debt.1976  The failure to promptly meet the payment became a frequent subject of papal complaint to king and bishops. In letters to Henry I., 1115, and to the archbishop of Canterbury, Pascal reminded them that not one half of the "gift" had been paid to St. Peter. Innocent III. gave his legate sharp orders to collect it and complained that the bishops kept back part of the tax for their own use. The tax of a penny for each household was compounded for £201.7s.; but, in 1306, William de Testa, the papal legate, was commanded to ignore the change and to revert to the original levy. Beginning with the thirteenth century, the matter of collection was taken out of the hands of the bishops and placed in the hands of the papal legate. By the law of Gregory X. two subcollectors were assigned to each see with wages of 3 soldi a day, the wages being afterwards increased to 5 and 8 soldi. Peter’s Pence, with other tributes to Rome, was abolished by Henry VIII.’s law of 1534.

The tribute of one thousand marks, promised by John, was paid with great unwillingness by the nation or not paid at all. In 1275, as John XXI. reminded the English king, the payments were behind seven years. By 1301 the arrearage amounted to twelve thousand marks. It would seem as if the tax was discontinued after 1334 and, in 1366, parliament forbade its further payment and struck off all arrearages since 1334.1977  The popes, however, continued to make the claim, and the tax was paid in part or in whole.

The special taxes levied by popes were for the crusades in the East and against Frederick II. and for the expenses of the papal household. Gregory IX., 1229, with the king’s sanction, levied a tax of a tenth for himself. The extraordinary demand, made by Innocent IV., 1246, of a third of all clerical revenues for three years and a half, was refused by a notable gathering of bishops and abbots at Reading and appeal was made to a general council.1978

The most fruitful method which Rome employed for draining the revenues of the English Church was by requisition upon her benefices and special taxation of bishops and other dignitaries for their offices. The rapacity of the Roman proconsuls seemed to be revived. The first formal demand was made by Honorius III., 1226, and required that two prebends in each cathedral and two positions in each monastery be placed at the pope’s disposal. Italians were already in possession of English livings.

In 1231, Gregory IX. forbade the English bishops conferring any more prebends until positions were provided for five Romans. In 1240, the same pontiff made the cool requisition upon the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury of places for three hundred Italians.1979  It was a constant complaint that Italian succeeded Italian. And the bitter indignation was expressed in words such as Shakespeare used in his King John (Act III., Sc. 1):

"that no Italian priest

Shall tithe or toil in our dominions."

Innocent IV. was the most unblushing offender. He appointed boys to prebends, as at Salisbury, and Grosseteste spoke of some of his appointees as children, parvuli. A protest, directed to him, complained that "an endless number of Italians "held appointments in England and that they took out of the kingdom 60,000 marks yearly or more than half the amount realized by the king from the realm.1980

As early as 1256, the pope claimed the first-fruits of bishoprics, the claim to be in force for five years. Later they were made a fixed rule.1981  The papal legates could not be expected to fall behind their unscrupulous or complaisant masters. When Martin arrived in 1244, he asked for 30,000 marks and seized benefices worth more than 3000 marks a year. These officials were freely denominated indefatigable extortioners, bloodsuckers, and "wolves, whose bloody jaws were consuming the English clergy."1982  Money-getting was also esteemed the chief business of the papal representatives in Scotland.1983  Matthew Paris compared the "bloodsucking extortion" to the work of a harlot, vulgar and shameless, venally offering herself to all, and bent upon staining the purity of the English Church. The people, he says, were estranged in body, though not in heart, from the pope who acted in the spirit of a stepfather and from the Roman Church who treated England like a stepmother.1984  The popular indignation at times found vent in something more significant than words. Martin, after receiving textures, vases, furniture, and horses, as well as gold and silver, was given short shrift by the barons to get out of the kingdom. When he applied to the king for safe conduct, the king replied, "The devil give you safe conduct to hell and all the way through it."

The Norman Conquest exerted a wholesome, influence upon the Church in England, and introduced a new era of church building and the erection of monasteries and the regular and canonical observance of the church’s ritual. The thirteenth century was a notable period of church extension. The system of endowed vicarages was developed.

Hugh de Wells created several hundred vicarages and Grosseteste continued the policy and provided for their maintenance out of the revenues of the older churches. Chantries were endowed where mass was said for the repose of the souls of the dead, and in time these were often united to constitute independent vicarages or parishes. The synod of Westminster, 1102, provided for a more just treatment of the ill-paid vicars. The Constitutions of Otho forbade the tearing down of old historic buildings and the erection of new ones without the consent of the bishop.

The Normans also introduced a new era of clerical education. Before their arrival, so William of Malmesbury says,1985 the clergy were content with a slight degree of learning and could scarcely stammer the words of the sacraments. A satisfactory idea of the extent and dispersion of learning among the clergy it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. A high authority, Dr. Stubbs,1986 makes the doubtful statement that every one admitted even to minor orders must have been able to read and write. It happened, however, that bishops were rejected for failing in their examinations and others were admitted to their sees though they were unable to read.1987  As for preaching, a sermon from an English parochial priest in the Middle Ages was probably a rare thing. There were at all times some men of literary ability among the English clergy as is attested by the chronicles that have come down to us, by such writers as John of Salisbury, Walter Map, and Peter of Blois (who was imported from France), and by the Schoolmen who filled the chairs at Oxford in its early history.

In spite of the measures of Anselm and other prelates, clerical marriage and concubinage continued in England. Writing to Anselm, Pascal II. spoke of the majority of the English priests as married. Laws were enacted forbidding the people to attend mass said by an offending priest; and women who did not quit priestly houses were to be treated as adulteresses and denied burial in sacred ground. An English priest in the time of Adrian IV. named his daughter Hadriana, a reminder to the pope that he himself was the son of a priest.1988  Some relief was attempted by the introduction of the Augustinian rule, requiring priests to live together; but it was adopted in the single English cathedral of Carlisle and in a few Scotch cathedrals. The records of the courts leave no doubt of the coarse vice which prevailed in clerical groups. Even after the twelfth century, many of the bishops were married or had semi-legitimated families. According to Matthew Paris, Grosseteste was on the point of resigning his see on account of the low morals of his clergy.

The attempt to introduce the law of Gratian into England was never wholly successful. Archbishop Arundel might declare that "in all cases the canons and laws were authoritative which proceeded from the porter of eternal life and death, who sits in the seat of God Himself, and to whom God has committed the laws of the divine realm."1989  But the barons, as at the parliament of Merton, 1236, resisted the foreign claim. William the Conqueror provided for ecclesiastical courts, under the charge of bishops and archdeacons, which took the place of the hundred court.

Suits, however, touching the temporalities of the clergy were tried in the secular courts,1990 as were also offences against the forestry laws and the laws of hunting. But all matters pertaining to wills and to marriage were reserved for the clerical court. These provisions gave the Church vast power. It was inevitable, however, that there should be a clash of jurisdiction, and, in fact, endless disputes arose in the settlement of matters pertaining to advowsons, tithes, and other such cases. The relative leniency of the penalties meted out to clerics led many to enter at least the lower orders, and enroll themselves as clerks who never had any idea of performing clerical functions.

The more important acts pertaining to the Church in England in this period were, in addition to William’s mandates for dividing the civil and church courts, the canons of the council of London, 1108, the Clarendon Constitutions, 1164, John’s brief surrendering his kingdom, 1213, the Constitutions of Otho, 1237, and the Mortmain Act of 1279. The Mortmain Act, which was one of the most important English parliamentary acts of the Middle Ages, forbade the alienation of lands to the Church so as to exempt them from the payment of taxation to the state.

§ 129. Two English Bishops.

For Hugh of Lincoln: The magna vita, by his chaplain, Adam, ed. by Dimock, Lond., 1864;—a metrical Life, ed. by Dimock, Lond., 1860,—G. G. Perry: St. Hugh of Avalon, Lond., 1879.—H. Thurston (Rom. Cath.): St Hugh of Lincoln, Lond., 1898, transl. from the French, with copious additions.—J. A. Froude: A Bishop of the Twelfth Century, in Short Studies on Great Subjects, 2d series, pp. 54–86.

For Grosseteste: His Epistolae, ed. by Luard, Lond., 1861; Monumenta Franc., ed. by Brewer.—M. Paris, Luard’s ed.—Lives of Grosseteste, by Pegge, Lond., 1793.—Lechler, in his Life of Wiclif, transl. by Lorimer, pp. 20–40.—G. G. Perry, Lond., 1871.—Felten, Freib., 1887.—F. S. Stevenson, Lond., 1899.—M. Creighton: in Hist. Lectt. and Addresses, Lond., 1903.—C. Bigg, in Wayside Sketches in Eccles. Hist., Lond., 1906. — Dict. of Nat’l Biog.

Most prominent among the English ecclesiastics of the period, as faithful administrators of their sees, are Hugh and Robert Grosseteste, both bishops of Lincoln.1991

Hugh of Lincoln, or Hugh of Avalon, as he is also called, 1140–1200, was pronounced by Ruskin the most attractive sacerdotal figure known to him in history;1992 and Froude passed upon him the eulogy that he "was one of the most beautiful spirits ever incarnated in human clay, whose story should be familiar to every English boy."

Born near Grenoble, France, he was taken in his ninth year, on his mother’s death, to a convent; afterwards he entered the Grande Chartreuse, and followed an invitation from Henry II., about 1180, to take charge of the Carthusian monastery of St. Witham, which the king had founded a few years before. In 1186 he was chosen bishop of Lincoln, the most extensive diocese in England.1993

Hugh’s friendship with Henry did not prevent him from resisting the king’s interference in the affairs of his diocese. When the king attempted to force a courtier into one of the prebends of Lincoln, the bishop sent the reply, "Tell the king that hereafter ecclesiastical benefices are to be bestowed not upon courtiers but upon ecclesiastics."  He excommunicated the grand forester for encroaching upon the rights of the people. The king was enraged, but the bishop remained firm. The forests were strictly guarded so as to protect the game, and also, as is probable, to prevent Saxons from taking refuge in their recesses. The foresters and rangers were hated officials. The loss of the eyes and other brutal mutilations were the penalties for encroachment.

Towards Richard and John, Hugh showed the same independent spirit as towards Henry. At the council of Oxford, 1197, he dared to refuse consent to Richard’s demands for money, an almost unheard-of thing.1994  The king’s wrath was allayed by a visit the prelate paid him at his castle on the rock of Andely. This was the famous castle built in a single year, of which Philip said, "I would take it if it were iron."  To which Richard replied, "I would hold it if it were butter."  Upon Hugh’s departure, Richard is reported to have said, "If all prelates were like the bishop of Lincoln, not a prince among us could lift his head against them."

Hugh’s enlightened treatment of the Jews has already been referred to. He showed his interest in the lepers, built them a house, cared for them with his own hands, and called them "the flowers of Paradise, and jewels in the crown of heaven."  The Third Lateran had ordered separate churches and burial grounds for lepers. His treatment of the tomb of Fair Rosamonde was more in consonance with the canons of that age than agreeable to the spirit of our own. When, on a visit to Gadstow, he found her buried in the convent church, with lamps kept constantly burning over her body, he ordered the body removed, saying that her life was scandalous, and that such treatment would be a lesson to others to lead chaste lives. In his last moments Hugh was laid on a cross of ashes. John, who was holding a council at Lincoln, helped to carry the body to its resting-place. The archbishop of Canterbury and many bishops took part in the burial ceremonies. The Jews shed tears. Hugh was canonized in 1220, and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage.

One of the striking stories told of Hugh, the story of the swan, is attested by his chaplain and by Giraldus Cambrensis, who witnessed the swan’s movements. The swan, which had its nest at Stow, one of the bishop’s manors, was savage and unmanageable till Hugh first saw it. The bird at once became docile, and learned to follow the bishop’s voice, eat from his hand, and to put his bill up his sleeve. It seemed to know instinctively when the bishop was coming on a visit, and for several days before would fly up and down the lake flapping its wings. It kept guard over him when he slept.

Robert Grosseteste, 1175–1253, had a wider range of influence than Hugh, and was probably the most noteworthy Englishman of his generation.1995  No prelate of his century was so bold in telling the pope his duty. To his other qualities he added the tastes and acquisitions of the scholar. He was a reformer of abuses, and a forerunner of Wyclif in his use of the Scriptures. Roger Bacon, his ardent admirer, said that no one really knew the sciences but Robert of Lincoln.1996  His great influence is attested by the fact that for generations he was referred to as Lincolniensis, "he of Lincoln."

Born in England, and of humble origin, a fact which was made by the monks of Lincoln an occasion of derision, he pursued his studies in Oxford and Paris, and subsequently became chancellor of Oxford. He was acquainted with Greek, and knew some Hebrew. He was a prolific writer, and was closely associated with Adam Marsh.1997

No one welcomed the advent of the Mendicant Friars to England with more enthusiasm than did Grosseteste. He regarded their coming as the dawn of a new era, and delivered the first lectures in their school at Oxford, and left. them his, library, though he never took the gray cowl himself, as did Adam Marsh.

On being raised to the see of Lincoln, 1235, Grosseteste set out in the work of reforming monastic and clerical abuses, which brought him uninterrupted trouble till the close of his career. He set himself against drinking bouts, games in the churches and churchyards, and parish parades at episcopal visitations. The thoroughness of his episcopal oversight was a novelty. He came down like a hammer upon the monks, reports Matthew Paris, and the first year be removed seven abbots and four priors. At Ramsey he examined the very beds, and broke open the monks’ coffers like "a burglar," destroying their silver utensils and ornaments.1998  To the monks, who were about to choose an abbot, He wrote: "When you choose one to look after your swine, you make diligent search for a person possessing proper qualifications. And you ask the questions, Is he physically capable?  Has he the requisite experience?  Is he willing to take them into fitting pastures in the morning, to defend them against thieves and wild beasts, to watch over them at night?  And are not your souls of more value than many swine?"

The most protracted contest of his life was with his dean and chapter over the right of episcopal visitation.1999  The canons preached against him in his cathedral. But Grosseteste cited the cases of Samuel, who visited Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and David, who defended his father’s flocks. He was finally sustained by the pope.

In no way did the great bishop win a more sure place in history than by his vigorous resistance to the appointment of unworthy Italians to English livings and to other papal measures. In 1252, he opposed the collection of a tenth for a crusade which had the pope’s sanction. He declined to execute the king’s mandate legitimatizing children born before wedlock. His most famous refusal to instal an Italian, was the case of the pope’s nephew, Frederick of Lavagna. The pope issued a letter threatening with excommunication any one who might venture to oppose the young man’s induction. Grosseteste, then seventy-five years old, replied, declaring, "I disobey, resist, and rebel."2000  Matthew Paris (III. 393), professing to describe the scene in the papal household when the letter was received, relates that Innocent IV., raved away at the deaf and foolish dotard who had so audaciously dared to sit in judgment upon his actions."  Notwithstanding this attitude to the appointment of unworthy Italians, the bishop recognized the principle that to the pope belongs the right of appointing to all the benefices of the church.2001

On his visit to Lyons, 1250, Grosseteste’s memorandum against the abuses of the clergy was read in the pope’s presence. "Not in dispensing the mass but in teaching the living truth" does the work of the pastor consist, so it declared. "The lives of the clergy are the book of the laity."  Adam Marsh, who was standing by, compared the arraignment to the arraignments of Elijah, John the Baptist, Paul, Athanasius, and Augustine of Hippo.

According to Matthew Paris, on the night of Grosseteste’s death strange bells were heard. Miracles were reported performed at his tomb, and the rumor ran that, when Innocent was proposing to have the bishop’s body removed from its resting-place in the cathedral, Grosseteste appeared to the pope in a dream, gave him a sound reprimand, and left him half dead. The popular veneration was shown in the legend that on the night of Innocent IV’s death the bishop appeared to him with the words, "Aryse, wretch, and come to thy dome."

In the earlier part of his life, Grosseteste preached in Latin; in the latter he often used the vernacular. He was the greatest English preacher of his age. He was not above the superstitions of his time, and one of his famous sermons was preached before Henry III. at the reception of the reputed blood of Christ.2002  His writings are full of Scriptural quotations, and he urged the importance of the study of the Scriptures at the university, and the dedication of the morning hours to it, and emphasized their authority.2003  Wyclif quoted his protest against the practices of Rome,2004 and he has been regarded as a forerunner of the English Reformation.

Of Grosseteste’s writings the best known was probably his de cessatione legalium, the End of the Law, a book intended to convince the Jews. With the aid of John of Basingstoke, he translated the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, which Basingstoke had found in Constantinople.2005  He seems to have been a man of sterling common sense, as the following counsels indicate. To a friar he said:, Three things are necessary for earthly well-being, food, sleep, and a merry heart."  To another friar addicted to melancholy, he prescribed, as penance, a cupfull of the best wine. After the medicine had been taken, Grosseteste said, "Dear brother, if you would frequently do such penance, you would have a better ordered conscience."2006

Matthew Paris (V. 407) summed up the bishop’s career in these words:—

"He was an open confuter of both popes and kings, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the supporter of scholars, a preacher to the people, a persecutor of the incontinent, the unwearied student of the Scriptures, a crusher and despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily meat, he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, and affable; at the spiritual table, devout, tearful, and contrite. In the episcopal office he was sedulous, dignified, and indefatigable."

CHAPTER XVI.

POPULAR WORSHIP AND SUPERSTITION.

§ 130. The Worship of Mary.

Literature: The Works of the Schoolmen, especially, Damiani: de bono suffragiorum et variis miraculis, praesertim B. Virginis, Migne, 145. 559 sqq., 586 sqq., etc.—Anselm: Orationes et meditationes, de conceptu virginis, Migne, vol. 158.—Guibert of Nogent: de laudibus S. Mariae, Migne, 166. 537–579.—Honorius of Autun: Sigillum b. Mariae, Migne, 172. 495–518.—Bernard: de laudibus virginis matris, Migne, 183. 55 sqq., 70 sqq., 415 sqq., etc.—P. Lombardus: Sent., III. 3 sqq. Hugo de St. Victor: de Mariae virginitate, Migne, 176. 857–875, etc.—Alb. Magnus: de laudibus b. Mariae virginis, Borgnet’s ed., 36. 1–841.—Bonaventura: In Sent., III. 3, Peltier’s ed., IV. 53 sqq., 105 sqq., 202 sqq., etc.; de corona b. Mariae V., Speculum b. M. V., Laus b. M. V., Psalterium minus et majus b. M. V., etc., all in Peltier’s ed., XIV. 179–293.—Th. Aquinas: Summa, III. 27–35, Migne, IV. 245–319.—Analecta Hymnica medii aevi, ed. by G. M. Dreves, 49 Parts, Leipz., 1886–1906.—Popular writers as Caesar of Heisterbach, De Bourbon, Thomas à. Chantimpré, and De Voragine: Legenda aurea, Englished by William Caxton, Kelmscott Press ed., 1892; Temple classics ed., 7 vols.

F. Margott: D. Mariologie d. hl. Th. v. Aquino, Freiburg, 1878.—B. Häusler: de Mariae plenitudine gratiae secundum S. Bernardum, Freiburg, 1901.—H. von Eicken: Gesch. und System d. mittelalt. Weltanschauung, Stuttg., 1887, p. 476 sqq.—K. Benrath: Zur Gesch. der Marienverehrung, Gotha, 1886.—The Histt. of Doctr. of Schwane, pp. 413–428, Harnack, II. 568–562, Seeberg, Sheldon, etc.—Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 108–128. The artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Empfängniss, IV. 454–474, Maria, Marienlegenden, Marienfeste, vol. VIII., Ave Maria, Rosenkranz, and the art. Maria, by Zöckler in Herzog.—Mrs. Jamieson: Legends of the Monastic Orders.—Baring-Gould: Lives of the Saints, Curious Myths of the M. Ages.—Butler: Legends of the Saints.

Ave coeleste lilium, Ave rosa speciosa

Ave mater humilium, Superis imperiosa,

Deitatis triclinium; hac in valle lacrymarum

Da robur, fer auxilium, O excrusatrix culparum.

Bonaventura, Laus Beatae Virginis Mariae.2007

The worship of the Virgin Mary entered into the very soul of mediaeval piety and reached its height in the doctrine of her immaculate conception. Solemn theologians in their dogmatic treatises, ardent hymn-writers and minnesingers, zealous preachers and popular prose-writers unite in dilating upon her purity and graces on earth and her beauty and intercessory power in heaven. In her devotion, chivalry and religion united. A pious gallantry invested her with all the charms of womanhood also the highest beatitude of the heavenly estate. The austerities of the convent were softened by the recollection of her advocacy and tender guardianship, and monks, who otherwise shrank from the company of women, dwelt upon the marital tie which bound them to her. To them her miraculous help was being continually extended to counteract the ills brought by Satan. The Schoolmen, in their treatment of the immaculate conception, used over and over again delicate terms2008 which in conversation the pure to-day do not employ.

Monastic orders were dedicated to Mary, such as the Carthusian, Cistercian, and Carmelite, as were also some of the most imposing churches of Christendom, as the cathedrals at Milan and Notre Dame, in Paris.

The titles given to Mary were far more numerous than the titles given to Christ and every one of them is extra-biblical except the word "virgin."  An exuberant fancy allegorized references to her out of all sorts of texts, never dreamed of by their writers. She was found referred to in almost every figurative expression of the Old Testament which could be applied to a pure, human being. To all the Schoolmen, Mary is the mother of God, the queen of heaven, the clement queen, the queen of the world, the empress of the world, the mediatrix, the queen of the ages, the queen of angels, men and demons,2009 the model of all virtues, and Damiani even calls her is the mother of the eternal emperor."2010

Monks, theologians, and poets strain the Latin language to express their admiration of her beauty and benignity, her chastity and heavenly glory. Her motherhood and virginity are alike subjects of eulogy. The conception of physical grace, as expressed when the older Notker of St. Gall called her "the most beautiful of all virgins," filled the thought of the Schoolmen and the peasant. Albertus Magnus devotes a whole chapter of more than thirty pages of two columns each to the praise of her corporal beauty. In his exposition of Canticles 1:15, "Behold thou art fair, my love," he comments upon the beauty of her hair, her shoulders, her lips, her nose, her feet, and other parts of her body. Bonaventura’s hymns in her praise abound in tropical expressions, such as "she is more ruddy than the rose and whiter than the lily." Wernher of Tegernsee about 1178 sang:2011 —

Her face was so virtuous, her eyes so Bright,

Her manner so pure, that, among all women,

None could with her compare.

In a remarkable passage, Bernard represents her in the celestial places drawing attention to herself by her form and beauty so that she attracted the King himself to desire her.2012  Dante, a century and more later, enjoying paradise in the company of Bernard, thus represented the vision of Mary: —

I saw the virgin smile, whose rapture shot

Joy through the eyes of all that blessed throng:

And even did the words that I possess

Equal imagination, I should not

Dare, the attempt her faintest charms to express.

Paradiso, Canto XXXI.

The Canticles was regarded as an inspired anthology of Mary’s excellences of body and soul. Damiani represents God as inflamed with love for her and singing its lines in her praise. She was the golden bed on which God, weary in His labor for men and angels, lay down for repose. The later interpretation was that the book is a bridal song for the nuptials between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin. Bernard’s homilies on this portion of Scripture are the most famous collection of the Middle Ages. Alanus ab Insulis, who calls Mary the "tabernacle of God, the palace of the celestial King," says that it refers to the Church, but in an especial and most spiritual way to the glorious virgin.2013  Writer after writer, preacher after preacher, took up this favorite portion of the Old Testament. An abbess represented the Virgin as singing to the Spirit:2014 "My beloved is mine and I am his. He will tarry between my breasts." The Holy Spirit responded, "Thy breasts are sweeter than honey."

To Mary was given a place of dignity equal or superior to Christ as the friend of the sinful and unfortunate and the guide of souls to heaven. Damiani called her "the door of heaven," the window of paradise. Anselm spoke of her as "the vestibule of universal propitiation, the cause of universal reconciliation, the vase and temple of life and salvation for the world."2015  A favorite expression was "the tree of life"—lignum vitae — based upon Prov. iii:8. Albertus Magnus, in the large volume he devotes to Mary’s virtues, gives no less than forty reasons why she should be worshipped, authority being found for each one in a text of Scripture. The first reason was that the Son of God honors Mary. This accords with the fifth commandment, and Christ himself said of his mother, "I will glorify the house of my glory," Isa. lx:7; house, according to the Schoolman, being intended to mean Mary. The Bible teems with open and concealed references to her. Albertus ascribed to her thirty-five virtues, on all of which he elaborates at length, such as humility, sincerity, benignity, omnipotence, and modesty. He finds eighty-one biblical names indicative of her functions and graces. Twelve of these are taken from things in the heavens. She is a sun, a moon, a light, a cloud, a horizon, an aurora. Eight are taken from things terrestrial. Mary is a field, a mountain, a hill, a stone. Twenty-one are represented by things pertaining to water. She is a river, a fountain, a lake, a fish-pond, a cistern, a torrent, a shell. Thirty-one are taken from biblical figures. Mary is an ark, a chair, a house, a bed, a nest, a furnace, a library. Nine are taken from military and married life. Mary is a castle, a tower, a wall. It may be interesting to know how Mary fulfilled the office of a library. In her, said the ingenious Schoolman, were found all the books of the Old Testament, of all of which she had plenary knowledge as is shown in the words of her song which run, "as was spoken by our fathers."  She also had plenary knowledge of the Gospels as is evident from Luke ii:19: "Mary kept all these sayings in her heart."  But especially do Mary’s qualities lie concealed under the figure of the garden employed so frequently in the Song of Solomon. To the elaboration of this comparison Albertus devotes two hundred and forty pages, introducing it with the words, "a garden shut up is my sister, my bride " Cant. iv:12.2016

Bonaventura equals Albertus in ransacking the heavens and the earth and the waters for figures to express Mary’s glories and there is a tender chord of mysticism running through his expositions which is adapted to move all hearts and to carry the reader, not on his guard, away from the simple biblical statements. The devout Franciscan frequently returns to this theme and makes Mary the subject of his verse and sermons.2017  He exhausts the vocabulary for words in her praise. She is prefigured in Jacob’s ladder, Noah’s ark, the brazen serpent, Aaron’s rod, the star of Balaam, the pot of manna, Gideon’s horn, and other objects of Hebrew history. To each of these his Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary devotes poetic treatment extending in cases to more than one hundred lines and carrying the reader away by their affluence of imagination and the sweetness of the rhythm.

Imitating the Book of Psalms, Bonaventura wrote two psalteries, each consisting of one hundred and fifty parts. Each part of the Minor Psaltery consists of four lines, its opening lines being "Hail Virgin, tree of life; Hail Virgin, door of liberty; Hail Virgin, dear to God; Hail Virgin, light of the world; Hail Virgin, harbor of life; Hail Virgin, most beautiful." In the Greater Psaltery, Bonaventura paraphrases the one hundred and fifty psalms and introduces into each one Mary’s name and her attributes, revelling in ascriptions of her preeminence over men and angels. Here are several selections, but no selection can give any adequate idea of the liberty taken with Scripture. The first Psalm is made to run, "Blessed is the man who loves thee, O Virgin Mary. Thy grace will comfort his soul." The Twenty-third runs, "The Lord directs me, O Virgin mother of God—genetrix dei — because thou hast turned towards me His loving countenance." The first verse of Psalm 121 reads, "I have lifted up my eyes to thee, O Mother of Christ, from whom solace comes to all flesh."

Tender as are Bernard’s descriptions of Christ and his work, he nevertheless assigns to Mary the place of mediator between the soul and the Saviour. In Mary there is nothing severe, nothing to be dreaded. She is tender to all, offering milk and wool. If you are terrified at the thunders of the Father, go to Jesus, and if you fear to go to Jesus, then run to Mary. Besought by the sinner, she shows her breasts and bosom to the Son, as the Son showed his wounds to the Father. Let her not depart from thine heart. Following her, you will not go astray; beseeching her, you will not despair; thinking of her, you will not err.2018

So also Bonaventura pronounces Mary the mediator between us and Christ.2019  As God is the lord of revenge—Dominus ultionum,— he says in his Greater Psaltery, so Mary is the mother of compassion. She presents the requests of mortals to the Second Person of the Trinity, softening his wrath and winning favors which otherwise would not be secured.

Anselm, whom we are inclined to think of as a sober theologian above his fellows, was no less firm as an advocate of Mary’s mediatorial powers. Prayer after prayer does he offer to her, all aflame with devotion. "Help me by thy death and by thine assumption into heaven," he prays. "Come to my aid," he cries, "and intercede for me, O mother of God, to thy sweet Son, for me a sinner."2020

The veneration for Mary found a no less remarkable expression in the poetry of the Middle Ages. The vast collection, Analecta hymnica, published by Dreves and up to this time filling fifteen volumes, gives hundreds and thousands of sacred songs dwelling upon the merits and glories of the Virgin. The plaintive and tender key in which they are written is adapted to move the hardest heart, even though they are full of descriptions which have nothing in the Scriptures to justify them. Here are two verses taken at random from the thousands:—

Ave Maria, Angelorum dia                 Coeli rectrix, Virgo Maria

Ave maris stella, Lucens miseris        Deitatis cella, Porta principis.2021

Hail, Mary, Mother of God, Ruler of heaven, O Virgin Mary ... Hail, Star of the Sea, Lighting the wretched Cell of the Deity, Gate of the king.

Where the thinkers and singers of the age were so ardent in their worship of Mary, what could be expected from the mass of monks and from the people!  A few citations will suffice to show the implicit faith placed in Mary’s intercession and her power to work miracles.

Peter Damiani tells of a woman who, after being dead a year, appeared in one of the churches of Rome and related how she and many others had been delivered from purgatory by Mary in answer to their prayers. He also tells how she had a good beating given a bishop for deposing a cleric who had been careful never to pass her image without saluting it.2022

Caesar of Heisterbach abounds in stories of the gracious offices Mary performed inside the convent and outside of it. She frequently was seen going about the monastic spaces, even while the monks were in bed. On such occasions her beauty was always noted. Now and then she turned and gave a severe look to a careless monk, not lying in bed in the approved way. Of one such case the narrator says he did not know whether the severity was due to the offender’s having laid aside his girdle or having taken off his sandals. Mary stood by to receive the souls of dying monks, gave them seats at her feet in heaven, sometimes helped sleepy friars out by taking up their prayers when they began to doze, sometimes in her journeys through the choir aroused the drowsy, sometimes stretched out her arm from her altar and boxed the ears of dull worshippers, and sometimes gave the staff to favored monks before they were chosen abbots. She sometimes undid a former act, as when she saw to it that Dietrich was deposed whom she had aided in being elected to the archbishopric of Cologne.2023

To pious Knights, according to Caesar of Heisterbach, Mary was scarcely less gracious than she was to the inmates of the convent. She even took the place of contestants in the tournament. Thus it was in the case of Walter of Birbach who was listed and failed to get to the tournament field at the appointed hour for tarrying in a chapel in the worship of Mary. But the spectators were not aware of his absence. The tournament began, was contested to a close, and, as it was thought, Walter gained the day. But as it happened, Mary herself had taken the Knight’s place and fought in his stead, and, when the Knight arrived, he was amazed to find every one speaking in praise of the victory he had won.2024  Thomas of Chantimpré2025 tells of a robber whose head was cut off and rolled down the valley. He called out to the Virgin to be allowed to confess. A priest, passing by, ordered the head joined to the body. Then the robber confessed to the priest and told him that, as a young man, he had fasted in honor of the Virgin every Wednesday and Saturday under the promise that she would give him opportunity to make confession before passing into the next world.

All these collections of tales set forth how Mary often met the devil and took upon herself to soundly rebuke and punish him. According to Jacob of Voragine2026 a husband, in return for riches, promised the devil his wife. On their way to the spot, where she was to be delivered up, the wife, suspecting some dark deed, turned aside to a chapel and implored Mary’s aid. Mary put the worshipper to sleep and herself mercifully took the wife’s place at the husband’s side and rode with him, he not noticing the change. When they met the devil, the "mother of God" after some sound words of reprimand sent him back howling to hell.

Mary’s compassion and her ability to move her austere Son are brought out in the Miracle Plays. In the play of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the foolish virgins, after having in vain besought God for mercy, turned to the Virgin with these words:—

Since God our suit hath now denied

We Mary pray, the gentle maid,

The Mother of Compassion,

To pity our great agony

And for us, sinners poor, to pray

Mercy from her beloved Son.2027

The Church never officially put its stamp of commendation upon the popular belief that the Son is austere. Nevertheless, even down to the very eve of the Reformation, the belief prevailed that Christ’s austerity had to be appeased by Mary’s compassion.

The Virgin Birth of Christ.—The literary criticism of the Bible of recent years was as much undreamed of in this period of the Middle Ages as were steamboats or telephones. Schoolman and priest seem never to have doubted when they repeated the article of the Creed, "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."  Homily and theological treatise lingered over the words of Isa. vii:14: "Behold a virgin shall conceive," and over the words of the angelic annunciation: "Hail, thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women .... The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."  They discussed the conception and virginal birth in every possible aspect, as to the part the Holy Spirit had in the event and the part of Mary herself. Here are some of the questions propounded by Thomas Aquinas: Was there true matrimony between Joseph and Mary?  Was it necessary that the angel should appear in bodily form?  Was Christ’s flesh taken from Adam or from David?  Was it formed from the purest bloods of Mary?  Was the Holy Spirit the primary agent in the conception of Christ?  Was Christ’s body animated with a soul at the instant of conception?

None of the Schoolmen goes more thoroughly than Hugo of St. Victor into the question of the part played by the Holy Spirit in the conception of Jesus. He was at pains to show that, while the Spirit influenced the Virgin in conception, he was not the father of Jesus. The Spirit did not impart to Mary seed from his own substance, but by his power and love developed substance in her through the agency of her own flesh.2028

According to Anselm, God can make a human being in four ways, by the co-operation of a man and woman; without either as in the case of Adam; with the sole co-operation of the man as in the case of Eve; or from a woman without a man. Having produced men in the first three ways, it was most fitting God should resort to the fourth method in the case of Jesus. In another work he compares God’s creation of the first man from clay and the second man from a woman without the co-operation of a man.2029

Thomas Aquinas is very elaborate in his treatment of Mary’s virginity. "As a virgin she conceived, as a virgin gave birth, and she remains a virgin forevermore."  The assumption that she had other children derogates from her sanctity, for, as the mother of God, she would have been most ungrateful if she had not been content with such a Son. And it would have been highest presumption for Joseph to have polluted her who had received the annunciation of the angel. He taught that, in the conception of Christ’s body, the whole Trinity was active and Mary is to be called "rightly, truly, and piously, genetrix Dei," the mother of God.2030

The mediaeval estimate of Mary found its loftiest expression in the doctrine of the immaculate conception, the doctrine that Mary herself was conceived without sin. The Schoolmen were agreed that she was exempt from all actual transgression. They separated on the question whether she was conceived without sin and so was immaculate from the instant of conception or whether she was also tainted with original sin from which, however, she was delivered while she was yet in her mother’s womb. The latter view was taken by Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and even Bonaventura.2031  The view that she was conceived without sin and thus was never tainted with original sin was advocated by Duns Scotus, who, however, did not go further than to assert for it probability. Bernard, writing to the church of Lyons, condemned it for having introduced the festival of the immaculate conception, which he said lacked the approval of the Church, of reason and tradition. If Mary was conceived without sin, then why might not sinless conception be affirmed of Mary’s parents and grandparents and her ancestors to remotest antiquity. However, Bernard expressed his willingness to yield if the Church should appoint a festival of the immaculate conception.203

Bonaventura gave three reasons against the doctrine exempting Mary from original sin; namely, from common consent, from reason, and from prudence.2033  According to the first she suffered with the rest of mankind sorrows, which must have been the punishment of her own guilt inherited from Adam. According to the second, the conception of the body precedes its animation, the word "animation" being used by the Schoolmen for the first association of the soul with the body. In the conception of the body there is always concupiscence. The third argument relied upon the Fathers who agreed that Christ was the only being on earth exempt from sin. Bonaventura did not fix the time when Mary was made immaculate except to say, that it probably occurred soon after her conception and at that moment passion or flame of sin — fomes peccati — was extinguished.

Thomas Aquinas emphatically took this position and declared it was sufficient to confess that the blessed virgin committed no actual sin, either mortal or venial. "Thou art all fair, my love, and no spot is in thee," Cant. iv:7.2034

Nowhere else is Duns Scotus more subtle and sophistical than in his argument for Mary’s spotless conception whereby she was untainted by hereditary sin, and no doctrine has become more closely attached with his name. This argument is a chain of conjectures. Mary’s sinless conception, he said, was only a matter of probability, but at the same time seeming and congruous. The threefold argument is as follows: 1. God’s grace would be enhanced by releasing one individual from all taint of original sin from the very beginning. 2. By conferring this benefit Christ would bind Mary to himself by the strongest ties. 3. The vacancy left in heaven by the fallen angels could be best filled by her, if she were preserved immaculate from the beginning. As the second Adam was preserved immaculate, so it was fitting the second Eve should be. Duns’ conclusion was expressed in these words: "If the thing does not contradict the Church and the Scriptures, its reality seems probable, because it is more excellent to affirm of Mary that she was not conceived in sin."2035

The warm controversy between the Thomists and Scotists over the immaculate conception has been referred to in another place. Saints also joined in it. St. Brigitta of Sweden learned through a vision that Mary was conceived immaculate. On the other hand the Dominican, St. Catherine of Siena, prophesied Mary had not been sanctified till the third hour after her conception. The synod of Paris, 1387, decided in favor of the Scotist position, but Sixtus IV., 1483, threatened with excommunication either party denouncing the other. Finally, Duns Scotus triumphed, and in 1854, Pius IX. made it a dogma of the Church that Mary in the very instant of her conception was kept immune from all stain of original sin.2036

The festival of the immaculate conception, observed Dec. 8, was taken up by the Franciscans at their general chapter, held in Pisa, 1263, and its celebration made obligatory in their churches.

One more possible glorification of Mary, the humble mother of our Lord, has not yet been turned into dogma by the Roman Church, her assumption into heaven, her body not having seen corruption. This is held as a pious opinion and preachers like St. Bernard, Honorius of Autun, Gottfried of Admont, and Werner of St. Blasius preached sermon after sermon on Mary’s assumption. The belief is based upon the story, told by Juvenal of Jerusalem to the emperor Marcian at the council of Chalcedon, 451, that three days after Mary’s burial in Jerusalem, her coffin but not her body was found by the Apostles. Juvenal afterwards sent the coffin to the emperor.2037  Even Augustine had shunned to believe that the body of the mother of our Lord saw corruption. The festival of the Assumption was celebrated in Rome as early as the middle of the eleventh century.2038  The synod of Toulouse, 1229, included the festival among the other church festivals at the side of Christmas and Easter. Thomas Aquinas spoke of it as being tolerated by the Church, not commanded.

The Ave Maria, "Hail Mary, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" made up of the words of the angelic salutation and the words of Elizabeth, Luke i:28, 42, was used as a prayer in the time of Peter Damiani,2039 and was specially expounded by Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. The petitionary clause, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of death" appears in the sixteenth century and was introduced into the Roman breviary 1568.2040  The so-called Ave, or Angelus, bell was ordered rung by John XXII. (d. 1334) three times a day. When it peals, the woman in the home and the workman in the field are expected to bow their heads in prayer to Mary.

In few respects are the worship and teaching of the Middle Ages so different from those of the Protestant churches as in the claims made for Mary and the regard paid to her. If we are to judge by the utterances and example of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., the mediaeval cult still goes on in the Roman communion. And more recently Pius X. shows that he follows his predecessors closely. In his encyclical of Jan. 15, 1907, addressed to the French bishops, he says, "In full confidence that the Virgin Immaculate, daughter of our Father, mother of the Word, spouse of the Holy Ghost, will obtain for you from the most holy and adorable Trinity better days, we give you our Apostolic Benediction."  It was the misfortune of the mediaeval theologians to fall heir to the eulogies passed upon Mary by Jerome and other early Fathers of the early Church and the veneration in which she was held. They blindly followed having inherited also the allegorical mode of interpretation from the past. In part they were actuated by a sincere purpose to exalt the glory and divinity of Christ when they ascribed to Mary exemption from sin. On the other hand it was a Pagan, though chivalric, superstition to exalt her to a position of a goddess who stands between Christ and the sinner and mitigates by her intercession the austerity which marks his attitude towards them. This was the response the mediaeval Church gave to the exclamation of St. Bernard, "Who is this virgin so worthy of honor as to be saluted by the angel and so lowly as to have been espoused to a carpenter?"2041  The tenderest piety of the Middle Ages went out to her and is expressed in such hymns as the Mater dolorosa and the companion piece, Mater speciosa. But this piety, while it no doubt contributed to the exaltation of womanhood, also involved a relaxation of penitence, for in the worship of Mary tears of sympathy are substituted for resolutions of repentance.

§ 131. The Worship of Relics.

Literature: See Lit., p. 268 sq. Guibert of Nogent, d. 1124: de pignoribus sanctorum, Migne, vol. 156, 607–679.—Guntherus: Hist. Constantinopol., Migne, vol. 212.—Peter the Venerable: de miraculis, Migne, vol. 189.—Caesar of Heisterbach, Jacob of Voragine, Salimbene, etc.—P. Vignon: The Shroud of Christ, Engl. trans., N. Y., 1903.

The worship of relics was based by Thomas Aquinas upon the regard nature prompts us to pay to the bodies of our deceased friends and the things they held most sacred. The bodies of the saints are to be reverenced because they were in a special manner the temples of the Holy Ghost. The worship to be paid to them is the lowest form of worship, dulia. Hyperdulia, a higher form of worship, is to be rendered to the true cross on which Christ hung. In this case the worship is rendered not to the wood but to him who hung upon the cross. Latreia, the highest form of worship, belongs to God alone.2042  Following the seventh oecumenical council, the Schoolmen denied that when adoration is paid to images, say the image of Peter, worship is given to the image itself. It is rendered to the prototype, or that for which the image stands.2043

In the earlier years of the Middle Ages, Italy was the most prolific source of relics. With the opening of the Crusades the eyes of the Church were turned to the East, and the search of relic-hunters was abundantly rewarded. With open-mouthed credulity the West received the holy objects which Crusaders allowed to be imposed upon them. The rich mine opened up at the sack of Constantinople has already been referred to. Theft was sanctified which recovered a fragment from a saint’s body or belongings. The monk, Gunther, does not hesitate to enumerate the articles which the abbot, Martin, and his accomplices stole from the reliquary in one of the churches of the Byzantine city. Salimbene2044 mentions a present made to him from one of the churches of Ravenna of the bones of Elisha, all except the head, which had been stolen by the Austin friars.

The Holy Lance was disclosed at a critical moment in the siege of Antioch. The Holy Grail was found in Caesarea in 1101. The bones of the three kings, Caspar, Melchior, and Belthazar, reputed to have been the magi who presented their gifts at the manger, were removed from Milan to Cologne, where they still repose. In the same city of Cologne were found, in 1156, the remains of Ursula and the virgin martyrs, put to death by the Huns, the genuineness of the discovery being attested by a vision to Elizabeth of Schönau. Among the endless number of objects transmitted to Western Europe from the East were Noah’s beard, the horns of Moses, the stone on which Jacob slept at Bethel, the branch from which Absalom hung, our Lord’s foreskin, his navel cord, his coat, tears he shed at the grave of Lazarus, milk from Mary’s breasts, the table on which the Last Supper was eaten, the stone of Christ’s sepulchre, Paul’s stake in the flesh, a tooth belonging to St. Lawrence. Christ’s tooth, which the monks of St. Medard professed to have in their possession, was attacked by Guibert of Nogent on the ground that when Christ rose from the dead he was in possession of all the parts of his body. He also attacked the genuineness of the umbilical cord.2045  The prioress of Fretelsheim claimed to be in possession of two relics of the ass which bore Christ to Jerusalem.

The holy coat, the blood of Christ, and his cross have perhaps played the largest part in the literature of relics. Christ’s holy coat is claimed by Treves and Argenteuil as well as other localities. It was the seamless garment—tunica inconsutilis — woven by Mary, which grew as Christ grew was worn on the cross.2046  A notice in the Gesta Trevirorum (1105–1124) carries it back to the empress Helena who is said to have taken it to Treves. In the time of Frederick Barbarossa it was one of the glories of the city. On the eve of the Reformation it was solemnly shown to Maximilian I. and assembled German princes. At different dates, vast bodies of pilgrims have gone to look at it; the largest number in 1891, when 1,925,130 people passed through the cathedral for this purpose. Many miracles were believed to have been performed.2047

The arrival of some of Christ’s blood in England, Oct. 13, 1247, was solemnized by royalty and furnishes one of the strange and picturesque religious scenes of English mediaeval history. The detailed description of Matthew Paris speaks of it as "a holy benefit from heaven."2048  Its genuineness was vouched for by the Masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers, and by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the archbishops and other prelates of the Holy Land. After fasting and keeping watch the night before, the king, Henry III., accompanied by the priests of London in full canonicals and with tapers burning, carried the vase containing the holy liquid from St. Paul’s to Westminster, and made a circuit of the church, the palace, and the king’s own apartments. The king proceeded on foot, holding the sacred vessel above his head. The bishop of Norwich preached a sermon on the occasion and, at a later date, Robert Grosseteste preached another in which he defended the genuineness of the relic, giving a memorable exhibition of scholastic ingenuity.2049

The true cross was found more than once and fragments of it were numerous, so numerous that the fiction had to be invented that the true cross had the singular property of multiplying itself indefinitely. A choice must be made between the stories. The first Crusaders beheld the cross in Jerusalem. Richard I., during the Third Crusade, was directed to a piece of it by an aged man, the abbot of St. Elie, who had buried it in the ground and refused to deliver it up to Saladin, even though that prince put him in bonds to force him to do so. Richard and the army kissed it with pious devotion.2050  Among the objects which the abbot, Martin, secured in Constantinople were a piece of the true cross and a drop of the Lord’s blood. The true cross, however, was still entire, and in 1241 it reached Paris. It had originally been bought by the Venetians from the king of Jerusalem for £20,000 and was purchased from the Emperor Baldwin by Louis IX. The relic was received with great ceremony and carried into the French capital by the king, with feet and head bare, and accompanied by his mother, Blanche, the queen, the king’s brothers, and a great concourse of nobles and clergy.2051  The crown of thorns was carried in the same procession. At a later time these relics were placed in the new and beautiful chapel which Louis built, a supposed holy coat of Christ, the iron head of the lance which pierced his side, and the sponge offered to him on the cross, together with other relics.

The English chronicler’s enthusiasm for this event seems not to have been in the least dampened by the fact that the English abbey of Bromholm also possessed the true cross. It reached England in 1247, through a monk who had found it among the effects of the Emperor Baldwin, after he had fallen in battle. The monk appeared at the convent door with his two children, and carrying the sacred relic under his cloak. Heed was given to his story and he was taken in. Miracles at once began to be performed, even to the cleansing of lepers and the raising of the dead.2052

Some idea of the popular estimate of the value of relics may be had from the story which Caesar of Heisterbach relates of a certain Bernard who belonged to Caesar’s convent.2053  Bernard was in the habit of carrying about with him a box containing the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. Happening to give way to sensual thoughts, the two saints gave him a punch in the side. On Bernard’s assuming a proper mental state, the thumping stopped, but as soon as he renewed the unseemly thoughts the thumping began again. Bernard took the hint and finally desisted altogether. Caesar had the satisfaction of knowing that when Bernard had these experiences, he was not yet a monk.

The resentment of relics at being mistreated frequently came within the range of Caesar’s experience. One of St. Nicolas’ teeth, kept at Brauweiler, on one occasion jumped out of the glass box which contained it, to show the saint’s disgust at the irreverence of the people who were looking at it. Another case was of the relics of two virgins which had been hid in time of war and were left behind when other relics were restored to the reliquary. They were not willing to be neglected and struck so hard against the chest which held them that the noise was heard all through the convent, and continued to be heard till they were released.2054

An organized traffic in relics was carried on by unscrupulous venders who imposed them upon the credulity of the pious. The Fourth Lateran sought to put a stop to it by forbidding the veneration of novelties without the papal sanction. According to Guibert of Nogent,2055 the worshipper who made the mistake of associating spurious relics with a saint whom he wished to worship, did not thereby lose any benefit that might accrue from such worship. All the saints, he said, are one body in Christ (John 17:22), and in worshipping one reverence is done to the whole corporation.

The devil, on occasion, had a hand in attesting the genuineness of relics. By his courtesy a nail in the reliquiary of Cologne, of whose origin no one knew anything, was discovered to be nothing less than one of the nails of the cross.2056  Such kind services, no doubt, were rare. The court-preacher of Weimar, Irenaeus, 1566–1570, visiting Treves in company with the Duchess of Weimar, found one of the devil’s claws in one of the churches. The story ran, that at the erection of a new altar, the devil was more than usually enraged, and kicked so hard against the altar that he left a claw sticking in the wood.2057

The attitude of the Protestant churches to relics was expressed by Luther in his Larger Catechism when he said, "es ist alles tot Ding das niemand heiligen kann."  They are lifeless, dead things, that can make no man holy.

§ 132. The Sermon.

Literature: A. Nebe: Charakterbilder d. bedeutendsten Kanzelredner, Vol. I. Origen to Tauler, 1879. —J. M. Neale: Med. Preachers, Lond., 1853, new ed., 1873. —J. A. Broadus: The Hist. of Preaching, N. Y., 1876. A bare sketch.—H. Hering: Gesch. d. Predigt. (pp. 55–68), Berlin, 1905. —E. C. Dargan: Hist. of Preaching, from 70 to 1570, N. Y., 1906.

For the French Pulpit: *Lecoy de la Marche: La chaire franc. au moyen âge speciallement au XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1868, new ed., 1886.—L. Bourgain: La chaire franc. au XIIme siècle d’après les Mss., Paris, 1879. —J. von Walter: D. ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, 2 parts, Leip., 1903, 1906.

For the German Pulpit: W. Wackernagel: Altdeutsche Predigten und Gebete, Basel, 1876.—*R Cruel: Gesch. d. Deutschen Predigt im MtA., Detmold, 1879.—*A. Linsenmayer (Rom. Cath.): Gesch. der Predigt in Deutschland von Karl dem Grossen bis zum Ausgange d. 14ten Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1886.—Hauck: Kirchengesch.—Collections of med. Ger. sermons.—H. Leyser: Deutsche Predigten d. 13ten und 14ten Jahrhunderts, 1838.—K. Roth: Deutsche Predigten des XlI. und XIII. Jahrhunderts, 1839.—F. E. Grieshaber: Deutsche Predigt. d. XIII. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. Stuttg., 1844.—*A. E. Schönbach: Altdeutsche Predigten, 3 vols. Graz, 1886–1891; Studien zur Gesch. d. Altdeutschen Predigt. (on Berthold of Regensburg), 3 parts, Vienna, 1904–1906. —A. Franz: Drei Minoritenprediger aus d. XIII. u. XIV. Jahrh., Freib., 1907.

For the English Pulpit: R. Morris: Old Engl. Homilies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, 2 vols. Lond., 1868–1873.—See T. F. Crane: Introd. to the Exempla of Jacob de Vitry, Folklore Soc., Lond., 1890.—Richardson: Voragine as a Preacher, Presb. Rev., July, 1904.

Although the office of the preacher in the Middle Ages was overshadowed by the function of the priest, the art of preaching was not altogether neglected. The twelfth and the thirteenth centuries have each contributed at least one pulpit orator of the first magnitude: St. Bernard, whom we think of as the preacher in the convent and the preacher of the Crusades, and Berthold of Regensburg, the Whitefield of his age, who moved vast popular assemblies with practical discourses.

Two movements aroused the dormant energies of the pulpit: the Crusades, in the twelfth century, and the rise of the Mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. The example of the heretical sects preaching on the street and the roadside also acted as a powerful spur upon the established Church.

Ambrose had pronounced the bishop’s chief function to be preaching. The nearest approach made to that definition by a formal pronouncement of these centuries is found in the tenth canon of the Fourth Lateran. After emphasizing the paramount necessity of knowing the Word of God, the council commended the practice whereby bishops, in case of their incapacity, appointed apt men to take their place in preaching. Pope Innocent III. himself preached, and fifty-eight of his sermons are preserved.2058  The references to preaching in the acts of councils are rare. Now and then we hear an admonition from a writer on homiletics or a preacher in favor of frequent preaching. So Honorius of Autun, in an address to priests, declared that, if they lived a good life and did not publicly teach or preach, they were like the "watchmen without knowledge" and as dumb dogs (Isa. 56:9), and, if they preached and lived ill, they were as blind leaders of the blind.2059  Etienne de Bourbon speaks with commendation of a novice of the Dominican order who, on being urged to go into another order, replied: "I do not read that Jesus Christ was either a black or a white monk, but that he was a poor preacher. I will follow in his steps."

It is impossible to determine with precision the frequency with which sermons were preached in parishes. Probably one-half of the priests in Germany in the twelfth century did not preach.2060  The synod of Treves, 1227, forbade illiterate priests preaching. A sermon in England was a rarity before the arrival of the friars. A parson might have held a benefice fifty years without ever having preached a sermon. There were few pulpits in those days in English churches.2061

In the thirteenth century a notable change took place, through the example of the friars. They were preachers and went among the people. Vast audiences gathered in the fields and streets to listen to an occasional popular orator, like Anthony of Padua and Berthold of Regensburg. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Franciscans received formal permission from Clement V., "to preach on the streets the Word of God."

Nor was the preaching confined to men in orders. Laymen among the heretics and also among the orthodox groups and the Flagellants exercised their gifts.2062  Innocent III., in his letter to the bishop of Metz, 1199, and Gregory IX., 1235, condemned the unauthorized preaching of laymen. There were also boy preachers in those days.2063

The vernacular was used at the side of the Latin.2064  Samson, abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, preached in English, and Grosseteste in the later years of his life followed his example. Bishop Hermann of Prague, d. 1122, preached in Bohemian.2065  Of Berthold’s sermons which are preserved, five hundred are in Latin and seventy-one in German.

Congregations were affected much as congregations are to-day. Caesar of Heisterbach, who himself was a preacher, tells of a congregation that went to sleep and snored during a sermon. The preacher, suddenly turning from the line of his discourse, exclaimed: "Hear, my brethren, I will tell you something new and strange. There was once a king called Artus."  The sleepers awoke and the preacher continued, "See, brethren, when I spoke about God, you slept, but when I began to tell a trivial story, you pricked up your ears to hear."2066  Caesar was himself present on this occasion.

The accounts of contemporaries leave no room to doubt that extraordinary impressions were made upon great audiences.2067  The sermons that have come down to us are almost invariably based upon a text or paragraph of Scripture and are full of biblical instruction, doctrinal inference, and moral application. It was well understood that the personality of the preacher has much to do with the effectiveness of a discourse. Although the people along the Rhine did not understand the language of St. Bernard, they were moved to the very depths by his sermons. When his language was interpreted, they lost their power.

Four treatises have come down to us from this period on homiletics and the pulpit, by Guibert of Nogent, Alanus ab Insulis, Humbert de Romanis, and Hugo de St. Cher.2068  Their counsels do not vary much from the counsels given by writers on these subjects to-day. Guibert, in his What Order a Sermon should Follow,2069 insists upon the priest keeping up his studies, preparing his sermons with prayer, and cultivating the habit of turning everything he sees into a symbol of religious truth. He sets forth the different motives by which preachers were actuated, from a desire of display by ventriloquism to an honest purpose to instruct and make plain the Scriptures.

In his Art of Preaching,2070 Alanus counsels preachers to court the good-will of their audiences by cultivating humility of manner and by setting forth useful instruction. He must so impress them that they will think not of who is talking, but of what is being talked about. He advises the use of quotations from Gentile authors, following Paul’s example. After giving other counsels, Alanus in forty-seven chapters presents illustrations of the treatment of different themes, such as the contempt of the world, luxury, gluttony, godly sorrow, joy, patience, faith. He then furnishes specimens of exhortations to different classes of hearers: princes, lawyers, monks, the married, widows, virgins, the somnolent.

Humbert de Romanis, general of the order of the Dominicans, d. 1277, in a much more elaborate work,2071 pronounced preaching the most excellent of a monk’s occupations and set it above the liturgical service which, being in Latin, the people did not understand. Preaching is even better than the mass, for Christ celebrated the mass only once, but was constantly engaged in preaching. He urged the necessity of study, and counselled high thought rather than graceful and well-turned sentences, comparing the former to food and the latter to the dishes on which it is served.

To these homiletical rules and hints must be added the notices scattered through the sermons of preachers like Honorius of Autun and Caesar of Heisterbach. Caesar said,2072 a sermon should be like a net, made up of texts of Scripture; and like an arrow, sharp to pierce the hearts of the hearers; straight, that is, without any false doctrine; and feathered, that is, easy to be understood. The bow is the Word of God.

Among the prominent preachers from 1050 to 1200, whose sermons have been preserved, were Peter Damiani, d. 1072, Ivo of Chartres, d. 1116, Hildebert of Tours, d. 1133, Abaelard d. 1142, St. Bernard, d. 1153, and Maurice, archbishop of Paris, d. 1196. Of the eloquence of Arnold of Brescia, Norbert, the founder of the Premonstrant order, and Fulke of Neuilly, the fiery preacher of the Fourth Crusade, no specimens are preserved. Another class of preachers were the itinerant preachers, some of whom were commissioned by popes, as were Robert of Abrissel and Bernard of Thiron who went about clad in coarse garments and with flowing beards, preaching to large concourses of people. They preached repentance and sharply rebuked the clergy for their worldliness, themselves wept and brought their hearers to tears.

Bernard enjoys the reputation of being, up to his time, the most brilliant luminary of the pulpit after the days of Gregory the Great. Luther held his sermons in high regard and called him "the golden preacher"—der gueldene Prediger. Among the preachers of France he is placed at the side of Bourdaloue and Bossuet. He has left more than two hundred and fifty discourses on special texts and themes in addition to the eighty-six homilies on the Song of Solomon.2073

The subjects of the former range from the five pebbles which David picked up from the brook to the most solemn mysteries of Christ’s life and work. The sermons were not written out, but delivered from notes or improvised after meditation in the convent garden. For moral earnestness, flights of imagination, pious soliloquy, and passionate devotion to religious themes, they have a place in the first rank of pulpit productions. "The constant shadow of things eternal is over them all," said Dr. Storrs, himself one of the loftiest figures in the American pulpit of the last century. One of the leading authorities on his life, Deutsch, has said that Bernard combined in himself all the qualities of a great preacher, a vivid apprehension of the grace of God, a profound desire to help his hearers, a thorough knowledge of the human heart, familiarity with the Scriptures, opulence of thought, and a faculty of magnetic description.2074

Fulke of Neuilly, pastor in Neuilly near Paris, was a man of different mould from Bernard, but, like him, his eloquence is associated with the Crusades.2075  He was a born orator. His sermons on repentance in Notre Dame and on the streets of Paris were accompanied with remarkable demonstrations, the people throwing themselves on the ground, weeping and scourging themselves. Usurers "whom the devil alone was able to make, "fallen women, and other offenders turned from their evil ways. Called forth by Innocent III. to proclaim the Fourth Crusade, Fulke influenced, as he himself estimated, no less than two million to take the cross. He did not live to hear of the capture of Constantinople, to which event unintentionally he made so large a contribution.

The great preachers of the thirteenth century were the product of the mendicant orders or, like Grosseteste, sympathized with their aims and methods. The Schoolmen who belonged to these orders seem all to have been preachers, and their sermons, or collations, delivered in the convents, many of which are preserved, received the highest praise from contemporaries, but partook of the scholastic method. Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura were preachers, Bonaventura2076 being a great preacher. Albertus’ thirty-two sermons on the eucharist, based upon Proverbs 9:5, constitute one of the first series of discourses of the Middle Ages.

To the mendicant orders belonged also the eminent popular preachers, Anthony of Padua, John of Vicenza, and Berthold of Regensburg. Anthony of Padua, 1195–1231, born at Lisbon, entered the Franciscan order and made Northern Italy the scene of his labors. He differed from Francis in being a well-schooled man. He joined himself to the conventual party, at whose head stood Elias of Cortona. Like Francis he was a lover of nature and preached to the fishes. He preached in the fields and the open squares. As many as thirty thousand are reported to have flocked to hear him. He denied having the power of working miracles, but legend has associated miracles with his touch and his tomb. The fragments of his sermons, which are preserved, are mere sketches and, like Whitefield’s printed discourses, give no clew to the power of the preacher. Anthony was canonized the year after his death by Gregory IX. His remains were deposited, in 1263, in the church in Padua reared to his memory. Bonaventura was present. The body was found to have wholly dissolved except the tongue.2077

Berthold of Regensburg, d. 1272, had for his teacher David of Augsburg, d. 127l, also a preacher of renown. A member of the Franciscan order, Berthold itinerated from Thuringia to Bohemia, and from Spires to the upper Rhine regions as far as the Swiss canton of the Grisons. He was familiarly known as rusticanus, "the field preacher."  According to contemporaries, he was listened to by sixty thousand at a time. His sermons were taken down by others and, to correct mistakes, he was obliged to edit an edition with his own hand.2078

This celebrated preacher’s style is exceedingly pictorial. He drew illustrations from the stars and the fields, the forests and the waters. The most secret motives of the heart seemed to he open before him. Cruel, the historian of the mediaeval German pulpit, gives as the three elements of his power: his popular speech easily understood by the laity, his personality which he never hid behind a quoted authority, and his burning love for God and man. He preached unsparingly against the vices of his age: usury, avarice, unchastity, drunkenness, the dance, and the tournament, and everything adapted to destroy the sanctity of the home.

He urged as motives the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But especially did he appeal to the fear of perdition and its torments. If your whole body, he said, was glowing iron and the whole world on fire, yet are the pains of the lost many times greater, and when the soul is reunited with the body in hell, then it will be as passing from dew to a burning mountain. The sermons are enlivened by vivacious dialogues in which the devil is a leading figure. Berthold demanded penitence as well as works of penance. But he was a child of his time, was hard on heretics, and did not oppose any of the accepted dogmas.

A considerable number of sermons, many of them anonymous, are preserved from the mediaeval pulpit of Germany, where preaching seemed to be most in vogue.2079  Among the preachers were Gottfried, abbot of Admont, d. 1165, Honorius of Autun, d. 1152, and Werner of St. Blasius in the Black Forest, d. 1126. Gottfried’s sermons, of which about two hundred are preserved, occupy more than a thousand columns in Migne (174. 21–1133), and are as full of exegetical and edifying material as any other discourses of the Middle Ages.

Honorius and Werner both prepared homiliaria, or collections of sermons which were meant to be a homiletical arsenal for preachers. Honorius’ collection, the Mirror of the Church—Speculurn ecclesiae2080 — is made up of his own discourses, most of the texts being taken from the Psalms. The sermons are arranged under thirty-six Sundays or festival days, with as many as three or four sermons under a single head. In one of them he addresses himself to one class after another, calling them by name. One of the interesting things about these model discourses is the homiletical hints that are thrown in here and there. The following two show that it was necessary, even in those good old times, to adapt the length of the sermon to the patience of the hearers. "You may finish here if you choose, or if time permits, you may add the following things."  "For the sake of brevity you must sometimes shorten this sermon and at other times you may prolong it."

Werner’s collection, the Deflorationes sanctorum patrum, or Flowers from the Fathers, fills more than five hundred columns in Migne (151. 734–1294), and joins, with discourses from patristic times, other sermons, some of them probably by Werner himself. Thirteen are taken from Honorius of Autun. It would be interesting, if there were space, to give specimens of the sermonic literature contained in these collections.

Of the pulpit in England there is not much to be said. It had no preachers equal in fame to the preachers of Germany and Italy. The chief source of our information are the two volumes of Old English Homilies by Morris, which contain an English translation at the side of the Saxon original. The names of the preachers are lost. The sermons are brief expositions of texts of Scripture, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and on Mary and the Apostles, and are adapted to the wants and temptations of everyday life. In a sermon on the Creed2081 the general statement of the introduction is such as might be made by a wise preacher to-day: "Three things there are that each man must have who will lead a Christian life, a right belief, baptism, and a fair life, for he is not fully a Christian who is wanting in any of these."  One of the sermons quaintly treats of the traps set by the devil in four pits: play, and the trap idleness; drink, and the trap wrongdoing; the market, and the trap cheating; and the Church, and the trap pride. In the last trap the clergy are ensnared as when the priest neglects to perform the service or to speak what he ought to, or sings so as to catch the ears of women.2082

A general conclusion to be drawn from the sermons of this period of the Middle Ages is that human passions and the tendency to shirk religious duties or to substitute the appearance for the reality were about the same as they are to-day. Another conclusion is that the modes of appeal employed were about the same as the earnest preacher employs in this age, except that in those days much more emphasis was laid upon the pains of future punishment.

§ 133. Hymns and Sacred Poetry.

Latin Hymns: H. A. Daniel: Thesaurus Hymnol., 5 vols. Halle and Leipzig, 1855–1856. —F, J. Mone: Latein. Hymnen d. Mittelalters, 3 vols. Freib., 1853–1855. —R. C. Trench: Sacr. Lat. Poetry with Notes, Lond., 1849, 3d ed., 1874. —G. A. Königsfeld: Latein. Hymnen und Gesänge d. MtA., 2 vols. Bonn, 1847–1863 with transll.—J. M. Neale: Med. Hymns and Sequences, Lond., 1851, 3d ed., 1867; Hymns chiefly Med. on the Joys and Glories of Paradise, Lond., 1862, 4th ed., by S. G. Hatherley, 1882.—W. J. Loftie: Lat. Hymns, 3 vols. Lond., 1873–1877.—F. W. E. Roth: Lat. Hymnen d. MtA., Augsb., 1888.—*G. M. Dreves and C. Blume: Analecta hymnica medii aevi, Leipz., 1886–1906, 49 parts in 16 vols.—U. Chevalier: Repertorium hymnol. Cat. des chants, hymnes, proses, sequences, tropes, etc., 2 vols. Louvaine, 1892–1897; Poésie liturg. du moyen âge, Paris, 1893.—S. G. Pirmont: Les hymnes du Bréviare rom., 3 vols. Paris, 1874–1884.—Ed. Caswall: Lyra Catholica (197 transll.), Lond., 1849.—R. Mant: Anc. Hymns from the Rom. Brev., new ed., Lond., 1871.—F. A. March: Lat. Hymns with Engl. Notes, N. Y., 1874.—D. T. Morgan: Hymns and other Poems of the Lat. Ch., Oxf., 1880.—W. H. Frere: The Winchester Tropar from MSS. of the 10th and 11th centt., Lond., 1894. —H. Mills: The Hymn of Hildebert and the Ode of Xavier, with Engl. transll., Auburn, 1844.—W. C. Prime: The Seven Great Hymns of the Med. Ch., N. Y., 1865. —E. C. Benedict: The Hymn of Hildebert and other Med. Hymns, with transll., N. Y., 1867, 2d ed., 1869. —A. Coles: Dies Irae and other Lat. Poems, N. Y., 1868. —D. S. Wrangham: The Liturg. Poetry of Adam de St. Victor, with Engl. transll., 3 vols. Lond., 1881.—Ozanam: Les Poètes Franciscains en Italie au XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1852, 3d ed. 1869.—L. Gautier: Oeuvres poet. d’ Adam de St. Victor, Paris, 1858, 2d ed., 1887; Hist. de la poésie liturg. au moyen âge. Paris, 1886.—P. Schaff: Christ in Song, a Collection of Hymns, Engl. and trans. with notes, N. Y. and Lond., 1869. —Schaff and Gilman: Libr. of Rel. Poetry, N. Y., 1881.—Schaff: Lit. and Poetry, N. Y., 1890. Contains essays of St. Bernard as a Hymnist, the Dies irae, Stabat mater, etc.—S. W. Duffield: Lat. Hymn Writers and their Hymns, N. Y., 1889.

For German Hymns, etc.: C. E. P. Wackernagel: D. Deutsche Kirchenlied von d. ältesten Zeit bis zum 1600, 5 vols. Leip., 1864–1877.—Ed. E. Koch: Gesch. des Kirchenlieds und Kirchengesangs, 2 vols. 1847, 3d ed., by Lauxmann, 8 vols. 1866–1876.—Artt., Hymnus and Kirchenlied in Wetzer-Welte, VI. 519–551, VII. 600–606; Kirchenlied, in Herzog, by Drews, X. 409–419, and Lat. and Ger. Hymnody in Julian’s Dicty. of hymnology.

Note. The collection of Latin hymns by Dreves and Blume, members of the Society of Jesus, is a monument of persevering industry and scholarship. It is with few exceptions made up of hitherto unpublished poems. The collection is meant to be exhaustive and one is fairly amazed at the extent of mediaeval sacred poetry. There are about seven hundred pages and an average of eleven hundred poems to each volume. Monasteries and breviaries of every locality in Western Europe were searched for hymnological treasures. In cases, an entire number, or Heft (for the volumes have appeared in numbers), is given up to the poems of a single convent, as No. Vll., pp. 282, to the proses of St. Martial in Limoges. No. XL. contains sequences taken from English MSS., such as the missals of Salisbury, York, Canterbury, and Winchester, and is edited by H. M. Bannister, 1902. Among the more curious parts is No. XXVII., pp. 287, containing the religious poems of the Mozarabic, or Gothic liturgy. If Dreves adds a printed edition of the mediaeval Latin poetry found in Mone, Daniel, and other standard collections, his collection will supersede all the collections of his predecessors.

The mediaeval sermon is, at best, the object of curious search by an occasional student. It is otherwise with some of the mediaeval hymns. They shine in the cluster of the great hymns of all the ages. They have entered into the worship of all the churches of the West and continue to exercise a sanctifying mission. They are not adapted to the adherents of one confession or age alone, but to Christian believers of every age.

The Latin sacred poems of the Middle Ages, of which thousands have been preserved, were written, for the most part, in the shadow of cloistral walls, notably St. Gall, St. Martial in Limoges, Cluny, Clairvaux, and St. Victor near Paris. Few of them passed into public use in the church service, or were rendered by the voice. They served the purpose of devotional reading. The rhyme is universal after 1150.

These poems include liturgical proses, hymns, sequences, tropes, psalteries, and rhymed prayers to the rosary, called rosaria. The psalteries, psalteria rhythmica, in imitation of the Psalms, are divided into one hundred and fifty parts, and are addressed to the Trinity, to Jesus and to Mary, the larger number of them to Mary.2083  Sequence, a word first applied to a melody, came also to be used for a sacred poem. Notker of St. Gall was the first to adapt such poems to sequences or melodies.2084  The tropes were verses interpolated into the offices of the liturgy, and were joined on to the Gloria, the Hosanna, and other parts. They started in France and were most popular there and in England.2085

The authorship of the Latin mediaeval poetry belongs chiefly to France and Germany. England produced only a limited number of religious poems, and no one of the first rank. The best is Archbishop Peckham’s (d. 1292) rhymed office to the Trinity, from which three hymns were taken.2086  One verse of the poem runs:—

Adesto, sancta trinitas

Par splendor, una deitas,

Qui exstas rerum omnium

Sine fine principium.

Come near, O holy Trinity,

In splender equal, in deity one

Of all things that exist

The beginning, and without end.

The number of mediaeval hymns in German is also large. The custom of blending German and Latin lines in the same hymn was also very common, especially in the next period. The number of Saxon hymns, that is hymns produced in England, was very limited.2087

Although the liturgical service was chanted by the priests, singing was also in vogue among the people, especially in Northern Italy and in Germany. The Flagellants sang. Gerhoh of Reichersberg (d. 1169) said that all the people poured forth praises to the Saviour in hymns.2088  At the battle of Tusculum, 1168, the army sang,

Christ der du geboren bist.

St. Bernard, when he left Germany, spoke of missing the German songs of his companions. At popular religious services the people also to some extent joined in song. The songs were called Leisen and Berthold of Regensburg was accustomed, at the close of his sermons, to call upon the congregation to sing.2089  He complained of heretics drawing away children by their songs. Honorius of Autun gives directions for the people to join in the singing, such as the following: "Now lift high your voices," or "Lift up your song, Let us praise the Son of God."

As compared with the hymns of the Ambrosian group and of Prudentius, the mediaeval sacred poems are lacking in their strong and triumphant tone. They are written in the minor key, and give expression to the softer feelings of the heart, and its fears and forebodings. They linger at the cross and over the mystery of the Lord’s Supper, passionately supplicate the intercession of Mary or dwell on her perfections, and also depict the awful solemnities of the judgment and the entrancing glories of paradise. Where we are unable to follow the poet in his theology, we cannot help but be moved by his soft cadences and the tenderness of his devotion.

Among the poets of the earlier part of the period are Peter Damiani, some of whose hymns were received into the Breviaries,2090 Anselm of Canterbury, and Hildebert, archbishop of Tours (d. 1134). Some of Hildebert’s lines were used by Longfellow in his "Golden Legend."  Abaelard also wrote hymns, one of which, on the creation, was translated by Trench.2091

Bernard of Clairvaux, according to Abaelard’s pupil, Berengar, cultivated poetic composition from his youth.2092  Five longer religious poems are ascribed to him.2093  From the Rhythmic Song on the name of Christ—Jubilus rhythmicus de nomine Jesu — the Roman Breviary has drawn three hymns, which are used on the festival of the name of Christ. They are:—

Jesus, the very thought of thee.

Jesus, King most wonderful.

O Jesus, thou the beauty art.

Jesu, dulcis memoria.

Jesu, rex admirabilis.

Jesus, decus angelicum.

The first of these hymns has been called by Dr. Philip Schaff, "the sweetest and most evangelical hymn of the Middle Ages."

The free version of some of the verses by Ray Palmer is the most popular form of Bernard’s poem as used in the American churches.

Jesus, thou Joy of loving hearts,

Thou Fount of life, thou Light of men,

From the best bliss that earth imparts

We turn unfilled to thee again.

The poem to the Members of Christ’s body on the Cross—Rhythmica oratio ad unum quodlibet membrorum Christi patientis — is a series of devotional poems addressed to the crucified Saviour’s feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face. From the poem addressed to our Lord’s face—Salve caput cruentatum — John Gerhardt, 1656, took his

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.

O sacred head, now wounded,

With grief and shame weighed down.

Much as Bernard influenced his own age in other ways, he continues to influence our own effectively and chiefly by his hymns.

Bernard of Cluny, d. about 1150, has an enduring name as the author of the most beautiful and widely sung hymn on heaven, "Jerusalem the Golden."  He was an inmate of the convent of Cluny when Peter the Venerable was its abbot, 1122–1156. From his probable place of birth, Morlaix, Brittany, he is sometimes called Bernard of Morlaix. Of his career nothing is known. He lives in his poem, "The Contempt of the World"—de contemptu mundi — from which the hymns are taken which go by his name.2094  It contains nearly three thousand lines, and was dedicated to Peter the Venerable. At the side of its glowing descriptions of heaven, which are repetitions, it contains a satire on the follies of the age and the greed of the Roman court.2095  It is written in dactylic hexameters, with leonine and tailed rhyme, and is difficult of translation.

The most prolific of the mediaeval Latin poets is Adam of St. Victor, d. about 1180. He was one of the men who made the convent of St. Victor famous. He wrote in the departments of exegesis and psychology, but it is as a poet he has enduring fame. Gautier, Neale and Trench have agreed in pronouncing him the "foremost among the sacred Latin poets of the Middle Ages"; but none of his hymns are equal to Bernard’s hymns,2096 the Stabat mater, or Dies irae. Many of Adam’s poems are addressed to Mary and the saints, including Thomas à Becket. A deep vein of piety runs through them all.2097

Hymns of a high order and full of devotion we owe to the two eminent theologians, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. Of Bonaventura’s sacred poems the one which has gone into many collections of hymns begins, —

Recordare sanctae crucis

qui perfectam viam ducis.

Jesus, holy Cross, and dying.

Three of Thomas Aquinas’ hymns have found a place in the Roman Breviary. For six hundred years two of these have formed a part of the ritual of Corpus Christi: namely, —

Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium,

Sing, my tongue, the mystery telling,

And

Lauda, Zion, salvatorem.

Zion, to thy Saviour singing.2098

In both of these fine poems, the doctrine of transubstantiation finds full expression.

No other two hymns of ancient or mediaeval times have received so much attention as the Dies irae and the Stabat mater. They were the product of the extraordinary religious fervor which marked the Franciscan order in its earlier period, and have never been excelled, the one by its solemn grandeur, and the other by its tender and moving pathos.

Thomas of Celano, the author of Dies irae,2099 was born about 1200, at Celano, near Naples, and became one of the earliest companions of Francis d’Assisi. In 1221 he accompanied Caesar of Spires to Germany, and a few years later was made guardian, custos of the Franciscan convents of Worms, Spires, Mainz, and Cologne. Returning to Assisi, he wrote, by commission of Gregory IX., his first Life of St. Francis, and later, by command of the general of his order, he wrote the second Life.

The Dies irae opens with the lines, —

Dies irae, dies illa

solvet saeclum in favilla,

teste David cum sibylla.

In the most familiar of the versions, Sir Walter Scott freely reproduced the first lines thus:—

That day of wrath, that dreadful day,

When heaven and earth shall pass away,

What power shall be the sinner’s stay?

How shall he meet that dreadful day?

This solemn poem depicts the dissolution of the world and the trembling fear of the sinner as he looks forward to the awful scene of the last day and appeals for mercy. It has been characterized by Dr. Philip Schaff,2100 "as the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin Church poetry and the greatest judgment hymn of all ages."  The poet is the single actor. He realizes the coming judgment of the world, he hears the trumpet of the archangel through the open sepulchre, he expresses this sense of guilt and dismay, and ends with a prayer for the same mercy which the Saviour showed to Mary Magdalene and to the thief on the cross. The stanzas sound like the peals of an organ; now crashing like a clap of thunder, now stealing softly and tremulously like a whisper through the vacant cathedral spaces. The first words are taken from Zephaniah 1:15. Like the Fathers and Michael Angelo and the painters of the Renaissance, the author unites the prediction of the heathen Sibyl with the prophecies of the Old Testament.

The hymn is used on All Souls Day, Nov. 2. Mozart introduced it into his requiem mass. It has been translated more frequently than any other Latin poem.2101  Walter Scott introduced it into the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and Goethe made Gretchen tremble in dismay on hearing it in the cathedral.

The most tender hymn of the Middle Ages is the Stabat mater dolorosa. The first verse runs:—

Stabat mater dolorosa

juxta crucem lachrymosa

dum pendebat filius;

cujus animam gementem

contristatam ac dolentem

pertransivit gladius.

At the cross her station keeping,

Stood the mournful mother weeping,

Close to Jesus to the last;

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,

All His bitter anguish bearing,

Now at length the sword had passed. 2102

This hymn occupies the leading place among the many mediaeval hymns devoted to Mary and, in spite of its mariolatry, it appeals to the deepest emotions of the human heart. Its passion has been transfused into the compositions of Palestrina, Astorga, Pergolesi, Haydn, Bellini, Rossini, and other musical composers.

The poem depicts the agony of Mary at the sight of her dying Son. The first line is taken from John 19:25. The poet prays to Mary to be joined with her in her sorrow and to be defended by her on the day of judgment and taken into glory. The hymn passed into all the missals and was sung by the Flagellants in Italy at the close of the fourteenth century.2103

Jacopone da Todi, the author of these hymns, called also Jacobus de Benedictis (d. 1306), was converted from a wild career by the sudden death of his wife through the falling of a gallery in a theatre. He gave up the law, both degrees of which he had received from Bologna, and was admitted to the Franciscan order.2104  He abandoned himself to the extreme of ascetic austerity, appearing at one time in the public square walking on all fours and harnessed like a horse. He wrote a number of poems in the vulgar tongue, exposing the vices of his age and arraigning Boniface VIII. for avarice. He espoused the cause of the Colonna against that pope. Boniface had him thrown into prison and the story went that when the pope asked him, when he expected to get out, Jacopone replied, "when you get in."  Not until Boniface’s death, in 1303, was the poet released. He spent his last years in the convent of Collazone. His comfort in his last hours was his own hymn, Giesu nostra fidanza — Jesus our trust and confidence.

§ 134. The Religious Drama.

Literature: W. Hone: Anc. Mysteries, Lond., 1823.—W. Marriott: Col. Of Engl. Miracle Plays, Basel, 1838.—J. P. Collier: Hist. of Engl. Dram. Poetry, 2 vols. Lond. 1831; new ed., 1879.—Th. Wright: Engl. Mysteries, Lond., 1838. —F. J. Mone: Altdeutsche Schauspiele, Quedlinb., 1841; D. Schauspiel d. MtA., 2 vols., Karlsr., 1846.—*Karl Hase: D. geistliche Schauspiel, Leip. 1858, Engl. transl. by A. W. Jackson, Lond. 1880.—E. de Coussemaker: Drames liturg du moyen âge, Paris, 1861. —E. Wilken: Gesch. D. Geistl. Spiele In Deutschland, Götting., 2d ed., 1879.—A. W. Ward: Hist. of Engl. Dram. Lit., Lond., 1875.—G. Milchsack: D. Oster Und Passionsspiele, Wolfenbüttel, 1880.—*A. W. Pollard: Engl. Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes with Introd. and Notes, Lond., 1890, 4th ed., 1904.—C. Davidson: Studies in the Engl. Mystery Plays, 1892, printed for Yale Univ.—W. Creizenach: Gesch. des neueren Dramas, 3 vols. Halle, 1893–1903.—Heinzel: Beschreibung des geistl. Schauspiels im Deutschen MtA., Leip., 1898.—O’Connor: Sacred Scenes and Mysteries, Lond., 1899.—*E. K. Chambers: The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. Oxf., 1903. —Art. in Nineteenth Century, June, 1906, Festum stultorum by Mrs. V. Hemming.—J. S. Tunison: Dram. Traditions of the Dark Ages, Cincinnati, 1907. See the large list of works in Chambers, I. xiii-xlii.

An important aid to popular religion was furnished by the sacred drama which was fostered by the clergy and at first performed in churches, or the church precincts. It was in some measure a mediaeval substitute for the sermon and the Sunday-school. The old Roman drama received hard blows from the Christian Fathers, beginning with Tertullian, and from synods which condemned the vocation of the actor as inconsistent with a Christian profession. In part as a result of this opposition, and in part on account of the realistic obscenity to which it degenerated, the Roman stage was abandoned. According to the two codes of German law, the Sachsenspiegel and the Schwabenspiegel, actors had no legal rights.2105  But the dramatic instinct was not dead and after a lapse of time it showed itself again in Western Europe.

The mediaeval drama was an independent growth, a product of the convent and priesthood, and was closely associated with the public religious services. Its history includes two periods, roughly divided by the latter half of the thirteenth century. In the earlier period, the representations were largely under the control of the clergy. Priests were the actors and the intent was exclusively religious. In the later period, the elements of pantomime and burlesque were freely introduced and priests ceased to be the controlling factors. The modern drama begins in the sixteenth century, the age of Shakespeare.

The names given to the mediaeval representations were ludi, plays, mysteries, miracle-plays, and moralities. The term "morality" is used for plays which introduced the virtues and vices, personified, and carrying on dialogues teaching wholesome lessons of daily prudence and religion. The term "mystery" comes from the word ministerium, meaning a sacred office.2106  The earlier period of religious dramatization was also the age of itinerant singers and jesters who went about on their mission of entertainment and instruction. Such were the troubadours of Provence and Northern Italy, and the joculatores and jougleurs of France who sang descriptive songs—chansons de geste. The minnesingers of Germany and the English minstrels belong to the same general group. How far these two movements influenced each other, it is difficult to say,—the one starting from the convent and having a strictly religious intent, the other from the people and having for its purpose amusement.

The mediaeval drama had its first literary expression in the six short plays of Hroswitha, a nun belonging to the Saxon convent of Gandersheim, who died about 980. They were written in imitation of Terence and glorify martyrdom and celibate chastity. One of them represents a Roman governor making approaches to Christian virgins whom he had shut up in the scullery of his palace. Happily he was struck with madness and embraced the pots and kettles and covered with soot and dirt, was unceremoniously hustled about by the devil. It is not known whether these plays were acted out or not.2107

Hroswitha was an isolated personality and the mediaeval play had its origin not with her, but in the liturgical ritual for the festivals of Easter, Good Friday, and Christmas. To make the impression of the service more vivid than the reading or chanting of the text could do, dramatic features were introduced which were at first little more than the simplest tableaux vivants. They can be traced beyond the eleventh century and have their ancestry in the tropes or poetical interpolations inserted into the liturgy for popular effect.2108

The first dramatic action was associated with the services on Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday the cross was hid in a cloth or in a recess in the walls, or in a wooden enclosure, specially put together. Such recesses in the walls, called "sepulchres," are still found in Northwold, Navenby, and other English churches. On Easter day the crucifix was taken out from its place of concealment with solemn ritual. In Davis’ Ancient Rites of Durham is the following description:2109 —

"Within the church of Durham upon Good Friday there was a marvellous solemn service in which two of the ancient monks took a goodly large crucifix all of gold of the picture of our Saviour Christ, nailed upon the cross .... The service being ended, the said two monks carried the cross to the Sepulchre with great reverence (which Sepulchre was set up that morning on the north side of the quire, nigh unto the high altar before the service time) and there did lay it within the said Sepulchre with great devotion."

To this simple ceremony, adapted to impress the popular imagination, were soon added other realistic elements, such as the appearance of the angels and the women at the sepulchre, the race between Peter and John, and the conversation between Mary and the gardener. Dialogues made up of biblical language were introduced, one of the earliest of which is the conversation between the women and the angels:—

Whom seek ye in the sepulchre, worshippers of Christ?

Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, O heavenly denizens.

Quam quaeritis in sepulchro, Christocolae?

Jesum Nazarenum, crucifixum, O coelicolae.

On Christmas the dramatic action included the angels, the Magi, and other actors, and a real cradle or manger. Priests in the garb of shepherds, as they approached the stable, were met with the question,—

Whom seek ye in the stable, O shepherds, say?

Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite?

To which they replied,

The Saviour, Christ the Lord, the infant wound in swaddling clothes.

From such beginnings, the field was easily extended so as to include all Scriptural subjects, from Adam’s fall to the last judgment.

The first notice of a miracle play in England is the play of St. Katherine, presented by the schoolboys of Dunstable abbey, soon after the year 1100.2110  William Fitz-Stephen, writing about 1180, contrasted the religious plays performed in his day in London with the stage of pagan Rome.

An ambitious German play of the thirteenth century represents Augustine seated in front of a church, Isaiah, Daniel, and other prophets at his right hand, and at his left the High Priest and Jews. Isaiah uttered his prophecy of the Messiah. The Sibyl pointed to the star. Aaron entered with the budding rod. Balaam and the ass then take their turn. An angel blocks the way. The ass speaks. Balaam recites his prediction of the star of Jacob. The prophetic announcements being made, the high priest appeared with much circumstance, and a discussion followed between him on the one side and the prophets and Augustine on the other. Another act followed and the angel announced the Saviour’s birth. The child was born. The three kings and the shepherds come on the scene. The journey to Egypt followed and Egypt’s king met the holy family. Herod is eaten by worms. And so the play went on till anti-Christ made his appearance. Here we have a long advance upon the simple dramatic ceremonies of the century before, and at the same time the germ of the elaborate drama which was to follow. The materials, however, are all religious.

The dramatic instinct was not satisfied with a serious treatment of biblical themes. It demanded the introduction of the burlesque and farcical. These elements were furnished by Judas, the Jews, and the devil, who were made the butts of ridicule. Judas was paid in bad coin. The devil acted a double part. He tempts Eve by his flatteries, he holds the glass before Mary Magdalene while she makes her toilet before going out to dance with every comer, wheels the unfortunate into hell on a wheelbarrow, and receives the lost with mock ceremony into his realm. But he is as frequently represented as the stupid bungler. He was the mediaeval clown, the dupe of devices excelling his own in shrewdness. He sallied out from the stage, frightening little boys and followed with laughter and jibes by the older onlookers. His mishaps were the subject of infinite merriment.

The association of plays with the church was not received with universal approbation. Gerhoh of Reichersperg opposed them as a desecration. Innocent III. in 1210, if he did not condemn them altogether, condemned their abuse.2111  The synod of Treves, 1227, and other synods forbade priests holding "theatrical plays" in the church buildings. Caesar of Heisterbach represents the rigoristic feeling when, hearing from a priest of a stage that was struck by lightning and twenty men burned to death, declared the burning was a proper punishment for the friends of frivolity and that it was a wonder the priest, who was present, escaped.2112

By the end of the thirteenth century, the plays were no longer acted in the churches, but were transferred to the public squares and other open spaces. Gilds and companies of actors took them up and acting again began to be a recognized vocation. The religious element, however, was retained, and religious and moral subjects continued to be the basis of all the plays. Even after they began to be acted on the public squares, the plays, like a modern political gathering, were introduced with prayers and the Veni creator spiritus was chanted. Among the earlier societies, which made it their business to present them, was the confraternity of the Gonfalone. In its chapel, St. Maria della Pieta in the Colosseum, plays were given perhaps as early as 1250. In Passion week the roof of the chapel was turned into a stage and the passion was acted.2113  The first company of play actors in Paris was called confrèrie de la passion, the brotherhood of the passion."

The Feasts of the Fools and the Ass.—In these strange festivals, which go back to the eleventh century, full vent was given by the clergy to the love of the burlesque. At first, they were intended to give relief to the otherwise serious occupation of the clergyman and, while they parodied religious institutions, they were not intended to be sacrilegious, but to afford innocent amusement. Later, the observance took on extravagant forms and received universal condemnation. But, already in this period, the celebration in the churches and cathedrals was accompanied with revels which called forth the severe rebuke of Bishop Grosseteste2114 and two centuries later of John Huss. Both festivals were celebrated at Christmas tide and the early days of January. The descriptions are confusing, and it is difficult to get a perfectly clear conception of either festival.

On the Feast of the Fools,—festum stultorum,2115 — the deacons and subdeacons elected a boy as bishop or pope and in drollery allowed him episcopal functions. Prescriptions for the boy-bishop’s dress are found in the annals of St. Paul and York and Lincoln cathedrals, and included a white mitre and a staff. The ceremony was observed at Eton. The festival, however, was most popular in France. The boy-prelate rode on an ass at the head of a procession to the church amid the ringing of bells and the jangle of musical instruments. There he dismounted, was clad in bishop’s vestments, and seated on a platform. A banquet and religious services followed, and in turn dancing and other merriment. The ceremonies differed in localities and a number of rituals have come down to us.

In the feast of the Ass, —festum asinorum, —the beast that Balaam rode was the chief dramatis persona. The skin of the original animal formed a valuable possession of a convent in Verona. The aim was to give dramatic representation to biblical truth and perhaps to do honor to the venerable and long-suffering beast which from time immemorial has carried man and other burdens. At Rouen the celebration took place on Christmas day. Moses, Aaron, John the Baptist, the Sibyl, Virgil, the children who were thrown into the furnace, and other ancient characters appeared. Balaam, wearing spurs and seated on an ass, was the centre of attraction. A fire was started in the middle of the church around which stood six Jews and Gentiles. The prophets, one by one, made addresses attempting to convert them. The ass spoke when his way was barred by the angel, and Balaam uttered his prophecy of the star. The ass was then placed near the altar and a cope thrown over him. High mass followed.

At Beauvais the festival was celebrated on the anniversary of the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, Jan. 14. The ass, bearing "a most beautiful maiden" with a child in her arms, was led into the church and stood before the altar during the performance of mass. At the close of the ritual, the priest instead of repeating the customary formula of dismissal, ite, missa est, made three sounds like the braying of an ass,—sacerdos tres hinhannabit, —and the people responded three times, hinham.

The improprieties and revels which became connected with these celebrations were adapted to bring religion into disrepute and called forth the rebukes of Innocent III. and Innocent IV., the latter mentioning a boy-bishop by name and condemning the travesty upon serious subjects. In 1444 the theological faculty of Paris spoke of grave and damnable scandals connected with the celebrations, such as the singing of comic songs the men being dressed in women’s attire and the eating of fat cakes at the altar. Councils, as late as 1584, joined in condemning them. At the close of Henry VIII,’s reign and at Cranmer’s suggestion the festivals were forbidden in England.

§ 135. The Flagellants.

Literature: The Chronicles of Salimbene, Villani, etc.: Gerson: Contra sectam flagellantium, 1417, Du Pin’s ed., Antwerp, 1706. Gerson’s letter to Ferrer and his address to the council of Constance concerning the Flagellants are given by Van der Hardt: Constant. concilium, Frankf., 1700, III. 92–104.—J. Boileau: Hist. Flagel., Paris, 1700, new ed., 1770.—*E. G. Förstemann: D. christl. Geisslergesellschaften, Halle, 1828.—W. M. Cooper: Flagellation and the Flagellants, A Hist. of the Rod in all Countries, Lond., 1877; new ed., 1896.—Fredericq, in Corpus doc. inquis., etc. gives reports of their trials in Holland, I. 190 sqq., etc.—*F. Neukirch: D. Leben d. P. Damiani, Gött., 1875.—Lea: Hist. of Inq., I. 72 sqq., II. 381 sqq.—Artt. Geissler and Geisselung in Wetzer-Welte by Knöpfler, IV. 1532 sqq. and in Herzog by Haupt, VI. 432 sqq. For the older lit., see Förstemann, pp. 291–325.

A genuine indication of popular interest in religion within orthodox circles was the strange movement represented by the Flagellants. Gregorovius has gone so far as to pronounce their appearance "one of the most striking phenomena of the Middle Ages."2116  Although they started within the Church and are not to be classed with the mediaeval sectaries, the Flagellants in a later age came to be regarded with suspicion, were formally condemned by the council of Constance, and were even the object of ecclesiastical prosecution. They appeared first in 1259, then in 1333, 1349, 1399, and last at the time the council of Constance was sitting. The most notable appearance was in 1349, at the time the Black Death was raging in Europe.

The movement had no compact organization, as is shown from its spasmodic character. It grew out of discontent with the Church and a longing for true penitence and amendment of life. The prophecies of Joachim, who set 1260 as the time for the appearance of anti-christ, probably had something to do with stirring up unrest; perhaps also the famine in Italy, of 1258, which was followed by a strange physical malady, characterized by numbness of the bodily organs. Salimbene reports that the bells were left untolled for funerals, lest the sick should be terrified. The enthusiasm took the form of processions, scourgings, and some novel and strange ceremonies. It was a species of evangelism, and attempted a campaign against physical and other sins, as the Crusades did against the Saracens of the East. It sought to make popular the discipline of flagellation, which was practised in the convent, and to secure penitential results, such as the monk was supposed to reach.

The most notable adept of this conventual flagellation was Dominicus Loricatus (d. 1060), who got his name from the iron coat he wore next to his skin. He accompanied the repetition of every psalm with a hundred strokes with a lash on his naked back. Three thousand strokes were equivalent to a year’s penance. But Loricatus beat all records and accomplished the exercise of the entire Psalter no less than twenty times in six days, the equivalent of a hundred years of penance. Peter Damiani, to whom we are indebted for our account, relates that the zealous ascetic, after saying nine Psalters in a single day, accompanying them with the required number of lashes, went to his cell to make sure the count was right. Then removing his iron jacket and taking a scourge in each hand, he kept on repeating the Psalter the whole night through till he had finished it the twelfth time and was well into the thirteenth when he stopped.

What is your body, exclaimed Damiani, who contented himself with prescribing forty psalms a day for his monks,—"what is your body?  Is it not carrion, a mass of corruption, dust, and ashes, and what thanks will the worms give for taking good care of it?"2117

Under the appeals of preachers like Fulke of Neuilly and Anthony of Padua, there were abnormal physical manifestations, and hearers set to work flagellating themselves.

The flagellant outbreak of 1259 started at Perugia and spread like an epidemic. All classes, young and old, were seized. With bodies bared to the waist, carrying crosses and banners and singing hymns, newly composed and old, they marched to and fro in the streets, scourging themselves. Priests and monks joined the ranks of the penitents. Remarkable scenes of moral reform took place. Usurers gave up their ill-gotten gains; murderers confessed, and, with swords pointed to their throats, offered themselves up to justice; enemies were reconciled. And as the chatty chronicler, Salimbene, goes on to say, if any would not scourge himself, he was held to be a limb of Satan. And what is more, such persons were soon overtaken with sickness or premature death.2118 Twenty thousand marched from Modena to Bologna. At Reggio, Parma, and other cities, the chief officials joined them. But all were not so favorable, and the Cremona authorities and Manfred forbade their entering their territories.

The ardor cooled off quickly in Italy, but it spread beyond the Alps. Twelve hundred Flagellants appeared in Strassburg and the impulse was felt as far as Poland and Bohemia. The German penitents continued their penance thirty-three days in memory of the number of the years of Christ’s life. They chastised themselves and also sang hymns. Here also the enthusiasm subsided as suddenly as it was enkindled. The repetitions of the movement belong to the next period.

§ 136. Demonology and the Dark Arts.

Literature: Anselm: de casu diaboli, Migne, 158. 326–362.—P. Lombardus: Sent., II. 7 sqq.—Alb. Magnus: In Sent., Borgnet’s ed., XXVII. etc.—Th. Aquinas: Summa, I. 51 sqq., II. 94–96, Migne, I. 893 sqq., II. 718 sqq., etc. Popular statements, e.g. P. Damiani, Migne, 144, 145. Peter the Venerable: de mirac., Migne, 189. 850–954. —John of Salisbury: Polycraticus, Migne, 199. 405 sqq.—Walter Map—Caesar of Heisterbach: Dial. mirac. Strange’s ed., 2 vols. Bonn, 1851, especially bk. V.—Thos. A Chantimprè: Bonum universale de apibus, Germ. Reprod. by A. Kaufmann, Col. 1899.—Jac. De Voragine: Golden Legend, Temple Class. ed. —Etienne de Bourbon, especially Part IV.—*T. Wright: Narrative of Sorcery and Magic, 2 vols. Lond., 1851.—*G. Roskoff: Gesch. des Teufels, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1869.—*W. G. Soldau: Gesch. der Hexenprocesse, Stuttg., 1843; new ed., by Heppe, 2 vols. Stuttg., 1880.—*Lea: Hist. of the Inquis., III. 379–550.—Lecky: Hist. of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, chap. 1.—Döllinger-Friedrich: D. Papstthum, Munich, 1892.—A. D. White: Hist. of the Warfare of Science and Theol. in Christendom, 2 vols. N. Y., 1898.—*Joseph Hansen : Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprocess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung, Munich, 1900; *Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im MtA., Leip., 1901.—Graf von Hoensbroech: D. Papstthum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit, Leipzig, 2 vols. 1900; 4th ed., 1901, vol. I. 207–380. For special lit. on Witchcraft, 1300–1500, see next volume.

At no point do the belief and experience of our own age differ so widely from the Middle Ages as in the activity of the devil and the realm of evil spirits. The subject has already been touched upon under monasticism and the future state, but no history of the period would be complete which did not give it separate treatment. For the belief that the satanic kingdom is let loose upon mankind was more influential than the spirit of monasticism, or than the spirit which carried on the Crusades.

The credulity of monk and people and the theology of the Schoolmen peopled the earth and air with evil spirits. The writings of popular authors teem with tales of their personal appearances and malignant agency, and the scholastic definitions are nowhere more precise and careful than in the department of satanology. After centuries of Christian culture, a panic seized upon Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century about the fell agency of such spirits, a panic which continued powerfully to influence opinion far beyond the time of the Reformation. The persecution to which it led, was one of the most merciless forms of cruelty ever practised. The pursuit and execution of witches constitute a special chapter in the history, but it is not fully opened till the fifteenth century. Here belong the popular and scholastic conceptions of the devil and his agency before the witch-craze set in.

The sources from which the Middle Ages derived their ideas of the demonic world were the systems of classical antiquity, the Norse mythology, and the Bible as interpreted by Augustine and Gregory the Great. In its wildest fancies on the subject, the mediaeval theology was only following these two greater authorities.

The general term for the dark arts, that is, the arts which were supposed to be under the control of satanic agency, was maleficium, a term inherited from the Romans. The special names were magic, sorcery, necromancy, divination, and witchcraft. Astrology, after some hesitation, was included in the same list.2119

I. The Popular Belief.—The popular belief is set forth by such writers as Peter Damiani, Peter the Venerable, Caesar of Heisterbach, Jacob of Voragine, Thomas of Chantimpré, Etienne de Bourbon, and the French writers of poetry. Even the English writers, Walter Map and John of Salisbury, both travelled men and, as we would say, men of the world from whom we might have expected other things, accepted, with slight modification, the popular views. Map treats Ceres, Bacchus, Pan, the satyr, the dryads, and the fauns as demons, and John discusses in six chapters the pestiferous familiarity of demons and men—pestifera familiaritas daemonum et hominum.2120

Peter Damiani, the contemporary of Hildebrand, could tell of troops of devils he had seen in the air with his own eyes, and in all sorts of shapes.

Caesar of Heisterbach furnishes a storehouse of tales which to him were as much realities as reports of the Dark Continent by Stanley or Speke would be to us. This genial writer represents an old monk setting at rest the doubts of a novice by assuring him that he himself had seen the devil in the forms of a Moor, an ox, a dog, a toad, an ape, a pig, and even in the garbs of a nun and a prior. Peter the Venerable likewise speaks of Satan as taking on the form of a bear.2121  He also assumed the forms of a black horse, rooks, and other creatures. French poetry and the popular imagination invested him with horns, claws, and tail.2122

The devil made his appearance at all hours of the day and night, in the time of health, and at the hour of death. The monk was no more exempt from his personal solicitations while engaged at his devotions than at other times. One of the places where the evil spirits took particular delight in playing tricks was in the choir when the monastics were met for matins and other services. Here they would vex the devout by blowing out the lights, turning to a wrong leaf, or confusing the tune.2123

On one occasion Herman of Marienstadt saw three who passed so near to him that he might easily have touched them, had he so desired. He noted that they did not touch the floor and that one of them had the face of a woman, veiled. Sometimes a troop appeared and threw one part of the choir into discord, and when the other part took up the chant, the demons hastened over to its side and threw it into the same confusion, so that the two wings of the choir shouted hoarsely and discordantly one to the other.2124

On another occasion Herman, then become abbot, a monastic whom Caesar calls a man of marked piety, saw the devil in the form of a Moor sitting on one of the windows of the church. He looked as if he had just emerged from hell-fire, but soon took his flight. When Herman was praying to be delivered from such visions, the devil seizing his last opportunity appeared to the abbot as a bright eye as big as a fist, and as if to say, "Look straight at me once more for this is the last time."  Nevertheless, the abbot saw the devil again and this time at the sepulture of Countess Aleidis of Freusberg. While the lady’s body was lying in its shroud, the devil appeared, peering into all corners as if he was looking for something he had lost.

It was a bad symptom of the monkish imagination that when the devil was seen in convents, it was often in the form of a woman and a naked woman at that. Sometimes monks got sick from seeing him and could neither eat, drink, nor sleep for days. Sometimes they lost their minds from the same cause and died insane. At times, however, vigilant nuns were able to box his ears.2125  A demon entered the ear of a woman when her husband said to her, "Go to the devil."  Children were known to drink the devil in their milk as did one child of four who remained possessed for thirty years. The devil, as might have been expected, was fond of dice and, as in the case of a certain knight, Thieme, after playing with him all night carried him through the roof so that,—according to the testimony of the man’s son, he was never seen again.2126  Bernard, by his own statement, cast out demons, as did Norbert and most of the other mediaeval saints. Norbert’s biographer reports that the devil struck some of the Premonstrants with his tail. At other times he imparted to would-be monks an unusual gift to preach and explain the Bible, and the Premonstrants were about to receive some of this class into their order when the trick was revealed. On one occasion, when Norbert was about to cast out a demon from a boy, the demon took the shape of a pea and sat upon the boy’s tongue and then impudently set to work asserting that he would not evacuate his dwelling-place. "You are a liar," said the ecclesiastic, "and have been a liar from the beginning."  That truth the devil could not gainsay and so he came out and disappeared but not without leaving ill odors behind and the child sick.2127

The devil, however, to the discomfiture of the wicked often told the truth. Thus it happened in Norbert’s experience at Maestricht, that when he was about to heal a man possessed and a great crowd was gathered, the demon started to tell on bystanders tales of their adultery and other sins, which had not been covered by confession. No wonder the crowd quickly broke up and took to its heels.2128  The devil prayed the Lord’s Prayer but with mistakes so that he was easily detected.2129  Once his identity was discovered, it was no difficult thing to get rid of him. The sign of the cross, spitting, and saying the Ave Maria were sufficient to drive him away.2130  Peter the Venerable gives many cases showing how the crucifix, the host, and holy water protected monks, insidiously attacked by "the children of malediction" and the old enemy of souls"—antiquus hostis. Sometimes resort was had to sprinkling the room and all its furniture with holy water,—a sort of disinfecting process—and the imps would disappear.

De Voragine tells how St. Lupe, as he was praying one night, felt great thirst. He knew it was due to the devil and asked for water. When it was brought, he clapped a lid on the vessel, "shutting the devil up quick."  The prisoner howled all night, unable to get out.2131

Salimbene gives a droll case of a peasant into whom the devil entered, making him talk Latin. But the peasant tripped in his Latin so that "our Lector laughed at his mistakes."  The demon spoke up, "I can speak Latin well enough, but the tongue of this boor is so thick that I make sorry work wielding it."2132  Luther’s easy explanation of mice, fleas, and other pests as the devil’s creations, is called up by the following statement: A certain Cistercian, Richalmus, of the thirteenth century, in a book on the devil’s wiles, said, "It seems incredible but it is true, it is not fleas and lice which bite us but what we think is their bites are the pricks of demons. For those little insects do not live off our blood, but from perspiration, and we often feel such pricks when there are no fleas."2133

These incidents may be brought to a close by the following interesting conversation reported by Caesar of Heisterbach as having been carried on by two evil spirits who had possessed two women who got into a quarrel. "Oh, if we had only not gone over to Lucifer," said one, "and been cast out of heaven!"  The other replied, "Hold your peace, your repentance comes too late, you couldn’t get back if you would."  "If there were only a column of iron," answered the first, "though it were furnished with the sharpest knives and saws, I would be willing to climb up and down it till the last judgment day, if I could only thereby make my way back to glory."

These stories are records of what were believed to be real occurrences. The denizens of the lower world were everywhere present in visible and invisible form to vex and torment saint and sinner in body and soul. No voice is heard protesting against the belief. It is refreshing, however, to have at least one case of scepticism. Thus Vincent de Beauvais tells of a woman who assured her priest that she and other women were under the influence of witchcraft and had one night succeeded in getting into the priest’s bedchamber through the keyhole. After in vain trying to persuade her that she was laboring under a delusion, the priest locked the door and putting the key into his pocket, gave her a good drubbing with a stick, exclaiming, "Get out through the keyhole now, if you can."

II. The Theological Statement.—The wildest popular conceptions of the agency of evil spirits are confirmed by the theological definitions of Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and other Schoolmen. According to the mediaeval theology, the devil is at the head of a realm of demons who are divided into prelacies and hierarchies like the good angels.

The region into which the devil and his angels were cast down was the tenebrous air. There, in the pits of darkness, he and his followers are preserved until the day of final judgment. Their full degree of torment will not be meted out to them till then. In the meantime, they are permitted to trouble and torment men.2134  For this view such passages as Matt. 8:29 and Luke 8:31 are quoted.

Albertus Magnus, who, of all the Schoolmen, might speak on such a subject with precision, fixed the exact location of the aery realm. Following the philosophers, as he said, he defined three zones in the superterrestrial spaces: the higher, lower, and the middle zone.2135  The higher zone is light and tranquil, constituted of thin air and very hot. Its light is great in proportion to the propinquity of that sphere to the stars and because the rays of the sun permeate it for a longer time. The lower zone, enveloping and touching the solid earth, is made bright by the powerful reflection of the sun’s rays. The intermediate zone is exceedingly cold and dark. Here the tempests are bred and the hail and snows generated. This is the habitation of the evil spirits, and there they move the clouds, start the thunders, and set a-going other natural terrors to frighten and hurt men. The exact distance of that sphere from the earth the philosophers measure, but Albertus does not choose to determine the measurement.

In defining the mental power and the influence of evil spirits, Thomas Aquinas and the other Schoolmen follow Augustine closely, although in elaboration they go beyond him. The demons did not lose their intellectual keenness by their fall.2136  This keenness and long experience give them power to foretell the future. If astronomers, said Albertus Magnus, foresee future events by the natal constellations, much more may demons through their shrewdness in observation and watching the stars. Their predictions, however, differ from the predictions of the prophets by being the product of the light of nature. The prophets received a divine revelation.

The miracles which the evil spirits perform are, for the most part, juggleries.2137  Thomas Aquinas, however, asserts for these works a genuine supernatural quality. They are at times real works, as when the magicians, by the help of the devil, made frogs in Egypt; or as in the case of Job’s children upon whom fire came down from heaven. They are not able to create out of nothing, but they have the power to accelerate the development of germs and hidden potencies, to destroy harvests, influence the weather, and produce sickness and death.

The special influence which they exercise over human beings in sorcery and witchcraft they exercise by virtue of a compact entered into between them and men and women, Isa. 28:18: "We have made a covenant with death, and with sheol are we in agreement."  The most fiendish and frequent of these operations is to disturb the harmony of the married relation. Men they make impotent; women sterile. The earlier fiction of the succubus and the incubus, inherited from pagan mythology and adopted by Augustine, was fully accepted in the Middle Ages. This was the shocking belief that demons cohabit with men, the succubus, and lie with women, the incubus. The Schoolmen go so far as to affirm that, though the demons have no direct offspring, yet after lying with men they suddenly transform themselves and communicate the seed they have received to women.2138

This view which the Schoolmen formulated was common belief. The story of Merlin, the son of an incubus and a nun, was a popular one in the Middle Ages.2139  Guibert of Nogent states that his father and mother for three years were prevented from exercising the rights of wedlock until the incubus was driven off by a good angel. Matthew Paris reports the case of a child which went for the offspring of an incubus.2140  The Huns were popularly believed to be the offspring of demons and offcast Gothic women.2141  Eleanor, wife of Louis VII. and then of Henry II. of England, so report went, was likewise the child of a demon.2142  Caesar of Heisterbach gives many stories of the cohabitation of demons with priests and women.2143

This malign activity upon the marital relation was made by Thomas Aquinas a proper ground of divorce.2144  The transport of men and women through the air is also vouched for by this theologian, and as far back as the twelfth century the Patarenes were accused of practices, as by Walter Map, which were at a later period associated with witches. They held their meetings or synagogues behind closed doors and after the lights were put out the devil descended in the shape of a cat, holding on to a rope. Scenes of indiscriminate lust followed. Map was even willing to believe that the heretics kissed the cat under the tail.2145

The mind of Europe did not become seriously exercised on the subject of demonic possession until after heresy made its appearance and the measures to blot it out were in an advanced stage. The Fourth Lateran did not mention the dark arts, and its failure to do so can only be explained on the ground that the mind of Christendom was not yet aroused. It was not long, however, before violent incursions of the powers of darkness, as they were supposed to be, rudely awakened the Church, and from the time of Gregory IX. the agency of evil spirits and heresy were closely associated. In one of his deliverances against the Stedinger, this pope vouched for the belief that heretics consulted witches, held communion with demons, and indulged in orgies with them and the devil who, as he said, met with them in the forms of a great toad and black cat. Were the stars in heaven and the elements to combine for the destruction of such people without reference to their age or sex, it would be an inadequate punishment.2146

After 1250 the persecution of heretics for doctrinal error diminishes and the trials for sorcery, witchcraft, and other demonic iniquity become frequent.2147  In big bull, ad exstirpanda, 1252, Innocent IV. called upon princes to treat heretics as though they were sorcerers, and in 1258 Alexander IV. spoke of sorcerers as savoring of heresy.2148  Before this, magic and sorcery had come exclusively under the jurisdiction of the state.

At this juncture came the indorsement of Thomas Aquinas and his great theological contemporaries. There was nothing left for the ecclesiastical and civil authorities to do but to ferret out sorcerers, witches, and all who had habitual secret dealings with the devil. A craze seized upon the Church to clear the Christian world of imaginary armies of evil spirits, demonizing men and especially women. Pope after pope issued orders not to spare those who were in league with the devil, but to put them to torture and cast them into the flames.2149  The earliest trials for sorcery by the Inquisition were held in Southern France about 1250, and the oldest Interrogatories of the Inquisition on the subject date twenty-five years later.2150  These prosecutions reached their height in the fifteenth century, and the papal fulminations found their ultimate expression in the bull of Innocent VIII. against witches, 1484.

Men like Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were popularly charged with being wizards. Bacon, enlightened beyond his age, pronounced some of the popular beliefs delusions, but, far from denying the reality of sorcery and magic, he tried to explain the efficacy of spells and charms by their being made at seasons when the heavens were propitious.

§ 137. The Age passing Judgment upon Itself.

The preceding pages have shown the remarkable character of the events and movements, the men and ideas which fill the centuries from Hildebrand’s entrance into Rome with Leo IX., 1049, to the abdication of the simple-minded Coelestin, 1294. The present generation regards the events of the last half-century as most extraordinary. The same judgment was passed by Matthew Paris upon the half-century of which he was a spectator, 1200–1250. Useful inventions and discoveries, such as we associate with the second half of the nineteenth century, there were few or none in the thirteenth century, and yet those times were full of occurrences and measures which excited the deepest interest and the speculation of men. The retrospect of the fifty years, which the clearheaded English monk sums up in his Chronicles, furnishes one of the most instructive pieces of mediaeval literature.

Here is what Matthew Paris says: There occurred in this time extraordinary and strange events, the like of which had never been seen before nor were found in any of the writings of the Fathers. The Tartars ravaged countries inhabited by Christians. Damietta was twice taken and retaken, Jerusalem twice desolated by the Infidel. St. Louis was captured with his brothers in the East. Wales passed under the domination of England. Frederick, the Wonder of the World, had lived his career. The Crusades had given to a great host a glorious death. As for natural wonders, an eclipse of the sun had occurred twice in three years, earthquakes had shaken England several times, and there had been a destructive rise of the sea such as had never been seen before. One night immense numbers of stars fell from the heavens, a reason for which could not be found in the Book of Meteors, except that Christ’s threat was impending when he said, "There shall be signs in the heavens."

Among things distinctively religious, the chronicler notes that an English cardinal was suffocated in his palace, as was supposed, for having his eye on the tiara. The figure of Christ appeared in the sky in Germany and was plainly seen by every one. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Hildegard flourished. The ordeal of fire and water was abolished. Seville, Cordova, and other parts of Spain were rescued from the Moors. The orders of the Minorites and the Preachers arose, startling the world by their devotion and disgusting it by their sudden decline. Some of the blood of Christ and a stone, bearing his footprints, arrived in England.

Such are some of the occurrences which seemed wonderful to the racy English historian. If he had read over the leaves of his Chronicles as we do, how many other events he might have singled out,—from the appearance of the elephant, a gift of the king of France to the king of England, which, as he says, was the first ever seen in England and the appearance of the sea-monster thrown up in Norwich,2151 to his instructive accounts of the doings of popes and emperors, and the chafings of the English people under papal injustice.

Life was by no means a humdrum, monotonous existence to the people who lived in the age of the Crusades and Innocent III. On the contrary it was full of surprises and attractive movements, from every turn of the papacy and empire, to the expeditions of the Crusaders and the travels of Marco Polo and Rubruquis.

A historical period is measured by the judgment passed upon it by its contemporaries and by the judgment of succeeding generations. What did the period from 1050 to 1294 offer that seemed notable to those who were living then and what contribution did it make to the progress and well-being of mankind?  The first of these questions can be answered by the generation which then lived; the second, best by the generations which have come since.

It is the persuasion of a school of mediaeval enthusiasts that this period was a golden age of faith and morals and tenable systems of belief, an age when the laws of God were obeyed as they have not been since, an age when proper attention was given to the things of religion, an age of high ideals and spiritual repose. Is this judgment justified or is the older Protestant view the right one that the Middle Ages handed down nothing distinctive—which has been of permanent value; but, on the contrary, many of the superstitions and false doctrines now prevailing in the Church are an inheritance from the Middle Ages, and it would have been better if the Church had passed directly from the patristic age and skipped the mediaeval.2152

Neither judgment is right. A more just opinion is beginning to prevail, and upon a modification of the extreme views of Protestants and Roman Catholics on the subject depends to a considerable extent the closer fellowship between the ecclesiastical communions of the West. Much chaff will be found there mixed with the wheat. On the other hand, in this mediaeval period were also sown the seeds of religious ideas and institutions which are now in their period of bloom or awaiting the time of full fruitage.

The achievement of absolute power by the papacy, magnificent as it was, represents an ideal utterly at fault, whether we consider the teaching of Scripture or the prevailing judgment of the present time. Ambition, pride, avarice, were mingled in popes with a sincere belief that the Roman see inherited from the Apostle plenitude of authority in all realms. Europe, more enlightened, cannot accept such a claim and the moral degeneracy and spiritual incompetency of the popes, in the period following this, were an experimental proof that the theory was wrong.

As for the priesthood and hierarchy, evidence enough has been adduced to show that ordination did not insure devotion to office and personal purity. Dante’s hell contains more than one pontiff of this period. The nearer we approach Rome, the more numerous the scandals are. The term "the Romans" was synonymous with unscrupulous greed. Gregory X. in 1274 declared that "the prelates were the ruin of Christendom."  Frederick II., though pronounced a poor churchman, was a keen observer and no doubt indicated a widespread discontent with the lives the clergy were leading when he declared that, if they would change their mode of living, the world might again see miracles as in the days of old.2153

The distinctively mediaeval ideal of a religious life has little attraction to-day. The seclusion of the monastery presents a striking contrast to the active career demanded of a Christian profession in this age. The example of St. Bernard and his praise of monasticism, as the praise of other writers, are so weighty that one cannot deny that the best men saw in monastic solitude the highest advantage. Monastic institutions had a most useful part to play as a leavening force in the wild and unsettled society of that time. But the discipline and ardor of monastic orders quickly passed away, in spite of the devotion of Francis d’Assisi and other monastic founders. Simplicity yielded to luxury, and spiritual devotion to sloth and pride. It was the ardent Franciscan, Bonaventura, who instances the vices which had crept into his order and Jacques de Vitry, cardinal-bishop, d. 1240, who said that a girl’s virtue was safe under no Rule except the Cistercian. What can be said of the ideal of human life as it is set forth in the tale of St. Brandon, not to speak of innumerable similar tales told by Jacob de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, d. 1298!  What shall be thought of the example of the Blessed St. Angela of Foligno, admired and praised by so many Franciscan writers, who on her "conversion" prayed to be relieved of the impediments of obedience to husband, respect to mother and the care of children and rejoiced to have her request granted by their deaths!

If we desire priestly rule, there was enough of it to satisfy any one. But with the rule of the priesthood came the loss of individual freedom and the right of the soul to determine its own destiny in the sight of the Creator. De Voragine2154 speaks of Thomas à Becket, by great abstinence making his body lean and his soul fat. He had a right to do as he pleased. But it was the same prelate who expressed the hierarchical pride of the age when he exclaimed to an English king that priests are the fathers and masters of kings. The laity, according to Caesar of Heisterbach, as already quoted, were compared to the night, the clergy to the day, The preacher Werner of St. Blasius called the peasants the feet whose toil was appointed to maintain the more worthy parts of the body,—bishops, priests, and monks.2155  The thinkers of this period had no vision of the Reformation.

The Middle Ages have been praised as a period of religious contentment and freedom from sectarian strife. The very contrary was the case. The strife between the friars and the secular clergy and, in cases, within the monastic orders themselves equals in bitterness any strife that has been maintained between branches of the Protestant Church. It was a question not whether there was religious unrest but, from the days of Arnold of Brescia on, how the established Church might crush out heretical revolt. There was also religious doubt among the monks, and there were women who denied that Eve had been tempted by an apple, as Caesar of Heisterbach assures us.

The superstitions which prevailed were largely inherited from preceding ages. The worship of Mary clouded the merits of Christ. What can be said when Thomas of Chantimpré, d. about 1263, relates in all seriousness that a robber, whose head had been cut off, kept calling upon the Virgin, as the body rolled down a hill, until the parts were put together by a priest. The criminal then told how, as a boy, he had devoted Saturdays and Wednesdays to Mary and she had promised he should not die till opportunity was given him to make confession. So he made confession and died again, and, as the reader is left to believe, went into the other world rejoicing.

The gruesome tales of demoniacal presence and influence indicate a condition of mind from which we do well to be thankful we are delivered. John of St. Giles, the admirable English Dominican, used to say, as he retired to his cell in the evening, "Now I await my martyrdom," meaning the buffetings of the devil. The awful story of how Ludwig the Iron, 1100–1172, was welcomed to hell and shown all its compartments and then pitched mercilessly into quenchless flames is no worse than the visions of Dante, but too revolting in the apparent callousness of it to the suffering of others not to call forth a shudder to-day.2156

Such representations, however, do not warrant the conclusion that human charity was dead. St. Francis and Hugh of Lincoln kissed the hands of lepers. The Knights of St. Lazarus were intrusted by Louis IX. with the care of this class of sufferers. Houses for lepers were established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry, King Stephen at Burton, and others. Mathilda washed their feet, believing that, in so doing, she was washing the feet of Christ.2157  The oldest of the military orders and the Teutonic Knights, as well as other orders, were organized to care for the sick and distressed.

On the other hand the period sets, in some respects, an example of great devotion, and has handed down to us the universities and the cathedrals, some of the most tender hymns and imposing theological systems which, if they cannot be accepted in important particulars, are yet remarkable constructions of thought and piety. And, above all, it has handed down to us a group of notable men who may well serve as a stimulus to all generations which are interested in the extension of Christ’s kingdom.

But in the judgment of these very men, the period was not an ideal one either in morals or faith. If we go to preachers, like Berthold of Regensburg, we find evidence of the prevalence of vice and irreligion among all classes. If we go to popes and Schoolmen, we hear bitter complaints of the evils of the age and of human lot which would fit in with the most pessimistic philosophy of our times. Innocent III., in his Disdain of the World,—De contemptu mundi,—poured out a lamentation, lugubrious enough for the most desolate and forsaken. Anselm dilates under the same title, and Hugo of St. Victor2158 carries on the plaint in his Vanity of the World—De vanitate mundi. Walter Map wrote on the world’s misery—de mundi miseria, declaring that the world was near its destruction, that justice was exiled from society and the worship of Christ was coming to an end.

Exulat justitia, cessat Christi cultus.

The most famous of the longer poems of the period repeats Innocent’s title, and its author, Bernard of Cluny, is most severe upon the corruption in church and society. The poem starts in the minor key.

The last times, the worst times are here, watch.

Behold the Judge, supreme, is at hand with His wrath.

He is here, He is here. He will terminate the evils. He will reward the just.

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus

Ecce minaciter, imminet arbiter ille supremus.

Imminet, imminet, et mala terminet, aequa coronet.

The greater Bernard of Clairvaux exclaimed, "Oh! that I might, before dying, see the Church of God led back to the ideal of her early days. Then the nets were cast, not to catch gold and silver, but to save souls. The perilous times are not impending. They are here. Violence prevails on the earth."2159  The Englishman, Adam Marsh, writing to Grosseteste, spoke of "these most damnable times," his diebus damnatissimis.2160  Edmund of Abingdon, archbishop of Canterbury, dying in exile at Potigny, exclaimed, "I have lived too long, for I see all things going to ruin; Lord God receive my soul."2161  Roger Bacon found rottenness and decay everywhere, and he agreed with other moralists of his day, in making the clergy chiefly responsible for the prevailing corruption. The whole clergy, he says, "is given to pride, avarice, and self-indulgence. Where clergymen are gathered together, as at Paris and Oxford, their quarrels and strife, and their vices are a scandal to laymen."2162

With a similar lament Hildebrand, at the opening of the period, took up the duties of the papacy.

The prophet Joachim looked for a new dispensation as the only relief.

The real greatness of this period lies not in its relative moral and religious perfection, as compared with our own, but in a certain imposing grandeur of conception and of faith, as shown in the Crusades, the cathedrals, the Scholastic systems, and even the mistaken ideal of papal supremacy. Its institutions were not in a settled condition, and its religious life was not characterized by repose. A tremendous struggle was going on. The surface was troubled, and there was a mighty undercurrent of restlessness. It would be an ungracious and a foolish thing for this generation, the heir of twice as many centuries of Christian schooling as were the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to boast as though Christian charity and morality and devotion to high aims had waited until now to manifest themselves. The Middle Ages, from 1050 to 1300, offer a spectacle of stirring devotion to religious aims in thought and conduct.

VOLUME VI. THE MIDDLE AGES FROM BONIFACE VIII., 1294 TO THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1517

by

DAVID S. SCHAFF, D.D.

————

PREFACE

This volume completes the history of the Church in the Middle Ages. Dr. Philip Schaff on one occasion spoke of the Middle Ages as a terra incognita in the United States,—a territory not adequately explored. These words would no longer be applicable, whether we have in mind the instruction given in our universities or theological seminaries. In Germany, during the last twenty years, the study of the period has been greatly developed, and no period at the present time, except the Apostolic age, attracts more scholarly and earnest attention and research.

The author has had no apologetic concern to contradict the old notion, perhaps still somewhat current in our Protestant circles, that the Middle Ages were a period of superstition and worthy of study as a curiosity rather than as a time directed and overruled by an all-seeing Providence. He has attempted to depict it as it was and to allow the picture of high religious purpose to reveal itself side by side with the picture of hierarchical assumption and scholastic misinterpretation. Without the mediaeval age, the Reformation would not have been possible. Nor is this statement to be understood in the sense in which we speak of reaching a land of sunshine and plenty after having traversed a desert. We do well to give to St. Bernard and Francis d’Assisi, St. Elizabeth and St. Catherine of Siena, Gerson, Tauler and Nicolas of Cusa a high place in our list of religious personalities, and to pray for men to speak to our generation as well as they spoke to the generations in which they lived.

Moreover, the author has been actuated by no purpose to disparage Christians who, in the alleged errors of Protestantism, find an insuperable barrier to Christian fellowship. Where he has passed condemnatory judgments on personalities, as on the popes of the last years of the 15th and the earlier years of the 16th century, it is not because they occupied the papal throne, but because they were personalities who in any walk of life would call for the severest reprobation. The unity of the Christian faith and the promotion of fellowship between Christians of all names and all ages are considerations which should make us careful with pen or spoken word lest we condemn, without properly taking into consideration that interior devotion to Christ and His kingdom -which seems to be quite compatible with divergencies in doctrinal statement or ceremonial habit.

On the pages of the volume, the author has expressed his indebtedness to the works of the eminent mediaeval historians and investigators of the day, Gregorovius, Pastor, Mandell Creighton, Lea, Ehrle, Denifle, Finke, Schwab, Haller, Carl Mirbt, R. Mueller Kirsch, Loserth, Janssen, Valois, Burckhardt-Geiger, Seebohm and others, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and some no more among the living.

It is a pleasure to be able again to express his indebtedness to the Rev. David E. Culley, his colleague in the Western Theological Seminary, whose studies in mediaeval history and accurate scholarship have been given to the volume in the reading of the manuscript, before it went to the printer, and of the printed pages before they received their final form.

Above all, the author feels it to be a great privilege that he has been able to realize the hope which Dr. Philip Schaff expressed in the last years of his life, that his History of the Christian Church which, in four volumes, had traversed the first ten centuries and, in the sixth and seventh, set forth the progress of the German and Swiss Reformations, might be carried through the fruitful period from 1050–1517.

David S. Schaff.

The Western Theological Seminary,

Pittsburg.

[1]

THE DECLINE OF THE PAPACY AND THE PREPARATION FOR MODERN CHRISTIANITY.

FROM BONIFACE VIII. TO MARTIN LUTHER.

A.D. 1294-1517.

THE SIXTH PERIOD OF CHURCH HISTORY.

§ 1. Introductory Survey.

The two centuries intervening between 1294 and 1517, between the accession of Boniface VIII. and the nailing of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses against the church door in Wittenberg, mark the gradual transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, from the universal acceptance of the papal theocracy in Western Europe to the assertion of national independence, from the supreme authority of the priesthood to the intellectual and spiritual freedom of the individual. Old things are passing away; signs of a new order increase. Institutions are seen to be breaking up. The scholastic systems of theology lose their compulsive hold on men’s minds, and even become the subject of ridicule. The abuses of the earlier Middle Ages call forth voices demanding reform on the basis of the Scriptures and the common well-being of mankind. The inherent vital energies in the Church seek expression in new forms of piety and charitable deed.

The power of the papacy, which had asserted infallibility of judgment and dominion over all departments of human life, was undermined by the mistakes, pretensions, and worldliness of the papacy itself, as exhibited in the policy of Boniface VIII., the removal of the papal residence to Avignon, and the disastrous schism which, for nearly half a century, gave to Europe the spectacle of two, and at times three, popes reigning at the same time and all professing to be the vicegerents of God on earth.

The free spirit of nationality awakened during the crusades grew strong and successfully resisted the papal authority, first in France and then in other parts of Europe. Princes asserted supreme authority over the citizens within their dominions and insisted upon the obligations of churches to the state. The leadership of Europe passed from Germany to France, with England coming more and more into prominence.

The tractarian literature of the fourteenth century set forth the rights of man and the principles of common law in opposition to the pretensions of the papacy and the dogmatism of the scholastic systems. Lay writers made themselves heard as pioneers of thought, and a practical outlook upon the mission of the Church was cultivated. With unexampled audacity Dante assailed the lives of popes, putting some of St. Peter’s successors into the lowest rooms of hell.

The Reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel turned Europe for nearly fifty years, 1409–1450, into a platform of ecclesiastical and religious discussion. Though they failed to provide a remedy for the disorders prevailing in the Church, they set an example of free debate, and gave the weight of their eminent constituency to the principle that not in a select group of hierarchs does supreme authority in the Church rest, but in the body of the Church.

The hopelessness of expecting any permanent reform from the papacy and the hierarchy was demonstrated in the last years of the period, 1460–1517, when ecclesiastical Rome offered a spectacle of moral corruption and spiritual fall which has been compared to the corrupt age of the Roman Empire.

The religious unrest and the passion for a better state of affairs found expression in Wyclif, Huss, and other leaders who, by their clear apprehension of truth and readiness to stand by their public utterances, even unto death, stood far above their own age and have shone in all the ages since.

While coarse ambition and nepotism, a total perversion of the ecclesiastical office and violation of the fundamental virtues of the Christian life held rule in the highest place of Christendom, a pure stream of piety was flowing in the Church of the North, and the mystics along the Rhine and in the Lowlands were unconsciously fertilizing the soil from which the Reformation was to spring forth.

The Renaissance, or the revival of classical culture, unshackled the minds of men. The classical works of antiquity were once more, after the churchly disparagement of a thousand years, held forth to admiration. The confines of geography were extended by the discoveries of the continent in the West.

The invention of the art of printing, about 1440, forms an epoch in human advancement, and made it possible for the products of human thought to be circulated widely among the people, and thus to train the different nations for the new age of religious enfranchisement about to come, and the sovereignty of the intellect.

To this generation, which looks back over the last four centuries, the discovery of America and the pathways to the Indies was one of the remarkable events in history, a surprise and a prophecy. In 1453, Constantinople easily passed into the hands of the Turk, and the Christian empire of the East fell apart. In the far West the beginnings of a new empire were made, just as the Middle Ages were drawing to a close.

At the same time, at the very close of the period, under the direction and protection of the Church, an institution was being prosecuted which has scarcely been equalled in the history of human cruelty, the Inquisition,—now papal, now Spanish,—which punished heretics unto death in Spain and witches in Germany.

Thus European society was shaking itself clear of long-established customs and dogmas based upon the infallibility of the Church visible, and at the same time it held fast to some of the most noxious beliefs and practices the Church had allowed herself to accept and propagate. It had not the original genius or the conviction to produce a new system of theology. The great Schoolmen continued to rule doctrinal thought. It established no new ecclesiastical institution of an abiding character like the canon law. It exhibited no consuming passion such as went out in the preceding period in the crusades and the activity of the Mendicant Orders. It had no transcendent ecclesiastical characters like St. Bernard and Innocent III. The last period of the Middle Ages was a period of intellectual discontent, of self-introspection, a period of intimation and of preparation for an order which it was itself not capable of begetting.

CHAPTER I.

THE DECLINE OF THE PAPACY AND THE AVIGNON EXILE.

A.D. 1294–1377.

§ 2. Sources and Literature.

For works covering the entire period, see V. 1. 1–3, such as the collections of Mansi, Muratori, and the Rolls Series; Friedberg’s Decretum Gratiani, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1879–1881; Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengeschichte; Mirbt: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstthums, 2d ed., 1901; the works of Gregorovius and Bryce, the General Church and Doctrinal Histories of Gieseler, Hefele, Funk, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Karl Müller, Harnack Loofs, and Seeberg; the Encyclopaedias of Herzog, Wetzer-Welte, Leslie Stephen, Potthast, and Chévalier; the Atlases of F. W. Putzger, Leipzig, Heussi and Mulert, Tübingen, 1905, and Labberton, New York. L. Pastor: Geschichte der Papste, etc., 4 vols., 4th ed., 1901–1906, and Mandell Creighton: History of the Papacy, etc., London, 1882–1894, also cover the entire period in the body of their works and their Introductory Chapters. There is no general collection of ecclesiastical author far this period corresponding to Migne’s Latin Patrology.

For §§ 3, 4. Boniface VIII. Regesta Bonifatii in Potthast: Regesta pontificum rom., II., 1923–2024, 2133 sq. – Les Registres de Boniface VIII., ed. Digard, Fauçon et Thomas, 7 Fasc., Paris, 1884–1903. – Hist. Eccles. of Ptolemaeus of Lucca, Vitae Pontif. of Bernardus Guidonis, Chron. Pontif. of Amalricus Augers Hist. rerum in Italia gestarum of Ferretus Vicentinus, and Chronica universale of Villani, all in Muratori: Rerum Ital. Scriptores, III. 670 sqq., X. 690 sqq., XI. 1202 sqq., XIIL 348 sqq. – Selections from Villani, trans. by Rose E. Selfe, ed. by P. H. Wicksteed, Westminster, 1897. – Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., Münster, 1902. Prints valuable documents pp. i-ccxi. Also Acta Aragonensia. Quellen ... zur Kirchen und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jayme II, 1291–1327, 2 vols., Berlin, 1908. – Döllinger: Beiträge zur politischen, kirchlichen und Culturgeschichte der letzten 6 Jahrh., 3 vols., Vienna, 1862–1882. Vol. III., pp. 347–353, contains a Life of Boniface drawn from the Chronicle of Orvieto by an eye-witness, and other documents. – Denifle: Die Denkschriften der Colonna gegen Bonifaz VIII., etc., in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengeschichte des M. A., 1892, V. 493 sqq. – Dante: Inferno, XIX. 52 sqq., XXVII. 85 sqq.; Paradiso, IX. 132, XXVII. 22, XXX. 147. Modern Works. – J. Rubeus: Bonif. VIII. e familia Cajetanorum, Rome, 1651. Magnifies Boniface as an ideal pope. – P Dupuy: Hist. du différend entre le Pape Bon. et Philip le Bel, Paris, 1655. – Baillet (a Jansenist): Hist. des désmelez du Pape Bon. VIII. avec Philip le Bel, Paris, 1718. – L. Tosti: Storia di Bon. VIII. e de’suoi tempi, 2 vols., Rome, 1846. A glorification of Boniface. – W. Drumann: Gesch. Bonifatius VIII. 2 vols., Königsberg, 1862. – Cardinal Wiseman: Pope Bon. VIII. in his Essays, III. 161–222. Apologetic. – Boutaric: La France sous Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1861. – R. Holtzmann: W. von Nogaret, Freiburg, 1898. – E. Renan: Guil. de Nogaret, in Hist. Litt. de France, XXVII. 233 sq.; also Études sur la politique Rel. du règne de Phil. Ie Bel, Paris, 1899. – Döllinger: Anagni in Akad. Vorträge, III. 223–244. – Heinrich Finke (Prof. in Freiburg): as above. Also Papsttum und Untergang des Tempelordens, 2 vols., Münster, 1907. – J. Haller: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, Berlin, 1903. – Rich. Scholz: Die Publizistik zur Zeit Philipps des Schönen und Bonifaz VIII., Stuttgart, 1903. – The Ch. Histt. of Gieseler, Hergenröther-Kirsch 4th ed., 1904, II. 582–598, F. X. Funk, 4th ed., 1902, Hefele 3d ed., 1902, K. Müller, Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengeschichte, VI. 281–364. – Ranke: Univers. Hist., IX. – Gregorovius: History of the City of Rome, V. – Wattenbach: Gesch. des röm. Papstthums, 2d ED., Berlin, 1876, pp. 211–226. – G. B. Adams: Civilization during the Middle Ages, New York, 1894, ch. XIV. – Art. Bonifatius by Hauck in Herzog, III. 291–300.

For § 5. Literary Attacks upon the Papacy. Dante Allighiere: De monarchia, ed. by Witte, Vienna, 1874; Giuliani, Florence, 1878; Moore, Oxford, 1894. Eng. trans. by F. C. Church, together with the essay on Dante by his father, R. W. Church, London, 1878; P. H. Wicksteed, Hull, 1896; Aurelia Henry, Boston, 1904. – Dante’s De monarchia, Valla’s De falsa donatione Constantini, and other anti-papal documents are given in De jurisdictione, auctoritate et praeeminentia imperiali, Basel, 1566. Many of the tracts called forth by the struggle between Boniface VIII. and Philip IV. are found in Melchior Goldast: Monarchia S. Romani imperii, sive tractatus de jurisdictione imperiali seu regia et pontificia seu sacerdotali, etc., Hanover, 1610, pp. 756, Frankfurt, 1668. With a preface dedicated to the elector, John Sigismund of Brandenburg; in Dupuy: Hist. du Différend, etc., Paris, 1655, and in Finke and Scholz. See above. – E. Zeck: De recuperatione terrae Sanctae, Ein Traktat d. P. Dubois, Berlin, 1906. For summary and criticism, S. Riezler: Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers, pp. 131–166. Leipzig, 1874. – R. L. Poole: Opposition to the Temporal Claims of the Papacy, in his Illustrations of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 256–281, London, 1884. – Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., pp. 169 sqq., etc. – Denifle: Chartularium Un. Parisiensis, 4 vols. – Haller: Papsttum. – Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Colonna, III. 667–671, and Johann von Paris, VI. 1744–1746, etc. – Renan: Pierre Dubois in Hist. Litt. de France, XXVI. 471–536. – Hergenröther-Kirsch: Kirchengesch., II. 754 sqq.

For § 6. Transfer Of The Papacy To Avignon. Benedict XI.: Registre de Benoît XI., ed. C. Grandjean. – For Clement V., Clementis papae V. regestum ed. cura et studio monachorum ord. S. Benedicti, 9 vols., Rome, 1885–1892. – Etienne Baluze: Vitae paparum Avenoniensium 1305–1394, dedicated to Louis XIV. and placed on the Index, 2 vols., Paris, 1693. Raynaldus: ad annum, 1304 sqq., for original documents. – W. H. Bliss: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registries relating to Great Britain and Ireland, I.-IV., London, 1896–1902. – Giovanni and Matteo Villani: Hist. of Florence sive Chronica universalis, bks. VIII. sq. – M. Tangl: Die päpstlichen Regesta von Benedict XII.-Gregor XI., Innsbruck, 1898. Mansi: Concil., XXV. 368 sqq., 389 sqq. – J. B. Christophe: Hist. de la papauté pendant le XIVe siècle, 2 vols., Paris, 1853. – C. von Höfler: Die avignonesischen Päpste, Vienna, 1871. – Fauçon: La Libraire Des Papes d’Avignon, 2 vols., Paris, 1886 sq. – M. Souchon: Die Papstwahlen von Bonifaz VIII.-Urban VI., Braunschweig, 1888. – A. Eitel: D. Kirchenstaat unter Klemens V., Berlin, 1905. – Clinton Locke: Age of the Great Western Schism, pp. 1–99, New York, 1896. – J. H. Robinson: Petrarch, New York, 1898. – Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 1–7. – Döllinger-Friedrich: Das Papstthum, Munich, 1892. – Pastor: Geschichte der Papste seit dem Ausgang des M. A., 4 vols., 3d and 4th ed., 1901 sqq., I. 67–114. – Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England. – Capes: The English Church in the 14th and 15th Centuries, London, 1900. – Wattenbach: Röm. Papstthum, pp. 226–241. – Haller: Papsttum, etc. – Hefele-Knöpfler: VI. 378–936. – Ranke: Univers. Hist., IX. – Gregorovius: VI. – The Ch. Histt. of Gieseler, Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 737–776, Müller, II. 16–42. – Ehrle: Der Nachlass Clemens V. in Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengesch., V. 1–150. For the fall of the Templars, see for Lit. V. 1. p. 301 sqq., and especially the works of Boutaric, Prutz, Schottmüller, Döllinger. – Funk in Wetzer-Welte, XI. 1311–1345. – LEA: Inquisition, III. Finke: Papsttum und Untergang des Tempelordens, 2 vols., 1907. Vol. II. contains Spanish documents, hitherto unpublished, bearing on the fall of the Templars, especially letters to and from King Jayme of Aragon. They are confirmatory of former views.

For § 7. The Pontificate of John XXII. Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Jean XXII. relative a la France, ed. Aug. Coulon, 3 Fasc., 1900 sq. Lettres communes de p. Jean XXII., ed. Mollat, 3 vols, Paris, 1904–1906. – J. Guérard: Documents pontificeaux sur la Gascogne. Pontificat de Jean XXII., 2 vols., Paris, 1897–1903. – Baluze: Vitae paparum. – V. Velarque: Jean XXII. sa vie et ses aeuvres, Paris, 1883. – J. Schwalm, Appellation d. König Ludwigs des Baiern v. 1324, Riezler: D. Lit. Widersacher. Also Vatikanische Akten zur deutschen Gesch. zur Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern, Innsbruck, 1891. – K. Müller: Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern mit der römischen Curie, 2 vols., Tübingen, 1879 sq. – Ehrle: Die Spirituallen, ihr Verhältniss zum Franciskanerorden, etc., in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., 1885, p. 509 sqq., 1886, p. 106 sqq., 1887, p. 553 sqq., 1890. Also P. J. Olivi: S. Leben und s. Schriften 1887, pp. 409–540. – Döllinger: Deutschlands Kampf mit dem Papstthum unter Ludwig dem Bayer in Akad. Vorträge, I. 119–137. – Hefele: VI. 546–579. – Lea: Inquisition, I. 242–304. – The Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Franziskanerorden, IV. 1650–1683, and Armut, I. 1394–1401. Artt. John XXII. in Herzog, IX. 267–270, and Wetzer-Welte, VIII. 828 sqq. – Haller: Papsttum, p. 91 sqq. – Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England. – Gregorovius, VI. – PASTOR: I. 80 sqq.

For § 8. The Papal Office Assailed. Some of the tracts may be found in Goldast: Monarchia, Hanover, 1610, e.g. Marsiglius of Padua, II. 164–312; Ockam’s Octo quaestionum decisiones super potestate ac dignitate papali, II. 740 sqq., and Dialogus inter magistrum et discipulum, etc., II., 399 sqq. Special edd. are given in the body of the chap. and may be found under Alvarus Pelagius, Marsiglius, etc., in Potthast: Bibl. med. aevi. – Un trattato inedito di Egidio Colonna: De ecclesiae potestate, ed. G. U. Oxilia et G. Boffito, Florence, 1908, pp. lxxxi, 172. – Schwab: Gerson, pp. 24–28. – Müller: D. Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern. – Riezler: Die Lit. Widersacher der Päpste, etc., Leipzig, 1874. – Marcour: Antheil der Minoriten am Kampf zwischen Ludwig dem Baiern und Johann XXII., Emmerich, 1874. – Poole: The Opposition to the Temporal Claims of the Papacy, in Illust. of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 256–281. – Haller: Papsttum, etc., pp. 73–89. English trans. of Marsiglius of Padua, The Defence of Peace, by W. Marshall, London, 1636. – M. Birck: Marsilio von Padua und Alvaro Pelayo über Papst und Kaiser, Mühlheim, 1868. – B. Labanca, Prof. of Moral Philos. in the Univ. of Rome: Marsilio da Padova, riformatore politico e religioso, Padova, 1882, pp. 236. – L. Jourdan: Étude sur Marsile de Padoue, Montauban, 1892. – J. Sullivan: Marsig. of Padua, in Engl. Hist. Rev., 1906, pp. 293–307. An examination of the MSS. See also Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum; Pastor, I. 82 sqq.; Gregorovius, VI. 118 sqq., the Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Alvarus Pelagius, I. 667 sq., Marsiglius, VIII., 907–911, etc., and in Herzog, XII. 368 370, etc. – N. Valois: Hist. Litt., Paris, 1900, XXIII., 628–623, an Art. on the authors of the Defensor.

For § 9. The Financial System of the Avignon Popes. Ehrle: Schatz, Bibliothek und Archiv der Päpste im 14ten Jahrh., in Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengesch., I. 1–49, 228–365, also D. Nachlass Clemens V. und der in Betreff desselben von Johann XXII. geführte Process, V. 1–166. – Ph. Woker: Das kirchliche Finanzwesen der Päpste, Nördlingen, 1878. – M. Tangl: Das Taxenwesen der päpstlichen Kanzlei vom 13ten his zur Mitte des 15ten Jahrh., Innsbruck, 1892. – J. P. Kirsch: Die päpstl. Kollektorien in Deutschland im XIVten Jahrh., Paderborn, 1894; Die Finanzverwaltung des Kardinalkollegiums im XIII. u. XIV. ten Jahrh., Münster, 1896; Die Rückkehr der Päpste Urban V. und Gregor XI. con Avignon nach Rom. Auszüge aus den Kameralregistern des Vatikan. Archivs, Paderborn, 1898; Die päpstl. Annaten in Deutschland im XIV. Jahrh. 1323–1360, Paderborn, 1903. – P. M. Baumgarten: Untersuchungen und Urkunden über die Camera Collegii Cardinalium, 1295–1437, Leipzig, 1898. – A. Gottlob: Die päpstl. Kreuzzugsteuern des 13ten Jahrh., Heiligenstadt, 1892; Die Servitientaxe im 13ten Jahrh., Stuttgart, 1903. – Emil Goeller: Mittheilungen u. Untersuchungen über das päpstl. Register und Kanzleiwesen im 14ten Jahrh., Rome, 1904; D. Liber Taxarum d. päpstl. Rammer. Eine Studie zu ihrer Entstehung u. Anlage, Rome, 1906, pp. 106. –  Haller: Papsttum u. Kirchenreform; also Aufzeichnungen über den päpstl. Haushalt aus Avignonesischer Zeit; die Vertheilung der Servitia minuta u. die Obligationen der Prälaten im 13ten u. 14ten Jahrh.; Die Ausfertigung der Provisionen, etc., all in Quellen u. Forschungen, ed. by the Royal Prussian Institute in Rome, Rome, 1897, 1898. – C. Lux: Constitutionum apostolicarum de generali beneficiorum reservatione, 1265–1378, etc., Wratislav, 1904. – A. Schulte: Die Fugger in Rom, 1495–1523, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1904. – C. Samarin and G. Mollat: La Fiscalité pontifen France au XIVe  siècle, Paris, 1905. – P. Thoman: Le droit de propriété des laïques sur les églises et le patronat laïque au moy. âge, Paris, 1906. Also the work on Canon Law by T. Hinschius, 6 vols., Berlin, 1869–1897, and E. Friedberg, 6th ed., Leipzig, 1903.

For § 10. Later Avignon Popes. Lettres des papes d’Avignon se rappor-tant a la France, viz. Lettres communes de Benoît XII., ed. J. M. Vidal, Paris, 1906; Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, ed. G. Daumet, Paris, 1890; Lettres ... de Clement VI., ed. E. Deprez, Paris, 1901; Excerpta ex registr. de Clem. VI. et Inn. VI., ed. Werunsky, Innsbruck, 1886; Lettres ... de Pape Urbain V., ed. P. Lecacheux, Paris, 1902. – J. H. Albans: Actes anciens et documents concernant le bienheureux Urbain V., ed. by U. Chevalier, Paris, 1897. Contains the fourteen early lives of Urban. – Baluze: Vitae paparum Avenionen-sium, 1693;– Muratori: in Rer. ital. scripp, XIV. 9–728. – Cerri: Innocenzo VI., papa, Turin, 1873. Magnan: Hist. d’ Urbain V., 2d ed., Paris, 1863. – Werunsky: Gesch. karls IV. u. seiner Zeit, 3 vols., Innsbruck, 1880–1892. – Geo. Schmidt: Der Hist. Werth der 14 alten Biographien des Urban V., Breslau, 1907. – Kirsch: Rückkehr der Päpste, as above. In large part, documents for the first time published. – Lechner: Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland, 1348–1351, 1884. – C. Creighton: Hist. of Epidemics in England, Cambridge, 1891. F. A. Gasquet: The Great Pestilence, London, 1893, 2d ed., entitled The Black Death, 1908. – A. Jessopp: The Black Death in East Anglia in Coming of the Friars, pp. 166–261. – Villani, Wattenbach, p. 226 sqq.; Pastor, I., Gregorovius, Cardinal Albornoz, Paderborn, 1892.

For § 11. The Re-Establishment of the Papacy in Rome. The Lives of Gregory XI. in Baluz, I. 426 sqq., and Muratori, III. 2, 645. – Kirsch: Rürkkehr, etc., as above. – Leon Mirot: La politique pontif. et le rétour du S. Siege a Rome, 1376, Paris, 1899. – F. Hammerich: St. Brigitta, die nordische Prophetin u. Ordenstifterin, Germ. ed., Gotha, 1872. For further Lit. on St. Brigitta, see Herzog, III. 239. For works on Catherine of Siena, see ch. III. Also Gieseler, II., 3, pp. 1–131; Pastor, I. 101–114; Gregorovius, VI. Lit. under §10.

§ 3. Pope Boniface VIII. 1294–1303.

The pious but weak and incapable hermit of Murrhone, Coelestine V., who abdicated the papal office, was followed by Benedict Gaetani,—or Cajetan, the name of an ancient family of Latin counts,—known in history as Boniface VIII. At the time of his election he was on the verge of fourscore,1 but like Gregory IX. he was still in the full vigor of a strong intellect and will. If Coelestine had the reputation of a saint, Boniface was a politician, overbearing, implacable, destitute of spiritual ideals, and controlled by blind and insatiable lust of power.

Born at Anagni, Boniface probably studied canon law, in which he was an expert, in Rome.2  He was made cardinal in 1281, and represented the papal see in France and England as legate. In an address at a council in Paris, assembled to arrange for a new crusade, he reminded the mendicant monks that he and they were called not to court glory or learning, but to secure the salvation of their souls.3

Boniface’s election as pope occurred at Castel Nuovo, near Naples, Dec. 24, 1294, the conclave having convened the day before. The election was not popular, and a few days later, when a report reached Naples that Boniface was dead, the people celebrated the event with great jubilation. The pontiff was accompanied on his way to Rome by Charles II. of Naples.4

The coronation was celebrated amid festivities of unusual splendor. On his way to the Lateran, Boniface rode on a white palfrey, a crown on his head, and robed in full pontificals. Two sovereigns walked by his side, the kings of Naples and Hungary. The Orsini, the Colonna, the Savelli, the Conti and representatives of other noble Roman families followed in a body . The procession had difficulty in forcing its way through the kneeling crowds of spectators. But, as if an omen of the coming misfortunes of the new pope, a furious storm burst over the city while the solemnities were in progress and extinguished every lamp and torch in the church. The following day the pope dined in the Lateran, the two kings waiting behind his chair.

While these brilliant ceremonies were going on, Peter of Murrhone was a fugitive. Not willing to risk the possible rivalry of an anti-pope, Boniface confined his unfortunate predecessor in prison, where he soon died. The cause of his death was a matter of uncertainty. The Coelestine party ascribed it to Boniface, and exhibited a nail which they declared the unscrupulous pope had ordered driven into Coelestine’s head.

With Boniface VIII. began the decline of the papacy. He found it at the height of its power. He died leaving it humbled and in subjection to France. He sought to rule in the proud, dominating spirit of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; but he was arrogant without being strong, bold without being sagacious, high-spirited without possessing the wisdom to discern the signs of the times.5  The times had changed. Boniface made no allowance for the new spirit of nationality which had been developed during the crusading campaigns in the East, and which entered into conflict with the old theocratic ideal of Rome. France, now in possession of the remaining lands of the counts of Toulouse, was in no mood to listen to the dictation of the power across the Alps. Striving to maintain the fictitious theory of papal rights, and fighting against the spirit of the new age, Boniface lost the prestige the Apostolic See had enjoyed for two centuries, and died of mortification over the indignities heaped upon him by France.

French enemies went so far as to charge Boniface with downright infidelity and the denial of the soul’s immortality. The charges were a slander, but they show the reduced confidence which the papal office inspired. Dante, who visited Rome during Boniface’s pontificate, bitterly pursues him in all parts of the Divina Commedia. He pronounced him "the prince of modern Pharisees," a usurper "who turned the Vatican hill into a common sewer of corruption."  The poet assigned the pope a place with Nicholas III. and Clement V. among the simoniacs in "that most afflicted shade," one of the lowest circles of hell.6  Its floor was perforated with holes into which the heads of these popes were thrust.

"The soles of every one in flames were wrapt —7

... whose upper parts are thrust below

Fixt like a stake, most wretched soul

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Quivering in air his tortured feet were seen."

Contemporaries comprehended Boniface’s reign in the description, "He came in like a fox, he reigned like a lion, and he died like a dog, intravit ut vulpes, regnavit ut leo, mortuus est sicut canis.

In his attempt to control the affairs of European states, he met with less success than failure, and in Philip the Fair of France he found his match.

In Sicily, he failed to carry out his plans to secure the transfer of the realm from the house of Aragon to the king of Naples.

In Rome, he incurred the bitter enmity of the proud and powerful family of the Colonna, by attempting to dictate the disposition of the family estates. Two of the Colonna, James and Peter, who were cardinals, had been friends of Coelestine, and supporters of that pope gathered around them. Of their number was Jacopone da Todi, the author of the Stabat Mater, who wrote a number of satirical pieces against Boniface. Resenting the pope’s interference in their private matters, the Colonna issued a memorial, pronouncing Coelestine’s abdication and the election of Boniface illegal.8  It exposed the haughtiness of Boniface, and represented him as boasting that he was supreme over kings and kingdoms, even in temporal affairs, and that he was governed by no law other than his own will.9  The document was placarded on the churches and a copy left in St. Peter’s. In 1297 Boniface deprived the Colonna of their dignity, excommunicated them, and proclaimed a crusade against them. The two cardinals appealed to a general council, the resort in the next centuries of so many who found themselves out of accord with the papal plans. Their strongholds fell one after another. The last of them, Palestrina, had a melancholy fate. The two cardinals with ropes around their necks threw themselves at the pope’s feet and secured his pardon, but their estates were confiscated and bestowed upon the pope’s nephews and the Orsini. The Colonna family recovered in time to reap a bitter vengeance upon their insatiable enemy.

The German emperor, Albrecht, Boniface succeeded in bringing to an abject submission. The German envoys were received by the haughty pontiff seated on a throne with a crown upon his head and sword in his hand, and exclaiming, "I, I am the emperor."  Albrecht accepted his crown as a gift, and acknowledged that the empire had been transferred from the Greeks to the Germans by the pope, and that the electors owed the right of election to the Apostolic See.

In England, Boniface met with sharp resistance. Edward I., 1272–1307, was on the throne. The pope attempted to prevent him from holding the crown of Scotland, claiming it as a papal fief from remote antiquity.10  The English parliament, 1301, gave a prompt and spirited reply. The English king was under no obligation to the papal see for his temporal acts.11  The dispute went no further. The conflict between Boniface and France is reserved for more prolonged treatment.

An important and picturesque event of Boniface’s pontificate was the Jubilee Year, celebrated in 1300. It was a fortunate conception, adapted to attract throngs of pilgrims to Rome and fill the papal treasury. An old man of 107 years of age, so the story ran, travelled from Savoy to Rome, and told how his father had taken him to attend a Jubilee in the year 1200 and exhorted him to visit it on its recurrence a century after. Interesting as the story is, the Jubilee celebration of 1300 seems to have been the first of its kind.12  Boniface’s bull, appointing it, promised full remission to all, being penitent and confessing their sins, who should visit St. Peter’s during the year 1300.13  Italians were to prolong their sojourn 30 days, while for foreigners 15 days were announced to be sufficient. A subsequent papal deliverance extended the benefits of the indulgence to all setting out for the Holy City who died on the way. The only exceptions made to these gracious provisions were the Colonna, Frederick of Sicily, and the Christians holding traffic with Saracens. The city wore a festal appearance. The handkerchief of St. Veronica, bearing the imprint of the Saviour’s face, was exhibited. The throngs fairly trampled upon one another. The contemporary historian of Florence, Giovanni Villani, testifies from personal observation that there was a constant population in the pontifical city of 200,000 pilgrims, and that 30,000 people reached and left it daily. The offerings were so copious that two clerics stood day and night by the altar of St. Peter’s gathering up the coins with rakes.

So spectacular and profitable a celebration could not be allowed to remain a memory. The Jubilee was made a permanent institution. A second celebration was appointed by Clement VI. in 1350. With reference to the brevity of human life and also to the period of our Lord’s earthly career, Urban VI. fixed its recurrence every 33 years. Paul II., in 1470, reduced the intervals to 25 years. The twentieth Jubilee was celebrated in 1900, under Leo XIII.14 Leo extended the offered benefits to those who had the will and not the ability to make the journey to Rome.

For the offerings accruing from the Jubilee and for other papal moneys, Boniface found easy use. They enabled him to prosecute his wars against Sicily and the Colonna and to enrich his relatives. The chief object of his favor was his nephew, Peter, the second son of his brother Loffred, the Count of Caserta. One estate after another was added to this favorite’s possessions, and the vast sum of more than 915,000,000 was spent upon him in four years.15  Nepotism was one of the offences for which Boniface was arraigned by his contemporaries.

§ 4. Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France.

The overshadowing event of Boniface’s reign was his disastrous conflict with Philip IV. of France, called Philip the Fair. The grandson of Louis IX., this monarch was wholly wanting in the high spiritual qualities which had distinguished his ancestor. He was able but treacherous, and utterly unscrupulous in the use of means to secure his ends. Unattractive as his character is, it is nevertheless with him that the first chapter in the history of modern France begins. In his conflict with Boniface he gained a decisive victory. On a smaller scale the conflict was a repetition of the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., but with a different ending. In both cases the pope had reached a venerable age, while the sovereign was young and wholly governed by selfish motives. Henry resorted to the election of an anti-pope. Philip depended upon his councillors and the spirit of the new French nation.

The heir of the theocracy of Hildebrand repeated Hildebrand’s language without possessing his moral qualities. He claimed for the papacy supreme authority in temporal as well as spiritual matters. In his address to the cardinals against the Colonna he exclaimed: "How shall we assume to judge kings and princes, and not dare to proceed against a worm!  Let them perish forever, that they may understand that the name of the Roman pontiff is known in all the earth and that he alone is most high over princes."16  The Colonna, in one of their proclamations, charged Boniface with glorying that he is exalted above all princes and kingdoms in temporal matters, and may act as he pleases in view of the fulness of his power—plenitudo potestatis. In his official recognition of the emperor, Albrecht, Boniface declared that as "the moon has no light except as she receives it from the sun, so no earthly power has anything which it does not receive from the ecclesiastical authority."  These claims are asserted with most pretension in the bulls Boniface issued during his conflict with France. Members of the papal court encouraged him in these haughty assertions of prerogative. The Spaniard, Arnald of Villanova, who served Boniface as physician, called him in his writings lord of lords—deus deorum.

On the other hand, Philip the Fair stood as the embodiment of the independence of the state. He had behind him a unified nation, and around him a body of able statesmen and publicists who defended his views.17

The conflict between Boniface and Philip passed through three stages: (1) the brief tilt which called forth the bull Clericis laicos; (2) the decisive battle, 1301–1303, ending in Boniface’s humiliation at Anagni; (3) the bitter controversy which was waged against the pope’s memory by Philip, ending with the Council of Vienne.18

The conflict originated in questions touching the war between France and England. To meet the expense of his armament against Edward I., Philip levied tribute upon the French clergy. They carried their complaints to Rome, and Boniface justified their contention in the bull Clericis laicos, 1296. This document was ordered promulged in England as well as in France. Robert of Winchelsea, archbishop of Canterbury, had it read in all the English cathedral churches. Its opening sentence impudently asserted that the laity had always been hostile to the clergy. The document went on to affirm the subjection of the state to the papal see. Jurisdiction over the persons of the priesthood and the goods of the Church in no wise belongs to the temporal power. The Church may make gratuitous gifts to the state, but all taxation of Church property without the pope’s consent is to be resisted with excommunication or interdict.

Imposts upon the Church for special emergencies had been a subject of legislation at the third and fourth Lateran Councils. In 1260 Alexander IV. exempted the clergy from special taxation, and in 1291 Nicolas IV. warned the king of France against using for his own schemes the tenth levied for a crusade. Boniface had precedent enough for his utterances. But his bull was promptly met by Philip with an act of reprisal prohibiting the export of silver and gold, horses, arms, and other articles from his realm, and forbidding foreigners to reside in France. This shrewd measure cut off French contributions to the papal treasury and cleared France of the pope’s emissaries. Boniface was forced to reconsider his position, and in conciliatory letters, addressed to the king and the French prelates, pronounced the interpretation put upon his deliverance unjust. Its purpose was not to deny feudal and freewill offerings from the Church. In cases of emergency, the pope would also be ready to grant special subsidies. The document was so offensive that the French bishops begged the pope to recall it altogether, a request he set aside. But to appease Philip, Boniface issued another bull, July 22, 1297, according thereafter to French kings, who had reached the age of 20, the right to judge whether a tribute from the clergy was a case of necessity or not. A month later he canonized Louis IX., a further act of conciliation.

Boniface also offered to act as umpire between France and England in his personal capacity as Benedict Gaetanus. The offer was accepted, but the decision was not agreeable to the French sovereign. The pope expressed a desire to visit Philip, but again gave offence by asking Philip for a loan of 100, 000 pounds for Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois, whom Boniface had invested with the command of the papal forces.

In 1301 the flame of controversy was again started by a document, written probably by the French advocate, Pierre Dubois,19 which showed the direction in which Philip’s mind was working, for it could hardly have appeared without his assent. The writer summoned the king to extend his dominions to the walls of Rome and beyond, and denied the pope’s right to secular power. The pontiff’s business is confined to the forgiving of sins, prayer, and preaching. Philip continued to lay his hand without scruple on Church property; Lyons, which had been claimed by the empire, he demanded as a part of France. Appeals against his arbitrary acts went to Rome, and the pope sent Bernard of Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, to Paris, with commission to summon the French king to apply the clerical tithe for its appointed purpose, a crusade, and for nothing else. Philip showed his resentment by having the legate arrested. He was adjudged by the civil tribunal a traitor, and his deposition from the episcopate demanded.

Boniface’s reply, set forth in the bull Ausculta fili — Give ear, my son—issued Dec. 5, 1301, charged the king with high-handed treatment of the clergy and making plunder of ecclesiastical property. The pope announced a council to be held in Rome to which the French prelates were called and the king summoned to be present, either in person or by a representative. The bull declared that God had placed his earthly vicar above kings and kingdoms. To make the matter worse, a false copy of Boniface’s bull was circulated in France known as Deum time,—Fear God,—which made the statements of papal prerogative still more exasperating. This supposititious document, which is supposed to have been forged by Pierre Flotte, the king’s chief councillor, was thrown into the flames Feb. 11, 1302.20  Such treatment of a papal brief was unprecedented. It remained for Luther to cast the genuine bull of Leo X. into the fire. The two acts had little in common.

The king replied by calling a French parliament of the three estates, the nobility, clergy and representatives of the cities, which set aside the papal summons to the council, complained of the appointment of foreigners to French livings, and asserted the crown’s independence of the Church. Five hundred years later a similar representative body of the three estates was to rise against French royalty and decide for the abolition of monarchy. In a letter to the pope, Philip addressed him as "your infatuated Majesty,"21 and declined all submission to any one on earth in temporal matters.

The council called by the pope convened in Rome the last day of October, 1302, and included 4 archbishops, 35 bishops, and 6 abbots from France. It issued two bulls. The first pronounced the ban on all who detained prelates going to Rome or returning from the city. The second is one of the most notable of all papal documents, the bull Unam sanctam, the name given to it from its first words, "We are forced to believe in one holy Catholic Church."  It marks an epoch in the history of the declarations of the papacy, not because it contained anything novel, but because it set forth with unchanged clearness the stiffest claims of the papacy to temporal and spiritual power. It begins with the assertion that there is only one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation. The pope is the vicar of Christ, and whoever refuses to be ruled by Peter belongs not to the fold of Christ. Both swords are subject to the Church, the spiritual and the temporal. The temporal sword is to be wielded for the Church, the spiritual by it. The secular estate may be judged by the spiritual estate, but the spiritual estate by no human tribunal. The document closes with the startling declaration that for every human being the condition of salvation is obedience to the Roman pontiff.

There was no assertion of authority contained in this bull which had not been before made by Gregory VII. and his successors, and the document leans back not only upon the deliverances of popes, but upon the definitions of theologians like Hugo de St. Victor, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. But in the Unam sanctam the arrogance of the papacy finds its most naked and irritating expression.

One of the clauses pronounces all offering resistance to the pope’s authority Manichaeans. Thus Philip was made a heretic. Six months later the pope sent a cardinal legate, John le Moine of Amiens, to announce to the king his excommunication for preventing French bishops from going to Rome. The bearer of the message was imprisoned and the legate fled. Boniface now called upon the German emperor, Albrecht, to take Philip’s throne, as Innocent III. had called upon the French king to take John’s crown, and Innocent IV. upon the count of Artois to take the crown of Frederick II. Albrecht had wisdom enough to decline the empty gift. Philip’s seizure of the papal bulls before they could be promulged in France was met by Boniface’s announcement that the posting of a bull on the church doors of Rome was sufficient to give it force.

The French parliament, June, 1308, passed from the negative attitude of defending the king and French rights to an attack upon Boniface and his right to the papal throne. In 20 articles it accused him of simony, sorcery, immoral intercourse with his niece, having a demon in his chambers, the murder of Coelestine, and other crimes. It appealed to a general council, before which the pope was summoned to appear in person. Five archbishops and 21 bishops joined in subscribing to this document. The university and chapter of Paris, convents, cities, and towns placed themselves on the king’s side.22

One more step the pope was about to take when a sudden stop was put to his career. He had set the eighth day of September as the time when he would publicly, in the church of Anagni, and with all the solemnities known to the Church, pronounce the ban upon the disobedient king and release his subjects from allegiance. In the same edifice Alexander III. had excommunicated Barbarossa, and Gregory IX., Frederick II. The bull already had the papal signature, when, as by a storm bursting from a clear sky, the pope’s plans were shattered and his career brought to an end.

During the two centuries and a half since Hildebrand had entered the city of Rome with Leo IX., popes had been imprisoned by emperors, been banished from Rome by its citizens, had fled for refuge and died in exile, but upon no one of them had a calamity fallen quite so humiliating and complete as the calamity which now befell Boniface. A plot, formed in France to checkmate the pope and to carry him off to a council at Lyons, burst Sept. 7 upon the peaceful population of Anagni, the pope’s country seat. William of Nogaret, professor of law at Montpellier and councillor of the king, was the manager of the plot and was probably its inventor. According to the chronicler, Villani,23 Nogaret’s parents were Cathari, and suffered for heresy in the flames in Southern France. He stood as a representative of a new class of men, laymen, who were able to compete in culture with the best-trained ecclesiastics, and advocated the independence of the state. With him was joined Sciarra Colonna, who, with other members of his family, had found refuge in France, and was thirsting for revenge for their proscription by the pope. With a small body of mercenaries, 300 of them on horse, they suddenly appeared in Anagni. The barons of the Latium, embittered by the rise of the Gaetani family upon their losses, joined with the conspirators, as also did the people of Anagni. The palaces of two of Boniface’s nephews and several of the cardinals were stormed and seized by Sciarra Colonna, who then offered the pope life on the three conditions that the Colonna be restored, Boniface resign, and that he place himself in the hands of the conspirators. The conditions were rejected, and after a delay of three hours, the work of assault and destruction was renewed. The palaces one after another yielded, and the papal residence itself was taken and entered. The supreme pontiff, according to the description of Villani,24 received the besiegers in high pontifical robes, seated on a throne, with a crown on his head and a crucifix and the keys in his hand. He proudly rebuked the intruders, and declared his readiness to die for Christ and his Church. To the demand that he resign the papal office, he replied, "Never; I am pope and as pope I will die."  Sciarra was about to kill him, when he was intercepted by Nogaret’s arm. The palaces were looted and the cathedral burnt, and its relics, if not destroyed, went to swell the booty. One of the relics, a vase said to have contained milk from Mary’s breasts, was turned over and broken. The pope and his nephews were held in confinement for three days, the captors being undecided whether to carry Boniface away to Lyons, set him at liberty, or put him to death. Such was the humiliating counterpart to the proud display made at the pope’s coronation nine years before!

In the meantime the feelings of the Anagnese underwent a change. The adherents of the Gaetani family rallied their forces and, combining together, they rescued Boniface and drove out the conspirators. Seated at the head of his palace stairway, the pontiff thanked God and the people for his deliverance. "Yesterday," he said, "I was like Job, poor and without a friend. To-day I have abundance of bread, wine, and water."  A rescuing party from Rome conducted the unfortunate pope to the Holy City, where he was no longer his own master.25  A month later, Oct. 11, 1303, his earthly career closed. Outside the death-chamber, the streets of the city were filled with riot and tumult, and the Gaetani and Colonna were encamped in battle array against each other in the Campagna.

Reports agree that Boniface’s death was a most pitiable one. He died of melancholy and despair, and perhaps actually insane. He refused food, and beat his head against the wall. "He was out of his head," wrote Ptolemy of Lucca,26 and believed that every one who approached him was seeking to put him in prison.

Human sympathy goes out for the aged man of fourscore years and more, dying in loneliness and despair. But judgment comes sooner or later upon individuals and institutions for their mistakes and offences. The humiliation of Boniface was the long-delayed penalty of the sacerdotal pride of his predecessors and himself. He suffered in part for the hierarchical arrogance of which he was the heir and in part for his own presumption. Villani and other contemporaries represent the pope’s latter end as a deserved punishment for his unblushing nepotism, his pompous pride, and his implacable severity towards those who dared to resist his plans, and for his treatment of the feeble hermit who preceded him. One of the chroniclers reports that seamen plying near the Liparian islands, the reputed entrance to hell, heard evil spirits rejoicing and exclaiming, "Open, open; receive pope Boniface into the infernal regions."

Catholic historians like Hergenröther and Kirsch, bound to the ideals of the past, make a brave attempt to defend Boniface, though they do not overlook his want of tact and his coarse violence of speech. It is certain, says Cardinal Hergenröther,27 "that Boniface was not ruled by unworthy motives and that he did not deviate from the paths of his predecessors or overstep the legal conceptions of the Middle Ages."  Finke, also a Catholic historian, the latest learned investigator of the character and career of Boniface, acknowledges the pope’s intellectual ability, but also emphasizes his pride and arrogance, his depreciation of other men, his disagreeable spirit and manner, which left him without a personal friend, his nepotism and his avarice. He hoped, said a contemporary, to live till "all his enemies were suppressed."

In strong contrast to the common judgment of Catholic historians is the sentence passed by Gregorovius. "Boniface was devoid of every apostolical virtue, a man of passionate temper, violent, faithless, unscrupulous, unforgiving, filled with ambitions and lust of worldly power."  And this will be the judgment of those who feel no obligation to defend the papal institution.

In the humiliation of Boniface VIII., the state gained a signal triumph over the papacy. The proposition, that the papal pretension to supremacy over the temporal power is inconsistent with the rights of man and untaught by the law of God, was about to be defended in bold writings coming from the pens of lawyers and poets in France and Italy and, a half century later, by Wyclif. These advocates of the sovereign independence of the state in its own domain were the real descendants of those jurisconsults who, on the pIain of Roncaglia, advocated the same theory in the hearing of Frederick Barbarossa. Two hundred years after the conflict between Boniface and Philip the Fair, Luther was to fight the battle for the spiritual sovereignty of the individual man. These two principles, set aside by the priestly pride and theological misunderstanding of the Middle Ages, belong to the foundation of modern civilization.

Boniface’s Bull, Unam Sanctam.

The great importance of Boniface’s bull, Unam Sanctam, issued against Philip the Fair, Nov. 18, 1302, justifies its reproduction both in translation and the original Latin. It has rank among the most notorious deliverances of the popes and is as full of error as was Innocent VIII.’s bull issued in 1484 against witchcraft. It presents the theory of the supremacy of the spiritual power over the temporal, the authority of the papacy over princes, in its extreme form. The following is a translation: —

Boniface, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God. For perpetual remembrance: —

Urged on by our faith, we are obliged to believe and hold that there is one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. And we firmly believe and profess that outside of her there is no salvation nor remission of sins, as the bridegroom declares in the Canticles, "My dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice one of her that bare her."  And this represents the one mystical body of Christ, and of this body Christ is the head, and God is the head of Christ. In it there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. For in the time of the Flood there was the single ark of Noah, which prefigures the one Church, and it was finished according to the measure of one cubit and had one Noah for pilot and captain, and outside of it every living creature on the earth, as we read, was destroyed. And this Church we revere as the only one, even as the Lord saith by the prophet, "Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog."  He prayed for his soul, that is, for himself, head and body. And this body he called one body, that is, the Church, because of the single bridegroom, the unity of the faith, the sacraments, and the love of the Church. She is that seamless shirt of the Lord which was not rent but was allotted by the casting of lots. Therefore, this one and single Church has one head and not two heads,—for had she two heads, she would be a monster,—that is, Christ and Christ’s vicar, Peter and Peter’s successor. For the Lord said unto Peter, "Feed my sheep."  "My," he said, speaking generally and not particularly, "these and those," by which it is to be understood that all the sheep are committed unto him. So, when the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they must confess that they are not of Christ’s sheep, even as the Lord says in John, "There is one fold and one shepherd."

That in her and within her power are two swords, we are taught in the Gospels, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword. For when the Apostles said, "Lo, here,"—that is in the Church,—are two swords, the Lord did not reply to the Apostles "it is too much," but "it is enough."  It is certain that whoever denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter, hearkens ill to the words of the Lord which he spake, "Put up thy sword into its sheath."  Therefore, both are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword; the latter is to be used for the Church, the former by the Church; the former by the hand of the priest, the latter by the hand of princes and kings, but at the nod and sufferance of the priest. The one sword must of necessity be subject to the other, and the temporal authority to the spiritual. For the Apostle said, "There is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God;" and they would not have been ordained unless one sword had been made subject to the other, and even as the lower is subjected by the other for higher things. For, according to Dionysius, it is a divine law that the lowest things are made by mediocre things to attain to the highest. For it is not according to the law of the universe that all things in an equal way and immediately should reach their end, but the lowest through the mediocre and the lower through the higher. But that the spiritual power excels the earthly power in dignity and worth, we will the more clearly acknowledge just in proportion as the spiritual is higher than the temporal. And this we perceive quite distinctly from the donation of the tithe and functions of benediction and sanctification, from the mode in which the power was received, and the government of the subjected realms. For truth being the witness, the spiritual power has the functions of establishing the temporal power and sitting in judgment on it if it should prove to be not good.28  And to the Church and the Church’s power the prophecy of Jeremiah attests: "See, I have set thee this day over the nations and the kingdoms to pluck up and to break down and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant."

And if the earthly power deviate from the right path, it is judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power deviate from the right path, the lower in rank is judged by its superior; but if the supreme power [the papacy] deviate, it can be judged not by man but by God alone. And so the Apostle testifies, "He which is spiritual judges all things, but he himself is judged by no man."  But this authority, although it be given to a man, and though it be exercised by a man, is not a human but a divine power given by divine word of mouth to Peter and confirmed to Peter and to his successors by Christ himself, whom Peter confessed, even him whom Christ called the Rock. For the Lord said to Peter himself, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth," etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power so ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God, unless perchance he imagine two principles to exist, as did Manichaeus, which we pronounce false and heretical. For Moses testified that God created heaven and earth not in the beginnings but "in the beginning."

Furthermore, that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff,—this we declare, say, define, and pronounce to be altogether necessary to salvation.

Bonifatius, Episcopus, Servus servorum Dei. Ad futuram rei memoriam.29

Unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et ipsam apostolicam urgente fide credere cogimur et tenere, nosque hanc frmiter credimus et simpliciter confitemur, extra quam nec salus est, nec remissio peccatorum, sponso in Canticis proclamante: Una est columba mea, perfecta mea. Una est matris suae electa genetrici suae [Cant. 6:9].  Quae unum corpus mysticum repraesentat, cujus caput Christus, Christi vero Deus. In qua unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma. Una nempe fuit diluvii tempore arca Noë, unam ecclesiam praefigurans, quae in uno cubito consummata unum, Noë videlicet, gubernatorem habuit et rectorem, extra quam omnia subsistentia super terram legimus fuisse deleta.

Hanc autem veneramur et unicam, dicente Domino in Propheta: Erue a framea, Deus, animam meam et de manu canis unicam meam. [Psalm 22:20.]  Pro anima enim, id est, pro se ipso, capite simul oravit et corpore. Quod corpus unicam scilicet ecclesiam nominavit, propter sponsi, fidei, sacramentorum et caritatis ecclesiae unitatem. Haec est tunica illa Domini inconsutilis, quae scissa non fuit, sed sorte provenit. [John 19.]

Igitur ecclesiae unius et unicae unum corpus, unum caput, non duo capita, quasi monstrum, Christus videlicet et Christi vicarius, Petrus, Petrique successor, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: Pasce oves meas. [John 21:17.]  Meas, inquit, generaliter, non singulariter has vel illas: per quod commisisse sibi intelligitur universas. Sive ergo Graeci sive alii se dicant Petro ejusque successoribus non esse commissos: fateantur necesse est, se de ovibus Christi non esse, dicente Domino in Joanne, unum ovile et unicum esse pastorem. [John 10:16.]

In hac ejusque potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem videlicet et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. Nam dicentibus Apostolis: Ecce gladii duo hic [Luke 22:38], in ecclesia scilicet, cum apostoli loquerentur, non respondit Dominus, nimis esse, sed satis. Certe qui in potestate Petri temporalem gladium esse negat, male verbum attendit Domini proferentis: Converte gladium tuum in vaginam. [Matt. 26:52.]  Uterque ergo est in potestate ecclesiae, spiritualis scilicet gladius et materialis. Sed is quidem pro ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia exercendus, ille sacerdotis, is manu regum et militum, sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis.

Oportet autem gladium esse sub gladio, et temporalem auctoritatem spirituali subjici potestati. Nam cum dicat Apostolus: Non est potestas nisi a Deo; quae autem sunt, a Deo ordinata sunt [Rom. 13:1], non autem ordinata essent, nisi gladius esset sub gladio, et tanquam inferior reduceretur per alium in suprema. Nam secundum B. Dionysium lex dirinitatis est, infima per media in suprema reduci .... Sic de ecclesia et ecclesiastica potestate verificatur vaticinium Hieremiae [Jer. 1:10]: Ecce constitui te hodie super gentes et regna et cetera, quae sequuntur.

Ergo, si deviat terrena potestas, judicabitur a potestate spirituali; sed, si deviat spiritualis minor, a suo superiori si vero suprema, a solo Deo, non ab homine poterit judicari, testante Apostolo: Spiritualis homo judicat omnia, ipse autem a nemine judicatur. [1 Cor. 2:16.]  Est autem haec auctoritas, etsi data sit homini, et exerceatur per hominem, non humana, sed potius divina potestas, ore divino Petro data, sibique suisque successoribus in ipso Christo, quem confessus fuit, petra firmata, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: Quodcunque ligaveris, etc. [Matt. 16:19.]  Quicunque igitur huic potestati a Deo sic ordinatae resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit, nisi duo, sicut Manichaeus, fingat esse principia, quod falsum et haereticum judicamus, quia, testante Moyse, non in principiis, sed in principio coelum Deus creavit et terram. [Gen. 1:1.]

Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus dicimus, definimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.

The most astounding clause of this deliverance makes subjection to the pope an essential of salvation for every creature. Some writers have made the bold attempt to relieve the language of this construction, and refer it to princes and kings. So fair and sound a Roman Catholic writer as Funk30 has advocated this interpretation, alleging in its favor the close connection of the clause with the previous statements through the particle porro, furthermore, and the consideration that the French people would not have resented the assertion that obedience to the papacy is a condition of salvation. But the overwhelming majority of Catholic historians take the words in their natural meaning.31  The expression "every human creature" would be a most unlikely one to be used as synonymous with temporal rulers. Boniface made the same assertion in a letter to the duke of Savoy, 1300, when he demanded submission for every mortal,—omnia anima. Aegidius Colonna paraphrased the bull in these words, "the supreme pontiff is that authority to which every soul must yield subjection."32  That the mediaeval Church accepted this construction is vouched for by the Fifth Lateran Council, 1516, which, in reaffirming the bull, declared "it necessary to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Roman pontiff."33

§ 5. Literary Attacks against the Papacy.

Nothing is more indicative of the intellectual change going on in Western Europe in the fourteenth century than the tractarian literature of the time directed against claims made by the papacy. Three periods may be distinguished. In the first belong the tracts called forth by the struggle of Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII., with the year 1302 for its centre. Their distinguishing feature is the attack made upon the pope’s jurisdiction in temporal affairs. The second period opens during the pontificate of John XXII. and extends from 1320–1340. Here the pope’s spiritual supremacy was attacked. The most prominent writer of the time was Marsiglius of Padua. The third period begins with the papal schism toward the end of the fourteenth century. The writers of this period emphasized the need of reform in the Church and discussed the jurisdiction of general councils as superior to the jurisdiction of the pope.34

The publicists of the age of Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair now defended, now openly attacked the mediaeval theory of the pope’s lordship over kings and nations. The body of literature they produced was unlike anything which Europe had seen before. In the conflict between Gregory IX. and Frederick II., Europe was filled with the epistolary appeals of pope and emperor, who sought each to make good his case before the court of European public opinion, and more especially of the princes and prelates. The controversy of this later time was participated in by a number of writers who represented the views of an intelligent group of clerics and laymen. They employed a vigorous style adapted to make an impression on the public mind.

Stirred by the haughty assertions of Boniface, a new class of men, the jurisconsults, entered the lists and boldly called in question the old order represented by the policy of Hildebrand and Innocent III. They had studied in the universities, especially in the University of Paris, and some of them, like Dubois, were laymen. The decision of the Bologna jurists on the field of Roncaglia was reasserted with new arguments and critical freedom, and a step was taken far in advance of that decision which asserted the independence of the emperor. The empire was set aside as an antiquated institution, and France and other states were pronounced sovereign within their own limits and immune from papal dominion over their temporal affairs. The principles of human law and the natural rights of man were arrayed against dogmatic assertions based upon unbalanced and false interpretations of Scripture. The method of scholastic sophistry was largely replaced by an appeal to common sense and regard for the practical needs of society. The authorities used to establish the new theory were Aristotle, the Scriptures and historic facts. These writers were John the Baptists preparing the way for the more clearly outlined and advanced views of Marsiglius of Padua and Ockam, who took the further step of questioning or flatly denying the pope’s spiritual supremacy, and for the still more advanced and more spiritual appeals of Wyclif and Luther. A direct current of influence can be traced back from the Protestant Reformation to the anti-papal tracts of the first decade of the fourteenth century.

The tract writers of the reign of Philip the Fair, who defended the traditional theory of the pope’s absolute supremacy in all matters, were the Italians Aegidius Colonna, James of Viterbo, Henry of Cremona, and Augustinus Triumphus. The writers who attacked the papal claim to temporal power are divided into two groups. To the first belongs Dante, who magnified the empire and the station of the emperor as the supreme ruler over the temporal affairs of men. The men of the second group were associated more or less closely with the French court and were, for the most part, Frenchmen. They called in question the authority of the emperor. Among their leaders were John of Paris and Peter Dubois. In a number of cases their names are forgotten or uncertain, while their tracts have survived. It will be convenient first to take up the theory of Dante, and then to present the views of papal and anti-papal writings which were evidently called forth by the struggle started by Boniface.

Dante was in nowise associated with the court of Philip the Fair, and seems to have been moved to write his treatise on government, the De monarchia, by general considerations and not by any personal sympathy with the French king. His theory embodies views in direct antagonism to those promulged in Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam, and Thomas Aquinas, whose theological views Dante followed, is here set aside.35  The independence and sovereignty of the civil estate is established by arguments drawn from reason, Aristotle, and the Scriptures. In making good his position, the author advances three propositions, devoting a chapter to each: (1) Universal monarchy or empire, for the terms are used synonymously, is necessary. (2) This monarchy belongs to the Roman people. (3) It was directly bequeathed to the Romans by God, and did not come through the mediation of the Church.

The interests of society, so the argument runs, require an impartial arbiter, and only a universal monarch bound by no local ties can be impartial. A universal monarchy will bring peace, the peace of which the angels sang on the night of Christ’s birth, and it will bring liberty, God’s greatest gift to man.36  Democracy reduces men to slavery. The Romans are the noblest people and deserve the right to rule. This is evident from the fine manhood of Aeneas, their progenitor,37 from the evident miracles which God wrought in their history and from their world-wide dominion. This right to rule was established under the Christian dispensation by Christ himself, who submitted to Roman jurisdiction in consenting to be born under Augustus and to suffer under Tiberius. It was attested by the Church when Paul said to Festus, "I stand at Caesar’s judgment seat, where I ought to be judged," Acts 25:10. There are two governing agents necessary to society, the pope and the emperor. The emperor is supreme in temporal things and is to guide men to eternal life in accordance with the truths of revelation. Nevertheless, the emperor should pay the pope the reverence which a first-born son pays to his father, such reverence as Charlemagne paid to Leo III.38

In denying the subordination of the civil power, Dante rejects the figure comparing the spiritual and temporal powers to the sun and moon,39 and the arguments drawn from the alleged precedence of Levi over Judah on the ground of the priority of Levi’s birth; from the oblation of the Magi at the manger and from the sentence passed upon Saul by Samuel. He referred the two swords both to spiritual functions. Without questioning the historical occurrence, he set aside Constantine’s donation to Sylvester on the ground that the emperor no more had the right to transfer his empire in the West than he had to commit suicide. Nor had the pope a right to accept the gift.40  In the Inferno Dante applied to that transaction the oft-quoted lines:41—

"Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was cause,

Not thy conversion, but those rich domains

Which the first wealthy pope received of thee."

The Florentine poet’s universal monarchy has remained an ideal unrealized, like the republic of the Athenian philosopher.42  Conception of popular liberty as it is conceived in this modern age, Dante had none. Nevertheless, he laid down the important principle that the government exists for the people, and not the people for the government.43

The treatise De monarchia was burnt as heretical, 1329, by order of John XXII. and put on the Index by the Council of Trent. In recent times it has aided the Italian patriots in their work of unifying Italy and separating politics from the Church according to Cavour’s maxim, "a free Church in a free state."

In the front rank of the champions of the temporal power of the papacy stood Aegidius Colonna, called also Aegidius Romanus, 1247–1316.44  He was an Augustinian, and rose to be general of his order. He became famous as a theological teacher and, in 1287, his order placed his writings in all its schools.45  In 1295 he was made archbishop of Bourges, Boniface setting aside in his favor the cleric nominated by Coelestine. Aegidius participated in the council in Rome, 1301, which Philip the Fair forbade the French prelates to attend. He was an elaborate writer, and in 1304 no less than 12 of his theological works and 14 of his philosophical writings were in use in the University of Paris.

The tract by which Aegidius is chiefly known is his Power of the Supreme Pontiff—De ecclesiastica sive de summit pontificis potestate. It was the chief work of its time in defence of the papacy, and seems to have been called forth by the Roman Council and to have been written in 1301.46  It was dedicated to Boniface VIII. Its main positions are the following: —

The pope judges all things and is judged by no man, 1 Cor. 2:15. To him belongs plenary power, plenitudo potestatis. This power is without measure, without number, and without weight. 47 It extends over all Christians. The pope is above all laws and in matters of faith infallible. He is like the sea which fills all vessels, like the sun which, as the universally active principle, sends his rays into all things. The priesthood existed before royalty. Abel and Noah, priests, preceded Nimrod, who was the first king. As the government of the world is one and centres in one ruler, God, so in the affairs of the militant Church there can be only one source of power, one supreme government, one head to whom belongs the plenitude of power. This is the supreme pontiff. The priesthood and the papacy are of immediate divine appointment. Earthly kingdoms, except as they have been established by the priesthood, owe their origin to usurpation, robbery, and other forms of violence.48  In these views Aegidius followed Augustine: De civitate, IV. 4, and Gregory VII. The state, however, he declared to be necessary as a means through which the Church works to accomplish its divinely appointed ends.

In the second part of his tract, Aegidius proves that, in spite of Numb. 18:20, 21, and Luke 10:4, the Church has the right to possess worldly goods. The Levites received cities. In fact, all temporal goods are under the control of the Church.49  As the soul rules the body, so the pope rules over all temporal matters. The tithe is a perpetual obligation. No one has a right to the possession of a single acre of ground or a vineyard without the Church’s permission and unless he be baptized.

The fulness of power, residing in the pope, gives him the right to appoint to all benefices in Christendom, but, as God chooses to rule through the laws of nature, so the pope rules through the laws of the Church, but he is not bound by them. He may himself be called the Church. For the pope’s power is spiritual, heavenly and divine. Aegidius was used by his successors, James of Viterbo, Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus, and also by John of Paris and Gerson who contested some of his main positions.50

The second of these writers, defending the position of Boniface VIII., was James of Viterbo,51 d. 1308. He also was an Italian, belonged to the Augustinian order, and gained prominence as a teacher in Paris. In 1302 he was appointed by Boniface archbishop of Beneventum, and a few months later archbishop of Naples. His Christian Government—De regimine christiano — is, after the treatise of Aegidius, the most comprehensive of the papal tracts. It also was dedicated to Boniface VIII., who is addressed as "the holy lord of the kings of the earth."  The author distinctly says he was led to write by the attacks made upon the papal prerogative.

To Christ’s vicar, James says, royalty and priesthood, regnum et sacerdotium, belong. Temporal authority was not for the first time conferred on him when Constantine gave Sylvester the dominion of the West. Constantine did nothing more than confirm a previous right derived from Christ, when he said, "whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."  Priests are kings, and the pope is the king of kings, both in mundane and spiritual matters.52  He is the bishop of the earth, the supreme lawgiver. Every soul must be subject to him in order to salvation.53  By reason of his fulness of power, the supreme pontiff can act according to law or against it, as he chooses.54

Henry of Cassaloci, or Henry of Cremona, as he is usually called from his Italian birthplace, d. 1312, is mentioned, contrary to the custom of the age, by name by John of Paris, as the author of the tract, The Power of the Pope—De potestate papae.55  He was a distinguished authority in canon law and consulted by Boniface. He was appointed, 1302, a member of the delegation to carry to Philip the Fair the two notorious bulls, Salvator mundi and Ausculta fili. The same year he was appointed bishop of Reggio.56  The papal defenders were well paid.

Henry began his tract with the words of Matt. 27:18, "All power is given unto me," and declared the attack against the pope’s temporal jurisdiction over the whole earth a matter of recent date, and made by "sophists" who deserved death. Up to that time no one had made such denial. He attempts to make out his fundamental thesis from Scripture, the Fathers, canon law, and reason. God at first ruled through Noah, the patriarchs, Melchizedec, and Moses, who were priests and kings at the same time. Did not Moses punish Pharaoh?  Christ carried both swords. Did he not drive out the money-changers and wear the crown of thorns?  To him the power was given to judge the world. John 5:22. The same power was entailed upon Peter and his successors. As for the state, it bears to the Church the relation of the moon to the sun, and the emperor has only such power as the pope is ready to confer. Henry also affirms that Constantine’s donation established no right, but confirmed what the pope already possessed by virtue of heavenly gift.57  The pope transferred the empire to Charlemagne, and Innocent IV. asserted the papal supremacy over kings by deposing Frederick II. If in early and later times the persons of popes were abused, this was not because they lacked supreme authority in the earth58 or were in anywise subject to earthly princes. No emperor can legally exercise imperial functions without papal consecration. When Christ said, "my kingdom is not of this world," he meant nothing more than that the world refused to obey him. As for the passage, "render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s," Christ was under no obligation to give tribute to the emperor, and the children of the kingdom are free, as Augustine, upon the basis of Matt. 27:26 sq., said.

The main work of another defender of the papal prerogatives, Augustinus Triumphus, belongs to the next period.59

An intermediate position between these writers and the anti-papal publicists was taken by the Cardinals Colonna and their immediate supporters.60  In their zeal against Boniface VIII. they questioned the absolute power of the Church in temporal concerns, and placed the supreme spiritual authority in the college of cardinals, with the pope as its head.

Among the advanced writers of the age was William Durante, d. 1381, an advocate of Gallicanism.61  He was appointed bishop of Mende before he had reached the canonical age. He never came under the condemnation of the Church. In a work composed at the instance of Clement V. on general councils and the reformation of Church abuses, De modo generalis concilii celebrandi et corruptelis in ecclesiis reformandis, he demanded a reformation of the Church in head and members,62 using for the first time this expression which was so often employed in a later age. He made the pope one of the order of bishops on all of whom was conferred equally the power to bind and to loose.63  The bishops are not the pope’s assistants, the view held by Innocent III., but agents directly appointed by God with independent jurisdiction. The pope may not act out of harmony with the canons of the early Church except with the approval of a general council. When new measures are contemplated, a general council should be convened, and one should be called every ten years.64

Turning now to the writers who contested the pope’s right to temporal authority over the nations, we find that while the most of them were clerics, all of them were jurists. It is characteristic that besides appealing to Aristotle, the Scriptures, and the canon law, they also appealed to the Roman law. We begin with several pamphlets whose authorship is a matter of uncertainty.

The Twofold Prerogative—Quaestio in utramque partem — was probably written in 1302, and by a Frenchman.65  The tract clearly sets forth that the two functions, the spiritual and the temporal, are distinct, and that the pope has plenary power only in the spiritual realm. It is evident that they are not united in one person, from Christ’s refusal of the office of king and from the law prohibiting the Levites holding worldly possessions. Canon law and Roman law recognized the independence of the civil power. Both estates are of God. At best the pope’s temporal authority extends to the patrimony of Peter. The empire is one among the powers, without authority over other states. As for the king of France, he would expose himself to the penalty of death if he were to recognize the pope as overlord.66

The same positions are taken in the tract,67 The Papal Power,—Quaestio de potestate papae. The author insists that temporal jurisdiction is incompatible with the pope’s office. He uses the figure of the body to represent the Church, giving it a new turn. Christ is the head. The nerves and veins are officers in the Church and state. They depend directly upon Christ, the head. The heart is the king. The pope is not even called the head. The soul is not mentioned. The old application of the figure of the body and the soul, representing respectively the regnum and the sacerdotium, is set aside. The pope is a spiritual father, not the lord over Christendom. Moses was a temporal ruler and Aaron was priest. The functions and the functionaries were distinct. At best, the donation of Constantine had no reference to France, for France was distinct from the empire. The deposition of Childerich by Pope Zacharias established no right, for all that Zacharias did was, as a wise counsellor, to give the barons advice.

A third tract, one of the most famous pieces of this literature, the Disputation between a Cleric and a Knight,68 was written to defend the sovereignty of the state and its right to levy taxes upon Church property. The author maintains that the king of France is in duty bound to see that Church property is administered according to the intent for which it was given. As he defends the Church against foreign foes, so he has the right to put the Church under tribute.

In the publicist, John of Paris, d. 1306, we have one of the leading minds of the age.69  He was a Dominican, and enjoyed great fame as a preacher and master. On June 26, 1303, he joined 132 other Parisian Dominicans in signing a document calling for a general council, which the university had openly favored five days before.70  His views of the Lord’s Supper brought upon him the charge of heresy, and he was forbidden to give lectures at the university.71  He appealed to Clement V., but died before he could get a hearing.

John’s chief writing was the tract on the Authority of the Pope and King, —De potestate regia et papali,72 — which almost breathes the atmosphere of modern times.

John makes a clear distinction between the "body of the faithful," which is the Church, and the "body of the clergy."73  The Church has its unity in Christ, who established the two estates, spiritual and temporal. They are the same in origin, but distinguished on earth. The pope has the right to punish moral offences, but only with spiritual punishments. The penalties of death, imprisonment, and fines, he has no right to impose. Christ had no worldly jurisdiction, and the pope should keep clear of "Herod’s old error."74  Constantine had no right to confer temporal power on Sylvester. John adduced 42 reasons urged in favor of the pope’s omnipotence in temporal affairs and offers a refutation for each of them.

As for the pope’s place in the Church, the pope is the representative of the ecclesiastical body, not its lord. The Church may call him to account. If the Church were to elect representatives to act with the supreme pontiff, we would have the best of governments. As things are, the cardinals are his advisers and may admonish him and, in case he persists in his error, they may call to their aid the temporal arm. The pope may be deposed by an emperor, as was actually the case when three popes were deposed by Henry III. The final seat of ecclesiastical authority is the general council. It may depose a pope. Valid grounds of deposition are insanity, heresy, personal incompetence and abuse of the Church’s property.

Following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, John derived the state from the family and not from murder and other acts of violence.75  It is a community organized for defence and bodily well-being. With other jurists, he regarded the empire as an antiquated institution and, if it continues to exist, it is on a par with the monarchies, not above them. Climate and geographical considerations make different monarchies necessary, and they derive their authority from God. Thus John and Dante, while agreeing as to the independence of the state, differ as to the seat where secular power resides. Dante placed it in a universal empire, John of Paris in separate monarchies.

The boldest and most advanced of these publicists, Pierre Dubois,76 was a layman, probably a Norman, and called himself a royal attorney.77  As a delegate to the national council in Paris, April, 1302, he represented Philip’s views. He was living as late as 1321. In a number of tracts he supported the contention of the French monarch against Boniface VIII.78  France is independent of the empire, and absolutely sovereign in all secular matters. The French king is the successor of Charlemagne. The pope is the moral teacher of mankind, "the light of the world," but he has no jurisdiction in temporal affairs. It is his function to care for souls, to stop wars, to exercise oversight over the clergy, but his jurisdiction extends no farther.

The pope and clergy are given to worldliness and self-indulgence. Boniface is a heretic. The prelates squander the Church’s money in wars and litigations, prefer the atmosphere of princely courts, and neglect theology and the care of souls. The avarice of the curia and the pope leads them to scandalous simony and nepotism.79  Constantine’s donation marked the change to worldliness among the clergy. It was illegal, and the only title the pope can show to temporal power over the patrimony of Peter is long tenure. The first step in the direction of reforms would be for clergy and pope to renounce worldly possessions altogether. This remedy had been prescribed by Arnold of Brescia and Frederick II.

Dubois also criticised the rule and practice of celibacy. Few clergymen keep their vows. And yet they are retained, while ordination is denied to married persons. This is in the face of the fact that the Apostle permitted marriage to all. The practice of the Eastern church is to be preferred. The rule of single life is too exacting, especially for nuns. Durante had proposed the abrogation of the rule, and Arnald of Villanova had emphasized the sacredness of the marriage tie, recalling that it was upon a married man, Peter, that Christ conferred the primacy.80

Dubois showed the freshness of his mind by suggestions of a practical nature. He proposed the colonization of the Holy Land by Christian people, and the marriage of Christian women to Saracens of station as a means of converting them. As a measure for securing the world’s conversion, he recommended to Clement the establishment of schools for boys and girls in every province, where instruction should be given in different languages. The girls were to be taught Latin and the fundamentals of natural science, and especially medicine and surgery, that they might serve as female physicians among women in the more occult disorders.

A review of the controversial literature of the age of Philip the Fair shows the new paths along which men’s thoughts were moving.81  The papal apologists insisted upon traditional interpretations of a limited number of texts, the perpetual validity of Constantine’s donation, and the transfer of the empire. They were forever quoting Innocent’s famous bull, Per venerabilem.82  On the other hand, John of Paris, and the publicists who sympathized with him, as also Dante, corrected and widened the vision of the field of Scripture, and brought into prominence the common rights of man. The resistance which the king of France offered to the demands of Boniface encouraged writers to speak without reserve.

The pope’s spiritual primacy was left untouched. The attack was against his temporal jurisdiction. The fiction of the two swords was set aside. The state is as supreme in its sphere as the Church in its sphere, and derives its authority immediately from God. Constantine had no right to confer the sovereignty of the West upon Sylvester, and his gift constitutes no valid papal claim. Each monarch is supreme in his own realm, and the theory of the overlordship of the emperor is abandoned as a thing out of date.

The pope’s tenure of office was made subject to limitation. He may be deposed for heresy and incompetency. Some writers went so far as to deny to him jurisdiction over Church property. The advisory function of the cardinals was emphasized and the independent authority of the bishops affirmed. Above all, the authority residing in the Church as a body of believers was discussed, and its voice, as uttered through a general council, pronounced to be superior to the authority of the pope. The utterances of John of Paris and Peter Dubois on the subject of general councils led straight on to the views propounded during the papal schism at the close of the fourteenth century.83  Dubois demanded that laymen as well as clerics should have a voice in them. The rule of clerical celibacy was attacked, and attention called to its widespread violation in practice. Pope and clergy were invoked to devote themselves to the spiritual well-being of mankind, and to foster peaceable measures for the world’s conversion.

This freedom of utterance and changed way of thinking mark the beginning of one of the great revolutions in the history of the Christian Church. To these publicists the modern world owes a debt of gratitude. Principles which are now regarded as axiomatic were new for the Christian public of their day. A generation later, Marsiglius of Padua defined them again with clearness, and took a step still further in advance.

§ 6. The Transfer of the Papacy to Avignon.

The successor of Boniface, Benedict XI., 1303–1304, a Dominican, was a mild-spirited and worthy man, more bent on healing ruptures than on forcing his arbitrary will. Departing from the policy of his predecessor, he capitulated to the state and put an end to the conflict with Philip the Fair. Sentences launched by Boniface were recalled or modified, and the interdict pronounced by that pope upon Lyons was revoked. Palestrina was restored to the Colonna. Only Sciarra Colonna and Nogaret were excepted from the act of immediate clemency and ordered to appear at Rome. Benedict’s death, after a brief reign of eight months, was ascribed to poison secreted in a dish of figs, of which the pope partook freely.84

The conclave met in Perugia, where Benedict died, and was torn by factions. After an interval of nearly eleven months, the French party won a complete triumph by the choice of Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. At the time of his election, Bertrand was in France. He never crossed the Alps. After holding his court at Bordeaux, Poictiers, and Toulouse, he chose, in 1309, Avignon as his residence.

Thus began the so-called Babylonian captivity, or Avignon exile, of the papacy, which lasted more than seventy years and included seven popes, all Frenchmen, Clement V., 1305–1314; John XXII., 1316–1334; Benedict XII., 1334–1342; Clement VI., 1342–1352; Innocent VI., 1352–1362; Urban V., 1362–1370; Gregory XI., 1370–1378. This prolonged absence from Rome was a great shock to the papal system. Transplanted from its maternal soil, the papacy was cut loose from the hallowed and historical associations of thirteen centuries. It no longer spake as from the centre of the Christian world.

The way had been prepared for the abandonment of the Eternal City and removal to French territory. Innocent II. and other popes had found refuge in France. During the last half of the thirteenth century the Apostolic See, in its struggle with the empire, had leaned upon France for aid. To avoid Frederick II., Innocent IV. had fled to Lyons, 1245. If Boniface VIII. represents a turning-point in the history of the papacy, the Avignon residence shook the reverence of Christendom for it. It was in danger of becoming a French institution. Not only were the popes all Frenchmen, but the large majority of the cardinals were of French birth. Both were reduced to a station little above that of court prelates subject to the nod of the French sovereign. At the same time, the popes continued to exercise their prerogatives over the other nations of Western Christendom, and freely hurled anathemas at the German emperor and laid the interdict upon Italian cities. The word might be passed around, "where the pope is, there is Rome," but the wonder is that the grave hurt done to his oecumenical character was not irreparable.85

The morals of Avignon during the papal residence were notorious throughout Europe. The papal household had all the appearance of a worldly court, torn by envies and troubled by schemes of all sorts. Some of the Avignon popes left a good name, but the general impression was bad—weak if not vicious. The curia was notorious for its extravagance, venality, and sensuality. Nepotism, bribery, and simony were unblushingly practised. The financial operations of the papal family became oppressive to an extent unknown before. Indulgences, applied to all sorts of cases, were made a source of increasing revenue. Alvarus Pelagius, a member of the papal household and a strenuous supporter of the papacy, in his De planctu ecclesiae, complained bitterly of the speculation and traffic in ecclesiastical places going on at the papal court. It swarmed with money-changers, and parties bent on money operations. Another contemporary, Petrarch, who never uttered a word against the papacy as a divine institution, launched his satires against Avignon, which he called "the sink of every vice, the haunt of all iniquities, a third Babylon, the Babylon of the West."  No expression is too strong to carry his biting invectives. Avignon is the "fountain of afflictions, the refuge of wrath, the school of errors, a temple of lies, the awful prison, hell on earth."86  But the corruption of Avignon was too glaring to make it necessary for him to invent charges. This ill-fame gives Avignon a place at the side of the courts of Louis XIV. and Charles II. of England.

During this papal expatriation, Italy fell into a deplorable condition. Rome, which had been the queen of cities, the goal of pilgrims, the centre towards which the pious affections of all Western Europe turned, the locality where royal and princely embassies had sought ratification for ambitious plans—Rome was now turned into an arena of wild confusion and riot. Contending factions of nobles, the Colonna, Orsini, Gaetani, and others, were in constant feud,87 and strove one with the other for the mastery in municipal affairs and were often themselves set aside by popular leaders whose low birth they despised. The source of her gains gone, the city withered away and was reduced to the proportions, the poverty, and the dull happenings of a provincial town, till in 1370 the population numbered less than 20,000. She had no commerce to stir her pulses like the young cities in Northern and Southern Germany and in Lombardy. Obscurity and melancholy settled upon her palaces and public places, broken only by the petty attempts at civic displays, which were like the actings of the circus ring compared with the serious manoeuvres of a military campaign. The old monuments were neglected or torn down. A papal legate sold the stones of the Colosseum to be burnt in lime-kilns, and her marbles were transported to other cities, so that it was said she was drawn upon more than Carrara.88  Her churches became roofless. Cattle ate grass up to the very altars of the Lateran and St. Peter’s. The movement of art was stopped which had begun with the arrival of Giotto, who had come to Rome at the call of Boniface VIII. to adorn St. Peter’s. No product of architecture is handed down from this period except the marble stairway of the church of St. Maria, Ara Coeli, erected in 1348 with an inscription commemorating the deliverance from the plague, and the restored Lateran church which was burnt, 1308.89  Ponds and débris interrupted the passage of the streets and filled the air with offensive and deadly odors. At Clement V.’s death, Napoleon Orsini assured Philip that the Eternal City was on the verge of destruction and, in 1347, Cola di Rienzo thought it more fit to be called a den of robbers than the residence of civilized men.

The Italian peninsula, at least in its northern half, was a scene of political division and social anarchy. The country districts were infested with bands of brigands. The cities were given to frequent and violent changes of government. High officials of the Church paid the price of immunity from plunder and violence by exactions levied on other personages of station. Such were some of the immediate results of the exile of the papacy. Italy was in danger of succumbing to the fate of Hellas and being turned into a desolate waste.

Avignon, which Clement chose as his residence, is 460 miles southeast of Paris and lies south of Lyons. Its proximity to the port of Marseilles made it accessible to Italy. It was purchased by Clement VI., 1348, from Naples for 80, 000 gold florins, and remained papal territory until the French Revolution. As early as 1229, the popes held territory in the vicinity, the duchy of Venaissin, which fell to them from the domain of Raymond of Toulouse. On every side this free papal home was closely confined by French territory. Clement was urged by Italian bishops to go to Rome, and Italian writers gave as one reason for his refusal fear lest he should receive meet punishment for his readiness to condemn Boniface VIII.90

Clement’s coronation was celebrated at Lyons, Philip and his brother Charles of Valois, the Duke of Bretagne and representatives of the king of England being present. Philip and the duke walked at the side of the pope’s palfrey. By the fall of an old wall during the procession, the duke, a brother of the pope, and ten other persons lost their lives. The pope himself was thrown from his horse, his tiara rolled in the dust, and a large carbuncle, which adorned it, was lost. Scarcely ever was a papal ruler put in a more compromising position than the new pontiff. His subjection to a sovereign who had defied the papacy was a strange spectacle. He owed his tiara indirectly, if not immediately, to Philip the Fair. He was the man Philip wanted.91  It was his task to appease the king’s anger against the memory of Boniface, and to meet his brutal demands concerning the Knights Templars. These, with the Council of Vienne, which he called, were the chief historic concerns of his pontificate.

The terms on which the new pope received the tiara were imposed by Philip himself, and, according to Villani, the price he made the Gascon pay included six promises. Five of them concerned the total undoing of what Boniface had done in his conflict with Philip. The sixth article, which was kept secret, was supposed to be the destruction of the order of the Templars. It is true that the authenticity of these six articles has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that from the very outset of Clement’s pontificate, the French king pressed their execution upon the pope’s attention.92  Clement, in poor position to resist, confirmed what Benedict had done and went farther. He absolved the king; recalled, Feb. 1, 1306, the offensive bulls Clericis laicos and Unam sanctam, so far as they implied anything offensive to France or any subjection on the part of the king to the papal chair, not customary before their issue, and fully restored the cardinals of the Colonna family to the dignities of their office.

The proceedings touching the character of Boniface VIII. and his right to a place among the popes dragged along for fully six years. Philip had offered, among others, his brother, Count Louis of Evreux, as a witness for the charge that Boniface had died a heretic. There was a division of sentiment among the cardinals. The Colonna were as hostile to the memory of Boniface as they were zealous in their writings for the memory of Coelestine V. They pronounced it to be contrary to the divine ordinance for a pope to abdicate. His spiritual marriage with the Church cannot be dissolved. And as for there being two popes at the same time, God was himself not able to constitute such a monstrosity. On the other hand, writers like Augustinus Triumphus defended Boniface and pronounced him a martyr to the interests of the Church and worthy of canonization.93  In his zeal against his old enemy Philip had called, probably as early as 1305, for the canonization of Coelestine V.94  A second time, in 1307, Boniface’s condemnation was pressed upon Clement by the king in person. But the pope knew how to prolong the prosecution on all sorts of pretexts. Philip represented himself as concerned for the interests of religion, and Nogaret and the other conspirators insisted that the assault at Avignon was a religious act, negotium fidei. Nogaret sent forth no less than twelve apologies defending himself for his part in the assault.95  In 1310 the formal trial began. Many witnesses appeared to testify against Boniface,—laymen, priests and bishops. The accusations were that the pope had declared all three religions false, Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity, pronounced the virgin birth a tale, denied transubstantiation and the existence of hell and heaven and that he had played games of chance.

Clement issued one bull after another protesting the innocency of the offending parties concerned in the violent measures against Boniface. Philip and Nogaret were declared innocent of all guilt and to have only pure motives in preferring charges against the dead pope.96  The bull, Rex gloriae, 1311, addressed to Philip, stated that the secular kingdom was founded by God and that France in the new dispensation occupied about the same place as Israel, the elect people, occupied under the old dispensation. Nogaret’s purpose in entering into the agreement which resulted in the affair at Anagni was to save the Church from destruction at the hands of Boniface, and the plundering of the papal palace and church was done against the wishes of the French chancellor. In several bulls Clement recalled all punishments, statements, suspensions and declarations made against Philip and his kingdom, or supposed to have been made. And to fully placate the king, he ordered all Boniface’s pronouncements of this character effaced from the books of the Roman Church. Thus in the most solemn papal form did Boniface’s successor undo all that Boniface had done.97  When the Oecumenical Council of Vienne met, the case of Boniface was so notorious a matter that it had to be taken up. After a formal trial, in which the accused pontiff was defended by three cardinals, he was adjudged not guilty. To gain this point, and to save his predecessor from formal condemnation, it is probable Clement had to surrender to Philip unqualifiedly in the matter of the Knights of the Temple.

After long and wearisome proceedings, this order was formally legislated out of existence by Clement in 1312. Founded in 1119 to protect pilgrims and to defend the Holy Land against the Moslems, it had outlived its mission. Sapped of its energy by riches and indulgence, its once famous knights might well have disbanded and no interest been the worse for it. The story, however, of their forcible suppression awakens universal sympathy and forms one of the most thrilling and mysterious chapters of the age. Döllinger has called it "a unique drama in history."98

The destruction of the Templar order was relentlessly insisted upon by Philip the Fair, and accomplished with the reluctant co-operation of Clement V. In vain did the king strive to hide the sordidness of his purpose under the thin mask of religious zeal. At Clement’s coronation, if not before, Philip brought charges against it. About the same time, in the insurrection called forth by his debasement of the coin, the king took refuge in the Templars’ building at Paris. In 1307 he renewed the charges before the pope. When Clement hesitated, he proceeded to violence, and on the night of Oct. 13, 1307, he had all the members of the order in France arrested and thrown into prison, including Jacques de Molay, the grand-master. Döllinger applies to this deed the strong language that, if he were asked to pick out from the whole history of the world the accursed day,—dies nefastus,—he would be able to name none other than Oct. 13, 1307. Three days later, Philip announced he had taken this action as the defender of the faith and called upon Christian princes to follow his example. Little as the business was to Clement’s taste, he was not man enough to set himself in opposition to the king, and he gradually became complaisant.99  The machinery of the Inquisition was called into use. The Dominicans, its chief agents, stood high in Philip’s favor, and one of their number was his confessor. In 1308 the authorities of the state assented to the king’s plans to bring the order to trial. The constitution of the court was provided for by Clement, the bishop of each diocese and two Franciscans and two Dominicans being associated together. A commission invested with general authority was to sit in Paris.100

In the summer of 1308 the pope ordered a prosecution of the knights wherever they might be found.101  The charges set forth were heresy, spitting upon the cross, worshipping an idol, Bafomet—the word for Mohammed in the Provençal dialect—and also the most abominable offences against moral decency such as sodomy and kissing the posterior parts and the navel of fellow knights. The members were also accused of having meetings with the devil who appeared in the form of a black cat and of having carnal intercourse with female demons. The charges which the lawyers and Inquisitors got together numbered 127 and these the pope sent through France and to other countries as the basis of the prosecution.

Under the strain of prolonged torture, many of the unfortunate men gave assent to these charges, and more particularly to the denial of Christ and the spitting upon the cross. The Templars seem to have had no friends in high places bold enough to take their part. The king, the pope, the Dominican order, the University of Paris, the French episcopacy were against them. Many confessions once made by the victims were afterwards recalled at the stake. Many denied the charges altogether.102  In Paris 36 died under torture, 54 suffered there at one burning, May 10, 1310, and 8 days later 4 more. Hundreds of them perished in prison. Even the bitterest enemies acknowledged that the Templars who were put to death maintained their innocence to their dying breath.103

In accordance with Clement’s order, trials were had in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and England. In England, Edward II. at first refused to apply the torture, which was never formally adopted in that land, but later, at Clement’s demand, he complied. Papal inquisitors appeared. Synods in London and York declared the charges of heresy so serious that it would be impossible for the knights to clear themselves. English houses were disbanded and the members distributed among the monasteries to do penance. In Italy and Germany, the accused were, for the most part, declared innocent. In Spain and Portugal, no evidence was forthcoming of guilt and the synod of Tarragona, 1310, and other synods favored their innocence.

The last act in these hostile proceedings was opened at the Council of Vienne, called for the special purpose of taking action upon the order. The large majority of the council were in favor of giving it a new trial and a fair chance to prove its innocence. But the king was relentless. He reminded Clement that the guilt of the knights had been sufficiently proven, and insisted that the order be abolished. He appeared in person at the council, attended by a great retinue. Clement was overawed, and by virtue of his apostolic power issued his decree abolishing the Templars, March 22, 1312.104  Clement’s reasons were that suspicions existed that the order held to heresies, that many of the Templars had confessed to heresies and other offences, that thereafter reputable persons would not enter the order, and that it was no longer necessary for the defence of the Holy Land. Directions were given for the further procedure. The guilty were to be put to death; the innocent to be supported out of the revenues of the order. With this action the famous order passed out of existence.

The end of Jacques de Molay, the 22d and last grand-master of the order of Templars, was worthy of its proudest days. At the first trial he confessed to the charges of denying Christ and spitting upon the cross, and was condemned, but afterwards recalled his confession. His case was reopened in 1314. With Geoffrey de Charney, grand-preceptor of Normandy, and others, he was led in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Molay then stood forth and declared that the charges against the order were false, and that he had confessed to them under the strain of torture and instructions from the king. Charney said the same. The commission promised to reconsider the case the next day. But the king’s vengeance knew no bounds, and that night, March 11, 1314, the prisoners were burned. The story ran that while the flames were doing their grewsome (sic) work, Molay summoned pope and king to meet him at the judgment bar within a year. The former died, in a little more than a month, of a loathsome disease, though penitent, as it was reported, for his treatment of the order, and the king, by accident, while engaged in the chase, six months later. The king was only 46 years old at the time of his death, and 14 years after, the last of his direct descendants was in his grave and the throne passed to the house of Valois.

As for the possessions of the order, papal decrees turned them over to the Knights of St. John, but Philip again intervened and laid claim to 260,000 pounds as a reimbursement for alleged losses to the Temple and the expense of guarding the prisoners.105  In Spain, they passed to the orders of San Iago di Compostella and Calatrava. In Aragon, they were in part applied to a new order, Santa Maria de Montesia, and in Portugal to the Military Order of Jesus Christ, ordo militiae Jesu Christi. Repeated demands made by the pope secured the transmission of a large part of their possessions to the Knights of St. John. In England, in 1323, parliament granted their lands to the Hospitallers, but the king appropriated a considerable share to himself. The Temple in London fell to the Earl of Pembroke, 1313.106

The explanation of Philip’s violent animosity and persistent persecution is his cupidity. He coveted the wealth of the Templars. Philip was quite equal to a crime of this sort.107  He robbed the bankers of Lombardy and the Jews of France, and debased the coin of his realm. A loan of 500,000 pounds which he had secured for a sister’s dowry had involved him in great financial straits. He appropriated all the possessions of the Templars he could lay his hands upon. Clement V.’s subserviency it is easy to explain. He was a creature of the king. When the pope hesitated to proceed against the unfortunate order, the king beset him with the case of Boniface VIII. To save the memory of his predecessor, the pope surrendered the lives of the knights.108  Dante, in representing the Templars as victims of the king’s avarice, compares Philip to Pontius Pilate.

"I see the modern Pilate, whom avails

No cruelty to sate and who, unbidden,

Into the Temple sets his greedy sails."

Purgatory, xx. 91.

The house of the Templars in Paris was turned into a royal residence, from which Louis XVI., more than four centuries later, went forth to the scaffold.

The Council of Vienne, the fifteenth in the list of the oecumenical councils, met Oct. 16, 1311, and after holding three sessions adjourned six months later, May 6, 1812. Clement opened it with an address on Psalm 111:1, 2, and designated three subjects for its consideration, the case of the order of the Templars, the relief of the Holy Land and Church reform. The documents bearing on the council are defective.109  In addition to the decisions concerning the Templars and Boniface VIII., it condemned the Beguines and Beghards and listened to charges made against the Franciscan, Peter John Olivi (d. 1298). Olivi belonged to the Spiritual wing of the order. His books had been ordered burnt, 1274, by one Franciscan general, and a second general of the order, Bonagratia, 1279, had appointed a commission which found thirty-four dangerous articles in his writings. The council, without pronouncing against Olivi, condemned three articles ascribed to him bearing on the relation of the two parties in the Franciscan order, the Spirituals and Conventuals.

The council has a place in the history of biblical scholarship and university education by its act ordering two chairs each, of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee established in Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca.

While the proceedings against Boniface and the Templars were dragging on in their slow course in France, Clement was trying to make good his authority in Italy. Against Venice he hurled the most violent anathemas and interdicts for venturing to lay hands on Ferrara, whose territory was claimed by the Apostolic See. A crusade was preached against the sacrilegious city. She was defeated in battle, and Ferrara was committed to the administration of Robert, king of Naples, as the pope’s vicar.

All that he could well do, Clement did to strengthen the hold of France on the papacy. The first year of his pontificate he appointed 9 French cardinals, and of the 24 persons whom he honored with the purple, 23 were Frenchmen. He granted to the insatiable Philip a Church tithe for five years. Next to the fulfilment of his obligations to this monarch, Clement made it his chief business to levy tributes upon ecclesiastics of all grades and upon vacant Church livings.110  He was prodigal with offices to his relatives. This was a leading feature of his pontificate. Five of his kin were made cardinals, three being still in their youth. His brother he made rector of Rome, and other members of his family received Ancona, Ferrara, the duchy of Spoleto, and the duchy of Venaissin, and other territories within the pope’s gift.111  The administration and disposition of his treasure occupied a large part of Clement’s time and have offered an interesting subject to the pen of the modern Jesuit scholar, Ehrle. The papal treasure left by Clement’s predecessor, after being removed from Perugia to France, was taken from place to place and castle to castle, packed in coffers laden on the backs of mules. After Clement’s death, the vast sums he had received and accumulated suddenly disappeared. Clement’s successor, John XXII., instituted a suit against Clement’s most trusted relatives to account for the moneys. The suit lasted from 1318–1322, and brought to light a great amount of information concerning Clement’s finances.112

His fortune Clement disposed of by will, 1312, the total amount being 814,000 florins; 300,000 were given to his nephew, the viscount of Lomagne and Auvillars, a man otherwise known for his numerous illegitimate offspring. This sum was to be used for a crusade; 314,000 were bequeathed to other relatives and to servants. The remaining 200,000 were given to churches, convents, and the poor. A loan of 160,000 made to the king of France was never paid back.113

Clement’s body was by his appointment buried at Uzeste. His treasure was plundered. At the trial instituted by John XXII., it appeared that Clement before his death had set apart 70,000 florins to be divided in equal shares between his successor and the college of cardinals. The viscount of Lomagne was put into confinement by John, and turned over 300,000 florins, one-half going to the cardinals and one-half to the pope. A few months after Clement’s death, the count made loans to the king of France of 110,000 florins and to the king of England of 60,000.

Clement’s relatives showed their appreciation of his liberality by erecting to his memory an elaborate sarcophagus at Uzeste, which cost 50,000 gold florins. The theory is that the pope administers moneys coming to him by virtue of his papal office for the interest of the Church at large. Clement spoke of the treasure in his coffers as his own, which he might dispose of as he chose.114

Clement’s private life was open to the grave suspicion of unlawful intimacy with the beautiful Countess Brunissenda of Foix. Of all the popes of the fourteenth century, he showed the least independence. An apologist of Boniface VIII., writing in 1308, recorded this judgment:115  "The Lord permitted Clement to be elected, who was more concerned about temporal things and in enriching his relatives than was Boniface, in order that by contrast Boniface might seem worthy of praise where he would otherwise have been condemned, just as the bitter is not known except by the sweet, or cold except by heat, or the good except by evil."  Villani, who assailed both popes, characterized Clement "as licentious, greedy of money, a simoniac, who sold in his court every benefice for gold."116

By a single service did this pope seem to place the Church in debt to his pontificate. The book of decretals, known as the Clementines, and issued in part by him, was completed by his successor, John XXII.

§ 7. The Pontificate of John XXII 1316–1334.

Clement died April 20, 1314. The cardinals met at Carpentras and then at Lyons, and after an interregnum of twenty seven months elected John XXII., 1316–1334, to the papal throne. He was then seventy-two, and cardinal-bishop of Porto.117  Dante had written to the conclave begging that it elect an Italian pope, but the French influence was irresistible.

Said to be the son of a cobbler of Cahors, short of stature,118  with a squeaking voice, industrious and pedantic, John was, upon the whole, the most conspicuous figure among the popes of the fourteenth century, though not the most able or worthy one. He was a man of restless disposition, and kept the papal court in constant commotion. The Vatican Archives preserve 59 volumes of his bulls and other writings. He had been a tutor in the house of Anjou, and carried the preceptorial method into his papal utterances. It was his ambition to be a theologian as well as pope. He solemnly promised the Italian faction in the curia never to mount an ass except to start on the road to Rome. But he never left Avignon. His devotion to France was shown at the very beginning of his reign in the appointment of eight cardinals, of whom seven were Frenchmen.

The four notable features of John’s pontificate are his quarrel with the German emperor, Lewis the Bavarian, his condemnation of the rigid party of the Franciscans, his own doctrinal heresy, and his cupidity for gold.

The struggle with Lewis the Bavarian was a little afterplay compared with the imposing conflicts between the Hohenstaufen and the notable popes of preceding centuries. Europe looked on with slight interest at the long-protracted dispute, which was more adapted to show the petulance and weakness of both emperor and pope than to settle permanently any great principle. At Henry VII.’s death, 1313, five of the electors gave their votes for Lewis of the house of Wittelsbach, and two for Frederick of Hapsburg. Both appealed to the new pope, about to be elected. Frederick was crowned by the archbishop of Treves at Bonn, and Lewis by the archbishop of Mainz at Aachen. In 1317 John declared that the pope was the lawful vicar of the empire so long as the throne was vacant, and denied Lewis recognition as king of the Romans on the ground of his having neglected to submit his election to him.

The battle at Mühldorf, 1322, left Frederick a prisoner in his rival’s hands. This turn of affairs forced John to take more decisive action, and in 1323 was issued against Lewis the first of a wearisome and repetitious series of complaints and punishments from Avignon. The pope threatened him with the ban, claiming authority to approve or set aside an emperor’s election.119  A year later he excommunicated Lewis and all his supporters.

In answer to this first complaint of 1323, Lewis made a formal declaration at Nürnberg in the presence of a notary and other witnesses that he regarded the empire as independent of the pope, charged John with heresy, and appealed to a general council. The charge of heresy was based on the pope’s treatment of the Spiritual party among the Franciscans. Condemned by John, prominent Spirituals, Michael of Cesena, Ockam and Bonagratia, espoused Lewis’ cause, took refuge at his court, and defended him with their pens. The political conflict was thus complicated by a recondite ecclesiastical problem. In 1324 Lewis issued a second appeal, written in the chapel of the Teutonic Order in Sachsenhausen, which again renewed the demand for a general council and repeated the charge of heresy against the pope.

The next year, 1325, Lewis suffered a severe defeat from Leopold of Austria, who had entered into a compact to put Charles IV. of France on the German throne. He went so far as to express his readiness, in the compact of Ulm, 1326, to surrender the German crown to Frederick, provided he himself was confirmed in his right to Italy and the imperial dignity. At this juncture Leopold died.

By papal appointment Robert of Naples was vicar of Rome. But Lewis had no idea of surrendering his claims to Italy, and, now that he was once again free by Leopold’s death, he marched across the Alps and was crowned, January 1327, emperor in front of St. Peter’s. Sciarra Colonna, as the representative of the people, placed the crown on his head, and two bishops administered unction. Villani120 expresses indignation at an imperial coronation conducted without the pope’s consent as a thing unheard of. Lewis was the first mediaeval emperor crowned by the people. A formal trial was instituted, and "James of Cahors, who calls himself John XXII." was denounced as anti-christ and deposed from the papal throne and his effigy carried through the streets and burnt.121  John of Corbara, belonging to the Spiritual wing of the Franciscans, was elected to the throne just declared vacant, and took the name of Nicolas V. He was the first anti-pope since the days of Barbarossa. Lewis himself placed the crown upon the pontiff’s head, and the bishop of Venice performed the ceremony of unction. Nicolas surrounded himself with a college of seven cardinals, and was accused of having forthwith renounced the principles of poverty and abstemiousness in dress and at the table which the day before he had advocated.

To these acts of violence John replied by pronouncing Lewis a heretic and appointing a crusade against him, with the promise of indulgence to all taking part in it. Fickle Rome soon grew weary of her lay-crowned emperor, who had been so unwise as to impose an extraordinary tribute of 10,000 florins each upon the people, the clergy, and the Jews of the city. He retired to the North, Nicolas following him with his retinue of cardinals. At Pisa, the emperor being present, the anti-pope excommunicated John and summoned a general council to Milan. John was again burnt in effigy, at the cathedral, and condemned to death for heresy. In 1330 Lewis withdrew from Italy altogether, while Nicolas, with a cord around his neck, submitted to John. He died in Avignon three years later. In 1334, John issued a bull which, according to Karl Müller, was the rudest act of violence done up to that time to the German emperor by a pope.122  This fulmination separated Italy from the crown and kingdom—imperium et regnum — of Germany and forbade their being reunited in one body. The reason given for this drastic measure was the territorial separation of the two provinces. Thus was accomplished by a distinct announcement what the diplomacy of Innocent III. was the first to make a part of the papal policy, and which figured so prominently in the struggle between Gregory IX. and Frederick II.

With his constituency completely lost in Italy, and with only an uncertain support in Germany, Lewis now made overtures for peace. But the pope was not ready for anything less than a full renunciation of the imperial power. John died 1334, but the struggle was continued through the pontificate of his successor, Benedict XII. Philip VI. of France set himself against Benedict’s measures for reconciliation with Lewis, and in 1337 the emperor made an alliance with England against France. Princes of Germany, making the rights of the empire their own, adopted the famous constitution of Rense,—a locality near Mainz, which was confirmed at the Diet of Frankfurt, 1338. It repudiated the pope’s extravagant temporal claims, and declared that the election of an emperor by the electors was final, and did not require papal approval. This was the first representative German assembly to assert the independence of the empire.

The interdict was hanging over the German assembly when Benedict died, 1342. The battle had gone against Lewis, and his supporters were well-nigh all gone from him. A submission even more humiliating than that of Henry IV. was the only thing left. He sought the favor of Clement VI., but in vain. In a bull of April 12, 1343, Clement enumerated the emperor’s many crimes, and anew ordered him to renounce the imperial dignity. Lewis wrote, yielding submission, but the authenticity of the document was questioned at Avignon, probably with the set purpose of increasing the emperor’s humiliation. Harder conditions were laid down. They were rejected by the diet at Frankfurt, 1344. But Germany was weary, and listened without revulsion to a final bull against Lewis, 1346, and a summons to the electors to proceed to a new election. The electors, John of Bohemia among them, chose Charles IV., John’s son. The Bohemian king was the blind warrior who met his death on the battlefield of Crécy the same year. Before his election, Charles had visited Avignon, and promised full submission to the pope’s demands. His continued complacency during his reign justified the pope’s choice. The struggle was ended with Lewis’ death a year later, 1347, while he was engaged near Munich in a bear-hunt. It was the last conflict of the empire and papacy along the old lines laid down by those ecclesiastical warriors, Hildebrand and Innocent III. and Gregory IX.

To return to John XXII., he became a prominent figure in the controversy within the Franciscan order over the tenure of property, a controversy which had been going on from the earliest period between the two parties, the Spirituals, or Observants, and the Conventuals. The last testament of St. Francis, pleading for the practice of absolute poverty, and suppressed in Bonaventura’s Life of the saint, 1263, was not fully recognized in the bull of Nicolas III., 1279, which granted the Franciscans the right to use property as tenants, while forbidding them to hold it in fee simple. With this decision the strict party, the Spirituals, were not satisfied, and the struggle went on. Coelestine V. attempted to bring peace by merging the Spiritual wing with the order of Hermits he had founded, but the measure was without success.

Under Boniface VIII. matters went hard with the Spirituals. This pope deposed the general, Raymond Gaufredi, putting in his place John of Murro, who belonged to the laxer wing. Peter John Olivi (d. 1298), whose writings were widely circulated, had declared himself in favor of Nicolas’ bull, with the interpretation that the use of property and goods was to be the "use of necessity,"—usus pauper,—as opposed to the more liberal use advocated by the Conventuals and called usus moderatus. Olivi’s personal fortunes were typical of the fortunes of the Spiritual branch. After his death, the attack made against his memory was, if possible, more determined, and culminated in the charges preferred at Vienne. Murro adopted violent measures, burning Olivi’s writings, and casting his sympathizers into prison. Other prominent Spirituals fled. Angelo Clareno found refuge for a time in Greece, returning to Rome, 1305, under the protection of the Colonna.

The case was formally taken up by Clement V., who called a commission to Avignon to devise measures to heal the division, and gave the Spirituals temporary relief from persecution. The proceedings were protracted till the meeting of the council in Vienne, when the Conventuals brought up the case in the form of an arraignment of Olivi, who had come to be regarded almost as a saint. Among the charges were that he pronounced the usus pauper to be of the essence of the Minorite rule, that Christ was still living at the time the lance was thrust into his side, and that the rational soul has not the form of a body. Olivi’s memory was defended by Ubertino da Casale, and the council passed no sentence upon his person.

In the bull Exivi de paradiso,123 issued 1813, and famous in the history of the Franciscan order, Clement seemed to take the side of the Spirituals. It forbade the order or any of its members to accept bequests, possess vineyards, sell products from their gardens, build fine churches, or go to law. It permitted only "the use of necessity," usus arctus or pauper, and nothing beyond. The Minorites were to wear no shoes, ride only in cases of necessity, fast from Nov. 1 until Christmas, as well as every Friday, and possess a single mantle with a hood and one without a hood. Clement ordered the new general, Alexander of Alessandra, to turn over to Olivi’s followers the convents of Narbonne, Carcassonne and Béziers, but also ordered the Inquisition to punish the Spirituals who refused submission.

In spite of the papal decree, the controversy was still being carried on within the order with great heat, when John XXII. came to the throne. In the decretal Quorumdam exegit, and in the bull Sancta romana et universalis ecclesia, Dec. 30, 1317, John took a positive position against the Spirituals. A few weeks later, he condemned a formal list of their errors and abolished all the convents under Spiritual management. From this time on dates the application of the name Fraticelli124 to the Spirituals. They refused to submit, and took the position that even a pope had no right to modify the Rule of St. Francis. Michael of Cesena, the general of the order, defended them. Sixty-four of their number were summoned to Avignon. Twenty-five refused to yield, and passed into the hands of the Inquisition. Four were burnt as martyrs at Marseilles, May 7, 1318. Others fled to Sicily.125

The chief interest of the controversy was now shifted to the strictly theological question whether Christ and his Apostles observed complete poverty. This dispute threatened to rend the wing of the Conventuals itself. Michael of Cesena, Ockam, and others, took the position that Christ and his Apostles not only held no property as individuals, but held none in common. John, opposing this view, gave as arguments the gifts of the Magi, that Christ possessed clothes and bought food, the purse of Judas, and Paul’s labor for a living. In the bull Cum inter nonnullos, 1323, and other bulls, John declared it heresy to hold that Christ and the Apostles held no possessions. Those who resisted this interpretation were pronounced, 1324, rebels and heretics. John went farther, and gave back to the order the right of possessing goods in fee simple, a right which Innocent IV. had denied, and he declared that in things which disappear in the using, such as eatables, no distinction can be made between their use and their possession. In 1326 John pronounced Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse heretical. The three Spiritual leaders, Cesena, Ockam, and Bonagratia were seized and held in prison until 1328, when they escaped and fled to Lewis the Bavarian at Pisa. It was at this time that Ockam was said to have used to the emperor the famous words, "Do thou defend me with the sword and I will defend thee with the pen"—tu me depfendes gladio, ego te defendam calamo. They were deposed from their offices and included in the ban fulminated against the anti-pope, Peter of Corbara. Later, Cesena submitted to the pope, as Ockam is also said to have done shortly before his death. Cesena died at Munich, 1342 He committed the seal of the order to Ockam. On his death-bed he is said to have cried out: "My God, what have I done?  I have appealed against him who is the highest on the earth. But look, O Father, at the spirit of truth that is in me which has not erred through the lust of the flesh but from great zeal for the seraphic order and out of love for poverty."  Bonagratia also died in Munich.126

Later in the fourteenth century the Regular Observance grew again to considerable proportions, and in the beginning of the fifteenth century its fame was revived by the flaming preachers Bernardino of Siena and John of Capistrano. The peace of the Franciscan order continued to be the concern of pope after pope until, in 1517, Leo X. terminated the struggle of three centuries by formally recognizing two distinct societies within the Franciscan body. The moderate wing was placed under the Master-General of the Conventual Minorite Brothers, and was confirmed in the right to hold property. The strict or Observant wing was placed under a Minister-General of the Whole Order of St. Francis.127  The latter takes precedence in processions and at other great functions, and holds his office for six years.

If the Spiritual Franciscans had been capable of taking secret delight in an adversary’s misfortunes, they would have had occasion for it in the widely spread charge that John was a heretic. At any rate, he came as near being a heretic as a pope can be. His heresy concerned the nature of the beatific vision after death. In a sermon on All Souls’, 1331, he announced that the blessed dead do not see God until the general resurrection. In at least two more sermons he repeated this utterance. John, who was much given to theologizing, Ockam declared to be wholly ignorant in theology.128  This Schoolman, Cesena, and others pronounced the view heretical. John imprisoned an English Dominican who preached against him, and so certain was he of his case that he sent the Franciscan general, Gerardus Odonis, to Paris to get the opinion of the university.

The King, Philip VI., took a warm interest in the subject, opposed the pope, and called a council of theologians at Vincennes to give its opinion. It decided that ever since the Lord descended into hades and released souls from that abode, the righteous have at death immediately entered upon the vision of the divine essence of the Trinity.129  Among the supporters of this decision was Nicolas of Lyra. When official announcement of the decision reached the pope, he summoned a council at Avignon and set before it passages from the Fathers for and against his view. They sat for five days, in December, 1333. John then made a public announcement, which was communicated to the king and queen of France, that he had not intended to say anything in conflict with the Fathers and the orthodox Church and, if he had done so, he retracted his utterances.

The question was authoritatively settled by Benedict XII. in the bull Benedictus deus, 1336, which declared that the blessed dead—saints, the Apostles, virgins, martyrs, confessors who need no purgatorial cleansing—are, after death and before the resurrection of their bodies at the general judgment, with Christ and the angels, and that they behold the divine essence with naked vision.130  Benedict declared that John died while he was preparing a decision.

The financial policy of John XXII. and his successors merits a chapter by itself. Here reference may be made to John’s private fortune. He has had the questionable fame of not only having amassed a larger sum than any of his predecessors, but of having died possessed of fabulous wealth. Gregorovius calls him the Midas of Avignon. According to Villani, he left behind him 18,000,000 gold florins and 7,000,000 florins’ worth of jewels and ornaments, in all 25,000,000 florins, or $60,000,000 of our present coinage. This chronicler concludes with the remark that the words were no longer remembered which the Good Man in the Gospels spake to his disciples, "Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven."131  Recent investigations seem to cast suspicion upon this long-held view as an exaggeration. John’s hoard may have amounted to not more than 750,000 florins, or $2,000,000132 of our money. If this be a safe estimate, it is still true that John was a shrewd financier and perhaps the richest man in Europe.

When John died he was ninety years old.

§ 8. The Papal Office Assailed.

To the pontificate of John XXII. belongs a second group of literary assailants of the papacy. Going beyond Dante and John of Paris, they attacked the pope’s spiritual functions. Their assaults were called forth by the conflict with Lewis the Bavarian and the controversy with the Franciscan Spirituals. Lewis’ court became a veritable nest of antipapal agitation and the headquarters of pamphleteering. Marsiglius of Padua was the cleverest and boldest of these writers, Ockam—a Schoolman rather than a practical thinker—the most copious. Michael of Cesena133 and Bonagratia also made contributions to this literature.

Ockam sets forth his views in two works, The Dialogue and the Eight Questions. The former is ponderous in thought and a monster in size.134  It is difficult, if at times possible, to detect the author’s views in the mass of cumbersome disputation. These views seem to be as follows: The papacy is not an institution which is essential to the being of the Church. Conditions arise to make it necessary to establish national churches.135  The pope is not infallible. Even a legitimate pope may hold to heresy. So it was with Peter, who was judaizing, and had to be rebuked by Paul, Liberius, who was an Arian, and Leo, who was arraigned for false doctrine by Hilary of Poictiers. Sylvester II. made a compact with the devil. One or the other, Nicolas III. or John XXII., was a heretic, for the one contradicted the other. A general council may err just as popes have erred. So did the second Council of Lyons and the Council of Vienne, which condemned the true Minorites. The pope may be pronounced a heretic by a council or, if a council fails in its duty, the cardinals may pronounce the decision. In case the cardinals fail, the right to do so belongs to the temporal prince. Christ did not commit the faith to the pope and the hierarchy, but to the Church, and somewhere within the Church the truth is always held and preserved. Temporal power did not originally belong to the pope. This is proved by Constantine’s donation, for what Constantine gave, he gave for the first time. Supreme power in temporal and spiritual things is not in a single hand. The emperor has full power by virtue of his election, and does not depend for it upon unction or coronation by the pope or any earthly confirmation of any kind.

More distinct and advanced were the utterances of Marsiglius of Padua. His writings abound in incisive thrusts against the prevailing ecclesiastical system, and lay down the principles of a new order. In the preparation of his chief work, the Defence of the Faith,—Defensor pacis,—he had the help of John of Jandun.136  Both writers were clerics, but neither of them monks. Born about 1270 in Padua, Marsiglius devoted himself to the study of medicine, and in 1312 was rector of the University of Paris. In 1325 or 1326 he betook himself to the court of Lewis the Bavarian. The reasons are left to surmisal. He acted as the emperor’s physician. In 1328 he accompanied the emperor to Rome, and showed full sympathy with the measures taken to establish the emperor’s authority. He joined in the ceremonies of the emperor’s coronation, the deposition of John XXII. and the elevation of the anti-pope, Peter of Corbara. The pope had already denounced Marsiglius and John of Jandun137 as "sons of perdition, the sons of Belial, those pestiferous individuals, beasts from the abyss," and summoned the Romans to make them prisoners. Marsiglius was made vicar of Rome by the emperor, and remained true to the principles stated in his tract, even when the emperor became a suppliant to the Avignon court. Lewis even went so far as to express to John XXII. his readiness to withdraw his protection from Marsiglius and the leaders of the Spirituals. Later, when his position was more hopeful, he changed his attitude and gave them his protection at Munich. But again, in his letter submitting himself to Clement VI., 1343, the emperor denied holding the errors charged against Marsiglius and John, and declared his object in retaining them at his court had been to lead them back to the Church. The Paduan died before 1343.138

The personal fortunes of Marsiglius are of small historical concern compared with his book, which he dedicated to the emperor. The volume, which was written in two months,139 was as audacious as any of the earlier writings of Luther. For originality and boldness of statement the Middle Ages has nothing superior to offer. To it may be compared in modern times Janus’ attack on the doctrine of papal infallibility at the time of the Vatican Council.140  Its Scriptural radicalism was in itself a literary sensation.

In condemning the work, John XXII., 1327, pronounced as contrary "to apostolic truth and all law" its statements that Christ paid the stater to the Roman government as a matter of obligation, that Christ did not appoint a vicar, that an emperor has the right to depose a pope, and that the orders of the hierarchy are not of primitive origin. Marsiglius had not spared epithets in dealing with John, whom he called "the great dragon, the old serpent."  Clement VI. found no less than 240 heretical clauses in the book, and declared that he had never read a worse heretic than Marsiglius. The papal condemnations were reproduced by the University of Paris, which singled out for reprobation the statements that Peter is not the head of the Church, that the pope may be deposed, and that he has no right to inflict punishments without the emperor’s consent.141

The Defensor pacis was a manifesto against the spiritual as well as the temporal assumptions of the papacy and against the whole hierarchical organization of the Church. Its title is shrewdly chosen in view of the strifes between cities and states going on at the time the book was written, and due, as it claimed, to papal ambition and interference. The peace of the Christian world would never be established so long as the pope’s false claims were accepted. The main positions are the following:142 —

The state, which was developed out of the family, exists that men may live well and peaceably. The people themselves are the source of authority, and confer the right to exercise it upon the ruler whom they select. The functions of the priesthood are spiritual and educational. Clerics are called upon to teach and to warn. In all matters of civil misdemeanor they are responsible to the civil officer as other men are. They should follow their Master by self-denial. As St. Bernard said, the pope needs no wealth or outward display to be a true successor of Peter.

The function of binding and loosing is a declarative, not a judicial, function. To God alone belongs the power to forgive sins and to punish. No bishop or priest has a right to excommunicate or interdict individual freedom without the consent of the people or its representative, the civil legislator. The power to inflict punishments inheres in the congregation "of the faithful"—fidelium. Christ said, "if thy brother offend against thee, tell it to the Church."  He did not say, tell it to the priest. Heresy may be detected as heresy by the priest, but punishment for heresy belongs to the civil official and is determined upon the basis of the injury likely to be done by the offence to society. According to the teaching of the Scriptures, no one can be compelled by temporal punishment and death to observe the precepts of the divine law.143

General councils are the supreme representatives of the Christian body, but even councils may err. In them laymen should sit as well as clerics. Councils alone have the right to canonize saints.

As for the pope, he is the head of the Church, not by divine appointment, but only as he is recognized by the state. The claim he makes to fulness of power, plenitudo potestatis, contradicts the true nature of the Church. To Peter was committed no greater authority than was committed to the other Apostles.144  Peter can be called the Prince of the Apostles only on the ground that he was older than the rest or more steadfast than they. He was the bishop of Antioch, not the founder of the Roman bishopric. Nor is his presence in Rome susceptible of proof. The pre-eminence of the bishop of Rome depends upon the location of his see at the capital of the empire. As for sacerdotal power, the pope has no more of it than any other cleric, as Peter-had no more of it than the other Apostles.145

The grades of the hierarchy are of human origin. Bishops and priests were originally equal. Bishops derive their authority immediately from Christ.

False is the pope’s claim to jurisdiction over princes and nations, a claim which was the fruitful source of national strifes and wars, especially in Italy. If necessary, the emperor may depose a pope. This is proved by the judgment passed by Pilate upon Christ. The state may, for proper reasons, limit the number of clerics. The validity of Constantine’s donation Marsiglius rejected, as Dante and John of Paris had done before, but he did not surmise that the Isidorean decretals were an unblushing forgery, a discovery left for Laurentius Valla to make a hundred years later.

As for the Scriptures, Marsiglius declares them to be the ultimate source of authority. They do not derive that authority from the Church. The Church gets its authority from them. In cases of disputed interpretation, it is for a general council to settle what the true meaning of Scripture is.146  Obedience to papal decretals is not a condition of salvation. If that were so, how is it that Clement V. could make the bull Unam sanctam inoperative for France and its king?  Did not that bull declare that submission to the pope is for every creature a condition of salvation!  Can a pope set aside a condition of salvation?  The case of Liberius proves that popes may be heretics. As for the qualifications of bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, not one in ten of them is a doctor of theology. Many of the lower clergy are not even acquainted with grammar. Cardinals and popes are chosen not from the ranks of theologians, but lawyers, causidici. Youngsters are made cardinals who love pleasure and are ignorant in studies.

Marsiglius quotes repeatedly such passages as "My kingdom is not of this world," John 18:36, and "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s," Matt. 22:21. These passages and others, such as John 6:15, 19:11, Luke 12:14, Matt. 17:27, Rom. 13, he opposes to texts which were falsely interpreted to the advantage of the hierarchy, such as Matt. 16:19, Luke 22:38, John 21:15–17.

If we overlook his doctrine of the supremacy of the state over the Church, the Paduan’s views correspond closely with those held in Protestant Christendom to-day. Christ, he said, excluded his Apostles, disciples, and bishops or presbyters from all earthly dominion, both by his example and his words.147  The abiding principles of the Defensor are the final authority of the Scriptures, the parity of the priesthood and its obligation to civil law, the human origin of the papacy, the exclusively spiritual nature of priestly functions, and the body of Christian people in the state or Church as the ultimate source of authority on earth.

Marsiglius has been called by Catholic historians the forerunner of Luther and Calvin.148  He has also been called by one of them the "exciting genius of modern revolution."149  Both of these statements are not without truth. His programme was not a scheme of reform. It was a proclamation of complete change such as the sixteenth century witnessed. A note in a Turin manuscript represents Gerson as saying that the book is wonderfully well grounded and that the author was most expert in Aristotle and also in theology, and went to the roots of things.150

The tractarian of Padua and Thomas Aquinas were only 50 years apart. But the difference between the searching epigrams of the one and the slow, orderly argument of the other is as wide as the East is from the West, the directness of modern thought from the cumbersome method of mediaeval scholasticism. It never occurred to Thomas Aquinas to think out beyond the narrow enclosure of Scripture interpretation built up by other Schoolmen and mediaeval popes. He buttressed up the regime he found realized before him. He used the old misinterpretations of Scripture and produced no new idea on government. Marsiglius, independent of the despotism of ecclesiastical dogma, went back to the free and elastic principles of the Apostolic Church government. He broke the moulds in which the ecclesiastical thinking of centuries had been cast, and departed from Augustine in claiming for heretics a rational and humane treatment. The time may yet come when the Italian people will follow him as the herald of a still better order than that which they have, and set aside the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry as an invention of man.151

Germany furnished a strong advocate of the independent rights of the emperor, in Lupold of Bebenburg, who died in 1363. He remained dean of Würzburg until he was made bishop of Bamberg in 1353. But he did not attack the spiritual jurisdiction of the Apostolic See. Lupold’s chief work was The Rights of the Kingdom and Empire—de juribus regni et imperii,—written after the declarations of Rense. It has been called the oldest attempt at a theory of the rights of the German state.152  Lupold appeals to the events of history.

In defining the rights of the empire, this author asserts that an election is consummated by the majority of the electors and that the emperor does not stand in need of confirmation by the pope. He holds his authority independently from God. Charlemagne exercised imperial functions before he was anointed and crowned by Leo. The oath the emperor takes to the pope is not the oath of fealty such as a vassal renders, but a promise to protect him and the Church. The pope has no authority to depose the emperor. His only prerogative is to announce that he is worthy of deposition. The right to depose belongs to the electors. As for Constantine’s donation, it is plain Constantine did not confer the rule of the West upon the bishop of Rome, for Constantine divided both the West and the East among his sons. Later, Theodosius and other emperors exercised dominion in Rome. The notice of Constantine’s alleged gift to Sylvester has come through the records of Sylvester and has the appearance of being apocryphal.

The papal assailants did not have the field all to themselves. The papacy also had vigorous literary champions. Chief among them were Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus Pelagius.153  The first dedicated his leading work to John XXII., and the second wrote at the pope’s command. The modern reader will find in these tracts the crassest exposition of the extreme claims of the papacy, satisfying to the most enthusiastic ultramontane, but calling for apology from sober Catholic historians.154

Triumphus, an Italian, born in Ancona, 1243, made archbishop of Nazareth and died at Naples, 1328, was a zealous advocate of Boniface VIII. His leading treatise, The Power of the Church,—Summa de potestate ecclesiastica,—vindicates John XXII. for his decision on the question of evangelical poverty and for his opposition to the emperor’s dominion in Italy.155  The pope has unrestricted power on the earth. It is so vast that even he himself cannot know fully what he is able to do.156  His judgment is the judgment of God. Their tribunals are one.157  His power of granting indulgences is so great that, if he so wished, he could empty purgatory of its denizens provided that conditions were complied with.158

In spiritual matters he may err, because he remains a man, and when he holds to heresy, he ceases to be pope. Council cannot depose him nor any other human tribunal, for the pope is above all and can be judged by none. But, being a heretic, he ceases, ipso facto, to be pope, and the condition then is as it would be after one pope is dead and his successor not yet elected.

The pope himself may choose an emperor, if he so please, and may withdraw the right of election from the electors or depose them from office. As vicar of God, he is above all kings and princes.

The Spanish Franciscan, Alvarus Pelagius, was not always as extravagant as his Augustinian contemporary.159  He was professor of law at Perugia. He fled from Rome at the approach of Lewis the Bavarian, 1328, was then appointed papal penitentiary at Avignon, and later bishop of the Portuguese diocese of Silves. His Lament over the Church,—de planctu ecclesiae,160 — while exalting the pope to the skies, bewails the low spiritual estate into which the clergy and the Church had fallen. Christendom, he argues, which is but one kingdom, can have but one head, the pope. Whoever does not accept him as the head does not accept Christ. And whosoever, with pure and believing eye, sees the pope, sees Christ himself.161  Without communion with the pope there is no salvation. He wields both swords as Christ did, and in him the passage of Jer. 1:10 is fulfilled, "I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant."  Unbelievers, also, Alvarus asserts to be legally under the pope’s jurisdiction, though they may not be so in fact, and the pope may proceed against them as God did against the Sodomites. Idolaters, Jews, and Saracens are alike amenable to the pope’s authority and subject to his punishments. He rules, orders, disposes and judges all things as he pleases. His will is highest wisdom, and what he pleases to do has the force of law.162  Wherever the supreme pontiff is, there is the Roman Church, and he cannot be compelled to remain in Rome.163  He is the source of all law and may decide what is the right. To doubt this means exclusion from life eternal.

As the vicar of Christ, the pope is supreme over the state. He confers the sword which the prince wields. As the body is subject to the soul, so princes are subject to the pope. Constantine’s donation made the pope, in fact, monarch over the Occident. He transferred the empire to Charlemagne in trust. The emperor’s oath is an oath of fealty and homage.

The views of Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus followed the papal assertion and practice of centuries, and the assent or argument of the Schoolmen. Marsiglius had the sanction of Scripture rationally interpreted, and his views were confirmed by the experiences of history. After the lapse of nearly 500 years, opinion in Christendom remains divided, and the most extravagant language of Triumphus and Alvarus is applauded, and Marsiglius, the exponent of modern liberty and of the historical sense of Scripture, continues to be treated as a heretic.

§ 9. The Financial Policy of the Avignon Popes.

The most notable feature of the Avignon period of the papacy, next to its subserviency to France, was the development of the papal financial system and the unscrupulous traffic which it plied in spiritual benefits and ecclesiastical offices. The theory was put into practice that every spiritual favor has its price in money. It was John XXII.’s achievement to reduce the taxation of Christendom to a finely organized system.

The papal court had a proper claim for financial support on all parts of the Latin Church, for it ministered to all. This just claim gave way to a practice which made it seem as if Christendom existed to sustain the papal establishment in a state of luxury and ease. Avignon took on the aspect of an exchange whose chief business was getting money, a vast bureau where privileges, labelled as of heavenly efficacy, were sold for gold. Its machinery for collecting moneys was more extensive and intricate than the machinery of any secular court of the age. To contemporaries, commercial transactions at the central seat of Christendom seemed much more at home than services of religious devotion.

The mind of John XXII. ran naturally to the counting-house and ledger system.164  He came from Cahors, the town noted for its brokers and bankers. Under his favor the seeds of commercialism in the dispensation of papal appointments sown in preceding centuries grew to ripe fruitage. Simony was an old sin. Gregory VII. fought against it. John legalized its practice.

Freewill offerings and Peter’s pence had been made to popes from of old. States, held as fiefs of the papal chair, had paid fixed tribute. For the expenses of the crusades, Innocent III. had inaugurated the system of taxing the entire Church. The receipts from this source developed the love of money at the papal court and showed its power, and, no matter how abstemious a pope might be in his own habits, greed grew like a weed in his ecclesiastical household. St. Bernard, d. 1153, complained bitterly of the cupidity of the Romans, who made every possible monetary gain out of the spiritual favors of which the Vatican was the dispenser. By indulgence, this appetite became more and more exacting, and under John and his successors the exploitation of Christendom was reduced by the curia to a fine art.

The theory of ecclesiastical appointments, held in the Avignon period, was that, by reason of the fulness of power which resides in the Apostolic See, the pope may dispense all the dignities and benefices of the Christian world. The pope is absolute in his own house, that is, the Church.

This principle had received its full statement from Clement IV., 1265.165  Clement’s bull declared that the supreme pontiff is superior to any customs which were in vogue of filling Church offices and conflicted with his prerogative. In particular he made it a law that all offices, dignities, and benefices were subject to papal appointment which became vacant apud sedem apostolicam or in curia, that is, while the holders were visiting the papal court. This law was modified by Gregory X. at the Council of Lyons, 1274, in such a way as to restore the right of election, provided the pope failed to make an appointment within a month.166  Boniface VIII., 1295, again extended the enactment by putting in the pope’s hands all livings whose occupants died within two days’ journey of the curia, wherever it might at the time be.167  Innocent IV. was the first pope to exercise the right of reservation or collation on a large scale. In 1248, out of 20 places in the cathedral of Constance, 17 were occupied by papal appointees, and there were 14 "expectants" under appointment in advance of the deaths of the occupants. In 1255, Alexander IV. limited the number of such expectants to 4 for each church. In 1265, Clement IV forbade all elections in England in the usual way until his commands were complied with, and reserved them to himself. The same pontiff, on the pretext of disturbances going on in Sicily, made a general reservation of all appointments in the realm, otherwise subject to episcopal or capitular choice. Urban IV. withdrew the right of election from the Ghibelline cities of Lombardy; Martin IV. and Honorius IV. applied the same rule to the cathedral appointments of Sicily and Aragon; Honorius IV. monopolized all the appointments of the Latin Church in the East; and Boniface VIII., in view of Philip IV.’s resistance, reserved to himself the appointments to all "cathedral and regular churches" in France. Of 16 French sees which became vacant, 1295–1301, only one was filled in the usual way by election.168

With the haughty assumption of Clement IV.’s bull and the practice of later popes, papal writers fell in. Augustinus Triumphus, writing in 1324, asserted that the pope is above all canon law and has the right to dispose of all ecclesiastical places.169  The papal system of appointments included provisions, expectances, and reservations.170

In setting aside the vested rights of chapters and other electors, the pope often joined hands with kings and princes. In the Avignon period a regular election by a chapter was the exception.171  The Chronicles of England and France teem with usurped cases of papal appointment. In 1322 the pope reserved to himself all the appointments in episcopal, cathedral, and abbey churches, and of all priors in the sees of Aquileja, Ravenna, Milan, Genoa, and Pisa.172  In 1329 he made such reservation for the German dioceses of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and in 1339 for Cologne.173  There was no living in Latin Christendom which was safe from the pope’s hands. There were not places enough to satisfy all the favorites of the papal household and the applicants pressed upon the pope’s attention by kings and princes. The spiritual and administrative qualities of the appointees were not too closely scrutinized. Frenchmen were appointed to sees in England, Germany, Denmark, and other countries, who were utterly unfamiliar with the languages of those countries. Marsiglius complains of these "monstrosities "and, among other unfit appointments, mentions the French bishops of Winchester and Lund, neither of whom knew English or Danish. The archbishop of Lund, after plundering his diocese, returned to Southern France.

To the supreme right of appointment was added the supreme right to tax the clergy and all ecclesiastical property. The supreme right to exercise authority over kings, the supreme right to set aside canonical rules, the supreme right to make appointments in the Church, the supreme right to tax Church property, these were, in their order, the rights asserted by the popes of the Middle Ages. The scandal growing out of this unlimited right of taxation called forth the most vigorous complaints from clergy and laity, and was in large part the cause which led to the summoning of the three great Reformatory councils of the fifteenth century.174

Popes had acted upon this theory of jurisdiction over the property of the Church long before John XXII. They levied taxes for crusades in the Orient, or to free Italy from rebels for the papal state. They gave their sanction to princes and kings to levy taxes upon the Church for secular purposes, especially for wars.175  In the bull Clericis laicos, Boniface did not mean to call in question the propriety of the Church’s contributing to the necessities of the state. What he demanded was that he himself should be recognized as arbiter in such matters, and it was this demand which gave offence to the French king and to France itself. The question was much discussed whether the pope may commit simony. Thomas Aquinas gave an affirmative answer. Alvarus Pelagius176 thought differently, and declared that the pope is exempt from the laws and canons which treat of simony. Augustinus Triumphus took the same ground.177  The pope is not bound by laws. He is above laws. Simony is not possible to him.

In estimating the necessities of the papal court, which justified the imposition of customs, the Avignon popes were no longer their own masters. They were the creatures of the camera and the hungry horde of officials and sycophants whose clamor filled the papal offices day and night. These retainers were not satisfied with bread. Every superior office in Christendom had its value in terms of gold and silver. When it was filled by papal appointment, a befitting fee was the proper recognition. If a favor was granted to a prince in the appointment of a favorite, the papal court was pretty sure to seize some new privilege as a compensation for itself. Precedent was easily made a permanent rule. Where the pope once invaded the rights of a chapter, he did not relinquish his hold, and an admission fee once fixed was not renounced. We may not be surprised at the rapacity which was developed at the papal court. That was to be expected. It grew out of the false papal theory and the abiding qualities of human nature.178

The details governing the administration of the papal finances John set forth in two bulls of 1316 and 1331. His scheme fixed the financial policy of the papacy and sacred college.179  The sources from which the papacy drew its revenues in the fourteenth century were: (1) freewill offerings, so called, given for ecclesiastical appointments and other papal favors, called visitations, annates, servitia; and (2) tributes from feudal states such as Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and England, and the revenues from the papal state in Italy.180  The moneys so received were apportioned between four parties, the pope, the college of cardinals, and their two households. Under John XXlI. the freewill offerings, so called, came to be regarded as obligatory fees. Every papal gift had its compensation. There was a list of prices, and it remained in force till changed on the basis of new estimates of the incomes of benefices. To answer objections, John XXII., in his bull of 1331, insisted that the prices set upon such favors were not a charge for the grace imparted, but a charge for the labor required for writing the pertinent documents.181  But the declaration did not remove the ill odor of the practice. The taxes levied were out of all proportion to the actual cost of the written documents, and the privileges were not to be had without money.

These payments were regularly recorded in registers or ledgers kept by the papal secretaries of the camera. The details of the papal exchequer, extant in the Archives of the Vatican, have only recently been subjected to careful investigation through the liberal policy of Leo XIII., and have made possible a new chapter in works setting forth the history of the Church in this fourteenth century.182

These studies confirm the impression left by the chroniclers and tract-writers of the fourteenth century. The money dealings of the papal court were on a vast scale, and the transactions were according to strict rules of merchandise.183  Avignon was a great money centre. Spiritual privileges were vouched for by carefully worded and signed contracts and receipts. The papal commercial agents went to all parts of Europe.

Archbishop, bishop, and abbot paid for the letters confirming their titles to their dignities. The appointees to lower clerical offices did the same. There were fees for all sorts of concessions, dispensations and indulgences, granted to layman and to priest. The priest born out of wedlock, the priest seeking to be absent from his living, the priest about to be ordained before the canonical age, all had to have a dispensation, and these cost money.184  The larger revenues went directly into the papal treasury and the treasury of the camera. The smaller fees went to notaries, doorkeepers, to individual cardinals, and other officials. These intermediaries stood in a long line with palms upturned. To use a modern term, it was an intricate system of graft. The beneficiaries were almost endless. The large body of lower officials are usually designated in the ledgers by the general term "familiars" of the pope or camera.185  The notaries, or copyists, received stipulated sums for every document they transcribed and service they performed. However exorbitant the demands might seem, the petitioners were harried by delays and other petty annoyances till in sheer weariness they yielded.

The taxes levied upon the higher clergy were usually paid at Avignon by the parties in person. For the collection of the annates from the lower clergy and of tithes and other general taxes, collectors and subcollectors were appointed. We find these officials in different parts of Europe. They had their fixed salaries, and sent periodical reckonings to the central bureau at Avignon.186  The transmission of the moneys they collected was often a dangerous business. Not infrequently the carriers were robbed on their way, and the system came into vogue of employing merchant and banking houses to do this business, especially Italian firms, which had representatives in Northern and Central Europe. The ledgers show a great diversity in the names and value of the coins. And it was a nice process to estimate the values of these moneys in the terms of the more generally accepted standards.187

The offerings made by prelates at their visits to the papal see, called visitationes,188 were divided equally between the papal treasury and the cardinals. From the lists, it appears that the archbishops of York paid every three years "300 marks sterling, or 1200 gold florins."  Every two years the archbishops of Canterbury paid "300 marks sterling, or 1500 gold florins;" the archbishop of Tours paid 400 pounds Tournois; of Rheims, 500 pounds, Tournois; of Rouen, 1000 pounds Tournois.189  The archbishop of Armagh, at his visitation in 1301, paid 60 silver marks, or 250 gold florins. In 1350 the camera claimed from Armagh back payments for fifty years.190  Presumably no bishop of that Irish diocese had made a visit in that interval. Whether the claim was honored or not, is not known.

The servitia communia, or payments made by archbishops, bishops, and abbots on their confirmation to office, were also listed, according to a fixed scale. The voluntary idea had completely disappeared before a fixed assessment.191  Such a dignitary was called an electus until he had paid off the tax.192  In certain cases the tax was remitted on account of the poverty of the ecclesiastic, and in the ledgers the entry was made, "not taxed on account of poverty," non taxata propter paupertatem. The amount of this tax seems to have varied, and was sometimes one-third of the income and sometimes a larger portion.193  In the fourteenth century the following sees paid servitia as follows: Mainz, 5,000 gold florins; Treves, 7, 000; Cologne, 10,000; Narbonne, 10,000. On the basis of a new valuation, Martin V. in 1420 raised the taxation of the sees of Mainz and Treves to 10,000 florins each, or $25,000 of our money, so that they corresponded to the assessment made from of old upon Cologne.194  When an incumbent died without having met the full tax, his successor made up the deficit in addition to paying the assessment for his own confirmation.195

The following cases will give some idea of the annoyances to which bishops and abbots were put who travelled to Avignon to secure letters of papal confirmation to their offices. In 1334, the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, Canterbury, had to wait in Avignon from April 22 to Aug. 9 to get his confirmation, and it cost him 148 pounds sterling. John IV., abbot-elect of St. Albans, in 1302 went for consecration to Rome, accompanied by four monks. He arrived May 6, presented his case to Boniface VIII. in person at Anagni, May 9, and did not get back to London till Aug. 1, being all the while engaged in the process of getting his papers properly prepared and certified to.196  The expense of getting his case through was 2,585 marks, or 10,340 gold florins; or $25,000 of our money. The ways in which this large sum was distributed are not a matter of conjecture. The exact itemized statement is extant: 2,258 marks, or 9,032 florins, went to "the Lord pope and the cardinals."  Of this sum 5,000 florins, or 1,250 marks, are entered as a payment for the visitatio, and the remainder in payment of the servitium to the cardinals. The remaining 327 marks, or 1,308 florins, were consumed in registration and notarial fees and gifts to cardinals. To Cardinal Francis of St. Maria in Cosmedin, a nephew of Boniface, a gift was made costing more than 10 marks, or 40 florins.

Another abbot-elect of St. Albans, Richard II., went to Avignon in 1326 accompanied by six monks, and was well satisfied to get away with the payment of 3,600 gold florins. He was surprised that the tax was so reasonable. Abbot William of the diocese of Autun, Oct. 22, 1316, obligated himself to pay John XXII., as confirmation tax, 1,500 gold florins, and to John’s officials 170 more.197

The fees paid to the lower officials, called servitia minuta, were classified under five heads, four of them going to the officials, familiares of the pontiff, and one to the officials of the cardinals.198  The exact amounts received on account of servitia or confirmation fees by the pope and the college of cardinals, probably will never be known. From the lists that have been examined, the cardinals between 1316–1323 received from this source 234,047 gold florins, or about 39,000 florins a year. As the yield from this tax was usually, though not always, divided in equal shares between the pope and the cardinals, the full sum realized from this source was double this amount.199

The annates, so far as they were the tax levied by the pope upon appointments made by himself to lower clerical offices and livings, went entirely into the papal treasury, and seem to have been uniformly one-half of the first year’s income.200  They were designated as livings "becoming vacant in curia," which was another way of saying, places which had been reserved by the pope. The popes from time to time extended this tax through the use of the right of reservation to all livings becoming vacant in a given district during a certain period. In addition to the annate tax, the papal treasury also drew an income during the period of their vacancy from the livings reserved for papal appointment and during the period when an incumbent held the living without canonical right. These were called the "intermediate fruits"—medii fructus.201

Special indulgences were an uncertain but no less important source of revenue. The prices were graded according to the ability of the parties to pay and the supposed inherent value of the papal concession. Queen Johanna of Sicily paid 500 grossi Tournois, or about $150, for the privilege of taking the oath to the archbishop of Naples, who acted as the pope’s representative. The bull readmitting to the sacraments of the Church Margaret of Maultasch and her husband, Lewis of Brandenburg, the son of Lewis the Bavarian, cost the princess 2000 grossi Tournois. The king of Cyprus was poor, and secured for his subjects indulgence to trade with the Egyptians for the modest sum of 100 pounds Tournois, but had to pay 50 pounds additional for a ship sent with cargo to Egypt.202  There was a graduated scale for papal letters giving persons liberty to choose their confessor without regard to the parish priests.

To these sources of income were added the taxes for the relief of the Holy Land—pro subsidio terrae sanctae. The Council of Vienne ordered a tenth for six years for this purpose. John XXII., 1333, repeated the substance of Clement’s bull. The expense of clearing Italy of hostile elements and reclaiming papal territory as a preliminary to the pope’s return to Rome was also made the pretext for levying special taxes. For this object Innocent VI. levied a three-years’ tax of a tenth upon the Church in Germany, and in 1366 Urban V. levied another tenth upon all the churches of Christendom.203

It would be a mistake to suppose that the Church always responded to these appeals, or that the collectors had easy work in making collections. The complaints, which we found so numerous in England in the thirteenth century, we meet with everywhere during the fourteenth century. The resistance was determined, and the taxes were often left unpaid for years or not paid at all.

The revenues derived from feudal states and princes, called census, were divided equally between the cardinals and the pope’s private treasury. Gregory X., in 1272, was the first to make such a division of the tribute from Sicily, which amounted to 8000 ounces of gold, or about $90,000.204  In the pontificate of John XXII. there is frequent mention of the amounts contributed by Sicily and their equal partition. The sums varied from year to year, and in 1304 it was 3000 ounces of gold. The tribute of Sardinia and Corsica was fixed in 1297 at the annual sum of 2000 marks, and was divided between the two treasuries.205  The papal state and Ferrara yielded uncertain sums, and the tribute of 1000 marks, pledged by John of England, was paid irregularly, and finally abrogated altogether. Peter’s pence, which belongs in this category, was an irregular source of papal income.206

The yearly income of the papal treasury under Clement V. and John XXII. has been estimated at from 200,000 to 250,000 gold florins.207  In 1353 it is known to have been at least 260,000 florins, or more than $600,000 of our money

These sources of income were not always sufficient for the expenses of the papal household, and in cases had to be anticipated by loans. The popes borrowed from cardinals, from princes, and from bankers. Urban V. got a loan from his cardinals of 30, 000 gold florins. Gregory XI. got loans of 30,000 florins from the king of Navarre, and 60, 000 from the duke of Anjou. The duke seems to have been a ready lender, and on another occasion loaned Gregory 40,000 florins.208  It was a common thing for bishops and abbots to make loans to enable them to pay the expense of their confirmation. The abbot of St. Albans, in 1290, was assessed 1300 pounds for his servitium, and borrowed 500 of it.209  The habit grew until the time of the Reformation, when the sums borrowed, as in the case of Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz, were enormous.

The transactions of the Avignon chancellory called forth loud complaints, even from contemporary apologists for the papacy. Alvarus Pelagius, in his Lament over the Church, wrote: "No poor man can approach the pope. He will call and no one will answer, because he has no money in his purse to pay. Scarcely is a single petition heeded by the pope until it has passed through the hands of middlemen, a corrupt set, bought with bribes, and the officials conspire together to extort more than the rule calls for."  In another place he said that whenever he entered into the papal chambers he always found the tables full of gold, and clerics counting and weighing florins.210  Of the Spanish bishops he said that there was scarcely one in a hundred who did not receive money for ordinations and the gift of benefices. Matters grew no better, but rather worse as the fourteenth century advanced. Dietrich of Nieheim, speaking of Boniface IX., said that "the pope was an insatiable gulf, and that as for avarice there was no one to compare with him."211  To effect a cure of the disease, which was a scandal to Christendom, the popes would have been obliged to cut off the great army of officials who surrounded them. But this vast organized body was stronger than the Roman pontiff. The fundamental theory of the rights of the papal office was at fault. The councils made attempts to introduce reforms, but in vain. Help came at last and from an unexpected quarter, when Luther and the other leaders openly revolted against the mediaeval theory of the papacy and of the Church.

§ 10. The Later Avignon Popes.

The bustling and scholastic John XXII. was followed by the scholarly and upright Benedict XII., 1334–1342. Born in the diocese of Toulouse, Benedict studied in Paris, and arose to the dignity of bishop and cardinal before his elevation to the papal throne. If Villani is to be trusted, his election was an accident. One cardinal after another who voted for him did so, not dreaming he would be elected. The choice proved to be an excellent one. The new pontiff at once showed interest in reform. The prelates who had no distinct duties at Avignon he sent home, and to his credit it was recorded that, when urged to enrich his relatives, he replied that the vicar of Christ, like Melchizedek, must be without father or mother or genealogy. To him belongs the honor of having begun the erection of the permanent papal palace at Avignon, a massive and grim structure, having the features of a fortress rather than a residence. Its walls and towers were built of colossal thickness and strength to resist attack. Its now desolated spaces are a speechless witness to perhaps the most singular of the episodes of papal history. The cardinals followed Benedict’s example and built palaces in Avignon and its vicinity.

Clement VI., 1342–1352, who had been archbishop of Rouen, squandered the fortune amassed by John XXII. and prudently administered by Benedict. He forgot his Benedictine training and vows and was a fast liver, carrying into the papal office the tastes of the French nobility from which he sprang. Horses, a sumptuous table, and the company of women made the papal palace as gay as a royal court.212  Nor were his relatives allowed to go uncared for. Of the twenty-five cardinals’ hats which he distributed, twelve went to them, one a brother and one a nephew. Clement enjoyed a reputation for eloquence and, like John XXII., preached after he became pope. Early in his pontificate the Romans sent a delegation, which included Petrarch, begging him to return to Rome. But Clement, a Frenchman to the core, preferred the atmosphere of France. Though he did not go to Rome, he was gracious enough to comply with the delegation’s request and appoint a Jubilee for the deserted and impoverished city.

During Clement’s rule, Rome lived out one of the picturesque episodes of its mediaeval history, the meteoric career of the tribune Cola (Nicolas) di Rienzo. Of plebeian birth, this visionary man was stirred with the ideals of Roman independence and glory by reading the ancient classics. His oratory flattered and moved the people, whose cause he espoused against the aristocratic families of the city. Sent to Avignon at the head of a commission, 1343, to confer the highest municipal authority upon the pope, he won Clement’s attention by his frank manner and eloquent speech. Returning to Rome, he fascinated the people with visions of freedom and dominion. They invested him on the Capitol with the signiory of the city, 1347. Cola assumed the democratic title of tribune. Writing from Avignon, Petrarch greeted him as the man whom he had been looking for, and dedicated to him one of his finest odes. The tribune sought to extend his influence by enkindling the flame of patriotism throughout all Italy and to induce its cities to throw off the yoke of their tyrants. Success and glory turned his head. Intoxicated with applause, he had the audacity to cite Lewis the Bavarian and Charles IV. before his tribunal, and headed his communications with the magnificent superscription, "In the first year of the Republic’s freedom."  His success lasted but seven months. The people had grown weary of their idol. He was laid by Clement under the ban and fled, to appear again for a brief season under Innocent V.

Avignon was made papal property by Clement, who paid Joanna of Naples 80, 000 florins for it. The low price may have been in consideration of the pope’s services in pronouncing the princess guiltless of the murder of her cousin and first husband, Andreas, a royal Hungarian prince, and sanctioning her second marriage with another cousin, the prince of Tarentum.

This pontiff witnessed the conclusion of the disturbed career of Lewis the Bavarian, in 1347. The emperor had sunk to the depths of self-abasement when he swore to the 28 articles Clement laid before him, Sept. 18, 1343, and wrote to the pope that, as a babe longs for its mother’s breast, so his soul cried out for the grace of the pope and the Church. But, if possible, Clement intensified the curses placed upon him by his two predecessors. The bull, which he announced with his own lips, April 13, 1346, teems with rabid execrations. It called upon God to strike Lewis with insanity, blindness, and madness. It invoked the thunderbolts of heaven and the flaming wrath of God and the Apostles Peter and Paul both in this world and the next. It called all the elements to rise in hostility against him; upon the universe to fight against him, and the earth to open and swallow him up alive. It blasphemously damned his house to desolation and his children to exclusion from their abode. It invoked upon him the curse of beholding with his own eyes the destruction of his children by their enemies.213

During Clement’s pontificate, 1348–1349, the Black Death swept over Europe from Hungary to Scotland and from Spain to Sweden, one of the most awful and mysterious scourges that has ever visited mankind. It was reported by all the chroniclers of the time, and described by Boccaccio in the introduction to his novels. According to Villani, the disease appeared as carbuncles under the armpits or in the groin, sometimes as big as an egg, and was accompanied with devouring fever and vomiting of blood. It also involved a gangrenous inflammation of the lungs and throat and a fetid odor of the breath. In describing the virulence of the infection, a contemporary said that one sick person was sufficient to infect the whole world.214  The patients lingered at most a day or two. Boccaccio witnessed the progress of the plague as it spread its ravages in Florence.215  Such measures of sanitation as were then known were resorted to, such as keeping the streets of the city clean and posting up elaborate rules of health. Public religious services and processions were appointed to stay death’s progress. Boccaccio tells how he saw the hogs dying from the deadly contagion which they caught in rooting amongst cast-off clothing. In England all sorts of cattle were affected, and Knighton speaks of 5000 sheep dying in a single district.216  The mortality was appalling. The figures, though they differ in different accounts, show a vast loss of life.

A large per cent of the population of Western Europe fell before the pestilence. In Siena, 80,000 were carried off; in Venice, 100,000; in Bologna, two-thirds of the population; and in Florence, three-fifths. In Marseilles the number who died in a single month is reported as 57,000. Nor was the papal city on the Rhone exempt. Nine cardinals, 70 prelates, and 17,000 males succumbed. Another writer, a canon writing from the city to a friend in Flanders, reports that up to the date of his writing one-half of the population had died. The very cats, dogs, and chickens took the disease.217  At the prescription of his physician, Guy of Chauliac, Clement VI. stayed within doors and kept large fires lighted, as Nicolas IV. before him had done in time of plague.

No class was immune except in England, where the higher classes seem to have been exempt. The clergy yielded in great numbers, bishops, priests, and monks. At least one archbishop of Canterbury, Bradwardine, was carried away by it. The brothers of the king of Sweden, Hacon and Knut, were among the victims. The unburied dead strewed the streets of Stockholm. Vessels freighted with cargoes were reported floating on the high seas with the last sailor dead.218  Convents were swept clear of all their inmates. The cemeteries were not large enough to hold the bodies, which were thrown into hastily dug pits.219  The danger of infection and the odors emitted by the corpses were so great that often there was no one to give sepulture to the dead. Bishops found cause in this neglect to enjoin their priests to preach on the resurrection of the body as one of the tenets of the Catholic Church, as did the bishop of Winchester.220  In spite of the vast mortality, many of the people gave themselves up without restraint to revelling and drinking from tavern to tavern and to other excesses, as Boccaccio reports of Florence.

In England, it is estimated that one-half of the population, or 2,500,000 people, fell victims to the dread disease.221  According to Knighton, it was introduced into the land through Southampton. As for Scotland, this chronicler tells the grewsome story that some of the Scotch, on hearing of the weakness of the English in consequence of the malady, met in the forest of Selfchyrche—Selkirk—and decided to fall upon their unfortunate neighbors, but were suddenly themselves attacked by the disease, nearly 5000 dying. The English king prorogued parliament. The disaster that came to the industries of the country is dwelt upon at length by the English chroniclers. The soil became "dead," for there were no laborers left to till it. The price per acre was reduced one-half, or even much more. The cattle wandered through the meadows and fields of grain, with no one to drive them in. "The dread fear of death made the prices of live stock cheap."  Horses were sold for one-half their usual price, 40 solidi, and a fat steer for 4 solidi. The price of labor went up, and the cost of the necessaries of life became "very high."222  The effect upon the Church was such as to interrupt its ministries and perhaps check its growth. The English bishops provided for the exigencies of the moment by issuing letters giving to all clerics the right of absolution. The priest could now make his price, and instead of 4 or 5 marks, as Knighton reports, he could get 10 or 20 after the pestilence had spent its course. To make up for the scarcity of ministers, ordination was granted before the canonical age, as when Bateman, bishop of Norwich, set apart by the sacred rite 60 clerks, "though only shavelings" under 21. In another direction the evil effects of the plague were seen. Work was stopped on the Cathedral of Siena, which was laid out on a scale of almost unsurpassed size, and has not been resumed to this day.223

The Black Death was said to have invaded Europe from the East, and to have been carried first by Genoese vessels.224  Its victims were far in excess of the loss of life by any battles or earthquakes known to European history, not excepting the Sicilian earthquake of 1908.

In spite of the plague, and perhaps in gratitude for its cessation, the Jubilee Year of 1350, like the Jubilee under Boniface at the opening of the century, brought thousands of pilgrims to Rome. If they left scenes of desolation in the cities and villages from which they came, they found a spectacle of desolation and ruin in the Eternal City which Petrarch, visiting the same year, said was enough to move a heart of stone. Matthew Villani225 cannot say too much in praise of the devotion of the visiting throngs. Clement’s bull extended the benefits of his promised indulgence to those who started on a pilgrimage without the permission of their superiors, the cleric without the permission of his bishop, the monk without the permission of his abbot, and the wife without the permission of her husband.

Of the three popes who followed Clement, only good can be said. Innocent VI., 1352–1362, a native of the see of Limoges, had been appointed cardinal by Clement VI. Following in the footsteps of Benedict XII., he reduced the ostentation of the Avignon court, dismissed idle bishops to their sees, and instituted the tribunal of the rota, with 21 salaried auditors for the orderly adjudication of disputed cases coming before the papal tribunal. Before Innocent’s election, the cardinals adopted a set of rules limiting the college to 20 members, and stipulating that no new members should be appointed, suspended, deposed, or excommunicated without the consent of two-thirds of their number, and that no papal relative should be assigned to a high place. Innocent no sooner became pontiff than he set it aside as not binding.

Soon after the beginning of his reign, Innocent released Cola di Rienzo from confinement226 and sent him and Cardinal Aegidius Alvarez of Albernoz to Rome in the hope of establishing order. Cola was appointed senator, but only a few months afterwards was put to death in a popular uprising, Oct. 8, 1354. He dreamed of a united Italy, 500 years before the union of its divided states was consummated, but his name remains a powerful impulse to popular freedom and national unity in the peninsula.

Tyrants and demagogues infested Italian municipalities and were sucking their life-blood. The State of the Church had been parcelled up into petty principalities ruled by rude nobles, such as the Polentas in Ravenna, the Malatestas in Rimini, the Montefeltros in Urbino. The pope was in danger of losing his territory in the peninsula altogether. Soldiers of fortune from different nations had settled upon it and spread terror as leaders of predatory bands. In no part was anarchy more wild than in Rome itself, and in the Campagna. Albernoz had fought in the wars against the Moors, and had administered the see of Toledo. He was a statesman as well as a soldier. He was fully equal to his difficult task and restored the papal government.227

In 1355, Albernoz, as administrator of Rome, placed the crown of the empire on the head of Charles IV. To such a degree had the imperial dignity been brought that Charles was denied permission by the pope to enter the city till the day appointed for his coronation. His arrival in Italy was welcomed by Petrarch as Henry VII.’s arrival had been welcomed by Dante. But the emperor disappointed every expectation, and his return from Italy was an inglorious retreat. He placed his own dominion of Bohemia in his debt by becoming the founder of the University of Prag.228  It was he also who, in 1356, issued the celebrated Golden Bull, which laid down the rules for the election of the emperor. They placed this transaction wholly in the hands of the electors, a majority of whom was sufficient for a choice. The pope is not mentioned in the document. Frankfurt was made the place of meeting. The electors designated were the archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne, the Count Palatine, the king of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the duke of Saxony.229

Urban V., 1362–1370, at the time of his election abbot of the Benedictine convent of St. Victor in Marseilles, developed merits which secured for him canonization by Pius IX., 1870. He was the first of the Avignon popes to visit Rome. Petrarch, as he had written before to Benedict XII. and Clement VI., now, in his old age, wrote to the new pontiff rebuking the curia for its vices and calling upon him to be faithful to his part as Roman bishop. Why should Urban hide himself away in a corner of the earth?  Italy was fair, and Rome, hallowed by history and legend of empire and Church, was the theocratic capital of the world. Charles IV. visited Avignon and offered to escort the pontiff. But the French king opposed the plan and was supported by the cardinals in a body. Only three Italians were left in it. Urban started for the home of his spiritual ancestors in April, 1367. A fleet of sixty vessels furnished by Naples, Genoa, Venice, and Pisa conducted the distinguished traveller from Marseilles to Genoa and Corneto, where he was met by envoys from Rome, who put into his hands the keys of the castle of St. Angelo, the symbol of full municipal power. All along the way transports of wine, fish, cheese, and other provisions, sent on from Avignon, met the papal party, and horses from the papal stables on the Rhone were in waiting for the pope at every stage of the journey.230

At Viterbo, a riot was called forth by the insolent manners of the French, and the pope launched the interdict against the city. The papal ledgers contain the outlay by the apothecary for medicines for the papal servants who were wounded in the melee. Here Albernoz died, to whom the papacy owed a large debt for his services in restoring order to Rome. The legend runs that, when he was asked by the pope for an account of his administration, he loaded a car with the keys of the cities he had recovered to the papal authority, and sent them to him.

Urban chose as his residence the Vatican in preference to the Lateran. The preparations for his advent included the restoration of the palace and its gardens. A part of the garden was used as a field, and the rest was overgrown with thorns. Urban ordered it replanted with grape-vines and fruit trees. The papal ledger gives the cost of these improvements as 6,621 gold florins, or about $15,000. Roofs, floors, doors, walls, and other parts of the palace had to be renewed. The expenses from April 27, 1367, to November, 1368, as shown in the report of the papal treasurer, Gaucelin de Pradello, were 15,559 florins, or $39,000.231

During the sixty years that had elapsed since Clement V. fixed the papal residence in France, Rome had been reduced almost to a museum of Christian monuments, as it had before been a museum of pagan ruins. The aristocratic families had forsaken the city. The Lateran had again fallen a prey to the flames in 1360. St. Paul’s was desolate. Rubbish or stagnant pools filled the streets. The population was reduced to 20,000 or perhaps 17,000.232  The return of the papacy was compared by Petrarch to Israel returning out of Egypt.

Urban set about the restoration of churches. He gave 1000 florins to the Lateran and spent 5000 on St. Paul’s. Rome showed signs of again becoming the centre of European society and politics. Joanna, queen of Naples, visited the city, and so did the king of Cyprus and the emperor, Charles IV. In 1369 John V. Palaeologus, the Byzantine emperor, arrived, a suppliant for aid against the Turks, and publicly made solemn abjuration of his schismatic tenets.

The old days seemed to have returned, but Urban was not satisfied. He had not the courage nor the wide vision to sacrifice his own pleasure for the good of his office. Had he so done, the disastrous schism might have been averted. He turned his face back towards Avignon, where he arrived "at the hour of vespers," Sept. 27, 1370. He survived his return scarcely two months, and died Dec. 19, 1370, universally beloved and already honored as a saint.

§ 11. The Re-establishment of the Papacy in Rome. 1377.

Of the nineteen cardinals who entered the conclave at the death of Urban V., all but four were Frenchmen. The choice immediately fell on Gregory XI., the son of a French count. At 17 he had been made cardinal by his uncle, Clement VI. His contemporaries praised him for his moral purity, affability, and piety. He showed his national sympathies by appointing 18 Frenchmen cardinals and filling papal appointments in Italy with French officials. In English history he is known for his condemnation of Wyclif. His pontificate extended from 1370–1378.

With Gregory’s name is associated the re-establishment of the papacy in its proper home on the Tiber. For this change the pope deserves no credit. It was consummated against his will. He went to Rome, but was engaged in preparations to return to Avignon, when death suddenly overtook him.

That which principally moved Gregory to return to Rome was the flame of rebellion which filled Central and Northern Italy, and threatened the papacy with the permanent loss of its dominions. The election of an anti-pope was contemplated by the Italians, as a delegation from Rome informed him. One remedy was open to crush revolt on the banks of the Tiber. It was the presence of the pope himself.233

Gregory had carried on war for five years with the disturbing elements in Italy. In the northern parts of the peninsula, political anarchy swept from city to city. Soldiers of fortune, the most famous of whom was the Englishman, John Hawkwood, spread terror wherever they went. In Milan, the tyrant Bernabo was all-powerful and truculent. In Florence, the revolt was against the priesthood itself, and a red flag was unfurled, on which was inscribed the word "Liberty."  A league of 80 cities was formed to abolish the pope’s secular power. The interdict hurled against the Florentines, March 31, 1376, for the part they were taking in the sedition, contained atrocious clauses, giving every one the right to plunder the city and to make slaves of her people wherever they might be found.234  Genoa and Pisa followed Florence and incurred a like papal malediction. The papal city, Bologna, was likewise stirred to rebellion in 1376 by its sister city on the Arno.

Florence fanned the flames of rebellion in Rome and the other papal towns, calling upon them to throw off the yoke of tyranny and return to their pristine liberty. What Italian, its manifesto proclaimed, "can endure the sight of so many noble cities, serving barbarians appointed by the pope to devour the goods of Italy?"235  But Rome remained true to the pope, as did Ancona. On the other hand, Perugia, Narni, Viterbo, and Ferrara, in 1375, raised the banner of rebellion until revolt threatened to spread over the whole of the papal patrimony. The bitter feeling against the French officials was intensified by a detachment of 10,000 Breton mercenaries which the pope sent to crush the revolution. They were under the leadership of Cardinal Robert of Geneva,—afterward Clement VII.,—an iron-hearted soldier and pitiless priest. It was as plain as day, Pastor says, that Gregory’s return was the only thing that could save Rome to the papacy.

To the urgency of these civil commotions were added the pure voices of prophetesses, which rose above the confused sounds of revolt and arms, the voices of Brigitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, both canonized saints.

Petrarch, who for nearly half a century had been urging the pope’s return, now, in his last days, replied to a French advocate who compared Rome to Jericho, the town to which the man was going who fell among thieves, and stigmatized Avignon as the sewer of the earth. He died 1374, without seeing the consuming desire of his life fulfilled. Guided by patriotic instincts, he had carried into his appeals the feeling of an Italian’s love of his country. Brigitta and Catherine made their appeals to Gregory on higher than national grounds, the utility of Christendom and the advantage of the kingdom of God. Emerging from visions and ecstatic moods of devotion, they called upon the Church’s chief bishop to be faithful to the obligations of his holy office.

On the death of her husband, St. Brigitta left her Scandinavian home and joined the pilgrims whose faces were set towards Rome in the Jubilee year of 1350.236  Arriving in the papal city, the hope of seeing both the emperor and the pope once more in that centre of spiritual and imperial power moved her to the devotions of the saint and the messages of the seer. She spent her time in going from church to church and ministering to the sick, or sat clad in pilgrim’s garb, begging. Her revelations, which were many, brought upon her the resentment of the Romans. She saw Urban enter the city and, when he announced his purpose to return again to France, she raised her voice in prediction of his speedy death, in case he persisted in it. When Gregory ascended the throne, she warned him that he would die prematurely if he kept away from the residence divinely appointed for the supreme pontiff. But to her, also, it was not given to see the fulfilment of her desire. The worldliness of the popes stirred her to bitter complaints. Peter, she exclaimed, "was appointed pastor and minister of Christ’s sheep, but the pope scatters them and lacerates them. He is worse than Lucifer, more unjust than Pilate, more cruel than Judas. Peter ascended the throne in humility, Boniface in pride."  To Gregory she wrote, "in thy curia arrogant pride rules, insatiable cupidity and execrable luxury. It is the very deepest gulf of horrible simony.237  Thou seizest and tearest from the Lord innumerable sheep."  And yet she was worthy to be declared a saint. She died in 1373. Her daughter Catherine took the body to Sweden.

Catherine of Siena was more fortunate. She saw the papacy re-established in Italy, but she also witnessed the unhappy beginnings of the schism. This Tuscan prophetess, called by a sober Catholic historian, "one of the most wonderful appearances in history,"238 wrote letter after letter to Gregory XI. whom she called "sweet Christ on earth," appealing to him and admonishing him to do his duty as the head of the Church, and to break away from his exile, which she represented as the source of all the evils with which Christendom was afflicted. "Be a true successor of St. Gregory," she wrote. "Love God. Do not bind yourself to your parents and your friends. Do not be held by the compulsion of your surroundings. Aid will come from God."  His return to Rome and the starting of a new crusade against the Turks, she represented as necessary conditions of efficient measures to reform the Church. She bade him return "swiftly like a gentle lamb. Respond to the Holy Spirit who calls you. I tell you, Come, come, come, and do not wait for time, since time does not wait for you. Then you will do like the Lamb slain, whose place you hold, who, without weapons in his hands, slew our foes. Be manly in my sight, not fearful. Answer God, who calls you to hold and possess the seat of the glorious shepherd, St. Peter, whose vicar you are."239

Gregory received a letter purporting to come from a man of God, warning him of the poison which awaited him at Rome and appealing to his timidity and his love of his family. In a burning epistle, Catherine showed that only the devil or one of his emissaries could be the author of such a communication, and called upon him as a good shepherd to pay more honor to God and the well-being of his flock than to his own safety, for a good shepherd, if necessary, lays down his life for the sheep. The servants of God are not in the habit of giving up a spiritual act for fear of bodily harm.240

In 1376, Catherine saw Gregory face to face in Avignon, whither she went as a commissioner from Florence to arrange a peace between the city and the pope. The papal residence she found not a paradise of heavenly virtues, as she expected, but in it the stench of infernal vices.241  The immediate object of the mission was not accomplished; but her unselfish appeals confirmed Gregory in his decision to return to Rome—a decision he had already formed before Catherine’s visit, as the pope’s own last words indicate.242

As early as 1374, Gregory wrote to the emperor that it was his intention to re-establish the papacyon the Tiber.243  A member of the papal household, Bertrand Raffini, was sent ahead to prepare the Vatican for his reception. The journey was delayed. It was hard for the pope to get away from France. His departure was vigorously resisted by his relatives as well as by the French cardinals and the French king, who sent n delegation to Avignon, headed by his brother, the duke of Anjou, to dissuade Gregory from his purpose.

The journey was begun Sept. 13, 1376. Six cardinals were left behind at Avignon to take care of the papal business. The fleet which sailed from Marseilles was provided by Joanna of Naples, Peter IV. of Aragon, the Knights of St. John, and the Italian republics, but the vessels were not sufficient to carry the large party and the heavy cargo of personal baggage and supplies. The pope was obliged to rent a number of additional galleys and boats. Fernandez of Heredia, who had just been elected grand-master of the Knights of St. John, acted as admiral. A strong force of mercenaries was also required for protection by sea and at the frequent stopping places along the coast, and for service, if necessary, in Rome itself. The expenses of this peaceful Armada—vessels, mercenaries, and cargo—are carefully tabulated in the ledgers preserved in Avignon and the Vatican.244  The first entries of expense are for the large consignments of Burgundy and other wines which were to be used on the way, or stored away in the vaults of the Vatican.245  The cost of the journey was heavy, and it should occasion no surprise that the pope was obliged to increase the funds at his control at this time by borrowing 30,000 gold florins from the king of Navarre.246  The papal moneys, amounting to 85,713 florins, were carried from Avignon to Marseilles in twelve chests on pack horses and mules, and in boats. To this amount were added later 41,527 florins, or, in all, about $300,000 of our present coinage. The cost of the boats and mercenaries was very large, and several times the boatmen made increased demands for their services and craft to which the papal party was forced to accede. Raymund of Turenne, who was in command of the mercenaries, received 700 florins a month for his "own person," each captain with a banner 24 florins, and each lance with three men under him 18 florins monthly. Nor were the obligations of charity to be overlooked. Durandus Andreas, the papal eleemosynary, received 100 florins to be distributed in alms on the journey, and still another 100 to be distributed after the party’s arrival at Rome.247

The elements seemed to war with the expedition. The fleet had no sooner set sail from Marseilles than a fierce storm arose which lasted several weeks and made the journey tedious. Urban V. was three days in reaching Genoa, Gregory sixteen. From Genoa, the vessels continued southwards the full distance to Ostia, anchorage being made every night off towns. From Ostia, Gregory went up the Tiber by boat, landing at Rome Dec. 16, 1377. The journey was made by night and the banks were lit up by torches, showing the feverish expectation of the people. Disembarking at St. Paul’s, the pope proceeded the next day, Jan. 17, to St. Peter’s, accompanied by rejoicing throngs. In the procession were bands of buffoons who added to the interest of the spectacle and afforded pastime to the populace. The pope abode in the Vatican and, from that time till this day, it has continued to be the papal residence.

Gregory survived his entrance into the Eternal City a single year. He spent the warmer months in Anagni, where he must have had mixed feelings as he recalled the experiences of his predecessor Boniface VIII., which had been the immediate cause of the transfer of the papal residence to French soil. The atrocities practised at Cesena by Cardinal Robert cast a dark shadow over the events of the year. An uprising of the inhabitants in consequence of the brutality of his Breton troops drove them and the cardinal to seek refuge in the citadel. Hawkwood was called in, and, in spite of the cardinal’s pacific assurances, the mercenaries fell upon the defenceless people and committed a butchery whose shocking details made the ears of all Italy to tingle. Four thousand were put to death, including friars in their churches, and still other thousands were sent forth naked and cold to find what refuge they could in neighboring towns. But, in spite of this barbarity, the pope’s authority was acknowledged by an enlarging circle of Italian commonwealths, including Bologna. Florence, even, sued for peace.

When Gregory died, March 27, 1378, he was only 47 years old. By his request, his body was laid to rest in S. Maria Nuova on the Forum. In his last hours, he is said to have regretted having given his ear to the voice of Catherine of Siena, and he admonished the cardinals not to listen to prophecies as he had done.248  Nevertheless, the monument erected to Gregory at Rome two hundred years later is true to history in representing Catherine of Siena walking at the pope’s side as if conducting him back to Rome. The Babylonian captivity of the papacy had lasted nearly three-quarters of a century. The wonder is that with the pope virtually a vassal of France, Western Christendom remained united. Scarcely anything in history seems more unnatural than the voluntary residence of the popes in the commonplace town on the Rhone remote from the burial-place of the Apostles and from the centres of European life.

CHAPTER II.

THE PAPAL SCHISM AND THE REFORMATORY COUNCILS. 1378–1449.

§ 12. Sources and Literature.

For §§ 13, 14. The Papal Schism.—Orig. documents in Raynaldus: Annal. Eccles.—C.E. Bulaeus, d. 1678: Hist. univer. Parisiensis, 6 vols., Paris, 1665–1673, vol. IV. —Van der Hardt, see § 15.—H. Denifle and A. Chatelain: Chartul. universitatis Paris., 4 vols., Paris, 1889–1897, vols. III., IV., especially the part headed de schismate, III. 552–639.—Theoderich of Nieheim (Niem): de Schismate inter papas et antipapas, Basel, 1566, ed. by Geo. Erler, Leipzig, 1890. Nieheim, b. near Paderborn, d. 1417, had exceptional opportunities for observing the progress of events. He was papal secretary—notarius sacri palatii — at Avignon, went with Gregory XI. to Rome, was there at the breaking out of the schism, and held official positions under three of the popes of the Roman line. In 1408 he joined the Livorno cardinals, and supported Alexander V. and John XXIII.—See H. V. Sauerland: D. Leben d. Dietrich von Nieheim nebst einer Uebersicht über dessen Schriften, Göttingen, 1876, and G. Erler: Dietr. von Nieheim, sein Leben u. s. Schriften, Leipzig, 1887. Adam of Usk: Chronicon, 1377–1421, 2d ed. by E. M. Thompson, with Engl. trans., London, 1904.—Martin de Alpartils: Chronica actitatorum temporibus Domini Benedicti XIII. ed. Fr. Ehrle, S. J., vol. I., Paderborn, 1906.—Wyclif’s writings, Lives of Boniface IX. and Innocent VII. in Muratori, III. 2, pp. 830 sqq., 968 sq.—P. Dupuy: Hist. du schisme 1378–1420, Paris, 1654.—P. L. Maimbourg (Jesuit): Hist. du grand schisme d’ Occident, Paris, 1678.—Ehrle: Neue Materialien zur Gesch. Peters von Luna (Benedict XIII.), in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., VI. 139 sqq., VII. 1 sqq.—L. Gayet: Le Grand schisme d’Occident, 2 vols., Florence and Berlin, 1889.—C. Locke: Age of the Great Western Schism, New York, 1896.—Paul Van Dyke: Age of the Renascence an Outline of the Hist. of the Papacy, 1377–1527, New York, 1897.—L. Salembier: Le grand schisme d’ Occident, Paris, 1900, 3d ed., 1907. Engl. trans., London, 1907.—N. Valois: La France et le grand schisme d’Occident, 4 vols., Paris, 1896–1901.—E. Goeller: König Sigismund’s Kirchenpolitik vom Tode Bonifaz IX. bis zur Berufung d. Konstanzer Concils, Freiburg, 1902.—M. Jansen: Papst Bonifatius IX. u. s. Beziehungen zur deutschen Kirche, Freiburg, 1904.—H. Bruce: The Age of Schism, New York, 1907.—E. J. Kitts: In the Days of the Councils. A Sketch of the Life and Times of Baldassare Cossa, John XXIII., London, 1908.—Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengesch., VI. 727–936.—Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 807–833.—Gregorovius, VI. 494–611.—Pastor, I. 115–175.—Creighton, I. 66–200.

For §§ 15, 16. The Councils of Pisa and Constance.—Mansi: Concilia, XXVI., XXVII.—Labbaeus: Concilia, XI., XII. 1–259.—Hermann van der Hardt, Prof. of Hebrew and librarian at Helmstädt, d. 1746: Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense Concilium de universali ecclesiae reformatione, unione et fide, 6 vols., Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1696–1700. A monumental work, noted alike as a mine of historical materials and for its total lack of order in their arrangement. In addition to the acts and history of the Council of Constance, it gives many valuable contemporary documents, e.g. the De corrupto statu eccles., also entitled De ruina eccles., of Nicolas Of Clamanges; the De modis uniendi et reformandi eceles. in concilio universali; De difficultate reformationis;and Monita de necessitate reformationis Eccles. in capite et membris,—all probably by Nieheim; and a Hist. of the Council, by Dietrich Vrie, an Augustinian, finished at Constance, 1417. These are all in vol. I. Vol. II. contains Henry of Langenstein’s Consilium pacis: De unione ac reformatione ecclesiae, pp. 1–60; a Hist. of the c. of Pisa, pp. 61–156; Niehelm’s Invectiva in di, ffugientem Johannem XXIII. and de vita Johan. XXIII. usque ad fugam et carcerem ejus, pp. 296–459, etc. The vols. are enriched with valuable illustrations. Volume V. contains a stately array of pictures of the seals and escutcheons of the princes and prelates attending the council in person or by proxy, and the fourteen universities represented. The work also contains biogg. of D’Ailly, Gerson, Zarabella, etc.—Langenstein’s Consilium pacis is also given in Du Pin’s ed. of Gerson’s Works, ed. 1728, vol. II. 809–839. The tracts De difficultate reformationis and Monita de necessitate, etc., are also found in Da Pin, II. 867–875, 885–902, and ascribed to Peter D’Ailly. The tracts De reformatione and De eccles., concil. generalis, romani pontificis et cardinalium auctoritate, also ascribed to D’Ailly in Du Pin, II. 903–915, 925–960.—Ulrich von Richental: Das Concilium so ze Costenz gehalten worden, ed. by M. R. Buck, Tübingen, 1882.—Also Marmion: Gesch. d. Conc. von Konstanz nach Ul. von Richental, Constance, 1860. Richental, a resident of Constance, wrote from his own personal observation a quaint and highly interesting narrative. First publ., Augsburg, 1483. The MS. may still be seen in Constance.—*H. Finke: Forschungen u. Quellen zur Gesch. des Konst. Konzils, Paderborn, 1889. Contains the valuable diary of Card. Fillastre, etc.—*Finke: Actae conc. Constanciensis, 1410–1414, Münster, 1906.—J. L’enfant (Huguenot refugee in Berlin, d. 1728): Hist. du conc. de Constance, Amsterdam, 1714; also Hist. du conc. de Pisa, Amsterdam, 1724, Engl. trans., 2 vols., London, 1780.—B. Hübler Die Konstanzer Reformation u. d. Konkordate von 1418, Leipzig, 1867.—U. Lenz: Drei Traktate aus d. Schriftencyclus d. Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1876. Discusses the authorship of the tracts De modis, De necessitate, and De difficultate, ascribing them to Nieheim.—B. Bess: Studien zur Gesch. d. Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1891.—J. H. Wylie: The Counc. of Const. to the Death of J. Hus, London, 1900.—*J. B. Schwab: J. Gerson, Würzburg, 1868.—*P. Tschackert: Peter von Ailli, Gotha, 1877.—Döllinger-Friedrick: D. Papstthum, new ed., Munich, 1892, pp. 154-l64. F. X. Funk: Martin V. und d. Konzil von Konstanz in Abhandlungen u.Untersuchungen, 2 vols., Paderborn, 1897, I. 489–498. The works cited in § 1, especially, Creighton, I. 200–420, Hefele, VI. 992–1043, VII. 1–375, Pastor, I. 188–279, Valois, IV., Salembier, 250 sqq.; Eine Invektive gegen Gregor xii., Nov. 1, 1408, in Ztschr. f. Kirchengesch., 1907, p. 188 sq.

For § 17. The Council Of Basel.—Lives of Martin V. and Eugenius IV. in Mansi: XXVIII. 975 sqq., 1171 sqq.; in Muratori: Ital. Scripp., and Platina: Hist. of the Popes, Engl. trans., II. 200–235.—Mansi, XXIX.-XXXI.; Labbaeus, XII. 454—XIII. 1280. For C. of Siena, MANSI: XXVIII. 1058–1082.—Monum. concil. general. saec. XV., ed. by Palacky, 3 vols., Vienna, 1857–1896. Contains an account of C. of Siena by John Stojkoric of Ragusa, a delegate from the Univ. of Paris. John de Segovia: Hist. gest. gener. Basil. conc., new ed., Vienna, 1873. Segovia, a spaniard, was a prominent figure in the Basel Council and one of Felix V.’s cardinals. For his writings, see Haller’s Introd. Concil. Basiliense. Studien und Quellen zur Gesch. d. Concils von Basel, with Introd. ed. by T. Haller, 4 vols., Basel, 1896–1903. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini: Commentarii de gestis concil. Basil., written 1440 to justify Felix’s election, ed. by Fea, Rome, 1823; also Hist. Frederici III., trans. by T. Ilgen, 2 vols., Leipzig. No date. Aeneas, afterward Pius II., "did not say and think the same thing at all times," says Haller, Introd., p. 12.—See Voigt: Enea Sylvio de’ Piccolomini, etc., 3 vols., Berlin, 1856–1863.—Infessura: Diario della cittá di Roma, Rome, 1890, PP. 22–42.—F. P. Abert: Eugenius IV., Mainz, 1884.—Wattenbach: Röm Papstthum, pp. 271–284.—Hefele-Knöpfler, VII. 375–849. Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum, 160 sqq.—Creighton, II. 3–273.—Pastor, I. 209—306.—Gregorovius, VI.-VII.—M. G. Perouse: Louis Aleman et la fin du grand schisme, Paris, 1805. A detailed account of the C. of Basel.

For § 18. The Ferrara-Florence Council.—Abram Of Crete: Historia, in Latin trans., Rome, 1521; the Greek original by order of Gregory XIII., Rome, 1577; new Latin trans., Rome, 1612.—Sylv. Syropulos: Vera Hist. unionis non verae inter Graecos et Latinos, ed. by Creyghton, Haag, 1660.—Mansi, XXXI., contains the documents collected by Mansi himself, and also the Acts published by Horatius Justinian, XXXI. 1355–1711, from a Vatican MS., 1638. The Greek and Latin texts are printed side by side. —Labbaeus and Harduin also give Justinian’s Acts and their own collections. —T. Frommann: Krit. Beiträge zur Gesch. d. florentinischen Kircheneinigung, Hale, 1872.—Knöpfler, art. Ferrara-Florenz, in Wetzer-Welte: IV. 1363–1380. Tschackert, art. Ferrara-Florenz, in Herzog, VI. 46 48.—Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum, pp. 166–171.

§ 13. The Schism Begun. 1378.

The death of Gregory XI. was followed by the schism of Western Christendom, which lasted forty years, and proved to be a greater misfortune for the Church than the Avignon captivity. Anti-popes the Church had had, enough of them since the days of Gregory VII., from Wibert of Ravenna chosen by the will of Henry IV. to the feeble Peter of Corbara, elected under Lewis the Bavarian. Now, two lines of popes, each elected by a college of cardinals, reigned, the one at Rome, the other in Avignon, and both claiming to be in the legitimate succession from St. Peter.

Gregory XI. foresaw the confusion that was likely to follow at his death, and sought to provide against the catastrophe of a disputed election, and probably also to insure the choice of a French pope, by pronouncing in advance an election valid, no matter where the conclave might be held. The rule that the conclave should convene in the locality where the pontiff died, was thus set aside. Gregory knew well the passionate feeling in Rome against the return of the papacy to the banks of the Rhone. A clash was almost inevitable. While the pope lay a-dying, the cardinals at several sittings attempted to agree upon his successor, but failed.

On April 7, 1378, ten days after Gregory’s death, the conclave met in the Vatican, and the next day elected the Neapolitan, Bartholomew Prignano, archbishop of Bari. Of the sixteen cardinals present, four were Italians, eleven Frenchmen, and one Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who later became famous as Benedict XIII. The French party was weakened by the absence of the six cardinals, left behind at Avignon, and still another was absent. Of the Italians, two were Romans, Tebaldeschi, an old man, and Giacomo Orsini, the youngest member of the college. The election of an Italian not a member of the curia was due to factions which divided the French and to the compulsive attitude of the Roman populace, which insisted upon an Italian for pope.

The French cardinals were unable to agree upon a candidate from their own number. One of the two parties into which they were split, the Limousin party, to which Gregory XI. and his predecessors had belonged, numbered six cardinals. The Italian mob outside the Vatican was as much a factor in the situation as the divisions in the conclave itself. A scene of wild and unrestrained turbulence prevailed in the square of St. Peter’s. The crowd pressed its way into the very spaces of the Vatican, and with difficulty a clearing was made for the entrance of all the cardinals. To prevent the exit of the cardinals, the Banderisi, or captains of the thirteen districts into which Rome was divided, had taken possession of the city and closed the gates. The mob, determined to keep the papacy on the Tiber, filled the air with angry shouts and threats. "We will have a Roman for pope or at least an ltalian."—Romano, romano, lo volemo, o almanco Italiano was the cry. On the first night soldiers clashed their spears in the room underneath the chamber where the conclave was met, and even thrust them through the ceiling. A fire of combustibles was lighted under the window. The next morning, as their excellencies were saying the mass of the Holy Spirit and engaged in other devotions, the noises became louder and more menacing. One cardinal, d’Aigrefeuille, whispered to Orsini, "better elect the devil than die."

It was under such circumstances that the archbishop of Bari was chosen. After the choice had been made, and while they were waiting to get the archbishop’s consent, six of the cardinals dined together and seemed to be in good spirits. But the mob’s impatience to know what had been done would brook no delay, and Orsini, appearing at the window, cried out "go to St. Peter."  This was mistaken for an announcement that old Tebaldeschi, cardinal of St. Peter’s, had been chosen, and a rush was made for the cardinal’s palace to loot it, as the custom was when a cardinal was elected pope. The crowd surged through the Vatican and into the room where the cardinals had been meeting and, as Valois puts it, "the pillage of the conclave had begun."  To pacify the mob, two of the cardinals, half beside themselves with fright, pointed to Tebaldeschi, set him up on a chair, placed a white mitre on his head, and threw a red cloak over his shoulders. The old man tried to indicate that he was not the right person. But the throngs continued to bend down before him in obeisance for several hours, till it became known that the successful candidate was Prignano.

In the meantime the rest of the cardinals forsook the building and sought refuge, some within the walls of St. Angelo, and four by flight beyond the walls of the city. The real pope was waiting for recognition while the members of the electing college were fled. But by the next day the cardinals had sufficiently regained their self-possession to assemble again,—all except the four who had put the city walls behind them,—and Cardinal Peter de Vergne, using the customary formula, proclaimed to the crowd through the window:  "I announce to you a great joy. You have a pope, and he calls himself Urban VI."  The new pontiff was crowned on April 18, in front of St. Peter’s, by Cardinal Orsini.

The archbishop had enjoyed the confidence of Gregory XI. He enjoyed a reputation for austere morals and strict conformity to the rules of fasting and other observances enjoined by the Church. He wore a hair shirt, and was accustomed to retire with the Bible in his hand. At the moment of his election no doubt was expressed as to its validity. Nieheim, who was in the city at the time, declared that Urban was canonical pope-elect. "This is the truth," he wrote, "and no one can honestly deny it."249  All the cardinals in Rome yielded Urban submission, and in a letter dated May 8 they announced to the emperor and all Christians the election and coronation. The cardinals at Avignon wrote acknowledging him, and ordered the keys to the castle of St. Angelo placed in his hands. It is probable that no one would have thought of denying Urban’s rights if the pope had removed to Avignon, or otherwise yielded to the demands of the French members of the curia. His failure to go to France, Urban declared to be the cause of the opposition to him.

Seldom has so fine an opportunity been offered to do a worthy thing and to win a great name as was offered to Urban VI. It was the opportunity to put an end to the disturbance in the Church by maintaining the residence of the papacy in its ancient seat, and restoring to it the dignity which it had lost by its long exile. Urban, however, was not equal to the occasion, and made an utter failure. He violated all the laws of common prudence and tact. His head seemed to be completely turned. He estranged and insulted his cardinals. He might have made provision for a body of warm supporters by the prompt appointment of new members to the college, but even this measure he failed to take till it was too late. The French king, it is true, was bent upon having the papacy return to French soil, and controlled the French cardinals. But a pope of ordinary shrewdness was in position to foil the king. This quality Urban VI. lacked, and the sacred college, stung by his insults, came to regard him as an intruder in St. Peter’s chair.

In his concern for right living, Urban early took occasion in a public allocution to reprimand the cardinals for their worldliness and for living away from their sees. He forbade their holding more than a single appointment and accepting gifts from princes. To their demand that Avignon continue to be the seat of the papacy, Urban brusquely told them that Rome and the papacy were joined together, and he would not separate them. As the papacy belonged not to France but to the whole world, he would distribute the promotions to the sacred college among the nations.

Incensed at the attack made upon their habits and perquisites, and upon their national sympathies, the French cardinals, giving the heat of the city as the pretext, removed one by one to Anagni, while Urban took up his summer residence at Tivoli. His Italian colleagues followed him, but they also went over to the French. No pope had ever been left more alone. Forming a compact body, the French members of the curia demanded the pope’s resignation. The Italians, who at first proposed the calling of a council, acquiesced. The French seceders then issued a declaration, dated Aug. 2, in which Urban was denounced as an apostate, and his election declared void in view of the duress under which it was accomplished.250  It asserted that the cardinals at the time were in mortal terror from the Romans. Now that he would not resign, they anathematized him. Urban replied in a document called the Factum, insisting upon the validity of his election. Retiring to Fondi, in Neapolitan territory, the French cardinals proceeded to a new eIection, Sept. 20, 1378, the choice falling upon one of their number, Robert of Geneva, the son of Amadeus, count of Geneva. He was one of those who, four months before, had pointed out Tebaldeschi to the Roman mob. The three Italian cardinals, though they did not actively participate in the election, offered no resistance. Urban is said to have received the news with tears, and to have expressed regret for his untactful and self-willed course. Perhaps he recalled the fate of his fellow-Neapolitan, Peter of Murrhone, whose lack of worldly wisdom a hundred years before had lost him the papal crown. To establish himself on the papal throne, he appointed 29 cardinals. But it was too late to prevent the schism which Gregory XI. had feared and a wise ruler would have averted.

Robert of Geneva, at the time of his election 36 years old, came to the papal honor with his hands red from the bloody massacre of Cesena. He had the reputation of being a politician and a fast liver. He was consecrated Oct. 31 under the name of Clement VII. It was a foregone conclusion that he would remove the papal seat back to Avignon. He first attempted to overthrow Urban on his own soil, but the attempt failed. Rome resisted, and the castle of St. Angelo, which was in the hands of his supporters, he lost, but not until its venerable walls were demolished, so that at a later time the very goats clambered over the stones. He secured the support of Joanna, and Louis of Anjou whom she had chosen as the heir of her kingdom, but the war which broke out between Urban and Naples fell out to Urban’s advantage. The duke of Anjou was deposed, and Charles of Durazzo, of the royal house of Hungary, Joanna’s natural heir, appointed as his successor. Joanna herself fell into Charles’ hands and was executed, 1882, on the charge of having murdered her first husband. The duke of Brunswick was her fourth marital attempt. Clement VII. bestowed upon the duke of Anjou parts of the State of the Church and the high-sounding but empty title of duke of Adria. A portion of Urban’s reward for crowning Charles, 1881, was the lordship over Capria, Amalfi, Fondi, and other localities, which he bestowed upon his unprincipled and worthless nephew, Francis Prignano. In the war over Naples, the pope had made free use of the treasure of the Roman churches.

Clement’s cause in Italy was lost, and there was nothing for him to do but to fall back upon his supporter, Charles V. He returned to France by way of the sea and Marseilles.

Thus the schism was completed, and Western Europe had the spectacle of two popes elected by the same college of cardinals without a dissenting voice, and each making full claims to the prerogative of the supreme pontiff of the Christian world. Each pope fulminated the severest judgments of heaven against the other. The nations of Europe and its universities were divided in their allegiance or, as it was called, their "obedience."  The University of Paris, at first neutral, declared in favor of Robert of Geneva,251 as did Savoy, the kingdoms of Spain, Scotland, and parts of Germany. England, Sweden, and the larger part of Italy supported Urban. The German emperor, Charles IV., was about to take the same side when he died, Nov. 29, 1378. Urban also had the vigorous support of Catherine of Siena. Hearing of the election which had taken place at Fondi she wrote to Urban: "I have heard that those devils in human form have resorted to an election. They have chosen not a vicar of Christ, but an anti-Christ. Never will I cease, dear father, to look upon you as Christ’s true vicar on earth."

The papal schism which Pastor has called "the greatest misfortune that could be thought of for the Church"252 soon began to call forth indignant protests from the best men of the time. Western Christendom had never known such a scandal. The seamless coat of Christ was rent in twain, and Solomon’s words could no longer be applied, "My dove is but One."253  The divine claims of the papacy itself began to be matter of doubt. Writers like Wyclif made demands upon the pope to return to Apostolic simplicity of manners in sharp language such as no one had ever dared to use before. Many sees had two incumbents; abbeys, two abbots; parishes, two priests. The maintenance of two popes involved an increased financial burden, and both papal courts added to the old practices new inventions to extract revenue. Clement VII.’s agents went everywhere, striving to win support for his obedience, and the nations, taking advantage of the situation, magnified their authority to the detriment of the papal power.

The following is a list of the popes of the Roman and Avignon lines, and the Pisan line whose legitimacy has now no advocates in the Roman communion.

Roman Line

Urban VI., 1378–1389.

Boniface IX., 1389–1404.

Innocent VII., 1404–1406.

Gregory XII., 1406–1415.

Deposed at Pisa, 1409. d. 1424  Resigned

at Constance, 1415, d. 1417.

Avignon Line

Clement VII., 1378–1394.

Benedict XIII., 1394–1409.

Deposed at Pisa, 1409, and at

Constance, 1417,.

Pisan Line

Alexander V., 1409–1410.

John XXIII., 1410–1415.

Martin V., 1417–1431.

Acknowledged by the whole Latin Church.

The question of the legitimacy of Urban VI.’s pontificate is still a matter of warm dispute. As neither pope nor council has given a decision on the question, Catholic scholars feel no constraint in discussing it. French writers have been inclined to leave the matter open. This was the case with Bossuet, Mansi, Martene, as it is with modern French writers. Valois hesitatingly, Salembier positively, decides for Urban. Historians, not moved by French sympathies, pronounce strongly in favor of the Roman line, as do Hefele, Funk, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Denifle, and Pastor. The formal recognition of Urban by all the cardinals and their official announcement of his election to the princes would seem to put the validity of his election beyond doubt. On the other hand, the declaratio sent forth by the cardinals nearly four months after Urban’s election affirms that the cardinals were in fear of their lives when they voted; and according to the theory of the canon law, constraint invalidates an election as constraint invalidated Pascal II.’s concession to Henry V. It was the intention of the cardinals, as they affirm, to elect one of their number, till the tumult became so violent and threatening that to protect themselves they precipitately elected Prignano. They state that the people had even filled the air with the cry, "Let them be killed," moriantur. A panic prevailed. When the tumult abated, the cardinals sat down to dine, and after dinner were about to proceed to a re-election, as they say, when the tumult again became threatening, and the doors of the room where they were sitting were broken open, so that they were forced to flee for their lives.

To this testimony were added the depositions of individual cardinals later. Had Prignano proved complaisant to the wishes of the French party, there is no reason to suspect that the validity of his election would ever have been disputed. Up to the time when the vote was cast for Urban, the cardinals seem not to have been under duress from fear, but to have acted freely. After the vote had been cast, they felt their lives were in danger.254  If the cardinals had proceeded to a second vote, as Valois has said, Urban might have been elected. The constant communications which passed between Charles V. and the French party at Anagni show him to have been a leading factor in the proceedings which followed and the reconvening of the conclave which elected Robert of Geneva.255

On the other hand, the same body of cardinals which elected Urban deposed him, and, in their capacity as princes of the Church, unanimously chose Robert as his successor. The question of the authority of the sacred college to exercise this prerogative is still a matter of doubt. It received the abdication of Coelestine V. and elected a successor to him while he was still living. In that case, however, the papal throne became vacant by the supreme act of the pope himself.

§ 14. Further Progress of the Schism. 1378–1409.

The territory of Naples remained the chief theatre of the conflict between the papal rivals, Louis of Anjou, who had the support of Clement VII., continuing to assert his claim to the throne. In 1383 Urban secretly left Rome for Naples, but was there held in virtual confinement till he had granted Charles of Durazzo’s demands. He then retired to Nocera, which belonged to his nephew. The measures taken by the cardinals at Anagni had taught him no lesson. His insane severity and self-will continued, and brought him into the danger of losing the papal crown. Six of his cardinals entered into a conspiracy to dethrone him, or at least to make him subservient to the curia. The plot was discovered, and Urban launched the interdict against Naples, whose king was supposed to have been a party to it. The offending cardinals were imprisoned in an old cistern, and afterwards subjected to the torture.256  Forced to give up the town and to take refuge in the fortress, the relentless pontiff is said to have gone three or four times daily to the window, and, with candles burning and to the sound of a bell, to have solemnly pronounced the formula of excommunication against the besieging troops. Allowed to depart, and proceeding with the members of his household across the country, Urban reached Trani and embarked on a Genoese ship which finally landed him at Genoa, 1386. On the way, the crew threatened to carry him to Avignon, and had to be bought off by the unfortunate pontiff. Was ever a ruler in a worse predicament, beating about on the Mediterranean, than Urban!  Five of the cardinals who had been dragged along in chains now met with a cruel end. Adam Aston, the English cardinal, Urban had released at the request of the English king. But towards the rest of the alleged conspirators he showed the heartless relentlessness of a tyrant. The chronicler Nieheim, who was with the pope at Naples and Nocera, declares that his heart was harder than granite. Different rumors were afloat concerning the death the prelates were subjected to, one stating they had been thrown into the sea, another that they had their heads cut off with an axe; another report ran that their bodies were buried in a stable after being covered with lime and then burnt.

In the meantime, two of the prelates upon whom Urban had conferred the red hat, both Italians, went over to Clement VII. and were graciously received.

Breaking away from Genoa, Urban went by way of Lucca to Perugia, and then with another army started off for Naples. Charles of Durazzo, who had been called to the throne of Hungary and murdered in 1386, was succeeded by his young son Ladislaus (1386~1414), but his claim was contested by the heir of Louis of Anjou (d. 1384). The pontiff got no farther than Ferentino, and turning back was carried in a carriage to Rome, where he again entered the Vatican, a few months before his death, Oct. 15, 1389.

Bartholomew Prignano had disappointed every expectation. He was his own worst enemy. He was wholly lacking in common prudence and the spirit of conciliation. It is to his credit that, as Nieheim urges, he never made ecclesiastical preferment the object of sale. Whatever were his virtues before he received the tiara, he had as pope shown himself in every instance utterly unfit for the responsibilities of a ruler.

Clement VII., who arrived in Avignon in June, 1379, stooped before the kings of France, Charles V. (d. 1380) and Charles VI. He was diplomatic and versatile where his rival was impolitic and intractable. He knew how to entertain at his table with elegance.257  The distinguished preacher, Vincent Ferrer, gave him his support. Among the new cardinals he appointed was the young prince of Luxemburg, who enjoyed a great reputation for saintliness. At the prince’s death, in 1387, miracles were said to be performed at his tomb, a circumstance which seemed to favor the claims of the Avignon pope.

Clement’s embassy to Bohemia for a while had hopes of securing a favorable declaration from the Bohemian king, Wenzil, but was disappointed.258  The national pride of the French was Clement’s chief dependence, and for the king’s support he was obliged to pay a humiliating price by granting the royal demands to bestow ecclesiastical offices and tax Church property. As a means of healing the schism, Clement proposed a general council, promising, in case it decided in his favor, to recognize Urban as leading cardinal. The first schismatic pope died suddenly of apoplexy, Sept. 16, 1394, having outlived Urban VI. five years.

Boniface IX., who succeeded Urban VI., was, like him, a Neapolitan, and only thirty-five at the time of his election. He was a man of fine presence, and understood the art of ruling, but lacked the culture of the schools, and could not even write, and was poor at saying the services.259  He had the satisfaction of seeing the kingdom of Naples yield to the Roman obedience. He also secured from the city of Rome full submission, and the document, by which it surrendered to him its republican liberties, remained for centuries the foundation of the relations of the municipality to the Apostolic See.260  Bologna, Perugia, Viterbo, and other towns of Italy which had acknowledged Clement, were brought into submission to him, so that before his death the entire peninsula was under his obedience except Genoa, which Charles VI. had reduced. All men’s eyes began again to turn to Rome.

In 1390, the Jubilee Year which Urban VI. had appointed attracted streams of pilgrims to Rome from Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and England and other lands, as did also the Jubilee of 1400, commemorating the close of one and the beginning of another century. If Rome profited by these celebrations, Boniface also made in other ways the most of his opportunity, and his agents throughout Christendom returned with the large sums which they had realized from the sale of dispensations and indulgences. Boniface left behind him a reputation for avarice and freedom in the sale of ecclesiastical concessions.261  He was also notorious for his nepotism, enriching his brothers Andrew and John and other relatives with offices and wealth. Such offences, however, the Romans could easily overlook in view of the growing regard throughout Europe for the Roman line of popes and the waning influence of the Avignon line.

The preponderant influence of Ladislaus secured the election of still another Neapolitan, Cardinal Cosimo dei Migliorati, who took the name of Innocent VII. He also was only thirty-five years old at the time of his elevation to the papal chair, a doctor of both laws and expert in the management of affairs. The members of the conclave, before proceeding to an election, signed a document whereby each bound himself, if elected pope, to do all in his power to put an end to the schism. The English chronicler, Adam of Usk, who was present at the coronation, concludes the graphic description he gives of the ceremonies262 with a lament over the desolate condition of the Roman city. How much is Rome to be pitied! he exclaims, "for, once thronged with princes and their palaces, she is now a place of hovels, thieves, wolves, worms, full of desert spots and laid waste by her own citizens who rend each other in pieces. Once her empire devoured the world with the sword, and now her priesthood devours it with mummery. Hence the lines —

" ’The Roman bites at all, and those he cannot bite, he hates.

Of rich he hears the call, but ’gainst the poor he shuts his gates.’ "

Following the example of his two predecessors, Innocent excommunicated the Avignon anti-pope and his cardinals, putting them into the same list with heretics, pirates, and brigands. In revenge for his nephew’s cold-blooded slaughter of eleven of the chief men of the city, whose bodies he threw out of a window, he was driven from Rome, and after great hardships he reached Viterbo. But the Romans soon found Innocent’s rule preferable to the rule of Ladislaus, king of Naples and papal protector, and he was recalled, the nephew whose hands were reeking with blood making public entry into the Vatican with his uncle.

The last pope of the Roman line was Gregory XII. Angelo Correr, cardinal of St. Marks, Venice, elected 1406, was surpassed in tenacity as well as ability by the last of the Avignon popes, elected 1394, and better known as Peter de Luna of Aragon, one of the cardinals who joined in the revolt against Urban VI. and in the election of Clement VII. at Fondi.

Under these two pontiffs the controversy over the schism grew more and more acute and the scandal more and more intolerable. The nations of Western Europe were weary of the open and flagitious traffic in benefices and other ecclesiastical privileges, the fulminations of one pope against the other, and the division of sees and parishes between rival claimants. The University of Paris took the leading part in agitating remedial measures, and in the end the matter was taken wholly out of the hands of the two popes. The cardinals stepped into the foreground and, in the face of all canonical precedent, took the course which ultimately resulted in the reunion of the Church under one head.

Before Gregory’s election, the Roman cardinals, numbering fourteen, again entered into a compact stipulating that the successful candidate should by all means put an end to the schism, even, if necessary, by the abdication of his office. Gregory was fourscore at the time, and the chief consideration which weighed in his choice was that in men arrived at his age ambition usually runs low, and that Gregory would be more ready to deny himself for the good of the Church than a younger man.

Peter de Luna, one of the most vigorous personalities who have ever claimed the papal dignity, had the spirit and much of the ability of Hildebrand and his namesake, Gregory IX. But it was his bad star to be elected in the Avignon and not in the Roman succession. Had he been in the Roman line, he would probably have made his mark among the great ruling pontiffs. His nationality also was against him. The French had little heart in supporting a Spaniard and, at Clement’s death, the relations between the French king and the Avignon pope at once lost their cordiality. Peter was energetic of mind and in action, a shrewd observer, magnified his office, and never yielded an inch in the matter of papal prerogative. Through the administrations of three Roman pontiffs, he held on firmly to his office, outlived the two Reformatory councils of Pisa and Constance, and yielded not up this mortal flesh till the close of the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and was still asserting his claims and maintaining the dignity of pope at the time of his death. Before his election, he likewise entered into a solemn compact with his cardinals, promising to bend every effort to heal the unholy schism, even if the price were his own abdication.

The professions of both popes were in the right direction. They were all that could be desired, and all that remained was for either of them or for both of them to resign and make free room for a new candidate. The problem would thus have been easily settled, and succeeding generations might have canonized both pontiffs for their voluntary self-abnegation. But it took ten years to bring Gregory to this state of mind, and then almost the last vestige of power had been taken from him. Peter de Luna never yielded.

Undoubtedly, at the time of the election of Gregory XII., the papacy was passing through one of the grave crises in its history. There were not wanting men who said, like Langenstein, vice-chancellor of the University of Paris, that perhaps it was God’s purpose that there should be two popes indefinitely, even as David’s kingdom was divided under two sovereigns.263  Yea, and there were men who argued publicly that it made little difference how many there were, two or three, or ten or twelve, or as many as there were nations.264

At his first consistory Gregory made a good beginning, when he asserted that, for the sake of the good cause of securing a united Christendom, he was willing to travel by land or by sea, by land, if necessary, with a pilgrim’s staff, by sea in a fishing smack, in order to come to an agreement with Benedict. He wrote to his rival on the Rhone, declaring that, like the woman who was ready to renounce her child rather than see it cut asunder, so each of them should be willing to cede his authority rather than be responsible for the continuance of the schism. He laid his hand on the New Testament and quoted the words that "he who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."  He promised to abdicate, if Benedict would do the same, that the cardinals of both lines might unite together in a new election; and he further promised not to add to the number of his cardinals, except to keep the number equal to the number of the Avignon college.

Benedict’s reply was shrewd, if not equally demonstrative. He, too, lamented the schism, which he pronounced detestable, wretched, and dreadful,265 but gently setting aside Gregory’s blunt proposal, suggested as the best resort the via discussionis, or the path of discussion, and that the cardinals of both lines should meet together, talk the matter over, and see what should be done, and then, if necessary, one or both popes might abdicate. Both popes in their communications called themselves "servant of the servants of God."  Gregory addressed Benedict as "Peter de Luna, whom some peoples in this wretched—miserabili — schism call Benedict XIII."; and Benedict addressed the pope on the Tiber as "Angelus Correr, whom some, adhering to him in this most destructive—pernicioso — schism, call Gregory XII."  "We are both old men," wrote Benedict. "Time is short; hasten, and do not delay in this good cause. Let us both embrace the ways of salvation and peace."

Nothing could have been finer, but it was quickly felt that while both popes expressed themselves as ready to abdicate, positive as the professions of both were, each wanted to have the advantage when the time came for the election of the new pontiff to rule over the reunited Church.

As early as 1381, the University of Paris appealed to the king of France to insist upon the calling of a general council as the way to terminate the schism. But the duke of Anjou had the spokesman of the university, Jean Ronce, imprisoned, and the university was commanded to keep silence on the subject.

Prior to this appeal, two individuals had suggested the same idea, Konrad of Gelnhausen, and Henry of Langenstein, otherwise known as Henry of Hassia. Konrad, who wrote in 1380,266 and whose views led straight on to the theory of the supreme authority of councils,267 affirmed that there were two heads of the Church, and that Christ never fails it, even though the earthly head may fail by death or error. The Church is not the pope and the cardinals, but the body of the faithful, and this body gets its inner life directly from Christ, and is so far infallible. In this way he answers those who were forever declaring that in the absence of the pope’s call there would be no council, even if all the prelates were assembled, but only a conventicle.

In more emphatic terms, Henry of Langenstein, in 1381, justified the calling of a council without the pope’s intervention.268  The institution of the papacy by Christ, he declared, did not involve the idea that the action of the pope was always necessary, either in originating or consenting to legislation. The Church might have instituted the papacy, even had Christ not appointed it. If the cardinals should elect a pontiff not agreeable to the Church, the Church might set their choice aside. The validity of a council did not depend upon the summons or the ratification of a pope. Secular princes might call such a synod. A general council, as the representative of the entire Church, is above the cardinals, yea, above the pope himself. Such a council cannot err, but the cardinals and the pope may err.

The views of Langenstein, vice-chancellor of the University of Paris, represented the views of the faculties of that institution. They were afterwards advocated by John Gerson, one of the most influential men of his century, and one of the most honored of all the centuries. Among those who took the opposite view was the English Dominican and confessor of Benedict XIII., John Hayton. The University of Paris he called "a daughter of Satan, mother of error, sower of sedition, and the pope’s defamer, "and declared the pope was to be forced by no human tribunal, but to follow God and his own conscience.

In 1394, the University of Paris proposed three methods of healing the schism269 which became the platform over which the issue was afterwards discussed, namely, the via cessionis, or the abdication of both popes, the via compromissi, an adjudication of the claims of both by a commission, and the via synodi, or the convention of a general council to which the settlement of the whole matter should be left. No act in the whole history of this famous literary institution has given it wider fame than this proposal, coupled with the activity it displayed to bring the schism to a close. The method preferred by its faculties was the first, the abdication of both popes, which it regarded as the simplest remedy. It was suggested that the new election, after the popes had abdicated, should be consummated by the cardinals in office at the time of Gregory XI.’s decease, 1378, and still surviving, or by a union of the cardinals of both obediences.

The last method, settlement by a general council, which the university regarded as offering the most difficulty, it justified on the ground that the pope is subject to the Church as Christ was subject to his mother and Joseph. The authority of such a council lay in its constitution according to Christ’s words, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."  Its membership should consist of doctors of theology and the laws taken from the older universities, and deputies of the orders, as well as bishops, many of whom were uneducated,—illiterati.270

Clement VII. showed his displeasure with the university by forbidding its further intermeddling, and by condemning his cardinals who, without his permission, had met and recommended him to adopt one of the three ways. At Clement’s death the king of France called upon the Avignon college to postpone the election of a successor, but, surmising the contents of the letter, they prudently left it unopened until they had chosen Benedict XIII. Benedict at once manifested the warmest zeal in the healing of the schism, and elaborated his plan for meeting with Boniface IX., and coming to some agreement with him. These friendly propositions were offset by a summons from the king’s delegates, calling upon the two pontiffs to abdicate, and all but two of the Avignon cardinals favored the measure. But Benedict declared that such a course would seem to imply constraint, and issued a bull against it.

The two parties continued to express deep concern for the healing of the schism, but neither would yield. Benedict gained the support of the University of Toulouse, and strengthened himself by the promotion of Peter d’Ailly, chancellor of the University of Paris, to the episcopate. The famous inquisitor, Nicolas Eymericus, also one of his cardinals, was a firm advocate of Benedict’s divine claims. The difficulties were increased by the wavering course of Charles VI., 1380–1412, a man of feeble mind, and twice afflicted with insanity, whose brothers and uncles divided the rule of the kingdom amongst themselves. French councils attempted to decide upon a course for the nation to pursue, and a third council, meeting in Paris, 1398, and consisting of 11 archbishops and 60 bishops, all theretofore supporters of the Avignon pope, decided upon the so-called subtraction of obedience from Benedict. In spite of these discouragements, Benedict continued loyal to himself. He was forsaken by his cardinals and besieged by French troops in his palace and wounded. The spectacle of his isolation touched the heart and conscience of the French people, and the decree ordering the subtraction of obedience was annulled by the national parliament of 1403, which professed allegiance anew, and received from him full absolution.

When Gregory XII. was elected in 1406, the controversy over the schism was at white heat. England, Castile, and the German king, Wenzil, had agreed to unite with France in bringing it to an end. Pushed by the universal clamor, by the agitation of the University of Paris, and especially by the feeling which prevailed in France, Gregory and Benedict saw that the situation was in danger of being controlled by other hands than their own, and agreed to meet at Savona on the Gulf of Genoa to discuss their differences. In October, 1407, Benedict, attended by a military guard, went as far as Porto Venere and Savona. Gregory got as far as Lucca, when he declined to go farther, on the plea that Savona was in territory controlled by the French and on other pretexts. Nieheim represents the Roman pontiff as dissimulating during the whole course of the proceedings and as completely under the influence of his nephews and other favorites, who imposed upon the weakness of the old man, and by his doting generosity were enabled to live in luxury. At Lucca they spent their time in dancing and merry-making. This writer goes on to say that Gregory put every obstacle in the way of union.271  He is represented by another writer as having spent more in bonbons than his predecessors did for their wardrobes and tables, and as being only a shadow with bones and skin.272

Benedict’s support was much weakened by the death of the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, who had been his constant supporter. France threatened neutrality, and Benedict, fearing seizure by the French commander at Genoa, beat a retreat to Perpignan, a fortress at the foot of the Pyrenees, six miles from the Mediterranean. In May of the same year France again decreed "subtraction," and a national French assembly in 1408 approved the calling of a council. The last stages of the contest were approaching.

Seven of Gregory’s cardinals broke away from him, and, leaving him at Lucca, went to Pisa, where they issued a manifesto appealing from a poorly informed pope to a better informed one, from Christ’s vicar to Christ himself, and to the decision of a general council. Two more followed. Gregory further injured his cause by breaking his solemn engagement and appointing four cardinals, May, 1408, two of them his nephews, and a few months later he added ten more. Cardinals of the Avignon obedience joined the Roman cardinals at Pisa and brought the number up to thirteen. Retiring to Livorno on the beautiful Italian lake of that name, and acting as if the popes were deposed, they as rulers of the Church appointed a general council to meet at Pisa, March 25, 1409.

As an offset, Gregory summoned a council of his own to meet in the territory either of Ravenna or Aquileja. Many of his closest followers had forsaken him, and even his native city of Venice withdrew from him its support. In the meantime Ladislaus had entered Rome and been hailed as king. It is, however, probable that this was with the consent of Gregory himself, who hoped thereby to gain sympathy for his cause. Benedict also exercised his sovereign power as pontiff and summoned a council to meet at Perpignan, Nov. 1, 1408.

The word "council," now that the bold initiative was taken, was hailed as pregnant with the promise of sure relief from the disgrace and confusion into which Western Christendom had been thrown and of a reunion of the Church.

§ 15. The Council of Pisa.

The three councils of Pisa, 1409, Constance, 1414, and Basel, 1431, of which the schism was the occasion, are known in history as the Reformatory councils. Of the tasks they set out to accomplish, the healing of the schism and the institution of disciplinary reforms in the Church, the first they accomplished, but with the second they made little progress. They represent the final authority of general councils in the affairs of the Church—a view, called the conciliary theory—in distinction from the supreme authority of the papacy.

The Pisan synod marks an epoch in the history of Western Christendom not so much on account of what it actually accomplished as because it was the first revolt in council against the theory of papal absolutism which had been accepted for centuries. It followed the ideas of Gerson and Langenstein, namely, that the Church is the Church even without the presence of a pope, and that an oecumenical council is legitimate which meets not only in the absence of his assent but in the face of his protest. Representing intellectually the weight of the Latin world and the larger part of its constituency, the assembly was a momentous event leading in the opposite direction from the path laid out by Hildebrand, Innocent III., and their successors. It was a mighty blow at the old system of Church government.

While Gregory XII. was tarrying at Rimini, as a refugee, under the protection of Charles Malatesta, and Benedict XIII. was confined to the seclusion of Perpignan, the synod was opened on the appointed day in the cathedral of Pisa. There was an imposing attendance of 14 cardinals,—the number being afterwards increased to 24,—4 patriarchs, 10 archbishops, 79 bishops and representatives of 116 other bishops, 128 abbots and priors and the representatives of 200 other abbots. To these prelates were added the generals of the Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Augustinian orders, the grand-master of the Knights of St. John, who was accompanied by 6 commanders, the general of the Teutonic order, 300 doctors of theology and the canon law, 109 representatives of cathedral and collegiate chapters, and the deputies of many princes, including the king of the Romans, Wenzil, and the kings of England, France, Poland, and Cyprus. A new and significant feature was the representation of the universities of learning, including Paris,273 Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge, Montpellier, Toulouse, Angers, Vienna, Cracow, Prag, and Cologne. Among the most important personages was Peter d’Ailly, though there is no indication in the acts of the council that he took a prominent public part. John Gerson seems not to have been present.

The second day, the archbishop of Milan, Philargi, himself soon to be elected pope, preached from Judg. 20:7: "Behold, ye are all children of Israel. Give here your advice and counsel," and stated the reasons which had led to the summoning of the council. Guy de Maillesec, the only cardinal surviving from the days prior to the schism, presided over the first sessions. His place was then filled by the patriarch of Alexandria, till the new pope was chosen.

One of the first deliverances was a solemn profession of the Holy Trinity and the Catholic faith, and that every heretic and schismatic will share with the devil and his angels the burnings of eternal fire unless before the end of this life he make his peace with the Catholic Church.274

The business which took precedence of all other was the healing of the schism, the causa unionis, as, it was called, and disposition was first made of the rival popes. A formal trial was instituted, which was opened by two cardinals and two archbishops proceeding to the door of the cathedral and solemnly calling Gregory and Benedict by name and summoning them to appear and answer for themselves. The formality was gone through three times, on three successive days, and the offenders were given till April 15 to appear.

By a series of declarations the synod then justified its existence, and at the eighth session declared itself to be "a general council representing the whole universal Catholic Church and lawfully and reasonably called together."275  It thought along the lines marked out by D’Ailly and Gerson and the other writers who had pronounced the unity of the Church to consist in oneness with her divine Head and declared that the Church, by virtue of the power residing in herself, has the right, in response to a divine call, to summon a council. The primitive Church had called synods, and James, not Peter, had presided at Jerusalem.

D’Ailly, in making definite announcement of his views at a synod, meeting at Aix, Jan. 1, 1409, had said that the Church’s unity depends upon the unity of her head, Christ. Christ’s mystical body gets its authority from its divine head to meet in a general council through representatives, for it is written, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."  The words are not "in Peter’s name," or "in Paul’s name," but "in my name."  And when the faithful assemble to secure the welfare of the Church, there Christ is in their midst.

Gerson wrote his most famous tract bearing on the schism and the Church’s right to remove a pope—De auferibilitate papae ab ecclesia — while the council of Pisa was in session.276  In this elaborate treatment he said that, in the strict sense, Christ is the Church’s only bridegroom. The marriage between the pope and the Church may be dissolved, for such a spiritual marriage is not a sacrament. The pope may choose to separate himself from the Church and resign. The Church has a similar right to separate itself from the pope by removing him. All Church officers are appointed for the Church’s welfare and, when the pope impedes its welfare, it may remove him. It is bound to defend itself. This it may do through a general council, meeting by general consent and without papal appointment. Such a council depends immediately upon Christ for its authority. The pope may be deposed for heresy or schism. He might be deposed even where he had no personal guilt, as in case he should be taken prisoner by the Saracens, and witnesses should testify he was dead. Another pope would then be chosen and, if the reports of the death of the former pope were proved false, and he be released from captivity, he or the other pope would have to be removed, for the Church cannot have more than one pontiff.

Immediately after Easter, Charles Malatesta appeared in the council to advocate Gregory’s cause. A commission, appointed by the cardinals, presented forty reasons to show that an agreement between the synod and the Roman pontiff was out of the question. Gregory must either appear at Pisa in person and abdicate, or present his resignation to a commission which the synod would appoint and send to Rimini.

Gregory’s case was also represented by the rival king of the Romans, Ruprecht,277 through a special embassy made up of the archbishop of Riga, the bishops of Worms and Verden, and other commissioners. It presented twenty-four reasons for denying the council’s jurisdiction. The paper was read by the bishop of Verden at the close of a sermon preached to the assembled councillors on the admirable text, "Peace be unto you." The most catching of the reasons was that, if the cardinals questioned the legitimacy of Gregory’s pontificate, what ground had they for not questioning the validity of their own authority, appointed as they had been by Gregory or Benedict.

In a document of thirty-eight articles, read April 24, the council presented detailed specifications against the two popes, charging them both with having made and broken solemn promises to resign.

The argument was conducted by Peter de Anchorano, professor of both laws in Bologna, and by others. Peter argued that, by fostering the schism, Gregory and his rival had forfeited jurisdiction, and the duty of calling a representative council of Christendom devolved on the college of cardinals. In certain cases the cardinals are left no option whether they shall act or not, as when a pope is insane or falls into heresy or refuses to summon a council at a time when orthodox doctrine is at stake. The temporal power has the right to expel a pope who acts illegally.

In an address on Hosea 1:11, "and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and shall appoint themselves one head," Peter Plaoul, of the University of Paris, clearly placed the council above the pope, an opinion which had the support of his own university as well as the support of the universities of Toulouse, Angers, and Orleans. The learned canonist, Zabarella, afterwards appointed cardinal, took the same ground.

The trial was carried on with all decorum and, at the end of two months, on June 5, sentence was pronounced, declaring both popes "notorious schismatics, promoters of schism, and notorious heretics, errant from the faith, and guilty of the notorious and enormous crimes of perjury and violated oaths."278

Deputies arriving from Perpignan a week later, June 14, were hooted by the council when the archbishop of Tarragona, one of their number, declared them to be "the representatives of the venerable pope, Benedict XIII."  Benedict had a short time before shown his defiance of the Pisan fathers by adding twelve members to his cabinet. When the deputies announced their intention of waiting upon Gregory, and asked for a letter of safe conduct, Balthazar Cossa, afterwards John XXIII., the master of Bologna, is said to have declared, "Whether they come with a letter or without it, he would burn them all if he could lay his hands upon them."

The rival popes being disposed of, it remained for the council to proceed to a new election, and it was agreed to leave the matter to the cardinals, who met in the archiepiscopal palace of Pisa, June 26, and chose the archbishop of Milan, Philargi, who took the name of Alexander V. He was about seventy, a member of the Franciscan order, and had received the red hat from Innocent VII. I. He was a Cretan by birth, and the first Greek to wear the tiara since John VII., in 706. He had never known his father or mother and, rescued from poverty by the Minorites, he was taken to Italy to be educated, and later sent to Oxford. After his election as pope, he is reported to have said, "as a bishop I was rich, as a cardinal poor, and as pope I am a beggar again."279

In the meantime Gregory’s side council at Cividale, near Aquileja, was running its course. There was scarcely an attendant at the first session. Later, Ruprecht and king Ladislaus were represented by deputies. The assumption of the body was out of all proportion to its size. It pronounced the pontiffs of the Roman line the legitimate rulers of Christendom, and appointed nuncios to all the kingdoms. However, not unmindful of his former professions, Gregory anew expressed his readiness to resign if his rivals, Peter of Luna and Peter of Candia (Crete), would do the same. Venice had declared for Alexander, and Gregory, obliged to flee in the disguise of a merchant, found refuge in the ships of Ladislaus.

Benedict’s council met in Perpignan six months before, November, 1408. One hundred and twenty prelates were in attendance, most of them from Spain. The council adjourned March 26, 1409, after appointing a delegation of seven to proceed to Pisa and negotiate for the healing of the schism.

After Alexander’s election, the members lost interest in the synod and began to withdraw from Pisa, and it was found impossible to keep the promise made by the cardinals that there should be no adjournment till measures had been taken to reform the Church "in head and members."  Commissions were appointed to consider reforms, and Alexander prorogued the body, Aug. 7, 1409, after appointing another council for April 12, 1412.280

At the opening of the Pisan synod there were two popes; at its close, three. Scotland and Spain still held to Benedict, and Naples and parts of Central Europe continued to acknowledge the obedience of Gregory. The greater part of Christendom, however, was bound to the support of Alexander. This pontiff lacked the strength needed for the emergency, and he aroused the opposition of the University of Paris by extending the rights of the Mendicant orders to hear confessions.281  He died at Bologna, May 3, 1410, without having entered the papal city. Rumor went that Balthazar Cossa, who was about to be elected his successor, had poison administered to him.

As a rule, modern Catholic historians are inclined to belittle the Pisan synod, and there is an almost general agreement among them that it lacked oecumenical character. Without pronouncing a final decision on the question, Bellarmin regarded Alexander V. as legitimate pope. Gerson and other great contemporaries treated it as oecumenical, as did also Bossuet and other Gallican historians two centuries later. Modern Catholic historians treat the claims of Gregory XII. as not affected by a council which was itself illegitimate and a high-handed revolt against canon law.282

But whether the name oecumenical be given or be withheld matters little, in view of the general judgment which the summons and sitting of the council call forth. It was a desperate measure adopted to suit an emergency, but it was also the product of a new freedom of ecclesiastical thought, and so far a good omen of a better age. The Pisan synod demonstrated that the Church remained virtually a unit in spite of the double pontifical administration. It branded by their right names the specious manoevres of Gregory and Peter de Luna. It brought together the foremost thinkers and literary interests of Europe and furnished a platform of free discussion. Not its least service was in preparing the way for the imposing council which convened in Constance five years later.

§ 16. The Council of Constance. 1414–1418.

At Alexander’s death, seventeen cardinals met in Bologna and elected Balthazar Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. He was of noble Neapolitan lineage, began his career as a soldier and perhaps as a corsair,283 was graduated in both laws at Bologna and was made cardinal by Boniface IX. He joined in the call of the council of Pisa. A man of ability, he was destitute of every moral virtue, and capable of every vice.

Leaning for support upon Louis of Anjou, John gained entrance to Rome. In the battle of Rocca Secca, May 14, 1411, Louis defeated the troops of Ladislaus. The captured battle-flags were sent to Rome, hung up in St. Peter’s, then torn down in the sight of the people, and dragged in the dust in the triumphant procession through the streets of the city, in which John participated. Ladislaus speedily recovered from his defeat, and John, with his usual faithlessness, made terms with Ladislaus, recognizing him as king, while Ladislaus, on his part, renounced his allegiance to Gregory XII. That pontiff was ordered to quit Neapolitan territory, and embarking in Venetian vessels at Gaeta, fled to Dalmatia, and finally took refuge with Charles Malatesta of Rimini, his last political ally.

The Council of Constance, the second of the Reformatory councils, was called together by the joint act of Pope John XXIII. and Sigismund, king of the Romans. It was not till he was reminded by the University of Paris that John paid heed to the action of the Council of Pisa and called a council to meet at Rome, April, 1412. Its sessions were scantily attended, and scarcely a trace of it is left.284  After ordering Wyclif’s writings burnt, it adjourned Feb. 10, 1413. John had strengthened the college of cardinals by adding fourteen to its number, among them men of the first rank, as D’Ailly, Zabarella of Florence, Robert Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, and Fillastre, dean of Rheims.

Ladislaus, weary of his treaty with John and ambitious to create a unified Latin kingdom, took Rome, 1413, giving the city over to sack. The king rode into the Lateran and looked down from his horse on the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, which he ordered the canons to display. The very churches were robbed, and soldiers and their courtesans drank wine out of the sacred chalices. Ladislaus left Rome, struck with a vicious disease, rumored to be due to poison administered by an apothecary’s daughter of Perugia, and died at Naples, August, 1414. He had been one of the most prominent figures in Europe for a quarter of a century and the chief supporter of the Roman line of pontiffs.

Driven from Rome, John was thrown into the hands of Sigismund, who was then in Lombardy. This prince, the grandson of the blind king, John, who was killed at Crécy, had come to the throne of Hungary through marriage with its heiress. At Ruprecht’s death he was elected king of the Romans, 1411. Circumstances and his own energy made him the most prominent sovereign of his age and the chief political figure in the Council of Constance. He lacked high aims and moral purpose, but had some taste for books, and spoke several languages besides his own native German. Many sovereigns have placed themselves above national statutes, but Sigismund went farther and, according to the story, placed himself above the rules of grammar. In his first address at the Council of Constance, so it is said, he treated the Latin word schisma, schism, as if it were feminine.285  When Priscian and other learned grammarians were quoted to him to show it was neuter, he replied, "Yes; but I am emperor and above them, and can make a new grammar."  The fact that Sigismund was not yet emperor when the mistake is said to have been made—for he was not crowned till 1433—seems to prejudice the authenticity of the story, but it is quite likely that he made mistakes in Latin and that the bon-mot was humorously invented with reference to it.

Pressed by the growing troubles in Bohemia over John Huss, Sigismund easily became an active participant in the measures looking towards a new council. Men distrusted John XXIII. The only hope of healing the schism seemed to rest with the future emperor. In many documents, and by John himself, he was addressed as "advocate and defender of the Church"286 — advocatus et defensor ecclesiae.287

Two of John’s cardinals met Sigismund at Como, Oct. 13, 1413, and discussed the time and place of the new synod. John preferred an Italian city, Sigismund the small Swabian town of Kempten; Strassburg, Basel, and other places were mentioned, but Constance, on German territory, was at last fixed upon. On Oct. 30 Sigismund announced the approaching council to all the prelates, princes, and doctors of Christendom, and on Dec. 9 John attached his seal to the call. Sigismund and John met at Lodi the last of November, 1413, and again at Cremona early in January, 1414, the pope being accompanied by thirteen cardinals. Thus the two great luminaries of this mundane sphere were again side by side.288  They ascended together the great Torazzo, close to the cathedral of Cremona, accompanied by the lord of the town, who afterwards regretted that he had not seized his opportunity and pitched them both down to the street. Not till the following August was a formal announcement of the impending council sent to the Kaufhaus

Gregory XII., who recognized Sigismund as king of the Romans.289  Gregory complained to Archbishop Andrew of Spalato, bearer of the notice, of the lateness of the invitation, and that he had not been consulted in regard to the council. Sigismund promised that, if Gregory should be deposed, he would see to it that he received a good life position.290

The council, which was appointed for Nov. 1, 1414, lasted nearly four years, and proved to be one of the most imposing gatherings which has ever convened in Western Europe. It was a veritable parliament of nations, a convention of the leading intellects of the age, who pressed together to give vent to the spirit of free discussion which the Avignon scandals and the schism had developed, and to debate the most urgent of questions, the reunion of Christendom under one undisputed head."291

Following the advice of his cardinals, John, who set his face reluctantly towards the North, reached Constance Oct. 28, 1414. The city then contained 5500 people, and the beauty of its location, its fields, and its vineyards, were praised by Nieheim and other contemporaries. They also spoke of the salubriousness of the air and the justice of the municipal laws for strangers. It seemed to be as a field which the Lord had blessed.292  As John approached Constance, coming by way of the Tirol, he is said to have exclaimed, "Ha, this is the place where foxes are trapped."  He entered the town in great style, accompanied by nine cardinals and sixteen hundred mounted horsemen. He rode a white horse, its back covered with a red rug. Its bridles were held by the count of Montferrat and an Orsini of Rome. The city council sent to the pope’s lodgings four large barrels of Elsass wine, eight of native wine, and other wines.293

The first day of November, John attended a solemn mass at the cathedral. The council met on the 5th, with fifteen cardinals present. The first public session was held Nov. 16. In all, forty-five public sessions were held, the usual hour of assembling being 7 in the morning. Gregory XII. was represented by two delegates, the titular patriarch of Constantinople and Cardinal John Dominici of Ragusa, a man of great sagacity and excellent spirit.

The convention did not get into full swing until the arrival of Sigismund on Christmas Eve, fresh from his coronation, which occurred at Aachen, Nov. 8, and accompanied by his queen, Barbara, and a brilliant suite. After warming themselves, the imperial party proceeded to the cathedral and, at cock-crowing Christmas morning, were received by the pope. Services were held lasting eight, or, according to another authority, eleven hours without interruption. Sigismund, wearing his crown and a dalmatic, exercised the functions of deacon and read the Gospel, and the pope conferred upon him a sword, bidding him use it to protect the Church.

Constance had become the most conspicuous locality in Europe. It attracted people of every rank, from the king to the beggar. A scene of the kind on so great a scale had never been witnessed in the West before. The reports of the number of strangers in the city vary from 50,000 to 100,000. Richental, the indefatigable Boswell of the council, himself a resident of Constance, gives an account of the arrival of every important personage, together with the number of his retainers. One-half of his Chronicle is a directory of names. He went from house to house, taking a census, and to the thousands he mentions by name, he adds 5000 who rode in and out of the town every day. He states that 80,000 witnessed the coronation of Martin V. The lodgings of the more distinguished personages were marked with their coats of arms. Bakers, beadles, grooms, scribes, goldsmiths, merchantmen of every sort, even to traffickers from the Orient, flocked together to serve the dukes and prelates and the learned university masters and doctors. There were in attendance on the council, 33 cardinals, 5 patriarchs, 47 archbishops, 145 bishops, 93 titular bishops, 217 doctors of theology, 361 doctors in both laws, 171 doctors of medicine, besides a great number of masters of arts from the 37 universities represented, 83 kings and princes represented by envoys, 38 dukes, 173 counts, 71 barons, more than 1500 knights, 142 writers of bulls, 1700 buglers, fiddlers, and players on other musical instruments. Seven hundred women of the street practised their trade openly or in rented houses, while the number of those who practised it secretly was a matter of conjecture.294  There were 36,000 beds for strangers. Five hundred are said to have been drowned in the lake during the progress of the council. Huss wrote, "This council is a scene of foulness, for it is a common saying among the Swiss that a generation will not suffice to cleanse Constance from the sins which the council has committed in this city."295

The English and Scotch delegation, which numbered less than a dozen persons, was accompanied by 700 or 800 mounted men, splendidly accoutred, and headed by fifers and other musicians, and made a great sensation by their entry into the city. The French delegation was marked by its university men and other men of learning.296

The streets and surroundings presented the spectacle of a merry fair. There were tournaments, dances, acrobatic shows, processions, musical displays. But in spite of the congestion, good order seems to have been maintained. By order of the city council, persons were forbidden to be out after curfew without a light. Chains were to be stretched across some of the streets, and all shouting at night was forbidden. It is said that during the council’s progress only two persons were punished for street brawls. A check was put upon extortionate rates by a strict tariff. The price of a white loaf was fixed at a penny, and a bed for two persons, with sheets and pillows, at a gulden and a half a month, the linen to be washed every two weeks. Fixed prices were put upon grains, meat, eggs, birds, and other articles of food.297  The bankers present were a great number, among them the young Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence.

Among the notables in attendance, the pope and Sigismund occupied the chief place. The most inordinate praise was heaped upon the king. He was compared to Daniel, who rescued Susanna, and to David. He was fond of pleasure, very popular with women, always in debt and calling for money, but a deadly foe of heretics, so that whenever he roared, it was said, the Wyclifites fled.298  There can be no doubt that to Sigismund were due the continuance and success of the council. His queen, Barbara, the daughter of a Styrian count, was tall and fair, but of questionable reputation, and her gallantries became the talk of the town.

The next most eminent persons were Cardinals D’Ailly, Zabarella, Fillastre, John of Ragusa, and Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, who died during the session of the council, and was buried in Constance, the bishop of Winchester, uncle to the English king, and John Gerson, the chief representative of the University of Paris. Zabarella was the most profound authority on civil and canon law in Europe, a professor at Bologna, and in 1410 made bishop of Florence. He died in the midst of the council’s proceedings, Sept. 26, 1417. Fillastre left behind him a valuable daily journal of the council’s proceedings. D’Ailly had been for some time one of the most prominent figures in Europe. Hallum is frequently mentioned in the proceedings of the council. Among the most powerful agencies at work in the assemblies were the tracts thrown off at the time, especially those of Diedrich of Nieheim, one of the most influential pamphleteers of the later Middle Ages.299

The subjects which the council was called together to discuss were the reunion of the Church under one pope, and Church reforms.300  The action against heresy, including the condemnation of John Huss and Jerome of Prag, is also conspicuous among the proceedings of the council, though not treated by contemporaries as a distinct subject. From the start, John lost support. A sensation was made by a tract, the work of an Italian, describing John’s vices both as man and pope. John of Ragusa and Fillastre recommended the resignation of all three papal claimants, and this idea became more and more popular, and was, after some delay, adopted by Sigismund, and was trenchantly advocated by Nieheim, in his tract on the Necessity of a Reformation in the Church.

From the very beginning great plainness of speech was used, so that John had good reason to be concerned for the tenure of his office. December 7, 1414, the cardinals passed propositions binding him to a faithful performance of his papal duties and abstinence from simony. D’Ailly wrote against the infallibility of councils, and thus furnished the ground for setting aside the papal election at Pisa.

From November to January, 1415, a general disposition was manifested to avoid taking the initiative—the noli me tangere policy, as it was called.301  The ferment of thought and discussion became more and more active, until the first notable principle was laid down early in February, 1415, namely, the rule requiring the vote to be by nations. The purpose was to overcome the vote of the eighty Italian bishops and doctors who were committed to John’s cause. The action was taken in the face of John’s opposition, and followed the precedent set by the University of Paris in the government of its affairs. By this rule, which no council before or since has followed, except the little Council of Siena, 1423, England, France, Italy, and Germany had each a single vote in the affairs of the council. In 1417, when Aragon, Castile, and Scotland gave in their submission to the council, a fifth vote was accorded to Spain. England had the smallest representation. In the German nation were included Scandinavia, Poland, and Hungary. The request of the cardinals to have accorded to them a distinct vote as a body was denied. They met with the several nations to which they belonged, and were limited to the same rights enjoyed by other individuals. This rule seems to have been pressed from the first with great energy by the English, led by Robert of Salisbury. Strange to say, there is no record that this mode of voting was adopted by any formal conciliar decree.302

The nations met each under its own president in separate places, the English and Germans sitting in different rooms in the convent of the Grey Friars. The vote of the majority of the nations carried in the public sessions of the council. The right to vote in the nations was extended so as to include the doctors of both kinds and princes. D’Ailly advocated this course, and Fillastre argued in favor of including rectors and even clergymen of the lowest rank. Why, reasoned D’Ailly, should a titular bishop have an equal voice with a bishop ruling over an extensive see, say the archbishopric of Mainz, and why should a doctor be denied all right to vote who has given up his time and thought to the questions under discussion?  And why, argued Fillastre, should an abbot, having control over only ten monks, have a vote, when a rector with a care of a thousand or ten thousand souls is excluded?  An ignorant king or prelate he called a "crowned ass."  Doctors were on hand for the very purpose of clearing up ignorance.

When the Italian tract appeared, which teemed with charges against John, matters were brought to a crisis. Then it became evident that the scheme calling for the removal of all three popes would go through, and John, to avoid a worse fate, agreed to resign, making the condition that Gregory XII. and Benedict should also resign. The formal announcement, which was read at the second session, March 2, 1415, ran: "I, John XXIII., pope, promise, agree, and obligate myself, vow and swear before God, the Church, and this holy council, of my own free will and spontaneously, to give peace to the Church by abdication, provided the pretenders, Benedict and Gregory, do the same."303  At the words "vow and swear," John rose from his seat and knelt down at the altar, remaining on his knees till he finished the reading. The reading being over, Sigismund removed his crown, bent before John, and kissed his feet. Five days after, John issued a bull confirming his oath.

Constance was wild with joy. The bells rang out the glad news. In the cathedral, joy expressed itself in tears. The spontaneity of John’s self-deposition may be questioned, in view of the feeling which prevailed among the councillors and the report that he had made an offer to cede the papacy for 30,000 gulden.304

A most annoying, though ridiculous, turn was now given to affairs by John’s flight from Constance, March 20. Rumors had been whispered about that he was contemplating such a move. He talked of transferring the council to Rizza, and complained of the unhealthiness of the air of Constance. He, however, made the solemn declaration that he would not leave the town before the dissolution of the council. To be on the safe side, Sigismund gave orders for the gates to be kept closed and the lake watched. But John had practised dark arts before, and, unmindful of his oath, escaped at high noon on a "little horse," in the disguise of a groom, wrapped in a gray cloak, wearing a gray cap, and having a crossbow tied to his saddle.305  The flight was made while the gay festivities of a tournament, instituted by Frederick, duke of Austria, were going on, and with two attendants. The pope continued his course without rest till he reached Schaffhausen. This place belonged to the duke, who was in the secret, and on whom John had conferred the office of commander of the papal troops, with a yearly grant of 6000 gulden. John’s act was an act of desperation. He wrote back to the council, giving as the reason of his flight that he had been in fear of Sigismund, and that his freedom of action had been restricted by the king.306

So great was the panic produced by the pope’s flight that the council would probably have been brought to a sudden close by a general scattering of its members, had it not been for Sigismund’s prompt action. Cardinals and envoys despatched by the king and council made haste to stop the fleeing pope, who continued on to Laufenburg, Freiburg, and Breisach. John wrote to Sigismund, expressing his regard for him, but with the same pen he was addressing communications to the University of Paris and the duke of Orleans, seeking to awaken sympathy for his cause by playing upon the national feelings of the French. He attempted to make it appear that the French delegation had been disparaged when the council proceeded to business before the arrival of the twenty-two deputies of the University. France and Italy, with two hundred prelates, had each only a single vote, while England, with only three prelates, had a vote. God, he affirmed, dealt with individuals and not with nations. He also raised the objection that married laymen had votes at the side of prelates, and John Huss had not been put on trial, though he had been condemned by the University of Paris.

To the envoys who found John at Breisach, April 23, he gave his promise to return with them to Constance the next morning; but with his usual duplicity, he attempted to escape during the night, and was let down from the castle by a ladder, disguised as a peasant. He was soon seized, and ultimately handed over by Sigismund to Louis III., of the Palatinate, for safe-keeping.

In the meantime the council forbade any of the delegates to leave Constance before the end of the proceedings, on pain of excommunication and the loss of dignities. Its fourth and fifth sessions, beginning April 6, 1415, mark an epoch in the history of ecclesiastical statement. The council declared that, being assembled legitimately in the Holy Spirit, it was an oecumenical council and representing the whole Church, had its authority immediately from Christ, and that to it the pope and persons of every grade owed obedience in things pertaining to the faith and to the reformation of the Church in head and members. It was superior to all other ecclesiastical tribunals.307  This declaration, stated with more precision than the one of Pisa, meant a vast departure from the papal theory of Innocent III. and Boniface VIII.

Gerson, urging this position in his sermon before the council, March 23, 1415, said308 the gates of hell had prevailed against popes, but not against the Church. Joseph was set to guard his master’s wife, not to debauch her, and when the pope turned aside from his duty, the Church had authority to punish him. A council has the right by reason of the vivifying power of the Holy Spirit to prolong itself, and may, under certain conditions, assemble without call of pope or his consent.

The conciliar declarations reaffirmed the principle laid down by Nieheim on the eve of the council in the tract entitled the Union of the Church and its Reformation, and by other writers.309  The Church, Nieheim affirmed, whose head is Christ, cannot err, but the Church as a commonwealth,—respublica,—controlled by pope and hierarchy, may err. And as a prince who does not seek the good of his subjects may be deposed, so may the pope, who is called to preside over the whole Church .... The pope is born of man, born in sin—clay of clay—limus de limo. A few days ago the son of a rustic, and now raised to the papal throne, he is not become an impeccable angel. It is not his office that makes him holy, but the grace of God. He is not infallible; and as Christ, who was without sin, was subject to a tribunal, 80 is the pope. It is absurd to say that a mere man has power in heaven and on earth to bind and loose from sin. For he may be a simoniac, a liar, a fornicator, proud, and worse than the devil—pejor quam diabolus. As for a council, the pope is under obligation to submit to it and, if necessary, to resign for the common good—utilitatem communem. A general council may be called by the prelates and temporal rulers, and is superior to the pope. It may elect, limit, and depose a pope—and from its decision there is no appeal—potest papam eligere, privare et deponere. A tali concilio nullus potest appellare. Its canons are immutable, except as they may be set aside by another oecumenical council.

These views were revolutionary, and show that Marsiglius of Padua, and other tractarians of the fourteenth century, had not spoken in vain.

Having affirmed its superiority over the pope, the council proceeded to try John XXIII. on seventy charges, which included almost every crime known to man. He had been unchaste from his youth, had been given to lying, was disobedient to his parents. He was guilty of simony, bought his way to the cardinalate, sold the same benefices over and over again, sold them to children, disposed of the head of John the Baptist, belonging to the nuns of St. Sylvester, Rome, to Florence, for 50,000 ducats, made merchandise of spurious bulls, committed adultery with his brother’s wife, violated nuns and other virgins, was guilty of sodomy and other nameless vices.310  As for doctrine, he had often denied the future life.

When John received the notice of his deposition, which was pronounced May 29, 1415, he removed the papal cross from his room and declared he regretted ever having been elected pope. He was taken to Gottlieben, a castle belonging to the bishop of Constance, and then removed to the castle at Heidelberg, where two chaplains and two nobles were assigned to serve him. From Heidelberg the count Palatine transferred him to Mannheim, and finally released him on the payment of 30,000 gulden. John submitted to his successor, Martin V., and in 1419 was appointed cardinal bishop of Tusculum, but survived the appointment only six months. John’s accomplice, Frederick of Austria, was deprived of his lands, and was known as Frederick of the empty purse—Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche. A splendid monument was erected to John in the baptistery in Florence by Cosimo de’ Medici, who had managed the pope’s money affairs.

While John’s case was being decided, the trial of John Huss was under way. The proceedings and the tragedy of Huss’ death are related in another place.

John XXIII. was out of the way. Two popes remained, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., who were facetiously called in tracts and addresses Errorius, a play on Gregory’s patronymic, Angelo Correr,311 and Maledictus. Gregory promptly resigned, thus respecting his promise made to the council to resign, provided John and Benedict should be set aside. He also had promised to recognize the council, provided the emperor should preside. The resignation was announced at the fourteenth session, July 4, 1415, by Charles Malatesta and John of Ragusa, representing the Roman pontiff. Gregory’s bull, dated May 15, 1414, which was publicly read, "convoked and authorized the general council so far as Balthazar Cossa, John XXIII., is not present and does not preside."  The words of resignation ran, "I resign, in the name of the Lord, the papacy, and all its rights and title and all the privileges conferred upon it by the Lord Jesus Christ in this sacred synod and universal council representing the holy Roman and universal Church."312  Gregory’s cardinals now took their seats, and Gregory himself was appointed cardinal-bishop of Porto and papal legate of Ancona. He died at Recanati, near Ancona, Oct. 18, 1417. Much condemnation as Angelo Correr deserves for having temporized about renouncing the papacy, posterity has not withheld from him respect for his honorable dealing at the close of his career. The high standing of his cardinal, John of Ragusa, did much to make men forget Gregory’s faults.

Peter de Luna was of a different mind. Every effort was made to bring him into accord with the mind of the councilmen in the Swiss city, but in vain. In order to bring all the influence possible to bear upon him, Sigismund, at the council’s instance, started on the journey to see the last of the Avignon popes face to face. The council, at its sixteenth session, July 11, 1415, appointed doctors to accompany the king, and eight days afterwards he broke away from Constance, accompanied by a troop of 4000 men on horse.

Sigismund and Benedict met at Narbonne, Aug. 15, and at Perpignan, the negotiations lasting till December. The decree of deposition pronounced at Pisa, and France’s withdrawal of allegiance, had not broken the spirit of the old man. His dogged tenacity was worthy of a better cause.313  Among the propositions the pope had the temerity to make was that he would resign provided that he, as the only surviving cardinal from the times before the schism, should have liberty to follow his abdication by himself electing the new pontiff. Who knows but that one who was 80 thoroughly assured of his own infallibility would have chosen himself. Benedict persisted in calling the Council of Constance the "congregation," or assembly. On Nov. 14 he fled to Peñiscola, a rocky promontory near Valencia, again condemned the Swiss synod, and summoned a legitimate one to meet in his isolated Spanish retreat. His own cardinals were weary of the conflict, and Dec. 13, 1415, declared him deposed. His long-time supporter, Vincent Ferrer, called him a perjurer. The following month the kingdom of Aragon, which had been Benedict’s chief support, withdrew from his obedience and was followed by Castile and Scotland.

Peter de Luna was now as thoroughly isolated as any mortal could well be. The council demanded his unconditional abdication, and was strengthened by the admission of his old supporters, the Spanish delegates. At the thirty-seventh session, 1417, he was deposed. By Sigismund’s command the decision was announced on the streets of Constance by trumpeters. But the indomitable Spaniard continued to defy the synod’s sentence till his death, nine years later, and from the lonely citadel of Peñiscola to sit as sovereign of Christendom. Cardinal Hergenröther concludes his description of these events by saying that Benedict "was a pope without a church and a shepherd without sheep. This very fact proves the emptiness of his claims."  Benedict died, 1423,314 leaving behind him four cardinals. Three of these elected the canon, Gil Sauduz de Munoz of Barcelona, who took the name of Clement VIII. Five years later Gil resigned, and was appointed by Martin V. bishop of Majorca, on which island he was a pope with insular jurisdiction.315  The fourth cardinal, Jean Carrier, elected himself pope, and took the name of Benedict XIV. He died in prison, 1433.

It remained for the council to terminate the schism of years by electing a new pontiff and to proceed to the discussions of Church reforms. At the fortieth session, Oct. 30, 1417, it was decided to postpone the second item until after the election of the new pope. In fixing this order of business, the cardinals had a large influence. There was a time in the history of the council when they were disparaged. Tracts were written against them, and the king at one time, so it was rumored, proposed to seize them all.316  But that time was past; they had kept united, and their influence had steadily grown.

The papal vacancy was filled, Nov. 11, 1417, by the election of Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. The election was consummated in the Kaufhaus, the central commercial building of Constance, which is still standing. Fifty-three electors participated, 6 deputies from each of the 5 nations, and 23 cardinals. The building was walled up with boards and divided into cells for the electors. Entrance was had by a single door, and the three keys were given, one to the king, one to the chapter of Constance, and one to the council. When it became apparent that an election was likely to be greatly delayed, the Germans determined to join the Italians in voting for an Italian to avoid suspicion that advantage was taken of the synod’s location on German soil. The Germans then secured the co-operation of the English, and finally the French and Spaniards also yielded.317  The pope-elect was thus the creature of the council.

The Western Church was again unified under one head. But for the deep-seated conviction of centuries, the office of the universal papacy would scarcely have survived the strain of the schism.318  Oddo Colonna, the only member of his distinguished house who has worn the tiara, was a subdeacon at the time of his election. Even more hastily than Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, was he rushed through the ordination of deacon, Nov. 12, of priest, Nov. 13, and bishop, Nov. 14. He was consecrated pope a week later, Nov. 21, Sigismund kissing his toe. In the procession, the bridles of Martin’s horse were held by Sigismund and Frederick the Hohenzollern, lately created margrave of Brandenburg. The margrave had paid Sigismund 250,000 marks as the price of his elevation, a sum which the king used to defray the expenses of his visit to Benedict.

Martin at once assumed the presidency of the council which since John’s flight had been filled by Cardinal Viviers. Measures of reform were now the order of the day and some headway was made. The papal right of granting indulgences was curtailed. The college of cardinals was limited to 24, with the stipulation that the different parts of the church should have a proportionate representation, that no monastic order should have more than a single member in the college, and that no cardinal’s brother or nephew should be raised to the curia so long as the cardinal was living. Schedules and programmes enough were made, but the question of reform involved abuses of such long standing and so deeply intrenched that it was found impossible to reconcile the differences of opinion prevailing in the council and bring it to promptness of action. After sitting for more than three years, the delegates were impatient to get away.

As a substitute for further legislation, the so-called concordats were arranged. These agreements were intended to regulate the relations of the papacy and the nations one with the other. There were four of these distinct compacts, one with the French, and one with the German nations, each to be valid for five years, one with the English to be perpetual, dated July 21, 1418, and one with the Spanish nation, dated May 13, 1418.319  These concordats set forth rules for the appointment of the cardinals and the restriction of their number, limited the right of papal reservations and the collection of annates and direct taxes, determined what causes might be appealed to Rome, and took up other questions. They were the foundation of the system of secret or open treaties by which the papacy has since regulated its relations with the nations of Europe. Gregory VII. was the first pope to extend the system of papal legates, but he and his successors had dealt with nations on the arbitrary principle of papal supremacy and infallibility.

The action of the Council of Constance lifted the state to some measure of equality with the papacy in the administration of Church affairs. It remained for Louis XIV., 16431715, to assert more fully the Gallican theory of the authority of the state to manage the affairs of the Church within its territory, so far as matters of doctrine were not touched. The first decisive step in the assertion of Gallican liberties was the synodal action of 1407, when France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict XIII. By this action the chapters were to elect their own bishops, and the pope was restrained from levying taxes on their sees. Then followed the compact of the Council of Constance, the Pragmatic Sanction adopted at Bourges, 1438, and the concordat agreed upon between Francis I. and Leo X. at the time of the Reformation. In 1682 the French prelates adopted four propositions, restricting the pope’s authority to spirituals, a power which is limited by the decision of the Council of Constance, and by the precedents of the Gallican Church, and declaring that even in matters of faith the pope is not infallible. Although Louis, who gave his authority to these articles, afterwards revoked them, they remain a platform of Gallicanism as against the ultramontane theory of the infallibility and supreme authority of the pope, and may furnish in the future the basis of a settlement of the papal question in the Catholic communion.320

In the deliverance known as Frequens, passed Oct. 9, 1417, the council decreed that a general council should meet in five years, then in seven years, and thereafter perpetually every ten years.321  This action was prompted by Martin in the bull Frequens, Oct. 9, 1417. On completing its forty-fifth session it was adjourned by Martin, April 22, 1418. The Basel-Ferrara and the Tridentine councils sat a longer time, as did also the Protestant Westminster Assembly, 1643–1648. Before breaking away from Constance, the pope granted Sigismund a tenth for one year to reimburse him for the expense he had been to on account of the synod.

The Council of Constance was the most important synod of the Middle Ages, and more fairly represented the sentiments of Western Christendom than any other council which has ever sat. It furnished an arena of free debate upon interests whose importance was felt by all the nations of Western Europe, and which united them. It was not restricted by a programme prepared by a pope, as the Vatican council of 1870 was. It had freedom and exercised it. While the dogma of transubstantiation enacted by the 4th Lateran, 1215, and the dogma of papal infallibility passed by the Vatican council injected elements of permanent division into the Church, the Council of Constance unified Latin Christendom and ended the schism which had been a cause of scandal for forty years. The validity of its decree putting an oecumenical council above the pope, after being disputed for centuries, was officially set aside by the conciliar vote of 1870. For Protestants the decision at Constance is an onward step towards a right definition of the final seat of religious authority. It remained for Luther, forced to the wall by Eck at Leipzig, and on the ground of the error committed by the Council of Constance, in condemning the godly man, John Huss, to deny the infallibility of councils and to place the seat of infallible authority in the Scriptures, as interpreted by conscience.

Note on the Oecumenical Character of the Council of Constance.

Modern Roman Catholic historians deny the oecumenical character and authority of the Council of Constance, except its four last, 42d-45th sessions, which were presided over by Pope Martin V., or at least all of it till the moment of Gregory XII.’s bull giving to the council his approval, that is, after John had fled and ceased to preside. Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 862, says that before Gregory’s authorization the council was without a head, did not represent the Roman Church, and sat against the will of the cardinals, by whom he meant Gregory’s cardinals. Salembier, p. 317, says, Il n’est devenu oecuménique qu’après la trente-cinquième session, lorsque Grégoire III. eut donné sa démission, etc. Pastor, I. 198 sq., warmly advocates the same view, and declares that when the council in its 4th and 6th sessions announced its superiority over the pope, it was not yet an oecumenical gathering. This dogma, he says, was intended to set up a new principle which revolutionized the old Catholic doctrine of the Church. Philip Hergenröther, in Katholisches Kirchenrecht, p. 344 sq., expresses the same judgment. The council was not a legitimate council till after Gregory’s resignation.

The wisdom of the council in securing the resignation of Gregory and deposing John and Benedict is not questioned. The validity of its act in electing Martin V., though the papal regulation limiting the right of voting to the cardinals was set aside, is also acknowledged on the ground that the council at the time of Martin’s election was sitting by Gregory’s sanction, and Gregory was true pope until he abdicated.

A serious objection to the view, setting aside this action of the 4th and 5th sessions, is offered by the formal statement made by Martin V. At the final meeting of the council and after its adjournment had been pronounced, a tumultuous discussion was precipitated over the tract concerning the affairs of Poland and Lithuania by the Dominican, Falkenberg, which was written in defence of the Teutonic Knights, and justified the killing of the Polish king and all his subjects. It had been the subject of discussion in the nations, and its heresies were declared to be so glaring that, if they remained uncondemned by the council, that body would go down to posterity as defective in its testimony for orthodoxy. It was during the tumultuous debate, and after Martin had adjourned the council, that he uttered the words which, on their face, sanction whatever was done in council in a conciliar way. Putting an end to the tumult, he announced he would maintain all the decrees passed by the council in matters of faith in a conciliar way—omnia et singula determinata et conclusa et decreta in materiis fidei per praesens sacrum concilium generale Constantiense conciliariter tenere et inviolabiliter observare volebat et nunquam contravenire quoquomodo.  Moreover, he announced that he sanctioned and ratified acts made in a "conciliar way and not made otherwise or in any other way."  Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat papa et ratificat et non aliter nec alio modo. Funk, Martin V. und das Konzil zu Konstanz in Abhandlungen, I. 489 sqq., Hefele, Conciliengesch., I. 62, and Küpper, in Wetzer-Welte, VII. 1004 sqq., restrict the application of these words to the Falkenberg incident. Funk, however, by a narrow interpretation of the words "in matter of faith," excludes the acts of the 4th and 6th sessions from the pope’s approval. Döllinger (p. 464), contends that the expression conciliariter, "in a conciliar way," is opposed to nationaliter, "in the nations."  The expression is to be taken in its simple meaning, and refers to what was done by the council as a council.

The only other statement made by Martin bearing upon the question occurs in his bull Frequens, of Feb. 22, 1418, in which he recognized the council as oecumenical, and declared its decrees binding which pertained to faith and the salvation of souls—quod sacrum concilium Constant., universalem ecclesiam representans approbavit et approbat in favorem fidei et salutem animarum, quod hoc est ab universis Christi fidelibus approbandum et tenendum. Hefele and Funk show that this declaration was not meant to exclude matters which were not of faith, for Martin expressly approved other matters, such as those passed upon in the 39th session. There is no record that Martin at any time said anything to throw light upon his meaning in these two utterances.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, as Raynaldus, an. 1418, shows, the view came to expression that Martin expressly intended to except the action of the 4th and 6th sessions from his papal approval.

Martin V.’s successor, Eugenius IV., in 1446, thirty years after the synod, asserted that its decrees were to be accepted so far as they did not prejudice the law, dignity, and pre-eminence of the Apostolic See — absque tamen praejudicio juris et dignitatis et praeeminentiae Apost. sedis. The papacy had at that time recovered its prestige, and the supreme pontiff felt himself strong enough to openly reassert the superiority of the Apostolic See over oecumenical councils. But before that time, in a bull issued Dec. 13, 1443, he formally accepted the acts of the Council of Basel, the most explicit of which was the reaffirmation of the acts of the Council of Constance in its 4th and 5th sessions.

It occurs to a Protestant that the Council of Constance would hardly have elected Oddo Colonna pope if he had been suspected of being opposed to the council’s action concerning its own superiority. The council would have stultified itself in appointing a man to undo what it had solemnly done. And for him to have denied its authority would have been, as Döllinger says (p. 159), like a son denying his parentage. The emphasis which recent Catholic historians lay upon Gregory’s authorization of the synod as giving it for the first time an oecumenical character is an easy way out of the difficulty, and this view forces the recognition of the Roman line of popes as the legitimate successors of St. Peter during the years of the schism.

§ 17. The council of Basel. 1431–1449.

Martin V. proved himself to be a capable and judicious ruler, with courage enough when the exigency arose. He left Constance May 16, 1418. Sigismund, who took his departure the following week, offered him as his papal residence Basel, Strassburg, or Frankfurt. France pressed the claims of Avignon, but a Colonna could think of no other city than Rome, and proceeding by the way of Bern, Geneva, Mantua, and Florence, he entered the Eternal city Sept. 28, 1420.322  The delay was due to the struggle being carried on for its possession by the forces of Joanna of Naples under Sforza, and the bold chieftain Braccio.323  Martin secured the withdrawal of Joanna’s claims by recognizing that princess as queen of Naples, and pacified by investing him with Assisi, Perugia, Jesi, and Todi.

Rome was in a desolate condition when Martin reached it, the prey of robbers, its streets filled with refuse and stagnant water, its bridges decayed, and many of its churches without roofs. Cattle and sheep were herded in the spaces of St. Paul’s. Wolves attacked the inhabitants within the walls.324  With Martin’s arrival a new era was opened. This pope rid the city of robbers, so that persons carrying gold might go with safety even beyond the walls. He restored the Lateran, and had it floored with a new pavement. He repaired the porch of St. Peter’s, and provided it with a new roof at a cost of 50,000 gold gulden. Revolutions within the city ceased. Martin deserves to be honored as one of Rome’s leading benefactors. His pontificate was an era of peace after years of constant strife and bloodshed due to factions within the walls and invaders from without. With him its mediaeval history closes, and an age of restoration and progress begins. The inscription on Martin’s tomb in the Lateran, "the Felicity of his Times,"—temporum suorum felicitas,—expresses the debt Rome owes to him.

Among the signs of Martin’s interest in religion was his order securing the transfer to Rome of some of the bones of Monica, the mother of Augustine, and his bull canonizing her. On their reception, Martin made a public address in which he said, "Since we possess St. Augustine, what do we care for the shrewdness of Aristotle, the eloquence of Plato, the reputation of Pythagoras?  These men we do not need. Augustine is enough. If we want to know the truth, learning, and religion, where shall we find one more wise, learned, and holy than St. Augustine?"

As for the promises of Church reforms made at Constance, Martin paid no attention to them, and the explanation made by Pastor, that his time was occupied with the government of Rome and the improvement of the city, is not sufficient to exculpate him. The old abuses in the disposition and sale of offices continued. The pope had no intention of yielding up the monarchical claims of the papal office. Nor did he forget his relatives. One brother, Giordano, was made duke of and another, Lorenzo, count of Alba. One of his nephews, Prospero, he invested with the purple, 1426. He also secured large tracts of territory for his house.325

The council, appointed by Martin at Constance to meet in Pavia, convened April, 1423, was sparsely attended, adjourned on account of the plague to Siena, and, after condemning the errors of Wyclif and Huss, was dissolved March 7, 1424. Martin and his successors feared councils, and it was their policy to prevent, if possible, their assembling, by all sorts of excuses and delays. Why should the pope place himself in a position to hear instructions and receive commands?  However, Martin could not be altogether deaf to the demands of Christendom, or unmindful of his pledge given at Constance. Placards were posted up in Rome threatening him if he summoned a council. Under constraint and not of free will, he appointed the second council, which was to meet in seven years at Basel, 1481, but he died the same year, before the time set for its assembling.

Eugenius IV., the next occupant of the papal throne, 1431–1447, a Venetian, had been made bishop of Siena by his maternal uncle, Gregory XII., at the age of twenty-four, and soon afterwards was elevated to the curia. His pontificate was chiefly occupied with the attempt to assert the supremacy of the papacy against the conciliar theory. It also witnessed the most notable effort ever made for the union of the Greeks with the Western Church.

By an agreement signed in the conclave which elevated Eugenius, the cardinals promised that the successful candidate should advance the interests of the impending general council, follow the decrees of the Council of Constance in appointing cardinals, consult the sacred college in matters of papal administration, and introduce Church reforms. Such a compact had been signed by the conclave which elected Innocent VI., 1352, and similar compacts by almost every conclave after Eugenius down to the Reformation, but all with no result, for, as soon as the election was consummated, the pope set the agreement aside and pursued his own course.

On the day set for the opening of the council in Basel, March 7, 1431, only a single prelate was present, the abbot of Vezelay. The formal opening occurred July 23, but Cardinal Cesarini, who had been appointed by Martin and Eugenius to preside, did not appear till Sept. 9. He was detained by his duties as papal legate to settle the Hussite insurrection in Bohemia. Sigismund sent Duke William of Bavaria as protector, and the attendance speedily grew. The number of doctors present was larger in comparison to the number of prelates than at Constance. A member of the council said that out of 500 members he scarcely saw 20 bishops. The rest belonged to the lower orders of the clergy, or were laymen. "Of old, bishops had settled the affairs of the Church, but now the common herd does it."326  The most interesting personage in the convention was Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who came to Basel as Cardinal Capranica’s secretary. He sat on some of its important commissions.

The tasks set before the council were the completion of the work of Constance in instituting reforms,327 and a peaceful settlement of the Bohemian heresy. Admirable as its effort was in both directions, it failed of papal favor, and the synod was turned into a constitutional battle over papal absolutism and conciliar supremacy. This battle was fought with the pen as well as in debate. Nicolas of Cusa, representing the scholastic element, advocated, in 1433, the supremacy of councils in his Concordantia catholica. The Dominican, John of Turrecremata, took the opposite view, and defended the doctrine of papal infallibility in his Summa de ecclesia et ejus auctoritate. For years the latter writing was the classical authority for the papal pretension.

The business was performed not by nations but by four committees, each composed of an equal number of representatives from the four nations and elected for a month. When they agreed on any subject, it was brought before the council in public session.

It soon became evident that the synod acknowledged no earthly authority above itself, and was in no mood to hear the contrary principle defended. On the other hand, Eugenius was not ready to tolerate free discussion and the synod’s self-assertion, and took the unfortunate step of proroguing the synod to Bologna, making the announcement at a meeting of the cardinals, Dec. 18, 1431. The bull was made public at Basel four weeks later, and made an intense sensation. The synod was quick to give its answer, and decided to continue its sittings. This was revolution, but the synod had the nations and public opinion back of it, as well as the decrees of the Council of Constance. It insisted upon the personal presence of Eugenius, and on Feb. 15, 1432, declared for its own sovereignty and that a general council might not be prorogued or transferred by a pope without its own consent.

In the meantime Sigismund had received the iron crown at Milan, Nov. 25, 1431. He was at this period a strong supporter of the council’s claims. A French synod, meeting at Bourges early in 1432, gave its sanction to them, and the University of Paris wrote that Eugenius’ decree transferring the council was a suggestion of the devil. Becoming more bold, the council, at its third session, April 29, 1432, called upon the pope to revoke his bull and be present in person. At its fourth session, June 20, it decreed that, in case the papal office became vacant, the election to fill the vacancy should be held in Basel and that, so long as Eugenius remained away from Basel, he should be denied the right to create any more cardinals. The council went still farther, proceeded to arraign the pope for contumacy, and on Dec. 18 gave him 60 days in which to appear, on pain of having formal proceedings instituted against him.

Sigismund, who was crowned emperor in Rome the following Spring, May 31, 1433, was not prepared for such drastic action. He was back again in Basel in October, but, with the emperor present or absent, the council continued on its course, and repeatedly reaffirmed its superior authority, quoting the declarations of the Council of Constance at its fourth and fifth sessions. The voice of Western Christendom was against Eugenius, as were the most of his cardinals. Under the stress of this opposition, and pressed by the revolution threatening his authority in Rome, the pope gave way, and in the decree of Dec. 13, 1433, revoked his three bulls, beginning with Dec. 18, 1431, which adjourned the synod. He asserted he had acted with the advice of the cardinals, but now pronounced and declared the "General Council of Bagel legitimate from the time of its opening."  Any utterance or act prejudicial to the holy synod or derogatory to its authority, which had proceeded from him, he revoked, annulled, and pronounced utterly void.328  At the same time the pope appointed legates to preside, and they were received by the synod. They swore in their own names to accept and defend its decrees.

No revocation of a former decree could have been made more explicit. The Latin vocabulary was strained for words. Catholic historians refrain from making an argument against the plain meaning of the bull, which is fatal to the dogma of papal inerrancy and acknowledges the superiority of general councils. At best they pass the decree with as little comment as possible, or content themselves with the assertion that Eugenius had no idea of confirming the synod’s reaffirmation of the famous decrees of Constance, or with the suggestion that the pope was under duress when he issued the document.329  Both assumptions are without warrant. The pope made no exception whatever when he confirmed the acts of the synod "from its opening."  As for the explanation that the decree was forced, it needs only to be said that the revolt made against the pope in Rome, May, 1434, in which the Colonna took a prominent part, had not yet broken out, and there was no compulsion except that which comes from the judgment that one’s case has failed. Cesarini, Nicolas of Cusa, Aeneas Sylvius, John, patriarch of Antioch, and the other prominent personages at Basel, favored the theory of the supreme authority of councils, and they and the synod would have resented the papal deliverance if they had surmised its utterances meant something different from what they expressly stated. Döllinger concludes his treatment of the subject by saying that Eugenius’ bull was the most positive and unequivocal recognition possible of the sovereignty of the council, and that the pope was subject to it.

Eugenius was the last pope, with the exception of Pius IX., who has had to flee from Rome. Twenty-five popes had been obliged to escape from the city before him. Disguised in the garb of a Benedictine monk, and carried part of the way on the shoulders of a sailor, he reached a boat on the Tiber, but was recognized and pelted with a shower of stones, from which he escaped by lying flat in the boat, covered with a shield. Reaching Ostia, he took a galley to Livorno. From there he went to Florence. He remained in exile from 1434 to 1443.

In its efforts to pacify the Hussites, the synod granted them the use of the cup, and made other concessions. The causes of their opposition to the Church had been expressed in the four articles of Prag. The synod introduced an altogether new method of dealing with heretics in guaranteeing to the Hussites and their representatives full rights of discussion. Having settled the question of its own authority, the synod took up measures to reform the Church "in head and members."  The number of the cardinals was restricted to 24, and proper qualifications insisted upon, a measure sufficiently needed, as Eugenius had given the red hat to two of his nephews. Annates, payments for the pallium, the sale of church dignities, and other taxes which the Apostolic See had developed, were abolished. The right of appeal to Rome was curtailed. Measures of another nature were the reaffirmation of the law of priestly celibacy,330 and the prohibition of theatricals and other entertainments in church buildings and churchyards. In 1439 the synod issued a decree on the immaculate conception, by which Mary was declared to have always been free from original and actual sin.331  The interference with the papal revenues affecting the entire papal household was, in a measure, atoned for by the promise to provide other sources. From the monarchical head of the Church, directly appointed by God, and responsible to no human tribunal, the supreme pontiff was reduced to an official of the council. Another class of measures sought to clear Basel of the offences attending a large and promiscuous gathering, such as gambling, dancing, and the arts of prostitutes, who were enjoined from showing themselves on the streets.

Eugenius did not sit idly by while his prerogatives were being tampered with and an utterly unpapal method of dealing with heretics was being pursued. He communicated with the princes of Europe, June 1, 1436, complaining of the highhanded measures, such as the withdrawal of the papal revenues, the suppression of the prayer for the pope in the liturgy, and the giving of a vote to the lower clergy in the synod. At that juncture the union with the Greeks, a question which had assumed a place of great prominence, afforded the pope the opportunity for reasserting his authority and breaking up the council in the Swiss city.

Overtures of union, starting with Constantinople, were made simultaneously through separate bodies of envoys sent to the pope and the council. The one met Eugenius at Bologna; the other appeared in Basel in the summer of 1434. In discussing a place for a joint meeting of the representatives of the two communions, the Greeks expressed a preference for some Italian city, or Vienna. This exactly suited Eugenius, who had even suggested Constantinople as a place of meeting, but the synod sharply informed him that the city on the Bosphorus was not to be considered. In urging Basel, Avignon, or a city in Savoy, the Basel councilmen were losing their opportunity. Two delegations, one from the council and one from the pope, appeared in Constantinople, 1437, proposing different places of meeting.

When the matter came up for final decision, the council, by a vote of 355 to 244, decided to continue the meeting at Basel, or, if that was not agreeable to the Greeks, then at Avignon. The minority, acting upon the pope’s preference, decided in favor of Florence or Udine. In a bull dated Sept. 18, 1437, and signed by eight cardinals, Eugenius condemned the synod for negotiating with the Greeks, pronounced it prorogued, and, at the request of the Greeks, as it alleged, transferred the council to Ferrara.332

The synod was checkmated, though it did not appreciate its situation. The reunion of Christendom was a measure of overshadowing importance, and took precedence in men’s minds of the reform of Church abuses. The Greeks all went to Ferrara. The prelates, who had been at Basel, gradually retired across the Alps, including Cardinals Cesarini and Nicolas of Cusa. The only cardinal left at Basel was d’Aleman, archbishop of Arles. It was now an open fight between the pope and council, and it meant either a schism of the Western Church or the complete triumph of the papacy. The discussions at Basel were characterized by such vehemence that armed citizens had to intervene to prevent violence. The conciliar theory was struggling for life. At its 28th session, October, 1437, the council declared the papal bull null and void, and summoned Eugenius within sixty days to appear before it in person or by deputy. Four months later, Jan. 24, 1488, it declared Eugenius suspended, and, June 25, 1439, at its 34th session, "removed, deposed, deprived, and cast him down," as a disturber of the peace of the Church, a simoniac and perjurer, incorrigible, and errant from the faith, a schismatic, and a pertinacious heretic.333  Previous to this, at its 33d session, it had again solemnly declared for the supreme jurisdiction of councils, and denied the pope the right to adjourn or transfer a general council. The holding of contrary views, it pronounced heresy.

In the meantime the council at Ferrara had been opened, Jan. 8, 1438, and was daily gaining adherents. Charles VII. took the side of Eugenius, although the French people, at the synod of Bourges in the summer of 1438, accepted, substantially, the reforms proposed by the council of Basel.334  This action, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, decided for the superiority of councils, and that they should be held every ten years, abolished annates and first-fruits, ordered the large benefices filled by elections, and limited the number of cardinals to twenty-four. These important declarations, which went back to the decrees of the Council of Constance, were the foundations of the Gallican liberties.

The attitude of the German princes and ecclesiastics was one of neutrality or of open support of the council at Basel. Sigismund died at the close of the year 1437, and, before the election of his son-in-law, Albrecht II., as his successor, the electors at Frankfurt decided upon a course of neutrality. Albrecht survived his election as king of the Romans less than two years, and his uncle, Frederick III., was chosen to take his place. Frederick, after observing neutrality for several years, gave his adhesion to Eugenius.

Unwilling to be ignored and put out of life, the council at Basel, through a commission of thirty-two, at whose head stood d’Aleman, elected, 1439, Amadeus, duke of Savoy, as pope.335  After the loss of his wife, 1435, Amadeus formed the order of St. Mauritius, and lived with several companions in a retreat at Ripaille, on the Lake of Geneva. He was a man of large wealth and influential family connections. He assumed the name of Felix V., and appointed four cardinals. A year after his election, and accompanied by his two sons, he entered Basel, and was crowned by Cardinal d’Aleman. The tiara is said to have cost 30,000 crowns. Thus Western Christendom again witnessed a schism. Felix had the support of Savoy and some of the German princes, of Alfonso of Aragon, and the universities of Paris, Vienna, Cologne, Erfurt, and Cracow. Frederick III. kept aloof from Basel and declined the offer of marriage to Margaret, daughter of Felix and widow of Louis of Anjou, with a dowry of 200,000 ducats.

The papal achievement in winning Frederick III., king of the Romans, was largely due to the corruption of Frederick’s chief minister, Caspar Schlick, and the treachery of Aeneas Sylvius, who deserted one cause and master after another as it suited his advantage. From being a vigorous advocate of the council, he turned to the side of Eugenius, to whom he made a most fulsome confession, and, after passing from the service of Felix, he became secretary to Frederick, and proved himself Eugenius’ most shrewd and pliable agent. He was an adept in diplomacy and trimmed his sails to the wind.

The archbishops of Treves and Cologne, who openly supported the Basel assembly, were deposed by Eugenius, 1446. The same year six of the electors offered Eugenius their obedience, provided he would recognize the superiority of an oecumenical council, and within thirteen months call a new council to meet on German soil. Following the advice of Aeneas Sylvius, the pope concluded it wise to show a conciliatory attitude. Papal delegates appeared at the diet, meeting September, 1446, and Aeneas was successful in winning over the margrave of Brandenburg and other influential princes. The following January he and other envoys appeared in Rome as representatives of the archbishop of Mainz, Frederick III., and other princes. The result of the negotiations was a concordat,—the so-called princes’ concordat,—Fürsten Konkordat,—by which the pope restored the two deposed archbishops, recognized the superiority of general councils, and gave to Frederick the right during his lifetime to nominate the incumbents of the six bishoprics of Trent, Brixen, Chur, Gurk, Trieste, and Pilsen, and to him and his successors the right to fill, subject to the pope’s approval, 100 Austrian benefices. These concessions Eugenius ratified in four bulls, Feb. 5–7, 1447, one of them, the bull Salvatoria, declaring that the pope in the previous three bulls had not meant to disparage the authority of the Apostolic See, and if his successors found his concessions out of accord with the doctrine of the fathers, they were to be regarded as void. The agreement was celebrated in Rome with the ringing of bells, and was confirmed by Nicolas V. in the so-called Vienna Concordat, Feb. 17, 1448.336

Eugenius died Feb. 23, 1447, and was laid at the side of Eugenius III. in St. Peter’s. He had done nothing to introduce reforms into the Church. Like Martin V., he was fond of art, a taste he cultivated during his exile in Florence. He succeeded in perpetuating the mediaeval view of the papacy, and in delaying the reformation of the Church which, when it came, involved the schism in Western Christendom which continues to this day.

The Basel council continued to drag on a tedious and uneventful existence. It was no longer in the stream of noticeable events. It stultified itself by granting Felix a tenth. In June, 1448, it adjourned to Lausanne. Reduced to a handful of adherents, and weary of being a synonym for innocuous failure, it voted to accept Nicolas V., Eugenius’ successor, as legitimate pope, and then quietly breathed its last, April 25, 1449. After courteously revoking his bulls anathematizing Eugenius and Nicolas, Felix abdicated. He was not allowed to suffer, much less obliged to do penance, for his presumption in exercising papal functions. He was made cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and Apostolic vicar in Savoy and other regions which had recognized his "obedience."  Three of his cardinals were admitted to the curia, and d’Aleman forgiven. Felix died in Geneva, 1451.337

The Roman Church has not since had an anti-pope. The Council of Basel concluded the series of the three councils, which had for their chief aims the healing of the papal schism and the reformation of Church abuses. They opened with great promise at Pisa, where a freedom of discussion prevailed unheard of before, and where the universities and their learned representatives appeared as a new element in the deliberations of the Church. The healing of the schism was accomplished, but the abuses in the Church went on, and under the last popes of the fifteenth century became more infamous than they had been at any time before. And yet even in this respect these councils were not in vain, for they afforded a warning to the Protestant reformers not to put their trust even in ecclesiastical assemblies. As for the theory of the supremacy of general councils which they had maintained with such dignity, it was proudly set aside by later popes in their practice and declared fallacious by the Fifth Lateran in 1516,338 and by the dogma of papal infallibility announced at the Council of the Vatican, 1870.

§ 18. The Council of Ferrara-Florence. 1438–1445.

The council of Ferrara witnessed the submission of the Greeks to the Roman see. It did not attempt to go into the subject of ecclesiastical reforms, and thus vie with the synod at Basel. After sixteen sessions held at Ferrara, Eugenius transferred the council, February, 1439, to Florence. The reason given was the unhealthy conditions in Ferrara, but the real grounds were the offer of the Florentines to aid Eugenius in the support of his guests from the East and, by getting away from the seaside, to lessen the chances of the Greeks going home before the conclusion of the union. In 1442 the council was transferred to Rome, where it held two sessions in the Lateran. The sessions at Ferrara, Florence, and Rome are listed with the first twenty-five sessions of the council of Basel, and together they are counted as the seventeenth oecumenical council.339

The schism between the East and the West, dating from the middle of the ninth century, while Nicolas I. and Photius were patriarchs respectively of Rome and Constantinople, was widened by the crusades and the conquest of Constantinople, 1204. The interest in a reunion of the two branches of the Church was shown by the discussion at Bari, 1098, when Anselm was appointed to set forth the differences with Greeks, and by the treatments of Thomas Aquinas and other theologians. The only notable attempt at reunion was made at the second council of Lyons, 1274, when a deputation from the East accepted articles of agreement which, however, were rejected by the Eastern churches. In 1369, the emperor John visited Rome and abjured the schism, but his action met with unfavorable response in Constantinople. Delegates appeared at Constance, 1418, sent by Manuel Palaeologus and the patriarch of Constantinople,340 and, in 1422, Martin V. despatched the Franciscan, Anthony Massanus, to the Bosphorus, with nine articles as a basis of union. These articles led on to the negotiations conducted at Ferrara.

Neither Eugenius nor the Greeks deserve any credit for the part they took in the conference. The Greeks were actuated wholly by a desire to get the assistance of the West against the advance of the Turks, and not by religious zeal. So far as the Latins are concerned, they had to pay all the expenses of the Greeks on their way to Italy, in Italy, and on their way back as the price of the conference. Catholic historians have little enthusiasm in describing the empty achievements of Eugenius.341

The Greek delegation was large and inspiring, and included the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople. In Venetian vessels rented by the pope, the emperor John VI., Palaeologus reached Venice in February, 1438.342  He was accorded a brilliant reception, but it is fair to suppose that the pleasure he may have felt in the festivities was not unmixed with feelings of resentment, when he recalled the sack and pillage of his capital, in 1204, by the ancestors of his entertainers. John reached Ferrara March 6. The Greek delegation comprised 700 persons. Eugenius had arrived Jan. 27. In his bull, read in the synod, he called the emperor his most beloved son, and the patriarch his most pious brother.343  In a public address delivered by Cardinal Cesarini, the differences dividing the two communions were announced as four,—the mode of the procession of the Holy Spirit, the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist, the doctrine of purgatory, and the papal primacy. The discussions exhibit a mortifying spectacle of theological clipping and patchwork. They betray no pure zeal for the religious interests of mankind. The Greeks interposed all manner of dilatory tactics while they lived upon the hospitality of their hosts. The Latins were bent upon asserting the supremacy of the Roman bishop. The Orientals, moved by considerations of worldly policy, thought only of the protection of their enfeebled empire.

Among the more prominent Greeks present were Bessarion, bishop of Nice, Isidore, archbishop of Russian Kief, and Mark Eugenicus, archbishop of Ephesus. Bessarion and Isidore remained in the West after the adjournment of the council, and were rewarded by Eugenius with the red hat. The archbishop of Ephesus has our admiration for refusing to bow servilely to the pope and join his colleagues in accepting the articles of union. The leaders among the Latins were Cardinals Cesarini and Albergati, and the Spaniard Turrecremata, who was also given the red hat after the council adjourned.

The first negotiations concerned matters of etiquette. Eugenius gave a private audience to the patriarch, but waived the ceremony of having his foot kissed. An important question was the proper seating of the delegates, and the Greek emperor saw to it that accurate measurements were taken of the seats set apart for the Greeks, lest they should have positions of less honor than the Latins.344  The pope’s promise to support his guests was arranged by a monthly grant of thirty florins to the emperor, twenty-five to the patriarch, four each to the prelates, and three to the other visitors. What possible respect could the more high-minded Latins have for ecclesiastics, and an emperor, who, while engaged on the mission of Church reunion, were willing to be the pope’s pensioners, and live upon his dole!

The first common session was not held till Oct. 8, 1438. Most of it was taken up with a long address by Bessarion, as was the time of the second session by a still longer address by another Greek. The emperor did his share in promoting delay by spending most of his time hunting. At the start the Greeks insisted there could be no addition to the original creed. Again and again they were on the point of withdrawing, but were deterred from doing so by dread of the Turks and empty purses.345  A commission of twenty, ten Greeks and ten Latins, was appointed to conduct the preliminary discussion on the questions of difference.

The Greeks accepted the addition made to the Constantinopolitan creed by the synod of Toledo, 589, declaring that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but with the stipulation that they were not to be required to introduce the filioque clause when they used the creed. They justified their course on the ground that they had understood the Latins as holding to the procession from the Father and the Son as from two principles. The article of agreement ran: "The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally and substantially as it were from one source and cause."346

In the matter of purgatory, it was decided that immediately at death the blessed pass to the beatific vision, a view the Greeks had rejected. Souls in purgatory are purified by pain and may be aided by the suffrages of the living. At the insistence of the Greeks, material fire as an element of purification was left out.

The use of leavened bread was conceded to the Greeks.

In the matter of the eucharist, the Greeks, who, after the words, "this is my body," make a petition that the Spirit may turn the bread into Christ’s body, agreed to the view that transubstantiation occurs at the use of the priestly words, but stipulated that the confession be not incorporated in the written articles.

The primacy of the Roman bishop offered the most serious difficulty. The article of union acknowledged him as "having a primacy over the whole world, he himself being the successor of Peter, and the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians, to whom, in Peter, Christ gave authority to feed, govern and rule the universal Church."347  This remarkable concession was modified by a clause in the original document, running, "according as it is defined by the acts of the oecumenical councils and by the sacred canons."348  The Latins afterwards changed the clause so as to read, "even as it is defined by the oecumenical councils and the holy canons." The Latin falsification made the early oecumencial councils a witness to the primacy of the Roman pontiff.

The articles of union were incorporated in a decree349 beginning Laetentur coeli et exultat terra, "Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad."  It declared that the middle wall of partition between the Occidental and Oriental churches has been taken down by him who is the cornerstone, Christ. The black darkness of the long schism had passed away before the ray of concord. Mother Church rejoiced to see her divided children reunited in the bonds of peace and love. The union was due to the grace of the Holy Ghost. The articles were signed July 5 by 115 Latins and 33 Greeks, of whom 18 were metropolitans. Archbishop Mark of Ephesus was the only one of the Orientals who refused to sign. The patriarch of Constantinople had died a month before, but wrote approving the union. His body lies buried in S. Maria Novella, Florence. His remains and the original manuscript of the articles, which is preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence, are the only relics left of the union.

On July 6, 1439, the articles were publicly read in the cathedral of Florence, the Greek text by Bessarion, and the Latin by Cesarini. The pope was present and celebrated the mass. The Latins sang hymns in Latin, and the Greeks followed them with hymns of their own. Eugenius promised for the defence of Constantinople a garrison of three hundred and two galleys and, if necessary, the armed help of Western Christendom. After tarrying for a month to receive the five months of arrearages of his stipend, the emperor returned by way of Venice to his capital, from which he had been absent two years.

The Ferrara agreement proved to be a shell of paper, and all the parade and rejoicing at the conclusion of the proceedings were made ridiculous by the utter rejection of its articles in Constantinople.

On their return, the delegates were hooted as Azymites, the name given in contempt to the Latins for using unleavened bread in the eucharist. Isidore, after making announcement of the union at Of en, was seized and put into a convent, from which he escaped two years later to Rome. The patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria issued a letter from Jerusalem, 1443, denouncing the council of Florence as a synod of robbers and Metrophanes, the Byzantine patriarch as a matricide and heretic.

It is true the articles were published in St. Sophia, Dec. 14, 1452, by a Latin cardinal, but six months later, Constantinople was in the hands of the Mohammedans. A Greek council, meeting in Constantinople, 1472, formally rejected the union.

On the other hand, the success of the Roman policy was announced through Western Europe. Eugenius’ position was strengthened by the empty triumph, and in the same proportion the influence of the Basel synod lessened. If cordial relations between churches of the East and the West were not promoted at Ferrara and Florence, a beneficent influence flowed from the council in another direction by the diffusion of Greek scholarship and letters in the West.

Delegations also from the Armenians and Jacobites appeared at Florence respectively in 1439 and 1442. The Copts and Ethiopians also sent delegations, and it seemed as if the time had arrived for the reunion of all the distracted parts of Christendom.350  A union with the Armenians, announced Nov. 22, 1439, declared that the Eastern delegates had accepted the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son and the Chalcedon Council giving Christ two natures and by implication two wills. The uniate Armenians have proved true to the union. The Armenian catholicos, Gregory IX., who attempted to enforce the union, was deposed, and the Turks, in 1461, set up an Armenian patriarch, with seat at Constantinople. The union of the Jacobites, proclaimed in 1442, was universally disowned in the East. The attempts to conciliate the Copts and Ethiopians were futile. Eugenius sent envoys to the East to apprise the Maronites and the Nestorians of the efforts at reunion. The Nestorians on the island of Cyprus submitted to Rome, and a century later, during the sessions of the Fifth Lateran, 1516, the Maronites were received into the Roman communion.

On Aug. 7, 1445, Eugenius adjourned the long council which had begun its sittings at Basel, continued them at Ferrara and Florence, and concluded them in the Lateran.

CHAPTER III.

LEADERS OF CATHOLIC THOUGHT.

§ 19. Literature.

For § 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.—No complete ed. of Ockam’s works exists. The fullest lists are given by Riezler, see below, Little: Grey Friars of Oxford, pp. 226–234, and Potthast: II. 871–873. Goldast’s Monarchia, II. 313–1296, contains a number of his works, e.g. opus nonaginta dierum, Compendium errorum Johannis XXII., De utili dominio rerum Eccles. et abdicatione bonorum temporalium, Super potestatem summi pontificis, Quaestionum octo decisiones, Dial. de potestate papali et imperiali in tres partes distinctus, (1) de haereticis, (2) de erroribus Joh. XXII., (3) de potestate papae, conciliorum et imperatoris (first publ. 2 vols., Paris, 1476).—Other works: Expositio aurea super totam artem veterem, a com. on Porphyry’s Isagoge, and Aristotle’s Elenchus, Bologna, 1496.—Summa logices, Paris, 1488.—Super I V. Iibros sententiarum, Lyons, 1483.—De sacramento altaris, Strassburg, 1491.—De praedestinatione et futuris contingentibus, Bologna, 1496.—Quodlibeta septem, Paris, 1487.—Riezler: D. antipäpstlichen und publizistischen Schriften Occams in his Die literar. Widersacher, etc., 241–277.—Haureau: La philos. scolastique.—Werner: Die Scholastik des späteren M. A., II., Vienna, 1883, and Der hl. Thos. von Aquino, III.—Stöckl: Die Philos. des M. A., II. 986–1021, and art. Nominalismus in Wetzer-Welte, IX.—Baur: Die christl. Kirche d. M. A., p. 377 sqq.—Müller: Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern.—R. L. Poole in Dict. of Natl. Biog., XLI. 357–362.—R. Seeberg in Herzog, XIV. 260–280.—A. Dorner; D. Verhältniss von Kirche und Staat nach Occam in Studien und Kritiken, 1886, pp. 672–722.—F. Kropatscheck: Occam und Luther in Beitr. zur Förderung christl. Theol., Gütersloh, 1900.—Art. Nominalismus, by Stöckl in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 423–427.

For § 21. Catherine of Siena.—Her writings. Epistole ed orazioni della seraphica vergine s. Catterina da Siena, Venice, 1600, etc.—Best ed. 6 vols., Siena, 1707–1726.—Engl. trans. of the Dialogue of the Seraphic Virgin Cath. of Siena, by Algar Thorold, London, 1896.—Her Letters, ed. by N. Tommaseo: Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, 4 vols., Florence, 1860.—*Eng. trans. by Vida D. Scudder: St. Cath. of Siena as seen in her Letters, London, 1906, 2d ed., 1906.—Her biography is based upon the Life written by her confessor, Raymundo de Vineis sive de Capua, d. 1399: vita s. Cath. Senensis, included in the Siena ed. of her works and in the Acta Sanctt. III. 863–969.—Ital. trans. by Catherine’s secretary, Neri De Landoccio, Fr. trans. by E. Cartier, Paris, 1863, 4th ed., 1877.—An abbreviation of Raymund’s work, with annotations, Leggenda della Cat. da Siena, usually called La Leggenda minore, by Tommaso d’antonio Nacci Caffarini, 1414.—K. Hase: Caterina von Siena, Ein Heiligenbild, Leipzig, 1804, new ed., 1892.—J. E. Butler: Cath. of Siena, London, 1878, 4th ed., 1895.—Augusta T. Drane, Engl. Dominican: The Hist. of Cath. of Siena, compiled from the Orig. sources, London, 1880, 3d ed., 1900, with a trans. of the Dialogue.—St. Catherine of Siena and her Times, by the author of Mademoiselle Mori (Margaret D. Roberts), New York, 1906, pays little attention to the miraculous element, and presents a full picture of Catherine’s age.—*E. G. Gardner: St. Catherine of Siena: A Study in the Religion, Literature, and History of the fourteenth century in Italy, London, 1907.

For § 22. Peter d’ailly.—Paul Tschackert: Peter von Ailli. Zur Gesch. des grossen abendländischen Schismas und der Reformconcilien von Pisa und Constanz, Gotha, 1877, and Art. in Herzog, I. 274–280.—Salembier: Petrus de Alliaco, Lille, 1886.—Lenz: Drei Traktate aus d. Schriftencyclus d. Konst. Konz., Marburg, 1876.—Bess: Zur Gesch. des Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1891.—Finke: Forschungen und Quellen, etc., pp. 103–132.—For a list of D’Ailly’s writings, See Tschackert, pp. 348–365.—Some of them are given in Van der Hardt and in Du Pin’s ed. of Gerson’s Works, I. 489–804, and the De difficultate reform. eccles., and the De necessitate reform. eccles., II. 867–903.

For § 23. John Gerson.—Works. Best ed. by L. E. Du Pin, Prof. of Theol. in Paris, 5 vols., Antwerp, 1706; 2d ed., Hague Com., 1728. The 2d ed. has been consulted in this work and is pronounced by Schwab "indispensable."  It contains the materials of Gerson’s life and the contents of his works in an introductory essay, Gersoniana, I. i-cxlv, and also writings by D’ailly, Langenstein, Aleman and other contemporaries. A number of Gerson’s works are given in Goldast’s Monarchia and Van der Hardt.—A Vita Gersonis is given in Hardt’s Conc. Const., IV. 26–57.—Chartul. Univ. Paris., III., IV., under John Arnaud and Gerson.—J. B. Schwab: Johannes Gerson, Prof. der Theologie und Kanzler der Universität Paris, Würzburg, 1858, an exhaustive work, giving also a history of the times, one of the most thorough of biographies and to be compared with Hurter’s Innocent III.—A. Masson: J. Gerson, sa vie, son temps et ses oeuvres, Lyons, 1894.—A. Lambon: J. Gerson, sa réforme de l’enseigement Theol. et de l’éducation populaire, Paris, 1888.—Bess: Zur Gesch. d. Konstanz. Konzils; art. Gerson in Herzog, VI. 612–617.—Lafontaine: Jehas Gerson, 1363–1429, Paris, 1906, pp. 340.—J. Schwane: Dogmengesch.—Werner: D. Scholastik d. späteren M. A., IV., V.

For § 24. Nicolas of Clamanges.—Works, ed. by J. M. Lydius, 2 vols., Leyden, 1013, with Life.—The De ruina ecclesiae, with a Life, in Van der Hardt: Conc. Constan., vol. I., pt. lII.—Writings not in Lydius are given by Bulaeus in Hist. univ. Paris.—Baluzius: Miscellanea, and D’Achery: Spicilegium.—Life in Du Pin’s Works of Gerson, I., p. xxxix sq.—A. Müntz: Nic. de Clem., sa vie et ses écrits, Strassburg, 1846.—J. Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 493–497.—Artt. by Bess in Herzog, IV. 138–147, and by Knöpfsler in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 298–306.—G. Schubert: Nic. von Clem. als Verfasser der Schrift de corrupto ecclesiae statu, Grossenhain, 1888.

For § 25. Nicolas of Cusa.—Edd. of his Works, 1476 (place not given), as ed. by Faber Stapulensis, 3 vols., 1514, Basel.—German trans. of a number of the works by F. A. Schrapff, Freiburg, 1862.—Schrapff: Der Cardinal und Bischof Nic. von Cusa Mainz, 1843; Nic. von Cusa als Reformator in Kirche, Reich und Philosophie des 15ten Jahrh., Tübingen, 1871.—J. M. Düx: Der deutsche Card. Nic. von Cusa und die Kirche seiner Zeit, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1847.—J. Uebinger: D. Gotteslehre des Nic. von Cusa, Münster, 1888.—J. Marx: Nik. von Cues und seine Stiftungen au Cues und Deventer, Treves, 1906, pp. 115.—C. Schmitt: Card. Nic. Cusanus, Coblenz, 1907. Presents him as astronomer, geographer, mathematician, historian, homilete, orator, philosopher, and theologian.—Stöckl, III. 23–84.—Schwane, pp. 98–102.—Art. by Funk in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 306–315.

§ 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.

Scholasticism had its last great representative in Duns Scotus, d. 1308. After him the scholastic method gradually passed into disrepute. New problems were thrust upon the mind of Western Europe, and new interests were engaging its attention. The theologian of the school and the convent gave way to the practical theological disputant setting forth his views in tracts and on the floor of the councils. Free discussion broke up the hegemony of dogmatic assertion. The authority of the Fathers and of the papacy lost its exclusive hold, and thinkers sought another basis of authority in the general judgment of contemporary Christendom, in the Scriptures alone or in reason. The new interest in letters and the natural world drew attention away from labored theological systems which were more adapted to display the ingenuity of the theologian than to be of practical value to society. The use of the spoken languages of Europe in literature was fitted to force thought into the mould of current exigencies. The discussions of Roger Bacon show that at the beginning of the fourteenth century men’s minds, sated with abstruse metaphysical solutions of theological questions, great and trivial, were turning to a world more real and capable of proof.

The chief survivors of the dialectical Schoolmen were Durandus and William Ockam. Gabriel Biel of Tübingen, who died just before the close of the fifteenth century, is usually called the last of the Schoolmen.351  Such men as D’Ailly, Gerson and Wyclif, sometimes included under the head of mediaeval scholastics, evidently belong to another class.

A characteristic feature of the scholasticism of Durandus and Ockam is the sharper distinction they made between reason and revelation. Following Duns Scotus, they declared that doctrines peculiar to revealed theology are not susceptible of proof by pure reason. The body of dogmatic truth, as accepted by the Church, they did not question.

A second characteristic is the absence of originality. They elaborated what they received. The Schoolmen of former periods had exhausted the list of theological questions and discussed them from every standpoint.

The third characteristic is the revival and ascendency of nominalism, the principle Roscellinus advocated more than two hundred years before. The Nominalists were also called Terminists, because they represent words as terms which do not necessarily have ideas and realities to correspond to them. A universal is simply a symbol or term for a number of things or for that which is common to a number of things.352  Universality is nothing more than a mode of mental conception. The University of Paris resisted the spread of nominalism, and in 1839 the four nations forbade the promulgation of Ockam’s doctrine or listening to its being expounded in private or public.353  In 1473, Louis XI. issued a mandate forbidding the doctors at Paris teaching it, and prohibiting the use of the writings of Ockam, Marsiglius and other writers. In 1481 the law was rescinded.

Durandus, known as doctor resolutissimus, the resolute doctor, d. 1334, was born at Pourçain, in the diocese of Clermont, entered the Dominican order, was appointed by Fohn XXII. bishop of Limoux, 1317, and was later elevated to the sees of Puy and Meaux. He attacked some of the rules of the Franciscans and John XXII.’s theory of the beatific vision, and in 1333 was declared by a commission guilty of eleven errors. His theological views are found in his commentary on the Lombard, begun when he was a young man and finished in his old age. He showed independence by assailing some of the views of Thomas Aquinas. He went beyond his predecessors in exalting the Scriptures above tradition and pronouncing their statements more authoritative than the dicta of Aristotle and other philosophers.354  All real existence is in the individual. The universal is not an entity which can be divided as a chunk of wood is cut into pieces. The universal, the unity by which objects are grouped together as a class, is deduced from individuals by an act of the mind. That which is common to a class has, apart from the individuals of the class, no real existence.

On the doctrine of the eucharist Durandus seems not to have been fully satisfied with the view held by the Church, and suggested that the words "this is my body," may mean "contained under"—contentum sub hoc. This marks an approach to Luther’s view of consubstantiation. This theologian was held in such high esteem by Gerson that he recommended him, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bradwardine and Henry of Ghent, to the students of the college of Navarre.355

The most profound scholastic thinker of the fourteenth century was the Englishman, William Ockam, d. 1349, called doctor invincibilis, the invincible doctor, or, with reference to his advocacy of nominalism, venerabilis inceptor, the venerable inaugurator. His writings, which were more voluminous than lucid, were much published at the close of the fifteenth century, but have not been put into print for several hundred years. There is no complete edition of them. Ockam’s views combined elements which were strictly mediaeval, and elements which were adopted by the Reformers and modern philosophy. His identification with the cause of the Spiritual Franciscans involved him in controversy with two popes, John XXII. and Benedict XII. His denial of papal infallibility has the appearance not 80 much of a doctrine proceeding from theological conviction as the chance weapon laid hold of in time of conflict to protect the cause of the Spirituals.

Of the earlier period of Ockam’s life, little is known. He was born in Surrey, studied at Oxford, where he probably was a student of Duns Scotus, entered the Franciscan order, and was probably master in Paris, 1315–1320. For his advocacy of the doctrine of Christ’s absolute poverty he was, by order of John XXII., tried and found guilty and thrown into confinement.356  With the aid of Lewis the Bavarian, he and his companions, Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia, escaped in 1328 to Pisa. from that time on, the emperor and the Schoolman, as already stated, defended one another. Ockam accompanied the emperor to Munich and was excommunicated. At Cesena’s death the Franciscan seal passed into his hands, but whatever authority he possessed he resigned the next year into the hands of the acknowledged Franciscan general, Farinerius. Clement VI. offered him absolution on condition of his abjuring his errors. Whether he accepted the offer or not is unknown. He died at Munich and is buried there. The distinguished Englishman owes his reputation to his revival of nominalism, his political theories and his definition of the final seat of religious authority.

His theory of nominalism was explicit, and offered no toleration to the realism of the great Schoolmen from Anselm on. Individual things alone have factual existence. The universals are mere terms or symbols, fictions of the mind—fictiones, signa mentalia, nomina, signa verbalia. They are like images in a mirror. A universal stands for an intellectual act—actus intelligenda — and nothing more. Did ideas exist in God’s mind as distinct entities, then the visible world would have been created out of them and not out of nothing.357

Following Duns Scotus, Ockam taught determinism. God’s absolute will makes things what they are. Christ might have become wood or stone if God had so chosen. In spite of Aristotle, a body might have different kinds of motion at the same time. In the department of morals, what is now bad might have been good, if God had so willed it.

In the department of civil government, Ockam, advocating the position taken by the electors at Rense, 1338, declared the emperor did not need the confirmation of the pope. The imperial office is derived immediately from God.358  The Church is a priestly institution, administers the sacraments and shows men the way of salvation, but has no civil jurisdiction,359 potestas coactiva.

The final seat of authority, this thinker found in the Scriptures. Truths such as the Trinity and the incarnation cannot be deduced by argument. The being of God cannot be proven from the so-called idea of God. A plurality of gods may be proven by the reason as well as the existence of the one God. Popes and councils may err. The Bible alone is inerrant. A Christian cannot be held to believe anything not in the Scriptures.360

The Church is the community of the faithful—communitas, or congregatio fidelium.361  The Roman Church is not identical with it, and this body of Christians may exist independently of the Roman Church. If the pope had plenary power, the law of the Gospel would be more galling than the law of Moses. All would then be the pope’s slaves.362  The papacy is not a necessary institution.

In the doctrine of the eucharist, Ockam represents the traditional view as less probable than the view that Christ’s body is at the side of the bread. This theory of impanation, which Rupert of Deutz taught, approached Luther’s theory of consubstantiation. However, Ockam accepted the Church’s view, because it was the less intelligible and because the power of God is unlimited. John of Paris, d. 1308, had compared the presence of Christ in the elements to the co-existence of two natures in the incarnation and was deposed from his chair at the University of Paris, 1304. Gabriel Biel took a similar view.363

Ockam’s views on the authority of the civil power, papal errancy, the infallibility of the Scriptures and the eucharist are often compared with the views of Luther.364  The German reformer spoke of the English Schoolman as "without doubt the leader and most ingenious of the Schoolmen"—scholasticorum doctorum sine dubio princeps et ingeniosissimus. He called him his "dear teacher," and declared himself to be of Ockam’s party—sum Occamicae factionis.365  The two men were, however, utterly unlike. Ockam was a theorist, not a reformer, and in spite of his bold sayings, remained a child of the mediaeval age. He started no party or school in theological matters. Luther exalted personal faith in the living Christ. He discovered new principles in the Scriptures, and made them the active forces of individual and national belief and practice. We might think of Luther as an Ockam if he had lived in the fourteenth century. We cannot think of Ockam as a reformer in the sixteenth century. He would scarcely have renounced monkery. Ockam’s merit consists in this that, in common with Marsiglius and other leaders of thought, he imbibed the new spirit of free discussion, and was bold enough to assail the traditional dogmas of his time. In this way he contributed to the unsettlement of the pernicious mediaeval theory of the seat of authority.

§ 21. Catherine of Siena, the Saint.

Next to Francis d’Assisi, the most celebrated of the Italian saints is Catherine of Siena—Caterina da Siena—1347–1380. With Elizabeth of Thuringia, who lived more than a century before her, she is the most eminent of the holy women of the Middle Ages whom the Church has canonized. Her fame depends upon her single-hearted piety and her efforts to advance the interests of the Church and her nation. She left no order to encourage the reverence for her name. She was the most public of all the women of the Middle Ages in Italy, and yet she passed unscathed and without a taint through streets and in courts. Now, as the daughter of an humble citizen of Siena, she ministers to the poor and the sick: now, as the prophetess of heaven, she appeals to the conscience of popes and of commonwealths. Her native Sienese have sanctified her with the fragrant name la beata poplana, the blessed daughter of the people. Although much in her career, as it has been handed down by her confessor and biographer, may seem to be legendary, and although the hysterical element may not be altogether wanting from her piety, she yet deserves and will have the admiration of all men who are moved by the sight of a noble enthusiasm. It would require a fanatical severity to read the account of her unwearied efforts and the letters, into which she equally poured the fire of her soul, without feeling that the Sienese saint was a very remarkable woman, the Florence Nightingale of her time or more, "one of the most wonderful women that have ever lived," as her most recent English biographer has pronounced her. Or, shall we join Gregorovius, the thorough student of mediaeval Rome, in saying, "Catherine’s figure flits like that of an angel: through the darkness of her time, over which her gracious genius sheds a soft radiance. Her life is more worthy and assuredly a more human subject for history than the lives of the popes of her age."366

Catherine Benincasa was the twenty-third of a family of twenty-five children. Her twin sister, Giovanna, died in infancy. Her father was a dyer in prosperous circumstances. Her mother, Monna Lapa, survived the daughter. Catherine treated her with filial respect, wrote her letters, several of which are extant, and had her with her on journeys and in Rome during her last days there. Catherine had no school training, and her knowledge of reading and writing she acquired after she was grown up.

As a child she was susceptible to religious impressions, and frequented the Dominican church near her father’s home. The miracles of her earlier childhood were reported by her confessor and biographer, Raymund of Capua. At twelve her parents arranged for her a marriage, but to avoid it Catherine cut off her beautiful hair. She joined the tertiary order of the Dominicans, the women adherents being called the mantellate from their black mantles. Raymund declares "that nature had not given her a face over-fair," and her personal appearance was marred by the marks of the smallpox. And yet she had a winning expression, a fund of good spirits, and sang and laughed heartily. Once devoted to a religious life, she practised great austerities, flagellating herself three times a day,—once for herself, once for the living and once for the dead. She wore a hair undergarment and an iron chain. During one Lenten season she lived on the bread taken in communion. These asceticisms were performed in a chamber in her father’s house. She was never an inmate of a convent. Such extreme asceticisms as she practised upon herself she disparaged at a later period.

At an early age Catherine became the subject of visions and revelations. On one of these occasions and after hours of dire temptation, when she was tempted to live like other girls, the Saviour appeared to her stretched on the cross and said: "My own daughter, Catherine, seest thou how much I have suffered for thee?  Let it not be hard for thee to suffer for me."  Thrilled with the address, she asked: "Where wert thou, Lord, when I was tempted with such impurity?" and He replied, "In thy heart."  In 1367, according to her own statement, the Saviour betrothed himself to her, putting a ring on her finger. The ring was ever afterwards visible to herself though unseen by others. Five years before her death, she received the stigmata directly from Christ. Their impression gave sharp pain, and Catherine insisted that, though they likewise were invisible to others, they were real to her.

In obedience to a revelation, Catherine renounced the retired life she had been living, and at the age of twenty began to appear in public and perform the active offices of charity. This was in 1367. She visited the poor and sick, and soon became known as the ministering angel of the whole city. During the plague of 1374, she was indefatigable by day and night, healed those of whom the physicians despaired, and she even raised the dead. The lepers outside the city walls she did not neglect.

One of the remarkable incidents in her career which she vouches for in one of her letters to Raymund was her treatment of Niccolo Tuldo, a young nobleman condemned to die for having uttered words disrespectful of the city government. The young man was in despair, but under Catherine’s influence he not only regained composure, but became joyful in the prospect of death. Catherine was with him at the block and held his head. She writes, "I have just received a head into my hands which was to me of such sweetness as no heart can think, or tongue describe."  Before the execution she accompanied the unfortunate man to the mass, where he received the communion for the first time. His last words were "naught but Jesus and Catherine. And, so saying," wrote his benefactress, "I received his head in my hands."  She then saw him received of Christ, and as she further wrote, "When he was at rest, my soul rested in peace, in so great fragrance of blood that I could not bear to remove the blood which had fallen on me from him."

The fame of such a woman could not be held within the walls of her native city. Neighboring cities and even the pope in Avignon heard of her deeds of charity and her revelations. The guide of minds seeking the consolations of religion, the minister to the sick and dying, Catherine now entered into the wider sphere of the political life of Italy and the welfare of the Church. Her concern was divided between efforts to support the papacy and to secure the amelioration of the clergy and establish peace. With the zeal of a prophet, she urged upon Gregory XI. to return to Rome. She sought to prevent the rising of the Tuscan cities against the Avignon popes and to remove the interdict which was launched against Florence, and she supported Urban VI. against the anti-pope, Clement VII. With equal fervor she urged Gregory to institute a reformation of the clergy, to allow no weight to considerations of simony and flattery in choosing cardinals and pastors and "to drive out of the sheep-fold those wolves, those demons incarnate, who think only of good cheer, splendid feasts and superb liveries."  She also was zealous in striving to stir up the flames of a new crusade. To Sir John Hawkwood, the freelance and terror of the peninsula, she wrote, calling upon him that, as he took such pleasure in fighting, he should thenceforth no longer direct his arms against Christians, but against the infidels. She communicated to the Queen of Cyprus on the subject. Again and again she urged it upon Gregory XI., and chiefly on the grounds that he "might minister the blood of the Lamb to the wretched infidels," and that converted, they might aid in driving pride and other vices out of the Christian world.367

Commissioned by Gregory, she journeyed to Pisa to influence the city in his favor. She was received with honors by the archbishop and the head of the republic, and won over two professors who visited her with the purpose of showing her she was self-deceived or worse. She told them that it was not important for her to know how God had created the world, but that "it was essential to know that the Son of God had taken our human nature and lived and died for our salvation." One of the professors, removing his crimson velvet cap, knelt before her and asked for forgiveness. Catherine’s cures of the sick won the confidence of the people. On this visit she was accompanied by her mother and a group of like-minded women.

A large chapter in Catherine’s life is interwoven with the history of Florence. The spirit of revolt against the Avignon regime was rising in upper Italy and, when the papal legate in Bologna, in a year of dearth, forbade the transportation of provisions to Florence, it broke out into war. At the invitation of the Florentines, Catherine visited the city, 1375 and, a year later, was sent as a delegate to Avignon to negotiate terms of peace. She was received with honor by the pope, but not without hesitancy. The other members of the delegation, when they arrived, refused to recognize her powers and approve her methods. The cardinals treated her coolly or with contempt, and women laid snares at her devotions to bring ridicule upon her. Such an attempt was made by the pope’s niece, Madame de Beaufort Turenne, who knelt at her side and ran a sharp knife into her foot so that she limped from the wound.

The dyer’s daughter now turned her attention to the task of confirming the supreme pontiff in his purpose to return to Rome and counteract the machinations of the cardinals against its execution. Seeing her desire realized, she started back for Italy and, met by her mother at Leghorn, went on to Florence, carrying a commission from the pope. Her effort to induce the city to bow to the sentence of interdict, which had been laid upon it, was in a measure successful. Her reverence for the papal office demanded passive obedience. Gregory’s successor, Urban VI., lifted the ban. Catherine then returned to Siena where she dictated the Dialogue, a mystical treatise inculcating prayer, obedience, discretion and other virtues. Catherine declared that God alone had been her guide in its composition.

In the difficulties, which arose soon after Urban’s election, that pontiff looked to Siena and called its distinguished daughter to Rome. They had met in Avignon. Accompanied by her mother and other companions, she reached the holy city in the Autumn of 1378. They occupied a house by themselves and lived upon alms.368  Her summons to Urban "to battle only with the weapons of repentance, prayer, virtue and love" were not heeded. Her presence, however, had a beneficent influence, and on one occasion, when the mob raged and poured into the Vatican, she appeared as a peacemaker, and the sight of her face and her words quieted the tumult.

She died lying on boards, April 29, 1380. To her companions standing at her side, she said: "Dear children, let not my death sadden you, rather rejoice to think that I am leaving a place of many sufferings to go to rest in the quiet sea, the eternal God, and to be united forever with my most sweet and loving Bridegroom. And I promise to be with you more and to be more useful to you, since I leave darkness to pass into the true and everlasting light."  Again and again she whispered, "I have sinned, O Lord; be merciful to me."  She prayed for Urban, for the whole Church and for her companions, and then she departed, repeating the words, "Into thy hands I commit my spirit."

At the time of her death Catherine of Siena was not yet thirty-three years old. A magnificent funeral was ordered by Urban. A year after, her head, enclosed in a reliquary, was sent to her native Siena, and in 1461 she was canonized by the city’s famous son, pope Pius II., who uttered the high praise "that none ever approached her without going away better."  In 1865 when Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome was reopened, her ashes were carried through the streets, the silver urn containing them being borne by four bishops. Lamps are kept ever burning at the altar dedicated to her in the church. In 1866 Pius IX. elevated the dyer’s daughter to the dignity of patron saint and protectress of Rome, a dignity she shares with the prince of the Apostles. With Petrarch she had been the most ardent advocate of its claims as the papal residence, and her zeal was exclusively religious.

In her correspondence and Dialogue we have the biography of Catherine’s soul. Nearly four hundred of her letters are extant.369  Not only have they a place of eminence as the revelations of a saintly woman’s thoughts and inner life, but are, next to the letters written by Petrarch, the chief specimens of epistolary literature of the fourteenth century. She wrote to persons of all classes, to her mother, the recluse in the cloister, her confessor, Raymund of Capua, to men and women addicted to the pleasures of the world, to the magistrates of cities, queens and kings, to cardinals, and to the popes, Gregory XI. and Urban VI., gave words of counsel, set forth at length measures and motives of action, used the terms of entreaty and admonition, and did not hesitate to employ threats of divine judgment, as in writing to the Queen of Naples. They abound in wise counsels.

The correspondence shows that Catherine had some acquaintance with the New Testament from which she quotes the greater precepts and draws descriptions from the miracle of the water changed into wine and the expulsion of the moneychangers from the temple and such parables as the ten virgins and the marriage-feast. One of her most frequent expressions is the blood of Christ, and in truly mystical or conventual manner she bids her correspondents, even the pope and the cardinals, bathe and drown and inebriate themselves in it, yea, to clothe and fill themselves with it, "for Christ did not buy us with gold or silver or pearls or other precious stones, but with his own precious blood."370

To Catherine the religious life was a subjection of the will to the will of God and the outgoing of the soul in exercises of prayer and the practice of love. "I want you to wholly destroy your own will that it may cling to Christ crucified."  So she wrote to a mother bereft of her children. Writing to the recluse, Bartolomea della Seta, she represented the Saviour as saying, "Sin and virtue consist in the consent of the will, there is no sin or virtue unless voluntarily wrought."

To another she wrote, "I have already seen many penitents who have been neither patient nor obedient because they have studied to kill their bodies but not their wills."371

Her sound religious philosophy showed itself in insisting again and again that outward discipline is not the only or always the best way to secure the victory of the spirit. If the body is weak or fallen into illness, the rule of discretion sets aside the exercises of bodily discipline. She wrote, "Not only should fasting be abandoned but flesh be eaten and, if once a day is not enough, then four times a day."  Again and again she treats of penance as an instrument. "The little good of penance may hinder the greater good of inward piety. Penance cuts off," so she wrote in a remarkable letter to Sister Daniella of Orvieto, "yet thou wilt always find the root in thee, ready to sprout again, but virtue pulls up by the root."

Monastic as Catherine was, yet no evangelical guide-book could write more truly than she did in most particulars. And at no point does this noble woman rise higher than when she declined to make her own states the standard for others, and condemned those "who, indiscreetly, want to measure all bodies by one and the same measure, the measure by which they measure themselves."  Writing to her niece, Nanna Benincasa, she compared the heart to a lamp, wide above and narrow below. A bride of Christ must have lamp and oil and light. The heart should be wide above, filled with holy thoughts and prayer, bearing in memory the blessings of God, especially the blessing of the blood by which we are bought. And like a lamp, it should be narrow below, "not loving or desiring earthly things in excess nor hungering for more than God wills to give us."

To the Christian virtues of prayer and love she continually returns. Christian love is compared to the sea, peaceful and profound as God Himself, for "God is love."  This passage throws light upon the unsearchable mystery of the Incarnate Word who, constrained by love, gave Himself up in all humility. We love because we are loved. He loves of grace, and we love Him of duty because we are bound to do so; and to show our love to Him we ought to serve and love every rational creature and extend our love to good and bad, to all kinds of people, as much to one who does us ill as to one who serves us, for God is no respecter of persons, and His charity extends to just men and sinners. Peter’s love before Pentecost was sweet but not strong. After Pentecost he loved as a son, bearing all tribulations with patience. So we, too, if we remain in vigil and continual prayer and tarry ten days, shall receive the plenitude of the Spirit. More than once in her letters to Gregory, she bursts out into a eulogy of love as the remedy for all evils. "The soul cannot live without love," she wrote in the Dialogue, "but must always love something, for it was created through love. Affection moves the understanding, as it were, saying, ’I want to love, for the food wherewith I am fed is love.’ "372

Such directions as these render Catherine’s letters a valuable manual of religious devotion, especially to those who are on their guard against being carried away by the underlying quietistic tone. Not only do they have a high place as the revelation of a pious woman’s soul. They deal with unconcealed boldness and candor with the low conditions into which the Church was fallen. Popes are called upon to institute reforms in the appointment of clergymen and to correct abuses in other directions. As for the pacification of the Tuscan cities, a cause which lay so close to Catherine’s heart, she urged the pontiff to use the measures of peace and not of war, to deal as a father would deal with a rebellious son,—to put into practice clemency, not the pride of authority. Then the very wolves would nestle in his bosom like lambs.373

As for the pope’s return to Rome, she urged it as a duty he owed to God who had made him His vicar. In view of the opposition on the Rhone, almost holding him as by physical force, she called upon him to "play the man," "to be a manly man, free from fear and fleshly love towards himself or towards any creature related to him by kin," "to be stable in his resolution and to believe and trust in Christ in spite of all predictions of the evil to follow his return to Rome."374  To this impassioned Tuscan woman, the appointment of unworthy shepherds and bad rectors was responsible for the rebellion against papal authority, shepherds who, consumed by self-love, far from dragging Christ’s sheep away from the wolves, devoured the very sheep themselves. It was because they did not follow the true Shepherd who has given His life for the sheep. Likening the Church to a garden, she invoked the pope to uproot the malodorous plants full of avarice, impurity and pride, to throw them away that the bad priests and rulers who poison the garden might no longer have rule. To Urban VI. she addressed burning words of condemnation. "Your sons nourish themselves on the wealth they receive by ministering the blood of Christ, and are not ashamed of being money-changers. In their great avarice they commit simonies, buying benefices with gifts or flatteries or gold."  And to the papal legate of Bologna, Cardinal d’Estaing, she wrote, "make the holy father consider the loss of souls more than the loss of cities, for God demands souls."

The stress Catherine laid upon the pope’s responsibility to God and her passionate reproof of an unworthy and hireling ministry, inclined some to give her a place among the heralds of the Protestant Reformation. Flacius Illyricus included her in the list of his witnesses for the truth—Catalogus testium veritatis.375  With burning warmth she spoke of a thorough-going reformation which was to come upon the Church. "The bride, now all deformed and clothed in rags," she exclaimed, "will then gleam with beauty and jewels, and be crowned with the diadem of all virtues. All believing nations will rejoice to have excellent shepherds, and the unbelieving world, attracted by her glory, will be converted unto her."  Infidel peoples would be brought into the Catholic fold,—ovile catholicum,—and be converted unto the true pastor and bishop of souls. But Catherine, admirable as these sentiments were, moved within the limits of the mediaeval Church. She placed piety back of penitential exercises in love and prayer and patience, but she never passed beyond the ascetic and conventual conception of the Christian life into the open air of liberty through faith. She had the spirit of Savonarola, the spirit of fiery self-sacrifice for the well-being of her people and the regeneration of Christendom, but she did not see beyond the tradition of the past. Living a hundred years and more before the Florentine prophet, she was excelled by none in her own age and approached by none of her own nation in the century between her and Savonarola, in passionate effort to save her people and help spread righteousness. Hers was the voice of the prophet, crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord."

In recalling the women of the century from 1350 to 1450, the mind easily associates together Catherine of Siena and Joan of Arc, 1411–1431, one the passionate advocate of the Church, the other of the national honor of France. The Maid of Orleans, born of peasant parentage, was only twenty when she was burnt at the stake on the streets of Rouen, 1431. Differing from her Italian sister by comeliness of form and robustness of constitution, she also, as she thought, was the subject of angelic communications and divine guidance. Her unselfish devotion to her country at first brought it victory, but, at last, to her capture and death. Her trial by the English on the charges of heresy and sorcery and her execution are a dark sheet among the pages of her century’s history. Twenty-five years after her death, the pope revoked the sentence, and the French heroine, whose standard was embroidered with lilies and adorned with pictures of the creation and the annunciation, was beatified, 1909, and now awaits the crown of canonization from Rome. The exalted passion of these two women, widely as they differ in methods and ideals and in the close of their careers, diffuses a bright light over the selfish pursuits of their time, and makes the aims of many of its courts look low and grovelling.

§ 22. Peter d’Ailly, Ecclesiastical Statesman.

One of the most prominent figures in the negotiations for the healing of the papal schism, as well as one of the foremost personages of his age, was Peter d’Ailly, born in Compiegne 1350, died in Avignon 1420. His eloquence, which reminds us of Bossuet and other French orators of the court of Louis XIV., won for him the title of the Eagle of France—aquila Francia.376

In 1372 he entered the College of Navarre as a theological student, prepared a commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard three years later, and in 1380 reached the theological doctorate. He at once became involved in the measures for the healing of the schism, and in 1381 delivered a celebrated address in the name of the university before the French regent, the duke of Anjou, to win the court for the policy of settling the papal controversy through a general council. His appeal not meeting with favor, he retired to Noyon, from which he wrote a letter purporting to come from the devil, a satire based on the continuance of the schism, in which the prince of darkness called upon his friends and vassals, the prelates, to follow his example in promoting division in the Church. He warned them as their overlord that the holding of a council might result in establishing peace and so bring eternal shame upon them. He urged them to continue to make the Church a house of merchandise and to be careful to tithe anise and cummin, to make broad the borders of their garments and in every other way to do as he had given them an example.377

In 1384 D’Ailly was made head of the College of Navarre, where he had Gerson for a pupil, and in 1389 chancellor of the university.

When Benedict XIII. was chosen successor to Clement VII., he was sent by the French king on a confidential mission to Avignon. Benedict won his allegiance and appointed him successively bishop of Puy, 1395, and bishop of Cambray, 1397. D’Ailly was with Benedict at Genoa, 1405, and Savona, 1407, but by that time seems to have come to the conclusion that Benedict was not sincere in his profession of readiness to resign, and returned to Cambray. In his absence Cambray had decided for the subtraction of its allegiance from Avignon. D’Ailly was seized and taken to Paris, but protected by the king, who was his friend. Thenceforth he favored the assemblage of a general council.

At Pisa and at Constance, D’Ailly took the position that a general council is superior to the pope and may depose him. Made a cardinal by John XXIII., 1411, he attended the council held at Rome the following year and in vain tried to have a reform of the calendar put through. At Constance, he took the position that the Pisan council? though it was called by the Spirit and represented the Church universal, might have erred, as did other councils reputed to be general councils. He declared that the three synods of Pisa, Rome and Constance, though not one body, yet were virtually one, even as the stream of the Rhine at different points is one and the same. It was not necessary, so he held, for the Council of Constance to pass acts confirming the Council of Pisa, for the two were on a par.378

In the proceedings against John XXIII., the cardinal took sides against him. He was the head of the commission which tried Huss in matters of faith, June 7, 8, 1415, and was present when the sentence of death was passed upon that Reformer. At the close of the council he appears as one of the three candidates for the office of pope, and his defeat was a disappointment to the French.379  He was appointed legate by Martin V., with his residence at Avignon, and spent his last days there.

D’Ailly followed Ockam as a nominalist. To his writings in the departments of philosophy, theology and Church government he added works on astronomy and geography and a much-read commentary on Aristotle’s meteorology.380  His work on geography, The Picture of the World,—imago mundi,—written 1410, was a favorite book with Columbus. A printed copy of it containing marginal notes in the navigator’s own hand is preserved in the biblioteca Colombina, Seville. This copy he probably had with him on his third journey to America, for, in writing from Hayti, 1498, he quoted at length the eighth chapter. Leaning chiefly upon Roger Bacon, the author represented the coast of India or Cathay as stretching far in the direction of Europe, so that, in a favorable wind, a ship sailing westwards would reach it in a few days. This idea was in the air, but it is possible that it was first impressed upon the mind of the discoverer of the New World by the reading of D’Ailly’s work. Humboldt was the first to show its value for the history of discovery.381

§ 23. John Gerson, Theologian and Church Leader.

In John Gerson, 1363–1429, we have the most attractive and the most influential theological leader of the first half of the fifteenth century. He was intimately identified with the University of Paris as professor and as its chancellor in the period of its most extensive influence in Europe. His voice carried great weight in the settlement of the questions rising out of the papal schism.

Jean Charlier Gerson, born Dec. 14, 1363, in the village of Gerson, in the diocese of Rheims, was the oldest of twelve children. In a letter to him still extant,382 his mother, a godly woman, pours out her heart in the prayer that her children may live in unity with each other and with God. Two of John’s brothers became ecclesiastics. In 1377 Gerson went to Paris, entering the College of Navarre. This college was founded by Johanna, queen of Navarre, 1304, who provided for 3 departments, the arts with 20 students, philosophy with 30 and theology with 20 students. Provision was made also for their support, 4 Paris sous weekly for the artists, 6 for the logicians and 8 for the theologians. These allowances were to continue until the graduates held benefices of the value respectively of 30, 40 and 60 pounds. The regulations allowed the theological students a fire, daily, from November to March after dinner and supper for one half-hour. The luxury of benches was forbidden by a commission appointed by Urban V. in 1366. On the festival days, the theologians were expected to deliver a collation to their fellow-students of the three classes. The rector at the head of the college, originally appointed by the faculty of the university, was now appointed by the king’s confessor. The students wore a special dress and the tonsure, spoke Latin amongst themselves and ate in common.

Gerson, perhaps the most distinguished name the University of Paris has on its list of students, was a faithful and enthusiastic son of his alma mater, calling her "his mother," "the mother of the light of the holy Church," "the nurse of all that is wise and good in Christendom," "a prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem," "the fountain of knowledge, the lamp of our faith, the beauty and ornament of France, yea, of the whole world."383

In 1382, at the age of nineteen, he passed into the theological department, and a year later came under the guidance of D’Ailly, the newly appointed rector, remaining under him for seven years. Gerson was already a marked man, and was chosen in 1383 procurator of the French "nation," and in 1387 one of the delegation to appear before Clement VII. and argue the case against John of Montson. This Dominican, who had been condemned for denying the immaculate conception of Mary, refused to recant on the plea that in being condemned Thomas Aquinas was condemned, and he appealed to the pope. The University of Paris took up the case, and D’Ailly in two addresses before the papal consistory took the ground that Thomas, though a saint, was not infallible. The case went against De Montson; and the Dominicans, who refused to bow to the decision, left the university and did not return till 1403.

Gerson advocated Mary’s exemption from original as well as actual sin, and made a distinction between her and Christ, Christ being exempt by nature, and Mary—domina nostra — by an act of divine grace. This doctrine, he said, cannot be immediately derived from the Scriptures,384 but, as the Apostles knew more than the prophets, so the Church teachers know some things the Apostles did not know.

At D’Ailly’s promotion to the episcopate, 1395, his pupil fell heir to both his offices, the offices of professor of theology and chancellor of the university. In the discussion over the healing of the schism in which the university took the leading part, he occupied a place of first prominence, and by tracts, sermons and public memorials directed the opinion of the Church in this pressing matter. The premise from which he started out was that the peace of the Church is an essential condition to the fulfilment of its mission. This view he set forth in a famous sermon, preached in 1404 at Tarascon before Benedict XIII. and the duke of Orleans. Princes and prelates, he declared, both owe obedience to law. The end for which the Church was constituted is the peace and well-being of men. All Church authority is established to subserve the interests of peace. Peace is so great a boon that all should be ready to renounce dignities and position for it. Did not Christ suffer shame?  Better for a while to be without a pope than that the Church should observe the canons and not have peace, for there can be salvation where there is no pope.385  A general council should be convened, and it was pious to believe that in the treatment of the schism it would not err—pium est credere non erraret. As Schwab has said, no one had ever preached in the same way to a pope before. The sermon caused a sensation.

Gerson, though not present at the council of Pisa, contributed to its discussions by his important tracts on the Unity of the Church—De unitate ecclesiastica — and the Removal of a Pope—De auferbilitate papae ab ecclesia. The views set forth were that Christ is the head of the Church, and its monarchical constitution is unchangeable. There must be one pope, not several, and the bishops are not equal in authority with him. As the pope may separate himself from the Church, so the Church may separate itself from the pope. Such action might be required by considerations of self-defence. The papal office is of God, and yet the pope may be deposed even by a council called without his consent. All Church offices and officials exist for the good of the Church, that is, for the sake of peace which comes through the exercise of love. If a pope has a right to defend himself against, say, the charge of unchastity, why should not the Church have a like right to defend itself?  A council acts under the immediate authority of Christ and His laws. The council may pronounce against a pope by virtue of the power of the keys which is given not only to one but to the body—unitati. Aristotle declared that the body has the right, if necessary, to depose its prince. So may the council, and whoso rejects a council of the Church rejects God who directs its action. A pope may be deposed for heresy and schism, as, for example, if he did not bend the knee before the sacrament, and he might be deposed when no personal guilt was chargeable against him, as in the case already referred to, when he was a captive of the Saracens and was reported dead.

At the Council of Constance, where Gerson spoke as the delegate of the French king, he advocated these positions again and again with his voice, as in his address March 23, 1415, and in a second address July 21, when he defended the decree which the synod had passed at its fifth session. He reasserted that the pope may be forced to abdicate, that general councils are above the popes and that infallibility only belongs to the Church as a body or its highest representative, a general council.386

A blot rests upon Gerson’s name for the active part he took in the condemnation of John Huss. He was not above his age, and using the language of Innocent III. called heresy a cancer.387  He declares that he was as zealous in the proceedings against Huss and Wyclif as any one could be.388  He pronounced the nineteen errors drawn from Huss’ work on the Church "notoriously heretical."  Heresy, he declared, if it is obstinate, must be destroyed even by the death of its professors.389  He denied Huss’ fundamental position that nothing is to be accepted as divine truth which is not found in Scripture. Gerson also condemned the appeal to conscience, explicitly assuming the old position of Church authority and canon law as final. The opinions of an individual, however learned he may be in the Scriptures, have no weight before the judgment of a council.390

In the controversy over the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, involved in the Bohemian heresy, Gerson also took an extreme position, defending it by arguments which seem to us altogether unworthy of a genuine theology. In a tract on the subject he declared that, though some passages of Scripture and of the Fathers favored the distribution of both wine and bread, they do not contain a definite command, and in the cases where an explicit command is given it must be understood as applying to the priests who are obliged to commune under both kinds so as to fully represent Christ’s sufferings and death. But this is not required of the laity who commune for the sake of the effect of Christ’s death and not to set it forth. Christ commanded only the Apostles to partake of both kinds.391  The custom of lay communion was never universal, as is proved by Acts 2:42, 46. The essence of the sacrament of the body and blood is more important than the elements, John 6:54. But the whole Christ is in either element, and, if some of the doctors take a different view, the Church’s doctrine is to be followed, and not they. From time immemorial the Church has given the communion only in one form. The Council of Constance was right in deciding that only a single element is necessary to a saving participation in the sacrament. The Church may make changes in the outward observance when the change does not touch the essence of the right in question. The use of the two elements, once profitable, is now unprofitable and heretical.

To these statements Gerson added practical considerations against the distribution of the cup to laymen, such as the danger of spilling the wine, of soiling the vessels from the long beards of laymen, of having the wine turn to vinegar, if it be preserved for the sick and so it cease to be the blood of Christ—et ita desineret esse sanguis Christi — and from the impossibility of consecrating in one vessel enough for 10,000 to 20,000 communicants, as at Easter time may be necessary. Another danger was the encouragement such a practice would give to the notions that priest and layman are equal, and that the chief value of the sacrament lies in the participation and not in the consecration of the elements.392  Such are some of the "scandals" which this renowned teacher ascribed to the distribution of the cup to the laity.

A subject on which Gerson devoted a great deal of energy for many years was whether the murder of tyrants or of a traitorous vassal is justifiable or not. He advocated the negative side of the case, which he failed to win before the Council of Constance. The question grew out of the treatment of the half-insane French king, Charles VI. (1880–1422), and the attempt of different factions to get control of the government.

On Nov. 28, 1407, the king’s cousin, Louis, duke of Orleans, was murdered at the command of the king’s uncle, John, duke of Burgundy. The duke’s act was defended by the Franciscan and Paris professor, John Petit,—Johannes Parvus,—in an address delivered before the king March 8, 1408. Gerson, who at an earlier time seems to have advocated the murder of tyrants, answered Petit in a public address, and called upon the king to suppress Petit’s nine propositions.393  The University of Paris made Gerson’s cause its own. Petit died in 1411, but the controversy went on. Petit’s theory was this, that every vassal plotting against his lord is deserving of death in soul and body. He is a tyrant, and according to the laws of nature and God any one has the right to put him out of the way. The higher such a person is in rank, the more meritorious is the deed. He based his argument upon Thomas Aquinas, John of Salisbury, Aristotle, Cicero and other writers, and referred to Moses, Zambri and St. Michael who cast Lucifer out of heaven, and other examples. The duke of Orleans was guilty of treason against the king, and the duke of Burgundy was justified in killing him.

The bishop of Paris, supported by a commission of the Inquisition and at the king’s direction, condemned Petit and his views. In February, 1414, Gerson made a public address defending the condemnation, and two days later articles taken from Petit’s work were burnt in front of Notre Dame. The king ratified the bishop’s judgment, and the duke of Burgundy appealed the case to Rome.394

The case was now transferred to the council, which at its fifteenth session, July 6, 1415, passed a compromise measure condemning the doctrine that a tyrant, in the absence of a judicial sentence, may and ought to be put to death by any subject whatever, even by the use of treacherous means, and in the face of an oath without committing perjury. Petit was not mentioned by name. It was this negative and timid action, which led Gerson to say that if Huss had had a defender, he would not have been found guilty. It was rumored that the commission which was appointed to bring in a report, by sixty-one out of eighty votes, decided for the permissibility of Petit’s articles declaring that Peter meant to kill the high priest’s servant, and that, if he had known Judas’ thoughts at the Last Supper, he would have been justified in killing him. The duke of Burgundy’s gold is said to have been freely used.395  The party led by the bishop of Arras argued that the tyrant who takes the sword is to be punished with the sword. Gerson, who was supported by D’Ailly replied that then the command "thou shalt not kill" would only forbid such an act as murder, if there was coupled with it an inspired gloss, "without judicial authority."  The command means, "thou shalt not kill the innocent, or kill out of revenge."  Gerson pressed the matter for the last time in an address delivered before the council, Jan. 17, 1417, but the council refused to go beyond the decree of the fifteenth session.

The duke of Burgundy got possession of Paris in 1418, and Gerson found the doors of France closed to him. Under the protection of the duke of Bavaria he found refuge at Rattenberg and later in Austria. On the assassination of the duke of Burgundy himself, with the connivance of the dauphin, Sept. 10, 1419, he returned to France, but not to Paris. He went to Lyons, where his brother John was, and spent his last years there in monastic seclusion. The dauphin is said to have granted him 200 livres in 1420 in recognition of his services to the crown.

It remains to speak of Gerson as a theologian, a preacher and a patriot.

In the department of theology proper Gerson has a place among the mystics.396  Mysticism he defines as "the art of love," the "perception of God through experience."  Such experience is reached by humility and penance more than through the path of speculation. The contemplative life is most desirable, but, following Christ’s example, contemplation must be combined with action. The contemplation of God consists of knowledge as taught in John 17:3, "This is life eternal, to know Thee and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."  Such knowledge is mingled with love. The soul is one with God through love. His mysticism was based, on the one hand, on the study of the Scriptures and, on the other, on the study of Bonaventura and the St. Victors. He wrote a special treatise in praise of Bonaventura and his mystical writings. Far from having any conscious affinity with the German mystics, he wrote against John of Ruysbroeck and Ruysbroeck’s pupil, John of Schönhofen, charging them with pantheism.

While Gerson emphasized the religious feelings, he was far from being a religious visionary and wrote treatises against the dangers of delusion from dreams and revelations. As coins must be tested by their weight, hardness, color, shape and stamp, so visions are to be tested by the humility and honesty of those who profess to have them and their readiness to teach and be taught. He commended the monk who, when some one offered to show him a figure like Christ, replied, "I do not want to see Christ on the earth. I am contented to wait till I see him in heaven."

When the negotiations were going on at the Council of Constance for the confirmation of the canonization of St. Brigitta, Gerson laid down the principle that, if visions reveal what is already in the Scriptures,397 then they are false, for God does not repeat Himself, Job 33:14. People have itching ears for revelations because they do not study the Bible. Later he warned398 against the revelations of women, as women are more open to deception than men.

The Scriptures, Gerson taught, are the Church’s rule and guide to the end of the world. If a single statement should be proved false, then the whole volume is false, for the Holy Spirit is author of the whole. The letter of the text, however, is not sufficient to determine their meaning, as is proved from the translations of the Waldenses, Beghards and other secretaries.399  The text needs the authority of the Church, as Augustine indicated when he said, "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Church did not compel me."

Great as Gerson’s services were in other departments, it was, to follow his sympathetic and scholarly biographer, Schwab, from the pulpit that he exercised most influence on his generation.400  He preached in French as well as Latin, and his sermons had, for the most part, a practical intent, being occupied with ethical themes such as pride, idleness, anger, the commandments of the Decalogue, the marital state. He held that the ordinary priest should confine himself to a simple explanation of the Decalogue, the greater sins and the articles of faith.

During the last ten years of his life, spent in seclusion at Lyons, he continued his literary activity, writing more particularly in the vein of mystical theology. His last work was on the Canticles.

The tradition runs that the great teacher in his last years conducted a catechetical school for children in St. Paul’s at Lyons, and that he taught them to offer for himself the daily prayer, "God, my creator, have pity upon Thy poor servant, Jean Gerson"—Mon Dieu, mon Createur, ayez pitié de vostre pauvre serviteur, Jean Gerson.401  It was for young boys and perhaps for boys spending their first years in the university that he wrote his tractate entitled Leading Children to Christ.402  It opens with an exposition of the words, "Suffer little children to come unto me" and proceeds to show how much more seemly it is to offer to God our best in youth than the dregs of sickly old age. The author takes up the sins children should be admonished to avoid, especially unchastity, and holds up to reprobation the principle that vice is venial if it is kept secret, the principle expressed in the words si non caste tamen caute.

In a threefold work, giving a brief exposition of the Ten Commandments, a statement of the seven mortal sins and some short meditations on death and the way to meet it, Gerson gives a sort of catechism, although it is not thrown into the form of questions and answers. As the author states, it was intended for the benefit of poorly instructed curates who heard confessions, for parents who had children to instruct, for persons not interested in the public services of worship and for those who had the care of the sick in hospitals.403

The title, most Christian doctor—doctor christianissimus —  given to John Gerson is intended to emphasize the evangelical temper of his teaching. To a clear intellect, he added warm religious fervor. With a love for the Church, which it would be hard to find excelled, he magnified the body of Christian people as possessing the mind and immediate guidance of Christ and threw himself into the advocacy of the principle that the judgment of Christendom, as expressed in a general council, is the final authority of religious matters on the earth.

He opposed some of the superstitions inherited from another time. He emphasized the authority of the sacred text. In these views as in others he was in sympathy with the progressive spirit of his age. But he stopped short of the principles of the Reformers. He knew nothing of the principles of individual sovereignty and the rights of conscience. His thinking moved along churchly lines. He had none of the bold original thought of Wyclif and little of that spirit which sets itself against the current errors of the times in which we live. His vote for Huss’ burning proves sufficiently that the light of the new age had not dawned upon his mind. He was not, like them, a forerunner of the movement of the sixteenth century.

The chief principle for which Gerson contended, the supremacy of general councils, met with defeat soon after the great chancellor’s death, and was set aside by popes and later by the judgment of a general council. His writings, however, which were frequently published remain the chief literary monuments in the department of theology of the first half of the fourteenth century.404  Separated from the Schoolmen in spirit and method, he stands almost in a class by himself, the most eminent theologian of his century. This judgment is an extension of the judgment of the eminent German abbot and writer, Trithemius, at the close of the fifteenth century: "He was by far the chief divine of his age"405 Theologorum sui temporis longe princeps.

§ 24. Nicolas of Clamanges, the Moralist.

The third of the great luminaries who gave fame to the University of Paris in this period, Nicolas Poillevillain de Clamanges, was born at Clamengis,406 Champagne, about 1367 and died in Paris about 1437. Shy by nature, he took a less prominent part in the settlement of the great questions of the age than his contemporaries, D’Ailly and Gerson. Like them, he was identified with the discussions called forth by the schism, and is distinguished for the high value he put on the study of the Scriptures and his sharp exposition of the corruption of the clergy. He entered the College of Navarre at twelve, and had D’Ailly and Gerson for his teachers. In theology he did not go beyond the baccalaureate. It is probable he was chosen rector of the university 1393. With Peter of Monsterolio, he was the chief classical scholar of the university and was able to write that in Paris, Virgil, Terence and Cicero were often read in public and in private.407

In 1394, Clamanges took a prominent part in preparing the paper, setting forth the conclusions of the university in regard to the healing of the schism.408  It was addressed to the "most Christian king, Charles VI., most zealous of religious orthodoxy by his daughter, the university."  This, the famous document suggesting the three ways of healing the schism,—by abdication, arbitration and by a general council,—is characterized by firmness and moderation, two of the elements prominent in Clamanges’ character. It pronounced the schism pestiferous, and in answer to the question who would give the council its authority, it answered: "The communion of all the faithful will give it; Christ will give it, who said: ’Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.’ "

The Paris professor was one of the men whom the keen-eyed Peter de Luna picked out, and when he was elected pope, Clamanges supported him and wrote appealing to him, as the one who no longer occupied the position of one boatman among others, but stood at the rudder of the ship, to act in the interest of all Christendom. He was called as secretary to the Avignon court, but became weary of the commotion and the vices of the palace and the town.409  In 1406, he seems to have withdrawn from Benedict at Genoa and retired to Langres, where he held a canon’s stall. He did not, however, break with the pope, and, when Benedict in 1408 issued the bull threatening the French court with excommunication, Clamanges was charged with being its author. He denied the charge, but the accusation of want of patriotism had made a strong impression, and he withdrew to the Carthusian convent, Valprofonds, and later to Fontaine du Bosc. His seclusion he employed in writing letters and treatises and in the study of the Bible which he now expressed regret for having neglected in former years for classical studies.

To D’Ailly he wrote on the advantages of a secluded life.—De fructu eremi. In another tract—De fructu rerum adversarum — he presented the advantages of adversity. One of more importance complained of the abuse of the Lord’s Day and of the multiplication of festivals as taking the workman from his work while the interests of piety were not advanced. In still another tract—De studio theologico — addressed to a theologian at Paris who had inquired whether it was better for him to continue where he was or to retire to a pastorate, he emphasized the importance and delicacy of caring for souls, but advised the inquirer to remain at the university and to concern himself chiefly with the study of the Scriptures. He ascribed the Church’s decline to their neglect, and pronounced the mass, processionals and festivals as of no account unless the heart be purified by faith.

During the sessions of the Council of Constance, which he did not attend, Clamanges sent a letter to that body urging unity of thought and action. He expressed doubt whether general councils were always led by the Holy Spirit. The Church, which he defined as infallible, is only there where the Holy Spirit is, and where the Church is, can be only known to God Himself. In 1425 he returned to Paris and lectured on rhetoric and theology.

Clamanges’ reputation rests chiefly upon his sharp criticism of the corrupt morals of the clergy. His residence in Avignon gave him a good opportunity for observation. His tract on the prelates who were practising simony—De praesulibus simoniacis — is a commentary on the words, "But ye have made it a den of thieves," Matt. 21:13. A second tract on the downfall of the Church—De ruina ecclesiae — is one of the most noted writings of the age. Here are set forth the simony and private vices practised at Avignon where all things holy were prostituted for gold and luxury. Here is described the corruption of the clergy from the pope down to the lowest class of priests. The author found ideal conditions in the first century, when the minds of the clergy were wholly set on heavenly things. With possessions and power came avarice and ambition, pride and luxury. The popes themselves were guilty of pride in exalting their authority above that of the empire and by asserting for themselves the right of appointing all prelates, yea of filling all the benefices of Christendom. The evils arising from annates and expectances surpass the power of statement. The cardinals followed the popes in their greed and pride, single cardinals having as many as 500 livings. In order to perpetuate their "tyranny," pope and curia had entered into league with princes, which Clamanges pronounces an abominable fornication. Many of the bishops drew large incomes from their sees which they administered through others, never visiting them themselves. Canons and vicars followed the same course and divided their time between idleness and sensual pleasure. The mendicant monks corresponded to the Pharisees of the synagogue. Scarcely one cleric out of a thousand did what his profession demanded. They were steeped in ignorance and given to brawling, drinking, playing with dice and fornication. Priests bought the privilege of keeping concubines. As for the nuns, Clamanges said, he dared not speak of them. Nunneries were not the sanctuaries of God, but shameful brothels of Venus, resorts of unchaste and wanton youth for the sating of their passions, and for a girl to put on the veil was virtually to submit herself to prostitution.410  The Church was drunken with the lust of power, glory and pleasures. Judgment was sure to come, and men should bow humbly before God who alone could rectify the evils and put an end to the schism. Descriptions such as these must be used with discrimination, and it would be wrong to deduce from them that the entire clerical body was corrupt. The diseases, however, must have been deep-seated to call forth such a lament from a man of Clamanges’ position.

The author did not call to open battle like the German Reformer at a later time, but suggested as a remedy prayers, processions and fasts. His watchword was that the Church must humble itself before it can be rebuilt.411 It was, however, a bold utterance and forms an important part of that body of literature which so powerfully moulded opinion at the time of the Reformatory councils.

The loud complaints against the state of morals at the papal court and beyond during the Avignon period increased, if possible, in strength during the time of the schism. The list of abuses to be corrected which the Council of Constance issued, Oct. 30, 1417, includes the official offences of the curia, such as reservations, annates, the sale of indulgences and the unrestricted right of appeals to the papal court. The subject of chastity it remained for individual writers to press. In describing the third Babylon, Petrarch was even more severe than Clamanges who wrote of conditions as they existed nearly a century later and accused the papal household of practising adultery, rape and all manners of fornication.412ois, La vie en France au moyen âge d’après quelques moralistes du temps, Paris, 1908, pp. 320, 336, etc. Clamanges declared that many parishes insisted upon the priests keeping concubines as a precaution in defence of their own families. Against all canonical rules John XXIII. gave a dispensation to the illegitimate son of Henry IV. of England, who was only ten years old, to enter orders.413 The case of John XXIII. was an extreme one, but it must be remembered, that in Bologna where he was sent as cardinal-legate, his biographer, Dietrich of Nieheim, says that two hundred matrons and maidens, including some nuns, fell victims to the future pontiff’s amours. Dietrich Vrie in his History of the Council of Constance said: "The supreme pontiffs, as I know, are elected through avarice and simony and likewise the other bishops are ordained for gold. The old proverb; ’Freely give, for freely ye have received’ is now most vilely perverted and runs ’Freely I have not received and freely I will not give, for I have bought my bishopric with a great price and must indemnify myself impiously for my outlay.’ ... If Simon Magus were now alive he might buy with money not only the Holy Ghost but God the Father and Me, God the Son."414 But bad as was the moral condition of the hierarchy and papacy at the time of the schism, it was not so bad as during the last half century of the Middle Ages. The Reformatory councils are the best, though by no means the only, proof that a deep moral vitality existed in the Church. Their very summons and assembling were a protest against clerical corruption and hypocrisy "in head and members,"—from the pope down to the most obscure priest,—and at the same time a most hopeful sign of future betterment.

§ 25. Nicolas of Cusa, Scholar and Churchman.

Of the theologians of the generation following Gerson and D’Ailly none occupies a more conspicuous place than the German Nicolas of Cusa, 1401–1464. After taking a prominent part in the Basel council in its earlier history, he went into the service of Eugenius IV. and distinguished himself by practical efforts at Church reform and by writings in theology and other departments of human learning.

Born at Cues near Treves, the son of a boatman, he left the parental home on account of harsh treatment. Coming under the patronage of the count of Manderscheid, he went to Deventer, where he received training in the school conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life. He studied law in Padua, and reached the doctorate, but exchanged law for theology because, to follow the statement of his opponent, George of Heimburg, he had failed in his first case. At Padua he had for one of his teachers Cesarini, afterwards cardinal and a prominent figure in the Council of Basel.

In 1432 he appeared in Basel as the representative of Ulrich of Manderscheid, archbishop-elect of Treves, to advocate Ulrich’s cause against his rivals Rabanus of Helmstatt, bishop of Spires, whom the pope had appointed archbishop of the Treves diocese. Identifying himself closely with the conciliar body, Nicolas had a leading part in the proceedings with the Hussites and went with the majority in advocating the superiority of the council over the pope. His work on Catholic Unity,—De concordantia catholica,—embodying his views on this question and dedicated to the council 1433, followed the earlier treatments of Langenstein, Nieheim and Gerson. A general council, being inspired by the Holy Spirit, speaks truly and infallibly. The Church is the body of the faithful—unitas fidelium — and is represented in a general council. The pope derives his authority from the consent of the Church, a council has power to dethrone him for heresy and other causes and may not be prorogued or adjourned without its own consent. Peter received no more authority from Christ than the other Apostles. Whatever was said to Peter was likewise said to the others. All bishops are of equal authority and dignity, whether their jurisdiction be episcopal, archiepiscopal, patriarchal or papal, just as all presbyters are equal.415

In spite of these views, when the question arose as to the place of meeting the Greeks, Nicolas sided with the minority in favor of an Italian city, and was a member of the delegations appointed by the minority which visited Eugenius IV. at Bologna and went to Constantinople. This was in 1437 and from that time forward he was a ready servant of Eugenius and his two successors. Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II., called him the Hercules of the Eugenians. Aeneas also pronounced him a man notable for learning in all branches of knowledge and on account of his godly life.416

Eugenius employed his new supporter as legate to arrange terms of peace with the German Church and princes, an end he saw accomplished in the concordat of Vienna, 1447. He was rewarded by promotion to the college of cardinals, and in 1452 was made bishop of Brixen in the Tyrol. Here he sought to introduce Church reforms, and he travelled as the papal legate in the same interest throughout the larger part of Germany.

By attempting to assert all the mediaeval feoffal rights of his diocese, the bishop came into sharp conflict with Siegmund, duke of Austria. Even the interdict pronounced by two popes did not bring the duke to terms. He declared war against the bishop and, taking him prisoner, forced from him a promise to renounce the old rights which his predecessors for many years had not asserted. Once released, the bishop treated his oath as null, on the ground that it had been forced from him, and in this he was supported by Pius II. In 1460 he went to Rome and died at Todi, Umbria, a few years later.

Nicolas of Cusa knew Greek and Hebrew, and perhaps has claim to being the most universal scholar of Germany up to his day since Albertus Magnus. He was interested in astronomy, mathematics and botany, and, as D’Ailly had done before, he urged, at the Council of Basel, the correction of the calendar. The literary production on which he spent most labor was a discussion of the problems of theology—De docta ignorantia. Here he attacked the scholastic method and showed the influence upon his mind of mysticism, the atmosphere of which he breathed at Deventer. He laid stress upon the limitations of the human mind and the inability of the reason to find out God exhaustively. Faith, which he defined as a state of the soul given of God’s grace, finds out truths the intellect cannot attain to.417  His views had an influence upon Faber Stapulensis who edited the Cusan’s works and was himself a French forerunner of Luther in the doctrine of justification by faith.

His last labors, in connection with the crusade against the Turks pushed by Pius II., led him to studies in the Koran and the preparation of a tract,—De cribatione Alcoran,—in which he declared that false religions have the true religion as their basis.

It is as an ecclesiastical mediator, and as a reformer of clerical and conventual abuses that the cardinal has his chief place in history. He preached in the vernacular. In Bamberg he secured the prohibition of new brotherhoods, in Magdeburg the condemnation of the sale of indulgences for money. In Salzburg and other places he introduced reforms in convents, and in connection with other members of his family he founded the hospital at Cues with beds for 33 patients. He showed his interest in studies by providing for the training of 20 boys in Deventer. He dwelt upon the rotation of the earth on its axis nearly a century before Copernicus. He gave reasons for regarding the donation of Constantine spurious, and he also called in question the genuineness of other parts of the Isidorian Decretals.

On the other hand, the cardinal was a thorough churchman and obedient child of the Church. As the agent of Nicolas V. he travelled in Germany announcing the indulgence of the Jubilee Year, and through him, it is said, indulgences to the value of 200,000 gulden were sold for the repair of St. Peter’s.

This noble and many-sided man has been coupled together with Gutenberg by Janssen,—the able and learned apologist of the Catholic Church in the closing years of the Middle Ages,—the one as the champion of clerical and Church discipline, the other the inventor of the printing-press. It is no disparagement of the impulses and work of Nicolas to say that he had not the mission of the herald of a new age in thought and religion as it was given to Gutenberg to promote culture and civilization by his invention.418  He did not possess the gift of moral and doctrinal conviction and foresight which made the monk of Wittenberg the exponent and the herald of a radical, religious reformation whose permanent benefits are borne witness to by a large section of Christendom.

§ 26. Popular Preachers.

During the century and a half closing with 1450, there were local groups of preachers as well as isolated pulpit orators who exercised a deep influence upon congregations. The German mystics with Eckart and John Tauler at their head preached in Strassburg, Cologne and along the Rhine. D’Ailly and Gerson stood before select audiences, and give lustre to the French pulpit. Wyclif, at Oxford, and John Huss in Bohemia, attracted great attention by their sermons and brought down upon themselves ecclesiastical condemnation. Huss was one of a number of Bohemian preachers of eminence. Wyclif sought to promote preaching by sending out a special class of men, his "pore preachers."

The popular preachers constitute another group, though the period does not furnish one who can be brought into comparison with the field-preacher, Berthold of Regensburg, the Whitefield of his century, d. 1272. Among the popular preachers of the time the most famous were Bernardino and John of Capistrano, both Italians, and members of the Observant wing of the Franciscan order, and the Spanish Dominican, Vincent Ferrer. To a later age belong those bright pulpit luminaries, Savonarola of Florence and Geiler of Strassburg.

Bernardino of Siena, 1380–1444, was praised by Pius II. as a second Paul. He made a marked impression upon Italian audiences and was a favorite with pope Martin V. His voice, weak and indistinct at first, was said to have been made strong and clear through the grace of Mary, to whom he turned for help. He was the first vicar-general of the Observants, who numbered only a few congregations in Italy when he joined them, but increased greatly under his administration. In 1424 he was in Rome and, as Infessura the Roman diarist reports,419 so influenced the people that they brought their games and articles of adornment to the Capitol and made a bonfire of them. Wherever he went to preach, a banner was carried before him containing the monogram of Christ, IHS, with twelve rays centring in the letters. He urged priests to put the monogram on the walls of churches and public buildings, and such a monogram may still be seen on the city building of Siena.420  The Augustinians and Dominicans and also Poggio attacked him for this practice. In 1427, he appeared in Rome to answer the charges. He was acquitted by Martin V., who gave him permission to preach everywhere, and instructed him to hold an eighty-days’ mission in the papal city itself. In 1419, he appeared in the Lombard cities, where the people were carried away by his exhortations to repentance, and often burned their trinkets and games in the public squares. His body lies in Aquila, and he was canonized by Nicolas V., 1450.

John of Capistrano, 1386–1456, a lawyer, and at an early age intrusted with the administration of Perugia, joined the Observants in 1416 and became a pupil of Bernardino. He made a reputation as an inquisitor in Northern Italy, converting and burning heretics and Jews. No one could have excelled him in the ferocity of his zeal against heresy. His first appointment as inquisitor was made in 1426, and his fourth appointment 23 years later in 1449.421

As a leader of his order, he defended Bernardino in 1427, and was made vicar-general in 1443. He extended his preaching to Vienna and far up into Germany, from Nürnberg to Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Breslau, making everywhere a tremendous sensation. He used the Latin or Italian, which had to be interpreted to his audiences. These are reported to have numbered as many as thirty thousand.422  He carried relics of Bernardino with him, and through them and his own instrumentality many miracles were said to have been performed. His attendants made a note of the wonderful works on the spot.423  The spell of his preaching was shown by the burning of pointed shoes, games of cards, dice and other articles of pleasure or vanity. Thousands of heretics are also reported to have yielded to his persuasions. He was called by Pius II. to preach against the Hussites, and later against the Turks. He was present at the siege of Belgrade, and contributed to the successful defence of the city and the defeat of Mohammed II. He was canonized in 1690.

The life of Vincent Ferrer, d. 1419, the greatest of Spanish preachers, fell during the period of the papal schism, and he was intimately identified with the controversies it called forth. His name is also associated with the gift of tongues and with the sect of the Flagellants. This devoted missionary, born in Valencia, joined the Dominican order, and pursued his studies in the universities of Barcelona and Lerida. He won the doctorate of theology by his tract on the Modern Schism in the Church—De moderno ecclesiae schismate. Returning to Valencia, he gained fame as a preacher, and was appointed confessor to the queen of Aragon, Iolanthe, and counsellor to her husband, John I. In 1395, Benedict XIII. called him to be chief penitentiary in Avignon and master of the papal palace. Two years later he returned to Valencia with the title of papal legate. He at first defended the Avignon obedience with great warmth, but later, persuaded that Benedict was not sincere in his professions looking to the healing of the schism, withdrew from him his support and supported the Council of Constance.

Ferrer’s apostolic labors began in 1399. He itinerated through Spain, Northern Italy and France, preaching two and three times a day on the great themes of repentance and the nearness of the judgment. He has the reputation of being the most successful of missionaries among the Jews and Mohammedans. Twenty-five thousand Jews and eight thousand Mohammedans are said to have yielded to his persuasions. Able to speak only Spanish, his sermons, though they were not interpreted, are reported to have been understood in France and Italy. The gift of tongues was ascribed to him by his contemporaries as well as the gift of miracles. Priests and singers accompanied him on his tours, and some of the hymns sung were Vincent’s own compositions. His audiences are given as high as 70,000, an incredible number, and he is said to have preached twenty thousand times. He also preached to the Waldenses in their valleys and to the remnant of the Cathari, and is said to have made numerous converts. He himself was not above the suspicion of heresy, and Eymerich made the charge against him of declaring that Judas Iscariot hanged himself because the people would not permit him to live, and that he found pardon with God.424  He was canonized by Calixtus III., 1455. The tale is that Ferrer noticed this member of the Borgia family as a young priest in Valencia, and made the prediction that one day he would reach the highest office open to mortal man.425

On his itineraries Ferrer was also accompanied by bands of Flagellants. He himself joined in the flagellations, and the scourge with which he scourged himself daily, consisting of six thongs, is said still to be preserved in the Carthusian convent of Catalonia, scala coeli. Both Gerson and D’Ailly attacked Ferrer for his adoption of the Flagellant delusion. In a letter addressed to the Spanish preacher, written during the sessions of the Council of Constance, Gerson took the ground that both the Old Testament and the New Testament forbid violence done to the body, quoting in proof Deut. 14:1, "Ye shall not cut yourselves."  He invited him to come to Constance, but the invitation was not accepted.426

CHAPTER IV.

THE GERMAN MYSTICS.

§ 27. Sources and Literature.

General Works.—*Franz Pfeiffer: Deutsche Mystiker, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1857, 2d ed of vol. I., Göttingen, 1906.—*R. Langenberg: Quellen und Forschungen zur Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, Bonn, 1902.—F. Galle: Geistliche Stimmen aus dem M. A., zur Erbauung, Halle, 1841.—Mrs. F. Bevan: Three Friends of God, Trees planted by the River, London.—*W. R. Inge: Light, Life and Love, London, 1904. Selections from Eckart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck, etc.—The works given under Eckart, etc., in the succeeding sections. R. A. Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics. For a long time the chief English authority, offensive by the dialogue style it pursues, and now superseded.—W. Preger: Gesch. der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1874–1893.—G. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. II., Hamburg, 1841.—*Inge: Christian Mysticism. pp. 148 sqq., London, 1899. — Eleanor C. Gregory: An Introd. to Christ. Mysticism, London, 1901.—W. R. Nicoll: The Garden of Nuts, London, 1905. The first four chapp. give a general treatment of mysticism.—P. Mehlhorn: D. Blüthezeit d. deutschen Mystik, Freiburg, 1907, pp. 64.—*S. M. Deutsch: Mystische Theol. in Herzog, XIX. 631 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt im M. A., pp. 370–414. A. Ritschl: Gesch. d. Pietismus, 3 vols., Bonn, 1880–1886.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., III. 376 sqq.—Loofs: Dogmengesch., 4th ed., Halle, 1906, pp. 621–633.—W. James: The Varieties of Relig. Experience, chs. XVI., XVII.

For § 29. Meister Eckart.—German Sermons bound in a vol. with Tauler’s Sermons, Leipzig, 1498, Basel, 1521.—Pfeiffer: Deutsche Mystiker, etc., vol. II., gives 110 German sermons, 18 tracts, and 60 fragments.—*Denifle: M. Eckehart’s Lateinische Schriften und die Grundanschauung seiner Lehre, in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., II. 416–652. Gives excerpts from his Latin writings.—F. Jostes: M. Eckehart und seine Jünger, ungedruckte Texte zur Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, Freiburg, 1895.—*H. Büttner: M. Eckehart’s Schriften und Predigten aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen übersetzt, Leipzig, 1903. Gives 18 German sermons and writings.—G. Landauer: Eckhart’s mystische Schriften in unsere Sprache übertragen, Berlin, 1903.—H. Martensen: M. Eckart, Hamburg, 1842.—A. Lasson: M. E. der Mystiker, Berlin, 1868. Also the section on Eckart by Lasson in Ueberweg’s Hist. of Phil.—A. Jundt: Essai sur le mysticisme spéculatif d. M. E., Strassburg, 1871; also Hist. du pathéisme populaire au moyen âge, 1876. Gives 18 of Eckart’s sermons. Preger, I. 309–458.—H. Delacroix: Le mysticisme spéculatif en Allemagne au 14e siècle, Paris, 1900.—Deutsch’s art. Eckart in Herzog, V. 142–154.—Denifle: Die Heimath M. Eckehart’s in Archiv für Lit. und K. Gesch. des M. A., V. 349–364, 1889.—Stöckl: Gesch. der Phil., etc., III. 1095–1120.—Pfleiderer: Religionsphilosophie, Berlin, 2d ed., 1883, p. 3 sqq.—INGE.—L. Ziegler: D. Phil. und relig. Bedeutung d. M. Eckehart in Preuss. Jahrbücher, Heft 3, 1904.—See a trans. of Eckart’s sermon on John 6:44, by D. S. Schaff, in Homiletic Rev., 1902, pp. 428–431

Note.—Eckart’s German sermons and tracts, published in 1498 and 1521, were his only writings known to exist till Pfeiffer’s ed., 1867. Denifle was the first to discover Eckart’s Latin writings, in the convent of Erfurt, 1880, and at Cusa on the Mosel, 1886. These are fragments on Genesis, Exodus, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom. John Trithemius, in his De Scripp. Eccles., 1492, gives a list of Eckart’s writings which indicates a literary activity extending beyond the works we possess. The list catalogues four books on the Sentences, commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, the Canticles, the Book of Wisdom, St. John, on the Lord’s Prayer, etc.

For § 30. John Tauler.—Tauler’s Works, Leipzig, 1498 (84 sermons printed from MSS. in Strassburg); Augsburg, 1508; Basel, 1521 (42 new sermons) and 1522; Halberstadt, 1523; Cologne, 1543 (150 sermons, 23 being publ. for the first time, and found in St. Gertrude’s convent, Cologne); Frankfurt, 1565; Hamburg, 1621; Frankfurt, 3 vols., 1826 (the edition used by Miss Winkworth); ed. by J. Hamberger, 1864, 2d ed., Prag, 1872. The best. Hamberger substituted modern German in the text and used a Strassburg MS. which was destroyed by fire at the siege of the city in 1870; ed. by Kuntze und Biesenthal containing the Introdd. of Arndt and Spener, Berlin, 1842.—*Engl. trans., Susanna Winkworth: The History and Life of Rev. John Tauler with 25 Sermons, with Prefaces by Canon Kingsley and Roswell D. Hitchcock, New York, 1858.—*The Inner Way, 36 Sermons for Festivals, by John Tauler, trans. with Introd. by A. W. Huttons London, 1905.—C. Schmidt: J. Tauler von Strassburg, Hamburg, 1841, and Nicolas von Basel, Bericht von der Bekehrung Taulers, Strassburg, 1875.—Denifle: D. Buch von geistlicher Armuth, etc., Munich, 1877, and Tauler’s Bekehrung, Münster, 1879.—A Jundt: Les amis de Dieu au 14e siècle, Paris, 1879.—Preger, III. 1–244.—F. Cohrs: Art. Tauler in Herzog, XIX. 451–459.

Note.—Certain writings once ascribed to Tauler, and printed with his works, are now regarded as spurious. They are (1) The Book of Spiritual Poverty, ed. by Denifle, Munich, 1877, and previously under the title Imitation of Christ’s Life of Poverty, by D. Sudermann, Frankfurt, 1621, etc. Denifle pointed out the discord between its teachings and the teachings of Tauler’s sermons. (2) Medulla animae, consisting of 77 chapters. Preger decides some of them to be genuine. (3) Certain hymns, including Es kommt ein Schiff geladen, which even Preger pronounces spurious, III. 86. They are publ. by Wackernagel.

For § 31. Henry Suso,—Ed. of his works, Augsburg, 1482, and 1512.—*M. Diepenbrock: H. Suso’s, genannt Amandus, Leben und Schriften, Regensburg, 1829, 4th ed., 1884, with Preface by J. Görres.—H. Seuse Denifle: D. deutschen Schriften des seligen H. Seuse, Munich, 1880.—*H. Seuse: Deutsche Schriften, ed. K. Bihlmeyer, Stuttgart, 1907. The first complete edition, and based upon an examination of many MSS.—A Latin trans. of Suso’s works by L. Surius, Cologne, 1555. French trans. by Thirot: Ouvages mystiques du bienheureux H. Suso, 2 vols., Paris, 1899. Engl. extracts in Light, Life and Love, pp. 66–100.—Preger: D. Briefe H. Suso’s nach einer Handschrift d. XV. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1867.—C. Schmidt: Der Mystiker, H. Suso in Stud. und Kritiken, 1843, pp. 835 sqq.—Preger: Deutsche Mystik, II. 309–419.—L. Kärcher: H. Suso aus d. Predigerorden, in Freiburger Diöcesenarchiv, 1868, p. 187 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt, 396 sqq.—Art. in Wetzer- Welte, H. Seuse, V. 1721–1729.

For § 32. The Friends of God.—The works of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck.—Jundt: Les Amis de Dieu, Paris, 1879.—Kessel: Art. Gottesfreunde in Wetzer-Welte, V. 893–900.—The writings of Rulman Merswin: Von den vier Jahren seines anfahenden Lebens, ed. by Schmidt, in Reuss and Cinitz, Beiträge zu den Theol. Wissenschaften, V., Jena, 1854.—His Bannerbüchlein given in Jundt’s Les Amis.—Das Buch von den neun Felsen, ed. from the original MS. by C. Schmidt, Leipzig, 1859, and in abbreviated form by Preger, III. 337–407, and Diepenbrock: Heinrich Suso, pp. 505–572.—P. Strauch: Art. Rulman Merswin in Herzog, XVII. 20–27.—For the "Friend of God of the Oberland" and his writings. K. Schmidt: Nicolas von Basel: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, Vienna, 1866, and Nic. von Basel, Bericht von der Bekehrung Taulers, Strassburg, 1876.—F. Lauchert: Des Gottesfreundes im Oberland Buch von den zwei Mannen, Bonn, 1896.—C. Schmidt: Nic. von Basel und die Gottesfreunde, Basel, 1856.—Denifle: Der Gottesfreund im Oberland und Nic. von Basel. Eine krit. Studie, Munich, 1875.—Jundt: Rulman Merswin et l’Ami de Dieu de l’Oberland, Paris, 1890.—Preger, III. 290–337.—K. Rieder: Der Gottesfreund vom Oberland. Eine Erfindung des Strassburger Johanniterbruders Nicolaus von Löwen, Innsbruck, 1905.

For § 33. John Of Ruysbroeck.—Vier Schriften, ed. by Arnswaldt, with Introd. by Ullmann, Hanover, 1848.—Superseded by J. B. David (Prof. in Louvaine), 6 vols., Ghent, 1857–1868. Contains 12 writings.—Lat. trans. by Surius, Cologne, 1549.—*F. A. Lambert: Drei Schriften des Mystikers J. van Ruysb., Die Zierde der geistl. Hochzeit, Vom glanzenden Stein and Das Buch uon der höchsten Wahrheit, Leipzig. No date; about 1906. Selections from Ruysbroeck in Light, Life and Love, pp. 100–196.—*J. G. V. Engelhardt: Rich. von St. Victor u. J. Ruysbroeck, Erlangen, 1838.—Ullmann: Reformatoren, etc., II. 35 sqq.—W. L. de Vreese: Bijdrage tot de kennis van het leven en de werken van J. van Ruusbroec, Ghent, 1896.—*M. Maeterlinck: Ruysbr. and the Mystics, with Selections from Ruysb., London, 1894. A trans. by Jane T. Stoddart of Maeterlinck’s essay prefixed to his L’Ornement des noces spirituelles de Ruysb., trans. by him from the Flemish, Brussels, 1891.—Art. Ruysbroeck in Herzog, XVII. 267–273, by Van Veen.

For § 34. Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life.—Lives of Groote, Florentius and their pupils, by Thomas À Kempis: Opera omnia, ed, by Sommalius, Antwerp, 1601, 3 vols., Cologne, 1759, etc., and in unpubl. MSS.— J. Busch, d. 1479: Liber de viris illustribus, a collection of 24 biographies of Windesheim brethren, Antwerp, 1621; also Chronicon Windeshemense, Antwerp, 1621, both ed. by Grube, Halle, 1886.—G. H. M. Delprat Verhandeling over de broederschap van Geert Groote en over den involoed der fraterhuizen, Arnheim, etc., 1856.—J. G. R. Acquoy (Prof. in Leyden): Gerhardi Magni epistolae XIV., Antwerp, 1857. G. Bonet-Maury:: Gerhard de Groot d’après des documents onédites. Paris 1878.—*G. Kettlewell: Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life, 2 vols, New York, 1882.—*K. Grube: Johannes Busch, Augustinerpropst in Hildesheim. Ein kathol. Reformator in 15ten Jahrh., Freiburg, 1881. Also G. Groote und seine Stiftungen, Cologne, 1883.—R. Langenberg: Quellen and Forschungen, etc., Bonn, 1902.—Boerner: Die Annalen und Akten der Brüder des Gemainsamen Lebens im Lichtenhofe zu Hildesheim, eine Grundlage der Gesch. d. deutschen Brüderhäuser und ein Beitrag zur Vorgesch. der Reformation, Fürstenwalde, 1905.—The artt. by K. Hirsche in Herzog, 2d ed., II. 678–760 and L. Schulze, Herzog, 3rd ed., III., 474–507, and P.A. Thijm in Wetzer-Welte, V. 1286–1289.—Ullmann: Reformatoren, II. 1–201.—Lea: Inquisition, II. 360 sqq.—Uhlhorn: Christl. Liebesthätigkeit im M. A., Stuttgart, 1884, pp. 350–375.

Note.—A few of the short writings of Groote were preserved by Thomas à Kempis. To the sermons edited by Acquoy, Langenberg, pp. 3–33, has added Groote’s tract on simony, which he found in the convent of Frenswegen, near Nordhorn. He has also found Groote’s Latin writings. The tract on simony—de simonia ad Beguttas — is addressed to the Beguines in answer to the question propounded to him by some of their number as to whether it was simony to purchase a place in a Beguine convent. The author says that simony "prevails very much everywhere," and that it was not punished by the Church. He declares it to be simony to purchase a place which involves spiritual exercises, and he goes on to apply the principle to civil offices pronouncing it simony when they are bought for money. The work is written in Low German, heavy in style, but interesting for the light it throws on practices current at that time.

For § 35. The Imitation of Christ.—Edd. of À Kempis’ works, Utrecht, 1473 (15 writings, and omitting the Imitation of Christ); Nürmberg, 1494 (20 writings), ed. by J. Badius, 1520, 1521, 1528; Paris, 1549; Antwerp, 1574; Dillingen, 1676; ed. by H. Sommalius, 3 vols., Antwerp, 1599, 3d ed. 1615; ed. by M. J. Pohl, 8 vols. promised; thus far 5 vols, Freiburg im Br., 1903 sqq. Best and only complete ed.—Thomas à Kempis hymns in Blume and Dreves: Analecta hymnica, XLVIII. pp. 475–514.—For biograph. and critical accounts.—Joh. Busch: Chron. Windesemense.—H. Rosweyde: Chron. Mt. S. Agnetis, Antwerp, 1615, and cum Rosweydii vindiciis Kempensibus, 1622.—J. B. Malou: Recherches historiq. et critiq. sur le véritable auteur du livre de l’Imitat. de Jesus Chr., Tournay, 1848; 3d ed., Paris 1856.—*K. Hirsche: Prologomena zu einer neuen Ausgabe de imitat. Chr. (with a copy of the Latin text of the MS. dated 1441), 1873, 1883, 1894.—C. Wolfsgruber: Giovanni Gersen sein Leben und sein Werk de Imitat. Chr., Augsburg, 1880.—*S. Kettlewell: Th. à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life, 2 vols., London, 1882. Also Authorship of the de imitat, Chr., London, 1877, 2d ed., 1884.—F. R. Cruise: Th. à Kempis, with Notes of a visit to the scenes in which his life was spent, with some account of the examination of his relics, London, 1887.—L. A. Wheatley: Story of the Imitat. of Chr., London, 1891.—Dom Vincent Scully: Life of the Venerable Th. à Kempis, London, 1901.—J. E. G. de Montmorency: Th. à Kempis, His Age and Book, London, 1906—*C. Bigg in Wayside Sketches in Eccle. Hist., London, 1906, pp. 134–154.—D. B. Butler, Thos. à Kempis, a Rel. Study, London, 1908.—Art. Thos. à Kempis in London Quarterly Review, April, 1908, pp. 254–263.

First printed ed. of the Latin text of the Imitat. of Christ, Augsburg, 1472. Bound up with Jerome’s de viris illust. and writings of Augustine and Th. Aquinas.—Of the many edd. in Engl. the first was by W. Atkynson, and Margaret, mother of Henry VII., London, 1502, reprinted London, 1828, new ed. by J. K. Ingram, London, 1893.—The Imitat. of Chr., being the autograph MS. of Th. à Kempis de Imitat. Chr. reproduced in facsimile from the orig. in the royal libr. at Brussels. With Introd. by C. Ruelens, London, 1879.—The Imitat. of Chr. Now for the first time set forth in Rhythm and Sentences. With Pref. by Canon Liddon, London, 1889.—Facsimile Reproduction of the 1st ed. of 1471, with Hist. Introd. by C. Knox-Little, London, 1894.—The Imitat. of Chr., trans. by Canon W. Benham, with 12 photogravures after celebrated paintings, London, 1905.—An ed. issued 1881 contains a Pref. by Dean Farrar.—R. P. A. de Backer: Essai bibliograph. sur le livre de imitat. Chr., Liège, 1864.—For further Lit. on the Imitat. of Chr., see the Note at the end of § 35.

§ 28. The New Mysticism.

In joy of inward peace, or sense

Of sorrow over sin,

He is his own best evidence

His witness is within.

—Whittier, Our Master.

At the time when the scholastic method was falling into disrepute and the scandals of the Avignon court and the papal schism were shaking men’s faith in the foundations of the Church, a stream of pure pietism was watering the regions along the Rhine, from Basel to Cologne, and from Cologne to the North Sea. North of the Alps, voices issuing from convents and from the ranks of the laity called attention to the value of the inner religious life and God’s immediate communications to the soul.

To this religious movement has recently been given the name, the Dominican mysticism, on account of the large number of its representatives who belonged to the Dominican order. The older name, German mysticism, which is to be preferred, points to the locality where it manifested itself, and to the language which the mystics for the most part used in their writings. Like the Protestant Reformation, the movement had its origin on German soil, but, unlike the Reformation, it did not spread beyond Germany and the Lowlands. Its chief centres were Strassburg and Cologne; its leading representatives the speculative Meister Eckart, d. 1327, John Tauler, d. 136l, Henry Suso, d. 1366, John Ruysbroeck, d. 1381, Gerrit Groote, d. 1384, and Thomas à Kempis, d. 1471. The earlier designation for these pietists was Friends of God. The Brothers of the Common Life, the companions and followers of Groote, were of the same type, but developed abiding institutions of practical Christian philanthropy. In localities the Beguines and Beghards also breathed the same devotional and philanthropic spirit. The little book called the German Theology, and the Imitation of Christ, were among the finest fruits of the movement. Gerson and Nicolas of Cusa also had a strong mystical vein, but they are not to be classed with the German mystics. With them mysticism was an incidental, not the distinguishing, quality.

The mystics along the Rhine formed groups which, however, were not bound together by any formal organization. Their only bond was the fellowship of a common religious purpose.

Their religious thought was not always homogeneous in its expression, but all agreed in the serious attempt to secure purity of heart and life through union of the soul with God. Mysticism is a phase of Christian life. It is a devotional habit, in contradistinction to the outward and formal practice of religious rules. It is a religious experience in contrast to a mere intellectual assent to tenets. It is the conscious effort of the soul to apprehend and possess God and Christ, and expresses itself in the words, "I live, and yet not I but Christ liveth in me."  It is essentially what is now called in some quarters "personal religion."  Perhaps the shortest definition of mysticism is the best. It is the love of God shed abroad in the heart.427  The element of intuition has a large place, and the avenues through which religious experience is reached are self-detachment from the world, self-purgation, prayer and contemplation.

Without disparaging the sacraments or disputing the authority of the Church, the German mystics sought a better way. They laid stress upon the meaning of such passages as "he that believeth in me shall never hunger and he that cometh unto me shall never thirst, " "he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father "and "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness."  The word love figures most prominently in their writings. Among the distinctive terms in vogue among them were Abgeschiedenheit, Eckart’s word for self-detachment from the world and that which is temporal, and Kehr, Tauler’s oft-used word for conversion. They laid stress upon the new birth, and found in Christ’s incarnation a type of the realization of the divine in the soul.

German mysticism had a distinct individuality of its own. On occasion, its leaders quoted Augustine’s Confessions and other works, Dionysius the Areopagite, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, but they did not have the habit of referring back to human authorities as had the Schoolmen, bulwarking every theological statement by patristic quotations, or statements taken from Aristotle. The movement arose like a root out of a dry ground at a time of great corruption and distraction in the Church, and it arose where it might have been least expected to arise. Its field was the territory along the Rhine where the heretical sects had had representation. It was a fresh outburst of piety, an earnest seeking after God by other paths than the religious externalism fostered by sacerdotal prescriptions and scholastic dialectics. The mystics led the people back from the clangor and tinkling of ecclesiastical symbolisms to the refreshing springs of water which spring up into everlasting life.

Compared with the mysticism of the earlier Middle Ages and the French quietism of the seventeenth century, represented by Madame Guyon, Fénelon and their predecessor the Spaniard Miguel de Molinos, German mysticism likewise has its own distinctive features. The religion of Bernard expressed itself in passionate and rapturous love for Jesus. Madame Guyon and Fénelon set up as the goal of religion a state of disinterested love, which was to be reached chiefly by prayer, an end which Bernard felt it scarcely possible to reach in this world.

The mystics along the Rhine agreed with all genuine mystics in striving after the direct union of the soul with God. They sought, as did Eckart, the loss of our being in the ocean of the Godhead, or with Tauler the undisturbed peace of the soul, or with Ruysbroeck the impact of the divine nature upon our nature at its innermost point, kindling with divine love as fire kindles. With this aspiration after the complete apprehension of God, they combined a practical tendency. Their silent devotion and meditation were not final exercises. They were moved by warm human sympathies, and looked with almost reverential regard upon the usual pursuits and toil of men. They approached close to the idea that in the faithful devotion to daily tasks man may realize the highest type of religious experience.

By preaching, by writing and circulating devotional works, and especially by their own examples, they made known the secret and the peace of the inner life. In the regions along the lower Rhine, the movement manifested itself also in the care of the sick, and notably in schools for the education of the young. These schools proved to be preparatory for the German Reformation by training a body of men of wider outlook and larger sympathies than the mediaeval convent was adapted to rear.

For the understanding of the spirit and meaning of German mysticism, no help is so close at hand as the comparison between it and mediaeval scholasticism. This religious movement was the antithesis of the theology of the Schoolmen; Eckart and Tauler of Thomas Aquinas, the German Theology of the endless argumentation of Duns Scotus, the Imitation of Christ of the cumbersome exhaustiveness of Albertus Magnus. Roger Bacon had felt revulsion from the hairsplitting casuistries of the Schoolmen, and given expression to it before Eckart began his activity at Cologne. Scholasticism had trodden a beaten and dusty highway. The German mystics walked in secluded and shady pathways. For a catalogue of dogmatic maxims they substituted the quiet expressions of filial devotion and assurance. The speculative element is still prominent in Eckart, but it is not indulged for the sake of establishing doctrinal rectitude, but for the nurture of inward experience of God’s operations in the soul. Godliness with these men was not a system of careful definitions, it was a state of spiritual communion; not an elaborate construction of speculative thought, but a simple faith and walk with God. Not processes of logic but the insight of devotion was their guide.428  As Loofs has well said, German mysticism emphasized above all dogmas and all external works the necessity of the new birth.429  It also had its dangers. Socrates had urged men not to rest hopes upon the Delphian oracle, but to listen to the voice in their own bosoms. The mystics, in seeking to hear the voice of God speaking in their own hearts, ran peril of magnifying individualism to the disparagement of what was common to all and of mistaking states of the overwrought imagination for revelations from God.430

Although the German mystical writers have not been quoted in the acts of councils or by popes as have been the theologies of the Schoolmen, they represented, if we follow the testimonies of Luther and Melanchthon, an important stage in the religious development of the German people, and it is certainly most significant that the Reformation broke out on the soil where the mystics lived and wrought, and their piety took deep root. They have a perennial life for souls who, seeking devotional companionship, continue to go back to the leaders of that remarkable pietistic movement.

The leading features of the mysticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be summed up in the following propositions.

1. Its appeals were addressed to laymen as well as to clerics.

2. The mystics emphasized instruction and preaching, and, if we except Suso, withdrew the emphasis which had been laid upon the traditional ascetic regulations of the Church. They did not commend buffetings of the body. The distance between Peter Damiani and Tauler is world-wide.

3. They used the New Testament more than they used the Old Testament, and the words of Christ took the place of the Canticles in their interpretations of the mind of God. The German Theology quotes scarcely a single passage which is not found in the New Testament, and the Imitation of Christ opens with the quotation of words spoken by our Lord. Eckart and Tauler dwell upon passages of the New Testament, and Ruysbroeck evolves the fulness of his teaching from Matthew 25:6, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him."

4. In the place of the Church, with its sacraments and priesthood as a saving institution, is put Christ himself as the mediator between the soul and God, and he is offered as within the reach of all.

5. A pure life is taught to be a necessary accompaniment of the higher religious experience, and daily exemplification is demanded of that humility which the Gospel teaches.

6. Another notable feature was their use of the vernacular in sermon and treatise. The mystics are among the very earliest masters of German and Dutch prose. In the Introduction to his second edition of the German Theology, Luther emphasized this aspect of their activity when he said, "I thank God that I have heard and find my God in the German tongue as neither I nor they [the adherents of the old way] have found Him in the Latin and Hebrew tongues."  In this regard also the mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were precursors of the evangelical movement of the sixteenth century. Their practice was in plain conflict with the judgment of that German bishop who declared that the German language was too barbarous a tongue to be a proper vehicle of religious truth.

The religious movement represented by German and Dutch mysticism is an encouraging illustration that God’s Spirit may be working effectually in remote and unthought-of places and at times when the fabric of the Church seems to be hopelessly undermined with formalism, clerical corruption and hierarchical arrogance and worldliness. It was so at a later day when, in the little and remote Moravian town of Herrnhut, God was preparing the weak things of the world, and the things which were apparently foolish, to confound the dead orthodoxy of German Protestantism and to lead the whole Protestant Church into the way of preaching the Gospel in all the world. No organized body survived the mystics along the Rhine, but their example and writings continue to encourage piety and simple faith toward God within the pale of the Catholic and Protestant churches alike.

A classification of the German mystics on the basis of speculative and practical tendencies has been attempted, but it cannot be strictly carried out.431  In Eckart and Ruysbroeck, the speculative element was in the ascendant; in Tauler, the devotional; in Suso, the emotional; in Groote and other men of the Lowlands, the practical.

§ 29. Meister Eckart.

Meister Eckart, 1260–1327, the first in the line of the German mystics, was excelled in vigor of thought by no religious thinker of his century, and was the earliest theologian who wrote in German.432  The philosophical bent of his mind won for him from Hegel the title, "father of German philosophy."  In spite of the condemnation passed upon his writings by the pope, his memory was regarded with veneration by the succeeding generation of mystics. His name, however, was almost forgotten in later times. Mosheim barely mentions it, and the voluminous historian, Schroeckh, passes it by altogether. Baur, in his History of the Middle Ages, devotes to Eckart and Tauler only three lines, and these under the head of preaching, and makes no mention at all of German mysticism. His memory again came to honor in the last century, and in the German church history of the later Middle Ages he is now accorded a place of pre-eminence for his freshness of thought, his warm piety and his terse German style.433  With Albertus Magnus and Rupert of Deutz he stands out as the earliest prominent representative in the history of German theology.

During the century before Eckart, the German church also had its mystics, and in the twelfth century the godly women, Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schoenau, added to the function of prophecy a mystical element. In the thirteenth century the Benedictine convent of Helfta, near Eisleben, Luther’s birthplace, was a centre of religious warmth. Among its nuns were several by the names of Gertrude and Mechthild, who excelled by their religious experiences, and wrote on the devotional life. Gertrude of Hackeborn, d. 1292, abbess of Helfta, and Gertrude the Great, d. 1302, professed to have immediate communion with the Saviour and to be the recipients of divine revelations. When one of the Mechthilds asked Christ where he was to be found, the reply was, "You may seek me in the tabernacle and in Gertrude’s heart."  From 1293 Gertrude the Great recorded her revelations in a work called the Communications of Piety—Insinuationes divinae pietatis. Mechthild of Magdeburg, d. 1280, and Mechthild of Hackeborn, d. 1310, likewise nuns of Helfta, also had visions which they wrote out. The former, who for thirty years had been a Beguine, Deutsch calls " one of the most remarkable personalities in the religious history of thirteenth century."  Mechthild of Hackeborn, a younger sister of the abbess Gertrude, in her book on special grace,—Liber specialis gratiae,—sets forth salvation as the gift of grace without the works of the law. These women wrote in German.434

David of Augsburg, d. 1271, the inquisitor who wrote on the inquisition,—De inquisitione haereticorum,—also wrote on the devotional life. These writings were intended for monks, and two of them435 are regarded as pearls of German prose.

In the last years of the thirteenth century, the Franciscan Lamprecht of Regensburg wrote a poem entitled "Daughter of Zion" (Cant. III. 11), which, in a mystical vein, depicts the soul, moved by the impulse of love, and after in vain seeking its satisfaction in worldly things, led by faith and hope to God. The Dominicans, Dietrich of Freiburg and John of Sterngassen, were also of the same tendency.436  The latter labored in Strassburg.

Eckart broke new paths in the realm of German religious thought. He was born at Hochheim, near Gotha, and died probably in Cologne.437  In the last years of the thirteenth century he was prior of the Dominican convent of Erfurt, and provincial of the Dominicans in Thuringia, and in 1300 was sent to Paris to lecture, taking the master’s degree, and later the doctorate. After his sojourn in France he was made prior of his order in Saxony, a province at that time extending from the Lowlands to Livland. In 1311 he was again sent to Paris as a teacher. Subsequently he preached in Strassburg, was prior in Frankfurt, 1320, and thence went to Cologne.

Charges of heresy were preferred against him in 1325 by the archbishop of Cologne, Henry of Virneburg. The same year the Dominicans, at their general chapter held in Venice, listened to complaints that certain popular preachers in Germany were leading the people astray, and sent a representative to make investigations. Henry of Virneburg had shown himself zealous in the prosecution of heretics. In 1322, Walter, a Beghard leader, was burnt, and in 1325 a number of Beghards died in the flames along the Rhine. It is possible that Eckart was quoted by these sectaries, and in this way was exposed to the charge of heresy.

The archbishop’s accusations, which had been sent to Rome, were set aside by Nicolas of Strassburg, Eckart’s friend, who at the time held the position of inquisitor in Germany. In 1327, the archbishop again proceeded against the suspected preacher and also against Nicolas. Both appealed from the archbishop’s tribunal to the pope. In February, Eckart made a public statement in the Dominican church at Cologne, declaring he had always eschewed heresy in doctrine and declension in morals, and expressed his readiness to retract errors, if such should be found in his writings.438

In a bull dated March 27, 1329, John XXII. announced that of the 26 articles charged against Eckart, 15 were heretical and the remaining 11 had the savor of heresy. Two other articles, not cited in the indictment, were also pronounced heretical. The papal decision stated that Eckart had acknowledged the 17 condemned articles as heretical. There is no evidence of such acknowledgment in the offenders extant writing.439

Among the articles condemned were the following. As soon as God was, He created the world.—The world is eternal.—External acts are not in a proper sense good and divine.—The fruit of external acts does not make us good, but internal acts which the Father works in us.—God loves the soul, not external acts. The two added articles charged Eckart with holding that there is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable, and that God is neither good nor better nor best, so that God can no more be called good than white can be called black.

Eckart merits study as a preacher and as a mystic theologian.

As a Preacher.—His sermons were delivered in churches and at conferences within cloistral walls. His style is graphic and attractive, to fascination. The reader is carried on by the progress of thought. The element of surprise is prominent. Eckart’s extant sermons are in German, and the preacher avoids dragging in Latin phrases to explain his meaning, though, if necessary, he invents new German terms. He quotes the Scriptures frequently, and the New Testament more often than the Old, the passages most dwelt upon being those which describe the new birth, the sonship of Christ and believers, and love. Eckart is a master in the use of illustrations, which he drew chiefly from the sphere of daily observation,—the world of nature, the domestic circle and the shop. Although he deals with some of the most abstruse truths, he betrays no ambition to make a show of speculative subtlety. On the contrary, he again and again expresses a desire to be understood by his hearers, who are frequently represented as in dialogue with himself and asking for explanations of difficult questions. Into the dialogue are thrown such expressions as "in order that you may understand," and in using certain illustrations he on occasion announces that he uses them to make himself understood.440

The following is a resumé of a sermon on John 6:44, "No man can come unto me except the Father draw him."441  In drawing the sinner that He may convert him, God draws with more power than he would use if He were to make a thousand heavens and earths. Sin is an offence against nature, for it breaks God’s image in us. For the soul, sin is death, for God is the soul’s true life. For the heart, it is restlessness, for a thing is at rest only when it is in its natural state. Sin is a disease and blindness, for it blinds men to the brief duration of time, the evils of fleshly lust and the long duration of the pains of hell. It is bluntness to all grace. Sin is the prison-house of hell. People say they intend to turn away from their sins. But how can one who is dead make himself alive again?  And by one’s own powers to turn from sin unto God is much less possible than it would be for the dead to make themselves alive. God himself must draw. Grace flows from the Father’s heart continually, as when He says, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

There are three things in nature which draw, and these three Christ had on the cross. The first was his fellow-likeness to Us. As the bird draws to itself the bird of the same nature, so Christ drew the heavenly Father to himself, so that the Father forgot His wrath in contemplating the sufferings of the cross. Again Christ draws by his self-emptiness. As the empty tube draws water into itself, so the Son, by emptying himself and letting his blood flow, drew to himself all the grace from the Father’s heart. The third thing by which he draws is the glowing heat of his love, even as the sun with its heat draws up the mists from the earth.

The historian of the German mediaeval pulpit, Cruel, has said,442  "Eckart’s sermons hold the reader by the novelty and greatness of their contents, by their vigor of expression and by the genial frankness of the preacher himself, who is felt to be putting his whole soul into his effort and to be giving the most precious things he is able to give."  He had his faults, but in spite of them "he is the boldest and most profound thinker the German pulpit has ever had,—a preacher of such original stamp of mind that the Church in Germany has not another like him to offer in all the centuries."

Eckart as a Theological Thinker.—Eckart was still bound in part by the scholastic method. His temper, however, differed widely from the temper of the Schoolmen. Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, who united the mystical with the scholastic element, were predominantly Schoolmen, seeking to exhaust every supposable speculative problem. No purpose of this kind appears in Eckart’s writings. He is dominated by a desire not so much to reach the intellect as to reach the soul and to lead it into immediate fellowship with God. With him the weapons of metaphysical dexterity are not on show; and in his writings, so far as they are known, he betrays no inclination to bring into the area of his treatment those remoter topics of speculation, from the constitution of the angelic world to the motives and actions which rule and prevail in the regions of hell. God and the soul’s relation to Him are the engrossing subjects.443  The authorities upon whom Eckart relied most, if we are to judge by his quotations, were Dionysius the Areopagite, and St. Bernard, though he also quotes from Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great, from Plato, Avicenna and Averrhoes. His discussions are often introduced by such expressions as "the masters say," or "some masters say."  As a mystical thinker he has much in common with the mystics who preceded him, Neo-Platonic and Christian, but he was no servile reproducer of the past. Freshness characterizes his fundamental principles and his statement of them. In the place of love for Jesus, the precise definitions of the stages of contemplation emphasized by the school of St. Victor and the hierarchies and ladders and graduated stairways of Dionysius, he magnifies the new birth in the soul, and sonship.444

As for God, He is absolute being, Deus est esse. The Godhood is distinct from the persons of the Godhead,—a conception which recalls Gilbert of Poictiers, or even the quaternity which Peter the Lombard was accused of setting up. The Trinity is the method by which this Godhood reveals itself by a process which is eternal. Godhood is simple essence having in itself the potentiality of all things.445  God has form, and yet is without form, is being, and yet is without being. Great teachers say that God is above being. This is not correct, for God may as little be called a being, ein Wesen, as the sun may be called black or pale.446

All created things were created out of nothing, and yet they were eternally in God. The master who produces pieces of art, first had all his art in himself. The arts are master within the master. Likewise the first Principle, which Eckart calls Erstigkeit, embodied in itself all images, that is, God in God. Creation is an eternal act. As soon as God was, He created the world. Without creatures, God would not be God. God is in all things and all things are God—Nu sint all Ding gleich in Gott und sint Got selber.447  Thomas Aquinas made a clear distinction between the being of God and the being of created things. Eckart emphasized their unity. What he meant was that the images or universals exist in God eternally, as he distinctly affirmed when he said, "In the Father are the images of all creatures."448

As for the soul, it can be as little comprehended in a definition as God Himself.449  The soul’s kernel, or its ultimate essence, is the little spark, Fünkelein, a light which never goes out which is uncreated and uncreatable.450  Notwithstanding these statements, the German theologian affirms that God created the soul and poured into it, in the first instance, all His own purity. Through the spark the soul is brought into union with God, and becomes more truly one with Him than food does with the body. The soul cannot rest till it returns to God, and to do 80 it must first die to itself, that is, completely submit itself to God.451  Eckart’s aim in all his sermons, as he asserts, was to reach this spark.

It is one of Eckart’s merits that he lays so much stress upon the dignity of the soul. Several of his tracts bear this title.452  This dignity follows from God’s love and regenerative operation.

Passing to the incarnation, it is everywhere the practical purpose which controls Eckart’s treatment, and not the metaphysical. The second person of the Trinity took on human nature, that man might become partaker of the divine nature. In language such as Gregory of Nyssa used, he said, God became man that we might become God.  Gott ist Mensch worden dass wir Gott wurden. As God was hidden within the human nature so that we saw there only man, so the soul is to be hidden within the divine nature, that we should see nothing but God.453  As certainly as God begets the Son from His own nature, so certainly does He beget Him in the soul. God is in all things, but He is in the soul alone by birth, and nowhere else is He so truly as in the soul. No one can know God but the only begotten Son. Therefore, to know God, man must through the eternal generation become Son. It is as true that man becomes God as that God was made man.454

The generation of the eternal Son in the soul brings joy which no man can take away. A prince who should lose his kingdom and all worldly goods would still have fulness of joy, for his birth outweighs everything else.455  God is in the soul, and yet He is not the soul. The eye is not the piece of wood upon which it looks, for when the eye is closed, it is the same eye it was before. But if, in the act of looking, the eye and the wood should become one, then we might say the eye is the wood and the wood is the eye. If the wood were a spiritual substance like the eyesight, then, in reality, one might say eye and wood are one substance.456  The fundament of God’s being is the fundament of my being, and the fundament of my being is the fundament of God’s being. Thus I live of myself even as God lives of Himself.457  This begetment of the Son of God in the soul is the source of all true life and good works.

One of the terms which Eckart uses most frequently, to denote God’s influence upon the soul, is durchbrechen, to break through, and his favorite word for the activity of the soul, as it rises into union with God, is Abgeschiedenheit, the soul’s complete detachment of itself from all that is temporal and seen. Keep aloof, abgeschieden, he says, from men, from yourself, from all that cumbers. Bear God alone in your hearts, and then practise fasting, vigils and prayer, and you will come unto perfection. This Abgeschiedenheit, total self-detachment from created things,458 he says in a sermon on the subject, is "the one thing needful."  After reading many writings by pagan masters and Christian teachers, Eckart came to consider it the highest of all virtues,—higher than humility, higher even than love, which Paul praises as the highest; for, while love endures all things, this quality is receptiveness towards God. In the person possessing this quality, the worldly has nothing to correspond to itself. This is what Paul had reference to when he said, "I live and yet not I, for Christ liveth in me."  God is Himself perfect Abgeschiedenheit.

In another place, Eckart says that he who has God in his soul finds God in all things, and God appears to him out of all things. As the thirsty love water, so that nothing else tastes good to them, even so it is with the devoted soul. In God and God alone is it at rest. God seeks rest, and He finds it nowhere but in such a heart. To reach this condition of Abgeschiedenheit, it is necessary for the soul first to meditate and form an image of God, and then to allow itself to be transformed by God.459

What, then, some one might say, is the advantage of prayer and good works?  In eternity, God saw every prayer and every good work, and knew which prayer He could hear. Prayers were answered in eternity. God is unchangeable and cannot be moved by a prayer. It is we who change and are moved. The sun shines, and gives pain or pleasure to the eye, according as it is weak or sound. The sun does not change. God rules differently in different men. Different kinds of dough are put into the oven; the heat affects them differently, and one is taken out a loaf of fine bread, and another a loaf of common bread.

Eckart is emphatic when he insists upon the moral obligation resting on God to operate in the soul that is ready to receive Him. God must pour Himself into such a man’s being, as the sun pours itself into the air when it is clear and pure. God would be guilty of a great wrong—Gebrechen — if He did not confer a great good upon him whom He finds empty and ready to receive Him. Even so Christ said of Zaccheus, that He must enter into his house. God first works this state in the soul, and He is obliged to reward it with the gift of Himself. "When I am blessed, selig, then all things are in me and in God, and where I am, there is God, and where God is, there I am."460

Nowhere does Eckart come to a distinct definition of justification by faith, although he frequently speaks of faith as a heavenly gift. On the other hand, he gives no sign of laying stress on the penitential system. Everywhere there are symptoms in his writings that his piety breathed a different atmosphere from the pure mediaeval type. Holy living is with him the product of holy being. One must first be righteous before he can do righteous acts. Works do not sanctify. The righteous soul sanctifies the works. So long as one does good works for the sake of the kingdom of heaven or for the sake of God or for the sake of salvation or for any external cause, he is on the wrong path. Fastings, vigils, asceticisms, do not merit salvation.461  There are places in the mystic’s writings where we seem to hear Luther himself speaking.

The stress which Eckart lays upon piety, as a matter of the heart and the denial to good works of meritorious virtue, gave plausible ground for the papal condemnation, that Eckart set aside the Church’s doctrine of penance, affirming that it is not outward acts that make good, but the disposition of the soul which God abidingly works in us. John XXII. rightly discerned the drift of the mystic’s teaching.

In his treatment of Mary and Martha, Eckart seems to make a radical departure from the mediaeval doctrine of the superior value of pure contemplation. From the time of Augustine, Rachel and Mary of Bethany had been regarded as the representatives of the contemplative and higher life. In his sermon on Mary, the German mystic affirmed that Mary was still at school. Martha had learned and was engaged in good works, serving the Lord. Mary was only learning. She was striving to be as holy as her sister. Better to feed the hungry and do other works of mercy, he says, than to have the vision of Paul and to sit still. After Christ’s ascension, Mary learned to serve as fully as did Martha, for then the Holy Spirit was poured out. One who lives a truly contemplative life will show it in active works. A life of mere contemplation is a selfish life. The modern spirit was stirring in him. He saw another ideal for life than mediaeval withdrawal from the world. The breath of evangelical freedom and joy is felt in his writings.462

Eckart’s speculative mind carried him to the verge of pantheism, and it is not surprising that his hyperbolical expressions subjected him to the papal condemnation. But his pantheism was Christian pantheism, the complete union of the soul with God. It was not absorption in the divine being involving the loss of individuality, but the reception of Godhood, the original principle of the Deity. What language could better express the idea that God is everything, and everything God, than these words, words adopted by Hegel as a sort of motto: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are the same, and there is but one sight, one apprehension, one love."463  And yet such language, endangering, as it might seem, the distinct personality of the soul, was far better than the imperative insistence laid by accredited Church teachers on outward rituals and conformity to sacramental rites.

Harnack and others have made the objection that the Cologne divine does not dwell upon the forgiveness of sins. This omission may be overlooked, when we remember the prominence given in his teaching to regeneration and man’s divine sonship. His most notable departure from scholasticism consists in this, that he did not dwell upon the sacraments and the authority of the Church. He addressed himself to Christian individuals, and showed concern for their moral and spiritual well-being. Abstruse as some of his thinking is, there can never be the inkling of a thought that he was setting forth abstractions of the school and contemplating matters chiefly with a scientific eye. He makes the impression of being moved by strict honesty of purpose to reach the hearts of men.464  His words glow with the Minne, or love, of which he preached so often. In one feature, however, he differed widely from modern writers and preachers. He did not dwell upon the historical Christ. With him Christ in us is the God in us, and that is the absorbing topic. With all his high thinking he felt the limitations of human statement and, counselling modesty in setting forth definitions of God, he said, "If we would reach the depth of God’s nature, we must humble ourselves. He who would know God must first know himself."465  Not a popular leader, not professedly a reformer, this early German theologian had a mission in preparing the way for the Reformation. The form and contents of his teaching had a direct tendency to encourage men to turn away from the authority of the priesthood and ritual legalism to the realm of inner experience for the assurance of acceptance with God. Pfleiderer has gone so far as to say that Eckart’s "is the spirit of the Reformation, the spirit of Luther, the motion of whose wings we already feel, distinctly enough, in the thoughts of his older German fellow-citizen."466  Although he declared his readiness to confess any heretical ideas that might have crept into his sermons and writings, the judges at Rome were right in principle. Eckart’s spirit was heretical, provoking revolt against the authority of the mediaeval Church and a restatement of some of the forgotten verities of the New Testament.

§ 30. John Tauler of Strassburg.

To do Thy will is more than praise,

As words are less than deeds;

And simple trust can find Thy ways

We miss with chart of creeds.

– Whittier. Our Master.

Among the admirers of Eckart, the most distinguished were John Tauler and Heinrich Suso. With them the speculative element largely disappears and the experimental and practical elements predominate. They emphasized religion as a matter of experience and the rule of conduct. Without denying any of the teachings or sacraments of the Church, they made prominent immediate union with Christ, and dwelt upon the Christian graces, especially patience, gentleness and humility. Tauler was a man of sober mind, Suso poetical and imaginative.

John Tauler, called doctor illuminatus, was born in Strassburg about 1300, and died there, 1361. Referring to his father’s circumstances, he once said, "If, as my father’s son, I had once known what I know now, I would have lived from my paternal inheritance instead of resorting to alms."467  Probably as early as 1315, he entered the Dominican order. Sometime before 1330, he went to Cologne to take the usual three-years’ course of study. That he proceeded from there to Paris for further study is a statement not borne out by the evidence. He, however, made a visit in the French capital at one period of his career. Nor is there sufficient proof that he received the title doctor or master, although he is usually called Dr. John Tauler.

He was in his native city again when it lay under the interdict fulminated against it in 1329, during the struggle between John XXII. and Lewis the Bavarian. The Dominicans offered defiance, continuing to say masses till 1339, when they were expelled for three years by the city council. We next find Tauler at Basel, where he came into close contact with the Friends of God, and their leader, Henry of Nördlingen. After laboring as priest in Bavaria, Henry went to the Swiss city, where he was much sought after as a preacher by the clergy and laymen, men and women. In 1357, Tauler was in Cologne, but Strassburg was the chief seat of his activity. Among his friends were Christina Ebner, abbess of a convent near Nürnberg, and Margaret Ebner, a nun of the Bavarian convent of Medingen, women who were mystics and recipients of visions.468  Tauler died in the guest-chamber of a nunnery in Strassburg, of which his sister was an inmate.

Tauler’s reputation in his own day rested upon his power as a preacher, and it is probable that his sermons have been more widely read in the Protestant Church than those of other mediaeval preachers. The reason for this popularity is the belief that the preacher was controlled by an evangelical spirit which brought him into close affinity with the views of the Reformers. His sermons, which were delivered in German, are plain statements of truth easily understood, and containing little that is allegorical or fanciful. They attempt no display of learning or speculative ingenuity. When Tauler quotes from Augustine, Gregory the Great, Dionysius, Anselm or Thomas Aquinas, as he sometimes does, though not as frequently as Eckart, he does it in an incidental way. His power lay in his familiarity with the Scriptures, his knowledge of the human heart, his simple style and his own evident sincerity.469  He was a practical every-day preachers intent on reaching men in their various avocations and trials.

If we are to follow the History of Tauler’s Life and Conscience, which appeared in the first published edition of his works, 1498, Tauler underwent a remarkable spiritual change when he was fifty.470  Under the influence of Nicolas of Basel, a Friend of God from the Oberland, he was then led into a higher stage of Christian experience. Already had he achieved the reputation of an effective preacher when Nicolas, after hearing him several times, told him that he was bound in the letter and that, though he preached sound doctrine, he did not feel the power of it himself. He called Tauler a Pharisee. The rebuked man was indignant, but his monitor replied that he lacked humility and that, instead of seeking God’s honor, he was seeking his own. Feeling the justice of the criticism, Tauler confessed he had been told his sins and faults for the first time. At Nicolas’ advice he desisted from preaching for two years, and led a retired life. At the end of that time Nicolas visited him again, and bade him resume his sermons. Tauler’s first attempt, made in a public place and before a large concourse of people, was a failure. The second sermon he preached in a nunnery from the text, Matt. 25:6, "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him," and so powerful was the impression that 50 persons fell to the ground like dead men. During the period of his seclusion, Tauler had surrendered himself entirely to God, and after it he continued to preach with an unction and efficiency before unknown in his experience.

Some of Tauler’s expressions might give the impression that he was addicted to quietistic views, as when he speaks of being "drowned in the Fatherhood of God," of "melting in the fire of His love," of being "intoxicated with God."  But these tropical expressions, used occasionally, are offset by the sober statements in which he portrays the soul’s union with God. To urge upon men to surrender themselves wholly to God and to give a practical exemplification of their union with Him in daily conduct was his mission.

He emphasized the agency of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens and sanctifies, who rebukes sin and operates in the heart to bring it to self-surrender.471  The change effected by the Spirit, which he called Kehr — conversion—he dwelt upon continually. The word, which frequently occurs in his sermons, was almost a new word in mediaeval sermonic vocabulary. Tauler also insisted upon the Eckartian Abgeschiedenheit, detachment from the world, and says that a soul, to become holy, must become "barren and empty of all created things," and rid of all that "pertains to the creature."  When the soul is full of the creature, God must of necessity remain apart from it, and such a soul is like a barrel that has been filled with refuse or decaying matter. It cannot thereafter be used for good, generous wine or any other pure drink.472

As for good works, if done apart from Christ, they are of no avail. Tauler often quoted the words of Isaiah 64:6. "All our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment."  By his own power, man cannot come unto God. Those who have never felt anxiety on account of their sins are in the most dangerous condition of all.473

The sacraments suffer no depreciation at Tauler’s hands, though they are given a subordinate place. They are all of no avail without the change of the inward man. Good people linger at the outward symbols, and fail to get at the inward truth symbolized. Yea, by being unduly concerned about their movements in the presence of the Lord’s body, they miss receiving him spiritually. Men glide, he says, through fasting, prayer, vigils and other exercises, and take so much delight in them that God has a very small part in their hearts, or no part in them at all.474

In insisting upon the exercise of a simple faith, it seems almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that Tauler took an attitude of intentional opposition to the prescient and self-confident methods of scholasticism. It is better to possess a simple faith—einfaltiger Glaube — than to vainly pry into the secrets of God, asking questions about the efflux and reflux of the Aught and Nought, or about the essence of the soul’s spark. The Arians and Sabellians had a marvellous intellectual understanding of the Trinity, and Solomon and Origen interested the Church in a marvellous way, but what became of them we know not. The chief thing is to yield oneself to God’s will and to follow righteousness with sincerity of purpose. "Wisdom is not studied in Paris, but in the sufferings of the Lord," Tauler said. The great masters of Paris read large books, and that is well. But the people who dwell in the inner kingdom of the soul read the true Book of Life. A pure heart is the throne of the Supreme Judge, a lamp bearing the eternal light, a treasury of divine riches, a storehouse of heavenly sweetness, the sanctuary of the only begotten Son.475

A distinctly democratic element showed itself in Tauler’s piety and preaching which is very attractive. He put honor upon all legitimate toil, and praised good and faithful work as an expression of true religion. One, he said, "can spin, another can make shoes, and these are the gifts of the Holy Ghost; and I tell you that, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift to be able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to become a pattern to all."  Fidelity in one’s avocation is more than attendance upon church. He spoke of a peasant whom he knew well for more than forty years. On being asked whether he should give up his work and go and sit in church, the Lord replied no, he should win his bread by the sweat of his brow, and thus he would honor his own precious blood. The sympathetic element in his piety excluded the hard spirit of dogmatic complacency. "I would rather bite my tongue," Tauler said, "till it bleed, than pass judgment upon any man. Judgment we should leave to God, for out of the habit of sitting in judgment upon one’s neighbor grow self-satisfaction and arrogance, which are of the devil."476

It was these features, and especially Tauler’s insistence upon the religious exercises of the soul and the excellency of simple faith, that won Luther’s praise, first in letters to Lange and Spalatin, written in 1516. To Spalatin he wrote that he had found neither in the Latin nor German tongue a more wholesome theology than Tauler’s, or one more consonant with the Gospel.477

The mood of the heretic, however, was furthest from Tauler. Strassburg knew what heresy was, and had proved her orthodoxy by burning heretics. Tauler was not of their number. He sought to call a narrow circle away from the formalities of ritual to close communion with God, but the Church was to him a holy mother. In his reverence for the Virgin, he stood upon mediaeval ground. Preaching on the Annunciation, he said that in her spirit was the heaven of God, in her soul His paradise, in her body His palace. By becoming the mother of Christ, she became the daughter of the Father, the mother of the Son, the Holy Spirit’s bride. She was the second Eve, who restored all that the first Eve lost, and Tauler does not hesitate to quote some of Bernard’s passionate words pronouncing Mary the sinner’s mediator with Christ. He himself sought her intercession. If any one could have seen into her heart, he said, he would have seen God in all His glory.478

Though he was not altogether above the religious perversions of the mediaeval Church, John Tauler has a place among the godly leaders of the Church universal, who have proclaimed the virtue of simple faith and immediate communion with God and the excellency of the unostentatious practice of righteousness from day to day. He was an expounder of the inner life, and strikes the chord of fellowship in all who lay more stress upon pure devotion and daily living than upon ritual exercises. A spirit congenial to his was Whittier, whose undemonstrative piety poured itself out in hearty appreciation of his unseen friend of the fourteenth century. The modern Friend represents the mysterious stranger, who pointed out to Tauler the better way, as saying:—

What hell may be, I know not. This I know,

I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.

One arm, Humility, takes hold upon

His dear humanity; the other, Love,

Clasps His divinity. So where I go

He goes; and better fire-walled hell with Him

Than golden-gated Paradise without.

Said Tauler,

My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man,

Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,

Wisdom the weary Schoolmen never knew.

§ 31. Henry Suso.

Henry Suso, 1295?-1366, a man of highly emotional nature, has on the one hand been treated as a hysterical visionary, and on the other as the author of the most finished product of German mysticism. Born on the Lake of Constance, and perhaps in Constance itself, he was of noble parentage, but on the death of his mother, abandoned his father’s name, Berg, and adopted his mother’s maiden name, Seuse, Suso being the Latin form.479  At thirteen, he entered the Dominican convent at Constance, and from his eighteenth year on gave himself up to the most exaggerated and painful asceticisms. At twenty-eight, he was studying at Cologne, and later at Strassburg.

For supporting the pope against Lewis the Bavarian, the Dominicans in Constance came into disfavor, and were banished from the city. Suso retired to Diessehoven, where he remained, 1339–1346, serving as prior. During this period, he began to devote himself to preaching. The last eighteen years of his life were spent in the Dominican convent at Ulm, where he died, Jan. 25, 1366. He was beatified by Gregory XVI., 1831.

Suso’s constitution, which was never strong, was undermined by the rigorous penitential discipline to which he subjected himself for twenty-two years. An account of it is given in his Autobiography. Its severity, so utterly contrary to the spirit of our time, was so excessive that Suso’s statements seem at points to be almost incredible. The only justification for repeating some of the details is to show the lengths to which the penitential system of the Mediaeval Church was carried by devotees. Desiring to carry the marks of the Lord Jesus, Suso pricked into his bare chest, with a sharp instrument, the monogram of Christ, IHS. The three letters remained engraven there till his dying day and, "Whenever my heart moved," as he said, "the name moved also."  At one time he saw in a dream rays of glory illuminating the scar.

He wore a hair shirt and an iron chain. The loss of blood forced him to put the chain aside, but for the hair shirt he substituted an undergarment, studded with 150 sharp tacks. This he wore day and night, its points turned inwards towards his body. Often, he said, it made the impression on him as if he were lying in a nest of wasps. When he saw his body covered with vermin, and yet he did not die, he exclaimed that the murderer puts to death at one stroke, "but alas, O tender God, — zarter Gott,—what a dying is this of mine!"  Yet this was not enough. Suso adopted the plan of tying around his neck a part of his girdle. To this he attached two leather pockets, into which he thrust his hands. These he made fast with lock and key till the next morning. This kind of torture he continued to practise for sixteen years, when he abandoned it in obedience to a heavenly vision. How little had the piety of the Middle Ages succeeded in correcting the perverted views of the old hermits of the Nitrian desert, whose stories this Swiss monk was in the habit of reading, and whose austerities he emulated!

God, however, had not given any intimation of disapproval of ascetic discipline, and so Suso, in order further to impress upon his body marks of godliness, bound against his back a wooden cross, to which, in memory of the 30 wounds of Christ, he affixed 30 spikes. On this instrument of torture he stretched himself at night for 8 years. The last year he affixed to it 7 sharp needles. For a long time he went through 2 penitential drills a day, beating with his fist upon the cross as it hung against his back, while the needles and nails penetrated into his flesh, and the blood flowed down to his feet. As if this were not a sufficient imitation of the flagellation inflicted upon Christ, he rubbed vinegar and salt into his wounds to increase his agony. His feet became full of sores, his legs swelled as if he had had the dropsy, his flesh became dry and his hands trembled as if palsied. And all this, as he says, he endured out of the great inner love which he had for God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing pains he wanted to imitate. For 25 years, cold as the winter might be, he entered no room where there was a fire, and for the same period he abstained from all bathing, water baths or sweat baths—Wasserbad und Schweissbad. But even with this list of self-mortifications, Suso said, the whole of the story was not told.

In his fortieth year, when his physical organization had been reduced to a wreck, so that nothing remained but to die or to desist from the discipline, God revealed to him that his long-practised austerity was only a good beginning, a breaking up of his untamed humanity,—Ein Durchbrechen seines ungebrochenen Menschen,—and that thereafter he would have to try another way in order to "get right."  And so he proceeded to macerations of the inner man, and learned the lessons which asceticisms of the soul can impart.

Suso nowhere has words of condemnation for such barbarous self-imposed torture, a method of pleasing God which the Reformation put aside in favor of saner rules of piety.

Other sufferings came upon Suso, but not of his own infliction. These he bore with Christian submission, and the evils involved he sought to rectify by services rendered to others. His sister, a nun, gave way to temptation. Overcoming his first feelings of indignation, Suso went far and near in search of her, and had the joy of seeing her rescued to a worthy life, and adorned with all religious virtues. Another cross he had to bear was the charge that he was the father of an unborn child, a charge which for a time alienated Henry of Nördlingen and other close friends. He bore the insinuation without resentment, and even helped to maintain the child after it was born.

Suso’s chief writings, which abound in imagery and comparisons drawn from nature, are an Autobiography,480 and works on The Eternal Wisdom—Büchlein von der ewigen Weisheit — and the Truth—Büchlein von der Wahrheit. To these are to be added his sermons and letters.

The Autobiography came to be preserved by chance. At the request of Elsbet Staglin, Suso told her a number of his experiences. This woman, the daughter of one of the leading men of Zürich, was an inmate of the convent of Tosse, near Winterthur. When Suso discovered that she had committed his conversations to writing, he treated her act as "a spiritual theft," and burnt a part of the manuscript. The remainder he preserved, in obedience to a supernatural communication, and revised. Suso appears in the book as "The Servant of the Eternal Wisdom."

The Autobiography is a spiritual self-revelation in which the author does not pretend to follow the outward stages of his career. In addition to the facts of his religious experience, he sets forth a number of devotional rules containing much wisdom, and closes with judicious and edifying remarks on the being of God, which he gave to Elsbet in answer to her questions.481

The Book of the Eternal Wisdom, which is in the form of a dialogue between Christ, the Eternal Wisdom, and the writer, has been called by Denifle, who bore Suso’s name, the consummate fruit of German mysticism. It records, in German,482 meditations in which use is made of the Scriptures. Here we have a body of experimental theology such as ruled among the more pious spirits in the German convents of the fourteenth century.

Suso declares that one who is without love is as unable to understand a tongue that is quick with love as one speaking in German is unable to understand a Fleming, or as one who hears a report of the music of a harp is unable to understand the feelings of one who has heard the music with his own ears. The Saviour is represented as saying that it would be easier to bring back the years of the past, revive the withered flowers or collect all the droplets of rain than to measure the love—Minne — he has for men.

The Servant, after lamenting the hardness of heart which refuses to be moved by the spectacle of the cross and the love of God, seeks to discover how it is that God can at once be so loving and so severe. As for the pains of hell, the lost are represented as exclaiming, "Oh, how we desire that there might be a millstone as wide as the earth and reaching to all parts of heaven, and that a little bird might alight every ten thousand years and peck away a piece of stone as big as the tenth part of a millet seed and continue to peck away every ten thousandth year until it had pecked away a piece as big as a millet seed, and then go on pecking at the same rate until the whole stone were pecked away, so only our torture might come to an end; but that cannot be."

Having dwelt upon the agony of the cross and God’s immeasurable love, the bliss of heaven and the woes of hell, Suso proceeds to set forth the dignity of suffering. He had said in his Autobiography that "every lover is a martyr,"483 and here the Eternal Wisdom declares that if all hearts were become one heart, that heart could not bear the least reward he has chosen to give in eternity as a compensation for the least suffering endured out of love for himself .... This is an eternal law of nature that what is true and good must be harvested with sorrow. There is nothing more joyous than to have endured suffering. Suffering is short pain and prolonged joy. Suffering gives pain here and blessedness hereafter. Suffering destroys suffering—Leiden tödtet Leiden. Suffering exists that the sufferer may not suffer. He who could weigh time and eternity in even balances would rather he in a glowing oven for a hundred years than to miss in eternity the least reward given for the least suffering, for the suffering in the oven would have an end, but the reward is forever.

After dwelling upon the advantages of contemplation as the way of attaining to the heavenly life, the Eternal Wisdom tells Suso how to die both the death of the body and the soul; namely, by penance and by self-detachment from all the things of the earth—Entbrechen von allen Dingen. An unconverted man is introduced in the agonies of dying. His hands grow cold, his face pales, his eyes begin to lose their sight. The prince of terrors wrestles with his heart and deals it hard blows. The chill sweat of death creeps over his body and starts haggard fears. "O angry countenance of the severe Judge, how sharp are thy judgments!" he exclaims. In imagination, or with real sight, he beholds the host of black Moors approaching to see whether he belongs to them, and then the beasts of hell surrounding him. He sees the hot flames rising up above the denizens of purgatory, and hears them cry out that the least of their tortures is greater than the keenest suffering endured by martyr on the earth. And that a day there is as a hundred years. They exclaim, "Now we roast, now we simmer and now we cry out in vain for help."  The dying man then passes into the other world, calling out for help to the friends whom he had treated well on the earth, but in vain.

The treatise, which closes with excellent admonitions on the duty of praising God continually, makes a profound spiritual impression, but it presents only one side of the spiritual life, and needs to be supplemented and expurgated in order to present a proper picture. Christ came into the world that we might have everlasting life now, and that we might have abundance of life, and that his joy might remain in us and our joy might be full. The patient endurance of suffering purifies the soul and the countenance, but suffering is not to be counted as always having a sanctifying power, much less is it to be courted. Macerations have no virtue of themselves, and patience in enduring pain is only one of the Christian virtues, and not their crown. Love, which is the bond of perfectness, finds in a cheerful spirit, in hearty human fellowships and in well-doing also, its ministries. The mediaeval type of piety turned the earth into a vale of tears. It was cloistral. For nearly 30 years, as Suso tells us, he never once broke through the rule of silence at table.484  Innocent III. could write, just before becoming world-ruler, a treatise on the contempt of the world. The piety of the modern Church is of a cheerful type, and sees good everywhere in this world which God created. Suso’s piety was what the Germans have called the mysticism of suffering—die Mystik des Leidens. His way of self-inflicted torture was the wrong way. In going, however, with Suso we will not fail to reach some of the heights of religious experience and to find nearness to God.

Suso kept company with the Friends of God, and acknowledged his debt to Eckart, "the high teacher," "his high and holy master," from whose "sweet teachings he had taken deep draughts."  As he says in his Autobiography, he went to Eckart in a time of spiritual trial, and was helped by him out of the hell of distress into which he had fallen. He uses some of Eckart’s distinctive vocabulary, and after the Cologne rnystic’s death, Suso saw him "in exceeding glory" and was admonished by him to submission. This quality forms the subject of Suso’s Book on the Truth, which in part was meant to be a defence of his spiritual teacher.

A passage bearing on the soul’s union with Christ will serve as a specimen of Suso’s tropical style, and may fitly close this chapter. The soul, so the Swiss mystic represents Christ as saying—

"the soul that would find me in the inner closet of a consecrated and self-detached life,—abgeschiedenes Leben,—and would partake of my sweetness, must first be purified from evil and adorned with virtues, be decked with the red roses of passionate love, with the beautiful violets of meek submission, and must be strewn with the white lilies of purity. It shall embrace me with its arms, excluding all other loves, for these I shun and flee as the bird does the cage. This soul shall sing to me the song of Zion, which means passionate love combined with boundless praise. Then I will embrace it and it shall lean upon my heart."485

§ 32. The Friends of God.

The Friends of God attract our interest both by the suggestion of religious fervor involved in their name and the respect with which the prominent mystics speak of them. They are frequently met within the writings of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroeck, as well as in the pages of other writers of the fourteenth century. Much mystery surrounds them, and efforts have failed to define with precision their teachings, numbers and influence. The name had been applied to the Waldenses,486 but in the fourteenth century it came to be a designation for coteries of pietists scattered along the Rhine, from Basel to Strassburg and to the Netherlands, laymen and priests who felt spiritual longings the usual church services did not satisfy. They did not constitute an organized sect. They were addicted to the study of the Scriptures, and sought close personal fellowship with God. They laid stress upon a godly life and were bent on the propagation of holiness. Their name was derived from John 16:15, "Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends."  Their practices did not involve a breach with the Church and its ordinances. They had no sympathy with heresy, and antagonized the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The little treatise, called the German Theology, at the outset marks the difference between the Friends of God and the false, free spirits, especially the Beghards.487

A letter written by a Friend to another Friend488 represents as succinctly as any statement their aim when it says, "The soul that loves God must get away from the world, from the flesh and all sensual desires and away from itself, that is, away from its own self-will, and thus does it make ready to hear the message of the work and ministry of love accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ."  The house which Rulman Merswin founded in Strassburg was declared to be a house of refuge for honorable persons, priests and laymen who, with trust in God, choose to flee the world and seek to improve their lives. The Friends of God regarded themselves as holding the secret of the Christian life and as being the salt of the earth, the instructors of other men.489

Among the leading Friends of God were Henry of Nördlingen, Nicolas of Löwen, Rulman Merswin and "the great Friend of God from the Oberland."  The personality of the Friend of God from the Oberland is one of the most evasive in the religious history of the Middle Ages. He is presented as leader of great personal power and influence, as the man who determined Tauler’s conversion and wrote a number of tracts, and yet it is doubtful whether such a personage ever lived. Rulman Merswin affirms that he had been widely active between Basel and Strassburg and in the region of Switzerland, from which he got his name, the Oberland. In 1377, according to the same authority, he visited Gregory XI. in Rome and, like Catherine of Siena, petitioned the pontiff to set his face against the abuses of Christendom. Rulman was in correspondence with him for a long period, and held his writings secret until within four years of his (Rulman’s) death, when he published them. They were 17 in number, all of them bearing on the nature and necessity of a true conversion of heart.490

This mystic from the Oberland, as Rulman’s account goes, led a life of prayer and devotion, and found peace, performed miracles and had visions. He is placed by Preger at the side of Peter Waldo as one of the most influential laymen of the Middle Ages, a priest, though unordained, of the Church. After Rulman’s death, we hear no more of him.

Rulman Merswin, the editor of the Oberland prophet’s writings, was born in Stra6sburg, 1307, and died there, 1382. He gave up merchandise and devoted himself wholly to a religious life. He had undergone the change of conversion—Kehr. For four years he had a hard struggle against temptations, and subjected himself to severe asceticisms, but was advised by his confessor, Tauler, to desist, at least for a time. It was towards the end of this period that he met the man from the Oberland. After his conversion, he purchased and fitted up an old cloister, located on an island near Strassburg, called das grüne Wört, to serve as a refuge for clerics and laymen who wished to follow the principles of the Friends of God and live together for the purpose of spiritual culture. In 1370, after the death of his wife, Rulman himself became an inmate of the house, which was put under the care of the Knights of St. John a year later. Here he continued to exhort by pen and word till his death. He lies buried at the side of his wife in Strassburg.

Merswin’s two chief writings are entitled Das Bannerbüchlein, the Banner-book, and Das Buch von den neun Felsen, the Nine Rocks. The former is an exhortation to flee from the banner of Lucifer and to gather under the blood-red banner of Christ.491  The Nine Rocks, written in the form of a dialogue, 1352, opens with a parable, describing innumerable fishes swimming down from the lakes among the hills through the streams in the valleys into the deep sea. The author then sees them attempting to find their way back to the hills. These processes illustrate the career of human souls departing from God into the world and seeking to return to Him. The author also sees a "fearfully high mountain," on which are nine rocks. The souls that succeed in getting back to the mountain are so few that it seemed as if only one out of every thousand reached it. He then proceeds to set forth the condition of the eminent of the earth, popes and kings, cardinals and princes; and also priests, monks and nuns, Beguines and Beghards, and people of all sorts and classes. He finds the conditions very bad, and is specially severe on women who, by their show of dress and by their manners, are responsible for men going morally astray and falling into sin. Many of these women commit a hundred mortal sins a day.

Rulman then returns to the nine rocks, which represent the nine stages of progress towards the source of our being, God. Those who are on the rocks have escaped the devil’s net, and by climbing on up to the last rock, they reach perfection. Those on the fifth rock have gained the point where they have completely given up their own self-will. The sixth rock represents full submission to God. On the ninth the number is so small that there seemed to be only three persons on it. These have no desire whatever except to honor God, fear not hell nor purgatory, nor enemy nor death nor life.

The Friends of God, who are bent on something more than their own salvation, are depicted in the valley below, striving to rescue souls from the net in which they have been ensnared. The Brethren of the Free Spirit resist this merciful procedure.

The presentation is crude, and Scripture is not directly quoted. The biblical imagery, however, abounds, and, as in the case of the ancient allegory of Hermas, the principles of the Gospel are set forth in a way adapted, no doubt, to reach a certain class of minds, even as in these modern days the methods of the Salvation Army appeal to many for whom the discourses of Bernard or Gerson might have little meaning. 492

Rulman Merswin is regarded by Denifle, Strauch and other critics as the author of the works ascribed to the Friend of God from the Oberland, and the inventor of this fictitious personage.493  The reason for this view is that no one else knows of the Oberlander and that, after Rulman’s death, attempts on the part of the Strassburg brotherhood to find him, or to find out something about him, resulted in failure. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand why Rulman did not continue to keep his writings secret till after his own death, if the Oberlander was a fictitious character.494

Whatever may be the outcome of the discussion over the historic personality of the man from the Oberland, we have in the writings of these two men a witness to the part laymen were taking in the affairs of the Church.

§ 33. John of Ruysbroeck.

Independent of the Friends of God, and yet closely allied with them in spirit, was Jan von Ruysbroeck, 1293–1381. In 1350, he sent to the Friends in Strassburg his Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage—Chierheit der gheesteleker Brulocht. He forms a connecting link between them and the Brothers of the Common Life. The founder of the latter brotherhood, de Groote, and also Tauler, visited him. He was probably acquainted with Eckart’s writings, which were current in the Lowlands.495

The Flemish mystic was born in a village of the same name near Brussels, and became vicar of St. Gudula in that city. At sixty he abandoned the secular priesthood and put on the monastic habit, identifying himself with the recently established Augustinian convent Groenendal,—Green Valley,—located near Waterloo. Here he was made prior. Ruysbroeck spent most of his time in contemplation, though he was not indifferent to practical duties. On his walks through the woods of Soignes, he believed he saw visions and he was otherwise the subject of revelations. He was not a man of the schools. Soon after his death, a fellow-Augustinian wrote his biography, which abounds in the miraculous element. The very trees under which he sat were illuminated with an aureole. At his passing away, the bells of the convent rang without hands touching them, and perfume proceeded from his dead body.

The title, doctor ecstaticus, which at an early period was associated with Ruysbroeck, well names his characteristic trait. He did not speculate upon the remote theological themes of God’s being as did Eckart, nor was he a popular preacher of every-day Christian living, like Tauler. He was a master of the contemplative habit, and mused upon the soul’s experiences in its states of partial or complete union with God. His writings, composed in his mother-tongue, were translated into Latin by his pupils, Groote and William Jordaens. The chief products of his pen are the Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, the Mirror of Blessedness and Samuel, which is a defence of the habit of contemplation, and the Glistening Stone, an allegorical meditation on the white stone of Rev. 2:17, which is interpreted to mean Christ.

Ruysbroeck laid stress upon ascetic exercises, but more upon love. In its highest stages of spiritual life, the soul comes to God "without an intermediary."  The name and work of Christ are dwelt upon on every page. He is our canon, our breviary, our every-day book, and belongs to Laity and clergy alike. He was concerned to have it understood that he has no sympathy with pantheism, and opposed the heretical views of the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Beghards. He speaks of four sorts of heretics, the marks of one of them being that they despise the ordinances and sacraments of the Catholic Church, the Scriptures and the sufferings of Christ, and set themselves above God himself. He, however, did not escape the charge of heresy. Gerson, who received a copy of the Spiritual Marriage from a Carthusian monk of Bruges, found the third book teaching pantheism, and wrote a tract in which he complained that the author, whom he pronounced an unlearned man, followed his feelings in setting forth the secrets of the religious life. Gerson was, however, persuaded that he had made a mistake by the defence written by John of Schoenhofen, one of the brethren of Groenendal. However, in his reply written 1408, he again emphasized that Ruysbroeck was a man without learning, and complained that he had not made his meaning sufficiently clear.496

The Spiritual Marriage, Ruysbroeck’s chief contribution to mystical literature, is a meditation upon the words of the parable, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him."  It sets forth three stages of Christian experience, the active, the inner and the contemplative. In the active stage the soul adopts the Christian virtues and practises them, fighting against sin, and thus it goes out "to meet the bridegroom."  We must believe the articles of the Creed, but not seek to fully understand them. And the more subtle doctrines of the Scripture we should accept and explain as they are interpreted by the life of Christ and the lives of his saints. Man should study nature, the Scriptures and all created things, and draw from them profit. To understand Christ he must, like Zaccheus, run ahead of all the manifestations of the creature world, and climb up the tree of faith, which has twelve branches, the twelve articles of the Creed.

As for the inner life, it is distinguished from the active by devotion to the original Cause and to truth itself as against devotion to exercises and forms, to the celebration of the sacrament and to good works. Here the soul separates itself from outward relations and created forms, and contemplates the eternal love of God. Asceticism may still be useful, but it is not essential.

The contemplative stage few reach. Here the soul is transferred into a purity and brightness which is above all natural intelligence. It is a peculiar adornment and a heavenly crown. No one can reach it by learning and intellectual subtlety nor by disciplinary exercises. In order to attain to it, three things are essential. A man must live virtuously; he must, like a fire that never goes out, love God constantly, and he must lose himself in the darkness in which men of the contemplative habit no longer find their way by the methods known to the creature. In the abyss of this darkness a light incomprehensible is begotten, the Son of God, in whom we "see eternal life."

At last the soul comes into essential unity with God, and, in the fathomless ocean of this unity, all things are seized with bliss. It is the dark quiet in which all who love God lose themselves. Here they swim in the wild waves of the ocean of God’s being.497

He who would follow the Flemish mystic in these utterances must have his spirit. They seem far removed from the calm faith which leaves even the description of such ecstatic states to the future, and is content with doing the will of God in the daily avocations of this earthly life. Expressions he uses, such as "spiritual intoxication,"498 are not safe, and the experiences he describes are, as he declares, not intended for the body of Christian people to reach here below. In most men they would take the forms of spiritual hysteria and the hallucinations of hazy self-consciousness. It is well that Ruysbroeck’s greatest pupil, de Groote, did not follow along this line of meditation, but devoted himself to practical questions of every-day living and works of philanthropy. The ecstatic mood is characteristic of this mystic in the secluded home in Brabant, but it is not the essential element in his religious thought. His descriptions of Christ and his work leave little to be desired. He does not dwell upon Mary, or even mention her in his chief work. He insists upon the works which proceed from genuine love to God. The chapter may be closed with two quotations:—

"Even devotion must give way to a work of love to the spiritual and to the physical man. For even should one rise in prayer higher than Peter or Paul, and hear that a poor man needed a drink of water, he would have to cease from the devotional exercise, sweet though it were, and do the deed of love. It is well pleasing to God that we leave Him in order to help His members. In this sense the Apostle was willing to be banished from Christ for his brethren’s sake."

"Always before thou retire at night, read three books, which thou oughtest always to have with thee. The first is an old, gray, ugly volume, written over with black ink. The second is white and beautifully written in red, and the third in glittering gold letters. First read the old volume. That means, consider thine own past life, which is full of sins and errors, as are the lives of all men. Retire within thyself and read the book of conscience, which will be thrown open at the last judgment of Christ. Think over how badly thou hast lived, how negligent thou hast been in thy words, deeds, wishes and thoughts. Cast down thy eyes and cry, ’God be merciful to me a sinner.’  Then God will drive away fear and anxious concern and will give thee hope and faith. Then lay the old book aside and go and fetch from memory the white book. This is the guileless life of Christ, whose soul was pure and whose guileless body was bruised with stripes and marked with rose-red, precious blood. These are the letters which show his real love to us. Look at them with deep emotion and thank him that, by his death, he has opened to thee the gate of heaven. And finally lift up thine eyes on high and read the third book, written in golden script; that is, consider the glory of the life eternal, in Comparison with which the earthly vanishes away as the light of the candle before the splendor of the sun at midday."499

§ 34. Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life.

It was fortunate for the progress of religion, that mysticism in Holland and Northwestern Germany did not confine itself to the channel into which it had run at Groenendal. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, and before Ruysbroeck’s death, it associated with itself practical philanthropic activities under the leadership of Gerrit Groote, 1340–1384, and Florentius Radewyn, 1350–1400, who had finished his studies in Prag. They were the founders of the Windesheim Congregation and the genial company known as the Brothers of the Common Life, called also the Brothers of the New Devotion. To the effort to attain to union with God they gave a new impulse by insisting that men imitate the conduct of Christ. 500 Originating in Holland, they spread along the Rhine and into Central Germany.

Groote was born at Deventer, where his father had been burgomaster. After studying at Paris, he taught at Cologne, and received the appointment of canon, enjoying at least two church livings, one at Utrecht and one at Aachen. He lived the life of a man of the world until he experienced a sudden conversion through the influence of a friend, Henry of Kolcar, a Carthusian prior. He renounced his ecclesiastical livings and visited Ruysbroeck, being much influenced by him. Thomas à Kempis remarks that Groote could say, after his visits to Ruysbroeck, "Thy wisdom and knowledge are greater than the report which I heard in my own country."

At forty he began preaching. Throngs gathered to hear him in the churches and churchyards of Deventer, Zwolle, Leyden and other chief towns of the Lowlands.501  Often he preached three times a day. His success stirred up the Franciscans, who secured from the bishop of Utrecht an inhibition of preaching by laymen. Groote came under this restriction, as he was not ordained. An appeal was made to Urban VI., but the pope put himself on the side of the bishop. Groote died in 1384, before the decision was known.

Groote strongly denounced the low morals of the clergy, but seems not to have opposed any of the doctrines of the Church. He fasted, attended mass, laid stress upon prayer and alms, and enforced these lessons by his own life. To quote an old writer, he taught by living righteously—docuit sancte vivendo. In 1374, he gave the house he had inherited from his father at Deventer as a home for widows and unmarried women. Without taking vows, the inmates were afforded an opportunity of retirement and a life of religious devotion and good works. They were to support themselves by weaving, spinning, sewing, nursing and caring for the sick. They were at liberty to leave the community whenever they chose. John Brinkerinck further developed the idea of the female community.

The origin of the Brothers of the Common Life was on this wise. After the inhibition of lay preaching, Groote settled down at Deventer, spending much time in the house of Florentius Radewyn. He had employed young priests to copy manuscripts. At Radewyn’s suggestion they were united into a community, and agreed to throw their earnings into a common fund. After Groote’s death, the community received a more distinct organization through Radewyn. Other societies were established after the model of the Deventer house, which was called "the rich brother house,"—het rijke fraterhuis,—as at Zwolle, Delft, Liége, Ghent, Cologne, Münster, Marburg and Rostock, many of them continuing strong till the Reformation.502

A second branch from the same stock, the canons Regular of St. Augustine, established by the influence of Radewyn and other friends and pupils of Groote, had as their chief houses Windesheim, dedicated 1387, and Mt. St. Agnes, near Zwolle. These labored more within the convent, the Brothers of the Common Life outside of it.

The Brotherhood of the Common Life never reached the position of an order sanctioned by Church authority. Its members, including laymen as well as clerics, took no irrevocable vow, and were at liberty to withdraw when they pleased. They were opposed to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and were free from charges of looseness in morals and doctrine. Like their founder, they renounced worldly goods and remained unmarried. They supported the houses by their own toil.503

To gardening, making clothes and other occupations pertaining to the daily life, they added preaching, conducting schools and copying manuscripts. Groote was an ardent lover of books, and had many manuscripts copied for his library. Among these master copyists was Thomas à Kempis. Classical authors as well as writings of the Fathers and books of Scripture were transcribed. Selections were also made from these authors in distinct volumes, called ripiaria — little river banks. At Liege they were so diligent as copyists as to receive the name Broeders van de penne, Brothers of the Quill. Of Groote, Thomas à Kempis reports that he had a chest filled with the best books standing near his dining table, so that, if a course did not please him, he might reach over to them and give his friends a cup for their souls. He carried books about with him on his preaching tours. Objection was here and there made to the possession of so many books, where they might have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.504  Translations also were made of the books of Scripture and other works. Groote translated the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Office for the Dead and certain Devotions to Mary. The houses were not slow in adopting type, and printing establishments are mentioned in connection with Maryvale, near Geissenheim, Windesheim, Herzogenbusch, Rostock, Louvaine and other houses.

The schools conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life, intended primarily for clerics, have a distinguished place in the history of education. Seldom, if ever before, had so much attention been paid to the intellectual and moral training of youth. Not only did the Brothers, have their own schools. They labored also in schools already established. Long lists of the teachers are still extant. Their school at Herzogenbusch had at one time 1200 scholars, and put Greek into its course at its very start, 1424. The school at Liége in 1524 had 1600 scholars.505  The school at Deventer acquired a place among the notable grammar schools of history, and trained Nicolas of Cusa, Thomas à Kempis, John Wessel and Erasmus, who became an inmate of the institution, 1474, and learned Greek from one of its teachers, Synthis. Making the mother-tongue the chief vehicle of education, these schools sent out the men who are the fathers of the modern literature of Northwestern Germany and the Lowlands, and prepared the soil for the coming Reformation.

Scarcely less influential was the public preaching of the Brethren in the vernacular, and the collations, or expositions of Scripture, given to private circles in their own houses. Groote went to the Scriptures, so Thomas à Kempis says, as to a well of life. Of John Celle, d. 1417, the zealous rector of the Zwolle school, the same biographer writes: "He frequently expounded to the pupils the Holy Scriptures, impressing upon them their authority and stirring them up to diligence in writing out the sayings of the saints. He also taught them to sing accurately, and sedulously to attend church, to honor God’s ministers and to pray often."506  Celle himself played on the organ.

The central theme of their study was the person and life of Christ. "Let the root of thy study," said Groote, "and the mirror of thy life be primarily the Gospel, for therein is the life of Christ portrayed."507  A period of each day was set apart for reflection on some special religious subject,—Sunday on heaven, Monday on death, Tuesday on the mercies of God, Wednesday on the last judgment, Thursday on the pains of hell, Friday on the Lord’s passion and Saturday on sins. They laid more stress upon inward purity and rectitude than upon outward conformities to ritual.508

The excellent people joined the other mystics of the fourteenth century in loosening the hold of scholasticism and sacerdotalism, those two master forces of the Middle Ages.509  They gave emphasis to the ideas brought out strongly from other quarters,—the heretical sects and such writers as Marsiglius of Padua,—the idea of the dignity of the layman, and that monastic vows are not the condition of pure religious devotion. They were the chief contributors to the vigorous religious current which was flowing through the Lowlands. Popular religious literature was in circulation. Manuals of devotion were current, cordials and praecordials for the soul’s needs. Written codes of rules for laymen were passed from hand to hand, giving directions for their conduct at home and abroad. Religious poems in the vernacular, such as the poem on the wise and foolish virgins, carried biblical truth.

Van viff juncfrou wen de wis weren

Unde van vif dwasen wilt nu hir leren.

Some of these were translations from Bernard’s Jesu dulcis memoria, and some condemned festivities like the Maypole and the dance.510

Eugene IV., Pius II., and Sistus IV. gave the Brothers marks of their approval, and the great teachers, Cardinal Cusa, D’Ailly and John Gerson spoke in their praise. There were, however, detractors, such as Grabon, a Saxon Dominican who presented, in the last days of the Council of Constance, 1418, no less than twenty-five charges against them. The substance of the charges was that the highest religious life may not be lived apart from the orders officially sanctioned by the Church. A commission appointed by Martin V., to which Gerson and D’Ailly belonged, reported adversely, and Grabon was obliged to retract. The commission adduced the fact that there was no monastic body in Jerusalem when the primitive Church practised community of goods, and that conventual walls and vows are not essential to the highest religious life. Otherwise the pope, the cardinals and the prelates themselves would not be able to attain to the highest reach of religious experience.511

With the Reformation, the distinct mission of the Brotherhood was at an end, and many of the communities fell in with the new movement. As for the houses which maintained their old rules, Luther felt a warm interest in them. When, in 1532, the Council of Hervord in Westphalia was proposing to abolish the local sister and brother houses, the Reformer wrote strongly against the proposal as follows: "Inasmuch as the Brothers and Sisters, who were the first to start the Gospel among you, lead a creditable life, and have a decent and well-behaved community, and faithfully teach and hold the pure Word, such monasteries and brother-houses please me beyond measure."  On two other occasions, he openly showed his interest in the brotherhood of which Groote was the founder.512

§ 35. The Imitation of Christ. Thomas à Kempis.

... mild saint

À Kempis overmild.

—Lanier.

The pearl of all the mystical writings of the German-Dutch school is the Imitation of Christ, the work of Thomas à Kempis. With the Confessions of St. Augustine and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress it occupies a place in the very front rank of manuals of devotion, and, if the influence of books is to be judged by their circulation, this little volume, starting from a convent in the Netherlands, has, next to the Sacred Scriptures, been the most influential of all the religious writings of Christendom. Protestants and Catholics alike have joined in giving it praise. The Jesuits introduced it into their Exercises. Dr. Samuel Johnson, once, when ill, taught himself Dutch by reading it in that language, and said of its author that the world had opened its arms to receive his book.513  It was translated by John Wesley, was partly instrumental in the conversion of John Newton, was edited by Thomas Chalmers, was read by Mr. Gladstone "as a golden book for all times" and was the companion of General Gordon. Dr. Charles Hodge, the Presbyterian divine, said it has diffused itself like incense through the aisles and alcoves of the Universal Church.514

The number of counted editions exceeds 2000. The British Museum has more than 1000 editions on its shelves.515

Originally written in the Latin, a French translation was made as early as 1447, which still remains in manuscript. The first printed French copies appeared in Toulouse, 1488. The earliest German translation was made in 1434 and is preserved in Cologne, and printed editions in German begin with the Augsburg edition of 1486. Men eminent in the annals of German piety, such as Arndt, 1621, Gossner, 1824, and Tersteegen, 1844, have issued editions with prefaces. The work first appeared in print in English, 1502, the translation being partly by the hand of Margaret, the mother of Henry VII. Translations appeared in Italian in Venice and Milan, 1488, in Spanish at Seville, 1536, in Arabic at Rome, 1663, in Arminian at Rome, 1674, and in other languages.516

The Imitation of Christ consists of four books, and derives its title from the heading of the first book, De imitatione Christi et contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi, the imitation of Christ and the contempt of all the vanities of the world. It seems to have been written in metre.517  The four books are not found in all the manuscripts nor invariably arranged in the same order, facts which have led some to suppose that they were not all written at the same time. The work is a manual of devotion intended to help the soul in its communion with God. Its sententious statements are pitched in the highest key of Christian experience. Within and through all its reflections runs the word, self-renunciation. Its opening words, "whoso followeth me, shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life," John 8:12, are a fitting announcement of the contents. The life of Christ is represented as the highest study it is possible for a mortal to take up. He who has his spirit has found the hidden manna. What can the world confer without Jesus?  To be without him is the direst hell; to be with him, the sweetest paradise.

Here are counsels to read the Scriptures, statements about the uses of adversity and advice for submission to authority, warnings against temptations, reflections upon death, the judgment and paradise. Here are meditations on Christ’s oblation on the cross and the advantages of the communion, and also admonitions to flee the vanities and emptiness of the world and to love God, for he that loveth, knoweth God. Christ is more than all the wisdom of the schools. He lifts up the mind in a moment of time to perceive more reasons for eternal truth than a student might learn over books in ten years. He teaches without confusion of words, without the clashing of opinions, without the pride of reputation,—sine fastu honoris,—the contention of arguments. The concluding words are: "My eyes are unto Thee. My God, in Thee do I put my trust, O Thou Father of mercies. Accompany thy servant with Thy grace and direct him by the path of peace to the land of unending light—patriam perpetuae claritatis."

The plaintive minor key, the gently persuasive tone of the work are adapted to attract serious souls seeking the inner chamber of religious peace and purity of thought, but especially those who are under the shadow of pain and sorrow. The praise of Christ is so unstinted, and the dependence upon him so unaffected, that one cannot help but feel, in reading this book, that he is partaking of the essence of the Gospel. The work, however, presents only one side of the Christian life. It commends humility, submission, gentleness and the passive virtues. It does not emphasize the manly virtues of courage and loyalty to the truth, nor elaborate upon Christian activities to be done to our fellow-men. To fall in completely with the spirit of Thomas à Kempis, and to abide there, would mean to follow the best cloistral ideal of the Middle Ages, or rather of the fourteenth century. Its counsels and reflections were meant primarily for those who had made the convent their home, not for the busy traffickers in the marts of the world, and in association with men of all classes. It leans to quietism, and is calculated to promote personal piety for those who dwell much alone rather than to fit men for engaging in the public battles which fall to men’s usual lot. Its admonitions are adapted to help men to bear with patience rather than to rectify the evils in the world, to be silent rather than to speak to the throng, to live well in seclusion rather than set an example of manly and womanly endeavor in the shop, on the street and in the family. The charge has been made, and not without some ground, that the Imitation of Christ sets forth a selfish type of religion.518  Its soft words are fitted to quiet the soul and bring it to meek contentment rather than to stir up the combatant virtues of courage and of assistance to others. Its message corresponds to the soft glow of the summer evening, and not to the fresh hours filled with the rays of the morning sun. This plaintive note runs through Thomas’ hymns, as may be seen from a verse taken from "The Misery of this Life" :—

Most wonderful would it be

If one did not feel and lament

That in this world to live

Is toil, affliction, pain.519

Over the pages of the book is written the word Christ. It is for this reason that Protestants cherish it as well as Catholics. The references to mediaeval errors of doctrine or practice are so rare that it requires diligent search to find them. Such as they are, they are usually erased from English editions, so that the English reader misses them entirely. Thomas introduces the merit of good works, transubstantiation, IV. 2, the doctrine of purgatory, IV. 9, and the worship of saints, I. 13, II. 9, II. 6, 59. But these statements, however, are like the flecks on the marbles of the Parthenon.

The author, Thomas à Kempis, 1380–1471, was born in Kempen, a town 40 miles northwest of Cologne, and died at Zwolle, in the Netherlands. His paternal name was Hemerken or Hämmerlein, Little Hammer. He was a follower of Groote. In 1395, he was sent to the school of Deventer, under the charge of Florentius Radewyn and the Brothers of the Common Life. He became skilful as a copyist, and was thus enabled to support himself. Later he was admitted to the Augustinian convent of Mt. St. Agnes, near Zwolle, received priest’s orders, 1413, and was made sub-prior, 1429. His brother John, a man of rectitude of life, had been there before him, and was prior. Thomas’ life seems to have been a quiet one, devoted to meditation, composition and copying. He copied the Bible no less than four times, one of the copies being preserved at Darmstadt. His works abound in quotations of the New Testament. Under an old picture, which is represented as his portrait, are the words, "In all things I sought quiet, and found it not save in retirement and in books."520  They fit well the author of the famous Imitation of Christ, as the world thinks of him. He reached the high age of fourscore years and ten. A monument was dedicated to his memory in the presence of the archbishop of Utrecht in St. Michael’s Church Zwolle, Nov. 11, 1897. The writings of à Kempis, which are all of a devotional character, include tracts and meditations, letters, sermons, a Life of St. Lydewigis, a steadfast Christian woman who endured a great fight of afflictions, and the biographies of Groote, Florentius and nine of their companions. Works similar to the are his prolonged meditation upon the Incarnation, and a meditation on the Life and Blessings of the Saviour,521 both of which overflow with admiration for Christ.

In these writings the traces of mediaeval theology, though they are found, are not obtrusive. The writer followed his mediaeval predecessors in the worship of Mary, of whom he says, she is to be invoked by all Christians, especially by monastics.522  He prays to her as the "most merciful," the "most glorious" mother of God, and calls her the queen of heaven, the efficient mediatrix of the whole world, the joy and delight of all the saints, yea, the golden couch for all the saints. She is the chamber of God, the gate of heaven, the paradise of delights, the well of graces, the glory of the angels, the joy of men, the model of manners, the brightness of virtues, the lamp of life, the hope of the needy, the salvation of the weak, the mother of the orphaned. To her all should flee as sons to a mother’s bosom.523

From these tender praises of Mary it is pleasant to turn away to the code of twenty-three precepts which the Dutch mystic laid down under the title, A Small Alphabet for a Monk in the School of God.524  Here are some of them. Love to be unknown and to be reputed as nothing. Love solitude and silence, and thou wilt find great quiet and a good conscience. Where the crowd is, there is usually confusion and distraction of heart. Choose poverty and simplicity. Humble thyself in all things and under all things, and thou wilt merit kindness from all. Let Christ be thy life, thy reading, thy meditation, thy conversation, thy desire, thy gain, thy hope and thy reward. Zaccheus, brother, descend from the height of thy secular wisdom. Come and learn in God’s school the way of humility, long-suffering and patience, and Christ teaching thee, thou shalt come at last safely to the glory of eternal beatitude.

NOTE. – The Authorship of the Imitation of Christ. This question has been one of the most hotly contested questions in the history of pure literature. National sentiments have entered into the discussion, France and Italy contending for the honor of authorship with the Lowlands. The work is now quite generally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis, but among those who dissent from this opinion are scholars of rank.

Among the more recent treatments of the subject not given in the Literature, § 27, are V. Becker: L’auteur de l’Imitat. et les documents néerlandais, Hague, 1882. Also Les derniers travaux sur l’auteur de l’Imitat., Brussels, 1889.—Denifle: Krit. Bemerk. zur Gersen-Kempis Frage, Zeitung für kath. Theol., 1882 sq.—A. O. Spitzes: Th. à K. als schrijver der navolging, Utrecht, 1880. Also Nouvelle défense en réponse du Denifle, Utrecht, 1884.—L. Santini: I diritti di Tommaso da Kemp., 2 vols., Rome, 1879–1881.—F. X. Funk: Gerson und Gersen and Der Verfasser der Nachfolge Christi in his Abhandlungen, Paderborn, 1899, II. 373–444.—P. E. Puyol: Descript. bibliogr. des MSS. et des princip. edd. du livre de imitat., Paris, 1898. Also Paléographie, classement, généalogie du livre de imitat., Paris, 1898. Also L’auteur du livre de imitat., 2 vols., Paris, 1899.—Schulze’s art. in Herzog.—G. Kentenich: Die Handschriften der Imitat. und die Autorschaft des Thomas, in Brieger’s Zeitschrift, 1902, 18 sqq., 1903, 594 sqq.

Pohl gives a list of no less than 35 persons to whom with more or less confidence the authorship has been ascribed. The list includes the names of John Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris; John Gersen, the reputed abbot of Vercelli, Italy, who lived about 1230; Walter Hylton, St. Bernard, Bonaventura, David of Augsburg, Tauler, Suso and even Innocent III. The only claimants worthy of consideration are Gerson, Gersen, and Thomas à Kempis, although Montmorency is inclined to advance the claim of Walter Hylton. The uncertainty arises from the facts (1) that a number of the MSS. and printed editions of the fifteenth century have no note of authorship; (2) the rest are divided between these, Gerson, Gersen, à Kempis, Hylton, and St. Bernard; (3) the MSS. copies show important divergencies. The matter has been made more difficult by the forgery of names and dates in MSS. since the controversy began, these forgeries being almost entirely in the interest of a French or Italian authorship. A reason for the absence of the author’s name in so many MSS. is found in the desire of à Kempis, if he indeed be the author, to remain incognito, in accordance with his own motto, ama nesciri, "love to be unknown."

Of the Latin editions belonging to the fifteenth century, Pohl gives 28 as accredited to Gerson, 12 to Thomas, 2 to St. Bernard, and 6 as anonymous. Or, to follow Funk, p. 426, 40 editions of that century were ascribed to Gerson, 11 to à Kempis, 2 to Bernard, 1  to Gersen, and 2 are anonymous. Spitzen gives 16 as ascribed to à Kempis. Most of the editions ascribing the work to Gerson were printed in France, the remaining editions being printed in Italy or Spain. The editions of the sixteenth century show a change, 37 Latin editions ascribing the authorship to à Kempis, and 25 to Gerson. As for the MSS. dated before 1460, and whose dates may be said to be reasonably above suspicion, all were written in Germany and the Lowlands. The oldest, included in a codex preserved since 1826 in the royal library of Brussels, probably belongs before 1420. The codex contains 9 other writings of à Kempis besides the Imitation, and contains the note, Finitus et completus MCCCCXLI per manus fratris Th. Kempensis in Monte S. Agnetis prope Zwollis (finished and completed, 1441, by the hands of brother Thomas à Kempis of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle). See Pohl, II. 461 sqq. So this is an autographic copy. The text of the Imitation, however, is written on older paper than the other documents, and has corrections which are found in a Dutch translation of the first book, dating from 1420. For these reasons, Funk, p. 424, and others, puts the MS. back to 1416–1420.

The literary controversy over the authorship began in 1604, when Dom Pedro Manriquez, in a work on the Lord’s Supper issued at Milan, and on the alleged basis of a quotation by Bonaventura, declared the Imitation to be older than that Schoolman. In 1606, Bellarmin, in his Descript. eccles., was more precise, and stated it was already in existence in 1260. About the same time, the Jesuit, Rossignoli, found in a convent at Arona, near Milan, a MS. without date, but bearing the name of an abbot, John Gersen, as its author; the house had belonged to the Benedictines once. In 1614 the Benedictine, Constantius Cajetan, secretary of Paul V., issued his Gersen restitutus at Rome, and later his Apparatus ad Gersenem restitutum, in which he defended the Italian’s claim. This individual was said to have been a Benedectine abbot of Vercelli, in Piedmont, in the first half of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, the Augustinian, Rosweyde, in his vindiciae Kempenses, Antwerp, 1617, so cogently defended the claims of à Kempis that Bellarmin withdrew his statement. In the nineteenth century the claims of Gersen were again urged by a Piedmontese nobleman, Gregory, in his Istoria della Vercellese letteratura, Turin, 1819, and subsequent publications, and by Wolfsgruber of Vienna in a scholarly work, 1880. But Hirsche and Funk are, no doubt, right in pronouncing the name Gersen a mistake for Gerson, and Funk, after careful criticism, declares the Italian abbot a fictitious personage. The most recent Engl. writer on the subject, Montmorency, p. xiii. says, "there is no evidence that there was ever an abbot of Vercelli by the name of Gersen."

The claims of John Gerson are of a substantial character, and France was not slow in coming to the chancellor’s defence. An examination of old MSS., made in Paris, had an uncertain issue, so that, in 1640, Richelieu’s splendid edition of the Imitation was sent forth without an author’s name. The French parliament, however, in 1652, ordered the book printed under the name of à Kempis. The matter was not settled and, at three gatherings, 1671, 1674, 1687, instituted by Mabillon, a fresh examination of MSS. was made, with the result that the case went against à Kempis. Later, Du Pin, after a comparison of Gerson’s writings with the Imitation, concluded that it was impossible to decide with certainty between these two writers and Gersen. (See his 2d ed. of Gerson’s Works, 1728, I. lix-lxxxiv) but in a special work. Amsterdam, 1706, he had decided in favor of the Dutchman. French editions of the Imitation continued to be issued under the name of Gerson, as, for example, those of Erhard-Mezler, 1724, and Vollardt, 1758. On the other hand, the Augustinian, Amort, defended the à Kempis authorship in his Informatio de statu controversiae, Augsburg, 1728, and especially in his Scutum Kempense, Cologne, 1728. After the unfavorable statement of Schwab, Life of Gerson, 1858, pp. 782–786, declaring that the Imitation is in an altogether different style from Gerson’s works, the theory of the Gerson authorship seemed to be finally abandoned. The first collected edition of Gerson’s Works, 1483, knows nothing about the Imitation. Nor did Gerson’s brother, prior of Lyons, mention it in the list he gave of the chancellor’s works, 1423. The author of the Imitation was, by his own statements, a monk, IV. 5, 11; III., 56. Gerson would have been obliged to change his usual habit of presentation to have written in the monastic tone.

After the question of authorship seemed to be pretty well settled in favor of à Kempis, another stage in the controversy was opened by the publications of Puyol in 1898, 1899. Puyol gives a description of 548 manuscripts, and makes a sharp distinction between those of Italian origin and other manuscripts. He also annotates the variations in 57, with the conclusion that the Italian text is the more simple, and consequently the older and original text. He himself based his edition on the text of Arona. Puyol is followed by Kentenich, and has been answered by Pohl and others.

Walter Hylton’s reputed authorship of the Imitation is based upon three books of that work, having gone under the name De musica ecclesiastica in MSS. in England and the persistent English tradition that Hylton was the author. Montmorency, pp. xiv, 138–170, while he pronounces the Hylton theory of authorship untenable, confesses his inability to explain it.

The arguments in favor of the à Kempis authorship, briefly stated, are as follows:—

1. External testimony. John Busch, in his Chronicon Windesemense, written 1464, seven years before à Kempis’ death, expressly states that à Kempis wrote the Imitation. To this testimony are to be added the testimonies of Caspar of Pforzheim, who made a German translation of the work, 1448; Hermann Rheyd, who met Thomas, 1454, and John Wessel, who was attracted to Windesheim by the book’s fame. For other testimonies, see Hirsche and Funk, pp. 432–436.

2. Manuscripts and editions. The number of extant MSS. is about 500. See Kentenich, p. 294. Funk, p. 420, gives 13 MSS. dated before 1500, ascribing the Imitation to à Kempis. The autograph copy, contained in the Brussels codex of 1441, has already been mentioned. It must be said, however, the conclusion reached by Hirsche, Pohl, Funk, Schulze and others that this text is autographic has been denied by Puyol and Kentenich, on the basis of its divergences from other copies, which they claim the author could not have made. A second autograph, in Louvaine (see Schulze, p. 730), seems to be nearly as old, 1420, and has the note scriptus manibus et characteribus Thomae qui est autor horum devotorum libellorum, "written by the hand of Thomas," etc. (Pohl, VI. 456 sq.). A third MS., stating that Thomas is the author, and preserved in Brussels, is dated 1425.—As for the printed editions of the fifteenth century, at least 13 present Thomas as the author, from the edition of Augsburg, 1472, to the editions of Paris, 1493, 1500.

3. Style and contents. These agree closely with à Kempis’ other writings, and the flow of thought is altogether similar to that of his Meditation on Christ’s Incarnation. Spitzen seems to have made it at least very probable that the author was acquainted with the writings of Ruysbroeck, John of Schoenhoven, and other mystics and monks of the Lowlands. Funk has brought out references to ecclesiastical customs which fit the book into the time between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hirsche laid stress on Germanisms in the style.

Among recent German scholars, Denifle sets aside à Kempis’ claims and ascribes the work to some unknown canon regular of the Lowlands. Karl Müller, in a brief note, Kirchengesch., II. 122, and Loof’s Dogmengesch., 4th ed., p. 633, pronounce the à Kempis authorship more than doubtful. On the other hand, Schwab, Hirsche, Schulze and Funk agree that the claims of Thomas are almost beyond dispute. It is almost impossible to give a reason why the Imitation should have been ascribed to the Dutch mystic, if he were not indeed its author. The explanation given by Kentenich, p. 603, seems to be utterly insufficient.

§ 36. The German Theology.

The evangelical teachings of the little book, known as The German Theology, led Ullmann to place its author in the list of the Reformers before the Reformation.525 The author was one of the Friends of God, and no writing issuing from that circle has had a more honorable and useful career. Together with the Imitation of Christ, it has been the most profitable of the writings of the German mystics. Its fame is derived from Luther’s high praise as much as from its own excellent contents. The Reformer issued two editions of it, 1516, with a partial text, and 1518, in the second edition giving it the name which remains with it to this day, Ein Deutsch Theologia — A German treatise of Theology.526 Luther designated as its author a Frankfurt priest, a Teutonic knight, but for a time it was ascribed to Tauler. The Preface of the oldest MS., dated 1497, and found in 1850, made this view impossible, for Tauler is himself quoted in ch. XIII. Here the author is called a Frankfurt priest and a true Friend of God.

Luther announced his high obligation to the teachings of the manual of the way of salvation when he said that next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book had come into his hands from which he had learnt more of what God and man and all things are and would wish to learn more. The author, he affirmed, was a pure Israelite who did not take the foam from the surface, but drew from the bed of the Jordan. Here, he continued, the teachings of the Scriptures are set forth as plain as day which have been lying under the desk of the universities, nay, have almost been left to rot in dust and muck. With his usual patriotism, he declared that in the book he had found Christ in the German tongue as he and the other German theologians had never found him in Greek, Latin or Hebrew.

The German Theology sets forth man’s sinful and helpless condition, Christ’s perfection and mediatorial work and calls upon men to have access to God through him as the door. In all its fifty-four chapters no reference is made to Mary or to the justifying nature of good works or the merit of sacramental observances.527  It abounds as no other writing of the German mystics did in quotations from the New Testament. In its pages the wayfaring man may find the path of salvation marked out without mystification.

The book, starting out with the words of St. Paul, "when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away," declares that that which is imperfect has only a relative existence and that, whenever the Perfect becomes known by the creature, then "the I, the Self and the like must all be given up and done away."  Christ shows us the way by having taken on him human nature. In chs. XV.-LIV., it shows that all men are dead in Adam, and that to come to the perfect life, the old man must die and the new man be born. He must become possessed with God and depossessed of the devil. Obedience is the prime requisite of the new manhood. Sin is disobedience, and the more "of Self and Me, the more of sin and wickedness and the more the Self, the I, the Me, the Mine, that is, self-seeking and selfishness, abate in a man, the more doth God’s I, that is, God Himself, increase."  By obedience we become free. The life of Christ is the perfect model, and we follow him by hearkening unto his words to forsake all. This is nothing else than saying that we must be in union with the divine will and be ready either to do or to suffer. Such a man, a man who is a partaker of the divine nature, will in sincerity love all men and things, do them good and take pleasure in their welfare. Knowledge and light profit nothing without love. Love maketh a man one with God. The last word is that no man can come unto the Father but by Christ.

In 1621 the Catholic Church placed the Theologia Germanica on the Index. If all the volumes listed in that catalogue of forbidden books were like this one, making the way of salvation plain, its pages would be illuminated with ineffable light.528

§ 37. English Mystics.

England, in the fourteenth century, produced devotional writings which have been classed in the literature of mysticism. They are wanting in the transcendental flights of the German mystics, and are, for the most part, marked by a decided practical tendency.

The Ancren Riwle was written for three sisters who lived as anchoresses at Tarrant Kaines, Dorsetshire.529  It was the custom in their day in England for women living a recluse life to build a room against the wall of some church or a small structure in a churchyard and in such a way that it had windows, but no doors of egress. This little book of religious counsels was written at the request of the sisters, and is usually ascribed to Simon of Ghent, bishop of Salisbury, d. 1315. The author gives two general directions, namely, to keep the heart "smooth and without any scar of evil," and to practise bodily discipline, which "serveth the first end, and of which Paul said that it profiteth little."  The first is the lady, the second the handmaid. If asked to what order they belonged, the sisters were instructed to say to the Order of St. James, for James said, "Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep one’s self unspotted from the world."  It is interesting to note that they are bidden to have warm clothes for bed and back, and to wash "as often as they please."  They were forbidden to lash themselves with a leathern thong, or one loaded with lead except at the advice of their confessor. Richard Rolle, d. 1349, the author of a number of devotional treatises, and also translations or paraphrases of the Psalms, Job, the Canticles and Jeremiah, suddenly left Oxford, where he was pursuing his studies, discontented with the scholastic method in vogue at the university, and finally settled down as a hermit at Hampole, near Doncaster. Here he attained a high fame for piety and as a worker of miracles. He wrote in Latin and English, his chief works being the Latin treatises, The Emendation of Life and The Fervor of Love. They were translated in 1434, 1435, by Rich Misyn. His works are extant in many manuscript copies. Rolle exalted the contemplative life, indulged in much dreamy religious speculation, but also denounced the vice and worldliness of his time. In the last state of the contemplative life he represents man as "seeing into heaven with his ghostly eye."530

Juliana of Norwich, who died 1443, as it is said, at the age of 100, was also an anchoress, having her cell in the churchyard of St. Julian’s church, Norwich. She received 16 revelations, the first in 1373, when she was 30 years old. At that time, she saw "God in a point."  She laid stress upon love, and presented the joyful aspect of religion. God revealed Himself to her in three properties, life, light and love. Her account of her revelations is pronounced by Inge "a fragrant little book."531

The Ladder of Perfection, written by Walter Hylton, an Augustinian canon of Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire, who died 1396,532 depicts the different stages of spiritual attainment from the simple knowledge of the facts of religion, which is likened to the water of Cana which must be turned into wine, to the last stages of contemplation and divine union. There is no great excellency, Hylton says, "in watching and fasting till thy head aches, nor in running to Rome or Jerusalem with bare feet, nor in building churches and hospitals."  But it is a sign of excellency if a man can love a sinner, while hating the sin. Those who are not content with merely saving their souls, but go on to the higher degrees of contemplation, are overcome by "a good darkness," a state in which the soul is free and not distracted by anything earthly. The light then arises little by little. Flashes come through the chinks in the walls of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is not reached by a bound. There must be transformation, and the power that transforms is the love of God shed abroad in the soul. Love proceeds from knowledge, and the more God is known, the more is He loved. Hylton’s wide reputation is proved by the ascription of Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation to him and its identification in manuscripts with his De musica ecclesiastica.533

These writings, if we except Rolle, betray much of that sobriety of temper which characterizes the English religious thought. They contain no flights of hazy mystification and no rapturous outbursts of passionate feeling. They emphasize features common to all the mystics of the later Middle Ages, the gradual transformation through the power of love into the image of God, and ascent through inward contemplation to full fellowship with Him. They show that the principles of the imitation of Christ were understood on the English side of the channel as well as by the mystics of the Lowlands, and that true godliness is to be reached in another way than by the mere practice of sacramental rites.

These English pietists are to be regarded, however, as isolated figures who, so far as we know, had no influence in preparing the soil for the seed of the Reformation that was to come, as had the Pietists who lived along the Rhine.534

CHAPTER V.

REFORMERS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

§ 38. Sources and Literature.

For § 39. Church and Society in England, etc.—Thomas Walsingham: Hist. Anglicana, ed. by Riley, Rolls Ser., London, 1869.—Walter de Heimburgh: Chronicon, ed. by Hamilton, 2 vols., 1848 sq.—Adam Merimuth: Chronicon, and Robt. de Avesbury: De gestis mirabilibus Edwardi III., ed. by Thompson with Introd., Rolls Ser., 1889.—Chron. Angliae (1326–1388), ed. by Thompson, Rolls Ser., 1874.—Henry Knighton: Chronicon, ed. by Lumby, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., 1895.—Ranulph Higden, d. bef. 1400: Polychronicon, with trans. by Trevisa, Rolls Ser., 9 vols., 1865–1886.—Thos. Rymer, d. 1713: Foedera, Conventiones et Litera, London, 1704–1715.—Wilkins: Concilia.—W. C. Bliss: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to G. Britain and Ireland, vols. II.-IV., London, 1897–1902. Vol. II. extends from 1305–1342; vol. III., 1342–1362; vol. IV., 1362–1404. A work of great value.—Gee and Hardy: Documents, etc.—Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Eccles. Doc’ts.—Stubbs: Constit. Hist. of Engl., III. 294–387.—The Histt. of Engl., by Lingard, bks. III., IV., and Green, bk. IV.—Capes: The Engl. Ch. in the 14th and 15th Centt., London, 1900.—Haller: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, pp. 375–465.—Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars.—Creighton: Hist. of Epidemics in England.—Gasquet: The Great Pestilence, 1893.—Rashdall and others: Histt. of Oxford and Cambridge.—The Dict. of Nat. Biog.—Also Thos. Fuller’s Hist. of Gr. Brit., for its general judgments and quaint statements.—Loserth: Studien zur Kirchenpolitik Englands im 14 Jahrh. in Sitzungsberichte d. kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissenschaften in Wien, Vienna, 1897.—G. Kriehn: Studies in the Sources of the Social Revol. of 1381, Am. Hist. Rev., Jan.-Oct., 1902.—C. Oman: The Great Revolt in 1381, Oxford, 1906.—Traill: Social Engl., vol. II., London, 1894.—Rogers: Six Centt. of Work and Wages.—Cunningham: Growth of Engl. Industry.

For §§ 40–42. John Wyclif.—I. The publication of Wyclif’s works belongs almost wholly to the last twenty-five years, and began with the creation of the Wyclif Society, 1882, which was due to a summons from German scholars. In 1858, Shirley, Fasc., p. xlvi, could write, "Of Wyc’s Engl. writings nothing but two short tracts have seen the light," and in 1883, Loserth spoke of his tractates "mouldering in the dust."  The MSS. are found for the most part in the libraries of Oxford, Prag and Vienna. The Trialogus was publ. Basel, 1525, and Wycliffe’s Wycket, in Engl., Nürnberg, 1546. Reprinted at Oxford, 1828.—Latin Works, ed. by the Wyclif Soc., organized, 1882, in answer to Buddensieg’s appeal in the Academy, Sept. 17, 1881, 31 vols., London, 1884–1907.—De officia pastorli, ed. by Lechler, Leipzig, 1863.—Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, Oxford, 1869.—De veritate sac. Scripturae, ed. by Rudolf Buddensieg, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—De potestate papae, ed. by Loserth, London, 1907.—Engl. Works: Three Treatises, by J. Wyclffe, ed. by J. H. Todd, Dublin, 1851.—*Select Engl. Works, ed. by Thos. Arnold, 3 vols., Oxford, 1869–1871.—*Engl. Works Hitherto Unprinted, ed. by F. D. Matthew, London, 1880, with valuable Introd.—*Wyclif’s trans. of the Bible, ed. by Forshall and Madden, 4 vols., Oxford, 1850.—His New Test. with Introd. and Glossary, by W. W. Skeat, Cambridge, 1879.—The trans. of Job, Pss., Prov., Eccles. and Canticles, Cambridge, 1881.—For list of Wyclif’s works, see Canon W. W. Shirley: Cat. of the Works of J. W., Oxford, 1865. He lists 96 Latin and 65 Engl. writings.—Also Lechler in his Life of Wiclif, II. 559–573, Engl. trans., pp. 483–498.—Also Rashdall’s list in Dict. of Nat. Biog.—II. Biographical.—Thomas Netter of Walden, a Carmelite, d. 1430: Fasciculi zizaniorum Magistri Joh. Wyclif cum tritico (Bundles of tares of J. Wyc. with the wheat), a collection of indispensable documents and narrations, ed. by Shirley, with valuable Introd., Rolls Ser., London, 1858.—Also Doctrinale fidei christianae Adv. Wicleffitas et Hussitas in his Opera, Paris, 1532, best ed., 3 vols., Venice, 1757. Walden could discern no defects in the friars, and represented the opposite extreme from Wyclif. He sat in the Council of Pisa, was provincial of his order in England, and confessor to Henry V.—The contemporary works given above, Chron. Angliae, Walsingham, Knighton, etc.—England in the Time of Wycliffe in trans. and reprints, Dept. of Hist. Univ. of Pa., 1895.—John Foxe: Book of Martyrs, London, 1632, etc.— John Lewis: Hist. of the Life and Sufferings of J. W., Oxford, 1720, etc., and 1820.—R. Vaughan: Life and Opinions of J. de Wycliffe, 2 vols., London, 1828, 2d ed., 1831.—V. Lechler: J. von Wiclif und die Vorgesch. der Reformation, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1873.—*Engl. trans., J. W. and his Engl. Precursors, with valuable Notes by Peter Lorimer, 2 vols., London, 1878, new edd., 1 vol., 1881, 1884.—*R. Buddensieg: J. Wiclif und seine Zeit, Gotha, 1883. Also J. W. as Patriot and Reformer, London, 1884.—E. S. Holt: J. de W., the First Reformer, and what he did for England, London, 1884.—V. Vattier: J. W., sa vie, ses oeuvres et sa doctrine, Paris, 1886.—*J. Loserth: Hus und Wiclif, Prag and Leipzig, 1883, Engl. trans., London, 1884. Also W.’s Lehre v. wahrem u. falschem Papsttum, in Hist. Zeitschrift, 1907, p. 237 sqq.—L. Sergeant: John Wyclif, New York, 1893.—H. B. Workman: The Age of Wyclif, London, 1901.—Geo. S. Innes: J. W., Cin’ti.—J. C. Carrick: Wyc. and the Lollards, London, 1908.—C. Bigg, in Wayside Sketches in Eccles. Hist., London, 1906.—For other Biogg., see Shirley: Fasciculus, p. 531 sqq.—III. J. L. Poole: W. and Movements for Reform, London, 1889, and W.’s Doctr. of Lordship in  Illustr. of Med. Thought, 1884.—Wiegand: De Eccles. notione quid Wiclif docuerit, Leipzig, 1891.—*G. M. Trevelyan: Engl. In The Age Of W., London, 2d ed., 1899.—Powell and Trevelyan: The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards, London, 1899.—H. Fürstenau: J. von W.’s Lehren v. d. Stellung d. weltl. Gewalt, Berlin, 1900.—Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Eccles. Docts.—Gee and Hardy.—Stubbs: Constit. Hist., III. 314–374.—The Histt. of Capes, Green and Lingard, vol. IV.—The Histt. of the Engl. Bible, by Eadie, Westcott, Moulton, Stoughton, Mombert, etc.—Matthew: Authorship of the Wycliffite Bible, Engl. Hist. Rev., January, 1895.—Gasquet: The Eve of the Reformation, new ed., London, 1905; The Old Engl. Bible and Other Essays, London, 1908.—R. S. Storrs: J. Wyc. and the First Engl. Bible in Sermons and Addresses, Boston, 1902. An eloquent address delivered in New York on the 500th anniversary of the appearance of Wyclif’s New Test.—Rashdall in Dict. of Natl. Biog., LXIII. 202–223.—G. S. Innis: Wycliffe Cinti.

For § 43. Lollards.—The works noted above of Knighton, Walsingham, Rymer’s Foedera, the Chron. Angliae, Walden’s Fasc. ziz., Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Also Adam Usk: Chronicle.—Thos. Wright: Polit. Poems and Songs, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., London, 1859.—Fredericq: Corp. inquis. Neerl., vols. I.-III.—Reginald Pecock: The Repressor of overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. by Babington, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., London, 1860.—The Histt. of Engl. and the Church of Engl.—A. M. Brown: Leaders of the Lollards, London, 1848.—W. H. Summers: Our Lollard Ancestors, London, 1904.—*James Gairdner: Lollardy and the Reform. in Engl., 2 vols., London, 1908.—E. P. Cheyney: The Recantations of the Early Lollards, Am. Hist. Rev., April, 1899.—H. S. Cronin: The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, Engl. Hist. Rev., April, 1907.—Art. Lollarden, by Buddensieg in Herzog, XI. 615–626.—The works of Trevelyan and Forshall and Madden, cited above, and Oldcastle, vol. XLII. 86–93, and other artt. in Dict. of Nat. Biog.

For §§ 44–46. John Huss. — Hist. et monumenta J. Hus atque Hieronymi Pragensis, confessorum Christi, 2 vols., Nürnberg, 1558, Frankfurt, 1715. I have used the Frankfurt ed.—W. Flajshans: Mag. J. Hus Expositio Decalogi, Prag, 1903; De corpore Christi: De sanguine Christi, Prag, 1904; Sermones de sanctis, Prag, 1908; Super quatuor sententiarum, etc.—*Francis Palacky: Documenta Mag. J. Hus, vitam, doctrinam, causam in Constantiensi actam consilio illustrantia, 1403–1418, pp. 768, Prag, 1869. Largely from unpublished sources. Contains the account of Peter of Mladenowitz, who was with Huss at Constance.—K. J. Erben (archivarius of Prag): Mistra Jana Husi sebrané spisy Czeske. A collection of Huss’ Bohemian writings, 3 vols., Prag, 1865–1868.—Trans. of Huss’ Letters, first by Luther, Wittenberg, 1536 (four of them, together with an account by Luther of Huss’ trial and death), republ. by C. von Kügelgen, Leipzig, 1902.—Mackenzie: Huss’ Letters, Edinburgh, 1846.—*H. B. Workman and B. M. Pope: Letters of J. Hus with Notes.—For works on the Council of Constance, see Mansi, vol. XXVIII., Van der Hardt, Finke, Richental etc., see § 12.—C. von Höfler: Geschichtsschreiber der hussitischen Bewegung, 3 vols., Vienna, 1856–1866. Contains Mladenowitz and other contemporary documents.—*Palacky, a descendant of the Bohemian Brethren, d. 1876: Geschichte von Böhmen, Prag, 1836 sqq., 3d ed., 5 vols., 1864 sqq. Vol. III. of the first ed. was mutilated at Vienna by the censor of the press (the office not being abolished till 1848), on account of the true light in which Huss was placed. Nevertheless, it made such an impression that Baron Helfert was commissioned to write a reply, which appeared, Prag, 1867, pp. 287. In 1870, Palacky publ. a second ed. of vol. III., containing all the excerpted parts.—Palacky: Die Vorlaeufer des Hussitenthums in Böhmen, Prag, 1869.—L. Köhler: J. Hus u. s. Zeit, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1846.—E. H. Gillett, Prof. in New York Univ., d. New York, 1876: Life and Times of J. Huss, 2 vols., Boston, 1863, 3d ed., 1871.—W. Berger: J. Hus u. König Sigismund, Augsburg, 1871.—Bonnechose: J. Hus u. das Concil zu Kostnitz, Germ. trans., 3d ed., Leipzig, 1870.—F. v. Bezold: Zur Gesch. d. Husitenthums, Munich, 1874.—E. Denis: Huss et la guerre des Hussites, Paris, l878.—A. H. Wratislaw: J. Hus, London, 1882.—*J. Loserth: Wiclif and Hus, also Beiträge zur Gesch. der Hussit. Bewegung, 5 small vols., 1877–1895, reprinted from magazines. Also Introd. to his ed. of Wiclif’s De ecclesia. Also art. J. Huss in Herzog, Encyc., VIII. 473–489.—Lechler: J. Hus, Leipzig, 1890.—*J. H. Wylie: The Counc. of Constance to the Death of J. Hus, London, 1900.—*H. B. Workman: The Dawn of the Reformation, The Age of Hus, London, 1902.—Lea: Hist. of the Inquis., II. 431–566.—Hefele, vol. VII.—*J. B. Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 527–609.—Tschackert: Von Ailli, pp. 218–235.—W. Faber and J. Kurth: Wie sah Hus aus?  Berlin, 1907.—Also J. Huss by Lützow, N. Y., 1909, and Kuhr, Cinti.

For § 47. The Hussites.—Mansi, XXVII, XXIX.—Haller: Concil. Basiliense.—Bezold: König Sigismund und d. Reichskriege gegen d. Husiten, 3 vols., Munich, 1872–1877.—*Jaroslav Goll: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der Böhmischen Brüder, 2 vols., Prag, 1878–1882.—*L. Keller: Die Reformation und die aelteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1885.—W. Preger: Ueber das Verhältniss der Taboriten zu den Waldesiern des 14ten Jahrh., 1887.—Haupt: Waldenserthum und Inquisition im südöstlichen, Deutschland, Freiburg i. Br., 1890.—H. Herre: Die Husitenverhandlungen, 1429, in Quellen u. Forschungen d. Hist. Inst. von Rom, 1899.—*E. Müller: Böhm. Brüder, Herzog, III. 445–467.—E. De Schweinitz: The Hist. of the Church known as the Unitas Fratrum, Bethlehem, 1885.—Also Hergenröther-Kirsch: Kirchengesch., II. 886–903.

§ 39. The Church in England in the Fourteenth Century.

The 14th century witnessed greater social changes in England than any other century except the 19th. These changes were in large part a result of the hundred years’ war with France, which began in 1337, and the terrible ravages of the Black Death. The century was marked by the legal adoption of the English tongue as the language of the country and the increased respect for parliament, in whose counsels the rich burgher class demanded a voice, and its definite division into two houses, 1341. The social unrest of the land found expression in popular harangues, poems, and tracts, affirming the rights of the villein and serf class, and in the uprising known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

The distinctly religious life of England, in this period, was marked by obstinate resistance to the papal claims of jurisdiction, culminating in the Acts of Provisors, and by the appearance of John Wyclif, one of the most original and vigorous personalities the English Church has produced.

An industrial revolution was precipitated on the island by the Great Pestilence of 1348. The necessities of life rose enormously in value. Large tracts of land passed back from the smaller tenants into the hands of the landowners of the gentry class. The sheep and the cattle, as a contemporary wrote, "strayed through the fields and grain, and there was no one who could drive them."  The serfs and villeins found in the disorder of society an opportunity to escape from the yoke of servitude, and discovered in roving or in independent engagements the joys of a new-found freedom. These unsettled conditions called forth the famous statutes of Edward III.’s reign, 1327–1377, regulating wages and the prices of commodities.

The popular discontent arising from these regulations, and from the increased taxation necessitated by the wars with France, took the form of organized rebellion. The age of feudalism was coming to an end. The old ideas of labor and the tiller of the soil were beginning to give way before more just modes of thought. Among the agitators were John Ball, whom Froissart, with characteristic aristocratic indifference, called "the mad priest of Kent," the poet Longland and the insurgent leader, Watt Tyler. In his harangues, Ball fired popular feeling by appeals to the original rights of man. By what right, he exclaimed, "they, who are called lords, greater folk than we?  On what grounds do they hold us in vassalage?  Do not we all come from the same father and mother, Adam and Eve?"  The spirit of individual freedom breathed itself out in the effective rhyme, which ran like wildfire, —

When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?

The rhymes, which Will Longland sent forth in his Complaint of Piers Ploughman, ventilated the sufferings and demands of the day laborer and called for fair treatment such as brother has a right to expect from brother. Gentleman and villein faced the same eternal destinies. "Though he be thine underling," the poet wrote, "mayhap in heaven, he will be worthier set and with more bliss than thou."  The rising sense of national importance and individual dignity was fed by the victory of Crécy, 1346, where the little iron balls, used for the first time, frightened the horses; by the battle of Poictiers ten years later; by the treaty of Brétigny, 1360, whereby Edward was confirmed in the possession of large portions of France, and by the exploits of the Black Prince. The spectacle of the French king, John, a captive on the streets of London, made a deep impression. These events and the legalization of the English tongue, 1362,535 contributed to develop a national and patriotic sentiment before unknown in England.

The uprising, which broke out in 1381, was a vigorous assertion of the popular demand for a redress of the social inequalities between classes in England. The insurgent bands, which marched to London, were pacified by the fair promises of Richard II., but the Kentish band led by Watt Tyler, before dispersing, took the Tower and put the primate, Sudbury, to death. He had refused to favor the repeal of the hated decapitation tax. The abbeys of St. Albans and Edmondsbury were plundered and the monks ill treated, but these acts of violence were a small affair compared with the perpetual import of the uprising for the social and industrial well-being of the English people. The demands of the insurgents, as they bore on the clergy, insisted that Church lands and goods, after sufficient allowance had been made for the reasonable wants of the clergy, should be distributed among the parishioners, and that there should be a single bishop for England. This involved a rupture with Rome.536

It was inevitable that the Church should feel the effects of these changes. Its wealth, which is computed to have covered one-third of the landed property of the realm, and the idleness and mendicancy of the friars, awakened widespread murmur and discontent. The ravages made among the clergy by the Black Death rendered necessary extraordinary measures to recruit its ranks. The bishop of Norwich was authorized to replace the dead by ordaining 60 young men before the canonical age. With the rise of the staples of living, the stipends of the vast body of the priestly class was rendered still more inadequate. Archbishop Islip of Canterbury and other prelates, while recognizing in their pastorals the prevalent unrest, instead of showing proper sympathy, condemned the covetousness of the clergy. On the other hand, Longland wrote of the shifts to which they were put to eke out a living by accepting secular and often menial employment in the royal palace and the halls of the gentry class.

Parson and parish priest pleyned to the bishop,

That their parishes were pore sith the pestilence tym,

To have a license and a leve at London to dwelle

And syngen there for symonye, for silver is swete.

There was a movement from within the English people to limit the power of the bishops and to call forth spirituality and efficiency in the clergy. The bishops, powerful as they remained, were divested of some of their prestige by the parliamentary decision of 1370, restricting high offices of state to laymen. The first lay chancellor was appointed in 1340. The bishop, however, was a great personage, and woe to the parish that did not make fitting preparations for his entertainment and have the bells rung on his arrival. Archbishop Arundel, Foxe quaintly says, "took great snuff and did suspend all such as did not receive him with the noise of bells."  Each diocese had its own prison, into which the bishop thrust refractory clerics for penance or severer punishment.

The mass of the clergy had little learning. The stalls and canonries, with attractive incomes, where they did not go to foreigners, were regarded as the proper prizes of the younger sons of noblemen. On the other hand, the prelates lived in abundance. The famous bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, counted fifty manors of his own. In the larger ones, official residences were maintained, including hall and chapel. This prelate travelled from one to the other, taking reckonings of his stewards, receiving applications for the tonsure and ordination and attending to other official business. Many of the lower clergy were taken from the villein class, whose sons required special exemption to attend school. The day they received orders they were manumitted.

The benefit of clergy, so called, continued to be a source of injustice to the people at large. By the middle of the 13th century, the Church’s claim to tithes was extended not only to the products of the field, but the poultry of the yard and the cattle of the stall, to the catch of fish and the game of the forests. Wills almost invariably gave to the priest "the best animal" or the "best quick good."  The Church received and gave not back, and, in spite of the statute of Mortmain, bequests continued to be made to her. It came, however, to be regarded as a settled principle that the property of Church and clergy was amenable to civil taxation, and bishops, willingly or by compulsion, loaned money to the king. The demands of the French campaigns made such taxation imperative.

Indulgences were freely announced to procure aid for the building of churches, as in the case of York Cathedral, 1396, the erection of bridges, the filling up of muddy roads and for other public improvements. The clergy, though denied the right of participating in bowling and even in the pastime of checkers, took part in village festivities such as the Church-ale, a sort of mediaeval donation party, in which there was general merrymaking, ale was brewed, and the people drank freely to the health of the priest and for the benefit of the Church. As for the morals of the clergy, care must always be had not to base sweeping statements upon delinquencies which are apt to be emphasized out of proportion to their extent. It is certain, however, that celibacy was by no means universally enforced, and frequent notices occur of dispensations given to clergymen of illegitimate birth. Bishop Quevil of Exeter complained that priests with families invested their savings for the benefit of their marital partners and their children. In the next period, in 1452, De la Bere, bishop of St. David’s, by his own statement, drew 400 marks yearly from priests for the privilege of having concubines, a noble, equal in value to a mark, from each one.537  Glower, in his Vox clamantis, gave a dark picture of clerical habits, and charges the clergy with coarse vices such as now are scarcely dreamed of. The Church historian, Capes, concludes that "immorality and negligence were widely spread among the clergy."538  The decline of discipline among the friars, and their rude manners, a prominent feature of the times, came in for the strictures of Fitzralph of Armagh, severe condemnation at the hands of Wyclif and playful sarcasm from the pen of Chaucer. The zeal for learning which had characterized them on their first arrival in England, early in the 13th century, had given way to self-satisfied idleness. Fitzralph, who was fellow of Balliol, and probably chancellor of the University of Oxford, before being raised to the episcopate, incurred the hostility of the friars by a series of sermons against the Franciscan theory of evangelical poverty. He claimed it was not scriptural nor derived from the customs of the primitive Church. For his temerity he was compelled to answer at Avignon, where he seems to have died about the year 1360.539  Of the four orders of mendicants, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians, Longland sang that they

Preached the people for profit and themselve

Glosed the Gospel as them good lyked,

For covetis of copis construed it as they would.

Of the ecclesiastics of the century, if we except Wyclif, probably the most noted are Thomas Bradwardine and William of Wykeham, the one the representative of scholarly study, the other of ecclesiastical power. Bradwardine, theologian, phiIosopher, mathematician and astronomer, was a student at Merton College, Oxford, 1325. At Avignon, whither he went to receive consecration to the see of Canterbury, 1349, he had a strange experience. During the banquet given by Clement VI. the doors were thrown open and a clown entered, seated on a jackass, and humbly petitioned the pontiff to be made archbishop of Canterbury. This insult, gotten up by Clement’s nephew Hugo, cardinal of Tudela, and other members of the sacred college, was in allusion to the remark made by the pope that, if the king of England would ask him to appoint a jackass to a bishopric, he would not dare to refuse. The sport throws an unpleasant light upon the ideals of the curia, but at the same time bears witness to the attempt which was being made in England to control the appointment of ecclesiastics. Bradwardine enjoyed such an enviable reputation that Wyclif and other English contemporaries gave him the title, the Profound Doctor—doctor profundus.540  In his chief work on grace and freewill, delivered as a series of lectures at Merton, he declared that the Church was running after Pelagius.541  In the philosophical schools he had rarely heard anything about grace, but all day long the assertions that we are masters of our own wills. He was a determinist. All things, he affirmed, which occur, occur by the necessity of the first cause. In his Nun’s Tale, speaking of God’s predestination, Chaucer says:—

But he cannot boult it to the bren

As can the holie doctour, S. Austin,

Or Boece (Boethius), or the Bishop Bradwardine.

Wykeham, 1324–1404, the pattern of a worldly and aristocratic prelate, was an unblushing pluralist, and his see of Winchester is said to have brought him in £60,000 of our money annually. In 1361 alone, he received prebends in St. Paul’s, Hereford, Salisbury, St. David’s, Beverley, Bromyard, Wherwell Abergwili, and Llanddewi Brewi, and in the following year Lincoln, York, Wells and Hastings. He occupied for a time the chief office of chancellor, but fell into disrepute. His memory is preserved in Winchester School and in New College, Oxford, which he founded. The princely endowment of New College, the first stones of which were laid in 1387, embraced 100 scholarships. These gifts place Wykeham in the first rank of English patrons of learning at the side of Cardinal Wolsey. He also has a place in the manuals of the courtesies of life by his famous words, "Manners makyth man."542

The struggles of previous centuries against the encroachment of Rome upon the temporalities of the English Church was maintained in this period. The complaint made by Matthew Paris543 that the English Church was kept between two millstones, the king and the pope, remained true, with this difference, however, the king’s influence came to preponderate. Acts of parliament emphasized his right to dictate or veto ecclesiastical appointments and recognized his sovereign prerogative to tax Church property. The evident support which the pope gave to France in her wars with England and the scandals of the Avignon residence were favorable to the crown’s assertion of authority in these respects. Wyclif frequently complained that the pope and cardinals were "in league with the enemies of the English kingdom"544 and the papal registers of the Avignon period, which record the appeals sent to the English king to conclude peace with France, almost always mention terms that would have made France the gainer. At the outbreak of the war, 1339, Edward III. proudly complained that it broke his heart to see that the French troops were paid in part with papal funds.545

The three most important religious acts of England between John’s surrender of his crown to Innocent III. and the Act of Supremacy, 1534, were the parliamentary statutes of Mortmain, 1279, of Provisors, 1351, and for the burning of heretics, 1401. The statute of Mortmain or Dead-hand forbade the alienation of lands so as to remove them from the obligation of service or taxation to the secular power. The statute of Provisors, renewed and enlarged in the acts of Praemunire, 1353, 1390 and 1393, concerned the subject of the papal rights over appointments and the temporalities of the English Church. This old bone of contention was taken up early in the 14th century in the statute of Carlyle, 1307,546 which forbade aliens, appointed to visit religious houses in England, taking moneys with them out of the land and also the payment of tallages and impositions laid upon religious establishments from abroad. In 1343, parliament called upon the pope to recall all "reservations, provisions and collations" which, as it affirmed, checked Church improvements and the flow of alms. It further protested against the appointment of aliens to English livings, "some of them our enemies who know not our language."  Clement VI., replying to the briefs of the king and parliament, declared that, when he made provisions and reservations, it was for the good of the Church, and exhorted Edward to act as a Catholic prince should and to permit nothing to be done in his realm inimical to the Roman Church and ecclesiastical liberty. Such liberty the pope said he would "defend as having to give account at the last judgment."  Liberty in this case meant the free and unhampered exercise of the lordly claims made by his predecessors from Hildebrand down.547  Thomas Fuller was close to the truth, when, defining papal provisions and reservations, he wrote, "When any bishopric, abbot’s place, dignity or good living (aquila non capit muscas — the eagle does not take note of flies) was like to be void, the pope, by a profitable prolepsis to himself, predisposed such places to such successors as he pleased. By this device he defeated, when he so pleased, the legal election of all convents and rightful presentation of all patrons."

The memorable statute of Provisors forbade all papal provisions and reservations and all taxation of Church property contrary to the customs of England. The act of 1353 sought more effectually to clip the pope’s power by forbidding the carrying of any suit against an English patron before a foreign tribunal.548

To these laws the pope paid only so much heed as expediency required. This claim, made by one of his predecessors in the bull Cupientes, to the right to fill all the benefices of Christendom, he had no idea of abandoning, and, whenever it was possible, he provided for his hungry family of cardinals and other ecclesiastics out of the proverbially fat appointments of England. Indeed, the cases of such appointments given by Merimuth, and especially in the papal books as printed by Bliss, are so recurrent that one might easily get the impression that the pontiff’s only concern for the English Church was to see that its livings were put into the hands of foreigners. I have counted the numbers in several places as given by Bliss. On one page, 4 out of 9 entries were papal appointments. A section of 2½ pages announces "provisions of a canonry, with expectation of a prebend" in the following churches: 7 in Lincoln, 5 in Salisbury, 2 in Chichester, and 1 each in Wells, York, Exeter, St. Patrick’s, Dublin, Moray, Southwell, Howden, Ross, Aberdeen, Wilton.549  From 1342–1385 the deanery of York was held successively by three Roman cardinals. In 1374, the incomes of the treasurer, dean and two archdeaneries of Salisbury went the same way. At the close of Edward III.’s reign, foreign cardinals held the deaneries of York, Salisbury and Lichfield, the archdeanery of Canterbury, reputed to be the richest of English preferments, and innumerable prebends. Bishops and abbots-elect had to travel to Avignon and often spend months and much money in securing confirmation to their appointments, and, in cases, the prelate-elect was set aside on the ground that provision had already been made for his office. As for sees reserved by the pope, Stubbs gives the following list, extending over a brief term of years: Worcester, Hereford, Durham and Rochester, 1317; Lincoln and Winchester, 1320; Lichfield, 1322; Winchester, 1328; Carlisle and Norwich, 1825; Worcester, Exeter and Hereford, 1827; Bath, 1829; Durham, Canterbury, Winchester and Worcester, 1334. Provisions were made in full recognition of the plural system. Thus, Walter of London, the king’s confessor, was appointed by the pope to the deanery of Wells, though, as stated in the papal brief, he already held a considerable list of "canonries and prebends," Lincoln, Salisbury, St. Paul, St. Martin Le Grand, London, Bridgenorth, Hastings and Hareswell in the diocese of Salisbury.550  By the practice of promoting bishops from one see to another, the pope accomplished for his favorites what he could not have done in any other way. Thus, by the promotion of Sudbury in 1874 to Canterbury, the pope was able to translate Courtenay from Hereford to London, and Gilbert from Bangor to Hereford, and thus by a single stroke he was enriched by the first-fruits of four sees.

In spite of legislation, the papal collectors continued to ply their trade in England, but less publicly and confidently than in the two preceding centuries. In 1879, Urban VI. sent Cosmatus Gentilis as his nuncio and collector-in-chief, with instructions that he and his subcollectors make speedy returns to Rome, especially of Peter’s pence.551  In 1375, Gregory XI. had called upon the archbishops of Canterbury and York to collect a tax of 60,000 florins for the defence of the lands of the Apostolic see, the English benefices, however, held by cardinals being exempted. The chronicler Merimuth, in a noteworthy paragraph summing up the curial practice of foraging upon the English sees and churches, emphasizes the persistence and shrewdness with which the Apostolic chair from the time of Clement V. had extorted gold and riches as though the English might be treated as barbarians. John XXII. he represents as having reserved all the good livings of England. Under Benedict XII., things were not so bad. Benedict’s successor, Clement VI., was of all the offenders the most unscrupulous, reserving for himself or distributing to members of the curia the fattest places in England. England’s very enemies, as Merimuth continues, were thus put into possession of English revenues, and the proverb became current at Avignon that the English were like docile asses bearing all the burdens heaped upon them.552  This prodigal Frenchman threatened Edward III. with excommunication and the land with interdict, if resistance to his appointments did not cease and if their revenues continued to be withheld. The pope died in 1353, before the date set for the execution of his wrathful threat. While France was being made English by English arms, the Italian and French ecclesiastics were making conquest of England’s resources.

The great name of Wyclif, which appears distinctly in 1366, represents the patriotic element in all its strength. In his discussions of lordship, presented in two extensive treatises, he set forth the theory of the headship of the sovereign over the temporal affairs of the Church in his own dominions, even to the seizure of its temporalities. In him, the Church witnessed an ecclesiastic of equal metal with Thomas à Becket, a man, however, who did not stoop, in his love for his order, to humiliate the state under the hand of the Church. He represented the popular will, the common sense of mankind in regard to the province of the Church, the New Testament theory of the spiritual sphere. Had he not been practically alone, he would have anticipated by more than two centuries the limitation of the pope’s power in England.

§ 40. John Wyclif.

"A good man was there of religioun

That was a pore Persone of a town;

But rich he was of holy thought and werk;

He was also a lerned man, a clerk,

That Christes gospel trewly wolde preche.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

This noble ensample to his shepe he gaf,

That first he wrought and after that he taught.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

A better priest I trow that nowhere non is,

He waited after no pompe ne reverence;

Ne maked him no spiced conscience,

But Christes lore and his apostles twelve

He taught, but first he folwed it himselve."553

Chaucer.

The title, Reformers before the Reformation, has been aptly given to a group of men of the 14th and 15th centuries who anticipated many of the teachings of Luther and the Protestant Reformers. They stand, each by himself, in solitary prominence, Wyclif in England, John Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in Florence, and Wessel, Goch and Wesel in Northern Germany. To these men the sculptor has given a place on the pedestal of his famous group at Worms representing the Reformation of the 16th century. They differ, if we except the moral reformer, Savonarola, from the group of the German mystics, who sought a purification of life in quiet ways, in having expressed open dissent from the Church’s ritual and doctrinal teachings. They also differ from the group of ecclesiastical reformers, D’Ailly, Gerson, Nicolas of Clamanges, who concerned themselves with the fabric of the canon law and did not go beyond the correction of abuses in the administration and morals of the Church. Wyclif and his successors were doctrinal reformers. In some views they had been anticipated by Marsiglius of Padua and the other assailants of the papacy of the early half of the 14th century.

John Wyclif, called the Morning Star of the Reformation, and, at the time of his death, in England and in Bohemia the Evangelical doctor,554 was born about 1324 near the village of Wyclif, Yorkshire, in the diocese of Durham.555  His own writings give scarcely a clew to the events of his career, and little can be gathered from his immediate contemporaries. He was of Saxon blood. His studies were pursued at Oxford, which had six colleges. He was a student at Balliol and master of that hall in 1361. He was also connected with Merton and Queen’s, and was probably master of Canterbury Hall, founded by Archbishop Islip.556  He was appointed in succession to the livings of Fillingham, 1363, Ludgershall, 1368, and by the king’s appointment, to Lutterworth, 1374. The living of Lutterworth was valued at £26 a year.

Wyclif occupies a distinguished place as an Oxford schoolman, a patriot, a champion of theological and practical reforms and the translator of the Scriptures into English. The papal schism, occurring in the midst of his public career, had an important bearing on his views of papal authority.

So far as is known, he confined himself, until 1366, to his duties in Oxford and his parish work. In that year he appears as one of the king’s chaplains and as opposed to the papal supremacy in the ecclesiastial affairs of the realm. The parliament of the same year refused Urban V.’s demand for the payment of the tribute, promised by King John, which was back 33 years. John, it declared, had no right to obligate the kingdom to a foreign ruler without the nation’s consent. Wyclif, if not a member of this body, was certainly an adviser to it.557

In the summer of 1374, Wyclif went to Bruges as a member of the commission appointed by the king to negotiate peace with France and to treat with the pope’s agents on the filling of ecclesiastical appointments in England. His name was second in the list of commissioners following the name of the bishop of Bangor. At Bruges we find him for the first time in close association with John of Gaunt, Edward’s favorite son, an association which continued for several years, and for a time inured to his protection from ecclesiastical violence.558

On his return to England, he began to speak as a religious reformer. He preached in Oxford and London against the pope’s secular sovereignty, running about, as the old chronicler has it, from place to place, and barking against the Church.559  It was soon after this that, in one of his tracts, he styled the bishop of Rome "the anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and cut-purses."  He maintained that-he "has no more power in binding and loosing than any priest, and that the temporal lords may seize the possessions of the clergy if pressed by necessity."  The duke of Lancaster, the clergy’s open foe, headed a movement to confiscate ecclesiastical property. Piers Ploughman had an extensive public opinion behind him when he exclaimed, "Take her lands, ye Lords, and let her live by dimes (tithes)."  The Good Parliament of 1376, to whose deliberation Wyclif contributed by voice and pen, gave emphatic expression to the public complaints against the hierarchy.

The Oxford professor’s attitude had become too flagrant to be suffered to go unrebuked. In 1377, he was summoned before the tribunal of William Courtenay, bishop of London, at St. Paul’s, where the proceedings opened with a violent altercation between the bishop and the duke. The question was as to whether Wyclif should take a seat or continue standing in the court. Percy, lord marshal of England, ordered him to sit down, a proposal the bishop pronounced an unheard-of indignity to the court. At this, Lancaster, who was present, swore he would bring down Courtenay’s pride and the pride of all the prelates in England. "Do your best, Sir," was the spirited retort of the bishop, who was a son of the duke of Devonshire. A popular tumult ensued, Wyclif being protected by Lancaster.

Pope Gregory XI. himself now took notice of the offender in a document condemning 19 sentences from his writings as erroneous and dangerous to Church and state. In fact, he issued a batch of at least five bulls, addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, the University of Oxford and the king, Edward III. The communication to Archbishop Sudbury opened with an unctuous panegyric of England’s past most glorious piety and the renown of its Church leaders, champions of the orthodox faith and instructors not only of their own but of other peoples in the path of the Lord’s commandments. But it had come to his ears that the Lutterworth rector had broken forth into such detestable madness as not to shrink from publicly proclaiming false propositions which threatened the stability of the entire Church. His Holiness, therefore, called upon the archbishop to have John sent to prison and kept in bonds till final sentence should be passed by the papal court.560  It seems that the vice-chancellor of Oxford at least made a show of complying with the pope’s command and remanded the heretical doctor to Black Hall, but the imprisonment was only nominal.

Fortunately, the pope might send forth his fulminations to bind and imprison but it was not wholly in his power to hold the truth in bonds and to check the progress of thought. In his letter to the chancellor of Oxford, Gregory alleged that Wyclif was vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he hoped to pollute the faithful and bring them to the precipice of perdition, overthrow the Church and subvert the secular estate. The disturber was put into the same category with those princes among errorists, Marsiglius of Padua and John of Jandun.561

The archbishop’s court at Lambeth, before which the offender was now cited, was met by a message from the widow of the Black Prince to stay the proceedings, and the sitting was effectually broken up by London citizens who burst into the hall. At Oxford, the masters of theology pronounced the nineteen condemned propositions true, though they sounded badly to the ear. A few weeks later, March, 1878, Gregory died, and the papal schism broke out. No further notice was taken of Gregory’s ferocious bulls. Among other things, the nineteen propositions affirmed that Christ’s followers have no right to exact temporal goods by ecclesiastical censures, that the excommunications of pope and priest are of no avail if not according to the law of Christ, that for adequate reasons the king may strip the Church of temporalities and that even a pope may be lawfully impeached by laymen.

With the year 1378 Wyclif’s distinctive career as a doctrinal reformer opens. He had defended English rights against foreign encroachment. He now assailed, at a number of points, the theological structure the Schoolmen and mediaeval popes had laboriously reared, and the abuses that had crept into the Church. The spectacle of Christendom divided by two papal courts, each fulminating anathemas against the other, was enough to shake confidence in the divine origin of the papacy. In sermons, tracts and larger writings, Wyclif brought Scripture and common sense to bear. His pen was as keen as a Damascus blade. Irony and invective, of which he was the master, he did not hesitate to use. The directness and pertinency of his appeals brought them easily within the comprehension of the popular mind. He wrote not only in Latin but in English. His conviction was as deep and his passion as fiery as Luther’s, but on the one hand, Wyclif’s style betrays less of the vivid illustrative power of the great German and little of his sympathetic warmth, while on the other, less of his unfortunate coarseness. As Luther is the most vigorous tract writer that Germany has produced, so Wyclif is the foremost religious pamphleteer that has arisen in England; and the impression made by his clear and stinging thrusts may be contrasted in contents and audience with the scholarly and finished tracts of the Oxford movement led by Pusey, Keble and Newman, the one reaching the conscience, the other appealing to the aesthetic tastes; the one adapted to break down priestly pretension, the other to foster it.

But the Reformer of the 14th century was more than a scholar and publicist. Like John Wesley, he had a practical bent of mind, and like him he attempted to provide England with a new proclamation of the pure Gospel. To counteract the influence of the friars, whom he had begun to attack after his return from Bruges, he conceived the idea of developing and sending forth a body of itinerant evangelists. These "pore priests," as they were called, were taken from the list of Oxford graduates, and seem also to have included laymen. Of their number and the rules governing them, we are in the dark. The movement was begun about 1380, and on the one side it associates Wyclif with Gerrit de Groote, and on the other with Wesley and with his more recent fellow-countryman, General Booth, of the Salvation Army.

Although this evangelistic idea took not the form of a permanent organization, the appearance of the pore preachers made a sensation. According to the old chronicler, the disciples who gathered around him in Oxford were many and, clad in long russet gowns of one pattern, they went on foot, ventilating their master’s errors among the people and publicly setting them forth in sermons.562  They had the distinction of being arraigned by no less a personage than Bishop Courtenay "as itinerant, unauthorized preachers who teach erroneous, yea, heretical assertions publicly, not only in churches but also in public squares and other profane places, and who do this under the guise of great holiness, but without having obtained any episcopal or papal authorization."

It was in 1381, the year before Courtenay said his memorable words, that Walden reports that Wyclif "began to determine matters upon the sacrament of the altar."563  To attempt an innovation at this crucial point required courage of the highest order. In 12 theses he declared the Church’s doctrine unscriptural and misleading. For the first time since the promulgation of the dogma of transubstantiation by the Fourth Lateran was it seriously called in question by a theological expert. It was a case of Athanasius standing alone. The mendicants waxed violent. Oxford authorities, at the instance of the archbishop and bishops, instituted a trial, the court consisting of Chancellor Berton and 12 doctors. Without mentioning Wyclif by name, the judges condemned as pestiferous the assertions that the bread and wine remain after consecration, and that Christ’s body is present only figuratively or tropically in the eucharist. Declaring that the judges had not been able to break down his arguments, Wyclif went on preaching and lecturing at the university. But in the king’s council, to which he made appeal, the duke of Lancaster took sides against him and forbade him to speak any more on the subject at Oxford. This prohibition Wyclif met with a still more positive avowal of his views in his Confession, which closes with the noble words, "I believe that in the end the truth will conquer."

The same year, the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, but there is no evidence that Wyclif had any more sympathy with the movement than Luther had with the Peasants’ Rising of 1525. After the revolt was over, he proposed that Church property be given to the upper classes, not to the poor.564  The principles, however, which he enunciated were germs which might easily spring up into open rebellion against oppression. Had he not written, "There is no moral obligation to pay tax or tithe to bad rulers either in Church or state. It is permitted to punish or depose them and to reclaim the wealth which the clergy have diverted from the poor?"  One hundred and fifty years after this time, Tyndale said, "They said it in Wyclif’s day, and the hypocrites say now, that God’s Word arouseth insurrection."565

Courtenay’s elevation to the see of Canterbury boded no good to the Reformer. In 1382, he convoked the synod which is known in English history as the Earthquake synod, from the shock felt during its meetings. The primate was supported by 9 bishops, and when the earth began to tremble, he showed admirable courage by interpreting it as a favorable omen. The earth, in trying to rid itself of its winds and humors, was manifesting its sympathy with the body ecclesiastic.566  Wyclif, who was not present, made another use of the occurrence, and declared that the Lord sent the earthquake "because the friars had put heresy upon Christ in the matter of the sacrament, and the earth trembled as it did when Christ was damned to bodily death."567

The council condemned 24 articles, ascribed to the Reformer, 10 of which were pronounced heretical, and the remainder to be against the decisions of the Church.568  The 4 main subjects condemned as heresy were that Christ is not corporally present in the sacrament, that oral confession is not necessary for a soul prepared to die, that after Urban VI.’s death the English Church should acknowledge no pope but, like the Greeks, govern itself, and that it is contrary to Scripture for ecclesiastics to hold temporal possessions. Courtenay followed up the synod’s decisions by summoning Rygge, then chancellor of Oxford, to suppress the heretical teachings and teachers. Ignoring the summons, Rygge appointed Repyngdon, another of Wyclif’s supporters, to preach, and when Peter Stokys, "a professor of the sacred page," armed with a letter from the archbishop, attempted to silence him, the students and tutors at Oxford threatened the Carmelite with their drawn swords.

But Courtenay would permit no trifling and, summoning Rygge and the proctors to Lambeth, made them promise on their knees to take the action indicated. Parliament supported the primate. The new preaching was suppressed, but Wyclif stood undaunted. He sent a Complaint of 4 articles to the king and parliament, in which he pleaded for the supremacy of English law in matters of ecclesiastical property, for the liberty for the friars to abandon the rules of their orders and follow the rule of Christ, and for the view that on the Lord’s table the real bread and wine are present, and not merely the accidents.569

The court was no longer ready to support the Reformer, and Richard II. sent peremptory orders to Rygge to suppress the new teachings. Courtenay himself went to Oxford, and there is some authority for the view that Wyclif again met the prelate face to face at St. Frideswides. Rigid inquisition was made for copies of the condemned teacher’s writings and those of Hereford. Wyclif was inhibited from preaching, and retired to his rectory at Lutterworth. Hereford, Repyngdon, Aston and Bedeman, his supporters, recanted. The whole party received a staggering blow and with it liberty of teaching at Oxford.570

Confined to Lutterworth, Wyclif continued his labors on the translation of the Bible, and sent forth polemic tracts, including the Cruciata,571 a vigorous condemnation of the crusade which the bishop of Norwich, Henry de Spenser, was preparing in support of Urban VI. against the Avignon pope, Clement VII. The warlike prelate had already shown his military gifts during the Peasants’ Uprising. Urban had promised plenary indulgence for a year to all joining the army. Mass was said and sermons preached in the churches of England, and large sums collected for the enterprise. The indulgence extended to the dead as well as to the living. Wyclif declared the crusade an expedition for worldly mastery, and pronounced the indulgence "an abomination of desolation in the holy place."  Spenser’s army reached the Continent, but the expedition was a failure. The most important of Wyclif’s theological treatises, the Trialogus, was written in this period. It lays down the principle that, where the Bible and the Church do not agree, we must obey the Bible, and, where conscience and human authority are in conflict, we must follow conscience.572

Two years before his death, Wyclif received a paralytic stroke which maimed but did not completely disable him. It is possible that he received a citation to appear before the pope. With unabated rigor of conviction, he replied to the supreme pontiff that of all men he was most under obligation to obey the law of Christ, that Christ was of all men the most poor, and subject to mundane authority. No Christian man has a right to follow Peter, Paul or any of the saints except as they imitated Christ. The pope should renounce all worldly authority and compel his clergy to do the same. He then asserted that, if in these views he was found to err, he was willing to be corrected, even by death. If it were in his power to do anything to advance these views by his presence in Rome, he would willingly go thither. But God had put an obstacle in his way, and had taught him to obey Him rather than man. He closed with the prayer that God might incline Urban to imitate Christ in his life and teach his clergy to do the same.

While saying mass in his church, he was struck again with paralysis, and passed away two or three days after, Dec. 29, 1384, "having lit a fire which shall never be put out."573  Fuller, writing of his death, exclaims, "Admirable that a hare, so often hunted with so many packs of dogs, should die quietly sitting in his form."

Wyclif was spare, and probably never of robust health, but he was not an ascetic. He was fond of a good meal. In temper he was quick, in mind clear, in moral character unblemished. Towards his enemies he was sharp, but never coarse or ribald. William Thorpe, a young contemporary standing in the court of Archbishop Arundel, bore testimony that "he was emaciated in body and well-nigh destitute of strength, and in conduct most innocent. Very many of the chief men of England conferred with him, loved him dearly, wrote down his sayings and followed his manner of life."574

The prevailing sentiment of the hierarchy was given by Walsingham, chronicler of St. Albans, who characterized the Reformer in these words: "On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John de Wyclif, that instrument of the devil, that enemy of the Church, that author of confusion to the common people, that image of hypocrites, that idol of heretics, that author of schism, that sower of hatred, that coiner of lies, being struck with the horrible judgment of God, was smitten with palsy and continued to live till St. Sylvester’s Day, on which he breathed out his malicious spirit into the abodes of darkness."

The dead was not left in peace. By the decree of Arundel, Wyclif’s writings were suppressed, and it was so effective that Caxton and the first English printers issued no one of them from the press. The Lateran decree of February, 1413, ordered his books burnt, and the Council of Constance, from whose members, such as Gerson and D’Ailly, we might have expected tolerant treatment, formally condemned his memory and ordered his bones exhumed from their resting-place and "cast at a distance from the sepulchre of the church."  The holy synod, so ran the decree, "declares said John Wyclif to have been a notorious heretic, and excommunicates him and condemns his memory as one who died an obstinate heretic."575  In 1429, at the summons of Martin IV., the decree was carried out by Flemmyng, bishop of Lincoln.

The words of Fuller, describing the execution of the decree of Constance, have engraven themselves on the page of English history. "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hardby. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over."

In the popular judgment of the English people, John Wyclif, in company with John Latimer and John Wesley, probably represents more fully than any other English religious leader, independence of thought, devotion to conscience, solid religious common sense, and the sound exposition of the Gospel. In the history of the intellectual and moral progress of his people, he was the leading Englishman of the Middle Ages.576

§ 41. Wyclif’s Teachings.

Wyclif’s teachings lie plainly upon the surface of his many writings. In each one of the eminent rôles he played, as schoolman, political reformer, preacher, innovator in theology and translator of the Bible, he wrote extensively. His views show progress in the direction of opposition to the mediaeval errors and abuses. Driven by attacks, he detected errors which, at the outset, he did not clearly discern. But, above all, his, study of the Scriptures forced upon him a system which was in contradiction to the distinctively mediaeval system of theology. His language in controversy was so vigorous that it requires an unusual effort to suppress the impulse to quote at great length.

Clear as Wyclif’s statements always are, some of his works are drawn out by much repetition. Nor does he always move in a straight line, but digresses to this side and to that, taking occasion to discuss at length subjects cognate to the main matter he has in hand. This habit often makes the reading of his larger works a wearisome task. Nevertheless, the author always brings the reader back from his digression or, to use a modern expression, never leaves him sidetracked.

I. As a Schoolman.—Wyclif was beyond dispute the most eminent scholar who taught for any length of time at Oxford since Grosseteste, whom he often quotes.577  He was read in Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome and other Latin Fathers, as well as in the mediaeval theologians from Anselm to Duns Scotus, Bradwardine, Fitzralph and Henry of Ghent. His quotations are many, but with increasing emphasis, as the years went on, he made his final appeal to the Scriptures. He was a moderate realist and ascribed to nominalism all theological error. He seems to have endeavored to shun the determinism of Bradwardine, and declared that the doctrine of necessity does not do away with the freedom of the will, which is so free that it cannot be compelled. Necessity compels the creature to will, that is, to exercise his freedom, but at that point he is left free to choose.578

II. As a Patriot.—In this role the Oxford teacher took an attitude the very reverse of the attitude assumed by Anselm and Thomas à Becket, who made the English Church a servant to the pope’s will in all things. For loyalty to the Hildebrandian theocracy, Anselm was willing to suffer banishment and à Becket suffered death. In Wyclif, the mutterings of the nation, which had been heard against the foreign regime from the days of William the Conqueror, and especially since King John’s reign, found a stanch and uncompromising mouthpiece. Against the whole system of foreign jurisdiction he raised his voice, as also against the Church’s claim to hold lands, except as it acknowledged the rights of the state. He also opposed the tenure of secular offices by the clergy and, when Archbisbop Sudbury was murdered, declared that he died in sin because he was holding the office of chancellor.

Wyclif’s views on government in Church and state are chiefly set forth in the works on Civil and Divine Lordship—De dominio divino, and De dominio civili — and in his Dialogus.579  The Divine Lordship discusses the title by which men hold property and exercise government, and sets forth the distinction between sovereignty and stewardship. Lordship is not properly proprietary. It is stewardship. Christ did not desire to rule as a tenant with absolute rights, but in the way of communicating to others.580  As to his manhood, he was the most perfect of servants.

The Civil Lordship opens by declaring that no one in mortal sin has a right to lordship, and that every one in the state of grace has a real lordship over the whole universe. All Christians are reciprocally lords and servants. The pope, or an ecclesiastical body abusing the property committed to them, may be deprived of it by the state. Proprietary right is limited by proper use. Tithes are an expedient to enable the priesthood to perform its mission. The New Testament does not make them a rule.

From the last portion of the first book of the Civil Lordship, Gregory XI. drew most of the articles for which Wyclif had to stand trial. Here is found the basis for the charge ascribing to him the famous statement that God ought to obey the devil. By this was meant nothing more than that the jurisdiction of every lawful proprietor should be recognized.

III. As a Preacher.—Whether we regard Wyclif’s constant activity in the pulpit, or the impression his sermons made, he must be pronounced by far the most notable of English preachers prior to the Reformation.581  294 of his English sermons and 224 of his Latin sermons have been preserved. To these discourses must be added his English expositions of the Lord’s prayer, the songs of the Bible, the seven deadly sins and other subjects. With rare exceptions, the sermons are based upon passages of the New Testament.

The style of the English discourses is simple and direct. No more plainly did Luther preach against ecclesiastical abuses than did the English Reformer. On every page are joined with practical religious exposition stirring passages rebuking the pope and worldly prelates. They are denounced as anti-christ and the servants of the devil—the fiend—as they turn away from the true work of pasturing Christ’s flock for worldly gain and enjoyment. The preacher condemns the false teachings which are nowhere taught in the Scriptures, such as pilgrimages and indulgences. Sometimes Wyclif seems to be inconsistent with himself, now making light of fasting, now asserting that the Apostles commended it; now disparaging prayers for the dead, now affirming purgatory. With special severity do his sermons strike at the friars who preach out of avarice and neglect to expose the sins of their hearers. No one is more idle than the rich friars, who have nothing but contempt for the poor. Again and again in these sermons, as in his other works, he urges that the goods of the friars be seized and given to the needy classes. Wyclif, the preacher, was always the bold champion of the layman’s rights.

His work, The Pastoral Office, which is devoted to the duties of the faithful minister, and his sermons lay stress upon preaching as the minister’s proper duty. Preaching he declared the "highest service," even as Christ occupied himself most in that work. And if bishops, on whom the obligation to preach more especially rests, preach not, but are content to have true priests preach in their stead, they are as those that murder Jesus. The same authority which gave to priests the privilege of celebrating the sacrament of the altar binds them to preach. Yea, the preaching of the Word is a more precious occupation than the ministration of the sacraments.582

When the Gospel was preached, as in Apostolic times, the Church grew. Above all things, close attention should be given to Christ’s words, whose authority is superior to all the rites and commandments of pope and friars. Again and again Wyclif sets forth the ideal minister, as in the following description:—

"A priest should live holily, in prayer, in desires and thought, in godly conversation and honest teaching, having God’s commandments and His Gospel ever on his lips. And let his deeds be so righteous that no man may be able with cause to find fault with them, and so open his acts that he may be a true book to all sinful and wicked men to serve God. For the example of a good life stirreth men more than true preaching with only the naked word."

The priest’s chief work is to render a substitute for Christ’s miracles by converting himself and his neighbor to God’s law.583  The Sermon on the Mount, Wyclif pronounced sufficient for the guidance of human life apart from any of the requirements and traditions of men.

IV. As a Doctrinal Reformer.—Wyclif’s later writings teem with denials of the doctrinal tenets of his age and indictments against ecclesiastical abuses. There could be no doubt of his meaning. Beginning with the 19 errors Gregory XI. was able to discern, the list grew as the years went on. The Council of Constance gave 45, Netter of Walden, fourscore, and the Bohemian John Lücke, an Oxford doctor of divinity, 266. Cochlaeus, in writing against the Hussites, went beyond all former computations and ascribed to Wyclif the plump sum of 303 heresies, surely enough to have forever covered the Reformer’s memory with obloquy. Fuller suggests as the reason for these variations that some lists included only the Reformer’s primitive tenets or breeders, and others reckoned all the younger fry of consequence derived from them.

The first three articles adduced by the Council of Constance584 had respect to the Lord’s Supper, and charged Wyclif with holding that the substance of the bread remains unchanged after the consecration, that Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar in a real sense, and the accidents of a thing cannot remain after its substance is changed. The 4th article accuses him with declaring that the acts of bishop or priest in baptizing, ordaining and consecrating are void if the celebrant be in a state of mortal sin. Then follow charges of other alleged heresies, such as that after Urban VI. the papacy should be abolished, the clergy should hold no temporal possessions, the friars should gain their living by manual toil and not by begging, Sylvester and Constantine erred in endowing the Church, the papal elections by the cardinals were an invention of the devil, it is not necessary to salvation that one believe the Roman church to be supreme amongst the churches and that all the religious orders were introduced by the devil.

The most of the 45 propositions represent Wyclif’s views with precision. They lie on the surface of his later writings, but they do not exhaust his dissent from the teachings and practice of his time. His assault may be summarized under five heads: the nature of the Church, the papacy, the priesthood, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the use of the Scriptures.

The Church was defined in the Civil Lordship to be the body of the elect,—living, dead and not yet born,—whose head is Christ. Scarcely a writing has come down to us from Wyclif’s pen in which he does not treat the subject, and in his special treatise on the Church, written probably in 1378, it is defined more briefly as the body of all the elect—congregatio omnium predestinatorum. Of this body, Christ alone is the head. The pope is the head of a local church. Stress is laid upon the divine decree as determining who are the predestinate and who the reprobate.585

Some persons, he said, in speaking of "Holy Church, understand thereby prelates and priests, monks and canons and friars and all that have the tonsure,—alle men that han crownes,—though they live ever so accursedly in defiance of God’s law."  But so far from this being true, all popes cardinals and priests are not among the saved. On the contrary, not even a pope can tell assuredly that he is predestinate. This knows no one on earth. The pope may be a prescitus, a reprobate. Such popes there have been, and it is blasphemy for cardinals and pontiffs to think that their election to office of itself constitutes a title to the primacy of the Church. The curia is a nest of heretics if its members do not follow Christ, a fountain of poison, the abomination of desolation spoken of in the sacred page. Gregory XI. Wyclif called a terrible devil—horrendus diabolus. God in His mercy had put him to death and dispersed his confederates, whose crimes Urban VI. had revealed.586

Though the English Reformer never used the terms visible and invisible Church, he made the distinction. The Church militant, he said, commenting on John 10:26, is a mixed body. The Apostles took two kinds of fishes, some of which remained in the net and some broke away. So in the Church some are ordained to bliss and some to pain, even though they live godly for a while.587  It is significant that in his English writings Wyclif uses the term Christen men—Christian men—instead of the term the faithful.

As for the papacy, no one has used more stinging words against individual popes as well as against the papacy as an institution than did Wyclif. In the treatises of his last years and in his sermons, the pope is stigmatized as anti-Christ. His very last work, on which he was engaged when death overtook him, bore the title, Anti-christ, meaning the pope. He went so far as to call him the head-vicar of the fiend.588  He saw in the papacy the revelation of the man of sin. The office is wholly poisonous—totum papale officium venenosum. He heaped ridicule upon the address "most holie fadir."  The pope is neither necessary to the Church nor is he infallible. If both popes and all their cardinals were cast into hell, believers could be saved as well without them. They were created not by Christ but by the devil. The pope has no exclusive right to declare what the Scriptures teach, or proclaim what is the supreme law. His absolutions are of no avail unless Christ has absolved before. Popes have no more right to excommunicate than devils have to curse. Many of them are damned—multi papae sunt dampnati. Strong as such assertions are, it is probable that Wyclif did not mean to cast aside the papacy altogether. But again and again the principle is stated that the Apostolic see is to be obeyed only so far as it follows Christ’s law.589

As for the interpretation of Matthew 16:18, Wyclif took the view that "the rock" stands for Peter and every true Christian. The keys of the kingdom of heaven are not metal keys, as popularly supposed, but spiritual power, and they were committed not only to Peter, but to all the saints, "for alle men that comen to hevene have these keies of God."590 Towards the pope’s pretension to political functions, Wyclif was, if possible, more unsparing. Christ paid tribute to Caesar. So should the pope. His deposition of kings is the tyranny of the devil. By disregarding Peter’s injunction not to lord it over God’s heritage, but to feed the flock, he and all his sect—tota secta — prove themselves hardened heretics.

Constantine’s donation, the Reformer pronounced the beginning of all evils in the Church. The emperor was put up to it by the devil. It was his new trick to have the Church endowed.591  Chapter after chapter of the treatise on the Church calls upon the pope, prelates and priests to return to the exercise of spiritual functions. They had become the prelates and priests of Caesar. As the Church left Christ to follow Caesar, so now it should abandon Caesar for Christ. As for kissing the pope’s toe, there it; no foundation for it in Scripture or reason.

The pope’s practice of getting money by tribute and taxation calls forth biting invective. It was the custom, Wyclif said, to solemnly curse in the parish churches all who clipped the king’s coins and cut men’s purses. From this it would seem, he continued, that the proud and worldly priest of Rome and all his advisers were the most cursed of clippers and out-purses,—cursed of clipperis and purse-kerveris,—for they drew out of England poor men’s livelihoods and many thousands of marks of the king’s money, and this they did for spiritual favors. If the realm had a huge hill of gold, it would soon all be spent by this proud and worldly priest-collector. Of all men, Christ was the most poor, both in spirit and in goods and put from him all manner of worldly lordship. The pope should leave his authority to worldly lords, and speedily advise his clergy to do the same. I take it, as a matter of faith, that no man should follow the pope, nor even any of the saints in heaven, except as they follow Christ.592

The priests and friars formed another subject of Wyclif’s vigorous attack. Clerics who follow Christ are true priests and none other. The efficacy of their acts of absolution of sins depends upon their own previous absolution by Christ. The priest’s function is to show forgiveness, already pronounced by God, not to impart it. It was, he affirmed, a strange and marvellous thing that prelates and curates should "curse so faste," when Christ said we should bless rather than reprove. A sentence of excommunication is worse than murder.

The rule of auricular confession Wyclif also disparaged. True contrition of heart is sufficient for the removal of sins. In Christ’s time confession of man to man was not required. In his own day, he said, "shrift to God is put behind; but privy (private) shrift, a new-found thing, is authorized as needful for the soul’s health."  He set forth the dangers of the confessional, such as the unchastity of priests. He also spoke of the evils of pilgrimages when women and men going together promiscuously were in temptation of great "lecherie."593  Clerical celibacy, a subject the Reformer seldom touched upon, he declared, when enforced, is against Scripture, and as under the old law priests were allowed to marry, so under the new the practice is never forbidden, but rather approved.

Straight truth-telling never had a warmer champion than Wyclif. Addressing the clergy, he devotes nearly a hundred pages of his Truth of Scripture to an elaboration of this principle. Not even the most trifling sin is permissible as a means of averting a greater evil, either for oneself or one’s neighbor. Under no circumstances does a good intention justify a falsehood. The pope himself has no right to tolerate or practice misrepresentation to advance a good cause. To accomplish a good end, the priest dare not even make a false appeal to fear. All lying is of itself sin, and no dispensation can change its character.594

The friars called forth the Reformer’s keenest thrusts, and these increased in sharpness as he neared the end of his life. Quotations, bearing on their vices, would fill a large volume. Entire treatises against their heresies and practices issued from his pen. They were slavish agents of the pope’s will; they spread false views of the eucharist; they made merchandise of indulgences and letters of fraternity which pretended to give the purchasers a share in their own good deeds here and at the final accounting. Their lips were full of lies and their hands of blood. They entered houses and led women astray; they lived in idleness; they devoured England.595

The Reformer had also a strong word to say on the delusion of the contemplative life as usually practised. It was the guile of Satan that led men to imagine their fancies and dreamings were religious contemplation and to make them an excuse for sloth. John the Baptist and Christ both left the desert to live among men. He also went so far as to demand that monks be granted the privilege of renouncing the monkish rule for some other condition where they might be useful.596

The four mendicant orders, the Carmelites, Augustinians, Jacobites or Dominicans, and Minorites or Franciscans gave their first letters to the word Caim, showing their descent from the first murderer. Their convents, Wyclif called Cain’s castles. His relentless indignation denounced them as the tail of the dragon, ravening wolves, the sons of Satan, the emissaries of anti-christ and Luciferians and pronounced them worse than Herod, Saul and Judas. The friars repeat that Christ begged water at the well. It were to their praise if they begged water and nothing else.597

With the lighter hand of ridicule, Chaucer also held up the mendicants for indictment. In the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales he represents the friar as an—

... easy man to yeve penaunce,

Ther as he wiste to have a good pitaunce

For unto a powre order for to give

Is signe that a man is well y-shrive.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

His wallet lay biforn him in his lappe

Bretful of pardoun come from Rome all hoot,

A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot

Ne was ther swich another pardonour

For in his male he hadde a pilwe-beer [pillow]

Which that, he seyde, was our Lady’s veyl:

And in a glas he hadde a pigges bones.

Skeat’s ed., 4:7, 21.

If it required boldness to attack the powerful body of the monks, it required equal boldness to attack the mediaeval dogma of transubstantiation. Wyclif himself called it a doctrine of the moderns and of the recent Church—novella ecclesia. In his treatise on the eucharist, he praised God that he had been delivered from its laughable and scandalous errors.598  The dogma of the transmutation of the elements he pronounced idolatry, a lying fable. His own view is that of the spiritual presence. Christ’s body, so far as its dimensions are concerned, is in heaven. It is efficaciously or virtually in the host as in a symbol.599  This symbol "represents"—vicarius est—the body.

Neither by way of impanation nor of identification, much less by way of transmutation, is the body in the host. Christ is in the bread as a king is in all parts of his dominions and as the soul is in the body. In the breaking of the bread, the body is no more broken than the sunbeam is broken when a piece of glass is shattered: Christ is there sacramentally, spiritually, efficiently—sacramentaliter, spiritualiter et virtualiter. Transubstantiation is the greatest of all heresies and subversive of logic, grammar and all natural science.600

The famous controversy as to whether a mouse, partaking of the sacramental elements, really partakes of Christ’s body is discussed in the first pages of the treatise on the eucharist. Wyclif pronounces the primary assumption false, for Christ is not there in a corporal manner. An animal, in eating a man, does not eat his soul. The opinion that the priest actually breaks Christ’s body and so breaks his neck, arms and other members, is a shocking error. What could be more shocking,—horribilius,—he says, than that the priest should daily make and consecrate the Lord’s body, and what more shocking than to be obliged to eat Christ’s very flesh and drink his very blood. Yea, what could be thought of more shocking than that Christ’s body may be burned or eructated, or that the priest carries God in bodily form on the tips of his fingers. The words of institution are to be taken in a figurative sense. In a similar manner, the Lord spoke of himself as the seed and of the world as the field, and called John, Elijah, not meaning that the two were one person. In saying, I am the vine, he meant that the vine is a symbol of himself.

The impossibility of the miracle of elemental transmutation, Wyclif based on the philosophical principle that the substance of a thing cannot be separated from its accidents. If accidents can exist by themselves, then it is impossible to tell what a thing is or whether it exists at all. Transubstantiation would logically demand transaccidentation, an expression the English Reformer used before Luther. The theory that the accidents remain while the substance is changed, he pronounced "grounded neither in holy writt ne reson ne wit but only taughte by newe hypocritis and cursed heretikis that magnyfyen there own fantasies and dremes."601

Another proof of Wyclif’s freedom of mind was his assertion that the Roman Church, in celebrating the sacrament, has no right to make a precise form of words obligatory, as the words of institution differ in the different accounts of the New Testament. As for the profitable partaking of the elements, he declared that the physical eating profits nothing except the soul be fed with love. Announcing it as his expectation that he would be set upon for his views, he closed his notable treatise on the eucharist with the words, The truth of reason will prevail over all things.

Super omnia vincit veritas rationis.

In these denials of the erroneous system of the mediaeval Church at its vital points, Wyclif was far in advance of his own age and anticipated the views of the Protestant Reformers.

§ 42. Wyclif and the Scriptures.

Wyclif’s chief service for his people, next to the legacy of his own personality, was his assertion of the supreme authority of the Bible for clergy and laymen alike and his gift to them of the Bible in their own tongue. His statements, setting forth the Scriptures as the clear and sufficient manual of salvation and insisting that the literal sense gives their plain meaning, were as positive and unmistakable as any made by Luther. In his treatise on the value and authority of the Scriptures, with 1000 printed pages,602  more is said about the Bible as the Church’s appointed guide-book than was said by all the mediaeval theologians together. And none of the Schoolmen, from Anselm and Abaelard to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, exalted it to such a position of preëminence as did he. With one accord they limited its authority by coördinating with its contents tradition, that is, the teachings of the Church. This man, with unexcelled precision and cogency, affirmed its final jurisdiction, as the law of God, above all authorities, papal, decretist or patristic. What Wyclif asserts in this special treatise, he said over again in almost every one of his works, English and Latin. If possible, he grew more emphatic as his last years went on, and his Opus evangelicum, probably his very last writing, abounds in the most positive statements language is capable of.

To give the briefest outline of the Truth of Scripture will be to state in advance the positions of the Protestant Reformers in regard to the Bible as the rule of faith and morals. To Wyclif the Scriptures are the authority for every Catholic tenet. They are the Law of Christ, the Law of God, the Word of God, the Book of Life—liber vitae. They are the immaculate law of the Lord, most true, most complete and most wholesome.603  All things necessary to belief for salvation are found in them. They are the Catholic faith, the Christian faith,—fides christiana,—the primal rule of human perfection, the primal foundation of the Christian proclamation.

This book is the whole truth which every Christian should study.604  It is the measure and standard of all logic. Logic, as in Oxford, changes very frequently, yea, every twenty years, but the Scriptures are yea, yea and nay, nay. They never change. They stand to eternity.605  All logic, all law, all philosophy and all ethic are in them. As for the philosophy of the pagan world, whatever it offers that is in accord with the Scriptures is true. The religious philosophy which the Christian learns from Aristotle he learns because it was taught by the authors of Scripture.606  The Greek thinker made mistakes, as when he asserted that creation is eternal. In several places Wyclif confesses that he himself had at one time been led astray by logic and the desire to win fame, but was thankful to God that he had been converted to the full acceptance of the Scriptures as they are and to find in them all logic.

All through this treatise, and in other works, Wyclif contends against those who pronounced the sacred writings irrational or blasphemous or abounding in errors and plain falsehoods. Such detractors he labelled modern or recent doctors—moderni novelli doctores. Charges such as these would seem well-nigh incredible, if Wyclif did not repeat them over and over again. They remind us of the words of the priest who told Tyndale, 150 years later, "It were better to be without God’s laws than to be without the pope’s."  What could be more shocking,—horribilius,—exclaimed Wyclif, than to assert that God’s words are false.607

The supreme authority of the Scriptures appears from their contents, the beneficent aim they have in view, and from the witness borne to them by Christ. God speaks in all the books. They are one great Word of God. Every syllable of the two Testaments is true, and the authors were nothing more than scribes or heralds.608  If any error seem to be found in them, the error is due to human ignorance and perverseness. Nothing is to be believed that is not founded upon this book, and to its teachings nothing is to be added.609

Wyclif devotes much time to the principles of biblical exposition and brushes away the false principles of the Fath-ers and Schoolmen by pronouncing the "literal verbal sense" the true one. On occasion, in his sermons, he himself used the other senses, but his sound judgment led him again and again to lay emphasis upon the etymological meaning of words as final. The tropological, anagogical and allegorical meanings, if drawn at all, must be based upon the literal meaning. Wyclif confessed his former mistake of striving to distinguish them with strict precision. There is, in fact, only one sense of Scripture, the one God himself has placed in it as the book of life for the wayfaring man.610  Heresy is the contradiction of Scripture. As for himself, Wyclif said, he was ready to follow its teachings, even unto martyrdom, if necessary.611

For hundreds of years no eminent teacher had emphasized the right of the laity to the Word of God. It was regarded as a book for the clergy, and the interpretation of its meaning was assumed to rest largely with the decretists and the pope. The Council of Toulouse, 1229, had forbidden the use of the Bible to laymen. The condemned sects of the 12th and 13th centuries, especially the Waldenses, had adopted another rule, but their assailants, such as Alanus ab Insulis, had shown how dangerous their principle was. Wyclif stood forth as the champion of an open Bible. It was a book to be studied by all Christians, for "it is the whole truth."  Because it was given to the Church, its teachings are free to every one, even as is Christ himself.612

To withhold the Scriptures from the laity is a fundamental sin. To make them known in the mother-tongue is the first duty of the priest. For this reason priests ought always to be familiar with the language of the people. Wyclif held up the friars for declaring it heresy to translate God’s law into English and make it known to laymen. He argued against their position by referring to the gift of tongues at Pentecost and to Jerome’s translation, to the practice of Christ and the Apostles who taught peoples in their native languages and to the existence in his own day of a French translation made in spite of all hindrances. Why, he exclaims, "should not Englishmen do the same, for as the lords of England have the Bible in French, it would not be against reason if they had the same material in English."  Through an English Bible Englishmen would be enabled best "to follow Christ and come to heaven."613  What could be more positive than the following words?

Christen men and women, olde and young, shulden study fast in the New Testament, and no simple man of wit shulde be aferde unmeasurably to study in the text of holy Writ. Pride and covetise of clerks is cause of their blyndness and heresie and priveth them fro verie understonding of holy Writ. The New Testament is of ful autorite and open to understonding of simple men, as to the pynts that ben most needful to salvation.

Wyclif was the first to give the Bible to his people in their own tongue. He knew no Hebrew and probably no Greek. His version, which was made from the Latin Vulgate, was the outgrowth of his burning desire to make his English countrymen more religious and more Christian. The paraphrastic translation of books which proceeded from the pen of Richard Rolle and perhaps a verse of the New Testament of Kentish origin and apparently made for a nunnery,614 must be considered as in no wise in conflict with the claim of priority made for the English Reformer. In his task he had the aid of Nicolas Hereford, who translated the Old Testament and the Apocryphal books as far as Baruch 3:20. A revision was made of Wyclif’s Bible soon after his death, by Purvey. In his prologue, Purvey makes express mention of the "English Bible late translated," and affirms that the Latin copies had more need of being corrected than it. One hundred and seventy copies of these two English bibles are extant, and it seems strange that, until the edition issued by Forshall and Madden in 1850, they remained unprinted.615  The reason for their not being struck off on the presses of Caxton and other early English printers, who issued the Golden Legend, with its fantastic and often grewsome religious tales, was that Wyclif had been pronounced a heretic and his version of the Scriptures placed under the ban by the religious authorities in England.

A manuscript preserved in the Bodleian, Forshall and Madden affirm to be without question the original copy of Hereford himself. These editors place the dates of the versions in 1382 and 1388. Purvey was a Lollard, who boarded under Wyclif’s roof and, according to the contemporary chronicler, Knighton, drank plentifully of his instructions. He was imprisoned, but in 1400 recanted, and was promoted to the vicarage of Hythe. This preferment he resigned three years later. He was imprisoned a second time by Archbishop Chichele, 1421, was alive in 1427, and perhaps died in prison.

To follow the description given by Knighton in his Chronicle, the gift of the English Bible was regarded by Wyclif’s contemporaries as both a novel act and an act of desecration. The irreverence and profanation of offering such a translation was likened to the casting of pearls before swine. The passage in Knighton, who wrote 20 years after Wyclif’s death, runs thus: —

The Gospel, which Christ bequeathed to the clergy and doctors of the Church,—as they in turn give it to lay and weaker persons,—this Master John Wyclif translated out of the Latin into the Anglican tongue, not the Angelic tongue, so that by him it is become common,—vulgare,—and more open to the lay folk and to women, knowing how to read, than it used to be to clerics of a fair amount of learning and of good minds. Thus, the Gospel pearl is cast forth and trodden under foot of swine, and what was dear to both clergy and laity is now made a subject of common jest to both, and the jewel of the clergy is turned into the sport of the laity, so that what was before to the clergy and doctors of the Church a divine gift, has been turned into a mock Gospel [or common thing].616

The plain meaning of this statement seems to be that Wyclif translated at least some of the Scriptures, that the translation was a novelty, and that the English was not a proper language for the embodiment of the sacred Word. It was a cleric’s book, and profane temerity, by putting it within the reach of the laity, had vulgarized it.

The work speedily received reprobation at the hands of the Church authorities. A bill presented in the English parliament, 1891, to condemn English versions, was rejected through the influence of the duke of Lancaster, but an Oxford synod, of 1408, passed the ominous act, that upon pain of greater excommunication, no man, by his own authority, should translate into English or any other tongue, until such translation were approved by the bishop, or, if necessary, by the provincial council. It distinctly mentions the translation "set forth in the time of John Wyclif."  Writing to John XXIII., 1412, Archbishop Arundel took occasion to denounce "that pestilent wretch of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of anti-christ who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother-tongue."617

In 1414, the reading of the English Scriptures was forbidden upon pain of forfeiture "of land, cattle, life and goods from their heirs forever."  Such denunciations of a common English version were what Wyclif’s own criticisms might have led us to expect, and quite in consonance with the decree of the Synod of Toulouse, 1229, and Arundel’s reprobation has been frequently matched by prelatical condemnation of vernacular translations of the Bible and their circulation down to the papal fulminations of the 19th century against Bible societies, as by Pius VII., 1816, who declared them "fiendish institutions for the undermining of the foundation of religion."  The position, taken by Catholic apologists, that the Catholic hierarchy has never set itself against the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but only against unauthorized translations, would be adapted to modify Protestantism’s notion of the matter, if there were some evidence of only a limited attempt to encourage Bible study among the laity of the Catholic Church with the pages of Scripture open before them. If we go to the Catholic countries of Southern Europe and to South America, where her away has been unobstructed, the very opposite is true.

In the clearest language, Wyclif charged the priestly authorities of his time with withholding the Word of God from the laity, and denying it to them in the language the people could understand. And the fact remains that, from his day until the reign of Elizabeth, Catholic England did not produce any translations of the Bible, and the English Reformers were of the opinion that the Catholic hierarchy was irrevocably set against English versions. Tyndale had to flee from England to translate his New Testament, and all the copies of the first edition that could be collected were burnt on English soil. And though it is alleged that Tyndale’s New Testament was burnt because it was an "unauthorized" translation, it still remains true that the hierarchy made no attempt to give the Bible to England until long after the Protestant Reformation had begun and Protestantism was well established.

The copies of Wyclif’s and Purvey’s versions seem to have been circulated in considerable numbers in England, and were in the possession of low and high. The Lollards cherished them. A splendid copy was given to the Carthusians of London by Henry VI., and another copy was in the possession of Henry VII. Sir Thomas More states distinctly that there was found in the possession of John Hunne, who was afterwards burnt, a Bible "written after Wyclif’s copy and by him translated into our tongue."618  While for a century and a half these volumes helped to keep alive the spirit of Wyclif in England, it is impossible to say how far Wyclif’s version influenced the Protestant Reformers. In fact, it is unknown whether they used it at all. Some of its words, such as mote and beam and strait gate, which are found in the version of the 16th century, seem to indicate, to say the least, that these terms had become common property through the medium of Wyclif’s version.619  The priceless heirloom which English-speaking peoples possess in the English version and in an open Bible free to all who will read, learned and unlearned, lay and cleric, will continue to be associated with the Reformer of the 14th century. As has been said by one of the ablest of recent Wyclif students, Buddensieg, the call to honor the Scriptures as the Word of God and to study and diligently obey them, runs through Wyclif’s writings like a scarlet thread.620  Without knowing it, he departed diametrically from Augustine when he declared that the Scriptures do not depend for their authority upon the judgment of the Church, but upon Christ.

In looking over the career and opinions of John Wyclif, it becomes evident that in almost every doctrinal particular did this man anticipate the Reformers. The more his utterances are studied, the stronger becomes this conviction. He exalted preaching; he insisted upon the circulation of the Scriptures among the laity; he demanded purity and fidelity of the clergy; he denied infallibility to the papal utterances, and went so far as to declare that the papacy is not essential to the being of the Church. He defined the Church as the congregation of the elect; he showed the unscriptural and unreasonable character of the doctrine of transubstantiation; he pronounced priestly absolution a declarative act. He dissented from the common notion about pilgrimages; he justified marriage on biblical grounds as honorable among all men; he appealed for liberty for the monk to renounce his vow, and to betake himself to some useful work.

The doctrine of justification by faith Wyclif did not state. However, he constantly uses such expressions as, that to believe in Christ is life. The doctrine of merit is denied, and Christ’s mediation is made all-sufficient. He approached close to the Reformers when he pronounced "faith the supreme theology,"—fides est summa theologia,—and that only by the study of the Scriptures is it possible to become a Christian.621

Behind all Wyclif’s other teaching is his devotion to Christ and his appeal to men to follow Him and obey His law. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the name of Christ appears on every page of his writings. To him, Christ was the supreme philosopher, yea, the content of all philosophy.622

In reaching his views Wyclif was, so far as we know, as independent as any teacher can well be. There is no indication that he drew from any of the medieval sects, as has been charged, nor from Marsiglius and Ockam. He distinctly states that his peculiar views were drawn not from Ockam but from the Scriptures.623

The Continental Reformers did not give to Wyclif the honor they gave to Huss. Had they known more about him, they might have said more.624  Had Luther had access to the splendid shelf of volumes issued by the Wyclif Society, he might have said of the English Reformer what he said of Wessel’s Works when they were put into his hands. The reason why no organized reformation followed Wyclif’s labors is best given when we say, the time was not yet ripe. And, after all the parallelisms are stated between his opinions and the doctrines of the Reformers, it will remain true that, evangelical as he was in speech and patriotic as he was in spirit, the Englishman never ceased to be a Schoolman. Luther was fully a man of the new age.

Note. – The Authorship of the First English Bible. Recently the priority of Wyclif’s translation has been denied by Abbot Gasquet in two elaborate essays, The Old English Bible, pp. 87–155. He also pronounces it to be very doubtful if Wyclif ever translated any part of the Bible. All that can be attempted here is a brief statement of the case. In addition to Knighton’s testimony, which seems to be as plain as language could put it, we have the testimony of John Huss in his Reply to the Carmelite Stokes, 1411, that Wyclif translated the whole Bible into English. No one contends that Wyclif did as much as this, and Huss was no doubt speaking in general terms, having in mind the originator of the work and the man’s name connected with it. The doubt cast upon the first proposition, the priority of Wyclif’s version, is due to Sir Thomas More’s statement in his Dialogue, 1530, Works, p. 233. In controverting the positions of Tyndale and the Reformers, he said, "The whole Bible was before Wyclif’s days, by virtuous and well-learned men, translated into English and by good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read."  He also says that he saw such copies. In considering this statement it seems very possible that More made a mistake (1) because the statement is contrary to Knighton’s words, taken in their natural sense and Huss’ testimony. (2) Because Wyclif’s own statements exclude the existence of any English version before his own. (3) Because the Lollards associated their Bible with Wyclif’s name. (4) Because before the era of the Reformation no English writer refers to any translating except in connection with Wyclif’s name and time. Sir Thomas More was engaged in controversy and attempting to justify the position that the Catholic hierarchy had not been opposed to translations of the Scriptures nor to their circulation among proper classes of the laity. But Abbot Gasquet, after proposing a number of conjectural doubts and setting aside the natural sense of Knighton’s and Arundel’s statements, denies altogether the Wycliffite authorship of the Bible ascribed to him and edited by Forshall and Madden, and performs the feat of declaring this Bible one of the old translations mentioned by More. It must be stated here, a statement that will be recalled later, that Abbot Gasquet is the representative in England of the school of Janssen, which has endeavored to show that the Catholic Church was in an orderly process of development before Luther arose, and that Luther and the Reformers checked that development and also wilfully misrepresented the condition of the Church of their day. Dr. Gasquet, with fewer plausible facts and less literature at command than Janssen, seeks to present the English Church’s condition in the later Middle Ages as a healthy one. And this he does (1) by referring to the existence of an English mediaeval literature, still in MSS., which he pronounces vast in its bulk; (2) by absolutely ignoring the statements of Wyclif; (3) by setting aside the testimonies of the English Reformers; (4) by disparaging the Lollards as a wholly humble and illiterate folk. Against all these witnesses he sets up the single witness, Sir Thomas More.

The second proposition advocated by Dr. Gasquet that it is doubtful, and perhaps very improbable, that Wyclif did nothing in the way of translating the Bible, is based chiefly upon the fact that Wyclif does not refer to such a translation anywhere in his writings. If we take the abbot’s own high priest among authorities, Sir Thomas More, the doubt is found to be unjustifiable, if not criminal. More, speaking of John Hunne, who was burnt, said that he possessed a copy of the Bible which was "after a Wycliffite copy."  Eadie, I. 6O sqq.; Westcott, Hist. of the Eng. Bible. Gairdner who discusses the subject fairly in his Lollardy, I. 101–117, Capes, pp. 125–128, F. D. Matthew, in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1895, and Bigg, Wayside Sketches, p. 127 sq., take substantially the position taken by the author. Gasquet was preceded by Lingard, Hist. of Eng., IV. 196, who laid stress upon More’s testimony to offset and disparage the honor given from time immemorial to Wyclif in connection with the English Bible.

How can a controversialist be deemed fair who, in a discussion of this kind, does not even once refer to Wyclif’s well-known views about the value of a popular knowledge of the Scriptures, and his urgency that they be given to all the people through plain preaching and in translation?  Dr. Gasquet’s attitude to "the strange personality of Wyclif" may be gotten from these words, Old Eng. Bible, p. 88: "Whatever we may hold as Catholics as to his unsound theological opinions, about which there can be no doubt, or, as peace-loving citizens, about his wild revolutionary social theories, on which, if possible, there can be less," etc.

The following are two specimens of Wyclif’s versions:—

MATT. VIII. 23–27.  And Jhesu steyinge vp in to a litel ship, his disciplis sueden him. And loo! a grete steryng was made in the see, so that the litil ship was hilid with wawis; but he slepte. And his disciplis camen nigh to hym, and raysiden hym, sayinge, Lord, saue vs: we perishen. And Jhesus seith to hem, What ben yhee of litil feith agast?  Thanne he rysynge comaundide to the wyndis and the see, and a grete pesiblenesse is maad. Forsothe men wondreden, sayinge: What manere man is he this, for the wyndis and the see obeishen to hym.

ROM. VIII. 5–8.  For thei that ben aftir the fleisch saueren tho thingis that ben of the fleisch, but thei that ben aftir the spirit felen tho thingis that ben of the spirit. For the prudence of fleisch: is deeth, but the prudence of spirit: is liif and pees. For the wisdom of fleische is enemye to God, for it is not suget to the lawe of God: for nether it may. And thei that ben in fleisch: moun not please to God.

§ 43. The Lollards.

Although the impulse which Wyclif started in England did not issue there in a compact or permanent organization, it was felt for more than a century. Those who adopted his views were known as Wycliffites or Lollards, the Lollards being associated with the Reformer’s name by the contemporary chroniclers, Knighton and Walsingham, and by Walden.625  The former term gradually gave way to the latter, which was used to embrace all heretics in England.

The term Lollards was transplanted to England from Holland and the region around Cologne. As early as 1300 Lollard heretics were classed by the authorities with the Beghards, Beguines, Fratricelli, Swestriones and even the Flagellants, as under the Church’s ban. The origin of the word, like the term Huguenots, is a matter of dispute. The derivation from the Hollander, "Walter Lollard," who was burnt in Cologne, 1322, is now abandoned.626  Contemporaries derived it from lolium,—tares,—and referred it to the false doctrine these sectarists were sowing, as does Knighton, and probably also Chaucer, or, with reference to their habit of song, from the Latin word laudare, to praise.627  The most natural derivation is from the Low German, lullen or einlullen to sing to sleep, whence our English lullaby. None of the Lollard songs have come down to us. Scarcely a decade after Wyclif’s death a bull was issued by Boniface IX., 1396, against the "Lullards or Beghards" of the Low Countries.

The Wycliffite movement was suppressed by a rigid inquisition, set on foot by the bishops and sanctioned by parliament. Of the first generation of these heretics down to 1401, so far as they were brought to trial, the most, if not all, of them recanted. The 15th century furnished a great number of Lollard trials and a number of Lollard martyrs, and their number was added to in the early years of the 16th century. Active measures were taken by Archbishop Courtenay; and under his successor, Thomas, earl of Arundel, the full force of persecution was let loose. The warlike bishop of Norwich, Henry Spenser, joined heartily in the repressive crusade, swearing to put to death by the flames or by decapitation any of the dissenters who might presume to preach in his diocese. The reason for the general recantations of the first generation of Wyclif’s followers has been found in the novelty of heresy trials in England and the appalling effect upon the accused, when for the first time they felt themselves confronted with the whole power of the hierarchy.628

In 1394, they were strong enough to present a petition in full parliament, containing twelve Conclusions.629  These propositions called the Roman Church the stepmother of the Church in England, declared that many who had priestly ordination were not ordained of God, took up the evils growing out of enforced celibacy, denied Christ’s material presence in the eucharist, condemned pilgrimages and image-worship, and pronounced priestly confession and indulgences measures invented for the profit of the clergy. The use of mitres, crosses, oil and incense was condemned and also war, on the ground that warriors, after the first blood is let, lose all charity, and so "go straight to hell."  In addition to the Bible, the document quotes Wyclif’s Trialogus by name.

From about 1390 to 1425, we hear of the Lollards in all directions, so that the contemporary chronicler was able to say that of every two men found on the roads, one was sure to be a Lollard.630  With the accession of Henry IV. of Lancaster (1399–1413), a severe policy was adopted. The culminating point of legislation was reached in 1401, when parliament passed the act for the burning of heretics, the first act of the kind in England.631  The statute referred to the Lollards as a new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the Church in respect to the sacraments and, against the law of God and the Church, usurping the office of preaching. It forbade this people to preach, hold schools and conventicles and issue books. The violators were to be tried in the diocesan courts and, if found guilty and refusing to abjure, were to be turned over to the civil officer and burnt. The burning, so it was stipulated, was to be on a high place where the punishment might be witnessed and the onlookers be struck with fear.

The most prominent personages connected with the earliest period of Wycliffism, Philip Repyngdon, John Ashton, Nicolas Hereford and John Purvey, all recanted. The last three and Wyclif are associated by Knighton as the four arch-heretics.

Repyngdon, who had boldly declared himself at Oxford for Wyclif and his view of the sacrament, made a full recantation, 1382. Subsequently he was in high favor, became chancellor of Oxford, bishop of Lincoln and a cardinal, 1408. He showed the ardor of his zeal by treating with severity the sect whose views he had once espoused.

John Ashton had been one of the most active of Wyclif’s preachers. In setting forth his heretical zeal, Knighton describes him as "leaping up from his bed and, like a dog, ready to bark at the slightest sound."  He finally submitted in Courtenay’s court, professing that he "believed as our modur, holy kirke, believes," and that in the sacrament the priest has in his hand Christ’s very body. He was restored to his privileges as lecturer in Oxford, but afterwards fell again into heretical company.632

Hereford, Wyclif’s fellow-translator, appealed to Rome, was condemned there and cast into prison. After two years of confinement, he escaped to England and, after being again imprisoned, made his peace with the Church and died a Carthusian.

In 1389, nine Lollards recanted before Courtenay, at Leicester. The popular preacher, William Swynderby, to whose sermons in Leicester the people flocked from every quarter, made an abject recantation, but later returned to his old ways, and was tried in 1891 and convicted. Whether he was burnt or died in prison, Foxe says, he could not ascertain.

The number suffering death by the law of 1401 was not large in the aggregate. The victims were distributed through the 125 years down to the middle of Henry VIII.’s reign. There were among them no clergymen of high renown like Ridley and Latimer. The Lollards were an humble folk, but by their persistence showed the deep impression Wyclif’s teachings had made. The first martyr, the poor chaplain of St. Osythe, William Sawtré, died March 2, 1401, before the statute for burning heretics was passed. He abjured and then returned again to his heretical views. After trying him, the spiritual court ordered the mayor or sheriff of London to "commit him to the fire that he be actually burnt."633  The charges were that he denied the material presence, condemned the adoration of the cross and taught that preaching was the priesthood’s most important duty.

Among other cases of burnings were John Badby, a tailor of Evesham, 1410, who met his awful fate chained inside of a cask; two London merchants, Richard Turming and John Claydon at Smithfield, 1415; William Taylor, a priest, in 1423 at Smithfield; William White at Norwich, 1428; Richard Hoveden, a London citizen, 1430; Thomas Bagley, a priest, in the following year; and in 1440, Richard Wyche, who had corresponded with Huss. Peter Payne, the principal of St. Edmund’s College, Oxford, took refuge in flight, 1417, and became a leader among the Hussites, taking a prominent part as their representative at the Council of Basel. According to Foxe there were, 1424–1480, 100 prosecutions for heresy in Norwich alone. The menace was considered so great that, in 1427, Richard Flemmyng, bishop of Lincoln, founded Lincoln College, Oxford, to counteract heresy. It was of this college that John Wesley was a fellow, the man who made a great breach in the Church in England.

The case of William Thorpe, who was tried in 1397 and again before Arundel, 1407, is of interest not only in itself, but for the statements that were made in the second trial about Wyclif. The archbishop, after accusing Thorpe of having travelled about in Northern England for 20 years, spreading the infection of heresy, declared that he was called of God to destroy the false sect to which the prisoner belonged, and pledged himself to "punish it so narrowly as not to leave a slip of you in this land."634  Thorpe’s assertion that Wyclif was the greatest clerk of his time evoked from Arundel the acknowledgment that he was indeed a great clerk and, by the consent of many, "a perfect liver," but that many of the conclusions of his learning were damned, as they ought to be.

Up to the close of the 14th century, a number of laymen in high position at court had favored Wycliffism, including Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Richard Stury and Sir John Clanvowe, all of the king’s council, Sir John Cheyne, speaker of the lower house, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Erpingham and also the earl of Salisbury.635  This support was for the most part withdrawn when persecution took an active form. With Sir John Oldcastle, otherwise known as Lord Cobham from his marriage with the heiress of the Cobham estate, it was different. He held firm to the end, encouraged the new preachers on his estates in Kent, and condemned the mass, auricular confession and the worship of images. Arundel’s court, before which he appeared after repeated citations, turned him over to the secular arm "to do him to death."  Oldcastle was imprisoned in the Tower, but made his escape and was at large for four years. In 1414, he was charged with being a party to an uprising of 20,000 Lollards against the king. Declared an outlaw, he fled to Wales, where he was seized three years later and taken to London to be hanged and burnt as a traitor and heretic, Dec. 15, 1417.636  John Foxe saw in him "the blessed martyr of Christ, the good Lord Cobham."

It is a pleasant relief from these trials and puttings-to-death to find the University of Oxford in 1406 bearing good testimony to the memory of its maligned yet distinguished dead, placing on record its high sense of his purity of life, power in preaching and diligence in studies. But fragrant as his memory was held in Oxford, at least secretly, parliament was fixed in its purpose to support the ecclesiastical authorities in stamping out his doctrine. In 1414, it ordered the civil officer to take the initiative in ferreting out heresy, and magistrates, from the Lord chancellor down, were called upon to use their power in extirpating "all manner of heresies, errors and lollardies."  This oath continued to be administered for two centuries, until Sir Edward Coke, Lord High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, refused to take it, with the name Lollard included, insisting that the principles of Lollardy had been adopted by the Church of England.637

Archbishop Chichele seemed as much bent as his predecessor, Arundel, on clearing the realm of all stain of heresy. In 1416 he enjoined his suffragans to inquire diligently twice a year for persons under suspicion and, where they did not turn them over to the secular court, to commit them to perpetual or temporary imprisonment, as the nature of the case might require. It was about the same time that an Englishman, at the trial of Huss in Constance, after a parallel had been drawn between Wyclif’s views and those of the Bohemian, said, "By my soul, if I were in your place I would abjure, for in England all the masters, one after another, albeit very good men, when suspected of Wicliffism, abjured at the command of the archbishop."638

Heresy also penetrated into Scotland, James Resby, one of Wyclif’s poor priests, being burnt at Perth, 1407, and another at Glasgow, 1422. In 1488, a Bohemian student at St. Andrews, Paul Craw, suffered the same penalty for heresy.639  The Scotch parliament of 1425 enjoined bishops to make search for heretics and Lollards, and in 1416 every master of arts at St. Andrews was obliged to take an oath to defend the Church against them.

Between 1450–1517, Lollardy was almost wholly restricted to the rural districts, and little mention is made of it in contemporary records. At Amersham, one of its centres, four were tried in 1462, and some suffered death, as William Barlowe in 1466, and John Goose a few years later. In 1507, three were burnt there, including William Tylsworth, the leading man of the congregation. At the crucial moment he was deserted by the members, and sixty of them joined in carrying fagots for his burning. This time of recantation continued to be known in the district as the Great Abjuration. The first woman to suffer martyrdom in England, Joan Broughton, was burnt at Smithfield, 1494, as was also her daughter, Lady Young. Nine Lollards made public penance at Coventry, 1486, but, as late as 1519, six men and one woman suffered death there. Foxe also mentions William Sweeting and John Brewster as being burnt at Smithfield, 1511, and John Brown at Ashford the same year. How extensively Wyclif’s views continued to be secretly held and his writings read is a matter of conjecture. Not till 1559 was the legislation directed against Lollardy repealed.

Our knowledge of the tenets and practices of the Lollards is derived from their Twelve Conclusions and other Lollard documents, the records of their trials and from the Repressor for over-much Blaming of the Clergy, an English treatise written by Dr. Pecock, bishop of Chichester, and finished 1455. Inclined to liberal thought, Bishop Pecock assumed a different attitude from Courtenay, Arundel and other prelates, and sought by calm reasoning to win the Lollards from their mistakes. He mentioned the designation of Known Men—1 Cor. 14:38, 2 Tim. 2:19—as being one of old standing for them, and he also calls them "the lay party" or "the Bible Men."  He proposed to consider their objections against 11 customs and institutions, such as the worship of images, pilgrimages, landed endowments for the church, degrees of rank among the clergy, the religious orders, the mass, oaths and war. Their tenet that no statute is valid which is not found in the Scriptures he also attempted to confute. In advance of his age, the bishop declared that fire, the sword and hanging should not be resorted to till the effort had been made "by clene wit to draw the Lollards into the consent of the true faith."  His sensible counsel brought him into trouble, and in 1457 he was tried by Archbishop Bouchier and offered the alternative of burning or public recantation. Pecock chose the latter, and made abjuration at St. Paul’s Cross before the archbishop and thousands of spectators. He was clothed in full episcopal robes, and delivered up 14 of his writings to be burnt.640  He was forced to resign his see, and in 1459 was, at the pope’s instance, remanded to close confinement in Thorney Abbey. His Repressor had been twice burnt in Oxford.

There seems to have been agreement among the Lollards in denying the material presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread and in condemning pilgrimages, the worship of images and auricular confession. They also held to the right of the people to read the Scriptures in their own tongue.641  The expression, God’s law, was widely current among them, and was opposed to the canon law and the decisions of the Church courts. Some denied purgatory, and even based their salvation on faith,642 the words, "Thy faith hath saved thee," being quoted for this view. Some denied that the marriage bond was dependent upon the priest’s act, and more the scriptural warrant and expediency of priestly celibacy.643

Lollardy was an anticipation of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and did something in the way of preparing the mind of the English people for that change. Professed by many clerics, it was emphatically a movement of laymen. In the early Reformation period, English Lutherans were at times represented as the immediate followers of Wyclif. Writing in 1523 to Erasmus, Tonstall, bishop of London, said of Lutheranism that "it was not a question of some pernicious novelty, but only that new arms were being added to the great band of Wycliffite heretics."644

§ 44. John Huss of Bohemia.

Across the seas in Bohemia, where the views of Wyclif were transplanted, they took deeper root than in England, and assumed an organized form. There, the English Reformer was called the fifth evangelist and, in its earlier stages, the movement went by the name of Wycliffism. It was only in the later periods that the names Hussites and Hussitism were substituted for Wycliffites and Wycliffism. Its chief spokesmen were John Huss and Jerome of Prag, who died at the stake at Constance for their avowed allegiance to Wyclif.

Through Huss, Prag became identified with a distinct stage in the history of religious progress. Distinguished among its own people as the city of St. John of Nepomuk, d. 1383, and in the history of armies as the residence of Wallenstein, the Catholic leader in the Thirty Years’ War, Prag is known in the Western world pre-eminently as the home of Huss. Through his noble advocacy, the principles enunciated by Wyclif became the subject of discussion in oecumenical councils, called forth armed crusades and furnished an imposing spectacle of steadfast resistance against religious oppression. Wycliffism passed out of view in England; but Hussitism, in spite of the most bitter persecution by the Jesuits, has trickled down in pure though small streamlets into the religious history of modern times, notably through the Moravians of Herrnhut.

During the reign of Charles IV., king of Bohemia and emperor, 1346–1378, the Bohemian kingdom entered upon the

[picture with title below]

John Huss of Bohemia

golden era of its literary and religious history. In 1344, the archbishopric of Prag was created, and the year 1347 witnessed an event of far more than local importance in the founding of the University of Prag. The first of the German universities, it was forthwith to enter upon the era of its brightest fame. The Czech and German languages were spoken side by side in the city, which was divided, at the close of the 14th century into five quarters. The Old Town, inhabited chiefly by Germans, included the Teyn church, the Carolinum, the Bethlehem chapel and the ancient churches of St. Michael and St. Gallus. Under the first archbishop of Prag, Arnest of Pardubitz, and his successor Ocko of Wlaschim, a brave effort was made to correct ecclesiastical abuses. In 1355, the demand for popular instruction was recognized by a law requiring parish priests to preach in the Czech. The popular preachers, Konrad of Waldhausen, d. 1369, Militz of Kremsier, d. 1874, and Matthias of Janow, d. 1394, made a deep impression. They quoted at length from the Scriptures, urged the habit of frequent communion, and Janow, as reported by Rokyzana at the Council of Basel, 1433, seems to have administered the cup to the laity.645  When John Huss entered upon his career in the university, he was breathing the atmosphere generated by these fervent evangelists, although in his writings he nowhere quotes them.

Close communication between England and Bohemia had been established with the marriage of the Bohemian king Wenzel’s sister, Anne of Luxemburg, to Richard II., 1382. She was a princess of cultivated tastes, and had in her possession copies of the Scriptures in Latin, Czech and German. Before this nuptial event, the philosophical faculty of the University of Prag, in 1367, ordered its bachelors to add to the instructions of its own professors the notebooks of Paris and Oxford doctors. Here and there a student sought out the English university, or even went so far as the Scotch St. Andrews. Among those who studied in Oxford was Jerome of Prag. Thus a bridge for the transmission of intellectual products was laid from Wyclif’s lecture hall to the capital on the Moldau.646  Wyclif’s views and writings were known in Bohemia at an early date. In 1381 a learned Bohemian theologian, Nicolas Biceps, was acquainted with his leading principles and made them a subject of attack. Huss, in his reply to the English Carmelite, John Stokes, 1411, declared that he and the members of the university had had Wyclif’s writings in their hands and been reading them for 20 years and more.647  Five copies are extant of these writings, made in Huss’ own hand, 1398. They were carried away in the Thirty Years’ War and are preserved in the Royal Library of Stockholm.

John Huss was born of Czech parents, 1369, at Husinec in Southern Bohemia. The word Hus means goose, and its distinguished bearer often applied the literal meaning to himself. For example, he wrote from Constance expressing the hope that the Goose might be delivered from prison, and he bade the Bohemians, "if they loved the Goose," to secure the king’s aid in having him released. Friends also referred to him in the same way.648  His parents were poor and, during his studies in the University of Prag, he supported himself by singing and manual services. He took the degree of bachelor of arts in 1393 and of divinity a year later. In 1396 he incepted as master of arts, and in 1398 began delivering lectures in the university. In 1402 he was chosen rector, filling the office for six months.

With his academic duties Huss combined the activity of a preacher, and in 1402 was appointed to the rectorship of the Chapel of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. This church, usually known as the Bethlehem church, was founded in 1391 by two wealthy laymen, with the stipulation that the incumbent should preach every Sunday and on festival days in Czech. It was made famous by its new rector as the little church, Anastasia, in Constantinople, was made famous in the fourth century by Gregory of Nazianzus, and by his discourses against the Arian heresy.

As early as 1402, Huss was regarded as the chief exponent and defender of Wycliffian views at the university. Protests, made by the clergy against their spread, took definite form in 1403, when the university authorities condemned the 24 articles placed under the ban by the London council of 1382. At the same time 21 other articles were condemned, which one of the university masters, John Hübner, a Pole, professed to have extracted from the Englishman’s writings. The decision forbade the preaching and teaching of these 45 articles. Among Wyclif’s warm defenders were Stanislaus of Znaim and Stephen Paletz. The subject which gave the most offence was his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

A distinct stage in the religious controversies agitating Bohemia was introduced by the election of Sbinko of Hasenburg to the see of Prag, 1403. In the earlier years of his administration Huss had the prelate’s confidence, held the post of synodal preacher and was encouraged to bring to the archbishop’s notice abuses that might be reformed. He was also appointed one of a commission of three to investigate the alleged miracles performed by the relic of Christ’s blood at Wylsnak and attracting great throngs. The report condemned the miracles as a fraud. The matter, however, became subject of discussion at the university and as far away as Vienna and Erfurt, the question assuming the form whether Christ left any of his blood on the earth. In a tract entitled the Glorification of all Christ’s Blood,649 Huss took the negative side. In spite of him and of the commission’s report, the miracles at Wylsnak went on, until, in 1552, a zealous Lutheran broke the pyx which held the relic and burnt it.

So extensive was the spread of Wycliffism that Innocent VII., in 1405, called upon Sbinko to employ severe measures to stamp it out and to seize Wyclif’s writings. The same year a Prag synod forbade the propaganda of Wyclif’s views and renewed the condemnation of the 45 articles. Three years later Huss—whose activity in denouncing clerical abuses and advocating Wyclif’s theology knew no abatement—was deposed from the position of synodal preacher. The same year the University authorities, at the archbishop’s instance, ordered that no public lectures should be delivered on Wyclif’s Trialogus and Dialogus and his doctrine of the Supper, and that no public disputation should concern itself with any of the condemned 45 articles.

The year following, 1409, occurred the emigration from the university of the three nations, the Bavarians, Saxons and Poles, the Czechs alone being left. The bitter feeling of the Bohemians had expressed itself in the demand for three votes, while the other nations were to be restricted to one each. When Wenzel consented to this demand, 2000 masters and scholars withdrew, the Germans going to Leipzig and founding the university of that city. The University of Prag was at once reduced to a provincial school of 500 students, and has never since regained its prestige.650

Huss, a vigorous advocate of the use of the Czech, was the recognized head of the national movement at the university, and chosen first rector under the new régime. If possible, his advocacy of Wyclif and his views was more bold than before. From this time forth, his Latin writings were filled with excerpts from the English teacher and teem with his ideas. Wyclif’s writings were sown broadcast in Bohemia. Huss himself had translated the Trialogus into Czech. Throngs were attracted by preaching. Wherever, wrote Huss in 1410, in city or town, in village or castle, the preacher of the holy truth made his appearance, the people flocked together in crowds and in spite of the clergy.651

Following a bull issued by Alexander V., Sbinko, in 1410, ordered Wyclif’s writings seized and burnt, and forbade all preaching in unauthorized places. The papal document called forth the protest of Huss and others, who appealed to John XXIII. by showing the absurdity of burning books on philosophy, logic and other non-theological subjects, a course that would condemn the writings of Aristotle and Origen to the flames. The protest was in vain and 200 manuscript copies of the Reformer’s writings were cast into the flames in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace amidst the tolling of the church bells.652

Two days after this grewsome act, the sentence of excommunication was launched against Huss and all who might persist in refusing to deliver up Wyclif’s writings. Defying the archbishop and the papal bull, Huss continued preaching in the Bethlehem chapel. The excitement among all classes was intense and men were cudgelled on the streets for speaking against the Englishman. Satirical ballads were sung, declaring that the archbishop did not know what was in the books he had set fire to. Huss’ sermons, far from allaying the commotion, were adapted to increase it.

Huss had no thought of submission and, through handbills, announced a defence of Wyclif’s treatise on the Trinity before the university, July 27. But his case had now passed from the archbishop’s jurisdiction to the court of the curia, which demanded the offender’s appearance in person, but in vain. In spite of the appeals of Wenzel and many Bohemian nobles who pledged their honor that he was no heretic, John XXIII. put the case into the hands of Cardinal Colonna, afterwards Martin V., who launched the ban against Huss for his refusal to comply with the canonical citation.

Colonna’s sentence was read from all the pulpits of Prag except two. But the offensive preaching continued, and Sbinko laid the city under the interdict, which, however, was withdrawn on the king’s promise to root out heresy from his realm. Wenzel gave orders that "Master Huss, our beloved and faithful chaplain, be allowed to preach the Word of God in peace."  According to the agreement, Sbinko was also to write to the pope assuring him that diligent inquisition had been made, and no traces of heresy were to be found in Bohemia. This letter is still extant, but was never sent.

Early in September, 1411, Huss wrote to John XXIII. protesting his full agreement with the Church and asking that the citation to appear before the curia be revoked. In this communication and in a special letter to the cardinals653 Huss spoke of the punishment for heresy and insubordination. He, however, wrote to John that he was bound to speak the truth, and that he was ready to suffer a dreadful death rather than to declare what would be contrary to the will of Christ and his Church. He had been defamed, and it was false that he had expressed himself in favor of the remanence of the material substance of the bread after the words of institution, and that a priest in mortal sin might not celebrate the eucharist. Sbinko died Sept. 28, 1411. At this juncture the excitement was increased by the arrival in Prag of John Stokes, a Cambridge man, and well known in England as an uncompromising foe of Wycliffism. He had come with a delegation, sent by the English king, to arrange an alliance with Sigismund. Stokes’ presence aroused the expectation of a notable clash, but the Englishman, although he ventilated his views privately, declined Huss’ challenge to a public disputation on the ground that he was a political representative of a friendly nation.654

The same year, 1411, John XXIII. called Europe to a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the defender of Gregory XII., and promised indulgence to all participating in it, whether by personal enlistment or by gifts. Tiem, dean of Passau, appointed preacher of the holy war, made his way to Prag and opened the sale of indulgences. Chests were placed in the great churches, and the traffic was soon in full sway. As Wyclif, thirty years before, in his Cruciata, had lifted up his voice against the crusade in Flanders, so now Huss denounced the religious war and denied the pope’s right to couple indulgences with it. He filled the Bethlehem chapel with denunciations of the sale and, in a public disputation, took the ground that remission of sins comes through repentance alone and that the pope has no authority to seize the secular sword. Many of his paragraphs were taken bodily from Wyclif’s works on the Church and on the Absolution from guilt and punishment.655  Huss was supported by Jerome of Prag.

Popular opinion was on the side of these leaders, but from this time Huss’ old friends, Stanislaus of Znaim and Stephen Paletz, walked no more with him. Under the direction of Wok of Waldstein, John’s two bulls, bearing on the crusade and offering indulgence, were publicly burnt, after being hung at the necks of two students, dressed as harlots, and drawn through the streets in a cart.656  Huss was still writing that he abhorred the errors ascribed to him, but the king could not countenance the flagrant indignity shown to the papal bulls, and had three men of humble position executed, Martin, John and Stanislaus. They had cried out in open church that the bulls were lies, as Huss had proved. They were treated as martyrs, and their bodies taken to the Bethlehem chapel, where the mass for martyrs was said over them.

To reaffirm its orthodoxy, the theological faculty renewed its condemnation of the 45 articles and added 6 more, taken from Huss’ public utterances. Two of the latter bore upon preaching.657  The clergy of Prag appealed to be protected "from the ravages of the wolf, the Wycliffist Hus, the despiser of the keys," and the curia pronounced the greater excommunication. The heretic was ordered seized, delivered over to the archbishop, and the Bethlehem chapel razed to the ground. Three stones were to be hurled against Huss’ dwelling, as a sign of perpetual curse. Thus the Reformer had against him the archbishop, the university, the clergy and the curia, but popular feeling remained in his favor and prevented the papal sentence from being carried out. The city was again placed under the interdict. Huss appealed from the pope and, because a general council’s action is always uncertain and at best tardy, looked at once to the tribunal of Christ. He publicly asserted that the pope was exercising prerogatives received from the devil.

To allay the excitement, Wenzel induced Huss to withdraw from the city. This was in 1412. In later years Huss expressed doubts as to whether he had acted wisely in complying. He was moved not only by regard for the authority of his royal protector but by sympathy for the people whom the interdict was depriving of spiritual privileges. Had he defied the sentence and refused compliance with the king’s request, it is probable he would have lost the day and been silenced in prison or in the flames in his native city. In this case, the interest of his career would have been restricted to the annals of his native land, and no place would have been found for him in the general history of Europe. So Huss went into exile, but there was still some division among the ecclesiastical authorities of the kingdom over the merits of Wycliffism, and a national synod, convoked February 13, 1413, to take measures to secure peace, adjourned without coming to a decision.

Removed from Prag, Huss was indefatigable in preaching and writing. Audiences gathered to hear him on the marketplaces and in the fields and woods. Lords in their strong castles protected him. Following Wyclif, he insisted upon preaching as the indefeasible right of the priest, and wrote that to cease from preaching, in obedience to the mandate of pope or archbishop, would be to disobey God and imperil his own salvation.658  He also kept in communication with the city by visiting it several times and by writing to the Bethlehem chapel, the university and the municipal synod. This correspondence abounds in quotations from the Scriptures, and Huss reminds his friends that Christ himself was excommunicated as a malefactor and crucified. No help was to be derived from the saints. Christ’s example and his salvation are the sufficient sources of consolation and courage. The high priests, scribes, Pharisees, Herod and Pilate condemned the Truth and gave him over to death, but he rose from the tomb and gave in his stead twelve other preachers. So he would do again. What fear, he wrote, "shall part us from God, or what death?  What shall we lose if for His sake we forfeit wealth, friends, the world’s honors and our poor life?... It is better to die well than to live badly. We dare not sin to avoid the punishment of death. To end in grace the present life is to be banished from misery. Truth is the last conqueror. He wins who is slain, for no adversity "hurts him if no iniquity has dominion over him."  In this strain he wrote again and again. The "bolts of anti-christ," he said, could not terrify him, and should not terrify the "elect of Prag."659

Of the extent of Huss’ influence during this period he bore witness at Constance when, in answer to D’Ailly, he said:

I have stated that I came here of my own free will. If I had been unwilling to come, neither that king [referring to Wenzel] nor this king here [referring to Sigismund] would have been able to force me to come, so numerous and so powerful are the Bohemian nobles who love me, and within whose castles I should have been able to lie concealed.

And when D’Ailly rebuked the statement as effrontery, John of Chlum replied that it was even as the prisoner said, "There are numbers of great nobles who love him and have strong castles where they could keep him as long as they wished, even against both those kings."

The chief product of this period of exile was Huss’ work on the Church, De ecclesia, the most noted of all his writings. It was written in view of the national synod held in 1413, and was sent to Prag and read in the Bethlehem chapel, July 8. Of this tractate Cardinal D’Ailly said at the Council of Constance that by an infinite number of arguments, it combated the pope’s plenary authority as much as the Koran, the book of the damned Mohammed, combated the Catholic faith.660

In this volume, next to Wyclif’s, the most famous treatment on the Church since Cyprian’s work, De ecclesia, and Augustine’s writings against the Donatists, Huss defined the Church and the power of the keys, and then proceeds to defend himself against the fulminations of Alexander V. and John XXIII. and to answer the Prag theologians, Stephen Paletz and Stanislaus of Znaim, who had deserted him. The following are some of its leading positions.

The Holy Catholic Church is the body or congregation of all the predestinate, the dead, the living and those yet to be.661  The term ’catholic’ means universal. The unity of the Church is a unity of predestination and of blessedness, a unity of faith, charity and grace. The Roman pontiff and the cardinals are not the Church. The Church can exist without cardinals and a pope, and in fact for hundreds of years there were no cardinals.662  As for the position Christ assigned to Peter, Huss affirmed that Christ called himself the Rock, and the Church is founded on him by virtue of predestination. In view of Peter’s clear and positive confession, "the Rock—Petra — said to Peter—Petro — ’I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, that is, a confessor of the true Rock which Rock I am.’   And upon the Rock, that is, myself, I will build this Church."  Thus Huss placed himself firmly on the ground taken by Augustine in his Retractations. Peter never was the head of the Holy Catholic Church.663

He thus set himself clearly against the whole ultramontane theory of the Church and its head. The Roman bishop, he said, was on an equality with other bishops until Constantine made him pope. It was then that he began to usurp authority. Through ignorance and the love of money the pope may err, and has erred, and to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.664  There have been depraved and heretical popes. Such was Joan, whose case Huss dwelt upon at length and refers to at least three times. Such was also the case of Liberius, who is also treated at length. Joan had a son and Liberius was an Arian.665

In the second part of the De ecclesia, Huss pronounced the bulls of Alexander and John XXIII. anti-christian, and therefore not to be obeyed. Alexander’s bull, prohibiting preaching in Bohemia except in the cathedral, parish and monastic churches was against the Gospel, for Christ preached in houses, on the seaside, and in synagogues, and bade his disciples to go into all the world and preach. No papal excommunication may be an impediment to doing what Christ did and taught to be done.666

Turning to the pope’s right to issue indulgences, the Reformer went over the ground he had already traversed in his replies to John’s two bulls calling for a crusade against Ladislaus. He denied the pope’s right to go to war or to make appeal to the secular sword. If John was minded to follow Christ, he should pray for his enemies and say, "My kingdom is not of this world."  Then the promised wisdom would be given which no enemies would be able to gainsay. The power to forgive sins belongs to no mortal man anymore than it belonged to the priest to whom Christ sent the lepers. The lepers were cleansed before they reached the priest. Indeed, many popes who conceded the most ample indulgences were themselves damned.667  Confession of the heart alone is sufficient for the soul’s salvation where the applicant is truly penitent.

In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church visible, and in setting aside the sacerdotal power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke with the accepted theory of Western Christendom; he committed the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. These fundamental ideas, however, were not original with the Bohemian Reformer. He took them out of Wyclif’s writings, and he also incorporated whole paragraphs of those writings in his pages. Teacher never had a more devoted pupil than the English Reformer had in Huss. The first three chapters of De ecclesia are little more than a series of extracts from Wyclif’s treatise on the Church. What is true of this work is also true of most of Huss’ other Latin writings.668  Huss, however, was not a mere copyist. The ideas he got from Wyclif he made thoroughly his own. When he quoted Augustine, Bernard, Jerome and other writers, he mentioned them by name. If he did not mention Wyclif, when he took from him arguments and entire paragraphs, a good reason can be assigned for his silence. It was well known that it was Wyclif’s cause which he was representing and Wycliffian views that he was defending, and Wyclif’s writings were wide open to the eye of members of the university faculties. He made no secret of following Wyclif, and being willing to die for the views Wyclif taught. As he wrote to Richard Wyche, he was thankful that "under the power of Jesus Christ, Bohemia had received so much good from the blessed land of England."669

The Bohemian theologian was fully imbued with Wyclif’s heretical spirit. The great Council of Constance was about to meet. Before that tribunal Huss was now to be judged.

§ 45. Huss at Constance.

Thou wast their Rock, their fortress and their might;

Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;

Thou, in the darkness drear, their light of light. Alleluia.

The great expectations aroused by the assembling of the Council of Constance included the settlement of the disturbance which was rending the kingdom of Bohemia. It was well understood that measures were to be taken against the heresy which had invaded Western Christendom. In two letters addressed to Conrad, archbishop of Prag, Gerson bore witness that, in learned centres outside of Bohemia, the names of Wyclif and Huss were indissolubly joined. Of all Huss’ errors, wrote the chancellor, "the proposition is the most perilous that a man who is living in deadly sin may not have authority and dominion over Christian men. And this proposition, as is well known, has passed down to Huss from Wyclif."670

To Constance Sigismund, king of the Romans and heir of the Bohemian crown, turned for relief from the embarrassment of Hussitism; and from Lombardy he sent a deputation to summon Huss to attend the council at the same time promising him safe conduct. The Reformer expressed his readiness to go, and had handbills posted in Prag announcing his decision. Writing to Wenzel and his queen, he reaffirmed his readiness, and stated he was willing to suffer the penalty appointed for heretics, should he be condemned.671

Under date of Sept. 1, 1414, Huss wrote to Sigismund that he was ready to go to Constance "under safe-conduct of your protection, the Lord Most High being my defender."  A week later, the king replied, expressing confidence that, by his appearance, all imputation of heresy would be removed from the kingdom of Bohemia.

Huss set out on the journey Oct. 11, 1414, and reached Constance Nov. 3. He was accompanied by the Bohemian nobles, John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba and Henry Lacembok. With John of Chlum was Mladenowitz, who did an important service by preserving Huss’ letters and afterwards editing them with notes. Huss’ correspondence, from this time on, deserves a place in the choice autobiographical literature of the Christian centuries. For pathos, simplicity of expression and devotion to Christ, the writings of the Middle Ages do not furnish anything superior.

In a letter, written to friends in Bohemia on the eve of his departure, Huss expressed his expectation of being confronted at Constance by bishops, doctors, princes and canons regular, yea, by more foes than the Redeemer himself had to face. He prayed that, if his death would contribute aught to God’s glory, he might be enabled to meet it without sinful fear. A second letter was not to be opened, except in case of his death. It was written to Martin, a disciple whom the writer says he had known from childhood. He binds Martin to fear God, to be careful how he listened to the confessions of women, and not to follow him in any frivolity he had been guilty of in other days, such as chess-playing. Persecution was about to do its worst because he had attacked the greed and incontinence of the clergy. He willed to Martin his gray cloak and bade him, in case of his death, give to the rector his white gown and to his faithful servant, George, a guinea.

The route was through Nürnberg. Along the way Huss was met by throngs of curious people. He sat down in the inns with the local priests, talking over his case with them. At Nürnberg the magistrates and burghers invited him to meet them at an inn. Deeming it unnecessary to go out of its way to meet Sigismund, who was at Spires, the party turned its face directly to the lake of Constance. Arrived on its upper shore, they sent back most of their horses for sale, a wise measure, as it proved, in view of the thousands of animals that had to be cared for at Constance.672

Arrived at Constance, Huss took lodgings with a "second widow of Sarepta," who had kept the bakery to the White Pigeon. The house is still shown. His coming was a great sensation, and he entered the town, riding through a large crowd. The day after, John of Chlum and Baron Lacembok called upon pope John XXIII., who promised that no violence should be done their friend, nay, even though he had killed the pope’s own brother. He granted him leave to go about the city, but forbade him to attend high mass. Although he was under sentence of excommunication, Huss celebrated mass daily in his own lodgings. The cardinals were incensed that a man charged openly with heresy should have freedom, and whatever misgivings Huss had had of unfair dealing were to be quickly justified. Individual liberty had no rights before the bar of an ecclesiastical court in the 15th century when a heretic was under accusation. Before the month had passed, Huss’ imprisonment began, a pretext being found in an alleged attempt to escape from the city concealed in a hay-wagon.673  On November 28, the two bishops of Trent and Augsburg entered his lodgings with a requisition for him to appear before the cardinals. The house was surrounded by soldiers. Huss, after some hesitation, yielded and left, with the hostess standing at the stairs in tears. It was the beginning of the end.

After a short audience with the cardinals, the prisoner was taken away by a guard of soldiers, and within a week he was securely immured in the dungeon of the Dominican convent. Preparations had been going on for several days to provide the place with locks, bolts and other strong furnishings.

In this prison, Huss languished for three months. His cell was hard by the latrines. Fever and vomiting set in, and it seemed likely they would quickly do their dismal work. John XXIII. deserves some credit for having sent his physician, who applied clysters, as Huss himself wrote. To sickness was added the deprivation of books, including the Bible. For two months we have no letters from him. They begin again, with January, 1415, and give us a clear insight into the indignities to which he was exposed and the misery he suffered. These letters were sent by the gaoler.

What was Sigismund doing?  He had issued the letter of safe-conduct, Oct. 18. On the day before his arrival in Constance, Dec. 24th, John of Chlum posted up a notice on the cathedral, protesting that the king’s agreement had been treated with defiance by the cardinals. Sigismund professed to be greatly incensed, and blustered, but this was the end of it. He was a time-serving prince who was easily persuaded to yield to the arguments of such ecclesiastical figures as D’Ailly, who insisted that little matters like Huss’ heresy should not impede the reformation of the church, the council’s first concern, and that error unreproved was error countenanced.674  All good churchmen prayed his Majesty might not give way to the lies and subtleties of the Wycliffists. The king of Aragon wrote that Huss should be killed off at once, without having the formality of a hearing.

During his imprisonment in the Black Friars’ convent, Huss wrote for his gaoler, Robert, tracts on the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, Mortal Sin and Marriage. Of the 13 letters preserved from this time, the larger part were addressed to John of Chlum, his trusty friend. Some of the letters were written at midnight, and some on tattered scraps of paper.675  In this correspondence four things are prominent: Huss’ reliance upon the king and his word of honor, his consuming desire to be heard in open council, the expectation of possible death and his trust in God. He feared sentence would be passed before opportunity was given him to speak with the king. "If this is his honor, it is his own lookout," he wrote.676

In the meantime the council had committed the matter of heresy to a commission, with D’Ailly at its head. It plied Huss with questions, and presented heretical articles taken from his writings. Stephen Paletz, his apostate friend, badgered him more than all the rest. His request for a "proctor and advocate" was denied. The thought of death was continually before him. But, as the Lord had delivered Jonah from the whale’s belly, and Daniel from the lions, so, he believed, God would deliver him, if it were expedient.

Upon John XXIII.’s flight, fears were felt that Huss might be delivered by his friends, and the keys of the prison were put into the hands of Sigismund. On March 24th the bishop of Constance had the prisoner chained and transferred by boat to his castle, Gottlieben. There he had freedom to walk about in his chains by day, but he was handcuffed and bound to the wall at night. The imprisonment at Gottlieben lasted seventy-three days, from March 24th-June 5th. If Huss wrote any letters during that time none have survived. It was a strange freak of history that the runaway pontiff, on being seized and brought back to Constance, was sent to Gottlieben to be fellow-prisoner with Huss, the one, the former head of Christendom, condemned for almost every known misdemeanor; the other, the preacher whose life was, by the testimony of all contemporaries, almost without a blemish. The criminal pope was to be released after a brief confinement and elevated to an exalted dignity; the other was to be contemned as a religious felon and burnt as an expiation to orthodox theology.

At Gottlieben, Huss suffered from hemorrhage, headache and other infirmities, and at times was on the brink of starvation. A new commission, appointed April 6, with D’Ailly at its head, now took up seriously the heresy of Huss and Wyclif, whom the council coupled together.677  Huss’ friends had not forgotten him, and 250 Moravian and Bohemian nobles signed a remonstrance at Prag, May 13, which they sent to Sigismund, protesting against the treatment "the beloved master and Christian preacher" was receiving, and asked that he might be granted a public hearing and allowed to return home. Upon a public hearing Huss staked everything, and with such a hearing in view he had gone to Constance.

In order to bring the prisoner within more convenient reach of the commission, he was transferred in the beginning of June to a third prison,—the Franciscan friary. From June 5–8 public hearings were had in the refectory, the room being crowded with cardinals, archbishops, bishops, theologians and persons of lesser degree. Cardinal D’Ailly was present and took the leading part as head of the commission. The action taken May 4th condemning 260 errors and heresies extracted from Wyclif’s works was adapted to rob Huss of whatever hope of release he still indulged. Charges were made against him of holding that Christ is in the consecrated bread only as the soul is in the body, that Wyclif was a good Christian, that salvation was not dependent upon the pope and that no one could be excommunicated except by God Himself. He also had expressed the hope his soul might be where Wyclif’s was.678  When a copy of his book on the Church was shown, they shouted, "Burn it."  Whenever Huss attempted to explain his positions, he was met with shouts, "Away with your sophistries. Say, Yes or No."  The Englishman, John Stokes, who was present, declared that it seemed to him as if he saw Wyclif himself in bodily form sitting before him.

On the morning of June 7th, Huss exclaimed that God and his conscience were on his side. But, Said D’Ailly, "we cannot go by your conscience when we have other evidence, and the evidence of Gerson himself against you, the most renowned doctor in Christendom."679  D’Ailly and an Englishman attempted to show the logical connection of the doctrine of remanence with realism. When Huss replied that such reasoning was the logic of schoolboys, another Englishman had the courage to add, Huss is quite right: what have these quibbles to do with matters of faith?  Sigismund advised Huss to submit, saying that he had told the commission he would not defend any heretic who was determined to stick to his heresy. He also declared that, so long as a single heretic remained, he was ready to light the fire himself with his own hand to burn him. He, however, promised that Huss should have a written list of charges the following day.

That night, as Huss wrote, he suffered from toothache, vomiting, headache and the stone. On June 8th, 39 distinct articles were handed to him, 26 of which were drawn from his work on the Church. When he demurred at some of the statements, D’Ailly had the pertinent sections from the original writings read. When they came to the passage that no heretic should be put to death, the audience shouted in mockery. Huss went on to argue from the case of Saul, after his disobedience towards Agag, that kings in mortal sin have no right to authority. Sigismund happened to be at the moment at the window, talking to Frederick of Bavaria. The prelates, taking advantage of the avowal, cried out, "Tell the king Huss is now attacking him."  The emperor turned and said, "John Huss, no one lives without sin."  D’Ailly suggested that the prisoner, not satisfied with pulling down the spiritual fabric, was attempting to hurl down the monarchy likewise. In an attempt to break the force of his statement, Huss asked why they had deposed pope John. Sigismund replied that Baldassarre was real pope, but was deposed for his notorious crimes.

The 39 articles included the heretical assertions that the Church is the totality of the elect, that a priest must continue preaching, even though he be under sentence of excommunication, and that whoso is in mortal sin cannot exercise authority. Huss expressed himself ready to revoke statements that might be proved untrue by Scripture and good arguments, but that he would not revoke any which were not so proved. When Sigismund remonstrated, Huss appealed to the judgment bar of God. At the close of the proceedings, D’Ailly declared that a compromise was out of the question. Huss must abjure.680

As Huss passed out in the charge of the archbishop of Riga, John of Chlum had the courage to reach out his hand to him. The act reminds us of the friendly words Georg of Frundsberg spoke to Luther at Worms. Huss was most thankful, and a day or two afterward wrote how delightful it had been to see Lord John, who was not ashamed to hold out his hand to a poor, abject heretic, a prisoner in irons and the butt of all men’s tongues. In addressing the assembly after Huss’ departure, Sigismund argued against accepting submission from the prisoner who, if released, would go back to Bohemia and sow his errors broadcast. "When I was a boy," he said, "I remember the first sprouting of this sect, and see what it is today. We should make an end of the master one day, and when I return from my journey we will deal with his pupil. What’s his name?"  The reply was, Jerome. Yes, said the king, I mean Jerome.

Huss, as he himself states, was pestered in prison by emissaries who sought to entrap him, or to "hold out baskets" for him to escape in. Some of the charges made against him he ascribes to false witnesses. But many of the charges were not false, and it is difficult to understand how he could expect to free himself by a public statement, in view of the solemn condemnation passed upon the doctrines of Wyclif. He was convinced that none of the articles brought against him were contrary to the Gospel of Christ, but canon law ruled at councils, not Scripture. A doctor told him that if the council should affirm he had only one eye, he ought to accept the verdict. Huss replied if the whole world were to tell him so, he would not say so and offend his conscience, and he appealed to the case of Eleazar in the Book of the Maccabees, who would not make a lying confession.681  But he was setting his house in order. He wrote affecting messages to his people in Bohemia and to John of Chlum. He urged the Bohemians to hear only priests of good report, and especially those who were earnest students of Holy Writ. Martin he adjured to read the Bible diligently, especially the New Testament.

On June 15th, the council took the far-reaching action forbidding the giving of the cup to laymen. This action Huss condemned as wickedness and madness, on the ground that it was a virtual condemnation of Christ’s example and command. To Hawlik, who had charge of the Bethlehem chapel, he wrote, urging him not to withhold the cup from the laity.682  He saw indisputable proof that the council was fallible. One day it kissed the feet of John, as a paragon of virtue, and called him "most holy," and the next it condemned him as "a shameful homicide, a sodomite, a simoniac and a heretic."  He quoted the proverb, common among the Swiss, that a generation would not suffice to cleanse Constance from the sins the body had committed in that city.

The darkness deepened around the prisoner. On June 24th, by the council’s orders, his writings were to be burnt, even those written in Czech which, almost in a tone of irony, as he wrote, the councillors had not seen and could not read. He bade his friends not be terrified, for Jeremiah’s books, which the prophet had written at the Lord’s direction, were burnt.

His affectionate interest in the people of "his glorious country" and in the university on the Moldau, and his feeling of gratitude to the friends who had supported him continued unabated. A dreadful death was awaiting him, but he recalled the sufferings of Apostles and the martyrs, and especially the agonies endured by Christ, and he believed he would be purged of his sins through the flames. D’Ailly had replied to him on one occasion by peremptorily saying he should obey the decision of 50 doctors of the Church and retract without asking any questions. "A wonderful piece of information," he wrote, "As if the virgin, St. Catherine, ought to have renounced the truth and her faith in the Lord because 50 philosophers opposed her."683  In one of his last letters, written to his alma mater of Prag, he declared he had not recanted a single article.

On the first day of July, he was approached by the archbishops of Riga and Ragusa and 6 other prelates, who still had a hope of drawing from him a recantation. A written declaration made by Huss in reply showed the hope vain.684  Another effort was made July 5th, Cardinals D’Ailly and Zabarella and bishop Hallum of Salisbury being of the party of visiting prelates. Huss closed the discussion by declaring that he would rather be burnt a thousand times than abjure, for by abjuring he said he would offend those whom he had taught.685

Still another deputation approached him, his three friends John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba and Lacembok, and four bishops. They were sent by Sigismund. As a layman, John of Chlum did not venture to give Huss advice, but bade him, if he felt sure of his cause, rather than to be against God, to stand fast, even to death. One of the bishops asked whether he presumed to be wiser than the whole council. No, was the reply, but to retract he must be persuaded of his errors out of the Scriptures. "An obstinate heretic!" exclaimed the bishops. This was the final interview in private. The much-desired opportunity was at hand for him to stand before the council as a body, and it was his last day on earth.

After seven months of dismal imprisonment and deepening disappointment, on Saturday, July 6th, Huss was conducted to the cathedral. It was 6 A. M., and he was kept waiting outside the doors until the celebration of mass was completed. He was then admitted to the sacred edifice, but not to make a defence, as he had come to Constance hoping to do. He was to listen to sentence pronounced upon him as an ecclesiastical outcast and criminal. He was placed in the middle of the church on a high stool, set there specially for him.686  The bishop of Lodi preached from Rom. 6:6, "that the body of sin may be destroyed."  The extermination of heretics was represented as one of the works most pleasing to God, and the preacher used the time-worn illustrations from the rotten piece of flesh, the little spark which is in danger of turning into a great flame and the creeping cancer. The more virulent the poison the swifter should be the application of the cauterizing iron. In the style of Bossuet in a later age, before Louis XIV., he pronounced upon Sigismund the eulogy that his name would be coupled with song and triumph for all time for his efforts to uproot schism and destroy heresy.

The commission, which included Patrick, bishop of Cork, appointed to pronounce the sentence, then ascended the pulpit. All expressions of feeling with foot or hand, all vociferation or attempt to start disputation were solemnly forbidden on pain of excommunication. 30 articles were then read, which were pronounced as heretical, seditious and offensive to pious ears. The sentence coupled in closest relation Wyclif and Huss.687  The first of the articles charged the prisoner with holding that the Church is the totality of the predestinate, and the last that no civil lord or prelate may exercise authority who is in mortal sin. Huss begged leave to speak, but was hushed up.

The sentence ran that "the holy council, having God only before its eye, condemns John Huss to have been and to be a true, real and open heretic, the disciple not of Christ but of John Wyclif, one who in the University of Prag and before the clergy and people declared Wyclif to be a Catholic and an evangelical doctor—vir catholicus et doctor evangelicus."  It ordered him degraded from the sacerdotal order, and, not wishing to exceed the powers committed unto the Church, it relinquished him to the secular authority.

Not a dissenting voice was lifted against the sentence. Even John Gerson voted for it. One incident has left its impress upon history, although it is not vouched for by a contemporary. It is said that, when Huss began to speak, he looked at Sigismund, reminding him of the safe-conduct. The king who sat in state and crowned, turned red, but did not speak.

The order of degradation was carried out by six bishops, who disrobed the condemned man of his vestments and destroyed his tonsure. They then put on his head a cap covered over with pictures of the devil and inscribed with the word, heresiarch, and committed his soul to the devil. With upturned eyes, Huss exclaimed, "and I commit myself to the most gracious Lord Jesus."

The old motto that the Church does not want blood—ecclesia non sitit sanguinem — was in appearance observed, but the authorities knew perfectly well what was to be the last scene when they turned Huss over to Sigismund. "Go, take him and do to him as a heretic" were the words with which the king remanded the prisoner to the charge of Louis, the Count Palatine. A guard of a thousand armed men was at hand. The streets were thronged with people. As Huss passed on, he saw the flames on the public square which were consuming his books. For fear of the bridge’s breaking down, the greater part of the crowd was not allowed to cross over to the place of execution, called the Devil’s Place. Huss’ step had been firm, but now, with tears in his eyes, he knelt down and prayed. The paper cap falling from his head, the crowd shouted that it should be put on, wrong side front.

It was midday. The prisoner’s hands were fastened behind his back, and big neck bound to the stake by a chain. On the same spot sometime before, so the chronicler notes, a cardinal’s worn-out mule had been buried. The straw and wood were heaped up around Huss’ body to the chin, and rosin sprinkled upon them. The offer of life was renewed if he would recant. He refused and said, "I shall die with joy to-day in the faith of the gospel which I have preached."  When Richental, who was standing by, suggested a confessor, he replied, "There is no need of one. I have no mortal sin."  At the call of bystanders, they turned his face away from the East, and as the flames arose, he sang twice, Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me. The wind blew the fire into the martyr’s face, and his voice was hushed. He died, praying and singing. To remove, if possible, all chance of preserving relics from the scene, Huss’ clothes and shoes were thrown into the merciless flames. The ashes were gathered up and cast into the Rhine.

While this scene was being enacted, the council was going on with the transaction of business as if the burning without the gates were only a common event. Three weeks later, it announced that it had done nothing more pleasing to God than to punish the Bohemian heretic. For this act it has been chiefly remembered by after generations.

Not one of the members of the Council of Constance, after its adjournment, so far as we know, uttered a word of protest against the sentence. No pope or oecumenical synod since has made any apology for it. Nor has any modern Catholic historian gone further than to indicate that in essential theological doctrines Huss was no heretic, though his sentence was strictly in accord with the principles of the canon law. So long as the dogmas of an infallible Church organization and an infallible pope continue to be strictly held, no apology can be expected. It is of the nature of Protestant Christianity to confess wrongs and, as far as is possible, make reparation for them. When the Massachusetts court discovered that it had erred in the case of the Salem witchcraft in 1692, it made full confession, and offered reparation to the surviving descendants; and Judge Sewall, one of the leaders in the prosecution, made a moving public apology for the mistake he had committed. The same court recalled the action against Roger Williams. In 1903, the Protestants of France reared a monument at Geneva in expiation of Calvin’s part in passing sentence upon Servetus. Luther, in his Address to the German Nobility, called upon the Roman Church to confess it had done wrong in burning Huss. That innocent man’s blood still cries from the ground.

Huss died for his advocacy of Wycliffism. The sentence passed by the council coupled the two names together.688  The 25th of the 30 Articles condemned him for taking offence at the reprobation of the 45 articles, ascribed to Wyclif. How much this article was intended to cover cannot be said. It is certain that Huss did not formally deny the doctrine of transubstantiation, although he was charged with that heresy. Nor was he distinctly condemned for urging the distribution of the cup to the laity, which he advocated after the council had positively forbidden it. His only offence was his definition of the Church and his denial of the infallibility of the papacy and its necessity for the being of the Church. These charges constitute the content of all the 30 articles except the 25th. Luther said brusquely but truly, that Huss committed no more atrocious sin than to declare that a Roman pontiff of impious life is not the head of the Church catholic.689

John Huss struck at the foundations of the hierarchical system. He interpreted our Lord’s words to Peter in a way that was fatal to the papal theory of Leo, Hildebrand and Innocent III.690  His conception of the Church, which he drew from Wyclif, contains the kernel of an entirely new system of religious authority. He made the Scriptures the final source of appeal, and exalted the authority of the conscience above pope, council and canon law as an interpreter of truth. He carried out these views in practice by continuing to preach in spite of repeated sentences of excommunication, and attacking the pope’s right to call a crusade. If the Church be the company of the elect, as Huss maintained, then God rules in His people and they are sovereign. With such assertions, the teachings of Thomas Aquinas were set aside.

The enlightened group of men who shared the spirit of Gerson and D’Ailly did not comprehend Wycliffism, for Wycliffism was a revolt against an alleged divine institution, the visible Church. Gerson denied that the appeal to conscience was an excuse for refusing to submit to ecclesiastical authority. Faith, with him, was agreement with the Church’s system. The chancellor not only voted for Huss’ condemnation, but declared he had busily worked to bring the sentence about. Nineteen articles he drew from Huss’ work on the Church, he pronounced "notoriously heretical."  However, at a later time, in a huff over the leniency shown to Jean Petit, he stated that if Huss had been given an advocate, he would never have been convicted.691

In starting out for Constance, Huss knew well the punishment appointed for heretics. The amazing thing is that he should ever have thought it possible to clear himself by a public address before the council. In view of the procedure of the Inquisition, the council showed him unheard-of consideration in allowing him to appear in the cathedral. This was done out of regard for Sigismund, who was on the eve of his journey to Spain to induce Benedict of Luna to abdicate.692

As for the safe-conduct—salvo-conductus — issued by Sigismund, all that can be said is that a king did not keep his word. He was more concerned to be regarded as the patron of a great council than to protect a Bohemian preacher, his future subject. Writing with reference to the solemn pledge, Huss said, "Christ deceives no man by a safe-conduct. What he pledges he fulfils. Sigismund has acted deceitfully throughout."693  The plea, often made, that the king had no intention of giving Huss an unconditional pledge of protection, is in the face of the documentary evidence. In September, 1415, the Council of Constance took formal notice of the criticisms floating about that in Huss’ execution a solemn promise had been broken, and announced that no brief of safe-conduct in the case of a heretic is binding. No pledge is to be observed which is prejudicial to the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical jurisdiction.694

The safe-conduct was in the ordinary form, addressed to all the princes and subjects of the empire, ecclesiastical and secular, and informing them that Huss should be allowed to pass, remain and return without impediment. Jerome, according to the sentence passed upon him by the council, declared that the safe-conduct had been grossly violated, and when, in 1433, the legates of the Council of Basel attempted to throw the responsibility for Huss’ condemnation on false witnesses, so called, Rokyzana asked how the Council of Constance could have been moved by the Holy Ghost if it were controlled by perjurers, and showed that the violation of the safe-conduct had not been forgotten. When the Bohemian deputies a year earlier had come to Basel, they demanded the most carefully prepared briefs of safe-conduct from the Council of Basel, the cities of Eger and Basel and from Sigismund and others. Frederick of Brandenburg and John of Bavaria agreed to furnish troops to protect the Hussites on their way to Basel, at Basel, and on their journey home. A hundred and six years later, Luther profited by Huss’ misfortune when he recalled Sigismund’s perfidy, perfidy which the papal system of the 16th century would have repeated, had Charles V. given his consent.695

In a real sense, Huss was the precursor of the Reformation. It is true, the prophecy was wrongly ascribed to him, "To-day you roast a goose—Huss—but a hundred years from now a swan will arise out of my ashes which you shall not roast."  Unknown to contemporary writers, it probably originated after Luther had fairly entered upon his work. But he struck a hard blow at hierarchical assumption before Luther raised his stronger arm. Luther was moved by Huss’ case, and at Leipzig, forced to the wall by Eck’s thrusts, the Wittenberg monk made the open avowal that oecumenical councils also may err, as was done in putting Huss to death at Constance. Years before, at Erfurt, he had taken up a volume of the Bohemian sermons, and was amazed that a man who preached so evangelically should have been condemned to the stake. But for fear of the taint of heresy, he quickly put it down.696  The accredited view in Luther’s time was given by Dobneck in answer to Luther’s good opinion, when he said that Huss was worse than a Turk, Jew, Tartar and Sodomite. In his edition of Huss’ letters, printed 1537, Luther praised Huss’ patience and humility under every indignity and his courage before an imposing assembly as a lamb in the midst of wolves and lions. If such a man, he wrote, "is to be regarded as a heretic, then no person under the sun can be looked upon as a true Christian."

A cantionale, dating from 1572, and preserved in the Prag library, contains a hymn to Huss’ memory and three medallions which well set forth the relation in which Wyclif and Huss stand to the Reformation. The first represents Wyclif striking sparks from a stone. Below it is Huss, kindling a fire from the sparks. In the third medallion, Luther is holding aloft the flaming torch. his is the historic succession, although it is true Luther began his career as a Reformer before he was influenced by Huss, and continued his work, knowing little of Wyclif.

To the cause of religious toleration, and without intending it, John Huss made a more effectual contribution by his death than could have been made by many philosophical treatises, even as the deaths of Blandina and other martyrs of the early Church, who were slaves, did more towards the reduction of the evils of slavery than all the sentences of Pagan philosophers. Quite like his English teacher, he affirmed the sovereign rights of the truth. It was his habit, so he stated, to conform his views to the truth, whatever the truth might be. If any one, he said, "can instruct me by the sacred Scriptures or by good reasoning, I am willing to follow him. From the outset of my studies, I have made it a rule to joyfully and humbly recede from a former opinion when in any matter I perceive a more rational opinion."697

§ 46. Jerome of Prag.

A year after Huss’ martyrdom, on May 30, 1416, his friend Jerome of Prag was condemned by the council and also suffered at the stake. He shared Huss’ enthusiasm for Wyclif, was perhaps his equal in scholarship, but not in steadfast constancy. Huss’ life was spent in Prag and its vicinity. Jerome travelled in Western Europe and was in Prag only occasionally. Huss left quite a body of writings, Jerome, none.

Born of a good family at Prag, Jerome studied in his native city, and later at Oxford and Paris. At Oxford he became a student and admirer of Wyclif’s writings, two of which, the Trialogus and the Dialogus, he carried with him back to Bohemia not later than 1402. In Prag, he defended the English doctor as a holy man "whose doctrines were more worthy of acceptance than Augustine himself," stood with Huss in the contest over the rights of the Bohemian nation, and joined him in attacking the papal indulgences, 1412.

Soon after arriving in Constance, Huss wrote to John of Chlum not to allow Jerome on any account to go to join him. In spite of this warning, Jerome set out and reached Constance April 4th, 1415, but urged by friends he quit the city. He was seized at Hirschau, April 15, and taken back in chains. There is every reason for supposing he and Huss did not see one another, although Huss mentions him in a letter within a week before his death,698 expressing the hope that he would die holy and blameless and be of a braver spirit in meeting pain than he was. Huss had misjudged himself. In the hour of grave crisis he proved constant and heroic, while his friend gave way.

On Sept. 11, 1415, Jerome solemnly renounced his admiration for Wyclif and professed accord with the Roman church and the Apostolic see and, twelve days later, solemnly repeated his abjuration in a formula prepared by the council.699

Release from prison did not follow. It was the council’s intention that Jerome should sound forth his abjuration as loudly as possible in Bohemia, and write to Wenzel, the university and the Bohemian nobles; but he disappointed his judges. Following Gerson’s lead, the council again put the recusant heretic on trial. The sittings took place in the cathedral, May 23 and 26, 1416. The charge of denying transubstantiation Jerome repudiated, but he confessed to having done ill in pledging himself to abandon the writings and teachings of that good man John Wyclif, and Huss. Great injury had been done to Huss, who had come to the council with assurance of safe-conduct. Even Judas or a Saracen ought under such circumstances to be free to come and go and to speak his mind freely.

On May 30, Jerome was again led into the cathedral. The bishop of Lodi ascended the pulpit and preached a sermon, calling upon the council to punish the prisoner, and counselling that against other such heretics, if there should be any, any witnesses whatever should be allowed to testify,—ruffians, thieves and harlots. The sermon being over, Jerome mounted a bench—bancum ascendens — and made a defence whose eloquence is attested by Poggio and others who were present. Thereupon, the, holy synod "pronounced him a follower of Wyclif and Huss, and adjudged him to be cast off as a rotten and withered branch—palmitem putridum et aridum.700

Jerome went out from the cathedral wearing a cheerful countenance. A paper cap was put on his head, painted over with red devils. No sentence of deposition was necessary or ceremony of disrobing, for the condemned man was merely a laic.701  He died on the spot where Huss suffered. As the wood was being piled around him, he sang the Easter hymn, salva festa dies, Hail, festal day. The flames were slow in putting an end to his miseries as compared with Huss. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine. And many learned people wept, the chronicler Richental says, that he had to die, for he was almost more learned than Huss. After his death, the council joined his name with the names of Wyclif and Huss as leaders of heresy.

Poggio Bracciolini’s description of Jerome’s address in the cathedral runs thus:—

It was wonderful to see with what words, with what eloquence, with what arguments, with what countenance and with what composure, Jerome replied to his adversaries, and how fairly he put his case .... He advanced nothing unworthy of a good man, as though he felt confident—as he also publicly asserted—that no just reason could be found for his death .... Many persons he touched with humor, many with satire, many very often he caused to laugh in spite of the sad affair, jesting at their reproaches .... He took them back to Socrates, unjustly condemned by his fellow-citizens. Then be mentioned the captivity of Plato, the flight of Anaxagoras, the torture of Zeno and the unjust condemnation of many other Pagans .... Thence he passed to the Hebrew examples, first instancing Moses, the liberator of his people, Joseph, sold by his brethren, Isaiah, Daniel, Susannah .... Afterwards, coming down to John the Baptist and then to the Saviour, he showed how, in each case, they were condemned by false witnesses and false judges .... Then proceeding to praise John Huss, who had been condemned to be burnt, he called him a good man, just and holy, unworthy of such a death, saying that he himself was prepared to go to any punishment whatsoever .... He said that Huss had never held opinions hostile to the Church of God, but only against the abuses of the clergy, against the pride, the arrogance and the pomp of prelates .... He displayed the greatest cleverness,—for, when his speech was often interrupted with various disturbances, he left no one unscathed but turned trenchantly upon his accusers and forced them to blush, or be still .... For 340 days he lay in the bottom of a foul, dark tower. He himself did not complain at the harshness of this treatment, but expressed his wonder that such inhumanity could be shown him. In the dungeon, he said, he had not only no facilities for reading, but none for seeing .... He stood there fearless and unterrified, not alone despising death but seeking it, so that you would have said he was another Cato. O man, worthy of the everlasting memory of men!  I praise not that which he advanced, if anything contrary to the institutions of the Church; but I admire his learning, his eloquence, his persuasiveness of speech, his adroitness in reply .... Persevering in his errors, he went to his fate with joyful and willing countenance, for he feared not the fire nor any kind of torture or death .... When the executioners wished to start the fire behind his back that he might not see it, he said, ’Come here and light the fire in front of me. If I had been afraid of it, I should never have come to this place.’  In this way a man worthy, except in respect of faith, was burnt .... Not Mutius himself suffered his arm to burn with such high courage as did this man his whole body. Nor did Socrates drink the poison so willingly as be accepted the flames.702

Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II., bore similar testimony to the cheerfulness which Huss and Jerome displayed in the face of death, and said that they went to the stake as to a feast and suffered death with more courage than any philosopher.703

§ 47. The Hussites.

The news of Huss’ execution stirred the Bohemian nation to its depths. Huss was looked upon as a national hero and a martyr. The revolt, which followed, threatened the very existence of the papal rule in Bohemia. No other dissenting movement of the Middle Ages assumed such formidable proportions. The Hussites, the name given to the adherents of the new body, soon divided into two organized parties, the Taborites and the Calixtines or Utraquists. They agreed in demanding the distribution of the cup to the laity. A third body, the Unitas Fratrum, or Bohemian Brethren, originated in the middle of the 15th century, forty years after Huss’ death. When it became known that Huss had perished in the flames, the populace of Prag stoned the houses of the priests unfriendly to the martyr; and the archbishop himself was attacked in his palace, and with difficulty eluded the popular rage by flight. King Wenzel at first seemed about to favor the popular party.

The Council of Constance, true to itself, addressed a document to the bishop and clergy of Prag, designating Wyclif, Huss and Jerome as most unrighteous, dangerous and shameful men,704 and calling upon the Prag officials to put down those who were sowing their doctrines.

The high regard in which Huss was held found splendid expression at the Bohemian diet, Sept. 2, 1415, when 452 nobles signed an indignant remonstrance to the council for its treatment of their "most beloved brother," whom they pronounced to be a righteous and catholic man, known in Bohemia for many years by his exemplary life and honest preaching of the law of the Gospel. They concluded the document by announcing their intention to defend, even to the effusion of blood, the law of Christ and his devoted preachers.705  Three days later, the nobles formed a league which was to remain in force for six years, in which they bound themselves to defend the free preaching of the Gospel on their estates, and to recognize the authority of prelates only so far as they acted according to the Scriptures.

To this manifesto the council, Feb. 20, 1416, replied by citing the signers to appear before it within 50 days, on pain of being declared contumacious.

Huss’ memory also had honor at the hands of the university, which, on May 23, 1416, sent forth a communication addressed to all lands, eulogizing him as in all things a master whose life was without an equal.706  In omnibus Magister vitae sine pari.

Upon the dissolution of the council, Martin V., who, as a member of the curia, had excommunicated Huss, did not allow the measures to root out Hussitism drag. In his bull Inter cunctos,707 Feb. 22, 1418, he ordered all of both sexes punished as heretics who maintained "the pestilential doctrine of the heresiarchs, John Wyclif, John Huss and Jerome of Prag."  Wenzel announced his purpose to obey the council, but many of his councillors left the court, including the statesman, Nicolas of Pistna, and the military leader, the one-eyed John Zizka. The popular excitement ran so high that, during a Hussite procession, the crowd rushed into the council-house and threw out of the window seven of the councillors who had dared to insult the procession.

Affairs entered a new stage with Wenzel’s death, 1419. With considerable unanimity the Bohemian nobles acceded to his successor Sigismund’s demand that the cup be withheld from the laity, but the nation at large did not acquiesce, and civil war followed. Convents and churches were sacked. Sigismund could not make himself master of his kingdom, and an event occurred during his visit in Breslau which deepened the feeling against him. A merchant, John Krasa, asserting on the street the innocence of Huss, was dragged at a horse’s tail to the stake and burnt. Hussite preachers inveighed against Sigismund, calling him the dragon of the Apocalypse.

Martin V. now summoned Europe to a crusade against Bohemia, offering the usual indulgences, as Innocent III. had done two centuries before, when he summoned a crusade against the Cathari in Southern France. In obedience to the papal mandate, 150,000 men gathered from all parts of Europe. All the horrors of war were perpetrated, and whole provinces desolated. Five times the holy crusaders entered the land of Huss, and five times they were beaten back. In 1424 the Hussites lost their bravest military leader, John Zizka, but in 1427, under his successor, Procopius Rasa, called the Great, the most influential priest of Prag, they took the offensive and invaded Germany.

While they were winning victories over the foreign intruders, the Hussites were divided among themselves in regard to the extent to which the religious reformation should be carried. The radical party, called the Taborites, from the steep hill Tabor, 60 miles south of Prag, on which they built a city, rejected transubstantiation, the worship of saints, prayers for the dead, indulgences and priestly confession and renounced oaths, dances and other amusements. They admitted laymen, including women, to the office of preaching, and used the national tongue in all parts of the public service. Zizka, their first leader, held the sword in the spirit of one of the Judges. After his death, the stricter wing of the Taborites received the name of the Orphans.

The moderate party was called now Pragers, from the chief seat of their influence, now Calixtines,—from the word calix or cup,—or Utraquists from the expression sub utraque specie, "under both forms," from their insisting upon the administration of the cup to the laity. The University of Prag took sides with the Calixtines and, in 1420, the four so-called Prag articles were adopted. This compact demanded the free preaching of the Gospel, the distribution of the cup to the laity, the execution of punishment for mortal sins by the civil court, and the return of the clergy to the practice of Apostolic poverty. The Calixtines confined the use of Czech at the church service to the Scripture readings.708

After the disastrous rout of the Catholic army, led by Cardinal Cesarini at Tauss, Aug. 14, 1431, the history of the Bohemian movement passed into a third stage, marked by the negotiations begun by the Council of Basel and the almost complete annihilation of the Taborite party. It was a new spectacle for an oecumenical council to treat with heretics as with a party having rights. Unqualified submission was the demand which the Church had heretofore made. On Oct. 15, 1431, the council invited the Bohemians to a conference and promised delegates safe-conduct. This promise assured them that neither guile nor deceit would be resorted to on any ground whatsoever, whether it be of authority or the privileges of canon law or of the decisions of the Councils of Constance and Siena or any other council.709  Three hundred delegates appointed by the Bohemian diet appeared in Basel. On the way, at Eger, and in the presence of the landgrave of Brandenburg and John, duke of Bavaria, they laid down their own terms, which were sent ahead and accepted by the council.710  These terms, embodied in thirteen articles, dealt with the method of carrying on the negotiations, the cessation of the interdict during the sojourn of the delegates in the Swiss city and the privilege of practising their own religious rites. The leaders of the Bohemian delegation were John Rokyzana of the Utraquist party and the Taborite, Procopius. Rokyzana was the pastor of the Teyn Church in Prag.

The council recognized the austere principles of the Hussites by calling upon the Basel authorities to prohibit all dancing and gambling and the appearance of loose women on the streets. On their arrival, Jan. 4, 1433, the Bohemians were assigned to four public taverns, and a large supply of wine and provisions placed at their disposal. Delegations from the council and from the city bade them formal welcome. They followed their own rituals, the Taborites arousing most curiosity by the omission of all Latin from the services and discarding altar and priestly vestments.

On the floor of the council, the Bohemians coupled praise with the names of Wyclif and Huss, and would tolerate no references to themselves as heretics. The discussions were prolonged to a wearisome length, some of their number occupying as much as two or three days in their addresses. Among the chief speakers was the Englishman, Peter Payne, whose address consumed three days. The final agreement of four articles, known as the Campactata, was ratified by deputies of the council and of the three Bohemian parties giving one another the hand. The main article granted the use of the cup to the laity, where it was asked, but on condition that the doctrine be inculcated that the whole Christ is contained in each of the elements. The use of the cup was affirmed to be wholesome to those partaking worthily.711  The Compacts were ratified by the Bohemian diet of Iglau, July 5, 1436. All ecclesiastical censures were lifted from Bohemia and its people. The abbot of Bonnival, addressing the king of Castile upon the progress of the Council of Basel, declared that the Bohemians at the start were like ferocious lions and greedy wolves, but through the mercy of Christ and after much discussion had been turned into the meekest lambs and accepted the four articles.712

Although technically the question was settled, the Taborites were not satisfied. The Utraquists approached closer to the Catholics. Hostilities broke out between them, and after a wholesale massacre in Prag, involving, it is said, 22,000 victims, the two parties joined in open war. The Taborites were defeated in the battle at Lipan, May 30, 1434, and Procopius slain. This distinguished man had travelled extensively, going as far as Jerusalem before receiving priestly orders. He was a brilliant leader, and won many successes in Austria, Moravia and Hungary. The power of the Taborites was gone, and in 1452 they lost Mt. Tabor, their chief stronghold.

The emperor now entered upon possession of his Bohemian kingdom and granted full recognition to the Utraquist priests, promising to give his sanction to the elections of bishops made by the popular will and to secure their ratification by the pope. Rokyzana was elected archbishop of Prag by the Bohemian diet of 1435. Sigismund died soon after, 1437, and the archbishop never received papal recognition, although he administered the affairs of the diocese until his death, 1471.

Albert of Austria, son-in-law of Sigismund and an uncompromising Catholic, succeeded to the throne. In 1457 George Podiebrad, a powerful noble, was crowned by Catholic bishops, and remained king of Bohemia till 1471. He was a consistent supporter of the national party which held to the Compactata. The papal authorities, refusing to recognize Rokyzana, despatched emissaries to subdue the heretics by the measures of preaching and miracles. The most noted among them were Fra Giacomo and John of Capistrano. John, whose miraculous agency equalled his eloquence, succumbed to a fever after the battle of Belgrade.

In 1462 the Compacts were declared void by Pius II., who threatened with excommunication all priests administering the cup to the laity. George Podiebrad resisted the papal bull. Four years later, a papal decree sought to deprive that "son of perdition" of his royal dignity, and summoned the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus, to take his crown.713  Matthias accepted the responsibility, the cross and invaded Moravia. The war was still in progress when Podiebrad died. By the peace of Kuttenberg 1485 and an agreement made in 1512, the Utraquists preserved their right to exist at the side of their Catholic neighbors. Thus they continued till 1629, when the right of communion in both kinds was withdrawn by Ferdinand II. of Austria, whose hard and bloody hand put an end to all open dissent in Bohemia.714

The third outgrowth from the Hussite stock, the Unitas Fratrum, commonly called the Bohemian Brethren, has had an honorable and a longer history than the Taborites and Calixtines. This body still has existence in the Moravians, whose missionary labors, with Herrnhut as a centre, have stirred all Protestant Christendom. Its beginnings are uncertain. It appears distinctly for the first time in 1457, and continued to grow till the time of the Reformation. Its synod of 1467 was attended by 60 Brethren. The members in Prag were subjected to persecution, and George Podiebrad gave them permission to settle on the estate, Lititz, in the village corporation of Kunwald.715  Martin, priest at Königgraetz, with a part of his flock affiliated himself with them, and other congregations were soon formed. They were a distinct type, worshipping by themselves, and did not take the sacraments from the Catholic priests. They rejected oaths, war and military service and resorted, apparently from the beginning, to the lot. They also rejected the doctrine of purgatory and all services of priests of unworthy life.

The exact relation which this Hussite body bore to the Taborites and to the Austrian Waldenses is a matter which has called forth much learned discussion, and is still involved in uncertainty. But there seems to be no doubt that the Bohemian Brethren were moved by the spirit of Huss, and also that in their earliest period they came into contact with the Waldenses. Pressing up from Italy, the followers of Peter Valdez had penetrated into Bohemia in the later part of the 14th century, and had Frederick Reiser as their leader.716  This Apostolic man was present at the Council of Basel, 1435, and styled himself, "the bishop of the faithful in the Romish church, who reject the donation of Constantine."  With Anna Weiler, he suffered at the stake in Strassburg, 1458. One of the earliest names associated with the Bohemian Brethren is the name of Peter Chelcicky, a marked religious personage in his day in Bohemia. We know he was a man of authority among them, but little more.717

Believing that the papal priesthood had been corrupt since Constantine’s donation to Sylvester, the Brethren, at the synod of 1467, chose Michael, pastor of Senftenburg, "presbyter and bishop," and sent him to the Waldensian bishop Stephen for sanction or consecration.718  It seems probable that Stephen had received orders at Basel from bishops in the regular succession. On his return, Michael consecrated Matthias of Kunwald, while he himself, for a time and for a reason not known, was not officially recognized. The synod had resorted to the lot and placed the words "he is" on 3 out of 12 ballots, 9 being left blank. Matthias chose one of he printed ballots.719  Matthias, in turn, ordained Thomas and Elias bishops, men who had drawn the other two printed ballots.

By 1500, the Bohemian Brethren numbered 200,000 scattered in 300 or 400 congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. They had their own confession, catechism and hymnology.720  Of the 60 Bohemian books printed 1500–1510, 50 are said to have been by members of the sect. A new period in their history was introduced by Lucas of Prag, d. 1528, a voluminous writer. He gave explanations of the Brethren’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper to Luther. Brethren, including Michael Weiss, the hymnwriter, visited the German Reformer, and in 1521 he had in his possession their catechism.

The merciless persecutions of the Brethren and the other remaining Hussite sectarists were opened under the Austrian rule of Ferdinand I. in 1549, and continued, with interruptions, till the Thirty Years’ War when, under inspiration of the Jesuits, the government resorted to measures memorable for their heartlessness to blot out heresy from Bohemia and Moravia.

The Church of the Brethren had a remarkable resurrection in the Moravians, starting with the settlement of Christian David and other Hussite families in 1722 on land given by Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut. They preserve the venerable name of their spiritual ancestry, Unitas Fratrum, and they have made good their heritage by their missionary labors which have carried the Gospel to the remotest ends of the earth, from Greenland to the West Indies and Guiana, and from the leper colony of Jerusalem to Thibet and Australia. In our own land, David Zeisberger and other Moravian missionaries have shown in their labors among the Indian tribes the godly devotion of John Huss, whose body the flames at Constance were able to destroy, but not his sacred memory and influence.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST POPES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 1447–1521

§ 48. Literature and General Survey.

Works on the Entire Chapter.—Bullarium, ed. by Tomasetti, 5 vols., Turin, 1859 sq.—Mansi: Councils, XXXI., XXXII.—Muratori: Rerum ital. scriptores. Gives Lives of the popes.—Stefano Infessura: Diario della città di Roma, ed. by O. Tommasini, Rome, 1890. Extends to 1494, and is the journal of an eye-witness. Also in Muratori.—Joh. Burchard: Diarium sive rerum urbanarum commentarii, 1483–1506, ed. by L. Thuasne, 3 vols., Paris, 1883–1885. Also in Muratori.—B. Platina, b. 1421 in Cremona, d. as superintendent of the Vatican libr., 1481: Lives of the Popes to the Death of Paul II., 1st Lat. ed., Venice, 1479, Engl. trans. by W. Benham in Anc. and Mod. Libr. of Theol. No date.—Sigismondo Dei Conti da Foligno: Le storie de suoi tempi 1475–1510, 2 vols., Rome, 1883. Lat. and Ital. texts in parallel columns.—Pastor: Ungedruckte Akten zur Gesch. der Päpste, vol. I., 1376–1464, Freiburg, 1904.—Ranke: Hist. of the Popes.—A. von Reumont: Gesch. d. Stadt Rom., vol. III., Berlin, 1870.—*Mandell Creighton, bp. of London: Hist. of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, II. 235-IV., London, 1887.—*Gregorovius: Hist. of the City of Rome, Engl. trans., VII., VIII.—*L. Pastor, R. Cath. Prof. at Innsbruck: Gesch. der Päpste im Zeitalter der Renaissance, 4 vols., Freiburg, 1886–1906, 4th ed., 1901–1906, Engl. trans. F. I. Ambrosius, etc., 8 vols., 1908.—Wattenbach: Gesch. des röm. Papstthums, 2d ed., Berlin, 1876, pp. 284–300.—Hefele-Hergenröther: Conciliengeschichte, VIII. Hergenröther’s continuation of Hefele’s work falls far below the previous vols. by Hefele’s own hand as rev. by Knöpfler.—The Ch. Histt. of Hergenröther-Kirsch, Hefele, Funk, Karl Müller.—H. Thurston: The Holy Year of Jubilee. An Account of the Hist. and Ceremonial of the Rom. Jubilee, London, 1900.—Pertinent artt. in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog. The Histt. of the Renaissance of Burckhardt and Symonds.—For fuller lit., see the extensive lists prefixed to Pastor’s first three vols. and for a judicious estimate of the contemporary writers, see Creighton at the close of his vols.

Note. – The works of Creighton, Gregorovius and Pastor are very full. It is doubtful whether any period of history has been treated so thoroughly and satisfactorily by three contemporary historians. Pastor and Gregorovius have used new documents discovered by themselves in the archives of Mantua, Milan, Modena, Florence, the Vatican, etc. Pastor’s notes are vols. of erudite investigation. Creighton is judicial but inclined to be too moderate in his estimate of the vices of the popes, and in details not always reliable. Gregorovius’ narration is searching and brilliant. He is unsparing in his reprobation of the dissoluteness of Roman society and backs his statements with authorities. Pastor’s masterly and graphic treatment is the most extensive work on the period. Although written with ultramontane prepossessions, it is often unsparing when it deals with the corruption of popes and cardinals, especially Alexander VI., who has never been set forth in darker colors since the 16th century than on its pages.

§ 49. Nicholas V.—Lives by Platina and in Muratori, especially Manetti.—Infessura: pp. 46–59.—Gibbon: Hist. of Rome, ch. LXVIII. For the Fall of Constantinople.—Gregorovius: VII. 101–160.—Creighton: II. 273–365.—Pastor: I. 351–774.—Geo. Findlay: Hist. of Greece to 1864, 7 vols., Oxford, 1877, vols. IV., V.—Edw. Pears: The Destruction of the German Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks, London, 1903, pp. 476.

§ 50. Pius II.—Opera omnia, Basel, 1551, 1571, 1589.—Opera inedita, by I. Cugnoni, Rome, 1883.—His Commentaries, Pii pontif. max. commentarii rerum memorabilium quae temporibus suis contigerunt, with the continuation of Cardinal Ammanati, Frankfurt, 1614. Last ed. Rome, 1894.—Epistolae, Cologne, 1478, and often. Also in opera, Basel, 1551. A. Weiss: Aeneas Sylvius als Papst Pius II. Rede mit 149 bisher ungedruckten Briefen, Graz, 1897.—Eine Rede d. Enea Silvio vor d. C. zu Basel, ed. J. Haller in Quellen u. Forschungen aus ital. Archiven, etc., Rome, 1900, III. 82–102.—Pastor: II. 714–747 gives a number of Pius’ letters before unpubl.—Orationes polit. et eccles. by Mansi, 3 vols., Lucae, 1755–1759.—Historia Frid. III. Best ed. by Kollar, Vienna, 1762, Germ. trans. by Ilgen, 2 vols., in Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit., Leipzig, 1889 sq.—Addresses at the Congress of Mantua and the bulls Execrabilis and In minoribus in Mansi: Concil., XXXII., 191–267.—For full list of edd. of Pius’ Works, see Potthast, I. 19–25.—Platina: Lives of the Popes.—Antonius Campanus: Vita Pii II, in Muratori, Scripp., III. 2, pp. 969–992.—G. Voigt: Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter, 3 vols., Berlin, 1856–1863.—K. Hase: Aen. Syl. Piccolomini, in Rosenvorlesungen, pp. 56–88, Leipzig, 1880.—A. Brockhaus: Gregor von Heimburg, Leipzig, 1861.—K. Menzel: Diether von Isenberg, als Bischof von Mainz, 1459–1463, Erlangen, 1868.—Gregorovius: VII. 160–218.—Burckhardt.—Creighton: II. 365–500.—Pastor: II. 1–293. Art. Pius II. by Benrath in Herzog, XV. 422–435.

§ 51. Paul II.—Lives by Platina, Gaspar Veronensis, and M. Canensius of Viterbo, both in Muratori, new ed., 1904, III., XVI., p. 3 sqq., with Preface, pp. i-xlvi.—A. Patritius: Descriptio adventus Friderici III. ad Paulum II., Muratori, XXIII. 205–215.—Ammanati’s Continuation of Pius lI.’s Commentaries, Frankfurt ed., 1614. Gaspar Veronensis gives a panegyric of the cardinals and Paul’s relatives, and stops before really taking up Paul’s biography. Platina, from personal pique, disparaged Paul II. Canensius’ Life is in answer to Platina, and the most important biography.—Gregorovius: VII.—Creighton: III.—Pastor: II.

§§ 52, 53. Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII.—Infessura, pp. 75–283.—Burchard, in Thuasne’s ed., vol. I.—J. Gherardi da Volterra: Diario Romano, 1479–1484, in Muratori, Scripp., XXIII. 3, also the ed. of 1904.—Platina in Muratori, III., p. 1053, etc. (accepted by Pastor as genuine and with some question by Creighton).—Sigismondo dei Conti da Foligno: vol. I. Infessura is severe on Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Volterra, who received an office from Sixtus, does not pronounce a formal judgment. Sigismondo, who was advanced by Sixtus, is partial to him.—A. Thuasne: Djem, Sultan, fils de Mohammed II. d’après les documents originaux en grande partie inédits, Paris, 1892.—Gregorovius: VII. 241–340.—Pastor: II. 451-III. 284.—Creighton: III. 56–156.—W. Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 2 vols., Liverpool, 1795, 6th ed., London, 1825, etc.

§ 54. Alexander VI.—Bulls in Bullarium Rom.—The Regesta of Alex., filling 113 vols., in the Vatican, Nos. 772–884. After being hidden from view for three centuries, they were opened, 1888, by Leo XIII. to the inspection and use of Pastor.—See Pastor’s Preface in his Gesch. der Päpste, Infessura. Stops at Feb. 26, 1494.—Burchard: vols. II., III.—Sigismondo de’ Conti: Le storie, etc.—Gordon: Life of Alex. VI., London, 1728.—Abbé Ollivier: Le pape Alex. VI. et les Borgia, Paris, 1870.—V. Nemec: Papst Alex. VI., eine Rechtfertigung, Klagenfurt, 1879. Both attempts to rescue this pope from infamy.—Leonetti: Papa Aless. VI., 3 vols., Bologna, 1880.—M. Brosch: Alex. VI. u. seine Söhne, Vienna, 1889.—C. von Höfler: Don Rodrigo de Borgia und seine Söhne, Don Pedro Luis u. Don Juan, Vienna, 1889.—Höfler: D. Katastrophe des herzöglichen Hauses des Borgias von Gandia, Vienna, 1892.—Schubertsoldem: D. Borgias u. ihre Zeit, 1907.—Reumont: Gesch. der Stadt Rom. Also art. Alex. VI. in Wetzer-Welte, I. 483–491.—H. F. Delaborde: L’expédition de Chas. VIII. en Italie, Paris, 1888.—Ranke: Hist. of the Popes.—Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo.—Gregorovius: Hist. of City of Rome, vol. VII. Also Lucrezia Borgia, 3d ed., Stuttgart, 1875. Engl. trans. by J. L. Garner, 2 vols., New York, 1903.—Creighton: III.—Pastor: III.—Hergenröther-Kirsch: III. 982–988.—* P. Villari: Machiavelli and his times, Engl. trans., 4 vols., London, 1878–1883.—Burckhardt and Symonds on the Renaissance.—E. G. Bourne: Demarcation Line Of Alex. Vi. In Essays In Hist. Criticism.—Lord Acton: The Borgias and their Latest Historian, in North Brit. Rev., 1871, pp. 351–367.

§ 55. Julius II. Bullarium IV.—Burchard: Diarium to May, 1506.—Sigismondo: vol. II.—Paris de Grassis, master of ceremonies at the Vatican, 1504 sqq.: Diarium from May 12, 1504, ed. by L. Frati, Bologna, 1886, and Döllinger in Beitäge zur pol. Kirchl. u. Culturgesch. d. letzen 6 Jahrh., 3 vols., Vienna, 1863–1882, III. 363–433.—A. Giustinian, Venetian ambassador: Dispacci, Despatches, 1502–1505, ed. by Villari, 3 vols., Florence, 1876, and by Rawdon Browning in Calendar of State Papers, London, 1864 sq.—Fr. Vettori: Sommario delta storia d’Italia 1511–1527, ed. by Reumont in Arch. Stor. Itat., Append. B., pp. 261–387.—Dusmenil: Hist. de Jules II., Paris, 1873.—* M. Brosch: Papst Julius II. und die Gründung des Kirchenstaats, Gotha, 1878.—P. Lehmann: D. pisaner Konzit vom Jahre, 1511, Breslau, 1874.—Hefele-Hergenröther: VIII. 392–592.—Benrath: Art. Julius II., in Herzog, IX. 621–625.—Villari: Machiavelli.—Ranke: I. 36–59.—Reumont: III., Pt. 2, pp. 1–49. Gregorovius: VIII.—Creighton: IV. 54–176.—Pastor: III.

§ 56. Leo X.—Regesta to Oct. 16, 1515, ed. by Hergenröther, 8 vols., Rome, 1884–1891.—Mansi: XXXII. 649–1001.—Paris de Grassis, as above, and ed. by Armellini: Il diario de Leone X., Rome, 1884. Vettori: Sommario.—M. Sanuto, Venetian ambassador: Diarii, I.-XV., Venice, 1879 sqq.—*Paulus Jovius, b. 1483, acquainted with Leo: De Vita Leonis, Florence, 1549. The only biog. till Fabroni’s Life, 1797.—* L. Landucci: Diario Fiorentino 1450–1516, continued to 1542, ed. by Badia, Florence, 1883.—*W. Roscoe: Life and Pontificate of Leo X., 4 vols., Liverpool, 1805, 6th ed. rev. by his son, London, 1853. The book took high rank, and its value continues. Apologetic for Leo, whom the author considers the greatest pope of modern times. Put on the Index by Leo XII., d. 1829. A Germ. trans. by Glaser and Henke, with valuable notes, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1806–1808. Ital. trans. by Count L. Bossi, Milan, 1816 sq.—E. Muntz: Raphael, His Life, Work, and Times, Engl. trans., W. Armstrong, London, 1896.—E. Armstrong: Lor. de’ Medici, New York, 1896.—H. M. Vaughan: The Medici Popes (Leo X. and Clement VII.), London, 1908. Hefele-Hergenröther: VIII. 592–855.—Reumont: III. Pt. 2, pp. 49–146. Villari: Machiavelli.—Creighton: IV.—Gregorovius: VIII.—Pastor: IV.—Köstlin: Life of Luther, I. 204–525.—*A. Schulte: Die Fugger in Rom. 1495–1523, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—Burckhardt.—Symonds.

Popes.—Nicolas V., 1447–1455; Calixtus III., 1455–1458; Pius II., 1458–1464; Paul II., 1464–1471; Sixtus IV., 1471–1484; Innocent VIII., 1484–1492; Alexander VI., 1492–1503; Pius III., 1503; Julius II., 1503–1513; Leo X., 1513–1521.

The period of the Reformatory councils, closing with the Basel-Ferrara synod, was followed by a period notable in the history of the papacy, the period of the Renaissance popes. These pontiffs of the last years of the Middle Ages were men famous alike for their intellectual endowments, the prostitution of their office to personal aggrandizement and pleasure and the lustre they gave to Rome by their patronage of letters and the fine arts. The decree of the Council of Constance, asserting the supreme authority of oecumenical councils, treated as a dead letter by Eugenius IV., was definitely set aside by Pius II. in a bull forbidding appeals from papal decisions and affirming finality for the pope’s authority. For 70 years no general assembly of the Church was called.

The ten pontiffs who sat on the pontifical throne, 1450–1517, represented in their origin the extremes of fortune, from the occupation of the fisherman, as in the case of Sixtus IV., to the refinement of the most splendid aristocracy of the age, as in the case of Leo X. of the family of the Medici. In proportion as they embellished Rome and the Vatican with the treasures of art, did they seem to withhold themselves from that sincere religious devotion which would naturally be regarded as a prime characteristic of one claiming to be the chief pastor of the Christian Church on earth. No great principle of administration occupied their minds. No conspicuous movement of pious activity received their sanction, unless the proposed crusade to reconquer Constantinople be accounted such, but into that purpose papal ambition entered more freely than devotion to the interests of religion.

This period was the flourishing age of nepotism in the Vatican. The bestowment of papal favors by the pontiffs upon their nephews and other relatives dates as a recognized practice from Boniface VIII. In vain did papal conclaves, following the decree of Constance, adopt protocols, making the age of 30 the lowest limit for appointment to the sacred college, and putting a check on papal favoritism. Ignoring the instincts of modesty and the impulse of religion, the popes bestowed the red hat upon their young nephews and grandnephews and upon the sons of princes, in spite of their utter disqualification both on the ground of intelligence and of morals. The Vatican was beset by relatives of the pontiffs, hungry for the honors and the emoluments of office. Here are some of those who were made cardinals before they were 30: Calixtus III. appointed his nephews, Juan and Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI.), the latter 25, and the little son of the king of Portugal; Pius II., his nephew at 23, and Francis Gonzaga at 17; Sixtus IV., John of Aragon at 14, his nephews, Peter and Julian Rovere, at 25 and 28, and his grandnephew, Rafaelle Riario, at 17; Innocent VIII., John Sclafenatus at 23, Giovanni de’ Medici at 13; Alexander VI., in 1493, Hippolito of Este at 15, whom Sixtus had made archbishop of Strigonia at 8, his son, Caesar Borgia, at 18, Alexander Farnese (Paul III.), brother of the pope’s mistress, at 25, and Frederick Casimir, son of the king of Poland, at 19; Leo X., in 1513, his nephew, Innocent Cibo, at 21, and his cousin, the illegitimate Julius de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII., and in 1517 three more nephews, one of them the bastard son of his brother, also Alfonzo of Portugal at 7, and John of Loraine, son of the duke of Sicily, at 20. This is an imperfect list.721  Bishoprics, abbacies and other ecclesiastical appointments were heaped upon the papal children, nephews and other favorites. The cases in which the red hat was conferred for piety or learning were rare, while the houses of Mantua, Ferrara and Modena, the Medici of Florence, the Sforza of Milan, the Colonna and the Orsini had easy access to the Apostolic camera.

The cardinals vied with kings in wealth and luxury, and their palaces were enriched with the most gorgeous furnishings and precious plate, and filled with servants. They set an example of profligacy which they carried into the Vatican itself. The illegitimate offspring of pontiffs were acknowledged without a blush, and the sons and daughters of the highest houses in Italy, France and Spain were sought in marriage for them by their indulgent fathers. The Vatican was given up to nuptial and other entertainments, even women of ill-repute being invited to banquets and obscene comedies performed in its chambers.

The prodigal expenditures of the papal household were maintained in part by the great sums, running into tens of thousands of ducats, which rich men were willing to pay for the cardinalate. When the funds of the Vatican ran low, loans were secured from the Fuggers and other banking houses and the sacred things of the Vatican put in pawn, even to the tiara itself. The amounts required by Alexander VI. for marriage dowries for his children, and by Leo X. for nephews, were enormous.

Popes, like Sixtus IV. and Alexander VI., had no scruple about involving Italy in internecine wars in order to compass the papal schemes either in the enlargement of papal domain or the enrichment of papal sons and nephews. Julius II. was a warrior and went to the battle-field in armor. No sovereign of his age was more unscrupulous in resorting to double dealing in his diplomacy than was Leo X. To reach the objects of its ambition, the holy see was ready even to form alliances with the sultan. The popes, so Döllinger says, from Paul II. to Leo X., did the most it was possible to do to cover the papacy with shame and disgrace and to involve Italy in the horrors of endless wars.722  The Judas-like betrayal of Christ in the highest seat of Christendom, the gayeties, scandals and crimes of popes as they pass before the reader in the diaries of Infessura, Burchard and de Grassis and the despatches of the ambassadors of Venice, Mantua and other Italian states, and as repeated by Creighton, Pastor and Gregorovius, make this period one of the most dramatic in human annals. The personal element furnished scene after scene of consuming interest. It seems to the student as if history were approaching some great climax.

Three events of permanent importance for the general history of mankind also occurred in this age, the overthrow of the Byzantine empire, 1453, the discovery of the Western world, 1492, and the invention of printing. It closed with a general council, the Fifth Lateran, which adjourned only a few months before the Reformer in the North shook the papal fabric to its base and opened the door of the modern age.

§ 49. Nicolas V. 1447–1455.

Nicolas V., 1447–1455, the successor of Bugenius IV., was ruled by the spirit of the new literary culture, the Renaissance, and was the first Maecenas in a line of popes like-minded. Following his example, his successors were for a century among the foremost patrons of art and letters in Europe. What Gregory VII. was to the system of the papal theocracy, that Nicolas was to the artistic revival in Rome. Under his rule, the eternal city witnessed the substantial beginnings of that transformation, in which it passed from a spectacle of ruins and desertion to a capital adorned with works of art and architectural construction. He himself repaired and beautified the Vatican and St. Peter’s, laid the foundation of the Vatican library and called scholars and artists to his court.723

Thomas Parentucelli, born 1397, the son of a physician of Sarzana, owed nothing of his distinction to the position of his family. His father was poor, and the son was little of stature, with disproportionately short legs. What he lacked, however, in bodily parts, he made up in intellectual endowments, tact and courtesies of manner. His education at Bologna being completed, his ecclesiastical preferment was rapid. In 1444, he was made archbishop of Bologna and, on his return from Germany as papal legate, 1446, he was honored with the red hat. Four months later he was elevated to the papal throne, and according to Aeneas Sylvius, whose words about the eminent men of his day always have a diplomatic flavor, Thomas was so popular that there was no one who did not approve his election.

To Nicolas was given the notable distinction of witnessing the complete reunion of Western Christendom. By the abdication of Felix V., whom he treated with discreet and liberal generosity, and by Germany’s abandonment of its attitude of neutrality, he could look back upon papal schism and divided obediences as matters of the past.

The Jubilee Year, celebrated in 1450, was adapted to bind the European nations closely to Rome, and to stir up anew the fires of devotion which had languished during the ecclesiastical disputes of nearly a century.724  So vast were the throngs of pilgrims that the contemporary, Platina, felt justified in asserting that such multitudes had never been seen in the holy city before. According to Aeneas, 40,000 went daily from church to church. The handkerchief of St. Veronica,—lo sudario,—bearing the outline of the Lord’s face, was exhibited every Sabbath, and the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul every Saturday. The large sums of money which the pilgrims left, Nicolas knew well how to use in carrying out his plans for beautifying the churches and streets of the city.

The calamity, which occurred on the bridge of St. Angelo, and cast a temporary gloom over the festivities of the holy year, is noticed by all the contemporary writers. The mule belonging to Peter Barbus, cardinal of St. Mark’s, was crushed to death, so dense were the crowds, and in the excitement two hundred persons or more were trodden down or drowned by being pushed or throwing themselves into the Tiber. To prevent a repetition of the disaster, the pope had several buildings obstructing the passage to the bridge pulled down.725

In the administration of the properties of the holy see, Nicolas was discreet and successful. He confirmed the papal rule over the State of the Church, regained Bolsena and the castle of Spoleto, and secured the submission of Bologna, to which he sent Bessarion as papal legate. The conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, who emulated the ambitions of Rienzo, was put down in 1453 and left the pope undisputed master of Rome. In his selection of cardinals he was wise, Nicolas of Cusa being included in the number. The appointment of his younger brother, Philip Calandrini, to the sacred college, aroused no unfavorable criticism.

Nicolas’ reign witnessed, in 1452, the last coronation in Rome of a German emperor, Frederick III. This monarch, who found in his councillor, Aeneas Sylvius, an enthusiastic biographer, but who, by the testimony of others, was weak and destitute of martial spirit and generous qualities, was the first of the Hapsburgs to receive the crown in the holy city, and held the imperial office longer than any other of the emperors before or after him. With his coronation the emperor combined the celebration of his nuptials to Leonora of Portugal.

Frederick’s journey to Italy and his sojourn in Rome offered to the pen of Aeneas a rare opportunity for graphic description, of which he was a consummate master. The meeting with the future empress, the welcome extended to his majesty, the festivities of the marriage and the coronation, the trappings of the soldiery, the blowing of the horns, the elegance of the vestments worn by the emperor and his visit to the artistic wonders of St. Peter’s,—these and other scenes the shrewd and facile Aeneas depicted. The Portuguese princess, whose journey from Lisbon occupied 104 days, disembarked at Leghorn, February, 1452, where she was met by Frederick, attended by a brilliant company of knights. After joining in gay entertainments at Siena, lasting four days, the party proceeded to Rome. Leonora, who was only sixteen, was praised by those who saw her for her rare beauty and charms of person. She was to become the mother of Maximilian and the ancestress of Charles V.726

On reaching the gates of the papal capital, Frederick was met by the cardinals, who offered him the felicitations of the head of Christendom, but also demanded from him the oath of allegiance, which was reluctantly promised. The ceremonies, which followed the emperor’s arrival, were such as to flatter his pride and at the same time to confirm the papal tenure of power in the city. Frederick was received by Nicolas on the steps of St. Peter’s, seated in an ivory chair, and surrounded by his cardinals, standing. The imperial visitor knelt and kissed the pontiff’s foot. On March 16, Nicolas crowned him with the iron crown of Lombardy and united the imperial pair in marriage. Leonora then went to her own palace, and Frederick to the Vatican as its guest. The reason for his lodging near the pope was that Nicolas might have opportunity for frequent communication with him or, as rumor went, to prevent the Romans approaching him under cover of darkness with petitions for the restoration of their liberties.727  Three days later, March 19, the crown of the empire was placed upon Frederick’s head.728  With his consort he then received the elements from the pope’s hand. The following week Frederick proceeded to Naples.729

Scarcely in any pontificate has so notable and long-forecasted an event occurred as the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks, which took place May 29, 1453. The last of the Constantines perished in the siege, fighting bravely at the gate of St. Romanos. The church of Justinian, St. Sophia, was turned into a mosque, and a cross, surmounted with a janissary’s cap, was carried through the streets, while the soldiers shouted, "This is the Christian’s God." This historic catastrophe would have been regarded in Western Europe as appalling, if it had not been expected. The steady advance of the Turks and their unspeakable atrocities had kept the Greek empire in alarm for centuries. Three hundred years before, Latin Christendom had been taught to expect defeats at the hands of the Mohammedans in the taking of Edessa, 1145, and the fatal battle of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem, 1187.

In answer to the appeals of the Greeks, Nicolas despatched Isidore as legate to Constantinople with a guard of 200 troops, but, as a condition of helping the Eastern emperor, he insisted that the Ferrara articles of union be ratified in Constantinople. In a long communication, dated Oct. 11, 1451, the Roman pontiff declared that schisms had always been punished more severely than other evils. Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who attempted to divide the people of God, received a more bitter punishment than those who introduced idolatry. There could not be two heads to an empire or the Church. There is no salvation outside of the one Church. He was lost in the flood who was not housed in Noah’s ark. Whatever opinion it may have entertained of these claims, the Byzantine court was in too imminent danger to reject the papal condition, and in December, 1452, Isidore, surrounded by 300 priests, announced, in the church of St. Sophia, the union of the Greek and Latin communions. But even now the Greek people violently resented the union, and the most powerful man of the empire, Lucas Notaras, announced his preference for the turban to the tiara. The aid offered by Nicolas was at best small. The last week of April, 1453, ten papal galleys set sail with some ships from Naples, Venice and Genoa, but they were too late to render any assistance.730

The termination of the venerable and once imposing fabric on the Bosphorus by the Asiatic invader was the only fate possible for an empire whose rulers, boasting themselves the successors of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, Christian in name and most Christian by the standard of orthodox professions, had heaped their palaces full of pagan luxury and excess. The government, planted in the most imperial spot on the earth, had forfeited the right to exist by an insipid and nerveless reliance upon the traditions of the past. No elements of revival manifested themselves from within. Religious formulas had been substituted for devotion. Much as the Christian student may regret the loss of this last bulwark of Christianity in the East, he will be inclined to find in the disaster the judgment realized with which the seven churches of the Apocalypse were threatened which were not worthy. The problem which was forced upon Europe by the arrival of the Grand Turk, as contemporaries called Mohammed II., still awaits solution from wise diplomacy or force of arms or through the slow and silent movement of modern ideas of government and popular rights.

The disaster which overtook the Eastern empire, Nicolas V. felt would be regarded by after generations as a blot upon his pontificate, and others, like Aeneas Sylvius, shared this view.731

He issued a bull summoning the Christian nations to a crusade for the recovery of Constantinople, and stigmatized Mohammed II. as the dragon described in the Book of Revelation. Absolution was offered to those who would spend six months in the holy enterprise or maintain a representative for that length of time. Christendom was called upon to contribute a tenth. The cardinals were enjoined to do the same, and all the papal revenues accruing from larger and smaller benefices, from bishoprics, archbishoprics and convents, were promised for the undertaking.

Feeble was the response which Europe gave. The time of crusading enthusiasm was passed. The Turk was daring and to be dreaded. An assembly called by Frederick III., at Regensburg in the Spring of 1454, at which the emperor himself did not put in an appearance, listened to an eloquent appeal by Aeneas, but adjourned the subject to the diet to meet in Frankfurt in October. Again the emperor was not present, and the diet did nothing. Down to the era of the Reformation the crusade against the Turk remained one of the chief official concerns of the papacy.

If Nicolas died disappointed over his failure to influence the princes to undertake a campaign against the Turks, his fame abides as the intelligent and genial patron of letters and the arts. In this rôle he laid after generations under obligation to him as Innocent III., by his crusading armies, did not. He lies buried in St. Peter’s at the side of his predecessor, Eugenius IV.732

The next pontiff, the Spaniard, Calixtus III., 1455–1458, had two chief concerns, the dislodgment of the Turks from Constantinople and the advancement of the fortunes of the Borgia family, to which he belonged. Made cardinal by Eugenius IV., he was 77 years old when he was elected pope. From his day, the Borgias played a prominent part in Rome, their career culminating in the ambitions and scandals of Rodrigo Borgia, for 30 years cardinal and then pope under the name of Alexander VI.

Calixtus opened his pontificate by vowing "to Almighty God and the Holy Trinity, by wars, maledictions, interdicts, excommunications and in all other ways to punish the Turks."733  Legates were despatched to kindle the zeal of princes throughout Europe. Papal jewels were sold, and gold and silver clasps were torn from the books of the Vatican and turned into money. At a given hour daily the bells were rung in Rome that all might give themselves to prayer for the sacred war. But to the indifference of most of the princes was added active resistance on the part of France. Venice, always looking out for her own interests, made a treaty with the Turks. Frederick III. was incompetent. The weak fleet the pope was able to muster sailed forth from Ostia under Cardinal Serampo to empty victories. The gallant Hungarian, Hunyady, brought some hope by his brilliant feat in relieving Belgrade, July 14, 1456, but the rejoicing was reduced by the news of the gallant leader’s death. Scanderbeg, the Albanian, who a year later was appointed papal captain-general, was indeed a brave hero, but, unsupported by Western Europe, he was next to powerless.

Calixtus’ unblushing nepotism surpassed anything of the kind which had been known in the papal household before. Catalan adventurers pressed into Rome and stormed their papal fellow-countrymen with demands for office. Upon the three sons of two of his sisters, Juan of Milan, son of Catherine Borgia, and Pedro Luis and Rodrigo, sons of Isabella, he heaped favor after favor. Adopted by their uncle, Pedro and Rodrigo were the objects of his sleepless solicitude. Gregorovius has compared the members of the Borgia family to the Roman Claudii. By the endowment of nature they were vigorous and handsome, and by nature and practice, sensual, ambitious, and high-handed,—their coat of arms a bull. Under protest from the curia, Rodrigo and Juan of Milan were made cardinals, 1457, both the young men still in their twenties.

Their unsavory habits were already a byword in Rome. Rodrigo was soon promoted over the heads of the other members of the sacred college to the place of vice-chancellor, the most lucrative position within the papal gift. At the same time, the little son—figliolo — of the king of Portugal, as Infessura calls him, was given the red hat.

With astounding rapidity Pedro Luis, who remained a layman, was advanced to the highest positions in the state, and made governor of St. Angelo and duke of Spoleto, and put in possession of Terni, Narni, Todi and other papal fiefs.734  It was supposed that it was the fond uncle’s intention, at the death of Alfonso of Naples, to invest this nephew with the Neapolitan crown by setting aside Alfonso’s illegitimate son, Don Ferrante.

Calixtus’ death was the signal for the flight of the Spanish lobbyists, whose houses were looted by the indignant Romans. Discerning the coming storm, Pedro made the best bargain he could by selling S. Angelo to the cardinals for 20,000 ducats, and then took a hasty departure.

Like Honorius III., Calixtus might have died of a broken heart over his failure to arouse Europe to the effort of a crusade, if it had not been for this consuming concern for the fortunes and schemes of his relatives. From this time on, for more than half a century, the gift of dignities and revenues under papal control for personal considerations and to unworthy persons for money was an outstanding feature in the history of the popes.

§ 50. Aeneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini, Pius II.

The next pontiff, Pius II., has a place among the successful men of history. Lacking high enthusiasms and lofty aims, he was constantly seeking his own interests and, through diplomatic shrewdness, came to be the most conspicuous figure of his time. He was ruled by expediency rather than principle. He never swam against the stream.735  When he found himself on the losing side, he was prompt in changing to the other.

Aeneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini was born in 1405 at Corsignano, a village located on a bold spur of the hills near Siena. He was one of 18 children, and his family, which had been banished from Siena, was poor but of noble rank. At 18, the son began studying in the neighboring city, where he heard Bernardino preach. Later he learned Greek in Florence. It was a great opportunity when Cardinal Capranica took this young man with him as his secretary to Basel, 1431. Gregorovius has remarked that it was the golden age of secretaries, most of the Humanists serving in that capacity. Later, Aeneas went into the service of the bishop of Novaro, whom he accompanied to Rome. The bishop was imprisoned for the part he had taken in a conspiracy against Eugenius IV. The secretary escaped a like treatment by flight. He then served Cardinal Albergati, with whom he travelled to France. He also visited England and Scotland.736

Returning to Basel, Aeneas became one of the conspicuous personages in the council, was a member, and often acted as chairman of one of the four committees, the committee on faith, and was sent again and again on embassies to Strassburg, Frankfurt, Trent and other cities. The council also appointed him its chief abbreviator. In 1440 he decided in favor of the rump-synod, which continued to meet in Basel, and espoused the cause of Felix V., who made him his secretary. The same year he wrote the tract on general councils.737  Finding the cause of the anti-pope waning, he secured a place under Frederick III., and succeeded to the full in ingratiating himself in that monarch’s favor. His Latin epigrams and verses won for him the appointment of poet-laureate, and his diplomatic cleverness and versatility the highest place in the royal council. At first he joined with Schlick, the chancellor, in holding Frederick to a neutral attitude between Eugenius and the anti-pope, but then, turning apostate to the cause of neutrality, gracefully and unreservedly gave in his submission to the Roman pontiff. While on an embassy to Rome, 1445, he excused himself before Eugenius for his errors at Basel on the plea of lack of experience. He at once became useful to the pope, and a year later received the appointment of papal secretary. By his persuasion, Frederick transferred his obedience to Eugenius, which Aeneas was able to announce in person to the pope a few days before his death. From Nicolas V. he received the sees of Trieste, 1447, and Siena, 1450, and in 1456 promotion to the college of cardinals.

At the time of his election as pope, Aeneas was 53 years old. He had risen by tact and an accurate knowledge of men and European affairs. He was a thorough man of the world, and capable of grasping a situation in a glance. He had been profligate, and his love affairs were many. A son was born to him in Scotland, and another, by an Englishwoman, in Strassburg. In a letter to his father, asking him to adopt the second child, he described, without concealment and apparently without shame, the measures he took to seduce the mother. He spoke of wantonness as an old vice. He himself was no eunuch nor without passion. He could not claim to be wiser than Solomon nor holier than David. Aeneas also used his pen in writing tales of love adventures. His History of Frederick III. contains prurient details that would not be tolerated in a respectable author to-day. He was even ready to instruct youth in methods of self-indulgence, and wrote to Sigismund, the young duke of the Tyrol, neither to neglect literature nor to deny himself the blandishments of Venus.738  This advice was recalled to his face by the canonist George von Heimburg at the Congress of Mantua. The famous remark belongs to Aeneas that the celibacy of the clergy was at one time with good reason made subject of positive legislation, but the time had come when there was better reason for allowing priests to marry. He himself did not join the clerical order till 1446, when he was consecrated subdeacon. Before Pius’ election,739  the conclave bound the coming pope to prosecute the war against the Turk, to observe the rules of the Council of Constance about the sacred college and to consult its members before making new appointments to bishoprics and the greater abbeys. Nominations of cardinals were to be made to the camera, and their ratification to depend upon a majority of its votes. Each cardinal whose income did not amount to 4,000 florins was to receive 100 florins a month till the sum of 4,000 was reached. This solemn compact formed a precedent which the cardinals for more than half a century followed.

Aeneas’ constitution was already shattered. He was a great sufferer from the stone, the gout and a cough, and spent many months of his pontificate at Viterbo and other baths. His rule was not distinguished by any enduring measures. He conducted himself well, had the respect of the Romans, received the praise of contemporary biographers, and did all he could to further the measures for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. He appointed the son of his sister, Laodamia, cardinal at the age of 23, and in 1461 he bestowed the same dignity on Francis Gonzaga, a youth of only 17. These appointments seem to have awakened no resentment.

To advance the interest of the crusade against the Turks, Pius called a congress of princes to meet in Mantua, 1460. On his way thither, accompanied by Bessarion, Borgia and other cardinals, he visited his birthplace, Corsignana, and raised it to a bishopric, changing its name to Pienza. He also began the construction of a palace and cathedral which still endure. Siena he honored by conferring the Golden Rose on its signiory, and promoting the city to the dignity of a metropolitan see. He also enriched it with one of John the Baptist’s arms. Florence arranged for the pope’s welcome brilliant amusements,—theatrical plays, contests of wild beasts, races between lions and horses, and dances,—worldly rather than religious spectacles, as Pastor remarks.

The princes were slow in arriving in Mantua, and the attendance was not such as to justify the opening of the congress till Sept. 26. Envoys from Thomas Palaeologus of the Morea, brother of the last Byzantine emperor, from Lesbos, Cyprus, Rhodes and other parts of the East were on hand to pour out their laments. In his opening address, lasting three hours, Pius called upon the princes to emulate Stephen, Peter, Andrew, Sebastian, St. Lawrence and other martyrs in readiness to lay down their lives in the holy war. The aggression of the Turks had robbed Christendom of some of its fairest seats,—Antioch, where the followers of Christ for the first time received the name Christians, Solomon’s temple, where Christ so often preached, Bethlehem, where he was born, the Jordan, in which he was baptized, Tabor, on which he was transfigured, Calvary, where he was crucified. If they wanted to retain their own possessions, their wives, their children, their liberty, the very faith in which they were baptized, they must believe in war and carry on war. Joshua continued to have victory over his enemies till the sun went down; Gideon, with 300, scattered the Midianites; Jephthah, with a small army, put to flight the swarms of the Ammonites; Samson had brought the proud Philistines to shame; Godfrey, with a handful of men, had destroyed an innumerable number of the enemy and slaughtered the Turks like cattle. Passionately the papal orator exclaimed, O! that Godfrey were once more present, and Baldwin and Eustache and Bohemund and Tancred, and the other mighty men who broke through the ranks of the Turks and regained Jerusalem by their arms.740

The assembly was stirred to a great heat, but, so a contemporary says, the ardor soon cooled. Cardinal Bessarion followed Pius with an address which also lasted three hours. Of eloquence there was enough, but the crusading age was over. The conquerors of Jerusalem had been asleep for nearly 400 years. Splendid orations could not revive that famous outburst of enthusiasm which followed Urban’s address at Clermont. In this case the element of romance was wanting which the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre had furnished. The prowess of the conquering Turks was a hard fact.

During the Congress of Mantua the controversy broke out between the German lawyer, Gregor of Heimburg, and Pius. They had met before at Basel. Heimburg, representing the duke of the Tyrol, who had imprisoned Nicolas of Cusa spoke against the proposed crusade. He openly insulted the pope by keeping on his hat in his presence, an indignity he jokingly explained as a precaution against the catarrh. From the sentence of excommunication, pronounced against his ducal master, he appealed to a general council, August 13, 1460. He himself was punished with excommunication, and Pius called upon the city of Nürnberg to expel him as the child of the devil and born of the artifice of lies. Heimburg became a wanderer until the removal of the ban, 1472. He was the strongest literary advocate in Germany of the Basel decrees and the superiority of councils, and has been called a predecessor of Luther and precursor of the Reformation.741  Diether, archbishop of Mainz, another advocate of the conciliar system, who entered into compacts with the German princes to uphold the Basel decrees and to work for a general council on German soil, was deposed, 1461, as Hermann, archbishop of Cologne, was deposed a hundred years later for undertaking measures of reform in his diocese.

Pius left Mantua the last of January, 1461, stopping on the return journey a second time at his beloved Siena, and canonizing its distinguished daughter, Catherine.742  Here Rodrigo Borgia’s gayeties were so notorious as to call forth papal rebuke. The cardinal gave banquets to which women were invited without their husbands. In a severe letter to the future supreme pontiff, Pius spoke of the dancing at the entertainments as being performed, so he understood, with "all licentiousness."

The ease with which Pius, when it was to his interest, renounced theories which he once advocated is shown in two bulls. The first, the famous bull, Execrabilis, declared it an accursed and unheard-of abuse to make appeal to a council from the decisions of the Roman pontiff, Christ’s vicar, to whom it was given to feed his sheep and to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. To rid the Church of this pestiferous venom,—pestiferum virus,—it announced the papal purpose to damn such appeals and to lay upon the appellants a curse from which there could be no absolution except by the Roman pontiff himself and in the article of death.743  Thus the solemn principle which had bloomed so promisingly in the fair days of the councils of Constance and Basel, and for which Gerson and D’Ailly had so zealously contended, was set aside by one stroke of the pen. Thenceforward, the decree announced, papal decisions were to be treated as final.

Three years later, April 26, 1463, the theory of the supremacy of general councils was set aside in still more precise language.744  In an elaborate letter addressed to the rector and scholars of the University of Cologne, Pius pronounced for the monarchical form of government in the church—monarchicum regimen — as being of divine origin, and the one given to Peter. As storks follow one leader, and as the bees have one king, so the militant church has in the vicar of Christ one who is moderator and arbiter of all. He receives his authority directly from Christ without mediation. He is the prince—praesul — of all the bishops, the heir of the Apostles, of the line of Abel and Melchisedek. As for the Council Of Constance, Pius expressed his regard for its decrees so far as they were approved by his predecessors, but the definitions of general councils, he affirmed, are subject to the sanction of the supreme pontiff, Peter’s successor. With reference to his former utterances at Basel, he expressly revoked anything he had said in conflict with the positions taken in the bull, and ascribed those statements to immaturity of mind, the imprudence of youth and the circumstances of his early training. Quis non errat mortalis—what mortal does not make mistakes, he exclaimed. Reject Aeneas and follow Pius—Aeneam rejicite, Pium recipite — he said. The first was a Gentile name given by parents at the birth of their son; the second, the name he had adopted on his elevation to the Apostolic see.745

It would not be ingenuous to deny to Pius II., in making retractation, the virtue of sincerity. A strain of deep feeling runs through its long paragraphs which read like the last testament of a man speaking from the heart. Inspired by the dignity of his office, the pope wanted to be in accord with the long line of his predecessors, some of whom he mentioned by name, from Peter and Clement to the Innocents and Boniface. In issuing the decree of papal infallibility four centuries later, Pius IX. did not excel his predecessor in the art of composition; but he had this advantage over him that his announcement was stamped with the previous ratification of a general council. The two documents of the two popes of the name Pius reach the summit of papal assumption and consigned to burial the theories of the final authority of general councils and the infallibility of their decrees.

Scarcely could any two things be thought of more incongruous than Pius II.’s culture and the glorious reception he gave in 1462 to the reputed head of the Apostle Andrew. This highly prized treasure was brought to Italy by Thomas Palaeologus, who, in recognition of his pious benevolence toward the holy see, was given the Golden Rose, a palace in Rome and an annual allowance of 6,000 ducats. The relic was received with ostentatious signs of devotion. Bessarion and two other members of the sacred college received it at Narni and conveyed it to Rome. The pope, accompanied by the remaining cardinals and the Roman clergy, went out to the Ponte Molle to give it welcome. After falling prostrate before the Apostle’s skull, Pius delivered an appropriate address in which he congratulated the dumb fragment upon coming safely out of the hands of the Turks to find at last, as a fugitive, a place beside the remains of its brother Apostles. The address being concluded, the procession reformed and, with Pius borne in the Golden Chair, conducted the skull to its last resting-place. The streets were decked in holiday attire, and no one showed greater zeal in draping his palace than Rodrigo Borgia. The skull was deposited in St. Peter’s, after, as Platina says, "the sepulchres of some of the popes and cardinals, which took up too much room, had been removed." The ceremonies were closed by Bessarion in an address in which he expressed the conviction that St. Andrew would join with the other Apostles as a protector of Rome and in inducing the princes to combine for the expulsion of the Turks.746

In his closing days, Pius II. continued to be occupied with the crusade. He had written a memorable letter to Mohammed II. urging him to follow his mother’s religion and turn Christian, and assuring him that, as Clovis and Charlemagne had been renowned Christian sovereigns, so he might become Christian emperor over the Bosphorus, Greece and Western Asia. No reply is extant. In 1458, the year before the Mantuan congress assembled, the crescent had been planted on the Acropolis of Athens. All Southern Greece suffered the indignity and horrors of Turkish oppression. Servia fell into the hands of the invaders, 1459, and Bosnia followed, 1462.

Pius’ bull of 1463, summoning to a crusade, was put aside by the princes, but the pontiff, although he was afflicted with serious bodily infirmities, the stone and the gout, was determined to set an example in the right direction. Like Moses, he wanted, at least, to watch from some promontory or ship the battle against the enemies of the cross. Financial aid was furnished by the discovery of the alum mines of Tolfa, near Civita Vecchia, in 1462, the revenue from which passed into the papal treasury and was specially devoted by the conclave of 1464 to the crusade. But it availed little. Pius proceeded to Ancona on a litter, stopping on the way at Loreto to dedicate a golden cup to the Virgin. Philip of Burgundy, upon whom he had placed chief reliance, failed to appear. From Frederick III. nothing was to be expected. Venice and Hungary alone promised substantial help. The supreme pontiff lodged on the promontory in the bishop’s palace. But only two vessels lay at anchor in the harbor, ready for the expedition. To these were added in a few days 14 galleys sent by the doge. Pius saw them as they appeared in sight. The display of further heroism was denied him by his death two days later. A comparison has been drawn by the historian between the pope, with his eye fixed upon the East, and another, a born navigator, who perhaps was even then turning his eyes towards the West, and before many years was to set sail in equally frail vessels to make his momentous discovery.

On his death-bed, Pius had an argument whether extreme unction, which had been administered to him at Basel during an outbreak of the plague, might be administered a second time. Among his last words, spoken to Cardinal Ammanati, whom he had adopted, were, "pray for me, my son, for I am a sinner. Bid my brethren continue this holy expedition." The body was carried to Rome and laid away in St. Peter’s.

The disappointment of this restless and remarkable man, in the closing undertaking of his busy career, cannot fail to awaken human sympathy. Pius, whose aims and methods had been the most practical, was carried away at last by a romantic idea, without having the ability to marshal the forces for its realization. He misjudged the times. His purpose was the purpose of a man whose career had taught him never to tolerate the thought of failure. In forming a general estimate, we cannot withhold the judgment that, if he had made culture and literary effort prominent in the Vatican, his pontificate would have stood out in the history of the papacy with singular lustre. It will always seem strange that he did not surround himself with literati, as did Nicolas V., and that his interest in the improvement of Rome showed itself only in a few minor constructions. His biographer, Campanus, declares that he incurred great odium by his neglect of the Humanists, and Filelfo, his former teacher of Greek, launched against his memory a biting philippic for this neglect. The great literary pope proved to be but a poor patron.747  Platina’s praise must not be forgotten, when he says, "The pope’s delight, when he had leisure, was in writing and reading, because he valued books more than precious stones, for in them there were plenty of gems." What he delighted in as a pastime himself, he seems not to have been concerned to use his high position to promote in others. He was satisfied with the diplomatic mission of the papacy and deceived by the ignis fatuus of a crusade to deliver Constantinople.

Platina describes Pius at the opening of his pontificate as short, gray-haired and wrinkled of face. He rose at daybreak, and was temperate at table. His industry was noteworthy. His manner made him accessible to all, and he struck the Romans of his age as a man without hypocrisy. Looked at as a man of culture, Aeneas was grammarian, geographer, historian, novelist and orator. Everywhere he was the keen observer of men and events. The plan of his cosmography was laid out on a large scale, but was left unfinished.748  His Commentaries, extending from his birth to the time of his death, are a racy example of autobiographic literature. His strong hold upon the ecclesiastics who surrounded him can only be explained by his unassumed intellectual superiority and a certain moral ingenuousness. He is one of the most interesting figures of his century.749

§ 51. Paul II. 1464–1471.

The next occupant of the papal throne possessed none of the intellectual attractiveness of his predecessor, and displayed no interest in promoting the war against the Turks. He was as difficult to reach as Pius had been accessible, and was slow in attending to official business. The night he turned into day, holding his audiences after dark, and legates were often obliged to wait far into the night or even as late as three in the morning before getting a hearing.

Pietro Barbo, the son of a sister of Eugenius IV., was born in Venice, 1418. He was about to set sail for the East on a mercantile project, when the news reached Venice of his uncle’s election to the papacy. Following his elder brother’s advice, he gave up the quest of worldly gain and devoted himself to the Church. Eugenius’ favor assured him rapid promotion, and he was successively appointed archdeacon of Bologna, bishop of Cervia, bishop of Vicenza, papal pronotary and cardinal. On being elected to the papal chair, the Venetian chose the name of Formosus and then Mark, but, at the advice of the conclave, both were given up, as the former seemed to carry with it a reference to the pontiff’s fine presence, and the latter was the battle-cry of Venice, and might give political offence. So he took the name, Paul.

Before entering upon the election, the conclave again adopted a pact which required the prosecution of the crusade and the assembling of a general council within three years. The number of cardinals was not to exceed 24, the age of appointment being not less than 30 years, and the introduction of more than one of the pope’s relatives to that body was forbidden.750

This solemn agreement, Paul proceeded at once summarily to set aside. The cardinals were obliged to attach their names to another document, whose contents the pope kept concealed by holding his hand over the paper as they wrote. The veteran Carvajal was the only member of the curia who refused to sign. From the standpoint of papal absolutism, Paul was fully justified. What right has any conclave to dictate to the supreme pontiff of Christendom, the successor of St. Peter!  The pact was treason to the high papal theory, and meant nothing less than the substitution of an oligarchy for the papal monarchy. Paul called no council, not even a congress, to discuss the crusade against the Turks, and appointed three of his nephews cardinals, Marco Barbo, his brother’s son, and Battista Zeno and Giovanni Michïel, sons of two sisters.751  His ordinances for the city included sumptuary regulations, limiting the prices to be paid for wearing apparel, banquets and entertainments at weddings and funerals, and restricting the dowries of daughters to 800 gold florins.

A noteworthy occurrence of Paul’s pontificate was the storm raised in Rome, 1466, by his dismissal of the 70 abbreviators, the number to which Pius II. had limited the members of that body. This was one of those incidents which give variety to the history of the papal court and help to make it, upon the whole, the most interesting of all histories. The scribes of the papal household were roughly divided into two classes, the secretaries and the abbreviators. The business of the former was to take charge of the papal correspondence of a more private nature, while the latter prepared briefs of bulls and other more solemn public documents.752  The dismissal of the abbreviators got permanent notoriety by the complaints of one of their number, Platina, and the sufferings he was called upon to endure. This invaluable biographer of the popes states that the dispossessed officials, on the plea that their appointment had been for life, besieged the Vatican 20 nights before getting a hearing. Then Platina, as their spokesman, threatened to appeal to the princes of Europe to have a general council called and see that justice was done. The pope’s curt answer was that he would rescind or ratify the acts of his predecessors as he pleased.

The unfortunate abbreviator, who was more of a scholar than a politician, was thrown into prison and held there during the four months of Winter without fire and bound in chains. Unhappily for him, he was imprisoned a second time, accused of conspiracy and heretical doctrine. In these charges the Roman Academy was also involved, an institution which cultivated Greek thought and was charged with having engaged in a propaganda of Paganism. There was some ground for the charge, for its leader, Pomponius Laeto, who combined the care of his vineyard with ramblings through the old Roman ruins and the perusal of the ancient classics, had deblaterated against the clergy. This antiquary was also thrown into prison. Platina relates how he and a number of others were put to the torture, while Vienesius, his Holiness’ vice-chancellor, looked on for several days as the ordeal was proceeding, "sitting like another Minos upon a tapestried seat as if he had been at a wedding, a man in holy orders whom the canons of the Church forbade to put torture upon laymen, lest death should follow, as it sometimes does." On his release he received a promise from Paul of reappointment to office, but waited in vain till the accession of Sixtus IV., who put him in charge of the Vatican library.753

Paul pursued an energetic policy against Podiebrad and the Utraquists of Bohemia and, after ordering all the compacts with the king ignored, deposed him and called upon Matthias of Hungary to take his throne. Paul had rejected Podiebrad’s offer to dispossess the Turk on condition of being recognized as Byzantine emperor.754

In 1468, Frederick, III. repeated his visit to Rome, accompanied by 600 knights, but the occasion aroused none of the high expectation of the former visit, when the emperor brought with him the Portuguese infanta. There was no glittering pageant, no august papal reception. On receiving the communion in the basilica of St. Peter’s, he received from the pontiff’s hand the bread, but not the "holy blood," which, as the contemporary relates, Paul reserved to himself as an object-lesson against the Bohemians, though it was customary on such occasions to give both the elements. The successor of Charlemagne and Barbarossa was then given a seat at the pope’s side, which was no higher than the pope’s feet.755  Patritius, who describes the scene, remarks that, while the respect paid to the papal dignity had increased, the imperium of the Roman empire had fallen into such decadence that nothing remained of it but its name. Without manifesting any reluctance, the Hapsburg held the pope’s stirrup.

Paul was not without artistic tastes, although he condemned the study of the classics in the Roman schools,756 and was pronounced by Platina a great enemy and despiser of learning. He was an ardent collector of precious stones, coins, vases and other curios, and took delight in showing his jewels to Frederick III. Sixtus IV. is said to have found 54 silver chests filled with pearls collected by this pontiff, estimated to be worth 300,000 ducats. The two tiaras, made at his order, contained gems said to have been worth a like amount. At a later time, Cardinal Barbo found in a secret drawer of one of Paul’s chests sapphires valued at 12,000 ducats.757  Platina was probably repeating only a common rumor, when he reports that in the daytime Paul slept and at night kept awake, looking over his jewels.

To this diversion the pontiff added sensual pleasures and public amusements.758  He humored the popular taste by restoring heathen elements to the carnival, figures of Bacchus and the fauna, Diana and her nymphs. In the long list of the gayeties of carnival week are mentioned races for young men, for old men and for Jews, as well as races between horses, donkeys and buffaloes. Paul looked down from St. Mark’s and delighted the crowds by furnishing a feast in the square below and throwing down amongst them handfuls of coins. In things of this kind, says Infessura, the pope had his delight.759  He was elaborate in his vestments and, when he appeared in public, was accustomed to paint his face.

The pope’s death was ascribed to his indiscretion in eating two large melons. Asked by a cardinal why, in spite of the honors of the papacy, he was not contented, Paul replied that a little wormwood can pollute a whole hive of honey. The words belong in the same category as the words spoken 300 years before by the English pope, Adrian, when he announced the failure of the highest office in Christendom to satisfy all the ambitions of man.

§ 52. Sixtus IV. 1471–1484.

The last three popes of the 15th century, Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., completely subordinated the interests of the papacy to the advancement of their own pleasure and the enrichment and promotion of their kindred.760  The avenues of the Vatican were filled with upstarts whose only claim to recognition was that they were the children or the nephews of its occupant, the supreme pontiff.

The chief features of the reign of Sixtus IV., a man of great decision and ability, were the insolent rule of his numerous nephews and the wars with the states of Italy in which their intrigues and ambitions involved their uncle. At the time of his election, Francesco Rovere was general of the order of the Franciscans. Born 1414, he had risen from the lowest obscurity, his father being a fisherman near Savona. He took the doctor’s degree in theology at Padua, and taught successively in Bologna, Pavia, Siena, Florence and Perugia. Paul II. appointed him cardinal. In the conclave strong support is said to have come to him through his notorious nephew, Peter Riario, who was active in conducting his canvas and making substantial promises for votes.

The effort to interest the princes in the Turkish crusade was renewed, but soon abandoned. Cardinals were despatched to the various courts of Europe, Bessarion to France, Marco Barbo to Germany, and Borgia to Spain, but only to find these governments preoccupied with other concerns or ill-disposed to the enterprise. In 1472, a papal fleet of 18 galleys actually set sail, with banners blessed by the pope in St. Peter’s, and under the command of Cardinal Caraffa. It was met at Rhodes by 30 ships from Naples and 36 from Venice and, after some plundering exploits, returned with 25 Turkish prisoners of war and 12 camels,—trophies enough to arouse the curiosity of the Romans. Moneys realized from some of Paul II.’s gems had been employed to meet the expenditure.

Sixtus’ relatives became the leading figures in Rome, and in wealth and pomp they soon rivalled or eclipsed the old Roman families and the older members of the sacred college. Sixtus was blessed or burdened with 16 nephews and grandnephews. All that was in his power to do, he did, to give them a good time and to establish them in affluence and honor all their days. The Sienese had their day under Pius II., and now it was the turn of the Ligurians. The pontiff’s two brothers and three, if not four, sisters, as well as all their progeny, had to be taken care of. The excuse made for Calixtus III. cannot be made for this indulgent uncle, that he was approaching his dotage. Sixtus was only 56 when he reached the tiara. And desperate is the suggestion that the unfitness or unwillingness of the Roman nobility to give the pope proper support made it necessary for him to raise up another and a complacent aristocracy.761

Sixtus deemed no less than five of his nephews and a grandnephew deserving of the red hat, and sooner or later eight of them were introduced into the college of cardinals. Two nephews in succession were appointed prefects of Rome. The nephews who achieved the rank of cardinals were Pietro Riario at 25, and Julian della Rovere at 28, in 1471, both Franciscan monks; Jerome Basso and Christopher Rovere, in 1477; Dominico Rovere, Christopher’s brother, in 1478; and the pope’s grandnephew, Raphael Sansoni, at the age of 17, in 1477. The two nephews made prefects of Rome were Julian’s brother Lionardo, who died in 1475, and his brother Giovanni, d. 1501. Lionardo was married by his uncle to the illegitimate daughter of Ferrante, king of Naples.762

Upon Peter Riario and Julian Rovere he heaped benefice after benefice. Julian, a man of rare ability, afterwards made pope under the name of Julius II., was appointed archbishop of Avignon and then of Bologna, bishop of Lausanne, Constance, Viviers, Ostia and Velletri, and placed at the head of several abbeys. Riario, who, according to popular hearsay, was the pope’s own child, was bishop of Spoleto, Seville and Valencia, Patriarch of Constantinople, and recipient of other rich places, until his income amounted to 60,000 florins or about 2,500,000 francs. He went about with a retinue of 100 horsemen. His expenditures were lavish and his estate royal. His mistresses, whom he did not attempt to conceal, were dressed in elegant fabrics, and one of them wore slippers embroidered with pearls. Dominico received one after the other the bishoprics of Corneto, Tarentaise, Geneva and Turin.

The visit of Leonora, the daughter of Ferrante, in Rome in 1473, while on her way to Ferrara to meet her husband, Hercules of Este, was perhaps the most splendid occasion the city had witnessed since the first visit of Frederick III. It furnished Riario an opportunity for the display of a magnificent hospitality. On Whitsunday, the Neapolitan princess was conducted by two cardinals to St. Peter’s, where she heard mass said by the pope and then at high-noon witnessed the miracle play of Susanna and the Elders, acted by Florentine players. The next evening she sat down to a banquet which lasted 3 hours and combined all the skill which decorators and cooks could apply. The soft divans and costly curtainings, the silk costumes of the servants and the rich courses are described in detail by contemporary writers. In anticipation of modern electrical fans, 3 bellows were used to cool and freshen the atmosphere. In such things, remarks Infessura, the treasures of the Church were squandered.763

In 1474, on the death of Peter Riario, a victim of his excesses and aged only 28,764 his brother Jerome, a layman, came into supreme favor. Sixtus was ready to put all the possessions of the papal see at his disposal and, on his account, he became involved in feuds with Florence and Venice. He purchased for this favorite Imola, at a cost of 40,000 ducats, and married him to the illegitimate daughter of the duke of Milan, Catherine Sforza. The purchase of Imola was resented by Florence, but Sixtus did not hesitate to further antagonize the republic and the Medici. The Medici had established a branch banking-house in Rome and become the papal bankers. Sixtus chose to affront the family by patronizing the Pazzi, a rival banking-firm. At the death of Philip de’Medici, archbishop of Pisa, in 1474, Salviati was appointed his successor against the protest of the Medici. Finally, Julian de’ Medici was denied the cardinalship. These events marked the stages in the progress of the rupture between the papacy and Florence. Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, and his brother Julian represented the family which the fiscal talents of Cosmo de’Medici had founded. In his readiness to support the ambitions of his nephew, Jerome Riario, the pope seemed willing to go to any length of violence. A conspiracy was directed against Lorenzo’s life, in which Jerome was the chief actor,—one of the most cold-blooded conspiracies of history. The pope was conversant with the plot and talked it over with its chief agent, Montesecco and, though he may not have consented to murder, which Jerome and the Pazzi had included in their plan, he fully approved of the plot to seize Lorenzo’s person and overthrow the republic.765

The terrible tragedy was enacted in the cathedral of Florence. When Montesecco, a captain of the papal mercenaries, hired to carry out the plot, shrank from committing sacrilege by shedding blood in the church of God, its execution was intrusted to two priests, Antonio Maffei da Volterra and Stefano of Bagnorea, the former a papal secretary. While the host was being elevated, Julian de’Medici, who was inside the choir, was struck with one dagger after another and fell dead. Lorenzo barely escaped. As he was entering the sanctuary, he was struck by Maffei and slightly wounded, and made a shield of his arm by winding his mantle around it, and escaped with friends to the sacristy, which was barred against the assassins. The bloody deed took place April 26, 1478.

The city proved true to the family which had shed so much lustre upon it, and quick revenge was taken upon the agents of the conspiracy. Archbishop Salviati, his brother, Francesco de’ Pazzi and others were hung from the signoria windows.766  The two priests were executed after having their ears and noses cut off. Montesecco was beheaded. Among those who witnessed the scene in the cathedral was the young cardinal, Raphael, the pope’s grandnephew, and without having any previous knowledge of the plot. His face, it was said, turned to an ashen pallor, which in after years he never completely threw off.

With intrepid resolution, Sixtus resented the death of his archbishop and the indignity done a cardinal in the imprisonment of Raphael as an accomplice. He hurled the interdict at the city, branding Lorenzo as the son of iniquity and the ward of perdition,—iniquitatis filius et perditionis alumnus,—and entered into an alliance with Naples against it. Louis XI. of France and Venice and other Italian states espoused the cause of Florence. Pushed to desperation, Lorenzo went to Naples and made such an impression on Ferrante that he changed his attitude and joined an alliance with Florence. The pope was checkmated. The seizure of Otranto on Italian soil by the Turks, in 1480, called attention away from the feud to the imminent danger threatening all Italy. In December of that year, Sixtus absolved Florence, and the legates of the city were received in front of St. Peter’s and touched with the rod in token of forgiveness. Six months later, May 26, 1481, Rome received the news of the death of Mohammed II., which Sixtus celebrated by special services in the church, Maria del Popolo,767 and the Turks abandoned the Italian coast.

Again, in the interest of his nephew, Jerome, Sixtus took Forli, thereby giving offence to Ferrara. He joined Venice in a war against that city, and all Italy became involved. Later, the warlike pontiff again saw his league broken up and Venice and Ferrara making peace, irrespective of his counsels. He vented his mortification by putting the queen of the Adriatic under the interdict.

In Rome, the bloody pope fanned the feud between the Colonna and the Orsini, and almost succeeded in blotting out the name of the Colonna by assassination and judicial murder.

Sixtus has the distinction of having extended the efficacy of indulgences to souls in purgatory. He was most zealous in distributing briefs of indulgence.768  The Spanish Inquisition received his solemn sanction in 1478. Himself a Franciscan, he augmented the privileges of the Franciscan order in a bull which that order calls its great ocean—mare magnum. He canonized the official biographer of Francis d’Assisi, Bonaventura.

He issued two bulls with reference to the worship of Mary and the doctrine of the immaculate conception, but he declared her sinlessness from the instant of conception a matter undecided by the Roman Church and the Apostolic see—nondum ab ecclesia romana et apostolica sede decisum.769  In all matters of ritual and outward religion, he was of all men most punctilious. The chronicler, Volterra, abounds in notices of his acts of devotion. Asa patron of art, his name has a high place. He supported Platina with four assistants in cataloguing the archives of the Vatican in three volumes.

Such was Sixtus IV., the unblushing promoter of the interests of his relatives, many of them as worthless as they were insolent, the disturber of the peace of Italy, revengeful, and yet the liberal patron of the arts. The enlightened diarist of Rome, Infessura,770 calls the day of the pontiff’s decease that most happy day, the day on which God liberated Christendom from the hand of an impious and iniquitous ruler, who had before him no fear of God nor love of the Christian world nor any charity whatsoever, but was actuated by avarice, the love of vain show and pomp, most cruel and given to sodomy.771

During his reign, were born in obscure places in Saxony and Switzerland two men who were to strike a mighty blow at the papal rule, themselves also of peasant lineage and the coming leaders of the new spiritual movement.

§ 53. Innocent VIII. 1484–1492.

Under Innocent VIII. matters in Rome were, if anything, worse than under his predecessor, Sixtus IV. Innocent was an easy-going man without ideals, incapable of conceiving or carrying out high plans. He was chiefly notable for his open avowal of an illegitimate family and his bull against witchcraft.

At Sixtus’ death, wild confusion reigned in Rome. Nobles and cardinals barricaded their residences. Houses were pillaged. The mob held carnival on the streets. The palace of Jerome Riario was sacked. Relief was had by an agreement between the rival families of the Orsini and Colonna to withdraw from the city for a month and Jerome’s renunciation of the castle of S. Angelo, which his wife had defended, for 4,000 ducats. Not till then did the cardinals feel themselves justified in meeting for the election of a new pontiff.

The conclaves of 1484 and 1492 have been pronounced by high catholic authority among the "saddest in the history of the papacy."772  Into the conclave of 1484, 25 cardinals entered, 21 of them Italians. Our chief account is from the hand of the diarist, Burchard, who was present as one of the officials.

His description goes into the smallest details. A protocol was again adopted, which every cardinal promised in a solemn formula to observe, if elected pope. Its first stipulation was that 100 ducats should be paid monthly to members of the sacred college, whose yearly income from benefices might not reach the sum of 4,000 ducats (about 200,000 francs in our present money). Then followed provisions for the continuance of the crusade against the Turks, the reform of the Roman curia in head and members, the appointment of no cardinal under 30 for any cause whatever, the advancement of not more than a single relative of the reigning pontiff to the sacred college and the restriction of its membership to 24.773

Rodrigo Borgia fully counted upon being elected and, in expectation of that event, had barricaded his palace against being looted. Large bribes, even to the gift of his palace, were offered by him for the coveted prize of the papacy. Cardinal Barbo had 10 votes and, when it seemed likely that he would be the successful candidate, Julian Rovere and Borgia, renouncing their aspirations, combined their forces, and during the night, went from cell to cell, securing by promises of benefices and money the votes of all but six of the cardinals. According to Burchard, the pope about to be elected sat up all night signing promises. The next morning the two cardinals aroused the six whom they had not disturbed, exclaiming, "Come, let us make a pope." "Who?" they said. "Cardinal Cibo." "How is that?" they asked. "While you were drowsy with sleep, we gathered all the votes except yours," was the reply.

The new pope, Lorenzo Cibo, born in Genoa, 1432, had been made cardinal by Sixtus IV., 1473. During his rule, peace was maintained with the courts of Italy, but in Rome clerical dissipation, curial venality and general lawlessness were rampant. "In darkness Innocent was elected, in darkness he lives, and in darkness he will die," said the general of the Augustinians.774  Women were carried off in the night. The murdered were found in the streets in the morning. Crimes, before their commission, were compounded for money. Even the churches were pilfered. A piece of the true cross was stolen from S. Maria in Trastavere. The wood was reported found in a vineyard, but without its silver frame. When the vice-chancellor, Borgia, was asked why the laws were not enforced, he replied, "God desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and live."775  The favorite of Sixtus IV., Jerome Riario, was murdered in 1488. His widow, the brave and masculine Catherine Sforza, who was pregnant at the time, defended his castle at Forli and defied the papal forces besieging it, declaring that, if they put her children to death who were with her, she yet had one left at Imola and the unborn child in her womb. The duke of Milan, her relative, rescued her and put the besiegers to flight.

All ecclesiastical offices were set for sale. How could it be otherwise, when the papal tiara itself was within the reach of the highest bidder?776  The appointment of 18 new papal secretaries brought 62,400 ducats into the papal treasury. The bulls creating the offices expressly declared the aim to be to secure funds. 52 persons were appointed to seal the papal bulls, called plumbatores, from the leaden ball or seal they used, and the price of the position was fixed at 2,500 ducats. Even the office of librarian in the Vatican was sold, and the papal tiara was put in pawn. In a time of universal traffic in ecclesiastical offices, it is not surprising that the fabrication of papal documents was turned into a business. Two papal notaries confessed to having issued 50 such documents in two years, and in spite of the pleas of their friends were hung and burnt, 1489.777

Innocent’s children were not persons of marked traits, or given to ambitious intrigues. Common rumor gave their number as 16, all of them children by married women.778  Franceschetto and Theorina seem to have been born before the father entered the priesthood. Franceschetto’s marriage to Maddalena, a daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was celebrated in the Vatican, Jan. 20, 1488. Ten months later, the pope’s granddaughter, Peretta, child of Theorina, was also married in the Vatican to the marquis of Finale. The pontiff sat with the ladies at the table, a thing contrary to all the accepted proprieties. In 1492, another grandchild, also a daughter of Theorina, Battistana, was married to duke Louis of Aragon.779

The statement of Infessura is difficult to believe, although it is made at length, that Innocent issued a decree permitting concubinage in Rome both to clergy and laity. The prohibition of concubinage was declared prejudicial to the divine law and the honor of the clergy, as almost all the clergy, from the highest to the lowest, had concubines, or mistresses. According to the Roman diarist, there were 6,800 listed public courtezans in Rome besides those whose names were not recorded.780  To say the least, the statement points to the low condition of clerical morals in the holy city and the slight regard paid to the legislation of Gregory VII. Infessura was in position to know what was transpiring in Rome.

What could be expected where the morals of the supreme pontiff and the sacred senate were so loose?  The lives of many of the cardinals were notoriously scandalous. Their palaces were furnished with princely splendor and filled with scores of servants. Their example led the fashions in extravagance in dress and sumptuous banquetings. They had their stables, kennels and falcons. Cardinal Sforza, whose yearly income is reported to have been 30,000 ducats, or 1,500,000 francs, present money, excelled in the chase. Cardinal Julian made sport of celibacy, and had three daughters. Cardinal Borgia, the acknowledged leader in all gayeties, was known far and wide by his children, who were prominent on every occasion of display and conviviality. The passion for gaming ran high in the princely establishments. Cardinal Raphael won 8,000 ducats at play from Cardinal Balue who, however, in spite of such losses, left a fortune of 100,000 ducats. This grandnephew of Sixtus IV. was a famous player, and in a single night won from Innocent’s son, Franceschetto, 14,000 ducats. The son complained to his father, who ordered the fortunate winner to restore the night’s gains. But the gay prince of the church excused himself by stating that the money had already been paid out upon the new palace he was engaged in erecting.

The only relative whom Innocent promoted to the sacred college was his illegitimate brother’s son, Lorenzo Cibo. The appointment best known to posterity was that of Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, afterwards Leo X.

Another appointment, that of D’Aubusson, was associated with the case of the Mohammedan prince, Djem. This incident in the annals of the papacy would seem incredible, if it were not true. A writer of romance could hardly have invented an episode more grotesque. At the death of Mohammed II., his son, Djem, was defeated in his struggle for the succession by his brother Bajazet, and fled to Rhodes for protection. The Knights of St. John were willing to hold the distinguished fugitive as prisoner, upon the promise of 45,000 ducats a year from the sultan. For safety’s sake, Djem was removed to one of the Hospitaller houses in France. Hungary, Naples, Venice, France and the pope,—all put in a claim for him. Such competition to pay honor to an infidel prince had never before been heard of in Christendom. The pope won by making valuable ecclesiastical concessions to the French king, among them the bestowal of the red hat on D’Aubusson.

The matter being thus amicably adjusted, Djem was conducted to Rome, where he was received with impressive ceremonies by the cardinals and city officials. His person was regarded as of more value than the knowledge of the East brought by Marco Polo had been in its day, and the reception of the Mohammedan prince created more interest than the return of Columbus from his first journey to the West. Djem was escorted through the streets by the pope’s son, and rode a white horse sent him by the pope. The ambassador of the sultan of Egypt, then in Rome, had gone out to meet him, and shed tears as he kissed his feet and the feet of his horse. The popes had not shrunk from entering into alliances with Oriental powers to secure the overthrow of Mohammed II. and his dynasty. Djem, or the Grand Turk, as he was called, was welcomed by the pope surrounded by his cardinals. The proud descendant of Eastern monarchs, however, refused to kiss the supreme pontiff’s foot, but made some concession by kissing his shoulder. He was represented as short and stout, with an aquiline nose, and a single good eye, given at times inordinately to drink, though a man of some intellectual culture. He was reported to have put four men to death with his own hand. But Djem was a dignitary who signified too much to be cast aside for such offences. Innocent assigned him to elegantly furnished apartments in the Vatican, and thus the strange spectacle was afforded of the earthly head of Christendom acting as the host of one of the chief living representatives of the faith of Islam, which had almost crushed out the Christian churches of the East and usurped the throne on the Bosphorus.

Bajazet was willing to pay the pope 40,000 ducats for the hospitality extended to his rival brother, and delegations came from him to Rome to arrange the details of the bargain. The report ran that attempts were made by the sultan to poison both his brother and the pope by contaminating the wells of the Vatican. When the ambassador brought from Constantinople the delayed payment of three years, 120,000 ducats, Djem insisted that the Turk’s clothes should be removed and his skin be rubbed down with a towel, and that he should lick the letter "on every side," as proof that he did not also carry poison.781  Djem survived his first papal entertainer, Innocent VIII., three years, and figured prominently in public functions in the reign of Alexander VI. He died 1495, still a captive.

Another curious instance was given in Innocent’s reign of the hold open-mouthed superstition had in the reception given to the holy lance. This pretended instrument, with which Longinus pierced the Saviour’s side and which was found during the Crusades by the monk Barthélemy at Antioch, was already claimed by two cities, Nürnberg and Paris. The relic made a greater draft upon the credulity of the age than St. Andrew’s head. The latter was the gift of a Christian prince, howbeit an adherent of the schismatic Greek Church; the lance came from a Turk, Sultan Bajazet.

Some question arose among the cardinals whether it would not be judicious to stay the acceptance of the gift till the claims of the lance in Nürnberg had been investigated. But the pope’s piety, such as it was, would not allow a question of that sort to interfere. An archbishop and a bishop were despatched to Ancona to receive the iron fragment, for only the head of the lance was extant. It was conducted from the city gates by the cardinals to St. Peter’s, and after mass the pope gave his blessing. The day of the reception happened to be a fast, but, at the suggestion of one of the cardinals, some of the fountains along the streets, where the procession was appointed to go, were made to throw out wine to slake the thirst of the populace. After a solemn service in S. Maria del Popolo, on Ascension Day, 1492, the Turkish present, encased in a receptacle of crystal and gold, was placed near the handkerchief of St. Veronica in St. Peter’s.782

The two great stains upon the pontificate of Innocent VIII., the crusade he called to exterminate the Waldenses, 1487, and his bull directed against the witches of Germany, 1484, which inaugurated two horrible dramas of cruelty, have treatment in another place.

Innocent was happy in being permitted to join with Europe in rejoicings over the expulsion of the last of the Moors from Granada, 1492. Masses were said in Rome, and a sermon preached in the pontiff’s presence in celebration of the memorable event.783  With characteristic national gallantry, Cardinal Borgia showed his appreciation by instituting a bull-fight in which five bulls were killed, the first but not the last spectacle of the kind seen in the papal city. In his last sickness, Innocent was fed by a woman’s milk.784  Several years before, when he was thought to be dying, the cardinals found 1,200,000 ducats in his drawers and chests. They now granted his request that 48,000 ducats should be taken from his fortune and distributed among his relatives.

§ 54. Pope Alexander VI—Borgia. 1492–1503.

The pontificate of Alexander VI., which coincides with the closing years of the 15th century and the opening of the 16th, may be compared with the pontificate of Boniface VIII., which witnessed the passage from the 13th to the 14th centuries. Boniface marked the opening act in the decline of the papal power introduced by the king of France. Under Alexander, when the French again entered actively into the affairs of Italy, even to seizing Rome, the papacy passed into its deepest moral humiliation since the days of the pornocracy in the 10th century.

Alexander VI., whom we have before known as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, has the notorious distinction of being the most corrupt of the popes of the Renaissance period. Even in the judgment of Catholic historians, his dissoluteness knew no restraint and his readiness to abase the papacy for his own personal ends, no bounds.785  His intellectual force, if used aright, might have made his pontificate one of the most brilliant in the annals of the Apostolic see. The time was ripe. The conditions offered the opportunity if ever period did. But moral principle was wanting. Had Dante lived again, he would have written that Alexander VI. made a greater refusal than the hermit pope, Coelestine V., and deserved a darker doom than the simoniac pope, Boniface VIII.

At Innocent VIII.’s death, 23 cardinals entered into the conclave which met in the Sistine chapel. Borgia and Julian Rovere were the leading candidates. They were rivals, and had been candidates for the papal chair before. Everything was to be staked on success in the pending election. Openly and without a blush, ecclesiastical offices and money were offered as the price of the spiritual crown of Christendom. Julian was supported by the king of France, who deposited 200,000 ducats in a Roman bank and 100,000 more in Genoa to secure his election. If Borgia could not outbid him he was, at least, the more shrewd in his manipulations. There were only five cardinals, including Julian, who took nothing. The other members of the sacred college had their price. Monticelli and Soriano were given to Cardinal Orsini and also the see of Cartagena, and the legation to the March; the abbey of Subiaco and its fortresses to Colonna; Civita Castellana and the see of Majorca to Savelli; Nepi to Sclafetanus; the see of Porto to Michïel; and rich benefices to other cardinals. Four mules laden with gold were conducted to the palace of Ascanio Sforza, who also received Rodrigo’s splendid palace and the vice-chancellorship. Even the patriarch of Venice, whose high age—for he had reached 95—might have been expected to lift him above the seduction of filthy lucre, accepted 5,000 ducats. Infessura caustically remarks that Borgia distributed all his goods among the poor.786

The ceremonies of coronation were on a scale which appeared to the contemporaries unparalleled in the history of such occasions. A figure of a bull, the emblem of the Borgias, was erected near the Palazzo di S. Marco on the line of the procession, from whose eyes, nostrils and mouth poured forth water, and from the forehead wine. Rodrigo was 61 years of age, had been cardinal for 37 years, having received that dignity when he was 25. His fond uncle, Calixtus III., had made him archbishop of Valencia, heaped upon him ecclesiastical offices, including the vice-chancellorship, and made him the heir of his personal possessions. His palace was noted for the splendor of its tapestries and carpets and its vessels of gold and silver.787  The new pope possessed conspicuous personal attractions. He was tall and well-formed, and his manners so taking that a contemporary, Gasparino of Verona, speaks of his drawing women to himself more potently than the magnet attracts iron.788  The reproof which his gallantries of other days called forth from Pius II. at Siena has already been referred to.

The pre-eminent features of Alexander’s career, as the supreme pontiff of Christendom, were his dissolute habits and his extravagant passion to exalt the worldly fortunes of his children. In these two respects he seemed to be destitute at once of all regard for the solemnity of his office and of common conscience. A third feature was the entry of Charles VIII. and the French into Italy and Rome. During his pontificate two events occurred whose world-wide significance was independent of the occupant of the papal throne,—the one geographical, the other religious,—the discovery of America and the execution of the Florentine preacher, Savonarola. As in the reign of Calixtus III., so now Spaniards flocked to Rome, and the Milanese ambassador wrote that ten papacies would not have been able to satisfy their greed for official recognition. In spite of a protocol adopted in the conclave, a month did not pass before Alexander appointed his nephew, Juan of Borgia, cardinal, and in the next years he admitted four more members of the Borgia family to the sacred college, including his infamous son, Caesar Borgia, at the age of 18.789

Alexander’s household and progeny call for treatment first. It soon became evident that the supreme passion of his pontificate was to advance the fortunes of his children.790  His parental relations were not merely the subject of rumor; they are vouched for by irresistible documentary proof.

Alexander was the acknowledged father of five children by Vanozza de Cataneis: Pedro Luis, Juan, Caesar, Lucretia, Joffré and, perhaps, Pedro Ludovico. The briefs issued by Sixtus IV. legitimating Caesar and Ludovico are still extant.791  Two bulls were issued by Alexander himself in 1493, bearing on Caesar’s parentage. The first, declaring him to be the son of Vanozza by a former husband, was intended to remove the objections the sacred college naturally felt in admitting to its number one of uncertain birth. In the second, Alexander announced him to be his own son.792  Tiring of Vanozza, who was 11 years his junior, Alexander put her aside and saw that she was married successively to three husbands, himself arranging for the first relationship and making provision for the second and the third.793  In her later correspondence with Lucretia she signed herself, thy happy and unhappy mother—la felice ed infelice matre.

These were not the only children Alexander acknowledged. His daughters Girolama and Isabella were married 1482 and 1483.794  Another daughter, Laura, by Julia Farnese, born in 1492, he acknowledged as his own child, and in 1501 the pope formally legitimated, as his own son, Juan, by a Roman woman. In a first bull he called the boy Caesar’s, but in a second he recognized him as his own offspring.795

Among Alexander’s mistresses, after he became pope, the most famous was cardinal Farnese’s sister, Julia Farnese, called for her beauty, La Bella. Infessura repeatedly refers to her as Alexander’s concubine. Her legal husband was appeased by the gift of castles.

The gayeties, escapades, marriages, worldly distinctions and crimes of these children would have furnished daily material for paragraphs of a nature to satisfy the most sensational modern taste. Don Pedro Luis, Alexander’s eldest son, and his three older brothers began their public careers in the service of the Spanish king, Ferdinand, who admitted them to the ranks of the higher nobility and sold Gandia, with the title of duke, to Don Pedro. This gallant young Borgia died in 1491 at the age of 30, on the eve of his journey from Rome to Spain to marry Ferdinand’s cousin. His brother, Don Juan, fell heir to the estate and title of Gandia and was married with princely splendor in Barcelona to the princess to whom Don Pedro had been betrothed.

Alexander’s son, Caesar Borgia was as bad as his ambition was insolent. The annals of Rome and of the Vatican for more than a decade are filled with his impiety, his intrigues and his crimes. At the age of six, he was declared eligible for ordination. He was made protonotary and bishop of Pampeluna by Innocent VIII. At his father’s election he hurried from Pisa, where he was studying, and on the day of his father’s coronation was appointed archbishop of Valencia. He was then sixteen.

Don Joffré was married, at 13, to a daughter of Alfonso of Naples and was made prince of Squillace.

The personal fortunes of Alexander’s daughter, Lucretia, constitute one of the notorious and tragic episodes of the 15th century.

The most serious foreign issue in Alexander’s reign was the invasion of Charles VIII., king of France. The introductory act in what seemed likely to be the complete transformation of Italy was the sale of Cervetri and Anguillara to Virginius Orsini for 40,000 ducats by Franceschetto, the son of Innocent VIII. This papal scion was contented with a life of ease and retired to Florence. The transfer of these two estates was treated by the Sforza as disturbing the balance of power in the peninsula, and Ludovico and Ascanio Sforza pressed Alexander to check the influence of Ferrante, king of Naples, who was the supporter of the Orsini. Ferrante, a shrewd politician, by ministering to Alexander’s passion to advance his children’s fortunes, won him from the alliance with the Sforza. He promised to the pope’s son, Joffré, Donna Sancia, a mere child, in marriage. Ludovico Sforza, ready to resort to any measure likely to promote his own personal ambition, invited Charles VIII. to enter Italy and make good his claim to the crown of Naples on the ground of the former Angevin possession. He also applauded the French king’s announced purpose to reduce Constantinople once more to Christian dominion.

On Ferrante’s death, 1494, Alfonso II. was crowned king of Naples by Alexander’s nephew, Cardinal Juan Borgia. Charles, then only 22, was short, deformed, with an aquiline nose and an inordinately big head. He set out for Italy at the head of a splendid army of 40,000 men, equipped with the latest inventions in artillery. Julian Rovere, who had resisted Alexander’s policy and fled to Avignon, joined with other disaffected cardinals in supporting the French and accompanying the French army. Charles’ march through Northern Italy was a series of easy and almost bloodless triumphs. Milan threw open its gates to Charles. So did Pisa. Before entering Florence, the king was met by Savonarola, who regarded him as the messenger appointed by God to rescue Italy from her godless condition. Rome was helpless. Alexander’s ambassadors, sent to treat with the invader, were either denied audience or denied satisfaction. In his desperation, the pope resorted to the Turkish sultan, Bajazet, for aid. The correspondence that passed between the supreme ruler of Christendom and the leading sovereign of the Mohammedan world was rescued from oblivion by the capture of its bearer, George Busardo.796  40,000 ducats were found on Busardo’s person, a payment sent by Bajazet to Alexander for Djem’s safe-keeping. Alexander had indicated to the sultan that it was Charles’ aim to carry Djem off to France and then use him as the admiral of a fleet for the capture of Constantinople. In reply, Bajazet suggested that such an issue would result in even greater damage to the pope than to himself. His papal friend, whom he addressed as his Gloriosity—gloriositas, might be pleased to lift the said prisoner, Djem, out of the troubles of this present world and transfer his soul into another, where he would enjoy more quiet.797  For performing such a service, he stood ready to give him the sum of 300,000 ducats, which, as he suggested, the pope might use in purchasing princedoms for his children.

On the last day of 1494, the French army entered the holy city, dragging with it 36 bronze cannon. Such military discipline and equipment the Romans had not seen, and they looked on with awe and admiration. To the king’s demand that the castle of S. Angelo be surrendered, Alexander sent a refusal declaring that, if the fortress were attacked, he would take his position on the walls surrounded with the most sacred relics in Rome. Cardinals Julian Rovere, Sforza, Savelli and Colonna, who had ridden into the city with the French troops, urged the king to call a council and depose Alexander for simony. But when it came to the manipulation of men, Alexander was more than a match for his enemies. Charles had no desire to humiliate the pope, except so far as it might be necessary for the accomplishment of his designs upon Naples. A pact was arranged, which included the delivery of Djem to the French and the promise that Caesar Borgia should accompany the French troops to Naples as papal legate. In the meantime the French soldiery had sacked the city, even to Vanozza’s house. Henceforth the king occupied quarters in the Vatican, and the disaffected cardinals, with the exception of Julian, were reconciled to the pope.

On his march to Naples, which began Jan. 25, 1495, Charles took Djem with him. That individual passed out of the gates of Rome, riding at the side of Caesar. These two personages, the Turkish pretender and the pontiff’s son, had been on terms of familiarity, and often rode on horseback together. Within a month after leaving Rome, and before reaching Naples, the Oriental died. The capital of Southern Italy was an easy prize for the invaders. Caesar had been able to make his escape from the French camp. His son’s shrewdness and good luck afforded Alexander as much pleasure as did the opportunity of joining the king of Spain and the cities of Northern Italy in an alliance against Charles. In 1496, the alliance was strengthened by the accession of Henry VII. of England. After abandoning himself for several months to the pleasures of the Neapolitan capital, the French king retraced his course and, after the battle of Fornuovo, July 6, 1495, evacuated Italy. Alexander had evaded him by retiring from Rome, and sent after the retreating king a message to return to his proper dominions on pain of excommunication. The summons neither hastened the departure of the French nor prevented them from returning to the peninsula again in a few years.798

The misfortunes and scandals of the papal household were not interrupted by the French invasion, and continued after it. In the summer of 1497, occurred the mysterious murder of Alexander’s son, the duke of Gandia, then 24 years old. It was only a sample of the crimes being perpetrated in Rome. The duke had supped with Caesar, his brother, and Cardinal Juan Borgia at the residence of Vanozza. The supper being over, the two brothers rode together as far as the palace of Cardinal Sforza. There they separated, the duke going, as he said, on some private business, and accompanied by a masked man who had been much with him for a month past. The next day, Alexander waited for his son in vain. In the evening, unable to bear the suspense longer, he instituted an investigation. The man in the mask had been found mortally wounded. A charcoal-dealer deposed that, after midnight, he had seen several men coming to the brink of the river, one of them on a white horse, over the back of which was thrown a dead man. They backed the horse and pitched the body into the water. The pope was inconsolable with grief, and remained without food from Thursday to Sunday. He had recently made his son lord of the papal patrimony and of Viterbo, standard-bearer of the church and duke of Benevento. In reporting the loss to the consistory of cardinals, the father declared that he loved Don Juan more than anything in the world, and that if he had seven papacies he would give them all to restore his son’s life.

The origin of the murder was a mystery. Different persons were picked out as the perpetrators. It was surmised that the deed was committed by some lover who had been abused by the gay duke. Suspicion also fastened on Ascanio Sforza, the only cardinal who did not attend the consistory. But gradually the conviction prevailed that the murderer was no other than Caesar Borgia himself, and the Italian historian, Guicciardini, three years later adopted the explanation of fratricide. Caesar, it was rumored, was jealous of the place the duke of Gandia held in his father’s affections, and hankered after the worldly honors which had been heaped upon him.

When the charcoal-dealer was asked why he did not at once report the dark scene, he replied that such deeds were a common occurrence and he had witnessed a hundred like it.799

In the first outburst of his grief, Alexander, moved by feelings akin to repentance, appointed a commission of six cardinals to bring in proposals for the reformation of the curia and the Church. His reforming ardor was, however, soon spent, and the proposals, when offered, were set aside as derogatory to the papal prerogative. For the next two years, the marriages and careers of his children, Caesar and Lucretia, were treated as if they were the chief concern of Christendom.

Lucretia, born in 1480, had already been twice betrothed to Spaniards, when the father was elected pope and sought for her a higher alliance. In 1493, she was married to John Sforza, lord of Pesaro, a man of illegitimate birth. The young princess was assigned a palace of her own near the Vatican, where Julia Farnese ruled as her father’s mistress. It was a gay life she lived, as the centre of the young matrons of Rome. Accompanied by a hundred of them at a time, she rode to church. She was pronounced by the master of ceremonies of the papal chapel most fair, of a bright disposition, and given to fun and laughter.800  The charges of incest with her own father and brother Caesar made against her on the streets of the papal city, in the messages of ambassadors and by the historian, Guicciardini, seem too shocking to be believed, and have been set aside by Gregorovius, the most brilliant modern authority for her life. The distinguished character of her last marriage and the domestic peace and happiness by which it was marked seem to be sufficient to discredit the damaging accusations.

The marriage with the lord of Pesaro was celebrated in the Vatican, after a sermon had been preached by the bishop of Concordia. Among the guests were 11 cardinals and 150 Roman ladies. The entertainment lasted till 5 in the morning. There was dancing, and obscene comedies were performed, with Alexander and the cardinals looking on. And all this, exclaims a contemporary," to the honor and praise of Almighty God and the Roman church!"801

After spending some time with her husband on his estate, Lucretia was divorced from him on the charge of his impotency, the divorce being passed upon by a commission of cardinals. After spending a short time in a convent, the princess was married to Don Alfonso, duke of Besiglia, the bastard son of Alfonso II. of Naples. The Vatican again witnessed the nuptial ceremony, but the marriage was, before many months, to be brought to a close by the duke’s murder.

In the meantime Donna Sancia, the wife of Joffré, had come to the city, May, 1496, and been received at the gates by cardinals, Lucretia and other important personages. The pope, surrounded by 11 cardinals, and with Lucretia on his right hand, welcomed his son and daughter-in-law in the Vatican. According to Burchard, the two princesses boldly occupied the priests’ benches in St. Peter’s. Later, it was said, Sancia’s two brothers-in-law, the duke of Gandia and Caesar, quarrelled over her and possessed her in turn. Alexander sent her back to Naples, whether for this reason or not is not known. She was afterwards received again in Rome.

Caesar, in spite of his yearly revenues amounting to 35,000 ducats, had long since grown tired of an ecclesiastical career. Bishop and cardinal-deacon though he was, he deposed before his fellow-cardinals that from the first he had been averse to orders, and received them in obedience to his father’s wish. These words Gregorovius has pronounced to be perhaps the only true words the prince ever spoke. Caesar’s request was granted by the unanimous voice of the sacred college. Alexander, whose policy it now was to form a lasting bond between France and the papacy, looked to Louis XII., successor of Charles VIII., for a proper introduction of his son upon a worldly career.802  Louis was anxious to be divorced from his deformed and childless wife, Joanna of Valois, and to be united to Charles’ young widow, Anne, who carried the dowry of Brittany with her. There were advantages to be gained on both sides. Dispensation was given to the king, and Caesar was made duke of Valentinois and promised a wife of royal line.

The arrangements for Caesar’s departure from Rome were on a grand scale. The richest textures were added to gold and silver vessels and coin, so that, when the young man departed from the city, he was preceded by a line of mules carrying goods worth 200,000 ducats on their backs. The duke’s horses were shod with silver. The contemporary writer gives a picture of Alexander standing at the window, watching the cortege, in which were four cardinals, as it passed towards the West. The party went by way of Avignon. After some disappointment in not securing the princess whom Caesar had picked out, Charlotte d’Albret, then a young lady of sixteen, and a sister of the king of Navarre, was chosen. When the news of the marriage, which was celebrated in May, 1499, reached Rome, Alexander and the Spaniards illuminated their houses and the streets in honor of the proud event. The advancement of this abandoned man, from this time forth, engaged Alexander VI.’s supreme energies. The career of Caesar Borgia passes, if possible, into stages of deeper darkness, and the mind shrinks back from the awful sensuality, treachery and cruelty for which no crime was too revolting. Everything had to give way that stood in the hard path of his vulgar ambition and profligate greed. And at last his father, ready to sacrifice all that is sacred in religion and human life to secure his son’s promotion, became his slave, and in fear dared not to offer resistance to his plans.

The duke was soon back in Italy, accompanying the French army led by Louis XII. The reduction of Milan and Naples followed. The taking of Milan reduced Alexander’s former ally and brought captivity to Ascanio Sforza, the cardinal, but it was welcome news in the Vatican. Alexander was bent, with the help of Louis, upon creating a great dukedom in central Italy for his son, with a kingly dominion over all the peninsula as the ultimate act of the drama. The fall of Naples was due in part to the pope’s perfidy in making an alliance with Louis and deposing the Neapolitan king, Frederick.

Endowed by his father with the proud title of duke of the Romagna and made captain-general of the church, Caesar, with the help of 8,000 mercenaries, made good his rights to Imola, Forli, Rimini and other towns, some of the victories being celebrated by services in St. Peter’s. At the same time, Lucretia was made regent of Nepi and Spoleto. As a part of the family program, the indulgent father proceeded to declare war against the Gaetani house and to despoil the Colonna, Savelli and Orsini. No obstacle should be allowed to remain in the ambitious path of the unscrupulous son. Upon him was also conferred that emblem of purity of character or of high service to the Church, the Golden Rose.

The celebration of the Jubilee in the opening year of the new century, which was to be so eventful, brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the holy city, and the great sums which were collected were reserved for the Turkish crusade, or employed for the advancement of the Borgias. The bull announcing the festival offered to those visiting Rome free indulgence for the most grievous sins.803  On Christmas eve, 1499, Alexander struck the Golden Gate with a silver mallet, repeating the words of Revelation, "He openeth and no man shutteth."

In glaring contrast to the religious ends with which the Jubilee was associated in the minds of the pilgrims, Caesar entered Rome, in February, surrounded with all the trappings of military conquest. Among the festivities provided to relieve the tedium of religious occupations was a Spanish bull-fight. The square of St. Peter’s was enclosed with a railing and the spectators looked on while the pope’s son, Caesar, killed five bulls. The head of the last he severed with a single stroke of his sword.

Another of the fearful tragedies of the Borgia family filled the atmosphere of this holy year with its smothering fumes, the murder of Lucretia’s husband, the duke of Besiglia, to whom she had borne a son.804  On returning home at night he was fallen upon at the steps of St. Peter’s and stabbed. Carried to his palace, he was recovering, when Caesar, who had visited him several times, at last had him strangled, August 18, 1500. The pope’s son openly declared his responsibility, and gave as an explanation that he himself was in danger from the prince.

With such scenes the new century was introduced in the papal city. But the end was not yet. The appointment of cardinals had been prostituted into a convenient device for filling the papal coffers and advancing the schemes of the papal family. In 1493 Alexander added 12 to the sacred college, including Alexander Farnese, afterwards Paul III., and brother to the pope’s mistress. From these creations more than 100,000 ducats are said to have been realized.805  In 1496 four more were added, all Spaniards, including the pope’s nephew, Giovanni Borgia, and making 9 Spaniards in Alexander’s cabinet. When 12 cardinals were appointed, Sept. 28, 1500, Caesar reaped 120,000 ducats as his reward. He had openly explained that he needed the money for his designs in the Romagna. In 1503, just before his father’s death, the duke received 130,000 more for 9 red hats. He raised 64,000 by the appointment of new abbreviators. Nor were the dead to go free. At the death of Cardinal Ferrari, 50,000 ducats were seized from his effects, and when Cardinal Michïel died, nephew of Paul II., 150,000 ducats were transferred to the duke’s account.

One iniquity only led to another, Cardinal Orsini, while on a visit to the pope, was taken prisoner. His palace was dismantled, and other members of the family seized and their castles confiscated. The cardinal’s mother, aged fourscore, secured from Alexander, upon the payment of 2,000 ducats and a costly pearl which Orsini’s mistress had in her possession and, dressed as a man, took to Alexander,806 the privilege of supplying her son with a daily dole of bread. But the unfortunate man’s doom was sealed. He came to his death, as it was believed, by poison prepared by Alexander.807

The last of Alexander’s notable achievements for his family was the marriage of Lucretia to Alfonso, son of Hercules, duke of Ferrara, 1502. The young duke was 24, and a widower. The prejudices of his father were removed through the good offices of the king of France and a reduction of the tribute due from Ferrara, as a papal fief, from 400 ducats to 100 florins, the college of cardinals giving their assent. While the negotiations were going on, Alexander, during an absence of three months from Rome, confided his correspondence and the transaction of his business to the hands of his daughter. This appointment made the college of cardinals subject to her.

Lucretia entered with zest into the settlement of the preliminaries leading up to the betrothal and into the preparations for the nuptials. When the news of the signing of the marriage contract reached Rome, early in September, 1501, she went to S. Maria del Popolo, accompanied by 300 knights and four bishops, and gave public thanks. On the way she took off her cloak, said to be worth 300 ducats, and gave it to her buffoon. Putting it on, he rode through the streets crying out, "Hurrah for the most illustrious duchess of Ferrara. Hurrah for Alexander VI."808  For three hours the great bell on the capitol was kept ringing, and bonfires were lit through the city to "incite everybody to joy." The pope’s daughter, although she had been four times betrothed and twice married, was only 21 at the time of her last engagement. According to the Ferrarese ambassador, her face was most beautiful and her manners engaging.809  In the brilliant escort sent by Hercules to conduct his future daughter-in-law to her new home, were the duke’s two younger sons, who were entertained at the Vatican. Caesar and 19 cardinals, including Cardinal Hippolytus of Este, met the escort at the Porto del Popolo. Night after night, the Vatican was filled with the merriment of dancing and theatrical plays. At her father’s request, Lucretia performed special dances. The formal ceremony of marriage was performed, December 30th, in St. Peter’s, Don Ferdinand acting as proxy for his brother. Preceded by 50 maids of honor, a duke on each side of her, the bride proceeded to the basilica. Her approach was announced by musicians playing in the portico. Within on his throne sat the pontiff, surrounded by 13 cardinals. After a sermon, which Alexander ordered made short, a ring was put on Lucretia’s finger by Duke Ferdinand. Then the Cardinal d’Este approached, laying on a table 4 other rings, a diamond, an emerald, a turquoise and a ruby, and, at his order, a casket was opened which contained many jewels, including a head-dress of 16 diamonds and 150 large pearls. But with exquisite courtesy, the prelate begged the princess not to spurn the gift, as more gems were awaiting her in Ferrara.

The rest of the night was spent in a banquet in the Vatican, when comedies were rendered, in which Caesar was one of the leading figures. To their credit be it said, that some of the cardinals and other dignitaries preferred to retire early. The week which followed was filled with entertainments, including a bull-fight on St. Peter’s square, in which Caesar again was entered as a matador.

The festivities were brought to a close Jan. 6th, 1502. 150 mules carried the bride’s trousseau and other baggage. The lavish father had told her to take what she would. Her dowry in money was 100,000 ducats. A brilliant cavalcade, in which all the cardinals and ambassadors and the magistrates of the municipality took part, accompanied the party to the city gates and beyond, while Cardinal Francesco Borgia accompanied the party the whole journey. In this whole affair, in spite of ourselves, sympathy for a father supplants our indignation at his perfidy in violating the sacred vows of a Catholic priest and the pledge of the supreme pontiff. Alexander followed the cavalcade as far as he could with his eye, changing his position from window to window. But no mention is made by any of the writers of the bride’s mother. Was she also a witness of the gayeties from some concealed or open standing-place?

Lucretia never returned to Rome. And so this famous woman, whose fortunes awaken the deepest interest and also the deepest sympathy, passes out from the realm of this history and she takes her place in the family annals of the noble house of Este. She gained the respect of the court and the admiration of the city, living a quiet, domestic life till her death in 1519. Few mortals have seen transpire before their own eyes and in so short a time so much of dissemblance and crime as she. She was not forty when she died. The old representation, which made her the heroine of the dagger and the poisoned cup and guilty of incest, has given way to the milder judgment of Reumont and Gregorovius, with whom Pastor agrees. While they do not exonerate her from all profligacy, they rescue her from being an abandoned Magdalen, and make appeal to our considerate judgment by showing that she was made by her father an instrument of his ambitions for his family and that at last she exhibited the devotion of a wife and of a mother. Her son, Hercules, who reigned till 1559, was the husband of Renée, the princess who welcomed Calvin and Clement Marot to her court.

Death finally put an end to the scandals of Alexander’s reign. After an entertainment given by Cardinal Hadrian, the pope and his son Caesar were attacked with fever. It was reported that the poison which they had prepared for a cardinal was by mistake or intentionally put into the cups they themselves used.810  The pontiff’s sickness lasted less than a week. The third day he was bled. On his death-bed he played cards with some of his cardinals. At the last, he received the eucharist and extreme unction and died in the presence of five members of the sacred college. It is especially noted by that well-informed diarist, Burchard, that during his sickness Alexander never spoke a single word about Lucretia or his son, the duke. Caesar was too ill to go to his father’s sick-bed but, on hearing of his death, he sent Micheletto to demand of the chamberlain the keys to the papal exchequer, threatening to strangle the cardinal, Casanova, and throw him out of the window in case he refused. Terrified out of his wits,—perterritus,—the cardinal yielded, and 100,000 ducats of gold and silver were carried away to the bereaved son.

In passing an estimate upon Alexander VI., it must be remembered that the popular and also the carefully expressed judgments of contemporaries are against him.811  The rumor was current that the devil himself was present at the death-scene and that, paying the price he had promised him for the gift of the papacy 12 years before, Alexander replied to the devil’s beckonings that he well understood the time had come for the final stage of the transaction.812

Alexander’s intellectual abilities have abundant proof in the results of his diplomacy by which be was enabled to plot for the political advancement of Caesar Borgia, with the support of France, at whose feet he had at one time been humbled, by his winning back the support of the disaffected cardinals, and by his immunity from personal hurt through violence, unless it be through poison at last. That which marks him out for unmitigated condemnation is his lack of principle. Mental ability, which is ascribed to the devil himself, is no substitute for moral qualities. Perfidy, treachery, greed, lust and murder were stored up in Alexander’s heart.813  While he shrank from the commission of no crime to reach the objects of his ambition, he was wont to engage in the solemn exercises of devotion, and even to say the mass with his own lips. To measure his iniquity, as has been said, one need only compare his actions with the simple statement of the precepts, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal." Elevation to a position of responsibility usually has the effect of sobering a man’s spirit, but Rodrigo Borgia degraded the highest office in the gift of Christendom for his own carnal designs. The moral qualities and aims of Gregory VII. and Innocent III., however much we may dissent from those aims, command respect. Alexander VI. was sensual, and his ability to govern men, no matter how great it was, should not moderate the abhorrence which his depraved aims arouse. The man with brute force can hold others in terror, but he is a brute, nevertheless. The standards, it must be confessed, of life in Rome were low when Rodrigo was made cardinal, and a Roman chronicler could say that every priest had his mistress and almost all the Roman monasteries had been turned into lupinaria — brothels.814  But holy traditions still lingered around the sacred places of the city; the solemn rites of the Christian ritual were still performed; the dissoluteness of the Roman emperors still seemed hellish when compared with the sacrifice of the cross. And yet, two years before Alexander’s death, October 31, 1501, an orgy took place in the Vatican by Caesar’s appointment whose obscenity the worst of the imperial revels could hardly have surpassed. 50 courtezans spent the night dancing, with the servants and others present, first with their clothes on and then nude, the pope and Lucretia looking on. The women, still naked, and going on their hands and feet, picked up chestnuts thrown on the ground, and then received prizes of cloaks, shoes, caps and other articles.815

To Alexander nothing was sacred,—office, virtue, marriage, or life. As cardinal he was present at the nuptials of the young Julia Farnese, and probably at that very moment conceived the purpose of corrupting her, and in a few months she was his acknowledged mistress. The cardinal of Gurk said to the Florentine envoy, "When I think of the pope’s life and the lives of some of his cardinals, I shudder at the thought of remaining in the curia, and I will have nothing to do with it unless God reforms His Church." It was a biting thrust when certain German knights, summoned to Rome, wrote to the pontiff that they were good Christians and served the Count Palatine, who worshipped God, loved justice, hated vice and was never accused of adultery. "We believe," they went on, "in a just God who will punish with eternal flames robbery, sacrilege, violence, abuse of the patrimony of Christ, concubinage, simony and other enormities by which the Christian Church is being scandalized."816

It is pleasant to turn to the few acts of this last pontificate of the 15th century which have another aspect than pure selfishness or depravity. In 1494, Alexander canonized Anselm without, however, referring to the Schoolman’s great treatise on the atonement, or his argument for the existence of God.817  He promoted the cult of St. Anna, the Virgin Mary’s reputed mother, to whom Luther was afterwards devoted.818  He almost blasphemously professed himself under the special protection of the Virgin, to whom he ascribed his deliverance from death on several occasions, by sea and in the papal palace.

In accord with the later practice of the Roman Catholic Church, Alexander restricted the freedom of the press, ordering that no volume should be published without episcopal sanction.819  His name meets the student of Western discovery in its earliest period, but his treatment of America shows that he was not informed of the purposes of Providence. In two bulls, issued May 4th and 5th, 1493, he divided the Western world between Portugal and Spain by a line 100 leagues west of the Azores, running north and south. These documents mention Christopher Columbus as a worthy man, much to be praised, who, apt as a sailor, and after great perils, labors and expenditures, had discovered islands and continents—terras firmas — never before known. The possession of the lands in the West, discovered and yet to be discovered, was assigned to Spain and Portugal to be held and governed in perpetuity,—in perpetuum,—and the pope solemnly declared that he made the gift out of pure liberality, and by the authority of the omnipotent God, conceded to him in St. Peter, and by reason of the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which he administered on earth.820  Nothing could be more distinctly stated. As Peter’s successor, Alexander claimed the right to give away the Western Continent, and his gift involved an unending right of tenure. This prerogative of disposing of the lands in the West was in accordance with Constantine’s invented gift to Sylvester, recorded in the spurious Isidorian decretals.821

If any papal bull might be expected to have the quality of inerrancy, it is the bull bearing so closely on the destinies of the great American continent, and through it on the world’s history. But the terms of the bull of May 4th were set aside a year after its issue by the political treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, which shifted the line to a distance 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. And the centuries have rudely overturned the supreme pontiff’s solemn bequest until not a foot of land on this Western continent remains in the possession of the kingdoms to which it was given. Putting aside the distinctions between doctrinal and disciplinary decisions, which are made by many Catholic exponents of the dogma of papal infallibility, Alexander’s bull conferring the Americas, as Innocent III.’s bull pronouncing the stipulations of the Magna Charta forever null, should afford a sufficient refutation of the dogma.

The character and career of Alexander VI. afford an argument against the theory of the divine institution and vicarial prerogatives of the papacy which the doubtful exegesis of our Lord’s words to Peter ought not to be allowed to counteract. If we leave out all the wicked popes of the 9th and 10th centuries, forget for a moment the cases of Honorius and other popes charged with heresy, and put aside the offending popes of the Renaissance period and all the bulls which sin against common reason, such as Innocent VIII.’s bull against witchcraft, Alexander is enough to forbid that theory. Could God commit his Church for 12 years to such a monster?  It is fair to recognize that Catholic historians feel the difficulty, although they find a way to explain it away. Cardinal Hergenröther says that, Christendom was delivered from a great offence by Alexander’s death, but even in his case, unworthy as this pope was, his teachings are to be obeyed, and in him the promise made to the chair of St. Peter was fulfilled (Matt. 23:2, 3). In no instance did Alexander VI. prescribe to the Church anything contrary to morals or the faith, and never did he lead her astray in disciplinary decrees which, for the most part, were excellent."822

In like strain, Pastor writes:823  In spite of Alexander, the purity of the Church’s teaching continued unharmed. It was as if Providence wanted to show that men may injure the Church, but that it is not in their power to destroy it. As a bad setting does not diminish the value of the precious stone, so the sinfulness of a priest cannot do any essential detriment either to his dispensation of her sacraments or to the doctrines committed to her. Gold remains gold, whether dispensed by clean hands or unclean. The papal office is exalted far above the personality of its occupants, and cannot lose its dignity or gain essential worth by the worthiness or unworthiness of its occupants. Peter sinned deeply, and yet the supreme pastoral office was committed to him. It was from this standpoint that Pope Leo the Great declared that the dignity of St. Peter is not lost, even in an unworthy successor. Petri dignitas etiam in indigno haeredo non deficit." Leo’s words Pastor adopts as the motto of his history.

In such reasoning, the illustrations beg the question. No matter how clean or unclean the hands may be which handle it, lead remains lead, and no matter whether the setting be gold or tin, an opaque stone remains opaque which is held by them. The personal opinion of Leo the Great will not be able to stand against the growing judgment of mankind, that the Head of the Church does not commit the keeping of sacred truth to wicked hands or confide the pastorate over the Church to a man of unholy and lewd lips. The papal theory of the succession of Peter, even if there were no other hostile historic testimony, would founder on the personality of Alexander VI., who set an example of all depravity. Certainly the true successors of Peter will give in their conduct some evidence of the fulfilment of Christ’s words "the kingdom of heaven is within you."  Who looks for an illustration of obedience to the mandates of the Most High to the last pontiff of the 15th century!824

§ 55. Julius II., the Warrior-Pope. 1503–1513.

Alexander’s successor, Pius III., a nephew of Pius II., and a man of large family, succumbed, within a month after his election, to the gout and other infirmities. He was followed by Julian Rovere, Alexander’s old rival, who, as cardinal, had played a conspicuous part for more than 30 years. He proved to be the ablest and most energetic pontiff the Church had had since the days of Innocent III. and Gregory IX. in the 13th century.

At Alexander’s death, Caesar Borgia attempted to control the situation. He afterwards told Machiavelli that he had made provision for every exigency except the undreamed-of conjunction of his own and his father’s sickness.825  Consternation ruled in Rome, but with the aid of the ambassadors of France, Germany, Venice and Spain, Caesar was prevailed upon to withdraw from the city, while the Orsini and the Colonna families, upon which Alexander had heaped high insult, entered it again.

The election of Julian Rovere, who assumed the name of Julius II., was accomplished with despatch October 31, 1503, after bribery had been freely resorted to. The Spanish cardinals, 11 in number and still in a measure under Caesar’s control, gave their votes to the successful candidate on condition that Caesar should be recognized as gonfalonier of the church. The faithful papal master-of-ceremonies, whose Diary we have had occasion to draw on so largely, was appointed bishop of Orta, but died two years later. Born in Savona of humble parentage and appointed to the sacred college by his uncle, Sixtus IV., Julius had recently returned to Rome after an exile of nearly 10 years. The income from his numerous bishoprics and other dignities made him the richest of the cardinals. Though piety was not one of the new pontiff’s notable traits, his pontificate furnished an agreeable relief from the coarse crimes and domestic scandals of Alexander’s reign. It is true, he had a family of three daughters, one of whom, Felice, was married into the Orsini family in 1506, carrying with her a splendid dowry of 15,000 ducats. But the marriage festivities were not appointed for the Vatican, nor did the children give offence by their ostentatious presence in the pontifical palace. Julius also took care of his nephews. Two of them were appointed to the sacred college, Nov. 29, 1503, and later two more were honored with the same dignity. For making the Spanish scholar, Ximenes, cardinal, Julius deserved well of other ages as well as his own. He was a born ruler. He had a dignified and imposing presence and a bright, penetrating eye. Under his white hair glowed the intellectual fire of youth. He was rapid in his movements even to impetuosity, and brave even to daring. Defeats that would have disheartened even the bravest seemed only to intensify Julius’ resolution. If his language was often violent, the excuse is offered that violence of speech was common at that time. As a cardinal he had shown himself a diplomat rather than a saint, and as pope he showed himself a warrior rather than a priest. When Michael Angelo, who was ordered to execute the pope’s statue in bronze, was representing Julius with his right hand raised, the pope asked, "What are you going to put into the left?"  "It may be a book," answered the artist. "Nay, give me a sword, for I am no scholar," was the pope’s reply. Nothing could be more characteristic.826

Julius’ administration at once brought repose and confidence to the sacred college and Rome. If he did not keep his promise to abide by the protocol adopted in the conclave calling for the assembling of a council within two years, he may be forgiven on the ground of the serious task he had before him in strengthening the political authority of the papal see. This was the chief aim of his pontificate. He deserves the title of the founder of the State of the Church, a realm that, with small changes, remained papal territory till 1870. This end being secured, he devoted himself to redeeming Italy from its foreign invaders. Three foes stood in his way, Caesar and the despots of the Italian cities, the French who were intrenched in Milan and Genoa, and the Spaniards who held Naples and Sicily. His effort to rescue Italy for the Italians won for him the grateful regard due an Italian patriot. Like Innocent III., he closed his reign with an oecumenical council.

Caesar Borgia returned to Rome, was recognized as gonfalonier and given apartments in the Vatican. Julius had been in amicable relations with the prince in France and advanced his marriage, and Caesar wrote that in him he had found a second father. But Caesar now that Alexander was dead, was as a galley without a rudder. He was an upstart; Julius a man of power and far-reaching plans. Prolonged co-operation between the two was impossible. The one was sinister, given to duplicity; the other frank and open to brusqueness. The encroachment of Venice upon the Romagna gave the occasion at once for Caesar’s fall and for the full restoration of papal authority in that region. Supporters Caesar had none who could be relied upon in the day of ill success. He no longer had the power which the control of patronage gives. Julius demanded the keys of the towns of the Romagna as a measure necessary to the dislodgment of Venice. Caesar yielded, but withdrew to Ostia, meditating revenge. He was seized, carried back to Rome and placed in the castle of S. Angelo, which had been the scene of his dark crimes. He was obliged to give up the wealth gotten at his father’s death and to sign a release of Forli and other towns. Liberty was then given him to go where be pleased. He accepted protection from the Spanish captain, Gonsalvo de Cordova, but on his arrival in Naples the Spaniard, with despicable perfidy, seized the deceived man and sent him to Spain, August, 1504. For two years he was held a prisoner, when he escaped to the court of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. He was killed at the siege of Viana, 1507, aged 31. Thus ended the career of the man who had once been the terror of Rome, whom Ranke calls "a virtuoso in crime," and Machiavelli chose as the model of a civil ruler. This political writer had met Caesar after Julius’ elevation, and in his Prince827 says, "It seems good to me to propose Caesar Borgia as an example to be imitated by all those who through fortune and the arms of others have attained to supreme command. For, as he had a great mind and great ambitions, it was not possible for him to govern otherwise." Caesar had said to the theorist, "I rob no man. I am here to act the tyrant’s part and to do away with tyrants." Only if to obtain power by darkness and assassination is worthy of admiration, and if to crush all individual liberty is a just end of government, can the Machiavellian ideal be regarded with other feelings than those of utter reprobation. There is something pathetic in the recollection that, to the end, this inhuman brother retained the affection of his sister, Lucretia. She pled for his release from imprisonment in Spain, and Caesar’s letter to her announcing his escape is still extant.828  When the rumor came of his death, Lucretia despatched her servant, Tullio, to Navarre to find out the truth, and gave herself up to protracted prayer on her brother’s behalf. This beautiful example of a sister’s love would seem to indicate that Caesar possessed by nature some excellent qualities.

Julius was also actively engaged in repairing some of the other evils of Alexander’s reign and making amends for its injustices. He restored Sermoneta to the dukes of Gaetani. The document which pronounced severe reprobation upon Alexander ran, "our predecessor, desiring to enrich his own kin, through no zeal for justice, but by fraud and deceit, sought for causes to deprive the Gaetani of their possessions." With decisive firmness, he announced his purpose to assert his lawful authority over the papal territory and, accompanied by 9 cardinals, he left Rome at the head of 500 men and proceeded to make good the announcement. Perugia was quickly brought to terms; and, aided by the French, the pope entered Bologna, against which he had launched the interdict. Returning to Rome, he was welcomed as a conqueror. The victorious troops passed under triumphal arches, including a reproduction of Constantine’s arch erected on St. Peter’s square; and, accompanied by 28 members of the sacred college, Julius gave solemn thanks in St. Peter’s.829

The next to be brought to terms was Venice. In vain had the pope, through letters and legates, called upon the doge to give up Rimini, Faenza, Forli and other parts of the Romagna upon which he had laid his hand. In March, 1508, he joined the alliance of Cambrai, the other parties being Louis XII. and the emperor Maximilian, and later, Ferdinand of Spain. This agreement decided in cold blood upon the division of the Venetian possessions, and bound the parties to a war against the Turk. France was confirmed in the tenure of Milan, and given Cremona and Brescia. Maximilian was to have Verona, Padua and Aquileja; Naples, the Venetian territories in Southern Italy; Hungary, Dalmatia; Savoy, Cyprus; and the Apostolic see, the lands of which it had been dispossessed. It was high-handed robbery, even though a pope was party to it. Julius, who had promised to add the punishments of the priestly office to the force of arms, proceeded with merciless severity, and placed the republic under the interdict, April 27, 1509. In vain did Venice appeal to God and a general council. Past sins enough were written against her to call for severe treatment. She was forced to surrender Rimini, Faenza and Ravenna, and was made to drink the cup of humiliation to its dregs. The city renounced her claim to nominate to bishoprics and benefices and tax the clergy without the papal consent. The Adriatic she was forced to open to general commerce. Her envoys, who appeared in Roma to make public apology for the sins of the proud state, were subjected to the insult of listening on their knees to a service performed outside the walls of St. Peter’s and lasting an hour; at every verse of the Miserere the pope and 12 cardinals, each with a golden rod, touched them. Then, service over, the doors of the cathedral were thrown open and absolution pronounced.830  The next time Venice was laid under the papal ban, the measure failed.

Julius’ plans were next directed against the French, the impudent invaders of Northern Italy and claimants of sovereignty over it. Times had changed since the pope, as cardinal Julian Rovere, had accompanied the French army under Charles VIII. The absolution of Venice was tantamount to the pope’s withdrawal from the alliance of Cambrai. By making Venice his ally, he hoped to bring Ferrara again under the authority of the holy see. The duchy had flourished under the warm support of the French.

Julius now made a far-reaching stroke in securing the help of the Swiss, who had been fighting under the banners of France. The hardy mountaineers, who now find it profitable to entertain tourists from all over the world, then found it profitable to sell their services in war. With the aid of their vigorous countryman, Bishop Schinner of Sitten, afterwards made cardinal, the pope contracted for 6,000 Swiss mercenaries for five years. The localities sending them received 13,000 gulden a year, and each soldier 6 francs a month, and the officers, twice that sum. As chaplain of the Swiss troops, Zwingli went to Rome three times, a course of which his patriotism afterwards made him greatly ashamed. The descendants of these Swiss mercenaries defended Louis XVI., and their heroism is commemorated by Thorwaldsen’s lion, cut into the rock at Lucerne. Swiss guards, dressed in yellow suits, to this day patrol the approaches and halls of the Vatican.831

The French king, Louis XII. (1498–1515), sought to break Julius’ power by adding to the force of arms the weight of a religious assembly and, at his instance, the French bishops met in council at Tours, September, 1510, and declared that the pope had put aside the keys of St. Peter, which his predecessors had employed, and seized the sword of Paul. They took the ground that princes were justified in opposing him with force, even to withdrawing obedience and invading papal territory.832  As in the reign of Philip the Fair, so now moneys were forbidden transferred from France to Rome, and a call was made by 9 cardinals for a council to meet at Pisa on Sept. 1st, 1511. This council of Tours denounced Julius as "the new Goliath," and Louis had a coin struck off with the motto, I will destroy the name of Babylon—perdam Babylonis nomen. Calvin, in the year of his death, sent to Renée, duchess of Ferrara, one of these medals which in his letter, dated Jan. 8, 1564, he declared to be the finest present he had it in his power to make her. Renée was the daughter of Louis XII. Julius excommunicated Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, as a son of iniquity and a root of perdition. Thus we have the spectacle of the supreme priest of Christendom and the most Christian king, the First Son of the Church, again engaged in war with one another.

At the opening of the campaign, Julius was in bed with a sickness which was supposed to be mortal; but to the amazement of his court, he suddenly arose and, in the dead of Winter, January, 1511, betook himself to the camp of the papal forces. His promptness of action was in striking contrast to the dilatory policy of Louis, who spent his time writing letters and summoning ecclesiastical assemblies when he ought to have been on the march. From henceforth till his death, the pope wore a beard, as he is represented in Raphael’s famous portrait.833  Snow covered the ground, but Julius set an example by enduring all the hardships of the camp. To accomplish the defeat of the French, he brought about the Holy League, October, 1511, Spain and Venice being the other parties. Later, these three allies were joined by Maximilian and Henry VIII. of England. Henry had been honored with the Golden Rose.834  Henry’s act was England’s first positive entrance upon the field of general European politics.

In the meantime the French were carrying on the Council of Pisa. The pope prudently counteracted its influence by calling a council to meet in the Lateran. Christendom was rent by two opposing ecclesiastical councils as well as by two opposing armies. The armies met in decisive conflict under the walls of the old imperial city of Ravenna. The leader of the French, Gaston de Foix, nephew of the French king, though only 24, approved himself, in spite of his youth, one of the foremost captains of his age. Bologna had fallen before his arms, and now Ravenna yielded to the same necessity after a bloody battle. The French army numbered 25,000, the army of the League 20,000. In the French camp was the French legate, Cardinal Sanseverino, mounted and clad in steel armor, his tall form towering above the rest. Prominent on the side of the allied army was the papal legate, Cardinal de’ Medici, clad in white, and Giulio Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The battle took place on Easter Day, 1512. Gaston de Foix, thrown to the ground by the fall of his horse, was put to death by some of the seasoned Spanish soldiers whom Gonsalvo had trained. The victor, whose battle cry was "Let him that loves me follow me," was borne into the city in his coffin. Rimini, Forli and other cities of the Romagna opened their gates to the French. Cardinal Medici was in their hands.

The papal cause seemed to be hopelessly lost, but the spirit of Julius rose with the defeat. He is reported to have exclaimed, "I will stake 100,000 ducats and my crown that I will drive the French out of Italy," and the victory of Ravenna proved to be another Cannae. The hardy Swiss, whose numbers Cardinal Schinner had increased to 18,000, and the Venetians pushed the campaign, and the barbarians, as Julius called the French, were forced to give up what they had gained, to surrender Milan and gradually to retire across the Alps. Parma and Piacenza, by virtue of the grant of Mathilda, passed into his hands, as did also Reggio. The victory was celebrated in Rome on an elaborate scale. Cannons boomed from S. Angelo, and thanks were given in all the churches. In recognition of their services, the pope gave to the Swiss two large banners and the permanent title of Protectors of the Apostolic see—auxiliatores sedis apostolicae. Such was the end of this remarkable campaign.

Julius purchased Siena from the emperor for 30,000 ducats and, with the aid of the seasoned Spanish troops, took Florence and restored the Medici to power. In December, 1513, Maximilian, who at one time conceived the monstrous idea of combining with his imperial dignity the office of supreme pontiff, announced his support of the Lateran council, the pope having agreed to use all the spiritual measures within his reach to secure the complete abasement of Venice. The further execution of the plans was prevented by the pope’s death. In his last hours, in a conversation with Cardinal Grimani, he pounded on the floor with his cane, exclaiming, "If God gives me life, I will also deliver the Neapolitans from the yoke of the Spaniards and rid the land of them."835

The Pisan council had opened Sept. 1, 1511, with only two archbishops and 14 bishops present. First and last 6 cardinals attended, Carvajal, Briçonnet, Prie, d’Albret, Sanseverino and Borgia. The Universities of Paris Toulouse and Poictiers were represented by doctors. After holding three sessions, it moved to Milan, where the victory of Ravenna gave it a short breath of life. When the French were defeated, it again moved to Asti in Piedmont, where it held a ninth session, and then it adjourned to Lyons, where it dissolved of itself.836  Hergenröther, Pastor and other Catholic historians take playful delight in calling the council the little council—conciliabulum—and a conventicle, terms which Julius applied to it in his bulls.837  Among its acts were a fulmination against the synod Julius was holding in the Lateran, and it had the temerity to cite the pope to appear, and even to declare him deposed from all spiritual and temporal authority. The synod also reaffirmed the decrees of the 5th session of the Council of Constance, placing general councils over the pope.

Very different in its constitution and progress was the Fifth Lateran, the last oecumenical council of the Middle Ages, and the 18th in the list of oecumenical councils, as accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. It lasted for nearly five years, and closed on the eve of the nailing of the XCV theses on the church door in Wittenberg. It is chiefly notable for what it failed to do rather than for anything it did. The only one of its declarations which is of more than temporary interest was the deliverance, reaffirming Boniface’s theory of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff over all potentates and individuals whatsoever.

In his summons calling the council, Julius deposed the cardinals, who had entered into the Pisan synod, as schismatics and sons of darkness.838  The attendance did not compare in weight or numbers with the Council of Constance. At the 1st session, held May 3, 1512, there were present 16 cardinals, 12 patriarchs, 10 archbishops, 70 bishops and 3 generals of orders. The opening address by Egidius of Viterbo, general of the Augustinian order, after dwelling upon the recent glorious victories of Julius, magnified the weapons of light at the council’s disposal, piety, prayers, vows and the breastplate of faith. The council should devote itself to placating all Christian princes in order that the arms of the Christian world might be turned against the flagrant enemy of Christ, Mohammed. The council then declared the adherents of the Pisan conventicle schismatics and laid France under the interdict. Julius, who listened to the eloquent address, was present at 4 sessions.

At the 2d session, Cajetan dilated at length on the pet papal theory of the two swords.

In the 4th session, the Venetian, Marcello, pronounced a eulogy upon Julius which it would be hard to find excelled for fulsome flattery in the annals of oratory. After having borne intolerable cold, so the eulogist declared, and sleepless nights and endured sickness in the interests of the Church, and having driven the French out of Italy, there remained for the pontiff the greater triumphs of peace. Julius must be pastor, shepherd, physician, ruler, administrator and, in a word, another God on earth.839

At the 5th session, held during the pope’s last illness, a bull was read, severely condemning simony at papal elections. The remaining sessions of the council were held under Julius’ successor.

When Julius came to die, he was not yet 70. No man of his time had been an actor in so many stirring scenes. On his death-bed he called for Paris de Grassis, his master of ceremonies, and reminded him how little respect had been paid to the bodies of deceased popes within his recollection. Some of them had been left indecently nude. He then made him promise to see to it that he should have decent care and burial.840  The cardinals were summoned. The dying pontiff addressed them first in Latin, and implored them to avoid all simony in the coming election, and reminded them that it was for them and not for the council to choose his successor. He pardoned the schismatic cardinals, but excluded them from the conclave to follow his death. And then, as if to emphasize the tie of birth, he changed to Italian and besought them to confirm his nephew, the duke of Urbino, in the possession of Pesaro, and then he bade them farewell. A last remedy, fluid gold, was administered, but in vain. He died Feb. 20, 1513.841

The scenes which ensued were very different from those which followed upon the death of Alexander VI. A sense of awe and reverence filled the city. The dead pontiff was looked upon as a patriot, and his services to civil order in Rome and its glory counterbalanced his deficiencies as a priest of God.842

It was of vast profit that the Vatican had been free from the domestic scandals which had filled it so long. From a worldly standpoint, Julius had exalted the papal throne to the eminence of the national thrones of Europe. In the terrific convulsion which Luther’s onslaughts produced, the institution of the papacy might have fallen in ruins had not Julius re-established it by force of arms. But in vain will the student look for signs that Julius II. had any intimation of the new religious reforms which the times called for and Luther began. What measures this pope, strong in will and bold in execution, might have employed if the movement in the North had begun in his day, no one can surmise. The monk of Erfurt walked the streets of Rome during this pontificate for the first and only time. While Luther was ascending the scala santa on his knees and running about to the churches, wishing his parents were in purgatory that he might pray them out, Julius was having perfected a magnificently jewelled tiara costing 200,000 ducats, which he put on for the first time on the anniversary of his coronation, 1511. These two men, both of humble beginnings, would have been more a match for each other than Luther and Julius’ successor, the Medici, the man of luxurious culture.843

Under Julius II. the papal finances flourished. Great as were the expenditures of his campaigns, he left plate and coin estimated to be worth 400,000 ducats. A portion of this fund was the product of the sale of indulgences. He turned the forgiveness of sins for the present time and in purgatory into a matter of merchandise.844

In another place, Julius will be presented from the standpoint of art and culture, whose splendid patron he was. What man ever had the privilege of bringing together three artists of such consummate genius as Bramante, Michael Angelo and Raphael!  His portrait in the Pitti gallery, Florence, forms a rich study for those who seek in the lines and colors of Raphael’s art the secret of the pontiff’s power.845  The painter has represented Julius as an old man with beard, and with his left hand grasping the arm of the chair in which he sits. His fingers wear jewelled rings. The forehead is high, the lips firmly pressed, the eyes betokening weariness, determination and commanding energy.

In the history of the Western Continent, Julius also has some place. In 1504 he created an archbishopric and two bishoprics of Hispaniola, or Hayti. The prelates to whom they were assigned never crossed the seas. Seven years later, 1511, he revoked these creations and established the sees of San Domingo and Concepcion de la Vega on the island of Hayti and the see of San Juan in Porto Rico, all three subject to the metropolitan supervision of the see of Seville.

§ 56. Leo X. 1513–1521.

The warlike Julius II. was followed on the pontifical throne by the voluptuary, Leo X.,—the prelate whose iron will and candid mind compel admiration by a prince given to the pursuit of pleasure and an adept in duplicity. Leo loved ease and was without high aims. His Epicurean conception of the supreme office of Christendom was expressed in a letter he sent a short time after his election to his brother Julian. In it were these words, "Let us enjoy the papacy, for God has given it to us."846  The last pontificate of the Middle Ages corresponded to the worldly philosophy of the pontiff. Leo wanted to have a good time. . The idea of a spiritual mission never entered his head. No effort was made, emanating from the Vatican, to further the interests of true religion.

Born in Florence, Dec. 11, 1475, Giovanni de’ Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had every opportunity which family distinction, wealth and learned tutors, such as Poliziano, could give. At 7 he received the tonsure, and at once the world of ecclesiastical preferment was opened to the child. Louis XI. of France presented him with the abbey of Fonte Dolce, and at 8 he was nominated to the archbishopric of Aix, the nomination, however, not being confirmed. A canonry in each of the cathedral churches of Tuscany was set apart for him, and his appointments soon reached the number of 27, one of them being the abbacy of Monte Cassino, and another the office of papal pronotary.847

The highest dignities of the Church were in store for the lad and, before he had reached the age of 14, he was made cardinal-deacon by Innocent VIII., March 9, 1489. Three years later, March 8, 1492, Giovanni received in Rome formal investment into the prerogatives of his office. The letter, which Lorenzo wrote on this latter occasion, is full of the affectionate counsels of a father and the prudent suggestions of the tried man of the world, and belongs in a category with the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son. Lorenzo reminded Giovanni of his remarkable fortune in being made a prince of the church, all the more remarkable because he was not only the youngest member of the college of cardinals, but the first cardinal to receive the dignity at so tender an age. With pardonable pride, he spoke of it as the highest honor ever conferred upon the Medicean house. He warned his son that Rome was the sink of all iniquities and exhorted him to lead a virtuous life, to avoid ostentation, to rise early, an admonition the son never followed, and to use his opportunities to serve his native city. Lorenzo died a few months later.848  Forthwith the young prelate was appointed papal legate to Tuscany, with residence in his native city.

When Julius died, Giovanni de’ Medici was only 37. In proceeding to Rome, he was obliged to be carried in a litter, on account of an ulcer for which an operation was performed during the meeting of the conclave. Giovanni, who belonged to the younger party, had won many friends by his affable manners and made no enemies, and his election seems to have been secured without any special effort on his part. The great-grandson of the banker, Cosimo, chose the name of Leo X. He was consecrated to the priesthood March 17, 1513, and to the episcopate March 19. The election was received by the Romans with every sign of popular approval. On the festivities of the coronation 100,000 ducats, or perhaps as much as 150,000 ducats, were expended, a sum which the frugality of Julius had stored up.

The procession was participated in by 250 abbots, bishops and archbishops. Alfonso of Este, whom Julius II. had excommunicated, led the pope’s white horse, the same one he had ridden the year before at Ravenna. On the houses and

[picture with title below]

Pope Leo X

on the arches, spanning the streets, might be seen side by side statues of Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medicean house, and of the Olympian gods and nymphs. On one arch at the Piazza di Parione were depicted Perseus, Apollo, Moses and Mercury, sacred and mythological characters conjoined, as Alexander Severus joined the busts of Abraham and Orpheus in his palace in the third century. A bishop, afterwards Cardinal Andrea della Valle, placed on his arch none but ancient divinities, Apollo, Bacchus, Mercury, Hercules and Venus, together with fauns and Ganymede. Antonio of San Marino, the silversmith, decorated his house with a marble statue of Venus, under which were inscribed the words—

Mars ruled; then Pallas, but Venus will rule forever.849

As a ruler, Leo had none of the daring and strength of his predecessor. He pursued a policy of opportunism and stooped to the practice of duplicity with his allies as well as with his enemies. On all occasions he was ready to shift to the winning side. To counteract the designs of the French upon Northern Italy, he entered with Maximilian, Henry VIII. and Ferdinand of Spain into the treaty of Mechlin, April 5, 1513. He had the pleasure of seeing the French beaten by Henry VIII. at the battle of the Spurs850 and again driven out of Italy by the bravery of the Swiss at Novara, June 6. Louis easily yielded to the pope’s advances for peace and acknowledged the authority of the Lateran council. The deposed cardinals, Carvajal and Sanseverino, who had been active in the Pisan council, signed a humiliating confession and were reinstated. Leo remarked to them that they were like the sheep in the Gospel which was lost and was found. A secret compact, entered into between the pontiff and King Louis, and afterwards joined by Henry VIII., provided for the French king’s marriage with Mary Tudor, Henry’s younger sister, and the recognition of his claims in Northern Italy. But at the moment these negotiations were going on, Leo was secretly engaged in the attempt to divorce Venice from the French and to defeat the French plans for the reoccupation of Milan. Louis’ career was suddenly cut short by death, Jan. 1, 1515, at the age of 52, three months after his nuptials with Mary, who was sixteen at the time of her marriage.

The same month Leo came to an understanding with Maximilian and Spain, whereby Julian de’ Medici, the pope’s brother, should receive Parma, Piacenza and Reggio. Leo purchased Modena from the emperor for 40,000 ducats, and was sending 60,000 ducats monthly for the support of the troops of his secret allies.

At the very same moment, faithless to his Spanish allies, the pope was carrying on negotiations with Venice to drive them out of Italy.

Louis’ son-in-law and successor, Francis I., a warlike and enterprising prince, held the attention of Europe for nearly a quarter of a century with his campaigns against Charles V., whose competitor he was for the imperial crown. Carrying out Louis’ plans, and accompanied by an army of 35,000 men with 60 cannon, he marched in the direction of Milan, inflicting at Marignano, Sept., 1515, a disastrous defeat upon the 20,000 Swiss mercenaries.851  At the first news of the disaster, Leo was thrown into consternation, but soon recovered his composure, exclaiming in the presence of the Venetian ambassador, "We shall have to put ourselves into the hands of the king and cry out for mercy."  The victory, was the reply, "will not inure to your hurt or the damage of the Apostolic see. The French king is a son of the Church." And so it proved to be. Without a scruple, as it would seem, the pope threw off his alliances with the emperor and Ferdinand and hurried to get the best terms he could from Francis.

They met at Bologna. Conducted by 20 cardinals, Francis entered Leo’s presence and, uncovering his head, bowed three times and kissed the pontiff’s hand and foot. Leo wore a tiara glittering with gems, and a mantle, heavy with cloth of gold. The French orator set forth how the French kings from time immemorial had been protectors of the Apostolic see, and how Francis had crossed the mountains and rivers to show his submission. For three days pontiff and king dwelt together in the same palace. It was agreed that Leo yield up Parma and Piacenza to the French, and a concordat was worked out which took the place of the Pragmatic Sanction. This document, dating from the Council of Basel, and ratified by the synod of Bourges, placed the nomination to all French bishoprics, abbeys and priories in the hands of the king, and this clause the concordat preserved. On the other hand, the clauses in the Pragmatic Sanction were omitted which made the pope subject to general councils and denied to him the right to collect annates from French benefices higher and lower.

The election of a successor to the emperor Maximilian, who died Jan., 1519, put Leo’s diplomacy to the severest test. Ferdinand the Catholic, who had seen the Moorish domination in Spain come to an end and the Americas annexed to his crown, and had been invested by Julius II. in 1510 with the kingdom of Naples, died in 1516, leaving his grandson, Charles, heir to his dominions. Now, by the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian, Charles was heir of the Netherlands and the lands of the Hapsburgs and natural claimant of the imperial crown. Leo preferred Francis, but Charles had the right of lineage and the support of the German people. To prevent Charles’ election, and to avoid the ill-will of Francis, he agitated through his legate, Cajetan, the election of either Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, or the elector of Brandenburg. Secretly he entered into the plans of Francis and allowed the archbishops of Treves and Cologne to be assured of their promotion to the sacred college, provided they would cast their electoral vote for the French king. But to be sure of his ground, no matter who might be elected, Leo entered also into a secret agreement with Charles. Both candidates had equal reason for believing they had the pope on their side.852  Finally, when it became evident that Francis was out of the race, and after the electors had already assembled in Frankfurt, Leo wrote to Cajetan that it was no use beating one’s head against the wall and that he should fall in with the election of Charles. Leo had stipulated 100,000 ducats as the price of his support of Charles.853  He sent a belated letter of congratulation to the emperor-elect, which was full of tropical phrases, and in 1521, at the Diet of Worms, the assembly before which Luther appeared, he concluded with Charles an alliance against his former ally, Francis. The agreement included the reduction of Milan, Parma and Piacenza. The news of the success of Charles’ troops in taking these cities reached Leo only a short time before his death, Dec. 1, 1521. For the cause of Protestantism, the papal alliance with the emperor against France proved to be highly favorable, for it necessitated the emperor’s absence from Germany.

In his administration of the papacy, Leo X. was not unmindful of the interests of his family. Julian, his younger brother, was made gonfalonier of the Church, and was married to the sister of Francis I.’s mother. For a time he was in possession of Parma, Piacenza and Reggio. Death terminated his career, 1516. His only child, the illegitimate Hippolytus, d. 1535, was afterwards made cardinal.

The worldly hopes of the Medicean dynasty now centred in Lorenzo de’ Medici, the son of Leo’s older brother. After the deposition of Julius’ nephew, he was invested with the duchy of Urbino. In 1518 he was married to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, a member of the royal house of France. Leo’s presents to the marital pair were valued at 300,000 ducats, among them being a bedstead of tortoise-shell inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious stones. They took up their abode at Florence, but both husband and wife died a year after the marriage, leaving behind them a daughter who, as Catherine de’ Medici, became famous in the history of France and the persecution of the Huguenots. With Lorenzo’s death, the last descendant of the male line of the house founded by Cosimo de’ Medici became extinct.

In 1513 Leo admitted his nephew, Innocent Cibo, and his cousin, Julius, to the sacred college. Innocent Cibo, a young man of 21, was the son of Franceschetto Cibo, Innocent VIII.’s son, and Maddelina de’ Medici, Leo’s sister. His low morals made him altogether unfit for an ecclesiastical dignity. Julius de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII., was the bastard son of Leo’s uncle, who was killed in the Pazzi conspiracy under Sixtus IV., 1478. The impediment of the illegitimate birth was removed by a papal decree.854  Two nephews, Giovanni Salviati and Nicolas Ridolfi, sons of two of Leo’s sisters, were also vested with the red hat, 1517. On this occasion Leo appointed no less than thirty-one cardinals. Among them were Cajetan, the learned general of the Dominicans, Aegidius of Viterbo, who had won an enviable fame by his address opening the Lateran council, and Adrian of Utrecht, Leo’s successor in the papal chair. Of the number was Alfonso of Portugal, a child of 7, but it was understood he was not to enter upon the duties of his office till he had reached the age of 14. Among the other appointees were princes entirely unworthy of any ecclesiastical office.855

The Vatican was thrown into a panic in 1517 by a conspiracy directed by Cardinal Petrucci of Siena, one of the younger set of cardinals with whom the pope had been intimate. Embittered by Leo’s interference in his brother’s administration of Siena and by the deposition of the duke of Urbino, Petrucci plotted to have the pope poisoned by a physician, Battesta de Vercelli, a specialist on ulcers. The plot was discovered, and Petrucci, who came to Rome on a safe-conduct procured from the pope by the Spanish ambassador, was cast into the Marroco, the deepest dungeon of S. Angelo. On being reminded of the safe-conduct, Leo replied to the ambassador that no one was safe who was a poisoner. Cardinals Sauli and Riario were entrapped and also thrown into the castle-dungeons. Two other cardinals were suspected of being in the plot, but escaped. Petrucci and the physician were strangled to death; Riario and Sauli were pardoned. Riario, who had witnessed the dastardly assassination in the cathedral of Florence 40 years before, was the last prominent representative of the family of Sixtus IV. Torture brought forth the confession that the plotters contemplated making him pope. Leo set the price of the cardinal’s absolution high,—150,000 ducats to be paid in a year, and another 150,000 to be paid by his relatives in case Riario left his palace. He finally secured the pope’s permission to leave Rome, and died, 1521, at Naples.

One of the sensational pageants which occurred during Leo’s pontificate was on the arrival of a delegation from Portugal, 1514, to announce to the pope the obedience of its king, Emmanuel. The king sent a large number of presents, among them horses from Persia, a young panther, two leopards and a white elephant. The popular jubilation over the procession of the wild beasts reached its height when the elephant, taking water into his proboscis, spurted it over the onlookers.856  In recognition of the king’s courtesy, the pope vested in Portugal all the lands west of Capes Bojador and Non to the Indies.

The Fifth Lateran resumed its sessions in April, 1513, a month after Leo’s election. The council ratified the concordat with France, and at the 8th session, Dec. 19, 1513, solemnly affirmed the doctrine of the soul’s immortality.857  The affirmation was called forth by the scepticism of the Arabic philosophers and the Italian pantheists. A single vote recorded against the decree came from the bishop of Bergamo, who took the ground that it is not the business of theologians to spend their time sitting in judgment upon the theories of philosophers.

The invention of printing was recognized by the council as a gift from heaven intended for the glory of God and the propagation of good science, but the legitimate printing of books was restricted to such as might receive the sanction of the master of the palace in Rome or, elsewhere, by the sanction of the bishop or inquisitors who were charged with examining the contents of books.858  The condemnation of all books, distasteful to the hierarchy, was already well under way.

The council approved the proposed Turkish crusade and levied a tenth on Christendom. Its collection was forbidden in England by Henry VIII. Cajetan presented the cause in an eloquent address at the Diet of Augsburg, 1518. Altogether the most significant of the council’s deliverances was the bull, Pater aeternus, labelled as approved by its authority and sent out by Leo, 1516.859  Here the position is reaffirmed—the position taken definitely by Pius II. and Sixtus IV.—that it is given to the Roman pontiff to have authority over all Church councils and to appoint, transfer and dissolve them at will. This famous deliverance expressly renewed and ratified the constitution of Boniface VIII., the Unam sanctam, asserting it to be altogether necessary to salvation for all Christians to be subject to the Roman pontiff.860  To this was added the atrocious declaration that disobedience to the pope is punishable with death. Innocent III. had quoted Deut. 17:12 in favor of this view, falsifying the translation of the Vulgate, which he made to read, "that whoever does not submit himself to the judgment of the high-priest, him shall the judge put to death." The council, in separating the quotations, falsely derived it from the Book of the Kings.861

Nor should it be overlooked that in his bull the infallible Leo X. certified to a falsehood when he expressly declared that the Fathers, in the ancient councils, in order to secure confirmation for their decrees, "humbly begged the pope’s approbation."  This he affirmed of the councils of Nice, 325, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople, 680, and Nice, 787. 214 years before, when Boniface VIII. issued his bull, Philip the Fair was at hand to resist it. The French sovereign now on the throne, Francis I., made no dissent. The concordat had just been ratified by the council.

The council adjourned March 16, 1517, a bare majority of two votes being for adjournment. Writers of Gallican sympathies have denied its oecumenical character. On the other hand, Cardinal Hergenröther regrets that the Church has taken a position to it of a stepmother to her child. Pastor says there was already legislation enough before the Fifth Lateran sat to secure all the reforms needed. Not laws but action was required. Funk expresses the truth when he says, what the council did for Church reform is hardly worth noting down.862

In passing judgment upon Leo X., the chief thing to be said is that he was a worldling. Religion was not a serious matter with him. Pleasure was his daily concern, not piety. He gave no earnest thought to the needs of the Church. It would scarcely be possible to lay more stress upon this feature in the life of Louis XIV., or Charles II., than does Pastor in his treatment of Leo’s career. Reumont863 says it did not enter Leo’s head that it was the task and duty of the papacy to regenerate itself, and so to regenerate Christendom. Leo’s personal habits are not a matter of conjecture. They lie before us in a number of contemporary descriptions. In his reverend regard for the papal office, Luther did Leo an unintentional injustice when he compared him to Daniel among the lions. The pope led the cardinals in the pursuit of pleasure and in extravagance in the use of money. To one charge, unchasteness, Leo seems not to have exposed himself. How far this was a virtue, or how far it was forced upon him by nature, cannot be said.

The qualities, with which nature endowed him, remained with him to the end. He was good-humored, affable and accessible. He was often found playing chess or cards with his cardinals. At the table he was usually temperate, though he spent vast sums in the entertainment of others. He kept a monk capable of swallowing a pigeon at one mouthful and 40 eggs at a sitting. To his dress he gave much attention, and delighted to adorn his fingers with gems.

The debt art owes to Leo X. may be described in another place. Rome became what Paris afterwards was, the centre of luxury, art and architectural improvement. The city grew with astonishing rapidity. "New buildings," said an orator, "are planted every day. Along the Tiber and on the Janicular hill new sections arise." Luigi Gradenigo, the Venetian ambassador, reports that in the ten years following Leo’s election, 10,000 buildings had been put up by persons from Northern Italy. The palaces of bankers, nobles and cardinals were filled with the richest furniture of the world. Artists were drawn from France and Spain as well as Italy, and every kind of personality who could afford amusement to others.

The Vatican was the resort of poets, musicians, artists, and also of actors and buffoons. Leo joined in their conversation and laughed at their wit. He even vied with the poets in making verses off-hand. Musical instruments ornamented with gold and silver he purchased in Germany. With almost Oriental abandon he allowed himself to be charmed with entertainments of all sorts.

Among Leo’s amusements the chase took a leading place, though it was forbidden by canonical law to the clergy. Fortunately for his reputation, he was not bound, as pope, by canon law. As Louis XIV. said, "I am the state," so the pope might have said, "I am the canon law." Portions of the year he passed booted and spurred. He fished in the lake of Bolsena and other waters. He takes an inordinate pleasure in the chase, wrote the Venetian ambassador. He hunted in the woods of Viterbo and Nepi and in the closer vicinity of Rome, but with most pleasure at his hunting villa, Magliana. He reserved for his own use a special territory. The hunting parties were often large.864  At a meet, prepared by Alexander Farnese, the pope found himself in the midst of 18 cardinals, besides other prelates, musicians, actors and servants. A pack of sixty or seventy dogs aided the hunters. Magliana was five miles from Rome, on the Tiber. This favorite pleasure castle is now a desolate farmhouse. In strange contrast to his own practice, the pope, at the appeal of the king of Portugal, forbade the privileges of the chase to the Portuguese clergy.

The theatre was another passion to which Leo devoted himself. He attended plays in the palaces of the cardinals and rich bankers and in S. Angelo, and looked on as they were performed in the Vatican itself. Bibbiena, one of the favorite members of his cabinet, was a writer of salacious comedies. One of these, the Calandria, Leo witnessed performed in 1514 in his palace. The ballet was freely danced in some of these plays, as in the lascivious Suppositi by Ariosto, played before the pope in S. Angelo on Carnival Sunday. Another of the plays was the Mandragola, by Machiavelli, to modern performances of which in Florence young people are not admitted.865  An account given of one of these plays by the ambassador of Ferrara, Paolucci, represented a girl pleading with Venus for a lover. At once, eight monks appeared on the scene in their gray mantles. Venus bade the girl give them a potion. Amor then awoke the sleepers with his arrow. The monks danced round Amor and made love to the girl. At last they threw aside their monastic garb and all joined in a moresca. On the girl’s asking what they could do with their arms, they fell to fighting, and all succumbed except one, and he received the girl as the prize of his prowess.866  And Leo was the high-priest of Christendom, the professed successor of Peter the Apostle!

Festivities of all sorts attracted the attention of the good-natured pope. With 14 cardinals he assisted at the marriage of the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, to his mistress. The entertainment was given at Chigi’s beautiful house, the Farnesina. This man was considered the most fortunate banker of his day in Rome. The kings of Spain and France and princes of Germany sent him presents, and sought from him loans. Even the sultan was said to have made advances for his friendship. His income was estimated at 70,000 ducats a year, and he left behind him 800,000 ducats. This Croesus was only fifty-five when death separated him from his fortune. At one of his banquets, the gold plates were thrown through the windows into the Tiber after they were used at the table, but fortunately they were saved from loss by being caught in a net which had been prepared for them. On another occasion, when Leo and 18 cardinals were present, each found his own coat-of-arms on the silver dishes he used. At Agostino’s marriage festival, Leo held the bride’s hand while she received the ring on one of her fingers. The pontiff then baptized one of Chigi’s illegitimate children. Cardinals were not ashamed to dine with representatives of the demi-monde, as at a banquet given by the banker Lorenzo Strozzi.867  But in scandals of this sort Alexander’s pontificate could not well be outdone.

With the easy unconcern of a child of the world, spoiled by fortune, the light-hearted de’ Medici went on his way as if the resources of the papal treasury were inexhaustible. Julius was a careful financier. Leo’s finances were managed by incompetent favorites.868  In 1517 his annual income is estimated to have been nearly 600,000 ducats. Of this royal sum, 420,000 ducats were drawn from state revenues and mines. The alum deposits at Tolfa yielded 40,000; Ravenna and the salt mines of Cervia, 60,000; the river rents in Rome, 60,000; and the papal domains of Spoleto, Ancona and the Romagna, 150,000. According to another contemporary, the papal exchequer received 160,000 ducats from ecclesiastical sources. The vendable offices at the pope’s disposal at the time of his death numbered 2,150, yielding the enormous yearly income of 328,000 ducats.869

Two years after Leo assumed the pontificate, the financial problem was already a serious one. All sorts of measures had to be invented to increase the papal revenues and save the treasury from hopeless bankruptcy. By augmenting the number of the officials of the Tiber—porzionari di ripa — from 141 to 612, 286,000 ducats were secured. The enlargement of the colleges of the cubiculari and scudieri, officials of the Vatican, brought in respectively 90,000 and 112,000 ducats more. From the erection of the order of the Knights of St. Peter,—cavalieri di San Pietro,—with 401 members, the considerable sum of 400,000 ducats was realized, 1,000 ducats from each knight. The sale of indulgences did not yield what it once did, but the revenue from this source was still large.870  The highest ecclesiastical offices were for sale, as in the reign of Alexander. Cardinal Innocent Cibo paid 30,000 ducats or, at; another report went, 40,000, for his hat, and Francesco Armellini bought his for twice that amount.871

The shortages were provided for by resort to the banker and the usurer and to rich cardinals. Loan followed loan. Not only were the tapestries of the Vatican and the silver plate given as securities, but ecclesiastical benefices, the gems of the papal tiara and the rich statues of the saints were put in pawn. Sometimes the pope paid 20 per cent for sums of 10,000 ducats and over.872  It occasions no surprise that Leo’s death was followed by a financial collapse, and a number of cardinals passed into bankruptcy, including Cardinal Pucci, who had lent the pope 150,000 ducats. From the banker, Bernado Bini, Leo had gotten 200,000 ducats. His debts were estimated as high as 800,000 ducats. It was a common joke that Leo squandered three pontificates, the legacy Julius left and the revenues of his successor’s pontificate, as well as the income of his own.

For the bankers and all sorts of money dealers the Medicean period was a flourishing time in Rome. No less than 30 Florentines are said to have opened banking institutions in the city, and, at the side of the Fuggers and Welsers, did business with the curia. The Florentines found it to be a good thing to have a Medicean pope, and swarmed about the Vatican as the Spaniards had done in the good days of Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., the Sienese, during the reign of Pius II., and the Ligurians while Sixtus IV. of Savona was pope. They stormed the gates of patronage, as if all the benefices of the Church were intended for them.873

Leo’s father, Lorenzo, said of his three sons that Piero was a fool, Giuliano was good and Giovanni shrewd. The last characterization was true to the facts. Leo X. was shrewd, the shrewdness being of the kind that succeeds in getting temporary personal gain, even though it be by the sacrifice of high and accessible ends. His amiability and polish of manners made him friends and secured for him the tiara. He was not altogether a degenerate personality like Alexander VI., capable of all wickedness. But his outlook never went beyond his own pleasures. The Vatican was the most luxurious court in Europe; it performed no moral service for the world. The love of art with Leo was the love of color, of outline, of beauty such as a Greek might have had, not a taste controlled by regard for spiritual grace and aims. In his treatment of the European states and the Italian cities, his diplomacy was marked by dissimulation as despicable as any that was practised by secular courts. Without a scruple be could solemnly make at the same moment contradictory pledges. Perfidy seemed to be as natural to him as breath.874

At the same time, Leo followed the rubrics of religion. He fasted, so it is reported, three times a week, abstained from meat on Wednesday and Friday, daily read his Breviary and was accustomed before mass to seek absolution from his confessor. But he was without sanctity, without deep religious conviction. The issues of godliness had no appreciable effect upon him in the regulation of his habits. Even in his patronage of art and culture, he forgot or ignored Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Erasmus. What a noble substitution it would have been, if these men had found welcome in the Vatican, and the jesters and buffoons and gormandizers been relegated to their proper place!  The high-priest of the Christian world is not to be judged in the same terms we would apply to a worldly prince ruling in the closing years of the Middle Ages. The Vatican, Leo turned into a house of revelling and frivolity, the place of all others where the step and the voice of the man of God should have been heard. The Apostle, whom he had been taught to regard as his spiritual ancestor, accomplished his mission by readiness to undergo, if necessary, martyrdom. Leo despoiled his high office of its sacredness and prostituted it into a vehicle of his own carnal propensities. Had he followed the advice of his princely father, man of the world though he was, Leo X. would have escaped some of the reprobation which attaches to his name.

There is no sufficient evidence that Leo ever used the words ascribed to him, "how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."875  Such blasphemy we prefer not to associate with the de’ Medici. Nevertheless, no sharper condemnation of one claiming to be Christ’s vicar on earth could well be thought of than that which is carried by the words of Sarpi, the Catholic historian of the Council of Trent,876 who said, "Leo would have been a perfect pope, if he had combined with his other good qualities a moderate knowledge of religion and a greater inclination to piety, for neither of which he shewed much concern." Before Leo’s death, the papacy had lost a part of its European constituency, and that part which, in the centuries since, has represented the furthest progress of civilization. The bull which this pontiff hurled at Martin Luther, 1520, was consumed into harmless ashes at Wittenberg, ashes which do not speak forth from the earth as do the ashes of John Huss. To the despised Saxon miner’s son, the Protestant world looks back for the assertion of the right to study the Scriptures, a matter of more importance than all the circumstance and rubrics of papal office and sacerdotal functions. Not seldom has it occurred that the best gifts to mankind have come, not through a long heritage of prerogatives but through the devotion of some agent of God humbly born. It seemed as if Providence allowed the papal office at the close of the mediaeval age to be filled by pontiffs spiritually unworthy and morally degenerate, that it might be known for all time that it was not through the papacy the Church was to be reformed and brought out of its mediaeval formalism and scholasticism. What popes had refused to attempt, another group of men with no distinction of office accomplished.

CHAPTER VII.

HERESY AND WITCHCRAFT.

§ 57. Literature.

For § 58.—For the Brethren of the Free Spirit, Fredericq: Corpus doc. haer. pravitalis, etc., vols. I-III.—Haupt, art. in Herzog, III. 467–473, Brüder des Freien Geistes. See lit., vol. V., I. p. 459.—For the Fraticelli F. Ehrle: Die Spiritualen. Ihr Verhältniss zum Francis-kanerorden u. zu d. Fraticellen in Archiv f. K. u. Lit. geschichte, 1885, pp. 1509–1570; 1886, pp. 106–164; 1887, pp. 553–623.—Döllinger: Sektengesch., II.—Lea: Inquisition, III. 129 sqq., 164–175.—Wetzer-Welte, IV, 1926–1985.—For the Waldenses, see lit., vol. V., I. p. 459.—Also, W. Preger: Der Traktat des Dav. von Augsburg fiber die Waldenser, Munich, 1878.—Hansen: Quellen, etc., Bonn, 1901, 149–181, etc. See full title below.—For the Flagellants, see lit., vol. V., I. p. 876. Also Paul Runge: D. Lieder u. Melodien d. Geissler d. Jahres 1349, nach. d. Aufzeichnung Hugo’s von Reutlingen nebst einer Abhandlung über d. ital. Geisslerlieder von H. Schneegans u. einem Beitrage über d. deutschen u. niederl. Geissler von H. Pfannenschmid, Leipzig, 1900.

§ 59. Witchcraft.—For the treatments of the Schoolmen and other med. writers, see vol. V., I. p. 878.—Among earlier modem writers, see J. Bodin: Magorum Daemonomania, 1579.—Reg. Scott: Discovery of Witchcraft, London, 1584.—P. Binsfeld: De confessionibus maleficarum et sagarum, Treves, 1596.—M. Delrio: Disquisitiones magicae, Antwerp, 1599, Cologne, 1679.—Erastus, of Heidelberg: Repititio disputationis de lamiis seu strigibus, Basel, 1578.—J. Glanvill: Sadducismus triumphatus, London, 1681.—R. Baxter: Certainty of the World of Spirits, London, 1691.—Recent writers.—* T. Wright: Narrative of Sorcery and Magic, 2 vols., London, 1851.—G. Roskoff: Gesch. des Teufels, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1869.—W. G. Soldan: Gesch. der Hexenprocesse, Stuttgart, 1843; new ed., by Heppe, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1880.—Lea: History of the Inquisition, III. 379–550.—*Lecky: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, ch. I.—Döllinger-Friedrich: D. Papstthum, pp. 123–131.—A.D. White, History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom, 2 vols., New York, 1898.—*J. Hansen: Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hezenprocess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung, Munich, 1900; *Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im M. A., Leipzig, 1901.—Graf von Hoensbroech: D. Papstthum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit, Leipzig, 2 vols., 1900; 4th ed., 1901, I. 380–599.—J. Diefenbach: Der Hexenwahn, vor u. nach Glaubenspaltung in Deutschland, Mainz, 1886 (the last chapter—on the conciones variae—gives sermons on the weather, storms, winds, dreams, mice, etc.); also, Besessenheit, Zauberei u. Hexenfabeln, Frankfurt, 1893; also, Zauberglaube des 16ten Jahrh. nach d. Katechismen M. Luthers und d. P. Canisius, Mainz, 1900. Binz: Dr. Joh. Weyer, Bonn, 1885, 2d ed., Berlin, 1896. A biography of one of the early opponents of witch-persecution, with sketches of some of its advocates.—Baissac: Les grands jours de la sorcellerie, Paris, 1890.—H. Vogelstein and P. Rieger, Gesch. d. Juden in Rom, 2 vols., Berlin, 1895 sq.—S. Riezler: Gesch. d. Hexenprocesse in Baiern, Stuttgart, 1896.—C. Lempens: D. grösste Verbrechen aller Zeiten. Pragnatische Gesch. d. Hexenprocesse, 2d ed., 1904.—Janssen-Pastor: Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, etc., vol. VIII., 531–751.—The Witch-Persecutions, in Un. of Pa. Transll. and Reprints, vol. III.

§ 60. The Spanish Inquisition.—See lit., V. I. p. 460 sqq. Hefele: D. Cardinal Ximines und d. Kirchl. Zustände in Spanien am Ende d. 15 u. Anfang d. 16. Jahrh., Tübingen, 1844, 2d ed., 1851. Also, art. Ximines in Wetzer-Welte, vol. XII.—C. V. Langlois: L’inq., d’après les travaux récents, Paris, 1902.—H. C. Lea: Hist. of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols., New York, 1906 sq. Includes Sicily, Sardinia, Mexico and Peru, but omits Holland.—E. Vacandard: The Inquisition. A criticism and history. Study of the Coercive Power of the Church, transl. by B. L. Conway, London, 1908.—C. G. Ticknor: Hist. of Spanish Literature, I. 460 sqq.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, III. 624–630.

Dr. Lea’s elaborate work is the leading modern treatment of the subject and is accepted as an authority In Germany. See Benrath in Lit-Zeitung, 1908, pp. 203–210. The author has brought out as never before the prominent part the confiscation of property played in the Spanish tribunal. The work of Abbé Vacandard, the author of the Life of St. Bernard, takes up the positions laid down in Dr. Lea’s general work on the Inquisition and attempts to break the force of his statements. Vacandard admits the part taken by the papacy in prosecuting heresy by trial torture and even by the death penalty, but reduces the Church’s responsibility on the ground of the ideas prevailing in the Middle Ages, and the greater freedom and cruelty practised by the state upon its criminals. He denies that Augustine favored severe measures of compulsion against heretics and sets forth, without modification, the unrelenting treatment of Thomas Aquinas.

§ 58. Heretical and Unchurchly Movements.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the seat of heresy was shifted from Southern France and Northern Italy to Bohemia and Northern Germany, the Netherlands and England. In Northern and Central Europe, the papal Inquisition, which had been so effective in exterminating the Albigenses and in repressing or scattering the Waldenses, entered upon a new period of its history, in seeking to crush out a new enemy of the Church, witchcraft. The rise and progress of the two most powerful and promising forms of popular heresy, Hussitism and Lollardy, have already been traced. Other sectarists who came under the Church’s ban were the Beghards and Beguines, who had their origin in the 13th century,877 the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Fraticelli, the Flagellants and the Waldenses.

It is not possible to state with exactness the differences between the Beghards, Beguines, the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Fraticelli as they appeared from 1300 to 1500. The names were often used interchangeably as a designation of foes of the established Church order.878  The court records and other notices that have come down to us indicate that they were represented in localities widely separated, and excited alarm which neither their numbers nor the station of their adherents justified. The orthodox mind was easily thrown into a panic over the deviations from the Church’s system of doctrine and government. The distribution of the dissenters proves that a widespread religious unrest was felt in Western Christendom. They may have imbibed some elements from Joachim of Flore’s millenarianism, and in a measure partook of the same spirit as German mysticism. There was a spiritual hunger the Church’s aristocratic discipline and its priestly ministrations did not satisfy. The Church authorities had learned no other method of dealing with heresy than the method in vogue in the days of Innocent III. and Innocent IV., and sought, as before, by imprisonments, the sword and fire, to prevent its predatory ravages.

The Brethren of the Free Spirit879 were infected with pantheistic notions and manifested a tendency now to free thought, now to libertinism of conduct. At times they are identified with the Beghards and Beguines. The pantheistic element suggests a connection with Amaury of Bena or Meister Eckart, but of this the extant records of trials furnish no distinct evidence. To the Beghards and Beguines likewise were ascribed pantheistic tenets.

To the general class of free thinkers belonged such individuals as Margaret of Henegouwen, usually known as Margaret of Porete, a Beguine, who wrote a book advocating the annihilation of the soul in God’s love, and affirmed that, when this condition is reached, the individual may, without qualm of conscience, yield to any indulgence the appetites of nature call for. After having several times relapsed from the faith, she was burnt, together with her books, in the Place de Grève, Paris, 1310.880  Here belong also the Men of Reason,—homines intelligentiae,—who appeared at Brussels early in the 14th century and were charged with teaching the final restoration of all men and of the devil.881

The Fraticelli, also called the Fratricelli,—the Little Brothers,—represented the opposite tendency and went to an extravagant excess in insisting upon a rigid observance of the rule of poverty. Originally followers of the Franciscan Observants, Peter Olivi, Michael Cesena and Angelo Clareno, they offered violent resistance to the decrees of John XXII., which ascribed to Christ and the Apostles the possession of property. Some were given shelter in legitimate Franciscan convents, while others associated themselves in schismatic groups of their own. They were active in Italy and Southern France, and were also represented in Holland and even in Egypt and Syria, as Gregory XI., 1375, declared; but it would be an error to regard their number as large. In his bull, Sancta romana, issued in 1317, John XXII. spoke of "men of the profane multitude, popularly called Fraticelli, or brethren of the poor life, Bizochi or Beguines or known by other names." This was not the first use of the term in an offensive sense. Villani called two men Fraticelli, a mechanic of Parma, Segarelli and his pupil Dolcino of Novara, both of whom were burnt, Segarelli in 1300 and Dolcino some time later. Friar Bonato, head of a small Spiritual house in Catalonia, after being roasted on one side, proffered repentance and was released, but afterwards, 1335, burnt alive.882  Wherever the Fraticelli appeared, they were pursued by the Inquisition. A number of bulla of the 14th century attacked them for denying the papal edicts and condemned them to rigorous prosecution. A formula, which they were required to profess, ran as follows: "I swear that I believe in my heart and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles, while in mortal life, held in common the things the Scriptures describe them as having and that they had the right of giving, selling and alienating them."

In localities they seem to have carried their opposition to the Church so far as to set up a hierarchy of their own.883  The regular priests they denounced as simonists and adulterers. In places they were held in such esteem by the populace that the Inquisition and the civil courts found themselves powerless to bring them to trial. Nine were burnt under Urban V. at Viterbo, and in 1389 Fra Michaele Berti de Calci, who had been successful in making converts, met the same fate at Florence. In France also they yielded victims to the flames, among them, Giovanni da Castiglione and Francese d’Arquata at Montpellier, 1354, and Jean of Narbonne and Maurice at Avignon. These enthusiasts are represented as having met death cheerfully.

Early in the 15th century, we find the Fraticelli again the victims of the Inquisition. In 1424 and 1426, Martin V. ordered proceedings against certain of their number in Florence and in Spain. The vigorous propaganda of the papal preachers, John of Capistrano and James of the Mark, succeeded in securing the return of many of these heretics to the Church, but, as late as the reign of Paul II., 1466, they were represented in Rome, where six of their number were imprisoned and subjected to torture. The charges against them were the denial of the validity of papal decrees of indulgence other than the Portiuncula decree.884  In Northern Europe the Fraticelli were classified with the Lollards and Beghards or identified with these heretics. The term, however, occurs seldom. Walter, the Lollard, was styled, the most wicked heresiarch of the Fraticelli, a man full of the devil and most perverse in his errors."885

Of far more interest to this age are the Flagellants who attracted attention by the strange outward demonstrations in which their religious fervor found expression. Theirs was a militant Christianity. They made an attempt to do something. They correspond more closely to the Salvation Army of the 19th century than any other organization of the Middle Ages. There is no record that the beating of drums played any part in the movement, but they used popular songs, a series of distinctive physical gestures and peculiar vociferations, uniforms and some of the discipline of the camp. Their campaigns were penitential crusades in which the self-mortifications of the monastery were transferred to the open field and the public square, and were adapted to impress the impenitent to make earnest in the warfare against the passions of the flesh. The Flagellants buffeted the body if they did not always buffet Satan.

An account has already been given of the first outbreak of the enthusiasm in Italy in 1259, which, starting in Perugia, spread to Northern Italy and extended across the Alps to Austria, Prag and Strassburg.886  Similar outbreaks occurred in 1296, 1333, 1349, 1399, and again at the time of the Spanish evangelist, Vincent Ferrer.

From being regarded as harmless fanatics they came to be treated as disturbers of the ecclesiastical peace, and in Northern Europe were classed with Beghards, Lollards, Hussites and other unchurchly or heretical sectarists.

The movement of 1333 was led by an eloquent Dominican, Venturino of Bergamo, and is described at length by Villani. Ten thousand followed this leader, wearing head-bands inscribed with the monogram of Christ, IHS, and on their chests a dove with an olive-branch in her mouth. Venturino led his followers as far as Rome and preached on the Capitoline. The penniless enthusiasts soon became a laughing-stock, and Venturino, on going to Avignon, gained absolution and died in Smyrna, 1346.

The earlier exhibitions of Flagellant zeal were as dim candlelights compared with the outbursts of 1349, during the ravages of the Black Death, which in contemporary chronicles and the Flagellant codes was called the great death—das grosse Sterben, pestis grandis, mortalitas magna. Bands of religious campaigners suddenly appeared in nearly all parts of Latin Christendom, Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands. John du Fayt, preaching before Clement VI., represented them as spread through all parts—per omnes provincias—and their numbers as countless. The exact numbers of the separate bands are repeatedly given, as they appeared in Ghent, Tournay, Dort, Bruges, Liége and other cities.887  Even bishops and princes took part in them. There were also bands of women.

Our knowledge of the German and Lowland Flagellants is most extensive. While the accounts of chroniclers differ in details, they agree in the main features. The Flagellants clad themselves in white and wore on their mantles, before and behind, and on their caps, a red cross, from which they got the name, the Brothers of the Cross. They marched from place to place, stopping only a single day and night at one locality, except in case of Sunday, when they often made an exception. In the van of their processions were carried crosses and banners. They sang hymns as they marched. The public squares in front of churches and fields, near-by towns, were chosen for their encampments and disciplinary drill, which was repeated twice a day with bodies bared to the waist. A special feature was the reading of a letter which, so it was asserted, was originally written on a table of stone and laid by an angel on the altar of St. Peter’s in Jerusalem.888  It represented Christ as indignant at the world’s wickedness, and, more especially, at the desecration of Sunday and the prevalence of usury and adultery, but as promising mercy on condition that the Flagellants gather and make pilgrimages of penance lasting 33½ days, a period corresponding to the years of his earthly life.

The letter being read, the drill began in earnest. It consisted of their falling on their knees and on the ground three times, in scourging themselves and in certain significant gestures to indicate to what sin each had been specially addicted. Every soldier carried a whip, or scourge, which, as writers are careful to report, was tipped with pieces of iron. These were often so sharp as to justify their comparison to needles, and the blood was frequently seen trickling down the bodies of the more zealous, even to their loins.889  The blows were executed to the rhythmic music of hymns, and the ruddy militiamen, milites rubicundi,—as they were sometimes called, believed that the blood which they shed was one with Christ’s blood or was mixed with it. They found a patron in St. Paul, whose stigmata they thought of, not as scars of conscience but bodily wounds.890  At each genuflection they sang a hymn, four hymns being sung during the progress of a drill. The first calling to the drill began with the words: —

Nun tretet herzu wer buesen welle

Fliehen wir die heisse Hölle.

Lucifer ist bös Geselle

Wen er habet mit Pech er ihn labet.

Darum fliehen wir mit ihm zu sein.

Wer unser Busse wolle pflegen

Der soll gelten und wieder geben.

Now join us all who will repent

Let’s flee the fiery heat of hell.

Lucifer is a bad companion

Whom he clutches, he covers with pitch.

Let us flee away from him.

Whoso will through our penance go

Let him restore what he’s taken away.891

In falling flat on the ground, they stretched out their arms to represent the arms of the cross. The fourth hymn, sung at the third genuflection, was a lament over the punishment of hell to which the Usurer, the liar, the murderer, the road-robber, the man who neglected to fast on Friday and to keep Sunday, were condemned, and with this was coupled a prayer to Mary.

Das Hilf uns Maria Königin,

Dass wir deines Kindes Huld gewin.

Mary, Queen, help us, pray,

To win the favor of thy child.892

Each penitent indicated his besetting sin. The hard drinker put his finger to his lips. The perjurer held up his two front fingers as if swearing an oath. The adulterer fell on his belly. The gambler moved his hand as if in the act of throwing dice.

During the ravages of the Black Death a contingent of 120 of these penitential warriors crossed the channel from Holland and marched through London and other English towns, wearing red crosses and having their scourges pointed with pieces of iron as sharp as needles.893  But they failed to secure a following.

It was inevitable that the Flagellants should incur opposition from the Church authorities. The mediaeval Church as little tolerated independence in ritual or organization as in doctrine. In France, they were opposed from the first. The University of Paris issued a deliverance against them, and Philip VI. forbade their manoeuvres on French soil under pain of death. A harder blow was struck by the head of Christendom, Clement VI., who fulminated his sweeping bull Oct. 20, 1349. Flagellants starting from Basel appeared in Avignon to the number, according to one document, of 2000. Before issuing his bull, Clement and his cardinals listened to the sermon on the subject preached by the Paris doctor, John du Fayt. The preacher selected 13 of the Flagellant tenets and practices for his reprobation, including the shedding of their own blood, a practice, he declared, fit for the priests of Baal, and the murder of Jews for their supposed crime of poisoning the wells, in which was sought the origin of the Black Plague. Clement pronounced the Flagellant movement a work of the devil and the angelic letter a forgery. He condemned the warriors for repudiating the priesthood and treating their penances as equivalent to the journey to the jubilee in Rome, set for 1350.894  The bull was sent to the archbishops of England, France, Poland, Germany and Sweden, and it called upon them to invoke, if necessary, the secular arm to put down the new rebellion against the ordinances of the Church.

Against such opposition the Flagellants could not be expected to maintain themselves long. Sharp enactments were directed against them by the Fleming cities and by archbishops, as in Prag and Magdeburg. Strassburg forbade public scourgings on its streets. As late as 1353, the archbishop of Cologne found it necessary to order all priests who had favored them to confess on pain of excommunication.895

We are struck with four features of the Flagellant movement during the Black Death,—its organization, the part assumed in it by the laity, the use of music and, in general, its strong religious and ethical character. In Italy, before this time, these people had their organizations. There was scarcely an Italian city which did not have one or more such brotherhoods. Padua had six, Perugia and Fabiano three, but the movement does not seem to have developed opposition to Church authority. In some of the outbreaks priests were the leaders, and the permanent organizations seem to have formed a close association with the Dominicans and Franciscans and to have devoted themselves to the care of the poor and sick.

On the other hand, in the North, a spirit of independence of the clergy manifested itself. This is evident from the Flagellant codes of the German and Dutch groups, current at the time of the great pestilence and in after years. The conditions of membership included reconciliation with enemies, the consent of husband or wife or, in the case of servants, the consent of their masters, strict obedience to the leaders, who were called master or rector, and ability to pay their own expenses. During the campaigns, which lasted 33½ days, they were to ask no alms nor to wash their persons or their clothing, nor cut their beards nor speak to women, nor to lie on feather beds. They were forbidden to carry arms or to pursue the flagellation to the limit where it might lead to sickness or death.896

Five pater nosters and ave Marias were prescribed to be said before and after meals, and it was provided that, so long as they lived, they should flagellate themselves every Friday three times during the day and once at night. The associations were called brotherhoods, and the members were bidden to call each other not chum—socium — but brother, "seeing that all were created out of the same element and bought with the same price."897

The leaders of the fraternities were laymen, and, as just indicated, the equality of the members before God and the cross was emphasized. The movement was essentially a lay movement, an expression of the spirit of dissatisfaction in Northern Germany and the Lowlands with the sacerdotal class.898  Some of the codes condemn the worship of images, the doctrine of transubstantiation, indulgences, priestly unction and, in cases, they substituted the baptism of blood for water baptism. One of these, containing 50 articles, expressly declared that the body of Christ is not in the sacrament, and that "indulgences amount to nothing and together with priests are condemned of God." The 26th article said, "It is better to die with a skin tanned with dust and sweat than with one smeared with a whole pound of priestly ointment."899

The German hymns as well as the codes of the Flagellants urge the duty of prayer and the mortification of the flesh and the preparation for death, the abandonment of sin, the reconciliation of enemies and the restoration of goods unjustly acquired. These sentiments are further vouched for by the chroniclers.

To these religionists belongs the merit of having revived the use of popular religious song. Singing was a feature of the earliest Flagellant movement, 1259.900  Their hymns are in Latin, Italian, French, German and Dutch. In Italian they went by the name of laude, and in German leisen. The Italian hymns, like the German, agree that sins have brought down the judgment of God and in appealing to the Virgin Mary, and call upon the "brethren" to castigate themselves, to confess their sins and to live in peace and brotherhood. They beseech the Virgin to prevail upon her son to stop "the hard death and pestilence—Gesune tolga via l’ aspra morte e pistilentia.901  Most of these hymns are filled with the thought of death and the woes of humanity, but the appeals to Mary are full of tenderness, and every conceivable allegory is applied to her from the dove to the gate of paradise, from the rose to a true medicine for every sickness. The songs of the Italian and the Northern Flagellants seem to have been independent of each other.902

The cohorts in the North agreed in using the same penitential song at their drills, but they had a variety of scores and songs for their marches.903  While the most of the words of their songs have been known, it is only recently that some of the music has been found to which the Flagellants sang their hymns. A manuscript of Hugo of Reutlingen, dating from 1349 and discovered at St. Petersburg, gives 8 such tunes, together with the words and an account of the movement.904  The hearers, in describing the impression made upon them by the melodies, mention their sweetness, their orderly rhythm,—ordine miro hymnos cantabant,—and their pathos capable of "moving hearts of stone and bringing tears to the eyes of the most stolid."905

Altogether, the Flagellant movement during the Black Death, 1349, must be regarded as a genuinely popular religious movement.

The next outbreak of Flagellant zeal, which occurred in 1399, was confined for the most part to Italy. The Flagellants, who were distinguished by mantles with a red cross, appeared in Genoa, Piacenza, Modena, Rome and other Italian cities. A number of accounts have come down to us, now favorable as the account of the "notary of Pistoja," now unfavorable as the account of von Nieheim. According to the Pistojan writer, the movement had its origin in a vision seen by a peasant in the Dauphiné, which is of interest as showing the relative places assigned in the popular worship to Christ and Mary. After a midday meal, the peasant saw Christ as a young man. Christ asked him for bread. The peasant told him there was none left, but Christ bade him look, and behold! he saw three loaves. Christ then bade him go and throw the loaves into a spring a short distance off. The peasant went, and was about to obey, when a woman, clad in white and bathed in tears, appeared, telling him to go back to the young man and say that his mother had forbidden it. He went, and Christ repeated his command, but at the woman’s mandate the peasant again returned to Christ. Finally he threw in one of the loaves, when the woman, who was Mary, informed him that her Son was exceedingly angry at the sinfulness of the world and had determined to punish it, even to destruction. Each loaf signified one-third of mankind and the destruction of one-third was fixed, and if the peasant should cast in the other two loaves, all mankind would perish. The man cast himself on his knees before the weeping Virgin, who then assured him that she had prayed her Son to withhold judgment, and that it would be withheld, provided he and others went in processions, flagellating themselves and crying "mercy" and "peace," and relating the vision he had seen.906

The peasant was joined by 17 others, and they became the nucleus of the new movement. The bands slept in the convents and church grounds, sang hymns,—laude,—from which they were also called laudesi, and scourged themselves with thongs as their predecessors had done. Miracles were supposed to accompany their marches. Among the miracles was the bleeding of a crucifix, which some of the accounts, as, for example, von Nieheim’s, explain by their pouring blood into a hole in the crucifix and then soaking the wood in oil and placing it in the sun to sweat. According to this keen observer, the bands traversed almost the whole of the peninsula. Fifteen thousand, accompanied by the bishop of Modena, marched to Bologna, where the population put on white. Not only were the people and clergy of Rome carried away by their demonstrations, but also members of the sacred college and all classes put on sackcloth and white. The pope went so far as to bestow upon them his blessing and showed them the handkerchief of St. Veronica. Nieheim makes special mention of their singing and their new songs — nova carmina. But the historian of the papal schism could see only evil and fraud in the movement,907 and condemns their lying together promiscuously at night, men and women, boys and girls. On their marches they stripped the trees bare of fruit and left the churches and convents, where they encamped, defiled by their uncleanness. An end was put to the movement in Rome by the burning of one of the leading prophets.

The bull of Clement VI. was followed, in l372, by the fulmination of Gregory XI., who associated the Flagellants with the Beghards, and by the action of the Council of Constance. In a tract presented to the council in 1417, Gerson asserted that the sect made scourging a substitute for the sacrament of penance and confession.908  He called upon the bishops to put down its cruel and sanguinary members who dared to shed their own blood and regarded themselves as on a par with the old martyrs. The laws of the decalogue were sufficient without the imposition of any new burdens, as Christ himself taught, when he said, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." This judgment of the theologians the Flagellants might have survived, but the merciless probe of the Inquisition to which they were exposed in the 15th century took their life. Trials were instituted against them in Thuringia under the Dominican agent, Schönefeld, 1414. At one place, Sangerhausen, near Erfurt, 91 were burnt at one time and, on another occasion, 22 more. The victims of the second group died, asserting that all the evils in the Church came from the corrupt lives of the clergy.

The Flagellant movement grew out of a craving which the Church life of the age did not fully meet. Excesses should not blind the eye to its good features. Hugo of Reutlingen concludes his account of the outbreak of 1349 with the words: "Many good things were associated with the Flagellant brothers, and these account for the attention they excited."

A group of sectaries, sometimes associated by contemporary writers with the Flagellants, was known as the Dancers. These people appeared at Aachen and other German and Dutch towns as early as 1374. In Cologne they numbered 500. Like the Flagellants, they marched from town to town. Their dancing and jumping—dansabant et saltabant — they performed half naked, sometimes bound together two and two, and often in the churches, where they had a preference for the spaces in front of the images of the Virgin. Cases occurred where they fell dead from exhaustion. In Holland, the Dancers were also called Frisker or Frilis, from frisch,—spry,—the word with which they encouraged one another in their terpsichorean feats.909

To another class of religious independents belong the Waldenses, who, in spite of their reputation as heretics, continued to survive in France, Piedmont and Austria. They were still accused of allowing women to preach, denying the real presence and abjuring oaths, extreme unction, infant baptism and also of rejecting the doctrines of purgatory and prayers for the dead.910

With occasional exceptions, the Waldensians of Italy and France were left unmolested until the latter part of the 15th century and the dukes of Savoy were inclined to protect them in their Alpine abodes. But the agents of the Inquisition were keeping watch, and the Franciscan Borelli is said to have burned, in 1393, 150 at Grenoble in the Dauphiné in a single day. It remained for Pope Innocent VIII. to set on foot a relentless crusade against this harmless people as his predecessor of the same name, Innocent III., set on foot the crusade against the Albigenses. His notorious bull of May 5, 1487, called upon the king of France, the duke of Savoy and other princes to proceed with armed expeditions against them and to crush them out "as venomous serpents."911  It opened with the assertion that his Holiness was moved by a concern to extricate from the abyss of error those for whom the sovereign Creator had been pleased to endure sufferings. The striking difference seems not to have occurred to the pontiff that the Saviour, to whose services he appealed, gave his own life, while he himself, without incurring any personal danger, was consigning others to torture and death.

Writing of the crusade which followed, the Waldensian historian, Leger, says that all his people had suffered before was as "flowers and roses" compared to what they were now called upon to endure. Charles VIII. entered heartily into the execution of the decree, and sent his captain, Hugo de la Palu. The crusading armies may have numbered 18,000 men.

The mountaineer heretics fled to the almost inaccessible platform called Pré du Tour, where their assailants could make no headway against their arrows and the stones they hurled. On the French side of the Alps the crusade was successful. In the Val de Louise, 70, or, according to another account, 3000, who had fled to the cave called Balme de Vaudois, were choked to death by smoke from fires lit at the entrance. Many of the Waldenses recanted, and French Waldensianism was well-nigh blotted out. Their property was divided between the bishop of Embrun and the secular princes. As late as 1545, 22 villages inhabited by French Waldenses were pillaged and burnt by order of the parliament of Provence. With the unification of Italy in 1870, this ancient and respectable people was granted toleration and began to descend from its mountain fastnesses, where it had been confined for the half of a millennium.

in Austria, the fortunes of the Waldensians were more or less interwoven with the fortunes of the Hussites and Bohemian Brethren. In parts of Northern Germany, as in Brandenburg in 1480, members of the sect were subjected to severe persecutions. In the Lowlands we hear of their imprisonment, banishment and death by fire.912

The mediaeval horror of heresy appears in the practice of ascribing to heretics nefarious performances of all sorts. The terms Waldenses and Waldensianism were at times made synonymous with witches and witchcraft. Just how the terms Vauderie, Vaudoisie, Vaudois, Waudenses and Valdenses came to be used in this sense has not been satisfactorily explained. But such usage was in vogue from Lyons to Utrecht, and the papal bull of Eugenius IV., 1440, refers to the witches in Savoy as being called Waldenses.913  An elaborate tract entitled the Waldensian Idolatry,914 — Valdenses ydolatrae,—written in 1460 and giving a description of its treatment in Arras, accused, the Waldenses with having intercourse with demons and riding through the air on sticks, oiled with a secret unguent.

§ 59. Witchcraft and its Punishment.

Perhaps no chapter in human history is more revolting than the chapter which records the wild belief in witchcraft and the merciless punishments meted out for it in Western Europe in the century just preceding the Protestant Reformation and the succeeding century.915  In the second half of that century, the Church and society were thrown into a panic over witchcraft, and Christendom seemed to be suddenly infested with a great company of bewitched people, who yielded themselves to the irresistible discipline of Satan. The mania spread from Rome and Spain to Bremen and Scotland. Popes, lawyers, physicians and ecclesiastics of every grade yielded their assent, and the only voices lifted up in protest which have come down to us from the Middle Ages were the voices of victims who were subjected to torture and perished in the flames. No Reformer uttered a word against it. On the contrary, Luther was a stout believer in the reality of demonic agency, and pronounced its adepts deserving of the flames. Calvin allowed the laws of Geneva against it to stand. Bishop Jewel’s sermon before Queen Elizabeth in 1562 was perhaps the immediate occasion of a new law on the subject.916  Baxter proved the reality of witchcraft in his Certainty of the World of Spirits. On the shores of New England the delusion had its victims, at Salem, 1692, and a century later, 1768, John Wesley, referring to occurrences in his own time, declared that "giving up witchcraft was, in effect, giving up the Bible."

In the establishment of the Inquisition, 1215, Innocent III. made no mention of sorcery and witchcraft. The omission may be explained by two considerations. Provision was made for the prosecution of sorcerers by the state, and heretical depravity, a comparatively novel phenomenon for the Middle Ages, was in Innocent’s age regarded as the imminent danger to which the Church was exposed.

Witchcraft was one of the forms of maleficium, the general term adopted by the Middle Ages from Roman usage for demonology and the dark arts, but it had characteristic features of its own.917  These were the transport of the bewitched through the air, their meetings with devils at the so-called sabbats and indulgence in the lowest forms of carnal vice with them. Some of these features were mentioned in the canon episcopi,—the bishop’s canon,—which appeared first in the 10th century and was incorporated by Gratian in his collection of canon law, 1150. But this canon treated as a delusion the belief that wicked women were accustomed to ride together in troops through the air at night in the suite of the Pagan goddess, Diana, into whose service they completely yielded themselves, and this in spite of the fact that women confessed to this affinity.918  The night-riding, John of Salisbury, d. 1182, treated as an illusion with which Satan vexed the minds of women; but another Englishman, Walter Map, in the same century, reports the wild orgies of demons with heretics, to whom the devil appeared as a tom-cat.919

From the middle of the 13th century the distinctive features of witchcraft began to engage the serious attention of the Church authorities. During the reign of Gregory IX., 1227–1241, it became evident to them that the devil, not satisfied with inoculating Western Europe with doctrinal heresy, had determined to vex Christendom with a new exhibition of his malice in works of sorcery and witchcraft. Strange cases were occurring which the inquisitors of heresy were quick to detect. The Dominican Chantimpré tells of the daughter of a count of Schwanenburg, who was carried every night through the air, even eluding the strong hold of a Franciscan who one night tried to hold her back. In 1275 a woman of Toulouse, under torture, confessed she had indulged in sexual intercourse with a demon for many years and given birth to a monster, part wolf and part serpent, which for two years she fed on murdered children. She was burnt by the civil tribunal.

But it is not till the 15th century that the era of witchcraft properly begins. From about 1430 it was treated as a distinct cult, carefully defined and made the subject of many treatises. The punishments to be meted out for it were carefully laid down, as also the methods by which witches should be detected and tried. The cases were no longer sporadic and exceptional; they were regarded as being a gild or sect marshalled by Satan to destroy faith from the earth.

It is probable that the responsibility for the spread of the wild witch mania rests chiefly with the popes. Pope after pope countenanced and encouraged the belief. Not a single utterance emanated from a pope to discourage it.920  Pope after pope called upon the Inquisition to punish witches.

The list of papal deliverances opened in 1233, when Gregory IX., addressing the bishops of Mainz and Hildesheim, accepted the popular demonology in its crudest forms.921  The devil, so Gregory asserted, was appearing in the shapes of a toad, a pallid ghost and a black cat. In language too obscene to be repeated, he described at length the orgies which took place at the meetings of men and women with demons. Where medicines did not cure, iron and fire were to be used. The rotting flesh was to be cut out. Did not Elijah slay the four hundred priests of Baal and Moses put idolaters to death?

Before the close of the 13th century, popes themselves were accused of having familiar spirits and practising sorcery, as John XXI., 1276, and Boniface VIII. Boniface went so far, 1303, as to order the trial of an English bishop, Walter of Coventry and Lichfield, on the charge of having made a pact with the devil and habitually kissing the devil’s posterior parts. Under his successor, Clement, the gross charges of wantonness with the devil were circulated against the Knights of the Temple. In his work, De maleficiis, Boniface VIII.’s physician, Arnold of Villanova, stated with scientific precision the satanic devices for disturbing and thwarting the marital relation. Among the popes of the 14th century, John XXII. is distinguished for the credit he gave to all sorts of malefic arts and his instructions to the inquisitors to proceed against persons in league with the devil.922

Side by side with the papal utterances went the authoritative statements of the Schoolmen. Leaning upon Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, accepted as real the cohabitation of human beings with demons, and declared that old women had the power by the glance of their eye of injecting into young people a certain evil essence. If the horrible beliefs of the Middle Ages on the subject of witchcraft are to be set aside, then the bulls of Leo XIII. and Pius X.923 pronouncing Thomas the authoritative guide of Catholic theology must be modified.

The definitions of the Schoolmen justified the demand which papal deliverances made, that the Church tribunal has at least equal jurisdiction with the tribunal of the state in ferreting out and prosecuting the adepts of the dark arts. Manuals of procedure in cases of sorcery used by the Inquisition date back at least to 1270.924  The famous Interrogatory of Bernard Guy of 1320 contains formulas on the subject. The canonists, however, had difficulty in defining the point at which maleficium became a capital crime. Oldradus, professor of canon law in turn at Bologna, Padua and Avignon, sought, about 1325, to draw a precise distinction between the two, and gave the opinion that, only when sorcery savors strongly of heresy, should it be dealt with as heresy was dealt with, the position assumed before by Alexander IV., 1258–1260. The final step was taken when Eymericus, in his Inquisitorial Directory and special tracts, 1370–1380, affirmed the close affinity between maleficium and heresy, and threw the door wide open for the most rigorous measures against malefics.

To such threefold authorization was added the weight of the great influence of the University of Paris, which, in 1378, two years after the issue of Eymericus’ work, sent out 28 articles affirming the reality of maleficium.

Proceeding to the second period in the history of our subject, beginning with 1430, it is found to teem with tracts and papal deliverances on witchcraft.

Gerson, the leading theologian of his age, said it was heresy and impiety to question the practice of the malefic arts, and Eugenius IV., in several deliverances, beginning with 1434, spoke in detail of those who made pacts with demons and sacrificed to them.925  Witchcraft was about to take the place in men’s minds which heresy had occupied in the age of Innocent III. The frightful mania was impending which spread through Latin Christendom under the Renaissance popes, from Pius II. to Clement VII., and without a dissenting voice received their sanction. Of the Humanist, Pius II., better things might have been expected, but he also, in 1459, fulminated against the malefics of Brittany. To what length the Vatican could go in sanctioning the crassest superstition is seen from Sixtus IV.’s bull, 1471, in which that pontiff reserved to himself the right to manufacture and consecrate the little waxen figures of lambs, the touch of which was pronounced to be sufficient to protect against fire and shipwreck, storm and hail, lightning and thunder, and to preserve women in the hour of parturition.926

Among the documents on witchcraft, emanating from papal or other sources, the place of pre-eminence is occupied by the bull, Summis desiderantes issued by Innocent VIII., 1484. This notorious proclamation, consisting of nearly 1000 words, was sent out in answer to questions proposed to the papal chair by German inquisitors, and recognizes in clearest language the current beliefs about demonic bewitchment as undeniable. It had come to his knowledge, so the pontiff wrote, that the dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg and Bremen teemed with persons who, forsaking the Catholic faith, were consorting with demons. By incantations, conjurations and other iniquities they were thwarting the parturition of women and destroying the seed of animals, the fruits of the earth, the grapes of the vine and the fruit of the orchard. Men and women, flocks and herds, trees and all herbs were being afflicted with pains and torments. Men could no longer beget, women no longer conceive, and wives and husbands were prevented from performing the marital act. In view of these calamities, the pope authorized the Dominicans, Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, professors of theology, to continue their activity against these malefics in bringing them to trial and punishment. He called upon the bishop of Salzburg to see to it that they were not impeded in their work and, a few months later, he admonished the archbishop of Mainz to give them active support. In other documents, Innocent commended Sigismund, archbishop of Austria, the count of the Tyrol and other persons for the aid they had rendered to these inquisitors in their effort to crush out witchcraft.

The burning of witches was thus declared the definite policy of the papal see and the inquisitors proceeded to carry out its instructions with untiring and merciless severity.927

Innocent’s communication, so abhorrent to the intelligent judgment of modern times, would seem of itself to sweep away the dogma of papal infallibility, even if there were no cases of Liberius, the Arian, or Honorius, the Monothelite. The argument is made by Pastor and Cardinal Hergenröther that Innocent did not officially pronounce on the reality of witchcraft when, proceeding upon the basis of reports, he condemned it and ordered its punishment.928  However, in case this explanation be not regarded as sufficient, these writers allege that the decision, being of a disciplinary nature, would have no more binding force than any other papal decision on non-dogmatic subjects. This distinction is based upon the well-known contention of Catholic canonists that the pope’s inerrancy extends to matters of faith and not to matters of discipline. Leaving these distinctions to the domain of theological casuistry, it remains a historic fact that Innocent’s bull deepened the hold of a vicious belief in the mind of Europe and brought thousands of innocent victims to the rack and to the flames. The statement made by Dr. White is certainly not far from the truth when he says that, of all the documents which have issued from Rome, imperial or papal, Innocent’s bull first and last cost the greatest suffering.929  Innocent might have exercised his pontifical infallibility in denying, or at least doubting, the credibility of the witnesses. A simple word from him would have prevented untold horrors. No one of his successors in the papal chair has expressed any regret for his deliverance, much less consigned to the Index of forbidden books the Malleus maleficarum, the inquisitors’ official text-book on witchcraft, most of the editions of which printed Innocent’s bull at length.

Innocent’s immediate successors followed his example and persons or states opposing repressive measures against witches were classed with malefactors and, as in the case of Venice, the state was threatened by Leo X. with the fulminations of the Church if it did not render active assistance. At the papal rebuke, Brescia changed its attitude and in a single year sentenced 70 to the flames.

Next to Innocent’s bull, the Witches Hammer,—Malleus maleficarum,—already referred to, is the most important and nefarious legacy the world has received on witchcraft. Dr. Lea pronounces it "the most portentous monument of superstition the world has produced."930  These two documents were the official literature which determined the progress and methods of the new crusade.

The Witches Hammer, published in 1486, proceeded from the hands of the Dominican Inquisitors, Heinrich Institoris, whose German name was Kraemer, and Jacob Sprenger. The plea cannot be made that they were uneducated men. They occupied high positions in their order and at the University of Cologne. Their book is divided into three parts: the first proves the existence of witchcraft; the second sets forth the forms in which it manifested itself; the third describes the rules for its detection and prosecution. In the last quarter of the 15th century the world, so it states, was more given over to the devil than in any preceding age. It was flooded with all kinds of wickedness. In affirming the antics of witches and other malefics, appeal is made to the Scriptures and to the teachings of the Church and especially to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Witches and sorcerers, whose father is the devil, are at last bound together in an organized body or sect. They meet at the weekly sabbats and do the devil homage by kissing his posterior parts. He appears among them as a tom-cat, goat, dog, bull or black man, as whim and convenience suggest. Demons of both sexes swarm at the meetings. Baptism and the eucharist are subjected to ridicule, the cross trampled upon. After an abundant repast the lights are extinguished and, at the devil’s command "Mix, mix," there follow scenes of unutterable lewdness. The devil, however, is a strict disciplinarian and applies the whip to refractory members.

The human members of the fraternity are instructed in all sorts of fell arts. They are transported through the air. They kill unbaptized children, keeping them in this way out of heaven. At the sabbats such children are eaten. Of the carnal intercourse, implied in the words succubus and incubus, the authors say, there can be no doubt. To quote them, "it is common to all sorcerers and witches to practise carnal lust with demons."931  To this particular subject are devoted two full chapters, and it is taken up again and again.

In evidence of the reality of their charges, the authors draw upon their own extensive experience and declare that, in 48 cases of witches brought before them and burnt, all the victims confessed to having practised such abominable whoredoms for from 10 to 30 years.

Among the precautions which the book prescribed against being bewitched, are the Lord’s Prayer, the cross, holy water and salt and the Church formulas of exorcism. It also adds that inner grace is a preservative.932

The directions for the prosecution of witches, given in the third part of the treatise, are set forth with great explicitness. Public rumor was a sufficient cause for an indictment. The accused were to be subjected to the indignity of having the hair shaved off from their bodies, especially the more secret parts, lest perchance some imp or charm might be hidden there. Careful rules were given to the inquisitors for preserving themselves against being bewitched, and Institoris and Sprenger took occasion to congratulate themselves that, in their long experience, they had been able to avoid this calamity. In case the defender of a witch seemed to show an excess of zeal, this was to be treated as presumptive evidence that he was himself under the same influence. One of the devices for exposing guilt was a sheet of paper of the length of Christ’s body, inscribed with the seven words of the cross. This was to be bound on the witch’s body at the time of the mass, and then the ordeal of torture was applied. This measure almost invariably brought forth a confession of guilt. The ordeal of the red-hot iron was also recommended, but it was to be used with caution, as it was the trick of demons to cover the hands of witches with a salve made from a vegetable essence which kept them from being burnt. Such a case happened in Constance, the woman being able to carry the glowing iron six paces and thus going free.

Of all parts of this manual, none is quite so infamous as the author’s vile estimate of woman. If there is any one who still imagines that celibacy is a sure highway to purity of thought, let him read the testimonies about woman and marriage given by mediaeval writers, priests and monks, themselves celibate and presumably chaste. Their impurities of expression suggest a foul atmosphere of thought and conversation. The very title of the Malleus maleficarum—the Hammer of the Female Malefics—is in the feminine because, as the authors inform their readers, the overwhelming majority of those who were behagged and had intercourse with demons were women.933  In flat contrast to our modern experience of the religious fidelity of women, the authors of this book derive the word femina — woman—from fe and minus, that is, fides minus, less in faith. Weeping and spinning and deceiving they represent as the very essence of her nature. She deceives, because she was formed from Adam’s rib and that was crooked.

A long chapter, I. 6, is devoted to showing woman’s inferiority to man and the subject of her alliance with demons is dwelt upon, apparently with delight. The cohabitation with fiends was in earlier ages, the authors affirm, against the will of women, but in their own age it was with their full consent and by their ardent desire. They thank God for being men. Few of their sex, they say, consent to such obscene relations,—one man to ten women. This refusal was due to the male’s natural vigor of mind, vigor rationis. To show the depravity of woman and her fell agency in history, Institoris and Sprenger quote all the bad things they can heap up from authors, biblical and classic, patristic and scholastic, Cato, Terence, Seneca, Cicero, Jerome. Jesus Sirach’s words are frequently quoted, "Woman is more bitter than death." Helen, Jezebel and Cleopatra are held forth as examples of pernicious agency which wrought the destruction of kingdoms, such catastrophes being almost invariably due to woman’s machinations.

It was the common representation of the writers of the outgoing century of the Mediaeval Age that God permits the intervention of Satan’s malefic agency through the marriage bed more than through any other medium, and for the reason that the first sin was carried down through the marital act. On this point, Thomas Aquinas is quoted by one author after the other.934  Preachers, as well as writers on witchcraft, took this disparaging view of woman. Geiler of Strassburg gave as the reason for ten women being burnt to one man on the charge of witchcraft, woman’s loquacity and frivolity. He quoted Ambrose that woman is the door to the devil and the way of iniquity—janua diaboli et via iniquitatis. Another noted preacher of the 15th century, John Nider, gave ten cases in which the cohabitation of man and woman is a mortal sin and, in a Latin treatise on moral leprosy, included the marriage state.935  A century earlier, in his De planctu ecclesiae, written from Avignon, Bishop Alvarez of Pelayo enumerated 102 faults common to women, one of these their cohabitation with the denizens of hell. From his own experience, the prelate states, he knew this to be true. It was practised, he says, in a convent of nuns and vain was his effort to put a stop to it.

Experts gave it as their opinion that "the new sect of witches" had its beginning about the year 1300.936  But the writers of the 15th and 16th centuries were careful to prove that their two characteristic performances, the flight through the air and demonic intercourse, were not illusions of the imagination, but palpable realities.937  To the testimonies of the witches themselves were added the ocular observations of church officials.938  Other devilish performances dwelt upon, were the murder of children before baptism, the eating of their flesh after it had been consecrated to the devil and the trampling upon the host.939  One woman, in 1457, confessed she had been guilty of the last practice 30 years.

The more popular places of the weekly sabbats were the Brocken, Benevento, Como and the regions beyond the Jordan. Here the witches and demons congregated by the thousands and committed their excesses. The witches went from congregation to congregation as they pleased940 and, according to Prierias, children as young as eight and ten joined in the orgies.

Sometimes it went hard with the innocent, though prurient, onlookers of these scenes, as was the case with the inquisitor of Como, Bartholomew of Homate, and some of his companions. Determined to see for themselves, they looked on at a sabbat in Mendrisio from a place of concealment. As if unaware of their presence, the presiding devil dismissed the assembly, but immediately calling the revellers back, had them drag the intruders forth and the demons belabored them so lustily that they survived only 15 days.941  The forms the devil usually assumed were those of a large tom-cat or a goat. If the meeting was in a building, he was wont to descend by a ladder, tail foremost. The witches kissed his posterior parts and, after indulging in a feast, the lights were put out and wild revels followed. As early as 1460, pictures were printed representing women riding through the air, straddling stocks and broomsticks, on goats or carried by demons. In Normandy, the obsessed were called broom-riders—scobaces.942  Taught by demons, they made a salve of the ashes of a toad fed on the wafer, the blood of murdered children and other ingredients, which they applied to their riding sticks to facilitate their flights. According to the physician, John Hartlieb, who calls this salve the "unguent of Pharelis"—Herodias—it was made from seven different herbs, each gathered on a different day of the week and mixed with the fat of birds and animals.943

The popularity of the witch-delusion as a subject of literary treatment is shown by the extracts Hansen gives from 70 writings, without exhausting the list.944  Most of the writers were Dominicans. The Witches Hammer was printed in many editions, issued 13 times before 1520 and, from 1574–1669, 16 times. The most famous of these writers in the earlier half of the 15th century was John Nider, d. 1438, in his Formicarius or Ant-Industry. He was a member of the Dominican order, professor of theology in Vienna and attended the Council of Basel. Writers like Jacquier were not satisfied with sending forth a single treatise.945  Writers like Sylvester Prierias, d. 1523, known in the history of Luther, and Bartholomew Spina, d. 1546, occupied important positions at the papal court.946  These two men expounded Innocent VIII.’s bull, and quote the Witches Hammer. Geiler of Strassburg repeated from the pulpit the vilest charges against witches. Pico della Mirandola, the biographer of Savonarola, filled a book with material of the same sort, and declared that one might as well call in question the discovery of America as the existence of witches.947

The prosecution of witches assumed large proportions first in Switzerland and Northern Italy and then in France and Germany. In Rome, the first reported burning was in 1424.948  In the diocese of Como, Northern Italy, 41 were burnt the year after the promulgation of Innocent VIII.’s bull. Between 1500–1525 the yearly number of women tried in that district was 1000 and the executions averaged 100. In 1521, Prierias declared that the Apennine regions were so full of witches that they were expected soon to outnumber the faithful.

In France, one of the chief victims, the Carmelite William Adeline, was professor in Paris and had taken part in the Council of Basel. Arraigned by the Inquisition, 1453, he confessed to being a Vaudois, and having habitually attended their synagogues and done homage to the devil. In spite of his abjurations, he was kept in prison till he died.949  In Briançon, 1428–1447, 110 women and 57 men were executed for witchcraft in the flames or by drowning.

In Germany, Heidelberg, Pforzheim, Nürnberg, Würzburg, Bamberg, Vienna, Cologne, Metz and other cities were centres of the craze and witnessed many executions. It was during the five years preceding 1486 that Heinrich Institoris and Sprenger sent 48 to the stake. The Heidelberg court-preacher, Matthias Widman, of Kemnat, pronounced the "Cathari or heretical witches" the most damnable of the sects, one which should be subjected to "abundance of fire and without mercy." He reports that witches rode on broomsticks, spoons, cats, goats and other objects, and that he had seen many of them burnt in Heidelberg. In 1540, six years before Luther’s death, four witches and sorcerers were burnt in Protestant Wittenberg. And in 1545, 34 women were burnt or quartered in Geneva. In England the law for the burning of heretics, 1401, was applied to these unfortunate people, not a few of whom were committed to the flames. But the persecution in the mediaeval period never took on the proportions on English soil it reached on the Continent; and there, it was not the Church but the state that dealt with the crime of sorcery.

According to the estimate of Louis of Paramo, himself a distinguished inquisitor of Sicily who had condemned many to the flames, there had been during the 150 years before 1597, the date of his treatise on the Origin and Progress of the Inquisition, 30,000 executions for witchcraft.950

The judgments passed upon witches were whipping, banishment and death by fire, or, as in Cologne, Strassburg and other places, by drowning. The most common forms of torture were the thumb-screw and the strappado. In the latter the prisoner’s hands were bound behind his back with a rope which was drawn through a pulley in the ceiling. The body was slowly lifted up, and at times left hanging or allowed to suddenly drop to the floor. In our modern sense, there was no protection of law for the accused. The suspicion of an ecclesiastical or civil court was sufficient to create an almost insurmountable presumption of guilt. Made frantic by the torture, the victims were willing to confess to anything, however untrue and repulsive it might be. Death at times must have seemed, even with the Church’s ban, preferable to protracted agonies, for the pains of death at best lasted a few hours and might be reduced to a few minutes. As Lecky has said, these unfortunate people did not have before them the prospect of a martyr’s crown and the glory of the heavenly estate. They were not buoyed up by the sympathies and prayers of the Church. Unpitied and unprayed for, they yielded to the cold scrutiny of the inquisitor and were consumed in the flames.

Persons who took the part of the supposed witch, or ventured to lift up their voices against the trials for witchcraft, did so at the risk of their lives. In 1598, the Dutch priest, Cornelius Loos Callidus, was imprisoned at Treves for declaring that women, making confession under torture to witch devices, confessed to what was not true. And four years before, 1589, Dr. Dietrich Flade, a councillor of Treves, was burnt for attacking the prosecution of witchcraft.951

The belief in demonology and all manner of malefic arts was a legacy handed down to the Church from the old Roman world and, where the influence of the Northern mythologies was felt, the belief took still deeper roots. But it cannot be denied that cases and passages taken from the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, were adduced to justify the wild dread of malign spirits in the Middle Ages. Saul’s experience with the witch of Endor, the plagues brought by the devil upon Job, the representations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, incidents from the Apocrypha and the cases of demonic agency in the New Testament were dwelt upon and applied with literal and relentless rigor.

It is a long chapter which begins with the lonely contests the old hermits had with demons, recounts the personal encounters of mediaeval monks in chapel and cell and relates the horrors of the inquisitorial process for heresy. Our more rational processes of thought and our better understanding of the Christian law of love happily have brought this chapter to a close in enlightened countries. The treatment here given has been in order to show how greatly a Christian society may err, and to confirm in this generation the feeling of gratitude for the better sentiments which now prevail. It is perhaps also clue to those who suffered, that a general description of the injustice done them should be given. The chapter may not unfitly be brought to a close by allowing one of the victims to speak again from his prison-cell, the burgomaster of Bamberg, though he suffered a century after the Middle Ages had closed, 1628. After being confronted by false witnesses he confessed, under torture, to having indulged in the practices ascribed to the bewitched and he thus wrote to his daughter: —

Many hundred good nights, dearly beloved daughter, Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into a witch-prison must become a witch or be tortured till he invents something out of his head and—God pity him—bethinks himself of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me .... Then came the executioner and put the thumbscrews on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from the writing .... Then they stripped me, bound my hands behind my back and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were at an end. Eight times did they do this and let me drop again so that I suffered terrible agony .... [Here follows a rehearsal of the confessions he was induced to make.] ... Now, dear child, you have all my confessions for which I must die. They are sheer lies made up. All this I was forced to say through fear of the rack, for they never leave off the torture till one confesses something .... Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people may not find it or else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers be beheaded .... I have taken several days to write this for my hands are both lame. Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more.952

Innocent VIII’s Bull, Summit desiderantes. December 5, 1484: In Part:953

Innocentius episcopus, servus servorum dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam. Summis desiderantes affectibus, prout pastoralis sollicitudinis cura requirit, ut fides catholica nostris potissime temporibus ubique augeatur et floreat ac omnis haeretica pravitas de finibus fidelium procul pellatur, es libenter declaramus ac etiam de novo concedimus per quae hujusmodi pium desiderium nostrum votivum sortiatur effectum; cunctisque propterea, per nostrae operationis ministerium, quasi per providi operationis saeculum erroribus exstirpatis, eiusdem fidei zelus et observantia in ipsorum corda fidelium fortium imprimatur.

Sane nuper ad nostrum non sine ingenti molestia pervenit auditum, quod in nonnullis partibus Alemaniae superioris, necnon in Maguntinensi, Coloniensi, Treverensi, Saltzumburgensi, et Bremensi, provinciis, civitatibus, terris, locis et dioecesibus complures utriusque sexus personae, propriae salutis immemores et a fide catholica deviantes, cum daemonibus, incubis et succubis abuti, ac suis incantationibus, carminibus et coniurationibus aliisque nefandis superstitiosis, et sortilegis excessibus, criminibus et delictis, mulierum partus, animalium foestus, terra fruges, vinearum uvas, et arborum fructus; necnon homines, mulieres, pecora, pecudes et alia diversorum generam animalia; vineas quoque, pomeria, prata, pascua, blada, frumenta et alia terra legumina perirs, suffocari et extingui facere et procurare; ipsosque homines, mulieres, iumenta, pecora, pecudes et animalia diris tam intrinsecis quam extrinsecis doloribus et tormentis afficere et excruciare; ac eosdem homines ne gignere, et mulieres ne concipere, virosque, ne uxoribus, et mulieres, ne viris actus coniugales reddere valeant, impedire; fidem praeterea ipsam, quam in sacri susceptione baptismi susceperunt, ore sacrilego abnegare, aliaque quam plurima nefanda, excussus et crimina, instigante humani generis inimico, committere et perpetrare non verentur in animarum suarum periculum, divines maiestatis offensam ac perniciosum exemplum ac scandulum plurimorum. Quodque licet dilecti filii Henrici Institoris in praedictis partibus Alemaniae superioris ... necnon Iacobus Sprenger per certas partes lineae Rheni, ordinis Praedicatorum et theologiae professores, haeretics pravitatis inquisitores per literas apostolicas deputati fuerunt, prout adhuc existunt; tamen nonnulli clerici et laici illarum partium, quaerentes plura sapere quam oporteat, pro eo quod in literis deputationis huiusmodi provinciae, civitates dioeceses terrae et alia loca praedicta illarumque personae ac excessus huiusmodi nominatim et specifice expressa non fuerunt, illa sub eisdem partibus minime contineri, et propterea praefatis inquisitoribus in provinciis, civitatibus, dioecesibus, terris et locis praedictis huiusmodi inquisitionis officium exequi non licere; et ad personarum earundem super excessibus et criminibus antedictis punitionem, incarcerationem et correctionem admitti non debere, pertinaciter asserere non erubescunt ... Huiusmodi inquisitions officium exequi ipsasque personas, quas in praemissis culpabiles reperierint, iuxta earum demerita corrigere, incarcerare, punire et mulctare .... Quotiens opus fuerant, aggravare et reaggravare auctoritate nostra procuret, invocato ad hoc, si opus fuerit, auxilio brachii saecularis.

§ 60. The Spanish Inquisition.

Torquemada’s name, with clouds o’ercast,

Looms in the distant landscape of the past

Like a burnt tower upon a blackened heath,

Lit by the fires of burning woods beneath.

Longfellow.

The Inquisition of Spain is one of the bywords of history. The horrors it perpetrated have cast a dark shadow over the pages of Spanish annals. Organized to rid the Spanish kingdoms of the infection of heresy, it extended its methods to the Spanish dependencies in Europe, Sicily and Holland and to the Spanish colonies of the new world. After the marriage of Philip II. with Mary Tudor it secured a temporary recognition in England. In its bloody sacrifices, Jews, Moors, Protestants and the practitioners of the dark arts were included. No country in the world was more concerned to maintain the Catholic faith pure than was Spain from the 15th to the 18th century, and to no Church organization was a more unrestricted authority given than to the Spanish Inquisition. Agreeing with the papal Inquisition established by Innocent III. in its ultimate aim, the eradication of heresy, it differed from that earlier institution by being under the direction of a tribunal appointed by the Spanish sovereign, immediately amenable to him and acting independently of the bishops. The papal Inquisition was controlled by the Apostolic see, which appointed agents to carry its rules into effect and whose agency was to a certain extent subject to the assent of the bishops.

Engaged in the wars for the dispossession of the Pagan Moors, the Spanish kingdoms had shown little disposition to yield to the intrusion of Catharan and other heresy from the North. The menace to its orthodox repose came from the Jews, Jews who held firmly to their ancestral faith and Jews who had of their own impulse or through compulsion adopted the Christian rites. In no part of Europe was the number of Jews so large and nowhere had they been more prosperous in trade and reached such positions of eminence as physicians and as counsellors at court. The Jewish literature of mediaeval Spain forms a distinct and notable chapter in Hebrew literary history. To rid the land of the Jews who persisted in their ancestral belief was not within the jurisdiction of the Church. That belonged to the state, and, according to the canon law, the Jew was not to be molested in the practice of his religion. But the moment Jews or Moors submitted to baptism they became amenable to ecclesiastical discipline. Converted Jews in Spain were called conversos, or maranos — the newly converted—and it was with them, in its first period, that the Spanish Inquisition had chiefly to do. After Luther’s doctrines began to spread it addressed itself to the extirpation of Protestants, but, until the close of its history, in 1834, the Jewish Christians constituted most of its victims.

From an early time Spanish legislation was directed to the humiliation of the Jews and their segregation from the Christian population. The oecumenical Council of Vienne, 1312, denounced the liberality of the Spanish law which made a Jewish witness necessary to the conviction of a Jew. Spanish synods, as those of Valladolid and Tarragona, 1322, 1329, gave strong expression to the spirit of intolerance with which the Spanish church regarded the Jewish people. The sacking and wholesale massacre of their communities, which lived apart in quarters of their own called Juderias, were matters of frequent occurrence, and their synagogues were often destroyed or turned into churches. It is estimated that in 1391, 50,000 Jews were murdered in Castile, and the mania spread to Aragon.954

The explanation of this bitter feeling is to be sought in the haughty pride of the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh, their persistent observance of their traditions and the exorbitant rates of usury which they charged. Not content with the legal rate, which in Aragon was 20% and in Castile 331/3% they often compelled municipalities to pay even higher rates. The prejudice and fears of the Christian population charged them with sacrilege in the use of the wafer and the murder of baptized children, whose blood was used in preparations made for purposes of sorcery. Legislation was made more exacting. The old rules were enforced enjoining a distinctive dress and forbidding them to shave their beards or to have their hair cut round. All employment in Christian households, the practice of medicine and the occupation of agriculture were denied them. Scarcely any trade was left to their hand except the loaning of money, and that by canon law was illegal for Christians.

The joint reign of Ferdinand, 1452–1516, and Isabella, 1451–1504, marked an epoch in the history of the Jews in Spain, both those who remained true to their ancestral faith and the large class which professed conversion to the Christian Church.955

In conferring the title "Catholic" upon Ferdinand and Isabella, 1495, Alexander VI. gave as one of the reasons the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 1492. The institution of the Spanish Inquisition, which began its work twelve years before, was directed primarily against the conversos, people of Jewish blood and members of the Church who in heart and secret usage remained Jews.

The papal Inquisition was never organized in Castile, and in Aragon it had a feeble existence. With the council of Tortosa, 1429, complaints began to be made that the conversos neglected to have their children baptized, and by attending the synagogues and observing the Jewish feasts were putting contempt upon their Christian faith. That such hypocrisy was practised cannot be doubted in view of the action of the Council of Basel which put its brand upon it. In 1451 Juan II. applied to the papal court to appoint a commission to investigate the situation. At the same time the popular feeling was intensified by the frantic appeals of clerics such as Friar Alfonso de Espina who in his Fortalicium fidei — the Fortification of the Faith—brought together a number of alleged cases of children murdered by Jews and argued for the Church’s right to baptize Jewish children in the absence of the parents’ consent.956  The story ran that before Isabella’s accession her confessor Torquemada, that hammer of heretics, secured from her a vow to leave no measure untried for the extirpation of heresy from her realm. Sometime later, listening to this same ecclesiastic’s appeal, Ferdinand and his consort applied to the papal see for the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile.

Sixtus IV., who was then occupying the chair of St. Peter, did not hesitate in a matter so important, and on Nov. 1, 1478, issued the bull sanctioning the fell Spanish tribunal. It authorized the Spanish sovereigns to appoint three bishops or other ecclesiastics to proceed against heretics and at the same time empowered them to remove and replace these officials as they thought fit. After a delay of two years, the commission was constituted, 1480, and consisted of two Dominican theologians, Michael de Morillo and John of St. Martin, and a friar of St. Pablo, Seville. A public reception was given to the commission by the municipal council of Seville. The number of prisoners was soon too large for the capacity of St. Pablo, where the court first established itself, and it was removed to the chief stronghold of the city, the fortress of Triana, whose ample spaces and gloomy dungeons were well fitted for the dark work for which it had been chosen.

Once organized, the Inquisition began its work by issuing the so-called Edict of Grace957 which gave heretics a period of 30 or 40 days in which to announce themselves and, on making confession, assured them of pardon. Humane as this measure was, it was also used as a device for detecting other spiritual criminals, those confessing, called penitentes, being placed under a vow to reveal the names of heretics. The humiliations to which the penitents were subjected had exhibition at the first auto de fe held in Toledo, 1486, when 750 penitents of both sexes were obliged to march through the city carrying candles and bare-headed; and, on entering the cathedral, were informed that one-fifth of their property had been confiscated, and that they were thenceforth incapacitated to hold public office. The first auto de fe was held in Seville, Feb. 6, 1481, six months after the appointment of the tribunal, when six men and women were cremated alive. The ghastly spectacle was introduced with a sermon, preached by Friar Alfonso de Hojeda. A disastrous plague, which broke out in the city, did not interrupt the sittings of the tribunal, which established itself temporarily at Aracena, where the first holocaust included 23 men and women. According to a contemporary, by Nov. 4, 1491, 298 persons had been committed to the flames and 79 condemned to perpetual imprisonment.958  The tribunal established at Ciudad Real, 1483, burnt 52 heretics within two years, when it was removed, in 1485, to Toledo. In Avila, from 1490–1500, 75 were burnt alive, and 26 dead bodies exhumed and cast into the flames. In cases, the entire conversos population was banished, as in Guadalupe, by the order of the inquisitor-general, Deza, in 1500. From Castile, the Inquisition extended its operations to Aragon, where its three chief centres were Valencia, Barcelona and Saragossa, and then to the Balearic Islands, where it was especially active. The first burning in Saragossa took place, 1484, when two men were burnt alive and one woman in effigy, and at Barcelona in 1488, when four persons were consumed alive.

The interest of Sixtus IV. continued to follow the tribunal he had authorized and, in a letter addressed to Isabella, Feb. 13, 1483, he assured the queen that its work lay close to his heart. The same year, to render the tribunal more efficient, it was raised by Ferdinand to the dignity of the fifth council of the state with the title, Concejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion. Usually called the suprema, this body was to have charge of the Holy Office throughout the realm. The same end was promoted by the creation of the office of inquisitor-general, 1483, to which the power was consigned of removing and appointing inquisitorial functionaries. The first incumbent was Thomas de Torquemada, at that time prior of Santa Cruz in Segovia. This fanatical ecclesiastic, whose name is a synonym of uncompromising religious intolerance and heartless cruelty, had already been appointed, in 1482, an inquisitor by the pope. He brought to his duties a rare energy and formulated the rules characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition.

With Torquemada at its head, the Holy Office became, next to royalty itself, the strongest power in Spain. Its decisions fell like the blow of a great iron hammer, and there was no power beneath the sovereign that dared to offer them resistance. In 1507, at the death of Deza, third inquisitor-general, Castile and Aragon were placed under distinct tribunals. Cardinal Ximenes, 1436–1517, a member of the Franciscan order and one of the foremost figures in Spanish church history, was elevated to the office of supreme inquisitor of Castile. His distinction as archbishop of Toledo pales before his fame as a scholar and patron of letters. He likewise was unyielding in the prosecution of the work of ridding his country of the taint of heresy, but he never gave way to the temptation of using his office for his own advantage and enriching himself from the sequestrated property of the conversos, as Torquemada was charged with doing.

Under Adrian of Utrecht, at first inquisitor-general of Aragon, the tribunals of the two kingdoms were again united in 1518, and, by the addition of Navarre, which Ferdinand had conquered, the whole Iberian peninsula, with the exception of Portugal, came under the jurisdiction of a single supreme official. Adrian had acted as tutor to Charles V., and was to succeed Leo X. on the papal throne. From his administration, the succession of inquisitors-general continued unbroken till 1835, when the last occupant of the office died, Geronimo Castellan y Salas, bishop of Tarazona.959

The interesting question has been warmly discussed, whether the Inquisition of Spain was a papal institution or an institution of the state, and the attempt has been made to lift the responsibility for its organization and administration from the supreme pontiff. The answer is, that it was predominantly an ecclesiastical institution, created by the authority of Sixtus IV. and continuously supported by pontifical sanction. On the other hand, its establishment was sought after by Ferdinand and Isabella, and its operations, after the papal authorization had been secured, was under the control of the Spanish sovereign. So far as we know, the popes never uttered a word in protest against the inhuman measures which were practised by the Spanish tribunals. Their only dissent arose from the persistence with which Ferdinand kept the administrative agency in his own hands and refused to allow any interference with his disposition of the sequestrated estates.960  The hearty approbation of the Apostolic see is vouched for in many documents, and the responsibility for the Spanish tribunal was distinctly assumed by Sixtus V., Jan. 22, 1588, as an institution established by its authority. Sixtus IV. and his successors sought again and again to get its full management into their own hands, but were foiled by the firmness of Ferdinand. When, for example, in a bull dated April 18, 1482, the pope ordered the names of the witnesses and accusers to be communicated to the suspects, that the imprisonments should be in episcopal gaols, that appeal might be taken to the Apostolic chair and that confessions to the bishop should stop all prosecution, Ferdinand sharply resented the interference and hinted that the suggestion had started with the use of conversos gold in the curia. This papal action was only a stage in the battle for the control of the Holy Office.961  Ferdinand was ready to proceed to the point of rupture with Rome rather than allow the principle of appeals which would have reduced the power of the suprema to impotence. Sixtus wrote a compromising reply, and a year later, October, 1483, Ferdinand got all he asked for, and the appointment of Torquemada was confirmed.

The royal management of the Inquisition was also in danger of being fatally hampered by letters of absolution, issued according to custom by the papal penitentiary, which were valid not only in the court of conscience but in stopping public trials. Ferdinand entered a vigorous protest against their use in Spain, when Sixtus, 1484, confirmed the penitentiary’s right; but here also Sixtus was obliged to retreat, at least in part, and Alexander VI. and later Clement VII., 1524, made such letters invalid when they conflicted with the jurisdiction of the Spanish tribunal. Spain was bent on doing things in its own way and won practical independence of the curia.962

The principle, whereby in the old Inquisition the bishops were co-ordinate in authority with the inquisitors or superior to them, had to be abandoned in Spain in spite of the pope’s repeated attempts to apply it. Innocent VIII., 1487, completely subjected the bishops to the inquisitorial organization, and when Alexander, 1494, annulled this bull and required the inquisitors to act in conjunction with the bishop, Ferdinand would not brook the change and, under his protection, the suprema and its agents asserted their independence to Ferdinand.

Likewise, in the matter of confiscations of property, the sovereign claimed the right to dictate their distribution, now applying them for the payment of salaries to the inquisitors and their agents, now appropriating them for the national exchequer, now for his own use or for gifts to his favorites.

No concern of his reign, except the extension of his dominions, received from Ferdinand more constant and sympathetic attention than the deletion of heresy. With keen delight he witnessed the public burnings as adapted to advance the Catholic faith. He scrutinized the reports sent him by inquisitors and, at times, he expressed his satisfaction with their services by gifts of money. In his will, dated the day before his death, he enjoined his heir, Charles V., to be strenuous in supporting the tribunal. As all other virtues, so this testament ran, "are nothing without faith by which and in which we are saved, we command the illustrious prince, our grandson, to labor with all his strength to destroy and extirpate heresy from our kingdoms and lordships, appointing ministers, God-fearing and of good conscience, who will conduct the Inquisition justly and properly for the service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and who will also have a great zeal for the destruction of the sect of Mohammed."963  Without doubt, the primary motive in the establishment of the tribunal was with Ferdinand, and certainly with Isabella, religious.

There seems at no time to have been any widespread revolt against the procedure of the Inquisition. In Aragon, some mitigation of its rigors and rules was proposed by the Cortes of Barcelona, 1512, such as the withdrawal from the inquisitors of the right to carry weapons and the exemption of women from the seizure of their property, in cases where a husband or father was declared a heretic, but Ferdinand and Bishop Enguera, the Aragonese inquisitor-general, were dispensed by Leo X., 1514, from keeping the oath they had taken to observe the rules. At Charles V.’s accession, an effort was made to have some of the more offensive evils abolished, such as the keeping of the names of witnesses secret, and in 1520 the Cortes of Valladolid and Corunna made open appeal for the amendment of some of the rules. Four hundred thousand ducats were offered, presumably by conversos, to the young king if he would give his assent, and, as late as 1528, the kingdom of Granada, in the same interest, offered him 50,000 ducats. But the appeals received no favorable action and, under the influence of Ximines, in 1517, the council of Castile represented to Charles that the very peace of Spain depended upon the maintenance of the Inquisition. The cardinal wrote a personal letter to the king, declaring that interference on his part would cover his name with infamy.964

The most serious attempt to check the workings of the Inquisition occurred in Saragossa and resulted in the assassination of the chief inquisitor, Peter Arbues, an act of despair laid at the door of the conversos. Arbues was murdered in the cathedral Jan. 25, 1485, the fatal blow being struck from behind, while the priest was on his knees engaged in prayer. He knew his life was threatened and not only wore a coat of mail and cap of steel, but carried a lance. He lingered twenty-four hours. Miracles wrought at the coffin vouched for the sanctity of the murdered ecclesiastic. The sacred bell of Villela tolled unmoved by hands. Arbues’ blood liquefied on the cathedral floor two weeks after the deed. Within two years, the popular veneration showed itself in the erection of a splendid tomb to the martyr’s memory and the Catholic Church, by the bull of Pius IX., June 29, 1867, has given him the honors of canonization. As the assassination of the papal delegate, Peter of Castelnau, at the opening of the crusade against the Albigenses, 1208, wrought to strengthen Innocent in his purpose to wipe out heresy, even with the sword, likewise the taking off of Arbues only tightened the grip of the Spanish Inquisition in Aragon. His murderers and all in any way accessory to the crime were hunted down, their hands were cut off at the portal of the cathedral and their bodies dragged to the market-place, where they were beheaded and quartered or burnt alive.965

Next to the judicial murders perpetrated by the Inquisition, its chief evil was the confiscation of estates. The property of the conversos offered a tempting prize to the cupidity of the inquisitors and to the crown. The tribunal was expected to live from the spoils of the heretics. Torquemada’s Instructions of 1484 contained specific rules governing the disposition of goods held by heretics. There was no limit put upon their despoilment, except that lands transferred before 1479 were exempted from seizure, a precaution to avoid the disturbance of titles. The property of dead heretics, though they had lain in their graves fifty years, was within the power of the tribunal. The dowries of wives were mercifully exempted whose husbands were adjudged heretical, but wives whose fathers were found to be heretics lost their dowries. The claims of the children of heretic fathers might have been expected to call for merciful consideration, but the righteousness of their dispossession had no more vigorous advocates than the clergy. To such property, as the bishop of Simancas argued, the old Christian population had a valid moral claim. The Instructions of 1484 direct that, if the children were under age at the time of the confiscation, they were to be distributed among pious families, and announced it as the king’s intention, in case they grew up good Christians, so to endow them with alms, especially the girls, that they might marry or enter religion.966

The practice of confiscation extended to the bedding and wearing apparel of the victims. One gracious provision was that the slaves of condemned heretics should receive freedom. Lands were sold at auction 30 days after their sequestration, but the low price which they often brought indicates that purchasers enjoyed special privileges of acquisition. Ferdinand and his successor, Charles, were profuse in their disposition of such property. Had the moneys been used for the wars against the Moors, as at first proposed by Torquemada, the plea might be made that the tribunal was moved by unselfish considerations, but they were not. Not only did Ferdinand take money for his bankrupt treasury, but he appropriated hunting horses, pearls and other objects for his own use. The Flemish favorites of Charles V., in less than ten months, sent home 1,100,000 ducats largely made up of bequests derived from the exactions of the sacred court.967  Dr. Lea, whose merit it is to have shown the vast extent to which the sequestration of estates was carried, describes the money transactions of the Inquisition as "a carnival of plunder." It was even found to be not incompatible with a purpose to maintain the purity of the faith to enter into arrangements whereby, for a sufficient consideration, communities received protection from inquisitorial charges. The first such bargain was made at Valencia, 1482. The king, however, did not hesitate on occasion to violate his pact and allow unfortunate conversos, who had paid for exemption, to be arraigned and condemned. No law existed requiring faith to be kept with a heretic. It also happened that condemned conversos purchased freedom from serving in the galleys or wearing the badge of heresy, the sanbenito.968

As early as 1485, Ferdinand and Isabella were able to erect a royal palace at Guadalupe, costing 2,732,333 maravedis, with the proceeds of sequestrated property and, in a memorial address to Charles V., 1524, Tristan de Leon asserted that these sovereigns had received from the possessions of heretics no less than 10,000,000 ducats. Torquemada also was able to spend vast sums upon his enterprises, such as the conventual building of St. Thomas at Avila, which it was supposed were drawn from the victims whom his religious fervor condemned to the loss of their goods and often of their lives.969  When the heretical mine was showing signs of exhaustion in Spain, the Spanish colonies of Mexico and Peru poured in their spoils to enable the Holy Office to maintain the state to which it had been accustomed. At an early period, it began to take care for its own perpetuation by making investments on a large scale.970

After Ferdinand’s death, the suprema’s power increased, and it demanded a respect only less than that which was yielded to the crown. Its arrogance and insolence in administration kept pace with the high pretension it made to sacredness of aim and divine authority. The institution was known as the Holy Office, the building it occupied was the holy house, casa santa, and the public solemnity at which the tribunal appeared officially before the public and announced its decisions was called the act of faith, auto de fe.

The suprema acted upon the principle started by Paramo, that the inquisitor was the chief personage in his district. He represented both the pope and king.971  On the one hand, he claimed the right to arrest at will and without restriction from the civil authority; on the other, he demanded freedom for his officials from all arrest and violence.

In trading and making exports, the Holy Office claimed exemption from the usual duties levied upon the people at large. Immunity from military service and the right to carry deadly weapons by day and night were among other privileges to which it laid claim. A deliverance of the Apostolic see, 1515, confirmed it in its right to arrest the highest noble in the land who dared to attack its prerogatives or agents and, in case of need, to protect itself by resort to bloodshed. Its jurisdiction extended not only to the lower orders of the clergy, but also to members of the orders, a claim which, after a long struggle, was confirmed by the edicts of Pius IV. and V., 1559, 1561. A single class was exempted from the rules of its procedure, the bishops. However, the exemption was rather apparent than real, for the Holy Office exercised the right of arraigning bishops under suspicion before the papal chair. The first cases of this kind were prelates of Jewish extraction, Davila of Segovia, 1490, and Aranda of Calahorra, 1498. Both were tried in Rome, the former being exonerated, and Aranda kept in prison in S. Angelo, where he is supposed to have died, 1500. The most famous of the episcopal suspects, the archbishop of Toledo, Bartholomew of Carranza, 1503–1576, was kept in prison for 17 years, partly in Spain and partly in Rome. The case enjoyed a European reputation.

Carranza had the distinction of administering the last rites to Charles V. and was for a time a favorite of Philip II., but that sinister prince turned against him. Partly from jealousy of Carranza’s honors, as has been surmised, and chiefly on account of his indiscretions of speech, the inquisitor-general Valdes decided upon the archbishop’s prosecution, and when his Commentary on the Catechism appeared in Spanish, he was seized under authorization from the Apostolic see, 1559. For two years the prelate was kept in a secret prison and then brought to trial. After delay, Pius IV., 1564, appointed a distinguished commission to investigate the case and Pius V. forced his transfer in 1567 to Rome, where he was confined in S. Angelo for nine years. Under Pius V.’s successor, Gregory XIII., Carranza was compelled to abjure alleged errors, suspended from his seat for five years and remanded to confinement in a Roman convent, where he afterwards died. The boldness and vast power of the Inquisition could have no better proof than the indignity and punishment placed upon a primate of Spain,

The procedure of the Holy Office followed the rules drawn by Torquemada, 1484, 1485, called the Instructions of Seville, and the Instructions of Valladolid prepared by the same hand, 1488 and 1498. These early codes were afterwards known as the Instructiones antiguas, and remained in force until superseded by the code of 1561 prepared by the inquisitor-general, Valdes.

Torquemada lodged the control of the Inquisition in the suprema, to which all district tribunals were subordinated. Permanent tribunals were located at Seville, Toledo, Valladolid, Madrid (Corte), Granada, Cordova, Murcia Llerena, Cuenca, Santiago, Logroño and the Canaries under the crown of Castile and at Saragossa, Valencia, Barcelona and Majorca under the crown of Aragon.972

The officials included two inquisitors an assessor or consulter on modes of canonical procedure, an alguazil or executive officer, who executed the sentences of the tribunal, notaries who kept the records, and censors or califadores who pronounced elaborate opinions on points of dispute. To these was added an official who appraised and took charge of confiscated property. A large body of subordinates, such as the familiars or confidential agents, complete the list of officials. Laymen were eligible to the office of inquisitor, provided they were unmarried, and a condition made for holding any of these places was parity of blood, limpieza, freedom from all stain of Morisco, Jewish or heretic parentage and of ancestral illegitimacy. This peculiar provision led to endless investigation of genealogical records before appointments were made.973

Each tribunal had a house of its own, containing the audience chamber, rooms for the inquisitors, a library for the records, le secreto de la Inquisicion,—a chamber of torture and secret prisons. The familiars have a dark fame. They acted as a body of spies to detect and report cases of heresy. Their zeal made them the terror of the land, and the Cortes of Monzon, 1512, called for the reduction of their number.

In its procedure, the Inquisition went on the presumption that a person accused was guilty until he had made out his innocence. The grounds of arrest were rumor or personal denunciation. Informing on suspects was represented to the people as a meritorious act and inculcated even upon children as a duty. The instructions of 1484 prescribed a mitigated punishment for minors who informed on heretical fathers, and Bishop Simancas declared it to be the sacred obligation of a son to bring his father, if guilty, to justice.974  The spiritual offender was allowed an advocate. Secrecy was a prime feature in the procedure. After his arrest, the prisoner was placed in one of the secret prisons,—carceres secretas,—and rigidly deprived of all intercourse with friends. All papers bearing upon his case were kept from him. The names of his accusers and of witnesses for his prosecution were withheld. In the choice of its witnesses the Inquisition allowed itself great liberty, even accepting the testimony of persons under the Church’s sentence of excommunication, of Jews who remained in the Hebrew faith and of heretics. Witnesses for the accused were limited to persons zealous for the orthodox faith, and none of his relatives to the fourth generation were allowed to testify. Heresy was regarded as a desperate disorder and to be removed at all costs. On the other hand, the age of amenability was fixed at 12 for girls and 14 for boys. The age of fourscore gave no immunity from the grim rigors of the exacting tribunal.975

The charges, on which victims were arraigned, included the slightest deflection in word or act from strict Catholic usage, such as the refusal to eat pork on a single occasion, visiting a house where Moorish notions were taught, as well as saying that the Virgin herself and not her image effected cures, and that Jews and Moors would be saved if they sincerely, believed the Jewish and the Moorish doctrines to be true.976  Recourse was had to torture, not only to secure evidence of guilt. Even when the testimony of witnesses was sufficient to establish guilt, resort was had to torture to extract a confession from the accused that thereby his soul might be delivered from the burden of secret guilt, to extract information of accomplices, and that a wholesome influence might be exerted in deterring others from heresy by giving them an example of punishment. The modes of torture most in use were the water ordeal and the garruche. In the water-cure, the victim, tightly bound, was stretched upon a rack or bed, and with the body in an inclined position, the head downward. The jaws were distended, a linen cloth was thrust down the victim’s throat and water from a quart jar allowed to trickle through it into his inward parts.977  On occasion, seven or eight such jars were slowly emptied. The garrucha, otherwise known as the strappade, has already been described. In its application in Spain it was customary to attach weights to the feet and to suspend the body in such a manner that the toes alone touched the ground, and the Spanish rule required that the body be raised and lowered leisurely so as to increase the pain.

The final penalties for heresy included, in addition to the spiritual impositions of fasting and pilgrimage, confiscation of goods, imprisonment, public scourging, the galleys, exile and death. Confiscation and burning extended to the dead, against whom the charge of heresy could be made out. At Toledo, July 25, 1485, more than 400 dead were burnt in effigy. Frequently at the autos no living victims suffered. In cases of the dead their names were effaced from their tombstones, that "no memory of them should remain on the face of the earth except as recorded in our sentence." Their male descendants, including the grandchildren, were incapacitated from occupying benefices and public positions, from riding on horseback, carrying weapons and wearing silk or ornaments.

The penalty of scourging was executed in public on the bodies of the victims, bared to the waist, by the public executioner. Women of 86 to girls of 13 were subjected to such treatment. Galley labor as a mode of punishment was sanctioned by Alexander VI., 1503. The sentence of perpetual imprisonment was often relaxed, either from considerations of mercy or for financial reasons. Up to 1488, there had been 5000 condemnations to lasting imprisonment.978

The saco bendito, or sanbenito, another characteristic feature of the Spanish Inquisition, was a jacket of gray or yellow texture, furnished before and behind with a large cross as prescribed by Torquemada. This galling humiliation was aggravated by the rule that, after they were laid aside, the sanbenitos should be hung up in the churches, together with a record of the wearer’s name inscribed and his sentence. To avoid the shame of this public display, descendants often sought to change their names, a practice the law soon checked. The precedent for the sanbenito was found in the covering our first parents wore to hide their nakedness, or in the sackcloth worn in the early Church as a mark of penance.

The auto de fe, the final act in the procedure of the Inquisition, shows the relentlessness of this tribunal, and gave the spectators a foretaste of the solemnities of the day of judgment. There heretics, after being tried by the inquisitorial court, were exposed to public view,979 and received the first official notice of their sentence. The ceremonial took place on the public squares, where platforms and staging were erected at municipal expense, and such occasions were treated as public holidays. On the day appointed, the prisoners marched in procession, led by Dominicans and others bearing green and white crosses, and followed by the officials of the Holy Office. Arrived at the square, they were assigned seats on benches. A sermon was then preached and an oath taken from the people and also from the king, if present, to support the Inquisition. The sentences were then announced. Unrepentant heretics were turned over to the civil officers. Wearing benitos, inscribed with their name, they were conducted on asses to the brasero, or place of burning, which was usually outside the city limits, and consigned to the flames. The other heretics were then taken back to the prisons of the Inquisition. Inquisitorial agents were present at the burnings and made a record of them for the use of the religious tribunal. The solemnities of the auto de fe were usually begun at 6 in the morning and often lasted into the afternoon.

Theoretically, the tribunal did not pass the sentence of blood. The ancient custom of the Church and the canon law forbade such a decision. Its authority ceased with the abandonment—or, to use the technical expression, the relaxation—of the offender to the secular arm. By an old custom in passing sentence of incorrigible heresy, it even prayed the secular officer to avoid the spilling of blood and to exercise mercy. The prayer was an empty form. The state well understood its duty, and its failure to punish with death heretics convicted by the spiritual court was punishable with excommunication. It did not presume to review the case, to take new evidence or even to require a statement of the evidence on which the sentence of heresy was reached. The duty of the secular officer was ministerial, not judicial. The sentence of heresy was synonymous with burning at the stake. The Inquisition, however, did not stop with turning heretics over to the state, but, as even Vacandard admits, at times pronounced the sentence of burning.980

So honorable to the state and to religion were the autos de fe regarded that kings attended them and they were appointed to commemorate the marriage of princes or their recovery from sickness. Ferdinand was in the habit of attending them. On the visit of Charles V. to Valencia, 1528, public exhibition was given at which 13 were relaxed in person and 10 in effigy. Philip II.’s marriage, in 1560, to Isabella of Valois was celebrated by an auto in Toledo and, in 1564, when this sovereign was in Barcelona, a public exhibition was arranged in his honor, at which eight were sentenced to death. Such spectacles continued to be witnessed by royal personages till 1701, when Philip V. set an example of better things by refusing to be present at one.

The last case of an execution by the Spanish Inquisition was a schoolmaster, Cayetano Ripoll, July 26, 1826. His trial lasted nearly two years. He was accused of being a deist, and substituting in his school the words "Praise be to God" for "Ave Maria purissima." He died calmly on the gibbet after repeating the words, "I die reconciled to God and to man."981

Not satisfied with putting heretical men out of the world, the Inquisition also directed its attention to noxious writings.982  At Seville, in 1490, Torquemada burnt a large number of Hebrew copies of the Bible, and a little later, at Salamanca, he burnt 6000 copies. Ten years later, 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella promulgated a law forbidding books being printed, imported and sold which did not have the license of a bishop or certain specified royal judges. All Lutheran writings were ordered by Adrian, in 1521, delivered up to the Inquisition. Thenceforth the Spanish tribunal proved itself a vigorous guardian of the purity of the press. The first formal Index, compiled by the University of Louvain, 1546, was approved by the inquisitor-general Valdes and the suprema, and ordered printed with a supplement. This was the first Index Expurgatorius printed in Spain. All copies of the Scriptures in Spanish were seized and burnt, and the ferocious law of 1558 ordered booksellers keeping or selling prohibited books punished with confiscation of goods or death. Strict inquisitorial supervision was had over all libraries in Spain down into the 19th century. Of the effect of this censorship upon Spanish culture, Dr. Lea says: "The intellectual development which in the 16th century promised to render Spanish literature and learning the most illustrious in Europe was stunted and starved into atrophy, the arts and sciences were neglected, and the character which Spain acquired among the nations was tersely expressed in the current saying that Africa began at the Pyrenees."

The "ghastly total" of the victims consigned by the Spanish Inquisition to the flames or other punishments has been differently stated. Precise tables of statistics are of modern creation, but that it was large is beyond question. The historian, Llorente, gives the following figures: From 1480–1498, the date of Torquemada’s death, 8800 were burnt alive, 6500 in effigy and 90,004 subjected to other punishments. From 1499–1506, 1664 were burnt alive, 832 in effigy and 32,456 subjected to other punishments. From 1507–1517, during the term of Cardinal Ximines, 2536 were burnt alive, 1368 in effigy and 47,263 subjected to other penalties. This writer gives the grand totals up to 1524 as 14,344 burnt alive, 9372 in effigy and 195,937 condemned to other penalties or released as penitents. In 1524, an inscription was placed on the fortress of Triana Seville, running: "In the year 1481, under the pontificate of Sixtus IV. and the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition was begun here. Up to 1524, 20,000 heretics and more abjured their awful crime on this spot and nearly 1000 were burnt." From records still extant, the victims in Toledo before 1501 are found to have numbered 297 burnt alive and 600 in effigy, and 5400 condemned to other punishment or reconciled. The documents, however, are not preserved or, at any rate, not known from which a full estimate could be made. In any case the numbers included thousands of victims burnt alive and tens of thousands subjected to other punishments.983

The rise of the Spanish Inquisition was contemporary with Spain’s advance to a foremost place among the nations of Europe. After eight centuries, her territory was for the first time completely free from the government of the Mohammedan. The renown of her regiments was soon to be unequalled. Spanish ships opened the highways of the sea and returned from the New World freighted with its wealth. Spanish diplomacy was in the ascendant in Italy. But the decay of her vital forces her religious zeal did not check. Spain’s Catholic orthodoxy was assured, but Spain placed herself outside the current of modern culture and progress. By her policy of religious seclusion and pride, she crushed independence of thought and virility of moral purpose. One by one, she lost her territorial acquisitions, from the Netherlands and Sicily to Cuba and the Philippines in the far Pacific. Heresy she consumed inside of her own precincts, but the paralysis of stagnation settled down upon her national life and institutions, and peoples professing Protestantism, which she still calls heresy, long since have taken her crown in the world of commerce and culture, invention and nautical enterprise. The present map of the world has faint traces of that empire on which it was the boast of the Spaniard of the 16th century that the sun never set. This reduction of territory and resources calls forth no spirit of denunciation. Nay, it attracts a sympathetic consideration which hopes for the renewed greatness of the land of Ferdinand and Isabella, through the introduction of that intellectual and religious freedom which has stirred the energies of other European peoples and kept them in the path of progress and new achievement.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RENAISSANCE.

§ 61. Literature of the Renaissance.

For an extended list of literature, see Voigt: Wiederbelebung des elam. Alterthums, II. 517–529, bringing it down to 1881, and Pastor: Gesch. der Päpste, I., pp. xxxii-lxiii, III., pp. xlii-lxix. Also this vol., pp. 400 sqq. Geiger adds Lit. notices to his Renaissance und Humanismus, pp. 564 sqq. The edd. of most of the Humanists are given in the footnotes.—M. Whitcomb: A Lit. Source-Book of the Ital. Renaiss., Phila., 1898, pp. 118.

Genl. Works.—*G. Tiraboschi, a Jesuit and librarian of the duke of Modena, d. 1794: Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 18 vols., Modena, 1771–1782; 9 vols., Roma, 1782–1785; 16 vols., Milan, 1822–1826. Vol. V. of the Roman ed. treats of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio.—Heeren: Gesch. d. class. Lit., etc., 2 vols., Götting., 1797–1802.—Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo De’ Medici and Life and Pontificate of Leo X. — J. Ch. L. Sismondi, d. 1842: Hist. des Républiques Itat., Paris, 1807–1818, 5th ed., 10 vols., 1840–1844. Engl. trsl., Lond., 1832, and Hist. de la renaiss. de la liberté en Italie, 2 vols., 1832.—J. Michelet, d. 1874: Renaissance, the 7th vol. of his Hist. de France, Paris, 1867.—*J. Burckhardt, Prof. in Basel, d. 1897: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, Basel, 1860; 3rd ed. by L. Geiger, 1878. 9th ed., 1904. A series of philosophico-historical sketches on the six aspects of the Italian Renaissance, namely, the new conception of the state, the development of the individual, the revival of classic antiquity, the discovery of the world and of man, the new formation of society and the transformation of morals and religion. Engl. trsl. by Middlemore from the 3rd ed., 2 vols., Lond., 1878, 1 vol., 1890. Also his Cicerone; Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Itat., 4th ed. by Bode, Leipz., 1879; 9th ed., 2 vols., 1907.—*G. Voigt: Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus, 1859; 2 vols., 3rd ed., 1893.—T. D. Woolsey, Pres. of Yale Col., d. 1889: The Revival of Letters in the 14th and 15th Centuries. A series of valuable articles in the line of Voigt’s first ed., in the New Englander for 1864 and 1865.—M. Monnier: La Renaiss. de Dante à Luther, Paris, 1884. Crowned by the French Acad.—*P. Villari: Nic. Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, 3 vols., Flor., 1877–1882; Engl. trsl. by the author’s wife, 4 vol., Lond., 1878–1883. An introd. chap. on the Renaiss. New ed., 2 vols. 1891.—J. A. Symonds: Renaissance in Italy, Lond., 1877 sqq.; 2d, cheaper ed., 7 vols., 1888. Part I., The Age of the Despots; Part II., The Revival of Learning; Part III., The Fine Arts; Part IV., Ital. Literature, 2 vols.; Part V., The Cath. Reaction, 2 vols. The most complete Engl. work on the subject and based upon the original sources, but somewhat repetitious. Also his Life of Michelangelo, etc. See below.—G. Koerting: Gesch. der Lit. Italiens im Zeitalter der Renaiss., Leipz., Vol. I., 1878, Petrarca; Vol. II., 1880, Boccaccio; Vol. III., 1884, the forerunners and founders of the Renaissance.—*L. Geiger, Prof. in Berlin: Renaissance u. Humanismus in Ital. und Deutschland, Berlin, 1882, 2nd ed., 1899. Part of Oncken’s Allg. Gesch.—Mrs. Oliphant: The Makers of Florence, Lond., 1888. Sketches of Dante, Giotto, Savonarola, Michelangelo.—P. Schaff: The Renaissance, N. Y., 1891, pp. 182.—*Gregorovius: Hist. of the City of Rome, vols. vi-viii.—*Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, especially vols. I. 3–63; III. 3–172.—Creighton: Hist. of the Papacy.—P. and H. van Dyke: The Age of the Renascence, 1377–1527, N. Y., 1897.—K. Brandi: D. Renaiss. in Florenz u. Rom 2nd ed., Leipz., 1900.—W. S. Lilly: Renaiss. Types, Lond., 1901.—E. Steinmann: Rom u. d. Renaiss., von Nik. V.—Leo X., 2nd ed., Leipz., 1902. *John Owen: The Skeptics of the Ital. Renaiss., Lond., 1893.—J. Klaczko: Rome and the Renaiss., trsl. by Dennie, N. Y., 1903.—P. van Dyke: Aretino, Th. Cromwell and Maximilian I, N. Y., 1905.—L. Schmidt: D. Renaiss. in Briefen v. Dichtern, Künstlern, Staatsmännern u. Frauen.—J. S. Sandys — Hist. of Class. Scholarship, 3 vols.—A. Baudrillart: The Cath. Ch., the Renais. and Protestantism, Lond., 1908.—Imbart de la Tour: L’église cathol: la crise et la renaiss., Paris, 1909.

For § 63.—For Dante. Best Italian text of the Div. Commedia is by Witte. The ed. of Fraticelli, Flor., 1881, to used In this vol. See also Toynbee’s text, Lond., 1900. The latest and best Ital. commentaries by Scartazzini, Leipz., 3 vols., 1874–1894, 3rd, small ed., 1899, P. G. Campi, Turin, 1890 sqq., and W. W. Vernon, based on Benvenuto da Imola, 2 vols., Lond., 1897,—Engl. trsll. of Dante’s Div. Com.: In verse by Rev. H. F. Cary, 1805, etc., amended ed. by O. Kuhns, N. Y., 1897.—J. C. Wright, Lond., 1843, etc.; Longfellow, 3 vols., 1867, etc.; E. H. Plumptre, 2 vols., Lond., 1887 sqq.; T. W. Parsons, Bost, 1896.—H. K. Haselfoot, Lond., 1899.—M. R Vincent, N. Y., 1904.—In prose: J. A. Carlyle Lond., 1848, etc.; W. S. Dugdale, Purgatorio, Lond., 1883.—A. J. Butler, Lond., 1894.—G. C. Norton, Boston, 1892, new ed., 1901.—P. H. Wicksteed, Lond., 1901 sqq.—H. P. Tozer, Lond., 1904.—*G. A. Scartazzini, a native of the Grisons, Reformed minister: Prolegomeni della Div. Com., etc., Leipz., 1890. Engl. trsl. A Companion to Dante, by A. J. Butler, Lond., 1893; Dante Handbuch, etc., Engl. trsl. Hdbook. to Dante, etc., by T. Davidson, Bost., 1887.—E. A. Fay: Concordance to the Div. Com., Cambr., Mass., 1880.—P. Schaff: Dante and the Div. Com., in Literature and Poetry, 1890, pp. 279–429, with list of Dante lit, pp. 328–337.—Tozer: Engl. Concordance on Dante’s Div. Com., Oxf., 1907.—*E. Moore: Studies in Dante, 3 vols., Lond., 1896–1903.—Lives of Dante: Dante and his Early Biographers, being a résumé by E. Moore of five, Lond., 1880. A trsl. of Boccaccio’s and Bruni’s Lives, by Wicksteed, Hull, 1898.—F. X. Kraus, Berl., 1897.—P. Villari: The First Two Centt. of Florent. Hist. The Republic, and Parties at the Time of Dante. Engl. trsl. by L. Villari.—*Witte: Essays on Dante, trsl. by Lawrence and Wicksteed.—Essays on Dante by *R. W. Church, 1888, and *Lowell.—M. F. Rossetti: Shadow of Dante, Edin., 1884.—Owen: Skeptics of the Ital. Renaiss.—J. A. Symonds: Introd. to the Study of Dante, Lond., 1893.—D. G. C. Rossetti: Dante and Ital. Poets preceding him, 1100–1300, Boston, 1893.—C. A. Dinsmore: The Teachings of Dante, Bost., 1901.—C.E. Laughlin: Stories of Authors’ Loves, Phila., 1902.—A. H. Strong: Dante, in Great Poets and their Theol., Phila., 1897, pp. 105–155.—Art. Dante with Lit. in the Schaff-Herzog, III. 853 sqq. by M. R. Vincent.

For Petrarca: Opera omnia, Venice, 1503; Basel, 1554, 1581.—Epistolae ed. in Lat. and Ital. by Fracasetti, Flor., 1859–1870, in several vols. The Canzoniere or Rime in Vita e Morte di Mad. Laura often separately edited by Marsand, Leopardi, Carducci and others, and in all collections of the Ital. classics.—Sonnets, Triumphs and other Poems, with a Life by T. Campbell Lond., 1889–1890.—Lives by Blanc, Halle, 1844.—Mézières, Paris, 1868, 2d ed., 1873.—Geiger, Leipz., 1874,—Koerting, Leipz., 1878, pp. 722.—Mary A. Ward, Bost., 1891.—F. Horridge, 1897.—*J. H. Robinson and R. W. Rolfe, N. Y., 1898.—L. O. Kuhns, Great Poets of Italy, 1904.—E. J. Mills: Secret of Petr., 1904.—R. de Nolhac: Petr. and the Art World, 1907.

For Boccaccio: Opere volgari, ed. by Moutier, 17 vols., Flor., 1827–1834, Le Lettere edite ed inedite, trsl. by Fr. Corragini, Flor., 1877.—Lives of Boccaccio by Manetti, Baldelli, Landau, Koerting, Leipz., 1880. Geiger: Renaissance, pp. 448–474.—*Owen: Skeptics, etc., pp. 128–147.—N. H. Dole: Boccaccio and the Novella in A Teacher of Dante, etc., N. Y., 1908.

For § 64.—For Lives of the popes, see pp. 401–403. Lives of Cosimo de’ Medici by Fabroni, Pisa, 1789; K. D. Ewart, Lond., 1899; and of Lorenzo by Fabroni, 2 vols., Pisa, 1784; Roscoe; von Reumont; B. Buser Leipz., 1879;Castelnau, 2 vols., Paris, 1879.—Vaughan: The Medici Popes, 1908.—G. F. Young: The Medici, 1400–1743, Lond., 1909.—Lor. de’ Medici: Opere, 4 vols., Flor., 1825, Poesie, ed. by Carducci, Flor., 1859.—E. L. S. Horsburgh: Lor. the Magnificent, Lond., 1909.

For § 66.—G. Vasari, pupil of Michelangelo, d. 1574; Lives of the More Celebrated Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1550; best ed. by Milanesi, 9 vols., Flor., 1878–1885. Small ed., 1889. Engl. trsl., new ed., 1878, 5 vols. in Bohn’s Library. Vasari is the basis of most works in this department.—Benvenuto Cellini, goldsmith and sculptor at Florence, d. 1570: Vita scritta da lui medesimo. An autobiog. giving a lively picture of the life of an Ital. artist of that period. German trsl. by Goethe; Engl. trsll. by Roscoe and Symonds, Lond., 1890.—A. Luigi Lanza, d. 1810: The Hist. of Painting in Italy, from the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to 1800. Trsl. by T. Roscoe, 3 vols., Lond., 1852.—W. Lübke: Hist. of Sculpture, Engl. trsl. by Bunnett, 2 vols., 1872; Outlines of the Hist. of Art, ed. by R. Sturgis, 2 vols., N. Y., 1904.—J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle: Hist. of Painting in Italy, etc., to the 16th Cent., Lond., 1864–1867, ed. by Douglass, Lond., 3 vols., 1903–1908.—Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake: Hist. of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art.—Mrs. Jameson: Legends of the Madonna as repres. in the Fine Arts; Sacr. and Leg. Art; Legends of the Monastis Orders as expressed in the Fine Arts.—H. Taine: Lectures on Art, Paris, 1865 sq.—1st series: The Philos. of Art. 2nd series: Art in Italy, etc. Trsl. by Durand, N. Y., 1875.—A. Woltmann and K. Woermann: Hist. of Anc., Early Christian and Med. Painting. Trsl. by Colvin, Lond., 1880, iIIus.—E. Müntz: Hist. de l’Art pendant la Renaiss., 5 vols., Paris, 1889–1905. The first 3 vols. are devoted to Italy, the 4th to France, the 5th to other countries. Les Antiquités de la ville de Rom, 1300–1600, Paris, 1886.—Histt. of Archit. by Ferguson and R. Sturgis.—C. H. Moore: Character of Renaiss. Archit., N. Y., 1905.—R. Lanciani: Golden Days of the Renaiss. in Rome, 1906.—A. K. Porter: Med. Archit. Its Origin and Development, 2 vols., N. Y., 1909.—Lives of Michelangelo by *H. Grimm, 2 vols., Berl., 1860, 5th ed., 1879. Engl. trsl. by Bunnett, 12th ed., 2 vols., Bost., 1882; A. Sprenger: Raffaele u. Michelangelo, 2nd ed., 1883; C. Clement, Lond., 1883; J. A. Symonds, 2 vols., N. Y., 1892; F. Horridge, 1897; C. Holroyd, 1903.—Lives of Raphael by Ruland, Lond., 1870; Lübke, Dresden, 1881; Müntz, trsl. by Armstrong, 1888; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 2 vols., Lond., 1882–1888; Minghetti, Ger. ed., Breslau, 1887; *H. Grimm trsl. by S. H. Adams, Bost, 1888; Knackfuss, trsl. by Dodgson, N. Y., 1899.

For §§ 68, 69.—K. Hagen: Deutschland literarische und religiöse Verhältnisse im Reformations-Zeitalter, Erlang., 1841–1844, 38 vols., 2d ed., Frankf., 1868.—T. Janssen-Pastor: Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, 18th ed., I. 77–166, II. Comp. his alphab. list of books, I., pp. xxxi-lv.—Geiger: Renaiss. u. Humanismus, pp. 323–580.—Zarncke: D. deutschen Universitäten im MA., Leip., 1857.—Paulsen: Germ. Universities, etc., trsl. by Perry, Lond., 1895.—G. Kaufmann: Gesch. d. deutschen Universitäten, 2 vols., Stuttg., 1888–1896.—For monographs on the universities, see Lit. in Rashdall and Schmid, pp. 51–54.

For Reuchlin: Briefwechsel, ed. L. Geiger, Tübing., 1875. Monographs on Reuchlin by Mayerhof, Berl., 1830; Lamay, Pforzheim, 1855; Geiger, Leipz., 1871; A. Horawitz, Vienna, 1877.—On Reuchlin’s conflict with the Dominicans of Cologne and Hutten’s part in it, see Strauss: U. von Hutten, pp. 132–164; Böcking, II. 55–156.—N. Paulus: D. deutschen Dominikaner im Kampfe mit Luther, Freib., 1903, p. 94 sqq., 119 sqq.—Janssen, II. 40 sqq.

For Erasmus: Opera, ed. B. Rhenanus, 9 vols., Basel,1540, by Le Clerc, 10 vols., Leyden, 1703–1706.—Epistolä, ed. Allen, Oxf., 1906. In Engl. trsl. by *F. M. Nichols, 2 vols., Lond., 1901–1904. In Engl. trsl., Praise of Folly, Lond., 1876. Colloquies, Lond., 1724, new ed., 2 vols., 1878. Enchiridion, Lond., 1905.—Bibl. Erasmania, 5 vols, Ghent, 1897–1907 sqq. Lives of Erasmus, by H. Durand de Laur: Er. précurseur et initiateur de l’esprit mod., 2 vols., Paris, 1872.—*R. B. Drummond, 2 vols., Lond., 1873.—*F. Seebohm: The Oxf. Reformers, Lond., 1887, etc.—Amiel, Paris, 1889.—J. A. Froude, 1896.—*E Emerton, N. Y., 1899.—A. B. Pennington, Lond., 1875, 1901.—E. F. H. Capey, Lond., 1903.—*J. A. Faulkner, Cin’ti, 1907.—A. Richter: Erasmienstudien, Dresden, 1901.—Geiger, 526 sqq.—Janssen, II. 1–24.

For general education: Rashdall Universities, II., pp. 211–285—K. A. Schmid: Gesch. d. Erziehung, Stuttg., 1892, II. 51–126.—J. Müller: Quellenschriften zur Gesch. d. deutschsprachl. Unterrichts his zur Mitte d. 16. Jahrh., Gotha, 1882.

For Ulrich von Hutten: E. Böcking: Ulrichi Hutteni opp., 7 vols., Leipz., 1859–1870.—S. Szamatolski: Huttens deutsche Schriften, 1891.—D. F. Strauss, author of the Life of Jesus: U. von Hutten, 3vols., Leipz., 1858, 1 vol., 1871, Engl. trsl., Lond., 1874. Also Gespräche von U. von Hut., the Epp. obscurorum virorum in German, Leipz., 1860.—J. Deckert: Ul. v. Hutten’s Leben u. Wirken, Vienna, 1901.

For § 70.—Imbart de la Tour, Prof. at Bordeaux: L’église catholique: la crise et la renaissance, Paris, 1909, being vol. II. of Les origines de la réforme, vol. I., La France moderne, 1905. To be completed in 4 vols.—Schmid: Gesch. d. Erziehung, II., 40 sqq.—H. M. Baird: Hist. of the Huguenots, I. 1–164.—Bonet Maury, art. Faber In Herzog, V. 715 sqq.—Works on the Univ. of Paris and French Lit.; H. van Laun: Hist. of French Lit., 3 vols. in one, N. Y., 1895, pp. 259–296.—The Histt. of France by Martin and Guizot.

For § 71.—F. Seebohm: The Oxford Reformers, Colet, Erasmus, More, Lond., 1887.—Colet’s writings ed. with trsl. and notes by Lupton, 5 vols., Lond., 1867–1876.—Lives of Colet, by S. Knight, 1823.—J. H. Lupton: Life of Dean Colet, Lond., 1887, new ed., 1908.—Artt. in Dict. Natl. Biogr., Colet, Fisher, etc.—Histt. of Engl. by Lingard and Green.—Histt. of the Engl. Ch. by Gairdner and by Capes.—Ward-Waller: Cambr. Hist. of Engl. Lit., vol. III., Cambr., 1909.—H. Morley: Engl. Writers, vol. VII., 1891.—Mullinger: Hist. of Univ. of Cambridge.—For edd. of Sir Thos. More’s Works, see Dict. Natl. Biogr., XXXVIII., 445 sqq.—Lives of More by Roper, written in Mary Tudor’s reign, publ. Paris, 1626, Stapleton, Douay, 1588; E. More, a grandson, 1627; T. E. Bridgett, Rom. Cath., 2nd ed., 1892: W. H. Hutton, 1895.—W. S. Lilly: Renaiss. Types, 1901, III., Erasmus, IV., More.—L. Einstein: The Ital. Renaiss. in England.—A.D. Innes: Ten Tudor Statesmen, Lond., 1906. More is treated pp. 76–111.—A. F. Leach: Engl. Schools at the Reformation, Lond., 1896.—Eng. Works of Bp. J. Fisher, ed. Major, Lond., 1876.—Life of Fisher, by Bridgett, 1888.

§ 62. The Intellectual Awakening.

The discussions, which issued in the Reformatory councils and which those councils fostered, were a worthy expression of an awakening freedom of thought in the effort to secure relief from ecclesiastical abuses. The movement, to which the name Renaissance has been given, was a larger and far more successful effort, achieving freedom from the intellectual bondage to which the individual man had been subjected by the theology and hierarchy of the Church. The intelligence of Italy, and indeed of Western Europe as a whole, had grown weary of the monastic ideal of life, and the one-sided purpose of the scholastic systems to exalt heavenly concerns by ignoring or degrading things terrestrial. The Renaissance insisted upon the rights of the life that now is, and dignified the total sphere for which man’s intellect and his aesthetic and social tastes by nature fit him. It sought to give just recognition to man as the proprietor of the earth. It substituted the enlightened observer for the monk; the citizen for the contemplative recluse. It honored human sympathies more than conventual visions and dexterous theological dialectics. It substituted observation for metaphysics. It held forth the achievements of history. It called man to admire his own creations, the masterpieces of classical literature and the monuments of art. It bade him explore the works of nature and delight himself in their excellency. How different from the apparent or real indifference to the beauties of the natural world as shown, for example, by the monk, St. Bernard, was the attitude of Leon Battista Alberti, d. 1472, who bore testimony that the sight of a lovely landscape had more than once made him well of sickness.984

In the narrower sense, the Renaissance may be confined to the recovery of the culture of Greece and Rome and the revival of polite literature and art, and it is sometimes designated the Revival of Letters. After having been taught for centuries that the literature of classic antiquity was full of snares and dangers for a Christian public, men opened their eyes and revelled with childlike delight in the discovery of ancient authors and history. Virgil sang again the Aeneid, Homer the Iliad and Odyssey. Cicero once more delivered his orations and Plato taught his philosophy. It was indeed an intellectual and artistic new birth that burst forth in Italy, a regeneration, as the word Renaissance means. But it was more. It was a revolt against monastic asceticism and scholasticism, the systems which cramped the free flow of bodily enthusiasm and intellectual inquiry.985  It called man from morbid self-mortifications as the most fitting discipline of mortal existence here below, and offered him the satisfaction of all the elements of his nature as his proper pursuit.

Beginning in Italy, this new enthusiasm spread north to Germany and extended as far as Scotland. North of the Alps, it was known as Humanism and its representatives as Humanists, the words being taken from literae humanae, or humaniores, that is, humane studies, the studies which develop the man as the proprietor of this visible sphere. In the wider sense, it comprehends the revival of literature and art, the development of rational criticism, the transition from feudalism to a new order of social organization, the elevation of the modern languages of Europe as vehicles for the highest thought, the emancipation of intelligence, and the expansion of human interests, the invention of the printing-press, the discoveries of navigation and the exploration of America and the East, and the definition of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo,—in one word, all the progressive developments of the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, developments which have since been the concern of modern civilization.

The most discriminating characterization of this remarkable movement came from the pen of Michelet, who defined it as the discovery of the world and man. In this twofold aspect, Burckhardt, its leading historian for Italy, has treated the Renaissance with deep philosophical insight.

The period of the Renaissance lasts from the beginning of the 14th to the middle of the 16th century, from Roger Bacon, d. 1294, and Dante, d. 1321, to Raphael, d. 1520, and Michelangelo, d. 1564, Reuchlin, d. 1522, and Erasmus, d. 1536. For more than a century it proceeded in Italy without the patronage of the Church. Later, from the pontificate of Nicolas V. to the Medicean popes, Leo X. and Clement VII., it was fostered by the papal court. For this reason the last popes of the Middle Ages are known as the Renaissance popes. The movement in the courts may be divided into three periods: the age of the great Italian literati, Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, the age from 1400–1460, when the interest in classic literature predominated, and the age from 1460–1540, when the pursuit of the fine arts was the predominant feature. The first age contributed immortal works to literature. In the second, Plato and the other classics were translated and sedulously studied. In the last, the fine arts and architecture offered their array of genius in, Italy.

To some writers it has occurred to go back as far as Frederick II. for the beginnings of the movement. That sovereign embodied in himself a varied culture and a versatility of intellect rare in any age. With authorship and a knowledge of a number of languages, he combined enlightened ideas in regard to government and legislation, the patronage of higher education and the arts. For the varied interests of his mind, he has been called the first modern man.986  However, the literary activity of his court ceased at his death. Italy was not without its poets in the 13th century, but it is with the imposing figure of Dante that the revival of culture is to be dated. That a Renaissance should have been needed is a startling fact in the history of human development and demands explanation. The ban, which had been placed by the Church upon the study of the classic authors of antiquity and ancient institutions, palsied polite research and reading for a thousand years. Even before Jerome, whose mind had been disciplined in the study of the classics, at last pronounced them unfit for the eye of a Christian, Tertullian’s attitude was not favorable. Cassian followed Jerome; and Alcuin, the chief scholar of the 9th century, turned away from Virgil as a collection of lying fables. At the close of the 10th century, a pope reprimanded Arnulf of Orleans by reminding him that Peter was unacquainted with Plato, Virgil and Terence, and that God had been pleased to choose as His agents, not philosophers and rhetoricians, but rustics and unlettered men. In deference to such authorities the dutiful churchman turned from the closed pages of the old Romans and Greeks. Only did a selected author like Terence have here and there in a convent a clandestine though eager reader.

In the 12th century, it seemed as if a new era in literature was impending, as if the old learning was about to flourish again. The works of Aristotle became more fully known through the translations of the Arabs. Schools were started in which classic authors were read. Abaelard turned to Virgil as a prophet. The Roman law was discovered and explained at Bologna and other seats of learning. John of Salisbury, Grosseteste, Peter of Blois and other writers freely quoted from Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Ovid and other Latin authors. But the head of Western Christendom discerned in this movement a grave menace to theology and religion, and was quick to blight the new shoot with his curse, and in its early statutes, forced by the pope, the University of Paris excluded the literature of Rome from its curriculum.

But this arbitrary violence could not forever hold the mind of Europe in bonds. The satisfaction its intelligence was seeking, it did not find in the subtle discussions of the Schoolmen or the dismal pictures of the monastics. When the new movement burst forth, it burst forth in Italy, that beautiful country, the heir of Roman traditions. The glories of Italy’s past in history and in literature blazed forth again as after a long eclipse, and the cult of the beautiful, for which the Italian is born, came once more into free exercise. In spite of invasion after invasion the land remained Italian. Lombards, Goths, Normans had occupied it, but the invaders were romanized much more than the Italians were teutonized. The feudal system and Gothic architecture found no congenial soil south of the Alps. In the new era, it seemed natural that the poets and orators of old Italy should speak again in the land which they had witnessed as the mistress of all nations. The literature and law of Greece and Rome again became the educators of the Latin and also of the Teutonic races, preparing them to receive the seeds of modern civilization.

The tap-root of the Renaissance was individualism as opposed to sacerdotal authority. Its enfranchising process manifested itself in Roger Bacon, whose mind turned away from the rabbinical subtleties of the Schoolmen to the secrets of natural science and the discoveries of the earth reported by Rubruquis or suggested by his own reflection, and more fully in Dante, Marsiglius of Padua and Wyclif, who resisted the traditional authority of the papacy. It was active in the discussions of the Reformatory councils. And it received a strong impetus in the administration of the Lombard cities which gloried in their independence. With their authority the imperial policy of Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. had clashed. Partly owing to the loose hold of the empire and partly owing to the papal policy, which found its selfish interests subserved better by free contending states and republics than by a unified kingdom of Italy under a single temporal head, these independent municipalities took such deep root that they withstood for nearly a thousand years the unifying process which, in the case of France, Great Britain and Spain, resulted in the consolidation of strong kingdoms soon after the era of the Crusades closed. Upon an oligarchical or a democratic basis, despots and soldiers of fortune secured control of their Italian states by force of innate ability. Individualism pushed aside the claims of birth, and it so happened in the 14th and 15th centuries that the heads of these states were as frequently men of illegitimate birth as of legitimate descent. In our change-loving Italy, wrote Pius II., "where nothing is permanent and no old dynasty exists, servants easily rise to be kings."987

It was in the free republic of Florence, where individualism found the widest sphere for self-assertion, that the Renaissance took earliest root and brought forth its finest products. That municipality, which had more of the modern spirit of change and progress than any other mediaeval organism, invited and found satisfaction in novel and brilliant works of power, whether they were in the domain of government or of letters or even of religion, as under the spell of Savonarola. There Dante and Lionardo da Vinci were born, and there Machiavelli exploited his theories of the state and Michelangelo wrought. The Medici gave favor to all forms of enterprise that might bring glory to the city. After Nicolas V. ascended the papal throne, Rome vied with its northern neighbor as a centre of the arts and culture. The new tastes and pursuits also found a home in Ferrara, Urbino, Naples, Milan and Mantua.

Glorious the achievement of the Renaissance was, but it was the last movement of European significance in which Italy and the popes took the lead. Had the current of aesthetic and intellectual enthusiasm joined itself to a stream of religious regeneration, Italy might have kept in advance of other nations, but she produced no safe prophets. No Reformer arose to lead her away from dead religious forms to living springs of spiritual life, from ceremonies and relics to the New Testament.

In spreading north to Germany, Holland and England, the movement took on a more serious aspect. There it produced no poets or artists of the first rank, but in Reuchlin and Erasmus it had scholars whose erudition not only attracted the attention of their own but benefited succeeding generations and contributed directly to the Reformation. South of the Alps, culture was the concern of a special class and took on the form of a diversion, though it is true all classes must have looked with admiration upon the works of art that were being produced.

It was, then, the mission of the Renaissance to start the spirit of free inquiry, to certify to the mind its dignity, to expand the horizon to the faculties of man as a citizen of the world, to recover from the dust of ages the literary treasures and monuments of ancient Greece and Rome, to inaugurate a style of fresh description, based on observation, in opposition to the dialectic circumlocution of the scholastic philosophy, to call forth the laity and to direct attention to the value of natural morality and the natural relationships of man with man. To the monk beauty was a snare, woman a temptation, pleasure a sin, the world vanity of vanities. The Humanist taught that the present life is worth living. The Renaissance breathed a cosmopolitan spirit and fostered universal sympathies. In the spirit of some of the yearnings of the later Roman authors, Dante exclaimed again, "My home is the world."988

§ 63. Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio.

Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio represent the birth and glory of Italian literature and ushered in the new literary and artistic age. Petrarca and Boccaccio belong chiefly to the department of literary culture; Dante equally to it and the realm of religious thought and composition. The period covered by their lives extends over more than a hundred years, from Dante’s birth in 1265 to Boccaccio’s death, 1375.

Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321, the first of Italian and the greatest of mediaeval poets, has given us in his Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy, conceived in 1300, a poetic view of the moral universe under the aspect of eternity,—sub specie aeternitatis. Born in Florence, he read under his teacher Brunetto Latini, whom in later years he praised, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and other Latin authors. In the heated conflict of parties, going on in his native city, he at first took the side of the Guelfs as against the Ghibellines, who were in favor of the imperial régime in Italy. In 1300, he was elected one of the priori or chief magistrates, approved the severe measures then employed towards political opponents and, after a brief tenure of office, was exiled. The decree of exile threatened to burn him alive if he ventured to return to the city. After wandering about, going to Paris and perhaps further west, he settled down in Ravenna, where he died and where his ashes still lie. After his death, Florence accorded the highest honors to his memory. Her request for his body was refused by Ravenna, but she created a chair for the exposition of the Divine Comedy, with Boccaccio as its first occupant, and erected to her distinguished son an-imposing monument in the church of Santa Croce and a statue on the square in front. In 1865, all Italy joined Florence in celebrating the 6th centenary of the poet’s birth. Never has study been given to Dante’s great poem as a work of art by wider circles and with more enthusiasm than to-day, and it will continue to serve as a prophetic voice of divine judgment and mercy as long as religious feeling seeks expression.

Dante was a layman, married and had seven children. An epoch in his life was his meeting, as a boy of nine years, with Beatrice, who was a few months younger than himself, at a festival given in her father’s house, where she was tenderly called, as Boccaccio says, Bice. The vision of Beatrice—for there is no record that they exchanged words—entered and filled Dante’s soul with an effluence of purity and benignity which cleared away all evil thoughts.989  After an interval of nine years he saw her a second time, and then not again till, in his poetic dream, he met her in paradise. Beatrice married and died at 24, 1290.

With this vision, the new life began for Dante, the vita nuova which he describes in the book of that name. Beatrice’s features illuminated his path and her pure spirit was his guide. At the first meeting, so the poet says, "she appeared to me clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, garlanded and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age." The love then begotten, says Charles Eliot Norton, "lasted from Dante’s boyhood to his death, keeping his heart fresh, spite of the scorchings of disappointment, with the springs of perpetual solace."990  The last glimpse the poet gives of her was as he saw her at the side of Rachel in the highest region of heaven.

The third in order, underneath her, lo!

Rachel with Beatrice.—Par., xxxii. 6.

Had Dante written only the tract against the temporal power of the papacy, the De monarchia, his name would have been restricted to a place in the list of the pamphleteers of the 14th century. His Divine Comedy exalts him to the eminence of the foremost poetic interpreter of the mediaeval world. This immortal poem is a mirror of mediaeval Christianity and civilization and, at the same time, a work of universal significance and perennial interest. It sums up the religious concepts of the Middle Ages and introduces the free critical spirit of the modern world.991  It is Dante’s autobiography and reflects his own experiences: —

All the pains by me depicted, woes and tortures, void of pity,

On this earth I have encountered—found them all in Florence City.992

It brings into view the society of mediaeval Italy, a long array of its personages, many of whom had only a local and transient interest. At the same time, the Comedy is the spiritual biography of man as man wherever he is found, in the three conditions of sin, repentance and salvation. It describes a pilgrimage to the world of spirits beyond this life, from the dark forest of temptation, through the depths of despair in hell, up the terraces of purification in purgatory, to the realms of bliss. Through the first two regions the poet’s guide is Virgil, the representative of natural reason, and through the heavenly spaces, Beatrice, the type of divine wisdom and love. The Inferno reflects sin and misery; the Purgatorio, penitence and hope; the Paradiso, holiness and happiness. The first repels by its horrors and laments; the second moves by its penitential tears and prayers; the third enraptures by its purity and peace. Purgatory is an intermediate state, constantly passing away, but heaven and hell will last forever. Hell is hopeless darkness and despair; heaven culminates in the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity, beyond which nothing higher can be conceived by man or angel. Here are depicted the extremes of terror and rapture, of darkness and light, of the judgment and the love of God. In paradise, the saints are represented as forming a spotless white rose, whose cup is a lake of light, surrounded by innocent children praising God. This sublime conception was probably suggested by the rose-windows of Gothic cathedrals, or by the fact that the Virgin Mary was called a rose by St. Bernard and other mediaeval divines and poets.

Following the geocentric cosmology of the Ptolemaic system, the poet located hell within the earth, purgatory in the southern hemisphere, and heaven in the starry firmament. Hell is a yawning cavity, widest at the top and consisting of ten circles. Purgatory is a mountain up which souls ascend. The heavenly realm consists of nine circles, culminating in the empyrean where the pure divine essence dwells.

Among these regions of the spiritual and future world, Dante distributes the best-known characters of his and of former generations. He spares neither Guelf nor Ghibelline, neither pope nor emperor, and gives to all their due. He adapts the punishment to the nature of the sin, the reward to the measure of virtue, and shows an amazing ingenuity and fertility of imagination in establishing the correspondence of outward condition to moral character. Thus the cowards and indifferentists in the vestibule of the Inferno are driven by a whirling flag and stung by wasps and flies. The licentious are hurried by tempestuous winds in total darkness, with carnal lust still burning, but never gratified.

The infernal hurricane, that never rests

Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine,

Whirling them round; and smiting, it molests them;

It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them.

Inferno, V. 31–43.

The gluttonous lie on the ground, exposed to showers of hail and foul water; blasphemers supine upon a plain of burning sand, while sparks of fire, like flakes of snow in the Alps, slowly and constantly descend upon their bodies. The wrathful are forever tearing one another.

And I, who stood intent upon beholding,

Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,

All of them naked and with angry look.

They smote each other not alone with hands,

But with the head and with the breast and feet

Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth.

Inferno, VII. 100 sqq.

The simonists, who sell religion for money and turn the temple of God into a den of thieves, are thrust into holes, head downwards, with their feet protruding and tormented with flames. The arch-heretics are held in red-hot tombs, and tyrants in a stream of boiling blood, shot at by the centaurs whenever they attempt to rise. The traitors are immersed in a lake of ice with Satan, the arch-traitor and the embodiment of selfishness, malignity and turpitude. Their very tears turn to ice, symbol of utter hardness, and Satan is forever consuming in his three mouths the three arch-traitors, Judas, Brutus and Cassius. Milton represents Satan as the archangel who even in hell exalts himself and in pride exclaims, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," and the poet leaves the mind of the reader disturbed by a feeling of admiration for Lucifer’s untamed ambition and superhuman power. Dante’s Satan awakens disgust and horror, and the inscription over the entrance to hell makes the reader shudder: —

Through me ye enter the abode of woe;

Through me to endless sorrow are brought;

Through me amid the souls accurst ye go.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

All hope abandon—ye who enter here!

Per me si va nella città dolente;

Per me si va nell’ eterno dolore;

Per me si va tra la perduta gente.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate.

Passing out from the domain of gloom and dole, Virgil leads the poet to purgatory, where the dawn of day breaks. This realm, as has been said, comes nearer to our common life than hell or paradise.993  Hope dwells here. Song, not wailing, is heard. A ship appears, moved by an angel and filled with spirits, singing the hymn of redemption. Cato approaches and urges the guide and Dante to wash themselves on the shore from all remainders of hell and to hurry on. In purgatory, they pass through seven stages, which correspond to the seven mortal sins, the two lowest, pride and envy, the highest, wantonness and luxury. All the penitents have stamped on their foreheads seven P’s,—the first letter of the word peccata, sins,—which are effaced only one by one, as they pass from stage to stage, "enclasped with scorching fire," until they are delivered through penal fire from all stain. A similar correspondence exists between sin and punishments as in the Inferno, but with the opposite effect, for here sins are repented of and forgiven, and the woes are disciplinary until "the wound that healeth last is medicined." Thus the proud, in the first and lowest terrace, are compelled to totter under huge weights, that they may learn humility. The indolent, in the fourth terrace, are exercised by constant and rapid walking. The avaricious and prodigal, with hands and feet tied together, lie with their faces in the dust, weeping and wailing. The gluttons suffer hunger and thirst that they may be taught temperance. The licentious wander about in flames that their sensual passions may be consumed away.

Arriving at paradise, the Roman poet can go no further, and Beatrice takes his place as Dante’s guide. The spirits are distributed in glory according to their different grades of perfection. Here are passed in review theologians, martyrs, crusaders, righteous princes and judges, monks and contemplative mystics. In the 9th heaven Beatrice leaves the poet to take her place at the side of Rachel, after having introduced him to St. Bernard. Dante looks again and sees Mary and Eve and Sarah,

… and the gleaner-maid

Meek ancestress of him, who sang the songs

Of sore repentance in his sorrowful mood;

Gabriel, Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, Peter, St. Augustine and other saints. Then he is led by the devout mystic to Mary, who, in answer to his prayer, shows him the Deity in the empyrean, but what he saw was not for words to utter. Alike are all the saints in enjoying the same reward of the beatific vision.

Dante was in full harmony with the orthodox faith of his age, and followed closely the teachings of Thomas Aquinas’ great book of divinity.994  He accepted all the distinctive tenets of mediaeval Catholicism—purgatory, the worship of Mary, the intercession of saints, the efficacy of papal indulgences and the divine institution of the papacy. He paid deep homage to the monastic life and accords exalted place to Benedict, St. Francis and Dominic. But he cast aside all traditions in dealing freely with the successors of Peter in the Apostolic see. Here, too, he was under the direction of the beloved Beatrice. The evils in the Church he traced to her temporal power and he condemned to everlasting punishment Anastasius II. for heresy, Nicolas III., Boniface VIII. and Clement V. for simony, Coelestine V. for cowardice in abdicating the pontifical office, and a squad of other popes for avarice.

Following the theology of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he put into hell the whole heathen world except two solitary figures, Cato of Utica, who sacrificed life for liberty and keeps watch at the foot of purgatory, and the just emperor, Trajan, who, 500 years after his death, was believed to have been prayed out of hell by Pope Gregory I. To the region of the Inferno, also, though on the outer confines of it, a place is assigned to infants who die in infancy without being baptized, whether the offspring of Christian or heathen parents. Theirs is no conscious pain, but they remain forever without the vision of the blessed. In the same vicinity the worthies of the old dispensation were detained until Christ descended after his crucifixion and gave them release. There, John the Baptist had been kept for two years after his pains of martyrdom, Par. xxxii. 25. In the upper regions of the hopeless Inferno a tolerably comfortable place is also accorded to the noble heathen poets, philosophers, statesmen and warriors, while unfaithful Christians are punished in the lower circles according to the degrees of their guilt. The heathen, who followed the light of nature, suffer sorrow without pain. As Virgil says: —

In the right manner they adored not God.

For such defects, and not for other guilt,

Lost are we, and are only so far punished,

That without hope we live on, in desire.

Dante began his poem in Latin and was blamed by Giovanni del Virgilio, a teacher of Latin literature in Bologna, because he abandoned the language of old Rome for the vulgar dialect of Tuscany. Poggio also lamented this course. But the poet defended himself in his unfinished book, Eloquence in the Vernacular, De vulgari eloquio,995 and, by writing the Commedia, the Vita nuova, the Convivio and his sonnets in his native Florentine tongue, he became the father of Italian literature and opened the paths of culture to the laity. Within three years of the poet’s death, commentaries began to be written on the Divina Commedia, as by Graziuolo de’ Bambagliolo, 1324, and within 100 years chairs were founded for its exposition at Florence, Venice, Bologna and Pisa.

A second service which Dante rendered in his poem to the coming culture was in bringing antiquity once more into the foreground and treating pagan and Christian elements side by side, though not as of the same value, and interweaving mythological fables with biblical history, classical with Christian reminiscences. By this tolerance he showed himself a man of the new age, while he still held firmly to the mediaeval theology.996

Dante’s abiding merit, however, was his inspiring portrayal of the holiness and love of God. Sin, the perversion of the will, is punished with sin continuing in the future world and pain. Salvation is through the "Lamb of God who takes away our sins and suffered and died that we might live." This poem, like a mighty sermon, now depresses, now enraptures the soul, or, to use the lines of the most poetic of his translators, Longfellow,

Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;

Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,

What soft compassion glows.

Francesco Petrarca, 1304–1374, was the most cultured man of his time. His Italian sonnets and songs are masterpieces of Italian poetic diction, but he thought lightly of them and hoped to be remembered by his Latin writings.997  He was an enthusiast for the literature of antiquity and gave a great impulse to its study. His parents, exiled from Florence, removed to Avignon, then the seat of the papacy, which remained Francesco’s residence till 1333. He was ordained to the priesthood but without an inward call. He enjoyed several ecclesiastical benefices as prior, canon and archdeacon, which provided for his support without burdening him with duties. He courted and enjoyed the favor of princes, popes and prelates. He abused the papal residence on the Rhone as the Babylon of the West, urged the popes to return to Rome and hailed Cola da Rienzo as an apostle of national liberty. His writings contain outbursts of patriotism but, on the other hand, the author seems to contradict himself in being quick to accept the hospitality of the Italian despots of Mantua, Padua, Rimini and Ferrara, and the viconti of Milan. In 1350, he formed a friendship with Boccaccio which remained warm until his death.

In spite of his priestly vows, Petrarca lived with concubines and had at least two illegitimate children, Giovanni and Francesca, the stain of whose birth was removed by papal bulls. In riper years, and more especially after his pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year, 1350, he broke away from the slavery of sin. "I now hate that pestilence," he wrote to Boccaccio, "infinitely more than I loved it once, so that in turning over the thought of it in my mind, I feel shame and horror. Jesus Christ, my liberator, knows that I say the truth, he to whom I often prayed with tears, who has given to me his hand in pity and helped me up to himself." He took great delight in the Confessions of St. Augustine, a copy of which he carried about with him.

In his De contemptu mundi,—the Contempt of the World, written in 1343, Petrarca confesses as his greatest fault the love of glory and the desire for the immortality of his name. This, the besetting sin of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Humanists inherited. It became with them a ruling passion. They found it in Cicero, the most read of all the Latin classics. Dante strove after the poet’s laurel and often returned to the theme of fame as a motive of action—lo grand disio della eccelenza.998  Petrarca, after much seeking on his own part, was offered the poet’s crown by the University of Paris and the Roman senate. He took it from the latter, and was crowned on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, April 8, 1341, Robert, king of Sicily, being present on the occasion. This he regarded as the proudest moment of his life, the excelling glory of his career. In ostentatious piety the poet carried his crown to St. Peter’s, where he laid it on the altar of the Apostle.

Petrarca has been called the first modern scholar and man of letters, the inaugurator of the Italian Renaissance. Unlike Dante, he despised scholastic and mystic learning and went further back to the well of pagan antiquity. He studied antiquity, not as a philologist or antiquarian, but as a man of taste.999  He admired the Greek and Roman authors for their eloquence, grace and finish of style. Cicero and Virgil were his idols, the fathers of eloquence, the eyes of the Latin language. He turned to Plato. He made a distinction between the religion of the New Testament as interpreted by Augustine and as interpreted by the Schoolmen. Petrarca also opened the period of search and discovery of ancient books and works of art. He spared no pains to secure old manuscripts. In 1345, he found several of Cicero’s letters at Verona, and also a portion of Quintilian which had been unknown since the 10th century. A copy of Homer he kept with care, though be could not read its contents. All the Greek he knew was a few rudiments learned from a faithless Calabrian, Barlaam. He was the first to collect a private library and had 200 volumes. His first thought in passing old convents was to hunt up books. He accumulated old coins and medals and advocated the preservation of ancient monumenta. He seems also to have outlined the first mediaeval map of Italy.1000

Few authors have more fully enjoyed the benefit of their labors than Petrarca. He received daily letters of praise from all parts of Italy, from France, Germany and England. He expressed his satisfaction that the emperor of Byzantium knew him through his writings. Charles IV. invited him three times to Germany that he might listen to his eloquence and learn from him lessons of wisdom; and Pope Gregory XI. on hearing of his death, ordered good copies of all his books. The next generation honored him, not as the singer of Laura, the wife of another, whose beauty and loveliness he praised in passionate verse,1001  but as the scholar and sage.

The name of Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313–1375, the third of the triumvirate of the Italian luminaries of the 14th century, has also a distinct place in the transition from the Middle Ages to the age of the Renaissance. With his two great predecessors he was closely linked, with Dante as his biographer, with Petrarca as his warm friend. It was given to him to be the founder of easy and elegant Italian prose. The world has had few writers who can equal him in realistic narration.1002  There is ground for the saying that Dante is admired, Petrarca praised, Boccaccio read. He also wrote poetry, but it does not constitute his claim to distinction.

Certaldo, twenty miles from Florence, was probably Boccaccio’s birthplace. He was the illegitimate son of a Florentine father and a Parisian mother. After spending six years in business and giving six to the law,—the whole period being looked upon by him later as lost time,—he devoted himself to literature. Several years he spent at the court of Naples, where he fell in love with Maria, the married daughter of King Robert, who yielded her honor to his advances. Later, he represented her passion for him in L’amorosa Fiammetta. Thus the three great Italian literati commemorate the love of women who were bound in matrimony to others, but there is a wide gulf between the inspiring passion of Dante for Beatrice and Boccaccio’s sensual love.1003  Boccaccio was an unmarried layman and freely indulged in irregular love. His three children of unknown mothers died before him.

In his old age he passed, like Petrarca, through a certain conversion, and, with a preacher’s fervor, warned others against the vanity, luxury and seductive arts of women. He would fain have blotted out the immoralities of his writings when it was too late. The conversion was brought about by a Carthusian monk who called upon him at Certaldo. Upon the basis of another monk’s vision, he threatened Boccaccio with speedy death, if he did not abandon his godless writing. Terrified with the prospect, he determined to renounce the pen and give himself up to penance. Petrarca, on hearing of his state of mind, wrote to him to accept what was good in the monk’s advice, but not to abandon studies which he pronounced the nutriment of a healthy mind.

In zeal for the ancient classics, Boccaccio vied with his contemporary. Many of them he copied with his own hand, and bequeathed them to his father-confessor in trust for the Augustinian convent of the Holy Spirit in Florence. He learned the elements of Greek and employed a Greek of Calabria, Leontius Pilatus, to make a literal translation of the Iliad and Odyssey for learners. An insight into his interest in books is given to us in his account of a visit to Monte Casino. On asking to see the library, a monk took him to a dusty room without a door to it, and with grass growing in its windows. Many of the manuscripts were mutilated. The monks, as his guide told him, were in the habit of tearing out leaves to be used by the children as psalters or to be sold to women for amulets for their arms.

In 1373, the signoria of Florence appointed him to the lectureship on the Divina Commedia, with a salary of 100 guldens gold. He had gotten only as far as the 17th canto of the Inferno when he was overtaken by death.

Boccaccio’s Latin works are mostly compilations from ancient mythology—De genealogia deorum — and biography, and also treat the subject of geography—De montium, silvarum, lacuum et marium nominibus. In his De claris mulieribus, he gave the biographies of 104 distinguished women, including Eve, the fictitious popess, Johanna, and Queen Johanna of Naples, who was still living. His most popular work is the Decamerone, the Ten Days’ Book—which in later years he would have destroyed or purged of its immoral and frivolous elements. It is his poetry in prose and may be called a Commedia Humana, as contrasted with Dante’s Commedia Divina. It contains 100 stories, told by ten young persons, seven ladies and three men of Florence, during the pestilence of 1348. After listening to a description of the horrors of the plague, the reader is transferred to a beautiful garden, several miles from the city, where the members of the company, amid laughter and tears, relate the stories which range from moral tales to indecent love intrigues. One of the well-known stories is of the Jew, Abraham, who, refusing to comply with the appeals to turn Christian, went to Rome to study the question for himself. Finding the priestly morals most corrupt, cardinals with concubines and revelling in riches and luxury, he concluded Christianity must have a divine origin, or it would not have survived when the centre of Christendom was so rotten, and he offered himself for baptism. The Decamerone reveals a low state of morals among priests and monks as well as laymen and women. It derides marriage, the confessional, the hypocrisy of monkery and the worship of relics. The employment of wit and raillery against ecclesiastical institutions was a new element in literature, and Boccaccio wrote in a language the people understood. No wonder that the Council of Trent condemned the work for its immoralities, and still more for its anticlerical and antimonastic ridicule; but it could not prevent its circulation. A curious expurgated edition, authorized by the pope, appeared in Florence in 1573, which retained the indecencies, the impure personages, but substituted laymen for the priests and monks, thus saving the honor of the Church.1004

Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio led the way to a recognition of the worth of man’s natural endowment by depicting the passions of his heart. To them also it belonged to have an ardent love for nature and to reproduce it in description. Thus Petrarca described the mountains and the gulfs of the sea as well as Rome, Naples and other Italian places where he loved to be.1005  His description of his delight in ascending a mountain near Vaucluse, it has been suggested, was the first of its kind in literature. In these respects, the appreciation of man and the world, they stood at the opening of the new era.

§ 64. Progress and Patrons of Classical Studies in the 15th Century.

The enthusiasm for classical studies and the monuments of antiquity reached its high pitch in Italy in the middle and latter half of the 15th century. Many distinguished classical students appeared, none of whom, however, approached in literary eminence the three Italian literati of the preceding century. Admirable as was their zeal in promoting an acquaintance with the writers of Greece and Rome, they were in danger of becoming mere pedants and imitators of the past. The whole field of ancient literature was searched, poetry and philosophy, letters and works of geography and history. Italy seemed to be bent on setting aside all other studies for the ancient classics. Cicero was taken as the supreme model of style, and his age was referred to as "that immortal and almost heavenly age."1006

The services of the Italian Humanists in reviving an interest in ancient literature and philosophy were, however, quite enough to give distinction to their era, though their own writings have ceased to be read. One new feature of abiding significance was developed in the 15th century, the science of literary and historical criticism. This was opened by Salutato, d. 1406, who contended that Seneca could not have been the author of the tragedies ascribed to him, and culminated in Laurentius Valla and the doubts that scholar cast upon the authorship of the Apostles’ Creed and the Donation of Constantine. The Fall of Constantinople in 1453, with which the middle of the century was signalized, cannot be regarded as more than an incident in the history of the spread of Greek letters in the West, which would have been accomplished had the city remained under the Greek emperors.

To the discovery and copying of manuscripts, led by such men as Poggio or the monk Nicolas of Treves, who in 1429 brought to Rome 12 hitherto unpublished comedies of Plautus, were added the foundation of princely libraries in Florence, Rome, Urbino and other cities. Numerous were the translations of Greek authors made into Latin, and more numerous the translations from both languages into Italian. By the recovery of a lost or half-forgotten literature, the Italian Renaissance laid the modern world under a heavy debt. But in its restless literary activity, it went still further, imitating the literary forms received from antiquity. Orations became a marked feature of the time, pompous and stately. The envoys of princes were called orators and receptions, given to such envoys, were opened with classical addresses. Orations were also delivered at the reception of relics, at funerals and—the epithalamials—and even at the consecration of bishops. At a betrothal, Filelfo opened his address with the words, "Aristotle, the peripatetic teacher." The orations of this Latinist, most eminent in his day, are pronounced by Geiger a disgusting mixture of classic and biblical quotations.1007  Not seldom these ornate productions were extended to two or three hours. Pius II.’s fame for oratory helped him to the papal throne.

All forms of classic poetry were revived—from the epic to the epigram, from tragedy to satire. Petrarca’s Africa, an epic on Scipio, and Boccaccio’s Theseid led the way. Attempts were even made to continue or restore ancient literary works. Maffeo Vegio, under Martin V., composed a 13th book of Virgil, Bruni restored the second decade of Livy. The poets not only revived the ancient mythologies but peopled Italy with new gods and nymphs. Especially active were they in celebrating the glories of the powerful men of their age, princes and popes. A Borgiad was dedicated to Alexander VI., a Borsead to Borso, duke of Este, a Sforzias to one of the viconti of Milan and the Laurentias to Lorenzo de’ Medici. The most offensive panegyric of all was the poetical effusion of Ercole Strozzi at the death of Caesar Borgia. In this laudation, Roma is represented as having placed her hopes in the Borgias, Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., and last of all in Caesar, whose deeds are then glorified.

In historic composition also, a new chapter was opened. The annals of cities and the careers of individuals were studied and written down. The histories of Florence, first in Latin by Lionardo Bruni and then down to 1362 by the brothers Villani, who wrote in Italian, and then by Poggio to 1455, were followed by other histories down to the valuable Diaries of Rome by Infessura and Burchard, the History of Venice, 1487–1513, by Bembo, and the works of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, who wrote in Italian. In 1463, Flavio Biondo compiled his encyclopaedic work in three parts on the history, customs, topography and monuments of Rome and Italy, Roma instaurata, Roma triumphans and Italia illustrata. Lionardo Bruni wrote Lives of Cicero and Aristotle in Latin and of Dante and Petrarca in Italian. The passion for composition was displayed in the despatches of Venetian, Mantuan and other ambassadors at the courts of Rome or Este and by the elaborate letters, which were in reality finished essays, for the most part written in Latin and introducing comments on books and matters of literary interest, by Politian, Bembo and others, a form of writing revived by Petrarca. The zeal for Latin culture also found exhibition in the habit of giving to children ancient names, such as Agamemnon and Achilles, Atalanta and Pentesilea. A painter called his daughter Minerva and his son Apelles. The habit also took root of assuming Latin names. A Sanseverino, howbeit of illegitimate birth, proudly called himself Julius Pomponius Laetus. This custom extended to Germany, where Schwarzerd gave up his original German patronymic for Melanchthon, Hausschein for Oecolampadius, Reuchlin for Capnio, Buchmann for Bibliander; Hutten, Luther, Zwingli, who were more patriotic, adhered to their vernacular names. Pedants adopted a more serious change when they paganized sacred terms and substituted mythological for Christian ideas. The saints were called dii and deae; their statues, simulacra sancta deorum; holy images of the gods, Peter and Paul, dii titulares Romae or S. Romulus and S. Remus; the nuns, vestales virgines; heaven, Olympus; cardinals, augurs, and the College of Cardinals, Senatus sacer; the pope, pontifex maximus, and his thunders, dirae; the tiara, infula Romulea; and God, Jupiter optimus Maximus!1008  Erasmus protested against such absurd pedantry as characterizing Humanism in its dotage. Another sign of the cult of the ancients was the imitation of Roman burial usages even in the churches. At Bruni’s death in 1443, the priors of Florence decreed him a public, funeral "after the manner of the ancients." Before the laying-away of his body in S. Croce, Manetti pronounced a funeral oration and placed the crown of laurel on the deceased author’s head.

The high veneration of antiquity was also shown in the regard which cities and individuals paid to the relics of classical writers. Padua thought she had the genuine bones of Livy, and Alfonso of Naples considered himself happy in securing one of the arms of the dead historian. Naples gloried in the real or supposed tomb of Virgil. Parma boasted of the bones of Cassius. Como claimed both the Plinies, but Verona proved that the elder belonged to it. Alfonso of Naples, as he was crossing over the Abruzzi, saluted Sulmona, the birthplace of Ovid.

The larger Italian towns were not without Latin schools. Among the renowned teachers were Vittorino da Feltre, whom Gonzaga of Mantua called to his court, and Guarino of Verona. Children of princes from abroad went to Mantua to sit at the feet of Feltre, who also gave instruction to as many as 70 poor and talented children at a time. Latin authors were committed to memory and translated by the pupils, and mathematics and philosophy were taught. To his literary curriculum Feltre added gymnastic exercises and set his pupils a good example by his chastity and temperance. He was represented as a pelican which nourishes her young with her own blood. Pastor, who calls this teacher the greatest Italian pedagogue of the Renaissance period, is careful to notice that he had mass said every morning before beginning the sessions of the day.

The Humanists were fortunate in securing the encouragement of the rich and powerful. Literature has never had more liberal and intelligent patrons than it had in Italy in the 15th century. The munificence of Maecenas was equalled and surpassed by Cosimo and Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence and Nicolas V. in Rome. Other cities had their literary benefactors, but some of these were most noted for combining profligacy with their real or affected interest in literary culture. Humanists were in demand. Popes needed secretaries, and princes courted orators and poets who could conduct a polished correspondence, write addresses, compose odes for festive occasions and celebrate their deeds. Lionardo Bruni, Valla, Bembo, Sadoleto and other Humanists were secretaries or annotators at the papal court under Nicolas V. and his successors.

Cosimo de’ Medici, d. 1464, the most munificent promoter of arts and letters that Europe had seen for more than a thousand years, was the richest banker of the republic of Florence, scholarly, well-read and, from taste and ambition, deeply interested in literature. We have already met him at Constance during the council. He travelled extensively in France and Germany and ruled Florence, after a temporary exile, as a republican merchant-prince, for 30 years. He encouraged scholars by gifts of money and provided for the purchase of manuscripts, without assuming the air of condescension which spoils the generosity of the gift, but with a feeling of respect for superior merit. His literary minister, Nicolo de’ Niccoli, 1364–1437, was a centre of attraction to literary men in Florence and collected and, in great part, copied 800 codices. Under his auspices, Poggio searched some of the South German convents and found at St. Gall the first complete Quintilian. Niccoli’s library, through Cosimo’s mediation, was given to S. Marco, and forms a part of the Medicean library. With the same enlightened liberality, Cosimo also encouraged the fine arts. He was a great admirer of the saintly painter, Fra Angelico, whom he ordered to paint the history of the crucifixion on one of the walls of the chapter-house of S. Marco. Among the scholars protected in Florence under Cosimo’s administration were the Platonist Ficino, Lionardo Bruni and Poggio. During the last year of his life, Cosimo had read to him Aristotle’s Ethics and Ficino’s translation of Plato’s The Highest Good. He also contributed to churches and convents, and by the erection of stately buildings turned Florence into the Italian Athens.

Cosimo’s grandson and worthy successor, Lorenzo de’ Medici, d. 1492, was well educated in Latin and Greek by Landino, Argyropulos and Ficino. He was a man of polite culture and himself no mean poet, whose songs were sung on the streets of Florence. His family life was reputable. He liked to play with his children and was very fond of his son Giovanni, afterwards Leo X. Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola were among the ornaments of his court. By his lavish expenditures he brought himself and the republic to the brink of bankruptcy in 1490.

Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, d. 1482, and Alfonso of Naples also deserve special mention as patrons of learning. Federigo, a pupil of Vittorino da Feltre, was a scholar and an admirer of patristic as well as classical learning. He also cultivated a taste for music, painting and architecture, employed 30 and 40 copyists at a time, and founded, at an expense of 40,000 ducats, a library which, in 1657, was incorporated in the Vatican.

Alfonso was the special patron of the skeptical Laurentius Valla and the licentious Beccadelli, 1394–1471, and also had at his court the Greek scholars, George of Trebizond and the younger Chrysoloras. He listened with delight to literary, philosophical and theological lectures and disputes, which were held in his library. He paid large sums for literary work, giving Beccadelli 1000 gold guldens for his Hermaphrodita, and Fazio, in addition to his yearly stipend of 500 guldens, 1,500 guldens for his Historia Alphonsi. When he took Manetti to be his secretary, he is reported to have said he would be willing to divide his last crust with scholars.

With Nicolas V., 1447–1455, Humanism triumphed at the centre of the Roman Church. He was the first and best pope of the Renaissance and its most liberal supporter. However, Humanism never struck as deep root in Rome as it did in Florence. It was always more or less of an exotic in the papal city.1009  Nicolas caught the spirit of the Renaissance in Florence, where he served as private tutor. For 20 years he acted as the secretary of Cardinal Niccolo Abergati, and travelled in France, England, Burgundy, Germany and Northern Italy. On these journeys he collected rare books, among which were Lactantius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, 12 epistles of Ignatius and an epistle of Polycarp. Many manuscripts he copied with his own hand, and he helped to arrange the books Cosimo collected. His pontificate was a golden era for architects and authors. With the enormous sums which the year of Jubilee, 1450, brought to Rome, he was able to carry out his double passion for architecture and literature. In the bank of the Medici alone, 100,000 florins were deposited to the account of the papacy. Nicolas gave worthy scholars employment as transcribers, translators or secretaries, but he made them work night and day. He sent agents to all parts of Italy and to other countries, even to Russia and England, in search of rare books, and had them copied on parchment and luxuriously bound and clasped with silver clasps. He thus collected the works of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Appian, Philo Judaeus, and the Greek Fathers, Eusebius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Cyril and Dionysius the Areopagite. He kindled a feverish enthusiasm for the translation of Greek authors, and was determined to enrich the West with versions of all the surviving monuments of Hellenic literature. As Symonds puts it, Rome became a factory of translations from Greek into Latin. Nicolas paid to Valla 500 scudi for a Latin version of Thucydides and to Guarino 1,500 for his translation of Strabo. He presented to Nicolas Perotti for his translation of Polybius a purse of 500 new papal ducats,—a ducat being the equivalent of 12 francs,—with the remark that the sum was not equal to the author’s merits. He offered 5,000 ducats for the discovery of the Hebrew Matthew and 10,000 gold gulden for a translation of Homer, but in vain; for Marsuppini and Oratius only furnished fragments of the Iliad, and Valla’s translation of the first 16 books was a paraphrase in prose. He gave Manetti, his secretary and biographer, though absent from Rome, a salary of 600 ducats. No such liberal and enlightened friend of books ever sat in the chair of St. Peter.

Nicolas found an enduring monument in the Vatican Library, which, with its later additions, is the most valuable collection in the world of rare manuscripts in Oriental, Greek, Latin and ecclesiastical literature. Among its richest treasures is the Vatican manuscript of the Greek New Testament. There had been older pontifical libraries and collections of archives, first in the Lateran, afterwards in the Vatican palace, but Nicolas well deserves to be called the founder of the Vatican Library. He bought for it about 5,000 volumes of valuable classical and biblical manuscripts,—an enormous collection for those days,—and he had besides a private library, consisting chiefly of Latin classics. No other library of that age reached 1,000 volumes. Bessarion had only 600 volumes, Niccoli in Florence 800, Federigo of Urbino 772. The Vatican now contains 30,000 manuscripts and about 100,000 printed works. Free access was offered to its archives for the first time by Leo XIII.

The interest of the later popes of the Renaissance period was given to art and architecture rather than to letters. The Spaniard, Calixtus III., according to the doubtful report of Vespasiano, regarded the accumulation of books by his predecessor as a waste of the treasures of the Church of God, gave away several hundred volumes to the old Cardinal Isidore of Kiew and melted the silver ornaments, with which many manuscripts were bound, into coin for his proposed war against the Turks.

From the versatile diplomatist and man of letters, Pius II., the Humanists had a right to expect much, but they got little. This, however, was not because Eneas Sylvius had reason to fear rivalry. After being elected pope, he was carried about the city of Rome and to Tusculum, Alba, Ostia and other localities, tracing the old Roman roads and water conduits and examining other monuments. He was a poet, novelist, controversialist, historian, cosmographer. He had a heart for everything, from the boat-race and hunting-party to the wonders of great cities, Florence and Rome. His faculty of observation was as keen as his interests were broad. Nothing seems to have escaped his eye. Everything that was human had an interest for him, and his description of cities and men, as in his Frederick III and History of Bohemia, hold the reader’s attention by their clever judgments and their appreciation of characteristic and entertaining details.1010  Pius’ novels and odes breathe a low moral atmosphere, and his comedy, Chrisis, in the style of Terence, deals with women of ill-repute and is equal to the most lascivious of the Humanistic productions. His orations fill three volumes, and over 500 of his letters are still extant.

Under Paul II., the Humanists of the papal household had hard times, as the treatment of Platina shows. Sixtus IV., 1471–1484, has a place in the history of the Vatican library, which he transferred to four new and beautiful halls. He endowed it with a permanent fund, provided for Latin, Greek and Hebrew copyists, appointed as librarians two noted scholars, Bussi and Platina, and separated the books from the archives.1011  The light-hearted Leo X., a normal product of the Renaissance, honored Bembo and other literati, but combined the patronage of frivolous with serious literature. In a letter printed in the first edition of the first six books of the Annals of Tacitus, 1515,—discovered in the Westphalian convent of Corbay, 1508,—he wrote that "from his earliest years he had been accustomed to think that, if we except the knowledge and worship of God Himself, nothing more excellent or more useful had been given by the Creator to mankind than classical studies which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life, but are applicable and useful to every particular situation."

As a characteristic development of the Italian Renaissance must be mentioned the so-called academies of Florence, Rome and Naples. These institutions corresponded somewhat to our modern scientific associations. The most noted of them, the Platonic Academy of Florence, was founded by Cosimo de’ Medici, and embraced among its members the principal men of Florence and some strangers. It celebrated the birthday of Plato, November 13, with a banquet and a discussion of his writings. It revived and diffused the knowledge of the sublime truths of Platonism, and then gave way to other academies in Florence of a more literary and social character.1012  Its brightest fame was reached under Lorenzo.

The academy at Rome, which had Pomponius Laetus for its founder, did not confine itself to the study of Plato and philosophy, but had a more general literary aim. The meetings were devoted to classical discussions and the presentation of orations and plays. Although Laetus was half a pagan, Alexander VI. was represented at his funeral, 1498, by members of his court. Cardinal Sadoleto in the 16th century reckoned the Roman academy among the best teachers of his youth. The academy at Naples, developed by Jovianus Pontanus, devoted itself chiefly to matters of style. The Florentine academy has been well characterized by Professor Jebb as predominantly philosophic, the Roman as antiquarian and the Neapolitan as literary.1013

§ 65. Greek Teachers and Italian Humanists.

The revival of the study of Greek, which had been neglected for eight centuries or more, was due, not to an interest in the original text of the New Testament, but to a passion to become acquainted with Homer, Plato and other classic Greek authors. Not even had Gregory the Great any knowledge of the language. The erection of chairs for its study was recommended by the Council of Vienne, but the recommendation came to nothing. The revival of the study of the language was followed by the discovery of Greek manuscripts, the preparation of grammars and dictionaries and the translation of the Greek classics.

If we pass by such itinerating and uncertain teachers as the Calabrians, from whom Petrarca and Boccaccio took lessons, the list of modern teachers of Greek opens with Emanuel Chrysoloras, 1350–1415. He taught in Florence, Milan, Padua, Venice and Rome and, having conformed to the Latin Church, was taken as interpreter to the council at Constance, where he died. He wrote the first Greek grammar, printed in 1484. The first lexicon was prepared by a Carmelite monk, Giovanni Crastone of Piacenza, and appeared in 1497. Provided as we are with a full apparatus for the study of Greek, we have little conception of the difficulty of acquiring a book-knowledge of that language without the elementary helps of grammar and dictionary.

A powerful impetus was given to Greek studies by the Council of Ferrara, 1439, with its large delegation from the Eastern Church and its discussions over the doctrinal differences of Christendom. Its proceedings appeared in the two languages. Among those who attended the council and remained in the West for a period or for life, were Plethon, whose original name was Georgios Gemistos, 1355–1450, and Bessarion, 1403–1472. Cosimo de’ Medici heard Plethon often and was led by his lectures on Plato to conceive the idea of the Platonic Academy in Florence.

Bessarion, bishop of Nicaea, became a fixture in the Latin Church and was admitted to the college of cardinals by Eugenius IV. The objection made in conclave to his candidacy for the papal chair by the cardinal of Avignon was that he was a Greek and wore a beard. He died in Ravenna. Like all Greeks, Bessarion was a philosophical theologian, and took more interest in the metaphysical mystery of the eternal procession of the Spirit than the practical work of the Spirit upon the hearts of men. He vindicated Plato against the charges of immorality and alleged hostility to orthodox doctrines, pointed to that philosopher’s belief in the creation and the immortality of the soul, quoted the favorable opinions of him given by Basil, Augustine and other Fathers, and represented him as a bridge from heathenism to Christianity. Bessarion’s palace in Rome was a meeting-place of scholars. At an expense of 15,000 ducats or, as Platina says, 30,000, he collected a valuable library which he gave, in 1468, to the republic of Venice.1014

George of Trebizond, 1395–1484, came to Italy about 1420, conformed to the papal church, taught eloquence and the Aristotelian philosophy in Venice and Rome, and was appointed an apostolic scribe by Nicolas V. He was a conceited, disputatious and irascible man and quarrelled with Valla, Poggio, Theodore of Gaza, Bessarion and Perotti. The 50 scudi which Sixtus IV. gave him for the translation of Aristotle’s History of Animals, he contemptuously threw into the Tiber. His chief work was a comparison of Aristotle and Plato, to the advantage of the former.

Theodore of Gaza, George’s rival, was a native of Thessalonica, reached Italy 1430, taught in Ferrara and then passed into the service of Pope Nicolas. He was a zealous Platonist, and translated several Greek works into Latin and some of Cicero’s works into Greek and also wrote a Greek grammar.

John Argyropulos, an Aristotelian philosopher and translator, taught 15 years with great success at Florence, and then at Rome, where Reuchlin heard him lecture on Thucydides. His death, 1486, was brought about by excess in eating melons.

The leading Greeks, who emigrated to Italy after the fall of Constantinople, were Callistus, Constantine Lascaris and his son John. John Andronicus Callistus taught Greek at Bologna and at Rome, 1454–1469, and took part in the disputes between the Platonists and Aristotelians. Afterwards he removed to Florence and last to France, in the hope of better remuneration. He is said to have read all the Greek authors and imported six chests of manuscripts from Greece. Constantine Lascaris, who belonged to a family of high rank in the Eastern empire, gave instruction in the Greek language to Ippolita, the daughter of Francis Sforza, and later the wife of Alfonso, son of Ferdinand I. of Naples. He composed a Greek grammar for her, the first book printed in Greek, 1476. In 1470, he moved to Messina, where he established a flourishing school, and died near the close of the century. Among his pupils was Cardinal Bembo of Venice.

His son, John Lascaris, 1445–1535, was employed by Lorenzo de’ Medici to collect manuscripts in Greece, and superintended the printing of Greek books in Florence. He accompanied Charles VIII. to France. In 1513, he was called by Leo X. to Rome, and opened there a Greek and Latin school. In 1518, he returned to France and collected a library for Francis I. at Fontainebleau.

Among those who did distinguished service in collecting Greek manuscripts was Giovanni Aurispa, 1369–1459, who went to Constantinople in his youth to study Greek, and bought and sold with the shrewdness of an experienced bookseller. In 1423, he returned from Constantinople with 238 volumes, including Sophocles, Aeschylus, Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Lucian. Thus these treasures were saved from ruthless destruction by the Turks, before the catastrophe of 1453 overtook Constantinople.

The study of Greek suffered a serious decline in Italy after the close of the 15th century, but was taken up and carried to a more advanced stage by the Humanists north of the Alps.

The study of Hebrew, which had been preserved in Europe by Jewish scholars, notably in Spain, was also revived in Italy in the 15th century, but its revival met with opposition. When Lionardo Bruni heard that Poggio was learning the language, he wrote contending that the study was not only unprofitable but positively hurtful. Manetti, the biographer of Nicolas V., translated the Psalms out of Hebrew and made a collection of Hebrew manuscripts for that pontiff. The Camalduensian monk, Traversari, learned the language and, in 1475, began the printing of Hebrew books on Italian presses. Chairs for the study of Hebrew were founded at Bologna, 1488, and in Rome 1514.

Passing from the list of the Greek teachers to the Italian Humanists, it is possible to select for mention here only a few of the more prominent names, and with special reference to their attitude to the Church.

Lionardo Bruni, 1369–1444, a pupil of Chrysoloras, gives us an idea of the extraordinary sensation caused by the revival of the Greek language. He left all his other studies for the language of Plato and Demosthenes. He was papal secretary in Rome and for a time chancellor of Florence, and wrote letters, orations, histories, philosophical essays and translations from the Greek, among them Aristotle’s Ethics, Politics and Economies, and Plato’s Phaedo, Crito, Apology, Phaedrus and Gorgias and his Epistles and six of Plutarch’s Lives. Foreigners went to Florence expressly to see his face. He was a pious Catholic.1015

Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1459, was secretary of Martin V., then of Nicolas V., and lived mostly in Florence and Rome.1016  He was the most widely known Humanist of his day and had an unbounded passion for classical antiquity and for literary controversy. He excelled chiefly in Latin, but knew also Greek and a little Hebrew. He was an enthusiastic book-hunter. He went to Constance as papal secretary and, besides discovering a complete copy of Quintilian’s Institutes, made search in the neighboring Benedictine abbeys of Reichenau and Weingarten for old manuscripts. In Cluny and other French convents he discovered new orations of Cicero. He also visited "barbarous England." Although in the service of the curia for nearly 50 years, Poggio detested and ridiculed the monks and undermined respect for the church which supported him. In his Dialogue against Hypocrisy, he gathered a number of scandalous stories of the tricks and frauds practised by monks in the name of religion. His bold description of the martyrdom of the heretic Jerome of Prag has already been cited. When Felix was elected, Poggio exhausted the dictionary for abusive terms and called the anti-pope another Cerberus, a golden calf, a roaring lion, a high-priest of malignity; and he did equally well for the Council of Basel, which had elected Felix. Poggio’s self-esteem and quick temper involved him in endless quarrels, and invectives have never had keener edge than those which passed between him and his contestants. To his acrid tongue were added loose habits. He lived with a concubine, who bore him 14 children, and, when reproached for it, he frivolously replied that he only imitated the common habit of the clergy. At the age of 54, he abandoned her and married a Florentine maiden of 18, by whom he had 4 children. His Facetiae, or Jest-Book, a collection of obscene stories, acquired immense popularity.

The general of the Camalduensian order, Ambrogio Traversari, 1386–1439, combined ascetic piety with interest in heathen literature. He collected 238 manuscripts in Venice and translated from the Greek Fathers. He was, perhaps, the first Italian monk from the time of Jerome to his own day who studied Hebrew.

Carlo Marsuppini, of Arezzo, hence called Carlo Aretino, belonged to the same circle, but was an open heathen, who died without confession and sacrament. He was nevertheless highly esteemed as a teacher and as chancellor of Florence, and honorably buried in the church of S. Croce, 1463, where a monument was erected to his memory.

Francesco Filelfo, 1398–1481, was one of the first Latin and Greek scholars, and much admired and much hated by his contemporaries. He visited Greece, returned to Italy with a rich supply of manuscripts, and was professor of eloquence and Greek in the University of Florence. He combined the worst and best features of the Renaissance. He was conceited, mean, selfish, avaricious. He thought himself equal if not superior to Virgil and Cicero. In malignity and indecency of satire and invective be rivalled Poggio. His poisonous tongue got him into scandalous literary feuds with Niccolo, Poggio, members of the Medici family and others. He was banished from Florence, but, recalled in his old days by Lorenzo, he died a few weeks after his return, aged 83. He was always begging or levying contributions on princes for his poetry, and he kept several servants and six horses. His 3 wives bore him 24 children. He was ungrateful to his benefactors and treacherous to his friends.1017

Marsilio Ficino, 1433–1499, one of the circle who made the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent famous, was an ordained priest, rector of two churches and canon of the cathedral of Florence. He eloquently preached the Platonic gospel to his "brethren in Plato," and translated the Orphic hymns, the Hermes Trismegistos, and some works of Plato and Plotinus,—a colossal task for that age. He believed that the divine Plotinus had first revealed the theology of the divine Plato and "the mysteries of the ancients," and that these were consistent with Christianity. Yet he was unable to find in Plato’s writings the mystery of the Trinity. He wrote a defence of the Christian religion, which he regarded as the only true religion, and a work on the immortality of the soul, which he proved with 15 arguments as against the Aristotelians. He was small and sickly, and kept poor by dishonest servants and avaricious relations.

Politian, to his edition of Justinian’s Pandects, added translations of Epictetus, Hippocrates, Galen and other authors, and published among lecture-courses those on Ovid, Suetonius, Pliny and Quintilian. His lecture-room extended its influence to England and Germany, and Grocyn, Linacre and Reuchlin were among his hearers.

Three distinguished Italian Humanists whose lives overlap the first period of the Reformation were cardinals, Pietro Bembo, 1470–1547, Giacopo Sadoleto, 1477–1547, and Aleander, 1480–1542. All were masters of an elegant Latin style. For 22 years Bembo lived in concubinage, and had three children. Cardinal Sadoleto is best known for his polite and astute letter calling upon the Genevans to abandon the Reformation, to which Calvin replied.1018

Not without purpose have the two names, Laurentius Valla, 1406–1457, and Pico della Mirandola, 1463–1494, been reserved for the last. These men are to be regarded as having, among the Humanists of the 15th century, the most points of contact with our modern thought,—the one the representative of critical scholarship, the other of broad human sympathies coupled with a warm piety.

Laurentius Valla, the only Humanist of distinction born in Rome, taught at Pavia, was secretary to the king of Naples, and at last served at the court of Nicolas V.1019  He held several benefices and was buried in the Lateran, but was a sceptic and an indirect advocate of Epicurean morality. He combined classical with theological erudition and attained an influence almost equal to that enjoyed by Erasmus several generations later. He was a born critic, and is one of the earliest pioneers of the right of private judgment. He broke loose from the bondage of scholastic tradition and an infallible Church authority, so that in this respect Bellarmin called him a forerunner of Luther. Luther, with an imperfect knowledge of Valla’s works, esteemed him highly, declaring that in many centuries neither Italy nor the universal Church could produce another like him.1020  He narrowly escaped the Inquisition. He denied to the monks the monopoly of being "the religious," and attacked their threefold vow. In his Annotations to the New Testament, published by Erasmus, 1505, he ventured to correct Jerome’s Vulgate. He doubted the genuineness of the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite and rejected as a forgery Christ’s letter to King Abgarus which Eusebius had accepted as genuine. When he attacked the Apostolic origin of the Apostles’ Creed and, about 1440, exposed the Donation of Constantine as a fiction, he was calling in question the firm belief of centuries. In pronouncing the latter "contradictory, impossible, stupid, barbarous and ridiculous,"1021 he was wrenching a weapon, long used, out of the hand of the hierarchy. His attack was based on the ground of authentic history, inherent improbability and the mediaeval character of the language. Not satisfied with refuting its genuineness, Valla made it an occasion of an assault upon the whole temporal power of the papacy. He thus struck at the very bulwarks of the mediaeval theocracy. In boldness and violence Valla equalled the anti-papal writings of Luther. He went, indeed, not so far as to deny the spiritual power and divine institution of the papacy, but he charged the bishop of Rome with having turned Peter into Judas and having accepted the devil’s offer of the kingdoms of this world. He made him responsible for the political divisions and miseries of Italy, for rebellions and civil wars, herein anticipating Machiavelli. He maintained that the princes had a right to deprive the pope of his temporal possessions, which he had long before forfeited by their abuse. The purity of Valla’s motives are exposed to suspicion. At the time he wrote the tract he was in the service of Alfonso, who was engaged in a controversy with Eugenius IV.

Unfortunately, Valla’s ethical principles and conduct were no recommendation to his theology. His controversy with Poggio abounds in scandalous personalities. In the course of it, Valla was charged with seduction and pederasty.1022  His Ciceronian Dialogues on Lust, written perhaps 1431, are an indirect attack upon Christian morality. Valla defended the Platonic community of wives. What nature demands is good and laudable, and the voice of nature is the voice of God. When he was charged by Poggio with having seduced his brother-in-law’s maid, he admitted the charge without shame.

Pico della Mirandola, the most precocious genius that had arisen since Duns Scotus, was cut down when he was scarcely 30 years of age. The Schoolman was far beyond him in dialectic subtlety, but was far inferior to him in independence of thought and, in this quality, Pico anticipated the coming age. He studied canon law, theology, philosophy and the humanities in Ferrara and learned also Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic.1023  In his twenty-third year, he went to Rome and published 900 theses on miscellaneous topics, in which he anticipated some of the Protestant views; for example, that no image or cross should be adored and that the words "This is my body" must be understood symbolically,—significative,—not materially. He also maintained that the science of magic and the Cabbala confirm the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. These opinions aroused suspicion, and 13 of his theses were condemned by Innocent VIII. as heretical; but, as he submitted his judgment to the Church, he was acquitted of heresy, and Alexander VI. cleared him of all charges.

To his erudition, Pico added sincere faith and ascetic tendencies. In the last years of his short life, he devoted himself to the study of the Bible with the purpose of preaching Christ throughout the world. He was an admirer of Savonarola, who blamed him for not becoming a full monk and thought he went to purgatory. Of all Humanists he had the loftiest conception of man’s dignity and destiny. In his De dignitate hominis, he maintained that God placed man in the midst of the world that he might the more easily study all that therein is, and endowed him with freewill, by which he might degenerate into the condition of the beast or rise to a godlike existence. He found the highest truth in the Christian religion. He is the author of the famous sentence: Philosophia veritatem quaerit, theologia invenit, religio possidet,—philosophy seeks the truth, theology finds it, religion has it.

Mirandola had a decided influence on John Reuchlin, who saw him in 1490 and was persuaded by him of the immense wisdom hid in the Cabbala. He also was greatly admired by Zwingli. He was the only one, says Burckhardt, "who, in a decided voice, fought for science and the truth of all the ages against the one-sided emphasis of classic antiquity. In him it is possible to see what a noble change Italian philosophy would have undergone, if the counter-Reformation had not come in and put an end to the whole higher intellectual movement."1024  Giordano Bruno, one of the last representatives of the philosophical Renaissance, was condemned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition and burnt on the Campo de’ Fiori in 1600. To the great annoyance of Pope Leo XIII., his admirers erected a statue to his memory on the same spot in 1889.

§ 66. The Artists.

Haec est Italia diis sacra.—Pliny.

Italian Humanism reproduced the past. Italian art was original. The creative productions of Italy in architecture, sculpture and painting continue to render it the world’s chief centre of artistic study and delight. Among Italian authors, Dante alone has a place at the side of Michelangelo, Raphael and Lionardo da Vinci. The cultivation of art began in the age of Dante with Cimabue and Giotto, but when Italian Humanism was declining Italian painting and sculpture were celebrating their highest triumphs. Such a combination and succession of men of genius in the fine arts as Italy produced, in a period extending over three centuries, has nowhere else been known. They divided their triumphs between Florence and Rome, but imparted their magic touch to many other Italian cities, including Venice, which had remained cold to the literary movement. Here again Rome drew upon Florence for painters such as Giotto and Fra Angelico, and for sculptors such as Ghiberti, Donatello, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo.

While the Italy of the 15th century—or the quattrocento, as the Italians call it—was giving expression to her own artistic conceptions in color and marble and churchly dome, masterpieces of ancient sculpture, restless, in the graves where for centuries they had had rude sepulture, came forth to excite the admiring astonishment of a new generation. What the age of Nicolas V. was for the discovery of manuscripts, the age of Julius II. was for the discovery of classic Greek statuary. The extensive villa of the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli, which extended over several miles and embraced a theatre, lyceum, temple, basilica, library, and race-course, alone furnished immense treasures of art. Others were found in the bed of the Tiber or brought from Greece or taken from the Roman baths, where their worth had not been discerned. In Alexander VI.’s pontificate the Apollo Belvedere was found; under Julius II. the torso of Hercules, the Laocoön group1025 and the Vatican Venus. The Greek ideals of human beauty were again revealed and kindled an enthusiasm for similar achievements.

Petrarca’s collections were repeated. Paul II. deposited his rich store of antiquities in his palace of San Marco. In Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici was active in securing pieces of ancient art. The museum on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, where Nicolas V. seems to have restored the entire palace of the senate, dates from 1471, one of its earliest treasures being the statue of Marcus Aurelius. The Vatican museum was the creation of Julius II. To these museums and the museums in Florence were added the galleries of private collectors.

In architecture, the Renaissance artists never adopted the stern Gothic of the North. In 1452, Leon Battista Alberti showed to Nicolas V. a copy of his De re aedificatoria, a work on architecture, based upon his studies of the Roman monuments. Nicolas opened the line of great builders in Rome and his plans were on a splendid scale.

The art of the Renaissance blends the glorification of mediaeval Catholicism with the charms of classical paganism, the history of the Bible with the mythology of Greece and Rome. The earlier painters of the 14th and 15th centuries were more simple, chaste and devout than those of the 16th, who reached a higher distinction as artists. The Catholic type of piety is shown in the preponderance of the pictures of the Madonna holding the infant Saviour in her arms or on her lap and in the portraiture of St. Sebastian and other saints. Heavenly beauty and earthly sensuality meet side by side, and the latter often draws attention away from the former. The same illustrious painters, says Hawthorne, in the Marble Faun, "seem to take up one task or the other—the disrobed woman whom they called Venus, or the type of highest and tenderest womanhood in the mother of their Saviour—with equal readiness, but to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success."  One moment the painter represented Bacchus wedding Ariadne and another depicted Mary on the hill of Calvary. Michelangelo now furnished the Pietà for St. Peter’s, now designed the Rape of Ganymede for Vittoria Colonna and the statue of the drunken Bacchus for the Roman Jacopo Galli. Titian’s Magdalen in the Pitti gallery, Florence, exhibits in one person the voluptuous woman with exposed breasts and flowing locks and the penitent saint looking up to heaven. Of Sandro Botticelli, Vasari said that "in many homes he painted of naked women a plenty."  If, however, the Christian religion furnished only to a single writer, Dante, the subject of his poem, it furnished to all the painters and sculptors many subjects from both Testaments and also from Church history, for the highest productions of their genius.

In looking through the long list of distinguished sculptors, painters and architects who illuminated their native Italy in the Renaissance period, one is struck with the high age which many of them reached and, at the same time, with the brief period in which some of them acquired undying fame. Michelangelo lived to be 89, while Correggio died before he was 44. Titian, had he lived one year longer, would have rounded out a full century, while death took the brush out of Raphael’s hand before he was 37, a marvellous example of production in a short period, to be compared with Mozart in the department of music and Blaise Pascal in letters. And again, several of the great artists are remarkable examples of an extraordinary combination of talents. Lionardo da Vinci and Michelangelo excelled alike as architects, sculptors, painters and poets. Lionardo was, besides being these, a chemist, engineer, musician, merchant and profound thinker, yea, "the precocious originator of all modern wonders and ideas, a subtle and universal genius, an isolated and insatiate investigator," and is not unjustly called, on his monument at Milan, "the restorer of the arts and sciences."1026  His mural picture of the Last Supper in Milan, best known by the engraving of Raphael Morghen, in spite of its defaced condition, is a marvellous reproduction of one of the sublimest events, adapted to the monks seated around their refectory table (instead of the reclining posture on couches), and every head a study. As for Michelangelo, he has been classed by Taine with Dante, Shakespeare and Beethoven among the four great intellects in the world of art and literature.

Distinguishing in the years between 1300–1550 two periods, the earlier Renaissance to 1470 and the high Renaissance, from that date forward, we find that Italian art had its first centre in Florence, and its most glorious exhibition under Julius II. and Leo X. in Rome.1027  The earlier period began with Cimabue, who died about 1302, and Giotto, 1276–1336, the friend of Dante. According to the story, Cimabue found Giotto, then ten years old, drawing sheep on a stone with a piece of charcoal and, with his father’s consent, took the lad to Florence. These two artists employed their genius in the decoration of the cathedral erected to the memory of St. Francis in Assisi. The visitor to S. Croce and other sacred places in Florence looks upon the frescos of Giotto. His Dante, like Guido Reni’s Beatrice Cenci, once seen can never be forgotten. Symonds has remarked that it may be said, without exaggeration, that Giotto and his scholars, within the space of little more than half a century, painted upon the walls of the churches and the public places of Italy every great conception of the Middle Ages.1028  Fra Angelico da Fiesole, 1387–1455, is the most religious of the painters of this period, and his portraiture of saints and angels is so pure as to suggest no other impression than saintliness.

The mind is almost stunned by the combination of brilliant artistic achievement, of which the pontificate of Julius II. may be taken as the centre. There flourished in that age Perugino, 1446–1524,—Raphael’s teacher,—Lionardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, Raphael, 1483–1520, Michelangelo, 1475–1564, Correggio, 1493–1534, Andrea del Sarto, 1487–1531, and Titian, 1477–1576, all Italians.

Of Raphael, his German biographer has said his career is comprised in four words, "he lived, he loved, he worked, he died young."1029  He was an attractive and amiable character, free from envy and jealousy, modest, magnanimous, patient of criticism, as anxious to learn as to teach, always ready to assist poor artists. Michelangelo and he labored in close proximity in the Vatican, Michelangelo in the Sistine chapel, Raphael in the stanze and loggie. Their pupils quarrelled among themselves, each depreciating the rival of his master; but the masters rose above the jealousy of small minds. They form a noble pair, like Schiller and Goethe among poets. Raphael seemed almost to have descended from a higher world. Vasari says that he combined so many rare gifts that he might be called a mortal god rather than a simple man. The portraits, which present him as an infant, youth and man, are as characteristic and impressive as Giotto’s Dante and Guido Reni’s Beatrice Cenci.

Like Goethe, Raphael was singularly favored by fortune and was free from the ordinary trials of artists—poverty, humiliation and neglect. He held the appointment of papal chamberlain and had the choice between a cardinal’s hat and marriage to a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena, with a dowry of three thousand gold crowns. But he put off the marriage from year to year, and preferred the dangerous freedom of single life. His contemporary and admirer, Vasari, says, when Raphael felt death approaching, he "as a good Christian dismissed his mistress from his house, making a decent provision for her support, and then made his last confession."

The painter’s best works are devoted to religious characters and events. On a visit to Florence after the burning of Savonarola, he learned from his friend Fra Bartolomeo to esteem the moral reformer and gave him, as well as Dante, a place among the great teachers of the Church in his fresco of the Theologia in the Vatican. His Madonnas represent the perfection of human loveliness and purity. In the Madonna di San Sisto at Dresden, so called because Sixtus IV. is introduced into the picture, the eye is divided between the sad yet half-jubilant face of the Virgin Mother, the contemplative gaze of the cherubs and the pensive and sympathetic expression of the divine child.

Grimm says, Raphael’s Madonnas are not Italian faces but women who are lifted above national characteristics. The Madonnas of da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Murillo and Rubens contain the features of the nationality to which these painters belonged. Raphael alone has been able to give us feminine beauty which belongs to the European type as such.1030

The last, the greatest, and the purest of Raphael’s works is the Transfiguration in the Vatican. While engaged on it, he died, on Good Friday, his birthday. It was suspended over his coffin and carried to the church of the Pantheon, where his remains repose in his chosen spot near those of his betrothed bride, Maria di Bibbiena. In that picture we behold the divinest figure that ever appeared on earth, soaring high in the air, in garments of transparent light, and with arms outspread, adored by Moses on the right hand and by Elijah on the left, who represent the Old Covenant of law and promise. The three favorite disciples are lying on the ground, unable to face the dazzling splendor from heaven. Beneath this celestial scene we see, in striking contrast, the epileptic boy with rolling eyes, distorted features, and spasmodic limbs, held by his agonized father and supported by his sister; while the mother imploringly appeals to the nine disciples who, in their helplessness, twitted by scribes, point up to the mountain where Jesus had gone. In connecting the two scenes, the painter followed the narrative of the Gospels, Matt. xvii. 1–14; Mark ix. 2–14; Luke ix. 28–37. The connection is being continually repeated in Christian experience. Descending from the Mount of Transfiguration, we are confronted with the misery of earth and, helpless in human strength, we look to heaven as the only source of help.

Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was 10 years older than Raphael, and survived him 44 years. He drew the inspiration for his sculptures and pictures from the Old Testament, from Dante and from Savonarola. He praised Dante in two sublime sonnets and heard Savonarola’s thrilling sermons against wickedness and vice, and witnessed his martyrdom. Vasari and Condivi both bear witness to his spotless morality. He deplored the corruptions of the papal court.

For Rome still slays and sells Christ at the court,

Where paths are closed to virtue’s fair increase.1031

The artist’s works have colossal proportions, and refuse to be judged by ordinary rules. They are divided between painting, as the frescos in the Sistine chapel of St. Peter’s, architecture as in St. Peter’s dome, and works of statuary, as Moses in Rome and David in Florence. His Pietà in St. Peter’s, a marble group representing the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Saviour in her arms, raised him suddenly to the rank of the first sculptor of Italy.1032  His Last Judgment, on the altar wall of the Sistine chapel, represents the dominant conception of the Middle Ages of Christ as an angry judge, and is as Dantesque as Dante’s Inferno itself.1033  The artist’s last work in marble was the unfinished Pietà, in the cathedral of Florence; his last design a picture of the crucifixion. In his last poems, he took farewell of the fleeting pleasures of life, turned to God as the only reality and found in the crucified Saviour his only comfort. This is the core of the evangelical doctrine of justification rightly understood.

The day of Michelangelo’s death was the day of Galileo Galilei’s birth in Florence. The golden age of art had passed: the age of science was at hand.

Among the greater churches of Italy,—the cathedrals of Milan, Venice, Pisa, Siena, Florence and Rome,—St. Peter’s stands pre-eminent in dimensions, treasures of art and imposing ecclesiastical associations.1034  This central cathedral of Christendom was not dedicated till 1626 by Urban VIII. Its reconstruction was planned on a colossal scale by Nicolas V., but little was done till Julius II. took up the work. Among the architects who gave to the building their thought, Bramante and Michelangelo did most. On April 18, 1506, Julius II. laid the first stone according to Bramante’s design. A mass being said by Cardinal Soderini, the old pope descended by a ladder into the trench which had been dug at the spot where the statue of St. Veronica now stands. There was much fear, says Paris de Grassis, that the ground would fall in and the pope, before consecrating the foundations, cried out to those above not to come too near the edge. Under Leo X., Raphael was appointed sole architect, and was about to deviate from Bramante’s plan, when death stayed his hand. Michelangelo, taking up the task in 1535, gave to the structure its crowning triumph in the dome, the noblest in Western Europe, and the rival of the dome of St. Sophia.

That vast and wondrous dome,

To which Diana’s marvel was a cell, —

Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.1035

§ 67. The Revival of Paganism.

The revival of letters and the cultivation of art brought no purification of morals to Italy nor relief from religious formalism. The great modern historians of the period,—Voigt, Burckhardt, Gregorovius, Pastor, Creighton and Symonds,—agree in depicting the decline of religion and the degeneracy of morals in dark colors, although Pastor endeavors to rescue the Church from the charge of total neglect of its duty and to clear the mediaeval hierarchy and theology from the charge of being responsible for the semi-paganism of the Renaissance.

The mediaeval theology had put the priesthood in the place of the individual conscience. Far from possessing any passion to rescue Italy from a religious formalism which involved the seeds of stagnation of thought and moral disintegration, the priesthood was corrupt at heart and corrupt in practice in the highest seats of Christendom.1036  Finding the clerical mind of Italy insincere and the moral condition of the Church corrupt, Humanism not only made no serious effort to amend this deplorable state but, on the contrary, it contributed to the further decadence of morals by a revival of paganism, now Epicurean, now Stoical, attested both in the lives and the writings of many of its chief leaders. Gregorovius has felt justified in pronouncing the terrible sentence that the sole end of the Italian Renaissance was paganism.1037

The worship of classical forms led to the adoption of classical ideas. There were not wanting Humanists and artists who combined culture with Christian faith, and devoted their genius to the cause of truth and virtue. Traversari strictly observed the rules of his monastic order; Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Vittorino da Feltre, Ficino, Sadoleto, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Michelangelo and others were devout Christian believers. Traversari at first hesitated to translate classic authors and, when he did, justified himself on the ground that the more the Pagan writers were understood, the more would the excellence of the Christian system be made manifest. But Poggio, Filelfo, Valla and the majority of the other writers of the Renaissance period, such as Ariosto, Aretino, Machiavelli, were indifferent to religion, or despised it in the form they saw it manifested. Culture was substituted for Christianity, the worship of art and eloquence for reverence for truth and holiness. The Humanists sacrificed in secret and openly to the gods of Greece and Rome rather than to the God of the Bible. Yet, they were not independent enough to run the risk of an open rupture with orthodoxy, which would have subjected them to the Inquisition and death at the stake.1038  Yea, those who were most flagrant in their attacks upon the ecclesiastics of their time often professed repentance for their writings in their last days, as Boccaccio and Bandello, and applied for extreme unction before death. So it was with Machiavelli, who died with the consolations of the Church which he undermined with his pen, with the half-Pagan Pomponius Laetus of Rome and the infamous Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini, who joined to his patronage of culture the commission of every crime.

Dangerous as it may be to pronounce a final judgment upon the moral purity of a generation, even though, as in the case of the 15th century, it reveals itself clearly in its literature and in the lives of the upper classes, literary men, popes and princes, nevertheless this it is forced upon us to do. The Renaissance in Italy produced no Thomas à Kempis. No devout mystics show signs of a reform movement in her convents and among her clergy, though, it is true, there were earnest preachers who cried out for moral reform, as voices crying in the wilderness. Nor are we unmindful of the ethical disintegration of the Church and society at other periods and in other countries, as in France under Louis XIV., when we call attention to the failure of religion in the country of the popes and at a time of great literary and artistic activity to bear fruits in righteousness of life.

The Humanists were the natural enemies of the monks. For this they cannot be blamed. As a class, the monks hated learning, boasted of superior piety, made a display of their proud humility and yet were constantly quarrelling with each other. Boccaccio and the novelists would not have selected monks and nuns as heroes and heroines of their obscene tales if monastic life had not been in a degenerate state. Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, Bandello, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Aretino and Erasmus and the writers of the Epistolae virorum obscurorum chastised with caustic irony and satire the hypocrisy and vices of the monastic class, or turned its members into a butt of ridicule. To the charges of unchastity and general hypocrisy was added the imposition of false miracles upon the ignorant and credulous. It was common rumor that the nuns were the property of the monks.1039  The literature of the 15th century teems with such charges, and Savonarola was never more intense than when he attacked the clergy for their faithlessness and sins. Machiavelli openly declared "we Italians are of all most irreligious and corrupt," and he adds, "we are so because the representatives of the Church have shown us the worst example."  Pastor has suggested that Humanists, who were themselves leading corrupt lives, were ill-fitted to sit in judgment upon the priesthood. This in a sense is true, and their representations, taken alone, would do no more than create an unfavorable presumption, but their statements are confirmed by the scandals of the papal court and the social conditions in Rome; and Rome was not worse than Venice, Florence and other Italian towns. The same distinguished historian seeks to parry the attacks of Humanistic writers and to offset the lives of the hierarchy by a long list of 89 saints of the calendar who lived 1400–1520.1040  The number is imposing, but outside of Bernardino da Siena, Fra Angelico, Jacopo della Marca and John of Capistrano, few of the names are known to general history, and the last two showed traits which the common judgment of mankind is not inclined to regard as saintly. Pastor also adduces the wills of the dying, in which provision was made for ecclesiastical objects, but these may indicate superstitious fear as well as intelligent piety. After all is said, it remains true that the responsibility and the guilt were with the clergy, who were rightly made the targets of the wits, satirists and philosophers of the time.

But while the Humanists were condemning the clerical class, many, yea, the most of them, lived in flagrant violation of the moral code themselves and inclined to scepticism or outright paganism. In their veneration of antiquity, they made the system of Plato of equal authority with the Christian system, or placed its authority above the Christian scheme. They advocated a return to the dictates of nature, which meant the impulses of the natural and sensuous man. The watchword, sequere naturam, "follow nature," was launched as a philosophical principle. The hard-fought controversy which raged over the relative merits of the two Greek thinkers, Aristotle and Plato, was opened by Plethon, who accused Aristotle of atheism. The battle was continued for many years, calling forth from contestants the bitterest personal assaults. In defending Plato, Ficino set the philosopher so high as to obscure the superior claims of the Christian religion, and it was seriously proposed to combine with the Scripture readings of the liturgy excerpts from Plato’s writings.1041

The immortality of the soul was formally questioned by Pietro Pomponazzi, a popular teacher of the Aristotelian philosophy in Padua and Bologna. His tract, published in 1516, was burnt by the Franciscans at Venice, but was saved from a like fate in Rome and Florence by the intervention of Bembo and Julius de’ Medici. So widespread was the philosophy of materialism that the Fifth Lateran three years before, Dec. 19, 1513, deemed it necessary to reaffirm the doctrine of the soul’s immortality and to instruct professors at the universities to answer the arguments of the materialists. In the age of Julius II. and Leo X., scepticism reigned universally in Rome, and the priests laughed among themselves over their religious functions as the augurs once did in the ancient city.1042

The chief indictment against Humanism is, that it lacked a serious moral sense, which is an essential element of the Christian system. Nor did it at any time show a purpose of morally redeeming itself or seek after a regenerative code of ethics. It declined into an intellectual and aesthetic luxury, a habit of self-indulgence for the few, with no provision for the betterment of society at large and apparently no concern for such betterment. The Humanists were addicted to arrogance, vanity, and lacked principle and manly dignity. They were full of envy and jealousy, engaged in disgraceful personal quarrels among themselves and stooped to sycophancy in the presence of the rich and powerful. Politian, Filelfo and Valla agreed in begging for presents and places in terms of abject flattery. While they poured contempt upon the functionaries of religion, they failed to imitate the self-denying virtues which monasticism enjoined and that regard for the rights of others which Christian teaching commands. Under the influence of the Renaissance was developed that delusive principle, called honor, which has played such an extensive rôle in parts of Europe and under which a polished culture may conceal the most refined selfishness.1043

No pugilistic encounter could be more brutal than the literary feuds between distinguished men of letters. Poggio and Filelfo fought with poisoned daggers. To sully these pages, says Symonds, "with Poggio’s rank abuse would be impossible."  Poggio, not content with thrusts at Filelfo’s literary abilities, accused him of the worst vices, and poured out calumnies on Filelfo’s wife and mother. In Poggio’s contest with George of Trebizond, the two athletes boxed each other’s ears and tore one another’s hair. George had accused Poggio of taking credit for translations of Xenophon and Diodorus which did not belong to him. Between Valla and Fazio eight books of invectives were exchanged. Bezold is forced to say that such feuds revealed perhaps more than the cynicism of the Italian poetry the complete moral decay.1044

To the close of the period, the Renaissance literature abounds in offences against morality and decency. Poggio was already 70 years of age when he published his filthy Facetiae, Jest-book, which appeared 26 times in print before 1500 and in 3 Italian translations. Of Poggio’s works, Burckhardt says, "They contain dirt enough to create a prejudice against the whole class of Humanists."  Filelfo’s epigrams, De jocis et seriis, are declared by his biographer, Rosmini, to contain "horrible obscenities and expressions from the streets and the brothels."  Beccadelli and Aretino openly preached the emancipation of the flesh, and were not ashamed to embellish and glorify licentiousness in brilliant verses, for which they received the homage of princes and prelates. Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus was furiously attacked by the monks in the pulpit, but applauded by the Humanists. Cosimo allowed the indecent work to be dedicated to himself, and the author was crowned by the Emperor Sigismund in Siena, 1433, and died old and popular at Naples, 1471. The critics of his obscenities, Beccadelli pointed to the ancient writers. Nicolas was loaned a copy of his notorious production, kept it for nine days and then returned the work without condemning it. Pietro Aretino, d. 1557, the most obscene of the Italian poets, was called il divino Aretino, honored by Charles V., Francis I. and Clement VII., and even dared to aspire to a cardinal’s hat, but found a miserable end. Bandello, d. 1562, in his Facetiae, paints society in dissolution. Moral badness taints every one’s lips. Debauchery in convents is depicted as though it were a common occurrence. And he was a bishop!1045

Machiavelli, the Florentine politician and historian, a worshipper of ability and power, and admirer of Caesar Borgia, built upon the basis of the Renaissance a political system of absolute egotism; yet he demands of the prince that he shall guard the appearance of five virtues to deceive the ignorant.1046  Under the cover of Stoicism, many Humanists indulged in a refined Epicureanism.

The writers of novels and plays not only portrayed social and domestic immorality without a blush, but purposely depicted it in a dress that would call forth merriment and laughter. Tragedy was never reached by the Renaissance writers. The kernel of this group of works was the faithlessness of married women, for the unmarried were kept under such close supervision that they were with difficulty reached. The skill is enlarged upon with which the paramour works out his plans and the outwitted husband is turned into an object of ridicule. Here we are introduced to courtesans and taken to brothels.1047

In the Mandragola by Machiavelli, Callimaco, who has been in Paris, returns to Florence determined to make Lucrezia, of whose charms he has heard, his mistress. Assuming the roll of a physician, he persuades her husband, who is anxious for an heir, to allow him to use a potion of mandragora, which will relieve his wife of sterility and at the same time kill the paramour. Working upon the husband’s mind through the mother-in-law and Lucrezia’s confessor, who consents to the plot for a bribe, he secures his end. Vice and adultery are glorified. And this was one of the plays on which Leo X. looked with pleasure!  In 1513, in face of the age-long prohibition of the theatre by the Church, this pontiff opened the playhouse on the Capitol. A few years later he witnessed the performance of Ariosto’s comedy the Suppositi. The scenery had been painted by Raphael. The spectators numbered 2,000, Leo looking on from a box with an eye-glass in his hand. The plot centres around a girl’s seduction by her father’s servant. One of the first of the cardinals to open his palace to theatrical representations was Raffaele Riario.

Intellectual freedom in Italy assumed the form of unrestrained indulgence of the sensual nature. In condemning the virginity extolled by the Church, Beccadelli pronounced it a sin against nature. Nature is good, and he urged men to break down the law by mixing with nuns.1048  The hetaerae were of greater service to mankind than monastic recluses. Illegitimacy, as has already been said, was no bar to high position in the state or the Church. Aeneas Sylvius declared that most of the rulers in Italy had been born out of wedlock,1049  and when, as pope, he arrived in Ferrara, 1459, he was met by eight princes, not a single one of them the child of legitimate marriage. The appearance of the Gallic disease in Italy at the close of the 15th century may have made men cautious; the rumor went that Julius II., who did not cross his legs at public service on a certain festival, was one of its victims.1050  Aretino wrote that the times were so debauched that cousins and kinsfolk of both sexes, brothers and sisters, mingled together without number and without a shadow of conscientious scruple.1051

What else could be expected than the poisoning of all grades of society when, at the central court of Christendom, the fountain was so corrupt. The revels in the Vatican under Alexander VI. and the levity of the court of Leo X. furnished a spectacle which the most virtuous principles could scarcely be expected to resist. Did not a harlequin monk on one occasion furnish the mirth at Leo’s table by his extraordinary voracity in swallowing a pigeon whole, and consuming forty eggs and twenty capons in succession!  Innocent VIII.’s son was married to a daughter of the house of the Medici, and Alexander’s son was married into the royal family of France and his daughter Lucrezia into the scarcely less proud family of Este. Sixtus IV. taxed and thereby legalized houses of prostitution for the increase of the revenues of the curia. The 6,800 public prostitutes in Rome in 1490, if we accept Infessura’s figures, were an enormous number in proportion to the population. This Roman diarist says that scarcely a priest was to be found in Rome who did not keep a concubine "for the glory of God and the Christian religion."  All parts of Italy and Spain contributed to the number of courtesans. They lived in greater splendor in Rome than the hetaerae in Athens, and bore classical names, such as Diana, Lucrezia, Camilla, Giulia, Costanza, Imperia, Beatrice. They were accompanied on their promenades and walks to church by poets, counts and prelates, but usually concluded their gilded misery in hospitals after their beauty had faded away.1052

The almost nameless vice of the ancient world also found its way into Italy, and Humanists and sons of popes like the son of Paul III., Pierluigi Farnese, if not popes themselves, were charged with pederasty. In his 7th satire, Ariosto, d. 1533, went so far as to say it was the vice of almost all the Humanists. For being addicted to it, a Venetian ambassador lost his position, and the charge was brought against the Venetian annalist, Sanuto. Politian, Valla and Aretino and the academicians of Rome had the same accusation laid at their door. The worst cannot be told, so abhorrent to the prime instincts of humanity do the crimes against morality seem. No wonder that Symonds speaks of "an enervation of Italian society in worse than heathen vices."1053

To licentiousness were added luxury, gaming, the vendetta or the law of blood-revenge, and murder paid for by third parties. Life was cheap where revenge, a licentious end or the gain of power was a motive. Cardinals added benefice to benefice in order to secure the means of gratifying their luxurious tastes.1054  In the middle of the 16th century, Italy, says Burckhardt, was in a moral crisis, out of which the best men saw no escape. In the opinion of Symonds, who has written seven volumes on the Renaissance, it is "almost impossible to overestimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the 16th century. And Gregorovius adds that "the richest intellectual life blossomed in a swamp of vices."1055

Of open heresy and attacks upon the papal prerogatives, popes were intolerant enough, as was quickly proved, when Luther appeared and Savonarola preached, but not of open immorality and secret infidelity. In the hierarchical interest they maintained the laws of sacerdotal celibacy, but allowed them to be broken by prelates in their confidence and employ, and openly flaunted their own bastard children and concubines. And unfortunately, as has been said, not only did the Humanists, with some exceptions, fall in with the prevailing licentiousness: there even was nothing in their principles to prevent its practice. As a class, the artists were no better than the scholars and, if possible, even more lax in regard to sexual license. Such statements are made not in the spirit of bitterness toward the Church of the Middle Ages, but in deference to historic fact, which ought at once to furnish food for reflection upon the liability of an ecclesiastical organization to err and even to foster vice as well as superstition by its prelatical constitution and unscriptural canons, and also to afford a warning against the captivating but fallacious theory that literature and art, not permeated by the principles of the Christian faith, have the power to redeem themselves or purify society. They did not do it in the palmy days of Greece and Rome, nor did they accomplish any such end in Italy.

In comparing our present century with the period of the Renaissance, there is at least one ground for grateful acknowledgment.1056  The belief in astrology, due largely to the rise of astronomical science, has been renounced. Thomas Aquinas had decided that astrology was a legitimate art when it is used to forecast natural events, such as drought and rain, but when used to predict human actions and destiny it is a daemonic cult.1057  At an early period it came to be classed with heresy, and was made amenable to the Inquisition. In 1324, Cecco d’Ascoli, who had shown that the position of libra rendered the crucifixion of Christ inevitable, was obliged to abjure, and his astrolabe and other instruments were burnt, 1327, by the tribunal at Florence. In spite of Petrarca’s ridicule, the cult continued. The Chancellor D’Ailly gave it credit. Scarcely a pope or Italian prince or republic of the latter part of the Renaissance period who did not have his astrologer or yield to the delusion in a larger or smaller measure, as, for example, Sixtus IV., Julius II. and Leo X., as well as Paul III. at a period a little later. Julius II. delayed his coronation several weeks, to Nov. 26, 1503, the lucky day announced by the astrologer. Ludovico of Milan waited upon favorable signs in the heavens before taking an important step.1058

On the other hand, Savonarola condemned the belief, and was followed by Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus.1059  To the freedom of human action astrology opposed a fatalistic view of the world. This was felt at the time, and Matteo Villani said more than once that "no constellation is able to compel the free-will of man or thwart God’s decree."  Before the 15th century had come to a close, the cult was condemned to extinction in France, 1494, but in Germany, in spite of the spread of the Copernican system, it continued to have its followers for more than a century. The great Catholic leader in the Thirty Years’ War, Wallenstein, continued, in the face of reverses, to follow the supposed indications of the heavenly bodies, and Schiller puts into his mouth the words:

The stars he not; what’s happened

Has turned out against the course of star and fate;

Art does not play us false. The false heart

’Tis, which drags falsehood into the truth-telling heavens.

The revolt against the ascendancy of mediaeval priestcraft and scholastic dialectic was a great and necessary movement demanded by the sane intents of mankind. The Italian Renaissance led the revolt. It gave liberty to the individual and so far its work was wholesome, but it was liberty not bound by proper restraints. It ran wild in an excess of indulgence, so that Machiavelli could say, "Italy is the corruption of the world."  When the restraint came, it came from the North as it had come centuries before, in the days of the Ottos, in the 10th century. When studies in Italy set aside the ideals of Christianity, when religion seemed to be in danger of expiring and social virtue of altogether giving way, then the voice was raised in Wittenberg which broke with monastic asceticism and scholasticism and, at the same time, asserted an individualism under the control of conscience and reverence for God.

§ 68. Humanism in Germany.

Humanistic studies were late in finding entrance into Germany. They were opposed not so much by priestly ignorance and prejudice, as was the case in Italy, as by the scholastic theology which reigned at the universities. German Humanism may be dated from the invention of the printing-press about 1450. Its flourishing period began at the close of the 15th century and lasted only till about 1520, when it was absorbed by the more popular and powerful religious movement, the Reformation, as Italian Humanism was superseded by the papal counter-Reformation. Marked features distinguished the new culture north of the Alps from the culture of the Italians. The university and school played a much more important part than in the South. The representatives of the new scholarship were teachers, even Erasmus, who taught in Cambridge, and was on intimate terms with the professors at Basel. During the progress of the movement new universities sprang up, from Basel to Rostock. Again, in Germany, there were no princely patrons of arts and learning to be compared in intelligence and munificence to the Renaissance popes and the Medici. Nor was the new culture here exclusive and aristocratic. It sought the general spread of intelligence, and was active in the development of primary and grammar schools. In fact, when the currents of the Italian Renaissance began to set toward the North, a strong, independent, intellectual current was pushing down from the flourishing schools conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life. In the Humanistic movement, the German people was far from being a slavish imitator. It received an impulse from the South, but made its own path. Had Italy been careful to take lessons from the pedagogy of the North, it is probable her people would to-day be advanced far beyond what they are in intelligence and letters.

In the North, Humanism entered into the service of religious progress. German scholars were less brilliant and elegant, but more serious in their purpose and more exact in their scholarship than their Italian predecessors and contemporaries. In the South, the ancient classics absorbed the attention of the literati. It was not so in the North. There was no consuming passion to render the classics into German as there had been in Italy. Nor did Italian literature, with its loose moral teachings, find imitators in the North. Boccaccio’s Decameron was first translated into German by the physician, Henry Stainhöwel, who died in 1482. North of the Alps, the attention was chiefly centred on the Old and New Testaments. Greek and Hebrew were studied, not with the purpose of ministering to a cult of antiquity, but to more perfectly reach the fountains of the Christian system. In this way, preparation was made for the constructive work of the Protestant Reformation.

And what was true of the scholarship of Germany was also true of its art. The painters, Albrecht Dürer, who was born and died at Nürnberg, 1471–1528, Lukas Kranach, 1472–1553, and for the most part Hans Holbein, 1497–1543, were free from the pagan element and contributed to the spread of the Reformation. Kranach lived in Wittenberg after 1504 and painted portraits of Luther, Melanchthon and other leaders of the German Reformation. Holbein gave illustrations for some of the new writings and painted portraits of Erasmus and Melanchthon. His Madonna, now at Darmstadt, has a German face and wears a crown on her head, while the child in her arms reflects his concern for the world in the sadness of his countenance.

If any one individual more than another may be designated as the connecting link between the learning of Italy and Germany, it is Aeneas Sylvius. By his residence at the court of Frederick III. and at Basel, as one of the secretaries of the council, he became a well-known character north of the Alps long before he was chosen pope. The mediation, however, was not effected by any single individual. The fame of the Renaissance was carried over the pathways of trade which led from Northern Italy to Augsburg, Nürnberg, Constance and other German cities. The visits of Frederick III. and the campaigns of Charles VIII. and the ascent of the throne of Naples by the princes of Aragon carried Germans, Frenchmen and Spaniards to the greater centres of the peninsula. A constant stream of pilgrims itinerated to Rome and the Spanish popes drew to the city throngs of Spaniards. As the fame of Italian culture spread, scholars and artists began to travel to Venice, Florence and Rome, and caught the inspiration of the new era.

To the Italians Germany was a land of barbarians. They despised the German people for their ignorance, rudeness and intemperance in eating and drinking. Aeneas found that the German princes and nobles cared more for horses and dogs than for poets and scholars and loved their wine-cellars better than the muses. Campanus, a witty poet of the papal court, who was sent as legate to the Diet of Regensburg by Paul II., and afterwards was made a bishop by Pius II., abused Germany for its dirt, cold climate, poverty, sour wine and miserable fare. He lamented his unfortunate nose, which had to smell everything, and praised his ears, which understood nothing. Such impressions were soon offset by the sound scholarship which arose in Germany and Holland. And, if Italy contributed to Germany an intellectual impulse, Germany sent out to the world the printing-press, the most important agent in the history of intellectual culture since the invention of the alphabet.

Before the first swell of the new movement was felt, the older German universities were already established: Prag in 1347, Vienna 1365, Heidelberg 1386, Cologne 1388, Erfurt 1392, Würzburg 1402, Leipzig 1409 and Rostock 1419. During the last half of the 15th century, there were quickly added to this list universities at Greifswald and Freiburg 1456, Treves 1457, Basel 1459, Ingolstadt 1472, Tübingen and Mainz 1477, and Wittenberg 1502. Ingolstadt lost its distinct existence by incorporation in the University of Munich, 1826, and Wittenberg by removal to Halle. Most of these universities had the four faculties, although the popes were slow to give their assent to the sanction of the theological department, as in the case of Vienna and Rostock, where the charter of the secular prince authorized their establishment. Strong as the religious influences of the age were, the social and moral habits of the students were by no means such as to call for praise. Parents, Luther said, in sending their sons to the universities, were sending them to destruction, and an act of the Leipzig university, dating from the close of the 15th century, stated that students came forth from their homes obedient and pious, but "how they returned, God alone knew."1060  In 1510, the student-body at Erfurt were so turbulent that the citizens and the peasant-folk turned cannons upon the collegiate building and, after the students had fled, battered down its walls and did great damage to university archives and library.

The theological teaching was ruled by the Schoolmen, and the dialectic method prevailed in all departments. In clashing with the scholastic method and curricula, the new teaching met with many a repulse, and in no case was it thoroughly triumphant till the era of the Reformation opened. Erfurt may be regarded as having been the first to give the new culture a welcome. In 1466, it received Peter Luder of Kislau, who had visited Greece and Asia Minor, and had been previously appointed to a chair in Heidelberg, 1456. He read on Virgil, Jerome, Ovid and other Latin writers. There Agricola studied and there Greek was taught by Nicolas Marschalck, under whose supervision the first Greek book printed in Germany issued from the press, 1501. There John of Wesel taught. It was Luther’s alma mater and, among his professors, he singled out Trutvetter for special mention as the one who directed him to the study of the Scriptures.1061

Heidelberg, chartered by the elector Ruprecht I. and Pope Urban VI., showed scant sympathy with the new movement. However, the elector-palatine, Philip, 1476–1508, gathered at his court some of its representatives, among them Reuchlin. Ingolstadt for a time had Reuchlin as professor and, in 1492, Konrad Celtis was appointed professor of poetry and eloquence.

In 1474, a chair of poetry was established at Basel. Founded by Pius II., it had among its early teachers two Italians, Finariensis and Publicius. Sebastian Brant taught there at the close of the century and among its notable students were Reuchlin and the Reformers, Leo Jud and Zwingli. In 1481, Tübingen had a stipend of oratoria. Here Gabriel Biel taught till very near the close of the century. The year after Biel’s death, Heinrich Bebel was called to lecture on poetry. One of Bebel’s distinguished pupils was Philip Melanchthon, who studied and taught in the university, 1512–1518. Reuchlin was called from Ingolstadt to Tübingen, 1521, to teach Hebrew and Greek, but died a few months later.

Leipzig and Cologne remained inaccessible strongholds of scholasticism, till Luther appeared, when Leipzig changed front. The last German university of the Middle Ages, Wittenberg, founded by Frederick the Wise and placed under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and St. Augustine, acquired a world-wide influence through its professors, Luther and Melanchthon. Not till 1518, did it have instruction in Greek, when Melanchthon, soon to be the chief Greek scholar in Germany, was called to one of its chairs at the age of 21. According to Luther, his lecture-room was at once filled brimful, theologians high and low resorting to it.

As seats of the new culture, Nürnberg and Strassburg occupied, perhaps, even a more prominent place than any of the university towns. These two cities, with Basel and Augsburg, had the most prosperous German printing establishments. At the close of the 15th century, Nürnberg, the fountain of inventions, had four Latin schools and was the home of Albrecht Dürer the painter and Willibald Pirkheimer, a patron of learning.

Popular education, during the century before the Reformation, was far more advanced in Germany than in other nations. The chief schools, conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life, were located at Zwolle, Deventer, Herzogenbusch and Liége. All the leading towns had schools.1062  The attendance at Deventer ran as high as 2,200. Melanchthon attended the Latin school at Pforzheim, now in Baden. Here Reuchlin found his young grand-nephew and gave him a Greek grammar, promising him a Vocabulary, provided Melanchthon would have ready some verses in Latin on his return. It is needless to say that the boy was ready and received the book. The town of Schlettstadt in Alsace was noted as a classical centre. Here Platter found Sapidus teaching, and he regarded it as the best school he had found. In 1494, there were five pedagogues in Wesel, teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and singing. One Christmas the clergy of the place entertained the pupils, giving them each cloth for a new coat and a piece of money.1063  The primary or trivial schools, as they were called from teaching the trivium,—grammar, rhetoric and dialectic,—gradually extended their courses and, before the Reformation, such schools as Liége and Schlettstadt had eight classes.1064  Greek was begun with the 4th class.

Among the noted schoolmasters was Alexander Hegius, who taught at Deventer for nearly a quarter of a century, till his death in 1498. At the age of 40 he was not ashamed to sit at the feet of Agricola. He made the classics central in education and banished the old text-books. Trebonius, who taught Luther at Eisenach, belonged to a class of worthy men. The penitential books of the day called upon parents to be diligent in keeping their children off the streets and sending them to school.1065  It remained for Luther to issue a stirring appeal to the magistrates of the Saxon towns to establish schools for both girls and boys and he called for a curriculum, which included not only history and Latin but vocal and instrumental music.

The chief Humanists of Germany were Rudolph Agricola, Reuchlin and Erasmus. To the last two a separate treatment is given as the pathfinders of biblical learning, the venerabiles inceptores of modern biblical research.

Agricola, whose original name was Roelef Huisman, was born near Groningen, 1443, and died 1485. He enjoyed the highest reputation in his day as a scholar and received unstinted praise from Erasmus and Melanchthon. He has been regarded as doing for Humanism in Germany what was done for Italy by Petrarca, the first life of whom, in German, Agricola prepared. He was far in advance of the Italian poet in the purity of his life. After studying in Erfurt, Louvain and Cologne, Agricola went to Italy, spending some time at the universities in Pavia and Ferrara. He declined a professor’s chair in favor of an appointment at the court of Philip of the Palatinate in Heidelberg. He made Cicero and Quintilian his models. In his last years, he turned his attention to theology and studied Hebrew. Like Pico della Mirandola, he was buried in the cowl of a monastic order. The inscription on his tomb in Heidelberg stated that he had studied what is taught about God and the true faith of the Saviour in the books of Scripture.

Another Humanist was Jacob Wimpheling, 1450–1528, of Schlettstadt, who taught in Heidelberg. He was inclined to be severe on clerical abuses but, at the close of his career, wanted to substitute for the study of Virgil and Horace, Sedulius and Prudentius. The poetic Sebastian Brant, 1457–1521, the author of the Ship of Fools, began his career as a teacher of law in Basel. Mutianus Rufus, d. at Gotha 1526, in his correspondence, went so far as to declare that Christianity is as old as the world and that Jupiter, Apollo, Ceres and Christ are only different names of the one hidden God.1066

A name which deserves a high place in the German literature of the last years of the Middle Ages is John Trithemius, 1462–1505, abbot of a Benedictine convent at Sponheim, which, under his guidance, gained the reputation of a learned academy. He gathered a library of 2,000 volumes and wrote a patrology, or encyclopaedia of the Fathers, and a catalogue of the renowned men of Germany. Prelates and nobles visited him to consult and read the Latin and Greek authors he had collected. These men and others contributed their part to that movement of which Reuchlin and Erasmus were the chief lights and which led on easily to the Protestant Reformation.1067

§ 69. Reuchlin and Erasmus.

In his fresco of the Reformation on the walls of the Berlin museum, Kaulbach has given a place of great prominence to Reuchlin and Erasmus. They are represented in the group of the Humanists, standing side by side, with books under their arms and clad in scholar’s cap and gown, their faces not turned toward the central figure on the platform, Martin Luther. The artist has presented the truth of history. These two most noteworthy German scholars prepared the way for the Reformation and the modern study of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, but remained and died in the Roman Church in which they were born. Rightly did Ulrich von Hutten call them "the two eyes of Germany."  To them, and more especially to Erasmus, did all the greater Reformers owe a debt, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Melanchthon and Beza.

John Reuchlin, 1455–1522, known also by the Latin name Capnion,1068 was born in Pforzheim and studied at Schlettstadt, Freiburg, Paris, Basel, Orleans, Poictiers, Florence and Rome. He learned Greek from native Greeks, Hebrew from John Wessel and from Jewish rabbis in Germany and Italy. He bought many Hebrew and rabbinical books, and marked down the time and place of purchase to remind him of the happiness their first acquaintance gave him. A lawyer by profession, he practised law in Stuttgart and always called himself legum doctor. He was first in the service of Eberhard, count of Würtemberg, whom he accompanied to Italy in 1482 as he later accompanied his son, 1490. He served on diplomatic missions and received from the Emperor Maximilian the rank of a count of the Palatinate. At Eberhard’s death he removed to Heidelberg, 1496, where he was appointed by the elector Philip chief tutor in his family. His third visit to Rome, 1498, was made in the elector’s interest. Again he returned to Stuttgart, from which he was called in 1520 to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew at a salary of 200 gulden. In 1521, he was driven from the city by the plague and was appointed lecturer in Tübingen. His death occurred the following spring at Liebenzell in the Black Forest.

Reuchlin recommended Melanchthon as professor of Greek in the University of Wittenberg, and thus unconsciously secured him for the Reformation. He was at home in almost all the branches of the learning of his age, but especially in Greek and Hebrew. He translated from Greek writings into Latin, and a part of the Iliad and two orations of Demosthenes into German. His first important work appeared at Basel when he was 20, the Vocabularius breviloquus, a Latin lexicon which went through 25 editions, 1475–1504. He also prepared a Greek Grammar. His chief distinction, however, is as the pioneer of Hebrew learning among Christians in Northern Europe. He gave a scientific basis for the study of this language in his Hebrew Grammar and Dictionary, the De rudimentis hebraicis, which he published in 1506 at his own cost at Pforzheim. Its circulation was slow and, in 1510, 750 copies of the edition of 1,000 still remained unsold. The second edition appeared in 1537. The author proudly concluded this work with the words of Horace, that he had reared a monument more enduring than brass.1069  In 1512, he issued the Penitential Psalms with a close Latin translation and grammatical notes, a work used by Luther. The printing of Hebrew books had begun in Italy in 1475.

Reuchlin pronounced Hebrew the oldest of the tongues—the one in which God and angels communicated with man. In spite of its antiquity it is the richest of the languages and from it other languages drew, as from a primal fountain. He complained of the neglect of the study of the Scriptures for the polite study of eloquence and poetry.1070  Reuchlin studied also the philosophy of the Greeks and the Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean mysticisms. He was profoundly convinced of the value of the Jewish Cabbala, which he found to be a well of hidden wisdom. In this rare branch of learning he acknowledged his debt to Pico della Mirandola, whom he called "the greatest scholar of the age."  He published the results of his studies in two works—one, De verbo mirifico, which appeared at Basel in 1494, and passed through eight editions; and one, De arte cabbalistica, 1517. "The wonder-working word "is the Hebrew tetragrammaton Ihvh, the unpronounceable name of God, which is worshipped by the celestials, feared by the infernals and kissed by the soul of the universe. The word Jesu, Ihsvh, is only an enlargement of Ihvh by the letter s. The Jehovah- and Jesus-name is the connecting link between God and man, the infinite and the finite. Thus the mystic tradition of the Jews is a confirmation of the Christian doctrine of the trinity and the divinity of Christ. Reuchlin saw in every name, in every letter, in every number of the old Testament, a profound meaning. In the three letters of the word for create, bara, Gen. 1:1, he discerned the mystery of the Trinity; in one verse of Exodus, 72 inexpressible names of God; in Prov. 30:31, a prophecy that Frederick the Wise, of Saxony, would follow Maximilian as emperor of Germany, a prophecy which was not fulfilled. We may smile at these fantastic vagaries; but they stimulated and deepened the zeal for the hidden wisdom of the Orient, which Reuchlin called forth from the grave.

Through his interest in the Jews and in rabbinical literature, Reuchlin became involved in a controversy which spread over all Europe and called forth decrees from Cologne and other universities, the archbishop of Mainz, the inquisitor-general of Germany, Hoogstraten, the emperor, Maximilian, and Pope Leo X. The monks were his chief opponents, led by John Pfefferkorn, a baptized Jew of Cologne. The controversy was provoked by a tract on the misery of the Jews, written by Reuchlin, 1505—Missive warumb die Juden so lang im Elend sind.  Here the author made the obstinacy of the Jews in crucifying Christ and their persistence in daily blaspheming him the just cause of their sorrows, but, instead of calling for their persecution, he urged a serious effort for their conversion. In a series of tracts, Pfefferkorn assaulted this position and demanded that his former coreligionists, as the sworn enemies of Christ, should be compelled to listen to Christian preaching, be forbidden to practise usury and that their false Jewish books should be destroyed.1071  The flaming anti-Semite prosecuted his case with the vigor with which a few years later Eck prosecuted the papal case against Luther. Maximilian, whose court he visited three times to present the matter, Hoogstraten and the University of Cologne took Pfefferkorn’s side, and the emperor gave him permission to burn all Jewish books except, of course, the Old Testament. Called upon to explain his position by the archbishop of Mainz, with whom Maximilian left the case, Reuchlin exempted from destruction the Talmud, the Cabbala and all other writings of the Jews except the Nizahon and the Toledoth Jeshu, which, after due examination and legal decision, might be destroyed, as they contained blasphemies against Christ, his mother and the Apostles. He advised the emperor to order every university in Germany to establish chairs of Hebrew for ten years.1072

Pfefferkorn, whom Reuchlin had called a "buffalo or an ass," replied in a violent attack, the Handmirror—Handspiegel wider und gegen die Juden — 1511. Both parties appeared before the emperor, and Reuchlin replied in the Spectacles—Augenspiegel,—which in its turn was answered by his antagonist in the Burning Glass—Brandspiegel. The sale of the Spectacles was forbidden in Frankfurt. Reuchlin followed in a Defense against all Calumniators, 1513, and after the manner of the age cudgelled them with such epithets as goats, biting dogs, raving wolves, foxes, hogs, sows, horses, asses and children of the devil.1073  An appeal he made to Frederick the Wise called forth words of support from Carlstadt and Luther. The future Reformer spoke of Reuchlin as a most innocent and learned man, and condemned the inquisitorial zeal of the Cologne theologians who "might have found worse occasions of offence on all the streets of Jerusalem than in the extraneous Jewish question."  The theological faculty of Cologne, which consisted mostly of Dominicans, denounced 43 sentences taken from Reuchlin as heretical, 1514. The Paris university followed suit. Cited before the tribunal of the Inquisition by Hoogstraten, Reuchlin appealed to the pope. Hoogstraten had the satisfaction of seeing the Augenspiegel publicly burnt at Cologne, Feb. 10, 1514. The young bishop of Spires, whom Leo X. appointed to adjudicate the case, cleared Reuchlin and condemned Hoogstraten to silence and the payment of the costs, amounting to 111 gulden, April 24, 1514.1074  But the indomitable inquisitor took another appeal, and Leo appointed Cardinal Grimani and then a commission of 24 to settle the dispute. All the members of the commission but Sylvester Prierias favored Reuchlin, who was now supported by the court of Maximilian, by the German "poets" as a body and by Ulrich von Hutten, but opposed by the Dominican order. When a favorable decision was about to be rendered, Leo interposed, June 23, 1520, and condemned Reuchlin’s book, the Spectacles, as a work friendly to the Jews, and obligated the author to pay the costs of trial and thereafter to keep silence. The monks had won and Pfefferkorn, with papal authority on his side, could celebrate his triumph over scholarship and toleration in a special tract, 1521.

With the Reformation, which in the meantime had broken out at Wittenberg, the great Hebrew scholar showed no sympathy. He even turned away from Melanchthon and cancelled the bequest of his library, which he had made in his favor, and gave it to his native town, Pforzheim. He prevented, however, Dr. Eck, during his brief sojourn at Ingolstadt, from burning Luther’s writings. His controversy with Pfefferkorn had shown how strong in Germany the spirit of obscurantism was, but it had also called forth a large number of pamphlets and letters in favor of Reuchlin. The Hebrew pathfinder prepared a collection of such testimonies from Erasmus, Mutianus, Peutinger, Pirkheimer, Busch, Vadianus, Glareanus, Melanchthon, Æcolampadius, Hedio and others,—in all, 43 eminent scholars who were classed as Reuchlinists.

Among the writings of the Reuchlinists against the opponents of the new learning, the Letters of Unfamed Men—Epistolae virorum obscurorum — occupy the most prominent place. These epistles are a fictitious correspondence of Dominican monks who expose their own old-fogyism, ignorance and vulgarity to public ridicule in their barbarous German-Latin jargon, which is called kitchen-Latin, Küchenlatein, and which admits of no adequate translation. They appeared anonymously, but were chiefly written by Ulrich von Hutten and Crotus Rubeanus whose German name was Johannes Jaeger. The authors were friends of Luther, but Crotus afterwards fell out with the Reformation, like Erasmus and other Humanists.

Ulrich von Hutten, 1488–1523, after breaking away from the convent in which his father had placed him six years before, pursued desultory studies in the University of Cologne, developed a taste for the Humanistic culture and travelled in Italy. In 1517, he returned to Germany and had a position at the court of the pleasure-loving Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz, a patron of the new learning. He was crowned with the poet’s crown by Maximilian and was hailed as the future great epic poet of Germany by Erasmus, but later incurred the hostility of that scholar who, after Hutten’s death, directed against his memory the shafts of his satire. He joined Franz von Sickingen in standing ready to protect Luther at Worms. Placed under the ban, he spent most of his time after 1520, till his death, in semi-concealment at Schlettstadt, Basel and at Zürich under the protection of Zwingli.

Hutten’s life at Cologne and in Rome gave him opportunity enough to find out the obscurantism of the Dominicans and other foes of progress as well as the conditions prevailing at the papal court. In 1517, he edited Valla’s tract on the spurious Donation of Constantine and, with inimitable irony, dedicated it to Leo X. In ridicule and contempt it excelled everything, Janssen says, that had been written in Germany up to that time against the papacy. As early as 1513, Hutten issued epigrams from Italy, calling Julius II. "the corrupter of the earth, the plague of mankind."1075  His Latin poem, the Triumph of Reuchlin, 1518, defended the Hebrew scholar, and called for fierce punishment upon Pfefferkorn. It contained a curious woodcut, representing Reuchlin’s triumphal procession to his native Pforzheim, and his victory over Hoogstraten and Pfefferkorn with their four idols of superstition, barbarism, ignorance and envy.1076

The 10 Epistles of the Unfamed Men, written first in Latin and then translated by Hutten into German, with genial and not seldom coarse humor, demanded the restriction of the pope’s tyranny, the dissolution of the convents, the appropriation of annates and lands of abolished convents and benefices for the creation of a fund for the needy. The amorous propensities of the monks are not spared. The author called the holy coat of Treves a lousy old rag, and declared the relics of the three kings of Cologne to be the bodies of three Westphalian peasants. In the 4th letter, entitled the Roman trinity, things are set forth and commented upon which were found in three’s in Rome. Three things were considered ridiculous at Rome: the example of the ancients, the papacy of Peter and the last judgment. There were three things of which they had a superabundance in the holy city: antiquities, poison and ruins; three articles were kept on sale: Christ, ecclesiastical places and women; three things which gave the Romelings pain: the unity among the princes, the growing intelligence of the people and the revelation of their frauds; three things which they disliked most to hear about: a general council, a reformation of the clerical office and the opening of the eyes of the Germans; three things held as most precious: beautiful women, proud horses and papal bulls. These were some of the spectacles which Rome offered. Had not Hutten himself been in Rome, when the same archbishop’s pall was sold twice in a single day!  The so-called "gracious expectations," which the pope distributed, were a special mark of his favor to the Germans.1077  Hutten’s wit reached the popular heart, drew laughter from the educated and stirred up the wrath of the self-satisfied advocates of the old ways. As a knight, he touched a new chord, the national German pride, a chord on which Luther played as a master.

What Reuchlin did for Hebrew learning, Erasmus, who was twelve years his junior, accomplished for Greek learning and more. He established the Greek pronunciation which goes by his name; he edited and translated Greek classics and Church Fathers and made them familiar to northern scholars, and he furnished the key to the critical study of the Greek Testament, the magna charta of Christianity. He was the contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and was an invaluable aid to the movement led by them through his edition of the New Testament, his renunciation of scholastic subtlety in its interpretation and his attacks on the ceremonial religiosity of his age. But, when the time came for him to take open sides, he protested his aversion to the course which the Reformers had taken as a course of violence and revolution. He died in isolation, without a party. The Catholics would not claim him; the Protestants could not.1078

Desiderius Erasmus, 1466–1536, was born at Rotterdam out of wedlock, his father probably a priest at the time.1079  His school life began at Deventer when he was nine years old, Hegius then being in charge. His parents died when he was 13 and, in 1481, he was in the school at Herzogenbusch where he spent three years, a period he speaks of as lost time. His letters of after years refer to his school experiences without enthusiasm or gratitude. After wandering about, he was persuaded against his will to enter a convent at Steyn. This step, in later years, he pronounced the most unfortunate calamity of his life. To his experience in the convent he ascribed the physical infirmity of his manhood. But he certainly went forth with the great advantage of having become acquainted with conventual life on its inside, and wholesome moral influence must have been exerted from some quarter in his early life to account for the moral discrimination of his later years. His ability secured for him the patronage of the bishop of Cambray, who intended taking him as his interpreter to Italy, where he hoped to receive the cardinal’s hat. So far as Italy went, the young scholar was disappointed, but the bishop sent him to Paris, without, however, providing him with much financial assistance. He was able to support himself from the proceeds of instruction he gave several young Englishmen and, through their mediation, Erasmus made his first visit to England, 1499. This visit seems to have lasted only two or three months.1080

At Oxford, the young scholar met Colet and Sir Thomas More and, through the influence of the former, was induced to give more attention to the Greek than he had been giving. The next years he spent in France and Holland writing his book of Proverbs,—Adagia,—issued 1500, and his Manual of the Christian soldier, —Enchiridion militis Christiani,—issued in 1502. In 1505, he was back in England, remaining there for three years. He then embraced an opportunity to travel in Italy with the two sons of Henry VII.’s Genoese physician, Battista Boerio. At Turin, he received the doctor’s degree, spent a number of months in Venice, turning out work for the Aldine presses, and visited Bologna, Rome and other cities. There is no indication in his correspondence that he was moved by the culture, art or natural scenery of Italy, nor does he make a single reference to the scenery of the Alps which he crossed.

Expecting lucrative appointment from Henry VIII., Erasmus returned to England, 1509, remaining there five years. On his way, he wrote for diversion his Praise of Folly,—Encomium moriae,—a book which received its title from the fact that he was thinking of Sir Thomas More when its conception took form in his mind. The book was completed in More’s house and was illustrated with life-like pictures by Holbein.1081  During part of this sojourn in England, Erasmus was entered as "Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity" at Cambridge and taught Greek. The salary was 65 dollars a year, which Emerton calls "a respectable sum."  He was on intimate terms with Colet, now dean of St. Paul’s, More, Fisher, bishop of Rochester, Archbishop Warham and other Englishmen. Lord Mountjoy provided him with an annuity and Archbishop Warham with the living of Aldington in 1411, which Erasmus retained for a while and then exchanged for an annuity of £20 from the archbishop.1082

From 1515–1521, he had his residence in different cities in the Lowlands, and it was at this time he secured complete dispensation from the monastic vow which had been granted in part by Julius II. some years earlier.1083  Erasmus’ fame now exceeded the fame of any other scholar in Europe. Wherever he went, he was received with great honors. Princes joined scholars and prelates in doing him homage. Melanchthon addressed to him a poem, "Erasmus the best and greatest," Erasmum optimum, maximum. His edition of the Greek New Testament appeared in 1516, and in 1518 his Colloquies, a collection of familiar relations of his experiences with men and things.

When persecution broke out in the Netherlands after Leo’s issuance of his bull against Luther, Erasmus removed to Basel, where some of his works had already been printed on the Froben presses. At first be found the atmosphere of his new home congenial, and published one edition after the other of the Fathers,—Hilary 1523, Irenaeus 1526, Ambrose 1527, Augustine 1528, Epiphanius 1529, Chrysostom 1530. But when the city, under the influence of Oecolampadius, went Protestant and Erasmus was more closely pushed to take definite sides or was prodded with faithlessness to himself in not going with the Reformers, he withdrew to the Catholic town of Freiburg in Breisgau, 1529. The circulation of his Colloquies had been forbidden in France and burnt in Spain, and his writings were charged by the Sorbonne with containing 82 heretical teachings. On the other hand, he was offered the red hat by Paul III., 1535, but declined it on account of his age.

After the death of Oecolampadius, he returned to Basel, 1535, broken down with the stone and catarrh. The last work on which he was engaged was an edition of Origen. He died calling out, "Oh, Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, have mercy on me," but without priest or extreme unction,—sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus, as the Dominicans of Cologne in their joy and bad Latin expressed it. He was buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel, carried to the grave, as his friend and admirer, Beatus Rhenanus, informs us, on the shoulders of students. The chief magistrate of the city and all the professors and students were present at the burial.

Erasmus was the prince of Humanists and the most influential and useful scholar of his age. He ruled with undisputed sway as monarch in the realm of letters. He combined brilliant genius with classical and biblical learning, keen wit and elegant taste. He rarely wrote a dull line. His extensive travels made him a man of the world, a genuine cosmopolitan, and he stood in correspondence with scholars of all countries who consulted him as an oracle. His books had the popularity and circulation of modern novels. When the rumor went abroad that his Colloquies were to be condemned by the Sorbonne, a Paris publisher hurried through the press an edition of 24,000 copies. To the income from his writings and an annuity of 400 gulden which he received as counsellor of Charles V.—a title given him in 1516—were added the constant gifts from patrons and admirers.1084

Had Erasmus confined himself to scholarly labors, though he secured eminence as the first classicist of his age, his influence might have been restricted to his time and his name to a place with the names of Politian of Italy and Budaeus of France, whose works are no longer read. But it was otherwise. His labors had a far-reaching bearing on the future. He was a leading factor in the emancipation of the mind of Europe from the bondage of ignorance and superstition, and he uncovered a lifeless formalism in religion. He unthawed the frost-bitten intellectual soil of Germany. The spirit of historical criticism which Laurentius Valla had shown in the South, he represented north of the Alps, and of Valla he spoke as "unrivalled both in the sharpness of his intelligence and the tenacity of his memory."1085  But the sweep of his influence is due to the mediation of his pupils and admirers, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Luther.

Erasmus’ break with the old mediaeval ecclesiasticism was shown in a fourfold way. He scourged the monks for their ignorance, pride and unchastity, and condemned that ceremonialism in religion which is without heart; he practised the critical method in the treatment of Scripture; he issued the first Greek New Testament; be advocated the translation of the Bible into the languages spoken in his day.

In almost every work that he wrote, Erasmus, in a vein of satire or in serious statement, inveighed against the hypocritical pretension of the monkery of his time and against the uselessness of hollow religious rites. In his edition of the New Testament, he frequently returns to these subjects. For example, in a note on Matt. 19:12 he speaks of the priests "who are permitted to fornicate and may freely keep concubines but not have a wife."1086  Nowhere is his satire more keen on the clergy than in the Praise of Folly. In this most readable book, Folly represented as a female, delivers an oration to an audience of all classes and conditions and is most explicit and elaborate when she discourses on the priests, monks, theologians and the pope. After declaring with consummate irony that of all classes the theologians were the least dependent upon her, Folly proceeds to exhibit them as able to give the most exquisite solutions for the most perplexing questions, how in the wafer accidents may subsist without a subject, how long a time it required for the Saviour to be conceived in the Virgin’s womb, whether God might as easily have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb or a stone as a man. In view of such wonderful metaphysics, the Apostles themselves would have needed a new illuminating spirit could they have lived again.

As for the monks, whose name signifies solitude, they were to be found in every street and alley. They were most precise about their girdles and hoods and the cut of their crowns, yet they easily provoked quarrels, and at last they would have to search for a new heaven, for entrance would be barred them to the old heaven prepared for such as are true of heart. As for the pope, Luther’s language never pictured more distinctly the world-wide gulf between what the successor of St. Peter should be and really was, than did the biting sentences of Erasmus. Most liberal, he said, were the popes with the weapons of the Spirit,—interdicts, greater and lesser excommunications, roaring bulls and the like,—which they launch forth with unrestrained vehemence when the authority of St. Peter’s chair is attacked. These are they who by their lusts and wickedness grieve the Holy Spirit and make their Saviour’s wounds to bleed afresh.1087  In the Enchiridion, he says, "Apostle, pastor and bishop" are names of duties not of government, and papa, pope, and abbas, abbot, are titles of love. The sale of indulgences, saint worship and other mediaeval abuses came in for Erasmus’ poignant thrusts.

In addition to his own Annotations and Paraphrases of the New Testament, he edited the first printed edition of Valla’s Annotations, which appeared in Paris, 1505. It was his great merit to call attention to the plain meaning of Scripture and to urge men "to venerate the living and breathing picture of Christ in the sacred books, instead of falling down before statues of wood and stone of him, adorned though they were with gold. What were Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Ockam compared with him, whom the Father in heaven called His beloved Son!"  As for the Schoolmen, he said, "I would rather be a pious divine with Jerome than invincible with Scotus. Was ever a heretic converted by their subtleties!"1088

The appearance of Erasmus’ edition of the Greek Testament at Basel, 1516, marked an epoch in the study and understanding of the Scriptures. It was worth more for the cause of religion than all the other literary works of Erasmus put together, yea, than all the translations and original writings of all the Renaissance writers. The work contained a dedication to Leo X., a man whom Erasmus continued to flatter, as in the epistle dedicating to him his edition of Jerome, but who of all men was destined to oppose the proclamation of the true Gospel. The volume, 672 pages in all, contained the Greek text in one column and Erasmus’ own Latin version in the other, together with his annotations. It was hurried through the press in order to anticipate the publication of the New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglot, which was actually printed in 1514, but was not given to the public till 1520. The editor used three manuscripts of the 12th century, which are still preserved in the university library of Basel and retain the marginal notes of Erasmus and the red lines of the printer to indicate the corresponding pages of the printed edition. Erasmus did not even take the trouble to copy the manuscripts, but sent them, with numerous marginal corrections, to the printer.1089  The manuscript of the Apocalypse was borrowed from Reuchlin, and disappeared, but was rediscovered, in 1861, by Dr. Delitzsch in the library of Oettingen-Wallerstein at Mayhingen, Bavaria. It was defective on the last leaf and supplemented by Erasmus, who translated the last six verses from the Vulgate into indifferent Greek, for he was a better Latinist than Hellenist.

In all, Erasmus published five editions of the Greek Testament-1516, 1519, 1522, 1527 and 1535. Besides, more than 30 unauthorized reprints appeared in Venice, Strassburg, Basel, Paris and other cities. He made several improvements, but his entire apparatus never exceeded eight MSS. The 4th and the 5th editions were the basis of the textus receptus, which ruled supreme till the time of Lachmann and Tregelles. His notes and paraphrases on the New Testament, the Apocalypse excepted, were translated into English, and a copy given to every parish in 1547. Zwingli copied the Pauline Epistles from the 1st Greek edition with his own hand in the convent at Einsiedeln, 1516. From the 2d edition of 1519, Luther prepared his German translation on the Wartburg, 1522, and Tyndale his English version, 1526.

Thus Erasmus directly contributed to the preparation of the vernacular versions which he so highly commended in his Preface to the 1st edition of his Greek Testament. He there expressed the hope that the Scriptures might be translated into every tongue and put into the hands of every reader, to give strength and comfort to the husbandman at his plough, to the weaver at his shuttle, to the traveller on his journey and to the woman at her distaff. He declared it a miserable thing that thousands of educated Christians had never read the New Testament. In editing the Greek original, it was his purpose, so he says, to enable the theologians to study Christianity at its fountain-head. It was high praise when Oecolampadius confessed he had learned from Erasmus that "in the Sacred Books nothing was to besought but Christ," nihil in sacris scripturis praeter Christum quaerendum.1090

It was a common saying, to which Erasmus himself refers, that he laid the egg which Luther hatched. His relations to the Wittenberg Reformer and to the movement of the Reformation is presented in the 6th volume of this series. Here it is enough to say that Erasmus desired a reformation by gradual education and gentle persuasion within the limits of the old Church system. He disapproved of the violent measures of Luther and Zwingli, and feared that they would do much harm to the cause of learning and refined culture, which he had more at heart than religion.

He and Luther never met, and he emphatically disavowed all responsibility for Luther’s course and declared he had had no time to read Luther’s books. And yet, in a letter to Zwingli, he confessed that most of the positions taken by Luther he had himself taken before Luther’s appearance. The truth is that Erasmus was a critical scholar and not a man of action or of deep fervor of conviction. At best, he was a moralist. He went through no such religious experiences as Luther, and Luther early wrote to Lange that he feared Erasmus knew little of the grace of God. The early part of the 16th century was a period when the critic needed to be supplemented. Erasmus had no mind for the fray of battle. His piety was not deep enough to brave a rupture with the old order. He courted the flattery of the pope, though his pen poured forth ridicule against him. And nowhere is the difference of the two men shown in clearer light than in their treatment of Leo X., whom, when it was to his advantage, Erasmus lauded as a paragon of culture.1091  He did not see that something more was needed than literature and satire to work a change. The times required the readiness for martyrdom, and Erasmus’ religious conviction was not sufficient to make him ready to suffer for principle. On most controverted points, Emerton well says he had one opinion for his friends and another for the world. He lacked both the candor and the courage to be a religious hero. "Erasmus is a man for himself" was the  apt characterization often repeated in the Letters of Unfamed Men. Luther spoke to the German people and fought for them. Erasmus awakened the admiration of the polite by his scholarship and wit. The people knew him not. Luther spoke in German: Erasmus boasted that he knew as little Italian as Indian and that he was little conversant with German, French or English. He prided himself on his pure Latinity.

Erasmus never intended to separate from Rome any more than his English friends, John Colet and Thomas More. He declared he had never departed from the judgment of the Church, nor could he. "Her consent is so important to me that I would agree with the Arians and Pelagians if the Church should approve what they taught."  This he wrote in 1526 after the open feud with Luther in the controversy over the freedom of the will. The Catholic Church, however, never forgave him. All his works were placed on the Index by two popes, Paul IV. in 1559 and Sixtus V., 1590, as intentionally heretical. In 1564, by the final action of the Council of Trent, this sweeping judgment was revoked and all the writings removed from the Index except the Colloquies, Praise of Folly, Christian Marriage and one or two others, a decision confirmed by Clement VIII., 1596. And there the matter has rested since.1092

The Catholic historian of the German people, Janssen, in a dark picture of Erasmus, presents him as vain and conceited, ungrateful to his benefactors, always ready to take a neutral attitude on disputed questions and, for the sake of presents, flattering to the great. Janssen calls attention to his delight over the gold and silver vessels and other valuables he had received in gifts. My drawers, Erasmus wrote, "are filled with presents, cups, bottles, spoons, watches, some of them of pure gold, and rings too numerous to count."  In only one respect, says Janssen, did he go beyond his Italian predecessors in his attack upon the Church. The Italians sneered and ridiculed, but kept their statements free from hypocritical piety, which Erasmus often resorted to after be had driven his dagger into his opponent’s breast.1093  In England, the old Puritan, Tyndale, also gave Erasmus no quarter, but spoke of him as one "whose tongue maketh little gnats great elephants and lifteth up above the stars whosoever giveth him a little exhibition."1094  But no one has ever understood Erasmus and discerned what was his mission better than Luther. That Reformer, who had once called him "our ornament and hope—decus nostrum et spes,"—expressed the whole truth when, in a letter to Oecolampadius, 1523, he said: "Erasmus has done what he was ordained to do. He has introduced the ancient languages in place of the pernicious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab .... He has done enough to overcome the evil, but to lead to the land of promise is not, in my judgment, his business."

§ 70. Humanism in France.

Humanism in France found its way from Italy, but did not become a distinct movement until the 16th century was well on its way. Budaeus, 1467–1540, was the chief representative of classical studies; Faber Stapulensis, or, to use his French name, Lefèvre d’Etaples, of Christian culture, 1469–1536, both of them living well into the period of the Reformation.1095  In France, as in Germany, the pursuit of the classics never went to the point of intoxication as it did in Italy. In France, the Renaissance did not reach its maturity till after the Reformation was well advanced in Germany, the time at which the springs of the movement in the Italian peninsula were dried up.

On the completion of the 100 years’ war between France and England, the intellectual currents began to start. In 1464, Peter Raoul composed for the duke of Bourgogne a history of Troy. At that time the French still regarded themselves as descendants of Hector. If we except Paris, none of the French universities took part in the movement. Individual writers and printing-presses at Paris, Lyons, Rouen and other cities became its centres and sources. William Fichet and Gaguin are usually looked upon as the first French Humanists. Fichet introduced "the eloquence of Rome" at Paris and set up a press at the Sorbonne. He corresponded with Bessarion and had in his library volumes of Petrarca, Guarino of Verona and other Italians. Gaguin copied and corrected Suetonius in 1468 and other Latin authors. Poggio’s Jest-book and some of Valla’s writings were translated into French. In the reign of Louis XI., who gloried in the title "the first Christian king," French poets celebrated his deeds. The homage of royalty took in part the place among the literary men of France that the cult of antiquity occupied in Italy.1096

Greek, which had been completely forgotten in France, had its first teachers in Gregory Tifernas, who reached Paris, 1458, John Lascaris, who returned with Charles VIII., and Hermonymus of Sparta, who had Reuchlin and Budaeus among his scholars. An impetus was given to the new studies by the Italian, Aleander, afterwards famous for his association with Luther at Worms. He lectured in Paris, 1509, on Plato and issued a Latino-Greek lexicon. In 1512 his pupil, Vatable, published the Greek grammar of Chrysoloras. William Budaeus, perhaps the foremost Greek scholar of his day, founded the Collège de France, 1530, and finally induced Francis I. to provide for instruction in Hebrew and Greek. The University of Paris at the close of the 14th century was sunk into a low condition and Erasmus bitterly complained of the food, the morals and the intellectual standards of the college of Montague which he attended. Budaeus urged the combination of the study of the Scriptures with the study of the classics and exclaimed of the Gospel of John, "What is it, if not the almost perfect sanctuary of the truth!"1097  He persisted in setting himself against the objection that the study of the languages of Scripture led on to Lutheranism.

Lefèvre studied in Paris, Pavia, Padua and Cologne and, for longer or shorter periods, tarried in the greater Italian cities. He knew Greek and some Hebrew. From 1492–1506 he was engaged in editing the works of Aristotle and Raymundus Lullus and then, under the protection of Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, he turned his attention to theology. It was his purpose to offset the Sentences of Peter the Lombard by a system of theology giving only what the Scriptures teach. In 1509, he published the Psalterum quintuplex, a combination of five Latin versions of the Psalms, including a revision and a commentary by his own hand. In 1512, he issued a revised Latin translation of the Pauline Epistles with commentary. In this work, he asserted the authority of the Bible and the doctrine of justification by faith, without appreciating, however, the far-reaching significance of the latter opinion.1098  He also called in question the merit of good works and priestly celibacy. In his Preface to the Psalms Lefèvre said, "For a long time I followed Humanistic studies and I scarcely touched my books with things divine, but then these burnt upon me with such light, that profane studies seemed to be as darkness in comparison."  Three years after the appearance of Luther’s New Testament, Lefèvre’s French translation appeared, 1523. It was made from the Vulgate, as was his translation of the Old Testament, 1528. In 1522 and 1525, appeared his commentaries on the four Gospels and the Catholic Epistles. The former was put on the Index by the Sorbonne. The opposition to the free spirit of inquiry and to the Reformation, which the Sorbonne stirred up and French royalty adopted, forced him to flee to Strassburg and then to the liberal court of Margaret of Angoulême.

Among those who came into contact with Lefèvre were Farel and Calvin, the Reformers of Geneva. In the meantime Clement Marot, 1495–1544, the first true poet of the French literary revival, was composing his French versification of the Psalms and of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Psalms were sung for pleasure by French princes and later for worship in Geneva and by the Huguenots. When Calvin studied the humanities and law at Bourges, Orleans and Paris, about 1520, he had for teachers Cordier and L’Etoile, the canonists, and Melchior Wolmar, teacher of Greek, whose names the future Reformer records with gratitude and respect. He gave himself passionately to Humanistic studies and sent to Erasmus a copy of his work on Seneca’s Clemency, in which he quoted frequently from the ancient classics and the Fathers. Had he not adopted the new religious views, it is possible he would now be known as an eminent figure in the history of French Humanism.

§ 71. Humanism in England.

Use well temporal things: desire eternal things.

—John Colet.

Humanism reached England directly from Italy, but was greatly advanced by Erasmus during his three sojourns at Oxford and Cambridge and by his close and abiding friendship with the leading English representatives of the movement. Its history carries us at once to the universities where the conflict between the new learning and the old learning was principally fought out and also to St. Paul’s school, London, founded by Colet. It was marked with the usual English characteristics of caution and reserve, and never manifested any of the brilliant or paganizing traits of the Italian literary movement, nor did it reach the more profound classical scholarship of the German Humanists. In the departments of the fine arts, if we except printing, it remained unresponsive to the Continental leadership. English Humanism, like the theology of the English Reformation, adopted the work of others. It was not creative. On the other hand, it laid more distinctive emphasis upon the religious and ethical elements than the Humanistic circles of Italy, though not of Germany. Its chief leaders were John Colet and Sir Thomas More, with whom Erasmus is also to be associated. It had patrons in high places in Archbishop Warham of Canterbury, Cardinal Wolsey and John Fisher, bishop of Rochester.1099

The English revival of letters was a direct precursor of the English Reformation, although its earliest leaders died in the Catholic Church. Its first distinct impetus was received in the last quarter of the 15th century through English students who visited Italy. It had been the custom for English archdeacons to go to Italy for the study of the canon law. Richard de Bury and Peter de Blois had shown interest in books and Latin profane authors. Italians, Poggio and Polidore Virgil1100 among them, tarried and some of them taught in England, but the first to introduce the new movement were William Sellyng, Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn.

Sellyng, of All Souls’ College, Oxford, and afterwards prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1471–1495, made a visit to Italy in 1464 and at Bologna was a pupil of Politian. From this tour, or from a later one, he brought back with him some Greek MSS. and he introduced the studying of Greek in Canterbury. Linacre, d. 1524, the most celebrated medical man of his day in England, studied under Sellyng at Christ Church and then in Oxford, where he took Greek under Cornelio Vitelli, the first to publicly teach that language in England in the later Middle Ages. He then went to Florence, Rome and Padua, where he graduated in medicine. On returning to England, he was ordained priest and later made physician to Henry VIII. He translated the works of Galen into English.1101

While Linacre was studying in Florence, Grocyn arrived in that city. He was teaching Greek in Oxford before 1488 and, on his return from the Continent, he began, 1491, to give Greek lectures in that university. With this date the historian, Green, regards the new period as opening. Grocyn lectured on pseudo-Dionysius and, following Laurentius Valla, abandoned the tradition that he was the Areopagite, the pupil of St. Paul. He and Linacre were close friends of Erasmus, and that scholar couples them with Colet and More as four representatives of profound and symmetrical learning.1102

At the close of the 15th century, the English were still a "barbarous" people in the eyes of the Italians.1103  According to Erasmus, who ought to have known what a good school was, the schoolteachers of England were "shabby and broken down and, in cases, hardly in their senses."  At the universities, the study of Duns Scotus ruled and the old method and text-books were in use. The Schoolmen were destined, however, soon to be displaced and the leaves of the Subtle Doctor to be scattered in the quadrangles of Oxford and trodden under foot.

As for the study of Greek, there were those, as Wood says, who preached against it as "dangerous and damnable" and, long after the new century had dawned, Sir Thomas More wrote to the authorities at Oxford condemning them for opposition to Greek.1104  A course of sermons, to which More refers, had been preached in Lent not only against the study of the Greek classics but also the Latin classics. What right, he went on to say, "had a preacher to denounce Latin of which he knew so little and Greek of which he knew nothing?  How can he know theology, if he is ignorant of Hebrew, Greek and Latin?  "In closing the letter, More threatened the authorities with punishment from Warham, Wolsey and even the king himself, if they persisted in their course. Of the clergy’s alarm against the new learning, More took notice again and again. To Lily, the headmaster of St. Paul’s school, he wrote, "No wonder your school raises a storm; it is like the wooden horse for the ruin of barbarous Troy."  But, if there were those who could see only danger from the new studies, there were also men like Fisher of Rochester who set about learning Greek when he was 60. For the venerable Sentences of the Lombard, the Scriptures were about to be instituted as the text-book of theology in the English universities.

The man who contributed most to this result was John Colet. Although his name is not even so much as mentioned in the pages of Lingard, he is now recognized, as he was by Tyndale, Latimer and other Reformers of the middle of the 16th century, as the chief pioneer of the new learning in England and as an exemplar of noble purposes in life and pure devotion to culture.

The son of Sir Henry Colet, several times lord mayor of London, the future dean of St. Paul’s was one of 22 children. He survived all the members of his family except his mother, to whom he referred, when he felt himself growing old, with admiration for her high spirits and happy old age. As we think of her, we may be inclined to recall the good mother of John Wesley. After spending 3 years at Oxford, 1493–1496,1105 young Colet, "like a merchantman seeking goodly wares," as Erasmus put it, went to Italy. For the places where he studied, we are left to conjecture, but Archbishop Parker two generations later said that he studied "a long time in foreign countries and especially the Sacred Scriptures."  On his return to Oxford, although not yet ordained to the priesthood, he began expounding St. Paul’s Greek epistles in public, the lectures being given gratuitously. At this very moment the Lady Margaret professor of divinity was announcing for his subject the Quodlibets of Duns Scotus. Later, Colet expounded also the First Epistle to the Corinthians.

At this period, he was not wholly freed from the old academic canons and was inclined to reject the reading of classic authors whose writings did not contain a "salutatory flavor of Christ and in which Christ is not set forth .... Books, in which Christ is not found, are but a table of devils."1106  Of the impression made by his exposition, a proof is given in Colet’s own description of a visit he had from a priest. The priest, sitting in front of Colet’s fire, drew forth from his bosom a small copy of the Epistles, which he had transcribed with his own hand, and then, in answer to his request, his host proceeded to set forth the golden things of the 1st chapter of Romans.1107   His expositions abound in expressions of admiration for Paul.

At Oxford, in 1498, Colet met Erasmus, who was within a few months of being of the same age, and he also came into contact with More, whom he called "a rare genius."  The fellowship with these men confirmed him in his modern leanings. He lectured on the Areopagite’s Hierarchies, but he soon came to adopt Grocyn’s view of their late date. The high estimate of Thomas Aquinas which prevailed, he abandoned and pronounced him "arrogant for attempting to define all things" and of "corrupting the whole teaching of Christ with his profane philosophy."1108  Some years later, writing to Erasmus, he disparaged the contemporary theologians as spending their lives in mere logical tricks and dialectic quibbles. Erasmus, replying to him, pronounced the theology which was once venerable "become, almost dumb, poor and in rags."

As dean of St. Paul’s, an appointment he received in 1504, Colet stands forth as a reformer of clerical abuses, a bold preacher and a liberal patron of education. The statutes he issued for the cathedral clergy laid stress upon the need of reformation "in every respect, both in life and religion."  The old code, while it was particular to point out the exact plane the dean should occupy in processions and the choir, did not mention preaching as one of his duties. Colet had public lectures delivered on Paul’s Epistles, but it was not long till he was at odds with his chapter. The cathedral school did not meet his standard, and the funds he received on his father’s death he used to endow St. Paul’s school, 1509.1109  The original buildings were burnt down in the London fire, and new buildings reared in 1666. The statutes made the tuition free, and set the number of pupils at 153, since increased threefold. They provided for instruction in "good literature, both Latin and Greek," but especially for Christian authors that "wrote their wisdom with clean and chaste Latin."  The founder’s high ideal of a teacher’s qualifications, moral as well as literary, set forth in his statutes for the old cathedral school, was "that he should be an upright and honorable man and of much and well-attested learning."  Along with chaste literature, he was expected "to imbue the tender minds of his pupils with holy morals and be to them a master, not of grammar only, but of virtue."1110

St. Paul’s has the distinction of being the first grammar-school in England where Greek was taught. The list of its masters was opened by William Lily, one of the few Englishmen of his age capable of teaching Greek. After studying at Oxford, he made a journey to Jerusalem, and returned to England by way of Italy. He died in 1522. By his will, Colet left all his books, "imprinted and in paper," to poor students of the school.

As a preacher, the dean of St. Paul’s was both bold and Scriptural. Among his hearers were the Lollards. Colet himself seems to have read Wyclif’s writings as well as other heretical works.1111  Two of his famous sermons were delivered before convocation, 1511, and on Wolsey’s receiving the red hat. The convocation discourse, which has come down to us entire, is a vigorous appeal for clerical reform.1112  The text was taken from Rom. xii:2. "Be ye not conformed to this world but be ye reformed."  The pride and ambition of the clergy were set forth and their quest of preferment in Church and state condemned. Some frequented feasts and banquetings and gave themselves to sports and plays, to hunting and hawking.1113  If priests themselves were good, the people in their turn would be good also. "Our goodness," exclaimed the preacher, "would urge them on in the right way far more efficaciously than all your suspensions and excommunications. They should live a good and holy life, be properly learned in the Scriptures and chiefly and above all be filled with the fear of God and the love of the heavenly life."

According to the canons of the age, the preacher went beyond the limits of prudence and Fitz-James, bishop of London, cited him for trial but the case was set aside by the archbishop. The charges were that Colet had condemned the worship of images and declared that Peter was a poor man and enjoyed no episcopal revenues and that, in condemning the reading of sermons, Colet had meant to give a thrust to Fitz-James himself, who was addicted to that habit. Latimer, who was at Cambridge about that time, said in a sermon some years later, that, in those days Doctor Colet was in trouble and should have been burned, if God had not turned the king’s heart to the contrary."

When Erasmus’ Greek Testament appeared, Colet gave it a hearty welcome. In a letter to the Dutch scholar acknowledging the receipt of a copy, he expressed his regret at not having a sufficient knowledge of Greek to read it and his desire to be his disciple in that tongue. It was here he made the prediction that "the name of Erasmus will never perish."  Erasmus had written to Colet that he had dipped into Hebrew but gone no further, "frightened by the strangeness of the idiom and in view of the insufficiency of the human mind to master a multitude of subjects."1114  A much younger scholar at Tübingen, Philip Melanchthon, had put his tribute to the Novum instrumentum in Greek verse which was transmitted to Erasmus by Beatus Rhenanus. Fox, bishop of Winchester, pronounced the book more instructive to him than 10 commentaries.

Not long before his death, Colet determined to retire to a religious retreat at Shene, a resolution based upon his failing health and the troubles in which his freedom of utterance had involved him. He did not live to carry out his resolution. He was buried in St. Paul’s. It is noteworthy that his will contained no benefactions to the Church or provision for masses for his soul. Erasmus paid the high tribute to his friend, while living, that England had not "another more pious or one who more truly knew Christ."  And, writing after Colet’s death to a correspondent, he exclaimed, "What a man has England and what a friend I have lost!"  Colet had often hearkened to Erasmus’ appeals in times of stringency.1115  No description in the Colloquies has more interest for the Anglo-Saxon people than the description of the journey which the two friends made together to the shrines of Thomas à Becket and of Our Lady of Walsingham. And the best part of the description is the doubting humor with which they passed criticism upon Peter’s finger, the Virgin’s milk, one of St. Thomas’ shoes and other relics which were shown them.

Far as Colet went in demanding a reform of clerical habits, welcoming the revival of letters, condemning the old scholastic disputation and advocating the study of the Scriptures, it is quite probable he would not have fallen in with the Reformation.1116  He was fifty when it broke out. The best word that can be spoken of him is, that he seems to have conformed closely to the demand which he made of Christian men to live good and upright lives for, of a surety, he said, "to do mercy and justice is more pleasant to God, than to pray or do sacrifice to Him."1117  What higher tribute could be paid than the one paid by Donald Lupton in his History of Modern Protestant Divines, 1637, "This great dean of St. Paul’s taught and lived like St. Paul."1118

Sir Thomas More, 1478–1535, not only died in the Catholic Church, but died a martyr’s death, refusing to acknowledge the English king’s supremacy so far as to impugn the pope’s authority. After studying in Oxford, be practised law in London, rising to be chancellor of the realm. It is not for us here to follow his services in his profession and to the state, but to trace his connection with the revival of learning and the religious movement in England. More was a pattern of a devout and intelligent layman. He wore a hair shirt next to his skin and yet he laughed at the superstition of his age. On taking office, he stipulated that, he should first look to God and after God to the king."  At the same time, he entered heartily with his close friends, Erasmus and Colet, into the construction of a new basis for education in the study of the classics, Latin and Greek. He was firmly bound to the Church, with the pope as its head, and yet in his Utopia he presented a picture of an ideal society in which religion was to be in large part a matter of the family, and confession was not made to the priest nor absolution given by the priest.

With the exception of the Utopia, all of More’s genuine works were religious and the most of them were controversial treatises, intended to confute the new doctrines of the Reformation which had found open advocates in England long before More’s death. More was beheaded in 1535 and, if we recall that Tyndale’s English New Testament was published in 1526, we shall have a standard for measuring the duration of More’s contact with the Protestant upheaval. Tyndale himself was strangled and burnt to death a year after More’s execution. In answer to Simon Fish’s work, The Supplication of Beggars, a bitter attack against purgatory, More sent forth the Supplication of Souls or Poor Seely (simple) Souls pewled out of Purgatory. Here souls are represented as crying out not to be left in their penal distress by the forgetfulness of the living. Fish was condemned to death and burnt, 1533. As the chief controversialist on the old side, More also wrote against John Fryth, who was condemned to the stake 1533, and against Tyndale, pronouncing his translation of the New Testament "a false English translation newly forged by Tyndale."  He also made the strange declaration that "Wyclif, Tyndale and Friar Barnes and such others had been the original cause why the Scripture has been of necessity kept out of lay people’s hands."1119  More said heretical books were imported from the Continent to England, in vats full."  He called Thomas Hylton, a priest of Kent, one of the heretics whom he condemned to the flames, "the devil’s stinking pot."  Hylton’s crime was the denial of the five sacraments and he was burnt 1530.1120  As was the custom of the time, More’s controversial works abound in scurrilous epithets. His opponents he distinguishes by such terms as "swine," "hellhounds that the devil hath in his kennel," "apes that dance for the pleasure of Lucifer."1121  In his works against Tyndale and Fryth, he commended pilgrimages, image-worship and indulgences. He himself, so the chancellor wrote, had been present at Barking, 1498, when a number of relics were discovered which "must have been hidden since the time when the abbey was burnt by the infidels," and he declared that the main thing was that such relics were the remains of holy men, to be had in reverence, and it was a matter of inferior import whether the right names were attached to them or not."1122

And yet, More resisted certain superstitions, as of the Franciscan monk of Coventry who publicly preached, that "whoever prayed daily through the Psalter to the Blessed Virgin could not be damned."  He denied the Augustinian teaching that infants dying without baptism were consigned to eternal punishment and he could write to Erasmus, that Hutten’s Epistolae obscurorum virorum delighted every one in England and that "under a rude scabbard the work concealed a most excellent blade."1123  His intimacy with Colet and Erasmus led to an attempt on the part of the monks, in 1519, to secure his conversion.

More was beatified by Leo XIII., 1886, and with St. Edmund, Bishop Fisher and Thomas à Becket is the chief English martyr whom English Catholics cultivate. He died "unwilling to jeopardize his soul to perpetual damnation" and expressing the hope that, "as St. Paul and St. Stephen met in heaven and were friends, so it might be with him and his judges."  Gairdner is led to remark that "no man ever met an unjust doom in a more admirable spirit."1124  We may concur in this judgment and yet we will not overlook the fact that More, gentleman as he was in heart, seems to us to have been unrelenting to the men whom he convicted as heretics and, in his writings, piled upon them epithets as drastic as Luther himself used. Aside from this, he is to be accorded praise for his advocacy of the reform in education and his commendation of Erasmus’ Greek Testament. He wrote a special letter to the Louvain professor, Dorpius, upbraiding him for his attack upon the critical studies of Erasmus and upon the revision of the old Latin text as unwarranted.

More’s Utopia, written in Latin and published in 1516 with a preface by Budaeus, took Europe by storm. It was also called Nusquama or Nowhere. With Plato’s Republic as a precedent, the author intended to point out wherein European society and especially England was at fault. In More’s ideal commonwealth, which was set up on an island, treaties were observed and promises kept, and ploughmen, carpenters, wagoners, colliers and other artisans justly shared in the rewards of labor with noblemen, goldsmiths and usurers, who are called the unproductive classes. "The conspiracy of the rich procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth" was not allowed. In Utopia, a proper education was given to every child, the hours of physical labor were reduced to six, the streets were 20 feet wide and the houses backed with gardens and supplied with freshwater. The slaughtering was done outside the towns. All punishment was for the purpose of reform and religion, largely a matter of family. The old religions continued to exist on the island, for Christianity had but recently been introduced, but More, apparently belying his later practice as judge, declared that "no man was punished for his religion."  Its priests were of both sexes and "overseers and orderers of worship" rather than sacerdotal functionaries. Not to them but to the heads of families was confession made, the wife prostrate on the ground confessing to her husband, and the children to both parents. The priests were married.

Little did More suspect that, within ten years of the publication of his famous book, texts would be drawn from it to support the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany.1125  In it are stated some of the sociological hopes and dreams of this present age. The author was voicing the widespread feeling of his own generation which was harassed with laws restricting the wages of labor, with the enclosures of the commons by the rich, the conversion of arable lands into sheep farms and with the renewed warfare on the Continent into which England was drawn.1126

John Fisher, who suffered on the block a few months before More for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, and set aside the succession of Catherine of Aragon’s offspring, was 79 years old when he died. Dean Perry has pronounced him "the most learned, the most conscientious and the most devout of the bishops of his day."  In 1511, he recommended Erasmus to Cambridge to teach Greek. On the way to the place of beheadal, this good man carried with him the New Testament, repeating again and again the words, "This is life eternal to know Thee and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."  "That was learning enough for him," he said.

To Grocyn, Colet, More and Fisher the Protestant world gives its reverent regard. It is true, they did not fully apprehend the light which was spreading over Europe. Nevertheless, they went far as pioneers of a more rational system of education than the one built up by the scholastic method and they have a distinct place in the history of the progress of religious thought.1127

In Scotland, the Protestant Reformation took hold of the nation before the Renaissance had much chance to exercise an independent influence. John Major, who died about 1550, wrote a commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard and is called "the last of the Schoolmen."  He is, however, a connecting link with the new movement in literature through George Buchanan, his pupil at St Andrews. Major remained true to the Roman communion. Buchanan, after being held for six months in prison as a heretic in Portugal, returned to Scotland and adopted the Reformation. According to Professor Hume-Brown, his Latin paraphrase of the Psalms in metre "was, until recent years, read in Scotland in every school where Latin was taught."1128  Knox’s History of the Reformation was the earliest model of prose literature in Scotland.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PULPIT AND POPULAR PIETY.

§ 72. Literature.

For §§73, 74.—The works of Erasmus, Colet, Tyndale, Geller of Strassburg and other sources quoted in the notes.—Lea: Hist. of Cler. Celibacy. Also Hist. of Span. Inq.—Histt. Of The Engl. Ch. by Capes and Gairdnertraill: Social Hist. of Engl., vol. II.—Seebohm: Oxf. Reformers.—Gasquet: The Old Engl. Bible and Other Essays, Lond., 2d ed., 1907. Also The Eve of the Reformation, pp. 245 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt, im MA, pp. 431–663, Detmold, 1879.—Kolde: D. relig. Leben in Erfurt am Ausgange d. MA, 1898.—Landmann: D. Predigttum in Westphalen In d. letzten Zeiten d. MA, pp. 256.—Schön: art. Predigt in Herzog, XV. 642–656. Janssen-Pastor: Hist. of the Ger. People, vol. I.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, I. 31 sqq., III. 133 sqq.—Hefele-Hergenröther: Conciliengesch., vol. VIII.

For § 75.—Ullmann: Reformers before the Reformation, 2 vols., Hamb., 1841 sq., 2d ed., Gotha, 1866, Engl. trsl, 2 vols., Edinb., 1855; Also J. Wessel, ein Vorgänger Luthers, Hamb., 1834.—Gieseler, II., Part IV. 481–503. Copious excerpts from their writings.—Hergenröther-Kirsch, II., 1047–1049.—Janssen-Pastor: I. 745–747.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., III. 518, etc.—Loofs: Dogmengesch., 4th ed., 655–658.—For Goch: His De libertate christ., etc., ed. by Corn. Graphaeus, Antw., 1520–1523.—O. Clemen: Joh. Pupper von Goch, Leip., 1896 and artt. In Herzog, VI. 740–743, and In Wetzer-Welte, VI. 1678–1684.—For Wesel: his Adv. indulgentias in Walch’s Monumenta medii aevi Götting., 1757.—The proceedings of his trial, in Aeneas Sylvius: Commentarium de concilio Basileae and D’argentré: Col. Nov. judiciorum de erroribus novis, Paris, 1755, and Browne: Fasciculus, 2d ed., Lond., 1690.—Artt. in Herzog by Clemen, xxi, 127–131, and Wetzer-Welte, VI. 1786–1789.—For Wessel: 1st ed. of his works Farrago rerum theol., a collection of his tracts, appeared in the Netherlands about 1521, 2d ed., Wittenb., 1522, containing Luther’s letter, 3d and 4th edd., Basel, 1522, 1523. Complete ed. of his works containing Life, by A. Hardenberg (preacher in Bremen, d. 1574), Groningen, 1614.—Muurling: Commentatio historico-Theol. de Wesseli cum vita tum meritis, Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1831; also de Wesseli principiis ac virtutibus, Amsterd., 1840.—J. Friedrich, Rom. Cath.: J. Wessel, Regensb., 1862.—Artt. Wessel in Herzog, by Van Veen, xxi. 131–147, and Wetzer-Welte, XII. 1339–1343.—P. Hofstede de Groot: J. Wessel Ganzevoort, Groningen, 1871.

For § 76.—Nicolas of Lyra: Postillae sive Commentaria brevia in omnia biblia, Rome, 1541–1543, 5 vols., Introd.—Wyclif: De veritate scrip. Sac., ed. by Buddensieg, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—Gerson: De sensu litterali scrip: sac., Du Pin’s ed., 1728, I. 1 sqq.—Erasmus: Introd. to Gr. Test., 1516.—L. Hain: Repertorium bibliographicum, 4 vols., Stuttg., 1826–1838. Ed. Reuss, d. 1891: D. Gesch. d. heil. Schriften N. T., 6th ed., Braunschweig, 1887, pp. 603 sqq.—F. W. Farrar: Hist. of Interpretation, Lond., 1886, pp. 254–303.—S. Berger: La Bible Française au moyen âge, Paris, 1884. Gasquet: The Old Engl. Bible, etc.; the Eve of the Reformation.—F. Falk: Bibelstudien, Bibelhandschriften und Bibeldrucken, Mainz, 1901: Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA, ihre Kenntnis und ihre Verbreitung, Col., 1905.—W. Walther: D. deutschen Bibelübersetzungen des MA, Braunschweig, 1889–1892.—A. Coppinger: Incunabula bibl. or the First Half Cent. of the Lat. Bible, 1450–1500, with 54 facsimiles, Lond., 1892.—The Histt. of the Engl. Bible, by Westcott, Eadie, Moulton, Kenyon, etc.—Janssen-Pastor: Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, I. 9 sqq.—Bezold: Gesch. der Reformation, pp. 109 sqq.—R. Schmid: Nic. of Lyra, In Herzog XII. 28–30.—Artt. Bibellesen und Bibelverbot and Bibelübersetzungen in Herzog II. 700 sqq., III. 24 sqq. Other works cited in the notes.

For § 77.—I. Sources: Savonarola’s Lat. and Ital. writings consist of sermons, tracts, letters and a few poems. The largest collection of MSS. and original edd. is preserved in the National Library of Florence. It contains 15 edd. of the Triumph of the Cross issued in the 15th and 16th centt. Epp. spirituales et asceticae, ed. Quétif, Paris, 1674. The sermons were collected by a friend, Lorenzo Vivoli, and published as they came fresh from the preacher’s lips. Best ed. Sermoni a Prediche, Prato, 1846. Also ed. by G. Baccini, Flor., 1889. A selection, ed. by Villari and Casanova: Scelta di prediche e scritti, G. Sav., Flor., 1898.—Germ. trsl. of 12 sermons and the poem de ruina mundi by H. Schottmüller: Berlin, 1901, pp. 132. A. Gherardi: Nuovi documenta e studii intorno a Savon., 1876, 2d ed., Flor., 1887.—The Triumph of the Cross, ed. in Lat. and Ital. by L. Ferretti, O. P., Milan, 1901. Engl. trsl. from this ed. by J. Procter, Lond., 1901, pp. 209.—Exposition of Ps. LI and part of Ps. XXXII, Lat. text with Engl. trsl. by E. H. Perowne, Lond., 1900, pp. 227.—Sav.’s Poetry, ed. by C. Guasti, Flor., 1862, pp. xxii, 1864.—Rudelbach, Perrens and Villari give specimens in the original.—E. C. Bayonne: Oeuvres spir. choisies de Sav., 3 vols., Paris, 1880.—Oldest biographies by P. Burlamacchi, d. 1519, founded on an older Latin Life, the work of an eye-witness, ed. by Mansi, 1761: G. F. Pico Della Mirandola (nephew of the celebrated scholar of that name), completed 1520, publ. 1530, ed. by Quétif, 2 vols., Paris, 1674. On these three works, see Villari, Life of Sav., pp. xxvii sqq.—Also J. Nardi (a contemporary): Le storie della cittá di Firenze, 1494–1531, Flor., 1584. Luca Landucci, a pious Florentine apothecary and an ardent admirer of Sav.: Diario Fiorentino, 1450–1516, Florence, 1883. A realistic picture of Florence and the preaching and death of Savonarola.

II. Modern Works.—For extended lit., see Potthast: Bibl. Hist. med., II. 1564 sqq.—Lives by Rudelbach, Hamb., 1835.—Meier, Berl., 1836.—K. Hase in Neue Propheten, Leip., 1851.—F. T. Perrens, 2 vols., Paris, 1853, 3d ed., 1859.—Madden, 2 vols., Lond., 1854.—Padre V. Marchese, Flor., 1855.—*Pasquale Villari: Life and Times of Savon., Flor., 1859–1861, 2d ed., 1887, 1st Engl. trsl. by L. Horner, 2d Engl. trsl. by Mrs. Villari, Lond., 2 vols., 1888, 1 vol. ed., 1899.—Ranke in Hist. biogr. Studien, Leip., 1877.—Bayonne: Paris, 1879.—E. Warren, Lond., 1881.—W. Clark, Prof. Trinity Col., Toronto, Chicago, 1891.—J. L. O’Neil, O. P.: Was Sav. really excommunicated?  Bost, 1900; *H. Lucas, St. Louis, 1900.—G. McHardy, Edinb., 1901.—W. H. Crawford: Sav. the Prophet in Men of the Kingdom series.—*J. Schnitzer: Quellen und Forschungen zur Gesch. Savon., 3 vols., Munich, 1902–1904. Vol. II., Sav. und die Fruerprobe, pp. 175.—Also Savon. im Lichte der neuesten Lit. in Hist.-pol. Blätter, 1898–1900.—H. Riesch: Savon. U. S. Zeit, Leip., 1906.—Roscoe in Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent.—E. Comba: Storia della riforma in Italia, Flor., 1881.—P. Schaff, art. Savon. in Herzog II., 2d ed., XIII. 421–431, and Benrath in 3d ed., XVII. 502–513.—Creighton: vol. III.—Gregorovius: VII. 432 sqq.—*Pastor: 4th ed., III. 137–148, 150–162, 396–437: Zur Beurtheilung Sav., pp. 79, Freib. im Br., 1896. This brochure was in answer to sharp attacks upon Pastor’s treatment of Savonarola in the 1st ed. of his Hist., especially those of Luotto and Feretti.—P. Luotto: Il vero Savon. ed il Savon. di L. Pastor, Flor., 1897, p. 620. Luotto also wrote Dello studio di scrittura sacra secondo G. Savon. e Léon XIII., Turin, 1896.—Feretti: Per la causa di Fra G. Savon., Milan, 1897.—Mrs. Oliphant: Makers of Florence. Godkin: The Monastery of San Marco, Lond., 1901.—G. Biermann: Krit. Studie zur Gesch. des Fra G. Savon., Rostock, 1901.—Brie: Savon. und d. deutsche Lit., Breslau, 1903.—G. Bonet-Maury: Les Précurseurs de la Réforme et de la liberté de conscience ... du XIIe et XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1904, contains sketches of Waldo, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable, St. Francis, Dante, Savonarola, etc.—Savonarola has been made the subject of romantic treatment by Lenau In his poem Savonarola, 1844, Geo. Eliot in Romola, and by Alfred Austin in his tragedy, Savonarola, Lond., 1881, with a long preface in which an irreverent, if not blasphemous, parallel is drawn between the Florentine preacher and Christ.

For § 78.—See citations In the Notes.

For § 79.—G. Uhlhorn: Die christl. Liebesthätigkeit im MA, Stuttg., 1884.—P. A Thiejm: Gesch. d. Wohlthätigkeitsanstalten in Belgien, etc., Freib., 1887.—L. Lallemand: Hist. de la charité, 3 vols., Paris, 1906. Vol. 3 covers the 10th-16th century.—T. Kolde: Art. Bruderschaften, in Herzog, III. 434–441.—A. Blaize: Des monts-de-piété et des banques de prêt sur gage, Paris, 1856.—H. Holzapfel: D. Anfänge d. montes pietatis 1462–1515, Munich, 1903.—Toulmin Smith: Engl. Gilds, Lond., 1870.—Thorold Rogers: Work and Wages, ch. XI. sqq.—W. Cunningham: Growth of Engl. Industry and Commerce, bk. II., ch. III. sqq.—Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, II.—Stubbs: Const. Hist., ch. XXI.—W. von Heyd: Gesch. d. Levantenhandels im MA, 2 vols., Stuttg., 1879.—Artt. Aussatz and Zins u. Wucher In Wetzer-Welte, I. 1706 sqq., XII. 1963–1975.—Janssen-Pastor, I. 451 sqq.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste., III.

For § 60.—The Sources are Thomas Aquinas, the papal bulls of indulgence and treatments by Wyclif, Huss, Wessel, John of Paltz, James of Jüterbock, etc. Much material is given by W. Köhler: Dokumente zum Ablassstreit, Tüb., 1902, and A. Schulte: D. Fugger in Rom, 2 vols., Leipz., 1904. Vol. II contains documents.—The authoritative Cath. work is Fr. Beringer: Die Ablässe, ihr Wesen u. Gebrauch, pp. 860 and 64, 13th ed., Paderb., 1906.—Also Nic. Paulus: J. Tetzel, der Ablassprediger, Mainz, 1899.—Best Prot. treatments, H. C. Lea: Hist. of Auric. Conf. and Indulgences in the Lat. Ch., 3 vols., Phil., 1896.—T. Brieger, art. Indulgenzen in Herzog, IX. 76–94, and Schaff-Herzog, V. 485 sqq. and D. Wesen d. Ablasses am Ausgange d. MA, a university address. Brieger has promised an extended treatment in book form.—Schaff: Ch. Hist., V., I. p. 729 sqq., VI. 146 sqq.

§ 73. The Clergy.

Both in respect of morals and education the clergy, during the period following the year 1450, showed improvement over the age of the Avignon captivity and the papal schism. Clerical practice in that former age was so lo that it was impossible for it to go lower and any appearance of true religion remain. One of the healthy signs of this latter period was that, in a spirit of genuine religious devotion, Savonarola in Italy and such men in Germany as Busch, Thomas Murner, Geiler of Strassburg, Sebastian Brant and the Benedictine abbot, Trithemius, held up to condemnation, or ridicule, priestly incompetency and worldliness. The pictures, which they joined Erasmus in drawing, were dark enough. Nevertheless, the clergy both of the higher and lower grades included in its ranks many men who truly sought the well-being of the people and set an example of purity of conduct.

The first cause of the low condition, for low it continued to be, was the impossible requirement of celibacy. The infraction of this rule weakened the whole moral fibre of the clerical order. A second cause is to be looked for in the seizure of the rich ecclesiastical endowments by the aristocracy as its peculiar prize and securing them for the sons of noble parentage without regard to their moral and intellectual fitness. To the evils arising from these two causes must be added the evils arising from the unblushing practice of pluralism. No help came from Rome. The episcopal residences of Toledo, Constance, Paris, Mainz, Cologne and Canterbury could not be expected to be models of domestic and religious order when the tales of Boccaccio were being paralleled in the lives of the supreme functionaries of Christendom at its centre.

The grave discussions of clerical manners, carried on at the Councils of Constance and Basel, revealed the disease without providing a cure. The proposition was even made by Cardinal Zabarella and Gerson, in case further attempts to check priestly concubinage failed, to concede to the clergy the privilege of marriage.1129  In the programme for a reformation of the Church, offered by Sigismund at Basel, the concession was included and Pius II., one of the attendants on that synod, declared the reasons for restoring the right of matrimony to priests to be stronger in that day than were the reasons in a former age for forbidding it. The need of a relaxation of the rigid rule found recognition in the decrees of Eugenius IV., 1441, and Alexander VI., 1496, releasing some of the military orders from the vow of chastity. Here and there, priests like Lallier of Paris at the close of the 15th century, dared to propose openly, as Wyclif had done a century before, its full abolition. But, for making the proposal, the Sorbonne denied to Lallier the doctorate.

In Spain, the efforts of synods and prelates to put a check upon clerical immorality accomplished little. Finally, the secular power intervened and repeated edicts were issued by Ferdinand and Isabella against priestly concubinage, 1480, 1491, 1502, 1503. So energetic was the attempt at enforcement that, in districts, clerics complained that the secular officials made forcible entrance into their houses and carried off their women companions.1130  In his History of the Spanish Inquisition, Dr. Lea devotes a special chapter to clerical solicitation at the confessional. Episcopal deliverances show that the priests were often illiterate and without even a knowledge of Latin. The prelates were given to worldliness and the practice of pluralism. The revenues of the see of Toledo were estimated at from 80,000 to 100,000 ducats, with patronage at the disposal of its incumbent amounting to a like sum. A single instance must suffice to show the extent to which pluralism in Spain was carried. Gonzalez de Mendoza, while yet a child, held the curacy of Hita, at twelve was archdeacon of Guadalajara, one of the richest benefices of Spain, and retained the bishopric of Seguenza during his successive administrations of the archbishoprics of Seville and Toledo. Gonzalez was a gallant knight and, in 1484, when he led the army which invaded Granada, he took with him his bastard son, Rodrigo, who was subsequently married in great state in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella to Ferdinand’s niece. In 1476, when the archbishopric of Saragossa became vacant, king Juan II. applied to Sixtus IV. to appoint his son, Alfonzo, a child of six, to the place. Sixtus declined, but after a spirited controversy preserved the king’s good-will by appointing the boy perpetual administrator of the see.

In France, the bishop of Angers, in an official address to Charles VIII., 1484, declared that the religious orders had fallen below the level of the laity in their morals.1131  To give a case of extravagant pluralism, John, son of the duke of Lorraine, 1498–1550, was appointed bishop-coadjutor of Metz, 1501, entering into full possession seven years later, and, one after the other, he united with this preferment the bishoprics of Toul, 1517, and Térouanne, 1518, Valence and Die, 1521, Verdun, 1523, Alby, 1536, Macon soon after, Agen, 1541 and Nantes, 1542. To these were added the archbishoprics of Narbonne, 1524, Rheims, 1533, and Lyons, 1537. He also held at least nine abbeys, including Cluny. He resigned the sees of Verdun and Metz to a nephew, but resumed them in 1548 when this nephew married Marguerite d’Egmont.1132  In 1518, he received the red hat. During the 15th century one boy of 10 and another of 17 filled the bishopric of Geneva. A loyal Romanist, Soeur Jeanne de Jussie, writing after the beginning of the 16th century, testifies to the dissoluteness of the bishops and clergy of the Swiss city and charged them with living in adultery.1133

In Germany, although as a result of the labors of the Mystics the ecclesiastical condition was much better, the moral and intellectual unfitness was such that it calls forth severe criticism from Catholic as well as Protestant historians. The Catholic, Janssen, says that "the profligacy of the clergy at German cathedrals, as well as their rudeness and ignorance, was proverbial. The complaints which have come down to us from the 15th century of the bad morals of the German clergy are exceedingly numerous."  Ficker, a Protestant, speaks of "the extraordinary immorality to which priests and monks yielded themselves."  And Bezold, likewise a Protestant, says that "in the 15th century the worldliness of the clergy reached a height not possible to surpass."1134  The contemporary Jacob Wimpheling, set forth probably the true state of the case. He was severe upon the clergy and yet spoke of many excellent prelates, canons and vicars, known for their piety and good works. He knew of a German cleric who held at one time 20 livings, including 8 canonries. To the archbishopric of Mainz, Albrecht of Hohenzollern added the see of Halberstadt and the archbishopric of Magdeburg. For his promotion to the see of Mainz he paid 30,000 gulden, money he borrowed from the Fuggers.

The bishops were charged with affecting the latest fashions in dress and wearing the finest textures, keeping horses and huntings dogs, surrounding themselves with servants and pages, allowing their beards and hair to grow long, and going about in green- and red-colored shoes and shoes punctured with holes through which ribbons were drawn. They were often seen in coats of mail, and accoutred with helmets and swords, and the tournament often witnessed them entered in the lists.1135

The custom of reserving the higher offices of the Church for the aristocracy was widely sanctioned by law. As early as 1281 in Worms and 1294 in Osnabruck, no one could be dean who was not of noble lineage. The office of bishop and prebend stalls were limited to men of noble birth by Basel, 1474, Augsburg, 1475, Münster and Paderborn, 1480, and Osnabruck, 1517. The same rule prevailed in Mainz, Halberstadt, Meissen, Merseburg and other dioceses. At the beginning of the 16th century, it was the established custom in Germany that no one should be admitted to a cathedral chapter who could not show 16 ancestors who had joined in the tournament and, as early as 1474, the condition of admission to the chapter of Cologne was that the candidate should show 32 members of his family of noble birth. Of the 228 bishops who successively occupied the 32 German sees from 1400–1517, all but 13 were noblemen. The eight occupants of the see of Münster, 1424–1508, were all counts or dukes. So it was with 10 archbishops of Mainz, 1419–1514, the 7 bishops of Halberstadt, 1407–1513, and the 5 archbishops of Cologne, 1414–1515.1136  This custom of keeping the high places for men of noble birth was smartly condemned by Geiler of Strassburg and other contemporaries. Geiler declared that Germany was soaked with the folly that to the bishoprics, not the more pious and learned should be promoted but only those who, "as they say, belong to good families."  It remained for the Protestant Reformation to reassert the democratic character of the ministry.

A high standard could not be expected of the lower ranks of the clergy where the incumbents of the high positions held them, not by reason of piety or intellectual attainments but as the prize of birth and favoritism. The wonder is, that there was any genuine devotion left among the lower priesthood. Its ranks were greatly overstocked. Every family with several sons expected to find a clerical position for one of them and often the member of the family, least fitted by physical qualifications to make his way in the world, was set apart for religion. Here again Geiler of Strassburg applied his lash of indignation, declaring that, as people set apart for St. Velten the chicken that had the pox and for St. Anthony the pig that was affected with disease, so they devoted the least likely of their children to the holy office.

The German village clergy of the period were as a rule not university bred. The chronicler, Felix Faber of Ulm, in 1490 declared that out of 1000 priests scarcely one had ever seen a university town and a baccalaureate or master was a rarity seldom met with. With a sigh, people of that age spoke of the well-equipped priest of, the good old times."

From the Alps to Scandinavia, concubinage was widely practised and in parts of Germany, such as Saxony, Bavaria, Austria and the Tirol, it was general. The region, where there was the least of it, was the country along the Rhine. In parts of Switzerland and other localities, parishes, as a measure of self-defence, forced their young pastors to take concubines. Two of the Swiss Reformers, Leo Jud and Bullinger, were sons of priests and Zwingli, a prominent priest, was given to incontinence before starting on his reformatory career. It was a common saying that the Turk of clerical sensualism within was harder to drive out than the Turk from the East.

How far the conscientious effort, made in Germany in the last years of the Middle Ages to reform the convents, was attended with success is a matter of doubt. John Busch labored most energetically in that direction for nearly fifty years in Westphalia, Thuringia and other parts. The things that he records seem almost past belief. Nunneries, here and there, were no better than brothels. In cases, they were habitually visited by noblemen. The experience is told of one nobleman who was travelling with his servant and stopped over night at a convent. After the evening meal, the nuns cleared the main room and, dressed in fine apparel, amused their visitor by exhibitions of dancing.1137  Thomas Murner went so far as to say that convents for women had all been turned into refuges for people of noble birth.1138  The dancing during the sessions of the Diet of Cologne, 1505, was opened by the archbishop and an abbess, and nuns from St. Ursula’s and St. Mary’s, the king Maximilian looking on. Preachers, like Geiler of Strassburg, cried out against the moral dangers which beset persons taking the monastic vow.1139  The cloistral life came to be known as "the compulsory vocation."  As the time of the Reformation approached, there was no lessening of the outcry against the immorality of the clergy and convents, as appears from the writings of Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus.

The practice of priestly concubinage, uncanonical though it was, bishops were quite ready to turn into a means of gain, levying a tax upon it. In the diocese of Bamberg, a toll of 5 gulden was exacted for every child born to a priest and, in a single year, the tax is said to have brought in the considerable sum of 1,500 gulden. In 1522, a similar tax of 4 gulden brought into the treasury of the bishop of Constance, 7,500 gulden. The same year, complaint was made to the pope by the Diet of Nürnberg of the reckless lawlessness of young priests in corrupting women and of the annual tax levied in most dioceses upon all the clergy without distinction whether they kept concubines or not.1140  It is not surprising, in view of these facts, that Luther called upon monks and nuns unable to avoid incontinence of thought, to come forth from the monasteries and marry. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that no plausible charge of incontinence was made against the Reformer.

If we turn to England, we are struck with the great dearth of contemporary religious literature, 1450–1517, as compared with Germany.1141  Few writings have come down to us from which to form a judgment of the condition of the clergy. Our deductions must be drawn in part from the testimonies of the English Humanists and Reformers and from the records of the visitations of monasteries and also their suppression under Henry VIII. In a document, drawn up at the request of Henry V. by the University of Oxford, 1414, setting forth the need of a reformation of the Church, one of the articles pronounced the "undisguised profligacy of the clergy to be the scandal of the Church."1142  In the middle of the century, 1455, Archbishop Bourchier’s Commission for Reforming the Clergy spoke of the marriage and concubinage of the secular clergy and the gross ignorance which, in quarters, marked them. In the latter part of the century, 1489, the investigation of the convents, undertaken by Archbishop Morton, uncovered an unsavory state of affairs. The old abbey of St. Albans, for example, had degenerated till it was little better than a house of prostitution for monks. In two priories under the abbey’s jurisdiction, the nuns had been turned out to give place to avowed courtesans. The Lollards demanded the privilege of wedlock for priests. When, in 1494, 30 of their number were arraigned by Robert Blacater, archbishop of Glasgow, one of the charges against them was their assertion that priests had wives in the primitive Church.1143  Writing at the very close of the 15th century, Colet exclaimed, "Oh, the abominable impiety of those miserable priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great multitude, who fear not to rush from the arms of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church, to the altar of Christ, to the mysteries of God."1144  The famous tract, the Beggars’ Petition, written on the eve of the British Reformation, accused the clergy of having no other serious occupation than the destruction of the peace of family life and the corruption of women.1145

As for the practice of plural livings, it was perhaps as much in vogue in England as in Germany. Dr. Sherbourne, Colet’s predecessor as dean of St. Paul’s, was a notable example of a pluralist, but in this respect was exceeded by Morton and Wolsey. As for the ignorance of the English clergy, it is sufficient to refer to the testimony of Bishop Hooper who, during his visitation in Gloucester, 1551, found 168 of 811 clergymen unable to repeat the Ten Commandments, 40 who could not tell where the Lord’s Prayer was to be found and 31 unable to give the author.1146

In Scotland, the state of the clergy in pre-Reformation times was probably as low as in any other part of Western Europe.1147  John IV.’s bastard son was appointed bishop of St. Andrews at 16 and the illegitimate sons of James V., 1513–1542, held the five abbeys of Holyrood, Kelso, St. Andrews, Melrose and Coldingham. Bishops lived openly in concubinage and married their daughters into the ranks of the nobility. In the marriage document, certifying the nuptials of Cardinal Beaton’s eldest daughter to the Earl of Crawford, 1546, the cardinal called her his child. On the night of his murder, he is said to have been with his favorite mistress, Marion Ogilvie.

Side by side with the decline of the monastic institutions, there prevailed among the monks of the 15th century a most exaggerated notion of the sanctifying influence of the monastic vow. According to Luther, the monks of his day recognized two grades of Christians, the perfect and the imperfect. To the former the monastics belonged. Their vow was regarded as a second baptism which cleared those who received it from all stain, restored them to the divine image and put them in a class with the angels. Luther was encouraged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be affirmed that any one "entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.1148

§ 74. Preaching.

The two leading preachers of Europe during the last 50 years of the Middle Ages were Jerome Savonarola of Florence and John Geiler of Strassburg. Early in the 15th century, Gerson was led by the ignorance of the clergy to recommend a reduction of preaching,1149 but in the period just before the Reformation there was a noticeable revival of the practice of preaching in Germany and a movement in that direction was felt in England. Erasmus, as a cosmopolitan scholar made an appeal for the function of the pulpit, which went to all portions of Western Europe.

In Germany, the importance of the sermon was emphasized by synodal decrees and homiletic manuals. Such synods were the synods of Eichstädt, 1463, Bamberg, 1491, Basel, 1503, Meissen, 1504. Surgant’s noted Handbook on the Art of Preaching praised the sermon as the instrument best adapted to lead the people to repentance and inflame Christian love and called it "the way of life, the ladder of virtue and the gate of paradise."1150  It was pronounced as much a sin to let a word from the pulpit fall unheeded as to spill a drop of the sacramental wine. In the penitential books and the devotional manuals of the time, stress was laid upon the duty of attending preaching, as upon the mass. Those who left church before the sermon began were pronounced deserving excommunication. Wolff’s penitential manual of 1478 made the neglect of the sermon a violation of the 4th commandment. The efficacy of sermons was vouched for in the following story. A good man met the devil carrying a bag full of boxes packed with salves. Holding up a black box, the devil said that he used it to put people to sleep during the preaching service. The preachers, he continued, greatly interfered with his work, and often by a single sermon snatched from him persons he had held in his power for 30 or 40 years.1151

By the end of the 15th century, all the German cities and most of the larger towns had regular preaching.1152  It was a common thing to endow pulpits, as in Mainz, 1465, Basel, 1469, Strassburg, 1478, Constance, Augsburg, Stuttgart and other cities. The popular preachers drew large audiences. So it was with Geiler of Strassburg, whose ministry lasted 30 years. 10,000 are said to have gathered to hear the sermons of the barefooted monk, Jacob Mene of Cologne, when he held forth at Frankfurt, the people standing in the windows and crowding up against the organ to hear him. It was Mene’s practice to preach a sermon from 7–8 in the morning, and again after the noon meal. On a certain Good Friday he prolonged his effort five hours, from 3–8 P. M. According to Luther, towns were glad to give itinerant monks 100 gulden for a series of Lenten discourses.

Other signs of the increased interest felt in sermons were the homiletic cyclopaedias of the time furnishing materials derived from the Bible, the Fathers, classic authors and from the realm of tale and story. To these must be added the plenaria, collections from the Gospels and Epistles with glosses and comments. The plenarium of Guillermus, professor in Paris, went through 75 editions before 1500. Collections of model sermons were also issued, some of which had an extensive circulation. The collection of John Nider, d. 1439, passed through 17 editions. His texts were invariably subjected to a threefold division. The collection of the Franciscan, John of Werden, who died at Cologne about 1450, passed through 25 editions. John Herolt’s volume of Sermons of a Disciple — Sermones discipuli — went through 41 editions before 1500 and is computed to have had a circulation of no less than 40,000 copies.1153  One of the most popular of the collections called Parati sermones—The Ready Man’s Sermons — appeared anonymously. Its title was taken from 1 Peter 4:6, "ready—paratus — to judge the quick and the dead" and Ps. 119:60, "I made haste [ready] and delayed not to observe thy commandments."  In setting forth the words "Be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is" the author says that such wisdom is taught by the animals. 1. By the lion who brushes out his paw-prints with his tail so that the hunter is thrown off the track. So we should with penance erase the marks of our sins that the devil may not find us out. 2. The serpent which closes both ears to the seducer, one ear with his tail and the other by holding it to the ground. Against the devil we should shut our ears by the two thoughts of death and eternity. 3. The ant from which we learn industry in making provision for the future. 4. A certain kind of fish which sucks itself fast to the rock in times of storm. So we should adhere closely to the rock, Christ Jesus, by thoughts of his passion and thus save ourselves from the surging of the waves of the world. Such materials show that the homiletic instinct was alert and the preachers anxious to catch the attention of the people and impart biblical truth.

The sermons of the German preachers of the 15th century were written now in Latin, now in German. The more famous of the Latin sermonizers were Gabriel Biel, preacher in Mainz and then professor in Tübingen, d. 1495, and Jacob Jüterbock, 1883–1465, Carthusian prior in Erfurt and professor in the university in that city.1154  Among the notable preachers who preached in German were John Herolt of Basel, already mentioned; the Franciscan John Gritsch whose sermons reached 26 editions before 1500; the Franciscan, John Meder of Basel whose Lenten discourses on the Prodigal Son of the year 1494 reached 36 editions and Ulrich Krafft, pastor in Ulm, 1500 to 1516, and author of the two volumes, The Spiritual Battle and Noah’s Ark.

More famous than all others was Geiler of Strassburg, usually called from his father’s birthplace, Geiler of Kaisersberg, born in Schaffhausen, 1445, died in Strassburg, 1510. He and his predecessor, Bertholdt of Regensburg, have the reputation of being the most powerful preachers of mediaeval Germany. For more than a quarter of a century he stood in the cathedral pulpit of Strassburg, the monarch of preachers in the North. After pursuing his university studies in Freiburg and Basel, Geiler was made professor at Freiburg, 1476. His pulpit efforts soon made him a marked man. In accepting the call as preacher in the cathedral at Strassburg, he entered into a contract to preach every Sunday and on all festival and fast days. He continued to fill the pulpit till within two months of his death and lies interred in the cathedral where he preached.1155

"The Trumpet of Strassburg," as Geiler was called, gained his fame as a preacher of moral and social reforms. He advocated no doctrinal changes. Called upon, 1500, to explain his public declaration that the city councillors were "all of the devil," he issued 21 articles demanding that games of chance be prohibited, drinking halls closed, the Sabbath and festival days observed, the hospitals properly cared for and monkish mendicancy regulated.

He was a preacher of the people and now amused, now stung them, by anecdotes, plays on words, descriptions, proverbs, sallies of wit, humor and sarcasm.1156  He attacked popular follies and fashions and struck at the priests "many of whom never said mass," and at the convents in which "neither religion nor virtue was found and the living was lax, lustful, dissolute and fall of all levity."1157  Mediaeval superstition he served up to his hearers in good doses. He was a firm believer in astrology, ghosts and witches.

Geiler’s style may seem rude to the polite age in which we live, but it reached the ear of his own time. The high as well as the low listened. Maximilian went to hear Geiler when he was in Strassburg. No one could be in doubt about the preacher’s meaning. In a series of 65 passion sermons, he elaborated a comparison between Christ and a ginger cake—the German Lebkuchen. Christ is composed of the bean meal of the deity, the old fruit meal of the body and the wheat meal of the soul. To these elements is added the honey of compassion. He was thrust into the oven of affliction and is divided by preachers into many parts and distributed among the people. In other sermons, he compared perfect Christians to sausages.

In seven most curious discourses on Der Hase im Pfeffer an idiomatic expression for That’s the Rub—based on Prov. 30:26, "The coney is a weak folk," he made 14 comparisons between the coney and the good Christian. The coney runs better up hill than down, as a good Christian should do. The coney has long ears as also a Christian should have, especially monastics, attending to what God has to say. The coney must be roasted; and so must also the Christian pass through the furnace of trial. The coney being a lank beast must be cooked in lard, so also must the Christian be surrounded with love and devotion lest he be scorched in the furnace. In 64 discourses, preached two years before his death, Geiler brought out the spiritual lessons to be derived from ants and in another series he elaborated the 25 sins of the tongue. In a course of 20 sermons to business men, he depicted the six market days and the devil as a pedler(sic) going about selling his wares. He preached 17 sermons on the lion in which the king of beasts was successively treated as the symbol of the good man, the worldly man, Christ and the devil; 12 of these sermons were devoted to the ferocious activities of the devil. A series on the Human Tree comprised no less than 163 discourses running from the beginning of Lent, 1495, to the close of Lent, 1496.

During the last two years of the 15th century, Geiler preached 111 homilies on Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools Narren-schiff — all drawn from the text Eccles. 1:15 as it reads in the Vulgate, "the fools are without number."  Through Geiler’s intervention Brant had been brought to Strassburg from Basel, where he was professor. His famous work, which is a travesty upon the follies of his time, employed the figure of a ship for the transport of his fools because it was the largest engine of transportation the author knew of. Very humorously Brant placed himself in the moderator’s chair while all the other fools were gathered in front of him. He himself took the rôle of the Book-fool. Among other follies which are censured are the doings of the mendicants, the traffic in relics and indulgences and the multiplication of benefices in single hands.1158  Geiler’s homilies equal Brant’s poetry in humor. Both were true to life. No preacher of the Middle Ages held the popular ear so long as Geiler of Strassburg and no popular poet, not even Will Langland, more effectually wrote for the masses than Sebastian Brant.

In this period, the custom came to be quite general to preach from the nave of the church instead of from the choir railing. Preachers limited their discourses by hour-glasses, a custom later transplanted to New England.1159  Sermons were at times unduly extended. Gerhard Groote sometimes preached for three hours during Lent and John Gronde extended some of his discourses to six hours, mercifully, however, dividing them into two parts with a brief breathing-spell between, profitable as may well be surmised alike to the preacher and the hearers. Geiler, who at one time had been inclined to preach on without regard to time, limited his discourses to a single hour.

The criticisms which preachers passed upon the customs of the day show that human nature was pretty much the same then as it is now and that the "good old times" are not to be sought for in that age. All sorts of habits were held up to ridicule and scorn. Drunkenness and gluttony, the dance and the street comedy, the dress of women and the idle lounging of rich men’s sons, usury and going to church to make a parade were among the subjects dwelt upon. Again and again, Geiler of Strassburg returned to the lazy sons of the rich who spent their time in retailing scandals and doing worse, more silly in their dress than the women, fops who "thought themselves somebody because their fathers were rich."  He also took special notice of women and their fripperies. He condemned their belts, sometimes made of silk and adorned with gold, costing as much as 40 or 50 gulden, their padded busts and their extensive wardrobes, enabling them to wear for a week at a time two different garments each day and a third one for a dancing party or the play. He launched out against their long hair, left to fall down over the back and crowned with ribbons or small caps such as the men wore. As examples of warning, Absalom and Holofernes were singled out, the former caught by his hair in the branches of the tree and Holofernes ensnared by the adornments of Judith. Geiler called upon the city authorities to come to the help of society and the preacher and legislate against such evils.1160

Another preacher, Hollen, condemned the long trails which women wore as "the devil’s wagon," for neither men nor angels but only the devil has a caudal appendage. As for dancing, especially the round dances, the devil was the head concertmaster at such entertainments and the higher the dancers jumped, the deeper their fall into hell and, the more firmly they held on to each other with their hands, the more closely did the devil tighten his hold upon them. Dancing was represented by the preachers as an occasion of much profligacy.

In ridiculing the preaching of his day, Erasmus held forth the preachers’ ignorance, their incongruous introductions, their use of stories from all departments without any discrimination, their old women’s tales and the frivolous topics they chose—aniles fabulae et questiones frivolse. A famous passage in which the great scholar disparages the preaching of the monks and friars begins with the words: —

All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are these gestures!  What heights and falls in their voice!  What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of months, apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another.1161

Erasmus deserves credit for discerning the need of the times, and recommending the revival of the practice of preaching and the mission of preachers to the heathen nations. His views were set forth in the Ecclesiastes or Preacher, a work written during the Freiburg period and filling 275 pages,1162 each double the size of the pages of the hardcopy volume. The chief purpose of preaching he defined to be instruction. Every preacher is a herald of Christ, who was himself the great preacher. The office of preaching is superior in dignity to the office of kings. "Among the charisms of the Spirit, none is more noble and efficacious than preaching. To be a dispenser of the celestial philosophy and a messenger of the divine will is excelled by no office in the church."  It is quite in accord with Erasmus’ high regard for the teaching function, that he magnifies the instructional element of the sermon. Writing to Sapidus, 1516, he said, "to be a schoolmaster is next to being a king."1163

Of the English pulpit, there is little to say. We hear of preaching at St. Paul’s Cross and at other places, but there is no evidence that preaching was usual. No volumes of English sermons issued from the printing-press. Colet is the only English preacher of the 15th century of historical importance. The churchly counsel given to priests to impart instruction to the people, issued by the Lambeth synod of 1281, stands almost solitary. In 1466, Archbishop Nevill of York did no more than to repeat this legislation.

In Scotland the history of the pulpit begins with Knox. Dr. Blaikie remarks that, for the three centuries before the Reformation, scarcely a trace of Christian preaching can be found in Scotland worthy the name. The country had no Wyclif, as it had no Anselm.1164  Hamilton and Wishart, Knox’s immediate forerunners, were laymen.

The Abbé Dr. Gasquet in a chapter on A Forgotten English Preacher in his Old Eng. Bible and other Essays gives extracts from the MS. sermon of Thomas Branton, Bishop of Rochester, 1372–1389. After saying that we know very little about mediaeval preaching in England, Dr. Gasquet, p. 54, remarks that it is perhaps just as well, as the sermons were probably dull and that "the modern sermon" has to be endured as a necessary evil. In his chapter on Teaching and Preaching, pp. 244–284, in his Eve of the Reformation, the same author returns to the subject, but the chapter itself gives the strongest evidence of the literary barrenness of the English Church in the closing years of the Middle Ages and the dearth of preaching and public instruction. By far the larger part of the chapter, pp. 254–280, is taken up with quotations from Sir Thomas More, the tract Dives and Pauper and other tracts, to show that the doctrine of the worship of images and saints was not taught in its crass form and with a statement of the usefulness of miracle-plays as a means of popular religious instruction. Dr. Gasquet lays stress upon the "simple instruction" given by the English priesthood in the Middle Ages as opposed to formal sermons which he confesses "were probably by no means so frequent as in these times."  He makes the astounding assertion, p. 245, that religions instruction as a means of social and moral improvement was not one of the primary aims of the Reformation. The very opposite is proved by the efforts of Luther, Calvin and Knox to secure the establishment of schools in every hamlet and the catechisms which the two former prepared and the numerous catechisms prepared by their fellow Reformers. And what of their habit of constant preaching?  Luther preached day after day. One of the first signs of the Reformation in Geneva was that St. Pierre and St. Gervaise were opened for preaching daily. Calvin incorporated into his ecclesiastical polity as one of the orders the ministry, the teaching body.

§ 75. Doctrinal Reformers.

A group of theologians appeared in Northwestern Germany who, on the one hand, were closely associated by locality and training with the Brothers of the Common Life and, on the other, anticipated the coming age by the doctrinal reforms which they proposed. On the latter account, John of Goch, John of Wesel and Wessel of Gansfort have been properly classed with Wyclif and Huss as Reformers before the Reformation.1165  Erasmus has no place at their side for, with his satire on ceremonies and church conditions, the question is always raised of his sincerity. Savonarola suggested no doctrinal changes. Among the new views emphasized by one or all of these three men were the final authority of the Scriptures, the fallibility of the pope, the sufficiency of divine grace for salvation irrespective of priestly mediation, and the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church. However, but for the Protestant Reformation, it is not probable their voices would have been heard beyond the century in which they lived.

John Pupper, 1400–1475, usually called John of Goch from his birthplace, a hamlet on the lower Rhine near Cleves, seems to have been trained in one of the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and then studied in Cologne and perhaps in Paris. He founded a house of Augustinians near Mecheln, remaining at its head till his death. His writings were not published till after the beginning of the Reformation. He anticipated that movement in asserting the supreme authority of the Bible. The Fathers are to be accepted only so far as they follow the canonical Scriptures. In contrast to the works of the philosophers and the Schoolmen, the Bible is a book of life; theirs, books of death.1166  He also called in question the merit of monastic vows and the validity of the distinction between the higher and lower morality upon which monasticism laid stress. What is included under the higher morality is within the reach of all Christians and not the property of monks only. He renounced the Catholic view of justification without stating with clearness the evangelical theory.1167

John Ruchrath von Wesel, d. 1481, attacked the hierarchy and indulgences and was charged on his trial with calling in question almost all the distinctive Roman Catholic tenets. He was born in Oberwesel on the Rhine between Mainz and Coblentz. He taught at the University of Erfurt and, in 1458, was chosen its vice-rector. Luther bore testimony to his influence when he said, "I remember how Master John Wesalia ruled the University of Erfurt by his writings through the study of which I also became a master."1168  Leaving Erfurt, he was successively professor in Basel and cathedral preacher in Mainz and Worms.

In 1479, Wesel was arraigned for heresy before the Inquisition at Mainz.1169  Among the charges were that the Scriptures are alone a trustworthy source of authority; the names of the predestinate are written in the book of life and cannot be erased by a priestly ban; indulgences do not profit; Christ is not pleased with festivals of fasting, pilgrimages or priestly celibacy; Christ’s body can be in the bread without any change of the bread’s substance: pope and councils are not to be obeyed if they are out of accord with the Scriptures; he whom God chooses will be saved irrespective of pope and priests, and all who have faith will enjoy as much blessedness as prelates. Wesel also made the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church and defined the Church as the aggregation of all the faithful who are bound together by love—collectio omnium fidelium caritate copulatorum. In his trial, he was accused of having had communication with the Hussites. In matters of historical criticism, he was also in advance of his age, casting doubt upon some of the statements of the Athanasian Creed, abandoning the application of the term Catholic to the Apostles’ Creed and pronouncing the addition of the filioque clause—and from the Son—unwarranted. The doctrines of indulgences and the fund of merit he pronounced unscriptural and pious frauds. The elect are saved wholly through the grace of God—sola Dei gratia salvantur electi.

At the request of Diether of Isenburg, archbishop of Mainz, the Universities of Cologne and Heidelberg sent delegates to the trial. The accused was already an old man, leaning on his staff, when he appeared before the tribunal. Lacking strength to stand by the heretical articles, he agreed to submit "to mother Church and the teachings of the doctors."  A public recantation in the cathedral followed, and his books were burnt.1170  These punishments were not sufficient to expiate his offence and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian convent of Mainz, where he died.

Among Wesel’s reported sayings, which must have seemed most blasphemous to the devout churchman of the time, are the following: "The consecrated oil is not better than the oil used for your cakes in the kitchen."  "If you are hungry, eat. You may eat a good capon on Friday."  "If Peter established fasting, it was in order that he might get more for his fish" on fast days. To certain monastics, he said, "Not religion" (that is, monastic vows) "but God’s grace saves," religio nullum salvat sed gratia Dei.

A still nearer approach to the views of the Reformers was made by Wessel Gansfort, commonly called John Wessel,1171 born in Groningen, 1420, died 1489. In his Preface to Wessel’s writings, 1522, Luther said, "If I had read Wessel earlier, my enemies might have said that Luther drew everything from Wessel, so well do our two minds agree."  Wessel attended school at Zwolle, where he met Thomas à Kempis of the neighboring convent of Mt. St. Agnes. The story ran that when Thomas pointed him to the Virgin, Wessel replied, "Father, why did you not rather point me to Christ who calls the heavy-laden to himself?"  He continued his studies in Cologne, where he took Greek and Hebrew, in Heidelberg and in Paris. He declined a call to Heidelberg. In 1470, we find him in Rome. The story went that, when Sixtus IV. invited him to follow the common custom of visitors to the Vatican and make a request, the German student replied that he would like to have a Hebrew or Greek manuscript of the Bible from the Vatican. The pope, laughing, said, "Why did you not ask for a bishopric, you fool?"  Wessel’s reply was "Because I do not need it."

Wessel spent some time in Basel, where he met Reuchlin. In 1473, the bishop of Utrecht wrote that many were seeking his life and invited him back to Holland. His last years, from 1474 on, Wessel spent with the Brothers of the Common Life at Mt. St. Agnes, and in the nuns’ convent at Groningen. There, in the place of his birth, he lies buried. His last words were, "I know no one save Jesus, the Crucified."

Wessel enjoyed a reputation for great learning. He escaped arraignment at the hands of the Inquisition, but was violently attacked after his death in a tract on indulgences, by Jacob Hoeck, Dean of Naaldwyk. None of Wessel’s writings were published till after the outbreak of the Reformation. Although he did not reach the doctrine of justification by faith, he declared that pope and councils may err and he defined the Church to be the communion of the saints. The unity of the Church does not lie in the pope—unitas ecclesiae sub uno papa tantum accidentalis est, adeo ut non sit necessaria. He laid stress upon the faith of the believer in partaking of the eucharist or, rather, upon his hunger and thirst after the sacrament. But he did not deny the sacrifice of the mass or the validity of the communion under one kind. He gave up the judicial element in priestly absolution.1172  There is no such thing as works of supererogation, for each is under obligation to do all he can and to do less is to sin. The prerogative of the keys belongs to all believers. Plenary indulgences are a detestable invention of the papacy to fill its treasury.

In 1522, a Dutch lawyer, von Hoen, joining with other Netherlanders, sent Luther a copy of some of Wessel’s writings.1173  In the preface which the Reformer wrote for the Wittenberg edition, he said that, as Elijah of old, so he had felt himself to be the only one left of the prophets of God but he had found out that God had also had his prophets in secret like Wessel.

These three German theologians, Goch, Wesel and Wessel, were quietly searching after the marks of the true Church and the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone. Without knowing it, they were standing on the threshold of the Reformation.

§ 76. Girolamo Savonarola.

Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter.

In the closing decade of the 15th century the city of Florence seemed to be on the eve of becoming a model municipality, a pattern of Christian morals, a theocracy in which Christ was acknowledged as sovereign. In the movement looking towards this change, the chief actor was Jerome Savonarola, prior of the

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Savonarola

Dominican convent of St. Mark’s, the most imposing preacher of the Middle Ages and one of the most noteworthy preachers of righteousness since St. Paul. Against the dark moral background of his generation he appears as a broad sheet of northern light with its coruscations, mysterious and protentous, but also quickly disappearing. His message was the prophet’s cry, "Who shall abide the day of His coming and who shall stand when He appeareth?"

Savonarola, born in Ferrara Sept. 21, 1452, died in Florence May 23, 1498, was the third of seven children. Choosing his grandfather’s profession, he entered upon the study of medicine, from which he was turned away by a deepening impression of the corruption of society and disappointment at the refusal of a family of Strozzi, living at Ferrara, to give him their daughter in marriage. At the age of 23, he secretly left his father’s house and betook himself to Bologna, where he assumed the Dominican habit. Two days after his arrival in Bologna, he wrote thus to his father explaining the reason of his abrupt departure.

I could not endure any longer the wickedness of the blinded peoples of Italy. Virtue I saw despised everywhere and vices exalted and held in honor. With great warmth of heart, I made daily a short prayer to God that He might release me from this vale of tears. ’Make known to me the way,’ I cried, ’the way in which I should walk for I lift up my soul unto Thee,’ and God in His infinite mercy showed me the way, unworthy as I am of such distinguishing grace.1174

He begged his father to console his mother and referred him to a poem by his pen on the contempt of the world, which he had left among his papers. In this letter and several letters to his mother, which are extant, is shown the young monk’s warm affection for his parents and his brothers and sisters.

In the convent, the son studied Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and became familiar with the Scriptures, sections of which he committed to memory. Two copies of the Bible are extant in Florence, containing copious notes in Savonarola’s own handwriting, made on the margin, between the printed lines and on added leaves.1175  After his appointment as provincial, he emphasized the study of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek.

In 1481, he was sent to Florence, where he became an inmate of St. Mark’s. The convent had been rebuilt by Cosimo de Medici and its walls illuminated by the brush of Fra Angelico. At the time of Savonarola’s arrival, the city was at the height of its fame as a seat of culture and also as the place of lighthearted dissipation under the brilliant patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

The young monk’s first efforts in the pulpit in Florence were a failure. The congregation at San Lorenzo, where he preached during the Lenten season, fell to 25 persons. Fra Mariano da Gennazzano, an Augustinian, was the popular favorite. The Dominican won his first fame by his Lenten sermons of 1486, when he preached at Brescia on the Book of Revelation. He represented one of the 24 elders rising up and pronouncing judgments upon the city for its wickedness. In 1489, he was invited back to Florence by Lorenzo at the suggestion of Pico della Mirandola, who had listened to Savonarola’s eloquence at Reggio. During the remaining nine years of his life, the city on the Arno was filled with Savonarola’s personality. With Catherine of Siena, he shares the fame of being the most religious of the figures that have walked its streets. During the first part of this short period, he had conflict with Lorenzo and, during the second, with Alexander VI., all the while seeking by his startling warnings and his prophecies to bring about the regeneration of the city and make it a model of civic and social righteousness. From Aug. 1, 1490, when he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mark’s, the people thronged to hear him whether he preached there or in the cathedral. In 1491, he was made prior of his convent. To preaching he added writings in the department of philosophy and tracts on humility, prayer and the love of Jesus. He was of middle height, dark complexion, lustrous eyes dark gray in color, thick lips and aquiline nose. His features, which of themselves would have been called coarse, attracted attention by the serious contemplative expression which rested upon them, and the flash of his eye.

Savonarola’s sermons were like the flashes of lightning and the reverberations of thunder. It was his mission to lay the axe at the root of dissipation and profligacy rather than to depict the consolations of pardon and communion with God. He drew more upon the threatenings of the divine wrath than upon the refreshing springs of the divine compassion. Tender descriptions of the divine love and mercy were not wanting in his sermons, but the woes pronounced upon the sinfulness of his time exceeded the gentle appeals. He was describing his own method, when he said, "I am like the hail. Cover thyself lest it come down upon thee, and strike thee. And remember that I said unto thee, Cover thy head with a helmet, that is clothe thyself with virtue and no hail stone will touch thee."1176

In the time of his greatest popularity, the throngs waited hours at the doors of the cathedral for the preacher’s arrival and it has been estimated by Villari, that audiences of 10,000 or 12,000 hung on his discourses. Like fields of grain under the wind, the feelings of his audiences were swayed by the preacher’s voice. Now they burned with indignation: now they were softened to tears. "I was overcome by weeping and could not go on."  So wrote the reporter while taking down a sermon, and Savonarola himself felt the terrible strain of his efforts and often sank back into his seat completely exhausted. His message was directed to the clergy, high and low, as well as to the people and the flashes of his indignation often fell upon the palace of Lorenzo. The clergy he arraigned for their greed of prebends and gold and their devotion to outer ceremonies rather than to the inner life of the soul. Florence he addressed in endearing terms as the object of his love. "My Florence," he was wont to exclaim. Geneva was no more the city of Calvin or Edinburgh of Knox than was Florence the city of Savonarola. Portraying the insincerity of the clergy, he said: —

In these days, prelates and preachers are chained to the earth by the love of earthly things. The care of souls is no longer their concern. They are content with the receipt of revenue. The preachers preach to please princes and to be praised by them. They have done worse. They have not only destroyed the Church of God. They have built up a new Church after their own pattern. Go to Rome and see!  In the mansions of the great prelates there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical art. Go thither and see!  Thou shalt find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands and telling one another that they can guide mens’ souls by means of Virgil, Horace and Cicero ... The prelates of former days had fewer gold mitres and chalices and what few they possessed were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the poor. But our prelates, for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor of their sole means of support. Dost thou not know what I would tell thee!  What doest thou, O Lord!  Arise, and come to deliver thy Church from the hands of devils, from the hands of tyrants, from the hands of iniquitous prelates.1177

Dizzy flights of fancy abounded in Savonarola’s discourses and took the place of calm and logical exposition. On the evening before he preached his last sermon in Advent, 1492, Savonarola beheld in the middle of the sky a hand holding a sword with the inscription, Behold the sword of the Lord will descend suddenly and quickly upon the earth—Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter. Suddenly the sword was turned toward the earth, the sky was darkened, swords, arrows and flames rained down. The heavens quaked with thunder and the world became a prey to famine and death. The vision was ended by a command to the preacher to make these things known. Again and again, in after years did he refer to this prophetic vision.1178  Its memory was also preserved by a medal, representing on one side Savonarola and on the other a sword in the heavens held by a hand and pointing to a city beneath.

The inscription on the heavenly sword well represents the style of Savonarola’s preaching. It was impulsive, pictorial, eruptive, startling, not judicial and instructive. And yet it made a profound impression on men of different classes. Pico della Mirandola the elder has described its marvellous effect upon himself. On one occasion, when he announced as his text Gen. 6:17, "Behold I will bring the flood of waters upon the earth," Pico said he felt a cold shudder course through him, and his hair, as it were, stand on end. One is reminded of some of the impressions made by the sermons of Christmas Evans, the Welsh preacher, and the impression made by Whitefield’s oratory upon Lord Chesterfield and Franklin. But the imagery of the sermon, brilliant and weird as it was, is no sufficient explanation of the Florentine preacher’s power. The preacher himself was burning with religious passion. He felt deeply and he was a man of deep devotion. He had the eye of the mystic and saw beneath the external and ritual to the inner movements of spiritual power.

The biblical element was also a conspicuous feature of his preaching. Defective as Savonarola’s exegesis was, the biblical element was everywhere in control of his thought and descriptions. His famous discourses were upon the ark, Exodus, and the prophets Haggai, Ezekiel, Amos and Hosea, and John’s Revelation. He insisted upon the authority of Scripture. "I preach the regeneration of the Church," he said, "taking the Scriptures as my sole guide."1179

Another element which gave to Savonarola’s sermons their virility and power was the prophetic element. Savonarola was not merely the expounder of righteousness. He claimed to be a prophet revealing things which, to use his own words, "are beyond the scope of the knowledge which is natural to any creature."  This element would have been a sign of weakness, if it had not been associated with a great personality, bent on noble ends. The severity of his warnings was often so fearful that the preacher himself shrank back from delivering them. On one occasion, he spent the entire night in vigils and prayer that he might be released from the duty of making known a message, but in vain. The sermon, he then went forth to preach, he called a terrific sermon.

Savonarola’s confidence in his divine appointment to be the herald of special communications from above found expression not only from the pulpit but was set forth more calmly in two works, the Manual of Revelations, 1495, and a Dialogue concerning Truth and Prophecy, 1497. The latter tract with a number of Savonarola’s sermons were placed on the Index. In the former, the author declared that for a long time he had by divine inspiration foretold future things but, bearing in mind the Saviour’s words, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs," he had practised reserve in such utterances. He expressed his conception of the office committed to him, when he said, "The Lord has put me here and has said to me, ’I have placed thee as a watchman in the centre of Italy ... that thou mayest hear my words and announce them,’ " Ezek. 3:17. If we are inclined to regard Savonarola as having made a mistake in claiming prophetic foresight, we easily condone the mistake on the ground of his impassioned fervor and the pure motives by which he was animated. To his prophecies he applied Christ’s own words, that no jot or tittle should fail till they were fulfilled.

None of his messages was more famous than the one he received on his visit to paradise, March, 1495. Before starting on his journey, a number of ladies offered to be his companions. Philosophy and Rhetoric he declined. Accepting the company of Faith, Simplicity, Prayer and Patience, he was met on his way by the devil in a monk’s garb.1180  Satan took occasion to present to him objections against the supernatural character of his predictions. Savonarola ought to have stopped with preaching virtue and denouncing vices and left prophecy alone. A prophet was always accredited by miracles. True prophets were holy men and the devil asked Savonarola whether he felt he had reached a high grade of saintliness. He then ventured to show that Savonarola’s prophecies had not always been fulfilled. By this time they had arrived at the gates of paradise where prudently Satan took his leave. The walls of paradise—so Savonarola described them—were of diamonds and other precious stones. Ten banners surmounted them inscribed with the prayers of Florence. Hierarchies and principalities appeared on every side. With the help of angels, the visitor mounted a ladder to the throne of the Virgin who gave him a crown and a precious stone and then, with Jesus in her arms, supplicated the Trinity for Savonarola and the Florentines. Her request was granted and the Florentines promised an era of prosperity preceded by a period of sorrows. In this new time, the city would be more powerful and rich than ever before.

The question arises whether Savonarola was a genuine prophet or whether he was self-deluded, mistaking for the heated imaginations of his own religious fervor, direct communications from God.1181  Alexander VI. made Savonarola’s "silly declaration of being a prophet" one of the charges against him.1182  In his Manual of Revelations, Savonarola advanced four considerations to prove that he was a true prophet—his own subjective certainty, the fulfilment of his predictions, their result in helping on the cause of moral reform in Florence and their acceptance by good people in the city. His prophecies, he said, could not have come from astrology for he rejected it, nor from a morbid imagination for this was inconsistent with his extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, nor from Satan for Satan hated his sermons and does not know future events.

For us, the only valid test is historical fact. Were Savonarola’s prophecies fulfilled?  The two prophecies, upon whose fulfilment stress is laid, were the political revolution in Florence, which occurred, and the coming of Charles VIII. from across the Alps. Savonarola saw in Charles a Cyrus whose advent would release Florence from her political bondage and introduce an era of civil freedom . He also predicted Charles’ subsequent retreat. Commines, who visited Savonarola in the convent of St. Mark’s after the trials which followed Charles’ advent in Italy had begun, went away impressed with the friar’s piety and candor, and declared that he predicted with certainty to him and to the king, "things which no one believed at the time and which have all been fulfilled since."1183  On the other hand, such solemn prognostications failed of fulfilment, as the extension of Florentine dominion even to the recovery of Pisa, made May 28, 1495, and the speedy conversion of the Turks and Moors, made May 3, 1495. The latter purported to be a revelation from the Virgin on his visit to paradise. Where a certain number of solemn, prophetic announcements remained unfulfilled, it is fair to suspect that the remainder were merely the predictions of a shrewd observer watching the progress of events. Many people trusted the friar as a prophet but, as conditions became more and more involved, they demanded with increasing insistence that he should substantiate his prophetic claim by a miracle. Even the predictions which came true in part, such as the coming of Charles VIII. across the Alps, received no fulfilment in the way of a permanent improvement of conditions, such as Savonarola expected. The statement of Prof. Bonet-Maury expresses the case well. Savonarola’s prophetic gift, so-called, was nothing more than political and religious intuition.1184  Some of his predictions were not in the line of what Christian prophecies might be expected to be, such as the rehumiliation of Pisa. The Florentines felt flattered by the high honor which the prophet paid to their city, and his predictions of her earthly dominion as well as heavenly glory. In his Manual of Revelations he exclaims, "Whereas Florence is placed in the midst of Italy, like the heart in the midst of the body, God has chosen to select her, that she may be the centre from which this prophetic announcement should be spread abroad throughout all Italy."

No scene in Savonarola’s career excels in moral grandeur and dramatic interest his appearance at the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in 1492. History has few such scenes to offer. When it became apparent to the brilliant ruler of the Florentine state that his days were numbered, he felt unwilling to face the mysteries of death and the future without the absolution priestly prerogative pretends to be competent to confer. Savonarola and Lorenzo loved Florence with an equal love, though the one sought its glory through a career of righteousness and the other through a career of worldly dominion and glittering culture. The two leaders found no terms of agreement. Lorenzo had sought to win the preacher by personal attention and blandishments. He attended mass at St. Mark’s. Savonarola held himself back as from an elegant worldling and the enemy of the liberties of Florence. "You see," said Lorenzo, "a stranger has come into my house, yet he will not stoop to pay me a visit."  "He does not ask for me; let him go or stay at his pleasure," replied the friar to those who told him that Lorenzo was in the convent garden.

Five influential citizens of Florence called and suggested to the friar that he modify his public utterances. Recognizing that they had come at Lorenzo’s instance, he bade them tell the prince to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons and spares not the mighty of the earth. Lorenzo called upon Fra Mariano to publicly take Savonarola to task. This he did from the pulpit on Ascension Day, 1491. Lorenzo himself was present, but the preacher’s charges overshot the mark, and Savonarola was more popular than ever. The prior of St. Mark’s exclaimed, "Although I am a stranger in the city, and Lorenzo the first man in the state, yet shall I stay here and it is he who will go hence."

When the hour of death approached, Lorenzo was honest with himself. In vain did the physician, Lazzaro of Pavia, resort to the last medical measure, a potion of distilled gems. Farewell was said to Pico della Mirandola and other literary friends, and Lorenzo gave his final counsels to his son, Piero. The solemn rites of absolution and extreme unction were all that remained for man to receive from man. Lorenzo’s confessor was within reach but the prince looked to St. Mark’s. "I know of no honest friar save this one," he exclaimed. And so Savonarola was summoned to the bedside in the villa Careggi, two miles from the city. The dying man wanted to make confession of three misdeeds: the sack of Volterra, the robbery of Monte delle Fanciulle and the merciless reprisals after the Pazzi conspiracy. The spiritual messenger then proceeded to present three conditions on which his absolution depended. The first was a strong faith in God’s mercy. The dying man gave assent. The second was that he restore his ill-gotten wealth, or charge his sons to do it. To this assent was also given. The third demand required that he give back to Florence her liberties. To this Lorenzo gave no response and turned his face to the wall. The priest withdrew and, in a few hours, April 8, 1492, the ruler of Florence passed into the presence of the omnipotent Judge who judgeth not according to the appearance but according to the heart and whose mercy is everlasting.

The surmisal has been made that, if Savonarola had been less rigid, he might have exercised an incalculable influence for good upon the dying prince who was still susceptible of religious impressions.1185  But who can with probability conjecture the secrets of the divine purpose in such cases?  Perhaps, Savonarola’s relentless demands awakened in Lorenzo a serious impression showing itself in a cry to God for absolution, while the extreme unction of the priest might have lulled the dying man’s conscience to sleep with a false sense of security. At any rate, the influence of the friar of St. Mark’s with the people increased.

During the years, beginning with 1494, Savonarola’s ascendancy was at its height and so cold a witness as Guicciardini reports his influence as extraordinary. These years included the invasion of Charles VIII., the banishment of the Medici from Florence and the establishment of a theocratic government in the city.

"He will come across the Alps against Italy like Cyrus," Savonarola had prophesied of the French king, Charles VIII. And, when the French army was approaching the confines of Florence, he exclaimed, "Behold, the sword has come upon you. The prophecies are fulfilled, the scourge begun!  Behold these hosts are led of the Lord!  O Florence, the time of singing and dancing is at an end. Now is the time to shed floods of tears for thy sins."

Florence listened eagerly. Piero de’ Medici went to the French camp and yielded to the king’s demand for 200,000 florins, and the cession of Pisa, Leghorn and Sarzana. But Savonarola thundered and pled from the pulpit against the Medicean house. The city decreed its banishment and sent commissioners to Charles, with Savonarola among them. In his address, which is preserved, the friar reminded his Majesty that he was an instrument sent by the Lord to relieve Italy of its woes and to reform the Church. Charles entered Florence but, moved by Savonarola’s intercession, reduced the tribute to 120,000 florins and restrained the depredations of the French soldiery. The king also seems to have listened to the friar’s stern words when he said to him, "Hearken unto the voice of God’s servant and pursue thy journey onward without delay."

When Charles, after sacking Rome and occupying Naples, returned to Northern Italy, Savonarola wrote him five letters threatening that, if he did not do for Florence the things about which he had spoken to him, God’s wrath would be poured out upon his head. These things were the recognition of the liberties of Florence and the return of Pisa to her dominion. In his letter of May 25, 1495, bidding Charles favor the city of Florence, he asserted, "God has chosen this city and determined to magnify her and raise her up and, whoso toucheth her, toucheth the apple of His eye."  Certainly, from the standpoint of the welfare of Italy, the French invasion was not of Providential origin. Although the banners of his army were inscribed with the words Voluntas Dei — the Will of God—and Missus Dei — the legate of God—Charles was bent on territorial aggrandizement and not on breaking the bonds of civic despotism.

The time had now come to realize in Florence Savonarola’s ideal of government, a theocracy with Christ at its head. The expulsion of the Medici made possible a reorganization of the state and the new constitution, largely a matter of Savonarola’s creation, involved him inextricably in civic policies and the war of civic factions. However, it should not be forgotten that his municipal constitution secured the commendation of Guicciardini and other Italian political writers. It was a proof of the friar’s remarkable influence that, at his earnest advice, a law was passed which prevented retaliatory measures against the followers of the Medici. Landucci wrote in his diary that, but for Savonarola, the streets would have been bathed in blood. In his great sermons on Haggai, during the Advent season of 1494, and on the Psalms in 1495, Savonarola definitely embarked as a pilot on the political sea. "The Lord has driven my bark into the open ocean," he exclaimed from the pulpit. Remonstrating with God for imposing this duty upon him, he declared, ’I will preach, if so I must, but why need I meddle with the government of Florence.’  And the Lord said, ’If thou wouldst make Florence a holy city, thou must establish her on firm foundations and give her a government which cherishes righteousness.’  Thus the preacher was committed. He pronounced from the pulpit in favor of virtue as the foundation of a sound government and democracy as its form. "Among northern nations," he affirmed, where there is great strength and little intellect, and among southern nations where there is great intellect and little strength, the rule of a single despot may sometimes be the best of governments. But in Italy and, above all in Florence, where both strength and intellect abound,—where men have keen wits and restless spirits,—the government of the one can only result in tyranny."

In the scheme, which he proposed, he took for his model the great council of Venice, leaving out its head, the doge, who was elected for life. The great council of Florence was to consist of, at least, 1500 men, who had reached the age of 29, paid their taxes and belonged to the class called beneficiati, that is, those who held a civil office themselves or whose father, grandfather, or great-grandfather had held a civil office. A select council of 80 was to be chosen by it, its members to be at least forty years of age. In criminal cases, an appeal from a decision of the signory was allowed to the great council, which was to meet once a week and to be a voting rather than a deliberative body.

The place of the supreme doge or ruler, Savonarola gave to God himself. "God alone," he exclaimed from the pulpit, "God alone will be thy king, O Florence, as He was king of Israel under the old Covenant."  "Thy new head shall be Jesus Christ,"—this was the ringing cry with which he closed his sermons on Haggai. Savonarola’s recent biographer, Villari, emphasizes "the masterly prudence and wisdom shown by him in all the fundamental laws he proposed for the new state."  He had no seat in the council and yet he was the soul of the entire people.1186

In the last chapter of his career Savonarola was pitted against Alexander VI. as his contestant. The conflict began with the demand made by the pope July 25, 1495, that Savonarola proceed to Rome and answer charges. Then followed papal inhibitions of his preaching and the decree of excommunication, and the conflict closed with the appointment of a papal commission which condemned Savonarola to death as a heretic.

Alexander’s order, summoning the friar to Rome, was based on his announcement that his predictions of future events came by divine revelation.1187  At the same time, the pope expressed his great joy over the report that of all the workers in the Lord’s vineyard, Savonarola was the most zealous, and he promised to welcome him to the eternal city with love and fraternal affection. Savonarola declined the pontiff’s summons on the ground of ill-health and the dangers that would beset him on the way to Rome. His old rival in the pulpit, Fra Mariano de Gennazzano, and other enemies were in Rome intriguing against him, and the Medici were fast winning the pope’s favor.

Alexander’s first letter inhibiting him from preaching, Sept. 9, 1495, condemned Savonarola’s insane folly in mixing up with Italian political affairs and his announcement that he was a special messenger sent from God. In his reply Savonarola answered the charges and, at the invitation of the signory, continued to preach. In his third brief, Oct. 16, 1495, the pontiff forbade him to preach openly or in private. Pastor remarks, "It was as clear as the sun that Savonarola was guilty of rank disobedience to the papal authority."1188

For five months, the friar held himself aloof in his convent but, Feb. 17, 1496, at the call of the signory to preach the Lenten sermons, he again ascended the pulpit. He took the bold position that the pope might err. "The pope," he said, "may command me to do something that contravenes the law of Christian love or the Gospel. But, if he did so command, I would say to him, thou art no shepherd. Not the Roman Church, but thou errest." From that time on, he lifted his voice against the corruptions of the papal city as he had not done before. Preaching on Amos 4:1, Feb. 28, 1496, he exclaimed, "Who are the fat kine of Bashan on the mountains of Samaria?  I say they are the courtesans of Italy and Rome. Or, are there none?  A thousand are too few for Rome, 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 are too few for Rome. Prepare thyself, O Rome, for great will be thy punishments."1189

Finding threats would not stop Savonarola’s mouth, Alexander resorted to bribery, an art in which he was well skilled. Through a Dominican sent to Florence, he offered to the friar of St. Mark’s the red hat. But Alexander had mistaken his man and, in a sermon delivered August, 1496, Savonarola declared that neither mitres nor a cardinal’s hat would he have, but only the gift God confers on His saints—death, a crimson hat, a hat reddened with blood. Lucas, strangely enough, ascribes the offer of the red hat, not to vicious shrewdness but to the alleged good purpose of Alexander to show his appreciation of, an earnest but misguided man."

The carnival season of 1496 and the seasons of the next two years gave remarkable proofs of the hold Savonarola had on the popular mind. The carnival, which had been the scene of wild revelries, was turned into a semi-religious festival. The boys had been accustomed to carry their merriment to rude excesses, forcing their demands for money upon older persons, dancing around bonfires at night and pelting people and houses promiscuously with stones. For this "festival of the stones," which the signory had been unable to abolish Savonarola and his co-helpers substituted a religious celebration. It was called the reform of the boys. Savonarola had established boys’ brigades in different wards of the city and arranged tiers of seats for them against the walls of the cathedral. These "boys of Fra Girolamo," as Landucci calls them, marched up and down the streets singing hymns which Savonarola and Benivieni composed and taking their places at stands, erected for the purpose, received collections for the poor.

On the last day of the carnival of 1497, occurred the burning of the vanities, as it was called. The young men, who had been stirred to enthusiasm by Savonarola’s sermons, went through the city, knocking from door to door and asking the people to give up their trinkets, obscene books such as Ovid and Boccaccio, dice, games of chance, harps, mirrors, masks, cosmetics and portraits of beautiful women, and other objects of luxury. These were piled up in the public square in a pyramid, 60 feet high and 240 feet in circumference at the base. The morning of that day, throngs listened to the mass said by Savonarola. The young men went in procession through the streets and reaching the pile of vanities, they with others joined hands and danced around the pile and then set fire to it amid the singing of religious songs. The sound of bells and trumpets added to the effect of the strange spectacle. Men thought of the books and philters, burnt at Ephesus under the spell of Paul’s preaching. The scene was repeated the last year of Savonarola’s life,1498.

Savonarola has been charged with having no sympathy with the Renaissance and the charge it is not easy to set aside. As Burckhardt, the historian of that movement, says, he remained a monastic. In one writing, he sets forth the dangers of literature. Plato and Aristotle are in hell. And this was the judgment expressed in the city of the Platonic Academy!  Virgil and Cicero he tolerated, but Catullus, Ovid and Terence he condemned to banishment.1190

At one time, under the spell of the prior’s preaching, all Florence seemed to be going to religion. Wives left their husbands and betook themselves to convents. Others married, taking the vow of nuptial abstinence and Savonarola even dreamed that the city might reach so perfect a condition that all marrying would cease. People took the communion daily and young men attended mass and received the eucharistic emblem. Fra Bartolomeo threw his studies of naked figures into the fire and for a time continued to think it sinful to use the hands in painting which ought to be folded continually in prayer. It was impossible that such a tension should continue. There was enthusiasm but not regeneration. A reaction was sure to come and the wonder is that Savonarola retained so much of the popular confidence, almost to the end of his life.

Alexander would have none of the Florentine reforms and was determined to silence Savonarola at any cost. Within the city, the air was full of rumors of plots to restore the Medici and some of the conspirators were executed. Enemies of the republic avowed their purpose to kill Savonarola and circulated sheets and poems ridiculing and threatening him. Insulting placards were posted up against the walls of his convent and, on one occasion, the pulpit of the cathedral was defiled with ordure and draped in an ass’ skin, while spikes were driven into the place where the preacher was accustomed to strike his hand. Landucci speaks of it as a "great scandal."  Assassins even gathered in the cathedral and were only cowed by guards posted by the signory. The friar of St. Mark’s seemed not to be appalled. It was ominous, however, that the signory became divided in his support.

If possible, Savonarola became more intense in his arraignment of the evils of the Church. He exclaimed: "O prostrate Church, thou hast displayed thy foulness to the whole earth. Thou hast multiplied thy fornications in Italy, in France, in Spain and all other regions. Thou hast desecrated the sacraments with simony. Of old, priests called their bastards nephews, now they call them outright sons."  Alexander could not mistake the reference nor tolerate such declamations. The integrity of the supreme seat of Christendom was at stake. A prophetic function superior to the papacy Eugenius III. might recognize, when it was administered in the admonitions of a St. Bernard, but the Florentine prophet had engaged in denunciation even to personal invective. The prophet was losing his balance. On May 12,1497, for "his failure to obey our Apostolic admonitions and commands" and as "one suspected of heresy" Alexander declared him excommunicate. All were forbidden to listen to the condemned man or have converse with him.1191

In a letter addressed a month later "to all Christians, the elect of God," Savonarola again affirmed his readiness to yield to the Church’s authority, but denied that he was bound to submit to the commands of his superiors when these were in conflict with charity and God’s law. "Henceforth," exclaimed the Puritan contemporary, Landucci, "we were deprived of the Word of God."  The signory wrote to Alexander in support of Savonarola, affirming his purity of character and soundness of doctrine, and friends, like Pico della Mirandola the younger, issued defences of his conduct. The elder Pico della Mirandola and Politian, both of whom had died a year or two before, showed their reverence for Savonarola by assuming the Dominican garb on their death-beds.

At this time, Savonarola sent forth his Triumph of the Cross, in which were set forth the verity and reasonableness of the Catholic faith.1192  After proving from pure reason God’s existence and the soul’s immortality, the work proceeds to expound the Trinity, which is above man’s reason, and articles of the Apostles’ Creed, and to set forth the superior excellency of the lives of Christians, on which much stress is laid. It closes with a confutation of Mohammedanism and other false forms of religion.

Savonarola kept silence in the pulpit and refrained from the celebration of the sacrament until Christmas day of 1497, when he celebrated the mass at St. Mark’s three times. On the 11th of February, he stood again in the pulpit of the duomo. To a vast concourse he represented the priest as merely an instrument of the Almighty and, when God withdraws His presence, prelate and pope are but as "a broken iron tool."  "And, if a prelate commands what is contrary to godly living and charity, he is not only not to be obeyed but deserves to be anathema."  On another occasion, he said that not only may the pope be led into error by false reports but also by his own badness, as was the case with Boniface VIII. who was a wicked pope, beginning his pontificate like a fox and ending it like a dog.1193  Many, through reverence for the Church, kept away from Savonarola’s preaching from this time on. Among these was the faithful Landucci, who says, "whether justly or unjustly, I was among those who did not go. I believed in him, but did not wish to incur risk by going to hear him, for he was under sentence of excommunication."  Savonarola’s enemies had made the words of Gregory the Great their war-cry, Sententia pastoris sive justa sive unjusta timenda est.—"The sentence of the shepherd is to be respected, whether it be just or unjust."1194  His denunciations of the corruption prevailing in the Church became more bold. The tonsure, he cried,

is the seat of all iniquity. It begins in Rome where the clergy make mock of Christ and the saints; yea, are worse than Turks and worse than Moors. They traffic in the sacraments. They sell benefices to the highest bidder. Have not the priests in Rome courtesans and grooms and horses and dogs?  Have they not palaces full of tapestries and silks, of perfumes and lackeys?  Seemeth it, that this is the Church of God?

Every Roman priest, he said, had his concubine. No longer do they speak of nephews but of their sons and daughters. Savonarola even sought to prove from the pulpit that the papal brief of excommunication proceeded from the devil, inasmuch as it was hostile to godly living.

It was becoming evident that the preacher was fighting a losing battle. His assaults against the morals of the clergy and the Vatican stirred up the powers in the Church against him; his political attitude, factions in Florence. His assertions, dealing more and more in exaggerations, were developing an expectant and at the same time a critical state of mind in the people which no religious teacher could permanently meet except through the immediate and startling intervention of God. He called heaven to witness that he was "ready to die for His God" and invited God to send him to the fires of hell, if his motives were not pure and his work inspired. On another occasion, he invoked the Lord to strike him dead on the spot, if he was not sincere. Landucci reports some of these wild protestations which he heard with his own ears.

One weapon still remained to the pope to bring Savonarola to terms,—the interdict. This he threatened to fulminate over Florence, unless the signory sent this "son of the evil one" to Rome or cast him into prison. In case the first course was pursued, Alexander promised to treat Savonarola as a father would treat a son, provided he repented, for he "desired not the death of a sinner but that he might turn from his way and live."1195  He urged the signory not to allow Savonarola to be as the fly in the milk, disturbing its relations with Rome or "to tolerate that pernicious worm fostered by their warmth."

Through epistolary communications and legates, the signory continued its attempts to remove Alexander’s objections and protect Savonarola. But, while all the members continued to express confidence in the friar’s purity of motive, the majority came to take the position that it was more expedient to silence the preacher than to incur the pope’s ban. At the public meeting, called by the signory March 9,1498, to decide the course of action to be taken, the considerations pressed were those of expediency. The pope, as the vicar of Christ, has his authority directly from God and ought to be obeyed. A second consideration was the financial straits of the municipality. A tenth was needed and this could only be ordered through the pope. Some proposed to leave the decision of the matter to Savonarola himself. He was the best man the world had seen for 200 years. Others boldly announced that Alexander’s letters were issued through the machinations of enemies of Florence and the censures they contained, being unjust, were not to be heeded.1196  On March 17,1498, the signory’s decision was communicated to Savonarola that he should thenceforth refrain from preaching and the next day he preached his last sermon.

In his last sermon, Savonarola acknowledged it as his duty to obey the mandate. A measure had been worked out in his mind which was the last open to a churchman. Already had he hinted from the pulpit at the convention of a general council as a last resort. The letters are still extant which he intended to send to the kings of Spain, England, France, Germany and Hungary, calling upon them to summon a council. In them, he solemnly declared that Alexander was no pope. For, aside from purchasing his office and from his daily sale of benefices, his manifest vices proved him to be no Christian. The letters seem never to have been received. Individuals, however, despatched preliminary communications to friends at the different courts to prepare the way for their appeal.1197  One, addressed to Charles VIII., was intercepted at Milan and sent to the pope. Alexander now had documentary proof of the Florentine’s rebellion against papal authority. But suddenly a wholly unexpected turn was given to the course of events.

Florence was startled by the rumor that resort was to be had to ordeal by fire to decide the genuineness of Savonarola’s claims.1198  The challenge came from a Franciscan, Francesco da Puglia, in a sermon at S. Croce in which he arraigned the Dominican friar as a heretic and false prophet. In case Savonarola was not burnt, it would be a clear sign that Florence was to follow him. The challenge was accepted by Fra Domenico da Pescia, a monk of St. Mark’s and close friend of Savonarola’s, a man of acknowledged purity of life. He took his friend’s place, holding that Savonarola should be reserved for higher things. Francesco da Puglia then withdrew and a Franciscan monk, Julian Rondinelli, reluctantly took his place. Savonarola himself disapproved the ordeal. It was an appeal to the miraculous. He had never performed a miracle nor felt the importance of one. His cause, he asserted, approved itself by the fruits of righteousness. But to the people, as the author of Romola has said, "the fiery trial seemed a short and easy argument" and Savonarola could not resist the popular feeling without forfeiting his popularity. The history of Florence could show more than one case of saintly men whose profession had been tested by fire. So it was, during the investiture controversy, with St. John Gualberti, in Settimo close by, and with the monk Peter in 1068, and so it was, a half century later, with another Peter who cleared himself of the charge of contemning the cross by walking unhurt over nine glowing ploughshares.1199

The ordeal was authorized by the signory and set for April 7. It was decided that, in case Fra Domenico perished, Savonarola should go into exile within three hours. The two parties, Domenico and Rondinelli, filed their statements with the signory. The Dominican’s included the following points. The Church stands in need of renovation. It will be chastened. Florence will be chastened. These chastisements will happen in our day. The sentence of excommunication against Savonarola is invalid. No one sins in ignoring it.1200

The ordeal aroused the enthusiasm of Savonarola’s friends. When he announced it in a sermon, many women exclaimed, "I, too, I, too."  Other monks of St. Mark’s and hundreds of young men announced their readiness to pass through the flames out of regard for their spiritual guide.

Alexander VI. waited with intense interest for the last bulletins from Florence. His exact state of mind it is difficult to determine. He wrote disapproving of the ordeal and yet he could not but feel that it afforded an easy way of getting rid of the enemy to his authority. After the ordeal was over, he praised Francesco and the Franciscans in extravagant terms and declared the Franciscans could not have done anything more agreeable to him.1201

The coming trial was looked for with the most intense interest. There was scarcely any other topic of conversation in Florence or in Rome. Great preparations were made. Two pyres of thorns and other wood were built on the public square about 60 feet in length, 3 feet wide at the base and 3 or 4 feet high,1202 the wood soaked with pitch and oil. The distance between the pyres was two feet, just wide enough for a man to pass through. All entrances to the square were closed by a company of 300 men under Marcuccio Salviatis and two other companies of 500 each, stationed at different points. The people began to arrive the night before. The windows and roofs of the adjoining houses were crowded with the eager spectators.

The solemnity was set for eleven o’clock. The Dominicans made a solemn impression as they marched to the appointed place. Fra Domenico, in the van, was clothed in a fiery red velvet cope. Savonarola, clad in white and carrying a monstrance with the host, brought up the rear of the body of monks and these were followed by a great multitude of men, women and children, holding lighted tapers. When the hour arrived for the procession to start, Savonarola was preaching. He had again told the people that his work required no miracle and that he had ever sought to justify himself by the signs of righteousness and declared that, as on Mt. Carmel, miraculous intervention could only be expected in answer to prayer and humility.

Later mediaeval history has few spectacles to offer to the eye and the imagination equal in interest to the spectacle offered that day. There, stood the greatest preacher of his time and the most exalted moral figure since the days of John Huss and Gerson. And there, the ancient method of testing innocency was once more to be tried, a novel spectacle, indeed, to that cultured generation of Florentines. The glorious pageants of Medicean times had afforded no entertainment more attractive.

The crowds were waiting. The hour was past. There was a mysterious moving of monks in and out of the signory-palace. The whole story of what occurred was later told by Savonarola himself as well as by other eyewitnesses. The Franciscans refused to allow Fra Domenico to enter the burning pathway wearing his red cope or any of the other garments he had on, on the ground that they might be bewitched. So he was undressed to his skin and put on another suit. On the same ground, they also insisted that he keep at a distance from Savonarola. The impatience of the crowds increased. The Franciscans again passed into the signory-hall and had a long conference. They had discerned a wooden crucifix in Domenico’s hands and insisted upon its being put away for fear it might also have been bewitched. Savonarola substituted the host but the Franciscans insisted that the host should not be carried through the flames. The signory was appealed to but Savonarola refused to yield, declaring that the accidents might be burnt like a husk but that the essence of the sacred wafer would remain unconsumed. Suddenly a storm came up and rain fell but it as suddenly stopped. The delay continued. The crowds were growing unruly and threatening. Nightfall was at hand. The signory called the ordeal off.

Savonarola’s power was gone. The spell of his name had vanished. The spectacle was felt to be a farce. The popular menace grew more and more threatening and a guard scarcely prevented violence to Savonarola’s person, as the procession moved back to St. Mark’s.

There is much in favor of the view that on that day Savonarola’s political enemies, the Arrabbiati, were in collusion with the Franciscans and that the delay on the square, occasioned by interposing objections, was a trick to postpone the ordeal altogether.1203  It was said daggers were ready to put Savonarola out of the way. The populace, however, did not stop to consider such questions. Savonarola had not stood the test. And, it reasoned, if he was sincere and confident of his cause, why did he not enter the flaming pathway himself and brave its fiery perils. If he had not gone through unharmed, he at any rate, in dying, would have shown his moral heroism. It was Luther’s readiness to stand the test at Worms which brought him the confidence of the people. Had he shrunk in 1521 in the presence of Charles V., he would have lost the popular regard as Savonarola did in 1498 on the piazza of Florence. The judgment of modern times agrees with the popular judgment of the Florentines. Savonarola showed himself wanting in the qualities of the hero. Better for him to have died, than to have exposed himself to the charge of cowardice.

Florence felt mad anger at having been imposed upon. The next day St. Mark’s was stormed by the mob. The signory voted Savonarola’s immediate banishment. Landucci, who wept and continued to pray for him, says "that hell seemed to have opened its doors."  Savonarola made an address, bidding farewell to his friends. Resistance of the mob was in vain. The convent was broken into and pillaged. Fra Domenico and the prior were bound and taken before the galfonier amidst insults and confined in separate apartments. A day or two later Fra Silvestro, whose visions had favored the ordeal, was also seized. "As for saying a word in Savonarola’s favor," wrote Landucci, "it was impossible. One would have been killed."

The pope, on receiving the official news of the occurrences in Florence, sent word congratulating the signory, gave the city plenary absolution and granted it the coveted tithes for three years. He also demanded that Savonarola be sent to Rome for trial, at the same time, however, authorizing the city to proceed to try the three friars, not neglecting, if necessary, the use of torture.1204  A commission was appointed to examine the prisoners. Torture was resorted to. Savonarola was bound to a rope drawn through a pulley and, with his hands behind his back, was lifted from the floor and then by a sudden jerk allowed to fall. On a single day, he was subjected to 14 turnings of the rope. There were two separate trials conducted by the municipality, April 17 and April 21–23. In the delirious condition, to which his pains reduced him, the unfortunate man made confessions which, later in his sane moments, he recalled as untrue.1205  He even denied that he was a prophet. The impression which this denial made upon such ardent admirers as Landucci, the apothecary, was distressing. Writing April 19,1498, he says:—

I was present at the reading of the proceedings against Savonarola, whom we all held to be a prophet. But he said he is no prophet and that his prophecies were not from God. When I heard that, I was seized with wonder and amazement. A deep pain took hold of my soul, when I saw such a splendid edifice fall to the ground, because it was built upon the sorry foundation of a falsehood. I looked for Florence to become a new Jerusalem whose laws and example of a good life—buona vita — would go out for the renovation of the Church, the conversion of infidels and the comfort of the good and I felt the contrary and took for medicine the words, "in thy will, O Lord, are all things placed"—in voluntate tua, Domine, omnia sunt posita. Diary, p. 173.

Alexander despatched a commission of his own to conduct the trial anew, Turriano, the Venetian general of the Dominicans and Francesco Romolino, the bishop of Ilerda, afterwards cardinal. Letters from Rome stated that the commission had instructions "to put Savonarola to death, even if he were another John the Baptist."  Alexander was quite equal to such a statement. Soon after his arrival in Florence, Romolino announced that a bonfire was impending and that he carried the sentence with him ready, prepared in advance.

Fra Domenico bore himself most admirably and persisted in speaking naught but praise of his friend and ecclesiastical superior. Fra Silvestro, yielding to the agonies of the rack, charged his master with all sorts of guilt. Other monks of St. Mark’s wrote to Alexander, making charges against their prior as an impostor. So it often is with those who praise in times of prosperity. To save themselves, they deny and calumniate their benefactors. They received their reward, the papal absolution.

The exact charges, upon which Savonarola was condemned to death, are matter of some uncertainty and also matter of indifference, for they were partly trumped up for the occasion. Though no offender against the law of God, he had given offence enough to man. He was accused by the papal commissioners with being a heretic and schismatic. He was no heretic. The most that can be said is, that he was a rebel against the pope’s authority and went in the face of Pius II.’s bull Execrabilis, when he decided to appeal to a council.1206

The intervals between his torture, Savonarola spent in composing his Meditations upon the two penitential Psalms, the 32d and the 51st. Here we see the gloss of his warm religious nature. The great preacher approaches the throne of grace as a needy sinner and begs that he who asks for bread may not be turned away with a stone. He appeals to the cases of Zaccheus, Mary Magdalene, the woman of Canaan, Peter and the prodigal son. Deliver me, he cries, "as Thou hast delivered countless sinners from the grasp of death and the gates of hell and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness."  Luther, who published the expositions with a notable preface,1523, declared them "a piece of evangelical teaching and Christian piety. For, in them Savonarola is seen entering in not as a Dominican monk, trusting in his vows, the rules of his order, his cowl and masses and good works but clad in the breastplate of righteousness and armed with the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation, not as a member of the Order of Preachers but as an everyday Christian."1207

At their own request the three prisoners, after a separation of six weeks, were permitted to meet face to face the night before the appointed execution. The meeting occurred in the hall of the signory. When Savonarola returned to his cell, he fell asleep on the lap of Niccolini of the fraternity of the Battuti, a fraternity whose office it was to minister to prisoners. Niccolini reported that the sleep was as quiet as the sleep of a child. On awaking, the condemned man passed the remaining hours of the night in devotions. The next morning, the friends met again and partook together of the sacrament.

The sentence was death by hanging, after which the bodies were to be burnt that "the soul might be completely separated from the body."  The execution took place on the public square where, two months before, the crowds had gathered to witness the ordeal by fire. Savonarola and his friends were led forth stripped of their robes, barefooted and with hands bound. Absolution was pronounced by the bishop of Verona under appointment from the pope. In pronouncing Savonarola’s deposition, the prelate said, "I separate thee from the Church militant and the Church triumphant"—separo te ab ecclesia militante et triumphante. "Not from the Church triumphant," replied Savonarola, "that is not thine to do"—militante, non triumphante: hoc enim tuum non est. In silence he witnessed the deaths of Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro, whose last words were "Jesus, Jesus," and then ascended the platform of execution. There were still left bystanders to fling insults. The bodies were burnt and, that no particle might be left to be used as a relic, the ashes were thrown into the Arno.

Savonarola had been pronounced by Alexander’s commission "that iniquitous monster—omnipedium nequissimum — call him man or friar we cannot, a mass of the most abominable wickedness."  The pious Landucci, in thinking of his death, recalled the crucifixion and, at the scene of the execution, again lamented the disappointment of his hopes for the renovation of the Church and the conversion of the infidel—la novazione della chiesa e la conversione degli infedeli.

Savonarola was one of the most noteworthy figures Italy has produced. The modern Christian world, Catholic and Protestant, joins him in close fellowship with the flaming religious luminaries of all countries and all centuries. He was a preacher of righteousness and a patriot. Among the religious personalities of Italy, he occupies a position of grandeur by himself, separate from her imposing popes, like Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; from Dante, Italy’s poet and the world’s; from St. Francis d’Assisi and from Thomas Aquinas. Italy had other preachers,—Anthony of Padua, Bernardino of Siena,—but their messages were local and ecclesiastical. With Arnold of Brescia, Savonarola had something in common. Both had a stirring message of reform. Both mixed up political ideals with their spiritual activity and both died by judicial sanction of the papal see.

Savonarola’s intellectual gifts and attainments were not extraordinary. He was great by reason of moral conviction, his eloquence, his disinterested love of his country, his whole-souled devotion to the cause of righteousness. As an administrator, he failed. He had none of the sagacity or tact of the statesman and it was his misfortune to have undertaken to create a new government, a task for which he was the least qualified of all men.1208  He was a preacher of righteousness and has a place in the "goodly fellowship of the prophets."  He belonged to the order of Ezekiel and Isaiah, Nathan and John the Baptist,—the company in which the Protestant world also places John Knox.

Savonarola was a true Catholic. He did not deny a single dogma of the mediaeval Church. But he was more deeply rooted in the fundamental teachings of Christ than in ecclesiastical formulas. In the deliverance of his message, he rose above rituals and usages. He demanded regeneration of heart. His revolt against the authority of the pope, in appealing to a council, is a serious stumbling-block to Catholics who are inclined to a favorable judgment of the Friar of St. Mark’s. Julius II.’s bull Cum tanto divino,1505, pronounced every election to the papacy secured by simony invalid. If it was meant to be retroactive, then Alexander was not a true pope.1209

The favorable judgments of contemporaries were numerous. Guicciardini called him the saviour of his country—salvatore di patria — and said that "Never was there so much goodness and religion in Florence as in his day and, after his death, it was seen that every good thing that had been done was done at his suggestion and by his advocacy."  Machiavelli thus expressed himself: "The people of Florence seemed to be neither illiterate nor rude, yet they were persuaded that God spake through Savonarola. I will not decide, whether it was so or not, for it is due to speak of so great a man with reverence."

The day after Savonarola’s death, women were seen praying at the spot where he suffered and for years flowers were strewn there. Pico della Mirandola closed his biography with an elaborate comparison between Savonarola and Christ. Both were sent from God. Both suffered in the cause of righteousness between two others. At the command of Julius II., Raphael,12 years after Savonarola’s death, placed the preacher among the saints in his Disputa. Philip Neri and Catherine de Ricci 1210 revered him, and Benedict XIV. seems to have regarded him worthy of canonization.1211

Within the Dominican order, the feeling toward its greatest preacher has undergone a great change. Respect for the papal decision led it, for a hundred years after Savonarola’s death, to make official effort to retire his name to oblivion. The Dominican general, Sisto Fabri of Lucca, in 1585, issued an order forbidding every Dominican monk and nun mentioning his name and commanded them to give up any article to their superiors which kept warm admiration for him or aroused it. In the latter half of the 19th century, as the 400th anniversary of his execution approached, Catholics, and especially Dominicans, in all parts of the world defended his memory and efforts were made to prepare the way for his canonization. In the attempt to remove all objections, elaborate arguments have been presented to prove that Alexander’s sentence of excommunication was in fact no excommunication at all.1212  The sound and judicious Catholic historians, Hefele-Knöpfler, do not hesitate to pronounce his death a judicial murder.1213

By the general consent of Protestants, Jerome Savonarola is numbered among the precursors of the Reformation,—the view taken by Ranke. He was not an advocate of its distinguishing tenet of justification by faith. The Roman church was for him the mother of all other churches and the pope its head. In his Triumph of the Cross, he distinctly asserts the seven sacraments as an appointment of Christ and that Christ is "wholly and essentially present in each of the eucharistic elements."  Nevertheless, he was an innovator and his exaltation of divine grace accords with the teaching of the Reformation. Here all Protestants would have fellowship with him as when he said:1214 —

It is untrue that God’s grace is obtained by pre-existing works of merit as though works and deserts were the cause of predestination. On the contrary, these are the result of predestination. Tell me, Peter; tell me, O Magdalene, wherefore are ye in paradise?  Confess that not by your own merits have ye obtained salvation, but by the goodness of God.

Passages abound in his Meditations like this one. "Not by their own deservings, O Lord, or by their own works have they been saved, lest any man should be able to boast, but because it seemed good in Thy sight."  Speaking of Savonarola’s Exposition of the Psalms, Luther said that, although some clay still stuck to Savonarola’s theology, it is a pure and beautiful example of what is to be believed, trusted and hoped from God’s mercy and how we come to despair of works. And the whole-souled German Reformer exclaimed, "Christ canonizes Savonarola through us even though popes and papists burst to pieces over it."1215

The sculptor has given him a place at the feet of Luther and at the side of Wyclif and Huss in the monument of the Reformation at Worms. When Catholics, who heard that this was proposed, wrote to show the impropriety of including the Florentine Dominican in such company, Rietschel consulted Hase on the subject. The venerable Church historian replied, "It makes no difference whether they counted Savonarola a heretic or a saint, he was in either case a precursor of the Reformation and so Luther recognized him."1216

The visitor in Florence to-day finds two invisible personalities meeting him everywhere, Dante, whom the city banished, and Savonarola, whom it executed. The spirit of theexecutioner has vanished and the mention of Savonarola’s name strikes in all Florentines a tender chord of admiration and love. In 1882, the signory placed his statue in the Hall of the Five Hundred. There, a few yards from the place of his execution, he stands in his Dominican habit and cowl, with his left hand resting on a lion’s head and holding aloft in his right hand a crucifix, while his clear eye is turned upwards. Again, on May 22,1901, the city honored the friar by setting a circular bronze tablet with portrait on the spot where he suffered death. A great multitude attended the dedication and one of the wreaths of flowers bore the name of the Dominicans.

In Savonarola’s cell in St. Mark’s has been placed a medallion head of the friar, and still another on the cloistral wall over the spot where he was seized and made prisoner, and the visitor will often find there a fresh wreath of flowers, a proof of the undying memory of the Florentine preacher and patriot.

This was he,

Savonarola,—the star-look shooting from the cowl.

—Browning, Casa Guido Windows.

§ 77. The Study and Circulation of the Bible.

The only biblical commentary of the Middle Ages, conforming in any adequate sense to our modern ideas of exegesis, was produced by Nicolas of Lyra, who died 1340. The exegesis of the Schoolmen was a subversion of Scripture rather than an exposition. In their hands, it was made the slave of dogma. Of grammatical and textual criticism they had no conception and they lacked all equipment for the grammatical study of the original Hebrew and Greek. What commentaries were produced in the flourishing era of Scholasticism, were either collections of quotations from the Fathers, called Chains,—catenae, the most noted of which was the catena on the Gospels by Thomas Aquinas,—or, if original works, they teemed with endless suggestions of the fancy and were like continents of tropical vine-growths through which it is next to impossible to find a clear path to Jesus Christ and the meaning of human life. The bulky expositions of the Psalms, Job and other biblical books by such theologians as Rupert of Deutz, Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, are to-day intellectual curiosities or, at best, manuals from which piety of the conventual type may be fed. They bring out every other meaning but the historical and plain sense intended by the biblical authors. Especially true is this of the Song of Songs, which the Schoolmen made a hunting-ground for descriptions of the Virgin Mary.1217  It is said, Thomas Aquinas was engaged on the exposition of this book when he died.

The traditional mediaeval formula of interpretation reduced Tychonius’ seven senses to four,—the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. The formula ran:—

Litteralis gesta docet; quid credas, allegoria,

Moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia.

Thomas Aquinas, fully in accord with this method, said that "the literal sense of Scripture is manifold, its spiritual sense, threefold, viz., allegorical, moral and anagogical."1218  The literal sense teaches the things which have happened, the allegorical what we are to believe, the moral what we are to do and the anagogical directs to things to be awaited. The last three senses correspond to faith, hope and charity. Hugo of Cher compared them to the four coverings of the tabernacle, the four winds, the four wings of the cherubim, the four rivers of paradise, the four legs of the Lord’s table. Here are specimens: Jerusalem, literally, is a city in Palestine; allegorically, it is the Church; morally, the faithful soul; anagogically, the heavenly Jerusalem. The Exodus from Egypt is, historically, a fact; allegorically, the redemption of Christ; morally, the soul’s conversion; anagogically, the departure for the heavenly land. In his earliest years, Dean Colet followed this method. From Savonarola we would expect it. The literal heaven, earth and light of Genesis 1:1,2, he expounded as meaning allegorically, Adam, Eve and the light of grace or the Hebrews, Gentiles and Jesus Christ; morally, the soul, body and active intelligence; anagogically, angels, men and the vision of God. In his later years, Colet, in answer to a letter from Erasmus, who insisted upon the fecundity of meanings of Scripture texts, abandoned his former position and declared that their fecundity consisted not in their giving birth to many senses but to one only and that the truest.1219  In his better moods, Erasmus laid stress upon the one historical, sense, applying to the interpretation of the Bible the rule that is applied to other books.

After the Reformation was well on its way, the old irrational method continued to be practised and Bishop Longland, in a sermon on Prov. 9:1,2, preached in 1525, explained the words "she hath furnished her table" to mean, that wisdom had set forth in her spiritual banquet the four courses of history, tropology, anagogy and allegory.1220  Three years later,1528, Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible, had this to say of the mediaeval system of exegesis and the new system which sought out the literal sense of Scripture: —

The papists divide the Scripture into four senses, the literal, tropological, allegorical and anagogical. The literal sense has become nothing at all, for the pope hath taken it clean away and hath made it his possession. He hath partly locked it up with the false and counterfeited keys of his traditions, ceremonies and feigned lies. Thou shalt understand that the Scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense, and this literal sense is the root and ground of all and the anchor that never faileth whereunto, if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way.1221

A decided step in the direction of the, new exegesis movement was made by Nicolas of Lyra in his Postillae, a brief commentary on the entire Bible.1222  This commentator, called by Wyclif the elaborate and skilful annotator of Scripture,—tamen copiosus et ingeniosus postillator Scripturae,1223 was born in Normandy, about 1270, and became professor in Paris where he remained till his death. He knew Greek and learned Hebrew from a rabbi and his knowledge of that tongue gave rise to the false rumor that he had a Jewish mother. Lyra made a new Latin translation, commented directly on the original text and ventured at times to prefer the comments of Jewish commentators to the comments of the Fathers. As he acknowledged in his Introduction, he was much influenced by the writings of Rabbi Raschi.

Lyra’s lasting merit lies in the stress he laid upon the literal sense which he insisted should alone be employed in establishing dogma. In practice, however, he allowed a secondary sense, the mystical or typical, but he declared that it had been put to such abuse as to have choked out—suffocare — the literal sense. The language of Scripture must be understood in its natural sense as we would expect our words to be understood.1224  His method aided in undermining the fanciful and pernicious exegetical system of the Schoolmen who knew neither Greek nor Hebrew and prepared the way for a new period of biblical exposition. He was used not only by Wyclif and Gerson,1225 but also by Luther, who acknowledged his services in insisting upon the literal sense.

Although Wyclif wrote no commentaries on books of Scripture, he gave expositions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue and of many texts, which are thoroughly practical and popular. In his treatise on the Truth of Scripture, he seems at times to pronounce the discovery of the literal sense the only object of a sound exegesis.1226  A generation later Gerson showed an inclination to lay stress upon the literal sense as fundamental but went no further than to say that it is to be accepted so far as it is found to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church.1227

Later in the 15th century, the free critical spirit which the Revival of Letters was begetting found pioneers in the realm of exegesis in Laurentius Valla and Erasmus, Colet, Wesel and Wessel. As has already been said, Valla not only called in question the genuineness of Constantine’s donation, but criticised Jerome’s Vulgate and Augustine. Erasmus went still farther when he left out of his Greek New Testament,1516, the spurious passage about the three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, though he restored it in the edition of 1522. He pointed out the discrepancy between a statement in Stephen’s speech and the account in Genesis and questioned the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostolic origin of 2d and 3rd John and the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse.

In opposition to such views the Sorbonne, in 1526, declared it an error of faith to call in question the authorship of any of the books of the New Testament. Erasmus recommended for the student of the Scriptures a fair knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and also that he be versed in other studies, especially the knowledge of natural objects such as the animals, trees, precious stones and geography of Scripture.1228

The nearest approach to the exegetical principles as well as doctrinal positions of the Reformers was made by the Frenchman, Lefèvre d’Etaples, whose translations of the New Testament and the Old Testament carry us into the period introduced by Luther. It remained for Luther and the other Reformers to give to the literal or historical sense its due weight, and especially from the sane grammatical exegesis of John Calvin is a new period in the exposition of the sacred writings to be dated.

The early printing-presses, from Lyons to Paris and from Venice and Nürnberg to Cologne and Lübeck, eagerly turned out editions of the entire Bible or parts of it, the vast majority of which, however, gave the Latin text. The first printed Latin Bible, which appeared at Mainz without date and in two volumes, belongs before 1455 and bears the name of the Gutenberg Bible from the printer or the Mazarin Bible from the copy which was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. Before 1520, no less than 199 printed editions of the entire volume appeared. Of these,156 were Latin,17 German,—3 of the German editions being in Low German,—11 Italian, 2 Bohemian and one Russian.1229  Spain produced two editions, a Limousin version at Valencia,1478, and the Complutensian Bible of Cardinal Ximenes,1514–1517. England was far behind and her first printed English New Testament did not appear till 1526, although Caxton had setup his printing-press at Westminster in 1477.

To the printed copies of the whole Scriptures must be added the parts which appeared in plenaria and psalteria,—copies of the Gospels and of the Psalms,1230 — and in the postillae which contained the Scripture text with annotations. From 1470–1520 no less than 103 postillae appeared from the press.1231

The number of copies of the Bible sent off in a single edition is a matter of conjecture as must also be the question whether copies were widely held by laymen.1232

The new path which Erasmus struck out in his edition of the New Testament was looked upon in some quarters as a dangerous path. Dorpius, one of the Louvain professors, in 1515, anticipated the appearance of the book by remonstrating with Erasmus for his bold project and pronounced the received Vulgate text free "from all mixture of falsehood and mistake."  This, he alleged, was evident from its acceptance by the Church in all ages and the use the Fathers had made of it. Another member of the Louvain faculty, Latromus, employed his learning in a pamphlet which maintained that a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was not necessary for the scholarly study of the Scriptures. In England, Erasmus’ New Testament was attacked on a number of grounds by Lee, archbishop of York; and Standish, bishop of St. Asaph, preached a furious sermon in St. Paul’s churchyard on Erasmus’ temerity in undertaking the issue of such a work. The University of Cologne was especially outraged by Erasmus’ attempt and Conrad of Hersbach wrote:1233 —

They have found a language called Greek, at which we must be careful to be on our guard. It is the mother of all heresies. In the hands of many persons I see a book, which they call the New Testament. It is a book full of thorns and poison. As for Hebrew my brethren, it is certain that those who learn it will sooner or later turn Jews.

But among the men who read Erasmus’ text was Martin Luther, and he was studying it to settle questions which started in his soul. About one of these he asked his friend Spalatin to consult Erasmus, namely the final meaning of the righteousness of the law, which he felt the great scholar had misinterpreted in his annotations on the Romans in the Novum instrumentum. He believed, if Erasmus would read Augustine’s works, he would change his mind. Luther preferred Augustine, as he said, with the knowledge of one tongue to Jerome with his knowledge of five.

Down to the very end of its history, the mediaeval Church gave no official encouragement to the circulation of the Bible among the laity. On the contrary, it uniformly set itself against it. In 1199 Innocent III., writing to the diocese of Metz where the Scriptures were being used by heretics, declared that as by the old law, the beast touching the holy mount was to be stoned to death, so simple and uneducated men were not to touch the Bible or venture to preach its doctrines.1234  The article of the Synod of Toulouse,1229, strictly forbidding the Old and New Testaments to the laity either in the original text or in the translation1235 was not recalled or modified by papal or synodal action. Neither after nor before the invention of printing was the Bible a free book. Gerson was quite in line with the utterances of the Church, when he stated, that it was easy to give many reasons why the Scriptures were not to be put into the vulgar tongues except the historical sections and the parts teaching morals.1236  In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella represented the strict churchly view when, on the eve of the Reformation, they prohibited under severe penalties the translation of the Scriptures and the possession of copies. The positive enactment of the English archbishop, Arundel, at the beginning of the 15th century, forbidding the reading of Wyclif’s English version, was followed by the notorious pronouncement of Archbishop Bertholdt of Mainz against the circulation of the German Bible, at the close of the same century,1485. The position taken by Wyclif that the Scriptures, as the sole source of authority for creed and life, should be freely circulated found full response in the closing years of the Middle Ages only in the utterances of one scholar, Erasmus, but he was under suspicion and always ready to submit himself to the judgment of the Church hierarchic. If Wyclif said, "God’s law should be taught in that tongue that is more known, for this wit [wisdom] is God’s Word," Erasmus in his Paraclesis1237 uttered the equally bold words: —

I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated into their own vulgar tongue, as though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men’s ignorance of it. The counsels of kings are much better kept hidden but Christ wished his mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel and the epistles of Paul. And I wish they were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen but also by Turks and Saracens, I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plow, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.

The utterances of Erasmus aside, the appeals made 1450–1520 for the circulation of the Scriptures among all classes are very sparse and, in spite of all pains, Catholic controversialists have been able to bring together only a few. And yet, the few that we have show that, at least in Germany and the Netherlands, there was a popular hunger for the Bible in the vernacular. Thus, the Preface to the German Bible, issued at Cologne,1480, called upon every Christian to read the Bible with devotion and honest purpose. Though the most learned may not exhaust its wisdom, nevertheless its teachings are clear and uncovered. The learned may read Jerome’s Vulgate but the unlearned and simple folk could and should use the Cologne edition which was in good German. The devotional manual, Die Himmelsthür,—Door of Heaven,—1513, declared that listening to sermons ought to stir up people to read diligently in the German Bible. In 1505, Jacob Wimpheling spoke of the common people reading both Testaments in their mother-tongue and made this the ground of an appeal to priests not to neglect to read the Word of God themselves.1238

Such testimonies are more than offset by warnings against the danger attending the popular use of Scriptures. Brant spoke strongly in this vein and so did Geiler of Strassburg, who asserted that putting the Scriptures into the hands of laymen was like putting a knife into the hands of children to cut bread. He added that it "was almost a wicked thing to print the sacred text in German."1239  Archbishop Bertholdt’s fulmination against German versions of the Bible and their circulation among the people no doubt expressed the general mind of the hierarchy in Germany and all Europe.1240  In this celebrated edict, the German primate pronounced the German language too barbarous a tongue to reproduce the high thoughts expressed by Greek and Latin writers, writing of the Christian religion. The Scriptures are not to be given to simple and unlearned men and, above all, are not to be put into the hands of women.1241  He spoke of the fools who were using the divine gift of printing to send forth things proscribed to the public and declared, that the printers of the sacred text were moved by the vain love of fame or by greed. In his zeal, the archbishop went so far as to forbid the translation of all works whatsoever, of Greek and Latin authorship, or their sale without the sanction of the doctors of the Universities of Mainz or Erfurt. The punishment for the violation of the edict was excommunication, confiscation of books and a fine of 100 gulden.

The decree was so effective that, after 1488, only four editions of the German Bible appeared until 1522, when Luther issued his New Testament, when the old German translations seemed to be suddenly laid aside.1242  In England, Arundel’s inhibition so fully expressed the mind of the nation that for a full century no attempt was made to translate the Bible into English and it was not till after 1530 that the first copy of the English Scriptures was published on English soil.1243  Sir Thomas More, it is true, writing on the threshold of the English Reformation, interpreted Arundel’s decree as directed against corrupt translations and sought to make it appear that it was on account of errors that Wyclif’s version had been condemned. He was striving to parry the charge that the Church had withheld the Bible from popular use, but, whatever the interpretation put upon his words may be (see this volume, p. 348), the fact remains that the English were slow in getting any printed version of their own and that the Catholic party issued none till the close of the 16th century.

Distinct witness is borne by Tyndale to the unwillingness of the old party to have the Bible in English, in these words: "Some of the papists say it is impossible to translate the Scriptures into English, some that it is not lawful for the layfolk to have it in the mother-tongue, some that it would make them all heretics."1244  After the new views were quite prevalent in England, the English Bible had a hard time in winning the right to be read. Tyndale’s version, for the printing of which he found no room in England, was at Wolsey’s instance proscribed by Henry VIII. and the famous burning of 1527 in St. Paul’s churchyard of all the copies Bishop Tonstall could lay his hands on will always rise up to rebuke those who try to make it appear that the circulation of the Word of God was intended by the Church authorities to be free. Tyndale declared that, "in burning the New Testament, the papists did none other thing than I looked for; no more shall they do if they burn me also."  Any fears he may have had were realized in his execution at Vilvorde,1536.1245  No doubt, the priest represented a large class when he rebuked Tyndale for proposing to translate the Bible in the words,  "We were better without God’s laws than the pope’s."  The martyr Hume’s body was hung when an English Bible was found on his person. In 1543, the reading of the Scriptures was forbidden in England except to persons of quality. The Scotch joined the English authorities when the Synod of St. Andrews,1529, forbade the importation of Bibles into Scotland.

In France, according to the testimony of the famous printer Robert Stephens, who was born in 1503, the doctors of the Sorbonne, in the period when he was a young man, knew about the New Testament only from quotations from Jerome and the Decretals. He declared that he was more than 50 years old before he knew anything about the New Testament. Luther was a man before he saw a copy of the Latin Bible. In 1533, Geneva forbade its citizens to read the Bible in German or French and ordered all translations burnt.1246  The strict inquisition of books would have passed to all countries, if the hierarchy had had its way. In 1535, Francis I. closed the printing-presses and made it a capital offence in France to publish a religious book without authorization from the Sorbonne. The attitude of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, since the Reformation as well as during the Reformation, has been against the free circulation of the Bible. In the 19th century, one pope after another anathematized Bible societies. In Spain, Italy and South America, the punishments visited upon Bible colporteurs and the frequent burning of the Bible itself have been quite in the line of the decrees of Arundel and Bertholdt and the treatment of Bishop Tonstall. Nor will it be forgotten that, at the time Rome was made the capital of Italy in 1870, a papal law required that copies of the Bible found in the possession of visitors to the papal city be confiscated.

On the other hand, through the agency of the Reformers, the book was made known and offered freely to all classes. What use the Reformers hoped to make of printing for the dissemination of religion and intelligence is tersely and quaintly expressed by the martyrologist, Foxe, in these words:1247 —

Either the pope must abolish printing or he must seek a new world to reign over, for else, as the world stands, printing will abolish him. The pope and all the cardinals must understand this, that through the light of printing the world begins now to have eyes to see and heads to judge .... God hath opened the press to preach, whose voice the pope is never able to stop with all the puissance of the triple crown. By printing as by the gift of tongues and as by the singular organ of the Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the Gospel sounds to all nations and countries under heaven and what God reveals to one man, is dispersed to many and what is known to one nation is opened to all.

Note: – Both Janssen and Abbot Gasquet spend much pains in the attempt to show that the mediaeval Church was not opposed to the circulation of the Bible in popular versions or the Latin Vulgate. The proofs they bring forward must be regarded as strained and insufficient. They ignore entirely the vast mass of testimony on the other side, as, for example, the testimony involved in the popular reception given to the German and English Scriptures when they appeared from the hands of the Reformers and the mass of testimony given by the Reformers on the subject. Gasquet endeavors to break the force of the argument drawn from Arundel’s edict, but he has nothing to say of the demand Wyclif made for the popular dissemination of the Bible, a demand which implied that the Bible was withheld from the people. Dr. Barry who belongs to the same school, in the Cambr. Mod. Hist., I. 640, speaks of "the enormous extent the Bible was read in the 15th century" and that it was not "till we come within sight of the Lutheran troubles that preachers, like Geiler of Kaisersberg, hint their doubts on the expediency of unrestrained Bible-reading in the vernacular."  What is to be said of such an exaggeration in view of the fact that the vast majority of Bibles were in Latin, a language which the people could not read, that Geiler died in 1510, seven years before Luther ceased to be a pious Augustinian monk, and that he did very much more than hint doubts!  He expressed himself unreservedly against Bible-reading. Janssen-Pastor,—I. 23 sqq., 72 sqq., VII. 535 sqq.—have a place for stray testimonies between 1480–1520 in favor of the popular reading of the Scriptures, but, go far as I can see, do not refer to the warnings of Brant, Geiler and others against their use by laymen, and the only reference they make to Bertholdt’s notorious decree is to the clause in which the archbishop emphasizes the divine art of printing, divina quaedam ars imprimendi, I. 15.

§ 78. Popular Piety.

During the last century of the Middle Ages, the religious life of the laity was stimulated by some new devices, especially in Germany. There, the effort to instruct the laity in the matters of the Christian faith was far more vital and active than in any other part of Western Christendom.

The popular need found recognition in the illustrations, furnished in many editions of the early Bibles. The Cologne Bible of 1480, the Lübeck Bible of 1494 and the Venice Bible of Malermi,1497, are the best examples of this class of books. Fifteen of the 17 German Bibles, issued before the Reformation, were illustrated.

A more distinct recognition of this need was given in the so-called biblia pauperum,—Bibles for the poor,—first single sheets and then books, containing as many as 40 or 50 pictures of biblical scenes.1248  In the first instance, they seem to have been intended to aid priests in giving instruction. Side by side, they set scenes from the two Testaments, showing the prophetic types and their fulfilments. Thus the circumcisions of Abraham, Jacob and Christ are depicted in three separate pictures, the priest being represented in the very act of circumcising Christ. Explanations in Latin, German or French accompany the pictures.

An extract will give some idea of the kind of information furnished by this class of literature. When Adam was dying, he sent Seth into the garden to get medicine. The cherub gave him a branch from the tree of life. When Seth returned, he found his father dead and buried. He planted the branch and in 4000 years it grew to be the tree on which the Saviour was crucified.

The best executed of these biblical picture-books are those in Constance,1249 St. Florian, Austria and in the libraries of Munich and Vienna. The name, biblia pauperum, may have been derived from Bonaventura or the statement of Gregory the Great, that pictures are the people’s bible. In 1509, Lukas Kranach issued the passion in a series of pictures at Wittenberg.

A marked and most hopeful novelty in Germany were the numerous manuals of devotion and religious instruction which were issued soon after the invention of printing. This literature bears witness to the intelligent interest taken in religious training, although its primary purpose was not for the young but to furnish a guide-book for the confessional and to serve priest and layman in the hour of approaching death.1250  These books are, for the most part, in German, and probably had a wide circulation. They show common Christians what the laws of God are for daily life and what are the chief articles of the Church’s faith. Some of the titles give us an idea of the intent,—The Soul’s Guide, Der Seelenführer; Path to Heaven, Die Himmelstrasse; The Soul’s Comfort, Der Seelentrost; The Heart’s Counsellor, Der Herzmahner; The Devotional Bell, Das andächtige Zeitglöcklein; The Foot-Path to Eternal Bliss, Der Fusspfad zur ewigen Seligkeit; The Soul’s Vegetable Garden, Das Seelenwürzgärtlein; The Soul’s Vineyard, Der Weingarten der Seele; The Spiritual Chase, Die geistliche Jagd. Others were known by the general title of Beichtbüchlein—libri di penitentia — or penitential books.

A compendious statement of their intent is given in the title of the Seelenführer,1251 namely "The Soul’s Guide, a useful book for every Christian to practise a pious life and to reach a holy death."  This literature deserves closer attention both because it represents territory hitherto largely neglected by students of the later Middle Ages and because it bears witness to the zeal among the German clergy to spread practical religion among the people. The Himmelwagen, the Heavenly Carriage, represents the horses as faith, love, repentance, patience, peace, humility and obedience. The Trinity is the driver, the carriage itself God’s mercy.

With variations, these little books explain the 10 Commandments, the 14 articles of the Creed—the number into which it was then divided—the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, mortal sins, the 5 senses, the works of mercy and other topics. The Soul’s Comfort, which appeared in 16 editions,1474–1523,1252 takes up the 10 Commandments, 7 sacraments, 8 Beatitudes, 6 works of mercy, the 7 spiritual gifts, 7 mortal sins and 7 cardinal virtues and "what God further thinks me worthy of knowing."  Most useful as this little book was adapted to be, it sometimes states truth under strange forms, as when it tells of a man whose soul after death was found, not in his body but in his money-chest and of a girl who, while dancing on Friday, was violently struck by the devil but recovered on giving her promise to amend her ways.

The Path to Heaven contains 52 chapters. The first two set forth faith and hope, the joys of the elect and the pains of the lost and it closes with 4 chapters describing a holy death, the devil’s modes of tempting the dying and questions which are to be put to sick people. Dietrich Kolde’s Mirror of a Christian Man, one of the most popular of the manuals, in the first two of its 46 chapters, took up the Apostles’ Creed and, in the last, the marks of a good Christian man. The first edition appeared before 1476; the 23d at Delfft,1518.1253

Many of the manuals expressly set forth the value of the family religion and call upon parents to teach their children the Creed, the 10 Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, to have them pray morning and evening and to take them to church to hear the mass and preaching. The Soul’s Guide says, "The Christian home should be the first school for young children and their first church."

The Path to Heaven,1254 written by Stephen von Landskron or Lanzkranna, dean of Vienna, d. 1477, presents a very attractive picture of a Christian household. As a model for imitation, the head of a family is represented as going to church with his wife, children and servants every Sunday and listening to the preaching. On returning home, he reviews the subject of the sermon and hears them recite the Commandments, Lord’s Prayer and Creed and the 7 mortal sins. Then, after he has refreshed himself with a draught, Trinklein, they sing a song to God or Mary or to one of the saints. The Soul’s Comfort counsels parents to examine their households about the articles of faith and the precepts the children had learned at school and at church. The Table of a Christian Life1255 urges the parents to keep their children off the streets, send them to school, making a selection of their teachers and, above all, to live well themselves and "go before" their children in the practice of all the virtues.

Of the penitential books, designed distinctly as manuals of preparation for the confessional, the work of John Wolff is the most elaborate and noteworthy. This good man, who was chaplain at St. Peter’s, Frankfurt, wrote his book 1478.1256  He was deeply interested in the impartation of religious instruction. His tombstone, which was unearthed in 1895, calls him the "doctor of the 10 Commandments" and gives a representation of the 10 Commandments in 10 pictures, each Commandment being designated by a hand with one or more fingers uplifted. Such tables it was not an uncommon thing, in the last years of the Middle Ages, to hang on the walls of churches.

Wolff’s book, which is a guide for daily Christian living, sets forth at length the 10 Commandments and the acts and inward thoughts which are in violation of them, and puts into the mouth of the offender an appropriate confession. Thus, confessing to a violation of the 4th Commandment, the offender says, "I have done on Friday rough work, in farming, dunging the fields, splitting wood, spinning, sewing, buying and selling, dancing, striking people at the dance, playing games and doing other sinful things. I did not hear mass or preaching and was remiss in the service of Almighty God."  Upon the exposition of the Decalogue follow lists of the five baser sins,—usury, killing, stealing, sodomy and keeping back wages,—the 6 sins against the Holy Ghost, the 7 works of mercy such as visiting the sick, clothing the naked and burying the dead, the sacraments, the Beatitudes, the 7 gifts of the Holy Ghost and an exposition of repentance. The work closes with a summary of the advantages to be derived from the frequent repetition of the 10 Commandments and mentions 13 excuses, given for not repeating them, such as that the words are hard to remember and the unwillingness to have them as a perpetual monitor.

These manuals, having in view the careful instruction of adults and children, indicate a new era in the history of religious training. No catechisms have come down to us from the ancient Church. The catechumens to whom Augustine and Cyril addressed their catechetical discourses were adults. In the 13th century, synods began to call for the preparation of summaries of religious knowledge for laymen. So a synod at Lambeth,1281, Prag,1355, and Lavaur, France,1368. The Synod of Tortosa,1429, ordered its prelates to secure the preparation of a brief compendium containing in concise paragraphs all that it was necessary for the people to know and that might be explained to them every Sunday during the year by their pastors. Gerson approached the catechetical method (see this volume, p. 216 sq.) and, after long years of activity made the statement that the reformation of the church must begin with children, a parvulis ecclesiae reparatio et ejus cultura incipienda.1257  In his Tripartite work he presents the Ten Commandments, confession and thoughts for the dying. The catechetical form of question and answer was not adopted till after the Lutheran Reformation was well on its way. The term, catechism, as a designation of such a manual was first used by Luther,1525, and the first book to bear the title was Andreas Althammer’s Catechism, which appeared in 1528. Luther’s two catechisms were issued one year later. The first Catholic book to bear the title was prepared by George Wicelius,1535.

In England, we have something similar to the German penitential books in the Prymers,1258 the first copy of which dates from 1410. They were circulated in Latin and English, and were intended for the instruction of the laity. They contained the calendar, the Hours of our Lady, the litany, the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, Ten Commandments, 7 Penitential Psalms, the 7 deadly sins, prayers and other matters. The book is referred to by Piers Plowman, and frequently in the 15th century, as one well known.1259  The Horn-book also deserves mention. This device for teaching the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer consisted of a rectangular board with a handle, to be held like a modern hand-mirror. On one or both sides were cut or printed the letters of the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer. Horn-books were probably not in general use till the close of the 16th century, but they date back to the middle of the 15th. They probably got their name from a piece of animal horn with which the face of the written matter was covered as a protection against grubby fingers.1260

A nearer approach to the catechetical idea was made by Colet in his rudiments of religious knowledge appended to his elementary grammar, and intended for use in St. Paul’s School. It contains the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, an exposition of the love due God and our fellowmen, 46 special "precepts of living," and two prayers, and is generally known as the Catecheyzon.1261

Religious instruction was also given through the series of pictures known as the Dance of Death, and through the miracle plays.1262  In the Dance of Death, a perpetual memento mori, death was represented in the figure of a skeleton appearing to persons in every avocation of life and of every class. None were too holy or too powerful to evade his intrusion and none too humble to be beyond his notice. Death wears now a serious, now a comic aspect, now politely leads his victim, now walks arm in arm with him, now drags him or beats him. An hour-glass is usually found somewhere in the pictures, grimly reminding the onlooker that the time of life is certain to run out. These pictures were painted on bridges, houses, church windows and convent walls. Among the oldest specimens are those in Minden,1383, at Paris in the churchyard of the Franciscans,1425, Dijon,1436, Basel,1441, Croyden, the Tower of London, Salisbury Cathedral,1460, Lübeck,1463.1263

In the fifteenth century, the religious drama was in its bloom in Germany and England.1264  The acting was now turned over to laymen and the public squares and streets were preferred for the performances. The people looked on from the houses as well as from the streets. In 1412, while the play of St. Dorothea was being acted in the market-place at Bautzen, the roof of one of the houses fell and 33 persons were killed. The introduction of buffoonery and farce had become a recognized feature and lightened the impression without impairing the religious usefulness of the plays. The devil was made a subject of perpetual jest and fun. The people found in them an element of instruction which, perhaps, the priest did not impart. The scenes enacted reached from the Creation and the fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgment and from Abel’s death and Isaac’s sacrifice to the crucifixion and resurrection.

Set forth by living actors, the miracle plays and moralities were to the Middle Ages what the Pilgrim’s Progress was to Puritans. They were performed from Rome to London, at the marriage and visits of princes and for the delectation of the people. We find them presented before Sigismund and prelates during the solemn discussions of the Council of Constance, as when the play of the Nativity and the Slaughter of the Innocents was acted at the Bishop of Salisbury’s lodgings,1417, and at St. Peter’s, as when the play of Susannah and the Elders was performed in honor of Leonora, daughter of Ferrante of Naples,1473. At a popular dramatization of the parable of the 10 Virgins in Eisenach,1324, the margrave, Friedrich, was so moved by the pleas of the 5 foolish maidens and the failure to secure the aid of Mary and the saints, that he cried out, "What is the Christian religion worth, if sinners cannot obtain mercy through the intercession of Mary?"  The story went, that he became melancholy and died soon afterwards.

Of the four English cycles of miracle plays, York, Chester, Coventry and Towneley or Wakefield, the York cycle dates back to 1360 and contained from 48 to 57 plays. Chester and Coventry were the traditional centres of the religious drama. The stage or pageant, as it was called, was wheeled through the streets. The playing was often in the hands of the guilds, such as the barbers, tanners, plasterers, butchers, spicers, chandlers.1265  The paying of actors dates from the 14th century.

Chester cycles was Noah’s Flood, a subject popular everywhere in mediaeval Europe. After God’s announcement to the patriarch, his 3 sons and their wives offered to take hand in the building of the ark. Noah’s wife alone held out and scolded while the others worked. In spite of Noah’s well-known quality of patience, her husband exclaimed: —

Lord, these women be crabbed, aye

And none are meke, I dare well says.

Nothing daunted, however, the patriarch went on with his hammering and hewing and remarked: —

These bordes heare I pinne togither

To bear us saffe from the weither,

That we may rowe both heither and theither

And saffe be from the fludde.1266

The ark finished, each party brought his portion of animals and birds. But when they were housed, Noah’s help-meet again proved a disturbing element. Noah bade Shem go and fetch her.

Sem, sonne, loe!  thy mother is wrawe (angry).

Shem told her they were about to set sail, but still she resisted entreaty and all hands were called to join together and "fetch her in."

One of the best of the English plays, Everyman, has for its subject the inevitableness of death and the judgment.1267  God sends Death to Everyman and, in his attempt to withstand his message, Everyman calls upon his friends Fellowship, Riches, Strength, Beauty and Good Works for help or, at least, to accompany him on his pilgrimage. This with one consent they refused to do. He then betook himself to Penance, and has explained to him the powers of the priesthood: —

God hath to priest more power given

Than to any angel that is in heaven.

With five words, he may consecrate

God’s body in flesh and blood to take

And handleth his Maker between his hands:

The priest bindeth and unbindeth all bands

Both in earth and in heaven,

He ministers all the sacraments seven.

Such plays were impressive sermons, a popular summer-school of moral and religious instruction, the mediaeval Chatauqua. They continued to be performed in England till the 16th century and even till the reign of James I., when the modern drama took their place. The last survival of the religious drama of the Middle Ages is the Passion Play given at Oberammergau in the highlands of Bavaria. In obedience to a vow, made during a severe epidemic in 1684, it has been acted every ten years since and more often in recent years. Since 1860, the performances have attracted throngs of spectators from foreign lands, a performance being set for 1910. Writers have described it as a most impressive sermon on the most momentous of scenes, as it is a solemn act of worship for the simple-hearted, pious Catholics of that remote mountain village.

Pilgrimages and the worship of relics were as popular in the 16th century as they had been in previous periods of the Middle Ages.1268  Guide-books for pilgrims were circulated in Germany and England and contained vocabularies as well as items of geography and other details.1269  Jerusalem continued to attract the feet of princes and prelates as well as persons of less exalted estate. Frederick the Wise of Saxony, Luther’s cautious but firm friend, was one of these pilgrims in the last days of the Middle Ages. William Wey of England, who in 1458 and 1462, went to the Holy Land, tells us how the pilgrims sang "O city dear Jerusalem," Urbs beata, as they landed at Joppa. Sir Richard Torkington and Sir Thomas Tappe, both ecclesiastics, made the journey the same year that Luther nailed up the Theses,1517. The journeys to Rome during the Jubilee Years of 1450,1500, drew vast throngs of people, eager to see the holy city and concerned to secure the religious benefits promised by the supreme pontiff. Local shrines also attracted constant streams of pilgrims.

Among the popular shrines in Germany were the holy blood at Stemberg from 1492, the image of Mary at Grimmenthal from 1499, as a cure for the French sickness, the head of St. Anna at Düren from 1500, this relic having been stolen from Mainz. The holy coat of Treves was brought to light in 1512. As in the flourishing days of the Crusades, so again, pilgrimage-epidemics broke out among the children of Germany, as in 1457 when large bands went to St. Michael’s in Normandy and in 1475 to Wilsnack, where, in spite of the exposure by Nicolas of Cusa, the blood was still reputed holy.1270  The most noted places of pilgrimage in Germany were Cologne with the bodies of the three Magi-kings and Aachen, where Mary’s undergarment, Jesus’ swaddling-cloth and the loin-cloth he wore on the cross and other priceless relics are kept. Some idea of the popularity of pilgrimages may be had from the numbers that are given, though it is possible they are exaggerated. In 1466, 130,000 attended the festival of the angels at Einsiedeln, Switzerland, and in 1496 the porter at the gate of Aachen counted 146,000.1271  In the 14 days, when the relics were displayed, 85,000 gulden were left in the money-boxes of St. Mary’s, Aachen.

Imposing religious processions were also popular, such as the procession at Erfurt,1483, in a time of drought. It lasted from 5 in the morning till noon, the ranks passing from church to church. Among those who took part were 948 children from the schools, the entire university-body comprising 2,141 persons, 812 secular priests, the monks of 5 convents and a company of 2,316 maidens with their hair hanging loosely down their backs and carrying tapers in their hands. German synods called attention to the abuses of the pilgrimage-habit and sought to check it.1272

English pilgrims, not satisfied with going to Rome, Jerusalem and the sacred places on their own island, also turned their footsteps to the tomb of St. James of Compostella, Spain. In 1456, Wey conducted 7 ship-loads of pilgrims to this Spanish locality. Among the popular English shrines were St. Edmund of Bury, St. Ethelred of Ely, the holy hood of Boxley, the holy blood of Hailes and, more popular than all, Thomas à Becket’s tomb at Canterbury and our Blessed Lady of Walsingham. So much frequented was the road to Walsingham that it was said, Providence set the milky way in the place it occupies in the heavens that it might shine directly upon it and direct the devout to the sacred spot. These two shrines were visited by unbroken processions of religious itinerants, including kings and queens as well as people less distinguished. Reference has already been made to Erasmus’ description, which he gives in his Colloquies. At Walsingham, he was shown the Virgin’s shrine rich with jewels and ornaments of silver and gold and lit up by burning candles. There, was the wicket at which the pilgrim had to stoop to pass but through which, with the Virgin’s aid, an armed knight on horseback had escaped from his pursuer. The Virgin’s congealed milk, the cool scholar has described with particular precision. Asking what good reason there was for believing it was genuine, the verger replied by pointing him to an authentic record hung high up on the wall. Walsingham was also fortunate enough to possess the middle joint of one of Peter’s fingers.

At Canterbury, Erasmus and Colet looked upon Becket’s skull covered with a silver case except at the spot where the fatal dagger pierced it and Colet, remarking that Thomas was good to the poor while on earth, queried whether now being in heaven he would not be glad to have the treasures, stored in his tomb, distributed in alms. When a chest was opened and the monk held up the rags with which the archbishop had blown his nose, Colet held them only a moment in his fingers and let them drop in disgust. It was said by Thomas à Kempis, that rarely are they sanctified who jaunt about much on pilgrimages—raro sanctificantur, qui multum peregrinantur.1273  One of the German penitential books exclaimed, "Alas! how seldom do people go on pilgrimages from right motives."  Twenty-five years after the visits of Erasmus and Colet, the canons of Walsingham, convicted of forging relics, were dragged by the king’s order to Chelsea and burnt and the tomb of St. Thomas was rifled of its contents and broken up.

Saints continued to be in high favor. Every saint has his distinct office allotted to him, said Erasmus playfully. One is appealed to for the toothache, a second to grant easy delivery in childbirth, a third to lend aid on long journeys, a fourth to protect the farmer’s live stock. People prayed to St. Christopher every morning to be kept from death during the day, to St. Roche to be kept from contagion and to St. George and St. Barbara to be kept from falling into the hands of enemies. He suggested that these fabulous saints were more prayed to than Peter and Paul and perhaps than Christ himself.1274  Sir Thomas More, in his defence of the worship of saints, expressed his astonishment at the "madness of the heretics that barked against the custom of Christ’s Church."

The encouragement, given at Rome to the worship of relics, had a signal illustration in the distinguished reception accorded the head of St. Andrew by the Renaissance pope, Pius II. In Germany, princes joined with prelates in making collections of sacred bones and other objects in which miraculous virtue was supposed to reside and whose worship was often rewarded by the almost infinite grace of indulgence. In Germany, in the 15th century as in Chaucer’s day in England, the friars were the indefatigable purveyors of this sort of merchandise, from the bones of Balaam’s ass to the straw of the manger and feathers from St. Michael’s wings. The Nürnberger, Nicolas Muffel, regretted that, after the effort of 33 years, he had only been able to bring together 308 specimens. Unfortunately this did not keep him from the crime of theft and the penalty of the gallows.1275  In Vienna, were shown such rarities as a piece of the ark, drops of sweat from Gethsemane and some of the incense offered by the Wise Men from the East. Albrecht, archbishop of Mainz, helped to collect no less than 8,138 sacred fragments and 42 entire bodies of saints. This collection, which was deposited at Halle, contained the host—that is, Christ’s own body—which Christ offered while he was in the tomb, a statue of the Virgin with a full bottle of her milk hanging from her neck, several of the pots which had been used at Cana and a portion of the wine Jesus made, as well as some of the veritable manna which the Hebrews had picked up in the desert, and some of the earth from a field in Damascus from which God made Adam.

A most remarkable collection was made by no less a personage than Frederick the Wise of Saxony.1276  A rich description of its treasures has been preserved from the hand of Andreas Meinhard, then a new master of arts. On his way to Wittenberg,1507, he met a raw student about to enter the university, Reinhard by name. The elector had made good use of the opportunities his pilgrimages to Jerusalem furnished and succeeded in obtaining the very respectable number of 5,005 sacred pieces. The collection was displayed for over a year in the Schlosskirche, where Meinhard and his travelling companion looked at it with wondering eyes and undoubting confidence. Among the pieces were a thorn from the crown of thorns, a tunic belonging to John the Evangelist, milk from the Virgin’s breast, a piece of Mt. Calvary, a piece of the table on which the Last Supper was eaten, fragments of the stones on which Christ stood when he wept over Jerusalem and as he was about to ascend to heaven, the entire body of one of the Bethlehem Innocents, one of the fingers of St. Anna, "the most blessed of grandmothers,"—beatissimae aviae,—pieces of the rods of Aaron and Moses, a piece of Mary’s girdle and some of the straw from the Bethlehem manger. Good reason had Meinhard to remark that, if the grandfathers had been able to arise from the dead, they would have thought Rome itself transferred to Wittenberg. Each of these fragments was worth 100 days of indulgence to the worshipper. The credulity of Frederick, the collector, and the people betrays the atmosphere in which Luther was brought up and the struggle it must have cost him to attack the deep-seated beliefs of his generation.

The religious reverence paid to the Virgin could not well go beyond the stage it reached in the age of the greater Schoolmen nor could more flattering epithets be heaped upon her than were found in the works of Albertus Magnus and Bonaventura. Mary was more easily entreated than her Son. The Horticulus animae,—Garden of the Soul,—tells the story of a cleric, accustomed to say his Ave Marias devoutly every day, to whom the Lord appeared and said, that his mother was much gratified at the priest’s prayers and loved him much but that he should not forget also to direct prayers to himself. The book, Heavenly Wagon, called upon sinners to take refuge in her mantle, where full mercy and pardon would be found.1277  Erasmus remarked that Mary’s blind devotees, praying to her on all occasions, considered it manners to place the mother before the Son.1278  In 1456, Calixtus III. commended the use of the Ave Maria as a protection against the Turks. English Prymers contained the salutations,

Blessid art thou virgyn marie, that hast born the lord maker of the world: thou hast getyn hym that made thee, and thou dwellist virgyne withouten ende. Thankis to god.

Heil sterre of the see, hooli goddis modir, alwei maide, blesful gate of heuene.1279

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in its extreme form, exempting Mary from the beginning from all taint of original sin, was defined by the Council of Basel1280 but the decision has no oecumenical authority. Sixtus IV.,1477 and 1483, declared the definition of the dogma still an open question, the Holy See not having pronounced upon the subject. But the University of Paris,1497, in emphatic terms decided for the doctrine and bound its members to the tenet by an oath. Erasmus, comparing the subtlety of the Schoolmen with the writings of the Apostles, observed that, while the former hotly contended over the Immaculate Conception, the Apostles who knew Mary well never undertook to prove that she was immune from original sin.1281

To the worship of Mary was added the worship of Anna, Mary’s reputed mother. The names of Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim, were received from the Apocryphal Gospels of James and the Infancy. Jerome and Augustine had treated the information with suspicion as also the further information that the couple were married in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth, had angelic announcements of the birth of Mary and that, upon Joachim’s death, Anna married a second and a third time. The Crusaders brought relics of her with them to Western Europe and gradually her claim found recognition. Her cult spread rapidly. In Alexander VI. she found a distinguished devotee. Churches and hospitals were built to her memory. Trithemius wrote a volume in her praise and artists, like Albrecht Dürer, joined her with Mary on the canvas.1282  She was claimed as a patron saint by women in childbirth and by the copper miners. Luther himself was one of her ardent worshippers. Both Albrecht of Mainz and Frederick the Wise were fortunate enough to have in their collections of relics, each, one of the fingers of the saint.1283

If sacred poetry is any test of the devotion paid to a saint, then the Virgin Mary was far and away the chief personage to whom worshippers in the last centuries of the Middle Ages looked for help. The splendid collection issued by Blume and Dreves,—Analecta hymnica,—filling now nearly 8,000 pages, gives the material from which a judgment can be formed as to the relative amount of attention writers of hymns and sequences paid to the Godhead, to Mary and to the other saints. Number XLII., containing 336 hymns, gives 37 addressed to Christ,110 to Mary and 189 to other saints. Number XLVI. devotes 102 to Mary. These numbers are taken at random. Here are introductory verses from several of the thousands of hymns which were composed in praise of her virtues and the efficacy of her intercession:—

Pulchra regis regia

Regens regentem omnia 1284

Sal deitatis cella

Virgo virginum

Maria, nostra consolatrix.1285

Materaltissimi regis

Tu humani altrix gregis

Advocata potissima

In hora mortis ultima.1286

Anna also has a large place in the hymns of the later Middle Ages and the 16th century.1287  Here are the opening verses of two of them:

Dulcis Jesu matris pater

Joachim, et Anna mater

Justi, natu nobiles.1288

Gaude, mater Anna

Gaude, mater sancta

Cum sis Dei facta

Genetrix avia.1289

In England, singing sacred songs seems to have been little cultivated before the 16th century. The singing of Psalms in the days of Anne Boleyn was a novelty and was greatly enjoyed at the court as it was later in Elizabeth’s reign, on the streets. The vast numbers of sacred pieces, written in Germany, France and the Lowlands, were intended for conventual devotions not for popular use.1290  Singing, however, was practised extensively in pilgrimages and processions and also in churches, and the Basel synod at its 21st session complained that the public services were interrupted by hymns in the vernacular. Germany took the lead in sacred popular music. From 1470–1520, nearly 100 hymns were printed from German presses, many of them with original tunes. Sometimes the hymns were in German from beginning to end, sometimes they were a mixture of Latin and German. As the Middle Ages drew to a close, religious song increased. The Reformation established congregational singing and begat the congregational hymnbook.1291

These adjuncts and elements of Christian worship and training were added to the usual service of the churches, the celebration of the mass, which was central, the confessional and preaching. The age was religious but doubt was growing. A writer of the 16th century says of England:1292

There are many who have various opinions concerning religion but all attend mass every day and say many pater nosters in public, the women carrying long rosaries in their hands and any who can read taking the Hours of our Lady with them and reciting them in church verse by verse in a low voice is the manner of the religious. They always hear mass in their parish church on Sunday and give liberal alms nor do they omit any form incumbent upon good Christians.

The age of a more intelligent piety was still to come, though it was to prove itself less submissive to human authority.

§ 79. Works of Charity.

Benevolence and philanthropy, which are of the very essence of the Christian religion, flourished in the later Middle Ages. In the endeavor to provoke his generation to good works, Luther asserted that "in the good old papal times everybody was merciful and kind. Then it snowed endowments and legacies and hospitals."1293  Institutions were established to care for the destitute and sick, colleges and bursaries were endowed and protection given to the dependent against the rapacity of unscrupulous money-lenders.

The modern notion of stamping out sickness by processes of sanitation scarcely occurred to the mediaeval municipalities. Although the population of Europe was not 1/10 of what it is to-day, disease was fearfully prevalent. No epidemics so fatal as the Black Death appeared in Europe but, even in England, the return of plagues was frequent, as in 1406,1439,1464,1477. The famine of 1438, called the Great Famine, was followed the next year by the Great Pestilence, called also the pestilence sans merci. In 1464, to follow the Chronicle of Croyland, thousands, "died like slaughtered sheep."  The sweating sickness of 1485 reappeared in 1499 and 1504. In the first epidemic, 20,000 died in London and, in 1504, the mayor of the city succumbed. The disease took people suddenly and was marked by a chill, which was followed by a fiery redness of the skin and agonizing thirst that led the victims to drink immoderately. Drinking was succeeded by sweating from every pore.1294

Provision was made for the sick and needy through the monasteries, gilds and brotherhoods as well as by individual assistance and state collections. The care of the poor was in England regarded as one of the primary functions of the Church. Archbishop Stratford,1342, ordered that a portion of the tithe should be invariably set apart for their needs. The neglect of the poor was alleged as one of the crying omissions of the alien clergy.

Doles for the poor, a common form of charity in England, were often provided for on a large scale. During the 40 days the duke of Gaunt’s body was to remain unburied, 50 marks were to be distributed daily until the 40th day, when the amount was to be increased to 500 marks. Bishop Skirland wanted 200 given away between his death and his interment. A draper of York gave by will 100 beds with furniture to as many poor folk. A cloth-maker made a doubtful charity when he left a suit of his own make to 13 poor people, with the condition that they should sit around his coffin for 8 days. There were houses, says Thorold Rogers, where doles of bread and beer were given to all wayfarers, houses where the sick were treated, clothed and fed, particularly the lepers. One of the hospitals that survives is St. Crow at Winchester for old and indigent people.1295  The cook Ketel, a Brother of the Common Life, whose biography Thomas à Kempis wrote, said it would be better to sell all the books of the house at Deventer and give more to the poor.

Hospitals, in the earlier part of our period, were the special concern of the knights of the Teutonic Order and continued throughout the whole of it to engage the attention of the Beguines. It became the custom also for the Beguines to go as nurses to private houses as in Cologne, Frankfurt, Treves, Ulm and other German cities, receiving pay for their services.1296  The Beguinages in Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp andother cities of Belgium and Holland date back to this period. The 15th century also witnessed the growth of municipal hospitals, a product of the civic spirit which had developed in North-Europe. Cities like Cologne, Lübeck and Augsburg had several hospitals. The Hotel de Dieu, Paris, did not come under municipal control till 1505. In cases, admission to hospitals was made by their founders conditional on ability to say the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ave Maria, as for example to St. Anthony’s, Augsburg. In this case, the founder took care to provide for himself, requiring the inmates on entering to say 100 Pater nosters and 100 Ave Marias over his grave and every day to join in saying over it 15 of each.1297  Damian of Löwen and his wife, who endowed a hospital at Cologne,1450, stipulated that "the very poorest and sickest were to be taken care of whether they belonged to Cologne or were strangers."

Rome had more than one hospital endowment. The foundation of Cardinal John Colonna at the Lateran, made 1216, still remains. In his History of the Popes (III. 51), Pastor has given a list of the hospitals and other institutions of mercy in the different states of Italy and justly laid stress upon this evidence of the power of Christianity. The English gilds, organized, in the first instance, for economic and industrial purposes, also pledged relief to their own sick and indigent members. The gild of Corpus Christi at York provided 8 beds for poor people and paid a woman by the year 14 shillings and fourpence to keep them. The gild of St. Helena at Beverley cared constantly for 3 or 4 poor folk.1298

Leprosy decreased during the last years of the Middle Ages, but hospitals for the reception of lepers are still extensively found,—the lazarettos, so called after Lazarus, who was reputed to have been afflicted with the disease. Houses for this malady had been established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry I. at St. Giles, by King Stephen at Burton, Leicestershire and by others till the reign of John. St. Hugh of Lincoln, as well as St. Francis d’Assissidistinguished themselves by their solicitude for lepers. But the disease seems to have died out in England in the 14th century and it was hard to fill the beds endowed for this class of sufferers. In 1434, it was ordered that beds be kept for 2 lepers in the great Durham leper hospital "provided they could be found in these parts."  Originally the hospital had beds for 60.1299  Late in the 16th century there were still lepers in Germany. Thomas Platter wrote, "When we came to Munich, it was so late that we could not enter the city, but had to remain in the leperhouse."1300

Begging was one of the curses of England and Germany as it continues to be of Southern Europe to-day. It was no disgrace to ask alms. The mendicant friars by their example consecrated a nuisance with the sacred authority of religion. Pilgrims and students also had the right of way as beggars. Sebastian Brant gave a list of the different ecclesiastical beggars who went about with sacks, into which they put with indiscriminate greed apples, plums, eggs, fish, chickens, meat, butter and cheese,—sacks which had no bottom.

Der Bettler Sack wird nimmer voll;

Wie man ihn füllt, so bleibt er hohl.

In Germany, towns gave franchises to beg.1301  The habit of mendicancy, which Brant ridiculed, Geiler of Strassburg called upon the municipality to regulate or forbid altogether. In England, mendicancy was a profession recognized in law.

With the decay of the monastic endowments and the legal maintenance of wages at a low rate, the destitution and vagrancy increased. The English statutes of laborers at the close of this period,1495 and 1504, ordered beggars, not able to work, to return to their own towns where they might follow the habit of begging without hindrance.1302

At a time when in Germany, the richest country of Europe, church buildings were multiplying with great rapidity, many churches in England, on account of the low economic conditions, were actually left to go to ruin or turned into sheepcotes and stables, a transmutation to which Sir Thomas More as well as others refers. The rapacity of the nobles and abbots in turning large areas into sheep-runs deprived laborers of employment and brought social distress upon large numbers. On the other hand, parliament passed frequent statutes of apparel, as in 1463 and 1482, restricting the farmer and laborer in his expenditure on dress. The different statutes of laborers, enacted during the 15th century, had the effect of depressing and impoverishing the classes dependent upon the daily toil of their hands.1303

In spite of the strict synodal rules, repeated again and again, usury was practised by Christians as well as by Jews. All the greater Schoolmen of the 13th century had discussed the subject of usury and pronounced it sin, on the ground of Luke 6:34, and other texts. They held that charges of interest offended against the law of love to our neighbor and the law of natural fairness, for money does not increase with use but rather is reduced in weight and value. It is a species of greed which is mortal sin.1304  It was so treated by mediaeval councils when practised by Christians and the contrary opinion was pronounced heretical by the oecumenical council of Vienne. Geiler of Strassburg expounded the official church view when he pronounced usury always wicked. It was wrong for a Christian to take back more than the original principal. And the substitution of a pig or some other gift in place of a money payment he also denounced.

The rates of the Jews were exorbitant. In Florence, they were 20% in 1430 and, in 1488, 32½%.1305  In Northern Europe they were much higher, from 431/3 to 80 or even 100%. Municipalities borrowed. Clerics, convents and churches mortgaged their sacred vessels. City after city in Germany and Switzerland expelled the Jews,—from Spires and Zürich,1435, to Geneva,1490, and Nürnberg, Ulm and Nördlingen,1498–1500. The careers of the great banking-houses in the second half of the fifteenth century show the extensive demand for loans by popes and prelates, as well as secular princes.

To afford relief to the needy, whose necessities forced them to borrow, a measure of real philanthropy was conceived in the last century of the Middle Ages, the montes pietatis, or charitable accumulations.1306  They were benevolent loaning funds. The idea found widespread acceptance in Italy, where the first institutions were founded at Perugia,1462, and Orvieto,1463. City councils aided such funds by contributions, as at Perugia, when it gave 3,000 gulden. But in this case, finding itself unable to furnish the full amount, it mulcted the Jews for 1,200 gulden, Pius II. giving his sanction to the constraint. In cases, bishops furnished the capital, as at Pistoja,1473, where Bishop Donato de’ Medici gave 3,000 gulden. At Lucca, a merchant, who had grown rich through commercial affiliation with the Jews, donated the princely capital of 40,000 gold gulden. At Gubbio, a law taxed all inheritances one per cent in favor of the local fund, and neglect to pay was punished with an additional tax of one per cent.

The popes showed a warm interest in the new benevolence by granting to particular funds their sanction and offering indulgences to contributors. From 1463 to 1515 we have records of 16 papal authorizations from such popes as Pius II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II. and Leo X. The sanction of Innocent VIII., given to the Mantua fund,1486, called upon the preachers to summon the people to support the fund, promised 10 years full indulgence to donors, and excommunicated all who opposed the project. Sixtus IV., in commending the fund for his native town of Savona,1479, pronounced its worthy object to be to aid not only the poor but also the rich who had pawned their goods. He offered a plenary indulgence on the collection of every 100 gulden. In 1490, the Savona fund had 22,000 gulden and the limit of loans was raised to 100 ducats.1307

The administration of these bureaus of relief was in the hands of directors, usually a mixed body of clergymen and laymen, and often appointed by municipal councils. The accounts were balanced each month. In Perugia, the rate, which was 12% in 1463, was reduced to 8% a year later. In Milan it was reduced from 10% to 5%, in 1488. Five per cent was the appointed rate fixed at Padua, Vicenza and Pisa, and 4% at Florence. The loans were made upon the basis of property put in pawn. The benevolent efficacy of these funds cannot be questioned and to them, in part, is due the reduction of interest from 40% to 4 and 10% in Italy, before the close of the 15th century.1308  They met, however, with much opposition and were condemned as contravening the traditional law against usury.

A foremost place in advancing the movement was taken by the Franciscans and in the Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre,1439–1494, it had its chief apostle. This popular orator canvassed all the greater towns of Northern Italy,—Mantua, Florence, Parma, Padua, Milan, Lucca, Verona, Brescia. Wherever he went, he was opposed from the pulpit and by doctors of the canon law. At Florence, so warmly was the controversy conducted in the pulpits that a public discussion was ordered at which Lorenzo de’ Medici, doctors of the law, clerics and many laymen were present, with the result that the archbishop forbade opposition to the mons on pain of excommunication. The Deuteronomic injunction, 24:12 sq., ordering that, if a man borrow a coat, it should be restored before sundown and the Lord’s words, Luke 6, were quoted by the opposition. But it was replied, that the object of loaning to the poor was not to enrich the fund or individuals but to do the borrower good. Savonarola gave the institution his advocacy.1309  The Fifth Lateran commended it and in this it was followed, 50 years later, by the Council of Trent.

The attempt to transplant the Italian institution in Germany was unsuccessful and was met by the establishment of banks by municipal councils, as at Frankfurt.1310  In England also, it gained no foothold. So strong was the feeling against lending out money at interest that, at Chancellor Morton’s importunity, parliament proceeded against it with severe measures, and a law of Henry VII.’s reign made all lending of money at interest a criminal offence and the bargain between borrower and lender null and void.

Notable expression was also given to the practice of benevolence by the religious brotherhoods of the age. These organizations developed with amazing rapidity and are not to be confounded with the gilds which were organizations of craftsmen, intended to promote the production of good work and also to protect the master-workers in their monopoly of trade. They were connected with the Church and were, in part, under the direction of the priesthood, although from some of them, as in Lübeck, priests were distinctly excluded. Like the gilds, their organization was based upon the principle of mutual aid1311 but they emphasized the principle of unselfish sympathy for those in distress. Luther once remarked, there was no chapel and no saint without a brotherhood. In fact, nothing was so sure to make a saint popular as to name a brotherhood after him. By 1450, there was not a mendicant convent in Germany which had not at least one fraternity connected with it. Cities often had a number of these organizations. Wittenberg had 21, Lübeck 70, Frankfurt 31, Hamburg 100. Every reputable citizen in German cities belonged to one or more.1312  Luther belonged to 3 at Erfurt, the brotherhoods of St. Augustine, St. Anna and St. Catherine.

The dead, who had belonged to them, had the distinct advantage of being prayed for. Their sick were cared for in hospitals, containing beds endowed by them. Sometimes they incorporated the principle of mutual benefit or assurance societies, and losses sustained by the living they made good. At Paderborn, in case a brother lost his horse, every member contributed one or two shillings or, if he lost his house, his fellow-members contributed three shillings each or a load of lumber.

As there were gilds of apprentices as well as of master-workmen, so there were brotherhoods of the poor and humble as well as of those in comfortable circumstances. Even the lepers had fraternities, and one of these clans had fief rights to a spring at Wiesbaden. So also had the beggars and cripples at Zülpich, founded 1454. The entrance fee in the last case was 8 shillings, from which there was a reduction of one-half for widows.1313

In the case of the Italian brotherhoods, it is often difficult to distinguish between a society organized for a benevolent purpose and a society for the cult of some saint. The gilds of Northern Italy, as a rule, laid emphasis upon religious duties such as attendance upon mass, confession of sins and refraining from swearing. The Roman societies had their patron saints,—the blacksmith and workers in gold, St. Eligius, the millers Paulinus of Nola, the barrel-makers St. James, the inn-keepers St. Blasius and St. Julian, the masons St. Gregory the Great, the barbers and physicians St. Cosmas and St. Damian, the painters St. Luke and the apothecaries St. Lawrence. The popes encouraged the confraternities and elevated some of them to the dignity of archfraternities, as St. Saviour in Rome, the first to win this distinction. Florence was also good soil for religious brotherhoods. At the beginning of the 16th century, there were no less than 73 within its bounds, some of them societies of children.1314

Society did not wait for the present age to apply the principle of Christian charity. The development of organizations and bureaus in the 15th century was not carried as far as it is to-day, and for the good reason that the same demand for it did not exist. The cities were small and it was possible to carry out the practice of individual relief with little fear of deception.

§ 80. The Sale of Indulgences.

Nowhere, except in the lives of the popes themselves, did the humiliation of the Western Church find more conspicuous exhibition than in the sale of indulgences. The forgiveness of sins was bought and sold for money, and this sacred privilege formed the occasion of the rupture of Western Christendom as, later, the Lord’s Supper became the occasion of the chief division between the Protestant churches.

Originally an indulgence was the remission of a part or all of the works of satisfaction demanded by the priest in the sacrament of penance. This is the definition given by Roman Catholic authorities to-day.1315  In the 13th century, it came to be regarded as a remission of the penalty of sin itself, both here and in purgatory. At a later stage, it was regarded, at least in wide circles, as a release from the guilt of sin as well as from its penalty. The fund of merits at the Church’s disposition—thesaurus meritorum — as defined by Clement VI., in 1343, is a treasury of spiritual assets, consisting of the infinite merits of Christ, the merits of Mary and the supererogatory merits of the saints, which the Church uses by virtue of the power of the keys. One drop of Christ’s blood, so it was argued, was sufficient for the salvation of the world, and yet Christ shed all his blood and Mary was without stain. From the vast surplus accumulation supplied by their merits, the Church had the right to draw in granting remission to sinners from the penalties resulting from the commission of sin. The very term "keys," it was said, implies a treasure which is looked away and to which the keys give access.1316  The authority to grant indulgences was shared by the pope and the bishops. The law of Innocent III., intended to check its abuse, restricted the time for which bishops might grant indulgence to 40 days, the so-called quarantines. By the decree of Pius X., issued Aug. 28,1903, cardinals, even though they are not priests, may issue indulgences in their titular churches for 200 days, archbishops for 100 and bishops for 50 days.

The application of indulgence to the realm of purgatory by Sixtus IV. was a natural development of the doctrine that the prayers and other suffrages of the living inure to the benefit of the souls in that sphere. As Thomas Aquinas clearly taught, such souls belong to the jurisdiction of the Church on earth. And, if indulgences may be granted to the living, certainly the benefit may be extended to the intermediate realm, over which the Church also has control.

Sixtus’ first bull granting indulgence for the dead was issued 1476 in favor of the church of Saintes. Here was offered to those who paid a certain sum—certam pecuniam — for the benefit of the building, the privilege of securing a relaxation of the sufferings of the purgatorial dead, parents for their children, friend for friend. The papal deliverance aroused criticism and in a second bull, issued the following year, the pontiff states that such relaxations were offered by virtue of the fulness of authority vested in the pope from above plenitudo potestatis — to draw upon the fund of merits..1317

To the abuse, to which this doctrine opened the door, was added the popular belief that letters of indulgence gave exemption both from the culpability and penalty of sin. The expression, "full remission of sins," plena or plenissima remissio peccatorum, is found again and again in papal bulls from the famous Portiuncula indulgence, granted by Honorius III. to the Franciscans, to the last hours of the undisputed sway of the pope in the West. It was the merit of the late Dr. Lea to have called attention to this almost overlooked element of the mediaeval indulgence. Catholic authorities of to-day, as Paulus and Beringer, without denying the use of the expression, a poena et culpa, assert that it was not the intent of any genuine papal message to grant forgiveness from the guilt of sin without contrition of heart.1318  The expression was in current use in tracts and in common talk.1319  John of Paltz, in his Coelifodina, an elaborate defence of indulgences written towards the close of the 15th century, affirmed that an indulgence is given by virtue of the power of the keys whereby guilt is remitted and penalty withdrawn. These keys open the fund of the Church to its sons.1320  Luther was only expressing the popular view when, writing to Albrecht of Mainz,1517, he complained that men accepted the letters of indulgence as giving them exemption from all penalty and guilt—homo per istas indulgentias liber sit ab omni poena et culpa. Not only on the Continent but also in England were such forms of indulgence circulated. For example, Leo X.’s indulgence for the hospital S. Spirito in Rome ran in its English translation, "Holy and great indulgence and pardon of plenary remission a culpa et poena."1321  The popular mind did not stop to make the fine distinction between guilt and its punishment and, if it had, it would have been quite satisfied to be made free from the sufferings entailed by sin. If by a papal indulgence a soul in purgatory could be immediately released and given access to heavenly felicity, the question of guilt was of no concern.

Long before the days of Tetzel, Wyclif and Huss had condemned the use of the formula, "from penalty and guilt," as did also John Wessel. In denouncing the bulls of indulgence for those joining in a crusade against Ladislaus, issued 1412, Huss copied Wyclif almost word for word.1322  Wyclif fiercely condemned the papal assumption in granting full indulgence for the crusade of Henry de Spenser. Priests, he asserted, have no authority to give absolution without proper works of satisfaction and all papal absolution is of no avail, where the offenders are not of good and worthy life. If the pope has power to absolve unconditionally, he should exercise his power to excuse the sins of all men. The English Reformer further declared that, to the Christian priest it was given, to do no more than announce the forgiveness of sins just as the old priests pronounced a man a leper or cured of leprosy, but it was not possible for him to effect a cure. He spoke of, the fond fantasy of spiritual treasure in heaven, that each pope is made dispenser of the treasure at his own will, a thing dreamed of without ground."1323  Such power would make the pope master of the saints and Christ himself. He condemned the idea that the pope could "clear men of pain and sin both in this world and the other, so that, when they die, they flee to heaven without pain. This is for blind men to lead blind men and both to fall into the lake."  As for the pardoning of sin for money, that would imply that righteousness may be bought and sold. Wyclif gave it as a report, that Urban VI. had granted an indulgence for 2,000 years.1324

Indulgences found an assailant in Erasmus, howbeit a genial assailant. In his Praise of Folly, he spoke of the "cheat of pardons and indulgences."  These lead the priests to compute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory and to assign them a longer or shorter continuance according as the people purchase more or fewer of these salable exemptions. By this easy way of purchasing pardon any notorious highwayman, any plundering bandit or any bribe-taking judge may for a part of their unjust gains secure atonement for perjuries, lusts, bloodsheds, debaucheries and other gross impieties and, having paid off arrears, begin upon a new score. The popular idea was no doubt stated by Tyndale in answer to Sir Thomas More when he said, that "men might quench almost the terrible fire of hell for three halfpence."1325

It is fair to say that, while the last popes of the Middle Ages granted a great number of indulgences, the exact expression, "from guilt and penalty," does not occur in any of the extant papal copies1326 although some of their expressions seem fully to imply the exemption from guilt. Likewise, it must be said that they also contain the usual expressions for penitence as a condition of receiving the grace—"being truly penitent and confessing their sins"—vere poenitentibus et confessio.

Indulgences in the last century of the Middle Ages were given for all sorts of benevolent purposes, crusades against the Turks, the building of churches and hospitals, in connection with relics, for the rebuilding of a town desolated by fire, as Brüx, for bridges and for the repair of dikes, such an indulgence being asked by Charles V. The benefits were received by the payment of money and a portion of the receipts, from 33% to 50%, was expected to go to Rome. The territory chiefly, we may say almost exclusively, worked for such enterprises was confined to the Germanic peoples of the Continent from Switzerland and Austria to Norway and Sweden. England, France and Spain were hardly touched by the traffic. Cardinal Ximenes set forth the damage done to ecclesiastical discipline by the practice and, as a rule, it was under other pretexts that papal moneys were received from England.1327

In the transmission of the papal portions of the indulgence-moneys, the house of the Fuggers figures conspicuously. Sometimes it charged 5%, sometimes it appropriated amounts not reckoned strictly on the basis of a fixed per cent. The powerful banking-firm, also responding cheerfully to any request made to them, often secured the grant of indulgences in Rome. The custodianship of the chests, into which the indulgence-moneys were cast, was also a matter of much importance and here also the Fuggers figured prominently. Keys to such chests were often distributed to two or three parties, one of whom was apt to be the representative of the bankers.

Among the more famous indulgences for the building of German churches were those for the construction of a tower in Vienna,1514, for the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Constance, which had suffered great damage from fire,1511, the building of the Dominican church in Augsburg,1514, the restoration of the Cathedral of Treves,1515, and the building of St. Annaberg church,1517, in which Duke George of Saxony was much interested. One-half of the moneys received for these constructions went to Rome. In most of these cases, the Fuggers acted as agents to hold the keys of the chest and transmit the moneys to the papal exchequer. The sees of Constance, Chur, Augsburg and Strassburg were assigned as the territory in which indulgences might be sold for the cathedral in Constance. No less than four bulls of indulgence were issued in 1515 for the benefit of Treves, including one for those who visited the holy coat which was found 1512 and was to be exhibited every 7 years.1328

Among the noted hospitals to which indulgences were issued—that is, the right to secure funds by their sale—were hospitals in Nürnberg,1515, Strassburg,1518 and S. Spirito, Rome,1516.

Both of the churches in Wittenberg were granted indulgences and a special indulgence was issued for the reliquary-museum which the elector Frederick had collected. An indulgence of 100 days was attached to each of the 5,005 specimens and another 100 to each of the 8 passages between the cases that held them. With the 8,133 relics at Halle and the 42 entire bodies, millions and billions of days of indulgence were associated, a sort of anticipation of the geologic periods moderns demand. To be more accurate, these relics were good for pardons covering 39,245,120 years and 220 days and the still further period of 6,540,000 quarantines, each of 40 days.

In Rome, the residence of the supreme pontiffs, as we might well have expected, the offer of indulgences was the most copious, almost as copious as the drops on a rainy day. According to the Nürnberger relic-collector, Nicolas Muffel, every time the skulls of the Apostles were shown or the handkerchief of St. Veronica, the Romans who were present received a pardon of 7,000 days, other Italians 10,000 and foreigners 14,000. In fact, the grace of the ecclesiastical authorities was practically boundless. Not only did the living seek indulgences, but even the dying stipulated in their wills that a representative should go to Assisi or Rome or other places to secure for their souls the benefit of the indulgences offered there.

Prayers also had remarkable offers of grace attached to them. According to the penitential book, The Soul’s Joy, the worshipper offering its prayers to Mary received 11,000 years indulgence and some prayers, if offered, freed 15 souls from purgatory and as many earthly sinners from their sins. It professed to give one of Alexander Vl.’s decrees, according to which prayer made three times to St. Anna secured 1,000 years indulgence for mortal sins and 20,000 for venial. The Soul’s Garden claimed that one of Julius II.’s indulgences granted 80,000 years to those who would pray a prayer to the Virgin which the book gave. No wonder Siebert, a Roman Catholic writer, is forced to say that "the whole atmosphere of the later Middle Ages was soaked with the indulgence-passion."1329

An indulgence issued by Alexander VI., in 1502, was designed to secure aid for the knights of the Teutonic Order against the Russians. The latter was renewed by Julius II. and Cologne, Treves, Mainz, Bremen, Bamberg and other sees were assigned as the territory. Much money was collected, the papal treasury receiving one-third of the returns. The preaching continued till 1510 and Tetzel took a prominent part in the campaign.1330

It remains to speak of the most important of all of the indulgences, the indulgence for the construction of St. Peter’s in Rome. This interest was pushed by two notable popes, Julius II. and Leo X., and called forth the protest of Luther, which shook the power of the papacy to its foundations. It seems paradoxical that the chief monument of Christian architecture should have been built in part out of the proceeds of the scandalous traffic in absolutions.

On April 18,1506, soon after the laying of the cornerstone of St. Peter’s, Julius II. issued a bull promising indulgence to those who would contribute to its construction, fabrica, as it was called. Eighteen months later, Nov. 4,1507, he commissioned Jerome of Torniello, a Franciscan Observant, to oversee the preaching of the bull in the so-called 25 Cismontane provinces, which included Northern Italy, Austria, Bohemia and Poland. By a later decree Switzerland was added.1331  Germany was not included and probably for the reason that a number of indulgence bulls were already in force in most of its territory. A special rescript appointed Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, as chief overseer of the business in England. At Julius’ death, the matter was taken up by Leo X. and pushed.

The preaching of indulgences in Germany for the advantage of St. Peter’s began in the pontificate of Leo X. and is closely associated with the elevation of Albrecht of Hohenzollern to the sees of Mainz, Magdeburg and Halberstadt. Albrecht, a brother of Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, was chosen in 1513 to the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the bishopric of Halberstadt. The objections on the ground of his age and the combination of two sees—a thing, however, which was true of Albrecht’s predecessor—were set aside by Leo X., after listening to the arguments made by the German embassies.

In 1514, Albrecht was further honored by being elected archbishop of Mainz. The last incumbent, Uriel of Gemmingen, died the year before. The archdiocese had been unfortunate with its bishops. Berthold of Henneberg had died 1504 and James of Liebenstein in 1508. These frequent changes necessitated a heavy burden of taxation to enable the prelates to pay their tribute to the Holy See, which amounted to 10,000 ducats in each case, with sundry additions. By the persuasion of the elector Joachim and the Fuggers, Leo sanctioned Albrecht’s election to the see of Mainz. He was given episcopal consecration and thus the three sees were joined in the hands of a man who was only 24.

But Albrecht’s confirmation as archbishop was not secured without the payment of a high price. The price,10,000 ducats, was set by the authorities in Rome and did not originate with the German embassy, which had gone to prosecute the case. The proposition came from the Vatican itself and at the very moment the Lateran council was voting measures for the reform of the Church. It carried with it the promise of a papal indulgence for the archbishop’s territories. The elector Joachim expressed some scruples of conscience over the purchase, but it went through. Schulte exclaims that, if ever a benefice was sold for gold, this was true in the case of Albrecht.1332

The bull of indulgences was issued March 31,1516, and granted the young German prelate the right to dispose of pardons throughout the half part of Germany, the period being fixed at 8 years. The bull offered, "complete absolution—plenissimam indulgentiam — and remission of all sins," sins both of the living and the dead. A private paper, emanating from Leo and dated two weeks later, April 15, mentions the 10,000 ducats proposed by the Vatican as the price of Albrecht’s confirmation as having been already placed in Leo’s hands.1333  To enable him to pay the full amount of 30,000 ducats his ecclesiastical dignities had cost, Albrecht borrowed from the Fuggers and, to secure funds, he resorted to a two-years’ tax of two-fifths which he levied on the priests, the convents and other religious institutions of his dioceses. In 1517, "out of regard for his Holiness, the pope, and the salvation and comfort of his people," Joachim opened his domains to the indulgence-hawkers. It was his preaching in connection with this bull that won for Tetzel an undying notoriety. Oldecop, writing in 1516, of what he saw, said that people, in their eagerness to secure deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin and to get their parents and friends out of purgatory, were putting money into the chest all day long.

The description of Tetzel’s sale of indulgences and Luther’s protest are a part of the history of the Reformation. It remains, however, yet to be said, as belonging to the mediaeval period, that the grace of indulgences was popularly believed to extend to sins, not yet committed. Such a belief seems to have been encouraged by the pardon-preachers, although there is no documentary proof that any papal authorities made such a promise. In writing to the archbishop of Mainz, Oct. 31,1517, Luther had declared that it was announced by the indulgence-hawkers that no sin was too great to be covered by the indulgence, nay, not even the sin of violating the Virgin, if such a thing had been possible. And late in life,1541, the Reformer stated that the pardoner "also sold sins to be committed."1334  The story ran that a Saxon knight went to Tetzel and offered him 10 thaler for a sin he had in mind to commit. Tetzel replied that he had full power from the pope to grant such an indulgence, but that it was worth 80 thaler. The knight paid the amount, but some time later waylaid Tetzel and took all his indulgence-moneys from him. To Tetzel’s complaints the robber replied, that thereafter he must not be so quick in giving indulgence from sins, not yet committed.1335

The traffic in ecclesiastical places and the forgiveness of sins constitutes the very last scene of mediaeval Church history. On the eve of the Reformation, we have the spectacle of the pope solemnly renewing the claim to have rule over both spheres, civil and ecclesiastical, and to hold in his hand the salvation of all mankind, yea, and actually supporting the extravagant luxuries of his worldly court with moneys drawn from the trade in sacred things. How deep-seated the pernicious principle had become was made manifest in the bull which Leo issued, Nov. 9,1518, a full year after the nailing of the Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, in which all were threatened with excommunication who failed to preach and believe that the pope has the right to grant indulgences.1336

CHAPTER X.

THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

Lit. – The following treatments may be consulted for this chapter. Haller: Papstthum u. Kirchenreform.—Döllinger-Friedrich: D. Papstaum.—G. Krüger: The Papacy, Engl. trsl., N. Y.,1909.—Lea: The Eve of the Reformation, In Cambr. Hist., I: 653–692.—Bezold: Gesch. d. deutschen Reformation, pp. 1–244.—Janssen-Pastor: vol. I., II.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, III. 3–150, etc.—Gregorovius: vols. VII., VIII.—G. Ficker: Das ausgehende MA u. sein Verhältniss zur Reformation, Leipz.,1903. A. Schulte.: Kaiser Maximilian als Kandidat für d. päpstlichen Stuhl 1511, Leipz.,1906.—O. Smeaton: The Medici and the Ital. Renaissance, Cin’ti.—The works already cited of Th. Rogers and Cunningham.—W. H. Heyd: Gesch. d. Levantenhandels, 2 vols., Stuttg.,1859.

Many great regions are discovered

Which to late age were ne’er mentioned,

Who ever heard of th’ Indian Peru

Or who, in venturous vessel, measured

The Amazon huge river, now found true?

Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view?

Yet all these were when no man did them know,

Yet have from wisest ages hidden been.

And later times things more unknown shall show.

Why then should witless man so much misween,

That nothing is but that which he hath seen.

—Spenser, Faerie Queene.

No period in the history of the Christian Church has a more clear date set for its close than the Middle Ages. In whatever light the Protestant Reformation is regarded there can be no doubt that a new age began with the nailing of the Theses on the church doors in Wittenberg. All attempts to find another date for the beginning of modern history have failed, whether the date be the reign of Philip the Fair or the Fall of Constantinople,1453, or the invention of printing. Much as the invention of movable type has done for the spread of intelligence, the personality and conduct of Luther must always be looked upon as the source from which the new currents of human thought and action in Western Europe emanated.1337

Not so easy, however, is it to fix a satisfactory date for the opening of the Middle Ages. They have been dated from Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy German Empire, the patron of learning, the maker of codes of law. The better starting-point is the pontificate of Gregory the Great, who is well called the last of the Fathers and the first of the mediaeval popes. From that date, the rift between the Eastern and the Western Churches, which was already wide as a result of the arrogance of the bishops of Rome, rapidly grew to be unhealable.

The Middle Ages, with their limits, fall easily into 3 periods, but it must be confessed that the first, extending from 600–1050, is a period of warring elements, with no orderly development. Hildebrand properly opens the Middle Ages as a period of great ideas, conscious of its power and begetting movements which have exerted a tremendous influence upon the history of the Church. From the moment that monk entered Rome, the stream of ecclesiastical affairs proceeded on its course between well-defined banks. During the 500 years that followed, the voice of the supreme pontiff was heard above all other voices and controlled every movement emanating from the Church. In this period, the doctrinal system, which is distinctively known as the mediaeval, came to its full statement. It was the period of great corporate movements, of the Crusades, the Mendicant orders, of the cathedrals and universities, of the canon law and the sacramental combination and of the Reformatory councils.

The third period of the Middle Ages, which this volume traverses, is at once the product of the former period of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. and, at the same time, the germinative seed-plot of new forces. The sacerdotal keeps its hold and the papacy remains the central tribunal and court of Europe, but protests were heard—vigorous and startling from different quarters, from Prag, Paris, Oxford—which, without overthrowing old institutions, shook the confidence in their Apostolic appointment and perpetuity. These last two centuries of the mediaeval world betray no consuming passion like the Crusades, for all efforts of the pope to stir the dead nerves of that remarkable impulse were futile. And Pius II., looking from the bluffs of Ancona out upon the sea in the hope of discerning ships rigged to undertake the reconquest of the East, furnishes a pathetic spectacle of an attempt to call forth energies to achieve the dreams of the past, when for practical minds the illusion itself has already disappeared.

The Reformatory councils endeavored to undo what Hildebrand and Innocent III. had built up and Thomas Aquinas had sanctioned, the control of the Church and society by the will of the supreme pontiff. The system of the Schoolmen broke down. Wyclif, himself endowed with scholastic acuteness, belonged to that modern class of men who find in practical considerations a sufficient reason to ignore the contentions of dialectic philosophy. And, finally, the Renaissance completely set aside some of the characteristic notions of the Middle Ages, stirring the interest of man in all the works of God, and honoring those who in this earthly sphere of action wrought out the products of intellectual endeavor in literature and art, on the platform and in the department of state.

This last period of the Middle Ages appears to the student of general history as a period of presentiments—and efforts on the part of scattered thinkers, to reach a more free and rational mode of thought and living than the mode they had inherited from the past. The period opening with Hildebrand and extending to Boniface VIII. furnished more imposing personalities,—architects compelling by the force of intellectual assertion,—but fewer useful men. It created a dogmatic unity and triumphed by a policy of force, but the rights of the individual and the principle of liberty of thought and conscience, with which God has chosen to endow mankind, it could not consign to permanent burial.

However, in spite of the efforts put forth in the closing period of the Middle Ages to shake off the fetters of the rigid ecclesiastical compulsion, it failed. The individual reformers and prophets prepared the way for a new time, but were unable to marshal forces enough in their own age to inaugurate the new order. This it was the task of Luther to do.

In a retrospect of the marked features of the closing centuries of the Middle Ages, we are struck first of all with the process by which the nations of Western Europe became consolidated until they substantially won the limits which they now occupy. The conquest of the weary Byzantine empire seemed to open the way for the Turks into all Europe. The acropolis of Athens was occupied in 1458. Otranto on the Italian coast was seized and Vienna itself threatened. All Europe felt as Luther did when he offered the prayer, "from the murderous cruelty of the Turk, Good Lord deliver us."  Much as the loss of the city on the Bosphorus was lamented at this time, it cannot but be felt that there was no force in Eastern Christendom which gave any promise of progress, theological or civil.

The papacy, claiming to be invested with plenitude of authority, abated none of its claims, but by its history proved that those very claims are fictitious and have no necessary place in the divine appointment.

Seldom has a more impressive spectacle been furnished than was furnished by the Reformatory councils. Following the Avignon period and the age of the papal schism, they struggled to correct the abuses of the papal system and to define its limitations. The first oecumenical council held on German soil, the Council of Constance, made such an authoritative decision. Its weight was derived from its advocates, the most distinguished theologians and canonists of the time, and the combined voice of the universities and the nations of Latin Christendom. But the decision proved to be no stronger than a spider’s web. The contention, which had been made by that long series of pungent tracts which was opened with the tract of Gelnhausen, was easily set aside by the dexterous hand of the papacy itself. Gelnhausen had declared that the way to heal the troubles in the papal household was to convoke a general council.1338  To this mode of statement Pius II. opposed his bull, Execrabilis, and his successors went on untroubled by the outcry of Latin Christendom for some share in the government of the Church.

But the appeal for a council was an ominous portent. It had been made by Philip the Fair and the French Parliament,1303. It was made by the Universities of Paris and Oxford and the great churchmen of France. It was made by Wyclif, by Huss and Savonarola. In vain, to be sure, but the body of the Church was thinking and the arena of free discussion was extending.

The most extravagant claims of the papacy still had defenders. Augustus Triumphus and Alvarus Pelayo declared there could be no appeal from the pope to God, because the pope and God were in agreement. He who looks upon the pope with intent and trusting eye, looks upon Christ, and wherever the pope is, there is the Church. Yea, the pope is above canon law. But these men were simply repeating what was current tradition. Dante struck another note, when he put popes in the lowest regions of hell, and Marsiglius of Padua, when he cast doubt upon Peter’s ever having been in Rome and insisted that the laity are also a part of the Church.

The scandalous lives of the popes whose names fill the last paragraph of the history of the Middle Ages would have excluded them from decent modern circles and exposed them to sentence as criminals. They were perjurers, adulterers. Avarice, self-indulgence ruled their life. They had no mercy. The charges of murder and vicious disease were laid to their door. They were willing to set the states of Italy one over against the other and to allow them to lacerate each other to extend their own territory or to secure power and titles for their own children and nephews. Luther was not far out of the way when, in his Appeal to the German Nobility, he declared "Roman avarice is the greatest of robbers that ever walked the earth. All goes into the Roman sack, which has no bottom, and all in the name of God."  In all history, it would be difficult to discover a more glaring inconsistency between profession and practice than is furnished by the careers of the last popes of the Middle Ages.

Upon freedom of thought, the papacy continued to lay the mortmain of alleged divine appointment. Dante’s De monarchia was burnt by John XXII. The evangelical text-book, the Theologia Germanica has been put on the index. Erasmus’ writings were put on the Index. Curses were hurled against a German emperor by Clement VI. which it would almost be sacrilege to repeat with the lips. Eckart was declared a heretic. Wyclif’s bones were dug up and cast into the flames. Huss was burnt. Savonarola was burnt. And, from nameless graves in Spain and Germany rises the protest against the papacy as a divine institution.

Valla said again and again that the papacy was responsible for all the misfortunes of Italy, its worst enemy. To such a low plane was that institution brought that the Emperor Maximilian I. seriously considered having himself elected pope and combining in himself the two sovereignties of Church and state. That such a thought was possible is proof of the actual state of affairs. A most Catholic historian, Janssen (III. 77), says: "The court of Leo X., with its extravagant expenditure in card-playing, theatres and all manner of worldly amusements, was still more flagrantly opposed to the position of chief overseer of the Church than the courts of the German ecclesiastical princes, notably Albrecht of Mainz. The iniquity of Rome exceeded that of the ecclesiastical princes of Germany."  And was not the chief idea, which some of the aspirants after the highest office in Christendom had in mind, well embodied in the words with which Leo followed his election, "Let us enjoy the papacy"?  If the lives of these latter popes were unworthy, their treatment of the spiritual prerogatives was sacrilegious. Rome encouraged the Crusades but sent no Crusaders. In Rome everything was for sale. The forgiveness of sins itself was offered for money.

And, within papal circles, there was no movement towards reform. As well might men have looked for a burnt field to furnish food. It is not improbable that the very existence of the papacy was saved by the Reformation. This is the view to which Burckhardt chooses to give expression twice in the same work.1339  It discredited by its incumbents every high claim asserted for it. And yet, with abounding self-confidence, in the last hours of the Middle Ages, it solemnly reaffirmed the claim of supreme jurisdiction over the souls and bodies of men, the Church and the state. And after the Reformation had begun, Prierias, Master of the palace, declared the pope’s superiority to the Scriptures in these words: "Whoever does not rest upon the doctrine of the Roman Church and the Roman pope as an infallible rule of faith, from which even the Holy Scriptures derive their authority, is a heretic."  And to be a heretic meant to be an outlaw. Prierias was the man who spoke of Luther as "the brute with the deep eyes and strange fantasies."

Forces of another character were working. In quiet pathways, the mystics walked with God and, though they did not repudiate the sacramental system, they called attention to the religion of the heart as the seat of religion. The Imitation of Christ was written once, for all ages. The Church had found its proper definition as the body of the elect and that idea stood in direct antithesis to the theory the hierarchy worked upon. The preaching of the Waldenses had been condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council, but there was a growing popular demand for instruction as well as the spectacle of the mass, and the catechetical manuals laid stress upon the sermon. The Albigenses had been completely blotted out, but the principles of Lollardism and Hussitism continued to flow, though as little rills. The Inquisition was still doing its work, but in Germany schools for all classes of children were being taught. The laity was asserting its rights in the domain of learning and culture. These influences were silently preparing the soil for the new teachings.

In the 15th century, a potent force stirred Europe as Europe had never been stirred by it before,—Commerce. The industrial change, then going on, deserves more than a passing reference as a factor preparing the mind for intellectual and religious innovation. This, at least, is true of the German people. Explorations and the extension of commerce have, in more periods than one, preceded a revival of missionary enterprise. But, of all the centuries, none is so like the 19th as the last century of the Middle Ages,—vital with humanistic forces of all kinds. It was a time of revolution in the methods of trade and the comforts and prices of living. The world could never be again just what it had been before. There was marked restlessness among the artisan and peasant classes. This industrial unrest was adapted to encourage and to beget unrest in things ecclesiastical and to accustom the mind to the thought of change there.

From Italy, whose harbors were the outfitting points for fleets during the Crusades, the centre of trade had shifted to the cities north of the Alps and to the Portuguese coast. Nürnberg, Ulm, Augsburg and Constance in Southern Germany; Bruges, Antwerp and other cities along the lower Rhine and in Flanders; and the cities of the Hanseatic League were bustling marts, turning out new and wonderful products of manufacture and drawing the products of the outside world through London, Lisbon, Lyons and Venice. Energy and enterprise were making Germany rich and her mercantile houses had their representatives and depots in Venice, Antwerp and other ports.1340

Methods of business, such as to-day are suggesting grave problems to the political economist and moralist, were introduced and flourished. Trading companies and monopolies came upon the stage and startled the advocates of the old feudal ways by the extent and boldness of their operations. Trusts flourished in Augsburg and other German cities.1341  Individuals and corporations cornered the import trade, the grain crop, the wine harvest, the silver, copper and iron product, sugar, linen, leather, pepper, even soap, for they used soap also in those days. The Höchstetters, the Ebners and the Fuggers were among the great speculative and trading firms of the age. They carried things with a high hand. Ambrose Höchstetter of Augsburg, for example, one season bought up all the ash wood, another all the grain and another all the wine. Nor was the art of adulteration left for these later, and often discredited, times to practice. They condescended to small things, even to the mixing of brick-dust with pepper. Commodities rose suddenly in price. In Germany, wine rose, in 1510, 49 per cent and grain 32 per cent. Imperial diets took cognizance of these conditions and tried to correct the evils complained of by regulating the prices of goods.1342  Municipalities did the same. Preachers, like Geiler of Strassburg, charged the monopolists with fearing neither God nor man and called upon the cities to banish them. Professors of jurisprudence, for there was at that time no department of social science, inveighed against monopolies as spiders’ webs to ensnare the innocent.1343  It was a fast age. There was no precedent for what was going on. Men sighed for the good old times. Speculation was rampant and the prospect of quick gains easily captivated the people. They took shares in the investment companies and often lost everything. It was noticed that the directors of the companies were able to avoid losses which the common and unsuspecting investor had to bear. The confusion was increased by the readiness of town aldermen and city councillors to take stock in the concerns. It also happened that the great traders, whose ventures involved others in loss, were conspicuous in church affairs.

To the wealth, arising from manufactures and foreign commerce, were added the riches which were being dug up from the newly opened mines of silver, copper and iron in Bohemia and Saxony. Avarice was cried down as the besetting sin of the age and, in some quarters, commerce was denounced as being carried on in defiance of the simplest precepts of the Gospel.1344

With wealth came extravagance in dress and at the table. Municipalities legislated against it and imperial parliaments sought to check it by arbitrary rules. Wimpheling says, table services of gold were not unusual and that he himself had eaten from golden plates at Cologne. Complaint was frequently made at the diets that men were being brought to poverty by their expenditures for dress upon themselves and the expenditures of the female members of their households.

In Germany, peasants were limited to a certain kind of cloth for their outer garments and to a maximum price.1345  The women had their share in making the disturbance and dignified town councils sat in judgment upon the number of gowns and other articles of apparel and ornament the ladies of the day might possess without detriment to the community or hurt to the solvency of their indulgent husbands. The council of Ratisbon, for example, in 1485 made it a rule that the wives and daughters of distinguished burghers should be limited to 8 dresses, 6 long cloaks, 3 dancing gowns, one plaited mantle with not more than 3 sets of sleeves of silk velvet and brocade, 2 pearl hair bands not to cost more than 12 florins, one tiara of gold set with pearls, not more than three veils costing 8 florins each, etc. But why enumerate the whole list of articles?  It is supposable the women conformed, even if they were inclined to criticise the aldermen for not sticking to their legitimate municipal business. Geiler of Strassburg had his word to say for these innovations of an extravagant age, the women with two dresses for a single day, their long trains trailing in the dust, the cocks’ feathers worn in the women’s hats and the long hair falling down over their shoulders. The times were cried down as bad. It is, however, pleasant to recall that a contemporary annalist commended as praiseworthy the habit of bathing at least "once every two weeks."

Among the artisans and the peasants, the unrest asserted itself in strikes and uprisings, strikes for shorter hours, for better food and for better wages. Sometimes a municipality and a gild were at strife for years. Sometimes a city was bereft at one stroke of all the workers of a given craft, as was Nürnberg of her tin workers in 1475. The gilds of tailors are said to have been most given to strikes.

The new social order involved the peasant class in more hardship than any other. The peasants were made the victims of the rapacity and violence of the landowners, who encroached upon their fields and their traditional but unwritten rights, and deprived them of the right to fish and hunt and gather wood in the forests. The Church also came in for its share of condemnation. One-fifth of the soil of Germany was in the possession of convents and other religious establishments and the peasant leaders called upon the monks and priests to distribute their lands. In their marching songs they appealed to Christ to keep them from putting the priests to death. The Peasant War of 1525 was not the product of the abuse of the principle of personal freedom introduced by the Reformation. It was one of a long series of uprisings and it has been said that, if the Reformation had not come and diverted the attention of the people, it is likely Germany would have been shaken by such a social revolution in the 16th century as the world has seldom seen.1346

In England, the restlessness was scarcely less demonstrative and the condition of the laboring classes scarcely less deplorable. Their hardships in the 14th century called forth the rebellion of Watt Tyler. The famous statute of laborers of 1350 fixed the wages of reapers at 8 pence a day; the statute of 1444, a century later, raised it to 5 pence. The laws of 1495, Cunningham says, were intended to keep down the wages of the daily toiler. English legislation was habitually bent on preventing an artificial enhancement of prices. At the very close of the Middle Ages,1515, a regulation fixed the day’s work from 5 in the morning until 7 or 8 in the evening in summer and during the hours of daylight during the winter. Legislation was sought to put a limit on prices against the inflation of combinations. Frauds and adulterations in articles offered for sale, bad work and false weights were officially condemned in 1504. Against the proclivity of the gilds to fix the prices of their wares at unreasonable figures, Henry VII. set himself with determination. With the development of sheep-walks farm hands lost their employment.1347  To the author of Utopia the act of parliament in 1515, fixing wages, seemed to be "nothing else than a conspiracy of the rich against the poor," and, the laboring man was doomed to a life so wretched that even a beast’s life in comparison seemed to be enviable."

The discoveries in the New World and the nautical exploits, which carried Portuguese sailors around the Cape of Good Hope, also stimulated this feeling of restlessness. While the horizon of the natural world was being enlarged and new highways of commerce were being opened, thoughtful men had questions whether the geography of the spiritual world, as outlined in the scholastic systems, did not need revision. The resurrection of the Bible as a popular book stimulated the curiosity and questioning. The Bible also was a new world. The trade, the enterprise, the thought awakened during the last 70 years of the Middle Ages were incomparably more vital than had been awakened by the Crusades and the Crusaders’ tales. When the Reformation came, the chief centres of business in Germany and England became, for the most part, seats of the new religious movement, Nürnberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Geneva, Strassburg, Frankfurt, Lübeck and London.

The Renaissance, as has already been set forth, was another potent factor contributing to the forward impulse of the last century of the Middle Ages. All the faculties of man were to be recognized as worthy of cultivation. Europe arose as out of a deep sleep. Men opened their eyes and saw, as Mr. Taine put it. The Renaissance made the discovery of man and the earth. The Schoolmen had forgotten both. Here also a new world was revealed to view and Ulrich von Hutten, referring to it and to the age as a whole could exclaim, "O century, studies flourish, spirits are awaking. It is a pleasure to live!"

But in the Renaissance Providence seems to have had the design of showing again that intellectual and artistic culture may flourish, while the process of moral and social decline goes on. No regenerating wave passed over Italy’s society or cleansed her palaces and convents. The outward forms of civilization did not check the inward decline. The Italian character, says Gregorovius, "in the last 30 years of the 15th century displays a trait of diabolical passion. Tyrannicide, conspiracies and deeds of treachery were universal."  In the period of Athenian greatness, the process of the intellectual sublimation of the few was accompanied by the process of moral decay in the many. So now, art did not purify. The Renaissance did not find out what repentance was or feel the need of it. Savonarola’s admiring disciple, Pico della Mirandola, presented a memorial to the Fifth Lateran which declared that, if the prelates "delayed to heal the wounds of the Church, Christ would cut off the corrupted members with fire and sword. Christ had cast out the money-changers, why should not Leo exile the worshippers of the many golden calves?"  In Italy, remarks Ranke, "no one counted for a cultured person who did not cherish some erroneous views about Christianity."

The North had no Dante and Petrarca and Boccaccio or Thomas Aquinas, but it had its Tauler and Thomas à Kempis and its presses sent forth the first Greek New Testament. This was a positive preparation for the coming age as much as the Greek language was a preparation for the spread of Christianity through Apostolic preaching in the 1st century. German printers went to Rome in 1467 and as far as Barcelona. In his work on the new invention,1507, Wimpheling1348 declared "that as the Apostles went forth of old, so now the disciples of the sacred art go forth from Germany into all lands and their printed books become heralds of the Gospel, preachers of the truth and wisdom."  Germany became the intellectual market of Europe and its wares went across the North Sea to that little kingdom which was to become the chief bulwark of Protestantism. In vain did Leo X. set himself against the free circulation of literature.1349

The Greek edition of the New Testament and the printing-press,—that invention which cleaves all the centuries in two and yet binds all the centuries together—were the two chief providential instruments made ready for Martin Luther. But he had to find them. They did not make him a reformer, the leader of the new age. Erasmus, whom Janssen mercilessly condemns, remained a moralizer. He lacked both the passion and the heroism of the religious reformer. The religious reformer must be touched from above. Reuchlin, Erasmus and Gutenberg prepared the outward form of the Greek and Hebrew Bible. Luther discovered its contents, and made them known.

Such were the complex forces at work in the closing century of the Middle Ages. The absolute jurisdiction of the papacy was solemnly reaffirmed. The hierarchy virtually constituted the Church. Religious dissent was met with compulsion and force, not by persuasion and instruction. Coercion was substituted for individual consent. Popular piety remained bound in the old forms and was strong. But there were sounds of refreshing rills, flowing from the fresh fountain of the water of life, running at the side of the old ceremonials, especially in the North. The Revival of Letters aroused the intellect to a sense of its sovereign rights. The movement of thought was greatly accelerated by the printed page. The development of trade communicated unrest. But the lives of the popes, as we look back upon the age, forbade the expectation of any relief from Rome. The Reformatory councils had contented themselves with attempts to reform the administration of the Church. Nevertheless, though men did not see it, driftwood as from a new theological continent was drifting about and there were prophetic voices though the princes of the Church listened not to them. What was needed was not government, was not regulations but regeneration. This the hierarchy could not give, but only God alone.1350

The facts, set forth in this volume, leave no room for the contention of the recent class of historians in the Roman Church,—Janssen, Denifle, Pastor, Nicolas, Paulus, Dr. Gasquet—who have devoted themselves to the task of proving that an orderly reform-movement was going on when the Reformation broke out. That movement, they represent as an unspeakable calamity for civilization, an apostasy from Christianity, an insurrection against divinely constituted authority. It violently checked the alleged current of progress and popes, down to Pius IX. and Leo XIII., have anathematized Protestantism as a poisonous pestilence and the mother of all modem evils in Church and state. In the attempt to make good this judgment, these recent writers not only have laid stress upon "the good old times,"—a description which the people of the 16th century would have repudiated,1351 — but have resorted to the defamation of the German Reformer’s character, setting aside the contemporaries who knew him best, and violently perverting Luther’s own words. Imbart de la Tour, the most recent French historian of this school, on reaching the year 1517, exclaims, "The era of peaceful reforms was at an end; the era of religious revolution was about to open."1352

Lefèvre d’Etaples was not alone when he uttered the famous words: —

The signs of the times announce that a reformation of the Church is near at hand and, while God is opening new paths for the preaching of the Gospel by the discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards, we must hope that He will also visit His Church and raise her from the abasement into which she has now fallen.

The Philosophy of Christ,—the name which Erasmus gave to the Gospel in his Paraclesis, prefixed to his edition of the New Testament,—was to a large degree covered over by the dialectical theology of the Schoolmen. What men needed was the Gospel and the bishop of Isernia, preaching at the Fifth Lateran council in its 12th session, spoke better than he knew when he exclaimed: "The Gospel is the fountain of all wisdom, of all knowledge. From it has flowed all the higher virtue, all that is divine and worthy of admiration. The Gospel, I say the Gospel."  The words were spoken on the very eve of the Reformation and the council of the Middle Ages failed utterly to offer any real remedy for the religious degeneracy. The Reformer came from the North, not from Rome and as from another Nazareth. The angel of God had to descend again and trouble the waters and a single personality touched in conscience proved himself mightier than the wisdom of theology and wiser than the rulers of the visible Church.

Remarkable the Middle Ages were for their bold enterprises in thought and action and they are an important part of the history of the Church. We acknowledge our debt, but their superstitions and errors we set aside as we move on in the pathway of a more intelligent devotion and broader human, sympathies, towards an age when all who profess the Gospel shall unite together in the unity of the faith in the Son of God.

Remarkable the Middle Ages were for their bold enterprises in thought and action and they are an important part of the history of the Church. We acknowledge our debt, but their superstitions and errors we set aside as we move on in the pathway of a more intelligent devotion and broader human, sympathies, towards an age when all who profess the Gospel shall unite together in the unity of the faith in the Son of God.

VOLUME VII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY -THE GERMAN REFORMATION

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This is a reproduction of the Second Edition, Revised

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PREFACE.

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I publish the history of the Reformation in advance of the concluding volume on the Middle Ages, which will follow in due time.

The Reformation was a republication of primitive Christianity, and the inauguration of modern Christianity. This makes it, next to the Apostolic age, the most important and interesting portion of church history. The Luther and Zwingli celebrations of 1883 and 1884 have revived its memories, and largely increased its literature; while scholars of the Roman Church have attempted, with great ability, an ultramontane reconstruction of the history of Germany and Europe during the period of the Reformation. The Cultur-Kampf is still going on. The theological battles of the sixteenth century are being fought over again in modern thought, with a slow but steady approach to a better understanding and filial settlement. Protestantism with its freedom can afford to be fair and just to Romanism, which is chained to its traditions. The dogma of papal infallibility is fatal to freedom of investigation. Facts must control dogmas, and not dogmas facts. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is the aim of the historian; but truth should be told in love (Eph. 4:15).

The signs of the times point to a new era in the ever onward March of Christ’s kingdom. God alone foreknows the future, and sees the end from the beginning. We poor mortals know only "in part," and see "in a mirror, darkly." But, as the plans of Providence unfold themselves, the prospect widens, old prejudices melt away, and hope and charity expand with our vision. The historian must be impartial, without being neutral or indifferent. He must follow the footsteps of Divine Providence, which shapes our ends, and guides all human events in the interest of truth, righteousness, and peace.

I have collected much material for a comprehensive history of the Reformation, in the libraries of Europe, during several summer visits (thirteen in all), and digested it at home. I have studied the Luther literature in Berlin, the Zwingli literature in Zuerich, the Calvinistic literature in Geneva and Paris, the English and Scotch Reformation in London, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Two years ago I revisited, with great satisfaction, the classical localities made memorable by the Reformation,—Wittenberg, Eisleben, Eisenach, the Wartburg, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Heidelberg, Zuerich, Geneva,—and found kind friends and Christian brethren everywhere. At Marburg, Coburg, Augsburg, I had been before. By way of contrast I made in the same year an interesting tour through Roman-Catholic Spain, the land of Ferdinand and Isabel, Charles V., Philip II., and Ignatius Loyola, and compared her former and present state with the Protestant North. In Italy I have been three times, including a three-months sojourn in Rome. A visit to the places of events brings one nearer to the actors, and puts one almost into the position of a witness.

This volume embraces, besides a general introduction to modern church history, the productive period of the German Reformation, from its beginning to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the death of Luther (1546), with a concluding estimate of the character and services of this extraordinary man. I have used the new Weimar edition of his works as far as published; for the other parts, Walch and the Erlangen edition. Of modern Protestant historians I have chiefly consulted Ranke (my teacher), and Koestlin (my friend), with whose views, on Luther and the Reformation I am in essential harmony. I have also constantly compared the learned Roman-Catholic works of Doellinger, and Janssen, besides numerous monographs. The reader will find classified lists of the sources and literature in all leading sections (e.g., pp. 94, 99, 183, 272, 340, 399, 421, 494, 579, 612, 629, 695, 706), and occasional excursions into the field of the philosophy of church history (as in the introductory chapter, and in §§ 49, 56, 63, 79, 87, 99, etc.). In these I have endeavored to interpret the past in the light of the present, and to make the movements of the sixteenth century more intelligible through their results in the nineteenth. For we must judge the tree by its fruits. "God’s mills grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."

I am conscious of the defects of this new attempt to reproduce the history of the Reformation, which has so often been told by friend and foe, but too often in a partisan spirit. I have done the best I could. God expects no more from his servants than faithfulness in the use of their abilities and opportunities.

The Author.

New York, September, 1888.

THE REFORMATION. FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648.

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CHAPTER I.

ORIENTATION.

Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.—2 Cor. 3:17.

§ 1. The Turning Point of Modern History.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization.

The age of the Reformation bears a strong resemblance to the first century. Both are rich beyond any other period in great and good men, important facts, and permanent results. Both contain the ripe fruits of preceding, and the fruitful germs of succeeding ages. They are turning points in the history of mankind. They are felt in their effects to this day, and will be felt to the end of time. They refashioned the world from the innermost depths of the human soul in its contact, with the infinite Being. They were ushered in by a providential concurrence of events and tendencies of thought. The way for Christianity was prepared by Moses and the Prophets, the dispersion of the Jews, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the language and literature of Greece, the arms and laws of Rome, the decay of idolatry, the spread of skepticism, the aspirations after a new revelation, the hopes of a coming Messiah. The Reformation was preceded and necessitated by the corruptions of the papacy, the decline of monasticism and scholastic theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of letters, the resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the Greek Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after national independence and personal freedom. In both centuries we hear the creative voice of the Almighty calling light out of darkness.

The sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion, literature, and art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were becoming new. Pessimists and timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened overthrow of cherished notions and institutions, and were complaining, fault-finding and desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of the signs of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522: "If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity."

The same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century, which is eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and progress. And both then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty takes two opposite directions, either towards skepticism and infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion from its primitive sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again regenerate the world.

The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions in the place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has succeeded.

Under the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been Christianized and civilized, and united into a family of nations under the spiritual government of the Pope and the secular government of the Emperor, with one creed, one ritual, one discipline, and one sacred language. The state of heathenism and barbarism at the beginning of the sixth century contrasts with the state of Christian Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness compared with the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet arisen.

All honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to humanity. But Christianity is far broader and deeper than any ecclesiastical organization. It burst the shell of mediaeval forms, struck out new paths, and elevated Europe to a higher plane of intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever attained before.

§ 2. Protestantism and Romanism.

Protestantism represents the most enlightened and active of modern church history, but not the whole of it.

Since the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in two distinct channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern schism of the ninth century, which is not healed to this day; both parties being as firm and unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question of the Filioque, and the more important practical question of Popery. But Protestantism differs much more widely from the Roman church than the Roman church differs from the Greek, and the Protestant schism has become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which exist in separate ecclesiastical organizations.

We must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces the ancient Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may say, in a wider sense, all the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is the Latin church turned against the Reformation, consolidated by the Council of Trent and completed by the Vatican Council of 1870 with its dogma of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. Mediaeval Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the Reformation; modern Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation, yet holding with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned, and doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility.

The distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and post-Reformation Romanism, in their attitude towards Protestantism, has its historical antecedent and parallel in the distinction between pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way for Christianity, and post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy.

Catholicism and Protestantism represent two distinct types of Christianity which sprang from the same root, but differ in the branches.

Catholicism is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations of the Middle Ages as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism is evangelical Christianity which answers the age of independent manhood. Catholicism is traditional, hierarchical, ritualistic, conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic, spiritual, progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense of sin and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel; parental authority is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to manly self-government.

The characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by Romanism, yet without destroying the underlying unity.

Romanism and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race. They accept in common the Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith. They agree in every article of the Apostles’ Creed. What unites them is far deeper, stronger and more important than what divides them.

But Romanism holds also a large number of "traditions of the elders," which Protestantism rejects as extra-scriptural or anti-scriptural; such are the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, prayers and masses for the dead, works of supererogation, purgatory, indulgences, the system of monasticism with its perpetual vows and ascetic practices, besides many superstitious rites and ceremonies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, revived and developed the Augustinian doctrines of sin and grace; it proclaimed the sovereignty of divine mercy in man’s salvation, the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of faith, and the sufficiency of Christ’s merit as a source of justification; it asserted the right of direct access to the Word of God and the throne of grace, without human mediators; it secured Christian freedom from bondage; it substituted social morality for monkish asceticism, and a simple, spiritual worship for an imposing ceremonialism that addresses the senses and imagination rather than the intellect and the heart.

The difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches was typically foreshadowed by the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity in the apostolic age, which anticipated, as it were, the whole future course of church history. The question of circumcision or the keeping of the Mosaic law, as a condition of church membership, threatened a split at the Council of Jerusalem, but was solved by the wisdom and charity of the apostles, who agreed that Jews and Gentiles alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 15:11). Yet even after the settlement of the controversy by the Jerusalem compromise Paul got into a sharp conflict with Peter at Antioch on the same question, and protested against his older colleague for denying by his timid conduct his better conviction, and disowning the Gentile brethren. It is not accidental that the Roman Church professes to be built on Peter and regards him as the first pope; while the Reformers appealed chiefly to Paul and found in his epistles to the Galatians and Romans the bulwark of their anthropology and soteriology, and their doctrine of Christian freedom. The collision between Paul and Peter was only temporary; and so the war between Protestantism and Romanism will ultimately pass away in God’s own good time.

The Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and swept with astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Scotland; since the seventeenth century it has spread by emigration to North America, and by commercial and missionary enterprises to every Dutch and English colony, and every heathen land. It carried away the majority of the Teutonic and a part of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to overthrow the papal church.

But towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of the Reformation was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded giant, and made the most vigorous efforts to reconquer the lost territory in Europe, and to extend its dominion in Asia and South America. Since that time the numerical relation of the two churches has undergone little change. But the progress of secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.

In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in all countries and climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she advances in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art, and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to believe that she will last to the end of time.

Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works.

The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many evils, have also the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the conversion of the world and facilitating the free growth of every phase of religious life. The evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of denominations, which have a mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the rights and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not a finale, but a movement still in progress. We may look hopefully forward to a higher, deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His overruling wisdom and mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy Spirit upon all the churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of men have divided. There must and will be, in the fullest sense of Christ’s prophecy, "one flock, one Shepherd" (John 10:16).1

§3. Necessity of a Reformation.

The corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the complaint of the best men, and even of general councils. A reformation of the head and the members was the watchword at Pisa, Constance, and Basel, but remained a pium desiderium for a whole century.

Let us briefly review the dark side in the condition of the church at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been removed, but papal morals, after a temporary improvement, became worse than ever during the years 1492 to 1521. Alexander VI. was a monster of iniquity; Julius II. was a politician and warrior rather than a chief shepherd of souls; and Leo X. took far more interest in the revival of heathen literature and art than in religion, and is said to have even doubted the truth of the gospel history.

No wonder that many cardinals and priests followed the scandalous example of the popes, and weakened the respect of the laity for the clergy. The writings of contemporary scholars, preachers and satirists are full of complaints and exposures of the ignorance, vulgarity and immorality of priests and monks. Simony and nepotism were shamefully practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of unchastity and uncleanness. The bishoprics were monopolized by the youngest sons of princes and nobles without regard to qualification. Geiler of Kaisersberg, a stern preacher of moral reform at Strassburg (d. 1510), charges all Germany with promoting ignorant and worldly men to the chief dignities, simply on account of their high connections. Thomas Murner complains that the devil had introduced the nobility into the clergy, and monopolized for them the bishoprics.2  Plurality of office and absence from the diocese were common. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz was at the same time archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Halberstadt. Cardinal Wolsey was archbishop of York while chancellor of England, received stipends from the kings of France and Spain and the doge of Venice, and had a train of five hundred servants. James V. of Scotland (1528–1542) provided for his illegitimate children by making them abbots of Holyrood House, Kelso, Melrose, Coldingham and St. Andrews, and intrusted royal favorites with bishoprics.

Discipline was nearly ruined. Whole monastic establishments and orders had become nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and dissipation, and were the objects of contempt and ridicule, as may be seen from the controversy of Reuchlin with the Dominicans, the writings of Erasmus, and the Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum.

Theology was a maze of scholastic subtleties, Aristotelian dialectics and idle speculations, but ignored the great doctrines of the gospel. Carlstadt, the older colleague of Luther, confessed that he had been doctor of divinity before he had seen a complete copy of the Bible. Education was confined to priests and nobles. The mass of the laity could neither read nor write, and had no access to the word of God except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit.

The priest’s chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle of transubstantiation, and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead in a foreign tongue. Many did it mechanically, or with a skeptical reservation, especially in Italy. Preaching was neglected, and had reference, mostly, to indulgences, alms, pilgrimages and processions. The churches were overloaded with good and bad pictures, with real and fictitious relics. Saint-worship and image-worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed the direct worship of God in spirit and in truth.

Piety which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ and a consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a round of mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters and Avemarias, fasting, alms-giving, confession to the priest, and pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Good works were measured by the quantity rather than the quality, and vitiated by the principle of meritoriousness which appealed to the selfish motive of reward. Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in indulgences was carried on under the Pope’s sanction for filthy lucre as well as for the building of St. Peter’s Dome, and caused that outburst of moral indignation which was the beginning of the Reformation and of the fearful judgment on the Church of Rome.

This is a one-sided, but not an exaggerated description. It is true as far as it goes, and needs only to be supplemented by the bright side which we shall present in the next section.

Honest Roman Catholic scholars, while maintaining the infallibility and consequent doctrinal irreformability of their church, admit in strong terms the decay of discipline and the necessity of a moral reform in the sixteenth century.3

The best proof is furnished by a pope of exceptional integrity, Adrian VI., who made an extraordinary confession of the papal and clerical corruption to the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522, and tried earnestly, though in vain, to reform his court. The Council of Trent was called not only for the extirpation of heresy, but in part also "for the reformation of the clergy and Christian people;"4 and Pope Pius IV., in the bull of confirmation, likewise declares that one of the objects of the Council was "the correction of morals and the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline."5

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the church was more than once in a far worse condition, during the papal schism in the fourteenth, and especially in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and yet she was reformed by Pope Hildebrand and his successors without a split and without an alteration of the Catholic Creed.

Why could not the same be done in the sixteenth century?  Because the Roman church in the critical moment resisted reform with all her might, and forced the issue: either no reformation at all, or a reformation in opposition to Rome.

The guilt of the western schism is divided between the two parties, as the guilt of the eastern schism is; although no human tribunal can measure the share of responsibility. Much is due, no doubt, to the violence and extravagance of the Protestant opposition, but still more to the intolerance and stubbornness of the Roman resistance. The papal court used against the Reformation for a long time only the carnal weapons of political influence, diplomatic intrigue, secular wealth, haughty pride, scholastic philosophy, crushing authority, and bloody persecution. It repeated the course of the Jewish hierarchy, which crucified the Messiah and cast the apostles out of the synagogue.

But we must look beyond this partial justification, and view the matter in the light of the results of the Reformation.

It was evidently the design of Providence to develop a new type of Christianity outside of the restraints of the papacy, and the history of three centuries is the best explanation and vindication of that design. Every movement in history must be judged by its fruits.

The elements of such an advance movement were all at work before Luther and Zwingli protested against papal indulgences.

§ 4. The Preparations for the Reformation.

C. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation. Hamburg, 1841, 2d ed. 1866, 2 vols. (Engl. trans. by R. Menzies, Edinb. 1855, 2 vols.). C. de Bonnechose: Réformateurs avant réforme du xvi. siècle. Par. 1853, 2 vols. A good résumé by Geo. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873, ch. III. 52–84; and in the first two lectures of Charles Beard: The Reformation, London, 1883, p. 1–75. Comp., also the numerous monographs of various scholars on the Renaissance, on Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola, Hutten, Reuchlin, Erasmus, etc. A full account of the preparation for the Reformation belongs to the last chapters of the History of Mediaeval Christianity (see vol. V.). We here merely recapitulate the chief points.

Judaism before Christ was sadly degenerated, and those who sat in Moses’ seat had become blind leaders of the blind. Yet "salvation is of the Jews;" and out of this people arose John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Messiah, and the Apostles. Jerusalem, which stoned the prophets and crucified the Lord, witnessed also the pentecostal miracle and became the mother church of Christendom. So the Catholic church in the sixteenth century, though corrupt in its head and its members, was still the church of the living God and gave birth to the Reformation, which removed the rubbish of human traditions and reopened the pure fountain of the gospel of Christ.

The Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience. They stood as closely related to the papal church, as the Apostles and Evangelists to the Synagogue and the Temple; and for reasons of similar urgency, they were justified to leave the communion of their fathers; or rather, they did not leave it, but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy.

The Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward. It struck its roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the future. It sprang forth almost simultaneously from different parts of Europe and was enthusiastically hailed by the leading minds of the age in church and state. No great movement in history—except Christianity itself—was so widely and thoroughly prepared as the Protestant Reformation.

The reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of the Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics with their thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of classical literature; the general intellectual awakening; the biblical studies of Reuchlin, and Erasmus; the rising spirit of national independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards in England; Hus, and the Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel, and Johann Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the Brethren of the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,—contributed their share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to a new era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation which was not anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Luther made the remark that his opponents might charge him with having borrowed everything from John Wessel if he had known his writings earlier. The fuel was abundant all over Europe, but it required the spark which would set it ablaze.

Violent passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of princes, and all sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up with the war against the papacy. But they were at work likewise in the introduction of Christianity among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel close by." Human nature is terribly corrupt and leaves its stains on the noblest movements in history.

But, after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not free from faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and there is no nation which has not been benefited by the change they introduced.

§ 5. The Genius and Aim of the Reformation.

Is. Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the Reformation. Two essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48–187. Also his History of Protestant Theology, Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols.

Phil. Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845 (German and English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of the Reformation, two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York, 1885. p. 124–134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203–219.

Dan. Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92 pages). This is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, in 3 vols.

K. F. A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig, 1865. Also his Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr. Hengstenberg. Leipzig, 1862.

Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London, 1883. A Unitarian view, written with ample learning and in excellent spirit.

Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or the 95 Theses and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885.

The literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or Calvinistic Protestantism is given in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, l. 211.

The spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by Paul in his anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing that no amount of abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual despotism and slavery. But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly appreciate it.

The Reformation was at first a purely religious movement, and furnishes a striking illustration of the all-pervading power of religion in history. It started from the question: What must a man do to be saved?  How shall a sinner be justified before God, and attain peace of his troubled conscience?  The Reformers were supremely concerned for the salvation of the soul, for the glory of Christ and the triumph of his gospel. They thought much more of the future world than of the present, and made all political, national, and literary interests subordinate and subservient to religion.6

Yet they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists, but optimists, men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous, hopeful men, free from selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, equal to any who had preceded them since the days of the Apostles. From the centre of religion they have influenced every department of human life and activity, and given a powerful impulse to political and civil liberty, to progress in theology, philosophy, science, and literature.

The Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had interposed between Christ and the believer. It opened the door to direct union with him , as the only Mediator between God and man, and made his gospel accessible to every reader without the permission of a priest. It was a return to first principles, and for this very reason also a great advance. It was a revival of primitive Christianity, and at the same time a deeper apprehension and application of it than had been known before.

There are three fundamental principles of the Reformation: the supremacy of the Scriptures over tradition, the supremacy of faith over works, and the supremacy of the Christian people over an exclusive priesthood. The first may be called the objective, the second the subjective, the third the social or ecclesiastical principle.7

They resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom, or freedom in Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is to bring every man into living union with Christ as the only and all-sufficient Lord and Saviour from sin and death.

§ 6. The Authority of the Scriptures.

The objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as the inspired record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice; in opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, as the joint rules of faith.

The teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but subordinated to the Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually subordinates the Bible to tradition by making the latter the sole interpreter of the former and confining interpretation within the limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the application of the Bible principle there was considerable difference between the more conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and institutions, which the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and simplicity, rejected as useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed what they regarded as anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the principle that the church has no right to impose upon the conscience articles of faith without clear warrant in the Word of God.

Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the Reformation.

We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made.

The Roman church, while recognizing the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, prefers to control the laity by the teaching priesthood, and allows the reading of the Scriptures in the popular tongues only under certain restrictions and precautions, from fear of abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent III. was of the opinion that the Scriptures were too deep for the common people, as they surpassed even the understanding of the wise and learned. Several synods in Gaul, during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading of the Romanic translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt. Archbishop Berthold, of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486, threatened with excommunication all who ventured to translate and to circulate translations of sacred books, especially the Bible, without his permission. The Council of Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus and Jerome of Prague, condemned also the writings and the hopes of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into the English tongue, to the flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of damnable heresy who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV. (1564), in the conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible versions did more harm than good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis), would not allow laymen to read the sacred book except by special permission of a bishop or an inquisitor. Clement VIII. (1598) reserved the right to grant this permission to the Congregation of the Index. Gregory XV. (1622), and Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713), repeated the conditional prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal popes, extended the permission to read the Word of God in the vernacular to all the faithful, yet with the proviso that the translation be approved in Rome and guarded by explanatory notes from the writings of the fathers and Catholic scholars (1757). This excludes, of course, all Protestant versions, even the very best. They are regarded as corrupt and heretical and have often been committed to the flames in Roman Catholic countries, especially in connection with the counter-Reformation of the Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament had to be smuggled into England and was publicly burnt by order of Tunstall, bishop of London, in St. Paul’s church-yard near the spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the globe. The Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as a "pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them "pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for proof, to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863.8

Such fulminations against Protestant Bible societies might be in some measure excused if the popes favored Catholic Bible societies, which would be the best proof of zeal for the spread of the Scriptures. But such institutions do not exist. Fortunately papal bulls have little effect in modern times, and in spite of official prohibitions and discouragements, there are zealous advocates of Bible reading among modern Catholics, as there were among the Greek and Latin fathers.9  Nor have the restrictions of the Council of Trent been able to prevent the progress of Biblical scholarship and exegesis even in the Roman church.  E pur si muove. The Bible, as well as the earth, moves for all that.

Modern Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical tradition than the Reformers could be in their hot indignation against the prevailing corruptions and against the papal tyranny of their day. The deeper study of ecclesiastical and secular history has dispelled the former ignorance on the "dark ages," so called, and brought out the merits of the fathers, missionaries, schoolmen, and popes, in the progress of Christian civilization.

But these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred Scripture as an ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor the importance of its widest circulation. It is by far the best guide of instruction in holy living and dying. No matter what theory of the mode and extent of inspiration we may hold, the fact of inspiration is plain and attested by the universal consent of Christendom. The Bible is a book of holy men, but just as much a book of God, who made those men witnesses of truth and sure teachers of the way of salvation.

§ 7. Justification by Faith.

The subjective principle of Protestantism is the doctrine of justification and salvation by faith in Christ; as distinct from the doctrine of justification by faith and works or salvation by grace and human merit. Luther’s formula is sola fide. Calvin goes further back to God’s eternal election, as the ultimate ground of salvation and comfort in life and in death. But Luther and Calvin meant substantially the same thing, and agree in the more general proposition of salvation by free grace through living faith in Christ (Acts 4:12), in opposition to any Pelagian or Semi-pelagian compromise which divides the work and merit between God and man. And this is the very soul of evangelical Protestantism.10

Luther assigned to his solifidian doctrine of justification the central position in the Christian system, declared it to be the article of the standing or falling (Lutheran) church, and was unwilling to yield an inch from it, though heaven and earth should collapse.11  This exaggeration is due to his personal experience during his convent life. The central article of the Christian faith on which the church is built, is not any specific dogma of the Protestant, or Roman, or Greek church, but the broader and deeper truth held by all, namely, the divine-human personality and atoning work of Christ, the Lord and Saviour. This was the confession of Peter, the first creed of Christendom.

The Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic, as defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent, chiefly in two points. Justification is conceived as a declaratory and judicial act of God, in distinction from sanctification, which is a gradual growth; and faith is conceived as a fiducial act of the heart and will, in distinction from theoretical belief and blind submission to the church. The Reformers derived their idea from Paul, the Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17–26); but Paul suggests the solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love."

Faith, in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which engages all the powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very life of Christ and all his benefits. It is the child of grace and the mother of good works. It is the pioneer of all great thoughts and deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of nations; by faith Moses became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith the Galilean fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of martyrs endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving power. It unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath eternal life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem, "that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the law. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul’s answer to the question of the jailor:  "What must I do to be saved?"

Protestantism does by no means despise or neglect good works or favor antinomian license; it only subordinates them to faith, and measures their value by quality rather than quantity. They are not the condition, but the necessary evidence of justification; they are not the root, but the fruits of the tree. The same faith which justifies, does also sanctify. It is ever "working through love" (Gal. 5:6). Luther is often charged with indifference to good works, but very unjustly. His occasional unguarded utterances must be understood in connection with his whole teaching and character. "Faith" in his own forcible language which expresses his true view, "faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing and it is impossible that it should not do good without ceasing; it does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is put, it has done them already, and is always engaged in doing them; you may as well separate burning and shining from fire, as works from faith."

The Lutheran doctrine of Christian freedom and justification by faith alone, like that of St. Paul on which it was based, was made the cloak of excesses by carnal men who wickedly reasoned, "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound" (Rom. 6:1), and who abused their "freedom for an occasion to the flesh" (Gal. 5:13). All such consequences the apostle cut off at the outset by an indignant "God forbid."

The fact is undeniable, that the Reformation in Germany was accompanied and followed by antinomian tendencies and a degeneracy of public morals. It rests not only on the hostile testimonies of Romanists and separatists, but Luther and Melanchthon themselves often bitterly complained in their later years of the abuse of the liberty of the gospel and the sad state of morals in Wittenberg and throughout Saxony.12

But we should remember, first, that the degeneracy of morals, especially the increase of extravagance, and luxury with its attending vices, had begun in Catholic times in consequence of discoveries and inventions, the enlargement of commerce and wealth.13  Nor was it near as bad as the state of things which Luther had witnessed at Rome in 1510, under Pope Julius II., not to speak of the more wicked reign of Pope Alexander VI. Secondly, the degeneracy was not due so much to a particular doctrine, as to the confusion which necessarily followed the overthrow of the ecclesiastical order and discipline, and to the fact that the Lutheran Reformers allowed the government of the church too easily to pass from the bishops into the hands of secular rulers. Thirdly, the degeneracy was only temporary during the transition from the abolition of the old to the establishment of the new order of things. Fourthly, the disorder was confined to Germany. The Swiss Reformers from the start laid greater stress on discipline than the Lutheran Reformers, and organized the new church on a more solid basis. Calvin introduced a state of moral purity and rigorism in Geneva such as had never been known before in the Christian church. The Huguenots of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of England and New England, and the Presbyterians of Scotland are distinguished for their strict principles and habits. An impartial comparison of Protestant countries and nations with Roman Catholic, in regard to the present state of public and private morals and general culture, is eminently favorable to the Reformation.

§ 8. The Priesthood of the Laity.

The social or ecclesiastical principle of Protestantism is the general priesthood of believers, in distinction from the special priesthood which stands mediating between Christ and the laity.

The Roman church is an exclusive hierarchy, and assigns to the laity the position of passive obedience. The bishops are the teaching and ruling church; they alone constitute a council or synod, and have the exclusive power of legislation and administration. Laymen have no voice in spiritual matters, they can not even read the Bible without the permission of the priest, who holds the keys of heaven and hell.

In the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a king. "All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike; one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. The inward anointing—this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of bishop or pope—gives them not the name only, but the nature, the purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are believers in Christ."

This principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active co-operation in the government and administration of the church; it gives them a voice and vote in the election of the pastor; it makes every member of the congregation useful, according to his peculiar gift, for the general good. This principle is the source of religious and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant countries. Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship of free, self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a republic.

The good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible knowledge among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational singing, in the institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of the magistrates for moral reform and general education.

But it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers who seized the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes in their dominion, robbed the churches and convents, and often defied all discipline by their own immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous examples of Protestant popes who disgraced the cause of the Reformation. Erastianism and Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.

§ 9. The Reformation and Rationalism.

G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.

S. Berger: La Bible an seizième siècle; étude sur les origines de la critique. Paris, 1879.

Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation, to Modem Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V.

Comp. also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed. 1870, 2 vols. George P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879, revised 1885 (191 pages).

The Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and tradition the supreme rule of faith, laying the chief stress on tradition, that is, the teaching of an infallible church headed by an infallible Pope, as the judge of the meaning of both.14

Evangelical, Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.

Rationalism raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and accepts them only as far as they come within the limits of its comprehension. It makes rationality or intelligibility the measure of credibility. We take the word Rationalism here in the technical sense of a theological system and tendency in distinction from rational theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have produced scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy. Christianity is above reason, but not against reason.

The Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by Rationalistic and by Roman Catholic historians and controversialists, but from an opposite point of view, by the former to the credit, by the latter to the disparagement of both.

The Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of reason: it freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took the second step: it freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. "Luther," says Lessing, the champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy, "thou great, misjudged man!  Thou hast redeemed us from the yoke of tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the letter!  Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou would teach us now, such as Christ himself would teach!"

Roman Catholics go still further and hold Protestantism responsible for all modern revolutions and for infidelity itself, and predict its ultimate dismemberment and dissolution.15  But this charge is sufficiently set aside by the undeniable fact that modern infidelity and revolution in their worst forms have appeared chiefly in Roman Catholic countries, as desperate reactions against hierarchical and political despotism. The violent suppression of the Reformation in France ended at last in a radical overthrow of the social order of the church. In Roman Catholic countries, like Spain and Mexico, revolution has become a chronic disease. Romanism provokes infidelity among cultivated minds by its excessive supernaturalism.

The Reformation checked the skepticism of the renaissance, and the anarchical tendencies of the Peasants’ War in Germany and of the Libertines in Geneva. An intelligent faith is the best protection against infidelity; and a liberal government is a safeguard against revolution.

The connection of the Reformation with Rationalism is a historical fact, but they are related to each other as the rightful use of intellectual freedom to the excess and abuse of it. Rationalism asserts reason against revelation, and freedom against divine as well as human authority. It is a one-sided development of the negative, protesting, antipapal and antitraditional factor of the Reformation to the exclusion of its positive, evangelical faith in the revealed will and word of God. It denies the supernatural and miraculous. It has a superficial sense of sin and guilt, and is essentially Pelagian; while the Reformation took the opposite Augustinian ground and proceeded from the deepest conviction of sin and the necessity of redeeming grace. The two systems are thus theoretically and practically opposed to each other. And yet there is an intellectual and critical affinity between them, and Rationalism is inseparable from the history of Protestantism. It is in the modern era of Christianity what Gnosticism was in the ancient church—a revolt of private judgment against the popular faith and church orthodoxy, an overestimate of theoretic knowledge, but also a wholesome stimulus to inquiry and progress. It is not a church or sect (unless we choose to include Socinianism and Unitarianism), but a school in the church, or rather a number of schools which differ very considerably from each other.

Rationalism appeared first in the seventeenth century in the Church of England, though without much effect upon the people, as Deism, which asserted natural religion versus revealed religion; it was matured in its various phases after the middle of the eighteenth century on the Continent, especially in Protestant Germany since Lessing (d. 1781) and Semler (d. 1791), and gradually obtained the mastery of the chairs and pulpits of Lutheran and Reformed churches, till about 1817, when a revival of the positive faith of the Reformation spread over Germany and a serious conflict began between positive and negative Protestantism, which continues to this day.

1. Let us first consider the relation of the Reformation to the use of reason as a general principle.

The Reformation was a protest against human authority, asserted the right of private conscience and judgment, and roused a spirit of criticism and free inquiry in all departments of knowledge. It allows, therefore, a much wider scope for the exercise of reason in religion than the Roman church, which requires an unconditional submission to her infallible authority. It marks real progress, but this progress is perfectly consistent with a belief in revelation on subjects which lie beyond the boundary of time and sense. What do we know of the creation, and the world of the future, except what God has chosen to reveal to us?  Human reason can prove the possibility and probability of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the certainty and necessity. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe in the supernatural on divine testimony, and it is unreasonable to reject it.

The Reformers used their reason and judgment very freely in their contest with church authority. Luther refused to recant in the crisis at Worms, unless convinced by testimonies of the Scriptures and "cogent arguments."16  For a while he was disposed to avail himself of the humanistic movement which was skeptical and rationalistic in its tendency, but his strong religious nature always retained the mastery. He felt as keenly as any modern Rationalist, the conflict between natural reason and the transcending mysteries of revelation. He was often tormented by doubts and even temptations to blasphemy, especially when suffering from physical infirmity. A comforter of others, he needed comfort himself and asked the prayers of friends to fortify him against the assaults of the evil spirit, with whom he had, as he thought, many a personal encounter. He confessed, in 1524, how glad he would have been five years before in his war with papal superstition, if Carlstadt could have convinced him that the Eucharist was nothing but bread and wine, and how strongly he was then inclined to that rationalistic view which would have given a death blow to transubstantiation and the mass. He felt that every article of his creed—the trinity, in unity, the incarnation, the transmission of Adam’s sin, the atonement by the blood of Christ, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the body—transcended human comprehension. In Aug. 2, 1527, during the raging of the pestilence at Wittenberg, he wrote to Melanchthon, who was absent at Jena: "For more than a week I have been tossed about in death and hell; so that, hurt in all my body, I still tremble in every limb. For having almost wholly lost Christ, I was driven about by storms and tempests of despair and blasphemy against God. But God, moved by the prayers of the saints, begins to have pity upon me, and has drawn my soul out of the lowest hell. Do not cease to pray for me, as I do for you. I believe that this agony of mine pertains to others also."17

In such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the Scriptures and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against hope. "It is a quality of faith," he says in the explanation of his favorite Epistle to the Galatians, "that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not strangle. But how?  It holds to God’s Word, and lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as he believed God’s Word, wherein was promised him that from his unfruitful and as it were dead wife, Sarah, God would give him seed."

This and many similar passages clearly show the bent of Luther’s mind. He knew the enemy, but overcame it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In his later years he became more and more a conservative churchman. He repudiated the mystic doctrine of the inner word and spirit, insisted on submission to the written letter of the Scriptures, even when it flatly contradicted reason. He traced the errors of the Zwickau prophets, the rebellious peasants, the Anabaptists, and the radical views of Carlstadt and Zwingli, without proper discrimination, to presumptuous inroads of the human reason into the domain of faith, and feared from them the overthrow of religion. He so far forgot his obligations to Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a Lucian, a doubter, and an atheist. Much as he valued reason as a precious gift of God in matters of this world, he abused it with unreasonable violence, when it dared to sit in judgment over matters of faith.18

Certainly, Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the authorship of his sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in question, before he can be appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He would have sacrificed his reason ten times rather than his faith.

Zwingli was the most clear-headed and rationalizing among the Reformers.19  He did not pass through the discipline of monasticism and mysticism, like Luther, but through the liberal culture of Erasmus. He had no mystic vein, but sound, sober, practical common sense. He always preferred the plainest sense of the Bible. He rejected the Catholic views on original sin, infant damnation and the corporeal presence in the eucharist, and held advanced opinions which shocked Luther and even Calvin. But he nevertheless reverently bowed before the divine authority of the inspired Word of God, and had no idea of setting reason over it. His dispute with Luther was simply a question of interpretation, and he had strong arguments for his exegesis, as even the best Lutheran commentators must confess.

Calvin was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He never abused reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an indispensable handmaid of revelation. He constructed with his logical genius the severest system of Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French, Dutch, English and American theology, and fortified it against Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy and discipline could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian in the eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire. Upon the whole, the Reformed churches in England, Scotland and North America, have been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.

2. Let us now consider the application of the principle of free inquiry to the Bible.20

The Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its circumstances and surroundings are proper subjects of investigation; for it is a human as well as a divine book, and has a history, like other literary productions. The extent of the Bible, moreover, or the Canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or by inspiration, but by church authority or tradition, and was not fully agreed upon till the close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial synods, not by any of the seven oecumenical Councils. It was therefore justly open to reinvestigation.

The Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, settled the Canon, including the Apocrypha, but without any critical inquiry or definite theological principle; it simply confirmed the traditional usage, and pronounced an anathema on every one who does not receive all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate.21  She also checked the freedom of investigation by requiring conformity to a defective version and a unanimous consensus of the fathers, although such an exegetical consensus does not exist except in certain fundamental doctrines.

The Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the Canon, as they had a right to do, but without any idea of sweeping away the traditional belief or undermining the authority of the Word of God. On the contrary, from the fulness of their faith in the inspired Word, as contained in the Scriptures, they questioned the canonicity of a few books which seem to be lacking in sufficient evidence to entitle them to a place in the Bible. They simply revived, in a new shape and on doctrinal rather than historical grounds, the distinction made by the Hebrews and the ancient fathers between the canonical and apocryphal books of the Old Testament, and the Eusebian distinction between the Homologumena and Antilegomena of the New Testament, and claimed in both respects the freedom of the ante-Nicene church.

They added, moreover, to the external evidence, the more important internal evidence on the intrinsic excellency of the Scripture, as the true ground on which its authority and claim to obedience rests; and they established a firm criterion of canonicity, namely, the purity and force of teaching Christ and his gospel of salvation. They did not reject the testimonies of the fathers, but they placed over them what Paul calls the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. 2:4).

Luther was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism, which was indeed subjective and arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism of faith. He made his central doctrine of justification by faith the criterion of canonicity.22  He thus placed the material or subjective principle of Protestantism above the formal or objective principle, the truth above the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the gospel above the written Gospel, Christ above the Bible. Romanism, on the contrary, places the church above the Bible. But we must remember that Luther first learnt Christ from the Bible, and especially, from the Epistles of Paul, which furnished him the key for the understanding of the scheme of salvation.

He made a distinction, moreover, between the more important and the less important books of the New Testament, according to the extent of their evangelic purity and force, and put Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the German Bible.23

He states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows: "Hitherto we have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament. The four that follow have been differently esteemed in olden times." He therefore appeals to the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection was to the contents.

He disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James because he could not harmonize it with Paul’s teaching on justification by faith without works,24 and he called it an epistle of straw as compared with the genuine apostolic writings.25

He objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because it seems to deny (in Heb. 6, 10 and 12) the possibility of repentance after baptism, contrary to the Gospels and to Paul, and betrays in 2:3, a post-apostolic origin. He ascribed the authorship to Apollos by an ingenious guess, which, though not supported by ancient tradition, has found great favor with modern commentators and critics,26 chiefly because the authorship of any other possible writer (Paul, Barnabas, Luke, Clement) seems to offer insuperable difficulties, while the description of Apollos in Acts 18:24–28, compared with the allusions in 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6; 4:6; 16:12, seems to fit exactly the author of this anonymous Epistle.

He called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter, and hence rejected by the ancient fathers.

He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the church of Rome.

The clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his preface to the first edition of his German version of the New Testament (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions.27

Luther’s view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction of the divine contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed truth itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of one of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother Paul, this argument won’t stick."28

Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth.

A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament;29 but the Lutheran church, with a sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional catholic Canon (not even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet retained his arrangement of the books of the New Testament.30  The Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would himself raise the strongest protest.

The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books.

Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of it, because he did not deem it an inspired book, written by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel.31  In this view he has many followers, but the severest critical school of our days (that of Tübingen) assigns it to the Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions the seven Antilegomena, but includes them in the general catalogue of the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of six Antilegomena (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but nevertheless appeals to their testimony.32

Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself incompetent for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John. He denies, decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not the canonicity, of Hebrews.33  He is disposed to assign Second Peter to a pupil of Peter, who wrote under the auspices and by direction of the Apostle; but he guards in this case, also, against unfavorable inferences from the uncertainty of origin.34

Calvin clearly saw the inconsistency of giving the Church the right of determining the canon after denying her right of making an article of faith. He therefore placed the Canon on the authority of God who bears testimony to it through the voice of the Spirit in the hearts of the believer. The eternal and inviolable truth of God, he says, is not founded on the pleasure and judgment of men, and can be as easily distinguished as light from darkness, and white from black. In the same line, Peter Vermilius denies that "the Scriptures take their authority from the Church. Their certitude is derived from God. The Word is older than the Church. The Spirit of God wrought in the hearts of the bearers and readers of the Word so that they recognized it to be truly divine."  This view is clearly set forth in several Calvinistic Confessions.35  In its exclusive form it is diametrically opposed to the maxim of Augustin, otherwise so highly esteemed by the Reformers: "I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church."36  But the two kinds of evidence supplement each other. The human authority of tradition though not the final ground of belief, is indispensable as an historical witness of the genuineness and canonicity, and is of great weight in conflict with Rationalism. There is no essential antagonism between the Bible and the Church in the proper sense of the term. They are inseparable. The Church was founded by Christ and the apostles through the preaching of the living Word of God, and the founders of the Church are also the authors of the written Word, which continues to be the shining and guiding light of the Church; while the Church in turn is the guardian, preserver, translator, propagator, and expounder of the Bible.

3. The liberal views of the Reformers on inspiration and the canon were abandoned after the middle of the sixteenth century, and were succeeded by compact and consolidated systems of theology. The evangelical scholasticism of the seventeenth century strongly resembles, both in its virtues and defects, the catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages which systematized and contracted the patristic theology, except that the former was based on the Bible, the latter on church tradition. In the conflict with Romanism the Lutheran and Calvinistic scholastics elaborated a stiff, mechanical theory of inspiration in order to set an infallible book against an infallible pope. The Bible was identified with the Word of God, dictated to the sacred writers as the penmen of the Holy Ghost. Even the classical purity of style and the integrity of the traditional text, including the Massoretic punctuation, were asserted in the face of stubborn facts, which came to light as the study of the origin and history of the text advanced. The divine side of the Scriptures was exclusively dwelled upon, and the human and literary side was ignored or virtually denied. Hence the exegetical poverty of the period of Protestant scholasticism. The Bible was used as a repository of proof texts for previously conceived dogmas, without regard to the context, the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and the gradual development of the divine revelation in accordance with the needs and capacities of men.

4. It was against this Protestant bibliolatry and symbololatry that Rationalism arose as a legitimate protest. It pulled down one dogma after another, and subjected the Bible and the canon to a searching criticism. It denies the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, except in a wider sense which applies to all works of genius, and treats them simply as a gradual evolution of the religious spirit of Israel and the primitive Christian Church. It charges them with errors of fact and errors of doctrine, and resolves the miracles into legends and myths. It questions the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the genuineness of the Davidic Psalms, the Solomonic writings, the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel, and other books of the Old Testament. It assigns not only the Eusebian Antilegomena, but even the Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and several Pauline Epistles to the post-apostolic age, from A.D. 70 to 150.

In its later developments, however, Rationalism has been obliged to retreat and make several concessions to orthodoxy. The canonical Gospels and Acts have gained by further investigation and discovery;37 and the apostolic authorship of the four great Epistles of Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians and the Apocalypse of John is fully admitted by the severest school of criticism (that of Tübingen). A most important admission: for these five books teach or imply all the leading facts and truths of the gospel, and overthrow the very foundations of Rationalism. With the Christ of the Gospels, and the Apostle Paul of his acknowledged Epistles, Christianity is safe.

Rationalism was a radical revolution which swept like a flood over the Continent of Europe. But it is not negative and destructive only. It has made and is still making valuable contributions to biblical philology, textual criticism, and grammatico-historical exegesis. It enlarges the knowledge of the conditions and environments of the Bible, and of all that belongs to the human and temporal side of Christ and Christianity. It cultivates with special zeal and learning the sciences of Critical Introduction, Biblical Theology, the Life of Christ, the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.

5. These acquisitions to exegetical and historical theology are a permanent gain, and are incorporated in the new evangelical theology, which arose in conflict with Rationalism and in defense of the positive Christian faith in the divine facts of revelation and the doctrines of salvation. The conflict is still going on with increasing strength, but with the sure prospect of the triumph of truth. Christianity is independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and of human theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the miraculous preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His "words are spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing." Criticism and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but will ultimately return to Him who furnishes the only key for the solution of the problems of history and human life. "No matter," says the world-poet Goethe in one of his last utterances, "how much the human mind may progress in intellectual culture, in the science of nature, in ever-expanding breadth and depth: it will never be able to rise above the elevation and moral culture which shines in the Gospels."

Notes.

The famous close of the Preface of Luther’s edition of the German New Testament was omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch’s ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim as follows:

"Aus diesem allen kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Büchern, und Unterschied nehmen, welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli Episteln, sonderlich die zu den Römern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der rechte Kern und Mark unter allen Büchern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein sollten, und einem jeglichen Christen zu rathen wäre, das er dieselben am ersten und allermeisten läse, und ihm durch täglich Lesen so gemein mächte, als das täglich Brod.

"Denn in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten Christi beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie der Glaube an Christum Sünd, Tod und Hölle überwindet, und das Leben, Gerechtigkeit und Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des Evangelii, wie du gehöret hast.

"Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der Predigt Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke denn seiner Predigt mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte, die geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh 5.V.51). Weil nu Johannes gar wenig Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt schreibt; wiederumb die andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig seiner Worte beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte, recht(e) Hauptevangelion, und den andren dreien weit fürzuzichen und höher zu heben. Also auch Sanct Paulus und Petrus Episteln weit über die drei Evangelia Matthai, Marci und Lucä vorgehen.

"Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel(n), sonderlich die zu den Römern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind die Bücher, die dir Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest and horist [hörest]. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern(e) Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein(e) evangelisch(e) Art an ihr hat. Doch davon weiter in andern Vorreden."

§ 10. Protestantism and Denominationalism.38

The Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first seven oecumenical Councils with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be added, since 1725, St. Petersburg where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides. The patriarch of Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no supremacy of jurisdiction over his fellow-patriarchs.

The Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope who claims to be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches the Greek and the Protestant churches as schismatical and heretical.

The Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up the visible unity of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a higher spiritual unity on the basis of freedom and the full development of every phase of truth.

Instead of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of distinct national churches and confessions or denominations. Rome, the local centre of unity, was replaced by Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one great pope had to surrender to many little popes of smaller pretensions, yet each claiming and exercising sovereign power in his domain. The hierarchical rule gave way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the territory is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio), a principle first maintained by the Byzantine Emperors, and held also by the Czar of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme authority of the oecumenical Councils. Every king, prince, and magistrate, who adopted the Reformation, assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a national church to the exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were either expelled, or simply tolerated under various restrictions and disabilities.

Hence there are as many national or state churches as there are independent Protestant governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and most of them also the evangelical confessions as a correct summary of Scripture doctrines. Every little principality in monarchical Germany and every canton in republican Switzerland has its own church establishment, and claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship, and discipline. And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular ruler who appoints the ministers of religion and the professors of theology. The property of the church which had accumulated by the pious foundations of the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation period and placed under the control of the state, which in turn assumed the temporal support of the church.

This is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the independent or free churches of more recent growth, which manage their own affairs on the voluntary principle.

The transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state was not contemplated by the Reformers, but was the inevitable consequence of the determined opposition of the whole Roman hierarchy to the Reformation. The many and crying abuses which followed this change in the hands of selfish and rapacious princes, were deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who would have consented to the restoration of the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the freedom of gospel preaching and gospel teaching.

The Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of independence than the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate of Zurich, and Calvin ruled supreme in Geneva under institutions of his own founding; but both closely united the civil and ecclesiastical power, and the former gradually assumed the supremacy.

Scandinavia and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a Protestant episcopate which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with the head of the state; yet even there the civil ruler is legally the supreme governor of the church.

The greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are the Church of England, much weakened by dissent, but still the richest and most powerful of all; the United Evangelical Church of Prussia which, since 1817, includes the formerly separated Lutheran and Reformed confessions; the Lutheran Church of Saxony (with a Roman Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the Reformed or Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Originally, all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two confessions or denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still prevails in Germany and Scandinavia, and the Reformed which took root in Switzerland, France, Holland, England and Scotland, and to a limited extent also in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The Lutheran church follows the larger portion of German and Scandinavian emigrants to America and other countries, the Reformed church in its various branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the United States.

From these two confessions should be distinguished the Anglican Church, which the continental historians from defective information usually count with the Reformed Church, but which stands midway between evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and may therefore be called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed moderately Reformed in her doctrinal articles,39  but in polity and ritual she is much more conservative than the Calvinistic and even the Lutheran confession, pays greater deference to the testimony of the ancient fathers, and lays stress upon her unbroken episcopal succession.

The confessional division in the Protestant camp arose very early. It was at first confined to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic presence, which the Marburg Conference of 1529 could not remove, although Luther and Zwingli agreed in fourteen and a half out of fifteen articles of faith. Luther refused any compromise. Other differences gradually developed themselves, on the ubiquity of Christ’s body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to widen and perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia and other German states, since 1817, has not really healed it, but added a third Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older Confessions which, still continue separate in other countries.

The controversies among the Protestants in the sixteenth century roused all the religious and political passions and cast a gloom over the bright picture of the Reformation. Melanchthon declared that with tears as abundant as the waters of the river Elbe he could not express his grief over the distractions of Christendom and the "fury of theologians." Calvin also, when invited, with Melanchthon, Bullinger and Buzer, in 1552, by Archbishop Cranmer to Lambeth Palace for the purpose of framing a concensus-creed of the Reformed churches, was willing to cross ten seas for the cause of Christian union.40  But the noble scheme was frustrated by the stormy times, and still remains a pium desiderium.

Much as we must deplore and condemn sectarian strife and bitterness, it would be as unjust to charge them on Protestantism, as to charge upon Catholicism the violent passions of the trinitarian, christological and other controversies of the Nicene age, or the fierce animosity between the Greek and Latin Churches, or the envy and jealousy of the monastic orders of the Middle Ages, or the unholy rivalries between Jansenists and Jesuits, Gallicans and Ultramontanists in modern Romanism. The religious passions grow out of the selfishness of depraved human nature in spite of Christianity, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant., and may arise in any denomination or in any congregation. Paul had to rebuke the party spirit in the church at Corinth. The rancor of theological schools and parties under one and the same government is as great and often greater than among separate rival denominations. Providence overrules these human weaknesses for the clearer development of doctrine and discipline, and thus brings good out of evil.

The tendency of Protestantism towards individualism did not stop with the three Reformation Churches, but produced other divisions wherever it was left free to formulate and organize the differences of theological parties and schools. This was the case in England, in consequence of what may be called a second Reformation, which agitated that country during the seventeenth century, while Germany was passing through the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.

The Toleration Act of 1689, after the final overthrow of the semi-popish and treacherous dynasty of the Stuarts, gave the Dissenters who were formerly included in the Church of England, the liberty to organize themselves into independent denominations under the names of Presbyterians, Independents or Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers; all professing the principles of the Reformation, but differing in minor points of doctrine, and especially in discipline, and the mode of worship.

The Methodist revival of religion which shook England and the American colonies during the eighteenth century, gave rise to a new denomination which spread with the enthusiasm of an army of conquest and grew into one of the largest and most influential communions in English-speaking Christendom.

In Scotland, the original unity of the Reformed Kirk was likewise broken up, mostly on the question of patronage and the sole headship of Christ, so that the Scotch population is now divided chiefly into three branches, the Established Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Free Church of Scotland; all holding, however, to the Westminster standards.

In Germany, the Moravian brotherhood acquired a legal existence, and fully earned it by its missionary zeal among the heathen, its educational institutions, its pure discipline and stimulating influence upon the older churches.

All these Churches of Great Britain and the Continent were transplanted by emigration to the virgin soil of North America, where they mingle on a basis of equality before the law and in the enjoyment of perfect religious freedom. But few communions are of native growth. In America, the distinction between church and sect, churchmen and dissenters, has lost its legal meaning. And even in Europe it is weakened in the same proportion in which under the influence of modern ideas of toleration and freedom the bond of union of church and state is relaxed, and the sects or theological parties are allowed to organize themselves into distinct communities.

Thus Protestantism in the nineteenth century is divided into half a dozen or more large denominations, without counting the minor divisions which are even far more numerous. The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Baptists, are distinct and separate families. Nor is the centrifugal tendency of Protestantism exhausted, and may produce new denominations, especially in America, where no political power can check its progress.

To an outside spectator, especially to a Romanist and to an infidel, Protestantism presents the aspect of a religious chaos or anarchy which must end in dissolution.

But a calm review of the history of the last three centuries and the present condition of Christendom leads to a very different conclusion. It is an undeniable fact that Christianity has the strongest hold upon the people and displays the greatest vitality and energy at home and abroad, in English-speaking countries, where it is most divided into denominations and sects. A comparison of England with Spain, or Scotland with Portugal, or the United States with Mexico and Peru or Brazil, proves the advantages of living variety over dead uniformity. Division is an element of weakness in attacking a consolidated foe, but it also multiplies the missionary, educational, and converting agencies. Every Protestant denomination has its own field of usefulness, and the cause of Christianity itself would be seriously weakened and contracted by the extinction of any one of them.

Nor should we overlook the important fact, that the differences which divide the various Protestant denominations are not fundamental, and that the articles of faith in which they agree are more numerous than those in which they disagree. All accept the inspired Scriptures as the supreme rule of faith and practice, salvation by grace, and we may say every article of the Apostles’ Creed; while in their views of practical Christianity they unanimously teach that our duties are comprehended in the royal law of love to God and to our fellow-men, and that true piety and virtue consist in the imitation of the example of Christ, the Lord and Saviour of all.

There is then unity in diversity as well as diversity in unity.

And the tendency to separation and division is counteracted by the opposite tendency to Christian union and denominational intercommunion which manifests itself in a rising degree and in various forms among Protestants of the present day, especially in England and America, and on missionary fields, and which is sure to triumph in the end. The spirit of narrowness, bigotry and exclusiveness must give way at last to a spirit of evangelical catholicity, which leaves each denomination free to work out its own mission according to its special charisma, and equally free to co-operate in a noble rivalry with all other denominations for the glory of the common Master and the building up of His Kingdom.

The great problem of Christian union cannot be solved by returning to a uniformity of belief and outward organization. Diversity in unity and unity in diversity is the law of God in history as well as in nature. Every aspect of truth must be allowed room for free development. Every possibility of Christian life must be realized. The past cannot be undone; history moves zig-zag, like a sailing vessel, but never backwards. The work of church history, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant, cannot be in vain. Every denomination and sect has to furnish some stones for the building of the temple of God.

And out of the greatest human discord God will bring the richest concord.

§ 11. Protestantism and Religious Liberty.

Comp. Ph. Schaff: The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in the History of Toleration Acts, N. York, 1889. (126 pages.)

The Reformation was a grand act of emancipation from spiritual tyranny, and a vindication of the sacred rights of conscience in matters of religious belief. Luther’s bold stand at the Diet of Worms, in the face of the pope and the emperor, is one of the sublimest events in the history of liberty, and the eloquence of his testimony rings through the centuries.41  To break the force of the pope, who called himself and was believed to be, the visible vicar of God on earth, and who held in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, required more moral courage than to fight a hundred battles, and it was done by an humble monk in the might of faith.

If liberty, both civil and religious, has since made progress, it is due in large measure to the inspiration of that heroic act. But the progress was slow and passed through many obstructions and reactions. "The mills of God grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."

It seems one of the strangest inconsistencies that the very men who claimed and exercised the right of protest in essentials, should have denied the same right to others, who differed from them in nonessentials. After having secured liberty from the yoke of popery, they acted on the persecuting principles in which they had been brought up. They had no idea of toleration or liberty in our modern sense. They fought for liberty in Christ, not from Christ, for liberty to preach and teach the gospel, not to oppose or pervert it. They were as intensely convinced of their views as their Roman opponents of theirs. They abhorred popery and heresy as dangerous errors which should not be tolerated in a Christian society. John Knox feared one Romish mass in Scotland more than an army of ten thousand French invaders. The Protestant divines and princes of the sixteenth century felt it to be their duty to God and to themselves to suppress and punish heresy as well as civil crimes. They confounded the law with the gospel. In many cases they acted in retaliation, and in self-defense. They were surrounded by a swarm of sects and errorists who claimed to be the legitimate children of the Reformation, exposed it to the reproach of the enemies and threatened to turn it into confusion and anarchy. The world and the church were not ripe for a universal reign of liberty, nor are they even now.

Religious persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and the base passions of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from mistaken zeal for truth and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious conviction, and from the alliance of religion with politics or the union of church and state, whereby an offence against the one becomes an offence against the other. Persecution is found in all religions, churches and sects which had the power; while on the other hand all persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of toleration and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as the worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause of God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in ignorance persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of Moses, the other from devotion to the laws and gods of Rome. Charlemagne thought he could best promote Christianity among the heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river for wholesale baptism. St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally convinced of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A religion or church established by law must be protected by law against its enemies. The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none.

Church history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not only of Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by Christians.

But there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling Providence in all human wickedness. The persecutions test character, develop moral heroism, bring out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the bloody seed of religious liberty. They fail of their object when the persecuted party has the truth on its side, and ultimately result in its victory. This was the case with Christianity in the Roman empire, and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the cross, and reaped the crown.

Let us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of persecution, which is at the same time a history of religious liberty.

1. The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of persecution. The teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are against it. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. He declared that His kingdom is not of this world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for drawing the sword, though it was in defense of his Master; and he preferred to suffer and to die rather than to call the angels of God to aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the gospel by spiritual means and condemned the use of carnal weapons.

For three hundred years the church followed their example and advocated freedom of conscience. She suffered persecution from Jews and Gentiles, but never retaliated, and made her way to triumph through the power of truth and a holy life sealed by a heroic death.42

2. The change began with the union of church and state under Constantine the Great, in the East, and Charles the Great, in the West. Both these emperors represent the continuation of the old Roman empire under the dominion of the sword and the cross.

The mediaeval theory of the Catholic Church assumes a close alliance of Caesar and Pope, or the civil and ecclesiastical power, in Christian countries, and the exclusiveness of the Catholic communion out of which there can be no salvation. The Athanasian Creed has no less than three damning clauses against all who dissent from the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. From this point of view every heresy, i.e., every departure from catholic orthodoxy, is a sin and a crime against society, and punishable both by the church and the state, though in different ways. "The church does not thirst for blood "43 but excommunicates the obstinate heretic and hands him over to the civil magistrate to be dealt with according to law. And the laws of pagan Rome and Christian Rome were alike severe against every open dissent from the state religion. The Mosaic legislation against idolatry and blasphemy, which were punished by death, as a crime against the theocracy and as treason against Jehovah,44 seemed to afford divine authority for similar enactments under the Christian dispensation, in spite of the teaching and example of Christ and his Apostles. The Christian emperors after Constantine persecuted the heathen religion and heretical sects, as their heathen predecessors had persecuted the Christians as enemies of the national gods. The Justinian code, which extended its influence over the whole Continent of Europe, declares Christian heretics and schismatics, as well as Pagans and Jews, incapable of holding civil or military offices, forbids their public assemblies and ecclesiastical acts, and orders their books to be burned.

The leading divines of the church gave sanction to this theory. St. Augustin, who had himself been a heretic for nine years, was at first in favor of toleration.45  But during the Donatist controversy, he came to the conclusion that the correction and coërcion of heretics and schismatics was in some cases necessary and wholesome. His tract on the Correction of the Donatists was written about 417, to show that the schismatical and fanatical Donatists should be subjected to the punishment of the imperial laws. He admits that it is better that men should be led to worship God by teaching than be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but he reasons that more men are corrected by fear. He derives the proof from the Old Testament. The only passages from the New Testament which he is able to quote, would teach a compulsory salvation rather than punishment, but are really not to the point. He refers to Paul’s conversion as a case of compulsion by Christ himself, and misapplies the word of our Lord in the parable of the Supper: "Constrain them to come in."46  Yet he professed, on the other hand, the correct principle that "no man can believe against his will."47  And he expressly discouraged the infliction of the death-penalty on heretics.48

Thomas Aquinas, next to Augustin, the highest authority among the canonized doctors of the Latin church, went a step further. He proved, to the satisfaction of the Middle Ages, that the rites of idolaters, Jews, and infidels ought not to be tolerated,49  and that heretics or corruptors of the Christian faith, being worse criminals than debasers of money, ought (after due admonition) not only to be excommunicated by the church, but also be put to death by the state.50  He does not quote a Bible passage in favor of the death-penalty of heretics; on the contrary he mentions three passages which favor toleration of heretics, 2 Tim. 2:24; 1 Cor. 11:19; Matt. 13:29, 30, and then tries to deprive them of their force by his argument drawn from the guilt of heresy.

The persecution of heretics reached its height in the papal crusades against the Albigenses under Innocent III., one of the best of popes; in the dark deeds of the Spanish Inquisition; and in the unspeakable atrocities of the Duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands during his short reign (1567–1573).51

The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing his image, an avenging angel and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages.52

The infamous dragonnades of Louis XIV. were a continuation of the same politico-ecclesiastical policy on a larger scale, aiming at the complete destruction of Protestantism in France, in violation of the solemn edict of his grandfather (1598, revoked 1685), and met the full approval of the Roman clergy, including Bishop Bossuet, the advocate of Gallican liberties.53

The most cruel of the many persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in the valleys of Piedmont took place in 1655, and shocked by its boundless violence the whole Protestant world, calling forth the vigorous protest of Cromwell and inspiring the famous sonnet of Milton, his foreign secretary:

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones."

These persecutions form the darkest, we may say, the satanic chapters in church history, and are a greater crime against humanity and Christianity than all the heresies which they in vain tried to eradicate.

The Roman church has never repented of her complicity with these unchristian acts. On the contrary, she still holds the principle of persecution in connection with her doctrine that there is no salvation outside of her bosom. The papal Syllabus of 1864 expressly condemns, among the errors of modern times, the doctrine of religious toleration.54  Leo XIII., a great admirer of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885, "concerning the Christian constitution of states," wisely moderates, but reaffirms, in substance, the political principles of his predecessor.55  A revocation would be fatal to the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility. The practice of persecution is a question of power and expediency; and although isolated cases still occur from time to time,56 the revival of mediaeval intolerance is an impossibility, and would be condemned by intelligent and liberal Roman Catholics as a folly and a crime.

3. The Protestant theory and practice of persecution and toleration.

(a) The Lutheran Reformers and Churches.

Luther was the most advanced among the Reformers in the ideas of toleration and liberty. He clearly saw the far-reaching effect of his own protest against Rome, and during his storm- and pressure-period, from 1517 to 1521, he was a fearless champion of liberty. He has left some of the noblest utterances against coërcion in matters of conscience, which contain almost every essential feature of the modern theory on the subject. He draws a sharp line between the temporal power which is confined to the body and worldly goods, and the spiritual government which belongs to God. He says that "no one can command or ought to command the soul, except God, who alone can show it the way to heaven;" that "the thoughts and mind of man are known only to God;" that "it is futile and impossible to command, or by force to compel any man’s belief;" that "heresy is a spiritual thing which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown;" that "belief is a free thing which cannot be enforced."57  He opposed the doctrine of the Anabaptists with every argument at his command, but disapproved the cruel persecution to which they were subjected in Protestant as well as Catholic countries. "It is not right," he said in a book against them (1528), "and I deeply regret that such wretched people should be so miserably murdered, burned, and cruelly put to death; every one should be allowed to believe what he pleases. If he believes wrongly, he will have punishment enough in the eternal fire of hell. Why should they be tortured in this life also?"58  If heretics were to be punished by death, the hangman would be the best (the most orthodox) theologian. "I can in no way admit," he wrote to his friend Link in 1528, "that false teachers should be put to death: it is enough that they should be banished ."59

To this extent, then, he favored punishment of heretics, but no further. He wanted them to be silenced or banished by the government. He spent his violence in words, in which he far outstripped friends and foes, and spared neither papists, nor Zwinglians, nor Anabaptists, nor even temporal princes like Henry VIII., Duke George of Saxony, and Duke Henry of Brunswick.60  But his acts of intolerance are few. He refused the hand of fellowship to Zwingli, and would not have tolerated him at Wittenberg. He begged the elector, John, to prevent a certain Hans Mohr from spreading Zwinglian opinions in Coburg. He regretted the toleration of the Zwinglians in Switzerland after their defeat, which he uncharitably interpreted as a righteous judgment of God.61

A few words on his views concerning the toleration of the Jews who had to suffer every indignity from Christians, as if they were personally responsible for the crime of the crucifixion. Luther was at first in advance of public opinion. In 1523 he protested against the cruel treatment of the Jews, as if they were dogs, and not human beings, and counseled kindness and charity as the best means of converting them. If the apostles, he says, who were Jews, had dealt with the heathen, as we heathen Christians deal with the Jews, no heathen would ever have been converted, and I myself, if I were a Jew, would rather become anything else than a Christian.62  But in 1543 he wrote two violent books against the Jews.63  His intercourse with several Rabbis filled him with disgust and indignation against their pride, obstinacy and blasphemies. He came to the conclusion that it was useless to dispute with them and impossible to convert them. Moses could do nothing with Pharaoh by warnings, plagues and miracles, but had to let him drown in the Red Sea. The Jews would crucify their expected Messiah, if he ever should come, even worse than they crucified the Christian Messiah. They are a blind, hard, incorrigible race.64  He went so far as to advise their expulsion from Christian lands, the prohibition of their books, and the burning of their synagogues and even their houses in which they blaspheme our Saviour and the Holy Virgin. In the last of his sermons, preached shortly before his death at Eisleben, where many Jews were allowed to trade, he concluded with a severe warning against the Jews as dangerous public enemies who ought not to be tolerated, but left the alternative of conversion or expulsion.65

Melanchthon, the mildest of the Reformers, went—strange to say—a step further than Luther, not during his lifetime, but eight years after his death, and expressly sanctioned the execution of Servetus for blasphemy in the following astounding letter to Calvin, dated Oct. 14, 1554: "Reverend sir and dearest brother: I have read your work in which you have lucidly refuted the horrible blasphemies of Servetus, and I thank the Son of God, who has been the arbiter (brabeuthv") of this your contest. The church, both now and in all generations, owes and will owe you a debt of gratitude. I entirely assent to your judgment. (Tuo judicio prorsus adsentior.) And I say, too, that your magistrates did right in that, after solemn trial, they put the blasphemer (hominem blasphemum) to death."66  He expressed here his deliberate conviction to which he adhered. Three years later, in a warning against the errors of Theobald Thammer, he called the execution of Servetus "a pious and memorable example to all posterity."67  We cannot tell what Luther might have said in this case had he lived at that time. It is good for his reputation that he was spared the trial.68

The other Lutheran Reformers agreed essentially with the leaders. They conceded to the civil ruler the control over the religious as well as political opinions of their subjects. Martin Bucer went furthest in this direction and taught in his "Dialogues" (1535) the right and the duty of Christian magistrates to reform the church, to forbid and punish popish idolatry, and all false religions, according to the full rigor of the Mosaic law.69

In accordance with these views of the Lutheran Reformers the Roman Catholics in Lutheran countries were persecuted, not, indeed, by shedding their blood as the blood of Protestants was shed in Roman Catholic countries, but by the confiscation of their church property, the prohibition of their worship, and, if it seemed necessary, by exile. In the reorganization of the church in Electoral Saxony in 1528, under the direction of the Wittenberg Reformers, the popish priests were deprived of their benefices, and even obstinate laymen were forced to sell their property and to leave their country. "For," said the Elector, "although it is not our intention to bind any one to what he is to believe and hold, yet will we, for the prevention of mischievous tumult and other inconveniences, suffer neither sect nor separation in our territory."70

The Protestant dissenters fared no better in Lutheran Saxony. The Philippists (Melanchthonians) or Crypto-Calvinists were outlawed, and all clergymen, professors and school teachers who would not subscribe the Formula of Concord, were deposed (1580). Dr. Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon’s son-in-law, professor of medicine at Wittenberg and physician to the Elector Augustus of Saxony, was imprisoned for ten years (1576–1586) for no other crime than "Philippism" (i.e. Melanchthonianism), and Nicolas Crell, the chancellor of Saxony, was, after ten years’ confinement, beheaded at Dresden for favoring Crypto-Calvinism at home and supporting the Huguenots abroad, which was construed as high treason (1601).71  Since that time the name of Calvin was as much hated in Saxony as the name of the Pope and the Turk.72

In other Lutheran countries, Zwinglians and Calvinists fared no better. John a Lasco, the Reformer of Poland and minister of a Protestant congregation in London, when fleeing with his followers, including many women and children, from the persecution of the bloody Mary, was not allowed a resting place at Copenhagen, or Rostock, or Lübeck, or Hamburg, because he could not accept the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence, and the poor fugitives were driven from port to port in cold winter, till at last they found a temporary home at Emden (1553).73

In Scandinavia every religion except the Lutheran was forbidden on pain of confiscation and exile, and these laws were in force till the middle of the nineteenth century. Queen Christina lost her Swedish crown by her apostasy from Lutheranism, which her father had so heroically defended in the Thirty Years’ War.

(b) The Swiss Reformers, though republicans, were not behind the Germans in intolerance against Romanists and heretics.

Zwingli extended the hand of brotherhood to Luther, and hoped to meet even the nobler heathen in heaven, but had no mercy on the Anabaptists, who threatened to overthrow his work in Zürich. After trying in vain to convince them by successive disputations, the magistrate under his control resorted to the Cruel irony of drowning their leaders (six in all) in the Limmat near the lake of Zürich (between 1527 and 1532).74

Zwingli counselled, at the risk of his own life, the forcible introduction of the Reformed religion into the territory of the Catholic Forest Cantons (1531); forgetting the warning of Christ to Peter, that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword.75

Calvin has the misfortune rather than the guilt of pre-eminence for intolerance among the Reformers. He and Servetus are the best abused men of the sixteenth century; and the depreciation of the good name of the one and the exculpation of the bad name of the other have been carried far beyond the limits of historic truth and justice. Both must be judged from the standpoint of the sixteenth, not of the nineteenth, century.

The fatal encounter of the champion of orthodoxy and the champion of heresy, men of equal age, rare genius, and fervent zeal for the restoration of Christianity, but direct antipodes in doctrine, spirit and aim, forms the most thrilling tragedy in the history of the Reformation. The contrast between the two is almost as great as that between Simon Peter and Simon Magus.76  Their contest will never lose its interest. The fires of the funeral pile which were kindled at Champel on the 27th of October, 1553, are still burning and cast their lurid sparks into the nineteenth century.

Leaving the historical details and the doctrinal aspect for another chapter,77  we confine ourselves here to the bearing of the case on the question of toleration.

Impartial history must condemn alike the intolerance of the victor and the error of the victim, but honor in both the strength of conviction. Calvin should have contented himself with banishing his fugitive rival from the territory of Geneva, or allowing him quietly to proceed on his contemplated journey to Italy, where he might have resumed his practice of medicine in which he excelled. But he sacrificed his future reputation to a mistaken sense of duty to the truth and the cause of the Reformation in Switzerland and his beloved France, where his followers were denounced and persecuted as heretics. He is responsible, on his own frank confession, for the arrest and trial of Servetus, and he fully assented to his condemnation and death "for heresy and blasphemy," except that he counselled the magistrate, though in vain, to mitigate the legal penalty by substituting the sword for the fire.78

But the punishment was in accordance with the mediaeval laws and wellnigh universal sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Christendom; it was unconditionally counselled by four Swiss magistrates which had been consulted before the execution (Zurich, Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen), and was expressly approved by all the surviving reformers: Bullinger, Farel, Beza, Peter Martyr, and (as we have already seen) even by the mild and gentle Melanchthon. And strange to say, Servetus himself held, in part at least, the theory under which he suffered: for he admitted that incorrigible obstinacy and malice deserved death,79  referring to the case of Ananias and Sapphira; while schism and heresy should be punished only by excommunication and exile.

Nor should we overlook the peculiar aggravation of the case. We may now put a more favorable construction on Servetus’ mystic and pantheistic or panchristic Unitarianism than his contemporaries, who seemed to have misunderstood him, friends as well as foes; but he was certainly a furious fanatic and radical heretic, and in the opinion of all the churches of his age a reckless blasphemer, aiming at the destruction of historic Christianity. He was thus judged from his first book (1531),80 as well as his last (1553),81 and escaped earlier death only by concealment, practicing medicine under a fictitious name and the protection of a Catholic archbishop. He had abused all trinitarian Christians, as tritheists and atheists; he had denounced the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as a dream of St. Augustin, a fiction of popery, an invention of the devil, and a three-headed Cerberus.82  He had attacked with equal fury infant-baptism, as a detestable abomination, a killing of the Holy Spirit, an abolition of regeneration, and overthrow of the entire kingdom of Christ, and pronounced a woe on all baptizers of infancy who close the kingdom of heaven against mankind. He had been previously condemned to the stake by the Roman Catholic tribunal of the inquisition, after a regular trial, in the archiepiscopal city of Vienne in France, partly on the ground of his letters to Calvin procured from Geneva, and burned in effigy with his last book after his escape. He then rushed blindly into the hands of Calvin, whom he denounced, during the trial, as a liar, a hypocrite, and a Simon Magus, with a view, apparently, to overthrow his power, in league with his enemies, the party of the Libertines, which had then the majority in the council of Geneva.83

Considering all these circumstances Calvin’s conduct is not only explained, but even justified in part. He acted in harmony with the public law and orthodox sentiment of his age, and should therefore not be condemned more than his contemporaries, who would have done the same in his position.84

But all the humane sentiments are shocked again by the atrocity, of the execution; while sympathy is roused for the unfortunate sufferer who died true to his conviction, reconciled to his enemies, and with the repeated prayer in the midst of the flames: "Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me!"

The enemies of Calvin raised, in anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets, a loud protest against the new tribunal of popery and inquisition in Geneva, which had boasted to be an asylum of all the persecuted. The execution of Servetus was condemned by his anti-trinitarian sympathizers, especially the Italian refugees in Switzerland, and also by some orthodox Christians in Basel and elsewhere, who feared that it would afford a powerful argument to the Romanists for their persecution of Protestants.

Calvin felt it necessary, therefore, to come out with a public defense of the death-penalty for heresy, in the spring of 1554.85  He appealed to the Mosaic law against idolatry and blasphemy, to the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple-court (Matt. 21:12), and he tries to refute the arguments for toleration which were derived from the wise counsel of Gamaliel (Acts 5:34), the parable of the tares among the wheat (Matt. 13:29), and Christ’s rebuke of Peter for drawing the sword (Matt. 26:52). The last argument he disposes of by making a distinction between private vengeance and public punishment.

Beza also defended, with his usual ability, in a special treatise, the punishment of heretics, chiefly as a measure of self-defense of the state which had a right to give laws and a duty to protect religion. He derived the doctrine of toleration from scepticism and infidelity and called it a diabolical dogma.86

The burning of the body of Servetus did not destroy his soul. His blood was the fruitful seed of the doctrine of toleration and the Unitarian heresy, which assumed an organized form in the Socinian sect, and afterward spread in many orthodox churches, including Geneva.

Fortunately the tragedy of 1553 was the last spectacle of burning a heretic in Switzerland, though several years later the Anti-trinitarian, Valentine Gentile, was beheaded in Berne (1566).

(c) In France the Reformed church, being in the minority, was violently and systematically persecuted by the civil rulers in league with the Roman church, and it is well for her that she never had a chance to retaliate. She is emphatically a church of martyrs.

(d) The Reformed church in Holland, after passing through terrible trials and persecutions under Spanish rule, showed its intolerance toward the Protestant Arminians who were defeated by the Synod of Dort (1619). Their pastors and teachers were deposed and banished. The Arminian controversy was, however, mixed up with politics; the Calvinists were the national and popular party under the military lead of Prince Maurice; while the political leaders of Arminianism, John Van Olden Barneveldt and Hugo Grotius, were suspected of disloyalty for concluding a truce with Spain (1609), and condemned, the one to death, the other to perpetual banishment. With a change of administration the Arminians were allowed to return (1625), and disseminated, with a liberal theology, principles of religious toleration.

§ 12. Religious Intolerance and Liberty in England and America.

The history of the Reformation in England and Scotland is even more disfigured by acts of intolerance and persecution than that of the Continent, but resulted at last in greater gain for religious freedom. The modern ideas of well regulated, constitutional liberty, both civil and religious, have grown chiefly on English soil.

At first it was a battle between persecution and mere toleration, but toleration once legally secured prepared the way for full religious liberty.

All parties when persecuted, advocated liberty of conscience, and all parties when in power, exercised intolerance, but in different degrees. The Episcopalians before 1689 were less intolerant than the Romanists under Queen Mary; the Presbyterians before 1660 were less intolerant than the Episcopalians; the Independents less intolerant (in England) than the Presbyterians (but more intolerant in New England); the Baptists, Quakers, Socinians and Unitarians consistently taught freedom of conscience, and were never tempted to exercise intolerance. Finally all became tolerant in consequence of a legal settlement in 1689, but even that was restricted by disabling clauses. The Romanists used fire and sword; the Episcopalians fines, prisons, pillories, nose-slittings, ear-croppings, and cheek-burnings; the Presbyterians tried depositions and disabilities; the Independents in New England exiled Roger Williams, the Baptist (1636), and hanged four Quakers (two men and two women, 1659, 1660 and 1661) in Boston, and nineteen witches in Salem (1692). But all these measures of repression proved as many failures and made persecution more hateful and at last impossible.

1. The first act of the English Reformation, under Henry VIII., was simply the substitution of a domestic for a foreign popery and tyranny; and it was a change for the worse. No one was safe who dared to dissent from the creed of the despotic monarch who proclaimed himself "the supreme head of the Church of England." At his death (1547), the six bloody articles were still in force; but they contained some of the chief dogmas of Romanism which he held in spite of his revolt against the pope.

2. Under the brief reign of Edward VI. (1547–1553), the Reformation made decided progress, but Anabaptists were not tolerated; two of them, who held some curious views on the incarnation, were burnt as obstinate heretics, Joan Bocher, commonly called Joan of Kent, May 2, 1550, and George Van Pare, a Dutchman April 6, 1551. The. young king refused at first to sign the death-warrant of the woman, correctly thinking that the sentence was "a piece of cruelty too like that which they had condemned in papists;" at last he yielded to Cranmer’s authority, who argued with him from the law of Moses against blasphemy, but he put his hand to the warrant with tears in his eyes and charged the archbishop with the responsibility for the act if it should be wrong.

3. The reign of the bloody Queen Mary (1553–1558) was a fearful retaliation, but sealed the doom of popery by the blood of Protestant martyrs, including the Reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, who were burnt in the market place at Oxford.

4. Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), by virtue of her office, as "Defender of the Faith, and supreme governor of the Church" in her dominions, permanently established the Reformed religion, but to the exclusion of all dissent. Her penal code may have been a political necessity, as a protection against domestic treason and foreign invasion, but it aimed systematically at the annihilation of both Popery and Puritanism. It acted most severely upon Roman Catholic priests, who could only save their lives by concealment or exile. Conformity to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer was rigidly enforced; attendance upon the Episcopal service was commanded, while the mass and every other kind of public worship were forbidden under severe penalties. The rack in the tower was freely employed against noblemen suspected of disloyalty to the queen-pope. The statute de haereticis comburendis from the reign of Henry IV. (1401) remained in force, and two Anabaptists were burnt alive under Elizabeth, and two Arians under her successor. The statute was not formally abolished till 1677. Ireland was treated ecclesiastically as well as politically as a conquered province, and England is still suffering from that cruel polity, which nursed a hereditary hatred of the Catholic people against their Protestant rulers, and made the removal of the Irish grievances the most difficult problem of English statesmanship.

Popery disappeared for a while from British soil, and the Spanish Armada was utterly defeated. But Puritanism, which fought in the front rank against the big pope at Rome, could not be defeated by the little popes at home. It broke out at last in open revolt against the tyranny of the Stuarts, and the cruelties of the Star Chamber and High-Commission Court, which were not far behind the Spanish Inquisition, and punished freedom of speech and of the press as a crime against society.

5. Puritanism ruled England for about twenty years (1640 to 1660), which form the most intensely earnest and excited period in her history. It saved the rights of the people against the oppression of their rulers, but it punished intolerance with intolerance, and fell into the opposite error of enforcing Puritan, in the place of Episcopal, uniformity, though with far less severity. The Long Parliament abolished the Episcopal hierarchy and liturgy (Sept. 10, 1642), expelled about two thousand royalist clergymen from their benefices, and executed on the block Archbishop Laud (1644) and King Charles I. (1649), as traitors; thus crowning them with the glory of martyrdom and preparing the way for the Restoration. Episcopalians now became champions of toleration, and Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of the English pulpit, raised his eloquent voice for the Liberty of Prophesying (1647), which, however, he afterward recalled in part when he was made a bishop by Charles II. (1661).87

The Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643–1652), which numbered one hundred and twenty-one divines and several lay-deputies and is one of the most important ecclesiastical meetings ever held, was intrusted by Parliament with the impossible task of framing a uniform creed, discipline and ritual for three kingdoms. The extraordinary religious commotion of the times gave rise to all sorts of religious opinions from the most rigid orthodoxy to deism and atheism, and called forth a lively pamphlet war on the subject of toleration, which became an apple of discord in the Assembly. Thomas Edwards, in his Gangraena (1645), enumerated, with uncritical exaggeration, no less than sixteen sects and one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous "errors, heresies and blasphemies," exclusive of popery and deism.88

There were three theories on toleration, which may be best stated in the words of George Gillespie, one of the Scottish commissioners of the Assembly.89

(a) The theory of the "Papists who hold it to be not only no sin, but good service to God to extirpate by fire and sword all that are adversaries to, or opposers of, the Church and Catholic religion." Under this theory John Hus and Jerome of Prague were burnt at the Council of Constance. Gillespie calls it., in the Preface, "the black devil of idolatry and tyranny."

(b) "The second opinion doth fall short as far as the former doth exceed: that is, that the magistrate ought not to inflict any punishment, nor put forth any coërcive power upon heretics and sectaries, but on the contrary grant them liberty and toleration." This theory is called "the white devil of heresy and schism," and ascribed to the Donatists (?), Socinians, Arminians and Independents. But the chief advocate was Roger Williams, the Baptist, who became the founder of Rhode Island.90  He went to the root of the question, and demanded complete separation of politics from religion. Long before him, the Puritan Bishop Hooper, and Robert Browne, the renegade founder of Congregationalism had taught the primitive Christian principle that the magistrates had no authority over the church and the conscience, but only over civil matters. Luther expressed the same view in 1523.91

(c) "The third opinion is that the magistrate may and ought to exercise his coërcive power in suppressing and punishing heretics and sectaries less or more, according as the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others may require." For this theory Gillespie quotes Moses, St. Augustin, Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, Voëtius, John Gerhard, and other Calvinistic and Lutheran divines. It was held by the Presbyterians in England and Scotland, including the Scottish commissioners in the Assembly, and vigorously advocated by Dr. Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Divinity in St. Andrews,92 and most zealously by Thomas Edwards, a Presbyterian minister in London.93  It had a strong basis in the national endorsement of the Solemn League and Covenant, and triumphed in the Westminster Assembly. It may therefore be called the Presbyterian theory of the seventeenth century. But it was never put into practice by Presbyterians, at least not to the extent of physical violence, against heretics and schismatics either in England or Scotland.94

The Westminster Confession of Faith, in its original shape, declares, on the one hand, the great principle of religious liberty, that "God alone is Lord of the conscience," but also, on the other hand, that dangerous heretics "may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the church, and by the power of the civil magistrate."95  And it assigns to the civil magistrate the power and duty to preserve "unity and peace in the church," to suppress "all blasphemies and heresies," to prevent or reform "all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline," and for this purpose "to call synods and be present at them."96

6. The five Independent members of the Assembly under the lead of Dr. Goodwin protested against the power given to the civil magistrate and to synods.97  The obnoxious clauses of the Confession were therefore omitted or changed in the Congregational recension called "the Savoy Declaration" (1658).98

But the toleration of the Independents, especially after they obtained the ascendancy under Cromwell’s protectorate differed very little from that of the Presbyterians. They were spoiled by success.99  They excluded from their program Popery, Prelacy, and Socinianism. Dr. Owen, their most distinguished divine, who preached by command a sermon before Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles I., entitled "Righteous Zeal encouraged by Divine Protection" (Jer. 15:19, 20), and accepted the appointment as Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of the University at Oxford, laid down no less than sixteen fundamentals as conditions of toleration.100  He and Dr. Goodwin served on the Commission of the forty-three Triers which, under Cromwell’s protectorate, took the place of the Westminster Assembly. Cromwell himself, though the most liberal among the English rulers and the boldest protector of Protestantism abroad, limited toleration to Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, all of whom recognized the sacred Scriptures and the fundamental articles of Christianity; but he had no toleration for Romanists and Episcopal Royalists, who endangered his reign and who were suspected of tolerating none but themselves. His great foreign secretary, John Milton, the most eloquent advocate of liberty in the English language, defended the execution of the king, and was intolerant to popery and prelacy.

Had Cromwell reigned longer, the Triers and the Savoy Conference which he reluctantly appointed, would probably have repeated the vain attempt of the Westminster Assembly to impose a uniform creed upon the nation, only with a little more liberal "accommodation" for orthodox dissenters except "papists" and "prelatists"). Their brethren in New England where they had full sway, established a Congregational theocracy which had no room even for Baptists and Quakers.

7. Cromwell’s reign was a brief experiment. His son was incompetent to continue it. Puritanism had not won the heart of England, but prepared its own tomb by its excesses and blunders. Royalty and Episcopacy, which struck their roots deep in the past, were restored with the powerful aid of the Presbyterians. And now followed a reaction in favor of political and ecclesiastical despotism, and public and private immorality, which for a time ruined all the good which Puritanism had done.

Charles II., who "never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one," broke his solemn pledges and took the lead in intolerance and licentiousness. The Act of Uniformity was re-enacted May 19, 1662, and went into operation on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1662, made hideous by the St. Bartholomew Massacre, nearly a hundred years before. "And now came in," says Baxter, one of the most moderate as well as most learned and pious of the Nonconformists, "the great inundation of calamities, which in many streams overwhelmed thousands of godly Christians, together with their pastors." All Puritan ministers were expelled from their livings and exposed to starvation, their assemblies forbidden, and absolute obedience to the king and conformity to episcopacy were enforced, even in Scotland. The faithful Presbyterians in that country (the Covenanters) were subjected by the royal dragonnades to all manner of indignities and atrocities. "They were hunted"—says an English historian101 — like criminals over the mountains; their ears were torn from their roots; they were branded with hot irons; their fingers were wrenched asunder by the thumbkins; the bones of their legs were shattered in the boots; women were scourged publicly through the streets; multitudes were transported to the Barbadoes; an infuriated soldiery was let loose upon them, and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in torturing them."

The period of the Restoration is, perhaps, the most immoral and disgraceful in English history. But it led at last to the final overthrow of the treacherous and semi-popish dynasty of the Stuarts, and inaugurated a new era in the history of religious liberty. Puritanism was not dead, but produced some of its best and most lasting works—Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—in this period of its deepest humiliation and suffering.

8. The act of Toleration under the reign of William and Mary, 1689, made an end to violent persecutions in England. And yet it is far from what we now understand by religious liberty. Toleration is negative, liberty positive; toleration is a favor, liberty a right; toleration may be withdrawn by the power which grants it, liberty is as inalienable as conscience itself; toleration is extended to what cannot be helped and what may be in itself objectionable, liberty is a priceless gift of the Creator.

The Toleration of 1689 was an accommodation to a limited number of Dissenters—Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, who were allowed liberty of separate organization and public worship on condition of subscribing thirty-six out of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Roman Catholics and Unitarians were excluded, and did not acquire toleration in England till the nineteenth century, the former by the Act of Emancipation passed April 13, 1829. Even now the Dissenters in England labor under minor disabilities and social disadvantages, which will continue as long as the government patronizes an established church. They have to support the establishment, in addition to their own denomination. Practically, however, there is more religious liberty in England than anywhere on the Continent, and as much as in the United States.

9. The last and most important step in the progress of religious liberty was taken by the United States of America in the provision of the Federal Constitution of 1787, which excludes all religious tests from the qualifications to any office or public trust. The first amendment to the Constitution (1789) enacts that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."102

Thus the United States government is by its own free act prevented from ever establishing a state-church, and on the other hand it is bound to protect freedom of religion, not only as a matter of opinion, but also in its public exercise, as one of the inalienable rights of an American citizen, like the freedom of speech and of the press. History had taught the framers of the Constitution that persecution is useless as well as hateful, and that it has its root in the unholy alliance of religion with politics. Providence had made America a hospitable home for all fugitives from persecution,—Puritans, Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Quakers, Reformed, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, etc.—and foreordained it for the largest development of civil and religious freedom consistent with order and the well-being of society. When the colonies, after a successful struggle for independence, coalesced into one nation they could not grant liberty to one church or sect without granting it to all. They were thus naturally driven to this result. It was the inevitable destiny of America. And it involved no injustice or injury to any church or sect.

The modern German empire forms in some measure a parallel. When it was formed in 1870 by the free action of the twenty or more German sovereignties, it had to take them in with their religion, and abstain from all religious and ecclesiastical legislation which might interfere with the religion of any separate state.

The constitutional provision of the United States in regard to religion is the last outcome of the Reformation in its effect upon toleration and freedom, not foreseen or dreamed of by the Reformers, but inevitably resulting from their revolt against papal tyranny. It has grown on Protestant soil with the hearty support of all sects and parties. It cuts the chief root of papal and any other persecution, and makes it legally impossible. It separates church and state, and thus prevents the civil punishment of heresy as a crime against the state. It renders to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and renders to God the things that are God’s. It marks a new epoch in the history of legislation and civilization. It is the American contribution to church history. No part of the federal constitution is so generally accepted and so heartily approved as that which guarantees religious liberty, the most sacred and most important of all liberties. It is regarded almost as an axiom which needs no argument.

Religious liberty has thus far been fully justified by its effects. It has stimulated the fullest development of the voluntary principle. The various Christian churches can live in peace and harmony together, and are fully able to support and to govern themselves without the aid of the secular power. This has been proven by the experience of a century, and this experience is the strongest argument in favor of the separation of church and state. Christianity flourishes best without a state-church.

The separation, however, is peaceful, not hostile, as it was in the Ante-Nicene age, when the pagan state persecuted the church. Nor is it a separation of the nation from Christianity. The government is bound to protect all forms of Christianity with its day of rest, its churches, its educational and charitable institutions.103  Even irreligion and infidelity are tolerated within the limits of the law of self-preservation. Religious liberty may, of course, be abused like any other liberty. It has its necessary boundary in the liberty of others and the essential interests of society. The United States government would not tolerate, much less protect, a religion which requires human sacrifices, or sanctions licentious rites, or polygamy, or any other institution inconsistent with the laws and customs of the land, and subversive of the foundation of the state and the order of Christian civilization. Hence the recent prohibition of polygamy in the Territories, and the unwillingness of Congress to admit Utah into the family of States unless polygamy is abolished by the Mormons. The majority of the population decides the religion of a country, and, judged by this test, the American people are as Christian as any other on earth, only in a broader sense which recognizes all forms of Christianity. While Jews and infidels are not excluded from the enjoyment of any civil or political right on account of their religion or irreligion, they cannot alter the essentially Christian character of the sentiments, habits and institutions of the nation.

There are three important institutions in which church and state touch each other even in the United States, and where a collision of interests may take place: education in the public schools, marriage, and Sunday as a day of civil and sacred rest. The Roman Catholics are opposed to public schools unless they can teach in them their religion which allows no compromise with any other; the Mormons are opposed to monogamy, which is the law of the land and the basis of the Christian family; the Jews may demand the protection of their Sabbath on Saturday, while infidels want no Sabbath at all except perhaps for amusement and dissipation. But all these questions admit of a peaceful settlement and equitable adjustment, without a relapse into the barbarous measures of persecution.

The law of the United States is supreme in the Territories and the District of Columbia, but does not forbid any of the States to establish a particular church, or to continue a previous establishment. The Colonies began with the European system of state-churchism, only in a milder form, and varying according to the preferences of the first settlers. In the New England Colonies—except Rhode Island founded by the Baptist Roger Williams—orthodox Congregationalism was the established church which all citizens were required to support; in Virginia and the Southern States, as also in New York, the Episcopal Church was legally established and supported by the government.104  Even those Colonies which were professedly founded on the basis of religious toleration, as Maryland and Pennsylvania, enacted afterwards disabling clauses against Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Jews and infidels. In Pennsylvania, the Quaker Colony of William Penn, no one could hold office, from 1693 to 1775, without subscribing a solemn declaration of belief in the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity and condemning the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the mass as idolatrous.105

The great revolution of legislation began in the Colony of Virginia in 1776, when Episcopacy was disestablished, and all other churches freed from their disabilities.106  The change was brought about by the combined efforts of Thomas Jefferson (the leading statesman of Virginia, and a firm believer in absolute religious freedom on the ground of philosophic neutrality), and of all dissenting denominations, especially the Presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers. The other Colonies or States gradually followed the example, and now there is no State in which religious freedom is not fully recognized and protected.

The example of the United States exerts a silent, but steady and mighty influence upon Europe in raising the idea of mere toleration to the higher plane of freedom, in emancipating religion from the control of civil government, and in proving the advantages of the primitive practice of ecclesiastical self-support and self-government.

The best legal remedy against persecution and the best guarantee of religious freedom is a peaceful separation of church and state; the best moral remedy and guarantee is a liberal culture, a comprehensive view of the many-sidedness of truth, a profound regard for the sacredness of conscientious conviction, and a broad and deep Christian love as described by the Apostle Paul.

§ 13. Chronological Limits.

The Reformation period begins with Luther’s Theses, A.D. 1517, and ends with the Peace of Westphalia, A.D. 1648. The last event brought to a close the terrible Thirty Years’ War and secured a legal existence to the Protestant faith (the Lutheran and Reformed Confession) throughout Germany.

The year 1648 marks also an important epoch in the history of English and Scotch Protestantism, namely, the ratification by the Long Parliament of the doctrinal standards of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643 to 1652), which are still in use among the Presbyterian Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States.

Within this period of one hundred and thirty-one years there are several minor epochs, and the dates vary in different countries.

The German Reformation, which is essentially Lutheran, divides itself naturally into four sub-periods:1. From 1517 to the Augsburg Diet and Augsburg Confession, 1530. 2. From 1530 to the so-called "Peace of Augsburg," 1555. 3. From 1555 to the "Formula of Concord," 1577, which completed the Lutheran system of doctrine, or 1580 (when the "Book of Concord" was published and enforced). 4. From 1580 to the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War, 1648.

The Scandinavian Reformation followed closely in the path of the Lutheran Reformation of Germany, and extends, likewise, to the Thirty Years’ War, in which Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, took a leading part as defender of Protestantism. The Reformation triumphed in Sweden in 1527, in Denmark and Norway in 1537.

The Swiss Reformation was begun by Zwingli and completed by Calvin, and is accordingly divided into two acts: 1. The Reformation of German Switzerland to the death of Zwingli, 1517 to 1531. 2. The Reformation of French Switzerland to the death of Calvin, 1564, or we may say, to the death of Beza, 1605.

The introduction of the Reformed church into Germany, especially the Palatinate, falls within the second period.

In the stormy history of French Protestantism, the years 1559, 1598 and 1685, mark as many epochs. In 1559, the first national synod was held in Paris and gave the Reformed congregations a compact organization by the adoption of the Gallican Confession and the Presbyterian form of government. In 1598, the Reformed church secured a legal existence and a limited measure of freedom by the edict of Nantes, which King Henry IV. gave to his former fellow-religionists. But his bigoted grandson, Louis XIV., revoked the edict in 1685. Since that time the French Reformed church continued like a burning bush in the desert; while thousands of her sons reluctantly left their native land, and contributed, by their skill, industry and piety, to the prosperity of Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England, and North America.

The Reformation in Holland includes the heroic war of emancipation from the Spanish yoke and passed through the bloody bath of martyrdom, until after unspeakable sufferings under Charles V. and Philip II., the Utrecht Union of the seven Northern Provinces (formed in 1579), was reluctantly acknowledged by Spain in 1609. Then followed the internal theological war between Arminianism and Calvinism, which ended in the victory of the latter at the National Synod of Dort, 1619.

The progressive stages of the English Reformation, which followed a course of its own, were influenced by the changing policy of the rulers, and are marked by the reigns of Henry VIII., 1527–1547; of Edward VI., 1547–1553; the papal reaction and period of Protestant martyrdom under Queen Mary, 1553–1558; the re-establishment of Protestantism under Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1603. Then began the second Reformation, which was carried on by the people against their rulers. It was the struggle between Puritanism and the semi-popery of the Stuart dynasty. Puritanism achieved a temporary triumph, deposed and executed Charles I. and Archbishop Laud; but Puritanism as a national political power died with Cromwell, and in 1660 Episcopacy and the Prayer Book were restored under Charles II., till another revolution under William and Mary in 1688 made an end to the treacherous rule of the Stuarts and gave toleration to the Dissenters, who hereafter organized themselves in separate denominations, and represent the left wing of English Protestantism.

The Reformation in Scotland, under the lead of John Knox (1505–1572), the Luther of the North, completed its first act in 1567 with the legal recognition and establishment by the Scotch Parliament. The second act was a struggle with the papal reaction under Queen Mary of Scots, till 1590. The third act may be called the period of anti-Prelacy and union with English Puritanism, and ended in the final triumph of Presbyterianism in 1690. Since that time, the question of patronage and the relation of church and state have been the chief topics of agitation and irritation in the Church of Scotland and gave rise to a number of secessions; while the Westminster standards of faith and discipline have not undergone any essential alteration.

The Reformed faith secured a partial success and toleration in Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia and Moravia, but suffered severely by the Jesuitical reaction, especially in Bohemia. In Italy and Spain the Reformation was completely suppressed; and it is only since the overthrow of the temporal rule of the Pope in 1871, that Protestants are allowed to hold public worship in Rome and to build churches or chapels.

§ 14. General Literature on the Reformation.

SOURCES.

I. On The Protestant Side: (1) The works of the Reformers, especially Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox. They will be quoted in the chapters relating to their history.

(2) Contemporary Historians: Joh. Sleidan (Prof. of law in Strassburg, d. 1556): De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae Carolo V. Caesare commentarii. Libri XXVI. Argentor. 1555 fol., best ed. by Am Ende, Francof. ad M. 1785–86, 3 vols. Engl. transl. by Bohun, London, 1689, 3 vols. fol. French transl. with the notes of Le Courayer, 1767. Embraces the German and Swiss Reformation.

The Annales Reformationis of Spalatin, and the Historia Reformationis of Fr. Myconius, refer only to the Lutheran Reformation. So, also, Löscher’s valuable collection of documents, 3 vols. See below § 15.

II. Roman Catholic: (1) Official documents. Leonis X. P. M. Regesta, ed. by Cardinal Hergenröther under the auspices of Pope Leo XIII., from the Vatican archives. Freiburg i. B. 1884 sqq., 12 fascic. The first three parts contain 384 pages to A.D. 1514.—Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae ex tabulariis secretioribus S. Sedis, 1521–’25, ed. by Petrus Balan, Ratisbonae, 1884 (589 pages). Contains the acts relating to the Diet of Worms, with the reports of Aleander, the papal legate, and the letters of Clement VII. from 1523–’25. It includes a document of 1513, heretofore unknown, which disproves the illegitimate birth of Clement VII. and represents him as the son of Giuliano de Medici and his wife, Florets. Monumenta Saeculi XVI. Historiam illustrantia, ed. by Balan, vol. I. Oeniponte, 1885 (489 pages).

(2) Controversial writings: Joh. Eck (d. 1563): Contra Ludderum, 1530. 2 Parts fol. Polemical treatises on the Primacy, Penance, the Mass, Purgatory etc. Jo. Cochlaeus (canon of Breslau, d. 1552): Commentaria de Actis et Scriptis Lutheri ab Anno Dom. 1517 ad A. 1547 fideliter conscripta. Mogunt. 1549 fol.; Par. 1565; Colon. 1568.—Laur. Surius (a learned Carthusian, d. at Cologne, 1578): Commentarius rerum in orbe gestarum ab a. 1500–1564. Colon. 1567. Against Sleidan.

Historical Representations.

I. Protestant Works.

(1) The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Schröckh (Kirchengesch. seit der Reformation, Leipzig, 1804–’12, 10 vols.), Mosheim, Gieseler (Bd. III. Abth. I. and II., 1840 and 1852; Engl. transl. N. Y. vols. IV. and V., 1862 and 1880), Baur (Bd. IV. 1863), Hagenbach (vol. III., also separately publ. 4th ed. 1870; Engl. transl. by Miss Eveline Moore, Edinburgh, 1878, 2 vols.; especially good on the Zwinglian Reformation). More briefly treated in the compends of Guericke, Neidner, Hase (11th ed. 1886), Ebrard, Herzog (vol. IIIrd), Kurtz (10th ed. 887, vol. IInd).

All these works pay special attention to the Continental Reformation, but very little to that of England and Scotland.

Neander comes down only to 1430; his lectures on modern church history (which I heard in 1840) were never published. Gieseler’s work is most valuable for its literature down to 1852, and extracts from the sources, but needs an entire reconstruction, which is contemplated by Prof. Brieger at Leipzig.

(2) Jean Henri Merle d’aubigne (usually miscalled D’Aubigné, which is simply an addition indicating the place of his ancestors, d. 1872): Histoire de la reformation du 16. siècle, Paris, 1835–’53, 5 vols., 4th ed. 1861 sqq.; and Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps du Calvin, Par., 1863–’78, 8 vols. (including a posthumous vol.). Also in German by Runkel (Stuttgart, 1848 sqq.), and especially in English (in several editions, some of them mutilated). Best Engl. ed. by Longman, Green & Co., London, 1865 sqq.; best Am. ed. by Carter, New York, 1870–’79, the first work in 5, the second in 8 vols. Merle’s History, owing to its evangelical fervor, intense Protestantism and dramatic eloquence, has had an enormous circulation in England and America through means of the Tract Societies and private publishers.

H. Stebbing: History of the Reformation, London, 1836, 2 vols.

G. Waddington (Anglican, d. 1869): A History of the Reformation on the Continent. London, 1841, 3 vols. (Only to the death of Luther, 1546.)

F. A. Holzhauzen: Der Protestantismus nach seiner geschichtl. Entstehung, Begründung und Fortbildung. Leipzig, 1846–’59, 3 vols. Comes down to the Westphalian Treaty. The author expresses his standpoint thus (III. XV.): "Die christliche Kirche ist ihrer Natur nach wesentlich Eine, und der kirchliche Auflösungs-process, welcher durch die Reformation herbeigeführt worden ist, kann keinen anderen Zweck haben, als ein neues höhes positives Kirchenthum herzustellen."

B. Ter Haar (of Utrecht) Die Reformationsgeschichte in Schilderungen. Transl. from the Dutch by C. Gross. Gotha, 5th ed. 1856, 2 vols.

Dan. Schenkel (d. 1885): Die Refomatoren und die Reformation. Wiesbaden. 1856. Das Wesen des Protestantismus aus den Quellen des Ref. zeitalters. Schaffhausen, 1862, 3 vols.

Charles Hardwick: (Anglican, d. 1859): A History of the Christian Church during the Reformation. Cambridge and London, 1856. Third ed. revised by W. Stubbs (bishop of Chester), 1873.

J. Tulloch: (Scotch Presbyt., d. 1886): Leaders of the Reformation: Luther, Calvin, Latimer, Knox. Edinb., 1859; 3d ed. 1883.

L. Häusser (d. 1867): Geschichte des Zeitalters der Reformation, 1517–1648. ed. by Oncken, Berlin, 1868 (867 pages). Abridged EngI. transl. by Mrs. Sturge, N. Y., 1874.

E. L. Th. Henke (d. 1872): Neuere Kirgesch. ed. by Dr. Gass, Halle, 1874, 2 vols. The first vol. treats of the Reformation.

Fr. Seebohm: The Era of the Protestant Revolution. London and N. York, 1874.

J. A. Wylie: History of Protestantism. London, 1875–77, 3 vols.

George P. Fisher (Prof. of Church History in Yale College): The Reformation. New York, 1873. A comprehensive work, clear, calm, judicial, with a useful bibliographical Appendix (p. 567–591).

J. M. Lindsay (Presbyt.): The Reformation. Edinb., 1882. (A mere sketch.)

Charles Beard (Unitarian): The Reformation in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures. London, 1883; 2d ed., 1885. Very able. German translation by F. Halverscheid. Berlin, 1884.

John F. Hurst (Method. Bishop): Short History of the Reformation. New York, 1884 (125 pages).

Ludwig Keller: Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien. Leipz., 1885 (516 pages). In sympathy with the Waldenses and Anabaptists.

Two series of biographies of the Reformers, by a number of German scholars the Lutheran series in 8 vols., Elberfeld, 1861–’75, and the Reformed (Calvinistic) series in 10 vols., Elberfeld, 1857–’63. The Lutheran series was introduced by Nitzsch, the Reformed by Hagenbach. The several biographies will be mentioned in the proper places.

(3) For the general history of the world and the church during and after the period of the Reformation, the works of Leopold von Ranke (d. 1886) are of great importance, namely: Fürsten und Völker von Südeuropa im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Berlin 1827, 4th ed. enlarged 1877); Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494–1514 (3d ed. 1885); Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Berlin, 8th ed. 1885, 3 vols. Engl. trans. by Sarah Austin, Lond. 4th ed. 1867, 3 vols.); Französische Geschichte im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Stuttgart, 1852, 4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.); Englische Geschichte vornehmlich im 16. u. 17. Jahrh. (4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.; Engl. transl. publ. by the Clarendon Press); and especially his classical Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Berlin, 1839–’43, 6th ed. 1880–’82, in 6 vols.; transl. in part by S. Austin, 1845–’47, 3 vols.). Ranke is a master of objective historiography from the sources in artistic grouping of the salient points, and is in religious and patriotic sympathy with the German Reformation; while yet he does full justice to the Catholic church and the papacy as a great power in the history of religion and civilization. In his 85th year he began to dictate in manly vigor a Universal History down to the time of Emperor Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VII., 1881–86; to which were added 2 posthumous vols. by Dove and Winter, 1888, 9 vols. in all. His library was bought for the University in Syracuse, N. Y.

For the general literature see Henry Hallam: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries. London, 1842, etc. N. York ed., 1880, in 4 vols.

II. Roman Catholic Works.

(1) The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Möhler (d. 1838, ed. from lectures by Gams, Regensburg, 1867–1868, 3 vols.; the third vol. treats of the Reformation), Alzog (10th ed. 1882, 2 vols.; Engl. transl. by Pabish and Byrne, Cincinnati, 1874 sqq., 3 vols.), Kraus (2d ed. 1882), and Cardinal Hergenröther (third ed. 1885). Comp. also, in part, the Histories of the Council of Trent by Sarpi (d. 1623), and Pallavicini (d. 1667).

(2) Thuanus (De Thou, a moderate Catholic, d. 1617); Historiarum sui Temporis libri 138. Orleans (Geneva), 1620 sqq., 5 vols. fol. and London, 1733, 7 vols. fol.; French transl. London, 1734, 16 vols. 4to. Goes from 1546 to 1607.

Louis Maimbourg (Jesuit, d. at Paris, 1686): Histoire du Lutheranisme Paris, 1680; Histoire du Calvinisme, 1682. Controversial, and inspired by partisan zeal; severely handled by R. Bayle in his Critique générale de l’histoire du Calvinisme de M., Amsterd., 1684.

Bp. Bossuet (d. 1704): Histoire des variations des églises protestantes. Paris, 1688, 2 vols. and later edd., also in his collected works, 1819 sqq. and 1836 sqq. English transl., Dublin, 1829, 2 vols. German ed. by Mayer, Munich. 1825, 4 vols. A work of great ability, but likewise polemical rather than historical. It converted Gibbon to Romanism, but left him at last a skeptic, like Bayle, who was, also, first a Protestant, then a Romanist for a short season.

Kaspar Riffel: Kirchengesch. Der Neusten Zeit. Mainz, 1844–47, 3 vols.

Martin John Spalding (since 1864 Archbishop of Baltimore, d. 1872): History of the Protest. Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, and in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, France., and Northern Europe.  Louisville, 1860; 8th ed., revised and enlarged. Baltimore, 1875, 2 vols. No Index. Against Merle D’Aubigné. The Archbishop charges D’Aubigné (as he calls him) with being a "bitter partisan, wholly unreliable as an historian," and says of his work that it is "little better than a romance," as he "omits more than half the facts, and either perverts or draws on his imagination for the remainder." His own impartiality and reliableness as an historian may be estimated from the following judgments of the Reformers: "Luther, while under the influence of the Catholic Church, was probably a moderately good man; he was certainly a very bad one after he left its communion "(I. 72)."Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo!" (77). "His violence often drove him to the very verge of insanity .... He occasionally inflicted on Melanchthon personal chastisement" (87). Spalding quotes from Audin, his chief authority (being apparently quite ignorant of German): "Luther was possessed not by one, but by a whole troop of devils" (89). Zwingli (or Zuingle, as he calls him) he charges with "downright paganism" (I. 175), and makes fun of his marriage and the marriages of the other Reformers, especially Bucer, who "became the husband of no less than three ladies in succession: and one of them had been already married three times—all too, by a singular run of good luck, in the reformation line" (176). And this is all that we learn of the Reformer of Strassburg. For Calvin the author seems to draw chiefly on the calumnies of Audin, as Audin drew on those of Bolsec. He describes him as "all head and no heart;" "he crushed the liberties of the people in the name of liberty;" "he combined the cruelty of Danton and Robespierre with the eloquence of Murat and Mirabeau, though he was much cooler, and therefore more successful than any one of them all; he was a very Nero." Spalding gives credit to Bolsec’s absurd stories of the monstrous crimes and horrible death of Calvin, so fully contradicted by his whole life and writings and the testimonies of his nearest friends, as Beza, Knox, etc. (I. 375, 384, 386, 388, 391). And such a work by a prelate of high character and position seems to be the principal source from which American Roman Catholics draw their information of the Reformation and of Protestantism!

The historico-polemical works of Döllinger and Janssen belong to the history of

the German Reformation and will be noticed in the next section.

CHAPTER II.

LUTHER’S TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, A.D. l483–1517.

§ 15. Literature of the German Reformation.

Sources.

I. Protestant Sources:

(1) The Works of the Reformers, especially Luther and Melanchthon. See § § 17, 32. The reformatory writings of Luther, from 1517–1524, are in vol. XV. of Walch’s ed., those from 1525–1537 in vol. XVI., those from 1538–1546 in vol. XVII. See also the Erlangen ed., vols. 24–32 (issued separately in a second ed. 1883 sqq.), and the Weimar ed., vol. I. sqq.

(2) Contemporary writers:

G. Spalatin (Chaplain of Frederick the Wise and Superintendent in Altenburg, d. 1545): Annales Reformationis oder Jahrbücher von der Reform. Lutheri (to 1543). Ed. by Cyprian, Leipz., 1718.

Frid. Myconius (or Mekum, Superintendent at Gotha, d. 1546): Historia Reformationis vom Jahr Christi 1518–1542. Ed. by Cyprian, Leipzig, 1718.

M. Ratzeberger (a physician, and friend of Luther, d. 1559): Luther und seine Zeit. Ed. from MS. in Gotha by Neudecker, Jena, 1850 (284 pp.).

(3) Documentary collections:

V. E. Löscher (d. 1749): Vollständige Reformations=Acta und Documenta (for the years 1517–’19). Leipzig, 1720–’29, 3 vols.

Ch. G. Neudecker: Urkunden aus der Reformationszeit, Cassel, 1836; Actenstücke aus der Zeit der Reform., Nürnberg, 1838; Neue Beiträge, Leipzig, 1841.

C. E. Förstemann: Archiv. f. d. Gesch. der Reform., Halle, 1831 sqq.; Neues Urkundenbuch, Hamburg, 1842.

Th. Brieger: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Reformation. Gotha, 1884 sqq. (Part I. Aleander und Luther, 1521.)

II. Roman  Catholic Sources . See § 14, p. 89.

Histories.

I. Protestant Historians :

Lud. A Seckendorf (a statesman of thorough education and exemplary integrity, d. 1692): Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo. Francof. et Lips., 1688; Lipsiae, 1694, fol. Against the Jesuit Maimbourg.

Chr. A. Salig (d. 1738): Vollständige Historie der Augsburger Confession (from 1517–1562). Halle, 1730–’35. 3 vols.

G. J. Planck (d. 1833): Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veränderungen und der Bildung unseres protest. Lehrbegriffs bis zur Einführung der Concordienformel. Leipzig, 2d ed., 1791–1800, 6 vols. Important for the doctrinal controversies in the Luth. Church. Followed by the Geschichte der protest. Theologie von der Konkordienformel an his in die Mitte des achtzehnten Jahrh. Göttingen, 1831, 1 vol.

H. G. Kreussler: D. Mart. Luthers Andenken in Münzen nebst Lebensbeschreibungen merkwürdiger Zeitgenossen desselben. Mit 47 Kupfern und der Ansicht Wittenbergs und Eisenachs zu Luthers Zeit. Leipzig, 1818. Chiefly interesting for the numerous illustrations.

Phil. Marheinecke (d. 1846): Geschichte der teutschen Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed., 1831, 4 vols. One of the best books, written in Luther-like popularity of style.

K. Hagen: Deutschlands literar. und relig. Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter. Erlangen, 1841–’44, sqq., 3 vols.

CH. G. Neudecker: Gesch. des evang. Protestantismus in Deutschland. Leipzig, 1844, sq., 2 vols.

C. Hundeshagen (d. 1873): Der deutsche Protestantismus. Frankfurt, 1846, 3d ed. 1850. Discusses the genius of the Reformation as well as modern church questions.

H. Heppe (German Reformed, d. 1879): Gesch. des deutschen Protestantismus in den Jahren 1555–’85. Marburg, 1852 sqq., 4 vols., 2d ed., 1865 sq. He wrote, also, a number of other books on the Reformation, especially in Hesse.

Merle d’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, see § 14. The first division treats of the German Reformation and is translated into German by Runkel, Stuttgart, 1848–1854, 5 vols., republ. by the American Tract society. Several English editions; London and New York.

Wilh. Gass: Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik. Berlin, 1854–’67, 4 vols.

G. Plitt: Geschichte der evang. Kirche bis 1530. Erlangen, 1867.

Is. A. Dorner (d. 1884): Geschichte. der protestantischen Theologie, besonders in Deutschland. München, 1867. The first Book, pp. 1–420, treats of the Reformation period of Germany and Switzerland. English translation, Edinburgh, 1871, 2 vols.

Ch. P. Krauth (d. 1882): The Conservative Reformation. Philadelphia, 1872. A dogmatico-historical vindication of Lutheranism.

K. F. A. Kahnis (d. 1888): Die deutsche Reformation. Leipzig, vol. I. 1872 (till 1520, unfinished).

G. Weber: Zur Geschichte des Reformationszeitalters. Leipzig, 1874.

Fr. v. Bezold: Gesch. der deutschen Reformation. Berlin, 1886.

The Elberfeld series of biographies of the Lutheran Reformers, with extracts from their writings, 1861–1875. It begins with C. Schmidt’s Melanchthon, and ends with Köstlin’s Luther (the large work in 2 vols., revised 1883).

Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte. Halle, 1883 sqq. A series of monographs on special topics in the Reformation history, especially that of Germany, published by a Society formed in the year of the Luther celebration for the literary defence of Protestantism against Romanism. Kolde, Benrath, Holdewey, Bossert, Walther, are among the contributors. The series includes also an essay on Wiclif by Buddensieg (1885), one on the Revocation of the edict of Nantes by Theod. Schott (1885), and one on Ignatius of Loyola by E. Gothein (1885).

Of Secular histories of Germany during the Reformation period, comp. especially, Leopold von Ranke: Deutsche Gesch. im Zeitalter der Reformation (6th ed., 1881, 6 vols.), a most important work, see § 14. Also, Karl Ad. Menzel (d. 1855): Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen seit der Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed., 1854 sq., 6 vols. Wolfgang Menzel (d. 1873): Geschichte der Deutschen, 6th ed., 1872 sq., 3 vols. L. Stacke: Deutsche Geschichte. Bielefeld u. Leipzig, 1881, 2 vols. (Vol. II. by W. Boehm, pp. 37–182.)  Gottlob Egelhaaf (Dr. Phil., Prof. in the Karls-Gymnasium at Heilbronn): Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Gekrönte Preisschrift des Allgemeinen Vereins für Deutsche Literatur. Berlin, 1885. In the spirit of Ranke’s great work on the same topic, with polemic reference to Janssen. It extends from 1517 to the Peace of Augsburg, 1555. (450 pages.)

II. Roman Catholic Historians. See the Lit. in § 14.

Ignatius Döllinger (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in Munich, since 1870 Old Catholic): Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkung im Umfange des Luther. Bekenntnisses. Regensburg, 1846–’48, 3 vols.; 2d ed., 1853. A learned collection of testimonies against the Reformation and its effects from contemporary apostates, humanists, and the Reformers themselves (Luther and Melanchthon), and those of their followers who complain bitterly of the decay of morals and the dissensions in the Lutheran church. The author has, nevertheless, after he seceded from the Roman communion, passed a striking judgment in favor of Luther’s greatness.

Karl Werner: Geschichte der kathol. Theologie in Deutschland. München, 1866.

Joh. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. Freiburg, i. B. 1876–’88, 6 vols. (down to 1618). This masterpiece of Ultramontane historiography is written with great learning and ability from a variety of sources (especially the archives of Frankfurt, Mainz, Trier, Zürich, and the Vatican), and soon passed through twelve editions. It called out able defences of the Reformation by Kawerau (five articles in Luthardt’s "Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft und Kirchl. Leben," 1882 and 1883), Köstlin, Lenz, Schweizer, Ebrard, Baumgarten, and others, to whom Janssen calmly replied in An meine Kritiker, Freiburg, i. B., tenth thousand, 1883 (227 pp.), and Ein Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. i. B., twelfth thousand, 1883 (144 pp.). He disclaims all "tendency," and professes to aim only at the historical truth. Admitted, but his standpoint is false, because he views the main current of modern history as an apostasy and failure; while it is an onward and progressive movement of Christianity under the guidance of Divine providence and the ever present spirit of its Founder. He reads history through the mirror of Vatican Romanism, and we need not wonder that Pope Leo XIII. has praised Janssen as "a light of historic science and a man of profound learning."

Janssen gives in each volume, in alphabetical order, very full lists of books and pamphlets, Catholic and Protestant, on the different departments of the history of Germany from the close of the fifteenth to the close of the sixteenth century. See vol. I. xxvii.-xliv.; vol. II. xvii.-xxviii.; vol. III. xxv.-xxxix.; vol. IV. xviii.-xxxi.; vol. V. xxv.-xliii.

For political history: Fr. v. Buchholz: Ferdinand I. Wien, 1832 sqq., 9 vols. Hurter: Ferdinand II. Schaffhausen, 1850 sqq.

§ 16. Germany and the Reformation.

Germany invented the art of printing and produced the Reformation. These are the two greatest levers of modern civilization. While other nations sent expeditions in quest of empires beyond the sea, the Germans, true to their genius of inwardness, descended into the depths of the human soul and brought to light new ideas and principles. Providence, it has been said, gave to France the dominion of the land, to England the dominion of the sea, to Germany the dominion of the air. The air is the region of speculation, but also the necessary condition of life on the land and the sea.

The characteristic traits which Tacitus ascribes to the heathen Germans, contain already the germ of Protestantism. The love of personal freedom was as strong in them as the love of authority was in the Roman race. They considered it unworthy of the gods to confine them within walls, or to represent them by images; they preferred an inward spiritual worship which communes directly with the Deity, to an outward worship which appeals to the senses through forms and ceremonies, and throws visible media between the finite and the infinite mind. They resisted the aggression of heathen Rome, and they refused to submit to Christian Rome when it was forced upon them by Charlemagne.

But Christianity as a religion was congenial to their instincts. They were finally Christianized, and even thoroughly Romanized by Boniface and his disciples. Yet they never felt quite at home under the rule of the papacy. The mediaeval conflict of the emperor with the pope kept up a political antagonism against foreign rule; the mysticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries nursed the love for a piety of less form and more heart, and undermined the prevailing mechanical legalism; dissatisfaction with the pope increased with his exactions and abuses, until at last, under the lead of a Saxon monk and priest, all the national forces combined against the anti-christian tyranny and shook it of forever. He carried with him the heart of Germany. No less than one hundred grievances against Roman misrule were brought before the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522.107  Erasmus says that when Luther published his Theses all the world applauded him.108  It is not impossible that all Germany would have embraced the Reformation if its force had not been weakened and its progress arrested by excesses and internal dissensions, which gave mighty aid to the Romanist reaction.

Next to Germany, little Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, England and Scotland, inhabited by kindred races, were most active in completing that great act of emancipation from popery and inaugurating an era of freedom and independence.

Nationality has much to do with the type of Christianity. The Oriental church is identified with the Greek and Slavonic races, and was not affected by the Reformation of the sixteenth century; hence she is not directly committed for or against it, and is less hostile to evangelical Protestantism than to Romanism, although she agrees, in doctrine, discipline and worship, far more with the latter. The Roman Catholic Church retained her hold upon the Latin races, which were, it first superficially touched by the Reformation, but reacted, and have ever since been vacillating between popery and infidelity, or between despotism and revolution. Even the French, who under Henry IV. were on the very verge of becoming Protestant, are as a nation more inclined to swing from Bossuet to Voltaire than to Calvin; although they will always have a respectable minority of intelligent Protestants. The Celtic races are divided; the Welsh and Scotch became intensely Protestant, the Irish as intensely Romanist. The Teutonic or Germanic nations produced the Reformation chiefly, but not exclusively; for the French Calvin was the greatest theologian among the Reformers, and has exerted a stronger influence in shaping the doctrine and discipline of Protestantism outside of Germany than any of them.

§ 17. The Luther Literature.

The Luther literature is immense and has received large additions since 1883. The richest collections are in the Royal Library at Berlin (including Dr. Knaake’s); in the public libraries of Dresden, Weimar, Wittenberg, Wolfenbüttel, München; in America, in the Theol. Seminary at Hartford (Congregationalist), which purchased the Beck collection of over 1,200 works, and in the Union Theol. Sem., New York, which has the oldest editions.

For the Luther literature comp. J. A. Fabricius: Centifolium Lutheranum, Hamburg, 1728 and 1730, 2 Parts; Vogel: Bibliotheca biographica Lutherana, Halle, 1851, 145 pages; John Edmands: Reading Notes on Luther, Philada., 1883; Beck (publisher): Bibliotheca Lutherana, Nördlingen, 1883; (185 pages, with titles of 1236 books, now at Hartford), 1884: Bibliographie der Luther-Literatur des J. 1883, Frankf. a. M. 1884, enlarged ed. 1887 (52 and 24 pages, incomplete).

luther’s works.

Oldest editions: Wittenberg, 12 German vols., 1539–’59,and 7 Latin, 1545–’58; Jena, 8 German and 4 Latin vols., 1555–’58, with 2 supplements by Aurifaber, 1564–’65; Altenburg, 10 vols., 1661–’64; Leipzig, 22 vols., 1729–’40, fol.—The three best editions are:

(1) The Halle edition by Johann Georg Walch, Halle, 1740–1750, in 24 vols., 4to. Republished with corrections and additions by Dr. Walther, Stöckhardt, Kähler, etc., Concordia College, St. Louis, 1880 sqq., 25 vols.

(2) The Erlangen-Frankfurt ed. by Plochmann, Irmischer, and Enders, etc., Erlangen, and Frankfurt a. M., 1827 sqq., 2d ed., 1862–1883, 101 vols. 8vo. (not yet finished). German writings, 67 vols.; Opera Latina, 25 vols.; Com. in Ep. and Gal., 3 vols.; Opera Latina varii argumenti ad reformationis Hist. pertinentia, 7 vols. The most important for our purpose are the Reformations-historische Schriften (9 vols., second ed., 1883–’85), and the Briefwechsel (of which the first vol. appeared in 1884; 6 vols. are promised).

(3) The Weimar edition (the fourth centennial memorial ed., patronized by the Emperor of Germany), by Drs. Knaake, Kawerau, Bertheau, and other Luther scholars, Weimar, 1883 sqq. This, when completed, will be the critical standard edition. It gives the works in chronological order and strict reproduction of the first prints, with the variations of later edd., even the antiquated and inconsistent spelling, which greatly embarrasses the reader not thoroughly familiar with German. The first volume contains Luther’s writings from 1512–1518; the second (1884), the writings from 1518–1519; vols. III. and IV. (1885–’6), the Commentaries on the Psalms; vol. VI. (1888), the continuation of the reformatory writings till 1520; several other vols. are in press.

I have usually indicated, from which of these three editions the quotations are made. The last was used most as far as it goes, and is quoted as the "Weimar ed."

The first collected ed. of Luther’s German works appeared in 1539 with a preface, in which he expresses a wish that all his books might be forgotten and perish, and the Bible read more instead.  (See Erl. Frkf. ed. I., pp. 1–6.)

Selections of Luther’s Works by Pfizer (Frankf., 1837, sqq.); Zimmermann (Frankf., 1846 sq.); Otto von Gerlach (Berlin, 1848, 10 vols., containing the Reformatorische Schriften).

The Letters of Luther were separately edited by De Wette, Berlin, 1825, sqq., 5 vols.; vol. VI. by J. C. Seidemann, 1856 (716 pp., with an addition of Lutherbriefe, 1859); supplemented by C. A. H. Burkhardt, Leipz., 1866 (524 pp.); a revised ed. with comments by Dr. E. L. Enders (pastor at Oberrad near Frankfurt a. M.), 1884 sqq. (in the Erl. Frankf ed.). The first volume contains the letters from 1507 to March, 1519. For selection see C. Alfred Hase: Lutherbriefe in Auswahl und Uebersetzung, Leipzig, 1867 (420 pages). Th. Kolde: Analecta Lutherana, Briefe und Actenstücke zur Geschichte Luther’s. Gotha, 1883. Contains letters of Luther and to Luther, gathered with great industry from German and Swiss archives and libraries.

Additional Works of Luther:

The Table Talk of Luther is best edited by Aurifaber, 1566, etc. (reprinted in Walch’s ed. vol. xxii.); by Förstemann and Bindseil, Leipzig, 1844–’48, 4 vols. (the German Table Talk); by Bindseil: Martini Lutheri Colloquia, Latina, etc., Lemgoviae et Detmoldae, 1863–’66, 3 vols.; and in the Frankf. Erl. ed., vols. 57–62. Dr. Conr. Cordatus: Tagebuch über Dr. Luther geführt, 1537, first edited by Dr. Wrampelmeyer, Halle, 1885, 521 pages. Last and best edition by Hoppe, St. Louis, 1887 (vol. xxii. of Am. ed. of Walch).

Georg Buchwald: Andreas Poach’s handschriftl. Sammlung ungedruckter Predigten D. Martin Luthers aus den Jahren 1528 bis 1546. Aus dem Originale zum ersten Mal herausgegeben.  Leipzig, 1884, to embrace 3 vols. (Only the first half of the first vol., published 1884, and the first half of the third vol., 1885; very few copies sold.)  The MS. collection of Andreas Poach in the public library at Zwickau embraces nine volumes of Luther’s sermons from 1528–1546. They are based on stenographic reports of Diaconus Georg Rörer of Wittenberg (ordained by Luther 1525, d. at Halle, 1557), who took full Latin notes of Luther’s German sermons, retaining, however, in strange medley a number of German words and phrases.

P. Tschackert: Unbekannte Predigten u. Scholien Luthers, Berlin, 1888. MSS. of sermons from Oct. 23, 1519, to April 2, 1521, discovered in the University Library at Königsberg. They will be publ. in the Weimar edition.

II. Biographies  of Luther :

(1) By contemporaries, who may be included in the sources.

Melanchthon wrote Vita Lutheri, a brief but weighty sketch, 1546, often reprinted, translated into German by Matthias Ritter, 1555, with Melanchthon’s account of Luther’s death to the students in the lecture room, the funeral orations of Bugenhagen and Cruciger (157 pages); a new transl. by Zimmermann, with preface by G. J. Planck, Göttingen, 1813; ed. of the original in Vitae quatuor Reformatorum., Lutheri a Melanchthone, Melanchthonis a Camerario, Zwinglii a Myconio, Calvini a Beza, prefaced by Neander, Berlin, 1841. Justus Jonas gives an account of Luther’s last sickness and death as an eye-witness, 1546. Mathesius (Luther’s pupil and friend, d. 1561) preached seventeen sermons on Luther’s life, first published 1565, and very often since, though mostly abridged, e.g., an illustrated popular ed. with preface by G. H. v. Schubert, Stuttgart, 1846; jubilee edition, St. Louis and Dresden, 1883. Joh. Cochlaeus, a Roman Cath. antagonist of Luther, wrote Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis, chronographica, ex ordine ab anno Dom. 1517 usque ad annum 1546 (inclusive), fideliter conscripta. Mayence, 1549 fol.

(2) Later Biographies till 1875 (the best marked *) by

*Walch (in his ed. of L.’s Works, vol. XXIV. pp. 3–875); Keil (4 parts in 1 vol., Leipz., 1764); Schröckh (Leipz., 1778); Ukert (Gotha, 2 vols., 1817); Pfizer (Stuttgart, 1836); Stang (with illustrations, Stuttg., 1836); Jaekel (Leipz., 1841, new ed. Elberfeld, 1871); *Meurer (Dresden, 1843–’46, 3 vols. with illustrations, abridged in 1 vol., 1850, 3d ed., 1870, mostly in Luther’s own words); *Juergens (Leipz., 1846–’47, 3 vols., reaching to 1517, very thorough, but unfinished); J. M. Audin (Rom. Cath., Hist. de la vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de M. Luth., Paris, 1839, 7th ed., revue et corrigée, 1856, 3 vols.—a storehouse of calumnies, also in German and English);109 * M. Michelet (Mémoirs de L., écrits par lui-mème, traduits et mis en ordre, Paris, 1835, also Brussels, 1845, 2 vols.; the best biography in French; Eng. transl. by Hazlitt, London, 1846, and by G. H. Smith, London and N. Y., 1846);110 Ledderhose (Karlsruh, 3d ed., 1883; French transl. of the first ed., Strassburg, 1837); Genthe (Leipz., 1842, with seventeen steel engravings); Westermann (Halle, 1845); Weydmann (Luther, ein Charakter—und Spiegelbild für unsere Zeit, Hamburg, 1850); B. Sears (English, publ. by the Am. Sunday School Union, Philada., 1850, with special reference to the youth of L.); Jgn. Döllinger (R. C., Luther, eine Skizze, Freiburg i. B., 1851); König and Gelzer (with 48 fine illustrations, Hamb. u. Gotha, 1851; Engl. ed. with transl. of the text by Archdeacon Hare and Cath. Winkworth, Lond. and N. Y., 1856); * Jul. Hare (Vindication of Luther against his English Assailants, first publ. as a note in his The Mission of the Comforter, London, 1846, vol. II., 656–878, then separately, 2d ed., 1855, the best English appreciation of L.); II. Woersley (Life of Luther, London, 1856, 2 vols.); Wildenhahn (Leipz., 1861); Müller (Nürnberg, 1867); Henke (Luther u. Melanchthon, Marburg, 1867); H. W. J. Thiersch (Luther, Gustav Adolf und Maximilian I. von Bayern, Nördlingen, 1869, pp. 3–66); Vilmar (Luther, Melanchthon und Zwingli, Frankf. a. M., 1869); H. Lang (Berlin, 1870, rationalistic); Ackermann (Jena, 1871); Gasparin (Luther et la réforme ait XVe . siècle, Paris, 1873); Schaff (a sketch in Appleton’s "Cyclopaedia,"  1858, revised 1874); Rietschel (Martin Luther und Ignatius Loyola, Wittenberg, 1879).

(3) Recent Biographies, published since 1875, by

Jul. Koestlin (Elberfeld, 1875, 2 vols., 2d ed. revised 1883; 3d ed. unchanged; upon the whole the best German biography; also an abridged ed. for popular use with 64 illustrations, 3d ed., 1883. English transl. of the small ed. by an anonymous writer with the author’s sanction, Lond. and N. Y., 1883; another by Morris, Philad., 1883; comp. also Koestlin’s art. Luther in Herzog, 2d ed., vol. IX.; his Festschrift, 1883, in several edd., transl. by Eliz. P. Weir: Martin Luther the Reformer, London, 1883; and his polemic tract: Luther und Janssen, der Deutsche Reformator und ein ultramontaner Historiker, Halle, 3d ed., 1883); V. Hasak (R. Cath., Regensb., 1881); Rein (Leipz., 1883, English transl. by Behringer, N. Y., 1883); Rogge, (Leipz., 1883); *Plitt and Petersen (Leipzig, 1883); *MAx Lenz (2nd ed. Berlin, 1883); P. Kuhn (Luther, sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 3 vols.); C. Burk (4th ed., Stuttg., 1884); *Th. Kolde (M. Luther, Gotha, 1884, 2 vols.); J. A. Froude (Luther, a Short Biography, Lond. and N. Y., 1883); John Rae (M. Luth.: Lond., 1884); Paul Martin, i.e., M. Rade of Schönbach (Dr. M. Luther’s Leben, etc., Neusalza, 1885–87, 3 vols.); Peter Bayne (M. Luth.: his Life and Times, Lond. and N. Y., 1887, 2 vols.).

On Luther’s wife and his domestic life: W. Beste: Die Gesch. Catherina’s von Bora. Halle, 1843 (131 pp.). G. Hofmann: Katharina von Bora, oder M. L. als Gatte, und Vater. Leipzig, 1846. John G. Morris: Life of Cath. von Bora, Baltimore, 1856. Mor. Meurer: Katherina Luther geborne von Bora. Dresden, 1854; 2d ed., Leipzig, 1873.

III. Luther’s  Theology .

W. Beste: Dr. M. Luther’s Glaubenslehre. Halle, 1845 (286 pp.). Theodos. Harnack (senior): L.’s Theologie, Bd I. Erlang., 1862, Bd. II., 1886. *Jul. Koestlin: L.’s Theologie. Stuttg., 1863, 2d ed., 1883, 2 vols. By the same: Luther’s Lehre von der Kirche, 1853, new ed., Gotha, 1868. Ch. H. Weisse; Die Christologie Luthers, Leipz., 1852 (253 pp.). Luthardt: Die Ethik Luthers, Leipz., 1867, 2d ed., 1875. Lommatzsch: Luther’s Lehre von ethisch-relig. Standpunkt aus, Berlin, 1879). H. C. Moenckeberg: Luther’s Lehre von der Kirche. Hamburg, 1870. Hering: Die Mystik Luther’s. Leipz., 1879. Kattenbusch: Luther’s Stellung z. den ökumenischen Symbolen. Giessen, 1883.

IV. Luther as Bible Translator.

G. W. Panzer: Entwurf einer vollständigen Gesch. der deutschen Bibelübers. Dr. M. Luther’s von 1517–1581. Nürnberg, 1783. H. Schott: Gesch. der teutschen Bibelübers. Dr. M. Luther’s. Leipz., 1835. Bindseil: Verzeichniss der Original-Ausgaben der Luther. Uebersetzung der Bibel. Halle, 1841. Moenckeberg and Frommann: Vorschläge zur Revision von M. L.’s Bibelübers. Halle, 1861–62. Theod. Schott: Martin Luther und die deutsche Bibel.  Stuttgart, 1883. E. Riehm (Prof. in Halle and one of the Revisers of the Luther-Bible): Luther als Bibelübersetzer. Gotta. 1884. Comp. the Probebibel of 1883 (an official revision of Luther’s version), and the numerous pamphlets for and against it.

V. Luther as a Preacher.

E. Jonas: Die Kanzelberedtsamkeit Luther’s. Berlin, 1852 (515 pp.). Best ed. of his sermons by G. Schlosser:  Dr. Martin Luther’s Evangelien-Predigten auf alle Sonn-und Festtage des Kirchenjahres aus seiner Haus-und Kirchenpostille, Frankfurt a. M., 1883; 4th ed., 1885.

VI. Luther as Poet and Musician .

A. J. Rambach: Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang. Hamburg, 1813  Aug. Gebauer: Martin Luther und seine Zeitgenossen als Kirchenliederdichter. Leipzig, 1828 (212 pp.). C. von Winterfeld: Dr. M. Luth. deutsche geistliche Lieder nebst den wahrend seines Lebens dazu gebräuchlichen Stimmweisen. Leipzig, 1840 (132 pp., 4to). B. Pick: Luther as a Hymnist, Philad., 1875; Ein feste Burg (in 21 languages), Chicago, 1883. Bacon and Allen: The Hymns of Martin Luther with his original Tunes. Germ. and Eng., N. Y., 1883. Dr. Danneil: Luther’s Geistliche Lieder nach seinen drei Gesangbüchern von 1524, 1529, 1545. Frankfurt a. M., 1883. E. Achelis: Die Entstehungszeit v. Luther’s geistl. Liedern. Marburg, 1884.

VII. Special Points in Luther’s Life and Work.

John G. Morris: Quaint Sayings and Doings concerning Luther. Philadelphia, 1857. Tuzschmann: Luther in Worms. Darmstadt, 1860. Koehler: Luther’s Reisen. Eisenach, 1872. W. J. Mann and C. P. Krauth: The Great Reformation and the Ninety-five Theses. Philad., 1873. Zitzlaff. L. auf der Koburg. Wittenberg, 1882. Kolde. L. auf dem Reichstag zu Worms. Halle, 1883. Glock: Grundriss der Pädagogik Luther’s. Karlsruh, 1883.

VIII. Commemorative Addresses of 1883 and 1884.

Festschriften zur 400 jährigen Jubelfeier der Geburt Dr. Martin Luther’s, herausgegeben vom königl. Prediger-Seminar in Wittenberg. Wittenberg, 1883. (Addresses by Drs. Schmieder, Rietschel, and others.) P. Kleinert: L. im Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft (Academic oration). Berlin, 1883 (35 pp.). Ed. Reuss: Akad. Festrede zur Lutherfeier. Strassburg, 1883. Th. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen über Luther in Worms. Marburg, 1883, and Luther und sein Werk. Marb., 1883. Ad. Harnack: M. Luther in seiner Bedeutung für die Gesch. der Wissenschaft und der Bildung. Giessen, 1883 (30 pp.). Vid Upsala Universitets Luthersfest, den 10 Nov., 1883, with an oration of K. H. Gez. von Scheele (Prof. of Theol. at Upsala, appointed Bishop of Visby in Gothland, 1885). Upsala, 1883. G. N. Bonwetsch: Unser Reformator Martin Luther. Dorpat, 1883. Appenzeller, Ruetschi, Oettli, and others: Die Lutherfeier in Bern. Bern, 1883. Prof. Salmond (of Aberdeen): Martin Luther. Edinburgh, 1883. J. M. Lindsay: M. Luther, in the 9th ed. of "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. XV. (1883), 71–84. Jean Monod: Luther j’usqu’en 1520. Montauban, 1883. J. B. Bittinger: M. Luth. Cleveland, 1883. E. J. Wolf, and others: Addresses on the Reformation. Gettysburg, 1884. The Luther Document (No. XVII.) of the American Evang. Alliance, with addresses of Rev. Drs. Wm. M. Taylor and Phillips Brooks. N. Y., 1883. Symposiac on Luther, seven addresses of the seven Professors of the Union Theol. Seminary in New York, held Nov. 19, 1883. Jos. A. Seiss: Luther and the Reformation (an eloquent commemorative oration delivered in Philad., and New York). Philad. 1884. S. M. Deutsch: Luther’s These vom Jahr 1519 über die päpstliche Gewalt.  Berlin, 1884. H. Cremer: Reformation und Wissenschaft. Gotha, 1883

IX. Roman Catholic Attacks .

The Luther-celebration gave rise not only to innumerable Protestant glorifications, but also to many Roman Catholic defamations of Luther and the Reformation. The ablest works of this kind are by Janssen (tracts in defence of his famous History of Germany, noticed in § 15), G. G. Evers, formerly a Lutheran pastor (Katholisch oder protestantisch?  Hildesheim, 4th ed., 1883; Martin Luther’s Anfänge, Osnabrück, 3d ed., 1884; Martin Luther, Mainz, 1883 sqq., in several vols.), Westermayer. (Luther’s Werk im Jahr 1883), Germanus, Herrmann, Roettscher, Dasbach, Roem, Leogast, etc. See the "Historisch-politische Blätter" of Munich, and the "Germania" of Berlin, for 1883 and 1884 (the chief organs of Romanism in Germany), and the Protestant review of these writings by Wilh. Walther: Luther in neusten römischen Gericht. Halle, 1884 (166 pages).

§ 18. Luther’s Youth and Training.

In order to understand the genius and history of the German Reformation we must trace its origin in the personal experience of the monk who shook the world from his lonely study in Wittenberg, and made pope and emperor tremble at the power of his word.

All the Reformers, like the Apostles and Evangelists, were men of humble origin, and gave proof that God’s Spirit working through his chosen instruments is mightier than armies and navies. But they were endowed with extraordinary talents and energy, and providentially prepared for their work. They were also aided by a combination of favorable circumstances without which they could not have accomplished their work. They made  the Reformation, and the Reformation made them.

Of all the Reformers Luther is the first. He is so closely identified with the German Reformation that the one would have no meaning without the other. His own history is the formative history of the church which is justly called by his name, and which is the incarnation and perpetuation of his genius. No other Reformer has given his name to the church he reformed, and exercised the same controlling influence over its history. We need not discuss here the advantages and disadvantages of this characteristic difference; we are only concerned with the fact.

Martin Luther was born Nov. 10, 1483, an hour before midnight, at Eisleben in Prussian Saxony, where he died, Feb. 18, 1546.111

On the day following he was baptized and received the name of the saint of the day.

His parents had recently removed to that town112 from their original home at Mahra near Eisenach in Thuringia, where Boniface had first preached the gospel to the Germans. Six months after Luther’s birth they settled at Mansfeld, the capital of a rich mining district in the Harz mountains, which thus shares with the Thuringian forest the honor of being the home of the Luther family. They were very poor, but honest, industrious and pious people from the lower and uncultivated ranks.

Luther was never ashamed of his humble, rustic origin. "I am," he said with pride to Melanchthon, "a peasant’s son; my father, grandfather, all my ancestors were genuine peasants."113  His mother had to carry the wood from the forest, on her back, and father and mother, as he said, "worked their flesh off their bones," to bring up seven children (he had three younger brothers and three sisters). Afterward his father, as a miner, acquired some property, and left at his death 1250 guilders, a guilder being worth at that time about sixteen marks, or four dollars.114

Luther had a hard youth, without sunny memories, and was brought up under stern discipline. His mother chastised him, for stealing a paltry nut, till the blood came; and his father once flogged him so severely that he fled away and bore him a temporary grudge;115 but Luther recognized their good intentions, and cherished filial affection, although they knew not, as he said, to distinguish the ingenia to which education should be adapted. He was taught at home to pray to God and the saints, to revere the church and the priests, and was told frightful stories about the devil and witches which haunted his imagination all his life.

In the school the discipline was equally severe, and the rod took the place of kindly admonition. He remembered to have been chastised no less than fifteen times in one single morning. But he had also better things to say. He learned the Catechism, i.e.: the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and several Latin and German hymns. He treasured in his memory the proverbial wisdom of the people and the legendary lore of Dietrich von Bern, of Eulenspiegel and Markolf.

He received his elementary education in the schools of Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. Already in his fourteenth year he had to support himself by singing in the street.

Frau Ursula Cotta, the wife of the wealthiest merchant at Eisenach, immortalized herself by the benevolent interest she took in the poor student. She invited him to her table "on account of his hearty singing and praying," and gave him the first impression of a lady of some education and refinement. She died, 1511, but he kept up an acquaintance with her sons and entertained one of them who studied at Wittenberg. From her he learned the word: "There is nothing dearer in this world than the love of woman."116

The hardships of Luther’s youth and the want of refined breeding show their effects in his writings and actions. They limited his influence among the higher and cultivated classes, but increased his power over the middle and lower classes. He was a man of the people and for the people. He was of the earth earthy, but with his bold face lifted to heaven. He was not a polished diamond, but a rough block cut out from a granite mountain and well fitted for a solid base of a mighty structure. He laid the foundation, and others finished the upper stories.

§ 19. Luther in the University of Erfurt.

At the age of eighteen, in the year 1501, he entered, as "Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeld," the University of Erfurt, which had been founded a hundred years before (1392) and was then one of the best in Germany.117  By that time his father was able to assist him so that he was free of care and could acquire a little library.

He studied chiefly scholastic philosophy, namely: logic, rhetoric, physics and metaphysics. His favorite teacher was Truttvetter, called "Doctor Erfordiensis."118  The palmy days of scholasticism which reared those venerable cathedrals of thought in support of the traditional faith of the church in the thirteenth century, had passed away, and were succeeded by the times of barren disputes about Realism and Nominalism or the question whether the general ideas (the universalia) had an objective reality, or a merely nominal, subjective existence in the mind. Nominalism was then the prevailing system.

On the other hand the humanistic studies were reviving all over Europe and opened a new avenue of intellectual culture and free thought. The first Greek book in Greek letters (a grammar) which was published in Germany, appeared in Erfurt. John Crotus Rubeanus (Jäger) who studied there since 1498 and became rector of the University in 1520 and 1521, was one of the leaders of humanism and the principal author of the first part of the famous anti-monkish Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515); he was at first an intimate friend of Hutten and Luther, and greeted the latter on his way to Worms (1521) as the man who "first after so many centuries dared to strangle the Roman license with the sword of the Scripture," but afterward he fell away from the Reformation (1531) and assailed it bitterly.119

Luther did not neglect the study of the ancient classics, especially Cicero, Vergil, Plautus, and Livy.120  He acquired sufficient mastery of Latin to write it with clearness and vigor, though not with elegance and refinement. The knowledge of Greek he acquired afterward as professor at Wittenberg. In classical culture he never attained the height of Erasmus and Melanchthon, of Calvin and Beza; but in original thought and in the mastery of his own mother tongue he was unrivalled. He always regarded the languages as the sheath for the sword of the Spirit.

Beside his literary studies he cultivated his early love for music. He sang, and played the lute right merrily. He was a poet and musician as well as a theologian. He prized music as a noble gift of God, as a remedy against sadness and evil thoughts, and an effective weapon against the assaults of the devil. His poetic gift shines in his classical hymns. He had a rich font of mother wit and quaint humor.

His moral conduct was unblemished; and the mouth of slander did not dare to blacken his reputation till after the theological passions were roused by the Reformation. He went regularly to mass and observed the daily devotions of a sincere Catholic. He chose for his motto: to pray well is half the study. He was a devout worshipper of the Virgin Mary.

In his twentieth year he first saw a complete (Latin) Bible in the University Library, and was surprised and rejoiced to find that it contained so much more than was ever read or explained in the churches.121  His eye fell upon the story of Samuel and his mother, and he read it with delight. But he did not begin a systematic study of the Bible till he entered the convent; nor did he find in it the God of love and mercy, but rather the God of righteousness and wrath. He was much concerned about his personal salvation and given to gloomy reflections over his sinful condition. Once he fell dangerously ill, and was seized with a fit of despair, but an old priest comforted him, saying: "My dear Baccalaureus, be of good cheer; you will not die in this sickness: God will yet make a great man out of you for the comfort of many."

In 1502 he was graduated as Bachelor of Arts, in 1505 as Master of Arts. This degree, which corresponds to the modern Doctor of Philosophy in Germany, was bestowed with great solemnity. "What a moment of majesty and splendor," says Luther, "was that when one took the degree of Master, and torches were carried before him. I consider that no temporal or worldly joy can equal it."  His talents and attainments were the wonder of the University.

According to his father’s ambitious wish, Luther began to prepare himself for the profession of law, and was presented by him with a copy of the Corpus juris. But he inclined to theology, when a remarkable providential occurrence opened a new path for his life.

§ 20. Luther’s Conversion.

In the summer of 1505 Luther entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt and became a monk, as he thought, for his life time. The circumstances which led to this sudden step we gather from his fragmentary utterances which have been embellished by legendary tradition.

He was shocked by the sudden death of a friend (afterward called Alexius), who was either killed in a duel,122  or struck dead by lightning at Luther’s side. Shortly afterward, on the second of July, 1505, two weeks before his momentous decision, he was overtaken by a violent thunderstorm near Erfurt, on his return from a visit to his parents, and was so frightened that he fell to the earth and tremblingly exclaimed: "Help, beloved Saint Anna!  I will become a monk."  His friend Crotus (who afterward became an enemy of the Reformation) inaptly compared this event to the conversion of St. Paul at the gates of Damascus.123  But Luther was a Christian before he became a monk.

On the sixteenth of July he assembled his friends who in vain tried to change his resolution, indulged once more in social song, and bade them farewell. On the next day they accompanied him, with tears, to the gates of the convent. The only books he took with him were the Latin poets Vergil and Plautus.

His father almost went mad, when he heard the news. Luther himself declared in later years, that his monastic vow was forced from him by terror and the fear of death and the judgment to come; yet he never doubted that God’s hand was in it. "I never thought of leaving the convent: I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that the time had come."

This great change has nothing to do with Luther’s Protestantism. It was simply a transition from secular to religious life—such as St. Bernard and thousands of Catholic monks before and since passed through. He was never an infidel, nor a wicked man, but a pious Catholic from early youth; but he now became overwhelmed with a sense of the vanity of this world and the absorbing importance of saving his soul, which, according to the prevailing notion of his age, he could best secure in the quiet retreat of a cloister.

He afterward underwent as it were a second conversion, from the monastic and legalistic piety of mediaeval Catholicism to the free evangelical piety of Protestantism, when he awoke to an experimental knowledge of justification by free grace through faith alone.

§ 21. Luther as a Monk.

The Augustinian convent at Erfurt became the cradle of the Lutheran Reformation. All honor to monasticism: it was, like the law of Israel, a wholesome school of discipline and a preparation for gospel freedom. Erasmus spent five years reluctantly in a convent, and after his release ridiculed monkery with the weapons of irony and sarcasm; Luther was a monk from choice and conviction, and therefore all the better qualified to refute it afterward from deep experience. He followed in the steps of St. Paul, who from a Pharisee of the Pharisees became the strongest opponent of Jewish legalism.

If there ever was a sincere, earnest, conscientious monk, it was Martin Luther. His sole motive was concern for his salvation. To this supreme object he sacrificed the fairest prospects of life. He was dead to the world and was willing to be buried out of the sight of men that he might win eternal life. His latter opponents who knew him in convent, have no charge to bring against his moral character except a certain pride and combativeness, and he himself complained of his temptations to anger and envy.124

It was not without significance that the order which he joined, bore the honored name of the greatest Latin father who, next to St. Paul, was to be Luther’s chief teacher of theology and religion; but it is an error to suppose that this order represented the anti-Pelagian or evangelical views of the North African father; on the contrary it was intensely catholic in doctrine, and given to excessive worship of the Virgin Mary, and obedience to the papal see which conferred upon it many special privileges.

St. Augustin, after his conversion, spent several weeks with some friends in quiet seclusion on a country-seat near Tagaste, and after his election to the priesthood, at Hippo in 391, he established in a garden a sort of convent where with like-minded brethren and students he led an ascetic life of prayer, meditation and earnest, study of the Scriptures, yet engaged at the same time in all the public duties of a preacher, pastor and leader in the theological controversies and ecclesiastical affairs of his age.

His example served as an inspiration and furnished a sort of authority to several monastic associations which arose in the thirteenth century. Pope Alexander IV. (1256) gave them the so-called rule of St. Augustin. They belonged to the mendicant monks, like the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites. They laid great stress on preaching. In other respects they differed little from other monastic orders. In the beginning of the sixteenth century they numbered more than a hundred settlements in Germany.

The Augustinian congregation in Saxony was founded in 1493, and presided over since 1503 by John von Staupitz, the Vicar-General for Germany, and Luther’s friend. The convent at Erfurt was the largest and most important next to that at Nürnberg. The monks were respected for their zeal in preaching, pastoral care, and theological study. They lived on alms, which they collected themselves in the town and surrounding country. Applicants were received as novices for a year of probation, during which they could reconsider their resolution; afterward they were bound by perpetual vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to their superiors.

Luther was welcomed by his brethren with hymns of joy and prayer. He was clothed with a white woollen shirt, in honor of the pure Virgin, a black cowl and frock, tied by a leathern girdle. He assumed the most menial offices to subdue his pride: he swept the floor, begged bread through the streets, and submitted without a murmur to the ascetic severities. He said twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria in each of the seven appointed hours of prayer. He was devoted to the Holy Virgin and even believed, with the Augustinians and Franciscans, in her immaculate conception, or freedom from hereditary sin—a doctrine denied by the Dominicans and not made an article of faith till the year 1854. He regularly confessed his sins to the priest at least once a week. At the same time a complete copy of the Latin Bible was put into his hands for study, as was enjoined by the new code of statutes drawn up by Staupitz.

At the end of the year of probation Luther solemnly promised to live until death in poverty and chastity according to the rules of the holy father Augustin, to render obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the monastery. He was sprinkled with holy water, as he lay prostrate on the ground in the form of a cross. He was greeted as an innocent child fresh from baptism, and assigned to a separate cell with table, bedstead, and chair.125

The two years which followed, he divided between pious exercises and theological studies. He read diligently the Scriptures, and the later schoolmen,—especially Gabriel Biel, whom he knew by heart, and William Occam, whom he esteemed on account of his subtle acuteness even above St. Thomas and Duns Scotus, without being affected by his sceptical tendency. He acknowledged the authority of Aristotle, whom he afterward denounced and disowned as "a damned heathen."126  He excited the admiration of his brethren by his ability in disputation on scholastic questions.

His heart was not satisfied with brain work. His chief concern was to become a saint and to earn a place in heaven. "If ever," he said afterward, "a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have gotten there."  He observed the minutest details of discipline. No one surpassed him in prayer, fasting, night watches, self-mortification. He was already held up as a model of sanctity.

But he was sadly disappointed in his hope to escape sin and temptation behind the walls of the cloister. He found no peace and rest in all his pious exercises. The more he seemed to advance externally, the more he felt the burden of sin within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy, hatred and pride. He saw sin everywhere, even in the smallest trifles. The Scriptures impressed upon him the terrors of divine justice. He could not trust in God as a reconciled Father, as a God of love and mercy but trembled before him, as a God of wrath, as a consuming fire. He could not get over the words: "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God."  His confessor once told him: "Thou art a fool, God is not angry with thee, but thou art angry with God."  He remembered this afterward as "a great and glorious word," but at that time it made no impression on him. He could not point to any particular transgression; it was sin as an all-pervading power and vitiating principle, sin as a corruption of nature, sin as a state of alienation from God and hostility to God, that weighed on his mind like an incubus and brought him at times to the brink of despair.

He passed through that conflict between the law of God and the law of sin which is described by Paul (Rom. vii.), and which; ends with the cry: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?"  He had not yet learned to add: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death."

§ 22. Luther and Staupitz.

The mystic writings of Staupitz have been republished in part by Knaake in Johannis Staupitii Opera. Potsdam, 1867, vol. I. His "Nachfolge Christi" was first published in 1515; his book "Von der Liebe Gottes" (especially esteemed by Luther) in 1518, and passed through several editions; republ. by Liesching, Stuttgart, 1862. His last work "Von, dem heiligen rechten christlichen Glauben," appeared after his death, 1525, and is directed against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith without works. His twenty-four letters have been published by Kolde: Die Deutsche Augustiner Congregation und Johann von Staupitz. Gotha, 1879, p. 435 sqq.

II. On Luther and Staupitz: Grimm: De Joh. Staupitio ejusque in sacr. instaur. meritis, in Illgen’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1837 (VII, 74–79). Ullmann: Die Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. II., 256–284 (very good, see there the older literature). Döllinger: Die Reformation, I., 153–155. Kahnis: Deutsche Reformat., I., 150 sqq. Albr. Ritschl: Die Lehre v. der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 2d ed., I., 124–129 (on Staupitz’s theology). Mallet: in Herzog,2 XIV., 648–653. Paul Zeller: Staupitz. Seine relig. dogmat. Anschauungen und dogmengesch. Stellung, in the "Theol. Studien und Kritiken,"  1879. Ludwig Keller: Johann von Staupitz, und das Waldenserthum, in the "Historische Taschenbuch," ed. by W. Maurenbrecher, Leipzig, 1885, p. 117–167; also his Johann von Staupitz und die Anfänge der Reformation, Leipzig, 1888. Dr. Keller connects Staupitz with the Waldenses and Anabaptists, but without proof. Kolde: Joh. von Staup. ein Waldenser und Wiedertäufer, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch." Gotha, 1885, p. 426–447. Dieckhoff: Die Theol. des Joh. v. Staup., Leipz., 1887.

In this state of mental and moral agony, Luther was comforted by an old monk of the convent (the teacher of the novices) who reminded him of the article on the forgiveness of sins in the Apostles’ Creed, of Paul’s word that the sinner is justified by grace through faith, and of an incidental remark of St. Bernard (in a Sermon on the Canticles) to the same effect.

His best friend and wisest counsellor was Johann von Staupitz, Doctor of Divinity and Vicar-General of the Augustinian convents in Germany. Staupitz was a Saxon nobleman, of fine mind, generous heart, considerable biblical and scholastic learning, and deep piety, highly esteemed wherever known, and used in important missions by the Elector Frederick of Saxony. He belonged to the school of practical mysticism or Catholic pietism, which is best represented by Tauler and Thomas a Kempis. He cared more for the inner spiritual life than outward forms and observances, and trusted in the merits of Christ rather than in good works of his own, as the solid ground of comfort and peace. The love of God and the imitation of Christ were the ruling ideas of his theology and piety. In his most popular book, On the Love of God,127 he describes that love as the inmost being of God, which makes everything lovely, and should make us love Him above all things; but this love man cannot learn from man, nor from the law which only brings us to a knowledge of sin, nor from the letter of the Scripture which kills, but from the Holy Spirit who reveals God’s love in Christ to our hearts and fills it with the holy flame of gratitude and consecration. "The law," he says in substance, "makes known the disease, but cannot heal. But the spirit is hid beneath the letter; the old law is pregnant with Christ who gives us grace to love God above all things. To those who find the spirit and are led to Christ by the law, the Scriptures become a source of edification and comfort. The Jews saw and heard and handled Christ, but they had him not in their heart, and therefore they were doubly guilty. And so are those who carry Christ only on their lips. The chief thing is to have him in our heart. The knowledge of the Christian faith and the love to God are gifts of pure grace beyond our art and ability, and beyond our works and merits."

Staupitz was Luther’s spiritual father, and "first caused the light of the gospel to shine in the darkness of his heart."128  He directed him from his sins to the merits of Christ, from the law to the cross, from works to faith, from scholasticism to the study of the Scriptures, of St. Augustin, and Tauler. He taught him that true repentance consists not in self-imposed penances and punishments, but in a change of heart and must proceed from the contemplation of Christ’s sacrifice, in which the secret of God’s eternal will was revealed. He also prophetically assured him that God would overrule these trials and temptations for his future usefulness in the church.129

He encouraged Luther to enter the priesthood (1507), and brought him to Wittenberg; he induced him to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and to preach. He stirred him up against popery,130 and protected him in the transactions with Cardinal Cajetan. He was greeted by Scheurl in 1518 as the one who would lead the people of Israel out of captivity.

But when Luther broke with Rome, and Rome with Luther, the friendship cooled down. Staupitz held fast to the unity of the Catholic Church and was intimidated and repelled by the excesses of the Reformation. In a letter of April 1, 1524,131 he begs Luther’s pardon for his long silence and significantly says in conclusion: "May Christ help us to live according to his gospel which now resounds in our ears and which many carry on their lips; for I see that countless persons abuse the gospel for the freedom of the flesh.132  Having been the precursor of the holy evangelical doctrine, I trust that my entreaties may have some effect upon thee."  The sermons which he preached at Salzburg since 1522 breathe the same spirit and urge Catholic orthodoxy and obedience.133  His last book, published after his death (1525) under the title, "Of the holy true Christian Faith," is a virtual protest against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and a plea for a practical Christianity which shows itself in good works. He contrasts the two doctrines in these words: "The fools say, he who believes in Christ., needs no works; the Truth says, whosoever will be my disciple, let him follow Me; and whosoever will follow Me, let him deny himself and carry my cross day by day; and whosoever loves Me, keeps my commandments .... The evil spirit suggests to carnal Christians the doctrine that man is justified without works, and appeals to Paul. But Paul only excluded works of the law which proceed from fear and selfishness, while in all his epistles he commends as necessary to salvation such works as are done in obedience to God’s commandments, in faith and love. Christ fulfilled the taw, the fools would abolish the law; Paul praises the law as holy and good, the fools scold and abuse it as evil because they walk according to the flesh and have not the mind of the Spirit."134

Staupitz withdrew from the conflict, resigned his position, 1520, left his order by papal dispensation, became abbot of the Benedictine Convent of St. Peter in Salzburg and died Dec. 28, 1524) in the bosom of the Catholic church which he never intended to leave.135  He was evangelical, without being a Protestant.136  He cared little for Romanism, less for Lutheranism, all for practical Christianity. His relation to the Reformation resembles that of Erasmus with this difference, that he helped to prepare the way for it in the sphere of discipline and piety, Erasmus in the sphere of scholarship and illumination. Both were men of mediation and transition; they beheld from afar the land of promise, but did not enter it.

§ 23. The Victory of Justifying Faith.

(Comp. § 7.)

The secret of Luther’s power and influence lies in his heroic faith. It delivered him from the chaos and torment of ascetic self-mortification and self-condemnation, gave him rest and peace, and made him a lordly freeman in Christ, and yet an obedient servant of Christ. This faith breathes through all his writings, dominated his acts, sustained him in his conflicts and remained his shield and anchor till the hour of death. This faith was born in the convent at Erfurt, called into public action at Wittenberg, and made him a Reformer of the Church.

By the aid of Staupitz and the old monk, but especially by the continued study of Paul’s Epistles, be was gradually brought to the conviction that the sinner is justified by faith alone, without works of law. He experienced this truth in his heart long before he understood it in all its bearings. He found in it that peace of conscience which he had sought in vain by his monkish exercises. He pondered day and night over the meaning of "the righteousness of God "(Rom. 1:17), and thought that it is the righteous punishment of sinners; but toward the close of his convent life he came to the conclusion that it is the righteousness which God freely gives in Christ to those who believe in him. Righteousness is not to be acquired by man through his own exertions and merits; it is complete and perfect in Christ, and all the sinner has to do is to accept it from Him as a free gift. Justification is that judicial act of God whereby he acquits the sinner of guilt and clothes him with the righteousness of Christ on the sole condition of personal faith which apprehends and appropriates Christ and shows its life and power by good works, as a good tree bringing forth good fruits. For faith in Luther’s system is far more than a mere assent of the mind to the authority of the church: it is a hearty trust and full surrender of the whole man to Christ; it lives and moves in Christ as its element, and is constantly obeying his will and following his example. It is only in connection with this deeper conception of faith that his doctrine of justification can be appreciated. Disconnected from it, it is a pernicious error.

The Pauline doctrine of justification as set forth in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, had never before been clearly and fully understood, not even by Augustin and Bernard, who confound justification with sanctification.137  Herein lies the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant conception. In the Catholic system justification (dikaivwsi") is a gradual process conditioned by faith and good works; in the Protestant system it is a single act of God, followed by sanctification. It is based upon the merits of Christ, conditioned by faith, and manifested by good works.138

This experience acted like a new revelation on Luther. It shed light upon the whole Bible and made it to him a book of life and comfort. He felt relieved of the terrible load of guilt by an act of free grace. He was led out of the dark prison house of self-inflicted penance into the daylight and fresh air of God’s redeeming love. Justification broke the fetters of legalistic slavery, and filled him with the joy and peace of the state of adoption; it opened to him the very gates of heaven.

Henceforth the doctrine of justification by faith alone was for him to the end of life the sum and substance of the gospel, the heart of theology, the central truth of Christianity, the article of the standing or falling church. By this standard he measured every other doctrine and the value of every book of the Bible. Hence his enthusiasm for Paul, and his dislike of James, whom he could not reconcile with his favorite apostle. He gave disproportion to solifidianism and presented it sometimes in most unguarded language, which seemed to justify antinomian conclusions; but he corrected himself, he expressly condemned antinomianism, and insisted on good works and a holy life as a necessary manifestation of faith.139  And it must not be forgotten that the same charge of favoring antinomianism was made against Paul, who rejects it with pious horror: "Let it never be!"

Thus the monastic and ascetic life of Luther was a preparatory school for his evangelical faith. It served the office of the Mosaic law which, by bringing the knowledge of sin and guilt, leads as a tutor to Christ (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:24). The law convicted, condemned, and killed him; the gospel comforted, justified, and made him alive. The law enslaved him, the gospel set him free. He had trembled like a slave; now he rejoiced as a son in his father’s house. Through the discipline of the law he died to the law, that he might live unto God (Gal. 2:19).

In one word, Luther passed through the experience of Paul. He understood him better than any mediaeval schoolman or ancient father. His commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians is still one of the best, for its sympathetic grasp of the contrast between law and gospel, between spiritual slavery and spiritual freedom.

Luther held this conviction without dreaming that it conflicted with the traditional creed and piety of the church. He was brought to it step by step. The old views and practices ran along side with it, and for several years he continued to be a sincere and devout Catholic. It was only the war with Tetzel and its consequences that forced him into the position of a Reformer and emancipated him from his old connections.

§ 24. Luther Ordained to the Priesthood.

In the second year of his monastic life and when he was still in a state of perplexity, Luther was ordained to the priesthood, and on May 2, 1507, he said his first mass. This was a great event in the life of a priest. He was so overwhelmed by the solemnity of offering the tremendous sacrifice for the living and the dead that he nearly fainted at the altar.

His father had come with several friends to witness the solemnity and brought him a present of twenty guilders. He was not yet satisfied with the monastic vows. "Have you not read in Holy Writ," he said to the brethren at the entertainment given to the young priest, "that a man must honor father and mother?"  And when he was reminded, that his son was called to the convent by a voice from heaven, he answered: "Would to God, it were no spirit of the devil."  He was not fully reconciled to his son till after he had acquired fame and entered the married state.

Luther performed the duties of the new dignity with conscientious fidelity. He read mass every morning, and invoked during the week twenty-one particular saints whom be had chosen as his helpers, three on each day.

But he was soon to be called to a larger field of influence.

§ 25. Luther in Rome.140

"Roma qua nihil possis visere majus."—(Horace.)

"Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma.

Omnia hic ecce licent, non licet esse probum."

"Wer christlich leben will und Rein,

Der zieh am Rom und bleib daheim.

Hie mag man thun was man nur will,

Allein fromm sein gilt hier nicht viel."

(Old poetry quoted by Luther, in Walch, XXII., 2372.)

"Prächtiger, als wir in unserum Norden,

Wohnt der Bettler an der Engelspforten,

Denn er sieht das ewig einz’ge Rom:

Ihn umgibt der Schönheit Glanzgewimmel,

Und ein zweiter Himmel in den Himmel

Steigt Sancte Peter’s wundersamer Dom.

Aber Rom in allem seinem Glanze

Ist ein Grab nur der Vergangenheit,

Leben duftet nur die frische Pflanze,

Die die grüne Stunde streut."—(Schiller.)

An interesting episode in the history of Luther’s training for the Reformation was his visit to Rome. It made a deep impression on his mind, and became effective, not immediately, but several years afterward through the recollection of what he had seen and heard, as a good Catholic, in the metropolis of Christendom.

In the autumn of the year 1510,141 after his removal to Wittenberg, but before his graduation as doctor of divinity, Luther was sent to Rome in the interest of his order and at the suggestion of Staupitz, who wished to bring about a disciplinary reform and closer union of the Augustinian convents in Germany, but met with factious opposition.

In company with another monk and a lay brother, as the custom was, he traveled on foot, from convent to convent, spent four weeks in Rome in the Augustinian convent of Maria del popolo, and returned to Wittenberg in the following spring. The whole journey must have occupied several months. It was the longest journey he ever made, and at the same time, his pilgrimage to the shrines of the holy apostles where he wished to make a general confession of all his sins and to secure the most efficient absolution.

We do not know whether he accomplished the object of his mission.142  He left no information about his route, whether be passed through Switzerland or through the Tyrol, nor about the sublime scenery of the Alps and the lovely scenery of Italy.143  The beauties of nature made little or no impression upon the Reformers, and were not properly appreciated before the close of the eighteenth century.144  Zwingli and Calvin lived on the banks of Swiss lakes and in view of the Swiss Alps, but never allude to them; they were absorbed in theology and religion.

In his later writings and Table-Talk, Luther left some interesting reminiscences of his journey. He spoke of the fine climate and fertility of Italy, the temperance of the Italians contrasted with the intemperate Germans, also of their shrewdness, craftiness, and of the pride with which they looked down upon the "stupid Germans" and "German beasts," as semi-barbarians; he praised the hospitals and charitable institutions in Florence; but he was greatly disappointed with the state of religion in Rome, which he found just the reverse of what he had expected.

Rome was at that time filled with enthusiasm for the renaissance of classical literature and art, but indifferent to religion. Julius II., who sat in Peter’s chair from 1503 to 1513, bent his energies on the aggrandizement of the secular dominion of the papacy by means of an unscrupulous diplomacy and bloody wars, founded the Vatican Museum, and liberally encouraged the great architects and painters of his age in their immortal works of art. The building of the new church of St. Peter with its colossal cupola had begun under the direction of Bramante; the pencil of Michael Angelo was adorning the Sixtine chapel in the adjoining Vatican Palace with the pictures of the Prophets, Sibyls, and the last judgment; and the youthful genius of Raphael conceived his inimitable Madonna, with the Christ-child in her arms, and was transforming the chambers of the Vatican into galleries of undying beauty. These were the wonders of the new Italian art; but they had as little interest for the German monk as the temples and statues of classical Athens had for the Apostle Paul.

When Luther came in sight of the eternal city he fell upon the earth, raised his hands and exclaimed, "Hail to thee, holy, Rome!145  Thrice holy for the blood of martyrs shed here."  He passed the colossal ruins of heathen Rome and the gorgeous palaces of Christian Rome. But he ran, "like a crazy saint," through all the churches and crypts and catacombs with an unquestioning faith in the legendary traditions about the relics and miracles of martyrs.146  He wished that his parents were dead that he might help them out of purgatory by reading mass in the most holy place, according to the saying: "Blessed is the mother whose son celebrates mass on Saturday in St. John of the Lateran." He ascended on bended knees the twenty-eight steps of the famous Scala Santa (said to have been transported from the Judgment Hall of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem), that he might secure the indulgence attached to this ascetic performance since the days of Pope Leo IV. in 850, but at every step the word of the Scripture sounded as a significant protest in his ear: "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17).147

Thus at the very height of his mediaeval devotion he doubted its efficacy in giving peace to the troubled conscience. This doubt was strengthened by what he saw around him. He was favorably struck, indeed, with the business administration and police regulations of the papal court, but shocked by the unbelief, levity and immorality of the clergy. Money and luxurious living seemed to have replaced apostolic poverty and self-denial. He saw nothing but worldly splendor at the court of Pope Julius II., who had just returned from the sanguinary siege of a town conducted by him in person. He afterward thundered against him as a man of blood. He heard of the fearful crimes of Pope Alexander VI. and his family, which were hardly known and believed in Germany, but freely spoken of as undoubted facts in the fresh remembrance of all Romans. While he was reading one mass, a Roman priest would finish seven. He was urged to hurry up (passa, passa!), and to "send her Son home to our Lady." He heard priests, when consecrating the elements, repeat in Latin the words: "Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain." The term "a good Christian" (buon Christiano) meant "a fool." He was told that "if there was a hell, Rome was built on it," and that this state of things must soon end in a collapse.

He received the impression that "Rome, once the holiest city, was now the worst." He compared it to Jerusalem as described by the prophets.148  All these sad experiences did not shake his faith in the Roman church and hierarchy, so unworthily represented, as the Jewish hierarchy was at the time of Christ; but they returned to his mind afterward with double force and gave ease and comfort to his conscience when he attacked and abused popery as "an institution of the devil."149

Hence be often declared that he would not have missed "seeing Rome for a hundred thousand florins; for I might have felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope; but as we see, so we speak."

Six years after his visit the building of St. Peter’s Dome by means of the proceeds from papal indulgences furnished the occasion for the outbreak of that war which ended with an irrevocable separation from Rome.

In the Pitti Gallery of Florence there is a famous picture of Giorgione which represents an unknown monk with strongly Teutonic features and brilliant eyes, seated between two Italians, playing on a small organ and looking dreamily to one side. This central figure has recently been identified by some connoisseurs as a portrait of Luther taken at Florence a few months before the death of Giorgione in 1511. The identity is open to doubt, but the resemblance is striking.150

§ 26. The University of Wittenberg.

Grohmann: Annalen der Universität zu Wittenberg, 1802, 2 vols. Muther: Die Wittenberger Universitäts und Facultätsstudien v. Jahr 1508. Halle, 1867. K. Schmidt: Wittenberg unter Kurfürst Friedrich dem Weisen. Erlangen, 1877. Juergens: II, 151 sqq. and 182 sqq. (very thorough). Koestlin, I., 90 sqq. Kolde: Friedrich der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation, Erlangen, 1881; and his Leben Luther’s, 1884, I., 67 sqq.

In the year 1502 Frederick III., surnamed the Wise, Elector of Saxony ( b. 1463, d. 1525), distinguished among the princes of the sixteenth century for his intelligence, wisdom, piety, and in cautious protection of the Reformation, founded from his limited means a new University at Wittenberg, under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and St. Augustin. The theological faculty was dedicated to the Apostle Paul, and on the anniversary of his conversion at Damascus a mass was to be celebrated and a sermon preached in the presence of the rector and the senate.

Frederick was a devout Catholic, a zealous collector of relics, a believer in papal indulgences, a pilgrim to the holy land; but at the same time a friend of liberal learning, a protector of the person of Luther and of the new theology of the University of Wittenberg, which he called his daughter, and which be favored to the extent of his power. Shortly before his death he signified the acceptance of the evangelical faith by taking the communion in both kinds from Spalatin, his chaplain, counsellor and biographer, and mediator between him and Luther. He was unmarried and left no legitimate heir. His brother, John the Constant (1525–1532), and his nephew, John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–1547), both firm Protestants, succeeded him; but the latter was deprived of the electoral dignity and part of his possessions by his victorious cousin Moritz, Duke of Saxony, after the battle of Mühlberg (1547). The successors of Moritz were the chief defenders of Lutheranism in Germany till Augustus I. (1694–1733) sold the faith of his ancestors for the royal crown of Poland and became a Roman Catholic.

Wittenberg151 was a poor and badly built town of about three thousand inhabitants in a dull, sandy, sterile plain on the banks of the Elbe, and owes its fame entirely to the fact that it became the nursery of the Reformation theology. Luther says that it lay at the extreme boundary of civilization,152 a few steps from barbarism, and speaks of its citizens as wanting in culture, courtesy and kindness. He felt at times strongly tempted to leave it. Melanchthon who came from the fertile Palatinate, complained that he could get nothing fit to eat at Wittenberg. Myconius, Luther’s friend, describes the houses as "small, old, ugly, low, wooden." Even the electoral castle is a very unsightly structure. The Elector laughed when Dr. Pollich first proposed the town as the seat of the new university. But Wittenberg was one of his two residences (the other being Torgau), had a new castle-church with considerable endowments and provision for ten thousand masses per annum and an Augustinian convent which could furnish a part of the teaching force, and thus cheapen the expenses of the institution.

The university was opened October 18, 1502. The organization was intrusted to Dr. Pollich, the first rector, who on account of his extensive learning was called "lux mundi," and who had accompanied the Elector on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (1493), and to Staupitz, the first Dean of the theological faculty, who fixed his eye at once upon his friend Luther as a suitable professor of theology.

Wittenberg had powerful rivals in the neighboring, older and better endowed Universities of Erfurt and Leipzig, but soon overshadowed them by the new theology. The principal professors were members of the Augustinian order, most of them from Tübingen and Erfurt. The number of students was four hundred and sixteen in the first semester, then declined to fifty-five in 1505, partly in consequence of the pestilence, began to rise again in 1507, and when Luther and Melanchthon stood on the summit of their fame, they attracted thousands of pupils from all countries of Europe. Melanchthon heard at times eleven languages spoken at his hospitable table.

§ 27. Luther as Professor till 1517.

Luther was suddenly called by Staupitz from the Augustinian Convent of Erfurt to that of Wittenberg with the expectation of becoming at the same time a lecturer in the university. He arrived there in October, 1508, was called back to Erfurt in autumn, 1509, was sent to Rome in behalf of his order, 1510, returned to Wittenberg, 1511, and continued there till a few days before his death, 1546.

He lived in the convent, even after his marriage. His plain study, bed-room and lecture-hall are still shown in the "Lutherhaus." The lowliness of his work-shop forms a sublime contrast to the grandeur of his work. From their humble dwellings Luther and Melanchthon exerted a mightier influence than the contemporary popes and kings from their gorgeous palaces.

Luther combined the threefold office of sub-prior, preacher and professor. He preached both in his convent and in the town-church, sometimes daily for a week, sometimes thrice in one day, during Lent in 1517 twice everyday. He was supported by the convent. As professor he took no fees from the students and received only a salary of one hundred guilders, which after his marriage was raised by the Elector John to two hundred guilders.153

He first lectured on scholastic philosophy and explained the Aristotelian dialectics and physics. But he soon passed through the three grades of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor of divinity (October 18th and 19th, 1512), and henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the sacred science which was much more congenial to his taste. Staupitz urged him into these academic dignities,154  and the Elector who had been favorably impressed with one of his sermons, offered to pay the expenses (fifty guilders) for the acquisition of the doctorate.155  Afterward in seasons of trouble Luther often took comfort from the title and office of his doctorate of divinity and his solemn oath to defend with all his might the Holy Scriptures against all errors.156  He justified the burning of the Pope’s Bull in the same way. But the oath of ordination and of the doctor of theology implied also obedience to the Roman church (ecclesiae Romanae obedientiam) and her defence against all heresies condemned by her.157

With the year 1512 his academic teaching began in earnest and continued till 1546, at first in outward harmony with the Roman church, but afterward in open opposition to it.

He was well equipped for his position, according to the advantages of his age, but, very poorly, according to modern requirements, as far as technical knowledge is concerned.Although a doctor of divinity, he relied for several years almost exclusively on the Latin version of the Scriptures. Very few professors knew Greek, and still less, Hebrew. Luther had acquired a superficial idea of Hebrew at Erfurt from Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica.158  The Greek he learned at Wittenberg, we do not know exactly when, mostly from books and from his colleagues, Johann Lange and Melanchthon. As late as Feb. 18th, 1518, he asked Lange, "the Greek," a question about the difference between ajnavqhma and ajnavqema, and confessed that he could not draw the Greek letters.159  His herculean labor in translating the Bible forced him into a closer familiarity with the original languages, though he never attained to mastery. As a scholar he remained inferior to Reuchlin or Erasmus or Melanchthon, but as a genius he was their superior, and as a master of his native German he had no equal in all Germany. Moreover, he turned his knowledge to the best advantage, and always seized the strong point in controversy. He studied with all his might and often neglected eating and sleeping.

Luther opened his theological teaching with David and Paul, who became the pillars of his theology. The Psalms and the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians remained his favorite books. His academic labors as a commentator extended over thirty-three years, from 1513 to 1546, his labors as a reformer embraced only twenty-nine years, from 1517 to 1546. Beginning with the Psalms, 1513, he ended with Genesis, November 17th, 1545) three months before his death.

His first lectures on the Psalms are still extant and have recently been published from the manuscript in Wolfenbüttel.160  They are exegetically worthless, but theologically important as his first attempt to extract a deeper spiritual meaning from the Psalms. He took Jerome’s Psalter as the textual basis;161 the few Hebrew etymologies are all derived from Jerome, Augustin (who knew no Hebrew), and Reuchlin’s Lexicon. He followed closely the mediaeval method of interpretation which distinguished four different senses, and neglected the grammatical and historical interpretation. Thus Jerusalem means literally or historically the city in Palestine, allegorically the good, tropologically virtue, anagogically reward; Babylon means literally the city or empire of Babylon, allegorically the evil, tropologically vice, anagogically punishment. Then again one word may have four bad and four good senses, according as it is understood literally or figuratively.162  Sometimes he distinguished six senses. He emphasized the prophetic character of the Psalms, and found Christ and his work everywhere.163  He had no sympathy with the method of Nicolaus Lyra to understand the Psalter from the times of the writer. Afterward he learned to appreciate him.164  He followed Augustin, the Glossa ordinaria, and especially the Quincuplex Psalterium of Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1508 and 1513). He far surpassed himself in his later comments on the Psalms.165  It was only by degrees that he emancipated himself from the traditional exegesis, and approached the only sound and safe method of grammatico-historical interpretation of Scripture from the natural meaning of the words, the situation of the writer and the analogy of his teaching, viewed in the light of the Scriptures as a whole. He never gave up altogether the scholalistic and allegorizing method of utilizing exegesis for dogmatic and devotional purposes, but he assigned it a subordinate place. "Allegories," he said, "may be used to teach the ignorant common people, who need to have the same thing impressed in various forms." He measured the Scriptures by his favorite doctrine of justification by faith, and hence depreciated important books, especially the Epistle of James and the Apocalypse. But when his dogmatic conviction required it, he laid too much stress on the letter, as in the eucharistic controversy.

From the Psalms he proceeded to the Epistles of Paul. Here be had an opportunity to expound his ideas of sin and grace, the difference between the letter and the spirit, between the law and the gospel, and to answer the great practical question, how a sinner may be justified before a holy God and obtain pardon and peace. He first lectured on Romans and explained the difference between the righteousness of faith and the righteousness of works. He never published a work on Romans except a preface which contains a masterly description of faith. His lectures on Galatians he began October 27th, 1516, and resumed them repeatedly. They appeared first in Latin, September, 1519, and in a revised edition, 1523, with a preface of Melanchthon.166  They are the most popular and effective of his commentaries, and were often published in different languages. John Bunyan was greatly benefited by them. Their chief value is that they bring us into living contact with the central idea of the epistle, namely, evangelical freedom in Christ, which he reproduced and adapted in the very spirit of Paul. Luther always had a special preference for this anti-Judaic Epistle and called it his sweetheart or his wife.167

These exegetical lectures made a deep impression. They were thoroughly evangelical, without being anti-catholic. They reached the heart and conscience as well as the head. They substituted a living theology clothed with flesh and blood for the skeleton theology of scholasticism. They were delivered with the energy of intense conviction and the freshness of personal experience. The genius of the lecturer flashed from his deep dark eyes which seem to have struck every observer. "This monk," said Dr. Pollich, "will revolutionize the whole scholastic teaching." Christopher Scheurl commended Luther to the friendship of Dr. Eck (his later opponent) in January, 1517, as "a divine who explained the epistles of the man of Tarsus with wonderful genius." Melanchthon afterward expressed a general judgment when he said that Christ and the Apostles were brought out again as from the darkness and filth of prison.

§ 28. Luther and Mysticism. The Theologia Germanica.

In 1516 Luther read the sermons of Tauler, the mystic revival preacher of Strassburg (who died in 1361), and discovered the remarkable book called "German Theology," which he ascribed to Tauler, but which is of a little later date from a priest and custos of the Deutsch-Herrn Haus of Frankfort, and a member of the association called "Friends of God." It resembles the famous work of Thomas a Kempis in exhibiting Christian piety as an humble imitation of the life of Christ on earth, but goes beyond it, almost to the very verge of pantheism, by teaching in the strongest terms the annihilation of self-will and the absorption of the soul in God. Without being polemical, it represents by its intense inwardness a striking contrast to the then prevailing practice of religion as a mechanical and monotonous round of outward acts and observances.

Luther published a part of this book from an imperfect manuscript, December, 1516, and from a complete copy, in 1518, with a brief preface of his own.168  He praises it as rich and overprecious in divine wisdom, though poor and unadorned in words and human wisdom. He places it next to the Bible and St. Augustin in its teaching about God, Christ, man, and all things, and says in conclusion that "the German divines are doubtless the best divines."

There are various types of mysticism, orthodox and heretical, speculative and practical.169  Luther came in contact with the practical and catholic type through Staupitz and the writings of St. Augustin, St. Bernard, and Tauler. It deepened and spiritualized his piety and left permanent traces on his theology. The Lutheran church, like the Catholic, always had room for mystic tendencies. But mysticism alone could not satisfy him, especially after the Reformation began in earnest. It was too passive and sentimental and shrunk from conflict. It was a theology of feeling rather than of action. Luther was a born fighter, and waxed stronger and stronger in battle. His theology is biblical, with such mystic elements as the Bible itself contains.170

§ 29. The Penitential Psalms. The Eve of the Reformation.

The first original work which Luther published was a German exposition of the seven Penitential Psalms, 1517.171  It was a fit introduction to the reformatory Theses which enjoin the true evangelical repentance. In this exposition he sets forth the doctrines of sin and grace and the comfort of the gospel for the understanding of the common people. It shows him first in the light of a popular author, and had a wide circulation.

Luther was now approaching the prime of manhood. He was the shining light of the young university, and his fame began to spread through Germany. But he stood not alone. He had valuable friends and co-workers such as Dr. Wenzeslaus Link, the prior of the convent, and John Lange, who had a rare knowledge of Greek. Carlstadt also, his senior colleague, was at that time in full sympathy with him. Nicolaus von Amsdorf, of the same age with Luther, was one of his most faithful adherents, but more influential in the pulpit than in the chair. Christoph Scheurl, Professor of jurisprudence, was likewise intimate with Luther. Nor must we forget Georg Spalatin, who did not belong to the university, but had great influence upon it as chaplain and secretary of the Elector Frederick, and acted as friendly mediator between him and Luther. The most effective aid the Reformer received, in 1518, in the person of Melanchthon.172

The working forces of the Reformation were thus fully prepared and ready for action. The scholastic philosophy and theology were undermined, and a biblical, evangelical theology ruled in Wittenberg. It was a significant coincidence, that the first edition of the Greek Testament was published by Erasmus in 1516, just a year before the Reformation.173

Luther had as yet no idea of reforming the Catholic church, and still less of separating from it. All the roots of his life and piety were in the historic church, and he considered himself a good Catholic even in 1517, and was so in fact. He still devoutly prayed to the Virgin Mary from the pulpit; he did not doubt the intercession of saints in heaven for the sinners on earth; he celebrated mass with full belief in the repetition of the sacrifice on the cross and the miracle of transubstantiation; he regarded the Hussites as "sinful heretics" for breaking away from the unity of the church and the papacy which offered a bulwark against sectarian division.

But by the leading of Providence he became innocently and reluctantly a Reformer. A series of events carried him irresistibly from step to step, and forced him far beyond his original intentions. Had he foreseen the separation, he would have shrunk from it in horror. He was as much the child of his age as its father, and the times molded him before he molded the times. This is the case with all men of Providence: they are led by a divine hand while they are leading their fellow-men.

NOTES.

The works of Luther written before the 95 Theses (reprinted in the Weimar ed., I. 1–238, III., IV.) are as follows: Commentary on the Psalms; a number of sermons; Tractatus de his, qui ad ecclesias confugiunt (an investigation of the right of asylum; first printed 1517, anonymously, then under Luther’s name, 1520, at Landshut; but of doubtful genuineness); Sermo praescriptus praeposito in Litzka, 1512 (a Latin sermon prepared for his friend, the Provost Georg Mascov of Leitzkau in Brandenburg); several Latin Sermons from 1514–1517; Quaestio de viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia disputata, 1516; Preface to his first edition of "German Theology," 1516; The seven Penitential Psalms, 1517; Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 1517. The last are 97 theses against the philosophy of Aristotle, of whom he said, that he would hold him to be a devil if he had not had flesh. These theses were published in September, 1517, and were followed in October by the 95 Theses against the traffic in Indulgences.

The earliest letters of Luther, from April 22, 1507, to Oct. 31, 1517, are addressed to Braun (vicar at Eisenach), Spalatin (chaplain of the Elector Frederick), Lohr (prior of the Augustinian Convent at Erfurt), John Lange, Scheurl, and others. They are printed in Latin in Löscher’s Reformations-Acta, vol. . 795–846; in De Wette’s edition of Luther’s Briefe, I. 1–64; German translation in Walch, vol. XXI. The last of these ante-Reformation letters is directed to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and dated from the day of the publication of the Theses, Oct. 31, 1517 (DeWette I. 67–70). The letters begin with the name of "Jesus."

CHAPTER III.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE PUBLICATION OF LUTHER’S THESES TO THE DIET OF WORMS, A.D. 1517–1521.

§ 30. The Sale of Indulgences.

St. Peter’s Dome is at once the glory and the shame of papal Rome. It was built over the bones of the Galilaean fisherman, with the proceeds from the sale of indulgences which broke up the unity of Western Christendom. The magnificent structure was begun in 1506 under Pope Julius II., and completed in 1626 at a cost of forty-six millions scudi, and is kept up at an annual expense of thirty thousand scudi (dollars).174

Jesus began his public ministry with the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the court of the temple. The Reformation began with a protest against the traffic in indulgences which profaned and degraded the Christian religion.

The difficult and complicated doctrine of indulgences is peculiar to the Roman Church. It was unknown to the Greek and Latin fathers. It was developed by the mediaeval schoolmen, and sanctioned by the Council of Trent (Dec. 4, 1563), yet without a definition and with an express warning against abuses and evil gains.175

In the legal language of Rome, indulgentia is a term for amnesty or remission of punishment. In ecclesiastical Latin, an indulgence means the remission of the temporal (not the eternal) punishment of sin (not of sin itself), on condition of penitence and the payment of money to the church or to some charitable object. It maybe granted by a bishop or archbishop within his diocese, while the Pope has the power to grant it to all Catholics. The practice of indulgences grew out of a custom of the Northern and Western barbarians to substitute pecuniary compensation for punishment of an offense. The church favored this custom in order to avoid bloodshed, but did wrong in applying it to religious offenses. Who touches money touches dirt; and the less religion has to do with it, the better. The first instances of such pecuniary compensations occurred in England under Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690). The practice rapidly spread on the Continent, and was used by the Popes during and after the crusades as a means of increasing their power. It was justified and reduced to a theory by the schoolmen, especially by Thomas Aquinas, in close connection with the doctrine of the sacrament of penance and priestly absolution.176

The sacrament of penance includes three elements,—contrition of the heart, confession by the mouth (to the priest), and satisfaction by good works, such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimages, all of which are supposed to have an atoning efficacy. God forgives only the eternal punishment of sin, and he alone can do that; but the sinner has to bear the temporal punishments, either in this life or in purgatory; and these punishments are under the control of the church or the priesthood, especially the Pope as its legitimate head. There are also works of supererogation, performed by Christ and by the saints, with corresponding extra-merits and extra-rewards; and these constitute a rich treasury from which the Pope, as the treasurer, can dispense indulgences for money. This papal power of dispensation extends even to the departed souls in purgatory, whose sufferings may thereby be abridged. This is the scholastic doctrine.

The granting of indulgences degenerated, after the time of the crusades, into a regular traffic, and became a source of ecclesiastical and monastic wealth. A good portion of the profits went into the papal treasury. Boniface VIII. issued the first Bull of the jubilee indulgence to all visitors of St. Peter’s in Rome (1300). It was to be confined to Rome, and to be repeated only once in a hundred years, but it was afterwards extended and multiplied as to place and time.

The idea of selling and buying by money the remission of punishment and release from purgatory was acceptable to ignorant and superstitious people, but revolting to sound moral feeling. It roused, long before Luther, the indignant protest of earnest minds, such as Wiclif in England, Hus in Bohemia, John von Wesel in Germany, John Wessel in Holland, Thomas Wyttenbach in Switzerland, but without much effect.

The Lateran Council of 1517 allowed the Pope to collect one-tenth of all the ecclesiastical property of Christendom, ostensibly for a war against the Turks; but the measure was carried only by a small majority of two or three votes, and the minority objected that there was no immediate prospect of such a war. The extortions of the Roman curia became an intolerable burden to Christendom, and produced at last a successful protest which cost the papacy the loss of its fairest possessions.

§ 31. Luther and Tetzel.

I. On the Indulgence controversy: Luther’s Works, Walch’s ed., XV. 3–462; Weim. ed. I. 229–324. Löscher: Reformations-Acta. Leipzig, 1720. Vol. I. 355–539. J. Kapp: Schauplatz des Tetzelschen Ablass-krams. Leipzig, 1720. Jürgens: Luther, Bd. III. Kahnis: Die d. Ref., I. 18 1 sqq. Köstlin I. 153 sqq. Kolde, I. 126 sqq. On the Roman-Catholic side, Janssen: Geschichte, etc., II. 64 sqq.; 77 sqq.; and An meine Kritiker, Freiburg-i.-B., 1883, pp. 66–81.—On the editions of the Theses, compare Knaake, in the Weimar ed. I. 229 sqq.

Edw. Bratke: Luther’s 95 Thesen und ihre dogmengesch. Voraussetzungen. Göttingen, 1884 (pp. 333). Gives an account of the scholastic doctrine of indulgences from Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas down to Prierias and Cajetan, an exposition of Luther’s Theses, and a list of books on the subject. A. W. Dieckhoff (of Rostock): Der Ablassstreit. Dogmengeschichtlich dargestellt. Gotha, 1886 (pp. 260).

II. On Tetzel in particular: (1) Protestant biographies and tracts, all very unfavorable. (a) Older works by G. Hecht: Vita Joh. Tetzeli. Wittenberg, 1717. Jac. Vogel: Leben des päpstlichen Gnadenpredigers und Ablasskrämers Tetzel. Leipzig, 1717, 2d ed., 1727. (b) Modern works: F. G. Hofmann: Lebensbeschreibung des Ablasspredigers Tetzel. Leipzig, 1844. Dr. Kayser: Geschichtsquellen über Den Ablasspred. Tetzel Kritisch Beleuchtet. Annaberg, 1877 (pp. 20). Dr. Ferd. Körner: Tetzel, der Ablassprediger, etc. Frankenberg-i.-S. 1880 (pp. 153; chiefly against Gröne). Compare also Bratke and Dieckhoff, quoted above.

(2) Roman-Catholic vindications of Tetzel by Val. Gröne (Dr. Th.): Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgesch. und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors Dr. Joh. Tetzel aus dem Predigerorden. Soest und Olpe, 1853, 2d ed. 1860 (pp. 237). E. Kolbe: P. Joh. Tetzel. Ein Lebensbild dem kathol. Volke gewidmet. Steyl, 1882 (pp. 98, based on Gröne). K. W. Hermann: Joh. Tetzel, der päpstl. Ablassprediger. Frankf. -a.-M., 2te Aufl. 1883 (pp. 152). Janssen: An meine Kritiker, p. 73 sq. G. A. Meijer, Ord. Praed. (Dominican): Johann Tetzel, Aflaatprediker en inquisiteur.  Eene geschiedkundige studie. Utrecht, 1885 (pp. 150). A calm and moderate vindication of Tetzel, with the admission (p. 137) that the last word on the question has not yet been spoken, and that we must wait for the completion of the Regesta of Leo X. and other authentic publications now issuing from the Vatican archives by direction of Leo XIII. But the main facts are well established.

The rebuilding of St. Peter’s Church in Rome furnished an occasion for the periodical exercise of the papal power of granting indulgences. Julius II. and Leo X., two of the most worldly, avaricious, and extravagant Popes, had no scruple to raise funds for that object, and incidentally for their own aggrandizement, from the traffic in indulgences. Both issued several bulls to that effect.177

Spain, England, and France ignored or resisted these bulls for financial reasons, refusing to be taxed for the benefit of Rome. But Germany, under the weak rule of Maximilian, yielded to the papal domination.

Leo divided Germany into three districts, and committed in 1515 the sale for one district to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, and brother of the Elector of Brandenburg.178

This prelate (born June 28, 1490, died Sept. 24, 1545), though at that time only twenty-five years of age, stood at the head of the German clergy, and was chancellor of the German Empire. He received also the cardinal’s hat in 1518. He was, like his Roman master, a friend of liberal learning and courtly splendor, worldly-minded, and ill fitted for the care of souls. He had the ambition to be the Maecenas of Germany. He was himself destitute of theological education, but called scholars, artists, poets, free-thinkers, to his court, and honored Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten with presents and pensions. "He had a passionate love for music," says an Ultramontane historian, "and imported musicians from Italy to give luster to his feasts, in which ladies often participated. Finely wrought carpets, splendid mirrors adorned his halls and chambers; costly dishes and wines covered his table. He appeared in public with great pomp; he kept a body-guard of one hundred and fifty armed knights; numerous courtiers in splendid attire followed him when he rode out; he was surrounded by pages who were to learn in his presence the refinement of cavaliers." The same Roman-Catholic historian censures the extravagant court of Pope Leo X., which set the example for the secularization and luxury of the prelates in Germany.179

Albrecht was largely indebted to the rich banking-house of Fugger in Augsburg, from whom he had borrowed thirty thousand florins in gold to pay for the papal pallium. By an agreement with the Pope, he had permission to keep half of the proceeds arising from the sale of indulgences. The agents of that commercial house stood behind the preachers of indulgence, and collected their share for the repayment of the loan.

The Archbishop appointed Johann Tetzel (Diez) of the Dominican order, his commissioner, who again employed his sub-agents.

Tetzel was born between 1450 and 1460, at Leipzig, and began his career as a preacher of indulgences in 1501. He became famous as a popular orator and successful hawker of indulgences. He was prior of a Dominican convent, doctor of philosophy, and papal inquisitor (haereticae pravitatis inquisitor). At the end of 1517 he acquired in the University of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder the degree of Licentiate of Theology, and in January, 1518, the degree of Doctor of Theology, by defending, in two disputations, the doctrine of indulgences against Luther.180  He died at Leipzig during the public debate between Eck and Luther, July, 1519. He is represented by Protestant writers as an ignorant, noisy, impudent, and immoral charlatan, who was not ashamed to boast that he saved more souls from purgatory by his letters of indulgence than St. Peter by his preaching.181  On the other hand, Roman Catholic historians defend him as a learned and zealous servant of the church. He has only an incidental notoriety, and our estimate of his character need not affect our views on the merits of the Reformation. We must judge him from his published sermons and anti-theses against Luther. They teach neither more nor less than the usual scholastic doctrine of indulgences based on an extravagant theory of papal authority. He does not ignore, as is often asserted, the necessity of repentance as a condition of absolution.182  But he probably did not emphasize it in practice, and gave rise by unguarded expressions to damaging stories. His private character was certainly tainted, if we are to credit such a witness as the papal nuncio, Carl von Miltitz, who had the best means of information, and charged him with avarice, dishonesty, and sexual immorality.183

Tetzel traveled with great pomp and circumstance through Germany, and recommended with unscrupulous effrontery and declamatory eloquence the indulgences of the Pope to the large crowds who gathered from every quarter around him. He was received like a messenger from heaven. Priests, monks, and magistrates, men and women, old and young, marched in solemn procession with songs, flags, and candles, under the ringing of bells, to meet him and his fellow-monks, and followed them to the church; the papal Bull on a velvet cushion was placed on the high altar, a red cross with a silken banner bearing the papal arms was erected before it, and a large iron chest was put beneath the cross for the indulgence money. Such chests are still preserved in many places. The preachers, by daily sermons, hymns, and processions, urged the people, with extravagant laudations of the Pope’s Bull, to purchase letters of indulgence for their own benefit, and at the same time played upon their sympathies for departed relatives and friends whom they might release from their sufferings in purgatory "as soon as the penny tinkles in the box."184

The common people eagerly embraced this rare offer of salvation from punishment, and made no clear distinction between the guilt and punishment of sin; after the sermon they approached with burning candles the chest, confessed their sins, paid the money, and received the letter of indulgence which they cherished as a passport to heaven. But intelligent and pious men were shocked at such scandal. The question was asked, whether God loved money more than justice, and why the Pope, with his command over the boundless treasury of extra-merits, did not at once empty the whole purgatory for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, or build it with his own money.

Tetzel approached the dominions of the Elector of Saxony, who was himself a devout worshiper of relics, and had great confidence in indulgences, but would not let him enter his territory from fear that he might take too much money from his subjects. So Tetzel set up his trade on the border of Saxony, at Jüterbog, a few hours from Wittenberg.185

There he provoked the protest of the Reformer, who had already in the summer of 1516 preached a sermon of warning against trust in indulgences, and had incurred the Elector’s displeasure by his aversion to the whole system, although he himself had doubts about some important questions connected with it.

Luther had experienced the remission of sin as a free gift of grace to be apprehended by a living faith. This experience was diametrically opposed to a system of relief by means of payments in money. It was an irrepressible conflict of principle. He could not be silent when that barter was carried to the very threshold of his sphere of labor. As a preacher, a pastor, and a professor, he felt it to be his duty to protest against such measures: to be silent was to betray his theology and his conscience.

The jealousy between the Augustinian order to which he belonged, and the Dominican order to which Tetzel belonged, may have exerted some influence, but it was certainly very subordinate. A laboring mountain may produce a ridiculous mouse, but no mouse can give birth to a mountain. The controversy with Tetzel (who is not even mentioned in Luther’s Theses) was merely the occasion, but not the cause, of the Reformation: it was the spark which exploded the mine. The Reformation would have come to pass sooner or later, if no Tetzel had ever lived; and it actually did break out in different countries without any connection with the trade in indulgences, except in German Switzerland, where Bernhardin Samson acted the part of Tetzel, but after Zwingli had already begun his reforms.

§ 32. The Ninety-five Theses. Oct. 31, 1517.

Lit. in § 31.

After serious deliberation, without consulting any of his colleagues or friends, but following an irresistible impulse, Luther resolved upon a public act of unforeseen consequences. It may be compared to the stroke of the axe with which St. Boniface, seven hundred years before, had cut down the sacred oak, and decided the downfall of German heathenism. He wished to elicit the truth about the burning question of indulgences, which he himself professed not fully to understand at the time, and which yet was closely connected with the peace of conscience and eternal salvation. He chose the orderly and usual way of a learned academic disputation.

Accordingly, on the memorable thirty-first day of October, 1517, which has ever since been celebrated in Protestant Germany as the birthday of the Reformation, at twelve o’clock he affixed (either himself or through another) to the doors of the castle-church at Wittenberg, ninety-five Latin Theses on the subject of indulgences, and invited a public discussion. At the same time he sent notice of the fact to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and to Bishop Hieronymus Scultetus, to whose diocese Wittenberg belonged. He chose the eve of All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), because this was one of the most frequented feasts, and attracted professors, students, and people from all directions to the church, which was filled with precious relics.186

No one accepted the challenge, and no discussion took place. The professors and students of Wittenberg were of one mind on the subject. But history itself undertook the disputation and defence. The Theses were copied, translated, printed, and spread as on angels’ wings throughout Germany and Europe in a few weeks.187

The rapid circulation of the Reformation literature was promoted by the perfect freedom of the press. There was, as yet, no censorship, no copyright, no ordinary book-trade in the modern sense, and no newspapers; but colportors, students, and friends carried the books and tracts from house to house. The mass of the people could not read, but they listened attentively to readers. The questions of the Reformation were eminently practical, and interested all classes; and Luther handled the highest themes in the most popular style.

The Theses bear the title, "Disputation to explain the Virtue of Indulgences." They sound very strange to a modern ear, and are more Catholic than Protestant. They are no protest against the Pope and the Roman Church, or any of her doctrines, not even against indulgences, but only against their abuse. They expressly condemn those who speak against indulgences (Th. 71), and assume that the Pope himself would rather see St. Peter’s Church in ashes than have it built with the flesh and blood of his sheep (Th. 50). They imply belief in purgatory. They nowhere mention Tetzel. They are silent about faith and justification, which already formed the marrow of Luther’s theology and piety. He wished to be moderate, and had not the most distant idea of a separation from the mother church. When the Theses were republished in his collected works (1545), he wrote in the preface: "I allow them to stand, that by them it may appear how weak I was, and in what a fluctuating state of mind, when I began this business. I was then a monk and a mad papist (papista insanissimus), and so submersed in the dogmas of the Pope that I would have readily murdered any person who denied obedience to the Pope."

But after all, they contain the living germs of a new theology. The form only is Romish, the spirit and aim are Protestant. We must read between the lines, and supply the negations of the Theses by the affirmations from his preceding and succeeding books, especially his Resolutiones, in which he answers objections, and has much to say about faith and justification. The Theses represent a state of transition from twilight to daylight. They reveal the mighty working of an earnest mind and conscience intensely occupied with the problem of sin, repentance, and forgiveness, and struggling for emancipation from the fetters of tradition. They might more properly be called "a disputation to diminish the virtue of papal indulgences, and to magnify the full and free grace of the gospel of Christ." They bring the personal experience of justification by faith, and direct intercourse with Christ and the gospel, in opposition to an external system of churchly and priestly mediation and human merit. The papal opponents felt the logical drift of the Theses much better than Luther, and saw in them an attempt to undermine the whole fabric of popery. . The irresistible progress of the Reformation soon swept the indulgences away as an unscriptural, mediaeval tradition of men.188

The first Thesis strikes the keynote: "Our Lord and Master when he says, ’Repent,’189  desires that the whole life of believers should be a repentance."190  The corresponding Greek noun means change of mind (metavnoia), and implies both a turning away from sin in sincere sorrow and grief, and a turning to God in hearty faith. Luther distinguishes, in the second Thesis, true repentance from the sacramental penance (i.e., the confession and satisfaction required by the priest), and understands it to be an internal state and exercise of the mind rather than isolated external acts; although he expressly affirms, in the third Thesis, that it must manifest itself in various mortifications of the flesh. Repentance is a continual conflict of the believing spirit with the sinful flesh, a daily renewal of the heart. As long as sin lasts, there is need of repentance. The Pope can not remit any sin except by declaring the remission of God; and he can not remit punishments except those which he or the canons impose (Thes.5 and 6). Forgiveness presupposes true repentance, and can only be found in the merits of Christ. Here comes in the other fundamental Thesis (62): The true treasury of the church is the holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God." This sets aside the mediaeval notion about the overflowing treasury of extra-merits and rewards at the disposal of the Pope for the benefit of the living and the dead.

We have thus set before us in this manifesto, on the one hand, human depravity which requires lifelong repentance, and on the other the full and free grace of God in Christ, which can only be appropriated by a living faith. This is, in substance, the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith (although not expressed in terms), and virtually destroys the whole scholastic theory and practice of indulgences. By attacking the abuses of indulgences, Luther unwittingly cut a vein of mediaeval Catholicism; and by a deeper conception of repentance which implies faith, and by referring the sinner to the grace of Christ as the true and only source of remission, he proclaimed the undeveloped principles of evangelical Protestantism, and kindled a flame which soon extended far beyond his original intentions.

NOTES.

THE NINETY-FIVE THESES.

DISPUTATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER CONCERNING PENITENCE AND INDULGENCES.

In the desire and with the purpose of elucidating the truth, a disputation will be held on the underwritten propositions at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Monk of the Order of St. Augustin, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and ordinary Reader of the same in that place.191  He therefore asks those who cannot be present, and discuss the subject with us orally, to do so by letter in their absence. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: "Repent ye" [lit.: Do penance, poenitentiam agite], etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence [poenitentiam].192

2. This word poenitentia cannot be understood of sacramental penance, that is, of the confession and satisfaction which are performed under the ministry of priests.

3. It does not, however, refer solely to inward penitence; nay, such inward penitence is naught, unless it outwardly produces various mortifications of the flesh [varias carnis mortificationes].

4. The penalty [poena] thus continues as long as the hatred of self—that is, true inward penitence [poenitentia vera intus]—continues; namely, till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority, or by that of the canons.193

6. The Pope has no power to remit any guilt, except by declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God; or at most by remitting cases reserved for himself: in which cases, if his power were despised, guilt would certainly remain.

7. God never remits any man’s guilt, without at the same time subjecting him, humbled in all things, to the authority of his representative the priest [sacernoti suo vicario].

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and no burden ought to be imposed on the dying, according to them.

9. Hence the Holy Spirit acting in the Pope does well for us in that, in his decrees, he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Those priests act unlearnedly and wrongly, who, in the case of the dying, reserve the canonical penances for purgatory.

11. Those tares about changing of the canonical penalty into the penalty of purgatory seem surely to have been sown while the bishops were asleep.

12. Formerly the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying pay all penalties by death, and are already dead to the Canon laws, and are by right relieved from them.

14. The imperfect soundness or charity of a dying person necessarily brings with it great fear, and the less it is, the greater the fear it brings.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient by itself, to say nothing of other things, to constitute the pains of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven appear to differ as despair, almost despair, and peace of mind [securitas] differ.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems that it must needs be that, as horror diminishes, so charity increases.

18. Nor does it seem to be proved by any reasoning or any scriptures, that they are outside of the state of merit or the increase of charity.

19. Nor does this appear to be proved, that they are sure and confident of their own blessedness, at least all of them, though we may be very sure of it.

20. Therefore the Pope, when he speaks of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean simply of all, but only of those imposed by himself.

21. Thus those preachers of indulgences are in error who say that, by the indulgences of the Pope, a man is loosed and saved from all punishment.

22. For, in fact, he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which they would have had to pay in this life according to the canons.

23. If any entire remission of all the penalties can be granted to any one, it is certain that it is granted to none but the most perfect, that is, to very few.

24. Hence the greater part of the people must needs be deceived by this indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalties.

25. Such power as the Pope has over purgatory in general, such has every bishop in his own diocese, and every curate in his own parish, in particular.

26. [In the Latin text, I.] The Pope acts most rightly in granting remission to souls, not by the power of the keys (which is of no avail in this case), but by the way of suffrage [per modum suffragii].

27. They preach man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles [ut jactus nummus in cistam tinnierit].

28. It is certain, that, when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory desire to be redeemed from it, according to the story told of Saints Severinus and Paschal?194

30. No man is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of the attainment of plenary remission.

31. Rare as is a true penitent, so rare is one who truly buys indulgences—that is to say, most rare.

32. Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers.

33. We must especially beware of those who say that these pardons from the Pope are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God.

34. For the grace conveyed by these pardons has respect only to the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, which are of human appointment.

35. They preach no Christian doctrine, who teach that contrition is not necessary for those who buy souls out of purgatory, or buy confessional licenses.

36. Every Christian who feels true compunction has of right plenary remission of pain and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. The remission, however, imparted by the Pope, is by no means to be despised, since it is, as I have said, a declaration of the Divine remission.

39. It is a most difficult thing, even for the most learned theologians, to exalt at the same time in the eyes of the people the ample effect of pardons, and the necessity of true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves punishment; while the ampleness of pardons relaxes it, and causes men to hate it, or at least gives occasion for them to do so.

41. Apostolical pardons ought to be proclaimed with caution, lest the people should falsely suppose that they are placed before other good works of charity.

42. Christians should be taught that it is not the mind of the Pope, that the buying of pardons is to be in any way compared to works of mercy.

43. Christians should be taught, that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons.

44. Because, by a work of charity, charity increases, and the man becomes better; while, by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment.

45. Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgence of the Pope, but the anger of God.

46. Christians should be taught, that, unless they have superfluous wealth, they are bound to keep what is necessary for the use of their own households, and by no means to lavish it on pardons.

47. Christians should be taught, that, while they are free to buy pardons, they are not commanded to do so.

48. Christians should be taught that the Pope, in granting pardons, has both more need and more desire that devout prayer should be made for him, than that money should be readily paid.

49. Christians should be taught that the Pope’s pardons are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God.

50. [Lat. text XXV.] Christians should be taught, that, if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.

51. [I.] Christians should be taught, that as it would be the wish of the Pope, even to sell, if necessary, the Basilica of St. Peter, and to give of his own to very many of those from whom the preachers of pardons extract money.

52. Vain is the hope of salvation through letters of pardon, even if a commissary—nay, the Pope himself—were to pledge his own soul for them.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the Pope, who, in order that pardons may be preached, condemn the word of God to utter silence in other churches.

54. Wrong is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons than on the words of the gospel [verbis evangelicis].

55. The mind of the Pope necessarily is that if pardons, which are a very small matter [quod minimum est], are celebrated with single bells, single processions, and single ceremonies, the gospel, which is a very great matter [quod maximum est], should be preached with a hundred ceremonies.

56. The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope grants indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known among the people of Christ.195

57. It is clear that they are at least not temporal treasures; for these are not so readily lavished, but only accumulated, by many of the preachers.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and of the saints; for these, independently of the Pope, are always working grace to the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell to the outer man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church are the poor of the Church, but he spoke according to the use of the word in his time.

60. We are not speaking rashly when we say that the keys of the Church, bestowed through the merits of Christ, are that treasure.

61. For it is clear that the power of the Pope is alone sufficient for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases.

62. The true treasure of the Church is the holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God [Verus thesaurus ecclesiae est sacrosanctum Evangelium gloriae et gratiae Dei].

63. This treasure, however, is deservedly most hateful [merito odiosissimus; der allerfeindseligste und verhassteste], because it makes the first to be last.

64. While the treasure of indulgences is deservedly most acceptable, because it makes the last to be first.

65. Hence the treasures of the gospel are nets, wherewith of old they fished for the men of riches.

66. The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men.

67. Those indulgences, which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain [denn es grossen Gewinnst und Geniess trägt].

68. Yet they are in reality the smallest graces when compared with the grace of God and the piety of the cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to receive the commissaries of apostolical pardons with all reverence.

70. But they are still more bound to see to it with all their eyes, and take heed with all their ears, that these men do not preach their own dreams in place of the Pope’s commission.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolical pardons, let him be the anathema and accursed (sit anathema et maledictus; der sei ein Fluch und vermaladeiet].

72. But he, on the other hand, who exerts himself against the wantonness and license of speech of the preachers of pardons, let him be blessed.

73. As the Pope justly thunders [Lat., fulminat; G. trs., mit Ungnade und dem Bann schlägt] against those who use any kind of contrivance to the injury of the traffic in pardons;

74. Much more is it his intention to thunder against those who, under the pretext of pardons, use contrivances to the injury of holy charity and of truth.

75. [XXV.] To think that papal pardons have such power that they could absolve a man even if—by an impossibility—he had violated the Mother of God, is madness.

76. [I.] We affirm, on the contrary, that papal pardons [veniae papales] can not take away even the least venial sins, as regards the guilt [quoad culpam].

77. The saying that, even if St. Peter were now Pope, he could grant no greater graces, is blasphemy against St. Peter and the Pope.

78. We affirm, on the contrary, that both he and any other Pope has greater graces to grant; namely, the gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc. (1 Cor. xii. 9).

69. To say that the cross set up among the insignia of the papal arms is of equal power with the cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. Those bishops, curates, and theologians who allow such discourses to have currency among the people, will have to render an account.

81. This license in the preaching of pardons makes it no easy thing, even for learned men, to protect the reverence due to the Pope against the calumnies, or, at all events, the keen questionings, of the laity;

82. As, for instance: Why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of most holy charity and of the supreme necessity of souls,—this being the most just of all reasons,—if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of that most fatal thing, money, to be spent on building a basilica—this being a slight reason?

83. Again: Why do funeral masses and anniversary masses for deceased continue, and why does not the Pope return, or permit the withdrawal of, the funds bequeathed for this purpose, since it is a wrong to pray for those who are already redeemed?

84. Again: What is this new kindness of God and the Pope, in that, for money’s sake, they permit an impious man and an enemy of God to redeem a pious soul which loves God, and yet do not redeem that same pious and beloved soul, out of free charity, on account of its own need?

85. Again: Why is it that the penitential canons, long since abrogated and dead in themselves in very fact, and not only by usage, are yet still redeemed with money, through the granting of indulgences, as if they were full of life?

86. Again: Why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the one Basilica of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers?

87. Again: Why does the Pope remit or impart to those who, through perfect contrition, have a right to plenary remission and participation?

88. Again: What greater good would the Church receive if the Pope, instead of once as he does now, were to bestow these remissions and participations a hundred times a day on any one of the faithful?

89. Since it is the salvation of souls, rather than money, that the Pope seeks by his pardons, why does he annul the letters and pardons granted long ago, since they are equally efficacious?

90. To repress these scruples and arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to solve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the Pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian men unhappy.

91. If, then, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the Pope, all these questions would be resolved with ease; nay, would not exist.

92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace.

93. Blessed be all those prophets, who say to the people of Christ, "The cross, the cross," and there is no cross.

94. Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ their head through pains, deaths, and hells;

95. [Lat. Text, XX.] And thus trust to enter heaven through many tribulations, rather than in the security of peace [per securitatem pacis].

PROTESTATION.

I, Martin Luther, Doctor, of the Order of Monks at Wittenberg, desire to testify publicly that certain propositions against pontifical indulgences, as they call them, have been put forth by me. Now although, up to the present time, neither this most celebrated and renowned school of ours nor any civil or ecclesiastical power has condemned me, yet there are, as I hear, some men of headlong and audacious spirit, who dare to pronounce me a heretic, as though the matter had been thoroughly looked into and studied. But on my part, as I have often done before, so now too I implore all men, by the faith of Christ, either to point out to me a better way, if such a way has been divinely revealed to any, or at least to submit their opinion to the judgment of God and of the Church. For I am neither so rash as to wish that my sole opinion should be preferred to that of all other men, nor so senseless as to be willing that the word of God should be made to give place to fables devised by human reason.

§ 33. The Theses-Controversy. 1518.

Luther’s Sermon vom Ablass und Gnade, printed in February, 1518 (Weimar ed. I. 239–246; and in Latin, 317–324); Kurze Erklärung der Zehn Gebote, 1518 (I. 248–256, in Latin under the title Instructio pro Confessione peccatorum, p. 257–265); Asterisci adversus Obeliscos Eckii, March, 1518 (I. 278–316); Freiheit des Sermons päpstlichen Ablass und Gnade belangend, June, 1518, against Tetzel (I. 380–393); Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute, August, 1518, dedicated to the Pope (I. 522–628). Letters of Luther to Archbishop Albrecht, Spalatin, and others, in De Wette, I. 67 sqq.

Tetzel’s Anti-Theses, 2 series, one of 106, the other of 50 sentences, are printed in Löscher’s Ref. Acta, I. 505–514, and 518–523. Eck’s Obelisci, ibid. III. 333.

On the details of the controversy, see Jürgens (III. 479 sqq.), Köstlin (I. 175 sqq.), Kolde (I. 126 sqq.), Bratke, and Dieckhoff, as quoted in § 31.

The Theses of Luther were a tract for the times. They sounded the trumpet of the Reformation. They found a hearty response with liberal scholars and enemies of monastic obscurantism, with German patriots longing for emancipation from Italian control, and with thousands of plain Christians waiting for the man of Providence who should give utterance to their feelings of indignation against existing abuses, and to their desire for a pure, scriptural, and spiritual religion. "Ho, ho! "exclaimed Dr. Fleck, "the man has come who will do the thing." Reuchlin thanked God that "the monks have now found a man who will give them such full employment that they will be glad to let me spend my old age in peace."196

But, on the other hand, the Theses were strongly assailed and condemned by the episcopal and clerical hierarchy, the monastic orders, especially the Dominicans, and the universities, in fact, by all the champions of scholastic theology and traditional orthodoxy. Luther himself, then a poor, emaciated monk, was at first frightened by the unexpected effect, and many of his friends trembled. One of them told him, "You tell the truth, good brother, but you will accomplish nothing; go to your cell, and say, God have mercy upon me."197

The chief writers against Luther were Tetzel of Leipzig, Conrad Wimpina of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and the more learned and formidable John Eck of Ingolstadt, who was at first a friend of Luther, but now became his irreconcilable enemy. These opponents represented three universities and the ruling scholastic theology of the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas. But they injured their cause in public estimation by the weakness of their defence. They could produce no arguments for the doctrine and practice of indulgences from the Word of God, or even from the Greek and Latin fathers, and had to resort to extravagant views on the authority of the Pope. They even advocated papal infallibility, although this was as yet an open question in the Roman Church, and remained so till the Vatican decree of 1870.

Luther mustered courage. In all his weakness he was strong. He felt that he had begun this business in the name and for the glory of God, and was ready to sacrifice life itself for his honest conviction. He took comfort from the counsel of Gamaliel. In several letters of this period he subscribed himself Martinus Eleutherios (Freeman), but added, vielmehr Knecht (rather, Servant): he felt free of men, but bound in Christ. When his friend Schurf told him, "They will not bear it;" he replied, "But what, if they have to bear it?"  He answered all his opponents, directly and indirectly, in Latin and German, from the pulpit and the chair, and through the press. He began now to develop his formidable polemical power, especially in his German writings. He had full command over the vocabulary of common sense, wit, irony, vituperation, and abuse. Unfortunately, he often resorted to coarse and vulgar expressions which, even in that semi-barbarous age, offended men of culture and taste, and which set a bad example for his admirers in the fierce theological wars within the Lutheran Church.198

The discussion forced him into a conflict with the papal authority, on which the theory and traffic of indulgences were ultimately made to rest. The controversy resolved itself into the question whether that authority was infallible and final, or subject to correction by the Scriptures and a general Council. Luther defended the latter view; yet he protested that he was no heretic, and that he taught nothing contrary to the Scriptures, the ancient fathers, the oecumenical Councils, and the decrees of the Popes. He still hoped for a favorable hearing from Leo X., whom he personally respected. He even ventured to dedicate to him his Resolutiones, a defence of the Theses (May 30, 1518), with a letter of abject humility, promising to obey his voice as the very voice of Christ.199

Such an anomalous and contradictory position could not last long.

In the midst of this controversy, in April, 1518, Luther was sent as a delegate to a meeting of the Augustinian monks at Heidelberg, and had an opportunity to defend, in public debate, forty conclusions, or, "theological paradoxes," drawn from St. Paul and St. Augustin, concerning natural depravity, the slavery of the will, regenerating grace, faith, and good works. He advocates the theologia crucis against the theologia gloriae, and contrasts the law and the gospel. "The law says, ’Do this,’   and never does it: the gospel says, ’Believe in Christ,’ and all is done." The last twelve theses are directed against the Aristotelian philosophy.200

He found considerable response, and sowed the seed of the Reformation in the Palatinate. Among his youthful hearers were Bucer (Butzer) and Brentz, who afterwards became distinguished reformers, the one in Strassburg and England, the other in the duchy (now kingdom) of Würtemberg.

§ 34. Rome’s Interposition. Luther and Prierias. 1518.

R. P. Silvestri Prieratis ordinis praedicatorum et s. theol. professoris celeberrimi, s. palatii apostolici magistri, in praesumptuosas Martini Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papae dialogus. In Löscher, II. 13–39. Knaake (Werke, I. 644) assigns the first edition to the second half of June, 1518, which is more likely than the earlier date of December, 1517, given by Löscher (II. 12) and the Erlangen ed. He mentions five separate editions, two of which were published by Luther without notes; afterwards he published an edition with his refutation.

Ad Dialogum Silvestri Prierati de potestate papae responsio. In Löscher, II. 3; Weim. ed. I., 647–686, II. 48–56. German translation in Walch, XVIII. l20–200.

Pope Leo X. was disposed to ignore the Wittenberg movement as a contemptible monkish quarrel; but when it threatened to become dangerous, he tried to make the German monk harmless by the exercise of his power. He is reported to have said first, "Brother Martin is a man of fine genius, and this outbreak is a mere squabble of envious monks;" but afterwards, "It is a drunken German who wrote the Theses; when sober he will change his mind."

Three months after the appearance of the Theses, he directed the vicar-general of the Augustinian Order to quiet down the restless monk. In March, 1518, he found it necessary to appoint a commission of inquiry under the direction of the learned Dominican Silvester Mazzolini, called from his birthplace Prierio or Prierias (also Prieras), who was master of the sacred palace and professor of theology.

Prierias came to the conclusion that Luther was an ignorant and blasphemous arch-heretic, and hastily wrote a Latin dialogue against his Theses, hoping to crush him by subtile scholastic distinctions, and the weight of papal authority (June, 1518). He identified the Pope with the Church of Rome, and the Church of Rome with the Church universal, and denounced every departure from it as a heresy. He said of Luther’s Theses, that they bite like a cur.

Luther republished the Dialogue with a reply, in which he called it "sufficiently supercilious, and thoroughly Italian and Thomistic "(August, 1518).

Prierias answered with a Replica (November, 1518). Luther republished it likewise, with a brief preface, and sent it to Prierias with the advice not to make himself any more ridiculous by writing books.

The effect of this controversy was to widen the breach.

In the mean time Luther’s fate had already been decided. The Roman hierarchy could no more tolerate such a dangerous man than the Jewish hierarchy could tolerate Christ and the apostles. On the 7th of August, 1518, he was cited to appear in Rome within sixty days to recant his heresies. On the 23d of the same month, the Pope demanded of the Elector Frederick the Wise, that he should deliver up this "child of the Devil" to the papal legate.

But the Elector, who was one of the most powerful and esteemed princes of Germany, felt unwilling to sacrifice the shining light of his beloved university, and arranged a peaceful interview with the papal legate at the Diet of Augsburg on promise of kind treatment and safe return.

§ 35. Luther and Cajetan. October, 1518.

The transactions at Augsburg were published by Luther in December, 1518, and are printed in Löscher, II. 435–492; 527–551; in Walch, XV. 636 sqq.; in the Weim. ed., II. 1–40. Luther’s Letters in De Wette, I. 147–167. Comp. Kahnis, I. 215–235; Köstlin, I. 204–238 (and his shorter biogr., Eng. trans., p. 108).

Luther accordingly proceeded to Augsburg in humble garb, and on foot, till illness forced him within a short distance from the city to take a carriage. He was accompanied by a young monk and pupil, Leonard Baier, and his friend Link. He arrived Oct. 7, 1518, and was kindly received by Dr. Conrad Peutinger and two counselors of the Elector, who advised him to behave with prudence, and to observe the customary rules of etiquette. Everybody was anxious to see the man who, like a second Herostratus, had kindled such a flame.

On Oct. 11, he received the letter of safe-conduct; and on the next day he appeared before the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio of Gaëta), who represented the Pope at the German Diet, and was to obtain its consent to the imposition of a heavy tax for the war against the Turks.

Cajetan was, like Prierias, a Dominican and zealous Thomist, a man of great learning and moral integrity, but fond of pomp and ostentation. He wrote a standard commentary on the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (which is frequently appended to the Summa); but in his later years, till his death (1534),—perhaps in consequence of his interview with Luther,—he devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Scriptures, and urged it upon his friends. He labored with the aid of Hebrew and Greek scholars to correct the Vulgate by a more faithful version, and advocated Jerome’s liberal views on questions of criticism and the Canon, and a sober grammatical exegesis against allegorical fancies, without, however, surrendering the Catholic principle of tradition.

There was a great contrast between the Italian cardinal and the German monk, the shrewd diplomat and the frank scholar; the expounder and defender of mediaeval scholasticism, and the champion of modern biblical theology; the man of church authority, and the advocate of personal freedom.

They had three interviews (Oct. 12, 13, 14). Cajetan treated Luther with condescending courtesy, and assured him of his friendship.201  But he demanded retraction of his errors, and absolute submission to the Pope. Luther resolutely refused, and declared that he could do nothing against his conscience ; that one must obey God rather than man ; that he had the Scripture on his side; that even Peter was once reproved by Paul for misconduct (Gal. 2:11), and that surely his successor was not infallible. Still be asked the cardinal to intercede with Leo X., that he might not harshly condemn him. Cajetan threatened him with excommunication, having already the papal mandate in his hand, and dismissed him with the words: "Revoke, or do not come again into my presence."  He urged Staupitz to do his best to convert Luther, and said he was unwilling to dispute any further with that deep-eyed German beast filled with strange speculations."202

Under these circumstances, Luther, with the aid of friends who provided him with an escort, made his escape from Augsburg, through a small gate in the city-Wall, in the night of the 20th of October, on a hard-trotting hack, without pantaloons, boots, or spurs. He rode on the first day as far as the town of Monheim203 without stopping, and fell utterly exhausted upon the straw in a stable.204

He reached Wittenberg, in good spirits, on the first anniversary of his Ninety-five Theses. He forthwith published a report of his conference with a justification of his conduct. He also wrote (Nov. 19) a long and very eloquent letter to the Elector, exposing the unfairness of Cajetan, who had misrepresented the proceedings, and demanded from the Elector the delivery of Luther to Rome or his expulsion from Saxony.

Before leaving Augsburg, be left an appeal from Cajetan to the Pope, and "from the Pope ill informed to the Pope to be better informed "(a papa male informato ad papam melius informandum). Soon afterwards, Nov. 28, he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope to a general council, and thus anticipated the papal sentence of excommunication. He expected every day maledictions from Rome, and was prepared for exile or any other fate.205  He was already tormented with the thought that the Pope might be the Anti-Christ spoken of by St. Paul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, and asked his friend Link (Dec. 11) to give him his opinion on the subject.206  Ultimately he lost faith also in a general council, and appealed solely to the Scriptures and his conscience. The Elector urged him to moderation through Spalatin, but Luther declared: "The more those Romish grandees rage, and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them, and shall feel all the more free to fight against the serpents of Rome. I am prepared for all, and await the judgment of God."

§ 36. Luther and Miltitz. January, 1519.

Löscher, II. 552–569; III. 6–21, 820–847. Luther’s Werke, Walch, XV. 308 sqq.; Weimar ed., II. 66 sqq. Letters in De Wette: I. 207 sqq., 233 sqq.

Joh. K. Seidemann: Karl Von Miltitz .... Eine chronol. Untersuchung. Dresden, 1844 (pp. 37). The respective sections in Marheineke, Kahnis (I. 235 sqq.), and Köstlin (I. 238 sqq. and 281 sqq.).

Before the final decision, another attempt was made to silence Luther by inducing him to revoke his heresies. Diplomacy sometimes interrupts the natural development of principles and the irresistible logic of events, but only for a short season. It usually resorts to compromises which satisfy neither party, and are cast aside. Principles must work themselves out.

Pope Leo sent his nuncio and chamberlain, Karl von Miltitz, a noble Saxon by birth, and a plausible, convivial gentleman,207  to the Elector Frederick with the rare present of a golden rose, and authorized him to negotiate with Luther. He provided him with a number of the highest recommendations to civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries.

Miltitz discovered on his journey a wide-spread and growing sympathy with Luther. He found three Germans on his side, especially in the North, to one against him. He heard bad reports about Tetzel, and summoned him; but Tetzel was afraid to travel, and died a few months afterwards (Aug. 7, 1519), partly, perhaps, in consequence of the severe censure from the papal delegate. Luther wrote to his opponent a letter of comfort, which is no more extant. Unmeasured as he could be in personal abuse, he harbored no malice or revenge in his heart.208

Miltitz held a conference with Luther in the house of Spalatin at Altenburg, Jan. 6, 1519. He was exceedingly polite and friendly; he deplored the offence and scandal of the Theses-controversy, and threw a great part of the blame on poor Tetzel; he used all his powers of persuasion, and entreated him with tears not to divide the unity of the holy Catholic Church.

They agreed that the matter should be settled by a German bishop instead of going to Rome, and that in the mean time both parties were to keep silence. Luther promised to ask the pardon of the Pope, and to warn the people against the sin of separating from the holy mother-church. After this agreement they partook of a social supper, and parted with a kiss. Miltitz must have felt very proud of his masterpiece of ecclesiastical diplomacy.

Luther complied with his promises in a way which seems irreconcilable with his honest convictions and subse-quent conduct. But we must remember the deep conflicts of his mind, the awful responsibility of his undertaking, the critical character of the situation. Well might he pause for a while, and shrink back from the idea of a separation from the church of his fathers, so intimately connected with his religious life as well as with the whole history of Christianity for fifteen hundred years. He had to break a new path which became so easy for others. We must all the more admire his conscientiousness.

In his letter to the Pope, dated March 3, 1519, he expressed the deepest personal humility, and denied that he ever intended to injure the Roman Church, which was over every other power in heaven and on earth, save only Jesus Christ the Lord over all. Yet he repudiated the idea of retracting his conscientious convictions.

In his address to the people, he allowed the value of indulgences, but only as a recompense for the "satisfaction" given by, the sinner, and urged the duty of adhering, notwithstanding her faults and sins, to the holy Roman Church, where St. Peter and St. Paul, and many Popes and thousands of martyrs, had shed their blood.

At the same time, Luther continued the careful study of history, and could find no trace of popery and its extraordinary claims in the first centuries before the Council of Nicaea. He discovered that the Papal Decretals, and the Donation of Constantine, were a forgery. He wrote to Spalatin, March 13, 1519, "I know not whether tho Pope is anti-christ himself, or his apostle; so wretchedly is Christ, that is the truth, corrupted and crucified by him in the Decretals."209

§ 37. The Leipzig Disputation. June 27-July 15, 1519.

I. Löscher, III. 203–819. Luther’s Works, Walch, XV. 954 sqq.; Weim. ed. II. 153–435 (see the literary notices of Knaake, p. 156). Luther’s letters to Spalatin and the Elector, in De Wette:, I. 284–324.

II. Joh. K. Seidemann: Die Leipziger Disputation im Jahre 1519. Dresden and Leipzig, 1843 (pp. 161). With important documents (pp. 93 sqq.)  The best book on the subject. Monographs on Carlstadt by Jäger (Stuttgart, 1856), on Eck by Wiedemann (Regensburg, 1865), and the relevant sections in Marheineke, Kahnis (I. 251–285), Köstlin, Kolde, and the general histories of the Reformation. The account by Ranke (I. 277–285) is very good. On the Roman side, see Janssen, II. 83–88 (incomplete).

The agreement between Miltitz and Luther was only a short truce. The Reformation was too deeply rooted in the wants of the age to be suppressed by the diplomacy of ecclesiastical politicians. Even if the movement had been arrested in one place, it would have broken out in another; indeed, it had already begun independently in Switzerland. Luther was no more his own master, but the organ of a higher power. "Man proposes, God disposes."

Before the controversy could be settled by a German bishop, it was revived, not without a violation of promise on both sides,210  in the disputation held in the large hall of the Castle of Pleissenburg at Leipzig, under the sanction of Duke George of Saxony, between Eck, Carlstadt, and Luther, on the doctrines of the papal primacy, free-will, good works, purgatory, and indulgences. It was one of the great intellectual battles; it lasted nearly three weeks, and excited universal attention in that deeply religious and theological age. The vital doctrines of salvation were at stake. The debate was in Latin, but Luther broke out occasionally in his more vigorous German.

The disputation began with the solemnities of a mass, a procession, an oration of Peter Mosellanus, De ratione disputandi, and the singing of Veni, Creator Spiritus. It ended with a eulogistic oration by the Leipzig professor John Lange, and the Te Deum.

The first act was the disputation between Eck and Carlstadt, on the freedom of the human will, which the former maintained, and the latter denied. The second and more important act began July 4, between Eck and Luther, chiefly on the subject of the papacy.

Dr. Eck (Johann Mair), professor of theology at Ingolstadt in Bavaria, was the champion of Romanism, a man of great learning, well-stored memory, dialectical skill, ready speech, and stentorian voice, but overconfident, conceited, and boisterous. He looked more like a butcher or soldier than a theologian. Many regarded him as a mere charlatan, and expressed their contempt for his audacity and vanity by the nicknames Keck (pert) and Geck (fop), which date from this dispute.211

Carlstadt (Andreas von Bodenstein), Luther’s impetuous and ill-balanced friend and colleague, was an unfortunate debater.212  He had a poor memory, depended on his notes, got embarrassed and confused, and furnished an easy victory to Eck. It was ominous, that, on entering Leipzig, his wagon broke down, and he fell into the mud.

Luther was inferior to Eck in historical learning and flowing Latinity, but surpassed him in knowledge of the Bible, independent judgment, originality, and depth of thought, and had the law of progress on his side. While Eck looked to the fathers, Luther went back to the grandfathers; he ascended from the stream of church history to the fountain of God’s Word; yet from the normative beginning of the apostolic age he looked hopefully into the future. Though pale and emaciated, he was cheerful, wore a little silver ring, and carried a bunch of flowers in his hand. Peter Mosellanus, a famous Latinist, who presided over the disputation, thus describes his personal appearance at that time:213 —

"Luther is of middle stature; his body thin, and so wasted by care and study that nearly all his bones may be counted.214  He is in the prime of life. His voice is clear and melodious. His learning, and his knowledge of Scripture are so extraordinary that he has nearly every thing at his fingers’ ends. Greek and Hebrew he understands sufficiently well to give his judgment on interpretations. For conversation, he has a rich store of subjects at his command; a vast forest (silva ingens) of thoughts and words is at his disposal. He is polite and clever. There is nothing stoical, nothing supercilious, about him; and he understands how to adapt himself to different persons and times. In society he is lively and agreeable. He is always fresh, cheerful, and at his ease, and has a pleasant countenance, however hard his enemies may threaten him, so that one cannot but believe that Heaven is with him in his great undertaking.215  Most people, however, reproach him with want of moderation in polemics, and with being rather imprudent and more cutting than befits a theologian and a reformer."

The chief interest in the disputation turned on the subject of the authority of the Pope and the infallibility of the Church. Eck maintained that the Pope is the successor of Peter, and the vicar of Christ by divine right; Luther, that this claim is contrary to the Scriptures, to the ancient church, to the Council of Nicaea,—the most sacred of all Councils,—and rests only on the frigid decrees of the Roman pontiffs.

But during the debate he changed his opinion on the authority of Councils, and thereby injured his cause in the estimation of the audience. Being charged by Eck with holding the heresy of Hus, he at first repudiated him and all schismatic tendencies; but on mature reflection he declared that Hus held some scriptural truths, and was unjustly condemned and burnt by the Council of Constance; that a general council as well as a Pope may err, and had no right to impose any article of faith not founded in the Scriptures. When Duke George, a sturdy upholder of the Catholic creed, heard Luther express sympathy with the Bohemian heresy, he shook his head, and, putting both arms in his sides, exclaimed, so that it could be heard throughout the hall, "A plague upon it!"216

From this time dates Luther’s connection with the Bohemian Brethren.

Luther concluded his argument with these words: "I am sorry that the learned doctor only dips into the Scripture as the water-spider into the water-nay, that he seems to flee from it as the Devil from the Cross. I prefer, with all deference to the Fathers, the authority of the Scripture, which I herewith recommend to the arbiters of our cause."

Both parties, as usual, claimed the victory. Eck was rewarded with honors and favors by Duke George, and followed up his fancied triumph by efforts to ruin Luther, and to gain a cardinal’s hat; but he was also severely attacked and ridiculed, especially by Willibald Pirkheimer, the famous humanist and patrician of Nürnberg, in his stinging satire, "The Polished Corner."217  The theological faculties of Cologne, Louvain, and afterwards (1521) also that of Paris, condemned the Reformer.

Luther himself was greatly dissatisfied, and regarded the disputation as a mere waste of time. He made, however, a deep impression upon younger men, and many students left Leipzig for Wittenberg. After all, he was more benefited by the disputation and the controversies growing out of it, than his opponents.

The importance of this theological tournament lies in this: that it marks a progress in Luther’s emancipation from the papal system. Here for the first time he denied the divine right and origin of the papacy, and the infallibility of a general council. Henceforward he had nothing left but the divine Scriptures, his private judgment, and his faith in God who guides the course of history by his own Spirit, through all obstructions by human errors, to a glorious end. The ship of the Reformation was cut from its moorings, and had to fight with the winds and waves of the open sea.

From this time Luther entered upon a revolutionary crusade against the Roman Church until the anarchical dissensions in his own party drove him back into a conservative and even reactionary position.

Before we proceed with the development of the Reformation, we must make the acquaintance of Melanchthon, who had accompanied Luther to the Leipzig disputation as a spectator, suggesting to him and Carlstadt occasional arguments,218 and hereafter stood by him as his faithful colleague and friend.

§ 38. Philip Melanchthon. Literature (Portrait).

The best Melanchthon collection is in the Royal Library of Berlin, which I have consulted for this list (July, 1886). The third centenary of Mel.’s death in 1860, and the erection of his monument in Wittenberg, called forth a large number of pamphlets and articles in periodicals.

I. Works of Melanchthon. The first ed. appeared at Basel, 1541, 5 vols. fol.; another by Peucer (his son-in-law), Wittenberg, 1562–64, 4 vols. fol.; again 1601. Selection of his German works by Köthe. Leipzig, 1829–30, 6 vols. *Best ed. of Opera omnia (in the "Corpus Reformatorum") by Bretschneider and Bindseil. Halle, 1834–60, 28 vols. 4°. The most important vols. for church history are vols. i.-xi. and xxi.-xxviii. The last vol. (second part) contains Annates Vitae (pp. 1–143), and very ample Indices (145–378).

Add to these: Epistolae, Judicia, Consilia, Testimonia, etc., ed. H. E. Bindseil. Halle, 1874. 8°. A supplement to the "Corpus Reform." Compare also Bindseil’s Bibliotheca Melanthoniana. Halis 1868 pp. 28). Carl Krause: Melanthoniana, Regesten und Briefe über die Beziehungen Philipp Mel. zu Anhalt und dessen Fürsten. Zerbst, 1885. pp. 185.

II. Biographies of Mel. An account of his last days by the Wittenberg professors: Brevis narratio exponens quo fine vitam in terris suam clauserit D. Phil. Mel. conscripta a professoribus academiae Vitebergensis, qui omnibus quae exponuntur interfuerunt. Viteb. 1560. 4°. The same in German. A funeral oration by Heerbrand: Oratio in obitum Mel. habita in Academia Tubingensi die decima quinta Maji. Vitebergae, 1560. *Joachim Camerarius: Vita Mel. Lips. 1566; and other edd., one with notes by Strobel. Halle, 1777; one with preface by Neander in the Vitae quatuor Reformatorum. Berlin, 1841.

Strobel: Melanchthoniana. Altdorf, 1771: Die Ehre Mel. gerettet, 1773; and other works. A. H. Niemeyer: Phil. Mel. als Praeceptor Germaniae. Halle, 1817. Fr. Aug. Cox: Life of Mel., comprising an account of the Reform. Lond. 1815, 2d ed. 1817. G. L. Fr. Delbrück: Ph. Mel. der Glaubenslehrer. Bonn, 1826. Heyd: Mel. und Tübingen, 1512–18. Tüb. 1839. *Fr. Galle: Characteristik Melanchth. als Theol. und Entw. seines Lehrbegr. Halle, 1840. *Fr. Matthes: Ph. Mel. Sein Leben u. Wirken aus den Quellen. Altenb. 1841. 2d ed. 1846. Ledderhose: Phil. Mel. nach seinem aüsseren u. inneren Leben dargestellt. Heidelberg, 1847 (English translation by Dr. Krotel. Phila. 1855). By the same: Das Leben des Phil. Mel. für das Volk. Barmen, 1858. *Mor. Meurer: Phil. Mel.’s Leben. Leipzig u. Dresden, 1860. 2d ed. 1869. Heppe: Phil. Mel. der Lehrer Deutschlands. Marburg, 1860. *Carl Schmidt: Philipp Melanchthons Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1861 (in the "Reformatoren der Luth. Kirche"). * Herrlinger: Die Theologie Mel.’s in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung. Gotha, 1879.

III. Brief sketches, by Neander, in Piper’s "Evang.-Kalender" for 1851. By Nitzsch, in the "Deutsche Zeitschrift für christl. Wissenschaft,"  1855. Is. Aug. Dorner: Zum dreihundertjährigen Gedächtniss des Todes Melanchthons, 1860. Volbeding: Mel. wie er liebte und lebte (Leipz. 1860.). Kahnis: Rede zum Gedächtniss Mel.’s (Leipz. 1860). Wohlfahrt: Phil. Mel. (Leipzig, 1860). W. Thilo: Mel. im Dienste der heil. Schrift (Berlin, 1860). Paul Pressel: Phil. Mel. Ein evang. Lebensbild (Stuttg. 1860). Festreden zur Erinnerung an den 300 jährigen Todestag Phil. Mel.’s und bei der Grundsteinlegung zu dessen Denkmal zu Wittenberg, herausgeg. von Lommatzch (Wittenb. 1860). Henke: Das Verhältniss Luthers und Mel. zu einander (Marburg, 1860), and Memoria B. Phil. Mel. (Marburg, 1860). Ad. Planck: Mel. Praeceptor Germ. (Nördlingen, 1860). Tollin: Ph. Mel. und Mich. Servet. Eine Quellenstudie (Berlin, 1876). Landerer: Mel., in Herzog1 and Herzog2 ix. 471–525, revised by Herrlinger. Thiersch: Mel. (Augsburg, 1877, and New York, Am. Tract Soc. 1880). Luthardt: Melanchthon’s Arbeiten im Gebiete der Moral (Leipz. 1884). Wagenmann: Ph. Mel. (in the "Allgem. Deutsche Biographie"). Paulsen in "Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichts "(Leipz. 1885. pp. 34 sqq.). Schaff in St. Augustin, Melanchthon, Neander (New York and London, 1886. pp. 107–127).

IV. On Mel.’s Loci, see Strobel: Literärgesch. von Ph. Mel.’s locis theologicis. Altdorf and Nürnberg, 1776. Plitt: Melanchthons Loci in ihrer Urgestalt. Erlangen, 1864.

§ 40. Melanchthon’s Early Labors.

Although yet a youth of twenty-one years of age, Melanchthon at once gained the esteem and admiration of his colleagues and hearers in Wittenberg. He was small of stature, unprepossessing in his outward appearance, diffident and timid. But his high and noble forehead, his fine blue eyes, full of fire, the intellectual expression of his countenance, the courtesy and modesty of his behavior, revealed the beauty and strength of his inner man. His learning was undoubted, his moral and religious character above suspicion. His introductory address, which he delivered four days after his arrival (Aug. 29), on "The Improvement of the Studies of Youth,"227 dispelled all fears: it contained the programme of his academic teaching, and marks an epoch in the history of liberal education in Germany. He desired to lead the youth to the sources of knowledge, and by a careful study of the languages to furnish the key for the proper understanding of the Scriptures, that they might become living members of Christ, and enjoy the fruits of His heavenly wisdom. He studied and taught theology, not merely for the enrichment of the mind, but also and chiefly for the promotion of virtue and piety.228

He at first devoted himself to philological pursuits, and did more than any of his contemporaries to revive the study of Greek for the promotion of biblical learning and the cause of the Reformation. He called the ancient languages the swaddling-clothes of the Christ-child: Luther compared them to the sheath of the sword of the Spirit. Melanchthon was master of the ancient languages; Luther, master of the German. The former, by his co-operation, secured accuracy to the German Bible; the latter, idiomatic force and poetic beauty.

In the year 1519 Melanchthon graduated as Bachelor of Divinity; the degree of Doctor he modestly declined. From that time on, he was a member of the theological faculty, and delivered also theological lectures, especially on exegesis. He taught two or three hours every day a variety of topics, including ethics, logic, Greek and Hebrew grammar; he explained Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Titus, Matthew, Romans, the Psalms. In the latter period of his life he devoted himself exclusively to sacred learning. He was never ordained, and never ascended the pulpit; but for the benefit of foreign students who were ignorant of German, he delivered every Sunday in his lecture-room a Latin sermon on the Gospels. He became at once, and continued to be, the most popular teacher at Wittenberg. He drew up the statutes of the University, which are regarded as a model. By his advice and example the higher education in Germany was regulated.

His fame attracted students from all parts of Christendom, including princes, counts, and barons. His lecture-room was crowded to overflowing, and he heard occasionally as many as eleven languages at his frugal but hospitable table. He received calls to Tübingen, Nürnberg, and Heidelberg, and was also invited to Denmark, France, and England; but he preferred remaining in Wittenberg till his death.

At the urgent request of Luther, who wished to hold him fast, and to promote his health and comfort, he married (having no vow of celibacy to prevent him) as early as August, 1520, Catharina Krapp, the worthy daughter of the burgomaster of Wittenberg, who faithfully shared with him the joys and trials of domestic life. He had from her four children, and was often seen rocking the cradle with one hand, while holding a book in the other. He used to repeat the Apostles’ Creed in his family three times a day. He esteemed his wife higher than himself. She died in 1557 while he was on a journey to the colloquy at Worms: when he heard the sad news at Heidelberg, he looked up to heaven, and exclaimed, "Farewell! I shall soon follow thee."

Next to the "Lutherhaus" with the "Luthermuseum," the most interesting dwelling in the quaint old town of Wittenberg on the banks of the Elbe is the house of Melanchthon in the Collegienstrasse. It is a three-story building, and belongs to the Prussian government, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. having bought it from its former owner. Melanchthon’s study is on the first story; there he died. Behind the house is a little garden which was connected with Luther’s garden. Here, under the shade of the tree, the two Reformers may often have exchanged views on the stirring events of the times, and encouraged each other in the great conflict. The house bears in German the inscription on the outer wall: —

"Here lived, taught, and died

Philipp Melanchthon."

§ 41. Luther and Melanchthon.

P. Schaff: Luther und Melanchthon, In his "Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund," Mercersburg, Pa., vol. III. (1850), pp. 58–64. E. L. Henke: Das Verhältniss Luthers und Melanchthons zu einander. Festrede am 19 April, 1860. Marburg (28 pages). Compare also Döllinger: Die Reformation, vol. i. 349 sqq.

"Wo sich das strenge mit dem Zarten,

Wo Starkes sich und Mildes paarten,

Da giebt es einen guten Klang." (Schiller.)

In great creative epochs of the Church, God associates congenial leaders for mutual help and comfort. In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we find Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Farel and Viret, Calvin and Beza in Switzerland, Craniner, Latimer, and Ridley in England, Knox and Melville in Scotland, working together with different gifts, but in the same spirit and for the same end. The Methodist revival of the eighteenth century was carried on by the co-operation of the two Wesleys and Whitefield; and the Anglo-Catholic movement of the nineteenth, by the association of Pusey, Newman, and Keble.

Immediately after his arrival at the Saxon University, on the Elbe, Melanchthon entered into an intimate relation with Luther, and became his most useful and influential co-laborer. He looked up to his elder colleague with the veneration of a son, and was carried away and controlled (sometimes against his better judgment) by the fiery genius of the Protestant Elijah; while Luther regarded him as his superior in learning, and was not ashamed to sit humbly at his feet. He attended his exegetical lectures, and published them, without the author’s wish and knowledge, for the benefit of the Church. Melanchthon declared in April, 1520, that "he would rather die than be separated from Luther;" and in November of the same year, "Martin’s welfare is dearer to me than my own life." Luther was captivated by Melanchthon’s first lecture; he admired his scholarship, loved his character, and wrote most enthusiastically about him in confidential letters to Spalatin, Reuchlin, Lange, Scheurl, and others, lauding him as a prodigy of learning and piety.229

The friendship of these two great and good men is one of the most delightful chapters in the religious drama of the sixteenth century. It rested on mutual personal esteem and hearty German affection, but especially on the consciousness of a providential mission intrusted to their united labors. Although somewhat disturbed, at a later period, by slight doctrinal differences and occasional ill-humor,230 it lasted to the end; and as they worked together for the same cause, so they now rest under the same roof in the castle church at Wittenberg, at whose doors Luther had nailed the war-cry of the Reformation.

Melanchthon descended from South Germany, Luther from North Germany; the one from the well-to-do middle classes of citizens and artisans, the other from the rough but sturdy peasantry. Melanchthon had a quiet, literary preparation for his work: Luther experienced much hardship and severe moral conflicts. The former passed to his Protestant conviction through the door of classical studies, the latter through the door of monastic asceticism; the one was fore-ordained to a professor’s chair, the other to the leadership of an army of conquest.

Luther best understood and expressed the difference of temper and character; and it is one of his noble traits, that he did not allow it to interfere with the esteem and admiration for his younger friend and colleague. "I prefer the books of Master Philippus to my own," he wrote in 1529.231  "I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike. I am born to fight against innumerable monsters and devils. I must remove stumps and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and clear the wild forests; but Master Philippus comes along softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him."

Luther was incomparably the stronger man of the two, and differed from Melanchthon as the wild mountain torrent differs from the quiet stream of the meadow, or as the rushing tempest from the gentle breeze, or, to use a scriptural illustration, as the fiery Paul from the contemplative John. Luther was a man of war, Melanchthon a man of peace. Luther’s writings smell of powder; his words are battles; he overwhelms his opponents with a roaring cannonade of argument, eloquence, passion, and abuse. Melanchthon excels in moderation and amiability, and often exercised a happy restraint upon the unmeasured violence of his colleague. Once when Luther in his wrath burst out like a thunderstorm, Melanchthon quieted him by the line, —

"Vince animos iramque tuam qui caetera vincis."

Luther was a creative genius, and pioneer of new paths; Melanchthon, a profound scholar of untiring industry. The one was emphatically the man for the people, abounding in strong and clear sense, popular eloquence, natural wit, genial humor, intrepid courage, and straightforward honesty. The other was a quiet, considerate, systematic thinker; a man of order, method, and taste, and gained the literary circles for the cause of the Reformation. He is the principal founder of a Protestant theology, and the author of the Augsburg Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. He very properly represented the evangelical cause in all the theological conferences with the Roman-Catholic party at Augsburg, Speier, Worms, Frankfort, Ratisbon, where Luther’s presence would only have increased the heat of controversy, and widened the breach. Luther was unyielding and uncompromising against Romanism and Zwinglianism: Melanchthon was always ready for compromise and peace, as far as his honest convictions would allow, and sincerely labored to restore the broken unity of the Church. He was even willing, as his qualified subscription to the Articles of Smalcald shows, to admit a certain supremacy of the Pope (jure humano), provided he would tolerate the free preaching of the gospel. But Popery and evangelical freedom will never agree.

Luther was the boldest, the most heroic and commanding; Melanchthon, the most gentle, pious, and conscientious, of the Reformers. Melanchthon had a sensitive and irritable temperament, though under good control, and lacked courage; he felt, more keenly and painfully than any other, the tremendous responsibility of the great religious movement in which he was engaged. He would have made any personal sacrifice if he could have removed the confusion and divisions attendant upon it.232  On several occasions he showed, no doubt, too much timidity and weakness; but his concessions to the enemy, and his disposition to compromise for the sake of peace and unity, proceeded always from pure and conscientious motives.

The two Wittenberg Reformers were brought together by the hand of Providence, to supply and complete each other, and by their united talents and energies to carry forward the German Reformation, which would have assumed a very different character if it had been exclusively left in the hands of either of them.

Without Luther the Reformation would never have taken hold of the common people: without Melanchthon it would never have succeeded among the scholars of Germany. Without Luther, Melanchthon would have become a second Erasmus, though with a profounder interest in religion; and the Reformation would have resulted in a liberal theological school, instead of giving birth to a Church. However much the humble and unostentatious labors and merits of Melanchthon are overshadowed by the more striking and brilliant deeds of the heroic Luther, they were, in their own way, quite as useful and indispensable. The "still small voice" often made friends to Protestantism where the earthquake and thunder-storm produced only terror and convulsion.

Luther is greatest as a Reformer, Melanchthon as a Christian scholar. He represents in a rare degree the harmony of humanistic culture with biblical theology and piety. In this respect he surpassed all his contemporaries, even Erasmus and Reuchlin. He is, moreover, the connecting link between contending churches, and a forerunner of Christian union and catholicity which will ultimately heal the divisions and strifes of Christendom. To him applies the beatitude: "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."

The friendship of Luther and Melanchthon drew into its charming circle also some other worthy and remarkable residents of Wittenberg,—Lucas Cranach the painter, who lent his art to the service of the Reformation; Justus Jonas, who came to Wittenberg in 1521 as professor and provost of the castle church, translated several writings of Luther and Melanchthon into German, and accompanied the former to Worms (1521), and on his last journey to Eisleben (1546); and Johann Bugenhagen, called Doctor Pomeranus, who moved from Pomerania to Wittenberg in 1521 as professor and preacher, and lent the Reformers most effective aid in translating the Bible, and organized the Reformation in several cities of North Germany and in Denmark.

§ 42. Ulrich von Hutten and Luther.

Böcking’s edition of Ulrichi Hutteni equitis Germani Opera. Lips, 185–1861. 5 vols. with three supplements, 1864–1870. Davie, Friedrich Strauss (the author of the Leben Jesu): Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten, übersetzt und erläutert, Leipz. 1860, and his biography of Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878 (pp. 567). A masterly work by a congenial spirit. Compare K. Hagen, Deutschlands liter. und Rel. Verh. in Reformationszeitalter, II. 47–60; Ranke, D. Gesch. I. 289–294; Janssen, II. 53 sqq. Werckshagen: Luther u. Hutten, 1888.

While Luther acquired in Melanchthon, the head of the Christian and theological wing of the humanists, a permanent and invaluable ally, he received also temporary aid and comfort from the pagan and political wing of the humanists, and its ablest leader, Ulrich von Hutten.

This literary Knight and German patriot was descended from an ancient but impoverished noble family of Franconia. He was born April 21, 1488, and began life, like Erasmus, as an involuntary monk; but he escaped from Fulda in his sixteenth year, studied humanities in the universities of Erfurt, Cologne, and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, law at Pavia and Bologna, traveled extensively, corresponded with the most prominent men of letters, was crowned as poet by the Emperor Maximilian at Augsburg (1517), and occupied an influential position at the court of Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1517–1520), who had charge of the sale of indulgences in Germany.

He took a lively part in Reuchlin’s conflict with the obscurantism of the Dominicans of Cologne.233  He is, next to his friend Crotus of Erfurt, the chief author of the Epistolae obscurorum Virorum, that barbarous ridicule of barbarism, in which the ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, and vulgarity of the monks are exposed by factitious letters in their own wretched Latin with such success that they accepted them at first as genuine, and bought a number of copies for distribution.234  He vigorously attacked the abuses and corruptions of the Church, in Latin and German pamphlets, in poetry and prose, with all the weapons of learning, common-sense, wit, and satire. He was, next to Luther, the boldest and most effective polemical writer of that period, and was called the German Demosthenes on account of his philippics against Rome. His Latin is better than Luther’s, but his German far inferior. In wit and power of ridicule he resembles Lucian; at times he reminds one of Voltaire and Heine. He had a burning love of German liberty and independence. This was his chief motive for attacking Rome. He laid the axe at the root of the tree of tyranny. His motto was, "Iacta est alea. Ich hab’s gewagt."235

He republished in 1518 the tract of Laurentius Valla on the Donation of Constantine, with an embarrassing dedication to Pope Leo X., and exposed on German soil that gigantic fraud on which the temporal power of the papacy over all Christian Europe was made to rest. But his chief and most violent manifesto against Rome is a dialogue which he published under the name "Vadiscus, or the Roman Trinity," in April, 1520, a few months before Luther’s "Address to the German Nobility" (July) and his "Babylonian Captivity" (October). He here groups his experiences in Rome under several triads of what abounds in Rome, of what is lacking in Rome, of what is forbidden in Rome, of what one brings home from Rome, etc. He puts them into the mouth of a Roman consul, Vadiscus, and makes variations on them. Here are some specimens:236 —

"Three things keep Rome in power: the authority of the Pope, the bones of the saints, and the traffic in indulgences.

"Three things are in Rome without number:  strumpets, priests, and scribes.

"Three things abound in Rome: antiquities, poison, and ruins.

"Three things are banished from Rome: simplicity, temperance, and piety (or, in another place: poverty, the ancient discipline, and the preaching of the truth).

"Three things the Romans trade in: Christ, ecclesiastical benefices, and women.

"Three things everybody desires in Rome: short masses, good gold, and a luxurious life.

"Three things are disliked in Rome: a general council, a reformation of the clergy, and the fact that the Germans begin to open their eyes.

"Three things displease the Romans most: the unity of the Christian princes, the education of the people, and the discovery of their frauds.

"Three things are most valued in Rome: handsome women, fine horses, and papal bulls.

"Three things are in general use in Rome: luxury of the flesh, splendor in dress, and pride of the heart.

"Three things Rome can never get enough of: money for the episcopal pallium, monthly, and annual incomes from vacant benefices.237

"Three things are most praised and yet most rare in Rome. devotion, faith and innocence.

"Three things Rome brings to naught: a good conscience, devotion, and the oath.

"Three things are necessary in Rome to gain a lawsuit: money, letters of recommendation, and lies.

"Three things pilgrims usually bring back from Rome: a soiled conscience, a sick stomach, and an empty purse.

"Three things have kept Germany from getting wisdom: the stupidity of the princes, the decay of learning, and the superstition of the people.

"Three things are feared most in Rome: that the princes get united, that the people begin to open their eyes, and that Rome’s frauds are coming to light.

"Three things only could set Rome right: the determination of the princes, the impatience of the people, and an army of Turks at her doors."

This epigrammatic and pithy form made the dialogue popular and effective. Even Luther imitated it when, in his "Babylonian Captivity," he speaks of three walls, and three rods of the Papists. Hutten calls the Roman court a sink of iniquity, and says that for centuries no genuine successor of Peter had sat on his chair in Rome, but successors and imitators of Simon Magus, Nero, Domitian, and Heliogabalus.

As a remedy for these evils, he advises, not indeed the abolition of the papacy, but the withdrawal of all financial support from Germany, a reduction of the clerical force, and the permission of clerical marriage; by these means, luxury and immorality would at least be checked.

It is characteristic of the church of that age, that Hutten was on terms of intimacy with the first prelate of Germany, even while he wrote his violent attacks on Rome, and received a salary, and afterwards a pension, from him. But he lauded Albrecht to the skies for his support of liberal learning. He knew little of, and cared less for, doctrinal differences. His policy was to fight the big Pope of Rome with the little Pope of Germany, and to make the German emperor, princes, and nobles, his allies in shaking off the degrading yoke of foreign tyranny. Possibly Albrecht may have indulged in the dream of becoming the primate of an independent Catholic Church of Germany.

Unfortunately, Hutten lacked moral purity, depth, and weight. He was Frank, brave, and bold, but full of conceit, a restless adventurer, and wild stormer; able to destroy, but unable to build up. In his twentieth year he had contracted a disgusting disease which ruined him physically, and was used by his Roman opponents to ruin him morally. He suffered incredibly from it and from all sorts of quack remedies, for ten years, was attacked by it again after his cure, and yet maintained the vigor and freshness of his spirit.238

Hutten hailed the Wittenberg movement, though at first only as "a quarrel between two hot-headed monks who are shouting and screaming against each other" and hoped "that they would eat each other up." After the Leipzig disputation, he offered to Luther (first through Melanchthon) the aid of his pen and sword, and, in the name of his noble friend the Knight Franz von Sickingen, a safe retreat at Ebernburg near Kreuznach, where Martin Bucer, Johann Oecolampadius, and other fugitives from convents, and sympathizers with reform, found a hospitable home. He sent him his books with notes, that he might republish them.

But Luther was cautious. He availed himself of the literary and political sympathy, but only as far as his theological and religious position allowed. He respected Reuchlin, Erasmus, Crotus, Mutian, Pirkheimer, Hutten, and the other humanists, for their learning and opposition to monkery and priestcraft; be fully shared the patriotic indignation against Romish tyranny: but he missed in them moral earnestness, religious depth, and that enthusiasm for the pure gospel which was his controlling passion. He aimed at reformation, they at illumination. He did not relish the frivolous satire of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum; he called them silly, and the author a Hans Wurst (Jack Sausage); he would grow indignant, and weep rather than laugh, over the obscurantism and secret vices of the monks, though he had as keen a sense of the ridiculous as Crotus and Hutten. He deprecated, moreover, the resort to physical force in a spiritual warfare, and relied on the power of the Word of God, which had founded the Church, and which must reform the Church. His letters to Hutten are lost, but he wrote to Spalatin (Jan. 16, 1521): "You see what Hutten wants. I would not have the gospel defended by violence and murder. In this sense I wrote to him. By the Word the world was conquered; by the Word the Church was preserved; by the Word she will be restored. Antichrist, as he began without violence, will be crushed without violence, by the Word."

Hutten was impatient. He urged matters to a crisis. Sickingen attacked the Archbishop and Elector of Trier (Treves) to force the Reformation into his territory; but he was defeated, and died of his wounds in the hands of his enemies, May 7, 1522. Within one month all his castles were captured and mostly burnt by the allied princes; two of his sons were banished, a third was made prisoner. Luther saw in this disaster a judgment of God, and was confirmed in his aversion to the use of force.239

Hutten fled, a poor and sick exile, from Germany to Basel, and hoped to find a hospitable reception by Erasmus, his former friend and admirer; but he was coldly refused by the cautious scholar, and took bitter revenge in an unsparing attack on his character. He then went to Zürich, and was kindly and generously treated by Zwingli, who provided him with books and money, and sent him first to the hot bath of Pfeffers, and then to a quiet retreat on the island of Ufnau in the Lake of Zürich, under medical care. But he soon died there, of the incurable disease of his youth, in August, 1523, in the Prime of life (thirty-five years and four months of age), leaving nothing but his pen and sword, and the lesson: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. 4:6).

With Hutten and Sickingen the hope of a political reconstruction of Germany through means of the Reformation and physical force was destroyed. What the knights failed to accomplish, the peasants could still less secure by the general revolt two years later. But notwithstanding these checks, the Reformation was bound to succeed with spiritual weapons.

§ 43. Luther’s Crusade against Popery. 1520.

After the disputation at Leipzig, Luther lost all hope of a reformation from Rome, which was preparing a bull of excommunication.

Here begins his storm and pressure period,240  which culminated in the burning of the Pope’s bull, and the protest at the Diet of Worms.

Under severe mental anguish he was driven to the conviction that the papacy, as it existed in his day, was an anti-christian power, and the chief source and support of abuses in the Church. Prierias, Eck, Emser, and Alveld defended the most extravagant claims of the papacy with much learning, but without any discrimination between fact and fiction. Luther learned from the book of Laurentius Valla, as republished by Ulrich von Hutten, that the Donation of Constantine, by which this emperor conferred on Pope Sylvester and his successors the temporal sovereignty not only over the Lateran Palace, but also over Rome, Italy, and all the West, was a baseless forgery of the dark ages. He saw through the "devilish lies," as he called them, of the Canon law and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. "It must have been a plague sent by God," he says (in his "Address to the German Nobility"), "that induced so many people to accept such lies, though they are so gross and clumsy that one would think a drunken boor could lie more skillfully." Genuine Catholic scholars of a later period have exposed with irrefragable arguments this falsification of history. His view of the Church expanded beyond the limits of the papacy, and took in the Oriental Christians, and even such men as Hus, who was burned by an oecumenical council for doctrines derived from St. Paul and St. Augustin. Instead of confining the Church, like the Romanists, to an external visible communion under the Pope, he regarded it now as a spiritual communion of all believers under Christ the only Head. All the powers of indignation and hatred of Roman oppression and corruption gathered in his breast. "I can hardly doubt," he wrote to Spalatin, Feb. 23, 1520, "that the Pope is the Antichrist." In the same year, Oct. 11, he went so far as to write to Leo X. that the papal dignity was fit only for traitors like Judas Iscariot whom God had cast out.241

Luther was much confirmed in his new convictions by Melanchthon, who had independently by calm study arrived at the same conclusion. In the controversy with Eck, August, 1519, Melanchthon laid down the far-reaching principle that the Scriptures are the supreme rule of faith, and that we must not explain the Scriptures by the Fathers, but explain and judge the Fathers by the Scriptures. He discovered that even Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustin had often erred in their exegesis. A little later (September, 1519), he raised the same charge against the Councils, and maintained that a Catholic Christian could not be required to believe any thing that was not warranted by the Scriptures. He expressed doubts about transubstantiation and the whole fabric of the mass. His estimate of the supreme value of the Scriptures, especially of Paul, rose higher and higher, and made him stronger and bolder in the conflict with mediaeval tradition.

Thus fortified by the learning of Melanchthon, encouraged by the patriotic zeal of Hutten and Sickingen, goaded by the fury of his enemies, and impelled, as it were, by a preternatural impulse, Luther attacked the papal power as the very stronghold of Satan. Without personal ill-will against anybody, he had a burning indignation against the system, and transcended all bounds of moderation.242  He felt the inspiration of a prophet, and had the courage of a martyr ready to die at any moment for his conviction.

He issued in rapid succession from July till October, 1520, his three most effective reformatory works: the, "Address to the German Nobility," the "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," and the, "Freedom of a Christian Man."243  The first two are trumpets of war, and the hardest blows ever dealt by human pen to the system of popery; while the third is peaceful, and shines like a rainbow above the thunderclouds. A strange contrast!  Luther was the most conservative of radicals, and the most radical of conservatives. He had all the violence of a revolutionary orator, and at the same time the pious spirit of a contemplative mystic.

The sixteenth century was the age of practical soteriology. It had to settle the relation of man to God, to bring the believer into direct communion with Christ, and to secure to him the personal benefits of the gospel salvation. What was heretofore regarded as the exclusive privilege of the priest was to become the common privilege of every Christian. To this end, it was necessary to break down the walls which separated the clergy from the laity, and obstructed the approach to God. This was most effectually done by Luther’s anti-papal writings. On the relation of man to God rests the relation of man to his fellow-men; this is the sociological problem which forms one of the great tasks of the nineteenth century.

§ 44. Address to the German Nobility.

An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation: von des christlichen Standes Besserung. In Walch’s ed., X. 296 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXI. 274–360; Weimar ed., VI. 404. Köstlin (in his shorter biography of Luther, p. 197 New York ed.) gives a facsimile of the title-page of the second edition. Dr. Karl Benrath of Bonn published a separate ed., with introduction and notes, as No. 4 of the "Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte." Halle, 1886 (114 pages).

"The time for silence is gone, and the time for speaking has come." With these words (based on Eccles. 3:7) of the dedicatory preface to Amsdorf, Luther introduces his address, to his most Serene and Mighty Imperial Majesty, and to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, respecting a Reformation of the Christian Estate." The preface is dated on the Eve of St. John the Baptist (June 23), 1520; the book was hastily completed July 20,244 and before Aug. 18 no less than four thousand copies—an enormous number for those days—were published, and a new edition called for, besides reprints which soon appeared in Leipzig and Strassburg.

The book is a most stirring appeal to the German nobles, who, through Hutten and Sickingen, had recently offered their armed assistance to Luther. He calls upon them to take the much-needed Reformation of the Church into their own hands; not, indeed, by force of arms, but by legal means, in the fear of God, and in reliance upon his strength. The bishops and clergy refused to do their duty; hence the laity must come to the front of the battle for the purity and liberty of the Church.

Luther exposes without mercy the tyranny of the Pope, whose government, he says, "agrees with the government of the apostles as well as Lucifer with Christ, hell with heaven, night with day; and yet he calls himself Christ’s Vicar, and the Successor of Peter."

The book is divided into three parts: —

1. In the first part, Luther pulls down what he calls the three walls of Jericho, which the papacy had erected in self-defense against any reformation; namely, the exclusion of the laity from all control, the exclusive claim to interpret the Scriptures, and the exclusive claim to call a Council.

Under the first head, he brings out clearly and strongly, in opposition to priestcraft, the fundamental Protestant principle of the general priesthood of all baptized Christians. He attacks the distinction of two estates, one spiritual, consisting of Pope, bishops, priests, and monks; and one temporal, consisting of princes, lords, artificers, and peasants. There is only one body, under Christ the Head. All Christians belong to the spiritual estate. Baptism, gospel and faith,—these alone make spiritual and Christian people.245  We are consecrated priests by baptism; we are a royal priesthood, kings and priests before God (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 5:10). The only difference, then, between clergy and laity, is one of office and function, not of estate.

Luther represents here the ministerial office as the creature of the congregation; while at a later period, warned by democratic excesses, and the unfitness of most of the congregations of that age for a popular form of government, he laid greater stress upon the importance of the ministry as an institution of Christ. This idea of the general priesthood necessarily led to the emancipation of the laity from priestly control, and their participation in the affairs of the Church, although this has been but very imperfectly carried out in Protestant state churches. It destroyed the distinction between higher (clerical and monastic), and lower morality; it gave sanctity to the natural relations, duties, and virtues; it elevated the family as equal in dignity to virginity; it promoted general intelligence, and sharpened the sense of individual responsibility to the Church. But to the same source may be traced also the undue interference of kings, princes, and magistrates in ecclesiastical matters, and that degrading dependence of many Protestant establishments upon the secular power. Kingcraft and priestcraft are two opposite extremes, equally opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Luther, and especially Melanchthon, bitterly complained, in their later years, of the abuse of the episcopal power assumed by the magistrate, and the avarice of princes in the misappropriation of ecclesiastical property.

The principle of the general priesthood of the laity found its political and civil counterpart in the American principle of the general kingship of men, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are born free and equal."

2. In the second part, Luther chastises the worldly pomp of the Pope and the cardinals, their insatiable greed, and exactions under false pretenses.

3. In the third part, he deals with practical suggestions. He urges sweeping reforms in twenty-seven articles, to be effected either by the civil magistrate, or by a general council of ministers and laymen.

He recommends the abolition of the annates, of the worldly pomp and idolatrous homage paid to the Pope (as kissing his feet), and of his whole temporal power, so that he should be hereafter merely a spiritual ruler, with no power over the emperor except to anoint and crown him, as a bishop crowns a king, as Samuel crowned Saul and David.

He strongly demands the abrogation of enforced clerical celibacy, which destroys instead of promoting chastity, and is the cause of untold misery. Clergymen should be allowed to marry, or not to marry, according to their gift and sense of duty.

Masses for the dead should be abolished, since they have become a solemn mockery, and devices for getting money, thus exciting the anger of God.

Processions, saints’ days, and most of the public festivals, except Sunday, should be abrogated, since holy days have become most unholy by drinking, gambling, and idling.

Monasteries should be reduced in number, and converted into schools, with freedom to enter and to leave without binding vows.

Certain punishments of the Canon law should cease, especially the interdict which silences God’s word and service,—a greater sin than to kill twenty Popes at once.

Fasts should be voluntary and optional; for whilst at Rome they laugh at fasts, they let us abroad eat oil which they would not think fit for greasing their boots, and then sell us the liberty of eating butter and other things; whereas the apostle says that the gospel has given us liberty in all such matters (1 Cor. 10:25 sq.).

He also would forbid all begging in Christendom; each town should support its own poor, and not allow strange beggars to come in, whether pilgrims or mendicant monks; it is not right that one should work that another may be idle, and live ill that another may live well, but "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thess. 3:10).

He counsels a reduction of the clerical force, and the prohibition of pluralities. "As for the fraternities, together with indulgences, letters of indulgence, dispensations, masses, and all such things, let them all be drowned and abolished."

He recommends (Art. 24) to do justice to, and make peace with, the Bohemians; for Hus and Jerome of Prague were unjustly burnt, in violation of the safe-conduct promised by the Pope and the Emperor. Heretics should be overcome with books, not with fire; else, the hangmen would be the most learned doctors in the world, and there would be no need of study."

In Art. 25, Luther urges a sound reformation of the universities, which had become "schools of Greek fashion" and "heathenish manners" (2 Macc. 4:12, 13), and are, full of dissolute living." He is unjustly severe upon Aristotle, whom he calls a "dead, blind, accursed, proud, knavish heathen teacher." His logic, rhetoric, and poetic might be, retained; but his physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the book "Of the Soul" (which teaches that the soul dies with the body) ought to be banished, and the study of the languages, mathematics, history, and especially of the Holy Scriptures, cultivated instead. "Nothing is more devilishly mischievous," he says, "than an unreformed university." He would also have the Canon law banished, of which there is "nothing good but the name," and which is no better than "waste paper."

He does not spare national vices. He justly rebukes the extravagance in dress, the usury, and especially the intemperance in eating and drinking, for which, he says, "we Germans have an ill reputation in foreign countries, as our special vice, and which has become so common, and gained so much the upper hand, that sermons avail nothing." (His frequent protest against the "Saufteufel" of the Germans, as he calls their love of drink, is still unheeded. In temperance the Southern nations of Europe are far ahead of those of the North.)

In conclusion, he expresses the expectation that he will be condemned upon earth. "My greatest care and fear is, lest my cause be not condemned by men; by which I should know for certain that it does not please God. Therefore let them freely go to work, Pope, bishop, priest, monk, or doctor: they are the true people to persecute the truth, as they have always done. May God grant us all a Christian understanding, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation true spiritual courage, to do what is best for our unhappy Church. Amen."

The book was a firebrand thrown into the headquarters of the papal church. It anticipated a reply to the papal bull, and prepared the public mind for it. It went right to the heart of the Germans, in their own language wielded with a force as never before, and gave increased weight to the hundred grievances of long standing against Rome. But it alarmed some of his best friends. They condemned or regretted his biting severity.246  Staupitz tried at the eleventh hour to prevent the publication, and soon afterwards (Aug. 23, 1520) resigned his position as general vicar of the Angustinians, and retired to Salzburg, feeling himself unequal to the conflict. John Lange called the book a "blast for assault, atrocious and ferocious." Some feared that it might lead to a religious war. Melanchthon could not approve the violence, but dared not to check the spirit of the new Elijah. Luther defended himself by referring to the example of Paul and the prophets: it was necessary to be severe in order to get a hearing; he felt sure that he was not moved by desire for glory or money or pleasure, and disclaimed the intention of stirring up sedition and war; he only wished to clear the way for a free general council; he was perhaps the forerunner of Master Philippus in fighting Ahab and the prophets of Baal after the example of Elijah (1 Kings 18).247

NOTES.

The following extracts give a fair idea of Luther’s polemic against the Pope in this remarkable book: —

"The custom of kissing the Pope’s feet must cease. It is an un-Christian, or rather an anti-Christian example, that a poor sinful man should suffer his feet to be kissed by one who is a hundred times better than he. If it is done in honor of his power, why does he not do it to others in honor of their holiness?  Compare them together: Christ and the Pope. Christ washed his disciples’ feet, and dried them, and the disciples never washed his. The Pope, pretending to be higher than Christ, inverts this, and considers it a great favor to let us kiss his feet: whereas if any one wished to do so, he ought to do his utmost to prevent them, as St. Paul and Barnabas would not suffer themselves to be worshiped as gods by the men at Lystra, saying, ’We also are men of like passions with you’ (Acts 14:14 seq.). But our flatterers have brought things to such a pitch, that they have set up an idol for us, until no one regards God with such fear, or honors him with such reverence, as they do the Pope. This they can suffer, but not that the Pope’s glory should be diminished a single hairsbreadth. Now, if they were Christians, and preferred God’s honor to their own, the Pope would never be willing to have God’s honor despised, and his own exalted; nor would he allow any to honor him, until he found that God’s honor was again exalted above his own.

"It is of a piece with this revolting pride, that the Pope is not satisfied with riding on horseback or in a carriage, but, though he be hale and strong, is carried by men like an idol in unheard-of pomp. I ask you, how does this Lucifer-like pride agree with the example of Christ, who went on foot, as did also all his apostles?  Where has there been a king who lived in such worldly pomp as he does, who professes to be the head of all whose duty it is to despise and flee from all worldly pomp—I mean, of all Christians?  Not that this need concern us for his own sake, but that we have good reason to fear God’s wrath, if we flatter such pride, and do not show our discontent. It is enough that the Pope should be so mad and foolish, but it is too much that we should sanction and approve it."

After enumerating all the abuses to which the Pope and his Canon law give sanction, and which he upholds with his usurped authority, Luther addresses him in this impassioned style: —

"Dost thou hear this, O Pope! not the most holy, but the most sinful?  Would that God would hurl thy chair headlong from heaven, and cast it down into the abyss of hell!  Who gave you the power to exalt yourself above God? to break and to loose what he has commanded? to teach Christians, more especially Germans, who are of noble nature, and are famed in all histories for uprightness and truth, to be false, unfaithful, perjured, treacherous, and wicked?  God has commanded to keep faith and observe oaths even with enemies: you dare to cancel his command, laying it down in your heretical, antichristian decretals, that you have power to do so; and through your mouth and your pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and pervert the Scriptures according to your own arbitrary will. O Lord Christ! look down upon this, let thy day of judgment come and destroy the Devil’s lair at Rome. Behold him of whom St. Paul spoke (2 Thess. 2:3, 4), that he should exalt himself above thee, and sit in thy Church, showing himself as God—the man of sin and the child of damnation .... The Pope treads God’s commandments under foot, and exalts his own: if this is not Antichrist, I do not know what it is."

Janssen (II. 100) calls Luther’s "Address to the German Nobility" "das eigentliche Kriegsmanifest der Lutherisch-Huttenschen Revolutionspartei," and "ein Signal zum gewaltsamen Angriff." But the book nowhere counsels war; and in the letter to Link he says expressly: "nec hoc a me agitur, ut seditionem moveam, sed ut concilio generali libertatem asseram"(De Wette, I. 479). Janssen quotes (p. 103) a very vehement passage from Luther’s contemporaneous postscript to a book of Prierias which he republished (De juridica et irrefragabili veritate Romanae Ecclesiae Romanique Pontificis), expressing a wish that the Emperor, kings, and princes would make a bloody end to Pope and cardinals and the whole rabble of the Romish Sodom. But this extreme and isolated passage is set aside by his repeated declarations against carnal warfare, and was provoked by the astounding assertions of Prierias, the master of the papal palace, that the Pope was the infallible judge of all controversies, the head of all spiritual, the father of all secular princes, the head of the Church and of the whole universe (caput totius orbis universi). Against such blasphemy Luther breaks out in these words: "Mihi vero videtur, si sic pergat furor Romanistarum, nullum reliquum esse remedium, quam ut imperator, reges et principes vi et armis accincti aggrediantur has pestes orbis terrarum, remque non jam verbis, sed ferro decernant .... Si fures furca, si latrones gladio, si haereticos igne plectimus, cur non magis hos magistros perditionis, hos cardinales, hos papas et totam istam romanae Sodomae colluviem, quae ecclesiam Dei sine fine corrumpit, omnibus armis impetimus, et manus nostras in sanguine eorum lavamus? tanquam a communi et omnium periculosissimo incendio nos nostrosque liberaturi." Erl. ed., Opera Latina, II. 107. He means a national resistance under the guidance of the Emperor and rightful rulers.

§ 45. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. October, 1520.

De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium D. Martini Lutheri. Wittenb. 1520. Erl. ed. Opera Lat., vol. V. 13–118; German translation (Von der Babylonischen Gefängniss, etc.) by an unknown author, 1520, reprinted in Walch, XIX. 5–153, and in 0. v. Gerlach, IV. 65–199; the Lat. original again in the Weimar ed., vol. V. An English translation by Buchheim in First Principles of the Reformation (London, 1883), pp. 141–245.

In closing the "Address to the Nobility," Luther announces: "I have another song still to sing concerning Rome. If they wish to hear it, I will sing it to them, and sing with all my might. Do you understand, my friend Rome, what I mean?"

This new song, or second war-trumpet, was the book on the, "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," published in the beginning of October, 1520.248  He calls it a "prelude," as if the real battle were yet to come. He intended it for scholars and the clergy, and therefore wrote in Latin. It is a polemical, theological work of far-reaching consequences, cutting one of the roots of Romanism, and looking towards a new type of Christian life and worship. He attacks the sacramental system of the Roman Church, by which she accompanies and controls the life of the Christian from the cradle to the grave, and brings every important act and event under the power of the priest. This system he represents as a captivity, and Rome as the modern Babylon. Yet he was very far from undervaluing the importance and benefit of the sacrament; and as far as the doctrine of baptism and the eucharist is concerned, he agreed better with the Catholic than with the Zwinglian view.

Luther begins by thanking his Romish opponents for promoting his theological education. "Two years ago," he says, "I wrote about indulgences when I was still involved in superstitious respect for the tyranny of Rome; but now I have learned, by the kind aid of Prierias and the friars, that indulgences are nothing but wicked devices of the flatterers of Rome. Afterwards Eck and Emser instructed me concerning the primacy of the Pope. While I denied the divine right, I still admitted the human right; but after reading the super-subtle subtilties of those coxcombs in defense of their idol, I became convinced that the papacy is the kingdom of Babylon and the power of Nimrod the mighty hunter. Now a learned professor of Leipzig writes against me on the sacrament in both kinds, and is about to do still greater wonders.249  He says that it was neither commanded nor decreed, whether by Christ or the apostles, that both kinds should be administered to the laity."

1. Luther first discusses the sacrament of the Holy Communion, and opposes three errors as a threefold bondage; namely, the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass.

(a) As regards the withdrawal of the cup, he refutes the flimsy arguments of Alveld, and proves from the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, that the whole sacrament was intended for the laity as well as the clergy, according to the command, "Drink ye all of this." Each writer attaches the mark of universality to the cup, not to the bread, as if the Spirit foresaw the (Bohemian) schism. The blood of Christ was shed for all for the remission of sins. If the laymen have the thing, why should they be refused the sign which is much less than the thing itself?  The Church has no more right to take away the cup from the laity than the bread. The Romanists are the heretics and schismatics in this case, and not the Bohemians and the Greeks who take their stand on the manifest teaching of the Word of God. "I conclude, then, that to deny reception in both kinds to the laity is an act of impiety and tyranny, and one not in the power of any angel, much less of any Pope or council whatsoever." ... "The sacrament does not belong to the priests, but to all; nor are the priests lords, but servants, whose duty it is to give both kinds to those who seek them, as often as they seek them." ... "Since the Bishop of Rome has ceased to be a bishop, and has become a tyrant, I fear absolutely none of his decrees; for I know that neither he, nor even a general council, has authority to establish new articles of faith."

(b) The doctrine of transubstantiation is a milder bondage, and might be held alongside with the other and more natural view of the real presence, which leaves the elements unchanged. It is well known that Luther was to the end of life a firm believer in the real presence, and oral manducation of the very body and blood of Christ by unworthy as well as worthy communicants (of course, with opposite effects). He denied a miraculous change of the substance of the elements, but maintained the co-existence of the body and blood in, with, and under bread and wine, both being real, the one invisible and the other visible.250  In this book he claims toleration for both theories, with a personal preference for the latter. "Christians are at liberty, without peril to their salvation, to imagine, think, or believe in either of the two ways, since here there is no necessity of faith." ... "I will not listen to those, or make the slightest account of them, who will cry out that this doctrine is Wiclifite, Hussite, heretical, and opposed to the decisions of the Church." The Scripture does not say that the elements are transubstantiated: Paul calls them real bread and real wine, just as the cup was real. Moreover, Christ speaks (figuratively), "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," meaning his blood contained in the cup. Transubstantiation is a scholastic or Aristotelian figment of the twelfth century.251  "Why should Christ not be able to include his body within the substance of bread, as well as within the accidents?  Fire and iron, two different substances, are so mingled in red-hot iron, that in every part of it are both fire and iron. Why may not the glorious body of Christ much more be in every part of the substance of the bread?"  Common people do not understand the difference between substance and accidents, nor argue about it, but "believe with simple faith that the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in the elements." So also the incarnation does not require a transubstantiation of the human nature, that so the Godhead may be contained beneath the accidents of the human nature; "but each nature is entire, and we can say with truth, This man is God; this God is man."

(c) The sacrifice of the mass: that is, the offering to God of the very body and blood of Christ by the hands of the priest when he pronounces the words of institution; in other words, an actual repetition of the atoning sacrifice of the cross, only in an unbloody manner. This institution is the very heart of Roman-Catholic (and Greek-Catholic) worship. Luther attacks it as the third bondage, and the most impious of all. He feels the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of a task which involves an entire revolution of public worship. "At this day," he says, "there is no belief in the Church more generally received, or more firmly held, than that the mass is a good work and a sacrifice. This abuse has brought in an infinite flood of other abuses, until faith in the sacrament has been utterly lost, and they have made this divine sacrament a mere subject of traffic, huckstering, and money-getting contracts; and the entire maintenance of priests and monks depends upon these things." He goes back to the simplicity of the primitive institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is a thankful commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, with a blessing attached to it, namely, the forgiveness of sins, to be appropriated by faith. The substance of this sacrament is promise and faith. It is a gift of God to man, not a gift of man to God. It is, like baptism, to be received, and not to be given. The Romanists have changed it into a good work of man and an opus operatum, by which they imagine to please God; and have surrounded it with so many prayers, signs, vestments, gestures, and ceremonies, that the original meaning is obscured. "They make God no longer the bestower of good gifts on us, but the receiver of ours. Alas for such impiety!"  He proves from the ancient Church that the offering of the eucharist, as the name indicates, was originally a thank-offering of the gifts of the communicants for the benefit of the poor. The true sacrifice which we are to offer to God is our thanks, our possessions, and our whole person. He also objects to the use of the Latin language in the mass, and demands the vernacular.

2. The sacrament of Baptism. Luther thanks God that this sacrament has been preserved uninjured, and kept from "the foul and impious monstrosities of avarice and superstition." He agrees essentially with the Roman doctrine, and considers baptism as a means of regeneration; while Zwingli and Calvin regarded it merely as a sign and seal of preceding regeneration and church-membership. He even makes more of it than the Romanists, and opposes the prevailing view of St. Jerome, that penitence is a second plank of refuge after shipwreck. Instead of relying on priestly absolution, it is better to go back to the remission of sins secured in baptism. "When we rise out of our sins, and exercise penitence, we are simply reverting to the efficacy of baptism and to faith in it, whence we had fallen; and we return to the promise then made to us, but which we had abandoned through our sin. For the truth of the promise once made always abides, and is ready to stretch out the hand and receive us when we return."

As to the mode of baptism, he gives here, as elsewhere, his preference to immersion, which then still prevailed in England and in some parts of the Continent, and which was not a point of dispute either between Romanists and Protestants, or between Protestants and Anabaptists; while on the question of infant-baptism the Anabaptists differed from both. "Baptism," he says, "is that dipping into water whence it takes its name. For, in Greek to baptize signifies to dip, and baptism is a dipping." "Baptism signifies two things,—death and resurrection; that is, full and complete justification. When the minister dips the child into the water, this signifies death; when he draws him out again, this signifies life. Thus Paul explains the matter (Rom. 6:4) .... I could wish that the baptized should be totally immersed, according to the meaning of the word and the signification of the mystery; not that I think it necessary to do so, but that it would be well that so complete and perfect a thing as baptism should also be completely and perfectly expressed in the sign."

Luther’s view of baptismal regeneration seems to be inconsistent with his chief doctrine of justification by faith alone. He says, "It is not baptism which justifies any man, or is of any advantage; but faith in that word of promise to which baptism is added: for this justifies and fulfills the meaning of baptism. For faith is the submerging of the old man, and the emerging of the new man." But how does this apply to baptized infants, who can not be said to have faith in any proper sense of the term, though they have undoubtedly the capacity of faith?  Luther here brings in the vicarious faith of the parents or the Church. But he suggests also the idea that faith is produced in the children, through baptism, on the ground of their religious receptivity.

3. Lastly, Luther attacks the traditional number of the sacraments. He allows "only two sacraments in the Church of God, Baptism and Bread; since it is in these alone that we see both a sign divinely instituted, and a promise of remission of sins." In some sense he retains also the sacrament of Penance, as a way and means of return to baptism.

The rest of the seven Roman sacraments—confirmation, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction—he rejects because they can not be proved from Scripture, and are not commanded by Christ.

Matrimony has existed from the beginning of the world, and belongs to all mankind. Why, then, should it be called a sacrament?  Paul calls it a "mystery," but not a sacrament, as translated in the Vulgate (Ep. 5:32); or rather he speaks there of the union of Christ and the Church, which is reflected in matrimony as in a sort of allegory. But the Pope has restricted this universal human institution by rigorous impediments derived from spiritual affinity and legal relationship. He forbids it to the clergy, and claims the power to annull rightful marriages, even against the will of one of the parties. "Learn, then, in this one matter of matrimony, into what an unhappy and hopeless state of confusion, hindrance, entanglement, and peril all things that are done in the Church have been brought by the pestilent and impious traditions of men!  There is no hope of a remedy, unless we do away with all the laws of men, call back the gospel of liberty, and judge and rule all things according to it alone."

Luther closes with these words: "I hear a report that fresh bulls and papal curses are being, prepared against me, by which I am urged to recant, or else to be declared a heretic. If this is true, I wish this little book to be a part of my future recantation, that they may not complain that their tyranny has puffed itself up in vain. I shall also shortly publish, Christ being my helper, such a recantation as the See of Rome has never yet seen or heard, thus abundantly testifying my obedience in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.252  Amen.

" ’Hostis Herodes impie,

Christum venire quid times?

Non arripit mortalia

Qui regna dat coelestia.’ "

§ 46. Christian Freedom.—Luther’s  Last Letter to the Pope. October, 1520.

Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Wittenberg, 1520; often reprinted separately, and in the collected works of Luther. See Walch, XIX. 1206 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVII. 173–200 (from the first ed.); Gerlach’s ed. V. 5–46. The Latin edition, De Libertate Christiana, was finished a little later, and has some additions; see Erl. ed. Opera Lat., IV. 206–255. Luther’s letter to the Pope in Latin and German is printed also in De Wette, I. 497–515. English version of the tract and the letter by Buchheim, l.c. 95–137.

Although Rome had already condemned Luther, the papal delegate Miltitz still entertained the hope of a peaceful settlement. He had extracted from Luther the promise to write to the Pope. He had a final interview with him and Melanchthon at Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), in the convent of St. Antony, Oct. 11, 1520, a few days after Luther had seen the bull of excommunication. It was agreed that Luther should write a book, and a letter in Latin and German to Leo X., and assure him that he had never attacked his person, and that Dr. Eck was responsible for the whole trouble. The book was to be finished in twelve days, but. dated back to Sept. 6 in order to avoid the appearance of being occasioned by the Pope’s bull.

This is the origin of two of the most remarkable productions of Luther,—his little book on "Christian Freedom," and a dedicatory letter to Leo X.

The beautiful tract on "Christian Freedom" is a pearl among Luther’s writings. It presents a striking contrast to his polemic treatises against Rome, which were intended to break down the tyranny of popery. And yet it is a positive complement to them, and quite as necessary for a full understanding of his position. While opposing the Pope’s tyranny, Luther was far from advocating the opposite extreme of license. He was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Epistle to the Galatians, which protests against both extremes, and inspired the keynote to Luther’s Tract. He shows wherein true liberty consists. He means liberty according to the gospel; liberty in Christ, not from Christ; and offers this as a basis for reconciliation. He presents here a popular summary of Christian life. He keeps free from all polemics, and writes in the best spirit of that practical mysticism which connected him with Staupitz and Tauler.

The leading idea is: The Christian is the lord of all, and subject to none, by virtue of faith; he is the servant of all, and subject to every one, by virtue of love. Faith and love constitute the Christian: the one binds him to God, the other to his fellow-man. The idea is derived from St. Paul, who says, "Though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more" (1 Cor. 9:19); and "Owe no man any thing, save to love one another" (Rom. 13:8). It was carried out by Christ, who was Lord of all things, yet born of a woman, born under the law that he might redeem them who were under the law (Gal. 4:4); who was at once in the form of God, and in the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6, 7). The Christian life is an imitation of the’ life of Christ,—a favorite idea of the mediaeval mystics.

Man is made free by faith, which alone justifies; but it manifests itself in love, and all good works. The person must first be good before good works can be done, and good works proceed from a good person; as Christ says, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (Matt. 7:18). The fruit does not bear the tree, nor does the tree grow on the fruit; but the tree bears the fruit, and the fruit grows on the tree. So it is in all handicrafts. A good or bad house does not make a good or bad builder, but the good or bad builder makes a good or bad house. Such is the case with the works of men. Such as the man himself is, whether in faith or in unbelief, such is his work; good if it is done in faith, bad if in unbelief. Faith, as it makes man a believer, so also it makes his works good; but works do not make a believing man, nor a justified man. We do not reject works; nay, we commend them, and teach them in the highest degree. It is not on their own account that we condemn them, but on account of the perverse notion of seeking justification by them. "From faith flow forth love and joy in the Lord; and from love, a cheerful, willing, free spirit, disposed to serve our neighbor voluntarily, without taking any account of gratitude or ingratitude, praise or blame, gain or loss. Its object is not to lay men under obligations; nor does it distinguish between friends and enemies, or look to gratitude or ingratitude; but most freely and willingly it spends itself and its goods, whether it loses them through ingratitude, or gains good-will. For thus did its Father, distributing all things to all men abundantly and freely, making his sun to rise upon the just and the unjust. Thus, too, the child does and endures nothing except from the free joy with which it delights through Christ in God, the giver of such great gifts." ...

"Who, then, can comprehend the riches and glory of the Christian life?  It can do all things, has all things, and is in want of nothing; is lord over sin, death, and hell, and, at the same time, is the obedient and useful servant of all. But alas! it is at this day unknown throughout the world; it is neither preached nor sought after, so that we are quite ignorant about our own name, why we are and are called Christians. We are certainly called so from Christ, who is not absent, but dwells among us, provided we believe in him; and are reciprocally and mutually one the Christ of the other, doing to our neighbor as Christ does to us. But now, in the doctrine of men, we are taught only to seek after merits, rewards, and things which are already ours; and we have made of Christ a task-master far more severe than Moses." ...

"We conclude, then, that a Christian man does not live in and for himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor, or else is no Christian; in Christ by faith, in his neighbor by love. By faith he is carried upwards above himself to God, and by love he descends below himself to his neighbor, still always abiding in God and his love; as Christ says, ’Verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man’ " (John 1:51

In the Latin text Luther adds some excellent remarks against those who misunderstand and distort spiritual liberty, turn it into an occasion of carnal license, and show their freedom by their contempt of ceremonies, traditions, and human laws. St. Paul teaches us to walk in the middle path, condemning either extreme, and saying, "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth" (Rom. 14:3). We must resist the hardened and obstinate ceremonialists, as Paul resisted the Judaizers who would compel Titus to be circumcised; and we must spare the weak who are not yet able to apprehend the liberty of faith. We must fight against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep.

This Irenicon must meet with the approval of every true Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant. It breathes the spirit of a genuine disciple of St. Paul. It is full of heroic faith and childlike simplicity. It takes rank with the best books of Luther, and rises far above the angry controversies of his age, during which he composed it, in the full possession of the positive truth and peace of the religion of Christ.253

Luther sent the book to Pope Leo X., who was too worldly-minded a man to appreciate it; and accompanied the same with a most singular and undiplomatic, yet powerful polemic letter, which, if the Pope ever read it, must have filled him with mingled feelings of indignation and disgust. In his first letter to the Pope (1518), Luther had thrown himself at his feet as an obedient son of the vicar of Christ; in his second letter (1519), he still had addressed him as a humble subject, yet refusing to recant his conscientious convictions: in his third and last letter he addressed him as an equal, speaking to him with great respect for his personal character (even beyond his deserts), but denouncing in the severest terms the Roman See, and comparing him to a lamb among wolves, and to Daniel in the den of lions. The Popes, he says, are vicars of Christ because Christ is absent from Rome.254  Miltitz and the Augustinian brethren, who urged him to write an apologetic letter to Leo, must have been sorely disappointed; for it destroyed all prospects of reconciliation, if they had not been destroyed already.

After some complimentary words about Leo, and protesting that he had never spoken disrespectfully of his person, Luther goes on to say, —

"The Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even Antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.

"Meanwhile you, Leo, are sitting like a lamb in the midst of wolves, like Daniel in the midst of lions, and, with Ezekiel, you dwell among scorpions. What opposition can you alone make to these monstrous evils?  Take to yourself three or four of the most learned and best of the cardinals. What are these among so many?  You would all perish by poison, before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over with the court of Rome: the wrath of God has come upon her to the uttermost. She hates Councils, she dreads to be reformed, she cannot restrain the madness of her impiety; she fills up the sentence passed on her mother, of whom it is said, ’We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed; let us forsake her.’  It had been your duty, and that of your cardinals, to apply a remedy to these evils; but this gout laughs at the physician’s hand, and the chariot does not obey the reins. Under the influence of these feelings I have always grieved that you, most excellent Leo, who were worthy of a better age, have been made pontiff in this. For the Roman court is not worthy of you and those like you, but of Satan himself, who in truth is more the ruler in that Babylon than you are.

"Oh, would that, having laid aside that glory which your most abandoned enemies declare to be yours, you were living rather in the office of a private priest, or on your paternal inheritance!  In that glory none are worthy to glory, except the race of Iscariot, the children of perdition. For what happens in your court, Leo, except that, the more wicked and execrable any man is, the more prosperously he can use your name and authority for the ruin of the property and souls of men, for the multiplication of crimes, for the oppression of faith and truth, and of the whole Church of God?  O Leo! in reality most unfortunate, and sitting on a most perilous throne: verily I tell you the truth, because I wish you well; for if Bernard felt compassion for his Anastasius at a time when the Roman See, though even then most corrupt, was as yet ruling with better hope than now, why should not we lament, to whom so much additional corruption and ruin has happened in three hundred years?

Is it not true that there is nothing under the vast heavens more corrupt, more pestilential, more hateful, than the court of Rome?  She incomparably surpasses the impiety of the Turks, so that in very truth she, who was formerly the gate of heaven, is now a sort of open mouth of hell, and such a mouth as, under the urgent wrath of God, can not be blocked up; one course alone being left to us wretched men,—to call back and save some few, if we can, from that Roman gulf.

"Behold, Leo my father, with what purpose and on what principle it is that I have stormed against that seat of pestilence. I am so far from having felt any rage against your person, that I even hoped to gain favor with you and to aid in your welfare, by striking actively and vigorously at that your prison, nay, your hell. For, whatever the efforts of all intellects can contrive against the confusion of that impious court will be advantageous to you and to your welfare, and to many others with you. Those who do harm to her are doing your work; those who in every way abhor her are glorifying Christ; in short, those are Christians who are not Romans ....

"In fine, that I may not approach your Holiness empty-handed, I bring with me this little book,255  published under your name, as a good omen of the establishment of peace and of good hope. By this you may perceive in what pursuits I should prefer and be able to occupy myself to more profit, if I were allowed, or had been hitherto allowed, by your impious flatterers. It is a small book, if you look to the paper; but, unless I mistake, it is a summary of the Christian life put together in small compass, if you apprehend its meaning. I, in my poverty, have no other present to make you; nor do you need any thing else than to be enriched by a spiritual gift. I commend myself to your Holiness, whom may the Lord Jesus preserve for ever. Amen.

"Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520."

§ 47. The bull of Excommunication. June 15, 1520.

The bull "Exurge, Domine," in the Bullarium Romanum, ed. CAR. Cocquelines, Tom. III., Pars III. (ab anno 1431 ad 1521), pp. 487–493, and in Raynaldus (continuator of Baronius): Annal. Eccl., ad ann. 1520, no. 51 (Tom. XX. fol. 303–306). Raynaldus calls Luther "apostatam nefandissimum," and takes the bull from Cochlaeus, who, besides Eck and Ulemberg (a Protestant apostate), is the chief authority for his meager and distorted account of the German Reformation. A copy of the original edition of the bull is in the Astor Library, New York. See Notes.

U. v. Hutten published the bull with biting glosses: Bulla Decimi Leonis contra errores Lutheri et sequacium, or Die glossirte Bulle (in Hutten’s Opera, ed. Böcking, V. 301–333; in the Erl. ed. of Luther’s Op. Lat., IV. 261–304; also in German in Walch, XV. 1691 sqq.; comp. Strauss: U. v. Hutten, p. 338 sqq.). The glosses in smaller type interrupt the text, or are put on the margin. Luther: Von den neuen Eckischen Bullen und Lügen (Sept. 1520); Adv. execrabilem Antichristi bullam (Nov. 1520); Wider die Bullen des Endchrists (Nov. 1520; the same book as the preceding Latin work, but sharper and stronger); Warum des Papsts und seiner Jünger Bücher verbrannt sind (Lat. and Germ., Dec. 1520); all in Walch, XV. fol. 1674–1917; Erl. ed., XXIV. 14–164, and Op. Lat. V. 132–238; 251–271. Luther’s letters to Spalatin and others on the bull of excommunication, in De Wette, I. 518–532.

Ranke: I. 294–301. Merle D’Aubigné, bk. VI. ch. III. sqq. Hagenbach, III. 100–102. Kahnis: I. 306–341. Köstlin: I. 379–382. Kolde: I. 280 sqq. Janssen: II. 108 sqq.

After the Leipzig disputation, Dr. Eck went to Rome, and strained every nerve to secure the condemnation of Luther and his followers.256  Cardinals Campeggi and Cajetan, Prierias and Aleander, aided him. Cajetan was sick, but had himself carried on his couch into the sessions of the consistory. With considerable difficulty the bull of excommunication was drawn up in May, and after several amendments completed June 15, 1520.257

Nearly three years had elapsed since the publication of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses. In the mean time he had attacked with increasing violence the very foundations of the Roman Church, had denounced popery as an antichristian tyranny, and had dared to appeal from the Pope to a general council, contrary to the decisions of Pius II. and Julius II., who declared such an appeal to be heresy. Between the completion and the promulgation of the bull, he went still further in his, "Address to the German Nobility," and the book on the "Babylonian Captivity," and made a reconciliation impossible except by an absolute surrender, which was a moral impossibility for him. Rome could not tolerate Lutheranism any longer without ceasing to be Rome. She delayed final action only for political and prudential considerations, especially in view of the election of a new German Emperor, and the influential voice of the Elector Frederick, who was offered, but declined, the imperial crown.

The bull of excommunication is the papal counter-manifesto to Luther’s Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it. Instead of causing Luther and his friends to be burnt, it was burnt by Luther. It is an elaborate document, prepared with great care in the usual heavy, turgid, and tedious style of the curia. It breathes the genuine spirit of the papal hierarchy, and mingles the tones of priestly arrogance, concern for truth, abomination of heresy and schism, fatherly sorrow, and penal severity. The Pope speaks as if he were the personal embodiment of the truth, the infallible judge of all matters of faith, and the dispenser of eternal rewards and punishments.

He begins with the words of Ps. 74:22: "Arise, O God, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually." He calls St. Peter, St. Paul, and the whole body of the saints, to aid against "the boar out of the wood" and "the wild beast of the field" that had broken into the vineyard of the Lord, to waste and destroy it (Ps. 80:13). He expresses deep sorrow at the revival of the Bohemian and other heresies in the noble German nation which had received the empire from the Pope, and shed so much precious blood against heresy. Then he condemns forty-one propositions selected from Luther’s books, as heretical, or at least scandalous and offensive to pious ears, and sentences all his books to the flames. Among the errors named are those relating to the sacramental and hierarchical system, especially the authority of the Pope and the (Roman) Church. The denial of free will (liberum arbitrium) after the fall is also condemned, though clearly taught by St. Augustin. But Luther’s fundamental doctrine of justification by faith is not expressly mentioned. The sentences are torn from the connection, and presented in the most objectionable form as mere negations of Catholic doctrines. The positive views of the Reformer are not stated, or distorted.

For the person of Luther, the Pope professes fatherly love and forbearance, and entreats him once more, by the mercies of God and the blood of Christ, to repent and recant within sixty days after the publication of the bull in the Brandenburg, Meissen, and Merseburg dioceses, and promises to receive him graciously like the prodigal son. But failing to repent, he and his adherents will be cut off, as withered branches, from the vine of Christ, and be punished as obstinate heretics. This means that they shall be burned; for the bull expressly condemns the proposition of Luther which denounces the burning of heretics as "contrary to the will of the Holy Spirit." All princes, magistrates, and citizens are exhorted, on threat of excommunication and promise of reward, to seize Luther and his followers, and to hand him over to the apostolic chair. Places which harbor him or his followers are threatened with the interdict. Christians are forbidden to read, print, or publish any of his books, and are commanded to burn them.

We may infer from this document in what a state of intellectual slavery Christendom would be at the present time if the papal power had succeeded in crushing the Reformation. It is difficult to estimate the debt we owe to Martin Luther for freedom and progress.

The promulgation and execution of the bull were intrusted to two Italian prelates, Aleander and Caraccioli, and to Dr. Eck. The personal enemy of Luther, who had been especially active in procuring the bull, was now sent back in triumph with the dignity of a papal nuncio, and even with the extraordinary power of including by name several followers of Luther, among whom he singled out Carlstadt and Dolzig of Wittenberg, Adelmann of Augsburg, Egranus of Zwickau, and the humanists Pirkheimer and Spengler of Nürnberg. The selection of Eck, the most unpopular man in Germany, was a great mistake of the Pope, as Roman historians admit, and it helped the cause of the Reformation.258

The bull was published and carried out without much difficulty in Mayence, Cologne, and Louvain; and Luther’s books were committed to the flames, with the sanction of the new Emperor. But in Northern Germany, which was the proper seat of the conflict, it met with determined resistance, and was defeated. Eck printed and placarded the bull at Ingolstadt, at Meissen (Sept. 21), at Merseburg (Sept. 25), and at Brandenburg (Sept. 29). But in Leipzig where a year before he had achieved his boasted victory over Luther in public debate, he was insulted by the students (one hundred and fifty had come over from Wittenberg), and took flight in a convent; the bull was bespattered, and torn to pieces.259  He fared still worse in Erfurt, where he had been ridiculed and held up to scorn as a second Hochstraten in the satire Eccius dedolatus (printed at Erfurt in March, 1520): the theological faculty refused to publish the bull; and the students threw the printed copies into the water, saying, "It is only a water-bubble (bulla), let it float on the water."260

Eck sent the bull to the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Oct. 3, 1520, with the request to prohibit the teaching of any of the condemned propositions of Luther, and threatening that, in case of disobedience, the Pope would recall all the liberties and privileges of the university. The professors and counselors of the Elector declined the promulgation for various reasons.

The Elector Frederick was on the way to Aachen to assist at the coronation of Charles V., but was detained at Cologne by the gout. There he received the bull from Aleander after the mass, Nov. 4, and was urged with eloquent words to execute it, and to punish Luther or to send him to Rome; but he cautiously deferred an answer, and sought the advice of Erasmus in the presence of Spalatin. The famous scholar gave it as his judgment, that Luther’s crime consisted in having touched the triple crown of the Pope and the stomachs of the monks;261 he also wrote to Spalatin, after the interview, that the Pope’s bull offended all upright men by its ferocity and was unworthy of a meek vicar of Christ.262  The Elector was thus confirmed in his favorable view of Luther. He sent Spalatin to Wittenberg, where some students had left in consequence of the bull; but Spalatin was encouraged, and found that Melanchthon had about six hundred, Luther four hundred hearers, and that the church was crowded whenever Luther preached. A few weeks afterward the Pope’s bull was burnt.

NOTES.—THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION.

As I do not find the bull in any of the Protestant or Roman-Catholic church histories which I have consulted (except the Annals of Raynaldus), I give it here in full as transcribed from an original copy in possession of the Astor Library, New York (probably the only one on the American Continent), together with facsimiles of titlepage and first page (see preceeding pages in text). The pamphlet contains twenty pages, small quarto, and is printed continuously, like ancient MSS. I have divided it into sections, with headings, and noted the departures of Cocquelines and Raynaldus from the original.

BULLA CONTRA ERRORES MARTINI LUTHERI ET SEQUACIUM.

Leo Episcopus Servus Servorum Dei.263

Ad perpetuam rel memoriam.

[Proömium. The Pope invokes God, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the saints, against the new enemies of the Church.]

Exurge, Domine, et judica causam tuam, memor esto improperiorum tuorum, eorum, quae ab insipientibus fiunt totâ die; inclina aurem tuam ad preces nostras, quoniam surrexerunt vulpes quaerentes demoliri vineam, cujus tu torcular calcasti solus, et ascensurus ad Patrem ejus curam, regimen et administrationem Petro tanquam capiti et tuo vicario, ejusque successoribus instar triumphantis Ecclesiae commisisti: exterminate nititur eam aper de silva, et singularis ferus depasci [tur] eam. Exurge, Petre, et pro pastorali cura praefata tibi (ut praefertur) divinitus demandata, intende in causam sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae, Matris omnium ecclesiarum, se fidei magistrae, quam tu, jubente Deo, tuo sanguine consecrasti, contra quam, sicut tu praemonere dignatus es, insurgunt magistri mendaces introducentes sectas perditionis, sibi celerem interitum superducentes,264 quorum lingua ignis est, inquietum malum, plena veneno mortifero, qui zelum amarum habentes et contentiones in cordibus suis, gloriantur, et mendaces sunt adversus veritatem. Exurge tu quoque, quaesumus, Paule, qui eam tuâ doctrinâ et pari martyrio illuminasti atque illustrasti. Jam enim surgit novus Porphyrius; quia sicut ille olim sanctos Apostolos injuste momordit, ita hic sanctos Pontifices praedecessores nostros contra tuam doctrinam eos non obsecrando, sed increpando, mordere, lacerare, ac ubi causae suae265 diffidit, ad convicia accedere non veretur, more haereticorum, quorum (ut inquit Hieronymus) ultimum presidium est, ut cum conspiciant causas suas damnatum iri, incipiant virus serpentis linguâ diffundere; et cum se victos conspiciant, ad contuinelias prosilire. Nam licet haereses esse ad exercitationem fidelium in dixeris oportere, eas tamen, ne incrementum accipiant, neve vulpeculae coalescant, in ipso ortu, te intercedente et adjuvante, extingui necesse est.

Exurgat denique,266 omnis Sanctorum, ac reliqua universalis Ecclesia, cujus vera sacrarum literarum interpretatione posthabitâ, quidam, quorum mentem pater mendacii excaecavit, ex veteri haereticorum instituto, apud semetipsos sapientes, scripturas easdem aliter quam Spiritus sanctus flagitet, proprio dumtaxat sensu ambitionis, auraeque popularis causâ, teste Apostolo, interpretantur, immo vero torquent et adulterant, ita ut juxta Hieronymum jam non sit evangelium Christi, sed hominis, aut quod pejus est, diaboli. Exurgat, inquam, praefata Ecclesia sancta Dei, et una cum beatissimis Apostolis praefatis267 apud Deum omnipotentem intercedat, ut purgatis ovium suarum erroribus, eliminatisque a fidelium finibus haeresibus universis Ecclesiae suae sanctae pacem et unitatem conservare dignetur.

[The errors of the Greeks and Bohemians revived by Luther and his followers.]

Dudum siquidem268 quod prae animi angustia et moerore exprimere vix possumus, fide dignorum relatu ac famâ publicâ referente ad nostrum pervenit auditum, immo vero, proh dolor! oculis nostris vidimus ac legimus, multos et varios errores quosdam videlicet jam per Concilia ac Praedec-essorum nostrorum constitutiones damnatos, haeresim etiam Graecorum et Bohemicam expresse continentes: alios vero respective, vel haereticos, vel falsos, vel scandalosos, vel piarum aurium offensivos, vel simplicium mentium seductivos, a falsis fidei cultoribus, qui per superbam curiositatem mundi gloriam cupientes, contra Apostoli doctrinam plus sapere volunt, quam oporteat; quorum garrulitas (ut inquit Hieronymus) sine scripturarum auctoritate non haberet fidem, nisi viderentur perversam doctrinam etiam divinis testimoniis, male tamen interpretatis, roborare: a quorum oculis Dei timor recessit, humani generis hoste suggerente, noviter suscitatos, et nuper apud quosdam leviores in inclyta natione Germanica seminatos.

[The Germans, who received the empire from the Pope, were formerly most zealous against heresy, but now give birth to the most dangerous errors.]

Quod eo magis dolemus ibi269 evenisse, quod eandem nationem et nos et Praedecessores nostri in visceribus semper gesserimus caritatis. Nam post translatum ex Grecis a Romana Ecclesia in eosdem Germanos imperium, iidem Praedecessores nostri et nos ejusdem Ecclesiae advocates defensoresque ex eis semper accepimus; quos quidem Germanos, Catholicae veritatis vere germanos, constat haeresum [haeresium] acerrimos oppugnatores270 semper fuisse: cujus rei testes sunt laudabiles illae constitutiones Germanorum Imperatorum pro libertate Ecclesiae, proque expellendis exterminandisque ex omni Germania haereticis, sub gravissimis poenis, etiam amissionis terrarum et dominiorum, contra receptatores vel non expellentes olim editae, et à nostris Praedecessoribus confirmatae, quae si hodie servarentur, et nos et ipsi utique hae molestiâ careremus. Testis est in Concilio Constantiensi Hussitarum ac Wiccleffistarum, necnon Hieronymi Pragensis damnata ac punita perfidia. Testis est totiens contra Bohemos Germanorum sanguis effusus. Testis denique est praedictorum errorum, seu multorum ex eis per Coloniensem et Lovaniensem Universitates, utpote agri dominici piissimas religiosissimasque cultrices, non minus docta quam vera ac sancta confutatio, reprobatio, et damnatio. Multa quoque alia allegare possemus, quae, ne historiam texere videamur, praetermittenda censuimus.

Pro pastorals igitur officii, divinâ gratiâ, nobis injuncti cura, quam gerimus, praedictorum errorum virus pestiferum ulterius tolerare seu dissimulare sine Christianae, religionis nota, atque orthodoxae fidei injuria nullo modo possumus. Eorum autem errorum aliquos praesentibus duximus inferendos, quorum tenor sequitur, et est talis: —

[Forty-one heretical sentences selected from Luther’s writings.]

I. Haeretica sententia est, sed usitata, Sacramenta novae legis justificantem gratiam illis dare, qui non ponunt obicem.

II. In puero post baptismum negare remanens peccatum, est Paulum et Christum simul conculcare.

III. Fomes peccati, etiam si nullum adsit actuale peccatum, moratur exeuntem a corpore animam ab ingressu coeli.

IV. Imperfecta caritas morituri fert secum necessario magnum timorem, qui se solo satis est facere poenam purgatorii, et impedit introitum regni.

V. Tres esse partes poenitentiae, contritionem, confessionem, et satisfactionem, non est fundatum in sacra scriptura, nec in antiquis sanctis Christianis doctoribus.

VI. Contritio, quae paratus per discussionem, collectionem,271 et deteststionem peccatorum, qua quis recogitat annos suos in amaritudine animae suae, ponderando peccatorum gravitatem, multitudinem, foeditatem, amissionem aeternae beatitudinis, ac aeternae damnationis acquisitionem, haec contritio facit hypocritam, immo magis peccatorem.

VII. Verissimum est proverbium, et omnium doctrina de contritionibus hucusque data praestantius, de cetero non facere, summa poenitentia, optima poenitentia, nova vita.

VIII. Nullo modo praesumas confiteri peccata venialia, sed nec omnia mortalia, quia impossibile est, ut omnia mortalia cognoscas: unde in primitiva Ecclesia solum manifesta mortalia confitebantur.

IX. Dum volumus omnia pure confiteri, nihil aliud facimus, quam quod misericordiae Dei nihil volumus relinquere ignoscendum.

X. Peccata non sunt illi remissa, nisi remittente sacerdote credat sibi remitti; immo peccatum maneret nisi remissum crederet; non enim sufficit remissio peccati et gratiae donatio, sed oportet etiam credere esse remissum.

XI. Nullo modo confidas absolvi propter tuam contritionem, sed propter verbum Christi: "Quodcumque solveris." etc. Sic, inquam, confide, si sacerdotis obtinueris absolutionem, et crede fortiter te absolutum; et absolutus vere eris,272  quidquid sit de contritione.

XII. Si per impossibile confessus non esset contritus, aut sacerdos non serio, sed joco absolveret, si tamen credat se absolutum, verissime est absolutus.

XIII. In sacramento poenitentiae se remissione culpae non plus facit Papa aut episcopus, quam infimus sacerdos; immo ubi non est sacerdos, aeque tantum quilibet Christianus, etiam si mulier, aut puer esset.

XIV. Nullus debet sacerdote respondere, se esse contritum, nec273 sacerdos requirere.

XV. Magnus est error eorum, qui ad sacramenta Eucharistiae accedunt huic innixi, quod sint confessi, quod non sint sibi conscii alicujus peccati mortalis; quod praemiserint orationes suas et praeparatoria; omnes illi ad274 judicium sibi manducant et bibunt; sed si credant et confidant se gratiam ibi consecuturos, haec sola fides facit eos puros et dignos.

XVI. Consultum videtur, quod Ecclesia in communi concilio275 statueret, laicos sub utraque specie communicandos; nec Bohemi communicantes sub utraque specie276 sunt haeretici, sed schismatici.

XVII. Thesauri Ecclesiae, unde Papa dat indulgentias, non sunt merita Christi et sanctorum.

XVIII. Indulgentiae sunt piae fraudes fidelium, et remissiones bonorum onerum, et sunt de numero eorum, quae licent, et non de numero eorum, quae expediunt.

XIX. Indulgentiae his, qui veraciter eas consequuntur, non valent ad remissionem poenae pro peccatis actualibus debitae ad divinam justitiam.

XX. Seducuntur credentes indulgentias esse salutares, et ad fructum spiritûs utiles.

XXI. Indulgentiae necessariae sunt solum publicis criminibus, et proprie conceduntur duris solummodo et impatientibus.

XXII. Sex generibus hominum indulgentiae nec sunt necessariae, nec utiles; videlicet mortuis seu morituris, infirmis, legitime impeditis, his qui non commiserunt crimina, his qui crimina commiserunt, sed non publica, his qui meliora operantur.

XXIII. Excommunicationes sunt tantum externae poenae, nec privant hominem communibus spiritualibus Ecclesiae orationibus.

XXIV. Docendi sunt Christiani plus diligere excommunicationem quam timere.

XXV. Romanus Pontifex, Petri successor, non est Christi vicarius super omnes mundi ecclesias ab ipso Christo in beato Petro institutus.

XXVI. Verbum Christi ad Petrum: "Quodcumque solveris super terram," etc., extenditur duntaxat ad ligata ab ipso Petro.

XXVII. Certum est in manu Ecclesiae aut Papae prorsus non esse statuere articulos fidei, immo nec leges morum, seu bonorum operum.

XXVIII. Si Papa cum magna parte Ecclesiae sic vel sic sentiret, nec etiam erraret, adhuc non est peccatum aut haeresis contrarium sentire, praesertim in re non necessaria ad salutem, donec fuerit per Concilium universale alterum reprobatum, alterum approbatum.

XXIX. Via nobis facta est enarrandi auctoritatem Conciliorum, et libere contradicendi eorum gestis, et judicandi eorum decreta, et confidenter confitendi quidquid verum videtur, sive probatum fuerit, sive reprobatum a quocunque concilio.

XXX. Aliqui articuli Joannis Husz condemnati in concilio Constantiensi sunt Christianissimi, verissimi et evangelici, quos non universalis Ecclesia posset damnare.

XXXI. In omni opere bono Justus peccat.

XXXII. Opus bonum optime factum veniale est peccatum.

XXXIII. Haereticos comburi est contra voluntatem Spiritûs.277

XXXIV. Praeliari adversus Turcas est repugnare Deo visitanti iniquitates nostras per illos.

XXXV. Nemo est certus se non semper peccare mortaliter propter occultissimum superbaa vitium.

XXXVI. Liberum arbitrium post peccatum est res de solo titulo, et dum facit quod in se est, peccat mortaliter.

XXXVII. Purgatorium non potest probari ex sacra scriptura, quae sit in canone.

XXXVIII. Animae in purgatorio non sunt securae de earum salute, saltem omnes; nec probatum est ullis aut rationibus aut scripturis, ipsas esse extra statum merendi, aut278 agendae caritatis.

XXXIX. Animae in purgatorio peccant sine intermissione, quamdiu quaerunt requiem, et horrent poenas.

XL. Animae ex purgatorio liberatae suffragiis viventium minus beantur, quam si per se satisfecissent.

XLI. Praelati ecclesiastica et principes seculares non malefacerent si omnes saccos mendicitatis279 delerent.

[These propositions are condemned as heretical, scandalous, offensive, and contrary to Catholic truth.]

Qui quidem errores respective quam sint pestiferi, quam perniciosi, quam scandalosi, quam piarum et simplicium mentium seductivi, quam denique sint contra omnem charitatem, ac sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae matris omnium fidelium et magistrae fidei reverentiam atque nervum ecclesiasticae disciplines, obedientiam scilicet, quae fons est et origo omnium virtutum, sine qua facile unusquisque infidelis esse convincitur, nemo sanae mentis ignorat. Nos Igitur in praemissis, utpote gravissimis, propensius (ut decet) procedere, necnon hujusmodi pesti morboque canceroso, ne in agro Dominico tanquam vepris nociva ulterius serpat, viam praecludere cupientes, habita super praedictis erroribus, et eorum singulis diligenti trutinatione, discussione, ac districto examine, maturaque deliberatione, omnibusque rite pensatis ac saeepius ventilatis cum venerabilibus fratribus nostris sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalibus, ac regularium ordinum Prioribus, seu ministris generalibus, plurisbusque aliis sacrae theologiae, necnon utriusque juris professoribus sive magistris, et quidem peritissimis, reperimus eosdem errores respective (ut praefertur) aut articulos non esse catholicos, nec tanquam tales esse dogmatizandos, sed contra Ecclesivae Catholicae doctrinam sive traditionem, atque ab ea veram divinarum scripturarum receptam interpretationem, cujus auctoritati ita acquiescendum censuit Augustinus, ut dixerit, se Evangelio non fuisse crediturum, nisi Ecclesiae Catholicae intervenisset auctoritas. Nam ex eisdem erroribus, vel eorum aliquo, vel aliquibus, palam sequitur, eandem Ecclesiam, quae Spiritu sancto regitur, errare, et semper errasse. Quod est utique contra illud, quod Christus discipulis suis in ascensione sua (ut in sancto Evangelio Matthaei legitur) promisit dicens: "Ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem seculi;" necnon contra Sanctorum Patrum determinationes, Conciliorum quoque et summorum Pontificum expressas ordinationes seu canones, quibus non obtemperasse omnium haeresum et schismatum, teste Cypriano, fomes et causa semper fuit.

De eorundem itaque venerabilium fratrum nostrorum consilio et assensu, se omnium et singulorum praedictorum maturâ deliberatione praedicta, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei, et beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et nostra, praefatos omnes et singulos articulos seu errores, tanquam (ut praemittitur) respective haereticos, aut scandalosos, aut falsos, aut piarum aurium offensivos, vel simplicium mentium seductivos, et veritate Catholicae obviantes, damnamus, reprobamus, ac omnino rejicimus, ac pro damnatis, reprobatis, et rejectis ab omnibus utriusque sexûs Christi fidelibus haberi debere, harum serie decernimus et declaramus.280

[Prohibition of the defence and publication of these errors.]

Inhibentes in virtute sanctae obedientiae ac sub majoris excommunicationis latae sententiae, necnon quoad Ecclesiasticas et Regulares personas, Episcopalium omnium, etiam Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum et aliarum Cathedralium Ecclesiarum, Monasteriorum quoque et Prioratuum etiam Conventualium et quarumcunque281 dignitatum aut Beneficiorum Ecclesiasticorum, Saecularium aut quorum vis Ordinum Regularium, privationis et inhabilitatis ad illa, et alia in posterum obtinenda. Quo vero ad Conventus, Capitula seu domos, aut pia loca saecularium, vel regularium, etiam Mendicantium, necnon Universitatis etiam studiorum generalium quorumcunque privilegiorum indultorum a Sede Apostolica, vel ejus Legatis, aut alias quomodolibet habitorum, vel obtentorum, cujuscumque tenoris existant: necnon nominis et potestatis studium generale tenendi, legendi, ac interpretandi quasvis scientias et facultates et inhabilitatis ad illa et alia in posterum obtinenda: Praedicationis quoque officii ac amissionis studii generalis et omnium privilegiorum ejusdem. Quo vero ad saeculares ejusdem excommunicationis, necnon amissionis cujuscumque emphyteosis, seu quorumcunque feudorum, tam a Romana Ecclesia, quam alias quomodolibet obtentorum, ac etiam inhabilitatis ad illa et alia in posterum obtinenda. Necnon quo ad omnes et singulos superius nominatos, inhibitionis Ecclesiasticae sepulturae inhabilitatisque ad omnes et singulos actus legitimos, infamiae ac diffidationis et criminis laesae majestatis, et haereticorum et fautorum eorundem in jure expressis poenis, eo ipso et absque ulteriori declaratione per omnes et singulos supradictos, si (quod absit) contrafecerint, incurrendis. A quibus vigore cujuscumque facultatis et clausularum etiam in confessionalibus quibusvis personis, sub quibusvis verborum formis contentarum, nisi a Romano Pontifice vel alio ab eo ad id in specie facultatem habente, praeterquam in mortis artlculo constitute, absolvi nequeant. Omnibus et singulis utriusque sexus Christifidelibus, tam Laicis quam Clericis, Saecularibus et quorumvis Ordinum Regularibus, et aliis quibuscumque personis cujuscumque status, gradus, vel conditionis existant, et quarumque ecclesiastica vel mundana praefulgeant dignitate, etiam S. R. E. Cardinalibas, Patriarchis, Primatibus, Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum et aliaram Cathedralium, Collegiatarum ac inferiorum ecclesiarum Praelatis, Clericis aliisque personis Eccleslasticis, Saecularibus et quorumvis Ordinum etiam Mendicantium regularibus, Abbatibus, Prioribus vel Ministris generalibus vel particularibus, Fratribus, seu Religiosis, exemptis et non exemptis: Studiorum quoque Universitatibus Saecularibus et quorumvis Ordinum etiam Mendicantium regularibus, necnon Regibus, Imperatori, Electoribus, Principibus, Ducibus, Marchionibus, Comitibus, Baronibus, Capitaneis, Conductoribus, Domicellis, omnibusque Officialibus, Judicibus, Notariis Ecelesiasticis et Saecularibus, Communitatibus, Universitatibus, Potentatibus, Civitatibus, Castris, Terris et locis, seu eorum vel earum civibus, habitatoribus et incolis, ac quibusvis aliis personis Ecclesiasticis, vel Regularibus (ut praefertur) per universum orbem, ubicumque, praesertim in Alemania existentibus, vel pro tempore futures, ne praefatos errores, aut eorum aliquos, perversamque doctrinam hujusmodi asserere, affirmare, defendere, praedicare, aut illi quomodolibet, publice vel occulte, quovis quaesito ingenio vel colore, tacite vel expresse favere praesumant.

[The writings of Luther are forbidden, and ordered to be burnt.]

Insuper quia errores praefati, et plures alii continentur in libellis seu scriptis Martini Luther, dictos libellos, et omnia dicti Martini scripta, seu praedicationes in Latino, vel quocumque alio idiomate reperiantur, in quibus dicti errores, seu eorum aliquis continentur, similiter damnamus, reprobamus, atque omnino rejicimus, et pro damnatis, reprobatis, ac rejectis (ut praefertur) haberi volumus, mandantes in virtute sanctae obedientiae et sub poenis praedictis eo ipso incurrendis, omnibus et singulis utriusque sexûs Christifidelibus superius nominatis, ne hujusmodi scripta, libellos, praedicationes, seu schedulas, vel in eis contenta capitula, errores, aut articulos supradictos continentia legere, asserere, praedicare, laudare, imprimere, publicare, sive defendere per se vel alium, seu alios directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse, publice vel occulte, aut in domibus suis sive aliis publicis vel privatis locis tenere quoquo modo praesumant; quinimmo illa statim post harum publicationem ubicumque fuerint, per ordinaries et alios supradictos diligenter quaesita, publice et solemniter in praesentia cleri et populi sub omnibus et singulis supradictis poenis comburant.

[Martin Luther was often warned with paternal charity to desist from these errors, and cited to Rome with the promise of safe-conduct.]

Quod vero ad ipsum Martinum attinet, (bone Deus) quid praetermisimus, quid non fecimus, quid paternae charitatis omisimus, ut eum ab hujusmodi erroribus revocaremus?  Postquam enim ipsum citavimus, mitius cum eo procedere volentes, illum invitavimus, atque tam per diversos tractatus cum legato nostro habitos, quam per literas nostras hortati fuimus, ut a paedictis erroribus discederet, aut oblato etiam salvo conductu et pecuniâ ad iter necessariâ, sine metu seu timore aliquo quem perfecta charitas foras mittere debuit, veniret, ac Salvatoris nostri Apostolique Pauli exemplo, non occulto, sed palam et in facie loqueretur. Quod si fecisset, pro certe (ut arbitramur) ad cor reversus errores suos cognovisset, nec in Romana curia, quam tantopere vanis malevolorum rumoribus plusquam oportuit tribuendo vituperat, tot reperisset errata; docuissemusque cum luce clarius, sanctos Romanos Pontifices, quos praeter omnem modestiam injuriose lacerat, in suis canonibus, seu constitutionibus, quas mordere nititur, nunquam errasse; quia juxta prophetam, nec in Galahad resina, nec medicus deest. Sed obaudivit semper, et praedicta citatione omnibus et singulis supradictis spretis venire contempsit, ac usque in praesentem diem contumax, atque animo indurate censuras ultra annum sustinuit: et quod deterius est, addens mala malis, de citatione hujusmodi notitiam habens, in vocem temerariae appellationis prorupit ad futurum concilium contra constitutionem Pii Secundi ac Julii Secundi, praedecessorum nostrorum, qua cavetur, taliter appellantes haereticorum poenâ plectendos (frustra etiam Consilii auxilium imploravit, qui illi se non credere palam profitetur); ita ut contra ipsum tanquam de fide notorie suspectum, immo vere haereticum absque ulterori citatione vel mora ad condemnationem et damnationem ejus tanquam haeretici, ac ad omnium et singularum suprascriptarum poenarum et censurarum severitatem procedere possemus.

[Luther is again exhorted to repent, and promised the reception of the prodigal son.]

Nihilominus de eorundem fratrum nostroruin consilio, omnipotentis Dei imitantes clementiam, qui non vult mortem peccatoris, sed magis ut convertatur et vivat, omnium injuriarum hactenus nobis et Apostolicqae sedi illatarum obliti, omni qua possumus pietate uti decrevimus, et quantum in nobis est, agere, ut propositâ mansuetudinis viâ ad cor revertatur, et a praedictis recedat erroribus, ut ipsum tanquam filium illum prodigum ad gremium Ecclesiae revertentem benigne recipiamus. Ipsum igitur Martinum et quoscumque ei adhaerentes, ejusque receptatores et fautores per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri, et per aspersionem sanguinis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quo et per quem humani generis redemptio, et sanctae matris Ecclesiae aedificatio facta est, ex tote corde hortamur et obsecramus, ut ipsius Ecclesiae pacem, unitatem et veritatem, pro qua ipse Salvator tam instanter oravit ad Patrem, turbare desistant, et a praedictis, tam perniciosis erroribus prorsus abstineant, inventuri apud nos si effectualiter paruerint, et paruisse per legitima documenta nos certificaverint, paternae charitatis affectum, et apertum mansuetudinis et clementiae fontem.

[Luther is suspended from the functions of the ministry, and given sixty days, after the publication of the bull, to recant.]

Inhibentes nihilominus eidem Martino ex nunc, ut interim ab omni praedicatione seu praedicationis officio omnino desistat. Alioquin in ipsum Martinum si forte justitiae et virtutis amor a peccato non retrahat, indulgentiaeque spes ad poenitentiam non reducat, poenarum terror coërceat disciplinae: eundem Martinum ejusque adhaerentes complices, fautores, et receptatores tenore praesentium requirimus, et monemus in virtute sanctae obedientiae, sub praedictis omnibus et singulis poenis eo ipso incurrendis districte praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus infra sexaginta dies, quorum viginti pro primo, viginti pro secundo, et reliquos viginti dies pro tertio et peremptorio termino assignamus ab affixione praesentium in locis infrascriptis immediate sequentes numerandos, ipse Martinus, complices, fautores, adhaerentes, et receptatores praedicti a praefatis erroribus, eorumque praedicatione, ac publications, et assertione, defensione quoque et librorum seu scripturarum editione super eisdem, sive eorum aliquo omnino desistant, librosque ac scripturas omnes et singulas praefatos errores seu eorum aliquos quomodolibet continentes comburant, vel comburi faciant. Ipse etiam Martinus errores et assertiones hujusmodi omnino revocet, ac de revocatione hujusmodi per publica documenta in forma juris valida in manibus duorum Praelatorum consignata ad nos infra alios similes sexaginta dies transmittenda, vel per ipsummet (si ad nos venire voluerit, quod magis placeret) cum praefato plenissimo salvo conductu, quem ex nunc concedimus deferenda, nos certiores efficiat, ut de ejus vera obedientia nullus dubitationis scrupulus valeat remanere.

[In case Luther and his followers refuse to recant within sixty days, they will be excommunicated, and dealt with according to law.]

Alias si (quod absit) Martinus praefatus, complices, fautores, adhaerentes et receptatores praedicti secus egerint, seu proemissa omnia et singula infra terminum praedictum cum effectu non adimpleverint, Apostoli imitantes doctrinam, qui haereticum hominem post primam et secundam correctionem vitandum docuit, ex nunc prout ex tunc, et e converso eundem Martinum, complices, adhaerentes, fautores et receptatores praefatos et eorum quemlibet tanquam aridos palmites in Christo non manentes, sed doctrinam contrariam, Catholicae fidei inimicam, sive scandalosam seu damnatam, in non modicam offensam divinae majestatis, ac universalis Ecclesiae, et fidei Catholicae detrimentum et scandalum dogmatizantes, claves quoque Ecclesiae vilipendentes, notorios et pertinaces haereticos eâdem auctoritate fuisse et esse declarantes, eosdem ut tales harum serie condemnamus, et eos pro talibus haberi ab omnibus utriusque sexus Christi fidelibus supradictis volumus et mandamus. Eosque omnes et singulos omnibus supradictis et aliis contra tales a jure inflictis poenis praesentium tenore subjicimus, et eisdem irretitos fuisse et esse decernimus et declaramus.

[All Catholics are admonished not to read, print, or publish any book of Luther and his followers, but to burn them.]

Inhibemus praeterea sub omnibus et singulis praemissis poenis eo ipso incurrendis, omnibus et singulis Christi fidelibus superius nominatis, ne scripta, etiam praefatos errores non continentia, ab eodem Martino quomodolibet condita vel edita, aut condenda vel edenda, seu eorum aliqua tanquam ab homine orthodoxae fidei inimico, atque ideo vehementer suspecta, et ut ejus memoria omnino deleatur de Christifidelium consortio, legere, asserere, praedicare, laudare, imprimere, publicare, sive defendere, per se vel alium seu alios, directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse, publice vel occulte, seu in domibus suis, sive aliis locis publicis vel privatis tenere quoquomodo praesumant, quinimmo illa comburant, ut praefertur.282

[Christians are forbidden, after the excommunication, to hold any intercourse with Luther and his followers, or to give them shelter, on pain of the interdict; and magistrates are commanded to arrest and send them to Rome.]

Monemus insuper omnes et singulos Christifideles supradictos, sub eadem excommunicationis latae sententiae poena, ut haereticos praedictos declaratos et condemnatos, mandatis nostris non obtemperantes, post lapsum termini supradicti evitent et quantum in eis est, evitari faciant, nec cum eisdem, vel eorum aliquo commercium aut aliquam conversationem seu communionem habeant, nec eis necessaria ministrent.

Ad majorem praeterea dicti Martini suorumque complicum, fautorum et adhaerentium ac receptatorum praedictorum, sic post lapsum termini praedicti declaratorum haereticorum et condemnatorum confusionem universis et singulis utriusque sexus Christifidelibus Patriarchis, Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum, et aliarum cathedralium, collegiatarum ac inferiorum ecclesiarum Praelatis, Capitulis, aliisque personis ecclesiastica, saecularibus et quoramvis Ordinum etiam Mendicantium (praesertim ejus congregationis cujus dictus Martinus est professus, et in qua degere vel morari dicitur) regularibus exemptis et non exemptis, necnon universis et singulis principibus, quacumque ecclesiastica vel mundana fulgentibus dignitate Regibus, Imperatoris283 Electoribus, Ducibus, Marchionibus, Comitibus, Baronibus, Capitaneis, Conductoribus, Domicellis, Communitatibus, Universitatibus, Potentatibus, Civitatibus, Terris, Castris et locis, seu eorum habitatoribus, civibus et incolis omnibusque aliis et singulis supradictis per universum Orbem, praesertim in eadem Alemania constitutis mandamus, quatenus sub praedictis omnibus et singulis poenis, ipsi vel eorum quilibet, praefatum Martinum, complices, adhaerentes, receptantes et fautores personaliter capiant et captos ad nostram instantiam retineant et ad nos mittant: reportaturi pro tam bono opere a nobis et Sede Apostolica remunerationem, praemiumque condignum vel saltem eos et eorum quemlibet, de Metropolitanis, Cathedralibus, Collegiatis, et aliis ecclesiis, domibus, Monasteriis, Conventibus, Civitatibus, Dominiis, Universitatibus, Communitatibus, Castris, Terris, ac locis respective, tam clerici et regulares quam laici omnes et singuli supradicti omnino expellant.

[The places which harbor Luther and his followers are threatened with the Interdict.]

Civitates vero, Dominia, Terras, Castra, Villas, comitatus, fortilicia, Oppida et loca quaecumque ubilibet consistentia earum et eorum respective Metropolitanas, Cathedrales, Collegiatas et alias ecclesias, Monasteria, Prioratus, Domus, Conventus et loca religiosa vel pia cujuscunque ordinis (tit praefertur) ad quae praefatum Martinum vel aliquem ex praedictis declinare contigerit, quamdiu ibi permanserint et triduo post recessum, ecclesiastico subjicimus interdicto.

[Provision for the promulgation and execution of the bull.]

Et ut praemissa omnibus innotescant, mandamus insuper universis Patriarchis, Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum et aliarum cathedralium ac collegiatarum ecclesiarum Praelatis, Capitulis aliisque personis ecclesiasticis, saecularibus et quorumvis Ordinum supradictorum regularibus, fratribus religiosis, monachis exemptis et non exemptis supradictis, ubilibet, praesertim in Alemania constitutis quatenus ipsi vel eorum quilibet sub similibus censuris et poenis co ipso incurrendis, Martinum omnesque et singulos supradictos qui elapso teremo hujusmodi mandatis seu monitis nostris non paruerint, in eorum ecclesiis, dominicis et aliis festivis diebus, dum inibi major populi multitudo ad divina convenerit, declaratos haereticos et condemnatos publice nuncient faciantque et mandent ab aliis nunciari et ab omnibus evitari. Necnon omnibus Christifidelibus ut eos evitent, pari modo sub praedictis censuris et poenis. Et praesentes literas vel earum transumptum sub forma infrascripta factum in eorum ecclesiis, monasteriis, domibus, conventibus et aliis locis legi, publicare atque affigi faciant. Excommunicamus quoque et anathematizamus omnes et singulos cujuscumque status, gradiis, conditionis, prae-eminentiae, dignitatis aut excellentiae fuerint qui quo minus praesentes literae vel earum transumpta, copiae seu exemplaria in suis terris et dominiis legi, affigi et publicare possint, fecerint vel quoquomodo procuraverint per se vel alium seu alios, publice vel occulte, directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse.

Postremo quia difficile foret praesentes literas ad singula quaeque loca deferri in quibus necessarium foret, volumus et apostolica authoritate decernimus, quod earum transumptis manu publici notarii confectis et subscriptis, vel in alma Urbe impressis et sigillo alicujus ecclesiastici Praelati munitis ubique stetur et plena fides adhibeatur, prout originalibus literis staretur, si forent exhibitae vel ostensae.

Et ne praefatus Martinus omnesque alii supradicti, quos praesentes literae quomodolibet concernunt, ignorantiam earundem literarum et in eis contentorum omnium et singulorum praetendere valeant, literas ipsas in Basilicas Principis Apostolorum et Cancellariae Apostolicae, necnon Cathedralium ecclesiarum Brandeburgen., Misnen. et Morspergen. [Merseburg] valvis affigi et publicari debere284 volumus, decernentes, quod earundem literarum publicatio sic facta, supradictum Martinum omnesque alios et singulos praenominatos, quos literae hujusmodi quomodolibet concernunt, perinde arctent, ac si literae ipsae die affixionis et publicationis hujusmodi eis personaliter lectae et intimatae forent, cum non sit verisimile, quod ea quae tam patenter fiunt debeant apud eos incognita remanere.

Non obstantibus constitutionibus et ordinationibus apostolicis, seu si supradictis omnibus et singulis vel eorum alicui aut quibusvis aliis a Sede Apostolica praedicta, vel ab ea potestatem habentibus sub quavis forma, etiam confessionali et cum quibusvis etiam fortissimis clausulis, aut ex quavis causa, seu grandi consideratione, indultum vel concessum existat, quod interdici, suspendi, vel excommunicari non possint per literas Apostolicas, non facientes plenam et expressam ac de verbo ad verbum, non autem per clausulas generates id importantes, de indulto hujusmodi mentionem, ejusdem indulti tenores, causas285 et formas perinde ac si de verbo ad verbum insererentur, ita ut omnino tollatur, praesentibus pro expressis habentes.

Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrae damnationis, reprobationis, rejectionis, decreti, declarationis, inhibitionis, voluntatis, mandati, hortationis, obsecrationis, requisitionis, monitionis, assignationis, concessionis, condemnationis, subjectionis, excommunicationis, et anathematizationis infringere, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, indignationem Omnipotentis Dei ac Beatorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum ejus se noverit incursurum.

Dat. Romae apud S. Petrum anno incarnationis Dominicae Milesimo Quingentesimo Vigesimo. XVII. Kls. Julii. Pontificatus Nostri Anno Octavo.

Visa. R. Milanesius.

Albergatus.

Impressum Romae per Iacobum Mazochium

De Mandato S. D. N. Papae.286

§ 48. Luther burns the Pope’s bull, and forever breaks with Rome. Dec. 10, 1520.

Literature in § 47.

Luther was prepared for the bull of excommunication. He could see in it nothing but blasphemous presumption and pious hypocrisy. At first he pretended to treat it as a forgery of Eck.287  Then he wrote a Latin and German tract, "Against the bull of Antichrist,"288 called it a "cursed, impudent, devilish bull," took up the several charges of heresy, and turned the tables against the Pope, who was the heretic according to the standard of the sacred Scriptures. Hutten ridiculed the bull from the literary and patriotic standpoint with sarcastic notes and queries. Luther attacked its contents with red-hot anger and indignation bordering on frenzy. He thought the last day, the day of Antichrist, had come. He went so far as to say that nobody could be saved who adhered to the bull.289

In deference to his friends, he renewed the useless appeal from the Pope to a free general council (Nov. 17, 1520), which he had made two years before (Nov. 28, 1518); and in his appeal he denounced the Pope as a hardened heretic, an antichristian suppresser of the Scriptures, a blasphemer and despiser of the holy Church and of a rightful council.290

At the same time he resolved upon a symbolic act which cut off the possibility of a retreat. The Pope had ordered his books, good and bad, without any distinction, to be burned; and they were actually burned in several places, at Cologne even in the presence of the Emperor. They were to be burned also at Leipzig. Luther wanted to show that he too could burn books, which was an old custom (Acts 19:19) and easy business. He returned fire for fire, curse for curse. He made no distinction between truth and error in the papal books, since the Pope had ordered his innocent books to be destroyed as well. He gave public notice of his intention.

On the tenth day of December, 1520, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the presence of a large number of professors and students, he solemnly committed the bull of excommunication, together with the papal decretals, the Canon law, and several writings of Eck and Emser, to the flames, with these words (borrowed from Joshua’s judgment of Achan the thief, Josh. 7:25): "As thou [the Pope] hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord, may the eternal fire vex thee!"291

The spot where this happened is still shown outside the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, under a sturdy oak surrounded by an iron railing.292

Several hundred students tarried at the fire, which had been kindled by a master of the university, some chanting the Te Deum, others singing funeral dirges on the papal laws; then they made a mock procession through the town, collected piles of scholastic and Romish books, and returning to the place of execution, threw them into the flames.

Luther, with Melanchthon, Carlstadt, and the other doctors and masters, returned home immediately after the act. He at first had trembled at the step, and prayed for light; but after the deed was done, he felt more cheerful than ever. He regarded his excommunication as an emancipation from all restraints of popery and monasticism. On the same day he calmly informed Spalatin of the event as a piece of news.293  On the next day he warned the students in the lecture-room against the Romish Antichrist, and told them that it was high time to burn the papal chair with all its teachers and abominations.294  He publicly announced his act in a Latin and German treatise, "Why the Books of the Pope and his Disciples were burned by Dr. Martin Luther." He justified it by his duties as a baptized Christian, as a sworn doctor of divinity, as a daily preacher, to root out all unchristian doctrines. He cites from the papal law-books thirty articles and errors in glorification of the papacy, which deserve to be burned; and calls the whole Canon-law "the abomination of desolation" (Matt. 24:15) and antichristian (2 Thess. 2:4), since the sum of its teaching was, that "the Pope is God on earth, above all things, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and temporal; all things belong to the Pope, and no one dare ask, What doest thou?"  Simultaneously with this tract, he published an exhaustive defense of all his own articles which had been condemned by the Pope, and planted himself upon the rock of God’s revelation in the Scriptures.

Leo X., after the expiration of the one hundred and twenty days of grace allowed to Luther by the terms of the bull, proceeded to the last step, and on the third day of January, 1521, pronounced the ban against the Reformer, and his followers, and an interdict on the places where they should be harbored. But Luther had deprived the new bull of its effect.

The burning of the Pope’s bull was the boldest and most eventful act of Luther. Viewed in itself, it might indeed have been only an act of fanaticism and folly, and proved a brutum fulmen. But it was preceded and followed by heroic acts of faith in pulling down an old church, and building up a new one. It defied the greatest power on earth, before which emperors, kings, and princes, and all the nations of Europe bowed in reverence and awe. It was the fiery signal of absolute and final separation from Rome, and destroyed the effect of future papal bulls upon one-half of Western Christendom. It emancipated Luther and the entire Protestant world from that authority, which, from a wholesome school of discipline for young nations, had become a fearful and intolerable tyranny over the intellect and conscience of men.

Luther developed his theology before the eyes of the public; while Calvin, at a later period, appeared fully matured, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. "I am one of those," he says, "among whom St. Augustin classed himself, who have gradually advanced by writing and teaching; not of those who at a single bound spring to perfection out of nothing.

He called the Pope the most holy and the most hellish father of Christendom. He began in 1517 as a devout papist and monk, with full faith in the Roman Church and its divinely appointed head, protesting merely against certain abuses; in 1519, at the Leipzig disputation, he denied the divine right, and shortly afterwards also the human right, of the papacy; a year later he became fully convinced that the papacy was that antichristian power predicted in the Scriptures, and must be renounced at the risk of a man’s salvation.

There is no doubt that in all these stages he was equally sincere, earnest, and conscientious.

Luther adhered to the position taken in the act of Dec. 10, 1520, with unchanging firmness. He never regretted it for a moment. He had burned the ship behind him; he could not, and he would not, return. To the end of his life he regarded and treated the Pope of Rome in his official capacity as the very Antichrist, and expected that he soon would be destroyed by spiritual force at the second coming of Christ. At Schmalkalden in 1537 he prayed that God might fill all Protestants with hatred of the Pope. One of his last and most violent books is directed "Against the Papacy at Rome, founded by the Devil." Wittenberg, 1545.295  He calls Paul III. the "Most hellish Father," and addresses him as "Your Hellishness." instead of "Your Holiness." He promises at the close to do still better in another book, and prays that in case of his death, God may raise another one "a thousandfold more severe; for the devilish papacy is the last evil on earth, and the worst which all the devils with all their power could contrive. God help us. Amen." Thus he wrote, not under the inspiration of liquor or madness, as Roman historians have suggested, but in sober earnest. His dying words, as reported by Ratzeburger, his physician, were a prediction of the approaching death of the papacy: —

"Pestis eram vivus, moriens tua mors ero Papa."

From the standpoint of his age, Luther regarded the Pope and the Turk as "the two arch-enemies of Christ and his Church," and embodied this view in a hymn which begins, —

"Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort

Und steur’ des Papst’s und Türken Mord."296

This line, like the famous eightieth question of the Heidelberg Catechism which denounces the popish mass as an "accursed idolatry," gave much trouble in mixed communities, and in some it was forbidden by Roman-Catholic magistrates. Modern German hymn-books wisely substitute "all enemies," or "enemies of Christ," for the Pope and the Turk.

In order to form a just estimate of Luther’s views on the papacy, it must not be forgotten that they were uttered in the furnace-heat of controversy, and with all the violence of his violent temper. They have no more weight than his equally sweeping condemnation of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

§ 49. The Reformation and the Papacy.

Here is the place to interrupt the progress of events, and to reflect on the right or wrong of the attitude of Luther and the Reformation to the papacy.

The Reformers held the opinion that the papacy was an antichristian institution, and some of the Protestant confessions of faith have given symbolical sanction to this theory. They did not mean, of course, that every individual Pope was an Antichrist (Luther spoke respectfully of Leo X.), nor that the papacy as such was antichristian: Melanchthon, at least, conceived of the possibility of a Christian papacy, or a general superintendence of the Church for the preservation of order and unity.297

They had in view simply the institution as it was at their time, when it stood in open and deadly opposition to what they regarded as the truth of the gospel of Christ, and the free preaching of the same. Their theory does not necessarily exclude a liberal and just appreciation of the papacy before and after the Reformation.

And in this respect a great change has taken place among Protestant scholars, with the progress of exegesis and the knowledge of church history.

1. The prophetic Scripture texts to which the Reformers and early Protestant divines used to appeal for their theory of the papacy, must be understood in accordance with the surroundings and conditions of the writers and their readers who were to be benefited. This does not exclude, of course, an application to events and tendencies of the distant future, since history is a growing and expanding fulfillment of prophecy; but the application must be germane to the original design and natural meaning of the text. Few commentators would now find the Pope of Rome in "the little horn" of Daniel (7:8, 20, 21), who had in view rather Antiochus Epiphanes; or in the Apocalyptic beast from the abyss (Rev. 13:1), and "the mother of harlots" (17:5), which evidently apply to the persecuting heathen Rome of Nero and his successors.

St. John is the only biblical writer who uses the term Antichrist;"298 but he means by it, in the first instance, the Gnostic heresy of his own day, which denied the incarnation; for he represents this denial as the characteristic sign of Antichrist, and represents him as being already in the world; yea, he speaks of "many" antichrists who had gone out of the Christian churches in Asia Minor. The Pope has never denied the incarnation, and can never do it without ceasing to be Pope.

It is quite legitimate to use the terms "antichrist" and antichristian" in a wider sense, of all such men and tendencies as are opposed to Christ and his teaching; but we have no right to confine them to the Pope and the Roman Church., , Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many" (Matt. 24:4, 11, 23, 24).

St. Paul’s prediction of the great apostasy, and the "man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God."299 sounds much more than any other passage like a description of the papacy with its amazing claim to universal and infallible authority over the Church of God. But the application becomes more than doubtful when we remember that the apostle characterizes this antichristian apostasy as "the mystery of lawlessness," already at work in his day, though restrained from open manifestation by some conservative power.300  The papacy did not yet exist at the time; and its besetting sin is not lawless freedom, but the very opposite.

If we would seek for Scripture authority against the sins and errors of popery, we must take our stand on our Lord’s opposition to the traditions of the elders, which virtually set aside the word of God; on Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, where he defends Christian freedom against legalistic bondage, and teaches the great doctrines of sin and grace, forgotten by Rome, and revived by the Reformation; and on St. Peter’s protest against hierarchical presumption and pride.

There was in the early Church a general expectation that an Antichrist in the emphatic sense, an incarnation of the antichristian principle, a pseudo-Christ of hell, a "world-deceiver" (as he is called in the newly discovered "Teaching of the Apostles"301), should appear, and lead astray many Christians immediately before the second coming of Christ. The Reformers saw this Antichrist in the Pope, and looked for his speedy destruction; but an experience of more than three hundred and fifty years proves that in this expectation they were mistaken, and that the final Antichrist is still in the future.

2. As regards church history, it was as yet an unexplored field at the time of the Reformation; but the Reformation itself roused the spirit of inquiry and independent, impartial research. The documentary sources of the middle ages have only recently been made accessible on a large scale by such collections as the Monumenta Germania. "The keys of Peter," says Dr. Pertz, the Protestant editor of the Monumenta, "are still the keys of the middle ages." The greatest Protestant historians, ecclesiastical and secular,—I need only mention Neander and Ranke,—agree in a more liberal view of the papacy.302

After the downfall of the old Roman Empire, the papacy was, with all its abuses and vices, a necessary and wholesome training-school of the barbarian nations of Western and Northern Europe, and educated them from a state of savage heathenism to that degree of Christian civilization which they reached at the time of the Reformation. It was a check upon the despotism of rude force; it maintained the outward unity of the Church; it brought the nations into communication; it protected the sanctity of marriage against the lust of princes; it moderated slavery; it softened the manners; it inspired great enterprises; it promoted the extension of Christianity; it encouraged the cause of learning and the cultivation of the arts of peace.

And even now the mission of the papacy is not yet finished. It seems to be as needful for certain nations, and a lower stage of civilization, as ever. It still stands, not a forsaken ruin, but an imposing pyramid completed to the very top. The Roman Church rose like a wounded giant from the struggle with the Reformation, abolished in the Council of Trent some of the worst abuses, reconquered a considerable portion of her lost territory in Europe, added to her dominion one-half of the American Continent, and completed her doctrinal and governmental system in the decrees of the Vatican Council. The Pope has lost his temporal power by the momentous events of 1870; but he seems to be all the stronger in spiritual influence since 1878, when Leo XIII. was called to occupy the chair of Leo X. An aged Italian priest shut up in the Vatican controls the consciences of two hundred millions of human beings,—that is, nearly one-half of nominal Christendom,—and rules them with the claim of infallibility in all matters of faith and duty. It is a significant fact, that the greatest statesman of the nineteenth century, and founder of a Protestant empire, who at the beginning of the Kulturkampf declared that he would never go to Canossa (1872), found it expedient, after a conflict of ten years, to yield to an essential modification of the anti-papal May-laws of 1873, without, however, changing his religious conviction, or sacrificing the sovereignty of the State; he even conferred an extraordinary distinction upon the Pope by selecting him as arbiter in an international dispute between Germany and Spain (1885).303  But it is perhaps still more remarkable, that Leo XIII. in return sent to Prince Bismarck, the political Luther of Germany, the Christ Order, which was never given to a Protestant before, and that he supported him in the political campaign of 1887.

3. How can we justify the Reformation, in view of the past history and present vitality of the Papacy?

Here the history of the Jewish Church, which is a type of the Christian, furnishes us with a most instructive illustration and conclusive answer. The Levitical hierarchy, which culminated in the high priest, was of divine appointment, and a necessary institution for the preservation of the theocracy. And yet what God intended to be a blessing became a curse by the guilt of man: Caiaphas, the lineal descendant of Aaron, condemned the Messiah as a false prophet and blasphemer, and the synagogue cast out His apostles with curses.

What happened in the old dispensation was repeated on a larger scale in the history of Christianity. An antichristian element accompanied the papacy from the very beginning, and culminated in the corruptions at the time of the Reformation. The greater its assumed and conceded power, the greater were the danger and temptation of abuse. One of the best of Popes, Gregory the Great, protested against the title of, "universal bishop," as an antichristian presumption. The Greek Church, long before the Reformation, charged the Bishop of Rome with antichristian usurpation; and she adheres to her protest to this day. Not a few Popes, such as Sergius III., John XII., Benedict IX., John XXIII., and Alexander VI., were guilty of the darkest crimes of depraved human nature; and yet they called themselves successors of Peter, and vicars of Christ. Who will defend the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the horrors of the Inquisition, the papal jubilee over the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and all those bloody persecutions of innocent people for no other crime but that of opposing the tyranny of Rome, and dissenting from her traditions?  Liberal and humane Catholics would revolt at an attempt to revive the dungeon and the fagot against heresy and schism; but the Church of Rome in her official capacity has never repudiated the principle of persecution by which its practice was justified: on the contrary, Pope Gregory XVI. declared liberty of conscience and worship an insanity (deliramentum), and Pius IX. in his "Syllabus" of 1864 denounced it among the pernicious and pestilential errors of modern times. And what shall we say of the papal schism in the fifteenth century, when two or three rival Popes laid all Christendom under the curse of excommunication?  What of the utter secularization of the papacy just before the Reformation, its absorption in political intrigues and wars and schemes of aggrandizement, its avarice, its shameless traffic in indulgences, and all those abuses of power which called forth the one hundred and one gravamina of the German -nation?  Who will stand up for the bull of excommunication against Luther, with its threats of burning him and his books, and refusing the consolations of religion to every house or community which should dare to harbor him or any of his followers?  If that bull be Christian, then we must close our eyes against the plain teaching of Christ in the Gospels.

Even if the Bishop of Rome should be the legitimate successor of Peter, as he claims, it would not shield him against the verdict of history. For the carnal Simon revived and reasserted himself from time to time in the spiritual Peter. The same disciple whom Christ honored as the "Rock," on whose confession he promised to build his Church, was soon afterwards called "Satan" when he presumed to divert his Master from the path of suffering; the same Peter was rebuked when he drew the sword against Malchus; the same Peter, notwithstanding his boast of fidelity, denied his Lord and Saviour; and the same Peter incurred the severe remonstrance of Paul at Antioch when he practically denied the rights of the Gentile converts, and virtually excluded them from the Church. According to the Roman legend, the prince of the apostles relapsed into his consistent inconsistency, even a day before his martyrdom, by bribing the jailer, and fleeing for his life till the Lord appeared to him with the cross at the spot of the memorial chapel Domine quo vadis. Will the Pope ever imitate Peter in his bitter repentance for denying Christ?

If the Apostolic Church typically foreshadows the whole history of Christianity, we may well see in the temporary collision between Peter and Paul the type of the antagonism between Romanism and Protestantism. The Reformation was a revolt against legal bondage, and an assertion of evangelical freedom. It renewed the protest of Paul against Peter, and it succeeded. It secured freedom in religion, and as a legitimate consequence, also intellectual, political, and civil freedom. It made the Word of God with its instruction and comfort accessible to all. This is its triumphant vindication. Compare for proof Protestant Germany under William I., with Roman-Catholic Germany under Maximilian I.; England under Queen Victoria, with England under Henry VII.; Calvinistic Scotland and Lutheran Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, with Roman Scotland and Scandinavia in the fifteenth. Look at the origin and growth of free Holland and free North America. Contrast England with Spain of the present day; Prussia with Austria; Holland with Portugal; the United States and Canada with the older Mexico and Peru or Brazil. Consider the teeming Protestant literature in every department of learning, science and art; and the countless Protestant churches, schools, colleges, universities, charitable institutions and missionary stations scattered all over the globe. Surely, the Reformation can stand the test: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

NOTES.

Opinions of representative Protestant historians who cannot be charged with partisan bias or Romanizing tendency: —

"Whatever judgment," says Leopold von Ranke, who was a good Lutheran (Die römischen Päpste, I. 29), "we may form of the Popes of former times, they had always great interests in view: the care of an oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the propagation of Christianity among the Northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchical power. It belongs to the dignity of human existence to will and to execute something great. These tendencies the Popes kept in higher motion."

In the last volume of his great work, published after his death (Weltgeschichte, Siebenter Theil, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 311–313), Ranke gives his estimate of the typical Pope Gregory VII., of which this is a condensed translation: —

"The hierarchical system of Gregory rests on the attempt to make the clerical power the basis of the entire human existence. This explains the two principles which characterize the system,—the command of (clerical] celibacy, and the prohibition of investiture by the hands of a layman. By the first, the lower clergy were to be made a corporation free from all personal relations to human society; by the second, the higher clergy were to be secured against all influence of the secular power. The great hierarch had well considered his standpoint: he thereby met a want of the times, which regarded the clergy, so to say, as higher beings. All his words had dignity, consistency and power. He had a native talent for worldly affairs. Peter Damiani probably had this in view when he called him, once, the holy Satan .... Gregory’s deliverances contain no profound doctrines; nearly all were known before. But they are summed up by him in a system, the sincerity of which no one could call in question. His dying words: ’I die in exile, because I loved justice,’ express his inmost conviction. But we must not forget that it was only the hierarchical justice which he defended to his last breath."—In the thirteenth chapter, entitled "Canossa," Ranke presents his views on the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., or between the hierarchical and the secular power.

Adolf Harnack, a prominent historian of the present generation, in his commemorative address on Martin Luther (Giessen, 1883, p. 7), calls "the idea of the papacy the greatest and most humane idea (die grösste und humanste Idee) which the middle age produced."

It was In a review of Ranke’s History of the Popes, that Lord Macaulay, a Protestant of Scotch ancestry, penned his brilliant eulogy on the Roman Church as the oldest and most venerable power in Christendom, which is likely to outlast all other governments and churches. "She was great and respected," he concludes, "before the Saxon set his foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the Temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s."304

But we must not overlook a later testimony, in which the eloquent historian supplemented and qualified this eulogy: —

"From the time," says Macaulay in the first chapter of his History of England, "when the barbarians overran the Western Empire, to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favorable to science, to civilization, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor; while Protestant countries once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned, by skill and industry, into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation; the elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached,—teach the same lesson. Whoever passes, in Germany, from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the other side of the Atlantic, the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence which, even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a great people. But this apparent exception, when examined, will be found to confirm the rule; for in no country that is called Roman-Catholic has the Roman-Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority as in France.

"It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman-Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and intellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood."

§ 50. Charles V.

Literature.

Most of the works on Charles V. are histories of his times, in which he forms the central figure. Much new material has been brought to light from the archives of Brussels and Simancas. He is extravagantly lauded by Spanish, and indiscriminately censured by French historians. The Scotch Robertson, the American Prescott, and the German Ranke are impartial.

I. Joh. Sleidan (d. 1556): De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae Carlo V. Caesare Commentarii, Argentor. 1555 fol. (best ed. by Am Ende, Frf.-a.-M., 1785). Ludw. v. Seckendorf: Com. Hist. et Apol. de Lutheranism sive de Reformatione Religionis, Leipzig, 1694.  Goes to the year 1546.—The English Calendars of State-Papers,—Spanish, published by the Master of the Rolls.—De Thou: Historia sui Temporis (from the death of Francis I.).—The Histories of Spain by Mariana (Madrid, 1817–22, 20 vols. 8vo); Zurita (Çaragoça, 1669–1710, 6 vols. fol.); Ferreras (French trans., Amsterdam, 1751, 10 vols. 4to); Salazar de Mendoza (Madrid, 1770–71, 3 vols. fol.); Modesto Lafuente (Vols. XI. and XII., 1853), etc.

II. Biographies. Charles dictated to his secretary, William Van Male, while leisurely sailing on the Rhine, from Cologne to Mayence, in June, 1550, and afterwards at Augsburg, under the refreshing shade of the Fugger gardens, a fragmentary autobiography, in Spanish or French, which was known to exist, but disappeared, until Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, discovered in the National Library at Paris, in 1861, a Portuguese translation of it, and published a French translation from the same, with an introduction, under the title: Commentaires de Charles-Quint, Brussels, 1862. An English translation by Leonard Francis Simpson: The Autobiography of the Emperor Charles V., London, 1862 (161 and xlviii. pp.]. It is a summary of the Emperor’s journeys and expeditions ("Summario das Viages e Jornadas"), from 1516 to 1548. It dwells upon the secular events; but incidentally reveals, also, his feelings against the Protestants, whom he charges with heresy, obstinacy, and insolence, and against Pope Paul III., whom he hated for his arrogance, dissimulation, and breach of promise. Comp. on this work, the introduction of Lettenhove (translated by Simpson), and the acute criticism of Ranke, vol. vi. 75 sqq.

Alfonso Ulloa: Vita di Carlo V., Venet., 1560. Sandoval: Histoiria de la Vida y Hechos del Emperadòr Carlos Quinto, Valladolid, 1606 (Pampelona, 1618; Antwerp, 1681, 2 vols.). Sepulveda (Whom the Emperor selected as his biographer): De Rebus Gestis Caroli V. lmperatoris, Madrid, 1780 (and older editions). G. Leti: Vita del Imperatore Carlo V., 1700, 4vols. A. de Musica (in Menckenius, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. I., Leipzig, 1728). William Robertson (d. 1793): The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., London, 1769, 3 vols.; 6th ed., 1787, 4 vols.; new ed. of his Works, London, 1840, 8 vols. (vols. III., IV., V.); best ed., Phila. (Lippincott) 1857, 3 vols., with a valuable supplement by W. H. Prescott on the Emperor’s life after his abdication, from the archives of Simancas (III., 327–510). Hermann Baumgarten: Geschichte Karls V., Stuttgart, 1885 sqq. (to embrace 4 vols.; chiefly based on the English Calendars and the manuscript diaries of the Venetian historian Marino Sanuto).

III. Documents and Treatises on special parts of his history. G. Camposi: Carlo V. in Modena (in Archivio Storico Italiano, Florence, 1842–53, 25 vols., App.). D. G. van Male: Lettres sur la vie intérieure de l’Empéreur Charles-Quint, Brussels, 1843. K. Lanz: Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V. aus dem kaiserlichen Archiv und der Bibliothèque de Burgogne in Brussel, Leipzig, 1844–46, 3 vols.; Staatspapiere zur Geschichte des Kaisers Karl V., Stuttgart, 1845; and Actenstücke und Briefe zur Geschichte Karls V., Wien, 1853–57. G. Heine: Briefe an Kaiser Karl V., geschrieben von seinem Beichtvater (Garcia de Loaysa) in den Jahren 1530–32, Berlin, 1848 (from the Simancas archives). Sir W. Maxwell Stirling: The Cloister-Life of Charles V., London, 1852. F. A. A. Mignet: Charles-Quint; son abdication, son séjour et sa mort au monastère de Yuste, Paris, 1854; and Rivalité de François I. et de Charles-Quint, 1875, 2 vols. Amédée Pichot: Charles-Quint, Chronique de sa vie intérieure et de sa vie politique, de son abdication et de sa retraite dans le cloître de Yuste, Paris, 1854. Gachart (keeper of the Belgic archives): Retraite et mort de Charles-Quint au monastère de Yuste (the original documents of Simancas), Brussels. 1854–55, 2 vols.; Correspondance de Charles-Quint et de Adrien VI., Brussels, 1859. Henne: Histoire du règne de Charles V. en Belgique, Brussels, 1858 sqq., 10 vols. Th. Juste: Les Pays-bas sous Charles V., 1861. Giuseppe de Leva: Storia documentata di Carlo V. in correlazione all’ Italia, Venice, 1863. Rösler: Die Kaiserwahl Karls V., Wien, 1868. W. Maurenbrecher: Karl V. und die deutschen Protestanten, 1545–1555, Düsseldorf, 1865; Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformationszeit, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 99–133. A. v. Druffel: Kaiser Karl V. und die röm. Curie 1544–1546. 3 Abth. München, 1877 sqq.

IV. Comp. also Ranke: Deutsche Geschichte, I. 240 sqq., 311 sqq.; and on Charles’s later history in vols. II., III., IV., V., VI. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, II. 131 sqq., and vol. III. Weber: Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, vol. X. (1880), 1 sqq. Prescott’s Philip II., bk. I, chaps. 1 and 9 (vol. I. 1–26; 296–359). Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I., Introduction.

Before passing to the Diet of Worms, we must make the acquaintance of Charles V. He is, next to Martin Luther, the most conspicuous and powerful personality of his age. The history of his reign is the history of Europe for more than a third of a century (from 1520–1556).

In the midst of the early conflicts of the Reformation, the Emperor Maximilian I. died at Wels, Jan. 12, 1519. He had worn the German crown twenty-six years, and is called "the last Knight." With him the middle ages were buried, and the modern era dawned on Europe.

It was a critical period for the Empire: the religion of Mohammed threatened Christianity, Protestantism endangered Catholicism. From the East the Turks pushed their conquests to the walls of Vienna, as seven hundred years before, the Arabs, crossing the Pyrenees, had assailed Christian Europe from the West; in the interior the Reformation spread with irresistible force, and shook the foundations of the Roman Church. Where was the genius who could save both Christianity and the Reformation, the unity of the Empire and the unity of the Church?  A most difficult, yea, an impossible task.

The imperial crown descended naturally on Maximilian’s grandson, the young king of Spain, who became the most powerful monarch since the days of Charles the Great. He was the heir of four royal lines which had become united by a series of matrimonial alliances.

Never was a prince born to a richer inheritance, or entered upon public life with graver responsibilities, than Charles V. Spanish, Burgundian, and German blood mingled in his veins, and the good and bad qualities of his ramified ancestry entered into his constitution. He was born with his eventful century (Feb. 24, 1500), at Ghent in Flanders, and educated under the tuition of the Lord of Chièvres, and Hadrian of Utrecht, a theological professor of strict Dominican orthodoxy and severe piety, who by his influence became the successor of Leo X. in the papal chair. His father, Philip I., was the only son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy (daughter of Charles the Bold), and cuts a small figure among the sovereigns of Spain as "Philip the Handsome" (Filipe el Hermoso),—a frivolous, indolent, and useless prince. His mother was Joanna, called, "Crazy Jane" (Juana la Loca), second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and famous for her tragic fate, her insanity, long imprisonment, and morbid devotion to the corpse of her faithless husband, for whom, during his life, she had alternately shown passionate love and furious jealousy. She became, after the death of her mother (Nov. 26, 1504), the nominal queen of Spain, and dragged out a dreary existence of seventy-six years (she died April 11, 1555).305

Charles inherited the shrewdness of Ferdinand, the piety of Isabella, and the melancholy temper of his mother which plunged her into insanity, and induced him to exchange the imperial throne for a monastic cell. The same temper reappeared in the gloomy bigotry of his son Philip II., who lived the life of a despot and a monk in his cloister-palace of the Escorial. The persecuting Queen Mary of England, a granddaughter of Isabella, and wife of Philip of Spain, had likewise a melancholy and desponding disposition.

From his ancestry Charles fell heir to an empire within whose boundaries the sun never set. At the death of his father (Sept. 25, 1506), he became, by right of succession, the sovereign of Burgundy and the Netherlands; at the death of Ferdinand (Jan. 23, 1516), he inherited the crown of Spain with her Italian dependencies (Naples, Sicily, Sardinia), and her newly acquired American possessions (to which were afterwards added the conquests of Mexico and Peru); at the death of Maximilian, he succeeded to the hereditary provinces of the house of Habsburg, and soon afterwards to the empire of Germany. In 1530 he was also crowned king of Lombardy, and emperor of the Romans, by the Pope.

The imperial crown of Germany was hotly contested between him and Francis I. All the arts of diplomacy and enormous sums of money were spent on electioneering by both parties. The details reveal a rotten state of the political morals of the times. Pope Leo at first favored the claims of King Francis, who was the natural rival of the Austrian and Burgundian power, but a stranger to the language and manners of Germany. The seven electors assembled at Frankfurt offered the dignity to the wisest of their number, Frederick of Saxony; but he modestly and wisely declined the golden burden lined with thorns. He would have protected the cause of the Reformation, but was too weak and too old for the government of an empire threatened by danger from without and within.306  He nominated Charles; and this self-denying act of a Protestant prince decided the election, June 28, 1520. When the ambassadors of Spain offered him a large reward for his generosity, he promptly refused for himself, and declared that he would dismiss any of his servants for taking a bribe.

Charles was crowned with unusual splendor, Oct. 23, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), where the founder of the German Empire lies buried. In his oath he pledged himself to protect the Catholic faith, the Roman Church, and its head the Pope.

The new emperor was then only twenty years of age, and showed no signs of greatness.  "Nondum" ("Not yet") was the motto which he had adopted for his maiden shield in a tournament at Valladolid two years before. He afterwards exchanged it for "Plus Ultra." He was a good rider, and skilled in military exercises; he could break a lance with any Knight, and vanquish a bull in the ring, like an expert espada; but he was in feeble health, with a pale, beardless, and melancholy face, and without interest in public affairs. He had no sympathy with the German nation, and was ignorant of their language. But as soon as he took the reins of power into his own hands, he began to develop a rare genius for political and military government. His beard grew, and he acquired some knowledge of most of the dialects of his subjects. He usually spoke and wrote French and Spanish.

Charles V. as Emperor.

Without being truly great, he was an extraordinary man, and ranks, perhaps, next to Charlemagne and Otho I. among the German emperors.

He combined the selfish conservatism of the house of Habsburg, the religious ardor of the Spaniard, and the warlike spirit of the Dukes of Burgundy. He was the shrewdest prince in Europe, and an indefatigable worker. He usually slept only four hours a day. He was slow in forming his resolutions, but inflexible in carrying them into practice, and unscrupulous in choosing the means. He thought much, and spoke little; he listened to advice, and followed his own judgment. He had the sagacity to select and to keep the ablest men for his cabinet, the army and navy, and the diplomatic service. He was a good soldier, and could endure every hardship and privation except fasting. He was the first of the three great captains of his age, the Duke of Alva being the second, and Constable Montmorency the third.

His insatiable ambition involved him in several wars with France, in which he was generally successful against his bold but less prudent rival, Francis I. It was a struggle for supremacy in Italy, and in the Councils of Europe. He twice marched upon Paris.307

He engaged in about forty expeditions, by land and sea, in times when there were neither railroads nor steamboats. He seemed to be ubiquitous in his vast dominions. His greatest service to Christendom was his defeat of the army of Solyman the Magnificent, whom he forced to retreat to Constantinople (1532), and his rescue of twenty thousand Christian slaves and prisoners from the grasp of the African corsairs (1535), who, under the lead of the renowned Barbarossa, spread terror on the shores of the Mediterranean. These deeds raised him to the height of power in Europe.

But he neglected the internal affairs of Germany, and left them mostly to his brother Ferdinand. He characterized the Germans as "dreamy, drunken, and incapable of intrigue." He felt more at home in the rich Netherlands, which furnished him the greatest part of his revenues. But Spain was the base of his monarchy, and the chief object of his care. Under his reign, America began to play a part in the history of Europe as a mine of gold and silver.

He aimed at an absolute monarchy, with a uniformity in religion, but that was an impossibility; France checked his political, Germany his ecclesiastical ambition.

His Personal Character.

In his private character he was superior to Francis I., Henry VIII., and most contemporary princes, but by no means free from vice. He was lacking in those personal attractions which endear a sovereign to his subjects.308  Under a cold and phlegmatic exterior he harbored fiery passions. He was calculating, revengeful, implacable, and never forgave an injury. He treated Francis I., and the German Protestant princes in the Schmalkaldian war, with heartless severity. He was avaricious, parsimonious, and gluttonous. He indulged in all sorts of indigestible delicacies,—anchovies, frogs’ legs, eel-pasties,—and drank large quantities of iced beer and Rhine wine; he would not listen to the frequent remonstrances of his physicians and confessors, and would rather endure the discomforts of dyspepsia and gout than restrain his appetite, which feasted on twenty dishes at a single meal. In his autobiography he speaks of a fourteenth attack of gout, which "lasted till the spring of 1548."309

He had taste for music and painting. He had also some literary talent, and wrote or dictated an autobiography in the simple, objective style of Caesar, ending with the defeat of the Protestant league (1548); but it is dry and cold, destitute of great ideas and noble sentiments.

He married his cousin, Donna Isabella of Portugal, at Seville, 1526, and lived in happy union with her till her sudden death in 1539; but during his frequent absences from Spain, where she always remained, as well as before his marriage, and after her death, he indulged in ephemeral unlawful attachments.310  He had at least two illegitimate children, the famous Margaret, Duchess of Parma, and Don Juan of Austria, the hero of Lepanto (1547–1578), who lies buried by his side in the Escorial.

Charles has often been painted by the master hand of Titian, whom he greatly admired. He was of middle size, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a commanding forehead, an aquiline nose, a pale, grave, and melancholy countenance. His blue and piercing eye, his blonde, almost reddish hair, and fair skin, betokened his German origin, and his projecting lower jaw, with its thick, heavy lip, was characteristic of the princes of Habsburg; but otherwise he looked like a Spaniard, as he was at heart.

Incessant labors and cares, gluttony, and consequent gout, undermined his constitution, and at the age of fifty he was prematurely old, and had to be carried on a litter like a helpless cripple. Notwithstanding his many victories and successes, he was in his later years an unhappy and disappointed man, but sought and found his last comfort in the religion of his fathers.

§ 51. The Ecclesiastical Policy of Charles V.

The ecclesiastical policy of Charles was Roman Catholic without being ultramontane. He kept his coronation oath. All his antecedents were in favor of the traditional faith. He was surrounded by ecclesiastics and monks. He was thoroughly imbued with the Spanish type of piety, of which his grandmother is the noblest and purest representative. Isabella the Catholic, the greatest of Spanish sovereigns, "the queen of earthly queens."311  conquered the Moors, patronized the discoverer of America, expelled the Jews, and established the Inquisition,—all for the glory of the Virgin Mary and the Catholic religion.312  A genuine Spaniard believes, with Gonzalo of Oviedo, that "powder against the infidels is incense to the Lord." With him, as with his Moorish antipode, the measure of conviction is the measure of intolerance, and persecution the evidence of zeal. The burning of heretics became in the land of the Inquisition a sacred festival, an "act of faith;"313 and such horrid spectacles were in the reign of Philip II. as popular as the bull-fights which still flourish in Spain, and administer to the savage taste for blood.

Charles heard the mass daily, listened to a sermon on Sunday and holy days, confessed and communed four times a year, and was sometimes seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before the crucifix. He never had any other conception of Christianity than the Roman-Catholic, and took no time to investigate theological questions.

He fully approved of the Pope’s bull against Luther, and ordered it to be executed in the Netherlands. In his retreat at Yuste, he expressed regret that he had kept his promise of safe-conduct; in other words, that he had not burned the heretic at Worms, as Sigismund had burned Hus at Constance. He never showed the least sympathy with the liberal tendencies of the age, and regarded Protestantism as a rebellion against Church and State. He would have crushed it out if he had had the power; but it was too strong for him, and he needed the Protestant support for his wars against France, and against the Turks. He began in the Netherlands that fearful persecution which was carried on by his more bigoted son, Philip II., but it provoked the uprising of the people, and ended in the establishment of the Dutch Republic.314  He subdued the Lutheran league in the Schmalkaldian war; pale as death, but trusting in God, he rushed into the hottest of the fight at Mühlberg, and greeted the decisive victory of 1547 with the words: "I came, I saw, and God conquered."315  But the height of his power was the beginning of his decline. The same Saxon Elector, Moritz, who had aided him against the Protestant princes, turned against him in 1552, and secured in the treaty of Passau, for the first time, some degree of legal toleration to the Lutherans in Germany.

But while Charles was a strict Roman Catholic from the beginning to the end of his life, he was, nevertheless, by no means a blind and slavish papist. Like his predecessors on the German throne, be maintained the dignity and the sovereignty of the state against the claims of hierarchical supremacy. He hated the French, or neutral, politics of the papal court. His troops even captured Rome, and imprisoned Clement VII., who had formed a league with Francis I. against him (1527). He quarreled with Pope Paul III., who in turn severely protested against his tolerant or hesitating policy towards the Protestants in Germany. He says, in his Autobiography,316 that "the Pope’s emissaries, and some ecclesiastics, were incessantly endeavoring to induce him to take up arms against the Protestants (tomar as armas contra os protestantes)," but that he "hesitated on account of the greatness and difficulty of such an enterprise."

Moreover, Charles had a certain zeal for a limited reformation of church discipline on the basis of the Catholic doctrine and the papal hierarchy. He repeatedly urged a general council, against the dilatory policy of the Popes, and exhorted Protestants and Catholics alike to submit to its decisions as final. Speaking of the Diet of Augsburg, held in 1530, he says that he, asked his Holiness to convoke and assemble a general council, as most important and necessary to remedy what was taking place in Germany, and the errors which were being propagated throughout Christendom."317  This was likewise consistent with Spanish tradition. Isabella the Catholic, and Cardinal Ximenes, had endeavored to reform the clergy and monks in Spain.318

This Roman-Catholic reformation was effected by the Council of Trent, but turned out to be a papal counter-reformation, and a weapon against Protestantism in the hands of the Spanish order of the Jesuits.

The Emperor and the Reformer.

Charles and Luther saw each other once, and only once, at the Diet of Worms. The Emperor was disgusted with the monk who dared to set his private judgment and conscience against the time-honored creed of Christendom, and declared that he would never make him a heretic. But Luther wrote him a respectful letter of thanks for his safe-conduct.319

Twenty years later, after his victory over John Frederick of Saxony at Mühlberg on the Elbe (April 24, 1547), Charles stood on the grave of Luther in the castle church of Wittenberg, and was advised by the bloodthirsty Duke of Alva to dig up and burn the bones of the arch-heretic, and to scatter the ashes to the winds of heaven; but he declined with the noble words:, I make war on the living, not on the dead." This was his nearest approach to religious toleration. But the interesting incident is not sufficiently authenticated.320

For twenty-six years the Emperor and the Reformer stood at the head of Germany, the one as a political, the other as a religious, leader; working in opposite directions,—the one for the preservation of the old, the other for the creation of the new, order of things. The one had the army and treasure of a vast empire at his command; the other had nothing but his faith and pen, and yet made a far deeper and more lasting impression on his and on future ages. Luther died peacefully in his birthplace, trusting in the merits of Christ, and commending his soul to the God who redeemed him. Ten years later Charles ended his life as a monk in Spain, holding a burning candle in the right hand, and pressing with the left the crucifix to his lips, while the Archbishop of Toledo intoned the Psalm De Profundis. The last word of the dying Emperor was "Jesus."

§ 52. The Abdication of Charles, and his Cloister Life.

The abdication of Charles, and his subsequent cloister life, have a considerable interest for ecclesiastical as well as general history, and may by anticipation be briefly noted in this place.

In the year 305, the last of the imperial persecutors of Christianity, who was born a slave and reached his power by military achievements, voluntarily resigned the throne of the Caesars, and retired for the remaining eight years of his life to his native Salona in Dalmatia to raise cabbages. In the year 1555 (Oct. 25), Charles V., who was born an heir of three kingdoms, wearied of the race of politics, diplomacy, and war, defeated by the treason of Moritz, and tormented by gout, abdicated his crown to live and die like an humble monk.

The abdication of Charles took place in the royal palace at Brussels, in the same hall in which, forty years before, he had been declared of age, and had assumed the reign of Brabant. He was dressed in mourning for his unfortunate mother, and wore only one ornament,—the superb collar of the Golden Fleece. He looked grave, solemn, pale, broken: he entered leaning on a staff with one hand, and on the arm of William of Orange with the other; behind him came Philip II., his son and heir, small, meager, timid, but magnificently dressed,—a momentous association with the two youthful princes who were to be afterwards arrayed in deadly conflict for the emancipation of the Netherlands from the yoke of Spanish tyranny and bigotry.321

The Emperor rose from the throne, and with his right hand resting on the shoulder of the Prince of Orange,—who was one day to become the most formidable enemy of his house,—and holding a paper in the other hand, he addressed his farewell in French before the members of the royal family, the nobility of the Netherlands, the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the royal counselors, and the great officers of the household. He assured them that he had done his duty to the best of his ability, mindful of his dear native land, and especially of the interests of Christianity against infidels and heretics. He had shrunk from no toil; but a cruel malady now deprived him of strength to endure the cares of government, and this was his only motive for carrying out a long-cherished wish of resigning the scepter. He exhorted them above all things to maintain the purity of the faith. He had committed many errors, but only from ignorance, and begged pardon if he had wronged any one.

He then resigned the crown of the Netherlands to his son Philip with the exhortation, "Fear God: live justly; respect the laws; above all, cherish the interests of religion."

Exhausted, and pale as a corpse, he fell back upon his seat amid the tears and sobs of the assembly.322

On the 16th of January, 1556, he executed the deeds by which he ceded the sovereignty of Castile and Aragon, with their dependencies, to Philip. His last act was to resign the crown of Germany into the hands of his brother Ferdinand; but, as affairs move slowly in that country, the resignation was not finally acted on till Feb. 28, 1558, at the Diet at Frankfurt.323

His Retirement to Yuste.

On the 17th of September Charles sailed from the harbor of Flushing for Spain with a fleet of fifty-six sails, his two sisters (Mary, formerly queen of Hungary, and regent of the Low Countries, and Eleanor, the widow of King Francis of France), and a hundred and fifty select persons of the imperial household.

After a boisterous voyage, and a tedious land-journey, he arrived, Feb. 3, 1557, at the Convent of St. Gerome in Yuste, which he had previously selected for his retreat.

The resolution to exchange the splendors of the world for monastic seclusion was not uncommon among the rulers and nobles of Spain; and the rich convents of Montserrat and Poblet (now in ruins) had special accommodations for royal and princely guests. Charles had formed it during the lifetime of the Empress Isabella, and agreed with her that they would spend the rest of their days in neighboring convents, and be buried under the same altar. In 1542 he announced his intention to Francisco de Borgia; but the current of events involved him in a new and vain attempt to restore once more the Holy Roman Empire in the fullness of its power. Now his work was done, and he longed for rest. His resolution was strengthened by the desire to atone for sins of unchastity committed after the death of his wife.324

Yuste is situated in the mountainous province of Estremadura, about eight leagues from Plasencia and fifty leagues from Valladolid (then the capital of Spain), in a well-watered valley and a salubrious climate, and was in every way well fitted for the wishes of the Emperor.325

Here he spent about eighteen months till his death,—a remarkable instance of the old adage, Sie transit gloria mundi.

His Cloister Life.

There is something grand and romantic, as well as sad and solemn, in the voluntary retirement of a monarch who had swayed a scepter of unlimited power over two hemispheres, and taken a leading part in the greatest events of an eventful century. There is also an idyllic charm in the combination of the innocent amusements of country life with the exercises of piety.

The cloister life of Charles even more than his public life reveals his personal and religious character. It was represented by former historians as the life of a devout and philosophic recluse, dead to the world and absorbed in preparation for the awful day of judgment;326 but the authentic documents of Simancas, made known since 1844, correct and supplement this view.

He lived not in the convent with the monks, but in a special house with eight rooms built for him three years before. It opened into gardens alive with aromatic plants, flowers, orange, citron, and fig trees, and protected by high walls against intruders. From the window of his bedroom he could look into the chapel, and listen to the music and prayers of the friars, when unable to attend. He retained over fifty servants, mostly Flemings, including a major-domo (who was a Spaniard), an almoner, a keeper of the wardrobe, a keeper of the jewels, chamberlains, secretaries, physician, confessor, two watchmakers, besides cooks, confectioners, bakers, brewers, game-keepers, and numerous valets.327  Some of them lived in a neighboring village, and would have preferred the gay society of Brussels to the dull monotony of solitude. He was provided with canopies, Turkish carpets, velvet-lined arm-chairs, six cushions and a footstool for his gouty limbs, twenty-five suits of tapestry, sixteen robes of silk and velvet lined with ermine or eider-down, twelve hangings of the finest black cloth, four large clocks of elaborate workmanship, and a number of pocket-watches. The silver furniture for his table and kitchen amounted to fourteen thousand ounces in weight. The walls of his room were adorned with choice pictures, nine from the pencil of Titian (including four portraits of himself and one of the Empress). He had also a small library, mostly of devotional books.328

He took exercise in his gardens, carried on a litter. He constructed, with the aid of a skilled artisan, a little handmill for grinding wheat, puppet soldiers, clocks and watches, and endeavored in vain to make an two of them run exactly alike. The fresh mountain air and exercise invigorated his health, and he never felt better than in 1557.

He continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and the events of the times. He greeted with joy the victory of St. Quentin; with partial dissatisfaction, the conclusion of peace with the Pope (whom he would have treated more severely); with regret, the loss of Calais; with alarm, the advance of the Turkish fleet to Spain, and the progress of the Lutheran heresy. He received regular dispatches and messengers, was constantly consulted by his son, and freely gave advice in the new complications with France, and especially also in financial matters. He received visits from his two sisters,—the dowager queens of Hungary and France, who had accompanied him to Spain,—and from the nobles of the surrounding country; he kept up a constant correspondence with his daughter Joanna, regent of Castile, and with his sister, the regent of Portugal.

He maintained the stately Castilian etiquette of dining alone, though usually in the presence of his physician, secretary, and confessor, who entertained him on natural history or other topics of interest. Only once he condescended to partake of a scanty meal with the friars. He could not control, even in these last years, his appetite for spiced capons, pickled sausages, and eel-pies, although his stomach refused to do duty, and caused him much suffering.

But he tried to atone for this besetting sin by self-flagellation, which he applied to his body so severely during Lent that the scourge was found stained with his blood. Philip cherished this precious memorial of his father’s piety, and bequeathed it as an heirloom to his son.329

From the beginning of his retreat, and especially in the second year, Charles fulfilled his religious duties with scrupulous conscientiousness, as far as his health would permit. He attended mass in the chapel, said his prayers, and listened to sermons and the reading of selections from the Fathers (Jerome, Augustin, Bernard), the Psalms, and the Epistles of Paul. He favored strict discipline among the friars, and gave orders that any woman who dared to approach within two bow-shots of the gate should receive a hundred stripes. He enjoyed the visits of Francisco Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who had exchanged a brilliant position for membership in the Society of the Jesuits, and confirmed him in his conviction that he had acted wisely in relinquishing the world. He wished to be prayed for only by his baptismal name, being no longer emperor or king. Every Thursday was for him a feast of Corpus Christi.

He repeatedly celebrated the exequies of his parents, his wife, and a departed sister.

Yea, according to credible contemporary testimony, he celebrated, in the presentiment of approaching death, his own funeral, around a huge catafalque erected in the dark chapel. Bearing a lighted taper, he mingled with his household and the monks in chanting the prayers for the departed, on the lonely passage to the invisible world, and concluded the doleful ceremony by handing the taper to the priest, in token of surrendering his spirit to Him who gave it. According to later accounts, the Emperor was laid alive in his coffin, and carried in solemn procession to the altar.330

This relish for funeral celebrations reveals a morbid trait in his piety. It reminds one of the insane devotion of his mother to the dead body of her husband, which she carried with her wherever she went.

His Intolerance.

We need not wonder that his bigotry increased toward the end of life. He was not philosopher enough to learn a lesson of toleration (as Dr. Robertson imagines) from his inability to harmonize two timepieces. On the contrary, he regretted his limited forbearance towards Luther and the German Protestants, who had defeated his plans five years before. They were now more hateful to him than ever.

To his amazement, the same heretical opinions broke out in Valladolid and Sevilla, at the very court and around the throne of Spain. Augustin Cazalla,331 who had accompanied him as chaplain in the Smalkaldian war, and had preached before him at Yuste, professed Lutheran sentiments. Charles felt that Spain was in danger, and repeatedly urged the most vigorous measures for the extermination of heresy with fire and sword. "Tell the Grand Inquisitor, from me," he wrote to his daughter Joanna, the regent, on the 3d of May, 1558, "to be at his post, and to lay the ax at the root of the evil before it spreads farther. I rely on your zeal for bringing the guilty to punishment with all the severity which their crimes demand." In the last codicil to his will, he conjures his son Philip to cherish the Holy Inquisition as the best instrument for the suppression of heresy in his dominions. "So," he concludes, "shall you have my blessing, and the Lord shall prosper all your undertakings."332

Philip II., who inherited the vices but none of the virtues of his father, faithfully carried out this dying request, and by a terrible system of persecution crushed out every trace of evangelical Protestantism in Spain, and turned that beautiful country into a graveyard adorned by somber cathedrals, and disfigured by bull-rings.

His Death.

The Emperor’s health failed rapidly in consequence of a new attack of gout, and the excessive heat of the summer, which cost the life of several of his Flemish companions. He died Sept. 21, 1558, a consistent Catholic as be had lived. A few of his spiritual and secular friends surrounded his death-bed. He confessed with deep contrition his sins; prayed repeatedly for the unity of the Church; received, kneeling in his bed, the holy communion and the extreme unction; and placed his hope on the crucified Redeemer. The Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomé de Carranza, read the one hundred and thirtieth Psalm, and, holding up a crucifix, said: "Behold Him who answers for all. There is no more sin; all is forgiven;" while another of his preachers commended him to the intercession of saints, namely, St. Matthew, on whose day he was born, and St. Matthias, on whose day he was in a few moments to leave this world.

"Thus," says Mignet, "the two doctrines which divided the world in the age of Charles V. were once more brought before him on the bed of death."

It is an interesting fact, that the same archbishop who had taken a prominent part in the persecution of English Protestants under Queen Mary, and who administered the last and truly evangelical comfort to the dying Emperor, became a victim of persecution, and that those very words of comfort were used by the Emperor’s confessor as one of the grounds of the charge of heresy before the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition. Bartolomé de Carranza was seven years imprisoned in Spain, then sent to Rome, lodged in the Castle of St. Angelo, after long delay found guilty of sixteen Lutheranizing propositions in his writings, suspended from the exercise of his episcopal functions, and sentenced to be shut up for five years in a convent of his order. He died sixteen days after the judgment, in the Convent Sopra Minerva, May 2, 1576, "declaring his innocence with tears in his eyes, and yet with strange inconsistency admitting the justice of his sentence."333

In less than two months after the decease of the Emperor, Queen Mary, his cousin, and wife of his son, died, Nov. 17, 1558, and was borne to her rest in Westminster Abbey. With her the Roman hierarchy collapsed, and the reformed religion, after five years of bloody persecution, was permanently restored on the throne and in the Church of England. In view of this coincidence, we may well exclaim with Ranke, "How far do the thoughts of Divine Providence exceed the thoughts and purposes of men!"334

His Tomb.

From Yuste the remains of the once mighty Emperor were removed in 1574 to their last resting-place under the altar of the cathedral of the Escorial. That gloomy structure, in a dreary mountain region some thirty miles north of Madrid, was built by his order as a royal burial-place (between 1563 and 1584), and combines a palace, a monastery, a cathedral, and a tomb (called Pantheon). Philip II., "el Escorialense," spent there fourteen years, half king, half monk, boasting that he ruled the Old and New World from the foot of a mountain with two inches of paper. He died, after long and intense suffering, Sept. 13, 1598, in a dark little room facing the altar of the church.

Father and son are represented in gilt-bronze statues, opposite each other, in kneeling posture, looking to the high altar; Charles V., with his wife Isabella, his daughter Maria, and his sisters Eleonora and Maria; Philip II., with three of his wives, and his weak-minded and unfortunate son, Don Carlos.

The Escorial, like Spain itself, is only a shadow of the past, inhabited by the ghost of its founder, who entombed in it his own gloomy character.335

§ 53. The Diet of Worms. 1521.

I. Sources. Acta et res gestae D. M. Luth. in Comitiis Principum Wormatiae. Anno 1521. 4°. Acta Lutheri in Comitiis Wormatiae ed. Pollicarius, Vitb. 1546. These and other contemporary documents are reprinted in the Jena ed. of Luther’s Opera (1557), vol. II.; in Walch’s German ed., vols. XV., 2018–2325, and XXII., 2026 sqq.; and the Erlangen-Frankf. ed. of the Opera Lat., vol. VI. (1872); Vermischte deutsche Schriften, vol. XII. (or Sämmtl. Werke, vol. LXIV., pub. 1855), pp. 366–383. Förstemann: Neues Urkundenbuch, 1842, vol. I. Luther’s Letters to Spalatin, Cuspinianus, Lucas Cranach, Charles V., etc., see in De Wette, I. 586 sqq. Spalatin: Ann. Spalatin is also, according to Köstlin, the author of the contemporary pamphlet: Etliche wunderliche fleissige Handlung in D. M. Luther’s Sachen durch geistliche und weltliche Fürsten des Reich’s; but Brieger (in his "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.,"  Gotha, 1886, p. 482 sqq.) ascribes it to Rudolph von Watzdorf.

On the Roman-Cath. side, Cochläus (who was present at Worms): Pallavicini (who used the letters of Aleander); and especially the letters and dispatches of Aleander, now published as follows: Johann Friedrich: Der Reichstag zu Worms im Jahr 1521. Nach den Briefen des päpstlichen Nuntius Hieronymus Aleander. In the "Abhandlungen der Bayer. Akad.," vol. XI. München, 1870. Pietro Balan (R. Cath.): Monumenta Reform. Lutheranae ex tabulariis S. Sedis secretis. 1521–1525. Ratisb. Fasc. I., 1883. Contains Aleander’s reports from the papal archives, and is one of the first fruits of the liberal policy of Leo XIII. in opening the literary treasures of the Vatican. Theod. Brieger (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in Leipzig): Aleander und Luther, 1521. Die vervollständigten Aleander-Depeschen nebst Untersuchungen über den Wormser Reichstag. 1 Abth. Gotha, 1884 (315 pages). Gives the Aleander dispatches in Italian and Latin from a MS. in the library of Trent, and supplements and partly corrects, in the chronology, the edition of Balan.

II. Special Treatises. Boye: Luther zu Worms. Halle, 1817, 1824. Zimmer: Luther zu Worms. Heidelb. 1521. Tuzschmann: Luther in Worms. Darmstadt, 1860. Soldan: Der Reichstag zu Worms. Worms, 1863. Steitz: Die Melanchthon- und Luther-Herbergen zu Frankfurt-a.-M. Frankf., 1861. Contains the reports of the Frankfurt delegate Fürstenberg, and other documents. Hennes (R. Cath.): M. Luther’s Aufenthalt in Worms. Mainz, 1868. Waltz: Der Wormser Reichstag und seine Beziehungen zur reformator. Bewegung, in the "Forschungen zur deutschen Gesch."  Göttingen, 1868, VIII. pp. 21–44. Dan. Schenkel: Luther in Worms. Elberfeld, 1870. Jul. Köstlin: Luther’s Rede in Worms am 18. April, 1521. Halle, 1874 (the best on Luther’s famous declaration). Maurenbrecher: Der Wormser Reichstag von 1521, in his "Studien und Skizzen zur Gesch. der Reform. Zeit,"  Leipzig, 1874 (pp. 241–275); also in his Gesch. der kathol. Reformation, Nördlingen, 1880, vol. I., pp. 181–201. Karl Jansen (not to be confounded with the Rom.-Cath. Janssen): Aleander am Reichstage zu Worms, 1521. Kiel, 1883 (72 pages). Corrects Friedrich’s text of Aleander’s letters. Th. Kolde: Luther und der Reichstag zu Worms. 2d ed. Halle, 1883. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen über L. in Worms. Program to the Luther jubilee, Marburg, 1883 (a critique of Balan’s Monumenta). Kalkoff: Germ. transl. of the Aleander Dispatches, Halle, 1886. Elter: Luther u. der Wormser Reichstag. Bonn, 1886.

III. Ranke, I. 311–343. Gieseler, IV. 56–58 (Am. ed.). Merle D’aub., bk. VII. chs. I. -XI. Hagenbach, III. 103–109. G. P. Fisher, pp. 108–111. Köstlin, chs. XVII. and XVIII. (I. 411–466). Kolde, I. 325 sqq. Janssen (R. Cath.), II. 131–166. G. Weber: Das Zeitalter der Reformation (vol. X. of his Weltgeschichte), Leipzig, 1886, pp. 162–178. Baumgarten: Gesch. Karls V. Leipzig, l885, vol. I. 379–460.

On the 28th of January, 1521, Charles V. opened his first Diet at Worms. This was a free imperial city on the left bank of the Rhine, in the present grand-duchy of Hesse.336  It is famous in German song as the scene of the Niebelungenlied, which opens with King Günther of Worms and his sister Chriemhild, the world’s wonder for grace and beauty. It is equally famous in ecclesiastical history for "the Concordat of Worms," which brought to an end the long contest between the Emperor and the Pope about investiture (Sept. 23, 1122). But its greatest fame the city acquired by Luther’s heroic stand on the word of God and the rights of conscience, which made the Diet of 1521 one of the most important in the history of German Diets. After that event two conferences of Protestant and Roman-Catholic leaders were held in Worms, to heal the breach of the Reformation,—one in 1541, and one in 1557; but both failed of their object. In 1868 (June 25) a splendid monument to Luther and his fellow-laborers by Rietschel was erected at Worms, and dedicated with great national enthusiasm.337

The religious question threw all the political and financial questions into the background, and absorbed the attention of the public mind.

At the very beginning of the Diet a new papal brief called upon the Emperor to give, by an imperial edict, legal force to the bull of January 3, by which Luther was finally excommunicated, and his books condemned to the flames. The Pope urged him to prove his zeal for the unity of the Church. God had girded him with supreme earthly power, that he might use it against heretics who were much worse than infidels.338  On Maundy Thursday, March 28, the Pope, in proclaiming the terrible bull In Coena Domini, which is annually read at Rome, expressly condemned, among other heretics, Martin Luther by name with all his adherents. This was the third or fourth excommunication, but produced little effect.339

The Pope was ably represented by two Italian legates, who were afterwards created cardinals, -Marino Caracciolo (1459–1538) for the political affairs, and Jerome Aleander (1480–1542) for the ecclesiastical interests. Aleander was at that time librarian of the Vatican, and enjoyed great reputation as a Greek scholar. He had lectured at Paris before two thousand bearers of all classes. He stood in friendly relations to Erasmus; but when the latter showed sympathy with the Reformation, be denounced him as the chief founder of the Lutheran heresy. He was an intense papist, and skilled in all the arts of diplomacy. His religious wants were not very pressing. During the Diet of Worms he scarcely found time, in the holy week, "to occupy himself a little with Christ and his conscience." His sole object was to maintain the power of the Pope, and to annihilate the new heresy. In his letters he calls Luther a fool, a dog, a basilisk, a ribald. He urged everywhere the wholesale burning of his books.340  He employed argument, persuasion, promises, threats, spies, and bribes. He complained that he could not get money enough from Rome for greedy officials. He labored day and night with the Emperor, his confessor, and the members of the privy council. He played on their fears of a popular revolution, and reminded them of the example of the Bohemians, the worst and most troublesome of heretics. He did not shrink from the terrible threat, "If ye Germans who pay least into the Pope’s treasury shake off his yoke, we shall take care that ye mutually kill yourselves, and wade in your own blood." He addressed the Diet, Feb. 13, in a speech of three hours, and contended that Luther’s final condemnation left no room for a further hearing of the heretic, but imposed upon the Emperor and the Estates the simple duty to execute the requirements of the papal bull.

The Emperor hesitated between his religious impulses—which were decidedly Roman Catholic, though with a leaning towards disciplinary reform through a council—and political considerations which demanded caution and forbearance. He had already taken lessons in the art of dissimulation, which was deemed essential to a ruler in those days. He had to respect the wishes of the Estates, and could not act without their consent. Public sentiment was divided, and there was a possibility of utilizing the dissatisfaction with Rome for his interest. He was displeased with Leo for favoring the election of Francis, and trying to abridge the powers of the Spanish Inquisition; and yet he felt anxious to secure his support in the impending struggle with France, and the Pope met him half-way by recalling his steps against the Inquisition. He owed a debt of gratitude to the Elector Frederick, and had written to him, Nov. 28, 1520, to bring Luther to Worms, that he might have a hearing before learned men; but the Elector declined the offer, fearing the result. On the 17th of December, the Emperor advised him to keep Luther at Wittenberg, as he had been condemned at Rome.

At first be inclined to severe measures, and laid the draft of an edict before the Diet whereby the bull of excommunication should be legally enforced throughout all Germany. But this was resisted by the Estates, and other influences were brought to bear upon him. Then he tried indirectly, and in a private way, a compromise through his confessor, John Glapio, a Franciscan friar, who professed some sympathy with reform, and respect for Luther’s talent and zeal. He held several interviews with Dr. Brück (Pontanus), the Chancellor of the Elector Frederick. He assured him of great friendship, and proposed that he should induce Luther to disown or to retract the book on the "Babylonian Captivity," which was detestable; in this case, his other writings, which contained so much that is good, would bear fruit to the Church, and Luther might co-operate with the Emperor in the work of a true (that is, Spanish) reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. We have no right to doubt his sincerity any more than that of the like-minded Hadrian VI., the teacher of Charles. But the Elector would not listen to such a proposal, and refused a private audience to Glapio. His conference with Hutten and Sickingen on the Ebernburg was equally unsuccessful.341

The Estates were in partial sympathy with the Reformation, not from doctrinal and religious, but from political and patriotic motives; they repeated the old one hundred and one gravamina against the tyranny and extortions of the Roman See342 (similar to the charges in Luther’s Address to the German Nobility), and resisted a condemnation of Luther without giving him a hearing. Even his greatest enemy, Duke George of Saxony, declared that the Church suffered most from the immorality of the clergy, and that a general reformation was most necessary, which could be best secured by a general council.

During the Diet, Ulrich von Hutten exerted all his power of invective against the Pope and for Luther. He was harbored at Ebernburg, a few leagues from Worms, with his friend, the valorous Francis of Sickingen. He poured contempt and ridicule on the speech of Aleander, and even attempted to catch him and Caracciolo by force.343  But he and Sickingen favored, at the same time, the cause of the young Emperor, from whom they expected great things, and wished to bring about an anti-papal revolution with his aid. Hutten called upon him to dismiss his clerical counsellors, to stand on his own dignity, to give Luther a hearing, and to build up a free Germany. Freedom was now in the air, and all men of intelligence longed for a new and better order of things.344

Aleander was scarcely safe on the street after his speech of February 13. He reported to his master, that for nine-tenths of the Germans the name of Luther was a war-cry, and that the last tenth screamed "Death to the court of Rome!" Cochlaeus, who was in Worms as the theological adviser of the Archbishop of Treves, feared a popular uprising against the clergy.

Luther was the hero of the day, and called a new Moses, a second Paul. His tracts and picture, surrounded by a halo of glory, were freely circulated in Worms.345

At last Charles thought it most prudent to disregard the demand of the Pope. In an official letter of March 6, he cited Luther to appear before the Diet within twenty-one days under the sure protection of the Empire. The Elector Frederick, Duke George of Saxony, and the Landgrave of Hesse, added letters of safe-conduct through their respective territories.346

Aleander now endeavored to make the appearance of Luther as harmless as possible, and succeeded in preventing any discussion with him. The heretic was simply to recant, or, in case of refusal, to suffer the penalties of excommunication.

§ 54. Luther’s Journey to Worms.

"Mönchlein, Mönchlein, Du gehest einen schweren Gang."

Luther, from the first intimation of a summons by the Emperor, regarded it as a call from God, and declared his determination to go to Worms, though he should be carried there sick, and at the risk of his life. His motive was not to gratify an unholy ambition, but to bear witness to the truth. He well knew the tragic fate which overtook Hus at Constance notwithstanding the safe-conduct, but his faith inspired him with fearless courage. "You may expect every thing from me," he wrote to Spalatin, "except fear or recantation. I shall not flee, still less recant. May the Lord Jesus strengthen me."347

He shared for a while the hope of Hutten and Sickingen, that the young Emperor would give him at least fair play, and renew the old conflict of Germany with Rome; but he was doomed to disappointment.

While the negotiations in Worms were going on, he used incessantly his voice and his pen, and alternated between devotional and controversial exercises. He often preached twice a day, wrote commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, and the Magnificat (the last he finished in March), and published the first part of his Postil (Sermons on the Gospels and Epistles), a defense of his propositions condemned by Rome, and fierce polemical books against Hieronymus Emser, Ambrose Catharinus, and other papal opponents.

Emser, a learned Romanist, and secretary of Duke George of Saxony, had first attacked Luther after the Leipzig disputation, at which he was present. A bitter controversy followed, in which both forgot dignity and charity. Luther called Emser "the Goat of Leipzig" (in reference to the escutcheon of his family), and Emser called Luther in turn, the Capricorn of Wittenberg." Luther’s Antwort auf das überchristliche, übergeistliche, und überkünstliche Buch Bock Emser’s, appeared in March, 1521, and defends his doctrine of the general priesthood of believers.348  Emser afterwards severely criticised Luther’s translation of the Bible, and published his own version of the New Testament shortly before his death (1527).

Catharinus,349 an eminent Dominican at Rome, had attacked Luther toward the end of December, 1520. Luther in his Latin reply tried to prove from Dan. 8:25 sqq.; 2 Thess. 2:3 sqq.; 2 Tim. 4:3 sqq.; 2 Pet. 2:1 sqq.; and the Epistle of Jude, that popery was the Antichrist predicted in the Scriptures, and would soon be annihilated by the Lord himself at his second coming, which he thought to be near at hand.

It is astonishing that in the midst of the war of theological passions, he could prepare such devotional books as his commentaries and sermons, which are full of faith and practical comfort. He lived and moved in the heart of the Scriptures; and this was the secret of his strength and success.

On the second of April, Luther left Wittenberg, accompanied by Amsdorf, his friend and colleague, Peter Swaven, a Danish student, and Johann Pezensteiner, an Augustinian brother. Thus the faculty, the students, and his monastic order were represented. They rode in an open farmer’s wagon, provided by the magistrate of the city. The imperial herald in his coat-of-arms preceded on horseback. Melanchthon wished to accompany his friend, but he was needed at home. "If I do not return," said Luther in taking leave of him, "and my enemies murder me, I conjure thee, dear brother, to persevere in teaching the truth. Do my work during my absence: you can do it better than I. If you remain, I can well be spared. In thee the Lord has a more learned champion."

At Weimar, Justus Jonas joined the company. He was at that time professor and Canon at Erfurt. In June of the same year he moved to Wittenberg as professor of church law and provost, and became one of the most intimate friends and co-workers of Luther. He accompanied him on his last journey to Eisleben, and left us a description of his closing days. He translated several of his and Melanchthon’s works.

The journey to Worms resembled a March of triumph, but clouded with warnings of friends and threats of foes. In Leipzig, Luther was honorably received by the magistrate, notwithstanding his enemies in the University. In Thuringia, the people rushed to see the man who had dared to defy the Pope and all the world.

At Erfurt, where he had studied law and passed three years in a monastic cell, he was enthusiastically saluted, and treated as "the hero of the gospel." Before he reached the city, a large procession of professors and students of his alma mater, headed by his friends Crotus the rector, and Eoban the Latin poet, met him. Everybody rushed to see the procession. The streets, the walls, and roofs were covered with people, who almost worshiped Luther as a wonder-working saint. The magistrate gave him a banquet, and overwhelmed him with demonstrations of honor. He lodged in the Augustinian convent with his friend Lange. On Sunday, April 7, he preached on his favorite doctrine, salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and against the intolerable yoke of popery. Eoban, who heard him, reports that he melted the hearts as the vernal sun melts the snow, and that neither Demosthenes nor Cicero nor Paul so stirred their audiences as Luther’s sermon stirred the people on the shores of the Gera.350

During the sermon a crash in the balconies of the crowded church seared the hearers, who rushed to the door; but Luther allayed the panic by raising his hand, and assuring them that it was only a wicked sport of the Devil.351

In Gotha and Eisenach he preached likewise to crowded houses. At Eisenach he fell sick, and was bled; but a cordial and good sleep restored him sufficiently to proceed on the next day. He ascribed the sickness to the Devil, the recovery to God. In the inns, he used to take up his lute, and to refresh himself with music.

He arrived at Frankfurt, completely exhausted, on Sunday, April 14. On Monday he visited the high school of William Nesse, blessed the children and exhorted them "to be diligent in reading the Scriptures and investigating the truth." He also became acquainted with a noble patrician family, von Holzhausen, who took an active part in the subsequent introduction of the Reformation in that city.352

As he proceeded, the danger increased, and with it his courage. Before be left Wittenberg, the Emperor had issued an edict ordering all his books to be seized, and forbidding their sale.353  The herald informed him of it already at Weimar, and asked him, "Herr Doctor, will ye proceed?"  He replied, "Yes." The edict was placarded in all the cities. Spalatin, who knew the critical situation, warned him by special messenger, in the name of the Elector his patron, not to come to Worms, lest he might suffer the fate of Hus.354

Luther comforted his timid friends with the words: Though Hus was burned, the truth was not burned, and Christ still lives. He wrote to Spalatin from Frankfurt, that he had been unwell ever since he left Eisenach, and had heard of the Emperor’s edict, but that he would go to Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the evil spirits in the air.355  The day after, he sent him from Oppenheim (between Mainz and Worms) the famous words: -

"I shall go to Worms, though there were as many devils there as tiles on the roofs."356

A few days before his death at Eisleben, he thus described his feelings at that critical period: "I was fearless, I was afraid of nothing; God can make one so desperately bold. I know not whether I could be so cheerful now."357 Mathesius says, with reference to this courage: "If the cause is good, the heart expands, giving courage and energy to evangelists and soldiers."

Sickingen invited Luther, through Martin Bucer, in person, to his castle Ebernburg, where he would be perfectly safe under the protection of friends. Glapio favored the plan, and wished to have a personal conference with Luther about a possible compromise and co-operation in a moderate scheme of reform. But Luther would not be diverted from his aim, and sent word, that, if the Emperor’s confessor wished, he could see him in Worms.

Luther arrived in Worms on Tuesday morning, April 16, 1521, at ten o’clock, shortly before early dinner, in an open carriage with his Wittenberg companions, preceded by the imperial herald, and followed by a number of gentlemen on horseback. He was dressed in his monastic gown.358  The watchman on the tower of the cathedral announced the arrival of the procession by blowing the horn, and thousands of people gathered to see the heretic.359

As he stepped from the carriage, he said, "God will be with me."

The papal legate reports this fact to Rome, and adds that Luther looked around with the eyes of a demon.360  Cardinal Cajetan was similarly struck at Augsburg with the mysterious fire of the "profound eyes," and the "wonderful speculations," of the German monk.

Luther was lodged in the house of the Knights of St. John with two counselors of the Elector. He received visitors till late at night.361

The city was in a fever-heat of excitement and expectation.

§ 55. Luther’s Testimony before the Diet.

April 17 and 18, 1521.

See Lit. in § 53.

On the day after his arrival, in the afternoon at four o’clock, Luther was led by the imperial marshal, Ulrich von Pappenheim, and the herald, Caspar Sturm, through circuitous side-streets, avoiding the impassable crowds, to the hall of the Diet in the bishop’s palace where the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand resided. He was admitted at about six o’clock. There he stood, a poor monk of rustic manners, yet a genuine hero and confessor, with the fire of genius and enthusiasm flashing from his eyes and the expression of intense earnestness and thoughtfulness on his face, before a brilliant assembly such as he had never seen: the young Emperor, six Electors (including his own sovereign), the Pope’s legates, archbishops, bishops, dukes, margraves, princes, counts, deputies of the imperial cities, ambassadors of foreign courts, and a numerous array of dignitaries of every rank; in one word, a fair representation of the highest powers in Church and State.362  Several thousand spectators were collected in and around the building and in the streets, anxiously waiting for the issue.

Dr. Johann von Eck,363  as the official of the Archbishop of Treves, put to him, in the name of the Emperor, simply two questions in Latin and German,—first, whether he acknowledged the books laid before him on a bench (about twenty-five in number) to be his own; and, next, whether he would retract them. Dr. Schurf, Luther’s colleague and advocate, who stood beside him, demanded that the titles of those books be read.364  This was done. Among them were some such inoffensive and purely devotional books as an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer and of the Psalms.

Luther was apparently overawed by the August assembly, nervously excited, unprepared for a summary condemnation without an examination, and spoke in a low, almost inaudible tone. Many thought that he was about to collapse. He acknowledged in both languages the authorship of the books; but as to the more momentous question of recantation he humbly requested further time for consideration, since it involved the salvation of the soul, and the truth of the word of God, which was higher than any thing else in heaven or on earth.

We must respect him all the more for this reasonable request, which proceeded not from want of courage, but from a profound sense of responsibility.

The Emperor, after a brief consultation, granted him "out of his clemency" a respite of one day.

Aleander reported on the same day to Rome, that the heretical "fool" entered laughing, and left despondent; that even among his sympathizers some regarded him now as a fool, others as one possessed by the Devil; while many looked upon him as a saint full of the Holy Spirit; but in any case, he had lost much of his reputation.365

The shrewd Italian judged too hastily. On the same evening Luther recollected himself, and wrote to a friend: I shall not retract one iota, so Christ help me."366

On Thursday, the 18th of April, Luther appeared a second and last time before the Diet.

It was the greatest day in his life. He never appeared more heroic and sublime. He never represented a principle of more vital and general importance to Christendom.

On his way to the Diet, an old warrior, Georg von Frundsberg, is reported to have clapped him on the shoulder, with these words of cheer: "My poor monk, my poor monk, thou art going to make such a stand as neither I nor any of my companions in arms have ever done in our hottest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause, then forward in God’s name, and be of good courage: God will not forsake thee."367

He was again kept waiting two hours outside the hall, among a dense crowd, but appeared more cheerful and confident than the day before. He had fortified himself by prayer and meditation, and was ready to risk life itself to his honest conviction of divine truth. The torches were lighted when he was admitted.

Dr. Eck, speaking again in Latin and German, reproached him for asking delay, and put the second question in this modified form:, Wilt thou defend all the books which thou dost acknowledge to be thine, or recant some part?"

Luther answered in a well-considered, premeditated speech, with modesty and firmness, and a voice that could be heard all over the hall.368

After apologizing for his ignorance of courtly manners, having been brought up in monastic simplicity, he divided his books into three classes:369 (1) Books which simply set forth evangelical truths, professed-alike by friend and foe: these he could not retract. (2) Books against the corruptions and abuses of the papacy which vexed and martyred the conscience, and devoured the property of the German nation: these he could not retract without cloaking wickedness and tyranny. (3) Books against his popish opponents: in these he confessed to have been more violent than was proper, but even these he could not retract without giving aid and comfort to his enemies, who would triumph and make things worse. In defense of his books he could only say in the words of Christ:, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?"  If his opponents could convict him of error by prophetic and evangelical Scriptures, he would revoke his books, and be the first to commit them to the flames. He concluded with a warning to the young Emperor not to begin his reign by condemning the word of God, and pointed to the judgments over Pharaoh, the king of Babylon, and the ungodly kings of Israel.

He was requested to repeat his speech in Latin.370  This he did with equal firmness and with eyes upraised to heaven.

The princes held a short consultation. Eck, in the name of the Emperor, sharply reproved him for evading the question; it was useless, he said, to dispute with him about views which were not new, but had been already taught by Hus, Wiclif, and other heretics, and had been condemned for sufficient reasons by the Council of Constance before the Pope, the Emperor, and the assembled fathers. He demanded a round and direct answer, without horns."

This brought on the crisis.

Luther replied, he would give an answer "with neither horns nor teeth."371  From the inmost depths of his conscience educated by the study of the word of God, he made in both languages that memorable declaration which marks an epoch in the history of religious liberty: —

"Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear arguments (since I believe neither the Pope nor the Councils alone; it being evident that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound in the word of God: I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and dangerous to do any thing against the conscience."372

So far the reports are clear and harmonious. What followed immediately after this testimony is somewhat uncertain and of less importance.

Dr. Eck exchanged a few more words with Luther, protesting against his assertion that Councils may err and have erred. "You can not prove it," he said. Luther repeated his assertion, and pledged himself to prove it. Thus pressed and threatened, amidst the excitement and confusion of the audience, he uttered in German, at least in substance, that concluding sentence which has impressed itself most on the memory of men: —

"Here I stand. [I can not do otherwise.]  God help me!  Amen."373

The sentence, if not strictly historical, is true to the situation, and expresses Luther’s mental condition at the time,—the strength of his conviction, and prayer for God’s help, which was abundantly answered. It furnishes a parallel to Galileo’s equally famous, but less authenticated, "It does move, for all that" (E pur si muove).

The Emperor would hear no more, and abruptly broke up the session of the Diet at eight o’clock, amid general commotion.

On reaching his lodgings, Luther threw up his arms, and joyfully exclaimed, "I am through, I am through?  "To Spalatin, in the presence of others, he said, "If I had a thousand beads, I would rather have them all cut off one by one than make one recantation."

The impression he made on the audience was different according to conviction and nationality. What some admired as the enthusiasm of faith and the strength of conviction, appeared to others as fanaticism and heretical obstinacy.

The Emperor, a stranger to German thought and speech,374  declared after the first hearing: "This man will never make a heretic of me." He doubted the authorship of the famous books ascribed to him.375  At the second hearing he was horrified at the disparagement of general Councils, as if a German monk could be wiser than the whole Catholic Church. The Spaniards and Italians were no doubt of the same opinion; they may have been repelled also by his lowly appearance and want of refined manners. Some of the Spaniards pursued him with hisses as he left the room. The papal legates reported that he raised his hands after the manner of the German soldiers rejoicing over a clever stroke, and represented him as a vulgar fellow fond of good wine.376  They praised the Emperor as a truly Christian and Catholic prince who assured them the next day of his determination to treat Luther as a heretic. The Venetian ambassador, otherwise impartial, judged that Luther disappointed expectations, and showed neither much learning, nor much prudence, nor was he blameless in life.377

But the German delegates received a different impression. When Luther left the Bishop’s palace greatly exhausted, the old Duke Erik of Brunswick sent him a silver tankard of Eimbeck beer, after having first drunk of it himself to remove suspicion. Luther said, "As Duke Erik has remembered me to-day, may the Lord Jesus remember him in his last agony." The Duke thought of it on his deathbed, and found comfort in the words of the gospel: "Whosoever shall give unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise lose his reward." The Elector Frederick expressed to Spalatin the same evening his delight with Luther’s conduct: "How excellently did Father Martin speak both in Latin and German before the Emperor and the Estates!  He was bold enough, if not too much so."378  The cautious Elector would have been still better pleased if Luther had been more moderate, and not attacked the Councils. Persons of distinction called on him in his lodgings till late at night, and cheered him. Among these was the young Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who afterwards embraced the cause of the Reformation with zeal and energy, but did it much harm by his bigamy. After a frivolous jest, which Luther smilingly rebuked, he wished him God’s blessing.379

The strongest sympathizers with Luther were outside of the Diet, among the common people, the patriotic nobles, the scholars of the school of Erasmus, and the rising generation of liberal men. As he returned from the Diet to his lodgings, a voice in the crowd was heard to exclaim: "Blessed be the womb that bare this son." Tonstal, the English ambassador, wrote from Worms, that "the Germans everywhere are so addicted to Luther, that, rather than he should be oppressed by the Pope’s authority, a hundred thousand of the people will sacrifice their lives."380  In the imperial chambers a paper was found with the words: "Woe to the nation whose king is a child" (Eccl. x. 16).381  An uprising of four hundred German knights with eight thousand soldiers was threatened in a placard on the city hall; but the storm passed away. Hutten and Sickingen were in the Emperor’s service. "Hutten only barks, but does not bite," was a saying in Worms.

The papal party triumphed in the Diet. Nothing else could be expected if the historic continuity of the Latin Church and of the Holy German Roman Empire was to be preserved. Had Luther submitted his case to a general council, to which in the earlier stages of the conflict he had himself repeatedly appealed, the result might have been different, and a moderate reform of the mediaeval Church under the headship of the Pope of Rome might have been accomplished; but no more. By denying the infallibility of a council, he openly declared himself a heretic, and placed himself in opposition to the universal opinion, which regarded oecumenical Councils, beginning with the first of Nicaea in 325, as the ultimate tribunal for the decision of theological controversies. The infallibility of the Pope was as yet an open question, and remained so till 1870, but the infallibility of a general council was at that time regarded as settled. A protest against it could only be justified by a providential mission and actual success.

It was the will of Providence to prepare the way, through the instrumentality of Luther, for independent church-organizations, and the development of new types of Christianity on the basis of the word of God and the freedom of thought.

NOTE ON LUTHER’S SENTENCE: "HERE I STAND," ETC.

These words of Luther have been reported again and again, not only in popular books, but in learned histories, without a doubt of their genuineness. They are engraven on his monument at Worms.

But this very fact called forth a critical investigation of the Saxon Archivarius, Dr. C. A. H. Burkhardt (author of the learned work: Luther’s Briefwechsel), Ueber die Glaubwürdigkeit der Antwort Luthers: "Hie steh’ ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helff mir. Amen," in the "Theol. Studien und Kritiken" for 1869, III. pp. 517–531. He rejects all but the last three words (not the whole, as Janssen incorrectly reports, in his History, II. 165, note). His view was accepted by Daniel Schenkel (1870), and W. Maurenbrecher (Gesch. d. kath. Reform., 1880, I. 398). The latter calls the words even "Improper and unworthy," because theatrical, which we cannot admit.

On the other hand, Professor Köstlin, the biographer of Luther, has come to the rescue of the whole sentence in his Easter-program: Luther’s Rede in Worms, Halle, 1874; comp. his notes in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1882, p. 551 sq., and his Martin Luther, I. 453, and the note, p. 800 sq. (second Ed. 1883). His conclusion was accepted by Ranke in the sixth Ed. of his Hist. of Germany (I. 336), and by Mönckeberg (pastor of St. Nicolai in Hamburg), who supports it by new proofs, in an essay, Die Glaubwürdigkeit des Lutherwortes in Worms, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1876, No. II. pp. 295–306.

The facts are these. In Luther’s own Latin notes which he prepared, probably at Worms, for Spalatin, there is no such sentence except the words, "God help me." The prayer which he offered loudly in his chamber on the evening before his second appearance before the Diet, and which some one has reported, concludes with the words, "Gott helfe mir, Amen!" (Walch, X. 1721; Erl. -Frkf. Ed., LXIV. 289 sq.). Spalatin in his (defective) notes on the acts of the Diet, preserved at Weimar (Gesammtarchiv, Reichtagsacten, 1521), and in his Annals (Ed. by Cyprian, p. 41), vouches likewise only for the words, "Gott helfe mir, Amen!"  With this agrees the original edition of the Acta Lutheri Wormatiae habita which were published immediately after the Diet (reprinted in the Frankf. ed. of the Opera Lat., vol. VI. p. 14, see second foot-note).

But other contemporary reports give the whole sentence, though in different order of the words. See the comparative table of Burkhardt, I.c. pp. 525–529. A German report (reprinted in the Erl. -Frkf. ed., vol. LXIV. p. 383) gives as the last words of Luther (in reply to Eck): "Gott kumm mir zu Hilf!  Amen. Da bin ich." The words "Da bin ich" (Here I am) are found also in another source. Mathesius reports the full sentence as coming from the lips of Luther in 1540. In a German contemporary print and on a fly-leaf in the University library of Heidelberg (according to Köstlin), the sentence appears in this order: "Ich kann nicht anders; hier steh’ ich; Gott helfe mir." In the first edition of Luther’s Latin works, published 1546, the words appear in the present order: "Hier steh’ ich," etc. In this form they have passed into general currency.

Köstlin concludes that the only question is about the order of words, and whether they were spoken at the close of his main declaration, or a little afterwards at the close of the Diet. I have adopted the latter view, which agrees with the contemporary German report above quoted. Kolde, in his monograph on Luther at Worms (p. 60), agrees substantially with Köstlin, and says: "Wir wissen nicht mehr, in welchem Zusammenhang diese Worte gesprochen worden sind, auch können sie vielleicht etwas anders gelautet haben; bei der herrschenden Unruhe hat der eine Berichterstatter den Ausspruch so, der andere ihn so verstanden; sicherlich drückten sie zu gleicher Zeit seine felsenfeste Überzeugung von der Wahrheit seines in sich gewissen Glaubens aus, wie das Bewusstsein, dass hier nur Gott helfen könne."

§ 56. Reflections on Luther’s Testimony at Worms.

Luther’s testimony before the Diet is an event of world-historical importance and far-reaching effect. It opened an intellectual conflict which is still going on in the civilized world. He stood there as the fearless champion of the supremacy of the word of God over the traditions of men, and of the liberty of conscience over the tyranny of authority.

For this liberty, all Protestant Christians, who enjoy the fruit of his courage, owe him a debt of gratitude. His recantation could not, any more than his martyrdom, have stopped the Reformation; but it would have retarded its progress, and indefinitely prolonged the oppressive rule of popery.

When tradition becomes a wall against freedom, when authority degenerates into tyranny, the very blessing is turned into a curse, and history is threatened with stagnation and death.382  At such rare junctures, Providence raises those pioneers of progress, who have the intellectual and moral courage to break through the restraints at the risk of their lives, and to open new paths for the onward march of history. This consideration furnishes the key for the proper appreciation of Luther’s determined stand at this historical crisis.

Conscience is the voice of God in man. It is his most sacred possession. No power can be allowed to stand between the gift and the giver. Even an erring conscience must be respected, and cannot be forced. The liberty of conscience was theoretically and practically asserted by the Christians of the ante-Nicene age, against Jewish and heathen persecution; but it was suppressed by the union of Church and State after Constantine the Great, and severe laws were enacted under his successors against every departure from the established creed of the orthodox imperial Church. These laws passed from the Roman to the German Empire, and were in full force all over Europe at the time when Luther raised his protest. Dissenters had no rights which Catholics were bound to respect; even a sacred promise given to a heretic might be broken without sin, and was broken by the Emperor Sigismund in the case of Hus.383

This tyranny was brought to an end by the indomitable courage of Luther.

Liberty of conscience may, of course, be abused, like any other liberty, and may degenerate into heresy and licentiousness. The individual conscience and private judgment often do err, and they are more likely to err than a synod or council, which represents the combined wisdom of many. Luther himself was far from denying this fact, and stood open to correction and conviction by testimonies of Scripture and clear arguments. He heartily accepted all the doctrinal decisions of the first four oecumenical Councils, and had the deepest respect for the Apostles’ Creed on which his own Catechism is based. But he protested against the Council of Constance for condemning the opinions of Hus, which he thought were in accordance with the Scriptures. The Roman Church itself must admit the fallibility of Councils if the Vatican decree of papal infallibility is to stand; for more than one oecumenical council has denounced Pope Honorius as a heretic, and even Popes have confirmed the condemnation of their predecessor. Two conflicting infallibilities neutralize each other.384

Luther did not appeal to his conscience alone, but first and last to the Scripture as he understood it after the most earnest study. His conscience, as he said, was bound in the word of God, who cannot err. There, and there alone, he recognized infallibility. By recanting, he would have committed a grievous sin.

One man with the truth on his side is stronger than a majority in error, and will conquer in the end. Christ was right against the whole Jewish hierarchy, against Herod and Pilate, who conspired in condemning him to the cross. St. Paul was right against Judaism and heathenism combined, "unus versus mundum;" St. Athanasius, "the father of orthodoxy,"  was right against dominant Arianism; Galileo Galilei was right against the Inquisition and the common opinion of his age on the motion of the earth; Döllinger was right against the Vatican Council when, "as a Christian, as a theologian, as an historian, and as a citizen," he protested against the new dogma of the infallibility of the Pope.385

That Luther was right in refusing to recant, and that he uttered the will of Providence in hearing testimony to the supremacy of the word of God and the freedom of conscience, has been made manifest by the verdict of history.

§ 57. Private Conferences with Luther. The Emperors Conduct.

On the morning after Luther’s testimony, the Emperor sent a message—a sort of personal confession of faith—written by his own hand in French, to the Estates, informing them, that in consistency with his duty as the successor of the most Christian emperors of Germany and the Catholic kings of Spain, who had always been true to the Roman Church, he would now treat Luther, after sending him home with his safe-conduct, as an obstinate and convicted heretic, and defend with all his might the faith of his forefathers and of the Councils, especially that of Constance.386

Some of the deputies grew pale at this decision; the Romanists rejoiced. But in view of the state of public sentiment the Diet deemed it expedient to attempt private negotiations for a peaceful settlement, in the hope that Luther might be induced to withdraw or at least to moderate his dissent from the general Councils. The Emperor yielded in spite of Aleander’s protest.

The negotiations were conducted chiefly by Richard von Greiffenklau, Elector and Archbishop of Treves, and at his residence. He was a benevolent and moderate churchman, to whom the Elector Frederick and Baron Miltitz had once desired to submit the controversy. The Elector of Brandenburg, Duke George of Saxony, Dr. Vehus (chancellor of the Margrave of Baden), Dr. Eck of Treves, Dean Cochlaeus of Frankfort,387  and the deputies of Strasburg and Augsburg, likewise took part in the conferences.

These men were just as honest as Luther, but they occupied the standpoint of the mediaeval Church, and could not appreciate his departure from the beaten track. The archbishop was very kind and gracious to Luther, as the latter himself admitted. He simply required that in Christian humility he should withdraw his objections to the Council of Constance, leave the matter for the present with the Emperor and the Diet, and promise to accept the final verdict of a future council unfettered by a previous decision of the Pope. Such a council might re-assert its superiority over the Pope, as the reformatory Councils of the fifteenth century had done.

But Luther had reason to fear the result of such submission, and remained as hard as a rock. He insisted on the supremacy of the word of God over all Councils, and the right of judging for himself according to his conscience.388  He declared at last, that unless convinced by the Scriptures or "clear and evident reasons," he could not yield, no matter what might happen to him; and that he was willing to abide by the test of Gamaliel, "If this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow it" (Acts 5:38, 39).389

He asked the Archbishop, on April 25, to obtain for him the Emperor’s permission to go home. In returning to his lodgings, he made a pastoral visit to a German Knight, and told him in leaving: "To-morrow I go away."

Three hours after the last conference, the Emperor sent him a safe-conduct for twenty-one days, but prohibited him from writing or preaching on the way. Luther returned thanks, and declared that his only aim was to bring about a reformation of the Church through the Scriptures, and that he was ready to suffer all for the Emperor and the empire, provided only he was permitted to confess and teach the word of God. This was his last word to the imperial commissioners. With a shake of hands they took leave of each other, never to meet again in this world.

It is to the credit of Charles, that in spite of contrary counsel, even that of his former teacher and confessor, Cardinal Hadrian, who wished him to deliver Luther to the Pope for just punishment, he respected the eternal principle of truth and honor more than the infamous maxim that no faith should be kept with heretics. He refused to follow the example of his predecessor, Sigismund, who violated the promise of safe-conduct given to Hus, and ordered his execution at the stake after his condemnation by the Council of Constance.390  The protection of Luther is the only service which Charles rendered to the Reformation, and the best thing, in a moral point of view, he ever did.391  Unfortunately, he diminished his merit by his subsequent regret at Yuste.392  He had no other chance to crush the heretic. When he came to Wittenberg in 1547, Luther was in his grave, and the Reformation too deeply rooted to be overthrown by a short-lived victory over a few Protestant princes.

It is interesting to learn Aleander’s speculations about Luther’s intentions immediately after his departure. He reported to Rome, April 29, 1521, that the heretic would seek refuge with the Hussites in Bohemia, and do four "beastly things" (cose bestiali): 1, write lying Acta Wormaciensia, to incite the people to insurrection; 2, abolish the confessional; 3, deny the real presence in the sacrament; 4, deny the divinity of Christ.393

Luther did none of these things except the second, and this only in part. To prevent his entering Bohemia, Rome made provision to have him seized on the way.

§ 58. The Ban of the Empire. May 8 (26), 1521.

After Luther’s departure (April 26), his enemies had full possession of the ground. Frederick of Saxony wrote, May 4: "Martin’s cause is in a bad state: he will be persecuted; not only Annas and Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, are against him." Aleander reported to Rome, May 5, that Luther had by his bad habits, his obstinacy, and his "beastly" speeches against Councils, alienated the people, but that still many adhered to him from love of disobedience to the Pope, and desire to seize the church property.

The Emperor commissioned Aleander to draw up a Latin edict against Luther.394  It was completed and dated May 8 (but not signed till May 26). On the same day the Emperor concluded an alliance with the Pope against France. They pledged themselves "to have the same friends and the same enemies," and to aid each other in attack and defense.

The edict was kept back till the Elector Frederick and the Elector of the Palatinate with a large number of other members of the Diet had gone home. It was not regularly submitted to, nor discussed and voted on, by the Diet, nor signed by the Chancellor, but secured by a sort of surprise.395  On Trinity Sunday, May 26, Aleander went with the Latin and German copy to church, and induced the Emperor to sign both after high mass, "with his pious hand." The Emperor said in French, "Now you will be satisfied."—"Yes," replied the legate in the same language, "but much more satisfied will be the Holy See and all Christendom, and will thank God for such a good, holy, and religious Emperor."396

The edict is not so long, but as turgid, bombastic, intolerant, fierce, and Cruel, as the Pope’s bull of excommunication.397  It gave legal force to the bull within the German Empire. It denounces Luther as a devil in the dress of a monk, who had gathered a mass of old and new heresies into one pool, and pronounces upon him the ban and re-ban.398 It commands the burning, and forbids the printing, publication, and sale, of his books, the sheltering and feeding of his person, and that of his followers, and directs the magistrates to seize him wherever he may be found, and to hand him over to the Emperor, to be dealt with according to the penal laws against heretics. At the same time the whole press of the empire was put under strict surveillance.399

This was the last occasion on which the mediaeval union of the secular empire with the papacy was expressed in official form so as to make the German emperor the executor of the decrees of the bishop of Rome. The gravamina of the nation were unheeded. Hutten wrote: "I am ashamed of my fatherland."400

Thus Luther was outlawed by Church and State, condemned by the Pope, the Emperor, the universities, cast out of human society, and left exposed to a violent death.

But he had Providence and the future on his side. The verdict of the Diet was not the verdict of the nation.

The departure of the Emperor through the Netherlands to Spain, where he subdued a dangerous insurrection, his subsequent wars with Francis in Italy, the victorious advance of the Turks in Hungary, the protection of Luther by the Elector Frederick, and the rapid spread of Protestant doctrines, these circumstances, combined to reduce the imperial edict, as well as the papal bull, to a dead letter in the greater part of Germany. The empire was not a centralized monarchy, but a loose confederation of seven great electorates, a larger number of smaller principalities, and free cities, each with an ecclesiastical establishment of its own. The love of individual independence among the rival states and cities was stronger than the love of national union; and hence it was difficult to enforce the decisions of the Diet against a dissenting minority or even a single recalcitrant member. An attempt to execute the edict in electoral Saxony or the free cities by military force would have kindled the flame of civil war which no wise and moderate ruler would be willing to risk without imperative necessity. Charles was an earnest Roman Catholic, but also a shrewd statesman who had to consult political interests. Even the Elector Albrecht of Mainz prevented, as far as he could, the execution of the bull and ban in the dioceses of Mainz, Magdeburg, and Halberstadt. He did not sign the edict as chancellor of the empire.401  Capito, his chaplain and private counselor, described him in a letter to Zwingli, Aug. 4, 1521, as a promoter of "the gospel," who would not permit that Luther be attacked on the pulpit. And this was the prelate who had been intrusted by the Pope with the sale of indulgences. Such a change had been wrought in public sentiment in the short course of four years.

The settlement of the religious question was ultimately left to the several states, and depended very much upon the religious preferences and personal character of the civil magistrate. Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, the greater part of Northern Germany, also the Palatinate, Würtemberg, Nürnberg, Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Ulm, embraced Protestantism in whole or in part; while Southern and Western Germany, especially Bavaria and Austria, remained predominantly Roman Catholic. But it required a long and bloody struggle before Protestantism acquired equal legal rights with Romanism, and the Pope protests to this day against the Treaty of Westphalia which finally secured those rights.

§ 59. State of Public Opinion. Popular Literature.

K. Hagen: Der Geist der Reformation und seine Gegensätze. Erlangen, 1843. Bd. I. 158 sqq. Janssen, II. 181–197, gives extracts from revolutionary pamphlets to disparage the cause of the Reformation.

Among the most potent causes which defeated the ban of the empire, and helped the triumph of Protestantism, was the teeming ephemeral literature which appeared between 1521 and 1524, and did the work of the periodical newspaper press of our days, in seasons of public excitement. In spite of the prohibition of unauthorized printing by the edict of Worms, Germany was inundated by a flood of books, pamphlets, and leaflets in favor of true and false freedom. They created a public opinion which prevented the execution of the law.

Luther had started this popular literary warfare by his ninety-five Theses. He was by far the most original, fertile, and effective controversialist and pamphleteer of his age. He commanded the resources of genius, learning, courage, eloquence, wit, humor, irony, and ridicule, and had, notwithstanding his many physical infirmities, an astounding power of work. He could express the deepest thought in the clearest and strongest language, and had an abundant supply of juicy and forcible epithets.402  His very opponents had to imitate his German speech if they wished to reach the masses, and to hit the nail on the head. He had a genial heart, but also a most violent temper, and used it as a weapon for popular effect. He felt himself called to the rough work of "removing stumps and stones, cutting away thistles and thorns, and clearing the wild forests." He found aid and comfort in the severe language of the prophets. He had, as he says, the threefold spirit of Elijah,—the storm, the earthquake, and the fire, which subverts mountains and tears the rocks in pieces. He thoroughly understood the wants and tastes of his countrymen who preferred force to elegance, and the club to the dagger. Foreigners, who knew him only from his Latin writings, could not account for his influence.

Roman historians, in denouncing his polemics, are apt to forget the fearful severity of the papal bull, the edict of Worms, and the condemnatory decisions of the universities.403

His pen was powerfully aided by the pencil of his friend Lucas Cranach, the court-painter of Frederick the Wise.

Melanchthon had no popular talent, but he employed his scholarly pen in a Latin apology for Luther, against the furious decree of the Parisian theologasters."404  The Sorbonne, hitherto the most famous theological faculty, which in the days of the reformatory Councils had stood up for the cause of reform, followed the example of the universities of Louvain and Cologne, and denounced Luther during the sessions of the Diet of Worms, April 15, 1521, as an arch-heretic who had renewed and intensified the blasphemous errors of the Manichaeans, Hussites, Beghards, Cathari, Waldenses, Ebionites, Arians, etc., and who should be destroyed by fire rather than refuted by arguments.405  Eck translated the decision at once into German. Melanchthon dared to charge the faculty of Paris with apostasy from Christ to Aristotle, and from biblical theology to scholastic sophistry. Luther translated the Apology into German at the Wartburg, and, finding it too mild, he added to it some strokes of his "peasant’s axe."406

Ulrich von Hutten was almost equal to Luther in literary power, eloquence, wit, and sarcasm, as well as in courage, and aided him with all his might from the Ebernburg during his trial at Worms; but he weakened his cause by want of principle. He had previously republished and ridiculed the Pope’s bull of excommunication. He now attacked the edict of Worms, and wrote invectives against its authors, the papal legates, and its supporters, the bishops.407  He told the former how foolish it was to proceed with such impudence and violence against Luther, in opposition to the spirit of the age, that the time of revenge would soon come; that the Germans were by no means so blind and indifferent as they imagined; that the young Emperor would soon come to a better knowledge. He indignantly reminded Aleander of his shameful private utterance (which was also reported to Luther by Spalatin), that, if the Germans should shake off the papal yoke, Rome would take care to sow so much seed of discord among them that they would eat each other up. He reproached the archbishops and higher clergy for using force instead of persuasion, the secular magistrate instead of the word of Christ against Luther. He told them that they were no real priests; that they had bought their dignities; that they violated common morality; that they were carnal, worldly, avaricious; that they were unable or ashamed to preach the gospel which condemned their conduct, and that if God raised a preacher like Luther, they sought to oppress him. But the measure is full. "Away with you," he exclaims, "ye unclean hogs, away from the pure fountains!  Away with you, wicked traffickers, from the sanctuary!  Touch no longer the altars with your profane hands!  What right have ye to waste the pious benefactions of our fathers in luxury, fornication, and vain pomp, while many honest and pious people are starving?  The measure is full. See ye not that the air of freedom is stirring, that men, disgusted with the present state of things, demand improvement?  Luther and I may perish at your hands, but what of that?  There are many more Luthers and Huttens who will take revenge, and raise a new and more violent reformation."

He added, however, to the second edition, a sort of apologetic letter to Albrecht, the head of the German archbishops, his former friend and patron, assuring him of his continued friendship, and expressing regret that he should have been alienated from the protection of the cause of progress and liberty.

In a different spirit Hans Sachs, the pious poet-shoemaker of Nürnberg,408 wrote many ephemeral compositions in prose and poetry for the cause of Luther and the gospel. He met Luther at Augsburg in 1518, collected till 1522 forty books in his favor, and published in 1523 a poem of seven hundred verses under the title: "Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetzt hört überall," and with the concluding words: "Christus amator, Papa peccator." It was soon followed by four polemical dialogues in prose.

Among the most popular pamphleteers on the Protestant side were a farmer named "Karsthans," who labored in the Rhine country between Strassburg and Basel, and his imitator, "Neukarsthans." Many pamphlets were anonymous or pseudonymous.

It is a significant fact, that the Reformation was defended by so many laymen. All the great German classics who arose in more recent times (Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Rückert), as well as philosophers (Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze), are Protestants, at least nominally, and could not have grown on papal soil.

The newness and freshness of this fugitive popular literature called out by the Reformation, and especially by the edict of Worms, made it all the more effective. The people were hungry for intellectual and spiritual food, and the appetite grew with the supply.

The polemical productions of that period are usually brief, pointed, and aimed at the common-sense of the masses. They abound in strong arguments, rude wit, and coarse abuse. They plead the cause of freedom against oppression, of the laity against priestcraft and monkery. A favorite form of composition was the dialogue in which a peasant or a laboring-man defeats an ecclesiastic.

The Devil figures prominently in league with the Pope, sometimes as his servant, sometimes as his master. Very often the Pope is contrasted with Christ as his antipode. The Pope, says one of the controversialists, proclaimed the terrible bull of condemnation of Luther and all heretics on the day commemorative of the institution of the holy communion; and turned the divine mercy into human wrath, brotherly love into persecuting hatred, the very blessing into a curse.

St. Peter also appears often in these productions: he stands at the gate of heaven, examining priests, monks, and popes, whether they are fit to enter, and decides in most cases against them. Here is a specimen: A fat and drunken monk knocks at the gate, and is angry that he is not at once admitted; Peter tells him first to get sober, and laughs at his foolish dress. Then he catechises him; the monk enumerates all his fasts, self-mortifications, and pious exercises; Peter orders that his belly be cut open, and, behold! chickens, wild game, fish, omelets, wine, and other contents come forth and bear witness against the hypocrite, who is forthwith sent to the place of punishment.

The writer of a pamphlet entitled "Doctor Martin Luther’s Passion," draws an irreverent parallel between Luther’s treatment by the Diet, with Christ’s crucifixion: Luther’s entry into Worms is compared to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, the Diet to the Sanhedrin, Archbishop Albrecht to Caiaphas, the papal legates to the Pharisees, the Elector of Saxony to Peter, Eck and Cochlaeus to the false witnesses, the Archbishop of Treves to Pilate, the German nation to Pilate’s wife; at last Luther’s books and likeness are thrown into the fire, but his likeness will not burn, and the spectators exclaim, "Verily, he is a Christian."

The same warfare was going on in German Switzerland. Nicolas Manuel, a poet and painter (died 1530), in a carnival play which was enacted at Berne, 1522, introduces first the whole hierarchy, confessing one after another their sins, and expressing regret that they now are to be stopped by the rising opposition of the people; then the various classes of laymen attack the priests, expose their vices, and refute their sophistries; and at last Peter and Paul decide in favor of the laity, and charge the clergy with flatly contradicting the teaching of Christ and the Apostles.409

These pamphlets and fugitive papers were illustrated by rude woodcuts and caricatures of obnoxious persons, which added much to their popular effect. Popes, cardinals, and bishops are represented in their clerical costume, but with faces of wolves or foxes, and surrounded by geese praying a Paternoster or Ave Maria. The "Passion of Christ and Antichrist" has twenty-six woodcuts, from the elder Lucas Cranach or his school, which exhibit the contrast between Christ and his pretended vicar in parallel pictures: in one Christ declines the crown of this world, in the other the Pope refuses to open the gate to the Emperor (at Canossa); in one Christ wears the crown of thorns, in the other the Pope the triple crown of gold and jewels; in one Christ washes the feet of his disciples, in the other the Pope suffers emperors and kings to kiss his toe; in one Christ preaches the glad tidings to the poor, in the other the Pope feasts with his cardinals at a rich banquet; in one Christ expels the profane traffickers, in the other the Pope sits in the temple of God; in one Christ rides meekly on an ass into Jerusalem, in the other the Pope and his cardinals ride on fiery steeds into hell.410

The controversial literature of the Roman-Catholic Church was far behind the Protestant in ability and fertility. The most popular and effective writer on the Roman side was the Franciscan monk and crowned poet, Thomas Murner. He was an Alsatian, and lived in Strassburg, afterwards at Luzern, and died at Heidelberg (1537). He had formerly, in his Narrenbeschwörung (1512) and other writings, unmercifully chastised the vices of all classes, including clergy and monks, and had sided with Reuchlin in his controversy with the Dominicans, but in 1520 he turned against Luther, and assailed his cause in a poetical satire: "Vom grossen lutherischen Narren wie ihn Doctor Murner beschworen hat, 1522."411

CHAPTER IV.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE DIET OF WORMS

TO THE PEASANTS’ WAR, A.D. 1521–1525.

§ 60. A New Phase in the History of the Reformation.

At Worms, Luther stood on the height of his protest against Rome. The negative part of his work was completed: the tyranny of popery over Western Christendom was broken, the conscience was set free, and the way opened for a reconstruction of the Church on the basis of the New Testament. What he wrote afterwards against Rome was merely a repetition and re-affirmation.

On his return to Wittenberg, he had a more difficult task before him: to effect a positive reformation of faith and discipline, worship and ceremonies. A revolution is merely destructive and emancipative: a reformation is constructive and affirmative; it removes abuses and corruptions, but saves the foundation, and builds on it a new structure.

In this home-work Luther was as conservative and churchly as he had been radical and unchurchly in his war against the foreign foe. The connecting link between the two periods was his faith in Christ and the ever-living word of God, with which he began and ended his public labors.

He now raised his protest against the abuse of liberty in his own camp. A sifting process was necessary. Division and confusion broke out among his friends and followers. Many of them exceeded all bounds of wisdom and moderation; while others, frightened by the excesses, returned to the fold of the mother Church. The German nation itself was split on the question of the old or new religion, and remains, ecclesiastically, divided to this day; but the political unification and reconstruction of the German Empire with a Protestant head, instead of the former Roman-Catholic emperor, may be regarded as a remote result of the Reformation, without which it could never have taken place. And it is a remarkable providence, that this great event of 1870 was preceded by the Vatican Council and the decree of papal infallibility, and followed by the overthrow of the temporal power of the Pope and the political unification of Italy with Rome as the capital.

Before Luther entered upon the new phase in his career, he had a short rest on what he called his "Patmos" (Rev. 1:9), and his "wilderness." It is the most romantic, as his stand at Worms is the most heroic, chapter in his eventful life.

§ 61. Luther at the Wartburg. 1521–1522.

I. Luther’s Letters, from April 28, 1521, to March 7, 1522, in De Wette, vol. I. 5; II. 1–141. Very full and very characteristic. Walch, XV. 2324–2402.

II. C. Köhler: Luther auf der Wartburg. Eisenach, 1798. A. Witzschell: Luthers Aufenthalt auf der Wartburg. Wien, 1876. J. G. Morris: Luther at Wartburg and Coburg. Philadelphia, 1882.

III. Marheineke, Chap. X. (I. 276 sqq.). Merle D’Aubigné, bk. IX., chs. I. and II. Hagenbach, III. 105 sqq. Fisher, p. 112. Köstlin, I. 468–535.

Luther left Worms after a stay of ten days, April 26, 1521, at ten o’clock in the morning, quietly, in the same company with which he had made his entrance under the greatest popular commotion and expectation. His friend Schurf went along. The imperial herald joined him at Oppenheim so as not to attract notice.

In a letter to his friend Cranach, dated Frankfurt, April 28, he thus summarizes the proceedings of the Diet: "Have you written these books?  Yes. Will you recant?  No. Then get thee hence!  O we blind Germans, how childish we are to allow ourselves to be so miserably fooled by the Romanists!"412  In the same letter he takes leave of his Wittenberg friends, and intimates that he would be hidden for a while, though he did not know where. He says that he would rather have suffered death from the tyrants, especially "the furious Duke George," but he could not despise the counsel of good people. "A little while, and ye behold me no more; and again a little while, and ye shall see me (John 16:16). I hope it will be so with me. But God’s will, the best of all, be done in heaven and on earth."

At Friedberg he dismissed the herald, and gave him a Latin letter to the Emperor, and a German letter of the same import to the Estates. He thanked the former for the safe-conduct, and defended his course at Worms. He could not trust in the decision of one man or many men when God’s word and eternal interests were at stake, but was still willing to recant if refuted from the Scriptures.413

At Hersfeld he was hospitably entertained in the Benedictine convent by the Abbot Crato, and urged to preach. He did so in spite of the Emperor’s prohibition, obeying God rather than men. "I never consented," he says, "to tie up God’s word. This is a condition beyond my power."414  He preached also at Eisenach, but under protest of the priest in charge of the parish. Several of his companions parted from him there, and proceeded in the direction of Gotha and Wittenberg.

From Eisenach he started with Amsdorf and Petzensteiner for Möhra to see his relations. He spent a night with his uncle Heinz, and preached on the next Sunday morning. He resumed his journey towards Altenstein and Waltershausen, accompanied by some of his relatives. On the 4th of May, a company of armed horsemen suddenly appeared from the woods, stopped his carriage, amidst cursing and swearing, pulled him out, put him on horseback, hurried away with him in full speed, and brought him about midnight to the Wartburg, where he was to be detained as a noble prisoner of state in charge of Captain von Berlepsch, the governor of the castle.

The scheme had been wisely arranged in Worms by the Elector Frederick, whom Aleander calls "the fox of Saxony." He wavered between attachment to the old faith and inclination to the new. He could not be sure of Luther’s safety beyond the term of three weeks when the Emperor’s safe-conduct expired; he did not wish to disobey the Emperor, nor, on the other hand, to sacrifice the reformer, his own subject, and the pride of his university. He therefore deemed it best to withdraw him for a season from the public eye. Melanchthon characterizes him truly when he says of Frederick: "He was not one of those who would stifle changes in their very birth. He was subject to the will of God. He read the writings which were put forth, and would not permit any power to crush what he believed to be true."

The secret was strictly kept. For several months even John, the Elector’s brother, did not know Luther’s abode, and thought that he was in one of Sickingen’s castles. Conflicting rumors went abroad, and found credence among the crowds who gathered in public places to hear the latest news. Some said, He is dead; others, He is imprisoned, and cruelly treated. Albrecht Dürer, the famous painter, who was at that time at Antwerp, and esteemed Luther as "a man enlightened by the Holy Spirit and a confessor of the true Christian faith," entered in his diary on Pentecost, 1521, the prayer that God may raise up another man in his place, and fill him with the Holy Spirit to heal the wounds of the Church.

The Wartburg is a stately castle on a hill above Eisenach, in the finest part of the Thuringian forest. It combines reminiscences of mediaeval poetry and piety with those of the Reformation. It was the residence of the Landgraves of Thuringia from 1073 to 1440. There the most famous Minnesängers, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, graced the court of Hermann I. (1190–1217); there St. Elizabeth (1207–1231), wife of Landgrave Ludwig, developed her extraordinary virtues of humility and charity, and began those ascetic self-mortifications which her heartless and barbarous confessor, Conrad of Marburg, imposed upon her. But the most interesting relics of the past are the Lutherstube and the adjoining Reformationszimmer. The plain furniture of the small room which the Reformer occupied, is still preserved: a table, a chair, a bedstead, a small bookcase, a drinking-tankard, and the knightly armor of Junker Georg, his assumed name. The famous ink-spot is seen no more, and the story is not authentic.415  In the Wartburg the German students celebrated, in October, 1817, the third jubilee of the Reformation; in the Wartburg Dr. Merle D’Aubigné of Geneva received the inspiration for his eloquent history of the Reformation, which had a wider circulation, at least in the English translation, than any other book on church history; in the Wartburg the Eisenach Conference of the various Lutheran church-governments of Germany inaugurates its periodical sessions for the consultative discussion of matters of common interest, as the revision of the Luther-Bible. The castle was handsomely restored and decorated in mediaeval style, in 1847.

Luther’s sojourn in this romantic solitude extended through nearly eleven months, and alternated between recreation and work, health and sickness, high courage and deep despondency. Considering that he there translated the New Testament, it was the most useful year of his life. He gives a full description of it in letters to his Wittenberg friends, especially to Spalatin and Melanchthon, which were transmitted by secret messengers, and dated from "Patmos," or "the wilderness," from "the region of the air," or "the region of the birds."

He was known and treated during this episode as Knight George. He exchanged the monastic gown for the dress of a gentleman, let his hair and beard grow, wore a coat of mail, a sword, and a golden chain, and had to imitate courtly manners. He was served by two pages, who brought the meals to his room twice a day. His food was much better than be had been accustomed to as a monk, and brought on dyspepsia and insomnia. He enjoyed the singing of the birds, "sweetly lauding God day and night with all their strength." He made excursions with an attendant. Sometimes he took a book along, but was reminded that a Knight and a scholar were different beings. He engaged in conversation on the way, with priests and monks, about ecclesiastical affairs, and the uncertain whereabouts of Luther, till he was requested to go on. He took part in the chase, but indulged in theological thoughts among the huntsmen and animals. "We caught a few hares and partridges," he said, "a worthy occupation for idle people." The nets and dogs reminded him of the arts of the Devil entangling and pursuing poor human souls. He sheltered a hunted hare, but the dogs tore it to pieces; this suggested to him the rage of the Devil and the Pope to destroy those whom he wished to preserve. It would be better, he thought, to hunt bears and wolves.

He had many a personal encounter with the Devil, whose existence was as certain to him as his own. More than once he threw the inkstand at him—not literally, but spiritually. His severest blow at the archfiend was the translation of the New Testament. His own doubts, carnal temptations, evil thoughts, as well as the dangers threatening him and his work from his enemies, projected themselves into apparitions of the prince of darkness. He heard his noises at night, in a chest, in a bag of nuts, and on the staircase "as if a hundred barrels were rolled from top to bottom." Once he saw him in the shape of a big black dog lying in his bed; he threw the creature out of the window; but it did not bark, and disappeared.416  Sometimes he resorted to jokes. The Devil, he said, will bear any thing better than to be despised and laughed at.417

Luther was brought up in all the mediaeval superstitious concerning demons, ghosts, witches, and sorcerers. His imagination clothed ideas in concrete, massive forms. The Devil was to him the personal embodiment of all evil and mischief in the world. Hence he figures very largely in his theology and religious experience.418  He is the direct antipode of God, and the archfiend of Christ and of men. As God is pure love, so the Devil is pure selfishness, hatred, and envy. He is endowed with high intellectual gifts, as bad men often surpass good men in prudence and understanding. He was originally an archangel, but moved by pride and envy against the Son of God, whose incarnation and saving work he foresaw, he rose in rebellion against it. He commands an organized army of fallen angels and bad men in constant conflict with God and the good angels. He is the god of this world, and knows how to rule it. He has power over nature, and can make thunder and lightning, hail and earthquake, fleas and bed-bugs. He is the ape of God. He can imitate Christ, and is most dangerous in the garb of an angel of light. He is most busy where the Word of God is preached. He is proud and haughty, although he can appear most humble. He is a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He understands a thousand arts. He hates men because they are creatures of God. He is everywhere around them, and tries to hurt and seduce them. He kindles strife and enmity. He is the author of all heresies and persecutions. He invented popery, as a counterpart of the true kingdom of God. He inflicts trials, sickness, and death upon individuals. He tempts them to break the Ten Commandments, to doubt God’s word, and to blaspheme. He leads into infidelity and despair. He hates matrimony, mirth, and music. He can not bear singing, least of all "spiritual songs."419  He holds the human will captive, and rides it as his donkey. He can quote Scripture, but only as much of it as suits his purpose. A Christian should know that the Devil is nearer him than his coat or shirt, yea, than his own skin. Luther reports that he often disputed with the Devil in the night, about the state of his soul, so earnestly that he himself perspired profusely, and trembled. Once the Devil told him that he was a great sinner. "I knew that long ago," replied Luther, "tell me something new. Christ has taken my sins upon himself, and forgiven them long ago. Now grind your teeth." At other times he returned the charge and tauntingly asked him, "Holy Satan, pray for me," or "Physician, cure thyself."  The Devil assumes visible forms, and appears as a dog or a hog or a goat, or as a flame or star, or as a man with horns. He is noisy and boisterous.420  He is at the bottom of all witchcraft and ghost-trickery. He steals little children and substitutes others in their place, who are mere lumps of flesh and torment the parents, but die young.421  Luther was disposed to trace many mediaeval miracles of the Roman Catholic Church to the agency of Satan. He believed in daemones incubos et succubos.

But, after all, the Devil has no real power over believers. He hates prayer, and flees from the cross and from the Word of God as from a flaming fire. If you cannot expel him by texts of Holy Scripture, the best way is to jeer and flout him. A pious nun once scared him away by simply saying: "Christiana sum." Christ has slain him, and will cast him out at last into the fire of hell. Hence Luther sings in his battle hymn, —

"And let the Prince of ill

Look grim as e’er he will,

He harms us not a whit:

For why?  His doom is writ,

One little word shall slay him."

Luther was at times deeply dejected in spirit. He wrote to Melanchthon, July 13, under the influence of dyspepsia which paints every thing in the darkest colors: "You elevate me too high, and fall into the serious error of giving me too much credit, as if I were absorbed in God’s cause. This high opinion of yours confounds and racks me, when I see myself insensible, hardened, sunk in idleness, alas! seldom in prayer, and not venting one groan over God’s Church. My unsubdued flesh burns me with devouring fire. In short, I who ought to be eaten up with the spirit, am devoured by the flesh, by luxury, indolence, idleness, somnolence. Is it that God has turned away from me, because you no longer pray for me?  You must take my place; you, richer in God’s gifts, and more acceptable in his sight. Here, a week has passed away since I put pen to paper, since I have prayed or studied, either vexed by fleshly cares, or by other temptations. If things do not improve, I will go to Erfurt without concealment; there you will see me, or I you, for I must consult physicians or surgeons. Perhaps the Lord troubles me so much in order to draw me from this wilderness before the public."422

Notwithstanding his complaints of illness and depression, and assaults from the evil spirit, he took the liveliest interest in the events of the day, and was anxious to descend to the arena of conflict. He kept writing letters, books, and pamphlets, and sent them into the world. His literary activity during those few months is truly astounding, and contrasts strangely with his repeated lament that he had to sit idle at Patmos, and would rather be burned in the service of God than stagnate there.

He had few books in the Wartburg. He studied the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures very diligently;423 he depended for news on the letters of his friends at Wittenberg; and for his writings, on the resources of his genius.

He continued his great Latin commentary on the Psalms, dwelling most carefully on Psalm 22 with reference to the crucifixion, and wrote special expositions of Psalms 68 and 37. He completed his book on the Magnificat of the Holy Virgin, in which he still expresses his full belief in her sinlessness, even her immaculate conception. He attacked auricular confession, which was now used as a potent power against the reading of Protestant books, and dedicated the tract to Sickingen (June 1). He resumed his sermons on the Gospels and Epistles of the church year (Kirchenpostille), which were afterwards finished by friends, and became one of the most popular books of devotion in Germany. He declared it once the best book he ever wrote, one which even the Papists liked.424  He replied in Latin to Latomus, a Louvain theologian. He attacked in Latin and German the doctrine of the mass, which is the very heart of Roman Catholic worship, and monastic vows, the foundation of the monastic system. He dedicated the book against vows to his father who had objected to his becoming a monk.

He also dealt an effectual blow at Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz, who had exposed in Halle a collection of nearly nine thousand wondrous relies (including the manna in the wilderness, the burning bush of Moses, and jars from the wedding at Cana) to the view of pilgrims, with the promise of a "surpassing" indulgence for attendance and a charitable contribution to the Collegiate Church. Luther disregarded the fact that his own pious Elector had arranged a similar exhibition in Wittenberg only a few years before, and prepared a fierce protest against the "Idol of Indulgences" (October, 1521). Spalatin and the Elector protested against the publication, but he wrote to Spalatin: "I will not put up with it. I will rather lose you and the prince himself, and every living being. If I have stood up against the Pope, why should I yield to his creature?"  At the same time he addressed a sharp letter to the archbishop (Dec. 1), and reminded him that by this time he ought to know that indulgences were mere knavery and trickery; that Luther was still alive; that bishops, before punishing priests for marrying, better first expel their own mistresses. He threatened him with the issue of the book against the Idol of Halle. The archbishop submitted, and made a humble apology in a letter of Dec. 21, which shows what a power Luther had acquired over him.425

§ 62. Luther’s Translation of the Bible.

I. Dr. Martin Luther’s Bibelübersetzung nach der letzten Original-Ausgabe, kritisch bearbeitet von H. E. Bindseil und H. A. Niemeyer. Halle, 1845–55, in 7 vols. 8°. The N. T. in vols. 6 and 7. A critical reprint of the last edition of Luther (1545). Niemeyer died after the publication of the first volume. Comp. the Probebibel (the revised Luther-Version), Halle, 1883. Luther’s Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen und Fürbitte der Heiligen (with a letter to Wenceslaus Link, Sept. 12, 1530), in Walch, XXI. 310 sqq., and the Erl. Frkf. ed., vol. LXV. 102–123. (Not in De Wette’s collection, because of its polemical character.)  A defense of his version against the attacks of the Romanists. Mathesius, in his thirteenth sermon on the Life of Luther.

II. On the merits and history of Luther’s version. The best works are by Palm (1772). Panzer (Vollständ. Gesch. der deutschen Bibelübers. Luthers, Nürnb. 1783, 2d ed. 1791), Weidemann (1834), H. Schott (1835), Bindseil (1847), Hopf (1847), Mönckeberg (1855 and 1861), Karl Frommann (1862), Dorner (1868), W. Grimm (1874 and l884), Düsterdieck (1882), Kleinert (1883), TH. Schott (1883), and the introduction to the Probebibel (1883). See Lit. in § 17, p. 103.

III. On the pre-Lutheran German Bible, and Luther’s relation to it. Ed. Reuss: Die deutsche Historienbibel vor der Erfindung des Bücherdrucks. Jena, 1855. Jos. Kehrein (Rom. Cath.): Zur Geschichte der deutschen Bibelübersetzung vor Luther. Stuttgart, 1851. O. F. Fritzsche in Herzog, 2d ed., Bd. III. (1876), pp. 543 sqq. Dr. W. Krafft: Die deutsche Bibel vor Luther, sein Verhältniss zu derselben und seine Verdienste um die deutsche Bibelübersetzung.  Bonn, 1883 (25 pages. 4°.)  Also the recent discussions (1885–1887) of Keller, Haupt, Jostes, Rachel, Kawerau, Kolde, K. Müller, on the alleged Waldensian origin of the pre-Lutheran German version.

The richest fruit of Luther’s leisure in the Wartburg, and the most important and useful work of his whole life, is the translation of the New Testament, by which he brought the teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles to the mind and heart of the Germans in life-like reproduction. It was a republication of the gospel. He made the Bible the people’s book in church, school, and house. If he had done nothing else, he would be one of the greatest benefactors of the German-speaking race.426

His version was followed by Protestant versions in other languages, especially the French, Dutch, and English. The Bible ceased to be a foreign book in a foreign tongue, and became naturalized, and hence far more clear and dear to the common people. Hereafter the Reformation depended no longer on the works of the Reformers, but on the book of God, which everybody could read for himself as his daily guide in spiritual life. This inestimable blessing of an open Bible for all, without the permission or intervention of pope and priest, marks an immense advance in church history, and can never be lost.

Earlier Versions.

Luther was not the first, but by far the greatest translator of the German Bible, and is as inseparably connected with it as Jerome is with the Latin Vulgate. He threw the older translation into the shade and out of use, and has not been surpassed or even equaled by a successor. There are more accurate versions for scholars (as those of De Wette and Weizsäcker), but none that can rival Luther’s for popular authority and use.

The civilization of the barbarians in the dark ages began with the introduction of Christianity, and the translation of such portions of the Scriptures as were needed in public worship.

The Gothic Bishop Wulfila or Wölflein (i.e., Little Wolf) in the fourth century translated nearly the whole Bible from the Greek into the Gothic dialect. It is the earliest monument of Teutonic literature, and the basis of comparative Teutonic philology.427

During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It may be compared to Wiclif’s English Version (1380), which was likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian convent of Tepl in Bohemia.428  Another copy is preserved in the college library at Freiberg in Saxony.429  Both are from the fourteenth century, and agree almost word for word with the first printed German Bible, but contain, besides the New Testament, the apocryphal letter of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, which is a worthless compilation of a few sentences from the genuine writings of the apostle.430

After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate.431  No less than seventeen or eighteen editions appeared between 1462 and 1522, at Strassburg, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Cöln, Lübeck, and Halberstadt (fourteen in the High, three or four in the Low German dialect). Most of them are in large folio, in two volumes, and illustrated by wood-cuts. The editions present one and the same version (or rather two versions,—one High German, the other Low German) with dialectical alterations and accommodations to the textual variations of the MSS. of the Vulgate, which was in a very unsettled condition before the Clementine recension (1592). The revisers are as unknown as the translators.

The spread of this version, imperfect as it was, proves the hunger and thirst of the German people for the pure word of God, and prepared the way for the Reformation. It alarmed the hierarchy. Archbishop Berthold of Mainz, otherwise a learned and enlightened prelate, issued, Jan. 4, 1486, a prohibition of all unauthorized printing of sacred and learned books, especially the German Bible, within his diocese, giving as a reason that the German language was incapable of correctly rendering the profound sense of Greek and Latin works, and that laymen and women could not understand the Bible. Even Geiler of Kaisersberg, who sharply criticised the follies of the world and abuses of the Church, thought it "an evil thing to print the Bible in German."

Besides the whole Bible, there were numerous German editions of the Gospels and Epistles (Plenaria), and the Psalter, all made from the Vulgate.432

Luther could not be ignorant of this mediaeval version. He made judicious use of it, as he did also of old German and Latin hymns. Without such aid he could hardly have finished his New Testament in the short space of three months.433  But this fact does not diminish his merit in the least; for his version was made from the original Hebrew and Greek, and was so far superior in every respect that the older version entirely disappeared. It is to all intents a new work.

Luther’s Qualifications.

Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther’s version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.

His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent judgment.434  What he lacked in scholarship was supplied by his intuitive genius and the help of Melanchthon. In the German tongue he had no rival. He created, as it were, or gave shape and form to the modern High German. He combined the official language of the government with that of the common people. He listened, as he says, to the speech of the mother at home, the children in the street, the men and women in the market, the butcher and various tradesmen in their shops, and, "looked them on the mouth," in pursuit of the most intelligible terms. His genius for poetry and music enabled him to reproduce the rhythm and melody, the parallelism and symmetry, of Hebrew poetry and prose. His crowning qualification was his intuitive insight and spiritual sympathy with the contents of the Bible.

A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."

Progress of his Version.

Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."

He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.

He began with the New Testament in November or December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg, with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures; Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The translation was then hurried through three presses, and appeared already Sept. 21, 1522, but without his name.435

In December a second edition was required, which contained many corrections and improvements.436

He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.

In the progress of the work he founded a Collegium Biblieum, or Bible club, consisting of his colleagues Melanchthon, Bugenhagen (Pommer), Cruciger, Justus Jonas, and Aurogallus. They met once a week in his house, several hours before supper. Deacon Georg Rörer (Rorarius), the first clergyman ordained by Luther, and his proof-reader, was also present; occasionally foreign scholars were admitted; and Jewish rabbis were freely consulted. Each member of the company contributed to the work from his special knowledge and preparation. Melanchthon brought with him the Greek Bible, Cruciger the Hebrew and Chaldee, Bugenhagen the Vulgate, others the old commentators; Luther had always with him the Latin and the German versions besides the Hebrew. Sometimes they scarcely mastered three lines of the Book of Job in four days, and hunted two, three, and four weeks for a single word. No record exists of the discussions of this remarkable company, but Mathesius says that "wonderfully beautiful and instructive speeches were made."

At last the whole Bible, including the Apocrypha as "books not equal to the Holy Scriptures, yet useful and good to read," was completed in 1534, and printed with numerous woodcuts.

In the mean time the New Testament had appeared in sixteen or seventeen editions, and in over fifty reprints.437

Luther complained of the many errors in these irresponsible editions.

He never ceased to amend his translation. Besides correcting errors, he improved the uncouth and confused orthography, fixed the inflections, purged the vocabulary of obscure and ignoble words, and made the whole more symmetrical and melodious.

He prepared five original editions, or recensions, of his whole Bible, the last in 1545, a year before his death.438  This is the proper basis of all critical editions.439

The edition of 1546 was prepared by his friend Rörer, and contains a large number of alterations, which he traced to Luther himself. Some of them are real improvements, e.g., "Die Liebe höret nimmer auf," for, "Die Liebe wird nicht müde" (1 Cor. 13:8). The charge that he made the changes in the interest of Philippism (Melanchthonianism), seems to be unfounded.

Editions and Revisions.

The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome’s Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized, obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses inserted in 1 John 5:7 (first by a Frankfurt publisher, 1574), the third and fourth books of Ezra and the third book of the Maccabees added to the Apocrypha, and various other changes effected, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad. Elector August of Saxony tried to control the text in the interest of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, and ordered the preparation of a standard edition (1581). But it was disregarded outside of Saxony.

Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667–1719) in connection with Francke’s Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.

With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther’s version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772–1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (18001862), but did not obtain public authority.

At last a conservative official revision of the Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former editions in public use.440

The Success.

The German Bible of Luther was saluted with the greatest enthusiasm, and became the most powerful help to the Reformation. Duke George of Saxony, Duke William of Bavaria, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria strictly prohibited the sale in their dominions, but could not stay the current. Hans Lufft at Wittenberg printed and sold in forty years (between 1534 and 1574) about a hundred thousand copies,—an enormous number for that age,—and these were read by millions. The number of copies from reprints is beyond estimate.

Cochlaeus, the champion of Romanism, paid the translation the greatest compliment when he complained that "Luther’s New Testament was so much multiplied and spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of divinity."441

The Romanists were forced in self-defense to issue rival translations. Such were made by Emser (1527), Dietenberger (1534), and Eck (1537), and accompanied with annotations. They are more correct in a number of passages, but slavishly conformed to the Vulgate, stiff and heavy, and they frequently copy the very language of Luther, so that he could say with truth, "The Papists steal my German of which they knew little before, and they do not thank me for it, but rather use it against me." These versions have long since gone out of use even in the Roman Church, while Luther’s still lives.442

NOTE.

the pre-lutheran german bible.

According to the latest investigations, fourteen printed editions of the whole Bible in the Middle High German dialect, and three in the Low German, have been identified. Panzer already knew fourteen; see his Gesch. der nürnbergischen Ausgaben der Bibel, Nürnberg, 1778, p. 74.

The first four, in large folio, appeared without date and place of publication, but were probably printed: 1, at Strassburg, by Heinrich Eggestein, about or before 1466 (the falsely so-called Mainzer Bibel of 1462); 2, at Strassburg, by Johann Mentelin, 1466 (?); 3, at Augsburg, by Jodocus Pflanzmann, or Tyner, 1470 (?); 4, at Nürnberg, by Sensenschmidt and Frissner, in 2 vols., 408 and 104 leaves, 1470–73 (?). The others are located, and from the seventh on also dated, viz.: 5, Augsburg, by Günther Zainer, 2 vols., probably between 1473–1475. 6, Augsburg, by the same, dated 1477 (Stevens says, 1475?). 7, The third Augsburg edition, by Günther Zainer, or Anton Sorg, 1477, 2 vols., 321 and 332 leaves, fol., printed in double columns; the first German Bible with a date. 8, The fourth Augsburg edition, by A. Sorg, 1480, folio. 9, Nürnberg, by Anton Koburger (also spelled Koberger), 1483. 10, Strassburg, by Johann Gruninger, 1485. 11 and 12, The fifth and sixth Augsburg editions, in small fol., by Hans Schönsperger, 1487 and 1490. 13, The seventh Augsburg edition, by Hans Otmar, 1507, small folio. 14, The eighth Augsburg edition, by Silvan Otmar, 1518, small folio.

The Low Dutch Bibles were printed: 1, at Cologne, in large folio, double columns, probably 1480. The unknown editor speaks of previous editions and his own improvements. Stevens (Nos. 653 and 654) mentions two copies of the O. T. in Dutch, printed at Delf, 1477, 2 vols. fol. 2, At Lübeck, 1491 (not 1494), 2 vols. fol. with large woodcuts. 3, At Halberstadt, 1522.

Comp. Kehrein (I.c.), Krafft (l.c., pp. 4, 5), and Henry Stevens, The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, London, 1878. Stevens gives the full titles with descriptions, pp. 45 sqq., nos. 620 sqq.

Several of these Bibles, including the Koburger and those of Cologne and Halberstadt, are in the possession of the Union Theol. Seminary, New York. I examined them. They are ornamented by woodcuts, beginning with a picture of God creating the world, and forming Eve from the rib of Adam in Paradise. Several of them have Jerome’s preface (De omnibus divinae historiae libris, Ep. ad Paulinum), the oldest with the remark: "Da hebet an die epistel des heiligen priesters sant Jeronimi zu Paulinum von allen gottlichen büchern der hystory. Das erst capitel."

Dr. Krafft illustrates the dependence of Luther on the earlier version by several examples (pp. 13–18). The following is from the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5:21–27:—

the ninth bible, 1483.

Habt ir gehört, das gesaget ist den alten. Du solt nit tödten, wellicher aber tödtet. der wird schuldig des gerichts. Aber ich sag euch, daz ein yeglicher der do zürnet seinem bruder. der wirt schuldig des gerichts. Der aber spricht zu seinem bruder. racha. der wirt schuldig des rats. Und der do spricht. tor. der wirt schuldig des hellischen fewrs. Darum ob du opfferst dein gab zu dem attar. und do wirst gedenckend. daz dein bruder ettwas hat wider dich, lasz do dein gab vor dem altar und gee zum ersten und versüne dich mit deim bruder und denn kum und opffer dein gab. Bis gehellig deim widerwertigen schyer. die weyl du mit im bist him weg. das dich villeycht der widersacher nit antwurt den Richter. und der Richter dich antwurt dem diener und werdest gelegt in den kercker. Fürwar ich sag dir. du geest nit aus von dannen. und das du vergeltest den letzten quadranten.

luther’s new testament, 1522.

Ihr habt gehortt, das zu den alten gesagt ist, du sollt nit todten, wer aber todtet, der soll des gerichts schuldig seyn. Ich aber sage euch, wer mit seynem bruder zurnit, der ist des gerichts schuldig, wer aber zu seynem bruder sagt, Racha, der ist des rads schuldig, wer aber sagt, du narr, der ist des hellischen fewers schuldig.

DarumbwenÐ du deyn gabe auff den altar opfferst, un wirst alda eyngedenken, das deyn bruder ettwas widder dich hab, so las alda fur dem altar deyn gabe, unnd gehe zuvor hyn, unnd versune dich mitt deynem bruder, unnd als denn kom unnd opffer deyn gabe.

Sey willfertig deynem widersacher, bald, dieweyl du noch mit yhm auff dem wege bist, auff das dich der widdersacher nit der mal eyns ubirantwortte dem richter, unÐ d. richter ubirantworte dich dem diener, unÐ werdist ynÐ  den kerccker geworffen, warlich ich sage dyr, du wirst nit von dannen erauze komen, bis du auch den letzten heller bezealest.

To this I add two specimens in which the superiority of Luther’s version is more apparent.

Gen. 1:1–3.

the koburger bible of nürnberg, 1483

In dem anfang hat got beschaffen hymel und erden. aber dye erde was eytel und leere. und die vinsternus warn auff dem antlitz des abgrunds. vnd der geist gots swebet oder ward getragen auff den wassern. UnÐ  got der sprach. Es werde dz liecht. Un das liecht ist worden.

luther’s bible, ed. 1535.

Im anfang schuff Gott himel und erden. Und die erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auff der tieffe, und der Geist Gottes schwebet auff dem wasser.

Un Gott sprach. Es werde liecht. Und es ward liecht.

1 Cor. 13:1, 2.

The Strassburg Bible Of 1485.

Ob ich rede inn der zungen der engel vnd der menschen; aber habe ich der lieb nit, ich bin gemacht alls ein glockenspeyss lautend oder alls ein schell klingend. Vnd ob ich hab die weissagung und erkenn all heimlichkeit vnd alle kunst, und ob ich hab alten glauben, also das ich übertrag die berg, habe ich aber der lieb nit, ich bin nichts.

Luther’s New Testament, 1522.

Wenn ich mit menschen und mit engelzungen redet und hette die443 liebe nit,444 so wäre ich ein tönend ertz oder ein klingende schell.445 Und wenn ich weissagen kündt, vnnd wüste alle geheymnuss vnd alle erkantnüss, vnd hette alten glauben, also das ich berg versetzete, und hett der liebe nicht, so were ich nichts.

The precise origin of the mediaeval German Bible is still unknown. Dr. Ludwig Keller of Münster first suggested in his Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1885, pp. 257–260, the hypothesis that it was made by Waldenses (who had also a Romanic version); and he tried to prove it in his Die Waldenser und die deutschen Bibelübersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886 (189 pages). Dr. Hermann Haupt, of Würzburg, took the same ground in his Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis und der ersten gedruckten Bibel nachgewiesen, Würzburg, 1885 (64 pages); and again, in self-defense against Jostes, in Der waldensische Ursprung des Codex Teplensis und der vor-lutherischen deutschen Bibeldrucke, Würzburg, 1886. On the other hand, Dr. Franz Jostes, a Roman Catholic scholar, denied the Waldensian and defended the Catholic origin of that translation, in two pamphlets: Die Waldenser und die vorlutherische Bibelübersetzung, Münster, 1885 (44 pages), and Die Tepler Bibelübersetzung. Eine zweite Kritik, Münster, 1886 (43 pages). The same author promises a complete history of German Catholic Bible versions. The question has been discussed in periodicals and reviews, e.g., by Kawerau in Luthardt’s "Theol. Literaturblatt,"  Leipzig, 1885 and 1886 (Nos. 32–34), by Schaff in the New York "Independent" for Oct. 8, 1885, and in the "Presbyterian Review" for April, 1887, pp. 355 sqq.; by Kolde, in the "Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen," 1887, No. I.; by Müller in the "Studien und Kritiken,"  1887, No. III.; and Bornemann, in the "Jahrb. f. Prot. Theol.,"  1888, 67–101.

The arguments for the Waldensian origin are derived from certain additions to the Codex Teplensis, and alleged departures from the text of the Vulgate. But the additions are not anti-Catholic, and are not found in the cognate Freiberger MS.; and the textual variations can not be traced to sectarian bias. The text of the Vulgate was in greater confusion in the middle ages than the text of the Itala at the time of Jerome, nor was there any authorized text of it before the Clementine recension of 1592. The only plausible argument which Dr. Keller brings out in his second publication (pp. 80 sqq.) is the fact that Emser, in his Annotations to the New Test. (1523), charges Luther with having translated the N. T. from a "Wickleffisch oder hussisch exemplar." But this refers to copies of the Latin Vulgate; and in the examples quoted by Keller, Luther does not agree with the Codex Teplensis.

The hostility of several Popes and Councils to the circulation of vernacular translations of the Bible implies the existence of such translations, and could not prevent their publication, as the numerous German editions prove. Dutch, French, and Italian versions also appeared among the earliest prints. See Stevens, Nos. 687 and 688 (p. 59 sq.). The Italian edition exhibited in 1877 at London is entitled: La Biblia en lingua Volgare (per Nicolo di Mallermi). Venetia: per Joan. Rosso Vercellese, 1487, fol. A Spanish Bible by Bonif. Ferrer was printed at Valencia, 1478 (see Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., II. 207, 5th Ed.).

The Bible is the common property and most sacred treasure of all Christian churches. The art of printing was invented in Catholic times, and its history goes hand in hand with the history of the Bible. Henry Stevens says (The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, p. 25): "The secular history of the Holy Scriptures is the sacred history of Printing. The Bible was the first book printed, and the Bible is the last book printed. Between 1450 and 1877, an interval of four centuries and a quarter, the Bible shows the progress and comparative development of the art of printing in a manner that no other single book can; and Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity."

§ 63. A Critical Estimate of Luther’s Version.

Luther’s version of the Bible is a wonderful monument of genius, learning, and piety, and may be regarded in a secondary sense as inspired. It was, from beginning to end, a labor of love and enthusiasm. While publishers and printers made fortunes, Luther never received or asked a copper for this greatest work of his life.446

We must judge it from the times. A German translation from the original languages was a work of colossal magnitude if we consider the absence of good grammars, dictionaries, and concordances, the crude state of Greek and Hebrew scholarship, and of the German language, in the sixteenth century. Luther wrote to Amsdorf, Jan. 13, 1522, that he had undertaken a task beyond his power, that he now understood why no one had attempted it before in his own name, and that he would not venture on the Old Testament without the aid of his friends.447  He felt especially how difficult it was to make Job and the Hebrew prophets speak in barbarous German.448  He jocosely remarked that Job would have become more impatient at the blunders of his translators than at the long speeches of his "miserable comforters."

As regards the text, it was in an unsettled condition. The science of textual criticism was not yet born, and the materials for it were not yet collected from the manuscripts, ancient versions, and patristic quotations. Luther had to use the first printed editions. He had no access to manuscripts, the most important of which were not even discovered or made available before the middle of the nineteenth century. Biblical geography and archaeology were in their infancy, and many names and phrases could not be understood at the time.

In view of these difficulties we need not be surprised at the large number of mistakes, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies in Luther’s version. They are most numerous in Job and the Prophets, who present, even to the advanced Hebrew scholars of our day, many unsolved problems of text and rendering. The English Version of 1611 had the great advantage of the labors of three generations of translators and revisers, and is therefore more accurate, and yet equally idiomatic.

The Original Text.

The basis for Luther’s version of the Old Testament was the Massoretic text as published by Gerson Ben Mosheh at Brescia in 1494.449 He used also the Septuagint, the Vulgate of Jerome450 (although he disliked him exceedingly on account of his monkery), the Latin translations of the Dominican Sanctes Pagnini of Lucca (1527), and of the Franciscan Sebastian Münster (1534), the "Glossa ordinaria" (a favorite exegetical vade-mecum of Walafried Strabo from the ninth century), and Nicolaus Lyra (d. 1340), the chief of mediaeval commentators, who, besides the Fathers, consulted also the Jewish rabbis.451

The basis for the New Testament was the second edition of Erasmus, published at Basel in Switzerland in 1519.452  His first edition of the Greek Testament had appeared in 1516, just one year before the Reformation. He derived the text from a few mediaeval MSS.453  The second edition, though much more correct than the first ("multo diligentius recognitum, emendatum," etc.), is disfigured by a large -number of typographical errors.454  He laid the foundation of the Textus Receptus, which was brought into its mature shape by R. Stephen, in his "royal edition" of 1550 (the basis of the English Textus Receptus), and by the Elzevirs in their editions of 1624 and 1633 (the basis of the Continental Textus Receptus), and which maintained the supremacy till Lachmann inaugurated the adoption of an older textual basis (1831).

Luther did not slavishly follow the Greek of Erasmus, and in many places conformed to the Latin Vulgate, which is based on an older text. He also omitted, even in his last edition, the famous interpolation of the heavenly witnesses in 1 John 5:7, which Erasmus inserted in his third edition (1522) against his better judgment.455

The German Rendering.

The German language was divided into as many dialects as tribes and states, and none served as a bond of literary union. Saxons and Bavarians, Hanoverians and Swabians, could scarcely understand each other. Each author wrote in the dialect of his district, Zwingli in his Schwyzerdütsch. "I have so far read no book or letter," says Luther in the preface to his version of the Pentateuch (1523), in which the German language is properly handled. Nobody seems to care sufficiently for it; and every preacher thinks he has a right to change it at pleasure, and to invent new terms." Scholars preferred to write in Latin, and when they attempted to use the mother tongue, as Reuchlin and Melanchthon did occasionally, they fell far below in ease and beauty of expression.

Luther brought harmony out of this confusion, and made the modern High German the common book language. He chose as the basis the Saxon dialect, which was used at the Saxon court and in diplomatic intercourse between the emperor and the estates, but was bureaucratic, stiff, heavy, involved, dragging, and unwieldy.456  He popularized and adapted it to theology and religion. He enriched it with the vocabulary of the German mystics, chroniclers, and poets. He gave it wings, and made it intelligible to the common people of all parts of Germany.

He adapted the words to the capacity of the Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a Silberling,457 the Greek drachma and Roman denarius into a German Groschen, the quadrans into a Heller, the Hebrew measures into Scheffel, Malter, Tonne, Centner, and the Roman centurion into a Hauptmann. He substituted even undeutsch (!) for barbarian in 1 Cor. 14:11. Still greater liberties he allowed himself in the Apocrypha, to make them more easy and pleasant reading.458  He used popular alliterative phrases as Geld und Gut, Land und Leute, Rath und That, Stecken und Stab, Dornen und Disteln, matt und müde, gäng und gäbe. He avoided foreign terms which rushed in like a flood with the revival of learning, especially in proper names (as Melanchthon for Schwarzerd, Aurifaber for Goldschmid, Oecolampadius for Hausschein, Camerarius for Kammermeister). He enriched the vocabulary with such beautiful words as holdselig, Gottseligkeit.

Erasmus Alber, a contemporary of Luther, called him the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.

Luther’s version is an idiomatic reproduction of the Bible in the very spirit of the Bible. It brings out the whole wealth, force, and beauty of the German language. It is the first German classic, as King James’s version is the first English classic. It anticipated the golden age of German literature as represented by Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller,—all of them Protestants, and more or less indebted to the Luther-Bible for their style. The best authority in Teutonic philology pronounces his language to be the foundation of the new High German dialect on account of its purity and influence, and the Protestant dialect on account of its freedom which conquered even Roman Catholic authors.459

The Protestant Spirit of Luther’s Version.

Dr. Emser, one of the most learned opponents of the Reformation, singled out in Luther’s New Testament several hundred linguistic blunders and heretical falsifications.460  Many of them were silently corrected in later editions. He published, by order of Duke George of Saxony, a new translation (1527) for the purpose of correcting the errors of "Luther and other heretics."461

The charge that Luther adapted the translation to his theological opinions has become traditional in the Roman Church, and is repeated again and again by her controversialists and historians.462

The same objection has been raised against the Authorized English Version.463

In both cases, the charge has some foundation, but no more than the counter-charge which may be brought against Roman Catholic Versions.

The most important example of dogmatic influence in Luther’s version is the famous interpolation of the word alone in Rom. 3:28 (allein durch den Glauben), by which he intended to emphasize his solifidian doctrine of justification, on the plea that the German idiom required the insertion for the sake of clearness.464  But he thereby brought Paul into direct verbal conflict with James, who says (James 2:24), "by works a man is justified, and not only by faith" ("nicht durch den Glauben allein"). It is well known that Luther deemed it impossible to harmonize the two apostles in this article, and characterized the Epistle of James as an "epistle of straw," because it had no evangelical character ("keine evangelische Art").

He therefore insisted on this insertion in spite of all outcry against it. His defense is very characteristic. "If your papist," he says,465 "makes much useless fuss about the word sola, allein, tell him at once: Doctor Martin Luther will have it so, and says: Papist and donkey are one thing; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. For we do not want to be pupils and followers of the Papists, but their masters and judges." Then he goes on in the style of foolish boasting against the Papists, imitating the language of St. Paul in dealing with his Judaizing opponents (2 Cor. 11:22 sqq.): "Are they doctors? so am I. Are they learned? so am I. Are they preachers? so am I. Are they theologians? so am I. Are they disputators? so am I. Are they philosophers? so am I. Are they the writers of books? so am I. And I shall further boast: I can expound Psalms and Prophets; which they can not. I can translate; which they can not .... Therefore the word allein shall remain in my New Testament, and though all pope-donkeys (Papstesel) should get furious and foolish, they shall not turn it out."466

The Protestant and anti-Romish character of Luther’s New Testament is undeniable in his prefaces, his discrimination between chief books and less important books, his change of the traditional order, and his unfavorable judgments on James, Hebrews, and Revelation.467  It is still more apparent in his marginal notes, especially on the Pauline Epistles, where he emphasizes throughout the difference between the law and the gospel, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone; and on the Apocalypse, where he finds the papacy in the beast from the abyss (Rev. 13), and in the Babylonian harlot (Rev. 17).468  The anti-papal explanation of the Apocalypse became for a long time almost traditional in Protestant commentaries.

On the other hand, the Roman Catholic translators used the same liberty of marginal annotations and pictorial illustrations in favor of the doctrines and usages of their own church. Emser’s New Testament is full of anti-Lutheran glosses. In Rom. 3:28, he protests on the margin against Luther’s allein, and says, "Paul by the words ’without works of the law’ does not mean that man is saved by faith alone, without good works, but only without works of the law, that is, external circumcision and other Jewish ceremonies." He therefore confines the "law" here to the ritual law, and "works" to Jewish works; while, according to the best modern commentators, Paul means the whole law, moral as well as ceremonial, and all works commanded by the law. And yet even in the same chapter and throughout the whole Epistle to the Romans, Emser copies verbatim Luther’s version for whole verses and sections; and where he departs from his language, it is generally for the worse.

The same may be said of the other two German Catholic Bibles of the age of the Reformation. They follow Luther’s language very closely within the limits of the Vulgate, and yet abuse him in the notes. Dr. Dietenberger adds his comments in smaller type after the chapters, and agrees with Emser’s interpretation of Rom. 3:28.469  Dr. Eck’s German Bible has few notes, but a strongly anti-Protestant preface.470

To be just, we must recognize the sectarian imperfections of Bible versions, arising partly from defective knowledge, partly from ingrained prejudices. A translation is an interpretation. Absolute reproduction is impossible in any work.471  A Jew will give a version of the Old Testament differing from that of a Christian, because they look upon it in a different light,—the one with his face turned backward, the other with his face turned forward. A Jew cannot understand the Old Testament till he becomes a Christian, and sees in it a prophecy and type of Christianity. No synagogue would use a Christian version, nor any church a Jewish version. So also the New Testament is rendered differently by scholars of the Greek, Latin, and Protestant churches. And even where they agree in words, there is a difference in the pervading spirit. They move, as it were, in a different atmosphere. A Roman Catholic version must be closely conformed to the Latin Vulgate, which the Council of Trent puts on an equal footing with the original text.472  A Protestant version is bound only by the original text, and breathes an air of freedom from traditional restraint. The Roman Church will never use Luther’s Version or King James’s Version, and could not do so without endangering her creed; nor will German Protestants use Emser’s and Eck’s Versions, or English Protestants the Douay Version. The Romanist must become evangelical before he can fully apprehend the free spirit of the gospel as revealed in the New Testament.

There is, however, a gradual progress in translation, which goes hand in hand with the progress of the understanding of the Bible. Jerome’s Vulgate is an advance upon the Itala, both in accuracy and Latinity; the Protestant Versions of the sixteenth century are an advance upon the Vulgate, in spirit and in idiomatic reproduction; the revisions of the nineteenth century are an advance upon the versions of the sixteenth, in philological and historical accuracy and consistency. A future generation will make a still nearer approach to the original text in its purity and integrity. If the Holy Spirit of God shall raise the Church to a higher plane of faith and love, and melt the antagonisms of human creeds into the one creed of Christ, then, and not before then, may we expect perfect versions of the oracles of God.

NOTES.

the official revision of the luther-bible, and the anglo-

american revision of the authorized english bible.

An official revision of Luther’s version was inaugurated, after long previous agitation and discussion, by the "Eisenach German Evangelical Church Conference," in 1863, and published under the title: Die Bibel oder die ganze Heilige Schrift des Alten und Neuen Testaments nach der deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers. Halle (Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses), 1883. It is called the Probebibel. The revised New Testament had been published several years before, and is printed by Dr. O. von Gebhardt together with the Greek text, in his Novum Testamentum Graece et Germanice, Leipzig, 1881.

The revision was prepared with extraordinary care, but in an ultra-conservative spirit, by a number of distinguished biblical scholars appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities of the German governments, eleven for the New Testament (Nitzsch, Twesten, Beyschlag, Riehm, Ahlfeld, Brückner, Meyer, Niemann, Fronmüller, Schröder, Köstlin), and over twenty for the Old Testament, including some who had also served in the New Testament company (Tholuck, Schlottmann, Riehm, Dillmann, Kleinert, Delitzsch, Bertheau, Düsterdieck, Kamphausen, Baur of Leipzig, Ahlfeld, Thenius, Kübel, Kapff, Schröder, Diestel, Grimm, Kühn, Hoffmann, Clausen, Grill). Dorner, Mönckeberg, and Karl Frommann took a very active part as counsellors and promoters, the last (an eminent Germanist and Luther-scholar, but with strong archaic tastes) in the linguistic portion.

The work was very severely criticised by opposite schools for changing too much or too little, and was recommitted by the Eisenach Conference of 1886 for final action. The history of this revision is told in the preface and Introduction to the Probebibel, and in Grimm’s Geschichte der luth. Bibelübersetzung, Jena, 1884, pp. 48–76.

The Anglo-American revision of the Authorized English Version of 1611 was set in motion by the Convocation of Canterbury, and carried out in fifteen years, between 1870 and 1885, by two committees,—one in England and one in the United States (each divided into two companies, -one for the Old Testament, one for the New, and each consisting of scholars of various Protestant denominations). Dr. Dorner, on his visit to America in 1873, desired to bring about a regular co-operation of the two revision movements, but it was found impracticable, and confined to private correspondence.

The two revisions are similar in spirit and aim; and as far as they run parallel, they agree in most of the improvements. Both aim to replace the old version in public and private use; but both depend for ultimate success on the verdict of the churches for which they were prepared. They passed through the same purgatory of hostile criticism both from conservative and progressive quarters. They mark a great progress of biblical scholarship, and the immense labor bestowed upon them can never be lost. The difference of the two arises from the difference of the two originals on which they are based, and its relation to the community.

The authorized German and English versions are equally idiomatic, classical, and popular; but the German is personal, and inseparable from the overawing influence of Luther, which forbids radical changes. The English is impersonal, and embodies the labors of three generations of biblical scholars from Tyndale to the forty-seven revisers of King James,—a circumstance which is favorable to new improvements in the same line. In Germany, where theology is cultivated as a science for a class, the interest in revision is confined to scholars; and German scholars, however independent and bold in theory, are very conservative and timid in practical questions. In England and America, where theology moves in close contact with the life of the churches, revision challenges the attention of the laity which claims the fruits of theological progress.

Hence the Anglo-American revision is much more thorough and complete. It embodies the results of the latest critical and exegetical learning. It involves a reconstruction of the original text, which the German Revision leaves almost untouched, as if all the pains-taking labors of critics since the days of Bengel and Griesbach down to Lachmann and Tischendorf (not to speak of the equally important labors of English scholars from Mill and Bentley to Westcott and Hort) had been in vain.

As to translation, the English Revision removes not only misleading errors, but corrects the far more numerous inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the minor details of grammar and vocabulary; while the German Revision is confined to the correction of acknowledged mistranslations. The German Revision of the New Testament numbers only about two hundred changes, the Anglo-American thirty-six thousand. The revised German New Testament is widely circulated; but of the provisional Probebibel, which embraces both Testaments, only five thousand copies were printed and sold by the Canstein Bibelanstalt at Halle (as I learned there from Dr. Kramer, July, 1886). Of the revised English New Testament, a million copies were ordered from the Oxford University Press before publication, and three million copies were sold in less than a year (1881). The text was telegraphed from New York to Chicago in advance of the arrival of the book. Over thirty reprints appeared in the United States. The Revised Old Testament excited less interest, but tens of thousands of copies were sold on the day of publication (1885), and several American editions were issued. The Bible, after all, is the most popular book In the world, and constantly increasing in power and influence, especially with the English-speaking race. (For particulars on the English Revision, see Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version, New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 404 sqq., and the extensive Revision literature, pp. 371 sqq.)

§ 64. Melanchthon’s Theology.

See Literature in § 38, pp. 182 sq. The 21st vol. of the "Corpus Reformatorum" (1106 fol. pages) is devoted to the various editions of Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici, and gives bibliographical lists (fol. 59 sqq.; 561 sqq.), and also an earlier outline from an unpublished MS. Comp. Carl Schmidt, Phil. Mel., pp. 64–75; and on Melanchthon’s doctrinal changes, Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1. 261 sqq.

While Luther translated the New Testament on the Wartburg, Melanchthon prepared the first system of Protestant theology at Wittenberg. Both drew from the same fountain, and labored for the same end, but in different ways. Luther built up the Reformation among the people in the German tongue; Melanchthon gave it methodical shape for scholars by his Latin writings. The former worked in the quarries, and cut the rough blocks of granite; the latter constructed the blocks into a habitable building. Luther expressed a modest self-estimate, and a high estimate of his friend, when he said that his superiority was more "in the rhetorical way," while Melanchthon was "a better logician and reasoner."

Melanchthon finished his "Theological Common-Places or Ground-Thoughts (Loci Communes or Loci Theologici), in April, 1521, and sent the proof-sheets to Luther on the Wartburg. They appeared for the first time before the Close of that year.473

This book marks an epoch in the history of theology. It grew out of exegetical lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, the Magna Charta of the evangelical system. It is an exposition of the leading doctrines of sin and grace, repentance and salvation. It is clear, fresh, thoroughly biblical, and practical. Its main object is to show that man cannot be saved by works of the law or by his own merits, but only by the free grace of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It presents the living soul of divinity, in striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasticism with its endless theses, antitheses, definitions, divisions, and subdivisions.

The first edition was written in the interest of practical Christianity rather than scientific theology. It is meagre in the range of topics, and defective in execution. It is confined to anthropology and soteriology, and barely mentions the metaphysical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as transcendent mysteries to be adored rather than curiously discussed. It has a polemical hearing against the Romanists, in view of the recent condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. It also contains some crude and extreme opinions which the author afterwards abandoned. Altogether in its first shape it was an unripe production, though most remarkable if we consider the youth of the author, who was then only twenty-four years of age.

Melanchthon shared at first Luther’s antipathy to scholastic theology; but he learned to distinguish between pure and legitimate scholasticism and a barren formalism, as also between the Aristotelian philosophy itself and the skeleton of it which was worshiped as an idol in the universities at that time. He knew especially the value of Aristotle’s ethics, wrote a commentary on the same (1529), and made important original contributions to the science of Christian ethics in his Philosophiae Moralis Epitome (1535).474

Under his improving hand, the Loci assumed in subsequent editions the proportions of a full, mature, and well-proportioned system, stated in calm, clear, dignified language, freed from polemics against the Sorbonne and contemptuous flings at the schoolmen and Fathers. He embraced in twenty-four chapters all the usual topics from God and the creation to the resurrection of the body, with a concluding chapter on Christian liberty. He approached the scholastic method, and even ventured, in opposition to the Anti-Trinitarians, on a new speculative proof of the Holy Trinity from psychological analogies. He never forsakes the scriptural basis, but occasionally quotes also the Fathers to show their supposed or real agreement with evangelical doctrines.

Melanchthon’s theology, like that of Luther, grew from step to step in the heat of controversy. Calvin’s Institutes came finished from his brain, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter.

The Loci prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession (1530), in which Melanchthon gave to the leading doctrines official shape and symbolical authority for the Lutheran Church. But he did not stop there, and passed through several changes, which we must anticipate in order to form a proper estimate of that work.

The editions of his theological manual are divided into three classes: 1, those from 1521 to 1535; 2, those from 1535 to 1544; 3, those from 1544 to 1559. The edition of 1535 (dedicated to King Henry VIII. of England, and translated into German by Justus Jonas) was a thorough revision. This and the editions which followed embody, besides additions in matter and improvements in style, important modifications of his views on predestination and free will, on the real presence, and on justification by faith. He gave up necessitarianism for synergism, the corporeal presence in the eucharist for a spiritual real presence, and solifidianism for the necessity of good works. In the first and third article he made an approach to the Roman-Catholic system, in the second to Calvinism.

The changes were the result of his continued study of the Bible and the Fathers, and his personal conferences with Roman and Reformed divines at Augsburg and in the colloquies of Frankfort, Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. He calls them elucidations of obscurities, moderations of extreme views, and sober second thoughts.475

1. He denied at first, with Luther and Augustin, all freedom of the human will in spiritual things.476  He even held the Stoic doctrine of the necessary occurrence of all actions, bad as well as good, including the adultery of David and the treason of Judas as well as the conversion of Paul.477

But on closer examination, and partly under the influence of Erasmus, he abandoned this stoic fatalism as a dangerous error, inconsistent with Christianity and morality. He taught instead a co-operation of the divine and human will in the work of conversion; thus anticipating Arminianism, and approaching the older semi-Pelagianism, but giving the initiative to divine grace. "God," he said in 1535, "is not the cause of sin, and does not will sin; but the will of the Devil and the will of man are the causes of sin." Human nature is radically, but not absolutely and hopelessly, corrupt; it can not without the aid of the Holy Spirit produce spiritual affections such as the fear and love of God, and true obedience; but it can accept or reject divine grace. God precedes, calls, moves, supports us; but we must follow, and not resist. Three causes concur in the conversion,—the word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the will of man. Melanchthon quotes from the Greek Fathers who lay great stress on human freedom, and he accepts Chrysostom’s sentence: "God draws the willing."

He intimated this synergistic view in the eighteenth article of the altered Augsburg Confession, and in the German edition of the Apology of the Confession. But he continued to deny the meritoriousness of good works; and in the colloquy of Worms, 1557, he declined to condemn the doctrine of the slavery of the human will, because Luther had adhered to it to the end. He was willing to tolerate it as a theological opinion, although he himself had rejected it.

2. As to the Lord’s Supper, he first accepted Luther’s view under the impression that it was supported by the ancient Church. But in this he was shaken by Oecolampadius, who proved (1530) that the Fathers held different opinions, and that Augustin did not teach an oral manducation. After 1534 he virtually gave up for himself, though he would not condemn and exclude, the conception of a corporeal presence and oral manducation of the body and blood of Christ; and laid the main stress on the spiritual, yet real presence and communion with Christ.

He changed the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession in 1540, and made it acceptable to Reformed divines by omitting the anti-Zwinglian clause. But he never accepted the Zwinglian theory of a mere commemoration. His later eucharistic theory closely approached that of Calvin; while on the subject of predestination and free will he differed from him. Calvin, who had written a preface to the French translation of the Loci Theologici, expressed, in private letters, his surprise that so great a theologian could reject the Scripture doctrine of eternal predestination; yet they maintained an intimate friendship to the end, and proved that theological differences need not prevent religious harmony and fraternal fellowship.

3. Melanchthon never surrendered the doctrine of justification by faith; but he laid in his later years, in opposition to antinomian excesses, greater stress on the necessity of good works of faith, not indeed as a condition of salvation and in a sense of acquiring merit, but as an indispensable proof of the duty of obedience to the divine will.

These doctrinal changes gave rise to bitter controversies after Luther’s death, and were ultimately rejected in the Formula of Concord (1577), but revived again at a later period. Luther himself never adopted and never openly opposed them.

The Loci of Melanchthon met from the start with extraordinary favor. Edition after edition appeared in Wittenberg during the author’s lifetime, the last from his own hand in the year 1559, besides a number of contemporaneous reprints at Basel, Hagenau, Strassburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Halle, and many editions after his death.

Luther had an extravagant opinion of them, and even declared them worthy of a place in the Canon.478  He thought that his translation of the Bible, and Melanchthon’s Loci, were the best outfit of a theologian, and almost superseded all other books.479

The Loci became the text-book of Lutheran theology in the universities, and took the place of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Strigel and Chemnitz wrote commentaries on them. Leonhard Hutter likewise followed them, till he published a more orthodox compend (1610) which threw them into the shade and even out of use during the seventeenth century.

The theological manual of Melanchthon proved a great help to the Reformation. The Romanists felt its power. Emser called it a new Koran and a pest. In opposition to them, he and Eck wrote Loci Catholici.480

Melanchthon’s Loci are the ablest theological work of the Lutheran Church in the sixteenth century. Calvin’s Institutes (1536) equal them in freshness and fervor, and surpass them in completeness, logical order, philosophical grasp, and classical finish.

It is remarkable that the first and greatest dogmatic systems of the Reformation proceeded from these two lay-theologians who were never ordained by human hands, but received the unction from on high.481  So the twelve apostles were not baptized by Christ with water, but with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

§ 65. Protestant Radicalism. Disturbances at Erfurt.

I. Letters of Luther from May, 1521, to March, 1522, to Melanchthon, Link, Lange, Spalatin, etc., in De Wette, vol. II.

II. F. W. Kampschulte: Die Universität Erfurt in ihrem Verh. zu dem Humanismus und der Reformation. Trier, 1858. Second part, chs. III. and IV. pp. 106 sqq.

III. Biographies of Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, by Füsslin (1776), Jäger (Stuttgart, 1856), Erbkam (in Herzogii, VII. 523 sqq.).

IV. Gieseler, IV. 61–65 (Am. ed.). Marheineke, chs. X. and XI. (I. 303 sqq.). Merle D’AuB., bk. IX. chs. 6–8. Köstlin, bk. IV. chs. 3 and 4 (I. 494 sqq.). Ranke, II. 7–26. Janssen, II. 204–227.

While Luther and Melanchthon laid a solid foundation for an evangelical church and evangelical theology, their work was endangered by the destructive zeal of friends who turned the reformation into a revolution. The best thing may be undone by being overdone. Freedom is a two-edged sword, and liable to the worst abuse as well as to the best use. Tares will grow up in every wheat-field, and they sometimes choke the wheat. But the work of destruction was overruled for the consolidation of the Reformation. Old rotten buildings had to be broken down before a new one could be constructed.

The Reformation during its first five years was a battle of words, not of deeds. It scattered the seeds of new institutions all over Germany, but the old forms and usages still remained. The new wine had not yet burst the old skin bottles. The Protestant soul dwelt in the Catholic body. The apostles after the day of Pentecost continued to visit the temple and the synagogue, and to observe circumcision, the sabbath, and other customs of the fathers, hoping for the conversion of all Israel, until they were cast out by the Jewish hierarchy. So the Protestants remained in external communion with the mother Church, attending Latin mass, bowing before the transubstantiated elements on the altar, praying the Ave Maria, worshiping saints, pictures, and crucifixes, making pilgrimages to holy shrines, observing the festivals of the Roman calendar, and conforming to the seven sacraments which accompanied them at every step of life from the cradle to the grave. The bishops were still in charge of their dioceses, and unmarried priests and deacons performed all the ecclesiastical functions. The convents were still occupied by monks and nuns, who went through their daily devotions and ascetic exercises. The outside looked just as before, while the inside had undergone a radical change.

This was the case even in Saxony and at Wittenberg, the nursery of the new state of things. Luther himself did not at first contemplate any outward change. He labored and hoped for a reformation of faith and doctrine within the Catholic Church, under the lead of the bishops, without a division, but he was now cast out by the highest authorities, and came gradually to see that he must build a new structure on the new foundation which he h ad laid by his writings and by the translation of the New Testament.

The negative part of these changes, especially the abolition of the mass and of monasticism, was made by advanced radicals among his disciples, who had more zeal than discretion, and mistook liberty for license.

While Luther was confined on the Wartburg, his followers were like children out of school, like soldiers without a captain. Some of them thought that he had stopped half way, and that they must complete what he had begun. They took the work of destruction and reconstruction into their own inexperienced and unskillful hands. Order gave way to confusion, and the Reformation was threatened with disastrous failure.

The first disturbances broke out at Erfurt in June, 1521, shortly after Luther’s triumphant passage through the town on his way to Worms. Two young priests were excommunicated for taking part in the enthusiastic demonstrations. This created the greatest indignation. Twelve hundred students, workmen, and ruffians attacked and demolished in a few days sixty houses of the priests, who escaped violence only by flight.482

The magistrate looked quietly on, as if in league with the insurrection. Similar scenes of violence were repeated during the summer. The monks under the lead of the Augustinians, forgetting their vows, left the convents, laid aside the monastic dress, and took up their abode among the people to work for a living, or to become a burden to others, or to preach the new faith.

Luther saw in these proceedings the work of Satan, who was bringing shame and reproach on the gospel.483  He feared that many left the cloister for the same reason for which they had entered, namely, from love of the belly and carnal freedom.484

During these troubles Crotus, the enthusiastic admirer of Luther, resigned the rectorship of the university, left Erfurt, and afterwards returned to the mother Church. The Peasants’ War of 1525 was another blow. Eobanus, the Latin poet who had greeted Luther on his entry, accepted a call to Nürnberg. The greatest celebrities left the city, or were disheartened, and died in poverty.

From this time dates the decay of the university, once the flourishing seat of humanism and patriotic aspirations. It never recovered its former prosperity.

§ 66. The Revolution at Wittenberg. Carlstadt and the New Prophets.

See Lit. in § 65.

In Wittenberg the same spirit of violence broke out under the lead of Luther’s older colleague, Andreas Carlstadt, known to us from his ill success at the Leipzig disputation. He was a man of considerable originality, learning, eloquence, zeal, and courage, but eccentric, radical, injudicious, ill-balanced, restless, and ambitious for leadership.

He taught at first the theology of mediaeval scholasticism, but became under Luther’s influence a strict Augustinian, and utterly denied the liberty of the human will.

He wrote the first critical work on the Canon of the Scriptures, and anticipated the biblical criticism of modern times. He weighed the historic evidence, discriminated between three orders of books as of first, second, and third dignity, putting the Hagiographa of the Old Testament and the seven Antilegomena of the New in the third order, and expressed doubts on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He based his objections to the Antilegomena, not on dogmatic grounds, as Luther, but on the want of historical testimony; his opposition to the traditional Canon was itself traditional; he put ante-Nicene against post-Nicene tradition. This book on the Canon, however, was crude and premature, and passed out of sight.485

He invented some curious and untenable interpretations of Scripture, e.g., of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper. He referred the word "this," not to the bread, but to the body of Christ, so as to mean: "I am now ready to offer this (body) as a sacrifice in death." He did not, however, publish this view till 1524, and afterwards made common cause with Zwingli.

Carlstadt preached and wrote, during Luther’s absence, against celibacy, monastic vows, and the mass. At Christmas, 1521, he omitted in the service the most objectionable parts of the Canon of the mass, and the elevation of the host, and distributed both wine and bread to a large congregation. He announced at the same time that he would lay aside the priestly dress and other ceremonies. Two days afterwards he was engaged to the daughter of a poor nobleman in the presence of distinguished professors of the university, and on Jan. 20, 1522, he was married. He gave improper notoriety to this act by inviting the whole university and the magistrate, and by publishing a book in justification of it.

He was not, however, the first priest who openly burst the chains of celibacy. Bartholomäus Bernhardi of Feldkirchen, a Wittenberg licentiate and newly elected Probst at Kemberg, and two other priests of less reputable character, had preceded him in 1521. Justus Jonas followed the example, and took a wife Feb. 10, 1522, to get rid of temptations to impurity (1 Cor. 7:12). Luther approved of these marriages, but did not intend at that time to follow the example.

Carlstadt went further, and maintained that no priest without wife and children should receive an appointment (so he explained "must" in 1 Tim. 3:2); that it was sin to commune without the cup; and that the monastic vow of celibacy was not binding, at least not before the sixtieth year of age, chastity being a free gift of God, and not at man’s disposal. He introduced a new legalism instead of the old, in violation of the principle of evangelical liberty and charity.

He also denounced pictures and images as dumb idols, which were plainly forbidden in the second commandment, and should be burnt rather than tolerated in the house of God. He induced the town council to remove them from the parish church; but the populace anticipated the orderly removal, tore them down, hewed them to pieces, and burnt them. He assailed the fasts, and enjoined the people to eat meat and eggs on fast-days. He repudiated all titles and dignities, since Christ alone was our Master (Matt. 23:8). He expressed contempt for theology and all human learning, because God had revealed the truth unto babes (Matt. 11:25), and advised the students to take to agriculture, and earn their bread in the sweat of their face (Gen. 3:19). He cast away his priestly and academic robes, put on a plain citizen’s dress, afterwards a peasant’s coat, and had himself called brother Andrew. He ran close to the border of communism. He also opposed the baptism of infants. He lost himself in the clouds of a confused mysticism and spiritualism, and appealed, like the Zwickau Prophets, to immediate inspirations.

In the beginning of November, 1521, thirty of the forty monks left the Augustinian convent of Wittenberg in a rather disorderly manner. One wished to engage in cabinet making, and to marry. The Augustinian monks held a congress at Wittenberg in January, 1522, and unanimously resolved, in accordance with Luther’s advice, to give liberty of leaving or remaining in the convent, but required in either case a life of active usefulness by mental or physical labor.

The most noted of these ex-monks was Gabriel Zwilling or Didymus, who preached in the parish church during Luther’s absence, and was esteemed by some as a second Luther. He fiercely attacked the mass, the adoration of the sacrament, and the whole system of monasticism as dangerous to salvation.

About Christmas, 1521, the revolutionary movement was reinforced by two fanatics from Zwickau, Nicolaus Storch, a weaver, and Marcus Thomä Stübner.486  The latter had previously studied with Melanchthon, and was hospitably entertained by him. A few weeks afterwards Thomas Münzer, a millennarian enthusiast and eloquent demagogue, who figures prominently in the Peasants’ War, appeared in Wittenberg for a short time. He had stirred up a religious excitement among the weavers of Zwickau in Saxony on the Bohemian frontier, perhaps in some connection with the Hussites or Bohemian Brethren, and organized the forces of a new dispensation by electing twelve apostles and seventy-two disciples. But the magistrate interfered, and the leaders had to leave.

These Zwickau Prophets, as they were called, agreed with Carlstadt in combining an inward mysticism with practical radicalism. They boasted of visions, dreams, and direct communications with God and the Angel Gabriel, disparaged the written word and regular ministry, rejected infant baptism, and predicted the overthrow of the existing order of things, and the near approach of a democratic millennium.

We may compare Carlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets with the Fifth Monarchy Men in the period of the English Commonwealth, who were likewise millennarian enthusiasts, and attempted, in opposition to Cromwell, to set up the "Kingdom of Jesus" or the fifth monarchy of Daniel.

Wittenberg was in a very critical condition. The magistrate was discordant and helpless. Amsdorf kept aloof. Melanchthon was embarrassed, and too modest and timid for leadership. He had no confidence in visions and dreams, but could not satisfactorily answer the objections to infant baptism, which the prophets declared useless because a foreign faith of parents or sponsors could not save the child. Luther got over this difficulty by assuming that the Holy Spirit wrought faith in the child.

The Elector was requested to interfere; but he dared not, as a layman, decide theological and ecclesiastical questions. He preferred to let things take their natural course, and trusted in the overruling providence of God. He believed in Gamaliel’s counsel, which is good enough in the preparatory and experimental stages of a new movement. His strength lay in a wise, cautious, peaceful diplomacy. But at this time valor was the better part of discretion.

The only man who could check the wild spirit of revolution, and save the ship of the Reformation, was Luther.

§ 67. Luther returns to Wittenberg.

Walch, XV. 2374–2403. De Wette, II. 137 sqq.

Luther was informed of all these disturbances. He saw the necessity of some changes, but regretted the violence with which they had been made before public opinion was prepared, and he feared a re-action which radicalism is always likely to produce. The Latin mass as a sacrifice, with the adoration of the host, the monastic institution, the worship of saints, images and relics, processions and pilgrimages, and a large number of superstitious ceremonies, were incompatible with Protestant doctrines. Worship had sooner or later to be conducted in the vernacular tongue; the sacrifice of the mass must give way to a commemorative communion; the cup must be restored to the laity, and the right of marriage to the clergy. He acquiesced in these changes. But about clerical vestments, crucifixes, and external ceremonies, he was indifferent; nor did he object to the use of pictures, provided they were not made objects of worship. In such matters he asserted the right of Christian freedom, against coercion for or against them. As to the pretended revelations of the new prophets, he despised them, and maintained that an inspired prophet must either be ordinarily called by church authority, or prove his divine commission by miracles.

He first went to Wittenberg in disguise, and spent three days there in December, 1621. He stayed under the roof of Amsdorf, and dared not show himself in the convent or on the street.

When the disturbances increased, he felt it his duty to reappear openly on the arena of conflict. He saw from the Wartburg his own house burning, and hastened to extinguish the flames. The Elector feared for his safety, as the Edict of Worms was still in force, and the Diet of Nürnberg was approaching. He ordered him to remain in his concealment. Luther was all his life an advocate of strict submission to the civil magistrates in their own proper sphere; but on this occasion be set aside the considerations of prudence, and obeyed the higher law of God and his conscience. His reply to the Elector (whom be never met personally) bears noble testimony to his sublime faith in God’s all-ruling providence. It is dated Ash Wednesday (March 5, 1522), from Borne, south of Leipzig. He wrote in substance as follows:487 —

"Grace and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and my most humble service.

"Most illustrious, high-born Elector, most gracious Lord!  I received the letter and warning of your Electoral Grace on Friday evening [Feb. 26], before my departure [March 1]. That your Electoral Grace is moved by the best intention, needs no assurance from me. I also mean well, but this is of no account .... If I were not certain that we have the pure gospel on our side, I would despair .... Your Grace knows, if not, I make known to you, that I have the gospel, not from men, but from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ .... I write this to apprise you that I am on my way to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than that of the Elector; and I have no intention of asking your Grace’s support. Nay, I believe that I can offer your Highness better protection than your Highness can offer me. Did I think that I had to trust in the Elector, I should not come at all. The sword is powerless here. God alone must act without man’s interference. He who has most faith will be the most powerful protector. As I feel your Grace’s faith to be still weak, I can by no means recognize in you the man who is to protect and save me. Your Electoral Grace asks me, what you are to do under these circumstances?  I answer, with all submission, Do nothing at all, but trust in God alone .... If your Grace had faith, you would behold the glory of God; but as you do not yet believe, you have not seen it. Let us love and glorify God forever. Amen."

Being asked by the Elector to give his reasons for a return, he assigned, in a letter of March 7, from Wittenberg,488  three reasons: the urgent written request of the church at Wittenberg; the confusion in his flock; and his desire to prevent an imminent outbreak. "My second reason," he wrote, "is that during my absence Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I can not repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word. My conscience would not allow me to delay longer; I was bound to disregard, not only your Highness’s disfavor, but the whole world’s wrath. It is my flock, the flock intrusted to me by God; they are my children in Christ. I could not hesitate a moment. I am bound to suffer death for them, and will cheerfully with God’s grace lay down my life for them, as Christ commands (John 10:12)."

Luther rode without fear through the territory of his violent enemy, Duke George of Saxony, who was then urging the Elector to severe measures against him and the Wittenbergers. He informed the Elector that he would pass through Leipzig, as he once went to Worms, though it should rain Duke Georges for nine days in succession, each fiercer than the original in Dresden.

He safely arrived in Wittenberg on Thursday evening, the 6th of March, full of faith and hope, and ready for a fight against his false friends.

On this journey he had on the 3d or 4th of March an interesting interview with two Swiss students, Kessler and Spengler, in the tavern of the Black Bear at Jena. We have an account of it from one of them, John Kessler of St. Gallen, who afterwards became a reformer of that city.489  It contrasts very favorably with his subsequent dealings with the Swiss, especially with Zwingli, which were clouded by prejudice, and embittered by intolerance. The episode was purely private, and had no influence upon the course of events; but it reveals a characteristic trait in this mighty man, who even in critical moments of intense earnestness did not lose his playful humor. We find the same combination of apparently opposite qualities when at Coburg he was watching the affairs of the Diet at Augsburg, and wrote a childlike letter to his little Hans. Such harmless humor is like the light of the sun breaking through dark clouds.

The two Swiss, who had studied at Basel, were attracted by the fame of Luther and Melanchthon, and traveled on foot to Wittenberg to hear them. They arrived at Jena after a terrible thunderstorm, fatigued and soaked through, and humbly sat down on a bench near the door of the guest-chamber, when they saw a Knight seated at a table, sword in hand, and the Hebrew Psalter before him. Luther recognized the Swiss by their dialect, kindly invited them to sit down at his side, and offered them a drink. He inquired whether Erasmus was still living in Basel, what he was doing, and what the people in Switzerland thought of Martin Luther. The students replied that some lauded him to the skies as a great reformer; others, especially the priests, denounced him as an intolerable heretic. During the conversation two traders came in; one took from his pocket Luther’s sermons on the Gospels and Epistles, and remarked that the writer must be either an angel from heaven or a devil from hell. At dinner Luther gave them a rare feast of reason and flow of soul. The astonished students suspected that the mysterious Knight was Ulrich von Hutten, when Luther, turning to the host, smilingly remarked, "Behold, I have become a nobleman over the night: these Swiss think that I am Hutten; you take me for Luther. The next thing will be that I am Marcolfus." He gave his young friends good advice to study the biblical languages with Melanchthon, paid their bill, offered them first a glass of beer, but substituted for it a glass of wine, since the Swiss were not used to beer, and with a shake of the hand he begged them to remember him to Doctor Jerome Schurf, their countryman, at Wittenberg. When they wished to know the name of the sender of the salutation, he replied, "Simply tell him that he who is coming sends greeting, and he will understand it."

When the students a few days afterwards arrived at Wittenberg, and called on Dr. Schurf to deliver the message from "him who is coming," they were agreeably surprised to find Luther there with Melanchthon, Jonas, and Amsdorf. Luther greeted them heartily, and introduced them to Melanchthon, of whom he had spoken at Jena.

The same student has left us a description of Luther’s appearance at that time. He was no more the meager, emaciated monk as at the Leipzig disputation three years previously,490  but, as Kessler says, "somewhat stout, yet upright, bending backwards rather than stooping, with a face upturned to heaven, with deep dark eyes and eyebrows, twinkling and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly look steadily at them."491  These deep, dark eyes, full of strange fire, had struck Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and Cardinal Aleander at Worms, as the eyes of a demon. They made the same impression on John Dantiscus, afterwards bishop of Culm and Ermeland, who on his return from Spain to Poland in 1523 saw Luther in Wittenberg; he reported that his "eyes were sharp, and had a certain terrible coruscation of lightning such as was seen now and then in demoniacs," and adds that, "his features were like his books," and "his speech violent and full of scorn." But friends judged differently. Another student, Albert Burrer, who saw him after his return from the Wartburg, praises his mild, kindly countenance, his pleasant sonorous voice, his charming address, the piety of his words and acts, the power of his eloquence which moved every hearer not made of stone, and created a desire to hear him again and again.492

§ 68. Luther restores Order in Wittenberg.—The End of Carlstadt.

I. Eight Sermons of Luther preached from Sunday, March 7 (Invocavit) to the next Sunday (Reminiscere), after his return to Wittenberg. The oldest editions, slightly varying in length, appeared 1523. Altenb. ed., II. 99 sqq.; Walch, XV. 2423 sqq.: XX. 1–101; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 202–285 (both recensions). Luther’s Letters to Spalatin, the Elector, and others from March, 1522, in De Wette, II. 144 sqq.

II. Of modern historians, Marheineke, Merle D’Aubigné, Ranke, Hagenbach, and Köstlin (I. 537–549) may be compared.

On the Sunday after his arrival, Luther ascended his old pulpit, and re-appeared before his congregation of citizens and students. Wittenberg was a small place; but what he said and did there, and what Calvin did afterwards in Geneva, had the significance of a world-historical fact, more influential at that time than an encyclical from Rome.

Protestantism had reached a very critical juncture. Luther or Carlstadt, reformation or revolution, the written Word or illusive inspirations, order or confusion: that was the question. Luther was in the highest and best mood, full of faith in his cause, and also full of charity for his opponents, strong in matter, sweet in manner, and completely successful. He never showed such moderation and forbearance before or after.

He preached eight sermons for eight days in succession, and carried the audience with him. They are models of effective popular eloquence, and among the best he ever preached. He handled the subject from the stand-point of a pastor, with fine tact and practical wisdom. He kept aloof from coarse personalities which disfigure so many of his polemical writings. Not one unkind word, not one unpleasant allusion, escaped his lips. In plain, clear, strong, scriptural language, he refuted the errors without naming the errorists. The positive statement of the truth in love is the best refutation of error.493

The ruling ideas of these eight discourses are: Christian freedom and Christian charity; freedom from the tyranny of radicalism which would force the conscience against forms, as the tyranny of popery forces the conscience in the opposite direction; charity towards the weak, who must be trained like children, and tenderly dealt with, lest they stumble and fall. Faith is worthless without charity. No man has a right to compel his brother in matters that are left free; and among these are marriage, living in convents, private confession, fasting and eating, images in churches. Abuses which contradict the word of God, as private masses, should be abolished, but in an orderly manner and by proper authority. The Word of God and moral suasion must be allowed to do the work. Paul preached against the idols in Athens, without touching one of them; and yet they fell in consequence of his preaching.

"Summa summarum," said Luther, "I will preach, speak, write, but I will force no one; for faith must be voluntary. Take me as an example. I stood up against the Pope, indulgences, and all papists, but without violence or uproar. I only urged, preached, and declared God’s Word, nothing else. And yet while I was asleep, or drinking Wittenberg beer with my Philip Melanchthon and Amsdorf, the Word inflicted greater injury on popery than prince or emperor ever did. I did nothing, the Word did every thing. Had I appealed to force, all Germany might have been deluged with blood; yea, I might have kindled a conflict at Worms, so that the Emperor would not have been safe. But what would have been the result?  Ruin and desolation of body and soul. I therefore kept quiet, and gave the Word free course through the world. Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel?  He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: ’Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game!  Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.’  But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear. The Word is almighty, and takes captive the hearts."494

Eloquence rarely achieved a more complete and honorable triumph. It was not the eloquence of passion and violence, but the eloquence of wisdom and love. It is easier to rouse the wild beast in man, than to tame it into submission. Melanchthon and the professors, the magistrate and peaceful citizens, were delighted. Dr. Schurf wrote to the Elector, after the sixth discourse: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us!  His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth. It is as clear as the sun, that the Spirit of God is in him, and that he returned to Wittenberg by His special providence."

Most of the old forms were restored again, at least for a season, till the people were ripe for the changes. Luther himself returned to the convent, observed the fasts, and resumed the cowl, but laid it aside two years afterwards when the Elector sent him a new suit. The passage in the mass, however, which referred to the unbloody repetition of the sacrifice and the miraculous transformation of the elements, was not restored, and the communion in both kinds prevailed, and soon became the universal custom. The Elector himself, shortly before his death (May 5, 1525), communed with the cup.

Didymus openly acknowledged his error, and declared that Luther preached like an angel.495  But the Zwickau Prophets left Wittenberg for ever, and abused the Reformer as a new pope and enemy of spiritual religion. Münzer stirred up the Peasants’ War, and met a tragic fate.496

Carlstadt submitted silently, but sullenly. He was a disappointed and unhappy man, and harbored feelings of revenge against Luther. Ranke characterizes him as "one of those men, not rare among Germans, who with an inborn tendency to profundity unite the courage of rejecting all that is established, and defending all that others reject, without ever rising to a clear view and solid conviction." He resumed his lectures in the university for a time; but in 1523 he retired to a farm in the neighborhood, to live as "neighbor Andrew" with lowly peasants, without, however, resigning the emoluments of his professorship. He devoted himself more fully than ever to his mystical speculations and imaginary inspirations. He entered into secret correspondence with Münzer, though he never fully approved his political movements. He published at Jena, where he established a printing-press, a number of devotional books under the name of "a new layman," instead of Doctor of Theology. He induced the congregation of Orlamünde to elect him their pastor without authority from the academic Senate of Wittenberg which had the right of appointment, and introduced there his innovations in worship, storming the altars and images. In 1524 be openly came out with his novel theory of the Lord’s Supper in opposition to Luther, and thus kindled the unfortunate eucharistic controversy which so seriously interfered with the peace and harmony of the Reformers. He also sympathized with the Anabaptists.497  Luther after long forbearance gave him up as incorrigible.498  With his consent, Carlstadt was exiled from Saxony (1524), but allowed to return on a sort of revocation, and on condition of keeping silence (1525). He evaded another expulsion by flight (1528). He wandered about in Germany in great poverty, made common cause with the Zwinglians, gave up some of his extravagant notions, sobered down, and found a resting-place first as pastor in Zürich, and then as professor of theology in Basel (1534–1541), where during the raging of a pestilence he finished his erratic career.

§ 69. The Diets of Nürnberg, A.D. 1522–1524. Adrian VI.

I. Walch, XV. 2504 sqq. Ranke, vol. II. pp. 27–46, 70–100, 244–262. J. Janssen, Vol. II. 256 sqq., 315 sqq. Köstlin, I. 622 sqq.

II. On Adrian VI. Gachard: Correspondance de Charles Quint et d’Adrian VI. Brux., 1859. Moring: Vita Adriani VI., 1536. Burmann: Hadrianus VI., sive Analecta Historica de Hadr. VI. Trajecti 1727 (includes Moring). Ranke: Die röm. Päpste in den letzten vier Jarhh., I., 59–64 (8th ed. 1885). C. Höfler (Rom. Cath.): Wahl und Thronbesteigung des letzten deutschen Papstes, Adrian VI. Wien, 1872; and Der deutsche Kaiser und der letzte deutsche Papst, Carl V. und Adrian VI. Wien, 1876. Fr. Nippold: Die Reformbestrebungen Papst Hadrian VI., und die Ursachen ihres Scheiterns. Leipzig, 1875. H. Bauer: Hadrian VI. Heidelb., 1876. Maurenbrecher: Gesch. der kathol. Reformation, I. 202–225. Nördlingen, 1880. See also the Lit. on Charles V., § 50 (p. 262 sqq.).

We must now turn our attention to the political situation, and the attitude of the German Diet to the church question.

The growing sympathies of the German nation with the Reformation and the political troubles made the execution of the papal bull and the Edict of Worms against Luther more and more impossible. The Emperor was absent in Spain, and fully occupied with the suppression of an insurrection, the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, and the war with France. Germany was threatened by the approach of the Turks, who had conquered Belgrad and the greater part of Hungary. The dangers of the nation were overruled for the progress of Protestantism.

An important change took place in the papacy. Leo X. died Dec. 1, 1521; and Adrian VI. (1459–1523) was unexpectedly elected in his absence, perhaps by the indirect influence of the Emperor, his former pupil. The cardinals hardly knew what they did, and hoped he might decline.

Adrian formed, by his moral earnestness and monastic piety, a striking contrast to the frivolity and worldliness of his predecessors. He was a Dutchman, born at Utrecht, a learned professor of theology in Louvain, then administrator and inquisitor of Spain, and a man of unblemished character.499  He had openly denied the papal infallibility; but otherwise he was an orthodox Dominican, and opposed to a doctrinal reformation. He had combined with the Louvain professors in the condemnation of Luther, and advised Charles to take rigorous measures against him at Worms. Barefooted and without any ostentation, he entered Rome. He read daily mass at early dawn, took a simple meal, slept on a couch, and lived like a monk. He introduced strict economy in the papal household, and vigorously attacked the grossest abuses. He tried to gain the influence of Erasmus and Zwingli. . But he encountered opposition everywhere.

Under these circumstances the Diet met at Nürnberg, March 23, 1522, and again Nov. 17, under the presidency of Ferdinand, the brother of the Emperor. To avert the danger of the Turks, processions and public prayers were ordered, and a tax imposed; but no army was raised.

Adrian demanded the execution of the Edict of Worms, and compared Luther to Mohammed; but he broke the force of his request by confessing with surprising frankness the corruptions of the Roman court, which loudly called for a radical moral reform of the head and members. Never before had the Curia made such a confession.

"We know," wrote the Pope in the instruction to his legate, Francesco Chieregati, "that for some time many abominations, abuses in ecclesiastical affairs, and violations of rights have taken place in the holy see; and that all things have been perverted into bad. From the head the corruption has passed to the limbs, from the Pope to the prelates: we have all departed; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." He regarded Protestantism as a just punishment for the sins of the prelates. He promised to do all in his power to remedy the evil, and to begin with the Curia whence it arose.500

The Emperor was likewise in favor of a reform of discipline, though displeased with Adrian for not supporting him in his war with France and his church-spoliation schemes.

The attempt to reform the church morally without touching the dogma had been made by the great Councils of the fifteenth century, and failed. Adrian found no sympathy in Rome, and reigned too short a time (Jan. 9, 1522 to Sept. 14, 1523) to accomplish his desire. It was rumored that he died of poison; but the proof is wanting. Rome rejoiced. His successor, Clement VII. (1523–1534), adopted at once the policy of his cousin, Leo X.

Complaint was made in the Diet against the Elector Frederick, that he tolerated Luther at Wittenberg, and allowed the double communion, the marriage of priests, and the forsaking of convents, but his controlling influence prevented any unfavorable action. The report of the suppression of the radical movements in Wittenberg made a good impression. Lutheran books were freely printed and sold in Nürnberg. Osiander preached openly against the Roman Antichrist.

The Diet, in the answer to the Pope (framed Feb. 8 and published as an edict March 6, 1523), refused to execute the Edict of Worms, and demanded the calling of a free general council in Germany within a year. In the mean time, Luther should keep silence; and the preachers should content themselves with preaching the holy gospel according to the approved writings of the Christian church. At the same time the hundred gravamina of the German nation were repeated.

This edict was a compromise, and did not decide the church question; but it averted the immediate danger to the Reformation, and so far marks a favorable change, as compared with the Edict of Worms. It was the beginning of the political emancipation of Germany from the control of the papacy. Luther was rather pleased with it, except the prohibition of preaching and writing, which he did not obey.

The influence of the edict, however, was weakened by several events which occurred soon afterwards.

At a new Diet at Nürnberg in January, 1524, where the shrewd Pope Clement VII. was represented by Cardinal Campeggio, the resolution was passed to execute the Edict of Worms, though with the elastic clause, "as far as possible."

At the earnest solicitation of the papal nuncio, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dukes William and Louis of Bavaria, together with twelve bishops of South Germany, concluded at Ratisbon, July 6, 1524, a league for the protection of the Roman faith against the Reformation, with the exception of the abolition of some glaring abuses which did not touch doctrines.501  The Emperor lent it his influence by issuing a stringent edict (July 27, 1524). This was an ominous event. The Romish league called forth a Protestant counter-league of Philip of Hesse and John of Saxony, at Torgau in June, 1526, although against the advice of the Wittenberg Reformers, who feared more evil than good from a union of politics with religion and trusted to the power of the Word of God without any carnal weapons.

Thus the German nation was divided into two hostile camps. From this unhappy division arose the political weakness of the empire, and the terrible calamities of the Smalkaldian and the Thirty Years’ Wars. In 1525 the Peasants’ War broke out, and gave new strength to the reaction, but only for a short time.

§ 70. Luther and Henry VIII

Henricus VIII.: Adsertio VII. Sacram. adv. Luth. Lond. 1521. A German translation by Frick, 1522, in Walch, XIX., 158 sqq. Lutherus: Contra Henricum Regem. 1522. Also freely reproduced in German by Luther. His letter to Henry, Sept. 1, 1525. Auf des Königs in England Lästerschrift M. Luther’s Antwort. 1527. Afterwards also in Latin. See the documents in Walch, XIX. 153–521; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 343 sqq.; XXX. 1–14. Comp. also Luther’s letters of Feb. 4 and March 11, 1527, in De Wette III. 161 and 163.

With all his opposition to Ultra-Protestantism in church and state, Luther did not mean to yield an inch to the Romanists. This appears from two very personal controversies which took place during these disturbances,—the one with Henry VIII. concerning the sacraments; the other with Erasmus about predestination and free-will. In both he forgot the admirable lessons of moderation which he had enjoined from the pulpit in Wittenberg. He used again the club of Hercules.

Henry VIII. of England urged Charles V. to exterminate the Lutheran heresy by force, and wrote in 1521 (probably with the assistance of his chaplain, Edward Lee), a scholastic defence of the seven sacraments, against Luther’s "Babylonish Captivity." He dedicated the book to Pope Leo X. He treated the Reformer with the utmost contempt, as a blasphemer and servant of Satan. He used the old weapons of church authority against freedom. He adhered to the dogma of transubstantiation, even after his breach with Rome. Pope Clement VII. judged that this book was written with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and promised indulgence to all who read it. At the same time he gratified the ambition of the vain king by confirming the title "Defender of the Faith," which Leo had already conferred upon him.502

The Protestant successors of Henry have retained the title to this day, though with a very different view of its meaning. The British sovereigns are defenders of the Episcopal Church in England, and of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, and in both characters enemies of the Church of Rome.

Luther read the King a lecture (in Latin and German) such as was rarely read to any crowned head. He called him "King Henry, of God’s disgrace (or wrath), King of England,"  and heaped upon him the most abusive epithets.503  He incidentally hit other princes, saying that "King Henry helps to prove the proverb that there are no greater fools than kings and princes." Such a style of polemics can not be justified by the coarseness of the age, or the nature of the provocation, and did more harm to Luther than to Henry. His best friends regretted it; yet long afterwards he even surpassed the violence, if possible, in his savage and scurrilous attack upon Duke Henry of Brunswick.504

When there was a prospect of gaining Henry VIII. for the cause of the Reformation, Luther made the matter worse by a strange inconsistency. In a most humble letter of Sept. 1, 1525, be retracted (not his doctrine, but) all the personal abuse, asked his pardon, and offered to honor his name publicly. Henry in his reply refused the offer with royal pride and scorn, and said that he now despised him as heartily for his cowardice as he had formerly hated him for his heresy. He also charged him with violating a nun consecrated to God, and leading other monks into a breach of their vows and into eternal perdition. Emser published a German translation of Luther’s letter and the King’s answer (which was transmitted through Duke George of Saxony), and accompanied it with new vituperations and slanders (1527). All the Romanists regarded this controversy, and the similar correspondence with Duke George, as a great blow to the Reformation.

Luther now resumed his former sarcastic tone; but it was a painful effort, and did not improve the case. He suspected that the answer was written by Erasmus, who had "more skill and sense in his finger than the King with all his wiseacres." He emphatically denied that he had offered to retract any of his doctrines. "I say, No, no, no, as long as I breathe, no matter how it offend king, emperor, prince, or devil .... In short, my doctrine is the main thing of which I boast, not only against princes and kings, but also against all devils. The other thing, my life and person, I know well enough to be sinful, and nothing to boast of; I am a poor sinner, and let all my enemies be saints or angels. I am both proud and humble as St. Paul (Phil. 2:3)."

In December of the same year in which he wrote his first book against King Henry, Luther began his important treatise "On the Secular Power, and how far obedience is due to it." He defends here the divine right and authority of the secular magistrate, and the duty of passive obedience, on the ground of Matt. 5:39 and Rom. 13:1, but only in temporal affairs. While he forbade the use of carnal force, he never shrank from telling even his own prince the truth in the plainest manner. He exercised the freedom of speech and of the press to the fullest extent, both in favor of the Reformation and against political revolution. The Reformation elevated the state at the expense of the freedom of the church; while Romanism lowered the dignity of the state to the position of an obedient servant of the hierarchy.

One wrong does not justify another. Yet those Roman-Catholic historians who make capital of this humiliating conduct of the Reformer, against his cause, should remember that Cardinal Pole, whom they magnify as one of the greatest and purest men of that age, in his book on the Unity of the Church, abused King Henry as violently and more keenly, although he was his king and benefactor, and had not given him any personal provocation; while Luther wrote in self-defense only, and was with all his passionate temper a man of kind and generous feelings.

Melanchthon regretted the fierce attack on King Henry; and when the king began to favor the Reformation, he dedicated to him the revised edition of his theological Loci (1535). He was twice called to England, but declined.505

§ 71. Erasmus.

I. Erasmus: Opera omnia, ed. by Beatus Rhenanus, Basil. 1540–41; 8 vols. fol.; best ed. by Clericus (Le Clerk), Lugd. Bat. 1703–06; 10 tom. in 11 vols. fol. There are several English translations of his Enchiridion, Encomium, Adagia, Colloquia, and smaller tracts. His most important theological works are his editions of the Greek Test. (1516, ’19,’ 22,’ 27, ’35, exclusive of more than thirty reprints), his Annotations and Paraphrases, his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, his editions of Laur. Valla, Jerome, Augustin, Ambrose, Origen, and other Fathers. His Moriae Encomium, or Panegyric of Folly (composed 1509), was often edited. His letters are very important for the literary history of his age. His most popular book is his Colloquies, which contain the wittiest exposures of the follies and abuses of monkery, fasting, pilgrimages, etc. English transl. by N. Bailey, Lond. 1724; new ed. with notes by Rev. E. Johnson, 1878, 2 vols. After 1514 all his works were published by his friend John Froben in Basel.

Comp. Adalb. Horawitz: Erasmus v. Rotterdam und Martinus Lipsius, Wien, 1882; Erasmiana, several numbers, Wien, 1882–85 (reprinted from the Sitzungsberichte of the Imperial Academy of Vienna; contains extracts from the correspondence of Er., discovered in a Codex at Louvain, and in the Codex Rehdigeranus, 254 of the city library at Breslau, founded by Rehdiger). Horawitz and Hartfelder: Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, Leipzig, 1886.

II. Biographies of Erasmus by himself and by Beatus Rhenanus, in vol. I. of the ed. of Clericus; by Pierre Bayle, in his "Dictionnaire" (1696); Knight, Cambr. 1726; Jortin, Lond. 1748, 2 vols.; 1808, 3 vols. (chiefly a summary of the letters of Erasmus with critical comments); Burigny, Paris, 1757, 2 vols.; Henke, Halle, 1782, 2 vols.; Hess, Zürich, 1789, 2 vols.; Butler, London, 1825; Ad. Müller, Hamburg, 1828 (Leben des E. v. Rotterdam ... Eine gekrönte Preisschrift; comp. the excellent review of Ullmann in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1829, No. I.); Glasius (prize essay in Dutch), The Hague, 1850; Stichart (Er. v. Rotterd., seine Stellung zur Kirche und zu den Kirchl. Bewegungen seiner Zeit), Leipz. 1870; Durand de Laur (Erasme, précurseur et initiateur de l’esprit moderne), Par. 1873, 2 vols.; R. B. Drummond (Erasmus, his Life and Character), Lond. 1873, 2 vols.; G. Feugère (Er., étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages), Par. 1874; Pennington, Lond. 1875; Milman (in Savonarola, Erasmus, and other Essays), Lond. 1870; Nisard, Rénaissance et réforme, Paris, 1877.—Also Woker: De Erasmi Rotterodami studiis irenicis. Paderborn, 1872. W. Vischer: Erasmiana. Programm zur Rectoratsfeier der Univers. Basel. Basel, 1876. "Erasmus" in Ersch and Gruber, vol. XXXVI. (by Erhard); in the "Allg. Deutsche Biogr." VI. 160–180 (by Kämmel); in Herzog,1 IV. 114–121 (by Hagenbach), and in Herzog,2 IV. 278–290 (by R. Stähelin); in the "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., VIII. 512–518. Schlottmann: Erasmus redivivus, Hal. 1883. Comp. Lit. in § 72.

The quarrel between King Henry and Luther was the occasion of a far more serious controversy and open breach between Erasmus and the Reformation. This involved a separation of humanism from Protestantism.

The Position of Erasmus.

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam506 (1466–1536) was the king among scholars in the early part of the sixteenth century. He combined native genius, classical and biblical learning, lively imagination, keen wit, and refined taste. He was the most cultivated man of his age, and the admired leader of scholastic Europe from Germany to Italy and Spain, from England to Hungary. The visible unity of the Catholic Church, and the easy interchange of ideas through the medium of one learned language, explain in part his unique position. No man before or since acquired such undisputed sovereignty in the republic of letters. No such sovereignty is possible nowadays when distinguished scholars are far more numerous, and when the Church is divided into hostile camps.507

Erasmus shines in the front rank of the humanists and forerunners of the Reformation, on the dividing line between the middle ages and modern times. His great mission was to revive the spirit of classical and Christian antiquity, and to make it a reforming power within the church. He cleared the way for a work of construction which required stronger hands than his. He had no creative and no organizing power. The first period of his life till 1524 was progressive and reformatory; the second, till his death, 1536, was conservative and reactionary.

He did more than any of his contemporaries to prepare the church for the Reformation by the impulse he gave to classical, biblical, and patristic studies, and by his satirical exposures of ecclesiastical abuses and monastic ignorance and bigotry. But he stopped half way, and after a period of, hesitation he openly declared war against Luther, thereby injuring both his own reputation and the progress of the movement among scholars. He was a reformer against reform, and in league with Rome. Thus he lost the respect and confidence of both parties. It would have been better for his fame if he had died in 1516, just after issuing the Greek Testament, a year before the Reformation. To do justice to him, we must look backward. Men of transition, like Staupitz, Reuchlin, and Erasmus, are no less necessary than bold leaders of a new departure. They belong to the class of which John the Baptist is the highest type. Protestants should never forget the immense debt of gratitude which they owe to the first editor of the Greek Testament who enabled Luther and Tyndale to make their translations of the word of life from the original, and to lead men to the very fountain of all that is most valuable and permanent in the Reformation. His edition was hastily prepared, before the art of textual criticism was born; but it anticipated the publication of the ponderous Complutensian Polyglot, and became the basis of the popularly received text. His exegetical opinions still receive and deserve the attention of commentators. To him we owe also the first scholarly editions of the Fathers, especially of Jerome, with whom he was most in sympathy. From these editions the Reformers drew their weapons of patristic controversy with the Romanists, who always appealed to the fathers of the Nicene age rather than to the grandfathers of the apostolic age.

Erasmus was allied to Reuchlin and Ulrich von Hutten, but greater and far more influential than both. All hated monasticism and obscurantism. Reuchlin revived Hebrew, Erasmus Greek learning, so necessary for the cultivation of biblical studies. Reuchlin gave his nephew Melanchthon to Wittenberg, but died a good Catholic. Hutten became a radical ultra-reformer, fell out with Erasmus, who disowned him when he was most in need of a friend, and perished in disgrace. Erasmus survived both, to protest against Protestantism.

And yet he cannot be charged with apostasy or even with inconsistency. He never was a Protestant, and never meant to be one. Division and separation did not enter into his program. From beginning to end he labored for a reformation within the church and within the papacy, not without it. But the new wine burst the old bottles. The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.

Sketch of His Life.

Erasmus was the illegitimate son of a Dutch priest, Gerard, and Margaret, the daughter of a physician,—their last but not their only child.508  He was born in Rotterdam, Oct. 27, in the year 1466 or 1467.509  He received his early education in the cathedral school of Utrecht and in a flourishing classical academy at Deventer, where he began to show his brilliant talents, especially a most tenacious memory. Books were his chief delight. Already in his twelfth year he knew Horace and Terence by heart.

After the death of his mother, he was robbed of his inheritance by his guardians, and put against his will into a convent at Herzogenbusch, which he exchanged afterwards for one at Steyn (Emaus), near Gouda, a few miles from Rotterdam.

He spent five unhappy years in monastic seclusion (1486–1491), and conceived an utter disgust for monkery. Ulrich von Hutten passed through the same experience, with the same negative result; while for Luther monastic life was his free choice, and became the cradle of a new religious life. Erasmus found relief in the study of the classics, which he pursued without a guide, by a secret impulse of nature. We have from this period a number of his compositions in poetry and prose, odes to Christ and the holy Virgin, invectives against despisers of eloquence, and an essay on the contempt of the world, in which he describes the corruptions of the world and the vices of the monks.

He was delivered from his prison life in 1491 by the bishop of Cambray, his parsimonious patron, and ordained to the priesthood in 1492. He continued in the clerical profession, and remained unmarried, but never had a parish.

He now gave himself up entirely to study in the University of Paris and at Orleans. His favorite authors were Cicero, Terence, Plutarch, and Lucian among the classics, Jerome among the fathers, and Laurentius Valla the commentator. He led hereafter an independent literary life without a regular charge, supporting himself by teaching, and then supported by rich friends.510  In his days of poverty he solicited aid in letters of mingled humility and vanity; when he became famous, he received liberal gifts and pensions from prelates and princes, and left at his death seven thousand ducats. The title of royal counsellor of the King of Spain (Charles V.) brought him an annual income of four hundred guilders after 1516. The smaller pensions were paid irregularly, and sometimes failed in that impecunious age. Authors seldom received copy money or royalty from publishers and printers, but voluntary donations from patrons of learning and persons to whom they dedicated their works. Froben, however, his chief publisher, treated Erasmus very generously. He traveled extensively, like St. Jerome, and made the personal acquaintance of the chief celebrities in church and state.

He paid two important visits to England, first on the invitation of his grateful and generous pupil, Lord Montjoy, between 1498 and 1500, and again in 1510. There he became intimate with the like-minded Sir Thomas More, Dean Colet, Archbishop Warham, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishop Fisher, and was introduced to King Henry VII. and to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. Colet taught him that theology must return from scholasticism to the Scriptures, and from dry dogmas to practical wisdom.511  For this purpose he devoted more attention to Greek at Oxford, but never attained to the same proficiency in it as in Latin. On his second visit he was appointed Lady Margaret’s professor of divinity, and reader of Greek, in Cambridge. His room in Queen’s College is still shown. The number of his hearers was small, and so was his income. "Still," he wrote to a friend in London, "I am doing my best to promote sound scholarship." He had much to say in praise of England, where he received so much kindness, but also in complaint of bad beer and bad wine, and of his robbery at Dover, where he was relieved of all his money in the custom-house, under a law that no one should take more than a small sum out of the realm.

Between his visits to England he spent three years in Italy (1506–1509), and bathed in the fountain of the renaissance. He took the degree of doctor of divinity at Turin, and remained some time in Venice, Padua, Bologna, and Rome. He edited the classics of Greece and Rome, with specimens of translations, and superintended the press of Manutius Aldus at Venice. He entered into the genius of antiquity, and felt at home there. He calls Venice the most magnificent city of the world. But the lovely scenery of Italy, and the majestic grandeur of the Alps, seem to have made no more impression upon his mind than upon that of Luther; at least, he does not speak of it.

After he returned from his last visit to England, he spent his time alternately at Brussels, Antwerp, and Louvain (1515–1521). He often visited Basel, and made this ancient city of republican Switzerland, on the boundaries between France and Germany, his permanent home in 1521. There he lived several years as editor and adviser of his friend and publisher, John Froben, who raised his press to the first rank in Europe. Basel was neutral till 1529, when the Reformation was introduced. It suited his position and taste. He liked the climate and the society. The bishop of Basel and the magistrate treated him with the greatest consideration. The university was then in its glory. He was not one of the public teachers, but enjoyed the intercourse of Wyttenbach, Capito, Glarean, Pellican, Amerbach. "I am here," he wrote to a friend, "as in the most agreeable museum of many and very eminent scholars. Everybody knows Latin and Greek, most of them also Hebrew. The one excels in history, the other in theology; one is well versed in mathematics, another in antiquities, a third in jurisprudence. You know how rarely we meet with such a combination. I at least never found it before. Besides these literary advantages, what candor, hospitality, and harmony prevail here everywhere!  You would swear that all had but one heart and one soul."

The fame of Erasmus brought on an extensive correspondence. His letters and books had the widest circulation. The "Praise of Folly" passed through seven editions in a few months, and through at least twenty-seven editions during his lifetime. Of his "Colloquies," a bookseller in Paris printed twenty-four thousand copies. His journeys were triumphal processions. Deputations received him in the larger cities with addresses of welcome. He was treated like a prince. Scholars, bishops, cardinals, kings, and popes paid him homage, sent him presents, or gave him pensions. He was offered by the Cardinal of Sion, besides a handsome board, the liberal sum of five hundred ducats annually, if he would live with him in Rome. He was in high favor with Pope Julius II. and Leo X., who patronized liberal learning. The former released him from his monastic vows; the latter invited him to Rome, and would have given him any thing if he had consented to remain. Adrian VI. asked his counsel how to deal with the Lutheran heresy (1523). Clement VII., in reply to a letter, sent him a present of two hundred florins. Paul III. offered him a cardinal’s hat to reward him for his attack on Luther (1536), but he declined it on account of old age.

The humanists were loudest in his praise, and almost worshiped him. Eoban Hesse, the prince of Latin poets of the time, called him a "divine being," and made a pilgrimage on foot from Erfurt to Holland to see him face to face. Justus Jonas did the same. Zwingli visited him in Basel, and before going to sleep used to read some pages of his writings. To receive a letter from him was a good fortune, and to have a personal interview with him was an event. A man even less vain than Erasmus could not have escaped the bad effect of such hero-worship. But it was partly neutralized by the detractions of his enemies, who were numerous and unsparing. Among these were Stunica and Caranza of Spain, Edward Lee of England, the Prince of Carpi, Cardinal Aleander, the leaders of scholastic divinity of Louvain and Paris, and the whole crowd of ignorant monks.

His later years were disturbed by the death of his dearest and kindest friend, John Froben (1527), to whose memory he paid a most noble tribute in one of his letters; and still more by the progress of the Reformation in his own neighborhood. The optimism of his youth and manhood gave way to a gloomy, discontented pessimism. The Lutheran tragedy, he said, gave him more pain than the stone which tortured him. "It is part of my unhappy fate, that my old age has fallen on these evil times when quarrels and riots prevail everywhere."  "This new gospel," he writes in another letter, "is producing a new set of men so impudent, hypocritical, and abusive, such liars and sycophants, who agree neither with one another nor with anybody else, so universally offensive and seditious, such madmen and ranters, and in short so utterly distasteful to me that if I knew of any city in which I should be free from them, I would remove there at once." His last letters are full of such useless lamentations. He had the mortification to see Protestantism triumph in a tumultuous way in Basel, through the labors of Oecolampadius, his former friend and associate. It is pleasant, however, and creditable to him, that his last interview with the reformer was friendly and cordial. The authorities of the city left him undisturbed. But he reluctantly moved to the Roman Catholic city of Freiburg in Baden (1529), wishing that Basel might enjoy every blessing, and never receive a sadder guest than he.512  He bought a house in Freiburg, lived there six years, and was treated with every demonstration of respect, but did not feel happy, and yielded to the solicitations of the Queen Regent of the Netherlands to return to his native land.

On his way he stopped in Basel in the house of Jerome Froben, August, 1535, and attended to the publication of Origen. It was his last work. He fell sick, and died in his seventieth year, July 12, 1536, of his old enemies, the stone and the gout, to which was added dysentery. He retained his consciousness and genial humor to the last. When his three friends, Amerbach, Froben, and Episcopius, visited him on his death-bed, he reminded them of Job’s three comforters, and playfully asked them about the torn garments, and the ashes that should be sprinkled on their heads. He died without a priest or any ceremonial of the Church (in wretched monastic Latin: "sine crux, sine lux, sine Deus"), but invoking the mercy of Christ. His last words, repeated again and again, were, "O Jesus, have mercy; Lord, deliver me; Lord, make an end; Lord, have mercy upon me!"513

In his will, dated Feb. 12, 1536, he left his valuables to Froben, Rhenanus, and other friends, and the rest to the aged and poor and for the education of young men of promise.514  The funeral was attended by distinguished men of both parties. He lies buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel, where his memory is cherished.

Erasmus was of small stature, but well formed. He had a delicate constitution, an irritable temperament, fair skin, blonde hair, wrinkled forehead, blue eyes, and pleasant voice. His face had an expression of thoughtfulness and quiet studiousness.515  In his behavior he combined dignity and grace. "His manners and conversation," says Beatus Rhenanus, "were polished, affable, and even charming."

He talked and wrote in Latin, the universal language of scholars in mediaeval Europe. He handled it as a living language, with ease, elegance, and effect, though not with classical correctness. His style was Ciceronian, but modified by the ecclesiastical vocabulary of Jerome. In his dialogue "Ciceronianus," or on the best mode of speaking (1528), he ridicules those pedantic semi-pagans, chiefly Italians, who worshiped and aped Cicero, and avoided Christian themes, or borrowed names and titles from heathen mythology. He had, however, the greatest respect for Cicero, and hoped that "he is now living peacefully in heaven." He learned neither German nor English nor Italian, and had only an imperfect knowledge of French, and even of his native Dutch.

He had a nervous sensibility. The least draught made him feverish. He could not bear the iron stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace. He could drink no wine but Burgundy. He abhorred intemperance. He could not eat fish on fast days; the mere smell of it made him sick: his heart, he said, was Catholic, but his stomach Lutheran. He never used spectacles either by day or by candle-light, and many wondered that study had not blinded his eyes. He walked firm and erect without a cane. His favorite exercise was horseback-riding.516  He usually traveled on horseback with an attendant, and carried his necessaries, including a shirt, a linen nightcap, and a prayer-book, in a knapsack tied to the saddle. He shrank from the mere mention of death, and frankly confessed that he was not born to be a martyr, but would in the hour of trial be tempted to follow St. Peter. He was fond of children, and charitable to the poor.

His Theological Opinions.

Erasmus was, like most of the German and English humanists, a sincere and enlightened believer in Christianity, and differed in this respect from the frivolous and infidel humanists of France and Italy. When charged by Prince Albertus Pius of Carpi, who was in high favor at the papal court, with turning sacred things into ridicule, he answered, "You will much more readily find scoffers at sacred things in Italy among men of your own rank, ay, and in your much-lauded Rome, than with us. I could not endure to sit down at table with such men." He devoted his brilliant genius and classical lore to the service of religion. He revered the Bible as a divine revelation, and zealously promoted its study. He anticipated Luther in the supreme estimate of the word of God as the true source of theology and piety. Oecolampadius confessed that he learned from Erasmus "nihil in sacris scripturis praeter Christum quaerendum."

He had a sharp eye to the abuses of the Church, and endeavored to reform them in a peaceful way. He wished to lead theology back from the unfruitful speculations and frivolous subtleties of scholasticism to Scriptural simplicity, and to promote an inward, spiritual piety. He keenly ridiculed the foolish and frivolous discussions of the schoolmen about formalities and quiddities, and such questions as whether God could have assumed the form of a woman, or an ass, or a cucumber, or a flint-stone; whether the Virgin Mary was learned in the languages; and whether we would eat and drink after the resurrection. He exposed the vices and follies, the ignorance and superstition, of the monks and clergy. He did not spare even the papacy. "I have no desire," he wrote in 1523, that the primacy of the Roman See should be abolished, but I could wish that its discipline were such as to favor every effort to promote the religion of the gospel; for several ages past it has by its example openly taught things that are plainly averse to the doctrines of Christ."

At the same time he lacked a deeper insight into the doctrines of sin and grace, and failed to find a positive remedy for the evils he complained of. In using the dangerous power of ridicule and satire which he shared with Lucian, he sometimes came near the line of profanity. Moreover, he had a decidedly skeptical vein, and in the present century he would probably be a moderate Rationalist.

With his critical faculty he saw the difficulties and differences in the human surroundings and circumstances of the Divine Scriptures. He omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, and only inserted it under protest in the third edition (1522), because he had rashly promised to do so if a single Greek MS. could be found to contain it.517  He doubted the genuineness of the pericope of the adulteress (John 8:1–11), though he retained it in the text. He disputed the orthodox punctuation of Rom. 9:5. He rejected the Pauline origin of Hebrews, and questioned the Johannean authorship of the Apocalypse. He judged Mark to be an abridgment of Matthew. He admitted lapses of memory and errors of judgment in the Apostles. He denied any other punishment in hell except "the perpetual anguish of mind which accompanies habitual sin." As to the Lord’s Supper, he said, when asked his opinion by the magistrate of Basel about the book of Oecolampadius and his figurative interpretation,518 that it was learned, eloquent, well written, and pious, but contrary to the general belief of the church from which it was dangerous to depart. There is good reason to believe that he doubted transubstantiation. He was also suspected of leaning to Arianism, because he summed up the reaching of Scripture on the Trinity in this sentence: "The Father is very frequently called God, the Son sometimes, the Holy Spirit never;" and he adds: "Many of the fathers who worshiped the Son with the greatest piety, yet scrupled to use the word homoousion, which is nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture."519  He moderated the doctrine of hereditary sin, and defended human freedom in his notes on Romans. He emphasized the moral, and depreciated the doctrinal, element in Christianity. He deemed the Apostles’ Creed sufficient, and was willing to allow within this limit freedom for theological opinions. "Reduce the number of dogmas," he advised Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, "to a minimum; you can do it without injury to Christianity; on other points, leave every one free to believe what he pleases; then religion will take hold on life, and you can correct the abuses of which the world justly complains."

He had a high opinion of the morality and piety of the nobler heathen, such as Socrates, Cicero, and Plutarch. "The Scriptures," he says in his Colloquies, "deserve, indeed, the highest authority; but I find also in the writings of the ancient heathen and in the poets so much that is pure, holy and divine, that I must believe that their hearts were divinely moved. The spirit of Christ is perhaps more widely diffused than we imagine, and many will appear among the saints who are not in our catalogue."520  Then, after quoting from Cicero and Socrates, he says, "I can often hardly restrain myself from exclaiming, ’Holy Socrates, pray for us.’ "

The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli.

Bigoted Catholics hated and feared him, as much as the liberal admired and lauded him. "He laid the egg," they said, "which Luther hatched."521  They perverted his name into Errasmus because of his errors, Arasmus because he ploughed up old truths and traditions, Erasinus because he had made himself an ass by his writings. They even called him Behemoth and Antichrist. The Sorbonne condemned thirty-seven articles extracted from his writings in 1527. His books were burned in Spain, and long after his death placed on the Index in Rome.

In his last word to his popish enemies who identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he writes: "For the future I despise them, and I wish I had always done so; for it is no pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout defiance of divine and human laws, ’We ought to obey God rather than men.’  That was well said by the Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety; only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye well."522

His Works.

The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes: —

I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvellous industry and enterprise.

He published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian.

He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516–1518; ed. ii., 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1530), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the "Christian Demosthenes"), Origen (in Latin, 1536). He wrote the prefaces and dedications.

He published the Annotations of Laurentius Valla on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library.

The most important of his edited works is the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation.523

II. Original works on general literature.

His "Adages" (Adagia), begun at Oxford, dedicated to Lord Mountjoy, first published in Paris in 1500, and much enlarged in subsequent editions,524 is an anthology of forty-one hundred and fifty-one Greek and Latin proverbs, similitudes, and sentences,—a sort of dictionary and commonplace-book, brimful of learning, illustrations, anecdotes, historical and biographical sketches, attacks on monks, priests, and kings, and about ten thousand quotations from Greek poets, literally translated into the Latin in the metre of the original.

"The Praise of Folly" (Encomium Moriae)525 was written on a journey from Italy to England, and finished in the house of his congenial friend, Sir Thomas More (whose name in Greek means "Fool"), as a jeu d’esprit, in the manner of his favorite Lucian. It introduces Folly personified as a goddess, in ironical praise of the merits, and indirect ridicule of the perversities, of different classes of society. It abounds in irony, wit, and humor, in keen observations of men and things, and contains his philosophy of life. The wise man is the most miserable of men, as is proved by the case of Socrates, who only succeeded in making himself ridiculous; while the fool is the happiest man, has no fear of death or hell, no tortures of conscience, tells always the truth, and is indispensable to the greatest of monarchs, who cannot even dine without him. In conclusion Erasmus, rather irreverently, quotes Scripture proofs in praise of folly. Pope Leo X. read and enjoyed the, book from beginning to end. Holbein illustrated it with humorous pictures, which are still preserved in Basel.

In his equally popular "Colloquies" (Colloquia Familiaria), begun in 1519, and enlarged in numerous editions, Erasmus aims to make better scholars and better men, as he says in his dedication to John Erasmius Froben (the son of his friend and publisher).526  He gives instruction for Latin conversation, describes the good and bad manners of the times, and ventilates his views on a variety of interesting topics, such as courtesy in saluting, rash vows a soldier’s life, scholastic studies, the profane feast, a lover and maiden, the virgin opposed to matrimony, the penitent virgin, the uneasy wife, the shipwreck, rich beggars, the alchemist, etc. The "Colloquies" are, next to the "Praise of Folly," his most characteristic work, and, like it, abound in delicate humor, keen irony, biting satire. He pays a glowing tribute to Cicero, and calls him "sanctum illud pectus afflatum coelesti numine;" and in the same conversation occurs the famous passage already referred to, "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis." He shows his sympathy with the cause of Reuchlin in the dialogue Apotheosis Reuchlini Capnionis, by describing a vision in which the persecuted Hebrew scholar (who died June 22, 1522) was welcomed in heaven by St. Jerome, and, without leave of the Pope, enrolled in the number of saints. But during Reuchlin’s life he had kept neutral in the Dominican quarrel about Reuchlin’s orthodoxy. He is very severe on "the coarse, over-fed monks," and indulges too freely in insinuations which offend modern taste.527   He attacks war, which he hated even more than monkery; and in his description of a reckless, extravagant, debauched, sick, poor and wretched soldier, he took unchristian revenge of Ulrich von Hutten after his miserable death. In the dialogue, "Unequal Marriage," he paints him in the darkest colors as an abandoned roué. He gives an amusing description of a German inn, which makes one thankful for the progress of modern civilization. The bedrooms, he says, are rightly so called; for they contain nothing but a bed; and the cleanliness is on a par with the rest of the establishment and the adjoining stable. The "Ichthyophagia" is a dialogue between a butcher and a fishmonger, and exposes the Pharisaical tendency to strain out a gnat and to swallow a camel, and to lay heavy burdens on others. "Would they might eat nothing but garlic who imposed these fish-days upon us!"  "Would they might starve to death who force the necessity of fasting upon free men!"  The form of the dialogue furnished the author a door of escape from the charge of heresy, for he could not be held responsible for the sentiments of fictitious characters; moreover, he said, his object was to teach Latin, not theology. Nevertheless, the Sorbonne condemned the "Colloquies," and the Inquisition placed them in the first class of prohibited books.

The numerous letters of Erasmus and to Erasmus throw much light upon contemporaneous literary and ecclesiastical history, and make us best acquainted with his personality. He corresponded with kings and princes, popes and cardinals, as well as with scholars in all parts of Europe. He tells us that he wrote sometimes forty letters in a day.528

III. Theological works. The edition of the Greek Testament, with a new Latin version and brief annotations, and the independent paraphrases, are the most important contributions of Erasmus to exegesis, and have appeared in very many editions. The paraphrastic form of commenting, which briefly explains the difficulties, and links text and notes in continuous composition, so as to make the writer his own interpreter,529 was a great benefit to the incipient scholarship of his day, and facilitated a more general spread of the New Testament, which he eloquently defended. He did not penetrate into the deeper meaning of the Scriptures, but he made the surface more intelligible by the moonlight of philology and refined culture. His Paraphrases cover the whole New Testament, except the Apocalypse, and fill the seventh volume of Le Clerk’s edition of his works. A translation was published in two volumes folio, in black-letter, at London, 1551, and appointed, by public authority, to be placed in all the parish churches of England.

His "Method of True Theology" (Ratio verae Theologiae)530 was prefixed to his first edition of the Greek Testament, and afterwards expanded and separately published, and dedicated to Cardinal-Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1519), in a preface full of complaints over the evil times of violent controversy, which, in his judgment, destroyed charity and the peaceful cultivation of learning and practical piety. He maintains that the first requisite for the study of the Scriptures is a knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Nor are poetry and good letters to be neglected. Christ clothes his teaching in poetic parables; and Paul quotes from the poets, but not from Aristotle.

The Enchiridion Militis Christiani,531  first published at Louvain, 1501 (or 1503),532 and translated into several languages, is a treatise on practical piety in its conflict with the Devil and unruly passions. The author borrows his weapons from the Scriptures, the fathers, and the Greek and Roman philosophers, and shows that the end of all human effort is Christ, and that the way to Christ is faith abounding in good works. In a later edition he added a defense, with a sharp attack on the scholastic theology contrasted with the plain, practical teaching of Christ and the apostles. The book was condemned by the Sorbonne as heretical.

In the tract on the Confessional (1524), he enumerates the advantages and the perils of that institution which may be perverted into a means of propagating vice by suggesting it to young and inexperienced penitents. He leaves, on the whole, the impression that the confessional does more harm than good.

In the book on the Tongue (1525), he eloquently describes, and illustrates with many anecdotes, its use and abuse. After its publication he wrote to his friends, "Erasmus will henceforth be mute, having parted with his tongue."

But a year after appeared his book on the Institution of Christian Matrimony (1526), dedicated to Queen Catherine of England. It contains the views of an unmarried man on the choice of a mate, the duties of parents, and the education of children. He justly blames Tertullian and Jerome (he might have included all the fathers) for their extravagant laudation of celibacy, and suggests doubts on the sacramental character of marriage.

One of his last works was a Catechism on the Apostles’ Creed, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer, which he dedicated to the father of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. For the same nobleman he wrote a short devotional work on preparation for death.

§ 72. Erasmus and the Reformation.

I. Erasmus: De Libero Arbitrio diatribe (1524), in Opera ed. Lugd. IX. Pars I. 1215 sqq., in Walch, XVIII. Hyperaspistae diatribes libri duo contra Servum Arbitr. M. Lutheri, in 2 parts (1526 and 1527), in Opera IX. Pars II. 1249 sqq., and in Walch, XVIII.

Luther: De Servo Arbitrio ad Erasmum Roterodamun, Wittembergae, 1525. On the last p. of the first ed. before me is the date "Mense Decembri, Anno MDXXV." German in Walch, XVIII. Erl. ed. Opera Lat. VII. 113 sqq. Letters of Luther to Erasmus and about Erasmus in Walch, XVIII., and in De Wette, I. pp. 39, 52, 87, 247; II. 49; III. 427; IV, 497.

II. Chlebus: Erasmus und Luther, in "Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.," 1845. Döllinger in his Die Reformation, 1846, vol. i. pp. 1–20. Kerker:  Er. u. sein Theol. Standpunkt, in the "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1859. D. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed. Bonn, 1878, pp. 448–484, 511–514, and passim.  Plitt: Erasmus in s. Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., in the "Zeitschrift f. Hist. Theol.," 1866, No. III. Rud. Stähelin: Eras. Stellung z. Reformation, Basel, 1873 (35 pp.; comp. his art. In Herzog2, quoted in § 71). Froude: Times of Erasmus and Luther. Three Lect., delivered at Newcastle, 1867 (in the first series of his "Short Studies on Great Subjects," New York ed., 1873, pp. 37–127), brilliant but inaccurate, and silent on the free-will controversy. Drummond: Erasmus, etc., 1873, vol. II. chs. xiii.-xv. E. Walter: Erasmus und Melanchthon, Bernburg, 1879. A. Gilly: Erasme de Rotterd., sa situation en face de l’église et de la libre pensée, Arras, 1879. Comp. also Kattenbusch: Luther’s Lehre vom unfreien Willen, Göttingen, 1875, and Köstlin: Luther’s Theologie, vol. II. 32–55.

Erasmus was eighteen years older than Luther, and stood at the height of his fame when the reformer began his work. He differed from him as Jerome differed from Augustin, or Eusebius from Athanasius. Erasmus was essentially a scholar, Luther a reformer; the one was absorbed in literature, the other in religion. Erasmus aimed at illumination, Luther at reconstruction; the former reached the intellect of the educated, the latter touched the heart of the people. Erasmus labored for freedom of thought, Luther for freedom of conscience. Both had been monks, Erasmus against his will, Luther by free choice and from pious motives; and both hated and opposed monkery, but the former for its ignorance and bigotry, the latter for its self-righteousness and obstruction of the true way to justification and peace. Erasmus followed maxims of worldly wisdom; Luther, sacred principles and convictions. The one was willing, as he confessed, to sacrifice "a part of the truth for the peace of the church," and his personal comfort; the other was ready to die for the gospel at any moment. Erasmus was a trimmer and timeserver, Luther every inch a moral hero.

Luther wrote upon his tablet (1536), "Res et verba Philippus; verba sine re Erasmus; res sine verbis Lutherus; nec res nec verba Carolostadius." But Luther himself was the master of words and matter, and his words were deeds. Melanchthon was an improved Erasmus on the side of evangelical truth.

It is easy to see how far two men so differently constituted could go together, and where and when they had to part. So long as the Reformation moved within the church, Erasmus sympathized with it. But when Luther, who had at first as little notion of leaving the Catholic Church, burnt the Pope’s bull and the decretals, and with them the bridge behind him, Erasmus shrank back, and feared that the remedy was worse than the evil. His very breadth of culture and irresolution became his weakness; while Luther’s narrowness and determination were his strength. In times of war, neutrality is impossible, and we must join one of the two contending armies. Erasmus was for unity and peace, and dreaded a split of the church as the greatest calamity; and yet he never ceased to rebuke the abuses. It was his misfortune, rather than his fault, that he could not side with the Reformation. We must believe his assertion that his conscience kept him from the cause of the Lutherans. At the same time he was concerned for his personal comfort and literary supremacy, and anxious to retain the friendship of his hierarchical and royal patrons. He wished to be a spectator, but not an actor in "the Lutheran tragedy."

Erasmus hailed the young Melanchthon with enthusiastic praise of his precocious genius and learning, and continued to respect him even after his breach with Luther. He stood in friendly correspondence with Zwingli, who revered him as the prince of humanists. He employed Oecolampadius as his assistant, and spoke highly, though evasively, of his book on the eucharist. He was not displeased with Luther’s attacks on indulgences and monasticism, and wrote to Zwingli that he had taught nearly every thing that Luther teaches, but without his coarseness and paradoxes.533  In a letter of reply, dated Louvain, May 30, 1519, he courteously but cautiously and condescendingly accepted Luther’s compliments and friendship, but advised him to moderate his tone, and to imitate Paul, who abolished the law by allegorical interpretation; at the same time he frankly admitted that he had not read his books, except portions of the commentary on the Psalms,534 and that he considered it his duty to keep neutral, in order to do the more for the revival of letters. In conclusion he expressed the wish: "May the Lord Jesus grant you daily more of his Spirit for his glory and the general good."535

So far, then, he objected not so much to the matter as to the manner of Luther, whose plebeian violence and roughness offended his cultured taste. But there was a deeper difference. He could not appreciate his cardinal doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took offence at the denial of free-will and human merit. He held the Catholic views on these subjects. He wished a reform of the discipline, but not of the faith, of the church, and cared little for dogmatic controversies.

His gradual alienation may be seen in the following extracts from his letters.

To Albrecht, Cardinal-Archbishop of Mainz, he wrote from Louvain, Nov. 1, 1519: –

"Permit me to say that I have never had any thing to do either with the affair of Reuchlin or with the cause of Luther. I have never taken any interest in the Cabbala or the Talmud. Those virulent contentions between Reuchlin and the party of Hochstraten have been extremely distasteful to me. Luther is a perfect stranger to me, and I have never had time to read his books beyond merely glancing over a few pages. If he has written well, no praise is due to me; if not, it would be unjust to hold me responsible .... Luther had written to me in a very Christian tone, as I thought; and I replied, advising him incidentally not to write any thing against the Roman Pontiff, nor to encourage a proud or intolerant spirit, but to preach the gospel out of a pure heart .... I am neither Luther’s accuser, nor advocate, nor judge; his heart I would not presume to judge—for that is always a matter of extreme difficulty—still less would I condemn. And yet if I were to defend him, as a good man, which even his enemies admit him to be; as one put upon his trial, a duty which the laws permit even to sworn judges; as one persecuted—which would be only in accordance with the dictates of humanity—and trampled on by the bounden enemies of learning, who merely use him as a handle for the accomplishment of their designs, where would be the blame, so long as I abstained from mixing myself up with his cause ?  In short, I think it is my duty as a Christian to support Luther in this sense, that, if he is innocent, I should not wish him to be crushed by a set of malignant villains; if he is in error, I would rather see him put right than destroyed: for thus I should be acting in accordance with the example of Christ, who, as the prophet witnesseth, quencheth not the smoking flax, nor breaketh the bruised reed."

To Pope Leo X., from Louvain, Sept. 13, 1520 (three months after the excommunication of Luther, June 15): –

"I have no acquaintance with Luther, nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps ten or twelve pages, and that only by snatches. From what I then saw, I judged him to be well qualified for expounding the Scriptures in the manner of the Fathers,—a work greatly needed in an age like this, which is so excessively given to mere subtleties, to the neglect of really important questions. Accordingly, I have favored his good, but not his bad, qualities, or rather I have favored Christ’s glory in him. I was among the first to foresee the danger there was of this matter ending in violence, and no one ever hated violence more than I do. Indeed, I even went so far as to threaten John Froben the printer, to prevent him publishing his books. I wrote frequently and industriously to my friends, begging that they would admonish this man to observe Christian meekness in his writings, and do nothing to disturb the peace of the church. And when he himself wrote to me two years ago, I lovingly admonished him what I wished him to avoid; and I would he had followed my advice. This letter, I am informed, has been shown to your Holiness, I suppose in order to prejudice me, whereas it ought rather to conciliate your Holiness’s favor towards me."

On Dec. 5, 1520, five days before the burning of the Pope’s bull, Erasmus, being asked for his opinion about Luther by the Elector Frederick of Saxony, whom he happened to meet at Cologne, hesitated a while, and looked blank; but being pressed by the Elector, who stood square before him and stared him in the face, he gave the well-known answer, –

"Luther has committed two sins,—he has touched the Pope on the crown, and the monks on the belly."536

The Elector smiled, and remembered the expression shortly before his death. Returned to his lodgings, Erasmus wrote down some axioms rather favorable to Luther and disapproving of the "Pope’s unmerciful bull," and sent them to Spalatin, but concealed the manuscript from fear that Aleander might see it; but it had been already published.

From a letter to a friend in Basel (Louis Berus), dated Louvain, May 14, 1521:–

"By the bitterness of the Lutherans, and the stupidity of some who show more zeal than wisdom in their endeavors to heal the present disorders, things have been brought to such a pass, that I, for one, can see no issue but in the turning upside down of the whole world. What evil spirit can have sown this poisonous seed in human affairs?  When I was at Cologne, I made every effort that Luther might have the glory of obedience and the Pope of clemency, and some of the sovereigns approved of this advice. But, lo and behold! the burning of the Decretals, the ’Babylonish Captivity,’ those propositions of Luther, so much stronger than they need be, have made the evil, it seems, incurable .... The only thing that remains to us, my dear Berus, is to pray that Christ, supreme in goodness and in power, may turn all to good; for he alone can do so."

In the same month, during the sessions of the Diet of Worms, he wrote to Nicholas Everard, from Mechlin, 1521: –

"If Luther had written more moderately, even though he had written freely, he would both have been more honored himself, and done more good to the world; but fate has decreed otherwise. I only wonder that the man is still alive .... They say that an edict is in readiness far more severe than the Pope’s bull;537 but from fear, or some other reason, it has not yet been published. I am surprised that the Pope should employ such agents, some of them illiterate men, and all of them headstrong and haughty, for the transaction of such affairs. Nothing can exceed the pride or violent temper of Cardinal Cajetan, of Charles Miltitz, of Marinus, of Aleander. They all act upon the principle of the young king who said, ’My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.’  As to Aleander, he is a complete maniac,—a bad, foolish man."

After the Diet of Worms, several events occurred which seemed to confirm his worst fears about the effects of the Reformation, and imbittered him against its leaders; namely, the disturbances of Carlstadt at Wittenberg (1521), Luther’s invective against Henry VIII. (1522), and the fierce attack of his former friend and admirer Ulrich von Hutten (1523).538

Nevertheless, he advised Pope Adrian VI. to avoid all harsh measures, to deal gently with errors, to pardon past misdoings, to reform abuses, and to call a general council of moderate men. The counsel was disregarded.

Glareanus (Loriti) of Basel described Erasmus very well, when he wrote to Zwingli, Jan. 20, 1523, "Erasmus is an old man, and desires rest. Each party would like to claim him, but he does not want to belong to any party. Neither party is able to draw him. He knows whom to avoid, but not whom to attach himself to." Glareanus added, however, that Erasmus confessed Christ in his writings, and that he never heard any unchristian word from his lips.539

§ 73. The Free-will Controversy. 1524–1527.

See Literature in § 73.

After halting some time between approval and disapproval, Erasmus found it impossible to keep aloof from the irrepressible conflict. Provoked by Hutten, and urged by King Henry and English friends, he declared open war against Luther, and broke with the Reformation. He did so with great reluctance; for he felt that he could not satisfy either party, and that he was out of his element in a strictly theological dispute. He chose for his attack Luther’s doctrine of total depravity.

Here lay the chief dogmatic difference between the two. Erasmus was an admirer of Socrates, Cicero, and Jerome; while Luther was a humble pupil of St. Paul and Augustin. Erasmus lacked that profound religious experience through which Luther had passed in the convent, and sympathized with the anthropology of the Greek fathers and the semi-Pelagian school.

In September, 1524, Erasmus appeared on the field with his work on the "Freedom of the Will." It is a defence of freedom as an indispensable condition of moral responsibility, without which there can be no meaning in precept, repentance, and reward. He maintains essentially the old semi-Pelagian theory, but in the mildest form, and more negatively than positively; for he wished to avoid the charge of heresy. He gives the maximum of glory to God, and a minimum to man. "I approve," he says, "of those who ascribe something to free-will, but rely most upon grace." We must exert our will to the utmost, but the will is ineffective without the grace of God. He urged against Luther Christ’s call upon Jerusalem to repent (Matt. 23:37), and the will of God that no one should perish, but that all should be saved (Ezek. 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9). He treated him with respect, but charged him with attempting to drive out one extreme by another.

Luther appreciated the merits of Erasmus, and frankly acknowledged his literary superiority.540  But he knew his weakness, and expressed, as early as 1516, the fear that he understood too little of the grace of God.541  He found in his writings more refutation of error than demonstration of truth, more love of peace than love of the cross. He hated his way of insinuating doubts. On June 20, 1523, he wrote to Oecolampadius:542 "May the Lord strengthen you in your proposed explanation of Isaiah [in the University of Basel], although Erasmus, as I understand, does not like it .... He has done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab. He does not lead to better studies which teach piety. I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work .... He has done enough to uncover the evil; but to reveal the good and to lead into the land of promise, is not his business, in my opinion." In a letter to Erasmus, dated April, 1524, a few months before the open breach, he proposed to him that they should let each other alone, and apologized for his subserviency to the papists, and his want of courage, in a manner which could not but wound the sensitive scholar.543

Luther on the Slavery of the Human Will.

He waited a whole year before he published his reply on the "Slavery of the Will" (December, 1525). It is one of his most vigorous and profound books, full of grand ideas and shocking exaggerations, that border on Manichaeism and fatalism.544  He thanked Erasmus for going to the root of the controversy instead of troubling him "about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and other fooleries." He inseparably connects divine foreknowledge and foreordination, and infers from God’s almighty power that all things happen by necessity, and that there can be no freedom in the creature.545  He represents the human will as a horse or a donkey which goes just as the rider directs it; and that rider is the Devil in the state of fallen nature, and God in the state of grace. The will has no choice of master; it is God and the Devil who are fighting for its possession. The Scripture exhortations to repentance and holy living must not be understood seriously, but ironically, as if God would say to man: Only try to repent and to do good, and you will soon find out that you cannot do it. He deals with man as a mother with the child: she invites the child to walk, in order that he may stretch out the arm for help. God speaks in this fashion solely to convict us of our helplessness, if we do not implore his assistance. Satan said, "Thou art free to act." Moses said, "Act," in order to convict us, before Satan, of our inability to act.

In the same book Luther makes a distinction between the Word of God and God himself, or between the revealed will of God, which offers salvation to all, and the concealed or hidden will, which means to save only some, and to leave the rest to deserved perdition. In this way he escapes the force of such passages as Ezek. 18:23; 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4, urged by Erasmus, that God does not wish the death but the salvation of the sinner (namely, according to his revealed will only).546  But this distinction puts a contradiction in God, which is impossible and intolerable.

If we except the peculiar way of statement and illustration, Luther’s view is substantially that of St. Augustin, whom Erasmus, with all due reverence for the great man, represents as teaching, "God works in us good and evil, and crowns his good works in us, and punishes his bad works in us." The positive part is unobjectionable: God is the author and rewarder of all that is good; but the negative part is the great stumbling-block. How can God in justice command us to walk when we are lame, and punish us for not walking?  The theory presupposes, of course, the apostasy and condemnation of the whole human race, on the ground of its unconscious or impersonal pre-existence and participation in the sin and guilt of Adam.

All the Reformers were originally Augustinians, that is, believers in the total depravity of man’s nature, and the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace. They had, like St. Paul and St. Augustin, passed through a terrible conflict with sin, and learned to feel in their hearts, what ordinary Christians profess with their lips, that they were justly condemned, and saved only by the merits of Christ. They were men of intense experience and conviction of their own sinfulness and of God’s mercifulness; and if they saw others perish in unbelief, it was not because they were worse, but because of the inscrutable will of God, who gives to some, and withholds from others, the gift of saving faith. Those champions of freedom taught the slavery of the will in all things pertaining to spiritual righteousness. They drew their moral strength from grace alone. They feared God, and nothing else. Their very fear of God made them fearless of men. The same may be said of the French Huguenots and the English Puritans. Luther stated this theory in stronger terms than Augustin or even Calvin; and he never retracted it,—as is often asserted,—but even twelve years later he pronounced his book against Erasmus one of his very best.547  Melanchthon, no doubt in part under the influence of this controversy, abandoned his early predestinarianism as a Stoic error (1535), and adopted the synergistic theory. Luther allowed this change without adopting it himself, and abstained from further discussion of these mysteries. The Formula of Concord re-asserted in the strongest terms Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the human will, but weakened his doctrine of predestination, and assumed a middle ground between Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism or synergism.548  In like manner the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining the greatest reverence for St. Augustin and indorsing his anthropology, never sanctioned his views on total depravity and unconditional predestination, but condemned them, indirectly, in the Jansenists.549

Final Alienation.

The Erasmus-Luther controversy led to some further personalities in which both parties forgot what they owed to their cause and their own dignity. Erasmus wrote a bitter retort, entitled "Hyperaspistes," and drove Luther’s predestinarian views to fatalistic and immoral consequences. He also addressed a letter of complaint to Elector John. The outrages of the Peasants’ War confirmed him in his apprehensions. He was alienated from Melanchthon and Justus Jonas. He gave up correspondence with Zwingli, and rather rejoiced in his death.550  He spoke of the Reformation as a tragedy, or rather a comedy which always ended in a marriage. He regarded it as a public calamity which brought ruin to arts and letters, and anarchy to the Church.551

He was summoned to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, as a counsellor of the Emperor, but declined because he was sick and conscious of his inability to please either party. He wrote, however, to Cardinal Campeggio, to the bishop of Augsburg, and other friends, to protest against settling questions of doctrine by the sword. His remedy for the evils of the Church was mutual forbearance and the correction of abuses. But his voice was not heeded; the time for compromises and half measures had passed, and the controversy took its course. He devoted his later years chiefly to the editing of new editions of his Greek Testament, and the writings of the church fathers.

Luther abandoned Erasmus, and abused him as the vainest creature in the world, as an enraged viper, a refined Epicurean, a modern Lucian, a scoffer, a disguised atheist, and enemy of all religion.552  We gladly return from this gross injustice to his earlier estimate, expressed in his letter to Erasmus as late as April, 1524: "The whole world must bear witness to your successful cultivation of that literature by which we arrive at a true understanding of the Scriptures; and this gift of God has been magnificently and wonderfully displayed in you, calling for our thanks."

§ 74. Wilibald Pirkheimer.

Bilibaldi Pirkheimeri Opera politica, historica, philologica, et epistolica, ed. by M. Goldast, Francf., 1610, fol. With a portrait by A. Dürer. His Encomium Podagrae was translated into English by W. Est, The Praise of the Gout, or the Gout’s Apology, a paradox both pleasant and profitable.  Lond., 1617.

Lampe: Zum Andenken W. P.’s. Nürnberg, 1828. Karl Hagen:  Deutschlands literarische und relig. Verhältnisse im Ref. Zeitalter. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Wilibald Pirkheimer. Erlangen, vol. I., 1841, pp. 188 sqq., 261 sqq., 2d ed. 1868. Döllinger: Reformation, vol. I., 161–174. D. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878, pp. 118 sq.; 227–235; 514–518. Lochner: Lebensläufe berühmter und verdienter Nürnberger, Nürnb., 1861. Rud. Hagen: W. P. in seinem Verhältniss zum Humanismus und zur Reformation, Nürnberg, 1882. Lic. P. Drews: Wilibald Pirkheimer’s Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., 1887 (138 pp.).

About this time, and after the Peasants’ War, the most eminent humanists withdrew from the Reformation, and followed Erasmus into the sheepfold of the mother church, disgusted with the new religion, but without being fully reconciled to the old, and dying at last of a broken heart. In this respect, the apprehension of Erasmus was well founded; the progress of the Reformation arrested and injured the progress of liberal learning, although not permanently. Theology triumphed over classical culture, and fierce dogmatic feuds took the place of satirical exposures of ignorant monks. But the literary loss was compensated by a religious gain. In the judgment of Luther, truth proved mightier than eloquence, faith stronger than learning, and the foolishness of God wiser than the wisdom of men.553

Among the pupils, friends and admirers of Erasmus, who were first attracted and then repelled by the Reformation, are Wilibald Pirkheimer, Crotus Rubeanus, Mutianus Rufus, Ulrich Zasius, Vitus Amerpach, Georg Wizel, Jacob Strauss, Johann Wildenauer (Egranus), Johann Haner, Heinrich Loriti Glareanus, and Theobald Billicanus.554

Wilibald Pirkheimer (1470–1530), the most distinguished and influential of them, was descended from an ancient, rich, and noble family of Nürnberg, and received a liberal military and diplomatic education. He spent seven years in Italy (1490–1497), and became a leader in the Renaissance. He occupied also a high social position as senator of Nürnberg and imperial counsellor. He was honored by important diplomatic missions, and fulfilled them with great ability. He was not an original genius, but the most learned and most eloquent layman in Germany. He mastered philology, jurisprudence, geography, astronomy, music, painting, botany, and all the discoveries and sciences of the time. He collected a rare library of books and manuscripts and a cabinet of coins, and gave free access to visitors. He translated writings of Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch, Euclid, Ptolemy, Lucian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Nilus, into Latin.555  He was called "the Nürnberg Xenophon," for his account of the rather inglorious Swiss campaign (1499) in which he took part as an officer.556  He carried on an extensive correspondence with the leading humanists, especially Reuchlin, Ulrich von Hutten, and Erasmus, and also with the Reformers, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Luther. He was the Maecenas of Germany, and a gentleman of striking and commanding presence, social culture, charming manners, and princely liberality.557  He constantly entertained distinguished strangers at his hospitable board. Nürnberg was then the first German city in politics, industry, and commerce. He made it also a centre of literature and illumination. At Venice there was a proverb:, All German cities are blind, except Nürnberg, which has one eye."

Pirkheimer hailed the beginnings of the Reformation with patriotic and literary enthusiasm, invited Luther to his house when he returned utterly exhausted from Augsburg in 1518, distributed his books, and, with his friends Albrecht Dürer and Lazarus Spengler, prepared the way for the victory of the new ideas in his native city. He wrote an apology of Reuchlin in his controversy with the Dominicans, contributed probably to the "Letters of Obscure Men," and ridiculed Dr. Eck in a satirical, pseudonymous dialogue, after the Leipzig disputation.558  Eck took cruel revenge when he published the Pope’s bull of excommunication, by naming Pirkheimer among the followers of Luther, and warning him through the magistrate of Nürnberg. Luther burnt the Pope’s bull; but Pirkheimer helped himself out of the difficulty by an evasive diplomatic disclaimer, and at last begged absolution.

This conduct is characteristic of the humanists. They would not break with the authorities of the church, and had not the courage of martyrs. They employed against existing abuses the light weapons of ridicule and satire rather than serious argument and moral indignation. They had little sympathy with the theology and piety of the Reformers, and therefore drew back when the Reformers, for conscience’ sake, broke with the old church, and were cast out of her bosom as the Apostles were cast out of the synagogue.

In a letter to Erasmus, dated Sept. 1, 1524, Pirkheimer speaks still favorably of Luther, though regretting his excesses, and deprecates a breach between the two as the greatest calamity that could befall the cause of sound learning. But soon after the free-will controversy, and under the influence of Erasmus, he wrote a very violent book against his former friend Oecolampadius, in defence of consubstantiation (he did not go as far as transubstantiation).559

The distractions among Protestants, the Anabaptist disturbances, the Peasants’ War, the conduct of the contentious Osiander, sickness, and family afflictions increased his alienation from the Reformation, and clouded his last years. The stone and the gout, of which he suffered much, confined him at home. Dürer, his daily companion (who, however, differed from him on the eucharistic question, and strongly leaned to the Swiss view), died in 1528. Two of his sisters, and two of his daughters, took the veil in the nunnery of St. Clara at Nürnberg. His sister Charitas, who is famous for her Greek and Latin correspondence with Erasmus and other luminaries, was abbess. The nunnery suffered much from the disturbances of the Reformation and the Peasants’ War. When it was to be secularized and abolished, he addressed to the Protestant magistrate an eloquent and touching plea in behalf of the nuns, and conclusively refuted the charges made against them. The convent was treated with some toleration, and survived till 1590.

His last letters, like those of Erasmus, breathe discontent with the times, lament over the decline of letters and good morals, and make the evangelical clergy responsible for the same evils which he formerly charged upon the Roman clergy and monks. "I hoped," he wrote to Zasius (1527), a distinguished professor of jurisprudence at Freiburg, who likewise stood halting between Rome and Wittenberg,—"I hoped for spiritual liberty; but, instead of it, we have carnal license, and things have gotten much worse than before." Zasius was of the same opinion,560 and Protestants of Nürnberg admitted the fact of the extensive abuse of the gospel liberty.561  In a letter to his friend Leib, prior of Rebdorf, written a year before his death, Pirkheimer disclaims all fellowship with Luther, and expresses the opinion that the Reformer had become either insane, or possessed by an evil spirit.562  But, on the other hand, he remained on good terms with Melanchthon, and entertained him on his way to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.

His apparent inconsistency is due to a change of the times rather than to a change of his conviction. Like Erasmus, he remained a humanist, who hoped for a reformation from a revival of letters rather than theology and religion, and therefore hailed the beginning, but lamented the progress, of the Lutheran movement.563

Broken by disease, affliction, and disappointment, he died in the year of the Augsburg Confession, Dec. 22, 1530, praying for the prosperity of the fatherland and the peace of the church. He left unfinished an edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, which Erasmus published with a preface. Shortly before his death, Erasmus had given him an unfavorable account of the introduction of the Reformation in Basel and of his intention to leave the city.

Pirkheimer made no permanent impression, and his writings are antiquated; but, as one of the most prominent humanists and connecting links between the mediaeval and the modern ages, he deserves a place in the history of the Reformation.

§ 75. The Peasants’ War. 1523–1525.

I. Luther: Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwölf Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben (1525); Wider die mörderischen und raüberischen Rotten der Bauern (1525); Ein Sendbrief von dem harten Büchlein wider die Bauern (1525). Walch, Vols. XVI. and XXI. Erl. ed., XXIV. 257–318. Melanchthon: Historic Thomae Münzers (1525), in Walch, XVI. 204 sqq. Cochlæus (Rom. Cath.), in his writings against Luther.

II. Histories of the Peasants’ War, by Sartorius (Geschichte des deutschen Bauernkriegs, Berlin, 1795); Wachsmuth (Leipzig. 1834); Oechsle (Heilbronn, 1830 anti 1844); Bensen (Erlangen, 1840); Zimmermann (Stuttgart, 1841, second edition 1856, 3 Vols.); Jörg (Freiburg, 1851); Schreiber (Freiburg, 1863–66, 3 vols.); Stern (Leipzig, 1868); Baumann (Tübingen, 1876–78); L. Fries, ed. by Schäffler and Henner (Würzburg, 1876, 1877); Hartfelder (Stuttgart, 1884).

III. Monographs on Thomas Münzer by Strobel (Leben, Schriften und Lehren Thomae Müntzers, Nürnberg and Altdorf, 1795); Gebser (1831); Streif (1835); Seidemann (Dresden, 1842); Leo (1856); Erbkam (in Herzog2, Vol. X. 365 sqq.).

IV. Ranke: II. 124–150. Janssen: II. 393–582. Häusser: ch. VII. Weber: Weltgesch., vol. X. 229–273 (second edition, 1886).

The ecclesiastical radicalism at Wittenberg was the prelude of a more dangerous political and social radicalism, which involved a large portion of Germany in confusion and blood. Both movements had their roots in crying abuses; both received a strong impetus from the Reformation, and pretended to carry out its principles to their legitimate consequences; but both were ultra- and pseudo-Protestant, fanatical, and revolutionary.

Carlstadt and Münzer are the connecting links between the two movements, chiefly the latter. Carlstadt never went so far as Münzer, and afterwards retraced his steps. Their expulsion from Saxony extended their influence over Middle and Southern Germany.564

Condition of the Peasants.

The German peasants were the beasts of burden for society, and in no better condition than slaves. Work, work, work, without reward, was their daily lot, even Sunday hardly excepted. They were ground down by taxation, legal and illegal. The rapid increase of wealth, luxury, and pleasure, after the discovery of America, made their condition only worse. The knights and nobles screwed them more cruelly than before, that they might increase their revenues and means of indulgence.

The peasants formed, in self-protection, secret leagues among themselves: as the "Käsebröder" (Cheese-Brothers), in the Netherlands; and the "Bundschuh,"565 in South Germany. These leagues served the same purpose as the labor unions of mechanics in our days.

Long before the Reformation revolutionary outbreaks took place in various parts of Germany,—A.D. 1476, 1492, 1493, 1502, 1513, and especially in 1514, against the lawless tyranny of Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg. But these rebellions were put down by brute force, and ended in disastrous failure.566

In England a communistic insurrection of the peasants and villeins occurred in 1381, under the lead of Wat Tyler and John Balle, in connection with a misunderstanding of Wiclif’s doctrines.

The Reformation, with its attacks upon the papal tyranny, its proclamation of the supremacy of the Bible, of Christian freedom, and the general priesthood of the laity, gave fresh impulse and new direction to the rebellious disposition. Traveling preachers and fugitive tracts stirred up discontent. The peasants mistook spiritual liberty for carnal license. They appealed to the Bible and to Dr. Luther in support of their grievances. They looked exclusively at the democratic element in the New Testament, and turned it against the oppressive rule of the Romish hierarchy and the feudal aristocracy. They identified their cause with the restoration of pure Christianity.

Thomas Münzer.

Thomas Münzer, one of the Zwickau Prophets, and an eloquent demagogue, was the apostle and travelling evangelist of the social revolution, and a forerunner of modern socialism, communism, and anarchism. He presents a remarkable compound of the discordant elements of radicalism and mysticism. He was born at Stolberg in the Harz Mountain (1590); studied theology at Leipzig; embraced some of the doctrines of the Reformation, and preached them in the chief church at Zwickau; but carried them to excess, and was deposed.

After the failure of the revolution in Wittenberg, in which he took part, he labored as pastor at Altstädt (1523), for the realization of his wild ideas, in direct opposition to Luther, whom he hated worse than the Pope. Luther wrote against the "Satan of Altstädt." Münzer was removed, but continued his agitation in Mühlhausen, a free city in Thuringia, in Nürnberg, Basel, and again in Mühlhausen (1525).

He was at enmity with the whole existing order of society, and imagined himself the divinely inspired prophet of a new dispensation, a sort of communistic millennium, in which there should be no priests, no princes, no nobles, and no private property, but complete democratic equality. He inflamed the people in fiery harangues from the pulpit, and in printed tracts to open rebellion against their spiritual and secular rulers. He signed himself "Münzer with the hammer," and "with the sword of Gideon." He advised the killing of all the ungodly. They had no right to live. Christ brought the sword, not peace upon earth. "Look not," he said, "on the sorrow of the ungodly; let not your sword grow cold from blood; strike hard upon the anvil of Nimrod [the princes]; cast his tower to the ground, because the day is yours."

The Program of the Peasants.

At the beginning of the uprising, the Swabian peasants issued a program of their demands, a sort of political and religious creed, consisting of twelve articles.567

Professing to claim nothing inconsistent with Christianity as a religion of justice, peace, and charity, the peasants claim: 1. The right to elect their own pastors (conceded by Zwingli, but not by Luther). 2. Freedom from the small tithe (the great tithe of grain they were willing to pay). 3. The abolition of bond-service, since all men were redeemed by the blood of Christ (but they promised to obey the elected rulers ordained by God, in every thing reasonable and Christian). 4. Freedom to hunt and fish. 5. A share in the forests for domestic fuel. 6. Restriction of compulsory service. 7. Payment for extra labor above what the contract requires. 8. Reduction of rents. 9. Cessation of arbitrary punishments. 10. Restoration of the pastures and fields which have been taken from the communes. 11. Abolition of the right of heriot, by which widows and orphans are deprived of their inheritance. 12. All these demands shall be tested by Scripture; and if not found to agree with it, they are to be withdrawn.

These demands are moderate and reasonable, especially freedom from feudal oppression, and the primitive right to elect a pastor. Most of them have since been satisfied. Had they been granted in 1524, Germany might have been spared the calamity of bloodshed, and entered upon a career of prosperity. But the rulers and the peasants were alike blind to their best interests, and consulted their passion instead of reason. The peasants did not stick to their own program, split up in parties, and resorted to brutal violence against their masters. Another program appeared, which aimed at a democratic reconstruction of church and state in Germany. Had Charles V. not been taken up with foreign schemes, he might have utilized the commotion for the unification and consolidation of Germany in the interest of an imperial despotism and Romanism. But this would have been a still greater calamity than the division of Germany.

Progress of the Insurrection.

The insurrection broke out in summer, 1524, in Swabia, on the Upper Danube, and the Upper Rhine along the Swiss frontier, but not on the Swiss side, where the peasantry were free. In 1525 it extended gradually all over South-Western and Central Germany. The rebels destroyed the palaces of the bishops, the castles of the nobility, burned convents and libraries, and committed other outrages. Erasmus wrote to Polydore Virgil, from Basel, in the autumn of 1525: "Every day there are bloody conflicts between the nobles and the peasants, so near us that we can hear the firing, and almost the groans of the wounded." In another letter he says: "Every day priests are imprisoned, tortured, hanged, decapitated, or burnt."

At first the revolution was successful. Princes, nobles, and cities were forced to submit to the peasants. If the middle classes, which were the chief supporters of Protestant doctrines, had taken sides with the peasants, they would have become irresistible.

But the leader of the Reformation threw the whole weight of his name against the revolution.

Luther advises a wholesale Suppression of the Rebellion.

The fate of the peasantry depended upon Luther. Himself the son of a peasant, he had, at first, considerable sympathy with their cause, and advocated the removal of their grievances; but he was always opposed to the use of force, except by the civil magistrate, to whom the sword was given by God for the punishment of evil-doers. He thought that revolution was wrong in itself, and contrary to Divine order; that it was the worst enemy of reformation, and increased the evil complained of. He trusted in the almighty power of preaching, teaching, and moral suasion. In the battle of words he allowed himself every license; but there he stopped. With the heroic courage of a warrior in the spiritual army of God, he combined the humble obedience of a monk to the civil authority.

He replied to the Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants with an exhortation to peace (May, 1525). He admitted that most of them were just. He rebuked the princes and nobles, especially the bishops, for their oppression of the poor people and their hostility to the gospel, and urged them to grant some of the petitions, lest a fire should be kindled all over Germany which no one could extinguish. But he also warned the peasants against revolution, and reminded them of the duty of obedience to the ruling powers (Rom. 13:1), and of the passage, that "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matt. 26:52). He advised both parties to submit the quarrel to a committee of arbitration. But it was too late; he preached to deaf ears.

When the dark cloud of war rose up all over Germany, and obscured the pure light of the Reformation, Luther dipped his pen in blood, and burst out in a most violent manifesto "against the rapacious and murderous peasants." He charged them with doing the Devil’s work under pretence of the gospel.568  He called upon the magistrates to "stab, kill, and strangle" them like mad dogs. He who dies in defence of the government dies a blessed death, and is a true martyr before God. A pious Christian should rather suffer a hundred deaths than yield a hair of the demands of the peasants.569

So fierce were Luther’s words, that he had to defend himself in a public letter to the chancellor of Mansfeld (June or July, 1525). He did not, however, retract his position. "My little book," he said, "shall stand, though the whole world should stumble at it." He repeated the most offensive passages, even in stronger language, and declared that it was useless to reason with rebels, except by the fist and the sword.570

Cruel as this conduct appears to every friend of the poor peasants, it would he unjust to regard it as an accommodation, and to derive it from selfish considerations. It was his sincere conviction of duty to the magistrate in temporal matters, and to the cause of the Reformation which was threatened with destruction.

Defeat of the Rebellion.

The advice of the Reformer was only too well executed by the exasperated princes, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who now made common cause against the common foe. The peasants, badly armed, poorly led, and divided among themselves, were utterly defeated by the troops of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Duke Henry of Brunswick, the Elector Jolin, and the Dukes George and John of Saxony. In the decisive battle at Frankenhausen, May 25, 1525, five thousand slain lay on the field and in the streets; three hundred were beheaded before the court-house. Münzer fled, but was taken prisoner, tortured, and executed. The peasants in South Germany, in the Alsace and Lorraine, met with the same defeat by the imperial troops and the forces of the electors of the Palatinate and Treves, and by treachery. In the castle of Zabern, in the Alsace (May 17), eighteen thousand peasants fell. In the Tyrol and Salzburg, the rebellion lasted longest, and was put down in part by arbitration.

The number of victims of war far exceeded a hundred thousand.571  The surviving rebels were beheaded or mutilated. Their widows and orphans were left destitute. Over a thousand castles and convents lay in ashes, hundreds of villages were burnt to the ground, the cattle killed, agricultural implements destroyed, and whole districts turned into a wilderness. "Never," said Luther, after the end of the war, "has the aspect of Germany been more deplorable than now."572

The Peasants’ War was a complete failure, and the victory of the princes an inglorious revenge. The reaction made their condition worse than ever. Very few masters had sufficient humanity and self-denial to loosen the reins. Most of them followed the maxim of Rehoboam: "My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions" (1 Kings 12:14). The real grievances remained, and the prospect of a remedy was put off to an indefinite future.

The cause of the Reformation suffered irreparable injury, and was made responsible by the Romanists, and even by Erasmus, for all the horrors of the rebellion. The split of the nation was widened; the defeated peasantry in Roman Catholic districts were forced back into the old church; quiet citizens lost their interest in politics and social reform; every attempt in that direction was frowned down with suspicion. Luther had once for all committed himself against every kind of revolution, and in favor of passive obedience to the civil rulers who gladly accepted it, and appealed again and again to Rom. 13:1, as the popes to Matt. 16:18, as if they contained the whole Scripture-teaching on obedience to authority. Melanchthon and Bucer fully agreed with Luther on this point; and the Lutheran Church has ever since been strictly conservative in politics, and indifferent to the progress of civil liberty. It is only in the nineteenth century that serfdom has been entirely abolished in Germany and Russia, and negro slavery in America.

The defeat of the Peasants’ War marks the end of the destructive tendencies of the Reformation, and the beginning of the construction of a new church on the ruins of the old.

CHAPTER V.

THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION FROM THE PEASANTS’ WAR TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, A.D. 1525–1530.

§ 76. The Three Electors.

G. Spalatin: Friedrich d. Weise, Lebensgeschichte, ed. by Neudecker and Preller, Jena, 1851. Tutzschmann: Fr. d. W., Grimma, 1848. Ranke, vol. II. Kolde: Friedrich der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation, Erlangen, 1881. Köstlin in the Studien u. Kritiken, 1882, p. 700, (vers. Kolde). Comp. §§ 26 and 61.

Shortly before the close of the Peasants’ War, Frederick III., surnamed the Wise, Elector of Saxony (1486–1525), died peacefully as he had lived, in his sixty-third year, May 5, 1525. His last hours at the castle of Lochau form a striking contrast with the stormy and bloody scenes around him. He hoped that the common people would not prevail, but admitted that they had reason to complain of harsh treatment. "Dear children," he said to his servants, "if I have wronged any one of you, I beg you to forgive me for God’s sake; we princes do many naughty things to the poor people." Shortly before his death, he partook of the holy communion in both kinds. This is the only distinct Protestant act in his life. His body was removed to Wittenberg, and buried in the castle church at which Luther had posted his Ninety-Five Theses. Melanchthon delivered a Latin oration; Luther wrote letters of condolence to his brother and nephew, who succeeded him, and praised his wisdom, his kindness to his subjects, his love of justice and hatred of falsehood. Aleander, the Pope’s legate at Worms, called him the old fox of Saxony, but in history he bears the name of the Wise. He had charge of the German Empire after the death of Maximilian; he modestly declined the imperial crown; he decided the election of King Charles of Spain, and was the only Elector who did not sell his vote.

Frederick was a devout Catholic, a believer in relics and indulgences, but at the same time a lover of fair dealing, an admirer of Luther, and much concerned for his university. He saved the German Reformation by saving the Reformer, without openly breaking with the Catholic Church. He never saw Luther, except at a distance in the Diet of Worms, and communicated with him chiefly through his chaplain and secretary, Spalatin. His cautious reserve was the best policy for the time.

Frederick was succeeded by his brother, John the Steadfast or Constant (1525–1532). He was less prudent and influential in politics, but a more determined adherent of the Reformation. He was too fat to mount his horse without the aid of a machine. He went to sleep at times under Luther’s sermons, but stood by him at every cost. His motto was:  "The word of God abideth for ever," which was placed on his ensigns and liveries.573  He was the first to sign the immortal protest of Speier in 1529, and the Confession of Augsburg in 1530.

His son and successor, John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–1554), survived Luther. He founded the University of Jena. He suffered the disastrous defeat at Mühlberg (April 24, 1547), and would rather lose his Electorate and half of his estates than deny the evangelical faith in which he was brought up. How different was the conduct of Elector Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who sold the Lutheran faith of his ancestors for the crown of Poland (1697), and disgraced both by his scandulous life.

Luther has left some characteristic remarks about his three sovereigns. Of Frederick, whom he only knew from a distance, he said, "He was a wise, intelligent, able, and good man, who hated all display and hypocrisy. He was never married.574  His life was pure and modest. His motto ’Tantum quantum possim’ was a sign of his good sense .... He was a fine manager and economist. He listened patiently in his council, shut his eyes, and took notes of each opinion. Then he formed his own conclusion. Such a prince is a blessing from God." Of John he said, "He had six pages to wait on him. They read the Bible to him for six hours every day. He often went to sleep, but when he awoke he had always some good text in his mouth. At sermon he used to take notes in a pocket-book. Church government and secular affairs were well administered. The Emperor had only good to say of him. He had a strong frame, and a hard death. He roared like a lion." John Frederick he judged to be "too indulgent, though he hates untruth and loose living. He fears God, and has his five wits about him. You never hear an impure or dishonorable word from his lips. He is a chaste husband, and loves his wife,—a rare virtue among kings and princes. One fault he has: he eats and drinks too much. Perhaps so big a body requires more than a small one. Otherwise he works like a donkey; and, drink what he will, he always reads the Bible or some good book before he goes to sleep."575

These three Electors of Saxony are the model princes of the Lutheran Reformation, which owes much to their protection. Philip of Hesse was more intelligent, brilliant, liberal, and daring than any of them, but his bigamy paralyzed his influence. He leaned more to the Reformed side, and stood on good terms with Zwingli. The most pious of the princes of Germany in the sixteenth century was Frederick III., surnamed the Pious, Elector of the Palatinate (1559–1576), who introduced the Heidelberg Catechism.

The Protestant sovereigns became supreme bishops in their respective dominions. They did not preach, nor administer the sacraments, but assumed the episcopal jurisdiction in the government of the Church, and exercised also the right of reforming the Church (jus reformationis) in their dominions, whereby they established a particular confession as the state religion, and excluded others, or reduced them to the condition of mere toleration. This right they claimed by virtue of a resolution of the Diet of Speier, in 1526, which was confirmed by the Peace of Augsburg, 1555, and ultimately by the Peace of Westphalia, 1648. The Reformers regarded this secular summepiscopate as a temporary arrangement which was forced upon them by the hostility of the bishops who adhered to the Pope. They justified it by the example of Josiah and other pious kings of Israel, who destroyed idolatry and restored the pure worship of Jehovah. They accepted the protection and support of the princes at the sacrifice of the freedom and independence of the church, which became an humble servant of the state. Melanchthon regretted this condition; and in view of the rapacity of the princes, and the confusion of things, he wished the old bishops back again, and was willing even to submit to the authority of a pope if the pope would allow the freedom of the gospel. In Scandinavia and England the episcopal hierarchy was retained, or a new one substituted for the old, and gave the church more power and influence in the government.

§ 77. Luther’s Marriage. 1525.

I. Luther’s Letters of May and June, 1525, touching on his marriage, in De Wette’s collection, at the end of second and beginning of third vols. His views on matrimonial duties, in several sermons, e.g., Predigt vom Ehestand, 1525 (Erl. ed., xvi. 165 sqq.), and in his Com. on 1 Cor. vii., publ. Wittenberg, 1523, and in Latin, 1525 (Erl. ed., xix. l-69). He wished to prevent this chapter from being used as a Schanddeckel der falsch-berümten Keuschheit. His views about Katie, in Walch, XXIV. 150. His table-talk about marriage and woman, in Bindseil’s Colloquia, II. 332–336. A letter of Justus Jonas to Spalatin (June 14, 1525), and one of Melanchthon to Camerarius (June 16).

II. The biographies of Katharina von Bora by Walch (1752), Beste (1843), Hofmann(1845), Meurer(1854). Uhlhorn: K. v. B., in Herzog2, vol. II. 564–567. Köstlin: Leben Luthers, I. 766–772; II. 488 sqq., 605 sqq.; his small biography, Am. ed. (Scribner’s), pp. 325–335, and 535 sqq. Beyschlag: Luther’s Hausstand in seiner reform. Bedeutung. Barmen, 1888.

III. Burk: Spiegel edler Pfarrfrauen. Stuttgart, 3d ed. 1885. W. Baur (Gen. Superintendent of the Prussian Rhine Province): Das deutsche evangelische Pfarrhaus, seine Gründung, seine Entfaltung und sein Bestand. Bremen, 1877, 3d ed. 1884.

Amidst the disturbances and terrors of the Peasants’ War, in full view of his personal danger, and in expectation of the approaching end of the world, Luther surprised his friends and encouraged his foes by his sudden marriage with a poor fugitive nun. He wrote to his friend Link: "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has, plunged me into marriage."

The manner was highly characteristic, neither saint-like nor sinner-like, but eminently Luther-like. By taking to himself a wife, he wished to please his father, to tease the Pope, and to vex the Devil. Beneath was a deeper and nobler motive, to rescue the oldest ordinance of God on earth from the tyranny of Rome, and to vindicate by his own example the right of ministers to the benefit of this ordinance. Under this view, his marriage is a public event of far-reaching consequence. It created the home life of the evangelical clergy.

He had long before been convinced that vows of perpetual celibacy are unscriptural and unnatural. He held that God has created man for marriage, and that those who oppose it must either be ashamed of their manhood, or pretend to be wiser than God. He did not object to the marriage of Carlstadt, Jonas, Bugenhagen, and other priests and monks. But he himself seemed resolved to remain single, and continued to live in the convent. He was now over forty years of age; eight years had elapsed since he opened the controversy with Rome in the Ninety-Five Theses; and, although a man of powerful passions, he had strictly kept his monastic and clerical vow. His enemies charged him with drinking beer, playing the lute, leading a worldly life, but never dared to dispute his chastity till after his marriage. As late as Nov. 30, 1524, he wrote to Spalatin  I shall never take a wife, as I feel at present. Not that I am insensible to my flesh or sex (for I am neither wood nor stone); but my mind is averse to wedlock, because I daily expect the death of a heretic."576  But on April 10, 1525, he wrote to the same friend: "Why do you not get married?  I find so many reasons for urging others to marry, that I shall soon be brought to it myself, notwithstanding that enemies never cease to condemn the married state, and our little wiseacres (sapientuli) ridicule it every day."577  He got tired of his monastic seclusion; the convent was nearly emptied, and its resources cut off; his bed, as Melanchthon tells us, was not properly made for months, and was mildewed with perspiration; he lived of the plainest food; he worked himself nearly to death; he felt the need of a helpmate.

In April, 1523, nine nuns escaped from the convent of Nimptsch near Grimma, fled to Wittenberg, and appealed to Luther for protection and aid. Among them was Catharina von Bora,578 a virgin of noble birth, but poor, fifteen years younger than Luther,579 not remarkable for beauty or culture, but healthy, strong, frank, intelligent, and high-minded. In looking at the portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Luther in their honeymoon, we must remember that they were painted by Cranach, and not by Raphael or Titian.580

Catharina had been attached and almost engaged to a former student of Wittenberg from Nürnberg; but he changed his mind, to her great grief, and married a rich wife (1523). After this Luther arranged a match between her and Dr. Glatz of Orlamünde (who was afterwards deposed); but she refused him, and intimated to Amsdorf, that she would not object to marry him or the Reformer. Amsdorf remained single. Luther at first was afraid of her pride, but changed his mind. On May 4, 1525, he wrote to Dr. Rühel (councilor of Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, and of Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz), that he would, take his Katie to wife before he died, in spite of the Devil."581  He left his friends ignorant of the secret, deeming it unwise to talk much about such delicate matters. "A man," he said, "must ask God for counsel, and pray, and then act accordingly."

On the evening of June 13, on Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, he invited Bugenhagen, Jonas, Lucas Cranach and wife, and a professor of jurisprudence, Apel (an ex-Dean of the Cathedral of Bamberg, who had himself married a nun), to, his house, and in their presence was joined in matrimony to Catharina von Bora in the name of the Holy Trinity. Bugenhagen performed the ceremony in the customary manner. On the following morning he entertained his friends at breakfast. Justus Jonas reported the marriage to Spalatin through a special messenger. He was affected by it to tears, and saw in it the wonderful hand of God.582

On June 27 Luther celebrated his wedding in a more public, yet modest style, by a nuptial feast, and invited his father and mother and his distant friends to "seal and ratify" the union, and to "pronounce the benediction."583  He mentioned with special satisfaction that he had now fulfilled an old duty to his father, who wished him to marry. The University presented him with a rich silver goblet (now in possession of the University of Greifswald), bearing the inscription: "The honorable University of the electoral town of Wittenberg presents this wedding gift to Doctor Martin Luther and his wife Kethe von Bora." The magistrate provided the pair with a barrel of Eimbeck beer, a small quantity of good wine, and twenty guilders in silver. What is very remarkable, Archbishop Albrecht sent to Katie through Rühel a wedding gift of twenty guilders in gold; Luther declined it for himself, but let Katie have it.584  Several wedding-rings of doubtful genuineness have been preserved, especially one which bears the image of the crucified Saviour, and the inscription, "D. Martino Luthero Catharina v. Boren, 13 Jun. 1525." It has been multiplied in 1817 by several copies. They lived together in the old Augustinian convent, which was now empty. He was not much interrupted in his studies, and at the end of the same year he published his violent book against Erasmus, who wondered that marriage had not softened his temper.

The event was a rich theme for slander and gossip. His enemies circulated a slander about a previous breach of the vow of chastity, and predicted that, according to a popular tradition, the ex-monk and ex-nun would give birth to Antichrist. Erasmus contradicts the slander, and remarked that if that tradition was true, there must have been many thousands of antichrists before this.585  Melanchthon (who had been invited to the feast of the 27th of June, but not to the ceremony of the 13th), in a Greek letter to his friend Camerarius (June 16), expressed the fear that Luther, though he might be ultimately benefited by his marriage, had committed a lamentable act of levity and weakness, and injured his influence at a time when Germany most needed it.586

Luther himself felt at first strange and restless in his new relation, but soon recovered. He wrote to Spalatin, June 16, "l have made myself so vile and contemptible forsooth that all the angels, I hope, will laugh, and all the devils weep."587  A year after he wrote to Stiefel (Aug. 11, 1526): "Catharina, my dear rib, salutes you, and thanks you for your letter. She is, thanks to God, gentle, obedient, compliant in all things, beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my poverty for the wealth of Croesus."588  He often preached on the trials and duties of married life truthfully and effectively, from practical experience, and with pious gratitude for that holy state which God ordained in paradise, and which Christ honored by his first miracle. He calls matrimony a gift of God, wedlock the sweetest, chastest life, above all celibacy, or else a veritable hell.

§ 78. Luther’s Home Life.

Luther and Katie were well suited to each other. They lived happily together for twenty-one years, and shared the usual burdens and joys. Their domestic life is very characteristic, full of good nature, innocent humor, cordial affection, rugged simplicity, and thoroughly German. It falls below the refinement of a modern Christian home, and some of his utterances on the relation between the two sexes are coarse; but we must remember the rudeness of the age, and his peasant origin. No stain rests upon his home life, in which he was as gentle as a lamb and as a child among children.

"Next to God’s Word," he said from his personal experience, "there is no more precious treasure than holy matrimony. God’s highest gift on earth is a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wife, with whom you may live peacefully, to whom you may intrust your goods and body and life."

He loved his wife dearly, and playfully called her in his letters "my heartily beloved, gracious housewife, bound hand and foot in loving service, Catharine, Lady Luther, Lady Doctor, Lady of Zulsdorf.589  Lady of the Pigmarket,590 and whatever else she may be." She was a good German Hausfrau, caring for the wants of her husband and children; she contributed to his personal comfort in sickness and health, and enabled him to exercise his hospitality. She had a strong will, and knew how to take her own part. He sometimes speaks of her as his "Lord Katie," and of himself as her "willing servant." "Katie," he said to her, "you have a pious husband who loves you; you are an empress." Once in 1535 he promised her fifty guilders if she would read the Bible through; whereupon, as he told a friend, it became a very serious matter with her." She could not understand why God commanded Abraham to do such a cruel thing as to kill his own child; but Luther pointed her to God’s sacrifice of his only Son, and to the resurrection from the dead. To Katie and to Melanchthon he wrote his last letters (five to her, three to Melanchthon) from Eisleben shortly before his death, informing her of his journey, his diet and condition, complaining of fifty Jews under the protection of the widowed Countess of Mansfeld, sending greetings to Master Philip (Melanchthon), and quieting her apprehensions about his health.

"Pray read, dear Katie, the Gospel of John and the little Catechism .... You worry yourself about your God, just as if He were not Almighty, and able to create ten Doctor Martin Luthers for the old one drowned perhaps in the Saale, or fallen dead by the fireplace, or on Wolf’s fowling floor. Leave me in peace with your cares; I have a better protector than you and all the angels. He—my Protector—lies in the manger and hangs upon a Virgin’s breast, but He sits also at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Rest, therefore, in peace. Amen."591

In his will (1542), seventeen years after his marriage, he calls her a "pious, faithful, and devoted wife, full of loving, tender care towards him." At times, however, he felt oppressed by domestic troubles, and said once he would not marry again, not even a queen. Those were passing moods. "Oh, how smoothly things move on, when man and wife sit lovingly at table!  Though they have their little bickerings now and then, they must not mind that. Put up with it." "We must have patience with woman, though she be it times sharp and bitter. She presides over the household machinery, and the servants deserve occasionally a good scolding." He put the highest honor of woman on her motherhood. "All men," he said, "are conceived, born, and nursed by women. Thence come the little darlings, the highly prized heirs. This honor ought in fairness to cover up all feminine weakness."

Luther had six children,—three daughters, two of whom died young, and three sons, Hans (John), Martin, and Paul. None inherited his genius. Hans gave him much trouble. Paul rose to some eminence as physician of the Elector, and died at Dresden, 1593. The sons accompanied their father on his last journey to Eisleben.592  His wife’s aunt, Magdalen von Bora, who had been a nun and head-nurse in the same cloister, lived with his family, and was esteemed like a grandmother by him and his children. Two orphan nieces, and a tutor for the boys, an amanuensis, and a number of students as boarders, belonged to the household in a portion of the former convent on the banks of the Elbe. The chief sitting-room of the family, his bedroom, and the lecture hall are still shown in "the Lutherhaus."

He began the day, after his private devotions, which were frequent and ardent, with reciting in his family the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a Psalm. He went to bed at nine, but rose early, and kept wide awake during the day. Of his private devotions we have an authentic account from his companion, Veit Dietrich, who wrote to Melanchthon during the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, when Luther was at Coburg, feeling the whole weight of that great crisis: —

"No day passes that he does not give three hours to prayer, and those the fittest for study. Once I happened to hear him praying. Good God! how great a spirit, how great a faith, was in his very words!  With such reverence did he ask, as if he felt that he was speaking with God; with such hope and faith, as with a Father and a Friend. ’I know,’ he said, ’that Thou art our Father and our God. I am certain, therefore, that Thou art about to destroy the persecutors of Thy children. If Thou doest not, then our danger is Thine too. This business is wholly Thine, we come to it under compulsion: Thou, therefore, defend.’ ... In almost these words I, standing afar off, heard him praying with a clear voice. And my mind burned within me with a singular emotion when he spoke in so friendly a manner, so weightily, so reverently, to God."

Luther celebrated the festivals, especially Christmas, with childlike joy. One of the most familiar scenes of Christian family life in Germany is Luther with his children around the Christmas-tree, singing his own Christmas hymn:

"Good news from heaven the angels bring,

Glad tidings to the earth they ring."593

Nothing can be more charming or creditable to his heart than the truly childlike letter he wrote to his oldest boy Hans, then four years of age, from Coburg, during the sessions of the Augsburg Diet in the momentous year 1530.594

"Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little boy. I am pleased to see that thou learnest thy lessons well, and prayest diligently. Go on thus, my dear boy, and when I come home, I will bring you a fine fairing. I know of a pretty, delightful garden, where are merry children that have gold frocks, and gather nice apples and pears, cherries and plums under the trees, and sing and jump and are happy; they also ride on fine little horses with gold bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man who owns the garden, who the children were. He said, ’These are the children who love to pray and to learn, and are good.’  Then I said, ’Dear man, I also have a son who is called Hans Luther. May he not come to this garden and eat such pretty apples and pears, and ride on such fine little horses, and play with these children?’  The man said, ’If he likes to pray and to learn, and is pious, he may come to the garden, and Lippus595 and Jost596 may come also; and if they all come together, they shall have pipes and drums and lutes and fiddles, and they shall dance and shoot with little crossbows.’

"Then he showed me a smooth lawn in the garden laid out for dancing, and there hung the golden pipes and drums and crossbows. But it was still early, and the children had not dined; therefore I could not wait for the dance. So I said, ’Dear sir, I will go straight home and write all this to my little boy; but he has an aunt, Lene,597 that he must bring with him.’   And the man answered, ’So it shall be; go and write as you say.’

"Therefore, dear little boy Johnny, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden together. And now I commend you to Almighty God. Give my love to aunt Lene, and give her a kiss for me. Anno 1530.

Thy loving father,

"Martinus Luther"

He was deeply grieved by the early death of his favorite daughter Lena (Magdalen), a pious, gentle, and affectionate girl of fourteen, with large, imaginative eyes, and full of promise.598  "I love her very much," he prayed; "but, dear God, if it is thy holy will to take her hence, I would gladly leave her with Thee." And to her he said, "Lena dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to remain here with thy father: art thou willing to go to that other Father?"—"Yes, dear father," she replied, "just as God wills." And when she was dying, he fell on his knees beside her bed, wept bitterly, and prayed for her redemption. As she lay in her coffin, he exclaimed, "Ah! my darling Lena, thou wilt rise again, and shine like a star,—yea, as a sun. I am happy in the spirit, but very sorrowful in the flesh." He wrote to his friend Jonas: "You will have heard that my dearest child is born again into the eternal kingdom of God. We ought to be glad at her departure, for she is taken away from the world, the flesh, and the devil; but so strong is natural love, that we cannot bear it without anguish of heart, without the sense of death in ourselves." On her tomb he inscribed these lines: —

"Here do I Lena, Luther’s daughter, rest,

Sleep in my little bed with all the blessed.

In sin and trespass was I born;

Forever would I be forlorn,

But yet I live, and all is good —

Thou, Christ, didst save me with thy blood."

Luther was simple, regular, and temperate in his habits. The reports to the contrary are slanders of enemies. The famous and much-abused adage, —

"Who does not love wife, wine, and song,

Remains a fool his whole life long,"599-

is not found in his works, nor in any contemporary writing, but seems to have originated in the last century, on the basis of some mediaeval saying.600  He used beer601 and common wine according to the general custom of his age and country; but he abhorred intemperance, and justly complained of the drink-devil (Saufteufel) of the Germans.602  Melanchthon, his daily companion, often wondered (as he reports after Luther’s death) how a man with such a portly frame could live on so meager a diet; for he observed that Luther sometimes fasted for four days when in good health, and was often contented for a whole day with a herring and a piece of bread. He preferred "pure, good, common, homely fare." Occasionally he received a present of game from the Elector, and enjoyed it with his friends.

He had a powerful constitution, but suffered much of the stone, of headache, and attacks of giddiness, and fainting; especially in the fatal year 1527, which brought him to the brink of the grave. He did not despise physicians, indifferent as they were in those days, and called them "God’s menders (Flicker) of our bodies; "but he preferred simple remedies, and said, "My best medical prescription is written in John 3: ’God so loved the world.’ "  He was too poor to keep horse and carriage, but he kept a bowling-alley for exercise. He liked to throw the first ball himself, and elicited a hearty laugh when he missed the mark; he then reminded the young friends that by aiming to knock down all the pins at once, they might miss them all, as they would find out in their future calling. He warned Melanchthon against excess of study, and reminded him that we must serve God by rest and recreation as well as by labor, for which reason He has given us the fourth commandment, and instituted the Sabbath.

Luther exercised a generous hospitality, and had always guests at his table. He was indiscriminately benevolent to beggars, until rogues sharpened his wits, and made him more careful.603  There was an unbroken succession of visitors—theologians, students, princes, noblemen, and ladies, anxious to see the great man, to get his advice and comfort; and all were favorably impressed with his frank, manly, and pleasant bearing. At times he was wrapt in deep thought, and kept a monkish silence at table; but at other times he talked freely, seriously and merrily, always interestingly, about every thing under the sun. His guests called his speeches their "table-spice," and recorded them faithfully without discrimination, even his most trivial remarks. Once he offered a premium for the shortest blessing. Bugenhagen began in Low German: —

"Dit und dat,

Trocken und nat

Gesegne Gott."

Luther improved upon it in Latin: —

"Dominus Jesus

Sit potus et esus."

But Melanchthon carried the palm with

"Benedictus benedicat."

To the records of Veit Dietrich, Lauterbach, and Mathesius, which were often edited, though in bad taste, we owe the most remarkable "Table-Talk "ever published.604  Many of his sayings are exceedingly quaint, and sound strange, coarse, and vulgar to refined ears. But they were never intended for publication; and making due allowance for human weakness, the rudeness of the age, and his own rugged nature, we may agree with the judgment of one of his most accurate biographers, that "in all his words and deeds Luther was guided constantly by the loftiest principles, by the highest considerations of morality and religious truth, and that in the simple and straightforward manner which was his nature, utterly free from affectation or artificial effort."605  After dinner he indulged with his friends and children in music, sacred and secular songs, German and Latin hymns. He loved poetry, music, painting, and all the fine arts. In this respect he was ahead of those puritanical Reformers who had no taste for the beautiful, and banished art from the church. He placed music next to theology. He valued it as a most effectual weapon against melancholy and the temptations of the Devil. "The heart," he said, "is satisfied, refreshed, and strengthened by music." He played the lute, sang melodiously, and composed tunes to his hymns, especially the immortal, Ein feste Burg," which gives classic expression to his heroic faith in God and the triumph of the gospel. He never lost his love for Virgil and Cicero, which he acquired as a student at Erfurt. He was fond of legends, fables, and proverbs. He would have delighted in the stories of old "Mother Goose," and in Grimm’s "Hausmährchen." He translated some of Esop’s Fables, and wrote a preface to an edition which was published after his death.

He enjoyed the beauties of nature, loved trees and flowers, was fond of gardening, watched with wonder the household of the bees, listened with delight to the singing birds, renewed his youth with the return of spring, and adored everywhere the wisdom and goodness of nature’s God. Looking at a rose, he said, "Could a man make a single rose, we should give him an empire; but these beautiful gifts of God come freely to us, and we think nothing of them. We admire what is worthless, if it be only rare. The most precious of things is nothing if it be common."  "The smallest flowers show God’s wisdom and might. Painters cannot rival their color, nor perfumers their sweetness; green and yellow, crimson, blue, and purple, all growing out of the earth. And yet we trample on lilies as if we were so many cows." He delighted in a refreshing rain. "God rains," he said, "many hundred thousand guilders, wheat, rye, barley, oats, wine, cabbage, grass, milk." Talking of children, he said, "They speak and act from the heart. They believe in God without disputing, and in another life beyond the present. They have small intellect, but they have faith, and are wiser than old fools like us. Abraham must have had a hard time when he was told to kill Isaac. No doubt he kept it from Sarah. If God had given me such all order, I should have disputed the point with Him. But God has given his only begotten Son unto death for us."

He shared in the traditional superstitions of his age. He believed in witchcraft, and had many a personal encounter with the Devil in sleepless nights.606  He was reluctant to accept the new Copernican system of astronomy, because Joshua bade the sun stand still, not the earth." He regarded the comets, which he calls "harlot stars," as tokens of God’s wrath, or as works of the Devil. Melanchthon and Zwingli held similar opinions on these irregular visitors. It was an almost universal belief of mankind, till recent times, that comets, meteors, and eclipses were fire-balls of an angry God to scare and rouse a wicked world to repentance.607  On the other hand, he doubted the calculations of astrology. "I have no patience with such stuff," he said to Melanchthon, who showed him the nativity of Cicero from the stars. "Esau and Jacob were born of the same father and mother, at the same time, and under the same planets, but their nature was wholly different. You would persuade me that astrology is a true science!  I was a monk, and grieved my father; I caught the Pope by his hair, and he caught me by mine; I married a runaway nun, and begat children with her. Who saw that in the stars?  Who foretold that?  Astronomy is very good, astrology is humbug. The example of Esau and Jacob disproves it."

Luther gave himself little concern about his household, and left it in the hands of his wife, who was prudent and economical. He calls himself a negligent, forgetful, and ignorant housekeeper, but gives great credit to his "Herr Kathie." He was contented with little, and called economy the best capital. All the Reformers were poor, and singularly free from avarice; they moved in a lofty sphere, and despised the vanities of the world.

Luther’s income was very small, even for the standard of his times, and presents a striking contrast to the royal splendor and luxury of bishops and cardinals. His highest annual salary as professor was three hundred guilders; it was first a hundred guilders; on his marriage the Elector John doubled it; the Elector John Frederick added a hundred; a guilder being equal in value to about sixteen marks or shillings (four dollars) of the present day. He received no honorarium from the students, nor any salary as preacher in the town church; but regular payments in wood and grain, and occasional presents of a fine suit, a cask of wine, or venison, or a silver cup from the Elector, with his greetings. Admiring friends gave him rings, chains, and other valuables, which he estimated in 1542 at a thousand guilders. In his last years (from 1541) he, as well as Bugenhagen, Melanchthon, and Jonas, received an annual honorary pension of fifty guilders from the king of Denmark, who thereby wished to show his gratitude for the Lutheran Reformation, and had previously (1539) sent him a special present of a hundred guilders through Bugenhagen. From his father, who left twelve hundred and fifty guilders, he inherited two hundred and fifty guilders. The publishers offered him (as he reported in 1539) a yearly grant of four hundred guilders for the free use of his manuscripts, but he refused "to make money out of the gifts of God." If he had been rewarded according to modern ideas, the royalty of his German Bible Version alone would have amounted to a handsome fortune before his death. He bought in 1540 from his brother-in-law a little farm, Zulsdorf, between Leipzig and Borna, for six hundred and ten guilders, as a home for his family. His wife cultivated a little garden with fruit-trees, even mulberry and fig trees, raised hops and brewed beer for domestic use, as was then the custom. She also had a small fish-pond. She enjoyed hard work. Luther assisted her in gardening and fishing. In 1541 he purchased a small house near the convent, for his wife.608  He willed all his property, which amounted to about nine thousand guilders, to his wife during her lifetime, wishing that, she should not receive from her children, but the children from her; that they must honor and obey her, as God has commanded."

His widow survived him seven years, and suffered from poverty and affliction. The Elector, the Counts of Mansfeld, and the King of Denmark added small sums to her income; but the unfortunate issue of the Smalkaldian war (1547) disturbed her peace, and drove her from Wittenberg. She returned after the war. Melanchthon and Bugenhagen did for her what they could. When the pestilence broke out at Wittenberg in 1552, and the university was moved to Torgau, she followed with her children; but on the journey she was thrown from the wagon into a ditch, and contracted a cold which soon passed into consumption. She died Dec. 20, 1552, at Torgau; her last prayer was for her children and the Lutheran Church.

A few words about Luther’s personal appearance. In early life, as we have seen, he looked like an ascetic monk, pale, haggard, emaciated.609  But in latter years he grew stout and portly. The change is characteristic of his transition from legalistic gloom to evangelical cheerfulness. He was of middle stature, had a large head and broad chest, a bold and open face without any dissimulation lurking behind, prominent lips, short curly hair, and uncommonly brilliant and penetrating eyes. His enemies saw in them the fire of a demon. His countenance makes the impression of frankness, firmness, courage, and trust in God. He looks like a hero of faith, who, with the Bible in his hand, defies the world, the flesh, and the Devil. His feet are firmly planted on the ground, as if they could not be moved. "Here I stand, I cannot otherwise." His voice was not strong, but clear and sonorous. He was neat in his dress, modest and dignified in his deportment. He exchanged the monastic gown in 1524 for a clerical robe, a gift of the Elector. He disliked the custom of the students to rise when he entered into the lecture-room. "I wish," he said, "Philip would give up this old fashion. These marks of honor always compel me to offer a few more prayers to keep me humble; and if I dared, I would go away without reading my lecture."

The same humility made him protest against the use of his name by his followers, who nevertheless persisted in it. "I pray you," he said, "leave my name alone, and do not call yourselves Lutherans, but Christians. Who is Luther?  My doctrine is not mine. I have not been crucified for any one. St. Paul would not that any one should call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of Christ. How, then, does it befit me, a miserable bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the children of Christ?  Cease, my dear friends, to cling to those party names and distinctions,—away with them all! and let us call ourselves only Christians, after Him from whom our doctrine comes. It is quite proper, that the Papists should bear the name of their party; because they are not content with the name and doctrine of Jesus Christ, they will be Papists besides. Well, let them own the Pope, as he is their master. For me, I neither am, nor wish to be, the master of any one. I and mine will contend for the sole and whole doctrine of Christ, who is our sole master."

§ 79. Reflections on Clerical Family Life.

The Reformers present to us the first noted examples of clerical family life in the Christian Church. This is a new and important chapter in the history of civilization.

They restored a natural right founded in the ordinance of God. The priests and high priests of the Jewish theocracy down to the father of John the Baptist, as well as the patriarchs, Moses, and some of the prophets, lived in wedlock. The prince of the apostles, whom Roman Catholics regard as the first pope, was a married man, and carried his wife with him on his missionary journeys.610  Paul claimed the same right as "other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas," though he renounced it for personal reasons. From the pastoral Epistles we may infer that marriage was the rule among the bishops and deacons of the apostolic age. It is therefore plainly a usurpation to deprive the ministers of the gospel of this right of nature and nature’s God.

But from the second century the opinion came to prevail, and still prevails in the papal communion, which is ruled by an unmarried priest, that marriage is inconsistent with the sacerdotal office, and should be forbidden after ordination. This view was based on the distinction between a lower and higher morality with corresponding merit and reward, the one for the laity or the common people; the other for priests and monks, who form a spiritual nobility. All the church fathers, Greek and Latin, even those who were themselves married (as Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, Synesius), are unanimous in praising celibacy above marriage; and the greatest of them are loudest in this praise, especially St. Jerome. And yet the mothers of Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Augustin, are the brightest examples of Christian women in the ancient Church. Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica were more useful in giving birth to these luminaries of the Church than any nuns.

This ascetic feature marks a decided difference between the Fathers and the Reformers, as it does between the Catholic and Evangelical churches. Anglicanism, with all its respect for the Fathers, differs as widely from them in this respect as any other Protestant communion.

The Oriental churches, including that of Russia, stopped half way in this ascetic restriction of a divine right. They approve and even enjoin marriage upon the lower clergy (before ordination), but forbid it to bishops, and regard the directions of Paul, 1 Tim. 3:2, 12 (compare 5:9), as a concession to the weakness of the flesh, and as a prohibition of second marriage. The Latin Church, understanding the advice of Paul, 1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 33, as, a counsel of perfection, "indicating a better way, imposed, as early as the fourth century, total abstinence from marriage upon all orders of the clergy, and brands the marriage of a priest as sinful concubinage. Pope Siricius, A.D. 385, issued the first prohibition of sacerdotal marriage. His successors followed, but it was not till Gregory VII. that the prohibition was rigidly enforced. It was done in the interest of hierarchical power, and at an enormous sacrifice of clerical purity. The Roman Catholic system makes marriage one of the seven sacraments; but by elevating celibacy above it, and by declaring it to be beneath the dignity of a priest of God, it degrades marriage as if it involved an element of impurity. According to the Gnostic and Manichaean theory, condemned by Paul as a doctrine of demons, 1 Tim. 4:1–3, marriage is a contact with sinful matter, and forbidden altogether.

In view of this state of public opinion and the long tradition of Latin Christendom, we need not wonder that the marriage of the Reformers created the greatest sensation, and gave rise to the slander that sensual passion was one of the strongest motives of their rebellion against popery. Erasmus struck the keynote to this perversion of history, although he knew well enough that Luther and Oecolampadius were Protestants several years before they thought of marrying. Clerical marriage was a result, not a cause, of the Reformation, as clerical celibacy was neither the first nor the chief objection to the papal system.611

On a superficial view one might wish that the Reformers had remained true to their solemn promise, like the Jansenist bishops in the seventeenth century, and the clerical leaders of the Old Catholic secession in the nineteenth.612  But it was their mission to introduce by example as well as by precept, a new type of Christian morality, to restore and re-create clerical family life, and to secure the purity, peace, and happiness of innumerable homes.

Far be it from us to depreciate the value of voluntary celibacy which is inspired by the love of God. The mysterious word of our Lord, Matt. 19:12, and the advice and example of Paul, 1 Cor. 7:7, 40, forbid it. We cheerfully admire the self-denial and devotion of martyrs, priests, missionaries, monks, nuns, and sisters of charity, who sacrificed all for Christ and their fellow-men. Protestantism, too, has produced not a few noble men and women who, without vows and without seeking or claiming extra merit, renounced the right of marriage from the purest motives.613  But according to God’s ordinance dating from the state of innocency, and sanctioned by Christ at the wedding feast at Cana, marriage is the rule for all classes of men, ministers as well as laymen. For ministers are men, and do not cease to be men by becoming ministers.

The Reformation has changed the moral ideal, and elevated domestic and social life. The mediaeval ideal of piety is the flight from the evil world: the modern ideal is the transformation of the world. The model saint of the Roman Church is the monk separated from the enjoyments and duties of society, and anticipating the angelic life in heaven where men neither marry nor are given in marriage: the model saint of the Evangelical Church is the free Christian and useful citizen, who shows his piety in the performance of social and domestic duties, and aims at the sanctification of the ordinances of nature. The former tries to conquer the world by running away from its temptations—though after all he cannot escape the flesh, the world, and the Devil in his own heart: the latter tries to conquer the world by converting it. The one abstains from the wedding feast: the other attends it, and changes the water into wine. The one flees from woman as a tempter: the other takes her to his heart, and reflects in the marriage relation the holy union of Christ with his Church. The one aims to secure, chastity by abstinence: the other proves it within the family. The one renounces all earthly possessions: the other uses them for the good of his fellow-men. The one looks for happiness in heaven: the other is happy already on earth by making others happy. The daily duties and trials of domestic and social life are a better school of moral discipline than monkish celibacy and poverty. Female virtues and graces are necessary to supplement and round out the character of man. Exceptions there are, but they prove the rule.

It may be expected that in the fervor and hurry of the first attempts in the transition from slavery to freedom, some indiscretions were committed; but they are as nothing compared with the secret chronique scandaleuse of enforced celibacy. It was reserved for later times to cultivate a more refined style of family life; but the Reformers burst the chains of papal tyranny, and furnished the practical proof that it is possible to harmonize the highest and holiest calling with the duties of husband and father. Though falling short of modern Protestant ideas of the dignity and rights of woman, they made her the rightful companion of the Christian pastor; and among those companions may be found many of the purest, most refined, and most useful women on earth. The social standing of woman is a true test of Christian civilization.

Melanchthon was the first among the Reformers who entered the state of matrimony; but being a layman, he violated no priestly or monastic vow. He married, at the urgent request of his friends, Katharina Krapp, the daughter of the burgomaster of Wittenberg, in November, 1520, and lived with his plain, pious, faithful, and benevolent wife, till her death in 1557. He was seen at times rocking the cradle while reading a book.614

Calvin was likewise free from the obligation of vows, but the severest and most abstemious among the Reformers. He married Idelette de Buren, the widow of an Anabaptist minister of Holland, whom he had converted to the Paedobaptist faith; he lived with her for nearly nine years, had three children who died in infancy, and remained a widower after her death. The only kind of female beauty which impressed him was, as he said, gentleness, purity, modesty, patience, and devotion to the wants of her husband; and these qualities he esteemed in his wife.615

Zwingli unfortunately broke his vow at Einsiedeln, while still a priest, and in receipt of a pension from the Pope. He afterwards married a worthy patrician widow with three children, Anna Reinhard von Knonau, who bore him two sons and two daughters, and lived to lament his tragic death on the field of battle, finding, like him, her only comfort in the Lord Jesus and the word of God.616

Ludwig Cellarius (Keller), Oecolampadius (the Reformer of Basel), Wolfgang Capito (the Reformer of Strassburg), and his more distinguished friend Martin Bucer (a widower who was always ready for union) were successively married to Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the daughter of a Knight and colonel aid-de-camp of the Emperor Maximilian I. She accompanied Bucer to Cambridge in England, and after his death returned to Basel, the survivor of four husbands!  She died Nov. 1, 1564.617  She must have had a remarkable attraction for Reformers. Oecolampadius thought her almost too young for his age of forty-five, but found her a "good Christian "and "free from youthful frivolity." She bore him three children,—Eusebius, Alitheia, and Irene.618  It was on the occasion of his marriage that Erasmus wrote to a friend (March 21, 1528): "Oecolampadius has lately married. His bride is not a bad-looking girl" [she was a widow]. "I suppose he wants to mortify his flesh. Some speak of the Lutheran cause as a tragedy, but to me it appears rather as a comedy, for it always ends in a wedding."619

Archbishop Cranmer appears in an unfavorable light. His first wife, "Black Joan," died in childbed before his ordination. Early in 1532, before he was raised to the primacy of Canterbury by Henry VIII. (August, 1532), he married a niece of the Lutheran preacher Osiander of Nürnberg, and concealed the fact, the disclosure of which would have prevented his elevation. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March, 1533, and his consecration took place March 30, 1533. The next year he privately summoned his wife to England; but sent her away in 1539, when he found it necessary to execute the bloody articles of Henry VIII., which included the prohibition of clerical marriage. He lent a willing hand to the divorces and re-marriages of his royal master. And yet with all his weakness of character, and time-serving policy, Cranmer must have been an eminently devout man if he translated and reproduced (as he certainly edited) the Anglican liturgy, which has stood the test of many generations to this day.620

John Knox, the Luther of Scotland, had the courage, as a widower of fifty-eight (March, 1563–64), to marry a Scotch lass of sixteen, Margaret Stuart, of royal name and blood, to the great indignation of Queen Mary, who "stormed wonderfully" at his audacity. The papists got up the story that he gained her affection by sorcery, and aimed to secure for his heirs, with the aid of the Devil, the throne of Scotland. His wife bore him three daughters, and two years after his death (1572) contracted a second marriage with Andrew Ker, a widower.621

The most unfortunate matrimonial incident in the Reformation is the consent of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer to the disgraceful bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It is a blot on their character, and admits of no justification. When the secret came out (1540), Melanchthon was so over-whelmed with the reproaches of conscience and a sense of shame that he fell dangerously ill at Weimar, till Luther, who was made of sterner stuff, and found comfort in his doctrine of justification by faith alone, prayed him out of the jaws of death.

In forming a just estimate of this subject, we must not only look backward to the long ages of clerical celibacy with all its dangers and evils, but also forward to the innumerable clerical homes which were made possible by the Reformation. They can bear the test of the closest examination.

Clerical celibacy and monastic vows deprived the church of the services of many men who might have become shining stars. On the other hand, it has been calculated by Justus Möser in 1750, that within two centuries after the Reformation from ten to fifteen millions of human beings in all lands owe their existence to the abolition of clerical celibacy.622  More important than this numerical increase is the fact that an unusual proportion of eminent scholars and useful men in church and state were descended from clerical families.623

There is a poetic as well as religious charm in the home of a Protestant country pastor who moves among his flock as a father, friend, and comforter, and enforces his teaching of domestic virtues and affections by his example, speaking louder than words. The beauty of this relation has often been the theme of secular poets. Everybody knows Oliver Goldsmith’s "Vicar of Wakefield," which describes with charming simplicity and harmless humor the trials and patience, the domestic, social, and professional virtues of a country pastor, and begins with the characteristic sentence: "I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married, and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population; from this motive I had scarcely taken orders a year, before I chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy face, but for such qualities as would wear well." Herder read this English classic four times, and commended it to his bride as one of the best books in any language. Goethe, who himself tasted the charm of a pastoral home in the days of his purest and strongest love to Friederike of Sesenheim, praises the "Vicar of Wakefield," as "one of the best novels, with the additional advantage of being thoroughly moral, yea in a genuine sense Christian," and makes the general assertion: "A Protestant country pastor is perhaps the most beautiful topic for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedek, as priest and king in one person. He is usually associated by occupation and outward condition with the most innocent conceivable estate on earth, that of the farmer; he is father, master of his house, and thoroughly identified with his congregation. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation, rests his higher vocation: to introduce men into life, to care for their spiritual education, to bless, to instruct, to strengthen, to comfort them in all the epochs of life, and, if the comfort for the present is not sufficient, to cheer them with the assured hope of a more happy future."624  In his idyl "Hermann und Dorothea," he introduces a clergyman as an ornament and benefactor of the community. It is to the credit of this greatest and most cultured of modern poets, that he, like Shakespeare and Schiller, never disparaged the clerical profession.

In his "Deserted Village," Goldsmith gives another picture of the village preacher as

"A man who was to all the country dear,

And passing rich on forty pounds a year. ...

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,

His looks adorned the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,

And fools who came to scoff remained to pray."

From a higher spiritual plane William Wordsworth, the brother of an Anglican clergyman and uncle of two bishops, describes the character of a Protestant pastor in his "Ecclesiastical Sonnets."

"A genial hearth, a hospitable board,

And a refined rusticity, belong

To the neat mansion, where, his flock among,

The learned Pastor dwells, their watchful lord.

Though meek and patient as a sheathèd sword

Though pride’s least lurking thought appear a wrong

To human kind; though peace be on his tongue,

Gentleness in his heart—can earth afford

Such genuine state, pre-eminence so free,

As when, arrayed in Christ’s authority,

He from the pulpit lifts his awful hand;

Conjures, implores, and labors all he can

For re-subjecting to divine command

The stubborn spirit of rebellious man!"

A Romish priest or a Russian pope depends for his influence chiefly upon his official character, though he may be despised for his vices. A Protestant minister stands or falls with his personal merits; and the fact of his high and honorable position and influence in every Protestant country, as a Christian, a gentleman, a husband and father, is the best vindication of the wisdom of the Reformers in abolishing clerical celibacy.

§ 80. Reformation of Public Worship.

I. Luther: Deutsches Taufbüchlein, 1523; Ordnung des Gottes-dienstes in der Gemeinde, 1523; Vom Gräuel der Stillmesse, 1524; Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdienstes, 1526; Das Taufbüchlein verdeutscht, aufs neue zugerichtet, 1526. In Walch, X.; in Erl. ed., XXII. 151 sqq. Comp. the Augsburg confession, Pars II. art. 3 (De missa); Apol. of the Augsb. Conf. art. XXIV. (De missa); the Lutheran liturgies or Kirchenagenden (also Kirchenordnungen) of the 16th century, collected in Daniel: Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiae Lutheranae, Lips. 1848 (Tom. II. of his Cod. Lit.), and Höfling: Liturgisches Urkundenbuch (ed. by G. Thomasius and Theodos. Harnack), Leipz. 1854.

II. Th. Kliefoth: Die ursprüngliche Gottesdienstordnung in den deutschen Kirchen luth. Reformation, ihre Destruction und Reformation, Rostock, 1847. Grüneisen: Die evang. Gottesdienstordnung in den oberdeutschen Landen, Stuttgart, 1856. Gottschick: Luthers Anschauungen vom christl. Gottesdienst und seine thatsächliche Reform desselben, Freiburg i. B., 1887.

The reformation of doctrine led to a reconstruction of worship on the basis of Scripture and the guidance of such passages as, God is spirit,"625 and must be worshiped, in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24), and, Let all things be done decently and in order" (1 Cor. 14:40). Protestantism aims at a rational or spiritual service,626 as distinct from a mechanical service of mere forms. It acts upon the heart through the intellect, rather than the senses, and through instruction, rather than ceremonies. It brings the worshiper into direct communion with God in Christ, through the word of God and prayer, without the obstruction of human mediators.

The Reformers first cleansed the sanctuary of gross abuses and superstitions, and cast out the money-changers with a scourge of cords. They abhorred idolatry, which in a refined form had found its way into the church. They abolished the sale of indulgences, the worship of saints, images, and relics, processions and pilgrimages, the private masses, and masses for the dead in purgatory.627  They rejected five of the seven sacraments (retaining only baptism and the eucharist), the doctrine of transubstantiation, the priestly sacrifice, the adoration of the host, the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, and the use of a dead language in public worship. They also reduced the excessive ceremonialism and ritualistic display which obscured the spiritual service.

But the impoverishment was compensated by a gain; the work of destruction was followed by a more important and difficult work of reconstruction. This was the revival of primitive worship as far as it can be ascertained from the New Testament, the more abundant reading of the Scriptures and preaching of the cardinal truths of the gospel, the restoration of the Lord’s Supper in its original simplicity, the communion in both kinds, and the translation of the Latin service into the vernacular language whereby it was made intelligible and profitable to the people. There was, however, much crude experimenting and changing until a new order of worship could be fairly established.

Uniformity in worship is neither necessary nor desirable, according to Protestant principles. The New Testament does not prescribe any particular form, except the Lord’s Prayer, the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the baptismal formula.

The Protestant orders of worship differ widely in the extent of departure from the Roman service, which is one and the same everywhere. The Lutheran Church is conservative and liturgical. She retained from the traditional usage what was not inconsistent with evangelical doctrine; while the Reformed churches of the Zwinglian and Calvinistic type aimed at the greatest simplicity and spirituality of worship after what they supposed to be the apostolic pattern. Some went so far as to reject all hymns and forms of prayer which are not contained in the Bible, but gave all the more attention to the Psalter, to the sermon, and to extemporaneous prayer. The Anglican Church, however, makes an exception among the Reformed communions: she is even more conservative than the Lutheran, and produced a liturgy which embodies in the choicest English the most valuable prayers and forms of the Latin service, and has maintained its hold upon the reverence and affection of the Episcopal churches to this day. They subordinate preaching to worship, and free prayer to forms of prayer.

Luther began to reform public worship in 1523, but with caution, and in opposition to the radicalism of Carlstadt, who during the former’s absence on the Wartburg had tumultuously abolished the mass, and destroyed the altars and pictures. He retained the term "mass," which came to signify the whole public service, especially the eucharistic sacrifice. He tried to save the truly Christian elements in the old order, and to reproduce them in the vernacular language for the benefit of the people. His churchly instincts were strengthened by his love of poetry and music. He did not object even to the use of the Latin tongue in the Sunday service, and expressed an impracticable wish for a sort of pentecostal Sunday mass in German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.628  At the same time he desired also a more private devotional service of converted Christians, with the celebration of the holy communion (corresponding to the missa fidelium of the ante-Nicene Church, as distinct from the missa catechumenorum), but deemed it impossible for that time from the want of the proper persons; for "we Germans," he said, "are a wild, rough, rabid people, with whom nothing can be done except under the pressure of necessity."

So he confined himself to provide for the public Sunday service. He retained the usual order, the Gospels and Epistles, the collects, the Te Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Benedictus, the Creed, the responses, the kneeling posture in communion, even the elevation of the host and chalice (which he afterwards abandoned, but which is still customary in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia), though without the adoration. He omitted the canon of the mass which refers to the priestly sacrifice, and which, since the sixth century, contains the kernel of the Roman mass, as an unbloody repetition of the crucifixion and miraculous trans-formation of the elements.629  He had previously rejected this "horrible canon," as he calls it, in his "Babylonian Captivity," and in a special tract from the Wartburg. He assailed it again and again as a cardinal error in the papal system. He held indeed the doctrine of the real presence, but without the scholastic notion of transubstantiation and priestly sacrifice.

He gave the most prominent place to the sermon, which was another departure from previous custom. He arranged three services on Sunday, each with a sermon: early in the morning, chiefly for servants; the mass at nine or ten; and in the afternoon a discourse from a text in the Old Testament. On Monday and Tuesday in the morning the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer were to be taught; on Wednesday, the Gospel of Matthew; on Saturday, the Gospel of John; on Thursday, the Epistle lessons should be explained. The boys of the school were to recite daily some Psalms in Latin, and then read alternately one or more chapters of the New Testament in Latin and German.

Luther introduced the new order with the approval of the Elector in October, 1525, and published it early in 1526.630  The chief service on Sunday embraces a German hymn or psalm; the Kyrie Eleison, and Gloria in Excelsis (Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr); a short collect, and the Epistle for the day; a hymn; the Gospel for the day sung by the Minister; the Nicene Creed recited by the whole congrega-tion; a sermon on the Gospel; the Lord’s Prayer; exhortation; the holy communion, the words of institution sung by the minister (this being the consecration of the elements), with singing of the Sanctus (Isa. 6:1–4, rendered into German by Luther), the Benedictus, the Agnus Dei (John 1:29) or in German "O Lamm Gottes unschuldig" (by Decius), followed by the distribution, the collection, and benediction. Omitting the canon missae, or the offering of the sacrifice of Christ’s body, the new order was substantially the same as the old, only translated into German.

Melanchthon says in the Augsburg Confession of 1530:631 Our churches are wrongfully accused of having abolished the mass. For the mass is retained still among us, and celebrated with great reverence; yea, and almost all the ceremonies that are in use, saving that with the things sung in Latin we mingle certain things sung in German at various parts of the service, which are added for the people’s instruction. For therefore alone we have need of ceremonies, that they may teach the unlearned."

Luther regarded ceremonies, the use of clerical robes, candles on the altar, the attitude of the minister in prayer, as matters of indifference which may be retained or abolished. In the revision of the baptismal service, 1526, he abolished the use of salt, spittle, and oil, but retained the exorcism in an abridged form. He also retained the public confession and absolution, and recommended private confession of sin to the minister.632

The Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and in Scandinavia adopted the order of Wittenberg with sundry modifications; but the Lutheran churches in Southern Germany (Würtemberg, Baden, Palatinate, Alsace) followed the simpler type of the Swiss service.

The Lutheran order of worship underwent some radical changes in the eighteenth century under the influence of rationalism; the spirit of worship cooled down; the weekly communion was abolished; the sermon degenerated into a barren moral discourse; new liturgies and hymnbooks with all sorts of misimprovements were introduced. But in recent times, we may say since the third centennial celebration of the Reformation (1817), there has been a gradual revival of the liturgical spirit in different parts of Germany, with a restoration of many devotional treasures of past ages. There is, however, no uniform Lutheran liturgy, like the Common Prayer Book of the Church of England. Each Lutheran state church has its own liturgy and hymnbook.

§ 81. Prominent Features of Evangelical Worship.

Taking a wider view of the subject, we may emphasize the following characteristic features of evangelical worship, as compared with that of the Latin and Greek churches:

1. The prominence given to the sermon, or the exposition and application of the word of God. It became the chief part of divine service, and as regards importance took the place of the mass. Preaching was the special function of the bishops, but sadly neglected by them, and is even now in Roman-Catholic countries usually confined to the season of Lent. The Roman worship is complete without a sermon. The mass, moreover, is performed in a dead language, and the people are passive spectators rather than hearers. The altar is the throne of the Catholic priest; the pulpit is the throne of the Protestant preacher and pastor. The Reformers in theory and practice laid the greatest stress on preaching and hearing the gospel as an act of worship.

Luther set the example, and was a most indefatigable and popular preacher.633  He filled the pulpit of the town church alternately with Bugenhagen, the pastor, on Sundays and week-days, sometimes twice a day. Even in the last days of his life he delivered four sermons from the pulpit at Eisleben in spite of physical infirmity and pain.634  His most popular sermons are those on the Gospels and Epistles of the year, collected in the Kirchenpostille, which he completed in 1525 and 1527. Another popular collection is his Hauspostille, which contains his sermons at home, as taken down by Veit Dietrich and Rörer, and published in 1544 and 1559. He preached without notes, after meditation, under the inspiration of the moment.

He was a Boanerges, the like of whom Germany never heard before or since. He had all the elements of a popular orator. Melanchthon said, "One is an interpreter, one a logician, another an orator, but Luther is all in all." Bossuet gives him credit for "a lively and impetuous eloquence by which he delighted and captivated his hearers." Luther observed no strict method. He usually followed the text, and combined exposition with application. He made Christ and the gospel his theme. He lived and moved in the Bible, and understood how to make it a book of life for his time. He always spoke from intense conviction and with an air of authority. He had an extraordinary faculty of expressing the profoundest thoughts in the clearest and strongest language for the common people. He hit the nail on the head. He was bold and brave, and spared neither the Devil nor the Pope nor the Sacramentarians. His polemical excursions, how-ever, are not always in good taste, nor in the right spirit.

He disregarded the scholars among his hearers, and aimed at the common people, the women and children and servants. "Cursed be the preachers," he said, "who in church aim at high or hard things." He was never dull or tedious. He usually stopped when the hearers were at the height of attention, and left them anxious to come again. He censured Bugenhagen for his long sermons, of which people so often and justly complain. He summed up his homiletical wisdom in three rules: —

"Start fresh; Speak out; Stop short."635

The mass and the sermon are the chief means of edification,—the one in the Greek and Roman, the other in the Protestant churches. The mass memorializes symbolically, day by day, the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world; the sermon holds up the living Christ of the gospel as an inspiration to holy living and dying. Both may degenerate into perfunctory, mechanical services; but Christianity has outlived all dead masses and dry sermons, and makes its power felt even through the weakest instrumentalities.

As preaching is an intellectual and spiritual effort, it calls for a much higher education than the reading of the mass from a book. A comparison of the Protestant with the Roman or Greek clergy at once shows the difference.

2. In close connection with preaching is the stress laid on catechetical instruction. Of this we shall speak in a special section.

3. The Lord’s Supper was restored to its primitive character as a commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, and a communion of believers with Him. In the Protestant system the holy communion is a sacrament, and requires the presence of the congregation; in the Roman system it is chiefly a sacrifice, and may be performed by the priest alone. The withdrawal of the cup is characteristic of the over-estimate of the clergy and under-estimate of the laity; and its restoration was not only in accordance with primitive usage, but required by the doctrine of the general priesthood of believers.

Luther retained the weekly communion as the conclusion of the regular service on the Lord’s Day. In the Reformed churches it was made less frequent, but more solemn.

4. The divine service was popularized by substituting the vernacular for the Latin language in prayer and song,—a change of incalculable consequence.

5. The number of church festivals was greatly reduced, and confined to those which commemorate the great facts of our salvation; namely, the incarnation (Christmas), the redemption (Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter), and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Ascension and Pentecost), with the concluding festival of the Holy Trinity. They constitute the nucleus of the Christian year, and a sort of chronological creed for the people. The Lutheran Church retained also (at least in some sections) the feasts of the Virgin Mary, of the Apostles and Evangelists, and of All Saints; but they have gradually gone out of use.

Luther held that church festivals, and even the weekly sabbath, were abolished in principle, and observed only on account of the requirements of public worship and the weakness of the laity.636  The righteous need no laws and ceremonies. To them all time is holy, every day a day of rest, and every day a day of good work. But "although," he says, "all days are free and alike, it is yet useful and good, yea, necessary, to keep holy one day, whether it be sabbath or Sunday or any other day; for God will govern the world orderly and peacefully; hence he gave six days for work, and the seventh for rest, that men should refresh themselves by rest, and hear the word of God."637

In this view all the Reformers substantially agree, including Calvin and Knox, except that the latter made practically less account of the annual festivals, and more of the weekly festival. The Anglo-American theory of the Lord’s Day, which is based on the perpetual essential obligation of the Fourth Commandment, as a part of the moral law to be observed with Christian freedom in the light of Christ’s resurrection, is of Puritan origin at the close of the sixteenth century, and was first symbolically sanctioned by the Westminster standards in 1647, but has worked itself into the flesh and blood of all English-speaking Christendom to the great benefit of public worship and private devotion.638

§ 82. Beginnings of Evangelical Hymnody.

I. The "Wittenberg Enchiridion," 1524. The "Erfurt Enchiridion," 1524. Walter’s "Gesangbuch," with preface by Luther, 1524. Klug’s "Gesangbuch," by Luther, 1529, etc. Babst’s "Gesangbuch," 1545, 5th ed. 1553. Spangenberg’s "Cantiones ecclesiasticae," 1545. See exact titles in Wackernagel’s Bibliographie, etc.

II. C. v. Winterfeld: Luther’s geistl. Lieder nebst Stimmweisen. Leipz. 1840. Ph. Wackernagel: Luther’s geistl. Lieder u. Singweisen. Stuttgart, 1848. Other editions of Luther’s Hymns by Stip, 1854; Schneider, 1856; Dreher, 1857. B. Pick: Luther as a Hymnist. Philad. 1875. Emil. Frommel: Luther’s Lieder und Sprüche. Der singende Luther im Kranze seiner dichtenden und bildenden Zeitgenossen. Berlin, 1883. (Jubilee ed. with illustrations from Dürer and Cranach.)  L. W. Bacon and N. H. Allen: The Hymns of Luther set to their original melodies, with an English Version. New York, 1883. E. Achelis: Die Entste-hungszeit v. Luther’s geistl. Liedern. Marburg, 1884. Danneil: Luther’s geistl. Lieder nach seinen drei Gesangbüchern von 1524, 1529, 1545. Frankf. -a-M., 1885.

III. Aug. H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben: Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenlieds his auf Luther’s Zeit. Breslau, 1832; third ed., Hannover, 1861. F. A. Cunz: Gesch. des deutschen Kirchenlieds. Leipz. 1855, 2 parts. Julius Mützell: Geistliche Lieder der evangelischen Kirche aus dem 16ten Jahrh. nach den ältesten Drucken.  Berlin, 1855, in 3 vols. (The same publ. afterwards Geistl. Lieder der ev. K. aus dem 17ten und Anfang des 18ten Jahrh. Braunschweig, 1858.) K. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer: Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem 8ten his 12ten Jahrh. Berlin, 1864.

*Eduard Emil Koch (d. 1871): Geschichte des Kirchenlieds der christlichen, insbesondere der deutschen evangelischen Kirche. Third ed. completed and enlarged by Richard Lauxmann. Stuttgart, 1866–1876, in 8 vols. (The first ed. appeared in 1847; the second in 1852 and 1853, in 4 vols.)  A very useful book for German hymnody.

*Philipp Wackernagel (d. 1877): Das deutsche Kirchenlied von Luther his N. Hermann und A. Blaurer. Stuttgart, 1842, in 2 vols. By the same: Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im 16ten Jahrhundert. Frankf. -a-M., 1855. *By the same: Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit his zu Anfang des XVII Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1864–77, in 5 vols. (his chief work, completed by his two sons). A monumental work of immense industry and pains-taking accuracy, in a department where "pedantry is a virtue." Vol. I. contains Latin hymns, and from pp. 365–884 additions to the bibliography. The second and following vols. are devoted to German hymnody, including the mediaeval (vol. II.).

*A. F. W. Fischer: Kirchenlieder-Lexicon. Hymnologisch-literarische Nachweisungen über 4,500 der wichtigsten und verbreitetsten Kirchenlieder aller Zeiten. Gotha, 1878, ’79, in 2 vols. K. Severin Meister and Wilhelm Bäumker (R. C.): Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen von den frühesten Zeiten his gegen Ende des 17ten Jahrh. Freiburg-i. -B. 1862, 2d vol. by Bäumker, 1883. Devoted chiefly to the musical part.

On the hymnody of the Reformed churches of Switzerland and France in the sixteenth century, Les Psaumes mis en rime franaçaise par Clément Marot et Theodore de Bèze. Mis en musique à quatre parties par Claude Goudimel. Genève, 1565. It contains 150 Psalms, Symeon’s Song, a poem on the Decalogue and 150 melodies, many of which were based on secular tunes, and found entrance into the Lutheran Church. A beautiful modern edition by O. Douen: Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot. Paris, 1878 and 1879, 2 vols. Weber: Geschichte des Kirchengesangs in der deutschen reformirten Schweiz seit der Reformation. Zürich, 1876.

On the hymnody of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, see Wackernagel’s large work, III. 229–350 (Nos. 255–417), and Koch, l.c. II. 114–132.

Comp. the hymnological collections and discussions of Rambach, Bunsen, Knapp, Daniel, J. P. Lange, Stier, Stip, Geffken, Vilmar, etc. Also Schaff’s sketch of "German Hymnology," and other relevant articles in the forthcoming "Dictionary of Hymnology," edited by J. Julian, to be published by J. Murray in London and Scribner in New York, 1889. This will be the best work in the English language on the origin and history of Christian hymns of all ages and nations.

The most valuable contribution which German Protestantism made to Christian worship is its rich treasury of hymns. Luther struck the key-note; the Lutheran Church followed with a luminous train of hymnists; the Reformed churches, first with metrical versions of the Psalms and appropriate tunes, afterwards with new Christian hymns.

The hymn in the strict sense of the term, as a popular religious lyric, or a lyric poem in praise of God or Christ to be sung by the congregation in public worship, was born in Germany and brought to maturity with the Reformation and with the idea of the general priesthood of believers. The Latin Church had prepared the way, and produced some of the grandest hymns which can never die, as the "Dies Irae," the "Stabat mater," and the "Jesu dulcis memoria." But these and other Latin hymns and sequences of St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, Fortunatus, Notker, St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Celano, Jacobus de Benedictis, Adam of St. Victor, etc., were sung by priests and choristers, and were no more intelligible to the common people than the Latin Psalter and the Latin mass.639  The reign of the Latin language in public worship, while it tended to preserve the unity of the church, and to facilitate literary intercourse, kept back the free development of a vernacular hymnody. Nevertheless, the native love of the Germans for poetry and song produced for private devotion a large number of sacred lyrics and versified translations of the Psalms and Latin hymns. As there were German Bibles before Luther’s version, so there were also German hymns before his time; but they were limited in use, and superseded by the superior products of the evangelical church. Philip Wackernagel (the most learned German hymnologist, and an enthusiastic admirer of Luther) gives in the second volume of his large collection no less than fourteen hundred and forty-eight German hymns and sequences, from Otfrid to Hans Sachs (inclusive) or from A.D. 868 to 1518. Nor was vernacular hymnody confined to Germany. St. Francis of Assisi composed the "Cantico del Sol," and Jacopone da Todi (the author of the "Stabat Mater ") those passionate dithyrambic odes which "vibrate like tongues of fire," for private confraternities and domestic gatherings.640

German Hymnody before the Reformation.

In order to form a just estimate of German Protestant hymnody, we must briefly survey the mediaeval German hymnody.

The first attempts of Teutonic church poetry are biblical epics, and the leader of the Teutonic Christ-singers is the Anglo-Saxon monk Caedmon of Whitby (formerly a swineherd), about 680, who reproduced in alliterative verse, as by inspiration, the biblical history of creation and redemption, and brought it home to the imagination and heart of Old England.641  This poem, which was probably brought to Germany by Bonifacius and other English missionaries, inspired in the ninth century a similar production of an unknown Saxon (Westphalian) monk, namely, a poetic gospel harmony or life of Christ under the title "Heliand "(i.e., Heiland, Healer, Saviour).642  About the same time (c. 870), Otfrid of Weissenburg in the Alsace, a Benedictine monk, educated at Fulda and St. Gall, versified the gospel history in the Alemannian dialect, in fifteen hundred verses, divided into stanzas, each stanza consisting of four rhymed lines.643

These three didactic epics were the first vernacular Bibles for the laity among the Western barbarians.644

The lyric church poetry and music began with the "Kyrie Eleison" and "Christe Eleison," which passed from the Greek church into the Latin as a response of the people, especially on the high festivals, and was enlarged into brief poems called (from the refrain) Kirleisen, or Leisen, also Leichen. These enlarged cries for mercy are the first specimens of German hymns sung by the people. The oldest dates from the ninth century, called the "Leich vom heiligen Petrus," in three stanzas, the first of which reads thus in English: —

"Our Lord delivered power to St. Peter,

That he may preserve the man who hopes in Him.

Lord, have mercy upon us!

Christ, have mercy upon us!"645

One of the best and most popular of these Leisen, but of much later date, is the Easter hymn,

"Christ is erstanden

von der marter alle,

des sul [sollen] wir alle fro sein,

Christ sol unser trost sein.

Kyrie leyson."646

Penitential hymns in the vernacular were sung by the Flagellants (the Geisslergesellschaften), who in the middle of the fourteenth century, during a long famine and fearful pestilence (the "Black Death," 1348), passed in solemn processions with torches, crosses, and banners, through Germany and other countries, calling upon the people to repent and to prepare for the judgment to come.647

Some of the best Latin hymns, as the "Te Deum," the "Gloria in excelsis," the "Pange lingua," the "Veni Creator Spiritus," the "Ave Maria," the "Stabat Mater," the "Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem," St. Bernard’s "Jesu dulcis memoria," and "Salve caput cruentatum," were repeatedly translated long before the Reformation. Sometimes the words of the original were curiously mixed with the vernacular, as in the Christmas hymn, —

"In dulci jubilo

Nun singet und seit fro!

Unsres Herzens Wonne

Leit in praesepio

Und leuchtet wie die Sonne

In matris gremio

Alpha es et O."648

A Benedictine monk, John of Salzburg, prepared a number of translations from the Latin at the request of his archbishop, Pilgrim, in 1366, and was rewarded by him with a parish.649

The "Minnesänger" of the thirteenth century—among whom Gottfried of Strassburg and Walther von der Vogelweide are the most eminent—glorified love, mingling the earthly and heavenly, the sexual and spiritual, after the model of Solomon’s Song. The Virgin Mary was to them the type of pure, ideal womanhood. Walther cannot find epithets enough for her praise.

The mystic school of Tauler in the fourteenth century produced a few hymns full of glowing love to God. Tauler is the author of the Christmas poem, —

"Uns kommt ein Schiff geladen,"

and of hymns of love to God, one of which begins, —

"Ich muss die Creaturen fliehen

Und suchen Herzensinnigkeit,

Soll ich den Geist zu Gotte ziehen,

Auf dass er bleib in Reinigkeit."650

The "Meistersänger" of the fifteenth century were, like the "Minnesänger," fruitful in hymns to the Virgin Mary. One of them begins, —

"Maria zart von edler Art

Ein Ros ohn alle Dornen."

From the middle ages have come down also some of the best tunes, secular and religious.651

The German hymnody of the middle ages, like the Latin, overflows with hagiolatry and Mariolatry. Mary is even clothed with divine attributes, and virtually put in the place of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit, as the fountain of all grace. The most pathetic of Latin hymns, the "Stabat mater dolorosa," which describes with overpowering effect the piercing agony of Mary at the cross, and the burning desire of being identified with her in sympathy, is disfigured by Mariolatry, and therefore unfit for evangelical worship without some omissions or changes. The great and good Bonaventura, who wrote the Passion hymn, "Recordare sanctae crucis," applied the whole Psalter to the Virgin in his "Psalterium B. Mariae," or Marian Psalter, where the name of Mary is substituted for that of the Lord. It was also translated into German, and repeatedly printed.652

"Through all the centuries from Otfrid to Luther" (says Wackernagel),653 we meet with the idolatrous veneration of the Virgin Mary. There are hymns which teach that she pre-existed with God at the creation, that all things were created in her and for her, and that God rested in her on the seventh day." One of the favorite Mary-hymns begins, —

"Dich, Frau vom Himmel, ruf ich an,

In diesen grossen Nöthen mein."654

Hans Sachs afterwards characteristically changed it into

"Christum vom Himmel ruf ich an."

The mediaeval hymnody celebrates Mary as the queen of heaven, as the "eternal womanly," which draws man insensibly heavenward.655  It resembles the Sixtine Madonna who carries the Christ-child in her arms.

German Hymnody of the Reformation.

The evangelical church substituted the worship of Christ, as our only Mediator and Advocate, for the worship of his virgin-mother. It reproduced and improved the old Latin and vernacular hymns and tunes, and produced a larger number of original ones. It introduced congregational singing in the place of the chanting of priests and choirs. The hymn became, next to the German Bible and the German sermon, the most powerful missionary of the evangelical doctrines of sin and redemption, and accompanied the Reformation in its triumphal march. Printed as tracts, the hymns were scattered wide and far, and sung in the house, the school, the church, and on the street. Many of them survive to this day, and kindle the flame of devotion.

To Luther belongs the extraordinary merit of having given to the German people in their own tongue, and in a form eclipsing and displacing all former versions, the Bible, the catechism, and the hymn-book, so that God might speak directly to them in His word, and that they might directly speak to Him in their songs. He was a musician also, and composed tunes to some of his hymns.656  He is the Ambrose of German church poetry and church music. He wrote thirty-seven hymns.657 Most of them (twenty-one) date from the year 1524; the first from 1523, soon after the completion of his translation of the New Testament; the last two from 1543, three years before his death. The most original and best known,—we may say the most Luther-like and most Reformer-like—is that heroic battle- and victory-hymn of the Reformation, which has so often been reproduced in other languages, and resounds in all German lands with mighty effect on great occasions: —

"Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott."

(A tower of strength is this our God.)658

This mighty poem is based upon the forty-sixth Psalm (Deus noster refugium et virtus) which furnished the key-note. It was born of deep tribulation and conquering faith, in the disastrous year 1527 (not 1521, or 1529, or 1530), and appeared first in print in 1528.659

Luther availed himself with his conservative tact of all existing helps for the benefit of public worship and private devotion. Most of his hymns and tunes rest on older foundations partly Latin, partly German. Some of them were inspired by Hebrew Psalms. To these belong, besides, Ein feste Burg" (Ps. 46), the following: —

"Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir" (1523).

(Out of the depths I cry to Thee. Ps. 130.)

"Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein" (1523).

(Help, Lord, look down from heaven above. Ps. 12.)

On the second chapter of Luke, which is emphatically the gospel of children, are based his truly childlike Christmas songs, —

"Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her" (1535),

(From heaven high to earth I come,)

and

"Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schaar" (1543).

(From heaven came the angel hosts.)

Others are free reproductions of Latin hymns, either directly from the original, or on the basis of an older German version: as, —

"Herr Gott, dich loben wir" (1543).

(Te Deum laudamus.)

"Komm, Gott, Schöpfer, heiliger Geist" (1524).

(Veni, Creator Spiritus.)

"Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" (1524).

(Veni, Redemptor gentium.)

"Gelobet seist du, Jesus Christ" (1524).

(Grates nunc omnes reddamus.)

"Mitten wir im Leben sind" (1524).

(Media vita in morte sumus.)

"Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist" (1524).

(Now we pray to the Holy Ghost.)

"Christ lag in Todesbanden" (1524).

(In the bonds of death He lay.)

"Surrexit Christus hodie.")660

Among his strictly original hymns are, —

"Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein" (1523).

(Rejoice, rejoice, dear flock of Christ.)

Bunsen calls this, the first (?) voice of German church-song, which flashed with the power of lightning through all German lands, in praise of the eternal decree of redemption of the human race and of the gospel of freedom."

"Erhalt uns Herr bei deinem Wort,

Und steur des Papsts und Türken Mord" (1541).

This is directed against the Pope and the Turk, as the chief enemies of Christ and his church in Luther’s days.661

The stirring song of the two evangelical proto-martyrs at Brussels in 1523, —

"Ein neues Lied wir heben an." —

is chronologically his first, and not a hymn in the proper sense of the term, but had an irresistible effect, especially the tenth stanza, —

"Die Asche will nicht lassen ab,

Sie stäubt in alten Landen,

Hie hilft kein Bach, Loch, Grub noch Grab,

Sie macht den Feind zu Schanden.

Die er im Leben durch den Mord,

Zu schweigen hat gedrungen

Die muss er todt an altem Ort

Mit aller Stimm und Zungen

Gar frölich lassen singen."662

(Their ashes will not rest and lie,

But scattered far and near,

Stream, dungeon, bolt, and grave defy,

Their foeman’s shame and fear.

Those whom alive the tyrant’s wrongs

To silence could subdue,

He must, when dead, let sing the songs

And in all languages and tongues

Resound the wide world through.)

Luther’s hymns are characterized, like those of St. Ambrose, by simplicity and strength, and a popular churchly tone. But, unlike those of St. Ambrose and the Middle Ages, they breathe the bold, confident, joyful spirit of justifying faith, which was the beating heart of his theology and piety.

Luther’s hymns passed at once into common use in church and school, and sung the Reformation into the hearts of the people. Hans Sachs of Nürnberg saluted him as the nightingale of Wittenberg.663  How highly his contemporaries thought of them, may be inferred from Cyriacus Spangenberg, likewise a hymnist, who said in his preface to the "Cithara Lutheri" (1569): "Of all master-singers since the days of the apostles, Luther is the best. In his hymns you find not an idle or useless word. The rhymes are easy and good, the words choice and proper, the meaning clear and intelligible, the melodies lovely and hearty, and, in summa, all is so rare and majestic, so full of pith and power, so cheering and comforting, that you will not find his equal, much less his master."

Before Luther’s death (1546), there appeared no less than forty-seven Lutheran hymn- and tune-books. The first German evangelical hymn-book, the so-called "Wittenberg Enchiridion." was printed in the year 1524, and contained eight hymns, four of them by Luther, three by Speratus, one by an unknown author. The "Erfurt Enchiridion" of the same year numbered twenty-five hymns, of which eighteen were from Luther. The hymn-book of Walther, also of 1524, contained thirty-two German and five Latin hymns, with a preface of Luther. Klug’s Gesangbuch by Luther, Wittenberg, 1529, had fifty (twenty-eight of Luther); Babst’s of 1545 (printed at Leipzig), eighty-nine; and the fifth edition of 1553, a hundred and thirty-one hymns.664

This rapid increase of hymns and hymn-books continued after Luther’s death. We can only mention the names of the principal hymnists who were inspired by his example.

Justus Jonas (1493–1555), Luther’s friend and colleague, wrote, —

"Wo Gott, der Herr, nicht bei uns hält" (Ps. 124).

(If God were not upon our side.)

Paul Ebert (1511–1569), the faithful assistant of Melanchthon, and professor of Hebrew in Wittenberg, is the author of

"Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein,"

(When in the hour of utmost need,)

and

"Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’r Mensch und Gott."

(Lord Jesus Christ, true man and God.)

Burkhard Waldis of Hesse (1486–1551) versified the Psalter.

Erasmus Alber (d. in Mecklenburg, 1553) wrote twenty hymns which Herder and Gervinus thought almost equal to Luther’s.

Lazarus Spengler of Nürnberg (1449–1534) wrote about 1522 a hymn on sin and redemption, which soon became very popular, although it is didactic rather than poetic: –

"Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt."

Hans Sachs (1494–1576), the shoemaker-poet of Nürnberg, was the most fruitful "Meistersänger" of that period, and wrote some spiritual hymns as well; but only one of them is still in use: —

"Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz?"

(Why doest thou vex thyself, my heart?)

Veit Dietrich, pastor of St. Sebaldus in Nürnberg (d. 1549), wrote: —

"Bedenk, o Mensch, die grosse Gnad."

(Remember, man, the wondrous grace.)

Markgraf Albrecht of Brandenburg (d. 1557), is the author of: —

"Was mein Gott will, gescheh allzeit."

(Thy will, my God, be always done.)

Paul Speratus, his court-chaplain at Königsberg (d. 1551), contributed three hymns to the first German hymn-book (1524), of which —

"Es ist das Heil uns kommen her"

(To us salvation now has come)

is the best, though more didactic than lyric, and gives rhymed expression to the doctrine of justification by faith.

Schneesing’s

"Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ"

(To Thee alone, Lord Jesus Christ)

appeared first in 1545, and is used to this day.

Mathesius, the pupil and biographer of Luther, and pastor at Joachimsthal in Bohemia (1504–65), wrote a few hymns. Nicolaus Hermann, his cantor and friend (d. 1561), is the author of a hundred and seventy-six hymns, especially for children, and composed popular tunes. Nicolaus Decius, first a monk, then an evangelical pastor at Stettin (d. 1541), reproduced the Gloria in Excelsis in his well-known

"Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr" (1526),

and the eucharistic Agnus Dei in his

"O Lamm Gottes unschuldig" (1531).

He also composed the tunes.

The German hymnody of the Reformation period was enriched by hymns of the Bohemian Brethren. Two of them, Michael Weisse (d. 1542) and Johann Horn, prepared free translations. Weisse was a native German, but joined the Brethren, and was sent by them as a delegate to Luther in 1522, who at first favored them before they showed their preference for the Reformed doctrine of the sacraments. One of the best known of these Bohemian hymns is the Easter song (1531): —

"Christus ist erstanden."

(Christ the Lord is risen.)

We cannot follow in detail the progress of German hymnody. It flows from the sixteenth century down to our days in an unbroken stream, and reflects German piety in the sabbath dress of poetry. It is by far the richest of all hymnodies.665

The number of German’ hymns cannot fall short of one hundred thousand. Dean Georg Ludwig von Hardenberg of Halberstadt, in the year 1786, prepared a hymnological catalogue of the first lines of 72,733 hymns (in five volumes preserved in the library of Halberstadt). This number was not complete at that time, and has considerably increased since. About ten thousand have become more or less popular, and passed into different hymn-books. Fischer666 gives the first lines of about five thousand of the best, many of which were overlooked by Von Hardenberg.

We may safely say that nearly one thousand of these hymns are classical and immortal. This is a larger number than can be found in any other language.

To this treasury of German song, several hundred men and women, of all ranks and conditions,—theologians and pastors, princes and princesses, generals and statesmen, physicians and jurists, merchants and travelers, laborers and private persons,—have made contributions, laying them on the common altar of devotion. The majority of German hymnists are Lutherans, the rest German Reformed (as Neander and Tersteegen), or Moravians (Zinzendorf and Gregor), or belong to the United Evangelical Church. Many of these hymns, and just those possessed of the greatest vigor and unction, full of the most exulting faith and the richest comfort, had their origin amid the conflicts and storms of the Reformation, or the fearful devastations and nameless miseries of the Thirty Years’ War; others belong to the revival period of the pietism of Spener, and the Moravian Brotherhood of Zinzendorf, and reflect the earnest struggle after holiness, the fire of the first love, and the sweet enjoyment of the soul’s intercourse with her heavenly Bridegroom; not a few of them sprang up even in the cold and prosy age of "illumination" and rationalism, like flowers from dry ground, or Alpine roses on fields of snow; others, again, proclaim, in fresh and joyous tones, the dawn of reviving faith in the land where the Reformation had its birth. Thus these hymns constitute a book of devotion and poetic confession of faith for German Protestantism, a sacred band which encircles its various periods, an abiding memorial of its struggles and victories, its sorrows and joys, a mirror of its deepest experiences, and an eloquent witness for the all-conquering and invincible life-power of the evangelical Christian faith.

The treasures of German hymnody have enriched the churches of other tongues, and passed into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Dutch, and modern English and American hymn-books.

John Wesley was the first of English divines who appreciated its value; and while his brother Charles produced an immense number of original hymns, John freely reproduced several hymns of Paul Gerhardt, Tersteegen, and Zinzendorf. The English Moravian hymn-book as revised by Montgomery contains about a thousand abridged (but mostly indifferent) translations from the German. In more recent times several accomplished writers, male and female, have vied with each other in translations and transfusions of German hymns.

Among the chief English translators are Miss Frances Elizabeth Cox;667 Arthur Tozer Russell;668 Richard Massie;669 Miss Catherine Winkworth;670 Mrs. Eric Findlater and her sister, Miss Jane Borthwick, of the Free Church of Scotland, who modestly conceal their names under the letters "H. L. L." (Hymns from the Land of Luther);671 James W. Alexander,672Henry Mills,673 John Kelly,674 not to mention many others who have furnished admirable translations of one or more hymns for public or private hymnological collections.675

English and American hymnody began much later than the German, but comes next to it in fertility, is enriching itself constantly by transfusions of Greek, Latin, and German, as well as by original hymns, and may ultimately surpass all hymnodies.

§ 83. Common Schools.

Luther: An die Rathsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes, dass sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen. Wittenberg, 1524. The book appeared in the same year in Latin (De constituendis scholis), with a preface of Melanchthon, the probable translator, at Hagenau. In Walch, x. 533; in the Erlangen. ed., xxii. 168–199.

Church and school go together. The Jewish synagogue was a school. Every Christian church is a school of piety and virtue for old and young. The mediaeval church was the civilizer and instructor of the barbarians, founded the convent and cathedral schools, and the great universities of Paris (1209), Bologna, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Salamanca, Alcala, Toledo, Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386), Cologne (1388), Erfurt (1393), Leipzig (1409), Basel (1460), Ingolstadt (1472), Tübingen (1477), Wittenberg (1502), etc. But education in the middle ages was aristocratic, and confined to the clergy and a very few laymen of the higher classes. The common people were ignorant and superstitious, and could neither read nor write. Even noblemen signed their name with a cross. Books were rare and dear. The invention of the printing-press prepared the way for popular education. The Reformation first utilized the press on a large scale, and gave a powerful impulse to common schools. The genius of Protestantism favors the general diffusion of knowledge. It elevates the laity, emancipates private judgment, and stimulates the sense of personal responsibility. Every man should be trained to a position of Christian freedom and self-government.

Luther discussed this subject first in his Address to the German Nobility (1520). In 1524 he wrote a special book in which he urged the civil magistrates of all the cities of Germany to improve their schools, or to establish new ones for boys and girls; this all the more since the zeal for monastic institutions had declined, and the convents were fast getting empty. He wisely recommended that a portion of the property of churches and convents be devoted to this purpose, instead of being wasted on secular objects, or on avaricious princes and noblemen. He makes great account of the study of languages, and skillfully refutes the objections. A few extracts will give the best idea of this very useful little book on a most important subject.

"Grace and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ … Although I am now excommunicated for three years, and should keep silent if I feared men more than God, ... I will speak as long as I live, until the righteousness of Christ shall break forth in its glory … I beg you all, my dear lords and friends, for God’s sake to take care of the poor youth, and thereby to help us all. So much money is spent year after year for arms, roads, dams, and innumerable similar objects, why should not as much be spent for the education of the poor youth?  ... The word of God is now heard in Germany more than ever before. But if we do not show our gratitude for it, we run the risk of sinking back into a worse darkness.

"Dear Germans, buy while the market is at the door. Gather while the sun shines and the weather is good. Use God’s grace and word while it is at hand. For you must know that God’s grace and word is a travelling shower, which does not return where once it has been. It was once with the Jews, but gone is gone (hin ist hin); now they have nothing. Paul brought it into Greece, but gone is gone; now they have the Turk. Rome and Italy have also had it, but gone is gone; they have now the Pope. And ye Germans must not think that you will have it forever; for ingratitude and contempt will not let it abide. Therefore, seize and hold fast, whoever can.

"It is a sin and shame that we should need to be admonished to educate our children, when nature itself, and even the example of the heathen, urge us to do so. … You say, the parents should look to that, it is none of the business of counselors and magistrates. But how, if the parents neglect it?  Most of the parents are incapable; having themselves learnt nothing, they cannot teach their children. Others have not the time. And what shall become of the orphans?  The glory of a town consists not in treasure, strong walls, and fine houses, but in fine, educated, well-trained citizens. The city of old Rome trained her sons in Latin and Greek and all the fine arts ....

"We admit, you say, there should and must be schools, but what is the use of teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and other liberal arts?  Could we not teach, in German, the Bible and God’s word, which are sufficient for salvation?  Answer: Yes, I well know, alas! that we Germans must ever be and abide brutes and wild beasts, as the surrounding nations call us, and as we well deserve to be called. But I wonder why you never say, Of what use are silks, wines, spices, and other foreign articles, seeing we have wine, corn, wool, flax, wood, and stones, in German lands, not only an abundance for sustenance, but also a choice and selection for elegance and ornament?  The arts and languages, which do us no harm, nay, which are a greater ornament, benefit, honor, and advantage, both for understanding Holy Writ, and for managing civil affairs, we are disposed to despise; and foreign wares, which are neither necessary nor useful to us, and which, moreover, peel us to the very bone, these we are not willing to forego. Are we not deserving to be called German fools and beasts?  ...

"Much as we love the gospel, let us hold fast to the languages. God gave us the Scriptures in two languages, the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek. Therefore we should honor them above all other languages. … And let us remember that we shall not be able to keep the gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is hid. They are the casket in which this treasure is kept. They are the vessels in which this drink is contained; they are the storehouse in which this food is laid by; and, as the gospel itself shows, they are the baskets in which these loaves and fishes and fragments are preserved. Yea, if we should so err as to let the languages go (which God forbid!), we shall not only lose the gospel, but it will come to pass at length that we shall not be able to speak or write correctly either Latin or German. ...

"Herewith I commend you all to the grace of God. May He soften and kindle your hearts so that they shall earnestly take the part of these poor, pitiable, forsaken youth, and, through Divine aid, counsel and help them to a happy and Christian ordering of the German land as to body and soul with all fullness and overflow, to the praise and honor of God the Father, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen."

The advice of Luther was not unheeded. Protestant nations are far ahead of the Roman Catholic in popular education. In Germany and Switzerland there is scarcely a Protestant boy or girl that cannot read and write; while in some papal countries, even to this day, the majority of the people are illiterate.676

§ 84. Reconstruction of Church Government and Discipline.

Aemil Ludw. Richter: Die evangel; Kirchenordnungen des 16 Jahrh., Weimar, 1846, 2 vols. By the same: Gesch. der evang. Kirchenver-fassung in Deutschland. Leipz., 1851. By the same: Lehrbuch des kath. und evang. Kirchenrechts, Leipzig, 5th ed., 1858. J. W. F. Höfling: Grundsätze der evang.-lutherischen Kirchenverfassung. Erlangen, third ed., 1853. Stahl: Die Kirchenverfassung nach Recht und Lehre der Protestanten. Erlangen, 1862. Mejer: Grundl. des luth. Kirchenregiments, Rostock, 1864. E. Friedberg: Lehrbuch des kath. u. evang. Kirchenrechts, Leipz., 1884.

The papal monarchy and visible unity of Western Christendom were destroyed with the burning of the Pope’s bull and the canon law. The bishops refused to lead the new movement; disorder and confusion followed. A reconstruction of government and discipline became necessary. The idea of an invisible church of all believers was not available for this purpose. The invisible is not governable. The question was, how to deal with the visible church as it existed in Saxony and other Protestant countries, and to bring order out of chaos. The lawyers had to be consulted, and they could not dispense with the legal wisdom and experience of centuries. Luther himself returned to the study of the canon law, though to little purpose.677  He hated it for its connection with popery, and got into conflict with the lawyers, even his colleague, Professor Schurf, who had accompanied him to the Diet of Worms as a faithful friend and counselor, but differed from him on matrimonial legislation. He abused the lawyers, even from the pulpit, as abettors of the Pope and the Devil.678  He was not a disciplinarian and organizer like John Calvin, or John Knox, or John Wesley, and left his church in a less satisfactory condition than the Reformed churches of Switzerland and Scotland. He complained that he had not the proper persons for what he wished to accomplish; but he did what he could under the circumstances, and regretted that he could do no more.

Four ways were open for the construction of an evangelical church polity: —

1. To retain the episcopal hierarchy, without the papacy, or to create a new one in its place. This was done in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia, and in the Church of England, but in the closest connection with the state, and in subordination to it. In Scandinavia the succession was broken; in England the succession continued under the lead of Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, was interrupted under Queen Mary, and restored under Queen Elizabeth.

Had the German bishops favored the Reformation, they would, no doubt, have retained their power in Germany, and naturally taken the lead in the organization of the new church. Melanchthon was in favor of episcopacy, and even a sort of papacy by human (not Divine) right, on condition of evangelical freedom; but the hostility of the hierarchy made its authority impossible in Germany.679  He had, especially in his later years, a stronger conception of the institutional character and historical order of the church than Luther, who cared nothing for bishops. He taught, however, the original equality of bishops and presbyters (appealing to the Pastoral Epistles and to Jerome); and held that when the regular bishops reject the gospel, and refuse to ordain evangelical preachers, the power of ordination returns to the church and the pastors.

2. To substitute a lay episcopate for the clerical episcopate; in other words, to lodge the supreme ecclesiastical power in the hands of the civil magistrate, who appoints ministers, superintendents, and church counselors as executive officers.

This was done in the Lutheran churches of Germany. The superintendents performed episcopal duties, but without constituting a distinct and separate grade of the ministry, and without the theory of the episcopal or apostolical succession. The Lutheran Church holds the Presbyterian doctrine of the parity of ministers.680  The organization of the Lutheran churches was, however, for a number of years regarded as provisional, and kept open for a possible reconciliation with the episcopate. Hence the princes were called Nothbischöfe.

3. To organize a presbyterian polity on the basis of the parity of ministers, congregational lay-elders, and deacons, and a representative synodical government, with strict discipline, and a distinction between nominal and communicant membership. This was attempted in Hesse at the Synod of Homberg (1526) by Lambert (a pupil of Zwingli and Luther), developed by Calvin in Geneva, and carried out in the Reformed churches of France, Holland, Scotland, and the Presbyterian churches of North America. Luther rather discouraged this plan in a letter to Philip of Hesse; but in 1540 he expressed a wish, with Jonas, Bugenhagen, and Melanchthon, to introduce Christian discipline with the aid of elders (seniores) in each congregation. Several Lutheran Church constitutions exclude adulterers, drunkards, and blasphemers from the communion.

4. Congregational independency; i.e., the organization of self-governing congregations of true believers in free association with each other. This was once suggested by Luther, but soon abandoned without a trial. It appeared in isolated attempts under Queen Elizabeth, and was successfully developed in the seventeenth century by the Independents in England, and the Congregationalists in New England.

The last two ways are more thoroughly Protestant and consistent with the principle of the general priesthood of believers; but they presuppose a higher grade of self-governing capacity in the laity than the episcopal polity.

All these forms of government admit of a union with the state (as in Europe), or a separation from the state (as in America). Union of church and state was the traditional system since the days of Constantine and Charlemagne, and was adhered to by all the Reformers. They had no idea of a separation; they even brought the two powers into closer relationship by increasing the authority of the state over the church. Separation of the two was barely mentioned by Luther, as a private opinion, we may say almost as a prophetic dream, but was soon abandoned as an impossibility.

Luther, in harmony with his unique personal experience, made the doctrine of justification the cardinal truth of Christianity, and believed that the preaching of that doctrine would of itself produce all the necessary changes in worship and discipline. But the abuse of evangelical freedom taught him the necessity of discipline, and he raised his protest against antinomianism. His complaints of the degeneracy of the times increased with his age and his bodily infirmities. The world seemed to him to be getting worse and worse, and fast rushing to judgment. He was so disgusted with the immorality prevailing among the citizens and students at Wittenberg, that he threatened to leave the town altogether in 1544, but yielded to the earnest entreaties of the university and magistrate to remain.681

The German Reformation did not stimulate the duty of self-support, nor develop the faculty of self-government. It threw the church into the arms of the state, from whose bondage she has never been able as yet to emancipate herself. The princes, nobles, and city magistrates were willing and anxious to take the benefit, but reluctant to perform the duties, of their new priestly dignity; while the common people remained as passive as before, without a voice in the election of their pastor, or any share in the administration of their congregational affairs. The Lutheran prince took the place of the bishop or pope; the Lutheran pastor (Pfarrherr), the place of the Romish priest, but instead of obeying the bishop he had to obey his secular patron.682

§85. Enlarged Conception of the Church. Augustin, Wiclif, Hus, Luther.

Köstlin: Luthers Lehre von der Kirche. Stuttgart, 1853. Comp. his Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung, II. 534 sqq.; and his Martin Luther, bk. VI. ch. iii. (II. 23 sqq.). Joh. Gottschick: Hus’, Luther’s und Zwingli’s Lehre von der Kirche, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte." Bd. VIII., Gotha, 1886, pp. 345 sqq. and 543 sqq. (Very elaborate, but he ought to have gone back to Wiclif and Augustin. Hus merely repeated Wiclif.)

Comp. also on the general subject Münchmeyer: Das Dogma von der sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Kirche, 1854. Ritschl: Ueber die Begriffe sichtbare und unsichtbare Kirche, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1859. Jul. Müller: Die unsichtbare Kirche, in his "Dogmatische Abhandlungen." Bremen, 1870, pp. 278–403 (an able defense of the idea of the invisible church against Rothe, Münchmeyer, and others who oppose the term invisible as inapplicable to the church. See especially Rothe’s Anfänge der christl. Kirche, 1837, vol. I. 99 sqq.). Alfred Krauss: Das protestantische Dogma von der unsichtbaren Kirche, Gotha, 1876. Seeberg: Der Begriff der christlichen Kirche, Part I., 1885. James S. Candlish: The Kingdom of God. Edinburgh, 1884.

Separation from Rome led to a more spiritual and more liberal conception of the church, and to a distinction between the one universal church of the elect children of God of all ages and countries, under the sole headship of Christ, and the several visible church organizations of all nominal Christians. We must trace the gradual growth of this distinction.

In the New Testament the term ejkklhsiva (a popular assembly, congregation) is used in two senses (when applied to religion): 1, in the general sense of the whole body of Christian believers (by our Lord, Matt. 16:18); and 2, in the particular sense of a local congregation of Christians (also by our Lord, Matt. 18:17). We use the equivalent term "church" (from kuriakovn, belonging to the Lord) in two additional senses: of a denomination (e.g., the Greek, the Roman, the Anglican, the Lutheran Church), and of a church edifice. The word ejkklhsiva occurs only twice in the Gospels (in Matthew), but very often in the Acts and Epistles; while the terms "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" are used very often in the Gospels, but rarely in the other books. This indicates a difference. The kingdom of God precedes the institution of the church, and will outlast it. The kingdom has come, is constantly coming, and will come in glory. It includes the government of God, and all the religious and moral activities of man. The visible church is a training-school for the kingdom. In many instances the terms may be interchanged, while in others we could not substitute the church for the kingdom without impropriety: e.g., in the phrase "of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3; Mark 10:14); or, "thy kingdom come" (Matt. 6:10) or, "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation, ... the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20, 21) or, "to inherit the kingdom" (Matt. 25:34; 1 Cor. 6:10; 15:30; Gal. 5:21); or, "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." A distinction between nominal and real, or outward and inward, membership of the church, is indicated in the words of our Lord, "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt. 22:14), and by Paul when be speaks of a circumcision of the flesh and a circumcision of the heart (Rom. 2:28, 29). Here is the germ of the doctrine of the visible and invisible church.

The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds include the holy catholic church and the communion of saints among the articles of faith,683  and do not limit them by the Greek, Roman, or any other nationality or age. "Catholic" means universal, and is as wide as humanity. It indicates the capacity and aim of the church; but the actualization of this universalness is a process of time, and it will not be completed till the whole world is converted to Christ.684

The mediaeval schoolmen distinguished three stages in the catholic church as to its locality,—the militant church on earth (ecclesia militans), the church of the departed or the sleeping church in purgatory (ecclesia dormiens), and the triumphant church in heaven (ecclesia triumphans). This classification was retained by Wiclif, Hus, and other forerunners of Protestantism; but the Reformers rejected the intervening purgatorial church, together with prayers for the departed, and included all the pious dead in the church triumphant.

In the militant church on earth, Augustin made an important distinction between "the true body of Christ" (corpus Christi verum), and "the mixed body of Christ" (corpus Christi mixtum or simulatum). He substitutes this for the less suitable designation of a "twofold body of Christ" (corpus Domini bipartitum), as taught by Tichonius, the Donatist grammarian (who referred to Cant. 1:5). These two bodies are in this world externally in one communion, as the good and bad fish are in one net, but they will ultimately be separated.685  To the true or pure church belong all the elect, and these only, whether already in the Catholic Church, or outside of it, yet predestinated for it. "Many," he says, "who are openly outside, and are called heretics, are better than many good Catholics; for we see what they are to-day; what they shall be to-morrow, we know not; and with God, to whom the future is already present, they already are what they shall be hereafter."686  On the other hand, hypocrites are in the church, but not of the church.

It should be added, however, that Augustin confined the true church on earth to the limits of the visible, orthodox, catholic body of his day, and excluded all heretics,—Manichaeans, Pelagians, Arians, etc.,—and schismatics,—Donatists, etc.,—as long as they remain outside of fellowship with that body. In explaining the article "the holy church," in his version of the Creed (which omits the epithet "catholic," and the additional clause "the communion of saints"), he says that this surely means, the Catholic Church;" and adds, "Both heretics and schismatics style their congregations churches. But heretics in holding false opinions regarding God do injury to the faith itself; while schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe. Wherefore, neither do the heretics belong to the Church Catholic, which loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same, inasmuch as it loves the neighbor, and consequently readily forgives the neigbbor’s sin."687  It is well known that this great and good man even defended the principle of forcible coercion of schismatics, on a false interpretation of Luke 14:23, "Constrain them to come in."

In the ninth century the visible Catholic Church was divided into two rival Catholic churches,—the patriarchal church in the East, and the papal church in the West. The former denied the papal claim of universal jurisdiction and headship, as an anti-Christian usurpation; the latter identified the Church Catholic with the dominion of the papacy, and condemned the Greek Church as schismatical. Hereafter, in Western Christendom, the Holy Catholic Church came to mean the Holy Roman Church.

The tyranny and corruptions of the papacy called forth the vigorous protest of Wiclif, who revived the Augustinian distinction between the true church and the mixed church, but gave it an anti-Roman and anti-papal turn (which Augustin did not). He defined the true church to be the congregation of the predestinated, or elect, who will ultimately be saved.688  Nobody can become a member of this church except by God’s predestination, which is the eternal foundation of the church, and determines its membership. No one who is rejected from eternity (praescitus, foreknown, as distinct from praedestinatus, foreordained) can be a member of this church. He may be in it, but he is not of it. As there is much in the human body which is no part of it, so there may be hypocrites in the church who will finally be removed. There is but one universal church, out of which there is no salvation. The only Head of this church is Christ; for a church with two heads would be a monster. The apostles declared themselves to be servants of this Head. The Pope is only the head of a part of the church militant, and this only if he lives in harmony with the commandments of Christ. This conception of the church excludes all hypocrites and bad members, though they be bishops or popes; and it includes all true Christians, whether Catholics, or schismatics, or heretics. It coincides with the Protestant idea of the invisible church. But Wiclif and Hus denied the certainty of salvation, as taught afterwards by Calvinists, and herein they agreed with the Catholics; they held that one may be sure of his present state of grace, but that his final salvation depends upon his perseverance, which cannot be known before the end.

Wiclif’s view of the true church was literally adopted by the Bohemian Reformer Hus, who depended for his theology on the English Reformer much more than was formerly known.689  From Hus it passed to Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, who agreed in denying the claims of the papacy to exclusive catholicity, and in widening the limits of the church so as to include all true believers in Christ. But they distinguished more clearly between the invisible and visible church, or rather between one true invisible church and several mixed visible churches.690  The invisible church is within the visible church as the soul is in the body, and the kernel in the shell. It is not a Utopian dream or Platonic commonwealth, but most real and historical. The term, "invisible" was chosen because the operations of the Holy Spirit are internal and invisible, and because nobody in this life can be surely known to belong to the number of the elect, while membership of the visible church is recognizable by baptism and profession.

Important questions were raised with this distinction for future settlement. Some eminent modern Protestant divines object to the term "invisible church," as involving a contradiction, inasmuch as the church is essentially a visible institution; but they admit the underlying truth of an invisible, spiritual communion of believers scattered throughout the world.691  As Protestantism has since divided and subdivided into a number of denominations and separate organizations, the idea of the church needs to be further expanded. We must recognize a number of visible churches, Greek, Latin, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and all the more recent Christian denominations which acknowledge Christ as their Head, and his teaching and example as their rule of faith and duty. The idea of denominations or confessions, as applied to churches, is of modern date; but is, after all, only an expansion of the idea of a particular church, or a contraction of the idea of the universal church, and therefore authorized by the double Scripture usage of ecclesia. The denominational conception lies between the catholic and the local conception. The one invisible church is found in all visible denominations and congregations as far as true Christianity extends. Another distinction should also be made between the church, and the kingdom of God, which is a more spiritual and more comprehensive idea than even this invisible catholic church, although very closely allied to it, and usually identified with it. But we cannot anticipate modern discussions. The Reformers were concerned first of all to settle their relation to the Roman Church as they found it, and to reconcile the idea of a truly catholic church which they could not and would not sacrifice, with the corruptions of the papacy on the one hand, and with their separation from it on the other.

Luther received a copy of Hus’s treatise De Ecclesia from Prague in 1519.692  He was driven to a defense of the Bohemian martyr in the disputation at Leipzig, and ventured to assert that Hus was unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance for holding doctrines derived from Augustin and Paul. Among these was his definition of the universal church as the totality of the elect (universitas praedestinatorum).

Luther developed this idea in his own way, and modified it in application to the visible church. He started from the article of the Creed, "I believe in the holy catholic church," but identified this article with the "communion of saints," as a definition of the catholic church.693  He explained the communion (Gemeinschaft) to mean the community or congregation (Gemeinde) of saints. He also substituted, in his Catechism, the word "Christian" for "catholic," in order to include in it all believers in Christ. Hence the term "catholic" became, or remained, identical in Germany with "Roman Catholic" or "papal;"694 while the English Protestant churches very properly retained the word "catholic" in, its true original sense of "universal," which admits of no sectarian limitation. The Romanists have no claim to the exclusive use of that title; they are too sectarian and exclusive to be truly catholic.

Luther held that the holy church in its relation to God is an article of faith, not of sight, and therefore invisible.695  But as existing among men the true church is visible, and can be recognized by the right preaching of the gospel or the purity of doctrine, and by the right administration of the sacraments (i.e., baptism and the Lord’s Supper). These are the two essential marks of a pure church. The first he emphasized against the Romanists, the second against what he called Enthusiasts (Schwarmgeister) and Sacramentarians (in the sense of anti-sacramentarians).

His theory acquired symbolical authority through the Augsburg Confession, which defines the church to be "the congregation of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught, and the sacraments are rightly administered."696  Worship and discipline, rites and ceremonies, are made secondary or indifferent, and reckoned with human traditions which may change from time to time. The church has no right to impose what is not commanded in the Word of God. In such things everybody is his own pope and church. The Lutheran Confession has always laid great—we may say too great—stress on the unity of doctrine, and little, too little, stress on discipline. And yet in no other evangelical denomination is there such a diversity of theological opinions, from the strict orthodoxy of the Formula Concordiae to every form and degree of Rationalism.

How far, we must ask here, did Luther recognize the dominion of the papacy as a part of the true catholic church?  He did not look upon the Pope in the historical and legal light as the legitimate head of the Roman Church; but he fought him to the end of his life as the antagonist of the gospel, as the veritable Antichrist, and the papacy as an apostasy. He could not have otherwise justified his separation, and the burning of the papal bull and law-books. He assumed a position to the Pope and his church similar to that of the apostles to Caiaphas and the synagogue. Nevertheless, whether consistently or not, he never doubted the validity of the ordinances of the Roman Church, having himself been baptized, confirmed, and ordained in it, and he never dreamed of being re-baptized or re-ordained. Those millions of Protestants who seceded in the sixteenth century were of the same opinion, with the sole exception of the Anabaptists who objected to infant-baptism, partly on the ground that it was an invention of the popish Antichrist, and therefore invalid.

Nor did Luther or any of the Reformers and sensible Protestants doubt that there always were and are still many true Christians in the Roman communion, notwithstanding all her errors and corruptions, as there were true lsraelites even in the darkest periods of the Jewish theocracy. In his controversy with the Anabaptists (1528), Luther makes the striking admission: "We confess that under the papacy there is much Christianity, yea, the whole Christianity, and has from thence come to us. We confess that the papacy possesses the genuine Scriptures, genuine baptism, the genuine sacrament of the altar, the genuine keys for the remission of sins, the true ministry, the true catechism, the Ten Commandments, the articles of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer. … I say that under the Pope is the true Christendom, yea, the very élite of Christendom, and many pious and great saints."697

For proof he refers, strangely enough, to the very passage of Paul, 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, from which he and other Reformers derived their chief argument that the Pope of Rome is Antichrist, "the man of sin," "the son of perdition." For Paul represents him as sitting "in the temple of God;" that is, in the true church, and not in the synagogue of Satan. As the Pope is Antichrist, he must be among Christians, and rule and tyrannize over Christians.698  Melanchthon, who otherwise had greater respect for the Pope and the Roman Church, repeatedly expressed the same view.699  Luther came nearer the true position when he said that the Roman Church might be called a "holy church," by synecdoche or ex parte, with the same restriction with which Paul called the Galatian Christians "churches," notwithstanding their apostasy from the true gospel.700

He combined with the boldest independence a strong reverence for the historical faith. He derives from the unbroken tradition of the church an argument against the Zwinglians for the real presence in the eucharist; and says, in a letter to Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia (April, 1532, after Zwingli’s death): "The testimony of the entire holy Christian church (even without any other proof) should be sufficient for us to abide by this article, and to listen to no sectaries against it. For it is dangerous and terrible (gefährlich und erschrecklich) to hear or believe any thing against the unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of the entire holy Christian church as held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the world. … To deny such testimony is virtually to condemn not only the holy Christian church as a damned heretic, but even Christ himself, with all his apostles and prophets, who have founded this article, ’I believe a holy Christian church,’ as solemnly affirmed by Christ when he promised, ’Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the world’ (Matt. 28:20), and by St. Paul when he says, ’The church of God is the pillar and ground of the truth’ (1 Tim. 3:15)."701

A Roman controversialist could not lay more stress on tradition than Luther does in this passage. But tradition, at least from the sixth to the sixteenth century, strongly favors the belief in transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass, both of which he rejected. And if the same test should be applied to his doctrine of solifidian justification, it would be difficult to support it by patristic or scholastic tradition, which makes no distinction between justification and sanctification, and lays as much stress on good works as on faith. He felt it himself, that on this vital point, not even Augustin was on his side. His doctrine can be vindicated only as a new interpretation of St. Paul in advance of the previous understanding.

Calvin, if we may here anticipate his views as expounded in the first chapters of the fourth book of his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," likewise clearly distinguishes between the visible and invisible church,702  and in the visible church again between the true evangelical church and the false papal church, which he assails as unmercifully as Luther; yet he also admits that the Roman communion, notwithstanding the antichristian character of the papacy, yea, for the very reason that Antichrist sits "in the temple of God," remains a church with the Scriptures and valid Christian ordinances.703  So the Jewish synagogue under Caiaphas retained the law and the prophets, the rites and ceremonies, of the theocracy.

The Westminster Confession implies the same theory, and supports it by the same questionable exegesis of 2 Thess. 2:3 sqq. and Rev. 13:1–8.704

The claims of the Roman Church rest on a broader and more solid base than the papacy, which is merely the form of her government. The papal hierarchy was often as corrupt as the Jewish hierarchy, and some popes were as wicked as Caiaphas;705 but this fact cannot destroy the claims nor invalidate the ordinances of the Roman Church, which from the days of the apostles down to the Reformation has been identified with the fortunes of Western Christendom, and which remains to this day the largest visible church in the world. To deny her church character is to stultify history, and to nullify the promise of Christ. (Matt. 16:18; 28:20.)

NOTES.

luther’s views on the church fathers.

Walch, XXII. 2050–2065. Erlangen ed. LXII. 97 sqq. (Tischreden). Bindseil: Mart. Lutheri Colloquia (1863), 3 vols.

In this connection it may be interesting to collect from his writings and Table Talk some of Luther’s characteristic judgments of the church fathers whose works began to be more generally known and studied through the editions of Erasmus.

Luther had no idea of a golden age of virgin purity of the church. He knew that even among the apostles there was a Judas, and that errors and corruptions crept into the Galatian, Corinthian, and other congregations, as is manifest from the censures, warnings, and exhortations of the Epistles of the New Testament. Much less could he expect perfection in any post-apostolic age. His view of the absolute supremacy of the Word of God over all the words of men, even the best and holiest, led him to a critical and discriminating estimate of the fathers and schoolmen. Besides, he felt the difference between the patristic and the Protestant theology. The Continental Reformers generally thought much less of the fathers than the Anglican divines.

"The fathers," says Luther, "have written many things that are pious and useful (multa pia et salutaria), but they must be read with discrimination, and judged by the Scriptures." "The dear fathers lived better than they wrote; we write better than we live." (Melius vixerunt quam scripserunt: nos Deo juvante melius scribimus quam vivimus. Bindseil, l.c. III. 140; Erl. ed., LXII. 103.)  He placed their writings far below the Scriptures; and the more he progressed in the study of both, the more he was impressed with the difference (Erl. ed., LXII. 107). To reform the church by the fathers is impossible; it can only be done by the Word of God (XXV. 231). They were poor interpreters, in part on account of their ignorance of Hebrew and Greek (XXII. 185). All the fathers have erred in the faith. Nevertheless, they are to be held in veneration for their testimony to the Christian faith (propter testimonium fidei omnes sunt venerandi. Erl. ed. LXII. 98).

Of all the fathers he learned most from Augustin. For him he had the profoundest respect, and him he quotes more frequently than all others combined. He regards him as one of the four pillars of the church (the claims of Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory, he disputed), as the best commentator, and the patron of theologians. "Latina nostra ecclesia nullum habuit praestantiorem doctorem quam Augustinum" (Bindseil, I. 456). "He pleased and pleases me better than all other doctors; he was a great teacher, and worthy of all praise" (III. 147). The Pelagians stirred him up to his best books, in which he treats of free-will, faith, and original sin. He first distinguished it from actual transgression. He is the only one among the fathers who had a worthy view of matrimony. The papists pervert his famous word: "I would not believe the gospel if the Catholic Church did not move me thereto," which was said against the Manichaeans in this sense: Ye are heretics, I do not believe you; I go with the church, the bride of Christ, which cannot err (Erl. ed., XXX. 394 sq.). Augustin did more than all the bishops and popes who cannot hold a candle to him (XXXI. 358 sq.), and more than all the Councils (XXV. 341). If he lived now, he would side with us, but Jerome would condemn us (Bindseil, III. 149). Yet with all his sympathy, Luther could not find his "sola fide."  Augustin, he says, has sometimes erred, and is not to be trusted. "Although good and holy, he was yet lacking in the true faith, as well as the other fathers." "When the door was opened to me for the understanding of Paul, I was done, with Augustin" (da war es aus mit ihm. Erl. ed., LXII. 119).

Next to Augustin he seems to have esteemed Hilary on account of his work on the Trinity. "Hilarius," he says, "inter omnes patres luctator fuit strenuissimus adversus haereticos, cui neque Augustinus conferri potest" (Bindseil, III. 138). Ambrose he calls "a pious, God-fearing, and brave man," and refers to his bold stand against the Emperor Theodosius. But his six books on Genesis are very thin, and his hymns have not much matter, though his (?) "Rex Christe, factor omnium," is "optimus hymnus." He praises Prudentius for his poetry. Tertullian, whom he once calls the oldest of the fathers (though he lived after 200), was "durus et superstitiosus." Of Cyprian he speaks favorably. As to Jerome, he had to admit that he was the greatest Bible translator, and will not be surpassed in this line (Erl. ed. LXII. 462). But he positively hated him on account of his monkery, and says: "He ought not to be counted among the doctors of the church; for he was a heretic, although I believe that he was saved by faith in Christ. I know no one of the fathers, to whom I am so hostile as to him. He writes only about fasting, virginity, and such things" (LXII. 119sq.). He was tormented by carnal temptations, and loved Eustochium so as to create scandal. He speaks impiously of marriage. His commentaries on Matthew, Galatians, and Titus are very thin. Luther had no more respect for Pope Gregory I. He is the author of the fables of purgatory and masses for souls; he knew little of Christ and his gospel, and was entirely too superstitious. The Devil deceived him, and made him believe in appearances of spirits from purgatory. "His sermons are not worth a copper" (Erl. ed., LI. 482; LII. 187; LX. 189, 405; XXVIII. 98 sqq.; Bindseil, III. 140, 228). But he praises beyond its merits his hymn Rex Christe, which he wrongly ascribes to Ambrose (Bindseil, III. 149; comp. Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnol., vol. I. 180 sq.).

With the Greek fathers, Luther was less familiar. He barely mentions Ignatius, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. He praises Athanasius as the greatest teacher of the Oriental Church, although he was nothing extra (obwohl er nichts sonderliches war). He could not agree with Melanchthon’s favorable judgment of Basil the Great. He thought Gregory of Nazianzen, the eloquent defender of the divinity of Christ during the Arian ascendency, to be of no account ("Nazianzenus est nihil." Bindseil, III. 152). He speaks well of Theodoret’s Commentary to Paul’s Epistles, but unreasonably depreciates Chrysostom, the golden preacher and commentator, and describes him as a great rhetorician, full of words and empty of matter; he even absurdly compares him to Carlstadt!  "He is garrulous, and therefore pleases Erasmus, who neglects faith, and treats only of morals. I consulted him on the beautiful passage on the highpriest in Hebrews; but he twaddled about the dignity of priests, and let me stick in the mud (Bindseil, III. 136; Erl. ed. LXII. 102).

Of mediaeval divines Luther esteemed Nicolaus Lyra as a most useful commentator. He praises St. Bernard, who in his sermons "excels all other doctors, even Augustin." He speaks highly of Peter the Lombard, "the Master of Sentences," and calls him a "homo diligentissimus et excellentissimi ingenii," although he brought in many useless questions (Bindseil, III. 151; Erl. ed. LXII. 114). He calls Occam, whom he studied diligently, "summus dialecticus" (Bindseil, III. 138, 270). But upon the whole he hated the schoolmen and their master, "the damned heathen Aristotle," although he admits him to have been "optimus dialecticus," and learned from him and his commentators the art of logical reasoning. Even Thomas Aquinas, "the Angelic Doctor," whom the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century highly and justly esteemed, he denounced as a chatterer (loquacissimus), who makes the Bible bend to Aristotle (Bindseil, III. 270, 286), and whose books are a fountain of all heresies, and destructive of the gospel ("der Brunn und Grundsuppe aller Ketzerei, Irrthums und Verleugnung des Evangeliums." Erl. ed. XXIV. 240). This is, of course, the language of prejudice and passion.—His views on Augustin are the most correct, because he knew him best, and liked him most.

Melanchthon and Oecolampadius from fuller knowledge and milder temper judged more favorably and consistently of the fathers generally, and their invaluable services to Christian literature.

§ 86. Changes in the Views on the Ministry. Departure from the Episcopal Succession. Luther ordains a Deacon, and consecrates a Bishop.

The Reformers unanimously rejected the sacerdotal character of the Christian ministry (except in a spiritual sense), and hence also the idea of a literal altar and sacrifice. No priest, no sacrifice. "Priest" is an abridgment of "presbyter,"706 and "Presbyter" is equivalent to "elder." It does not mean sacerdos in the New Testament, nor among the earliest ecclesiastical writers before Tertullian and Cyprian.707  Moreover, in Scripture usage "presbyter" and "bishop" are terms for one and the same office (as also in the Epistle of Clement of Rome, and the recently discovered "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles".708  This fact (conceded by Jerome and Chrysostom and the best modern scholars) was made the basis for presbyterian ordination in those Lutheran and Reformed churches which abolished episcopacy.709

In the place of a graded hierarchy, the Reformers taught the parity of ministers; and in the place of a special priesthood, offering the very body and blood of Christ, a general priesthood of believers, offering the sacrifices of prayer and praise for the one sacrifice offered for all time to come. Luther derived the lay-priesthood from baptism as an anointing by the Holy Spirit and an incorporation into Christ. "A layman with the Scriptures," he said, "is more to be believed than pope and council without the Scriptures."710

Nevertheless, he maintained, in opposition to the democratic radicalism of Carlstadt and the fanatical spiritualism of the Zwickau prophets, the necessity of a ministry, as a matter of order and expediency; and so far he asserted its divine origin. Every public teacher must be called of God through the Church, or prove his extraordinary call by miracles. And so the Augsburg Confession declares that "no man shall publicly teach in the church, or administer the sacraments, without a regular call."711

But what constitutes a regular call?  Luther at first took the ground of congregational independency in his writings to the Bohemian Brethren (1523), and advocated the right of a Christian congregation to call, to elect, and to depose its own minister.712  He meant, of course, a congregation of true believers, not a mixed multitude of nominal professors. In cases of necessity, which knows no law, he would allow any one who has the gift, to pray and sing, to teach and preach; and refers to the congregation of Corinth, and to Stephen, Philip, and Apollos, who preached without a commission from the apostles. In a conflagration everybody runs to lend a helping hand, to save the town. But, in ordinary cases, no one should be a teacher unless called and elected by the congregation. Even Paul did not elect elders without the concurrence of the people. The bishops of our days are no bishops, but idols. They neglect preaching, their chief duty, leaving it to chaplains and monks: they confirm and consecrate bells, altars, and churches, which is a self-invented business, neither Christian nor episcopal. They are baby-bishops.713

But congregations of pure Christians, capable of self-government, could not be found in Germany at that time, and are impossible in state churches where churchmanship and citizenship coincide. Luther abandoned this democratic idea after the Peasants’ War, and called on the arm of the govern-ment for protection against the excesses of the popular will.

In the first years of the Reformation the congregations were supplied by Romish ex-priests and monks. But who was to ordain the new preachers educated at Wittenberg?  The bishops of Saxony (Naumburg-Zeiz, Meissen, and Merseburg) remained loyal to their master in Rome; and there was no other ordaining power according to law. Luther might have derived the succession from two bishops of Prussia,—Georg von Polenz, bishop of Samland, and Erhard von Queis, bishop of Pomesania,—who accepted the Reformation, and afterwards surrendered their episcopal rights to Duke Albrecht as the summus episcopus (1525).714  But he did not wish to go outside of Saxony, and hated the whole hierarchy of pope and bishop as a human invention and spiritual tyranny. He congratulated the bishop of Samland that he, as by a miracle of grace, had been delivered from the mouth of Satan; while all other bishops raged like madmen against the reviving gospel, although he hoped that there were some timid Nicodemuses among them.715

With these views, and the conviction of his own divine authority to reform the church, he felt no reluctance to take the episcopal prerogative into his hands. He acted to the end of his life as an irregular or extraordinary bishop and pope in partibus Protestantium, being consulted by princes, magistrates, theologians, and people of all sorts.

He set the first example of a Presbyterian ordination by laying hands on his amanuensis, Georg Rörer (Rorarius), and making him deacon at Wittenberg, May 14, 1525. Rörer is favorably known by his assistance in the Bible Version and the first edition of Luther’s works. He died as librarian of the University of Jena, 1557. Melanchthon justified the act on the ground that the bishops neglected their duty.716

But Luther ventured even to consecrate a bishop, or a superintendent; as John Wesley did two hundred and fifty years afterwards in the interest of his followers in the United States. When the bishopric of Naumburg became vacant, the chapter, backed by the Roman-Catholic minority of the nobility and people, regularly elected Julius von Pflug, one of the ablest, purest, and mildest opponents of the Reformation. This choice displeased the Protestants. The Elector John Frederick, by an illegal use of power, confiscated the property of the diocese, and appointed a counter-bishop in the person of Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Luther’s most devoted friend, who was unmarried and a nobleman, and at that time superintendent at Magdeburg. The consecration took place on June 20, 1542, in the dome of Naumburg, in the presence of the Elector, the Protestant clergy, and a congregation of about five thousand people. Luther preached the sermon, and performed the consecration with the assistance of three superintendents (Medler, Spalatin, and Stein) and an abbot, by the laying-on of hands, and prayer.717  This bold and defiant act created great sensation and indignation, and required a public defense, which he prepared at the request of the Elector.718  He used the strongest language against popery and episcopacy to overawe the opposition, and to make it contemptible. He even boasts of having made a bishop without chrism, butter, and incense. "I cannot repent," he says, "of such a great and horrible sin, nor expect absolution for it." He assigns, among the reasons for setting aside the election of a Catholic bishop, that God had in the first three commandments, as by a thunder-stroke of judgment, forever condemned to hell the chapter of Naumburg, together with the pope, cardinals, and all their régime, for breaking those commandments by their idolatry and false worship. Christians are forbidden, on pain of eternal damnation, to hear and tolerate them. They must flee a false prophet, preacher, or bishop, and regard a popish bishop as no bishop at all, but as a wolf, yea, as a devil.719  "And what does the most hellish father in his hellish Church?  Does he not depose all bishops, abbots, priests, whom he finds heretics or apostates from his idolatry?  ... Yea, he interferes even with secular and domestic government, deposes emperors, kings, princes, separates man and wife, dissolves marriage, abolishes obedience, duty, and oath, simply for disobedience to his audacious devilish decretals and accursed bulls." But, as the holy Virgin sings in her Magnificat, "the Lord hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and hath put down princes from their thrones" (Luke 1:51, 52) and as St. Peter writes, "Deus superbis resistit" (1 Pet. 5:5). The proud and haughty, whether he be pope, emperor, king, prince, nobleman, citizen, or peasant, will be humbled, and come to a bitter end. The chapter of Naumburg elected a bishop who would have been bound by obedience to the pope to persecute the gospel, "to worship the devil," and to let the pope, the archbishop of Mainz, and their courtiers rule and ruin at pleasure. The papists have been playing this game for more than twenty years. It is high time to stop it. He who rules in heaven and also here in our hearts turns the wise into fools, and "taketh the wise in their craftiness" (1 Cor. 3:19).

This is the spirit and language of this apologetic Tract. It was followed by a still fiercer attack upon popery as an invention of the Devil" (1545).

Amsdorf was forced upon the chapter and the people by the Elector, but lost his bishopric in the Smalcaldian War (1547), took a leading and ultra-Lutheran part in the bitter theological controversies which followed, and died at Eisenach, 1565, in his eighty-second year. His ephemeral episcopate was, of course, a mere superintendency.

Several of Luther’s friends and pupils were appointed superintendents; as Lauterbach at Pirna (d. 1569); Heidenreich, or Heiderich, at Torgau (d. 1572), who with Mathesius, Dietrich, Weller, and others, preserved his "table spice" (condimenta mensae), as they called his familiar conversations.

The appointment of these superintendents was in the hands of the prince as summus episcopus over his territory. The congregations had not even the power of electing their own pastors.720

In the cities the magistrate assumed the episcopal power, and appointed the superintendents.

The further development of the episcopal, territorial, and collegial system in the Lutheran Church lies beyond our limits.

§ 87. Relation of Church and State.

In January, 1523, Luther published a remarkable book on the civil magistrate, dedicated to Prince John, in which he proved from Rom. 13:1 and 1 Pet. 2:13 the duty to obey the civil magistrate, and from Acts 5:29 the duty to obey God more than man.721  On the ground of Christ’s word, Matt. 22:21, which contains the wisest answer to an embarrassing question, he drew a sharp distinction between the secular and spiritual power, and reproved the pope and bishops for meddling with secular affairs, and the princes and nobles for meddling with spiritual matters. It sounds almost like a prophetic anticipation of the American separation of church and state when he says: —

"God has ordained two governments among the children of Adam, the reign of God under Christ, and the reign of the world under the civil magistrate, each with its own laws and rights. The laws of the reign of the world extend no further than body and goods and the external affairs on earth. But over the soul God can and will allow no one to rule but himself alone.722  Therefore where the worldly government dares to give laws to the soul, it invades the reign of God, and only seduces and corrupts the soul. This we shall make so clear that our noblemen, princes, and bishops may see what fools they are if they will force people with their laws and commandments to believe this or that.723  ... In matters which relate to the soul’s salvation nothing should be taught and accepted but God’s word. … As no one can descend to hell or ascend to heaven for me, as little can any one believe or disbelieve for me; as he cannot open or shut heaven or hell for me, neither can he force me to faith or unbelief … Faith is a voluntary thing which cannot be forced. Yea, it is a divine work in the spirit. Hence it is a common saying which is also found in Augustin: Faith cannot and should not be forced on anybody."724

Here is the principle of religious liberty which was proclaimed in principle by Christ, acted upon by the apostles, re-asserted by the ante-Nicene fathers against the tyranny of persecuting Rome, but so often violated by Christian Rome in her desire for a worldly empire, and also by Protestant churches and princes in their dealings with Romanists and Anabaptists. Luther does not spare the secular rulers, though this book is dedicated to the brother of the Elector.

"From the beginning of the world wise princes have been rare birds, and pious princes still rarer. Most of them are the greatest fools or the worst boobies on earth.725  Therefore we must fear the worst from them, and expect little good, especially in divine things which affect the soul’s welfare. They are God’s hangmen, and his wrath uses them to punish evil-doers, and to keep external peace."

He refers to Isa. 3:4, "I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them;" and to Hos. 13:11, "I have given thee a king in mine anger, and have taken him away in my wrath." "The world is too bad," he adds, "and not worthy to have many wise and pious princes."

To the objection that the secular magistrate should afford an external protection, and hinder heretics from seducing the people, he replies: —

This is the business of bishops, and not of princes. For heresy can never be kept off by force; another grip is needed for that; this is another quarrel than that of the sword. God’s word must contend here. If this fails, the worldly power is of no avail, though it fill the world with blood. Heresy is a spiritual thing that cannot be hewn down by iron, nor burned by fire, nor drowned by water.726  But God’s word does it, as Paul says, ’Our weapons are not carnal, but mighty in God’ (2 Cor. 10:4, 5)."

In his exposition of the First Epistle of St. Peter, from the same year (1523), he thus comments on the exhortation "to fear God and honor the king:"727

"If the civil magistrate interferes with spiritual matters of conscience in which God alone must rule, we ought not to obey at all, but rather lose our head. Civil government is confined to external and temporal affairs. … If an emperor or prince asks me about my faith, I would give answer, not because of his command, but because of my duty to confess my faith before everybody. But if he should go further, and command me to believe this or that, I would say, ’Dear sir, mind your secular business; you have no right to interfere with God’s reign, and therefore I shall not obey you at all.’ "

Similar views on the separation of church and state were held by Anabaptists, Mennonites, the English martyr-bishop Hooper, and Robert Browne the Independent; but they had no practical effect till a much later period.728

Luther himself changed his opinion on this subject, and was in some measure driven to a change by the disturbances and heresies which sprang up around him, and threatened disorder and anarchy. The victory over the peasants greatly increased the power of the princes. The Lutheran Reformers banded the work of re-organization largely over to them, and thus unwittingly introduced a caesaropapacy; that is, such a union of church and state as makes the head of the state also the supreme ruler in the church. It is just the opposite of the hierarchical principle of the Roman Church, which tries to rule the state. Melanchthon justified this transfer chiefly by the neglect of the pope and bishops to do their duty. He says, if Christ and the apostles had waited till Annas and Caiaphas permitted the gospel, they would have waited in vain.729

The co-operation of the princes and magistrates in the cities secured the establishment of the Protestant Church, but brought it under the bondage of lawyers and politicians who, with some honorable exceptions, knew less and ruled worse than the bishops. The Reformers often and bitterly complained in their later writings of the rapacity of princes and nobles who confiscated the property of churches and convents, and applied it to their own use instead of schools and benevolent purposes. Romish historians make the most of this fact to the disparagement of the Reformation. But the spoliations of Protestant princes are very trifling, as compared with the wholesale confiscation of church property by Roman-Catholic powers, as France, Spain, and Italy in the last and present centuries.

The union of church and state accounts for the persecution of papists, heretics, and Jews; and all the Reformers justified persecution to the extent of deposition and exile, some even to the extent of death, as in the case of Servetus.730

The modern progress of the principle of toleration and religious liberty goes hand in hand with the loosening of the bond of union between church and state.

§ 88. Church Visitation in Saxony.

Melanchthon: Articuli de quibus egerunt per visitatores in regione Saxoniae. Wittenb., 1527. Reprinted in the Corpus Reform., vol. XXVI. (1858), 9–28. The same in German with preface by Luther: Unterricht der Visitatoren an die Pfarrherrn im Kurfürstenthum zu Sachsen. Wittenb., 1628. In Walch, X. 1902, and in Corp. Reform., XXVI. 29–40. Also Luther’s Letters to Elector John, from the years 1525 to 1527, in De Wette, vol. III. 38 sqq.

Burkhardt: Gesch. der sächsischen Kirchen- und Schulvisitationen von 1524–45. Leipzig, 1879. Köstlin: M. L., II. 23–49.

In order to abolish ecclesiastical abuses, to introduce reforms in doctrine, worship, and discipline, and to establish Christian schools throughout the electorate of Saxony, Luther proposed a general visitation of all the churches. This was properly the work of bishops. But, as there were none in Saxony who favored the Reformation, he repeatedly urged the Elector John, soon after he succeeded his brother Frederick, to institute an episcopal visitation of the churches in his territory, and to divide it into three or four districts, each to be visited by two noblemen or magistrates.731  He presented to him, in his strong way, the deplorable condition of the church: the fear of God, and discipline are gone; the common people have lost all respect for the preachers, pay no more offerings, and let them starve; since the Pope’s tyranny is abolished, everybody does as he pleases. We shall soon have no churches, no schools, no pupils, unless the magistrates restore order, and take care at least of the youth, whatever may become of the old people.732

It was a dangerous step, and the entering wedge of a new caesaropapacy,—the rule of statecraft over priestcraft. But it seemed to be the only available help under the circumstances, and certainly served a very useful purpose. Luther had full confidence in the God-fearing Elector, that he would not abuse the authority thus temporarily conferred on him.

The Elector, after considerable delay, resolved upon the visitation in July, 1527, on the quasi-legal basis of the Diet of Speier, which a year before had temporarily suspended, but by no means abolished, the Edict of Worms. He directed Melanchthon to prepare a "formula of doctrine and rites" for the instruction of the visitors. Melanchthon elaborated in Latin, and more fully in German, a summary of the evangelical doctrines of faith and duty, which may be regarded as the first basis of the Augsburg Confession. He treats, in seventeen articles, of faith, the cross (affliction), prayer, the fruits of the Spirit, the magistrate, the fear of God, righteousness, judgment, the sacraments (Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Confession), the sign of the eucharist, penitence, marriage, prohibited cases, human traditions, Christian liberty, free-will, and the law. The order is not very logical, and differs somewhat in the German edition. The work was finished in December, 1527.

Luther wrote a popular preface and notes to the German edition, and explained the object. He shows the importance of church visitation, from the example of the apostles and the primary aim of the episcopal office; for a bishop, as the term indicates, is an overseer of the churches, and an archbishop is an overseer of the bishops. But the bishops have become worldly lords, and neglect their spiritual duties. Now, as the pure gospel has returned, or first begun, we need a true episcopacy; and, as nobody has a proper authority or divine command, we asked the Elector, as our divinely appointed ruler (Rom. 13), to exercise his authority for the protection and promotion of the gospel. Although he is not called to teach, he may restore peace and order, as the Emperor Constantine did when he called the Council of Nicaea for the settlement of the Arian controversy.733

Melanchthon wisely abstained from polemics, and advised the preachers to attack sin and vice, but to let the pope and the bishops alone. Luther was not pleased with this moderation, and added the margin: "But they shall violently condemn popery with its devotees, since it is condemned by God; for popery is the reign of Antichrist, and, by instigation of the Devil, it terribly persecutes the Christian church and God’s Word."734

The Elector appointed Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, Spalatin, and Myconius, besides some prominent laymen, among the visitors. They carried on their work in 1528 and 1529. They found the churches in a most deplorable condition, which was inherited from the times of the papacy, and aggravated by the abuse of the liberty of the Reformation. Pastors and people had broken loose from all restraint, churches and schools were in ruins, the ministers without income, ignorant, indifferent, and demoralized. Some kept taverns, were themselves drunkards, and led a scandalous life. The people, of course, were no better. "The peasants," wrote Luther to Spalatin, "learn nothing, know nothing, and abuse all their liberty. They have ceased to pray, to confess, to commune, as if they were bare of all religion. As they despised popery, so they now despise us. It is horrible to behold the administration of the popish bishops."735

The strong arm of the law was necessary. Order was measurably restored. The property of churches and convents was devoted to the endowment of parishes and schools, and stipends for theological students (1531). The appointment of ministers passed into the hands of the Elector. The visitations were repeated from time to time under the care of regular superintendents and consistories which formed the highest ecclesiastical Councils, under the sovereign as the supreme bishop.

In this way, the territorial state-church government was established and order restored in Saxony, Hesse, Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Mecklenburg, East Friesland, Silesia, and other Protestant sovereignties of Germany.

§ 89. Luther’s Catechisms. 1529.

I. Critical editions of Luther’s Catechisms in his Works, Erl. ed., vol. XXI. (contains the two catechisms and some other catechetical writings); by Mönckeberg (Hamburg, 1851, second ed. 1868); Schneider (Berlin, 1853, a reprint of the standard ed. of 1531 with a critical introduction); Theodos. Harnack (Stuttgart, 1856; a reprint of two editions of 1529 and 1539, and a table of the chief textual variations till 1842);   Zezschwitz   (Leipz. 1881); Calinich (Leipz. 1882). See titles in Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 245. The Catechisms are also printed in the editions of the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church, and the Little (or Small) Catechism, with English translation, in Schaff’s Creeds, etc., vol. III. 74–92. The text in the Book of Concord is unreliable, and should be compared with the works mentioned.

II. Discussions on the history and merits of Luther’s Catech., by Köcher, Augusti, Veesenmeyer, Zezschwitz  , and others, quoted by Schaff, l.c. 245. Add Köstlin: M. L., bk. VI. ch. IV. (II. 50–65).

The Catechisms of Luther are the richest fruit of the Saxon church visitations. Intended as a remedy for the evils of ignorance and irreligion, they have become symbolical standards of doctrine and duty, and permanent institutions in the Lutheran Church. The Little Catechism, which is his best, bears the stamp of his religious genius, and is, next to his translation of the Bible, his most useful and enduring work by which he continues a living teacher in catechetical classes and Sunday schools as far as the Lutheran confession extends. He here adapts the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to the capacity of children, and becomes himself a child with children, a learner with the teacher, as he said, "I am a doctor and a preacher, yet I am like a child who is taught the Catechism, and I read and recite word by word in the morning the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and cheerfully remain a child and pupil of the Catechism." A great little book, with as many thoughts as words, and every word sticking to the heart as well as the memory. It is strong food for men, and milk for babes. It appeals directly to the heart, and can be turned into prayer. In the language of the great historian Leopold von Ranke, "it is as childlike as it is profound, as comprehensible as it is unfathomable, simple and sublime. Happy he whose soul was fed by it, who clings to it!  He possesses an imperishable comfort in every moment; under a thin shell, a kernel of truth sufficient for the wisest of the wise."736

Catechetical instruction was (after the model of the Jewish synagogue) a regular institution of the Christian church from the beginning, as a preparation for membership. In the case of adult converts, it preceded baptism; in the case of baptized infants, it followed baptism, and culminated in the confirmation and the first communion. The oldest theological school, where Clement and the great Origen taught, grew out of the practical necessity of catechetical teaching. The chief things taught were the Creed (the Nicene in the Greek, the Apostles’ in the Latin Church) or what to believe, the Lord’s Prayer (Pater Noster) or how to pray, and the Ten Commandments or how to live. To these were added sometimes special chapters on the sacraments, the Athanasian Creed, the Te Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Ave Maria, Scripture verses, and lists of sins and virtues. Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures were a standard work in the Greek Church. Augustin wrote, at the request of a deacon, a famous book on catechising (De catechizandis rudibus), and a brief exposition of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer (Enchiridion), which were intended for teachers, and show what was deemed necessary in the fifth century for the instruction of Christians. In the middle ages the monks Kero (720) and Notker (912), both of St. Gall, Otfrid of Weissenburg (870), and others prepared catechetical manuals or primers of the simplest kind. Otfrid’s Catechism contains (1) the Lord’s Prayer with an explanation; (2) the deadly sins; (3) the Apostles’ Creed; (4) the Athanasian Creed; (5) the Gloria. The anti-papal sects of the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Bohemian Brethren, paid special attention to catechetical instruction.

The first Protestant catechisms were prepared by Lonicer (1523), Melanchthon (1524), Brentius (1527), Althamer, Lachmann (1528), and later by Urbanus Rhegius (Rieger).737  Luther urged his friends and colleagues, Justus Jonas and Agricola, to write one for Saxony (1525);738 but after the doleful experience of popular ignorance during the church visitation, he took the task in hand himself, and completed it in 1529. He had previously published popular expositions of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer (1520).739

He wrote two Catechisms, both in the German language. The "Great Catechism" is a continuous exposition, and not divided into questions and answers; moreover, it grew so much under his hands, that it became unsuitable for the instruction of the young, which he had in view from the beginning. Hence he prepared soon afterwards (in July, 1529) a short or little Catechism under the name Enchiridion. It is the ripe fruit of the larger work, and superseded it for practical use. The same relation exists between the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly.

With his conservative instinct, Luther retained the three essential parts of a catechism,—the Decalogue, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. He called the first the doctrine of all doctrines; the second, the history of all histories; the third, the highest of all prayers. To these three chief divisions he added, after the Catholic tradition and the example of the Bohemian Catechism, an instruction on the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in two separate parts, making five in all. He retained in the address of the Lord’s Prayer the old German Vater unser (Pater Noster), and the translation "Deliver us from evil" (a malo); but in his Bible he changed the former into Unser Vater (Matt. 6:9), and in his Large Catechism he refers the Greek to the evil one, i.e., the Devil (oJ ponhrov"), as our arch-enemy. Yet in practice these two differences have become distinctive marks of the Lutheran and German Reformed use of the Lord’s Prayer.740

The later editions of the Little Catechism (since 1564) contain a sixth part on "Confession and Absolution," or, "The Power of the Keys," which is inserted either as Part V., between Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, or added as Part VI., or as an appendix. The precise authorship of the enlarged form or forms (for they vary) of this part, with the questions, "What is the power of the keys?" etc., is uncertain; but the substance of it—viz. the questions on private or auricular confession of sin to the minister, and absolution by the minister, as given in the "Book of Concord"—date from Luther himself, and appear first substantially in the third edition of 1531, as introductory to the fifth part on the Lord’s Supper. He made much account of private confession and absolution; while the Calvinists abolished the same as a mischievous popish invention, and retained only the public act. "True absolution," says Luther, "or the power of the keys, instituted in the gospel by Christ, affords comfort and support against sin and an evil conscience. Confession or absolution shall by no means be abolished in the church, but be retained, especially on account of weak and timid consciences, and also on account of untutored youth, in order that they may be examined and instructed in the Christian doctrine. But the enumeration of sins should be free to every one, to enumerate, or not to enumerate such as he wishes."741  The practice of private confession is still retained in some sections, but has entirely disappeared in other sections, of the Lutheran Church.

The Church of England holds a similar view on this subject. The Book of Common Prayer contains, besides two forms of public confession and absolution, a form of private confession and absolution. But the last is omitted in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church of the United States.

Besides these doctrinal sections, the Little Catechism, as edited by Luther in 1531 (partly, also, in the first edition of 1529) has three appendices of a devotional or liturgical character: viz., (1) A series of short family prayers; (2) a table of duties (Haustafel) for the members of a Christian house hold, consisting of Scripture passages; (3) a marriage manual (Traubüchlin), and (4) a baptismal manual (Taufbüchlin).

The first two appendices were retained in the "Book of Concord;" but the third and fourth, which are liturgical and ceremonial, were omitted because of the great diversity in different churches as to exorcism in baptism and the rite of marriage.

The Little Catechism was translated from the German original into the Latin (by Sauermann) and many other languages, even into the Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. It is asserted by Lutheran writers that no book, except the Bible, has had a wider circulation. Thirty-seven years after its appearance, Mathesius spoke of a circulation of over a hundred thousand copies. It was soon introduced into public schools, churches, and families. It became by common consent a symbolical book, and a sort of "layman’s Bible" for the German people.

Judged from the standpoint of the Reformed churches, the catechism of Luther, with all its excellences, has some serious defects. It gives the text of the Ten Commandments in an abridged form, and follows the wrong division of the Latin Church, which omits the Second Commandment altogether, and cuts the Tenth Commandment into two to make up the number. It allows only three questions and answers to the exposition of the creed,—on creation, redemption, and sanctification. It gives undue importance to the sacraments by making them co-ordinate parts with the three great divisions; and elevates private confession and absolution almost to the dignity of a third sacrament. It contains no instruction on the Bible, as the inspired record of Divine revelation and the rule of faith and practice. These defects are usually supplied in catechetical instruction by a number of preliminary or additional questions and answers.

§ 90. The Typical Catechisms of Protestantism.

In this connection we may anticipate a brief comparison between the most influential manuals of popular religious instruction which owe their origin to the Reformation, and have become institutions, retaining their authority and usefulness to this day.

These are Luther’s Little Catechism (1529), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Anglican Catechism (1549, enlarged 1604, revised 1661), and the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647). The first is the standard catechism of the Lutheran Church; the second, of the German and Dutch Reformed, and a few other Reformed churches (in Bohemia and Hungary); the third, of the Episcopal Church of England and her daughters in the British Colonies and the United States; the fourth, of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, England, and America. They follow these various churches to all their missionary fields in heathen lands, and have been translated into many languages.

They are essentially agreed in the fundamental doctrines of catholic and evangelical religion. They teach the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer; that is, all that is necessary for a man to believe and to do in order to be saved. They thus exhibit the harmony of the chief branches of orthodox Protestant Christendom.

But they also differ, and reflect the peculiar genius and charisma of these churches. The Lutheran Catechism is the simplest, the most genial and childlike; the Heidelberg Catechism, the fullest and the richest for a more mature age; the Anglican Catechism, the shortest and most churchly, though rather meagre; the Westminster Catechism, the clearest, precisest, and most logical. The first three are addressed to the learner as a church-member, who answers the questions from his present or prospective experience. The Westminster Catechism is impersonal, and gives the answers in the form of a theological definition embodying the question. The first two breathe the affectionate heartiness and inwardness which are characteristic of German piety; the other two reflect the sober and practical type of English and Scotch piety. The Lutheran and Anglican Catechisms begin with the Ten Commandments, and regard the law in its preparatory mission as a schoolmaster leading to Christ. The other catechisms begin with an exposition of the articles of faith, and proceed from faith to the law as a rule of Christian life, which the Heidelberg Catechism represents as an act of gratitude for the salvation obtained (following in its order the Epistle to the Romans, from sin to redemption, and from redemption to a holy life of gratitude). Luther adheres to the Roman division of the Decalogue, and abridges it; the others give the better division of the Jews and the Greek Church, with the full text. The Lutheran and Anglican Catechisms assign to the sacraments an independent place alongside of the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer; while the Heidelberg and Westminster Catechisms incoporate them in the exposition of the articles of faith. The former teach baptismal regeneration, and Luther also the corporeal real presence, and private confession and absolution; the latter teach the Calvinistic theory of the sacraments, and ignore private confession and absolution. The Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, however, likewise teach the Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper. The Westminster Catechism departs from the catholic tradition by throwing the Apostles’ Creed into an appendix, and substituting for the historical order of revelation a new logical scheme; While all the other catechisms make the Creed the basis of their, doctrinal expositions.742

The difference is manifest in the opening questions and answers, which we give here in parallel columns: —

luther’s catechism

The First Commandment.

Thou shalt have no other gods.

What does this mean?

We should hear and love God, and trust in Him, above all things

The Second [Third] Commandment.

Thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain.

What does this mean?

We should so fear and love God as not to curse, swear, conjure, lie, or deceive, by his name; but call upon it in every time of need, pray, praise, and give thanks.

The Third [Fourth] Commandment.

Thou shalt keep the holy Sabbath day.

What does this mean?

We should hear and love God as not to despise preaching and His Word, and willingly hear and learn it.

heidelberg catechism.

What is thy only comfort in life and in death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.

How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou in this comfort mayest live abd die happily?

Three things: First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Secondly, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. Thirdly, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption.

anglican catechism

What is your name?

N. or M.

Who gave you this name?

My Godfathers and Godmothers 743 In my Baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

What did your godfathers and godmothers [sponsors] then for you?

They did promise and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in them all the days of my life.

westminster catechism.

What is the chief end of man?

Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him?

The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.

What do the Scriptures principally teach?

The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.

What is God?

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

CHAPTER VI.

PROPAGATION AND PERSECUTION OF PROTESTANTISM IN

GERMANY TILL 1530.

§ 91. Causes and Means of Progress.

The Reformation spread over Germany with the spontaneous and irresistible impulse of a great historical movement that struck its roots deep in the wants and necessities of the church. The only propaganda of Luther was the word and the pen, but these he used to the utmost of his time and strength. "There was no need of an arrangement," says Ranke, "or of a concerted agreement, or of any special mission. As at the first favor of the vernal sun the seed sprouts from the ploughed field, so the new convictions, which were prepared by all what men had experienced and heard, made their appearance on the slightest occasion, wherever the German language was spoken."744

The chief causes of progress were the general discontent with papal tyranny and corruption; the desire for light, liberty, and peace of conscience; the thirst for the pure word of God. The chief agencies were the German Bible, which spoke with Divine authority to the reason and conscience, and overawed the human authority of the pope; the German hymns, which sang the comforting doctrines of grace into the hearts of the people; and the writings of Luther, who discussed every question of the day with commanding ability and abundant knowledge, assuring the faith of friends, and crushing the opposition of foes. The force and fertility of his genius as a polemic are amazing, and without a parallel among fathers, schoolmen, and modern divines. He ruled like an absolute monarch in the realm of German theology and religion; and, with the gospel for his shield and weapon, he was always sure of victory.745

What Luther did for the people, Melanchthon accomplished, in his gentle and moderate way, for scholars. In their united labors they were more than a match for all the learning, skill, and material resources of the champions of Rome.

No such progress of new ideas and principles had taken place since the first introduction of Christianity. No power of pope or emperor, no council or diet, could arrest it. The very obstacles were turned into helps. Had the Emperor and his brother favored the cause of progress, all Germany might have become nominally Lutheran. But it was better that Protestantism should succeed, in spite of their opposition, by its intellectual and moral force. A Protestant Constantine or Charlemagne would have extended the territory, but endangered the purity, of the Reformation.

Secular and selfish motives and passions were mingled with the pure enthusiasm for the gospel. Violence, intrigues, and gross injustice were sometimes employed in the suppression of the old, and the introduction of the new, faith.746  But, human sin and imperfection enter into all great movements of history. Wherever God builds a church, the Devil is sure to build a chapel close by. The Devil is mighty; but God is almighty, and overrules the wrath and outwits the wit of his great enemy. Nothing but the power of truth and conviction could break down the tyranny of the papacy, which for so many centuries had controlled church and state, house and home, from the cradle to the grave, and held the keys to the kingdom of heaven. It is an insult to reason and faith to deny the all-ruling and overruling supremacy of God in the history of the world and the church.

§ 92. The Printing-Press and the Reformation.

The art of printing, which was one of the providential preparations for the Reformation, became the mightiest lever of Protestantism and modern culture.

The books before the Reformation were, for the most part, ponderous and costly folios and quartos in Latin, for limited circulation. The rarity of complete Bibles is shown by the fact that copies in the libraries were secured by a chain against theft. Now small and portable books and leaflets were printed in the vernacular for the millions.

The statistics of the book trade in the sixteenth century reveal an extraordinary increase since Luther. In the year 1513, there appeared only ninety prints in Germany; in 1514, one hundred and six; in 1515, one hundred and forty-five; in 1516, one hundred and five; in 1517, eighty-one. They are mostly little devotional tracts, flying newspapers, official notices, medical prescriptions, stories, and satirical exposures of clerical and monastic corruptions. In 1518 the number rose to one hundred and forty-six; in 1519, to two hundred and fifty-two; in 1520, to five hundred and seventy-one; in 1521, to five hundred and twenty-three; in 1522, to six hundred and seventy-seven; in 1523, to nine hundred and forty-four. Thus the total number of prints in the five years preceding the Reformation amounted only to five hundred and twenty-seven; in the six years after the Reformation, it rose to three thousand one hundred and thirteen.747

These works are distributed over fifty different cities of Germany. Of all the works printed between 1518 and 1523 no less than six hundred appeared in Wittenberg; the others mostly in Nürnberg, Leipzig, Cologne, Strassburg, Hagenau, Augsburg, Basel, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg. Luther created the book-trade in Northern Germany, and made the little town of Wittenberg one of the principal book-marts, and a successful rival of neighboring Leipzig as long as this remained Catholic. In the year 1523 more than four-fifths of all the books published were on the side of the Reformation, while only about twenty books were decidedly Roman Catholic. Erasmus, hitherto the undisputed monarch in the realm of letters, complained that the people would read and buy no other books than Luther’s. He prevailed upon Froben not to publish any more of them. "Here in Basel," he wrote to King Henry VIII., "nobody dares to print a word against Luther, but you may write as much as you please against the pope." Romish authors, as we learn from Cochlaeus and Wizel, could scarcely find a publisher, except at their own expense; and the Leipzig publishers complained that their books were unsalable.

The strongest impulse was given to the book trade by Luther’s German New Testament. Of the first edition, Sept. 22, 1522, five thousand copies were printed and sold before December of the same year, at the high price of one guilder and a half per copy (about twenty-five marks of the present value). Hans Luft printed a hundred thousand copies on his press in Wittenberg. Adam Petri in Basel published seven editions between 1522 and 1525; Thomas Wolf of the same city, five editions between 1523 and 1525. Duke George commanded that all copies should be delivered up at cost, but few were returned. The precious little volume, which contains the wisdom of the whole world, made its way with lightning speed into the palaces of princes, the castles of knights, the convents of monks, the studies of priests, the houses of citizens, the huts of peasants. Mechanics, peasants, and women carried the New Testament in their pockets, and dared to dispute with priests and doctors of theology about the gospel.748

As there was no copyright at that time, the works of the Reformers were multiplied by reprints in Nürnberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Basel. Republication was considered a legitimate and honorable business. Luther complained, not of the business itself, but of the reckless and scandalous character of many reprints of his books, which were so full of blunders that he could hardly recognize them.749  Sometimes the printers stole his manuscript, and published it elsewhere. He was not hindered by any censorship, except that he received occasionally a gentle warning from the Elector when he did not spare the princes. He took no honorarium for his books, and was satisfied with a number of free copies for friends. Authors were usually supported by a professorship, and considered it beneath their dignity, or as ungentlemanlike, to receive a royalty, but were indirectly rewarded by free copies or other presents of the publishers or rich patrons, in return for dedications, which were originally, as they are now, nothing more than public testimonies of regard or gratitude, though often used, especially during the seventeenth century, for selfish purposes.750  Cash payments to authors were, down to the eighteenth century, rare and very low. Few could make a decent living from writing books; and, we may add, few publishers acquired wealth from their trade, which is very uncertain, and subject to great losses. "Habent sua fata libelli."

But, while the progressive Reformation gave wings to the printing-press, the conservative re-action matured gradually a system of restriction, which, under the name of censorship and under the direction of book-censors, assumed the control of the publishing business with authority to prevent or suppress the publication and sale of books, pamphlets, and newspapers hostile to the prevailing religious, moral, or political sentiments.751  The Peasants’ War, which was kindled by inflammatory books, and threatened a general overthrow of social order, strengthened the reactionary tendencies of Protestant, as well as Roman Catholic, governments.

The burning of obnoxious books by public authority of church or state is indeed as old as the book-trade. A work of Protagoras, in which he doubted the existence of the Greek gods, was burned at the stake in Athens about twenty years after the death of Pericles. The Emperor Augustus subjected slanderous publications (libelli famosi) to legal prosecution and destruction by fire. Christian emperors employed their authority against heathen, heretical, and infidel books. Constantine the Great, backed by the Council of Nicaea, issued an edict against the writings of Porphyry and Arius; Accadius, against the books of the Eunomians (398); Theodosius, against the books of the Nestorians (435). Justinian commanded the destruction of sundry obnoxious works, and forbade their re-issue on pain of losing the right arm (536). The oecumenical synod of 680 at Constantinople burned the books which it had condemned, including the letters of the Monothelitic Pope Honorius.

Papal Rome inherited this practice, and improved upon it. Leo I. caused a large number of Manichaean books to be burnt (446). The popes claimed the right and duty to superintend the religious and moral literature of Christendom. They transferred the right in the thirteenth century to the universities, but they found little to do until the art of printing facilitated the publication of books. The Council of Constance condemned the books of Wiclif and Hus, and ordered the bishops to burn all the copies they could seize (1415).

The invention of the printing-press (c. 1450) called forth sharper measures in the very city where the inventor, John Gutenberg, lived and died (1400–1467). It gave rise also to the preventive policy of book-censorship which still exists in some despotic countries of Europe. Berthold, Archbishop of Mainz, took the lead in the restriction of the press. He prohibited, Jan. 10, 1486, the sale of all unauthorized German translations of Greek and Latin works, on the plea of the inefficiency of the German language, but with a hostile aim at the German Bible. In the same year Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull against the printers of bad books. The infamous Pope Alexander VI. prohibited in 1498, on pain of excommunication, the printing and reading of heretical books; and in a bull of June 1, 1501, which was aimed chiefly against Germany, he subjected all kinds of literary publications to episcopal supervision and censorship, and required the four archbishops of Cöln, Mainz, Trier, and Magdeburg, or their officials, carefully to examine all manuscripts before giving permission to print them. He also ordered that books already printed should be examined, and burnt if they contained any thing contrary to the Catholic religion. This bull forms the basis of all subsequent prohibitions and restrictions of the press by papal, imperial, or other authority.752

Leo X., who personally cared more for heathen art than Christian literature, went further, and prohibited, in a bull of March 3, 1515, the publication of any book in Rome without the imprimatur of the magister sacri palatii (the book-censor), and in other states and dioceses without the imprimatur of the bishop or the inquisitor of heretical depravity.753  Offenders were to be punished by the confiscation and public burning of their books, a fine of one hundred ducats, and excommunication. Archbishop and Elector Albrecht of Mainz was the first, and it seems the only, German prince who gave force to this bull for his own large diocese by a mandate of May 17, 1517, a few months before the outbreak of the Reformation. The papal bull of excommunication, June 15, 1520, consistently ordered the burning of, all the books of Luther."754  But he laughed it to scorn, and burned in revenge the pope’s bull, with all his decretals, Dec. 10, 1520.

Thus, with the freedom of conscience, was born the freedom of the press. But it had to pass through a severe ordeal, even in Protestant countries, and was constantly checked by Roman authorities as far as their power extended. The German Empire, by the Edict of Worms, made itself an ally of the pope against free thought and free press, and continued so until it died of old age in 1806.755  Fortunately, the weakness of the empire and the want of centralization prevented the execution of the prohibition of Protestant books, except in strictly papal countries, as Bavaria and Austria. But unfortunately, the Protestants themselves, who used the utmost freedom of the press against the Papists, denied it to each other; the Lutherans to the Reformed, and both to the Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians and Socinians.756  Protestant princes liked to control the press to protect themselves against popery, or the charges of robbery of church property and other attacks. The Elector John Frederick was as narrow and intolerant as Duke George on the opposite side. But these petty restrictions are nothing compared with the radical and systematic crusade of the Papists against the freedom of the press. King Ferdinand of Austria ordered, July 24, 1528, all printers and sellers of sectarian books to be drowned, and their books to be burnt. The wholesale burning of Protestant books, including Protestant Bibles, was a favorite and very effective measure of the Jesuitical reaction which set in before the middle of the sixteenth century, and was promoted by the political arm, and the internecine wars of the Protestants. Pope Paul IV. published in 1557 and 1559 the first official Index Librorum prohibitorum; Pius IV. in 1564, an enlarged edition, generally known as Index Tridentinus, as it was made by order of the Council of Trent. It contains a list of all the books forbidden by Rome, good, bad, and indifferent. This list has been growing ever since in size (1590, 1596, 1607, 1664, 1758, 1819, etc.), but declining in authority, till it became, like the bull against the comet, an anachronism and a brutum fulmen.757

§ 93. Protestantism in Saxony.

H. G. Hasse: Meissnisch-Albertinisch-Sächsische Kirchengesch. Leipz. 1847, 2 parts. Fr. Seifert: Die Reformation in Leipzig, Leipz. 1881. G. Lechler: Die Vorgeschichte der Reform. Leipzigs, 1885. See also the literary references in Köstlin, II. 426 and 672.

Electoral Saxony was the first conquest of the Reformation. Wittenberg was the centre of the whole movement, with Luther as the general in chief, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, as his aids. The gradual growth of Lutheranism in this land of its birth is identical with the early history of the Reformation, and has been traced already.

In close connection with the Electorate is the Duchy of Saxony, and may here be considered, although it followed the movement much later. The Duchy included the important cities of Dresden (the residence of the present kingdom of Saxony) and Leipzig with its famous university. Duke George kept the Reformation back by force during his long reign from 1500 to 1539. He hated the papal extortions, and advocated a reform of discipline by a council, but had no sympathy whatever with Luther. He took a dislike to him at the disputation in Leipzig, forbade his Bible, issued a rival version of the New Testament by Emser, sent all the Lutherans out of the land, and kept a close watch on the booksellers.758  He executed the Edict of Worms to the extent of his power, and would have rejoiced in the burning of Luther, who in turn abused him most unmercifully by his pen as a slave of the pope and the devil, though he prayed for his conversion.759

George made provision for the perpetuation of Romanism in his dominion but his sons died one after another. His brother and heir, Heinrich the Pious, was a Lutheran (as was his wife). Though old and weak, he introduced the Reformation by means of a church visitation after the Wittenberg model and with Wittenberg aid. The Elector of Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, and Cruciger were present at the inaugural festivities in Leipzig, May, 1539. Luther had the satisfaction of preaching at Pentecost before an immense audience in the city, where twenty years before he had disputed with Eck, and provoked the wrath of Duke George. Yet he was by no means quite pleased with the new state of things, and complained bitterly of the concealed malice of the semi-popish clergy, and the overbearing and avaricious conduct of the nobles and courtiers.

Nevertheless, the change was general and permanent. Leipzig became the chief Lutheran university, and the center of the Protestant book-trade, and remains so to this day. Joachim Camerarius (Kammermeister), an intimate friend and correspondent of Melanchthon, labored there as professor from 1541–1546 for the prosperity of the university, and for the promotion of classical learning and evangelical piety.

We briefly allude to the subsequent changes. Moritz, the son and heir of Heinrich, was a shrewd politician, a master in the art of dissimulation, and a double traitor, who from selfish motives in turn first ruined and then saved the cause of the Reformation. He professed the Lutheran faith, but betrayed his allies by aiding the Emperor in the Smalcaldian war for the price of the Electoral dignity of his cousin (1547); a few years later be betrayed the Emperor (1552), and thereby prepared the way for the treaty of Passau and the peace of Augsburg, which secured temporary rest to the Lutherans (1555).

His next successors, Augustus I. (his brother, 1553–1586). Christian I. (1586–1591), and Christian II. (1591–1611), were intolerant Lutherans, and suppressed Crypto-Calvinism and every other creed. Frederick Augustus I. (1694–1733) sold the faith of his ancestors for the crown of Poland. Since that time the rulers of Saxony have been Roman Catholics, while the people remained Lutheran, but gradually grew more liberal than their ancestors. Freedom of worship was granted to the Roman Church in 1807, to the German Reformed in 1818, and more recently (since 1866) to other communions.

§ 94. The Reformation in Nürnberg.

Priem: Geschichte von Nürnberg, 1874. F Roth: Die Einführung der Reformation in Nürnberg, 1517–28, Würzburg, 1885 (pp. 271).

The imperial cities (Reichsstädte) of the old German Empire, such as Nürnberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Strassburg, enjoyed a larger measure of liberty than other cities. They had the sovereignty over their territory, with a constitutional government, and seat and vote in the Diet (Reichstag). They were the centres of intelligence, wealth, and influence. For this reason the Reformation made from the beginning rapid progress in them, though not without commotion and opposition.

Nürnberg (Nuremberg), the most picturesque mediaeval city of Germany, was at that time the metropolis of German commerce, politics, letters, and art, and of an unusual constellation of distinguished men, most of whom sympathized with Erasmus and Luther. Pirkheimer, the Maecenas of Nürnberg (1475–1530), prepared the way, although he afterwards withdrew, like his friend Erasmus and other humanists.760  Albrecht Dürer, the famous painter (1471–1528), admired the heroic stand of Luther at Worms, and lamented his supposed death when removed out of sight; but during the eucharistic controversy he inclined to the view of Zwingli. Hans Sachs (1494–1576), the "Mastersinger" and shoemaker-poet, saluted the "Nightingale" of Wittenberg (1523). Wenzeslaus Link, an Augustinian monk and intimate friend and correspondent of Luther, was sent by Staupitz from Wittenberg to the Augustinian convent at Nürnberg in 1518, and promoted the cause by his popular evangelical sermons. The preachers of the two splendid churches of St. Sebaldus and St. Lorenz followed the movement. The mass was abolished in 1524. The most effective promoters of the Reformation besides Link were Spengler, a layman, and Osiander, the preacher of St. Lorenz.

Lazarus Spengler (1479–1534), secretary of the magistrate, an admirer of Staupitz, wrote an apology of Luther, 1519, and a popular hymn on justification by faith ("Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt"), helped to found an evangelical college, and left a confession of faith in his testament which Luther published with a preface, 1535. Joachim Camerarius, on the recommendation of Melanchthon, was called to the new college in 1526, as professor of history and Greek literature, and remained there till 1535, when he was called to the University of Tübingen, and afterwards (1541) to Leipzig.

Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), an able and learned, but opinionated and quarrelsome theologian, preached in St. Lorenz against the Roman Antichrist after 1522, fought as violently against Zwinglianism, married in 1525, attended the colloquy at Marburg, 1529, and the convent at Smalcald, 1537. He published a mechanical Gospel Harmony (1537), at the request of Archbishop Cranmer, who had married his niece (1532). He left Nürnberg in 1549, and became professor of theology at the newly founded university of Königsberg. There he stirred up a bitter theological controversy with the Wittenberg divines by his mystical doctrine of an effective and progressive justification by the indwelling of Christ (1551).

At Nürnberg several Diets were held during the Reformation period, and a temporary peace was concluded between Protestants and Roman Catholics in 1532.

§ 95. The Reformation in Strassburg. Martin Bucer.

Joh. W. Baum: Capito und Butzer, Elberfeld, 1860 (partly from MSS. See a complete chronological list of Bucer’s works, pp. 577–611). W. Krafft: art. "Butzer" in Herzog’s Encykl.2, vol. III. 35–46 (abridged in Schaff-Herzog). Tim. W. Röhrich: Gesch. der Reformation in Elsass und besonders in Strassburg, Strassb. 1830–32, 3 vols. A. Erichson: L’Église française de Strasbourg au seizième siècle d’après des monuments inédits. Stasb. 1885. Max Lenz: Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps mit Bucer, Leipzig, 1880 and 1887, 2 vols. Ad. Baum: Magistrat und Reformation in Strassburg. Strassb. 1887 (212 pages).

Strassburg, the capital of the Alsace, celebrated for its Gothic cathedral, university, and libraries, had been long before the Reformation the scene of the mystic revival preacher Tauler and the Friends of God. It was a thoroughly German city before Louis XIV. incorporated it with France (1681), and was re-conquered by Germany in 1870.

The Reformation began there in 1523. Zell, Bucer, Capito (Köpfel), Hedio (Heil), and for a few years Calvin also (1538 to 1541), labored there with great success. The magistrate abolished the mass, 1528, and favored the Protestant cause under the lead of Jacob Sturm, an enlightened patriot, who represented the city in all important transactions at home, in the Diet, and in conferences with the Romanists, till his death (1553). He urged the establishment of a Christian college, where classical learning and evangelical piety should be cultivated. His namesake, Johann Sturm, an eminent pedagogue, was called from Paris to preside over this college (1537), which grew into an academy, and ultimately into a university. Both were moderate men, and agreed with Capito and Bucer.761  The church of Strassburg was much disturbed by the Peasants’ War, the Anabaptists, and still more by the unfortunate sacramental controversies.

The chief reformer of Strassburg was Martin Bucer (1491–1552).762  He was a native of Alsace, a Dominican monk, and ordained to the priesthood. He received a deep impression from Luther at the disputation in Heidelberg, 1518; obtained papal dispensation from his monastic vows (1521); left the Roman Church; found refuge in the castle of Francis of Sickingen; married a nun, and accepted a call to Strassburg in 1523.

Here he labored as minister for twenty-five years, and had a hand in many important movements connected with the Reformation. He attended the colloquy at Marburg (1529); wrote, with Capito, the Confessio Tetrapolitana (1530); brought about an artificial and short-lived armistice between Luther and Zwingli by the Wittenberg Concordia (1536); connived, unfortunately, at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; and took a leading part, with Melanchthon, in the unsuccessful reformation of Archbishop Herrmann of Cologne (1542). Serious political troubles, and his resistance to the semi-popish Interim, made his stay in Strassburg dangerous, and at last impossible. Melanchthon in Wittenberg, Myconius in Basel, and Calvin in Geneva, offered him an asylum; but be accepted, with his younger colleague Fagius, a call of Cranmer to England (1549). He aided him in his reforms; was highly esteemed by the archbisbop and King Edward VI., and ended his labors as professor of theology in Cambridge. His bones were exhumed in the reign of Bloody Mary (1556), but his memory was honorably restored by Queen Elizabeth (1560).

Bucer figures largely in the history of his age as the third (next to Luther and Melanchthon) among the Reformers of Germany, as a learned theologian and diplomatist, and especially as a unionist and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians. He forms also a connecting link between Germany and England, and exerted some influence in framing the Anglican standards of doctrine and worship. His motto was: "We believe in Christ, not in the church."763

He impressed his character upon the church of Strassburg, which occupied a middle ground between Wittenberg and Zürich, and gave shelter to Calvin and the Reformed refugees of France. Strict Lutheranism triumphed for a period, but his irenical catholicity revived in the practical pietism of Spener, who was likewise an Alsacian. In recent times the Strassburg professors, under the lead of Dr. Reuss, mediated between the Protestant theology of Germany and that of France, in both languages, and furnished the best edition of the works of John Calvin.

§ 96. The Reformation in North Germany.

In Magdeburg the doctrines of Luther were preached in 1522 by Melchior Mirisch, an Augustinian prior, who had studied at Wittenberg. The magistrate shook off the authority of Archbishop Albrecht, invited Luther to preach in 1524, and secured the services of his friend Nicolaus von Amsdorf, who became superintendent, and introduced the, necessary changes. During the Interim troubles the city was a stronghold of the Lutheran party headed by Flacius, and laid under the imperial ban (1548). In the Thirty Years’ War it was burnt by Tilly (1631), but rose anew from destruction.764

In Magdeburg appeared the first Protestant church history, 1559–1574, in thirteen folio volumes, edited by Flacius, under the title "The Magdeburg Centuries,"—a work of colossal industry, but utilizing history for sectarian purposes against popery. It called forth the Annales of Baronius in the opposite interest.

Breslau and Silesia were reformed chiefly by John Hess, who studied at Wittenberg, 1519, a friend of Luther and Melanchthon. He held a successful disputation in Breslau in defense of the Protestant doctrines, 1524.765

Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig (1490–1561), a nobleman in the service of the Duke Frederick II. of Liegnitz, was one of the earliest promoters of the Reformation in Silesia, but fell out with Luther in the eucharistic controversy (1524). He had peculiar views on the sacraments, similar to those of the Quakers. He also taught that the flesh of Christ was deified. He founded a new sect, which was persecuted in Germany, but is perpetuated among the Schwenkfeldian congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania.766

Among the later leaders of the Protestant cause in Breslau must be mentioned Crato von Crafftheim (d. 1585), who studied at Wittenberg six years as an inmate of Luther’s household, and became an eminent physician of the Emperor Maximilian II. His younger friend, Zacharias Ursinus (d. 1583), is one of the two authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. Crato belonged to the Melanchthonian school, in distinction from the rigid Lutheranism which triumphed in the Formula of Concord.767

Bremen accepted Protestantism in November, 1522, by calling Heinrich Moller, better known as Heinrich von Zütphen (1468–1524), to the parish of Ansgari, and afterwards two other Protestant preachers. Moller had studied at Wittenberg, 1515, and taken a degree in 1521 under Melanchthon. He was prior of an Augustinian convent at Dort, and preached there and in Antwerp the doctrines of the Reformation, but had to flee for his life. He followed an invitation to preach in Ditmar, but met with opposition, and was burnt to death by a fanatical and drunken mob excited by the monks. Luther published an account of his death, and dedicated it to the Christians in Bremen, with an exposition of the tenth Psalm. He rejoiced in the return of the spirit of martyrdom, which, he says, "is horrible to behold before the world, but precious in the sight of God."768

In 1527 all the churches of Bremen were in charge of Protestant pastors, and afterwards divided between the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions. The convents were turned into schools and hospitals.

Hamburg, which shares with Bremen the supremacy in the North German and maritime commerce, followed in 1523. Five years later Dr. Bugenhagen, called Pomeranus (1485–1558), was called from Wittenberg to superintend the changes. This Reformer, Luther’s faithful friend and pastor, had a special gift of government, and was the principal organizer of the Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and Denmark. For this purpose he labored in the cities of Braunschweig (1528), Hamburg (1529), Lübeck (1530–1532), in his native Pomerania (1534), and in Denmark, where he spent nearly five years (1537–1542). His church constitutions were models.769

Lübeck, a rich commercial city, and capital of the Hanseatic League, expelled the first Lutheran preachers, but recalled them, and removed the priests in 1529. Bugenhagen completed the work.

In Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Duke Ernst the Confessor favored the new doctrines in 1527, and committed the prosecution of the work to Urbanus Rhegius, whom he met at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530.

Rhegius770 (1489–1541) belongs to the second class of Reformers. He was the son of a priest on the Lake of Constance, educated at Lindau, Freiburg-i.- B. (in the house of Zasius), and Ingolstadt under Dr. Eck, and ordained priest at Constance (1519). He joined the humanistic school, entered into correspondence with Erasmus, Faber, and Zwingli, and became an imperial orator and poet-laureate, though his poetry is stiff and conventional. He acquired the doctorate of divinity at Basel. He was called to Augsburg by the magistrate, and labored as preacher in the Dome from 1523 to 1530. He passed from Romanism to Lutheranism, from Lutheranism to Zwinglianism, and back to a moderate Lutheranism. He sympathized most with Bucer, and labored afterwards for the Wittenberg Concordia. The imperial prohibition of Protestant preaching, June 16, 1530, terminated his career in Augsburg, though he remained till Aug. 26, and conferred much with Bucer and Melanchthon.

He now entered upon his more important and permanent labors as general superintendent of Lüneberg, and took the leading part in the Reformation of Celle, Hannover, Minden, Soest, Lemgo, and other places; but he gives a doleful description of the moral condition. He attended the colloquy at Hagenau, and died soon after his return, May 27, 1541.

He wrote two catechisms and several devotional books. In his earlier career he was vain, changeable, and factious. He lacked originality, but had the talent of utilizing and popularizing the new ideas of others. Luther gives him the testimony: "He hated not only the popish abominations, but also all sectaries; he sincerely loved the pure word, and handled it with all diligence and faithfulness, as his writings abundantly show."771

The Dukes of Mecklenburg, Heinrich and Albrecht, applied to Luther in 1524 for "evangelists," and Luther sent them two Augustinian monks. Heinrich favored the Reformation, but very cautiously. The university of Rostock, founded 1419, became at a later period a school of strict Lutheran orthodoxy.

§ 97. Protestantism in Augsburg and South Germany.

Augsburg, first known twelve years before Christ as a Roman colony (Augusta Vindelicorum), and during the middle ages an imperial city (since 1276), the seat of a bishop, the chief emporium for the trade of Northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the East, and the home of princely merchants and bankers (the Fuggers and Welsers), figures prominently in the early history of the Reformation, and gave the name to the standard confession of the Lutheran Church in 1530, and to the treaty of peace in 1555.772  Luther was there in 1518 at a conference with Cardinal Cajetan, and lodged with the Carmelite friar Frosch, who remained faithful to him. Peutinger, the bishop (Christoph von Stadium), and two canons (Adelmann) were friendly to reform, at least for a time. Urbanus Rhegius preached there from 1523 to 1530, and exerted great influence. He distributed, with Frosch, the communion with the cup at Christmas, 1524. Both married in 1526.

But the Zwinglians, under the lead of Michael Keller, gradually gained the upper hand among influential men. Zwingli took advantage of the situation in his famous letter to Alber, Nov. 16, 1524, in which he first fully developed his theory. Even Rhegius, who had written before against Carstadt (sic) and Zwingli, became a Zwinglian, though only for a short period.

The Anabaptist leaders, Hubmaier, Denck, Hetzer, Hut, likewise appeared in Augsburg, and gathered a congregation of eleven hundred members. They held a general synod in 1527. They baptized by immersion. Rhegius stirred up the magistrate against them: the leaders were imprisoned, and some executed.773

The confusion and strife among the Protestants strengthened the Roman party. The people did not know what to believe, and the magistrate hesitated. The moral condition of the city, as described by Rhegius, Musculus, and other preachers, was deplorable, and worse than under the papal rule. During the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, the Emperor prohibited all Protestant preaching in public: the magistrate made no objection, and dismissed the preachers. But the Augsburg Confession left a permanent impression on the place.

The South-German cities of Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau were, like Augsburg, influenced by Zwingli as well as Luther, and united with Strassburg in the Tetrapolitan Confession, which Bucer and Capito prepared in great haste during the Diet of Augsburg as a document of union between the two wings of Protestantism. It failed to meet the approval of the Diet, and was, like Zwingli’s Confession, not even allowed to be read; but Bucer adhered to it to the end.

The most important and permanent conquest which the Reformation made in South Germany was that of the duchy (now kingdom) of Württemberg under Duke Ulrich, through the labors of Brenz, Blaurer, and Schnepf, after 1534. The University of Tübingen (founded 1477) became one of the most fruitful nurseries of Protestant theology, in all its phases, from the strictest orthodoxy to the most radical criticism.774

§ 98. The Reformation in Hesse, and the Synod of Homberg. Philip of Hesse, and Lambert of Avignon.

I. Lambertus Avenionensis: Paradoxa quae Fr. L. A. apud sanctam Hessorum Synodum Hombergi congregatam pro Ecclesiarum Reformatione e Dei Verbo disputanda et definienda proposuit, Erphordiae, 1527. (Reprinted in Sculteti Annales, p. 68; in Hardt, Hist. Lit. Ref. V. 98; an extract in Henke’s N. Kirchengesch., I. 101 sqq.) N. L. Richter: Die Kirchenordnungen des 16ten Jahrh., Weimar, 1846, vol. I. 56–69 (the Homberg Constitution). C. A. Credner: Philipp des Grossmüthigen hessische Kirchenreformations-Ordnung. Aus schriftlichen Quellen herausgegeben, übersetzt, und mit Rücksicht auf die Gegenwart bevorwortet, Giessen, 1852 (123 pp.)

II. F. W. Hassencamp: Hessische Kirchengesch. seit dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Marburg, 1852 and 1855. W. Kolbe: Die Einführung der Reformation in Marburg, Marburg, 1871. H. L. J. Heppe: Kirchengesch. beider Hessen, Marburg, 1876. (He wrote several other works on the church history of Hesse and of the Reformation generally, in the interest of Melanchthonianism and of the Reformed Church.)  E, L. Henke: Neuere Kirchengesch. (ed. by Gass, Halle, 1874), I. 98–109. Mejer: Homberger Synode, in Herzog2, VI. 268 sqq. Köstlin: M. L., II. 48 sqq.

III. Works on Philip of Hesse by Rommel (Philipp der Grossmüthige, Landgraf von Hessen, Giessen, 1830, 3 vols.), and Wille (Philipp der Grossmüthige und die Restitution Herzog Ulrichs von Würtemberg, Tübingen, 1882). Max Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philip, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1879; and Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps mit Bucer, Leipz. 1880, vol. 2d, 1887 (important for the political and ecclesiastical history of Germany between 1541 and 1547). The history of Philip is interwoven in Ranke’s Geschichte (vols. I. to VI.), and in Janssen’s Geschichte (vol. III.). Against Janssen is directed G. Bossert: Württemberg und Ianssen, Halle, 1884, 2 parts.

IV. Biographies of Lambert of Avignon by Baum (Strassb. 1840), Hassencamp (Elberfeld, 1860), Ruffet (Paris, 1873), and a sketch by Wagenmann in Herzog2, VIII. 371 sqq. (1881). The writings of Lambert of Avignon, mostly Theses and Commentaries, are very scarce, and have never been collected. His letters (some of them begging letters to the Elector of Saxony and Spalatin) are published by Herminjard in Correspondance des Réformateurs, vol. I. 112, 114, 118, 123, 131, 138, 142, 144, 146, 328, 344, 347, 371; vol. II. 239. Luther refers to him in several letters to Spalatin (see below).

Hesse or Hessia, in Middle Germany, was Christianized by St. Boniface in the eighth century, and subject to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Mainz. It numbered in the sixteenth century fifty convents, and more than a thousand monks and nuns.

Hesse became, next to Saxony, the chief theater of the Reformation in its early history; and its chief patron among the princes, next to Elector John, was Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, surnamed the "Magnanimous" (1504–1567). He figures prominently in the political history of Germany from 1525, when he aided in the suppression of the Peasants’ War, till 1547, when he was defeated by the Emperor in the Smalcaldian War, and kept a prisoner for five years (1547–1552). The last years of his life were quiet and conciliatory, but his moral force was broken by his misconduct and the failure of his political combinations.

His connection with the Reformation presents two different aspects, which make it difficult to decide whether it was more beneficial or more injurious. He made the acquaintance of Luther at the Diet of Worms (1521), and asked and received instruction from Melanchthon, whom be met at Heidelberg (1524). He declared in 1525, that he would rather lose body and life, land and people, than depart from the word of God, and urged the ministers to preach it in its purity.775  He openly embraced the Reformation in 1526, and remained faithful to it in his conviction and policy, though not in his moral conduct. He boldly and bravely defended it with a degree of theological knowledge which is rare among princes, and with a conciliatory liberality in regard to doctrinal controversies which was in advance of prevailing narrowness. He brought about the Marburg Colloquy with the noble aim of uniting the Protestant forces of Germany and Switzerland against the common foe (1529). By restoring Württemberg to Duke Ulrich in the brilliant victory at Laufen, he opened the way for the introduction of the Reformation into that country (1534). But, on the other hand, he repeatedly endangered the Protestant cause by his rashness, and injured it and himself most seriously by his licentiousness, which culminated in the open scandal of bigamy (1540). He resembles in many respects Henry VIII. of England.776

The Landgrave was the first prince who took advantage of the recess of the Diet of Speier, Aug. 27, 1526, and construed it into a legal permission for the introduction of the Reformation into his own territory. For this purpose he convened a synod in the little Hessian town of Homberg.777  It consisted of the clergy, the nobility, and the representatives of cities, and was held Oct. 20–22, 1526. He himself was present, and his chancellor Feige presided over the deliberations. The synod is remarkable for a premature scheme of democratic church government and discipline, which failed for the time, but contained fruitful germs for the future and for other countries. It was suggested by the disputations which had been held at Zürich for the introduction of the Zwinglican Reformation.

The leading spirit of this synod was Francis Lambert of Avignon (1487–1530), the first French monk converted to Protestantism and one of the secondary reformers. He had been formerly a distinguished and efficient traveling preacher of the Franciscan order in the South of France. But he could find no peace in severe ascetic exercises; and, when he became acquainted with some tracts of Luther in a French translation, he took advantage of a commission of his convent to deliver letters to a superior of his order in Germany, and left his native land never to return. He traveled on a mule through Geneva, Bern, Zürich, Basel, Eisenach, to Wittenberg, as a seeker after light on the great question of the day. He was half converted by Zwingli in a public disputation (July, 1522), and more fully by Luther in Wittenberg, where he arrived in January, 1523. Luther, who was often deceived by unworthy ex-priests and ex-monks, distrusted him at first, but became convinced of his integrity, and aided him.778  At his request Lambert delivered exegetical lectures in the university, translated reformatory tracts into French and Italian, and published a book in defense of his leaving the convent (February, 1523), and a commentary on the rule of the Minorites to which Luther wrote a preface (March, 1523). He advocated the transformation of convents into schools. He married a Saxon maiden (July 15, 1523), anticipating herein the Reformer, and lived with her happily, but in great poverty, which obliged him to beg for assistance. He spent over a year in Wittenberg; but, finding no prospect of a permanent situation on account of his ignorance of the German language, he suddenly left for Metz, against the advice of Luther and Melanchthon, on invitation of a few secret friends of the Reformation (March 24, 1524). He addressed a letter to the king of France to gain him for the Reformation, and announced a public disputation; but the clergy prevented it, and the magistrate advised him to leave Metz. He then proceeded to Strassburg (April, 1524), was kindly received by Bucer, and presented with the right of citizenship by the magistrate. He published practical commentaries on the Canticles, the Minor Prophets, a book against Erasmus, on free-will, and a sort of dogmatic compend.779  He was highly recommended to the Landgrave, who took him into his service soon after the Diet of Speier (1526), and made him one of the reformers of Hesse.

Lambert prepared for the Synod of Homberg, at the request of the Landgrave, a hundred and fifty-eight Theses (Paradoxa), as a basis for the reformation of doctrine, worship, and discipline. He advocated them with fiery and passionate eloquence in a long Latin speech.780  Adam Kraft spoke in German more moderately.

His leading ideas are these. Every thing which has been deformed must be reformed by the Word of God. This is the only rule of faith and practice. All true Christians are priests, and form the church. They have the power of self-government, and the right and duty to exercise discipline, according to Matt. 18:15–18, and to exclude persons who give offense by immorality or false doctrine. The bishops (i.e., pastors) are elected and supported by the congregation, and are aided by deacons who attend to the temporalities. The general government resides in a synod, which should meet annually, and consist of the pastors and lay representatives of all the parishes. The executive body between the meetings of synod is a commission of thirteen persons. Three visitors, to be appointed first by the prince, and afterwards by the synod, should visit the churches once a year, examine, ordain, and install candidates. Papists and heretics are not to be tolerated, and should be sent out of the land. A school for training of ministers is to be established in Marburg.

It is a matter of dispute, whether Lambert originated these views, or derived them from the Franciscan, or Waldensian, or Zwinglian, or Lutheran suggestions. The last is most probable. It is certain that Luther in his earlier writings (1523) expressed similar views on church government and the ministry. They are legitimately developed from his doctrine of the general priesthood of believers.781

On the basis of these principles a church constitution was prepared in three days by a synodical commission, no doubt chiefly by Lambert himself. It is a combination of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. Its leading features are congregational self-government, synodical supervision, and strict discipline. The directions for worship are based on Luther’s "Deutsche Messe," 1526.782

The constitution, with the exception of a few minor features, remained a dead letter. The Landgrave was rather pleased with it, but Luther, whom he consulted, advised postponement; he did not object to its principles, but thought that the times and the people were not ripe for it, and that laws in advance of public opinion rarely succeed.783  Luther learned a bitter lesson from the Peasants’ War and from the visitation of the churches in Saxony. Lambert himself, in his letters, complained of the prevailing corruptions and the abuse of evangelical liberty.784  A good reason both for the necessity and difficulty of discipline, which should have begun with the prince. But self-government must be acquired by actual trial and experience. Nobody can learn to swim without going into the water.

The Landgrave put himself at the head of the church, and reformed it after the Saxon model. He abolished the mass and the canon law, confiscated the property of the convents, endowed hospitals and schools, arranged church visitations, and appointed six superintendents (1531).

The combination of Lutheran and Reformed elements in the Hessian reformation explains the confessional complication and confusion in the subsequent history, and the present status of the Protestant Church in Hesse, which is claimed by both denominations.785

The best service which the Landgrave did to the cause of learning and religion, was the founding of the University of Marburg, which was opened July 1, 1527, with a hundred and four students. It became the second nursery of the Protestant ministry, next to Wittenberg, and remains to this day an important institution. Francis Lambert, Adam Kraft, Erhard Schnepf, and Hermann Busch were its first theological professors.

Lambert now had, after a roaming life of great poverty, a settled situation with a decent support. He lectured on his favorite books, the Canticles, the Prophets, and the Apocalypse; but he had few hearers, was not popular with his German colleagues, and felt unhappy. He attended the eucharistic Colloquy at Marburg in October, 1529, as a spectator, became a convert to the view of Zwingli, and defended it in his last work.786  This must have made his position more uncomfortable. He wished to find "some little town in Switzerland where he could teach the people what he had received from the Lord."787  But before this wish could be fulfilled, he died with his wife and daughter, of the pestilence, April 18, 1530. He was an original, but eccentric and erratic genius, with an over-sanguine temperament, with more zeal and eloquence than wisdom and discretion. His chief importance lies in the advocacy of the principle of ecclesiastical self-government and discipline. His writings are thoughtful; and the style is clear, precise, vivacious, and direct, as may be expected from a Frenchman.788

Lambert seems to have had a remote influence on Scotland, where principles of church government somewhat similar to his own were carried into practice after the model of the Reformed Church of Geneva. For among his pupils was Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the Scotch Reformation, who was burned at St. Andrews, Feb. 29, 1528.789  According to the usual view, William Tyndale also, the pioneer of the English Bible Version, studied at Marburg about the same time; for several of his tracts contain on the titlepage or in the colophon the imprint, Hans Luft at Marborow (Marburg) in the land of Hesse."790

§ 99. The Reformation in Prussia. Duke Albrecht and Bishop Georg Von Polenz.

I. Luther’s Letters to Albrecht from May 26, 1525, to May 2, 1545 (17, see list in Erl. ed. LVI. 248), to Briesmann and Georg von Polenz, in the collections of De Wette and Enders. J. Voigt: Briefwechsel der berühmtesten Gelehrten des Zeitalters der Reformation mit Herzog Albrecht von Preussen, Königsb. 1841.

II. Hartknoch: Preussische Kirchenhistorie, Königsberg, 1686. Arnoldt: Preussische Kirchengeschichte, Königsberg, 1769. Bock: Leben Albrechts des Aelteren, Königsb. 1750. Rhesa: De primis sacrorum reformatoribus in Prussia, Königsberg, 1823–1830 (seven University Programs containing biographies of Briesmann, Speratus, Poliander, Georg v. Polenz, Amandus). Gebser: Der Dom zu Königsberg, 1835. Erdmann: Preussen, Ordensstaat, in Herzog1, XII. 117–165 (1860; omitted in the second ed.). Pastor (R. Cath.): Neue Quellenberichte über den Reformator Albrecht von Brandenburg, Mainz, 1876 (in the "Katholik," LVI. February and March). C. A. Hase: Herzog Albrecht von Preussen und sein Hofprediger. Eine königsberger Tragödie aus dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Leipzig, 1879. Rindfleisch: Herzog Albrecht von Hohenzollern, der letzte Hochmeister, und die Reformation in Preussen, Danzig, 1880. P. Tschackert (professor in Königsberg): Georg von Polentz, Bischof von Samland, Leipzig, 1888 (in "Kirchengeschichtl. Studien" by Brieger, Tschackert, etc., pp. 145–194).

III. The general histories of Prussia by Stenzel, Droysen, Voigt (large work, 1827–39, in 9 vols.; condensed ed. 1850, in 3 vols.), Cosel, Hahn, Pierson (4th ed. 1881, 2 vols.), Ranke (Zwölf Bücher preussischer Gesch. 1874), Förster, etc. For the history of the Teutonic order, see Watterich: Die Gründung des deutschen Ordensstaates in Preussen, Leipzig, 1857; and Joh. Voigt: Geschichte des deutschen Ritterordens, Berlin, 1859, 2 vols.

IV. Ranke: Vol. II. 326 sqq. Janssen: III. 70–77.

Of greater prospective importance than the conversion of Hesse and even of Saxony to Protestantism, was the evangelization of Prussia, which from a semi-barbarous Duchy on the shores of the Baltic rose to the magnitude of a highly civilized kingdom, stretching from the borders of Russia beyond the banks of the Rhine, and which is now, in connection with the new German Empire, the leading Protestant power on the Continent of Europe.791

Old Prussia792 was a colony of the Teutonic Knights (Deutschorden), one of the three military religious orders which arose during the crusades for the defense of the Holy Land and the protection of pilgrims. They had the same military and monastic constitution as the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St. John (Johannitae); but their members were all Germans. They greatly distinguished themselves in the later crusades, and their chivalrous blood still flows in the veins of the old Prussian nobility. They wore a white mantle with a black silver-lined cross, and as a special favor an imperial eagle on their arms, which descended from them to the royal house of Prussia. After the fall of Jerusalem they removed their headquarters to Venice, and afterwards to Marienburg and Königsberg (the capital, where the kings of Prussia are crowned). Emperor Frederick II. and Pope Innocent III. granted them all the lands they might conquer from the heathen on the eastern borders of Germany, and the grand-master’s received the dignity of princes of the Roman Empire. They were invited by the Duke of Poland to defend the frontiers of his country against the heathen Prussians (1240). The conquest was completed in 1283. The Knights Christianized, or rather Romanized and Germanized, the Prussians, after the military fashion of Charlemagne in his dealings with the Saxons, and of Otho I. in subduing the Wends. The native heathenism was conquered, but not converted, and continued under Christian forms. Prussia is said to have contained under the Knights two millions of people and more than fifty cities, which carried on an extensive trade by means of the Hanseatic League. The chief cities were Marienburg, Königsberg, Thorn, Danzig, and Culm. But the common people were treated as slaves.

After nearly two centuries of rule the Knights degenerated, and their power declined by internal dissensions and the hostility of Poland. In 1466 they were forced by Casimir IV. in the Peace of Thorn to cede West Prussia with the richest cities to Poland, and to accept East Prussia as a fief of that kingdom. This was virtually the destruction of the political power of the order. The incompatibility of the military and monastic life became more and more apparent. Pope Adrian VI. urged Albrecht to restore the order to its former monastic purity and dignity. But this was impossible. The order had outlived itself.793

Luther saw this, and inaugurated a different kind of reform. He seized a favorable opportunity, and exhorted the Knights, in a public address, March 28, 1523, to forsake the false monastic chastity so often broken, and to live in true matrimonial chastity according to the ordinance of God in paradise (Gen. 2:18), which was older and wiser than popes and Councils. "Your order," he argued, "is truly a singular order: it is both secular and spiritual, and neither; it is bound to wield the sword against infidels, and yet to live in celibacy, poverty, and obedience, like other monks. These things do not agree together, as is shown by reason and by daily experience. The order is therefore of no use either to God or the world."794

In the summer of the same year be sent, at the wish of Albrecht, the pioneer of Protestant preachers, to Prussia, in the person of his friend Dr. Johannes Briesmann (14881549), a theologian of learning, piety, and executive ability, who arrived in Königsberg, Sept. 27, 1523, and labored there as preacher in the Dome, and successor of Bishop Georg von Polenz, till his death, with the exception of four years which he spent as evangelist in Riga (1527–1531).795  He afterwards sent two other gifted evangelists, known for their evangelical hymns, namely, Paul Speratus (d. 1551), and John Poliander (Graumann, d. 1541), who made themselves very useful. A third one, Amandus, created disturbance by his radicalism, which resembled that of Carlstadt, and caused his removal from Königsberg.

With the help of these theologians and evangelists, Duke Albrecht and Bishop Georg von Polenz brought about a radical change in Prussia, and prepared the way for its great future destiny. The religious reformation preceded the political change.

Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, last grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights, and first Duke of Prussia, was born at Ansbach, May 16, 1490; destined for the clerical profession; received into the order of the Knights, and elected its grand-master in 1511. He made his entry into Königsberg, Nov. 22, 1512. His effort to make Prussia independent and to refuse obedience to the king of Poland, involved him in a disastrous war till 1521, when an armistice for four years was concluded. He attended, as one of the princes of the empire, the Diet of Nürnberg, 1522 and 1523, and sought protection against Poland, but in vain. He diligently heard, during that time, the sermons of Andreas Osiander, and was converted to the doctrines of the Reformation. He called him his "spiritual father in Christ, through whom God first rescued him from the darkness of popery, and led him to the true divine knowledge." On a journey to Berlin he had a private conference with Luther and Melanchthon, and asked their advice (September, 1523). "Trust in God," said Luther with the consent of Melanchthon, "rather than the empire; shake off the senseless rules of your order, and make an end to that hermaphrodite monster which is neither religious nor secular; abolish the unchaste chastity of monkery; take to thyself a wife, and found a legitimate secular sovereignty." At the same time be recommended to him Paul Speratus as his assistant, who afterwards became bishop of Pomesania. The prince smiled, but said nothing.796  He wavered between obedience to the pope and to his conscience, and his open and secret instructions to the bishop of Samland were contradictory. His brother, Margrave Georg of Brandenburg, had previously given him the same advice as Luther, and he ultimately followed it.

In the mean time the evangelical doctrines had already spread in Prussia, and facilitated the proposed political change by undermining the monastic constitution of the order.

Two bishops of Prussia, differing from their brethren in Germany, favored the movement, George von Polenz of Samland, and Erhard von Queiss of Pomesania. The former took the lead. Luther was agreeably surprised, and expressed his joy that one, at least, of the bishops dared to profess the free gospel of Christ.797  He dedicated to him his commentary on Deuteronomy, with a congratulatory letter full of gratitude for the rapid flight of the gospel to Prussia in the far North (1525).798  The bishop did not reply, and seems to have preserved a dignified or prudent reserve towards the person of Luther, while allowing free course to his doctrines.799

Erhard von Queiss renounced popery in a public sermon, 1524, and resigned his worldly possessions and authority to the Duke (1527), in order to attend better to the spiritual duties of an evangelical bishop.

Georg von Polenz was the chancellor and chief counselor of Albrecht (we may say his Bismarck on a small scale) in this work of transformation. He was about five years older than Luther, and survived him four years. He descended from an old noble family of Meissen in Saxony, studied law in Italy, and was for a while private secretary at the court of Pope Julius II. Then he served as a soldier under Maximilian I. He became acquainted with Margrave Albrecht at Padua, 1509, and joined the Teutonic Knights. In 1519 he was raised to the episcopal chair, and consecrated by the neighboring bishops of Ermland and Pomesania in the Dome of Königsberg. The receipt of the Roman curia for a tax of fourteen hundred and eighty-eight ducats is still extant in the archives of that city. The first years of his office were disturbed by war with Poland, for which he had to furnish men and means. During the absence of the Duke in Germany he took his place.

In September, 1523, be became acquainted with Dr. Briesmann, and learned from him the biblical languages, the elements of theology, which he had never studied before, and the doctrines of Luther. In January, 1524, be already issued an order that baptism be celebrated in the vernacular tongue, and recommended the clergy to read diligently the Bible, and the writings of Luther, especially his book on Christian Liberty. This was the beginning of the Reformation in Prussia. We have from him three sermons, and three only, which he preached in favor of the change, at Christmas, 1523, and at Easter and Pentecost, 1524. He echoes in them the views of Briesmann. He declares, "I shall with the Divine will hold fast to the word of God and to the gospel, though I should lose body and life, goods and honor, and all I possess." He despised the authority of Pope Clement VII., who directed his legate, Campeggio, Dec. 1, 1524, to summon the bishop as a rebel and perjurer, to induce him to recant, or to depose him.

In May, 1525, he resigned the secular part of his episcopal authority into the hands of the Duke, because it was not seemly and Christian for a bishop to have so much worldly glory and power. A few days afterwards be married, June 8, 1525, five days before Luther’s marriage. In the next year the Duke followed his example, and invited Luther to the wedding (June, 1526). This double marriage was a virtual dissolution of the order as a monastic institution. In 1546 Georg von Polenz resigned his episcopal supervision into the hands of Briesmann. He died in peace, April 28, 1550, seventy-two years old, and was buried in the cathedral of Königsberg, the first Protestant bishop and chancellor of the first Prussian Hohenzollern, standing with him on the bridge of two ages with his hand on the Bible and his eye firmly fixed upon the future.

Albrecht, acting on the advice of Luther, changed the property of the Knights into a hereditary duchy. The king of Poland consented. On April 10, 1525, Albrecht was solemnly invested at Crakow with the rule of Prussia as a fief of Poland. Soon afterwards he received the homage of the Diet at Königsberg. The evangelical preachers saluted him under the ringing of the bells. The Emperor put him under the ban, but it had no effect. Most of the Knights received large fiefs, and married; the rest emigrated to Germany. Albrecht formally introduced the Reformation, July 6, 1525, and issued a Lutheran constitution and liturgy. The fasts were abolished, the number of holy days reduced, the ceremonies changed, the convents turned into hospitals, and worship conducted in the vernacular. All Romish and sectarian preaching was prohibited. He assumed all the ecclesiastical appointments, and became the supreme bishop of Prussia, the two Roman-Catholic bishops Georg and Queiss having surrendered to him their dignity. Their successors were mere superintendents. He felt, however, that the episcopal office was foreign to a worldly sovereign, and accepted it as a matter of necessity to secure order.800  He founded the University of Königsberg, the third Protestant university (after Wittenberg and Marburg). It was opened in 1544.801  He called Dr. Osiander from Nürnberg to the chief theological chair (1549); but this polemical divine, by his dissertations on the law and the gospel, and on the doctrine of justification, soon turned Prussia into a scene of violent and disgraceful theological controversies.802

Albrecht did not enjoy his reign. It was sadly disturbed in this transition state by troubles from within and without. He repeatedly said that he would rather watch sheep than be a ruler. He was involved in heavy debts. The seven children of his first wife, a daughter of the king of Denmark, died young, except a daughter, Anna Sophia, who married a duke of Mecklenburg (1555). His pious and faithful wife died, 1547. In 1550 he married a princess of Braunschweig; her first daughter was born blind; only one son, Albrecht Friedrich, survived him, and spent his life in melancholy. But Albrecht remained true to his evangelical faith, and died (March 20, 1568), with the words of Psa. 31:5, upon his lips, "Into Thine hand I commend my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of truth." He left proofs of his piety in prayers, meditations, and the testament to his son, who succeeded him, and died without male issue, 1618.

SUBSEQUENT HISTORY.

A few glimpses of the later history are here in place to explain the present confessional status of the Protestant church in the kingdom of Prussia.

The Duchy of Prussia in 1618 fell as an inheritance to John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1608–1619), son-in-law of the second Prussian Duke (Albert Frederick), and a descendant of Frederick of Hohenzollern, who had become margrave of Brandenburg by purchase in 1415. In this way the connection of Prussia arid Brandenburg was completed.

But Prussia remained in feudal subjection to Poland till 1656, when Frederick William, "the great Elector," conquered the independence by the victory of Warsaw. He is the first, as Frederick II., his great-grandson, is the second, founder of the greatness of Prussia. After the terrible devastations of the Thirty Years’ War he gathered the broken fragments of his provinces into a coherent whole during his long and successful reign (1640–1688). He was the most enlightened and most liberal among the German princes of his age. He protected the independence of Germany against French aggression. He was married to Louisa Henrietta, princess of Orange, of the Calvinistic faith, and authoress of the popular resurrection hymn, "Jesus, meine Zuversicht."803  He secured toleration to the Reformed churches in the Treaty of Westphalia. He gave refuge to over twenty thousand French Huguenots, who with their descendants became an important element in the Prussian nationality and the Reformed church. His son Frederick became the first king of Prussia, and was crowned at Königsberg, Jan. 18, 1701. He founded the University of Halle, 1693, which ultimately absorbed the University of Wittenberg by incorporation (1815), and assumed an important position in the history of German theology as the nursery, first of pietism, then of rationalism, and (since Tholuck’s appointment, 1827) of the evangelical revival.

With John Sigismund began an important confessional change, which laid the foundation for the union policy of his successors. He introduced the Reformed or Calvinistic element, which had been crushed out in Saxony, into the Court and Dome Church of Berlin, and gave the Heidelberg Catechism a place besides the Augsburg Confession. His grandson, "the great Elector," strengthened the Reformed element by his marriage to a princess from Holland, who adorned her faith, and by inviting a colony of French Huguenots who left their country for the sake of conscience. It was therefore quite natural that the Reformed rulers of a Lutheran country should cherish the idea of a union of the two confessions, which was realized in the present century.804

We have seen that Old Prussia was Lutheranized under the direct influence of the Wittenberg divines with whom Albrecht was in Constant correspondence. In Brandenburg also, the Lutheran type of Protestantism, after many reverses and controversies, was established under John George (1571–1598); the Formula of Concord was forcibly introduced, and all Calvinistic teaching was strictly forbidden. The Brandenburg "Corpus Doctrinae" of 1572 emphasizes Luther’s word that Zwingli was no Christian, and the Brandenburg chancellor Dietelmeyer is known by his unchristian prayer: "Impleat nos Deus odio Calvinistarum!"

But the Elector John Sigismund, who by travels and personal intercourse with Calvinistic princes and divines conceived a high regard for their superior Christian piety and courtesy, embraced the Reformed faith in 1606, and openly professed it in February, 1614, by declaring his assent to the four oecumenical symbols (including the Chalcedonense) and the altered Augsburg Confession of 1540, without imposing his creed upon his subjects, only prohibiting the preachers to condemn the Calvinists from the pulpit. In May, 1514, he issued a personal confession of faith, called the "Confession of Sigismund," or the "Brandenburg Confession" (Confessio Marchica). It teaches a moderate, we may say, Melanchthonian and unionistic Calvinism, and differs from the Lutheran Formula of Concord in the following points: It rejects Eutychianism and the ubiquity of Christ’s body, consubstantiation in the Lord’s Supper, the use of the wafer instead of the broken bread, and exorcism in baptism; on the other hand, it teaches the Calvinistic view of the spiritual real presence for believers, and unconditional election, but without an unconditional decree of reprobation; it distinctly declares that God sincerely wishes the salvation of all men, and is not the author of sin and damnation.

The change of Sigismund was the result of conscientious conviction, and not dictated by political motives. The people and his own wife re-mained Lutheran. He made no use of his territorial summepiscopate and the jus reformandi. He disclaimed all intention to coerce the conscience, since faith is a free gift of God, and cannot be forced. No man should pre-sume to exercise dominion over man’s religion. He thus set, in advance of his age, a noble example of toleration, which became the traditional policy of the Prussian rulers. The pietistic movement of Spener and Francke, which was supported by the theological faculty at Halle, weakened the confessional dissensus, and strengthened the consensus. The Moravian brotherhood exhibited long before the Prussian Union, in a small community, the real union of evangelical believers of both confessions.

Frederick the Great was an unbeliever, and had as little sympathy with Pietism and Moravianism as with Lutheranism and Calvinism; but he was a decided upholder of religious toleration, which found expression in his famous declaration that in his kingdom everybody must be at liberty to get saved "after his own fashion." The toleration of indifferentism, which prevailed in the last century, broke down the reign of bigotry, and prepared the way for the higher and nobler principle of religious liberty.

The revival of religious life at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a revival of general Christianity without a confessional or denomina-tional type, and united for a time pious Lutherans, Reformed, and even Roman Catholics. It was accompanied by a new phase of evangelical theology, which since Schleiermacher and Neander laid greater stress on the consensus than the dissensus of the Protestant confessions in oppo-sition to rationalism and infidelity. The ground was thus prepared for a new attempt to establish a mode of peaceful living between the two confessions of the Reformation.

King Frederick William III. (1797–1840), a conscientious and God-fearing monarch, who had been disciplined by sad reverses and providen-tial deliverances of Prussia, introduced what is called the "Evangelical Union" of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions at the tercentennial celebration of the Reformation (Sept. 27, 1817). The term "evangelical," which was claimed by both, assumed thus a new technical sense. The object of the Union (as officially explained in 1834 and 1852) was to unite the two churches under, one government and worship, without abolishing the doctrinal distinctions.805  It was conservative, not absorptive, and dif-fered in this respect from all former union schemes between the Greek and Latin, the Protestant and Roman Catholic, the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, which aimed at doctrinal uniformity or at best at a doctrinal compromise. The Prussian Union introduced no new creed; the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s Catechisms, and the Heidelberg Catechism continued to be used where they had been in use before; but it was assumed that the confessional differences were not vital and important enough to exclude Christian fellowship. The opposition proceeded chiefly from the "Old Lutherans," so called, who insist upon "pure doctrine," as the basis of union, to the exclusion of the Calvinistic "heresies," and who took just offense at the forcible introduction of the new liturgy of the king (the Agende of 1822); but the opposition was silenced by granting them the liberty of separate organization and self-government (1845). The Prussian Union suffers from the defects of Erastianism, but no more than any other state-church, or the introduction of the Reformation in the sixteenth century by the civil power. Experience has proved that moderate Lutherans and Reformed Christians can live together, commune at the same altar, and co-operate in the work of the common Master. This experience is a great gain. The union type of Protestantism has become an important historic fact and factor in the modern theology and church life of Prussia and those other parts of Germany which followed her example.

The two sons and successors of the founder of the Prussian Union, King Frederick William IV. (1840–1858), and Emperor William I. (1858–1888), have faithfully adhered to it in theory and practice.

Frederick William IV. was well versed in theology, and a pronounced evangelical believer. He wished to make the church more independent, and as a means to that end he established the Oberkirchenrath (1850, modified 1852), which in connection with the Cultusministerium should administer the affairs of the church in the name of the king; while a general synod was to exercise the legislative function. Under his reign the principle of religious liberty made great progress, and was embodied in the Prussian Constitution of 1850, which guarantees in Article XII. the freedom of conscience and of private and public worship to all religious associations.806

William I., aided by Bismarck and Moltke, raised Prussia, by superior statesmanship and diplomacy, and by brilliant victories in the wars with Austria (1866) and France (1870), to her present commanding position. He became by common consent of the German sovereigns and people the first hereditary emperor of United Germany under the lead of Prussia. He adorned this position in eighteen years of peace by his wisdom, integrity, justice, untiring industry, and simple piety, and gained the universal esteem and affection of the German nation, yea, we may say, of the civilized world, which mourned for him when on the 9th of March, 1888, in the ninety-first year of an eventful life, he entered into his rest. History has never seen a more illustrious trio than the Emperor William, "the Iron Chancellor," and "the Battle-thinker," who "feared God, and nothing else."

The new German Empire with a Protestant head is the last outcome of the Reformation of Prussia, and would not have been possible without it.

§ 100. Protestant Martyrs.

No great cause in church or state, in religion or science, has ever succeeded without sacrifice. Blood is the price of liberty. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity." Persecution develops the heroic qualities of human nature, and the passive virtues of patience and endurance under suffering. Protestantism has its martyrs as well as Catholicism. In Germany it achieved a permanent legal existence only after the Thirty Years’ War. The Reformed churches in France, Holland, England, and Scotland, passed through the fiery ordeal of persecution. It has been estimated that the victims of the Spanish Inquisition outnumber those of heathen Rome, and that more Protestants were executed by the Spaniards in a single reign, and in a single province of Holland, than Christians in the Roman empire during the first three centuries.807  Jews and heathens have persecuted Christians, Christians have persecuted Jews and heathens, Romanists have persecuted Protestants, Protestants have persecuted Romanists, and every state-church has more or less persecuted dissenters and sects. It is only within a recent period that the sacred rights of conscience have been properly appreciated, and that the line is clearly and sharply drawn between church and state, religious and civil offenses, heresy and crime, spiritual and temporal punishments.

The persecution of Protestants began at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Charles V. issued from that city the first of a series of cruel enactments, or "placards," for the extermination of the Lutheran heresy in his hereditary dominion of the Netherlands. In 1523 two Augustinian monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, as adherents of Luther, at the, stake in Brussels. After the fires were kindled, they repeated the Apostles’ Creed, sang the "Te Deum laudamus," and prayed in the flames, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon us." The heroic death of these Protestant proto-martyrs inspired Luther’s first poem, which begins, —

"Ein neues Lied wir heben an."808

The prior of their convents Lampert Thorn, was suffocated in prison. The martyrdom of Henry of Zütphen has already been noticed.809  Adolph Klarenbach and Peter Flysteden suffered at the stake in Cologne with constancy and triumphant joy, Sept. 28, 1529.810

George Winkler, a preacher in Halle, was cited by the Archbishop of Cologne to Aschaffenburg for distributing the communion in both kinds, and released, but murdered by unknown hands on his return, May, 1527.811

Duke George of Saxony persecuted the Lutherans, not by death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions, rather than for selling Lutheran books.812

In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524.813  In Salzburg a priest was secretly beheaded without a trial, by order of the archbishop, for Lutheran heresy.814  George Wagner, a minister at Munich, was burnt Feb. 8, 1527. Leonard Käser (or Kaiser) shared the same fate, Aug. 18, 1527, by order of the bishop of Passau. Luther wrote him, while in prison, a letter of comfort.815

But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and they died with the same heroic faith. Hätzer was burnt in Constance, Hübmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others drowned, still others burnt alive.816  Unfortunately, the Anabaptists were not much better treated by Protestant governments; even in Zürich several were drowned in the river under the eyes of Zwingli. The darkest blot on Protestantism is the burning of Servetus for heresy and blasphemy, at Geneva, with the approval of Calvin and all the surviving Reformers, including Melanchthon (1553). He had been previously condemned, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman-Catholic tribunal in France. Now such a tragedy would be impossible in any church. The same human passions exist, but the ideas and circumstances have changed.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.

§ 101. Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.

The Catholic system of Christianity, both Greek and Roman, is sacramental and sacerdotal. The saving grace of Christ is conveyed to men through the channel of seven sacraments, or "mysteries," administered by ordained priests, who receive members into the church by baptism, accompany them through the various stages of life, and dismiss them by extreme unction into the other world. A literal priesthood requires a literal sacrifice, and this is the repetition of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross offered by the priest in the mass from day to day. The power of the mass extends not only to the living, but even to departed spirits in purgatory, abridging their sufferings, and hastening their release and transfer to heaven.

The Reformers rejected the sacerdotal system altogether, and substituted for it the general priesthood of believers, who have direct access to Christ as our only Mediator and Advocate, and are to offer the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise, and intercession. They rejected the sacrifice of the mass, and the theory of transubstantiation, and restored the cup to the laity. They also agreed in raising the Word of God, as the chief means of grace, above the sacraments, and in reducing the number of the sacraments. They retained Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as instituted by Christ for universal and perpetual observance.

But here begins the difference. It consists in the extent of departure from the sacramental system of the Roman Church. The Lutheran Confession is, we may say, semi-sacramental, or much more sacramental than the Reformed (if we except the Anglican communion).817  It retained the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, with the rite of exorcism, and the corporal presence in the eucharist. The Augsburg Confession makes the sacraments an essential criterion of the church. Luther’s Catechism assigns to them an independent place alongside of the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. It adds to baptism and the Lord’s Supper confession and absolution as a third sacrament. At a later period, confirmation was restored to the position of a quasi-sacrament as a supplement of infant-baptism.

Zwingli and Calvin reduced the sacraments to signs and seals of grace which is inwardly communicated by the Holy Spirit. They asserted the sovereign causality of God, and the independence of the Spirit who "bloweth where it willeth" (John 3:8). God can communicate his gifts freely as he chooses. We are, however, bound to his prescribed means. The Swiss Reformers also emphasized the necessity of faith, not only for a profitable use of the sacrament (which is conceded by the Lutherans), but for the reception of the sacrament itself. Unworthy communicants receive only the visible sign, not the thing signified, and they receive the sign to their own injury.

The Anabaptists went still farther, and rejected infant-baptism because it lacks the element of faith on the part of the baptized. They were the forerunners of the Quakers, who dispensed with the external sacraments altogether, retaining, however, the spiritual fact of regeneration and communion with Christ, which the sacraments symbolize to the senses. The Quakers protested against forms when they were made substitutes for the spirit, and furnished the historic proof that the spirit in cases of necessity may live without forms, while forms without the spirit are dead.

It was the will of Providence that different theories on the means of grace should be developed. These theories are not isolated; they proceed from different philosophical and theological standpoints, and affect other doctrines. Luther was not quite wrong when he said to Zwingli at Marburg "You have a different spirit." Luther took his stand on the doctrine of justification by faith; Zwingli and Calvin, on the doctrine of divine causality and sovereignty, or eternal election. Luther proceeded anthropologically and soteriologically from man to God, Zwingli and Calvin proceeded theologically from God to man.

The difference culminates in the doctrine of the eucharistic presence, which called forth the fiercest controversies, and still divides Western Christendom into hostile camps. The eucharistic theories reveal an underlying difference of views on the relation of God to man, of the supernatural to the natural, of invisible grace to the visible means. The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation is the outgrowth of a magical supernaturalism which absorbs and annihilates the natural and human, leaving only the empty form. The Lutheran doctrine implies an interpenetration of the divine and human. The commemorative theory of Zwingli saves the integrity and peculiar character of the divine and human, but keeps them separate and distinct. The eucharistic theory affects Christology, the relation of church and state, and in some measure the character of piety. Lutheranism inclines to the Eutychian, Zwinglianism to the Nestorian, Christology. The former fosters a mystical, the latter a practical, type of piety.

Calvin, who appeared on the stage of public action five years after Zwingli’s, and ten years before Luther’s, death, advocated with great ability a eucharistic theory which mediates between the Lutheran realism and the Zwinglian spiritualism, and which passed into the Reformed confessions Luther had to deal with Zwingli, and never came into contact with Calvin. If he had, the controversy might have taken a different shape; but he would have maintained his own view of the real presence, and refused the figurative interpretation of the words of institution.

With the doctrine of the eucharist are connected some minor ritualistic differences, as the use of the wafer, and the kneeling posture of the communicants, which the Lutherans retained from the Catholic Church; while the Reformed restored the primitive practice of the breaking of bread, and the standing or sitting posture. Some Lutheran churches retained also the elevation of the host; Luther himself declared it a matter of indifference, and abolished it at Wittenberg in 1542.818

§ 102. The Anabaptist Controversy. Luther and Huebmaier.

Luther: Von der Wiedertaufe, an zwei Pfarrherrn. Wittenberg, 1528. In Walch, XXVII. 2643 sqq.; Erl. ed. XXVI. 254–294. Justus Menius: Der Wiedertäufer Lehre und Geheimniss, with a Preface by Luther, 1530. In the Erl. ed. LXIII. 290 sqq. Melanchthon: Contra Anabaptistas Judicium, "Corp. Reform." I. 953 sqq.

On the Baptist side the writings of Huebmaier, or, as he wrote his name, Huebmör, which are very rare, and ought to be collected and republished. Calvary, in "Mittheilungen aus dem Antiquariate," vol. I. Berlin, 1870, gives a complete list of them. The most important are Von dem christlichen Tauf der Gläubigen (1525); Eine Stimme eines ganzen christlichen Lebens (1525); Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern; Schlussreden (Axiomata); Ein Form des Nachtmals Christi; Von der Freiwilligkeit des Menschen (to show that God gives to all men an opportunity to become his children by free choice); Zwölf Artikel des christlichen Glaubens, etc.

On Huebmaier, see Schreiber in the "Taschenbuch fuer Gesch. und Alterthum Sueddeutschlands," Freiburg, 1839 and 40. Cunitz in Herzog’s "Encykl.," 2d ed. VI. 344. Ranke, II. 118, 126; III. 366, 369. Janssen, II. 387, 486.

All the Reformers retained the custom of infant-baptism, and opposed rebaptism (Wiedertaufe) as a heresy. So far they agreed with the Catholics against the Anabaptists, or Catabaptists as they were called, although they rejected the name, because in their view the baptism of infants was no baptism at all.

The Anabaptists or Baptists (as distinct from Pedobaptists) sprang up in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and organized independent congregations. Their leaders were Huebmaier, Denck, Hätzer, and Grebel. They thought that the Reformers stopped half-way, and did not go to the root of the evil. They broke with the historical tradition, and constructed a new church of believers on the voluntary principle. Their fundamental doctrine was, that baptism is a voluntary act, and requires personal repentance, and faith in Christ. They rejected infant-baptism as an anti-scriptural invention. They could find no trace of it in the New Testament, the only authority in matters of faith. They were cruelly persecuted in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic countries. We must carefully distinguish the better class of Baptists and the Mennonites from the restless revolutionary radicals and fanatics, like Carlstadt, Muenzer, and the leaders of the Muenster tragedy.

The mode of baptism was not an article of controversy at that time; for the Reformers either preferred immersion (Luther), or held the mode to be a matter of indifference (Calvin).

Luther agreed substantially with the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptism. His Taufbuechlein of 1523 is a translation of the Latin baptismal service, including the formula of exorcism, the sign of the cross, and the dipping. The second edition (1526) is abridged, and omits the use of chrisma, salt, and spittle.819  He defeated Carlstadt, Muenzer, and the Zwickau Prophets, who rejected infant-baptism, and embarrassed even Melanchthon. Saxony was cleared of Anabaptists; but their progress in other parts of Germany induced him a few years later to write a special book against Huebmaier, who appealed to his authority, and ascribed to him similar views.

Balthasar Huebmaier, or Huebmör, was born near Augsburg, 1480; studied under Dr. Eck at Freiburg-i. -B. and Ingolstadt, and acquired the degree of doctor of divinity. He became a famous preacher in the cathedral at Regensburg, and occasioned the expulsion of the Jews in 1519, whose synagogue was converted into a chapel of St. Mary. In 1522 he embraced Protestant opinions, and became pastor at Waldshut on the Rhine, on the borders of Switzerland. He visited Erasmus at Basel, and Zwingli at Zuerich, and aided the latter in the introduction of the Reformation. The Austrian government threatened violent measures, and demanded the surrender of his person. He left Waldshut, and took refuge in a convent of Schaffhausen, but afterwards returned. He openly expressed his dissent from Zwingli and Oecolampadius on the subject of infant-baptism. Zwingli was right, he said, in maintaining that baptism was a mere sign, but the significance of this sign was the pledge of faith and obedience unto death, and such a pledge a child could not make; therefore the baptism of a child had no meaning, and was invalid. Faith must be present, and cannot be taken for granted as a future certainly. Instead of baptism he introduced a solemn presentation or consecration of children before the congregation. He made common cause with the Anabaptists of Zuerich, and with Thomas Muenzer, who came into the neighborhood of Waldshut, and kindled the flame of the Peasants’ War. He is supposed by some to be the author of the Twelve Articles of the Peasants. He was rebaptized about Easter, 1525, and re-baptized many others. He abolished the mass, and removed the altar, baptismal font, pictures and crosses from the church.

The triumph of the re-action against the rebellious peasants forced him to flee to Zuerich (December, 1525). He had a public disputation with Zwingli, who had himself formerly leaned to the view that it would be better to put off baptism to riper years of responsibility, though he never condemned infant-baptism. He retracted under pressure and protest, and was dismissed with some aid. He went to Nikolsburg in Moravia, published a number of books in German, having brought a printing-press with him from Switzerland, and gathered the Baptist "Brethren" into congregations. But when Moravia, after the death of Louis of Hungary, fell into the possession of King Ferdinand of Austria, Huebmaier was arrested with his wife, sent to Vienna, charged with complicity in the Peasants’ War, and burned to death, March 10, 1528. He died with serene courage and pious resignation. His wife, who had strengthened him in his faith, was drowned three days later in the Danube. Zwingli, after his quarrel with Huebmaier, speaks unfavorably of his character; Vadian of St. Gall, and Bullinger, give him credit for great eloquence and learning, but charge him with a restless spirit of innovation. He was an advocate of the voluntary principle. and a martyr of religious freedom. Heretics, he maintained, are those only who wickedly oppose the Holy Sciptures, and should be won by instruction and persuasion. To use force is to deny Christ, who came to save, not to destroy.

A few months before Huebmaier’s death, Luther wrote, rather hastily, a tract against the Anabaptists (January or February, 1528), in the shape of a letter to two unnamed ministers in Catholic territory.820  "I know well enough," he begins, "that Balthasar Huebmör quotes me among others by name, in his blasphemous book on Re-baptism, as if I were of his foolish mind. But I take comfort in the fact that neither friend nor foe will believe such a lie, since I have sufficiently in my sermons shown my faith in infant-baptism." He expressed his dissent from the harsh and cruel treatment of the Anabaptists, and maintained that they ought to be resisted only by the Word of God and arguments, not by fire and sword, unless they preach insurrection and resist the civil magistrate.821  At the same time he ungenerously depreciated the constancy of their martyrs, and compared them to the Jewish martyrs at the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Donatist martyrs.822  He thought it served the papists right, to be troubled with such sectaries of the Devil in punishment for not tolerating the gospel. He then proceeds to refute their objections to infant-baptism.

1. Infant-baptism is wrong because it comes from the pope, who is Antichrist. But then we ought to reject the Scriptures, and Christianity itself, which we have in common with Rome. Christ found many abuses among the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Jewish people, but did not reject the Old Testament, and told his disciples to observe their doctrines (Matt. 23:3). Here Luther pays a striking tribute to the Roman church, and supports it by the very fact that the pope is Antichrist, and reveals his tyranny in the temple of God, that is, within the Christian Church, and not outside of it.823  By such an argument the Anabaptists weaken the cause of Christianity, and deceive themselves.

2. Infants know nothing of their baptism, and have to learn it afterwards from their parents or sponsors. But we know nothing of our natural birth and of many other things, except on the testimony of others.

3. Infants cannot believe. Luther denied this, and appealed to the word of Christ, who declared them fit for the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:14), and to the example of John the Baptist, who believed in the mother’s womb (Luke 1:41). Reformed divines, while admitting the capacity or germ of faith in infants, base infant-baptism on the vicarious faith of parents, and the covenant blessing of Abraham which extends to his seed (Gen. 17:7). Luther mentions this also.

4. The absence of a command to baptize children. But they are included in the command to baptize all nations (Matt. 28:19). The burden of proof lies on the Anabaptists to show that infant-baptism is forbidden in the Bible, before they abolish such an old and venerable institution of the whole Christian Church.

5. Among the positive arguments, Luther mentions the analogy of circumcision, Christ’s treatment of children, the cases of family baptisms, Acts 2:39; 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16.

Melanchthon quoted also the testimonies of Origen, Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Augustin, for the apostolic origin of infant-baptism.

§ 103. The Eucharistic Controversy.

I. Sources (1) Lutheran. Luther: Wider die himmlischen Propheten, Jan. 1525 (against Carlstadt and the Enthusiasts). Dass die Worte, "Das ist mein Leib," noch fest stehen (wider die Schwarmgeister), 1527. Grosses Bekenntniss vom Abendmahl, March, 1528 (against Zwingli and Oecolampadius). Kurzes Bekenntniss rom heil. Sacrament, 1544. All these tracts in the Erl. ed. vols. XXVI. 254; XXIX. 134, 348; XXX. 14, 151; XXXII. 396. Walch, Vol. XX. 1–2955, gives the eucharistic writings, for and against Luther, together with a history.

Bugenhagen: Contra novum errorem de sacramento corporis et sanguinis Christi. 1525. Also in German. In Walch, XX. 641 sqq. Brentz and Schnepf: Syngramma Suevicum super verbis coenae Dominicae "Hoc est corpus meum," etc., signed by fourteen Swabian preachers, Oct. 21, 1525. Against Oecolampadius, see Walch, XX. 34, 667 sqq.

(2) On the Zwinglian side. Zwingli: Letter to Rev. Mathaeus Alber, Nov. 16, 1524; Commentarius de vera et falsa religione, 1525; Amica exegesis, id est, Expositio eucharistiae negotii ad M. Lutherum, 1526; Dass diese Worte Jesu Christi: "Das ist myn Lychnam," ewiglich den alten eynigen Sinn haben werden, 1527; and several other eucharistic tracts. Oecolampadius: De genuina verborum Domini: "Hoc est corpus meum," juxta vetustissimos auctores expositione, Basel, 1525; Antisyngramma ad ecclesiastas Suevos (with two sermons on the sacrament), 1526. Oecolampadius and Zwingli: Ueber Luther’s Buch Bekenntniss genannt, zwo Antworten, 1528. See Zwingli: Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vol. II. Part II. 1–223; III. 145; 459 sqq.; 589 sqq.; 604 sqq. Also Walch, vol. XX. Extracts in Usteri and Vögelin, M. H. Zwingli’s Sämmtl. Schriften im Auszuge, vol. II. Part I., pp. 3–187.

II. The historical works on the eucharistic controversies of the Reformation period, by Lavater (Historia Sacramentaria, Tig. 1563): Selnecker and Chemnitz (Hist. des sacram. Streits, Leipz., 1583 and 1593); Hospinian (Hist. Sacramentaria, Tig. 1603, 2 vols.); Löscher (Hist. Motuum, in 3 Parts, Leipz., second ed., 1723); Ebrard (Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl und seine Geschichte, 2 vols., 1846); Kahnis (1851); Dieckhoff (1854); H. Schmid (1873).

III. The respective sections in the General Church Histories, and the Histories of the Reformation, especially Seckendorf, Gieseler, Baur, Hagenbach, Merle, Fisher. Planck, in his Geschichte des Protest. Lehrbegriffs (Leipz. second revised ed., 1792, vol. II., Books V. and VI.), gives a very full and accurate account of the eucharistic controversy, although he calls it "die unseligste alter Streitigkeiten" (II. 205).

IV. Special discussions. Dorner: Geschichte der protestant. Theologie (Muenchen, 1867), pp. 296–329. Jul. Mueller: Vergleichung der Lehren Luther’s und Calvin’s ueber das heil. Abendmahl, in his "Dogmatische Abhandlungen" (Bremen, 1870, pp. 404–467). Köstlin: Luther’s Theologie, II. 100 sqq., 511 sqq.; Mart. Luther, I. 715–725; II. 65–110 (Luther und Zwingli); 127 sqq.; 363–369. August Baur: Zwingli’s Theologie (Halle, 1885; second vol. has not yet appeared).

American discussions of the eucharistic controversies. J. W. Nevin (Reformed, d. 1886): The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846; Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper, in "The Mercersburg Review," 1850, pp. 421–549. Ch. Hodge (Presbyt, d. 1878): in "The Princeton Review" for April, 1848; Systematic Theology, New York, 1873, vol. III., 626–677. C. P. Krauth (Luth., d. 1883): The Conservative Reformation (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 585 sqq. H. J. Van Dyke (Calvinist): The Lord’s Supper, 2 arts. in "The Presbyterian Review," New York, 1887, pp. 193 and 472 sqq. J. W. Richard (Luth.), in the "Bibliotheca Sacra" (Oberlin, O.), Oct. 1887, p. 667 sqq., and Jan. 1888, p. 110 sqq.

See, also, the Lit. quoted in Schaff, Church Hist., I. 471 sq. and IV. 543 sq.

While the Reformers were agreed on the question of infant-baptism against the Anabaptists, they disagreed on the mode and extent of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper.

The eucharistic controversies of the sixteenth century present a sad and disheartening spectacle of human passion and violence, and inflicted great injury to the progress of the Reformation by preventing united action, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy; but they were overruled for the clearer development and statement of truth, like the equally violent Trinitarian, Christological, and other controversies in the ancient church. It is a humiliating fact, that the feast of union and communion of believers with Christ and with each other, wherein they engage in the highest act of worship, and make the nearest approach to heaven, should have become the innocent occasion of bitter contests among brethren professing the same faith and the same devotion to Christ and his gospel. The person of Christ and the supper of Christ have stirred up the deepest passions of love and hatred. Fortunately, the practical benefit of the sacrament depends upon God’s promise, and simple and childlike faith in Christ, and not upon any scholastic theory, any more than the benefit of the Sacred Scriptures depends upon a critical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.

The eucharist was twice the subject of controversy in the Middle Ages,—first in the ninth, and then in the eleventh, century. The question in both cases turned on a grossly realistic and a spiritual conception of the sacramental presence and fruition of Christ’s body and blood; and the result was the triumph of the Roman dogma of transubstantiation, as advocated by Paschasius Radbertus against Ratramnus, and by Lanfranc against Berengar, and as finally sanctioned by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and the Council of Trent in 1551.824

The Greek and Latin churches are substantially agreed on the doctrine of the communion and the mass, but divide on the ritual question of the use of leavened or unleavened bread. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity caused the bloody Hussite wars.

The eucharistic controversies of the Protestants assumed a different form. Transubstantiation was discarded by both parties. The question was not, whether the elements as to their substance are miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but whether Christ was corporally or only spiritually (though no less really) present with the natural elements; and whether he was partaken of by all communicants through the mouth, or only by the worthy communicants through faith.

The controversy has two acts, each with several scenes: first, between Luther and Zwingli; secondly, between the Lutherans and Philippists and Calvinists. At last Luther’s theory triumphed in the Lutheran, Calvin’s theory in the Reformed churches. The Protestant denominations which have arisen since the Reformation on English and American soil,—Independents, Baptists, Methodists, etc.,—have adopted the Reformed view. Luther’s theory is strictly confined to the church which bears his name. But, as the Melanchthonian and moderate Lutherans approach very nearly the Calvinistic view, so there are Calvinists, and especially Anglicans, who approach the Lutheran view more nearly than the Zwinglian. The fierce antagonism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has given way on both sides to a more dispassionate and charitable temper. This is a real progress.

We shall first trace the external history of this controversy, and then present the different theories with the arguments.

§ 104. Luther’s Theory before the Controversy.

Luther rejected, in his work on the "Babylonish Captivity of the Church" (1520), the doctrine of the mass, transubstantiation, and the withdrawal of the cup, as strongholds of the Papal tyranny. From this position he never receded. In the same work he clearly intimated his own view, which he had learned from Pierre d’Ailly, Cardinal of Cambray (Cameracensis),825 in these words: —

Formerly, when I was imbibing the scholastic theology, the Cardinal of Cambray gave me occasion for reflection, by arguing most acutely, in the Fourth Book of the Sentences, that it would be much more probable, and that fewer superfluous miracles would have to be introduced, if real bread and real wine, and not only their accidents, were understood to be upon the altar, unless the Church had determined the contrary. Afterwards, when I saw what the church was, which had thus determined,—namely, the Thomistic, that is, the Aristotelian Church,—I became bolder; and, whereas I had been before in great straits of doubt, I now at length established my conscience in the former opinion: namely, that there were real bread and real wine, in which were the real flesh and real blood of Christ in no other manner and in no less degree than the other party assert them to be under the accidents.826... Why should not Christ be able to include his body within the substance of bread, as well as within the accidents?  Fire and iron, two different substances, are so mingled in red-hot iron that every part of it is both fire and iron. Why may not the glorious body of Christ much more be in every part of the substance of the bread?  ... I rejoice greatly, that, at least among the common people, there remains a simple faith in this sacrament. They neither understand nor argue whether there are accidents in it or substance, but believe, with simple faith, that the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in it, leaving to these men of leisure the task of arguing as to what it contains."

At that time of departure from Romanism he would have been very glad, as he confessed five years later, to become convinced that there was nothing in the Lord’s Supper but bread and wine. Yea, his old Adam was still inclined to such a view; but he dared not doubt the literal meaning of the words of institution.827  In his book on the "Adoration of the Sacrament" (1523), addressed to the Waldensian Brethren in Bohemia, he rejects their symbolical theory, as well as the Romish transub-stantiation, and insists on the real and substantial presence of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharistic elements; but treats them very kindly, notwithstanding their supposed error, and commends them for their piety and discipline, in which they excelled the Germans.828

In his conviction of the real presence, he was greatly strengthened by the personal attacks and perverse exegesis of Carlstadt. Henceforth he advocated the point of agreement with the Catholics more strenuously than he had formerly opposed the points in which he differed from them. He changed the tone of moderation which he had shown in his address to the Bohemians, and treated his Protestant opponents with as great severity as the Papists. His peculiar view of the eucharist became the most, almost the only, serious doctrinal difference between the two wings of the Reformation, and has kept them apart ever since.

§ 105. Luther and Carlstadt.

The first outward impulse to the eucharistic controversy came from Holland in the summer of 1522, when Henry Rhodius brought from Utrecht a collection of the writings of John Wessel to Wittenberg, which he had received from a distinguished Dutch jurist, Cornelius Honius (Hoen). Wessel, one of the chief forerunners of the Reformation (d. 1489), proposed, in a tract "De Coena," a figurative interpretation of the words of institution, which seems to have influenced the opinions of Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Zwingli on this subject.829

But Luther was so much pleased with the agreement on other points that he overlooked the difference, and lauded Wessel as a theologian truly taught of God, and endowed with a high mind and wonderful gifts; yea, so fully in harmony with him, that the Papists might charge Luther with having derived all his doctrines from Wessel, had he known his writings before.830

The controversy was opened in earnest by Carlstadt, Luther’s older colleague and former friend, who gave him infinite trouble, and forced him into self-defense and into the development of the conservative and churchly elements in his theology.831  He smarted under the defeat he had suffered in 1522, and first silently, then openly, opposed Luther, regarding him henceforth as his enemy, and as the author of all his misfortunes. In this way he mixed, from the start, the gall of personal bitterness into the eucharistic controversy. Luther would probably have been more moderate if it had been free from those complications.

In 1524 Carlstadt came out with a new and absurd interpretation of the words of institution (Matt. 26:26 and parallel passages); holding that the Greek word for "this" being neuter (tou'to), could not refer to the bread, which is masculine in Greek (a[rto"), but must refer to the body of Christ (to; sw'ma), to which the Saviour pointed, so as to say, "Take, eat!  This here [this body] is my body [which will soon be] broken for you; this [blood] is my blood [which will be] shed for you." This resolves the words into a tautology and platitude. At the same time Carlstadt opposed infant-baptism, and traced his crude novelties to higher inspiration.832  After his expulsion from Saxony he propagated them, together with slanderous assaults upon Luther as, a double Papist," in several publications which appeared in Basel and Strasburg.833  He excited some interest among the Swiss Reformers, who sympathized with his misfortunes, and agreed with his opposition to the theory of a corporal presence and oral manducation, but dissented entirely from his exegesis, his mysticism, and radicalism. Capito and Bucer, the Reformers of Strassburg, leaned to the Swiss view, but regretted the controversy, and sent a deacon with Carlstadt’s tracts to Luther for advice.

Luther exhorted the Strassburgers, in a vigorous letter (Dec. 14, 1524), to hold fast to the evangelical doctrines, and warned them against the dangerous vagaries of Carlstadt. At the same time he issued an elaborate refutation of Carlstadt, in a book "Against the Heavenly Prophets" (December, 1524, and January, 1525, in two parts). It is written with great ability and great violence. "A new storm is arising," he begins. "Dr. Andreas Carlstadt is fallen away from us, and has become our worst enemy." He thought the poor man had committed the unpardonable sin.834  He describes, in vivid colors, the wild and misty mysticism and false legalism of these self-styled prophets, and defends the real presence. He despised the objections of reason, which was the mistress of the Devil. It is characteristic, that, from this time on, he lowered his estimate of the value of reason in theology, although he used it very freely and effectually in this very book.835

§ 106. Luther and Zwingli.

But now two more formidable opponents appeared on the field, who, by independent study, had arrived at a far more sensible interpretation of the words of institution than that of Carlstadt, and supported it with strong exegetical and rational arguments. Zwingli, the Luther of Switzerland, and Oecolampadius, its Melanchthon, gave the controversy a new and more serious turn.

Zwingli received the first suggestion of a figurative interpretation (est = significat) from Erasmus and Wessel through Honius; as Luther derived his first idea of a corporal presence in the unchanged elements from Pierre d’Ailly.836  He communicated his view, in a confidential Latin letter, Nov. 16, 1524, to the Lutheran preacher, Matthaeus Alber in Reutlingen, an opponent of Carlstadt, and based it on Christ’s word, John 6:63, as excluding a carnal or material manducation of his body and blood.837

A few months later (March, 1525) he openly expressed his view with the same arguments in the "Commentary on the True and False Religion."838  This was three months after Luther had published his book against Carlstadt. He does not men-tion Luther in either of these two writings, but evidently aimed at him, and speaks of his view almost as contemptuously as Luther had spoken of Carlstadt’s view.

In the same year Oecolampadius, one of the most learned and pious men of his age, appeared with a very able work in defense of the same theory, except that he put the figure in the predicate, and explained the words of institution (like Tertullian): "hoc est figura corporis mei." He lays, how-ever, no stress on this difference, as the sense is the same. He wrote with as much modesty and moderation as learning and acuteness. He first made use of testimonies of the church fathers, especially Augustin, who favors a spiritual fruition of Christ by faith. Erasmus judged the arguments of Oecolampadius to be strong enough to seduce the very elect.839

The Lutherans were not slow to reply to the Swiss.

Bugenhagen, a good pastor, but poor theologian, published a letter to Hess of Breslau against Zwingli.840  He argues, that, if the substantive verb in the words of institution is figurative, it must always be figurative; e.g., "Peter is a man," would mean, "Peter signifies a man."841  He also appeals to 1 Cor. 11:27, where Paul says that unworthy communicants are guilty of the body and blood of Christ, not of bread and wine. Zwingli had easy work to dispose of such an opponent.842

Several Swabian preachers, under the lead of Brentius of Hall, replied to Oecolampadius, who (himself a Swabian by birth) had dedicated his book to them with the request to examine and review it. Their Syngramma Suevicum is much more important than Bugenhagen’s epistle. They put forth the peculiar view that the word of Christ puts into bread and wine the very body and blood of Christ; as the word of Moses imparted a hearing power to the brazen serpent; as the word of Christ, "Peace be unto you," imparts peace; and the word, "Thy sins be forgiven," imparts pardon. But, by denying that the body of Christ is broken by the hands, and chewed with the teeth, they unwittingly approached the Swiss idea of a purely spiritual manducation. Oecolampadius clearly demonstrated this inconsistency in his Anti-syngramma (1526).843  Pirkheimer of Nuernberg, and Billicum of Nördlingen, likewise wrote against Oecolampadius, but without adding any thing new.

The controversy reached its height in 1527 and 1528, when Zwingli and Luther came into direct conflict. Zwingli combated Luther’s view vigorously, but respectfully, fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, in a Latin book, under the peaceful title, "Friendly Exegesis," and sent a copy to Luther with a letter, April 1, 1527.844  Luther appeared nearly at the same time (early in 1527), but in a very different tone, with a German book against Zwingli and Oecolampadius, under the title, "That the Words of Christ: ’This is my Body,’ stand fast. Against the Fanatics (Schwarmgeister)."845  Here he derives the Swiss view directly from the inspiration of the Devil. "How true it is," he begins, "that the Devil is a master of a thousand arts!846  He proves this powerfully in the external rule of this world by bodily lusts, tricks, sins, murder, ruin, etc., but especially, and above all measure, in spiritual and external things which affect God’s honor and our conscience. How he can turn and twist, and throw all sorts of obstacles in the way, to prevent men from being saved and abiding in the Christian truth!"  Luther goes on to trace the working of the Devil from the first corruptions of the gospel by heretics, popes, and Councils, down to Carlstadt and the Zwinglians, and mentions the Devil on every page. This is characteristic of his style of polemics against the Sacramentarians, as well as the Papists. He refers all evil in the world to the Prince of evil. He believed in his presence and power as much as in the omnipresence of God and the ubiquity of Christ’s body.

He dwells at length on the meaning of the words of institution: "This is my body." They must be taken literally, unless the contrary can be proved. Every departure from the literal sense is a device of Satan, by which, in his pride and malice, he would rob man of respect for God’s Word, and of the benefit of the sacrament. He makes much account of the disagreement of his opponents, and returns to it again and again, as if it were conclusive against them. Carlstadt tortures the word "this" in the sacred text; Zwingli, the word "is;" "Oecolampadius, the word "body;"847 others torture and murder the whole text. All alike destroy the sacraments. He allows no figurative meaning even in such passages as 1 Cor. 10:4; John 15:1; Gen. 41:26; Exod. 12:11, 12. When Paul says, Christ is a rock, he means that he is truly a spiritual rock. When Christ says, "I am the vine," he means a true spiritual vine. But what else is this than a figurative interpretation in another form?

A great part of the book is devoted to the proof of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. He explains "the right hand of God" to mean his "almighty power." Here he falls himself into a figurative interpretation. He ridicules the childish notion which he ascribes to his opponents, although they never dreamed of it, that Christ is literally seated, and immovably fastened, on a golden throne in heaven, with a golden crown on his head.848  He does not go so far as to deny the realness of Christ’s ascension, which implies a removal of his corporal presence. There is, in this reasoning, a strange combination of literal and figurative interpretation. But he very forcibly argues from the personal union of the divine and human natures in Christ, for the possibility of a real presence; only he errs in confounding real with corporal. He forgets that the spiritual is even more real than the corporal, and that the corporal is worth nothing without the spiritual.

Nitzsch and Köstlin are right when they say that both Zwingli and Luther "assume qualities of the glorified body of Christ, of which we can know nothing; the one by asserting a spacial inclusion of that body in heaven, the other by asserting dogmatically its divine omnipresence on earth."849  We may add, that the Reformers proceeded on an assumption of the locality of heaven, which is made impossible by the Copernican system. For aught we know, heaven may be very near, and round about as well as above us.

Zwingli answered Luther without delay, in an elaborate treatise, likewise in German (but in the Swiss dialect), and under a similar title ("That the words, ’This is my body,’ have still the old and only sense," etc.).850  It is addressed to the Elector John of Saxony, and dated June 20, 1527. Zwingli follows Luther step by step, answers every argument, defends the figurative interpretation of the words of institution by many parallel passages (Gen. 41:26; Exod. 12:11; Gal. 4:24; Matt. 11:14; 1 Cor. 10:4, etc.), and discusses also the relation of the two natures in Christ.

He disowns the imputed literal understanding of God’s almighty hand, and says, "We have known long since that God’s power is everywhere, that he is the Being of beings, and that his omnipresence upholds all things. We know that where Christ is, there is God, and where God is, there is Christ. But we distinguish between the two natures, and between the person of Christ and the body of Christ." He charges Luther with confounding the two. The attributes of the infinite nature of God are not communicable to the finite nature of man, except by an exchange which is called in rhetoric alloeosis. The ubiquity of Christ’s body is a contradiction. Christ is everywhere, but his body cannot be everywhere without ceasing to be a body, in any proper sense of the term.

This book of Zwingli is much sharper than his former writings on the subject. He abstains indeed from abusive language, and says that God’s Word must decide the controversy, and not opprobrious terms, as fanatic, devil, murderer, heretic, hypocrite, which Luther deals out so freely.851  But he and his friends applied also very unjust terms against the Lutherans, such as Capernaites, flesh-eaters, blood-drinkers, and called their communion bread a baked God.852  Moreover, Zwingli assumes an offensive and provoking tone of superiority, which cut to the quick of Luther’s sensibilities. Take the opening sentence: "To Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli wishes grace and peace from God through Jesus Christ the living Son of God, who, for our salvation, suffered death, and then left this world in his body and ascended to heaven, where he sits until he shall return on the last day, according to his own word, so that you may know that he dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), and not by bodily eating through the mouth, as thou wouldest teach without God’s Word." Towards the end he says, with reference to Luther’s attack upon Bucer: "Christ teaches us to return good for evil. Antichrist reverses the maxim, and you have followed him by abusing the pious and learned Bucer for translating and spreading your books .... Dear Luther, I humbly beseech you not to be so furious in this matter as heretofore. If you are Christ’s, so are we. It behooves us to contend only with the Word of God, and to observe Christian self-control. We must not fight against God, nor cloak our errors by his Word. God grant unto you the knowledge of truth, and of thyself, that you may remain Luther, and not become louvtrion.853  The truth will prevail. Amen."

Oecolampadius wrote likewise a book in self-defense.854  Luther now came out, in March, 1528, with his Great "Confession on the Lord’s Supper," which he intended to be his last word in this controversy.855  It is his most elaborate treatise on the eucharist, full of force and depth, but also full of wrath. He begins again with the Devil, and rejoices that he had provoked his fury by the defense of the holy sacrament. He compares the writings of his opponents to venomous adders. I shall waste, he says, no more paper on their mad lies and nonsense, lest the Devil might be made still more furious. May the merciful God convert them, and deliver them from the bonds of Satan!  I can do no more. A heretic we must reject, after the first and second admonition (Tit. 3:10). Nevertheless, he proceeds to an elaborate assault on the Devil and his fanatical crew.

The "Confession" is divided into three parts. The first is a refutation of the arguments of Zwingli and Oecolampadius; the second, an explanation of the passages which treat of the Lord’s Supper; the third, a statement of all the articles of his faith, against old and new heresies.

He devotes much space to a defense of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which he derives from the unity of the two natures. He calls to aid the scholastic distinction between three modes of presence,—local, definitive, and repletive.856  He calls Zwingli’s alloeosis "a mask of the Devil." He concludes with these words: "This is my faith, the faith of all true Christians, as taught in the Holy Scriptures. I beg all pious hearts to bear me witness, and to pray for me that I may stand firm in this faith to the end. For—which God forbid!—should I in the temptation and agony of death speak differently, it must be counted for nothing but an inspiration of the Devil.857  Thus help me my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Amen."

The "Confession" called out two lengthy answers of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, at the request of the Strassburg divines; but they add nothing new.858

This bitter controversy fell in the most trying time of Luther, when he suffered greatly from physical infirmity and mental depression, and when a pestilence raged at Wittenberg (1527), which caused the temporary removal of the University to Jena. He remained on the post of danger, escaped the jaws of death, and measurably recovered his strength, but not his former cheerfulness, good humor, and buoyancy of spirit.

§ 107. The Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529. (With Facsimile of Signatures.)

I. Contemporary Reports. (1) Lutheran. Luther’s references to the Conference at Marburg, in Erl. ed. XXXII. 398, 403, 408; XXXVI. 320 sqq. (his report from the pulpit); LIV. 286; 83, 107 sq., 153; LV. 88. Letters of Luther to his wife, Philip of Hesse, Gerbel, Agricola, Amsdorf, Link, and Probst, from October, 1529, and later, in De Wette, III. 508 sqq; IV. 26 sq. Reports of Melanchthon, Jonas, Brenz, and Osiander, in "Corpus Reform.," I. 1098, 1102 (Mel. in German); 1095 (Jonas), XXVI. 115; Seckendorf, II. 136; Walch, XVII. 2352–2379; Scultetus, Annal. evang., p. 215 sqq.; Riederer, Nachrichten, etc., II. 109 sqq.

(2) Reformed (Swiss and Strassburg) reports of Collin, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, are collected in Zwingli’s Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vol. IV. 173–204, and Hospinian’s Hist. Sacram., II. 74 sqq., 123 sqq. Bullinger: Reformationsgesch., II. 223 sqq. The reports of Bucer and Hedio are used by Baum in his Capito und Butzer (Elberf. 1860), p. 453 sqq., and Erichson (see below). The MS. of Capito’s Itinerary was burned in 1870 with the library of the Protestant Seminary at Strassburg, but had previously been copied by Professor Baum.

II. The Marburg Articles in Walch, XVII. 2357 sqq.; Erl. ed. LXV. 88 sqq.; "Corp. Reform.," XXVI. 121–128; H. Heppe: Die 15 Marburger Artikel vom 3 Oct., 1529, nach dent wieder aufgefundenen Autographon der Reformatoren als Facsimile veröffentlicht, Kassel, 1847, 2d ed. 1854 (from the archives at Kassel); another ed. from a MS. in Zuerich by J. M. Usteri in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1883, No. II., p. 400–413 (with facsimile). A list of older editions in the "Corpus Reform.," XXVI. 113–118.

III. L. J. K. Schmitt: Das Religionsgespräch zu Marburg im J. 1529, Marb. 1840. J. Kradolfer: Das Marb. Religiogsgesprach im J. 1529, Berlin, 1871. Schirrmacher: Briefe und Akten zur Geschichte des Religions-gesprächs zu Marburg 1529 und des Reichstags zu Augsburg 1530 nach der Handschrift des Aurifaber, Gotha, 1876. M. Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philipp, three articles in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift fuer K. Gesch.," 1879 (pp. 28, 220, and 429). Oswald Schmidt: in Herzog2, IX. (1881), 270–275. A. Erichson: Das Marburger Religionsgespräch i. J. 1529, nach ungedruckten strassburger Urkunden, Strassb. 1880. (Based upon Hedio’s unpublished Itinerarium ab Argentina Marpurgum super negotio Eucharistiae.) Frank H. Foster: The Historical Significance of the Marburg Colloquy, and its Bearing upon the New Departure (of Andover], in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Oberlin, Ohio, April, 1887, p. 363–369.

IV. See also the respective sections in Hospinian, Löscher (Historia Motuum, I. 143 sqq.), Planck (II. 515 sqq.), Marheineke, Hagenbach, Rommel (Phil. der Grossmuethige, I. 247 sqq., II. 219 sqq.), Hassencamp (Hessische K. G., II.), Merle D’Aubigné (bk. VIII. ch. VII.), Ebrard (Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl, II. 268 sqq.), and in the biographies of Luther, e.g., Köstlin: M. Luth. II. 127 sqq. (small biography, E. V. p. 391 sqq.), and of Zwingli, e.g., by Christoffel and Mörikofer. Comp. also Ranke, III. 116 sqq.; Janssen, III. 149–154

The eucharistic controversy broke the political force of Protestantism, and gave new strength to the Roman party, which achieved a decided victory in the Diet of Speier, April, 1529.

In this critical situation, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse formed at Speier "a secret agreement" with the cities of Nuernberg, Ulm, Strassburg and St. Gall, for mutual protection (April 22, 1529). Strassburg and St. Gall sided with Zuerich on the eucharistic question.

The situation became more threatening during the summer. The Emperor made peace with the Pope, June 29, and with France, July 19, pledging himself with his allies to extirpate the new deadly heresy; and was on the way to Augsburg, where the fate of Protestantism was to be decided. But while the nations of Europe aimed to emancipate themselves from the authority of the church and the clergy, the religious element was more powerful,—the hierarchical in the Roman, the evangelical in the Protestant party,—and overruled the political. This is the character of the sixteenth century: it was still a churchly and theological age.

Luther and Melanchthon opposed every alliance with the Zwinglians; they would not sacrifice a particle of their creed to any political advantage, being confident that the truth must prevail in the end, without secular aid. Their attitude in this matter was narrow and impolitic, but morally grand. In a letter to Elector John, March 6, 1530, Luther denied the right of resistance to the Emperor, even if he were wrong and used force against the gospel. "According to the Scriptures," he says, "a Christian dare not resist the magistrate, right or wrong, but must suffer violence and injustice, especially from the magistrate."859

Luther, as soon as he heard of the agreement at Speier, persuaded the Elector to annul it. "How can we unite with people who strive against God and the sacrament?  This is the road to damnation, for body and soul." Melanchthon advised his friends in Nuernberg to withdraw from the alliance, "for the godless opinion of Zwingli should never be defended." The agreement came to nothing.

Philip of Hesse stood alone. He was enthusiastic for an alliance, because he half sympathized with the Zwinglian theory, and deemed the controversy to be a battle of words. He hoped that a personal conference of the theological leaders would bring about an understanding.

After consulting Melanchthon personally in Speier, and Zwingli by letter, the Landgrave issued formal invitations to the Reformers, to meet at Marburg, and offered them a safe-conduct through his territory.860

Zwingli received the invitation with joy, and hoped for the best. The magistrate of Zuerich was opposed to his leaving; but he resolved to brave the danger of a long journey through hostile territory, and left his home in the night of Sept. 3, without waiting for the Landgrave’s safe-conduct, and without even informing his wife of his destination, beyond Basel. Accompanied by a single friend, the Greek professor Collin, he reached Basel safely on horseback, and on the 6th of September he embarked with Oecolampadius and several merchants on the Rhine for Strassburg, where they arrived after thirteen hours. The Reformers lodged in the house of Matthew Zell, the preacher in the cathedral, and were hospitably entertained by his wife Catharine, who cooked their meals, waited at the table, and conversed with them on theology so intelligently that they ranked her above many doctors. She often alluded in later years, with joy and pride, to her humble services to these illustrious men. They remained in Strassburg eleven days, in important consultation with the ministers and magistrates. Zwingli preached in the minister on Sunday, the 12th of September, in the morning, on our knowledge of truth, and our duty to obey it; Oecolampadius preached in the afternoon, on the new creature in Christ, and on faith operative in love (Gal. 5:6). On the 19th of September, at six in the morning, they departed with the Strassburg delegates, Bucer, Hedio, and Jacob Sturm, the esteemed head of the city magistrate, under protection of five soldiers. They travelled on horseback over hills and dales, through forests and secret paths. At the Hessian frontier, they were received by forty cavaliers, and reached Marburg on the 27th of September, at four o’clock in the afternoon, and were cordially welcomed by the Landgrave in person.861  The same journey can now be made in a few hours. On the next days they preached.

Zwingli and Philip of Hesse had political and theological sympathies. Zwingli, who was a statesman as well as a reformer, conceived about that time far-reaching political combinations in the interest of religion. He aimed at no less than a Protestant alliance between Zuerich, Hesse, Strassburg, France, Venice, and Denmark, against the Roman empire and the house of Habsburg. He believed in muscular, aggressive Christianity, and in rapid movements to anticipate an attack of the enemy, or to be at least fully prepared for it. The fiery and enthusiastic young Landgrave freely entered into these plans, which opened a tempting field to his ambition, and discussed them with Zwingli, probably already at Marburg, and afterwards in confidential letters, till the catastrophe at Cappel made an end to the correspondence, and the projected alliance.862

The Wittenbergers, as already remarked, would have nothing to do with political alliances unless it were an alliance against foreign foes. They were monarchists and imperialists, and loyally attached to Charles V., "the noble blood," as Luther called him. They feared that an alliance with the Swiss would alienate him still more from the Reformation, and destroy the prospect of reconciliation. In the same year Luther wrote two vigorous works (one dedicated to Philip of Hesse) against the Turks, in which, as a Christian, a citizen, and a patriot, he exhorted the German princes to aid the Emperor in protecting the German fatherland against those invaders whom he regarded as the Gog and Magog of prophecy, and as the instruments of God’s wrath for the punishment of corrupt Christendom.863  He had a still stronger religious motive to discourage a colloquy. He had denounced the Swiss divines as dangerous heretics, and was unwilling to negotiate with them, except on terms of absolute surrender such as could not be expected from men of honor and conscientious conviction.

The Wittenbergers, therefore, received the invitation to a colloquy with distrust, and resisted it. Luther declared that such a conference was useless, since he would not yield an inch to his opponents. Melanchthon even suggested to the Elector that he should forbid their attendance. They thought that "honorable Papists" should be invited as judges on a question touching the real presence!  But the Elector was unwilling to displease the Landgrave, and commanded the Reformers to attend. When they arrived at the Hessian frontier, Luther declared that nothing could induce him to cross it without a safe-conduct from the Landgrave (which arrived in due time). They reached Marburg on the last of September, three days after the Swiss.

How different the three historic appearances of Luther in public!  In the Leipzig disputation with Eck, we see him struggling in the twilight for emancipation from the bondage of popery. At Worms he stood before the Emperor, with invincible courage, as the heroic witness of the liberty of conscience. Marburg he entered reluctantly, at the noonday heat of his labors, in bad humor, firmly set in his churchly faith, imperious and obstinate, to face the Swiss Reformers, who were as honest and earnest as he, but more liberal and conciliatory. In Leipzig he protested as a Catholic against the infallibility of pope and council; in Worms he protested against the papal tyranny over the Bible and private judgment; in Marburg he protested as a conservative churchman against his fellow-Protestants, and in favor of the catholic faith in the mystery of the sacrament.864  On all occasions he was equally honest, firm, and immovable, true to his words at Worms, "Here I stand: I cannot do otherwise." The conduct of the two parties at that Conference is typical of the two confessions in their subsequent dealings with each other.

The visitors stopped at an inn, but were at once invited to lodge in the castle, and treated by the Landgrave with princely hospitality.

The Reformed called upon the Lutherans, but met with a cool reception. Luther spoke a kind word to Oecolampadius; but when he first met his friend Bucer, who now sided with Zwingli, he shook his hand, and said, smiling, and pointing his finger at him, "You are a good-for-nothing knave."865

In that romantic old castle of Marburg which overlooks the quaint city, and the beautiful and fertile valley of the Lahn, the famous Conference was held on the first three days of October. It was the first council among Protestants, and the first attempt to unite them. It attracted general attention, and promised to become world-historical.866  Euricius Cordus, a professor of medicine at Marburg, addressed, in a Latin poem, "the penetrating Luther, the gentle Oecolampadius, the magnanimous Zwingli, the eloquent Melanchthon, the pious Schnepf, the brave Bucer, the true-hearted Hedio," and all other divines who were assembled in Marburg, with an appeal to heal the schism. "The church," he says, "falls weeping at your feet, and begs you, by the mercies of Christ, to consider the question with pure zeal for the welfare of believers, and to bring about a conclusion of which the world may say that it proceeded from the Holy Spirit." Very touching is the prayer with which Zwingli entered upon the conference: "Fill us, O Lord and Father of us all, we beseech Thee, with thy gentle Spirit, and dispel on both sides all the clouds of misunderstanding and passion. Make an end to the strife of blind fury. Arise, O Christ, Thou Sun of righteousness, and shine upon us. Alas! while we contend, we only too often forget to strive after holiness which Thou requirest from us all. Guard us against abusing our powers, and enable us to employ them with all earnestness for the promotion of holiness."

§ 108. The Marburg Conference continued. Discussion and Result.

The work of the Conference began on Friday, the 1st of October, with divine service in the chapel of the castle. Zwingli preached on the providence of God, which he afterwards elaborated into an important treatise, "De Providentia." It was intended for scholars rather than the people; and Luther found fault with the introduction of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words into the pulpit. Luther, Bucer, and Osiander preached the morning sermons on the following days; Luther, on his favorite doctrine of justification by faith.

The Landgrave first arranged a private interview between the lions and the lambs; that is, between Luther and Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Melanchthon. The two pairs met after divine service, in separate chambers, and conferred for several hours. The Wittenberg Reformers catechised the Swiss about their views on the Trinity, original sin, and baptism, and were in a measure relieved of their suspicion that they entertained unsound views on these topics. Melanchthon had, a few months before the Conference, written a very respectful letter to Oecolampadius (April 8, 1529), in which he regrets that the "horribilis dissensio de coena Domini" interfered with the enjoyment of their literary and Christian friendship, and states his own view of the eucharist very moderately and clearly to the effect that it was a communion with the present Christ rather than a commemoration of the absent Christ.867   In the private conference with Zwingli, against whom he was strongly prejudiced, he is reported to have yielded the main point of dispute, as regards the literal interpretation of "This is my body," and the literal handing of Christ’s body to his disciples, but added that he gave it to them "in a certain mysterious manner."868  When Zwingli urged the ascension as an argument against the local presence, Melanchthon said, "Christ has ascended indeed, but in order to fill all things" (Eph. 4:10)." Truly," replied Zwingli, "with his power and might, but not with his body." During the open debate on the following days, Melanchthon observed a significant silence, though twice asked by Luther to come to his aid when he felt exhausted.869  He made only a few remarks. He was, however, at that time, of one mind with Luther, and entirely under his power. He was as strongly opposed to an alliance with the Swiss and Strass-burgers, influenced in part by political motives, being anxious to secure, if possible, the favor of Charles and Ferdinand.870

Luther must have handled Oecolampadius more severely; for the latter, in coming from the conference room, whispered to Zwingli, "I am again in the hands of Dr. Eck" (as at the colloquy in Baden in 1526).

The general discussion took place on Saturday, the 2d of October, in a large hall (which cannot now be identified with certainty).871  The Landgrave in plain dress appeared with his court as an eager listener, but not as an arbitrator, and was seated at a separate table. The official attendants on the Lutheran side were Luther (dressed as an Electoral courtier) and Melanchthon, behind them Jonas and Cruciger of Witten-berg, Myconius of Gotha, Osiander of Nuernberg, Stephen Agricola of Augsburg, Brentius of Hall in Swabia; on the Reformed side Zwingli and Oecolampadius, and behind them Bucer and Hedio of Strassburg: all men of eminent talent, learning, and piety, and in the prime of manhood and usefulness. Luther and Zwingli were forty-six, Oecolampadius forty-seven, Bucer thirty-eight, Hedio thirty-five, Melanchthon thirty-two, the Landgrave only twenty-five years of age. Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, as the chief disputants, sat at a separate table, facing each other.

Besides these representative theologians there were a number of invited guests, princes (including the exiled Duke Ulrich of Wuerttemberg), noblemen, and scholars (among them Lambert of Avignon). Zwingli speaks of twenty-four, Brentius of fifty to sixty, hearers. Poor Carlstadt, who was then wandering about in Friesland, and forced to sell his Hebrew Bible for bread, had asked for an invitation, but was refused. Many others applied for admission, but were disappointed.872  Zwingli advocated the greatest publicity and the employment of a recording secretary, but both requests were declined by Luther. Even the hearers were not allowed to make verbatim reports. Zwingli, who could not expect the Germans to understand his Swiss dialect, desired the colloquy to be conducted in Latin, which would have placed him on an equality with Luther; but it was decided to use the German language in deference to the audience.

John Feige, the chancellor of the Landgrave, exhorted the theologians in an introductory address to seek only the glory of Christ and the restoration of peace and union to the church.

The debate was chiefly exegetical, but brought out no new argument. It was simply a recapitulation of the preceding controversy, with less heat and more gentlemanly courtesy. Luther took his stand on the words of institution in their literal sense: "This is my body;" the Swiss, on the word of Christ: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life."

Luther first rose, and declared emphatically that he would not change his opinion on the real presence in the least, but stand fast on it to the end of life. He called upon the Swiss to prove the absence of Christ, but protested at the outset against arguments derived from reason and geometry. To give pictorial emphasis to his declaration, he wrote with a piece of chalk on the table in large characters the words of institution, with which he was determined to stand or fall: "Hoc est corpus Meum."

Oecolampadius in reply said he would abstain from philosophical arguments, and appeal to the Scriptures. He quoted several passages which have an obviously figurative meaning, but especially John 6:63, which in his judgment furnishes the key for the interpretation of the words of institution, and excludes a literal understanding. He employed this syllogism: Christ cannot contradict himself; he said, "The flesh profiteth nothing," and thereby rejected the oral manducation of his body; therefore he cannot mean such a manducation in the Lord’s Supper.

Luther denied the second proposition, and asserted that Christ did not reject oral, but only material manducation, like that of the flesh of oxen or of swine. I mean a sublime spiritual fruition, yet with the mouth. To the objection that bodily eating was useless if we have the spiritual eating, he replied, If God should order me to eat crab-apples or dung, I would do it, being assured that it would he salutary. We must here close the eyes.

Here Zwingli interposed: God does not ask us to eat crab-apples, or to do any thing unreasonable. We cannot admit two kinds of corporal manducation; Christ uses the same word "to eat," which is either spiritual or corporal. You admit that the spiritual eating alone gives comfort to the soul. If this is the chief thing, let us not quarrel about the other. He then read from the Greek Testament which he had copied with his own hand, and used for twelve years, the passage John 6:52, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" and Christ’s word, 6:63.

Luther asked him to read the text in German or Latin, not in Greek. When Christ says, "The flesh profiteth nothing," he speaks not of his flesh, but of ours.

Zwingli: The soul is fed with the spirit, not with flesh.

Luther: We eat the body with the mouth, not with the soul. If God should place rotten apples before me, I would eat them.

Zwingli: Christ’s body then would he a corporal, and not a spiritual, nourishment.

Luther: You are captious.

Zwingli: Not so; but you contradict yourself.

Zwingli quoted a number of figurative passages; but Luther always pointed his finger to the words of institution, as he had written them on the table. He denied that the discourse, John 6, had any thing to do with the Lord’s Supper.

At this point a laughable, yet characteristic incident occurred. "Beg your pardon," said Zwingli, "that passage [John 6:63] breaks your neck." Luther, understanding this literally, said, "Do not boast so much. You are in Hesse, not in Switzerland. In this country we do not break people’s necks. Spare such proud, defiant words, till you get back to your Swiss."873

Zwingli: In Switzerland also there is strict justice, and we break no man’s neck without trial. I use simply a figurative expression for a lost cause.

The Landgrave said to Luther, "You should not take offense at such common expressions." But the agitation was so great that the meeting adjourned to the banqueting hall.

The discussion was resumed in the afternoon, and turned on the christological question. I believe, said Luther, that Christ is in heaven, but also in the sacrament, as substantially as he was in the Virgin’s womb. I care not whether it be against nature and reason, provided it be not against faith.

Oecolampadius: You deny the metaphor in the words of institution, but you must admit a synecdoche. For Christ does not say, This is bread and my body (as you hold), but simply, This is my body.

Luther: A metaphor admits the existence of a sign only; but a synecdoche admits the thing itself, as when I say, the sword is in the scabbard, or the beer in the bottle.

Zwingli reasoned: Christ ascended to heaven, therefore he cannot be on earth with his body. A body is circumscribed, and cannot be in several places at once.

Luther: I care little about mathematics.

The contest grew hotter, without advancing, and was broken up by a call to the repast.

The next day, Sunday, Oct. 3, it was renewed.

Zwingli maintained that a body could not be in different places at once. Luther quoted the Sophists (the Schoolmen) to the effect that there are different kinds of presence. The universe is a body, and yet not in a particular place.

Zwingli: Ah, you speak of the Sophists, doctor!  Are you really obliged to return to the onions and fleshpots of Egypt?  He then cited from Augustin, who says, "Christ is everywhere present as God; but as to his body, he is in heaven."

Luther: You have Augustin and Fulgentius on your side, but we have all the other fathers. Augustin was young when he wrote the passage you quote, and he is obscure. We must believe the old teachers only so far as they agree with the Word of God.

Oecolampadius: We, too, build on the Word of God, not on the fathers; but we appeal to them to show that we teach no novelties.874

Luther, pointing again his finger to the words on the table: This is our text: you have not yet driven us from it. We care for no other proof.

Oecolampadius: If this is the case, we had better close the discussion.

The chancellor exhorted them to come to an understanding.

Luther: There is only one way to that. Let our adversaries believe as we do.

The Swiss: We cannot.

Luther: Well, then, I abandon you to God’s judgment, and pray that he will enlighten you.

Oecolampadius: We will do the same. You need it as much as we.

At this point both parties mellowed down. Luther begged pardon for his harsh words, as he was a man of flesh and blood. Zwingli begged Luther, with tearful eyes, to forgive him his harsh words, and assured him that there were no men in the world whose friendship he more desired than that of the Wittenbergers.875

Jacob Sturm and Bucer spoke in behalf of Strassburg, and vindicated their orthodoxy, which had been impeached. Luther’s reply was cold, and displeased the audience. He declared to the Strassburgers, as well as the Swiss, "Your spirit is different from ours."876

The Conference was ended. A contagious disease, called the English sweat (sudor Anglicus), which attacked its victims with fever, sweat, thirst, intense pain, and exhaustion, had suddenly broken out in Marburg as in other parts of Germany, and caused frightful ravages that filled everybody with alarm. The visitors were anxious to return home. So were the fathers of the Council of Trent, when the Elector Moritz chased the Emperor through the Tyrol; and in like manner the fathers of the Vatican Council hurried across the Alps when France declared war against Germany, and left the Vatican decrees in the hands of Italian infallibilists.

But the Landgrave once more brought the guests together at his table on Sunday night, and urged upon every one the supreme importance of coming to some understanding.

On Monday morning he arranged another private conference between the Saxon and the Swiss Reformers. They met for the last time on earth. With tears in his eyes, Zwingli approached Luther, and held out the hand of brotherhood, but Luther declined it, saying again, "Yours is a different spirit from ours." Zwingli thought that differences in non-essentials, with unity in essentials, did not forbid Christian brotherhood. "Let us," he said, "confess our union in all things in which we agree; and, as for the rest, let us remember that we are brethren. There will never be peace in the churches if we cannot bear differences on secondary points." Luther deemed the corporal presence a fundamental article, and construed Zwingli’s liberality into indifference to truth. "I am astonished," he said, "that you wish to consider me as your brother. It shows clearly that you do not attach much importance to your doctrine." Melanchthon looked upon the request of the Swiss as a strange inconsistency.877  Turning to the Swiss, the Wittenbergers said, "You do not belong to the communion of the Christian Church. We cannot acknowledge you as brethren." They were willing, however, to include them in that universal charity which we owe to our enemies.

The Swiss were ready to burst over such an insult, but controlled their temper.

On the same day Luther wrote the following characteristic letter to his wife: —

"Grace and peace in Christ. Dear Lord Keth, I do you to know that our friendly colloquy in Marburg is at an end, and that we are agreed in almost every point, except that the opposite party wants to have only bread in the Lord’s Supper, and acknowledge the spiritual presence of Christ in the same. To-day the Landgrave wants us to come to an agreement, and, if not, to acknowledge each other as brethren and members of Christ. He labors very zealousy for this end. But we want no brothership and membership, only peace and good-will. I suppose to-morrow or day after to-morrow we shall break up, and proceed to Schleitz in the Voigtland whither his Electoral Grace has ordered us.

"Tell Herr Pommer [Bugenhagen] that the best argument of Zwingli was that corpus non potest esse sine loco: ergo Christi corpus non est in pane. Of Oecolampadius: This sacramentum est signum corporis Christi. I think God has blinded their eyes.

"I am very busy, and the messenger is in a hurry. Give to all a good night, and pray for us. We are all fresh and hale, and live like princes. Kiss for me little Lena and little Hans (Lensgen und Hänsgen).

"Your obedient servant,

"M. L."

"P. S.—John Brenz, Andrew Osiander, Doctor Stephen [Agricola] of Augsburg are also here.

"People are crazy with the fright of the sweating plague. Yesterday about fifty took sick, and two died."878

At last Luther yielded to the request of the Landgrave and the Swiss, retired to his closet, and drew up a common confession in the German language. It consists of fifteen articles expressing the evangelical doctrines on the Trinity, the person of Christ, his death and resurrection, original sin, justification by faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the sacraments.

The two parties agreed on fourteen articles, and even in the more important part of the fifteenth article which treats of the Lord’s Supper as follows: —

We all believe, with regard to the Supper of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, that it ought to be celebrated in both kinds, according to the institution of Christ; that the mass is not a work by which a Christian obtains pardon for another man, whether dead or alive; that the sacrament of the altar is the sacrament of the very body and very blood of Jesus Christ; and that the spiritual manducation of this body and blood is specially necessary to every true Christian. In like manner, as to the use of the sacrament, we are agreed that, like the word, it was ordained of Almighty God, in order that weak consciences might be excited by the Holy Ghost to faith and charity.

"And although at present we are not agreed on the question whether the real body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine, yet both parties shall cherish Christian charity for one another, so far as the conscience of each will permit; and both parties will earnestly implore Almighty God to strengthen us by his Spirit in the true understanding. Amen."879

The Landgrave urged the insertion that each party should show Christian charity to the other. The Lutherans assented to this only on condition that the clause be added: "as far as the conscience of each will permit."

The articles were read, considered, and signed on the same day by Luther, Melanchthon, Osiander, Agricola, Brentius, on the part of the Lutherans; and by Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer, and Hedio, on the part of the Reformed. They were printed on the next day, and widely circulated.880

On the fifth day of October, in the afternoon, the guests took leave of each other with a shake of hands. It was not the hand of brotherhood, but only of friendship, and not very cordial on the part of the Lutherans. The Landgrave left Marburg on the same day, early in the morning, with a painful feeling of disappointment.

Luther returned to Wittenberg by way of Schleitz, where he met the Elector John by appointment, and revised the Marburg Articles so as to adapt them to his creed, and so far to weaken the consensus.

Both parties claimed the victory. Zwingli complained in a letter to Vadian of the overbearing and contumacious spirit of Luther, and thought that the truth (i.e., his view of it) had prevailed, and that Luther was vanquished before all the world after proclaiming himself invincible. He rejoiced in the agreement which must destroy the hope of the papists that Luther would return to them.

Luther, on the other hand, thought that the Swiss had come over to him half way, that they had humbled themselves, and begged his friendship. "There is no brotherly unity among us," he said in the pulpit of Wittenberg after his return from Mar-burg, "but a good friendly concord; they seek from us what they need, and we will help them."

Nearly all the contemporary reports describe the Conference as having been much more friendly and respectful than was expected from the preceding controversy. The speakers addressed each other as "Liebster Herr," "Euer Liebden," and abstained from terms of opprobrium. The Devil was happily ignored in the interviews; no heresy was charged, no anathema hurled. Luther found that the Swiss were not such bad people as he had imagined, and said even in a letter to Bullinger (1538), that Zwingli impressed him at Marburg as "a very good man" (optimus vir). Brentius, as an eye-witness, reports that Luther and Zwingli appeared as if they were brothers. Jonas described the Reformed leaders during the Conference as follows:881 "Zwingli has a certain rusticity and a little arrogance.882  In Oecolampadius there is an admirable good-nature and clemency.883  Hedio has no less humanity and liberality of spirit; but Bucer possesses the cunning of a fox,884 that knows how to give himself the air of acumen and prudence. They are all learned men, no doubt, and more formidable opponents than the papists; but Zwingli seems well versed in letters, in spite of Minerva and the Muses." He adds that the Landgrave was the most attentive hearer.

The laymen who attended the Conference seem to have been convinced by the Swiss arguments. The Landgrave declared that he would now believe the simple words of Christ, rather than the subtle interpretations of men. He desired Zwingli to remove to Marburg, and take charge of the ecclesiastical organization of Hesse. Shortly before his death he confessed that Zwingli had convinced him at Marburg. But more important is the conversion of Lambert of Avignon, who had heretofore been a Lutheran, but could not resist the force of the arguments on the other side. "I had firmly resolved," he wrote to a friend soon after the Conference, "not to listen to the words of men, or to allow myself to be influenced by the favor of men, but to be like a blank paper on which the finger of God should write his truth. He wrote those doctrines on my heart which Zwingli developed out of the word of God." Even the later change of Melanchthon, who declined the brotherhood with the Swiss as strongly as Luther, may perhaps be traced to impressions which he received at Marburg.

If the leaders of the two evangelical confessions could meet to-day on earth, they would gladly shake hands of brotherhood, as they have done long since in heaven.

The Conference did not effect the desired union, and the unfortunate strife broke out again. Nevertheless, it was by no means a total failure. It prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. More than this, it served as an encouragement to peace movements of future generations.885  It produced the first formulated consensus between the two confessions in fourteen important articles, and in the better part of the fifteenth, leaving only the corporal presence and oral manducation in dispute. It was well that such a margin was left. Without liberty in non-essentials, there can never be a union among intelligent Christians. Good and holy men will always differ on the mode of the real presence, and on many other points of doctrine, as well as government and worship. The time was not ripe for evangelical catholicity; but the spirit of the document survived the controversies, and manifests itself wherever Christian hearts and minds rise above the narrow partition walls of sectarian bigotry. Uniformity, even if possible, would not be desirable. God’s ways point to unity in diversity, and diversity in unity.

It was during the fiercest dogmatic controversies and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, that a prophetic voice whispered to future generations the watchword of Christian peacemakers, which was unheeded in a century of intolerance, and forgotten in a century of indifference, but resounds with increased force in a century of revival and re-union:

"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."

NOTE

On the Origin of the Sentence: "In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis (or, dubiis) libertas, in utrisque (or, omnibus) caritas."

This famous motto of Christian Irenics, which I have slightly modified in the text, is often falsely attributed to St. Augustin (whose creed would not allow it, though his heart might have approved of it), but is of much later origin. It appears for the first time in Germany, A.D. 1627 and 1628, among peaceful divines of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and found a hearty welcome among moderate divines in England.

The authorship has recently been traced to Rupertus Meldenius, an otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of such divines as Calixtus of Helmstädt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg, John Valentin Andrew of Wuerttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of Francfort-on-the Oder, the brothers Bergius in Brandenburg, and of the indefatigable traveling evangelist of Christian union, John Dury, and Richard Baxter. The tract of Meldenius bears the title, Paraenesis votiva pro Pace Ecclesiae ad Theologos Augustanae Confessionis, Auctore Ruperto Meldenio Theologo, 62 pp. in 4to, without date and place of publication. It probably appeared in 1627 at Francfort-on-the Oder, which was at that time the seat of theological moderation. Mr. C. R Gillett (librarian of the Union Theological Seminary) informs me that the original copy, which he saw in Berlin, came from the University of Francfort-on-the Oder after its transfer to Breslau.

Dr. Luecke republished the tract, in 1850, from a reprint in Pfeiffer’s Variorum Auctorum Miscellanea Theologiae (Leipzig, 1736, pp. l36–258), as an appendix to his monograph on the subject (pp. 87–145). He afterwards compared it with a copy of the original edition in the Electoral library at Cassel. Another original copy was discovered by Dr. Klose in the city library of Hamburg (1858), and a third one by Dr. Briggs and Mr. Gillett in the royal library of Berlin (1887).

The author of this tract is an orthodox Lutheran, who was far from the idea of ecclesiastical union, but anxious for the peace of the church and zealous for practical scriptural piety in place of the dry and barren scholasticism of his time. He belongs, as Luecke says ("Stud. und Kritiken," 1851, p. 906), to the circle of "those noble, genial, and hearty evangelical divines, like John Arnd, Valentin Andrew, and others, who deeply felt the awful misery of the fatherland, and especially the inner distractions of the church in their age, but who knew also and pointed out the way of salvation and peace." He was evidently a highly cultivated scholar, at home in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and in controversial theology. He excels in taste and style the forbidding literature of his age. He condemns the pharisaical hypocrisy, the folodoxiva, filargiva, and filoneikiva of the theologians, and exhorts them first of all to humility and love. By too much controversy about the truth, we are in danger of losing the truth itself. Nimium altercando amittitur Veritas. "Many," he says, "contend for the corporal presence of Christ who have not Christ in their hearts." He sees no other way to concord than by rallying around the living Christ as the source of spiritual life. He dwells on the nature of God as love, and the prime duty of Christians to love one another, and comments on the seraphic chapter of Paul on charity (1 Cor. 13). He discusses the difference between necessaria and non-necessaria. Necessary dogmas are, (1) articles of faith necessary to salvation; (2) articles derived from clear testimonies of the Bible; (3) articles decided by the whole church in a synod or symbol; (4) articles held by all orthodox divines as necessary. Not necessary, are dogmas (1) not contained in the Bible; (2) not belonging to the common inheritance of faith; (3) not unanimously taught by theologians; (4) left doubtful by grave divines; (5) not tending to piety, charity, and edification. He concludes with a defense of John Arnd (1555–1621), the famous author of "True Christianity," against the attacks of orthodox fanatics, and with a fervent and touching prayer to Christ to come to the rescue of his troubled church (Rev. 22:17).

The golden sentence occurs in the later half of the tract (p. 128 in Luecke’s edition), incidentally and in hypothetical form, as follows: —

"Verbo dicam: Si nos servaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non-necessariis libertatem, in utrisque charitatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae."

The same sentiment, but in a shorter sententious and hortative form, occurs in a book of Gregor Frank, entitled Consideratio theologica de gradibus necessitatis dogmatumt Christianorum quibus fidei, spei et charitatis officia reguntur, Francf. ad Oderam, 1628. Frank (1585–1651) was first a Lutheran, then a Reformed theologian, and professor at Francfort. He distinguishes three kinds of dogmas: (1) dogmas necessary for salvation: the clearly revealed truths of the Bible; (2) dogmas which are derived by clear and necessary inference from the Scriptures and held by common consent of orthodox Christendom; (3) the specific and controverted dogmas of the several confessions. He concludes the discussion with this exhortation: —

"Summa est: Servemus in necessariis unitatem, in non-necessariis libertatem, in utrisque charitatem."

He adds, "Vincat veritas, vivat charitas, maneat libertas per Jesum Christum qui est veritas ipsa, charitas ipsa, libertas ipsa."

Bertheau deems it uncertain whether Meldenius or Frank was the author. But the question is decided by the express testimony of Conrad, Berg, who was a colleague of Frank in the same university between 1627 and 1628, and ascribes the sentence to Meldenius.

Fifty years later Richard Baxter, the Puritan pacificator in England, refers to the sentence, Nov. 15, 1679, in the preface to The True and Only Way of Concord of All the Christian Churches, London, 1680, in a slightly different form: "I once more repeat to you the pacificator’s old despised words, ’Si in necessariis sit [esset] unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque charitas, optimo certo loco essent res nostrae.’ "

Luecke was the first to quote this passage, but overlooked a direct reference of Baxter to Meldenius in the same tract on p. 25. This Dr. Briggs discovered, and quotes as follows: —

"Were there no more said of all this subject, but that of Rupertus Meldenius, cited by Conradus Bergius, it might end all schism if well understood and used, viz." Then follows the sentence. Baxter also refers to Meldenius on the preceding page. This strengthens the conclusion that Meldenius was the "pacificator." For we are referred here to the testimony of a contemporary of Meldenius. Samuel Werenfels, a distinguished irenical divine of Basel, likewise mentions Meldenius and Conrad Bergius together as irenical divines, and testes veritatis, and quotes several passages from the Paraenesis votiva.

Conrad Bergius (Berg), from whom Baxter derived his knowledge of the sentence, was professor in the university of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and then a preacher at Bremen. He and his brother John Berg (1587–1658), court chaplain of Brandenburg, were irenical divines of the German Reformed Church, and moderate Calvinists. John Berg attended the Leipzig Colloquy of March, 1631, where Lutheran and Reformed divines agreed on the basis of the revised Augsburg Confession of 1540 in every article of doctrine, except the corporal presence and oral manducation. The colloquy was in advance of the spirit of the age, and had no permanent effect. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 558 sqq., and Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesiis Reformatis publicatarum, p. LXXV. and 653–668.

Dr. Briggs has investigated the writings of Conrad Bergius and his associates in the royal library of Berlin. In his "Praxis Catholica divini canonis contra quasvis haereses et schismata," etc., which appeared at Bremen in 1639, Bergius concludes with the classical word of "Rupertus Meldenius Theologus," and a brief comment on it. This is quoted by Baxter in the form just given. In the autumn of 1627 Bergius preached two discourses at Frankfurt on the subject of Christian union, which accord with the sentence, and appeared in 1628 with the consent of the theological faculty. They were afterwards incorporated in his Praxis Catholica. He was thoroughly at home in the polemics and irenics of his age, and can be relied on as to the authorship of the sentence.

But who was Meldenius?  This is still an unsolved question. Possibly he took his name from Melden, a little village on the borders of Bohemia and Silesia. His voice was drowned, and his name forgotten, for two centuries, but is now again heard with increased force. I subscribe to the concluding words of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Briggs: "Like a mountain stream that disappears at times under the rocks of its bed, and re-appears deeper down in the valley, so these long-buried principles of peace have reappeared after two centuries of oblivion, and these irenical theologians will be honored by those who live in a better age of the world, when Protestant irenics have well-nigh displaced the old Protestant polemics and scholastics."

The origin of the sentence was first discussed by a Dutch divine, Dr. Van der Hoeven of Amsterdam, in 1847; then by Dr. Luecke of Göttingen, Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die ursprungliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenspruchs ’In necessariis unitas,’ etc., Göttingen, 1850 (XXII. and 146 pages); with supplementary remarks in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1851, p. 905–938. Luecke first proved the authorship of Meldenius. The next steps were taken by Dr. Klose, in the first edition of Herzog’s "Theol. Encycl," sub Meltlenius, vol. IX. (1858), p. 304 sq., and by Dr. Carl Bertheau, in the second edition of Herzog, IX. (1881), p. 528–530. Dr. Brigas has furnished additional information in two articles in the "Presbyterian Review," vol. VIII., New York, 1857, pp. 496–499, and 743–746.

§ 109. Luther’s Last Attack on the Sacramentarians. His Relation to Calvin.

We anticipate the concluding act of the sad controversy of Luther with his Protestant opponents. It is all the more painful, since Zwingli and Oecolampadius were then sleeping in the grave; but it belongs to a full knowledge of the great Reformer.

The Marburg Conference did not really reconcile the parties, or advance the question in dispute; but the conflict subsided for a season, and was thrown into the background by other events. The persistent efforts of Bucer and Hedio to bring about a reconciliation between Wittenberg and Zuerich soothed Luther, and excited in him the hope that the Swiss would give up their heresy, as he regarded it. But in this hope he was disappointed. The Swiss could not accept the "Wittenberg Concordia" of 1536, because it was essentially Lutheran in the assertion of the corporal presence and oral manducation.

A year and a half before his death, Luther broke out afresh, to the grief of Melanchthon and other friends, in a most violent attack on the Sacramentarians, the "Short Confession on the Holy Sacrament" (1544).886   It was occasioned by Schwenkfeld,887 and by the rumor that Luther had changed his view, because he had abolished the elevation and adoration of the host.888  Moreover he learned that Dévay, his former student, and inmate of his house, smuggled the sacramenta-rian doctrine under Luther’s name into Hungary.889  He was also displeased with the reformation program of Bucer and Melanchthon for the diocese of Cologne (1543), because it stated the doctrine of the eucharist without the specific Lutheran features, so that he feared it would give aid and comfort to the Sacramentarians.890  These provocations and vexations, in connection with sickness and old age, combined to increase his irritability, and to sour his temper. They must be taken into account for all understanding of his last document on the eucharist. It is the severest of all, and forms a parallel to his last work against the papacy, of the same year, which surpasses in violence all he ever wrote against the Romish Antichrist.891

The "Short Confession" contains no argument, but the strongest possible reaffirmation of his faith in the real pres-ence, and a declaration of his total and final separation from the Sacramentarians and their doctrine, with some concluding remarks on the elevation of the sacrament. Standing on the brink of the grave, and in view of the judgment-seat, he solemnly condemns all enemies of the sacraments wherever they are.892  "Much rather," he says, "would I be torn to pieces, and burnt a hundred times, than be of one mind and will with Stenkefeld [Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, Oecolampad, and all the rest of the Schwärmer, or tolerate their doctrine." He overwhelms them with terms of opprobrium, and coins new ones which cannot be translated into decent English. He calls them heretics, hypocrites, liars, blasphemers, soul-murderers, sinners unto death, bedeviled all over.893  He ceased to pray for them, and left them to their fate. At one time he had expressed some regard for Oecolampadius,894 and even for Zwingli, and sincere grief at his tragic death.895  But in this last book he repeatedly refers to his death as a terrible judgment of God, and doubts whether he was saved.896  He was horrified at Zwingli’s belief in the salvation of the pious heathen, which he learned from his last exposition of the Christian faith, addressed to the king of France. "If such godless heathen," he says, "as Socrates, Aristides, yea, even the horrible Numa who introduced all kinds of idolatry in Rome897 (as St. Augustin writes), were saved, there is no need of God, Christ, gospel, Scriptures, baptism, sacrament, or Christian faith." He thinks that Zwingli either played the hypocrite when he professed so many Christian articles at Marburg, or fell away, and has become worse than a heathen, and ten times worse than he was as a papist.

This attitude Luther retained to the end. It is difficult to say whom he hated most, the papists or the Sacramentarians. On the subject of the real presence he was much farther removed from the latter. He remarks once that he would rather drink blood alone with the papists than wine alone with the Zwinglians. A few days before his death, he wrote to his friend, Pastor Probst in Bremen: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the Sacramentarians, nor standeth in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sitteth in the seat of the Zurichers."898  Thus he turned the blessing of the first Psalm into a curse, in accordance with his growing habit of cursing the pope and the devil when praying to God. He repeatedly speaks of this habit, especially in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and justifies it as a part of his piety.899

It is befitting that with this last word against the Sacramentarians should coincide in time and spirit his last and most violent attack upon the divine gift of reason, which he had himself so often and so effectually used as his best weapon, next to the Word of God. On Jan. 17, 1546, he ascended the pulpit of Wittenberg for the last time, and denounced reason as the damned whore of the Devil." The fanatics and Sacramentarians boast of it when they ask: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"  Hear ye the Son of God who says: "This is my body," and crush the serpent beneath your feet.900

Six days later Luther left the city of his public labors for the city of his birth, and died in peace at Eisleben, Feb. 18. 1546, holding fast to his faith, and commending his soul to his God and Redeemer.

In view of these last utterances we must, reluctantly, refuse credit to the story that Luther before his death remarked to Melanchthon: "Dear Philip, I confess that the matter of the Lord’s Supper has been overdone;"901 and that, on being asked to correct the evil, and to restore peace to the church, he replied: "I often thought of it; but then people might lose confidence in my whole doctrine. I leave the matter in the hands of the Lord. Do what you can after my death."902

But it is gratifying to know that Luther never said one unkind word of Calvin, who was twenty-five years younger. He never saw him, but read some of his books, and heard of him through Melanchthon. In a letter to Bucer, dated Oct. 14, 1539, he sent his respectful salutations to John Sturm and John Calvin, who lived at that time in Strassburg, and added that he had read their books with singular delight. This includes his masterly answer to the letter of Bishop Sadolet (1539).903  Melanchthon sent salutations from Luther and Bugenhagen to Calvin, and informed him that he was in high favor with Luther,"904 notwithstanding the difference of views on the real presence, and that Luther hoped for better opinions, but was willing to bear something from such a good man.905  Calvin had expressed his views on the Lord’s Supper in the first edition of his Institutes, which appeared in 1536,906 incidentally also in his answer to Sadolet, which Luther read "with delight,"907 and more fully in a special treatise, De Coena Domini, which was published in French at Strassburg, 1541, and then in Latin, 1545.908  Luther must have known these views. He is reported to have seen a copy of Calvin’s tract on the eucharist in a bookstore at Wittenberg, and, after reading it, made the remark: "The author is certainly a learned and pious man: if Zwingli and Oecolampadius had from the start declared themselves in this way, there would probably not have arisen such a controversy."909

Calvin returned Luther’s greetings through Melanchthon, and sent him two pamphlets with a letter, dated Jan. 21, 1545, addressing him as "my much respected father," and requesting him to solve the scruples of some converted French refugees. he expresses the wish that "he might enjoy for a few hours the happiness of his society," though this was impossible on earth.

Melanchthon, fearing a renewal of the eucharistic controversy, had not the courage to deliver this letter—the only one of Calvin to Luther—"because," he says, "Doctor Martin is suspicious, and dislikes to answer such questions as were proposed to him."910

Calvin regretted "the vehemence of Luther’s natural temperament, which was so apt to boil over in every direction," and to "flash his lightning sometimes also upon the servants of the Lord;" but he always put him above Zwingli, and exhorted the Zurichers to moderation. When he heard of the last attack of Luther, he wrote a noble letter to Bullinger, Nov. 25, 1544, in which he says:911 —

"I hear that Luther has at length broken forth in fierce invective, not so much against you as against the whole of us. On the present occasion, I dare scarce venture to ask you to keep silence, because it is neither just that innocent persons should thus be harassed, nor that they should be denied the opportunity of clearing themselves; neither, on the other hand, is it easy to determine whether it would be prudent for them to do so. But of this I do earnestly desire to put you in mind, in the first place, that you would consider how eminent a man Luther is, and his excellent endow-ments, with what strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill, with what efficiency and power of doctrinal statement, he hath hither-to devoted his whole energy to overthrow the reign of Antichrist, and at the same time to diffuse far and near the doctrine of salvation. Often have I been wont to declare, that even although he were to call me a devil, I should still not the less esteem and acknowledge him as an illustrious servant of God.912 ... This, therefore, I would beseech you to consider first of all, along with your colleagues, that you have to do with a most distin-guished servant of Christ, to whom we are all of us largely indebted. That, besides, you will do yourselves no good by quarreling, except that you may afford some sport to the wicked, so that they may triumph not so much over us as over the gospel. If they see us rending each other asunder, they then give full credit to what we say, but when with one consent and with one voice we preach Christ, they avail themselves unwarrantably of our inherent weakness to cast reproach upon our faith. I wish, therefore, that you would consider and reflect on these things, rather than on what Luther has deserved by his violence; lest that may happen to you which Paul threatens, that by biting and devouring one another, ye be consumed one of another. Even should he have provoked us, we ought rather to decline the contest than to increase the wound by the general shipwreck of the church."

This is the wisest Christian answer from Geneva to the thunderbolts of Wittenberg.

§ 110. Reflections on the Ethics of the Eucharistic Controversy.

Dogmatics and ethics, faith and conduct, should agree like the teaching and example of Christ from which they are to be drawn. But, in practice, they often conflict. History shows us many examples of ungodly champions of orthodoxy and godly champions of heterodoxy, of unholy churchmen and holy dissenters. The angel of Ephesus is commended for zeal against false apostles, and censured for leaving the first love; while the angel of Thyatira is praised for his good works, and reproved for tolerating error. Some are worse than their belief, and others are better than their misbelief or unbelief.

Luther and Zwingli are by no means opposed to each other as orthodox and heretic; they were essentially agreed in all fundamental articles of the evangelical faith, as the Marburg Conference proved. The difference between them is only a little more Catholic orthodoxy and intolerance in Luther, and a little more Christian charity and liberality in Zwingli. This difference is characteristic of the Reformers and of the denominations which they represent.

Luther had a sense of superiority, and claimed the credit of having begun the work of the Reformation. He supposed that the Swiss were indebted to him for what little knowledge they had of the gospel; while, in fact, they were as independent of him as the Swiss Republic was of the German Empire, and knew the gospel as well as he.913

But it would be great injustice to attribute his conduct to obstinacy and pride, or any selfish motive. It proceeded from his inmost conviction. He regarded the real presence as a fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with the incarnation, the union of the two natures of Christ, and the mystical union of believers with his divine-human personality. He feared that the denial of this article would consistently lead to the rejection of all mysteries, and of Christianity itself. He deemed it, moreover, most dangerous and horrible to depart from what had been the consensus of the Christian Church for so many centuries. His piety was deeply rooted in the historic Catholic faith, and it cost him a great struggle to break loose from popery. In the progress of the eucharistic controversy, all his Catholic instincts and abhorrence of heresy were aroused and intensified. In his zeal he could not do justice to his opponents, or appreciate their position. His sentiments are shared by millions of pious and devout Lutherans to this day, whose conscience forbids them to commune with Christians of Reformed churches.914  We may lament their narrowness, but must.respect their conviction, as we do the conviction of the far larger number of Roman Catholics, who devoutly believe in the miracle of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass.

In addition to Luther’s dogmatic standpoint we must take into account his ignorance of the true character of the Swiss, and their real doctrine. He had hardly heard of the Swiss Reformation when the controversy began. He did not even spell Zwingli’s name correctly (he always calls him "Zwingel"), and could not easily understand his Swiss dialect.915  He made a radical mistake by confounding him with Carlstadt and the fanatics. He charged him with reducing the Lord’s Supper to a common meal, and bread and wine to empty signs; and, although he found out his mistake at Marburg, he returned to it again in his last book, adding the additional charge of hypocrisy or apostasy. He treated him as a heathen, yea, worse than a heathen, as he treated Erasmus.

Zwingli was clear-headed, self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures from Rome), and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted in the mediaeval faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break off from the old church; he was a man of reflection rather than of intuition, and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent. Nevertheless, he was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as firmly, as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful, devoted, and active in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism than the Lutheran, in part for the very reason that they allow reason its legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in the salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he doubted the absolute necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very strongly asserted, but simply because he extended this grace beyond the boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace; and on this point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in genius, and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality, and courtesy; and in these qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has the sympathies of the best modern culture.

Making every allowance for Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the misunderstanding of his opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics, especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration for it from the imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke the truth in hatred and wrath, not in love.

This betrays an organic defect in his reformation; namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics over ethics, and a want of discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated leaving Wittenberg as a veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of morals, according to his own testimony, in the very centre of his influence.916  It required a second reformation, and such men as Arnd, Andreae, Spener. and Franke, to supplement the one-sided Lutheran orthodoxy by practical piety. Calvin, on the other hand, left at his death the church of Geneva in such a flourishing condition that John Knox pronounced it the best school of Christ since the days of the Apostles, and that sixty years later John Valentin Andreae, one of the noblest and purest Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century, from personal observation held it up to the Lutheran Church as a model for imitation.

Luther’s polemics had a bad effect on the Lutheran Church. He set in motion that theological fury which raged for several generations after his death, and persecuted some of the best men in it, from Melanchthon down to Spener.

His blind followers, in their controversies among themselves and with the Reformed, imitated his faults, without his genius and originality; and in their zeal for what they regarded the pure doctrine, they forgot the common duties of courtesy and kindness which we owe even to an enemy.917

We may quote here a well-considered judgment of Dr. Dorner, one of the ablest and profoundest evangelical divines of Germany, who says in a confidential letter to his lifelong friend, Bishop Martensen of Denmark, —

"I am more and more convinced that the deepest defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore has been a lack of the full appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This becomes manifest so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is lacking the tenderness of conscience and thorough moral culture which deals conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith is made to cover, in advance, all sins, even the future ones; and this is only another form of indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at the principle, to an establishment of ethics on the deepest foundation. But many treat justification, not only as the begin-ning, but also as the goal. Hence we see not seldom the justified and the old man side by side, and the old man is not a bit changed. Lutherans who show in their literary and social conduct the stamp of the old Adam would deal more strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from grace by such conduct, if they had a keener conscience, and could see the neces-sary requirements of the principle of justification; for then they would shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine of justification is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep, instead of quickening it."918

Zwingli’s conduct towards Luther, judged from the ethical point of view, is much more gentlemanly and Christian, though by no means perfect. He, too, misunderstood and misrepresented Luther when he charged him with teaching a local presence and a carnal eating of Christ’s body. He, too, knew how to be severe, and to use the rapier and the knife against the club and sledge-hammer of the Wittenberg Reformer. But he never forgot, even in the heat of controversy, the great services of Luther, and more than once paid him the tribute of sincere admiration.

"For a thousand years," says Zwingli, "no mightier investigator of the Holy Scriptures has appeared than Luther. No one has equaled him in manly and immovable courage with which he attacked popery. But whose work is it?  God’s, or Luther’s?  Ask Luther himself, and he will say God’s. He traces his doctrine to God and his eternal Word. As far as I have read his writings (although I have often purposely abstained from doing so), I find them well founded in the Scriptures: his only weak point is, that he yields too much to the Romanists in the matter of the sacraments, and the confession to the priest, and in tolerating the images in the churches. If he is sharp and racy in speech, it comes from a pious, honest heart, and a flaming love for the truth .... Others have come to know the true religion, but no one has ventured to attack the Goliath with his formidable armor; but Luther alone, as a true David, anointed by God, hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skillfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Therefore let us never cease to sing with joy: ’Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’ (1 Sam. 18:7). He was the Hercules who slew the Roman boar .... I have always been grateful to my teachers, how much more to that excellent man whom I can never expect to equal in honor and merit!  With no men on earth would I rather he agreed than with the Wittenbergers .... Many have found the true religion before Luther became famous; I have learnt the gospel from the same fountain of the Scriptures, and began to preach it in 1516 (at Einsiedeln), when I diligently studied and copied with mine own hand the Greek epistles of Paul,919  before I heard the name of Luther. He preaches Christ, so do I, thanks to God. And I will be called by no other name than that of my Captain Christ, whose soldiers we are."920

I may add here the impartial testimony of Dr. Köstlin, the best biographer of Luther, and himself a Lutheran: —

"Zwingli knew how to keep himself under control. Even where he is indignant, and intentionally sharp and pointed, he avoids the tone of passionate excitement, and uses the calm and urbane language of a gentleman of humanistic culture, and thereby proves his superiority over his opponent, without justifying the suspicion of Luther that he was uncertain in his own mind, and that the attitude he assumed was only a feint. His polemics forms thus the complete opposite to Luther’s book, ’That the words of Christ,’ etc. Yet it presents also another aspect. Zwingli characterizes, with select words of disregard, the writers and contents of the Syngramma, to which Luther had given his assent, and clearly hints at Luther’s wrath, spite, jealousy, audacity, and other faults poorly concealed under the cover of bravery, constancy, etc.; yea, here and there he calls his arguments ’childish’ and ’fantastic,’ etc. Hence his new writings were by no means so ’friendly’ as the title indicates. What is more important, we miss in them a sense for the deeper, truly religious motives of Luther, as much as we miss in Luther an appreciation of like motives in Zwingli .... He sees in Luther obstinate blindness, while Luther discovered in him a devilish spirit."921

§ 111. The Eucharistic Theories compared. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin.

We now present, for the sake of clearness, though at the risk of some repetition, the three Protestant theories on the real presence, with the chief arguments.

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin agree, negatively, in opposition to the dogma of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity; positively, in these essential points: the divine institution and perpetuity of the Lord’s Supper, the spiritual presence of Christ, the commemorative character of the ordinance as the celebration of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, its importance as the highest act of worship and communion with Christ, and its special blessing to all who worthily partake of it.

They differ on three points,—the mode of Christ’s presence (whether corporal, or spiritual); the organ of receiving his body and blood (whether by the mouth, or by faith); and the extent of this reception (whether by all, or only by believers). The last point has no practical religious value, though it follows from the first, and stands or falls with it. The difference is logical rather than religious. The Lord’s Supper was never intended for unbelievers. Paul in speaking of "unworthily" receiving the sacrament (1 Cor. 11:27) does not mean theoretical unbelief, but moral unworthiness, irreverence of spirit and manner.

I. The Lutheran Theory teaches a real and substantial presence of the very body and blood of Christ, which was born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered on the cross, in, with, and under (in, sub, cum) the elements of bread and wine, and the oral manducation of both substances by all commun-icants, unworthy and unbelieving, as well as worthy and believing, though with opposite effects. The simultaneous co-existence or conjunction of the two substances is not a local inclusion of one substance in the other (impanation), nor a mixture or fusing-together of the two substances into one; nor is it permanent, but ceases with the sacramental action. It is described as a sacramental, supernatural, incomprehensible union.922  The earthly elements remain unchanged and distinct in their substance and power, but they become the divinely appointed media for communicating the heavenly substance of the body and blood of Christ. They become so, not by priestly consecration, as in the doctrine of trans-substantiation, but by the power and Word of God. The eating of the body is by the mouth, indeed, yet is not Caper-naitic, and differs from the eating of ordinary food.923  The object and use of the Lord’s Supper is chiefly the assurance of the forgiveness of sins, to the comfort of the believer.924 This is the scholastic statement of the doctrine, as given by the framers of the Formula Concordiae, and the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century.

The confessional deliverances of the Lutheran Church on the Lord’s Supper are as follows: —

the augsburg confession of 1530.

"ART. X. Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the [true] body and blood of Christ925 are truly present [under the form of bread and wine],926 and are [there]927 communicated to [and received by]928 those that eat929 in the Lord’s Supper. And they disapprove of those that teach otherwise."930

the altered augsburg confession of 1540.

Concerning the Supper of the Lord they teach that with bread and wine are truly exhibited931 the body and blood of Christ to those that eat in the Lord’s Supper.932

articles of smalkald (by luther), 1537.

"Of this Sacrament of the Altar, we hold that the bread and wine in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ, and are given to, and re-ceived by, not only the pious, but also to and by the impious Christians."

In the same articles Luther denounces transubstantiation as a "subtle sophistry (subtilitas sophistica)," and the Romish mass as "the greatest and most terrible abomination (maxima et horrenda abominatio)." Pars III., Art. VI., in Mueller’s ed., pp. 301, 320.

formula of concord (1577). epitome, art. vii. affirmative.

"I. We believe, teach, and confess that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and that they are truly distributed and taken together with the bread and wine.

"II. We believe, teach, and confess that the words of the Testament of Christ are not to be understood otherwise than as the words themselves literally sound, so that the bread does not signify the absent body of Christ, and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that on account of the sacra-mental union the bread and wine are truly the body and blood of Christ.

"III. Moreover, as concerns the consecration, we believe, teach, and confess that no human work, nor any utterance of the minister of the Church, is the cause of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, but that this is to be attributed to the omnipotent power of our Lord Jesus Christ alone.

"IV. Nevertheless, we believe, teach, and confess, by unanimous con-sent, that in the use of the Lord’s Supper the words of the institution of Christ are by no means to be omitted, but are to be publicly recited, as it is written (1 Cor. 10:16), ’The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?’ etc. And this benediction takes place by the recitation of the words of Christ.

"V. Now the foundations on which we rest in this controversy with the Sacramentarians are the following, which, moreover, Dr. Luther has laid down in his Larger Confession concerning the Supper of the Lord: —

"The first foundation is an article of our Christian faith, to wit: Jesus Christ is true, essential, natural, perfect God and man in unity of person, inseparable and undivided.

"Secondly: That the right hand of God is everywhere; and that Christ, in respect of his humanity, is truly and in very deed seated thereat, and therefore as present governs, and has in his hand and under his feet, as the Scripture saith (Eph. 1:22), all things which are in heaven and on earth. At this right hand of God no other man, nor even any angel, but the Son of Mary alone, is seated, whence also he is able to effect those things which we have said.

"Thirdly: That the Word of God is not false or deceiving.

"Fourthly: That God knows and has in his power various modes of being in any place, and is not confined to that single one which philosophers are wont to call local or circumscribed.

"VI. We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are taken with the bread and wine, not only spiritually through faith, but also by the mouth, nevertheless not Capernaitically, but after a spiritual and heavenly manner, by reason of the sacramental union. For to this the words of Christ clearly bear witness, in which he enjoins us to take, to eat to drink; and that this was done by the Apostles the Scripture makes mention, saying (Mark 14:23), ’And they all drank of it.’  And Paul says, ’The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ;’ that is, he that eats this bread eats the body of Christ.

"To the same, with great consent, do the chief of the most ancient doctors of the church—Chrysostom, Cyprian, Leo the First, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustin—bear witness.

"VII. We believe, teach, and confess that not only true believers in Christ, and such as worthily approach the Supper of the Lord, but also the unworthy and unbelieving receive the true body and blood of Christ; in such wise, nevertheless, that they derive thence neither consolation nor life, but rather so as that receiving turns to their judgment and condemnation, unless they be converted, and repent (1 Cor. 11:27, 29).

"For although they repel from them Christ as a Saviour, nevertheless they are compelled, though extremely unwilling, to admit him as a stem Judge. And he no less present exercises his judgment over these impenitent guests than as present he works consolation and life in the hearts of true believers and worthy guests.

"VIII. We believe, teach, and confess that there is one kind only of unworthy guests: they are those only who do not believe. Of these it is written (John 3:18), ’He that believeth not is condemned already.’  And this judgment is enhanced and aggravated by an unworthy use of the holy Supper (1 Cor. 11:29).

"IX. We believe, teach, and confess that no true believer, so long as he retains a living faith, receives the holy Supper of the Lord unto condemnation, however much weakness of faith he may labor under. For the Lord’s Supper has been chiefly instituted for the sake of the weak in faith, who nevertheless are penitent, that from it they may derive true consolation and a strengthening of their weak faith (Matt. 9:12; 11:5, 28).

We believe, teach, and confess that the whole worthiness of the guests at this heavenly Supper consists alone in the most holy obedience and most perfect merit of Christ. And this we apply to ourselves by true faith, and are rendered certain of the application of this merit, and are confirmed in our minds by the sacrament. But in no way does that worthiness depend upon our virtues, or upon our inward or outward preparations."

The three great arguments for the Lutheran theory are the words of institution taken in their literal sense, the ubiquity of Christ’s body, and the prevailing faith of the church before the Reformation.

1. As to the literal interpretation, it cannot be carried out, and is surrendered, as inconsistent with the context and the surroundings, by nearly all modern exegetes.933

2. The ubiquity of Christ’s body involves an important element of truth, but is a dogmatic hypothesis without sufficient Scripture warrant, and cannot well be reconciled with the fact of the ascension, or with the nature of a body, unless it be resolved into a mere potential or dynamic presence which makes it possible for Christ to make his divine-human power and influence felt wherever he pleases.934

The illustrations which Luther uses—as the sun shining everywhere, the voice resounding in a thousand ears and hearts, the eye seeing different objects at once—all lead to a dynamic presence, which Calvin fully admits.

3. The historic argument might prove too much (for transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass), unless we are satisfied with the substance of truth which underlies the imperfect human theories and formulas. The real presence of Christ with his people is indeed a most precious truth, which can never be surrendered. It is the very life of the church and the comfort and strength of believers from day to day. He promised the perpetual presence not only of his spirit or influence, but of his theanthropic person:, I am with you alway." It is impossible to make an abstract separation of the divine and human in the God-man. He is the Head of the church, his body, and "filleth all in all." Nor can the church give up the other important truth that Christ is the bread of life, and nourishes, in a spiritual and heavenly manner, the soul of the believer which is vitally united to him as the branch is to the vine. This truth is symbolized in the miraculous feeding of the multitude, and set forth in the mysterious discourse of the sixth chapter of John.

As far as Luther contended for these truths, he was right against the Sacramentarians, though he erred in the form of conception and statement. His view is mystical but profound; Zwingli’s view is clear but superficial. The former commends itself to devout feeling, the latter to the sober understanding and intellect.

II. The Zwinglian Theory.—The Lord’s Supper is a solemn commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, according to his own command: "Do this in remembrance of me," and the words of Paul: "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come."935  Zwingli emphasized this primitive character of the institution as a gift of God to man, in opposition to the Roman mass as a work or offering which man makes to God.936  He compares the sacrament to a wedding-ring which seals the marriage union between Christ and the believer. He denied the corporal presence, because Christ ascended to heaven, and because a body cannot be present in more than one place at once, also because two substances cannot occupy the same space at the same time; but he admitted his spiritual presence, for Christ is eternal God, and his death is forever fruitful and efficacious.937  He denied the corporal eating as Capernaitic and useless, but he admitted a spiritual participation in the crucified body and blood by faith. Christ is both "host and feast" in the holy communion.

His last word on the subject of the eucharist (in the Confession to King Francis I.) is this: —

"We believe that Christ is truly present in the Lord’s Supper; yea, that there is no communion without such presence .... We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in the communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a sacramental and spiritual manner by the religious, believing and pious heart."938

This passage comes so near the Calvinistic view that it can hardly be distinguished from it. Calvin did injustice to Zwingli, when once in a confidential letter he called his earlier eucharistic doctrine, profane."939  But Zwingli in his polemic writings laid so much stress upon the absence of Christ’s body, that the positive truth of His spiritual presence was not sufficiently emphasized. Undoubtedly the Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of the historic Christ of the past, but it is also a vital communion with the ever-living Christ who is both in heaven and in his church on earth.

Zwingli’s theory did not pass into any of the leading Reformed confessions; but it was adopted by the Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Rationalists, and obtained for a time a wide currency in all Protestant churches, even the Lutheran. But the Rationalists deny what Zwingli strongly believed, the divinity of Christ, and thus deprive the Lord’s Supper of its deeper significance and power.

III. The Calvinistic Theory.—Calvin was the greatest divine and best writer among the Reformers, and his "Institutes of the Christian Religion" have almost the same importance for Reformed theology as the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas for that of the Roman Church. He organized the ideas of the Reformation into a clear, compact system, with the freshness and depth of genius, the convincing power of logic, and a complete mastery of the Latin and French languages.940

His theory of the Lord’s Supper occupies a via media between Luther and Zwingli; he combines the realism of the one with the spiritualism of the other, and saves the substance for which Luther contended, but avoids the objectionable form. He rests on the exegesis of Zwingli. He accepts the symbolical meaning of the words of institution; he rejects the corporal presence, the oral manducation, the participation of the body and blood by unbelievers, and the ubiquity of Christ’s body. But at the same time he strongly asserts a spiritual real presence, and a spiritual real participation of Christ’s body and blood by faith. While Zwingli dwelt chiefly on the negative, he emphasizes the positive, element. While the mouth receives the visible signs of bread and wine, the soul receives by faith, and by faith alone, the things signified and sealed thereby; that is, the body and blood of Christ with the benefit of his atoning death and the virtue of his immortal life. He combines the crucified Christ with the glorified Christ, and brings the believer into contact with the whole Christ. He lays great stress on the agency of the Holy Spirit in the ordinance, which was overlooked by Luther and Zwingli, but which appears in the ancient liturgies in the invocation of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who unites in a supernatural manner what is separated in space, and conveys to the believing communicant the life-giving virtue of the flesh of Christ now glorified in heaven.941  When Calvin requires the communicant to ascend to heaven to feed on Christ there, he does, of course, not mean a locomotion, but that devotional sursum corda of the ancient liturgies, which is necessary in every act of worship, and is effected by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Calvin discussed the eucharistic question repeatedly and fully in his Institutes and in separate tracts. I select a few extracts from his Institutes (Book IV., ch. XVII. 10 sqq.), which contain his first and last thoughts on the subject.

(10) "The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporal life. For there would be no aptitude in the sign, did not our souls find their nourishment in Christ. This could not be, did not Christ truly form one with us, and refresh us by the eating of his flesh, and the drinking of his blood. But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by our feeble capacity. Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive; viz., that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space. That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals in the Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises. And truly the thing there signified he exhibits and offers to all who sit down at that spiritual feast, although it is beneficially received by believers only who receive this great benefit with true faith and heartfelt gratitude."  ...

"(18) ... Though Christ withdrew his flesh from us, and with his body ascended to heaven, he sits at the right hand of the Father; that is, he reigns in power and majesty, and the glory of the Father. This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert his energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest his presence by the exercise of his power, can always be present with his people, breathing into them his own life, can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them safe, just as if he were with them in the body, in fine, can feed them with his own body, communion with which he transfuses into them. After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.

"(19) The presence of Christ in the Supper we must hold to be such as neither affixes him to the element of bread, nor encloses him in bread, nor circumscribes him in any way (this would obviously detract from his celestial glory); and it must, moreover, be such as neither divests him of his just dimensions, nor dissevers him by differences of place, nor assigns to him a body of boundless dimensions, diffused through heaven and earth. All these things are clearly repugnant to his true human nature. Let us never allow ourselves to lose sight of the two restrictions. First, let there be nothing derogatory to the heavenly glory of Christ. This happens whenever he is brought under the corruptible elements of this world, or is affixed to any earthly creatures. Secondly, let no property be assigned to his body inconsistent with his human nature. This is done when it is either said to be infinite, or made to occupy a variety of places at the same time.

"But when these absurdities are discarded, I willingly admit any thing which helps to express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, as exhibited to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are received, not by the imagination or intellect merely, but are enjoyed in reality as the food of eternal life."

Calvin’s theory was not disapproved by Luther, who knew it, was substantially approved by Melanchthon in 1540, and adopted by all the leading Reformed Confessions of faith. We select a few specimens from one of the earliest and from the latest Calvinistic standards: —

heidelberg catechism (1563).

Question 76. What is it to eat the crucified body, and drink the shed blood, of Christ?

Answer. It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the forgiveness of sins and life eternal; but moreover also, to be so united more and more to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us, that although He is in heaven, and we on the earth, we are, nevertheless flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones, and live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul.

Q. 78. Do, then, the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ?

A. No: but as the water, in baptism, is not changed into the blood of Christ, nor becomes the washing away of sins itself, being only the divine token and assurance thereof; so also, in the Lord’s Supper, the sacred bread does not become the body of Christ itself, though agreeably to the nature and usage of sacraments it is called the body of Christ.

Q. 79. Why, then, doth Christ call the bread His body, and the cup His blood, or the New Testament in His blood; and St. Paul, the communion of the body and blood of Christ?

A. Christ speaks thus not without great cause; namely, not only to teach us thereby, that, like as bread and wine sustain this temporal life, so also His crucified body and shed blood are the true meat and drink of our souls unto life eternal; but much more, by this visible sign and pledge to assure us that we are as really partakers of His true body and blood, through the working of the Holy Ghost, as we receive by the mouth of the body these holy tokens in remembrance of Him; and that all His sufferings and obedience are as certainly our own, as if we had ourselves suffered and done all in our own persons.

westminster confession of faith (1647).

Chapter XXIX., section VII.

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to the outward senses.

westminster larger catechism (1647).

Question 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord’s Supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein?

Answer. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper; and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION BETWEEN 1526 AND 1529.

§ 112. The First Diet of Speier, and the Beginning of the Territorial System. 1526.

I. The documents in Walch, XVI. 243 sqq. Neue Sammlung der Reichsabschiede, II. 273–75. Buchholtz: Ferdinand I., Bd. III.

II. Ranke, II. 249 sqq. Janssen, III. 39 sqq. J. Ney (Prot. minister in Speier): Analekten zur Gesch. des Reichstags zu Speier im J. 1526, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.," Gotha, 1885, p. 300 sqq., and 1887, p. 300 sqq. (New Documents from the archives of Karlsruh and Würzburg). Walter Friedensburg: Der Reichstag zu Speier, 1526, im Zusammenhang der polit. und Kirchl. Entwicklung Deutschlands im Reformationszeitalter, Berlin, 1887 (xiv. and 602 pages). Previous discussions by Veesemeier and Kluckhohn (in "Hist. Zeitschrift," 1886). Friedensburg used much new material preserved in the archives of Hamburg and other cities. Charles G. Albert: The Diet of Speyer, the Rise and Necessity of Protestantism, in the "Luth. Quart. Review" (Gettysburg, Penn.), for January, 1888.

We must now consider the political situation which has in part been presupposed in previous sections.

As Protestantism advanced, the execution of the Edict of Worms became less and less practicable. This was made manifest at the imperial Diet of Speier, held in the summer of 1526 under Archduke Ferdinand, in the name of the Emperor.942  The Protestant princes dared here for the first time to profess their faith, and were greatly strengthened by the delegates of the imperial cities in which the Reformation had made great progress. The threatening invasion of the Turks, and the quarrel of the Emperor with the Pope, favored the Protestant cause, and inclined the Roman Catholic majority to forbearance.

The Diet came with the consent of Ferdinand to the unanimous conclusion, Aug. 27, that a general or national council should be convened for the settlement of the church question, and that in the mean time, in matters concerning the Edict of Worms, "every State shall so live, rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to answer before God and his imperial Majesty."943

This important action was not meant to annul the Edict of Worms, and to be a permanent law of religious liberty, which gave to each member of the Diet the right to act as he pleased.944  It was no legal basis of territorial self-government, and no law at all. It was, as indicated by the terms, only an armistice, or temporary suspension of the Edict of Worms till the meeting of a general council, and within the limits of obedience to the Catholic Emperor who had no idea of granting religious liberty, or even toleration, to Protestants.

But in its practical effect the resolution of 1526 went far beyond its intention. It was a great help to the cause of Protestantism, especially as the council which the Diet contemplated, and which the Emperor himself repeatedly urged upon the Pope, was postponed for twenty years. In the mean time the Protestant princes, notably Philip of Hesse at the Synod of Homberg (Oct. 20, 1526), and the Elector of Saxony, interpreted the decree according to their wishes, and made the best use of the temporary privilege of independent action, regardless of its limitations or the views of the Emperor. Luther himself understood the Diet of Speier as having given him a temporary acquittal of heresy.945

At all events, from this time dates the exercise of territorial sovereignty, and the establishment of separate State churches in Germany. And as that country is divided into a number of sovereign States, there are there as many Protestant church organizations as Protestant States, according to the maxim that the ruler of the territory is the ruler of religion within its bounds (cujus regio, ejus religio).

Every Protestant sovereign hereafter claimed and exercised the so-called jus reformandi religionem, and decided the church question according to his own faith and that of the majority of his subjects. Saxony, Hesse, Prussia, Anhalt, Lüneburg, East-Friesland, Schleswig-Holstein, Silesia, and the cities of Nürnberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Ulm, Strassburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, adopted the Reformation. The princes of the territories and the magistrates of the cities consulted the theologians and preachers; but the congregations had no voice, not even in the choice of their pastor, and submitted in passive obedience. The powerful house of Austria, with the Emperor, and the Dukes of Bavaria, adhered to the old faith, and hotly contested the principle of independent state action on the church question, as being contrary to all the traditions of the Empire and of the Roman Church, which is constitutionally exclusive and intolerant.

The Protestant princes and theologians were likewise intolerant, though in a less degree, and prohibited the mass and the Roman religion wherever they had the power. Each party was bent upon victory, and granted toleration only from necessity or prudence when the dissenting minority was strong enough to assert its rights. Toleration was the fruit of a bitter contest, and was at last forced upon both parties as a modus vivendi. Protestantism had to conquer the right to exist, by terrible sacrifices. The right was conceded by the Augsburg treaty of peace, 1555, and finally established by the Westphalian treaty, 1648, which first uses the term toleration in connection with religion, and remains valid to this day, in spite of the protest of the Pope. The same policy of toleration was adopted in England after the downfall of the Stuart dynasty in 1688, and included all orthodox Protestants, but excluded the Roman Catholics, who were not emancipated till 1829. In Germany, toleration was first confined to three confessions,—the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the German Reformed,—but was gradually extended to other religious communions which are independent of state support and state control.

NOTES.

toleration and freedom.

Toleration is far from religious liberty, but a step towards it. Toleration is a concession of the government on the ground of necessity or expediency, and may be withdrawn or extended. Even despotic Russia and Turkey are tolerant, the one towards Mohammedans, the other towards Christians, because they cannot help it. To kill or to exile all dissenters would be suicidal folly. But they allow no departure from the religion of the State, and no propagandism against its interests.

Religious liberty is an inviolable and inalienable right which belongs to all men, within the limits of public morals and safety. God alone is the Lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to interfere with it. The full enjoyment and public exercise of religious liberty require a peaceful separation of church and state, which makes each independent, self-governing, and self-supporting in its own sphere, and secures to the church the legal protection of the state, and to the state the moral support of the church. This is the American theory of religious freedom, as guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1787: it prevents the state from persecuting the church, and the churches from persecuting each other, and confines them to their proper moral and spiritual vocation. The American principle of the legal equality of religious confessions was proposed by the Frankfort Parliament in 1849, triumphed in the new German empire, 1870, and is making steady progress all over the civilized world. (See the author’s Church and State in the United States, N. Y., 1888.)

§ 113. The Emperor and the Pope. The Sacking of Rome, 1527.

Contemporary accounts of the sacking of Rome are collected by Carlo Milanesi: Il Sacco di Roma del MDXXVII., Florence, 1867. Alfred von Reumont: Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1870), vol. III. 194 sqq.; Comp. the liter. he gives on p. 846 sq. Ranke: bk. V. (vol. III. I sqq.). Janssen: vol. III. 124 sqq.

Charles V. neither signed nor opposed the edict of Speier. He had shortly before fallen out with Clement VII., because this Pope released King Francis I. from the hard conditions of peace imposed upon him after his defeat at Pavia, June 26, 1526, and placed himself at the head of a Franco-Italian league against the preponderance of Austria    the Holy League" of Cognac, May 22, 1526). The league of the Emperor and the Pope had brought about the Edict of Worms; the breach between the two virtually annulled it at the Diet of Speier. Had the Emperor now embraced the Protestant doctrines, he might have become the head of a German imperial state church. But all his instincts were against Protestantism.

His quarrel with the Pope was the occasion of a fearful calamity to the Eternal City. The Spanish and German troops of the Emperor, under the lead of Constable Charles de Bourbon, and the old warrior Frundsberg (both enemies of the Pope), marched to Rome with an army of twenty thousand men, and captured the city, May 6, 1527. Bourbon, the ablest general of Charles, but a traitor to his native France, was struck by a musket-ball in climbing a ladder, and fell dead in the moment of victory. The pope fled to the castle St. Angelo. The soldiers, especially the Spaniards, deprived of their captain, surpassed the barbarians of old in beastly and refined cruelty, rage and lust. For eight days they plundered the papal treasury, the churches, libraries, and palaces, to the extent of ten millions of gold; they did not spare even the tomb of St. Peter and the corpse of Julius II., and committed nameless outrages upon defenseless priests, monks, and nuns. German soldiers marched through the streets in episcopal and cardinal’s robes, dressed a donkey like a priest, and by a grim joke proclaimed Luther as pope of Rome.

Never before had Rome suffered such indignities and loss. The sacking was a crime against civilization, humanity, and religion; but, at the same time, a fearful judgment of God upon the worldliness of the papacy, and a loud call to repentance.946

When the news reached Germany, many rejoiced, at the fall of Babylon." But Melanchthon, rising above bigotry, said in one of his finest addresses to the students of Wittenberg: "Why should we not lament the fall of Rome, which is the common mother-city of all nations?  I indeed feel this calamity no less than if it were my own native place. The robber hordes were not restrained by considerations of the dignity of the city, nor the remembrance of her services for the laws, sciences, and arts of the world. This is what we grieve over. Whatever be the sins of the Pope, Rome should not be made to suffer."  He acquitted the Emperor of all blame, and held the army alone responsible.947

§ 114. A War Panic, 1528.

On the "Packische Händel," see Walch (XVI. 444), Gieseler (III. 1, 229), Ranke (III. 26), Janssen (III. 109), Rommel’s, and Wille’s monographs on Philip of Hesse; and St. Ehses: Geschichte der Packschen Händel, Freiburg i. B. 1881.

The action of the Diet of 1526, and the quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope, were highly favorable to the progress of the Reformation. But the good effect was in great part neutralized by a stupendous fraud which brought Germany to the brink of a civil war.

Philip of Hesse, an ardent, passionate, impulsive, ambitious prince, and patron of Protestantism, was deceived by an unprincipled and avaricious politician, Otto von Pack, provisional chancellor of the Duchy of Saxony, into the belief that Ferdinand of Austria, the Electors of Mainz and Brandenburg, the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, and other Roman Catholic rulers had concluded a league at Breslau, May 15, 1527, for the extermination of Protestantism. He procured at Dresden a sealed copy of the forged document, for which he paid Pack four thousand guilders. He persuaded the Elector John of Saxony of its genuineness, and concluded with him, in all haste, a counter-league, March 9, 1528. They secured aid from other princes, and made expensive military preparations, to anticipate by a masterstroke an attack of the enemy.

Fortunately, the Reformers of Wittenberg were consulted, and prevented an open outbreak by their advice. Luther deemed the papists had enough for any thing, but was from principle opposed to aggressive war;948 Melanchthon saw through the forgery, and felt keenly mortified. When the fictitious document was published, the Roman Catholic princes indignantly denied it. Duke George denounced Pack as a traitor.949  Archduke Ferdinand declared that he never dreamed of such a league.

The rash conduct of Philip put the Protestant princes in the position of aggressors and disturbers of the public peace, and the whole affair brought shame and disgrace upon their cause.

§ 115. The Second Diet of Speier, and the Protest of 1529.

Walch, XVI. 315 sqq. J. J. Müller: Historie von der evang. Stände Protestation und Appellation wider den Reichsabschied zu Speier, 1529, Jena, 1705. Tittmann: Die Protestation der evang. Stände mit Hist. Erläuterungen, Leipzig, 1829. A. Jung: Gesch. des Reichstags zu Speier, 1529, Leipzig, 1830. J. Ney (protest. pastor at Speier): Geschichte des Reichstags zu Speier im Jahr 1529. Mit einem Anhange ungedruckter Akten und Briefe, Hamburg, 1880. Ranke, III. 102–116. Janssen, III 130–146.

Under these discouragements the second Diet of Speier was convened in March, 1529, for action against the Turks, and against the further progress of Protestantism. The Catholic dignitaries appeared in full force, and were flushed with hopes of victory. The Protestants felt that "Christ was again in the hands of Caiaphas and Pilate."950

The Diet neutralized the recess of the preceding Diet of 1526; it virtually condemned (without, however, annulling) the innovations made; and it forbade, on pain of the imperial ban, any further reformation until the meeting of the council, which was now positively promised for the next year by the Emperor and the Pope. The Zwinglians and Anabaptists were excluded even from toleration. The latter were to be punished by death.

The Lutheran members of the Diet, under the well-founded impression that the prohibition of any future reformation meant death to the whole movement, entered in the legal form of an appeal for themselves, their subjects and for all who now or shall hereafter believe in the Word of God, the famous protest of April 25, 1529, against all those measures of the Diet which were contrary to the Word of God, to their conscience, and to the decision of the Diet of 1526, and appealed from the decision of the majority to the Emperor, to a general or German council, and impartial Christian judges.951  The document was signed by the Elector John of Saxony, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Dukes Ernest and Francis of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, and the representatives of fourteen imperial cities, including Strassburg and St. Gall of the Zwinglian persuasion. They were determined to defend themselves against every act of violence of the majority. Their motto was that of Elector John the Constant: "The Word of God abideth forever." They deserve the name of confessors of the evangelical faith and the rights of conscience in the face of imminent danger.952

The protest of Speier was a renewal and expansion of Luther’s protest at Worms. The protest of a single monk had become the protest of princes and representatives of leading cities of the empire, who now for the first time appeared as an organized party. It was a protest of conscience bound in the Word of God against tyrannical authority.

The appeal was not entertained. The Emperor, who soon afterwards concluded peace with the Pope (June 29, 1529), and with the King of France (Aug. 5), refused even to grant the delegation of the Protestant States a respectful hearing at Piacenza (September), and kept them prisoners for a while.

From this protest and appeal the Lutherans were called Protestants; with good reason, if we look at their attitude to Rome, which remains the same to this day. It is the duty of the church at all times to protest against sin, error, corruption, tyranny, and every kind of iniquity. But the designation, which has since become a general term for evangelical Christians, is negative, and admits of an indiscriminate application to all who dissent from popery, no matter on what grounds and to what extent. It must be supplemented by the more important positive designation Evangelical. The gospel of Christ, as laid down in the New Testament, and proclaimed again in its primitive purity and power by the Reformation, is the basis of historical Protestantism, and gives it vitality and permanency. The protest of Speier was based objectively upon the Word of God, subjectively upon the right of private judgment and conscience, and historically upon the liberal decision of the Diet of 1526.953

Unfortunately, the moral force of the protest of Speier was soon weakened by dissensions among the signers. Luther and Melanchthon, who at that time were quite agreed on the eucharistic question, seriously objected to all political and military alliances, and especially to an alliance with the Zwinglians, whom they abhorred as heretics.954  They prevented vigorous measures of defense. Philip of Hesse, who was in full political, and in half theological, sympathy with the Swiss and Zwinglians, brought about in October of the same year the conference at Marburg in the hope of healing the Protestant schism: but the conference failed of its main object, and Protestantism had to carry on the conflict with Rome as a broken army.

§ 116. The Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.

The Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.

The Emperor expressed to the Pope his deep regret at the sacking of the holy city. His breach with him was purely political and temporary. The French troops again entered Lombardy. Henry VIII. of England sympathized with Francis and the Pope. The Spanish counselors of Charles repre-sented to him that the imprisonment of the vicar of Christ was inconsistent with the traditional loyalty of Spain to the holy see.

On Nov. 26, 1527, the Emperor concluded an agreement with the Pope by which he was released from confinement, and reinstated in his temporal power (except over a few fortified places), on promise of paying the soldiers, and convening a council for the reformation of the church. For a while Clement distrusted the Emperor, and continued his Franco-Italian policy; but at last they definitely made peace, June 29, 1529. The Pope acknowledged the sovereignty of the Emperor in Italy, which he had heretofore opposed; the Emperor guaranteed to him the temporal possessions, with a reservation of imperial rights.

They held a personal conference at Bologna in November of that year. They were well matched in political and diplomatic shrewdness, and settled their secular disputes as well as they could. Charles was crowned Roman emperor, Feb. 24, 1530, at Bologna, the only emperor crowned outside of St. Peter’s at Rome, and the last German emperor crowned by the Pope. The dignitaries who graced the occasion were chiefly Spanish and Italian noblemen. Only one of the seven German electors was present, Philip of the Palatinate. The wooden awning which was constructed between the palace and the church of San Petronio broke down, but the Emperor escaped an accident. Clothed in a richly jewelled robe, he was anointed with oil, and received from the bishop of Rome the crown of Charlemagne as the temporal head of Western Christendom, and swore to protect the Pope and the Roman-Catholic Church with their possessions, dignities, and rights.955

This event was the sunset of the union of the German empire with the papal theocracy.

The German electors complained that they were not invited to the coronation, nor consulted about the treaties with the Italian States, and entered a formal protest.

Early in May, 1530, the Emperor crossed the Alps on his way to the Diet of Augsburg, which was to decide the fate of Lutheranism in Germany.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DIET AND CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG. A.D. 1530.

§ 117. The Diet of Augsburg.

I. Sources. Collection in Walch, XVI. 747–2142. Luther’s Letters of the year 1530, in De Wette, vol. IV. Melanchthon’s Letters in the "Corpus Reformatorum," ed. Bretschneider and Bindseil, vol. II., and documents relating to the Augsb. Conf. in vol. XXVI. Spalatin, Annal., ed. by Cyprian, 131–289. The Roman Cath. representation: Pro Religione Christiana Res Gestae in Comitiis Augustae Vindelicorum habitis, 1530, reprinted in Cyprian’s Historie der Augsb. Conf. Brück wrote a refutation published by Förstemann, "Archiv für Ref. Gesch.," 1831. Collection of documents by Förstemann: Urkundenbuch zu der Gesch. des Reichstages zu Augsburg in J. 1530. Halle, 1833, ’35, 2 vols. By the same: Neues Urkundenbuch, Hamburg, 1842. Schirrmacher: Briefs und Acten zur Gesch. des Religionsgesprächs zu Marburg, 1529, und des Reichstages zu Augsburg, 1530, nach der Handschrift des Aurifaber, Gotha, 1876.

II. Histories of the Augsburg Diet and Confession. See list in "Corp. Ref." XXVI. 101–112. D. Chytræus (Kochhafe): Historie der Augsb. Conf., Rostock, 1576, Frcf. 1577, 1578, 1600. G. Coelestin: Hist. Comitiorum a. 1530 Augustae celebratorum, Frcf. 1577, 4 vols. fol. E. Sal. Cyprian: Hist. der Augsb. Conf., Gotha, 1730. Cur. A. Salig: Historie der Augsb. Conf. und derselben Apologie, Halle, 1730–35, in 3 parts. Weber: Vollständige Gesch. der Augsb. Conf., Frcf. 1783–84, 2 vols. Planck: Gesch. des protest. Lehrbegriff’s (Leipz. 1792), vol. III. I. 1–178. Fickenscher: Gesch. des Reichstages zu Augsb. 1530, Nürnb. 1830. Pfaff: Gesch. des Reichstags zu Augsburg, 1530, Stuttg. 1830. Add special works on the Augsb. Conf. mentioned in § 119.

III. The relevant sections in the general Church Histories of Schroeckh, Mosheim, Gieseler, etc.; in the Histories of the Reformation by Marheineke, Hagenbach, Merle D’aub., Fisher; in the general Histories of Germany by Ranke (Prot.), vol. III. 162–215, and Janssen (Rom. Cath.), vol. III. 165–211. Also the numerous Lives of Luther (e.g., Köstlin, Book VI., chs. XI. and XII., vol. II. 198 sqq.), and Melanchthon (e.g., C. Schmidt, 190–250).

IV. Special points. H. Virk: Melanchthon’s Politische Stellung auf dem Reichstag zu Augsburg, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1887, pp. 67 and 293 sqq.

The situation of Protestantism in 1530 was critical. The Diet of Speier had forbidden the further progress of the Reformation: the Edict of Worms was in full legal force; the Emperor had made peace with the Pope, and received from him the imperial crown at Bologna; the Protestants were divided among themselves, and the Conference at Marburg had failed to unite them against the common foe. At the same time the whole empire was menaced by a foreign power. The Turks under Suleiman "the Magnificent," who called himself, Lord of all rulers, Dispenser of crowns to the monarchs of the earth, the Shadow of God over the world," had reached the summit of their military power, and approached the gates of Vienna in September, 1529. They swore by the beard of Mohammed not to rest till the prayers of the prophet of Mecca should be heard from the tower of St. Stephen. They were indeed forced to retire with a loss of eighty thousand men, but threatened a second attempt, and in the mean time laid waste a great part of Hungary.

Under these circumstances the Diet of Augsburg convened, April 8, 1530. Its object was to settle the religious question, and to prepare for war against the Turks. The invitation dated Jan. 21, 1530, from Bologna, carefully avoids, all irritating allusions, sets forth in strong language the danger of foreign invasion, and expresses the hope that all would co-operate for the restoration of the unity of the holy empire of the German nation in the one true Christian religion and church.

But there was little prospect for such co-operation. The Roman majority meant war against the Protestants and the Turks as enemies of church and state; the Protestant minority meant defense against the Papists and the Turks as the enemies of the gospel. In the eyes of the former, Luther was worse than Mohammed; in the eyes of the Lutherans, the Pope was at least as bad as Mohammed. Their motto was, —

Erhalt uns Herr bei Deinem Wort

Und steur’ des Papsts und Türken Mord."

The Emperor stood by the Pope and the Edict of Worms, but was more moderate than his fanatical surroundings, and treated the Lutherans during the Diet with courteous consideration, while he refused to give the Zwinglians even a hearing. The Lutherans on their part praised him beyond his merits, and were deceived into false hopes; while they would have nothing to do with the Swiss and Strassburgers, although they agreed with them in fourteen out of fifteen articles of faith.956

The Saxon Elector, as soon as he received the summons to the Diet, ordered the Wittenberg theologians, at the advice of Chancellor Brück, to draw up a confession of faith for possible use at Augsburg, and to meet him at Torgau. He started on the 3d of April with his son, several noblemen, Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, Spalatin, and Agricola, stopped a few days at Coburg on the Saxon frontier, where Luther was left behind, and entered Augsburg on the 2d of May.

The Emperor was delayed on the journey through the Tyrol, and did not arrive till the 15th of June. On the following day he took a devout part in the celebration of the Corpus Christi festival. He walked in solemn procession under the most scorching heat, with uncovered head, heavy purple cloak, and a burning wax-candle. The Protestant princes absented themselves from what they regarded an idolatrous ceremony. They also declined to obey the Emperor’s prohibition of evangelical preaching during the Diet. Margrave George of Brandenburg declared that he would rather lose his head than deny God. The Emperor replied: "Dear prince, not head off, not head off."957  He imposed silence upon the preachers of both parties, except those whom he should select. The Protestant princes held service in private houses.

The Diet was opened on Monday, June 20, with high mass by the Cardinal Archbishop of Mainz, and a long sermon by Archbishop Pimpinelli of Rossano, the papal nuncio at the court of Ferdinand. He described, in elegant Latin, the tyranny of the Turks, reproved the Germans for their sleepiness and divisions, and commended the heathen Romans and Mohammedans for their religious unity, obedience, and devotion to the past. A few days afterwards (June 24) the papal nuncio at the Diet, Laurentius Campegius (Campeggi) warned the Estates not to separate from the holy Catholic church, but to follow the example of other Christian kings and powers.

The Emperor desired first to secure help against the Turks, but the Protestants insisted on the priority of the church question. He accordingly commanded them to have their confession ready within four days, and to hand it to him in writing. He did not wish it to be read before the Diet, but the Protestants insisted upon this. He then granted the reading in Latin, but the Elector of Saxony pressed the rights of the German vernacular. "We are on German soil," said he, "and therefore I hope your Majesty will allow the German language." The Emperor yielded this point, but refused the request to have the Confession read in the city hall where the Diet met.

On the twenty-fifth day of June—the most memorable day in the history of Lutheranism, next to the 31st of October -the Augsburg Confession was read, with a loud and firm voice, by Dr. Baier, vice-chancellor of Electoral Saxony, in the German language, before the Diet in the private chapel of the episcopal palace. The reading occupied nearly two hours. The Emperor, who knew little German and less theology, soon fell asleep.958   But the majority listened attentively. The Papists were surprised at the moderation of the Confession, and would have wished it more polemical and anti-catholic. The bishop of Augsburg, Christoph von Stadion, is reported to have remarked privately that it contained the pure truth. Duke William of Bavaria censured Eck for misrepresenting to him the Lutheran opinions; and when the doctor said he could refute them, not with the Scriptures, but with the fathers, he replied: "I am to understand, then, that the Lutherans are within the Scriptures, and we Catholics on the outside?"

Dr. Brück, the Saxon chancellor who composed the preface and epilogue, handed to the Emperor a German and a Latin copy of the Confession. The Emperor kept the former, and gave the latter to the Elector of Mainz for safe-keeping. The Latin copy (in Melanchthon’s own handwriting) was deposited in the archives of Brussels, and disappeared under the reign of Duke Alba. The German original, as read before the Diet, was sent, with the acts of the Diet, to the Council of Trent, and never returned. But unauthorized editions soon appeared in different places (six German, one Latin) during the Diet; and Melanchthon himself issued the Confession in both languages at Wittenberg, 1531.

Both documents were signed by seven princes; namely, the Elector John of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, Duke John Frederick of Saxony, Duke Francis of Lüneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt; and by two representatives of free cities, Nürnberg and Reutlingen.

The signing required considerable courage, for it involved the risk of the crown. When warned by Melanchthon of the possible consequences, the Saxon Elector nobly replied: "I will do what is right, unconcerned about my Electoral dignity. I will confess my Lord, whose cross I esteem more highly than all the power on earth."

This act and testimony gave great significance to the Diet of Augsburg, and immortal glory to the confessors. Luther gave eloquent expression to his joy, when he wrote to Melanchthon, Sept. 15, 1530:959 You have confessed Christ, you have offered peace, you have obeyed the Emperor, you have endured injuries, you have been drenched in their revilings, you have not returned evil for evil. In brief, you have worthily done God’s holy work as becometh saints. Be glad, then, in the Lord, and exult, ye righteous. Long enough have ye been mourning in the world; look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. I will canonize you as a faithful member of Christ. And what greater glory can you desire?  Is it a small thing to have yielded Christ faithful service, and shown yourself a member worthy of Him?"

The only blot on the fame of the Lutheran confessors of Augsburg is their intolerant conduct towards the Reformed, which weakened their own cause. The four German cities which sympathized with the Zwinglian view on the Lord’s Supper wished to sign the Confession, with the exception of the tenth article, which rejects their view; but they were excluded, and forced to hand in a separate confession of faith.

§ 118. The Negotiations, the Recess, the Peace of Nürnberg.

The remaining transactions during this Diet were discouraging and unfruitful, and the result was a complete, but short-lived, victory of the Roman Catholic party.

Melanchthon during all this time was in a state of nervous trepidation and despondency.960  Before the delivery of the Confession he thought it too mild and pacific; after the delivery, he thought it too severe and polemic. So far was he carried away by his desire for reunion, and fears of the disastrous results of a split, that he made a most humiliating approach to the papal legate, Campeggi, who had advised the Emperor to crush the Protestant heresy by fire and sword, to put Wittenberg under the ban, and to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into Germany. Two weeks after the delivery of the Confession, he assured him that the Lutherans did not differ in any doctrine from the Roman Church, and were willing to obey her if she only would charitably overlook a few minor changes of discipline and ceremonies, which they could not undo.961  And, to conciliate such a power, Melanchthon kept aloof as far as possible from the Zwinglians and Strassburgers. On the 8th of July he had a personal interview with Campeggi, and Aug. 4 he submitted to him a few mild conditions of peace. The cardinal expressed his great satisfaction at these concessions, but prudently reserved his answer till he should hear from Rome.

All these approaches failed. Rome would listen to nothing but absolute submission.

Melanchthon soon found out that the papal divines, especially Eck, were full of pharisaical pride and malice. He was severely censured by the Nürnbergers and by Philip of Hesse for his weakness, and even charged by some with treason to the evangelical cause. His conduct must be judged in the light of the fact that the Roman Church allowed a certain freedom on the controverted points of anthropology and soteriology, and did not formally condemn the evangelical doctrines till several years afterwards, in the Council of Trent. The Augsburg Confession itself takes this view of the matter, by declaring at the close of the doctrinal articles: "This is the sum of doctrine among us, in which can be seen nothing which is discrepant with Scripture, nor with the Catholic or even with the Roman Church, so far as that Church is known from the writings of the Fathers." Melanchthon may be charged with moral weakness and mistake of judgment, but not with unfaithfulness. Luther remained true to his invaluable friend, who was indispensable to the evangelical cause, and did it the greatest service at Augsburg. He comforted him in his letters from Coburg.962

The Lutheran Confession was referred for answer, i.e., for refutation, to a commission of twenty Roman theologians, who were present at the Diet, including Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, Wimpina, and Dittenberger. Their answer was ready July 13, but declined by the Emperor on account of its length and bitter tone. After undergoing five revisions, it was approved and publicly read on the 3d of August before the Diet, in the same chapel in which the Protestant Confession had been read. The Emperor pronounced the answer "Christian and well-considered." He was willing to hand a copy to the Protestants, on condition to keep it private; but Melanchthon prepared a refutation, at the request of the Lutheran princes.

The Emperor, in his desire for a peaceful result, arranged a conference between the theological leaders of the two parties. Eck, Wimpina, and Cochlaeus represented the Roman Catholics; Melanchthon, Brenz, and Schnepf, the Lutherans. The discussion began Aug. 16, but proved a failure. A smaller committee conferred from the 24th to the 29th of August, but with no better result. Melanchthon hoped against hope, and made concession after concession, to conciliate the bishops and the Emperor. But the Roman divines insisted on a recognition of an infallible church, a perpetual sacrifice, and a true priesthood. They would not even give up clerical celibacy, and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity; and demanded a restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction, of church property, and of the convents.

Luther, writing from Coburg, urged the hesitating theologians and princes to stand by their colors. He, too, was willing to restore innocent ceremonies, and even to consent to the restoration of episcopacy, but only on condition of the free preaching of the gospel. He deemed a reconciliation in doctrine impossible, unless the Pope gave up popery.963

On the 22d of September the Emperor announced the Recess of the Diet; that, after having heard and refuted the Confession of the Protestants, and vainly conferred with them, another term for consideration till April 15, 1531, be granted to them, as a special favor, and that in the mean time they should make no new innovations, nor disturb the

Catholics in their faith and worship, and assist the Emperor in the suppression of the Anabaptists and those who despised the holy sacrament. The Emperor promised to bring about a general council within a year for the removal of ecclesiastical grievances.

The signers of the Augsburg Confession, the cities of Frankfurt, Ulm, Schwäbisch Hall, Strassburg, Memmingen, Constance, Lindau, refused the recess. The Lutherans protested that their Confession had never been refuted, and offered Melanchthon’s Apology of the same, which was rejected. They accepted the proposed term for consideration.

The day after the announcement of the Recess, the Elector of Saxony returned home with his theologians. The Emperor took leave of him with these words: "Uncle, uncle, I did not look for this from you."  The Elector with tears in his eyes went away in silence. He stopped on the journey at Nürnberg and Coburg, and reached Torgau the 9th of October. The Landgrave of Hesse had left Augsburg in disgust several weeks earlier (Aug. 6), without permission, and created fears of an open revolt.

Luther was very indignant at the Recess, which was in fact a re-affirmation of the Edict of Worms. To stop the progress of the gospel, he declared, is to crucify the Lord afresh; the Augsburg Confession must remain as the pure word of God to the judgment day; the mass cannot be tolerated, as it is the greatest abomination; nor can it be left optional to commune in one or both kinds. Let peace be condemned to the lowest hell, if it hinder and injure the gospel and faith. They say, if popery falls, Germany will go to ruin. It is terrible, but I cannot help it. It is the fault of the papists.964  He published early in 1531 a book against the Edict of Augsburg, which he ascribes to Pope Clement "the arch-villain," and Campeggi, rather than to the Emperor, and closes with the wish that "blasphemous popery may perish in hell as John prophesies in Revelation (14:8; 18:2; 22:20); let every Christian say, Amen."965  In the same year he warned the Germans to be ready for defense, although it did not become him as a minister to stir up war.966

The Recess of the Diet was finally published Nov. 19; but its execution threatened to bring on civil war, and to give victory to the Turks. The Emperor shrank from such consequences and was seriously embarrassed. Only two of the secular princes, Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and Duke George of Saxony, were ready to assist him in severe measures. The Duke of Bavaria was dissatisfied with the Emperor’s efforts to have, his brother Ferdinand elected Roman king. The archbishops of Mayence and Cologne, and the bishop of Augsburg, half sympathized with the Protestants.967  But the Emperor had promised the Pope to use all his power for the suppression of heresy, and was bound to execute as best he could the edict of the Diet after the expiration of the term of grace, April 15, 1531.

The Lutheran princes therefore formed in December, 1530, at Smalcald, a defensive alliance under the name of the Smalcaldian League. The immediate object was to protect themselves against the lawsuits of the imperial chamber of justice for the recovery of church property and the restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction. Opinions were divided on the question whether the allies in case of necessity should take up arms against the Emperor; the theologians were opposed to it, but the lawyers triumphed over the theological scruples, and the Elector of Saxony pledged the members for defensive measures against any and every aggressor, even the Emperor. At a new convent at Smalcald in March, 1531, the League was concluded in due form for six years. It embraced Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Lüneburg, Anhalt, Mansfeld, and eleven cities. Out of this League ultimately arose the Smalcaldian war, which ended so disastrously for the Protestant princes, especially the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse (1547).

But for the present, war was prevented by the peace at Nürnberg, 1532. A renewed invasion of Sultan Suleiman with an army of three hundred thousand, in April, 1532, made conciliation a political and patriotic duty. The Emperor convened a Diet at Regensburg, April 17, which was transferred to Nürnberg; and there, on July 23, 1532, a temporary truce was concluded, and vigorous measures taken against the Turks, who were defeated by land and sea, and forced to retreat. The victorious Emperor went to Italy, and urged the Pope to convene the council; but the Pope was not yet ready, and found excuses for indefinite postponement.968

John the Constant died in the same year, of a stroke of apoplexy (Aug. 16, 1532), and was followed by his son John Frederick the Magnanimous, who in the Smalcaldian war lost his electoral dignity, but saved his evangelical faith.

§ 119. The Augsburg Confession.

I. Editions of the Augsb. Conf.: The best critical edition in the 26th vol. of the "Corpus Reformatorum," ed. Bretschneider und Bindseil (1858), 776 pages. It gives the Invariata and the Variata, in Latin and German, with critical apparatus, list of MSS. and early editions, and the preceding documents: viz., the Articles of Visitation, the Marburg, the Schwabach, and the Torgau Articles.

The Confession in Latin or German, or both, Is embodied in all the collections of Lutheran symbols by Rechenberg, Walch, Weber, Hase, Meyer, Francke, Müller.

Separate modem editions by Twesten, Tittmann, Weber, Wiggers, Förstemann, Harter, etc.

English translation, with Latin text, in Schaff, Creeds, III. 3–73; in English alone, in Henkel, Book of Concord, 1854, and Jacobs, Book of Concord, Philad., 1882. The first English translation was made by Richard Taverner, London, 1536, the last, on the basis of this, by Charles P. Krauth. (See B. M. Schmucker: English Translations of the Augsb. Conf., Philad., 1887, 34 pp.)

On the literature compare Köllner: Symbolik der Lutherischen Kirche, Hamburg, 1837, pp. 150–152, with a full history of the Conf., pp. 153–396.

II. Histories and monographs: the works of Chytraeus, Coelestin, Cyprian, Salig, Pfaff, Fickenscher, Forstemann, etc., quoted in § 117. Recent works: Köllner, 1837 (see above). Rudelbach: Die Augsb. Conf. nach den Quellen, Dresden, 1841. G. Plitt: Einleitung in die Augustana, Erlangen, 1867–68 2 Parts; Die Apologie der Augustana, Erl., 1873. W. J. Mann: A Plea for the Augsburg Confession, Philadelphia, 1856. Stuckenberg: The History of the Augsb. Confession, Philad., 1869. Zöckler: Die Augsb. Conf., Frkf. -a.-M., 1870. Vilmar: Die Augsb. Confession erklärt, Gütersloh, 1870. A brief account in Schaff: Creeds (4th ed. 1884), I. 225–242. On the Roman Catholic side see Janssen, III. 165–211, and L. Pastor: Die kirchlichen Reunionsbest-rebungen während der Regierung Karls V., Freiburg, 1879, 22 sqq.

III. On special points: Luther’s relation to the Augsb. Conf. is discussed by Rückert, Jena, 1854; Calinich, Leipz., 1861; Knaake, Berlin, 1863. The relation of the A. C. to the Marburg, Schwabach, and Torgau Articles is treated by Ed. Engelhardt in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1865, pp. 515–529; and by Th. Brieger in "Kirchengesch. Studien," Leipzig, 1888, pp. 265–320.

The Augsburg Confession is the first and the most famous of evangelical confessions. It gave clear, full, systematic expression to the chief articles of faith for which Luther and his friends had been contending for thirteen years, since he raised his protest against the traffic in indulgences. By its intrinsic merits and historic connections, it has become the chief doctrinal standard of the Lutheran Church, which also bears the name of the "Church of the Augsburg Confession."  It retains this position to this day, notwithstanding the theological and ecclesiastical dissensions in that communion. It furnished the keynote to similar public testimonies of faith, and strengthened the cause of the Reformation everywhere. It had a marked influence upon the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.969  In the final revision by the author, and with the necessary change in the tenth article, it has also been frequently adopted by Reformed divines and congregations. But it was never intended, least of all by Melanchthon, who mended it to the last moment and even after its adoption, as an infallible and ultimate standard, even of the Lutheran Church. It was at first modestly called an, "Apology," after the manner of the Christian Apologies in the ante-Nicene age, and meant to be simply a dispassionate statement in vindication of the Lutheran faith before the Roman Catholic world.

It is purely apologetic, and much more irenic than polemic. It aims to be, if possible, a Formula of Concord, instead of Discord. It is animated by a desire for reconciliation with Rome. Hence it is remarkably mild in tone, adheres closely to the historic faith, and avoids all that could justly offend the Catholics. It passes by, in silence, the supremacy of the Scriptures as the only rule of faith and practice, and some of the most objectionable features in the Roman system,—as indulgences, purgatory, and the papal primacy (which Melanchthon was willing to tolerate on an impossible condition). In short, it is the most churchly, the most catholic, the most conservative creed of Protestantism. It failed to conciliate Rome, but became the strongest bond of union among Lutherans.

The Confession is the ripe fruit of a gradual growth. It is based chiefly upon three previous confessional documents—the fifteen Articles of Marburg, Oct. 4, 1529, the seventeen Articles of Schwabach (a modification and expansion of the former by Luther, with the insertion of his view of the real presence), adopted by the Lutheran princes in a convent at Schwabach, near Nürnberg, Oct. 16, 1529, and several Articles of Torgau against certain abuses of the Roman Church, drawn up by Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, and Bugenhagen, by order of the Elector, at his residence in Torgau, March 20, 1530.970  The first two documents furnished the material for the first or positive part of the Augsburg Confession; the last, for its second or polemical part.

Melanchthon used this material in a free way, and made a new and far better work, which bears the stamp of his scholarship and moderation, his power of condensation, and felicity of expression. He began the preparation at Coburg, with the aid of Luther, in April, and finished it at Augsburg, June 24. He labored on it day and night, so that Luther had to warn him against over-exertion. "I command you," he wrote to him May 12, "and all your company that they compel you, under pain of excommunication, to take care of your poor body, and not to kill yourself from imaginary obedience to God. We serve God also by taking holiday and rest."

If we look at the contents, Luther is the primary, Melanchthon the secondary, author; but the form, the method, style, and temper are altogether Melanchthon’s. Nobody else could produce such a work. Luther would have made it more aggressive and polemic, but less effective for the occasion. He himself was conscious of the superior qualification of his friend for the task, and expressed his entire satisfaction with the execution. "It pleases me very well," he wrote of the Confession, "and I could not change or improve it; nor would it be becoming to do so, since I cannot tread so softly and gently."971  He would have made the tenth article on the real presence still stronger than it is; would have inserted his sola in the doctrine of justification by faith, as he did in his German Bible; and rejected purgatory, and the tyranny of popery, among the abuses in the second part. He would have changed the whole tone, and made the document a trumpet of war.

The Augsburg Confession proper (exclusive of preface and epilogue) consists of two parts,—one positive and dogmatic, the other negative and mildly polemic or rather apologetic. The first refers chiefly to doctrines, the second to ceremonies and institutions. The order of subjects is not strictly systematic, though considerably improved upon the arrangement of the Schwabach and Torgau Articles. In the manuscript copies and oldest editions, the articles are only numbered; the titles were subsequently added.

I. The first part presents in twenty-one articles—beginning with the Triune God, and ending with the worship of saints—a clear, calm, and condensed statement of the doctrines held by the evangelical Lutherans: (1) in common with the Roman Church; (2) in common with the Augustinian school in that church; (3) in opposition to Rome; and (4) in distinction from Zwinglians and Anabaptists.

(1) In theology and Christology, i.e., the doctrines of God’s unity and trinity (Art. I.), and of Christ’s divine-human personality (III.), the Confession strongly re-affirms the ancient catholic faith as laid down in the oecumenical creeds, and condemns (damnamus) the old and new forms of Unitarianism and Arianism as heresies.

(2) In anthropology, i.e., in the articles on the fall and original sin (II.), the slavery of the natural will and necessity of divine grace (XVIII.), the cause and nature of sin (XIX.), the Confession is substantially Augustinian, in opposition to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. The Donatists are also condemned (damnant, VIII.) for denying the objective virtue of the ministry and the sacraments, which Augustin defended against them.

(3) The general evangelical views more or less distinct from those of Rome appear in the articles on justification by faith (IV.), the Gospel ministry (V.), new obedience (VI.), the Church (VII., VIII.), repentance (XII.), ordination (XIV.), ecclesiastical rites (XV.), civil government (XVI.), good works (XIX.), the worship of saints, and the exclusive mediatorship of Christ (XX.).

These articles are so guardedly and skillfully worded as to disarm the papal opponents. Even the doctrine of justification by faith (Art. IV.), which Luther declared to be the article of the standing or falling church, is briefly and mildly stated, without the sola so strongly insisted on by Luther, and so objectionable to the Catholics, who charged him with willful perversion of the Scriptures, for inserting it in the Epistle to the Romans (3:28).972

(4) The distinctively Lutheran views—mostly retained from prevailing catholic tradition, and differing in part from those of other Protestant churches—are contained in the articles on the sacraments (IX., X., XIII.), on confession and absolution (XI.), and the millennium (XVII.). The tenth article plainly asserts the doctrine of a real bodily presence and distribution of Christ in the eucharist to all communicants, and disapproves (improbant) of those who teach differently (the Zwinglians).973  The Anabaptists are not only disapproved, but condemned (damnamus) as heretics three times: for their views on infant baptism and infant salvation (IX.),974  Civil offices (XVI.), the millennium and final restoration (XVII.).

These anti-Zwinglian and anti-Baptist articles, however, have long since lost their force in the Lutheran Church. Melanchthon himself changed the wording of the tenth Article in the edition of 1540, and omitted the clause of disapproval. The damnation of unbaptized infants dying in infancy, which is indirectly indorsed by condemning the opposite, is a fossil relic of a barbarous orthodoxy, and was justly denied by the Baptists, as also by Zwingli and Bullinger, who on this point were ahead of their age. The first official deliverance against this dogma was raised by the Reformed Church of Scotland, in the Second Scotch Confession (1581), which condemns among the errors of "the Roman Antichrist" "his Cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament, and his absolute necessity of baptism."975

The doctrine of the second advent and millennium (rejected in Art. XVII.), if we except the dreams of the radical wing of the Anabaptists, has found advocates among sound and orthodox Lutherans, especially of the school of Bengel, and must be regarded as an open question.

The last Article of the doctrinal part expresses the assurance that the Lutherans hold no doctrine which is contrary to the Scriptures, or to the Catholic or even the Roman Church, as far as known from the fathers, and differ from her only on certain traditions and ceremonies. Luther knew better, and so did the Romanists. Only Melanchthon, in his desire for union and peace, could have thus deceived himself; but he was undeceived before he left Augsburg, and in the Apology of the Confession be assumed a very different tone.

II. The second part of the Confession rejects, in seven articles, those abuses of Rome which were deemed most objectionable, and had been actually corrected in the Lutheran churches; namely, the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity (I.), the celibacy of the clergy (II.), the sacrifice of the mass (III.), obligatory auricular confession (IV.), ceremonial feasts and fasts (V.), monastic vows (VI.), and the secular power of the bishops as far as it interferes with the purity and spirituality of the church (VII.). This last Article is virtually a protest against the principle of Erastianism or Caesaro-papacy, and would favor in its legitimate consequences a separation of church and state. "The ecclesiastical and civil powers," says the Confession, "are not to be confounded. The ecclesiastical power has its own commandment to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. Let it not by force enter into the office of another, let it not transfer worldly kingdoms," etc. And as to the civil power, it is occupied only with worldly matters, not with the gospel, and "defends not the minds, but the bodies and bodily things, against manifest injuries."  This protest has been utterly disregarded by the Protestant rulers in Germany. The same Article favors the restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction with purely spiritual and ecclesiastical authority. This also was wholly disregarded by the signers, who were unwilling to give up their summepiscopate which they had claimed and exercised since 1526 with the consent of the Reformers.

The Confession concludes with these words: "Peter forbids bishops to be lords, and to be imperious over the churches (1 Pet. 5:3). Now, our meaning is not to take the rule from the bishops, but this one thing only is requested at their hands, that they would suffer the gospel to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few observances which cannot be held without sin. But if they will remit none, let them look how they will give account to God for this, that by their obstinacy they afford cause of division and schism."976  Thus the responsibility of schism in the Latin Church was thrown upon Rome. But even if Rome and the Diet had accepted the Augsburg Confession, the schism would still have occurred by the further progress of the Protestant spirit, which no power on earth, not even Luther and Melanchthon, could arrest.

The style of the Latin edition is such as may be expected from the rare classic culture and good taste of Melanchthon; while the order and arrangement might be considerably improved.

The diplomatic preface to the Emperor, from the pen of a lawyer, Chancellor Brück, is clumsy, tortuous, dragging, extremely obsequious, and has no other merit than to introduce the reader into the historical situation. The brief conclusion (Epilogus) is from the same source, and is followed by the signatures of seven princes and two magistrates. Several manuscript copies omit both preface and epilogue, as not properly belonging to the Confession.

Space forbids us to discuss the questions of the text, and the important variations of the Unaltered Confession of 1530, and the Altered Confession of 1540, which embodies the last improvements of its author, but has only a semi-official character and weight within the Lutheran Church.977

§ 120. The Roman Confutation and the Protestant Apology.

I. Corpus Reformatorum (Melanchthonis Opera), ed. by Bretschneider and Bindseil, vol. XXVII. (1859), 646 columns, and vol. XXVIII. 1–326. These volumes contain the Confutatio Confessionis Augustanae, and the two editions of Melanchthon’s Apologia Conf. Aug., in Latin and German, with Prolegomena and critical apparatus. The best and most complete edition. There are few separate editions of the Apology, but it Is incorporated in all editions of the Lutheran Symbols; see Lit. in § 119. The Latin text of the Confutatio was first published by A. Fabricius Leodius in Harmonia Confess. Augustanae, 1573; the German, by C. G. Müller, 1808, from a copy of the original in the archives of Mainz, which Weber had previously inspected (Krit. gesch. der Augsb. Conf., II. 439 sqq.).

II. K. Kieser (R. Cath.). Die Augsburger Confession und ihre Widerlegung, Regensburg, 1845. Hugo Lämmer: Die vor-tridentinisch-katholische Theologie des Reformations-Zeitalters, Berlin, 1858, pp. 33–46. By the same: De Confessonis Augustanae Confutatione Pontificia, in Neidner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1858. (Lämmer, a Lutheran, soon afterwards joined the Roman Church, and was ordained a priest, 1859, and appointed missionarius apostolicus, 1861.) G. Plitt (Luth.):Die Apologie der Augustana geschichtlich erklärt, Erlangen, 1873. Schaff: Creeds, etc., I. 243. The history and literature of the Apology are usually combined with that of the Confession, as in J. G. Walch, Feuerlin-Riederer, and Köllner.

The Roman "Catholic Confutation," so called, of the Augsburg Confession, was prepared in Augsburg by order of the Emperor Charles, by the most eminent Roman divines of Germany, and bitterest opponents of Luther, especially Drs. Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, in Latin and German.978  The final revision, as translated into German, was publicly read before the Emperor and the Diet, in the chapel of the episcopal palace, Aug. 3, and adopted as the expression of the views of the majority.

The document follows the order of the Augsburg Confession. It approves eighteen doctrinal articles of the first part, either in full or with some restrictions and qualifications. Even the fourth article, on justification, escapes censure, and Pelagianism is strongly condemned.979  The tenth article, on the Lord’s Supper, is likewise approved as far as it goes, provided only that the presence of the whole Christ in either of the substances be admitted.980  But Article VII., on the Church, is rejected;981 also Art. XX., on faith and good works, and Art. XXI., on the worship of saints.982

The second part of the Confession, on abuses, is wholly rejected; but at the close, the existence of various abuses, especially among the clergy, is acknowledged, and a reformation of discipline is promised and expected from a general council.983

The tone of the Confutation is moderate, owing to the express direction of the Emperor; but it makes no concession on the points under dispute. It abounds in biblical and patristic quotations crudely selected. As to talent and style, it is far inferior to the work of Melanchthon. The Roman Church was not yet prepared to cope with the Protestant divines.

The publication of the Confutation as well as the Confession was prohibited, and it did not appear in print till many years afterwards; but its chief contents became known from notes taken by hearers and from manuscript copies.

The Lutheran members of the Diet urged Melanchthon to prepare at once a Protestant refutation of the Roman refutation, and offered the first draught of it to the Diet, Sept. 22, through Chancellor Brück; but it was refused.

On the following day Melanchthon left Augsburg in company with the Elector of Saxony, re-wrote the Apology on the journey,984  and completed it leisurely at Wittenberg, with the help of a manuscript copy of the Confutation, in April, 1531.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession is a scholarly vindication of the Confession. It far excels the Confutation in theological and literary merit. It differs from the apologetic Confession by its polemic and protestant tone. It is written with equal learning and ability, but with less moderation and more boldness. It even uses some harsh terms against the papal opponents, and calls them liars and hypocrites (especially in the German edition). It is the most learned of the Lutheran symbols, and seven times larger than the Confession, but for this very reason not adapted to be a symbolical book. It contains many antiquated arguments, and errors in exegesis and patristic quotations. But in its day it greatly strengthened the confidence of scholars in the cause of Protestantism. Its chief and permanent value is historical, and consists in its being the oldest and most authentic interpretation of the Augsburg Confession, by the author himself.

The Apology, though not signed by the Lutheran princes at Augsburg, was recognized first in 1532, at a convent in Schweinfurt, as a public confession; it was signed by Lutheran divines at Smalcald, 1537; it was used at the religious conference at Worms, 1540, and embodied in the various editions of the Confession, and at last in the Book of Concord, 1580.

The text of the Apology has, like that of the Confession, gone through various transformations, which are used by Bossuet and other Romanists as proofs of the changeableness of Protestantism. The original draught made at Augsburg has no authority, as it was based on fragmentary notes of Camerarius and others who heard the Confutation read on the 3d of August.985  The first Latin edition was much enlarged and improved; the German translation was prepared by Justus Jonas, assisted by Melanchthon, but differs widely from the Latin.986  Both were published together with the Augsburg Confession in October, 1531. Changes were made in subsequent editions, both of the Latin original and the German translation, especially in the edition of 1540. Hence there is an Apologia invariata and an Apologia variata, as well as a Confessio invariata and a Confessio variata. The Book of Concord took both texts from the first edition.987

§ 121. The Tetrapolitan Confession.

I. Editions. The Latin text was first printed at Strassburg (Argentoratum), A.D. 1531, Sept. (21 leaves); then in the Corpus et Syntagma Confess. (1612 and 1654); in Augusti’s Corpus libr. symb. (1827), p. 327 sqq.; and in Niemeyer’s Collect. Confess. (1840), p. 740–770; Comp. Proleg., p. LXXXIII.

The German text appeared first at Strassburg, Aug. 1531 (together with the Apology, 72 leaves); then again, 1579, ed. by John Sturm, but was suppressed by the magistrate, 1580; at Zweibrücken, 1604; in Beck’s Symbol. Bücher, vol. I., p. 401 sq.; in Böckel’s Bekenntniss-Schriften der evang. reform. Kirche (1847), p. 363 sq.

II. Gottl. Wernsdorff: Historia Confessionis Tetrapolitanae, Wittenb. 1694, ed. IV. 1721. Schelhorn: Amaenitates Litter., Tom. VI., Francf. 1727. J. H. FELS: Dissert. de varia Confess. Tetrapolitanae fortuna praesertim in civitate Lindaviensi, Götting. 1755. Planck: Geschichte des protest. Lehrbegriffs, vol. III., Part I. (second ed. 1796), pp. 68–94. J. W. Röhrich: Geschichte der evangel. Kirche des Elsasses. Strassburg, 1855, 3 vols. J. W. Baum: Capito und Butzer (Elberf. 1860), p. 466 sqq. and 595. Schaff: Creeds, I. 524–529.

The Tetrapolitan Confession, also called the Strassburg and the Swabian Confession, is the oldest confession of the Reformed Church in Germany, and represented the faith of four imperial cities, Strassburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, which at that time sympathized with Zwingli and the Swiss, rather than Luther, on the doctrine of the sacraments.

It was prepared in great haste, during the sessions of the Diet of Augsburg, by Bucer, with the aid of Capito and Hedio, in the name of those four cities (hence the name) which were excluded by the Lutherans from their political and theological conferences, and from the Protestant League. They would greatly have preferred to unite with them, and to sign the Augsburg Confession, with the exception of the tenth article on the eucharist, but were forbidden. The Landgrave Philip of Hesse was the only one who, from a broad, statesmanlike view of the critical situation, favored a solid union of the Protestants against the common foe, but in vain.

Hence, after the Lutherans had presented their Confession June 25, and Zwingli his own July 8, the four cities handed theirs, July 11, to the Emperor in German and Latin. It was received very ungraciously, and not allowed to be read before the Diet; but a confutation full of misrepresentations was prepared by Faber, Eck, and Cochlaeus, and read Oct. 24 (or 17). The Strassburg divines were not even favored with a copy of this confutation, but procured one secretly, and answered it by a "Vindication and Defense" in the autumn of 1531.

The Tetrapolitan Confession consists of twenty-three chapters, besides preface and conclusion. It is in doctrine and arrangement closely conformed to the Lutheran Confession, and breathes the same spirit of moderation, but is more distinctly Protestant. This appears at once in the first chapter (On the Matter of Preaching), in the declaration that nothing should be taught in the pulpit but what was either expressly contained in the Holy Scriptures, or fairly deduced therefrom. (The Lutheran Confession is silent on the supreme authority of the Scriptures.)  The evangelical doctrine of justification is stated in the third and fourth chapters more clearly than by Melanchthon; namely, that we are justified not by works of our own, but solely by the grace of God and the merits of Christ, through a living faith, which is active in love, and productive of good works. Images are rejected in Chap. XXII.

The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (Chap. XVIII.) is couched in dubious language, which was intended to comprehend in substance the Lutheran and the Zwinglian theories, and accords with the union tendency of Bucer. But it contains the germ of the Calvinistic view. In this ordinance, it is said, Christ offers to his followers, as truly now as at the institution, his very body and blood as spiritual food and drink, whereby their souls are nourished to everlasting life. Nothing is said of the oral manducation and the participation of unbelievers, which are the distinctive features of the Lutheran view. Bucer, who had attended the Conference at Marburg in 1529, labored with great zeal afterwards to bring about a doctrinal compromise between the contending theories, but without effect.

The Tetrapolitan Confession was soon superseded by the clearer and more logical confessions of the Calvinistic type. The four cities afterwards signed the Lutheran Confession to join the Smalcald League. But Bucer himself remained true to his union creed, and reconfessed it in his last will and testament (1548) and on his death-bed.

§ 122. Zwingli’s Confession to the Emperor Charles.

Ad Carolum Boni. Imperatorem, Germaniae comitia Augustae celebrantem Fidei Huldrychi Zwinglii Ratio (Rechenschaft). Anno MDXXX. Mense Julio. Vincat veritas. In the same year a German translation appeared in Zürich, and in 1543 an English translation. See Niemeyer, Collect. Conf., p. XXVI. and 16 sqq. Böckel: Bekenntnissschriften der reform. Kirche, p. 40. sqq. Mörikofer: U. Zwingli, vol. II. p. 297 sqq. Christoffel: U. Z., vol. II. p. 237 sqq. Schaff: Creeds, I. 366 sqq.

Zwingli took advantage of the meeting of the Diet of Augsburg, to send a confession of his faith, addressed to the German Emperor, Charles V., shortly after the Lutheran princes had presented theirs. It is dated Zürich, July 3, 1530, and was delivered by his messenger at Augsburg on the 8th of the same month; but it shared the same fate as the "Tetrapolitan Confession."  It was treated with contempt, and never laid before the Diet. Dr. Eck wrote in three days a refutation, charging Zwingli that for ten years he had labored to root out from the people of Switzerland all faith and all religion, and to stir them up against the magistrate; that he had caused greater devastation among them than the Turks, Tartars, and Huns; that he had turned the churches and convents founded by the Habsburgers (the Emperor’s ancestors) into temples of Venus and Bacchus; and that he now completed his criminal career by daring to appear before the Emperor with such an impudent piece of writing.

The Lutherans (with the exception of Philip of Hesse) were scarcely less indignant, and much more anxious to conciliate the Catholics than to appear in league with Zwinglians and Anabaptists. They felt especially offended that the Swiss Reformer took strong ground against the corporal presence, and incidentally alluded to them as persons who "were looking back to the flesh-pots of Egypt."  Melanchthon judged him insane.

Zwingli, having had no time to consult with his confederates, offered the Confession in his own name, and submitted it to the judgment of the whole church of Christ, under the guidance of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

In the first sections he declares, as clearly as and even more explicitly than the Lutheran Confession, his faith in the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, as laid down in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds (which are expressly named). He teaches the election by free grace, the sole and sufficient satisfaction by Christ, and justification by faith, in opposition to all human mediators and meritorious works. He distinguishes between the internal or invisible, and the external or visible, church. The former is the company of the elect believers and their children, and is the bride of Christ; the latter embraces all nominal Christians and their children, and is beautifully described in the parable of the ten virgins, of whom five were foolish. The word "church" may also designate a single congregation, as the church in Rome, in Augsburg, in Leyden. The true church can never err in the foundation of faith. Purgatory he rejects as an injurious fiction, which sets Christ’s merits at naught. On original sin, the salvation of unbaptized infants, and the sacraments, he departs much farther from the traditional theology than the Lutherans. He goes into a lengthy argument against the corporal presence in the eucharist. On the other hand, however, he protests against being confounded with the Anabaptists, and rejects their views on infant baptism, civil offices, the sleep of the soul, and universal salvation.

The document is frank and bold, yet dignified and courteous, and concludes thus: "Hinder not, ye children of men, the spread and growth of the Word of God. Ye can not forbid the grass to grow. Ye must see that this plant is richly blessed from heaven. Consider not your own wishes, but the demands of the age concerning the free course of the gospel. Take these words kindly, and show by your deeds that you are children of God."

§ 123. Luther at the Coburg.

Luther’s Letters from Coburg, April 18 to Oct. 4, 1530, in De Wette, IV. 1–182. Melanchthon’s Letters to Luther from Augsburg, in the second volume of the "Corpus Reform."

Zitzlaff (Archidiaconus in Wittenberg): Luther auf der Koburg, Wittenberg, 1882 (175 pages). Köstlin, M. L., II. 198 sqq.

During the Diet of Augsburg, from April till October, 1530, Luther was an honorable prisoner in the electoral castle of Coburg.988  From that watch-tower on the frontier of Saxony and Bavaria, he exerted a powerful influence, by his letters, upon Melanchthon and the Lutheran confessors at the Diet. His sojourn there is a striking parallel to his ten months’ sojourn at the Wartburg, and forms the last romantic chapter in his eventful life. He was still under the anathema of the Pope and the ban of the empire, and could not safely appear at Augsburg. Moreover, his prince had reason to fear that by his uncompromising attitude he might hinder rather than promote the work of reconciliation and peace. But he wished to keep him near enough for consultation and advice. A message from Augsburg reached Coburg in about four days.

Luther arrived at Coburg, with the Elector and the Wittenberg divines, on April 15, 1530. In the night of the 22d he was conveyed to the fortified castle on the hill, and ordered to remain there for an indefinite time. No reason was given, but he could easily suspect it. He spent the first day in enjoying the prospect of the country, and examining the prince’s building (Fürstenbau) which was assigned him. His sitting-room is still shown. "I have the largest apartment, which overlooks the whole fortress, and I have the keys to all the rooms."  He had with him his amanuensis Veit Dietrich, a favorite student, and his nephew Cyriac Kaufmann, a young student from Mansfeld. He let his beard grow again, as he had done on the Wartburg. He was well taken care of at the expense of the Elector, and enjoyed the vacation as well as he could with a heavy load of work and care on his mind. He received more visitors than he liked. About thirty persons were stationed in the castle.

"Dearest Philip," he wrote to Melanchthon, April 23, "we have at last reached our Sinai; but we shall make a Sion of this Sinai, and here I shall build three tabernacles, one to the Psalms, one to the Prophets, and one to Aesop .... It is a very attractive place, and just made for study; only your absence grieves me. My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven. The sad condition of our German empire distresses you more."  Then he describes to him his residence in the "empire of birds."  In other letters he humorously speaks of the cries of the ravens and jackdaws in the forest, and compares them to a troop of kings and grandees, schoolmen and sophists, holding Diet, sending their mandates through the air, and arranging a crusade against the fields of wheat and barley, hoping for heroic deeds and grand victories. He could hear all the sophists and papists chattering around him from early morning, and was delighted to see how valiantly these knights of the Diet strutted about and wiped their bills, but he hoped that before long they would be spitted on a hedge-stake. He was glad to hear the first nightingale, even as early as April. With such innocent sports of his fancy he tried to chase away the anxious cares which weighed upon him. It is from this retreat that he wrote that charming letter to his boy Hans, describing a beautiful garden full of goodly apples, pears, and plums, and merry children on little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles, and promising him and his playmates a fine fairing if he prayed, and learned his lessons.989

Joy and grief, life and death, are closely joined in this changing world. On the 5th of June, Luther received the sad news of the pious death of his father, which occurred at Mansfeld, May 29. When he first heard of his sickness, he wrote to him from Wittenberg, Feb. 15, 1530: "It would be a great joy to me if only you and my mother could come to us. My Kate, and all, pray for it with tears. We would do our best to make you comfortable."  At the report of his end he said to Dietrich, "So my father, too, is dead," took his Psalter, and retired to his room. On the same day he wrote to Melanchthon that all he was, or possessed, he had received from God through his beloved father.

He suffered much from "buzzing and dizziness" in his head, and a tendency to fainting, so as to be prevented for several weeks from reading and writing. He did not know whether to attribute the illness to the Coburg hospitality, or to his old enemy. He had the same experience at the Wartburg. Dietrich traced it to Satan, since Luther was very careful of his diet.

Nevertheless, he accomplished a great deal of work. As soon as his box of books arrived, he resumed his translation of the Bible, begun on the Wartburg, hoping to finish the Prophets, and dictated to Dietrich a commentary on the first twenty-five Psalms. He also explained his favorite 118th Psalm, and wrote 118:17 on the wall of his room, with the tune for chanting, —

"Non moriar, sed vivam, et narrabo opera Domini."

By way of mental recreation he translated thirteen of Aesop’s fables, to adapt them for youth and common people, since "they set forth in pleasing colors of fiction excellent lessons of wise and peaceful living among bad people in this wicked world."  He rendered them in the simplest language, and expressed the morals in apt German proverbs.990

The Diet at Augsburg occupied his constant attention. He was the power behind the throne. He wrote in May a public "Admonition to the Clergy assembled at the Diet," reminding them of the chief scandals, warning them against severe measures, lest they provoke a new rebellion, and promising the quiet possession of all their worldly possessions and dignities, if they would only leave the gospel free. He published a series of tracts, as so many rounds of musketry, against Romish errors and abuses.

He kept up a lively correspondence with Melanchthon, Jonas, Spalatin, Link, Hausmann, Brenz, Agricola, Weller, Chancellor Brück, Cardinal Albrecht, the Elector John, the Landgrave Philip, and others, not forgetting his "liebe Kethe, Herr Frau Katherin Lutherin zu Wittenberg."  He dated his letters "from the region of the birds" (ex volucrum regno), "from the Diet of the jackdaws" (ex comitiis Monedu, larum seu Monedulanensibus), or "from the desert" (ex eremo, aus der Einöde). Melanchthon and the Elector kept him informed of the proceedings at Augsburg, asked his advice about every important step, and submitted to him the draught of the Confession. He approved of it, though he would have liked it much stronger. He opposed every compromise in doctrine, and exhorted the confessors to stand by the gospel, without fear of consequences.

His heroic faith, the moving power and crowning glory of his life, shines with wonderful luster in these letters. The greater the danger, the stronger his courage. He devoted his best hours to prayer. His "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," was written before this time,991 but fitly expresses his fearless trust in God at this important crisis, when Melanchthon trembled. "Let the matter be ever so great," he wrote to him (June 27), "great also is He who has begun and who conducts it; for it is not our work .... ’Cast thy burthen upon the Lord; the Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him.’ Does He say that to the wind, or does He throw his words before beasts? ... It is your worldly wisdom that torments you, and not theology. As if you, with your useless cares, could accomplish any thing!  What more can the Devil do than strangle us? I conjure you, who in all other matters are so ready to fight, to fight against yourself as your greatest enemy." In another letter he well describes the difference between himself and his friend in regard to cares and temptations. "In private affairs I am the weaker, you the stronger combatant; but in public affairs it is just the reverse (if, indeed, any contest can be called private which is waged between me and Satan): for you take but small account of your life, while you tremble for the public cause; whereas I am easy and hopeful about the latter, knowing as I do for certain that it is just and true, and the cause of Christ and God Himself. Hence I am as a careless spectator, and unmindful of these threatening and furious papists. If we fall, Christ falls with us, the Ruler of the world. I would rather fall with Christ than stand with the Emperor. Therefore I exhort you, in the name of Christ, not to despise the promises and the comfort of God, who says, ’Cast all your cares upon the Lord. Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’  I know the weakness of our faith; but all the more let us pray, ’Lord, increase our faith.’ "

In a remarkable letter to Chancellor Brück (Aug. 5), he expresses his confidence that God can not and will not forsake the cause of the evangelicals, since it is His own cause. "It is His doctrine, it is His Word. Therefore it is certain that He will hear our prayers, yea, He has already prepared His help, for he says, ’Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee" (Isa. 49:15). In the same letter he says, "I have lately seen two wonders: the first, when looking out of the window, I saw the stars of heaven and the whole beautiful vault of God, but no pillars, and yet the heavens did not collapse, and the vault still stands fast. The second wonder: I saw great thick clouds hanging over us, so heavy as to be like unto a great lake, but no ground on which they rested; yet they did not fall on us, but, after greeting us with a gloomy countenance, they passed away, and over them appeared the luminous rainbow .... Comfort Master Philip and all the rest. May Christ comfort and sustain our gracious Elector. To Christ be all the praise and thanks forever. Amen."

Urbanus Rhegius, the Reformer of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, on his way from Augsburg to Celle, called on Luther, for the first and last time, and spent a day with him at Coburg. It was "the happiest day" of his life, and made a lasting impression on him, which he thus expressed in a letter: "I judge, no one can hate Luther who knows him. His books reveal his genius; but if you would see him face to face, and hear him speak on divine things with apostolic spirit, you would say, the living reality surpasses the fame. Luther is too great to be judged by every wiseacre. I, too, have written books, but compared with him I am a mere pupil. He is an elect instrument of the Holy Ghost. He is a theologus for the whole world."

Bucer also paid him a visit at Coburg (Sept. 25), and sought to induce him, if possible, to a more friendly attitude towards the Zwinglians and Strassburgers. He succeeded at least so far as to make him hopeful of a future reconciliation. It was the beginning of those union efforts which resulted in the Wittenburg Concordia, but failed at last. Bucer received the impression from this visit, that Luther was a man "who truly feared God, and sought sincerely the glory of God."

There can be no doubt about this. Luther feared God, and nothing else. He sought the glory of Christ, and cared nothing for the riches and pleasures of the world. At Coburg, Luther was in the full vigor of manhood,—forty-six years of age,—and at the height of his fame and power. With the Augsburg Confession his work was substantially completed. His followers were now an organized church with a confession of faith, a form of worship and government, and no longer dependent upon his personal efforts. He lived and labored fifteen years longer, completing the translation of the Bible,—the greatest work of his life, preaching, teaching, and writing; but his physical strength began to decline, his infirmities increased, he often complained of lassitude and uselessness, and longed for rest after his herculean labors. Some of his later acts, as the unfortunate complicity with the bigamy affair of Philip of Hesse, and his furious attacks upon Papists and Sacramentarians, obscured his fame, and only remind us of the imperfections which adhere to the greatest and best of men.

Here, therefore, is the proper place to attempt an estimate of his public character, and services to the church and the world.

§ 124. Luther’s Public Character, and Position in History.

In 1883 the four hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout Protestant Christendom by innumerable addresses and sermons setting forth his various merits as a man and a German, as a husband and father, as a preacher, catechist, and hymnist, as a Bible translator and expositor, as a reformer and founder of a church, as a champion of the sacred rights of conscience, and originator of a mighty movement of religious and civil liberty which spread over Europe and across the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific. The story of his life was repeated in learned and popular biographies, in different tongues, and enacted on the stage in the principal cities of Germany.992  Not only Lutherans, but Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, united in these tributes to the Reformer. The Academy of Music in New York could not hold the thousands who crowded the building to attend the Luther-celebration arranged by the Evangelical Alliance in behalf of the leading Protestant denominations of America.993

Such testimony has never been borne to a mortal man. The Zwingli-celebration of the year 1884 had a similar character, and extended over many countries in both hemispheres, but would probably not have been thought of without the preceding Luther-celebration.

And indeed Luther has exerted, and still exerts, a spiritual power inferior only to that of the sacred writers. St. Angustin’s influence extends wider, embracing the Roman Catholic church as well as the Protestant; but he never reached the heart of the common people. Luther is the only one among the Reformers whose name was adopted, though against his protest, as the designation and watchword by the church which he founded. He gave to his people, in their own vernacular, what no man did before or since, three fundamental books of religion,—the Bible, a hymn-book, and a catechism. He forced even his German enemies to imitate his language in poetry and prose. So strong is the hold which his Bible version has upon the church of his name, that it is next to impossible to change and adapt it to modern learning and taste, although he himself kept revising and improving it as long as he lived.994

Luther was the German of the Germans, and the most vigorous type of the faults as well as the virtues of his nation.995  He is the apostle of Protestant Germany, fully as much as Boniface is the apostle of Roman Catholic Germany, and surpasses him vastly in genius and learning. Boniface, though an Anglo-Saxon by birth, was more a Roman than a German; while in Luther the Christian and the German were one, and joined in opposition to papal Rome. All schools of Lutheran divines appeal to his authority: the extreme orthodox, who out-Luther Luther in devotion to the letter; the moderate or middle party, who adhere only to the substance of his teaching; and the rationalists, who reject his creed, but regard him as the standard-bearer of the freedom of private judgment and dissent from all authority.996

His real strength lies in his German writings, which created the modern High-German book-language, and went right to the heart of the people. His greatest production is a translation,—the German Bible. Italians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, who knew him only from his Latin books, received a very feeble idea of his power, and could not understand the secret of his influence.997  The contemptuous judgments of Pope Leo, Cardinal Cajetan, Aleander, and Emperor Charles, echo the sentiments of their nations, and re-appear again and again among modern writers of the Latin races and the Romish faith.

Nevertheless, Martin Luther’s influence extends far beyond the limits of his native land. He belongs to the church and the world.

Luther has written his own biography, as well as the early history of the German Reformation, in his numerous letters, without a thought of their publication. He lays himself open before the world without reservation. He was the frankest and most outspoken of men, and swayed by the impulse of the moment, without regard to logical consistency or fear of consequences. His faults as well as his virtues lay on the surface of his German works. He infused into them his intense personality to a degree which hardly finds a parallel except in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.

He knew himself very well. A high sense of his calling and a deep sense of personal unworthiness are inseparably combined in his self-estimate. He was conscious of his prophetic and apostolic mission in republishing the primitive gospel for the German people; and yet he wrote to his wife not to be concerned about him, for God could make a dozen Luthers at any time. In his last will and testament (Jan. 6, 1542) he calls himself "a man well known in heaven, on earth, and in hell," but also "a poor, miserable, unworthy sinner," to whom "God, the Father of all mercies, has intrusted the gospel of His dear Son, and made him a teacher of His truth in spite of the Pope, the Emperor, and the Devil."  He signs himself, in that characteristic document, "God’s notary and witness in His gospel."  One of his last words was, "We are beggars."  And in the preface of the first collected edition of his works, he expresses a wish that they might all perish, and God’s Word alone be read.

Luther was a genuine man of the people, rooted and grounded in rustic soil, but looking boldly and trustingly to heaven with the everlasting gospel in his hand. He was a plebeian, without a drop of patrician blood, and never ashamed of his lowly origin. But what king or emperor or pope of his age could compare with him in intellectual and moral force?  He was endowed with an overwhelming genius and indomitable energy, with fiery temper and strong passions, with irresistible eloquence, native wit, and harmless humor, absolutely honest and disinterested, strong in faith, fervent in prayer, and wholly devoted to Christ and His gospel. Many of his wise, quaint, and witty sayings have passed into popular proverbs; and no German writer is more frequently named and quoted than Luther.

Like all great men, he harbored in his mind colossal contrasts, and burst through the trammels of logic. He was a giant in public, and a child in his family; the boldest reformer, yet a conservative churchman; the eulogist of reason as the handmaid of religion, and the abuser of reason as the mistress of the Devil; the champion of the freedom of the spirit, and yet a slave of the letter; an intense hater of popery to the last, and yet an admirer of the Catholic Church, and himself a pope within his own church.998

Yet there was a unity in this apparent contradiction. He was a seeker of the righteousness of works and peace of conscience as a Catholic monk, and he was a finder of the righteousness of faith as an evangelical reformer; just as the idea and pursuit of righteousness is the connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. It was the same engine, but reversed. In separating from papal catholicism, Luther remained attached to Christian catholicism; and his churchly instincts were never suppressed, but only suspended to re-assert themselves with new and greater force after the revolutionary excesses of the Reformation.

His history naturally divides itself into three periods: the Roman-Catholic and monastic period, till 1517; the Protestant and progressive period, till 1525; the churchly, conservative, and reactionary period, till 1546. But he never gave up his devotion to the free gospel, and his hatred of the Pope as the veritable Antichrist.999

Luther’s greatness is not that of a polished work of art, but of an Alpine mountain with towering peaks, rough granite blocks, bracing air, fresh fountains, and green meadows. His polemical books rush along like thunderstorms or turbid mountain torrents. He knew his violent temper, but never took the trouble to restrain it; and his last books against the Papists, the Zwinglians, and the Jews, are his worst, and exceed any thing that is known in the history of theological polemics. In his little tract against the Romish Duke Henry of Brunswick,1000  the word Devil occurs no less than a hundred and forty-six times.1001  At last he could not pray without cursing, as he confessed himself.1002  He calls his mastery of the vocabulary of abuse his rhetoric. "Do not think," he wrote to Spalatin, "that the gospel can he advanced without tumult, trouble, and uproar. You cannot make a pen of a sword. The Word of God is a sword; it is war, overthrow, trouble, destruction, poison; it meets the children of Ephraim, as Amos says, like a bear on the road, or like a lioness in the wood."1003  We may admit that the club and sledge-hammer of this Protestant Hercules were necessary for the semi-barbarous Germans of his day. Providence used his violent temper as an instrument for the destruction of the greatest spiritual tyranny which the world ever saw. Yet his best friends were shocked and grieved at his rude personalities, and condemnatory judgments of such men as Erasmus, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius, not to speak of his Romish adversaries. Nothing shows more clearly the great distance which separates him from the apostles and evangelists.

But, with all his faults, he is the greatest man that Germany produced, and one of the very greatest in history. Melanchthon, who knew him best, and suffered most from his imperious temper, called him the Elijah of Protestantism, and compared him to the Apostle Paul.1004  And indeed, in his religious experience and theological standpoint, he strongly resembles the Apostle of the Gentiles,—though at a considerable distance,—more strongly than any schoolman or father. He roused by his trumpet voice the church from her slumber; he broke the yoke of papal tyranny; he reconquered Christian freedom; he re-opened the fountain of God’s holy Word to all the people, and directed the Christians to Christ, their only Master.

This is his crowning merit and his enduring monument.

Augustin, Luther, Calvin.

The men who, next to the Apostles, have exerted and still exert through their writings the greatest influence in the Christian Church, as leaders of theological thought, are St. Augustin, Martin Luther, and John Calvin: all pupils of Paul, inspired by his doctrines of sin and grace, filled with the idea that God alone is great, equally eminent for purity of character, abundance in labors, and whole-souled consecration to the service of Christ, their common Lord and Saviour; and yet as different from each other as an African, a German, and a Frenchman can be. Next to them I would place an Englishman, John Wesley, who, as to abundance of useful labor in winning souls to Christ, is the most apostolic man that Great Britain has produced.

Augustin commands the respect and gratitude of the Catholic as well as the Protestant world. He is, among the three the profoundest in thought, and the sweetest in spirit; free from bitterness and coarseness, even in his severest polemics; yet advocating a system of exclusiveness which justifies coercion and persecution of heretics and schismatics. He identified the visible catholic church of his day with the kingdom of God on earth, and furnished the program of mediaeval Catholicism, though he has little to say about the papacy, and protested, in the Pelagian controversy, against the position of one Pope, while he accepted the decision of another. All three were fighters, but against different foes and with different weapons. Augustin contended for the catholic church against heretical sects, and for authority against false freedom; Luther and Calvin fought for evangelical dissent from the overwhelming power of Rome, and for rational freedom against tyrannical authority. Luther was the fiercest and roughest fighter of the three; but he alone had the Teutonic gift of humor which is always associated with a kindly nature, and extracts the sting out of his irony and sarcasm. His bark was far worse than his bite. He advised to drown the Pope and his cardinals in the Tiber; and yet he would have helped to save their lives after the destruction of their office. He wrote a letter of comfort to Tetzel on his death-bed, and protested against the burning of heretics.

Luther and Calvin learned much from Augustin, and esteemed him higher than any human teacher since the Apostles; but they had a different mission, and assumed a polemic attitude towards the traditional church. Augustin struggled from the Manichaean heresy into catholic orthodoxy, from the freedom of error into the authority of truth; the Reformers came out of the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy into the freedom of the gospel. Augustin put the church above the Word, and established the principle of catholic tradition; the Reformers put the Word above the church, and secured a progressive understanding of the Scriptures by the right of free investigation.

Luther and Calvin are confined in their influence to Protestantism, and can never be appreciated by the Roman Church; yet, by the law of re-action, they forced the papacy into a moral reform, which enabled it to recover its strength, and to enter upon a new career of conquest. Romanism has far more vitality and strength in Protestant than in papal countries, and owes a great debt of gratitude to the Reformation.

Of the two Reformers, Luther is the more original, forcible, genial, and popular; Calvin, the more theological, logical, and systematic, besides being an organizer and disciplinarian. Luther controls the Protestant churches of Germany and Scandinavia; Calvin’s genius shaped the confessions and constitutions of the Reformed churches in Switzerland, France, Holland, and Great Britain; he had a marked influence upon the development of civil liberty, and is still the chief molder of theological opinion in the Presbyterian and Congregational churches of Scotland and North America. Luther inspires by his genius, and attracts by his personality; Calvin commands admiration by his intellect and the force of moral self-government, which is the secret of true freedom in church and state.

Great and enduring are the merits of the three; but neither Augustin, nor Luther, nor Calvin has spoken the last word in Christendom. The best is yet to come.

NOTES.

Remarkable Judgments on Luther.

Luther, like other great men, has been the subject of extravagant praise and equally extravagant censure.

We select a few impartial and weighty testimonies from four distinguished writers of very different character and position,—an Anglican divine, two secular poets, and a Catholic historian.

I. Archdeacon Charles Julius Hare (1795–1855) has written the best work in the English language in vindication of Luther. It appeared first as a note of 222 pages in the second volume of his The Mission of the Comforter, 1846 (3d ed. 1876), and afterwards as a separate book shortly before his death, 2d ed. 1855.

Luther has been assailed by English writers on literary, theological, and moral grounds: 1, for violence and coarseness in polemics (by Henry Hallam, the historian); 2, for unsoundness in the doctrine of justification, and disregard of church authority (by the Oxford Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics); 3, for lax views on monogamy in conniving at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse (by the same, and by Sir William Hamilton).

These charges are discussed, refuted, or reduced to a minimum, by Hare (who had the largest Luther library and the fullest Luther knowledge in England), with ample learning, marked ability, and in the best Christian spirit. He concludes his vindication with these words: —

"To some readers it may seem that I have spoken with exaggerated admiration of Luther. No man ever lived whose whole heart and soul and life have been laid bare as his have been to the eyes of mankind. Open as the sky, bold and fearless as the storm, he gave utterance to all his feelings, all his thoughts. He knew nothing of reserve; and the impression he produced on his hearers and friends was such, that they were anxious to treasure up every word that dropped from his pen or from his lips. No man, therefore, has ever been exposed to so severe a trial; perhaps no man was ever placed in such difficult circumstances, or assailed by such manifold temptations. And how has he come out of the trial?  Through the power of faith, under the guardian care of his Heavenly Master, he was enabled to stand through life; and still he stands, and will continue to stand, firmly rooted in the love of all who really know him."

II. Goethe, the greatest poet and literary genius of Germany, when he was eighty-two years of age, March 11, 1832 (a few days before his death), paid this tribute to Luther and the Reformation, as reported by Eckermann, in the third or supplemental volume of the Conversations of that extraordinary man: —

"We scarcely know what we owe to Luther, and the Reformation In general. We are freed from the fetters of spiritual narrow-mindedness; we have, in consequence of our increasing culture, become capable of turning back to the fountain-head, and of comprehending Christianity in its purity. We have again the courage to stand with firm feet upon God’s earth, and to feel ourselves in our divinely endowed human nature. Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospels.

"But the better we Protestants advance in our noble development, so much the more rapidly will the Catholics follow us. As soon as they feel themselves caught up by the ever-extending enlightenment of the time, they must go on, do what they will, till at last the point is reached where all is but one."

III. Heinrich Heine, of Jewish descent, poet, critic, and humorist, the Franco-German Voltaire, who, like Voltaire, ridiculed with irreverent audacity the most sacred things, and yet, unlike him, could pass from smiles to tears, and appreciate the grandeur of Moses and the beauty of the Bible, pays this striking tribute to the Reformer: —

"Luther was not only the greatest, but also the most German man of our history; and in his character all the virtues and vices of the Germans are united in the grandest manner. He had also attributes which are rarely found together, and are usually regarded as hostile contradictions. He was at once a dreamy mystic, and a practical man of action. His thoughts had not only wings, but also hands; he spoke and he acted. He was not only the tongue, but also the sword of his age. He was both a cold scholastic stickler for words, and an inspired, divinely intoxicated prophet. After working his mind weary with his dogmatic distinctions during the day, he took his flute in the evening, looked up to the stars, and melted into melody and devotion. The same man who would scold like a fishwoman could also be as soft as a tender virgin. He was at times wild as the storm which uproots the oaks, and again as gentle as the zephyr which kisses the violets. He was full of the most awful fear of God, full of consecration to the Holy Spirit; he would be all absorbed in pure spirituality, and yet he knew very well the glories of the earth, and appreciated them, and from his mouth blossomed the famous motto: Who does not love wine, wife, and song, remains a fool his whole life long."1005  He was a complete man,—I might say, an absolute man,—in whom spirit and matter are not separated ....

"Honor to Luther!  Eternal honor to the dear man, to whom we owe the recovery of our dearest rights, and by whose benefit we live to-day!  It becomes us little to complain about the narrowness of his views. The dwarf who stands on the shoulders of the giant can indeed see farther than the giant himself, especially if he puts on spectacles; but for that lofty point of intuition we want the lofty feeling, the giant heart, which we cannot make our own. It becomes us still less to pass a harsh judgment upon his failings: these failings have been of more use to us than the virtues of a thousand others. The polish of Erasmus, the gentleness of Melanchthon, would never have brought us so far as the divine brutality of Brother Martin. From the imperial Diet, where Luther denied the authority of the Pope, and openly declared ’that his doctrine must be refuted by the authority of the Bible, or by the arguments of reason,’ new age has begun in Germany. The chain wherewith the holy Boniface bound the German church to Rome has been hewn asunder .... Through Luther we attained the greatest freedom of thought; but this Martin Luther gave us not only liberty to move, but also the means of moving, for to the spirit he gave also a body. He created the word for the thought,—he created the German language. He did this by his translation of the Bible. The Divine author of this book himself chose him his translator, and gave him the marvellous power to translate from a dead language which was already buried into another language which did not yet live. How Luther came to the language into which he translated the Bible I cannot conceive to this day .... This old book is a perennial fountain for the renewal of the German language."—Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, 2nd ed. 1852, in Heine’s Sämmtl. Werke, vol. III. 29 sqq.

IV. J. Döllinger, the most learned Catholic historian of the nineteenth century, in his Lectures on the Reunion of Christendom (Ueber die Wiedervereinigung der christlichen Kirchen, Nördlingen, 1888, p. 53), makes the following incidental remark on Luther and the Reformation: —

"The force and strength of the Reformation was only in part due to the personality of the man who was its author and spokesman in Germany. It was indeed Luther’s overpowering mental greatness and wonderful manysidedness (überwältigende Geistesgrösse und wunderbare Vielseitigkeit) that made him the man of his age and his people. Nor was there ever a German who had such an intuitive knowledge of his countrymen, and was again so completely possessed, not to say absorbed, by the national sentiment, as the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg. The mind and spirit of the Germans was in his hand as the lyre is in the hand of a skillful musician. He had given them more than any man in Christian days ever gave his people,—language, Bible, church hymn. All his opponents could offer in place of it, and all the reply they could make to him, was insipid, colorless, and feeble, by the side of his transporting eloquence. They stammered, he spoke. He alone has impressed the indelible stamp of his mind on the German language and the German intellect; and even those among us who hold him in religious detestation, as the great heresiarch and seducer of the nation, are constrained, in spite of themselves, to speak with his words and think with his thoughts.

"And yet still more powerful than this Titan of the world of mind was the yearning of the German people for deliverance from the bonds of a corrupted church system. Had no Luther arisen, a reformation would still have come, and Germany would not have remained Catholic."

Dr. Döllinger delivered the lectures from which this extract is taken, after his quarrel with Vatican Romanism, in the museum at Munich, February, 1872. They were stenographically reported in the "Köllner-Zeitung," translated into English by Oxenham (London, 1872), and from English into French by Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson (La réunion des églises, Paris, 1880), and at last published by the author (1888).

This testimony is of special importance, owing to the acknowledged learning and ability of Döllinger as a Roman Catholic historian, and author of an elaborate work against the Reformation (1848, 3 vols.), consisting mostly of contemporaneous testimonies. He is thoroughly at home in the writings of the Reformers, and prepared a biographical sketch of Luther,1006  in which he severely criticises him for his opinions and conduct towards the Catholic Church, but does full justice to his intellectual greatness. He says, p. 51, "If we justly call him a great man, who, endowed with mighty powers and gifts, accomplishes great things, who, as a bold legislator in the realm of mind, makes millions subservient to his system, then the peasant’s son of Möhra must be counted among the great, yea, the greatest men. This also is true, that he was a sympathizing friend, free of avarice and love of money, and ready to help others."

Döllinger was excommunicated for his opposition to the Vatican decree of infallibility (1870), but still remains a Catholic, and could not become a Protestant without retracting his work on the Reformation. He would, however, write a very different work now, and present the Reformation as a blessing rather than a calamity to Germany, in the light of the events which have passed since 1870. In one of his Akademische Vorträge, the first volume of which has just reached me (Nördlingen, 1888, p. 76), he makes the significant confession, that for many years the events In Germany from 1517 to 1552 were to him an unsolved riddle, and an object of sorrow and grief, seeing then only the result of division of the church and the nation into hostile camps; but that a closer study of the mediaeval history of Rome and Germany, and the events of the last years, have given him a better understanding and more hopeful view of the renewed and reunited German nation as a noble instrument in the hands of Providence. This is as far as he can go from his standpoint.

§ 125. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.

I conclude this volume with Luther’s immortal hymn, which is the best expression of his character, and reveals the secret of his strength as well as the moving power of the Reformation.1007

A tower of strength1008 our God is still,

A good defense1009 and weapon;

He helps us free from all the ill

That us hath overtaken.

Our old, mortal foe1010

Now aims his fell blow,

Great might and deep guile

His horrid coat-of-mail;1011

On earth is no one like him.1012

Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,

Ein’ gute Wehr und Waffen.

Er hilft uns frei aus aller Noth,

Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.

Der alt’ böse Feind,

Mit Ernst er’s jetzt meint;

Gross’ Macht und viel List,

Sein grausam Rüstung ist,

Auf Erd’ ist nicht sein’s Gleichen.

By might of ours can naught be done:1013

Our fate were soon decided.

But for us fights the champion,1014

By God himself provided.

Who Is this, ask ye?

Jesus Christ!  ÕTis he!

Lord of Sabaoth,

True God and Saviour both,

Omnipotent in battle.1015

Mit unsrer Macht ist nichts gethan,

Wir sind gar bald verloren:

Es streit’t für uns der rechte Mann,

Den Gott hat selbst erkoren.

Fragst du, wer Der ist?

Er heisst Jesus Christ,

Der Herr Zebaoth,

Und ist kein andrer Gott;

Das Feld muss Er behalten.

Did devils fill the earth and air,1016

All eager to devour us,

Our steadfast hearts need feel no care,

Lest they should overpower us.

The grim Prince of hell,

With rage though he swell,

Hurts us not a whit,

Because his doom is writ:

A little word can rout1017 him.

Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär’

Und wollt uns gar verschlingen,

So fürchten wir uns nicht zu sehr,

Es soll uns doch gelingen.

Der Fürst dieser Welt,

Wie sau’r er sich stellt,

Thut er uns doch nichts;

Das macht, er ist gericht’t;

Ein Wörtlein kann ihn fällen.

The word of God will never yield

To any creature living;

He stands with us upon the field,

His grace and Spirit giving.

Take they child and wife,

Goods, name, fame, and life,

Though all this be done,

Yet have they nothing won:

The kingdom still remaineth.

Das Wort sie sollen lassen stan1018

Und keinÕn Dank dazu haben.

Er ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan1019

Mit seinem Geist und Gaben.

Nehmen sie den Leib,

Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib;

Lass fahren dahin,

Sie haben’s kein’n Gewinn;

Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben

VOLUME VIII. MODERN CHRISTIANITY - THE SWISS REFORMATION

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This is a reproduction of the Third Edition, Revised

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PREFACE.

This volume concludes the history of the productive period of the Reformation, in which Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were the chief actors. It follows the Protestant movement in German, Italian, and French Switzerland, to the close of the sixteenth century.

During the last year, the sixth-centenary of the oldest surviving Republic was celebrated with great patriotic enthusiasm. On the first day of August, in the year 1291, the freemen of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden formed, in the name of the Lord "a perpetual alliance for the mutual protection of their persons, property, and liberty, against internal and external foes. On the same day, in 1891, the great event was commemorated in every village of Switzerland by the ringing of bells and the illumination of the mountains, while on the following day—a Sunday—thanksgiving services were held in every church, Catholic and Protestant. The chief festivities took place, from July 31 to Aug. 2, in the towns of Schwyz and Brunnen, and were attended by the Federal and Cantonal dignitaries, civil and military, and a vast assembly of spectators. The most interesting feature was a dramatic representation of the leading events in Swiss history—the sacred oaths of Schwyz, Brunnen, and Grütli, the poetic legend of William Tell, the heroic battles for liberty and independence against Austria, Burgundy, and France, the venerable figure of Nicolas von der Flue appearing as a peacemaker in the Diet at Stans, and the chief scenes of the Reformation, the Revolution, and the modern reconstruction. The drama, enacted in the open field in view of mountains and meadows and the lake of Luzern, is said to have equalled in interest and skill of execution the famous Passion Play of Oberammergau. Similar celebrations took place, not only in every city and village of Switzerland, but also in the Swiss colonies in foreign lands, notably in New York, on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of September.2

Between Switzerland and the United States there has always been a natural sympathy and friendship. Both aim to realize the idea of a government of freedom without license, and of authority without despotism; a government of law and order without a standing army; a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, under the sole headship of Almighty God.

At the time of the Reformation, Switzerland numbered as many Cantons (13) as our country originally numbered States, and the Swiss Diet was then a loose confederation representing only the Cantons and not the people, just as was our Continental Congress. But by the revision of the Constitution in 1848 and 1874, the Swiss Republic, following the example of our Constitution, was consolidated from a loose, aristocratic Confederacy of independent Cantons into a centralized federal State,3with a popular as well as a cantonal representation. In one respect the modern Swiss Constitution is even more democratic than that of the United States; for, by the Initiative and the Referendum, it gives to the people the right of proposing or rejecting national legislation.

But there is a still stronger bond of union between the two countries than that which rests on the affinity of political institutions. Zwingli and Calvin directed and determined the westward movement of the Reformation to France, Holland, England, and Scotland, and exerted, indirectly, a moulding influence upon the leading Evangelical Churches of America. George Bancroft, the American historian, who himself was not a Calvinist, derives the republican institutions of the United States from Calvinism through the medium of English Puritanism. A more recent writer, Douglas Campbell, of Scotch descent, derives them from Holland, which was still more under the influence of the Geneva Reformer than England. Calvinism breeds manly, independent, and earnest characters who fear God and nothing else, and favors political and religious freedom. The earliest and most influential settlers of the United States—the Puritans of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland and Ireland, the Huguenots of France, the Reformed from Holland and the Palatinate,—were Calvinists, and brought with them the Bible and the Reformed Confessions of Faith. Calvinism was the ruling theology of New England during the whole Colonial Period, and it still rules in great measure the theology of the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist Churches.

In the study of the sources I have derived much benefit from the libraries of Switzerland, especially the Stadtbibliothek of Zürich, which contains the invaluable Simler collection and every important work relating to the Reformation in Switzerland. I take great pleasure in expressing my obligation to Dr. G. von Wyss, president, and Dr. Escher, librarian, for their courtesy and kindness on repeated visits to that library.

The sources on the Reformation in French Switzerland are now made fully accessible by the new critical edition of Calvin’s works, by Herminjard’s collection of the correspondence of the French-speaking Reformers (not yet completed), and by the publications of the documentary history of Geneva during the period of Calvin’s labors, including the registers of the Council and of the Consistory.

I have freely quoted from Calvin’s works and letters, which give us the best insight into his mind and heart. I have consulted also his chief biographers,—French, German, and English: his enthusiastic admirers,—Beza, Henry, Stähelin, Bungener, and Merle D’Aubigné; his virulent detractors—Bolsec, Galiffe, and Audin; and his impartial critics,—Dyer, and Kampschulte. Dr. Henry’s work (1844) was the first adequate biography of the great Reformer, and is still unsurpassed as a rich collection of authentic materials, although not well arranged and digested.4 Dr. Merle D’Aubigné’s "History of the Reformation" comes down only to 1542. Thomas H. Dyer, LL. D, the author of the "History, of Modern Europe," from the fall of Constantinople to 1871, and other historical works, has written the first able and readable "Life of Calvin" in the English language, which is drawn chiefly from Calvin’s correspondence, from Ruchat, Henry, and, in the Servetus chapter, from Mosheim and Trechsel, and is, on the whole, accurate and fair, but cold and unsympathetic. The admirable work of Professor Kampschulte is based on a thorough mastery of the sources, but it is unfortunately incomplete, and goes only as far as 1542. The materials for a second and third volume were placed after his death (December, 1872) into the hands of Professor Cornelius of Munich, who, however, has so far only written a few sections. His admiration for Calvin’s genius and pure character (see p. 205) presents an interesting parallel to Döllinger’s eloquent tribute to Luther (quoted in vol. VI. 741), and is all the more valuable as he dissented from Calvin’s theology and church polity; for he was an Old Catholic and intimate friend of Reusch and Döllinger.5

The sole aim of the historian ought to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I have dedicated this volume to my countrymen and oldest surviving friends in Switzerland, Dr. Georg von Wyss of Zürich and Dr. Fréderic Godet of Neuchâtel. The one represents German, the other French Switzerland. Both are well known; the one for his historical, the other for his exegetical works. They have followed the preparation of this book with sympathetic interest, and done me the favor of revising the proof-sheets.6

I feel much encouraged by the kind reception of my Church History at home and abroad. The first three volumes have been freely translated into Chinese by the Rev. D. Z. Sheffield (a missionary of the American Board), and into Hindostani by the Rev. Robert Stewart (of the Presbyterian Mission of Sialkot).

I have made considerable progress in the fifth volume, which will complete the history of the Middle Ages. It was delayed till I could make another visit to Rome and Florence, and study more fully the Renaissance, which preceded the Reformation. Two or three more volumes will be necessary to bring the history down to the present time, according to the original plan. But how many works remain unfinished in this world!  Ars longa, vita brevis.

June, 1892.

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POSTSCRIPT.

The above Preface was ready for the printer, and the book nearly finished, when, on the 15th of July last, I was suddenly interrupted by a stroke of paralysis at Lake Mohonk (where I spent the summer); but, in the good providence of God, my health has been nearly restored. My experience is recorded in the 103d Psalm of thanksgiving and praise.

I regret that I could not elaborate chs. XVII. and XVIII., especially the influence of Calvin upon the Reformed Churches of Europe and America (§§ 162 and 163), as fully as I wished. My friend, the Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson, who happened to be with me when I was taken sick, aided me in the last chapter, on Beza, for which he was well prepared by previous studies. I had at first intended to add a history of the French Reformation, but this would make the volume too large and delay the publication. I have added, however, in an appendix, a list of literature which I prepared some time ago in the Library of the Society of the History of French Protestantism at Paris, and brought down to date. Most of the books are in my possession.

I may congratulate myself that, notwithstanding this serious interruption, I am enabled to publish the history of the Reformation of my native land before the close of the fiftieth anniversary of my academic teaching, which I began in December, 1842, in the University of Berlin, when my beloved teacher, Neander, was in the prime of his usefulness. A year afterwards, I received, at his and Tholuck’s recommendation, a call to a theological professorship from the Synod of the German Reformed Church in the United States, and I have never regretted accepting it. For it is a great privilege to labor, however humbly, for the kingdom of Christ in America, which celebrates in this month, with the whole civilized world, the fourth centennial of its discovery.

Thankful for the past, I look hopefully to the future.

Philip Schaff.

Union Theological Seminary

New York, October 12, 1892.

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The first edition (of 1500 copies) being exhausted, I have examined the volume and corrected a number of typographical errors, mostly in the French words of the last chapters. There was no occasion for other improvements.

P. S.

August 9, 1893.

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CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. Switzerland before the Reformation.

Switzerland belongs to those countries whose historic significance stands in inverse proportion to their size. God often elects small things for great purposes. Palestine gave to the world the Christian religion. From little Greece proceeded philosophy and art. Switzerland is the cradle of the Reformed churches. The land of the snow-capped Alps is the source of mighty rivers, and of the Reformed faith, as Germany is the home of the Lutheran faith; and the principles of the Swiss Reformation, like the waters of the Rhine and the Rhone, travelled westward with the course of the sun to France, Holland, England, Scotland, and to a new continent, which Zwingli and Calvin knew only by name. Compared with intellectual and moral achievements, the conquests of the sword dwindle into insignificance. Ideas rule the world; ideas are immortal.

Before the sixteenth century, Switzerland exerted no influence in the affairs of Europe except by the bravery of its inhabitants in self-defence of their liberty and in foreign wars. But in the sixteenth century she stands next to Germany in that great religious renovation which has affected all modern history.7

The Republic of Switzerland, which has maintained itself in the midst of monarchies down to this day, was founded by "the eternal covenant" of the three "forest cantons," Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, August 1, 1291, and grew from time to time by conquest, purchase, and free association. Lucerne (the fourth forest canton) joined the confederacy in 1332, Zurich in 1351, Glarus and Zug in 1352, Berne in 1353, Freiburg and Solothurn (Soleur) in 1481, Basle and Schaffhausen in 1501, Appenzell in 1513,—making in all thirteen cantons at the time of the Reformation. With them were connected by purchase, or conquest, or free consent, as common territories or free bailiwicks,8 the adjoining lands of Aargau, Thurgau, Wallis, Geneva, Graubündten (Grisons, Rhätia), the princedom of Neuchatel and Valangin, and several cities (Biel, Mühlhausen, Rotweil, Locarno, etc.). Since 1798 the number of cantons has increased to twenty-two, with a population of nearly three millions (in 1890). The Republic of the United States started with thirteen States, and has grown likewise by purchase or conquest and the organization and incorporation of new territories, but more rapidly, and on a much larger scale.

The romantic story of William Tell, so charmingly told by Egidius Tschudi, the Swiss Herodotus,9 and by Johannes von Müller, the Swiss Tacitus, and embellished by the poetic genius of Friedrich Schiller, must be abandoned to the realm of popular fiction, like the cognate stories of Scandinavian and German mythology, but contains, nevertheless, an abiding element of truth as setting forth the spirit of those bold mountaineers who loved liberty and independence more than their lives, and expelled the foreign invaders from their soil. The glory of an individual belongs to the Swiss people. The sacred oath of the men of Grütli on the Lake of Lucerne, at the foot of Seelisberg (1306 or 1308?), and the more certain confederation of Dec. 9, 1315, at Brunnen, were renewals of the previous covenant of 1291.10

The Swiss successfully vindicated their independence against the attacks of the House of Habsburg in the memorable battles of Morgarten ("the Marathon of Switzerland" 1315), Sempach (1386), and Näfels (1388), against King Louis XI. of France at St. Jacob near Basle (the Thermopylae of Switzerland, 1444), and against Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy at Granson, Murten (Morat), and Nancy (1476 and 1477).

Nature and history made Switzerland a federative republic. This republic was originally a loose, aristocratic confederacy of independent cantons, ruled by a diet of one house where each canton had the same number of deputies and votes, so that a majority of the Diet could defeat a majority of the people. This state of things continued till 1848, when (after the defeat of the Sonderbund of the Roman Catholic cantons) the constitution was remodelled on democratic principles, after the American example, and the legislative power vested in two houses, one (the Ständerath or Senate) consisting of forty-four deputies of the twenty-two sovereign cantons (as in the old Diet), the other (the Nationalrath or House of Representatives) representing the people in proportion to their number (one to every twenty thousand souls); while the executive power was given to a council of seven members (the Bundesrath) elected for three years by both branches of the legislature. Thus the confederacy of cantons was changed into a federal state, with a central government elected by the people and acting directly on the people.11

This difference in the constitution of the central authority must be kept in mind in order to understand why the Reformation triumphed in the most populous cantons, and yet was defeated in the Diet.12  The small forest cantons had each as many votes as the much larger cantons of Zurich and Berne, and kept out Protestantism from their borders till the year 1848. The loose character of the German Diet and the absence of centralization account in like manner for the victory of Protestantism in Saxony, Hesse, and other states and imperial cities, notwithstanding the hostile resolutions of the majority of the Diet, which again and again demanded the execution of the Edict of Worms.

The Christianization of Switzerland began in the fourth or third century under the Roman rule, and proceeded from France and Italy. Geneva, on the border of France and Savoy, is the seat of the oldest church and bishopric founded by two bishops of Vienne in Southern Gaul. The bishopric of Coire, in the south-eastern extremity, appears first in the acts of a Synod of Milan, 452. The northern and interior sections were Christianized in the seventh century by Irish missionaries, Columban and Gallus. The last founded the abbey of St. Gall, which became a famous centre of civilization for Alamannia. The first, and for a long time the only, university of Switzerland was that of Basle (1460), where one of the three reformatory Councils was held (1430). During the Middle Ages the whole country, like the rest of Europe, was subject to the Roman see, and no religion was tolerated but the Roman Catholic. It was divided into six episcopal dioceses,—Geneva, Coire, Constance, Basle, Lausanne, and Sion (Sitten). The Pope had several legates in Switzerland who acted as political and military agents, and treated the little republic like a great power. The most influential bishop, Schinner of Sion, who did substantial service to the warlike Julius II. and Leo X., attained even a cardinal’s hat. Zwingli, who knew him well, might have acquired the same dignity if he had followed his example.

§ 2. The Swiss Reformation.

The Church in Switzerland was corrupt and as much in need of reform as in Germany. The inhabitants of the old cantons around the Lake of Lucerne were, and are to this day, among the most honest and pious Catholics; but the clergy were ignorant, superstitious, and immoral, and set a bad example to the laity. The convents were in a state of decay, and could not furnish a single champion able to cope with the Reformers in learning and moral influence. Celibacy made concubinage a common and pardonable offence. The bishop of Constance (Hugo von Hohenlandenberg) absolved guilty priests on the payment of a fine of four guilders for every child born to them, and is said to have derived from this source seventy-five hundred guilders in a single year (1522). In a pastoral letter, shortly before the Reformation, he complained of the immorality of many priests who openly kept concubines or bad women in their houses, who refuse to dismiss them, or bring them back secretly, who gamble, sit with laymen in taverns, drink to excess, and utter blasphemies.13

The people were corrupted by the foreign military service (called Reislaufen), which perpetuated the fame of the Swiss for bravery and faithfulness, but at the expense of independence and good morals.14  Kings and popes vied with each other in tempting offers to secure Swiss soldiers, who often fought against each other on foreign battle-fields, and returned with rich pensions and dissolute habits. Zwingli knew this evil from personal experience as chaplain in the Italian campaigns, attacked it before he thought of reforming the Church, continued to oppose it when called to Zurich, and found his death at the hands of a foreign mercenary.

On the other hand, there were some hopeful signs of progress. The reformatory Councils of Constance and Basle were not yet entirely forgotten among the educated classes. The revival of letters stimulated freedom of thought, and opened the eyes to abuses. The University of Basle became a centre of literary activity and illuminating influences. There Thomas Wyttenbach of Biel taught theology between 1505 and 1508, and attacked indulgences, the mass, and the celibacy of the priesthood. He, with seven other priests, married in 1524, and was deposed as preacher, but not excommunicated. He combined several high offices, but died in great poverty, 1526. Zwingli attended his lectures in 1505, and learned much from him. In Basle, Erasmus, the great luminary of liberal learning, spent several of the most active years of his life (1514–1516 and 1521–1529), and published, through the press of his friend Frobenius, most of his books, including his editions of the Greek Testament. In Basle several works of Luther were reprinted, to be scattered through Switzerland. Capito, Hedio, Pellican, and Oecolampadius likewise studied, taught, and preached in that city.

But the Reformation proceeded from Zurich, not from Basle, and was guided by Zwingli, who combined the humanistic culture of Erasmus with the ability of a popular preacher and the practical energy of an ecclesiastical reformer.

The Swiss Reformation may be divided into three acts and periods, —

I. The Zwinglian Reformation in the German cantons from 1516 to Zwingli’s death and the peace of Cappel, 1531.

II. The Calvinistic Reformation in French Switzerland from 1531 to the death of Calvin, 1564.

III. The labors of Bullinger in Zurich (d. 1575), and Beza in Geneva (d. 1605) for the consolidation of the work of their older friends and predecessors.

The Zwinglian movement was nearly simultaneous with the German Reformation, and came to an agreement with it at Marburg in fourteen out of fifteen articles of faith, the only serious difference being the mode of Christ’s presence in the eucharist. Although Zwingli died in the Prime of life, he already set forth most of the characteristic features of the Reformed Churches, at least in rough outline.

But Calvin is the great theologian, organizer, and discip-linarian of the Reformed Church. He brought it nearer the Lutheran Church in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, but he widened the breach in the doctrine of predestination.

Zwingli and Bullinger connect the Swiss Reformation with that of Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia; Calvin and Beza, with that of France, Holland, England, and Scotland.

§ 3. The Genius of the Swiss Reformation compared with the German.

On the difference between the Lutheran and the Reformed Confessions see Göbel, Hundeshagen, Schnekenburger, Schweizer, etc., quoted in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 211.

Protestantism gives larger scope to individual and national freedom and variety of development than Romanism, which demands uniformity in doctrine, discipline, and worship. It has no visible centre or headship, and consists of a number of separate and independent organizations under the invisible headship of Christ. It is one flock, but in many folds. Variety in unity and unity in variety are the law of God in nature and history. Protestantism so far has fully developed variety, but not yet realized unity.

The two original branches of evangelical Christendom are the Lutheran and the Reformed Confessions. They are as much alike and as much distinct as the Greek and the Roman branches of Catholicism, which rest on the national bases of philosophical Greece and political Rome. They are equally evangelical, and admit of an organic union, which has actually been effected in Prussia and other parts of Germany since the third anniversary of the Reformation in 1817. Their differences are theological rather than religious; they affect the intellectual conception, but not the heart and soul of piety. The only serious doctrinal difference which divided Luther and Zwingli at Marburg was the mode of the real presence in the eucharist; as the double procession of the Holy Spirit was for centuries the only doctrinal difference between the Greek and Roman Churches. But other differences of government, discipline, worship, and practice developed themselves in the course of time, and overshadowed the theological lines of separation.

The Lutheran family embraces the churches which bear the name of Luther and accept the Augsburg Confession; the Reformed family (using the term Reformed in its historic and general sense) comprehends the churches which trace their origin directly or indirectly to the labors of Zwingli and Calvin.15  In England the second or Puritan Reformation gave birth to a number of. new denominations, which, after the Toleration Act of 1689, were organized into distinct Churches. In the eighteenth century arose the Wesleyan revival movement, which grew into one of the largest and most active churches in the English-speaking world.

Thus the Reformation of the sixteenth century is the mother or grandmother of at least half a dozen families of evangelical denominations, not counting the sub-divisions. Lutheranism has its strength in Germany and Scandinavia; the Reformed Church, in Great Britain and North America.

The Reformed Confession has developed different types. Travelling westward with the course of Christianity and civilization, it became more powerful in Holland, England, and Scotland than in Switzerland; but the chief characteristics which distinguish it from the Lutheran Confession were already developed by Zwingli and Calvin.

The Swiss and the German Reformers agreed in opposition to Romanism, but the Swiss departed further from it. The former were zealous for the sovereign glory of God, and, in strict interpretation of the first and second commandments, abolished the heathen elements of creature worship; while Luther, in the interest of free grace and the peace of conscience, aimed his strongest blows at the Jewish element of monkish legalism and self-righteousness. The Swiss theology proceeds from God’s grace to man’s needs; the Lutheran, from man’s needs to God’s grace.

Both agree in the three fundamental principles of Protestantism: the absolute supremacy of the Divine Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice; justification by free grace through faith; the general priesthood of the laity. But as regards the first principle, the Reformed Church is more radical in carrying it out against human traditions, abolishing all those which have no root in the Bible; while Luther retained those which are not contrary to the Bible. As regards justification by faith, Luther made it the article of the standing or falling Church; while Zwingli and Calvin subordinated it to the ulterior truth of eternal foreordination by free grace, and laid greater stress on good works and strict discipline. Both opposed the idea of a special priesthood and hierarchical rule; but the Swiss Reformers gave larger scope to the popular lay element, and set in motion the principle of congregational and synodical self-government and self-support.

Both brought the new Church into Close contact with the State; but the Swiss Reformers controlled the State in the spirit of republican independence, which ultimately led to a separation of the secular and spiritual powers, or to a free Church in a free State (as in the free churches of French Switzerland, and in all the churches of the United States); while Luther and Melanchthon, with their native reverence for monarchical institutions and the German Empire, taught passive obedience in politics, and brought the Church under bondage to the civil authority.

All the evangelical divines and rulers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were inconsistently intolerant in theory and practice; but the Reformation, which was a revolt against papal tyranny and a mighty act of emancipation, led ultimately to the triumph of religious freedom as its legitimate fruit.

The Reformed Church does not bear the name of any man, and is not controlled by a towering personality, but assumed different types under the moulding influence of Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, of Oecolampadius in Basle, of Haller in Berne, of Calvin and Beza in Geneva, of Ursinus and Olevianus in the Palatinate, of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley in England, of Knox in Scotland. The Lutheran Church, as the very name indicates, has the stamp of Luther indelibly impressed upon it; although the milder and more liberal Melanchthonian tendency has in it a legitimate place of honor and power, and manifests itself in all progressive and unionistic movements as those of Calixtus, of Spener, and of the moderate Lutheran schools of our age.

Calvinism has made a stronger impression on the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races than on the German; while Lutheranism is essentially German, and undergoes more or less change in other countries.

Calvin aimed at a reformation of discipline as well as theology, and established a model theocracy in Geneva, which lasted for several generations. Luther contented himself with a reformation of faith and doctrine, leaving the practical consequences to time, but bitterly lamented the Antinomian disorder and abuse which for a time threatened to neutralize his labors in Saxony.

The Swiss Reformers reduced worship to the utmost simplicity and naked spirituality, and made its effect for kindling or chilling-devotion to depend upon the personal piety and intellectual effort of the minister and the merits of his sermons and prayers. Luther, who was a poet and a musician, left larger scope for the esthetic and artistic element; and his Church developed a rich liturgical and hymnological literature. Congregational singing, however, flourishes in both denominations; and the Anglican Church produced the best liturgy, which has kept its place to this day, with increasing popularity.

The Reformed Church excels in self-discipline, liberality, energy, and enterprise; it carries the gospel to all heathen lands and new colonies; it builds up a God-fearing, manly, independent, heroic type of character, such as we find among the French Huguenots, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the Waldenses in Piedmont; and sent in times of persecution a noble army of martyrs to the prison and the stake. The Lutheran Church cultivates a hearty, trustful, inward, mystic style of piety, the science of theology, biblical and historical research, and wrestles with the deepest problems of philosophy and religion.

God has wisely distributed his gifts, with abundant opportunities for their exercise in the building up of his kingdom.

§ 4. Literature on the Swiss Reformation.

Compare the literature on the Reformation in general, vol. VI. 89–93, and the German Reformation, pp. 94–97. The literature on the Reformation in French Switzerland will be given in a later chapter (pp. 223 sqq.).

The largest collection of the Reformation literature of German Switzerland is in the Stadtbibliothek (in the Wasserkirche) and in the Cantonalbibliothek of Zürich. The former includes the 200 vols. of the valuable MSS. collection of Simler (d. 1788), and the Thesaurus Hottingerianus. I examined these libraries in August, 1886, with the kind aid of Profs. O. F. Fritsche, Alex. Schweizer, Georg von Wyss, and Dr. Escher, and again in July, 1890.

For lists of books on Swiss history in general consult the following works: Gottlieb Emanuel von Haller: Bibliothek der Schweizer-Geschichte und aller Theile, so dahin Bezug haben (Bern, 1785–’88, 7 vols.); with the continuations of Gerold Meyer Von Knonau (from 1840–’45, Zür., 1850) and Ludwig Von Sinner (from 1786–1861, Bern and Zürich, 1851). The Catalog der Stadtbibliothek in Zürich (Zürich, 1864–’67, 4 Bde, much enlarged in the written catalogues). E. Fr. von Mülinen: Prodromus einer Schweizer. Historiographie (Bern, 1874). The author promises a complete Lexicon of Swiss chroniclers, etc., annalists and historians in about 4 vols.

I. Sources: The works Of Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Leo Judae, Bullinger, Watt (Vadianus), and other Reformers of the Swiss cantons.

Herminjard: Correspondance des Reformateurs. Genève, 1866–’86. 7 vols.

Bullinger (Heinrich, Zwingli’s successor, d. 1575): Reformationsgeschichte, nach den Autographen herausgeg. von J. J. Hottinger und H. H. Vögeli. Frauenfeld, 1838–’40, 3 vols. 8°. From 1519 to 1532. In the Swiss-German dialect.

Kessler (Johannes, Reformer of St. Gallen): Sabbata. Chronik der Jahre 1523–’39. Ed. by E. Götzinger. St. Gallen, 1866–’68. 2 parts. Kessler was the student whom Luther met at Jena on his return to Wittenberg (see vol. VI. 385).

Simler (Joh. Jac.): Sammlung alter und neuer Urkunden zur Beleuchtung der Kirchengeschichte, vornehmlich des Schweizerlandes. Zürich, 1757–’63. 2 Bde in 6 Theilen. 8°. Also the first 30 vols. of his above-mentioned collection of MSS., which includes many printed pamphlets and documents.

Die Eidgenössischen Abschiede. Bd. III. Abth. 2: Abschiede von 1500–’20, bearbeitet von Segesser (Luzern, 1869); Bd. IV. I a: A.D. 1521–’28, bearbeitet von Strickler (Brugg, 1873); Bd. IV. 1 b: A.D. 1529–’32 (Zürich, 1876); Bd. IV. 1 c: A.D. 1533–’40, bearbeitet von Deschwanden (Luzern, 1878); Bd. IV. 1 d: A.D. 1541–’48, bearbeitet von Deschwanden (Luzern, 1882). The publication of these official acts of the Swiss Diet was begun at the expense of the Confederacy, A.D. 1839, and embraces the period from 1245 to 1848.

Strickler (Joh.): Actensammlung zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte in den Jahren 1521–’32. Zürich, 1878–’84. 5 vols. 8°. Mostly in Swiss-German, partly in Latin. The fifth vol. contains Addenda, Registers, and a list of books on the history of the Reformation to 1533.

Egli (Emil): Actensammlung zur Geschichte der Zürcher Reformation von 1519–’33. Zürich, 1879. (Pages vii. and 947.)

Stürler (M. v.): Urkunden der Bernischen Kirchenreform. Bern, 1862. Goes only to 1528.

On the Roman Catholic side: Archiv für die Schweizer. Reformations-Geschichte, herausgeg. auf Veranstaltung des Schweizer. Piusvereins. Solothurn, 1868’-76. 3 large vols. This includes in vol. I. the Chronik der Schweizerischen Reformation (till 1534), by Hans Salat of Luzern (d. after 1543), a historian and poet, whose life and writings were edited by Baechtold, Basel, 1876. Vol. II. contains the papal addresses to the Swiss Diet, etc. Vol. III. 7–82 gives a very full bibliography bearing upon the Reformation and the history of the Swiss Cantons down to 1871. This work is overlooked by most Protestant historians. Bullinger wrote against Salat a book entitled Salz zum Salat.

II. Later Historical Works:

Hottinger (Joh. Heinrich, an eminent Orientalist, 1620–’67): Historia Ecclesiasticae Novi Test. Tiguri [Turici], 1651–’67. 9 vols. 8°. The last four volumes of this very learned but very tedious work treat of the Reformation. The seventh volume has a chapter of nearly 600 pages (24–618) de Indulgentiis in specie!

Hottinger (Joh. Jacob, 1652–1735, third son of the former): Helvetische Kirchengeschichten, etc. Zür., 1698–1729. 4 vols. 4°. Newly ed. by Wirz and Kirchhofer. See below.

Miscellanea Tigurina edita, inedita, vetera, nova, theologica, historica, etc., ed. by J. J. Ulrich. Zür., 1722–’24. 3 vols. 8°. They contain small biographies of Swiss Reformers and important documents of Bullinger, Leo Judae, Breitinger, Simler, etc.

Füsslin (or Füssli, Joh. Conr. F., 1704–1775): Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Kirchenreformationsgeschichten des Schweizerlands. Zür., 1740–’53. 5 vols. 8°. Contains important original documents and letters.

Ruchat (Abrah., 1680–1750): Histoire de la Réformation de la Suisse, 1516–1556. Genève, 1727, ’28. 6 vols. 8°. New edition with Appendixes by L. Vulliemin. Paris and Lausanne, 1835–’38. 7 vols. 8°. Chiefly important for the French cantons. An English abridgment of the first four vols. in one vol. by J. Collinson (Canon of Durham), London, 1845, goes to the end of A.D. 1536.

Wirz (Ludw.) and Kirchhofer (Melch.): Helvet. Kirchengeschichte. Aus Joh. Jac. Hottinger’s älterem Werke und anderen Quellen neu bearbeitet.  Zürich, 1808–’19. 5 vols. The modern history is contained in vols. IV. and V. The fifth vol. is by Kirchhofer.

Merle D’Aubigné (professor of Church history at Geneva, d. 1872): Histoire de la Réformation du 16 siècle. Paris, 1838 sqq. Histoire de la Réformation au temps du Calvin. Paris, 1863–’78. Both works were translated and published in England and America, in various editions.

Trechsel (Friedr., 1805–1885): Beiträge zur Geschichte der Schweiz. Reformirten Kirche, zunächst derjenigen des Cantons Bern. Bern, 1841, ’42, 4 Hefte.

Gieseler (d. 1854): Ch. History. Germ. ed. III. A. 128 sqq.; 277 sqq. Am. ed. vol. IV. 75–99, 209–217. His account is very valuable for the extracts from the sources.

Baur (d. at Tübingen, 1860): Kirchengeschichte. Bd. IV. 80–96. Posthumous, Tübingen, 1863.

Hagenbach (Karl Rud., professor of Church history at Basel, d. 1874): Geschichte der Reformation, 1517–1555. Leipzig, 1834, 4th ed. 1870 (vol. III. of his general Kirchengeschichte). Fifth ed., with a literary and critical appendix, by Dr. F. Nippold, Leipzig, 1887. English translation by Miss E. Moore, Edinburgh and New York, 1878, ’79, 2 vols.

Chastel (Étienne, professor of Church history in the University of Geneva, d. 1885):Histoire du Christianisme, Tom. IV.: Age Moderne (p. 66 sqq.). Paris, 1882.

Berner Beiträge zur Geschichte der Schweizerischen Reformationskirchen.  Von Billeter, Flückiger, Hubler, Kasser, Marthaler, Strasser. Mit weiteren Beiträgen vermehrt und herausgegeben von Fr. Nippold. Bern, 1884. (Pages 454.)

On the Confessions of the Swiss Reformation see Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, New York, 4th ed. 1884, vol. I. 354 sqq.

Biographies of Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Leo Judae, Bullinger, Haller, etc., will be noticed in the appropriate sections.

III. General Histories Of Switzerland.

Müller (Joh. von, the classical historian of Switzerland, d. 1809): Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, fortgesetzt von Glutz-Blotzheim (d. 1818) und Joh. Jac. Hottinger. Vols. V. and VII. of the whole work. A masterpiece of genius and learning, but superseded in its earlier part, where he follows Tschudi, and accepts the legendary tales of Tell and Grütli. The Reformation history is by Hottinger ( b. 1783, d. 1860), and was published also under the title Gesch. der Eidgenossen während der Zeit der Kirchentrennung.  Zürich, 1825 and ’29, 2 vols  It was continued by Vulliemin in his Histoire de la confédération suisse dans les XVIIe et XVIIe siècles. Paris and Lausanne, 1841 and ’42. 3 vols. The first of these three volumes relates to the Reformation in French Switzerland, which was omitted in the German work of Hottinger, but was afterwards translated into German by others, and incorporated into the German edition (Zürich, 1786–1853, 15 vols.; the Reformation period in vols. VI.–X.). There is also a complete French edition of the entire History of Switzerland by Joh. von Muller, Glutz-Blotzheim, Hottinger, Vulliemin, and Monnard (Paris et Genève, 1837–’51, 18 vols. Three vols. from Vulliemin, five from Monnard, and the rest translated).

Other general Histories of Switzerland by Zschokke (1822, 8th ed. 1849; Engl. transl. by Shaw, 1848, new ed. 1875), Meyer von Knonau (2 vols.), Vögelin (6 Vols.), Morin, Zellweger, Vulliemin (German ed. 1882), Dändliker (Zürich, 1883 sqq., 3 vols., illustr.), Mrs. Hug and Rich. Stead (London, 1890), and Dieraür (Gotha, 1887 sqq.; second vol., 1892).

Bluntschli (J. C., a native of Zürich, professor of jurisprudence and international law at Heidelberg, d. 1881): Geschichte des Schweizerischen Bundesrechts von den ersten ewigen Bünden his auf die Gegenwart. Stuttgart, 2d ed. 1875. 2 vols. Important for the relation of Church and State in the period of the Reformation (vol. I. 292 sqq.). L. R. von Salis: Schweizerisches Bundesrecht seit dem 29. Mai 1874. Bern, 1892. 3 vols. (also in French and Italian).

E. Egli: Kirchengeschichte der Schweiz bis auf Karl d. Gr. Zürich, 1892.

Comp. Rud. Stähelin on the literature of the Swiss Reformation, from 1875–1882, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," vols. III. and VI.

CHAPTER II.

ZWINGLI’S TRAINING.

§ 5. The Zwingli Literature.

The general literature in § 4, especially Bullinger’s History and Egli’s Collection. The public libraries and archives in Zürich contain the various editions of Zwingli’s works, and the remains of his own library with marginal notes, which were exhibited in connection with the Zwingli celebration in 1884. See Zwingli-Ausstellung veranstaltet von der Stadtbibliothek in Zürich in Verbindung mit dem Staatsarchiv und der Cantonalbibliothek. Zürich, 1884. A pamphlet of 24 pages, with a descriptive catalogue of Zwingli’s books and remains. The annotations furnish fragmentary material for a knowledge of his theological growth. See Usteri’s Initia Zwingli, quoted below.

I. Sources:

Huldreich Zwingli: Opera omnia, ed. Melchior Schuler (d. 1859) and Joh. Schulthess (d. 1836). Tiguri, 1828–’42. 8 vols. Vols. I. and II., the German writings; III.–VI., Scripta Latina; VII. and VIII., Epistolae. A supplement of 75 pages was ed. by G. Schulthess (d. 1866) and Marthaler in 1861, and contains letters of Zwingli to Rhenanus and others. A new critical edition is much needed and contemplated for the "Corpus Reformatorum" by a commission of Swiss scholars. Zwingli’s Correspond. in Herminjard, Vols. I. and II.

The first edition of Zwingli’s Works appeared at Zürich, 1545, in 4 vols. Usteri and Vögelin: M. H. Zwingli’s Schriften im Auszuge, Zürich, 1819 and ’20, 2 vols. (A systematic exhibition of Zwingli’s teaching in modern German.) Another translation of select works into modern German by R. Christoffel, Zür., 1843, 9 small vols.

Comp. also Paul Schweizer (Staatsarchivar in Zürich, son of Dr. Alexander Schweizer): Zwingli-Autographen im Staats-Archiv zu Zürich. 1885. (23 pages; separately publ. from the "Theol. Zeitschrift aus der Schweiz.")

Joannis Oecolampadii et Huldrichi Zwinglii Epistolarum libri IV. Basil. 1536.

Herminjard (A. L.): Correspondance des Réformateurs. Genève, 1866 sqq. Letters of Zwingli in vol. I. Nos. 82 and 146 (and eight letters to him, Nos. 17, 19, 32, etc.), and in vol. II. No. 191 (and nine letters to him).

Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus. Gesammelt u. herausgeg. von Dr. Adelbert Horawitz und Dr. Karl Hartfelder. Leipzig, 1886. Contains also the correspondence between Rhenanus and Zwingli. See Index, p. 700.

II. Biographies of Zwingli, including Short Sketches:

Oswald Myconius: De Vita et Obitu Zw., 1536. Republ. in Vitae quatuor Reformatortum, with Preface by Neander, 1840. Nüscheler, Zürich, 1776. J. Caspar Hess: Vie d’Ulrich Zwingle, Geneva, 1810; German ed. more than doubled by a literary appendix of 372 pages, by Leonh. Usteri, Zürich, 1811, 2 vols. (Engl. transl. from the French by Aiken, Lond., 1812). Rotermund, Bremen, 1818. J. M. Schuler: H. Zw. Gesch. seiner Bildung zum Reformator seines Vaterlandes. Zür., 1818, 2d ed. 1819. Horner, Zür., 1818. L. Usteri, in the Appendix to his ed. of Zwingli’s German works, Zür., 1819. Several sketches of Zwingli appeared in connection with the celebration of the Zürich Reformation in 1819, especially in the festal oration of J. J. Hess: Emendationis sacrorum beneficium, Turici, 1819. J. J. Hottinger, Zür., 1842 (translation by Th. C. Porter: Life and Times of U. Z., Harrisburg, Penn., 1857, 421 pages). Robbins, in "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, Mass., 1851. L. Mayer, in his "History of the German Ref. Church," vol. I., Philadelphia, 1851. Dan. Wise, Boston, 1850 and 1882. Roeder, St. Gallen and Bern, 1855. R. Christoffel, Elberfeld, 1857 (Engl. transl. by John Cochran, Edinb., 1858)., Salomon Vögelin: Erinnerungen an Zw. Zür., 1865. W. M. Blackburn, Philad., 1868. *J. C. Mörikofer, Leipzig, 1867 and ’69, 2 vols. The best biography from the sources. Dr. Volkmar: Vortrag, Zür., 1870 (30 pages). G. Finsler: U. Zw., 3 Vorträge, Zür., 1873. G. A. Hoff: Vie d’Ulr. Zw., Paris, 1882 (pp. 305). Jean Grob, Milwaukee, Wis., 1883, 190 pages (Engl. transl., N. York, 1884). Ch. Alphonse Witz: Ulrich Zwingli, Vorträge, Gotha, 1884 (pp. 144). Güder, in "Herzog’s Encycl.," XVIII. 701–706; revised by R. Stähelin in second ed., XVII., 584–635. E. Combe: U. Z.; le réformateur suisse. Lausanne, 1884 (pp. 40). H. Rörich: U. Z. Notice biographique, Genève, 1884 (pp. 40). J. G. Hardy: U. Zwingli, or Zurich and its Reformer. Edinb., 1888.

III. On Zwingli’s Wife:

Salomon Hess: Anna Reinhard, Gattin und Wittwe von U. Zwingli. Zürich, 2d ed. 1820. (Some truth and much fiction.) Gerold Meyer von Knonau: Züge aus dem Leben der Anna Reinhard. Erlangen, 1835. (Reliable.)

IV. Commemorative Addresses of 1884 at the Fourth Centennial of Zwingli’s Birth:

Comp. the list in the Züricher Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1885, pp. 265–268; and Flaigg, in Theol. Zeitschrift aus der Schweiz, 1885, pp. 219 sqq. Some of the biographies mentioned sub II. are commemorative addresses.

*Alex. Schweizer (d. 1888): Zwingli’s Bedeutung neben Luther. Festrede in der Universitätsaula, Jan. 6, 1884, weiter ausgeführt. Zur., 1884 (pp. 89). Also a series of articles of Schweizer in the "Protestant. Kirchenzeitung," Berlin, 1883, Nos. 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 26, 27, in defence of Zwingli against the charges of Janssen. Joh. Martin Usteri (pastor at Affoltern, then Prof. at Erlangen, d. 1889 Ulrich Zwingli, ein Martin Luther ebenbürtiger [?] Zeuge des evang. Glaubens. Festschrift mit Vorrede von H. v. der Goltz. Zürich, 1883 (144 pp.); Zwingli und Erasmus, Zürich, 1885 (39 pp.); Initia Zwinglii, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1885 (pp. 607–672), 1886 (pp. 673–737), and 1889 (pp. 140 and 141). Rud. Stähelin: Huldreich Zwingli und sein Reformations-werk. Zum vierhundertjahrigen Geburtstag Z.’s dargestellt. Halle, 1883 (pages 81). Ernst Stähelin: H. Z.’s Predigt an unser Schweizervolk und unsere Zeit.  Basel, 1884. Ernst Müller: Ulrich Zw. Ein Bernischer Beitrag zur Zwinglifeier. Bern, 1884. E. Dietz: Vie d’U. Z. à l’occasion du 400° anniversaire de sa naissance. Paris and Strasbourg, 1884 (pp. 48). Herm. Spörri: Durch Gottes Gnade allein. Zur Feier des 400 jähr. Geb. tages Zw.’s. Hamburg, 1884. Joh. (T. Dreydorff: U. Zw. Festpredigt. Leipzig, 1884. Sal. Vögelin: U. Z.  Zür., 1884. G. Finsler (Zwingli’s twenty-second successor as Antistes in Zürich): Ulrich Zw. Festschrift zur Feier seines 400 jähr. Geburtstags. Zür., 3d ed. 1884 (transl. into Romansch by Darms, Coire, 1884). Finsler and Meyer von Knonau: Festvorträge bei der Feier des 400 jähr. Geburtstags U. Z. Zür., 1884 (pp. 24). Finsler delivered also the chief address at the unveiling of Zwingli’s monument, Aug. 25, 1885. Oechsli: Zur Zwingli-Feier. Zür., 1884.  Die Zwinglifeier in Bern, Jan. 6, 1884. Several addresses, 80 pages. Alfred Krauss (professor in Strassburg): Zwingli. Strassb., 1884 (pp. 19). Aug. Bouvier: Foi, Culture et Patriotisme. Deux discours à l’occasion Du quatrième centenaire de Ulrich Zwingli. Genève and Paris, 1884. (In "Nouvelles Paroles de Fol et de Liberté," and separately.) W. Gamper (Reform. minister at Dresden): U. Z. Festpredigt zur 400 jähr. Gedenkfeier seines Geburtstages. Dresden, 1884. G. K. von Toggenburg (pseudonymous R. Cath.): Die wahre Union und die Zwinglifeier. St. Gallen and Leipzig, 1884 (pp. 190). Zwingliana, in the "Theol. Zeitschrift aus der Schweiz."  Zür., 1884, No. II. Kappeler, Grob und Egg: Zur Erinnerung. Drei Reden gehalten in Kappel, Jan. 6, 1884. Affoltern a. A. 1884 (pp. 27).—In America also several addresses were delivered and published in connection with the Zwingli commemoration in 1883 and ’84. Besides, some books of Zwingli’s were republished; e.g. the Hirt (Shepherd) by Riggenbach (Basel, 1884); the Lehrbüchlein, Latin and German, by E. Egli (Zür., 1884).

V. On the Theology of Zwingli:

Edw. Zeller (professor of philosophy in Berlin): Das theologische System Zwingli’s. Tübingen, 1853.

Ch. Sigwart: Ulrich Zwingli. Der Charakter seiner Theologie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Picus von Mirandola dargestellt. Stuttg. und Hamb., 1855.

Herm. Spörri (Ref. pastor in Hamburg): Zwingli-Studien. Leipzig, 1886 (pp. 131). Discussions on Zwingli’s doctrine of the Church, the Bible, his relation to humanism and Christian art.

August Baur (D. D., a Würtemberg pastor in Weilimdorf near Stuttgart): Zwingli’s Theologie, ihr Werden und ihr System. Halle, vol. I. 1885 (pp. 543); Vol. II. P. I., 1888 (pp. 400), P. II., 1889. This work does for Zwingli what Jul. Köstlin did for Luther and A. Herrlinger for Melanchthon.

Alex. Schweizer, in his Festrede, treats more briefly, but very ably, of Zwingli’s theological opinions (pp. 60–88).

VI. Relation of Zwingli to Luther and Calvin:

Merle D’Aubigné: Le Lutheranisme et la Reforme. Paris, 1844. Engl. translation: Luther and Calvin. N. York, 1845.

Hundeshagen: Charakteristik U. Zwingli’s und seines Reformationswerks unter Vergleichung mit Luther und Calvin, in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1862. Compare also his Beiträge zur Kirchenverfassungsgeschichte und Kirchenpolitik, Bd. I. Wiesbaden, 1864, pp. 136–297. (Important for Zwingli’s church polity.)

G. Plitt (Lutheran): Gesch. der ev. Kirche bis zum Augsburger Reichstage. Erlangen, 1867, pp. 417–488.

A. F. C. Vilmar (Luth.): Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli. Frankf. -a. -M., 1869.

G. Uhlhorn (Luth.): Luther and the Swiss, translated by G. F. Krotel, Philadelphia, 1876.

Zwingli Wirth (Reformed): Luther und Zwingli. St. Gallen, 1884 (pp. 37).

VII. Special Points in Zwingli’s History and Theology:

Kradolfer: Zwingli in Marburg. Berlin, 1870.

Emil Egli: Die Schlacht von Cappel 1531. Mit 2 Plänen und einem Anhang ungedruckter Quellen. Zür., 1873 (pp. 88). By the same: Das Religionsgespräch zu Marburg. Zür., 1884. In the "Theol. Zeitschrift aus der Schweiz."

Martin Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philipp, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte" for 1879 (Bd. III.).

H. Bavinck: De ethick van U. Zwingli. Kampen, 1880.

Jul. Werder: Zwingli als politischer Reformator, in the "Basler Beiträge zur vaterländ. Geschichte,"  Basel, 1882, pp. 263–290.

Herm. Escher: Die Glaubensparteien in der Schweiz. Eidgenossenschaft und ihre Beziehungen zum Auslande von 1527–’31. Frauenfeld, 1882. (pp. 326.) Important for Zwingli’s Swiss and foreign policy, and his views on the relation of Church and State.

W. Oechsli: Die Anfänge des Glaubenskonfliktes zwischen Zürich und den Eidgenossen. Winterthur, 1883 (pp. 42).

Marthaler: Zw.’s Lehre vom Glauben. Zür., 1884.

Aug. Baur: Die erste Züricher Disputation. Halle, 1883 (pp. 32).

A. Erichson: Zwingli’s Tod und dessen Beurtheilung durch Zeitgenossen, Strassb., 1883 (pp. 43); U. Zw. und die elsässischen Reformatoren, Strassb., 1884 (pp. 40).

Flückiger: Zwingli’s Beziehungen zu Bern, in the "Berner Beiträge."  Bern, 1884.

J. Mart. Usteri: Initia Zwinglii, and Zw. and Erasmus. See above, p. 18.

H. Fenner: Zw. als Patriot und Politiker. Frauenfeld, 1884 (pp. 38).

G. Heer: U. Zw. als Pfarrer von Glarus. Zürich, 1884 (pp. 42).

Gust. Weber (musical director and organist of the Grossmünster in Zürich): H. Zwingli. Seine Stellung zur Musik und seine Lieder. Zürich and Leipzig, 1884 (pp. 68).

A. Zahn: Zwingli’s Verdienste um die biblische Abendmahlslehre. Stuttgart, 1884.

G. Wunderli; Zürich in der Periode 1519–’31. Zürich, 1888.

On Zwingli and the Anabaptists, see the literature in § 24.

VIII. In part also the biographies of Oecolampadius, Bullinger, Leo Judae, Haller, etc.

The best books on Zwingli are Mörikofer’s biography, Usteri on the education of Zwingli, Baur on his theology, Escher and Oechsli on his state and church polity, and Schweizer and R. Stähelin on his general character and position in history.

§ 6. Zwingli’s Birth and Education.

Franz: Zwingli’s Geburtsort. Beitrag zur reformator. Jubelfeier 1819. (The author was pastor of Wildhaus.)  St. Gallen, 1818. Schuler: Huldreich Zwingli. Geschichte seiner Bildung zum Reformator des Vaterlandes. Zürich, 1819. (404 pp. Very full, but somewhat too partial, and needing correction.)

Huldreich or Ulrich Zwingli16 was born January 1, 1484, seven weeks after Luther, in a lowly shepherd’s cottage at Wildhaus in the county of Toggenburg, now belonging to the Canton St. Gall.

He was descended from the leading family in this retired village. His father, like his grandfather, was the chief magistrate (Ammann); his mother, the sister of a priest (John Meili, afterwards abbot of Fischingen, in Thurgau, 1510–1523); his uncle, on the father’s side, dean of the chapter at Wesen on the wild lake of Wallenstadt. He had seven brothers (he being the third son) and two sisters.

The village of Wildhaus is the highest in the valley, surrounded by Alpine meadows and the lofty mountain scenery of Northeastern Switzerland, in full view of the seven Churfirsten and the snow-capped Sentis. The principal industry of the inhabitants was raising flocks. They are described as a cheerful, fresh and energetic people; and these traits we find in Zwingli.17  The Reformation was introduced there in 1523. Not very far distant are the places where Zwingli spent his public life,—Glarus, Einsiedeln, and Zurich.

Zwingli was educated in the Catholic religion by his God-fearing parents, and by his uncle, the dean of Wesen, who favored the new humanistic learning. He grew up a healthy, vigorous boy. He had at a very early age a tender sense of veracity as "the mother of all virtues," and, like young Washington, he would never tell a lie.

When ten years of age he was sent from Wesen to a Latin school at Basle, and soon excelled in the three chief branches taught there,—Latin grammar, music and dialectics.

In 1498 he entered a college at Berne under the charge of Heinrich Wölflin (Lupulus), who was reputed to be the best classical scholar and Latin poet in Switzerland, and followed the reform movement in 1522.18

From 1500 to 1502 he studied in the University of Vienna, which had become a centre of classical learning by the labors of distinguished humanists, Corvinus, Celtes, and Cuspinian, under the patronage of the Emperor Maximilian I.19  He studied scholastic philosophy, astronomy, and physics, but chiefly the ancient classics. He became an enthusiast for the humanities. He also cultivated his talent for music. He played on several instruments—the lute, harp, violin, flute, dulcimer, and hunting-horn—with considerable skill. His papal opponents sneeringly called him afterwards "the evangelical lute-player, piper, and whistler."  He regarded this innocent amusement as a means to refresh the mind and to soften the temper. In his poetical and musical taste he resembles Luther, without reaching his eminence.

In 1502 he returned to Basle, taught Latin in the school of St. Martin, pursued his classical studies, and acquired the degree of master of arts in 1506; hence he was usually called Master Ulrich. He never became a doctor of divinity, like Luther. In Basle he made the acquaintance of Leo Jud (Judae, also called Master Leu), who was graduated with him and became his chief co-laborer in Zurich. Both attended with much benefit the lectures of Thomas Wyttenbach, professor of theology since 1505. Zwingli calls him his beloved and faithful teacher, who opened his eyes to several abuses of the Church, especially the indulgences, and taught him "not to rely on the keys of the Church, but to seek the remission of sins alone in the death of Christ, and to open access to it by the key of faith."20

§ 7. Zwingli in Glarus.

G. Heer: Ulrich Zwingli als Pfarrer in Glarus. Zürich, 1884.

Zwingli was ordained to the priesthood by the bishop of Constance, and appointed pastor of Glarus, the capital of the canton of the same name.21  He had to pay over one hundred guilders to buy off a rival candidate (Göldli of Zurich) who was favored by the Pope, and compensated by a papal pension. He preached his first sermon in Rapperschwyl, and read his first mass at Wildhaus. He labored at Glarus ten years, from 1506 to 1516. His time was occupied by preaching, teaching, pastoral duties, and systematic study. He began to learn the Greek language "without a teacher,"22 that he might study the New Testament in the original.23  He acquired considerable facility in Greek. The Hebrew language he studied at a later period in Zurich, but with less zeal and success. He read with great enthusiasm the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, poets, orators, and historians. He speaks in terms of admiration of Homer, Pindar, Demosthenes, Cicero, Livy, Caesar, Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus, Plutarch. He committed Valerius Maximus to memory for the historical examples. He wrote comments on Lucian. He perceived, like Justin Martyr, the Alexandrian Fathers, and Erasmus, in the lofty ideas of the heathen philosophers and poets, the working of the Holy Spirit, which he thought extended beyond Palestine throughout the world. He also studied the writings of Picus della Mirandola (d. 1494), which influenced his views on providence and predestination.

During his residence in Glarus he was brought into correspondence with Erasmus through his friend Loreti of Glarus, called Glareanus, a learned humanist and poet-laureate, who at that time resided in Basle, and belonged to the court of admirers of the famous scholar. He paid him also a visit in the spring of 1515, and found him a man in the prime of life, small and delicate, but amiable and very polite. He addressed him as "the greatest philosopher and theologian;" he praises his "boundless learning," and says that he read his books every night before going to sleep. Erasmus returned the compliments with more moderation, and speaks of Zwingli’s previous letter as being "full of wit and learned acumen."  In 1522 Zwingli invited him to settle in Zurich; but Erasmus declined it, preferring to be a cosmopolite. We have only one letter of Zwingli to Erasmus, but six of Erasmus to Zwingli.24  The influence of the great scholar on Zwingli was emancipating and illuminating. Zwingli, although not exactly his pupil, was no doubt confirmed by him in his high estimate of the heathen classics, his opposition to ecclesiastical abuses, his devotion to the study of the Scriptures, and may have derived from him his moderate view of hereditary sin and guilt, and the first suggestion of the figurative interpretation of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper.25  But he dissented from the semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus, and was a firm believer in predestination. During the progress of the Reformation they were gradually alienated, although they did not get into a personal controversy. In a letter of Sept. 3, 1522, Erasmus gently warns Zwingli to fight not only bravely, but also prudently, and Christ would give him the victory.26  He did not regret his early death. Glareanus also turned from him, and remained in the old Church. But Zwingli never lost respect for Erasmus, and treated even Hutten with generous kindness after Erasmus had cast him off.27

On his visit to Basle he became acquainted with his biographer, Oswald Myconius, the successor of Oecolampadius (not to be confounded with Frederick Myconius, Luther’s friend).

Zwingli took a lively interest in public affairs. Three times he accompanied, according to Swiss custom, the recruits of his congregation as chaplain to Italy, in the service of Popes Julius II. and Leo X., against France. He witnessed the storming of Pavia (1512),28 probably also the victory at Novara (1513), and the defeat at Marignano (1515). He was filled with admiration for the bravery of his countrymen, but with indignation and grief at the demoralizing effect of the foreign military service. He openly attacked this custom, and made himself many enemies among the French party.

His first book, "The Labyrinth," is a German poem against the corruptions of the times, written about 1510.29  It represents the fight of Theseus with the Minotaur and the wild beasts in the labyrinth of the world,—the one-eyed lion (Spain), the crowned eagle (the emperor), the winged lion (Venice), the cock (France), the ox (Switzerland), the bear (Savoy). The Minotaur, half man, half bull, represents, he says, "the sins, the vices, the irreligion, the foreign service of the Swiss, which devour the sons of the nation."  His Second poetic work of that time, "The Fable of the Ox,"30 is likewise a figurative attack upon the military service by which Switzerland became a slave of foreign powers, especially of France.

He superintended the education of two of his brothers and several of the noblest young men of Glarus, as Aegidius Tschudi (the famous historian), Valentine Tschudi, Heer, Nesen, Elmer, Brunner, who were devotedly, and gratefully attached to him, and sought his advice and comfort, as their letters show.

Zwingli became one of the most prominent and influential public men in Switzerland before he left Glarus; but he was then a humanist and a patriot rather than a theologian and a religious teacher. He was zealous for intellectual culture and political reform, but shows no special interest in the spiritual welfare of the Church. He did not pass through a severe struggle and violent crisis, like Luther, but by diligent seeking and searching he attained to the knowledge of the truth. His conversion was a gradual intellectual process, rather than a sudden breach with the world; but, after he once had chosen the Scriptures for his guide, he easily shook off the traditions of Rome, which never had a very strong hold upon him. That process began at Glarus, and was completed at Zurich.

His moral character at Glarus and at Einsiedeln was, unfortunately, not free from blemish. He lacked the grace of continence and fell with apparent ease into a sin which was so common among priests, and so easily overlooked if only proper caution was observed, according to the wretched maxim, "Si non caste, saltem caute."  The fact rests on his own honest confession, and was known to his friends, but did not injure his standing and influence; for he was in high repute as a priest, and even enjoyed a papal pension. He resolved to reform in Glarus, but relapsed in Einsiedeln under the influence of bad examples, to his deep humiliation. After his marriage in Zurich, his life was pure and honorable and above the reproach of his enemies.

NOTES ON ZWINGLI’S MORAL CHARACTER.

Recent discussions have given undue prominence to the blot which rests on Zwingli’s earlier life, while yet a priest in the Roman Church. Janssen, the ultramontane historian, has not one word of praise for Zwingli, and violates truth and charity by charging him with habitual, promiscuous, and continuous licentiousness, not reflecting that he thereby casts upon the Roman Church the reproach of inexcusable laxity in discipline. Zwingli was no doubt guilty of occasional transgressions, but probably less guilty than the majority of Swiss priests who lived in open or secret concubinage at that time (see § 2, p. 6); yea, he stood so high in public estimation at Einsiedeln and Zurich, that Pope Hadrian VI., through his Swiss agent, offered him every honor except the papal chair. But we will not excuse him, nor compare his case (as some have done) with that of St. Augustin; for Augustin, when he lived in concubinage, was not a priest and not even baptized, and he confessed his sin before the whole world with deeper repentance than Zwingli, who rather made light of it. The facts are these: —

1) Bullinger remarks (Reformationsgesch. I. 8) that Zwingli was suspected in Glarus of improper connection with several women ("weil er wegen einiger Weiber verargwohnt war"). Bullinger was his friend and successor, and would not slander him; but he judged mildly of a vice which was so general among priests on account of celibacy. He himself was the son of a priest, as was also Leo Judae.

2) Zwingli, in a confidential letter to Canon Utinger at Zurich, dated Einsiedeln, Dec. 3, 1518 (Opera, VII. 54–57), contradicts the rumor that he had seduced the daughter of an influential citizen in Einsiedeln, but admits his unchastity. This letter is a very strange apology, and, as he says himself, a blateratio rather than a satisfactio. He protests, on the one hand (what Janssen omits to state), that he never dishonored a married woman or a virgin or a nun ("ea ratio nobis perpetuo fuit, nec alienum thorum conscendere, nec virginem vitiare, nec Deo dicatam profanare"); but, on the other hand, he speaks lightly, we may say frivolously, of his intercourse with the impure daughter of a barber who was already, dishonored, and apologizes for similar offences committed in Glarus. This is the worst feature in the letter, and casts a dark shade on his character at that time. He also refers (p. 57) to the saying of Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.): "Non est qui vigesimum annum excessit, nec virginem tetigerit."  His own superiors set him a bad example. Nevertheless he expresses regret, and applies to himself the word, 2 Pet. 2:22, and says, "Christus per nos blasphematur."

3) Zwingli, with ten other priests, petitioned the bishop of Constance in Latin (Einsiedeln, July 2, 1522), and the Swiss Diet in German (Zurich, July 13, 1522), to permit the free preaching of the gospel and the marriage of the clergy. He enforces the petition by an incidental confession of the scandalous life of the clergy, including himself (Werke, I. 39): "Euer ehrsam Wysheit hat bisher gesehen das unehrbar schandlich Leben, welches wir leider bisher geführt haben (wir wollen allein von uns selbst geredet haben) mit Frauen, damit wir männiglich übel verärgert und verbösert haben."  But this document with eleven signatures (Zwingli’s is the last) is a general confession of clerical immorality in the past, and does not justify Janssen’s inference that Zwingli continued such life at that time. Janssen (Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, p. 47), moreover, mistakes in this petition the Swiss word rüw (Ruhe, rest) for rüwen (Reue, repentance), and makes the petitioners say that they felt "no repentance," instead of "no rest."  The document, on the contrary, shows a decided advance of moral sentiment as compared with the lame apology in the letter to Utinger, and deeply deplores the state of clerical immorality. It is rather creditable to the petitioners than otherwise; certainly very honest.

4) In a letter to his five brothers, Sept. 17, 1522, to whom he dedicated a sermon on "the ever pure Virgin Mary, mother of God," Zwingli confesses that he was subject to Hoffahrt, Fressen, Unlauterkeit, and other sins of the flesh (Werke, I. 86). This is his latest confession; but if we read it in connection with the whole letter, it makes the impression that he must have undergone a favorable change about that time, and concluded a regular, though secret, connection with his wife. As to temperance, Bullinger (I. 305) gives him the testimony that he was "very temperate in eating and drinking."

5) Zwingli was openly married in April, 1524, to Anna Reinhart, a respectable widow, and mother of several children, after having lived with her about two years before in secret marriage. But this fact, which Janssen construes into a charge of "unchaste intercourse," was known to his intimate friends; for Myconius, in a letter of July 22, 1522, sends greetings to Zwingli and his wife ("Vale cum uxore quam felicissime et tuis omnibus," Opera, VII. 210; and again: "Vale cum uxore in Christo," p. 253). The same is implied in a letter of Bucer, April 14, 1524 (p. 335; comp. the note of the editors). "The cases," says Mörikofer (I. 211), "were very frequent at that time, even with persons of high position, that secret marriages were not ratified by a religious ceremony till weeks and months afterwards."  Before the Council of Trent secret marriages were legitimate and valid. (Can. et Decr. Conc. Trid., Sess. XXIV., Decr. de reform. matrimonii.)

Zwingli’s character was unmercifully attacked by Janssen in his Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, III. 83 sq.; An meine Kritiker (1883), 127–140; Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker (1888), 45–48; defended as far as truth permits by Ebrard, Janssen und die Reformation (1882); Usteri, Ulrich Zwingli (1883), 34–47; Alex. Schweizer, articles in the "Protest. Kirchenzeitung," Berlin, 1883, Nos. 23–27. Janssen answered Ebrard, but not Usteri and Schweizer. The main facts were correctly stated before this controversy by Mörikofer, I. 49–53 and 128), and briefly also by Hagenbach, and Merle (bk. VIII. ch. 6).

§ 8. Zwingli in Einsiedeln.

In 1516 Zwingli left Glarus on account of the intrigues of the French political party, which came into power after the victory of the French at Marignano (1515), and accepted a call to Einsiedeln, but kept his charge and expected to return; for the congregation was much attached to him, and promised to build him a new parsonage. He supplied the charge by a vicar, and drew his salary for two years, until he was called to Zurich, when he resigned.

Einsiedeln31 is a village with a Benedictine convent in the Catholic canton Schwyz. It was then, and is to this day, a very famous resort of pilgrims to the shrine of a wonder-working black image of the Virgin Mary, which is supposed to have fallen from heaven. The number of annual pilgrims from Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy exceeds a hundred thousand.

Here, then, was a large field of usefulness for a preacher. The convent library afforded special facilities for study.

Zwingli made considerable progress in his knowledge of the Scriptures and the Fathers. He read the annotations of Erasmus and the commentaries of Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom. He made extracts on the margin of his copies of their works which are preserved in the libraries at Zurich. He seems to have esteemed Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom more, and Augustin less, than Luther did; but he also refers frequently to Augustin in his writings.32

We have an interesting proof of his devotion to the Greek Testament in a MS. preserved in the city library at Zurich. In 1517 he copied with his own hand very neatly the Epistles of Paul and the Hebrews in a little book for constant and convenient use. The text is taken from the first edition of Erasmus, which appeared in March, 1516, and corrects some typographical errors. It is very legible and uniform, and betrays an experienced hand; the marginal notes, in Latin, from Erasmus and patristic commentators, are very small and almost illegible. On the last page he added the following note in Greek: —

"These Epistles were written at Einsiedeln of the blessed Mother of God by Huldreich Zwingli, a Swiss of Toggenburg, in the year one thousand five hundred and seventeen of the Incarnation, in the month of June.33  Happily ended."34

At the same time he began at Einsiedeln to attack from the pulpit certain abuses and the sale of indulgences, when Samson crossed the Alps in August, 1518. He says that he began to preach the gospel before Luther’s name was known in Switzerland, adding, however, that at that time he depended too much on Jerome and other Fathers instead of the Scriptures. He told Cardinal Schinner in 1517 that popery had poor foundation in the Scriptures. Myconius, Bullinger, and Capito report, in substantial agreement, that Zwingli preached in Einsiedeln against abuses, and taught the people to worship Christ, and not the Virgin Mary. The inscription on the entrance gate of the convent, promising complete remission of sins, was taken down at his instance.35  Beatus Rhenanus, in a letter of Dec. 6, 1518, applauds his attack upon Samson, the restorer of indulgences, and says that Zwingli preached to the people the purest philosophy of Christ from the fountain.36

On the strength of these testimonies, many historians date the Swiss Reformation from 1516, one year before that of Luther, which began Oct. 31, 1517. But Zwingli’s preaching at Einsiedeln had no such consequences as Luther’s Theses. He was not yet ripe for his task, nor placed on the proper field of action. He was at that time simply an Erasmian or advanced liberal in the Roman Church, laboring for higher education rather than religious renovation, and had no idea of a separation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the abbot, the bishop of Constance, Cardinal Schinner, and even the Pope. At Schinner’s recommendation, he was offered an annual pension of fifty guilders from Rome as an encouragement in the pursuit of his studies, and he actually received it for about five years (from 1515 to 1520). Pucci, the papal nuncio at Zurich, in a letter dated Aug. 24, 1518, appointed him papal chaplain (Accolitus Capellanus), with all the privileges and honors of that position, assigning as the reason "his splendid virtues and merits," and promising even higher dignities.37  He also offered to double his pension, and to give him in addition a canonry in Basle or Coire, on condition that he should promote the papal cause. Zwingli very properly declined the chaplaincy and the increase of salary, and declared frankly that he would never sacrifice a syllable of the truth for love of money; but he continued to receive the former pension of fifty guilders, which was urged upon him without condition, for the purchase of books. In 1520 he declined it altogether,—what he ought to have done long before.38  Francis Zink, the papal chaplain at Einsiedeln, who paid the pension, was present at Zwingli’s interview with Pucci, and says, in a letter to the magistracy at Zurich (1521), that Zwingli could not well have lived without the pension, but felt very badly about it, and thought of returning to Einsiedeln.39  Even as late as Jan. 23, 1523, Pope Adrian VI., unacquainted with the true state of things, wrote to Zwingli a kind and respectful letter, hoping to secure through him the influence of Zurich for the holy see.40

§ 9. Zwingli and Luther.

Comp. Vol. VI. 620–651, and the portrait of Luther, p. 107.

The training of Zwingli for his life-work differs considerably from that of Luther. This difference affected their future work, and accounts in part for their collision when they met as antagonists in writing, and on one occasion (at Marburg) face to face, in a debate on the real presence. Comparisons are odious when partisan or sectarian feeling is involved, but necessary and useful if impartial.

Both Reformers were of humble origin, but with this difference: Luther descended from the peasantry, and had a hard and rough schooling, which left its impress upon his style of polemics, and enhanced his power over the common people; while Zwingli was the son of a magistrate, the nephew of a dean and an abbot, and educated under the influence of the humanists, who favored urbanity of manners. Both were brought up by pious parents and teachers in the Catholic faith; but Luther was far more deeply rooted in it than Zwingli, and adhered to some of its doctrines, especially on the sacraments, with great tenacity to the end. He also retained a goodly portion of Romish exclusivism and intolerance. He refused to acknowledge Zwingli as a brother, and abhorred his view of the salvation of unbaptized children and pious heathen.

Zwingli was trained in the school of Erasmus, and passed from the heathen classics directly to the New Testament. He represents more than any other Reformer, except Melanchthon, the spirit of the Renaissance in harmony with the Reformation.41   He was a forerunner of modern liberal theology. Luther struggled through the mystic school of Tauler and Staupitz, and the severe moral discipline of monasticism, till he found peace and comfort in the doctrine of justification by faith. Both loved poetry and music next to theology, but Luther made better use of them for public worship, and composed hymns and tunes which are sung to this day.

Both were men of providence, and became, innocently, reformers of the Church by the irresistible logic of events. Both drew their strength and authority from the Word of God. Both labored independently for the same cause of evangelical truth, the one on a smaller, the other on a much larger field. Luther owed nothing to Zwingli, and Zwingli owed little or nothing to Luther. Both were good scholars, great divines, popular preachers, heroic characters.

Zwingli broke easily and rapidly with the papal system, but Luther only step by step, and after a severe struggle of conscience. Zwingli was more radical than Luther, but always within the limits of law and order, and without a taint of fanaticism; Luther was more conservative, and yet the chief champion of freedom in Christ. Zwingli leaned to rationalism, Luther to mysticism; yet both bowed to the supreme authority of the Scriptures. Zwingli had better manners and more self-control in controversy; Luther surpassed him in richness and congeniality of nature. Zwingli was a republican, and aimed at a political and social, as well as an ecclesiastical reformation; Luther was a monarchist, kept aloof from politics and war, and concentrated his force upon the reformation of faith and doctrine. Zwingli was equal to Luther in clearness and acuteness of intellect and courage of conviction, superior in courtesy, moderation, and tolerance, but inferior in originality, depth, and force. Zwingli’s work and fame were provincial; Luther’s, worldwide. Luther is the creator of the modern high-German book language, and gave to his people a vernacular Bible of enduring vitality. Zwingli had to use the Latin, or to struggle with an uncouth dialect; and the Swiss Version of the Bible by his faithful friend Leo Judae remained confined to German Switzerland, but is more accurate, and kept pace in subsequent revisions with the progress of exegesis. Zwingli can never inspire, even among his own countrymen, the same enthusiasm as Luther among the Germans. Luther is the chief hero of the Reformation, standing in the front of the battle-field before the Church and the world, defying the papal bull and imperial ban, and leading the people of God out of the Babylonian captivity under the gospel banner of freedom.

Each was the right man in the right place; neither could have done the work of the other. Luther was foreordained for Germany, Zwingli for Switzerland. Zwingli was cut down in the prime of life, fifteen years before Luther; but, even if he had outlived him, he could not have reached the eminence which belongs to Luther alone. The Lutheran Church in Germany and the Reformed Church of Switzerland stand to this day the best vindication of their distinct, yet equally evangelical Christian work and character.

NOTES.

I add the comparative estimates of the two Reformers by two eminent and equally unbiassed scholars, the one of German Lutheran, the other of Swiss Reformed, descent.

Dr. Baur (the founder of the Tübingen school of critical historians) says:42  When the two men met, as at Marburg, Zwingli appears more free, more unprejudiced, more fresh, and also more mild and conciliatory; while Luther shows himself harsh and intolerant, and repels Zwingli with the proud word: ’We have another spirit than you.’43  A comparison of their controversial writings can only result to the advantage of Zwingli. But there can be no doubt that, judged by the merits and effects of their reformatory labors, Luther stands much higher than Zwingli. It is true, even in this respect, both stand quite independent of each other. Zwingli has by no means received his impulse from Luther; but Luther alone stands on the proper field of battle where the cause of the Reformation had to be fought out. He is the path-breaking Reformer, and without his labors Zwingli could never have reached the historic significance which properly belongs to him alongside of Luther."44

Dr. Alexander Schweizer (of Zurich), in his commemorative oration of 1884, does equal justice to both: "Luther and Zwingli founded, each according to his individuality, the Reformation in the degenerated Church, both strengthening and supplementing each other, but in many respects also going different ways. How shall we estimate them, elevating the one, lowering the other, as is the case with Goethe and Schiller?  Let us rather rejoice, according to Goethe’s advice, in the possession of two such men. May those Lutherans who wish to check the growing union with the Reformed, continue to represent Luther as the only Reformer, and, in ignorance of Zwingli’s deep evangelical piety, depreciate him as a mere humanistic illuminator: this shall not hinder us from doing homage at the outset to Luther’s full greatness, contented with the independent position of our Zwingli alongside of this first hero of the Reformation; yea, we deem it our noblest task in this Zwingli festival at Zurich, which took cheerful part in the preceding Luther festival, to acknowledge Luther as the chief hero of the battle of the Reformation, and to put his world-historical and personal greatness in the front rank; and this all the more since Zwingli himself, and afterwards Calvin, have preceded us in this high estimate of Luther."45

Phillips Brooks (Bishop of Massachusetts, the greatest preacher of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, d. 1893):, Of all the Reformers, in this respect [tolerance], Zwingli, who so often in the days of darkness is the man of light, is the noblest and clearest. At the conference in Marburg he contrasts most favorably with Luther in his willingness to be reconciled for the good of the common cause, and he was one of the very few who in those days believed that the good and earnest heathen could be saved."  (Lectures on Tolerance, New York, 1887, p. 34.)

Of secular historians, J. Michelet (Histoire de France, X. 310 sq.) shows a just appreciation of Zwingli, and his last noble confession addressed to the King of France. He says of him: "Grand docteur, meilleur patriote, nature forte et simple, il a montré le type même, le vrai génie de la Suisse, dans sa fière indépendance de l’Italie, de l’Allemagne. … Son langage à François 1er, digne de la Renaissance, établissait la question de l’Église dans sa grandeur."  He then quotes the passage of the final salvation of all true and noble men, which no man with a heart can ever forget.

CHAPTER III.

THE REFORMATION IN ZURICH. 1519–1526.

§ 10. Zwingli called to Zurich.

The fame of Zwingli as a preacher and patriot secured him a call to the position of chief pastor of the Great Minster (Grossmünster), the principal church in Zurich, which was to become the Wittenberg of Switzerland. Many of the Zurichers had heard him preach on their pilgrimages to Einsiedeln. His enemies objected to his love of music and pleasure, and charged him with impurity, adding slander to truth. His friend Myconius, the teacher of the school connected with the church, exerted all his influence in his favor. He was elected by seventeen votes out of twenty-four, Dec. 10, 1518.

He arrived in Zurich on the 27th of the month, and received a hearty welcome. He promised to fulfil his duties faithfully, and to begin with the continuous exposition of the Gospel of Matthew, so as to bring the whole life of Christ before the mind of the people. This was a departure from the custom of following the prescribed Gospel and Epistle lessons, but justified by the example of the ancient Fathers, as Chrysostom and Augustin, who preached on whole books. The Reformed Churches reasserted the freedom of selecting texts; while Luther retained the Catholic system of pericopes.

Zurich, the most flourishing city in German Switzerland, beautifully situated in an amphitheatre of fertile hills, on the lake of the same name and the banks of the Limmat, dates its existence from the middle of the ninth century when King Louis the German founded there the abbey of Frauemünster (853). The spot was known in old Roman times as a custom station (Turicum). It became a free imperial city of considerable commerce between Germany and Italy, and was often visited by kings and emperors.

The Great Minster was built in the twelfth century, and passed into the Reformed communion, like the minsters of Basle, Berne, and Lausanne, which are the finest churches in Switzerland.

In the year 1315 Zurich joined the Swiss confederacy by an eternal covenant with Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. This led to a conflict with Austria, which ended favorably for the confederacy.46

In the beginning of the sixteenth century Zurich numbered seven thousand inhabitants. It was the centre of the international relations of Switzerland, and the residence of the embassadors (sic) of foreign powers which rivalled with each other in securing the support of Swiss soldiers. This fact brought wealth and luxury, and fostered party spirit and the lust of gain and power among the citizens. Bullinger says, "Before the preaching of the gospel [the Reformation], Zurich was in Switzerland what Corinth was in Greece."47

§ 11. Zwingli’s Public Labors and Private Studies.

Zwingli began his duties in Zurich on his thirty-sixth birthday (Jan. 1, 1519) by a sermon on the genealogy of Christ, and announced that on the next day (which was a Sunday) he would begin a series of expository discourses on the first Gospel. From Matthew he proceeded to the Acts, the Pauline and Catholic Epistles; so that in four years he completed the homiletical exposition of the whole New Testament except the Apocalypse (which he did not regard as an apostolic book). In the services during the week he preached on the Psalms. He prepared himself carefully from the original text. He probably used for his first course Chrysostom’s famous Homilies on Matthew. With the Greek he was already familiar since his sojourn in Glarus. The Hebrew he learned from a pupil of Reuchlin who had come to Zurich. His copy of Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica is marked with many notes from his hand.48

His sermons, as far as published, are characterized, as Hagenbach says, "by spiritual sobriety and manly solidity."  They are plain, practical, and impressive, and more ethical than doctrinal.

He made it his chief object "to preach Christ from the fountain," and "to insert the pure Christ into the hearts."49  He would preach nothing but what he could prove from the Scriptures, as the only rule of Christian faith and practice. This is a reformatory idea; for the aim of the Reformation was to reopen the fountain of the New Testament to the whole people, and to renew the life of the Church by the power of the primitive gospel. By his method of preaching on entire books he could give his congregation a more complete idea of the life of Christ and the way of salvation than by confining himself to detached sections. He did not at first attack the Roman Church, but only the sins of the human heart; he refuted errors by the statement of truth.50  His sermons gained him great popularity in Zurich. The people said, "Such preaching was never heard before."  Two prominent citizens, who were disgusted with the insipid legendary discourses of priests and monks, declared after hearing his first sermon, "This is a genuine preacher of the truth, a Moses who will deliver the people from bondage."  They became his constant hearers and devoted friends.

Zwingli was also a devoted pastor, cheerful, kind, hospitable and benevolent. He took great interest in young men, and helped them to an education. He was, as Bullinger says, a fine-looking man, of more than middle size, with a florid complexion, and an agreeable, melodious voice, which, though not strong, went to the heart. We have no portrait from his lifetime; he had no Lucas Kranach near him, like Luther; all his pictures are copies of the large oil painting of Hans Asper in the city library at Zurich, which was made after his death, and is rather hard and wooden.51

Zwingli continued his studies in Zurich and enlarged his library, with the help of his friends Glareanus and Beatus Rhenanus, who sent him books from Basle, the Swiss headquarters of literature. He did not neglect his favorite classics, and read, as Bullinger says, Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Horace, Sallust, and Seneca. But his chief attention was now given to the Scriptures and the patristic commentaries.

In the meantime Luther’s reform was shaking the whole Church, and strengthened and deepened his evangelical convictions in a general way, although he had formed them independently. Some of Luther’s books were reprinted in Basle in 1519, and sent to Zwingli by Rhenanus. Lutheran ideas were in the air, and found attentive ears in Switzerland. He could not escape their influence. The eucharistic controversy produced an alienation; but he never lost his great respect for Luther and his extraordinary services to the Church.52

§ 12. Zwingli and the Sale of Indulgences.

Bernhardin Samson, a Franciscan monk of Milan, crossed the St. Gotthard to Switzerland in August, 1518, as apostolic general commissioner for the sale of indulgences. He is the Tetzel of Switzerland, and equalled him in the audacious profanation of holy things by turning the forgiveness of sins and the release from purgatorial punishment into merchandise. He gave the preference to the rich who were willing to buy letters of indulgence on parchment for a crown. To the poor he sold the same article on common paper for a few coppers. In Berne he absolved the souls of all the departed Bernese of the pains of purgatory. In Bremgarten he excommunicated Dean Bullinger (the father of Henry) for opposing his traffic. But in Zurich he was stopped in his career.

Zwingli had long before been convinced of the error of indulgences by Wyttenbach when he studied in Basle. He had warned the people against Samson at Einsiedeln. He exerted his influence against him in Zurich; and the magistracy, and even the bishop of Constance (who preferred to sell indulgences himself) supported the opposition. Samson was obliged to return to Italy with his "heavy, three-horse wagon of gold."  Rome had learned a lesson of wisdom from Luther’s Theses, and behaved in the case of Samson with more prudence and deference to the sentiment of the enlightened class of Catholics. Leo X., in a brief of April, 1519, expressed his willingness to recall and to punish him if he had transgressed his authority.53

The opposition to the sale of indulgences is the opening chapter in the history of the German Reformation, but a mere episode in the Swiss Reformation. That battle had been fought out victoriously by Luther. Zwingli came in no conflict with Rome on this question, and was even approved for his conduct by Dr. Faber, the general vicar of the diocese of Constance, who was then his friend, but became afterwards his enemy.

§ 13. Zwingli during the Pestilence.

In the summer of 1519 Zwingli went to the famous bath of Pfäffers at Ragatz to gather strength for his prospectively onerous duties at Zurich, in view of the danger of the approach of the plague from Basle. As soon as he learned, in August, that the plague had broken out in Zurich, he hastened back without stopping to visit his relations on the way. For several weeks he devoted himself, like a faithful shepherd, day after day, to the care of the sick, until he fell sick himself at the end of September. His life was in great danger, as he had worn himself out. The papal legate sent his own physician to his aid. The pestilence destroyed twenty-five hundred lives; that is, more than one-third of the population of Zurich. Zwingli recovered, but felt the effects on his brain and memory, and a lassitude in all limbs till the end of the year. His friends at home and abroad, including Faber, Pirkheimer, and Dürer at Nürnberg, congratulated him on his recovery.

The experience during this season of public distress and private affliction must have exerted a good influence upon his spiritual life.54  We may gather this from the three poems, which he composed and set to music soon afterwards, on his sickness and recovery. They consist each of twenty-six rhymed iambic verses, and betray great skill in versification. They breathe a spirit of pious resignation to the will of God, and give us an insight into his religious life at that time.55  He wrote another poem in 1529, and versified the Sixty-ninth Psalm.56

Zwingli’s Poems during the Pestilence, with a Free Condensed Translation.

I. Im Anfang der Krankheit.

Hilf, Herr Gott, hilf

In dieser Noth;

Ich mein’, der Tod

Syg57 an der Thür.

Stand, Christe, für;

Denn du ihn überwunden hast!

Zu dir ich gilf:58

Ist es din Will,

Zuch us den Pfyl,59

Din Haf63bin ich,

Mach ganz ald64 brich.

Dann nimmst du hin

Den Geiste min

Der mich verwundt,

Nit lass ein Stund

Mich haben weder Rüw60 noch Rast!

Willt du dann glych61

Todt haben mich

Inmitts der Tagen min,

So soll es willig syn.

Thu, wie Du willt,

Mich nüt befilt.62

Von dieser Erd,

Thust du’s, dass er nit böser werd,

Ald andern nit

Befleck ihr Leben fromm und Sitt.

II. Mitten in der Krankheit.

Tröst, Herr Gott, tröst!

Die Krankheit wachst,65

Weh und Angst fasst

Min Seel und Lyb.66

Darum dich schybr67

Gen mir, einiger Trost, mit Gnad!

Die gwüss erlöst

Bin jeden, der Sin herzlich B’ger

Und Hoffnung setzt

In dich, verschätzt.

Darzu diss Zyt all Nutz und Schad.

Nun ist es um;

Min Zung ist stumm,

Mag sprechen nit ein Wort;

Min Sinn’ sind all verdorrt,

Darum ist Zyt,68Dass Du min Stryt69

Führist fürhin;

So ich nit bin

So stark, dass ich

Mög tapferlich

Thun Widerstand

Des Tüfels Facht70 und frefner Hand.

Doch wird min Gmüth

Stät bliben dir, wie er auch wüth.

III. Zur Genesung.

G’sund, Herr Gott, g’sund!

Ich mein’, ich kehr

Schon wiedrum her.

Ja, wenn dich dunkt,

Der Sünden Funk’

Werd nit mehr bherrschen mich uf  Erd,

So muss min Mund

Din Lob und Lehr

Ussprechen mehr

Denn vormals je,

Wie es auch geh’

Einfältiglich ohn’ alle G’fährd.

Wiewohl ich muss

Des Todes buss

Erliden zwar einmal

Villicht mit gröss’rer Qual,

Denn jezund wär’

Geschehen, Herr!

So ich sunst bin

Nach71 gfahren hin,

So will ich doch

Den Trutz und Poch72

In dieser Welt

Tragen fröhlich um Widergelt,73

Mit Hülfe din,

Ohn’ den nüt74 mag vollkommen syn.

I. In the Beginning of his Sickness.

Help me, O Lord,

My strength and rock;

Lo, at the door

I hear death’s knock.

Uplift thine arm,

Once pierced for me,

That conquered death,

And set me free.

Yet, if thy voice,

In life’s mid-day

Recalls my soul,

Then I obey.

In faith and hope,

Earth I resign,

Secure of heaven,

For I am Thine.

II. In the Midst of his Sickness.

My pains increase;

Haste to console;

For fear and woe

Seize body and soul.

Lo!  Satan strains

To snatch his prey;

I feel his grasp;

Must I give way?

Death is at hand,

My senses fail,

My tongue is dumb;

Now, Christ, prevail.

He harms me not,

I fear no loss,

For here lie

Beneath Thy cross.

III. On Recovering from his Sickness.

My God! my Lord!

Healed by Thy hand,

Upon the earth

Once more I stand.

Though now delayed,

My hour will come,

Involved, perchance,

In deeper gloom.

Let sin no more

Rule over me;

My mouth shall sing

Alone of Thee.

But, let it come;

With joy I’ll rise,

And bear my yoke

Straight to the skies.

§ 14. The Open Breach. Controversy about Fasts. 1522.

Zwingli was permitted to labor in Zurich for two years without serious opposition, although he had not a few enemies, both religious and political. The magistracy of Zurich took at first a neutral position, and ordered the priests of the city and country to preach the Scriptures, and to be silent about human inventions (1520). This is the first instance of an episcopal interference of the civil authority in matters of religion. It afterwards became a settled custom in Protestant Switzerland with the full consent of Zwingli. He was appointed canon of the Grossmünster, April 29, 1521, with an additional salary of seventy guilders, after he had given up the papal pension. With this moderate income he was contented for the rest of his life.

During Lent, 1522, Zwingli preached a sermon in which he showed that the prohibition of meat in Lent had no foundation in Scripture. Several of his friends, including his publisher, Froschauer, made practical use of their liberty.

This brought on an open rupture. The bishop of Constance sent a strong deputation to Zurich, and urged the observance of the customary fasts. The magistracy prohibited the violation, and threatened to punish the offenders (April 9, 1522).75  Zwingli defended himself in a tract on the free use of meats (April 16).76  It is his first printed book. He essentially takes the position of Paul, that, in things indifferent, Christians have liberty to use or to abstain, and that the Church authorities have no right to forbid this liberty. He appeals to such passages as 1 Cor. 8:8; 10:25; Col. 2:16; 1 Tim. 4:1; Rom. 14:1–3; 15:1, 2.

The bishop of Constance issued a mandate to the civil authorities (May 24), exhorting them to protect the ordinances of the Holy Church.77  He admonished the canons, without naming Zwingli, to prevent the spread of heretical doctrines. He also sought and obtained the aid of the Swiss Diet, then sitting at Lucerne.

Zwingli was in a dangerous position. He was repeatedly threatened with assassination. But he kept his courage, and felt sure of ultimate victory. He replied in the Archeteles ("the Beginning and the End"), hoping that this first answer would be the last.78  He protested that he had done no wrong, but endeavored to lead men to God and to his Son Jesus Christ in plain language, such as the common people could understand. He warned the hierarchy of the approaching collapse of the Romish ceremonies, and advised them to follow the example of Julius Caesar, who folded his garments around him that he might fall with dignity. The significance of this book consists in the strong statement of the authority of the Scriptures against the authority of the Church. Erasmus was much displeased with it.

§ 15. Petition for the Abolition of Clerical Celibacy. Zwingli’s Marriage.

In July of the same year (1522), Zwingli, with ten other priests, sent a Latin petition to the bishop, and a German petition to the Swiss Diet, to permit the free preaching of the gospel and the marriage of the clergy as the only remedy against the evils of enforced celibacy. He quotes the Scriptures for the divine institution and right of marriage, and begs the confederates to permit what God himself has sanctioned. He sent both petitions to Myconius in Lucerne for signatures. Some priests approved, but were afraid to sign; others said the petition was useless, and could only be granted by the pope or a council.79

The petition was not granted. Several priests openly disobeyed. One married even a nun of the convent of Oetenbach (1523); Reubli of Wyticon married, April 28, 1523; Leo Judae, Sept. 19, 1523.

Zwingli himself entered into the marriage relation in 1522,80 but from prudential reasons he did not make it public till April 5, 1524 (more than a year before Luther’s marriage, which took place June 13, 1525). Such cases of secret marriage were not unfrequent; but it would have been better for his fame if, as a minister and reformer, he had exercised self-restraint till public opinion was ripe for the change.

His wife, Anna Reinhart,81 was the widow of Hans Meyer von Knonau,82 the mother of three children, and lived near Zwingli. She was two years older than he. His enemies spread the report that he married for beauty and wealth; but she possessed only four hundred guilders besides her wardrobe and jewelry. She ceased to wear her jewelry after marrying the Reformer.

We have only one letter of Zwingli to his wife, written from Berne, Jan. 11, 1528, in which he addresses her as his dearest house-wife.83  From occasional expressions of respect and affection for his wife, and from salutations of friends to her, we must infer that his family life was happy; but it lacked the poetic charm of Luther’s home. She was a useful helpmate in his work.84  She contributed her share towards the creation of pastoral family life, with its innumerable happy homes.85

In Zwingli’s beautiful copy of the Greek Bible (from the press of Aldus in Venice, 1518), which is still preserved and called "Zwingli’s Bible," he entered with his own hand a domestic chronicle, which records the names, birthdays, and sponsors of his four children, as follows: "Regula Zwingli, born July 13, 1524;86 Wilhelm Zwingli, born January 29, 1526;87 Huldreich Zwingli, born Jan. 6, 1528;88 Anna Zwingli, born May 4, 1530."89 His last male descendant was his grandson, Ulrich, professor of theology, born 1556, died 1601. The last female descendant was his great-granddaughter, Anna Zwingli, who presented his MS. copy of the Greek Epistles of Paul to the city library of Zurich in 1634.

Zwingli lived in great simplicity, and left no property. His little study (the "Zwingli-Stübli"), in the official dwelling of the deacon of the Great Minster, is carefully preserved in its original condition.

§ 16. Zwingli and Lambert of Avignon.

In July, 1522, there appeared in Zurich a Franciscan monk, Lambert of Avignon, in his monastic dress, riding on a donkey. He had left his convent in the south of France, and was in search of evangelical religion. Haller of Berne recommended him to Zwingli. Lambert preached some Latin sermons against the abuses of the Roman Church, but still advocated the worship of saints and of the Virgin Mary. Zwingli interrupted him with the remark, "You err," and convinced him of his error in a disputation.

The Franciscan thanked God and proceeded to Wittenberg, where Luther received him kindly. At the Synod of Homberg (1526) he advocated a scheme of Presbyterian church government, and at the conference at Marburg he professed to be converted to Zwingli’s view of the Lord’s Supper.90

§ 17. The Sixty-seven Conclusions.

On the Sixty-seven Conclusions and the Three Disputations see Zwingli: Werke, I. A. 105 sqq.; Bullinger: I. 97 sqq.; Egli: 111, 114, 173 sqq.; Mörikofer: I. 138 sqq., 191 sqq. The text of the Sixty-seven Articles in Swiss-German, Werke, I. A. 153–157; in modern German and Latin, in Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, III. 197–207.

Zwingli’s views, in connection with the Lutheran Reformation in Germany, created a great commotion, not only in the city and canton of Zurich, but in all Switzerland. At his suggestion, the government—that is, the burgomaster and the small and large Council (called The Two Hundred)—ordered a public disputation which should settle the controversy on the sole basis of the Scriptures.

For this purpose Zwingli published Sixty-seven Articles or Conclusions (Schlussreden). They are the first public statement of the Reformed faith, but they never attained symbolical authority, and were superseded by maturer confessions. They resemble the Ninety-five Theses of Luther against indulgences, which six years before had opened the drama of the German Reformation; but they mark a great advance in Protestant sentiment, and cover a larger number of topics. They are full of Christ as the only Saviour and Mediator, and clearly teach the supremacy of the Word of God as the only rule of faith; they reject and attack the primacy of the Pope, the Mass, the invocation of saints, the meritoriousness of human works, the fasts, pilgrimages, celibacy, purgatory, etc., as unscriptural commandments of men.

The following are the most important of these theses: —

1. All who say that the gospel is nothing without the approbation of the Church, err and cast reproach upon God.

2. The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of his heavenly Father, and redeemed us by his innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us to God.

3. Therefore Christ is the only way to salvation to all who were, who are, who shall be.

4. Whosoever seeks or shows another door, errs—yea, is a murderer of

souls and a robber.

7. Christ is the head of all believers who are his body; but without him

the body is dead.

8. All who live in this Head are his members and children of God. And this is the Church, the communion of saints, the bride of Christ, the Ecclesia catholica.

15. Who believes the gospel shall be saved; who believes not, shall be damned. For in the gospel the whole truth is clearly contained.

16. From the gospel we learn that the doctrines and traditions of men are of no use to salvation.

17. Christ is the one eternal high-priest. Those who pretend to be highpriests resist, yea, set aside, the honor and dignity of Christ.

18. Christ, who offered himself once on the cross, is the sufficient and perpetual sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Therefore the mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one sacrifice of the cross, and a seal of the redemption through Christ.

19. Christ is the only Mediator between God and us.

22. Christ is our righteousness. From this it follows that our works are good so far as they are Christ’s, but not good so far as they are our own.

24. Christians are not bound to any works which Christ has not commanded. They may eat at all times all kinds of food.

26. Nothing is more displeasing to God than hypocrisy.

27. All Christians are brethren.

28. Whatsoever God permits and has not forbidden, is right. Therefore marriage is becoming to all men.

34. The spiritual [hierarchical] power, so called, has no foundation in the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of Christ.91

35. But the secular power [of the state] is confirmed by the teaching and example of Christ.92

37, 38. All Christians owe obedience to the magistracy, provided it does not command what is against God.93

49. I know of no greater scandal than the prohibition of lawful marriage to priests, while they are permitted for money to have concubines. Shame!94

50. God alone forgives sins, through Jesus Christ our Lord alone.

57. The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life.

58, 59. God alone knows the condition of the departed, and the less he has made known to us, the less we should pretend to know.

66. All spiritual superiors should repent without delay, and set up the cross of Christ alone, or they will perish. The axe is laid at the root.

§ 18. The Public Disputations. 1523.

The first disputation was held in the city hall on Thursday, Jan. 29, 1523, in the German language, before about six hundred persons, including all the clergy and members of the small and large Councils of Zurich. St. Gall was represented by Vadian; Berne, by Sebastian Meyer; Schaffhausen, by Sebastian Hofmeister. Oecolampadius from Basle expected no good from disputations, and declined to come. He agreed with Melanchthon’s opinion about the Leipzig disputation of Eck with Carlstadt and Luther. Nevertheless, he attended, three years afterwards, the Disputation at Baden. The bishop of Constance sent his general vicar, Dr. Faber, hitherto a friend of Zwingli, and a man of respect, able learning and an able debater, with three others as counsellors and judges. Faber declined to enter into a detailed discussion of theological questions which, he thought, belong to the tribunal of Councils or of renowned universities, as Paris, Cologne and Louvain. Zwingli answered his objections, and convinced the audience.95

On the same day the magistracy passed judgment in favor of Zwingli, and directed him "to continue to preach the holy gospel as heretofore, and to proclaim the true, divine Scriptures until he was better informed."  All other preachers and pastors in the city and country were warned "not to preach anything which they could not establish by the holy Gospel and other divine Scriptures," and to avoid personal controversy and bitter names.96

Zwingli prepared a lengthy and able defence of his Articles against the charges of Faber, July, 1523.97

The disputation soon produced its natural effects. Ministers took regular wives; the nunnery of Oetenbach was emptied; baptism was administered in the vernacular, and without exorcism; the mass and worship of images were neglected and despised. A band of citizens, under the lead of a shoemaker, Klaus Hottinger, overthrew the great wooden crucifix in Stadelhofen, near the city, and committed other lawless acts.98

Zwingli was radical in his opposition to idolatrous and superstitious ceremonies, but disapproved disorderly methods, and wished the magistracy to authorize the necessary changes.

Consequently, a second disputation was arranged for October 26, 1523, to settle the question of images and of the mass. All the ministers of the city and canton were ordered to attend; the twelve other cantons, the bishops of Constance, Coire and Basle, and the University of Basle were urgently requested to send learned delegates. The bishop of Constance replied (Oct. 16) that he must obey the Pope and the Emperor, and advised the magistracy to wait for a general council. The bishop of Basle excused himself on account of age and sickness, but likewise referred to a council and warned against separation. The bishop of Coire made no answer. Most of the cantons declined to send delegates, except Schaffhausen and St. Gall. Unterwalden honestly replied that they had no learned men among them, but pious priests who faithfully adhered to the old faith of Christendom, which they preferred to, all innovations.

The second disputation was held in the city hall, and lasted three days. There were present about nine hundred persons, including three hundred and fifty clergymen and ten doctors. Dr. Vadian of St. Gall, Dr. Hofmeister of Schaffhausen, and Dr. Schappeler of St. Gall presided. Zwingli and Leo Judae defended the Protestant cause, and had the advantage of superior Scripture learning and argument. The Roman party betrayed much ignorance; but Martin Steinli of Schaffhausen ably advocated the mass. Konrad Schmid of Küssnacht took a moderate position, and produced great effect upon the audience by his eloquence. His judgment was, first to take the idolatry out of the heart before abolishing the outward images, and to leave the staff to the weak until they are able to walk without it and to rely solely on Christ.99

The Council was not prepared to order the immediate abolition of the mass and the images. It punished Hottinger and other "idol-stormers" by banishment, and appointed a commission of ministers and laymen, including Zwingli, Schmidt and Judae, who should enlighten the people on the subject by preaching and writing. . Zwingli prepared his "Short and Christian Introduction," which was sent by the Council of Two Hundred to all the ministers of the canton, the bishops of Constance, Basle, and Coire, the University of Basle, and to the twelve other cantons (Nov. 17, 1523).100  It may be compared to the instruction of Melanchthon for the visitation of the churches of Saxony (1528).

A third disputation, of a more private character, was held Jan. 20, 1524. The advocates of the mass were refuted and ordered not to resist any longer the decisions of the magistracy, though they might adhere to their faith.

During the last disputation, Zwingli preached a sermon on the corrupt state of the clergy, which he published by request in March, 1524, under the title "The Shepherd."101  He represents Christ as the good Shepherd in contrast with the selfish hirelings, according to the parable in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Among the false shepherds he counts the bishops who do not preach at all; those priests who teach their own dreams instead of the Word of God; those who preach the Word but for the glorification of popery; those who deny their preaching by their conduct; those who preach for filthy lucre; and, finally, all who mislead men away from the Creator to the creature. Zwingli treats the papists as refined idolaters, and repeatedly denounces idolatry as the root of the errors and abuses of the Church.

During the summer of 1524 the answers of the bishops and the Diet appeared, both in opposition to any innovations. The bishop of Constance, in a letter to Zurich, said that he had consulted several universities; that the mass and the images were sufficiently warranted by the Scriptures, and had always been in use. The canton appointed a commission of clergymen and laymen to answer the episcopal document.102  The Swiss Diet, by a deputation, March 21, 1524, expressed regret that Zurich sympathized with the new, unchristian Lutheran religion, and prayed the canton to remain faithful to old treaties and customs, in which case the confederates would cheerfully aid in rooting out real abuses, such as the shameful trade in benefices, the selling of indulgences, and the scandalous lives of the clergy.

Thus forsaken by the highest ecclesiastical and civil authorities, the canton of Zurich acted on its own responsibility, and carried out the contemplated reforms.

The three disputations mark an advance beyond the usual academic disputations in the Latin language. They were held before laymen as well as clergymen, and in the vernacular. They brought religious questions before the tribunal of the people according to the genius of republican institutions. They had, therefore, more practical effect than the disputation at Leipzig. The German Reformation was decided by the will of the princes; the Swiss Reformation, by the will of the people: but in both cases there was a sympathy between the rulers and the majority of the population.

§ 19. The Abolition of the Roman Worship. 1524.

Bullinger, I. 173 sqq. Füssli, I. 142 sqq. Egli, 234 sqq.

By these preparatory measures, public opinion was prepared for the practical application of the new ideas. The old order of worship had to be abolished before the new order could be introduced. The destruction was radical, but orderly. It was effected by the co-operation of the preachers and the civil magistracy, with the consent of the people. It began at Pentecost, and was completed June 20, 1524.

In the presence of a deputation from the authorities of Church and State, accompanied by architects, masons and carpenters, the churches of the city were purged of pictures, relics, crucifixes, altars, candles, and all ornaments, the frescoes effaced, and the walls whitewashed, so that nothing remained but the bare building to be filled by a worshiping congregation. The pictures were broken and burnt, some given to those who had a claim, a few preserved as antiquities. The bones of the saints were buried. Even the organs were removed, and the Latin singing of the choir abolished, but fortunately afterwards replaced by congregational singing of psalms and hymns in the vernacular (in Basle as early as 1526, in St. Gall 1527, in Zurich in 1598). "Within thirteen days," says Bullinger, "all the churches of the city were cleared; costly works of painting and sculpture, especially a beautiful table in the Waterchurch, were destroyed. The superstitious lamented; but the true believers rejoiced in it as a great and joyous worship of God."103

In the following year the magistracy melted, sold, or gave away the rich treasures of the Great Minster and the Frauenminster,—chalices, crucifixes, and crosses of gold and silver, precious relics, clerical robes, tapestry, and other ornaments.104  In 1533 not a copper’s worth was left in the sacristy of the Great Minster.105  Zwingli justified this vandalism by the practice of a conquering army to spike the guns and to destroy the forts and provisions of the enemy, lest he might be tempted to return.

The same work of destruction took place in the village churches in a less orderly way. Nothing was left but the bare buildings, empty, cold and forbidding.

The Swiss Reformers proceeded on a strict construction of the second commandment as understood by Jews and Moslems. They regarded all kinds of worship paid to images and relics as a species of idolatry. They opposed chiefly the paganism of popery; while Luther attacked its legalistic Judaism, and allowed the pictures to remain as works of art and helps to devotion. For the classical literature of Greece and Rome, however, Zwingli had more respect than Luther. It should be remarked also that he was not opposed to images as such any more than to poetry and music, but only to their idolatrous use in churches. In his reply to Valentin Compar of Uri (1525), he says, "The controversy is not about images which do not offend the faith and the honor of God, but about idols to which divine honors are paid. Where there is no danger of idolatry, the images may remain; but idols should not be tolerated. All the papists tell us that images are the books for the unlearned. But where has God commanded us to learn from such books?  "He thought that the absence of images in churches would tend to increase the hunger for the Word of God.106

The Swiss iconoclasm passed into the Reformed Churches of France, Holland, Scotland, and North America. In recent times a reaction has taken place, not in favor of image worship, which is dead and gone, but in favor of Christian art; and more respect is paid to the decency and beauty of the house of God and the comfort of worshipers.

§ 20. The Reformed Celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Zwingli, Werke, II. B. 233. Bullinger, I. 263. Füssli, IV. 64.

The mass was gone. The preaching of the gospel and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper by the whole congregation, in connection with a kind of Agape, took its place.

The first celebration of the communion after the Reformed usage was held in the Holy Week of April, 1525, in the Great Minster. There were three services,—first for the youth on Maundy-Thursday, then for the middle-aged on Good Friday, and last for the old people on Easter. The celebration was plain, sober, solemn. The communicants were seated around long tables, which took the place of the altar, the men on the right, the women on the left. They listened reverently to the prayers, the words of institution, the Scripture lessons, taken from the 1 Cor. 11 and the mysterious discourse in the sixth chapter of John on the spiritual eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood, and to an earnest exhortation of the minister. They then received in a kneeling posture the sacred emblems in wooden plates and wooden cups. The whole service was a commemoration of Christ’s atoning death and a spiritual communion with him, according to the theory of Zwingli.

In the liturgical part he retained more from the Catholic service than we might expect; namely, the Introit, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, and several responses; but all were translated from Latin into the Swiss dialect, and with curious modifications. Thus the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, and the Ps. 103 were said alternately by the men and the women, instead of the minister and the deacon, as in the Catholic service, or the minister and the congregation, as in the Lutheran and Episcopal services.107  In most of the Reformed churches (except the Anglican) the responses passed out of use, and the kneeling posture in receiving the communion gave way to the standing or sitting posture.

The communion service was to be held four times in the year,—at Easter, Whitsunday, autumn, and Christmas. It was preceded by preparatory devotions, and made a season of special solemnity. The mass was prohibited at first only in the city, afterwards also in the country.

Zwingli furnished also in 1525 an abridged baptismal service in the vernacular language, omitting the formula of exorcism and all those elements for which he found no Scripture warrant.108

The Zwinglian and Calvinistic worship depends for its effect too much upon the intellectual and spiritual power of the minister, who can make it either very solemn and impressive, or very cold and barren. The Anglican Church has the advantage of an admirable liturgy.

§ 21. Other Changes. A Theological School. The Carolinum. A System of Theology.

Other changes completed the Reformation. The Corpus Christi festival was abolished, and the Christian year reduced to the observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. Processions and pilgrimages ceased. The property of convents was confiscated and devoted to schools and hospitals. The matrimonial legislation was reconstructed, and the care of the poor organized. In 1528 a synod assembled for the first time, to which each congregation sent its minister and two lay delegates.

A theological college, called Carolinum, was established from the funds of the Great Minster, and opened June 19, 1525. It consisted of the collegium humanitatis, for the study of the ancient languages, philosophy and mathematics, and the Carolinum proper, for the study of the Holy Scriptures, which were explained in daily lectures, and popularized by the pastors for the benefit of the congregation. This was called prophesying (1 Cor. 14:1).109  Zwingli wrote a tract on Christian education (1526).110  He organized this school of the prophets, and explained in it several books of the Old Testament, according to the Septuagint. He recommended eminent scholars to professorships. Among the earliest teachers were Ceporin, Pellican, Myconius, Collin, Megander, and Bibliander. To Zwingli Zurich owes its theological and literary reputation. The Carolinum secured an educated ministry, and occupied an influential position in the development of theological science and literature till the nineteenth century, when it was superseded by the organization of a full university.111

Zwingli wrote in the course of three months and a half an important work on the true, evangelical, as opposed to the false, popish faith, and dedicated it to Francis I., king of France, in the vain hope of gaining him to the cause of the Reformation.112  It completes his theological opposition to the papacy. It is the first systematic exposition of the Reformed faith, as Melanchthon’s Loci was the first system of Lutheran theology; but it was afterwards eclipsed by Calvin’s Institutes, which were addressed to the same king with no better effect. Francis probably never read either; but the dedication remains as a connecting link between the Swiss and the French Reformation. The latter is a child of the former.

§ 22. The Translation of the Bible. Leo Judae.

Metzger (Antistes in Schaffhausen): Geschichte der deutschen Bibelübersetzung der schweizerischen reformirten Kirche. Basel, 1876. Pestalozzi: Leo Judae. Elberfeld, 1860.

A most important part of the Reformation was a vernacular translation of the Bible. Luther’s New Testament (1522) was reprinted at Basel with a glossary. In Zurich it was adapted to the Swiss dialect in 1524, and revised and improved in subsequent editions. The whole Bible was published in German by Froschauer at Zurich in 1530, four years before Luther completed his version (1534).113  The translation of the Prophets and the Apocrypha was prepared by Conrad Pellican, Leo Judae, Theodor Bibliander, and other Zurich divines. The beautiful edition of 1531 contained also a new version of the Poetical books, with an introduction (probably by Zwingli), summaries, and parallel passages.

The Swiss translation cannot compare with Luther’s in force, beauty, and popularity; but it is more literal, and in subsequent revisions it has kept pace with the progress of exegesis. It brought the Word of God nearer to the heart and mind of the Swiss people, and is in use to this day alongside of the Lutheran version.114

The chief merit in this important service belongs to Leo Jud or Judae.115  He was born in 1482, the son of a priest in Alsass, studied with Zwingli at Basle, and became his successor as priest at Einsiedeln, 1519, and his colleague and faithful assistant as minister of St. Peter’s in Zurich since 1523. He married in the first year of his pastorate at Zurich. His relation to Zwingli has been compared with the relation of Melanchthon to Luther. He aided Zwingli in the second disputation, in the controversy with the Anabaptists, and with Luther, edited and translated several of his writings, and taught Hebrew in the Carolinum. Zwingli called him his "dear brother and faithful co-worker in the gospel of Jesus Christ."  He was called to succeed the Reformer after the catastrophe of Cappel; but he declined on account of his unfitness for administrative work, and recommended Bullinger, who was twenty years younger. He continued to preach and to teach till his death, and declined several calls to Wurtemberg and Basle. He advocated strict discipline and a separation of religion from politics. He had a melodious voice, and was a singer, musician, and poet, but excelled chiefly as a translator into German and Latin.116  He wrote a Latin and two German catechisms, and translated Thomas à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi, Augustin’s De Spiritu et Litera, the first Helvetic Confession, and other useful books into German, besides portions of the Bible. He prepared also a much esteemed Latin version of the Old Testament, which is considered his best work. He often consulted in it his colleagues and Michael Adam, a converted Jew. He did not live to see the completion, and left this to Bibliander and Pellican. It appeared in a handsome folio edition, 1543, with a preface by Pellican, and was several times reprinted.117  He lived on a miserable salary with a large family, and yet helped to support the poor and entertained strangers, aided by his industrious and pious wife, known in Zurich as "Mutter Leuin."  Four days before his death, June 19, 1542, he summoned his colleagues to his chamber, spoke of his career with great humility and gratitude to God, and recommended to them the care of the church and the completion of his Latin Bible. His death was lamented as a great loss by Bullinger and Calvin and the people of Zurich.118

§ 23. Church and State.

The Reformation of Zurich was substantially completed in 1525. It was brought about by the co-operation of the secular and spiritual powers. Zwingli aimed at a reformation of the whole religious, political, and social life of the people, on the basis and by the power of the Scriptures.119

The patriot, the good citizen, and the Christian were to him one and the same. He occupied the theocratic standpoint of the Old Testament. The preacher is a prophet: his duty is to instruct, to exhort, to comfort, to rebuke sin in high and low places, and to build up the kingdom of God; his weapon is the Word of God. The duty of the magistracy is to obey the gospel, to protect religion, to punish wickedness. Calvin took the same position in Geneva, and carried it out much more fully than Zwingli.

The bishop of Constance, to whose diocese Zurich belonged, opposed the Reformation; and so did the other bishops of Switzerland. Hence the civil magistracy assumed the episcopal rights and jurisdiction, under the spiritual guidance of the Reformers. It first was impartial, and commanded the preachers of the canton to teach the Word of God, and to be silent about the traditions of men (1520). Then it prohibited the violation of the Church fasts (1522), and punished the image-breakers, in the interest of law and order (1523). But soon afterwards it openly espoused the cause of reform in the disputation of 1523, and authorized the abolition of the old worship and the introduction of the new (1524 and 1525). It confiscated the property of the churches and convents, and took under its control the regulation of marriage, the care of the poor, and the education of the clergy. The Church was reduced legally to a state of dependence, though she was really the moving and inspiring power of the State, and was supported by public sentiment. In a republic the majority of the people rule, and the minority must submit. The only dissenters in Zurich were a small number of Romanists and Anabaptists, who were treated with the same disregard of the rights of conscience as the Protestants in Roman Catholic countries, only with a lesser degree of severity. The Reformers refused to others the right of protest which they claimed and exercised for themselves, and the civil magistracy visited the poor Anabaptists with capital punishment.

The example of Zurich was followed by the other cantons in which the Reformation triumphed. Each has its own ecclesiastical establishment, which claims spiritual jurisdiction over all the citizens of its territory. There is no national Reformed Church of Switzerland, with a centre of unity.

This state of things is the same as that in Protestant Germany, but differs from it as a republic differs from a monarchy. In both countries the bishops, under the command of the Pope, condemned Protestantism, and lost the control over their flock. The Reformers, who were mere presbyters, looked to the civil rulers for the maintenance of law and order. In Germany, after the Diet of Speier in 1526, the princes assumed the episcopal supervision, and regulated the Church in their own territories for good or evil. The people were passive, and could not even elect their own pastors. In Switzerland, we have instead a sort of democratic episcopate or republican Caesaropapacy, where the people hold the balance of power, and make and unmake their government.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Church and State, professing the same religion, had common interests, and worked in essential harmony; but in modern times the mixed character, the religious indifferentism, the hostility and the despotism of the State, have loosened the connection, and provoked the organization of free churches in several cantons (Geneva, Vaud, Neuchatel), on the basis of self-support and self-government. The State must first and last be just, and either support all the religions of its citizens alike, or none. It owes the protection of law to all, within the limits of order and peace. But the Church has the right of self-government, and ought to be free of the control of politicians.120

Among the ministers of the Reformation period, Zwingli, and, after his death, Bullinger, exercised a sort of episcopate in fact, though not in form; and their successors in the Great Minster stood at the head of the clergy of the canton. A similar position is occupied by the Antistes of Basle and the Antistes of Schaffhausen. They correspond to the Superintendents of the Lutheran churches in Germany.

Zwingli was the first among the Reformers who organized a regular synodical Church government. He provided for a synod composed of all ministers of the city and canton, two lay delegates of every parish, four members of the small and four members of the great council. This mixed body represented alike Church and State, the clergy and the laity. It was to meet twice a year, in spring and fall, in the city hall of Zurich, with power to superintend the doctrine and morals of the clergy, and to legislate on the internal affairs of the Church. The first meeting was held at Easter, 1528. Zwingli presided, and at his side was Leo Judae. The second meeting took place May 19, 1528. The proceedings show that the synod exercised strict discipline over the morals of the clergy and people, and censured intemperance, extravagance in dress, neglect of Church ordinances, etc.121

But German Switzerland never went to such rigors of discipline as Geneva under the influence of Calvin.

§ 24. Zwingli’s Conflict with Radicalism.

Comp. Literature in vol. VI., § 102, p. 606 sq.

I. Sources:

In the Staatsarchiv of Zurich there are preserved about two hundred and fifty documents under the title, Wiedertäuferacten,—*Egli: Actensammlung zur Gesch. der Zürcher Reformation, Zürich, 1879 (see the Alph. Index, p. 920, sub Wiedertäufer). The official reports are from their opponents. The books of the Anabaptists are scarce. A large collection of them is in the Baptist Theological Seminary at Rochester, N. Y. The principal ones are the tracts of Dr. Hübmaier (see vol. VI. 606); a few letters of Grebel, Hut, Reubli, etc., and other documents mentioned and used by Cornelius (Gesch. des Münsterschen Aufruhrs); the Moravian, Austrian, and other Anabaptist chronicles (see Beck, below); and the Anabaptist hymns reprinted in Wackernagel’s Deutsche Kirchenlied, vols. III. and V. (see below).

Zwingli: Wer Ursach gebe zu Aufruhr, wer die wahren Aufrührer seien, etc., Dec. 7, 1524. A defence of Christian unity and peace against sedition. (Werke, II. A. 376–425.) Vom Touff, vom Wiedertouff, und vom Kindertouff, May 27, 1525 (in Werke, II. A. 280–303. Republished in modern German by Christoffel, Zürich, 1843. The book treats in three parts of baptism, rebaptism, and infant baptism). Answer to Balthasar Hübmaier, Nov. 5, 1525 (Werke, II. A. 337 sqq.). Elenchus contra Catabaptistas, 1527 (Opera, III. 357 sqq.). His answer to Schwenkfeld’s 64 Theses concerning baptism (in Op. III. 563–583; Comp. A. Baur, II. 245–267). Oecolampadius: Ein gesprech etlicher predicanten zu Basel gehalten mit etlichen Bekennern des Wiedertouffs, Basel, 1525. Bullinger (Heinrich): Der Wiedertäufferen ursprung, fürgang, Sekten, etc. Zürich, 1560. (A Latin translation by J. Simler.) See also his Reformationsgeschichte, vol. I.

II. Later Discussions:

Ott (J. H.): Annales Anabaptistici. Basel, 1672.

Erbkam (H. W.): Geschichte der protestantischen Secten im Zeitalter der Reformation. Hamburg und Gotha, 1848. pp. 519–583.

Heberle: Die Anfänge des Anabaptismus in der Schweiz, in the "Jahrbücher fur deutsche Theologie," 1858.

Cornelius (C. A., a liberal Roman Catholic): Geschichte des Münsterschen Aufruhrs. Leipzig, 1855. Zweites Buch: Die Wiedertaufe. 1860. He treats of the Swiss Anabaptists (p. 15 sqq.), and adds historical documents from many archives (p. 240 sqq.). A very important work.

Mörikofer: U. Zwingli. Zürich, 1867. I. 279–313; II. 69–76. Very unfavorable to the Anabaptists.

R. von Lilienkron: Zur Liederdichtung der Wiedertäufer. München, 1877.

*Egli (Emil): Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit. Nach den Quellen des Staatsarchivs. Zürich, 1878 (104 pp.). By the same: Die St. Galler Täufer. Zürich, 1887. Important for the documents and the external history.

*Burrage (Henry S., American Baptist): The Anabaptists in Switzerland. Philadelphia, 1882, 231 pp. An account from the Baptist point of view. Comp. his Baptist Hymn Writers, Portland, 1888, pp. l-25.

Usteri (J. M.): Darstellung der Tauflehre Zwingli’s, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1882, pp. 205–284.

*Beck (JOSEPH): Die Geschichtsbücher der Wiedertäufer in Oestreich-Ungarn ... von 1526 bis 1785. Wien, 1883. Publ. by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Strasser (G.): Der schweizerische Anabaptismus zur Zeit der Reformation, in the "Berner Beiträge," 1884.

Nitsche (Richard, Roman Catholic): Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in der Schweiz zur Reformationszeit. Einsiedeln, New York, Cincinnati and St. Louis (Benziger), 1885 (107 pp.). He gives a list of literature on pp. vi.-viii.

Keller (Ludwig): Die Reformation und die ältern Reformparteien. Leipzig, 1885, pp. 364–435. He is favorable to the Anabaptists, and connects them with the Waldensian Brethren and other mediaeval sects by novel, but arbitrary combinations and conjectures. He mistakes coincidences for historical connections.

Baur (Aug.): Zwingli’s Theologie, vol. II. (1888), 1–267. An elaborate discussion and defence of Zwingli’s conduct towards the radicals, with full extracts from his writings, but unjust to the Baptists.

The monographs of Schreiber on Hübmaier (1839 and 1840, unfinished), Keim on Ludwig Hätzer (1856), and Keller on Hans Denck (Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer, 1882), touch also on the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. Kurtz, in the tenth ed. of his Kirchengeschichte (1887), II. 150–164, gives a good general survey of the Anabaptist movement in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, including the Mennonites.

Having considered Zwingli’s controversy with Romanism, we must now review his conflict with Radicalism, which ran parallel with the former, and exhibits the conservative and churchly side of his reformation. Radicalism was identical with the Anabaptist movement, but the baptismal question was secondary. It involved an entire reconstruction of the Church and of the social order. It meant revolution. The Romanists pointed triumphantly to revolution as the legitimate and inevitable result of the Reformation; but history has proved the difference. Liberty is possible without license, and differs as widely from it as from despotism.

The Swiss Reformation, like the German, was disturbed and checked by the radical excesses. It was placed between the two fires of Romanism and Ultraprotestantism. It was attacked in the front and rear, from without and within, by the Romanists on the ground of tradition, by the Radicals on the ground of the Bible. In some respects the danger from the latter was greater. Liberty has more to fear from the abuses of its friends than from the opposition of its foes. The Reformation would have failed if it had identified itself with the revolution. Zwingli applied to the Radicals the words of St. John to the antichristian teachers: "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2:19). He considered the controversy with the Papists as mere child’s play when compared to that with the Ultraprotestants.122

The Reformers aimed to reform the old Church by the Bible; the Radicals attempted to build a new Church from the Bible. The former maintained the historic continuity; the latter went directly to the apostolic age, and ignored the intervening centuries as an apostasy. The Reformers founded a popular state-church, including all citizens with their families; the Anabaptists organized on the voluntary principle select congregations of baptized believers, separated from the world and from the State. Nothing is more characteristic of radicalism and sectarianism than an utter want of historical sense and respect for the past. In its extreme form it rejects even the Bible as an external authority, and relies on inward inspiration. This was the case with the Zwickau Prophets who threatened to break up Luther’s work at Wittenberg.

The Radicals made use of the right of protest against the Reformation, which the Reformers so effectually exercised against popery. They raised a protest against Protestantism. They charged the Reformers with inconsistency and semipopery; yea, with the worst kind of popery. They denounced the state-church as worldly and corrupt, and its ministers as mercenaries. They were charged in turn with pharisaical pride, with revolutionary and socialistic tendencies. They were cruelly persecuted by imprisonment, exile, torture, fire and sword, and almost totally suppressed in Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic countries. The age was not ripe for unlimited religious liberty and congregational self-government. The Anabaptists perished bravely as martyrs of conscience.123

Zwingli took essentially, but quite independently, the same position towards the Radicals as Luther did in his controversy with Carlstadt, Münzer, and Hübmaier.124  Luther, on the contrary, radically misunderstood Zwingli by confounding him with Carlstadt and the Radicals. Zwingli was in his way just as conservative and churchly as the Saxon Reformer. He defended and preserved the state-church, or the people’s church, against a small fraction of sectaries and separatists who threatened its dissolution. But his position was more difficult. He was much less influenced by tradition, and further removed from Romanism. He himself aimed from the start at a thorough, practical purification of church life, and so far agreed with the Radicals. Moreover, he doubted for a while the expediency (not the right) of infant baptism, and deemed it better to put off the sacrament to years of discretion.125  He rejected the Roman doctrine of the necessity of baptism for salvation and the damnation of unbaptized infants dying in infancy. He understood the passage, Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," as applying only to adults who have heard the gospel and can believe, but not to children. On maturer reflection he modified his views. He learned from experience that it was impossible to realize an ideal church of believers, and stopped with what was attainable. As to infant baptism, he became convinced of its expediency in Christian families. He defended it with the analogy of circumcision in the Old Testament (Col. 2:11), with the comprehensiveness of the New Covenant, which embraces whole families and nations, and with the command of Christ, "Suffer little children to come unto Me," from which he inferred that he who refuses children to be baptized prevents them from coming to Christ. He also appealed to 1 Cor. 7:14, which implies the church-membership of the children of Christian parents, and to the examples of family baptisms in Acts 16:33, 18:8, and 1 Cor. 1:16.

The Radical movement began in Zurich in 1523, and lasted till 1532. The leaders were Conrad Grebel, from one of the first families of Zurich, a layman, educated in the universities of Vienna and Paris, whom Zwingli calls the corypheus of the Anabaptists; Felix Manz, the illegitimate son of a canon of the Great Minster, a good Hebrew scholar; Georg Blaurock, a monk of Coire, called on account of his eloquence "the mighty Jörg," or "the second Paul;" and Ludwig Hätzer of Thurgau, chaplain at Wädenschwyl, who, with Hans Denck, prepared the first Protestant translation of the Hebrew Prophets,126 and acted as secretary of the second Zurich disputation, and edited its proceedings. With them were associated a number of ex-priests and ex-monks, as William Reubli, minister at Wyticon, Johann Brödli (Paniculus) at Zollicon, and Simon Stumpf at Höng. They took an active part in the early stages of the Reformation, prematurely broke the fasts, and stood in the front rank of the image-stormers. They went ahead of public opinion and the orderly method of Zwingli. They opposed the tithe, usury, military service, and the oath. They denied the right of the civil magistracy to interfere in matters of religion. They met as "brethren" for prayer and Scripture-reading in the house of "Mother Manz," and in the neighborhood of Zurich, especially at Zollicon.

The German Radicals, Carlstadt and Münzer, were for a short time in Switzerland and on the Rhine, but did not re-baptize and had no influence upon the Swiss Radicals, who opposed rebellion to the civil authority. Carlstadt gradually sobered down; Münzer stirred up the Peasants’ War, seized the sword and perished by the sword. Dr. Hübmaier of Bavaria, the most learned among the Anabaptists, and their chief advocate, took part in the October disputation at Zurich in 1523, but afterwards wrote books against Zwingli (on the baptism of believers, 1525, and a dialogue with Zwingli, 1526), was expelled from Switzerland, and organized flourishing congregations in Moravia.

The Radical opinions spread with great rapidity, or rose simultaneously, in Berne, Basle, St. Gall, Appenzell, all along the Upper Rhine, in South Germany, and Austria. The Anabaptists were driven from place to place, and travelled as fugitive evangelists. They preached repentance and faith, baptized converts, organized congregations, and exercised rigid discipline. They called themselves simply "brethren" or "Christians."  They were earnest and zealous, self-denying and heroic, but restless and impatient. They accepted the New Testament as their only rule of faith and practice, and so far agreed with the Reformers, but utterly broke with the Catholic tradition, and rejected Luther’s theory of forensic, solifidian justification, and the real presence. They emphasized the necessity of good works, and deemed it possible to keep the law and to reach perfection. They were orthodox in most articles of the common Christian faith, except Hätzer and Denck, who doubted the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.

The first and chief aim of the Radicals was not (as is usually stated) the opposition to infant baptism, still less to sprinkling or pouring, but the establishment of a pure church of converts in opposition to the mixed church of the world. The rejection of infant baptism followed as a necessary consequence. They were not satisfied with separation from popery; they wanted a separation from all the ungodly. They appealed to the example of the disciples in Jerusalem, who left the synagogue and the world, gathered in an upper room, sold their goods, and held all things in common. They hoped at first to carry Zwingli with them, but in vain; and then they charged him with treason to the truth, and hated him worse than the pope.

Zwingli could not follow the Anabaptists without bringing the Reformation into discredit with the lovers of order, and rousing the opposition of the government and the great mass of the people. He opposed them, as Augustin opposed the schismatical Donatists. He urged moderation and patience. The Apostles, he said, separated only from the open enemies of the gospel, and from the works of darkness, but bore with the weak brethren. Separation would not cure the evils of the Church. There are many honest people who, though weak and sick, belong to the sheepfold of Christ, and would be offended at a separation. He appealed to the word of Christ, "He that is not against me, is for me," and to the parable of the tares and the wheat. If all the tares were to be rooted up now, there would be nothing left for the angels to do on the day of final separation.

§ 25. The Baptismal Controversy.

The opposition to the mixed state-church or popular church, which embraced all the baptized, legitimately led to the rejection of infant baptism. A new church required a new baptism.

This became now the burning question. The Radicals could find no trace of infant baptism in the Bible, and denounced it as an invention of the pope127 and the devil. Baptism, they reasoned, presupposes instruction, faith, and conversion, which is impossible in the case of infants.128  Voluntary baptism of adult and responsible converts is, therefore, the only valid baptism. They denied that baptism is necessary for salvation, and maintained that infants are or may be saved by the blood of Christ without water-baptism.129  But baptism is necessary for church membership as a sign and seal of conversion.

From this conception of baptism followed as a further consequence the rebaptism of those converts who wished to unite with the new church. Hence the name Anabaptists or Rebaptizers (Wiedertäufer), which originated with the Pedobaptists, but which they themselves rejected, because they knew no other kind of baptism except that of converts.

The demand of rebaptism virtually unbaptized and unchristianized the entire Christian world, and completed the rupture with the historic Church. It cut the last cord of union of the present with the past.

The first case was the rebaptism of Blaurock by Grebel in February, 1525, soon after the disputation with Zwingli. At a private religious meeting, Blaurock asked Grebel to give him the true Christian baptism on confession of his faith, fell on his knees and was baptized. Then he baptized all others who were present, and partook with them of the Lord’s Supper, or, as they called it, the breaking of bread.130  Reubli introduced rebaptism in Waldshut at Easter, 1525, convinced Hübmaier of its necessity, and rebaptized him with about sixty persons. Hübmaier himself rebaptized about three hundred.131

Baptism was not bound to any particular form or time or place or person; any one could administer the ordinance upon penitent believers who desired it. It was first done mostly in houses, by sprinkling or pouring, occasionally by partial or total immersion in rivers.132

The mode of baptism was no point of dispute between Anabaptists and Pedobaptists in the sixteenth century. The Roman Church provides for immersion and pouring as equally valid. Luther preferred immersion, and prescribed it in his baptismal service.133  In England immersion was the normal mode down to the middle of the seventeenth century.134  It was adopted by the English and American Baptists as the only mode; while the early Anabaptists, on the other hand, baptized by sprinkling and pouring as well. We learn this from the reports in the suits against them at Zurich. Blaurock baptized by sprinkling,135 Manz by pouring.136  The first clear case of immersion among the Swiss Anabaptists is that of Wolfgang Uliman (an ex-monk of Coire, and for a while assistant of Kessler in St. Gall). He was converted by Grebel on a journey to Schaffhausen, and, not satisfied with being "sprinkled merely out of a dish," was "drawn under and covered over in the Rhine."137  On Palm Sunday, April 9, 1525, Grebel baptized a large number in the Sitter, a river a few miles from St. Gall, which descends from the Säntis and flows into the Thur, and is deep enough for immersion.138  The Lord’s Supper was administered by the Baptists in the simplest manner, after a plain supper (in imitation of the original institution and the Agape), by the recital of the words of institution, and the distribution of bread and wine. They reduced it to a mere commemoration.

The two ideas of a pure church of believers and of the baptism of believers were the fundamental articles of the Anabaptist creed. On other points there was a great variety and confusion of opinions. Some believed in the sleep of the soul between death and resurrection, a millennial reign of Christ, and final restoration; some entertained communistic and socialistic opinions which led to the catastrophe of Münster (1534). Wild excesses of immorality occurred here and there.139

But it is unjust to charge the extravagant dreams and practices of individuals upon the whole body. The Swiss Anabaptists had no connection with the Peasants’ War, which barely touched the border of Switzerland, and were upon the whole, like the Moravian Anabaptists, distinguished for simple piety and strict morality. Bullinger, who was opposed to them, gives the Zurich Radicals the credit that they denounced luxury, intemperance in eating and drinking, and all vices, and led a serious, spiritual life. Kessler of St. Gall, likewise an opponent, reports their cheerful martyrdom, and exclaims, "Alas! what shall I say of the people?  They move my sincere pity; for many of them are zealous for God, but without knowledge."  And Salat, a Roman Catholic contemporary, writes that with "cheerful, smiling faces, they desired and asked death, and went into it singing German psalms and other prayers."140

The Anabaptists produced some of the earliest Protestant hymns in the German language, which deserve the attention of the historian. Some of them passed into orthodox collections in ignorance of the real authors. Blaurock, Manz, Hut, Hätzer, Koch, Wagner, Langmantel, Sattler, Schiemer, Glait, Steinmetz, Büchel, and many others contributed to this interesting branch of the great body of Christian song. The Anabaptist psalms and hymns resemble those of Schwenkfeld and his followers. They dwell on the inner life of the Christian, the mysteries of regeneration, sanctification, and personal union with Christ. They breathe throughout a spirit of piety, devotion, and cheerful resignation under suffering, and readiness for martyrdom. They are hymns of the cross, to comfort and encourage the scattered sheep of Christ ready for the slaughter, in imitation of their divine Shepherd.

NOTES.

The Anabaptist hymns appeared in a collection under the title "Aussbund Etlicher schöner Christlicher Geseng wie die in der Gefengniss zu Passau im Schloss von den Schweitzern und auch von anderen rechtgläubigen Christen hin und her gedicht worden," 1583, and often. Also in other collections of the sixteenth century. They are reprinted in Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, vol. III. (1870), pp. 440–491, and vol. V. (1877), pp. 677–887. He embodies them in this monumental corpus hymnologicum, as he does the Schwenkfeldian and the Roman Catholic hymns of the fifteenth century, but under express reservation of his high-Lutheran orthodoxy. He refuses to acknowledge the Anabaptists as martyrs any longer (as he had done in his former work on German hymnology), because they stand, he says (III. 439), "ausserhalb der Wahrheit, ausserhalb der heiligen lutherischen Kirche!" Hymnology is the last place for sectarian exclusiveness. It furnishes one of the strongest evidences of Christian union in the sanctuary of worship, where theological quarrels are forgotten in the adoration of a common Lord and Saviour. Luther himself, as Wackernagel informs us, received unwittingly in his hymn book of 1545 a hymn of the Anabaptist Grünwald, and another of the Schwenkfeldian Reusner. Wackernagel is happily inconsistent when he admits (p. 440) that much may be learned from the Anabaptist hymns, and that a noble heart will not easily condemn those victims of Rome and of the house of Habsburg. He gives first the hymns of Thomas Münzer, who can hardly be called an Anabaptist and was disowned by the better portion.

Burrage, in Baptist Hymn Writers, Portland, 1888, p. 1 sqq., gives some extracts of Anabaptist hymns. The following stanza, from a hymn of Schiemer or Schöner, characterizes the condition and spirit of this persecuted people:—

We are, alas, like scattered sheep,

The shepherd not in sight,

Each far away from home and hearth,

And, like the birds of night

That hide away in rocky clefts,

We have our rocky hold,

Yet near at hand, as for the birds,

There waits the hunter bold."

§ 26. Persecution of the Anabaptists.

We pass now to the measures taken against the separatists. At first Zwingli tried to persuade them in private conferences, but in vain. Then followed a public disputation, which took place by order of the magistracy in the council hall, Jan. 17, 1525. Grebel was opposed to it, but appeared, together with Manz and Reubli. They urged the usual arguments against infant baptism, that infants cannot understand the gospel, cannot repent and exercise faith. Zwingli answered them, and appealed chiefly to circumcision and 1 Cor. 7:14, where Paul speaks of the children of Christian parents as "holy."  He afterwards published his views in a book, "On Baptism, Rebaptism, and Infant Baptism" (May 27, 1525). Bullinger, who was present at the disputation, reports that the Anabaptists were unable to refute Zwingli’s arguments and to maintain their ground. Another disputation was held in March, and a third in November, but with no better result. The magistracy decided against them, and issued an order that infants should be baptized as heretofore, and that parents who refuse to have their children baptized should leave the city and canton with their families and goods.

The Anabaptists refused to obey, and ventured on bold demonstrations. They arranged processions, and passed as preachers of repentance, in sackcloth and girdled, through the streets of Zurich, singing, praying, exhorting, abusing the old dragon (Zwingli) and his horns, and exclaiming, "Woe, woe unto Zurich!"141

The leaders were arrested and shut up in a room in the Augustinian convent. A commission of ministers and magistrates were sent to them to convert them. Twenty-four professed conversion, and were set free. Fourteen men and seven women were retained and shut up in the Witch Tower, but they made their escape April 5.

Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were rearrested, and charged with communistic and revolutionary teaching. After some other excesses, the magistracy proceeded to threaten those who stubbornly persisted in their error, with death by drowning. He who dips, shall be dipped,—a cruel irony.

It is not known whether Zwingli really consented to the death sentence, but he certainly did not openly oppose it.142

Six executions in all took place in Zurich between 1527 and 1532. Manz was the first victim. He was bound, carried to a boat, and thrown into the river Limmat near the lake, Jan. 5, 1527. He praised God that he was about to die for the truth, and prayed with a loud voice, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!"  Bullinger describes his heroic death. Grebel had escaped the same fate by previous death in 1526. The last executions took place March 23, 1532, when Heinrich Karpfis and Hans Herzog were drowned. The foreigners were punished by exile, and met death in Roman Catholic countries. Blaurock was scourged, expelled, and burnt, 1529, at Clausen in the Tyrol. Hätzer, who fell into carnal sins, was beheaded for adultery and bigamy at Constance, Feb. 24, 1529. John Zwick, a Zwinglian, says that "a nobler and more manful death was never seen in Constance."  Thomas Blaurer bears a similar testimony.143  Hübmaier, who had fled from Waldshut to Zurich, December, 1525, was tried before the magistracy, recanted, and was sent out of the country to recant his recantation.144  He labored successfully in Moravia, and was burnt at the stake in Vienna, March 10, 1528. Three days afterwards his faithful wife, whom he had married in Waldshut, was drowned in the Danube.

Other Swiss cantons took the same measures against the Anabaptists as Zurich. In Zug, Lorenz Fürst was drowned, Aug. 17, 1529. In Appenzell, Uliman and others were beheaded, and some women drowned. At Basle, Oecolampadius held several disputations with the Anabaptists, but without effect; whereupon the Council banished them, with the threat that they should be drowned if they returned (Nov. 13, 1530). The Council of Berne adopted the same course.

In Germany and in Austria the Anabaptists fared still worse. The Diet of Speier, in April, 1529, decreed that "every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex be put to death by sword, or fire, or otherwise."  The decree was severely carried out, except in Strassburg and the domain of Philip of Hesse, where the heretics were treated more leniently. The most blood was shed in Roman Catholic countries. In Görz the house in which the Anabaptists were assembled for worship was set on fire. "In Tyrol and Görz," says Cornelius,145 "the number of executions in the year 1531 reached already one thousand; in Ensisheim, six hundred. At Linz seventy-three were killed in six weeks. Duke William of Bavaria, surpassing all others, issued the fearful decree to behead those who recanted, to burn those who refused to recant.... Throughout the greater part of Upper Germany the persecution raged like a wild chase.... The blood of these poor people flowed like water so that they cried to the Lord for help.... But hundreds of them of all ages and both sexes suffered the pangs of torture without a murmur, despised to buy their lives by recantation, and went to the place of execution joyfully and singing psalms."

The blood of martyrs is never shed in vain. The Anabaptist movement was defeated, but not destroyed; it revived among the Mennonites, the Baptists in England and America, and more recently in isolated congregations on the Continent. The questions of the subjects and mode of baptism still divide Baptist and Pedobaptist churches, but the doctrine of the salvation of unbaptized infants is no longer condemned as a heresy; and the principle of religious liberty and separation of Church and State, for which the Swiss and German Anabaptists suffered and died, is making steady progress. Germany and Switzerland have changed their policy, and allow to Baptists, Methodists, and other Dissenters from the state-church that liberty of public worship which was formerly denied them; and the state-churches reap the benefit of being stirred up by them to greater vitality. In England the Baptists are one of the leading bodies of Dissenters, and in the United States the largest denomination next to the Methodists and Roman Catholics.

§ 27. The Eucharistic Controversy. Zwingli and Luther.

Zwingli’s eucharistic writings: On the Canon of the Mass (1523); On the same, against Emser (1524); Letter to Matthew Alber at Reutlingen (1524); The 17th ch. of his Com. on the True and False Religion (in Latin and German, March 23, 1525); Answer to Bugenhagen (1525); Letter to Billicanus and Urbanus Rhegius (1526); Address to Osiander of Nürnberg (1527); Friendly Exegesis, addressed to Luther (Feb. 20, 1527); Reply to Luther on the true sense of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper (1527); The report on the Marburg Colloquy (1529). In Opera, vol. II. B., III., IV. 173 sqq.

For an exposition of Zwingli’s doctrine on the Lord’s Supper and his controversy with Luther, see vol. VI. 520–550 and 669–682; and A. Baur, Zwingli’s Theol. II. 268 sqq. (very full and fair).

The eucharistic controversy between Zwingli and Luther has been already considered in connection with the German Reformation, and requires only a brief notice here. It lasted from 1524 to 1529, and culminated in the Colloquy at Marburg, where the two views came into closer contact and collision than ever before or since, and where every argument for or against the literal interpretation of the words of institution and the corporal presence was set forth with the clearness and force of the two champions.

Zwingli and Luther agreed in the principle of a state-church or people’s church (Volks-Kirche), as opposed to individualism, separatism, and schism. Both defended the historic continuity of the Church, and put down the revolutionary radicalism which constructed a new church on the voluntary principle. Both retained infant baptism as a part of Christian family religion, against the Anabaptists, who introduced a new baptism with their new church of converts. Luther never appreciated this agreement in the general standpoint, and made at the outset the radical mistake of confounding Zwingli with Carlstadt and the Radicals.146

But there was a characteristic difference between the two Reformers in the general theory of the sacraments, and especially the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli stood midway between Luther and the Anabaptists. He regarded the sacraments as signs and seals of a grace already received rather than as means of a grace to be received. They set forth and confirm, but do not create, the thing signified. He rejected the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and of the corporal presence; while Luther adhered to both with intense earnestness and treated a departure as damnable heresy. Zwingli’s theory reveals the spiritualizing and rationalizing tendency of his mind; while Luther’s theory reveals his realistic and mystical tendency. Yet both were equally earnest in their devotion to the Scriptures as the Word of God and the supreme rule of faith and practice.

When they met face to face at Marburg,—once, and only once, in this life,—they came to agree in fourteen out of fifteen articles, and even in the fifteenth article they agreed in the principal part, namely, the spiritual presence and fruition of Christ’s body and blood, differing only in regard to the corporal presence and oral manducation, which the one denied, the other asserted. Zwingli showed on that occasion marked ability as a debater, and superior courtesy and liberality as a gentleman. Luther received the impression that Zwingli was a "very good man,"147 yet of a "different spirit," and hence refused to accept his hand of fellowship offered to him with tears. The two men were differently constituted, differently educated, differently situated and equipped, each for his own people and country; and yet the results of their labors, as history has proved, are substantially the same.

§ 28. The Works of Zwingli.

A list of Zwingli’s works in the edition of Schuler and Schulthess, vol. VIII. 696–704; of his theological works, in Baur, Zwingli ’s Theol., II. 834–837.

During the twelve short years of his public labors as a reformer, from 1519 to 1531, Zwingli developed an extraordinary literary activity. He attacked the Papists and the Radicals, and had to reply in self-defence. His advice was sought from the friends of reform in all parts of Switzerland, and involved him in a vast correspondence. He wrote partly in Latin, partly in the Swiss-German dialect. Several of his books were translated by Leo Judae. He handled the German with more skill than his countrymen; but it falls far short of the exceptional force and beauty of Luther’s German, and could make no impression outside of Switzerland. The editors of his complete works (Schuler and Schulthess) give, in eight large octavo volumes, eighty German and fifty-nine Latin books and tracts, besides two volumes of epistles by Zwingli and to Zwingli.

His works may be divided into seven classes, as follows: —

1. Reformatory and Polemical Works: (a) against popery and the papists (on Fasts; on Images; on the Mass; Against Faber; Against Eck; Against Compar; Against Emser, etc.); (b) on the controversy with the Anabaptists; (c) on the Lord’s Supper, against Luther’s doctrine of the corporal real presence.

2. Reformatory and Doctrinal: The Exposition of his 67 Conclusions (1524); A Commentary on the False and True Religion, addressed to King Francis I. of France (1525); A Treatise on Divine Providence (1530); A Confession of Faith addressed to the Emperor Charles V. and the Augsburg Diet (1530); and his last confession, written shortly before his death (1531), and published by Bullinger.

3. Practical and Liturgical: The Shepherd; Forms of Baptism and the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper; Sermons, etc.

4. Exegetical: Extracts from lectures on Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the four Gospels, and most of the Epistles, edited by Leo Judae, Megander, and others.

5. Patriotic and Political: Against foreign pensions and military service; addresses to the Confederates, and the Council of Zurich; on Christian education; on peace and war, etc.

6. Poetical: The Labyrinth and The Fable (his earliest productions); three German poems written during the pestilence; one written in 1529, and a versified Psalm (69th).

7. Epistles. They show the extent of his influence, and include letters to Zwingli from Erasmus, Pucci, Pope Adrian VI., Faber, Vadianus, Glareanus, Myconius, Oecolampadius, Haller, Megander, Beatus Rhenanus, Urbanus Rhegius, Bucer, Hedio, Capito, Blaurer, Farel, Comander, Bullinger, Fagius, Pirkheimer, Zasius, Frobenius, Ulrich von Hutten, Philip of Hesse, Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, and other distinguished persons.

§ 29. The Theology of Zwingli.

I. Zwingli: Commentarius de Vera et Falsa Religione, 1525 (German translation by Leo Judae); Fidei Ratio ad Carolum V., 1530; Christianae Fidei brevis et clara Expositio, 1531; De Providentia, 1530 (expansion of a sermon preached at Marburg and dedicated to Philip of Hesse).

II. The theology of Zwingli is discussed by Zeller, Sigwart, Spörri, Schweizer, and most fully and exhaustively by A. Baur. See Lit. § 5, p. 18. Comp. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 369 sqq, and Church History, VI. 721 sqq.

The dogmatic works of Zwingli contain the germs of the evangelical Reformed theology, in distinction from the Roman and the Lutheran, and at the same time several original features which separate it from the Calvinistic System. He accepted with all the Reformers the oecumenical creeds and the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity, and the divine-human personality of Christ. He rejected with Luther the scholastic additions of the middle ages, but removed further from the traditional theology in the doctrine of the sacraments and the real presence. He was less logical and severe than Calvin, who surpassed him in constructive genius, classical diction and rhetorical finish. He drew his theology from the New Testament and the humanistic culture of the Erasmian type. His love for the classics accounts for his liberal views on the extent of salvation by which he differs from the other Reformers. It might have brought him nearer to Melanchthon; but Melanchthon was under the overawing influence of Luther, and was strongly prejudiced against Zwingli. He was free from traditional bondage, and in several respects in advance of his age.

Zwingli’s theology is a system of rational supernaturalism, more clear than profound, devoid of mysticism, but simple, sober, and practical. It is prevailingly soteriological, that is, a doctrine of the way of salvation, and rested on these fundamental principles: The Bible is the only sure directory of salvation (which excludes or subordinates human traditions); Christ is the only Saviour and Mediator between God and men (which excludes human mediators and the worship of saints); Christ is the only head of the Church visible and invisible (against the claims of the pope); the operation of the Holy Spirit and saving grace are not confined to the visible Church (which breaks with the principle of exclusiveness).

1. Zwingli emphasizes the Word of God contained in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, as the only rule of Christian faith and practice. This is the objective principle of Protestantism which controls his whole theology. Zwingli first clearly and strongly proclaimed it in his Conclusions (1523), and assigned to it the first place in his system; while Luther put his doctrine of justification by faith or the subjective principle in the foreground, and made it the article of the standing or falling church. But with both Reformers the two principles so-called resolve themselves into the one principle of Christ, as the only and sufficient source of saving truth and saving grace, against the traditions of men and the works of men. Christ is before the Bible, and is the beginning and end of the Bible. Evangelical Christians believe in the Bible because they believe in Christ, and not vice versa. Roman Catholics believe in the Bible because they believe in the Church, as the custodian and infallible interpreter of the Bible.

As to the extent of the Bible, or the number of inspired books, Zwingli accepted the Catholic Canon, with the exception of the Apocalypse, which he did not regard as an apostolic work, and hence never used for doctrinal purposes.148  Calvin doubted the genuineness of the Second Epistle of Peter and the Pauline origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Both accepted the canon on the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, rather than the external authority of the Church. Luther, on the one hand, insisted in the eucharistic controversy on the most literal interpretation of the words of institution against all arguments of grammar and reason; and yet, on the other hand, he exercised the boldest subjective criticism on several books of the Old and New Testaments, especially the Epistle of James and the Epistle to the Hebrews, because he could not harmonize them with his understanding of Paul’s doctrine of justification. He thus became the forerunner of the higher or literary criticism which claims the Protestant right of the fullest investigation of all that pertains to the origin, history, and value of the Scriptures. The Reformed Churches, especially those of the English tongue, while claiming the same right, are more cautious and conservative in the exercise of it; they lay greater stress on the objective revelation of God than the subjective experience of man, and on historic evidence than on critical conjectures.

2. The doctrine of eternal election and providence. Zwingli gives prominence to God’s sovereign election as the primary source of salvation. He developed his view in a Latin sermon, or theological discourse, on Divine Providence, at the Conference of Marburg, in October, 1529, and enlarged and published it afterwards at Zurich (Aug. 20, 1530), at the special request of Philip of Hesse.149  Luther heard the discourse, and had no objection to it, except that he disliked the Greek and Hebrew quotations, as being out of place in the pulpit. Calvin, in a familiar letter to Bullinger, justly called the essay paradoxical and immoderate. It is certainly more paradoxical than orthodox, and contains some unguarded expressions and questionable illustrations; yet it does not go beyond Luther’s book on the "Slavery of the Human Will," and the first edition of Melanchthon’s Loci, or Calvin’s more mature and careful statements. All the Reformers were originally strong Augustinian predestinarians and denied the liberty of the human will. Augustin and Luther proceeded from anthropological premises, namely, the total depravity of man, and came to the doctrine of predestination as a logical consequence, but laid greater stress on sacramental grace. Zwingli, anticipating Calvin, started from the theological principle of the absolute sovereignty of God and the identity of foreknowledge and foreordination. His Scripture argument is chiefly drawn from the ninth chapter of Romans, which, indeed, strongly teaches the freedom of election,150 but should never be divorced from the tenth chapter, which teaches with equal clearness human responsibility, and from the eleventh chapter, which prophesies the future conversion of the Gentile nations and the people of Israel.

Zwingli does not shrink from the abyss of supralapsarian-ism. God, he teaches, is the supreme and only good, and the omnipotent cause of all things. He rules and administers the world by his perpetual and immutable providence, which leaves no room for accidents. Even the fall of Adam, with its consequences, is included in his eternal will as well as his eternal knowledge. So far sin is necessary, but only as a means to redemption. God’s agency in respect to sin is free from sin, since he is not bound by law, and has no bad motive or affection.151  Election is free and independent; it is not conditioned by faith, but includes faith.152  Salvation is possible without baptism, but not without Christ. We are elected in order that we may believe in Christ and bring forth the fruits of holiness. Only those who hear and reject the gospel in unbelief are foreordained to eternal punishment. All children of Christian parents who die in infancy are included among the elect, whether baptized or not, and their early death before they have committed any actual sin is a sure proof of their election.153  Of those outside the Church we cannot judge, but may entertain a charitable hope, as God’s grace is not bound. In this direction Zwingli was more liberal than any Reformer and opened a new path. St. Augustin moderated the rigor of the doctrine of predestination by the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the hypothesis of future purification. Zwingli moderated it by extending the divine revelation and the working of the Holy Spirit beyond the boundaries of the visible Church and the ordinary means of grace.

It is very easy to caricature the doctrine of predestination, and to dispose of it by the plausible objections that it teaches the necessity of sin, that it leads to fatalism and pantheism, that it supersedes the necessity of personal effort for growth in grace, and encourages carnal security. But every one who knows history at all knows also that the strongest predestinarians were among the most earnest and active Christians. It will be difficult to find purer and holier men than St. Augustin and Calvin, the chief champions of this very system which bears their name. The personal assurance of election fortified the Reformers, the Huguenots, the Puritans, and the Covenanters against doubt and despondency in times of trial and temptation. In this personal application the Reformed doctrine of predestination is in advance of that of Augustin. Moreover, every one who has some perception of the metaphysical difficulties of reconciling the fact of sin with the wisdom and holiness of God, and harmonizing the demands of logic and of conscience, will judge mildly of any earnest attempt at the solution of the apparent conflict of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

And yet we must say that the Reformers, following the lead of the great saint of Hippo, went to a one-sided extreme. Melanchthon felt this, and proposed the system of synergism, which is akin to the semi-Pelagian and Arminian theories. Oecolampadius kept within the limits of Christian experience and expressed it in the sound sentence, "Salus nostra ex Deo, perditio nostra ex nobis."  We must always keep in mind both the divine and the human, the speculative and the practical aspects of this problem of ages; in other words, we must combine divine sovereignty and human responsibility as complemental truths. There is a moral as well as an intellectual logic,—a logic of the heart and conscience as well as a logic of the head. The former must keep the latter in check and save it from running into supralapsarianism and at last into fatalism and pantheism, which is just as bad as Pelagianism.

3. Original sin and guilt. Here Zwingli departed from the Augustinian and Catholic system, and prepared the way for Arminian and Socinian opinions. He was far from denying the terrible curse of the fall and the fact of original sin; but he regarded original sin as a calamity, a disease, a natural defect, which involves no personal guilt, and is not punishable until it reveals itself in actual transgression. It is, however, the fruitful germ of actual sin, as the inborn rapacity of the wolf will in due time prompt him to tear the sheep.154

4. The doctrine of the sacraments, and especially of the Lord’s Supper, is the most characteristic feature of the Zwinglian, as distinct from the Lutheran, theology. Calvin’s theory stands between the two, and tries to combine the Lutheran realism with the Zwinglian spiritualism. This subject has been sufficiently handled in previous chapters.155

5. Eschatology. Here again Zwingli departed further from Augustin and the mediaeval theology than any other Reformer, and anticipated modern opinions. He believed (with the Anabaptists) in the salvation of infants dying in infancy, whether baptized or not. He believed also in the salvation of those heathen who loved truth and righteousness in this life, and were, so to say, unconscious Christians, or pre-Christian Christians. This is closely connected with his humanistic liberalism and enthusiasm for the ancient classics. He admired the wisdom and the virtue of the Greeks and Romans, and expected to meet in heaven, not only the saints of the Old Testament from Adam down to John the Baptist, but also such men as Socrates, Plato, Pindar, Aristides, Numa, Cato, Scipio, Seneca; yea, even such mythical characters as Hercules and Theseus. There is, he says, no good and holy man, no faithful soul, from the beginning to the end of the world, that shall not see God in his glory.156

Zwingli traced salvation exclusively to the sovereign grace of God, who can save whom, where, and how he pleases, and who is not bound to any visible means. But he had no idea of teaching salvation without Christ and his atonement, as he is often misunderstood and misrepresented. "Christ," he says (in the third of his Conclusions) "is the only wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Hence it is a denial of Christ when we confess another ground of salvation and satisfaction."  He does not say (and did not know) where, when, and how Christ is revealed to the unbaptized subjects of his saving grace: this is hidden from mortal eyes; but we have no right to set boundaries to the infinite wisdom and love of God.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches the necessity of baptism for salvation, and assigns all heathen to hell and all unbaptized children to the limbus infantum (a border region of hell, alike removed from burning pain and heavenly bliss). Lutheran divines, who accept the same baptismal theory, must consistently exclude the unbaptized from beatitude, or leave them to the uncovenanted mercy of God. Zwingli and Calvin made salvation depend on eternal election, which may be indefinitely extended beyond the visible Church and sacraments. The Scotch Presbyterian Confession condemns the "horrible dogma" of the papacy concerning the damnation of unbaptized infants. The Westminster Confession teaches that "elect infants dying in infancy," and "all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word, are saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth."157

The old Protestant eschatology is deficient. It rejects the papal dogma of purgatory, and gives nothing better in its place. It confounds Hades with Hell (in the authorized translations of the Bible 158), and obliterates the distinction between the middle state before, and the final state after, the resurrection. The Roman purgatory gives relief in regard to the fate of imperfect Christians, but none in regard to the infinitely greater number of unbaptized infants and adults who never hear of Christ in this life. Zwingli boldly ventured on a solution of the mysterious problem which is more charitable and hopeful and more in accordance with the impartial justice and boundless mercy of God.

His charitable hope of the salvation of infants dying in infancy and of an indefinite number of heathen is a renewal and enlargement of the view held by the ancient Greek Fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa). It was adopted by the Baptists, Armenians, Quakers, and Methodists, and is now held by the great majority of Protestant divines of all denominations.

CHAPTER IV.

SPREAD OF THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND.

§ 30. The Swiss Diet and the Conference at Baden, 1526.

Thomas Murner: Die Disputacion vor den XII Orten einer löblichen Eidgenossenschaft ... zu Baden gehalten. Luzern, 1527. This is the official Catholic report, which agrees with four other protocols preserved in Zurich. (Müller-Hottinger, VII. 84.)  Murner published also a Latin edition, Causa Helvetica orthodoxae fidei, etc. Lucernae, 1528. Bullinger, I. 331 sqq. The writings of Zwingli, occasioned by the Disputation in Baden, in his Opera, vol. II. B. 396–522.

Hottinger: Geschichte der Eidgenossen während der Zeit der Kirchentrennung, pp. 77–96. Mörikofer: Zw., II. 34–43. Merle: Reform., bk. XI. ch. 13. Herzog: Oekolampad, vol. II. ch. 1. Hagenbach: Oekolampad, pp. 90–98. A. Baur: Zw.’s Theol., I. 501–518.

The Diet of Switzerland took the same stand against the Zwinglian Reformation as the Diet of the German Empire against the Lutheran movement. Both Diets consisted only of one house, and this was composed of the hereditary nobility and aristocracy. The people were not directly represented by delegates of their own choice. The majority of voters were conservative, and in favor of the old faith; but the majority of the people in the larger and most prosperous cantons and in the free imperial cities favored progress and reform, and succeeded in the end.

The question of the Reformation was repeatedly brought before the Swiss Diet, and not a few liberal voices were heard in favor of abolishing certain crying abuses; but the majority of the cantons, especially the old forest-cantons around the lake of Lucerne, resisted every innovation. Berne was anxious to retain her political supremacy, and vacillated. Zwingli had made many enemies by his opposition to the foreign military service and pensions of his countrymen. Dr. Faber, the general vicar of the diocese of Constance, after a visit to Rome, openly turned against his former friend, and made every effort to unite the interests of the aristocracy with those of the hierarchy. "Now," he said, "the priests are attacked, the nobles will come next."159  At last the Diet resolved to settle the difficulty by a public disputation. Dr. Eck, well known to us from the disputation at Leipzig for his learning, ability, vanity and conceit,160 offered his services to the Diet in a flattering letter of Aug. 13, 1524. He had then just returned from a third visit to Rome, and felt confident that he could crush the Protestant heresy in Switzerland as easily as in Germany. He spoke contemptuously of Zwingli, as one who "had no doubt milked more cows than he had read books."  About the same time the Roman counter-reformation had begun to be organized at the convent of Regensburg (June, 1524), under the lead of Bavaria and Austria.

The disputation was opened in the Catholic city of Baden, in Aargau, May 21, 1526, and lasted eighteen days, till the 8th of June. The cantons and four bishops sent deputies, and many foreign divines were present. The Protestants were a mere handful, and despised as "a beggarly, miserable rabble."  Zwingli, who foresaw the political aim and result of the disputation, was prevented by the Council of Zurich from leaving home, because his life was threatened; but he influenced the proceedings by daily correspondence and secret messengers. No one could doubt his courage, which he showed more than once in the face of greater danger, as when he went to Marburg through hostile territory, and to the battlefield at Cappel. But several of his friends were sadly disappointed at his absence. He would have equalled Eck in debate and excelled him in biblical learning. Erasmus was invited, but politely declined on account of sickness.

The arrangements for the disputation and the local sympathies were in favor of the papal party. Mass was said every morning at five, and a sermon preached; the pomp of ritualism was displayed in solemn processions. The presiding officers and leading secretaries were Romanists; nobody besides them was permitted to take notes.161  The disputation turned on the real presence, the sacrifice of the mass, the invocation of the Virgin Mary and of saints, on images, purgatory, and original sin. Dr. Eck was the champion of the Roman faith, and behaved with the same polemical dexterity and overbearing and insolent manner as at Leipzig: robed in damask and silk, decorated with a golden ring, chain and cross; surrounded by patristic and scholastic folios, abounding in quotations and arguments, treating his opponents with proud contempt, and silencing them with his stentorian voice and final appeals to the authority of Rome. Occasionally he uttered an oath, "Potz Marter."  A contemporary poet, Nicolas Manuel, thus described his conduct: —

"Eck stamps with his feet, and claps his hands,

He raves, he swears, he scolds;

’I do,’ cries he, ’what the Pope commands,

And teach whatever he holds.’ "162

Oecolampadius of Basle and Haller of Berne, both plain and modest, but able, learned and earnest men, defended the Reformed opinions. Oecolampadius declared at the outset that he recognized no other rule of judgment than the Word of God. He was a match for Eck in patristic learning, and in solid arguments. His friends said, "Oecolampadius is vanquished, not by argument, but by vociferation."163  Even one of the Romanists remarked, "If only this pale man were on our side!"  His host judged that he must be a very pious heretic, because he saw him constantly engaged in study and prayer; while Eck was enjoying rich dinners and good wines, which occasioned the remark, "Eck is bathing in Baden, but in wine."164

The papal party boasted of a complete victory. All innovations were forbidden; Zwingli was excommunicated; and Basle was called upon to depose Oecolampadius from the pastoral office. Faber, not satisfied with the burning of heretical books, advocated even the burning of the Protestant versions of the Bible. Thomas Murner, a Franciscan monk and satirical poet, who was present at Baden, heaped upon Zwingli and his adherents such epithets as tyrants, liars, adulterers, church robbers, fit only for the gallows!  He had formerly (1512) chastised the vices of priests and monks, but turned violently against the Saxon Reformer, and earned the name of "Luther-Scourge "(Lutheromastix). He was now made lecturer in the Franciscan convent at Lucerne, and authorized to edit the acts of the Baden disputation.165

The result of the Baden disputation was a temporary triumph for Rome, but turned out in the end, like the Leipzig disputation of 1519, to the furtherance of the Reformation. Impartial judges decided that the Protestants had been silenced by vociferation, intrigue and despotic measures, rather than refuted by sound and solid arguments from the Scriptures. After a temporary reaction, several cantons which had hitherto been vacillating between the old and the new faith, came out in favor of reform.

§ 31. The Reformation in Berne.

I. The acts of the disputation of Berne were published in 1528 at Zurich and Strassburg, afterwards repeatedly at Berne, and are contained, together with two sermons of Zwingli, in Zwingli’s Werke, II. A. 63–229. Valerius Anshelm: Berner Chronik, new ed. by Stierlin and Wyss, Bern, 1884, ’86, 2 vols. Stürler: Urkunden der Bernischen Kirchenreform. Bern, 1862. Strickler: Aktensammlung, etc. Zurich, 1878 (I. 1).

II. Kuhn: Die Reformatoren Berns. Bern, 1828. Sam. Fischer: Geschichte der Disputation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. Melch. Kirchhofer: Berthold Haller oder die Reformation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. C. Pestalozzi: B. Haller, nach handschriftl. und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld, 1861. The monographs on Niclaus Manuel by Grüneisen, Stuttgart, 1837, and by Bächthold, Frauenfeld, 1878. Hundeshagen: Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Lutherthums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche von 1532–’58.  Bern, 1842. F. Trechsel: articles Berner Disputation and Berner Synodus, and Haller, in Herzog2, II. 313–324, and V 556–561. Berner Beiträge, etc., 1884, quoted on p. 15. See also the Lit. by Nippold in his Append. to Hagenbach’s Reform. Gesch., p. 695 sq.

III. Karl Ludwig von Haller (a distinguished Bernese and convert to Romanism, expelled from the Protestant Council of Berne, 1820; d. 1854): Geschichte der kirchlichen Revolution oder protestantischen Reform des Kantons Bern und umliegender Gegenden. Luzern, 1836 (346 pages). French translation, Histoire de la revolution religieuse dans la Swiss occidentale. Paris, 1839. This is a reactionary account professedly drawn from Protestant sources and represents the Swiss Reformation as the mother of the Revolution of 1789. To the French version of this book Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore (he does not mention the original) confesses to be "indebted for most of the facts" in his chapter on the Swiss Reformation which he calls a work established "by intrigue, chicanery, persecution, and open violence!"  Hist. of the Prot. Ref. in Germany and Switzerland, I. 181, 186 (8th ed., Baltimore, 1875).

Berne, the largest, most conservative and aristocratic of the Swiss cantons, which contains the political capital of the Confederacy, was the first to follow Zurich, after considerable hesitation. This was an event of decisive importance.

The Reformation was prepared in the city and throughout the canton by three ministers, Sebastian Meyer, Berthold Haller, and Francis Kolb, and by a gifted layman, Niclaus Manuel,—all friends of Zwingli. Meyer, a Franciscan monk, explained in the convent the Epistles of Paul, and in the pulpit, the Apostles’ Creed. Haller, a native of Würtemberg, a friend and fellow-student of Melanchthon, an instructive preacher and cautious reformer, of a mild and modest disposition, settled in Berne as teacher in 1518, was elected chief pastor at the cathedral 1521, and labored there faithfully till his death (1536). He was often in danger, and wished to retire; but Zwingli encouraged him to remain at the post of duty. Without brilliant talents or great learning, he proved eminently useful by his gentle piety and faithful devotion to duty. Manuel, a poet, painter, warrior and statesman, helped the cause of reform by his satirical dramas, which were played in the streets, his exposure of Eck and Faber after the Baden disputation, and his influence in the council of the city (d. 1530). His services to Zwingli resemble the services of Hutten to Luther. The Great Council of the Two Hundred protected the ministers in preaching the pure gospel.

The Peasants’ War in Germany and the excesses of the Radicals in Switzerland produced a temporary reaction in favor of Romanism. The government prohibited religious controversy, banished Meyer, and ordered Haller, on his return from the Baden disputation, to read Romish mass again; but he declined, and declared that he would rather give up his position, as he preferred the Word of God to his daily bread. The elections in 1527 turned out in favor of the party of progress. The Romish measures were revoked, and a disputation ordered to take place Jan. 6, 1528, in Berne.

The disputation at Berne lasted nineteen days (from Jan. 6 to 26). It was the Protestant counterpart of the disputation at Baden in composition, arrangements and result. It had the same effect for Berne as the disputations of 1523 had for Zurich. The invitations were general; but the Roman Catholic cantons and the four bishops who were invited refused, with the exception of the bishop of Lausanne, to send delegates, deeming the disputation of Baden final. Dr. Eck, afraid to lose his fresh laurels, was unwilling, as he said, "to follow the heretics into their nooks and corners"; but he severely attacked the proceedings. The Reformed party was strongly represented by delegates from Zurich, Basel, and St. Gall, and several cities of South Germany. Zurich sent about one hundred ministers and laymen, with a strong protection. The chief speakers on the Reformed side were Zwingli, Haller, Kolb, Oecolampadius, Capito, and Bucer from Strassburg; on the Roman side, Grab, Huter, Treger, Christen, and Burgauer. Joachim von Watt of St. Gall presided. Popular sermons were preached during the disputation by Blaurer of Constance, Zwingli, Bucer, Oecolampadius, Megander, and others.

The Reformers carried an easy and complete victory, and reversed the decision of Baden. The ten Theses or Conclusions, drawn up by Haller and revised by Zwingli, were fully discussed, and adopted as a sort of confession of faith for the Reformed Church of Berne. They are as follows: —

1. The holy Christian Church, whose only Head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, and abides in the same, and listens not to the voice of a stranger.

2. The Church of Christ makes no laws and commandments without the Word of God. Hence human traditions are no more binding on us than as far as they are founded in the Word of God.

3. Christ is the only wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Hence it is a denial of Christ when we confess another ground of salvation and satisfaction.

4. The essential and corporal presence of the body and blood of Christ cannot be demonstrated from the Holy Scripture.

5. The mass as now in use, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and the dead, is contrary to the Scripture, a blasphemy against the most holy sacrifice, passion, and death of Christ, and on account of its abuses an abomination before God.

6. As Christ alone died for us, so he is also to be adored as the only Mediator and Advocate between God the Father and the believers. Therefore it is contrary to the Word of God to propose and invoke other mediators.

7. Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life. Hence all masses and other offices for the dead166 are useless.

8. The worship of images is contrary to Scripture. Therefore images should be abolished when they are set up as objects of adoration.

9. Matrimony is not forbidden in the Scripture to any class of men; but fornication and unchastity are forbidden to all.

10. Since, according to the Scripture, an open fornicator must be excommunicated, it follows that unchastity and impure celibacy are more pernicious to the clergy than to any other class.

All to the glory of God and his holy Word.

Zwingli preached twice during the disputation.167  He was in excellent spirits, and at the height of his fame and public usefulness. In the first sermon he explained the Apostles’ Creed, mixing in some Greek and Hebrew words for his theological hearers. In the second, he exhorted the Bernese to persevere after the example of Moses and the heroes of faith. Perseverance alone can complete the triumph. (Ferendo vincitur fortuna.)  Behold these idols conquered, mute, and scattered before you. The gold you spent upon them must henceforth be devoted to the good of the living images of God in their poverty. "Hold fast," he said in conclusion, "to the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1). You know how much we have suffered in our conscience, how we were directed from one false comfort to another, from one commandment to another which only burdened our conscience and gave us no rest. But now ye have found freedom and peace in the knowledge and faith of Jesus Christ. From this freedom let nothing separate you. To hold it fast requires great fortitude. You know how our ancestors, thanks to God, have fought for our bodily liberty; let us still more zealously guard our spiritual liberty; not doubting that God, who has enlightened and drawn you, will in due time also draw our dear neighbors and fellow-confederates to him, so that we may live together in true friendship. May God, who created and redeemed us all, grant this to us and to them. Amen."

By a reformation edict of the Council, dated Feb. 7, 1528, the ten Theses were legalized, the jurisdiction of the bishops abolished, and the necessary changes in worship and discipline provisionally ordered, subject to fuller light from the Word of God. The parishes of the city and canton were separately consulted by delegates sent to them Feb. 13 and afterwards, and the great majority adopted the reformation by popular vote, except in the highlands where the movement was delayed.

After the catastrophe of Cappel the reformation was consolidated by the so-called "Berner Synodus," which met Jan. 9–14, 1532. All the ministers of the canton, two hundred and twenty in all, were invited to attend. Capito, the reformer of Strassburg, exerted a strong influence by his addresses. The Synod adopted a book of church polity and discipline; the Great Council confirmed it, and ordered annual synods. Hundeshagen pronounces this constitution a "true masterpiece even for our times," and Trechsel characterizes it as excelling in apostolic unction, warmth, simplicity and practical wisdom.168

Since that time Berne has remained faithful to the Reformed Church. In 1828 the Canton by order of the government celebrated the third centenary of the Reformation.

§ 32. The Reformation in Basel. Oecolampadius.

I. The sources are chiefly in the Bibliotheca Antistitii and the University Library of Basel, and in the City Library of Zürich; letters of Oecolampadius to Zwingli, in Bibliander’s Epistola Joh. Oecolampadii et Huldr. Zwinglii (Basel, 1536, fol.); in Zwingli’s Opera, vols. VII. and VIII.; and in Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs, passim.  Several letters of Erasmus, and his Consilium Senatui Basiliensi in negotio Lutherano anno 1525 exhibitum. Antiquitates Gernlerianae, Tom. I. and II. An important collection of letters and documents prepared by direction of Antistes Lukas Gernler of Basel (1625–1676), who took part in the Helvetic Consensus Formula. The Athenae Rauricae sive Catalogus Professorum Academics Basiliensis, by Herzog, Basel, 1778. The Basler Chroniken, publ. by the Hist. Soc. of Basel, ed. with comments by W. Vischer (son), Leipz. 1872.

II. Pet. Ochs: Geschichte der Stadt und Landschaft Basel. Berlin and Leipzig, 1786–1822. 8 vols. The Reformation is treated in vols. V. and VI., but without sympathy. Jak. Burckhardt: Kurze Geschichte der Reformation in Basel. Basel, 1819. R. R. Hagenbach: Kirchliche Denkwürdigkeiten zur Geschichte Basels seit der Reformation. Basel, 1827 (pp. 268). The first part also under the special title: Kritische Geschichte und Schicksale der ersten Basler Confession. By the same: Die Theologische Schule Basels und ihrer Lehrer von Stiftung der Hochschule 1460 bis zu De Wette’s Tod 1849 (pp. 75). Jarke (R. Cath.): Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformation.  Schaffhausen (Hurter), 1846 (pp. 576). Fried. Fischer: Der Bildersturm in der Schweiz und in Basel insbesondere. In the "Basler Jahrbuch "for 1850. W. Vischer: Actenstücke zur Geschichte der Reformation in Basel. In the "Basler Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte," for 1854. By the same: Geschichte der Universität Basel von der Gründung 1460 bis zur Reformation 1529. Basel, 1860. Boos: Geschichte der Stadt Basel. Basel, 1877 sqq. The first volume goes to 1501; the second has not yet appeared.

III. Biographical. S. Hess: Lebensgeschichte Joh. Oekolampads. Zürich, 1798 (chiefly from Zürich sources, contained in the Simler collection). J. J. Herzog (editor of the well-known "Encyclopaedia" d. 1882): Das Leben Joh. Oekolampads und die Reformation der Kirche zu Basel. Basel, 1843. 2 vols. Comp. his article in Herzog2, Vol. X. 708–724. K. R. Hagenbach: Johann Oekolampad und Oswald Myconius, die Reformatoren Basels. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1859. His Reformationsgesch., 5th ed., by Nippold, Leipzig, 1887, p. 386 sqq. On Oecolampadius’ connection with the Eucharistic Controversy and part in the Marburg Colloquy, see Schaff, vol. VI. 620, 637, and 642.

The example of Berne was followed by Basel, the wealthiest and most literary city in Switzerland, an episcopal see since the middle of the eighth century, the scene of the reformatory Council of 1430–1448, the seat of a University since 1460, the centre of the Swiss book trade, favorably situated for commerce on the banks of the Rhine and on the borders of Germany and France. The soil was prepared for the Reformation by scholars like Wyttenbach and Erasmus, and by evangelical preachers like Capito and Hedio. Had Erasmus been as zealous for religion as he was for letters, he would have taken the lead, but he withdrew more and more from the Reformation, although he continued to reside in Basel till 1529 and returned there to die (1536).169

The chief share in the work fell to the lot of Oecolampadius (1482–1531). He is the second in rank and importance among the Reformers in German Switzerland. His relation to Zwingli is similar to that sustained by Melanchthon to Luther, and by Beza to Calvin,—a relation in part subordinate, in part supplemental. He was inferior to Zwingli in originality, force, and popular talent, but surpassed him in scholastic erudition and had a more gentle disposition. He was, like Melanchthon, a man of thought rather than of action, but circumstances forced him out of his quiet study to the public arena.

Johann Oecolampadius170 was born at Weinsberg in the present kingdom of Würtemberg in 1482, studied law in Bologna, philology, scholastic philosophy, and theology in Heidelberg and Tübingen with unusual success. He was a precocious genius, like Melanchthon. In his twelfth year he composed (according to Capito) Latin poems. In 1501 he became Baccalaureus, and soon afterwards Master of Arts. He devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. Erasmus gave him the testimony of being the best Hebraist (after Reuchlin). At Tübingen he formed a friendship with Melanchthon, his junior by fifteen years, and continued on good terms with him notwithstanding their difference of opinion on the Eucharist. He delivered at Weinsberg a series of sermons on the Seven Words of Christ on the Cross, which were published by Zasius in 1512, and gained for him the reputation of an eminent preacher of the gospel.

In 1515 he received a call, at Capito’s suggestion, from Christoph von Utenheim, bishop of Basel (since 1502), to the pulpit of the cathedral in that city. In the year following he acquired the degree of licentiate, and later that of doctor of divinity. Christoph von Utenheim belonged to the better class of prelates, who desired a reformation within the Church, but drew back after the Diet of Worms, and died at Delsberg in 1522. His motto was: "The cross of Christ is my hope; I seek mercy, not works."171

Oecolampadius entered into intimate relations with Erasmus, who at that time took up his permanent abode in Basel. He rendered him important service in his Annotations to the New Testament, and in the second edition of the Greek Testament (concerning the quotations from the Septuagint and Hebrew). The friendship afterwards cooled down in consequence of their different attitude to the question of reform.

In 1518 Oecolampadius showed his moral severity and zeal for a reform of the pulpit by an attack on the prevailing custom of entertaining the people in the Easter season with all kinds of jokes. "What has," he asks, "a preacher of repentance to do with fun and laughter?  Is it necessary for us to yield to the impulse of nature ?  If we can crush our sins by laughter, what is the use of repenting in sackcloth and ashes?  What is the use of tears and cries of sorrow? …  No one knows that Jesus laughed, but every one knows that he wept. The Apostles sowed the seed weeping. Many as are the symbolic acts of the prophets, no one of them lowers himself to become an actor. Laughter and song were repugnant to them. They lived righteously before the Lord, rejoicing and yet trembling, and saw as clear as the sun at noonday that all is vanity under the sun. They saw the net being drawn everywhere and the near approach of the judge of the world."172

After a short residence at Weinsberg and Augsburg, Oecolampadius surprised his friends by entering a convent in 1520, but left it in 1522 and acted a short time as chaplain for Franz von Sickingen at Ebernburg, near Creuznach, where he introduced the use of the German language in the mass.

By the reading of Luther’s writings, he became more and more fixed in evangelical convictions. He cautiously attacked transubstantiation, Mariolatry, and the abuses of the confessional, and thereby attracted the favorable attention of Luther, who wrote to Spalatin (June 10, 1521): "I am surprised at his spirit, not because he fell upon the same theme as I, but because he has shown himself so liberal, prudent, and Christian. God grant him growth."  In June, 1523, Luther expressed to Oecolampadius much satisfaction at his lectures on Isaiah, notwithstanding the displeasure of Erasmus, who would probably, like Moses, die in the land of Moab. "He has done his part," he says, "by exposing the bad; to show the good and to lead into the land of promise, is beyond his power."  Luther and Oecolampadius met personally at Marburg in 1529, but as antagonists on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, in which the latter stood on the side of Zwingli.

In Nov. 17, 1522, Oecolampadius settled permanently in Basel and labored there as preacher of the Church of St. Martin and professor of theology in the University till his death. Now began his work as reformer of the church of Basel, which followed the model of Zürich. He sought the friendship of Zwingli in a letter full of admiration, dated Dec. 10, 1522.173  They continued to co-operate in fraternal harmony to the close of their lives.

Oecolampadius preached on Sundays and week days, explaining whole books of the Bible after the example of Zwingli, and attracted crowds of people. With the consent of the Council, he gradually abolished crying abuses, distributed the Lord’s Supper under both kinds, and published in 1526 a German liturgy, which retained in the first editions several distinctively Catholic features such as priestly absolution and the use of lights on the altar.

In 1525 he began to take an active part in the unfortunate Eucharistic controversy by defending the figurative interpretation of the words of institution: "This is (the figure of) my body," chiefly from the writings of the fathers, with which he was very familiar.174  He agreed in substance with Zwingli, but differed from him by placing the metaphor in the predicate rather than the verb, which simply denotes a connection of the subject with the predicate whether real or figurative, and which was not even used by our Lord in Aramaic. He found the key for the interpretation in John 6:63, and held fast to the truth that Christ himself is and remains the true bread of the soul to be partaken of by faith. At the conference in Marburg (1529) he was, next to Zwingli, the chief debater on the Reformed side. By this course he alienated his old friends, Brentius, Pirkheimer, Billican, and Luther. Even Melanchthon, in a letter to him (1529), regretted that the "horribilis dissensio de Coena Domini" interfered with the enjoyment of their friendship, though it did not shake his good will towards him ("benevolentiam erga te meam"). He concluded to be hereafter, a spectator rather than an actor in this tragedy."

Oecolampadius had also much trouble with the Anabaptists, and took the same conservative and intolerant stand against them as Luther at Wittenberg, and Zwingli at Zürich. He made several fruitless attempts in public disputations to convince them of their error.175

The civil government of Basel occupied for a while middle ground, but the disputation of Baden, at which Oecolampadius was the champion of the Reformed doctrines,176 brought on the crisis. He now took stronger ground against Rome and attacked what he regarded as the idolatry of the mass. The triumph of the Reformation in Berne in 1528 gave the final impetus.

On the 9th of February, 1529, an unbloody revolution broke out. Aroused by the intrigues of the Roman party, the Protestant citizens to the number of two thousand came together, broke to pieces the images still left, and compelled the reactionary Council to introduce everywhere the form of religious service practised in Zürich.

Erasmus, who had advised moderation and quiet waiting for a general Council, was disgusted with these violent, measures, which he describes in a letter to Pirkheimer of Nürnberg, May 9, 1529. "The smiths and workmen," he says, "removed the pictures from the churches, and heaped such insults on the images of the saints and the crucifix itself, that it is quite surprising there was no miracle, seeing how many there always used to occur whenever the saints were even slightly offended. Not a statue was left either in the churches, or the vestibules, or the porches, or the monasteries. The frescoes were obliterated by means of a coating of lime; whatever would bum was thrown into the fire, and the rest pounded into fragments. Nothing was spared for either love or money. Before long the mass was totally abolished, so that it was forbidden either to celebrate it in one’s own house or to attend it in the neighboring villages."177

The great scholar who had done so much preparatory work for the Reformation, stopped half-way and refused to identify himself with either party. He reluctantly left Basel (April 13, 1529) with the best wishes for her prosperity, and resided six years at Freiburg in Baden, a sickly, sensitive, and discontented old man. He was enrolled among the professors of the University, but did not lecture. He returned to Basel in August, 1535, and died in his seventieth year, July 12, 1536, without priest or sacrament, but invoking the mercy of Christ, repeating again and again, "O Lord Jesus, have mercy on me!"  He was buried in the Minster of Basel.

Glareanus and Beatus Rhenanus, humanists, and friends of Zwingli and Erasmus, likewise withdrew from Basel at this critical moment. Nearly all the professors of the University emigrated. They feared that science and learning would suffer from theological quarrels and a rupture with the hierarchy.

The abolition of the mass and the breaking of images, the destruction of the papal authority and monastic institutions, would have been a great calamity had they not been followed by the constructive work of the evangelical faith which was the moving power, and which alone could build up a new Church on the ruins of the old. The Word of God was preached from the fountain. Christ and the Gospel were put in the place of the Church and tradition. German service with congregational singing and communion was substituted for the Latin mass. The theological faculty was renewed by the appointment of Simon Grynäus, Sebastian Münster, Oswald Myconius, and other able and pious scholars to professorships.

Oecolampadius became the chief preacher of the Minster and Antistes, or superintendent, of the clergy of Basel.

On the 1st of April, 1529, an order of liturgical service and church discipline was published by the Council, which gave a solid foundation to the Reformed Church of the city of Basel and the surrounding villages.178  This document breathes the spirit of enthusiasm for the revival of apostolic Christianity, and aims at a reformation of faith and morals. It contains the chief articles which were afterwards formulated in the Confession of Basel (1534), and rules for a corresponding discipline. It retains a number of Catholic customs such as daily morning and evening worship, weekly communion in one of the city churches, the observance of the great festivals, including those of the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and the Saints.

To give force to these institutions, the ban was introduced in 1530, and confided to a council of three pious, honest, and brave laymen for each of the four parishes of the city; two to be selected by the Council, and one by the congregation, who, in connection with the clergy, were to watch over the morals, and to discipline the offenders, if necessary, by excommunication.—In accordance with the theocratic idea of the relation of Church and State, dangerous heresies which denied any of the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed, and blasphemy of God and the sacrament, were made punishable with civil penalties such as confiscation of property, banishment, and even death. Those, it is said, "shall be punished according to the measure of their guilt in body, life, and property, who despise, spurn, or contemn the eternal, pure, elect queen, the blessed Virgin Mary, or other beloved saints of God who now live with Christ in eternal blessedness, so as to say that the mother of God is only a woman like other women, that she had more children than Christ, the Son of God, that she was not a virgin before or after his birth," etc. Such severe measures have long since passed away. The mixing of civil and ecclesiastical punishments caused a good deal of trouble. Oecolampadius opposed the supremacy of the State over the Church. He presided over the first synods.

After the victory of the Reformation, Oecolampadius continued unto the end of his life to be indefatigable in preaching, teaching, and editing valuable commentaries (chiefly on the Prophets). He took a lively interest in French Protestant refugees, and brought the Waldenses, who sent a deputation to him, into closer affinity with the Reformed churches.179  He was a modest and humble man, of a delicate constitution and ascetic habits, and looked like a church father. He lived with his mother; but after her death, in 1528, he married, at the age of forty-five, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Cellarius (Keller), who afterwards married in succession two other Reformers (Capito and Bucer), and survived four husbands. This tempted Erasmus to make the frivolous joke (in a letter of March 21, 1528), that his friend had lately married a good-looking girl to crucify his flesh, and that the Lutheran Reformation was a comedy rather than a tragedy, since the tumult always ended in a wedding. He afterwards apologized to him, and disclaimed any motive of unkindness. Oecolam-padius had three children, whom he named Eusebius, Alitheia, and Irene (Godliness, Truth, Peace), to indicate what were the pillars of his theology and his household. His last days were made sad by the news of Zwingli’s death, and the conclusion of a peace unfavorable to the Reformed churches. The call from Zürich to become Zwingli’s successor he declined. A few weeks later, on the 24th of November, 1531, he passed away in peace and full of faith, after having partaken of the holy communion with his family, and admonished his colleagues to continue faithful to the cause of the Reformation. He was buried behind the Minster.180

His works have never been collected, and have only historical interest. They consist of commentaries, sermons, exegetical and polemical tracts, letters, and translations from Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Cyril of Alexandria.181

Basel became one of the strongholds of the Reformed Church of Switzerland, together with Zürich, Geneva, and Berne. The Church passed through the changes of German Protestantism, and the revival of the nineteenth century. She educates evangelical ministers, contributes liberally from her great wealth to institutions of Christian benevolence and the spread of the Gospel, and is (since 1816) the seat of the largest Protestant missionary institute on the Continent, which at the annual festivals forms a centre for the friends of missions in Switzerland, Würtemberg, and Baden. The neighboring Chrischona is a training school of German ministers for emigrants to America.

§ 33. The Reformation in Glarus. Tschudi. Glarean.

Valentin Tschudi: Chronik der Reformationsjahre 1521–1533. Mit Glossar und Commentar von Dr. Joh. Strickler. Glarus, 1888 (pp. 258). Publ. in the "Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins des Kantons Glarus," Heft XXIV., also separately issued. The first edition of Tschudi’s Chronik (Beschryb oder Erzellung, etc.) was published by Dr. J. J. Blumer, in vol. IX. of the "Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte," 1853, pp. 332–447, but not in the original spelling and without comments.

Blumer and Heer: Der Kanton Glarus, historisch, geographisch und topographisch beschrieben. St. Gallen, 1846. DR. J. J. Blumer: Die Reformation im Lande Glarus. In the "Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins des Kantons Glarus."  Zürich and Glarus, 1873 and 1875 (Heft IX. 9–48; XI. 3–26). H. G. Sulzberger: Die Reformation des Kant. Glarus und des St. Gallischen Bezirks Werdenberg. Heiden, 1875 (pp. 44).

Heinrich Schreiber: Heinrich Loriti Glareanus, gekrönter Dichter, Philolog und Mathematiker aus dem 16ten Jahrhundert. Freiburg, 1837. Otto Fridolin Fritzsche (Prof. of Church Hist. in Zürich): Glarean, sein Leben und seine Schriften. Frauenfeld, 1890 (pp. 136). Comp. also Geiger: Renaissance und Humanismus (1882), pp. 420–423, for a good estimate of Glarean as a humanist.

The canton Glarus with the capital of the same name occupies the narrow Linththal surrounded by high mountains, and borders on the territory of Protestant Zürich and of Catholic Schwyz. It wavered for a good while between the two opposing parties and tried to act as peacemaker. Landammann Hans Aebli of Glarus, a friend of Zwingli and an enemy of the foreign military service, prevented a bloody collision of the Confederates in the first war of Cappel. This is characteristic of the position of that canton.

Glarus was the scene of the first public labors of Zwingli from 1506 to 1516.182  He gained great influence as a classical scholar, popular preacher, and zealous patriot, but made also enemies among the friends of the foreign military service, the evils of which he had seen in the Italian campaigns. He established a Latin school and educated the sons of the best families, including the Tschudis, who traced their ancestry back to the ninth century. Three of them are connected with the Reformation,—Aegidius and Peter, and their cousin Valentin.

Aegidius (Gilg) Tschudi, the most famous of this family, the Herodotus of Switzerland (1505–1572), studied first with Zwingli, then with Glarean at Basel and Paris, and occupied important public positions, as delegate to the Diet at Einsiedeln (1529), as governor of Sargans, as Landammann of Glarus (1558), and as delegate of Switzerland to the Diet of Augsburg (1559). He also served a short time as officer in the French army. He remained true to the old faith, but enjoyed the confidence of both parties by his moderation. He expressed the highest esteem for Zwingli in a letter of February, 1517.183  His History of Switzerland extends from A.D. 1000 to 1470, and is the chief source of the period before the Reformation. He did not invent, but he embellished the romantic story of Tell and of Grütli, which has been relegated by modern criticism to the realm of innocent poetic fiction.184  He wrote also an impartial account of the Cappeler War of 1531.185

His elder brother, Peter, was a faithful follower of Zwingli, but died early, at Coire, 1532.186

Valentin Tschudi also joined the Reformation, but showed the same moderation to the Catholics as his cousin Egidius showed to the Protestants. After studying several years under Zwingli, he went, in 1516, with his two cousins to the classical school of Glarean at Basel, and followed him to Paris. From that city he wrote a Greek letter to Zwingli, Nov. 15, 1520, which is still extant and shows his progress in learning.187  On Zwingli’s recommendation, he was elected his successor as pastor at Glarus, and was installed by him, Oct. 12, 1522. Zwingli told the congregation that he had formerly taught them many Roman traditions, but begged them now to adhere exclusively to the Word of God.

Valentin Tschudi adopted a middle way, and was supported by his deacon, Jacob Heer. He pleased both parties by reading mass early in the morning for the old believers, and afterwards preaching an evangelical sermon for the Protestants. He is the first example of a latitudinarian or comprehensive broad-churchman. In 1530 he married, and ceased to read mass, but continued to preach to both parties, and retained the respect of Catholics by his culture and conciliatory manner till his death, in 1555. He defended his moderation and reserve in a long Latin letter to Zwingli, March 15, 1530.188  He says that the controversy arose from external ceremonies, and did not touch the rock of faith, which Catholics and Protestants professed alike, and that he deemed it his duty to enjoin on his flock the advice of Paul to the Romans 14, to exercise mutual forbearance, since each stands or falls to the same Lord. The unity of the Spirit is the best guide. He feared that by extreme measures, more harm was done than good, and that the liberty gained may degenerate into license, impiety, and contempt of authority. He begs Zwingli to use his influence for the restoration of order and peace, and signs himself, forever yours" (semper futurus tuus). The same spirit of moderation characterizes his Chronicle of the Reformation period, and it is difficult to find out from this colorless and unimportant narrative, to which of the two parties he belonged.

It is a remarkable fact that the influence of Tschudi’s example is felt to this day in the peaceful joint occupation of the church at Glarus, where the sacrifice of the mass is offered by a priest at the altar, and a sermon preached from the pulpit by a Reformed pastor in the same morning.189

Another distinguished man of Glarus and friend of Zwingli in the earlier part of his career, is Heinrich Loriti, or Loreti, better known as Glareanus, after the humanistic fashion of that age.190  He was born at Mollis, a small village of that canton, in 1488, studied at Cologne and Basel, sided with Reuchlin in the quarrel with the Dominican obscurantists,191 travelled extensively, was crowned as poet-laureate by the Emperor Maximilian (1512), taught school and lectured successively at Basel (1514), Paris (1517), again at Basel (1522), and Freiburg (since 1529). He acquired great fame as a philologist, poet, geographer, mathematician, musician, and successful teacher. Erasmus called him, in a letter to Zwingli (1514),192 the prince and champion of the Swiss humanists, and in other letters he praised him as a man pure and chaste in morals, amiable in society, well versed in history, mathematics, and music, less in Greek, averse to the subtleties of the schoolmen, bent upon learning Christ from the fountain, and of extraordinary working power. He was full of wit and quaint humor, but conceited, sanguine, irritable, suspicious, and sarcastic. Glarean became acquainted with Zwingli in 1510, and continued to correspond with him till 1523.193  He bought books for him at Basel (e.g. the Aldine editions of Lactantius and Tertullian) and sought a place as canon in Zürich. In his last letter to him he called him, the truly Christian theologian, the bishop of the Church of Zürich, his very great friend."194  He read Luther’s book on the Babylonian Captivity three times with enthusiasm. But when Erasmus broke both with Zwingli and Luther, he withdrew from the Reformation, and even bitterly opposed Zwingli and Oecolampadius.

He left Basel, Feb. 20, 1529, for Catholic Freiburg, and was soon followed by Erasmus and Amerbach. Here he labored as an esteemed professor of poetry and fruitful author, until his death (1563). He was surrounded by Swiss and German students. He corresponded, now, as confidentially with Aegidius Tschudi as he had formerly corresponded with Zwingli, and co-operated with him in saving a portion of his countrymen for the Catholic faith.195  He gave free vent to his disgust with Protestantism, and yet lamented the evils of the Roman Church, the veniality and immorality of priests who cared more for Venus than for Christ.196  A fearful charge. He received a Protestant Student from Zürich with the rude words: "You are one of those who carry the gospel in the mouth and the devil in the heart;" but when reminded that he did not show the graces of the muses, he excused himself by his old age, and treated the young man with the greatest civility. He became a pessimist, and expected the speedy collapse of the world. His friendship with Erasmus was continued with interruptions, and at last suffered shipwreck. He charged him once with plagiarism, and Erasmus ignored him in his testament.197  It was a misfortune for both that they could not understand the times, which had left them behind. The thirty works of Glarean (twenty-two of them written in Freiburg) are chiefly philological and musical, and have no bearing on theology.198  They were nevertheless put on the Index by Pope Paul IV., in 1559. He bitterly complained of this injustice, caused by ignorance or intrigue, and did all he could, with the aid of Tschudi, to have his name removed, which was done after the seven Catholic cantons had testified that Glarean was a good Christian.199

The Reformation progressed in Glarus at first without much opposition. Fridolin Brunner, pastor at Mollis, wrote to Zwingli, Jan. 15, 1527, that the Gospel was gaining ground in all the churches of the canton. Johann Schindler preached in Schwanden with great effect. The congregations decided for the Reformed preachers, except in Näfels. The reverses at Cappel in 1531 produced a reaction, and caused some losses, but the Reformed Church retained the majority of the population to this day, and with it the preponderance of intelligence, enterprise, wealth, and prosperity, although the numerical relation has recently changed in favor of the Catholics, in consequence of the emigration of Protestants to America, and the immigration of Roman-Catholic laborers, who are attracted by the busy industries (as is the case also in Zürich, Basel, and Geneva).200

§ 34. The Reformation in St. Gall, Toggenburg, and Appenzell. Watt and Kessler.

The sources and literature in the City Library of St. Gall which bears the name of Vadian (Watt) and contains his MSS. and printed works.

I. The historical works of Vadianus, especially his Chronicle of the Abbots of St. Gall from 1200–1540, and his Diary from 1629–’33, edited by Dr. E. Goetzinger, St. Gallen, 1875–’79, 3 vols.—Joachimi Vadiani Vita per Joannem Kesslerum conscripta. Edited from the MS. by Dr. Goetzinger for the Historical Society of St. Gall, 1865.—Johannes Kessler’s Sabbata. Chronik der Jahre 1523–1539. Herausgegeben von Dr. Ernst Goetzinger. St. Gallen, 1866. In "Mittheilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte" of the Historical Society of St. Gall, vols. V. and VI. The MS. of 532 pages, written in the Swiss dialect by Kessler’s own hand, is preserved in the Vadian library.

II. J. V. Arx (Rom. Cath., d. 1833): Geschichte des Kant. St. Gallen. St. Gallen, 1810–’13, 3 vols.—J. M. Fels: Denkmal Schweizerischer Reformatoren. St. Gallen, 1819.—Joh. Fr. Franz: Die schwarmerischen Gräülscenen der St. Galler Wiedertäutfer zu Anfang der Reformation. Ebnat in Toggenberg, 1824.—Joh. Jakob Bernet: Johann Kessler, genannt Ahenarius, Bürger und Reformator zu Sankt Gallen. St. Gallen, 1826.—K. Wegelin: Geschichte der Grafschaft Toggenburg. St. Gallen, 1830–’33, 2 Parts.—Fr. Weidmann: Geschichte der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallens. 1841.—A. Näf: Chronik oder Denkwürdigkeiten der Stadt und Landschaft St. Gallen. Zürich, 1851.—J. K. Büchler: Die Reformation im Lande Appenzell. Trogen, 1860. In the "Appenzellische Jahrbücher."—G. Jak. Baumgartner: Geschichte des Schweizerischen Freistaates und Kantons St. Gallen. Zürich, 1868, 2 vols.—H. G. Sulzberger: Geschichte der Reformation in Toggenburg; in St. Gallen; im Rheinthal; in den eidgenössischen Herrschaften Sargans und Gaster, sowie in Rapperschwil; in Hohensax-Forsteck; in Appenzell. Several pamphlets reprinted from the "Appenzeller Sonntagablatt," 1872 sqq.

III. Theod. Pressel: Joachim Vadian. In the ninth volume of the "Leben und ausgewählte Schriften der Väter und Begründer der reformirten Kirche."  Elberfeld, 1861 (pp. 103).—Rud. Stähelin: Die reformatorische Wirksamkeit des St. Galler Humanisten Vadian, in "Beiträge zur vaterländischen Geschichte," Basel, 1882, pp. 193–262; and his art. "Watt" in Herzog2, XVI. (1885), pp. 663–668. Comp. also Meyer von Knonau, "St. Gallen," In Herzog2, IV. 725–735.

The Reformation in the northeastern parts of Switzerland—St. Gall, Toggenburg, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, Thurgau, Aargau—followed the course of Zürich, Berne, and Basel. It is a variation of the same theme, on the one hand, in its negative aspects: the destruction of the papal and episcopal authority, the abolition of the mass and superstitious rites and ceremonies, the breaking of images and relics as symbols of idolatry, the dissolution of convents and confiscation of Church property, the marriage of priests, monks, and nuns; on the other hand, in its positive aspects: the introduction of a simpler and more spiritual worship with abundant preaching and instruction from the open Bible in the vernacular, the restoration of the holy communion under both kinds, as celebrated by the congregation, the direct approach to Christ without priestly mediation, the raising of the laity to the privileges of the general priesthood of believers, care for lower and higher education. These changes were made by the civil magistracy, which assumed the episcopal authority and function, but acted on the initiative of the clergy and with the consent of the majority of the people, which in democratic Switzerland was after all the sovereign power. An Antistes was placed at the head of the ministers as a sort of bishop or general superintendent. Synods attended to legislation and administration. The congregations called and supported their own pastors.

St. Gall—so-called from St. Gallus (Gilian), an Irish missionary and pupil of Columban, who with several hermits settled in the wild forest on the Steinach about 613—was a centre of Christianization and civilization in Alemannia and Eastern Switzerland. A monastery was founded about 720 by St. Othmar and became a royal abbey exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and very rich in revenues from landed possessions in Switzerland, Swabia, and Lombardy, as well as in manuscripts of classical and ecclesiastical learning. Church poetry, music, architecture, sculpture, and painting flourished there in the ninth and tenth centuries. Notker Balbulus, a monk of St. Gall (d. c. 912), is the author of the sequences or hymns in rhythmical prose (prosae), and credited with the mournful meditation on death ("Media vita in morte sumus"), which is still in use, but of later and uncertain origin. With the increasing wealth of the abbey the discipline declined and worldliness set in. The missionary and literary zeal died out. The bishop of Constance was jealous of the independence and powers of the abbot. The city of St. Gall grew in prosperity and longed for emancipation from monastic control. The clergy needed as much reformation as the monks. Many of them lived in open concubinage, and few were able to make a sermon. The high festivals were profaned by scurrilous popular amusements. The sale of indulgences was carried on with impunity.

The Reformation was introduced in the city and district of St. Gall by Joachim von Watt, a layman (1484–1551), and John Kessler, a minister (1502–1574). The co-operation of the laity and clergy is congenial to the spirit of Protestantism which emancipated the Church from hierarchical control.

Joachim von Watt, better known by his Latin name Vadianus, excelled in his day as a humanist, poet, historian, physician, statesman, and reformer. He was descended from an old noble family, the son of a wealthy merchant, and studied the humanities in the University of Vienna (1502),201 which was then at the height of its prosperity under the teaching of Celtes and Cuspinian, two famous humanists and Latin poets. He acquired also a good knowledge of philosophy, theology, law, and medicine. After travelling through Poland, Hungary, and Italy, he returned to Vienna and taught classical literature and rhetoric. He was crowned poet and orator by Maximilian (March 12, 1514), and elected rector of the University in 1516. He published several classical authors and Latin poems, orations, and essays. He stood in friendly correspondence with Reuchlin, Hutten, Hesse, Erasmus, and other leaders of the new learning, and especially also with Zwingli.202

In 1518 Watt returned to St. Gall and practised as physician till his death, but took at the same time an active part in all public affairs of Church and State. He was repeatedly elected burgomaster. He was a faithful co-worker of Zwingli in the cause of reform. Zwingli called him "a physician of body and soul of the city of St. Gall and the whole confederacy," and said, "I know no Swiss that equals him."  Calvin and Beza recognized in him "a man of rare piety and equally rare learning."  He called evangelical ministers and teachers to St. Gall. He took a leading part in the religious disputations at Zürich (1523–1525), and presided over the disputation at Berne (1528).

St. Gall was the first city to follow the example of Zürich under his lead. The images were removed from the churches and publicly burnt in 1526 and 1528; only the organ and the bones of St. Othmar (the first abbot) and Notker were saved. An evangelical church order was introduced in 1527. At the same time the Anabaptists endangered the Reformation by strange excesses of fanaticism. Watt had no serious objection to their doctrines, and was a friend and brother-in-law of Grebel, their leader, but he opposed them in the interest of peace and order.

The death of the abbot, March 21, 1529, furnished the desired opportunity, at the advice of Zürich and Zwingli, to abolish the abbey and to confiscate its rich domain, with the consent of the majority of the citizens, but in utter disregard of legal rights. This was a great mistake, and an act of injustice.

The disaster of Cappel produced a reaction, and a portion of the canton returned to the old church. A new abbot was elected, Diethelm Blaurer; he demanded the property of the convent and sixty thousand guilders damages for what had been destroyed and sold. The city had to yield. He held a solemn entry. He attended the last session of the Council of Trent and took a leading part in the counter-Reformation.

Watt showed, during this critical period, courage and moderation. He retained the confidence of his fellow-citizens, who elected him nine times to the highest civil office. He did what he could, in co-operation with Kessler and Bullinger, to save and consolidate the Reformed Church during the remaining years of his life. He was a portly, handsome, and dignified man, and wrote a number of geographical, historical, and theological works.203

John Kessler (Chessellius or Ahenarius), the son of a day-laborer of St. Gall, studied theology at Basel, and Wittenberg. He was one of the two students who had an interesting interview with Dr. Luther in the hotel of the Black Bear at Jena in March, 1522, on his return as Knight George from the Wartburg.204  It was the only friendly meeting of Luther with the Swiss. Had he shown the same kindly feeling to Zwingli at Marburg, the cause of the Reformation would have been the gainer.

Kessler supported himself by the trade of a saddler, and preached in the city and surrounding villages. He was also chief teacher of the Latin school. In 1571, a year before his death, he was elected Antistes or head of the clergy of St. Gall. He had a wife and eleven children, nine of whom survived him. He was a pure, amiable, unselfish, and useful man and promoter of evangelical religion. His portrait in oil adorns the City Library of St. Gall.

The county of Toggenburg, the home of Zwingli, was subject to the abbot of St. Gall since 1468, but gladly received the Reformed preachers under the influence of Zwingli, his relatives and friends. In 1524 the council of the community enjoined upon the ministers to teach nothing but what they could prove from the sacred Scriptures. The people resisted the interference of the abbot, the bishop of Constance, and the canton Schwyz. In 1528 the Reformation was generally introduced in the towns of the district. With the help of Zürich and Glarus, the Toggenburgers bought their freedom from the abbot of St. Gall for fifteen hundred guilders, in 1530; but were again subjected to his authority in 1536. The county was incorporated in the canton St. Gall in 1803. The majority of the people are Protestants.

The canton Appenzell received its first Protestant preachers—John Schurtanner of Teufen, John Dorig of Herisau, and Walter Klarer of Hundwil—from the neighboring St. Gall, through the influence of Watt. The Reformation was legally ratified by a majority vote of the people, Aug. 26, 1523. The congregations emancipated themselves from the jurisdiction of the abbot of St. Gall, and elected their own pastors. The Anabaptist disturbances promoted the Roman-Catholic reaction. The population is nearly equally divided,—Innerrhoden, with the town of Appenzell, remained Catholic; Ausserrhoden, with Herisau, Trogen, and Gais, is Reformed, and more industrious and prosperous.

The Reformation in Thurgau and Aargau presents no features of special interest.205

§ 35. Reformation in Schaffhausen. Hofmeister.

Melchior Kirchofer: Schaffhauserische Jahrbücher von 1519–1539, oder Geschichte der Reformation der Stadt und Landschaft Schaffhausen. Schaffhausen, 1819; 2d ed. Frauenfeld, 1838 (pp. 152). By, the same: Sebastian Wagner, genannt Hofmeister. Zürich, 1808.—Edw. Im-Thurm und Hans W. Harder: Chronik der Stadt Schaffhausen (till 1790). Schaffhausen, 1844.—H. G. Sulzberger: Geschichte der Reformation des Kant. Schaffhausen. Schaffhausen, 1876 (pp. 47).

Schaffhausen on the Rhine and the borders of Württemberg and Baden followed the example of the neighboring canton Zürich, under the lead of Sebastian Hofmeister (1476–1533), a Franciscan monk and doctor and professor of theology at Constance, where the bishop resided. He addressed Zwingli, in 1520, as "the firm preacher of the truth," and wished to become his helper in healing the diseases of the Church of Switzerland.206  He preached in his native city of Schaffhausen against the errors and abuses of Rome, and attended as delegate the religious disputations at Zürich (January and October, 1523), which resulted in favor of the Reformation.

He was aided by Sebastian Meyer, a Franciscan brother who came from Berne, and by Ritter, a priest who had formerly opposed him.

The Anabaptists appeared from Zürich with their radical views. The community was thrown into disorder. The magistracy held Hofmeister and Myer responsible, and banished them from the canton. A reaction followed, but the Reformation triumphed in 1529. The villages followed the city. Some noble families remained true to the old faith, and emigrated.

Schaffhausen was favored by a succession of able and devoted ministers, and gave birth to some distinguished historians.207

§ 36. The Grisons (Graubünden).

Colonel Landammann Theofil Sprecher a Bernegg at Maienfeld, Graubünden, has a complete library of the history of the Grisons, including some of the manuscripts of Campell and De Porta. I was permitted to use it for this and the following two sections under his hospitable roof in June, 1890. I have also examined the Kantons-Bibliothek of Graubünden in the "Raetische Museum" at Coire, which is rich in the (Romanic) literature of the Grisons.

I. Ulrici Campelli Raetiae Alpestris Topographica Descriptio, edited by Chr. J. Kind, Basel (Schneider), 1884, pp. 448, and Historia Raetica, edited by Plac. Plattner, Basel, tom. I., 1877, pp. 724, and tom. II., 1890, pp. 781. These two works form vols. VII., VIII., and IX. of Quellen zur Schweizer-Geschichte, published by the General Historical Society of Switzerland. They are the foundation for the topography and history of the Grisons in the sixteenth century. Campell was Reformed pastor at Süs in the Lower Engadin, and is called "the father of the historians of Rätia."  De Porta says that all historians of Rätia have ploughed with his team. An abridged German translation from the Latin manuscripts was published by Conradin von Mohr: Ulr. Campell’s Zwei Bücher rätischer Geschichte, Chur (Hitz), 1849 and 1851, 2 vols., pp. 236 and 566.

R. Ambrosius Eichhorn (Presbyter Congregationis S. Blasii, in the Black Forest): Episcopatus Curiensis in Rhaetia sub metropoli Moguntina chronologice et diplomatice illustratus. Typis San-Blasianis, 1797 (pp. 368, 40). To which is added Codex Probationum ad Episcopatum Curiensem ex proecipuis documentis omnibus ferme ineditis collectus, 204 pp. The Reformation period is described pp. 139 sqq. Eichhorn was a Roman Catholic priest, and gives the documents relating to the episcopal see of Coire from A.D. 766–1787. On "Zwinglianisms in Raetia," see pp. 142, 146, 248. (I examined a copy in the Episcopal Library at Coire.)

II General works on the history of the Grisons by Joh. Guler (d. 1637), Fortunatus Sprecher a Bernegg (d. 1647), Fortunatus Juvalta (d. 1654). Th. Von Mohr and Conradin Von Mohr (or Moor): Archiv für die Geschichte der Republik Graubünden. Chur, 1848–’86. 9 vols. A collection of historical works on Graubünden, including the Codex diplomaticus, Sammlung der Urkunden zur Geschichte Chur-Rhätiens und der Republik Graübunden. The Codex was continued by Jecklin, 1883–’86. Conradin Von Moor: Bündnerische Geschichtschreiber und Chronisten. Chur, 1862–277. 10 parts. By the same: Geschichte von Currätien und der Republ. Graubünden. Chur, 1869.—Joh. Andr. von Sprecher: Geschichte der Republik der drei Bünde im 18ten Jahrh. Chur, 1873–’75.2  vols.—A good popular summary: Graubündnerische Geschichten erzählt für die reformirten Volksschulen (by P. Kaiser). Chur, 1852 (pp. 281). Also J. K. von Tscharner: Der Kanton Graubünden, historisch, statistisch, geographisch dargestellt. Chur, 1842.

The Reformation literature see in § 37.

III. On the history of Valtellina, Chiavenna, and Bormio, which until 1797 were under the jurisdiction of the Grisons, the chief writers are: —

Fr. Sav. Quadrio: Dissertazioni critico-storiche intorno alla Rezia di qua dalle Alpi, oggi detta Valtellina. Milano, 1755. 2 vols., especially the second vol., which treats la storia ecclesiastica.—Ulysses Von Salis: StaatsGesch. des Thals Veltlin und der Graftschaften Clefen und Worms. 1792. 4 vols.—Lavizari: Storia della Valtellina. Capolago, 1838. 2 vols. Romegialli: Storia della Valtellina e delle già contee di Bormio e Chiavenna. Sondrio, 1834–’39. 4 vols.—Wiezel: Veltliner Krieg, edited by Hartmann. Strassburg, 1887.

The canton of the Grisons or Graubünden208 was at the time of the Reformation an independent democratic republic in friendly alliance with the Swiss Confederacy, and continued independent till 1803, when it was incorporated as a canton. Its history had little influence upon other countries, but reflects the larger conflicts of Switzerland with some original features. Among these are the Romanic and Italian conquests of Protestantism, and the early recognition of the principle of religious liberty. Each congregation was allowed to choose between the two contending churches according to the will of the majority, and thus civil and religious war was prevented, at least during the sixteenth century.209

Graubünden is, in nature as well as in history, a Switzerland in miniature. It is situated in the extreme south-east of the republic, between Austria and Italy, and covers the principal part of the old Roman province of Rätia.210  It forms a wall between the north and the south, and yet combines both with a network of mountains and valleys from the regions of the eternal snow to the sunny plains of the vine, the fig, and the lemon. In territorial extent it is the largest canton, and equal to any in variety and beauty of scenery and healthy climate. It is the fatherland of the Rhine and the Inn. The Engadin is the highest inhabited valley of Switzerland, and unsurpassed for a combination of attractions for admirers of nature and seekers of health. It boasts of the healthiest climate with nine months of dry, bracing cold and three months of delightfully cool weather.

The inhabitants are descended from three nationalities, speak three languages,—German, Italian, and Romansh (Romanic),—and preserve many peculiarities of earlier ages. The German language prevails in Coire, along the Rhine, and in the Prättigau, and is purer than in the other cantons. The Italian is spoken to the south of the Alps in the valleys of Poschiavo and Bregaglia (as also in the neighboring canton Ticino). The Romansh language is a remarkable relic of prehistoric times, an independent sister of the Italian, and is spoken in the Upper and Lower Engadin, the Münster valley, and the Oberland. It has a considerable literature, mostly religious, which attracts the attention of comparative philologists.211

The Grisonians (Graubündtner) are a sober, industrious, and heroic race, and have maintained their independence against the armies of Spain, Austria, and France. They have a natural need and inclination to emigrate to richer countries in pursuit of fortune, and to return again to their mountain homes. They are found in all the capitals of Europe and America as merchants, hotel keepers, confectioners, teachers, and soldiers.

The institutions of the canton are thoroughly democratic and exemplify the good and evil effects of popular sovereignty.212  "Next to God and the sun," says an old Engadin proverb, "the poorest inhabitant is the chief magistrate."  There are indeed to this day in the Grisons many noble families, descended in part from mediaeval robber-chiefs and despots whose ruined castles still look down from rocks and cliffs, and in greater part from distinguished officers and diplomatists in foreign service; but they have no more influence than their personal merits and prestige warrant. In official relations and transactions the titles of nobility are forbidden.213

Let us briefly survey the secular history before we proceed to the Reformation.

The Grisons were formed of three loosely connected confederacies or leagues, that is, voluntary associations of freemen, who, during the fifteenth century, after the example of their Swiss neighbors, associated for mutual protection and defence against domestic and foreign tyrants.214  These three leagues united in 1471 at Vatzerol in an eternal covenant, which was renewed in 1524, promising to each other by an oath mutual assistance in peace and war. The three confederacies sent delegates to the Diet which met alternately at Coire, Ilanz, and Davos.

At the close of the fifteenth century two leagues of the Grisons entered into a defensive alliance with the seven old cantons of Switzerland. The third league followed the example.215

In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Grisonians acquired by conquest from the duchy of Milan several beautiful and fertile districts south of the Alps adjoining the Milanese and Venetian territories, namely, the Valtellina and the counties of Bormio (Worms) and Chiavenna (Cleven), and annexed them as dependencies ruled by bailiffs. It would have been wiser to have received them as a fourth league with equal rights and privileges. These Italian possessions involved the Grisons in the conflict between Austria and Spain on the one hand, which desired to keep them an open pass, and between France and Venice on the other, which wanted them closed against their political rivals. Hence the Valtellina has been called the Helena of a new Trojan War. Graubünden was invaded during the Thirty Years’ War by Austro-Spanish and French armies. After varied fortunes, the Italian provinces were lost to Graubünden through Napoleon, who, by a stroke of the pen, Oct. 10, 1797, annexed the Valtellina, Bormio, and Chiavenna to the new Cisalpine Republic. The Congress of Vienna transferred them to Austria in 1814, and since 1859 they belong to the united Kingdom of Italy.

§ 37. The Reformation in the Grisons. Comander. Gallicius. Campell.

The work of CAMPELL quoted in § 36.

Bartholomäus Anhorn: Heilige Wiedergeburt der evang. Kirche in den gemeinen drei Bündten der freien hohen Rhätien, oder Beschreibung ihrer Reformation und Religionsverbesserung, etc. Brugg, 1680 (pp. 246). A new ed. St. Gallen, 1860 (pp. 144, 8°). By the same: Püntner Aufruhr im Jahr 1607, ed. from MSS. by Conradin von Mohr, Chur, 1862; and his Graw-Püntner [Graubündner]-Krieg, 1603–1629, ed. by Conr. von Mohr, Chur, 1873.

*Petrus Dominicus Rosius De Porta (Reformed minister at Scamff, or Scanfs, in the Upper Engadin): Historia Reformationis Ecclesiarum Raeticarum, ex genuinis fontibus et adhuc maximam partem numquam impressis sine partium studio deducta, etc. Curiae Raetorum. Tom. I., 1771 (pp. 658, 4°); Tom. II., 1777 (pp. 668); Tom. III., Como, 1786. Comes down to 1642. Next to Campell, the standard authority and chief source of later works.

Leonhard Truog (Reformed pastor at Thuais): Reformations-Geschichte von Graubünden aus zuverlässigen Quellen sorgfältig geschöpft. Denkmal der dritten Sekular-Jubelfeier der Bündnerischen Reformation. Chur (Otto), 1819 (pp. 132).—Reformationsbüchlein. Ein Denkmal des im Jahr 1819 in der Stadt Chur gefeierten Jubelfestes. Chur (Otto), 1819. (pp. 304).

*Christian Immanuel Kind (Pfarrer und Cancellarius der evang. rhätischen Synode, afterward Staats-Archivarius of the Grisons, d. May 23, 1884): Die Reformation in den Bisthümern Chur und Como. Dargestellt nach den besten älteren und neueren Hülfsmitteln. Chur, 1858 (Grubenmann), pp. 310, 8°. A popular account based on a careful study of the sources. By the same: Die Stadt Chur in ihrer ältesten Geschichte, Chur, 1859; Philipp Gallicius, 1868; Georg Jenatsch, in "Allg. Deutsche Biogr.," Bd. XIII. Georg Leonhardi (pastor in Brusio, Poschiavo): Philipp Gallicius, Reformator Graubündens. Bern, 1865 (pp. 103). The same also in Romansch.—H. G. Sulzberger (in Sevelen, St. Gallen, d. 1888): Geschichte der Reformation im Kanton Graubünden. Chur, 1880. pp. 90 (revised by Kind).—Florian Peer: L’église de Rhétie au XVIme XVIIme siècles. Genève, 1888.—Herold: J. Komander, in Meili’s Zeitschrift, Zurich, 1891.

The Christianization of the Grisons is traced back by tradition to St. Lucius, a royal prince of Britain, and Emerita, his sister, in the latter part of the second century.216  A chapel on the mountain above Coire perpetuates his memory. A bishop of Coire (Asimo) appears first in the year 452, as signing by proxy the creed of Chalcedon.217  The bishops of Coire acquired great possessions and became temporal princes.218  The whole country of the Grisons stood under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Coire and Como.

The state of religion and the need of a reformation were the same as in the other cantons of Switzerland. The first impulse to the Reformation came from Zürich with which Coire had close connections. Zwingli sent an address to the "three confederacies in Rhätia," expressing a special interest in them as a former subject of the bishop of Coire, exhorting them to reform the Church in alliance with Zürich, and recommending to them his friend Comander (Jan. 16, 1525).219  Several of his pupils preached in Fläsch, Malans, Maienfeld, Coire, and other places as early as 1524. After his death Bullinger showed the same interest in the Grisons. The Reformation passed through the usual difficulties first with the Church of Rome, then with Anabaptists, Unitarians, and the followers of the mystical Schwenkfeld, all of whom found their way into that remote corner of the world. One of the leading Anabaptists of Zürich, Georg Blaurock, was an ex-monk of Coire, and on account of his eloquence called "the mighty Jörg," or "the second Paul."  He was expelled from Zürich, and burnt by the Catholics in the Tyrol (1529).

The Reformers abolished the indulgences, the sacrifice of the mass, the worship of images, sacerdotal celibacy and concubinage, and a number of unscriptural and superstitious ceremonies, and introduced instead the Bible and Bible preaching in church and school, the holy communion in both kinds, clerical family life, and a simple evangelical piety, animated by an active faith in Christ as the only Saviour and Mediator. Where that faith is wanting the service in the barren churches is jejune and chilly.

The chief Reformers of the Grisons were Comander, Gallicius, Campell, and Vergerius, and next to them Alexander Salandronius (Salzmann), Blasius, and John Travers. The last was a learned and influential layman of the Engadin. Comander labored in the German, Gallicius and Campell in the Romansh, Vergerius in the Italian sections of the Grisons. They were Zwinglians in theology,220 and introduced the changes of Zürich and Basel. Though occupying only a second or third rank among the Reformers, they were the right men in the right places, faithful, self-denying workers in a poor country, among an honest, industrious, liberty-loving but parsimonious people. With small means they accomplished great and permanent results.

John Comander (Dorfmann), formerly a Roman priest, of unknown antecedents, preached the Reformed doctrines in the church of St. Martin at Coire from 1524. He learned Hebrew in later years, to the injury of his eyes, that he might read the Old Testament in the original. Zwingli sent him Bibles and commentaries. The citizens protected him against violence and accompanied him to and from church. The bishop of Coire arraigned him for heresy before the Diet of the three confederacies in 1525.

The Diet, in spite of the remonstrance of the bishop, ordered a public disputation at Ilanz, the first town on the Rhine. The disputation was begun on Sunday after Epiphany, Jan. 7, 1526, under the presidency of the civil authorities, and lasted several days. It resembled the disputations of Zürich, and ended in a substantial victory of the Reformation. The conservative party was represented by the Episcopal Vicar, the abbot of St. Lucius, the deans, and a few priests and monks; the progressive party, by several young preachers, Comander, Gallicius, Blasius, Pontisella, Fabricius, and Hartmann. Sebastian Hofmeister of Schaffhausen was present as a listener, and wrote an account of the speeches.221

Comander composed for the occasion eighteen theses,—an abridgment of the sixty-seven conclusions of Zwingli. The first thesis was: "The Christian Church is born of the Word of God and should abide in it, and not listen to the voice of a stranger" (John 10:4, 5). He defended this proposition with a wealth of biblical arguments which the champions of Rome were not able to refute. There was also some debate about the rock-passage in Matt. 16:18, the mass, purgatory, and sacerdotal celibacy. The Catholics brought the disputation to an abrupt close.

In the summer of the same year (June 26, 1526), the Diet of Ilanz proclaimed religious freedom, or the right of all persons in the Grisons, of both sexes, and of whatever condition or rank, to choose between the Catholic and the Reformed religion. Heretics, who after due admonition adhered to their error, were excluded and subjected to banishment (but not to death). This remarkable statute was in advance of the intolerance of the times, and forms the charter of religious freedom in the Grisons.222

The Diet of Ilanz ordered the ministers to preach nothing but what they could prove from the Scriptures, and to give themselves diligently to the study of the same. The political authority of the bishop of Coire was curtailed, appeals to him from the civil jurisdiction were forbidden, and the parishes were empowered to elect and to dismiss their own priests or pastors.223

Thus the episcopal monarchy was abolished and congregational independency introduced, but without the distinction made by the English and American Congregationalists between the church proper, or the body of converted believers, and the congregation of hearers or mere nominal Christians.

This legislation was brought about by the aid of liberal Catholic laymen, such as John Travers and John Guler, who at that time had not yet joined the Reformed party. The strict Catholics were dissatisfied, but had to submit. In 1553 the Pope sent a delegate to Coire and demanded the introduction of the Inquisition; but Comander, Bullinger, and the French ambassador defeated the attempt.

Comander, aided by his younger colleague, Blasius, and afterwards by Gallicius, continued to maintain the Reformed faith against Papists, Anabaptists, and also against foreign pensioners who had their headquarters at Coire, and who punished him for his opposition by a reduction of his scanty salary of one hundred and twenty guilders. He was at times tempted to resign, but Bullinger urged him to hold on.224  He stood at the head of the Reformed synod till his death in 1557.

He was succeeded by Fabricius, who died of the pestilence in 1566.

Philip Gallicius (Saluz) developed a more extensive activity. He is the Reformer of the Engadin, but labored also as pastor and evangelist in Domleschg, Langwies, and Coire. He was born on the eastern frontier of Graubünden in 1504, and began to preach already in 1520. He had an irresistible eloquence and power of persuasion. When he spoke in Romansh, the people flocked from every direction to hear him. He was the chief speaker at two disputations in Süs, a town of the Lower Engadin, against the Papists (1537), and against the Anabaptists (1544).225  He also introduced the Reformation in Zuz in the Lower Engadin, 1554, with the aid of John Travers, a distinguished patriot, statesman, soldier, and lay-preacher, who was called "the steelclad Knight in the service of the Lord."

Gallicius suffered much persecution and poverty, but remained gentle, patient, and faithful to the end. When preaching in the Domleschg he had not even bread to feed his large family, and lived for weeks on vegetables and salt. And yet he educated a son for the ministry at Basel, and dissuaded him from accepting a lucrative offer in another calling. He also did as much as he could for the Italian refugees. He died of the pestilence with his wife and three sons at Coire, 1566.

He translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments, and several chapters of the Bible, into the Romansh language, and thus laid the foundation of the Romansh literature. He also wrote a catechism and a Latin grammar, which were printed at Coire. He prepared the Confession of Raetia, in 1552, which was afterwards superseded by the Confession of Bullinger in 1566.

Ulrich Campell (b. c. 1510, d. 1582) was pastor at Coire and at Süs, and, next to Gallicius, the chief reformer of the Engadin. He is also the first historian of Raetia and one of the founders of the religious literature in Romanic Raetia. His history is written in good Latin, and based upon personal observation, the accounts of the ancient Romans, the researches of Tschudi, and communications of Bullinger and Vadian. It begins A.D. 100 and ends about 1582.

The Romansh literature was first cultivated during the Reformation.226  Gallicius, Campell, and Biveroni (Bifrun) are the founders of it. Campell prepared a metrical translation of the Psalter, with original hymns and a catechism (1562). Jacob Biveroni, a lawyer of Samaden, published a translation of Comander’s Catechism, which was printed at Poschiavo, 1552, and (with the aid of Gallicius and Campell) the entire New Testament, which appeared first in 1560 at Basel, and became the chief agency in promoting the evangelical faith in those regions. The people, who knew only the Romansh language, says a contemporary, "were amazed like the lsraelites of old at the sight of the manna."

The result of the labors of the Reformers and their successors in Graubünden was the firm establishment of an evangelical church which numbered nearly two-thirds of the population; while one-third remained Roman Catholic. This numerical relation has substantially remained to this day with some change in favor of Rome, though not by conversion, but by emigration and immigration. The two churches live peacefully together. The question of religion was decided in each community by a majority vote, like any political or local question. The principle of economy often gave the decision either for the retention of the Roman priest, or the choice of a Reformed preacher.227  Some stingy congregations remained vacant to get rid of all obligations, or hired now a priest, now a preacher for a short season. Gallicius complained to Bullinger about this independence which favored license under the name of liberty. Not unfrequently congregations are deceived by foreign adventurers who impose themselves upon them as pastors.

The democratic autonomy explains the curious phenomenon of the mixture of religion in the Grisons. The traveller may pass in a few hours through a succession of villages and churches of different creeds. At Coire the city itself is Reformed, and the Catholics with their bishop form a separate town on a hill, called the Court (of the bishop).

There is in Graubünden neither a State church nor a free church, but a people’s church.228  Every citizen is baptized, confirmed, and a church member. Every congregation is sovereign, and elects and supports its own pastor. In 1537 a synod was constituted, which meets annually in the month of June. It consists of all the ministers and three representatives of the government, and attends to the examination and ordination of candidates, and the usual business of administration. The civil government watches over the preservation of the church property, and prevents a collision of ecclesiastical and civil legislation, but the administration of church property is in the hands of the local congregations or parishes. The Second Helvetic Confession of Bullinger was formally accepted as the creed of the Church in 1566, but has latterly gone out of use. Ministers are only required to teach the doctrines of the Bible in general conformity to the teaching of the Reformed Church. Pastors are at liberty to use any catechism they please. The cultus is very simple, and the churches are devoid of all ornament. Many pious customs prevail among the people. A Protestant college was opened at Coire in the year 1542 with Pontisella, a native of Bregaglia, as first rector, who had been gratuitously educated at Zürich by the aid of Bullinger. With the college was connected a theological seminary for the training of ministers. This was abolished in 1843,229 and its funds were converted into scholarships for candidates, who now pursue their studies at Basel and Zürich or in German universities. In 1850 the Reformed college at Coire and the Catholic college of St. Lucius have been consolidated into one institution (Cantonsschule) located on a hill above Coire, near the episcopal palace.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Reformed clergy were orthodox in the sense of moderate Calvinism; in the eighteenth century Pietism and the Moravian community exerted a wholesome influence on the revival of spiritual life.230  In the present century about one-half of the clergy have been brought up under the influence of German Rationalism, and preach Christian morality without supernatural dogmas and miracles.

The Protestant movement in the Italian valleys of the Grisons began in the middle of the sixteenth century, but may as well be anticipated here.

§ 38. The Reformation in the Italian Valleys of the Grisons. Vergerio.

I. P. Dom. Rosius De Porta: Dissertatio historico-ecclesiastica qua ecclesiarum colloquio Vallis Praegalliae et Comitatiis Clavennae olim comprehensarum Reformatio et status ... exponitur. Curiae, 1787 (pp. 56, 4°). His Historia Reformations Eccles. Rhaeticarum, bk. II. ch. v. pp. 139–179 (on Vergerio).—Dan. Gerdes (a learned Reformed historian, 1698–1765): Specimen Italiae Reformatae. L. Batav. 1765.—*Thomas McCrie (1772–1835, author of the Life of John Knox, etc.): History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy. Edinburgh, 1827. 2d ed. 1833. Republished by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, 1842. Ch. VI., pp. 291 sqq., treats of the foreign Italian churches and the Reformation in the Grisons.—F. Trechsel: Die protest. Antitrinitarier, Heidelberg, 1844, vol. II. 64 sqq.)—G. Leonhardi: Ritter Johannes Guler von Weineck, Lebensbild eines Rhätiers aus dem 17ten Jahrh. Bern, 1863. By the same: Puschlaver Mord. Veltiner Mord. Die Ausrottung des Protestantismus im Misoxerthal. In the Zeitschrift "der Wahre Protestant," Basel, 1852–’54.—B. Reber: Georg Jenatsch, Graubündens Pfarrer und Held während des dreissigjährigen Kriegs. In the "Beitäge zur vaterländischen Geschichte," Basel, 1860.—E. Lechner: Das Thal Bergell (Bregaglia) in Graubünden, Natur, Sagen, Geschichte, Volk, Sprache, etc. Leipzig, 1865 (pp. 140).—Y. F. Fetz (Rom. Cath.): Geschichte der kirchenpolitischen Wirren im Freistaat der drei Bünde vom Anfang des 17ten Jahrh. bis auf die Gegenwart. Chur, 1875 (pp. 367).—*Karl Benrath: Bernardino Ochino von Siena. Leipzig, 1875 (English translation with preface by William Arthur, London, 1876). Comp. his Ueber die Quellen der italienischen Reformationsgeschichte. Bonn, 1876.—*Joh. Kaspar Mörikofer: Geschichte der evangelischen Flüchtlinge in der Schweiz. Zürich, 1876.—John Stoughton: Footprints of Italian Reformers. London, 1881 (pp. 235, 267 sqq.).—Em. Comba (professor of church history in the Waldensian Theological College at Florence): Storia della Riforma in Italia. Firenze, 1881 (only l vol. so far). Biblioteca della Riforma Italiana Sec. XVI. Firenze, 1883–’86. 6 vols. Visita ai Grigioni Riformati Italiani. Firenze, 1885. Vera Narrazione del Massacro di Valtellina. Zürich, 1621. Republished in Florence, 1886. Comp. literature on p. 131.

II. The Vergerius literature. The works of Vergerius, Latin and Italian, are very rare. Niceron gives a list of fifty-five, Sixt (pp. 595–601) of eighty-nine. He began a collection of his Opera adversus Papatum, of which only the first volume has appeared, at Tübingen, 1563. Recently Emil Comba has edited his Trattacelli e sua storia di Francesco Spiera in the first two volumes of his "Biblioteca della Riforma Italiana," Firenze, 1883, and the Parafrasi sopra l’ Epistola ai Romani, 1886. Sixt has published, from the Archives of Königsberg, forty-four letters of Vergerius to Albert, Duke of Prussia (pp. 533 sqq.), and Kausler and Schott (librarian at Stuttgart), his correspondence with Christopher, Duke of Würtemberg (Briefwechsel zwischen Christoph Herzog von Würt. und P. P. Vergerius, Tübingen, 1875).—Walter Friedensburg: Die Nunciaturen des Vergerio, 1533–’36. Gotha, 1892 (615 pp.). From the papal archives.

Chr. H. Sixt: Petrus Paulus Vergerius, päpstlicher Nuntius, katholischer Bischof und Vorkämpfer des Evangeliums. Braunschweig, 1855 (pp. 601). With a picture of Vergerius. 2d (title) ed. 1871. The labors in the Grisons are described in ch. III. 181 sqq.—Scattered notices of Vergerius are found in Sleidan, Seckendorf, De Porta, Sarpi, Pallavicini, Raynaldus, Maimburg, Bayle, Niceron, Schelhorn, Salig, and Meyer (in his monograph on Locarno. I. 36, 51; II. 236–255). A good article by Schott in Herzog2, XVI. 351–357. (Less eulogistic than Sixt.)

The evangelical Reformation spread in the Italian portions of the Grisons; namely, the valleys of Pregell or Bregaglia,231 and Poschiavo (Puschlav), which still belong to the Canton, and in the dependencies of the Valtellina (Veltlin), Bormio (Worms), and Chiavenna (Cleven), which were ruled by governors (like the Territories of the United States), but were lost to the Grisons in 1797. The Valtellina is famous for its luxuriant vegetation, fiery wine, and culture of silk. A Protestant congregation was also organized at Locarno in the Canton Ticino (Tessin), which then was a dependency of the Swiss Confederacy. This Italian chapter of the history of Swiss Protestantism is closely connected with the rise and suppression of the Reformation in Italy and the emigration of many Protestant confessors, who, like the French Huguenots of a later period, were driven from their native land, to enrich with their industry and virtue foreign countries where they found a hospitable home.

The first impulse to the Reformation in the Italian Grisons came from Gallicius and Campell, who labored in the neighboring Engadin, and knew Italian as well as Romansh. The chief agents were Protestant refugees who fled from the Inquisition to Northern Italy and found protection under the government of the Grisons. Many of them settled there permanently; others went to Zürich, Basel, and Geneva. In the year 1550 the number of Italian refugees was about two hundred. Before 1559 the number had increased to eight hundred. One fourth or fifth of them were educated men. Some inclined to Unitarian and Anabaptist opinions, and prepared the way for Socinianism. Among the latter may be mentioned Francesco Calabrese (in the Engadin); Tiriano (at Coire); Camillo Renato, a forerunner of Socinianism (at Tirano in the Valtellina); Ochino, the famous Capuchin pulpit orator (who afterwards went to Geneva, England, and Zürich); Lelio Sozini (who died at Zürich, 1562); and his more famous nephew, Fausto Sozini (1539–1604), the proper founder of Socinianism, who ended his life in Poland.

The most distinguished of the Italian evangelists in the Grisons, is Petrus Paulus Vergerius (1498–1565).232  He labored there four years (1549–1553), and left some permanent traces of his influence. He ranks among the secondary Reformers, and is an interesting but somewhat ambiguous and unsatisfactory character, with a changeful career. He held one of the highest positions at the papal court, and became one of its most decided opponents.

Vergerio was at first a prominent lawyer at Venice. After the death of his wife (Diana Contarini), he entered the service of the Church, and soon rose by his talents and attainments to influential positions. He was sent by Clement VII., together with Campeggi and Pimpinelli, to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, where he associated with Faber, Eck, and Cochlaeus, and displayed great zeal and skill in attempting to suppress the Protestant heresy. He was made papal secretary and domestic chaplain, 1532. He was again sent by Paul III. to Germany, in 1535, to negotiate with the German princes about the proposed General Council at Mantua. He had a personal interview with Luther in Wittenberg (Nov. 7), and took offence at his bad Latin, blunt speech, and plebeian manner. He could not decide, he said in his official report to the papal secretary (Nov. 12), whether this German "beast" was possessed by an evil demon or not, but he certainly was the embodiment of arrogance, malice, and unwisdom.233  He afterwards spoke of Luther as "a man of sacred memory," and "a great instrument of God," and lauded him in verses which he composed on a visit to Eisleben in 1559. On his return to Italy, he received as reward for his mission the archbishopric of Capo d’ Istria, his native place (not far from Trieste). He aspired even to the cardinal’s hat. He attended—we do not know precisely in what capacity, whether in the name of the Pope, or of Francis I. of France—the Colloquies at Worms and Regensburg, in 1540 and 1541, where he met Melanchthon and Calvin. Melanchthon presented him on that occasion with a copy of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology.234  At that time he was, according to his confession, still as blind and impious as Saul. In the address De Unitate et Pace Ecclesicae, which he delivered at Worms, Jan. 1, 1541, and which is diplomatic rather than theological,235  he urged a General Council as a means to restore the unity and peace of the Church on the traditional basis.

His conversion was gradually brought about by a combination of several causes,—the reading of Protestant books which he undertook with the purpose to refute them, his personal intercourse with Lutheran divines and princes in Germany, the intolerance of his Roman opponents, and the fearful death of Spiera. He acquired an experimental knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, which at that time commended itself even to some Roman divines of high standing, as Cardinal Contarini and Reginald Pole, and which was advocated by Paleario of Siena, and by a pupil of Valdés in an anonymous Italian tract on "The Benefit of Christ’s Death."236  He began to preach evangelical doctrines and to reform abuses. His brother, bishop of Pola, fully sympathized with him. He roused the suspicion of the Curia and the Inquisition. He went to Trent in February, 1546, to justify himself before the Council, but was refused admittance, and forbidden to return to his diocese. He retired to Riva on the Lago di Garda, not far from Trent.

In 1548 he paid a visit to Padua to take some of his nephews to college. He found the city excited by the fearful tragedy of Francesco Spiera, a lawyer and convert from Romanism, who had abjured the evangelical faith from fear of the Inquisition, and fell into a hell of tortures of conscience under the conviction that he had committed the unpardonable sin by rejecting the truth. He was for several weeks a daily witness, with many others, of the agonies of this most unfortunate of apostates, and tried in vain to comfort him. He thought that we must not despair of any sinner, though he had committed the crimes of Cain and Judas. He prepared himself for his visits by prayer and the study of the comforting promises of the Scriptures. But Spiera had lost all faith, all hope, all comfort; he insisted that he had committed the sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come; he was tormented by the remembrance of the sins of his youth, the guilt of apostasy, the prospect of eternal punishment which he felt already, and died in utter despair with a heart full of hatred and blasphemy. His death was regarded as a signal judgment of God, a warning example, and an argument for the truth of the evangelical doctrines.237

Vergerio was overwhelmed by this experience, and brought to a final decision. He wrote an apology in which he gives an account of the sad story, and renounces his connection with Rome at the risk of persecution, torture, and death. He sent it to the suffragan bishop of Padua, Dec. 13, 1548.

He was deposed and excommunicated by the pope, July 3, 1549, and fled over Bergamo to the Grisons. He remained there till 1553, with occasional journeys to the Valtellina, Chiavenna, Zürich, Bern, and Basel. He was hospitably received, and developed great activity in preaching and writing. People of all classes gathered around him, and were impressed by his commanding presence and eloquence. He founded a printing-press in Poschiavo in 1549, and issued from it his thunderbolts against popery. He preached at Pontresina and Samaden in the Upper Engadin, and effected the abolition of the mass and the images. He labored as pastor three years (1550–53) at Vicosoprano in Bregaglia. He travelled through the greater part of Switzerland, and made the acquaintance of Bullinger, Calvin, and Beza.

But the humble condition of the Grisons did not satisfy his ambition. He felt isolated, and complained of the inhospitable valleys. He disliked the democratic institutions. He quarrelled with the older Reformers, Comander and Gallicius. He tried to get the whole Synod of the Grisons under his control, and, failing in this, to organize a separate synod of the Italian congregations. Then he aspired to a more prominent position at Zürich or Geneva or Bern, but Bullinger and Calvin did not trust him.

In November, 1553, he gladly accepted a call to Würtemberg as counsellor of Duke Christopher, one of the best princes of the sixteenth century, and spent his remaining twelve years in the Duke’s service. He resided in Tübingen, but had no official connection with the University. He continued to write with his rapid pen inflammatory tracts against popery, promoted the translation and distribution of the Bible in the South Slavonic dialect, maintained an extensive correspondence, and was used in various diplomatic and evangelical missions to the Emperor Maximilian at Vienna, to the kings of Bohemia, and Poland. On his first journey to Poland he made the personal acquaintance of Albert, Duke of Prussia, who esteemed him highly and supplied him with funds. He entered into correspondence with Queen Elizabeth, in the vain hope of an invitation to England. He desired to be sent as delegate to the religious conference at Poissy in France, 1561, but was again disappointed. He paid four visits to the Grisons (November, 1561; March, 1562; May, 1563; and April, 1564), to counteract the intrigues of the Spanish and papal party, and to promote the harmony of the Swiss Church with that of Würtemberg. On his second visit he went as far as the Valtellina. He received an informal invitation to attend the Council of Trent in 1561 from Delfino, the papal nuncio, in the hope that he might be induced to recant; he was willing to go at the risk of meeting the fate of Hus at Constance, but on condition of a safe conduct, which was declined.238  At last he wished to unite with the Bohemian Brethren, whom he admired for their strict discipline combined with pure doctrine; he translated and published their Confession of Faith. He was in constant need of money, and his many begging letters to the Dukes of Würtemberg and of Prussia make a painful impression; but we must take into account the printing expenses of his many books, his frequent journeys, and the support of three nephews and a niece. In his fifty-ninth year he conceived the plan of contracting a marriage, and asked the Duke to double his allowance of two hundred guilders, but the request was declined and the marriage given up.239

He died Oct. 4, 1565, at Tübingen, and was buried there. Dr. Andreae, the chief author of the Lutheran Formula of Concord, preached the funeral sermon, which the learned Crusius took down in Greek. Duke Christopher erected a monument to his memory with a eulogistic inscription.240

The very numerous Latin and Italian books and fugitive tracts of Vergerio are chiefly polemical against the Roman hierarchy of which he had so long been a conspicuous member.241  He exposed, with the intemperate zeal of a proselyte, the chronique scandaleuse of the papacy, including the mythical woman-pope, Johanna (John VIII.), who was then generally believed to have really existed.242  He agreed with Luther that the papacy was an invention of the Devil; that the pope was the very Antichrist seated in the temple of God as predicted by Daniel (11:36) and Paul (2 Thess. 2:3 sq.), and the beast of the Apocalypse; and that he would soon be destroyed by a divine judgment. He attacked all the contemporary popes, except Adrian VI., to whom he gives credit for honesty and earnestness. He is especially severe on "Saul IV."  (Paul IV.), who as Cardinal Caraffa had made some wise and bold utterances on the corruption of the clergy, but since his elevation to the "apostate chair, which corrupts every one who ascends it," had become the leader of the Counter-Reformation with its measures of violence and blood. Such monsters, he says, are the popes. One contradicts the other, and yet they are all infallible, and demand absolute submission. Rather die a thousand times than have any communion with popery and fall away from Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for us and rose from the dead. Popery and the gospel are as incompatible as darkness and light, as Belial and Christ. No compromise is possible between them. Vergerio was hardly less severe on the cardinals and bishops, although he allowed some honorable exceptions. He attacked and ridiculed the Council of Trent, then in session, and tried to show that it was neither general, nor free, nor Christian. He used the same arguments against it as the Old Catholics used against the Vatican Council of 1870. He repelled the charge of heresy and turned it against his former co-religionists. The Protestants who follow the Word of God are orthodox, the Romanists who follow the traditions of men are the heretics.

His anti-popery writings were read with great avidity by his contemporaries, but are now forgotten. Bullinger was unfavorably impressed, and found in them no solid substance, but only frivolous mockery and abuse.

As regards the differences among Protestants, Vergerio was inconsistent. He first held the Calvinistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, and expressed it in his own Catechism,243 in a letter to Bullinger of Jan. 16, 1554, and even later, in June, 1556, at Wittenberg, where he met Melanchthon and Eber. But in Würtemberg he had to subscribe the Augsburg Confession, and in a letter to the Duke of Würtemberg, Oct. 23, 1557, he confessed the ubiquitarian theory of Luther. He also translated the Catechism of Brenz and the Würtemberg Confession into Italian, and thereby offended the Swiss Zwinglians, but told them that he was merely the translator. He never attributed much importance to the difference, and kept aloof from the eucharistic controversy.244  He was not a profound theologian, but an ecclesiastical politician and diplomatist, after as well as before his conversion.

Vergerio left the Roman Church rather too late, when the Counter-Reformation had already begun to crush Protestantism in Italy. He was a man of imposing personality, considerable learning and eloquence, wit and irony, polemic dexterity, and diplomatic experience, but restless, vain, and ambitious. He had an extravagant idea of his own importance. He could not forget his former episcopal authority and pretensions, nor his commanding position as the representative of the pope. He aspired to the dignity and influence of a sort of Protestant internuncio at all the courts of Europe, and of a mediator between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of the Council of Trent, characterizes him as a lively and bold man who could not live without business, and imagined that business could not get along without him. Calvin found in him much that is laudable, but feared that he was a restless busybody. Gallicius wrote to Bullinger: "I wish that Vergerio would be more quiet, and persuade himself that the heavens will not fall even if he, as another Atlas, should withdraw his support."  Nevertheless, Vergerio filled an important place in the history of his times. He retained the esteem of the Lutheran princes and theologians, and he is gratefully remembered for his missionary services in the two Italian valleys of the Grisons, which have remained faithful to the evangelical faith to this day.

§ 39. Protestantism in Chiavenna and the Valtellina, and its Suppression.

The Valtellina Massacre. George Jenatsch.

See literature in §§ 36 and 38, pp. 131 and 144 sq.

We pass now to the Italian dependencies of the Grisons, where Protestantism has had only a transient existence.

At Chiavenna the Reformed worship was introduced in 1544 by Agostino Mainardi, a former monk of Piedmont, under the protection of Hercules von Salis, governor of the province. He was succeeded by Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590), an Augustinian monk who had been converted by reading the works of the Reformers under the direction of Vermigli at Lucca, and became one of the most learned and acute champions of the Calvinistic system. He fled to the Grisons in 1551, and preached at Chiavenna. Two years later he accepted a call to a Hebrew professorship at Strassburg. There he got into a controversy with Marbach on the doctrine of predestination, which he defended with logical rigor. In 1563 he returned to Chiavenna as 245pastor. He had much trouble with restless Italian refugees and with the incipient heresy of Socinianism. In 1568 he left for Heidelberg, as professor of theology on the basis of the Palatinate Catechism, which in 1563 had been introduced under the pious Elector Frederick III. He prepared the way for Calvinistic scholasticism. A complete edition of his works appeared at Geneva, 1619, in three folio volumes.

Chiavenna had several other able pastors,—Simone Florillo, Scipione Lentulo of Naples, Ottaviano Meio of Lucca,

Small Protestant congregations were founded in the Valtellina, at Caspan (1546), Sondrio (the seat of government), Teglio, Tirano, and other towns. Dr. McCrie says: "Upon the whole, the number of Protestant churches to the south of the Alps appears to have exceeded twenty, which were all served, and continued till the end of the sixteenth century to be for the most part served, by exiles from Italy."

But Protestantism in Chiavenna, Bormio, and the Valtellina was at last swept out of existence. We must here anticipate a bloody page of the history of the seventeenth century.

Several causes combined for the destruction of Protestantism in Upper Italy. The Catholic natives were never friendly to the heretical refugees who settled among them, and called them banditi, which has the double meaning of exile and outlaw. They reproached the Grisons for receiving them after they had been expelled from other Christian countries. They were kept in a state of political vassalage, instead of being admitted to equal rights with the three leagues. The provincial governors were often oppressive, sold the subordinate offices to partisans, and enriched themselves at the expense of the inhabitants. The Protestants were distracted by internal feuds. The Roman Counter-Reformation was begun with great zeal and energy in Upper Italy and Switzerland by the saintly Cardinal Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan. Jesuits and Capuchins stirred up the hatred of the ignorant and superstitious people against the Protestant heretics. In the Grisons themselves the Roman Catholic party under the lead of the family of Planta, and the Protestants, headed by the family of Salis, strove for the mastery. The former aimed at the suppression of the Reformation in the leagues as well as the dependencies, and were suspected of treasonable conspiracy with Spain and Austria. The Protestant party held a court (Strafgericht, a sort of tribunal of inquisition) at Thusis in 1618, which included nine preachers, and condemned the conspirators. The aged Zambra, who in the torture confessed complicity with Spain, was beheaded; Nicolaus Rusca, an esteemed priest, leader of the Spanish Catholic interests in the Valtellina, called the hammer of the heretics, was cruelly tortured to death; Bishop John Flugi was deposed and outlawed; the brothers Rudolf and Pompeius Planta, the Knight Jacob Robustelli, and other influential Catholics were banished, and the property of the Plantas was confiscated.

These unrighteous measures created general indignation. The exiles fostered revenge, and were assured of Spanish aid. Robustelli returned, after his banishment, to the Valtellina, and organized a band of about three hundred desperate bandits from the Venetian and Milanese territories for the overthrow of the government of the Grisons and the extermination of Protestantism.

This is the infamous "Valtellina Massacre (Veltliner Mord) of July, 1620. It may be called an imitation of the Sicilian Vespers, and of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was the fiendish work of religious fanaticism combined with political discontent. The tragedy began in the silence of the night, from July 18th to 19th, by the murder of sixty defenceless adult Protestants of Tirano; the Podesta Enderlin was shot down in the street, mutilated, and thrown into the Adda; Anton von Salis took refuge in the house of a Catholic friend, but was sought out and killed; the head of the Protestant minister, Anton Bassa of Poschiavo, was posted on the pulpit of the church. The murderers proceeded to Teglio, and shot down about the same number of persons in the church, together with the minister, who was wounded in the pulpit, and exhorted the hearers to persevere; a number of women and children, who had taken refuge in the tower of the church, were burnt. The priest of Teglio took part in the bloody business, carrying the cross in the left, and the sword in the right hand. At Sondrio, the massacre raged for three days. Seventy-one Protestants, by their determined stand, were permitted to escape to the Engadin, but one hundred and forty fell victims to the bandits; a butcher boasted of having murdered eighteen persons. Not even the dead were spared; their bodies were exhumed, burnt, thrown into the water, or exposed to wild beasts. Paula Baretta, a noble Venetian lady of eighty years, who had left a nunnery for her religious conviction, was shamefully maltreated and delivered to the Inquisition at Milan, where a year afterward she suffered death at the stake. Anna of Libo fled with a child of two years in her arms; she was overtaken and promised release on condition of abjuring her faith. She refused, saying, "You may kill the body, but not the soul;" she pressed her child to her bosom, and received the death-blow. When the people saw the stream of blood on the market-place before the chief church, they exclaimed: "This is the revenge for our murdered arch-priest Rusca!"  He was henceforth revered as a holy martyr. At Morbegno the Catholics behaved well, and aided the Protestants in making their escape. The fugitives were kindly received in the Grisons and other parts of Switzerland. From the Valtellina Robustelli proceeded to Poschiavo, burnt the town of Brusio, and continued there the butchery of Protestants till he was checked.246

The Valtellina declared itself independent and elected the Knight Robustelli military chief. The canons of the Council of Trent were proclaimed, papal indulgences introduced, the evangelical churches and cemeteries reconsecrated for Catholic use, the corpses of Protestants dug up, burnt, and cast into the river. Addresses were sent to the Pope and the kings of Spain and France, explaining and excusing the foul deeds by which the rebels claimed to have saved the Roman religion and achieved political freedom from intolerable tyranny.

Now began the long and bloody conflicts for the recovery of the lost province, in which several foreign powers took part. The question of the Valtellina (like the Eastern question in modern times) became a European question, and was involved in the Thirty Years’ War. Spain, in possession of Milan, wished to join hands with Austria across the Alpine passes of the Grisons; while France and Venice had a political motive to keep them closed. Austrian and Spanish troops conquered and occupied the Valtellina and the three leagues, expelled the Protestant preachers, and inflicted unspeakable misery upon the people. France, no less Catholic under the lead of Cardinal Richelieu, but jealous of the house of Habsburg, came to the support of the Protestants in the Grisons, as well as the Swedes in the north, and sent an army under the command of the noble Huguenot Duke Henri de Rohan, who defeated the Austrians and Spaniards, and conquered the Valtellina (1635).

The Grisons with French aid recovered the Valtellina by the stipulation of Chiavenna, 1636, which guaranteed to the three leagues all the rights of sovereignty, but on condition of tolerating no other religion in that province but the Roman Catholic. Rohan, who had the best intentions for the Grisons, desired to save Protestant interests, but Catholic France would not agree. He died in 1638, and was buried at Geneva.

The Valtellina continued to be governed by bailiffs till 1797. It is now a part of the kingdom of Italy, and enjoys the religious freedom guaranteed by the constitution of 1848.247

In this wild episode of the Thirty Years’ War, a Protestant preacher, Colonel Georg Jenatsch, plays a prominent figure as a romantic hero. He was born at Samaden in the Upper Engadin, 1590, studied for the Protestant ministry at Zürich, successively served the congregations at Scharans and at Berbenno in the Valtellina, and narrowly escaped the massacre at Sondrio by making his flight through dangerous mountain passes. He was an eloquent speaker, an ardent patriot, a shrewd politician, and a brave soldier, but ambitious, violent, unscrupulous, extravagant, and unprincipled. He took part in the cruel decision of the court of Thusis (1618), and killed Pompeius Planta with an axe (1621). He served as guide and counsellor of the Duke de Rohan, and by his knowledge, pluck, and energy, materially aided him in the defeat of Austria. Being disappointed in his ambition, he turned traitor to France, joined the Austrian party and the Roman Church (1635), but educated his children in the Protestant religion. He was murdered at a banquet in Coire (1639) by an unknown person in revenge for the murder of Pompeius Planta. He is buried in the Catholic church, near the bishop’s palace. A Capuchin monk delivered the funeral oration.248

§ 40. The Congregation of Locarno.

Ferdinand Meyer: Die evangelische Gemeinde von Locarno, ihre Auswanderung nach Zürich und ihre weiteren Schicksale. Zürich, 1836. 2 vols. An exhaustive monograph carefully drawn from MS. sources, and bearing more particularly on the Italian congregation at Zürich, to which the leading Protestant families of Locarno emigrated.

Locarno, a beautiful town on the northern end of the Lago Maggiore, was subject to the Swiss Confederacy and ruled by bailiffs.249  It had in the middle of the sixteenth century a Protestant congregation of nearly two hundred members.250  Chief among them were Beccaria, Taddeo Duno, Lodovico Ronco, and Martino Muralto. A religious disputation was held there in 1549, about the authority of the pope, the merit of good works, justification, auricular confession, and purgatory.251  It ended in a tumult. Wirz, the presiding bailiff, who knew neither Latin nor Italian, gave a decision in favor of the Roman party. Beccaria refused to submit, escaped, and went to Zürich, where he was kindly received by Bullinger. He became afterwards a member of the Synod of Graubünden, and was sent as an evangelist to Misocco, but returned to Zürich.

The faithful Protestants of Locarno, who preferred emigration to submission, wandered with wives and children on foot and on horseback over snow and ice to Graubünden and Zürich, in 1556. Half of them remained in the Grisons, and mingled with the evangelical congregations. The rest organized an Italian congregation in Zürich under the fostering care of Bullinger. It was served for a short time by Vergerio, who came from Tübingen for the purpose, and then by Bernardino Ochino, who had fled from England to Basel after the accession of Queen Mary. Ochino was a brilliant genius and an eloquent preacher, then already sixty-eight years old, but gave offence by his Arian and other heretical opinions, and was required to leave in 1563. He went to Basel, Strassburg, Nürnberg, Krakau; was expelled from Poland, Aug. 6, 1564; and died in poverty in Moravia, 1565, a victim of his subtle speculations and the intolerance of his times. He wrote an Italian catechism for the Locarno congregation in the form of a dialogue (1561).

The most important accession to the exiles was Pietro Martire Vermigli, who had likewise fled from England, first to Strassburg (1553), then to Zürich (1555). He was received as a member into the council of the Locarno congregation, presented with the citizenship of Zürich, and elected professor of Hebrew in place of Conrad Pellican (who died in 1556). He labored there till his death, in 1562, in intimate friendship and harmony with Bullinger, generally esteemed and beloved. He was one of the most distinguished and useful Italian converts, and, like Zanchi, an orthodox Calvinist.

The Italian congregation was enlarged by new fugitives from Locarno and continued to the end of the sixteenth century. The principal families of Duno, Muralto, Orelli, Pestalozzi, and others were received into citizenship, took a prominent position in the history of Zürich, and promoted its industry and prosperity, like the exiled Huguenots in Brandenburg, Holland, England, and North America.252

§ 41. Zwinglianism in Germany.

The principles of the Helvetic Reformation spread also to some extent in Germany, but in a modified form, and prepared the way for the mediating (Melanchthonian) character of the German Reformed Church. Although Luther overshadowed every other personality in Germany, Zwingli had also his friends and admirers, especially the Landgrave, Philip of Hesse, who labored very zealously, though unsuccessfully, for a union of the Lutherans and the Reformed. Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, Cellarius at Augsburg, Blaurer at Constance, Hermann at Reutlingen, and Somius at Ulm, strongly sympathized with the genius and tendency of the Zürich Reformer.253  His influence was especially felt in those free cities of Southern Germany where the democratic element prevailed.

Four of these cities, Strassburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, handed to the Diet of Augsburg, 11th July, 1530, a special confession (Confessio Tetrapolitana) drawn up by Bucer, with the assistance of Hedio, and answered by the Roman divines, Faber, Eck, and Cochlaeus. It is the first symbolical book of the German Reformed Church (Zwingli’s writings having never acquired symbolical authority), but was superseded by the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the Second Helvetic Confession (1566). It strikes a middle course between the Augsburg Confession of Melanchthon and the private Confession sent in by Zwingli during the same Diet, and anticipates Calvin’s view on the Lord’s Supper by teaching a real fruition of the true body and blood of Christ, not through the mouth, but through faith, for the nourishment of the soul into eternal life.254

The Zwinglian Reformation was checked and almost destroyed in Germany by the combined opposition of Romanism and Lutheranism. The four cities could not maintain their isolated position, and signed the Augsburg Confession for political reasons, to join the Smalcaldian League. The Reformed Church took a new start in the Palatinate under the combined influence of Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Calvin (1563), gained strength by the accession of the reigning dynasty of Prussia (since 1614), and was ultimately admitted to equal rights with the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches in the German Empire by the Treaty of Westphalia.

CHAPTER V.

THE CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND REFORMED CANTONS.

See the works of Escher, Oechsli, and Fenner, quoted on p. 19; Mörikofer, Zwingli, II. 346–452; and Bluntschli, Geschichte des schweizerischen Bundesrechtes von den ewigen Bünden bis auf die Gegenwart. Stuttgart. 2d ed. 1875, 2 vols.

§ 42. The First War of Cappel. 1529.

The year 1530 marks the height of the Zwinglian Reformation. It was firmly established in the leading cities and cantons of Zürich, Bern, and Basel. It had gained a strong majority of the people in Northern and Eastern Switzerland, and in the Grisons. It had fair prospects of ultimate success in the whole confederacy, when its further progress was suddenly arrested by the catastrophe of Cappel and the death of Zwingli.

The two parties had no conception of toleration (except in Glarus and the Grisons), but aimed at supremacy and excluded each other wherever they had the power. They came into open conflict in the common territories or free bailiwicks, by the forcible attempts made there to introduce the new religion, or to prevent its introduction. The Protestants, under the lead of Zwingli, were the aggressors, especially in the confiscation of the rich abbey of St. Gall. They had in their favor the right of progress and the majority of the population. But the Roman Catholics had on their side the tradition of the past, the letter of the law, and a majority of Cantons and of votes in the Diet, in which the people were not directly represented. They strictly prohibited Protestant preaching within their own jurisdiction, and even began bloody persecution. Jacob Kaiser (or Schlosser), a Zürich minister, was seized on a preaching expedition, and publicly burnt at the stake in the town of Schwyz (May, 1529).255  His martyrdom was the signal of war. The Protestants feared, not without good reason, that this case was the beginning of a general persecution.

With the religious question was closely connected the political and social question of the foreign military service,256 which Zwingli consistently opposed in the interest of patriotism, and which the Roman Catholics defended in the interest of wealth and fame. This was a very serious matter, as may be estimated from the fact that, according to a statement of the French ambassador, his king had sent, from 1512 to 1531, no less than 1,133,547 gold crowns to Switzerland, a sum equal to four times the amount at present valuation. The pensions were the Judas price paid by foreign sovereigns to influential Swiss for treason to their country. In his opposition to this abuse, Zwingli was undoubtedly right, and his view ultimately succeeded, though long after his death.257

Both parties organized for war, which broke out in 1529, and ended in a disastrous defeat of the Protestants in 1531. Sixteen years later, the Lutheran princes suffered a similar defeat in the Smalcaldian War against the Emperor (1547). The five Forest Cantons—Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Luzern, and Zug—formed a defensive and offensive league (November, 1528; the preparations began in 1527), and even entered, first secretly, then openly, into an alliance with Ferdinand Duke of Austria and King of Bohemia and Hungary (April, 1529). This alliance with the old hereditary enemy of Switzerland, whom their ancestors had defeated in glorious battles, was treasonable and a step towards the split of the confederacy in two hostile camps (which was repeated in 1846). King Ferdinand had a political and religious interest in the division of Switzerland and fostered it. Freiburg, Wallis, and Solothurn sided with the Catholic Cantons, and promised aid in case of war. The Protestant Cantons, led by Zürich (which made the first step in this direction) formed a Protestant league under the name of the Christian co-burghery (Burgrecht) with the cities of Constance (Dec. 25, 1527), Biel and Mühlhausen (1529), and Strassburg (Jan. 9, 1530).258

Zwingli, provoked by the burning of Kaiser, and seeing the war clouds gathering all around, favored prompt action, which usually secures a great advantage in critical moments. He believed in the necessity of war; while Luther put his sole trust in the Word of God, although he stirred up the passions of war by his writings, and had himself the martyr’s courage to go to the stake. Zwingli was a free republican; while Luther was a loyal monarchist. He belonged to the Cromwellian type of men who "trust in God and keep their powder dry."  In him the reformer, the statesman, and the patriot were one. He appealed to the examples of Joshua and Gideon, forgetting the difference between the Old and the New dispensation. "Let us be firm," he wrote to his peace-loving friends in Bern (May 30, 1529), "and fear not to take up arms. This peace, which some desire so much, is not peace, but war; while the war that we call for, is not war, but peace. We thirst for no man’s blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers’ lives will never be secure among us."259

Zürich was first ready for the conflict and sent four thousand well-equipped soldiers to Cappel, a village with a Cistercian convent, in the territory of Zürich on the frontier of the Canton Zug.260  Smaller detachments were located at Bremgarten, and on the frontier of Schwyz, Basel, St. Gall. Mühlhausen furnished auxiliary troops. Bern sent five thousand men, but with orders to act only in self-defence.

Zwingli accompanied the main force to Cappel. "When my brethren expose their lives," he said to the burgomaster, who wished to keep him back, "I will not remain quiet at home. The army requires a watchful eye."  He put the halberd which he had worn as chaplain at Marignano, over his shoulder, and mounted his horse, ready to conquer or to die for God and the fatherland.261

He prepared excellent instructions for the soldiers, and a plan of a campaign that should be short, sharp, decisive, and, if possible, unbloody.

Zürich declared war June 9, 1529. But before the forces crossed the frontier of the Forest Cantons, Landammann Aebli of Glarus, where the Catholics and Protestants worship in one church, appeared from a visit to the hostile army as peacemaker, and prevented a bloody collision. He was a friend of Zwingli, an enemy of the mercenary service, and generally esteemed as a true patriot. With tears in his eyes, says Bullinger, he entreated the Zürichers to put off the attack even for a few hours, in the hope of bringing about an honorable peace. "Dear lords of Zuerich, for God’s sake, prevent the division and destruction of the confederacy."  Zwingli opposed him, and said: "My dear friend,262 you will answer to God for this counsel. As long as the enemies are in our power, they use good words; but as soon as they are well prepared, they will not spare us."  He foresaw what actually happened after his death. Aebli replied: "I trust in God that all will go well. Let each of us do his best."  And he departed.

Zwingli himself was not unwilling to make peace, but only on four conditions which he sent a day after Aebli’s appeal, in a memorandum to the Council of Zürich (June 11): 1) That the Word of God be preached freely in the entire confederacy, but that no one be forced to abolish the mass, the images, and other ceremonies which will fall of themselves under the influence of scriptural preaching; 2) that all foreign military pensions be abolished; 3) that the originators and the dispensers of foreign pensions be punished while the armies are still in the field; 4) that the Forest Cantons pay the cost of war preparations, and that Schwyz pay one thousand guilders for the support of the orphans of Kaiser (Schlosser) who had recently been burnt there as a heretic.

An admirable discipline prevailed in the camp of Zürich, that reminds one of the Puritan army of Cromwell. Zwingli or one of his colleagues preached daily; prayers were offered before each meal; psalms, hymns, and national songs resounded in the tents; no oath was heard; gambling and swearing were prohibited, and disreputable women excluded; the only exercises were wrestling, casting stones, and military drill. There can be little doubt that if the Zürichers had made a timely attack upon the Catholics and carried out the plan of Zwingli, they would have gained a complete victory and dictated the terms of peace. How long the peace would have lasted is a different question; for behind the Forest Cantons stood Austria, which might at any time have changed the situation.

But counsels of peace prevailed. Bern was opposed to the offensive, and declared that if the Zürichers began the attack, they should be left to finish it alone. The Zürichers themselves were divided, and their military leaders (Berger and Escher) inclined to peace.

The Catholics, being assured that they need not fear an attack from Bern, mustered courage and were enforced by troops from Wallis and the Italian bailiwicks. They now numbered nearly twelve thousand armed men.

The hostile armies faced each other from Cappel and Baar, but hesitated to advance. Catholic guards would cross over the border to be taken prisoners by the Zürichers, who had an abundance of provision, and sent them back well fed and clothed. Or they would place a large bucket of milk on the border line and asked the Zürichers for bread, who supplied them richly; whereupon both parties peacefully enjoyed a common meal, and when one took a morsel on the enemy’s side, he was reminded not to cross the frontier. The soldiers remembered that they were Swiss confederates, and that many of them had fought side by side on foreign battlefields.263  "We shall not fight," they said;, and pray God that the storm may pass away without doing us any harm."  Jacob Sturm, the burgomaster of Strassburg, who was present as a mediator, was struck with the manifestation of personal harmony and friendship in the midst of organized hostility. "You are a singular people," he said; "though disunited, you are united."

§ 43. The First Peace of Cappel. June, 1529.

After several negotiations, a treaty of Peace was concluded June 25, 1529, between Zürich, Bern, Basel, St. Gall, and the cities of Mühlhausen and Biel on the one hand, and the five Catholic Cantons on the other. The deputies of Glarus, Solothurn, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, Graubünden, Sargans, Strassburg, and Constanz acted as mediators.

The treaty was not all that Zwingli desired, especially as regards the abolition of the pensions and the punishment of the dispensers of pensions (wherein he was not supported by Bern), but upon the whole it was favorable to the cause of the Reformation.

The first and most important of the Eighteen Articles of the treaty recognizes, for the first time in Europe, the principle of parity or legal equality of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches,—a principle which twenty-six years afterwards was recognized also in Germany (by the Augsburger Religionsfriede of 1555), but which was not finally settled there till after the bloody baptism of the Thirty Years’ War, in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), against which the Pope of Rome still protests in vain. That article guarantees to the Reformed and Roman Catholic Cantons religious freedom in the form of mutual toleration, and to the common bailiwicks the right to decide by majority the question whether they would remain Catholics or become Protestants.264  The treaty also provided for the payment of the expenses of the war by the five cantons, and for an indemnity to the family of the martyred Kaiser. The abolition of the foreign pensions was not demanded, but recommended to the Roman Catholic Cantons. The alliance with Austria was broken. The document which contained the treasonable treaty was cut to pieces by Aebli in the presence of Zwingli and the army of Zürich.265

The Catholics returned to their homes discontented. The Zürichers had reason to be thankful; still more the Berners, who had triumphed with their policy of moderation.

Zwingli wavered between hopes and fears for the future, but his trust was in God. He wrote (June 30) to Conrad Som, minister at Ulm: "We have brought peace with us, which for us, I hope, is quite honorable; for we did not go forth to shed blood.266  We have sent back our foes with a wet blanket. Their compact with Austria was cut to pieces before mine eyes in the camp by the Landammann of Glarus, June 26, at 11 A. M. ... God has shown again to the mighty ones that they cannot prevail against him, and that we may gain victory without a stroke if we hold to him."267

He gave vent to his conflicting feelings in a poem which he composed in the camp (during the peace negotiations), together with the music, and which became almost as popular in Switzerland as Luther’s contemporaneous, but more powerful and more famous "Ein feste Burg," is to this day in Germany. It breathes the same spirit of trust in God.268

"Do thou direct thy chariot,Lord,

And guide it at thy will;

Without thy aid our strength is vain,

And useless all our skill.

Look down upon thy saints brought low,

And grant them victory o’er the foe.

"Beloved Pastor, who hast saved

Our souls from death and sin,

Uplift thy voice, awake thy sheep

That slumbering lie within

Thy fold, and curb with thy right hand

The rage of Satan’s furious band.

"Send down thy peace, and banish strife,

Let bitterness depart;

Revive the spirit of the past

In every Switzer’s heart:

Then shalt thy church forever sing

The praises of her heavenly King."269

§ 44. Between the Wars. Political Plains of Zwingli.

The effect of the first Peace of Cappel was favorable to the cause of the Reformation. It had now full legal recognition, and made progress in the Cantons and in the common territories. But the peace did not last long. The progress emboldened the Protestants, and embittered the Catholics.

The last two years of Zwingli were full of anxiety, but also full of important labors. He contemplated a political reconstruction of Switzerland, and a vast European league for the protection and promotion of Protestant interests.

He attended the theological Colloquy at Marburg (Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 1529) in the hope of bringing about a union with the German Lutherans against the common foe at Rome. But Luther refused his hand of fellowship, and would not tolerate a theory of the Lord’s Supper which he regarded as a dangerous heresy.270

While at Marburg, Zwingli made the personal acquaintance of the Landgraf, Philip of Hesse, and the fugitive Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who admired him, and sympathized with his theology as far as they understood it, but cared still more for their personal and political interests. He conceived with them the bold idea of a politico-ecclesiastical alliance of Protestant states and cities for the protection of religious liberty against the combined forces of the papacy and the empire which threatened that liberty. Charles V. had made peace with Clement VII., June 29, 1529, and crossed the Alps in May, 1530, on his way to the Diet of Augsburg, offering to the Protestants bread with one hand, but concealing a stone in the other. Zwingli carried on a secret correspondence with Philip of Hesse from April 22, 1529, till Sept. 10, 1531.271  He saw in the Roman empire the natural ally of the Roman papacy, and would not have lamented its overthrow.272  Being a republican Swiss, he did not share in the loyal reverence of the monarchical Germans for their emperor. But all he could reasonably aim at was to curb the dangerous power of the emperor by strengthening the Protestant alliance. Further he did not go.273

He tried to draw into this alliance the republic of Venice and the kingdom of France, but failed. These powers were jealous of the grasping ambition of the house of Habsburg, but had no sympathy with evangelical reform. Francis I. was persecuting the Protestants at that very time in his own country.

It is dangerous to involve religion in entangling political alliances. Christ and the Apostles kept aloof from secular complications, and confined themselves to preaching the ethics of politics. Zwingli, with the best intentions, overstepped the line of his proper calling, and was doomed to bitter disappointment. Even Philip of Hesse, who pushed him into this net, grew cool, and joined the Lutheran League of Smalcald (1530), which would have nothing to do with the Protestants of Switzerland.

§ 45. Zwingli’s Last Theological Labors. His Confessions of Faith.

During these fruitless political negotiations Zwingli never lost sight of his spiritual vocation. He preached and wrote incessantly; he helped the reform movement in every direction; he attended synods at Frauenfeld (May, 1530), at St. Gall (December, 1530), and Toggenburg (April, 1531); he promoted the organization and discipline of the Reformed churches, and developed great activity as an author. Some of his most important theological works—a commentary on the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, his treatise on Divine Providence, and two Confessions of Faith—belong to the last two years of his life.

He embraced the opportunity offered by the Diet of Augsburg to send a printed Confession of Faith to Charles V., July 8, 1530.274  But it was treated with contempt, and not even laid before the Diet. Dr. Eck wrote a hasty reply, and denounced Zwingli as a man who did his best to destroy religion in Switzerland, and to incite the people to rebellion.275  The Lutherans were anxious to conciliate the emperor, and repudiated all contact with Zwinglians and Anabaptists.276

A few months before his death (July, 1531) he wrote, at the request of his friend Maigret, the French ambassador at Zürich, a similar Confession addressed to King Francis I., to whom he had previously dedicated his "Commentary on the True and False Religion" (1524).277  In this Confession he discusses some of the chief points of controversy,—God and his Worship, the Person of Christ, Purgatory, the Real Presence, the Virtue of the Sacraments, the Civil Power, Remission of Sin, Faith and Good Works, Eternal Life,—and added an Appendix on the Eucharist and the Mass. He explains apologetically and polemically his doctrinal position in distinction from the Romanists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists. He begins with God as the ultimate ground of faith and only object of worship, and closes with an exhortation to the king to give the gospel free course in his kingdom. In the section on Eternal Life he expresses more strongly than ever his confident hope of meeting in heaven not only the saints of the Old and the New Dispensation from Adam down to the Apostles, but also the good and true and noble men of all nations and generations.278

This liberal extension of Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s salvation beyond the limits of the visible Church, although directly opposed to the traditional belief of the necessity of water baptism for salvation, was not altogether new. Justin Martyr, Origen, and other Greek fathers saw in the scattered truths of the heathen poets and philosophers the traces of the pre-Christian revelation of the Logos, and in the philosophy of the Greeks a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. The humanists of the school of Erasmus recognized a secondary inspiration in the classical writings, and felt tempted to pray: "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis."  Zwingli was a humanist, but he had no sympathy with Pelagianism. On the contrary, as we have shown previously, he traced salvation to God’s sovereign grace, which is independent of ordinary means, and he first made a clear distinction between the visible and the invisible Church. He did not intend, as he has been often misunderstood, to assert the possibility of salvation without Christ. "Let no one think," he wrote to Urbanus Rhegius (a preacher at Augsburg), "that I lower Christ; for whoever comes to God comes to him through Christ .... The word, ’He who believeth not will be condemned,’ applies only to those who can hear the gospel, but not to children and heathen .... I openly confess that all infants are saved by Christ, since grace extends as far as sin. Whoever is born is saved by Christ from the curse of original sin. If he comes to the knowledge of the law and does the works of the law (Rom. 2:14, 26), he gives evidence of his election. As Christians we have great advantages by the knowledge of the gospel."  He refers to the case of Cornelius, who was pious before his baptism; and to the teaching of Paul, who made the circumcision of the heart, and not the circumcision of the flesh, the criterion of the true Israelite (Rom. 2:28, 29).279

The Confession to Francis I. was the last work of Zwingli. It was written three months before his death, and published five years later (1536) by Bullinger, who calls it his "swan song."  The manuscript is preserved in the National Library of Paris, but it is doubtful whether the king of France ever saw it. Calvin dedicated to him his Institutes, with a most eloquent preface, but with no better success. Charles V. and Francis I. were as deaf to such appeals as the emperors of heathen Rome were to the Apologies of Justin Martyr and Tertullian. Had Francis listened to the Swiss Reformers, the history of France might have taken a different course.

§ 46. The Second War of Cappel. 1531.

Egli: Die Schlacht von Cappel, 1531. Zürich, 1873. Comp. the Lit. quoted § 42.

The political situation of Switzerland grew more and more critical. The treaty of peace was differently understood. The Forest Cantons did not mean to tolerate Protestantism in their own territory, and insulted the Reformed preachers; nor would they concede to the local communities in the bailiwicks (St. Gall, Toggenburg, Thurgau, the Rheinthal) the right to introduce the Reformation by a majority vote; while the Zürichers insisted upon both, and yet they probibited the celebration of the mass in their own city and district. The Roman Catholic Cantons made new disloyal approaches to Austria, and sent a deputation to Charles V. at Augsburg which was very honorably received. The fugitive abbot of St. Gall also appeared with an appeal for aid to his restoration. The Zürichers were no less to blame for seeking the foreign aid of Hesse, Venice, and France. Bitter charges and counter-charges were made at the meetings of the Swiss Diet.280

The crisis was aggravated by an international difficulty. Graubünden sent deputies to the Diet with an appeal for aid against the Chatelan of Musso and the invasion of the Valtellina by Spanish troops. The Reformed Cantons favored co-operation, the Roman Catholic Cantons refused it. The expedition succeeded, the castle of Musso was demolished, and the Grisons took possession of the Valtellina (1530–32).

Zwingli saw no solution of the problem except in an honest, open war, or a division of the bailiwicks among the Cantons according to population, claiming two-thirds for Zürich and Bern. These bailiwicks were, as already remarked, the chief bone of contention. But Bern advocated, instead of war, a blockade of the Forest Cantons. This was apparently a milder though actually a more cruel course. The Waldstätters in their mountain homes were to be cut off from all supplies of grain, wine, salt, iron, and steel, for which they depended on their richer Protestant neighbors.281  Zwingli protested. "If you have a right," he said in the pulpit, "to starve the Five Cantons to death, you have a right to attack them in open war. They will now attack you with the courage of desperation."  He foresaw the disastrous result. But his protest was in vain. Zürich yielded to the counsel of Bern, which was adopted by the Protestant deputies, May 15, 1531.

The decision of the blockade was communicated to the Forest Cantons, and vigorously executed, Zürich taking the lead. All supplies of provision from Zürich and Bern and even from the bailiwicks of St. Gall, Toggenburg, Sargans, and the Rheinthal were withheld. The previous year had been a year of famine and of a wasting epidemic (the sweating sickness). This year was to become one of actual starvation. Old men, innocent women and children were to suffer with the guilty. The cattle was deprived of salt. The Waldstätters were driven to desperation. Their own confederates refused them the daily bread, forgetful of the Christian precept, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:20, 21).

Zwingli spent the last months before his death in anxiety and fear. His counsel had been rejected, and yet he was blamed for all these troubles. He had not a few enemies in Zürich, who undermined his influence, and inclined more and more to the passive policy of Bern. Under these circumstances, he resolved to withdraw from the public service. On the 26th of July he appeared before the Great Council, and declared, "Eleven years have I preached to you the gospel, and faithfully warned you against the dangers which threaten the confederacy if the Five Cantons—that is, those who hate the gospel and live on foreign pensions—are allowed to gain the mastery. But you do not heed my voice, and continue to elect members who sympathize with the enemies of the gospel. And yet ye make me responsible for all this misfortune. Well, I herewith resign, and shall elsewhere seek my support."

He left the hall with tears. His resignation was rejected and withdrawn. After three days he appeared again before the Great Council, and declared that in view of their promise of improvement he would stand by them till death, and do his best, with God’s help. He tried to persuade the Bernese delegates at a meeting in Bremgarten in the house of his friend, Henry Bullinger, to energetic action, but in vain. "May God protect you, dear Henry; remain faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and his Church."

These were the last words he spoke to his worthy successor. As he left, a mysterious personage, clothed in a snow-white robe, suddenly appeared, and after frightening the guards at the gate plunged into the water, and vanished. He had a strong foreboding of an approaching calamity, and did not expect to survive it. Halley’s comet, which returns every seventy-six years, appeared in the skies from the middle of August to the 3d of September, burning like the fire of a furnace, and pointing southward with its immense tail of pale yellow color. Zwingli saw in it the sign of war and of his own death. He said to a friend in the graveyard of the minster (Aug. 10), as he gazed at the ominous star, "It will cost the life of many an honorable man and my own. The truth and the Church will suffer, but Christ will never forsake us."282  Vadian of St. Gall likewise regarded the comet as a messenger of God’s wrath; and the famous Theophrastus, who was at that time in St. Gall, declared that it foreboded great bloodshed and the death of illustrious men. It was then the universal opinion, shared also by Luther and Melanchthon, that comets, meteors, and eclipses were fireballs of an angry God. A frantic woman near Zürich saw blood springing from the earth all around her, and rushed into the street with the cry, "Murder, murder!"  The atmosphere was filled with apprehensions of war and bloodshed. The blockade was continued, and all attempts at a compromise failed.

The Forest Cantons had only one course to pursue. The law of self-preservation drove them to open war. It was forced upon them as a duty. Fired by indignation against the starvation policy of their enemies, and inspired by love for their own families, the Waldstätters promptly organized an army of eight thousand men, and marched to the frontier of Zürich between Zug and Cappel, Oct. 9, 1531.

The news brought consternation and terror to the Zürichers. The best opportunity had passed. Discontent and dissension paralyzed vigorous action. Frightful omens demoralized the people. Zürich, which two years before might easily have equipped an army of five thousand, could now hardly collect fifteen hundred men against the triple force of the enemy, who had the additional advantage of fighting for life and home.

Zwingli would not forsake his flock in this extreme danger. He mounted his horse to accompany the little army to the battlefield with the presentiment that he would never return. The horse started back, like the horse of Napoleon when he was about to cross the Niemen. Many regarded this as a bad omen; but Zwingli mastered the animal, applied the spur, and rode to Cappel, determined to live or to die with the cause of the Reformation.

The battle raged several hours in the afternoon of the eleventh of October, and was conducted by weapons and stones, after the manner of the Swiss, and with much bravery on both sides. After a stubborn resistance, the Zürichers were routed, and lost the flower of their citizens, over five hundred men, including seven members of the Small Council, nineteen members of the Great Council of the Two Hundred, and several pastors who had marched at the head of their flocks.283

§ 47. The Death of Zwingli.

Mörikofer, II. 414–420.—Egli, quoted on p. 179.—A. Erichson: Zwingli’s Tod und dessen Beurtheilung durch Zeitgenosen. Strassburg, 1883.

Zwingli himself died on the battlefield, in the prime of manhood, aged forty-seven years, nine months, and eleven days, and with him his brother-in-law, his stepson, his son-in-law, and his best friends. He made no use of his weapons, but contented himself with cheering the soldiers.284  "Brave men," he said (according to Bullinger), "fear not!  Though we must suffer, our cause is good. Commend your souls to God: he can take care of us and ours. His will be done."

Soon after the battle had begun, he stooped down to console a dying soldier, when a stone was hurled against his head by one of the Waldstätters and prostrated him to the ground. Rising again, he received several other blows, and a thrust from a lance. Once more he uplifted his head, and, looking at the blood trickling from his wounds, he exclaimed:  What matters this misfortune?  They may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul."  These were his last words.285

He lay for some time on his back under a pear-tree (called the Zwingli-Baum) in a meadow, his hands folded as in prayer, and his eyes steadfastly turned to heaven.286

The stragglers of the victorious army pounced like hungry vultures upon the wounded and dying. Two of them asked Zwingli to confess to a priest, or to call upon the dear saints for their intercession. He shook his head twice, and kept his eyes still fixed on the heavens above. Then Captain Vokinger of Unterwalden, one of the foreign mercenaries, against whom the Reformer had so often lifted his voice, recognized him by the torch-light, and killed him with the, sword, exclaiming, "Die, obstinate heretic."287

There he lay during the night. On the next morning the people gathered around the dead, and began to realize the extent of the victory. Everybody wanted to see Zwingli. Chaplain Stocker of Zug, who knew him well, made the remark that his face had the same fresh and vigorous expression as when he kindled his hearers with the fire of eloquence from the pulpit. Hans Schönbrunner, an ex-canon of Fraumünster in Zürich, as he passed the corpse of the Reformer, with Chaplain Stocker, burst into tears, and said, "Whatever may have been thy faith, thou hast been an honest patriot. May God forgive thy sins."288  He voiced the sentiment of the better class of Catholics.

But the fanatics and foreign mercenaries would not even spare the dead. They decreed that his body should be quartered for treason and then burnt for heresy, according to the Roman and imperial law. The sheriff of Luzern executed the barbarous sentence. Zwingli’s ashes were mingled with the ashes of swine, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.289

The news of the disaster at Cappel spread terror among the citizens of Zürich. "Then," says Bullinger, "arose a loud and horrible cry of lamentation and tears, bewailing and groaning."

On no one fell the sudden stroke with heavier weight than on the innocent widow of Zwingli: she had lost, on the same day, her husband, a son, a brother, a son-in-law, a brother-in-law, and her most intimate friends. She remained alone with her weeping little children, and submitted in pious resignation to the mysterious will of God. History is silent about her grief; but it has been vividly and touchingly described in the Zürich dialect by Martin Usteri in a poem for the tercentenary Reformation festival in Zürich (1819).290

Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, took the afflicted widow into his house, and treated her as a member of his family. She survived her husband seven years, and died in peace.

A few steps from the pear-tree where Zwingli breathed his last, on a slight elevation, in view of the old church and abbey of Cappel, of the Rigi, Pilatus, and the more distant snow-capped Alps, there arises a plain granite monument, erected in 1838, mainly by the exertions of Pastor Esslinger, with suitable Latin and German inscriptions.291

A few weeks after Zwingli, his friend Oecolampadius died peacefully in his home at Basel (Nov. 24, 1531). The enemies spread the rumor that he had committed suicide. They deemed it impossible that an arch-heretic could die a natural death.292

§ 48. Reflections on the Disaster at Cappel.

We need not wonder that the religious and political enemies of Zwingli interpreted the catastrophe at Cappel as a signal judgment of God and a punishment for heresy. It is the tendency of superstition in all ages to connect misfortune with a particular sin. Such an uncharitable interpretation of Providence is condemned by the example of Job, the fate of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the express rebuke of the disciples by our Saviour in the case of the man born blind (John 9:31). But it is found only too often among Christians. It is painful to record that Luther, the great champion of the liberty of conscience, under the influence of his mediaeval training, and unmindful of the adage, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, surpassed even the most virulent Catholics in the abuse of Zwingli after his death. It is a sad commentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer.293

The faithful friends of evangelical freedom and progress in Switzerland revered Zwingli as a martyr, and regarded the defeat at Cappel as a wholesome discipline or a blessing in disguise. Bullinger voiced their sentiments. "The victory of truth," he wrote after the death of his teacher and friend, "stands alone in God’s power and will, and is not bound to person or time. Christ was crucified, and his enemies imagined they had conquered; but forty years afterwards Christ’s victory became manifest in the destruction of Jerusalem. The truth conquers through tribulation and trial. The strength of the Christians is shown in weakness. Therefore, beloved brethren in Germany, take no offence at our defeat, but persevere in the Word of God, which has always won the victory, though in its defence the holy prophets, apostles, and martyrs suffered persecution and death. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. Victory will follow in time. A thousand years before the eyes of the Lord are but as one day. He, too, is victorious who suffers and dies for the sake of truth.294

It is vain to speculate on mere possibilities. But it is more than probable that a victory of the Protestants, at that time would have been in the end more injurious to their cause than defeat. The Zürichers would have forced the Reformation upon the Forest Cantons and all the bailiwicks, and would thereby have provoked a reaction which, with the aid of Austria and Spain and the counter-Reformation of the papacy, might have ended in the destruction of Protestantism, as it actually did in the Italian dependencies of Switzerland and the Grisons, in Italy, Spain, and Bohemia.

It was evidently the will of Providence that in Switzerland, as well as in Germany, both Churches, the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical, should co-exist, and live in mutual toleration and useful rivalry for a long time to come.

We must judge past events in the light of subsequent events and final results. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

The death of Zwingli is a heroic tragedy. He died for God and his country. He was a martyr of religious liberty and of the independence of Switzerland. He was right in his aim to secure the freedom of preaching in all the Cantons and bailiwicks, and to abolish the military pensions which made the Swiss tributary to foreign masters. But he had no right to coërce the Catholics and to appeal to the sword. He was mistaken in the means, and he anticipated the proper time. It took nearly three centuries before these reforms could be executed.

In 1847 the civil war in Switzerland was renewed in a different shape and under different conditions. The same Forest Cantons which had combined against the Reformation and for the foreign pensions, and had appealed to the aid of Austria, formed a confederacy within the confederacy (Sonderbund) against modern political liberalism, and again entered into an alliance with Austria; but at this time they were defeated by the federal troops under the wise leadership of General Dufour of Geneva, with very little bloodshed.295  In the year 1848 while the revolution raged in other countries, the Swiss Diet quickly remodelled the constitution, and transformed the loose confederacy of independent Cantons into a federal union, after the model of the United States, with a representation of the people (in the Nationalrath) and a central government, acting directly upon the people. The federal constitution of 1848 guaranteed "the free exercise of public worship to the recognized Confessions" (i.e. the Roman Catholic and Reformed); the Revised Constitution of 1874 extended this freedom, within the limits of morality and public safety, to all other denominations; only the order of the Jesuits was excluded, for political reasons.

This liberty goes much further than Zwingli’s plan, who would have excluded heretical sects. There are now, on the one hand, Protestant churches at Luzern, Baar, Brunnen, in the very heart of the Five Cantons (besides the numerous Anglican Episcopal, Scotch Presbyterian, and other services in all the Swiss summer resorts); and on the other hand, Roman Catholic churches in Zürich, Bern, Basel, Geneva, where the mass was formerly rigidly prohibited.

As regards the foreign military service which had a tendency to denationalize the Swiss, Zwingli’s theory has completely triumphed. The only relic of that service is the hundred Swiss guards, who, with their picturesque mediaeval uniform, guard the pope and the Vatican. They are mostly natives of the Five Forest Cantons.

Thus history explains and rectifies itself, and fulfils its promises.

NOTES.

There is a striking correspondence between the constitution of the old Swiss Diet and the constitution of the old American Confederacy, as also between the modern Swiss constitution and that of the United States. The Swiss Diet seems to have furnished an example to the American Confederacy, and the Congress of the United States was a model to the Swiss Diet in 1848. The legislative power of Switzerland is vested in the Assembly of the Confederacy (Bundesversammlung) or Congress, which consists of the National Council (Nationalrath) or House of Representatives, elected by the people, one out of twenty thousand,—and the Council of Cantons (Ständerath) or Senate, composed of forty-four delegates of the twenty-two Cantons (two from each) and corresponding to the old Diet. The executive power is exercised by the Council of the Confederacy (Bundesrath), which consists of seven members, and is elected every three years by the two branches of the legislature, one of them acting as President (Bundespräsident) for the term of one year (while the President of the United States is chosen by the people for four years, and selects his own cabinet. Hence the head of the Swiss Confederacy has very little power for good or evil, and is scarcely known). To the Supreme Court of the United States corresponds the Bundesgericht, which consists of eleven judges elected by the legislature for three years, and decides controversies between the Cantons. Comp. Bluntschli’s Geschichte des Schweizerischen Bundesrechts, 1875; Rüttimann, Das nordamerikanisehe Bundes-staatsrecht verglichen mit den politischen Einrichtungen der Schweiz, Zürich, 1867–72, 2 vols.; and Sir Francis O. Adams and C. D. Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, French translation with notes and additions by Henry G. Loumyer, and preface by L. Ruchonnet, Geneva, 1890.

The provisions of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland, May 29, 1874, in regard to religion, are as follows: —

Abschnitt I. Art. 49. "Die Glaubens und Gewissensfreiheit ist unverletzlich.

Niemand darf zur Theilnahme an einer Religionsgenossenschaft, oder an einem religiösen Unterricht, oder zur Vornahme einer religiösen Handlung gezwungen, oder wegen Glaubensansichten mit Strafen irgend welcher Art belegt werden....

Art. 50. Die freie Ausübung gottesdienstlicher Handlungen ist innerhalb der Schranken der Sittlichkeit und der öffentlichen Ordnung gewährleistet ....

Art. 51. Der Orden der Jesuiten und die ihm affiliirten Gesellschaften dürfen in keinem Theile der Schweiz Aufnahme finden, und es ist ihren Gliedern jede Wirksamkeit in Kirche und Schule untersagt."

The same Constitution forbids the civil and military officers of the Confederation to receive pensions or titles or decorations from any foreign government.

I. Art. 12. "Die Mitglieder der Bundesbehörden, die eidgenössischen Civilund Militärbeamten und die eidgenössischen Repräsentanten oder Kommissariendürfen von auswärtigen Regierungen weder Pensionen oder Gehalte, noch Titel, Geschenke oder Orden annehmen."

§ 49. The Second Peace of Cappel. November, 1531.

Besides the works already quoted, see Werner Biel’s account of the immediate consequences of the war of Cappel in the "Archiv für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte" (Rom. Cath.), vol. III. 641–680. He was at that time the secretary of the city of Zürich. The articles of the Peace in Hottinger, Schweizergeschichte, VII. 497 sqq., and in Bluntschli, l.c. II. 269–276 (comp. I. 332 sqq.).

Few great battles have had so much effect upon the course of history as the little battle of Cappel. It arrested forever the progress of the Reformation in German Switzerland, and helped to check the progress of Protestantism in Germany. It encouraged the Roman Catholic reaction, which soon afterwards assumed the character of a formidable Counter-Reformation. But, while the march of Protestantism was arrested in its original homes, it made new progress in French Switzerland, in France, Holland, and the British Isles.

King Ferdinand of Austria gave the messenger of the Five Cantons who brought him the news of their victory at Cappel, fifty guilders, and forthwith informed his brother Charles V. at Brussels of the fall of "the great heretic Zwingli," which he thought was the first favorable event for the faith of the Catholic Church. The Emperor lost no time to congratulate the Forest Cantons on their victory, and to promise them his own aid and the aid of the pope, of his brother, and the Catholic princes, in case the Protestants should persevere in their opposition. The pope had already sent men and means for the support of his party.

The disaster of Cappel was a prelude to the disaster of Mühlberg on the Elbe, where Charles V. defeated the Smalcaldian League of the Lutheran princes, April 24, 1547. Luther was spared the humiliation. The victorious emperor stood on his grave at Wittenberg, but declined to make war upon the dead by digging up and burning his bones, as he was advised to do by his Spanish generals.

The war of Cappel was continued for a few weeks. Zürich rallied her forces as best she could. Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen sent troops, but rather reluctantly, and under the demoralizing effect of defeat. There was a want of harmony and able leadership in the Protestant camp. The Forest Cantons achieved another victory on the Gubel (Oct. 24), and plundered and wasted the territory of Zürich; but as the winter approached, and as they did not receive the promised aid from Austria, they were inclined to peace. Bern acted as mediator.

The second religious Peace (the so-called Zweite Landsfriede) was signed Nov. 20, 1531,296 between the Five Forest Cantons and the Zürichers, on the meadows of Teynikon, near Baar, in the territory of Zug, and confirmed Nov. 24 at Aarau by the consent of Bern, Glarus, Freiburg, and Appenzell. It secured mutual toleration, but with a decided advantage to the Roman Catholics.

The chief provisions of the eight articles as regards religion were these: —

1. The Five Cantons and their associates are to be left undisturbed in their "true, undoubted, Christian faith"; the Zürichers and their associates may likewise retain their "faith," but with the exception of Bremgarten, Mellingen, Rapperschwil, Toggenburg, Gaster, and Wesen. Legal toleration or parity was thus recognized, but in a manner which implies a slight reproach of the Reformed creed as a departure from the truth. Mutual recrimination was again prohibited, as in 1529.297

2. Both parties retain their rights and liberties in the common bailiwicks: those who had accepted the new faith might retain it; but those who preferred the old faith should be free to return to it, and to restore the mass, and the images. In mixed congregations the church property is to be divided according to population.

Zürich was required to give up her league with foreign cities, as the Five Cantons had been compelled in 1529 to break their alliance with Austria. Thus all leagues with foreign powers, whether papal or Protestant, were forbidden in Switzerland as unpatriotic. Zürich had to refund the damages of two hundred and fifty crowns for war expenses, and one hundred crowns for the family of Kaiser, which had been imposed upon the Forest Cantons in 1529. Bern agreed in addition to pay three thousand crowns for injury to property in the territory of Zug.

The two treaties of peace agree in the principle of toleration (as far as it was understood in those days, and forced upon the two parties by circumstances), but with the opposite application to the neutral territory of the bailiwicks, where the Catholic minority was protected against further aggression. The treaty of 1529 meant a toleration chiefly in the interest and to the advantage of Protestantism; the treaty of 1531, a toleration in the interest of Romanism.

§ 50. The Roman Catholic Reaction.

The Romanists reaped now the full benefit of their victory. They were no longer disturbed by the aggressive movements of Protestant preachers, and they regained much of the lost ground in the bailiwicks.

Romanism was restored in Rapperschwil and Gaster. The abbot of St. Gall regained his convent and heavy damages from the city; Toggenburg had to acknowledge his authority, but a portion of the people remained Reformed. Thurgau and the Rheinthal had to restore the convents. Bremgarten 22 and Mellingen had to pledge themselves to re-introduce the mass and the images. In Glarus, the Roman Catholic minority acquired several churches and preponderating influence in the public affairs of the Canton. In Solothurn, the Reformation was suppressed, in spite of the majority of the population, and about seventy families were compelled to emigrate. In the Diet, the Roman Cantons retained a plurality of votes.

The inhabitants of the Forest Cantons, full of gratitude, made a devout pilgrimage to St. Mary of Einsiedeln, where Zwingli had copied the Epistles of St. Paul from the first printed edition of the Greek Testament in 1516, and where he, Leo Judae, and Myconius had labored in succession for a reformation of abuses, with the consent of Diepold von Geroldseck. That convent has remained ever since a stronghold of Roman Catholic piety and superstition in Switzerland, and attracts as many devout pilgrims as ever to the shrine of the "Black Madonna."  It has one of the largest printing establishments, which sends prayer-books, missals, breviaries, diurnals, rituals, pictures, crosses, and crucifixes all over the German-speaking Catholic world.298

Bullinger, who succeeded Zwingli, closes his "History of the Reformation" mournfully, yet not without resignation and hope. "All manner of tyranny and overbearance," he says, "is restored and strengthened, and an insolent régime is working the ruin of the confederacy. Wonderful are the counsels of the Lord. But he doeth all things well. To him be glory and praise!  Amen."

NOTE ON THE CONVENT OF EINSIEDELN.

(Comp. § 8, pp. 29 sqq.)

On a visit to Einsiedeln, June 12, 1890, I saw in the church a number of pilgrims kneeling before the wonder-working statue of the Black Madonna. The statue is kept in a special chapel, is coal-black, clothed in a silver garment, crowned with a golden crown, surrounded by gilt ornaments, and holding the Christ-Child in her arms. The black color is derived by some from the smoke of fire which repeatedly consumed the church, while the statue is believed to have miraculously escaped; but the librarian (Mr. Meier) told me that it was from the smoke of candles, and that the face of the Virgin is now painted with oil.

The library of the abbey numbers 40,000 volumes (including 900 incunabula), among them several copies of the first print of Zwingli’s Commentary on the true and false Religion, and other books of his. In the picture-gallery are life-size portraits of King Frederick William IV. of Prussia, his brother, the Prince of Prussia (afterwards Emperor William I. of Germany), of Napoleon III. and Eugenie, of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and his wife, and their unfortunate son who committed suicide in 1889, and of Pope Pius IX. These portraits were presented to the convent on its tenth centenary in 1861. The convent was founded by St. Meinhard, a hermit, in the ninth century, or rather by St. Benno, who died there in 940. The abbey has now nearly 100 Benedictine monks, a gymnasium with 260 pupils of twelve to twenty years, a theological seminary, and two filial institutions in Indiana and Arkansas. The church is an imposing structure, after the model of St. Peter’s in Rome, surrounded by colonnades. The costly chandelier is a present of Napoleon III. (1865).

The modern revival of Romanism, and the railroad from Wädensweil, opened 1877, have greatly increased the number of pilgrims. Goethe says of Einsiedeln: "Es muss ernste Betrachtungen erregen, dass ein einzelner Funke von Sittlichkeit und Gottesfurcht hier ein immerbrennendes und leuchtendes Flämmchen angezündet, zu welchem glaübige Seelen mit grosser Beschwerlichkeit heranpilgern, um an dieser heiligen Flamme auch ihr Kerzlein anzuzünden. Wie dem auch sei, so deutet es auf ein grenzenloses Bedürfniss der Menschheit nach gleichem Lichte, gleicher Wärme, wie es jener Erste im tiefsten Gefühle und sicherster Ueberzengung gehegt und genossen."

For a history of Einsiedeln, see Beschreibung des Klosters und der Wallfahrt Maria-Einsiedeln. Einsiedeln. Benziger & Co. 122 pp.

The wood-cut on p. 197 represents the abbey as it was before and at the time of Zwingli, and is a fair specimen of a rich mediaeval abbey, with church, dwellings for the brethren, library, school, and gardens. Einsiedeln lies in a dreary and sterile district, and derives its sole interest from this remarkable abbey.

§ 51. The Relative Strength of the Confessions in Switzerland.

We may briefly sum up the result of the Reformation in Switzerland as follows: —

Seven Cantons—Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Soluthurn (Soleur)—remained firm to the faith of their ancestors. Four Cantons, including the two strongest—Zürich, Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen—adopted the Reformed faith. Five Cantons—Glarus, St. Gall, Appenzell, Thurgau, and Aargau—are nearly equally divided between the two Confessions. Of the twenty-three subject towns and districts, only Morat and Granson became wholly Protestant, sixteen retained their former religion, and five were divided. In the Grisons nearly two-thirds of the population adopted the Zwinglian Reformation; but the Protestant gains in the Valtellina and Chiavenna were lost in the seventeenth century. Ticino and Wallis are Roman Catholic. In the French Cantons—Geneva, Canton de Vaud, and Neuchatel—the Reformation achieved a complete victory, chiefly through the labors of Calvin.

Since the middle of the sixteenth century the numerical relation of the two Churches has undergone no material change. Protestantism has still a majority of about half a million in a population of less than three millions. The Roman Catholic Church has considerably increased by immigration from Savoy and France, but has suffered some loss by the Old Catholic secession in 1870 under the lead of Bishop Herzog. The Methodists and Baptists are making progress chiefly in those parts where infidelity and indifferentism reign.

Each Canton still retains its connection with one or the other of the two Churches, and has its own church establishment; but the bond of union has been gradually relaxed, and religious liberty extended to dissenting communions, as Methodists, Baptists, Irvingites, and Old Catholics. The former exclusiveness is abolished, and the principle of parity or equality before the law is acknowledged in all the Cantons.

An impartial comparison between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Cantons reveals the same difference as exists between Southern and Northern Ireland, Eastern and Western Canada, and other parts of the world where the two Churches meet in close proximity. The Roman Catholic Cantons have preserved more historical faith and superstition, churchly habits and customs; the Protestant Cantons surpass them in general education and intelligence, wealth and temporal prosperity; while in point of morality both are nearly equal.

§ 52. Zwingli. Redivivus.

The last words of the dying Zwingli, "They may kill the body, but cannot kill the soul," have been verified in his case. His body was buried with his errors and defects, but his spirit still lives; and his liberal views on infant salvation, and the extent of God’s saving grace beyond the limits of the visible Church, which gave so much offence in his age, even to the Reformers, have become almost articles of faith in evangelical Christendom.

Ulrich Zwingli is, next to Martin Luther and John Knox, the most popular among the Reformers.299 He moved in sympathy with the common people; he spoke and wrote their language; he took part in their public affairs; he was a faithful pastor of the old and young, and imbedded himself in their affections; while Erasmus, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Beza, and Cranmer stood aloof from the masses. He was a man of the people and for the people, a typical Swiss; as Luther was a typical German. Both fairly represented the virtues and faults of their nation. Both were the best hated as well as the best loved men of their age, according to the faith which divided, and still divides, their countrymen.

Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli have been honored by a fourth centennial commemoration of their birth,—the one in 1883, the other in 1884. Such honor is almost without a precedent, at least in the history of theology.300

The Zwingli festival was not merely an echo of the Luther festival, but was observed throughout the Reformed churches of Europe and America with genuine enthusiasm, and gave rise to an extensive Zwingli literature. It is in keeping with the generous Christian spirit which the Swiss Reformer showed towards the German Reformer at Marburg, that many Reformed churches in Switzerland, as well as elsewhere, heartily united in the preceding jubilee of Luther, forgetting the bitter controversies of the sixteenth century, and remembering gratefully his great services to the cause of truth and liberty.301

In the following year (Aug. 25, 1885), a bronze statue was erected to Zwingli at Zürich in front of the Wasserkirche and City Library, beneath the minster where be preached. It represents the Reformer as a manly figure, looking trustfully up to heaven, with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other,—a combination true to history. Dr. Alexander Schweizer, one of the ablest Swiss divines (d. July 3, 1888), whose last public service was the Zwingli oration in the University, Jan. 7, 1884, protested against the sword, and left the committee on the monument. Dr. Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, the poet of the occasion, changed the sword of Zwingli, with poetic ingenuity, into the sword of Vokinger, by which he was slain.302  Antistes Finsler, in his oration, gave the sword a double meaning, as in the case of Paul, who is likewise represented with the sword, namely, the sword by which he was slain, and the sword of the spirit with which he still is fighting; while at the same time it distinguishes Zwingli from Luther, and shows him as the patriot and statesman.

The whole celebration—the orderly enthusiasm of the people, the festive addresses of representative men of Church and State, the illumination of the city and the villages around the beautiful lake—bore eloquent witness to the fact that Zwingli has impressed his image indelibly upon the memory of German Switzerland. Although his descendants are at present about equally divided between orthodox conservatives and rationalistic "reformers" (as they call themselves), they forgot their quarrels on that day, and cordially united in tributes to the abiding merits of him who, whatever were his faults, has emancipated the greater part of Switzerland from the tyranny of popery, and led them to the fresh fountain of the teaching and example of Christ.303

CHAPTER VI.

THE PERIOD OF CONSOLIDATION.

§ 53. Literature.

Supplementary to the literature in § 4, pp. 12 sqq.

I. Manuscript sources preserved in the City Library of Zürich, which was founded 1629, and contains c. 132,000 printed vols. and 3,500 MSS. See Salomon Vögelin: Geschichte der Wasserkirche und der Stadtbibliothek in Zürich. Zürich, 1848 (pp. 110 and 123). The Wasserkirche (capella aquatica) is traced back to Charles the Great. It contains also the remains of the lake dwellings. The bronze statue of Zwingli stands in front of it. The Thesaurus Hottingerianus, a collection of correspondence made by the theologian, J. H. Hottinger, 55 vols., embraces the whole Bullinger correspondence, which has been much used, but never published in full.—The Simler Collection of 196 vols. fol., with double index of 62 vols. fol., contains correspondence, proclamations, pamphlets, official mandates, and other documents, chronologically arranged, very legible, on good paper. Johann Jacob Simler (1716–1788), professor and inspector of the theological college, spent the leisure hours of his whole life in the collection of papers and documents relating to the history of Switzerland, especially of the Reformation. This unique collection was acquired by the government, and presented to the City Library in 1792. It has often been used, and, though partly depreciated by more recent discoveries, is still a treasure-house of information. The Bullinger correspondence is found in the volumes from A.D. 1531–1575.—Acta Ecclesiastica intermixtis politicis et politico-ecclesiasticis Manuscripta ex ipsis fontibus hausta in variis fol. Tomis chronologice pro administratione Antistitii Turicensis in ordinem redacta. 33 vols. fol. Beautifully written. Comes down to the administration of Antistes Joh. Jak. Hess (1795–1798). Tom I. extends from 1519–1531; tom. II. contains a biography of Bullinger, with his likeness, and the acts during his administration.—The State Archives of the City and Canton Zürich.

II. Printed works. Joh. Conr. Füsslin: Beyträge zur Erläuterung der KirchenReformationsgeschichten des Schweitzerlandes. Zürich, 1741–1753. 5  Parts. Contains important documents relating to the Reformation in Zürich and the Anabaptists, the disputation at Ilanz, etc.—Simler’s Sammlung alter und neuer Urkunden. Zürich, 1760. 2 vols.—Joh. Jak. Hottinger (Prof. of Theol. and Canon of the Great Minster): Helvetische Kirchengeschichten vorstellend der Helvetiern ehemaliges Heidenthum, und durch die Gnade Gottes gefolgtes Christenthum, etc. Zürich, 1698–1729. 4 Theile 4°. 2d ed. 1737. A work of immense industry, in opposition to a Roman Catholic work of Caspar Lang (Einsiedeln, 1692). The third volume goes from 1616 to 1700, the fourth to 1728. Superseded by Wirz.—Ludwig Wirz: Helvetische Kirchengeschichte. Aus Joh. Jak. Hottingers älterem Werke und anderen Quellen neu bearbeitet.  Zürich, 1808–1819. 6 vols. The fifth volume is by Melchior Kirchhofer, who gives the later history of Zwingli from 1625, and the Reformation in the other Cantons.—Joh. Jak. Hottinger: Geschichte der Eidgenossen während der Zeiten der Kirchentrennung. Zürich, 1825 and 1829. 2 vols. This work forms vols. VI. and VII. of Joh. von Müller’s and Robert Glutz Blotzheim’s Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft. The second volume (p. 446 sqq.) treats of the period of Bullinger, and is drawn in part from the Simler Collection and the Archives of Zürich. French translation by L. Vulliemin: Histoire des Suisses à l’époque de la Réformation. Paris et Zurich, 1833. 2 vols. G. R. Zimmermann (Pastor of the Fraumünster and Decan): Die Zürcher Kirche von der Reformation bis zum dritten Reformationsjubilüum (1519–1819) nach der Reihenfolge der Zürcherischen Antistes. Zürich, 1878 (pp. 414). On Bullinger, see pp. 36–73. Based upon the Acta Ecclesiastica quoted above.—Joh. Strickler’s Actensammlung, previously noticed (p. 13), extends only to 1532.

On the Roman Catholic side comp. Archiv für die Schweiz. Reformationsgesch., noticed above, p. 13. The first volume (1868) contains Salat’s Chronik down to 1534; the second (1872), 135 papal addresses to the Swiss Diet, mostly of the sixteenth century (from Martin V. to Clement VIII.), documents referring to 1531, Roman and Venetian sources on the Swiss Reformation, etc.; vol. III. (1876), a catalogue of books on Swiss history (7–98), and a number of documents from the Archives of Luzern and other cities, including three letters of King Francis I. to the Catholic Cantons, and an account of the immediate consequences of the War of Cappel by Werner Beyel, at that time secretary of the city of Zürich (pp. 641–680).

§ 54. Heinrich Bullinger. 1504–1575.

I. Sources. Bullinger’s printed works (stated to be 150 by Scheuchzer in "Bibliotheca Helvetica," Zürich, 1733). His manuscript letters (mostly Latin) in the "Thesaurus Hottingerianus" and the "Simler Collection" of the City Library at Zürich.—The second volume of the Acta Ecclesiastica, quoted in § 53.—The Zürich Letters or the Correspondence of several English Bishops and others with some of the Helvetian Reformers, chiefly from the Archives Of Zurich, translated and edited for the "Parker Society" by Dr. Robinson, Cambridge (University Press), 2d ed. 1846 (pp. 576).

II. Salomon Hess: Leben Bullinger’s. Zürich, 1828–’29, 2 vols. Not very accurate.—*Carl Pestalozzi: Heinrich Bullinger. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Nach handschriftlichen und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld, 1858. Extracts from his writings, pp. 505–622. Pestalozzi has faithfully used the written and printed sources in the Stadtbibliothek and Archives of Zürich.—R. Christoffel: H. Bullinger und seine Gattin. 1875.—Justus Heer: Bullinger, in Herzog2, II. 779–794. A good summary.

Older biographical sketches by Ludwig Lavater (1576), Josias Simler (1575), W. Stucki (1575), etc. Incidental information about Bullinger in Hagenbach and other works on the Swiss Reformation, and in Meyer’s Die Gemeinde von Locarno, 1836, especially I. 198–216.

After the productive period of the Zwinglian Reformation, which embraced fifteen years, from 1516 to 1531, followed the period of preservation and consolidation under difficult circumstances. It required a man of firm faith, courage, moderation, patience, and endurance. Such a man was providentially equipped in the person of Heinrich Bullinger, the pupil, friend, and successor of Zwingli, and second Antistes of Zürich. He proved that the Reformation was a work of God, and, therefore, survived the apparent defeat at Cappel.

He was born July 18, 1504, at Bremgarten in Aargau, the youngest of five sons of Dean Bullinger, who lived, like many priests of those days, in illegitimate, yet tolerated, wedlock.304  The father resisted the sale of indulgences by Samson in 1518, and confessed, in his advanced age, from the pulpit, the doctrines of the Reformation (1529). In consequence of this act he lost his place. Young Henry was educated in the school of the Brethren of the Common Life at Emmerich, and in the University of Cologne. He studied scholastic and patristic theology. Luther’s writings and Melanchthon’s Loci led him to the study of the Bible and prepared him for a change.

He returned to Switzerland as Master of Arts, taught a school in the Cistercian Convent at Cappel from 1523 to 1529, and reformed the convent in agreement with the abbot, Wolfgang Joner. During that time he became acquainted with Zwingli, attended the Conference with the Anabaptists at Zürich, 1525, and the disputation at Bern, 1528. He married Anna Adlischweiler, a former nun, in 1529, who proved to be an excellent wife and helpmate. He accepted a call to Bremgarten as successor of his father.

After the disaster at Cappel, he removed to Zürich, and was unanimously elected by the Council and the citizens preacher of the Great Minster, Dec. 9, 1531. It was rumored that Zwingli himself, in the presentiment of his death, had designated him as his successor. No better man could have been selected. It was of vital importance for the Swiss churches that the place of the Reformer should be filled by a man of the same spirit, but of greater moderation and self-restraint.305

Bullinger now assumed the task of saving, purifying, and consolidating the life-work of Zwingli; and faithfully and successfully did he carry out this task. When he ascended the pulpit of the Great Minster in Dec. 23, 1531, many hearers thought that Zwingli had risen from the grave.306  He took a firm stand for the Reformation, which was in danger of being abandoned by timid men in the Council. He kept free from interference with politics, which had proved ruinous to Zwingli. He established a more independent, though friendly relation between Church and State. He confined himself to his proper vocation as preacher and teacher.

In the first years he preached six or seven times a week; after 1542 only twice, on Sundays and Fridays. He followed the plan of Zwingli in explaining whole books of the Scriptures from the pulpit. His sermons were simple, clear, and practical, and served as models for young preachers.

He was a most devoted pastor, dispensing counsel and comfort in every direction, and exposing even his life during the pestilence which several times visited Zürich. His house was open from morning till night to all who desired his help. He freely dispensed food, clothing, and money from his scanty income and contributions of friends, to widows and orphans, to strangers and exiles, not excluding persons of other creeds. He secured a decent pension for the widow of Zwingli, and educated two of his children with his own. He entertained persecuted brethren for weeks and months in his own house, or procured them places and means of travel.307

He paid great attention to education, as superintendent of the schools in Zürich. He filled the professorships in the Carolinum with able theologians, as Pellican, Bibliander, Peter Martyr. He secured a well-educated ministry. He prepared, in connection with Leo Judae, a book of church order, which was adopted by the Synod, Oct. 22, 1532, issued by authority of the burgomaster, the Small and the Great Council, and continued in force for nearly three hundred years. It provides the necessary rules for the examination, election, and duties of ministers (Predicanten) and deans (Decani), for semi-annual meetings of synods with clerical and lay representatives, and the power of discipline. The charges were divided into eight districts or chapters.308

Bullinger’s activity extended far beyond the limits of Zürich. He had a truly Catholic spirit, and stood in correspondence with all the Reformed Churches. Beza calls him "the common shepherd of all Christian Churches;" Pellican, "a man of God, endowed with the richest gifts of heaven for God’s honor and the salvation of souls."  He received fugitive Protestants from Italy, France, England, and Germany with open arms, and made Zürich an asylum of religious liberty. He thus protected Celio Secondo Curione, Bernardino Occhino, and Peter Martyr, and the immigrants from Locarno, and aided in the organization of an Italian congregation in Zürich.309  Following the example of Zwingli and Calvin, he appealed twice to the king of France for toleration in behalf of the Huguenots. He dedicated to Henry II. his book on Christian Perfection (1551), and to Francis II. his Instruction in the Christian Religion (1559). He sent deputations to the French court for the protection of the Waldenses, and the Reformed congregation in Paris.

The extent of Bullinger’s correspondence is astonishing. It embraces letters to and from all the distinguished Protestant divines of his age, as Calvin, Melanchthon, Bucer, Beza, Laski, Cranmer, Hooper, Jewel, and crowned heads who consulted him, as Henry VIII., Edward VI., of England, Queen Elizabeth, Henry II. of France, King Christian of Denmark, Philip of Hesse, and the Elector Frederick of the Palatinate.

Bullinger came into contact with the English Reformation from the time of Henry VIII. to the reign of Elizabeth, especially during the bloody reign of Mary, when many prominent exiles fled to Zürich, and found a fraternal reception under his hospitable roof. The correspondence of Hooper, Jewel, Sandys, Grindal, Parkhurst, Foxe, Cox, and other church dignitaries with Bullinger, Gwalter, Gessner, Simler, and Peter Martyr, is a noble monument of the spiritual harmony between the Reformed Churches of Switzerland and England in the Edwardian and Elizabethan era. Archbishop Cranmer invited Bullinger, together with Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bucer, to a conference in London, for the purpose of framing an evangelical union creed; and Calvin answered that for such a cause he would be willing to cross ten seas. Lady Jane Grey, who was beheaded in 1554, read Bullinger’s works, translated his book on marriage into Greek, consulted him about Hebrew, and addressed him with filial affection and gratitude. Her three letters to him are still preserved in Zürich. Bishop Hooper of Gloucester, who had enjoyed his hospitality in 1547, addressed him shortly before his martyrdom in 1554, as his "revered father and guide," and the best friend he ever had, and recommended his wife and two children to his care. Bishop Jewel, in a letter of May 22, 1559, calls him his "father and much esteemed master in Christ," thanks him for his "courtesy and kindness," which he and his friends experienced during the whole period of their exile, and informs him that the restoration of the Reformed religion under Elizabeth was largely due to his own "letters and recommendations;" adding that the queen refused to be addressed as the head of the Church of England, feeling that such honor belongs to Christ alone, and not to any human being. Bullinger’s death was lamented in England as a public calamity.310

Bullinger faithfully maintained the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Church against the Roman Catholics and Lutherans with moderation and dignity. He never returned the abuse of fanatics, and when, in 1548, the Interim drove the Lutheran preachers from the Swabian cities, he received them hospitably, even those who had denounced the Reformed doctrines from the pulpit. He represents the German-Swiss type of the Reformed faith in substantial agreement with a moderate Calvinism. He gave a full exposition of his theological views in the Second Helvetic Confession.

His theory of the sacrament was higher than that of Zwingli. He laid more stress on the objective value of the institution. We recognize, he wrote to Faber, a mystery in the Lord’s Supper; the bread is not common bread, but venerable, sacred, sacramental bread, the pledge of the spiritual real presence of Christ to those who believe. As the sun is in heaven, and yet virtually present on earth with his light and heat, so Christ sits in heaven, and yet efficaciously works in the hearts of all believers. When Luther, after Zwingli’s death, warned Duke Albert of Prussia and the people of Frankfort not to tolerate the Zwinglians, Bullinger replied by sending to the duke a translation of Ratramnus’ tract, De corpore et sanguine Domini, with a preface. He rejected the Wittenberg Concordia of 1536, because it concealed the Lutheran doctrine. He answered Luther’s atrocious attack on the Zwinglians (1545) by a clear, strong, and temperate statement; but Luther died soon afterwards (1546) without retracting his charges. When Westphal renewed the unfortunate controversy (1552), Bullinger supported Calvin in defending the Reformed doctrine, but counselled moderation.311  He and Calvin brought about a complete agreement on the sacramental question in the Consensus Tigurinus, which was adopted in 1549 at Zürich, in the presence of some members of the Council, and afterwards received the approval of the other Swiss Reformed churches.312

On the doctrine of Predestination, Bullinger did not go quite as far as Zwingli and Calvin, and kept within the infralapsarian scheme. He avoided to speak of the predestination of Adam’s fall, because it seemed irreconcilable with the justice of the punishment of sin.313  The Consensus Genevensis (1552), which contains Calvin’s rigorous view, was not signed by the pastors of Zürich. Theodor Bibliander, the father of biblical exegesis in Switzerland, and a forerunner of Arminianism, opposed it. He adhered to the semi-Pelagian theory of Erasmus, and was involved in a controversy with Peter Martyr, who was a strict Calvinist, and taught in Zürich since 1556. Bibliander was finally removed from his theological professorship (Feb. 8, 1560), but his salary was continued till his death (Nov. 26, 1564).314

On the subject of toleration and the punishment of heretics, Bullinger agreed with the prevailing theory, but favorably differed from the prevailing practice. He opposed the Anabaptists in his writings, as much as Zwingli, and, like Melanchthon, he approved of the unfortunate execution of Servetus, but he himself did not persecute. He tolerated Laelio Sozini, who quietly died at Zürich (1562), and Bernardino Occhino, who preached for some time to the Italian congregation in that city, but was deposed, without further punishment, for teaching Unitarian opinions and defending polygamy. In a book against the Roman Catholic Faber, Bullinger expresses the Christian and humane sentiment that no violence should be done to dissenters, and that faith is a free gift of God, which cannot be commanded or forbidden. He agreed with Zwingli’s extension of salvation to all infants dying in infancy and to elect heathen; at all events, he nowhere dissents from these advanced views, and published with approbation Zwingli’s last work, where they are most strongly expressed.315

Bullinger’s house was a happy Christian home. He liked to play with his numerous children and grandchildren, and to write little verses for them at Christmas, like Luther.316

When his son Henry, in 1553, went to Strassburg, Wittenberg, and Vienna to prosecute his theological studies, be wrote down for him wise rules of conduct, of which the following are the most important: 1) Fear God at all times, and remember that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. 2) Humble yourself before God, and pray to him alone through Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. 3) Believe firmly that God has done all for our salvation through his Son. 4) Pray above all things for strong faith active in love. 5) Pray that God may protect your good name and keep thee from sin, sickness, and bad company. 6) Pray for the fatherland, for your dear parents, benefactors, friends, and all men, for the spread of the Word of God; conclude always with the Lord’s Prayer, and use also the beautiful hymn, Te Deum laudamus [which he ascribes to Ambrose and Augustin]. 7) Be reticent, be always more willing to hear than to speak, and do not meddle with things which you do not understand. 8) Study diligently Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin, history, philosophy, and the sciences, but especially the New Testament, and read daily three chapters in the Bible, beginning with Genesis. 9) Keep your body clean and unspotted, be neat in your dress, and avoid above all things intemperance in eating and drinking. 10) Let your conversation be decent, cheerful, moderate, and free from all uncharitableness.317  He recommended him to Melanchthon, and followed his studies with letters full of fatherly care and affection.318  He kept his parents with him till their death, the widow of Zwingli (d. 1538), and two of her children, whom he educated with his own. Notwithstanding his scanty income, he declined all presents, or sent them to the hospitals. The whole people revered the venerable minister of noble features and white patriarchal beard.

His last days were clouded, like those of many faithful servants of God. The excess of work and care undermined his health. In 1562 he wrote to Fabricius at Coire: "I almost sink under the load of business and care, and feel so tired that I would ask the Lord to give me rest if it were not against his will."  The pestilence of 1564 and 1565 brought him to the brink of the grave, and deprived him of his wife, three daughters, and his brother-in-law. He bore these heavy strokes with Christian resignation. In the same two fatal years he lost his dearest friends, Calvin, Blaurer, Gessner, Froschauer, Bibliander, Fabricius, Farel. He recovered, and was allowed to spend several more years in the service of Christ. His youngest daughter, Dorothea, took faithful and tender care of his health. He felt lonely and homesick, but continued to preach and to write with the aid of pastor Lavater, his colleague and son-in-law. He preached his last sermon on Pentecost, 1575. He assembled, Aug. 26, all the pastors of the city and professors of theology around his sick-bed, assured them of his perseverance in the true apostolic and orthodox doctrine, recited the Apostles’ Creed, and exhorted them to purity of life, harmony among themselves, and obedience to the magistrates. He warned them against intemperance, envy, and hatred, thanked them for their kindness, assured them of his love, and closed with a prayer of thanksgiving and some verses of the hymns of Prudentius. Then he took each by the hand and took leave of them with tears, as Paul did from the elders at Ephesus. A few weeks afterwards he died, after reciting several Psalms (51, 16, and 42), the Lord’s Prayer, and other prayers, peacefully, in the presence of his family, Sept. 17, 1575. He was buried in the Great Minster, at the side of his beloved wife and his dear friend, Peter Martyr. According to his wish, Rudolph Gwalter, Zwingli’s son-in-law and his adopted son, was unanimously elected his successor. Four of his successors were trained under his care and labored in his spirit.

The writings of Bullinger are very numerous, mostly doctrinal and practical, adapted to the times, but of little permanent value. Scheuchzer numbers one hundred and fifty printed books of his. The Zürich City Library contains about one hundred, exclusive of translations and new editions. Many are extant only in manuscript. He wrote Latin commentaries on the New Testament (except the Apocalypse), numerous sermons on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Apocalypse. His Decades (five series of ten sermons each on the Decalogue, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Sacraments) were much esteemed and used in Holland and England. His work on the justifying grace of God was highly prized by Melanchthon. His History of the Swiss Reformation, written by his own hand, in two folio volumes, has been published in 1838–’40, in three volumes. His most important doctrinal work is the Second Helvetic Confession, which acquired symbolical authority.319

§ 55. Antistes Breitinger (1575–1645).

In the same year in which Bullinger died (1575), Johann Jakob Breitinger was born, who became his worthy successor as Antistes of Zürich (1613–1645).320  He called him a saint, and followed his example. He was one of the most eminent Reformed divines of his age. Thoroughly trained in the universities of Herborn, Marburg, Franeker, Heidelberg, and Basel, he gained the esteem and affection of his fellow-citizens as teacher, preacher, and devoted pastor. During the fearful pestilence of 1611 he visited the sick from morning till night at the risk of his life.

He attended as one of the Swiss delegates the Synod of Dort (1618 and 1619). He was deeply impressed with the learning, wisdom, and piety of that body, and fully agreed with its unjust and intolerant treatment of the Arminians.321  On his return (May 21, 1619) he was welcomed by sixty-four Zürichers, who rode to the borders of the Rhine to meet him. Yet, with all his firmness of conviction, he was opposed to confessional polemics in an intensely polemic age, and admired the good traits in other churches and sects, even the Jesuits. He combined with strict orthodoxy a cheerful temper, a generous heart, and active piety. He had an open ear for appeals from the poor and the numerous sufferers in the murder of the Valtellina (1620) and during the Thirty Years’ War. At his request, hospitals and orphan houses were founded and collections raised, which in the Minster alone, during eight years (1618–1628), exceeded fifty thousand pounds. He was in every way a model pastor, model churchman, and model statesman. Although be towered high above his colleagues, he disarmed envy and jealousy by his kindliness and Christian humility. Altogether he shines next to Zwingli and Bullinger as the most influential and useful Antistes of the Reformed Church of Zürich.322

§ 56. Oswald Myconius, Antistes of Basel.

I. Correspondence between Myconius and Zwingli in Zwingli’s Opera, vols. VII. and VIII. (28 letters of the former and 20 of the latter).—Correspondence with Bullinger in the Simler Collection.—Antiqu. Gernl., I. The Chronicle of Fridolin Ryff, ed. by W. Vischer (son), in the Basler Chroniken (vol. 1, Leipzig, 1872), extends from 1514 to 1541.

II. Melchior Kirchofer (of Schaffhausen): Oswald Myconius, Antistes der Baslerischen Kirche. Zürich, 1813 (pp. 387). Still very serviceable.—R. Hagenbach: Joh. Oecolampad und Oswald Myronius, die Reformatoren Basels. Elberfeld, 1859 (pp. 309–462). Also his Geschichte der ersten Basler Confession. Basel, 1828.—B. Riggenbach, in Herzog2, X. 403–405.

Oswald Myconius (1488–1552),323 a native of Luzern, an intimate friend of Zwingli, and successor of Oecolampadius, was to the Church of Basel what Bullinger was to the Church of Zürich,—a faithful preserver of the Reformed religion, but in a less difficult position and more limited sphere of usefulness. He spent his earlier life as classical teacher in Basel, Zürich, Luzern, Einsiedeln, and again in Zürich. His pupil, Thomas Plater, speaks highly of his teaching ability and success. Erasmus honored him with his friendship before he fell out with the Reformation.324

After the death of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, he moved to Basel as pastor of St. Alban (Dec. 22, 1531), and was elected Antistes or chief pastor of the Church of that city, and professor of New Testament exegesis in the university (August, 1532). He was not ordained, and had no academic degree, and refused to take one because Christ had forbidden his disciples to be called Rabbi (Matt. 23:8).325  He carried out the views of Oecolampadius on discipline, and maintained the independence of the Church in its relation to the State and the university. He had to suffer much opposition from Carlstadt, who, by his recommendation, became professor of theology in Basel (1534), and ended there his restless life (1541). He took special interest in the higher and lower schools. He showed hospitality to the numerous Protestants from France who, like Farel and Calvin, sought a temporary refuge in Basel. The English martyrologist, John Foxe, fled from the Marian persecution to Basel, finished and published there the first edition of his Book of Martyrs (1554).

On the doctrine of the Eucharist, Myconius, like Calvin after him, occupied a middle ground between Zwingli and Luther. He aided Bucer in his union movement which resulted in the adoption of the Wittenberg Concordia and a temporary conciliation of Luther with the Swiss (1536). He was suspected by the Zürichers of leaning too much to the Lutheran side, but he never admitted the corporal presence and oral manducation; he simply emphasized more than Zwingli the spiritual real presence and fruition of the body and blood of Christ. He thought that Luther and Zwingli had misunderstood each other.326

Myconius matured, on the basis of a draft of Oecolampadius, the First Basel Confession of Faith, which was adopted by the magistracy, Jan. 21, 1534, and also by the neighboring city of Mühlhausen.327  It is very simple, and consists of twelve Articles, on God (the trinity), man, providence, Christ, the Church and sacraments, the Lord’s Supper, the ban, the civil government, faith and good works, the last judgment, feasts, fasts, and celibacy, and the Anabaptists (condemning their views on infant baptism, the oath, and civil government). It is written in Swiss-German, with marginal Scripture references and notes. It claims no infallibility or binding authority, and concludes with the words: "We submit this our confession to the judgment of the divine Scriptures, and are always ready, if we can be better informed from them, very thankfully to obey God and his holy Word."

This Confession was superseded by maturer statements of the Reformed faith, but retained a semi-symbolical authority in the Church of Basel, as a venerable historical document.

Myconius wrote the first biography of Zwingli in twelve, short chapters (1532).328  His other writings are not important.329

One of his most influential successors was Lukas Gernler, who presided as Antistes over the Church of Basel from 1656 to 1675. He formulated the scholastic system of Calvinism, with many subtle definitions and distinctions, in a Syllabus of 588 Theses. In connection with John Henry Heidegger of Zürich and the elder Turretin of Geneva, he prepared the Helvetic Consensus Formula, the last and the most rigid of Calvinistic symbols (1675). He was the last representative of strict Calvinistic orthodoxy in Basel. He combined with an intolerant creed a benevolent heart, and induced the magistracy of Basel to found an orphan asylum. The famous Hebrew and Talmudic scholars, John Buxtorf (1564–1629), his son, John (1599–1664), and his grandson, John Jacob (1645–1704), who adorned the university of Basel in the seventeenth century, fully agreed with the doctrinal position of Gernler, and defended even the rabbinical tradition of the literal inspiration of the Masoretic text against Louis Cappel, who attacked it with great learning (1650).330

§ 57. The Helvetic Confessions of Faith.

Niemeyer: Collectio Confess. (Hall. 1840), pp. 105–122 (Conf. Helv. prior, German and Latin), and 462–536 (Conf. Helv. posterior).—Schaff: Creeds of Christendom (New York, 6th ed. 1890), vol. I. 388–420 (history); III. 211–307 (First and Second Helv. Conf.), 831–909 (Second Helv. Conf. in English). Other literature quoted by Schaff, I. 385 and 399.

Bullinger and Myconius authoritatively formulated the doctrines of the Reformed Churches in Switzerland, and impressed upon them a strongly evangelical character, without the scholastic subtleties of a later period.

The Sixty-seven Conclusions and the two private Confessions of Zwingli (to Charles V., and Francis I.) were not intended to be used as public creeds, and never received the sanction of the Church. The Ten Theses of Bern (1528), the First Confession of Basel (1534), the Zürich Consensus (1549), and the Geneva Consensus (1552) were official documents, but had only local authority in the cities where they originated. But the First and Second Helvetic Confessions were adopted by the Swiss and other Churches, and kept their place as symbolical books for nearly three hundred years. They represent the Zwinglian type of doctrine modified and matured. They approach the Calvinistic system, without its logical rigor.

I. The First Helvetic Confession, 1536. It is also called the Second Basel Confession, to distinguish it from the First Basel Confession of 1534. It was made in Basel, but not for Basel alone. It owes its origin partly to the renewed efforts of the Strassburg Reformers, Bucer and Capito, to bring about a union between the Lutherans and the Zwinglians, and partly to the papal promise of convening a General Council. A number of Swiss divines were delegated by the magistrates of Zürich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, Mühlhausen, and Biel, to a conference in the Augustinian convent at Basel, Jan. 30, 1536. Bucer and Capito also appeared on behalf of Strassburg. Bullinger, Myconius, Grynaeus, Leo Judae, and Megander were selected as a commission to draw up a Confession of the faith of the Helvetic Churches, which might be used at the proposed General Council. It was examined and signed by all the clerical and lay delegates, February, 1536, and first published in Latin. Leo Judae prepared the German translation, which is fuller than the Latin text, and of equal authority.

Luther, to whom a copy was sent through Bucer, unexpectedly expressed, in two remarkable letters,331 his satisfaction with the earnest Christian character of this document, and promised to do all he could to promote union and harmony with the Swiss. He was then under the hopeful impressions of the "Wittenberg Concordia," which Bucer had brought about by his elastic diplomacy, May, 1536, but which proved, after all, a hollow peace, and could not be honestly signed by the Swiss. Luther himself made a new and most intemperate attack on the Zwinglians (1545), a year before his death.

The First Helvetic Confession is the earliest Reformed Creed that has acquired a national authority. It consists of 27 articles, is fuller than the First Confession of Basel, but not so full as the Second Helvetic Confession, by which it was afterwards superseded. The doctrine of the sacraments and of the Lord’s Supper is essentially Zwinglian, yet emphasizes the significance of the sacramental signs and the real spiritual presence of Christ, who gives his body and blood—that is, himself—to believers, so that he more and more lives in them, and they in him.

Bullinger and Leo Judae wished to add a caution against the binding authority of this or any other confession that might interfere with the supreme authority of the Word of God and with Christian liberty. They had a correct feeling of a difference between a confession of doctrine which may be improved from time to time with the progress of religious knowledge, and a rule of faith which remains unchanged. A confession of the Church has relative authority as norma normata, and depends upon its agreement with the Holy Scriptures, which have absolute authority as norma normans.

II. The Second Helvetic Confession, 1566. This is far more important than the first, and obtained authority beyond the limits of Switzerland. In the intervening thirty years Calvin had developed his theological system, and the Council of Trent had formulated the modern Roman creed. Bullinger prepared this Confession in 1562 for his private use, as a testimony of the faith in which he had lived and wished to die. Two years afterwards, during the raging of the pestilence, he elaborated it more fully, in the daily expectation of death, and added it to his last will and testament, which was to be delivered to the magistracy of Zürich after his decease.

But events in Germany gave to this private creed a public character. The pious elector of the Palatinate, Frederick III., being threatened by the Lutherans with exclusion from the treaty of peace on account of his secession to the Reformed Church and the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), requested Bullinger in 1565 to prepare a full and clear exposition of the Reformed faith, that he might answer the charges of heresy and dissension so constantly brought against the same. Bullinger sent him a manuscript copy of his confession. The Elector was so much pleased with it that he desired to have it translated and published in Latin and German before the Imperial Diet, which was to assemble at Augsburg in 1566 and to act on his alleged apostasy,

In the meantime the Swiss felt the need of such a Confession as a closer bond of union. The First Helvetic Confession was deemed too short, and the Zürich Consensus of 1549 and the Geneva Consensus of 1552 treated only two articles, namely, the Lord’s Supper and predestination. Conferences were held, and Beza came in person to Zürich to take part in the work. Bullinger freely consented to a few changes, and prepared also the German version. Geneva, Bern, Schaffhausen, Biel, the Grisons, St. Gall, and Mühlhausen expressed their agreement. Basel alone, which had its own confession, declined for a long time, but ultimately acceded.

The new Confession was published at Zürich, March 12, 1566, in both languages, at public expense, and was forwarded to the Elector of the Palatinate and to Philip of Hesse. A French translation appeared soon afterwards in Geneva under the care of Beza.

In the same year the Elector Frederick made such a manly and noble defence of his faith before the Diet at Augsburg, that even his Lutheran opponents were filled with admiration for his piety, and thought no longer of impeaching him for heresy.

The Helvetic Confession is the most widely adopted, and hence the most authoritative of all the Continental Reformed symbols, with the exception of the Heidelberg Catechism. It was sanctioned in Zürich and the Palatinate (1566), Neuchâtel (1568), by the Reformed Churches of France (at the Synod of La Rochelle, 1571), Hungary (at the Synod of Debreczin, 1567), and Poland (1571 and 1578). It was well received also in Holland, England, and Scotland as a sound statement of the Reformed faith. It was translated not only into German, French, and English, but also into Dutch, Magyar, Polish, Italian, Arabic, and Turkish. In Austria and Bohemia the Reformed or Calvinists are officially called "the Church of the Helvetic Confession," "the Lutherans, the Church of the Augsburg Confession."

THIRD BOOK.

THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND or THE CALVINISTIC MOVEMENT.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE PREPARATORY WORK. FROM 1526 TO 1536.

§ 58. Literature on Calvin and the Reformation in French Switzerland.

Important documents relating to the Reformation in French Switzerland are contained in the Archives of Geneva and Bern. Many documents have been recently published by learned Genevese archaeologists, as Galiffe, father and son, Grénus, Revilliod, E. Mallet, Chaponnière, Fick, and the Society of History and Archaeology of Geneva.

The best Calvin libraries are in the University of Geneva, where his MSS. are preserved in excellent order, and in the St. Thomasstift at Strassburg. The latter was collected by Profs. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, the editors of Calvin’s Works, during half a century, and embraces 274 publications of the Reformer (among them 36 Latin and 18 French editions of the Institutio), many rare contemporary works, and 700 modern books bearing upon Calvin and his Reformation. The Society of the History of French Protestantism in Paris (64 rue des saints pères) has a large collection of printed works.

I. Correspondence of the Swiss Reformers and their Friends.

Letters took to a large extent the place of modern newspapers and pamphlets; hence their large number and importance.

*A. S. Herminjard: Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de langue française, etc. Genève et Paris (Fischbacher, 33 rue de Seine), 1866–’86, 7 vols. To be continued. The most complete collection of letters of the Reformers of French Switzerland and their friends, with historical and biographical notes. The editor shows an extraordinary familiarity with the history of the French and Swiss Reformation. The first three volumes embrace the period from 1512 to 1536; vols. IV.–VII. extend from 1536 to 1642, or from the publication of Calvin’s Institutes to the acceptance of the ecclesiastical ordinances at Geneva. For the following years to the death of Calvin (1564) we have the correspondence in the Strassburg-Brunswick edition of Calvin’s works, vols. X.–XX. See below.

II. The History of Geneva before, during, and after the Reformation:

Jac. Spon: Histoire de la ville et de l’état de Genève. Lyon, 1680, 2 vols.: revised and enlarged by J. A. Gautier, Genève, 1730, 2 vols.

J. P. Bérenger: Histoire de Genève jusqu’en 1761. Genève. 1772, 6 vols

(Grénus) Fragments biographiques et historiques extraits des registres de Genève. Genève, 1815.

Mémoires et Documents publiés par la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Genève. 1840 sqq., vol. I.–XIV.

Francois Bonivard: Les chroniques de Genève. Publiés par G. Revilliod. Genève, 1867, 2 vols.

*Amédée Roget (Professor at the University of Geneva, d. Sept. 29, 1883):  Histoire du peuple de Genève depuis la réforme jusqu’à l’escalade. Genève, 1870–’83. 7 vols. From 1536 to 1567. The work was to extend to 1602, but was interrupted by the death of the author. Impartial. The best history of Geneva during the Reformation period. The author was neither a eulogist nor a detractor of Calvin.—By the same: L’église et l’état à Genève du vivant de Calvin. Genève, 1867 (pp. 91).

Jacq. Aug. Galiffe: Matériaux pour l’histoire de Genève. Genève, 1829 and ’30, 2 vols. 8°; Notices généalogiques sur les familles genevoises, Genève, 1829, 4 vols.—J. B. G. Galiffe (son of the former, and Professor of the Academy of Geneva): Besançon Hugues, libérateur de Genève. Historique de la fondation de l’independance Genevoise, Genève, 1859 (pp. 330); Genève historique et archéol., Genève, 1869; Quelques pages d’histoire exacte, soit les procès criminels intentés à Genève en 1547, pour haute trahison contre noble Ami Perrin, ancien syndic, conseiller et capitaine-général de la republique, et contre son accusateur noble Laurent Meigret dit le Magnifique, Genève, 1862 (135 pp. 4°); Nouvelles pages d’histoire exacte soit le procès de Pierre Ameaux, Genève, 1863 (116 pp. 4°). The Galiffes, father and son, descended from an old Genevese family, are Protestants, but very hostile to Calvin and his institutions, chiefly from the political point of view. They maintain, on the ground of family papers and the acts of criminal processes, that Geneva was independent and free before Calvin, and that he introduced a system of despotism. "La plupart des faits racontés par le medecin Lyonnais" (Bolsec), says the elder Galiffe (Notices généalogiques, III. 547), "sont parfaitement vrais."  He judges Calvin by the modem theory of toleration which Calvin and Beza with their whole age detested. "Les véritable protestants genevois," he says, "é taient ceux qui voulaient que chacun - libre d penser ce que so raison lui inspirait, et de ne faire que ce qu’elle approuvait; mais que personne ne se permit d’attaquer la religion de son prochain, de se moquer de sa croyance, u de le scandaliser par des _onstrations malicieuses et par des fanfaronnades de su_ioriÉqui ne prouvent que la fatuiÉridicule de ceux qui se nomment les_us."  The Galiffes sympathize with Ami Perrin, François Favre, Jean Philippe, Jean Lullin, Pierre Vandel, Michael Servet, and all others who were opposed to Calvin. For a fair criticism of the works of the Galiffes, seeLaFrance Protestante, II. 767 sqq., 2d ed.

III. The Reformers Before Calvin:

*Le Chroniqueur. Recueil historique, et journal de l’Helvetie romande, en l’an 1535 et en l’an 1536. Edited by L. Vulliemin, 1835. Lausanne (Marc Duclos), 326 pp. 4°. Descriptions and reprints of documents relating to the religious condition in those two years, in the form of a contemporary journal.

Melchior Kirchhofer (of Schaffhausen, 1773–1853). Das Leben Wilhelm Farels aus den Quellen bearbeitet.  Zürich, 1831 and ’33, 2 vols. (pp. 251 and 190, no index). Very good for that time. He also wrote biographies of Haller, Hofmeister, Myconius.

C. Chenevière: Farel, Froment, Viret, réformateurs relig. Genève, 1835.

H. Jaquemot: Viret, réformateur de Lausanne. Strassburg, 1856.

F. Godet (Professor and Pastor in Neuchatel): Histoire de la réformation et du refuge dans le pays de Neuchatel. Neuchatel, 1859 (209 pp.). Chiefly devoted to the labors of Farel, but carries the history down to the immigration of French refugees after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

C. Schmidt (of Strassburg): Wilhelm Farel und Peter Viret.  Nach handschriftlichen und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld, 1860. (In vol. IX. of the "Leben und ausgewählte Schriften der Väter der reform. Kirche.")

T. Cart: Pierre Viret, le réformateur vaudois. Lausanne, 1864.

C. Junod: Farel, réformateur de la Swisse romande et réformateur de l’église de Neuchatel. Neuchatel et Paris, 1865.

IV. Works and Correspondence of John Calvin:

Joh. Calvini: Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, theologi Argentoratenses. Brunsvigae, 1863 sqq. (in the Corp. Reform.). So far (1892) 48 vols. 4°. The most complete and most critical edition. The three editors died before the completion of their work, but left material for the remaining volumes (vols. 45 sqq.) which are edited by Alf. Erichson.

Older Latin edd., Geneva, 1617, 7 vols. folio, and Amstelod., 1667–’71, in 9 vols. folio. Separate Latin editions of the Institutes, by Tholuck (Berlin, 1834 and ’46), and of the Commentaries on Genesis by Hengstenberg (Berlin, 1838), on the Psalms (Berlin, 1830–’34), and the New Testament, except the Apocalypse (1833–’38, in 7 vols.), by Tholuck. The same books have also been separately republished in French.

An English edition of Calvin’s Works, by the "Calvin Translation Society," Edinburgh, 1843–’53, in 52 vols. The Institutes have been translated by Allen (London, 1813, often reprinted by the Presbyterian Board of Publication in Philadelphia), and by Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh, 1846). German translations of his Institutes by Fr. Ad. Krummacher (1834) and by B. Spiess (the first edition of 1536, Wiesbaden, 1887), and of parts of his Comment., by C. F. L. Matthieu (1859 sqq.).

The extensive correspondence of Calvin was first edited in part by Beza and Jonvilliers (Calvin’s secretary), Genevae, 1575, and other editions; then by Bretschneider (the Gotha Letters), Lips. 1835; by A. Crottet, Genève, 1850; much more completely By JULES BONNET, Lettres Françaises, Paris, 1854, 2 vols.; an English translation (from the French and Latin) by D. Constable and M. R. Gilchrist, Edinburgh and Philadelphia (Presbyterian Board of Publication), 1855 sqq., in 4 vols. (the fourth with an index), giving the letters in chronological order (till 1558). The last and best edition is by the Strassburg Professors in Calvini Opera, vol. X. Part II. to vol. XX., with ample Prolegomena on the various editions of Calvin’s Letters and the manuscript sources. His letters down to 1542 are also given by Herminjard, vols. VI. and VII., quoted above.

V. Biographies of Calvin:

*Theodor Beza (d. 1605): Johannis Calvini Vita. First published with Calvin’s posthumous Commentary on Joshua, in the year of his death. It is reprinted in all editions of Calvin’s works, and in Tholuck’s edition of Calvin’s Commentary on the Gospels. In the same year Beza published a French edition under the title, L’Histoire de la vie et mort de Maistre Jean Calvin avec le testament et derniere volonté dudit Calvin: et le catalogue des livres par luy composez. Genève, 1564; second French edition, enlarged and improved by his friend and colleague, Nic. Colladon, 1565; best edition, Geneva, 1657 (very rare, 204 pp.), which has been carefully republished from a copy in the Mazarin library, with an introduction and notes by Alfred Franklin, Paris, 1869 (pp. lxi and 294). This edition should be consulted. The three biographies of Beza (two French and one Latin) are reprinted in the Brunswick edition of Calvin’s Opera with a notice littéraire, Tom. XXI. pp. 6–172, to which are added the Epitaphia in lo. Calvinum scripta (Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French). There are also German, English, and Italian translations of this biography. An English translation by Francis Sibson of Trinity College, Dublin, reprinted in Philadelphia, 1836; another by Beveridge, Edinburgh, 1843.

The biography of Beza as enlarged by Colladon, though somewhat eulogistic, and especially Calvin’s letters and works, and the letters of his friends who knew him best, furnish the chief material for an authentic biography.

Hierosme Hermes Bolsec: Histoire de la vie, moeurs, actes, doctrine, constance et mort de Jean Calvin, jadis ministre de Genève, dédié au Reverendissime archeuesque, conte de l’Église de Lyon, et Primat de France, Lyon, 1577 (26 chs. and 143 pp.); republished at Paris, 1582; and with an introduction and notes by L. Fr. Chastel, Lyon, 1875 (pp. xxxi and 328). I have used Chastel’s edition. A Latin translation, De J. Calvini magni quondam Genevensium ministri vita, moribus, rebus gestis, studiis ac denique morte, appeared in Paris, 1577, also at Cologne, 1580; a German translation at Cologne, 1581. Bolsec was a Carmelite monk, then physician at Geneva, expelled on account of Pelagian views and opposition to Calvin, 1551; returned to the Roman Church; d. at Annecy about 1584. His book is a mean and unscrupulous libel, inspired by feelings of hatred and revenge; but some of his facts are true, and have been confirmed by the documents published by Galiffe. Bolsec wrote a similar biography of Beza: Histoire de la vie, moeurs, doctrine et déportments de Th. de Bèze dit le Spectable, 1582. A French writer says, "Ces biographies sont un tissu de calomnies qu’ aucun historien sérieux, pas même le P. Maimbourg, n’a osé admettre et dont plus récemment M. Mignet a fait bonne justice."  (A. Réville in Lichtenberger’s "Encycl.," II. 343.)  Comp. the article "Bolsec" in La France Protestante, 2d ed. (1879), II. 745–776.

Antibolseccus. Cleve, 1622. Of this book I find only the title.

Jacques Le Vasseur (canon and dean of the Church of Noyon): Annales de l’eglise cathédrale de Noyon. Paris, 1633, 2 vols. 4°. Contains some notices on the birth and relations of Calvin.

Jacques Desmay (R. C.): Remarques sur la vie de J. Calvin hérésiarque tirées des Registres de Noyon. Rouen, 1621 and 1657.

Charles Drelincourt (pastor at Charenton): La défense de Calvin contre l’outrage fait à sa mémoire. Genève, 1667; in German, Hanau, 1671. A refutation of the slanders of Bolsec and a posthumous book of Cardinal Richelieu on the easiest and surest method of conversion of those who separated themselves from the Roman Church. Bayle gives an epitome in his Dictionnaire.

Melchior Adam: Vita Calvini, in his Vitae Theologorum, etc. 3d ed. Francof., 1705 (Part II., Decades duae, etc., pp. 32–55). Chiefly from Beza.

Elijah Waterman (pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Bridgeport, Conn.) Memoirs of the Life and Writings of John Calvin: together with a selection of Letters written by him and other distinguished Reformers. Hartford, 1813.

Vincent Audin (R. C., 1793–1851): Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de Calvin. Paris, 1841, 2 vols.; 5th ed. 1851; 6th ed. 1873. English translation by John McGill; German translation, 1843. Written like a novel, with a deceptive mixture of truth and falsehood. It is a Bolsec redivivus. Audin says that he first cast away the book of Bolsec "as a shameful libel. All testimony was against Bolsec: Catholics and Protestants equally accused him. But, after a patient study of the reformer, we are now compelled to admit, in part, the recital of the physician of Lyon. Time has declared for Bolsec; each day gives the lie to the apologists of Calvin."  He boasts of having consulted more than a thousand volumes on Calvin, but betrays his polemical bias by confessing that he "desired to prove that the refugee of Noyon was fatal to civilization, to the arts, and to civil and religious liberty."  Audin wrote in the same spirit the history of Luther (1839, 3 vols.), Henry VIII. (1847), and Leo X. (1851). His work is disowned and virtually refuted by fair-minded Catholics like Kampschulte, Cornelius, and Funk.

*Paul Henry, D. D. (pastor of a French Reformed Church in Berlin): Das Leben Johann Calvins des grossen Reformators, etc. (dedicated to Neander). Hamburg, 1835–44, 3 vols. English translation (but without the notes and appendices, and differing from the author on the case of Servetus) by Henry Stebbing, London and New York, 1851, in 2 vols. This large work marks an epoch as an industrious collection of valuable material, but is ill digested, and written with unbounded admiration for Calvin. Henry wrote also, in opposition to Audin and Galiffe, an abridged Leben Johann Calvin’s. Ein Zeugniss für die Wahrheit. Hamburg and Gotha, 1846 (pp. 498).

Thomas Smyth, D. D.: Calvin and his Enemies. 1843; new ed. Philadelphia (Presbyterian Board of Publication), 1856, and again 1881. Apologetic.

Thomas H. Dyer: The Life of John Calvin. London (John Murray), 1850, pp. 560 (republished, New York, 1851). Graphic and impartial, founded upon Calvin’s correspondence, Henry, and Trechsel (Antitrinitarier).

Felix Bungener: Calvin, sa vie, son oeuvre, et ses écrits. Paris, 2d ed. 1863 (pp. 468). English translation, Edinburgh, 1863.

*E. Stähelin (Reformed minister at Basel): Johannes Calvin; Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1863, 2 vols. (in "Väter und Begründer der reform. Kirche," vol. IV. in two parts). One of the best biographies, though not as complete as Henry’s, and in need of modification and additions from more recent researches.

Paul Pressel (Luth.): Johann Calvin. Ein evangelisches Lebensbild. Elberfeld, 1864 (pp. 263). For the tercentenary of Calvin’s death (May 27, 1864). Based upon Stähelin, Henry, Mignet, and Bonnet’s edition of Calvin’s letters.

Albert Rilliet: Bibliographie de la vie de Calvin. "Correspond. litteraire."  Paris, 1864. La premier séjour de Calvin à Genève. Gen. 1878.

*Guizot (the great historian and statesman, a descendant of the Huguenots, d. at Val Richer, Sept. 12, 1874): St. Louis and Calvin. London, 1868. Comp. also his sketch in the Musée des protestants célèbres.

*F. W. Kampschulte (a liberal Roman Catholic, Professor of History at Bonn, died an Old Catholic, 1872): Joh. Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf. Leipzig, 1869, vol. I. (vols. II. and III. have not appeared). A most able, critical, and, for a Catholic, remarkably fair and liberal work, drawn in part from unpublished sources.—In the same spirit of fairness, Prof. Funk of Tübingen wrote an article on Calvin in the 2d ed. of Wetzer and Welte’s Catholic Kirchenlexicon, II. 1727–1744.

Thomas M’Crie, D. D.: The Early Years of John Calvin. A Fragment, 1509–1536. A posthumous work, edited by William Ferguson. Edinburgh, 1880 (pp. 199). Valuable as far as it goes.

Art. "Calvin" in La France Protestante, Paris, 2d ed. vol. III. (1881), 508–639.

Abel Lefranc: La jeunesse de Calvin. Paris, 1888 (pp. 229). The author brings to light new facts on the extent of the Protestant movement at Noyon.—Comp. his Histoire de la Ville de Noyon et de ses institutions. Paris, 1888.

Annales Calviniani by the editors of the Brunswick edition of Calvin’s Opera. Tom. XXI. 183–818. From 1509 to 1572. Invaluable for reference.

VI. Biographical Sketches and Essays on Special Points Connected with Calvin:

Fr. Aug. Alex. Mignet (eminent French historian and academician, 1796–1884): Mémoire sur l’établissement de la réforme et sur la constitution du Calvinisme à Genève. Paris, 1834. The same in German, Leipzig, 1843.

G. Weber: Geschichtliche Darstellung des Calvinismus im Verhältniss zum Staat in Genf und Frankreich bis zur Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes. Heidelberg, 1836 (pp. 372).

* J. J. Herzog: Joh. Calvin, Basel, 1843; and in his Real-Encyklop.2 vol. III. 77–106.

*Jules Bonnet: Lettres de Jean Calvin, 1854; Calvin au val d’Aoste, 1861 Idelette de Bure, femme de Calvin (in "Bulletin de la société de l’histoire du Protest. français," 1856, Nos. 11 and 12); Récits du seizième siècle, Paris, 1864; Nouveaux récits, 1870; Derniers récits, 1876.

E. Renan: Jean Calvin, in É tudes d’histoire religieuse, 5th ed. Paris, 1862; English translation by O. B. Frothingham Studies of Religious History and Criticism, New York, 1864, pp. 285–297).

J. H. Albert Rilliet: Lettre à M. Merle D’Aubigné sur deux points obscurs de la vie de Calvin, Genève, 1864. Le premier sejour de Calvin a Genève, in his and Dufour’s edition of Calvin’s French Catechism, Genève, 1878.

Mönkeberg: Joachim Westphal and Joh. Calvin. Hamburg, 1866.

J. Köstlin: Calvin’s Institutio nach Form und Inhalt.

Edmond Stern: La théorie du culte d’après Calvin. Strassburg, 1869.

James Anthony Froude: Calvinism, an Address delivered to the Students of St. Andrews, March 17, 1871 (in his Short Studies on Great Subjects, Second Series, New York, 1873, pp. 9–53).

Principal William Cunningham (Free Church of Scotland, d. 1861): The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformers. Edinburgh, 1862.

Principal John Tulloch (of the Established Church of Scotland, d. 1885): Leaders of the Reformation. Edinburgh, 1859; 3d ed. 1883.

Philip Schaff: John Calvin, in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1857, pp. 125–146, and in Creeds of Christendom (New York, 1877), I. 421–471.

A. A. Hodge (d. at Princeton, 1885): Calvinism, in Johnson’s "Universal Cyclopaedia" (New York, 1875 sqq.), vol. I. pp. 727–734; new ed. 1886, vol. I. 676–683.

Lyman H. Atwater: Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in the, "Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review," New York, January, 1875, pp. 73–106.

Dardier and Jundt: Calvin, in Lichtenberger’s "Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses," Tom. II. 529–557. (Paris, 1877.)

P. Lobstein: Die Ethik Calvins in ihren Grundzügen. Strassburg, 1877.

W. Lindsay Alexander: Calvin, in "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed. vol. IV. 714 sqq.

Pierre Vaucher: Calvin et les Genevois. Gen. 1880.

A. Pierson: Studien over Joh. Kalvijn. Haarlem, 1881–’83.

J. M. Usteri: Calvin’s Sacraments und Tauflehre. 1884.

B. Fontana: Documenti dell’ archivio Vaticano e dell’ Estense, circa il soggiorno di Calv. a Ferrara. Rom. 1885. E. Comba in "Revisita Christ.," 1885, IV.–VII.

C. A. Cornelius (liberal Catholic): Die Verbannung Calvins aus Genf. im J. 1536. München, 1886. Die Rückkehr Calvins nach Genf. I. Die Guillermins (pp. 62); II. Die Artichauds; III. Die Berufung (pp. 102). München, 1888 and 1889. Separate print from the "Abhandlungen der K. bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften," XIX. Bd. II. Abth. Cornelius, a friend of Döllinger, agrees in his high estimate of Calvin with Kampschulte, but dwells chiefly on the political troubles of Geneva during Calvin’s absence (with large quotations from Herminjard’s collection of letters), and stops with Calvin’s return, September, 1540.

Charles W. Shields: Calvin’s Doctrine on Infant Salvation, in the "Presb. and Ref. Review," New York, 1890, pp. 634–651. Tries to show that Calvin taught universal infant salvation(?).

Ed. Stricker: Johann Calvin als erster Pfarrer der reformirten Gemeinde zu Strassburg. Nach urkundlichen Quellen. Strassburg, 1890 (vi and 66 pp.).—In connection with Calvin’s sojourn at Strassburg may also be consulted, R. Reuss: Histoire de l’église de Strassbourg, 1880; and A. Erichson: L’église française de Strassbourg au XVIme siècle, 1886.

E. Doumergue (Professor of Church History at Montauban): Essai sur l’histoire du culte réformé principalement au XVIe et au XlXe siècle. Paris, 1890. The first part, pp. 1–116, treats of Calvin’s Liturgies and labors for church poetry and music.

The literature on Servetus will be given below, in the section on Calvin and Servetus.

VII. Histories of the Reformation in French Switzerland:

Abr. Ruchat (Professor of Theology in the Academy of Lausanne, d. 1750): Histoire de la réformation de la Suisse. Genève, 1727 sq., 6 vols.; new ed. with appendices, by Prof. L. Vulliemin, Nyon, 1835–’38, 7 vols. Comes down to 1566. Strongly anti-Romish and devoted to Bern, diffuse and inelegant in style, but full of matter, "un recueil de savantes dissertations, un extrait de documents" (Dardier, in Lichtenberger’s "Encyclop.," XI. 345).—An English abridgment in one volume by J. Collinson: History of the Reformation in Switzerland by Ruchat. London, 1845. Goes to 1537.

Dan. Gerdes (1698–1767): Introductio in Historiam Evangelii seculo XVI. passim per Europam renovati doctrinaeque Reformatae; accedunt varia monumenta pietatis atque rei literariae. Groningae, 1744–’52, 4 vols. Contains pictures of the Reformers and interesting documents. Parts of vols. I., II., and IV. treat of the Swiss Reformation.

C. B. Hundeshagen (Professor in Bern, afterwards in Heidelberg and Bonn; d. 1872): Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Lutherthums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche von 1532–1558. Nach meist ungedruckten Quellen. Bern, 1842.

*J. Gaberel (ancien pasteur): Histoire de l’église de Genève depuis le commencement de la réforme jusqu’en 1815. Genève, 1855–63, 3 vols.

P. Charpenne: Histoire de la réformation et des réformateurs de Genève. Paris, 1861.

Fleury: Histoire de l’église de Genève. Genève, 1880. 2 vols.

The works of Amad. Roget, quoted sub II.

*Merle D’Aubigné (Professor of Church History in the Free Church Theological Seminary at Geneva): Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps du Calvin. Paris, 1863–’78. English translation in several editions, the best by Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1863–’78, 8 vols.; American edition by Carter, New York, 1870–’79, 8 vols. The second division of Merle’s work on the Reformation. The last three volumes were edited after his death (Oct. 21, 1872) by Duchemin and Binder, and translated by William L. R. Cates. The work gives the history of the Reformation in Geneva down to 1542, and of the other Reformed Churches to the middle of the sixteenth century. It is, therefore, incomplete, but, as far as it goes, the most extensive, eloquent, and dramatic history of the Reformation by an enthusiastic partisan of the Reformers, especially Calvin, in full sympathy with their position and faith, except on the union of Church and State and the persecution of heretics. The first division, which is devoted to the Lutheran Reformation till 1530, had an extraordinary circulation in England and America. Ranke, with his calm, judicial temperament, wondered that such a book could be written in the nineteenth century. (See Preface to vol. VII. p. vi, note.)

Étienne Chastel (Professor of Church History in the University of Geneva, d. 1882): Histoire du Christianisme. Paris, 1882, 5 vols. Tom. IV. 66 sqq. treats of the Swiss Reformation.

G. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873, ch. VII. pp. 192–241.

Philippe Godet (son of Frederic, the commentator): Histoire littéraire de la Suisse française. Neuchâtel and Paris, 1890. Ch. II. 51–112 treats of the Reformers (Farel, Viret, Froment, Calvin, and Beza).

Virgile Rossel: Histoire littéraire de la Suisse romande. Genève (H. Georg), 1890, 2 vols. The first vol. Des origines jusqu’au XVIIIme siècle.

The Histories of the Reformation in France usually give also an account of the labors of Farel, Calvin, and Beza; e.g. the first volume of Gottlob von Polenz: Geschichte des französischen Calvinismus (Gotha, 1857 sqq.).

§ 59. The Condition of French Switzerland before the Reformation.

The losses of the Reformation in German Switzerland were more than made up by the gains in French Switzerland; that is, in the three Cantons, Vaud, Neuchàtel, and Geneva.332  Protestantism moved westward. Calvin continued, improved, and completed the work of Zwingli, and gave it a wider significance. Geneva took the place of Zürich, and surpassed in influence the city of Zwingli and the city of Luther. It became "the Protestant Rome," from which proceeded the ideas and impulses for the Reformed Churches of France, Holland, England, and Scotland. The city of Calvin has long since departed from his rigorous creed and theocratic discipline, and will never return to them; but the evangelical faith still lives there in renewed vigor; and among cities of the same size there is none that occupies a more important and influential position in theological and religious activity as well as literary and social culture, and as a convenient centre for the settlement of international questions, than Geneva.

The Reformation of French Switzerland cannot be separated from that of France. The inhabitants of the two countries are of the same Celtic or Gallic stock mixed with Germanic (Frank and Burgundian) blood. The first evangelists of Western Switzerland were Frenchmen who had to flee from their native soil. They became in turn, through their pupils, the founders of the Reformed Church of France. The Reformed Churches of the two countries are one in spirit. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many Huguenots found an asylum in Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchâtel. The French Swiss combine the best traits of the French character with Swiss solidity and love of freedom. They are ever ready to lend a helping hand to their brethren across the frontier, and they form at the same time a connecting link between them and the Protestants of the German tongue. Their excellent educational institutions attract students from abroad and train teachers for other countries.

The territory of the French Cantons, which embraces 1665 square miles, was in the sixteenth century under the protection of the Swiss Confederacy.

Vaud was conquered by Bern from the Duke of Savoy, and ruled by bailiffs till 1798.333

The principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin concluded a co-burghery with Freiburg, 1290, with Bern, 1307, and with Solothurn, 1324. In 1707 the principality passed to King Frederick I. of Prussia, who confirmed the rights and liberties of the country and its old alliance with Switzerland. The connection with Prussia continued till 1857, when it was dissolved by free consent.334

Geneva was originally governed by a bishop and a count, who divided the spiritual and secular government between them. Duke Charles III. of Savoy tried to subdue the city with the aid of an unworthy and servile bishop, Pierre de la Baume, whom he had appointed from his own family with the consent of Pope Leo X.335  But a patriotic party, under the lead of Philibert Berthelier, Besançon Hugues, and François Bonivard (Byron’s "Prisoner of Chillon") opposed the attempt and began a struggle for independence, which lasted several years, and resembles on a small scale the heroic struggle of Switzerland against foreign oppression. The patriots, on account of their alliance with the Swiss, were called Eidgenossen,—a German word for (Swiss) Confederates, which degenerated by mispronunciation into Eignots and Huguenots, and passed afterwards from Geneva to France as a nickname for Protestants.336  The party of the Duke of Savoy and the bishop were nicknamed Mamelukes or slaves. The patriots gained the victory with the aid of the German Swiss. On Feb. 20, 1526, Bern and Freiburg concluded an alliance with Geneva, and pledged their armed aid for the protection of her independence. The citizens of Geneva ratified the Swiss alliance by an overwhelming majority, who shouted, "The Swiss and liberty!"  The bishop appealed in vain to the pope and the emperor, and left Geneva for St. Claude. But he had to accept the situation, and continued to rule ten years longer (till 1536).337

This political movement, of which Berthelier is the chief hero, had no connection with the Reformation, but prepared the way for it, and was followed by the evangelical labors of Farel and Viret, and the organization of the Reformed Church under Calvin. During the war of emancipation there grew up an opposition to the Roman Church and the clergy of Geneva, which sided with Savoy and was very corrupt, even according to the testimonies of Roman Catholic writers, such as Bishop Antoine Champion, Bonivard, the Soeur de Jussie, and Francis of Sales. Reports of the Lutheran and Zwinglian reformation nursed the opposition. Freiburg (Fribourg) remained Roman Catholic338 and broke the alliance with Geneva; but Bern strengthened the alliance and secured for Geneva political freedom from Savoy and religious freedom from Rome.

NOTES.

For the understanding of the geography and history of the Swiss Confederacy, the following facts should be considered in connection with the map facing p. 1.

1. The original Confederacy of the Three Forest Cantons (Urcantone, Waldstätte), Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, from Aug. 1, 1291 (the date of the renewal of an older covenant of 1244) to 1332. Victory at Morgarten over Duke Leopold of Austria, Nov. 15, 1315. (After 1352 the number of Forest Cantons was five, including Luzern and Zug.)

2. The Confederacy of the Eight Cantons (Orte) from 1353 to 1481.

Luzern joined the Forest Cantons in 1332 (thenceforward the Confederacy was called the Bund der Vier Waldstätte, to which in 1352 was added Zug as the Fifth Forest Canton; hence the Fünf Orte or Five Cantons).

Zürich   joined   1351.

Glarus joined   1352.

Zug      "           1352

Bern     "           1353.

Victories over the Austrians at Sempach, July 9, 1386 (Arnold von Winkelried), and Näfels, April 9, 1388. Battle against the Dauphin of France (Louis XI.) Aug. 26, 1444, at St. Jacob near Basel (the Thermopylae of the Swiss), and victories over Charles the Bold of Burgundy, at Grandson, June 22, 1476, and Nancy, Jan. 5, 1477.

3. The Confederacy of the Thirteen Cantons, 1513–1798.

Freiburg           joined   1481.

Schaffhausen    joined   1501

Solothurn          "           1481

Appenzell         "           1513

Basel    "           1501.

4. The Confederation under the French Directory, 1798–1802. Vaud, with the help of France, made herself independent of Bern, 1798. Valtellina Chiavenna, and Bormio were lost to the Grisons and attached to the Cisalpine Republic by Napoleon, 1797. Neuchâtel separated from Switzerland.

5. The Confederation of Nineteen Cantons from 1803–1813, under the influence of Napoleon as "Mediator."

6. Modern Switzerland of Twenty-Two Cantons from the Congress of Vienna, 1815, to date.

The new Cantons are: Ticino, Valais, St. Gall, Aargau, Thurgau, Grisons, Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel. They were formerly dependent on, and protected by, or freely associated with, the Thirteen Can

§ 60. William Farel (1489–1565).

Letters of Farel and to Farel in Herminjard, beginning with vol. I. 193, and in the Strassburg edition of Calvin’s correspondence, Opera, X.–XX.

Biographies by Beza (Icones, 1580, with a picture); Melchior Adam (Decades duae, 57–61); *Kirchhofer (1833, 2 vols.); Verheiden (Imagines et Elogia, 1725, p. 86 sq., with picture); Chenevière (1835); Junod (1865). Merle D’Aubigné gives a very minute but broken account of Farel’s earlier labors, especially in Geneva (vols. III., IV., V., books 5, 6, and 9) . See also Ruchat, F. Godet, and other works mentioned in § 58, and art. "Farel" in La France Protestante, tome VI. 886–416 (1888).

Two years after the political emancipation of Geneva from the yoke of Savoy, Bern embraced the Protestant Reformation (1528), and at once exerted her political and moral influence for the introduction of the new religion into the neighboring French territory over which she had acquired control. She found three evangelists ready for this work,—one a native of Vaud, and two fugitive Frenchmen. The city of Freiburg, the Duke of Savoy, Charles V., and the pope endeavored to prevent the progress of heresy, but in vain.

The pioneer of Protestantism in Western Switzerland is William Farel. He was a travelling evangelist, always in motion, incessant in labors, a man full of faith and fire, as bold and fearless as Luther and far more radical, but without his genius. He is called the Elijah of the French Reformation, and "the scourge of the priests."  Once an ardent papist, he became as ardent a Protestant, and looked hereafter only at the dark side, the prevailing corruptions and abuses of Romanism. He hated the pope as the veritable Antichrist, the mass as idolatry, pictures and relics as heathen idols which must be destroyed like the idols of the Canaanites. Without a regular ordination, he felt himself divinely called, like a prophet of old, to break down idolatry and to clear the way for the spiritual worship of God according to his own revealed word. He was a born fighter; he came, not to bring peace, but the sword. He had to deal with priests who carried firearms and clubs under their frocks, and he fought them with the sword of the word and the spirit. Once he was fired at, but the gun burst, and, turning round, he said, "I am not afraid of your shots."  He never used violence himself, except in language. He had an indomitable will and power of endurance. Persecution and violence only stimulated him to greater exertions. His outward appearance was not prepossessing: he was small and feeble, with a pale but sunburnt face, narrow forehead, red and ill-combed beard, fiery eyes, and an expressive mouth.

Farel had some of the best qualities of an orator: a sonorous and stentorian voice, appropriate gesture, fluency of speech, and intense earnestness, which always commands attention and often produces conviction. His contemporaries speak of the thunders of his eloquence and of his transporting prayers. "Tua illa fulgura," writes Calvin. "Nemo tonuit fortius," says Beza. His sermons were extemporized, and have not come down to us. Their power lay in the oral delivery. We may compare him to Whitefield, who was likewise a travelling evangelist, endowed with the magnetism of living oratory. In Beza’s opinion, Calvin was the most learned, Farel the most forcible, Viret the most gentle preacher of that age.339

The chief defect of Farel was his want of moderation and discretion. He was an iconoclast. His violence provoked unnecessary opposition, and often did more harm than good. Oecolampadius praised his zeal, but besought him to be also moderate and gentle. "Your mission," he wrote to him, "is to evangelize, not to curse. Prove yourself to be an evangelist, not a tyrannical legislator. Men want to be led, not driven."  Zwingli, shortly before his death, exhorted him not to expose himself rashly, but to reserve himself for the further service of the Lord.

Farel’s work was destructive rather than constructive. He could pull down, but not build up. He was a conqueror, but not an organizer of his conquests; a man of action, not a man of letters; an intrepid preacher, not a theologian. He felt his defects, and handed his work over to the mighty genius of his younger friend Calvin. In the spirit of genuine humility and self-denial, he was willing to decrease that Calvin might increase. This is the finest trait in his character.340

Guillaume Farel, the oldest of seven children of a poor but noble family, was born in the year 1489 (five years after Luther and Zwingli, twenty years before Calvin) at Gap, a small town in the alps of Dauphiné in the south-east of France, where the religious views of the Waldenses were once widely spread. He inherited the blind faith of his parents, and doubted nothing. He made with them, as he remembered in his old age, a pilgrimage to a wonder-working cross which was believed to be taken from the cross of our Lord. He shared in the superstitious veneration of pictures and relics, and bowed before the authority of monks and priests. He was, as he said, more popish than popery.

At the same time he had a great thirst for knowledge, and was sent to school at Paris. Here he studied the ancient languages (even Hebrew), philosophy, and theology. His principal teacher, Jacques Le Fèvre d’Étaples (Faber Stapulensis, 1455–1536), the pioneer of the Reformation in France and translator of the Scriptures, introduced him into the knowledge of Paul’s Epistles and the doctrine of justification by faith, and prophetically told him, already in 1512: "My son, God will renew the world, and you will witness it."341  Farel acquired the degree of Master of Arts (January, 1517), and was appointed teacher at the college of Cardinal Le Moine.

The influence of Le Fèvre and the study of the Bible brought him gradually to the conviction that salvation can be found only in Christ, that the word of God is the only rule of faith, and that the Roman traditions and rites are inventions of man. He was amazed that he could find in the New Testament no trace of the pope, of the hierarchy, of indulgences, of purgatory, of the mass, of seven sacraments, of sacerdotal celibacy, of the worship of Mary and the saints. Le Fèvre, being charged with heresy by the Sorbonne, retired in 1521 to his friend William Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, who was convinced of the necessity of a reformation within the Catholic Church, without separation from Rome.342  There he translated the New Testament into French, which was published in 1523 without his name (almost simultaneously with Luther’s German New Testament.) Several of his pupils, Farel, Gérard, Roussel, Michel d’Arande, followed him to Meaux, and were authorized by Briçonnet to preach in his diocese. Margaret of Valois, sister of King Francis I. (then Duchess of Alençon, afterwards Queen of Navarre), patronized the reformers and also the freethinkers. But Farel was too radical for the mild bishop, and forbidden to preach, April 12, 1523. He went to Gap and made some converts, including four of his brothers; but the people found his doctrine "very strange," and drove him away. There was no safety for him anywhere in France, which then began seriously to persecute the Protestants.

Farel fled to Basel, and was hospitably received by Oecolampadius. At his suggestion he held a public disputation in Latin on thirteen theses, in which he asserted the perfection of the Scriptures, Christian liberty, the duty of pastors to preach the Gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith, and denounced images, fasting, celibacy, and Jewish ceremonies (Feb. 23, 1524).343  The disputation was successful, and led to the conversion of the Franciscan monk Pellican, a distinguished Greek and Hebrew scholar, who afterwards became professor at Zürich. He also delivered public lectures and sermons. Oecolampadius wrote to Luther that Farel was a match for the Sorbonne.344  Erasmus, whom Farel imprudently charged with cowardice and called a Balaam, regarded him as a dangerous disturber of the peace,345 and the Council (probably at the advice of Erasmus) expelled him from the city.

Farel now spent about a year in Strassburg with Bucer and Capito. Before he went there he made a brief visit to Zürich, Schaffhausen, and Constance, and became acquainted with Zwingli, Myconius, and Grebel. He had a letter of commendation to Luther from Oecolampadius, but it is not likely that he went to Wittenberg, since there is no allusion to it either in his or in Luther’s letters. At the request of Ulrich, Duke of Würtemberg, he preached in Mömpelgard (Montbéliard), and roused a fierce opposition, which forced him soon to return to Strassburg. Here he found Le Fèvre and other friends from Meaux, whom the persecution had forced to flee.

In 1526 Farel was again in Switzerland, and settled for a while, at the advice of Haller, as school teacher under the name of Guillaume Ursinus (with reference to Bern, the city of bears), at Aigle (Ælen)346 in the Pays de Vaud on the borders of Valais, subject to Bern.

He attended the Synod in Bern, January, 1528, which decided the victory of the Reformation, and received a commission from that city to preach in all the districts under its control (March 8, 1528). He accordingly labored as a sort of missionary bishop at Murat (Murten), Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Valangin, Yverdun, Biel (Bienne), in the Münster valley, at Orbe, Avenche, St. Blaise, Grandson, and other places. He turned every stump and stone into a pulpit, every house, street, and market-place into a church; provoked the wrath of monks, priests, and bigoted women; was abused, called, "heretic" and, "devil," insulted, spit upon, and more than once threatened with death. An attempt to poison him failed. Wherever he went he stirred up all the forces of the people, and made them take sides for or against the new gospel.

His arrival in Neuchâtel (December, 1529) marks an epoch in its history. In spite of violent opposition, he succeeded in introducing the Reformation in the city and neighboring villages. He afterwards returned to Neuchâtel, where he finished his course.347  Robert Olivetan, Calvin’s cousin, published the first edition of his French translation of the Bible at Neuchâtel in 1535. Farel had urged him to do this work. It is the basis of the numerous French translations made since that time.

In 1532 Farel with his friend Saunier visited the Waldenses in Piedmont at the request of Georg Morel and Peter Masson, two Waldensian preachers, who were returning from a visit to Strassburg and the Reformed Churches of Switzerland. He attended the Synod which met at Chanforans in the valley of Angrogne, Sept. 12, 1532, and resolved to adopt the doctrines of the Reformation. He advised them to establish schools. He afterwards collected money for them and sent them four teachers, one of whom was Robert Olivetan, who was at that time private tutor at Geneva. This is the beginning of the fraternal relations between the Waldenses and the Reformed Churches which continue to this day.

§ 61. Farel at Geneva. First Act of the Reformation (1535).

On their return from Piedmont, Farel and Saunier stopped at Geneva, Oct. 2, 1532. Zwingli had previously directed the attention of Farel to that city as an important field for the Reformation. Olivetan was there to receive them.

The day after their arrival the evangelists were visited by a number of distinguished citizens of the Huguenot party, among whom was Ami Perrin, one of the most ardent promoters of the Reformation, and afterwards one of the chief opponents of Calvin. They explained to them from the open Bible the Protestant doctrines, which would complete and consolidate the political freedom recently achieved. They stirred up a great commotion. The Council was alarmed, and ordered them to leave the city. Farel declared that he was no trumpet of sedition, but a preacher of the truth, for which he was ready to die. He showed credentials from Bern, which made an impression. He was also summoned to the Episcopal Council in the house of the Abbé de Beaumont, the vicar-general of the diocese. He was treated with insolence. "Come thou, filthy devil," said one of the canons, "art thou baptized?  Who invited you hither?  Who gave you authority to preach?"  Farel replied with dignity: "I have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and am not a devil. I go about preaching Christ, who died for our sins and rose for our justification. Whoever believes in him will be saved; unbelievers will be lost. I am sent by God as a messenger of Christ, and am bound to preach him to all who will hear me. I am ready to dispute with you, and to give an account of my faith and ministry. Elijah said to King Ahab, ’It is thou, and not I, who disturbest Israel.’  So I say, it is you and yours, who trouble the world by your traditions, your human inventions, and your dissolute lives."  The priests had no intention to enter into a discussion; they knew and confessed, "If we argue, our trade is gone."  One of the canons exclaimed: "He has blasphemed; we need no further evidence; he deserves to die."  Farel replied: "Speak the words of God, and not of Caiaphas."  Hereupon the whole assembly shouted: "Away with him to the Rhone!  Kill the Lutheran dog!"  He was reviled, beaten, and shot at. One of the syndics interposed for his protection. He was ordered by the Episcopal Council to leave Geneva within three hours.

He escaped with difficulty the fury of the priests, who pursued him with clubs. He was covered with spittle and bruises. Some Huguenots came to his defence, and accompanied him and Saunier in a boat across the lake to a place between Morges and Lausanne. At Orbe, Farel found Antoine Froment, a native of Dauphiné, and prevailed on him to go to Geneva as evangelist and a teacher of children (November, 1532); but he was also obliged to flee.

In this critical condition the Roman party, supported by Freiburg, called to their aid Guy Furbity, a learned Dominican doctor of the Sorbonne. He preached during advent, 1533, against the Protestant heresy with unmeasured violence. In Jan. 1, 1534, the bishop forbade all preaching without his permission.

Farel returned under the protection of Bern, and held a public disputation with Furbity, Jan. 29, 1534, in the presence of the Great and Small Councils and the delegates of Bern. He could not answer all his objections, but he denied the right of the Church to impose ordinances which were not authorized by the Scriptures, and defended the position that Christ was the only head of the Church. He used the occasion to explain the Protestant doctrines, and to attack the Roman hierarchy. Christ and the Holy Spirit, he said, are not with the pope, but with those whom he persecutes. The disputation lasted several days, and ended in a partial victory for Farel. Unable to argue from the Scriptures, Furbity confessed:, What I preached I cannot prove from the Bible; I have learned it from the Summa of St. Thomas"; but he repeated in the pulpit of St. Peter’s his charges against the heretics, Feb. 15, and was put in prison for several years.

Farel continued to preach in private houses. On March 1, when a monk, Francis Coutelier, attacked the Reformation, he ascended the pulpit to refute him. This was his first public sermon in Geneva. The Freiburgers protested against these proceedings, and withdrew from the coburghery (April 12). The bishop pronounced the ban over the city (April 30); the Duke of Savoy threatened war. But Bern stood by Geneva, and under her powerful protection, Farel, Viret, and Froment vigorously pushed the Reformation, though not without much violence.

The priests, monks, and nuns gradually left the city, and the bishop transferred his see to Annecy, an asylum prepared by the Duke of Savoy. Sister Jeanne de Jussie, one of the nuns of St. Claire, has left us a lively and naive account of their departure to Annecy. "It was a piteous thing," she says, "to see this holy company in such a plight, so overcome with fatigue and grief that several swooned by the way. It was rainy weather, and all were obliged to walk through muddy roads, except four poor invalids who were in a carriage. There were six poor old women who had taken their vows more than sixteen years before. Two of these, who were past sixty-six, and had never seen anything of the world, fainted away repeatedly. They could not bear the wind; and when they saw the cattle in the fields, they took the cows for bears, and the long-wooled sheep for ravaging wolves. They who met them were so overcome with compassion that they could not speak a word. And though our mother, the vicaress, had supplied them all with good shoes to save their feet, the greater number could not walk in them, but hung them at their waists. And so they walked from five o’clock in the morning, when they left Geneva, till near midnight, when they got to St. Julien, which is only a little league off."  It took the nuns fifteen hours to go a short league. The next day (Aug. 29) they reached Annecy under the ringing of all the bells of the city, and found rest in the monastery of the Holy Cross. The good sister Jussie saw in the Reformation a just punishment of the unfaithful clergy. "Ah," she said, "the prelates and churchmen did not observe their vows at this time, but squandered dissolutely the ecclesiastical property, keeping women in adultery and lubricity, and awakening the anger of God, which brought divine judgment on them."348

In Aug. 27, 1535, the Great Council of Two Hundred issued an edict of the Reformation, which was followed by another, May 21, 1536. The mass was abolished and forbidden, images and relics were removed from the churches. The citizens pledged themselves by an oath to live according to the precepts of the Gospel. A school was established for the elementary religious education of the young at the Convent de Rive, under the direction of Saunier. Out of it grew, afterwards, the college and academy of Calvin. A general hospital was founded at St. Claire, and endowed with the revenues of old Catholic hospitals. The bishop’s palace was converted into a prison. Four ministers and two deacons were appointed with fixed salaries payable out of the ecclesiastical revenues. Daily sermons were introduced at St. Pierre and St. Gervais; the communion after the simple solemn fashion of Zürich was, to be celebrated four times a year; baptism might be administered on any day, but only in the church, and by a minister. All shops were to be closed on Sunday. A strict discipline, which extended even to the headdress of brides, began to be introduced.

This was the first act in the history of the Reformation of Geneva. It was the work of Farel, but only preparatory to the more important work of Calvin. The people were anxious to get rid of the rule of Savoy and the bishop, but had no conception of evangelical religion, and would not submit to discipline. They mistook freedom for license. They were in danger of falling into the opposite extreme of disorder and confusion.

This was the state of things when Calvin arrived at Geneva in the summer of 1536, and was urged by Farel to assume the great task of building a new Church on the ruins of the old. Although twenty years older, he assumed willingly a subordinate position. He labored for a while as Calvin’s colleague, and was banished with him from Geneva, because they demanded submission to a confession of faith and a rigorous discipline. Calvin went to Strassburg. Farel accepted a call as pastor to Neuchâtel (July, 1538), the city where he had labored before.

§ 62. The Last Labors of Farel.

For the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, Farel remained chief pastor at Neuchâtel, and built up the Protestant Church in connection with Fabri, his colleague. He tried to introduce a severe discipline, by which he offended many of the new converts, and even his friends in Bern; but Fabri favored a milder course.

From Neuchâtel Farel, following his missionary impulse, made preaching excursions to Geneva, Strassburg, and Metz, in Lorraine. At Metz he preached in the cemetery of the Dominicans, while the monks sounded all the bells to drown his voice. He accompanied Calvin to Zürich to bring about the Consensus Tigurinus with the Zwinglians (1549). He followed Servetus to the stake (Oct. 27, 1553), and exhorted him in vain to renounce his errors. He collected money for the refugees of Locarno, and sent letters of comfort to his persecuted brethren in France. He made two visits to Germany (1557) to urge upon the German princes an active intercession in behalf of the Waldenses and French Protestants, but without effect. In December, 1558, when already sixty-nine years of age, he married, against the advice of his friends, a poor maiden, who had fled with her widowed mother from France to Neuchâtel.349  Calvin was much annoyed by this indiscretion, but besought the preachers of that city to bear with patience the folly of the old bachelor.

The marriage did not cool Farel’s zeal. In 1559 he visited the French refugees in Alsace and Lorraine. In November, 1561, he accepted an invitation to Gap, his birthplace, and ventured to preach in public, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, to the large number of his fellow-citizens who had become Protestants.

Shortly before his death Calvin informed him of his illness, May 2, 1564, in the last letter from his pen: "Farewell, my best and truest brother!  And since it is God’s will that you remain behind me in the world, live mindful of our friendship, which as it was useful to the Church of God, so the fruit of it awaits us in heaven. Pray do not fatigue yourself on my account. It is with difficulty that I draw my breath, and I expect that every moment will be the last. It is enough that I live and die for Christ, who is the reward of his followers both in life and in death. Again, farewell with the brethren."350  Farel, notwithstanding the infirmity of old age, travelled to Geneva, and paid his friend a touching farewell visit, but returned home before his death. He wrote to Fabri: "Would I could die for him!  What a beautiful course has he happily. finished!  God grant that we may thus finish our course according to the grace that he has given us."

His last journey was a farewell visit to the Protestants at Metz, who received him with open arms, and were exceedingly comforted by his presence (May, 1565). He preached with the fire of his youth. Soon after his return to Neuchâtel, he died peacefully, Sept. 13, 1565, seventy-six years old. The friends who visited him in his last days were deeply impressed with his heroic steadfastness and hopefulness. He was poor and disinterested, like all the Reformers.351  A monument was erected to him at Neuchâtel, May 4, 1876.

The writings of Farel are polemical and practical tracts for the times, mostly in French.352

§ 63. Peter Viret and the Reformation in Lausanne.

Biographies of Viret in Beza’s Icones, in Verheiden’s Imagines et Elogia (with a list of his works, pp. 88–90), by Chenevière (1835), Jaquemot (1856), C. Schmidt (1860). References to him in Ruchat, Le Chroniqueur, Gaberel, Merle D’Aubigné, etc.

Farel was aided in his evangelistic efforts chiefly by Viret and Froment, who agreed with his views, but differed from his violent method.

Peter Viret, the Reformer of Lausanne, was the only native Swiss among the pioneers of Protestantism in Western Switzerland; all others were fugitive Frenchmen. He was born, 1511, at Orbe, in the Pays de Vaud, and educated for the priesthood at Paris. He acquired a considerable amount of classical and theological learning, as is evident from his writings. He passed, like Luther and Farel, through a severe mental and moral struggle for truth and peace of conscience. He renounced Romanism before he was ordained, and returned to Switzerland. He was induced by Farel in 1531 to preach at Orbe. He met with considerable success, but also with great difficulty and opposition from priests and people. He converted his parents and about two hundred persons in Orbe, to whom he administered the holy communion in 1532. He shared the labors and trials of Farel and Froment in Geneva. An attempt was made to poison them; he alone ate of the poisoned dish, but recovered, yet with a permanent injury to his health.

His chief work was done at Lausanne, where he labored as pastor, teacher, and author for twenty-two years. By order of the government of Bern a public disputation was held Oct. 1 to 10, 1536.353  Viret, Farel, Calvin, Fabri, Marcourt, and Caroli were called to defend the Reformed doctrines. Several priests and monks were present, as Drogy, Mimard, Michod, Loys, Berilly, and a French physician, Claude Blancherose. A deputy of Bern presided. The discussion was conducted in French. Farel prepared ten Theses in which he asserts the supremacy of the Bible, justification by faith alone, the high-priesthood and mediatorship of Christ, spiritual worship without ceremonies and images, the sacredness of marriage, Christian freedom in the observance or non-observance of things indifferent, such as fasts and feasts. Farel and Viret were the chief speakers. The result was the introduction of the Reformation, November 1 of the same year. Viret and Pierre Caroli were appointed preachers. Viret taught at the same time in the academy founded by Bern in 1540.

Caroli stayed only a short time. He was a native of France and a doctor of the Sorbonne, who had become nominally a Protestant, but envied Viret for his popularity, took offence at his sermons, and wantonly charged him, Farel, and Calvin, with Arianism. He was deposed as a slanderer, and at length returned to the Roman Church.354

In 1549 Beza was appointed second professor of theology at the academy, and greatly strengthened Viret’s hands. Five young Frenchmen who were trained by them for the ministry, and had returned to their native land to preach the gospel, were seized at Lyons and burned, May 16, 1553, notwithstanding the intercession of the Reformed Cantons with King Henry II.

Viret attempted to introduce a strict discipline with the ban, but found as much opposition as Calvin at Geneva and Farel at Neuchâtel. Bern disapproved the ban and also the preaching of the rigorous doctrine of predestination. Beza was discouraged, and accepted a call to Geneva (September, 1558). Viret was deposed (Jan. 20, 1559). The professors of the academy and a number of preachers resigned. Viret went to Geneva and was appointed preacher of the city (March 2, 1559). His sermons were more popular and impressive than those of Calvin, and better attended.

With the permission of Geneva, he labored for a while as an evangelist, with great success, at Nismes, Montpellier, and Lyons. He presided as Moderator over the fourth national Synod of the Huguenots, August, 1563. He accepted a call from Jeanne d’Albret to an academy at Orthez, in Bearn, which she founded in 1566. There, in 1571, he died, the last of the triumvirate of the founders of the Reformed Church in French Switzerland. He was twice married, first to a lady of Orbe (1538); a second time, to a lady of Geneva (1546). He was small, sickly, and emaciated, but fervent in spirit, and untiring in labor.

Viret was an able and fruitful author, and shows an uncommon familiarity with classical and theological literature. He wrote, mostly in the form of dialogues, expositions of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, a summary of Christian doctrine, polemical books against the Council of Trent, against the mass and other doctrines of Romanism, and tracts on Providence, the Sacraments, and practical religion. The most important is The Christian Instruction in the Doctrine of the Gospel and the Law, and in the true Philosophy and Theology both Natural and Supernatural (Geneva, 1564, 3 vols. fol.). His writings are exceedingly rare.355

§ 64. Antoine Froment.

A. Froment: Les actes et gestes merveilleux de la cité de Genève, nouvellement convertie à l’Evangile. Edited by G. Revilliod, Genève, 1854. A chronicle from 1532 to 1536, fresh and lively, but partial and often inac-curate. Much used by Merle D’Aubigné. Letters in Herminjard, Tom. IV.

There is no special monograph of Froment, and he is omitted in Beza’s Icones and also in Verheiden’s Imagines et Elogia (Hagae, 1725), probably on account of his spotted character. Sketches in La France Protest., VI. 723–733, and notices in Roget, Merle D’Aubigné, Gaberel, Polenz. A good article by Th. Schott in Herzog2, IV. 677–699, and by Roget in Lichtenberger’s "Encycl.," V. 342–344. On his literary merita see Phil. Godet, Histoire litteraire de la Suisse Romande, 82 sqq.

Antoine Froment was born in 1509 in Mens, in Dauphiné, and was one of the earliest disciples of Farel, his countryman. He accompanied him in his evangelistic tours through Switzerland, and shared in his troubles, persecutions, and successes. In 1532 he went for the first time to Geneva, and opened an elementary school in which he taught religion. He advertised it by placards in these words: "A man has arrived, who in the space of one month will teach anybody, great or small, male or female, to read and write French; who does not learn it in that time need not pay anything. He will also heal many diseases without charge."  The people flocked to him; he was an able teacher, and turned his lessons into addresses and sermons.

On new year’s day, in 1533, he preached his first sermon on the public place, Molard, attacked the pope, priests, and monks as false prophets (Matt. 7:15 sq.), but was interrupted by armed priests, and forced by the police to flee to a retreat. He left the city by night, in February, but returned again and again, and aided Farel, Viret, and Calvin.

Unfortunately he did not remain faithful to his calling, and fell into disgrace. He neglected his pastoral duties, kept a shop, and at last gave up the ministry. His colleagues, especially Calvin, complained bitterly of him.356  In December, 1549, he was engaged by Bonivard, the official historian of the Republic, to assist him in his Chronicle, which was completed in 1552. Then he became a public notary of Geneva (1553). He got into domestic troubles. Soon after the death of his first wife, formerly abbess of a convent, he married a second time (1561), but committed adultery with a servant, was deposed, imprisoned, and banished, 1562.

His misfortune seems to have wrought in him a beneficial change. In 1572 he was permitted on application to return to Geneva in view of his past services, and in 1574 he was reinstated as notary. He died in 1581(?). The Genevese honored his memory as one, though the least important, and the least worthy, of the four Reformers of their city. His chief work is the Chronicle mentioned above, which supplements the Chronicles of Bonivard, and Sister Jeanne de Jussie.357

CHAPTER VIII.

JOHN CALVIN AND HIS WORK.

The literature in § 58, pp. 225–231.

§ 65. John Calvin compared with the Older Reformers.

We now approach the life and work of John Calvin, who labored more than Farel, Viret, and Froment. He was the chief founder and consolidator of the Reformed Church of France and French Switzerland, and left the impress of his mind upon all other Reformed Churches in Europe and America.

Revolution is followed by reconstruction and consolidation. For this task Calvin was providentially foreordained and equipped by genius, education, and circumstances.

Calvin could not have done the work of Farel; for he was not a missionary, or a popular preacher. Still less could Farel have done the work of Calvin; for he was neither a theologian, nor a statesman. Calvin, the Frenchman, would have been as much out of place in Zürich or Wittenberg, as the Swiss Zwingli and the German Luther would have been out of place and without a popular constituency in French-speaking Geneva. Each stands first and unrivalled in his particular mission and field of labor.

Luther’s public career as a reformer embraced twenty-nine years, from 1517 to 1546; that of Zwingli, only twelve years, from 1519 to 1531 (unless we date it from his preaching at Einsiedeln in 1516); that of Calvin, twenty-eight years, from 1536 to 1564. The first reached an age of sixty-two: the second, of forty-seven; the third, of fifty-four. Calvin was twenty-five years younger than Luther and Zwingli, and had the great advantage of building on their foundation. He had less genius, but more talent. He was inferior to them as a man of action, but superior as a thinker and organizer. They cut the stones in the quarries, he polished them in the workshop. They produced the new ideas, he constructed them into a system. His was the work of Apollos rather than of Paul: to water rather than to plant, God giving the increase.

Calvin’s character is less attractive, and his life less dramatic than Luther’s or Zwingli’s, but he left his Church in a much better condition. He lacked the genial element of humor and pleasantry; he was a Christian stoic: stern, severe, unbending, yet with fires of passion and affection glowing beneath the marble surface. His name will never rouse popular enthusiasm, as Luther’s and Zwingli’s did at the celebration of the fourth centennial of their birth; no statues of marble or bronze have been erected to his memory; even the spot of his grave in the cemetery at Geneva is unknown.358  But he surpassed them in consistency and self-discipline, and by his exegetical, doctrinal, and polemical writings, he has exerted and still exerts more influence than any other Reformer upon the Protestant Churches of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races. He made little Geneva for a hundred years the Protestant Rome and the best-disciplined Church in Christendom. History furnishes no more striking example of a man of so little personal popularity, and yet such great influence upon the people; of such natural timidity and bashfulness combined with such strength of intellect and character, and such control over his and future generations. He was by nature and taste a retiring scholar, but Providence made him an organizer and ruler of churches.

The three leading Reformers were of different nationality and education. Luther, the son of a German peasant, was trained in the school of monasticism and mysticism, under the influence of St. Augustin, Tauler, and Staupitz, and retained strong churchly convictions and prejudices. Zwingli, the son of a Swiss country magistrate, a republican patriot, an admiring student of the ancient classics and of Erasmus, passed through the door of the Renaissance to the Reformation, and broke more completely away from mediaevalism. Calvin, a native Frenchman, a patrician by education and taste, studied law as well as theology, and by his legal and judicial mind was admirably qualified to build up a new Christian commonwealth.

Zwingli and Luther met once face to face at Marburg, but did not understand each other. The Swiss extended to the German the hand of fellowship, notwithstanding their difference of opinion on the mode of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist; but Luther refused it, under the restraint of a narrower dogmatic conscience. Calvin saw neither, but was intimate with Melanchthon, whom he met at the Colloquies of Worms and Regensburg, and with whom he kept up a correspondence till his death. He rightly placed the German Reformer, as to genius and power, above the Swiss, and generously declared that, even if Luther should call him a devil, he would still esteem Luther as a most eminent servant of God. Luther saw, probably, only two books of Calvin, his reply to Sadolet and his tract on the Lord’s Supper; the former he read, as he says, with singular delight ("cum singulari voluptate "). How much more would he have been delighted with his Institutes or Commentaries!  He sent respectful greetings to Calvin through Melanchthon, who informed him that he was in high favor with the Wittenberg doctor.

Calvin, in his theology, mediated between Zwingli and Luther. Melanchthon mediated between Luther and Calvin; he was a friend of both, though unlike either in disposition and temper, standing as a man of peace between two men of war. The correspondence between Calvin and Melanchthon, considering their disagreement on the deep questions of predestination and free-will, is highly creditable to their head and heart, and proves that theological differences of opinion need not disturb religious harmony and personal friendship.

The co-operative friendships between Luther and Melanchthon, between Zwingli and Oecolampadius, between Farel and Calvin, between Calvin, Beza, and Bullinger, are among the finest chapters in the history of the Reformation, and reveal the hand of God in that movement.

Widely as these Reformers differed in talent, temperament, and sundry points of doctrine and discipline, they were great and good men, equally honest and earnest, unselfish and unworldly, brave and fearless, ready at any moment to go to the stake for their conviction. They labored for the same end: the renovation of the Catholic Church by leading it back to the pure and perennial fountain of the perfect teaching and example of Christ.

§ 66. Calvin’s Place in History.

1. Calvin was, first of all, a theologian. He easily takes the lead among the systematic expounders of the Reformed system of Christian doctrine. He is scarcely inferior to Augustin among the fathers, or Thomas Aquinas among the schoolmen, and more methodical and symmetrical than either. Melanchthon, himself the prince of Lutheran divines and "the Preceptor of Germany," called him emphatically "the Theologian."359

Calvin’s theology is based upon a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He was the ablest exegete among the Reformers, and his commentaries rank among the very best of ancient and modern times. His theology, therefore, is biblical rather than scholastic, and has all the freshness of enthusiastic devotion to the truths of God’s Word. At the same time he was a consummate logician and dialectician. He had a rare power of clear, strong, convincing statement. He built up a body of doctrines which is called after him, and which obtained symbolical authority through some of the leading Reformed Confessions of Faith.

Calvinism is one of the great dogmatic systems of the Church. It is more logical than Lutheranism and Arminianism, and as logical as Romanism. And yet neither Calvinism nor Romanism is absolutely logical. Both are happily illogical or inconsistent, at least in one crucial point: the former by denying that God is the author of sin—which limits Divine sovereignty; the latter by conceding that baptismal (i.e. regenerating or saving) grace is found outside of the Roman Church—which breaks the claim of exclusiveness.360

The Calvinistic system is popularly (though not quite correctly) identified with the Augustinian system, and shares its merit as a profound exposition of the Pauline doctrines of sin and grace, but also its fundamental defect of confining the saving grace of God and the atoning work of Christ to a small circle of the elect, and ignoring the general love of God to all mankind (John 3:16). It is a theology of Divine sovereignty rather than of Divine love; and yet the love of God in Christ is the true key to his character and works, and offers the only satisfactory solution of the dark mystery of sin. Arminianism is a reaction against scholastic Calvinism, as Rationalism is a more radical reaction against scholastic Lutheranism.361

Calvin did not grow before the public, like Luther and Melanchthon, who passed through many doctrinal changes and contradictions. He adhered to the religious views of his youth unto the end of his life.362  His Institutes came like Minerva in full panoply out of the head of Jupiter. The book was greatly enlarged and improved in form, but remained the same in substance through the several editions (the last revision is that of 1559). It threw into the shade the earlier Protestant theologies,—as Melanchthon’s Loci, and Zwingli’s Commentary on the True and False Religion,—and it has hardly been surpassed since. As a classical production of theological genius it stands on a level with Origen’s De Principiis, Augustin’s De Civitate Dei, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, and Schleiermacher’s Der Christliche Glaube.

2. Calvin is, in the next place, a legislator and disciplinarian. He is the founder of a new order of Church polity, which consolidated the dissipating forces of Protestantism, and fortified it against the powerful organization of Romanism on the one hand, and the destructive tendencies of sectarianism and infidelity on the other.

In this respect we may compare him to Pope Hildebrand, but with this great difference, that Hildebrand, the man of iron, reformed the papacy of his day on ascetic principles, and developed the mediaeval theocracy on the hierarchical basis of an exclusive and unmarried priesthood; while Calvin reformed the Church on social principles, and founded a theocracy on the democratic basis of the general priesthood of believers. The former asserted the supremacy of the Church over the State; the latter, the supremacy of Christ over both Church and State. Calvin united the spiritual and secular powers as the two arms of God, on the assumption of the obedience of the State to the law of Christ. The last form of this kind of theocracy or Christocracy was established by the Puritans in New England in 1620, and continued for several generations. In the nineteenth century, when the State has assumed a mixed religious and non-religious character, and is emancipating itself more and more from the rule of any church organization or creed, Calvin would, like his modern adherents in French Switzerland, Scotland, and America, undoubtedly be a champion of the freedom and independence of the Church and its separation from the State.

Calvin found the commonwealth of Geneva in a condition of license bordering on anarchy: he left it a well-regulated community, which John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland, from personal observation, declared to be "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles," and which Valentin Andreae, a shining light of the Lutheran Church, likewise from personal observation, half a century after Calvin’s death, held up to the churches of Germany as a model for imitation.363

The moral discipline which Calvin introduced reflects the severity of his theology, and savors more of the spirit of the Old Testament than the spirit of the New. As a system, it has long since disappeared, but its best results remain in the pure, vigorous, and high-toned morality which distinguishes Calvinistic and Presbyterian communities.

It is by the combination of a severe creed with severe self-discipline that Calvin became the father of the heroic races of French Huguenots, Dutch Burghers, English Puritans, Scotch Covenanters, and New England Pilgrims, who sacrificed the world for the liberty of conscience. "A little bit of the worlds history," says the German historian Häusser,364 "was enacted in Geneva, which forms the proudest portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A number of the most distinguished men in France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain professed her creed; they were sturdy, gloomy souls, iron characters cast in one mould, in which there was an interfusion of Romanic, Germanic, mediaeval, and modern elements; and the national and political consequences of the new faith were carried out by them with the utmost rigor and consistency."  A distinguished Scotch divine (Principal Tulloch) echoes this judgment when he says:365 "It was the spirit bred by Calvin’s discipline which, spreading into France and Holland and Scotland, maintained by its single strength the cause of a free Protestantism in all these lands. It was the same spirit which inspired the early and lived on in the later Puritans; which animated such men as Milton and Owen and Baxter; which armed the Parliament of England with strength against Charles I., and stirred the great soul of Cromwell in its proudest triumphs; and which, while it thus fed every source of political liberty in the Old World, burned undimned in the gallant crew of the ’Mayflower,’ the Pilgrim Fathers,—who first planted the seeds of civilization in the great continent of the West."366

Calvin was intolerant of any dissent, either papal or heretical, and his early followers in Europe and America abhorred religious toleration (in the sense of indifference) as a pestiferous error; nevertheless, in their conflict with reactionary Romanism and political despotism, they became the chief promoters of civil and religious liberty based upon respect for God’s law and authority. The solution of the apparent inconsistency lies in the fact that Calvinists fear God and nothing else. In their eyes, God alone is great, man is but a shadow. The fear of God makes them fearless of earthly despots. It humbles man before God, it exalts him before his fellow-men. The fear of God is the basis of moral self-government, and self-government is the basis of true freedom.367

3. Calvin’s influence is not confined to the religious and moral sphere; it extends to the intellectual and literary development of France. He occupies a prominent position in the history of the French language, as Luther, to a still higher degree, figures in the history of the German language. Luther gave to the Germans, in their own vernacular, a version of the Bible, a catechism, and a hymn-book. Calvin did not translate the Scriptures (although from his commentaries a tolerably complete version might be constructed), and his catechism and a few versified psalms never became popular; but he wrote classical French as well as classical Latin, and excelled his contemporaries in both. He was schooled in the Renaissance, but, instead of running into the pedantic Ciceronianism of Bembo, he made the old Roman tongue subservient to Christian thought, and raised the French language to the dignity of one of the chief organs of modern civilization, distinguished for directness, clearness, precision, vivacity, and elegance.

The modern French language and literature date from Calvin and his contemporary, François Rabelais (1483–1553). These two men, so totally different, reflect the opposite extremes of French character. Calvin was the most religious, Rabelais the most witty man, of his generation; the one the greatest divine, the other the greatest humorist, of France; the one a Christian stoic, the other a heathen Epicurean; the one represented discipline bordering on tyranny, the other liberty running into license. Calvin created the theological and polemical French style,—a style which suits serious discussion, and aims at instruction and conviction. Rabelais created the secular style, which aims to entertain and to please.368

Calvin sharpened the weapons with which Bossuet and the great Roman Catholic divines of the seventeenth century attacked Protestantism, with which Rousseau and the philosophers of the eighteenth century attacked Christianity, and with which Adolf Monod and Eugène Bersier of the nineteenth century preached the simple gospel of the New Testament.369

§ 67. Calvin’s Literary Labors.

The best edition of Calvin’s Opera by the Strassburg professors, Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss (now all dead), embraces so far 48 quarto vols. (1863–1892); the remaining volumes were prepared for publication by Dr. Reuss before his death (1891). He wrote to me from Neuhof, near Strassburg, July 11, 1887: "Alles ist zum Druck vorbereitet und ganz fertig mit Prolegomenis, etc. Es bleibt nichts mehr zu thun übrig als die Correctur und die Fortsetzung des immer à jour gehaltenen Index rerum et nominum, et locorum S. S., was ein anderer nach meinem Tode besorgen kann. Denn ich werde die Vollendung nicht erleben. Für den Schluss habe ich sogar noch ein Supplement ausgearbeitet, nämlich eine französische Bibel, extrahirt aus den französischen Commentaren und Predigten, nebst allen Varianten der zu Calvin’s Zeiten in Genf gedruckten Bibeln."  Vol. 45 sqq. are edited by Erichson.

Older editions appeared at Geneva, 1617, in 7 vols., in 15 fol., and at Amsterdam, 1667–1671, in 9 vols. fol. The English translation, Edinburgh, 1843–1854, has 62 vols. 8°. Several works have been separately published in Latin, French, German, Dutch, English, and other languages. See a chronological list in Henry: Das Leben Joh. Calvins, vol. III. Beilagen, 175–252, and in La France Prot. III. 545–636 (2d ed.).

The literary activity of Calvin, whether we look at the number or at the importance of works, is not surpassed by any ecclesiastical writer, ancient or modern, and excites double astonishment when we take into consideration the shortness of his life, the frailty of his health, and the multiplicity of his other labors as a teacher, preacher, church ruler, and correspondent. Augustin among the Fathers, Thomas Aquinas among the Schoolmen, Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, were equally fruitful; but they lived longer, with the exception of Thomas Aquinas. Calvin, moreover, wrote in two languages with equal clearness, force, and elegance; while Augustin and Thomas Aquinas wrote only in Latin; Luther was a master of German; and Melanchthon, a master of Latin and Greek, but his German is as indifferent as Luther’s Latin.

Calvin’s works may be divided into ten classes.

1. Exegetical Writings. Commentaries on the Pentateuch and Joshua, on the Psalms, on the Larger and Minor Prophets; Homilies on First Samuel and Job; Commentaries on all the books of the New Testament, except the Apocalypse. They form the great body of his writings.370

2. Doctrinal. The Institutes (Latin and French), first published at Basel, 1536; 2d ed., Strassburg, 1539; 5th Latin ed., Geneva, 1559.371

Minor doctrinal works: Three Catechisms, 1537, 1542, and 1545; On the Lord’s Supper (Latin and French), 1541; the Consensus Tigurinus, 1549 and 1551 (in both languages); the Consensus Genevensis (Latin and French), 1552; the Gallican Confession (Latin and French), 1559 and 1562.372

3. Polemical and Apologetic.373

(a) Against the Roman Church: Response to Cardinal Sadoletus, 1539; Against Pighius, on Free-will, 1543; On the Worship of Relics, 1543; Against the Faculty of the Sorbonne, 1544; On the Necessity of a Reformation, 1544; Against the Council of Trent, 1547.

(b) Against the Anabaptists: On the Sleep of the Soul (Psychopannychia), 1534; Brief Instruction against the Errors of the Sect of the Anabaptists, 1544.

(c) Against the Libertines: Adversus fanaticam et furiosam sectam Libertinorum qui se Spirituales vocant (also in French), 1545.

(d) Against the Anti-Trinitarians: Defensio orthodoxae fidei S. Trinitatis adversus prodigiosos errores Serveti, 1554; Responsum ad Quaestiones G. Blandatrae, 1558; Adversus Valentinum Gentilem, 1561; Responsum ad nobiles Fratres Polonos (Socinians) de controversia Mediatoris, 1561; Brevis admonitio ad Fratres Polonos ne triplicem in Deo essentiam pro tribus personis imaginando tres sibi Deos fabricent, 1563.

(e) Defence of the Doctrine of Predestination against Bolsec and Castellio, 1554 and 1557.

(f) Defence of the Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper against the Calumnies of Joachim Westphal, a Lutheran fanatic (two Defensiones and an Admonitio ultima), 1555, 1556, 1557, and a tract on the same subject against Hesshus (ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas), 1561.

4. Ecclesiastical and Liturgical. Ordinances of the Church of Geneva, 1537; Project of Ecclesiastical Ordinances, 1541; Formula of Oath prescribed to Ministers, 1542; Order of Marriage, 1545; Visitation of the Churches in the Country, 1546; Order of Baptism, 1551; Academic Laws, 1559; Ecclesiastical Ordinances, and Academic Laws, 1561; Liturgical Prayers.374

5. Sermons and Homilies. They are very, numerous, and were mostly taken down by auditors.375

6. Minor Treatises. His academic oration, for Cop in Paris, 1533; Against Astrology, 1549; On Certain Scandals, 1550, etc.

7. Consilia on various doctrinal and polemical subjects.

8. Letters. Calvin’s correspondence was enormous, and fills ten volumes in the last edition of his works.376

9. Poetical. A hymn to Christ, free metrical versions of several psalms, and an epic (Epinicion Christo cantatum, 1541).377

10. Calvin edited Seneca, De Clementia, with notes, 1532; a French translation of Melanchthon’s Loci, with preface, 1546; and wrote preface to Olivetan’s French Bible, 1535, etc.

The Adieus to the Little Council, and to the ministers of Geneva, delivered on his death-bed in 1564, form a worthy conclusion of the literary labors of this extraordinary teacher.

§ 68. Tributes to the Memory of Calvin.

Comp. the large collection of Opinions and Testimonies respecting the Writings of Calvin, in the last volume of the English edition of his works published by the Calvin Translation Society, Edinburgh, 1854, pp. 376–464. I have borrowed from it several older testimonies.

No name in church history—not even Hildebrand’s or Luther’s or Loyola’s—has been so much loved and hated, admired and abhorred, praised and blamed, blessed and cursed, as that of John Calvin. Living in a fiercely polemic age, and standing on the watch-tower of the reform movement in Western Europe, he was the observed of all observers, and exposed to attacks from every quarter. Religious and sectarian passions are the deepest and strongest. Melanchthon prayed for deliverance from "the fury of theologians."  Roman Catholics feared Calvin as their most dangerous enemy, though not a few of them honorably admitted his virtues. Protestants were divided according to creed and prejudice: some regarding him as the first among the Reformers and the nearest to Paul; others detesting his favorite doctrine of predestination. Even his share in the burning of Servetus was defended as just during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but is now universally deplored or condemned.378

Upon the whole, the verdict of history is growingly in his favor. He improves upon acquaintance. Those who know him best esteem him most. The fruits of his labors are abundant, especially in the English-speaking world, and constitute his noblest monument. The slanderous charges of Bolsec, though feebly re-echoed by Audin, are no longer believed. All impartial writers admit the purity and integrity, if not the sanctity, of his character, and his absolute freedom from love of gain and notoriety. One of the most eminent skeptical historians of France goes so far as to pronounce him "the most Christian man" of his age. Few of the great luminaries of the Church of God have called forth such tributes of admiration and praise from able and competent judges.

The following selection of testimonies may be regarded as a fair index of the influence which this extraordinary man has exerted from his humble study in "the little corner" on the south-western border of Switzerland upon men of different ages, nationalities, and creeds, down to the present time.

Tributes of Contemporaries (Sixteenth Century).

Martin Luther (1483–1546).

From a letter to Bucer, Oct. 14, 1539.

"Present my respectful greetings to Sturm and Calvin (then at Strassburg], whose books I have perused with singular pleasure (quorum libellos singulari cum voluptate legi)."

Martin Bucer (1491–1551).

"Calvin is a truly learned and singularly eloquent man (vere doctus mireque Facundus vir), an illustrious restorer of a purer Christianity (purioris Christianismi instaurator eximius)."

Theodore Beza (1519–1605).

From his Vita Calvini (Latin) at the Close (Opera, XXI. 172).

"I have been a witness of Calvin’s life for sixteen years, and I think I am fully entitled to say that in this man there was exhibited to all a most beautiful example of the life and death of the Christian (longe pulcherrimum vere christianae tum vita tum mortis exemplum), which it will be as easy to calumniate as it will be difficult to emulate."

Compare also the concluding remarks of his French biography, vol. XXI. 46 (Aug. 19, 1564).

John Sturm of Strassburg (1507–1589).

"John Calvin was endued with a most acute judgment, the highest learning, and a prodigious memory, and was distinguished as a writer by variety, copiousness, and purity, as may be seen for instance from his Institutes of the Christian Religion … I know of no work which is better adapted to teach religion, to correct morals, and to remove errors."

Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590).

An Italian convert to Protestantism. Professor at Strassburg and Heidelberg.

From a letter to the Landgrave of Hesse.

"Calvin, whose memory is honored, as all Europe knows, was held in the highest estimation, not only for eminent piety and the highest learning (praestanti pietate et maxima eruditione), but likewise for singular judgment on every subject (singulari in rebus omnibus judicio clarissimus)."

Bishop Jewel (1522–1571).

"Calvin, a reverend father, and worthy ornament of the Church of God."

Joseph Scaliger (1640–1609).

"Calvin is an instructive and learned theologian, with a higher purity and elegance of style than is expected from a theologian. The two most eminent theologians of our times are John Calvin and Peter Martyr; the former of whom has treated sound learning as it ought to be treated, with truth and purity and simplicity, without any of the scholastic subtleties. Endued with a divine genius, he penetrated into many things which lie beyond the reach of all who are not deeply skilled in the Hebrew language, though he did not himself belong to that class."

"O how well Calvin apprehends the meaning of the Prophets!  No one better … O what a good book is the Institutes!  ... Calvin stands alone among theologians (Solus inter theologos Calvinus)."

This judgment of the greatest scholar of his age, who knew thirteen languages, and was master of philology, history, chronology, philosophy, and theology, is all the more weighty as he was one of the severest of critics.

Florimond De Ræmond (1540–1602).

Counseiller du Roy au Parlement de Bordeaux. Roman Catholic.

From his L’histoire de la naissanse, progrez, et decadence de l’hérésie de ce siècle, divisé en huit livres, dedié à nôtre saint Père le Pape Paul cinquième. Paris, 1605. bk. VII. ch. 10.

"Calvin had morals better regulated and settled than N., and shewed from early youth that he did not allow himself to be carried away by the pleasures of sense (plaisirs de la chair et du ventre) … With a dry and attenuated body, he always possessed a fresh and vigorous intellect, ready in reply, bold in attack; even in his youth a great faster, either on account of his health, and to allay the headaches with which he was continually afflicted, or in order to have his mind more disencumbered for the purposes of writing, studying, and improving his memory. Calvin spoke little; what he said were serious and impressive words (et n’estoit que propos serieux et qui portoyent coup); he never appeared in company, and always led a retired life. He had scarcely his equal; for during twenty-three years that he retained possession of the bishopric (l’evesché) of Geneva, he preached every day, and often twice on Sundays. He lectured on theology three times a week; and every Friday he entered into a conference which he called the Congregation. His remaining hours were employed in composition, and answering the letters which came to him as to a sovereign pontiff from all parts of heretical Christendom (qui arrivoyent à luy de toute la Chrétienté hérétique, comme au Souveraine Pontife)....

"Calvin had a brilliancy of spirit, a subtlety of judgment, a grand memory, an eminent erudition, and the power of graceful diction.... No man of all those who preceded him has surpassed him in style, and few since have attained that beauty and facility of language which he possessed."

Etienne Pasquier (1528–1615).

Roman Catholic. Consellier et Avocat Général du Roy an la Chambre des Comptes de Paris.

From Les Recherches de la France, p. 769 (Paris, 1633).

… "He [Calvin) wrote equally well in Latin and French, the latter of which languages is greatly indebted to him for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine expressions (enrichie d’une infinité de beaux traits), though I could have wished that they had been written on a better subject. In short, a man wonderfully conversant with and attached to the books of the Holy Scriptures, and such, that if he had turned his mind in the proper direction, he might have been ranked with the most distinguished doctors of the Church."

Jacques Auguste de Thou (Thuanus, 1553–1617).

President of the Parliament of Paris. A liberal Roman Catholic and one of the framers of the Edict of Nantes.

From the 36th book of his Historia sui Temporis (from 1543–1607).

"John Calvin, of Noyon in Picardy, a person of lively spirit and great eloquence (d’un esprit vif et d’une grande eloquence),379 and a theologian of high reputation among the Protestants, died of asthma, May 20 [27], 1564, at Geneva, where he had taught for twenty-three years, being nearly fifty-six years of age. Though he had labored under various diseases for seven years, this did not render him less diligent in his office, and never hindered him from writing."

De Thou has nothing unfavorable to say of Calvin.

Testimonies of Later French Writers.

Charles Drelincourt (1595–1669).

"In that prodigious multitude of books which were composed by Calvin, you see no words thrown away; and since the prophets and apostles, there never perhaps was a man who conveyed so many distinct statements in so few words, and in such appropriate and well-chosen terms (en des mots si propres et si bien choisis).... Never did Calvin’s life appear to me more pure or more innocent than after carefully examining the diabolical calumnies with which some have endeavored to defame his character, and after considering all the praises which his greatest enemies are constrained to bestow on his memory."

Moses Amyraut (1596–1645).

"That incomparable Calvin, to whom mainly, next to God, the Church owes its Reformation, not only in France, but in many other parts of Europe."

Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704).

From his Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes (1688), the greatest polemical work in French against the Reformation.

"I do not know if the genius of Calvin would be found as fitted to excite the imagination and stir up the populace as was that of Luther, but after the movement had commenced, he rose in many countries, more especially in France, above Luther himself, and made himself head of a party which hardly yields to that of the Lutherans. By his searching intellect and his bold decisions, he improved upon all those who had sought in this century to establish a new church, and gave a new turn to the pretended reformation.

"It is a weak feeling which makes us desirous to find anything extraordinary in the death-beds of these people. God does not always bestow these examples. Since he permits heresy for the trial of his people, it is not to be wondered at that to complete this trial he allows the spirit of seduction to prevail in them even to the end, with all the fair appearances by which it is covered; and, without learning more of the life and death of Calvin, it is enough to know that he has kindled in his country a flame which not all the blood shed on its account has been able to extinguish, and that he has gone to appear before the judgment of God without feeling any remorse for a great crime ....

"Let us grant him then, since he wishes it so much, the glory of having written as well as any man of his age; let us even place him, if desired, above Luther; for whilst the latter was in some respects more original and lively, Calvin, his inferior in genius, appears to have surpassed him in learning. Luther triumphed as a speaker, but the pen of Calvin was more correct, especially in Latin, and his style, though severe, was much more consecutive and chaste. They equally excelled in speaking the language of their country, and both possessed an extraordinary vehemence. Each by his talents has gained many disciples and admirers. Each, elated by success, has fancied to raise himself above the Fathers; neither could bear contradiction, and their eloquence abounds in nothing more largely than virulent invective."

Richard Simon (1638–1712).

One of the greatest critical and biblical scholars of the Roman Catholic Church.

From his Critical History of the Old Testament (Latin and French).

"As Calvin was endued with a lofty genius, we are constantly meeting with something in his commentaries which delights the mind (quo animus rapitur); and in consequence of his intimate and perfect acquaintance with human nature, his ethics are truly charming, while he does his utmost to maintain their accordance with the sacred text. Had he been less under the influence of prejudice, and had he not been solicitous to become the leader and standard-bearer of heresy, he might have produced a work of the greatest usefulness to the Catholic Church."

The same passage, with additions, occurs in French. Simon says that no author "had a better knowledge of the utter inability of the human heart," but that "he gives too much prominence to this inability," and "lets no opportunity pass of slandering the Roman Church," so that part of his commentaries is "useless declamations" (déclamations inutiles). "Calvin displays more genius and judgment in his works than Luther; he is more cautious, and takes care not to make use of weak proofs, of which his adversaries might take advantage. He is subtle to excess in his reasoning, and his commentaries are filled with references skilfully drawn from the text—which are capable of prepossessing the minds of those readers who are not profoundly acquainted with religion."

Simon greatly underrates Calvin’s knowledge of Hebrew when he says that he knew not much more than the Hebrew letters. Dr. Diestel (Geschichte des Alten Test. in der christl. Kirche, 1869, p. 267) justly pronounces this a slander which is refuted by every page of Calvin’s commentaries. He ascribes to him a very good knowledge of Hebrew: "ausgewählt mit einer sehr tüchtigen hebräischen Sprachkenntniss."

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706).

Son of a Reformed minister, educated by the Jesuits of Toulouse, converted to Romanism, returned to Protestantism, skeptical, the author of a Dictionnaire historique et critique.

"That a man who had acquired so great a reputation and so great an authority should have had only a hundred crowns of salary, and have desired no more, and that after having lived fifty-five years with every sort of frugality, he left to his heirs only the value of three hundred crowns, including his library, is a circumstance so heroical, that one must be devoid of feeling not to admire it, and one of the most singular victories which virtue and greatness of soul have been able to achieve over nature, even among ministers of the gospel. Calvin has left imitators in so far as regards activity of life, zeal and affection for the interest of his party; they employ their eloquence, their pens, their endeavors, their solicitations in the advancement of the kingdom of God; but they do not forget themselves, and they are, generally speaking, an exemplification of the maxim that the Church is a good mother, in whose service nothing is lost.

"The Catholics have been at last obliged to dismiss to the region of fable the atrocious calumnies (les calomnies atroces) which they had uttered against the moral character of Calvin; their best authors now restrict themselves to stating that if he was exempt from the vices of the body, he has not been so from those of the mind, such as pride, passion, and slander. I know that the Cardinal de Richelieu, or that dexterous writer who has published under his name ’The Method of Conversation,’ had adopted the absurdities of Bolsec. But in general, eminent authors speak no more of that. The mob of authors will never renounce it. These calumnies are to be found in the ’Systema decretorum dogmaticorum,’ published at Avignon in 1693, by Francis Porter. Thus the work of Bolsec will always be cited as long as the Calvinists have adversaries, but it will be sufficient to brand it eternally with calumny that there is among Catholics a certain number of serious authors who will not adopt its fables."

Jean Alphonse Turretin (1617–1737).

Professor of theology of Geneva and representative of a moderate Calvinism. The most distinguished theologian of his name, also called Turretin the younger, to distinguish him from his father François.

"John Calvin was a man whose memory will be blessed to the latest age (vir benedictae in omne oevum memoriae). … He has by his immense labors instructed and adorned not only the Church of Geneva, but the whole Reformed world, so that not unfrequently all the Reformed Churches are in the gross called after his name."

Montesquieu (1689–1755).

Author of De l’esprit des lois (the oracle of the friends of moderate freedom).

"The Genevese should bless the birthday of Calvin."

Voltaire (1694–1778).

"Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations."

"The famous Calvin, whom we regard as the Apostle of Geneva, raised himself up to the rank of Pope of the Protestants (s’érigea en pape des Protestants). He was acquainted with Latin and Greek, and the had philosophy of his time. He wrote better than Luther, and spoke worse; both were laborious and austere, but hard and violent (durs et emportés).... Calvinism conforms to the republican spirit, and yet Calvin had a tyrannical spirit.... He demanded the toleration which he needed for himself in France, and he armed himself with intolerance at Geneva.... The severity of Calvin was united with the greatest disinterestedness (au plus grand desintéressement)."

Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712–1778).

A native of Geneva. The apostle of the French Revolution, as Calvin was the apostle of the French Reformation.

From Lettres écrites de la montagne.

"Quel homme fut jamais plus tranchant, plus impérieux, plus décisif, plus divinement infaillible à son gré que Calvin, pour qui la moindre opposition ... était toujours une oeuvre de Satan, un crime digne Du feu!"

D’alembert (1717–1783).

"Calvin justly enjoyed a great reputation—a literary man of the first rank (homme de lettre du premier ordre)—writing in Latin as well as one could do in a dead language, and in French with singular purity for his time (avec une pureté singulière pour son temps). This purity, which our able grammarians admire even at this day, renders his writings far superior to almost all those of the same age, as the works of the Port-Royalists are distinguished even at the present day, for the same reason, from the barbarous rhapsodies of their opponents and contemporaries.

Frederic Ancillon (1767–1837).

Tableau des Révolutions du Système Politique de l’Europe.

"Calvin was not only a profound theologian, but likewise an able legislator; the share which he had in the framing of the civil and religious laws which have produced for several centuries the happiness of the Genevan republic, is perhaps a fairer title to renown than his theological works; and this republic, celebrated notwithstanding its small size, and which knew how to unite morals with intellect, riches with simplicity, simplicity with taste, liberty with order, and which has been a focus of talents and virtues, has proved that Calvin knew men, and knew how to govern them."

Fr. Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787–1874).

Celebrated French historian and statesman, of Huguenot descent.

From St. Louis et Calvin, pp. 361 sqq.

"Calvin is great by reason of his marvellous powers, his lasting labors, and the moral height and purity of his character.... Earnest in faith, pure in motive, austere in his life, and mighty in his works, Calvin is one of those who deserve their great fame. Three centuries separate us from him, but it is impossible to examine his character and history without feeling, if not affection and sympathy, at least profound respect and admiration for one of the great Reformers of Europe and of the great Christians of France."

By the same (1787–1874).

From Musée des protestants célèbres.

"Luther vint pour détruire, Calvin pour fonder, par des nécessités égales, mais differentes.... Calvin fut l’homme de cette seconde époque de toutes les grandes révolutions sociales, où, après avoir conquis par la guerre le terrain qui doit leur appartenir, elles travaillent à s’y établir par la paix, selon des principes et sous les formes qui conviennent à leur nature.... L’idée générale selon laquelle Calvin agit en brûlant Servet était de son siècle, et an a tort de la lui imputer."

François Aug. Marie Mignet (1796–1884).

Celebrated French historian and academician.

From his Mémoire sur l’établissement de la Réforme à Genève.

"Calvin fut, dans le protestantisme, après Luther, ce qu’est la conséquance après le principe; dans la Suisse, ce qu’est la règle après une révolution.... Calvin, s’il n’avait ni le génie de l’invention ni celui de la conquète; s’il n’était ni un révolutionnaire comme Luther ni un missionaire comme Farel, il avait une force de logique qui devait pousser plus loin la réforme du premier, et une faculté d’organisation qui devait achever l’oeuvre du second. C’est par là qu’il renouvela la face du protestantisme at qu’il constitua Genève."

Jules Michelet (1798–1874).

Histoire de France, vol. XI. (Les Guerres De Religion), Paris, 1884, pp. 88, 89, 92.

"C’était un travailleur terrible, avec un air souffrant, une constitution misérable et débile, veillant, s’usant, se consumant, ne distinguant ni nuit ni jour....

"C’était une langue inouïe [Calvin’s French style], la nouvelle langue française. Vingte ans après Commines, trente ans avant Montaigne, dejà la langue de Rousseau.... Son plus redoutable attribut, c’est sa pénétrante clarté, son extrême lumière d’argent, plutôt d’acier, d’une lame qui brille, mais qui tranche. On sent que cette lumière vient du dedans, du fond de la conscience, d’un coeur âprement convaincu, dont la logique est l’aliment....

"Le fond de ce grand et puissant théologien était d’être un légiste. Il l’était de culture, d’esprit, de caractère. Il en avait les deux tendances: l’appel au juste, au vrai, un àpre besoin de justice; mais, d’autre part aussi, l’esprit dur, absolu, des tribunaux d’alors, et it le porta dans la théologie.... La prédestination de Calvin se trouva, en pratique, une machine a faire des martyrs."

Bon Louis Henri Martin (1810–1883).

Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789, Tom. VIII. p. 325, of the fourth edition, Paris, 1860. Crowned by the French Academy.

Martin, in his standard work, thus describes the influence of Calvin upon the city of Geneva: "Calvin ne la sauve pas seulement, mais conquiert â cette petite ville une grandeur, une puissance morale immense. Il en fait la capitale de la Réforme, autant que la Réforme peut avoir une capitale, pour la moitié du monde protestant, avec une vaste influence, acceptée ou subie, sur l’autre moitié. Genève n’est rien par la population, par les armes, par le territoire: elle est tout par l’esprit. Un seul avantage matériel lui garantit tons ses avantages moraux: son admirable position, qui fait d’elle une petite France républicaine et protestante, indépendante de la monarchie catholique de France et â l’abri de l’absorption monarchique et catholique; la Suisse protestante, alliée nécessaire de la royauté française contre l’empereur, couvre Genève par la politique vis-à-vis du roi et par l’épée contra les maisons d’Autriche et de Savoie."

Ernest Renan (1823–1892).

Renan, a member of the French Academy, a brilliant genius, and one of the first historians of France, was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood, but became a skeptic. This makes his striking tribute all the more significant.

From his article on John Calvin in his Études d’histoire religieuse, 7th ed. Paris, 1880, pp. 337–367.

"Calvin was one of those absolute men, cast complete in one mould, who is taken in wholly at a single glance: one letter, one action suffices for a judgment of him. There were no folds in that inflexible soul, which never knew doubt or hesitation.... Careless of wealth, of titles, of honors, indifferent to pomp, modest in his life, apparently humble, sacrificing everything to the desire of making others like himself, I hardly know of a man, save Ignatius Loyola, who could match him in those terrible transports.... It is surprising that a man who appears to us in his life and writings so unsympathetic should have been the centre of an immense movement in his generation, and that this harsh and severe tone should have exerted so great an influence on the minds of his contemporaries. How was it, for example, that one of the most distinguished women of her time, Renée of France, in her court at Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of European wits, was captivated by that stern master, and by him drawn into a course that must have been so thickly, strewn with thorns?  This kind of austere seduction is exercised by those only who work with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympathetic ardor which was one of the secrets of Luther’s success, lacking the charm, the perilous, languishing tenderness of Francis of Sales, Calvin succeeded more than all, in an age and in a country which called for a reaction towards Christianity, simply because he was the most Christian man of his century (l’homme le plus chrétien de son siècle, p. 342)."

Felix Bungener (1814–1874).

Pastor of the national Church of Geneva, and author of several historical works.

From Calvin, sa vie, son oeuvre et ses écrits, Paris, 1862; English translation (Edinburgh, 1863), pp. 338, 349.

"Let us not give him praise which he would not have accepted. God alone creates; a man is great only because God thinks fit to accomplish great things by his instrumentality. Never did any great man understand this better than Calvin. It cost him no effort to refer all the glory to God; nothing indicates that he was ever tempted to appropriate to himself the smallest portion of it. Luther, in many a passage, complacently dwells on the thought that a petty monk, as he says, has so well made the Pope to tremble, and so well stirred the whole world. Calvin will never say any such thing; he never even seems to say it, even in the deepest recesses of his heart; everywhere you perceive the man, who applies to all things—to the smallest as to the greatest—the idea that it is God who does all and is all. Read again, from this point of view, the very pages in which he appeared to you the haughtiest and most despotic, and see if, even there, he is anything other than the workman referring all, and in all sincerity, to his master.... But the man, in spite of all his faults, has not the less remained one of the fairest types of faith, of earnest piety, of devotedness, and of courage. Amid modern laxity, there is no character of whom the contemplation is more instructive; for there is no man of whom it has been said with greater justice, in the words of an apostle, ’he endured as seeing him who is invisible.’ "

From Dutch Scholars.

James Arminius (1560–1609).

The founder of Arminianism.

"Next to the study of the Scriptures which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin’s Commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than Helmich himself (a Dutch divine, 1551–1608]; for I affirm that he excels beyond comparison (incomparabilem esse) in the interpretation of Scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us by the library of the fathers; so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent spirit of prophecy (spiritum aliquem prophetiae eximium). His Institutes ought to be studied after the [Heidelberg] Catechism, as containing a fuller explanation, but with discrimination (cum delectu), like the writings of all men."

Dan. Gerdes (1698–1767).

Historia Evangelii Renovati, IV. 41 sq. (Groningae, 1752).

"Calvin’s labors were so highly useful to the Church of Christ, that there is hardly any department of the Christian world to be found that is not full of them,—hardly any heresy that has arisen which he has not successfully encountered with that two-edged sword, the Word of God, or a portion of Christian doctrine which he has not illustrated in a remarkable manner. Certainly his commentaries on the Old and New Testaments are all that could be desired; every one of his sermons is full of unction; his Institutes bear the most complete and finished execution; his doctrinal treatises are distinguished by solidity; his critical works by warmth and fervor; his practical writings by virtue and piety; and his letters by mildness, prudence, gravity, and wisdom."

Judgments of German Scholars.

John Lawrence Mosheim (1695–1755).

From the English translation of his Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, by James Murdock, D. D., New York, 1854, vol. III. 163, 167, 192.

"Calvin was venerated, even by his enemies, for his genius, learning, eloquence, and other endowments, and moreover was the friend of Melanchthon.

"Few persons of his age will bear any comparison with Calvin for patient industry, resolution, hatred of the Roman superstition, eloquence, and genius. Possessing a most capacious mind, he endeavored not only to establish and bless his beloved Geneva with the best regulations and institutions, but also to make it the mother and the focus of light and influence to the whole Reformed Church, just as Wittenberg was to the Lutheran community.

"The first rank among the interpreters of the age is deservedly assigned to John Calvin, who endeavored to expound nearly the whole of the sacred volume.

"His Institutes are written in a perspicuous and elegant style, and have nothing abstruse and difficult to be comprehended in the arguments or mode of reasoning."

Johannes von Müller (1752–1809).

The great historian of Switzerland, called "the German Tacitus."

Allgemeine Geschichte, Bk. III.

"John Calvin had the spirit of an ancient lawgiver, a genius and characteristic which gave him in part unmistakable advantages, and failings which were only the excess of virtues, by the assistance of which he carried through his objects. He had also, like other Reformers, an indefatigable industry, with a fixed regard to a certain end, an invincible perseverance in principles and duty during his life, and at his death the courage and dignity of an ancient Roman censor. He contributed greatly to the development and advance of the human intellect, and more, indeed, than he himself foresaw. For among the Genevese and in France, the principle of free inquiry, on which he was obliged at first to found his system, and to curb which he afterwards strove in vain, became more fruitful in consequences than among nations which are less inquisitive than the Genevese, and less daring than the French. From this source were developed gradually philosophical ideas, which, though they are not yet purified sufficiently from the passions and views of their founders, have yet banished a great number of gloomy and pernicious prejudices, and have opened us prospects of a pure practical wisdom and better success for the future."

Fr. August Tholuck (1799–1877).

Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 3d ed. 1831, p. 19.

"In his [Calvin’s] Exposition on the Epistle to the Romans are united pure Latinity, a solid method of unfolding and interpreting, founded on the principles of grammatical science and historical knowledge, a deeply penetrating faculty of mind, and vital piety."

Dr. Twesten (1789–1876).

The successor of Schleiermacher in the chair of systematic theology at Berlin, and an orthodox Lutheran in the United Evangelical Church of Prussia.

From his Dogmatik der evangelisch Lutherischen Kirche, I. 216 (4th ed. Hamburg, 1838).

After speaking very highly and justly of Melanchthon and John Gerhard, Twesten thus characterizes Calvin’s Institutes: —

"Mehr aus einem Gusz, als Melanchthon’s Loci, die reife Frucht eines tief religiösen und ächt wissenschaftlichen Geistes, mit groszer Klarheit, Kraft und Schönheit der Darstellung geschrieben, einfach in der Anlage, reich und gründlich in der Ausführung, verdient es neben jenen auch in unserer Kirche als eins der vorzüglichsten Werke auf dem Gebiete der dogmatischen Literatur überhaupt studirt zu werden."

Paul Henry.

Doctor of theology and pastor of a French Reformed Church in Berlin, author of two learned biographies of Calvin: a large one, in 3 vols. (1833–1844), which is chiefly valuable as a collection of documents, and a popular one in 1 vol.

From Das Leben Johann Calvins (Hamburg and Gotha, 1846), pp. 443 sqq.

"The whole tendency of Calvin was practical; learning was subordinate; the salvation of the world, the truth was to him the main thing. His spiritual tendency was not philosophical, but his dialectical bent ran principles to their utmost consequences. He had an eye to the minutest details. His former study of law had trained him for business.... He was a watchman over the whole Church.... All his theological writings excel in acuteness, dialectics, and warmth of conviction. He had great eloquence at command, but despised the art of rhetoric.... Day and night he was occupied with the work of the Lord. He disliked the daily entreaties of his colleagues to grant himself some rest. He continued to labor through his last sicknesses, and only stopped dictating a week before his death, when his voice gave out.... All sought his counsel; for God endowed him with such a happy spirit of wisdom that no one regretted to have followed his advice. How great was his erudition!  How marvellous his judgment!  How peculiar his kindness, which came to the aid even of the smallest and lowliest, if necessary, and his meekness and patient forbearance with the imperfections of others!"

Dr. L. Stähelin.

Johannes Calvin. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1863. Vol. II. pp. 365–393.

This description of Calvin’s character as a man and as a Christian is faithful in praise and censure, but too profuse to be inserted. Dr. Stähelin emphasizes the logic of his intellect and conscience, his firm assurance of eternal election, his constant sense of the nearness of God, "the majesty" of his character, the predominance of the Old Testament feature, his resemblance to Moses and the Hebrew Prophets, his irritability, anger, and contemptuousness, relieved by genuine humility before God, his faithfulness to friends, his life of unceasing prayer, his absolute disinterestedness and consecration to God. He also quotes the remarkable testimony of Renan, that Calvin was "the most Christian man in Christendom."

Dr. Friedrich Trechsel (1805–1885).

Die Protestantischen Antitrinitarier. Heidelberg, 1839–1844 (I. 177).

"People have often supposed that they were insulting Calvin’s memory by calling him the Pope of Protestantism!  He was so, but in the noblest sense of the expression, through the spiritual and moral superiority with which the Lord of the Church had endowed him for its deliverance; through his unwearied, universal zeal for God’s honor; through his wise care for the edifying of the kingdom of Christ; in a word, through all which can be comprehended in the idea of the papacy, of truth and honor."

Ludwig Häusser (1818–1867).

Professor of history at Heidelberg.

The Period of the Reformation, edited by Oncken (1868, 2d ed. 1880), translated by Mrs. Sturge, New York, 1874 (pp. 241 and 244).

"As the German Reformation is connected with Martin Luther, and the Swiss with Ulrich Zwingli, that of the Romanic and Western European nations is connected with John Calvin, the most remarkable personage of the time. He was not equal either to Luther or Zwingli in general talent, mental vigor, or tranquility of soul; but in logical acuteness and talent for organization he was at least equal, if not superior, to either. He settled the basis for the development of many states and churches. He stamped the form of the Reformation in countries to which he was a stranger. The French date the beginnings of their literary development from him, and his influence was not restricted to the sphere of religion, but embraced their intellectual life in general; no one else has so permanently influenced the spirit and form of their written language as he.

"At a time when Europe had no solid results of reform to allow, this little State of Geneva stood up as a great power; year by year it sent forth apostles into the world, who preached its doctrines everywhere, and it became the most dreaded counterpoise to Rome, when Rome no longer had any bulwark to defend her. The missionaries from this little community displayed the lofty and dauntless spirit which results from stoical education and training; they bore the stamp of a self-renouncing heroism which was elsewhere swallowed up in theological narrowness. They were a race with vigorous bones and sinews, for whom nothing was too daring, and who gave a new direction to Protestantism by causing it to separate itself from the old traditional monarchical authority, and to adopt the gospel of democracy as part of its creed. It formed a weighty counterpoise to the desperate efforts which the ancient Church and monarchical power were making to crush the spirit of the Reformation.

"It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip II., and the Stuarts, with Luther’s passive resistance; men were wanted who were ready to wage war to the knife, and such was the Calvinistic school. It everywhere accepted the challenge; throughout all the conflicts for political and religious liberty, up to the time of the first emigration to America, in France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, we recognize the Genevan school."

Dr. Karl Rudolf Hagenbach (1801–1874).

Swiss Reformed, of Basel.

Geschichte des Reformation, 5th ed. edited by Nippold, Leipzig, 1887, p. 605.

"Calvin hatte so zu sagen kein irdisches Vaterland, dessen Freiheit er, wie Zwingli, zu wahren sich bewogen fand. Das himmlische Vaterland, die Stadt Gottes war es, in welche er alle zu sammeln sich berufen sah. Ihm galt nicht Grieehe, nicht Skythe, nicht Franzose, nicht Deutscher, nicht Eidgenosz, sondern einzig und allein die neue Kreatur in Christo. Es wäre thöricht, ihm solches zum Vorwurf zu machen. Es ist vielmehr richtig bemerkt worden, wie Calvin, obgleich er nicht die Grösze Genfs als solche gesucht, dennoch dieser Stadt zu einer weltgeschichtlichen Grösze verholfen, die sie ohne ihn niemals erreicht haben würde. Aber so viel ist richtig, dasz das Reinmenschliche, das im Familien- und Volksleben seine Wurzel hat, und das durch das Christenthum nicht verdrängt, aber wohl veredelt werden soll, bei Calvin weniger zur Entwickelung kam. Männer des strengen Gedankens und einer rigiden Gesetzlichkeit werden geneigt sein, Calvin über Luther und Zwingli zu erheben. Und er hat auch seine unbestreitbaren Vorzüge. Poetisch angelegte Gemütsmenschen aber werden anfänglich Calvin und seiner vom Naturboden losgelösten, abstrakten Frömmigkeit gegenüber sich eines gewissen Fröstelns nicht erwehren können und einige Zeit brauchen, bis sie es überwunden haben; während sie sich zu dem herzgewinnenden Luther sogleich und auch dann noch hingezogen fühlen, wenn er schäumt und vor Zorn uebersprudelt."

Dr. Is. Dorner (1809–1884).

Geschichte der Protestantischen Theologie. München, 1867, pp. 374, 376.

"Calvin was equally great in intellect and character, lovely in social life, full of tender sympathy and faithfulness to friends, yielding and forgiving towards personal offences, but inexorably severe when he saw the honor of God obstinately and malignantly attacked. He combined French fire and practical good sense with German depth and soberness. He moved as freely in the world of ideas as in the business of Church government. He was an architectonic genius in science and practical life, always with an eye to the holiness and majesty of God."  (Condensed translation.)

Dr. Kahnis (Lutheran, 1814–1888).

Die Lutherische Dogmatik. Leipzig, 1861, vol. II. p. 490 sq.

"The fear of God was the soul of his piety, the rock-like certainty of his election before the foundation of the world was his power, and the doing of the will of God his single aim, which he pursued with trembling and fear.... No other Reformer has so well demonstrated the truth of Christ’s word that, in the kingdom of God, dominion is service. No other had such an energy of self-sacrifice, such an irrefragable conscientiousness in the greatest as well as the smallest things, such a disciplined power. This man, whose dying body was only held together by the will flaming from his eyes, had a majesty of character which commanded the veneration of his contemporaries."

F. W. Kampschulte (1831–1872).

Catholic Professor of History In the University of Bonn from 1860 to 1872, and author of an able and Impartial work on Calvin, which was Interrupted by his death. Vols. II. and III. were never published. He protested against the Vatican decrees of 1870.

Johann Calvin. Seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf. Erster Band, Leipzig,

1869, p. 274 sq.

"Calvin’s Lehrbuch der christlichen Religion ist ohne Frage das hervorragendste und bedeutendste Erzeugniss, welches die reformatorische Literatur des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts auf dem Gebiete der Dogmatik aufzuweisen hat. Schon ein oberflächlicher Vergleich lässt uns den gewaltigen Fortschritt erkennen, den es gegenüber den bisherigen Leistungen auf diesem Gebiete bezeichnet. Statt der unvollkommenen, nach der einen oder andern Seite unzulänglichen Versuche Melanchthon’s, Zwingli’s, Farel’s erhalten wir aus Calvin’s Hand das Kunstwerk eines, wenn auch nicht harmonisch in sich abgeschlossenen, so doch wohlgegliederten, durchgebildeten Systems, das in allen seinen Theilen die leitenden Grundgedanken widerspiegelt und von vollständiger Beherrschung des Stoffes zeugt. Es hatte eine unverkennbare Berechtigung, wenn man den Verfasser der Institution als den Aristoteles der Reformation bezeichnete. Die ausserordentliche Belesenheit in der biblischen und patristischen Literatur, wie sie schon in den früheren Ausgaben des Werkes hervortritt, setzt in Erstaunen. Die Methode ist lichtvoll und klar, der Gedankengang streng logisch, überall durchsicktig, die Eintheilung und Ordnung des Stoffes dem leitenden Grundgedanken entsprechend; die Darstellung schreitet ernst und gemessen vor und nimmt, obschon in den späteren Ausgaben mehr gelehrt als anziehend, mehr auf den Verstand als auf das Gemüth berechnet, doch zuweilen einen höheren Schwung an. Calvin’s Institution enthält Abschnitte, die dem Schönsten, was von Pascal und Bossuet geschrieben worden ist, an die Seite gestellt werden können: Stellen, wie jene fiber die Erhabenheit der heiligen Schrift, aber das Elend des gefallenen Menschen, über die Bedeutung des Gebetes, werden nie verfehlen, ait den Leser einen tiefen Eindruck zu machen. Auch von den katholischen Gegnern Calvin’s sind diese Vorzüge anerkannt und manche Abschnitte seines Werkes sogar benutzt worden. Man begreift es vollkommen, wenn er selbst mit dem Gefühl der Befriedigung und des Stolzes auf sein Werk blickt und in seinen übrigen Schriften gern auf das ’Lehrbuch’ zurückverweist."

"Und doch beschleicht uns, trotz aller Bewunderung, zu der uns der Verfasser nöthigt, bei dem Durchlesen seines Werkes ein unheimliches Gefühl. Ein System, das von dem furchtbaren Gedanken der doppelten Praedestination ausgeht, welches die Menschen ohne jede Rücksicht auf das eigene Verhalten in Erwählte und Verworfene scheidet und die Einen wie die Anderen zu blossen Werkzeugen zur Verherrlichung der göttlichen Majestät macht ... ein solches System kann unmöglich dem deukenden, Belehrung und Trost suchenden Menschengeist innere Ruhe und Befriedigung gewähren."

Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss.

Joh. Calvini Opera, vol. I. p. ix.

The Strassburg editors of Calvin’s Works belong to the modern liberal school of theology.

"Si Lutherum virum maximum, si Zwinglium civem Christianum nulli secundum, si Melanthonem praeceptorem doctissimum merito appellaris, Calvinum jure vocaris theologorum principem et antesignanum. In hoc enim quis linguarum et literarum praesidia, quis disciplinarum fere omnium non miretur orbem?  De cujus copia doctrinae, rerumque dispositions aptissime concinnata, et argumentorum vi ac validitate in dogmaticis; de ingenii acumine et subtilitate, atque nunc festiva nunc mordaci salsedine in polemicis, de felicissima perspicuitate, sobrietate ac sagacitate in exegeticis, de nervosa eloquentia et libertate in paraeneticis; de prudentia sapientiaque legislatoria in ecclesiis constituendis, ordinandis ac regendis incomparabile, inter omnes viros doctos et de rebus evangelicis libere sentientes jam abunde constat. Imo inter ipsos adversarios romanos nullus hodie est, vel mediocri harum rerum cognitione imbutus vel tantilla judicii praeditus aequitate, qui argumentorum et sententiarum ubertatem, proprietatem verborum sermonemque castigatum, stili denique, tam latini quam gallici, gravitatem et luciditatem non admiretur. Quae cuncta quum in singulis fere scriptis, tum praecipue relucent in immortali illa Institutione religionis Christianae, quae omnes ejusdem generis expositiones inde ab apostolorum temporibus conscriptas, adeoque ipsos Melanthonis Locos theologicos, absque omni controversia longe antecellit atque eruditum et ingenuum lectorem, etiamsi alicubi secus senserit, hodieque quasi vinctum trahit et vel invitum rapit in admirationem."

Tributes from English Writers (Mostly Episcopal).

Richard Hooker (1553–1600).

From his Preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity (Keble’s ed. vol. I. p. 158).

"Whom [Calvin], for my own part, I think incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy since the hour it enjoyed him. His bringing up was in the study of the civil law. Divine knowledge he gathered not by hearing or reading so much as by teaching others. For, though thousands were debtors to him, as touching knowledge of this kind, yet he to none, but only to God, the Author of that most blessed fountain, the Book of Life, and of the admirable dexterity of wit, together with the helps of other learning, which were his guides.—We should be injurious unto virtue itself, if we did derogate from them whom their industry hath made great. Two things of principal moment there are, which have deservedly procured him honor throughout the world: the one, his exceeding pains in composing the Institutions of the Christian Religion; the other, his no less industrious travails for exposition of Holy Scripture, according unto the same Institutions....

"Of what account the Master of Sentences [Peter Lombard] was in the Church of Rome; the same and more, among the preachers of Reformed Churches, Calvin had purchased; so that the perfectest divines were judged they which were skilfullest in Calvin’s writings; his books almost the very canon to judge both doctrine and discipline by."

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626).

"Calvin was an illustrious person, and never to be mentioned without a preface of the highest honor."

Dr. John Donne (1573–1631).

Royal Chaplain and Dean of St. Paul’s, London; distinguished as a poet and divine.

"St. Augustin, for sharp insight and conclusive judgment in exposition of places of Scripture, which he always makes so liquid and pervious, hath scarce been equalled therein by any of all the writers in the Church of God, except Calvin may have that honor, for whom (when it concerns not points of controversy) I see the Jesuits themselves, though they dare not name him, have a high degree of reverence."

Bishop Hall (1574–1656).

Works, III. 516.

"Reverend Calvin, whose judgment I so much honor, that I reckon him among the best interpreters of Scripture since the Apostles left the earth."

Bishop Sanderson (1587–1663).

"When I began to set myself to the study of Divinity as my proper business, Calvin’s Institutions were recommended to me, as they generally were to all young scholars in those times, as the best and most perfect system of Divinity, and the fittest to be laid as a groundwork in the study of the profession. And, indeed, my expectation was not at all ill-deemed in the study of those Institutions."

Richard Baxter (1615–1691).

"I know no man, since the Apostles’ days, whom I value and honor more than Calvin, and whose judgment in all things, one with another, I more esteem and come nearer to."

Bishop Wilson of Calcutta.

From Sermon preached on the death of the Rev. Basil Wood.

Calvin’s Commentaries remain, after three centuries, unparalleled for force of mind, justness of exposition, and practical views of Christianity."

Archbishop Lawrence.

From his Bampton Lectures.

"Calvin was both a wise and a good man, inferior to none of his contemporaries in general ability, and superior to almost all in the art, as well as elegance, of composition, in the perspicuity and arrangement of his ideas, the structure of his periods, and the Latinity of his diction."

Archdeacon Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855).

He had, of all Englishmen, the best knowledge and highest appreciation of Luther.

From his Mission of the Comforter, II. 449.

"Calvin’s Commentaries, although they too are almost entirely doctrinal and practical, taking little note of critical and philosophical questions, keep much closer to the text [than Luther’s], and make it their one business to bring out the meaning of the words of Scripture with fulness and precision. This they do with the excellence of a master richly endowed with the word of wisdom and with the word of knowledge, and from the exemplary union of a severe masculine understanding with a profound insight into the spiritual depths of the Scriptures, they are especially calculated to be useful in counteracting the erroneous tendencies of an age, when we seem about to be inundated with all that was fantastical and irrational in the exegetical mysticism of the Fathers, and are bid to see divine power in all allegorical cobwebs, and heavenly life in artificial flowers. I do not mean to imply an adoption or approval of all Calvin’s views, whether on doctrinal or other questions. But we may happily owe much gratitude and love, and the deepest intellectual obligations, to those whom at the same time we may, deem to be mistaken on certain points."

Thomas H. Dyer.

The Life of John Calvin. London, 1850, p. 533 sq.

"That Calvin was in some respects a really great man, and that the eloquent panegyric of his friend and disciple Beza contains much that is true, will hardly be denied. In any circumstances his wonderful abilities and extensive learning would have made him a shining light among the doctors of the Reformation; an accidental, or, as his friends and followers would say, a providential and predestinated visit to Geneva, made him the head of a numerous and powerful sect. Naturally deficient in that courage which forms so prominent a trait in Luther’s character, and which prompted him to beard kings and emperors face to face, Calvin arrived at Geneva at a time when the rough and initiatory work of Reform had already been accomplished by his bolder and more active friend Farel. Some peculiar circumstances in the political condition of that place favored the views which he seems to have formed very shortly after his arrival....

"The preceding narrative has already shown how, from that time to the hour of his death, his care and labor were constantly directed to the consolidation of his power, and to the development of his scheme of ecclesiastical polity. In these objects he was so successful that it may be safely affirmed that none of the Reformers, not even Luther himself, attained to so absolute and extensive an influence."

Archdeacon Frederic W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S.

History of Interpretation. London, 1886, pp. 342–344.

"The greatest exegete and theologian of the Reformation was undoubtedly Calvin. He is not an attractive figure in the history of that great movement. The mass of mankind revolt against the ruthless logical rigidity of his ’horrible decree.’  They fling it from their belief with the eternal ’God forbid!’ of an inspired natural horror. They dislike the tyranny of theocratic sacerdotalism [?] which be established at Geneva. Nevertheless his Commentaries, almost alone among those of his epoch, are still a living force. They are far more profound than those of Zwingli, more thorough and scientific, if less original and less spiritual, than those of Luther. In spite of his many defects—the inequality of his works, his masterful arrogance of tone, his inconsequent and in part retrogressive view of inspiration, the manner in which he explains away every passage which runs counter to his dogmatic prepossessions—in spite, too, of his ’hard expressions and injurious declamations’—he is one of the greatest interpreters of Scripture who ever lived. He owes that position to a combination of merits. He had a vigorous intellect, a dauntless spirit, a logical mind, a quick insight, a thorough knowledge of the human heart, quickened by rich and strange experience; above all, a manly and glowing sense of the grandeur of the Divine. The neatness, precision, and lucidity of his style, his classic training and wide knowledge, his methodical accuracy of procedure, his manly independence, his avoidance of needless and commonplace homiletics, his deep religious feeling, his careful attention to the entire scope and context of every passage, and the fact that he has commented on almost the whole of the Bible, make him tower above the great majority of those who have written on Holy Scripture. Nothing can furnish a greater contrast to many helpless commentaries, with their congeries of vacillating variorum annotations heaped together in aimless multiplicity, than the terse and decisive notes of the great Genevan theologian.... A characteristic feature of Calvin’s exegesis is its abhorrence of hollow orthodoxy. He regarded it as a disgraceful offering to a God of truth. He did not hold the theory of verbal dictation. He will never defend or harmonize what he regards as an oversight or mistake in the Sacred writers. He scorns to support a good cause by bad reasoning.... But the most characteristic and original feature of his Commentaries is his anticipation of modern criticism in his views about the Messianic prophecies.  He saw that the words of psalmists and prophets, while they not only admit of but demand ’germinant and springing developments,’ were yet primarily applicable to the events and circumstances of their own days."

Scotch Tributes.

ln Scotland, the land of John Knox, who studied at the feet of Calvin, his principles were most highly appreciated and most fully carried out.

Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856).

"Looking merely to his learning and ability, Calvin was superior to all modern, perhaps to all ancient, divines. Succeeding ages have certainly not exhibited his equal. To find his peer we must ascend at least to Aquinas or Augustin."

Dr. William Cunningham (1805–1861).

Principal of the New College and Professor of Church History in Edinburgh. Presbyterian of the Free Church.

Reformers, and the Theology of the Reformation. Edinburgh, 1866,

pp. 292, 294, 299.

"John Calvin was by far the greatest of the Reformers with respect to the talents he possessed, the influence he exerted, and the service he rendered to the establishment and diffusion of important truth....

"The systematizing of divine truth, and the full organization of the Christian Church according to the word of God, are the great peculiar achievements of Calvin. For this work God eminently qualified him, by bestowing upon him the highest gifts both of nature and of grace; and this work he was enabled to accomplish in such a way as to confer the greatest and most lasting benefits upon the Church of Christ, and to entitle him to the commendation and the gratitude of all succeeding ages....

"Calvin certainly was not free from the infirmities which are always found in some form or degree even in the best men; and in particular, he occasionally exhibited an angry impatience of contradiction and opposition, and sometimes assailed and treated the opponents of the truth and cause of God with a violence and invective which cannot be defended, and should certainly not be imitated. He was not free from error, and is not to be implicitly followed in his interpretation of Scripture, or in his exposition of doctrine. But whether we look to the powers and capacities with which God endowed him, the manner in which he employed them, and the results by which his labors have been followed,—or to the Christian wisdom, magnanimity, and devotedness which marked his character and generally regulated his conduct, there is probably not one among the sons of men, beyond the range of those whom God miraculously inspired by his Spirit, who has stronger claims upon our veneration and gratitude."

In another place which I cannot refer to, Cunningham, the successor of Chalmers, says: "Calvin is the man who, next to St. Paul, has done most good to mankind."

Dr. John Tulloch (1823–1886).

Principal of St. Mary’s College in the University of St. Andrews, of the Established Church of Scotland.

Luther and other Leaders of the Reformation. Edinburgh and London, 3d ed. 1883, pp. 234–237, 243, 245.

"Thus lived and died Calvin, a great, intense, and energetic character, who, more than any other of that great age, has left his impress upon the history of Protestantism. Nothing, perhaps, more strikes us than the contrast between the single naked energy which his character presents and of which his name has become symbolical, and the grand issues which have gone forth from it. Scarcely anywhere else can we trace such an impervious potency of intellectual and moral influence emanating from so narrow a centre.

"There is in almost every respect a singular dissimilarity between the Genevan and the Wittenberg reformer. In personal, moral, and intellectual features, they stand contrasted—Luther with his massive frame and full big face and deep melancholy eyes; Calvin, of moderate stature, pale and dark complexion, and sparkling eyes, that burned nearly to the moment of his death (Beza: Vita Calv.). Luther, fond and jovial, relishing his beer and hearty family repasts with his wife and children; Calvin, spare and frugal, for many years taking only one meal a day, and scarcely needing sleep. In the one, we see a rich and complex and buoyant and affectionate nature touching humanity at every point, in the other, a stern and grave unity of moral character. Both were naturally of a somewhat proud and imperious temper, but the violence of Luther is warm and boisterous, that of Calvin is keen and zealous. It might have been a very uncomfortable thing, as Melanchthon felt, to be exposed to Luther’s occasional storms; but after the storm was over, it was pleasant to be folded once more to the great heart that was sorry for its excesses. To be the object of Calvin’s dislike and anger was something to fill one with dread, not only for the moment, but long afterwards, and at a distance, as poor Castellio felt when he gathered the pieces of driftwood on the banks of the Rhine at Basel.

"In intellect, as in personal features, the one was grand, massive, and powerful, through depth and comprehension of feeling, a profound but exaggerated insight, and a soaring eloquence; the other was no less grand and powerful, through clearness and correctness of judgment, vigor and consistency of reasoning, and weightiness of expression. Both are alike memorable in the service which they rendered to their native tongue—in the increased compass, flexibility, and felicitous mastery which they imparted to it. The Latin works of Calvin are greatly superior in elegance of style, symmetry of method, and proportionate vigor of argument. He maintains an academic elevation of tone, even when keenly agitated in temper; while Luther, as Mr. Hallam has it, sometimes descends to mere ’bellowing in bad Latin.’  Yet there is a coldness in the elevation of Calvin, and in his correct and well-balanced sentences, for which we should like ill to exchange the kindling though rugged paradoxes of Luther. The German had the more rich and teeming—the Genevan the harder, more serviceable, and enduring mind. When interrupted in dictating for several hours, Beza tells us that he could return and commence where he had left off; and that amidst all the multiplicity of his engagements, he never forgot what he required to know for the performance of any duty.

"As preachers, Calvin seems to have commanded a scarcely less powerful success than Luther, although of a different character—the one stimulating and rousing, ’boiling over in every direction’—the other instructive, argumentative, and calm in the midst of his vehemence (Beza: Vita Calv.). Luther flashed forth his feelings at the moment, never being able to compose what might be called a regular sermon, but seizing the principal subject, and turning all his attention to that alone. Calvin was elaborate and careful in his sermons as in everything else. The one thundered and lightened, filling the souls of his hearers now with shadowy awe, and now with an intense glow of spiritual excitement; the other, like the broad daylight, filled them with a more diffusive though less exhilarating clearness....

"An impression of majesty and yet of sadness must ever linger around the name of Calvin. He was great and we admire him. The world needed him and we honor him; but we cannot love him. He repels our affections while he extorts our admiration; and while we recognize the worth, and the divine necessity, of his life and work, we are thankful to survey them at a distance, and to believe that there are also other modes of divinely governing the world, and advancing the kingdom of righteousness and truth.

"Limited, as compared with Luther, in his personal influence, apparently less the man of the hour in a great crisis of human progress, Calvin towers far above Luther in the general influence over the world of thought and the course of history, which a mighty intellect, inflexible in its convictions and constructive in its genius, never fails to exercise."

William Lindsay Alexander, D. D., F. R. S. E. (1808–1884).

Professor of Theology and one of the Bible Revisers. Congregationalist.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. vol. IV. (1878) p. 721.

"Calvin was of middle stature; his complexion was somewhat pallid and dark; his eyes, to the latest clear and lustrous, bespoke the acumen of his genius. He was sparing in his food and simple in his dress; he took but little sleep, and was capable of extraordinary efforts of intellectual toil. His memory was prodigious, but he used it only as the servant of his higher faculties. As a reasoner he has seldom been equalled, and the soundness and penetration of his judgment were such as to give to his conclusions in practical questions almost the appearance of predictions, and inspire in all his friends the utmost confidence in the wisdom of his counsels. As a theologian he stands on an eminence which only Augustin has surpassed; whilst in his skill as an expounder of Scripture, and his terse and elegant style, he possessed advantages to which Augustin was a stranger. His private character was in harmony with his public reputation and position. If somewhat severe and irritable, he was at the same time scrupulously just, truthful, and steadfast; he never deserted a friend or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates."

Testimonies of American Divines.

Dr. Henry B. Smith (1815–1877).

Professor of Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. Presbyterian.

From his Address before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, 1855, delivered by request of the Presbyterian Historical Society. See Faith and Philosophy, pp. 98 and 99.

"Though the Reformation, under God, began with Luther in the power of faith, it was carried on by Calvin with greater energy, and with a more constructive genius, both in theology and in church polity, as he also had a more open field. The Lutheran movement affected chiefly the centre and the north of Europe; the Reformed Churches were planted in the west of Europe, all around the ocean, in the British Isles, and by their very geographical site were prepared to act the most efficient part, and to leap the walls of the old world, and colonize our shores.

"Nothing is more striking in a general view of the history of the Reformed Churches than the variety of countries into which we find their characteristic spirit, both in doctrine and polity, penetrating. Throughout Switzerland it was a grand popular movement. There is first of all, Zwingli, the hero of Zurich, already in 1516 preaching against the idolatrous veneration of Mary, a man of generous culture and intrepid spirit, who at last laid down his life upon the field of battle. In Basle we find Oecolampadius, and also Bullinger [in Zurich], the chronicler of the Swiss reform. Farel aroused Geneva to iconoclasm by his inspiring eloquence.

"Thither comes in 1536, from the France which disowned him, Calvin, the mighty law-giver, great as a preacher, an expositor, a teacher and a ruler; cold in exterior, but burning with internal fire; who produced at twenty-six years of age his unmatched Institutes, and at thirty-five had made Geneva, under an almost theocratic government, the model city of Europe, with its inspiring motto, ’post tenebras lux.’   He was feared and opposed by the libertines of his day, as he is in our own. His errors were those of his own times: his greatness is of all times. Hooker calls him ’incomparably the wisest man of the French Church;’ he compares him to the ’Master of Sentences,’ and says, ’that though thousands were debtors to him as touching divine knowledge, yet he was to none, only to God.’  Montesquieu declares that ’the Genevese should ever bless the day of his birth.’  Jewel terms him ’a reverend Father, and worthy ornament of the Church of God.’  ’He that will not honor the memory of Calvin,’ says Mr. Bancroft, ’knows but little of the origin of American liberty.’  Under his influence Geneva became the ’fertile seed-plot’ of reform for all Europe; with Zurich and Strassburg, it was the refuge of the oppressed from the British Isles, and thus indoctrinated England and ourselves with its own spirit."

From Dr. Smith’s article "Calvin" in Appleton’s American Cyclopaedia.

"Calvin’s system of doctrine and polity has shaped more minds and entered into more nations than that of any other Reformer. In every land it made men strong against the attempted interference of the secular power with the rights of Christians. It gave courage to the Huguenots; it shaped the theology of the Palatinate; it prepared the Dutch for the heroic defence of their national rights; it has controlled Scotland to the present hour; it formed the Puritanism of England; it has been the basis of the New England character; and everywhere it has led the way in practical reforms. His theology assumed different types in the various countries into which it penetrated, while retaining its fundamental traits."

Dr. George P. Fisher (b. 1827).

Professor of Church History in Yale Divinity School, New Haven. Congregationalist.

From his History of the Reformation. New York, 1873, pp. 206 and 238.

When we look at his extraordinary intellect, at his culture—which opponents, like Bossuet, have been forced to commend—at the invincible energy which made him endure with more than stoical fortitude infirmities of body under which most men would have sunk, and to perform, in the midst of them, an incredible amount of mental labor; when we see him, a scholar naturally fond of seclusion, physically timid, and recoiling from notoriety and strife, abjuring the career that was most to his taste, and plunging, with a single-hearted, disinterested zeal and an indomitable will, into a hard, protracted contest; and when we follow his steps, and see what things he effected, we cannot deny him the attributes of greatness....

"His last days were of a piece with his life. His whole course has been compared by Vinet to the growth of one rind of a tree from another, or to a chain of logical sequences. He was endued with a marvellous power of understanding, although the imagination and sentiments were less roundly developed. His systematic spirit fitted him to be the founder of an enduring school of thought. In this characteristic he may be compared with Aquinas. He has been appropriately styled the Aristotle of the Reformation. He was a perfectly honest man. He subjected his will to the eternal rule of right, as far as he could discover it. His motives were pure. He felt that God was near him, and sacrificed everything to obey the direction of Providence. The fear of God ruled in his soul; not a slavish fear, but a principle such as animated the prophets of the Old Covenant. The combination of his qualities was such that he could not fail to attract profound admiration and reverence from one class of minds, and excite intense antipathy in another. There is no one of the Reformers who is spoken of, at this late day, with so much personal feeling, either of regard or aversion. But whoever studies his life and writings, especially the few passages in which he lets us into his confidence and appears to invite our sympathy, will acquire a growing sense of his intellectual and moral greatness, and a tender consideration for his errors.’

G. G. Herrick, D. D.

Congregational Minister of Mount Vernon Church, Boston.

From Some Heretics of Yesterday. Boston, 1890, pp. 210 sqq.

"Calvin gathered up the spiritual and intellectual forces that had been started by the Reformation movement, and marshalled and systematized them, and bound them into unity by the mastery of his logical thought, as the river gathers cloud and rill, and snow-drift and dew-fall, and constrains them through its own channel into the unity and directness of a powerful current. The action of Luther was impulsive, magnetic, popular, appealing to sentiment and feeling, that of Calvin was logical and constructive, appealing to understanding and reason. He was the systematizer of the Reformation....

"Calvin’s work was national, and more; he gave to the Reformation a universality like that of the gigantic system with which they [the Reformers] all were at war. Calvin, more than any other man that has ever lived, deserves to be called the Pope of Protestantism. While he was still living his opinions were deferred to by kings and prelates, and even after he was dead his power was confessed by his enemies. The papists called his Institutes The Heretics’ Koran.... He set up authority against authority, and maintained and perpetuated what he set up by the inherent clearness and energy and vigor of his own mental conceptions. The authority of the Romish Pope was based upon the venerable tradition of the past that had grown up by the accretion of ages; the authority of the Protestant Pope rested upon a logical structure which he himself built up, out of blocks hewn from alleged Scripture assertion and legitimate inferences therefrom....

"The man himself is one of the wonders of all time, and his work was admirable, beyond any words of appreciation that it is possible for me to utter. For while he himself tolerated no differences of theological opinion, and would have bound all thought by his own logical chain, this nineteenth century is as much indebted to his work as it is to that of Luther. That work constituted the world’s largest step towards democratic freedom. It set the individual man in the presence of the living God, and made the solitary soul, whether of prince or pauper, to feel its responsibility to, and dependence upon, Him alone who from eternity has decreed the sparrow’s flight or fall. Out of this logical conception of the equality of all men in the presence of Jehovah, he deduced the true republican character of the Church; a theory to which all Americans, and especially we of New England, owe our rich inheritance. He gave to the world, what it had not before, a majestic and consistent conception of a kingdom of God ruling in the affairs of men; of the beauty and the blessedness of a true Christian state; of the possibility of the city of God being one day realized in the universal subordination of human souls to divine authority...."

For testimonies bearing upon Calvin’s system of discipline, see below, § 110.

CHAPTER IX.

FROM FRANCE TO SWITZERLAND.

§ 69. Calvin’s Youth and Training.

Calvini Opera, vol. XXI. (1879).—On Noyon and the family of Calvin, Jacques Le Vasseur (Dr. of theology, canon and dean of the cathedral of Noyon): Annales de l’église cathédrale de Noyon. Paris, 1633, 2 vols. 4°.—Jacques Desmay(Dr. of the Sorbonne and vicar-general of the diocese of Rouen): Remarques sur la vie de Jean Calvin tirées des Registres de Noyon, lieu de sa naissance. Rouen, 1621.

Thomas M’Crie (d. 1835): The Early Years of Calvin. A Fragment. 1509–1536. Ed. by William Ferguson. Edinburgh, 1880 (199 pp.). A posthumous work of the learned biographer of Knox and Melville.

Abel Lefranc: La Jeunesse de Calvin. Paris (33 rue de Seine), 228 pp.

Comp. the biographies of Calvin by Henry, large work, vol. I. chs. I.–VIII. (small ed. 1846, pp. 12–29); Dyer (1850), pp. 4–10; Stähelin (1862) I. 3–12; *Kampschulte (1869), I. 221–225.

"As David was taken from the sheepfold and elevated to the rank of supreme authority; so God having taken me from my originally obscure and humble condition, has reckoned me worthy of being invested with the honorable office of a preacher and minister of the gospel. When I was yet a very little boy, my father had destined me for the study of theology. But afterwards, when he considered that the legal profession commonly raised those who follow it, to wealth, this prospect induced him suddenly to change his purpose. Thus it came to pass, that I was withdrawn from the study of philosophy and was put to the study of law. To this pursuit I endeavored faithfully to apply myself, in obedience to the will of my father; but God, by the secret guidance of his providence, at length gave a different direction to my course. And first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the superstitions of popery to be easily extricated from so profound an abyss of mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more burdened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that though I did not altogether leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardor."380

This is the meagre account which Calvin himself incidentally gives of his youth and conversion, in the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, when speaking of the life of David, in which he read his own spiritual experience. Only once more he alludes, very briefly, to his change of religion. In his Answer to Cardinal Sadoletus, he assures him that he did not consult his temporal interest when he left the papal party. "I might," he said, "have reached without difficulty the summit of my wishes, namely, the enjoyment of literary ease, with something of a free and honorable station."381

Luther indulged much more freely in reminiscences of his hard youth, his early monastic life, and his discovery of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which gave peace and rest to his troubled conscience.

John Calvin382 was born July 10, 1509,—twenty-five years after Luther and Zwingli,—at Noyon, an ancient cathedral city, called Noyon-la-Sainte, on account of its many churches, convents, priests, and monks, in the northern province of Picardy, which has given birth to the crusading monk, Peter of Amiens, to the leaders of the French Reformation and Counter-Reformation (the Ligue), and to many revolutionary as well as reactionary characters.383

His father, Gérard Cauvin, a man of hard and severe character, occupied a prominent position as apostolic secretary to the bishop of Noyon, proctor in the Chapter of the diocese, and fiscal procurator of the county, and lived on intimate terms with the best families of the neighborhood.384  His mother, Jeanne Lefranc, of Cambrai, was noted for her beauty and piety, but died in his early youth, and is not mentioned in his letters. The father married a second time. He became involved in financial embarrassment, and was excommunicated, perhaps on suspicion of heresy. He died May 26 (or 25), 1531, after a long sickness, and would have been buried in unconsecrated soil but for the intercession of his son, Charles, who gave security for the discharge of his father’s obligations.385

Calvin had four brothers and two sisters.386  Two of his brothers died young, the other two received a clerical education, and were early provided with benefices through the influence of the father.

Charles, his elder brother, was made chaplain of the cathedral in 1518, and curé of Roupy, but became a heretic or infidel, was excommunicated in 1531, and died Oct. 1, 1537, having refused the sacrament on his death-bed. He was buried by night between the four pillars of a gibbet.387

His younger brother, Antoine, was chaplain at Tournerolle, near Traversy, but embraced the evangelical faith, and, with his sister, Marie, followed the Reformer to Geneva in 1536. Antoine kept there a bookstore, received the citizenship gratuitously, on account of the merits of his brother (1546), was elected a member of the Council of Two Hundred (1558), and of the Council of the Sixty (1570), also one of the directors of the hospital, and died in 1573. He was married three times, and divorced from his second wife, the daughter of a refugee, on account of her proved adultery (1557). Calvin had innocently to suffer for this scandal, but made him and his five children chief heirs of his little property.388

The other sister of Calvin was married at Noyon, and seems to have remained in the Roman Catholic Church.

A relative and townsman of Calvin, Pierre Robert, called Olivetan, embraced Protestantism some years before him, and studied Greek and Hebrew with Bucer at Strassburg in 1528.389  He joined Farel in Neuchatel, and published there his French translation of the Bible in 1535.

More than a hundred years after Calvin’s death, another member of the family, Eloi Cauvin, a Benedictine monk, removed from Noyon to Geneva, and embraced the Reformed religion (June 13, 1667).390

These and other facts show the extent of the anti-papal sentiment in the family of Cauvin. In 1561 a large number of prominent persons of Noyon were suspected of heresy, and in 1562 the Chapter of Noyon issued a profession of faith against the doctrines of Calvin.391

After the death of Calvin, Protestantism was completely crushed out in his native town.

Calvin received his first education with the children of the noble family de Mommor (not Montmor), to which he remained gratefully attached. He made rapid progress in learning, and acquired a refinement of manners and a certain aristocratic air, which distinguished him from Luther and Zwingli. A son of de Mommor accompanied him to Paris, and followed him afterwards to Geneva.

His ambitious father destined him first for the clerical profession. He secured for him even in his twelfth year (1521) a part of the revenue of a chaplaincy in the cathedral of Noyon.392  In his eighteenth year Calvin received, in addition, the charge of S. Martin de Marteville (Sept. 27, 1527), although he had not yet the canonical age, and had only received the tonsure.

Such shocking irregularities were not uncommon in those days. Pluralism and absenteeism, though often prohibited by Councils, were among the crying abuses of the Church. Charles de Hangest, bishop of Noyon, obtained at fifteen years of age a dispensation from the pope "to hold all kinds of offices, compatible and incompatible, secular and regular, etiam tria curata "; and his nephew and successor, Jean de Hangest, was elected bishop at nineteen years of age. Odet de Châtillon, brother of the famous Coligny, was created cardinal in his sixteenth year. Pope Leo X. received the tonsure as a boy of seven, was made archbishop in his eighth, and cardinal-deacon in his thirteenth year (with the reservation that he should not put on the insignia of his dignity nor discharge the duties of his office till he was sixteen), besides being canon in three cathedrals, rector in six parishes, prior in three convents, abbot in thirteen additional abbeys, and bishop of Amalfi, deriving revenues from them all!

Calvin resigned the chaplaincy in favor of his younger brother, April 30, 1529. He exchanged the charge of S. Martin for that of the village Pont-l’Evèque (the birthplace of his father), July 5, 1529, but he resigned it, May 4, 1534, before he left France. In the latter parish he preached sometimes, but never administered the sacraments, not being ordained to the priesthood.393

The income from the chaplaincy enabled him to prosecute his studies at Paris, together with his noble companions. He entered the College de la Marche in August, 1523, in his fourteenth year.394  He studied grammar and rhetoric with an experienced and famous teacher, Marthurin Cordier (Cordatus). He learned from him to think and to write Latin, and dedicated to him in grateful memory his Commentary on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians (1550). Cordier became afterwards a Protestant and director of the College of Geneva, where he died at the age of eighty-five in the same year with Calvin (1564).395

From the College de la Marche Calvin was transferred to the strictly ecclesiastical College de Montague, in which philosophy and theology were taught under the direction of a learned Spaniard. In February, 1528, Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the order of the Jesuits, entered the same college and studied under the same teacher. The leaders of the two opposite currents in the religious movement of the sixteenth century came very near living under the same roof and sitting at the same table.

Calvin showed during this early period already the prominent traits of his character: he was conscientious, studious, silent, retired, animated by a strict sense of duty, and exceedingly religious.396  An uncertain tradition says that his fellow-students called him "the Accusative," on account of his censoriousness.397

NOTES. SLANDEROUS REPORTS ON CALVIN’S YOUTH.

Thirteen years after Calvin’s death, Bolsec, his bitter enemy, once a Romanist, then a Protestant, then a Romanist again, wrote a calumnious history of his life (Histoire de la vie, moeurs, actes, doctrine, constance, et mort de Jean Calvin, Lyon, 1577, republished by Louis-François Chastel, Magistrat, Lyon, 1875, pp. 323, with an introduction of xxxi. pp.). He represents Calvin as "a man, above all others who lived in the world, ambitious, impudent, arrogant, cruel, malicious, vindictive, and ignorant"(!) (p. 12).

Among other incredible stories he reports that Calvin in his youth was stigmatized (fleur-de-lysé, branded with the national flower of France) at Noyon in punishment of a heinous crime, and then fled from France in disgrace. "Calvin," he says (p. 28 sq.), "pourveu d’une cure et d’une chapelle, fut surprins ou (et) convaincu Du peché de Sodomie, pour lequel il fut en danger de mort par feu, comment est la commune peine de tel peché: mais que l’Evesque de laditte ville [Noyon] par compassion feit moderer laditte peine en une marque de fleur de lys chaude sur l’espaule. Iceluy Calvin confuz de telle vergongne et vitupère, se defit de ses deux bénéfices es mains du curé de Noyon, duquel ayant receu quelque somme d’argent s’en alla vers Allemaigne et Itallie: cherchant son adventure, et passa par la ville de Ferrare, ou il receut quelque aumone de Madame la Duchesse." Bolsec gives as his authority a Mr. Bertelier, secretary of the Council of Geneva, who, he says, was sent to Noyon to make inquiries about the early life of Calvin, and saw the document of his disgrace. But nobody else has seen such a document, and if it had existed at all, it would have been used against him by his enemies. The story is contradicted by all that is authentically known of Calvin, and has been abundantly refuted by Drelincourt, and recently again by Lefranc (p. 48 sqq., 176–182). Kampschulte (I. 224, note 2) declares it unworthy of serious refutation. Nevertheless it has been often repeated by Roman controversialists down to Audin.

The story is either a malignant slander, or it arose from confounding the Reformer with a younger person of the same name (Jean Cauvin), and chaplain of the same church at Noyon, who it appears was punished for some immorality of a different kind ("pour avoir retenue en so maison une femme du mauvais gouvernement") in the year 1550, that is, about twenty years later, and who was no heretic, but died a "bon Catholic" (as Le Vasseur reports in Annales de Noyon, p. 1170, quoted by Lefranc, p. 182). b.c. Galiffe, who is unfriendly to Calvin, adopts the latter suggestion (Quelques pages d’histoire exacte, p. 118).

Several other myths were circulated about the Reformer; e.g., that he was the son of a concubine of a priest; that he was an intemperate eater; that he stole a silver goblet at Orleans, etc. See Lefranc, pp. 52 sqq.

Similar perversions and inventions attach to many a great name. The Sanhedrin who crucified the Lord circulated the story that the disciples stole his body and cheated the world. The heretical Ebionites derived the conversion of Paul from disappointed ambition and revenge for an alleged offence of the high-priest, who had refused to give him his daughter in marriage. The long-forgotten myth of Luther’s suicide has been seriously revived in our own age (1890) by Roman Catholic priests (Majunke and Honef) in the interest of revived Ultramontanism, and is believed by thousands in spite of repeated refutation.

§ 70. Calvin as a Student in the French Universities. A.D. 1528–1533.

The letters of Calvin from 1530 to 1532, chiefly addressed to his fellow-student, François Daniel of Orleans, edited by Jules Bonnet, in the Edinburgh ed. of Calvin’s Letters, I. 3 sqq.; Herminjard, II. 278 sqq.; Opera, X. Part II. 3 sqq. His first letter to Daniel is dated "Melliani, 8 Idus Septembr.," and is put by Herminjard and Reuss in the year 1530 (not 1529). Mellianum is Meillant, south of Bourges (and not to be confounded with Meaux, as is done in the Edinburgh edition).

Comp. Beza-Colladon, in Op. XXI. 54 sqq., 121 sqq. L. Bonnet: É tudes sur Calvin, in the "Revue Chrétienne "for 1855. —Kampschulte, I. 226–240;M’Crie, 12–28;Lefranc, 72–108.

Calvin received the best education—in the humanities, law, philosophy, and theology—which France at that time could give. He studied successively in the three leading universities of Orleans, Bourges, and Paris, from 1528 to 1533, first for the priesthood, then, at the wish of his father, for the legal profession, which promised a more prosperous career. After his father’s death, he turned again with double zeal to the study of the humanities, and at last to theology.

He made such progress in learning that he occasionally supplied the place of the professors. He was considered a doctor rather than an auditor.398  Years afterwards, the memory of his prolonged night studies survived in Orleans and Bourges. By his excessive industry he stored his memory with valuable information, but undermined his health, and became a victim to headache, dyspepsia, and insomnia, of which he suffered more or less during his subsequent life.399  While he avoided the noisy excitements and dissipations of student life, he devoted his leisure to the duties and enjoyments of friendship with like-minded fellow-students. Among them were three young lawyers, Duchemin, Connan, and François Daniel, who felt the need of a reformation and favored progress, but remained in the old Church. His letters from that period are brief and terse; they reveal a love of order and punctuality, and a conscientious regard for little as well as great things, but not a trace of opposition to the traditional faith.

His principal teacher in Greek and Hebrew was Melchior Volmar (Wolmar), a German humanist of Rottweil, a pupil of Lefèvre, and successively professor in the universities of Orleans and Bourges, and, at last, at Tübingen, where he died in 1561. He openly sympathized with the Lutheran Reformation, and may have exerted some influence upon his pupil in this direction, but we have no authentic information about it.400  Calvin was very intimate with him, and could hardly avoid discussing with him the religious question which was then shaking all Europe. In grateful remembrance of his services he dedicated to him his Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Aug. 1, 1546).401

His teachers in law were the two greatest jurists of the age, Pierre d’Estoile (Petrus Stella) at Orleans, who was conservative, and became President of the Parliament of Paris, and Andrea Alciati at Bourges, a native of Milan, who was progressive and continued his academic career in Bologna and Padua. Calvin took an interest in the controversy of these rivals, and wrote a little preface to the Antapologia of his friend, Nicholas Duchemin, in favor of d’Estoile.402  He acquired the degree of Licentiate or Bachelor of Laws at Orleans, Feb. 14, 1531 (1532).403  On leaving the university he was offered the degree of Doctor of Laws without the usual fees, by the unanimous consent of the professors.404  He was consulted about the divorce question of Henry VIII., when it was proposed to the universities and scholars of the Continent; and he gave his opinion against the lawfulness of marriage with a brother’s widow.405  The study of jurisprudence sharpened his judgment, enlarged his knowledge of human nature, and was of great practical benefit to him in the organization and administration of the Church in Geneva, but may have also increased his legalism and overestimate of logical demonstration.

In the summer of 1531, after a visit to Noyon, where he attended his father in his last sickness, Calvin removed a second time to Paris, accompanied by his younger brother, Antoine. He found there several of his fellow-students of Orleans and Bourges; one of them offered him the home of his parents, but he declined, and took up his abode in the College Fortet, where we find him again in 1533. A part of the year he spent in Orleans.

Left master of his fortune, he now turned his attention again chiefly to classical studies. He attended the lectures of Pierre Danès, a Hellenist and encyclopaedic scholar of great reputation.406

He showed as yet no trace of opposition to the Catholic Church. His correspondence refers to matters of friendship and business, but avoids religious questions. When Daniel asked him to introduce his sister to the superior of a nunnery in Paris which she wished to enter, he complied with the request, and made no effort to change her purpose. He only admonished her not to confide in her own strength, but to put her whole trust in God. This shows, at least, that he had lost faith in the meritoriousness of vows and good works, and was approaching the heart of the evangelical system.407

He associated much with a rich and worthy merchant, Estienne de la Forge, who afterwards was burned for the sake of the Gospel (1535).

He seems to have occasionally suffered in Paris of pecuniary embarrassment. The income from his benefices was irregular, and he had to pay for the printing of his first book. At the close of 1531 he borrowed two crowns from his friend, Duchemin. He expressed a hope soon to discharge his debt, but would none the less remain a debtor in gratitude for the services of friendship.

It is worthy of remark that even those of his friends who refused to follow him in his religious change, remained true to him. This is an effective refutation of the charge of coldness so often made against him. François Daniel of Orleans renewed the correspondence in 1559, and entrusted to him the education of his son Pierre, who afterwards became an advocate and bailiff of Saint-Benoit near Orleans.408

§ 71. Calvin as a Humanist. Commentary on Seneca.

"L. Annei Se | necae, Romani Senato | ris, ac philosophi clarissi | mi, libri duo de Clementia, ad Ne | ronem Caesarem: | Joannis Caluini Nouiodunaei commentariis illustrati ... | Parisiis ... 1532." 4°). Reprinted 1576, 1597, 1612, and, from the ed. princeps, in Opera, vol. V. (1866) pp. 5–162. The commentary is preceded by a dedicatory epistle, a sketch of the life of Seneca.

H. Lecoultre: Calvin d’après son commentaire sur le "De Clementia" de Sénèque (1532). Lausanne, 1891 (pp. 29).

In April, 1532, Calvin, in his twenty-third year, ventured before the public with his first work, which was printed at his own expense, and gave ample proof of his literary taste and culture. It is a commentary on Seneca’s book On Mercy. He announced its appearance to Daniel with the words, "Tandem jacta est alea."  He sent a copy to Erasmus, who had published the works of Seneca in 1515 and 1529. He calls him "the honor and delight of the world of letters."409  It is dedicated to Claude de Hangest, his former schoolmate of the Mommor family, at that time abbot of St. Eloy (Eligius) at Noyon.

This book moves in the circle of classical philology and moral philosophy, and reveals a characteristic love for the best type of Stoicism, great familiarity with Greek and Roman literature.410 masterly Latinity, rare exegetical skill, clear and sound judgment, and a keen insight into the evils of despotism and the defects of the courts of justice, but makes no allusion to Christianity. It is remarkable that his first book was a commentary on a moral philosopher who came nearer to the apostle Paul than any heathen writer.

It is purely the work of a humanist, not of an apologist or a reformer. There is no evidence that it was intended to be an indirect plea for toleration and clemency in behalf of the persecuted Protestants. It is not addressed to the king of France, and the implied comparison of Francis with Nero in the incidental reference to the Neronian persecution would have defeated such a purpose.411

Calvin, like Melanchthon and Zwingli, started as a humanist, and, like them, made the linguistic and literary culture of the Renaissance tributary to the Reformation. They all admired Erasmus until he opposed the Reformation, for which he had done so much to prepare the way. They went boldly forward, when he timidly retreated. They loved religion more than letters. They admired the heathen classics, but they followed the apostles and evangelists as guides to the higher wisdom of God.

§ 72. Calvin’s Conversion. 1532.

Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms (Opera, XXXI. 21, 22, Latin and French in parallel columns), and his Reply to Sadolet (Opera, V. 389). See above, p. 296.

Henry, I. ch. II. Stähelin, I. l6–28. Kampschulte, I. 230. Lefranc, 96 sqq.

A brilliant career—as a humanist, or a lawyer, or a churchman—opened before Calvin, when he suddenly embraced the cause of the Reformation, and cast in his lot with a poor persecuted sect.

Reformation was in the air. The educated classes could not escape its influence. The seed sown by Lefèvre had sprung up in France. The influence from Germany and Switzerland made itself felt more and more. The clergy opposed the new opinions, the men of letters favored them. Even the court was divided: King Francis I. persecuted the Protestants; his sister, Marguerite d’Angoulème, queen of Navarre, protected them. How could a young scholar of such precocious mind and intense studiousness as Calvin be indifferent to the religious question which agitated the universities of Orleans, Bourges, and Paris?  He must have searched the Scriptures long and carefully before he could acquire such familiarity as he shows already in his first theological writings.

He speaks of his conversion as a sudden one (subita conversio), but this does not exclude previous preparation any more than in the case of Paul.412  A city may be taken by a single assault, yet after a long siege. Calvin was not an unbeliever, nor an immoral youth; on the contrary, he was a devout Catholic of unblemished character. His conversion, therefore, was a change from Romanism to Protestantism, from papal superstition to evangelical faith, from scholastic traditionalism to biblical simplicity. He mentions no human agency, not even Volmar or Olivetan or Lefèvre. "God himself," he says, "produced the change. He instantly subdued my heart to obedience."  Absolute obedience of his intellect to the word of God, and obedience of his will to the will of God: this was the soul of his religion. He strove in vain to attain peace of conscience by the mechanical methods of Romanism, and was driven to a deeper sense of sin and guilt. "Only one haven of salvation," he says, "is left open for our souls, and that is the mercy of God in Christ. We are saved by grace—not by our merits, not by our works."  Reverence for the Church kept him back for some time till he learned to distinguish the true, invisible, divine essence of the Church from its outward, human form and organization. Then the knowledge of the truth, like a bright light from heaven, burst upon his mind with such force, that there was nothing left for him but to obey the voice from heaven. He consulted not with flesh and blood, and burned the bridge behind him.

The precise time and place and circumstances of this great change are not accurately known. He was very reticent about himself. It probably occurred at Orleans or Paris in the latter part of the year 1532.413  In a letter of October, 1533, to Francis Daniel, he first speaks of the Reformation in Paris, the rage of the Sorbonne, and the satirical comedy against the queen of Navarre.414  In November of the same year he publicly attacked the Sorbonne. In a familiar letter to Bucer in Strassburg, which is dated from Noyon, Sept. 4 (probably in 1534), he recommends a French refugee, falsely accused of holding the opinions of the Anabaptists, and says, "I entreat of you, master Bucer, if my prayers, if my tears are of any avail, that you would compassionate and help him in his wretchedness. The poor are left in a special manner to your care; you are the helper of the orphan.... Most learned Sir, farewell; thine from my heart."415

There never was a change of conviction purer in motive, more radical in character, more fruitful and permanent in result. It bears a striking resemblance to that still greater event near Damascus, which transformed a fanatical Pharisee into an apostle of Jesus Christ. And, indeed, Calvin was not unlike St. Paul in his intellectual and moral constitution; and the apostle of sovereign grace and evangelical freedom had not a more sympathetic expounder than Luther and Calvin.416

Without any intention or effort on his part, Calvin became the head of the evangelical party in less than a year after his conversion. Seekers of the truth came to him from all directions. He tried in vain to escape them. Every quiet retreat was turned into a school. He comforted and strengthened the timid brethren in their secret meetings of devotion. He avoided all show of learning, but, as the old Chronicle of the French Reformed Church reports, he showed such depth of knowledge and such earnestness of speech that no one could hear him without being forcibly impressed. He usually began and closed his exhortations with the word of Paul, "If God is for us, who can be against us?"  This is the keynote of his theology and piety.

He remained for the present in the Catholic Church. His aim was to reform it from within rather than from without, until circumstances compelled him to leave.

§ 73. Calvin’s Call.

As in the case of Paul, Calvin’s call to his life-work coincided with his conversion, and he proved it by his labors. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

We must distinguish between an ordinary and an extraordinary call, or the call to the ministry of the gospel, and the call to reform the Church. The ordinary ministry is necessary for the being, the extraordinary for the well-being, of the Church. The former corresponds to the priesthood in the Jewish dispensation, and continues in unbroken succession; the latter resembles the mission of the prophets, and appears sporadically in great emergencies. The office of a reformer comes nearest the office of an apostle. There are founders of the Church universal, as Peter and Paul; so there are founders of particular churches, as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Zinzendorf, Wesley; but none of the Reformers was infallible.

1. All the Reformers were born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the historic Catholic Church, which cast them out; as the Apostles were circumcised and trained in the Synagogue, which cast them out. They never doubted the validity of the Catholic ordinances, and rejected the idea of re-baptism. Distinguishing between the divine substance and the human addition, Calvin said of his baptism, "I renounce the chrism, but retain the baptism."417

The Reformers were also ordained priests in the Roman Church, except Melanchthon and Calvin,—the greatest theologians among them. A remarkable exception. Melanchthon remained a layman all his life; yet his authority to teach is undoubted. Calvin became a regular minister; but how?

He was, as we have seen, intended and educated for the Roman priesthood, and early received the clerical tonsure.418  He also held two benefices, and preached sometimes in Pont l’Evèque, and also in Lignières, a little town near Bourges, where he made the impression that, he preached better than the monks."419

But he never read mass, and never entered the higher orders, properly so called.

After he left the Roman Church, there was no Evangelical bishop in France to ordain him; the bishops, so far, all remained in the old Church, except two or three in East Prussia and Sweden. If the validity of the Christian ministry depended on an unbroken succession of diocesan bishops, which again depends on historical proof, it would be difficult to defend the Reformation and to resist the claims of Rome. But the Reformers planted themselves on the promise of Christ, the ever-present head of the Church, who is equally near to his people in any age. They rejected the Roman Catholic idea of ordination as a divinely instituted sacrament, which can only be performed by bishops, and which confers priestly powers of offering sacrifice and dispensing absolution. They taught the general priesthood of believers, and fell back upon the internal call of the Holy Spirit and the external call of the Christian people. Luther, in his earlier writings, lodged the power of the keys in the congregation, and identified ordination with vocation. "Whoever is called," he says, "is ordained, and must preach: this is our Lord’s consecration and true chrism."  He even consecrated, by a bold irregularity, his friend Amsdorf as superintendent of Naumburg, to show that he could make a bishop as well as the pope, and could do it without the use of consecrated oil.

Calvin was regularly elected pastor and teacher of theology at Geneva in 1536 by the presbyters and the council, with the consent of the whole people.420

This popular election was a revival of the primitive custom. The greatest bishops of the early Church—such as Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustin—were elected by the voice of the people, which they obeyed as the voice of God.

We are not informed whether Calvin was solemnly introduced into his office by prayer and the laying on of the hands of presbyters (such as Farel and Viret), after the apostolic custom (1 Tim. 4:14), which is observed in the Reformed Churches. He did not regard ordination as absolutely indispensable, but as a venerable rite sanctioned by the practice of the Apostles which has the force of a precept.421  He even ascribed to it a semi-sacramental character. "The imposition of hands," he says, "which is used at the introduction of the true presbyters and ministers of the Church into their office, I have no objection to consider as a sacrament; for, in the first place, that sacrament is taken from the Scripture, and, in the next place, it is declared by Paul to be not unnecessary or useless, but a faithful symbol of spiritual grace (1 Tim. 4:14). I have not enumerated it as a third among the sacraments, because it is not ordinary or common to all the faithful, but a special rite for a particular office. The ascription of this honor to the Christian ministry, however, furnishes no reason of pride in Roman priests; for Christ has commanded the ordination of ministers to dispense his Gospel and his mysteries, not the inauguration of priests to offer sacrifices. He has commissioned them to preach the Gospel and to feed his flock, and not to immolate victims."422

The evangelical ministry in the non-episcopal Churches was of necessity presbyterial, that is, descended from the, Presbyterate, which was originally identical with the episcopate. Even the Church of England, during her formative period under the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, recognized the validity of presbyterial ordination, not only in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of the Continent, but within her own jurisdiction, as in the cases of Peter Martyr, professor of theology at Oxford; Bucer, Fagius, and Cartwright, professors at Cambridge; John à Lasco, pastor in London; Dean Whittingham of Durham, and many others.423

2. But whence did Calvin and the other Reformers derive their authority to reform the old Catholic Church and to found new Churches?  Here we must resort to a special divine call and outfit. The Reformers belong not to the regular order of priests, but to the irregular order of prophets whom God calls directly by his Spirit from the plough or the shepherd’s staff or the workshop or the study. So he raises and endows men with rare genius for poetry or art or science or invention or discovery. All good gifts come from God; but the gift of genius is exceptional, and cannot be derived or propagated by ordinary descent. There are divine irregularities as well as divine regularities. God writes on a crooked as well as on a straight line. Even Paul was called out of due time, and did not seek ordination from Peter or any other apostle, but derived his authority directly from Christ, and proved his ministry by the abundance of his labors.

In the apostolic age there were apostles, prophets, and evangelists for the Church at large, and presbyter-bishops and deacons for particular congregations. The former are considered extraordinary officers. But their race is not yet extinct, any more than the race of men of genius in any other sphere of life. They arise whenever and wherever they are needed.

We are bound to the ordinary means of grace, but God is free, and his Spirit works when, where, and how he pleases. God calls ordinary men for ordinary work in the ordinary way; and he calls extraordinary men for extraordinary work in an extraordinary way. He has done so in times past, and will do so to the end of time.424

Hooker, the most "judicious" of Anglican divines, says: Though thousands were debtors to Calvin, as touching divine knowledge, yet he was to none, only to God."

§ 74. The Open Rupture. An Academic Oration. 1533.

Calv. Opera, X. P. I. 30; XXI. 123, 129, 192. A very graphic account by Merle D’Aubigné, bk. II. ch. xxx. (vol. II. 264–284).

For a little while matters seemed to take a favorable turn at the court for reform. The reactionary conduct of the Sorbonne and the insult offered to Queen Marguerite by the condemnation of her "Mirror of a Sinful Soul,"—a tender and monotonous mystic reverie,425 — offended her brother and the liberal members of the University. Several preachers who sympathized with a moderate reformation, Gérard Roussel, and the Augustinians, Bertault and Courault, were permitted to ascend the pulpit in Paris.426  The king himself, by his opposition to the German emperor, and his friendship with Henry VIII., incurred the suspicion of aiding the cause of heresy and schism. He tried, from political motives and regard for his sister, to conciliate between the conservative and progressive parties. He even authorized the invitation of Melanchthon to Paris as counsellor, but Melanchthon wisely declined.

Nicolas Cop, the son of a distinguished royal physician (William Cop of Basel), and a friend of Calvin, was elected Rector of the University, Oct. 10, 1533, and delivered the usual inaugural oration on All Saint’s Day, Nov. 1, before a large assembly in the Church of the Mathurins.427

This oration, at the request of the new Rector, had been prepared by Calvin. It was a plea for a reformation on the basis of the New Testament, and a bold attack on the scholastic theologians of the day, who were represented as a set of sophists, ignorant of the Gospel. "They teach nothing," says Calvin, "of faith, nothing of the love of God, nothing of the remission of sins, nothing of grace, nothing of justification; or if they do so, they pervert and undermine it all by their laws and sophistries. I beg you, who are here present, not to tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses."428

The Sorbonne and the Parliament regarded this academic oration as a manifesto of war upon the Catholic Church, and condemned it to the flames. Cop was warned and fled to his relatives in Basel.429  Calvin, the real author of the mischief, is said to have descended from a window by means of sheets, and escaped from Paris in the garb of a vine-dresser with a hoe upon his shoulder. His rooms were searched and his books and papers were seized by the police.430

§ 75. Persecution of the Protestants in Paris. 1534.

Beza in Vita Calv., vol. XXI. 124.—Jean Crespin: Livre des Martyrs, Genève, 1570.—The report of the Bourgeois de Paris.—Gerdesius, IV. Mon. 11. Henry, I. 74; II. 333.—Dyer, I. 29.—Polenz, I. 282.—Kampschulte, I. 243.—"Bulletin de la Soc. de l’hist. du Prot. franç.," X. 34; XI. 253.

This storm might have blown over without doing much harm. But in the following year the reaction was greatly strengthened by the famous placards, which gave it the name of "the year of placards."  An over-zealous, fanatical Protestant by the name of Feret, a servant of the king’s apothecary, placarded a tract "on the horrible, great, intolerable abuses of the popish mass," throughout Paris and even at the door of the royal chamber at Fontainebleau, where the king was then residing, in the night of Oct. 18, 1534. In this placard the mass is described as a blasphemous denial of the one and all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ; while the pope, with all his brood (toute sa vermine) of cardinals, bishops, priests, and monks, are denounced as hypocrites and servants of Antichrist.431

All moderate Protestants deplored this untimely outburst of radicalism. It retarded and almost ruined the prospects of the Reformation in France. The best cause may be undone by being overdone.

The king was highly and justly incensed, and ordered the imprisonment of all suspected persons. The prisons were soon filled. To purge the city from the defilement caused by this insult to the holy mass and the hierarchy, a most imposing procession was held from the Louvre to Notre Dame, on Jan. 29, 1535. The image of St. Geneviève, the patroness of Paris, was carried through the streets: the archbishop, with the host under a magnificent däis, and the king with his three sons, bare-headed, on foot, a burning taper in their hands, headed the procession, and were followed by the princes, cardinals, bishops, priests, ambassadors, and the great officers of the State and of the University, walking two and two abreast, in profound silence, with lighted torches. Solemn mass was performed in the cathedral. Then the king dined with the prelates and dignitaries, and declared that he would not hesitate to behead any one of his own children if found guilty of these new, accursed heresies, and to offer them as a sacrifice to divine justice.

The gorgeous solemnities of the day wound up with a horrible autodafé of six Protestants: they were suspended by a rope to a machine, let down into burning flames, again drawn up, and at last precipitated into the fire. They died like heroes. The more educated among them had their tongues slit. Twenty-four innocent Protestants were burned alive in public places of the city from Nov. 10, 1534, till May 5, 1535. Among them was Etienne de la Forge (Stephanus Forgeus), an intimate friend of Calvin. Many more were fined, imprisoned, and tortured, and a considerable number, among them Calvin and Du Tillet, fled to Strassburg.432

These cruelties were justified or excused by charges of heresy, immorality, and disloyalty, and by a reference to the excesses of a fanatical wing of the Anabaptists in Münster, which took place in the same year.433  But the Huguenots were then, as their descendants have always been, and are now, among the most intelligent, moral, and orderly citizens of France.434

The Sorbonne urged the king to put a stop to the printing-press (Jan. 13, 1535). He agreed to a temporary suspension (Feb. 26). Afterwards censors were appointed, first by Parliament, then by the clergy (1542). The press stimulated free thought and was stimulated by it in turn. Before 1500, four millions of volumes (mostly in folio) were printed; from 1500 to 1536, seventeen millions; after that time the number is beyond calculation.435  The printing-press is as necessary for liberty as respiration for health. Some air is good, some bad; but whether good or bad, it is the condition of life.

This persecution was the immediate occasion of Calvin’s Institutes, and the forerunner of a series of persecutions which culminated under the reign of Louis XIV., and have made the Reformed Church of France a Church of martyrs.

§ 76. Calvin as a Wandering Evangelist. 1533–1536.

For nearly three years Calvin wandered as a fugitive evangelist under assumed names436 from place to place in Southern France, Switzerland, Italy, till he reached Geneva as his final destination. It is impossible accurately to determine all the facts and dates in this period.

He resigned his ecclesiastical benefices at Noyon and Pont l’Evèque, May 4, 1534, and thus closed all connection with the Roman Church.437  That year was remarkable for the founding of the order of the Jesuits at Montmartre (Aug. 15), which took the lead in the Counter-Reformation; by the election of Pope Paul III. (Alexander Farnese, Oct. 13), who confirmed the order, excommunicated Henry VIII., and established the Inquisition in Italy; and by the bloody persecution of the Protestants in Paris, which has been described in the preceding section.438

The Roman Counter-Reformation now began in earnest, and called for a consolidation of the Protestant forces.

Calvin spent the greater part of the year 1533 to 1534, under the protection of Queen Marguerite of Navarre, in her native city of Angoulême. This highly gifted lady (1492–1549), the sister of King Francis I., grandmother of Henry IV., and a voluminous writer in verse and prose, was a strange mixture of piety and liberalism, of idealism and sensualism. She patronized both the Reformation and the Renaissance, Calvin and Rabelais; she wrote the Mirror of a Sinful Soul, and also the Heptameron in professed imitation of Boccaccio’s Decamerone; yet she was pure, and began and closed the day with religious meditation and devotion. After the death of her royal brother (1547), she retired to a convent as abbess, and declared on her death-bed that, after receiving extreme unction, she had protected the Reformers out of pure compassion, and not from any wish to depart from the faith of her ancestors.439

Calvin lived at Angoulême with a wealthy friend, Louis du Tillet, who was canon of the cathedral and curé of Claix, and had acquired on his journeys a rare library of three or four thousand volumes.440  He taught him Greek, and prosecuted his theological studies. He associated with honorable men of letters, and was highly esteemed by them.441  He began there the preparation of his Institutes.442  He also aided Olivetan in the revision and completion of the French translation of the Bible, which appeared at Neuchâtel in June, 1535, with a preface of Calvin.443

From Angoulême Calvin made excursions to Nérac, Poitiers, Orleans, and Paris. At Nérac in Béarn, the little capital of Queen Marguerite, he became personally acquainted with Le Fèvre d’Étaples (Faber Stapulensis), the octogenarian patriarch of French Humanism and Protestantism. Le Fèvre, with prophetic vision, recognized in the young scholar the future restorer of the Church of France.444  Perhaps he also suggested to him to take Melanchthon for his model.445  Roussel, the chaplain and confessor of Marguerite, advised him to purify the house of God, but not to destroy it.

At Poitiers, Calvin gained several eminent persons for the Reformation. According to an uncertain tradition he celebrated with a few friends, for the first time, the Lord’s Supper after the Reformed fashion, in a cave (grotte de Croutelles) near the town, which long afterwards was called "Calvin’s Cave."446

Towards the close of the year 1534, he ventured on a visit to Paris. There he met, for the first time, the Spanish physician, Michael Servetus, who had recently published his heretical book On the Errors of the Trinity, and challenged him to a disputation. Calvin accepted the challenge at the risk of his safety, and waited for him in a house in the Rue Saint Antoine; but Servetus did not appear. Twenty years afterwards he reminded Servetus of this interview: "You know that at that time I was ready to do everything for you, and did not even count my life too dear that I might convert you from your errors."  Would that he had succeeded at that time, or never seen the unfortunate heretic again.

§ 77. The Sleep of the Soul. 1534.

Psychopannychia. Aureliae, 1534; 2d and revised ed. Basel, 1536; 3d ed. Strassburg, 1542; French trans. Paris, 1558; republished in Opera, vol. V. 165–232.—Comp. the analysis of Stähelin, I. 36–40, and La France Prot. III. 549. English translation in Calvin’s Tracts, III. 413–490.

Before Calvin left France, he wrote, at Orleans, 1534, his first theological book, entitled Psychopannychia, or the Sleep of the Soul. He refutes in it the hypothesis entertained by some Anabaptists, of the sleep of the soul between death and resurrection, and proves the unbroken and conscious communion of believers with Christ, their living Head. He appeals no more to philosophy and the classics, as in his earlier book on Seneca, but solely to the Scriptures, as the only rule of faith. Reason can give us no light on the future world, which lies beyond our experience.

He wished to protect, by this book, the evangelical Protestants against the charge of heresy and vagary. They were often confounded with the Anabaptists who roused in the same year the wrath of all the German princes by the excesses of a radical and fanatical faction at Münster.

§ 78. Calvin at Basel. 1535 to 1536.

The outbreak of the bloody persecution, in October, 1534, induced Calvin to leave his native land and to seek safety in free Switzerland. He was accompanied by his friend and pupil, Louis du Tillet, who followed him as far as Geneva, and remained with him till the end of August, 1537, when he returned to France and to the Roman Church.447

The travellers passed through Lorraine. On the frontier of Germany, near Metz, they were robbed by an unfaithful servant. They arrived utterly destitute at Strassburg, then a city of refuge for French Protestants. They were kindly received and aided by Bucer.

After a few days’ rest they proceeded to Basel, their proper destination. There Farel had found a hospitable home in 1524, and Cop and Courault ten years later. Calvin wished a quiet place for study where he could promote the cause of the Gospel by his pen. He lodged with his friend in the house of Catharina Klein (Petita), who thirty years afterwards was the hostess of another famous refugee, the philosopher, Petrus Ramus, and spoke to him with enthusiasm of the young Calvin, "the light of France."448

He was kindly welcomed by Simon Grynaeus and Wolfgang Capito, the heads of the university. He prosecuted with Grynaeus his study of the Hebrew. He dedicated to him in gratitude his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1539). He became acquainted also with Bullinger of Zürich, who attended the conference of Reformed Swiss divines for the preparation of the first Helvetic Confession (1536).449

According to a Roman Catholic report, Calvin, in company with Bucer, had a personal interview with Erasmus, to whom three years before he had sent a copy of his commentary on Seneca with a high compliment to his scholarship. The veteran scholar is reported to have said to Bucer on that occasion that "a great pestilence was arising in the Church against the Church."450  But Erasmus was too polite, thus to insult a stranger. Moreover, he was then living at Freiburg in Germany and had broken off all intercourse with Protestants. When he returned to Basel in July, 1536, on his way to the Netherlands, he took sick and died; and at that time Calvin was in Italy. The report therefore is an idle fiction.451

Calvin avoided publicity and lived in scholarly seclusion. He spent in Basel a year and a few months, from January, 1535, till about March, 1536.

§ 79. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

1. The full title of the first edition is "Christia | nae Religionis Insti | tutio totam fere pietatis summam et quic | quid est in doctrina salutis cognitu ne- | cessarium, complectens: omnibus pie | tatis studiosis lectu dignissi | mum opus, ac re- | cens edi- | tum. | Praefatio|  ad Chri | stianissimum Regem Francae, qua | hic ei liber pro confessione fidei | offertur. | Joanne Calvino | Nouiodunensi authore. | Basileae, | M. D. XXXVI."  The dedicatory Preface is dated ’X. Calendas Septembres’ (i.e. August 23), without the year; but at the close of the book the month of March, 1536, is given as the date of publication. The first two French editions (1541 and 1545) supplement the date of the Preface correctly: "De Basle le vingt-troysiesme d’Aoust mil cinq cent trente cinq."  The manuscript, then, was completed in August, 1535, but it took nearly a year to print it.

2. The last improved edition from the pen of the author (the fifth Latin) is a thorough reconstruction, and bears the title: "Institutio Chri | stianae Religionis, in libros qua | tuor nunc primum digesta, certisque distincta capitibus, ad aptissimam | methodum: aucta etiam tam magna accessione ut propemodum opus | novum haberi possit. | Joanne Calvino authore. | Oliva Roberti Stephani. | Genevae. | M. D. LIX."  The subsequent Latin editions are reprints of the ed. of 1559, with an index by Nic. Colladon, another by Marlorat. The Elzevir ed. Leyden, 1654, fol., was especially esteemed for its beauty and accuracy. A convenient modern ed. by Tholuck (Berlin, 1834, 2d ed. 1846).

3. The first French edition appeared without the name and place of the printer (probably Michel du Bois at Geneva), under the title: "Institution de la religion chrestienne en laquelle est comprinse une somme de piété.... composée en latin par J. Calvin et translatée par luy mesme. Avec la préface addressée au tres chrestien Roy de France, François premier de ce nom: par laquelle ce présent livre luy esi offert pour confession de Foy. M. D. XLI."  822 pp. 8°, 2d ed. Genève, Jean Girard, 1545; 3d ed. 1551; 4th ed. 1553; 5th ed. 1554; 6th ed. 1557; 7th ed. 1560, in fol.; 8th ed. 1561, in 8°; 9th ed. 1561, in 4°; 10th ed. 1562, etc.; 15th ed. Geneva, 1564. Elzevir ed. Leyden, 1654.

4. The Strassburg editors devote the first four volumes to the different editions of the Institutes in both languages. Vol, I. contains the editio princeps Latina of Basel, 1536 (pp. 10–247), and the variations of six editions intervening between the first and the last, viz., the Strassburg editions of 1539, 1543, 1545, and the Geneva editions of 1550, 1553, 1554 (pp. 253–1152); vol. II., the editio postrema of 1559 (pp. 1–1118); vols. III. and IV., the last edition of the French translation, or free reproduction rather (1560), with the variations of former editions.

5. The question of the priority of the Latin or French text is now settled in favor of the former. See Jules Bonnet, in the Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français for 1858, vol. VI. p. 137 sqq., Stähelin, vol. I. p. 55, and the Strassburg editors of the Opera, in the ample Prolegomena to vols. I. and III. Calvin himself says expressly (in the Preface to his French ed. 1541), that he first wrote the Institutes in Latin ("premièrement l’ay mis en latin"), for readers of all nations, and that he translated or reproduced them afterwards for the special benefit of Frenchmen ("l’ay aussi translaté en notre langage"). In a letter to his friend, François Daniel, dated Lausanne, Oct. 13, 1536, he writes that he began the French translation soon after the publication of the Latin (Letters, ed. Bonnet, vol. I. p. 21), but it did not appear till 1541, under the title given above. The erroneous assertion of a French original, so often repeated (by Bayle, Maimbourg, Basnage, and more recently by Henry, vol. I. p. 104; III. p. 177; Dorner, Gesch. der protest. Theol. p. 375; also by Guizot, H. B. Smith, and Dyer), arose from confounding the date of the Preface as given in the French editions (23 Aug., 1535), with the later date of publication (March, 1536). It is quite possible, however, that the dedication to Francis I. was first written in French, and this would most naturally account for the earlier date in the French editions.

6. On the differences of the several editions, comp. J. Thomas: Histoire de l’instit. chrétienne de J. Calv. Strasbourg, 1859. Alex. Schweizer: Centraldogmen, I. 150 sqq. (Zürich, 1854). Köstlin: Calvin’s Institutio nach Form und Inhalt, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1868.

7. On the numerous translations, see above, pp. 225, 265; Henry, Vol. III. Beilagen, 178–189; and La France Prot. III. 553.

In the ancient and venerable city of Basel, on the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany—the residence of Erasmus and Oecolampadius, the place where a reformatory council had met in 1430, and where the first Greek Testament was printed in 1516 from manuscripts of the university library John Calvin, then a mere youth of twenty-six years, and an exile from his native land, finished and published, twenty years after the first print of the Greek Testament, his Institutes of the Christian Religion, by which he astonished the world and took at once the front rank among the literary champions of the evangelical faith.

This book is the masterpiece of a precocious genius of commanding intellectual and spiritual depth and power. It is one of the few truly classical productions in the history of theology, and has given its author the double title of the Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas of the Reformed Church.452

The Roman Catholics at once perceived the significance of the Institutio, and called it the Koran and Talmud of heresy.453  It was burned by order of the Sorbonne at Paris and other places, and more fiercely and persistently persecuted than any book of the sixteenth century; but, we must add, it has found also great admirers among Catholics who, while totally dissenting from its theological system and antipopish temper, freely admit its great merits in the non-polemical parts.454

The Evangelicals greeted the Institutio at once with enthusiastic praise as the clearest, strongest, most logical, and most convincing defence of Christian doctrines since the days of the apostles. A few weeks after its publication Bucer wrote to the author: "It is evident that the Lord has elected you as his organ for the bestowment of the richest fulness of blessing to his Church."455

Nor is this admiration confined to orthodox Protestants. Dr. Baur, the founder of the Tübingen school of historical critics, declares this book of Calvin to be "in every respect a truly classical work, distinguished in a high degree by originality and acuteness of conception, systematic consistency, and clear, luminous method."456  And Dr. Hase pointedly calls it "the grandest scientific justification of Augustinianism, full of religious depth with inexorable consistency of thought."457

The Institutio is not a book for the people, and has not the rousing power which Luther’s Appeal to the German Nobility, and his tract on Christian Freedom exerted upon the Germans; but it is a book for scholars of all nations, and had a deeper and more lasting effect upon them than any work of the Reformers. Edition followed edition, and translations were made into nearly all the languages of Europe.458

Calvin gives a systematic exposition of the Christian religion in general, and a vindication of the evangelical faith in particular, with the apologetic and practical aim of defending the Protestant believers against calumny and persecution to which they were then exposed, especially in France. He writes under the inspiration of a heroic faith that is ready for the stake, and with a glowing enthusiasm for the pure Gospel of Christ, which had been obscured and deprived of its effect by human traditions, but had now risen from this rubbish to new life and power. He combines dogmatics and ethics in organic unity.

He plants himself firmly on the immovable rock of the Word of God, as the only safe guide in matters of faith and duty. He exhibits on every page a thorough, well-digested knowledge of Scripture which is truly astonishing. He does not simply quote from it as a body of proof texts, in a mechanical way, like the scholastic dogmaticians of the seventeenth century, but he views it as an organic whole, and weaves it into his system. He bases the authority of Scripture on its intrinsic excellency and the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking through it to the believer. He makes also judicious and discriminating use of the fathers, especially St. Augustin, not as judges but as witnesses of the truth, and abstains from those depreciatory remarks in which Luther occasionally indulged when, instead of his favorite dogma of justification by faith, he found in them much ascetic monkery and exaltation of human merit. "They overwhelm us," says Calvin, in the dedicatory Preface, "with senseless clamors, as despisers and enemies of the fathers. But if it were consistent with my present design, I could easily support by their suffrages most of the sentiments that we now maintain. Yet while we make use of their writings, we always remember that ’all things are ours,’ to serve us, not to have dominion over us, and that ’we are Christ’s alone’ (1 Cor. 3:21–23), and owe him universal obedience. He who neglects this distinction will have nothing certain in religion; since those holy men were ignorant of many things, frequently at variance with each other, and sometimes even inconsistent with themselves."  He also fully recognizes the indispensable use of reason in the apprehension and defence of truth and the refutation of error, and excels in the power of severe logical argumentation; while he is free from scholastic dryness and pedantry. But he subordinates reason and tradition to the supreme authority of Scripture as he understands it.

The style is luminous and forcible. Calvin had full command of the majesty, dignity, and elegance of the Latin Ianguage. The discussion flows on continuously and melodiously like a river of fresh water through green meadows and sublime mountain scenery. The whole work is well proportioned. It is pervaded by intense earnestness and fearless consistency which commands respect even where his arguments fail to carry conviction, or where we feel offended by the contemptuous tone of his polemics, or feel a shudder at his decretum horribile.

Calvin’s system of doctrine agrees with the (ecumenical creeds in theology and Christology; with Augustinianism in anthropology and soteriology, but dissents from the mediaeval tradition in ecclesiology, sacramentology, and eschatology. We shall discuss the prominent features of this system in the chapter on Calvin’s Theology.

The Institutio was dedicated to King Francis I. of France (1494–1547), who at that time cruelly persecuted his Protestant subjects. As Justin Martyr and other early Apologists addressed the Roman emperors in behalf of the despised and persecuted sect of the Christians, vindicating them against the foul charges of atheism, immorality, and hostility to Caesar, and pleading for toleration, so Calvin appealed to the French monarch in defence of his Protestant countrymen, then a small sect, as much despised, calumniated, and persecuted, and as moral and innocent as the Christians in the old Roman empire, with a manly dignity, frankness, and pathos never surpassed before or since. He followed the example set by Zwingli who addressed his dying confession of faith to the same sovereign (1531). These appeals, like the apologies of the ante-Nicene age, failed to reach or to affect the throne, but they moulded public opinion which is mightier than thrones, and they are a living force to-day.

The preface to the Institutio is reckoned among the three immortal prefaces in literature. The other two are President De Thou’s preface to his History of France, and Casaubon’s preface to Polybius. Calvin’s preface is superior to them in importance and interest. Take the beginning and the close as specimens.459

"When I began this work, Sire, nothing was farther from my thoughts than writing a book which would afterwards be presented to your Majesty. My intention was only to lay down some elementary principles, by which inquirers on the subject of religion might be instructed in the nature of true piety. And this labor I undertook chiefly for my countrymen, the French, of whom I apprehend multitudes to be hungering and thirsting after Christ, but saw very few possessing any real knowledge of him. That this was my design the book itself proves by its simple method and unadorned composition. But when I perceived that the fury of certain wicked men in your kingdom had grown to such a height, as to have no room in the land for sound doctrine, I thought I should be usefully employed, if in the same work I delivered my instructions to them, and exhibited my confession to you, that you may know the nature of that doctrine, which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen who are now disturbing the country with fire and sword. For I shall not be afraid to acknowledge, that this treatise contains a summary of that very doctrine, which, according to their clamors, deserves to be punished with imprisonment, banishment, proscription, and flames, and to be exterminated from the face of the earth. I well know with what atrocious insinuations your ears have been filled by them, in order to render our cause most odious in your esteem; but your clemency should lead you to consider that if accusation be accounted a sufficient evidence of guilt, there will be an end of all innocence in words and actions."

**********

"But I return to you, Sire. Let not your Majesty be at all moved by those groundless accusations with which our adversaries endeavor to terrify you; as that the sole tendency and design of this new gospel, for so they call it, is to furnish a pretext for seditions, and to gain impunity for all crimes. ’For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace;’ nor is ’the Son of God,’ who came to destroy ’the works of the devil, the minister of sin.’  And it is unjust to charge us with such motives and designs of which we have never given cause for the least suspicion. Is it probable that we are meditating the subversion of kingdoms?  We, who were never heard to utter a factious word, whose lives were ever known to be peaceable and honest while we lived under your government, and who, even now in our exile, cease not to pray for all prosperity to attend yourself and your kingdom!  Is it probable that we are seeking an unlimited license to commit crimes with impunity, in whose conduct, though many things may be blamed, yet there is nothing worthy of such severe reproach?  Nor have we, by divine grace, profited so little in the gospel, but that our life may be to our detractors an example of chastity, liberality, mercy, temperance, patience, modesty, and every other virtue. It is an undeniable fact, that we sincerely fear and worship God, whose name we desire to be sanctified both by our life and by our death; and envy itself is constrained to bear testimony to the innocence and civil integrity of some of us, who have suffered the punishment of death, for that very thing which ought to be accounted their highest praise. But if the gospel be made a pretext for tumults, which has not yet happened in your kingdom; if any persons make the liberty of divine grace an excuse for the licentiousness of their vices, of whom I have known many; there are laws and legal penalties, by which they may be punished according to their deserts: only let not the gospel of God be reproached for the crimes of wicked men. You have now, Sire, the virulent iniquity of our calumniators laid before you in a sufficient number of instances, that you may not receive their accusations with too credulous an ear.

"I fear I have gone too much into the detail, as this preface already approaches the size of a full apology; whereas, I intended it not to contain our defence, but only to prepare your mind to attend to the pleading of our cause; for though you are now averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed against us, we despair not of regaining your favor, if you will only once read with calmness and composure this our confession, which we intend as our defence before your Majesty. But, on the contrary, if your ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the malevolent, as to leave no opportunity for the accused to speak for themselves, and if those outrageous furies, with your connivance, continue to persecute with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, confiscations, and flames, we shall indeed, like sheep destined to the slaughter, be reduced to the greatest extremities. Yet shall we in patience possess our souls, and wait for the mighty hand of the Lord, which undoubtedly will in time appear, and show itself armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of their despisers, who now exult in such perfect security.

"May the Lord, the King of kings, establish your throne in righteousness, and your kingdom with equity."

The first edition of the Institutes was a brief manual containing, in six chapters, an exposition 1) of the Decalogue; 2) of the Apostles’ Creed; 3) of the Lord’s Prayer; 4) of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; 5) of the other so-called Sacraments; 6) of Christian liberty, Church government, and discipline. The second edition has seventeen, the third, twenty-one chapters. In the author’s last edition of 1559, it grew to four or five times its original size, and was divided into four books, each book into a number of chapters (from seventeen to twenty-five), and each chapter into sections. It follows in the main, like every good catechism, the order of the Apostles’ Creed, which is the order of God’s revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The first book discusses the knowledge of God the Creator (theology proper); the second, the knowledge of God the Redeemer (Christology); the third, of the Holy Spirit and the application of the saving work of Christ (soteriology); the fourth, the means of grace, namely, the Church and the sacraments.460

Although the work has been vastly improved under the revising hand of the author, in size and fulness of statement, the first edition contains all the essential features of his system. "Ex ungue leonem."  His doctrine of predestination, however, is stated in a more simple and less objectionable form. He dwells on the bright and comforting side of that doctrine, namely, the eternal election by the free grace of God in Christ, and leaves out the dark mystery of reprobation and preterition.461  He gives the light without the shade, the truth without the error. He avoids the paradoxes of Luther and Zwingli, and keeps within the limits of a wise moderation. The fuller logical development of his views on predestination and on the Church, dates from his sojourn in Strassburg, where he wrote the second edition of the Institutes, and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.

The following sections on some of his leading doctrines from the last edition give a fair idea of the spirit and method of the work:

The Connection Between the Knowledge of God and the Knowledge of Ourselves.

(Book I. ch. 1, §§ 1,  2.)

1. "True and substantial wisdom principally consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. But while these two branches of knowledge are so intimately connected, which of them precedes and produces the other, is not easy to discover. For, in the first place, no man can take a survey of himself but he must immediately turn to the contemplation of God, in whom he ’lives and moves’ (Acts 17:28); since it is evident that the talents which we possess are not from ourselves, and that our very existence is nothing but a subsistence in God alone. These bounties, distilling to us by drops from heaven, form, as it were, so many streams conducting us to the fountain-head. Our poverty conduces to a clearer display of the infinite fulness of God. Especially the miserable ruin, into which we have been plunged by the defection of the first man, compels us to raise our eyes towards heaven not only as hungry and famished, to seek thence a supply for our wants, but, aroused with fear, to learn humility.

"For since man is subject to a world of miseries, and has been spoiled of his divine array, this melancholy exposure discovers an immense mass of deformity. Every one, therefore, must be so impressed with a consciousness of his own infelicity, as to arrive at some knowledge of God. Thus a sense of our ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, depravity, and corruption, leads us to perceive and acknowledge that in the Lord alone are to be found true wisdom, solid strength, perfect goodness, and unspotted righteousness; and so, by our imperfections, we are excited to a consideration of the perfections of God. Nor can we really aspire toward him, till we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For who would not gladly rest satisfied with himself?  Where is the man not actually absorbed in self-complacency, while he remains unacquainted with his true situation, or content with his own endowments, and ignorant or forgetful of his own misery?  The knowledge of ourselves, therefore, is not only an incitement to seek after God, but likewise a considerable assistance towards finding him.

2. "On the other hand, it is plain that no man can arrive at the true knowledge of himself, without having first contemplated the divine character, and then descended to the consideration of his own. For such is the native pride of us all, that we invariably esteem ourselves righteous, innocent, wise, and holy, till we are convinced by clear proofs of our unrighteousness, turpitude, folly, and impurity. But we are never thus convinced, while we confine our attention to ourselves and regard not the Lord, who is the only standard by which this judgment ought to be formed." ...

Rational Proofs to Establish the Belief in the Scripture.

(Book I. ch. 8, §§ 1, d 2.)

1. "Without this certainty [that is, the testimony of the Holy Spirit], better and stronger than any human judgment, in vain will the authority of the Scripture be either defended by arguments, or established by the consent of the Church, or confirmed by any other supports; since, unless the foundation be laid, it remains in perpetual suspense. Whilst, on the contrary, when regarding it in a different point of view from common things, we have once religiously received it in a manner worthy of its excellence, we shall then derive great assistance from things which before were not sufficient to establish the certainty of it in our minds. For it is admirable to observe how much it conduces to our confirmation, attentively to study the order and disposition of the divine wisdom dispensed in it, the heavenly nature of its doctrine, which never savors of anything terrestrial, the beautiful agreement of all the parts with each other, and other similar characters adapted to conciliate respect to any writings. But our hearts are more strongly confirmed, when we reflect that we are constrained to admire it more by the dignity of the subjects than by the beauties of the language. For even this did not happen without the particular providence of God, that the sublime mysteries of the kingdom of heaven should be communicated, for the most part, in an humble and contemptible style: lest if they had been illustrated with more of the splendor of eloquence, the impious might cavil that their triumph is only the triumph of eloquence. Now, since that uncultivated and almost rude simplicity procures itself more reverence than all the graces of rhetoric, what opinion can we form, but that the force of truth in the sacred Scripture is too powerful to need the assistance of verbal art?  Justly, therefore, does the apostle argue that the faith of the Corinthians was founded ’not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God,’ because his preaching among them was ’not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit of power’ (1 Cor. 2:4). For the truth is vindicated from every doubt, when, unassisted by foreign aid, it is sufficient for its own support. But that this is the peculiar property of the Scripture, appears from the insufficiency of any human compositions, however artificially polished, to make an equal impression on our minds. Read Demosthenes or Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle, or any others of that class; I grant that you will be attracted, delighted, moved, and enraptured by them in a surprising manner; but if, after reading them, you turn to the perusal of the sacred volume, whether you are willing or unwilling, it will affect you so powerfully, it will so penetrate your heart, and impress itself so strongly on your mind, that, compared with its energetic influence, the beauties of rhetoricians and philosophers will almost entirely disappear; so that it is easy to perceive something divine in the sacred Scriptures, which far surpass the highest attainments and ornaments of human industry.

2. "I grant, indeed, that the diction of some of the prophets is neat and elegant, and even splendid; so that they are not inferior in eloquence to the heathen writers. And by such examples the Holy Spirit hath been pleased to show that he was not deficient in eloquence, though elsewhere he hath used a rude and homely style. But whether we read David, Isaiah, and others that resemble them, who have a sweet and pleasant flow of words, or Amos, the herdsman, Jeremiah, and Zechariah, whose rougher language savors of rusticity; that majesty of the Spirit which I have mentioned is everywhere conspicuous .... With respect to the sacred Scripture, though presumptuous men try to cavil at various passages, yet it is evidently replete with sentences which are beyond the powers of human conception. Let all the prophets be examined, not one will be found who has not far surpassed the ability of men; so that those to whom their doctrine is insipid must be accounted utterly destitute of all true taste ....

11. "If we proceed to the New Testament, by what solid foundations is its truth supported ?  Three evangelists recite their history in a low and mean style. Many proud men are disgusted with that simplicity because they attend not to the principal points of doctrine; whence it were easy to infer, that they treat of heavenly mysteries which are above human capacity. They who have a spark of ingenuous modesty will certainly be ashamed, if they peruse the first chapter of Luke. Now the discourses of Christ, a concise summary of which is comprised in these three evangelists, easily exempt their writings from contempt. But John, thundering from his sublimity, more powerfully than any thunderbolt, levels to the dust the obstinacy of those whom he does not compel to the obedience of faith. Let all those censorious critics, whose supreme pleasure consists in banishing all reverence for the Scripture out of their own hearts and the hearts of others, come forth to public view. Let them read the Gospel of John: whether they wish it or not, they will there find numerous passages, which, at least, arouse their indolence and which will even imprint a horrible brand on their consciences to restrain their ridicule; similar is the method of Paul and of Peter, in whose writings, though the greater part be obscure, yet their heavenly majesty attracts universal attention. But this one circumstance raises their doctrine sufficiently above the world, that Matthew, who had before been confined to the profit of his table, and Peter and John, who had been employed in fishing-boats, all plain, unlettered men, had learned nothing in any human school which they could communicate to others. And Paul, from not only a professed but a cruel and sanguinary enemy, being converted to a new man, proves by his sudden and unhoped-for change, that he was constrained, by a command from heaven, to vindicate that doctrine which he had before opposed. Let these deny that the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles; or, at least, let them dispute the credibility of the history: yet the fact itself loudly proclaims that they were taught by the Spirit, who, though before despised as some of the meanest of the people, suddenly began to discourse in such a magnificent manner on the mysteries of heaven ....

13. "Wherefore, the Scripture will then only be effectual to produce the saving knowledge of God, when the certainty of it shall be founded on the internal persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Thus those human testimonies, which contribute to its confirmation, will not be useless, if they follow that first and principal proof, as secondary aids to our imbecility. But those persons betray great folly, who wish it to be demonstrated to infidels that the Scripture is the Word of God, which cannot be known without faith. Augustin, therefore, justly observes, that piety and peace of mind ought to precede in order that a man may understand somewhat of such great subjects."

Meditation on the Future Life.

(Book III. ch. 9, §§ 1,  3,  6.)

1. "With whatever kind of tribulation we may be afflicted, we should always keep the end in view; to habituate ourselves to a contempt of the present life, that we may thereby be excited to meditation on that which is to come. For the Lord, well knowing our strong natural inclination to a brutish love of the world, adopts a most excellent method to reclaim us and rouse us from one insensibility that we may not be too tenaciously attached to that foolish affection. There is not one of us who is not desirous of appearing through the whole course of his life, to aspire and strive after celestial immortality. For we are ashamed of excelling in no respect the brutal herds, whose condition would not be at all inferior to ours, unless there remained to us a hope of eternity after death. But if you examine the designs, pursuits, and actions of every individual, you will find nothing in them but what is terrestrial. Hence that stupidity, that the mental eyes, dazzled with the vain splendor of riches, powers, and honors, cannot see to any considerable distance. The heart also, occupied and oppressed with avarice, ambition, and other inordinate desires, cannot rise to any eminence. In a word, the whole soul, fascinated by carnal allurements, seeks its felicity on earth.

"To oppose this evil, the Lord, by continual lessons of miseries, teaches his children the vanity of the present life. That they may not promise themselves profound and secure peace in it, therefore he permits them to be frequently disquieted and infested with wars or tumults, with robberies or other injuries. That they may not aspire with too much avidity after transient and uncertain riches, or depend on those which they possess, sometimes by exile, sometimes by the sterility of the land, sometimes by a conflagration, sometimes by other means, he reduces them to indigence, or at least confines them within the limits of mediocrity. That they may not be too complacently delighted with conjugal blessings, he either causes them to be distressed with the wickedness of their wives, or humbles them with a wicked offspring, or afflicts them with want or loss of children. But if in all these things he is more indulgent to them, yet that they may not be inflated with vainglory, or improper confidence, he shows them by diseases and dangers the unstable and transitory nature of all mortal blessings. We therefore truly derive advantages from the discipline of the cross, only when we learn that this life, considered in itself, is unquiet, turbulent, miserable in numberless instances, and in no respect altogether happy; and that all its reputed blessings are uncertain, transient, vain, and adulterated with a mixture of many evils; and in consequence of this at once conclude that nothing can be sought or expected on earth but conflict, and that when we think of a crown we must raise our eyes toward heaven. For it must be admitted that the mind is never seriously excited to desire and meditate on the future life, without having previously imbibed a contempt of the present ....

3. "But the faithful should accustom themselves to such a contempt of the present life, as may not generate either hatred of life or ingratitude towards God himself. For this life, though it is replete with innumerable miseries, is yet deservedly reckoned among the divine blessings which must not be despised. Wherefore if we discover nothing of the divine beneficence in it, we are already guilty of no small ingratitude towards God himself. But to the faithful especially it should be a testimony of the divine benevolence, since the whole of it is destined to the advancement of their salvation. For before he openly discovers to us the inheritance of eternal glory, he intends to reveal himself as our Father in inferior instances; and those are the benefits which he daily confers on us. Since this life, then, is subservient to a knowledge of the divine goodness, shall we fastidiously scorn it as though it contained no particle of goodness in it?  We must, therefore, have this sense and affection, to class it among the bounties of the divine benignity which are not to be rejected. For if Scripture testimonies were wanting, which are very numerous and clear, even nature itself exhorts us to give thanks to the Lord for having introduced us to the light of life, for granting us the use of it, and giving us all the helps necessary to its preservation. And it is a far superior reason for gratitude, if we consider that here we are in some measure prepared for the glory of the heavenly kingdom. For the Lord has ordained that they who are to be hereafter crowned in heaven, must first engage in conflicts on earth, that they may not triumph without having surmounted the difficulties of warfare and obtained the victory. Another reason is, that here we begin in various blessings to taste the sweetness of the divine benignity, that our hope and desire may be excited after the full revelation of it. When we have come to this conclusion, that our life in this world is a gift of the divine clemency, which as we owe it to him, we ought to remember with gratitude, it will then be time for us to descend to a consideration of its most miserable condition, that we may be delivered from excessive cupidity, to which, as has been observed, we are naturally inclined ....

6." It is certainly true that the whole family of the faithful, as long as they dwell on earth, must be accounted as ’sheep for the slaughter’ (Rom. 8:36), that they may be conformed to Christ their Head. Their state, therefore, would be extremely deplorable, if they did not elevate their thoughts towards heaven, to rise above all sublunary things, and look beyond present appearances (1 Cor. 15:19). On the contrary, when they have once raised their heads above this world, although they see the impious flourishing in riches and honors, and enjoying the most profound tranquillity; though they see them boasting of their splendor and luxury, and behold them abounding in every delight; though they may also be harassed by their wickedness, insulted by their pride, defrauded by their avarice, and may receive from them any other lawless provocations; yet they will find no difficulty in supporting themselves even under such calamities as these. For they will keep in view that day when the Lord will receive his faithful servants into his peaceful kingdom; will wipe every tear from their eyes (Isa. 25:8; Rev. 7:17), invest them with robes of joy, adorn them with crowns of glory, entertain them with his ineffable delights, exalt them to fellowship with His Majesty, and, in a word, honor them with a participation of his happiness. But the impious, who have been great in this world, he will precipitate down to the lowest ignominy; he will change their delights into torments, and their laughter and mirth into weeping and gnashing of teeth; he will disturb their tranquillity with dreadful agonies of conscience, and will punish their delicacy with inextinguishable fire, and even put them in subjection to the pious, whose patience they have abused. For, according to Paul, it is a righteous thing with God, to recompense tribulation to those that trouble the saints, and rest to those who are troubled, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven (2 Thess. 1:6, 7). This is our only consolation, and deprived of this, we must of necessity either sink into despondency of mind, or solace ourselves to our own destruction with the vain pleasures of the world. For even the psalmist confesses that he staggered, when he was too much engaged in contemplating the present prosperity of the impious; and that he could no otherwise establish himself, till he entered the sanctuary of God, and directed his views to the last end of the godly and of the wicked (Ps. 73:2, etc.).

"To conclude in one word, the cross of Christ triumphs in the hearts of believers over the devil and the flesh, over sin and impious men, only when their eyes are directed to the power of the resurrection."

Christian Liberty.

(Book 3, ch. 19, § 9.)

1. "It must be carefully observed, that Christian liberty is in all its branches a spiritual thing; all the virtue of which consists in appeasing terrified consciences before God, whether they are disquieted and solicitous concerning the remission of their sins, or are anxious to know if their works, which are imperfect and contaminated by the defilements of the flesh, be acceptable to God, or are tormented concerning the use of things that are indifferent. Wherefore those are guilty of perverting its meaning, who either make it the pretext of their irregular appetites, that they may abuse the divine blessings to the purposes of sensuality, or who suppose that there is no liberty but what is used before men, and therefore in the exercise of it totally disregard their weak brethren.

2. "The former of these sins is the more common in the present age. There is scarcely any one whom his wealth permits to be sumptuous, who is not delighted with luxurious splendor in his entertainments, in his dress, and in his buildings; who does not desire a pre-eminence in every species of luxury; who does not strangely flatter himself on his elegance. And all these things are defended under the pretext of Christian liberty. They allege that they are things indifferent. This, I admit, provided they be indifferently used. But where they are too ardently coveted, proudly boasted, or luxuriously lavished, these things, of themselves otherwise indifferent, are completely polluted by such vices. This passage of Paul makes an excellent distinction respecting things which are indifferent: ’Unto the pure, all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving, is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled’ (Titus 1:15). For why are curses denounced on rich men, who ’receive their consolation,’ who are ’satiated,’ who ’now laugh,’ who ’lie on beds of ivory,’ who ’join field to field,’ who ’have the harp and lyre, and the tabret, and wine in their feasts?’ (Luke 6:24, 25; Amos 6:1; Isa. 5:8). Ivory and gold and riches of all kinds are certainly blessings of divine providence, not only permitted, but expressly designed for the use of men; nor are we anywhere prohibited to laugh, or to be satiated with food, or to annex new possessions to those already enjoyed by ourselves or by our ancestors, or to be delighted with musical harmony, or to drink wine. This, indeed, is true; but amidst an abundance of all things, to be immersed in sensual delights, to inebriate the heart and mind with present pleasures, and perpetually to grasp at new ones, these things are very remote from a legitimate use of the divine blessings. Let them banish, therefore, immoderate cupidity, excessive profusion, vanity, and arrogance; that with a pure conscience they may make a proper use of the gifts of God. When their hearts shall be formed to this sobriety, they will have a rule for the legitimate enjoyment of them. On the contrary, without this moderation, even the common pleasures of the vulgar are chargeable with excess. For it is truly observed, that a proud heart frequently dwells under coarse and ragged garments, and that simplicity and humility are sometimes concealed under purple and fine linen.

3. "Let all men in their respective stations, whether of poverty, of competence, or of splendor, live in the remembrance of this truth, that God confers his blessings on them for the support of life, not of luxury; and let them consider this as the law of Christian liberty, that they learn the lesson which Paul had learned, when he said: ’I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am intrusted, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need’ (Phil. 4:11, 12)."

The Doctrine of Election.

(Book 3, ch. 21, § 1.)

1. "Nothing else [than election by free grace] will be sufficient to produce in us suitable humility, or to impress us with a due sense of our great obligations to God. Nor is there any other basis for solid confidence, even according to the authority of Christ, who, to deliver us from all fear and render us invincible amidst so many dangers, snares, and deadly conflicts, promises to preserve in safety all whom the Father has committed to his care .... The discussion of predestination, a subject of itself rather intricate, is made very perplexed and therefore dangerous by human curiosity, which no barriers can restrain from wandering into forbidden labyrinths, and soaring beyond its sphere, as if determined to leave none of the divine secrets unscrutinized or unexplored .... The secrets of God’s will which he determined to reveal to us, he discovers in his Word; and these are all that he foresaw would concern us, or conduce to our advantage ....

2."  Let us bear in mind, that to desire any other knowledge of predestination than what is unfolded in the Word of God, indicates as great folly, as a wish to walk through impassable roads, or to see in the dark. Nor let us be ashamed to be ignorant of some things relative to a subject in which there is a kind of learned ignorance (aliqua docta ignorantia) ....

3. "Others desirous of remedying this evil, will leave all mention of predestination to be as it were buried .... Though their moderation is to be commended in judging that mysteries ought to be handled with such great sobriety, yet as they descend too low, they leave little influence on the mind of man which refuses to submit to unreasonable restraints .... The Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which as nothing necessary and useful to be known is omitted, so nothing is taught which it is not beneficial to know .... Let us permit the Christian man to open his heart and his ears to all the discourses addressed to him by God, only with this moderation, that as soon as the Lord closes his sacred mouth, he shall also desist from further inquiry .... ’The secret things,’  says Moses (Deut. 29:29), ’belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of his law.’

5. "Predestination, by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no one, desirous of the credit of piety, dares absolutely to deny .... Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in himself, what he would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is fore-ordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death. This God has not only testified in particular persons, but has given as specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, which should evidently show the future condition of every nation to depend upon his decision (Deut. 32:8, 9)."

§ 80. From Basel to Ferrara. The Duchess Renée.

Shortly after, if not before, the publication of his great work, in March, 1536, Calvin, in company with Louis du Tillet, crossed the Alps to Italy, the classical soil of the literary and artistic Renaissance. He hoped to aid the cause of the religious Renaissance. He went to Italy as an evangelist, not as a monk, like Luther, who learned at Rome a practical lesson of the working of the papacy.

He spent a few months in Ferrara at the brilliant court of the Duchess Renée or Renata (1511–1575), the second daughter of Louis XII., of France, and made a deep and permanent impression on her. She had probably heard of him through Queen Marguerite and invited him to a visit. She was a small and deformed, but noble, pious, and highly accomplished lady, like her friends, Queen Marguerite and Vittoria Colonna. She gathered around her the brightest wits of the Renaissance, from Italy and France, but she sympathized still more with the spirit of the Reformation, and was fairly captivated by Calvin. She chose him as the guide of her conscience, and consulted him hereafter as a spiritual father as long as he lived.462  He discharged this duty with the frankness and fidelity of a Christian pastor. Nothing can be more manly and honorable than his letters to her. Guizot affirms, from competent knowledge, that "the great Catholic bishops, who in the seventeenth century directed the consciences of the mightiest men in France, did not fulfil the difficult task with more Christian firmness, intelligent justice and knowledge of the world than Calvin displayed in his intercourse with the Duchess of Ferrara."463

Renan wonders that such a stern moralist should have exercised a lasting influence over such a lady, and attributes it to the force of conviction. But the bond of union was deeper. She recognized in Calvin the man who could satisfy her spiritual nature and give her strength and comfort to fight the battle of life, to face the danger of the Inquisition, to suffer imprisonment, and after the death of her husband and her return to France (1559) openly to confess and to maintain the evangelical faith under most trying circumstances when her own son-in-law, the Duke of Guise, carried on a war of extermination against the Reformation. She continued to correspond with Calvin very freely, and his last letter in French, twenty-three days before his death, was directed to her. She was in Paris during the dreadful massacre of St. Bartholomew, and succeeded in saving the lives of some prominent Huguenots.464

Threatened by the Inquisition which then began its work of crushing out both the Renaissance and the Reformation, as two kindred serpents, Calvin bent his way, probably through Aosta (the birthplace of Anselm of Canterbury) and over the Great St. Bernard, to Switzerland.

An uncertain tradition connects with this journey a persecution and flight of Calvin in the valley of Aosta, which was commemorated five years later (1541) by a memorial cross with the inscription "Calvini Fuga."465

At Basel he parted from Du Tillet and paid a last visit to his native town to make a final settlement of family affairs.466

Then he left France, with his younger brother Antoine and his sister Marie, forever, hoping to settle down in Basel or Strassburg and to lead there the quiet life of a scholar and author. Owing to the disturbances of war between Charles V. and Francis I., which closed the direct route through Lorraine, he had to take a circuitous journey through Geneva.

CHAPTER X.

CALVIN’S FIRST SOJOURN AND LABORS IN GENEVA. 1536–1538.

From 1536, and especially from 1541, we have, besides the works and letters of Calvin and his correspondents and other contemporaries, important sources of authentic information in the following documents: —

1. Registres du Conseil de Genève, from 1536–1564. Tomes 29–58.

2. Registres des actes de baptême et de marriage, preserved in the archives of the city of Geneva.

3. Registres des actes du Consistoie de Genève, of which Calvin was a permanent member.

4. Registres de la Vénérable Compagnie, or the Ministerium of Geneva.

5. The Archives of Bern, Zürich, and Basel, of that period, especially those of Bern, which stood in close connection with Geneva and exercised a sort of protectorate over Church and State.

From these sources the Strassburg editors of Calvin’s Works have carefully compiled the Annales Calviniani, in vol. XXI. (or vol. XII. of Thesaurus Epistolicus Calvinianus), 185–818 (published 1879). The same volume contains also the biographies of Calvin by Beza (French and Latin) and Colladon (French), the epitaphia, and a Notice Littéraire, 1–178.

J. H. Albert RILLIET: Le prémier séjour de Calvin a Genève. In his and Dufour’s ed. of Calvin’s French Catechism. Geneva, 1878.—Henry, vol. I. chs. VIII. and IX.—Dyer, ch.III.—Stähelin, I. 122 sqq. Kampschulte, I. 278–320.—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. chs. I.–XIV.

§ 81. Calvin’s Arrival and Settlement at Geneva.

Calvin arrived at Geneva in the later part of July, 1536,467 two months after the Reformation had been publicly introduced (May 21).

He intended to stop only a night, as he says, but Providence had decreed otherwise. It was the decisive hour of his life which turned the quiet scholar into an active reformer.

His presence was made known to Farel through the imprudent zeal of Du Tillet, who had come from Basel via Neuchâtel, and remained in Geneva for more than a year. Farel instinctively felt that the providential man had come who was to complete and to save the Reformation of Geneva. He at once called on Calvin and held him fast, as by divine command. Calvin protested, pleading his youth, his inexperience, his need of further study, his natural timidity and bashfulness, which unfitted him for public action. But all in vain. Farel, "who burned of a marvellous zeal to advance the Gospel," threatened him with the curse of Almighty God if he preferred his studies to the work of the Lord, and his own interest to the cause of Christ. Calvin was terrified and shaken by these words of the fearless evangelist, and felt "as if God from on high had stretched out his hand."  He submitted, and accepted the call to the ministry, as teacher and pastor of the evangelical Church of Geneva.468

It was an act of obedience, a sacrifice of his desires to a sense of duty, of his will to the will of God.

Farel gave the Reformation to Geneva, and gave Calvin to Geneva—two gifts by which he crowned his own work and immortalized his name, as one of the greatest benefactors of that city and of Reformed Christendom.

Calvin was foreordained for Geneva, and Geneva for Calvin. Both have made, their calling and election sure."

He found in the city on Lake Leman "a tottering republic, a wavering faith, a nascent Church."  He left it a Gibraltar of Protestantism, a school of nations and churches.469

The city had then only about twelve thousand inhabitants, but by her situation on the borders of France and Switzerland, her recent deliverance from political and ecclesiastical despotism, and her raw experiments in republican self-government, she offered rare advantages for the solution of the great social and religious problems which agitated Europe.

Calvin’s first labors in that city were an apparent failure. The Genevese were not ready yet and expelled him, but after a few years they recalled him. They might have expelled him again and forever; for he was poor, feeble, and unprotected. But they gradually yielded to the moulding force of his genius and character. Those who call him "the pope of Geneva" involuntarily pay him the highest compliment. His success was achieved by moral and spiritual means, and stands almost alone in history.

§ 82. First Labors and Trials.

Calvin began his labors, Sept. 5, 1536, by a course of expository lectures on the Epistles of Paul and other books of the New Testament, which he delivered in the Church of St. Peter in the afternoon. They were heard with increasing attention. He had a rare gift of teaching, and the people were hungry for religious instruction.

After a short time he assumed also the office of pastor which he had at first declined.

The Council was asked by Farel to provide a suitable support for their new minister, but they were slow to do it, not dreaming that he would become the most distinguished citizen, and calling him simply "that Frenchman."470  He received little or no salary till Feb. 13, 1537, when the Council voted him six gold crowns.471

Calvin accompanied Farel in October to the disputation at Lausanne, which decided the Reformation in the Canton de Vaud, but took little part in it, speaking only twice. Farel was the senior pastor, twenty years older, and took the lead. But with rare humility and simplicity he yielded very soon to the superior genius of his young friend. He was contented to have conquered the territory for the renewed Gospel, and left it to him to cultivate the same and to bring order out of the political and ecclesiastical chaos. He was willing to decrease, that Calvin might increase. Calvin, on his part, treated him always with affectionate regard and gratitude. There was not a shadow of envy or jealousy between them.

The third Reformed preacher was Courault, formerly an Augustinian monk, who, like Calvin, had fled from France to Basel, in 1534, and was called to Geneva to replace Viret. Though very old and nearly blind, he showed as much zeal and energy as his younger colleagues. Saunier, the rector of the school, was an active sympathizer, and soon afterwards Cordier, Calvin’s beloved teacher, assumed the government of the school and effectively aided the ministers in their arduous work. Viret came occasionally from the neighboring Lausanne. Calvin’s brother, and his relative Olivetan, who joined them at Geneva, increased his influence.

The infant Church of Geneva had the usual trouble with the Anabaptists. Two of their preachers came from Holland and gained some influence. But after an unfruitful disputation they were banished by the large Council from the territory of the city as early as March, 1537.472

A more serious trouble was created by Peter Caroli, a doctor of the Sorbonne, an unprincipled, vain, and quarrelsome theological adventurer and turncoat, who changed his religion several times, led a disorderly life, and was ultimately reconciled to the pope and released from his concubine, as he called his wife. He had fled from Paris to Geneva in 1535, became pastor at Neuchâtel, where he married, and then at Lausanne. He raised the charge of Arianism against Farel and Calvin at a synod in Lausanne, May, 1537,473 because they avoided in the Confession the metaphysical terms Trinity and Person, (though Calvin did use them in his Institutio and his Catechism,) and because they refused, at Caroli’s dictation, to sign the Athanasian Creed with its damnatory clauses, which are unjust and uncharitable. Calvin was incensed at his arrogant and boisterous conduct and charged him with atheism. "Caroli," he said, "quarrels with us about the nature of God and the distinction of the persons; but I carry the matter further and ask him, whether he believes in the Deity at all?  For I protest before God and man that he has no more faith in the Divine Word than a dog or a pig that tramples under foot holy things" (Matt. 7:6). This is the first manifestation of his angry temper and of that contemptuous tone which characterizes his polemical writings. He handed in with his colleagues a confession on the Trinity.474  The synod after due consideration was satisfied with their orthodoxy, and declared Caroli convicted of calumny and unworthy of the ministry. He died in a hospital at Rome.475

§ 83. The Reformers introduce Order and Discipline.

Confession de la Foy laquelle tous les bourgeois et habitans de Genève et subjectz du pays doyvent jurer de garder et tenir; extraicte de l’instruction dont on use en l’église de la dicte ville, 1537. Confessio Fidei in quam jurare cives omnes Genevenses et qui sub civitatis ejus ditione agunt, jussi sunt. The French in Opera, vol. IX. 693–700 (and by Rilliet-Dufour, see below); the Latin in vol. V. 355–362. See also vol. XXII. 5 sqq. (publ. 1880).

Le Catéchisme de l’Eglise de Genève, c’est à dire le Formulaire d’instruire les enfans la Chretienté fait en manière de dialogue ou le ministre interrogue et l’enfant respond. The first edition of 1537 is not divided into questions and answers, and bears the title Instruction et Confession de Foy dont on use en l’Eglise de Genève. A copy of it was discovered by H. Bordier in Paris and published by Th. Dufour, together with the first ed. of the Confession de la Foy, at Geneva, 1878 (see below). A copy of a Latin ed. of 1545 had been previously found in the Ducal library at Gotha.

Catechismus sive Christianae religionis institutio, communibus renatae nuper in evangelio Genevensis ecclesiae suffragiis recepta et vulgari quidem prius idiomate, nunc vero Latine etiam in lucem edita, Joanne Calvino auctore. The first draft, or Catechismus prior, was printed at Basel, 1538 (with a Latin translation of the Confession of 1537). Reprinted in Opera in both languages, vol. V. 313-364. The second or larger Catechism appeared in French, 1541, in Latin, 1545, etc.; both reprinted in parallel columns, Opera, vol. VI. 1–160.

(Niemeyer in his Coll. Conf. gives the Latin text of the larger Cat. together with the prayers and liturgical forms; comp. his Proleg. XXXVII.–XLI. Böckel in his Bekenntniss-Shriften der evang. Reform. Kirche gives a German version of the larger Cat., 127–172. An English translation was prepared by the Marian exiles, Geneva, 1556, and reprinted in Dunlop’s Confessions, II. 139–272).

Calvin had a hand in nearly all the French and Helvetic confessions of his age. See Opera, IX. 693–772.

*Albert Rilliet and Théophile Dufour: Le Catéchisme français de Calvin publié en 1537, réimprimé pour la première fois d’après un exemplaire nouvellement retrouvé, et suivi de la plus ancienne Confession de Foi de l’Église de Genève (avec un notice sur le premier séjour de Calvin à Genève, par Albert Rilliet, et une notice bibliographique sur le Catéchisme et la Confession de Foi de Calvin, par Théophile Dufour), Genève (H. Georg.), and Paris (Fischbacher), 1878, 16°. pp. cclxxxviii. and 146; reprinted in Opera, XXII.

Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 467 sqq. Stähelin, I. 124 sqq. Kampschulte, I. 284 sqq. Merle D’Aubigné, VI. 328–357.

Geneva needed first of all a strong moral government on the doctrinal basis of the evangelical Reformation. The Genevese were a light-hearted, joyous people, fond of public amusements, dancing, singing, masquerades, and revelries. Reckless gambling, drunkenness, adultery, blasphemy, and all sorts of vice abounded. Prostitution was sanctioned by the authority of the State and superintended by a woman called the Reine du bordel. The people were ignorant. The priests had taken no pains to instruct them and had set them a bad example. To remedy these evils, a Confession of Faith and Discipline, and a popular Catechism were prepared, the first by Farel as the senior pastor, with the aid of Calvin;476 the second by Calvin. Both were accepted and approved by the Council in November, 1536.477

The Confession of Faith consists of twenty-one articles in which the chief doctrines of the evangelical faith are briefly and clearly stated for the comprehension of the people. It begins with the Word of God, as the rule of faith and practice, and ends with the duty to the civil magistracy. The doctrine of predestination and reprobation is omitted, but it is clearly taught that man is saved by the free grace of God without any merit (Art. 10). The necessity of discipline by admonition and excommunication for the conversion of the sinner is asserted (Art. 19). This subject gave much trouble in Geneva and other Swiss churches. The Confession prepared the way for fuller Reformed Confessions, as the Gallican, the Belgic, and the Second Helvetic. It was printed and distributed in April, 1537, and read every Sunday from the pulpits, to prepare the citizens for its adoption.478

Calvin’s Catechism, which preceded the Confession, is an extract from his Institutes, but passed through several transformations. On his return from Strassburg he re-wrote it on a larger scale, and arranged it in questions and answers, or in the form of a dialogue between the teacher and the pupil. It was used for a long time in Reformed Churches and schools, and served a good purpose in promoting an intelligent piety and virtue by systematic biblical instruction. It includes an exposition of the Creed, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer. It is much fuller than Luther’s, but less adapted for children. Beza says that it was translated into German, English, Scotch, Belgic, Spanish, into Hebrew by E. Tremellius, and "most elegantly" into Greek by H. Stephanus. It furnished the basis and material for a number of similar works, especially the Anglican (Nowell’s), the Palatinate (Heidelberg), and the Westminster Catechisms, which gradually superseded it.

Calvin has been called "the father of popular education and the inventor of free schools."479  But he must share this honor with Luther and Zwingli.

Besides the Confession and Catechism, the Reformed pastors (i.e. Farel, Calvin, and Courault) presented to the Council a memorial concerning the future organization and discipline of the Church of Geneva, recommending frequent and solemn celebration of the Lord’s Supper, at least once a month, alternately in the three principal churches, singing of Psalms, regular instruction of the youth, abolition of the papal marriage laws, the maintenance of public order, and the exclusion of unworthy communicants.480  They regarded the apostolic custom of excommunication as necessary for the protection of the purity of the Church, but as it had been fearfully abused by the papal bishops, they requested the Council to elect a number of reliable, godly, and irreproachable citizens for the moral supervision of the different districts, and the exercise of discipline, in connection with the ministers, by private and public admonition, and, in case of stubborn disobedience, by excommunication from the privileges of church membership.

On Jan. 16, 1537, the Great Council of Two Hundred issued a series of orders forbidding immoral habits, foolish songs, gambling, the desecration of the Lord’s Day, baptism by midwives, and directing that the remaining idolatrous images should be burned; but nothing was said about excommunication.481  This subject became a bone of contention between the pastors and citizens and the cause of the expulsion of the Reformers. The election of syndics, Feb. 5, was favorable to them.

The ministers were incessantly active in preaching, catechising, and visiting all classes of the people. Five sermons were preached every Sunday, two every week day, and were well attended. The schools were flourishing, and public morality was steadily rising. Saunier, in a school oration, praised the goodly city of Geneva which now added to her natural advantages of a magnificent site, a fertile country, a lovely lake, fine streets and squares, the crowning glory of the pure doctrine of the gospel. The magistrates showed a willingness to assist in the maintenance of discipline. A gambler was placed in the pillory with a chain around his neck. Three women were imprisoned for an improper head-dress. Even François Bonivard, the famous patriot and prisoner of Chillon, was frequently warned on account of his licentiousness. Every open manifestation of sympathy with popery by carrying a rosary, or cherishing a sacred relic, or observing a saint’s day, was liable to punishment. The fame of Geneva went abroad and began to attract students and refugees. Before the close of 1537 English Protestants came to Geneva to, see Calvin and Farel."482

On July 29, 1537, the Council of the Two Hundred ordered all the citizens, male and female, to assent to the Confession of Faith in the Church of St. Peter.483  It was done by a large number. On Nov. 12, the Council even passed a measure to banish all who would not take the oath.484

The Confession was thus to be made the law of Church and State. This is the first instance of a formal pledge to a symbolical book by a whole people.

It was a glaring inconsistency that those who had just shaken off the yoke of popery as an intolerable burden, should subject their conscience and intellect to a human creed; in other words, substitute for the old Roman popery a modern Protestant popery. Of course, they sincerely believed that they had the infallible Word of God on their side; but they could not claim infallibility in its interpretation. The same inconsistency and intolerance was repeated a hundred years later on a much larger scale in the "Solemn League and Covenant" of the Scotch Presbyterians and English Puritans against popery and prelacy, and sanctioned in 1643 by the Westminster Assembly of Divines which vainly attempted to prescribe a creed, a Church polity, and a directory of worship for three nations. But in those days neither Protestants nor Catholics had any proper conception of religious toleration, much less of religious liberty, as an inalienable right of man. "The power of the magistrates ends where that of conscience begins."  God alone is the Lord of conscience.

The Calvinistic churches of modem times still require subscription to the Westminster standards, but only from the officers, and only in a qualified sense, as to substance of doctrine; while the members are admitted simply on profession of faith in Christ as their Lord and Saviour.485

§ 84. Expulsion of the Reformers. 1538.

Calvin’s correspondence from 1537 to 1538, in Op. vol. X., Pt. II. 137 sqq. Herminjard, vols. IV. and V.—Annal. Calv., Op. XXI., fol. 215–235.

Henry, I. ch. IX.—Dyer, 78sqq.—Stähelin, I. 151 sqq.—Kampschulte, I. 296–319. Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. chs. XI.–XIV. (vol. VI. 469 sqq.).

C. A. Cornelius: Die Verbannung Calvins aus Genf. i. J. 1538. München, 1886.

The submission of the people of Geneva to such a severe system of discipline was only temporary. Many had never sworn to the Confession, notwithstanding the threat of punishment, and among them were the most influential citizens of the republic;486 others declared that they had been compelled to perjure themselves. The impossibility of enforcing the law brought the Council into contempt. Ami Porral, the leader of the clerical party in the Council, was charged with arbitrary conduct and disregard of the rights of the people. The Patriots and Libertines who had hailed the Reformation in the interest of political independence from the yoke of Savoy and of the bishop, had no idea of becoming slaves of Farel, and were jealous of the influence of foreigners. An intrigue to annex Geneva to the kingdom of France increased the suspicion. The Patriots organized themselves as a political party and labored to overthrow the clerical régime. They were aided in part by Bern, which was opposed to the tenet of excommunication and to the radicalism of the Reformers.

There was another cause of dissatisfaction even among the more moderate, which brought on the crisis. Farel in his iconoclastic zeal had, before the arrival of Calvin, abolished all holidays except Sunday, the baptismal fonts, and the unleavened bread in the communion, all of which were retained by the Reformed Church in Bern.487  A synod of Lausanne, under the influence of Bern, recommended the restoration of the old Bernese customs, as they were called. The Council enforced this decision. Calvin himself regarded such matters as in themselves indifferent, but would not forsake his colleagues.

Stormy scenes took place in the general assembly of citizens, Nov. 15, 1537. In the popular elections on Feb. 3, 1538, the anti-clerical party succeeded in the election of four syndics and a majority of the Council.488

The new rulers proceeded with caution. They appointed new preachers for the country, which was much needed. They prohibited indecent songs and broils in the streets, and going out at night after nine. They took Bern for their model. They enforced the decision of the Council of Lausanne concerning the Church festivals and baptismal fonts.

But the preachers were determined to die rather than to yield an inch. They continued to thunder against the popular vices, and censured the Council for want of energy in suppressing them. The result was that they were warned not to meddle in politics (March 12).489  Courauld, who surpassed even Farel in vehemence, was forbidden to preach, but ascended the pulpit again, April 7, denounced Geneva and its citizens in a rude and insulting manner,490 was imprisoned, and six days afterwards banished in spite of the energetic protests of Calvin and Farel. The old man retired to Thonon, on the lake of Geneva, was elected minister at Orbe, and died there Oct. 4 in the same year.

Calvin and Farel were emboldened by this harsh treatment of their colleague. They attacked the Council from the pulpit. Even Calvin went so far as to denounce it as the Devil’s Council. Libels were circulated against the preachers. They often heard the cry late in the evening, "To the Rhone with the traitors," and in the night they were disturbed by violent knocks at the door of their dwelling.

They were ordered to celebrate the approaching Easter communion after the Bernese rite, but they refused to do so in the prevailing state of debauchery and insubordination. The Council could find no supplies. On Easter Sunday, April 21, Calvin, after all, ascended the pulpit of St. Peter’s; Farel, the pulpit of St. Gervais. They preached before large audiences, but declared that they could not administer the communion to the rebellious city, lest the sacrament be desecrated. And indeed, under existing circumstances, the celebration of the love-feast of the Saviour would have been a solemn mockery. Many hearers were armed, drew their swords, and drowned the voice of the preachers, who left the church and went home under the protection of their friends. Calvin preached also in the evening in the Church of St. Francis at Rive in the lower part of the city, and was threatened with violence.

The small Council met after the morning service in great commotion and summoned the general Council. On the next two days, April 22 and 23, the great Council of the Two Hundred assembled in the cloisters of St. Peter’s, deposed Farel and Calvin, without a trial, and ordered them to leave the city within three days.491

They received the news with great composure. "Very well," said Calvin, "it is better to serve God than man. If we had sought to please men, we should have been badly rewarded, but we serve a higher Master, who will not withhold from us his reward."492  Calvin even rejoiced at the result more than seemed proper.

The people celebrated the downfall of the clerical régime with public rejoicings. The decrees of the synod of Lausanne were published by sound of trumpets. The baptismal fonts were re-erected, and the communion administered on the following Sunday with unleavened bread.

The deposed ministers went to Bern, but found little sympathy. They proceeded to Zürich, where a general synod was held, and were kindly received. They admitted that they had been too rigid, and consented to the restoration of the baptismal fonts, the unleavened bread (provided the bread was broken), and the four Church festivals observed in Bern; but they insisted on the introduction of discipline, the division of the Church into parishes, the more frequent administration of the communion, the singing of Psalms in public worship, and the exercise of discipline by joint committees of laymen and ministers.493

Bullinger undertook to advocate this compromise before Bern and Geneva. But the Genevese confirmed in general assembly the sentence of banishment, May 26.

With gloomy prospects for the future, yet trusting in God, who orders all things well, the exiled ministers travelled on horseback in stormy weather to Basel. In crossing a torrent swollen by the rains they were nearly swept away. In Basel they were warmly received by sympathizing friends, especially by Grynaeus. Here they determined to wait for the call of Providence. Farel, after a few weeks, in July, received and accepted a call to Neuchâtel, his former seat of labor, on condition that he should have freedom to introduce his system of discipline. Calvin was induced, two months later, to leave Basel for Strassburg.

It was during this crisis that Calvin’s friend and travelling companion, Louis du Tillet, who seems to have been of a mild and peaceable disposition, lost faith in the success of the Reformation. He left Geneva in August, 1537, for Strassburg and Paris, and returned to the Roman Church. He had relations in high standing who influenced him. His brother, Jean du Tillet, was the famous registrar of the Parliament of Paris; another brother became bishop of Sainte-Brieux, afterwards of Meaux.494  He explained to Calvin his conscientious scruples and reasons for the change. Calvin regarded them as insufficient, and warned him earnestly, but kindly and courteously. The separation was very painful to both, but was relieved by mutual regard. Du Tillet even offered to aid Calvin in his distressed condition after his expulsion, but Calvin gratefully declined, writing from Strassburg, Oct. 20, 1538: "You have made me an offer for which I cannot sufficiently thank you; neither am I so rude and unmannerly as not to feel the unmerited kindness so deeply, that even in declining to accept it, I can never adequately express the obligation that I owe to you."  As to their difference of opinion, he appeals to the judgment of God to decide who are the true schismatics, and concludes the letter with the prayer: "May our Lord uphold and keep you in his holy protection, so directing you that you decline not from his way."495

CHAPTER XI.

CALVIN IN GERMANY. FROM 1538–1541.

§ 85. Calvin in Strassburg.

I. Calvin’s correspondence from 1538–1541 in Opera, vols. X. and XI.; Herminjard, Vols. V. and VI.; Bonnet-Constable, Vol. I. 63 sqq. Beza: Vita Calv., in Op. XXI. 128 sq.—Ann. Calv., Op. XXI. 226–285. Contains extracts from the Archives du chapitre de St. Thomas de Strasbourg.

II. Alf. Erichson: L’Église française de Strasbourg au XVIe siècle, d’après des documents inédits. Strasb. 1885. Comp. also his other works on the History of the Reformation in the Alsace.—C. A. Cornelius: Die Rückkehr Calvin’s nach Genf. München, 1889.—E. Doumergue (Prof. of the Prot. Faculty of Montauban): Essai sur l’histoire du Culte Réformé principalement au XIXe Siècle. Paris, 1890. Ch. I., Calvin à Strasbourg, treats of the worship in the first French Reformed Church, the model of the churches of France.—Eduard Stricker: Johannes Calvin als erster Pfarrer der reformirten Gemeinde zu Strassburg. Nach urkundlichen Quellen. Strassburg (Heitz & Mündel), 1890 (65 pp.). In commemoration of the centenary of the church edifice of the French Reformed congregation (built in 1790) by its present pastor.

III. Henry, I. ch. X.—Stähelin, I. 168–283.—Kampschulte, I. 320–368.—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. chs. XV.–XVII. (vol. VI. 543–609).

Calvin felt so discouraged by his recent experience that he was disinclined to assume another public office, and Conrault approved of this purpose. He therefore refused the first invitation of Bucer to come to Strassburg, the more so as his friend Farel was not included. But he yielded at last to repeated solicitations, mindful of the example of the prophet Jonah. Farel gave his hearty assent.

Strassburg496 was since 1254 a free imperial city of Germany, famous for one of the finest Gothic cathedrals, large commerce, and literary enterprise. Some of the first editions of the Bible were printed there. By its geographical situation, a few miles west of the Upper Rhine, it formed a connecting link between Germany, France, and Switzerland, as also between Lutheranism and Zwinglianism. It offered a hospitable home to a steady flow of persecuted Protestants from France, who called Strassburg the New Jerusalem. The citizens had accepted the Reformation in 1523 in the spirit of evangelical union between the two leading types of Protestantism. Bucer, Capito, Hedio, Niger, Matthias Zell, Sturm, and others, labored there harmoniously together. Strassburg was the Wittenberg of South-western Germany, and in friendly alliance with Zürich and Geneva.

Martin Bucer, the chief Reformer of the city, was the embodiment of a generous and comprehensive catholicity, and gave it expression in the Tetrapolitan Confession, which was presented at the diet of Augsburg in 1530.497  He afterwards brought about, in the same irenic spirit, the Wittenberg Concordia (1536), which was to harmonize the Lutheran and Zwinglian theories on the Lord’s Supper, but conceded too much to Luther (even the participation of the body and blood of Christ by unworthy communicants), and therefore was rejected by Bullinger and the Swiss Churches. He wrote to Bern in June, 1540, that next to Wittenberg no city in Germany was so friendly to the gospel and so large-hearted in spirit as Strassburg. He ended his labors in the Anglican Church as professor of theology in the University of Cambridge in 1551. Six years after his death his body was dug up, chained upright to a stake and burned, under Queen Mary; but his tomb was rebuilt and his memory honorably restored under Queen Elizabeth. His colleague Fagius shared the same fate.

The Zürichers, in a letter to Calvin, call Strassburg "the Antioch of the Reformation;" Capito, "the refuge of exiled brethren;" the Roman Catholic historian, Florimond de Raemond, "the retreat and rendezvous of Lutherans and Zwinglians under the control of Bucer, and the receptacle of those that were banished from France."498  Among the distinguished early refugees from France were Francis Lambert, Farel, Le Févre, Roussel, and Michel d’Arande. Unfortunately, Strassburg did not long occupy this noble position, but became a battlefield of bitter sectarian strife and, for some time, the home of a narrow Lutheran orthodoxy. The city was conquered by Louis XIV. and annexed to Roman Catholic France in 1681, to the detriment of her Protestant character, but was reconquered by Emperor William I. and incorporated with united Germany as the capital of Alsace and Lorraine in 1870. The university was newly organized and better equipped than ever before.499

Calvin arrived at Strassburg in the first days of September, 1538.500  He spent there three years in useful labors. He was received with open arms by Bucer, Capito, Hedio, Sturm, and Niger, the leading men in the Church, and appointed by the Council professor of theology, with a moderate salary. He soon felt at home, and in the next summer bought the citizenship, and joined the guild of the tailors.501

The sojourn of Calvin in this city was a fruitful episode in his life, and an education for more successful work in Geneva. His views were enlarged and deepened. He gained valuable experience. He came in contact with the Lutheran Church and its leaders. He learned to understand and appreciate them, but was unfavorably impressed with the want of discipline and the slavish dependence of the clergy upon the secular rulers. He labored indefatigably and successfully as professor, pastor, and author. He informed Farel (April 20, 1539) that, when the messenger called for copy of his book (the second edition of the Institutes), he had to read fifty pages, then to teach and to preach, to write four letters, to adjust some quarrels, and was interrupted by visitors more than ten times.502

It is in the fitness of things that three learned professors of the University of Strassburg, who lived during the French and German régime, and were equally at home in the language and theology of both nations, should give to the world the last and best edition of Calvin’s works.

Calvin’s economic condition during these three years was very humble. It is a shame for the congregation and the city government that they allowed such a man to struggle for his daily bread. For the first five months he received no pay at all, only free board in the house of a liberal friend. His countrymen were poor, but might have done something. He informed Farel, in April, 1539, that of his many friends in France, not one had offered him a copper, except Louis Du Tillet, who hoped to induce him to return. Hence he declined.503  The city paid him a very meagre salary of fifty-two guilders (about two hundred marks) for his professorial duties from May, 1539.504  His books were not profitable. When the Swiss heard of his embarrassment, they wished to come to his aid, and Fabri sent ten ducats to Farel for Calvin.505  But he preferred to sell his greatest treasure—the library—which he had left in Geneva, and to take students as boarders (pensionnaires). He trusted to God for the future.506

With all his poverty he was happy in his independence, the society of congenial friends, and his large field of usefulness.

§ 86. The Church of the Strangers in Strassburg.

Calvin combined the offices of pastor and professor of theology in Strassburg, as he had done in Geneva. The former activity kept him in contact with his French countrymen; the latter extended his influence among the scholars in Germany.

He organized the first Protestant congregation of French refugees, which served as a model for the Reformed Churches of Geneva and France.

The number of refugees amounted at that time to about four hundred.507  Most of them belonged to the "little French Church."508  His first sermon was delivered in the Church of St. Nicholas, and attracted a large crowd of Frenchmen and Germans.509  He preached four times a week (twice on Sunday), and held Bible classes. He trained deacons to assist him, especially in the care of the poor, whom he had much at heart. The names of the first two were Nicholas Parent, who afterwards became pastor at Neuchâtel, and Claude de Fer or Féray (Claudius Feraeus), a French Hellenist, who had fled to Strassburg, taught Greek, and died of the pestilence in 1541, to the great grief of Calvin.

He introduced his favorite discipline, and as he was not interfered with by the magistracy he had better success than at Geneva during his first sojourn. "No house," he says, "no society, can exist without order and discipline, much less the Church."  He laid as much stress upon it as Luther did upon doctrine, and he regarded it as the best safeguard of sound doctrine and Christian life. He excluded a student who had neglected public worship for a month and fallen into gross immorality, from the communion table, and would not admit him till he professed repentance.510

Not a few of the younger members, however, objected to excommunication as a popish institution. But he distinguished between the yoke of Christ and the tyranny of the pope. He persevered and succeeded. "I have conflicts," he wrote to Farel, "severe conflicts, but they are a good school for me."

He converted many Anabaptists, who were wisely tolerated in the territory of Strassburg, and brought to him from the city and country their children for baptism. He was consulted by the magistrates on all important questions touching religion. He conscientiously attended to pastoral care, and took a kindly interest in every member of his flock. In this way he built up in a short time a prosperous church, which commanded the respect and admiration of the community of Strassburg.511

Unfortunately, this Church of the Strangers lasted only about twenty-five years, and was extinguished by the flames of sectarian bigotry, though not till after many copies had been made from it as a model. An exclusive Lutheranism, under the lead of Marbach, obtained the ascendency in Strassburg, and treated the Calvinistic Christians as dangerous heretics. When Calvin passed through the city on his way to Frankfort, in August, 1556, he was indeed honorably received by John Sturm and the students, who respectfully rose to their feet in his presence, but he was not allowed to preach to his own congregation, because he did not believe in the dogma of consubstantiation. A few years later the Reformed worship was altogether forbidden by order of the Council, Aug. 19, 1563.512

§ 87. The Liturgy of Calvin.

I. La forme des prieres et chantzs ecclesiastiques, avec la maniere d’administrer les sacremens et consacrer le marriage, selon la coutume de l’Eglise ancienne, A.D. 1542. In Opera, VI. 161–210 (from a copy at Stuttgart; the title is given in the old spelling without accents). Later editions (1543, 1545, 1562, etc.) add: "la visitation des malades," and "comme on l’observe à Genève."  An earlier edition of eighteen Psalms appeared at Strassburg, 1539. (See Douen, Clément Marot, I. 300 sqq.)  An edition of the liturgy with the Psalms was printed at Strassburg, Feb. 15, 1542. (See Douen, l.c. 305, and 342 sqq.)  A copy of an enlarged Strassburg ed. of 1545, entitled La forme des prieres et chantzs ecclesiastiques, was preserved in the Public Library at Strassburg till Aug. 24, 1870, when it was burnt at the siege of the city in the Franco-German War (Douen, I. 451 sq.).

II. Ch. d’Héricault: Ouvres de Marot. Paris, 1867.—Felix Bovet: Histoire du psautier des églises réformées. Neuchâtel, 1872.—O. Douen: Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot. Étude historique, littéraire, musicale et bibliographique; contenant les mélodies primitives des Psaumes, etc. Paris (à’imprimerie national), 1878 sq. 2 vols. royal 8vo. A magnificent work published at the expense of the French Republic on the recommendation of the Institute. The second volume contains the harmonies of Goudimel.

Farel published at Neuchâtel in 1533, and introduced at Geneva in 1537, the first French Reformed liturgy, which includes, in the regular Sunday service, a general prayer, the Lord’s Prayer (before sermon), the Decalogue, confession of sins, repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, a final exhortation and benediction.513 It resembled the German liturgy of Bern, which was published in 1529, and which Calvin caused to be translated into French by his friend Morelet.514 Of Farel’s liturgy only the form of marriage survived. The rest was reconstructed and improved by Calvin in the liturgy which he first introduced in Strassburg, and with some modifications in Geneva after his return.

Calvin’s liturgy was published twice in 1542. It was introduced at Lausanne in the same year, and gradually passed into other Reformed Churches.

Calvin built his form of worship on the foundation of Zwingli and Farel, and the services already in use in the Swiss Reformed Churches. Like his predecessors, he had no sympathy whatever with the Roman Catholic ceremonialism, which was overloaded with unscriptural traditions and superstitions. We may add that he had no taste for the artistic, symbolical, and ornamental features in worship. He rejected the mass, all the sacraments, except two, the saints’ days, nearly all church festivals, except Sunday, images, relics, processions, and the whole pomp and circumstance of a gaudy worship which appeals to the senses and imagination rather than the intellect and the conscience, and tends to distract the mind with the outward show instead of concentrating it upon the contemplation of the saving truth of the gospel.

He substituted in its place that simple and spiritual mode of worship which is well adapted for intelligent devotion, if it be animated by the quickening presence and power of the Spirit of God, but becomes jejune, barren, cold, and chilly if that power is waiting. He made the sermon the central part of worship, and substituted instruction and edification in the vernacular for the reading of the mass in Latin. He magnified the pulpit, as the throne of the preacher, above the altar of the sacrificing priest. He opened the inexhaustible fountain of free prayer in public worship, with its endless possibilities of application to varying circumstances and wants; he restored to the Church, like Luther, the inestimable blessing of congregational singing, which is the true popular liturgy, and more effective than the reading of written forms of prayer.

The order of public worship in Calvin’s congregation at Strassburg was as follows: —

The service began with an invocation,515 a confession of sin and a brief absolution.516 hen followed reading of the Scriptures, singing, and a free prayer. The whole congregation, male and female, joined in chanting the Psalms, and thus took an active part in public worship, while formerly they were but passive listeners or spectators. This was in accordance with the Protestant doctrine of the general priesthood of believers.517  The sermon came next, and after it a long general prayer and the Lord’s Prayer. The service closed with singing and the benediction.518

The same order is substantially observed in the French Reformed Churches. Calvin prepared also liturgical forms for baptism and the holy communion. A form for marriage and the visitation of the sick had been previously composed by Farel. The combination of the liturgical and extemporaneous features continue in the Reformed Churches of the Continent. In the Presbyterian churches of Scotland and most of the Dissenting churches of England, and their descendants in America, the liturgical element was gradually ruled out by free prayer; while the Anglican Church pursued the opposite course.

Baptism was always performed before the congregation at the close of the public service, and in the simplest manner, according to the institution of Christ; without the traditional ceremony of exorcism, and the use of salt, spittle, and burning candles, because these are not commanded in the Scriptures, nourish superstition, and divert the attention from the spiritual substance of the ordinance to outward forms. Calvin regarded immersion as the primitive form of baptism, but pouring and sprinkling as equally valid.519

The communion was celebrated once a month in a simple but very solemn manner by the whole congregation. Calvin required the communicants to give him previous notice of their intention, that they might receive instruction, warning, or comfort, according to their need. Unworthy applicants were excluded.

The introduction of the Psalter in the vernacular was a most important feature, and the beginning of a long and heroic chapter in the history of worship and Christian life. The Psalter occupies the same important place in the Reformed Church as the hymnal in the Lutheran. It was the source of comfort and strength to the Huguenot Church of the Desert, and to the Presbyterian Covenanters of Scotland, in the days of bitter trial and persecution. Calvin, himself prepared metrical versions of Psalms 25, 36, 43, 46,520 91, 113, 120, 138, 142, together with a metrical version of the Song of Simeon and the Ten Commandments.521  He afterwards used the superior version of Clément Marot, the greatest French poet of that age, who was the poet of the court, and the psalmist of the Church (1497–1544). Calvin met him first at the court of the Duchess of Ferrara (1536), whither he had fled, and afterwards at Geneva (1542), where he encouraged him to continue his metrical translation of the Psalms. Marot’s Psalter first appeared at Paris, 1541, and contained thirty Psalms, together with metrical versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the Angelic Salutation, the Creed, and the Decalogue. Several editions, with fifty Psalms, were printed at Geneva in 1543, one at Strassburg in 1545. Later editions were enlarged with the translations of Beza. The popularity and usefulness of his and Beza’s Psalter were greatly enhanced by the rich melodies of Claude Goudimel (1510–1572), who joined the Reformed Church in 1562, and died a martyr at Lyons in the night of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He devoted his musical genius to the Reformation. His tunes are based in part on popular songs, and breathe the simple and earnest spirit of the Reformed cultus. Some of them have found a place among the chorals of the Lutheran Church.

§ 88. Calvin as Theological Teacher and Author.

The Reformers of Strassburg, aided by leading laymen, as Jacob Sturm and John Sturm, provided for better elementary and higher education, and founded schools which attracted pupils from France as early as 1525. Gérard Roussel, one of the earliest of the refugees, speaks very highly of them in a letter to the bishop of Meaux.522  A Protestant college (gymnasium), with a theological department, was established March 22, 1538, and placed under the direction of John Sturm, one of the ablest pedagogues of his times. It was the nucleus of a university which continued German down to the French Revolution, was then half Frenchified, and is now again German in language and methods of teaching. The first teachers in that college were Bucer for the New Testament, Capito for the Old, Hedio for history and theology, Herlin for mathematics, and Jacob Bedrot or Pedrotus for Greek.523  A converted Jew taught Hebrew.

Calvin was appointed assistant professor of theology in January, 1539.524  He lectured on the Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Romans, and other books of the Bible. Many students came from Switzerland and France to hear him, who afterwards returned as evangelists. He speaks of several students in his correspondence with satisfaction. In some cases he was disappointed. He presided over public disputations. He refuted in 1539 a certain Robertus Moshamus, Dean of Passau, in a disputation on the merits of good works, and achieved a signal victory to the great delight of the scholars of the city.525

But he had also an unpleasant dispute with that worthless theological turncoat, Peter Caroli, who appeared at Strassburg in October, 1539, as a troubler in Israel, as he had done before at Lausanne, and sought to prejudice even Bucer and Capito against Calvin on the subject of the Trinity.526

With all his professional duties he found leisure for important literary work, which had been interrupted at Geneva. He prepared a thorough revision of his Institutes, which superseded the first, and a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, which opened the series of his invaluable exegetical works. Both were published at Strassburg by the famous printer Wendelin Rihel in 1539. He had been preceded, in the commentary on Romans, by Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, but he easily surpassed them all. He also wrote, in French, a popular treatise on the Lord’s Supper, in which he pointed out a via media between the realism of Luther and the spiritualism of Zwingli. Both parties, he says towards the close, have failed and departed from the truth in their passionate zeal, but this should not blind us to the great benefits which God through Luther and Zwingli has bestowed upon mankind. If we are not ungrateful and forgetful of what we owe to them, we shall be well able to pardon that and much more, without blaming them. We must hope for a reconciliation of the two parties.

At the Diet of Regensburg in 1541 he had, with the other Protestant delegates, to subscribe the Augsburg Confession. He could do so honestly, understanding it, as he said expressly, in the sense of the author who, in the year before, had published a revised edition with an important change in the 10th Article (on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper).527

Of his masterly answer to Sadolet we shall speak separately.

His many letters from that period prove his constant and faithful attention to the duties of friendship. In his letters to Farel he pours out his heart, and makes him partaker of his troubles and joys, and familiar with public events and private affairs even to little details. Farel could not stand a long separation and paid him two brief visits in 1539 and 1540.

§ 89. Calvin at the Colloquies of Frankfurt, Worms, and Regensburg.

Calvin: Letters from Worms, Regensburg, and Strassburg, in Opera, XI., and Herminjard, vols. VI. and VII. His report on the Diet at Regensburg (Les Actes de la journée impériale en la cité de Regenspourg), in Opera, V. 509–684.—Melanchthon: Report on the Colloquy at Worms, in Latin, and the Acts of the Colloquy at Regensburg, in German, 1542.

See his Epistolae, ed. Bretschneider, IV. 33–78, and pp. 728 sqq.—Sturm: Antipappus.—Sleidan: De Statu Eccles. et Reipublicae Carolo V. Caesare, Lib. XIII.

Henry, Vol. I. ch. XVII.—Dyer, pp. 105 sqq.—Stähelin, I. 229–254. Kampschulte, I. 328–342.—Stricker, pp. 27 sqq.—Ludwig Pastor (Rom. Cath.): Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen während der Regierung Karls V. Aus den Quellen dargestellt. Freiburg-i.-B., 1879 (507 pp.). He notices Calvin’s influence, pp. 194, 196, 212, 230, 245, 258, 266, 484, but apparently without having read his correspondence, which is one of the chief sources; he only refers to Kampschulte.

Calvin was employed, with Bucer, Capito, and Sturm, as one of the commissioners of the city and Church of Strassburg, on several public colloquies, which were held during his sojourn in Germany for the healing of the split caused by the Reformation. The emperor Charles V. was anxious, from political motives, to reconcile the Protestant princes to the Roman Church, and to secure their aid against the Turks. The leading theological spirits in these conferences were Melanchthon on the Lutheran, and Julius Pflug on the Roman Catholic side. They aimed to secure the reunion of the Church by mutual concessions on minor differences of doctrine and discipline. But the conferences shared the fate of all compromises. Luther and Calvin would not yield an inch to the pope, while the extreme men of the papal party, like Eck, were as unwilling to make any concession to Protestantism. A fuller account belongs to the ecclesiastical history of Germany.

Calvin, being a foreigner and a Frenchman, ignorant of the German language, acted a subordinate part, though he commanded the respect of both parties for his ability and learning, in which he was not inferior to any. Having no faith in compromises, or in the sincerity of the emperor, he helped to defeat rather than to promote the pacific object of these conferences. He favored an alliance between the Lutheran princes of the Smalkaldian League with Francis I., who, as the rival of Charles V., was inclined to such an alliance. He was encouraged in this line of policy by Queen Marguerite, who corresponded with him at that time through his friend Sleidan, the statesman and historian.528  He did succeed in securing, after repeated efforts, a petition of the Lutheran princes assembled at Regensburg to the French king in behalf of the persecuted Protestants in France (May 23, 1541).529  But he had no more confidence in Francis I. than in Charles V. "The king," he wrote to Farel (September, 1540), "and the emperor, while contending in cruel persecution of the godly, both endeavor to gain the favor of the Roman idol."530  He placed his trust in God, and in a close alliance of the Lutheran princes among themselves and with the Protestants in France and Switzerland.

He was a shrewd observer of the religious and political movements, and judged correctly of the situation and the principal actors. Nothing escaped his attention. He kept Farel at Neuchâtel informed even about minor incidents.

Calvin attended the first colloquy at Frankfurt in February, 1539, in a private capacity, for the purpose of making the personal acquaintance of Melanchthon and pleading the cause of his persecuted brethren in France, whom he had more at heart than German politics.

The Colloquy was prorogued to Hagenau in June, 1540, but did not get over the preliminaries.

A more important Colloquy was held at Worms in November of the same year. In that ancient city Luther had made his ever memorable declaration in favor of the liberty of conscience, which in spite of the pope’s protest had become an irrepressible power. Calvin appeared at this time in the capacity of a commissioner both of Strassburg and the dukes of Lüneburg. He went reluctantly, being just then in ill health and feeling unequal to the task. But he gathered strength on the spot, and braced up the courage of Melanchthon who, as the spokesman of the Lutheran theologians, showed less disposition to yield than on former occasions. He took a prominent part in the discussion. He defeated Dean Robert Mosham of Passau in a second disputation, and earned on that occasion from Melanchthon, and the Lutheran theologians who were present, the distinctive title "the Theologian" by eminence.531

He also wrote at Worms, for his private solace, not for publication, an epic poem in sixty-one distichs (one hundred and twenty-two lines), which celebrates the triumph of Christ and the defeat of his enemies (Eck, Cochlaeus, Nausea, Pelargus) after their apparent and temporary victory.532  He was not a poetic genius, but by study he made up the defects of nature.533

The Colloquy of Worms, after having hardly begun, was broken off in January, 1541, to be resumed at the approaching Diet of Regensburg (Ratisbon) in presence of the emperor on his return.

The Diet at Regensburg was opened April 5, 1541. Calvin appeared again as a delegate of Strassburg and at the special request of Melanchthon, but reluctantly and with little hope of success. He felt that he was ill suited for such work, and would only waste time.534  After long and vexatious delays in the arrival of the deputies, the theological Colloquy was opened and conducted on the Roman Catholic side by Dr. John Eck, professor at Ingolstadt (who had disputed with Luther at Leipzig and promulgated the papal bull of excommunication), Julius Pflug, canon of Mainz (afterwards bishop of Naumburg), and John Gropper, canon and professor of canon law at Cologne; on the Protestant side by Melanchthon of Wittenberg, Bucer of Strassburg, and Pistorius of Nidda in Hesse. Granvella presided in the name of the emperor; Cardinal Contarini, an enlightened and well-disposed prelate, who was inclined to evangelical views and favored a moderate reformation, acted as legate of Pope Paul III., who sent, however, at the same time the intolerant Bishop Morone as a special nuncio. Calvin could see no difference between the two legates, except that Morone would like to subdue the Protestants with bloodshed, Contarini without bloodshed. He was urged to seek an interview with Contarini, but refused. He speaks favorably of Pflug and Gropper, but contemptuously of Eck, the stentorian mouthpiece of the papal party, whom he regarded as an impudent babbler and vain sophist.535  The French king was represented by Du Veil, whom Calvin calls a "busy blockhead."  There were present also a good many bishops, the princes of the German States, and delegates of the imperial cities. The emperor, in an earnest speech, exhorted the divines, through an interpreter, to lay aside private feelings and to study only the truth, the glory of God, the good of the Church, and the peace of the empire.

The Colloquy passed slightly over the doctrines of original sin and the slavery of the will, where the Protestants were protected by the authority of St. Augustin. The Catholics agreed to the evangelical view of justification by faith (without the Lutheran sola), and conceded the eucharistic cup to the laity, but the parties split on the doctrine of the power of the Church and the real presence. Calvin was especially consulted on the last point, and gave a decided judgment in Latin against transubstantiation, which he rejected as a scholastic fiction, and against the adoration of the wafer which he declared to be idolatrous.536  He was displeased with the submissiveness of Melanchthon and Bucer, although he did not doubt the sincerity of their motives. He loved truth and consistency more than peace and unity. "Philip," he wrote to Farel (May 12, 1541),537 "and Bucer have drawn up ambiguous and varnished formulas concerning transubstantiation, to try whether they could satisfy the opposite party by giving them nothing.538  I cannot agree to this device, although they have reasonable grounds for doing so; for they hope that in a short time they would begin to see more clearly if the matter of doctrine be left open; therefore they rather wish to skip over it, and do not dread that equivocation (flexiloquation) than which nothing can be more hurtful. I can assure you, however, that both are animated with the best intentions, and have no other object in view than to promote the kingdom of Christ; only in their method of proceeding they accommodate themselves too much to the times .... These things I deplore in private to yourself, my dear Farel; see, therefore, that they are not made public. One thing I am thankful for, that there is no one who is fighting now more earnestly against the wafer-god,539 as he calls it, than Brentz."540  All the negotiations failed at last by the combined opposition of the extreme men of both parties.541

The emperor closed the Diet on the 28th of July, and promised to use his influence with the pope to convene a General Council for the settlement of the theological questions.542

Calvin had left Regensburg as soon as he found a chance, about the middle of June, much to the regret of Bucer and Melanchthon, who wished to retain him.543

His sojourn there was embittered by the ravages of the pestilence in Strassburg, which carried away his beloved deacon, Claude Féray (Feraeus), his friends Bedrotus and Capito, one of his boarders, Louis de Richebourg (Claude’s pupil), and the sons of Oecolampadius, Zwingli, and Hedio. He was thrown into a state of extreme anxiety and depression, which he revealed to Farel in a melancholy letter of March 29, 1541.544  "My dear friend Claude, whom I singularly esteemed," he writes, "has been carried off by the plague. Louis (de Richebourg) followed three days afterwards. My house was in a state of sad desolation. My brother (Antoine) had gone with Charles (de Richebourg) to a neighboring village; my wife had betaken herself to my brother’s; and the youngest of Claude’s scholars [probably Malherbe of Normandy] is lying sick in bed. To the bitterness of grief there was added a very anxious concern for those who survived. Day and night my wife is constantly present to my thoughts, in need of advice, seeing that she is deprived of her husband.545 ... These events have produced in me so much sadness that it seems as if they would utterly upset the mind and depress the spirit. You cannot believe the grief which consumes me on account of the death of my dear friend Claude."  Then he pays a touching tribute to Féray, who had lived in his house and stuck closer to him than a brother. But the most precious fruit of this sore affliction is his letter of comfort to the distressed father of Louis de Richebourg, which we shall quote in another connection.546

§ 90. Calvin and Melanchthon.

The correspondence between Calvin (14 letters) and Melanchthon (8 letters), and several letters of Calvin to Farel from Strassburg and Regensburg.

Henry, Vol. I. chs. XII. and XVII,—Stähelin, I. 237–254.—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. ch. XIX. (vol. VII. 18–22, in Cates’ translation).

One of the important advantages which his sojourn at Strassburg brought to Calvin and to the evangelical Church was his friendship with Melanchthon. It has a typical significance for the relationship of the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions, and therefore deserves special consideration.

They became first acquainted by correspondence through Bucer in October, 1538. Melanchthon brought Calvin at once into a friendly contact with Luther, who read with great pleasure Calvin’s answer to Sadolet (perhaps also his Institutes), and sent his salutations to him at Strassburg.547

Luther never saw Calvin, and probably knew little or nothing of the Reformation in Geneva. His own work was then nearly finished, and he was longing for rest. It is very fortunate, however, that while his mind was incurably poisoned against Zwingli and Zürich, he never came into hostile conflict with Calvin and Geneva, but sent him before his departure a fraternal greeting from a respectful distance. His conduct foreshadows the attitude of the Lutheran Church and theology towards Calvin, who had the highest regard for Luther, and enjoyed in turn the esteem of Lutheran divines in proportion as he was known.

Melanchthon was twelve years older than Calvin, as Luther was thirteen years older than Melanchthon. Calvin, therefore, might have sustained to Melanchthon the relation of a pupil to a teacher. He sought his friendship, and he always treated him with reverential affection.548  In the dedication of his commentary on Daniel, he describes Melanchthon as "a man who, on account of his incomparable skill in the most excellent branches of knowledge, his piety, and other virtues, is worthy of the admiration of all ages."  But while Melanchthon was under the overawing influence of the personality of Luther, the Reformer of Geneva was quite independent of Melanchthon, and so far could meet him on equal terms. Melanchthon, in sincere humility and utter freedom from jealousy, even acknowledged the superiority of his younger friend as a theologian and disciplinarian, and called him emphatically "the theologian."

They had many points of contact. Both were men of uncommon precocity; both excelled, above their contemporaries, in humanistic culture and polished style; both devoted all their learning to the renovation of the Church; they were equally conscientious and unselfish; they agreed in the root of their piety, and in all essential doctrines; they deplored the divisions in the Protestant ranks, and heartily desired unity and harmony consistent with truth.

But they were differently constituted. Melanchthon was modest, gentle, sensitive, feminine, irenic, elastic, temporizing, always open to new light; Calvin, though by nature as modest, bashful, and irritable, was in principle and conviction firm, unyielding, fearless of consequences, and opposed to all compromises. They differed also on minor points of doctrine and discipline. Melanchthon, from a conscientious love of truth and peace, and from regard for the demands of practical common sense, had independently changed his views on two important doctrines. He abandoned the Lutheran dogma of a corporal and ubiquitous presence in the eucharist, and approached the theory of Calvin; and he substituted for his earlier fatalistic view of a divine foreordination of evil as well as good the synergistic scheme which ascribes conversion to the co-operation of three causes: the Spirit of God, the Word of God, and the will of man. He conceded to man the freedom of either accepting or rejecting the Gospel salvation, yet without giving any merit to him for accepting the free gift; and on this point he dissented from Calvin’s more rigorous and logical system.549

The sincere and lasting friendship of these two great and good men is therefore all the more remarkable and valuable as a testimony that a deep spiritual union and harmony may co-exist with theological differences.550

Calvin and Melanchthon met at Frankfurt, Worms, and Regensburg under trying circumstances. Melanchthon felt discouraged about the prospects of Protestantism. He deplored the confusion which followed the abolition of the episcopal supervision, the want of discipline, the rapacity of the princes, the bigotry of the theologians. He had allowed himself, with Luther and Bucer, to give his conditional assent to the scandalous bigamy of Philip of Hesse (May, 1540), which was the darkest blot in the history of the German Reformation, and worse than the successive polygamy of Henry VIII. His conscience was so much troubled about his own weakness that, at Weimar, on his way to the Colloquies at Hagenau and Worms, he was brought to the brink of the grave, and would have died if Luther had not prayed him out of the jaws of the king of terrors. What a contrast between Melanchthon at Worms in 1540, and Luther at Worms in 1521!  At the Diet of Regensburg, in 1541, he felt no better. His son was sick, and he dreamed that he had died. He read disaster and war in the stars. His letters to intimate friends are full of grief and anxious forebodings. "I am devoured by a desire for a better life," he wrote to one of them. He was oppressed by a sense of the responsibility that rested upon him as the spokesman and leader of the Reformation in the declining years of Luther, who had been formerly his inspiration and strength. It is natural that in this condition of mind he looked for a new support, and this he found in Calvin. We can thus easily understand his wish to die in his arms. But Calvin himself, though more calm and composed in regard to public affairs, was, as we have seen, deeply distressed at Regensburg by news of the ravages of the pestilence among his friends at Strassburg, besides being harassed by multiplying petitions to return to Geneva. These troubles and afflictions brought their hearts nearer to each other.

In their first personal interview at Frankfurt on the Main, in February, 1539, they at once became intimate, and freely discussed the burning questions of the day, relating to doctrine, discipline, and worship.551

As to doctrine, Calvin had previously sent to Melanchthon a summary, in twelve articles, on the crucial topic of the real presence. To these Melanchthon assented without dispute,552 but confessed that he had no hope of satisfying those who obstinately insisted on a more gross and palpable presence.553  Yet he was anxious that the present agreement, such as it was, might be cherished until at length the Lord shall lead both sides into the unity of his own truth. This is no doubt the reason why he himself refrained from such a full and unequivocal public expression of his own view as might lead to a rupture in the Lutheran Church. He went as far as he deemed it prudent by modifying the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession, and omitting the anti-Zwinglian clause (1540).

As to ecclesiastical discipline, Melanchthon deplored the want of it in Germany, but could see no prospect of improvement, till the people would learn to distinguish the yoke of Christ from the papal tyranny.

As to worship, Calvin frankly expressed his objection to many ceremonies, which seemed to him to border too closely on Judaism.554  He was opposed to chanting in Latin, to pictures and candles in churches, to exorcism in baptism, and the like. Melanchthon was reluctant to discuss this point, but admitted that there was an excess of trifling or unnecessary Roman Catholic rites retained in deference to the judgment of the Canonists, and expressed the hope that some of them would be abandoned by degrees.

After the Colloquy at Regensburg the two Reformers saw each other no more, but continued to correspond as far as their time and multiplicity of duties would permit. The correspondence of friendship is apt to diminish with the increase of age and cares. Several letters are preserved, and are most creditable to both parties.555

The first letter of Calvin after that Colloquy, is dated Feb. 16, 1543, and is a lengthy answer to a message from Melanchthon.556

"You see," he writes, "to what a lazy fellow you have intrusted your letter. It was full four months before he delivered it to me, and then crushed and rumpled with much rough usage. But although it has reached me somewhat late, I set a great value upon the acquisition .... Would, indeed, as you observe, that we could oftener converse together were it only by letters. To you that would be no advantage; but to me, nothing in this world could be more desirable than to take solace in the mild and gentle spirit of your correspondence. You can scarce believe with what a load of business I am here burdened and incessantly hurried along; but in the midst of these distractions there are two things which most of all annoy me. My chief regret is, that there does not appear to be the amount of fruit that one may reasonably expect from the labor bestowed; the other is, because I am so far removed from yourself and a few others, and therefore am deprived of that sort of comfort and consolation which would prove a special help to me.

"But since we cannot have even so much at our own choice, that each at his own discretion might pick out the corner of the vineyard where he might serve Christ, we must remain at that post which He Himself has allotted to each. This comfort we have at least, of which no far distant separation can deprive us,—I mean, that resting content with this fellowship which Christ has consecrated with his own blood, and has also confirmed and sealed by his blessed Spirit in our hearts,—while we live on the earth, we may cheer each other with that blessed hope to which your letter calls us that in heaven above we shall dwell forever where we shall rejoice in love and in continuance of our friendship."557

There can be no nobler expression of Christian friendship.

In the same letter Calvin informs Melanchthon that he had dedicated to him his "Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine on the Slavery and Deliverance of the Human Will against the Calumnies of Albert Pighius," which he had urged Calvin to write, and which appeared in February, 1543.558  After some modest account of his labors in Geneva, and judicious reflections on the condition of the Church in Germany, he thus concludes: —

"Adieu, O man of most eminent accomplishments, and ever to be remembered by me and honored in the Lord!  May the Lord long preserve you in safety to the glory of his name and the edification of the Church. I wonder what can be the reason why you keep your Daniel a sealed book at home.559  Neither can I suffer myself quietly, without remonstrance, to be deprived of the benefit of its perusal. I beg you to salute Dr. Martin reverently in my name. We have here with us at present Bernardino of Siena, an eminent and excellent man, who has occasioned no little stir in Italy by his secession. He has requested me that I would greet you in his name. Once more adieu, along with your family, whom may the Lord continually preserve."

On the 11th of May following, Melanchthon thanked Calvin for the dedication, saying: 560 I am much affected by your kindness, and I thank you that you have been pleased to give evidence of your love for me to all the world, by placing my name at the beginning of your remarkable book, where all the world will see it."  He gives due praise to the force and eloquence with which he refuted Pighius, and, confessing his own inferiority as a writer, encourages him to continue to exercise his splendid talents for the edification and encouragement of the Church. Yet, while inferior as a logician and polemic, he, after all, had a deeper insight into the mystery of predestination and free will, although unable to solve it. He gently hints to his friend that he looked too much to one side of the problem of divine sovereignty and human liberty, and says in substance: —

"As regards the question treated in your book, the question of predestination, I had in Tübingen a learned friend, Franciscus Stadianus, who used to say, I hold both to be true that all things happen according to divine foreordination, and yet according to their own laws, although he could not harmonize the two. I maintain the proposition that God is not the author of sin, and therefore cannot will it. David was by his own will carried into transgression.561  He might have retained the Holy Spirit. In this conflict there is some margin for free will .... Let us accuse our own will if we fall, and not find the cause in God. He will help and aid those who fight in earnest. Movnon qevlhson, says Basilius, kai; qeo;" proapanta'. God promises and gives help to those who are willing to receive it. So says the Word of God, and in this let us abide. I am far from prescribing to you, the most learned and experienced man in all things that belong to piety. I know that in general you agree with my view. I only suggest that this mode of expression is better adapted for practical use."562

In a letter to Camerarius, 1552, Melanchthon expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which Calvin emphasized the doctrine of predestination, and attempted to force the Swiss churches to accept it in the Consensus Genevensis.563

Calvin made another attempt in 1554 to gain him to his view, but in vain.564  On one point, however, he could agree to a certain modification; for he laid stress on the spontaneity of the will, and rejected Luther’s paradoxes, and his comparison of the natural man to a dead statue.

It is greatly to the credit of Calvin that, notwithstanding his sensitiveness and intolerance against the opponents of his favorite dogma, he respected the judgment of the most eminent Lutheran divine, and gave signal proof of it by publishing a French translation of the improved edition of Melanchthon’s Theological Commonplaces in 1546, with a commendatory preface of his own,565 in which he says that the book was a brief summary of all things necessary for a Christian to know on the way of salvation, stated in the simplest manner by the profoundly learned author. He does not conceal the difference of views on the subject of free will, and says that Melanchthon seems to concede to man some share in his salvation; yet in such a manner that God’s grace is not in any way diminished, and no ground is left to us for boasting.

This is the only example of a Reformer republishing and recommending the work of another Reformer, which was the only formidable rival of his own chief work on the same subject (the Institutes), and differed from it in several points.566

The revival of the unfortunate eucharistic controversy by Luther in 1545, and the equally unfortunate controversy caused by the imperial Interim in 1548, tried the friendship of the Reformers to the uttermost. Calvin respectfully, yet frankly, expressed his regret at the indecision and want of courage displayed by Melanchthon from fear of Luther and love of peace.

When Luther came out a year before his death with his most violent and abusive book against the "Sacramentarians,"567 which deeply grieved Melanchthon and roused the just indignation of the Zwinglians, Calvin wrote to Melanchthon (June 28, 1545): 568—

"Would that the fellow-feeling which enables me to condole with you, and to sympathize in your heaviness, might also impart the power in some degree at least to lighten your sorrow. If the matter stands as the Zürichers say it does, then they have just occasion for their writing .... Your Pericles allows himself to be carried beyond all bounds with his love of thunder, especially seeing that his own cause is by no means the better of the two .... We all of us acknowledge that we are much indebted to him. But in the Church we always must be upon our guard, lest we pay too great a deference to men. It is all over with her when a single individual has more authority than all the rest .... Where there is so much division and separation as we now see, it is indeed no easy matter to still the troubled waters, and bring about composure .... You will say he [Luther] has a vehement disposition and ungovernable impetuosity; as if that very vehemence did not break forth with all the greater violence when all show themselves alike indulgent to him, and allow him to have his way unquestioned. If this specimen of overbearing tyranny has sprung forth already as the early blossom in the springtide of a reviving Church, what must we expect in a short time, when affairs have fallen into a far worse condition?  Let us, therefore, bewail the calamity of the Church and not devour our grief in silence, but venture boldly to groan for freedom .... You have studiously endeavored, by your kindly method of instruction, to recall the minds of men from strife and contention. I applaud your prudence and moderation. But while you dread, as you would some hidden rock, to meddle with this question from fear of giving offence, you are leaving in perplexity and suspense very many persons who require from you somewhat of a more certain sound, on which they can repose .... Perhaps it is now the will of God to open the way for a full and satisfactory declaration of your own mind, that those who look up to your authority may not be brought to a stand, and kept in a state of perpetual doubt and hesitation ....

"In the mean time let us run the race set before us with deliberate courage. I return you very many thanks for your reply, and for the extraordinary kindness which Claude assures me had been shown to him by you.569  I can form a conjecture what you would have been to myself, from your having given so kind and courteous a reception to my friend. I do not cease to offer my chief thanks to God, who has vouchsafed to us that agreement in opinion upon the whole of that question [on the real presence]; for although there is a slight difference in certain particulars, we are very well agreed upon the general question itself."

When after the defeat of the Protestants in the Smalkaldian War, Melanchthon accepted the Leipzig Interim with the humiliating condition of conformity to the Roman ritual, which the German emperor imposed upon them, Calvin was still more dissatisfied with his old friend. He sided, in this case, with the Lutheran non-conformists who, under the lead of Matthias Flacius, resisted the Interim, and were put under the ban of the empire. He wrote to Melanchthon, June 18, 1550, the following letter of remonstrance:570—

"The ancient satirist [Juvenal, I. 79] once said, —

’Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.’

"It is at present far otherwise with me. So little does my present grief aid me in speaking, that it rather renders me almost entirely speechless .... I would have you suppose me to be groaning rather than speaking. It is too well known, from their mocking and jests, how much the enemies of Christ were rejoicing over your contests with the theologians of Magdeburg.571 ... If no blame attaches to you in this matter, my dear Philip, it would be but the dictate of prudence and justice to devise means of curing, or at least mitigating, the evil. Yet, forgive me if I do not consider you altogether free from blame .... In openly admonishing you, I am discharging the duty of a true friend; and if I employ a little more severity than usual, do not think that it is owing to any diminution of my old affection and esteem for you .... I know that nothing gives you greater pleasure than open candor .... This is the sum of your defence: that, provided purity of doctrine be retained, externals should not be pertinaciously contended for .... But you extend the distinction of non-essentials too far. You are aware that the Papists have corrupted the worship of God in a thousand ways. Several of those things which you consider indifferent are obviously repugnant to the Word of God .... You ought not to have made such large concessions to the Papists .... At the time when circumcision was yet lawful, do you not see that Paul, because crafty and malicious fowlers were laying snares for the liberty of believers, pertinaciously refused to concede to them a ceremony at the first instituted by God?  He boasts that he did not yield to them,—no, not for an hour,—that the truth of God might remain intact among the Gentiles (Gal. 2:5) .... I remind you of what I once said to you, that we consider our ink too precious if we hesitate to bear testimony in writing to those things which so many of the flock are daily sealing with their blood .... The trepidation of a general is more dishonorable than the flight of a whole herd of private soldiers .... You alone, by only giving way a little, will cause more complaints and sighs than would a hundred ordinary individuals by open desertion. And, although I am fully persuaded that the fear of death never compelled you in the very least to swerve from the right path, yet I am apprehensive that it is just possible that another species of fear may have proved too much for your courage. For I know how much you are horrified at the charge of rude severity. But we should remember that reputation must not be accounted by the servants of Christ as of more value than life. We are no better than Paul was, who remained fearlessly on his way through ’evil and good report.’ ... You know why I am so vehement. I had rather die with you a hundred times than see you survive the doctrines surrendered by you ....

"Pardon me for loading your breast with these miserable though ineffectual groans. Adieu, most illustrious sir, and ever worthy of my hearty regard. May the Lord continue to guide you by his Spirit, and sustain you by his might. May his protection guard you. Amen."

We have here a repetition of the scene between Paul and Peter at Antioch, concerning the rite of circumcision; and while we admire the frankness and boldness of Paul and Calvin in rebuking an elder brother, and standing up for principle, we must also admire the meekness and humility of Peter and Melanchthon in bearing the censure.

Melanchthon himself, after a brief interruption, reopened the correspondence in the old friendly spirit, during the disturbances of war between Elector Maurice and the Emperor Charles, which made an end of the controversy about the Adiaphora.

"How often," wrote Melanchthon, Oct. 1, 1552,572 "would I have written to you, reverend sir and dearest brother, if I could find more trustworthy letter-carriers. For I would like to converse with you about many most important matters, because I esteem your judgment very highly and know the candor and purity of your soul.573  I am now living as in a wasp’s nest;574  but perhaps I shall soon be called from this mortal life to a brighter companionship in heaven. If I live longer, I have to expect new exiles; if so, I am determined to turn to you. The studies are now broken up by pestilence and war. How often do I mourn and sigh over the causes of this fury among princes."

In a lengthy and interesting answer Calvin says:575  "Nothing could have come to me more seasonably at this time than your letter, which I received two months after its despatch."576  He assures him that it was no little consolation to him in his sore trials at Geneva to be assured of the continuance of his affection, which, he was told, had been interrupted by the letter of remonstrance above referred to. "I have learned the more gladly that our friendship remains safe, which assuredly, as it grew out of a heartfelt love of piety, ought to remain forever sacred and inviolable."

In the unfortunate affair of Servetus, Melanchthon fully approved Calvin’s conduct (1554).577  But during the eucharistic controversy excited by Westphal, he kept an ominous silence, which produced a coolness between them. In a letter of Aug. 3, 1557, Calvin complains that for three years he had not heard from him, but expresses satisfaction that he still entertained the same affection, and closes with the wish that he maybe permitted "to enjoy on earth a most delightful interview with you, and feel some alleviation of my grief by deploring along with you the evils which we cannot remedy."578

That wish was not granted. In a letter of Nov. 19, 1558,579 he gives him, while still suffering from a quartan ague, a minute account of his malady, of the remedies of the doctors, of the formidable coalition of the kings of France and Spain against Geneva, and concludes with these words:

"Let us cultivate with sincerity a fraternal affection towards each other, the ties of which no wiles of the devil shall ever burst asunder .... By no slight shall my mind ever be alienated from that holy friendship and respect which I have vowed to you .... Farewell, most illustrious light and distinguished doctor of the Church. May the Lord always govern you by his Spirit, preserve you long in safety, increase your store of blessings. In your tum, diligently commend us to the protection of God, as you see us exposed to the jaws of the wolf. My colleagues and an innumerable crowd of pious men salute you."

On the 19th of April, 1560, Melanchthon was delivered from "the fury of the theologians" and all his troubles. A year after his death Calvin, who had to fight the battle of faith four years longer, during the renewed fury of the eucharistic controversy with the fanatical Heshusius, addressed this touching appeal to his sainted friend in heaven: —

"O Philip Melanchthon!  I appeal to thee who now livest with Christ in the bosom of God, and there art waiting for us till we shall be gathered with thee to that blessed rest. A hundred times, when worn out with labors and oppressed with so many troubles, didst thou repose thy head familiarly on my breast and say, ’Would that I could die in this bosom!’  Since then I have a thousand times wished that it had been granted to us to live together; for certainly thou wouldst thus have had more courage for the inevitable contest, and been stronger to despise envy, and to count as nothing all accusations. In this manner, also, the malice of many would have been restrained who, from thy gentleness which they call weakness, gathered audacity for their attacks."580

Who, in view of this friendship which was stronger than death, can charge Calvin with want of heart and tender affection?

§ 91. Calvin and Sadolet. The Vindication of the Reformation.

Sadoleti: Epistola ad Genevenses (Cal. Apr., i.e. March 18, 1539).—Calvini: Responsio ad Sadoletum (Sept. 1, 1539), Argentorati ap. Wendelinum Richelium excusa. In Calv. Opera, vol. V. 385–416. Calvin translated it into French, 1540 (republished at Geneva, 1860). English translation of both by Henry Beveridge in John Calvin’s Tracts relate to the Reformation, Edinburgh (Calvin Translation Society), 1844, pp. 3–68.—Beza, Vita C., Opera, XXI. 129.

Henry, Vol. I. ch. XI.—Dyer, 102 sq.—Stähelin, I. 291–304.—Kampschulte, I. 354 sq. (only a brief but important notice).—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. ch. XVI., and vol. VI. 570–594.

"Another evil, of a more dangerous kind, arose in the year 1539, and was at once extinguished by the diligence of Calvin. The bishop of Carpentras, at that time, was James Sadolet, a man of great eloquence, but he perverted it chiefly in suppressing the light of truth. He had been appointed a cardinal for no other reason than in order that his moral respectability might serve to put a kind of gloss on false religion. Observing his opportunity in the circumstances which had occurred, and thinking that he would easily ensnare the flock when deprived of its distinguished pastors, he sent, under the pretext of neighborhood (for the city of Carpentras is in Dauphiny, which again bounds on Savoy), a letter to his so-styled ’most Beloved Senate, Council, and People of Geneva,’ omitting nothing which might tend to bring them both into the lap of the Romish Harlot,581  There was nobody at that time in Geneva capable of writing an answer, and it is, therefore, not unlikely, that, had the letter not been written in a foreign tongue (Latin), it would, in the existing state of affairs, have done great mischief to the city. But Calvin, having read it at Strasbourg, forgot all his injuries, and forthwith answered it with so much truth and eloquence, that Sadolet immediately gave up the whole affair as desperate."

This is Beza’s account of that important and interesting controversy which occurred in the German period of Calvin’s life, and left a permanent impression on history.

The interregnum in Geneva furnished an excellent opportunity for Pierre de la Baume, who had been made a cardinal, to recover his lost bishopric. In this respect he only followed the example of dispossessed princes. He brought about, with the help of the pope, a consultation of the bishops of the neighboring dioceses of Lyons, Vienne, Lausanne, Besançon, Turin, Langres, and Carpentras. The meeting was held at Lyons under the presidency of the cardinal of Tournon, then archbishop of Lyons, and known as a bigoted persecutor of the Waldenses. Jean Philippe, the chief author of the banishment of Calvin, aided in the scheme. The bishop of Carpentras, a town on the borders of Savoy, was selected for the execution. A better choice could not have been made.

Jacopo Sadoleto (born at Modena, 1477, died at Rome, 1547) was one of the secretaries of Pope Leo X., bishop of Carpentras in Dauphiny since 1517, secretary of Clement VII. in 1523, a cardinal since 1536. He was frequently employed in diplomatic peace negotiations between the pope, the king of France, and the emperor of Germany. He had a high reputation as a scholar, a poet, and a gentleman of irreproachable character and devout piety. He best represents the Italian Renaissance in its leaning towards a moderate semi-evangelical reform within the Catholic Church. He was an admirer of Erasmus and Melanchthon, and one of the founders of the Oratory at Rome for purposes of mutual edification. He acted, like Contarini, as a mediator between the Roman and Protestant parties, but did not please either. In his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, he expressed opinions on divine grace and free-will which gave offence in Rome and in Spain. His colleague, Cardinal Bembo, warned him against the study of St. Paul, lest it might spoil his classical style. Sadolet prevented the spread of Calvinism in his diocese, but was opposed to violent persecution. He kindly received the fugitive Waldenses after the terrible massacre of Mérindol and Cabrières, in 1545, and besought the clemency of Francis I. in their behalf. He was grieved and disgusted with the nepotism of Pope Paul III., and declined the appointment to preside over the Council of Trent as papal delegate, on the score of extreme poverty.

This highly respectable dignitary of the papal hierarchy made a very able and earnest effort to win back the orphan Church of Geneva to the sheepfold of Rome. He thereby came involuntarily into a literary conflict with Calvin, in which he was utterly defeated. Fresh from a visit to the pope, he addressed a letter of some twenty or more octavo pages "to his dearly beloved Brethren, the Magistrates, Senate, and Citizens of Geneva."  It is written in elegant Latin, and with persuasive eloquence, of which he was a consummate master.

He assumes the air of authority as a cardinal and papal legate, and begins with an apostolic greeting: "Very dear Brethren in Christ,—Peace to you and with us, that is, with the Catholic Church, the mother of all, both of us and you, love and concord from God, the Father Almighty, and from his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, together with the Holy Spirit, perfect Unity in Trinity; to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever."  He flatters the Genevese by praising their noble city, the order and form of their republic, the worth of their citizens, and especially their "hospitality to strangers and foreigners," but he casts suspicion on the character and motives of the Reformers. This uncharitable and ungentlemanly reflection mars the beauty and dignity of his address, and weakened its effect upon the citizens of Geneva who, whatever were their religious views, had no doubt about the honesty and earnestness of Farel, Viret, and Calvin.

After this introduction Sadolet gives a very plausible exposition of the principle of the Catholic doctrines, but ignores the Bible. He admits that man is saved by faith alone, but adds the necessity of good works. He then asks the Genevese to decide, "Whether it be more expedient for their salvation to believe and follow what the Catholic Church has approved with general consent for more than fifteen hundred years, or innovations introduced within these twenty-five years by crafty men."  He then adduces the stock arguments of antiquity, universality, unity, and inerrancy, while the Protestants were already broken up into warring sects a manifest indication of falsehood. For "truth," he says, "is always one, while error is varied and multiform; that which is straight is simple, that which is crooked has many turns. Can any one who confesses Christ, fail to perceive that such teaching of the holy Church is the proper work of Satan, and not of God?  What does God demand of us?  What does Christ enjoin?  That we be all one in him."

He closes with an earnest exhortation, and assures the Genevese: "Whatever I possibly can do, although it is very little, still if I have in me any talent, skill, authority, industry, I offer them all to you and your interests, and will regard it as a great favor to myself should you be able to reap any fruit and advantage from my labor and assistance in things human and divine."

The Council of Geneva politely acknowledged the receipt of the cardinal’s letter with thanks for the compliments paid to the Genevese, and promised a full reply in due time. This was March 27. On the next day a number of citizens, under the lead of François Chamois, entered a protest against the ordinance by which the Confession of Faith had been adopted, July 29, 1537, and asked to be released from the oath. The Romanists took courage. No one could be found in Geneva who was able to answer the cardinal’s letter, and silence might be construed into consent.

Calvin received a copy of the appeal through Sulzer, a minister of Bern, wrote an answer of more than twice its length in six days, and despatched it to Geneva in time to neutralize the mischief (Sept. 1). Though not mentioned by name, he was indirectly assailed by the cardinal as the chief among those who had been denounced as misleaders and disturbers of the peace of Geneva. He therefore felt it his duty to take up the pen in defence of the Reformation.

He begins by paying a just tribute to the cardinal for his excellent learning and admirable eloquence, which raised him to a place among the first scholars of the age. Nor did he impeach his motives. "I will give you credit," he says, "for having written to the Genevese with the purest intention as becomes one of your learning, prudence, and gravity, and for having in good faith advised them to the course which you believed to be to their interest and safety."  He was, therefore, reluctant to oppose him, and he did so only under an imperative sense of duty. We let him speak for himself.582

"I profess to be one of those whom, with so much enmity, you assail and stigmatize. For though religion was already established, and the form of the Church corrected, before I was invited to Geneva, yet having not only approved by my suffrage, but studied as much as in me lay to preserve and confirm what had been done by Viret and Farel, I cannot separate my case from theirs. Still, if you had attacked me in my private character, I could easily have forgiven the attack in consideration of your learning, and in honor of letters. But when I see that my ministry, which I feel assured is supported and sanctioned by a call from God, is wounded through my side, it would be perfidy, not patience, were I here to be silent and connive.

"In that Church I have held the office, first of Doctor, and then of Pastor. In my own right I maintain that, in undertaking these offices, I had a legitimate vocation. How faithfully and religiously I have performed them, there is no occasion for now showing at length. Perspicuity, erudition, prudence, ability, or even industry, I will not claim for myself, but that I certainly labored with the sincerity which became me in the work of the Lord, I can in conscience appeal to Christ, my Judge, and all his angels, while all good men bear clear testimony in my favor. This ministry, therefore, when it shall appear to have been of God (as it certainly shall appear after the cause has been heard), were I in silence to allow you to tear and defame, who would not condemn such silence as treachery ?  Every person, therefore, now sees that the strongest obligations of duty—obligations which I cannot evade—constrain me to meet your accusations, if I would not with manifest perfidy desert and betray a cause with which the Lord has intrusted me. For though I am for the present relieved of the charge of the Church of Geneva, that circumstance ought not to prevent me from embracing it with paternal affection—God, when he gave it to me in charge, having bound me to be faithful forever."

He repels with modest dignity the frivolous charge of having embraced the cause of the Reformation from disappointed ambition.

"I am unwilling to speak of myself, but since you do not permit me to be altogether silent, I will say what I can consistently with modesty. Had I wished to consult my own interest, I would never have left your party. I will not, indeed, boast that there the road to preferment had been easy to me. I never desired it, and I could never bring my mind to catch at it; although I certainly know not a few of my own age who have crept up to some eminence—among them some whom I might have equalled, and others outstripped. This only I will be contented to say, it would not have been difficult for me to reach the summit of my wishes, viz., the enjoyment of literary ease with something of a free and honorable station. Therefore, I have no fear that any one not possessed of shameless effrontery will object to me, that out of the kingdom of the pope I sought for any personal advantage which was not there ready to my hand."

The Reformer follows the cardinal’s letter step by step, and defeats him at every point. He answers his assertions with facts and arguments. He destroys, like a cobweb, his beautiful picture of an ideal Catholicism by a description of the actual papacy of those days, with its abuses and corruptions, which were the real cause of the Reformation. He gives a very dark account, indeed, but it is fully confirmed by what is authentically known of the lives of such popes as Alexander VI. and Leo X., by the invectives of Savonarola, by the observations of Erasmus and Luther on their experience in Rome, by such impartial witnesses as Machiavelli, who says that religion was almost destroyed in Italy owing to the bad example set by the popes, and even by the testimony of an exceptionally good and pious pope, Adrian VI., who, with all his abhorrence of the Lutheran heresy, officially confessed the absolute necessity of a moral reform in the head and members of the hierarchy.

"We deny not," says Calvin, "that those over whom you preside are churches of Christ, but we maintain that the Roman pontiff, with his whole herd of pseudo-bishops, who have seized upon the pastor’s office, are ravening wolves, whose only study has hitherto been to scatter and trample upon the kingdom of Christ, filling it with ruin and devastation. Nor are we the first to make the complaint. With what vehemence does Bernard thunder against Eugenius and all the bishops of his own age?  Yet how much more tolerable was its condition than now?

"For iniquity has reached its height, and now those shadowy prelates, by whom you think the Church stands or perishes, and by whom we say that she has been cruelly torn and mutilated, and brought to the very brink of destruction, can bear neither their vices nor the cure of them. Destroyed the Church would have been, had not God, with singular goodness, prevented. For in all places where the tyranny of the Roman pontiff prevails, you scarcely see as many stray and tattered vestiges as will enable you to perceive that these Churches he half buried. Nor should you think this absurd, since Paul tells you that Antichrist would have his seat in no other place than in the midst of God’s sanctuary (2 Thess. 2:4) ....

"But whatever the character of the men, still, you say, it is written, ’What they tell you, do.’  No doubt, if they sit in the chair of Moses. But when, from the chair of verity, they intoxicate the people with folly, it is written, ’Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees’ (Matt. 12:6) ....

"Let your pontiff boast as he may of the succession of Peter: even if he should make good his title to it, he will establish nothing more than that obedience is due to him from the Christian people so long as he himself maintains his fidelity to Christ, and does not deviate from the purity of the gospel … . A prophet should be judged by the congregation (1 Cor. 14:29). Whoever exempts himself from this must first expunge his name from the list of the prophets ....

"As to your assertion, that our only aim in shaking off this tyrannical yoke was to set ourselves free for unbridled licentiousness after (so help us!) casting away all thoughts of future life, let judgment be given after comparing our conduct with yours. We abound, indeed, in numerous faults; too often do we sin and fall. Still, though truth would, modesty will not, permit me to boast how far we excel you in every respect, unless, perchance, you except Rome, that famous abode of sanctity, which having burst asunder the cords of pure discipline, and trodden all honor under foot, has so overflowed with all kinds of iniquity, that scarcely anything so abominable has ever been before."

At the close of his letter, Sadolet had cited the Reformers as criminals before the judgment-seat of God, in an imaginary confession to the effect that they had been actuated by base motives of pride and disappointed ambition in their assaults upon the holy Church and the vicegerent of Christ, and become guilty of "great seditions and schisms."

Calvin takes up the challenge by a counter-confession, which introduces us into the very heart of the great religious struggle of the sixteenth century, and is perhaps the ablest vindication of the Reformation to be found in the controversial literature of that time. He puts that movement on the ground of the Word of God against the commandments of men, and justifies it by the protests of the Hebrew prophets against the corruptions of the Levitical priesthood, and Christ’s fearful denunciations of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who nailed the Saviour to the cross. The same confession contains also an incidental account of the spiritual experience and conversion of the author, who speaks for himself as well as his colleagues. We give it in full.

"Consider now what serious answer you are to make for yourself and your party. Our cause, as it is supported by the truth of God, will be at no loss for a complete defence. I am not speaking of our persons; their safety will be found not in defence, but in humble confession and suppliant deprecation. But in so far as our ministry is concerned, there is none of us who will not be able thus to speak: —

" ’O Lord, I have, indeed, experienced how difficult and grievous it was to bear the invidious accusations with which I was harassed on the earth; but with the same confidence with which I then appealed to Thy tribunal, I now appear before Thee, because I know that in Thy judgment truth always reigns—that truth by whose assurance supported I first ventured to attempt—with whose assistance provided I was able to accomplish whatever I have achieved in Thy Church.

" ’They charged me with two of the worst of crimes—heresy and schism. And the heresy was, that I dared to protest against dogmas which they received. But what could I have done?  I heard from Thy mouth that there was no other light of truth which could direct our souls into the way of life, than that which was kindled by Thy Word. I heard that whatever human minds of themselves conceive concerning Thy Majesty, the worship of Thy Deity, and the mysteries of Thy religion, was vanity. I heard that their introducing into the Church instead of Thy Word, doctrines sprung from the human brain, was sacrilegious presumption.

" ’But when I turned my eyes towards men, I saw very different principles prevailing. Those who were regarded as the leaders of faith, neither understood Thy Word, nor greatly cared for it. They only drove unhappy people to and fro with strange doctrines, and deluded them with I know not what follies. Among the people themselves, the highest veneration paid to Thy Word was to revere it at a distance, as a thing inaccessible, and abstain from all investigation of it.

" 'Owing to this supine state of the pastors, and this stupidity of the people, every place was filled with pernicious errors, falsehoods, and superstition. They, indeed, called Thee the only God, but it was while transferring to others the glory which thou hast claimed for Thy Majesty. They figured and had for themselves as many gods as they had saints, whom they chose to worship. Thy Christ was indeed worshipped as God, and retained the name of Saviour; but where He ought to have been honored, He was left almost without honor. For, spoiled of His own virtue, He passed unnoticed among the crowd of saints, like one of the meanest of them. There was none who duly considered that one sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and by which He reconciled us to Thyself—none who ever dreamed of thinking of His eternal priesthood, and the intercession depending upon it—none who trusted in His righteousness only. That confident hope of salvation which is both enjoined by Thy Word, and founded upon it, had almost vanished. Nay, it was received as a kind of oracle, that it was foolish arrogance, and, as they termed it, presumption for any one trusting to Thy goodness, and the righteousness of Thy Son, to entertain a sure and unfaltering hope of salvation.

" ’Not a few profane opinions plucked up by the roots the first principles of that doctrine which Thou hast delivered to us in Thy Word. The true meaning of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, also, was corrupted by numerous falsehoods. And then, when all, with no small insult to Thy mercy, put confidence in good works, when by good works they strove to merit Thy favor, to procure justification, to expiate their sins, and make satisfaction to Thee (each of these things obliterating and making void the virtue of Christ’s cross), they were yet altogether ignorant wherein good works consisted. For, just as if they were not at all instructed in righteousness by Thy law, they had fabricated for themselves many useless frivolities, as a means of procuring Thy favor, and on these they so plumed themselves, that, in comparison of them, they almost contemned the standard of true righteousness which Thy law recommended,—to such a degree had human desires, after usurping the ascendancy, derogated, if not from the belief, at least from the authority, of Thy precepts therein contained.

" ’That I might perceive these things, Thou, O Lord, didst shine upon me with the brightness of Thy Spirit; that I might comprehend how impious and noxious they were, Thou didst bear before me the torch of Thy Word; that I might abominate them as they deserved,  Thou didst stimulate my soul.

" ’But in rendering an account of my doctrine, Thou seest (what my own conscience declares) that it was not my intention to stray beyond those limits which I saw had been fixed by all Thy servants. Whatever I felt assured that I had learned from Thy mouth, I desired to dispense faithfully to the Church. Assuredly, the thing at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was, that the glory of Thy goodness and justice, after dispersing the mists by which it was formerly obscured, might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of Thy Christ (all glosses being wiped away) might be fully displayed. For I thought it impious to leave in obscurity things which we were born to ponder and meditate. Nor did I think that truths, whose magnitude no language can express, were to be maliciously or falsely declared.

" ’I hesitated not to dwell at greater length on topics on which the salvation of my hearers depended. For the oracle could never deceive which declares (John 17:3): "This is eternal life to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

" ’As to the charge of forsaking the Church, which they were wont to bring against me, there is nothing of which my conscience accuses me, unless, indeed, he is to be considered a deserter, who, seeing the soldiers routed and scattered, and abandoning the ranks, raises the leader’s standard, and recalls them to their posts. For thus, O Lord, were all thy servants dispersed, so that they could not, by any possibility, hear the command, but had almost forgotten their leader, and their service, and their military oath. In order to bring them together, when thus scattered, I raised not a foreign standard, but that noble banner of Thine which we must follow, if we would be classed among Thy people. Then I was assailed by those who, when they ought to have kept others in their ranks, had led them astray, and when I determined not to desist, opposed me with violence. On this grievous tumults arose, and the contest blazed and issued in disruption.

" ’With whom the blame rests it is for Thee, O Lord, to decide. Always, both by word and deed, have I protested how eager I was for unity. Mine, however, was a unity of the Church, which should begin with Thee and end in Thee. For as oft as Thou didst recommend to us peace and concord, Thou, at the same time, didst show that Thou wert the only bond for preserving it.

" ’But if I desired to be at peace with those who boasted of being the heads of the Church and pillars of faith, I believed to purchase it with the denial of Thy truth. I thought that anything was to be endured sooner than stoop to such nefarious compact. For Thy Anointed Himself hath declared, that though heaven and earth should be confounded, yet Thy Word must endure forever (Matt. 24:35).

" ’Nor did I think that I dissented from Thy Church because I was at war with those leaders; for Thou hast forewarned me, both by Thy Son, and by the apostles, that that place would be occupied by persons to whom I ought by no means to consent. Christ had predicted not of strangers, but of men who should give themselves out for pastors, that they would be ravenous wolves and false prophets, and had, at the same time, cautioned me to beware of them. Where Christ ordered me to beware, was I to lend my aid?  And the apostles declared that there would be no enemies of Thy Church more pestilential than those from within who should conceal themselves under the title of pastors (Matt. 7:15; Acts 20:29; 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John 2:18).

" ’Why should I have hesitated to separate myself from persons whom they forewarned me to hold as enemies?  I had before my eyes the examples of Thy prophets, who I saw had a similar contest with the priests and false prophets of their day, though these were undoubtedly the rulers of the Church among the Israelitish people. But Thy prophets are not regarded as schismatics, because, when they wished to revive religion, which had fallen into decay, they desisted not, although opposed with the utmost violence. They still remained in the unity of the Church, though they were doomed to perdition by wicked priests, and deemed unworthy of a place among men, not to say saints.

" ’Confirmed by their example, I, too, persisted. Though denounced as a deserter of the Church, and threatened, I was in no respect deterred or induced to proceed less firmly and boldly in opposing those, who, in the character of pastors, wasted Thy Church with a more than impious tyranny. My conscience told me how strong the zeal was with which I burned for the unity of Thy Church, provided Thy truth were made the bond of concord. As the commotions which followed were not excited by me, so there is no ground for imputing them to me. Thou, O Lord, knowest, and the fact itself has testified to men, that the only thing I asked was, that all controversies should be decided by Thy Word, that thus both parties might unite with one mind to establish Thy kingdom; and I declined not to restore peace to the Church at the expense of my head, if I were found to have been unnecessarily the cause of tumult.

" ’But what did our opponents?  Did they not instantly, and like madmen fly to fires, swords, and gibbets?  Did they not decide that their only security, was in arms and cruelty?  Did they not instigate all ranks to the same fury?  Did they not spurn at all methods of pacification?  To this it is owing that a matter, which might at one time have been settled amicably, has blazed into such a contest. But although, amidst the great confusion, the judgments of men were various, I am freed from all fear, now that we stand at Thy tribunal, where equity, combined with truth, cannot but decide in favor of innocence.’

"Such, Sadolet, is our pleading, not the fictitious one which you, in order to aggravate our case, were pleased to devise, but that the perfect truth of which is known to the good even now, and will be made manifest to all creatures on that day. Nor will those who, instructed by our preaching, have adhered to our cause, be at loss what to say for themselves, since each will be ready with this defence: —

" ’I, O Lord, as I had been educated from a boy, always professed the Christian faith. But at first I had no other reason for my faith than that which then everywhere prevailed. Thy Word, which ought to have shone on all Thy people like a lamp, was taken away, or at least suppressed as to us. And lest any one should long for greater light, an idea had been instilled into the minds of all, that the investigation of that hidden celestial philosophy was better delegated to a few, whom the others might consult as oracles—that the highest knowledge befitting plebeian minds was to subdue themselves into obedience to the Church. Then, the rudiments in which I had been instructed were of a kind which could neither properly train me to the legitimate worship of Thy Deity, nor pave the way for me to a sure hope of salvation, nor train me aright for the duties of the Christian life. I had learned, indeed, to worship Thee only as my God, but as the true method of worshipping was altogether unknown to me, I stumbled at the very threshold. I believed, as I had been taught, that I was redeemed by the death of Thy Son from the liability to eternal death, but the redemption I thought of was one whose virtue could never reach me. I anticipated a future resurrection, but hated to think of it, as being an event most dreadful. And this feeling not only had dominion over me in private, but was derived from the doctrine which was then uniformly delivered to the people by their Christian teachers.

" ’They, indeed, preached of Thy clemency towards men, but confined it to those who should show themselves deserving of it. They, moreover, placed this desert in the righteousness of works, so that he only was received into Thy favor who reconciled himself to Thee by works. Nor, meanwhile, did they disguise the fact that we are miserable sinners, that we often fall through infirmity of the flesh, and that to all, therefore, Thy mercy behoved to be the common haven of salvation; but the method of obtaining it, which they pointed out, was by making satisfaction to Thee for offences. Then the satisfaction enjoined was, first, after confessing all our sins to a priest, suppliantly to ask pardon and absolution; and, secondly, by good to efface from Thy remembrance our bad actions. Lastly, in order to supply what was still wanting, we were to add sacrifices and solemn expiations. Then, because Thou wert a stern judge and strict avenger of iniquity, they showed how dreadful Thy presence must be. Hence they bade us flee first to the saints, that by their intercession Thou mightest be rendered exorable and propitious to us.

" ’When, however, I had performed all these things, though I had some intervals of quiet, I was still far off from true peace of conscience; for, whenever I descended into myself, or raised my mind to Thee, extreme terror seized me—terror which no expiations or satisfactions could cure. And the more closely I examined myself, the sharper the stings with which my conscience was pricked, so that the only solace which remained to me was to delude myself by obliviousness. Still, as nothing better offered, I continued the course which I had begun, when, lo! a very different form of doctrine started up, not one which led us away from the Christian profession, but one which brought it back to its fountain-head, and, as it were, clearing away the dross, restored it to its original purity.

" ’Offended by the novelty, I lent an unwilling ear, and at first, I confess, strenuously and passionately resisted; for (such is the firmness or effrontery with which it is natural to men to persist in the course which they have once undertaken) it was with the greatest difficulty I was induced to confess that I had all my life long been in ignorance and error. One thing, in particular, made me averse to those new teachers, viz. reverence for the Church.

" ’But when once I opened my ears, and allowed myself to be taught, I perceived that this fear of derogating from the majesty of the Church was groundless. For they reminded me how great the difference is between schism from the Church, and studying to correct the faults by which the Church herself was contaminated. They spoke nobly of the Church, and showed the greatest desire to cultivate unity. And lest it should seem they quibbled on the term Church, they showed it was no new thing for Antichrists to preside there in place of pastors. Of this they produced not a few examples, from which it appeared they aimed at nothing but the edification of the Church, and in that respect were similarly circumstanced with many of Christ’s servants whom we ourselves included in the catalogue of saints.

" ’For inveighing more freely against the Roman Pontiff, who was reverenced as the Vicegerent of Christ, the Successor of Peter, and the Head of the Church, they excused themselves thus: Such titles as those are empty bugbears, by which the eyes of the pious ought not to be so blinded as not to venture to look at them and sift the reality. It was when the world was plunged in ignorance and sloth, as in a deep sleep, that the pope had risen to such an eminence; certainly neither appointed head of the Church by the Word of God, nor ordained by a legitimate act of the Church, but of his own accord, self-elected. Moreover, the tyranny which he let loose against the people of God was not to be endured, if we wished to have the kingdom of Christ amongst us in safety.

" ’And they wanted not most powerful arguments to confirm all their positions. First, they clearly disposed of everything that was then commonly adduced to establish the primacy of the pope. When they had taken away all these props, they also, by the Word of God, tumbled him from his lofty height. On the whole, they make it clear and palpable, to learned and unlearned, that the true order of the Church had then perished,—that the keys under which the discipline of the Church is comprehended had been altered very much for the worse; that Christian liberty had fallen,—in short, that the kingdom of Christ was prostrated when this primacy was reared up. They told me, moreover, as a means of pricking my conscience, that I could not safely connive at these things as if they concerned me not; that so far art Thou from patronizing any voluntary error, that even he who is led astray by mere ignorance does not err with impunity. This they proved by the testimony of Thy Son (Matt. 15:14): "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

" ’My mind being now prepared for serious attention, I at length perceived, as if light had broken in upon me, in what a stye of error I had wallowed, and how much pollution and impurity I had thereby contracted. Being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen, and much more at that which threatened me in the view of eternal death, I, as in duty bound, made it my first business to betake myself to Thy way, condemning my past life, not without groans and tears.

" ’And now, O Lord, what remains to a wretch like me, but, instead of defence, earnestly to supplicate Thee not to judge according to its deserts that fearful abandonment of Thy Word, from which, in Thy wondrous goodness, Thou hast at last delivered me.’

"Now, Sadolet, if you please, compare this pleading with that which you have put into the mouth of your plebeian. It will be strange if you hesitate which of the two you ought to prefer. For the safety of that man hangs by a thread whose defence turns wholly on this—that he has constantly adhered to the religion handed down to him from his forefathers. At this rate, Jews and Turks and Saracens would escape the judgment of God.

"Away, then, with this vain quibbling at a tribunal which will be erected, not to approve the authority of man, but to condemn all flesh of vanity and falsehood, and vindicate the truth of God only."

Calvin descends to repel with just indignation the groundless charge of avarice and greed which Sadolet was not ashamed to cast upon the Reformers, who might have easily reached the dignity and wealth of bishops and cardinals, but who preferred to live and die in poverty for the sake of their sacred convictions.

"Would not," he asked, "the shortest road to riches and honors have been to accept the terms which were offered at the very first?  How much would your pontiff then have paid to many for their silence?  How much would he pay for it even at the present day?  If they were actuated in the least degree by avarice, why do they cut off all hope of improving their fortune, and prefer to be thus perpetually wretched, rather than enrich themselves without difficulty and in a moment?

"But ambition, forsooth, withholds them!  What ground you had for this other insinuation I see not, since those who first engaged in this cause could expect nothing else than to be spurned by the whole world, and those who afterwards adhered to it, exposed themselves knowingly and willingly to endless insults and revilings from every quarter."

He then answers to "the most serious charge of all:" that the Reformers had "dismembered the Spouse of Christ," while in fact they attempted, to present her as a chaste virgin of Christ," and, "seeing her polluted by base seducers, to recall her to conjugal fidelity," after having been defiled by the idolatry of image-worship and numberless superstitions. Peace and unity can only be found in Christ and his truth. He concludes with the wish: —

"May the Lord grant, Sadolet, that you and all your party may at length perceive that the only true bond of Church unity is Christ the Lord, who has reconciled us to God the Father, and will gather us out of our present dispersion into the fellowship of His body, that so, through His one Word and Spirit, we may grow together into one heart and one soul."

Such is a summary of that remarkable Answer—a masterpiece of dignified and gentlemanly theological controversy. There is scarcely a parallel to it in the literature of that age, which teems with uncharitable abuse and coarse invective. Melanchthon might have equalled it in courtesy and good taste, but not in adroitness and force. No wonder that the old lion of Wittenberg was delighted with this triumphant vindication of the evangelical Reformation by a young Frenchman, who was to carry on the conflict which he himself had begun twenty years before by his Theses and his heroic stand at the Diet of Worms. "This answer," said Luther to Cruciger, who had met Calvin at the Colloquies in Worms and Regensburg, "has hand and foot, and I rejoice that God raises up men who will give the last blow to popery, and finish the war against Antichrist which I began."583

The Answer made a deep and lasting impression. It was widely circulated, with Sadolet’s Letter, in manuscript, printed in Latin, first at Strassburg, translated into French, and published in both languages by the Council of Geneva at the expense of the city (1540). The prelates who had met at Lyons lost courage; the papal party in Geneva gave up all hope of restoring the mass. Three years afterwards Cardinal Pierre de la Baume died—the last bishop of Geneva.

§ 92. Calvin’s Marriage and Home Life.

Calvin’s Letters to Farel and Viret quoted below.

Jules Bonnet: Idelette de Bure, femme de Calvin. In the "Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français."  Quatrième année. Paris, 1856. pp. 636–646.—D. Lenoir, ibid. 1860. p. 26. (A brief note.)

Henry, I. 407 sqq.—Dyer, 99 sqq.—Stähelin, I. 272 sqq.—Merle d’Aubigné, bk. XI. ch. XVII, (vol. VI. 601–608).—Stricker, l.c. 42–50. (Kampschulte is silent on this topic.)

The most important event in Calvin’s private life during his sojourn in Germany was his marriage, which took place early in August, 1540.584  He expresses his views on marriage in his comments on Ephesians 5:28–33. "It is a thing against nature," he remarks, "that any one should not love his wife, for God has ordained marriage in order that two may be made one person—a result which, certainly, no other alliance can bring about. When Moses says that a man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, he shows that a man ought to prefer marriage to every other union, as being the holiest of all. It reflects our union with Christ, who infuses his very life unto us; for we are flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. This is a great mystery, the dignity of which cannot be expressed in words."

He himself was in no hurry to get married, and put it off till he was over thirty. He rather boasted that people could not charge him with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks besieged Troy, for the sake of a woman. What led him first to think of it, was the sense of loneliness and the need of proper care, that he might be able the better to serve the Church. He had a housekeeper, with her son, a woman of violent temper who sorely tried his patience. At one time she abused his brother so violently that he left the house, and then she ran away, leaving her son behind. The disturbance made him sick.585

He was often urged by his friend Farel (who himself found no time to think of marrying till his old age), and by Bucer, to take a wife, that he might enjoy the comforts of a well-ordered home. He first mentions the subject in a letter to Farel, from Strassburg, May 19, 1539, in which he says: "I am none of those insane lovers who, when once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults. This only is the beauty which allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my health.586  Therefore, if you think well of it, set out immediately, lest some one else [Bucer?] gets the start of you. But if you think otherwise we will let it pass."  It seems Farel could not find a person that combined all these qualities, and the matter was dropped for several months.

In Feb. 6, 1540, Calvin, in a letter to the same friend, touched again upon the subject of matrimony, but only incidentally, as if it were a subordinate matter. After informing him about his trouble with Caroli, his discussion with Hermann, an Anabaptist, the good understanding of Charles V. and Francis I., and the alarm of the Protestant princes of Germany, he goes on to say: "Nevertheless, in the midst of such commotions as these, I am so much at my ease as to have the audacity to think of taking a wife. A certain damsel of noble rank has been proposed to me,587  and with a fortune above my condition. Two considerations deterred me from that connection—because she did not understand our language, and because I feared she might be too mindful of her family and education."588

He sent his brother for another lady, who was highly recommended to him. He expected to get married March 10, and invited Farel to celebrate the wedding. But this project also failed, and he thought of abandoning all further attempts.

At last he married a member of his congregation, Idelette de Bure, the widow of Jean Stordeur (or Storder) of Liège,589 a prominent Anabaptist whom he had converted to the orthodox faith,590 and who had died of the pestilence in the previous February. She was probably the daughter of Lambert de Bure who, with six of his fellow-citizens, had been deprived of his property and banished forever, after having been legally convicted of heresy in 1533.591  She was the mother of several children, poor, and in feeble health. She lived in retirement, devoted to the education of her children, and enjoyed the esteem of her friends for her good qualities of head and heart. Calvin visited her frequently as pastor, and was attracted by her quiet, modest, gentle character. He found in her what he desired—firm faith, devoted love, and domestic helpfulness. He calls her "the excellent companion of my life," "the ever-faithful assistant of my ministry," and a "rare woman."592  Beza speaks of her as "a grave and honorable lady."593

Calvin lived in happy wedlock, but only for nine years. His wife was taken from him at Geneva, after a protracted illness, early in April, 1549. He felt the loss very deeply, and found comfort only in his work. He turned from the coffin to his study table, and resumed the duties of his office with quiet resignation and conscientious fidelity as if nothing had happened. He remained a widower the remaining fifteen years of his life. "My wife, a woman of rare qualities," he wrote, "died a year and a half ago, and I have now willingly chosen to lead a solitary life."

We know much less of Calvin’s domestic life than of Luther’s. He was always reticent concerning himself and his private affairs, while Luther was very frank and demonstrative. In selecting their wives neither of the Reformers had any regard to the charms of beauty and wealth which attract most lovers, nor even to intellectual endowment; they looked only to moral worth and domestic virtue. Luther married at the age of forty-one, Calvin at the age of thirty-one. Luther married a Catholic ex-nun, after having vainly recommended her to his friend Amsdorf, whom she proudly refused, looking to higher distinction. He married her under a sudden impulse, to the consternation of his friends, in the midst of the disturbances of the Peasants’ War, that he might please his father, tease the pope, and vex the devil. Calvin married, like Zwingli, a Protestant widow with several children; he married from esteem rather than affection, after due reflection and the solicitation of friends.

Katherine Luther cut a prominent figure in her husband’s personal history and correspondence, and survived him several years, which she spent in poverty and affliction. Idelette de Bure lived in modest retirement, and died in peace fifteen years before Calvin. Luther submitted as "a willing servant" to the rule of his "Lord Kathe," but he loved her dearly, played with his children in childlike simplicity, addressed to her his last letters, and expressed his estimate of domestic happiness in the beautiful sentence: "The greatest gift of God to man is a pious, kindly, God-fearing, domestic wife."594

Luther’s home life was enlivened and cheered by humor, poetry, and song; Calvin’s was sober, quiet, controlled by the fear of God, and regulated by a sense of duty, but none the less happy. Nothing can be more unjust than the charge that Calvin was cold and unsympathetic.595

His whole correspondence proves the reverse. His letters on the death of his wife to his dearest friends reveal a deep fountain of tenderness and affection. To Farel he wrote, April 2, 1549:—596

"Intelligence of my wife’s death has perhaps reached you before now. I do what I can to keep myself from being overwhelmed with grief. My friends also leave nothing undone that may administer relief to my mental suffering. When your brother left, her life was all but despaired of. When the brethren were assembled on Tuesday, they thought it best that we should join together in prayer. This was done. When Abel, in the name of the rest, exhorted her to faith and patience, she briefly (for she was now greatly worn) stated her frame of mind. I afterwards added an exhortation, which seemed to me appropriate to the occasion. And then, as she had made no allusion to her children, I, fearing that, restrained by modesty, she might be feeling an anxiety concerning them, which would cause her greater suffering than the disease itself, declared in the presence of the brethren, that I should henceforth care for them as if they were my own. She replied, ’I have already committed them to the Lord.’  When I replied, that that was not to hinder me from doing my duty, she immediately answered, ’If the Lord shall care for them, I know they will be commended to you.’  Her magnanimity was so great, that she seemed to have already left the world. About the sixth hour of the day, on which she yielded up her soul to the Lord, our brother Bourgouin addressed some pious words to her, and while he wag doing so, she spoke aloud, so that all saw that her heart was raised far above the world. For these were her words: ’O glorious resurrection!  O God of Abraham, and of all our fathers, in thee have the faithful trusted during so many past ages, and none of them have trusted in vain. I also will hope.’  These short sentences were rather ejaculated than distinctly spoken. This did not come from the suggestion of others, but from her own reflections, so that she made it obvious in few words what were her own meditations. I had to go out at six o’clock. Having been removed to another apartment after seven, she immediately began to decline. When she felt her voice suddenly failing her she said: ’Let us pray; let us pray. All pray for me.’  I had now returned. She was unable to speak, and her mind seemed to be troubled. I, having spoken a few words about the love of Christ, the hope of eternal life, concerning our married life, and her departure, engaged in prayer. In full possession of her mind, she both heard the prayer, and attended to it. Before eight she expired, so calmly, that those present could scarcely distinguish between her life and her death. I at present control my sorrow so that my duties may not be interfered with. But in the meanwhile the Lord has sent other trials upon me, Adieu, brother, and very excellent friend. May the Lord Jesus strengthen you by His Spirit; and may He support me also under this heavy affliction, which would certainly have overcome me, had not He, who raises up the prostrate, strengthens the weak, and refreshes the weary, stretched forth His hand from heaven to me. Salute all the brethren and your whole family.

To Viret he wrote a few days later, April 7, 1549, as follows: —

"Although the death of my wife has been exceedingly painful to me, yet I subdue my grief as well as I can. Friends, also, are earnest in their duty to me. It might be wished, indeed, that they could profit me and themselves more; yet one can scarcely say how much I am supported by their attentions. But you know well enough how tender, or rather soft, my mind is. Had not a powerful self-control, therefore, been vouchsafed to me, I could not have borne up so long. And truly mine is no common source of grief. I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my exile and poverty, but even of my death.597  During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry.

"From her I never experienced the slightest hindrance. She was never troublesome to me throughout the entire course of her illness; she was more anxious about her children than about herself. As I feared these private cares might annoy her to no purpose, I took occasion, on the third day before her death to mention that I would not fail in discharging my duty to her children. Taking up the matter immediately, she said, ’I have already committed them to God.’  When I said that that was not to prevent me from caring for them, she replied, ’I know you will not neglect what you know has been committed to God.’  Lately, also, when a certain woman insisted that she should talk with me regarding these matters, I, for the first time, heard her give the following brief answer: ’Assuredly the principal thing is that they live a pious and holy life. My husband is not to be urged to instruct them in religious knowledge and in the fear of God. If they be pious, I am sure he will gladly be a father to them; but if not, they do not deserve that I should ask for aught in their behalf.’  This nobleness of mind will weigh more with me than a hundred recommendations. Many thanks for your friendly consolation.

"Adieu, most excellent and honest brother. May the Lord Jesus watch over and direct yourself and your wife. Present my best wishes to her and to the brethren."

In reply to this letter, Viret wrote to Calvin, April 10, 1549: —

"Wonderfully and incredibly have I been refreshed, not by empty rumors alone, but especially by numerous messengers who have informed me how you, with a heart so broken and lacerated, have attended to all your duties even better than hitherto, ... and that, above all, at a time when grief was so fresh, and on that account all the more severe, might have prostrated your mind. Go on then as you have begun, ... and I pray God most earnestly, that you may be enabled to do so, and that you may receive daily greater comfort and be strengthened more and more."

Calvin’s character shines in the same favorable light at the loss of his only son who died in infancy (1542). He thanked Viret and his wife (he always sends greetings to Viret’s wife and daughter) for their tender sympathy with him in this bereavement, stating that Idelette would write herself also but for her grief. "The Lord," he says, "has dealt us a severe blow in taking from us our infant son; but it is our Father who knows what is best for his children."598  He found compensation for his want of offspring in the multitude of his spiritual children. "God has given me a little son, and taken him away; but I have myriads of children in the whole Christian world."599

Of Calvin’s deep sympathy with his friends in domestic affliction we have a most striking testimony in a private letter which was never intended for publication. It is the best proof of his extraordinary fidelity as a pastor. While he was in attendance at Ratisbon, the pestilence carried away, among other friends, Louis de Richebourg, who together with his older brother, Charles, lived in his house at Strassburg as a student and pensionnaire, under the tutorship of Claude Féray, Calvin’s dearly beloved assistant. On hearing the sad intelligence, early in April, 1541, he wrote to his father—a gentleman from Normandy, probably the lord of the village de Richebourg between Rouen and Beauvais, but otherwise unknown to us—a long letter of condolence and comfort, from which we give the following extracts:600 —

"Ratisbon (Month of April), 1541.

"When I first received the intelligence of the death of Claude and of your son Louis, I was so utterly overpowered (tout esperdu et confus en mon esprit) that for many days I was fit for nothing but to weep; and although I was somehow upheld before the Lord by those aids wherewith He sustains our souls in affliction, yet among men I was almost a nonentity; so far at least as regards my discharge of duty, I appeared to myself quite as unfit for it as if I had been half dead (un homme demi-mort). On the one hand, I was sadly grieved that a most excellent and faithful friend [Claude Féray] had been snatched away from me—a friend with whom I was so familiar, that none could be more closely united than we were; on the other hand, there arose another cause of grief, when I saw the young man, your son, taken away in the very flower of his age, a youth of most excellent promise, whom I loved as a son, because, on his part, he showed that respectful affection toward me as he would to another father.

"To this grievous sorrow was still added the heavy and distressing anxiety we experienced about those whom the Lord had spared to us. I heard that the whole household were scattered here and there. The danger of Malherbe601 caused me very great misery, as well as the cause of it, and warned me also as to the rest. I considered that it could not be otherwise but that my wife must be very much dismayed. Your Charles,602 I assure you, was continually recurring to my thoughts; for in proportion as he was endowed with that goodness of disposition which had always appeared in him towards his brother as well as his preceptor, it never occurred to me to doubt but that he would be steeped in sorrow and soaked in tears. One single consideration somewhat relieved me, that he had my brother along with him, who, I hoped, would prove no small comfort in this calamity; even that, however, I could not reckon upon, when at the same time I recollected that both were in jeopardy, and neither of them were yet beyond the reach of danger. Thus, until the letter arrived which informed me that Malherbe was out of danger, and that Charles and my brother, together with my wife and the others, were safe,603 I would have been all but utterly cast down, unless, as I have already mentioned, my heart was refreshed in prayer and private meditations, which are suggested by His Word ....

"The son whom the Lord had lent you for a season, He has taken away. There is no ground, therefore, for those silly and wicked complaints of foolish men: O blind death!  O hard fate!  O implacable daughters of Destiny!  O cruel fortune!  The Lord who had lodged him here for a season, at this stage of his career has called him away. What the Lord has done, we must, at the same time, consider has not been done rashly, nor by chance, neither from having been impelled from without, but by that determinate counsel, whereby He not only foresees, decrees, and executes nothing but what is just and upright in itself, but also nothing but what is good and wholesome for us. Where justice and good judgment reign paramount, there it is impious to remonstrate. When, however, our advantage is bound up with that goodness, how great would be the degree of ingratitude not to acquiesce, with a calm and well-ordered temper of mind, in whatever is the wish of our Father ....

"It is God who has sought back from you your son, whom He had committed to you to be educated, on the condition that he might always be His own. And, therefore, He took him away, because it was both of advantage to him to leave this world, and by this bereavement to humble you, or to make trial of your patience. If you do not understand the advantage of this, without delay, first of all, setting aside every other object of consideration, ask of God that He may show you. Should it be His will to exercise you still farther, by concealing it from you, submit to that will, that you may become wiser than the weakness of thine own understanding can ever attain to.

"In what regards your son, if you bethink yourself how difficult it is, in this most deplorable age to maintain an upright course through life, you will judge him to be blessed, who, before encountering so many coming dangers which already were hovering over him, and to be encountered in his day and generation, was so early delivered from them all. He is like one who has set sail upon a stormy and tempestuous sea, and before he has been carried out into the deeps, gets in safety to the secure haven. Nor, indeed, is long life to be reckoned so great a benefit of God, that we can lose anything, when separated only for the space of a few years, we are introduced to a life which is far better. Now, certainly, because the Lord Himself, who is the Father of us all, had willed that Louis should be put among the children as a son of His adoption, He bestowed this benefit upon you, out of the multitude of His mercies, that you might reap the excellent fruit of your careful education before his death; whence also you might know your interest in the blessings that belonged to you, ’I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed.’

"From his earliest boyhood, so far as his years allowed, Louis was grounded in the best studies, and had already made such a competent proficiency and progress, that we entertained great hope of him for the future. His manners and behavior had met with the approval of all good men. If at any time he fell into error, he not only patiently suffered the word of admonition, but also that of reproof, and proved himself teachable and obedient, and willing to hearken to advice … That, however, which we rate most highly in him was, that he had imbibed so largely the principles of piety, that he had not merely a correct and true understanding of religion, but had also been faithfully imbued with the unfeigned fear and reverence of God.

"This exceeding kindness of God toward your offspring ought with good reason to prevail more effectually with you in soothing the bitterness of death, than death itself have power to inflict grief upon you.

"With reference to my own feelings, if your sons had never come hither at all, I should never have been grieved on account of the death of Claude and Louis. Never, however, shall this most crushing sorrow, which I suffer on account of both, so overcome me, as to reflect with grief upon that day on which they were driven hither by the hand of God to us, rather than led by any settled purpose of their own, when that friendship commenced which has not only continued undiminished to the last, but which, from day to day, was rather increased and confirmed. Whatever, therefore, may have been the kind or model of education they were in search of, I rejoice that they lived under the same roof with me. And since it was appointed them to die, I rejoice also that they died under my roof, where they rendered back their souls to God more composedly, and in greater circumstances of quiet, than if they had happened to die in those places where they would have experienced greater annoyance from the importunity of those by whom they ought to have been assisted, than from death itself. On the contrary, it was in the midst of pious exhortations, and while calling upon the name of the Lord, that these sainted spirits fled from the communion of their brethren here to the bosom of Christ. Nor would I desire now to be free from all sorrow at the cost of never having known them. Their memory will ever be sacred to me to the end of my days, and I am persuaded that it will also be sweet and comforting.

"But what advantage, you will say, is it to me to have had a son of so much promise, since he has been torn away from me in the first flower of his youth?  As if, forsooth, Christ had not merited, by His death, the supreme dominion over the living and the dead!  And if we belong to Him (as we ought), why may He not exercise over us the power of life and of death?  However brief, therefore, either in your opinion or in mine, the life of your son may have been, it ought to satisfy us that he has finished the course which the Lord had marked out for him.

"Moreover, we may not reckon him to have perished in the flower of his age, who had grown ripe in the sight of the Lord. For I consider all to have arrived at maturity who are summoned away by death; unless, perhaps, one would contend with Him, as if He can snatch away any one before his time. This, indeed, holds true of every one; but in regard to Louis, it is yet more certain on another and more peculiar ground. For he had arrived at that age, when, by true evidences, he could prove himself a member of the body of Christ: having put forth this fruit, he was taken from us and transplanted. Yes, instead of this transient and vanishing shadow of life, he has regained the real immortality of being.

"Nor can you consider yourself to have lost him, whom you will recover in the blessed resurrection in the kingdom of God. For they had both so lived and so died, that I cannot doubt but they are now with the Lord. Let us, therefore, press forward toward this goal which they have reached. There can be no doubt but that Christ will bind together both them and us in the same inseparable society, in that incomparable participation of His own glory. Beware, therefore, that you do not lament your son as lost, whom you acknowledge to be preserved by the Lord, that he may remain yours forever, who, at the pleasure of His own will, lent him to you only for a season ....

"Neither do I insist upon your laying aside all grief. Nor, in the school of Christ, do we learn any such philosophy as requires us to put off that common humanity with which God has endowed us, that, being men, we should be tamed into stones.604  These considerations reach only so far as this, that you do set bounds, and, as it were, temper even your most reasonable sadness, that, having shed those tears which were due to nature and to fatherly affection, you by no means give way to senseless wailing. Nor do I by any means interfere because I am distrustful of your prudence, firmness, or high-mindedness; but only lest I might here be wanting, and come short in my duty to you.

"Moreover, I have requested Melanchthon and Bucer that they would also add their letters to mine, because I entertained the hope that it would not be unacceptable that they too should afford some evidence of their good-will toward you.

"Adieu, most distinguished sir, and my much-respected in the Lord. May Christ the Lord keep you and your family, and direct you all with His own Spirit, until you may arrive where Louis and Claude have gone before."

CHAPTER XII.

CALVIN’S SECOND SOJOURN AND LABORS AT GENEVA. 1541–1564.

The sources on this and the following chapters in § 81, p. 347.

§ 93. The State of Geneva after the expulsion of the Reformers.

I. The correspondence in Opera, vols. X. and XI., and Herminjard, Vols. V., VI., and VII.—Annal. Calv, XXI. 235–282.—The Chronicles of Roset and Bonivard; the histories of Spon, Gaberel, Roget, etc.

II. Henry, I. ch. XIX.—Stähelin, I. 283–299.—Dyer, 113–123.—Kampschulte, I. 342 sqq.—Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. chs. XVIII. (vol. VI. 610 sqq.) and XIX. (vol. VII. 1 sqq.).

C. A. Cornelius (Cath.): Die Rückkehr Calvins nach Genf. München, 1889. Continuation of his essay, Die Verbannung Calvins aus Genf. München, 1886. Both in the Transactions of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

The answer to Sadolet was one of the means of saving Geneva from the grasp of popery, and endearing Calvin to the friends of freedom. But there were other causes which demanded his recall. Internal disturbances followed his expulsion, and brought the little republic to the brink of ruin.

Calvin was right in predicting a short régime to his enemies. In less than a year they were demoralized and split up into factions. In the place of the expelled Reformers, two native preachers and two from Bern were elected on the basis of the Bernese customs, but they were below mediocrity, and not fit for the crisis. The supremacy of the State was guarded. Foreigners who could not show a good practical reason for their residence were banished; among them, even Saunier and Cordier, the rectors of the schools who faithfully adhered to the Reformers.

There were three main parties in Geneva, with subdivisions.

1. The government party was controlled by the syndics of 1538 and other enemies of the Reformers. They were called Articulants or, by a popular nickname, Artichauds,605 from the twenty-one articles of a treaty with Bern, which had been negotiated and signed by three counsellors and deputies of the city—Ami de Chapeaurouge, Jean Lullin, and Monathon. The government subjected the Church to the State, and was protected by Bern, but unable to maintain order. Tumults and riots multiplied in the streets; the schools were ruined by the expulsion of the best teachers; the pulpit lost its power; the new preachers became objects of contempt or pity; pastoral care was neglected; vice and immorality increased; the old licentiousness and frivolities, dancing, gambling, drunkenness, masquerades, indecent songs, adulteries, reappeared; persons went naked through the streets to the sound of drums and fifes.

Moreover, the treaty with Bern, when it became known, was very unpopular because it conceded to Bern the rights of sovereignty. The Council of Two Hundred would not submit to it because it sacrificed their liberties and good customs. But the judges of Bern decided that the Genevese must sign the treaty and pay the costs. This created a great commotion. The people cried "treason," and demanded the arrest of the three deputies who had been outwitted by the diplomacy of Bern, but they made their escape; whereupon they were condemned to death as forgers and rebels. The discontent extended to the pastors who had been elected in the place of Farel and Calvin.

Within two years after the banishment of the Reformers, the four syndics who had decreed it came to grief. Jean Philippe, the captain-general of the city and most influential leader of the Artichauds, but a man of violent passions, was beheaded for homicide, and as a mover of sedition, June 10, 1540. Two others, Chapeaurouge and Lullin, were condemned to death as forgers and rebels; the fourth, Richardet, died in consequence of an injury which he received in the attempt to escape justice. Such a series of misfortunes was considered a nemesis of Providence, and gave the death-blow to the anti-reform party.

2. The party of the Roman Catholics raised its head after the expulsion of the Reformers, and received for a short time great encouragement from the banished bishop Pierre de la Baume, whom Paul III. had made a cardinal, and from the Letter of Cardinal Sadolet. A number of priests and monks returned from France and Savoy, but the Answer of Calvin destroyed all the hopes and prospects of the Romanists, and the government showed them no favor.

3. The third party was friendly to the Reformers. It reaped all the benefit of the blunders and misfortunes of the other two parties, and turned them to the best account. Its members were called by their opponents Guillermains, after Master Guillaume (Farel). They were led by Perrin, Porral, Pertemps, and Sept. They were united, most active, and had a definite end in view—the restoration of the Reformation. They kept up a correspondence with the banished Reformers, especially with Farel in Neuchâtel, who counselled and encouraged them. They were suspected of French sympathies and want of patriotism, but retorted by charging the government with subserviency to Bern. They were inclined to extreme measures. Calvin exhorted them to be patient, moderate, and forgiving.

As the Artichauds declined, the Guillermains increased in power over the people. The vacant posts of the late syndics were filled from their ranks. The new magistrates assumed a bold tone of independence towards Bern, and insisted on the old franchises of Geneva. It is curious that they were encouraged by a letter of the Emperor Charles V., who thus unwittingly aided the cause of Calvin.606

The way was now prepared for the recall of Calvin. The best people of Geneva looked to him as the saviour of their city. His name meant order, peace, reform in Church and State.

Even the Artichauds, overpowered by public opinion, proposed in a general assembly of citizens, June 17, 1540, the resolution to restore the former status, and spoke loudly against popery. Two of the new preachers, Marcourt and Morland, resigned Aug. 10, and returned to Bern. The other two, Henri de la Mare and Jacques Bernard, humbly besought the favor of Calvin, and begged him to return. A remarkable tribute from his rivals and enemies.607

§ 94. Calvin’s Recall to Geneva.

Literature in § 93, especially the Correspondence and Registers.

Calvin did not forget Geneva. He proved his interest in her welfare by his Answer to Sadolet. But he had no inclination to return, and could only be induced to do so by unmistakable indications of the will of Providence.

He had found a place of great usefulness in a city where he could act as mediator between Germany and France, and benefit both countries; his Sunday services were crowded; his theological lectures attracted students from France and other countries; he had married a faithful wife, and enjoyed a peaceful home. The government of Strassburg appreciated him more and more, and his colleagues wished to retain him.

Melanchthon thought he could spare him less at the Colloquies of Worms and Ratisbon than anybody else. Looking to Geneva he could, from past experience, expect nothing but severe and hard trials. "There is no place in the world," he wrote to Viret, "which I fear more; not because I hate it, but because I feel unequal to the difficulties which await me there." 608 He called it an abyss from which he shrank back much more now than he had done in 1536. Indeed, he was not mistaken in his fears, for his subsequent life was an unbroken struggle. We need not wonder then that he refused call upon call, and requested Farel and Viret to desist from their efforts to allure him away.609

At the same time, he was determined to obey the will of God as soon as it would be made clear to him by unmistakable indications of Providence. "When I remember," he wrote to Farel, "that in this matter I am not my own master, I present my heart as a sacrifice and offer it up to the Lord."610  A very characteristic sentence, which reveals the soul of his piety. A seal of Calvin bears this motto, and the emblem is a hand presenting a heart to God. Seventeen years later, when he looked back upon that critical period of his life, he expressed the same view. "Although the welfare of that Church," he says, "was so dear to me, that I could without difficulty sacrifice my life for it; yet my timidity presented to me many reasons of excuse for declining to take such a heavy burden on my shoulders. But the sense of duty prevailed, and led me to return to the flock from which I had been snatched away. I did this with sadness, tears, and great anxiety and distress of mind, the Lord being my witness, and many pious persons who would gladly have spared me that pain, if not the same fear had shut their mouth."611  He mentions especially Martin Bucer, "that excellent servant of Christ," who threatened him with the example of Jonah; as Farel, on Calvin’s first visit to Geneva, had threatened him with the wrath of God.

His friends in Geneva, the Council and the people, were convinced that Calvin alone could save the city from anarchy, and they made every effort to secure his return. His recall was first seriously discussed in the Council early in 1539, again in February, 1540, and decided upon Sept. 21, 1540. Preparatory steps were taken to secure the co-operation of Bern, Basel, Zürich, and Strassburg. On the 13th of October, Michel Du Bois, an old friend of Calvin, was sent by the Large Council with a letter to him, and directed to press the invitation by oral representation. Without waiting for an answer, other petitions and deputations were forwarded. On the 19th of October the Council of Two Hundred resolved to use every effort for the attainment of that object. Ami Perrin and Louis Dufour were sent (Oct. 21 and 22) as deputies, with a herald, to Strassburg "to fetch Master Calvin."  Twenty dollars gold (écus au soleil) were voted, on the 27th, for expenses.612  The Registres of that month are full of actions concerning the recall of "the learned and pious Mr. Calvin."  No more complete vindication of the cause of the Reformers could be imagined.

Farel’s aid was also solicited. With incomparable self-denial he pardoned the ingratitude of the Genevese in not recalling him, and made every exertion to secure the return of his younger friend, whom he had first compelled by moral force to stop at Geneva. He bombarded him with letters. He even travelled from Neuchàtel to Strassburg, and spent two days there, pressing him in person and trying to persuade him, as well as Capito and Bucer, of the absolute necessity of his return to Geneva, which, in his opinion, was the most important spot in the world.

Dufour arrived at Strassburg in November, called upon the senate, followed Calvin to Worms, where he was in attendance on the Colloquy, and delivered the formal letter of invitation, dated Oct. 22, and signed by the syndics and Council of Geneva. It concludes thus: "On behalf of our Little, Great, and General Councils (all of which have strongly urged us to take this step), we pray you very affectionately that you will be pleased to come over to us, and to return to your former post and ministry; and we hope that by God’s help this course will be a great advantage for the furtherance of the holy gospel, seeing that our people very much desire you, and we will so deal with you that you shall have reason to be satisfied."  The letter was fastened with a seal bearing the motto: "Post tenebras spero lucem."

Calvin was thus most urgently and most honorably recalled by the united voice of the Council, the ministers, and the people of that city which had unjustly banished him three years before.

He was moved to tears by these manifestations of regard and confidence, and began to waver. But the deputies of Strassburg at Worms, under secret instruction from their government, entered a strong protest against his leaving. Bucer, Capito, Sturm, and Grynaeus, when asked for advice, decided that Calvin was indispensable to Strassburg as the head of the French Church which represented Protestant France; as a theological teacher who attracted students from Germany, France, and Italy, to send them back to their own countries as evangelists; and as a helper in making the Church of Strassburg a seminary of ministers of the gospel. No one besides Melanchthon could be compared with him. Geneva was indeed an important post, and the gate to France and Italy, but uncertain, and liable to be involved again in political complications which might destroy the evangelical labors of Calvin. The pastors and senators of Strassburg, urged by the churches of Zürich and Basel, came at last to the conclusion to consent to Calvin’s return after the Colloquy of Worms, but only for a season, hoping that he may soon make their city his final home for the benefit of the whole Church.613

Thus two cities, we might almost say, two nations, were contending for the possession of "the Theologian."  His whole future life, and a considerable chapter of Church history, depended on the decision. Under these circumstances he could make no definite promise, except that he would pay a visit to Geneva after the close of the Colloquy, on condition of getting the consent of Strassburg and Bern. He also prescribed, like a victorious general, the terms of surrender, namely, the restoration of Church discipline.

He had previously advised that Viret be called from Lausanne. This was done in Dec. 31, 1540, with the permission of Bern, but only for half a year. Viret arrived in Geneva Jan. 17, 1541. His persuasive sermons were well attended, and the magistrates showed great reverence for the Word of God; but he found so much and such difficult work in church and school, in the hospital and the poorhouse, that he urged Calvin to come soon, else he must withdraw or perish.

On the 1st of May, 1541, the General Council recalled, in due form, the sentence of banishment of April 23, 1538, and solemnly declared that every citizen considered Calvin, Farel, and Saunier to be honorable men, and true servants of God.614  On the 26th of May the senate sent another pressing request to Strassburg, Zürich, and Basel to aid Geneva in securing the return of Calvin.615

It is astonishing what an amount of interest this question of Calvin’s return excited throughout Switzerland and Germany. It was generally felt that the fate of Geneva depended on Calvin, and that the fate of evangelical religion in France and Italy depended on Geneva. Letters arrived from individuals and corporations. Farel continued to thunder, and reproached the Strassburgers for keeping Calvin back. He was indignant at Calvin’s delay. "Will you wait," he wrote him, "till the stones call thee?"

§ 95. Calvin’s Return to Geneva. 1541.

In the middle of June, Calvin left Regensburg, before the close of the Colloquy, much to the regret of Melanchthon; and after attending to his affairs in Strassburg, he set out for Switzerland. The Genevese sent Eustace Vincent, a mounted herald, to escort him, and voted thirty-six écus for expenses (Aug. 26).

The Strassburgers requested him to retain his right of citizenship, and the annual revenues of a prebend, which they had assigned him as the salary of his theological professorship. "He gladly accepted," says Beza, "the former mark of respect, but could never be induced to accept the latter, since the care of riches occupied his mind the least of anything."

Bucer, in the name of the pastors of Strassburg, gave him a letter to the Syndics and Council of Geneva, Sept. 1, 1541, in which he says: "Now he comes at last, Calvin, that elect and incomparable instrument of God, to whom no other in our age may be compared, if at all there can be the question of another alongside of him."  He added that such a highly favored man Strassburg could only spare for a season, on condition of his certain return.616  The Council of Strassburg wrote to the Council of Geneva on the same day, expressing the hope that Calvin may soon return to them for the benefit of the Church universal.617  The Senate of Geneva, in a letter of thanks (Sept. 17, 1541), expressed the determination to keep Calvin permanently in their city, where he could be as useful to the Church universal as at Strassburg.618

Calvin visited his friends in Basel, who affectionately commended him to Bern and Geneva (Sept. 4).619  Bern was not very favorable to Calvin and the clerical ascendency in Geneva, but gave him a safe-conduct through her territory.

At Soleure (Solothurn) he learned that Farel was deposed, without a trial, by the magistracy of Neuchâtel, because he had attacked a person of rank from the pulpit for scandalous conduct. He, therefore, turned from the direct route, and spent some days with his friend, trying to relieve him of the difficulty. He did not succeed at once, but his efforts were supported by Zürich, Strassburg, Basel, and Bern; and the seignory of Neuchâtel resolved to keep Farel, who continued to labor there till his death.620

Calvin wrote to the Council of Geneva from Neuchâtel on Sept. 7, explaining the reason of his delay.621  The next day he proceeded to Bern and delivered letters from Strassburg and Basel.

He was expected at Geneva on the 9th of September, but did not arrive, it seems, before the 13th. He wished to avoid a noisy reception, for which he had no taste.622  But there is no doubt that his arrival caused general rejoicing among the people.623

The Council provided for the Reformer a house and garden in the Rue des Chanoines near St. Peter’s Church,624 and promised him (Oct. 4), in consideration of his great learning and hospitality to strangers, a fixed salary of fifty gold dollars, or five hundred florins, besides twelve measures of wheat and two casks of wine.625  It also voted him a new suit of broadcloth, with furs for the winter. This provision was liberal for those days, yet barely sufficient for the necessary expenses of the Reformer and the claims on his hospitality. Hence the Council made him occasional presents for extra services; but he declined them whenever he could do without them. He lived in the greatest simplicity compatible with his position. A pulpit in St. Peter’s was prepared for him upon a broad, low pillar, that the whole congregation might more easily hear him.

The Council sent three horses and a carriage to bring Calvin’s wife and furniture. It took twenty-two days for the escort from Geneva to Strassburg and back (from Sept. 17 to Oct. 8).626

On the 13th of September Calvin appeared before the Syndics and the Council in the Town Hall, delivered the letters from the senators and pastors of Strassburg and Basel, and apologized for his long delay. He made no complaint and demanded no punishment of his enemies, but asked for the appointment of a commission to prepare a written order of church government and discipline. The Council complied with this request, and resolved to retain him permanently, and to inform the Senate of Strassburg of this intention. Six prominent laymen, four members of the Little Council, two members of the Large Council,—Pertemps, Perrin, Roset, Lambert, Goulaz, and Porral,—were appointed to draw up the ecclesiastical ordinances in conference with the ministers.627

On Sept. 16, Calvin wrote to Farel: "Thy wish is granted, I am held fast here. May God give his blessing."628

He desired to retain Viret and to secure Farel as permanent co-laborers; but in this he was disappointed—Viret being needed at Lausanne, and Farel at Neuchâtel. By special permission of Bern, however, Viret was allowed to remain with him till July of the next year. His other colleagues were rather a hindrance than a help to him, as "they had no zeal and very little learning, and could not be trusted."  Nearly the whole burden of reconstructing the Church of Geneva rested on his shoulders. It was a formidable task.

Never was a man more loudly called by government and people, never did a man more reluctantly accept the call, never did a man more faithfully and effectively fulfil the duties of the call than John Calvin when, in obedience to the voice of God, he settled a second time at Geneva to live and to die at this post of duty.

"Of all men in the world," says one of his best biographers and greatest admirers,629 "Calvin is the one who most worked, wrote, acted, and prayed for the cause which he had embraced. The coexistence of the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man is assuredly a mystery; but Calvin never supposed that because God did all, he personally had nothing to do. He points out clearly the twofold action, that of God and that of man. ’God,’ said he, ’after freely bestowing his grace on us, forthwith demands of us a reciprocal acknowledgment. When he said to Abraham, "I am thy God," it was an offer of his free goodness; but he adds at the same time what he required of him: "Walk before me, and be thou perfect."  This condition is tacitly annexed to all the promises. They are to be to us as spurs, inciting us to promote the glory of God.’  And elsewhere he says, ’This doctrine ought to create new vigor in all your members, so that you may be fit and alert, with might and main, to follow the call of God.’ "630

§ 96. The First Years after the Return.

Calvin entered at once upon his labors, and continued them without interruption for twenty-three years—till his death, May 27, 1564.

The first years were full of care and trial, as he had anticipated. His duties were more numerous and responsible than during his first sojourn. Then he was supported by the older Farel; now he stood at the head of the Church at Geneva, though yet a young man of thirty-two. He had to reorganize the Church, to introduce a constitution and order of worship, to preach, to teach, to settle controversies, to conciliate contending parties, to provide for the instruction of youth, to give advice even in purely secular affairs. No wonder that he often felt discouraged and exhausted, but trust in God, and a sense of duty kept him up.

Viret was of great service to him, but he was called back to Lausanne in July, 1542. His other colleagues—Jacques Bernard, Henri de la Mare, and Aimé Champereau—were men of inferior ability, and not reliable. In 1542 four new pastors were appointed,—Pierre Blanchet, Matthias de Greneston, Louis Trappereau, and Philippe Ozias (or Ozeas). In 1544 Geneva had twelve pastors, six of them for the county Churches. Calvin gradually trained a corps of enthusiastic evangelists. Farel and Viret visited Geneva on important occasions. For his last years, he had a most able and learned colleague in his friend Theodore Beza.

He pursued a wise and conciliatory course, which is all the more creditable to him when we consider the stern severity of his character and system. He showed a truly Christian forbearance to his former enemies, and patience with the weakness of his colleagues.631

"I will endeavor," he wrote to Bucer, in a long letter, Oct. 15, 1541, "to cultivate a good understanding and harmony with my neighbors, and also brotherly kindness (if they will allow me), with as much fidelity and diligence as I possibly can. So far as it depends on me, I shall give no ground of offence to any one … If in any way I do not answer your expectation, you know that I am in your power, and subject to your authority. Admonish me, chastise me, exercise towards me all the authority of a father over his son. Pardon my haste … I am entangled in so many employments that I am almost beside myself."632

To Myconius of Basel he wrote, March 14, 1542:

"I value the public peace and concord so highly, that I lay restraint upon myself; and this praise even the adversaries are compelled to award to me.633  This feeling prevails to such an extent, that, from day to day, those who were once open enemies have become friends; others I conciliate by courtesy, and I feel that I have been in some measure successful, although not everywhere and on all occasions.

"On my arrival it was in my power to have disconcerted our enemies most triumphantly, entering with full sail among the whole of that tribe who had done the mischief. I have abstained; if I had liked, I could daily, not merely with impunity, but with the approval of very many, have used sharp reproof. I forbear; even with the most scrupulous care do I avoid everything of the kind, lest even by some slight word I should appear to persecute any individual, much less all of them at once. May the Lord confirm me in this disposition of mind."634

He met at first with no opposition, but hearty co-operation among the people. About a fortnight after his arrival he presented a formula of the ecclesiastical order to the Small Council. Objection was made to the monthly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, instead of the custom of celebrating it only four times a year. Calvin, who strongly favored even a more frequent celebration, yielded his better judgment "in consideration of the weakness of the times," and for the sake of harmony. With this modification, the Small Council adopted the constitution Oct. 27; the Large Council confirmed it Nov. 9; and the general assembly of the citizens ratified it, by a very large majority, in St. Peter’s Church, the 20th of November, 1541. The small minority, however, included some of the leading citizens who were opposed to ecclesiastical discipline. The Articles, after the insertion of some trifling amendments and additions, were definitely adopted by the three Councils, Jan. 2, 1542.635

This was a great victory; for the ecclesiastical ordinances, which we shall consider afterwards, laid a solid foundation for a strong and well-regulated evangelical church.

Calvin preached at St. Peter’s, Viret at St. Gervais. The first services were of a penitential character, and their solemnity was enhanced by the fearful ravages of the pestilence in the neighboring cities. An extraordinary celebration of the holy communion on the first Sunday in November, and a weekly day of humiliation and prayer were appointed to invoke the mercy of God upon Geneva and the whole Church.

The second year after his return was very trying. The pestilence, which in 1541 had been raging in Strassburg and all along the Rhine, crept into Switzerland, diminishing the population of Basel and Zürich, and reached Geneva in the autumn, 1542. To the pestilence was added the scourge of famine, as is often the case. The evil was aggravated by the great influx of strangers who were attracted by Calvin’s fame and sought refuge from persecution under his shelter. The pest-house outside of the city was crowded. Calvin and Pierre Blanchet offered their services to the sick, while the rest of the ministers shrank back.636  The Council refused to let Calvin go, because the Church could not spare him.637  Blanchet risked his life, and fell a victim to his philanthrophy in eight or nine months. Calvin, in a letter dated October, 1542, gives the following account to Viret, who, in July, had left for Lausanne:638 —

"The pestilence also begins to rage here with greater violence, and few who are at all affected by it escape its ravages. One of our colleagues was to be set apart for attendance upon the sick. Because Peter [Blanchet] offered himself all readily acquiesced. If anything happens to him, I fear that I must take the risk upon myself, for, as you observe, because we are debtors to one another, we must not be wanting to those who, more than any others, stand in need of our ministry. And yet it is not my opinion, that while we wish to provide for one portion we are at liberty to neglect the body of the Church itself. But so long as we are in this ministry, I do not see that any pretext will avail us, if, through fear of infection, we are found wanting in the discharge of our duty when there is most need of our assistance."

Farel, on a like occasion, visited the sick daily, rich and poor, friend and foe, without distinction.639  We must judge Calvin by his spirit and motive. He had undoubtedly the spirit of a martyr, but felt it his duty to obey the magistrates, and to spare his life till the hour of necessity. We may refer to the example of Cyprian, who fled during the Decian persecution, but died heroically as a martyr in the Valerian persecution.

In 1545 Geneva was again visited by a pestilence, which some Swiss soldiers brought from France. The horrors were aggravated by a diabolical conspiracy of wicked persons, including some women, connected with the pest-house, for spreading the plague by artificial means, to gain spoils from the dead. The conspirators used the infected linen of those who had died of the disease, and smeared the locks of the houses with poison. A woman confessed, under torture, that she had killed eighteen men by her infernal arts. The ravages were fearful; Geneva was decimated; two thousand died out of a population of less than twenty thousand. Seven men and twenty-one women were burned alive for this offence. The physician of the lazaretto and two assistants were quartered.

Calvin formed a modest estimate of his labors during the first years, as may be seen from his letters. He wrote to Myconius, the first minister of Basel, March 14, 1542:640—

"The present state of our affairs I can give you in a few words. For the first month after resuming the ministry, I had so much to attend to, and so many annoyances, that I was almost worn out; such a work of labor and difficulty has it been to upbuild once more a fallen edifice (collapsum edificium instaurare). Although certainly Viret had already begun successfully to restore, yet, nevertheless, because he had deferred the complete form of order and discipline until my arrival, it had, as it were, to be commenced anew. When, having overcome this labor, I believed that there would be breathing-time allowed me, lo! new cares presented themselves, and those of a kind not much lighter than the former. This, however, somewhat consoles and refreshes me, that we do not labor altogether in vain, without some fruit appearing; which, although it is not so plentiful as we could wish, yet neither is it so scanty but that there does appear some change for the better. There is a brighter prospect for the future if Viret can be left here with me; on which account I am all the more desirous to express to you my most thankful acknowledgment, because you share with me in my anxiety that the Bernese may not call him away; and I earnestly pray, for the sake of Christ, that you would do your utmost to bring that about; for whenever the thought of his going away presents itself, I faint and lose courage entirely … Our other colleagues are rather a hindrance than a help to us; they are rude and self-conceited, have no zeal and less learning. But what is worst of all, I cannot trust them, even although I very much wish that I could; for by many evidences they show their estrangement from us, and give scarcely any indication of a sincere and trustworthy disposition. I bear with them, however, or rather I humor them, with the utmost lenity; a course from which I shall not be induced to depart, even by their bad conduct. But if, in the long run, the sore need a severer remedy, I shall do my utmost, and shall see to it by every method I can think of, to avoid disturbing the peace of the Church with our quarrels; for I dread the factions which must always necessarily arise from the dissensions of ministers. On my first arrival I might have driven them away had I wished to do so, and that is also even now in my power. I shall never, however, repent the degree of moderation which I have observed, since no one can justly complain that I have been too severe. These things I mention to you in a cursory way, that you may the more clearly perceive how wretched I shall be if Viret is taken away from me."

A month later (April 17, 1542), he wrote to Myconius:641 —

"In what concerns the private condition of this Church, I somehow, along with Viret, sustain the burden of it. If he is taken away from me, my situation will be more deplorable than I can describe to you, and even should he remain, there is some hazard that very much may not be obtained in the midst of so much secret animosity [between Geneva and Bern]. But that I may not torment myself beforehand, the Lord will see to it, and provide some one on whom I am compelled to cast this care."

In February, 1543, he wrote to Melanchthon:

"As to our own affairs, there is much that I might write, but the sole cause which imposes silence upon me is, that I could find no end. I labor here and do my utmost, but succeed indifferently. Nevertheless, all are astonished that my progress is so great in the midst of so many impediments, the greater part of which arise from the ministers themselves. This, however, is a great alleviation of my troubles, that not only this Church, but also the whole neighborhood, derive some benefit from my presence. Besides that, somewhat overflows from hence upon France, and even spreads as far as Italy."642

§ 97. Survey of Calvin’s Activity.

Calvin combined the offices of theological professor, preacher, pastor, church-ruler, superintendent of schools, with the extra labors of equal, yea, greater, importance, as author, correspondent, and leader of the expanding movement of the Reformation in Western Europe. He was involved in serious disciplinary and theological controversies with the Libertines, Romanists, Pelagians, Antitrinitarians, and Lutherans. He had no help except from one or more young men, whom he kept in his house and employed as clerks. When unwell he dictated from his bed. He had an amazing power for work notwithstanding his feeble health. When interrupted in dictation, he could at once resume work at the point where he left off.643  He indulged in no recreation except a quarter or half an hour’s walk in his room or garden after meals, and an occasional game of quoits or la clef with intimate friends. He allowed himself very little sleep, and for at least ten years he took but one meal a day, alleging his bad digestion.644  No wonder that he undermined his health, and suffered of headache, ague, dyspepsia, and other bodily infirmities which terminated in a premature death.

Luther and Zwingli were as indefatigable workers as Calvin, but they had an abundance of flesh and blood, and enjoyed better health. Luther liked to play with his children, and to entertain his friends with his humorous table-talk. Zwingli also found recreation in poetry and music, and played on several instruments.

A few years before his death, Calvin was compelled to speak of his work in self-defence against the calumnies of an ungrateful student and amanuensis, François Baudouin, a native of Arras, who ran away with some of Calvin’s papers, turned a Romanist, and publicly abused his benefactor. "I will not," he says, "enumerate the pleasures, conveniences, and riches I have renounced for Christ. I will only say that, had I the disposition of Baudouin, it would not have been very difficult for me to procure those things which he has always sought in vain, and which he now but too greedily gloats upon. But let that pass. Content with my humble fortune, my attention to frugality has prevented me from being a burden to anybody. I remain tranquil in my station, and have even given up a part of the moderate salary assigned to me, instead of asking for any increase. I devote all my care, labor, and study not only to the service of this Church, to which I am peculiarly bound, but to the assistance of all the Churches by every means in my power. I so discharge my office of a teacher, that no ambition may appear in my extreme faithfulness and diligence. I devour numerous griefs, and endure the rudeness of many; but my liberty is uncontrolled by the power of any man. I do not indulge the great by flattery; I fear not to give offence. No prosperity has hitherto inflated me; whilst I have intrepidly borne the many severe storms by which I have been tossed, till by the singular mercy of God I emerged from them. I live affably with my equals, and endeavor faithfully to preserve my friendships."645

Beza, his daily companion, thus describes "the ordinary labors" of Calvin, as he calls them: "During the week he preached every alternate, and lectured every third day; on Thursday he presided in the meetings of Presbytery (Consistory); and on Friday he expounded the Scripture in the assembly which we call ’the Congregation.’  He illustrated several sacred books with most learned commentaries, besides answering the enemies of religion, and maintaining an extensive correspondence on matters of great importance. Any one who reads these attentively, will be astonished how one little man (unicus homunculus) could be fit for labors so numerous and great. He availed himself much of the aid of Farel and Viret,646 while, at the same time, he conferred greater benefits on them. Their friendship and intimacy was not less hateful to the wicked than delightful to all the pious; and, in truth, it was a most pleasing spectacle to see and hear those three distinguished men carrying on the work of God in the Church so harmoniously, with such a variety of gifts. Farel excelled in a certain sublimity of mind, so that nobody could either hear his thunders without trembling, or listen to his most fervent prayers without being almost carried up to heaven. Viret possessed such suavity of eloquence, that his hearers were compelled to hang upon his lips. Calvin filled the mind of the hearers with as many weighty sentiments as he uttered words. I have often thought that a preacher compounded of the three would be absolutely perfect. In addition to these employments, Calvin had many others, arising out of circumstances domestic and foreign. The Lord so blessed his ministry that persons flocked to him from all parts of the Christian world; some to take his advice in matters of religion, and others to hear, him. Hence, we have seen an Italian, an English, and, finally, a Spanish Church at Geneva, one city seeming scarcely sufficient to entertain so many nests. But though at home he was courted by the good and feared by the bad, and matters had been admirably arranged, yet there were not wanting individuals who gave him great annoyance. We will unfold these contests separately, that posterity may be presented with a singular example of fortitude, which each may imitate according to his ability."647

We shall now consider this astounding activity of the Reformer in detail: his Church polity, his theological system, his controversies, and his relation to, and influence on, foreign churches.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONSTITUTION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH OF GENEVA.

§ 98. Literature.

I. Calvin’s Institutio Christ. Religionis, the fourth book, which treats of the Church and the Sacraments.—Les | ordinances | ecclésiastiques de | l’église de Genève. | Item | l’ordre des escoles | de la dite cité.|  Gen., 1541. 92 pp. 4°; another ed., 1562, 110 pp. Reprinted in Opera, X. fol. 15–30. (Projet d’ordinances ecclésiastiques, 1541). The same vol. contains also L’ordre du College de Genève; Leges academicae (1559), fol. 65–90; and Les ordinances ecclésiastiques de 1561, fol. 91–124. Comp. the Prolegomena, IX. sq., and also the earliest document on the organization and worship of the Church of Geneva, 1537, fol. 5–14.

II. Dr. Georg Weber: Geschichtliche Darstellung des Calvinismus im Verhältniss zum Staat in Genf und Frankreich bis zur Aufhebung des Edikts von Nantes, Heidelberg, 1836 (pp. 872). The first two chapters only (pp. 1–32) treat of Calvin and Geneva; the greater part of the book is a history of the French Reformation till 1685.—C. B. Hundeshagen: Ueber den Einfluss des Calvinismus auf die Ideen von Staat, und staats-bürgerlicher Freiheit, Bern, 1842.—*Amédée Roget: L’église et l’état à Genève du vivant de Calvin. Étude d’histoire politico-ecclèsiastique, Genève, 1867 (pp. 92). Comp. also his Histoire du peuple de Genève depuis la réforme jusqu’à l’escalade (1536–1602), 1870–1883, 7 vols.

III. Henry, Part II. chs. III.–VI. Comp. his small biography, pp. 165–196.—Dyer, ch. III.—Stähelin, bk. IV. (vol. I. 319 sqq.).—Kampschulte, I. 385–480. This is the end of his work; vols. II. and III. were prevented by his premature death (Dec. 3, 1872), and intrusted to Professor Cornelius of Munich (a friend and colleague of the late Dr. Döllinger), but he has so far only published a few papers on special points, in the Transactions of the Munich Academy. See p. 230. Merle D’Aubigné, bk. XI. chs. XXII.–XXIV. (vol. VII. 73 sqq.). These are his last chapters on Calvin, coming down to February, 1542; the continuation was prevented by his death in 1872.

§ 99. Calvin’s Idea of the Holy Catholic Church.

During his sojourn at Strassburg, Calvin matured his views on the Church and the Sacraments, and embodied them in the fourth book of the second edition of his Institutes, which appeared in the same year as his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1539). His ideal was high and comprehensive, far beyond what he was able to realize in the little district of Geneva. "In no respect, perhaps," says a distinguished Scotch Presbyterian scholar,648 "are the Institutes more remarkable than in a certain comprehensiveness and catholicity of tone, which to many will appear strangely associated with his name. But Calvin was far too enlightened not to recognize the grandeur of the Catholic idea which had descended through so many ages; this idea had, in truth, for such a mind as his, special attractions, and his own system mainly sought to give to the same idea a new and higher form. The narrowness and intolerance of his ecclesiastical rule did not so much spring out of the general principles laid down in the Institutes, as from his special interpretation and application of these principles."

When Paul was a prisoner in Rome, chained to a heathen soldier, and when Christianity was confined to a small band of humble believers scattered through a hostile world, he described to the Ephesians his sublime conception of the Church as the mystical "body of Christ, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all."  Yet in the same and other epistles he finds it necessary to warn the members of this holy brotherhood even against such vulgar vices as theft, intemperance, and fornication. The contradiction is only apparent, and disappears in the distinction between the ideal and the real, the essential and the phenomenal, the Church as it is in the mind of Christ and the Church as it is in the masses of nominal Christians.

The same apparent contradiction we find in Calvin, in Luther, and other Reformers. They cherished the deepest respect for the holy Catholic Church of Christ, and yet felt it their duty to protest with all their might against the abuses and corruptions of the actual Church of their age, and especially against the papal hierarchy which ruled it with despotic power. We may go further back to the protest of the Hebrew Prophets against the corrupt priesthood. Christ himself, who recognized the divine economy of the history of Israel, and came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, attacked with withering severity the self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses’ seat, and was condemned by the high priest and the Jewish hierarchy to the death of the cross. These scriptural antecedents help very much to understand and to justify the course of the Reformers.

Nothing can be more truly Catholic than Calvin’s description of the historic Church. It reminds one of the finest passages in St. Cyprian and St. Augustin. After explaining the meaning of the article of the Apostles’ Creed on the holy Catholic Church, as embracing not only the visible Church, but all God’s elect, living and departed, he thus speaks of the visible or historic Catholic Church:649

"As our present design is to treat of the visible Church, we may learn even from the title of mother, how useful and even necessary it is for us to know her; since there is no other way of entrance into life, unless we are conceived by her, born of her, nourished at her breast, and continually preserved under her care and government till we are divested of this mortal flesh and become I like the angels’ (Matt. 22:30). For our infirmity will not admit of our dismission from her school; we must continue under her instruction and discipline to the end of our lives. It is also to be remarked that out of her bosom there can be no hope of remission of sins, or any salvation, according to the testimony of Isaiah (37:32) and Joel (2:32); which is confirmed by Ezekiel (13:9), when he denounces that those whom God excludes from the heavenly life shalt not be enrolled among his people. So, on the contrary, those who devote themselves to the service of God are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem. For which reason the Psalmist says, ’Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the prosperity of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance’ (Ps106:4, 5). In these words the paternal favor of God, and the peculiar testimony of the spiritual life, are restricted to his flock, to teach us that it is always fatally dangerous to be separated from the Church."650

So strong are the claims of the visible Church upon us that even abounding corruptions cannot justify a secession. Reasoning against the Anabaptists and other radicals who endeavored to build up a new Church of converts directly from the Bible, without any regard to the intervening historical Church, he says:651

"Dreadful are those descriptions in which Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Habakkuk, and others, deplore the disorders of the Church at Jerusalem. There was such general and extreme corruption in the people, in the magistrates, and in the priests that Isaiah does not hesitate to compare Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah. Religion was partly despised, partly corrupted. Their manners were generally disgraced by thefts, robberies, treacheries, murders, and similar crimes.

"Nevertheless, the Prophets on this account neither raised themselves new churches, nor built new altars for the oblation of separate sacrifices; but whatever were the characters of the people, yet because they considered that God had deposited his word among that nation, and instituted the ceremonies in which he was there worshipped, they lifted up pure hands to him even in the congregation of the impious. If they had thought that they contracted any contagion from these services, surely they would have suffered a hundred deaths rather than have permitted themselves to be dragged to them. There was nothing, therefore, to prevent their departure from them, but the desire of preserving the unity of the Church.

"But if the holy Prophets were restrained by a sense of duty from forsaking the Church on account of the numerous and enormous crimes which were practiced, not by a few individuals, but almost by the whole nation, it is extreme arrogance in us, if we presume immediately to withdraw from the communion of a Church, where the conduct of all the members is not compatible either with our judgment or even with the Christian profession.

"Now what kind of an age was that of Christ and his Apostles?  Yet the desperate impiety of the Pharisees, and the dissolute lives everywhere led by the people, could not prevent them from using the same sacrifices, and assembling in the same temple with others, for the public exercises of religion. How did this happen, but from a knowledge that the society of the wicked could not contaminate those who, with pure consciences, united with them in the same solemnities.

"If any one pay no deference to the Prophets and the Apostles, let him at least acquiesce in the authority of Christ. Cyprian has excellently remarked: ’Although tares, or impure vessels, are found in the Church, yet this is not a reason why we should withdraw from it. It only behooves us to labor that we may be the wheat, and to use our utmost endeavors and exertions that we may be vessels of gold or of silver. But to break in pieces the vessels of earth belongs to the Lord alone, to whom a rod of iron is also given. Nor let any one arrogate to himself what is the exclusive province of the Son of God, by pretending to fan the floor, clear away the chaff, and separate all the tares by the judgment of man. This is proud obstinacy, and sacrilegious presumption, originating in a corrupt frenzy.’

"Let these two points, then, be considered as decided: first, that he who voluntarily deserts the external communion of the Church where the Word of God is preached, and the sacraments are administered, is without any excuse; secondly, that the faults either of few persons or of many form no obstacles to a due profession of our faith in the use of the ceremonies instituted by God; because the pious conscience is not wounded by the unworthiness of any other individual, whether he be a pastor or a private person; nor are the mysteries less pure and salutary to a holy and upright man, because they are received at the same time by the impure."

How, then, with such high churchly views, could Calvin justify his separation from the Roman Church in which he was born and trained?  He vindicated his position in the Answer to Sadolet, from which we have given large extracts.652  He did it more fully in his masterly work, "On the Necessity of Reforming the Church," which, "in the name of all who wish Christ to reign," he addressed to the Emperor Charles V. and the Diet to be assembled at Speier in February, 1544. It is replete with weighty arguments and accurate learning, and by far one of the ablest controversial books of that age.653  The following is a passage bearing upon this point:654

"The last and principal charge which they bring against us is, that we have made a schism in the Church. And here they fiercely maintain against us, that for no reason is it lawful to break the unity of the Church. How far they do us injustice the books of our authors bear witness. Now, however, let them take this brief reply—that we neither dissent from the Church, nor are aliens from her communion. But, as by this specious name of Church, they are wont to cast dust in the eyes even of persons otherwise pious and right-hearted, I beseech your Imperial Majesty, and you, Most Illustrious Princes, first, to divest yourselves of all prejudice, that you may give an impartial ear to our defence; secondly, not to be instantly terrified on hearing the name of Church, but to remember that the Prophets and Apostles had, with the pretended Church of their days, a contest similar to that which you see us have in the present day with the Roman pontiff and his whole train. When they, by the command of God, inveighed freely against idolatry, superstition, and the profanation of the temple, and its sacred rites, against the carelessness and lethargy of priests,—and against the general avarice, cruelty, and licentiousness, they were constantly met with the objection which our opponents have ever in their mouths—that by dissenting from the common opinion, they violated the unity of the Church. The ordinary government of the Church was then vested in the priests. They had not presumptuously arrogated it to themselves, but God had conferred it upon them by his law. It would occupy too much time to point out all the instances. Let us, therefore, be contented with a single instance, in the case of Jeremiah.

"He had to do with the whole college of priests, and the arms with which they attacked him were these: ’Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet’ (Jer. 18:18). They had among them a high priest, to reject whose judgment was a capital crime, and they had the whole order to which God himself had committed the government of the Jewish Church concurring with them. If the unity of the Church is violated by him, who, instructed solely by Divine truth, opposes himself to ordinary authority, the Prophet must be a schismatic; because, not at all deterred by such menaces from warring with the impiety of the priests, he steadily persevered.

"That the eternal truth of God preached by the Prophets and Apostles, is on our side, we are prepared to show, and it is indeed easy for any man to perceive. But all that is done is to assail us with this battering-ram, ’Nothing can excuse withdrawal from the Church.’  We deny out and out that we do so. With what, then, do they urge us?  With nothing more than this, that to them belongs the ordinary government of the Church. But how much better right had the enemies of Jeremiah to use this argument?  To them, at all events, there still remained a legal priesthood, instituted by God; so that their vocation was unquestionable. Those who in the present day have the name of prelates, cannot prove their vocation by any laws, human or divine. Be it, however, that in this respect both are on a footing, still, unless they previously convict the holy Prophet of schism, they will prove nothing against us by that specious title of Church.

"I have thus mentioned one Prophet as an example. But all the others declare that they had the same battle to fight—wicked priests endeavoring to overwhelm them by a perversion of this term Church. And how did the Apostles act?  Was it not necessary for them, in professing themselves the servants of Christ, to declare war upon the synagogue ?  And yet the office and dignity of the priesthood were not then lost. But it will be said that, though the Prophets and Apostles dissented from wicked priests in doctrine, they still cultivated communion with them in sacrifices and prayers. I admit they did, provided they were not forced into idolatry. But which of the Prophets do we read of as having ever sacrificed in Bethel?  Which of the faithful, do we suppose, communicated in impure sacrifices, when the temple was polluted by Antiochus, and profane rites were introduced into it?

"On the whole, we conclude that the servants of God never felt themselves obstructed by this empty title of Church, when it was put forward to support the reign of impiety. It is not enough, therefore, simply to throw out the name of Church, but judgment must be used to ascertain which is the true Church, and what is the nature of its unity. And the thing necessary to be attended to, first of all, is, to beware of separating the Church from Christ, its Head. When I say Christ, I include the doctrine of his gospel which he sealed with his blood. Our adversaries, therefore, if they would persuade us that they are the true Church must, first of all, show that the true doctrine of God is among them; and this is the meaning of what we often repeat, viz. that the uniform characteristics of a well-ordered Church are the preaching of sound doctrine, and the pure administration of the Sacraments. For, since Paul declares (Eph. 2:20) that the Church is ’built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,’ it necessarily follows that any church not resting on this foundation must immediately fall.

"I come now to our opponents.

"They, no doubt, boast in lofty terms that Christ is on their side. As soon as they exhibit him in their word we will believe it, but not sooner. They, in the same way, insist on the term Church. But where, we ask, is that doctrine which Paul declares to be the only foundation of the Church?  Doubtless, your Imperial Majesty now sees that there is a vast difference between assailing us with the reality and assailing us only with the name of Church. We are as ready to confess as they are that those who abandon the Church, the common mother of the faithful, the ’pillar and ground of the truth,’ revolt from Christ also; but we mean a Church which, from incorruptible seed, begets children for immortality, and, when begotten, nourishes them with spiritual food (that seed and food being the Word of God), and which, by its ministry, preserves entire the truth which God deposited in its bosom. This mark is in no degree doubtful, in no degree fallacious, and it is the mark which God himself impressed upon his Church, that she might be discerned thereby. Do we seem unjust in demanding to see this mark?  Wherever it exists not, no face of a Church is seen. If the name, merely, is put forward, we have only to quote the well-known passage of Jeremiah, ’Trust ye not in lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these’ (Jer. 7:4). Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?’ (Jer. 7:11).

"In like manner, the unity of the Church, such as Paul describes it, we protest we hold sacred, and we denounce anathema against all who in any way violate it. The principle from which Paul derives unity is, that there is ’one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,’ who hath called us into one hope (Eph. 4:4–6). Therefore, we are one body and one spirit, as is here enjoined, if we adhere to God only, i.e. be bound to each other by the tie of faith. We ought, moreover, to remember what is said in another passage, ’that faith cometh by the word of God.’  Let it, therefore, be a fixed point, that a holy unity exists amongst us, when, consenting in pure doctrine, we are united in Christ alone. And, indeed, if concurrence in any kind of doctrine were sufficient, in what possible way could the Church of God be distinguished from the impious factions of the wicked?  Wherefore, the Apostle shortly after adds, that the ministry was instituted ’for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God: that we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ’ (Eph. 4:12–15). Could he more plainly comprise the whole unity of the Church in a holy agreement in true doctrine, than when he calls us back to Christ and to faith, which is included in the knowledge of him, and to obedience to the truth?  Nor is any lengthened demonstration of this needed by those who believe the Church to be that sheepfold of which Christ alone is the Shepherd, and where his voice only is heard, and distinguished from the voice of strangers. And this is confirmed by Paul, when he prays for the Romans, ’The God of patience and consolation grant you to be of the same mind one with another, according to Christ Jesus; that, ye may with one accord and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 15:5, 6).

"Let our opponents, then, in the first instance, draw near to Christ, and then let them convict us of schism, in daring to dissent from them in doctrine. But, since I have made it plain that Christ is banished from their society, and the doctrine of his gospel exterminated, their charge against us simply amounts to this, that we adhere to Christ in preference to them. For what man, pray, will believe that those who refuse to be led away from Christ and his truth, in order to deliver themselves into the power of men, are thereby schismatics, and deserters from the communion of the Church?

"I certainly admit that respect is to be shown to priests, and that there is great danger in despising ordinary authority. If, then, they were to say, that we are not at our own hand to resist ordinary authority, we should have no difficulty in subscribing to the sentiment. For we are not so rude as not to see what confusion must arise when the authority of rulers is not respected. Let pastors, then, have their due honor—an honor, however, not derogatory in any degree to the supreme authority of Christ, to whom it behooves them and every man to be subject. For God declares, by Malachi, that the government of the Israelitish Church was committed to the priests, under the condition that they should faithfully fulfil the covenant made with them, viz. that ’their lips should keep knowledge,’ and expound the law to the people (Mal. 2:7). When the priests altogether failed in this condition, he declares, that, by their perfidy, the covenant was abrogated and made null. Pastors are mistaken if they imagine that they are invested with the government of the Church on any other terms than that of being ministers and witnesses of the truth of God. As long, therefore, as, in opposition to the law and to the nature of their office, they eagerly wage war with the truth of God, let them not arrogate to themselves a power which God never bestowed, either formerly on priests, or now on bishops, on any other terms than those which have been mentioned."

When the Romanists demanded miracles from the Reformers as a test of their innovations, Calvin replied that this was "unreasonable; for we forgo no new gospel, but retain the very same, whose truth was confirmed by all the miracles ever wrought by Christ and the Apostles. The opponents have this advantage over us, that they confirm their faith by continual miracles even to this day. But they allege miracles which are calculated to unsettle a mind otherwise well established; for they are frivolous and ridiculous, or vain and false. Nor, if they were ever so preternatural, ought they to have any weight in opposition to the truth of God, since the name of God ought to be sanctified in all places and at all times, whether by miraculous events or by the common order of nature."655

Luther had the same Catholic Church feeling, and gave strong expression to it in his writings against the radicals, and in a letter to the Margrave of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia (1532), in which he says: "It is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the unanimous testimony of the entire holy Christian Church as held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the world."656  And yet he asserted the right of conscience and private judgment at Worms against popes and Councils, because he deemed it "unsafe and dangerous to do anything against the conscience bound in the Word of God."

§ 100. The Visible and Invisible Church.

Comp. vol. VI. § 85, and the literature there quoted.

A distinction between real and nominal Christianity is as old as the Church, and has never been denied. "Many are called, but few are chosen."  We can know all that are actually called, but God only knows those who are truly chosen. The kindred parables of the tares and of the net illustrate the fact that the kingdom of heaven in this world includes good and bad men, and that a final separation will not take place before the judgment day.657  Paul distinguishes between an outward circumcision of the flesh and an inward circumcision of the heart; between a carnal Israel and a spiritual Israel; and he speaks of Gentiles who are ignorant of the written law, yet, do by nature the things of the law," and will judge those who," with the letter and circumcision, are transgressors of the law."  He thereby intimates that God’s mercy is not bounded by the limits of the visible Church.658

Augustin makes a distinction between the true body of Christ, which consists of the elect children of God from the beginning, and the mixed body of Christ, which comprehends all the baptized.659  In the Middle Ages the Church was identified with the dominion of the papacy, and the Cyprianic maxim, "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus," was narrowed into "Extra ecclesiam Romanam nulla salus," to the exclusion not only of heretical sects, but also of the Oriental Church. Wiclif and Hus, in opposition to the corruptions of the papal Church, renewed the distinction of Augustin, under a different and less happy designation of the congregation of the predestinated or the elect, and the congregation of those who are only foreknown.660

The Reformers introduced the terminology "visible" and invisible" Church. By this they did not mean two distinct and separate Churches, but rather two classes of Christians within the same outward communion. The invisible Church is in the visible Church, as the soul is in the body, or the kernel in the shell, but God only knows with certainty who belong to the invisible Church and will ultimately be saved; and in this sense his true children are invisible, that is, not certainly recognizable and known to men. We may object to the terminology, but the distinction is real and important.

Luther, who openly adopted the view of Hus at the disputation of Leipzig, first applied the term "invisible" to the true Church, which is meant in the Apostles’ Creed.661  The Augsburg Confession defines the Church to be "the congregation of saints (or believers), in which the Gospel is purely taught, and the sacraments are rightly administered."  This definition is too narrow for the invisible Church, and would exclude the Baptists and Quakers.662

The Reformed system of doctrine extends the domain of the invisible or true Church and the possibility of salvation beyond the boundaries of the visible Church, and holds that the Spirit of God is not bound to the ordinary means of grace, but may work and save "when, where, and how he pleases."663  Zwingli first introduced both terms. He meant by the "visible" Church the community of all who bear the Christian name, by the "invisible" Church the totality of true believers of all ages.664  And he included in the invisible Church all the pious heathen, and all infants dying in infancy, whether baptized or not. In this liberal view, however, he stood almost alone in his age and anticipated modern opinions.665

Calvin defines the distinction more clearly and fully than any of the Reformers, and his view passed into the Second Helvetic, the Scotch, the Westminster, and other Reformed Confessions.

"The Church," he says,666 "is used in the sacred Scriptures in two senses. Sometimes when they mention ’the Church’ they intend that which is really such in the sight of God (quae revera est coram Deo), into which none are received but those who by adoption and grace are the children of God, and by the sanctification of the Spirit are the true members of Christ. And then it comprehends not only the saints at any one time resident on earth, but all the elect who have lived from the beginning of the world.

"But the word ’Church’ is frequently used in the Scriptures to designate the whole multitude dispersed all over the world, who profess to worship one God and Jesus Christ, who are initiated into his faith by baptism, who testify their unity in true doctrine and charity by a participation of the sacred supper, who consent to the word of the Lord, and preserve the ministry which Christ has instituted for the purpose of preaching it. In this Church are included many hypocrites, who have nothing of Christ but the name and appearance; many persons, ambitious, avaricious, envious, slanderous, and dissolute in their lives, who are tolerated for a time, either because they cannot be convicted by a legitimate process, or because discipline is not always maintained with sufficient vigor.

"As it is necessary therefore to believe that Church which is invisible to us, and known to God alone, so this Church, which is visible to men, we are commanded to honor, and to maintain communion with it."

Calvin does not go as far as Zwingli in extending the number of the elect, but there is nothing in his principles to forbid such extension. He makes salvation dependent upon God’s sovereign grace, and not upon the visible means of grace. He expressly includes in the invisible Church "all the elect who have lived from the beginning of the world," and even those who had no historical knowledge of Christ. He says, in agreement with Augustin:, According to the secret predestination of God, there are many sheep without the pale of the Church, and many wolves within it. For God knows and seals those who know not either him or themselves. Of those who externally bear his seal, his eyes alone can discern who are unfeignedly holy, and will persevere to the end, which is the completion of salvation."  But in the judgment of charity, he continues, we must acknowledge as members of the Church "all those who, by a confession of faith, an exemplary life, and a participation in the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with ourselves."667

§ 101. The Civil Government.

On civil government see Institutes, IV. ch. XX., De politica administratione (in Tholuck’s ed. II. 475–496).

Calvin discusses the nature and function of Civil Government at length, and with the ability and wisdom of a statesman, in the last chapter of his Institutes.

He holds that the Church is consistent with all forms of government and social conditions, even with civil servitude (1 Cor. 7:21). But some kind of government is as necessary to mankind in this world as bread and water, light and air; and it is far more excellent, since it protects life and property, maintains law and order, and enables men to live peaceably together, and to pursue their several avocations.

As to the different forms of government, Calvin discusses the merits of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. All are compatible with Christianity and command our obedience. All have their advantages and dangers. Monarchy easily degenerates into despotism, aristocracy into oligarchy or the faction of a few, democracy into mobocracy and sedition. He gives the preference to a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He infused a more aristocratic spirit into the democratic Republic of Geneva, and saw a precedent in the government of Moses with seventy elders elected from the wisest and best of the people. It is safer, he thinks, for the government to be in the hands of many than of one, for they may afford each other assistance, and restrain arrogance and ambition.

Civil government is of divine origin. "All power is ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1). "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice" (Prov. 8:15). The magistrates are called "gods "(Ps. 82:1, 6; a passage indorsed by Christ, John 10:35), because they are invested with God’s authority and act as his vicegerents. "Civil magistracy is not only holy and legitimate, but far the most sacred and honorable in human life."  Submission to lawful government is the duty of every citizen. To resist it, is to set at naught the ordinance of God (Rom. 13:3, 4; comp. Tit. 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13, 14). Paul admonishes Timothy that in the public congregation "supplication, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for kings and for all that are in high places; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity" (1 Tim. 2:1, 2). We must obey and pray even for bad rulers, and endure in patience and humility till God exercises his judgment. The punishment of evildoers belongs only to God and to the magistrates. Sometimes God punishes the people by wicked rulers, and punishes these by other bad rulers. We, as individuals, must suffer rather than rebel. Only in one case are we required to disobey,—when the civil ruler commands us to do anything against the will of God and against our conscience. Then, we must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).668

Calvin was thus a strong upholder of authority in the State. He did not advise or encourage the active resistance of the Huguenots at the beginning of the civil wars in France, although he gave a tacit consent.

Calvin extended the authority and duty of civil government to both Tables of the Law. He assigns to it, in Christian society, the office,—"to cherish and support the external worship of God, to preserve the true doctrine of religion, to defend the constitution of the Church, and to regulate our lives in a manner requisite for the social welfare."  He proves this view from the Old Testament, and quotes the passage in Isaiah 49:23, that "kings shall be nursing-fathers and queens nursing-mothers" to the Church. He refers to the examples of Moses, Joshua and the Judges, David, Josiah, and Hezekiah.

Here is the critical point where religious persecution by the State comes in as an inevitable consequence. Offences against the Church are offences against the State, and vice versa, and deserve punishment by fines, imprisonment, exile, and, if necessary, by death. On this ground the execution of Servetus and other heretics was justified by all who held the same theory; fortunately, it has no support whatever in the New Testament, but is directly contrary to the spirit of the gospel.

Geneva, after the emancipation from the power of the bishop and the duke of Savoy, was a self-governing Republic under the protection of Bern and the Swiss Confederacy. The civil government assumed the episcopal power, and exercised it first in favor, then against, and at last permanently for the Reformation.

The Republic was composed of all citizens of age, who met annually in general assembly (conseil général), usually in St. Peter’s, under the sounding of bells, and trumpets, for the ratification of laws and the election of officers. The administrative power was lodged in four Syndics; the legislative power in two Councils, the Council of Sixty, and the Council of Two Hundred. The former existed since 1457; the latter was instituted in 1526, after the alliance with Freiburg and Bern, in imitation of the Constitution of these and other Swiss cities. The Sixty were by right members of the Council of Two Hundred. In 1530 the Two Hundred assumed the right to elect the ordinary or little Council of Twenty-Five, who were a part of the two other Councils and had previously been elected by the Syndics. The real power lay in the hands of the Syndics and the little Council of Twenty-five, which formed an oligarchy with legislative, executive, and judicial functions.

Calvin did not change these fundamental institutions of the Republic, but he infused into them a Christian and disciplinary spirit, and improved the legislation. He was appointed, together with the Syndics Roset, Porral, and Balard, to draw up a new code of laws, as early as Nov. 1, 1541.669  He devoted much time to this work, and paid attention even to the minutest details concerning the administration of justice, the city police, the military, the firemen, the watchmen on the tower, and the like.670

The city showed her gratitude by presenting him with "a cask of old wine" for these extra services.671

Many of his regulations continued in legal force down to the eighteenth century.

Calvin was consulted in all important affairs of the State, and his advice was usually followed; but he never occupied a political or civil office. He was not even a citizen of Geneva till 1559 (eighteen years after his second arrival), and never appeared before the Councils except when some ecclesiastical question was debated, or when his advice was asked. It is a mistake, therefore, to call him the head of the Republic, except in a purely intellectual and moral sense.

The code of laws was revised with the aid of Calvin by his friend, Germain Colladon (1510–1594), an eminent juris-consult and member of a distinguished family of French refugees who settled at Geneva. The revised code was begun in 1560, and published in 1568.672

Among the laws of Geneva we mention a press law, the oldest in Switzerland, dated Feb. 15, 1560. Laws against the freedom of the press existed before, especially in Spain. Alexander VI., a Spaniard, issued a bull in 1501, instructing the German prelates to exercise a close supervision over printers. Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic established a censorship which prohibited, under severe penalties, the printing, importation, and sale of any book that had not previously passed an examination and obtained a license. Rome adopted the same policy. Other countries, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, followed the example. In Russia, the severest restrictions of the press are still in force.

The press law of Geneva was comparatively moderate. It put the press under the supervision of three prudent and experienced men, to be appointed by the government. These men have authority to appoint able and trustworthy printers, to examine every book before it is printed, to prevent popish, heretical, and infidel publications, to protect the publisher against piracy; but Bibles, catechisms, prayers, and psalms may be printed by all publishers; new translations of the Scriptures are privileged in the first edition.673

The censorship of the press continued in Geneva till the eighteenth century. In 1600 the Council forbade the printing of the essays of Montaigne; in 1763 Rousseau’s Emile was condemned to be burned.

It should be noted, however, that under the influence of Calvin Geneva became one of the most important places of publication. The famous Robert Stephen (Etienne, 1503–1559), being censured by the Sorbonne of Paris, settled in Geneva after the death of his father, Henri, as a professed Protestant, and printed there two editions of the Hebrew Bible, and an edition of the Greek Testament, with the Vulgate and Erasmian versions, in 1551, which for the first time contains the versicular division of the text according to our present usage. To him we owe the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (third ed. 1543, in 4 vols.), and to his son, Henri, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (1572, 4 vols.). Beza published several editions of his Greek Testament in Geneva (1565–1598), which were chiefly used by King James’ translators. In the same city appeared the English version of the New Testament by Whittingham, 1557; then of the whole Bible, 1560. This is the so-called "Geneva Bible," or "Breeches Bible" (from the rendering of Gen. 3:7), which was for a long time the most popular English version, and passed through about two hundred editions from 1560 to 1630.674  Geneva has well maintained its literary reputation to this day.

§ 102. Distinctive Principles of Calvin’s Church Polity.

Calvin was a legislator and the founder of a new system of church polity and discipline. He had a legal training, which was of much use to him in organizing the Reformed Church at Geneva. If he had lived in the Middle Ages, he might have been a Hildebrand or an Innocent III. But the spirit of the Reformation required a reconstruction of church government on an evangelical and popular basis.

Calvin laid great stress on the outward organization and order of the Church, but in subordination to sound doctrine and the inner spiritual life. He compares the former to the body, while the doctrine which regulates the worship of God, and points out the way of salvation, is the soul which animates the body and renders it lively and active.675

The Calvinistic system of church polity is based upon the following principles, which have exerted great influence in the development of Protestantism: —

1. The autonomy of the Church, or its right of self-government under the sole headship of Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church likewise claims autonomy, but in a hierarchical sense, and under the supreme control of the pope, who, as the visible vicar of Christ, demands passive obedience from priests and people. Calvin vests the self-government in the Christian congregation, and regards all the ministers of the gospel, in their official character, as ambassadors and representatives of Christ. "Christ alone," he says, "ought to rule and reign in the Church, and to have all preeminence in it, and this government ought to be exercised and administered solely by his word; yet as he dwells not among us by a visible presence, so as to make an audible declaration of his will to us, he uses for this purpose the ministry of men whom he employs as his delegates, not to transfer his right and honor to them, but only that he may himself do his work by their lips; just as an artificer makes use of an instrument in the performance of his work."676

In practice, however, the autonomy both of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and of the Protestant Churches is more or less curtailed and checked by the civil government wherever Church and State are united, and where the State supports the Church. For self-government requires self-support. Calvin intended to institute synods, and to make the clergy independent of State patronage, but in this he did not succeed.

The Lutheran Reformers subjected the Church to the secular rulers, and made her an obedient handmaid of the State; but they complained bitterly of the selfish and arbitrary misgovernment of the princes. The congregations in most Lutheran countries of Europe have no voice in the election of their own pastors. The Reformers of German Switzerland conceded more power to the people in a democratic republic, and introduced synods, but they likewise put the supreme power into the hands of the civil government of the several cantons. In monarchical England the governorship of the Church was usurped and exercised by Henry VIII. and, in a milder form, by Queen Elizabeth and her successors, and acquiesced in by the bishops. The churches under Calvin’s influence always maintained, at least in theory, the independence of the Church in all spiritual affairs, and the right of individual congregations in the election of their own pastors. Calvin derives this right from the Greek verb used in the passage which says that Paul and Barnabas ordained presbyters by the suffrages or votes of the people.677  "Those two apostles," he says, "ordained the presbyters; but the whole multitude, according to the custom observed among the Greeks, declared by the elevation of their hands who was the object of their choice … . It is not credible that Paul granted to Timothy and Titus more power (1 Tim. 5:22 Tit. 1:5) than he assumed to himself."  After quoting with approval two passages from Cyprian, he concludes that the apostolic and best mode of electing pastors is by the consent of the whole people; yet other pastors ought to preside over the election, "to guard the multitude from falling into improprieties through inconstancy, intrigue, and confusion."678

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland has labored and suffered more than any Protestant Church for the principle of the sole headship of Christ; first against popery, then against prelacy, and last against patronage. In North America this principle is almost universally acknowledged.

2. The parity of the clergy as distinct from a jure divino hierarchy whether papal or prelatical.

Calvin maintained, with Jerome, the original identity of bishops (overseers) and presbyters (elders); and in this he has the support of the best modern exegetes and historians.679

But he did not on this account reject all distinctions among ministers, which rest on human right and historical development, nor deny the right of adapting the Church order to varying conditions and circumstances. He was not an exclusive or bigoted Presbyterian. He had no objection to episcopacy in large countries, like Poland and England, provided the evangelical doctrines be preached.680  In his correspondence with Archbishop Cranmer and Protector Somerset, he suggests various improvements, but does not oppose episcopacy. In a long letter to King Sigismund Augustus of Poland, he even approves of it in that kingdom.681

But Presbyterianism and Congregationalism are more congenial to the spirit of Calvinism than prelacy. In the conflict with Anglican prelacy during the seventeenth century, the Calvinistic Churches became exclusively Presbyterian in Scotland, or Independent in England and New England. During the same period, in opposition to the enforced introduction of the Anglican liturgy, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists abandoned liturgical worship; while Calvin and the Reformed Churches on the Continent approved of forms of devotion in connection with free prayer in public worship.

3. The participation of the Christian laity in Church government and discipline. This is a very important feature.

In the Roman Church the laity are passive, and have no share whatever in legislation. Theirs is simply to obey the priesthood. Luther first effectively proclaimed the doctrine of the general priesthood of the laity, but Calvin put it into an organized form, and made the laity a regular agency in the local congregation, and in the synods and Councils of the Church. His views are gaining ground in other denominations, and are almost generally adopted in the United States. Even the Protestant Episcopal Church gives, in the lower house of her diocesan and general conventions, to the laity an equal representation with the clergy.

4. Strict discipline to be exercised jointly by ministers and lay-elders, with the consent of the whole congregation.

In this point Calvin went far beyond the older Reformers, and achieved greater success, as we shall see hereafter.

5. Union of Church and State on a theocratic basis, if possible, or separation, if necessary to secure the purity and self-government of the Church. This requires fuller exposition.

§ 103. Church and State.

Calvin’s Church polity is usually styled a theocracy, by friends in praise, by foes in censure.682  This is true, but in a qualified sense. He aimed at the sole rule of Christ and his Word both in Church and State, but without mixture and interference. The two powers were almost equally balanced in Geneva. The early Puritan colonies in New England were an imitation of the Geneva model.

In theory, Calvin made a clearer distinction between the spiritual and secular powers than was usual in his age, when both were inextricably interwoven and confused. He compares the Church to the soul, the State to the body. The one has to do with the spiritual and eternal welfare of man, the other with the affairs of this present, transitory life.683  Each is independent and sovereign in its own sphere. He was opposed to any interference of the civil government with the internal affairs and discipline of the Church. He was displeased with the servile condition of the clergy in Germany and in Bern, and often complained (even on his death-bed) of the interference of Bern with the Church in Geneva. But he was equally opposed to a clerical control of civil and political affairs, and confined the Church to the spiritual sword. He never held a civil office. The ministers were not eligible to the magistracy and the Councils.

Yet he did not go so far as to separate the two powers; on the contrary, he united them as closely as their different functions would admit. His fundamental idea was, that God alone is Lord on earth as well as in heaven, and should rule supreme in Church and State. In this sense he was theocratic or christocratic. God uses Church and State as two distinct but co-operative arms for the upbuilding of Christ’s kingdom. The law for both is the revealed will of God in the Holy Scriptures. The Church gives moral support to the State, while the State gives temporal support to the Church.

Calvin’s ideal of Christian society resembles that of Hildebrand, but differs from it on the following important points:

1. Calvin’s theory professed to be based upon the Scriptures, as the only rule of faith and practice; the papal theocracy drew its support chiefly from tradition and the Canon law.

Calvin’s arguments, however, are exclusively taken from the Old Testament. The Calvinistic as well as the papal theocracy is Mosaic and legalistic rather than Christian and evangelical. The Apostolic Church had no connection whatever with the State except to obey its legitimate demands. Christ’s rule is expressed in that wisest word ever uttered on this subject: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s" (Matt. 22:21).

2. Calvin recognized only the invisible headship of Christ, and rejected the papal claim to world-dominion as an anti-christian usurpation.

3. He had a much higher view of the State than the popes. He considered it equally divine in origin and authority as the Church, and fully independent in all temporal matters; while the papal hierarchy in the Middle Ages often overruled the State by ecclesiastical authority. Hildebrand compared the Church to the sun, the State to the moon which borrows her light from the sun, and claimed and exercised the right of deposing kings and absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance. Boniface VIII. formulated this claim in the well-known theory of the two swords.

4. Calvin’s theocracy was based upon the sovereignty of the Christian people and the general priesthood of believers; the papal theocracy was an exclusive rule of the priesthood.

In practice, the two powers were not as clearly distinct at Geneva as in theory. They often intermeddled with each other. The ministers criticised the acts of the magistrates from the pulpit; and the magistrates called the ministers to account for their sermons. Discipline was a common territory for both, and the Consistory was a mixed body of clergymen and laymen. The government fixed and paid the salaries of the pastors, and approved their nomination and transfer from one parish to another. None could even absent himself for a length of time without leave by the Council. The Large Council voted on the Confession of Faith and Discipline, and gave them the power of law.

The Reformed Church of Geneva, in one word, was an established Church or State Church, and continues so to this day, though no more in an exclusive sense, but with liberty to Dissenters, whether Catholic or Protestant, who have of late been increasing by immigration.

The union of Church and State is tacitly assumed or directly asserted in nearly all the Protestant Confessions of Faith, which make it the duty of the civil government to support religion, to protect orthodoxy, and to punish heresy.684

In modern times the character of the State and its attitude towards the Church has undergone a material change in Switzerland as well as in other countries. The State is no longer identified with a particular Church, and has become either indifferent, or hostile, or tolerant. It is composed of members of all creeds, and should, in the name of justice, support all, or none; in either case allowing to all full liberty as far as is consistent with the public peace.

Under these circumstances the Church has to choose between liberty with self-support, and dependence with government support. If Calvin lived at this day, he would undoubtedly prefer the former. Calvinists and Presbyterians have taken the lead in the struggle for Church independence against the Erastian and rationalistic encroachments of the civil power. Free Churches have been organized in French Switzerland (Geneva, Vaud, Neuchàtel), in France, Holland, and especially in Presbyterian Scotland. The heroic sacrifices of the Free Church of Scotland in seceding from the Established Church, and making full provision for all her wants by voluntary contributions, form one of the brightest chapters in the history of Protestantism. The Dissenters in England have always maintained and exercised the voluntary principle since their legal recognition by the Toleration Act of 1689. In the British Provinces and in North America, all denominations are on a basis of equality before the law, and enjoy, under the protection of the government, full liberty of self-government with the corresponding duty of self-support. The condition of modern society demands a peaceful separation of Church and State, or a Free Church in a Free State.

§ 104. The Ecclesiastical Ordinances.

Comp. § 83 (352 sqq.) and § 86 (367 sqq.). Calvin discusses the ministerial office in the third chapter of the fourth book of his Institutes.

Having considered Calvin’s general principles on Church government, we proceed to their introduction and application in the little Republic of Geneva.

We have seen that in his first interview with the Syndics and Council after his return, Sept. 13, 1541, he insisted on the introduction of an ecclesiastical constitution and discipline in accordance with the Word of God and the primitive Church.685  The Council complied with his wishes, and intrusted the work to the five pastors (Calvin, Viret, Jacques Bernard, Henry de la Mare, and Aymé Champereau) and six councillors (decided Guillermins), to whom was added Jean Balard as advisory member. The document was prepared under his directing influence, submitted to the Councils, slightly altered, and solemnly ratified by a general assembly of citizens (the Conseil général), Jan. 2, 1542, as the fundamental church law of the Republic of Geneva.686  Its essential features have passed into the constitution and discipline of most of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches of Europe and America.

The official text of the "Ordinances "is preserved in the Registers of the Venerable Company, and opens with the following introduction: —

"In the name of God Almighty, we, the Syndics, Small and Great Councils with our people assembled at the sound of the trumpet and the great clock, according to our ancient customs, have considered that the matter above all others worthy of recommendation is to preserve the doctrine of the holy gospel of our Lord in its purity, to protect the Christian Church, to instruct faithfully the youth, and to provide a hospital for the proper support of the poor,—all of which cannot be done without a definite order and rule of life, from which every estate may learn the duty of its office. For this reason we have deemed it wise to reduce the spiritual government, such as our Lord has shown us and instituted by his Word, to a good form to be introduced and observed among us. Therefore we have ordered and established to follow and to guard in our city and territory the following ecclesiastical polity, taken from the gospel of Jesus Christ."687

The document is inspired by a high view of the dignity and responsibility of the ministry of the gospel, such as we find in the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians and Ephesians. "It may be confidently asserted," says a Catholic historian,688 "that in no religious society of Christian Europe the clergy was assigned a position so dignified, prominent, and influential as in the Church which Calvin built up in Geneva."

In his Institutes Calvin distinguishes three extraordinary officers of the Church,—Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists,—and four ordinary officers—Pastors (Bishops), Teachers, Ancients (Lay-elders), and Deacons.689

Extraordinary officers were raised up by the Lord at the beginning of his kingdom, and are raised up on special occasions when required "by the necessity of the times."  The Reformers must be regarded as a secondary class of Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists. Calvin himself intimates the parallel when he says:690 "I do not deny that ever since that period [of the Apostles] God has sometimes raised up Apostles or Evangelists in their stead, as he has done in our own time. For there was a necessity for such persons to recover the Church from the defection of Antichrist. Nevertheless, I call this an extraordinary office, because it has no place in well-constituted Churches."691

The extraordinary offices cannot be regulated by law. The Ordinances, therefore, give directions only for the ordinary offices of the Church.

1. The Pastors,692 or ministers of the gospel, as Calvin likes to call them, have "to preach the Word of God, to instruct, to admonish, to exhort and reprove in public and private, to administer the sacraments, and, jointly with the elders, to exercise discipline."693

No one can be a pastor who is not called, examined, ordained, or installed. In the examination, the candidate must give satisfactory evidence of his knowledge of the Scriptures, his soundness in doctrine, purity of motives, and integrity of character. If he proves worthy of the office, he receives a testimony to that effect from the Council to be presented to the congregation. If he fails in the examination, he must wait for another call and submit to another examination. The best mode of installation is by prayer and laying on of hands, according to the practice of the Apostles and the early Church; but it should be done without superstition.

All the ministers are to hold weekly conferences for mutual instruction, edification, correction, and encouragement in their official duties. No one should absent himself without a good excuse. This duty devolves also on the pastors of the country districts. If doctrinal controversies arise, the ministers settle them by discussion; and if they cannot agree, the matter is referred to the magistracy.

Discipline is to be strictly exercised over the ministers, and a number of sins and vices are specified which cannot be tolerated among them, such as heresy, schism, rebellion against ecclesiastical order, blasphemy, impurity, falsehood, perjury, usury, avarice, dancing, negligence in the study of the Scriptures.

The Ordinances prescribe for Sunday a service in the morning, catechism—that is, instruction of little children—at noon, a second sermon in the afternoon at three o’clock. Three sermons are to be preached during the week—Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. For these services are required, in the city, five regular ministers and three assistant ministers.

In the Institutes, Calvin describes the office of Pastors to be the same as that of the Apostles, except in the extent of their field and authority. They are all ambassadors of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1). What Paul says of himself applies to them all: "Woe is to me, if I preach not the gospel" (1 Cor. 9:16).

2. The office of the Teachers694 is to instruct the believers in sound doctrine, in order that the purity of the gospel be not corrupted by ignorance or false opinions.

Calvin derived the distinction between Teachers and Pastors from Eph. 4:11, and states the difference to consist in this, "that Teachers have no official concern with discipline, nor the administration of the sacraments, nor admonitions and exhortations, but only with the interpretation of the Scripture; whereas the pastoral office includes all these duties."695  He also says that the Teachers sustain the same resemblance to the ancient Prophets as the Pastors to the Apostles. He himself had the prophetic gift of luminous and convincing teaching in a rare degree. Theological Professors occupy the highest rank among Teachers.

3. The Ancients or Lay-Elders watch over the good conduct of the people. They must be God-fearing and wise men, without and above suspicion. Twelve were to be selected—two from the Little Council, four from the Council of the Sixty, and six from the Council of the Two Hundred. Each was to be assigned a special district of the city.

This is a very important office in the Presbyterian Churches. In the Institutes, Calvin. quotes in support of it the gifts of government.696  "From the beginning," he says,697 "every Church has had its senate or council, composed of pious, grave, and holy men, who were invested with that jurisdiction in the correction of vices … . This office of government is necessary in every age."  He makes a distinction between two classes of Elders,—Ruling Elders and Teaching Elders,—on the basis of 1 Tim. 5:17:, Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and in teaching."698  The exegetical foundation for such a distinction is weak, but the ruling Lay-Eldership has proved a very useful institution and great help to the teaching ministry.

4. The Deacons have the care of the poor and the sick, and of the hospitals. They must prevent mendicancy which is contrary to good order.699  Two classes of Deacons are distinguished, those who administer alms, and those who devote themselves to the poor and sick.700

5. Baptism is to be performed in the Church, and only by ministers and their assistants. The names of the children and their parents must be entered in the Church registers.

6. The Lord’s Supper is to be administered every month in one of the Churches, and at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The elements must be distributed reverently by the ministers and deacons. None is to be admitted before having been instructed in the catechism and made a profession of his faith.

The remainder of the Ordinances contains regulations about marriage, burial, the visitation of the sick, and prisons.

The Ministers and Ancients are to meet once a week on Thursday, to discuss together the state of the Church and to exercise discipline. The object of discipline is to bring the sinner back to the Lord.701

The Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541 were revised and enlarged by Calvin, and adopted by the Little and Large Councils, Nov. 13, 1561. This edition contains also the oaths of allegiance of the Ministers, Pastors, Doctors, Elders, Deacons, and the members of the Consistory, and fuller directions concerning the administration of the sacraments, marriage, the visitation of the sick and prisoners, the election of members of the Consistory, and excommunication.702

A new revision of the Ordinances was made and adopted by the General Council, June 3, 1576.

§ 105. The Venerable Company and the Consistory.

The Church of Geneva consisted of all baptized and professing Christians subject to discipline. It had, at the time of Calvin, a uniform creed; Romanists and sectarians being excluded. It was represented and governed by the Venerable Company and the Consistory.

1. The Venerable Company was a purely clerical body, consisting of all the pastors of the city and district of Geneva. It had no political power. It was intrusted with the general supervision of all strictly ecclesiastical affairs, especially the education, qualification, ordination, and installation of the ministers of the gospel. But the consent of the civil government and the congregation was necessary for the final induction to the ministry. Thus the pastors and the people were to co-operate.

2. The Consistory or Presbytery was a mixed body of clergymen and laymen, and larger and more influential than the Venerable Company. It represented the union of Church and State. It embraced, at the time of Calvin, five city Pastors and twelve Seniors or Lay-Elders, two of whom were selected from the Council of Sixty and ten from the Council of Two Hundred. The laymen, therefore, had the majority; but the clerical element was comparatively fixed, while the Elders were elected annually under the influence of the clergy. A Syndic was the constitutional head.703  Calvin never presided in form, but ruled the proceedings in fact by his superior intelligence and weighty judgment.704

The Consistory went into operation immediately after the adoption of the Ordinances, and met every Thursday. The reports begin from the tenth meeting, which was held on Thursday, Feb. 16, 1542.705

The duty of the Consistory was the maintenance and exercise of discipline. Every house was to be visited annually by a Minister and Elder. To facilitate the working of this system the city was divided into three parishes—St. Peter’s, the Magdalen, and St. Gervais. Calvin officiated in St. Peter’s.

The Consistorial Court was the controlling power in the Church of Geneva. It has often been misrepresented as a sort of tribunal of Inquisition or Star Chamber. But it could only use the spiritual sword, and had nothing to do with civil and temporal punishments, which belonged exclusively to the Council. The names of Gruet, Bolsec, and Servetus do not even appear in its records.706  Calvin wrote to the ministers of Zürich, Nov. 26, 1553: "The Consistory has no civil jurisdiction, but only the right to reprove according to the Word of God, and its severest punishment is excommunication."707  He wisely provided for the preponderance of the lay-element.

At first the Council, following the example of Basel and Bern, denied to the Consistory the right of excommunication.708  The persons excluded from the Lord’s Table usually appealed to the Council, which often interceded in their behalf or directed them to make an apology to the Consistory. There was also a difference of opinion as regards the consequences of excommunication. The Consistory demanded that persons cut off from the Church for grievous offenses and scandalous lives should be banished from the State for a year, or until they repent; but the Council did not agree. Calvin could not always carry out his views, and acted on the principle to tolerate what he could not abolish.709  It was only after his final victory over the Libertines in 1555 that the Council conceded to the Consistory the undisputed power of excommunication.710

From these facts we may judge with what right Calvin has so often been called "the Pope of Geneva," mostly by way of reproach.711  As far as the designation is true, it is an involuntary tribute to his genius and character. For he had no material support, and he never used his influence for gain or personal ends. The Genevese knew him well and obeyed him freely.

§ 106. Calvin’s Theory of Discipline.

Discipline is so important an element in Calvin’s Church polity, that it must be more fully considered. Discipline was the cause of his expulsion from Geneva, the basis of his flourishing French congregation at Strassburg, the chief reason for his recall, the condition of his acceptance, the struggle and triumph of his life, and the secret of his moral influence to this day. His rigorous discipline, based on his rigorous creed, educated the heroic French, Dutch, English, Scotch, and American Puritans (using this word in a wider sense for strict Calvinists). It fortified them for their trials and persecutions, and made them promoters of civil and religious liberty.

The severity of the system has passed away, even in Geneva, Scotland, and New England, but the result remains in the power of self-government, the capacity for organization, the order and practical efficiency which characterizes the Reformed Churches in Europe and America.

Calvin’s great aim was to realize the purity and holiness of the Church as far as human weakness will permit. He kept constantly in view the ideal of "a Church without spot or wrinkle or blemish," which Paul describes in the Epistle to the Ephesians 5:27. He wanted every Christian to be consistent with his profession, to show his faith by good works, and to strive to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. He was the only one among the Reformers who attempted and who measurably carried out this sublime idea in a whole community.

Luther thought the preaching of the gospel would bring about all the necessary changes, but he had to complain bitterly, at the end of his life, of the dissolute manners of the students and citizens at Wittenberg, and seriously thought of leaving the city in disgust.712

Calvin knew well enough that the ideal could only be imperfectly realized in this world, but that it was none the less our duty to strive after perfection. He often quotes Augustin against the Donatists who dreamed of an imaginary purity of the Church, like the Anabaptists who, he observes, "acknowledge no congregation to belong to Christ, unless it be in all respects conspicuous for angelic perfection, and who, under pretext of zeal, destroy all edification."  He consents to Augustin’s remark that "schemes of separation are pernicious and sacrilegious, because they proceed from pride and impiety, and disturb the good who are weak, more than they correct the wicked who are bold."  In commenting on the parable of the net which gathered of every kind (Matt. 13:47), he says: "The Church while on earth is mixed with good and bad and will never be free of all impurity … . Although God, who is a God of order, commands us to exercise discipline, he allows for a time to hypocrites a place among believers until he shall set up his kingdom in its perfection on the last day. As far as we are concerned, we must strive to correct vices and to purge the Church of impurity, although she will not be free from all stain and blemish till Christ shall separate the goats from the sheep."713

Calvin discusses the subject of discipline in the twelfth chapter of the fourth book of his Institutes. His views are sound and scriptural. "No society," he says at the outset, "no house can be preserved in proper condition without discipline. The Church ought to be the most orderly society of all. As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so discipline forms the nerves and ligaments which connect the members and keep each in its proper place. It serves as a bridle to curb and restrain the refractory who resist the doctrine of Christ; or as a spur to stimulate the inactive; and sometimes as a father’s rod to chastise, in mercy and with the gentleness of the spirit of Christ, those who have grievously fallen away. It is the only remedy against a dreadful desolation in the Church."

One of the greatest objections which he had against the Roman Church of his day was the utter want of discipline in constant violation of the canons. He asserts, without fear of contradiction, that "there was scarcely one of the (Roman) bishops, and not one in a hundred of the parochial clergy, who, if sentence were to be passed upon his conduct according to the ancient canons, would not be excommunicated, or, to say the very least, deposed from his office."714

He distinguished between the discipline of the people and the discipline of the clergy.715

1. The discipline of members has three degrees: private admonition; a second admonition in the presence of witnesses or before the Church; and, in case of persistent disobedience, exclusion from the Lord’s Table. This is in accordance with the rule of Christ (Matt. 18:15–17). The object of discipline is threefold: to protect the body of the Church against contamination and profanation; to guard the individual members against the corrupting influence of constant association with the wicked; and to bring the offender to repentance that he may be saved and restored to the fellowship of the faithful. Excommunication and subsequent restoration were exercised by Paul in the case of the Corinthian offender, and by the Church in her purer days. Even the Emperor Theodosius was excluded from communion by Bishop Ambrose of Milan on account of the massacre perpetrated in Thessalonica at his order.716

Excommunication should be exercised only against flagitious crimes which disgrace the Christian profession; such as adultery, fornication, theft, robbery, sedition, perjury, contempt of God and his authority. Nor should it be exercised by the bishop or pastor alone, but by the body of elders, and, as is pointed out by Paul, "with the knowledge and approbation of the congregation; in such a manner, however, that the multitude of the people may not direct the proceeding, but may watch over it as witnesses and guardians, that nothing be done by a few persons from any improper motive."  Moreover, "the severity of the Church must be tempered by a spirit of gentleness. For there is constant need of the greatest caution, according to the injunction of Paul concerning a person who may have been censured, ’lest by any means such a one should be swallowed up with his overmuch sorrow’ (2 Cor. 2:7); for thus a remedy would become a poison."

When the sinner gives reasonable evidence of repentance he is to be restored. Calvin objects to "the excessive austerity of the ancients," who refused to readmit the lapsed. He approves of the course of Cyprian, who says: "Our patience and kindness and tenderness is ready for all who come; I wish all to return into the Church; I wish all our fellow-soldiers to be assembled in the camp of Christ, and all our brethren to be received into the house of God our Father. I forgive everything; I conceal much. With ready and sincere affection I embrace those who return with penitence."  Calvin adds: "Such as are expelled from the Church, it is not for us to expunge from the number of the elect, or to despair of them as already lost. It is proper to consider them as strangers to the Church, and consequently to Christ, but this only as long as they remain in a state of exclusion. And even then let us hope better things of them for the future, and not cease to pray to God on their behalf. Let us not condemn to eternal death the offender, nor prescribe laws to the mercy of God who can change the worst of men into the best."  He makes a distinction between excommunication and anathema; the former censures and punishes with a view to reformation and restoration; the latter precludes all pardon, and devotes a person to eternal perdition. Anathema ought never to be resorted to, or at least very rarely. Church members ought to exert all means in their power to promote the reformation of an excommunicated person, and admonish him not as an enemy, but as a brother (2 Cor. 2:8). "Unless this tenderness be observed by the individual members as well as by the Church collectively, our discipline will be in danger of speedily degenerating into cruelty."

2. As regards the discipline of the clergy, Calvin objects to the exemption of ministers from civil jurisdiction, and wants them to be subject to the same punishments as laymen. They are more guilty, as they ought to set a good example. He quotes with approval the ancient canons, so shamefully neglected in the Roman Church of his day, against hunting, gambling, feasting, usury, commerce, and secular amusements. He recommends annual visitations and synods for the correction and examination of delinquent clergymen.

But he rejects the prohibition of clerical marriage as an "act of impious tyranny contrary to the Word of God and to every principle of justice. With what impunity fornication rages among them [the papal clergy] it is unnecessary to remark; emboldened by their polluted celibacy, they have become hardened to every crime … . Paul places marriage among the virtues of a bishop; these men teach that it is a vice not to be tolerated in the clergy … . Christ has been pleased to put such honor upon marriage as to make it an image of his sacred union with the Church. What could be said more in commendation of the dignity of marriage?  With what face can that be called impure and polluted, which exhibits a similitude of the spiritual grace of Christ?... Marriage is honorable in all; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4). The Apostles themselves have proved by their own example that marriage is not unbecoming the sanctity of any office, however excellent: for Paul testifies that they not only retained their wives, but took them about with them (1 Cor. 9:5)."

§ 107. The Exercise of Discipline in Geneva.

Calvin succeeded after a fierce struggle in infusing the Church of Geneva with his views on discipline. The Consistory and the Council rivalled with each other, under his inspiration, in puritanic zeal for the correction of immorality; but their zeal sometimes transgressed the dictates of wisdom and moderation. The union of Church and State rests on the false assumption that all citizens are members of the Church and subject to discipline.

Dancing, gambling, drunkenness, the frequentation of taverns, profanity, luxury, excesses at public entertainments, extravagance and immodesty in dress, licentious or irreligious songs were forbidden, and punished by censure or fine or imprisonment. Even the number of dishes at meals was regulated. Drunkards were fined three sols for each offence. Habitual gamblers were exposed in the pillory with cords around their neck. Reading of bad books and immoral novels was also prohibited, and the popular "Amadis de Gaul "was ordered to be destroyed (1559). A morality play on "the Acts of the Apostles," after it had been performed several times, and been attended even by the Council, was forbidden. Parents were warned against naming their children after Roman Catholic saints who nourished certain superstitions; instead of them the names of Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah became common. (This preference for Old Testament names was carried even further by the Puritans of England and New England.) The death penalty against heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy, and the barbarous custom of the torture were retained. Adultery, after a second offence, was likewise punished by death.

These were prohibitive and protective laws intended to prevent and punish irreligion and immorality.

But the Council introduced also coercive laws, which are contrary to the nature of religion, and apt to breed hypocrisy or infidelity. Attendance on public worship was commanded on penalty of three sols.717  When a refugee from Lyons once gratefully exclaimed, "How glorious is the liberty we enjoy here," a woman bitterly replied: "Free indeed we formerly were to attend mass, but now we are compelled to hear a sermon."  Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine into the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment. No respect was paid to person, rank, or sex. The strictest impartiality was maintained, and members of the oldest and most distinguished families, ladies as well as gentlemen, were treated with the same severity as poor and obscure people.

Let us give a summary of the most striking cases of discipline. Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing (which was usually connected with excesses). Bonivard, the hero of political liberty, and a friend of Calvin, was cited before the Consistory because he had played at dice with Clement Marot, the poet, for a quart of wine.718  A man was banished from the city for three months because, on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly: "He prays a beautiful psalm."719  A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: "This is the best Psalter."  A lady of Ferrara was expelled from the city for expressing sympathy with the Libertines, and abusing Calvin and the Consistory. Three men who had laughed during the sermon were imprisoned for three days. Another had to do public penance for neglecting to commune on Whitsunday. Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes. A man who swore by the "body and blood of Christ" was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square. A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil (diabless). A girl was beheaded for striking her parents, to vindicate the dignity of the fifth commandment.

A banker was executed for repeated adultery, but he died penitent and praised God for the triumph of justice. A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham, as the minister wished, and saying that he would sooner keep his son unbaptized for fifteen years.720  Bolsec, Gentilis, and Castellio were expelled from the Republic for heretical opinions. Men and women were burnt for witchcraft. Gruet was beheaded for sedition and atheism. Servetus was burnt for heresy and blasphemy. The last is the most flagrant case which, more than all others combined, has exposed the name of Calvin to abuse and execration; but it should be remembered that he wished to substitute the milder punishment of the sword for the stake, and in this point at least he was in advance of the public opinion and usual practice of his age.721

The official acts of the Council from 1541 to 1559 exhibit a dark chapter of censures, fines, imprisonments, and executions. During the ravages of the pestilence in 1545 more than twenty men and women were burnt alive for witchcraft, and a wicked conspiracy to spread the horrible disease.722  From 1542 to 1546 fifty-eight judgments of death and seventy-six decrees of banishments were passed.723  During the years 1558 and 1559 the cases of various punishments for all sorts of offences amounted to four hundred and fourteen—a very large proportion for a population of 20,000.

The enemies of Calvin-Bolsec, Audin, Galiffe (father and son)—make the most of these facts, and, ignoring all the good he has done, condemn the great Reformer as a heartless and cruel tyrant.724

It is impossible to deny that this kind of legislation savors more of the austerity of old heathen Rome and the Levitical code than of the gospel of Christ, and that the actual exercise of discipline was often petty, pedantic, and unnecessarily severe. Calvin was, as he himself confessed, not free from impatience, passion, and anger, which were increased by his physical infirmities; but he was influenced by an honest zeal for the purity of the Church, and not by personal malice. When he was threatened by Perrin and the Favre family with a second expulsion, he wrote to Perrin: "Such threats make no impression upon me. I did not return to Geneva to obtain leisure and profit, nor will it be to my sorrow if I should have to leave it again. It was the welfare and safety of the Church and State that induced me to return."725  He must be judged by the standard of his own, and not of our, age. The most cruel of those laws—against witchcraft, heresy, and blasphemy—were inherited from the Catholic Middle Ages, and continued in force in all countries of Europe, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, down to the end of the seventeenth century. Tolerance is a modern virtue. We shall return to this subject again in the chapter on Servetus.

§ 108. Calvin’s Struggle with the Patriots and Libertines.

Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se nomment Spirituelz.  Geneva, 1545; 2d ed. 1547. Reprinted in Opera, vol. VII. 145–252. Latin version by Nic. des Gallars, 1546. Farel also wrote a French book against the Libertines, Geneva, 1550.

The works of J. A. Galiffe and J. B. G. Galiffe on the Genevese families and the criminal processes of Perrin, Ameaux, Berthelier, etc., quoted above, p. 224. Hostile to Calvin. Audin, chs. XXXV., XXXVI., and XLIII. Likewise hostile.

F. Trechsel: Libertiner, in the first ed. of Herzog’s Encykl., VIII. 375–380 (omitted in the second ed.), and his Antitrinitarier, I. 177 sqq.—Henry II. 402 sqq.—Hundeshagen in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1845, pp. 866 sqq.—Dyer, 177, 198, 368, 390 sqq.—Stähelin, I. 382 sqq.; 457 sqq. On the side of Calvin.

Charles Schmidt: Les Libertins spirituels, Bâle, 1876 (pp. xiv. and 251). From a manuscript autograph of one J. F., an adept of the sect, written between 1547 and 1550. An extract in La France Protest. III. 590 sq.

It required a ten years’ conflict till Calvin succeeded in carrying out his system of discipline. The opposition began to manifest itself in 1545, during the raging of the pestilence; it culminated at the trial of Servetus in 1553, and it finally broke down in 1555.

Calvin compares himself in this controversy with David fighting against the Philistines. "If I should describe," he says in the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms (1557),726 "the course of my struggles by which the Lord has exercised me from this period, it would make a long story, but a brief reference may suffice. It affords me no slight consolation that David preceded me in these conflicts. For as the Philistines and other foreign foes vexed this holy king by continual wars, and as the wickedness and treachery of the faithless of his own house grieved him still more, so was I on all sides assailed, and had scarcely a moment’s rest from outward or inward struggles. But when Satan had made so many efforts to destroy our Church, it came at length to this, that I, unwarlike and timid as I am,727 found myself compelled to oppose my own body to the murderous assault, and so to ward it off. Five years long had we to struggle without ceasing for the upholding of discipline; for these evil-doers were endowed with too great a degree of power to be easily overcome; and a portion of the people, perverted by their means, wished only for an unbridled freedom. To such worthless men, despisers of the holy law, the ruin of the Church was a matter of utter indifference, could they but obtain the liberty to do whatever they desired. Many were induced by necessity and hunger, some by ambition or by a shameful desire of gain, to attempt a general overthrow, and to risk their own ruin as well as ours, rather than be subject to the laws. Scarcely a single thing, I believe, was left unattempted by them during this long period which we might not suppose to have been prepared in the workshop of Satan. Their wretched designs could only be attended with a shameful disappointment. A melancholy drama was thus presented to me; for much as they deserved all possible punishment, I should have been rejoiced to see them passing their lives in peace and respectability: which might have been the case, had they not wholly rejected every kind of prudent admonition."

At one time he almost despaired of success. He wrote to Farel, Dec. 14, 1547: "Affairs are in such a state of confusion that I despair of being able longer to retain the Church, at least by my own endeavors. May the Lord hear your incessant prayers in our behalf."  And to Viret he wrote, on Dec. 17, 1547: "Wickedness has now reached such a pitch here that I hardly hope that the Church can be upheld much longer, at least by means of my ministry. Believe me, my power is broken, unless God stretch forth his hand."728

The adversaries of Calvin were, with a few exceptions, the same who had driven him away in 1538. They never cordially consented to his recall. They yielded for a time to the pressure of public opinion and political necessity; but when he carried out the scheme of discipline much more rigorously than they had expected, they showed their old hostility, and took advantage of every censurable act of the Consistory or Council. They hated him worse than the pope.729  They abhorred the very word "discipline."  They resorted to personal indignities and every device of intimidation; they nicknamed him "Cain," and gave his name to the dogs of the street; they insulted him on his way to the lecture-room; they fired one night fifty shots before his bed-chamber; they threatened him in the pulpit; they approached the communion table to wrest the sacred elements from his hands, but he refused to profane the sacrament and overawed them. On another occasion he walked into the midst of an excited crowd and offered his breast to their daggers. As late as October 15, 1554, he wrote to an old friend: "Dogs bark at me on all sides. Everywhere I am saluted with the name of ’heretic,’ and all the calumnies that can possibly be invented are heaped upon me; in a word, the enemies among my own flock attack me with greater bitterness than my declared enemies among the papists."730

And yet in the midst of these troubles be continued to discharge all his duties, and found time to write some of his most important works.

It seems incredible that a man of feeble constitution and physical timidity should have been able to triumph over such determined and ferocious opposition. The explanation is in the justice of his cause, and the moral purity and "majesty of his character, which so strongly impressed the Genevese.

We must distinguish two parties among Calvin’s enemies—the Patriots, who opposed him on political grounds, and the Libertines, who hated his religion. It would be unjust to charge all the Patriots with the irreligious sentiments of the Libertines. But they made common cause for the overthrow of Calvin and his detested system of discipline. They had many followers among the discontented and dissolute rabble which abounds in every large city, and is always ready for a revolution, having nothing to lose and everything to gain.

1. The Patriots or Children of Geneva (Enfants de Genève), as they called themselves, belonged to some of the oldest and most influential families of Geneva,—Favre (or Fabri), Perrin, Vandel, Berthelier, Ameaux.731  They or their fathers had taken an active part in the achievement of political independence, and even in the introduction of the Reformation, as a means of protecting that independence. But they did not care for the positive doctrines of the Reformation. They wanted liberty without law. They resisted every encroachment on their personal freedom and love of amusements. They hated the evangelical discipline more than the yoke of Savoy.

They also disliked Calvin as a foreigner, who was not even naturalized before 1559. In the pride and prejudice of nativism, they denounced the refugees, who had sacrificed home and fortune to religion, as a set of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bankrupts, and spies of the Reformer. "These dogs of Frenchmen," they said, "are the cause that we are slaves, and must bow before Calvin and confess our sins. Let the preachers and their gang go to the —." They deprived the refugees of the right to carry arms, and opposed their admission to the rights of citizenship, as there was danger that they might outnumber and outvote the native citizens. Calvin secured, in 1559, through a majority of the Council, at one time, the admission of three hundred of these refugees, mostly Frenchmen.

The Patriots disliked also the protectorate of Bern, although Bern never favored the strict theology and discipline of Calvin.

2. The Libertines732 or Spirituels, as they called themselves, were far worse than the Patriots. They formed the opposite extreme to the severe discipline of Calvin. He declares that they were the most pernicious of all the sects that appeared since the time of the ancient Gnostics and Manichaeans, and that they answer the prophetic description in the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. He traces their immediate origin to Coppin of Yssel and Quintin of Hennegau, in the Netherlands, and to an ex-priest, Pocquet or Pocques, who spent some time in Geneva, and wanted to get a certificate from Calvin; but Calvin saw through the man and refused it. They revived the antinomian doctrines of the mediaeval sect of the "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," a branch of the Beghards, who had their headquarters at Cologne and the Lower Rhine, and emancipated themselves not only from the Church, but also from the laws of morality.733

The Libertines described by Calvin were antinomian pantheists. They confounded the boundaries of truth and error, of right and wrong. Under the pretext of the freedom of the spirit, they advocated the unbridled license of the flesh. Their spiritualism ended in carnal materialism. They taught that there is but one spirit, the Spirit of God, who lives in all creatures, which are nothing without him. "What I or you do," said Quintin, "is done by God, and what God does, we do; for he is in us."  Sin is a mere negation or privation, yea, an idle illusion which disappears as soon as it is known and disregarded. Salvation consists in the deliverance from the phantom of sin. There is no Satan, and no angels, good or bad. They denied the truth of the gospel history. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ have only a symbolical meaning to show us that sin does not exist for us.

The Libertines taught the community of goods and of women, and elevated spiritual marriage above legal marriage, which is merely carnal and not binding. The wife of Ameaux justified her wild licentiousness by the doctrine of the communion of saints, and by the first commandment of God given to man: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth (Gen. 1:28).

The Libertines rejected the Scriptures as a dead letter, or they resorted to wild allegorical interpretations to suit their fancies. They gave to each of the Apostles a ridiculous nickname.734  Some carried their system to downright atheism and blasphemous anti-Christianity.

They used a peculiar jargon, like the Gypsies, and distorted common words into a mysterious meaning. They were experts in the art of simulation and justified pious fraud by the parables of Christ. They accommodated themselves to Catholics or Protestants according to circumstances, and concealed their real opinions from the uninitiated.

The sect made progress among the higher classes of France, where they converted about four thousand persons. Quintin and Pocquet insinuated themselves into the favor of Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who protected and supported them at her little court at Nérac, yet without adopting their opinions and practices.735  She took offence at Calvin’s severe attack upon them. He justified his course in a reply of April 28, 1545, which is a fine specimen of courtesy, frankness, and manly dignity. Calvin assured the queen, whose protection he had himself enjoyed while a fugitive from persecution, that he intended no reflection on her honor, or disrespect to her royal majesty, and that he wrote simply in obedience to his duty as a minister. "Even a dog barks if he sees any one assault his master. How could I be silent if God’s truth is assailed?736 ... As for your saying that you would not like to have such a servant as myself, I confess that I am not qualified to render you any great service, nor have you need of it … . Nevertheless, the disposition is not wanting, and your disdain shall not prevent my being at heart your humble servant. For the rest, those who know me are well aware that I have never studied to enter into the courts of princes, for I was never tempted to court worldly honors.737  For I have good reason to be contented with the service of that good Master, who has accepted me and retained me in the honorable office which I hold, however contemptible in the eyes of the world. I should, indeed, be ungrateful beyond measure if I did not prefer this condition to all the riches and honors of the world."738

Beza says: "It was owing to Calvin that this horrid sect, in which all the most monstrous heresies of ancient times were renewed, was kept within the confines of Holland and the adjacent provinces."

During the trial of Servetus the political and religious Libertines combined in an organized effort for the overthrow of Calvin at Geneva, but were finally defeated by a failure of an attempted rebellion in May, 1555.

§ 109. The Leaders of the Libertines and their punishment: — Gruet, Perrin, Ameaux, Vandel, Berthelier.

We shall now give sketches of the chief Patriots and Libertines, and their quarrels with Calvin and his system of discipline. The heretical opponents—Bolsec, Castellio, Servetus—will be considered in a separate chapter on the Doctrinal Controversies.

1. Jacques Gruet was the first victim of Calvin’s discipline who suffered death for sedition and blasphemy. His case is the most famous next to that of Servetus. Gruet739 was a Libertine of the worst type, both politically and religiously, and would have been condemned to death in any other country at that time. He was a Patriot descended from an old and respectable family, and formerly a canon. He lay under suspicion of having attempted to poison Viret in 1535. He wrote verses against Calvin and the refugees which (as Audin says) were "more malignant than poetic."  He was a regular frequenter of taverns, and opposed to any rules in Church and State which interfered with personal liberty. When in church, he looked boldly and defiantly into the face of the preacher. He first adopted the Bernese fashion of wearing breeches with plaits at the knees, and openly defied the discipline of the Consistory which forbade it. Calvin called him a scurvy fellow, and gives an unfavorable account of his moral and religious character, which the facts fully justified.

On the 27th of June, 1547, a few days after the wife of Perrin had defied the Consistory,740 the following libel, written in the Savoyard patois, was attached to Calvin’s pulpit in St. Peter’s Church: —

"Gross hypocrite (Gros panfar), thou and thy companions will gain little by your pains. If you do not save yourselves by flight, nobody shall prevent your overthrow, and you will curse the hour when you left your monkery. Warning has been already given that the devil and his renegade priests were come hither to ruin every thing. But after people have suffered long they avenge themselves. Take care that you are not served like Mons. Verle of Fribourg.741  We will not have so many masters. Mark well what I say."742

The Council arrested Jacques Gruet, who had been heard uttering threats against Calvin a few days previously, and had written obscene and impious verses and letters. In his house were found a copy of Calvin’s work against the Libertines with a marginal note, Toutes folies, and several papers and letters filled with abuse of Calvin as a haughty, ambitious, and obstinate hypocrite who wished to be adored, and to rob the pope of his honor. There were also found two Latin pages in Gruet’s handwriting, in which the Scriptures were ridiculed, Christ blasphemed, and the immortality of the soul called a dream and a fable.

Gruet was tortured every day for a month, after the inhuman fashion of that age.743  He confessed that he had affixed the libel, and that the papers found in his house belonged to him; but he refused to name any accomplices. He was condemned for religious, moral, and political offences; being found guilty of expressing contempt for religion; of declaring that laws, both human and divine, were but the work of man’s caprice; and that fornication was not criminal when both parties were consenting; and of threatening the clergy and the Council itself.744

He was beheaded on the 26th of July, 1547. The execution instead of terrifying the Libertines made them more furious than ever. Three days afterwards the Council was informed that more than twenty young men had entered into a conspiracy to throw Calvin and his colleagues into the Rhone. He could not walk the streets without being insulted and threatened.

Two or three years after the death of Gruet, a treatise of his was discovered full of horrible blasphemies against Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Prophets and Apostles, against the Scriptures, and all religion. He aimed to show that the founders of Judaism and Christianity were criminals, and that Christ was justly crucified. Some have confounded this treatise with the book "De tribus Impostoribus," which dates from the age of Emperor Frederick II., and puts Moses, Christ, and Mohammed on a level as religious impostors.

Gruet’s book was, at Calvin’s advice, publicly burnt by the hangman before Gruet’s house, May 22, 1550.745

2. Ami Perrin (Amy Pierre), the military chief (captain-general) of the Republic, was the most popular and influential leader of the Patriotic party. He had been one of the earliest promoters of the Reformation, though from political rather than religious motives; he had protected Farel against the violence of the priests, and had been appointed deputy to Strassburg to bring Calvin back to Geneva.746  He was one of the six lay-members who, with the ministers, drew up the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1542, and for some time he supported Calvin in his reforms. He could wield the sword, but not the pen. He was vain, ambitious, pretentious, and theatrical. Calvin called him, in derision, the stage-emperor, who played now the "Caesar comicus," and now the "Caesar tragicus."747

Perrin’s wife, Francesca, was a daughter of François Favre, who had taken a prominent part in the political struggle against Savoy, but mistook freedom for license, and hated Calvin as a tyrant and a hypocrite. His whole family shared in this hatred. Francesca had an excessive fondness for dancing and revelry, a violent temper, and an abusive tongue. Calvin called her "Penthesilea" (the queen of the Amazons who fought a battle against the Greeks, and was slain by Achilles), and "a prodigious fury."748

He found out too late that it is foolish and dangerous to quarrel with a woman. He forgot Christ’s conduct towards the adulteress, and Mary Magdalene.

A disgraceful scene which took place at a wedding in the house of the widow Balthazar at Belle Rive, brought upon the family of Favre, who were present, the censure of the Consistory and the punishment of the Council. Perrin, his wife and her father were imprisoned for a few weeks in April, 1546. Favre refused to make any confession, and went to prison, shouting: "Liberty!  Liberty!  I would give a thousand crowns to have a general council."749  Perrin made an humble apology to the Consistory. Calvin plainly told the Favre family that as long as they lived in Geneva they must obey the laws of Geneva, though every one of them wore a diadem.750

From this time on Perrin stood at the head of the opposition to Calvin. He loudly denounced the Consistory as a popish tribunal. He secured so much influence over the Council that a majority voted, in March, 1547, to take the control of Church discipline into their own hands. But Calvin made such a vigorous resistance that it was determined eventually to abide by the established Ordinances.751

Perrin was sent as ambassador to Paris (April 26, 1547), and was received there with much distinction. The Cardinal du Bellay sounded him as to whether some French troops under his command could be stationed at Geneva to frustrate the hostile designs of the German emperor against Switzerland. He gave a conditional consent. This created a suspicion against his loyalty.

During his absence, Madame Perrin and her father were again summoned before the Consistory for bacchanalian conduct (June 23, 1547). Favre refused to appear. Francesca denied the right of the court to take cognizance of her private life. When remonstrated with, she flew into a passion, and abused the preacher, Abel Poupin, as "a reviler, a slanderer of her father, a coarse swine-herd, and a malicious liar."  She was again imprisoned, but escaped with one of her sons. Meeting Abel Poupin at the gate of the city she insulted him afresh and "even more shamefully than before."752

On the 27th of June, 1547, Gruet’s threatening libel was published.753  Calvin was reported to have been killed. He received letters from Burgogne and Lyons that the Children of Geneva had offered five hundred crowns for his head.754

On his return from Paris, Perrin was capitally indicted on a charge of treason, and of intending to quarter two hundred French cavalry, under his own command, at Geneva. His excuse was that he had accepted the command of these troops with the reservation of the approval of the government of Geneva. Bonivard, the old soldier of liberty and prisoner of Chillon, took part against Perrin. The ambassadors of Bern endeavored to divert the storm from the head of Perrin to the French ambassador Maigret the Magnifique. Perrin was expelled from the Council, and the office of captain-general was suppressed, but he was released from prison, together with his wife and father-in-law, Nov. 29, 1547.755

The Libertines summoned all their forces for a reaction. They called a meeting of the Council of Two Hundred, where they expected most support. A violent scene took place on Dec. 16, 1547, in the Senate house, when Calvin, unarmed and at the risk of his life, appeared in the midst of the armed crowd and called upon them, if they designed to shed blood, to begin with him. He succeeded, by his courage and eloquence, in calming the wild storm and preventing a disgraceful carnage. It was a sublime victory of reason over passion, of moral over physical force.756

The ablest of the detractors of Calvin cannot help paying here an involuntary tribute to him and to the truth of history. This is his dramatic account.

"The Council of the Two Hundred was assembled. Never had any session been more tumultuous; the parties, weary of speaking, began to appeal to arms. The people heard the appeal. Calvin appears, unattended; he is received at the lower part of the hall with cries of death. He folds his arms, and looks the agitators fixedly in the face. Not one of them dares strike him. Then, advancing through the midst of the groups, with his breast uncovered: ’If you want blood,’ says he, ’there are still a few drops here; strike, then!’  Not an arm is raised. Calvin then slowly ascends the stairway to the Council of the Two Hundred. The hall was on the point of being drenched with blood; swords were flashing on beholding the Reformer, the weapons were lowered, and a few words sufficed to calm the agitation. Calvin, taking the arm of one of the councillors, again descends the stairs, and cries out to the people that he wishes to address them. He does speak, and with such energy and feeling, that tears flow from their eyes. They embrace each other, and the crowd retires in silence. The patriots had lost the day. From that moment, it was easy to foretell that victory would remain with the Reformer. The Libertines, who had shown themselves so bold when it was a question of destroying some front of a Catholic edifice, overturning some saint’s niche, or throwing down an old wooden cross weakened by age, trembled like women before this man, who, in fact, on this occasion, exhibited something of the Homeric heroism."757

Notwithstanding this triumph, Calvin did not trust enemies, and expressed in letters to Farel and Viret even the fear that he could no longer maintain his position unless God stretch forth his hand for his protection.758

A sort of truce was patched up between the contending parties. "Our çi-devant Caesar (hesternus noster Caesar)," Calvin wrote to Farel, Dec. 28, 1547, "denied that he had any grudge against me, and I immediately met him half-way and pressed out the matter from the sore. In a grave and moderate speech, I used, indeed, some sharp reproofs (punctiones acutas), but not of a nature to wound; yet though he grasped my hand whilst promising to reform, I still fear that I have spoken to deaf ears."759

In the next year, Calvin was censured by the Council for saying, in a private letter to Viret which had been intercepted, that the Genevese "under pretence of Christ wanted to rule without Christ," and that he had to combat their, hypocrisy."  He called to his aid Viret and Farel to make a sort of apology.760

Perrin behaved quietly, and gained an advantage from this incident. He was restored to his councillorship and the office of captain-general (which had been abolished). He was even elected First Syndic, in February, 1549. He held that position also during the trial of Servetus, and opposed the sentence of death in the Council (1553).

Shortly after the execution of Servetus, the Libertines raised a demonstration against Farel, who had come to Geneva and preached a very severe sermon against them (Nov. 1, 1553).761  Philibert Berthelier and his brother François Daniel, who had charge of the mint, stirred up the laborers to throw Farel into the Rhone. But his friends formed a guard around him, and his defence before the Council convinced the audience of his innocence. It was resolved that all enmity should be forgotten and buried at a banquet. Perrin, the chief Syndic, in a sense of weakness, or under the impulse of his better feelings, begged Farel’s pardon, and declared that he would ever regard him as his spiritual father and pastor.762

After this time Calvin’s friends gained the ascendency in the Council. A large number of religious refugees were admitted to the rights of citizenship.

Perrin, then a member of the Little Council, and his friends, Peter Vandel and Philibert Berthelier, determined on rule or ruin, now concocted a desperate and execrable conspiracy, which proved their overthrow. They proposed to kill all foreigners who had fled to Geneva for the sake of religion, together with their Genevese sympathizers, on a Sunday while people were at church. But, fortunately, the plot was discovered before it was ripe for execution. When the rioters were to be tried before the Council of the Two Hundred, Perrin and several other ringleaders had the audacity to take their places as judges; but when he saw that matters were taking a serious turn in favor of law and order, he fled from Geneva, together with Vandel and Berthelier. They were summoned by the public herald, but refused to appear. On the day appointed for the trial five of the fugitives were condemned to death; Perrin, moreover, to have his right hand cut off, with which he had seized the bâton of the Syndic at the riot. The sentence was executed in effigy in June, 1555.763

Their estates were confiscated, and their wives banished from Geneva. The office of captain-general was again abolished to avoid the danger of a military dictatorship.

But the government of Bern protected the fugitives, and allowed them to commit outrages on Genevese citizens within their reach, and to attack Calvin and Geneva with all sorts of reproaches and calumnies.

Thus the "comic Caesar" ended as the "tragic Caesar."  An impartial biographer of Calvin calls the last chapter in Perrin’s career "a caricature of the Catilinarian conspiracy."764

3. The case of Pierre Ameaux shows a close connection between the political and religious Libertines. He was a member of the Council of Two Hundred. He sought and obtained a divorce from his wife, who was condemned to perpetual imprisonment for the theory and practice of free-lovism of the worst kind. But he hated Calvin’s theology and discipline. At a supper party in his own house he freely indulged in drink, and roundly abused Calvin as a teacher of false doctrine, as a very bad man, and nothing but a Picard.765

For this offence he was imprisoned by the Council for two months and condemned to a fine of sixty dollars. He made an apology and retracted his words. But Calvin was not satisfied, and demanded a second trial. The Council condemned him to a degrading punishment called the amende honorable, namely, to parade through the streets in his shirt, with bare head, and a lighted torch in his hand, and to ask on bended knees the pardon of God, of the Council, and of Calvin. This harsh judgment provoked a popular outbreak in the quarter of St. Gervais, but the Council proceeded in a body to the spot and ordered the wine-shops to be closed and a gibbet to be erected to frighten the mob. The sentence on Ameaux was executed April 5, 1546. Two preachers, Henri de la Mare and Aimé Maigret, who had taken part in the drinking scene, were deposed. The former had said before the Council that Calvin was, a good and virtuous man, and of great intellect, but sometimes governed by his passions, impatient, full of hatred, and vindictive."  The latter had committed more serious offences.766

4. Pierre Vandel was a handsome, brilliant, and frivolous cavalier, and loved to exhibit himself with a retinue of valets and courtesans, with rings on his fingers and golden chains on his breast. He had been active in the expulsion of Calvin, and opposed him after his recall. He was imprisoned for his debaucheries and insolent conduct before the Consistory. He was Syndic in 1548. He took a leading part in the conspiracy of Perrin and shared his condemnation and exile.767

5. Philibert Berthelier (or Bertelier, Bertellier), an unworthy son of the distinguished patriot who, in 1519, had been beheaded for his part in the war of independence, belonged to the most malignant enemies of Calvin. He had gone to Noyon, if we are to believe the assertion of Bolsec, to bring back scandalous reports concerning the early life of the Reformer, which the same Bolsec published thirteen years after Calvin’s death, but without any evidence.768  If the Libertines had been in possession of such information, they would have made use of it. Berthelier is characterized by Beza as "a man of the most consummate impudence" and "guilty of many iniquities."  He was excommunicated by the Consistory in 1551 for abusing Calvin, for not going to church, and other offences, and for refusing to make any apology. Calvin was absent during these sessions, owing to sickness. Berthelier appealed to the Council, of which he was the secretary. The Council at first confirmed the decision of the Consistory, but afterwards released him, during the syndicate of Perrin and the trial of Servetus, and gave him letters of absolution signed with the seal of the Republic (1553).769

Calvin was thus brought into direct conflict with the Council, and forced to the alternative of submission or disobedience; in the latter case he ran the risk of a second and final expulsion. But he was not the man to yield in such a crisis. He resolved to oppose to the Council his inflexible non possumus.

On the Sunday which followed the absolution of Berthelier, the September communion was to be celebrated. Calvin preached as usual in St. Peter’s, and declared at the close of the sermon that he would never profane the sacrament by administering it to an excommunicated person. Then raising his voice and lifting up his hands, he exclaimed in the words of St. Chrysostom: "I will lay down my life ere these hands shall reach forth the sacred things of God to those who have been branded as his despisers."

This was another moment of sublime Christian heroism.

Perrin, who had some decent feeling of respect for religion and for Calvin’s character, was so much impressed by this solemn warning that he secretly gave orders to Berthelier not to approach the communion table. The communion was celebrated, as Beza reports, "in profound silence, and under a solemn awe, as if the Deity himself had been visibly present among them."770

In the afternoon, Calvin, as for the last time, preached on Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian Elders (Acts 20:31); he exhorted the congregation to abide in the doctrine of Christ, and declared his willingness to serve the Church and each of its members, but added in conclusion: "Such is the state of things here that this may be my last sermon to you; for they who are in power would force me to do what God does not permit. I must, therefore, dearly beloved, like Paul, commend you to God, and to the Word of his grace."771

These words made a deep impression even upon his worst foes. The next day Calvin, with his colleagues and the Presbytery, demanded of the Council to grant them an audience before the people, as a law was attacked which had been sanctioned by the General Assembly. The Council refused the request, but resolved to suspend the decree by which the power of excommunication was declared to belong to the Council.

In the midst of this agitation the trial of Servetus was going on, and was brought to a close by his death at the stake, Oct. 27. A few days afterwards (Nov. 3), Berthelier renewed his request to be admitted to the Lord’s Table—he who despised religion. The Council which had condemned the heretic, was not quite willing to obey Calvin as a legislator, and wished to retain the power of excommunication in their own hands. Yet, in order to avoid a rupture with the ministers, who would not yield to any compromise, the Council resolved to solicit the opinions of four Swiss cantons on the subject.772

Bullinger, in behalf of the Church and magistracy of Zürich, replied in December, substantially approving of Calvin’s view, though he admonished him privately against undue severity. The magistrates of Bern replied that they had no excommunication in their Church. The answers of the two other cantons are lost, but seem to have been rather favorable to Calvin’s cause.

In the meantime matters assumed a more promising aspect. On Jan. 1, 1554, at a grand dinner given by the Council and judges, Calvin being present, a desire for peace was universally expressed. On the second of February the Council of Two Hundred swore, with uplifted hands, to conform to the doctrines of the Reformation, to forget the past, to renounce all hatred and animosity, and to live together in unity.

Calvin regarded this merely as a truce, and looked for further troubles. He declared before the Council that he readily forgave all his enemies, but could not sacrifice the rights of the Consistory, and would rather leave Geneva. The irritation continued in 1554. The opposition broke out again in the conspiracy against the foreigners and the council, which has been already described. The plot failed. Berthelier was, with Perrin, condemned to death, but escaped with him the execution of justice by flight.773

This was the end of Libertinism in Geneva.

§ 110. Geneva Regenerated. Testimonies Old and New.

The final result of this long conflict with Libertinism is the best vindication of Calvin. Geneva came out of it a new city, and with a degree of moral and spiritual prosperity which distinguished her above any other Christian city for several generations. What a startling contrast she presents, for instance, to Rome, the city of the vicar of Christ and his cardinals, as described by Roman Catholic writers of the sixteenth century!  If ever in this wicked world the ideal of Christian society can be realized in a civil community with a mixed population, it was in Geneva from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, when the revolutionary and infidel genius of Rousseau (a native of Geneva) and of Voltaire (who resided twenty years in the neighborhood, on his estate at Ferney) began to destroy the influence of the Reformer.

After the final collapse of the Libertine party in 1555, the peace was not seriously disturbed, and Calvin’s work progressed without interruption. The authorities of the State were as zealous for the honor of the Church and the glory of Christ as the ministers of the gospel. The churches were well filled; the Word of God was preached daily; family worship was the rule; prayer and singing of Psalms never ceased; the whole city seemed to present the aspect of a community of sincere, earnest Christians who practised what they believed. Every Friday a spiritual conference and experience meeting, called the "Congregation," was held in St. Peter’s, after the model of the meetings of "prophesying," which had been introduced in Zürich and Bern. Peter Paul Vergerius, the former papal nuncio, who spent a short time in Geneva, was especially struck with these conferences. "All the ministers," he says,774 "and many citizens attend. One of the preachers reads and briefly explains a text from the Scriptures. Another expresses his views on the subject, and then any member may make a contribution if so disposed. You see, it is an imitation of that custom in the Corinthian Church of which Paul speaks, and I have received much edification from these public colloquies."

The material prosperity of the city was not neglected. Greater cleanliness was introduced, which is next to godliness, and promotes it. Calvin insisted on the removal of all filth from the houses and the narrow and crooked streets. He induced the magistracy to superintend the markets, and to prevent the sale ofunhealthy food, which was to be cast into the Rhone. Low taverns and drinking shops were abolished, and intemperance diminished. Mendicancy on the streets was prohibited. A hospital and poor-house was provided and well conducted. Efforts were made to give useful employment to every man that could work. Calvin urged the Council in a long speech, Dec. 29, 1544, to introduce the cloth and silk industry, and two months afterwards he presented a detailed plan, in which he recommended to lend to the Syndic, Jean Ami Curtet, a sufficient sum from the public treasury for starting the enterprise. The factories were forthwith established and soon reached the highest degree of prosperity. The cloth and silk of Geneva were highly prized in Switzerland and France, and laid the foundation for the temporal wealth of the city. When Lyons, by the patronage of the French crown, surpassed the little Republic in the manufacture of silk, Geneva had already begun to make up for the loss by the manufacture of watches, and retained the mastery in this useful industry until 1885, when American machinery produced a successful rivalry.775

Altogether, Geneva owes her moral and temporal prosperity, her intellectual and literary activity, her social refinement, and her world-wide fame very largely to the reformation and discipline of Calvin. He set a high and noble example of a model community. It is impossible, indeed, to realize his church ideal in a large country, even with all the help of the civil government. The Puritans attempted it in England and in New England, but succeeded only in part, and only for a short period. But nothing should prevent a pastor from making an effort in his own congregation on the voluntary principle. Occasionally we find parallel cases in small communities under the guidance of pastors of exceptional genius and consecration, such as Oberlin in the Steinthal, Harms in Hermannsburg, and Löhe in Neudettelsau, who exerted an inspiring influence far beyond their fields of labor.

Let us listen to some testimonies of visitors who saw with their own eyes the changes wrought in Geneva through Calvin’s influence.

William Farel, who knew better than any other man the state of Geneva under Roman Catholic rule, and during the early stages of reform before the arrival of Calvin, visited the city again in 1557, and wrote to Ambrosius Blaurer that he would gladly listen and learn there with the humblest of the people, and that "he would rather be the last in Geneva than the first anywhere else."776

John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland, who studied several years in Geneva as a pupil of Calvin (though five years his senior), and as pastor of the English congregation, wrote to his friend Locke, in 1556: "In my heart I could have wished, yea, I cannot cease to wish, that it might please God to guide and conduct yourself to this place where, I neither fear nor am ashamed to say, is the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places I confess Christ to be truly preached; but manners and religion to be so seriously reformed, I have not yet seen in any other place besides."777

Dr. Valentine Andreae (1586–1654), a bright and shining light of the Lutheran Church of Würtemberg (a grandson of Jacob Andreae, the chief author of the Lutheran Formula of Concord), a man full of glowing love to Christ, visited Geneva in 1610, nearly fifty years after Calvin’s death, with the prejudices of an orthodox Lutheran against Calvinism, and was astonished to find in that city a state of religion which came nearer to his ideal of a Christocracy than any community he had seen in his extensive travels, and even in his German fatherland.

"When I was in Geneva," he writes, "I observed something great which I shall remember and desire as long as I live. There is in that place not only the perfect institute of a perfect republic, but, as a special ornament, a moral discipline, which makes weekly investigations into the conduct, and even the smallest transgressions of the citizens, first through the district inspectors, then through the Seniors, and finally through the magistrates, as the nature of the offence and the hardened state of the offender may require. All cursing and swearing gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, fraud, etc., are forbidden; while greater sins are hardly heard of. What a glorious ornament of the Christian religion is such a purity of morals!  We must lament with tears that it is wanting with us, and almost totally neglected. If it were not for the difference of religion, I would have forever been chained to that place by the agreement in morals, and I have ever since tried to introduce something like it into our churches. No less distinguished than the public discipline was the domestic discipline of my landlord, Scarron, with its daily devotions, reading of the Scriptures, the fear of God in word and in deed, temperance in meat and drink and dress. I have not found greater purity of morals even in my father’s home."778

A stronger and more impartial testimony of the deep and lasting effect of Calvin’s discipline so long after his death could hardly be imagined.

NOTES. MODERN TESTIMONIES.

The condemnation of Calvin’s discipline and his conduct toward the Libertines has been transplanted to America by two dignitaries of the Roman Church—Dr. John McGill, bishop of Richmond, the translator of Audin’s Life of Calvin (Louisville, n. d.), and Dr. M. S. Spalding, archbishop of Baltimore (between 1864 and 1872), in his History of the Protestant Reformation (Louisville, 1860), 8th ed., Baltimore, 1875. This book is not a history, but a chronique scandaleuse of the Reformation, and unworthy of a Christian scholar. Dr. Spalding devotes twenty-two pages to Calvin (vol. I. 370–392), besides an appendix on Rome and Geneva, and a letter addressed to Merle D’Aubigné and Bungener (pp. 495–530). He ignores his Commentaries and Institutes, which have commanded the admiration even of eminent Roman Catholic divines, and simply repeats, with some original mistakes and misspellings, the slanders of Bolsec and Audin, which have long since been refuted.

"Calvin," he says, "crushed the liberties of the people in the name of liberty. A foreigner, he insinuated himself into Geneva and, serpent-like, coiled himself around the very heart of the Republic which had given him hospitable shelter. He thus stung the very bosom which had warmed him. He was as watchful as a tiger preparing to pounce on its prey, and as treacherous … . His reign in Geneva was truly a reign of terror. He combined the cruelty of Danton and Robespierre with the eloquence of Marat and Mirabeau … . He was worse than ’the Chalif of Geneva,’ as Audin calls him—he was a very Nero!... He was a monster of impurity and iniquity. The story of his having been guilty of a crime of nameless turpitude at Noyon, though denied by his friends, yet rests upon very respectable authority. Bolsec, a contemporary writer, relates it as certain … . He ended his life in despair, and died of a most shameful and disgusting disease which God has threatened to rebellious and accursed reprobates."  The early Calvinists were hypocrites, and "their boasted austerity was little better than a sham, if it was not even a cloak to cover enormous wickedness. They exhibit their own favorite doctrine of total depravity in its fullest practical development!"  The archbishop, however, is kind enough to add in conclusion (p. 391), that he "would not be understood as wishing to reflect upon the character or conduct of the present professors of Calvinistic doctrines, many of whom are men estimable for their civic virtues."

The best answer to such a caricature, which turns the very truth into a lie, is presented in the facts of this chapter. With ignorance and prejudice even the gods contend in vain. But it is proper, at this place, to record the judgments of impartial historians who have studied the sources, and cannot be charged with any doctrinal bias in favor of Calvinism. Comp. other testimonies in § 68, pp. 270 sqq.

Gieseler, one of the coolest and least dogmatic of church historians, says (K. G. III. P. I. p. 389): "Durch Calvin’s eiserne Festigkeit wurden Genf’s Sitten ganz umgewandelt: so dankte die Stadt der Reformation ihre Freiheit, ihre Ordnung, und ihren aufblühenden Wohlstand."

From the Article "Calvin" in La France Protestante (III. 530): "Une telle Organisation, un pareil pouvoir sur les individus, une autorité aussi parfaitement inquisitoriale nous indignent aujourd’hui; c’était chose toute simple avec l’ardeur religieuse du XVIe siècle. Le consistoire atteignit le but que Calvin s’était proposé. En moins de trois générations, les moeurs de Genève subirent une métamorphose complète. A la mondanité naturelle succéda cette austérité un peu raide, cette gravité un peu étudiée qui caractérisèrent, dans les siècles passés, les disciples du réformateur. L’histoire ne nous offre que deux hommes qui aient su imprimer à tout un peuple le cachet particulier de leur génie: Lycurgue et Calvin, deux grands caractères qui offrent plus d’une analogie. Que de fades plaisanteries ne s’est-on pas permises sur l’esprit genevois! et Genève est devenue un foyer de lumières et d’émancipation intellectuelle, même pour ses détracteurs."

Marc-Monnier.

Marc-Monnier was born in Florence of French parents, 1829, distinguished as a poet and historian, professor of literature in the University of Geneva, and died 1885. His "La Renaissance de Dante à Luther" (1884) was crowned by the French Academy.

From "La Réforme, de Luther à Shakespeare"(Paris, 1885), pp. 70–72.

"Calvin fut done de son temps comme les papes, les empereurs et tons les rois, méme François 1er, qui brûlèrent des hérétiques, mais ceux qui ne voient dans Calvin que le meurtrier de Servet ne le connaissent pas. Ce fut une conviction, une intelligence, une des forces les plus étonnantes de ce grand siècle: pour le peser selon son mérite, il faut jeter dans la balance autre chose que nos tendresses et nos pitiés. Il faut voir tout l’homme, et le voir tel qu’il fut: ’un corps frêle et débile, sobre jusqu’à l’excès,’ rongé par des maladies et des infirmites qui devaient l’emporter avant le temps, mais acharné à sa tâche, ’ne vivant que pour le travail et ne travaillant que pour établir le royaume de Dieu sur la terre; devoué à cette cause jusqu’à lui tout sacrifier:’ le repos, la santé, la vie, plus encore: les études favorites, et avec une infatigable activité qui épouvantait ses adversaires, menant de front, à brides abattues, religion, morale, politique, législation, littérature, enseignement, prédication, pamphlets, oeuvres de longue haleine, correspondance énorme avec le roi et la reine de Navarre, la duchesse de Ferrare, le roi François 1er, avec d’autres princes encore, avec les réformateurs, les théologiens, les humanistes, les âmes travaillées et chargées, les pauvres prisonnières de Paris. Il écrivait dans l’Europe entière; deux mille Églises s’organisaient selon ses idées ou celles de ses amis; des missionnaires, animés de son souffle, partaient pour l’Angleterre, l’Écosse, les Pays-Bas, ’en remerciant Dieu et lui chantant des psaumes.’  En même temps cet homme seul, ce malade surmené s’emparait a Genève d’un peuple allègre, raisouneur, indiscipliné, le tenait dans sa main et le forçait d’obéir. Sans étre magistrat ni même citoyen (il ne le devint qu’aux dernières années de sa vie), sans mandat officiel ni titre reconnu, sans autre autorité que celle de son nom et d’une volonté inflexible, il commandait aux consciences, il gouvernait les maisons, il s’imposait, avec une foule de réfugiés venus de toute part, à une population qui n’a jamais aimé les étrangers ni les maîtres; il heurtait enfin de parti pris les coutumes, les traditions, les susceptibilités nationales et il les brisait. Non seulement il pesait sur les consciences et les opinions, mais aussi sur les moeurs, proscrivait la luxure et même le luxe, la bijouterie, la soie et le velours, les cheveux longs, les coiffures frisées, la bonne chère: toute espèce de plaisir et de distraction; cependant, malgré les haines et les colères suscitées par cette compression morale, ’le corps brisé, mais la tête haute,’ il gouverna longtemps les Genevois par l’autorité de son caractère et fut accompagné à sa tombe par le peuple tout entier. Voilà l’homme dont il est facile de rire, mais qu’il importe avant tout de connaitre.

"Calvin détruisit Genève pour la refaire à son image et, en dépit de toutes les révolutions, cette reconstitution improvisée dure encore: il existe aux portes de la France une ville de strictes croyances, de bonnes études et de bonnes moeurs: une ’cité de Calvin.’ "

A remarkable tribute from a scholar who was no theologian, and no clergyman, but thoroughly at home in the history, literature, manners, and society of Geneva. Marc-Monnier speaks also very highly of Calvin’s merits as a French classic, and quotes with approval the judgment of Paul Lacroix (in his ed. of select Oeuvres françoises de J. Calvin): "Le style de Calvin est un des plus grands styles du seizième siècle: simple, correct, élégant, clair, ingénieux, animé, varie de formes et de tons, il a commencé à fixer la langue française pour la prose, comme celui de Clement Marot l’avait fait pour les vers."

George Bancroft.

George Bancroft, the American historian and statesman, born at Worcester, Mass., 1800, died at Washington, 1891, served his country as secretary of the Navy, and ambassador at London and Berlin, with the greatest credit.

"A word on Calvin, the Reformer." From his Literary and Historical Miscellanies (New York, 1855), pp. 405 sqq.

"It is intolerance only, which would limit the praise of Calvin to a single sect, or refuse to reverence his virtues and regret his failings. He lived in the time when nations were shaken to their centre by the excitement of the Reformation; when the fields of Holland and France were wet with the carnage of persecution; when vindictive monarchs on the one side threatened all Protestants with outlawry and death, and the Vatican, on the other, sent forth its anathemas and its cry for blood. In that day, it is too true, the influence of an ancient, long-established, hardly disputed error, the Constant danger of his position, the intense desire to secure union among the antagonists of popery, the engrossing consciousness that his struggle was for the emancipation of the Christian world, induced the great Reformer to defend the use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy. Reprobating and lamenting his adhesion to the cruel doctrine, which all Christendom had for centuries implicitly received, we may, as republicans, remember that Calvin was not only the founder of a sect, but foremost among the most efficient of modern republican legislators. More truly benevolent to the human race than Solon, more self-denying than Lycurgus, the genius of Calvin infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy.

"We boast of our common schools; Calvin was the father of popular education, the inventor of the system of free schools. We are proud of the free States that fringe the Atlantic. The pilgrims of Plymouth were Calvinists; the best influence in South Carolina came from the Calvinists of France. William Penn was the disciple of the Huguenots; the ships from Holland that first brought colonists to Manhattan were filled with Calvinists. He that will not honor the memory, and respect the influence of Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty.

"If personal considerations chiefly win applause, then, no one merits our sympathy and our admiration more than Calvin; the young exile from France, who achieved an immortality of fame before he was twenty-eight years of age; now boldly reasoning with the king of France for religious liberty; now venturing as the apostle of truth to carry the new doctrines into the heart of Italy, and hardly escaping from the fury of papal persecution; the purest writer, the keenest dialectician of his century; pushing free inquiry to its utmost verge, and yet valuing inquiry solely as the means of arriving at fixed conclusions. The light of his genius scattered the mask of darkness which superstition had held for centuries before the brow of religion. His probity was unquestioned, his morals spotless. His only happiness consisted in his ’task of glory and of good;’ for sorrow found its way into all his private relations. He was an exile from his country; he became for a season an exile from his place of exile. As a husband he was doomed to mourn the premature loss of his wife; as a father he felt the bitter pang of burying his only child. Alone in the world, alone in a strange land, he went forward in his career with serene resignation and inflexible firmness; no love of ease turned him aside from his vigils; no fear of danger relaxed the nerve of his eloquence; no bodily infirmities checked the incredible activity of his mind; and so he continued, year after year, solitary and feeble, yet toiling for humanity, till after a life of glory, he bequeathed to his personal heirs, a fortune, in books and furniture, stocks and money, not exceeding two hundred dollars, and to the world, a purer reformation, a republican spirit in religion, with the kindred principles of republican liberty."

CHAPTER XIV.

CALVIN’S THEOLOGY.

§ 111. Calvin’s Commentaries.

I. Calvin’s Commentaries on the Old Test. in Opera, vols. XXIII.–XLIV., on the New Test., vols. XLV. sqq. (not yet completed). Separate Latin ed. of the Commentaries on the New Test. by Tholuck, Berlin, and Halle, 1831, 1836, etc., 7 vols.; also on Genesis (by Hengstenberg, Berlin, 1838) and on the Psalms (by Tholuck, 1836, 2 vols.). Translations in French (by J. Girard, 1650, and others), English (by various writers, 1570 sqq.), and other languages. Best English ed. by the "Calvin Translation Soc.," Edinburgh, 1843–55 (30 vols. for the O. T., 13 for the N. T.). See list in Darling’s Cyclopaedia Bibliographica, sub "Calvin."

II. A. Tholuck: Die Verdienste Calvin’s als Schriftausleger, in his "Lit. Anzeiger," 1831, reprinted in his "Vermischte Schriften" (Hamburg, 1839), vol. II. 330–360, and translated by Wm. Pringle (added to Com. on Joshua in the Edinb. ed. 1854, pp. 345–375).—G. W. Meyer: Geschichte der Schrifterklaerung, II. 448–475.—D. G. Escher.: De Calvino interprete, Traj., 1840.—Ed. Reuss: Calvin considéré comme exegète, in "Revue," VI. 223.—A. Vesson: Calvin exegète, Montaub, 1855.—E. Staehelin: Calvin, I. 182–198.— Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 457–460.—Merx: Joel, Halle, 1879, pp. 428–444.—Fred. W. Farrar: History of Interpretation (London, 1886), pp. 342–354.

Calvin was an exegetical genius of the first order. His commentaries are unsurpassed for originality, depth, perspicuity, soundness, and permanent value. The Reformation period was fruitful beyond any other in translations and expositions of the Scripture. If Luther was the king of translators, Calvin was the king of commentators. Poole, in the preface to his Synopsis, apologizes for not referring more frequently to Calvin, because others had so largely borrowed from him that to quote them was to quote him. Reuss, the chief editor of his works and himself an eminent biblical scholar, says that Calvin was, beyond all question the greatest exegete of the sixteenth century."779  Archdeacon Farrar literally echoes this judgment.780  Diestel, the best historian of Old Testament exegesis, calls him "the creator of genuine exegesis."781  Few exegetical works outlive their generation; those of Calvin are not likely to be superseded any more than Chrysostom’s Homilies for patristic eloquence, or Bengel’s Gnomon for pregnant and stimulating hints, or Matthew Henry’s Exposition for devotional purposes and epigrammatic suggestions to preachers.782

Calvin began his series of Commentaries at Strassburg with the Epistle to the Romans, on which his system of theology is chiefly built. In the dedication to his friend and Hebrew teacher Grynaeus, at Basel (Oct. 18, 1539), he already lays down his views of the best method of interpretation, namely, comprehensive brevity, transparent clearness, and strict adherence to the spirit and letter of the author. He gradually expounded the most important books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and all the books of the New Testament, with the exception of the Apocalypse, which he wisely left alone. Some of his expositions, as the Commentary on the Minor Prophets, were published from notes of his free, extempore lectures and sermons. His last literary work was a Commentary on Joshua, which he began in great bodily infirmity and finished shortly before his death and entrance into the promised land.

It was his delight to expound the Word of God from the chair and from the pulpit. Hence his theology is biblical rather than scholastic. The Commentaries on the Psalms and the Epistles of Paul are regarded as his best. He was in profound sympathy with David and Paul, and read in their history his own spiritual biography. He calls the Psalms (in the Preface) "an anatomy of all the parts of the soul; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or, rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life the griefs, the sorrows, the fears, the doubts, the hopes, the cares, the perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated."  He adds that his own trials and conflicts helped him much to a clearer understanding of these divine compositions.

He combined in a very rare degree all the essential qualifications of an exegete—grammatical knowledge, spiritual insight, acute perception, sound judgment, and practical tact. He thoroughly sympathized with the spirit of the Bible; he put himself into the situation of the writers, and reproduced and adapted their thoughts for the benefit of his age.

Tholuck mentions as the most prominent qualities of Calvin’s commentaries these four: doctrinal impartiality, exegetical tact, various learning, and deep Christian piety. Winer praises his "truly wonderful sagacity in perceiving, and perspicuity in expounding, the meaning of the Apostle."783

1. Let us first look at his philological outfit. Melanchthon well says: "The Scripture cannot be understood theologically unless it be first understood grammatically."784  He had passed through the school of the Renaissance; he had a rare knowledge of Greek; he thought in Greek, and could not help inserting rare Greek words into his letters to learned friends. He was an invaluable help to Luther in his translation of the Bible, but his commentaries are dogmatical rather than grammatical, and very meagre, as compared with those of Luther and Calvin in depth and force.785

Luther surpassed all other Reformers in originality, freshness, spiritual insight, bold conjectures, and occasional flashes of genius. His commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, which he called "his wife," is a masterpiece of sympathetic exposition and forceful application of the leading idea of evangelical freedom to the question of his age. But Luther was no exegete in the proper sense of the term. He had no method and discipline. He condemned allegorizing as a mere "monkey-game" (Affenspiel), and yet he often resorted to it in Job, the Psalms, and the Canticles. He was eminently spiritual, and yet, as against Zwingli, slavishly literal in his interpretation. He seldom sticks to the text, but uses it only as a starting-point for popular sermons, or polemical excursions against papists and sectarians. He cared nothing for the consensus of the fathers. He applied private judgment to the interpretation with the utmost freedom, and judged the canonicity and authority of the several books of the Bible by a dogmatic and subjective rule—his favorite doctrine of solifidian justification; and as he could not find it in James, he irreverently called his epistle "an epistle of straw."  He anticipated modern criticism, but his criticism proceeded from faith in Christ and God’s Word, and not from scepticism. His best work is a translation, and next to it, his little catechism for children.

Zwingli studied the Greek at Glarus and Einsiedeln that he might be able, "to draw the teaching of Christ from the fountains."786  He learnt Hebrew after he was called to Zuerich. He also studied the fathers, and, like Erasmus, took more to Jerome than to Augustin. His expositions of Scripture are clear, easy, and natural, but somewhat superficial. The other Swiss Reformers and exegetes—Oecolampadius, Grynaeus, Bullinger, Pellican, and Bibliander—had a good philological preparation. Pellican, a self-taught scholar (d. 1556), who was called to Zuerich by Zwingli in 1525, wrote a little Hebrew grammar even before Reuchlin,787 and published at Zuerich comments on the whole Bible.788  Bibliander (d. 1564) was likewise professor of Hebrew in Zuerich, and had some acquaintance with other Semitic languages; he was, however, an Erasmian rather than a Calvinist, and opposed the doctrine of the absolute decrees.

For the Hebrew Bible these scholars used the editions of Daniel Bomberg (Venice, 1518–45); the Complutensian Polyglot, which gives, besides the Hebrew text, also the Septuagint and Vulgate and a Hebrew vocabulary (Alcala, printed 1514–17; published 1520 sqq.); also the editions of Sabastian Muenster (Basel, 1536), and of Robert Stephens (Etienne, Paris, 1539–46). For the Greek Testament they had the editions of Erasmus (Basel, five ed. 1516–35), the Complutensian Polyglot (1520), Colinaeus (Paris, 1534), Stephens (Paris and Geneva, 1546–51). A year after Calvin’s death, Beza began to publish his popular editions of the Greek Testament, with a Latin version (Geneva, 1565–1604).

Textual criticism was not yet born, and could not begin its operations before a collection of the textual material from manuscripts, ancient versions, and patristic quotations. In this respect, therefore, all the commentaries of the Reformation period are barren and useless. Literary criticism was stimulated by the Protestant spirit of inquiry with regard to the Jewish Apocrypha and some Antilegomena of the New Testament, but was soon repressed by dogmatism.

Calvin, besides being a master of Latin and French, had a very good knowledge of the languages of the Bible. He had learned the Greek from Volmar at Bourges, the Hebrew from Grynaeus during his sojourn at Basel, and he industriously continued the study of both.789  He was at home in classical antiquity; his first book was a Commentary on Seneca, De Clementia, and he refers occasionally to Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Polybius, Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Livy, Pliny, Quintilian, Diogenes Laërtius, Aulus Gellius, etc. He inferred from Paul’s quotation of Epimenides, Tit. 1:12, "that those are superstitious who never venture to quote anything from profane authors. Since all truth is from God, if anything has been said aptly and truly even by impious men, it ought not to be rejected, because it proceeded from God. And since all things are of God, why is it not lawful to turn to his glory whatever may be aptly applied to this use?"  On 1 Cor. 8:1, he observes: "Science is no more to be blamed when it puffs up than a sword when it falls into the hands of a madman."  But he never makes a display of learning, and uses it only as a means to get at the sense of the Scripture. He wrote for educated laymen as well as for scholars, and abstained from minute investigations and criticisms; but he encouraged Beza to publish his Commentary on the New Testament in which philological scholarship is more conspicuous.

Calvin was also familiar with the patristic commentators, and had much more respect for them than Luther. He fully appreciated the philological knowledge and tact of Jerome, the spiritual depth of Augustin, and the homiletical wealth of Chrysostom; but he used them with independent judgment and critical discrimination.790

2. Calvin kept constantly in view the primary and fundamental aim of the interpreter, namely, to bring to light the true meaning of the biblical authors according to the laws of thought and speech.791  He transferred himself into their mental state and environment so as to become identified with them, and let them explain what they actually did say, and not what they might or should have said, according to our notions or wishes. In this genuine exegetical method he has admirably succeeded, except in a few cases where his judgment was biassed by his favorite dogma of a double predestination, or his antagonism to Rome; though even there he is more moderate and fair than his contemporaries, who indulge in diffuse and irrelevant declamations against popery and monkery. Thus he correctly refers the "Rock" in Matt. 16:18 to the person of Peter, as the representative of all believers.792  He stuck to the text. He detested irrelevant twaddle and diffuseness. He was free from pedantry. He never evades difficulties, but frankly meets and tries to solve them. He carefully studies the connection. His judgment is always clear, strong, and sound. Commentaries are usually dry, broken, and indifferently written. His exposition is an easy, continuous flow of reproduction and adaptation in elegant Erasmian Latinity. He could truly assert on his death-bed that he never knowingly twisted or misinterpreted a single passage of the Scriptures; that he always aimed at simplicity, and restrained the temptation to display acuteness and ingenuity.

He made no complete translation of the Bible, but gave a Latin and a French version of those parts on which he commented in either or both languages, and he revised the French version of his cousin, Pierre Robert Olivetan, which appeared first in 1535, for the editions of 1545 and 1551.793

3. Calvin is the founder of modern grammatico-historical exegesis. He affirmed and carried out the sound and fundamental hermeneutical principle that the biblical authors, like all sensible writers, wished to convey to their readers one definite thought in words which they could understand. A passage may have a literal or a figurative sense, but cannot have two senses at once. The word of God is inexhaustible and applicable to all times; but there is a difference between explanation and application, and application must be consistent with explanation.

Calvin departed from the allegorical method of the Middle Ages, which discovered no less than four senses in the Bible,794 turned it into a nose of wax, and substituted pious imposition for honest exposition. He speaks of "puerile" and "far-fetched" allegories, and says that he abstains from them because there is nothing "solid and firm" in them. It is an almost sacrilegious audacity to twist the Scriptures this way and that way, to suit our fancy.795  In commenting on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar, Gal. 4:22–26, he censures Origen for his arbitrary allegorizing, as if the plain historical view of the Bible were too mean and too poor. "I acknowledge," he says, "that Scripture is a most rich and inexhaustible fountain of all wisdom, but I deny that its fertility consists in the various meanings which any man at his pleasure may put into it. Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning; and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely. Let us not only neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions, those pretended expositions which lead us away from the natural meaning."  He approvingly quotes Chrysostom, who says that the word "allegory" in this passage is used in an improper sense.796  He was averse to all forced attempts to harmonize difficulties. He constructed his Harmony of the Gospels from the three Synoptists alone, and explained John separately.

4. Calvin emancipated exegesis from the bondage of dogmatism. He was remarkably free from traditional orthodox prepossessions and prejudices, being convinced that the truths of Christianity do not depend upon the number of dicta probantia. He could see no proof of the doctrine of the Trinity in the plural Elohim,797 nor in the three angel visitors of Abraham, Gen.18:2, nor in the Trisagion, Ps. 6:3,798 nor of the divinity of the Holy Spirit in Ps. 33:6.799

5. He prepared the way for a proper historical understanding of prophecy. He fully believed in the Messianic prophecies, which are the very soul of the faith and hope of Israel; but he first perceived that they had a primary bearing and practical application to their own times, and an ulterior fulfilment in Christ, thus serving a present as well as a future use. He thus explained Psalms 2, 8, 16, 22, 40, 45, 68, 110, as typically and indirectly Messianic. On the other hand, he made excessive use of typology, especially in his Sermons, and saw not only in David but in every king of Jerusalem a, figure of Christ."  In his explanation of the protevangelium, Gen. 3:15, he correctly understands the "seed of the woman," collectively of the human race, in its perpetual conflict with Satan, which will culminate ultimately in the victory of Christ, the head of the race.800  He widens the sense of the formula "that it might be fulfilled" (i{na plhrwqh|'), so as to express sometimes simply an analogy or correspondence between an Old Testament and a New Testament event. The prophecy, Hos. 11:1, quoted by Matthew as referring to the return of the Christ-child from Egypt, must, accordingly, "not be restricted to Christ," but is, skilfully adapted to the present occasion."801  In like manner, Paul, in Rom. 10:6, gives only an embellishment and adaptation of a word of Moses to the case in hand.802

6. He had the profoundest reverence for the Scriptures, as containing the Word of the living God and as the only infallible and sufficient rule of faith and duty; but he was not swayed by a particular theory of inspiration. It is true, he never would have approved the unguarded judgments of Luther on James, Jude, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse;803 but he had no hesitancy in admitting incidental errors which do not touch the vitals of faith. He remarks on Matt. 27:9: "How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess I know not, nor am I seriously troubled about it. That the name of Jeremiah has been put for Zechariah by an error, the fact itself shows, because there is no such statement in Jeremiah."804  Concerning the discrepancies between the speech of Stephen in Acts 7 and the account of Genesis, he suggests that Stephen or Luke drew upon ancient traditions rather than upon Moses, and made "a mistake in the name of Abraham."805  He was far from the pedantry of the Purists in the seventeenth century, who asserted the classical purity of the New Testament Greek, on the ground that the Holy Spirit could not be guilty of any solecism or barbarism, or the slightest violation of grammar; not remembering that the Apostles and Evangelists carried the heavenly treasure of truth in earthen vessels, that the power and grace of God might become more manifest, and that Paul himself confesses his rudeness "in speech," though not "in knowledge."  Calvin justly remarks, with special reference to Paul, that by a singular providence of God the highest mysteries were committed to us "sub contemptibili verborum humilitate," that our faith may not rest on the power of human eloquence, but solely on the efficacy of the divine Spirit; and yet he fully recognized the force and fire, the majesty and weight of Paul’s style, which he compares to flashes of lightning.806

The scholastic Calvinists, like the scholastic Lutherans of the seventeenth century, departed from the liberal views of the Reformers, and adopted a mechanical theory which confounds inspiration with dictation, ignores the human element in the Bible, and reduces the sacred writers to mere penmen of the Holy Spirit. This theory is destructive of scientific exegesis. It found symbolical expression, but only for a brief period, in the Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675, which, in defiance of historical facts, asserts even the inspiration of the Masoretic vowel points. But notwithstanding this restraint, the Calvinistic exegetes adhered more closely to the natural grammatical and historical sense of the Scriptures than their Lutheran and Roman Catholic contemporaries.807

7. Calvin accepted the traditional canon of the New Testament, but exercised the freedom of the ante-Nicene Church concerning the origin of some of the books. He denied the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews on account of the differences of style and mode of teaching (ratio docendi), but admitted its apostolic spirit and value. He doubted the genuineness of the Second Epistle of Peter, and was disposed to ascribe it to a pupil of the Apostle, but he saw nothing in it which is unworthy of Peter. He prepared the way for a distinction between authorship and editorship as to the Pentateuch and the Psalter.

He departed from the traditional view that the Scripture rests on the authority of the Church. He based it on internal rather than external evidence, on the authority of God rather than the authority of men. He discusses the subject in his Institutes,808 and states the case as follows: —

"There has very generally prevailed a most pernicious error that the Scriptures have only so much weight as is conceded to them by the suffrages of the Church, as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended on the arbitrary will of men.809 ... For, as God alone is a sufficient witness of Himself in His own Word, so also the Word will never gain credit in the hearts of men till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit. It is necessary, therefore, that the same Spirit, who spake by the mouths of the prophets, should penetrate into our hearts, to convince us that they faithfully delivered the oracles which were divinely intrusted to them … Let it be considered, then, as an undeniable truth, that they who have been inwardly taught by the Spirit, feel an entire acquiescence in the Scripture, and that it is self-authenticated, carrying with it its own evidence, and ought not to be made the subject of demonstrations and arguments from reason; but it obtains the credit which it deserves with us by the testimony of the Spirit. For though it commands our reverence by its internal majesty, it never seriously affects us till it is confirmed by the Spirit in our hearts. Therefore, being illuminated by him, we now believe the divine original of the Scripture, not from our own judgment or that of others, but we esteem the certainty that we have received it from God’s own mouth, by the ministry of men, to be superior to that of any human judgment, and equal to that of an intuitive perception of God himself in it … . Without this certainty, better and stronger than any human judgment, in vain will the authority of the Scripture be either defended by arguments, or established by the authority of the Church, or confirmed by any other support, since, unless the foundation be laid, it remains in perpetual suspense."810

This doctrine of the intrinsic merit and self-evidencing character of the Scripture, to all who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, passed into the Gallican, Belgic, Second Helvetic, Westminster, and other Reformed Confessions. They present a fuller statement of the objective or formal principle of Protestantism,—namely, the absolute supremacy of the Word of God as the infallible rule of faith and practice, than the Lutheran symbols which give prominence to the subjective or material principle of justification by faith.811

At the same time, the ecclesiastical tradition is of great value, as a witness to the human authorship and canonicity of the several books, and is more fully recognized by modern biblical scholarship, in its conflict with destructive criticism, than it was in the days of controversy with Romanism. The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit and the external testimony of the Church join in establishing the divine authority of the Scriptures.

§ 112. The Calvinistic System.

Comp. § 78, pp. 327–343, and the exposition of the Augustinian System and the Pelagian controversy in vol. III. §§ 146–158, pp. 783–856.—Dorner: Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, pp. 374–404.—Loofs: Dogmengeschichte, 2d ed., pp. 390–401.

Calvin is still a living force in theology as much as Augustin and Thomas Aquinas. No dogmatician can ignore his Institutes any more than an exegete can ignore his Commentaries. Calvinism is embedded in several confessions of the Reformed Church, and dominates, with more or less rigor, the spirit of a large section of Protestant Christendom, especially in Great Britain and North America. Calvinism is not the name of a Church, but it is the name of a theological school in the Reformed Churches. Luther is the only one among the Reformers whose name was given to the Church which he founded. The Reformed Churches are independent of personal authority, but all the more bound to tho teaching of the Bible.

Calvinism is usually identified with Augustinianism, as to anthropology and soteriology, in opposition to Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Augustin and Calvin were intensely religious, controlled by a sense of absolute dependence on God, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of his majesty and glory. To them God was everything; man a mere shadow. Blessed are the elect upon whom God bestows all his amazing mercy; but woe to the reprobate from whom he withholds it. They lay equal emphasis on the doctrines of sin and grace, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of God, the sinfulness of sin and the sovereignty of regenerating grace. In Christology they made no progress. Their theology is Pauline rather than Johannean. They passed through the same conflict with sin, and achieved the same victory, by the power of divine grace, as the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Their spiritual experience is reflected in their theology. But Calvin left us no such thrilling record of his experience as Augustin in his Confessions. He barely alludes to his conversion, in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms and in his Answer to Sadolet.

The profound sympathy of Calvin with Augustin is shown in the interesting fact that he quotes him far more frequently than all the Greek and Latin fathers combined, and quotes him nearly always with full approbation.812

But in some respects Augustin and Calvin were widely different. Augustin wandered for nine years in the labyrinth of the Manichaean heresy, and found at last rest and peace in the orthodox Catholic Church of his day, which was far better than any philosophical school or heretical sect, though not much purer than in the sixteenth century. He became the chief architect of scholastic and mystic theology, which ruled in the Middle Ages, and he still carries more weight in the Roman communion than any of the ancient fathers. Calvin was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, but fled from its prevailing corruptions to the citadel of the Holy Scripture, and became the most formidable enemy of the papacy. If Augustin had lived in the sixteenth century, he might, perhaps, have gone half way with the Reformers; but, judging from his high estimate of visible church unity and his conduct towards the schismatic Donatists, it is more probable that he would have become the leader of an evangelical school of Catholicism within the Roman Church.

The difference between the two great teachers may be briefly stated in two sentences which are antagonistic on the surface, though reconcilable at bottom. Augustin says: "I would not believe the gospel if it were not for the Church."813  Calvin teaches (in substance, though not in these words): "I would not believe the Church if it were not for the gospel."  The reconciliation must be found in the higher principle: I believe in Christ, and therefore I believe in the gospel and the Church, which jointly bear witness of him.

As to the doctrines of the fall, of total depravity, the slavery of the human will, the sovereignty of saving grace, the bishop of Hippo and the pastor of Geneva are essentially agreed; the former has the merit of priority and originality; the latter is clearer, stronger, more logical and rigorous, and far superior as an exegete.

Their views are chiefly derived from the Epistle to the Romans as they understood it, and may be summed up in the following propositions: God has from eternity foreordained all things that should come to pass, with a view to the manifestation of his glory; he created man pure and holy, and with freedom of choice; Adam was tried, disobeyed, lost his freedom, and became a slave of sin; the whole human race fell with him, and is justly condemned in Adam to everlasting death; but God in his sovereign mercy elects a part of this mass of corruption to everlasting life, without any regard to moral merit, converts the elect by irresistible grace, justifies, sanctifies, and perfects them, and thus displays in them the riches of his grace; while in his inscrutable, yet just and adorable counsel he leaves the rest of mankind in their inherited state of condemnation, and reveals in the everlasting punishment of the wicked the glory of his awful justice.

The Lutheran system is a compromise between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Luther himself was fully agreed with Augustin on total depravity and predestination, and stated the doctrine of the slavery of the human will even more forcibly and paradoxically than Augustin or Calvin.814  But the Lutheran Church followed him only half way. The Formula of Concord (1577) adopted his doctrine of total depravity in the strongest possible terms, but disclaimed the doctrine of reprobation; it represents the natural man as spiritually dead like "a stone" or "a block," and teaches a particular and unconditional election, but also an universal vocation.815

The Augustinian system was unknown in the ante-Nicene age, and was never accepted in the Eastern Church. This is a strong historical argument against it. Augustin himself developed it only during the Pelagian controversy; while in his earlier writings he taught the freedom of the human will against the fatalism of the Manichaeans.816  It triumphed in the Latin Church over Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, which were mildly condemned by the Synod of Orange (529). But his doctrine of an absolute predestination, which is only a legitimate inference from his anthropological premises, was indirectly condemned by the Catholic Church in the Gottschalk controversy (853), and in the Jansenist controversy (1653), although the name and authority of the great doctor and saint were not touched.

The Calvinistic system was adopted by a large portion of the Reformed Church, and has still able and earnest advocates. Calvin himself is now better understood, and more highly respected by scholars (French and German) than ever before; but his predestinarian system has been effectively opposed by the Arminians, the Quakers, and the Methodists, and is undergoing a serious revision in the Presbyterian and Calvinistic Churches of Europe and America.

The Augustinian, Lutheran, and Calvinistic systems rest on the same anthropology, and must stand or fall together with the doctrine of the universal damnation of the whole human race on the sole ground of Adam’s sin, including infants and entire nations and generations which never heard of Adam, and which cannot possibly have been in him as self-conscious and responsible beings.817  They have alike to answer the question how such a doctrine is reconcilable with the justice and mercy of God. They are alike dualistic and particularistic. They are constructed on the ruins of the fallen race, instead of the rock of the redeemed race; they destroy the foundation of moral responsibility by teaching the slavery of the human will; they turn the sovereignty of God into an arbitrary power, and his justice into partiality; they confine the saving grace of God to a particular class. Within that favorite and holy circle all is as bright as sunshine, but outside of it all is as dark as midnight. These systems have served, and still serve, a great purpose, and satisfy the practical wants of serious Christians who are not troubled with theological and philosophical problems; but they can never satisfy the vast majority of Christendom.

We are, indeed, born into a world of sin and death, and we cannot have too deep a sense of the guilt of sin, especially our own; and, as members of the human family, we should feel the overwhelming weight of the sin and guilt of the whole race, as our Saviour did when he died on the cross. But we are also born into an economy of righteousness and life, and we cannot have too high a sense of God’s saving grace which passeth knowledge. As soon as we enter into the world we are met with the invitation, "Suffer little children to come unto me."  The redemption of the race is as much an accomplished fact as the fall of the race, and it alone can answer the question, why God permitted or caused the fall. Where sin has abounded, grace has abounded not less, but much more.

Calvinism has the advantage of logical compactness, consistency, and completeness. Admitting its premises, it is difficult to escape its conclusions. A system can only be overthrown by a system. It requires a theological genius of the order of Augustin and Calvin, who shall rise above the antagonism of divine sovereignty and human freedom, and shall lead us to a system built upon the rock of the historic Christ, and inspired from beginning to end with the love of God to all mankind.

NOTES ON AMERICAN CALVINISM.

1. Calvinism was imported and naturalized in America, by the Puritans, since 1620, and dominated the theology and church life of New England during the colonial period. It found its ablest defender in Jonathan Edwards,—the great theological metaphysician and revival preacher,—who may be called the American Calvin. It still controls the Orthodox Congregational and Baptist churches. But it has provoked Unitarianism in New England (as it did in England), and has undergone various modifications. It is now gradually giving way to a more liberal and catholic type of Calvinism. The new Congregational Creed of 1883 is thoroughly evangelical, but avoids all the sharp angles of Calvinism.

2. The Presbyterian Calvinism is best represented by the theological systems of Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, and Henry B. Smith. The first is the mildest, the second the severest, the third the broadest, champion of modern American Calvinism; they alike illustrate the compatibility of logical Calvinism with a sweet and lovely Christian temper, but they dissent from Calvin’s views by their infralapsarianism, their belief in the salvation of all infants dying in infancy, and of the large number of the saved.

Henry B. Smith, under the influence of modern German theology, took a step in advance, and marks the transition from old Calvinism to Christological divinity, but died before he could elaborate it. "The central idea," he says, in his posthumous System of Christian Theology (New York, p. 341, 4th ed., 1890), "to which all the parts of theology are to be referred, and by which the system is to be made a system, or to be constructed, is what we have termed the Christological or Mediatorial idea, viz., that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. This idea is central, not in the sense that all the other parts of theology are logically deduced from it, but rather that they centre in it. The idea is that of an Incarnation in order to Redemption. This is the central idea of Christianity, as distinguished, or distinguishable, from all other religions, and from all forms of philosophy; and by this, and this alone, are we able to construct the whole system of the Christian faith on its proper grounds. This idea is the proper centre of unity to the whole Christian system, as the soul is the centre of unity to the body, as the North Pole is to all the magnetic needles. It is so really the centre of unity that when we analyze and grasp and apply it, we find that the whole of Christian theology is in it."  To this remarkable passage should be added a note which Dr. George L. Prentiss, his most intimate friend, found among the last papers of Dr. Smith, which may be called his theological will and testament. "What Reformed theology has got to do is to christologize predestination and decrees, regeneration and sanctification, the doctrine of the Church, and the whole of eschatology."

3. The movement for the revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith has seized, by an irresistible force within the last few years, the Presbyterian Churches of England, Scotland, and North America, and is inspired by the cardinal truth of God’s love to all mankind (John 3:16), and the consequent duty of the Church to preach the gospel to every creature, in obedience to Christ’s command (Mark 16:15; Matt. 28:19, 20). The United Presbyterian Church (1879) and the Free Church (1891) of Scotland express their dissent from the Westminster Standards in an explanatory statement, setting forth their belief in the general love of God, in the moral responsibility of man, and in religious liberty,—all of which are irreconcilable with a strict construction of those standards. The English Presbyterian Church has adopted a new creed, together with a declaratory statement (1890). The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States ordered, in 1889, a revision of the Westminster Confession, which is now going on; and, at the same time, the preparation of a new, short, and popular creed that will give expression to the living faith of the present Church, and serve, not as a sign of division and promoter of sectarian strife, but as a bond of harmony with other evangelical churches, and help rather than hinder the ultimate reunion of Christendom. See Schaff, Creed Revision in the Presbyterian Churches, 1890.

§ 113. Predestination.

1. Inst. bk. III. chs. XXI.–XXIV.  Articuli de Praedestinatione, first published from an autograph of Calvin by the Strassburg editors, in Opera, IX. 713. The Consensus Genevensis (1552), Opera, VIII. 249–366. Calvin’s polemical writings against Pighius (1543), vol. VI. 224–404; Bolsec (1551), vol. VIII. 85–140; and Castellio (15, 57–58), vol. IX. 253–318. He treats the subject also in several of his sermons, e.g. on First and Second Timothy.

2. Alex. Schweizer: Die Protestantischen Centraldogmen (Zuerich, 1854), vol. I. 150–179.—Staehelin, I. 271 sqq.—Dorner: Geschichte der protest. Theol., 386–395.—Philip Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 451–455.

Luther and Calvin.

The dogma of a double predestination is the cornerstone of the Calvinistic system, and demands special consideration.

Calvin made the eternal election of God, Luther made the temporal justification by faith, the article of the standing or falling Church, and the source of strength and peace in the battle of life. They agreed in teaching salvation by free grace, and personal assurance of salvation by a living faith in Christ and his gospel. But the former went back to the ultimate root in a pre-mundane unchangeable decree of God; the latter looked at the practical effect of saving grace upon the individual conscience. Both gave undue prominence to their favorite dogma, in opposition to Romanism, which weakened the power of divine grace, magnified human merit, and denied the personal certainty of salvation. They wished to destroy all basis for human pride and boasting, to pluck up Phariseeism by the root, and to lay a firm foundation for humility, gratitude, and comfort. This was a great progress over the mediaeval soteriology.

But there is a higher position, which modern evangelical theology has reached. The predestinarian scheme of Calvin and the solifidian scheme of Luther must give way or be subordinated to the Christocentric scheme. We must go back to Peter’s confession, which has only one article, but it is the most important article, and the oldest in Christendom. The central place in the Christian system belongs to the divine-human person and work of Christ: this is the immovable rock of the Church, against which the gates of Hades shall never prevail, and on which the creeds of Christendom will have to unite (Matt. 16:16–18; comp. 1 Cor. 2:2; 3:11; Rom. 4:25; 1 John 4:2, 3). The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are Christocentric and Trinitarian.

The Reformers All Predestinarians.

All the Reformers of the sixteenth century, following the lead of Augustin and of the Apostle Paul,—as they understood him,—adopted, under a controlling sense of human depravity and saving grace, and in antagonism to self-righteous legalism, the doctrine of a double predestination which decides the eternal destiny of all men.818  Nor does it seem possible, logically, to evade this conclusion if we admit the two premises of Roman Catholic and Evangelical orthodoxy—namely, the wholesale condemnation of all men in Adam, and the limitation of saving grace to the present life. All orthodox Confessions reject Universalism, and teach that some men are saved, and some are lost, and that there is no possibility of salvation beyond the grave. The predestinarians maintain that this double result is the outcome of a double decree, that history must harmonize with the divine will and cannot defeat it. They reason from the effect to the cause, from the end to the beginning.

Yet there were some characteristic differences in the views of the leading Reformers on this subject. Luther, like Augustin, started from total moral inability or the servum arbitrium; Zwingli, from the idea of an all-ruling providentia; Calvin, from the eternal decretum absolutum.

The Augustinian and Lutheran predestinarianism is moderated by the churchly and sacramental principle of baptismal regeneration. The Calvinistic predestinarianism confines the sacramental efficacy to the elect, and turns the baptism of the non-elect into an empty form; but, on the other hand, it opens a door for an extension of electing grace beyond the limits of the visible Church. Zwingli’s position was peculiar: on the one hand, he went so far in his supralapsarianism as to make God the sinless author of sin (as the magistrate in inflicting capital punishment, or the soldier in the battle, are innocently guilty of murder); but, on the other hand, he undermined the very foundation of the Augustinian system—namely, the wholesale condemnation of the race for the single transgression of one; he admitted hereditary sin, but denied hereditary guilt; and he included all infants and pious heathen in the kingdom of heaven. Such a view was then universally abhorred, as dangerous and heretical.819

Melanchthon, on further study and reflection, retreated in the Semi-Pelagian direction, and prepared the way for Arminianism, which arose, independently, in the heart of Calvinism at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He abandoned his earlier view, which he characterized as Stoic fatalism, and proposed the Synergistic scheme, which is a compromise between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism, and makes the human will co-operate with preceding divine grace, but disowns human merit.820

The Formula of Concord (1577) rejected both Calvinism and Synergism, yet taught, by a logical inconsistency, total disability and unconditional election, as well as universal vocation.

Calvin’s Theory.

Calvin elaborated the doctrine of predestination with greater care and precision than his predecessors, and avoided their "paradoxes," as he called some extravagant and unguarded expressions of Luther and Zwingli. On the other hand, he laid greater emphasis on the dogma itself, and assigned it a higher position in his theological system. He was, by his Stoic temper and as an admirer of Seneca, predisposed to predestinarianism, and found it in the teaching of Paul, his favorite apostle. But his chief interest in the doctrine was religious rather than metaphysical. He found in it the strongest support for his faith. He combined with it the certainty of salvation, which is the privilege and comfort of every believer. In this important feature he differed from Augustin, who taught the Catholic view of the subjective uncertainty of salvation.821  Calvin made the certainty, Augustin the uncertainty, a stimulus to zeal and holiness.

Calvin was fully aware of the unpopularity of the doctrine. "Many," he says, "consider nothing more unreasonable than that some of the common mass of mankind should be foreordained to salvation, and others to destruction … When the human mind hears these things, its petulance breaks all restraint, and it discovers a serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet."  But he thought it impossible to "come to a clear conviction of our salvation, till we are acquainted with God’s eternal election, which illustrates his grace by this comparison, that he adopts not all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what he refuses to others."  It is, therefore, not from the general love of God to all mankind, but from his particular favor to the elect that they, and they alone, are to derive their assurance of salvation and their only solid comfort. The reason of this preference can only be found in the inscrutable will of God, which is the supreme law of the universe. As to others, we must charitably assume that they are among the elect; for there is no certain sign of reprobation except perseverance in impenitence until death.

Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. "Predestination," he says, "we call the eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in himself the destiny of every man. For they are not all created in the same condition, but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death."822

This applies not only to individuals, but to whole nations. God has chosen the people of Israel as his own inheritance, and rejected the heathen; he has loved Jacob with his posterity, and hated Esau with his posterity. "The counsel of God, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but to those whom he devotes to condemnation the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, though incomprehensible judgment."823  God’s will is the supreme rule of justice,824  so that "what he wills must be considered just for the very reason that he wills it. When you ask, therefore, why the Lord did so, the answer must be, Because he would. But if you go further and ask why he so determined, you are in search of something higher and greater than the will of God, which can never be found. Let human temerity, therefore, desist from seeking that which is not, lest it should fail of finding that which is. This will be a sufficient restraint to any one disposed to reason with reverence concerning the secrets of his God."825  Calvin infers from the passage, "God hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth "(Rom. 9:13), that Paul attributes both equally "to the mere will of God. If, therefore, we can assign no reason why God grants mercy to his people but because such is his pleasure, neither shall we find any other cause but his will for the reprobation of others. For when God is said to harden or show mercy to whom he pleases, men are taught by this declaration to seek no cause behind his will."826

Predestination, therefore, implies a twofold decree—a decree of election unto holiness and salvation, and a decree of reprobation unto death on account of sin and guilt. Calvin deems them inseparable. "Many indeed," he says, "as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile and absurd, because election itself could not exist without being opposed to reprobation … . Whom God passes by, he reprobates (Quos Deus praeterit, reprobat), and from no other cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his children."827

God bestows upon the reprobate all the common mercies of daily life as freely as upon the elect, but he withholds from them his saving mercy. The gospel also is offered to them, but it will only increase their responsibility and enhance their damnation, like the preaching of Christ to the unbelieving Jews (Isa. 6:9, 10; Matt. 13:13–15). But how shall we reconcile this with the sincerity of such an offer?

Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism.

Within the Calvinistic system there arose two schools in Holland during the Arminian controversy, the Infralapsarians (also called Sublapsarians) and the Supralapsarians, who held different views on the order of the divine decrees and their relation to the fall (lapsus). The Infralapsarians adjust, as it were, the eternal counsel of God to the temporal fall of man, and assume that God decreed, first to create man in holiness; then to permit him to fall by the self-determination of his free will; next, to save a definite number out of the guilty mass; and last, to leave the rest in sin, and to ordain them to eternal punishment.828  The Supralapsarians reverse the order, so that the decree of election and reprobation precedes the decree of creation; they make uncreated and unfallen man (that is, a non-ens) the object of God’s double decree. The Infralapsarians, moreover, distinguish between an efficient or active and a permissive or passive decree of God, and exclude the fall of Adam from the efficient decree; in other words, they maintain that God is not in any sense the author of the fall, but that he simply allowed it to come to pass for higher ends. He did not cause it, but neither did he prevent it. The Supralapsarians, more logically, include the fall itself in the efficient and positive decree; yet they deny as fully as the Infralapsarians, though less logically, that God is the author of sin. The Infralapsarians attribute to Adam before the fall the gift of free choice, which was lost by the fall; some Supralapsarians deny it. The doctrine of probation (except in the one case of Adam) has no place in the Calvinistic system, and is essentially Arminian. It is entirely inapplicable to infants dying in infancy. The difference between the two schools is practically worthless, and only exposes the folly of man’s daring to search the secrets of God’s eternal counsel. They proceed on a pure metaphysical abstraction, for in the eternal God there is no succession of time, no before nor after.829

Calvin was claimed by both schools. He must be classed rather with the Supralapsarians, like Beza, Gomarus, Twysse, and Emmons. He saw the inconsistency of exempting from the divine foreordination the most important event in history, which involved the whole race in ruin. "It is not absurd," he says, "to assert that God not only foresaw, but also foreordained the fall of Adam and the ruin of his posterity."  He expressly rejects the distinction between permission (permissio) and volition (voluntas) in God, who cannot permit what he does not will. "What reason," he asks, "shall we assign for God’s permitting the destruction of the impious, but because it is his will?  It is not probable that man procured his own destruction by the mere permission, and without any appointment of God. As though God had not determined what he would choose to be the condition of the chief of his creatures. I shall not hesitate, therefore, to confess with Augustin, ’that the will of God is the necessity of things, and what he has willed will necessarily come to pass; as those things are really about to happen which he has foreseen."830

But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious sense shrunk from the last logical inference of making God the author of sin; for this would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. He attributes to Adam the freedom of choice, by which he might have obtained eternal life, but he wilfully disobeyed.831  Hence his significant phrase: "Man falls, God’s providence so ordaining it; yet he falls by his own guilt."832  Here we have supralapsarian logic combined with ethical logic. He adds, however, that we do not know the reason why Providence so ordained it, and that it is better for us to contemplate the guilt of man than to search after the bidden predestination of God. "There is," he says, "a learned ignorance of things which it is neither permitted nor lawful to know, and avidity of knowledge is a species of madness."

Here is, notwithstanding this wholesome caution, the crucial point where the rigorous logic of Calvin and Augustin breaks down, or where the moral logic triumphs over intellectual logic. To admit that God is the author of sin would destroy his holiness, and overthrow the foundation of morality and religion. This would not be Calvinism, but fatalism and pantheism. The most rigorous predestinarian is driven to the alternative of choosing between logic and morality. Augustin and Calvin could not hesitate for a moment. Again and again, Calvin calls it blasphemy to make God the author of sin, and he abhorred sin as much as any man ever did. It is an established fact that the severest Calvinists have always been the strictest moralists.833

Infant Salvation and Damnation.

Are infants dying in infancy included in the decree of reprobation?  This is another crucial point in the Augustinian system, and the rock on which it splits.

St. Augustin expressly assigns all unbaptized children dying in infancy to eternal damnation, because of original sin inherited from Adam’s transgression. It is true, he mitigates their punishment and reduces it to a negative state of privation of bliss, as distinct from positive suffering.834  This does credit to his heart, but does not relieve the matter; for "damnatio," though "levissima" and "mitissima," is still damnatio.

The scholastic divines made a distinction between poena damni, which involves no active suffering, and poena sensus, and assigned to infants dying unbaptized the former but not the latter. They invented the fiction of a special department for infants in the future world, namely, the Limbus Infantum, on the border region of hell at some distance from fire and brimstone. Dante describes their condition as one of "sorrow without torment."835  Roman divines usually describe their condition as a deprivation of the vision of God. The Roman Church maintains the necessity of baptism for salvation, but admits the baptism of blood (martyrdom) and the baptism of intention, as equivalent to actual baptism. These exceptions, however, are not applicable to infants, unless the vicarious desire of Christian parents be accepted as sufficient.

Calvin offers an escape from the horrible dogma of infant damnation by denying the necessity of water baptism for salvation, and by making salvation dependent on sovereign election alone, which may work regeneration without baptism, as in the case of the Old Testament saints and the thief on the cross. We are made children of God by faith and not by baptism, which only recognizes the fact. Calvin makes sure the salvation of all elect children, whether baptized or not. This is a great gain. In order to extend election beyond the limits of the visible means of grace, he departed from the patristic and scholastic interpretation of John 3:5, that "water" means the sacrament of baptism, as a necessary condition of entrance into the kingdom of God. He thinks that a reference to Christian baptism before it was instituted would have been untimely and unintelligible to Nicodemus. He, therefore, connects water and Spirit into one idea of purification and regeneration by the Spirit.836

Whatever be the meaning of "water," Christ cannot here refer to infants, nor to such adults as are beyond the reach of the baptismal ordinance. He said of children, as a class, without any reference to baptism or circumcision: "Of such is the kingdom of God."  A word of unspeakable comfort to bereaved parents. And to make it still stronger, he said: "It is not the will of your Father, who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" (Matt. 18:14). These declarations of our Saviour, which must decide the whole question, seem to justify the inference that all children who die before having committed any actual transgression, are included in the decree of election. They are born into an economy of salvation, and their early death may be considered as a sign of gracious election.

But Calvin did not go so far. On the contrary, he intimates very clearly that there are reprobate or non-elect children as well as reprobate adults. He says that "some infants," having been previously regenerated by the Holy Spirit, "are certainly saved," but he nowhere says that all infants are saved.837  In his comments on Rom. 5:17, he confines salvation to the infants of pious (elect) parents, but leaves the fate of the rest more than doubtful.838  Arguing with Catholic advocates of free-will, who yet admitted the damnation of unbaptized infants, he asks them to explain in any other way but by the mysterious will of God, the terrible fact "that the fall of Adam, independent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death. Their tongues so loquacious on every other point must here be struck dumb."839

And in this connection he adds the significant words:, It is an awful (horrible) decree, I confess, but no one can deny that God foreknew the future, final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it, because it was appointed by his own decree."840

Our best feelings, which God himself has planted in our hearts, instinctively revolt against the thought that a God of infinite love and justice should create millions of immortal beings in his own image—probably more than half of the human race—in order to hurry them from the womb to the tomb, and from the tomb to everlasting doom!  And this not for any actual sin of their own, but simply for the transgression of Adam of which they never heard, and which God himself not only permitted, but somehow foreordained. This, if true, would indeed be a "decretum horribile."

Calvin, by using this expression, virtually condemned his own doctrine. The expression so often repeated against him, does great credit to his head and heart, and this has not been sufficiently appreciated in the estimate of his character. He ventured thus to utter his humane sentiments far more strongly than St. Augustin dared to do. If he, nevertheless, accepted this horrible decree, he sacrificed his reason and heart to the, rigid laws of logic and to the letter of the Scripture as he understood it. We must honor him for his obedience, but as he claimed no infallibility, as an interpreter, we must be allowed to challenge his interpretation.

Zwingli, as already remarked, was the first and the only Reformer who entertained and dared to express the charitable hope and belief in universal infant salvation by the atonement of Christ, who died for all. The Anabaptists held the same view, but they were persecuted as heretics by Protestants and Catholics alike, and were condemned in the ninth article of the Augsburg Confession.841  The Second Scotch Confession of 1590 was the first and the only Protestant Confession of the Reformation period which uttered a testimony of abhorrence and detestation of the cruel popish doctrine of infant damnation.842

But gradually the doctrine of universal infant salvation gained ground among Arminians, Quakers, Baptists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and is now adopted by almost all Protestant divines, especially by Calvinists, who are not hampered by the theory of baptismal regeneration.843

Zwingli, as we have previously shown, was equally in advance of his age in regard to the salvation of pious heathens, who die in a state of readiness for the reception of the gospel; and this view has likewise penetrated the modern Protestant consciousness.844

Defence of the Doctrine of Predestination.

Calvin defended the doctrine of predestination in his Institutes, and his polemical writings against Pighius, Bolsec, and Castellio, with consummate skill against all objections, and may be said to have exhausted the subject on his side of the question. His arguments were chiefly drawn from the Scriptures, especially the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; but he unduly stretched passages which refer to the historical destiny of individuals and nations in this world, into declarations of their eternal fate in the other world; and he undervalued the proper force of opposite passages (such as Ezek. 33:11; 18:23, 32; John 1:29; 3:16; 1 John 2:2; 4:14; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9) by a distinction between the secret and revealed will of God (voluntas arcani and voluntas beneplaciti), which carries an intolerable dualism and contradiction into the divine will.

He closes the whole discussion with this sentence: "Now while many arguments are advanced on both sides, let our conclusion be to stand astonished with Paul at so great a mystery; and amidst the clamor of petulant tongues let us not be ashamed to exclaim with him, ’O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’  For, as Augustin justly contends, it is acting a most perverse part to set up the measure of human justice as the standard by which to measure the justice of God."

Very true; but how can we judge of God’s justice at all without our own sense of justice, which comes from God?  And how can that be justice in God which is injustice in man, and which God himself condemns as injustice?  A fundamental element in justice is impartiality and equity.

Practical Effect.

The motive and aim of this doctrine was not speculative but practical. It served as a bulwark of free grace, an antidote to Pelagianism and human pride, a stimulus to humility and gratitude, a source of comfort and peace in trial and despondency. The charge of favoring license and carnal security was always indignantly repelled as a slander by the Pauline "God forbid!" and refuted in practice. He who believes in Christ as his Lord and Saviour may have a reasonable assurance of being among the elect, and this faith will constrain him to follow Christ and to persevere to the end lest he be cast away. Those who believe in the perseverance of saints are likely to practice it. Present unbelief is no sure sign of reprobation as long as the way is open for repentance and conversion.

Calvin sets the absolute sovereignty of God and the infallibility of the Bible over against the pretended sovereignty and infallibility of the pope. Fearing God, he was fearless of man. The sense of God’s sovereignty fortified his followers against the tyranny of temporal sovereigns, and made them champions and promoters of civil and political liberty in France, Holland, England, and Scotland.

Confessional Approval.

The doctrine of predestination received the official sanction of the pastors of Geneva, who signed the Consensus Genevensis prepared by Calvin (1552).845  It was incorporated, in its milder, infralapsarian form, in the French Confession (1559), the Belgic Confession (1561), and the Scotch Confession (1560). It was more logically formulated in the Lambeth Articles (1595), the Irish Articles (1615), the Canons of Dort (1619), the Westminster Confession and Larger Catechism (1647), and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675). On the other hand, the First Helvetic Confession (1536), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), and the Anglican Articles (1571, Art. XVII.) indorse merely the positive part of the free election of believers, and are wisely silent concerning the decree of reprobation and preterition; leaving this to theological science and private opinion.846  It is noteworthy that Calvin himself emitted the doctrine of predestination in his own catechism. Some minor Reformed Confessions, as that of Brandenburg, expressly declare that God sincerely wishes the salvation of all men, and is not the author of sin and damnation.

NOTES.

AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENTS OF THE CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF A DOUBLE PREDESTINATION.

I. Calvin’s Articuli de Praedestinatione.

Calvin gave a condensed statement of his system in the following articles, which were first published by the Strassburg editors, in 1870, from his autograph in the University library of Geneva: —

[Ex autographo Calvini Bibl. Genev., Cod. 145, fol. 100.]

"Ante creatum primum hominem statuerat Deus aeterno consilio quid de toto genere humano fieri vellet.

"Hoc arcano Dei consilio factum est ut Adam ab integro naturae suae statu deficeret ac sua defectione traheret omnes suos posteros in reatum aeternae mortis.

"Ab hoc eodem decreto pendet discrimen inter electos et reprobos: quia alios sibi adoptavit in salutem, alios aeterno exitio destinavit.

"Tametsi justae Dei vindictae vasa sunt reprobi, rursum electi vasa misericordiae, causa tamen discriminis non alia in Deo quaerenda est quam mera eius voluntas, quae summa est justitiae regula.

"Tametsi electi fide percipiunt adoptionis gratiam, non tamen pendet electio a fide, sed tempore et ordine prior est.

"Sicut initium et perseverantia fidei a gratuita Dei electione fluit, ita non alii vere illuminantur in fidem, nec alii spiritu regenerationis donantur, nisi quos Deus elegit: reprobos vero vel in sua caecitate manere necesse est, vel excidere a parte fidei, si qua in illis fuerit.

"Tametsi in Christo eligimur, ordine tamen illud prius est ut nos Dominus in suis censeat, quam ut faciat Christi membra.

"Tametsi Dei voluntas summa et prima est rerum omnium causa, et Deus diabolum et impios omnes suo arbitrio subiectos habet, Deus tamen neque peccati causa vocari potest, neque mali autor, neque ulli culpae obnoxius est.

"Tametsi Deus peccato vere infensus est et damnat quidquid est iniustitiae in hominibus, quia illi displicet, non tamen nuda eius permissione tantum, sed nutu quoque et arcano decreto gubernantur omnia hominum facta.

"Tametsi diabolus et reprobi Dei ministri sunt et organa, et arcana eius judicia exsequuntur, Deus tamen incomprehensibili modo sic in illis et per illos operatur ut nihil ex eorum vitio labis contrahat, quia illorum malitia iuste recteque utitur in bonum finem, licet modus saepe nobis sit absconditus.

"Inscite vel calumniose faciunt qui Deum fieri dicunt autorem peccati, si omnia eo volente et ordinante fiant: quia inter manifestam hominum pravitatem et arcana Dei iudicia non distinguunt."

II. The Lambeth Articles.

In full agreement with Calvin are the Lambeth Articles, 1595. They were intended to be an obligatory appendix to the Thirty-nine Articles which, in Art. XVII., present only the positive side of the doctrine of predestination, and ignore reprobation. They were prepared by Dr. Whitaker, Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, and approved by, Dr. Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Hutton, Archbishop of York, and a number of prelates convened at Lambeth Palace, London; also by Hooker (with a slight modification; see Hooker’s Works, ed. by Keble, II. 752 sq.). But they were not sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth, who was displeased that a Lambeth Synod was called without her authority, nor by James I., and gradually lost their power during the Arminian reaction under the Stuarts. They are as follows: —

"1. God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto life; certain men he hath reprobated.

"2. The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life is not the foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything that is in the person predestinated, but only the good will and pleasure of God.

"3. There is predetermined a certain number of the predestinate, which can neither be augmented nor diminished.

"4. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be necessarily damned for their sins.

"5. A true, living, and justifying faith, and the Spirit of God justifying [sanctifying] is not extinguished, falleth not away; it vanisheth not away in the elect, either finally or totally.

"6. A man truly faithful, that is, such a one who is endued with a justifying faith, is certain, with the full assurance of faith, of the remission of his sins and of his everlasting salvation by Christ.

7. Saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not communicated to all men, by which they may be saved if they will.

"8. No man can come unto Christ unless it shall be given unto him, and unless the Father shall draw him; and all men are not drawn by the Father that they may come to the Son.

"9. It is not in the will or power of every one to be saved."

The Lambeth Articles were accepted by the Convocation at Dublin, 1615, and engrafted on the Irish Articles of Religion, which were probably composed by the learned Archbishop Ussher (at that time Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin), and form the connecting link between the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession. Some of the strongest statements of the Irish Articles passed literally (without any acknowledgment) into the Westminster Confession. The Irish Articles are printed in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, III. 526–544.

III. The Westminster Confession.

Chap. III. Of God’s Eternal Decree.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, prepared by the Westminster Assembly in 1647, adopted by the Long Parliament, by the Kirk of Scotland, and the Presbyterian Churches of America, gives the clearest and strongest symbolic statement of this doctrine. It assigns to it more space than to the holy Trinity, or the Person of Christ, or the atonement.

"1. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

"2. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

"3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"4. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.

"5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.

"6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

"7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.

"8. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel."

IV. Methodism And Calvinism.

The severest condemnation of the Westminster Calvinism came from John Wesley, the most apostolic man that the Anglo-Saxon race has produced. He adopted the Arminian creed and made it a converting agency; he magnified the free grace of God, like the Calvinists, but extended it to all men. In a sermon on Free Grace, preached at Bristol (Sermons, vol. I. 482 sqq.), he charges the doctrine of predestination with "making vain all preaching, and tending to destroy holiness, the comfort of religion and zeal for good works, yea, the whole Christian revelation by involving it in fatal contradictions."  He goes so far as to call it "a doctrine full of blasphemy," because "it represents our blessed Lord as a hypocrite, a deceiver of the people, a man void of common sincerity, as mocking his helpless creatures by offering what he never intends to give, by saying one thing and meaning another."  It destroys "all the attributes of God, his justice, mercy, and truth, yea, it represents the most holy God as worse than the devil, as both more false, more cruel, and more unjust."  This is as hard and unjust as anything that Pighius, Bolsec, Castellio, and Servetus said against Calvin. And yet Wesley cooperated for some time with George Whitefield, the great Calvinistic revival preacher, and delivered his funeral sermon in Tottenham-Court-Road, Nov. 18, 1770, on the text, Num. 23:10, in which he spoke in the highest terms of Whitefield’s personal piety and great usefulness (Sermons, I. 470–480). "Have we read or heard," he asked, "of any person since the apostles, who testified the gospel of the grace of God through so widely extended a space, through so large a part of the habitable world?  Have we read or heard of any person, who called so many thousands, so many myriads of sinners to repentance?  Above all, have we read or heard of any, who has been a blessed instrument in his hand of bringing so many sinners from ’darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God?’ "— This is a striking illustration how widely great and good men may differ in theology, and yet how nearly they may agree in religion.

Charles Wesley fully sided with the Arminianism of his brother John, and abused his poetic gift by writing poor doggerel against Calvinism.847  He had a bitter controversy on the subject with Toplady, who was a devout Calvinist. But their theological controversy is dead and buried, while their devotional hymns still live, and Calvinists and Methodists heartily join in singing Wesley’s "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and Toplady’s "Rock of Ages, cleft for me."

V. Modern Calvinism.

Modern Calvinism retains the doctrine of an all-ruling providence and saving grace, but denies reprobation and preterition, or leaves them to the sphere of metaphysical theology. It lays also great stress on the moral responsibility of the human will, and on the duty of offering the gospel sincerely to every creature, in accordance with the modern missionary spirit. This, at least, is the prevailing and growing tendency among Presbyterian Churches in Europe and America, as appears from the recent agitation on the revision of the Westminster Confession. The new creed of the Presbyterian Church of England, which was adopted in 1890, avoids all the objectionable features of old Calvinism, and substitutes for the eight sections of the third chapter of the Westminster Confession the following two articles, which contain all that is necessary in a public confession: —

ART. IV. Of Providence.

"We believe that God the Creator upholds all things by the word of his power, preserving and providing for all his creatures, according to the laws of their being; and that he, through the presence and energy of his Spirit in nature and history, disposes and governs all events for his own high design; yet is he not in any wise the author or approver of sin, neither are the freedom and responsibility of man taken away, nor have any bounds been set to the sovereign liberty of him who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth."

ART. XII. Of Election and Regeneration.

"We humbly own and believe that God the Father, before the foundation of the world, was pleased of his sovereign grace to choose unto himself in Christ a people, whom he gave to the Son, and to whom the Holy Spirit imparts spiritual life by a secret and wonderful operation of his power, using as his ordinary means, where years of understanding have been reached, the truths of his Word in ways agreeable to the nature of man; so that, being born from above, they are the children of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works."

§ 114. Calvinism examined.

We cannot dismiss this important subject without examining the Calvinistic system of predestination in the light of Christian experience, of reason, and the teaching of the Bible.

Calvinism, as we have seen, starts from a double decree of absolute predestination, which antedates creation, and is the divine program of human history. This program includes the successive stages of the creation of man, an universal fall and condemnation of the race, a partial redemption and salvation, and a partial reprobation and perdition: all for the glory of God and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice. History is only the execution of the original design. There can be no failure. The beginning and the end, God’s immutable plan and the issue of the world’s history, must correspond.

We should remember at the outset that we have to deal here with nothing less than a solution of the world-problem, and should approach it with reverence and an humble sense of the limitation of our mental capacities. We stand, as it were, before a mountain whose top is lost in the clouds. Many who dared to climb to the summit have lost their vision in the blinding snowdrifts. Dante, the deepest thinker among poets, deems the mystery of predestination too far removed from mortals who cannot see "the first cause in its wholeness," and too deep even for the comprehension of the saints in Paradise, who enjoy the beatific vision, yet "do not know all the elect," and are content "to will whatsoever God wills."848  Calvin himself confesses that, the predestination of God is a labyrinth, from which the mind of man can by no means extricate itself."849

The only way out of the labyrinth is the Ariadne thread of the love of God in Christ, and this is a still greater, but more blessed mystery, which we can adore rather than comprehend.

The Facts of Experience.

We find everywhere in this world the traces of a revealed God and of a hidden God; revealed enough to strengthen our faith, concealed enough to try our faith.

We are surrounded by mysteries. In the realm of nature we see the contrasts of light and darkness, day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter, life and death, blooming valleys and barren deserts, singing birds and poisonous snakes, useful animals and ravenous beasts, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. Turning to human life, we find that one man is born to prosperity, the other to misery; one a king, the other a beggar; one strong and healthy, the other a helpless cripple; one a genius, the other an idiot; one inclined to virtue, another to vice; one the son of a saint, the other of a criminal; one in the darkness of heathenism, another in the light of Christianity. The best men as well as the worst are exposed to fatal accidents, and whole nations with their innocent offspring are ravaged and decimated by war, pestilence, and famine.

Who can account for all these and a thousand other differences and perplexing problems?  They are beyond the control of man’s will, and must be traced to the inscrutable will of God, whose ways are past finding out.

Here, then, is predestination, and, apparently, a double predestination to good or evil, to happiness or misery.

Sin and death are universal facts which no sane man can deny. They constitute the problem of problems. And the only practical solution of the problem is the fact of redemption. "Where sin has abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly; that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord "(Rom. 5:20, 21).

If redemption were as universal in its operation as sin, the solution would be most satisfactory and most glorious. But redemption is only partially revealed in this world, and the great question remains: What will become of the immense majority of human beings who live and die without God and without hope in this world?  Is this terrible fact to be traced to the eternal counsel of God, or to the free agency of man?  Here is the point where Augustinianism and Calvinism take issue with Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Synergism, and Arminianism.

The Calvinistic system involves a positive truth: the election to eternal life by free grace, and the negative inference: the reprobation to eternal death by arbitrary justice. The former is the strength, the latter is the weakness of the system. The former is practically accepted by all true believers; the latter always has been, and always will be, repelled by the great majority of Christians.

The doctrine of a gracious election is as clearly taught in the New Testament as any other doctrine. Consult such passages as Matt. 25:34; John 6:37, 44, 65; 10:28; 15:16; l7:12; 18:9; Acts 13:48; Rom. 8:28–39; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 1:4–11; 2:8–10; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13, 14; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Pet. 1:2. The doctrine is confirmed by experience. Christians trace all their temporal and spiritual blessings, their life, health, and strength, their regeneration and conversion, every good thought and deed to the undeserved mercy of God, and hope to be saved solely by the merits of Christ, "by grace through faith," not by works of their own. The more they advance in spiritual life, the more grateful they feel to God, and the less inclined to claim any merit. The greatest saints are also the humblest. Their theology reflects the spirit and attitude of prayer, which rests on the conviction that God is the free giver of every good and perfect gift, and that, without God, we are nothing. Before the throne of grace all Christians may be called Augustinians and Calvinists.

It is the great merit of Calvin to have brought out this doctrine of salvation by free grace more forcibly and clearly than any divine since the days of Augustin. It has been the effective theme of the great Calvinistic preachers and writers in Europe and America to this day. Howe, Owen, Baxter, Bunyan, South, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Robert Hall, Chalmers, Spurgeon, were Calvinists in their creed, though belonging to different denominations,—Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist,—and had no superiors in pulpit power and influence. Spurgeon was the most popular and effective preacher of the nineteenth century, who addressed from week to week five thousand bearers in his Tabernacle, and millions of readers through his printed sermons in many tongues. Nor should we forget that some of the most devout Roman Catholics were Augustinians or Jansenists.

On the other hand, no man is saved mechanically or by force, but through faith, freely, by accepting the gift of God. This implies the contrary power of rejecting the gift. To accept is no merit, to reject is ingratitude and guilt. All Calvinistic preachers appeal to man’s responsibility. They pray as if everything depended on God; and yet they preach and work as if everything depended on man. And the Church is directed to send the gospel to every creature. We pray for the salvation of all men, but not for the loss of a single human being. Christ interceded even for his murderers on the cross.

Here, then, is a practical difficulty. The decree of reprobation cannot be made an object of prayer or preaching, and this is an argument against it. Experience confirms election, but repudiates reprobation.

The Logical Argument.

The logical argument for reprobation is that there can be no positive without a negative; no election of some without a reprobation of others. This is true by deductive logic, but not by inductive logic. There are degrees and stages of election. There must be a chronological order in the history of salvation. All are called sooner or later; some in the sixth, others in the ninth, others in the eleventh, hour, according to God’s providence. Those who accept the call and persevere in faith are among the elect (1 Pet. 1:1; 2:9). Those who reject it, become reprobate by their own unbelief, and against God’s wish and will. There is no antecedent decree of reprobation, but only a judicial act of reprobation in consequence of man’s sin.

Logic is a two-edged sword. It may lead from predestinarian premises to the conclusion that God is the author of sin, which Calvin himself rejects and abhors as a blasphemy. It may also lead to fatalism, pantheism, or universalism. We must stop somewhere in our process of reasoning, or sacrifice a part of the truth. Logic, it should be remembered, deals only with finite categories, and cannot grasp infinite truth. Christianity is not a logical or mathematical problem, and cannot be reduced to the limitations of a human system. It is above any particular system and comprehends the truths of all systems. It is above logic, yet not illogical; as revelation is above reason, yet not against reason.

We cannot conceive of God except as an omniscient and omnipotent being, who from eternity foreknew and, in some way, also foreordained all things that should come to pass in his universe. He foreknew what he foreordained, and he foreordained what he foreknew; his foreknowledge and foreordination, his intelligence and will are coeternal, and must harmonize. There is no succession of time, no before nor after in the eternal God. The fall of the first man, with its effects upon all future generations, cannot have been an accident which God, as a passive or neutral spectator, simply permitted to take place when he might so easily have prevented it. He must in some way have foreordained it, as a means for a higher end, as a negative condition for the greatest good. So far the force of reasoning, on the basis of belief in a personal God, goes to the full length of Calvinistic supralapsarianism, and even beyond it, to the very verge of universalism. If we give up the idea of a self-conscious, personal God, reason would force us into fatalism or pantheism.

But there is a logic of ethics as well as of metaphysics. God is holy as well as almighty and omniscient, and therefore cannot be the author of sin. Man is a moral as well as an intellectual being, and the claims of his moral constitution are equal to the claims of his intellectual constitution. Conscience is as powerful a factor as reason. The most rigid believer in divine sovereignty, if he be a Christian, cannot get rid of the sense of personal accountability, though he may be unable to reconcile the two. The harmony lies in God and in the moral constitution of man. They are the two complementary sides of one truth. Paul unites them in one sentence: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). The problem, however, comes within the reach of possible solution, if we distinguish between sovereignty as an inherent power, and the exercise of sovereignty. God may limit the exercise of his sovereignty to make room for the free action of his creatures. It is by his sovereign decree that man is free. Without such self-limitation he could not admonish men to repent and believe. Here, again, the Calvinistic logic must either bend or break. Strictly carried out, it would turn the exhortations of God to the sinner into a solemn mockery and cruel irony.

The Scripture Argument.

Calvin, though one of the ablest logicians, cared less for logic than for the Bible, and it is his obedience to the Word of God that induced him to accept the decretum horribile against his wish and will. His judgment is of the greatest weight, for he had no superior, and scarcely an equal, in thorough and systematic Bible knowledge and exegetical insight.

And here we must freely admit that not a few passages, especially in the Old Testament, favor a double decree to the extent of supreme supralapsarianism; yea, they go beyond the Calvinistic system, and seem to make God himself the author of sin and evil. See Ex. 4:21; 7:13 (repeatedly said of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart); Isa. 6:9, 10; 44:18; Jer. 6:21; Amos 3:6 ("Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"); Prov. 16:4; Matt. 11:25; 13:14, 15; John 12:40; Rom. 9:10–23; 11:7, 8; 1 Cor. 14:3; 2 Thess. 2:11; 1 Pet. 2:8; Jude 4 ("who were of old set forth unto this condemnation ").850

The rock of reprobation is Romans 9. It is not accidental that Calvin elaborated and published the second edition of his Institutes simultaneously with his Commentary on the Romans, at Strassburg, in 1539.

There are especially three passages in Romans 9, which in their strict literal sense favor extreme Calvinism, and are so explained by some of the severest grammatical commentators of modern times (as Meyer and Weiss).

(a) 9:13: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," quoted from Mal. 1:2, 3. This passage, whether we take it in a literal or anthropopathic sense, has no reference to the eternal destiny of Jacob and Esau, but to their representative position in the history of the theocracy. This removes the chief difficulty. Esau received a temporal blessing from his father (Gen. 27:39, 40), and behaved kindly and generously to his brother (33:4); he probably repented of the folly of his youth in selling his birthright,851 and may be among the saved, as well as Adam and Eve—the first among the lost and the first among the saved.

Moreover, the strict meaning of a positive hatred seems impossible in the nature of the case, since it would contradict all we know from the Bible of the attributes of God. A God of love, who commands us to love all men, even our enemies, cannot hate a child before his birth, or any of his creatures made in his own image. "Can a woman forget her sucking child," says the Lord, "that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Yea, these may forget, yet will I not forget thee" (Isa. 49:15). This is the prophet’s conception of the tender mercies of God. How much more must it be the conception of the New Testament?  The word hate must, therefore, be understood as a strong Hebraistic expression for loving less or putting back; as in Gen. 29:31, where the original text says, "Leah was hated" by Jacob, i.e. loved less than Rachel (comp. 29:30). When our Saviour says, Luke 14:26: "If any man hateth not his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple," he does not mean that his disciples should break the fifth commandment, and act contrary to his direction: "Love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you" (Matt. 5:44), but simply that we should prefer him above everything, even life itself, and should sacrifice whatever comes in conflict with him. This meaning is confirmed by the parallel passage, Matt. 10:37: "He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me."

(b) Rom. 9:17. Paul traces the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to the agency of God, and so far makes God responsible for sin. But this was a judicial act of punishing sin with sin; for Pharaoh had first hardened his own heart (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34). Moreover, this passage has no reference to Pharaoh’s future fate any more than the passage about Esau, but both refer to their place in the history of Israel.

(c) In Rom. 9:22 and 23, the Apostle speaks of "vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction" kathrtismevna eij" ajpwvleian), and "vessels of mercy which he (God) prepared unto glory" (a} prohtoivmasen eij" dovxan). But the difference of the verbs, and the difference between the passive (or middle) in the first clause and the active in the second is most significant, and shows that God has no direct agency in the destruction of the vessels of wrath, which is due to their self-destruction; the participle perfect denotes the result of a gradual process and a state of maturity for destruction, but not a divine purpose. Calvin is too good an exegete to overlook this difference, and virtually admits its force, although he tries to weaken it.

They observe," he says of his opponents, "that it is not said without meaning, that the vessels of wrath are fitted for destruction, but that God prepared the vessels of mercy; since by this mode of expression, Paul ascribes and challenges to God the praise of salvation, and throws the blame of perdition on those who by their choice procure it to themselves. But though I concede to them that Paul softens the asperity of the former clause by the difference of phraseology; yet it is not at all consistent to transfer the preparation for destruction to any other than the secret counsel of God, which is also asserted just before in the context, ’that God raised up Pharaoh, and whom he will he hardeneth.’  Whence it follows, that the cause of hardening is the secret counsel of God. This, however, I maintain, which is observed by Augustin, that when God turns wolves into sheep, he renovates them by more powerful grace to conquer their obstinacy; and therefore the obstinate are not converted, because God exerts not that mightier grace, of which he is not destitute if he chose to display it."852

Paul’s Teaching of the Extent of Redemption.

Whatever view we may take of these hard passages, we should remember that Romans 9 is only a part of Paul’s philosophy of history, unfolded in chapters 9–11. While Rom. 9 sets forth the divine sovereignty, Rom. 10 asserts the human responsibility, and Rom. 11 looks forward to the future solution of the dark problem, namely, the conversion of the fulness of the Gentiles and the salvation of all Israel (11:25). And he winds up the whole discussion with the glorious sentence: "God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy—upon all" (11:32). This is the key for the understanding, not only of this section, but of the whole Epistle to the Romans.853

And this is in harmony with the whole spirit and aim of this Epistle. It is easier to make it prove a system of conditional universalism than a system of dualistic particularism. The very theme, 1:16, declares that the gospel is a power of God for the salvation, not of a particular class, but of "every one" that believeth. In drawing a parallel between the first and the second Adam (5:12–21), he represents the effect of the latter as equal in extent, and greater in intensity than the effect of the former; while in the Calvinistic system it would be less. We have no right to limit "the many" (oiJ polloiv) and the, "all" (pavnte") in one clause, and to take it literally in the other. "If, by the trespass of the one [Adam], death reigned through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So, then, as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many [i.e. all] were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many [all] be made righteous" (5:17–19).854  The same parallel, without any restriction, is more briefly expressed in the passage (1 Cor. 15:21): "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive;" and in a different form in Rom. 11:32 and Gal. 3:22, already quoted.

These passages contain, as in a nutshell, the theodicy of Paul. They dispel the darkness of Romans 9. They exclude all limitations of God’s plan and intention to a particular class; they teach not, indeed, that all men will be actually saved—for many reject the divine offer, and die in impenitence,—but that God sincerely desires and actually provides salvation for all. Whosoever is saved, is saved by grace; whosoever is lost, is lost by his own guilt of unbelief.

The Offer of Salvation.

There remains, it is true, the great difficulty that the offer of salvation is limited in this world, as far as we know, to a part of the human race, and that the great majority pass into the other world without any knowledge of the historical Christ.

But God gave to every man the light of reason and conscience (Rom. 1:19; 2:14, 15). The Divine Logos "lighteth every man" that cometh into the world (John 1:9). God never left himself "without witness" (Acts 14:17). He deals with his creatures according to the measure of their ability and opportunity, whether they have one or five or ten talents (Matt. 25:15 sqq.). He is "no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:35).

May we not then cherish at least a charitable hope, if not a certain belief, that a God of infinite love and justice will receive into his heavenly kingdom all those who die innocently ignorant of the Christian revelation, but in a state of preparedness or disposition for the gospel, so that they would thankfully accept it if offered to them?  Cornelius was in such a condition before Peter entered his house, and he represents a multitude which no man can number. We cannot know and measure the secret operations of the Spirit of God, who works "when, where, and how he pleases."

Surely, here is a point where the rigor of the old orthodoxy, whether Roman Catholic, or Lutheran, or Calvinistic, must be moderated. And the Calvinistic system admits more readily of an expansion than the churchly and sacramental type of orthodoxy.

The General Love of God to all Men.

This doctrine of a divine will and divine provision of a universal salvation, on the sole condition of faith, is taught in many passages which admit of no other interpretation, and which must, therefore, decide this whole question. For it is a settled rule in hermeneutics that dark passages must be explained by clear pas-sages, and not vice versa. Such passages are the following: —

"I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord our God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live" (Ezek. 18:32, 23; 33:11). "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself" (John 12:32). "God so loved the world" (that is, all mankind) "that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). "God our Saviour willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth "(1 Tim. 2:4).855  "The grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men" (Tit. 2:11). "The Lord is long-suffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9).856  "Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for (the sins of) the whole world" (1 John 2:2). It is impossible to state the doctrine of a universal atonement more clearly in so few words.857

To these passages should be added the divine exhortations to repentance, and the lament of Christ over the inhabitants of Jerusalem who "would not" come to him (Matt. 23:37). These exhortations are insincere or unmeaning, if God does not want all men to be saved, and if men have not the ability to obey or disobey the voice. The same is implied in the command of Christ to preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15), and to disciple all nations (Matt. 28:19).

It is impossible to restrict these passages to a particular class without doing violence to the grammar and the context.

The only way of escape is by the distinction between a revealed will of God, which declares his willingness to save all men, and a secret will of God which means to save only some men.858  Augustin and Luther made this distinction. Calvin uses it in explaining 2 Pet. 3:9, and those passages of the Old Testament which ascribe repentance and changes to the immutable God.

But this distinction overthrows the system which it is intended to support. A contradiction between intention and expression is fatal to veracity, which is the foundation of human morality, and must be an essential attribute of the Deity. A man who says the reverse of what he means is called, in plain English, a hypocrite and a liar. It does not help the matter when Calvin says, repeatedly, that there are not two wills in God, but only two ways of speaking adapted to our weakness. Nor does it remove the difficulty when he warns us to rely on the revealed will of God rather than brood over his secret will.

The greatest, the deepest, the most comforting word in the Bible is the word, "God is love," and the greatest fact in the world’s history is the manifestation of that love in the person and the work of Christ. That word and this fact are the sum and substance of the gospel, and the only solid foundation of Christian theology. The sovereignty of God is acknowledged by Jews and Mohammedans as well as by Christians, but the love of God is revealed only in the Christian religion. It is the inmost essence of God, and the key to all his ways and works. It is the central truth which sheds light upon all other truths.

§ 115. Calvin’s Theory of the Sacraments.

Inst. bk. IV. chs. XIV.–XIX.

Next to the doctrine of predestination, Calvin paid most attention to the doctrine of the sacraments. And here he was original, and occupied a mediating position between Luther and Zwingli. His sacramental theory passed into all the Reformed Confessions more than his view of predestination.

Calvin accepts Augustin’s definition that a sacrament (corresponding to the Greek "mystery") is "a visible sign of an invisible grace," but he improves it by emphasizing the sealing character of the sacrament, according to Rom. 4:11, and the necessity of faith as the condition of receiving the benefit of the ordinance. "It is," he says, "an outward sign by which the Lord seals in our consciences the promises of his good-will towards us, to support the weakness of our faith, or a testimony of his grace towards us, with a reciprocal attestation of our piety towards him."  It is even more expressive than the word. It is a divine seal of authentication, which sustains and strengthens our faith. "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24). To be efficacious, the sacraments must be accompanied by the Spirit, that internal Teacher, by whose energy alone our hearts are penetrated, and our affections moved. Without the influence of the Spirit, the sacraments can produce no more effect upon our minds, than the splendor of the sun on blind eyes, or the sound of a voice upon deaf ears. If the seed falls on a desert spot, it will die; but if it be cast upon a cultivated field, it will bring forth abundant increase.

Calvin vigorously opposes, as superstitious and mischievous, the scholastic opus operatum theory that the sacraments justify and confer grace by an intrinsic virtue, provided we do not obstruct their operation by a mortal sin. A sacrament without faith misleads the mind to rest in the exhibition of a sensuous object rather than in God himself, and is ruinous to true piety.

He agrees with Augustin in the opinion that the sign and the matter of the sacrament are not inseparably connected, and that it produces its intended effect only in the elect. He quotes from him the sentence: "The morsel of bread given by the Lord to Judas was poison; not because Judas received an evil thing, but because, being a wicked man, he received a good thing in a sinful manner."  But this must not be understood to mean that the virtue and truth of the sacrament depend on the condition or choice of him who receives it. . The symbol consecrated by the word of the Lord is in reality what it is declared to be, and preserves its virtue, although it confers no benefit on a wicked and impious person. Augustin happily solves this question in a few words: "If thou receive it carnally, still it ceases not to be spiritual; but it is not so to thee."  The office of the sacrament is the same as that of the word of God; both offer Christ and his heavenly grace to us, but they confer no benefit without the medium of faith.

Calvin discusses at length the seven sacraments of the Roman Church, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the mass. But it is sufficient here to state his views on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the only sacraments which Christ directly instituted for perpetual observance in the Church.

§ 116. Baptism.

Inst. IV. chs. XV. and XVI. Also his Brieve instruction, pour armer tous bons fideles contre les erreurs de la secte commune des Anabaptistes, Geneva, 1544, 2d ed. 1545; Latin version by Nicolas des Gallars. In Opera, VII. 45 sqq. This tract was written against the fanatical wing of the Anabaptists at the request of the pastors of Neuchâtel. His youthful treatise On the Sleep of the Soul was also directed against the Anabaptists. See above, § 77, pp. 325 sqq. Calvin’s wife was the widow of a converted Anabaptist.

Baptism, Calvin says, is the sacrament of ablution and regeneration; the Eucharist is the sacrament of redemption and sanctification. Christ "came by water and by blood" (1 John 5:6); that is, to purify and to redeem. The Spirit, as the third and chief witness, confirms and secures the witness of water and blood; that is, of baptism and the eucharist (1 John 5:8).859  This sublime mystery was strikingly exhibited on the cross, when blood and water issued from Christ’s side, which on this account Augustin justly called ’the fountain of our sacraments.’ "

I. Calvin defines baptism as, a sign of initiation, by which we are admitted into the society of the Church, in order that, being incorporated into Christ, we may be numbered among the children of God."

II. Faith derives three benefits from this sacrament.

1. It assures us, like a legal instrument properly attested, that all our sins are cancelled, and will never be imputed unto us (Eph. 5:26; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet. 3:21). It is far more than a mark or sign by which we profess our religion before men, as soldiers wear the insignia of their sovereign. It is "for the remission of sins," past and future. No new sacrament is necessary for sins committed after baptism. At whatever time we are baptized, we are washed and purified for the whole life. "Whenever we have fallen, we must recur to the remembrance of baptism, and arm our minds with the consideration of it, that we may be always certified and assured of the remission of our sins."

2. Baptism shows us our mortification in Christ, and our new life in him. All who receive baptism with faith experience the efficacy of Christ’s death and the power of his resurrection, and should therefore walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:3, 4, 11).

3. Baptism affords us "the certain testimony that we are not only engrafted into the life and death of Christ, but are so united to him as to be partakers of all his benefits" (Gal. 3:26, 27).

But while baptism removes the guilt and punishment of hereditary and actual sin, it does not destroy our natural depravity, which is perpetually producing works of the flesh, and will not be wholly abolished till the close of this mortal life. In the mean time we must hold fast to the promise of God in baptism, fight manfully against sin and temptation, and press forward to complete victory.

III. On the question of the validity of baptism by unworthy ministers, Calvin fully agrees with Augustin against the view of the Donatists, who measured the virtue of the sacrament by the moral character of the minister. He applies the argument to the Anabaptists of his day, who denied the validity of Catholic baptism on account of the idolatry and corruption of the papal Church. "Against these follies we shall be sufficiently fortified, if we consider that we are baptized not in the name of any man, but in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and consequently that it is not the baptism of man, but of God, by whomsoever administered."  The papal priests "did not baptize us into the fellowship of their own ignorance or sacrilege, but into the faith of Jesus Christ, because they invoked, not their own name, but the name of God, and baptized in no name but his. As it was the baptism of God, it certainly contained the promise of remission of sins, mortification of the flesh, spiritual vivification, and participation of Christ. Thus it was no injury to the Jews to have been circumcised by impure and Apostate priests; nor was the sign on that account useless, so as to render it necessary to be repeated, but it was sufficient to recur to the genuine original … . When Hezekiah and Josiah assembled together out of all Israel, those who had revolted from God, they did not call any of them to a second circumcision."

He argues against the Anabaptists from the fact also, that the apostles who had received the baptism of John, were not rebaptized. "And among us, what rivers would be sufficient for the repetition of ablutions as numerous as the errors which are daily corrected among us by the mercy of the Lord."860

IV. He pleads for the simplicity of the ordinance against the adventitious medley of incantation, wax-taper, spittle, salt, and "other fooleries," which from an early age were publicly introduced. "Such theatrical pomps dazzle the eye and stupify the minds of the ignorant."  The simple ceremony as instituted by Christ, accompanied by a confession of faith, prayers, and thanksgivings, shines with the greater lustre, unencumbered with extraneous corruptions. He disapproves the ancient custom of baptism by laymen in cases of danger of death. God can regenerate a child without baptism.

V. The mode of baptism was not a subject of controversy at that time. Calvin recognized the force of the philological and historical argument in favor of immersion, but regarded pouring and sprinkling as equally valid, and left room for Christian liberty according to the custom in different countries.861  Immersion was then still the prevailing mode in England, and continued till the reign of Elizabeth, who was herself baptized by immersion.

VI. But while meeting the Baptists half-way on the question of the mode, he strenuously defends paedobaptism, and devotes a whole chapter to it.862  He urges, as arguments, circumcision, which was a type of baptism; the nature of the covenant, which comprehends the offspring of pious parents; Christ’s treatment of children, as belonging to the kingdom of heaven, and therefore entitled to the sign and seal of membership; the word of Peter addressed to the converts on the day of Pentecost, who were accustomed to infant circumcision, that "the promise is to you and your children" (Acts 2:39); Paul’s declaration that the children are sanctified by their parents (1 Cor. 7:14), etc. He refutes at length the objections of the Anabaptists, with special reference to Servetus, who agreed with them on that point.

He assigns to infant baptism a double benefit: it ratifies to pious parents the promise of God’s mercy to their children, and increases their sense of responsibility as to their education; it engrafts the children into the body of the Church, and afterwards acts as a powerful stimulus upon them to be true to the baptismal vow.

§ 117. The Lord’s Supper. The Consensus of Zuerich.

I. Inst. IV. chs. XVII. and XVIII. Comp. the first ed., cap. IV., in Opera, I. 118 sqq.—Petit traicté de la sainte cène de nostre Seigneur Jesus-Christ.  Auquel est demontré la vraye institution, profit et utilité d’icelle, Genève, 1541, 1542, 1549. Opera, V. 429–460. Latin version by Nicholas des Gallars: Libellus de Coena Domini, a Ioanne Calvino pridem Gallica lingua scriptus, nunc vero in Latinum sermonem conversus, Gen., 1545. Also translated into English. Remarkably moderate.—The two catechisms of Calvin. — Consensio mutua in re sacramentaria Tigurinae Ecclesiae et D. Calvini ministri Genevensis Ecclesiae jam nunc ab ipsis authoribus edita (usually called Consensus Tigurinus), simultaneously published at Geneva and Zuerich, 1551; French ed. L’accord passé, etc., Gen., 1551. In Opera, VII. 689–748. The Latin text also in Niemeyer’s Collectio Conf, pp. 191–217. A German translation (Die Zuericher Uebereinkunft) in Bickel’s Bekenntnissschriften der evang. reform. Kirche, pp. 173–181. Comp. the correspondence of Calvin with Bullinger, Farel, etc., concerning the Consensus.—Calvin’s polemical writings against Joachim Westphal, namely, Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de sacramentis, Geneva, 1554, Zuerich, 1555; Secunda Defensio ... contra Westphali calumnias, Gen., 1556; and Ultima Admonitio ad Westphalum, Gen., 1557. In Opera, IX. 1–120, 137–252. Lastly, his book against Tilemann Hesshus (Hesshusen), Dilucida Explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis et sanguinis Christi in sacra Coena, ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas, Gen., 1561. In Opera, IX. 457–524. (In the Amsterdam ed., Tom. IX. 648–723.) Klebiz of Heidelberg, Beza, and Pierre Boquin also took part in the controversy with Hesshus.

II. For a comparative statement of the eucharistic views of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, see this History, vol. VI. 669–682; and Creeds of Christendom, I. 455 sqq.; 471 sqq. Calvin’s doctrine has been fully set forth by Ebrard in fils Dogma v. heil. Abendmahl, II. 402–525, and by Nevin in his Mystical Presence, Philad., 1846, pp. 54–67; and in the "Mercersburg Review" for September, 1850, pp. 421–548 (against Dr. Hodge in the "Princeton Review" for 1848). Comp. also §§ 132–134 below; Henry, P. I. ch. XIII.; and Staehelin, II. 189 sqq.

In the eucharistic controversy, which raged with such fury in the age of the Reformation, and was the chief cause of separation in its ranks, Calvin consistently occupied from the beginning to the end the position of a mediator and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians, between Wittenberg and Zuerich.

The way for a middle theory was prepared by the Tetrapolitan or Swabian Confession, drawn up by Martin Bucer, a born compromiser, during the Diet of Augsburg, 1530,863 and by the Wittenberg Concordia, 1536, which for a while satisfied the Lutherans, but was justly rejected by the Swiss.

Calvin published his theory in its essential features in the first edition of the Institutes (1536), more fully in the second edition (1539), then in a special tract written at Strassburg. He defended it in various publications, and adhered to it with his usual firmness. It was accepted by the Reformed Churches, and never rejected by Luther; on the contrary, he is reported to have spoken highly of Calvin’s tract,—De Coena Domini, when he got hold of a Latin copy in 1545, a year before his death.864

Calvin approached the subject with a strong sense of the mystery of the vital union of Christ with the believer, which is celebrated in the eucharist. "I exhort my readers," he says, in the last edition of his Institutes, "to rise much higher than I am able to conduct them; for as to myself, whenever I handle this subject, after having endeavored to say everything, I am conscious of having said but very little in comparison with its excellence. And though the conceptions of the mind can far exceed the expressions of the tongue; yet, with the magnitude of the subject, the mind itself is oppressed and overwhelmed. Nothing remains for me, therefore, but to break forth in admiration of that mystery, which the mind is unable clearly to understand, or the tongue to express."865

He aimed to combine the spiritualism of Zwingli with the realism of Luther, and to avoid the errors of both. And he succeeded as well as the case will admit. He agreed with Zwingli in the figurative interpretation of the words of institution, which is now approved by the best Protestant exegetes, and rejected the idea of a corporal presence and oral participation in the way of transubstantiation or consubstantiation, which implies either a miracle or an omnipresence of the body of Christ. But he was not satisfied with a purely commemorative or symbolical theory, and laid the chief stress on the positive side of an actual communion with the ever-living Christ. He expressed in private letters the opinion that Zwingli had been so much absorbed with overturning the superstition of a carnal presence that he denied or obscured the true efficacy of the sacrament.866  He acknowledged the mystery of the real presence and real participation, but understood them spiritually and dynamically. He confined the participation of the body and blood of Christ to believers, since faith is the only means of communion with Christ; while Luther extended it to all communicants, only with opposite effects.

The following is a brief summary of his view from the last edition of the Institutes (1559): —

After receiving us into his family by baptism, God undertakes to sustain and to nourish us as long as we live, and gives us a pledge of his gracious intention in the sacrament of the holy communion. This is a spiritual banquet, in which Christ testifies himself to be the bread of life, to feed our souls for a true and blessed immortality. The signs of bread and wine represent to us the invisible nourishment which we receive from the body and blood of Christ. They are exhibited in a figure and image, adapted to our feeble capacity, and rendered certain by visible tokens and pledges, which the dullest minds can understand. This mystical benediction, then, is designed to assure us that the body of the Lord was once offered as a sacrifice for us upon which we may now feed, and that his blood was once shed for us and is our perpetual drink. "His flesh is true meat, and his blood is true drink" (John 6:55). "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" (Eph. 5:30). "This is a great mystery" (5:32), which can be admired rather than expressed. Our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, just as our corporal life is preserved and sustained by bread and wine. Otherwise there would be no propriety in the analogy of the sign. The breaking of the bread is indeed symbolical, yet significant; for God is not a deceiver who sets before us an empty sign. The symbol of the body assures us of the donation of the invisible substance, so that in receiving the sign we receive the thing itself. The thing signified is exhibited and offered to all who come to that spiritual banquet, but it is advantageously enjoyed only by those who receive it with true faith and gratitude.

Calvin lays great stress on the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit in the communion. This was ignored by Luther and Zwingli. The Spirit raises our hearts from earth to heaven, as he does in every act of devotion (sursum corda), and he brings down the life-giving power of the exalted Redeemer in heaven, and thus unites what is, according to our imperfect notions, separated by local distance.867  The medium of communication is faith. Calvin might have sustained his view by the old liturgies of the Oriental Church, which have a special prayer invoking the Holy Spirit at the consecration of the eucharistic elements.868

He quotes several passages from Augustin in favor of the spiritual real presence. Ratramnus in the ninth, and Berengar in the eleventh, century had likewise appealed to Augustin against the advocates of a carnal presence and participation.869

When Luther reopened the eucharistic controversy by a fierce attack upon the Zwinglians (1545), who defended their martyred Reformer in a sharp reply, Calvin was displeased with both parties, and labored to bring about a reconciliation.870  He corresponded with Bullinger (the Melanchthon of the Swiss Church), and, on his invitation, he went to Zuerich with Farel (May, 1549). The delicate negotiations were carried on by both parties with admirable frankness, moderation, wisdom, and patience. The result was the "Consensus Tigurinus," in which Calvin states his doctrine as nearly as possible in agreement with Zwingli. This document was published in 1551, and adopted by all the Reformed Cantons, except Bern, which cherished a strong dislike to Calvin’s rigorism. It was also favorably received in France, England, and in parts of Germany. Melanchthon declared to Lavater (Bullinger’s son-in-law) that he then for the first time understood the Swiss, and would never again oppose them; but he struck out the clause of the "Consensus" which confined the efficacy of the sacrament to the elect.

But while the "Consensus" brought peace to the Swiss Churches, and satisfied the Melanchthonians, it was assailed by Westphal and Hesshus, who out-luthered Luther in zeal and violence, and disturbed the last years of Melanchthon and Calvin. We shall discuss this controversy in the next chapter.

The Calvinistic theory of the Eucharist passed into all the Reformed Confessions, and is very strongly stated in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the chief symbol of the German and Dutch Reformed Churches.871  In practice, however, it has, among Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, largely given way to the Zwinglian view, which is more plain and intelligible, but ignores the mystical element in the holy communion.

CHAPTER XV.

THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES.

§ 118. Calvin as a Controversialist.

Calvin was involved in several controversies, chiefly on account of his doctrine of predestination. He displayed a decided superiority over all his opponents, as a scholar and a reasoner. He was never at a loss for an argument. He had also the dangerous gift of wit, irony, and sarcasm, but not the more desirable gift of harmless humor, which sweetens the bitterness of controversy, and lightens the burden of daily toil. Like David, in the imprecatory Psalms, he looked upon the enemies of his doctrine as enemies of God. "Even a dog barks," he wrote to the queen of Navarre, "when his master is attacked; how could I be silent when the honor of my Lord is assailed?"872  He treated his opponents—Pighius, Bolsec, Castellio, and Servetus—with sovereign contempt, and called them "nebulones,873 nugatores, canes, porci, bestiae. Such epithets are like weeds in the garden of his chaste and elegant style. But they were freely used by the ancient fathers, with the exception of Chrysostom and Augustin, in dealing with heretics, and occur even in the Scriptures, but impersonally.874  His age saw nothing improper in them. Beza says that "no expression unworthy of a good man ever fell from the lips of Calvin."  The taste of the sixteenth century differed widely from that of the nineteenth. The polemical writings of Protestants and Romanists alike abound in the most violent personalities and coarse abuse. Luther wielded the club of Hercules against Tetzel, Eck, Emser, Cochlaeus, Henry VIII., Duke Henry of Brunswick, and the Sacramentarians. Yet there were honorable exceptions even then, as Melanchthon and Bullinger. A fiery temper is a propelling force in history; nothing great can be done without enthusiasm; moral indignation against wrong is inseparable from devotion to what is right; hatred is the negative side of love. But temper must be controlled by reason, and truth should be spoken in love, "with malice to none, with charity for all."  Opprobrious and abusive terms always hurt a good cause; self-restraint and moderation strengthen it. Understatement commands assent; overstatement provokes opposition.

§ 119. Calvin and Pighius.

I. Albertus Pighius: De libero hominis arbitrio et divina gratia libri decem. Coloniae, 1542, mense Augusto. Dedicated to Cardinal Sadolet.  He wrote also Assertio hierarchiae ecclesiasticae, a complete defence of the Roman Church, dedicated to Pope Paul III., 1538.

Calvin: Defensio sanae et orthodoxae doctrinae de servitute et liberatione humani arbitrii adversus calumnias Alberti Pighii Campensis. With a preface to Melanchthon. Geneva, 1543. In Opera, VI. 225–404. (Amsterdam ed. t. VIII. 116 sqq.)  The same in French, Geneva, 1560.

II. Bayle: Art. Pighius, in his "Dict. hist."—Henry, II. 285 sqq. (English trans. I. 492 sqq.).—Dyer (1850), pp. 158–165.—Schweizer: Die protest. Centraldogmen (1854), I. 180–200. Very satisfactory.—Werner (R. Cath.): Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur der christl. Theologie (1865), IV. 272 sq. and 298. Superficial.—Stähelin, II. 281–287.—Prolegomena to Calvin’s Opera, VI. pp. XXIII.–XXV.

As Erasmus had attacked Luther’s doctrine on the slavery of the human will, and provoked Luther’s crushing reply, Albert Pighius attacked Luther and chiefly Calvin on the same vulnerable point.

Pighius (or Pigghe) of Campen in Holland, educated at Louvain and Cologne, and a pupil of Pope Adrian VI., whom he followed to Rome, was a learned and eloquent divine and deputed on various missions by Clement VII. and Paul III. He may have seen Calvin at the Colloquies in Worms and Ratisbon. He died as canon and archdeacon of Utrecht, Dec. 26, 1542, a few months after the publication of his book against Calvin and the other Reformers. Beza calls him the first sophist of the age, who, by gaining a victory over Calvin, hoped to attain to a cardinal’s hat. But it is wrong to judge of motives without evidence. His retirement to Utrecht could not promote such ambition.875

Pighius represents the dogma of the slavery of the human will, and of the absolute necessity of all that happens, as the cardinal error of the Reformation, and charges it with leading to complete moral indifference. He wrote ten books against it. In the first six books, he defends the doctrine of free-will; in the last four books, he discusses divine grace, foreknowledge, predestination, and providence, and, last, the Scripture passages on these subjects. He teaches the Semi-Pelagian theory with some Pelagian features, and declares that "our works are meritorious before God."  After the Synod of Trent had more carefully guarded the doctrine of justification against Semi-Pelagianism, the Spanish Inquisition placed his book,—De libero arbitrio, and his tract, De peccato originali, on the Index, and Cardinal Bona recommended caution in reading them, since he did not always present the reliable orthodox doctrine. Pighius was not ashamed to copy, without acknowledgment, whole pages from Calvin’s Institutes, where it suited his purpose. Calvin calls him a plagiarist, and says, "With what right he publishes such sections as his own, I cannot see, unless he claims, as enemy, the privilege of plunder."

The arguments of Pighius against the doctrine of the slavery of the human will are these: It contradicts common sense; it is inconsistent with the admitted freedom of will in civil and secular matters; it destroys all morality and discipline, turns men into animals and monsters, makes God the author of sin, and perverts his justice into cruelty, and his wisdom into folly. He derives these heresies from the ancient Gnostics and Simon Magus, except that Luther surpassed them all in impiety.

Calvin’s answer was written in about two months, and amidst many interruptions. He felt the weight of the objections, but he always marched up to the cannon’s mouth. He admits, incidentally, that Luther often used hyperbolic expressions in order to rouse attention. He also allows the liberum arbitrium in the sense that man acts voluntarily and of his inner impulse.876 But he denies that man, without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, has the power to choose what is spiritually good, and quotes Rom. 6:17; 7:14, 23. "Man has arbitrium spontaneum, so that he willingly and by choice does evil, without compulsion from without, and, therefore, he incurs guilt. But, owing to native depravity, his will is so given to sin that it always chooses evil. Hence spontaneity and enslavement may exist together. The voluntas is spontanea, but not libera; it is not coacta, yet serva."  This is an anticipation of the artificial distinction between natural ability and moral inability—a distinction which is practically useless. As regards the teaching of the early Church, he could not deny that the Fathers, especially Origen, exalt the freedom of the will; but he could claim Augustin in his later writings, in which he retracted his earlier advocacy of freedom. The objection that the slavery of the will nullifies the exhortations to repent, would be valid, if God did not make them effective by his Spirit.

The reply of Calvin to Pighius is more cautious and guarded than Luther’s reply to Erasmus, and more churchly than Zwingli’s tract on Providence. In defending himself, he defended what was then the common Protestant doctrine, in opposition to the then prevailing Pelagianism in the Roman Church. It had a good effect upon the Council of Trent, which distinctly disowned the Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian heresy.877

Calvin dedicated his book to Melanchthon, as a friend who had agreed with him and had advised him to write against Pighius, if he should attack the Reformation. But Melanchthon, who had taught the same doctrine, was at that time undergoing a change in his views on the freedom of the will, chiefly because he felt that the denial of it would make God the author of sin, and destroy man’s moral accountability.878  He was as competent to appreciate the logical argument in favor of necessity, but he was more open to the force of ethical and practical considerations. In his reply to Calvin’s dedication, May 11, 1543, he acknowledged the compliment paid to him, but modestly and delicately intimated his dissent and his desire that Protestants should unite in the defence of those more important doctrines, which commended themselves by their simplicity and practical usefulness. "I wish," he says, "you would transfer your eloquence to the adorning of these momentous subjects, by which our friends would be strengthened, our enemies terrified, and the weak encouraged; for who in these days possesses a more forcible or splendid style of disputation?  ... I do not write this letter to dictate to you who are so learned a man, and so well versed in all the exercises of piety. I am persuaded, indeed, that it agrees with your sentiments, though less subtle and more adapted for use."879

Calvin intended to answer the second part of the work of Pighius, but as he learned that he had died shortly before, he did not wish "to insult a dead dog" (!), and applied himself "to other pursuits."880  But nine years afterwards he virtually answered it in the Consensus Genevensis (1552), which may be considered as the second part of his refutation of Pighius, although it was occasioned by the controversy with Bolsec.

§ 120. The Anti-Papal Writings. Criticism of the Council of Trent. 1547.

I. Most of Calvin’s anti-papal writings are printed in Opera, Tom. VI. (in the Amsterdam ed., Tom. IX. 37–90; 99–335 and 409–485.)  An English translation in vols. I. and III. of Tracts relating the Reformation by John Calvin, translated from the original Latin by Henry Beveridge, Esq. Edinburgh (Calvin Translation Society), 1844 and 1851.

II. Acta Synodi Tridentinae elim antidoto. In Opera, VII. 305–506. Comp. Schweizer, I. 239–249; Dyer, p. 229 sq.; Stähelin, II. 255 sqq.

Calvin’s anti-papal writings are numerous. Among them his Answer to Cardinal Sadolet (1540), and his Plea for the Necessity of the Reformation, addressed to Emperor Charles V. (1544), deserve the first place. They are superior in ability and force to any similar works of the sixteenth century. They have been sufficiently noticed in previous sections.881  I will only add the manly conclusion of the Plea to the Emperor: —

"But be the issue what it may, we will never repent of having begun, and of having proceeded thus far. The Holy Spirit is a faithful and unerring witness to our doctrine. We know, I say, that it is the eternal truth of God that we preach. We are, indeed, desirous, as we ought to be, that our ministry may prove salutary to the world; but to give it this effect belongs to God, not to us. If, to punish, partly the ingratitude, and partly the stubbornness of those to whom we desire to do good, success must prove desperate, and all things go to worse, I will say what it befits a Christian man to say, and what all who are true to this holy profession will subscribe: We will die, but in death even be conquerors, not only because through it we shall have a sure passage to a better life, but because we know that our blood will be as seed to propagate the Divine truth, which men now despise."

Next to these books in importance is his criticism of the Council of Trent, published in November, 1547.

The Council of Trent, which was to heal the divisions of Western Christendom, convened after long delay, Dec. 13, 1545; then adjourned, convened again, and finally closed, Dec. 4, 1563, a few months before Calvin’s death. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth sessions (1546), it settled the burning questions of the rule of faith, original sin, and justification, in favor of the present Roman system and against the views of the Reformers. The Council avoided the ill-disguised Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism of Eck, Pighius, and other early champions of Rome, and worded its decrees with great caution and circumspection; but it decidedly condemned the Protestant doctrines of the supremacy of the Bible, the slavery of the natural will, and justification by faith alone.

Calvin was the first to take up the pen against these decisions. He subjected them to a searching criticism. He admits, in the introduction, that a Council might be of great use and restore the peace of Christendom, provided it be truly, oecumenical, impartial, and free. But he denies that the Council of Trent had these essential characteristics. The Greek and the Evangelical Churches were not represented at all. It was a purely Roman Council, and under the control of the pope, who was himself the chief offender, and far more disposed to perpetuate abuses than to abolish them. The members, only about forty, mostly Italians, were not distinguished for learning or piety, but were a set of wrangling monks and canonists and minions of the pope. They gave merely a nod of assent to the living oracle of the Vatican, and then issued the decrees as responses of the Holy Spirit., As soon as a decree is framed," he says, "couriers flee off to Rome, and beg pardon and peace at the feet of their idol. The holy father hands over what the couriers have brought to his private advisers for examination. They curtail, add, and change as they please. The couriers return, and a sederunt is appointed. The notary reads over what no one dares to disapprove, and the asses shake their ears in assent. Behold the oracle which imposes religious obligations on the whole world .... The proclamation of the Council is entitled to no more weight than the cry of an auctioneer."

Calvin dissects the decrees with his usual polemic skill. He first states them in the words of the Council, and then gives the antidote. He exposes the errors of the Vulgate, which the Council put on a par with the original Hebrew and Greek originals, and defends the supremacy of the Scriptures and the doctrine of justification by faith.

He wrote this work in two or three months, under constant interruption, while Chemnitz took ten years to complete his. He submitted the manuscript to Farel, who was delighted with it. He published also a French edition in a more popular form.

Cochlaeus prepared, with much personal bitterness, a refutation of Calvin (1548), and was answered by Des Gallars,882 and Beza, who numbers Cochlaeus among the monsters of the animal kingdom.883

After the close of the Council of Trent, Martin Chemnitz, the leading divine of the Lutheran Church after the death of Melanchthon, wrote his more elaborate Examen Concilii Tridentini (1565–1573; second ed. 1585), which was for a long time a standard work in the Roman controversy.

§ 121. Against the German Interim. 1549.

Interim Adultero-Germanum: Cui adjecta est vera Christianae pacificationis et ecclesiae reformandae ratio, per Joannem Calvinum. Cavete a fermento Pharisaeorum, 1549. Opera, VII. 541–674.—It was reprinted in Germany, and translated into French (1549) and Italian (1561). See Henry, II. 369 sqq.; III. Beilage, 211 sq.; Dyer, 232 sq.

On the Interim, comp. the German Histories of Ranke, (V. 25 sqq.) and Janssen (III. 625 sqq.), and the monograph of Ludwig Pastor (Rom. Cath.): Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen während der Regierung Karls V. Freiburg, 1879, pp. 357 sqq.

Calvin’s tract on the false German Interim is closely connected with his criticism of the Council of Trent. After defeating the Smalkaldian League, the Emperor imposed on the Protestants in Germany a compromise confession of faith to be used till the final decision of the General Council. It was drawn up by two Roman Catholic bishops, Pflug (an Erasmian) and Helding, with the aid of John Agricola, the chaplain of Elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg. Agricola was a vain, ambitious, and unreliable man, who had once been a secretary and table companion of Luther, but fell out with him and Melanchthon in the Antinomian controversy. He was suspected of having been bribed by the Catholics.884

The agreement was laid before the Diet of Augsburg, and is called the Augsburg Interim. It was proclaimed, with an earnest exhortation, by the Emperor, May 15, 1548. It comprehended the whole Roman Catholic system of doctrine and discipline, but in a mild and conciliatory form, and without an express condemnation of the Protestant views. The doctrine of justification was stated in substantial agreement with that of the Council of Trent. The seven sacraments, transubstantiation, the mass, the invocation of the saints, the authority of the pope, and all the important ceremonies, were to be retained. The only concession made to the Protestants was the use of the cup by the laity in the holy communion, and the permission for married priests to retain their wives. The arrangement suited the views of the Emperor, who, as Ranke remarks, wished to uphold the Catholic hierarchy as the basis of his power, and yet to make it possible for Protestants to be reconciled to him. It is very evident that the adoption of such a confession was a virtual surrender of the cause of the Reformation and would have ended in a triumph of the papacy.

The Interim was received with great indignation by the Protestants, and was rejected in Hesse, ducal Saxony, and the Northern cities, especially in Madgeburg, which became the headquarters of the irreconcilable Lutherans under the lead of Flacius. In Southern Germany it was enforced with great rigor by Spanish soldiers. More than four hundred pastors in Swabia and on the Rhine were expelled from their benefices for refusing the Interim, and wandered about with their families in poverty and misery. Among them was Brenz, the Reformer of Würtemburg, who fled to Basel, where he received a consolitary letter from Calvin (Nov. 5, 1548). Martin Bucer, with all his zeal for Christian union, was unwilling to make a compromise at the expense of his conscience, and fled from Strassburg to England, where he was appointed professor of divinity in the University of Cambridge.

It was forbidden under pain of death to write against the Interim. Nevertheless, over thirty attacks appeared from the "Chancellery of God" at Magdeburg. Bullinger and Calvin wrote against it.

Calvin published the imperial proclamation and the text of the Interim in full, and then gave his reasons why it could never bring peace to the Church. He begins with a quotation from Hilary in the Arian controversy: "Specious indeed is the name of peace, and fair the idea of unity; but who doubts that the only peace of the Church is that which is of Christ?"  This is the key-note of his own exposition on the true method of the pacification of Christendom.

Elector Maurice of Saxony, who stood between two fires,—his Lutheran subjects and the Emperor,—modified the Augsburg Interim, with the aid of Melanchthon and the other theologians of Wittenberg, and substituted for it the Leipzig Interim, Dec. 22, 1548. In this document the chief articles of faith are more cautiously worded so as to admit of an evangelical interpretation, but the Roman ceremonies are retained, as adiaphora, or things indifferent, which do not compromise the conscience nor endanger salvation. it gave rise to the Adiaphoristic Controversy between the strict and the moderate Lutherans. Melanchthon was placed in a most trying position in the midst of the contest. In the sincere wish to save Protestantism from utter overthrow and Saxony from invasion and desolation by imperial troops, he yielded to the pressure of the courtiers and accepted the Leipzig Interim in the hope of better times. For this conduct he was severely attacked by Flacius, his former pupil, and denounced as a traitor. When Calvin heard the news, he wrote an earnest letter of fraternal rebuke to Melanchthon, and reminded him of Paul’s unyielding firmness at the Synod of Jerusalem on the question of circumcision.885

Protestantism in Germany was brought to the brink of ruin, but was delivered from it by the treason of the Elector Maurice. This shrewd, selfish politician and master in the art of dissimulation, had first betrayed the Protestants, by aiding the Emperor in the defeat of the Smalkaldian League, whereby he gained the electorate; and then he rose in rebellion against the Emperor and drove him and the Fathers of Trent out of Tyrol (1551). He died in 1553 of a deadly wound which he received in a victorious battle against his old friend Albrecht of Brandenburg.886

The final result of the defeat of the Emperor was the Augsburg Treaty of Peace, 1555, which for the first time gave to the Lutherans a legal status in the empire, though with certain restrictions. This closes the period of the Lutheran Reformation.

§ 122. Against the Worship of Relics. 1543.

Advertissement tres-utile du grand proffit qui reviendroit à la Chrestienté, s’il se faisoit inventoire de tous les corps sainctz et reliques, qui sont tant en Italia qu’en France Allemaigne, Hespaigne, et autres Royaumes et Pays. Gen., 1543, 1544, 1551, 1563, 1579, 1599. Reprinted in Opera, VI. 405–452. A Latin edition by Nicolaus Gallasius (des Gallars) was published at Geneva, 1548. It appeared also in English (A very profitable treatise, etc.), London, 1561, and in two German translations (by Jakob Eysenberg of Wittenberg, 1557, etc., and by J. Fischart, 1584, or 1583, under the title Der heilig Brotkorb der h. Römischen Reliquien). See Henry, II. 333 and III., Appendix, 204–206. A new English translation by Beveridge in Calvin’s Tracts relating to the Reformation, Edinb., 1844, pp. 289–341.

In the same year in which Calvin answered Pighius, he published a French tract on Relics, which was repeatedly printed and translated. It was the most popular and effective of his anti-papal writings. He indulged here very freely in his power of ridicule and sarcasm, which reminds one almost of Voltaire, but the spirit is altogether different. He begins with the following judicious remarks, which best characterize the book: —

"Augustin, in his work, entitled On the Labor of Monks, complaining of certain itinerant impostors, who, as early as his day, plied a vile and sordid traffic, by carrying the relics of martyrs about from place to place, adds, ’If, indeed, they are relics of martyrs.’  By this expression he intimates the prevalence, even in his day, of abuses and impostures, by which the ignorant populace were cheated into the belief that bones gathered here and there were those of saints. While the origin of the imposture is thus ancient, there cannot be a doubt that in the long period which has since elapsed, it has exceedingly increased, considering, especially, that the world has since been strangely corrupted, and has never ceased to become worse, till it has reached the extreme wherein we now behold it.

"But the first abuse and, as it were, beginning of the evil was, that when Christ ought to have been sought in his Word, sacraments, and spiritual influences, the world, after its wont, clung to his garments, vests, and swaddling-clothes; and thus overlooking the principal matter, followed only its accessory. The same course was pursued in regard to apostles, martyrs, and other saints. For when the duty was to meditate diligently on their lives, and engage in imitating them, men made it their whole study to contemplate and lay up, as it were in a treasury, their bones, shirts, girdles, caps, and similar trifles.

"I am not unaware that in this there is a semblance of pious zeal, the allegation being, that the relics of Christ are kept on account of the reverence which is felt for himself, and in order that the remembrance of him may take a firmer hold of the mind. And the same thing is alleged with regard to the saints. But attention should be paid to what Paul says, viz., that all divine worship of man’s devising, having no better and surer foundation than his own opinion, be its semblance of wisdom what it may, is mere vanity and folly.

"Besides, any advantage, supposed to be derived from it, ought to be contrasted with the danger. In this way it would be discovered that the possession of such relics was of little use, or was altogether superfluous and frivolous, whereas, on the other hand, it was most difficult, or rather impossible, that men should not thereby degenerate into idolatry. For they cannot look upon them, or handle them, without veneration; and there being no limit to this, the honor due to Christ is forthwith paid to them. In short, a longing for relics is never free from superstition, nay, what is worse, it is the parent of idolatry, with which it is very generally conjoined.

"All admit, without dispute, that God carried away the body of Moses from human sight, lest the Jewish nation should fall into the abuse of worshipping it. What was done in the case of one ought to be extended to all, since the reason equally applies. But not to speak of saints, let us see what Paul says of Christ himself. He declares, that after the resurrection of Christ he knew him no more after the flesh, intimating by these words that everything carnal which belonged to Christ should be consigned to oblivion and be discarded, in order that we may make it our whole study and endeavor to seek and possess him in spirit. Now, therefore, when men talk of it as a grand thing to possess some memorial of Christ and his saints, what else is it than to seek an empty cloak with which to hide some foolish desire that has no foundation in reason?  But even should there seem to be a sufficient reason for it, yet, seeing it is so clearly repugnant to the mind of the Holy Spirit, as declared by the mouth of Paul, what more do we require?"

The following is a summary of this tract: —

What was at first a foolish curiosity for preserving relics has degenerated into abominable idolatry. The great majority of the relics are spurious. It could be shown by comparison that every apostle has more than four bodies and every saint two or three. The arm of St. Anthony, which was worshipped in Geneva, when brought out from the case, turned out to be a part of a stag. The body of Christ could not be obtained, but the monks of Charroux pretend to have, besides teeth and hair, the prepuce or pellicle cut off in his circumcision. But it is shown also in the Lateran church at Rome. The blood of Christ which Nicodemus is said to have received in a handkerchief or a bowl, is exhibited in Rochelle, in Mantua, in Rome, and many other places. The manger in which he laid at his birth, his cradle, together with the shirt which his mother made, the pillar on which he leaned when disputing in the Temple, the water-pots in which he turned water into wine, the nails, and pieces of the cross, are shown in Rome, Ravenna, Pisa, Cluny, Angers, and elsewhere.

The table of the last Supper is at Rome, in the church of St. John in the Lateran; some of the bread at St. Salvador in Spain; the knife with which the Paschal Lamb was cut up, is at Treves.887  What semblance of possibility is there that that table was found seven or eight hundred years after?  Besides, tables were in those days different in shape from ours, for people used to recline at meals. Fragments of the cross found by St. Helena are scattered over many churches in Italy, France, Spain, etc., and would form a good shipload, which it would take three hundred men to carry instead of one. But they say that this wood never grows less!  Some affirm that their fragments were carried by angels, others that they dropped down from heaven. Those of Poitiers say that their piece was stolen by a maid-servant of Helena and carried off to France. There is still a greater controversy as to the three nails of the cross: one of them was fixed in the crown of Constantine, the other two were fitted to his horse’s bridle, according to Theodoret, or one was kept by Helena herself, according to Ambrose. But now there are two nails at Rome, one at Siena, one at Milan, one at Carpentras, one at Venice, one at Cologne, one at Treves, two at Paris, one at Bourges, etc. All the claims are equally good, for the nails are all spurious. There is also more than one soldier’s spear, crown of thorns, purple robe, the seamless coat, and Veronica’s napkin (which at least six cities boast of having). A piece of broiled fish, which Peter offered to the risen Saviour on the seashore, must have been wondrously well salted if it has kept for these fifteen centuries!  But, jesting apart, is it supposable that the apostles made relics of what they had actually prepared for dinner?

Calvin exposes with equal effect the absurdities and impieties of the wonder-working pictures of Christ; the relics of the hair and milk of the Virgin Mary, preserved in so many places, her combs, her wardrobe and baggage, and her house carried by angels across the sea to Loreto; the shoes of St. Joseph; the slippers of St. James; the head of John the Baptist, of which Rhodes, Malta, Lucca, Nevers, Amiens, Besançon, and Noyon claim to have portions; and his fingers, one of which is shown at Besançon, another at Toulouse, another at Lyons, another at Bourges, another at Florence. At Avignon they have the sword with which John was beheaded, at Aix-la-Chapelle the linen cloth placed under him by the kindness of the executioner, in Rome his girdle and the altar at which he said prayers in the desert. It is strange, adds Calvin, that they do not also make him perform mass.

The tract concludes with this remark: "So completely are the relics mixed up and huddled together, that it is impossible to have the bones of any martyr without running the risk of worshipping the bones of some thief or robber, or, it may be, the bones of a dog, or a horse, or an ass, or—Let every one, therefore, guard against this risk. Henceforth no man will be able to excuse himself by pretending ignorance."

§ 123. The Articles of the Sorbonne with an Antidote. 1544.

Articuli a facultate s. theol. Parisiensi determinati super materiis fidei nostrae hodie controversis. Cum Antidoto (1543), 1544. Opera, VII. 1–44. A French edition appeared in the same year. English translation by Beveridge, in Calvin’s Tracts, I. 72–122.

The theological faculty of the University of Paris published, March 10, 1542, a summary of the most obnoxious doctrines of the Roman Church, in twenty-five articles, which were sanctioned by an edict of the king of France, and were to be subscribed by all candidates of the priesthood.888

Calvin republished these articles, and accompanied each, first with an ironical defence, and then with a scriptural antidote. This reductio ad absurdum had probably more effect in Paris than a serious and sober mode of refutation. The following is a specimen: —

"Article VI. Of the Sacrifice of the Mass.

"The sacrifice of the Mass is, according to the institution of Christ, available for the living and the dead."

"Proof,—Because Christ says, ’This do.’  But to do is to sacrifice, according to the passage in Vergil: ’When I will do (make an offering) with a calf in place of produce, do you yourself come.’889  As to which signification, see Macrobius. But when the Lutherans deride that subtlety, because Christ spoke with the Apostles in the common Hebrew or Syriac tongue, and the Evangelists wrote in Greek, answer that the common Latin translation outweighs them. And it is well known that the sense of Scripture must be sought from the determination of the Church. But of the value of sacrifice for the living and the dead we have proof from experience. For many visions have appeared to certain holy monks when asleep, telling them that by means of masses souls had been delivered from Purgatory. Nay, St. Gregory redeemed the soul of Trajan from the infernal regions."890

"Antidote to Article VI.

"The institution of Christ is, ’Take and eat’ (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; 1 Cor. 11:24), but not, offer. Therefore, sacrifice is not conformable to the institution of Christ, but is plainly repugnant to it. Besides, it is evident from Scripture that it is the peculiar and proper office of Christ to offer himself; as an apostle says, that by one offering he has forever perfected those that are sanctified (Heb. 10:14). Also, that ’once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself’ (9:26). Also, that after this sanctification, ’there remains no more a sacrifice for sins’ (10:26). For to this end also was he consecrated a priest after the order of Melchisdec, without successor or colleague (Heb. 5:6; 7:21).

"Christ, therefore, is robbed of the honor of the priesthood, when the right of offering is transferred to others. Lastly, no man ought to assume this honor unless called by God, as an apostle testifies. But we read of none having been called but Christ. On the other hand, since the promise is destined for those only who communicate in the sacrament, by what right can it belong to the dead?"

§ 124. Calvin and the Nicodemites. 1544.

Calvin: Petit traicté monstrant que c’est que doit faire un homme fidele, cognoissant la verité de l’Evangile quand il est entre les papistes, 1543. Excuse de Iehan Calvin à Messieurs les Nico_ites, sur la complaincte qu’il font de so trop grand rigueur. Excusatio ad Pseudo-Nicodemitas.) 1544. Embodied in the tractsDe vitandis superstitionibus quae cum sincera fidei confessione pugnant. Genevae, 1549, 1550, and 1551. This collection contains also the opinions of Melanchthon, Bucer, and Peter Martyr on the question raised by the Nicodemites. Reprinted inOpera, VI. 537–644. A German translation appeared at Herborn, 1588; an English translation by R. Golding, London, 1548. See the bibliographical notes in Henry, III.; Beilage, 208 sq.; Proleg. toOpera, VI. pp. xxx–xxxiv; an La France Protest., III. 584 sq.Dyer, 187 sqq. Stähelin, I. 542 sqq.

A great practical difficulty presented itself to the Protestants in France, where they were in constant danger of persecution. They could not emigrate en masse, nor live in peace at home, without concealing or denying their convictions. A large number were Protestants at heart, but outwardly conformed to the Roman Church. They excused their conduct by the example of Nicodemus, the Jewish Rabbi, who came to Jesus by night.

Calvin, therefore, called them "Nicodemites," but with this difference, that Nicodemus only buried the body of Christ, after anointing it with precious aromatics; while they bury both his soul and body, his divinity and humanity, and that, too, without honor. Nicodemus interred Christ when dead, but the Nicodemites thrust him into the earth after he has risen. Nicodemus displayed a hundred times more courage at the death of Christ than all the Nicodemites after his resurrection. Calvin confronted them with the alternative of Elijah:, How long halt ye between two opinions?  If the Lord be God, follow him: if Baal, then follow him "(1 Kings 18:21). He advised them either to leave their country for some place of liberty, or to absent themselves from idolatrous worship, even at the risk of their lives. The glory of God should be much dearer to us than this transitory life, which is only a shadow.

He distinguished several classes of Nicodemites: first, false preachers of the gospel, who adopt some evangelical doctrines (meaning probably Gérard le Roux or Roussel, for whom Margaret of Navarre had procured the bishopric of Oléron); next, worldly people, courtiers, and refined ladies, who are used to flattery and hate austerity; then, scholars and literary men, who love their ease and hope for gradual improvement with the spread of education and intelligence; lastly, merchants and citizens, who do not wish to be interrupted in their avocations. Yet he was far from disowning them as brethren because of their weakness. Owing to their great danger they could better expect pardon if they should fall, than he himself who lived in comparative security.

The Nicodemites charged Calvin with immoderate austerity. "Away with this Calvin! he is too impolite. He would reduce us to beggary, and lead us directly to the stake. Let him content himself with his own lot, and leave us in peace; or, let him come to us and show us how to behave. He resembles the leader of an army who incites the common soldiers to the attack, but himself keeps out of the reach of danger."  To this charge he replied (in substance): "If you compare me with a captain, you should not blame me for doing my duty. The question is not, what I would do in your condition, but what is our present duty—yours and mine. If my life differs from my teaching, then woe to me. God is my witness that my heart bleeds when I think of your temptations and dangers, and that I cease not to pray with tears that you may be delivered. Nor do I condemn always the persons when I condemn the thing. I will not boast of superior courage, but it is not my fault, if I am not more frequently in danger. I am not far from the shot of the enemy. Secure to-day, I do not know what shall be to-morrow. I am prepared for every event, and I hope that God will give me grace to glorify him with my blood as well as with my tongue and pen. I shall lay down my life with no more sadness than I now write down these words."

The French Protestants were under the impression that Luther and Melanchthon had milder and more practicable views on this subject, and requested Calvin to proceed to Saxony for a personal conference. This he declined from want of time, since it would take at least forty days for the journey from Geneva to Wittenberg and back. Nor had he the means. "Even in favorable seasons," he wrote to an unknown friend in France,891 "my income barely suffices to meet expenses, and from the scarcity with which we had to struggle during the last two years, I was compelled to run into debt."  He added that "the season was unfavorable for consulting Luther, who has hardly had time to cool from the heat of controversy."  He thus missed the only opportunity of a personal interview with Luther, who died a year later. It is doubtful whether it would have been satisfactory. The old hero was then discontented with the state of the world and the Church, and longing for departure.

But Calvin prevailed on a young gentleman of tolerable learning to undertake the journey for him. He gave him a literal Latin translation of his tracts against the Nicodemites, together with letters to Luther and Melanchthon (Jan. 20, 1545). He asked the latter to act as mediator according to his best judgment. The letter to Luther is very respectful and modest. After explaining the case, and requesting him to give it a cursory examination and to return his opinion in a few words, Calvin thus concludes this, his only, letter to the great German Reformer: —

"I am unwilling to give you this trouble in the midst of so many weighty and various employments; but such is your sense of justice that you cannot suppose me to have done this unless compelled by the necessity of the case; I therefore trust that you will pardon me. Would that I could fly to you, that I might even for a few hours enjoy the happiness of your society; for I would prefer, and it would be far better, not only upon this question, but also about others, to converse personally with yourself; but seeing that it is not granted to us on earth, I hope that shortly it will come to pass in the kingdom of God. Adieu, most renowned sir, most distinguished minister of Christ, and my ever-honored father. The Lord himself rule and direct you by His own Spirit, that you may persevere even unto the end, for the common benefit and good of His own Church."

Luther was still so excited by his last eucharistic controversy with the Swiss, and so suspicious, that Melanchthon deemed it inexpedient to lay the documents before him.892

"I have not shown your letter to Dr. Martin," he replied to Calvin, April 17, 1545, "for he takes many things suspiciously, and does not like his answers to questions of the kind you have proposed to him, to be carried round and handed from one to another .... At present I am looking forward to exile and other sorrows. Farewell!  On the day on which, thirty-eight hundred and forty-six years ago, Noah entered into the ark, by which God gave testimony of his purpose never to forsake his Church, even when she quivers under the shock of the billows of the great sea."

He gave, however, his own opinion; and this, as well as the opinions of Bucer and Peter Martyr, and Calvin’s conclusion, were published, as an appendix to the tracts on avoiding superstition, at Geneva in 1549.893  Melanchthon substantially agreed with Calvin; he asserts the duty of the Christian to worship God alone (Matt. 4:10), to flee from idols (1 John 5:21), and to profess Christ openly before men (Matt. 10:33); but he took a somewhat milder view as regards compliance with mere ceremonies and non-essentials. Bucer and Peter Martyr agreed with this opinion. The latter refers to the conduct of the early disciples, who, while holding worship in private houses, still continued to visit the temple until they were driven out.

We now proceed to Calvin’s controversies with Protestant opponents.

§ 125. Calvin and Bolsec.

I. Actes du procès intenté par Calvin et les autres ministres de Genève à Jérôme Bolsec de Paris (1551). Printed from the Register of the Venerable Company and the Archives of Geneva, in Opera, VIII. 141–248.—Calvin: De aeterna Dei Praedestinatione, etc., usually called Consensus Genevensis (1552)—chiefly an extract from the respective sections of his Institutes; reprinted in Opera, VIII. 249–366. It is the second part of his answer to Pighius ("the dead dog," as he calls him), but occasioned by the process of Bolsec, whose name he ignores in contempt.—Calvin’s letter to Libertetus (Fabri of Neuchâtel), January, 1552, in Opera, XIV. 278 sq.—The Letters of the Swiss Churches on the Bolsec affair, reprinted in vol. VIII. 229 sqq.—Beza: Vita Calv. ad ann. 1551.

II. Hierosme Hermes Bolsec, docteur Médecin à Lyon: Histoire de la vie, moeurs, actes, doctrine, constance et mort de Jean Calvin, jadis ministre de Genève, Lyon, 1577; Rééditée avec une introduction, des extraits de la vie de Th. de Bèze, par le même, et des notes à l’appuipar M. Louis-François Chastel, magistrat. Lyon, 1875 (xxxi and 328). On the character and different editions of this book, see La France Protest., II. 755 sqq.

III. Bayle: "Bolsec" in his "Diction. historique et critique."—F. Trechsel: Die Protest. Antitrinitarier (Heidelberg, 1844). Bd. I. 185–189 and 276–284.—Henry, III. 44 sqq., and the second Beilage to vol. III., which gives the documents (namely, the charges of the ministers of Geneva, Bolsec’s defence, his poem written in prison, the judgments of the Churches of Bern and Zürich—all of which are omitted in the English version, II. 130 sqq.).—Audin (favorable to Bolsec), ch. XXXIX.—Dyer, 265–283.—*Schweizer: Centraldogmen, I. 205–238.—Stähelin, I. 411–414; II. 287–292.—*La France Prot., sub, Bolsec," tom. II. 745–776 (second ed.). Against this article: Lettre d’un protestant Genevois aux lecteurs de la France Protestante, Genève, 1880. In defence of that article, Henri L. Bordier: L’école historique de Jérôme Bolsec, pour servir de supplement à l’article Bolsec de la France Protestante, Paris (Fischbacher), 1880.

Hieronymus (Hierosme) Hermes Bolsec, a native of Paris, was a Carmelite monk, but left the Roman Church, about 1545, and fled for protection to the Duchess of Ferrara, who admitted him to her house under the title of an almoner. There he married, and adopted the medical profession as a means of livelihood. Ever afterwards he called himself "Doctor of Medicine."  He made himself odious by his turbulent character and conduct, and was expelled by the Duchess for some deception (as Beza reports).

In 1550 he settled at Geneva with his wife and a servant, and practised his profession. But he meddled in theology, and began to question Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He denounced Calvin’s God as a hypocrite and liar, as a patron of criminals, and as worse than Satan. He was admonished, March 8, 1551, by the Venerable Company, and privately instructed by Calvin in that mystery, but without success. On a second offence he was summoned before the Consistory, and openly reprehended in the presence of fifteen ministers and other competent persons. He acknowledged that a certain number were elected by God to salvation, but he denied predestination to destruction; and, on closer examination, he extended election to all mankind, maintaining that grace efficacious to salvation is equally offered to all, and that the cause, why some receive and others reject it, lies in the free-will, with which all men were endowed. At the same time he abhorred the name of merits. This, in the eyes of Calvin, was a logical contradiction and an absurdity; for, he says, "if some were elected, it surely follows that others are not elected and left to perish. Unless we confess that those who come to Christ are drawn by the Father through the peculiar operation of the Holy Spirit on the elect, it follows either that all must be promiscuously elected, or that the cause of election lies in each man’s merit."

On the 16th of October, 1551, Bolsec attended the religious conference, which was held every Friday at St. Peter’s. John de St. André preached from John 8:47 on predestination, and inferred from the text that those who are not of God, oppose him to the last, because God grants the grace of obedience only to the elect. Bolsec suddenly interrupted the speaker, and argued that men are not saved because they are elected, but that they are elected because they have faith. He denounced, as false and godless, the notion that God decides the fate of man before his birth, consigning some to sin and punishment, others to virtue and eternal happiness. He loaded the clergy with abuse, and warned the congregation not to be led astray.

After he had finished this harangue, Calvin, who had entered the church unobserved, stepped up to him and so overwhelmed him, as Beza says, with arguments and with quotations from Scripture and Augustin, that "all felt exceedingly ashamed for the brazen-faced monk, except the monk himself."  Farel also, who happened to be present, addressed the assembly. The lieutenant of police apprehended Bolsec for abusing the ministers and disturbing the public peace.

On the same afternoon the ministers drew up seventeen articles against Bolsec and presented them to the Council, with the request to call him to account. Bolsec, in his turn, proposed several questions to Calvin and asked a categorical answer (October 25). He asserted that Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Brenz shared his opinion.

The Consistory asked the Council to consult the Swiss Churches before passing judgment. Accordingly, the Council sent a list of Bolsec’s errors to Zürich, Bern, and Basel. They were five, as follows: —

1. That faith depends not on election, but election on faith.

2. That it is an insult to God to say that he abandons some to blindness, because it is his pleasure to do so.

3. That God leads to himself all rational creatures, and abandons only those who have often resisted him.

4. That God’s grace is universal, and some are not more predestinated to salvation than others.

5. That when St. Paul says (Eph. 1:5), that God has elected us through Christ, he does not mean election to salvation, but election to discipleship and apostleship.

At the same time Calvin and his colleagues addressed a circular letter to the Swiss Churches, which speaks in offensive and contemptuous terms of Bolsec, and charges him with cheating, deception, and impudence. Beza also wrote from Lausanne to Bullinger.

The replies of the Swiss Churches were very unsatisfactory to Calvin, although the verdict was, on the whole, in his favor. They reveal the difference between the German and the French Swiss on the subject of divine decrees and free-will. They assent to the doctrine of free election to salvation, but evade the impenetrable mystery of absolute and eternal reprobation, which was the most material point in the controversy.

The ministers of Zürich defended Zwingli against Bolsec’s charge, that in his work on Providence he made God the author of sin, and they referred to other works in which Zwingli traced sin to the corruption of the human will. Bullinger, in a private letter to Calvin, impressed upon him the necessity of moderation and mildness. "Believe me," he said, "many are displeased with what you say in your Institutes about predestination, and draw the same conclusions from it as Bolsec has drawn from Zwingli’s book on Providence."  This affair caused a temporary alienation between Calvin and Bullinger. It was not till ten years afterwards that Bullinger decidedly embraced the Calvinistic dogma, and even then he laid no stress on reprobation.894

Myconius, in the name of the Church of Basel, answered evasively, and dwelt on what Calvin and Bolsec believed in common.

The reply of the ministers of Bern anticipates the modern spirit of toleration. They applaud the zeal for truth and unity, but emphasize the equally important duty of charity and forbearance. The good Shepherd, they say, cares for the sheep that has gone astray. It is much easier to win a man back by gentleness than to compel him by severity. As to the awful mystery of divine predestination, they remind Calvin of the perplexity felt by many good men who cling to the Scripture texts of God’s universal grace and goodness.

The effect of these letters was a milder judgment on Bolsec. He was banished for life from the territory of Geneva for exciting sedition and for Pelagianism, under pain of being whipped if he should ever return. The judgment was announced Dec. 23, 1551, with the sound of the trumpet.895

Bolsec retired to Thonon, in Bern, but as he created new disturbances he was banished (1555). He left for France, and sought admission into the ministry of the Reformed Church, but returned at last to the Roman communion.896  He was classed by the national synod of Lyon among deposed ministers, and characterized as "an infamous liar" and "Apostate" (1563). He lived near Lyon and at Autun, and died at Annecy about 1584. Thirteen years after Calvin’s death he took mean and cowardly revenge by the publication of a libellous "Life of Calvin," which injured him much more than Calvin; and this was followed by a slanderous "Life of Beza," 1582. These books would long since have been forgotten, had not partisan zeal kept them alive.897

The dispute with Bolsec occasioned Calvin’s tract, "On the Eternal Predestination of God," which he dedicated to the Syndics and Council of Geneva, under the name of Consensus Genevensis, or Agreement of the Genevese Pastors, Jan. 1, 1552. But it was not approved by the other Swiss Churches.

Beza remarks of the result of this controversy: "All that Satan gained by these discussions was, that this article of the Christian religion, which was formerly most obscure, became clear and transparent to all not disposed to be contentious."

The quarrel with Bolsec caused the dissolution of the friendship between Calvin and Jacques de Bourgogne, Sieur de Falais et Bredam, a descendant of the dukes of Burgundy, who with his wife, Jolunde de Brederode, a descendant of the old counts of Holland, settled in Geneva, 1548, and lived for some time in Calvin’s house at his invitation, when the wife of the latter was still living. His cook, Nicolas, served Calvin as clerk. Calvin took the greatest interest in De Falais, comforted him over the confiscation of his goods by Charles V., at whose court he had been educated, and wrote a defence for him against the calumnies before the emperor.898  He also dedicated to him his Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. His friendly correspondence from 1543 to 1852 is still extant, and does great credit to him.899  But De Falais could not penetrate the mysteries of theology, nor sympathize with the severity of discipline in Geneva. He was shocked at the treatment of Bolsec; he felt indebted to him as a physician who had cured one of his maid-servants of a cancer. He interceded for him with the magistrates of Geneva and of Bern. He wrote to Bullinger: "Not without tears am I forced to see and hear this tragedy of Calvin."  He begged him to unite with Calvin for the restoration of peace in the Church.

He left Geneva after the banishment of Bolsec and moved to Bern, where he lost his wife (1557) and married again. Bayle asserts, without authority, that in disgust at the Protestant dissensions he returned to the Roman Church.900

Even Melanchthon was displeased with Calvin’s conduct in this unfortunate affair; but the alienation was only superficial and temporary. Judging from the imperfect information of Laelius Socinus, he was disposed to censure the Genevese for an excess of zeal in behalf of the "Stoic doctrine of necessity," as he called it, while he applauded the Zürichers for greater moderation. He expressed himself to this effect in private letters.901  Socinus appealed to the judgment of Melanchthon in a letter to Calvin, and Calvin, in his reply, could not entirely deny it. Yet, upon the whole, Melanchthon, like Bullinger, was more on the side of Calvin, and in the more important affair of Servetus, both unequivocally justified his conduct, which is now generally condemned by Protestants.

§ 126. Calvin and Castellio.

I. Castellio’s chief work is his Biblia sacra latina (Basil., 1551, 1554, 1555, 1556, 1572; the N. T. also at Amst., 1683, Leipz., 1760, Halle, 1776). His French version is less important. He defended both against the attacks of Beza (Defensio suarum translationum Bibliorum, Basil., 1562). After the execution of Servetus, 1553, Castellio wrote several anonymous or pseudonymous booklets against Calvin, and against the persecution of heretics, which provoked the replies of Calvin and Beza (see below). His views against predestination and the slavery of the will are best set forth in his four Dialogi de praedestinatione, de electione, de libero arbitrio, de fide, which were published after his death at Basel, 1578, 1613, 1619, and in English, 1679. See a chronological list of his numerous works in La France Protestante, vol. IV. 126–141. I have before me (from the Union Seminary Library) a rare volume: Sebastiani Castellionis Dialogi IV, printed at Gouda in Holland anno 1613, which contains the four Dialogues above mentioned (pp. 1–225); Castellio’s Defence against Calvin’s Adv. Nebulonem, his Annotations on the ninth ch. of Romans, and several other tracts.

Calvin: Brevis Responsio ad diluendas nebulonis cuiusdam calumnias quibus doctrinam de aeterna Dei praedestinatione foedare conatus est, Gen. (1554), 1557. In Opera, IX. 253–266. The unnamed nebulo (in the French ed. le broullion) is Castellio. Calumniae nebulonis cujusdam adversus doctrinam Joh. Calvini de occulta Dei providentia. Johannis Calvini ad easdem responsio, Gen., 1558. In Opera, IX. 269–318. In this book Castellio’s objections to Calvin’s predestinarian system are set forth in twenty-four theses, with a defence, and then answered by Calvin. The first thesis charges Calvin with teaching: "Deus maximam mundi partem nudo puroque voluntatis suae arbitric creavit ad perditionem."  Thes. V.: "Nullum adulterium, furtum, homicidium committitur, quin Dei voluntas intercedat."

Beza: Ad Seb. Castellionis calumnias, quibus unicum salutis nostrae fundamentum, i.e. aeternam Dei praedestinationem evertere nititur, responsio, Gen., 1558. In his Tractat. theol. I. 337–423 (second ed. Geneva, 1582).

II. Bayle: Castalion in his "Dict. Hist. et crit."—Joh. C. Füsslin: Lebensge-schichte Seb. Castellio’s. Frankf. and Leipzig, 1776.—F. Trechsel: Die protest. Antitrinitarier, vol. I. (1839), pp. 208–214.—C. Rich. Brenner: Essai sur la vie et les écrits de Séb. Chatillon, 1853.—Henry: II. 383 sqq.; III. 88 sqq.; and Beilage, 28–42.—*Alex. Schweizer: Centraldogmen, I. 310–356; and Sebastian Castellio als Bekämpfer der Calvinischen Praedestinations-lehre, in Baur’s "Theol. Jahrbücher" for 1851.—Stähelin, I. 377–381; II. 302–308.—Jacob Maehly: Seb. Castellio, ein biographischer Versuch, Basel, 1862.—Jules Bonnet: Séb. Chatillion ou la tolérance ait XVIe siècle, in the, Bulletin de la Société de l’hist. du protest. français," Nos. XVI. and XVII., 1867 and 1868.—Em. Brossoux: Séb. Chasteillon, Strasbourg, 1867.—B. Riggenbach, in Herzog2, III. 160 sqq.—Lutteroth: Castallion in Lichten-berger, II. 672–677.—*La France Protestante (2d ed.): Chateillon, tom. IV. 122–142.—*Ferd. Buisson: Sébastien Castellion, Paris, 1892, 2 vols.

Castellio was far superior to Bolsec as a scholar and a man, and lived in peace with Calvin until differences of opinion on predestination, free-will, the Canticles, the descent into Hades, and religious toleration made them bitter enemies. In the beat of the controversy both forgot the dignity and moderation of a Christian scholar.

Sebastian Castellio or Castalio was born at Chatillon in Savoy, in 1515, six years after Calvin, of poor and bigoted parents.902  He acquired a classical and biblical education by hard study. He had a rare genius for languages, and mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In 1540 he taught Greek at Lyons, and conducted the studies of three noblemen. He published there a manual of biblical history under the title Dialogi sacri, which passed through several editions in Latin and French from 1540 to 1731. He wrote a Latin epic on the prophecies of Jonah; a Greek epic on John the Baptist, which greatly delighted Melanchthon; two versions of the Pentateuch, with a view to exhibit Moses as a master in all the arts and sciences; a translation of the Psalms, and other poetic portions of the Old Testament.

These works were preparatory to a complete Latin translation of the Bible, which he began at Geneva, 1542, and finished at Basel, 1551. It was dedicated to King Edward VI. of England, and often republished with various improvements. He showed some specimens in manuscript to Calvin, who disapproved of the style. His object was to present the Bible in classical Latinity according to the taste of the later humanists and the pedantic Ciceronianism of Cardinal Bembo. He substituted classical for biblical terms; as lotio for baptismus, genius for angelus, respublica for ecclesia, collegium for synagoge, senatus for presbyterium, furiosi for daemoniaci. He sacrificed the contents to style, obliterated the Hebraisms, and weakened the realistic force, the simplicity and grandeur of the biblical writers. His translation was severely criticised by Calvin and Beza as tending to secularize and profane the sacred book, but it was commended as a meritorious work by such competent judges as Melanchthon and Richard Simon. Castellio published also a French version of the Bible with notes (1555), but his French was not nearly as pure and elegant as his Latin, and was severely criticised by Beza. He translated portions of Homer, Xenophon, the Dialogues of Ochino, and also two mystical books, the Theologia Germanica (1557), and, in the last year of his life, the Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis,—"e latino in latinum," that is, from monkish into classical Latin,—omitting, however, the fourth book.

Castellio was a philologist and critic, an orator and poet, but not a theologian, and unable to rise to the lofty height of Calvin’s views and mission. His controversial tracts are full of bitterness. He combined a mystical with a sceptical tendency.903  He was an anachronism; a rationalist before Rationalism, an advocate of religious toleration in an age of intolerance.

Castellio became acquainted with Calvin at Strassburg, and lived with him in the same house (1540). Calvin appreciated his genius, scholarship, and literary industry, and, on his return to Geneva, he secured for him a call as rector of the Latin school at a salary of four hundred and fifty florins (November, 1541), in the place of his old teacher, Maturin Cordier. He treated him at first with marked kindness and forbearance. In 1542, when the pestilence raged, Castellio offered to go to the hospital, but he was either rejected as not qualified, not being a minister, or he changed his mind when the lot fell on him.904

Early in the year 1544, Castellio took offence at some of Calvin’s theological opinions, especially his doctrine of predestination. He disliked his severe discipline and the one-man-power. He anticipated the rationalistic opinion on the Song of Solomon, and described it as an obscene, erotic poem, which should be stricken out of the canon.905  He also objected to the clause of Christ’s descent into Hades in the Apostles’ Creed, or rather to Calvin’s figurative explanation of it, as being a vicarious foretaste of eternal pain by Christ on the cross.906  For these reasons Calvin opposed his ordination, but recommended an increase of his salary, which the Council refused, with the direction that he should keep better discipline in the school.907  He also gave him an honorable public testimony when he wished to leave Geneva, and added private letters of recommendation to friends. Castellio went to Lausanne, but soon returned to Geneva. In April, 1544, he asked the Council to continue him in his position for April, May, and June, which was agreed to.908

In a public discussion on some Scripture text in the weekly congregation at which about sixty persons were present, May 30, 1544, he eulogized St. Paul and drew an unfavorable contrast between him and the ministers of Geneva, charging them with drunkenness, impurity, and intolerance. Calvin listened in silence, but complained to the Syndics of this conduct.909  Castellio was summoned before the Council, which, after a patient hearing, found him guilty of calumny, and banished him from the city.910

He went to Basel, where the liberal spirit of Erasmus had not yet died out. He lived there several years in great poverty till 1553, when he obtained a Greek professorship in the University. That University was the headquarters of opposition to Calvinism. Several sceptical Italians gathered there. Fr. Hotoman wrote to Bullinger: "Calvin is no better spoken of here than in Paris. If one wishes to scold another, he calls him a Calvinist. He is most unjustly and immoderately assailed from all quarters."911

In the summer of 1554, an anonymous letter was addressed to the Genevese with atrocious charges against Calvin, who suspected that it was written by Castellio, and complained of it to Antistes Sulzer of Basel; but Castellio denied the authorship before the Council of Basel. About the same time appeared from the same anonymous source a malignant tract against Calvin, which collected his most obnoxious utterances on predestination, and was sent to Paris for publication to fill the French Protestants, then struggling for existence, with distrust of the Reformer (1555). Calvin and Beza replied with much indignation and bitterness, and heaped upon the author such epithets as dog, slanderer, corrupter of Scripture, vagabond, blasphemer. Calvin, upon insufficient information, even charged him with theft. Castellio, in self-defence, informs us that, with a large family dependent on him, he was in the habit of gathering driftwood on the banks of the Rhine to keep himself warm, and to cook his food, while working at the completion of his translation of the Scriptures till midnight. He effectively replied to Calvin’s reproachful epithets: "It ill becomes so learned a man as yourself, the teacher of so many others, to degrade so excellent an intellect by such foul and sordid abuse."

Castellio incurred the suspicion of the Council of Basel by his translation of Ochino’s Dialogues, which contained opinions favorable to Unitarianism and polygamy (1563). He defended himself by alleging that he acted not as judge, but only as translator, for the support of his family. He was warned to cease meddling with theology and to stick to philology.

He died in poverty, Dec. 29, 1563, only forty-eight years old, leaving four sons and four daughters from two wives. Calvin saw in his death a judgment of God, but a few months afterwards he died himself. Even the mild Bullinger expressed satisfaction that the translator of Ochino’s dangerous books had left this world.912  Three Polish Socinians, who happened to pass through Basel, were more merciful than the orthodox, and erected to Castellio a monument in the cloister adjoining the minster. Faustus Socinus edited his posthumous works. The youngest of his children, Frederic Castellio, acquired some distinction as a philologist, orator, musician, and poet, and was appointed professor of Greek, and afterwards of rhetoric, in Basel.

Castellio left no school behind him, but his writings exerted considerable influence on the development of Socinian and Arminian opinions. He opposed Calvinism with the same arguments as Pighius and Bolsec, and charged it with destroying the foundations of morality and turning God into a tyrant and hypocrite. He essentially agreed with Pelagianism, and prepared the way for Socinianism.

He differed also from Calvin on the subject of persecution. Being himself persecuted, he was one of the very few advocates of religious toleration in opposition to the prevailing doctrine and practice of his age. In this point also he sympathized with the Unitarians. After the execution of Servetus and Calvin’s defence of the same, there appeared, under the false name of Martinus Bellius, a book against the theory of religious persecution, which was ascribed to Castellio.913  He denied the authorship. He had, however, contributed to it a part under the name of Basilius (Sebastian) Montfortius (Castellio). The pseudo-name of Martinus Bellius, the editor who wrote the dedicatory preface to Duke Christopher of Württemberg (the protector of Vergerius), has never been unmasked. The book is a collection of judgments of different writers against the capital punishment of heretics. Calvin and Beza were indignant, and correctly ascribed the book to a secret company of Italian "Academici,"—Laelius Socinus, Curio, and Castellio. They also suspected that Magdeburg, the alleged place of publication, was Basel, and the printer an Italian refugee, Pietro Perna.

Castellio wrote also a tract, during the Huguenot wars in France, 1562, in which he defended religious liberty as the only remedy against religious wars.914

§ 127. Calvinism and Unitarianism. The Italian Refugees.

Comp. §§ 38–40 (pp. 144–163).

I. Calvin: Ad questiones Georgii Blandatrae responsum (1558); Responsum ad Fratres Polonos quomodo mediator sit Christus ad refutandum Stancari errorem (1560); Impietas Valentini Gentilis detecta et palam traducta qui Christum non sine sacrilega blasphemia Deum essentiatum esse fingit (1561); Brevis admonitio ad Fratres Polonos ne triplicem in Deo essentiam pro tribus personis imaginando tres sibi Deos fabricent (1563); Epistola Jo. Calv. quo fidem Admonitionis ab eo nuper editae apud Polonos confirmat (1563). All in Opera, Tom. IX. 321 sqq. The correspondence of Calvin with Lelio Sozini and other Italians, see below. On the controversy with Servetus, see next chapter.

The Socinian writings are collected in the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant, Irenopoli (Amsterdam), 1656 sqq., 8 vols in 11 tomes fol. It contains the writings of the younger Socinus and his successors (Schlichting, Crell, etc.).

II. Trechsel: Die Protestantischen Antitrinitarier, Heidelberg, 1839 and 1844, 2 vols. The first volume treats chiefly of Servetus; the second, of the Italian Antitrinitarians.—Otto Fock: Der Socinianismus, Kiel, 1847. (The first part contains the history, the second and more valuable part the system, of Socinianism.)—Schweizer: Die Protest. Centraldogmen (Zürich, 1854), vol. I. 293 sqq.—Henry, III. 276 sqq.—Dyer, 446 sqq.—Stähelin, II. 319 sqq.—L. Coligny: L’Antitrinitarianism à Genève au temps de Calvin. Genève, 1873.—Harnack: Dogmengeschichte, III. (1890) 653–691. Comp. Sand: Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum, 1684.

The Italian Protestants who were compelled to flee from the Inquisition, sought refuge in Switzerland, and organized congregations under native pastors in the Grisons, in Zürich, and Geneva. A few of them gathered also in Basel, and associated there with Castellio and the admirers of Erasmus.915  An Italian Church was organized at Geneva in 1542, and reorganized in 1551, under Galeazzo Caraccioli, Marquis of Vico. Its chief pastors were Ragnione, Count Martinengo (who died 1557), and Balbani.

Among the 279 fugitives who received the rights of citizenship in that city on one day of the year 1558, there were 200 Frenchmen, 50 Englishmen, 25 Italians, and 4 Spaniards.

The descendants of the refugees gradually merged into the native population. Some of the best families in Geneva, Zürich, and Basel still bear the names and cherish the memories of their foreign ancestors. In the valleys of Poschiavo and Bregaglia of the Grisons, several Protestant Italian congregations survive to this day.916

The Italian Protestants were mostly educated men, who had passed through the door of the Renaissance to the Reformation, or who had received the first impulse from the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. We must distinguish among them two classes, as they were chiefly influenced either by religious or intellectual motives. Those who had experienced a severe moral struggle for peace of conscience, became strict Calvinists; those who were moved by a desire for freedom of thought from the bondage of an exclusive creed, sympathized more with Erasmus than with Luther and Calvin, and had a tendency to Unitarianism and Pelagianism. Zanchi warned Bullinger against recommending Italians for sound doctrine until he had ascertained their views on God and on original sin. The same national characteristics continue to this day among the Romanic races. If Italians, Frenchmen, or Spaniards cease to be Romanists, they are apt to become sceptics and agnostics. They rarely stop midway.

The ablest, most learned, and most worthy representatives of orthodox Calvinism among the converted Italians were Peter Martyr Vermigli of Florence (1500–1562), who became, successively, professor at Strassburg (1543), at Oxford (1547), and last at Zürich (1555), and his younger friend, Jerome Zanchi (1516–1590), who labored first in the Grisons, and then as professor at Strassburg (1553) and at Heidelberg (1568). Calvin made several ineffectual attempts to secure both for the Italian congregation in Geneva.917

The sceptical and antitrinitarian Italians were more numerous among the scholars. Calvin aptly called them "sceptical Academicians."  They assembled chiefly at Basel, where they breathed the atmosphere of Erasmian humanism. They gave the Swiss Churches a great deal of trouble. They took offence at the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, which they misconstrued into tritheism, or Sabellianism, at the orthodox Christology of two natures in one person, and at the Calvinistic doctrines of total depravity and divine predestination, which they charged with tending to immorality. They doubted the right of infant baptism, and denied the real presence in the Eucharist. They hated ecclesiastical disciplina. They admired Servetus, and disapproved of his burning. They advocated religious toleration, which threatened to throw everything into confusion.

To this class belong the two Sozini,—uncle and nephew, Curio, Ochino (in his latter years), Renato, Gribaldo, Biandrata, Alciati, and Gentile. Castellio is also counted with these Italian sceptics. He thoroughly sided with their anti-Calvinism, and translated from the Italian manuscripts into Latin the last books of Ochino.

Thus the seeds for a new and heretical type of Protestantism were abundantly sown by these Italian refugees in the soil of the Swiss Churches, which had received them with open-hearted hospitality.

Fausto Sozini (1539–1604) formulated the loose heterodox opinions of this school of sceptics into a theological system, and organized an ecclesiastical society in Poland, where they enjoyed toleration till the Jesuitical reaction drove them away. Poland was the Northern home of the Italian Renaissance. Italian architects built the great churches and palaces in Cracow, Warsaw, and other cities, and gave them an Italian aspect. Fausto Sozini spent some time in Lyons, Zürich (where he collected the papers of his uncle), and Basel, but labored chiefly in Poland, and acquired great influence with the upper classes by his polished manners, amiability, and marriage with the daughter of a nobleman. Yet he was once mobbed by fanatical students and priests it Cracow, who dragged him through the streets and destroyed his library. He bore the persecution like a philosopher. His writings were published by his nephew, Wiszowaty, in the first two volumes of the Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum, 1656.

This is not the place for a full history of Socinianism. We have only to do with its initiatory movements in Switzerland, and its connection with Calvin. But a few general remarks will facilitate an understanding.

Socinianism, as a system of theology, has largely affected the theology of orthodox Protestantism on the Continent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was succeeded by modern Unitarianism, which has exerted considerable influence on the thought and literature of England and America in the nineteenth century. It forms the extreme left wing of Protestantism, and the antipode to Calvinism. The Socinians admitted that Calvinism is the only logical system on the basis of universal depravity and absolute foreknowledge and foreordination; but they denied these premises, and taught moral ability, free-will, and, strange to say, a limitation of divine foreknowledge. God foreknows and foreordains only the necessary future, but not the contingent future, which depends on the free-will of man. The two systems are therefore directly opposed in their theology and anthropology.

And yet there is a certain intellectual and moral affinity between them; as there is between Lutheranism and Rationalism. It is a remarkable fact that modern Unitarianism has grown up in the Calvinistic (Presbyterian and Independent) Churches of Geneva, France, Holland, England, and New England, while Rationalism has been chiefly developed in Lutheran Germany. But the reaction is also found in those countries.

The Italian and Polish Socinians took substantially the same ground as the English and American Unitarians. They were opposed alike to Romanism and Calvinism; they claimed intellectual freedom of dissent and investigation as a right; they elevated the ethical spirit of Christianity above the dogmas, and they had much zeal for higher liberal education. But they differ on an important point. The Socinians had a theological system, and a catechism; the modern Unitarians refuse to be bound by a fixed creed, and are independent in church polity. They allow more liberty for new departures, either in the direction of rationalism and humanitarianism, or in the opposite direction of supernaturalism and trinitarianism.

Calvin was in his early ministry charged with Arianism by a theological quack (Caroli), because he objected to the damnatory clauses of the pseudo-Athanasian creed, and expressed once an unfavorable opinion on the Nicene Creed.918  But his difficulty was only with the scholastic or metaphysical terminology,919  not with the doctrine itself; and as to the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, he was most emphatic.

It is chiefly due to Calvin’s and Bullinger’s influence that Unitarianism, which began to undermine orthodoxy, and to unsettle the Churches, was banished from Switzerland. It received its death-blow in the execution of Servetus, who was a Spaniard, but the ablest and most dangerous antitrinitarian. His case will be discussed in a special chapter.

§ 128. Calvin and Laelius Socinus.

F. Trechsel (pastor at Vechingen, near Bern): Die protest. Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socinus nach den Quellen und Urkunden geschichtlich dargestellt. Heidelberg, 1839, 1844. The first part of this learned work, drawn in part from manuscript sources, is devoted to Michael Servetus and his predecessors; the second part to Lelio Sozini and his sympathizing contemporaries. The third section of vol. II. 137–201, with documents in the Appendix, pp. 431–459, treats of Lelio Sozini.—Henry, II. 484 sqq.; III. 440, Beilage, 128.—Dyer, 251 (very brief).

Laelius Socinus, or Lelio Sozini, of Siena (1525–1562), son of an eminent professor of law, was well educated, and carried away by the reform movement in his early youth. He voluntarily separated from the Roman Church, in 1546, at the sacrifice of home and fortune. He removed to Chiavenna in 1547, travelled in Switzerland, France, England, Germany, and Poland, leading an independent life as a student, without public office, supported by the ample means of his father. He studied Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic with Pellican and Bibliander at Zürich and with Foster at Wittenberg, that he might reach "the fountain of the divine law" in the Bible. He made Zürich his second home, and died there in the prime of early manhood, leaving his unripe doubts and crude opinions as a legacy to his more gifted and famous nephew, who gave them definite shape and form.

Laelius was learned, acute, polite, amiable, and prepossessing. He was a man of affairs, better fitted for law or diplomacy than for theology. He was constitutionally a sceptic, of the type of Thomas: an honest seeker after truth; too independent to submit blindly to authority, and yet too religious to run into infidelity. His scepticism stumbled first at the Roman Catholic, than at the Protestant orthodoxy, and gradually spread over the doctrines of the resurrection, predestination, original sin, the trinity, the atonement, and the sacraments. Yet he remained in respectful connection with the Reformers, and communed with the congregation at Zürich, although he thought that the Consensus Tigurinus attributed too much power to the sacrament. He enjoyed the confidence of Bullinger and Melanchthon, who treated him with fatherly kindness, but regarded him better fitted for a secular calling than for the service of the Church. Calvin also was favorably impressed with his talents and personal character, but displeased with his excessive "inquisitiveness."920

L. Socinus came to Geneva in 1548 or 1549, seeking instruction from the greatest divine of the age. He opened his doubts to Calvin with the modesty of a disciple. Soon afterwards he addressed to him a letter from Zürich, asking for advice on the questions, whether it was lawful for a Protestant to marry a Roman Catholic; whether popish baptism was efficacious; and how the doctrine of the resurrection of the body could be explained.

Calvin answered in an elaborate letter (June 26, 1549),921 to the effect that marriage with Romanists was to be condemned; that popish baptism was valid and efficacious, and should be resorted to when no other can be had, since the Roman communion, though corrupt, still retained marks of the true Church as well as a scattered number of elect individuals, and since baptism was not a popish invention but a divine institution and gift of God who fulfils his promises; that the question on the mode of the resurrection, and its relation to the changing states of our mortal body, was one of curiosity rather than utility.

Before receiving this answer, Socinus wrote to Calvin again from Basel (July 25, 1549) on the same subjects, especially the resurrection, which troubled his mind very much.922  To this Calvin returned another answer (December, 1549), and warned him against the dangers of his sceptical bent of mind.923

Socinus was not discouraged by the earnest rebuke, nor shaken in his veneration for Calvin. During the Bolsec troubles, when at Wittenberg, he laid before him his scruples about predestination and free-will, and appealed to the testimony of Melanchthon, whom he had informed about the harsh treatment of Bolsec. Calvin answered briefly and not without some degree of bitterness.924

Socinus visited Geneva a second time in 1554, after his return from a journey to Italy, and before making Zürich his final home. He was then, apparently, still in friendly relations to Calvin and Caraccioli.925  Soon afterwards he opened to Calvin, in four questions, his objections to the doctrine of the vicarious atonement. Calvin went to the trouble to answer them at length, with solid arguments, June, 1555.926

But Socinus was not satisfied. His scepticism extended further to the doctrine of the sacraments and of the Trinity. He doubted first the personality of the Holy Spirit, and then the eternal divinity of Christ. He disapproved the execution of Servetus, and advocated toleration.

Various complaints against Socinus reached Bullinger. Calvin requested him to restrain the restless curiosity of the sceptic. Vergerio, then at Tübingen, Saluz of Coire, and other ministers, sent warnings. Bullinger instituted a private inquiry in a kindly spirit, and was satisfied with a verbal and written declaration of Socinus (July 15, 1555) to the effect that he fully agreed with the Scriptures and the Apostles’ Creed, that he disapproved the doctrines of the Anabaptists and Servetus, and that he would not teach any errors, but live in quiet retirement. Bullinger protected him against further attacks.

Socinus ceased to trouble the Reformers with questions. He devoted himself to the congregation of refugees from Locarno, and secured for them Ochino as pastor, but exerted a bad influence upon him. Fortified with letters of recommendation he made another journey to Italy,—via Germany and Poland, to recover his property from the Inquisition. Calvin gave him a letter to Prince Radziwill of Poland, dated June, 1558, to further his object.927  But Socinus was bitterly disappointed in his wishes, and returned to Zürich in August, 1559. The last few years of his short life he spent in quiet retirement. His nephew visited him several times, and revered him as a divinely illuminated man to whom he owed his most fruitful ideas.

The personal relation of Calvin and the elder Socinus is one of curious mutual attraction and repulsion, like the two systems which they represent.928

The younger Socinus, the real founder of the system called after him, did not come into personal contact with Calvin, and labored among the scattered Unitarians and Anabaptists in Poland.

Calvin took a deep interest in the progress of the Reformation in Poland, and wrote several letters to the king, to Prince Radziwill, and some of the Polish nobility. But when the writings of Servetus and antitrinitarian opinions spread in that kingdom, he warned the Polish brethren, in one of his last writings, against the danger of this heresy.

§ 129. Bernardino Ochino. 1487–1565.

Comp. § 40, p. 162. Ochino’s Sermons, Tragedy, Catechism, Labyrinths, and Dialogues. His works are very rare; one of the best collections is in the library of Wolfenbüttel; copious extracts in Schelhorn, Trechsel, Schweizer, and Benrath. A full list in Benrath’s monograph, Appendix II. 374–382. His letters (Italian and Latin), ibid. AppendixI1. 337–373. Ochino is often mentioned in Calvin’s and Bullinger’s correspondence.

Zaccaria Boverio (Rom. Cath.) in the Chronicle of the Order of the Capuchins, 1630 (inaccurate and hostile). Bayle’s "Dict."—Schelhorn: Ergötzlich-keiten aus der Kirchenhistorie, Ulm and Leipzig, 1764, vol. III. (with several documents in Latin and Italian).—Trechsel: Antitrinitarier, II. 202–270.—Schweizer: Centraldogmen, I. 297–309.—Cesare Cantu (Rom. Cath.): Gli Eretici d’Italia, Turin, 1565–1567, 3vols. —Büchsenschütz: Vie et écrits de B. O., Strasbourg, 1872.—*Karl Benrath: Bernardino Ochino von Siena. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Reformation, Leipzig, 1875 (384 pp.; 2d ed. 1892; transl. by Helen Zimmern, with preface by William Arthur, London, 1876, 304 pp.; the letters of Ochino are omitted).—Comp. C. Schmidt in his Peter Martyr Vermigli (1858), pp. 21 sqq., and art. in Herzog2 X. 680–683. (This article is unsatisfactory and shows no knowledge of Benrath, although he is mentioned in the lit.)

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Mi sara facile tutto in Christo per el qual vivo et spero di morire.

(From Ochino’s letter to the Council of Siena, Sept. 5, 1540; reproduced from Benrath’s monograph.)

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The Capuchin Monk.

Bernardino Ochino929 is one of the most striking and picturesque characters among the Italian Protestants of the Reformation period. He was an oratorical genius and monkish saint who shone with meteoric brilliancy on the sky of Italy, but disappeared at last under a cloud of scepticism in the far North.

He reminds one of three other eloquent monks: Savonarola, who was burnt in Florence at the stake; Father Gavazzi, who became a Calvinist and died peacefully in Rome; and Père Hyacinthe, who left the Carmelite order and the pulpit of Notre Dame in Paris without joining any Protestant Church.

Ochino was born in the fair Tuscan city of Siena, which is adorned by a Gothic marble dome and gave birth to six popes, fifty cardinals, and a number of canonized saints, among them the famous Caterina of Siena; but also to Protestant heretics, like Lelio and Fausto Sozini. He joined the Franciscans, and afterwards the severe order of the Capuchins, which had recently been founded by Fra Matteo Bassi in 1525. He hoped to gain heaven by self-denial and good works. He far surpassed his brethren in ability and learning,930 although his education was defective (he did not know the original languages of the Bible). He was twice elected Vicar-General of the Order. He was revered by many as a saint for his severe asceticism and mortification of the flesh. Vittoria Colonna, the most gifted woman of Italy, and the Duchess Renata of Ferrara were among his ardent admirers. Pope Paul III. intended to create him a cardinal.931

Ochino as an Orator.

Ochino was the most popular preacher of Italy in his time. No such orator had appeared since the death of Savonarola in 1498. He was in general demand for the course of sermons during Lent, and everywhere—in Siena, Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice—he attracted crowds of people who listened to him as to a prophet sent from God.

We can hardly understand from his printed sermons the extravagant laudations of his contemporaries. But good preachers were rare in Italy, and the effect of popular oratory depends upon action as much as on diction. We must take into account the magnetism of his personality, the force of dramatic delivery, the lively gestures, the fame of his monastic sanctity, his emaciated face, his gleaming eyes, his tall stature and imposing figure. The portrait prefixed to his "Nine Sermons," published at Venice, 1539, shows him to us as he was at the time: a typical Capuchin monk, with the head bent, the gaze upturned, the eyes deeply sunk under the brows, the nose aquiline, the mouth half open, the head shaved on top, the beard reaching down to his breast.

Cardinal Sadolet compared him to the orators of antiquity. One of his hearers in Naples said, This man could make the very stones weep.932

Cardinal Bembo933 secured him for Lent at Venice through Vittoria Colonna, and wrote to her (Feb. 23, 1539): "I have heard him all through Lent with such pleasure that I cannot praise him enough. I have never heard more useful and edifying sermons than his, and I no longer wonder that you esteem him so highly. He preaches in a far more Christian manner than other preachers, with more real sympathy and love, and utters more soothing and elevating thoughts. Every one is delighted with him."  A few months later (April 4, 1539) he wrote to the same lady: "Our Fra Bernardino is literally adored here. There is no one who does not praise him to the skies. How deeply his words penetrate, how elevating and comforting his discourses!"  He begged him to eat meat and to restrain from excessive abstinence lest he should break down.

Even Pietro Aretino, the most frivolous and immoral poet of that time, was superficially converted for a brief season by Ochino’s preaching, and wrote to Paul III. (April 21, 1539): "Bembo has won a thousand souls for Paradise by bringing to Venice Fra Bernardino, whose modesty is equal to his virtue. I have myself begun to believe in the exhortations trumpeted forth from the mouth of this apostolic monk."

Cardinal Commendone, afterwards Bishop of Amelia, an enemy of Ochino, gives this description of him: "Every thing about Ochino contributed to make the admiration of the multitude almost overstep all human bounds,—the fame of his eloquence; his prepossessing, ingratiating manner; his advancing years; his mode of life; the rough Capuchin garb; the long beard reaching to his breast; the gray hair; the pale, thin face; the artificial aspect of bodily weakness; finally, the reputation of a holy life. Wherever he was to speak the citizens might be seen in crowds; no church was large enough to contain the multitude of listeners. Men flocked as numerously as women. When he went elsewhere the crowd followed after to hear him. He was honored not only by the common people, but also by princes and kings. Wherever he came he was offered hospitality; he was met at his arrival, and escorted at his departure, by the dignitaries of the place. He himself knew how to increase the desire to hear him, and the reverence shown him. Obedient to the rule of his order, he only travelled on foot; he was never seen to ride, although his health was delicate and his age advanced. Even when Ochino was the guest of nobles—an honor he could not always refuse—he could never be induced, by the splendor of palaces, dress, and ornament, to forsake his mode of life. When invited to table, he ate of only one very simple dish, and he drank little wine; if a soft bed had been prepared for him, he begged permission to rest on a more comfortable pallet, spread his cloak on the ground, and laid down to rest. These practices gain him incredible honor throughout all Italy."

Conversion to Protestantism.

Ochino was already past fifty when he began to lose faith in the Roman Church. The first traces of the change are found in his "Nine Sermons" and "Seven Dialogues," which were published at Venice in 1539 and 1541. He seems to have passed through an experience similar to that of Luther in the convent at Erfurt, only less deep and lasting. The vain monastic struggle after righteousness led him to despair of himself, and to find peace in the assurance of justification by faith in the merits of Christ. As long as he was a monk, so he informs us, he went even beyond the requirements of his order in reading masses, praying the Pater Noster and Ave Maria, reciting Psalms and prayers, confessing trifling sins once or twice a day, fasting and mortifying his body. But he came gradually to the conviction that Christ has fully satisfied for his elect, and conquered Paradise for them; that monastic vows were not obligatory, and were even immoral; and that the Roman Church, though brilliant in outward appearance, was thoroughly corrupt and an abomination in the eyes of God.

In this transition state he was much influenced by his personal intercourse with Jean de Valdés and Peter Martyr. Valdés, a Spanish nobleman who lived at Rome and Naples, was an evangelical mystic, and the real author of that remarkable book, "On the Benefit of Christ’s Death" (published at Venice, 1540). It was formerly attributed to Aonio Paleario (a friend of Ochino), and had a wide circulation in Italy till it was suppressed and publicly burnt at Naples in 1553.

During the Lent season of 1542, Ochino preached his last course of sermons at Venice. The papal agents watched him closely and reported some expressions as heretical. He was forbidden to preach, and cited to Rome.

Caraffa had persuaded Pope Paul III. to use violent measures for the suppression of the Protestant heresy. In Rome, Peter had conquered Simon Magus, the patriarch of all heretics; in Rome’ the successor of Peter must conquer all successors of the arch-heretic. The Roman Inquisition was established by the bull Licet ab initio, July 21, 1542, under the direction of six cardinals. with plenary power to arrest and imprison persons suspected of heresy, and to confiscate their property. The famous General of the Capuchins was to be the first victim of the "Holy Office."

Ochino departed for Rome in August. Passing through Bologna, he called on the noble Cardinal Contarini, who in the previous year had met Melanchthon and Calvin at the Colloquy of Ratisbon, and was suspected of having a leaning to the Lutheran doctrine of justification, and to a moderate reformation. The cardinal was sick, and died soon after (August 24). The interview was brief, but left upon Ochino the impression that there was no chance for him in Rome. He continued his journey to Florence, met Peter Martyr in a similar condition, and was warned of the danger awaiting both. He felt that he must choose between Rome or Christ, between silence or death, and that flight was the only escape from this alternative. He resolved to save his life for future usefulness, though he was already fifty-six years old, gray-haired, and enfeebled by his ascetic life. If I remain in Italy, he said, my mouth is sealed; if I leave, I may by my writings continue to labor for the truth with some prospect of success.

He proved by his conduct the sincerity of his conversion to Protestantism. He risked every thing by secession from the papacy. An orator has no chance in a foreign land with a foreign tongue.934

Ochino in Switzerland.

In August, 1542, he left Florence; Peter Martyr followed two days later. He was provided with a servant and a horse by Ascanio Colonna, a brother of Vittoria, his friend.935  At Ferrara, the Duchess Renata furnished him with clothing and other necessaries, and probably also with a letter to her friend Calvin. According to Boverius, the annalist of the Capuchins, who deplores his apostasy as a great calamity for the order, he was accompanied by three lay brethren from Florence.

He proceeded through the Grisons to Zürich, and stopped there two days. He was kindly received by Bullinger, who speaks of him in a letter to Vadian (Dec. 19, 1542) as a venerable man, famous for sanctity of life and eloquence.

He arrived at Geneva about September, 1542, and remained there three years. He preached to the small Italian congregation, but devoted himself chiefly to literary work by which he hoped to reach a larger public in his native land. He was deeply impressed with the moral and religious prosperity of Geneva, the like of which he had never seen before, and gave a favorable description of it in one of his Italian sermons.936

"In Geneva, where I am now residing," he wrote in October, 1542, "excellent Christians are daily preaching the pure word of God. The Holy Scriptures are constantly read and openly discussed, and every one is at liberty to propound what the Holy Spirit suggests to him, just as, according to the testimony of Paul, was the case in the primitive Church. Every day there is a public service of devotion. Every Sunday there is catechetical instruction of the young, the simple, and the ignorant. Cursing and swearing, unchastity, sacrilege, adultery, and impure living, such as prevail in many places where I have lived, are unknown here. There are no pimps and harlots. The people do not know what rouge is, and they are all clad in a seemly fashion. Games of chance are not customary. Benevolence is so great that the poor need not beg. The people admonish each other in brotherly fashion, as Christ prescribes. Lawsuits are banished from the city; nor is there any simony, murder, or party spirit, but only peace and charity. On the other hand, there are no organs here, no noise of bells, no showy songs, no burning candles and lamps, no relics, pictures, statues, canopies, or splendid robes, no farces, or cold ceremonies. The churches are quite free from all idolatry."937

Ochino wrote at Geneva a justification of his flight, in a letter to Girolamo Muzio (April 7, 1543). In a letter to the magistrates of Siena, he gave a full confession of his faith based chiefly on the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (Nov. 3, 1543). He published, in rapid succession, seven volumes of Italian sermons or theological essays.938

He says in the Preface to these sermons: "Now, my dear Italy, I can no more speak to you from mouth to mouth; but I will write to you in thine own language, that everybody may understand me. My comfort is that Christ so willed it, that, laying aside all earthly considerations, I may regard only the truth. And as the justification of the sinner by Christ is the beginning of the Christian life, let us begin with it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."  His sermons are evangelical, and show a mystical tendency, as we might expect from a disciple of Valdes. He lays much stress on the vital union of the soul with Christ by faith and love. He teaches a free salvation by the sole merits of Christ, and the Calvinistic doctrine of sovereign election, but without the negative inference of reprobation. He wrote also a popular, paraphrastic commentary on his favorite Epistle to the Romans (1545), which was translated into Latin and German. Afterwards, he published sermons on the Epistle to the Galatians, which were printed at Augsburg, 1546.

He lived on good terms with Calvin, who distrusted the Italians, but after careful inquiry was favorably impressed with Ochino’s "eminent learning and exemplary life."939  He mentions him first in a letter to Viret (September, 1542) as a venerable refugee, who lived in Geneva at his own expense, and promised to be of great service if he could learn French.940  In a letter to Melanchthon (Feb. 14, 1543), he calls him an "eminent and excellent man, who has occasioned no little stir in Italy by his departure."941  Two years afterwards (Aug. 15, 1545), he recommended him to Myconius of Basel as "deserving of high esteem everywhere."942

Ochino associated at Basel with Castellio, and employed him in the translation of his works from the Italian. This connection may have shaken his confidence in the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination and free-will.

Ochino in Germany.

He labored for some time as preacher and author in Strassburg, where he met his old friend Peter Martyr, and in Augsburg, where he received from the city council a regular salary of two hundred guilders as preacher among the foreigners. This was his first regular settlement after he had left Italy. At Augsburg he lived with his brother-in-law and sister. He seems to have married at that time, if not earlier.943

Ochino in England.

After his victory over the Smalkaldian League, the Emperor Charles V. held a triumphant entry in Augsburg, Jan. 23, 1547, and demanded the surrender of the Apostate monk, whose powerful voice he had heard from the pulpit at Naples eleven years before. The magistrates enabled Ochino to escape in the night. He fled to Zürich, where he accidentally met Calvin, who arrived there on the same day. From Zürich he went to Basel.

Here he received, in 1547, a call to England from Archbishop Cranmer, who needed foreign aid in the work of the Reformation under the favorable auspices of the young King Edward VI. At the same time he called Peter Martyr, then professor at Strassburg, to a theological professorship at Oxford, and two years afterwards he invited Bucer and Fagius of Strassburg, who refused to sign the Augsburg Interim, to professorial chairs in the University of Cambridge (1549). Ochino and Peter Martyr made the journey together in company with an English knight, who provided the outfit and the travelling expenses.

Ochino labored six years in London, from 1547 to 1554, probably the happiest of his troubled life,—as evangelist among the Italian merchants and refugees, and as a writer in aid of the Reformation. His family followed him. He enjoyed the confidence of Cranmer, who appointed him canon of Canterbury (though he never resided there), and received a competent salary from the private purse of the king.

His chief work of that period is a theological drama against the papacy under the title "A Tragedy or a Dialogue of the unjust, usurped primacy of the Bishop of Rome," with a flattering dedication to Edward VI. He takes the ground of all the Reformers, that the pope is the predicted Antichrist, seated in the temple of God; and traces, in a series of nine conversations, with considerable dramatic skill but imperfect historical information, the gradual growth of the papacy from Boniface III. and Emperor Phocas (607) to its downfall in England under Henry VIII. and Edward VI.944

Ochino again in Switzerland.

After the accession of Queen Mary, Ochino had to flee, and went a second time to Geneva. He arrived there a day after the burning of Servetus (Oct. 28, 1553), which he disapproved, but he did not lose his respect for Calvin, whom he called, in a letter of Dec. 4, 1555, the first divine and the ornament of the century.945

He accepted a call as pastor of the Italian congregation at Zürich. Here he associated freely with Peter Martyr, but more, it would seem, with Laelius Socinus, who was also a native of Siena, and who by his sceptical opinions exerted an unsettling influence on his mind.

He wrote a catechism for his congregation (published at Basel, 1561) in the form of a dialogue between "Illuminato" (the catechumen) and "Ministro."  He explains the usual five parts—the Decalogue (which fills one-half of the book), the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, with an appendix of prayers.

His last works were his "Labyrinths" (1561) and "Thirty Dialogues" (1563), translated by Castellio into Latin, and published by an Italian printer at Basel. In these books Ochino discusses the doctrines of predestination, free-will, the Trinity, and monogamy, in a latitudinarian and sceptical way, which made the heretical view appear stronger in the argument than the orthodox.

The most objectionable is the dialogue on polygamy (Dial. XXI.), which he seemed to shield by the example of the patriarchs and kings of the Old Testament; while monogamy was not sufficiently defended, although it is declared to be the only moral form of marriage.946  The subject was much ventilated in that age, especially in connection with the bigamy of Philip of Hesse and the deplorable connivance of the Lutheran Reformers. A dialogue in favor of polygamy appeared in 1541, under the fictitious name of "Huldericus Neobulus," in the interest of Philip of Hesse. From this dialogue Ochino borrowed some of his strongest arguments.947  This accounts for his theoretical error. He certainly could have had no personal motive, for he was then in his seventy-seventh year, a widower with four children.948  His moral life had always been unblemished, as his congregation and Bullinger testified.

The End.

The dialogue on polygamy caused the unceremonious deposition and expulsion of the old man from Zürich by the Council, in December, 1563. In vain did he protest against misinterpreta-tion, and beg to be allowed to remain during the cold winter with his four children. He was ordered to quit the city within three weeks. Even the mild Bullinger did not protect him. He went to Basel, but the magistrates of that city were even more intolerant than the clergy, and would not permit him to remain during the winter. Castellio, the translator of the obnoxious books, was also called to account, but was soon summoned to a higher judgment (December 23). The printer, Perna, who had sold all the copies, was threatened with punishment, but seems to have escaped it.

Ochino found a temporary hiding-place in Nürnberg, and sent from there in self-defence an ill-tempered attack upon Zürich, to which the ministers of that city replied.949

Being obliged to leave Nürnberg, he turned his weary steps to Poland, and was allowed to preach to his countrymen at Cracow. But Cardinal Hosius and the papal nuncio denounced him as an atheist, and induced the king to issue an edict by which all non-Catholic foreigners were expelled from Poland (Aug. 6, 1564).

Ochino entered upon his last weary journey. At Pinczow he was seized by the pestilence and lost three of his children; nothing is known of the fourth. He himself survived, but a few weeks afterwards he took sick again and ended his lonely life at the end of December, 1564, at Schlackau in Moravia: a victim of his sceptical speculations and the intolerance of his age. A veil is thrown over his last days: no monument, no inscription marks his grave. What a sad contrast between the bright morning and noon-day, and the gloomy evening, of his public life!

A false rumor was spread that before his journey to Poland he met at Schaffhausen the cardinal of Lorraine on his return from the Council of Trent, and offered to prove twenty-four errors against the Reformed Church. The offer was declined with the remark: "Four errors are enough."  The rumor was investigated, but could not be verified. He himself denied it, and one of his last known utterances was: "I wish to be neither a Bullingerite, nor a Calvinist, nor a Papist, but simply a Christian."950

His sceptical views on the person of Christ and the atonement disturbed and nearly broke up the Italian congregation in Zürich. No new pastor was elected; the members coalesced with the German population, and the antitrinitarian influences disappeared.

§ 130. Caelius Secundus Curio. 1503–1569.

Curio’s works and correspondence.—Trechsel, I. 215 sqq., and Wagemann in Herzog,2 III. 396–400 (where the literature is given).

Celio Secundo Curione or Curio was the youngest of twenty-three children of a Piedmontese nobleman, studied history and law at Turin, became acquainted with the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Melanchthon through an Augustinian monk, and labored zealously for the spread of Protestant doctrines in Pavia, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, and Lucca. He barely escaped death at the stake, and fled to Switzerland with letters of recommendation by the Duchess Renata, the friend of Calvin. He received an appointment as professor of eloquence in Lausanne (1543–1547) and afterwards in Basel. He was the father-in-law of Zanchius. He attracted students from abroad, declined several calls, kept up a lively correspondence with his countrymen and with the Reformers, and wrote a number of theological and literary works. He sided with the latitudinarians, and thereby lost the confidence of Calvin and Bullinger; but he maintained his ground in Basel, and became the ancestor of several famous theological families of that city (Buxtorf, Zwinger, Werenfels, Frey).

Curio sympathized with Zwingli’s favorable judgment of the noble heathen, and thought that they were as acceptable to God as the pious Israelites. Vergerio, formerly a friend of Curio, charged him with the Pelagian heresy and with teaching that men may be saved without the knowledge of Christ, though not without Christ.951

Curio advanced also the hopeful view that the kingdom of heaven is much larger than the kingdom of Satan, and that the saved will far outnumber the lost.952

Such opinions were disapproved by Peter Martyr, Zanchi, Bullinger, Brenz, John a Lasco, and all orthodox Protestants of that age, as paradoxical and tending to Universalism. But modern Calvinists go further than Curio, at least in regard to the large majority of the saved.953

§ 131. The Italian Antitrinitarians in Geneva. Gribaldo, Biandrata, Alciati, Gentile.

See Lit. in § 127, and Sandius: Bibliotheca antitrinitaria. Trechsel (I. 277–390) is still the best authority on the early Antitrinitarians in Switzerland, and gives large extracts from the sources. Fock (I. 134) has only a few words on them.—Comp. in addition, Heberle: G. Blandrata, in the "Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie," for 1840, No. IV. Dorner: Hist. of Christology, German ed., II. 656 sqq.

The antitrinitarian leaven entered the Italian congregation at Geneva during and after the trial of Servetus, but was suppressed by the combined action of the Swiss Churches. This constitutes the last chapter of Antitrinitarianism in Switzerland.

Several Italian refugees denounced the execution of Servetus, adopted his views and tried to improve them, but were far inferior to him in genius and originality.

They circulated libels on Calvin, and ventilated their opinions in the weekly conference meetings of the Italian congregation, which were open to questions and free discussions.

1. Matteo Gribaldo, a noted professor of jurisprudence at Padua, bought the estate of Farges in the territory of Bern, near Geneva, and spent there a part of each year. He attended the Italian meetings on his visits to the town. During the trial of Servetus he openly expressed his disapproval of civil punishment for religious opinions, and maintained that everybody should be allowed to believe what he pleased. He at first concealed his views on the doctrine of Servetus, except among intimate friends. After an examination before the Council, he was ordered to leave the city on suspicion of heretical opinions on the Trinity (1559). These opinions were crude and undigested. He vacillated between dyotheism or tritheism and Arianism. He could not conceive of Father and Son except as two distinct beings or substances: the one begetting, the other begotten; the one sending, the other sent. He compared their relation to that between Paul and Apollos, who were two individuals, yet one in the abstract idea of the apostolate.

Before his dismission from Geneva he had, through the influence of Vergerio, received an appointment us professor of law in the University of Tübingen. Passing through Zürich he called on Bullinger, and complained bitterly of the conduct of Calvin. He gained the applause of the students in Tübingen, and was often consulted by Duke Christopher of Würtemberg on important matters.

But rumors of his heresies reached Tübingen, and inquiries were sent to Geneva. Calvin warned his old teacher, Melchior Volmar, against him, and Beza alarmed Vergerio by unfavorable reports. Vergerio informed the Duke of the charges.

Gribaldo was subjected to an examination before the academic senate in the presence of the Duke, and was pressed for a decided answer to the question, whether he agreed with the Athanasian Creed and the edict of Theodosius I. respecting the Trinity and the Catholic faith. He asked three weeks’ time for consideration, but escaped to his villa at Farges, where his family still resided.

There he was apprehended by the magistrates of Bern at the instance of the Duke of Würtemberg, in September, 1557. His papers were seized and found to contain antitrinitarian and other heresies. He was ordered to renounce his errors by a confession drawn up with his own hand, and banished from the territory of Bern; but on his promise to keep quiet, he was allowed to return the following year for the sake of his seven children. He died of the plague which visited Switzerland in 1564, and swept away thirty-eight thousand persons in the territory of Bern, besides seven thousand in Basel, and fourteen hundred at Coire. It was a fatal time for the Reformed Church, for between 1564 and 1566 several of the leaders died; as Calvin, Farel, Bibliander, Borrhaus, Blaurer, Fabricius, and Saluz.954

2. Giorgio Biandrata (or Blandrata), an educated physician of a noble family of Saluzzo in Piedmont (born about 1515), escaped the inquisition by flight to Geneva in 1557. He agreed substantially with Gribaldo, but was more subtle and cautious. He called Calvin his reverend father, and consulted him on theological questions. He seemed to be satisfied, but returned again and again with new doubts. Calvin, overburdened with labor and care, patiently listened and spent whole hours with the sceptic. He also answered his objections in writing.955  At last he refused further discussion as useless. "He tried," wrote Calvin to Lismann,  "to circumvent me like a serpent, but God gave me strength to withstand his cunning."

The spirit of doubt spread more and more in the Italian congregation. One of the principal sympathizers of Biandrata was Gianpaolo Alciati, a Piedmontese who had served in the army, and was not used to reverent language.

Martinengo, the worthy Italian pastor, shortly before his death, begged Calvin to take care of the little flock and to extirpate the dangerous heresy. Accordingly, a public meeting of the Italian congregation was held May 18, 1558, in the presence of Calvin and two members of the Council. Calvin, in the name of the Council, invited the malcontents to utter themselves freely, and assured them that they should not be punished. Biandrata appealed to certain expressions of Calvin, but was easily convicted of mistake. Alciati went so far as to declare that the orthodox party "worshipped three devils worse than all the idols of popery."  After a three hours’ discussion, it was resolved that all the members of the congregation should subscribe a confession of faith, which asserted the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, as being consistent with the essential unity of the Godhead.

Six members at first refused to subscribe, but yielded afterwards with the exception, it seems, of Biandrata and Alciati. They felt unsafe in Geneva, and went to Bern. There they found a sympathizer in Zurkinden, the secretary of the city, who engaged in an angry controversy with Calvin.

Biandrata left for Poland, gained the confidence of Prince Radziwill, propagated his Unitarian opinions, and justified himself before a synod at Pinczow (1561). In 1563 he accepted a call of Prince John Sigismund of Transylvania as his physician, and converted him and many others to his views, but was charged by Faustus Socinus to have in his last years favored the Jesuits from mercenary motives. It is possible that the old man, weary of theological strife, lost himself in the maze of scepticism, like Ochino. Tradition reports that he was robbed and murdered by his own nephew after 1585.

3. The peace of the Italian congregation was again disturbed by Giovanne Valenti Gentile of Calabria, a school-master of some learning and acuteness, who was attracted to Geneva by Calvin’s reputation, but soon imbibed the sentiments of Gribaldo and Biandrata. He was one of the six members who had at first refused to sign the Italian confession of faith. Soon after the departure of Biandrata and Alciati he openly professed their views, urged, as he said, by his conscience. He charged the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity with quaternity,—adding a general divine essence to the three divine essences of Father, Son, and Spirit,—and maintained that the Father was the only divine essence, the "essentiator."  Both these ideas he borrowed from Servetus. The Son is only an image and reflection of the Father.

Gentile was thrown into prison, July, 1557, by order of the Council, on the charge of violating the confession he had signed. He repeated his views and appealed to the ministers and the Council for protection against the tyranny of Calvin, but he was refuted by the ministers. At last he apologized for his severe language against Calvin, whom he had always revered as a great man, but he refused to recant his views. The Council asked the judgment of five lawyers, who decided that, according to the imperial laws (De summa Trinitate et fide catholica et de hereticis), Gentile deserved death by fire. The Council, instead, pronounced the milder sentence of death by the sword (Aug. 15). It seems that Calvin’s advice, which had been disregarded in the case of Servetus, now prevailed in the case of Gentile.

The fear of death induced Gentile to withdraw his charges against the orthodox doctrine, and to sign a brief confession of faith in three divine Persons in one Essence, and in the unity, coequality, and coeternity of the Son and Holy Spirit with the Father. He was released of the sentence of death; yet in view of his perjury, his heresies, and false accusations against the Church of Geneva, he was condemned by the magistrates to make an amende honorable, that is, in his shirt, bareheaded, and barefooted, with a lighted torch in his hand, to beg on his knees the judge’s pardon, to burn his writings with his own hand, and to walk through the principal streets under the sound of the trumpet. The sentence was carried out on the second of September. He submitted to it with surprising readiness, happy to escape death at such a cheap price. He also promised on oath not to leave the city without permission.

But he was hardly set at liberty when he escaped and joined his friends Gribaldo and Alciati at Farges. Soon afterwards he spent some time at Lyons. He studied the ante-Nicene Fathers, who confirmed his subordinationism, and wrote a book (Antidota) in defence of his views and against the chapter on the Trinity in Calvin’s Institutes. He declared that the orthodox terms of homoousia, person, substance, trinity, unity, were profane and monstrous, and obscured the true doctrine of the one God. He also attacked the doctrine of the two natures in Christ and the communication of attributes as idle speculations, which should be banished from the Church. He borrowed from Origen the distinction between the original God (aujtoqeov"), that is, the Father and the derived or secondary God (qeov", deuterovqeo", eJterovqeo") that is, the Son. The Father alone is God in the strict sense of the term—the essentiator; the Son is essentiatus and subordinate. He spoke most disrespectfully and passionately of the orthodox views. Calvin refuted his opinions in a special book (1561).

Gentile roused the suspicion of the Catholic authorities in Lyons and was imprisoned, but was set free after fifty days on his declaration that his writings were only opposed to Calvinism, not to orthodoxy.

But he felt unsafe in France, and accepted, with Alciati, an invitation of Biandrata to Poland in the summer of 1563.

After the royal edict, which expelled all the Antitrinitarians, he returned to Switzerland, was apprehended by the authorities of Bern, convicted of heresies, deceits, and evasions, and beheaded on the tenth of September, 1566. On the way to the place of execution, he declared that he died a martyr for the honor of the supreme God, and charged the ministers who accompanied him with Sabellianism. He received the death-stroke with firmness, amid the exhortations of the clergy and the prayers of the multitude for God’s mercy. Benedict Aretius, a theologian of Bern, published in the following year the acts of the process with a refutation of Gentile’s objections to the orthodox doctrine.

The fate of Gentile was generally approved. No voice of complaint or protest was heard, except a feeble one from Basel. Calvin had died more than two years before, and now the city of Bern, which had opposed his doctrinal and disciplinary rigor, condemned to death a heretic less gifted and dangerous than Servetus. Gentile himself indirectly admitted that a teacher of false religion was deserving of death, but he considered his own views as true and scriptural.956

The death of Gentile ends the history of Antitrinitarianism in Switzerland. In the same year the strictly orthodox Second Helvetic Confession of Bullinger was published and adopted in the Reformed Cantons.

§ 132. The Eucharistic Controversies. Calvin and Westphal.

I. The Sources are given in § 117. See especially Calvin’s Opera, vol. IX. 1–252, and the Prolegomena, pp. i-xxiv. The correspondence between Bullinger, à Lasco, Farel, Viret, and Calvin, on the controversy, in his Opera, vols. XV. and XVI. The letters of Melanchthon from this period in the Corpus Reform. vols. VII.–IX. The works of Westphal are quoted below.

II. Planck (neutral): Geschichte des Protest. Lehrbegriff’s (Leipzig, 1799), vol. V. Part II. 1–137.—Ebrard (Reformed): Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl, II. 525–744.—Nevin (Reformed), in the "Mercersburg Review" for 1850, pp. 486–510.—Mönckeberg (Lutheran): Joachim Westphal und Joh. Calvin, 1865.—Wagenmann in Herzog2, XVII. 1–6.

Henry, III. 298–357.—Dyer, 401–412.—Stähelin, II. 112 sqq., 189 sqq.—Gieseler, III. Part II. 280 sqq.—Dorner: Geschichte der protest. Theol., 400 sqq.—Schaff, Creeds, I. 279 sqq.

The sacramental controversy between Luther and Zwingli was apparently solved by the middle theory of Calvin, Bullinger, and Melanchthon, and had found a symbolical expression in the Zürich Consensus of 1549, for Switzerland, and even before that, in the Wittenberg Concordia of 1536 and in Melanchthon’s irenical restatement of the 10th article of the Altered Augsburg Confession of 1540, for Germany. Luther’s renewed attack upon the Swiss in 1544 was isolated, and not supported by any of his followers; while Calvin, from respect for Luther, kept silent.

But in 1552 a second sacramental war was opened by Westphal in the interest of the high Lutheran theory, and gradually spread over all Germany and Switzerland.

We may well "lament," with Calvin in his letter to Schalling (March, 1557), that those who professed the same gospel of Christ were distracted on the subject of his Last Supper, which should have been the chief bond of union among them.957

The Westphal-Calvin controversy did not concern the fact of the real presence, which was conceded by Calvin in all his previous writings on the subject, but the subordinate questions of the mode of the presence, of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, and the effect of the sacrament on unworthy communicants, whether they received the very body and blood of Christ, or only bread and wine, to their condemnation. Calvin clearly states the points of difference in the preface to his, Second Defence" : —

"That I have written reverently of the legitimate use, dignity, and efficacy, of the sacraments, even he himself [Westphal] does not deny. How skilfully or learnedly in his judgment, I care not, since it is enough to be commended for piety by an enemy. The contest remaining with him embraces three articles:

"First, he insists that the bread of the Supper is substantially (substantialiter) the body of Christ. Secondly, in order that Christ may exhibit himself present to believers, he insists that his body is immense (immensum), and exists everywhere, though without place (ubique esse, extra locum). Thirdly, he insists that no figure is to be admitted in the words of Christ, whatever agreement there may be as to the thing. Of such importance does he deem it to stick doggedly to the words, that he would sooner see the whole globe convulsed than admit any exposition.

"We maintain that the body and blood of Christ are truly offered (vere offerri) to us in the Supper in order to give life to our souls; and we explain, without ambiguity, that our souls are invigorated by this spiritual aliment (spirituali alimento), which is offered to us in the Supper, just as our bodies are nourished by daily bread. Therefore we hold, that in the Supper there is a true partaking (vera participatio) of the flesh and blood of Christ. Should any one raise a dispute as to the word ’substance,’ we assert that Christ, from the substance of his flesh, breathes life into our souls; nay, infuses his own life into us (propriam in nos vitam diffundere), provided always that no transfusion of substance be imagined."958

The Swiss had in this controversy the best of the argument and showed a more Christian spirit. The result was disastrous to Lutheranism. The Palatinate, in part also Hesse, Bremen, Anhalt, and, at a later period, the reigning dynasty of Prussia, passed over into the Reformed Church. Hereafter there were two distinct and separate Confessions in Protestant Germany, the Lutheran and the Reformed, which in the Westphalia Treaty were formally recog-nized on a basis of legal equality. The Lutheran Church might have sustained still greater loss if Melanchthon had openly professed his essential agreement with Calvin. But the magnetic power of Luther’s name and personality, and of his great work saved his doctrine of the Eucharist and the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which was finally formulated and fixed in the Formula of Concord (1577).

Joachim Westphal (1510–1574), a rigid Lutheran minister and afterwards superintendent at Hamburg, who inherited the intolerance and violent temper, but none of the genius and generosity of Luther, wrote, without provocation, a tract against the "Zürich Consensus," and against Calvin and Peter Martyr, in 1552. He aimed indirectly at the Philippists (Melanchthonians), who agreed with the Calvinistic theory of the Eucharist without openly confessing it, and who for this reason were afterwards called Crypto-Calvinists. He had previously attacked Melanchthon, his teacher and benefactor, and compared his conduct in the Interim controversy with Aaron’s worship of the golden calf.959  He taught that the very body of Christ was in the bread substantially, that it was ubiquitous, though illocal (extra locum), and that it was partaken by Judas no less than by Peter. He made no distinction between Calvin and Zwingli. He treats as "sacramentarians" and heretics all those who denied the corporal presence, the oral manducation, and the literal eating of Christ’s body with the teeth, even by unbelievers. He charges them with holding no less than twenty-eight conflicting opinions on the words of institution, quoting extracts from Carlstadt, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer, à Lasco, Bullinger, Peter Martyr, Schwenkfeld, and chiefly from Calvin. But nearly all these opinions are essentially the same, and that of Carlstadt was never adopted by any Church or any Reformed theologian.960  He speaks of their godless perversion of the Scriptures, and even their "satanic blasphemies."  He declared that they ought to be refuted by the rod of the magistrates rather than by the pen.961

As his first attack was ignored by the Swiss, he wrote another and larger tract in 1553, in which he proved the Lutheran view chiefly from 1 Cor. 11:29, 30, and urged the Lutherans to resist the progress of the Zwinglian or, as it was now called, Calvinistic heresy.962

The style and taste of his polemic may be inferred from his calling Bullinger "the bull of Zürich," Calvin "the calf of Geneva," and à Lasco "the Polish bear."

About the same time, in the autumn and winter of 1553, John à Lasco, a Polish nobleman, a friend of Calvin, and minister of a foreign Reformed congregation in London, fled with one hundred and seventy-five Protestants from persecution under the bloody Mary, and sought shelter on Danish and German shores; but was refused even a temporary refuge in cold winter at Helsingör, Copenhagen, Rostock, Lübeck, and Hamburg (though they found it at last in East Friesland). Westphal denounced these noble men as martyrs of the devil, enraged the people against them, and gloried in the inhuman cruelty as an act of faith.963

This conduct roused the Swiss to self-defence. Bullinger vindicated the orthodoxy of the Zürich ministry with his usual moderation. Calvin heard of the treatment of the refugees through a letter of Peter Martyr, then at Strassburg, in May, 1554, and took up his sharp and racy pen in three successive pamphlets. He at first wished to issue a joint remonstrance of the Swiss Churches, and sent a hasty draft to Bullinger. But Zürich, Basel, and Bern found it too severe, and refused to sign it. He corrected the draft, and published it in his own name under the title "Defence of the Sound and Orthodox Doctrine on the Sacraments," as laid down in the Consensus Tigurinus (Geneva, 1555). He treated Westphal with sovereign contempt, without naming him. Westphal replied in a tract thrice as large, complaining of the unworthy treatment, denying the intention of disturbing the peace of the Church, but repeating his charges against the Sacramentarians.964  Calvin, after some hesitation, prepared a "Second Defence," now openly directed "contra Westphali calumnias," and published it, with a preface to the Churches of Germany, in January, 1556. Westphal replied in two writings, one against Calvin and one against à Lasco, and sent letters to the leading cities of North Germany, urging them to unite in an orthodox Lutheran Confession against the Zürich Consensus. He received twenty-five responses, and issued them at Magdeburg, 1557. He also reprinted Melanchthon’s former opinions on the real presence (Hamburg, 1557). To meet these different assaults Calvin issued his "Last Admonition to Westphal" (1557). Westphal continued the controversy, but Calvin kept silent and handed him over to Beza.

Besides these main contestants several others took part in the fight: on the Lutheran side, Timan, Schnepf, Alberus, Gallus, Judex, Brenz, Andreae, etc.; on the Reformed side, à Lasco, Ochino, Polanus, Bibliander, and Beza.

Calvin indignantly rebuked the "rude and barbarous insults" to persecuted members of Christ, and characterized the ultra-Lutherans as men who would rather have peace with the Turks and Papists than with Swiss Christians. He called them "apes of Luther."  He triumphantly vindicated against misrepresentations and objections his doctrine of the spiritual real presence of Christ, and the sealing communication of the life-giving virtue of his body in heaven to the believer through the power of the Holy Spirit.

He might have defended his doctrine even more effectually if he had restrained his wrath and followed the brotherly advice of Bullinger, and even Farel, who exhorted him not to imitate the violence of his opponent, to confine himself to the thing, and to spare the person. But he wrote to Farel (August, 1557): "With regard to Westphal and the rest it was difficult for me to control my temper and to follow your advice. You call those ’brethren’ who, if that name be offered to them by us, do not only reject, but execrate it. And how ridiculous should we appear in bandying the name of brother with those who look upon us as the worst of heretics."965

§ 133. Calvin and the Augsburg Confession. Melanchthon’s Position in the Second Eucharistic Controversy.

Comp. Henry, III. 335–339 and Beilage, pp. 102–110; the works on the Augsburg Confession, and the biographies of Melanchthon.

During the progress of this controversy both parties frequently appealed to the Augsburg Confession and to Melanchthon. They were both right and both wrong; for there are two editions of the Confession, representing the earlier and the later theories of its author on the Lord’s Supper. The original Augsburg Confession of 1530, in the tenth article, teaches Luther’s doctrine of the real presence so clearly and strongly that even the Roman opponents did not object to it.966  But from the time of the Wittenberg Concordia in 1536, or even earlier,967 Melanchthon began to change his view on the real presence as well as his view on predestination and free-will; in the former he approached Calvin, in the latter he departed from him. He embodied the former change in the Altered Confession of 1540, without official authority, yet in good faith, as the author of the document, and in the conviction that he represented public sentiment, since Luther himself had moderated his opposition to the Swiss by assenting to the Wittenberg Concordia.968  The altered edition was made the basis of negotiations with the Romanists at the Colloquies of Worms and Ratisbon in 1541, and at the later Colloquies in 1546 and 1557. It was printed (with the title and preface of the Invariata) in the first collection of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church (Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum) in 1559; it was expressly approved by the Lutheran princes at the Convention of Naumburg in 1561, after Melanchthon’s death, as an improved modification and authentic interpretation of the Confession, and was adhered to by the Melanchthonians and the Reformed even after the adoption of the Book of Concord (1580).

The text in the two editions is as follows:—

Ed. 1530.

"De Coena Domini docent, quod corpus et sanguis Christi vere adsint [the German text adds: unter der Gestalt des Brots und Weins], et distribuantur vescentibus in Coena Domini, et improbant secus docentes." [In the German text: "Derhalben wird auch die Gegenlehre verworfen."]

Ed. 1540.

"De Coena Domini docent, quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus et sanguis Christi vescentibus in Coena Domini."

Ed. 1530.

"Concerning the Lord’s Supper, they teach that the body find blood of Christ are truly present [under the form of bread and wine], and are distributed to those that eat in the Lord’s Supper.  And they disapprove of those who teach otherwise." [In the German text: "Wherefore also the opposite doctrine is rejected."]

Ed. 1540.

"Concerning the Lord’s Supper, they teach that with bread and wine are truly exhibited the body and blood of Christ to those who eat in the Lord's Supper."

[Disapproval of dissenting views is omitted.]

It is to this revised edition of the document, and to its still living author, that Calvin confidently appealed.

"In regard to the Confession of Augsburg," he says in his Last Admonition to Westphal, "my answer is, that, as it was published at Ratisbon (1541), it does not contain a word contrary to our doctrine.969  If there is any ambiguity in its meaning, there cannot be a more competent interpreter than its author, to whom, as his due, all pious and learned men will readily pay this honor. To him I boldly appeal; and thus Westphal with his vile garrulity lies prostrate .... If Joachim wishes once for all to rid himself of all trouble and put an end to controversy, let him extract one word in his favor from Philip’s lips. The means of access are open, and the journey is not so very laborious, to visit one of whose consent he boasts so loftily, and with whom he may thus have familiar intercourse. If I shall be found to have used Philip’s name rashly, there is no stamp of ignominy to which I am not willing to submit.

"The passage which Westphal quotes, it is not mine to refute, nor do I regard what, during the first conflict, before the matter was clearly and lucidly explained, the importunity of some may have extorted from one who was then too backward in giving a denial. It were too harsh to lay it down as a law on literary men, that after they have given a specimen of their talent and learning, they are never after to go beyond it in the course of their lives. Assuredly, whosoever shall say that Philip has added nothing by the labor of forty years, does great wrong to him individually, and to the whole Church.

"The only thing I said, and, if need be, a hundred times repeat, is, that in this matter Philip can no more be torn from me than he can from his own bowels.970  But although fearing the thunder which threatened to burst from violent men (those who know the boisterous blasts of Luther understand what I mean), he did not always speak out openly as I could have wished, there is no reason why Westphal, while pretending differently, should indirectly charge him with having begun to incline to us only after Luther was dead. For when more than seventeen years ago we conferred together on this point of doctrine, at our first meeting, not a syllable required to be changed.971  Nor should I omit to mention Gaspar Cruciger, who, from his excellent talents and learning, stood, next after Philip, highest in Luther’s estimation, and far beyond all others. He so cordially embraced what Westphal now impugns, that nothing can be imagined more perfectly accordant than our opinions. But if there is still any doubt as to Philip, do I not make a sufficient offer when I wait silent and confident for his answer, assured that it will make manifest the dishonesty which has falsely sheltered itself under the venerable name of that most excellent man?"

Calvin urged Melanchthon repeatedly to declare openly his view on the points in controversy. In a letter of March 5, 1555, after thanking him for his approval of the condemnation of Servetus, he says: "About ’the bread-worship’ (peri; th'" ajrtolatreiva"), your most intimate opinion has long since been known to me, which you do not even dissemble in your letter. But your too great slowness displeases me, by which the madness of those whom you see rushing on to the destruction of the Church, is not only kept up, but from day to day increased."  Melanchthon answered, May 12, 1555:

I have determined to reply simply and without ambiguity, and I judge that I owe that work to God and the Church, nor at the age to which I have arrived, do I fear either exile or other dangers."  On August 23 of the same year, Calvin expressed his gratification with this answer and wrote: "I entreat you to discharge, as soon as you can, the debt which you acknowledge you owe to God and the Church."  He adds with undue severity: "If this warning, like a cock crowing rather late and out of season, do not awaken you, all will cry out with justice that you are a sluggard. Farewell, most distinguished sir, whom I venerate from the heart."  In another letter of Aug. 3, 1557, he complains of the silence of three years and apologizes for the severity of his last letter, but urges him again to come out, like a man, and to refute the charge of slavish timidity. "I do not think," he says, "you need to be reminded by many words, how necessary it is for you to hasten to wipe out this blot from your character."  He proposes that Melanchthon should induce the Lutheran princes to convene a peaceful conference of both parties at Strassburg, or Tübingen, or Heidelberg, or Frankfurt, and attend the conference in person with some pious, upright, and moderate men. "If you class me," he concludes, "in the number of such men, no necessity, however pressing, will prevent me from putting up this as my chief vow, that before the Lord gather us into his heavenly kingdom I may yet be permitted to enjoy on earth, a most delightful interview with you, and feel some alleviation of my grief by deploring along with you the evils which we cannot remedy."  In his last extant letter to Melanchthon, dated Nov. 19, 1558, Calvin alludes once more to the eucharistic controversy, but in a very gentle spirit, assuring him that he will never allow anything to alienate his mind "from that holy friendship and respect which I have vowed to you .... Whatever may happen, let us cultivate with sincerity a fraternal affection towards each other, the ties of which no wiles of Satan shall ever burst asunder."

Melanchthon would have done better for his own fame if, instead of approving the execution of Servetus, he had openly supported Calvin in the conflict with Westphal. But he was weary of the rabies theologorum, and declined to take an active part in the bitter strife on "bread-worship," as he called the notion of those who were not contented with the presence of the body of Christ in the sacramental use, but insisted upon its presence in and under the bread. He knew what kind of men he had to deal with. He knew that the court of Saxony, from a sense of honor, would not allow an open departure from Luther’s doctrine. Prudence, timidity, and respect for the memory of Luther were the mingled motives of his silence. He was aware of his natural weakness, and confessed in a letter to Christopher von Carlowitz, in 1548: "I am, perhaps, by nature of a somewhat servile disposition, and I have before endured an altogether unseemly servitude; as Luther more frequently obeyed his temperament, in which was no little contentiousness, than he regarded his own dignity and the common good."

But in his private correspondence he did not conceal his real sentiments, his disapproval of "bread-worship" and of the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. His last utterance on the subject was in answer to the request of Elector Frederick III. of the Palatinate, who tried to conciliate the parties in the fierce eucharistic controversy at Heidelberg. Melanchthon warned against scholastic subtleties and commended moderation, peace, biblical simplicity, and the use of Paul’s words that "the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ " (1 Cor. 10:16), not "changed into," nor the "substantial," nor the "true" body. He gave this counsel on the first of November, 1559. A few months afterwards he died (April 17, 1560).

The result was that the Elector deposed the leaders of both parties, Heshusius and Klebitz, called distinguished foreign divines to the University, and entrusted Zacharias Ursinus (a pupil of Melanchthon) and Caspar Olevianus (a pupil of Calvin) with the task of composing the Heidelberg or Palatinate Catechism, which was published Jan. 19, 1563. It became the principal symbolical book of the German and Dutch branches of the Reformed Church. It gives clear and strong expression to the Calvinistic-Melanchthonian theory of the spiritual real presence, and teaches the doctrine of election, but without a word on reprobation and preterition. In both respects it is the best expression of the genius and final doctrinal position of Melanchthon, who was himself a native of the Palatinate.

NOTES. MELANCHTHON’S LAST WORDS ON THE EUCHARIST.

Letter to Calvin, Oct. 14, 1554. Melanchthon approves of the execution of Servetus and continues: "Quod in proximis literas me hortaris, ut reprimam ineruditos clamores illorum, qui renovant certamen peri; ajrtolatreiva" scito, quosdam praecipue odio mei eam disputationem movere, ut habeant plausibilem causam ad me opprimendum."  He expresses the hope to discuss this subject with him once more before his death. (Mel’s Opera in the Corp. Reform. VIII. 362 sq.)

To Hardenberg, pastor in Bremen, who was persecuted for resisting the doctrine of ubiquity, he wrote, May 9, 1557 (ibid. IX. 154)  Crescit, ut vides, non modo certamen, sed etiam rabies in scriptoribus, qui ajrtolatreivan stabiliunt."

Letter to Mordeisen, counsellor of the Elector of Saxony, Nov. 15, 1557 (ibid. IX. 374): "Si mihi concedetis, ut in alia loco vivam, respondebo illis indoctis sycophantis et vere et graviter, et dicam utilia ecclesiae."

One of his last utterances is reported by Peucer, his son-in-law, "ex arcanis sermonibus Dom. Philippi," in an autograph of Jan. 3, 1561 (vol. IX. 1088–1090). Here Melanchthon asserts the real presence, but declines to describe the mode, and rejects the ubiquity of Christ’s body. He also admits the figurative sense of the words of institution, which Luther so persistently denied. "Consideranda est," he says, "interpretatio verborum Christi, quae ab aliis kata; to; rJhtovn, ab aliis kata; trovpon accipiuntur. Nec sunt plures interpretationes quam duae. Posterior Pauli est sine omni dubio, qui vocat koivwvian corporis panem, et aperte testatur, oujk ejxistavnai th'" fuvsew" ta; oJrwvmena suvmbola. Ergo Necesse Est Admitti trovpon. Cum hac consentit vetustas Graeca et Latina. Graeci suvmbola ajntivtupa, Latini ’signa’ et ’figuras’ vocant res externas et in usu corpus et sanguinem, ut discernant hunc sacrum et mysticum cibum a profano, et admoneant Ecclesiam de re signata, quae vere exhibetur et applicatur credentibus, et dicunt esse symbola tou' o[ntw" swvmato", contra Entychem, ut sciat Ecclesia, non esse inania symbola aut notas tantum professionis, sed symbola rerum praesentium Christi vere praesentis et efficacis et impertientis atque applicantis credentibus promissa beneficia."

From Melanchthon’s Judicium de controversia coenae Domini ad illustr. Principem ac D. D. Fridericum, Comitem Palatinum Rheni, Electorem, dated Nov. 1, 1559 (IX. 960 sqq.): "Non difficile, sed periculosum est respondere. Dicam tamen, quae nunc de controversia illius loci monere possum: et oro Filium Dei, ut et consilia et eventus gubernet. Non dubium est de controversia Coenae igentia certamina et bella in toto orbe terrarun secutura esse: quia mundus dat poenas idololatriae, et aliorum peccatorum. Ideo petamus, ut Filius Dei nos doceat et gubernet. Cum autem ubique multi sint infirmi, et nondum instituti in doctrina Ecclesia, imo confirmati in erroribus: necesse est initio habere rationem infirmorum.

"Probo igitur consilium Illustrissimi Electoris, quod rixantibus utrinque mandavit silentium ne distractio fiat in tenera Ecclesia, et infirmi turbentur in illo loco, et vicinia: et optarim rixatores in utraque parte abesse. Secundo, remotis contentiosis, prodest reliquos de una forma verborum convenire. Et in hac controversia optimum esset retinere verba Pauli: ’Panis quem frangimus, koinwniva ejsti; tou' swvmato".’  Et copiose de fructu coenae dicendum est, ut invitentur homines ad amorem hujus pignoris, et crebrum usum. Et vocabulum koinwvnia declarandum est.

"Non Dicit [Paulus], mutari naturam panis, at Papistae dicunt: non dicit, ut Bremenses, panem esse substantiale corpus Christi. Non dicit, ut Heshusius, panem esse verum corpus Christi: sed esse koinwnivan, id est, hoc, quo fit consociatio cum corpore Christi: quae fit in usu, et quidem non sine cogitatione, ut cum mures panem rodunt ....

"Sed hanc veram et simplicem doctrinam de fructu, nominant quidam cothurnos: et postulant dici, an sit corpus in pane, aut speciebus panis?   Quasi vero Sacramentum propter panem et illam Papisticam adorationem institutum sit. Postea fingunt, quomodo includant pani: alii conversionem, alii transubstantiationem, alii ubiquitatem excogitarunt. Haec portentosa omnia ignota sunt eruditae vetustati ....

"Ac maneo in hac sententia: Contentiones utrinque prohibendas esse, et forma verborum una et simili utendum esse. Si quibus haec non placent, nec volunt ad communionem accedere, his permittatur, ut suo judicio utantur, modo non fiant distractiones in populo.

"Oro autem filium Dei, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum sedentem ad dextram aeterni patris, et colligentem aeternam Ecclesiam voce Evangelii, ut nos doceat, gubernet, et protegat. Opta etiam, ut aliquando in pia Synodo de omnibus contraversiis harum temporum deliberetur."

§ 134. Calvin and Heshusius.

I. Heshusius: De Praesentia Corporis Christi in Coena Domini contra Sacramentarios. Written in 1569, first published at Jena, 1560 (and also at Magdeburg and Nürnberg, 1561). Defensio verae et sacrae confessionis de vera Praesentia Corporis Christi in Coena Domini adversus calumnias Calvini, Boquini, Bezae, et Clebitii. Magdeburg, 1562.

II. Calvinus: Dilucida Explicatio sanae Doctrina de vera Participatione Carnis et Sanguinis Christi in Sacra Coena ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas. Genevae, 1561. Also in French. Opera, IX. 457–524. Comp. Proleg. xli–xliii.—Beza wrote two tracts against Heshusius: kreofagiva, etc., and Abstersio calumniarum quibus Calvinus aspersus est ab Heshusio. Gen., 1561. Boquin and Klebitz likewise opposed him.

III. J. G. Leuckfeld: Historia Heshusiana. Quedlinburg, 1716.—T. H. Wilkens: Tilemann Hesshusen, ein Streittheologe der Lutherskirche. Leipzig, 1860.—C. Schmidt: Philipp Melanchthon. Elberfeld, 1861, pp. 639 sqq.—Hackenschmidt, Art. "Hesshusen" in Herzog2, VI. 75–79. Henry, III. 339–344, and Beilage, 221. Comp. also Planck, Heppe, G. Frank, and the extensive literature on the Reformation in the Palatinate and the history of the Heidelberg Catechism (noticed in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, I. 529–531).

Tilemann Heshusius (in German Hesshus or Hesshusen) was born in 1527 at Niederwesel in the duchy of Cleves, and died at Helmstädt in 1588. He was one of the most energetic and pugnacious champions of scholastic orthodoxy who outluthered Luther and outpoped the pope.972  He identified piety with orthodoxy, and orthodoxy with illocal con-insubstantiation,973 or "bread-worship," to use Melanchthon’s expression. He occupied influential positions at Gosslar, Rostock, Heidelberg, Bremen, Magdeburg, Zweibrücken, Jena, and Prussia; but with his turbulent disposition he stirred up strife everywhere, used the power of excommunication very freely, and was himself no less than seven times deposed from office and expelled. He quarrelled also with his friends Flacius, Wigand, and Chemnitz. But while he tenaciously defended the literal eating of Christ’s body by unbelievers as well as believers, he dissented from Westphal’s coarse and revolting notion of a chewing of Christ’s body with the teeth, and confined himself to the manducatio oralis. He rejected also the doctrine of ubiquity, and found fault with its introduction into the Formula of Concord.974

Heshusius was originally a pupil and table-companion of Melanchthon, and agreed with his moderate opinions, but, like Westphal and Flacius, he became an ungrateful enemy of his benefactor. He was recommended by him to a professorship at Heidelberg and the general superintendency of the Lutheran Church in the Palatinate on the Rhine (1558). Here he first appeared as a champion of the strict Lutheran theory of the substantial presence, and attacked "the Sacramentarians" in a book, On the Presence of the Body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper."  He quarrelled with his colleagues, especially with Deacon Klebitz, who was a Melanchthonian, but no less violent and pugnacious. He even tried to wrest the eucharistic cup from him at the altar. He excommunicated him because he would not admit the in and sub, but only the cum (pane et vino), in the scholastic formula of the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence. Elector Frederick III., called the Pious, restored peace by dismissing both Heshusius and Klebitz (Sept. 16, 1559), with the approval of Melanchthon. He afterwards ordered the preparation of the Heidelberg Catechism, and introduced the Reformed Church into the Palatinate, 1563.975

On the other hand, the Lutheran clergy of Würtemberg, under the lead of Brenz, in a synod at Stuttgart, gave the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which Luther had taught, but which Melanchthon had rejected, symbolical authority for Würtemberg (Dec. 19, 1559).976

Calvin received the book of Heshusius from Bullinger, who advised him to answer the arguments, but to avoid personalities.977  He hesitated for a while, and wrote to Olevianus (November, 1660): "The loquacity of that brawler is too absurd to excite my anger, and I have not yet decided whether I shall answer him, I am weary of so many pamphlets, and shall certainly not think his follies worthy of many days’ labor. But I have composed a brief analysis of this controversy, which will, perhaps, be shortly published."  It was one of his last controversial pamphlets and appeared in 1561.

In the beginning of his response he made that most touching allusion to his departed friend Melanchthon, which we have noticed in another connection.978  What a contrast between this noble tribute of unbroken friendship and the mean ingratitude of Heshusius, who most violently attacked Melanchthon’s memory immediately after his death.979

Calvin reiterates and vindicates the several points brought out in the controversy with Westphal, and refutes the arguments of Heshusius from the Scripture and the Fathers with his wonted intellectual vigor and learning, seasoned with pepper and salt. He compares him to an ape clothed in purple, and to an ass in a lion’s skin. The following are the chief passages: —

"Heshusius bewails the vast barbarism which appears to be impending, as if any greater or worse barbarism were to be feared than that from him and his fellows. To go no further for proof, let the reader consider how fiercely he sneers and tears at his master, Philip Melanchthon, whose memory he ought sacredly to revere .... Such is the pious gratitude of the scholar, not only towards the teacher to whom he owes whatever little learning he may possess, but towards a man who has deserved so highly of the whole Church ....

"Though there is some show about him, he does nothing more by his magniloquence than vend the old follies and frivolities of Westphal and his fellows. He harangues loftily on the omnipotence of God, on putting implicit faith in his word, and subduing human reason, in terms he may have learned from other sources, of which I believe myself also to be one. I have no doubt, from his childish stolidity of glorying, that he imagines himself to combine the qualities of Melanchthon and Luther. From the one he ineptly borrows flowers, and having no better way of rivalling the vehemence of the other, he substitutes bombast and sound ....

"Westphal boldly affirms that the body of Christ is chewed by the teeth, and confirms it by quoting with approbation the recantation of Berengar, as given by Gratian. This does not please Heshusius, who insists that it is eaten by the mouth but not touched by the teeth, and greatly disproves those gross modes of eating ....

"Heshusius argues that if the body of Christ is in heaven, it is not in the Supper, and that instead of him we have only a symbol. As if, forsooth, the Supper were not, to the true worshippers of God, a heavenly action, or, as it were, a vehicle which carries them above the world. But what is this to Heshusius, who not only halts on the earth, but drives his nose as far as he can into the mud?  Paul teaches that in baptism we put on Christ (Gal. 3:27). How acutely will Heshusius argue that this cannot be if Christ remain in heaven?  When Paul spoke thus it never occurred to him that Christ must be brought down from heaven, because he knew that he is united to us in a different manner, and that his blood is not less present to cleanse our souls than water to cleanse our bodies .... Of a similar nature is his objection that the body is not received truly if it is received symbolically; as if by a true symbol we excluded the exhibition of the reality.

"Some are suspicious of the term faith, as if it overthrew the reality and the effect. But we ought to view it far otherwise, viz. that the only way in which we are conjoined to Christ is by raising our minds above the world. Accordingly, the bond of our union with Christ is faith, which raises us upwards, and casts its anchor in heaven, so that instead of subjecting Christ to the figments of our reason, we seek him above in his glory.

"This furnishes the best method of settling a dispute to which I adverted, viz. whether believers alone receive Christ, or all, without exception, to whom the symbols of bread and wine are distributed, receive him?  Correct and clear is the solution which I have given: Christ offers his body and blood to all in general; but as unbelievers bar the entrance of his liberality, they do not receive what is offered. It must not, however, he inferred from this that when they reject what is given, they either make void the grace of Christ, or detract in any respect from the efficacy of the sacrament. The Supper does not, through their ingratitude, change its nature, nor does the bread, considered as an earnest or pledge given by Christ, become profane, so as not to differ at all from common bread, but it still truly, testifies communion with The Flesh and Blood of Christ."

This is the conclusion of Calvin’s last deliverance on the vexed subject of the sacrament. For the rest he handed his opponent over to Beza, who answered the "Defence" of Heshusius with two sharp and learned tracts.

The eucharistic controversy kindled by Westphal and Klebitz was conducted in different parts of Germany with incredible bigotry, passion, and superstition. In Bremen, John Timann fought for the carnal presence, and insisted upon the ubiquity of Christ’s body as a settled dogma (1555); while Albert Hardenberg, a friend of Melanchthon, opposed it, and was banished (1560); but a reaction took place afterwards, and Bremen became a stronghold of the Reformed Confession in Northern Germany.

§ 135. Calvin and the Astrologers.

Calvin: Advertissement contre l’astrologie qu’on appelle justiciaire: et autres curiosités qui régnent aujourdhuis dans le monde. Genève, 1549 (56 pp.). The French text is reprinted in Opera, vol. VII. 509–542. Admonitio adversus astrologiam quam judiciariam vocant; aliasque praeterea curiositates nonnullas, quae hodie in universam fere orbem grassantur, 1549. The Latin translation is by Fr. Hottman, sieur de Villiers, at that time secretary of Calvin, who dictated to him the work in French. The Latin text is reprinted in the Amsterdam ed., vol. IX. 500–509. An English translation: An Admonition against Astrology, Judiciall and other curiosities that reigne now in the world, by Goddred Gylby, appeared in London without date, and is mentioned by Henry, III. Beil. 212. Comp. Henry, II. 391 sq.

Calvin’s clear, acute, and independent intellect was in advance of the crude superstitions of his age. He wrote a warning against judicial astrology980 or divination, which presumes to pronounce judgment upon a man’s character or destiny as written in the stars. This spurious science, which had wandered from Babylon981 to ancient Rome and from heathen Rome to the Christian Church, flourished especially in Italy and France at the very time when other superstitions were shaken to the base. Several popes of the Renaissance—Sixtus IV., Julius II., Leo X., Paul III. were addicted to it, but Pico della Mirandola wrote a book against it. King Francis I. dismissed his physician because he was not sufficiently skilled in this science. The Duchess Renata of Ferrara consulted, even in her later years, the astrologer Luc Guaric. The court of Catherine de Medici made extensive use of this and other black arts, so that the Church and the State had to interfere.

But more remarkable is the fact that such an enlightened scholar as Melanchthon should have anxiously watched the constellations for their supposed bearing upon human events. Lelio Sozini was at a loss to know whether Melanchthon depended most on the stars, or on their Maker and Ruler.982  In this respect Luther, notwithstanding his strong belief in witchcraft and personal encounters with the devil, was in advance of his more learned friend, and refuted his astrological calculation of the nativity of Cicero with the Scripture fact of Esau’s and Jacob’s birth in the same hour. Yet he regarded the comets, or "harlot stars," as he called them, as tokens of God’s wrath, or as works of the devil. Zwingli saw in Halley’s comet, which appeared a few weeks before the disaster of Cappel, a sign of war and of his own death. The independent and heretical Servetus believed and practised astrology and wrote a defence of it (Apologetica Disceptatio pro Astrologia).

Nothing of this kind is found in Calvin. He denounced the attempt to reveal what God has hidden, and to seek him outside of his revealed will, as an impious presumption and a satanic delusion. It is right and proper, he maintains, to study the laws and motions of the heavenly bodies.983  True astronomy leads to the praise of God’s wisdom and majesty; but astrology upsets the moral order. God is sovereign in his gifts and not bound to any necessity of nature. He has foreordained all things by his eternal decree. Sometimes sixty thousand men fall in one battle; are they therefore born under the same star?  It is true the sun works upon the earth, and heat and dearth, rain and storm come down from the skies, but the wickedness of man proceeds from his will. The astrologers appealed to the first chapter of Genesis and to the prophet Jeremiah, who calls the stars signs, but Calvin met them by quoting Isa. 44:25: "who frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad."  In conclusion he rejects the whole theory and practice of astrology as not only superfluous and useless, but even pernicious.984

In the same tract he ridicules the alchemists, and incidentally exhibits a considerable amount of secular learning.

Calvin discredited also the ingenious speculations of Pseudo-Dionysius on the Celestial Hierarchy, as "mere babbling," adding that the author of that book, which was sanctioned by Thomas Aquinas and Dante, spoke like a man descended from heaven and giving an account of things he had seen with his own eyes; while Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven, did not deem it lawful for man to utter the secret things he had seen and heard.985

Calvin might have made his task easier if he had accepted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was known in his time, though only as a hypothesis.986

But in this matter Calvin was no more in advance of his age than any other divine. He believed that "the whole heaven moves around the earth," and declared it preposterous to set the conjecture of a man against the authority of God, who in the first chapter of Genesis had pointed out the relation of the sun and moon to the earth. Luther speaks with contempt of that upstart astronomer who wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy and the sacred Scripture, which tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. Melanchthon condemned the system in his treatise on the "Elements of Physics," published six years after the death of Copernicus, and cited against it the witness of the eyes, which inform us that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours; and passages from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, which assert that the earth stands fast and that the sun moves around it. He suggests severe measures to restrain such impious teaching as that of Copernicus.

But we must remember that the Copernican theory was opposed by philosophers as well as theologians of all creeds for nearly a hundred years, under the notion that it contradicts the testimony of the senses and the geocentric teaching of the Bible. When towards the close of the sixteenth century Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) became a convert to the Copernican theory, and with his rude telescope discovered the satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, he was denounced as a heretic, summoned before the Inquisition at Rome and commanded by Bellarmin, the standard theologian of the papacy, to abandon his error, and to teach that the earth is the immovable centre of the universe (Feb. 26, 1616). The Congregation of the Index, moved by Pope Paul V., rendered the decree that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to the Holy Scripture," and condemned the works of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, which affirm the motion of the earth. They remained on the Index Purgatorius till the time of Benedict XIV. Even after the triumph of the Copernican system in the scientific world, there were respectable theologians, like John Owen and John Wesley, who found it inconsistent with their theory of inspiration, and rejected it as a delusive and arbitrary hypothesis tending towards infidelity. "E pur si muove," the earth does move for all that!

There can be no contradiction between the Bible and science; for the Bible is not a book of astronomy or geology or science; but a book of religion, teaching the relation of the world and man to God; and when it touches upon the heavenly bodies, it uses the phenomenal popular language without pronouncing judgment for or against any scientific theory.

CHAPTER XVI.

SERVETUS: HIS LIFE. OPINIONS, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION.

§ 136  The Servetus Literature.

I. Theological Works of Michael Servetus.

DE TRINI-

tatis erroribus

Libri Septem.

Per Michaelem Serueto, aliàs

Reues ab Aragonia

Hispanum

Anno MDXXXI.

This book was printed at Hagenau in the Alsace, but without the name of the place, or of the publisher or printer. It contains 120 pages.

Dialogo | rum de Trinitate | Libri duo. | De justicia regni Chri | sti, Capitula quatuor. | Per Michaelem Serveto, | aliâs Reves, ab Aragonia | Hispanum. | Anno MDXXXII. Likewise printed at Hagenau. It concludes with the words: "Perdat Dominus omnes ecclesiae tyrannos. Amen. Finis."

These two works (bound in one volume in the copy before me) were incorporated in revised shape in the Restitutio.

Totius ecclesiae est ad sua limina

vocatio, in integrum restituta cognitione Dei, fidei Chri-

sti, instificationis nostrae, regenerationes baptismi, et coe-

nae domini manducationis. Restituto denique nobis re-

gno caelsti, Babylonis impiae captiuitate soluta, et An-

tichristo cum fuis penitus destructo.

This work was printed at Vienne in Dauphiné, at the expense of the author, who is indicated on the last page by the initial letters M. S. V.; i.e. Michael Servetus Villanovanus. It contains in 734 octavo pages: 1) Seven books on the Trinity (the ed. of 1531 revised); 2) Three books on Faith and the Righteousness of the kingdom of Christ (revised); 3) Four books on Regeneration and the kingdom of Antichrist; 4) Thirty Epistles to Calvin; 5) Sixty Signs of the reign of Antichrist; 6) Apology to Melanchthon and his colleagues on the mystery of the Trinity and ancient discipline.

One thousand (some say eight hundred) copies were printed and nearly all burnt or otherwise destroyed. Four or five were saved: namely, one sent by Servetus through Frelon to Calvin; one taken from the five bales seized at Lyons for the use of the Inquisitor Ory; a third transmitted for inspection to the Swiss Churches and Councils; a fourth sent by Calvin to Bullinger; a fifth given by Calvin to Colladon, one of the judges of Servetus, in which the objectionable passages are marked, and which was, perhaps, the same with the fourth copy. Castellio (1554) complained that he could not get a copy.

At present only two copies of the original edition are known to exist; one in the National Library of Paris (the Collation copy), the other in the Imperial Library of Vienna. Willis gives the curious history of these copies, pp. 535–541; Comp. his note on p. 196. Audin says that he used the annotated copy which bears the name of Colladon on the title-page, and the marks of the flames on the margins; how it was rescued, he does not know. It is this copy which passed into the hands of Dr. Richard Mead, a distinguished physician in London, who put a Latin note at the head of the work: "Fuit hic liber D. Colladon qui ipse nomen suum adscripsit. Ille vero simul cum Calvino inter judices sedebat qui auctorem Servetum flammis damnarunt. Ipse indicem in fine confecit. Et porro in ipso opere lineis ductis hic et illic notavit verba quibus ejus blasphemias et errores coargueret. Hoc exemplar unicum quantum scire licet flammis servatum restat: omnia enim quae reperire poterat auctoritate sua ut comburerentur curavit Calvinus."  (Quoted from Audin.) This must be the copy now in Paris. Dr. Mead began to republish a handsome edition in 1723, but it was suppressed and burnt by order of Gibson, the bishop of London.

In 1790, the book rose like a phoenix from its ashes in the shape of an exact reprint, page for page, and line for line, so that it can only be distinguished from the first edition by the date of publication at the bottom of the last page in extremely small figures—1790 (not 1791, as Trechsel, Staehelin, Willis, and others, say). The reprint was made from the original copy in the Vienna Library by direction of Chr. Th. Murr, M. D. (See his Adnotationes ad Bibliothecas Hallerianas, cum variis ad scripta Michaelis Serveti pertinentibus, Erlangen, 1805, quoted by Willis.)  The edition must have been small, for copies are rare. My friend, the Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, is in possession of a copy which I have used, and of which two pages, the first and the last, are given in facsimile.

A German translation of the Restitutio by Dr. Bernhard Spiess: Michael Servets Wiederherstellung des Christenthums zum ersten Mal übersetzt. Erster Bd., Wiesbaden (Limbarth), 1892 (323 pp.). The second vol. has not yet appeared. He says in the preface: "An Begeisterung für Christus und an biblischem Purismus ist Servet den meisten Theologen unserer Tage weit überlegen [?]; von eigentlichen Laesterungen ist nichts bei ihm zu entdecken."  Dr. Spiess, like Dr. Tollin, is both a defender of Servetus and an admirer of Calvin. He translated the first ed. of his Institutes (1536) into German (Wiesbaden, 1887).

The geographical and medical works of Servetus will be noticed in the next sections.

II. Calvinistic Sources.

Calvin: Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra trinitate contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani, ubi ostenditur haereticos jure gladii coercendos esse, etc., written in 1554, in Opera, VIII. (Brunsw., 1870), 453–644. The same volume contains thirty letters of Servetus to Calvin, 645–720, and the Actes du procès de Mich. Servet., 721–872. See also the correspondence of Calvin from the year 1553 in vol. XIV. 68 sqq. (The Defensio is in the Amsterdam ed., vol. IX. 510–567.)  Calvin refers to Servetus after his death several times in the last ed. of the Institutes (I. III. § 10, 22; II. IX. § 3, 10; IV. XVI. 29, 81), in his Responsio ad Balduini Convitia (1562), Opera, IX. 575, and in his Commentary on John 1:1 (written in 1554): "Servetus, superbissimus ex gente Hispanica nebulo."

Beza gives a brief account in his Calvini Vita, ad a. 1553 and 1554, where he says that "Servetus was justly punished at Geneva, not as a sectary, but as a monster made up of nothing but impiety and horrid blasphemies, with which, by his speeches and writings, for the space of thirty years, he had infected both heaven and earth."  He thinks that Servetus uttered a satanic prediction on the title-page of his book: "Great war took place in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting with [not against] the dragon."  He also wrote an elaborate defence of the death-penalty for heresy in his tract De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis, adversus Martini Bellii [pseudonym] farraginem et novorum academicorum sectam. Geneva (Oliva Rob. Stephani), 1554; second ed. 1592; French translation, 1560. See Heppe’s Beza, p. 38 sq.

III. Anti-Calvinistic.

Bolsec, in his Histoire de la vie ... de Jean Calvin (1577), chs. III. and IV., discusses the trial of Servetus in a spirit hostile alike to Calvin and Servetus. He represents the Roman Catholic view. He calls Servetus "a very arrogant and insolent man," and a "monstrous heretic," who deserved to be exterminated. "Desireroy," he says, p. 25, "que tous semblables fussent exterminez: et l’église de nostre Seigneur fut bien purgée de telle vermine."  His more tolerant editor, L. F. Chastel, protests against this wish by an appeal to Luke 9:55.

IV. Documentary Sources.

The Acts of the process of Servetus at Vienne were published by the Abbé D’artigny, Paris, 1749 (Tom. II. des Nouveaux Memoires).—The Acts of the process at Geneva, first published by J. H. Albert Rilliet: Relation du procés criminel intenté a Genève en 1553 contre Michel Servet, rédigée d’après les documents originaux. Genève, 1844. Reprinted in Opera, vol. VIII.—English translation, with notes and additions, by W. K. Tweedie: Calvin and Servetus. Edinburgh, 1846. German translation by Brunnemann (see below).

V. Modern Works.

*L. Mosheim, the famous Lutheran Church historian (1694–1755), made the first impartial investigation of the Servetus controversy, and marks a reaction of judgment in favor of Servetus, in two monographs, Geschichte des berühmten Spanischen Arztes Michael Serveto, Helmstaedt, 1748, 4° (second vol. of his Ketzergeschichte); and Neue Nachrichten von Serveto, 1750. He had first intrusted his materials to a pupil, Henr. Ab. Allwoerden, who published a Historia Michaelis Serveti, Helmstadii, 1727 (238 pp., with a fine portrait of Servetus and the scene of his execution) but as this book was severely criticised by Armand de la Chapelle, the pastor of the French congregation at the Hague, Mosheim wrote his first work chiefly from copies of the acts of the trial of Servetus at Geneva (which are verified by the publication of the original documents in 1844), and his second work from the trial at Vienne, which were furnished to him by a French ecclesiastic. Comp. Henry, III. 102 sq.; Dyer, 540 sq.

In the nineteenth century Servetus has been thoroughly discussed by the biographers of Calvin: Henry (vol. III. 107 sqq., abridged in Stebbing’s transl., vol. II.); Audin (chs. XL. and XLI.); Dyer (chs. IX. and X., pp. 296–367); Staehelin (I. 422 sqq.; II. 309 sqq.); and by Amédée Roget, in his Histoire du peuple de Genève (vol. IV., 1877, which gives the history of 1553–1555). Henry, Staehelin, and Roget vindicate Calvin, but dissent from his intolerance; Dyer aims to be impartial; Audin, like Bolsec, condemns both Calvin and Servetus.

*F. Trechsel: Michael Servet und seine Vorgaenger, Heidelberg, 1839 (the first part of his Die protest. Antitrinitarier). He draws chiefly from Servetus’s works and from the proceedings of the trial in the archives of Bern, which agree with those of Geneva, published afterwards by Rilliet.  His work is learned and impartial, but with great respect for Calvin. Comp. his valuable article in the first ed. of Herzog, vol. XIV. 286–301.

*W. K. Tweedie: Calvin and Servetus, London, 1846.

Emile Saisset: Michael Servet, I. Doctrine philosophique et religieuse de M. S.; II. Le procès et la mort de M. S.  In the "Revue des deux Mondes" for 1848, and in his "Mélanges d’histoire," 1859, pp. 117–227. Saisset was the first to assign Servetus his proper place among scientists and pantheists. He calls him "le théologien philosophe panthéiste précurseur inattendu de Malebranche et de Spinoza, de Schleiermacher et de Strauss."

J. S. Porter (Unitarian): Servetus and Calvin, 1854.

Karl Brunnemann: M. Serv., eine aktenmaessige Darstellung des 1553 in Genf gegen ihn geführten Kriminal-processes, Berlin), 1865. (From Rilliet.)

*Henri Tollin (Lic. Theol., Dr. Med., and minister of the French Reformed Church at Magdeburg): I. Charakterbild Michael Servets. Berlin, 1876, 48 pp. 8° (transl. into French by Mme. Picheral-Dardier, Paris, 1879);  II. Das Lehrsystem Michael Servets, genetisch dargestellt, Gütersloh, 1876–1878, 3 vols. (besides many smaller tracts; see below).

*R. Willis (M. D.): Servetus and Calvin. London, 1877 (641 pp.), with a fine portrait of Servetus and an ugly one of Calvin. More favorable to the former.

Marcelino Menendez Pelayo (R. Cath.): Historia de las Heterodoxos Espanjoles. Madrid, 1877. Tom. II. 249–313.

Don Pedro Gonzales De Velasco: Miguel Serveto. Madrid, 1880 (23 pp.). He has placed a statue of Serveto in the portico of the Instituto antropologico at Madrid.

Prof. Dr. A. v. d. Linde: Michael Servet, een Brandoffer der Gereformeerde Inquisitie. Groningen, 1891 (326 pp.). Hostile to Calvin, as the title indicates, and severe also against Tollin, but valuable for the literary references, distributed among the chapters.

(Articles in Encyclop., by Charles Dardier, in Lichtenberger’s "Encycl. des Sciences religieuses," vol. XI., pp. 570–582 (Paris, 1881); in Larousse’s "Grand Dictionnaire universel," vol. XIV. 621–623; Alex. Gordon, in "Encycl. Brit." XXI. 684–686; by Bernh. Riggenbach, in Herzog2, XIV. 153–161.)

The theology of Servetus is analyzed and criticised by Heberle: M. Servets Trinitaetslehre und Christologie in the "Tübinger Zeitschrift" for 1840; Baur: Die christl. Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes (Tübingen, 1843), III. 54–103; Dorner: Lehre v. d. Person Christi (Berlin, 1853), II. 613, 629, 649–660; Punjer: De M. Serveti doctrina, Jena, 1876.

The tragedy of Servetus has been dramatized by Max Ring (Die Genfer, 1850), José Echegaray (1880), and Albert Hamann (1881).

Servetus has been more thoroughly discussed and defended in recent times than any man connected with the Reformation.

The greatest Servetus scholar and vindicator is Dr. Tollin, pastor of a Huguenot Church in Germany, who calls himself "a Calvinist by birth and a decided friend of toleration by nature."  He was led to the study of Servetus by his interest in Calvin, and has written a Serveto-centric library of about forty books and tracts, bearing upon every aspect of Servetus: his Theology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Eschatology, Diabology, Antichristology, his relations to the Reformers (Luther, Bucer, Melanchthon), and to Thomas Aquinas, and also his medical and geographical writings. He has kindly furnished me with a complete list, and I will mention the most important below in their proper places.

Dr. Tollin assumes that Servetus was radically misunderstood by all his opponents—Catholic, Calvinistic, and Lutheran, and even by his Socinian and other Unitarian sympathizers. He thinks that even Calvin misunderstood him, though he understood him better than his other contemporaries. He makes Servetus a real hero, the peer of Calvin in genius, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, the founder of comparative geography (the forerunner of Ritter), and the pioneer of modern Christology, which, instead of beginning with the pre-existent Logos, rises from the contemplation of the man Jesus to the recognition of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, then as the Son of God, and last as God. But he has overdone the subject, and put some of his own ideas into the brain of Servetus, who, like Calvin, must be studied and judged in the light of the sixteenth, and not of the nineteenth, century.

Next to Tollin, Professor Harnack, Neander’s successor in Berlin, has formed a most favorable idea of Servetus. Without entering into an analysis of his views, he thinks that in him "the best of all that came to maturity in the sixteenth century was united, if we except the evangelical Reformation," and thus characterizes him: "Servede ist gleich bedeutend als empirischer Forscher, als kritischer Denker, als speculativer Philosoph und als christlicher Reformer im besten Sinn des Worts. Es ist eine Paradoxie der Geschichte, dass Spanien—das Land, welches von den Ideen der neuen Zeit im 16 Jahrhundert am wenigsten berührt gewesen ist—diesen einzigen Mann hervorgebracht hat."  (Dogmengeschichte, Bd. III. 661.)

§ 137. Calvin and Servetus.

We now come to the dark chapter in the history of Calvin which has cast a gloom over his fair name, and exposed him, not unjustly, to the charge of intolerance and persecution, which he shares with his whole age.

The burning of Servetus and the decretum horribile are sufficient in the judgment of a large part of the Christian world to condemn him and his theology, but cannot destroy the rocky foundation of his rare virtues and lasting merits. History knows only of one spotless being—the Saviour of sinners. Human greatness and purity are spotted by marks of infirmity, which forbid idolatry. Large bodies cast large shadows, and great virtues are often coupled with great vices.

Calvin and Servetus—what a contrast!  The best abused men of the sixteenth century, and yet direct antipodes of each other in spirit, doctrine, and aim: the reformer and the deformer; the champion of orthodoxy and the archheretic; the master architect of construction and the master architect of ruin, brought together in deadly conflict for rule or ruin. Both were men of brilliant genius and learning; both deadly foes of the Roman Antichrist; both enthusiasts for a restoration of primitive Christianity, but with opposite views of what Christianity is.

They were of the same age, equally precocious, equally bold and independent, and relied on purely intellectual and spiritual forces. The one, while a youth of twenty-seven, wrote one of the best systems of theology and vindications of the Christian faith; the other, when scarcely above the age of twenty, ventured on the attempt to uproot the fundamental doctrine of orthodox Christendom. Both died in the prime of manhood, the one a natural, the other a violent, death.

Calvin’s works are in every theological library; the books of Servetus are among the greatest rareties. Calvin left behind him flourishing churches, and his influence is felt to this day in the whole Protestant world; Servetus passed away like a meteor, without a sect, without a pupil; yet he still eloquently denounces from his funeral pile the crime and folly of religious persecution, and has recently been idealized by a Protestant divine as a prophetic forerunner of modern christo-centric theology.

Calvin felt himself called by Divine Providence to purify the Church of all corruptions, and to bring her back to the Christianity of Christ, and regarded Servetus as a servant of Antichrist, who aimed at the destruction of Christianity. Servetus was equally confident of a divine call, and even identified himself with the archangel Michael in his apocalyptic fight against the dragon of Rome and "the Simon Magus of Geneva."

A mysterious force of attraction and repulsion brought these intellectual giants together in the drama of the Reformation. Servetus, as if inspired by a demoniac force, urged himself upon the attention of Calvin, regarding him as the pope of orthodox Protestantism, whom he was determined to convert or to dethrone. He challenged Calvin in Paris to a disputation on the Trinity when the latter had scarcely left the Roman Church, but failed to appear at the appointed place and hour.987  He bombarded him with letters from Vienne; and at last he heedlessly rushed into his power at Geneva, and into the flames which have immortalized his name.988

The judgment of historians on these remarkable men has undergone a great change. Calvin’s course in the tragedy of Servetus was fully approved by the best men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.989  It is as fully condemned in the nineteenth century. Bishop Bossuet was able to affirm that all Christians were happily agreed in maintaining the rightfulness of the death penalty for obstinate heretics, as murderers of souls. A hundred years later the great historian Gibbon echoed the opposite public sentiment when he said: "I am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of Servetus than at the hecatombs which have blazed at auto-da-fés of Spain and Portugal."990

It would be preposterous to compare Calvin with Torquemada.991  But it must be admitted that the burning of Servetus is a typical case of Protestant persecution, and makes Calvin responsible for a principle which may be made to justify an indefinite number of applications. Persecution deserves much severer condemnation in a Protestant than in a Roman Catholic, because it is inconsistent. Protestantism must stand or fall with freedom of conscience and freedom of worship.

From the standpoint of modern Christianity and civilization, the burning of Servetus admits of no justification. Even the most admiring biographers of Calvin lament and disapprove his conduct in this tragedy, which has spotted his fame and given to Servetus the glory of martyrdom.

But if we consider Calvin’s course in the light of the sixteenth century, we must come to the conclusion that he acted his part from a strict sense of duty and in harmony with the public law and dominant sentiment of his age, which justified the death penalty for heresy and blasphemy, and abhorred toleration as involving indifference to truth   Even Servetus admitted the principle under which he suffered; for he said, that incorrigible obstinacy and malice deserved death before God and men.992

Calvin’s prominence for intolerance was his misfortune. It was an error of judgment, but not of the heart, and must be excused, though it cannot be justified, by the spirit of his age.993

Calvin never changed his views or regretted his conduct towards Servetus. Nine years after his execution he justified it in self-defence against the reproaches of Baudouin (1562), saying: "Servetus suffered the penalty due to his heresies, but was it by my will?  Certainly his arrogance destroyed him not less than his impiety. And what crime was it of mine if our Council, at my exhortation, indeed, but in conformity with the opinion of several Churches, took vengeance on his execrable blasphemies?  Let Baudouin abuse me as long as he will, provided that, by the judgment of Melanchthon, posterity owes me a debt of gratitude for having purged the Church of so pernicious a monster."994

In one respect he was in advance of his times, by recommending to the Council of Geneva, though in vain, a mitigation of punishment and the substitution of the sword for the stake.

Let us give him credit for this comparative moderation in a semi-barbarous age when not only hosts of heretics, but even innocent women, as witches, were cruelly tortured and roasted to death. Let us remember also that it was not simply a case of fundamental heresy, but of horrid blasphemy, with which he had to deal. If he was mistaken, if he misunderstood the real opinions of Servetus, that was an error of judgment, and an error which all the Catholics and Protestants of that age shared. Nor should it be overlooked that Servetus was convicted of falsehood, that he overwhelmed Calvin with abuse,995 and that he made common cause with the Libertines, the bitter enemies of Calvin, who had a controlling influence in the Council of Geneva at that time, and hoped to overthrow him.

It is objected that there was no law in Geneva to justify the punishment of Servetus, since the canon law had been abolished by the Reformation in 1535; but the Mosaic law was not abolished, it was even more strictly enforced; and it is from the Mosaic law against blasphemy that Calvin drew his chief argument.

On the other hand, however, we must frankly admit that there were some aggravating circumstances which make it difficult to reconcile Calvin’s conduct with the principles of justice and humanity. Seven years before the death of Servetus he had expressed his determination not to spare his life if he should come to Geneva. He wrote to Farel (Feb. 13, 1546): "Servetus lately wrote to me, and coupled with his letter a long volume of his delirious fancies, with the Thrasonic boast, that I should see something astonishing and unheard of. He offers to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his safety; for if he does come, and my authority be of any avail, I shall never suffer him to depart alive."996  It was not inconsistent with this design, if he aided, as it would seem, in bringing the book of Servetus to the notice of the Roman inquisition in Lyons. He procured his arrest on his arrival in Geneva. He showed personal bitterness towards him during the trial. Servetus was a stranger in Geneva, and had committed no offence in that city. Calvin should have permitted him quietly to depart, or simply caused his expulsion from the territory of Geneva, as in the case of Bolsec. This would have been sufficient punishment. If he had recommended expulsion instead of decapitation, he would have saved himself the reproaches of posterity, which will never forget and never forgive the burning of Servetus.

In the interest of impartial history we must condemn the intolerance of the victor as well as the error of the victim, and admire in both the loyalty to conscientious conviction. Heresy is an error; intolerance, a sin; persecution, a crime.

§ 138. Catholic Intolerance.

Comp. vol. VI. §§ 11 and 12 (pp. 50–86), and Schaff: The Progress of Religious Liberty as shown in the History of Toleration Acts. New York, 1889.

This is the place to present the chief facts on the subject of religious toleration and intolerance, which gives to the case of Servetus its chief interest and importance in history. His theological opinions are of far less consequence than his connection with the theory of persecution which caused his death.

Persecution and war constitute the devil’s chapter in history; but it is overruled by Providence for the development of heroism, and for the progress of civil and religious freedom. Without persecutors, there could be no martyrs. Every church, yea, every truth and every good cause, has its martyrs, who stood the fiery trial and sacrificed comfort and life itself to their sacred convictions. The blood of martyrs is the seed of toleration; toleration is the seed of liberty; and liberty is the most precious gift of God to every man who has been made in his image and redeemed by Christ.

Of all forms of persecution, religious persecution is the worst because it is enacted in the name of God. It violates the sacred rights of conscience, and it rouses the strongest and deepest passions. Persecution by word and pen, which springs from the hatred, envy, and malice of the human heart, or from narrowness and mistaken zeal for truth, will continue to the end of time; but persecution by fire and sword contradicts the spirit of humanity and Christianity, and is inconsistent with modern civilization. Civil offences against the State deserve civil punishment, by fine, imprisonment, confiscation, exile, and death, according to the degree of guilt. Spiritual offences against the Church should be spiritually judged, and punished by admonition, deposition, and excommunication, with a view to the reformation and restoration of the offender. This is the law of Christ. The temporal punishment of heresy is the legitimate result of a union of Church and State, and diminishes in rigor as this union is relaxed. A religion established by law must be protected by law. Hence the Constitution of the United States in securing full liberty of religion, forbids Congress to establish by law any religion or church.997  The two were regarded as inseparable. An established church must in self-defence persecute dissenters, or abridge their liberties; a free church cannot persecute. And yet there may be as much individual Christian kindness and charity in an established church, and as much intolerance and bigotry in a free church. The ante-Nicene Fathers had the same zeal for orthodoxy and the same abhorrence of heresy as the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, the mediaeval popes and schoolmen, and the Reformers; but they were confined to the spiritual punishment of heresy. In the United States of America persecution is made impossible, not because the zeal for truth or the passions of hatred and intolerance have ceased, but because the union between Church and State has ceased.

The theory of religious persecution was borrowed from the Mosaic law, which punished idolatry and blasphemy by death. "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto Jehovah only, shall be utterly destroyed."998  He that blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, he shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as the home-born, when he blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, shall be put to death."999

The Mosaic theocracy was superseded in its national and temporal provisions by the kingdom of Christ, which is "not of this world."  The confounding of the Old and New Testaments, of the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ, was the source of a great many evils in the Church.

The New Testament furnishes not a shadow of support for the doctrine of persecution. The whole teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are directly opposed to it. They suffered persecution, but they persecuted no one. Their weapons were spiritual, not carnal. They rendered to God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. The only passage which St. Augustin could quote in favor of coercion, was the parabolic "Constrain them to come in" (Luke 14:23), which in its literal acceptation would teach just the reverse, namely, a forced salvation. St. Thomas Aquinas does not quote any passage from the New Testament in favor of intolerance, but tries to explain away those passages which commend toleration (Matt. 13:29, 30; 1 Cor. 11:19; 2 Tim. 2:24). The Church has never entirely forgotten this teaching of Christ and always, even in the darkest ages of persecution, avowed the principle, "Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem"; but she made the State her executor.

In the first three centuries the Church had neither the power nor the wish to persecute. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Lactantius were the earliest advocates of the liberty of conscience. The Toleration Edict of Constantine (313) anticipated the modern theory of the right of every man to choose his religion and to worship according to his conviction. But this was only a step towards the union of the empire with the Church, when the Church assumed the position and power of the heathen state religion.

The era of persecution within the Church began with the first Oecumenical Council, which was called and enforced by Constantine. This Council presents the first instance of a subscription to a creed, and the first instance of banishment for refusing to subscribe. Arius and two Egyptian bishops, who agreed with him, were banished to Illyria. During the violent Arian controversies, which shook the empire between the first and second Oecumenical Councils (325–381), both parties when in power freely exercised persecution by imprisonment, deposition, and exile. The Arians were as intolerant as the orthodox. The practice furnished the basis for a theory and public law.

The penal legislation against heresy was inaugurated by Theodosius the Great after the final triumph of the Nicene Creed in the second Oecumenical Council. He promulgated during his reign (379–395) no less than fifteen severe edicts against heretics, especially those who dissented from the doctrine of the Trinity. They were deprived of the right of public worship, excluded from public offices, and exposed, in some cases, to capital punishment.1000  His rival and colleague, Maximus, put the theory into full practice, and shed the first blood of heretics by causing Priscillian, a Spanish bishop of Manichaean tendency, with six adherents, to be tortured, condemned, and executed by the sword.

The better feeling of the Church raised in Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours a protest against this act of inhumanity. But public sentiment soon approved of it. Jerome seems to favor the death penalty for heresy on the ground of Deut. 13:6–10. The great Augustin, who had himself been a Manichaean heretic for nine years, justified forcible measures against the Donatists, in contradiction to his noble sentiment: "Nothing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love."1001  The same Christian Father who ruled the thinking of the Church for many centuries, and moulded the theology of the Reformers, excluded all unbaptized infants from salvation, though Christ emphatically included them in the kingdom of heaven. Leo I., the greatest of the early popes, advocated the death penalty for heresy and approved of the execution of the Priscillianists. Thomas Aquinas, the master theologian of the Middle Ages, lent the weight of his authority to the doctrine of persecution, and demonstrated from the Old Testament and from reason that heretics are worse criminals than debasers of money, and ought to be put to death by the civil magistrate.1002  Heresy was regarded as the greatest sin, and worse than murder, because it destroyed the soul. It took the place of idolatry in the Mosaic law.

The Theodosian Code was completed in the Justinian Code (527–534); the Justinian Code passed into the Holy Roman Empire, and became the basis of the legislation of Christian Europe. Rome ruled the world longer by law and by the cross than she had ruled it by the sword. The canon law likewise condemns to the flames persons convicted of heresy.1003  This law was generally accepted on the Continent in the thirteenth century.1004  England in her isolation was more independent, and built society on the foundation of the common law; but Henry IV. and his Parliament devised the sanguinary statute de haeretico comburendo, by, which William Sawtre, a parish priest, was publicly burnt at Smithfield (Feb. 26, 1401) for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the bones of Wiclif were burnt by Bishop Fleming of Lincoln (in 1428). The statute continued in force till 1677, when it was formally abolished.

On this legal and theological foundation the mediaeval Church has soiled her annals with the blood of an army of heretics which is much larger than the army of Christian martyrs under heathen Rome. We need only refer to the crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, which were sanctioned by Innocent III., one of the best and greatest of popes; the tortures and autos-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition, which were celebrated with religious festivities; the fifty thousand or more Protestants who were executed during the reign of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands (1567–1573); the several hundred martyrs who were burned in Smithfield under the reign of the bloody Mary; and the repeated wholesale persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in France and Piedmont, which cried to heaven for vengeance.

It is vain to shift the responsibility upon the civil government. Pope Gregory XIII. commemorated the massacre of St. Bartholomew not only by a Te Deum in the churches of Rome, but more deliberately and permanently by a medal which represents "The Slaughter of the Huguenots" by an angel of wrath. The French bishops, under the lead of the great Bossuet, lauded Louis XIV. as a new Constantine, a new Theodosius, a new Charlemagne, a new exterminator of heretics, for his revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the infamous dragoonades against the Huguenots.

Among the more prominent individual cases of persecution, we may mention the burning of Hus (1415) and Jerome of Prague (1416) by order of the Council of Constance, the burning of Savonarola in Florence (1498), the burning of the three English Reformers at Oxford (1556), of Aonio Paleario at Rome (1570), and of Giordano Bruno (1600) in the same city and on the same spot where (1889) the liberals of Italy have erected a statue to his memory. Servetus was condemned to death at the stake, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman Catholic tribunal before he fell into the hands of Calvin.

The Roman Church has lost the power, and to a large extent also the disposition, to persecute by fire and sword. Some of her highest dignitaries frankly disown the principle of persecution, especially in America, where they enjoy the full benefit of religious freedom.1005  But the Roman curia has never officially disowned the theory on which the practice of persecution is based. On the contrary, several popes since the Reformation have indorsed it. Pope Clement VIII. denounced the Toleration Edict of Nantes as "the most accursed that can be imagined, whereby liberty of conscience is granted to everybody; which is the worst thing in the world."  Pope Innocent X. "condemned, rejected, and annulled" the toleration articles of the Westphalian Treaty of 1648, and his successors have ever protested against it, though in vain. Pope Pius IX., in the Syllabus of 1864, expressly condemned, among the errors of this age, the doctrine of religious toleration and liberty.1006  And this pope has been declared to be officially infallible by the Vatican decree of 1870, which embraces all his predecessors (notwithstanding the stubborn case of Honorius I.) and all his successors in the chair of St. Peter. Leo XIII. has moderately and cautiously indorsed the doctrine of the Syllabus.1007

§ 139. Protestant Intolerance. Judgments of the Reformers on Servetus.

The Reformers inherited the doctrine of persecution from their mother Church, and practised it as far as they had the power. They fought intolerance with intolerance. They differed favorably from their opponents in the degree and extent, but not in the principle, of intolerance. They broke down the tyranny of popery, and thus opened the way for the development of religious freedom; but they denied to others the liberty which they exercised themselves. The Protestant governments in Germany and Switzerland excluded, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the Roman Catholics from all religious and civil rights, and took exclusive possession of their churches, convents, and other property. They banished, imprisoned, drowned, beheaded, hanged, and burned Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, Schwenkfeldians, and other dissenters. In Saxony, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark no religion and public worship was allowed but the Lutheran. The Synod of Dort deposed and expatriated all Arminian ministers and school-teachers. The penal code of Queen Elizabeth and the successive acts of Uniformity aimed at the complete extermination of all dissent, whether papal or protestant, and made it a crime for an Englishman to be anything else than an Episcopalian. The Puritans when in power ejected two thousand ministers from their benefices for non-conformity; and the Episcopalians paid them back in the same coin when they returned to power. "The Reformers," says Gibbon, with sarcastic severity, "were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs."1008

Protestant persecution violates the fundamental principle of the Reformation. Protestantism has no right to exist except on the basis of freedom of conscience.

How, then, can we account for this glaring inconsistency?  There is a reason for everything. Protestant persecution was necessary in self-defence and in the struggle for existence. The times were not ripe for toleration. The infant Churches could not have stood it. These Churches had first to be consolidated and fortified against surrounding foes. Universal toleration at that time would have resulted in universal confusion and upset the order of society. From anarchy to absolute despotism is but one step. The division of Protestantism into two rival camps, the Lutheran and the Reformed, weakened it; further divisions within these camps would have ruined it and prepared an easy triumph for united Romanism, which would have become more despotic than ever before. This does not justify the principle, but it explains the practice, of intolerance.

The Reformers and the Protestant princes and magistrates were essentially agreed on this intolerant attitude, both towards the Romanists and the heretical Protestants, at least to the extent of imprisonment, deposition, and expatriation. They differed only as to the degree of severity. They all believed that the papacy is anti-christian and the mass idolatrous; that heresy is a sin against God and society; that the denial of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ is the greatest of heresies, which deserves death according to the laws of the empire, and eternal punishment according to the Athanasian Creed (with its three damnatory clauses); and that the civil government is as much bound to protect the first as the second table of the Decalogue, and to vindicate the honor of God against blasphemy. They were anxious to show their zeal for orthodoxy by severity against heresy. They had no doubt that they themselves were orthodox according to the only true standard of orthodoxy—the Word of God in the Holy Scriptures. And as regards the dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation, they were fully agreed with their Catholic opponents, and equally opposed to the errors of Servetus, who denied those dogmas with a boldness and contempt unknown before.

Let us ascertain the sentiments of the leading Reformers with special reference to the case of Servetus. They form a complete justification of Calvin as far as such a justification is possible.

Luther.

Luther, the hero of Worms, the champion of the sacred rights of conscience, was, in words, the most violent, but in practice, the least intolerant, among the Reformers. He was nearest to Romanism in the condemnation of heresy, but nearest to the genius of Protestantism in the advocacy of religious freedom. He was deeply rooted in mediaeval piety, and yet a mighty prophet of modern times. In his earlier years, till 1529, he gave utterance to some of the noblest sentiments in favor of religious liberty. "Belief is a free thing," he said, "which cannot be enforced."  "If heretics were to be punished by death, the hangman would be the most orthodox theologian."  "Heresy is a spiritual thing which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown."1009  To burn heretics is contrary to the will of the Holy Spirit."1010  False teachers should not be put to death; it is enough to banish them."1011

But with advancing years he became less liberal and more intolerant against Catholics, heretics, and Jews. He exhorted the magistrates to forbid all preaching of Anabaptists, whom he denounced without discrimination as false prophets and messengers of the devil, and he urged their expulsion.1012  He raised no protest when the Diet of Speier, in 1529, passed the cruel decree that the Anabaptists be executed by fire and sword without distinction of sex, and even without a previous hearing before the spiritual judges.1013  The Elector of Saxony considered it his duty to execute this decree, and put a number of Anabaptists to death in his dominions. His neighbor, Philip of Hesse, who had more liberal instincts than the contemporary princes of Germany, could not find it in his conscience to use the sword against differences of belief.1014  But the theologians of Wittenberg, on being consulted by the Elector John Frederick about 1540 or 1541, gave their judgment in favor of putting the Anabaptists to death, according to the laws of the empire. Luther approved of this judgment under his own name, adding that it was cruel to punish them by the sword, but more cruel that they should damn the ministry of the Word and suppress the true doctrine, and attempt to destroy the kingdoms of the world.1015

If we put a strict construction on this sentence, Luther must be counted with the advocates of the death-penalty for heresy. But he made a distinction between two classes of Anabaptists—those who were seditious or revolutionary, and those who were mere fanatics. The former should be put to death, the latter should be banished.1016  In a letter to Philip of Hesse, dated November 20, 1538, he urgently requested him to expel from his territory the Anabaptists, whom he characterizes as children of the devil, but says nothing of using the sword.1017  We should give him, therefore, the benefit of a liberal construction.1018

At the same time, the distinction was not always strictly observed, and fanatics were easily turned into criminals, especially after the excesses of Münster, in 1535, which were greatly exaggerated and made the pretext for punishing innocent men and women.1019  The whole history of the Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century has to be rewritten and disentangled from the odium theologicum.

As regards Servetus, Luther knew only his first work against the Trinity, and pronounced it, in his Table Talk (1532), an "awfully bad book."1020  Fortunately for his fame, he did not live to pronounce a judgment in favor of his execution, and we must give him the benefit of silence.

His opinions on the treatment of the Jews changed for the worse. In 1523 he had vigorously protested against the cruel persecution of the Jews, but in 1543 he counselled their expulsion from Christian lands, and the burning of their books, synagogues, and private houses in which they blaspheme our Saviour and the Holy Virgin. He repeated this advice in his last sermon, preached at Eisleben a few days before his death.1021

Melanchthon.

Melanchthon’s record on this painful subject is unfortunately worse than Luther’s. This is all the more significant because he was the mildest and gentlest among the Reformers. But we should remember that his utterances on the subject are of a later date, several years after Luther’s death. He thought that the Mosaic law against idolatry and blasphemy was as binding upon Christian states as the Decalogue, and was applicable to heresies as well.1022  He therefore fully and repeatedly justified the course of Calvin and the Council of Geneva, and even held them up as models for imitation!  In a letter to Calvin, dated Oct. 14, 1554, nearly one year after the burning of Servetus, he wrote:—

"Reverend and dear Brother: I have read your book, in which you have clearly refuted the horrid blasphemies of Servetus; and I give thanks to the Son of God, who was the brabeuthv" [the awarder of your crown of victory] in this your combat. To you also the Church owes gratitude at the present moment, and will owe it to the latest posterity. I perfectly assent to your opinion. I affirm also that your magistrates did right in punishing, after a regular trial, this blasphemous man."1023

A year later, Melanchthon wrote to Bullinger, Aug. 20, 1555: —

"Reverend and dear Brother: I have read your answer to the blasphemies of Servetus, and I approve of your piety and opinions. I judge also that the Genevese Senate did perfectly right, to put an end to this obstinate man, who could never cease blaspheming. And I wonder at those who disapprove of this severity."1024

Three years later, April 10, 1557, Melanchthon incidentally (in the admonition in the case of Theobald Thamer, who had returned to the Roman Church) adverted again to the execution of Servetus, and called it, a pious and memorable example to all posterity."1025  It is an example, indeed, but certainly not for imitation.

This unqualified approval of the death penalty for heresy and the connivance at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse are the two dark spots on the fair name of this great and good man. But they were errors of judgment. Calvin took great comfort from the endorsement of the theological head of the Lutheran Church.1026

Martin Bucer.

Bucer, who stands third in rank among the Reformers of Germany, was of a gentle and conciliatory disposition, and abstained from persecuting the Anabaptists in Strassburg. He knew Servetus personally, and treated him at first with kindness, but after the publication of his work on the Trinity, be refuted it in his lectures as a "most pestilential book."1027  He even declared in the pulpit or in the lecture-room that Servetus deserved to be disembowelled and torn to pieces.1028  From this we may infer how fully he would have approved his execution, had he lived till 1553.

The Swiss Churches.

The Swiss Reformers ought to have been in advance of those of Germany on this subject, but they were not. They advised or approved the exclusion of Roman Catholics from the Reformed Cantons, and violent measures against Anabaptists and Antitrinitarians. Six Anabaptists were, by a cruel irony, drowned in the river Limmat at Zürich by order of the government (between 1527 and 1532).1029  Other cantons took the same severe measures against the Anabaptists. Zwingli, the most liberal among the Reformers, did not object to their punishment, and counselled the forcible introduction of Protestantism into the neutral territories and the Forest Cantons. Ochino was expelled from Zürich and Basel (1563).

As regards the case of Servetus, the churches and magistrates of Zürich, Schaffhausen, Basel, and Bern, on being consulted during his trial, unanimously condemned his errors, and advised his punishment, but without committing themselves to the mode of punishment.1030

Bullinger wrote to Calvin that God had given the Council of Geneva a most favorable opportunity to vindicate the truth against the pollution of heresy, and the honor of God against blasphemy. In his Second Helvetic Confession (ch. XXX.) he teaches that it is the duty of the magistrate to use the sword against blasphemers. Schaffhausen fully agreed with Zürich. Even the authorities of Basel, which was the headquarters of the sceptical Italians and enemies of Calvin, gave the advice that Servetus, whom their own Oecolampadius had declared a most dangerous man, be deprived of the power to harm the Church, if all efforts to convert him should fail. Six years afterwards the Council of Basel, with the consent of the clergy and the University, ordered the body of David Joris, a chiliastic Anabaptist who had lived there under a false name (and died Aug. 25, 1556), to be dug from the grave and burned, with his likeness and books, by the hangman before a large multitude (1559).1031

Bern, which had advised moderation in the affair of Bolsec two years earlier, judged more severely in the case of Servetus, because he "had reckoned himself free to call in question all the essential points of our religion," and expressed the wish that the Council of Geneva might have prudence and strength to deliver the Churches from "this pest."  Thirteen years after the death of Servetus, the Council of Bern executed Valentino Gentile by the sword (Sept. 10, 1566) for an error similar to but less obnoxious than that of Servetus, and scarcely a voice was raised in disapproval of the sentence.1032

The Reformers of French Switzerland went further than those of German Switzerland. Farel defended death by fire, and feared that Calvin in advising a milder punishment was guided by the feelings of a friend against his bitterest foe. Beza wrote a special work in defence of the execution of Servetus, whom he characterized as "a monstrous compound of mere impiety and horrid blasphemy."1033  Peter Martyr called him "a genuine son of the devil," whose "pestiferous and detestable doctrines" and "intolerable blasphemies" justified the severe sentence of the magistracy.1034

Cranmer.

The English Reformers were not behind those of the continent in the matter of intolerance. Several years before the execution of Servetus, Archbishop Cranmer had persuaded the reluctant young King Edward VI. to sign the death-warrant of two Anabaptists—one a woman, called Joan Becher of Kent, and the other a foreigner from Holland, George Van Pare; the former was burnt May 2, 1550, the latter, April 6, 1551.

The only advocates of toleration in the sixteenth century were Anabaptists and Antitrinitarians, who were themselves sufferers from persecution. Let us give them credit for their humanity.

Gradual Triumph of Toleration and Liberty.

The reign of intolerance continued to the end of the seventeenth century. It was gradually undermined during the eighteenth century, and demolished by the combined influences of Protestant Dissenters, as the Anabaptists, Socinians, Arminians, Quakers, Presbyterians, Independents, of Anglican Latitudinarians, and of philosophers, like Bayle, Grotius, Locke, Leibnitz; nor should we forget Voltaire and Frederick the Great, who were unbelievers, but sincere and most influential advocates of religious toleration; nor Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison in America. Protestant Holland and Protestant England took the lead in the legal recognition of the principles of civil and religious liberty, and the Constitution of the United States completed the theory by putting all Christian denominations on a parity before the law and guaranteeing them the full enjoyment of equal rights.

Hand in hand with the growth of tolerance went the zeal for prison reform, the abolition of torture and cruel punishments, the abrogation of the slave trade, serfdom, and slavery, the improvement of the condition of the poor and miserable, and similar movements of philanthropy, which are the late but genuine outgrowth of the spirit of Christianity.

§ 140. The Early Life of Servetus.

For our knowledge of the origin and youth of Servetus we have to depend on the statements which he made at his trials before the Roman Catholic court at Vienne in April, 1553, and before the Calvinistic court at Geneva in August of the same year. These depositions are meagre and inconsistent, either from defect of memory or want of honesty. In Geneva he could not deceive the judges, as Calvin was well acquainted with his antecedents. I give, therefore, the preference to his later testimony.1035

Michael Serveto, better known in the Latinized form Servetus, also called Reves,1036 was born at Villa-nueva or Villanova in Aragon (hence "Villanovanus"), in 1509, the year of the nativity of Calvin, his great antagonist.1037  He informed the court of Geneva that he was of an ancient and noble Spanish family, and that his father was a lawyer and notary by profession.

The hypothesis that he was of Jewish or Moorish extraction is an unwarranted inference from his knowledge of Hebrew and the Koran.

He was slender and delicate in body, but precocious, inquisitive, imaginative, acute, independent, and inclined to mysticism and fanaticism. He seems to have received his early education in a Dominican convent and in the University of Saragossa, with a view at first to the clerical vocation.

He was sent by his father to the celebrated law-school of Toulouse, where he studied jurisprudence for two or three years. The University of Toulouse was strictly orthodox, and kept a close watch against the Lutheran heresy. But it was there that he first saw a complete copy of the Bible, as Luther did after he entered the University of Erfurt.

The Bible now became his guide. He fully adopted the Protestant principle of the supremacy and sufficiency of the Bible, but subjected it to his speculative fancy, and carried opposition to Catholic tradition much farther than the Reformers did. He rejected the oecumenical orthodoxy, while they rejected only the mediaeval scholastic orthodoxy. It is characteristic of his mystical turn of mind that he made the Apocalypse the basis of his speculations, while the sober and judicious Calvin never commented on this book.

Servetus declared, in his first work, that the Bible was the source of all his philosophy and science, and to be read a thousand times.1038  He called it a gift of God descended from heaven.1039  Next to the Bible, he esteemed the ante-Nicene Fathers, because of their simpler and less definite teaching. He quotes them freely in his first book.

We do not know whether, and how far, he was influenced by the writings of the Reformers. He may have read some tracts of Luther, which were early translated into Spanish, but he does not quote from them.1040

We next find Servetus in the employ of Juan Quintana, a Franciscan friar and confessor to the Emperor Charles V. He seems to have attended his court at the coronation by Pope Clement VII. in Bologna (1529), and on the journey to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which forms an epoch in the history of the Lutheran Reformation.1041  At Augsburg he may have seen Melanchthon and other leading Lutherans, but he was too young and unknown to attract much attention.

In the autumn of 1530 he was dismissed from the service of Quintana; we do not know for what reason, probably on suspicion of heresy.

We have no account of a conversion or moral struggle in any period of his life, such as the Reformers passed through. He never was a Protestant, either Lutheran or Reformed, but a radical at war with all orthodoxy. A mere youth of twenty-one or two, he boldly or impudently struck out an independent path as a Reformer of the Reformation. The Socinian society did not yet exist; and even there he would not have felt at home, nor would he have long been tolerated. Nominally, he remained in the Roman Church, and felt no scruple about conforming to its rites. As he stood alone, so he died alone, leaving an influence, but no school nor sect.

From Germany Servetus went to Switzerland and spent some time at Basel. There he first ventilated his heresies on the trinity and the divinity of Christ.

He importuned Oecolampadius with interviews and letters, hoping to convert him. But Oecolampadius was startled and horrified. He informed his friends, Bucer, Zwingli, and Bullinger, who happened to be at Basel in October, 1530, that he had been troubled of late by a hot-headed Spaniard, who denied the divine trinity and the eternal divinity of our Saviour. Zwingli advised him to try to convince Servetus of his error, and by good and wholesome arguments to win him over to the truth. Oecolampadius said that he could make no impression upon the haughty, daring, and contentious man. Zwingli replied: "This is indeed a thing insufferable in the Church of God. Therefore do everything possible to prevent the spread of such dreadful blasphemy."  Zwingli never saw the objectionable book in print.

Servetus sought to satisfy Oecolampadius by a misleading confession of faith, but the latter was not deceived by the explanations and exhorted him to "confess the Son of God to be coequal and coeternal with the Father;" otherwise he could not acknowledge him as a Christian.

§ 141. The Book against the Holy Trinity.

Servetus was too vain and obstinate to take advice. In the beginning of 1531, he secured a publisher for his book on the "Errors of the Trinity," Conrad Koenig, who had shops at Basel and Strassburg, and who sent the manuscript to Secerius, a printer at Hagenau in Alsace. Servetus went to that place to read the proof. He also visited Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, who received him with courtesy and kindness and tried to convert him, but in vain.

In July, 1531, the book appeared under the name of the author, and was furnished to the trade at Strassburg, Frankfort, and Basel, but nobody knew where and by whom it was published. Suspicion fell upon Basel.

This book is a very original and, for so young a man, very remarkable treatise on the Trinity and Incarnation in opposition to the traditional and oecumenical faith. The style is crude and obscure, and not to be compared with Calvin’s, who at the same age and in his earliest writings showed himself a master of lucid, methodical, and convincing statement in elegant and forcible Latin. Servetus was familiar with the Bible, the ante-Nicene Fathers (Tertullian and Irenaeus), and scholastic theology, and teemed with new, but ill-digested ideas which he threw out like firebrands. He afterwards embodied his first work in his last, but in revised shape. The following is a summary of the Seven Books on the Trinity:—

In the first book he proceeds from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and proves, first, that this man is Jesus the Christ; secondly, that he is the Son of God; and thirdly, that he is God.1042  He begins with the humanity in opposition to those who begin with the Logos and, in his opinion, lose the true Christ. In this respect he anticipates the Socinian and modern humanitarian Christology, but not in a rationalistic sense; for he asserts a special indwelling of God in Christ (somewhat resembling Schleiermacher), and a deification of Christ after his exaltation (like the Socinians).1043 He rejects the identity of the Logos with the Son of God and the doctrine of the communication of attributes. He distinguishes between the Hebrew names of God: Jehovah means exclusively the one and eternal God; Elohim or El or Adonai are names of God and also of angels, prophets, and kings (John 10:34–36).1044  The prologue of John speaks of things that were, not of things that are. Everywhere else the Bible speaks of the man Christ. The Holy Spirit means, according to the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma, wind or breath, and denotes in the Bible now God himself, now an angel, now the spirit of man, now a divine impulse.

He then explains away the proof texts for the doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7 (which he accepts as genuine, though Erasmus omitted it from his first edition); John 10:30; 14:11; Rom. 11:36. The chief passages, the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19) and the apostolic benediction (2 Cor. 13:14) where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are coordinated, he understands not of three persons, but of three dispositions of God.

In the second book be treats of the Logos, the person of Christ, and the Spirit of God, and chiefly explains the prologue to the fourth Gospel. The Logos is not a metaphysical being, but an oracle; the voice of God and the light of the world.1045  The Logos is a disposition or dispensation in God, so understood by Tertullian and Irenaeus.1046  Before the incarnation the Logos was God himself speaking; after the incarnation the Logos is Jesus Christ, who makes God known to us.1047  All that God before did through the Word, Christ does in the flesh. To him God has given the kingdom and the power to atone and to gather all things in him.

The third book is an exposition of the relation of Christ to the divine Logos.

The fourth book discusses the divine dispositions or manifestations. God appeared in the Son and in the Spirit. Two divine manifestations are substituted for the orthodox tripersonality. The position of the Father is not clear; he is now represented as the divinity itself, now as a disposition and person. The orthodox christology of two natures in one person is entirely rejected. God has no nature (from nasci), and a person is not a compound of two natures or things, but a unit.

The fifth book is a worthless speculative exposition of the Hebrew names of God. The Lutheran doctrine of justification is incidentally attacked as calculated to make man lazy and indifferent to good works.

The sixth book shows that Christ is the only fountain of all true knowledge of God, who is incomprehensible in himself, but revealed himself in the person of his Son. He who sees the Son sees the Father.

The seventh and last book is an answer to objections, and contains a new attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, which was introduced at the same time with the secular power of the pope. Servetus probably believed in the fable of the donation of Constantine.

It is not surprising that this book gave great offence to Catholics and Protestants alike, and appeared to them blasphemous. Servetus calls the Trinitarians tritheists and atheists.1048  He frivolously asked such questions as whether God had a spiritual wife or was without sex.1049  He calls the three gods of the Trinitarians a deception of the devil, yea (in his later writings), a three-headed monster.1050

Zwingli and Oecolampadius died a few months after the publication of the book, but condemned its contents beforehand. Luther’s and Bucer’s views on it have already been noticed. Melanchthon felt the difficulties of the trinitarian and christological problems and foresaw future controversies. He gave his judgment in a letter to his learned friend Camerarius (dated 5 Id. Febr. 1533): —

"You ask me what I think of Servetus?  I see him indeed sufficiently sharp and subtle in disputation, but I do not give him credit for much depth. He is possessed, as it seems to me, of confused imaginations, and his thoughts are not well matured on the subjects he discusses. He manifestly talks foolishness when he speaks of justification. peri; th'" triavdo" [on the subject of the Trinity] you know, I have always feared that serious difficulties would one day arise. Good God! to what tragedies will not these questions give occasion in times to come: ei[ ejstin uJpovstasi" oJ logvo" [is the Logos an hypostasis]?  ei[ ejstin ujpovstasi" to; pneu'ma [is the Holy Spirit an hypostasis]?  For my own part I refer to those passages of Scripture that bid us call on Christ, which is to ascribe divine honors to him, and find them full of consolation."1051

Cochlaeus directed the attention of Quintana, at the Diet of Regensburg, in 1532, to the book of Servetus which was sold there, and Quintana at once took measures to suppress it. The Emperor prohibited it, and the book soon disappeared.

Servetus published in 1532 two dialogues on the Trinity, and a treatise on Justification. He retracted, in the preface, all he had said in his former work, not, however, as false, but as childish.1052  He rejected the Lutheran doctrine of justification, and also both the Lutheran and Zwinglian views of the sacrament. He concluded the book by invoking a malediction on "all tyrants of the Church."1053

§ 142. Servetus as a Geographer.

As Servetus was repulsed by the Reformers of Switzerland and Germany, he left for France and assumed the name of Michel de Villeneuve. His real name and his obnoxious books disappeared from the sight of the world till they emerged twenty years later at Vienne and at Geneva. He devoted himself to the study of mathematics, geography, astrology, and medicine.

In 1534 he was in Paris, and challenged the young Calvin to a disputation, but failed to appear at the appointed hour.

He spent some time at Lyons as proof-reader and publisher of the famous printers, Melchior and Caspar Trechsel. He issued through them, in 1535, under the name of "Villanovanus," a magnificent edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, with a self-laudatory preface, which concludes with the hope that "no one will underestimate the labor, though pleasant in itself, that is implied in the collation of our text with that of earlier editions, unless it be some Zoilus of contracted brow, who cannot look without envy upon the zealous labors of others."  A second and improved edition appeared in 1541.1054

The discoveries of Columbus and his successors gave a strong impulse to geographical studies, and called forth several editions of the work of Ptolemy the famous Alexandrian geographer and astronomer of the second century.1055  The edition of Villeneuve is based upon that of Pirkheimer of Nürnberg, which appeared at Strassburg, 1525, with fifty charts, but contains considerable improvements, and gave to the author great reputation. It is a very remarkable work, considering that Servetus was then only twenty-six years of age. A year later Calvin astonished the world with an equally precocious and far more important and enduring work—the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

The most interesting features in the edition of Villeneuve are his descriptions of countries and nations. The following extracts give a fair idea, and have some bearing on the church history of the times: —

"The Spaniard is of a restless disposition, apt enough of understanding, but learning imperfectly or amiss, so that you shall find a learned Spaniard almost anywhere sooner than in Spain.1056  Half-informed, he thinks himself brimful of information, and always pretends to more knowledge than he has in fact. He is much given to vast projects never realized; and in conversation he delights in subtleties and sophistry. Teachers commonly prefer to speak Spanish rather than Latin in the schools and colleges of the country; but the people in general have little taste for letters, and produce few books themselves, mostly procuring those they want, from France … . The people have many barbarous notions and usages, derived by implication from their old Moorish conquerors and fellow-denizens … . The women have a custom, that would be held barbarous in France, of piercing their ears and hanging gold rings in them, often set with precious stones. They besmirch their faces, too, with minium and ecruse—red and white lead—and walk about on clogs a foot or a foot and a half high, so that they seem to walk above rather than on the earth. The people are extremely temperate, and the women never drink wine … . Spaniards are notably the most superstitious people in the world in their religious notions; but they are brave in the field, of signal endurance under privation and difficulty, and by their voyages of discovery have spread their name over the face of the globe."

"England is wonderfully well-peopled, and the inhabitants are long-lived. Tall in stature, they are fair in complexion, and have blue eyes. They are brave in war, and admirable bowmen ...."

"The people of Scotland are hot-tempered, prone to revenge, and fierce in their anger; but valiant in war, and patient beyond belief of cold, hunger, and fatigue. They are handsome in person, and their clothing and language are the same as those of the Irish; their tunics being dyed yellow, their legs bare, and their feet protected by sandals of undressed hide. They live mainly on fish and flesh. They are not a particularly religious people ...."

"The Italians make use in their everyday talk of the most horrid oaths and imprecations. Holding all the rest of the world in contempt, and calling them barbarians, they themselves have nevertheless been alternately the prey of the French, the Spaniards, and the Germans ...."1057

"Germany is overgrown by vast forests, and defaced by frightful swamps. Its climate is as insufferably hot in summer as it is bitterly cold in winter .... Hungary is commonly said to produce oxen; Bavaria, swine; Franconia, onions, turnips, and licorice; Swabia, harlots; Bohemia, heretics; Switzerland, butchers; Westphalia, cheats; and the whole country gluttons and drunkards … . The Germans, however, are a religious people; not easily turned from opinions they have once espoused, and not readily persuaded to concord in matters of schism; every one valiantly and obstinately defending the heresy he has himself adopted."1058

This unfavorable account of Germany, borrowed in part from Tacitus, was much modified and abridged in the second edition, in which it appears as "a pleasant country with a temperate climate."  Of the Swabians he speaks as a singularly gifted people.1059  The fling at the ignorance and superstition of the Spaniards, his own countrymen, was also omitted.

The most interesting part of this geographical work on account of its theological bearing, is the description of Palestine. He declared in the first edition that "it is mere boasting and untruth when so much of excellence is ascribed to this land; the experience of merchants and travellers who have visited it, proving it to be inhospitable, barren, and altogether without amenity. Wherefore you may say that the land was promised indeed, but is of little promise when, spoken of in everyday terms."  He omitted this passage in the second edition in deference to Archbishop Palmier. Nevertheless, it was made a ground of accusation at the trial of Servetus, for its apparent contradiction with the Mosaic account of the land, flowing with milk and honey."

§ 143. Servetus as a Physician, Scientist, and Astrologer.

Being supplied with the necessary funds, Servetus returned to Paris in 1536 and took his degrees as magister and doctor of medicine. He acquired great fame as a physician.

The medical world was then divided into two schools,—the Galenists, who followed Hippocrates and Galen, and the Averrhoists, who followed Averrhoes and Avicenna. Servetus was a pupil of Champier, and joined the Greek school, but had an open eye to the truth of the Arabians.

He published in 1537 a learned treatise on Syrups and their use in medicine. It is his most popular book, and passed through four editions in ten years.1060

He discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood or the passage of the blood from the right to the left chamber of the heart through the lungs by the pulmonary artery and vein. He published it, not separately, but in his work on the Restitution of Christianity, as a part of his theological speculation on the vital spirits. The discovery was burnt and buried with this book; but nearly a hundred years later William Harvey (1578–1658), independently, made the same discovery.1061

Servetus lectured in the University on geography and astrology, and gained much applause, but excited also the envy and ill-will of his colleagues, whom he treated with overbearing pride and contempt.

He wrote an "Apologetic Dissertation on Astrology,"1062 and severely attacked the physicians as ignoramuses, who in return denounced him as an impostor and wind-bag. The senate of the University sided with the physicians, and the Parliament of Paris forbade him to lecture on astrology and to prophesy from the stars (1538).1063

He left Paris for Charlieu, a small town near Lyons, and practised medicine for two or three years.

At his thirtieth year he thought that, after the example of Christ, he should be rebaptized, since his former baptism was of no value. He denied the analogy of circumcision. The Jews, he says, circumcised infants, but baptized only adults. This was the practice of John the Baptist; and Christ, who had been circumcised on the eighth day, was baptized when he entered the public ministry. The promise is given to believers only, and infants have no faith. Baptism is the beginning of regeneration, and the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. He wrote two letters to Calvin on the subject, and exhorted him to follow his example.1064

His arrogance made him so unpopular that he had to leave Charlieu.1065

§ 144. Servetus at Vienne. His Annotations to the Bible.

Villeneuve now repaired to Vienne in Dauphiné and settled down as a physician under the patronage of Pierre Palmier, one of his former bearers in Paris, and a patron of learning, who had been appointed archbishop of that see. He was provided with lodgings in the archiepiscopal palace, and made a comfortable living by his medical practice. He spent thirteen years at Vienne, from 1540 to 1553, which were probably the happiest of his fitful life. He conformed to the Catholic religion, and was on good terms with the higher clergy. Nobody suspected his heresy, or knew anything of his connection with the work on the "Errors of the Trinity."

He devoted his leisure to his favorite literary and theological studies, and kept the publishers of Lyons busy. We have already mentioned the second edition of his "Ptolemy", which he dedicated to Palmier with a complimentary preface.

A year afterwards (1542) he published a new and elegant edition of the Latin Bible of Santes Pagnini, a learned Dominican monk and pupil of Savonarola, but an enemy of the Reformed religion.1066  He accompanied it with explanatory notes, aiming to give "the old historical but hitherto neglected sense of the Scriptures."  He anticipated modern exegesis in substituting the typical for the allegorical method and giving to the Old Testament prophecies an immediate bearing on their times, and a remote bearing on Christ. Thus he refers Psalms II., VIII., XXII., and CX. to David, as the type of Christ. It is not likely that he learned this method from Calvin, and it is certain that Calvin did not learn it from him. But Servetus goes further than Calvin, and anticipates the rationalistic explanation of Deutero-Isaiah by referring "the servant of Jehovah" to Cyrus as the anointed of the Lord. Rome put his comments on the Index (1559). Calvin brought them up against him at the trial, and, without knowing that the text of the book was literally taken from another edition without acknowledgment, said that he dexterously filched five hundred livres from the publisher in payment for the vain trifles and impious follies with which he had encumbered almost every page of the book.1067

§ 145. Correspondence of Servetus with Calvin and Poupin.

While engaged in the preparation of his last work at Vienne, Servetus opened a correspondence with Calvin through Jean Frellon, a learned publisher at Lyons and a personal friend of both.1068  He sent him a copy of his book as far as then finished, and told him that he would find in it "stupendous things never heard of before."1069  He also proposed to him three questions: 1) Is the man Jesus Christ the Son of God, and how?  2) Is the kingdom of God in man, when does man enter into it, and when is he born again?  3) Must Christian baptism presuppose faith, like the Lord’s Supper, and to what end are both sacraments instituted in the New Testament?1070

Calvin seems to have had no time to read the whole manuscript, but courteously answered the questions to the effect, 1) that Christ is the Son of God both according to his divine nature eternally begotten, and according to his human nature as the Wisdom of God made flesh; 2) that the kingdom of God begins in man when he is born again, but that the process of regeneration is not completed in a moment, but goes on till death;3) that faith is necessary for baptism, but not in the same personal way as in the Lord’s Supper; for according to the type of circumcision the promise was given also to the children of the faithful. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are related to each other as circumcision and the passover. He referred to his books for details, but was ready to give further explanation if desired.1071

Servetus was by no means satisfied with the answer, and wrote back that Calvin made two or three Sons of God; that the Wisdom of God spoken of by Solomon was allegorical and impersonal; that regeneration took place in the moment of baptism by water and the spirit, but never in infant baptism. He denied that circumcision corresponded to baptism. He put five new theological questions to Calvin, and asked him to read the fourth chapter on baptism in the manuscript of the Restitutio which he had sent him.1072

To these objections Calvin sent another and more lengthy response.1073  He again offered further explanation, though he had no time to write whole books for him, and had discussed all these topics in his Institutes.1074

So far there is nothing to indicate any disposition in Calvin to injure Servetus. On the contrary we must admire his patience and moderation in giving so much of his precious time to the questions of a troublesome stranger and pronounced opponent. Servetus continued to press Calvin with letters, and returned the copy of the Institutes with copious critical objections. "There is hardly a page," says Calvin, "that is not defiled by his vomit."1075

Calvin sent a final answer to the questions of Servetus, which is lost, together with a French letter to Frellon, which is preserved.1076  This letter is dated Feb. 13, 1546, under his well-known pseudonym of Charles Despeville, and is as follows:—

"Seigneur Jehan, As your last letter was brought to me on my departure, I had no leisure to reply to the enclosure it contained. After my return I use the first moment of my leisure to comply with your desire; not indeed that I have any great hope of proving serviceable to such a man, seeing him disposed as I do. But I will try once more, if there be any means left of bringing him to reason, and this will happen when God shall have so wrought in him that he has become altogether another man. Since he has written to me in so proud a spirit, I have been led to write to him more sharply than is my wont, being minded to take him down a little in his presumption.1077  But I could not do otherwise. For I assure you there is no lesson he needs so much to learn as humility. This must come to him through the grace of God, not otherwise. But we, too, ought to lend a helping hand. If God give such grace to him and to us that the present answer will turn to his profit, I shall have cause to rejoice. If he persists, however, in the style he has hitherto seen fit to use, you will only lose your time in soliciting me further in his behalf; for I have other affairs that concern me more nearly, and I shall make it a matter of conscience not to busy myself further, not doubting that he is a Satan who would divert me from more profitable studies. Let me beg of you, therefore, to be content with what I have already done, unless you see occasion for acting differently."

Frellon sent this letter to Villeneuve by a special messenger, together with a note in which be addresses him as his "dear brother and friend."1078

On the same day Calvin wrote the famous letter to Farel already quoted. He had arrived at the settled conviction that Servetus was an incorrigible and dangerous heretic, who deserved to die.1079  But he did nothing to induce him to come to Geneva, as he wished, and left him severely alone. . In 1548 he wrote to Viret that he would have nothing more to do with this desperately obstinate heretic, who shall force no more letters from him.1080

Servetus continued to trouble Calvin, and published in his Restitutio no less than thirty letters to him, but without dates and without replies from Calvin.1081  They are conceived in a haughty and self-sufficient spirit. He writes to the greatest divine of the age, not as a learner, or even an equal, but as a superior. In the first of these printed letters he charges Calvin with holding absurd, confused, and contradictory opinions on the sonship of Christ, on the Logos, and on the Trinity. In the second letter he tells him: "You make three Sons of God: the human nature is a son to you, the divine nature is a son, and the whole Christ is a son … . All such tritheistic notions are a three-headed illusion of the Dragon, which easily crept in among the sophists in the present reign of Antichrist. Or have you not read of the spirit of the dragon, the spirit of the beast, the spirit of the false prophets, three spirits?  Those who acknowledge the trinity of the beast are possessed by three spirits of demons. These three spirits incite war against the immaculate Lamb, Jesus Christ (Apoc. 16). False are all the invisible gods of the Trinitarians, as false as the gods of the Babylonians. Farewell."1082  He begins the third letter with the oft-repeated warning (saepius te monui) not to admit that impossible—monster of three things in God. In another letter he calls him a reprobate and blasphemer (improbus et blasphemus) for calumniating good works. He charges him with ignorance of the true nature of faith, justification, regeneration, baptism, and the kingdom of heaven.

These are fair specimens of the arrogant, irritating, and even insulting tone of his letters. At last Servetus himself broke off his correspondence with Calvin, who, it seems, had long ceased to answer them, but he now addressed his colleagues. He wrote three letters to Abel Poupin, who was minister at Geneva from 1543 to 1556, when he died. The last is preserved, and was used in evidence at the trial.1083  It is not dated, but must have been written in 1548 or later. Servetus charges the Reformed Christians of Geneva that they had a gospel without a God, without true faith, without good works; and that instead of the true God they worshipped a three-headed Cerberus. "Your faith in Christ," he continues, "is a mere pretence and without effect; your man is an inert trunk, and your God a fabulous monster of the enslaved will. You reject baptismal regeneration and shut the kingdom of heaven against men. Woe unto you, woe, woe!"1084

He concludes this remarkable letter with the prediction that he would die for this cause and become like unto his Master.1085

§ 146. "The Restitution of Christianity."

During his sojourn at Vienne, Servetus prepared his chief theological work under the title, "The Restitution of Christianity."  He must have finished the greater part of it in manuscript as early as 1546, seven years before its publication in print; for in that year, as we have seen, he sent a copy to Calvin, which he tried to get back to make some corrections, but Calvin had sent it to Viret at Lausanne, where it was detained. It was afterwards used at the trial and ordered by the Council of Geneva to be burnt at the stake, together with the printed volume.1086

The proud title indicates the pretentious and radical character of the book. It was chosen, probably, with reference to Calvin’s, Institution of the Christian Religion."  In opposition to the great Reformer he claimed to be a Restorer. The Hebrew motto on the title-page was taken from Dan. 12:1: "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince;" the Greek motto from Rev. 12:7: "And there was war in heaven," which is followed by the words, "Michael and his angels going forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred, and his angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world."

The identity of the Christian name of the author with the name of the archangel is significant. Servetus fancied that the great battle with Antichrist was near at hand or had already begun, and that he was one of Michael’s warriors, if not Michael himself.1087

His "Restitution of Christianity" was a manifesto of war. The woman in the twelfth chapter of Revelation he understood to be the true Church; her child, whom God saves, is the Christian faith; the great red dragon with seven heads and horns is the pope of Rome, the Antichrist predicted by Daniel, Paul, and John. At the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, which divided the one God into three parts, the dragon began to drive the true Church into the wilderness, and retained his power for twelve hundred and sixty prophetic days or years; but now his reign is approaching to a close.

He was fully conscious of a divine mission to overthrow the tyranny of the papal and Protestant Antichrist, and to restore Christianity to its primitive purity. "The task we have undertaken," he says in the preface, "is sublime in majesty, easy in perspicuity, and certain in demonstration; for it is no less than to make God known in his substantial manifestation by the Word and his divine communication by the Spirit, both comprised in Christ alone, through whom alone do we plainly discern how the deity of the Word and the Spirit may be apprehended in man … . We shall now see God, unseen before, with his face revealed, and behold him shining in ourselves, if we open the door and enter in. It is high time to open this door and this way of the light, without which no one can read the sacred Scriptures, or know God, or become a Christian."  Then he gives a brief summary of topics, and closes the preface with this prayer:—

"O Christ Jesus, Son of God, who hast been given to us from heaven, who in thyself makest the Deity visibly manifest, open thyself to thy servant that so great a manifestation may be truly understood. Grant unto me now, who entreats thee, thy good Spirit, and the efficacious word; direct my mind and my pen that I may declare the glory of thy divinity and give expression to the true faith concerning thee. The cause is thine, and it is by a certain divine impulse that I am led to treat of thy glory from the Father, and the glory of thy Spirit. I once began to treat of it, and now I am constrained to do so again; for the time is, in truth, completed, as I shall now show to all the pious, from the certainty of the thing itself and from the manifest signs of the times. Thou hast taught us that a lamp must not be hidden. Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel. It concerns the common cause of all Christians, to which we are all bound."

He forwarded the manuscript to a publisher in Basel, Marrinus, who declined it in a letter, dated April 9, 1552, because it could not be safely published in that city at that time. He then made an arrangement with Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller and publisher at Vienne, and Guillaume Guéroult, his brother-in-law and manager of his printing establishment, who had run away from Geneva for bad conduct. He assured them that there were no errors in the book, and that, on the contrary, it was directed against the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and other heretics. He agreed to withhold his and their names and the name of the place of publication from the title-page. He assumed the whole of the expense of publication, and paid them in advance the sum of one hundred gold dollars. No one in France knew at that time that his real name was Servetus, and that he was the author of the work, "On the Errors of the Trinity."

The "Restitution" was secretly printed in a small house, away from the known establishment, within three or four months, and finished on the third of January, 1553. He corrected the proofs himself, but there are several typographical errors in it. The whole impression of one thousand copies was made up into bales of one hundred copies each; five bales were sent as white paper to Pierre Martin, type-founder of Lyons, to be forwarded by sea to Genoa and Venice; another lot to Jacob Bestet, bookseller at Chatillon; and a third to Frankfort. Calvin obtained one or more copies, probably from his friend Frellon of Lyons.1088

The first part of the "Restitution" is a revised and enlarged edition of the seven books "On the Errors of the Trinity."  The seven books are condensed into five; and these are followed by two dialogues on the Trinity between Michael and Peter, which take the place of the sixth and seventh books of the older work. The other part of the "Restitution," which covers nearly two-thirds of the volume (pp. 287–734), is new, and embraces three books on Faith and the Righteousness of the Kingdom of Christ (287–354), four books on Regeneration and the Reign of Antichrist (355–576), thirty letters to Calvin (577–664), Sixty Signs of Antichrist (664–670), and the Apology to Melanchthon on the Mystery of the Trinity and on Ancient Discipline (671–734). Calvin and Melanchthon are the two surviving Reformers whom he confronts as the representatives of orthodox Protestantism.1089

§ 147. The Theological System of Servetus.

Calvin, in his Refutatio Errorum Mich. Serveti, Opera, vol. VIII. 501–644, presents the doctrines of Servetus from his writings, in thirty-eight articles, the response of Servetus, the refutation of the response, and then a full examination of his whole system.—H. Tollin: Das Lehrsystem Michael Servet’s genetisch dargestellt. Gütersloh, 1878, 3 vols. 8°. The most complete exposition of the theological opinions of Servetus.

Calvin and Tollin represent two opposite extremes in the doctrinal and personal estimate of Servetus: Calvin is wholly polemical, and sees in the Restitutio a volume of ravings ("volumen deliriorum") and a chaos of blasphemies ("prodigiosum blasphemiarum chaos"); Tollin is wholly apologetical and eulogistic, and admires it as an anticipation of reverent, Christocentric theology; neither of them is strictly historical.

Trechsel’s account (I. 119–144) is short, but impartial.—Baur, in his "History of the Doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation" (Tübingen, 1843, 3 vols.) devotes, with his usual critical grasp and speculative insight, fifty pages to Servet’s views on God and Christ (I. 54–103). Dorner, in his great "History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ" (Berlin, 1853), discusses his Christology profoundly, but rather briefly (II. 649–656). Both recognize the force of his arguments against the dyophysitism of the Chalcedonian Christology, and compare his Christology with that of Apollinaris.

Before we proceed to the heresy trial, we must give a connected statement of the opinions of Servetus as expressed in his last and most elaborate work.

To his contemporaries the Restitutio appeared to be a confused compound of Sabellian, Samosatenic, Arian, Apollinarian, and Pelagian heresies, mixed with Anabaptist errors and Neo-platonic, pantheistic speculations. The best judges—Calvin, Saisset, Trechsel, Baur, Dorner, Harnack—find the root of his system in pantheism. Tollin denies his pantheism, although he admits the pantheistic coloring of some of his expressions; he distinguishes no less than five phases in his theology before it came to its full maturity, and characterizes it as an "intensive, extensive, and protensive Panchristism, or ’Christocentricism.’ "1090

Servetus was a mystic theosophist and Christopantheist. Far from being a sceptic or rationalist, he had very strong, positive convictions of the absolute truth of the Christian religion. He regarded the Bible as an infallible source of truth, and accepted the traditional canon without dispute. So far he agreed with evangelical Protestantism; but he differed from it, as well as from Romanism, in principle and aim. He claimed to stand above both parties as the restorer of primitive Christianity, which excludes the errors and combines the truths of the Catholic and Protestant creeds.

The evangelical Reformation, inspired by the teaching of St. Paul and Augustin, was primarily a practical movement, and proceeded from a deep sense of sin and grace in opposition to prevailing Pelagianism, and pointed the people directly to Christ as the sole and sufficient fountain of pardon and peace to the troubled conscience; but it retained all the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, and especially the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. It should be noticed, however, that Melanchthon, in the first edition of his Loci (1521), omitted these mysteries as objects of adoration rather than of speculation,1091 and that Calvin, in the controversy with Caroli, spoke lightly of the Nicene and Athanasian terminology, which was derived from Greek philosophy rather than from the Bible.

Servetus, with the Bible as his guide, aimed at a more radical revolution than the Reformers. He started with a new doctrine of God and of Christ, and undermined the very foundations of the Catholic creed. The three most prominent negative features of his system are three denials: the denial of the orthodox dogma of the Trinity, as, set forth in the Nicene Creed; the denial of the orthodox Christology, as determined by the Oecumenical Council of Chalcedon; and the denial of infant baptism, as practised everywhere except by the Anabaptists. From these three sources he derived all the evils and corruptions of the Church. The first two denials were the basis of the theoretical revolution, the third was the basis of the practical revolution which he felt himself providentially called to effect by his anonymous book.

Those three negations in connection with what appeared to be shocking blasphemy, though not intended as such, made him an object of horror to all orthodox Christians of his age, Protestants as well as Roman Catholic, and led to his double condemnation, first at Vienne, and then at Geneva. So far he was perfectly understood by his contemporaries, especially by Calvin and Melanchthon. But the positive features, which he substituted for the Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, were not appreciated in their originality, and seemed to be simply a repetition of old and long-condemned heresies.

There were Antitrinitarians before Servetus, not only in the ante-Nicene age, but also in the sixteenth century, especially among the Anabaptists—such as Hetzer, Denck, Campanus, Melchior Hoffmann, Reed, Martini, David Joris.1092  But he gathered their sporadic ideas into a coherent original system, and gave them a speculative foundation.1093

1. Christology.

Servetus begins the "Restitution," as well as his first book against the Trinity, with the doctrine of Christ. He rises from the humanity of the historical Jesus of Nazareth to his Messiahship and Divine Sonship, and from this to his divinity.1094  This is, we may say, the view of the Synoptical Gospels, as distinct from the usual orthodox method which, with the Prologue of the fourth Gospel, descends from his divinity to his humanity through the act of the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. In this respect he anticipates the modern humanitarian Christology. Jesus is, according to Servetus, begotten, not of the first person of God, but of the essence of the one undivided and indivisible God. He is born, according to the flesh, of the Virgin Mary by the overshadowing cloud of the Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20, 23; Luke 1:32, 35). The whole aim of the gospel is to lead men to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (comp. John 20:31).1095  But the term "Son of God" is in the Scriptures always used of the man Jesus, and never of the Logos.1096  He is the one true and natural son of God, born of the substance of God; we are sons by adoption, by an act of grace. We are made sons of God by faith (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26; Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:5). He is, moreover, truly and veritably God. The whole essence of God is manifest in him; God dwells in him bodily.1097

To his last breath Servetus worshipped Jesus as the Son of the eternal God. But he did not admit him to be the eternal Son of God except in an ideal and pantheistic sense, in which the whole world was in the mind of God from eternity, and comprehended in the Divine Wisdom (Sophia) and the Divine Word (Logos).

He opposed the Chalcedonian dualism and aimed (like Apollinaris) at an organic unity of Christ’s person, but made him a full human personality (while Apollinaris substituted the divine Logos for the human spirit, and thus made Christ only a half man). He charges the scholastic and orthodox divines, whom he calls sophists and opponents of the truth, with making two Sons of God—one invisible and eternal, another visible and temporal. They deny, he says, that Jesus is truly man by teaching that he has two distinct natures with a communication of attributes.1098  Christ does not consist of, or in, two natures. He had no previous personal pre-existence as a second hypostasis: his personality dates from his conception and birth. But this man Jesus is, at the same time, consubstantial with God (oJmoouvsio"). As man and wife are one in the flesh of their son, so God and man are one in Christ.1099  The flesh of Christ is heavenly and born of the very substance of God.1100  By the deification of the flesh of Christ he materialized God, destroyed the real humanity of Christ, and lost himself in the maze of a pantheistic mysticism.

2. Theology.

The fundamental doctrine of Servetus was the absolute unity, simplicity, and indivisibility of the Divine being, in opposition to the tripersonality or threefold hypostasis of orthodoxy.1101  In this respect he makes common cause with the Jews and Mohammedans, and approvingly quotes the Koran. He violently assails Athanasius, Hilary, Augustin, John of Damascus, Peter the Lombard, and other champions of the dogma of the Trinity.1102  But he claims the ante-Nicene Fathers, especially Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, for his view. He calls all Trinitarians "tritheists" and "atheists."1103  They have not one absolute God, but a three-parted, collective, composite God—that is, an unthinkable, impossible God, which is no God at all. They worship three idols of the demons,—a three-headed monster, like the Cerberus of the Greek mythology.1104  One of their gods is unbegotten, the second is begotten, the third proceeding. One died, the other two did not die. Why is not the Spirit begotten, and the Son proceeding?  By distinguishing the Trinity in the abstract from the three persons separately considered, they have even four gods. The Talmud and the Koran, he thinks, are right in opposing such nonsense and blasphemy.

He examines in detail the various patristic and scholastic proof texts for the Trinity, as Gen. 18:2; Ex. 3:6; Ps. 2:7; 110:1; Isa. 7:14; John 1:1; 3:13; 8:58; 10:18; 14:10; Col. 1:15; 2:9; 1 Pet. 3:19; Heb. 1:2.

Yet, after all, he taught himself a sort of trinity, but substitutes the terms "dispositions," "dispensations," "economies," for hypostases and persons. In other words, he believed, like Sabellius, in a trinity of revelation or manifestation, but not in a trinity of essence or substance. He even avowed, during the trial at Geneva, a trinity of persons and the eternal personality of Christ; but he understood the term, person "in the original sense of a mask used by players on the stage, not in the orthodox sense of a distinct hypostasis or real personality that had its own proper life in the Divine essence from eternity, and was manifested in time in the man Jesus.1105

Servetus distinguished—with Plato, Philo, the Neo-Platonists, and several of the Greek Fathers—between an ideal, invisible, uncreated, eternal world and the real, visible, created, temporal world. In God, he says, are from eternity the ideas or forms of all things: these are called "Wisdom" or "Logos," "the Word" (John 1:1). He identifies this ideal world with "the Book of God," wherein are recorded all things that happen (Deut. 32:32; Ps. 139:16; Rev. 5:1), and with the living creatures and four whirling wheels full of eyes, in the vision of Ezekiel (1:5; 10:12). The eyes of God are living fountains in which are reflected all things, great and small, even the hairs of our head (Matt. 10:30), but particularly the elect, whose names are recorded in a special book.

The Word or Wisdom of God, he says, was the seed out of which Christ was born, and the birth of Christ is the model of all births.1106  The Word may be called also the soul of Christ, which comprehends the ideas of all things. In Christ was the life, and the life was the light of the world (John 1:4 sqq.). He goes here into speculations about the nature of light and of the heavenly bodies, and ventilates his Hebrew learning. He distinguishes three heavens—the two material heavens of water and air, spoken of by Moses in the account of creation,1107  and a third, spiritual heaven of fire, the heaven of heavens, to which Paul was elevated (2 Cor. 12:2), in which God and Christ dwell, and which gives splendor to the angels. Christ has revealed the true heaven to us, which was unknown to the Jews.

All things are one in God, in whom they consist.1108  There is one fundamental ground or principle and head of all things, and this is Jesus Christ our Lord.1109

In the fifth book, Servetus discusses the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He identifies him with the Word, from which he differs only in the form of existence. God is, figuratively speaking, the Father of the Spirit, as he is the Father of Wisdom and the Word. The Spirit is not a third metaphysical being, but the Spirit of God himself. To receive the Holy Spirit means to receive the anointing of God. The indwelling of the Spirit in us is the indwelling of God (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:22). He who lies to the Holy Spirit lies to God (Acts 5:4). The Spirit is a modus, a form of divine existence. He is also called the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:9; 1 Pet. 1:11). The human spirit is a spark of the Divine Spirit, an image of the Wisdom of God, created, yet similar. God breathes his Spirit into man in his birth, and again in regeneration.

In connection with this subject, Servetus goes into an investigation of the vital spirits in man, and gives a minute description of the lesser circulation of the blood, which, as we have seen, he first discovered.1110  He studied theology as a physician and surgeon, and studied medicine as a theologian.

He discusses also the procession of the Spirit, which he regards not as a metaphysical and eternal process, but as a historical manifestation, identical with the mission. Herein he differs from both the Greek and the Latin theories, but unjustly charges the Greeks (who distinguish the procession from the Father alone, and the mission from the Father and the Son) with error in denying the Filioque. The Spirit, he says, proceeds from the Father and the Son, and he proceeds from the Father through the Son, who is the proper fountain of the Spirit. But he dates this procession from the day of Pentecost. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was unknown, which he proves from John 7:39 and Acts 19:2 (but contrary to such passages as Ps. 51:13; 1 Sam. 10:6; 16:13; Isa. 11:2; 61:1; 1 Pet. 1:11). The spirit in the Old Testament was only a spirit of servitude and fear, not of adoption and love (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Christ calls us friends and brethren (John 15:15; 20:17). The Jews knew only a sanctification of the flesh and external things, not of the spirit. The anointing we receive from Christ is the anointing of the Spirit (2 Cor. 1:21; 1 John 2:20, 27). The Holy Spirit becomes ours in regeneration. We are deified or made partakers of the divine nature by Christ.

3. Christopantheism.

The premises and conclusions of the speculations of Servetus are pantheistic. He adopts the conception of God as the all-embracing substance. "All is one and one is all, because all things are one in God, and God is the substance of all things."1111  As the Word of God is essentially man, so the Spirit of God is essentially the spirit of man. By the power of the resurrection all the primitive elements of the body and spirit have been renewed, glorified, and immortalized, and all these are communicated to us by Christ in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The Holy Spirit is the breath from the mouth of Christ (John 20:22). As God breathes into man the soul with the air, so Christ breathes into his disciples the Holy Spirit with the air … . The deity in the stone is stone, in gold it is gold, in the wood it is wood, according to the proper ideas of things. In a more excellent way the deity in man is man, in the spirit it is spirit."1112  "God dwells in the Spirit, and God is Spirit. God dwells in the fire, and God is fire; God dwells in the light, and God is light; God dwells in the mind, and he is the mind itself."  In one of his letters to Calvin he says: "Containing the essence of the universe in himself, God is everywhere, and in everything, and in such wise that he shows himself to us as fire, as a flower, as a stone."  God is always in the process of becoming.1113  Evil as well as good is comprised in his essence. He quotes Isa. 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things."  The evil differs from the good only in the direction.

When Calvin charged him with pantheism, Servetus restated his view in these words: "God is in all things by essence, presence, and power, and himself sustains all things."1114  Calvin admitted this, but denied the inference that the substantial Deity is in all creatures, and, as the latter confessed before the judges, even in the pavement on which they stand, and in the devils.1115  In his last reply to Calvin he tells him: "With Simon Magus you shut up God in a corner; I say, that he is all in all things; all beings are sustained in God."1116

He frequently refers with approval to Plato and the NeoPlatonists (Plotin, Jamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry).1117

But his views differ from the ordinary pantheism. He substitutes for a cosmopantheism a Christopantheism. Instead of saying, The world is the great God, he says, Christ is the great God.1118  By Christ, however, he means only the ideal Christ; for he denied the eternity of the real Christ.

4. Anthropology and Soteriology.1119

Servetus was called a Pelagian by Calvin. This is true only with some qualifications. He denied absolute predestination and the slavery of the human will, as taught first by all the Reformers. He admitted the fall of Adam in consequence of the temptation by the devil, and he admitted also hereditary sin (which Pelagius denied), but not hereditary guilt. Hereditary sin is only a disease for which the child is not responsible. (This was also the view of Zwingli.)  There is no guilt without knowledge of good and evil.1120  Actual transgression is not possible before the time of age and responsibility, that is, about the twentieth year.1121  He infers this from such passages as Ex. 30:14; 38:26; Num. 14:29; 32:11; Deut. 1:39.

The serpent has entered human flesh and taken possession of it. There is a thorn in the flesh, a law of the members antagonistic to the law of God; but this does not condemn infants, nor is it taken away in baptism (as the Catholics hold), for it dwells even in saints, and the conflict between the spirit and the serpent goes on through life.1122  But Christ offers his help to all, even to infants and their angels.1123

In the fallen state man has still a free-will, reason, and conscience, which connect him with the divine grace. Man is still the image of God. Hence the punishment of murder, which is an attack upon the divine majesty in man (Gen. 9:6). Every man is enlightened by the Logos (John 1:17). We are of divine origin (Acts 17:29). The doctrine of the, slavery of the human will is a great fallacy (magna fallacia), and turns divine grace into a pure machine. It makes men idle, and neglect prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. God is free himself and gives freedom to every man, and his grace works freely in man. It is our impiety which turns the gift of freedom into slavery.1124  The Reformers blaspheme God by their doctrine of total depravity and their depreciation of good works. All true philosophers and theologians teach that divinity is implanted in man, and that the soul is of the same essence with God.1125

As to predestination, there is, strictly speaking, no before nor after in God, as he is not subject to time. But he is just and merciful to all his creatures, especially to the little flock of the elect.1126  He condemns no one who does not condemn himself.

Servetus rejected also the doctrine of forensic justification by faith alone, as injurious to sanctification. He held that man is justified by faith and good works, and appealed to the second chapter of James and the obedience of Abraham. On this point he sympathized more with the Roman theory. Justification is not a declaratory act of imputation, but an efficacious act by which man is changed and made righteous. Love is greater than faith and knowledge, because God is love. It embraces all good works which clothe, preserve, and strengthen faith and increase the reward of future glory. He who loves is better than he who believes.1127

5. The Sacraments.1128

Servetus admitted only two sacraments, therein agreeing with the Protestants, but held original views on both.

(a) As to the sacrament of Baptism, he taught, with the Catholic Church, baptismal regeneration, but rejected, with the Anabaptists, infant baptism.

Baptism is a saving ordinance by which we receive the remission of sins, are made Christians, and enter the kingdom of heaven as priests and kings, through the power of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the water.1129  It is the death of the old man and the birth of the new man. By baptism we put on Christ and live a new life in him.1130

But baptism must be preceded by the preaching of the gospel, the illumination of the Spirit, and repentance, which, according to the preaching of John the Baptist and of Christ, is the necessary condition of entering the kingdom of God. Therefore, Servetus infers, no one is a fit subject for baptism before he has reached manhood. By the law of Moses priests were not anointed before the thirtieth year (Num. 4:3). Joseph was thirty years old when he was raised from the prison to the throne (Gen. 41:46). According to the rabbinical tradition Adam was born or created in his thirtieth year. Christ was baptized in the Jordan when he was thirty years (Luke 3:21–23), and that is the model of all true Christian baptism.1131  He was circumcised in infancy, but the carnal circumcision is the type of the spiritual circumcision of the heart, not of water baptism.1132  Circumcision was adapted to real infants who have not yet committed actual transgression; baptism is intended for spiritual infants—that is, for responsible persons who have a childlike spirit and begin a new life.

(b) Servetus rejected Infant Baptism as irreconcilable with these views, and as absurd. He called it a doctrine of the devil, an invention of popery, and a total subversion of Christianity.1133  He saw in it the second root of all the corruptions of the Church, as the dogma of the Trinity was the first root

By his passionate opposition to infant baptism he gave as much offence to Catholics and Protestants as by his opposition to the dogma of the Trinity. But while on this point he went further than the most fanatical Anabaptists, he did not belong to their society, and rejected the revolutionary opinions concerning obedience to government, and holding civil and military offices.

Children are unfit to perform the office of priests which is given to us in baptism. They have no faith, they cannot repent, and cannot enter into a covenant. Moreover, they do not need the bath of regeneration for the remission of sins, as they have not yet committed actual transgression.

But children are not lost if they die without baptism. Adam’s sin is remitted to all by the merits of Christ. They are excluded from the Church on earth; they must die and go to Sheol; but Christ will raise them up on the resurrection day and save them in heaven. The Scripture does not condemn the Ismaelites or the Ninevites or other barbarians. Christ gives his blessing to unbaptized children. How could the most merciful Lord, who bore the sins of a guilty world, condemn those who have not committed an impiety?1134

Servetus agreed with Zwingli, the Anabaptists, and the Second Scotch Confession, in rejecting the cruel Roman dogma, which excludes all unbaptized infants, even of Christian parents, from the kingdom of heaven.

(c) In the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, Servetus differs from the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Zwinglian theories, and approaches, strange to say, the doctrine of his great antagonist, Calvin.1135  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper represent the birth and the nourishment of the new man. By the former we receive the spirit of Christ; by the latter we receive the body of Christ, but in a spiritual and mystical manner. Baptism kindles and strengthens faith; the eucharist strengthens love and unites us more and more to Christ. By neglecting this ordinance the spiritual man famishes and dies away. The heavenly man needs heavenly food, which nourishes him to life eternal (John 6:53).1136

Servetus distinguishes three false theories on the Lord’s Supper, and calls their advocates transubstantiatores (Romanists), impanatores (Lutherans), and tropistae (Zwinglians).1137

Against the first two theories, which agree in teaching a carnal presence and manducation of Christ’s body and blood by all communicants, he urges that spiritual food cannot be received by the mouth and stomach, but only by the spiritual organs of faith and love. He refers, like Zwingli, to the passage in John 6:63, as the key for understanding the words of institution and the mysterious discourse on eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ.

He is most severe against the papal doctrine of transubstantiation or transelementation; because it turns bread into no-bread, and would make us believe that the body of Christ is eaten even by wild beasts, dogs, and mice. He calls this dogma a Satanic monstrosity and an invention of demons.1138

To the Tropists he concedes that bread and wine are symbols, but he objects to the idea of the absence of Christ in heaven. They are symbols of a really present, not of an absent Christ.1139  He is the living head and vitally connected with all his members. A head cut off from the body would be a monster. To deny the real presence of Christ is to destroy his reign.1140  He came to us to abide with us forever. He withdrew only his visible presence till the day of judgment, but promised to be with us invisibly, but none the less really, to the end of the world.1141

6. The Kingdom of Christ, and the Reign of Antichrist.1142

We have already noticed the apocalyptic fancies of Servetus. He could not find the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, so often spoken of in the Gospels (while Christ speaks only twice of the "Church"), in any visible church organization of his day. The true Church flourished in the first three centuries, but then fled into the wilderness, pursued by the dragon; there she has a place prepared by God, and will remain "a thousand two hundred and threescore prophetic days" or years (Rev. 12:6)—that is, from 325 till 1585.

The reign of Antichrist, with its corruptions and abominations, began with three contemporaneous events: the first Oecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), which split the one Godhead into three idols; the union of Church and State under Constantine, when the king became a monk; and the establishment of the papacy under Sylvester, when the bishop became a king.1143  From the same period he dates the general practice of infant baptism with its destructive consequences. Since that time the true Christians were everywhere persecuted and not allowed to assemble. They were scattered as sheep in the wilderness.

Servetus fully agreed with the Reformers in opposition to the papacy as an antichristian power, but went much further, and had no better opinion of the Protestant churches. He called the Roman Church "the most beastly of beasts and the most impudent of harlots."1144

He finds no less than sixty signs or marks of the reign of Antichrist in the eschatological discourses of Christ, in Daniel 7 and 12), in Paul (2 Thess. 2:3, 4; 1 Tim. 4:1), and especially in the Apocalypse (Rev. 13–18).

But this reign is now drawing to a close. The battle of Michael with Antichrist has already begun in heaven and on earth, and the author of the "Restitution" has sounded the trumpet of war, which will end in the victory of Christ and the true Church. Servetus might have lived to see the millennium (in 1585), but he expected to fall in the battle, and to share in the first resurrection.

He concludes his eschatological chapter on the reign of Antichrist with these words: "Whosoever truly believes that the pope is Antichrist, will also truly believe that the papistical trinity, paedobaptism, and the other sacraments of popery are doctrines of the daemons. O Christ Jesus, thou Son of God, most merciful deliverer, who so often didst deliver thy people from distresses, deliver us poor sinners from this Babylonian captivity of Antichrist, from his hypocrisy, his tyranny, and his idolatry. Amen."1145

7. Eschatology.

Servetus was charged by Calvin and the Council of Geneva with denying the immortality of the soul. This was a heresy punishable by death. Etienne Dolet was executed on the place Maubert at Paris, Aug. 2, 1546, for this denial.1146  But Servetus denied the charge. He taught that the soul was mortal, that it deserved to die on account of sin, but that Christ communicates to it new life by grace.1147  Christ has brought immortality to light (2 Tim. 1:10; 1 Pet. 1:21–25). This seems to be the doctrine of conditional immortality of believers. But he held that all the souls of the departed go to the gloomy abode of Sheol to undergo a certain purification before judgment. This is the baptism of blood and fire, as distinct from the baptism of water and spirit (1 Cor. 3:11–15). The good and the bad are separated in death. Those who die without being regenerated by Christ have no hope. The righteous progress in sanctification. They pray for us (for which he gives six reasons, and quotes Zach. 1:12, 13; Luke 15:10; 16:27, 28; 1 Cor. 13:18); but we ought not to pray for them, for they do not need our prayers, and there is no Scripture precept on the subject.1148

The reign of the pope or Antichrist will be followed by the millennial reign of Christ on earth (Rev. 20:4–7). Then will take place the first resurrection.

Servetus was a chiliast, but not in the carnal Jewish sense. He blames Melanchthon for deriding, with the papal crowd, all those as chiliasts who believe in the glorious reign of Christ on earth, according to the book of Revelation and the teaching of the school of St. John.1149

The general resurrection and judgment follow after the millennium. Men will be raised in the flower of manhood, the thirtieth year—the year of baptismal regeneration, the year in which Christ was baptized and entered upon his public ministry.1150  "Then wilt thou," so he addresses Philip Melanchthon, who, next to Calvin, was his greatest enemy, "with all thy senses, see, feel, taste, and hear God himself. If thou dost not believe this, thou dost not believe in a resurrection of the flesh and a bodily transformation of thy organs."1151

After the general judgment, Christ will surrender his mediatorial reign with its glories to the Father, and God will be all in all (Acts 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:24–28).

§ 148. The Trial and Condemnation of Servetus at Vienne.

See D’artigny in Nouveaux Memoires d’histoire, etc.; Mosheim’s Neue Nachrichten, etc.; and Calvin’s Opera, VIII. 833–856.

Shortly after the publication of the "Restitution," the fact was made known to the Roman Catholic authorities at Lyons through Guillaume Trie, a native of Lyons and a convert from Romanism, residing at that time in Geneva. He corresponded with a cousin at Lyons, by the name of Arneys, a zealous Romanist, who tried to reconvert him to his religion, and reproached the Church of Geneva with the want of discipline. On the 26th of February, 1553, he wrote to Arneys that in Geneva vice and blasphemy were punished, while in France a dangerous heretic was tolerated, who deserved to be burned by Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, who blasphemed the holy Trinity, called Jesus Christ an idol, and the baptism of infants a diabolic invention. He gave his name as Michael Servetus, who called himself at present Villeneuve, a practising physician at Vienne. In confirmation he sent the first leaf of the "Restitution," and named the printer Balthasar Arnoullet at Vienne.1152

This letter, and two others of Trie which followed, look very much as if they had been dictated or inspired by Calvin. Servetus held him responsible.1153  But Calvin denied the imputation as a calumny.1154  At the same time he speaks rather lightly of it, and thinks that it would not have been dishonorable to denounce so dangerous a heretic to the proper authorities. He also frankly acknowledges that he caused his arrest at Geneva.1155  He could see no material difference in principle between doing the same thing, indirectly, at Vienne and, directly, at Geneva. He simply denies that he was the originator of the papal trial and of the letter of Trie; but he does not deny that he furnished material for evidence, which was quite well known and publicly made use of in the trial where Servetus’s letters to Calvin are mentioned as pieces justificatives. There can be no doubt that Trie, who describes himself as a comparatively unlettered man, got his information about Servetus and his book from Calvin, or his colleagues, either directly from conversation, or from pulpit denunciations. We must acquit Calvin of direct agency, but we cannot free him of indirect agency in this denunciation.1156

Calvin’s indirect agency, in the first, and his direct agency in the second arrest of Servetus admit of no proper justification, and are due to an excess of zeal for orthodoxy.

Arneys conveyed this information to the Roman Catholic authorities. The matter was brought to the knowledge of Cardinal Tournon, at that time archbishop of Lyons, a cruel persecutor of the Protestants, and Matthias Ory, a regularly trained inquisitor of the Roman see for the kingdom of France. They at once instituted judicial proceedings.

Villeneuve was summoned before the civil court of Vienne on the 16th of March. He kept the judges waiting for two hours (during which he probably destroyed all suspicious papers), and appeared without any show of embarrassment. He affirmed that he had lived long at Vienne, in frequent company with ecclesiastics, without incurring any suspicion for heresy, and had always avoided all cause of offence. His apartments were searched, but nothing was found to incriminate him. On the following day the printing establishment of Arnoullet was searched with no better result. On the return of Arnoullet from a journey he was summoned before the tribunal, but he professed ignorance.

Inquisitor Ory now requested Arneys to secure additional proof from his cousin at Geneva. Trie forwarded on the 26th of March several autograph letters of Servetus which, he said, he had great difficulty in obtaining from Calvin (who ought to have absolutely refused). He added some pages from Calvin’s Institutes with the marginal objections of Servetus to infant baptism in his handwriting. Ory, not yet satisfied, despatched a special messenger to Geneva to secure the manuscript of the Restitutio, and proof that Villeneuve was Servetus and Arnoullet his printer. Trie answered at once, on the last of March, that the manuscript of the Restitutio had been at Lausanne for a couple of years (with Viret), that Servetus had been banished from the churches of Germany (Basel and Strassburg) twenty-four years ago, and that Arnoullet and Guéroult were his printers, as he knew from a good source which he would not mention (perhaps Frellon of Lyons).

The cardinal of Lyons and the archbishop of Vienne, after consultation with Inquisitor Ory and other ecclesiastics, now gave orders on the 4th of April for the arrest of Villeneuve and Arnoullet. They were confined in separate rooms in the Palais Delphinal. Villeneuve was allowed to keep a servant, and to see his friends. Ory was sent forth, hastened to Vienne, and arrived there the next morning.

After dinner Villeneuve, having been sworn on the Holy Gospels, was interrogated as to his name, age, and course of life. In his answers he told some palpable falsehoods to mislead the judges, and to prevent his being identified with Servetus, the heretic. He omitted to mention his residence in Toulouse, where he had been known under his real name, as the books of the University would show. He denied that he had written any other books than those on medicine and geography, although he had corrected many. On being shown some notes he had written on Calvin’s Institutes about infant baptism, he acknowledged at last the authorship of the notes, but added that he must have written them inconsiderately for the purpose of discussion, and he submitted himself entirely to his holy Mother, the Church, from whose teachings he had never wished to differ.

At the second examination, on the sixth day of April, he was shown some of his epistles to Calvin. He declared, with tears in his eyes, that those letters were written when he was in Germany some twenty-five years ago, when there was printed in that country a book by a certain Servetus, a Spaniard, but from what part of Spain he did not know!  At Paris he had heard Mons. Calvin spoken of as a learned man, and had entered into correspondence with him from curiosity, but begged him to keep his letters as confidential and as brotherly corrections.1157  Calvin suspected, he continued, that I was Servetus, to which I replied, I was not Servetus, but would continue to personate Servetus in order to continue the discussion. Finally we fell out, got angry, abused each other, and broke off the correspondence about ten years ago. He protested before God and his judges that he had no intention to dogmatize or to teach anything against the Church or the Christian religion. He told similar lies when other letters were laid before him.

Servetus now resolved to escape, perhaps with the aid of some friends, after he had secured through his servant a debt of three hundred crowns from the Grand Prior of the monastery of St. Pierre. On the 7th of April, at four o’clock in the morning, he dressed himself, threw a night-gown over his clothes, and put a velvet cap upon his head, and, pretending a call of nature, he secured from the unsuspecting jailer the key to the garden. He leaped from the roof of the outhouse and made his escape through the court and over the bridge across the Rhone. He carried with him his golden chain around his neck, valued at twenty crowns, six gold rings on his fingers, and plenty of money in his pockets.

Two hours elapsed before his escape became known. An alarm was given, the gates were closed, and the neighboring houses searched; but all in vain.

Nevertheless the prosecution went on. Sufficient evidence was found that the "Restitution" had been printed in Vienne; extracts were made from it to prove the heresies contained therein. The civil court, without waiting for the judgment of the spiritual tribunal (which was not given until six months afterwards), sentenced Servetus on the 17th of June, for heretical doctrines, for violation of the royal ordinances, and for escape from the royal prison, to pay a fine of one thousand livres tournois to the Dauphin, to be carried in a cart, together with his books, on a market-day through the principal streets to the place of execution, and to be burnt alive by a slow fire.1158

On the same day he was burnt in effigy, together with the five bales of his book, which had been consigned to Merrin at Lyons and brought back to Vienne.

The goods and chattels of the fugitive were seized and confiscated. The property he had acquired from his medical practice and literary labors amounted to four thousand crowns. The king bestowed them on the son of Monsieur de Montgiron, lieutenant-general of Dauphiné and presiding judge of the court.1159

Arnoullet was discharged on proving that he had been deceived by Guéroult, who seems to have escaped by flight. He took care that the remaining copies of the heretical book in France should be destroyed. Stephens, the famous publisher, who had come to Geneva in 1552, sacrificed the copies in his hands. Those that had been sent to Frankfort were burnt at the instance of Calvin.

On the 23d of December, two months after the execution of Servetus, the ecclesiastical tribunal of Vienne pronounced a sentence of condemnation on him.1160

§ 149. Servetus flees to Geneva and is arrested.

Rilliet: Relation du procès, etc., quoted above, p. 684. (Tweedie’s translation in his Calvin and Servetus, pp. 62 sqq.) Opera, VIII. 725–856.

Escaped from one danger of death, Servetus, as by "a fatal madness," as Calvin says, rushed into another.1161  Did he aspire to the glory of martyrdom in Geneva, as he seemed to intimate in his letter to Poupin?  But he had just escaped martyrdom in France. Or did he wish to have a personal interview with Calvin, which he had sought in Paris in 1534, and again in Vienne in 1546?  But after publishing his abusive letters and suspecting him for denunciation, he could hardly entertain such a wish. Or did he merely intend to pass through the place on his way to Italy?  But in this case he need not tarry there for weeks, and he might have taken another route through Savoy, or by the sea. Or did he hope to dethrone, the pope of Geneva with the aid of his enemies, who had just then the political control of the Republic?1162

He lingered in France for about three months. He intended, first, as he declared at the trial, to proceed to Spain, but finding the journey unsafe, he turned his eye to Naples, where he hoped to make a living as physician among the numerous Spanish residents. This he could easily have done under a new name.

He took his way through Geneva. He arrived there after the middle of July, 1553, alone and on foot, having left his horse on the French border. He took up his lodging in the Auberge de la Rose, a small inn on the banks of the lake. His dress and manner, his gold chain and gold rings, excited attention. On being asked by his host whether he was married, he answered, like a light-hearted cavalier, that women enough could be found without marrying.1163  This frivolous reply provoked suspicion of immorality, and was made use of at the trial, but unjustly, for a fracture disabled him for marriage and prevented libertinage.1164

He remained about a month, and then intended to leave for Zürich. He asked his host to hire a boat to convey him over the lake some distance eastward.

But before his departure he attended church, on Sunday, the 13th of August. He was recognized and arrested by an officer of the police in the name of the Council.1165

Calvin was responsible for this arrest, as he frankly and repeatedly acknowledged.1166  It was a fatal mistake. Servetus was a stranger and had committed no offence in Geneva. Calvin ought to have allowed him quietly to proceed on his intended journey. Why then did he act otherwise?  Certainly not from personal malice, nor other selfish reasons; for he only increased the difficulty of his critical situation, and ran the risk of his defeat by the Libertine party then in power. It was an error of judgment. He was under the false impression that Servetus had just come from Venice, the headquarters of Italian humanists and sceptics, to propagate his errors in Geneva, and he considered it his duty to make so dangerous a man harmless, by bringing him either to conviction and recantation, or to deserved punishment. He was determined to stand or fall with the principle of purity of doctrine and discipline. Rilliet justifies the arrest as a necessary measure of self-defence. "Under pain of abdication," he says, "Calvin must do everything rather than suffer by his side in Geneva a man whom he considered the greatest enemy of the Reformation; and the critical position in which he saw it in the bosom of the Republic, was one motive more to remove, if it was possible, the new element of dissolution which the free sojourn of Servetus would have created … . To tolerate Servetus with impunity at Geneva would have been for Calvin to exile himself … He had no alternative. The man whom a Calvinist accusation had caused to be arrested, tried, and condemned to the flames in France, could not find an asylum in the city from which that accusation had issued."1167

§ 150. State of Political Parties at Geneva in 1553.

Calvin’s position in Geneva at that time was very critical. For in the year 1553 he was in the fever-heat of the struggle for church discipline with the Patriots and Libertines, who had gained a temporary ascendency in the government. Amy Perrin, the leader of the patriotic party, was then captain-general and chief syndic, and several of his kinsmen and friends were members of the Little Council of Twenty-five.1168  During the trial of Servetus the Council sustained Philibert Berthelier against the act of excommunication by the Consistory, and took church discipline into its own hands. The foreign refugees were made harmless by being deprived of their arms. Violence was threatened to the Reformer. He was everywhere saluted as "a heretic," and insulted on the streets. Beza says: "In the year 1553, the wickedness of the seditions, hastening to a close, was so turbulent that both Church and State were brought into extreme danger …. . Everything seemed to be in a state of preparation for accomplishing the plans of the seditious, since all was subject to their power."  And Calvin, at the close of that year, wrote to a friend: "For four years the factions have done all to lead by degrees to the overthrow of this Church, already very weak. Behold two years of our life have passed as if we lived among the avowed enemies of the gospel."

The hostility of the Council to Calvin and his discipline continued even after the execution of Servetus for nearly two more years. He asked the assistance of Bullinger and the Church of Zürich to come to his aid again in this struggle.1169  He wrote to Ambrose Blaurer, Feb. 6, 1554: "These last few years evil disposed persons have not ceased on every occasion to create for us new subjects of vexation. At length in their endeavors to render null our excommunication, there is no excess of folly they have left unattempted. Everywhere the contest was long maintained with much violence, because in the senate and among the people the passions of the contending parties had been so much inflamed that there was some risk of a tumult."1170

We do not know whether Servetus was aware of this state of things. But he could not have come at a time more favorable to him and more unfavorable to Calvin. Among the Libertines and Patriots, who hated the yoke of Calvin even more than the yoke of the pope, Servetus found natural supporters who, in turn, would gladly use him for political purposes. This fact emboldened him to take such a defiant attitude in the trial and to overwhelm Calvin with abuse.

The final responsibility of the condemnation, therefore, rests with the Council of Geneva, which would probably have acted otherwise, if it had not been strongly influenced by the judgment of the Swiss Churches and the government of Bern. Calvin conducted the theological part of the examination of the trial, but had no direct influence upon the result. His theory was that the Church may convict and denounce the heretic theologically, but that his condemnation and punishment is the exclusive function of the State, and that it is one of its most sacred duties to punish attacks made on the Divine majesty.

"From the time Servetus was convicted of his heresy," says Calvin, "I have not uttered a word about his punishment, as all honest men will bear witness; and I challenge even the malignant to deny it if they can."1171  One thing only he did: he expressed the wish for a mitigation of his punishment.1172  And this humane sentiment is almost the only good thing that can be recorded to his honor in this painful trial.

§ 151. The First Act of the Trial at Geneva.

Servetus was confined near the Church of St. Pierre, in the ancient residence of the bishops of Geneva, which had been turned into a prison. His personal property consisted of ninety-seven crowns, a chain of gold weighing about twenty crowns, and six gold rings (a large turquoise, a white sapphire, a diamond, a ruby, a large emerald of Peru, and a signet ring of coralline). These valuables were surrendered to Pierre Tissot, and after the process given to the hospital. The prisoner was allowed to have paper and ink, and such books as could be procured at Geneva or Lyons at his own expense. Calvin lent him Ignatius, Polycarp, Tertullian, and Irenaeus. But he was denied the benefit of counsel, according to the ordinances of 1543. This is contrary to the law of equity and is one of the worst features of the trial. He was not subjected to the usual torture.

The laws of Geneva demanded that the accuser should become a prisoner with the accused, in order that in the event of the charge proving false, the former might undergo punishment in the place of the accused. The person employed for this purpose was Nicolas de la Fontaine, a Frenchman, a theological student, and Calvin’s private secretary. The accused as well as the accuser were foreigners. Another law obliged the Little Council to examine every prisoner within twenty-four hours after his arrest. The advocate or "Speaker" of Nicolas de la Fontaine in the trial was Germain Colladon, likewise a Frenchman and an able lawyer, who had fled for his religion, and aided Calvin in framing a new constitution for Geneva.

The trial began on the 15th of August and continued, with interruptions, for more than two months. It was conducted in French and took place in the Bishop’s Palace, according to the forms prescribed by law, in the presence of the Little Council, the herald of the city, the Lord-Lieutenant, and several citizens, who had a right to sit in criminal processes, but did not take part in the judgment. Among these was Berthelier, the bitter enemy of Calvin.

Servetus answered the preliminary questions as to his name, age, and previous history more truthfully than he had done before the Catholic tribunal, and incidentally accused Calvin of having caused the prosecution at Vienne. It is not owing to Calvin, he said, that he was not burnt alive there.

The deed of accusation, as lodged by Nicholas de la Fontaine, consisted of thirty-eight articles which were drawn up by Calvin (as he himself informs us), and were fortified by references to the books of Servetus, which were produced in evidence, especially the "Restitution of Christianity," both the manuscript copy, which Servetus had sent to Calvin in advance, and a printed copy.1173

The principal charges were, that be had published heretical opinions and blasphemies concerning the Trinity, the person of Christ, and infant baptism. He gave evasive or orthodox-sounding answers. He confessed to believe in the trinity of persons, but understood the word "person" in a different sense from that used by modern writers, and appealed to the first teachers of the Church and the disciples of the apostles.1174  He denied at first that he had called the Trinity three devils and Cerberus;1175  but he had done so repeatedly and confessed it afterwards. He professed to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God according to his divinity and humanity; that the flesh of Christ came from heaven and of the substance of God; but as to the matter it came from the Virgin Mary. He denied the view imputed to him that the soul was mortal. He admitted that he had called infant baptism "a diabolical invention and infernal falsehood destructive of Christianity."  This was a dangerous admission; for the Anabaptists were suspected of seditious and revolutionary opinions.

He was also charged with having, "in the person of M. Calvin, defamed the doctrines of the gospel and of the Church of Geneva."  To this he replied that in what he had formerly written against Calvin, in his own defence, he had not intended to injure him, but to show him his errors and faults, which he was ready to prove by Scripture and good reasons before a full congregation.

This was a bold challenge. Calvin was willing to accept it, but the Council declined, fearing to lose the control of the affair by submitting it to the tribunal of public opinion. The friends of Servetus would have run the risk of seeing him defeated in public debate. That charge, however, which seemed to betray personal ill-feeling of Calvin, was afterwards very properly omitted.

On the following day, the 16th of August, Berthelier, then smarting under the sentence of excommunication by the Consistory, openly came to the defence of Servetus, and had a stormy encounter with Colladon, which is omitted in the official record, but indicated by blanks and the abrupt termination: "Here they proceeded no further, but adjourned till to-morrow at mid-day."

On Thursday, the 17th of August, Calvin himself appeared before the Council as the real accuser, and again on the 21st of August.1176  He also conferred with his antagonist in writing. Servetus was not a match for Calvin either in learning or argument; but he showed great skill and some force.

He contemptuously repelled the frivolous charge that, in his Ptolemy, he had contradicted the authority of Moses, by describing Palestine as an unfruitful country (which it was then, and is now). He wiped his mouth and said, "Let us go on; there is nothing wrong there."

The charge of having, in his notes on the Latin Bible, explained the servant of God in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, as meaning King Cyrus, instead of the Saviour, he disposed of by distinguishing two senses of prophecy—the literal and historical sense which referred to Cyrus, and the mystical and principal sense which referred to Christ. He quoted Nicolaus de Lyra; but Calvin showed him the error, and asserts that he audaciously quoted books which he had never examined.

As to his calling the Trinity "a Cerberus" and "a dream of Augustin," and the Trinitarians "atheists," he said that he did not mean the true Trinity, which he believed himself, but the false trinity of his opponents; and that the oldest teachers before the Council of Nicaea did not teach that trinity, and did not use the word. Among them he quoted Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. Calvin refuted his assertion by quotations from Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen. On this occasion he charges him, unjustly, with total ignorance of Greek, because he was embarrassed by a Greek quotation from Justin Martyr, and called for a Latin version.1177

In discussing the relation of the divine substance to that of the creatures, Servetus declared that "all creatures are of the substance of God, and that God is in all things."  Calvin asked him: "How, unhappy man, if any one strike the pavement with his foot and say that he tramples on thy God, wouldst thou not be horrified at having the Majesty of heaven subjected to such indignity?"  To this Servet replied: "I have no doubt that this bench, and this buffet, and all you can show me, are of the substance of God."  When it was objected that in his view God must be substantially even in the devil, he burst out into a laugh, and rejoined: "Can you doubt this?  I hold this for a general maxim, that all things are part and parcel of God, and that the nature of things is his substantial Spirit."1178

The result of this first act of the trial was unfavorable to the prisoner, but not decisive.

Calvin used the freedom of the pulpit to counteract the efforts of the Libertine party in favor of Servetus.

§ 152. The Second Act of the Trial at Geneva.

The original prosecution being discharged, the case was handed over to the attorney-general, Claude Rigot, in compliance with the criminal ordinance of 1543. Thus the second act of the trial began. The prisoner was examined again, and a new indictment of thirty articles was prepared, which bore less on the actual heresies of the accused than on their dangerous practical tendency and his persistency in spreading them.1179

The Council wrote also to the judges of Vienne to procure particulars of the charges which had been brought against him there.

Servetus defended himself before the Council on the 23d of August, with ingenuity and apparent frankness against the new charges of quarrelsomeness and immorality. As to the latter, he pleaded his physical infirmity which protected him against the temptation of licentiousness. He had always studied the Scripture and tried to lead a Christian life. He did not think that his book would disturb the peace of Christendom, but would promote the truth. He denied that he had come to Geneva for any sinister purpose; he merely wished to pass through on his way to Zürich and Naples.

At the same time he prepared a written petition to the Council, which was received on the 24th of August. He demanded his release from the criminal charge for several reasons, which ought to have had considerable weight: that it was unknown in the Christian Church before the time of Constantine to try cases of heresy before a civil tribunal; that he had not offended against the laws either in Geneva or elsewhere; that he was not seditious nor turbulent; that his books treated of abstruse questions, and were addressed to the learned; that he had not spoken of these subjects to anybody but Oecolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; that he had ever refuted the Anabaptists, who rebelled against the magistrates and wished to have all things in common. In case he was not released, he demanded the aid of an advocate acquainted with the laws and customs of the country. Certainly a very reasonable request.1180

The attorney-general prepared a second indictment in refutation of the arguments of Servetus, who had studied law at Toulouse. He showed that the first Christian emperors claimed for themselves the cognizance and trial of heresies, and that their laws and constitutions condemned antitrinitarian heretics and blasphemers to death. He charged him with falsehood in declaring that he had written against the Anabaptists, and that he had not communicated his doctrine to any person during the last thirty years. The counsel asked for was refused because it was forbidden by the criminal statutes (1543), and because there was "not one jot of apparent innocence which requires an attorney."  The very thing to be proved!

A new examination followed which elicited some points of interest. Servetus stated his belief that the Reformation would progress much further than Luther and Calvin intended, and that new things were always first rejected, but afterwards received. To the absurd charge of making use of the Koran, he replied that he had quoted it for the glory of Christ, that the Koran abounds in what is good, and that even in a wicked book one may find some good things.

On the last day of August the Little Council received answer from Vienne. The commandant of the royal palace in that city arrived in Geneva, communicated to them a copy of the sentence of death pronounced against Villeneuve, and begged them to send him back to France that the sentence might be executed on the living man as it had been already executed on his effigy and books. The Council refused to surrender Servetus, in accordance with analogous cases, but promised to do full justice. The prisoner himself, who could see only a burning funeral pile for him in Vienne, preferred to be tried in Geneva, where he had some chance of acquittal or lighter punishment. He incidentally justified his habit of attending mass at Vienne by the example of Paul, who went to the temple, like the Jews; yet he confessed that in doing so he had sinned through fear of death.1181

The communication from Vienne had probably the influence of stimulating the zeal of the Council for orthodoxy. They wished not to be behind the Roman Church in that respect. But the issue was still uncertain.

The Council again confronted Servetus with Calvin on the first day of September. On the same day it granted, in spite of the strong protest of Calvin, permission to Philibert Berthelier to approach the communion table. It thus annulled the act of excommunication by the Consistory, and arrogated to itself the power of ecclesiastical discipline.

A few hours afterwards the investigation was resumed in the prison. Perrin and Berthelier were present as judges, and came to the aid of Servetus in the oral debate with Calvin, but, it seems, without success; for they resorted to a written discussion in which Servetus could better defend himself, and in which Calvin might complicate his already critical position. They wished, moreover, to refer the affair to the Churches of Switzerland which, in the case of Bolsec, had shown themselves much more tolerant than Calvin. Servetus demanded such reference. Calvin did not like it, but did not openly oppose it.

The Council, without entering on the discussion, decided that Calvin should extract in Latin, from the books of Servetus, the objectionable articles, word for word, contained therein; that Servetus should write his answers and vindications, also in Latin; that Calvin should in his turn furnish his replies; and that these documents be forwarded to the Swiss Churches as a basis of judgment. All this was fair and impartial.1182

On the same day Calvin extracted thirty-eight propositions from the books of Servetus with references, but without comments.

Then, turning with astonishing energy from one enemy to the other, he appeared before the Little Council on the 2d of September to protest most earnestly against their protection of Berthelier, who intended to present himself on the following day as a guest at the Lord’s table, and by the strength of the civil power to force Calvin to give him the tokens of the body and blood of Christ. He declared before the Council that he would rather die than act against his conscience. The Council did not yield, but resolved secretly to advise Berthelier to abstain from receiving the sacrament for the present. Calvin, ignorant of this secret advice, and resolved to conquer or to die, thundered from the pulpit of St. Peter on the 3d of September his determination to refuse, at the risk of his life, the sacred elements to an excommunicated person. Berthelier did not dare to approach the table. Calvin had achieved a moral victory over the Council.1183

In the mean time Servetus had, within the space of twenty-four hours, prepared a written defence, as directed by the Council, against the thirty-eight articles of Calvin. It was both apologetic and boldly aggressive, clear, keen, violent, and bitter. He contemptuously repelled Calvin’s interference in the trial, and charged him with presumption in framing articles of faith after the fashion of the doctors of the Sorbonne, without Scripture proof.1184  He affirmed that he either misunderstood him or craftily perverted his meaning. He quotes from Tertullian, Irenaeus, and pseudo-Clement in support of his views. He calls him a disciple of Simon Magus, a criminal accuser, and a homicide.1185  He ridiculed the idea that such a man should call himself an orthodox minister of the Church.

Calvin replied within two days in a document of twenty-three folio pages, which were signed by all the fourteen ministers of Geneva.1186  He meets the patristic quotations of Servetus with counter-quotations, with Scripture passages and solid arguments, and charges him in conclusion with the intention "to subvert all religion."1187

These three documents, which contained the essence of the doctrinal discussion, were presented to the Little Council on Tuesday the 5th of September.

On the 15th of September Servetus addressed a petition to the Council in which he attacked Calvin as his persecutor, complained of his miserable condition in prison and want of the necessary clothing, and demanded an advocate and the transfer of his trial to the Large Council of Two Hundred, where he had reason to expect a majority in his favor.1188  This course had probably been suggested to him (as Rilliet conjectures) by Perrin and Berthelier through the jailer, Claude de Genève, who was a member of the Libertine party.

On the same day the Little Council ordered an improvement of the prisoner’s wardrobe (which, however, was delayed by culpable neglect), and sent him the three documents, with permission to make a last reply to Calvin, but took no action on his appeal to the Large Council, having no disposition to renounce its own authority.

Servetus at once prepared a reply by way of explanatory annotations on the margin and between the lines of the memorial of Calvin and the ministers. These annotations are full of the coarsest abuse, and read like the production of a madman. He calls Calvin again and again a liar,1189 an impostor, a miserable wretch (nebulo pessimus), a hypocrite, a disciple of Simon Magus, etc. Take these specimens: "Do you deny that you are a man-slayer?  I will prove it by your acts. You dare not deny that you are Simon Magus. As for me, I am firm in so good a cause, and do not fear death … . You deal with sophistical arguments without Scripture … . You do not understand what you say. You howl like a blind man in the desert .... You lie, you lie, you lie, you ignorant calumniator .... Madness is in you when you persecute to death … . I wish that all your magic were still in the belly of your mother … . I wish I were free to make a catalogue of your errors. Whoever is not a Simon Magus is considered a Pelagian by Calvin. All, therefore, who have been in Christendom are damned by Calvin; even the apostles, their disciples, the ancient doctors of the Church and all the rest. For no one ever entirely abolished free-will except that Simon Magus. Thou liest, thou liest, thou liest, thou liest, thou miserable wretch."

He concludes with the remark that, his doctrine was met merely by clamors, not by argument or any authority," and he subscribed his name as one who had Christ for his certain protector.1190

He sent these notes to the Council on the 18th of September. It was shown to Calvin, but he did not deem it expedient to make a reply. Silence in this case was better than speech.

The debate, therefore, between the two divines was closed, and the trial became an affair of Protestant Switzerland, which should act as a jury.

§ 153. Consultation of the Swiss Churches. The Defiant Attitude of Servetus.

On the 19th of September the Little Council, in accordance with a resolution adopted on the 4th, referred the case of Servetus to the magistrates and pastors of the Reformed Churches of Bern, Zürich, Schaffhausen, and Basel for their judgment.

Two days afterwards Jaquemoz Jernoz, as the official messenger, was despatched on his mission with a circular letter and the documents,—namely the theological debate between Calvin and Servetus,—a copy of the "Restitution of Christianity," and the works of Tertullian and Irenaeus, who were the chief patristic authorities quoted by both parties.

On the result of this mission the case of Servetus was made to depend. Servetus himself had expressed a wish that this course should be adopted, hoping, it seems, to gain a victory, or at least an escape from capital punishment. On the 22d of August he was willing to be banished from Geneva; but on the 22d of September he asked the Council to put Calvin on trial, and handed in a list of articles on which he should be interrogated. He thus admitted the civil jurisdiction in matters of religious opinions which he had formerly denied, and was willing to stake his life on the decision, provided that his antagonist should be exposed to the same fate.1191  Among the four "great and infallible" reasons why Calvin should be condemned, he assigned the fact that he wished to "repress the truth of Jesus Christ, and follow the doctrines of Simon Magus, against all the doctors that ever were in the Church."  He declared in his petition that Calvin, like a magician, ought to be exterminated, and his goods be confiscated and given to Servetus, in compensation for the loss he had sustained through Calvin.

To dislodge Calvin from his position," says Rilliet, "to expel him from Geneva, to satisfy a just vengeance—these were the objects toward which Servetus rushed."

But the Council took no notice of his petition.

On the 10th of October he sent another letter to the Council, imploring them, for the love of Christ, to grant him such justice as they would not refuse to a Turk, and complaining that nothing had been done for his comfort as promised, but that he was more wretched than ever. The petition had some effect. The Lord Syndic, Darlod, and the Secretary of State, Claude Roset, were directed to visit his prison and to provide some articles of dress for his relief.

On the 18th of October the messenger of the State returned with the answers from the four foreign churches. They were forthwith translated into French, and examined by the magistrates. We already know the contents.1192  The churches were unanimous in condemning the theological doctrines of Servetus, and in the testimony of respect and affection for Calvin and his colleagues. Even Bern, which was not on good terms with Calvin, and had two years earlier counselled toleration in the case of Bolsec, regarded Servetus a much more dangerous heretic and advised to remove this "pest."  Yet none of the Churches consulted expressly suggested the death penalty. They left the mode of punishment with the discretion of a sovereign State. Haller, the pastor of Bern, however, wrote to Bullinger of Zürich that, if Servetus had fallen into the hands of Bernese justice, he would undoubtedly have been condemned to the flames.

§ 154. Condemnation of Servetus.

On the 23d of October the Council met for a careful examination of the replies of the churches, but could not come to a decision on account of the absence of several members, especially Perrin, the Chief Syndic, who feigned sickness. Servetus had failed to excite any sympathy among the people, and had injured his cause by his obstinate and defiant conduct. The Libertines, who wished to use him as a tool for political purposes, were discouraged and intimidated by the counsel of Bern, to which they looked for protection against the hated régime of Calvin.

The full session of the Council on the 26th, to which all counsellors were summoned on the faith of their oath, decided the fate of the unfortunate prisoner, but not without a stormy discussion. Amy Perrin presided and made a last effort in favor of Servetus. He at first insisted upon his acquittal, which would have been equivalent to the expulsion of Calvin and a permanent triumph of the party opposed to him. Being baffled, he proposed, as another alternative, that Servetus, in accordance with his own wishes, be transferred to the Council of the Two Hundred. But this proposal was also rejected. He was influenced by political passion rather than by sympathy with heresy or love of toleration, which had very few advocates at that time. When he perceived that the majority of the Council was inclined to a sentence of death, he quitted the Senate House with a few others.

The Council had no doubt of its jurisdiction in the case; it had to respect the unanimous judgment of the Churches, the public horror of heresy and blasphemy, and the imperial laws of Christendom, which were appealed to by the attorney-general. The decision was unanimous. Even the wish of Calvin to substitute the sword for the fire was overruled, and the papal practice of the auto-da-fé followed, though without the solemn mockery of a religious festival.

The judges, after enumerating the crimes of Servetus, in calling the holy Trinity a monster with three heads, blaspheming the Son of God, denying infant-baptism as an invention of the devil and of witchcraft, assailing the Christian faith, and after mentioning that he had been condemned and burned in effigy at Vienne, and had during his residence in Geneva persisted in his vile and detestable errors, and called all true Christians tritheists, atheists, sorcerers, putting aside all remonstrances and corrections with a malicious and perverse obstinacy, pronounced the fearful sentence:—

"We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to a stake and burnt alive, together with thy book, as well the one written by thy hand as the printed one, even till thy body be reduced to ashes; and thus shalt thou finish thy days to furnish an example to others who might wish to commit the like.

"And we command our Lieutenant to see that this our present sentence be executed."1193

Rilliet, who published the official report of the trial in the interest of history, without special sympathy with Calvin, says that the sentence of condemnation is "odious before our consciences, but was just according to the law."  Let us thank God that those unchristian and barbarous laws are abolished forever.

Calvin communicated to Farel on the 26th of October a brief summary of the result, in which he says: "The messenger has returned from the Swiss Churches. They are unanimous in pronouncing1194 that Servetus has now renewed those impious errors with which Satan formerly disturbed the Church, and that he is a monster not to be borne. Those of Basel are judicious. The Zürichers are the most vehement of all … They of Schaffhausen agree. To an appropriate letter from the Bernese is added one from the Senate in which they stimulate ours not a little. Caesar, the comedian [so he sarcastically called Perrin], after feigning illness for three days, at length went up to the assembly in order to free that wretch [Servetus] from punishment. Nor was he ashamed to ask that the case be referred to the Council of the Two Hundred. However, Servetus was without dissent condemned. He will be led forth to punishment to-morrow. We endeavored to alter the mode of his death, but in vain. Why we did not succeed, I defer for narration until I see you."

This letter reached Farel on his way to Geneva, where he arrived on the same day, in time to hear the sentence of condemnation. He had come at the request of Calvin, to perform the last pastoral duties to the prisoner, which could not so well be done by any of the pastors of Geneva.

§ 155. Execution of Servetus. Oct. 27, 1553.

Farel, in a letter to Ambrosius Blaarer, December, 1553, preserved in the library of St. Gall, and copied in the Thesaurus Hottingerianus of the city library of Zürich, gives an account of the last moments and execution of Servetus. See Henry, vol. III. Beilage, pp. 72–75. Calvin, at the beginning of his "Defence," Opera, VIII. 460, relates his own last interview with Servetus in prison on the day of his death.

When Servetus, on the following morning, heard of the unexpected sentence of death, he was horror-struck and behaved like a madman. He uttered groans, and cried aloud in Spanish, "Mercy, mercy!"

The venerable old Farel visited him in the prison at seven in the morning, and remained with him till the hour of his death. He tried to convince him of his error. Servetus asked him to quote a single Scripture passage where Christ was called "Son of God" before his incarnation. Farel could not satisfy him. He brought about an interview with Calvin, of which the latter gives us an account. Servetus, proud as he was, humbly asked his pardon. Calvin protested that be had never pursued any personal quarrel against him. "Sixteen years ago," he said, "I spared no pains at Paris to gain you to our Lord. You then shunned the light. I did not cease to exhort you by letters, but all in vain. You have heaped upon me I know not how much fury rather than anger. But as to the rest, I pass by what concerns myself. Think rather of crying for mercy to God whom you have blasphemed."  This address had no more effect than the exhortation of Farel, and Calvin left the room in obedience, as he says, to St. Paul’s order (Tit. 3:10, 11), to withdraw from a self-condemned heretic. Servetus appeared as mild and humble as he had been bold and arrogant, but did not change his conviction.

At eleven o’clock on the 27th of October, Servetus was led from the prison to the gates of the City Hall, to hear the sentence read from the balcony by the Lord Syndic Darlod. When he heard the last words, he fell on his knees and exclaimed: "The sword! in mercy!  and not fire!  Or I may lose my soul in despair."  He protested that if he had sinned, it was through ignorance. Farel raised him up and said: "Confess thy crime, and God will have mercy on your soul."  Servetus replied:, I am not guilty; I have not merited death."  Then he smote his breast, invoked God for pardon, confessed Christ as his Saviour, and besought God to pardon his accusers.1195

On the short journey to the place of execution, Farel again attempted to obtain a confession, but Servetus was silent. He showed the courage and consistency of a martyr in these last awful moments.

Champel is a little bill south of Geneva with a fine view on one of the loveliest paradises of nature.1196  There was prepared a funeral pile hidden in part by the autumnal leaves of the oak trees. The Lord Lieutenant and the herald on horseback, both arrayed in the insignia of their office, arrive with the doomed man and the old pastor, followed by a small procession of spectators. Farel invites Servetus to solicit the prayers of the people and to unite his prayers with theirs. Servetus obeys in silence. The executioner fastens him by iron chains to the stake amidst the fagots, puts a crown of leaves covered with sulphur on his head, and binds his book by his side. The sight of the flaming torch extorts from him a piercing shriek of "misericordias" in his native tongue. The spectators fall back with a shudder. The flames soon reach him and consume his mortal frame in the forty-fourth year of his fitful life. In the last moment he is heard to pray, in smoke and agony, with a loud voice: "Jesus Christ, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me!"1197

This was at once a confession of his faith and of his error. He could not be induced, says Farel, to confess that Christ was the eternal Son of God.

The tragedy ended when the clock of St. Peter’s struck twelve. The people quietly dispersed to their homes. Farel returned at once to Neuchâtel, even without calling on Calvin. The subject was too painful to be discussed.

The conscience and piety of that age approved of the execution, and left little room for the emotions of compassion. But two hundred years afterwards a distinguished scholar and minister of Geneva echoed the sentiments of his fellow-citizens when he said: "Would to God that we could extinguish this funeral pile with our tears."1198  Dr. Henry, the admiring biographer of Calvin, imagines an impartial Christian jury of the nineteenth century assembled on Champel, which would pronounce the judgment on Calvin, "Not guilty"; on Servetus, "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances."1199

The flames of Champel have consumed the intolerance of Calvin as well as the heresy of Servetus.

§ 156. The Character of Servetus.

Servetus—theologian, philosopher, geographer, physician, scientist, and astrologer—was one of the most remarkable men in the history of heresy. He was of medium size, thin and pale, like Calvin, his eyes beaming with intelligence, and an expression of melancholy and fanaticism. Owing to a physical rupture he was never married. He seems never to have had any particular friends, and stood isolated and alone.

His mental endowments and acquirements were of a high order, and placed him far above the heretics of his age and almost on an equality with the Reformers.1200  His discoveries have immortalized his name in the history of science. He knew Latin, Hebrew, and Greek (though Calvin depreciates his knowledge of Greek), as well as Spanish, French, and Italian, and was well read in the Bible, the early fathers, and the schoolmen. He had an original, speculative, and acute mind, a tenacious memory, ready wit, a fiery imagination, ardent love of learning, and untiring industry. He anticipated the leading doctrines of Socinianism and Unitarianism, but in connection with mystic and pantheistic speculations, which his contemporaries did not understand. He had much uncommon sense, but little practical common sense. He lacked balance and soundness. There was a streak of fanaticism in his brain. His eccentric genius bordered closely on the line of insanity. For

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

His style is frequently obscure, inelegant, abrupt, diffuse, and repetitious. He accumulates arguments to an extent that destroys their effect. He gives eight arguments to prove that the saints in heaven pray for us; ten arguments to show that Melanchthon and his friends were sorcerers, blinded by the devil; twenty arguments against infant baptism; twenty-five reasons for the necessity of faith before baptism; and sixty signs of the apocalyptic beast and the reign of Antichrist.1201

In thought and style he was the opposite of the clear-headed, well-balanced, methodical, logical, and thoroughly sound Calvin, who never leaves the reader in doubt as to his meaning.

The moral character of Servetus was free from immorality of which his enemies at first suspected him in the common opinion of the close connection of heresy with vice. But he was vain, proud, defiant, quarrelsome, revengeful, irreverent in the use of language, deceitful, and mendacious. He abused popery and the Reformers with unreasonable violence. He conformed for years to the Catholic ritual which he despised as idolatrous. He defended his attendance upon mass by Paul’s example in visiting the temple (Acts 21:26), but afterwards confessed at Geneva that he had acted under compulsion and sinned from fear of death. He concealed or denied on oath facts which he had afterwards to admit.1202  At Vienne he tried to lie himself out of danger, and escaped; in Geneva he defied his antagonist and did his best, with the aid of the Libertines in the Council, to ruin him.

The severest charge against him is blasphemy. Bullinger remarked to a Pole that if Satan himself should come out of hell, he could use no more blasphemous language against the Trinity than this Spaniard; and Peter Martyr, who was present, assented and said that such a living son of the devil ought not to be tolerated anywhere. We cannot even now read some of his sentences against the doctrine of the Trinity without a shudder. Servetus lacked reverence and a decent regard for the most sacred feelings and convictions of those who differed from him. But there was a misunderstanding on both sides. He did not mean to blaspheme the true God in whom he believed himself, but only the three false and imaginary gods, as he wrongly conceived them to be, while to all orthodox Christians they were the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of the one true, eternal, blessed Godhead.

He labored under the fanatical delusion that he was called by Providence to reform the Church and to restore the Christian religion. He deemed himself wiser than all the fathers, schoolmen, and reformers. He supported his delusion by a fanciful interpretation of the last and darkest book of the Bible.

Calvin and Farel saw, in his refusal to recant, only the obstinacy of an incorrigible heretic and blasphemer. We must recognize in it the strength of his conviction. He forgave his enemies; he asked the pardon even of Calvin. Why should we not forgive him?  He had a deeply religious nature. We must honor his enthusiastic devotion to the Scriptures and to the person of Christ. From the prayers and ejaculations inserted in his book, and from his dying cry for mercy, it is evident that he worshipped Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour.1203

§ 157. Calvin’s Defence of the Death Penalty for Heretics.

The public sentiment, Catholic and Protestant, as we have seen, approved of the traditional doctrine, that obstinate heretics should be made harmless by death, and continued unchanged down to the close of the seventeenth century.

But there were exceptions. As in the case of the execution of the Spanish Priscillianists in the fourth century, the genuine spirit of Christianity and humanity raised a cry of indignation and horror through the mouths of St. Ambrose of Milan, and St. Martin of Tours; so there were not a few in the sixteenth century who protested against the burning of Servetus. Most of these—Lelio Socino, Renato, Curio, Biandrata, Alciati, Gribaldo, Gentile, Ochino, and Castellio—were Italian refugees and free-thinkers who sympathized more or less with his heretical opinions. It was especially three professors in the University of Basel Borrhaus (Cellarius), Curio, and Castellio—who were suspected at Geneva of being followers of Servetus. For the same reason some Anabaptists, like David Joris, who lived at that time in Basel under the assumed name of John von Bruck, took his part. Anonymous libels in prose and verse appeared against Calvin. He was denounced as a new pope and inquisitor, and Geneva, heretofore an asylum of religious liberty, as a new Rome,1204 A hundred Servetuses seemed to arise from the ashes at Champel; but they were all inferior men, and did not understand the speculative views of Servetus, who had exhausted the productive powers of antitrinitarianism.1205

Not only dissenters and personal enemies, but also, as Beza admits, some orthodox and pious people and friends of Calvin were dissatisfied with the severity of the punishment, and feared, not without reason, that it would justify and encourage the Romanists in their cruel persecution of Protestants in France and elsewhere.

Under these circumstances Calvin felt it to be his disagreeable duty to defend his conduct, and to refute the errors of Servetus. He was urged by Bullinger to do it. He completed the work in a few months and published it in Latin and French in the beginning of 1554.1206  It had an official character and was signed by all the fifteen ministers of Geneva.1207

Beza aided him in this controversy and undertook to refute the pamphlet of Bellius, and did so with great ability and eloquence.1208

Calvin’s work against Servetus gave complete satisfaction to Melanchthon. It is the strongest refutation of the errors of his opponent which his age produced, but it is not free from bitterness against one who, at last, had humbly asked his pardon, and who had been sent to the judgment seat of God by a violent death. It is impossible to read without pain the following passage: "Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority; it is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for his Church. It is not in vain that he banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a severity exacted but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honor, unless the piety that is due to him be preferred to all human duties, and that when his glory is to be asserted, humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories?"

Calvin’s plea for the right and duty of the Christian magistrate to punish heresy by death, stands or falls with his theocratic theory and the binding authority of the Mosaic code. His arguments are chiefly drawn from the Jewish laws against idolatry and blasphemy, and from the examples of the pious kings of Israel. But his arguments from the New Testament are failures. He agrees with Augustin in the interpretation of the parabolic words: "Constrain them to come in" (Luke 14:23).1209  But this can only refer to moral and not to physical force, and would imply a forcible salvation, not destruction. The same parable was afterwards abused by the French bishops to justify the abominable dragoonades of Louis XIV. against the Huguenots. Calvin quotes the passages on the duty of the civil magistrate to use the sword against evil-doers (Rom. 13:4); the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple (Matt. 21:12); the judgment on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1 sqq.); the striking of Elymas with blindness (13:11); and the delivery of Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan (1 Tim. 1:20). He answers the objections from the parables of the tares and of the net (Matt. 13:30, 49), and from the wise counsel of Gamaliel (Acts 5:34). But he cannot get over those passages which contradict his theory, as Christ’s rebuke to John and James for wishing to call down fire from heaven (Luke 9:54), and to Peter for drawing the sword (Matt. 26:52), his declaration that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), and his whole spirit and aim, which is to save and not to destroy.

In his juvenile work on Seneca and in earlier editions of his Institutes, Calvin had expressed noble sentiments on toleration;1210  even as Augustin did in his writings against the Manichaeans, among whom he himself had lived for nine years; but both changed their views for the worse in their zeal for orthodoxy.

Calvin’s "Defence" did not altogether satisfy even some of his best friends. Zurkinden, the State Secretary of Bern, wrote him Feb. 10, 1554: "I wish the former part of your book, respecting the right which the magistrates may have to use the sword in coercing heretics, had not appeared in your name, but in that of your council, which might have been left to defend its own act. I do not see how you can find any favor with men of sedate mind in being the first formally to treat this subject, which is a hateful one to almost all."1211  Bullinger intimated his objections more mildly in a letter of March 26, 1554, in which he says: "I only fear that your book will not be so acceptable to many of the more simple-minded persons, who, nevertheless, are attached both to yourself and to the truth, by reason of its brevity and consequent obscurity, and the weightiness of the subject. And, indeed, your style appears somewhat perplexed, especially in this work."  Calvin wrote in reply, April 29, 1554: "I am aware that I have been more concise than usual in this treatise. However, if I should appear to have faithfully and honestly defended the true doctrine, it will more than recompense me for my trouble. But though the candor and justice which are natural to you, as well as your love towards me, lead you to judge of me favorably, there are others who assail me harshly as a master in cruelty and atrocity, for attacking with my pen not only a dead man, but one who perished by my hands. Some, even not self-disposed towards me, wish that I had never entered on the subject of the punishment of heretics, and say that others in the like situation have held their tongues as the best way of avoiding hatred. It is well, however, that I have you to share my fault, if fault it be; for you it was who advised and persuaded me to it. Prepare yourself, therefore, for the combat."1212

§ 158. A Plea for Religious Liberty. Castellio and Beza.

Cf. § 126, p. 627, and especially Ferd. Buisson, Sébastien Castellion. Paris (Hachette et Cie), 1892. 2 vols. 8vo (I. 358–413; II. 1–28).

A month after Calvin’s defence of the death penalty of heretics, there appeared at Basel a pseudonymous book in defence of religious liberty, dedicated to Duke Christopher of Würtemberg.1213  It was edited and prefaced professedly by Martinus Bellius, whose real name has never been discovered with certainty. Perhaps it was Martin Borrhaus of Stuttgart (1499–1564), professor of Hebrew learning in the University of Basel, and known under the name of "Cellarius," in honor of his first protector, Simon Cellarius (not to be confounded with Michael Cellarius of Augsburg). He studied at Heidelberg and Wittenberg, appeared first among the Zwickau Prophets, and then in connection with Carlstadt (who ended his days likewise as a professor at Basel).1214   The book was misdated from Magdeburg, the stronghold of the orthodox Lutherans, in opposition to the tyranny of the Imperial Interim. A French edition appeared, nominally at Rouen, but was probably printed at Lyons, where Castellio had a brother in the printing business.1215

Calvin at once suspected the true authors, and wrote to Bullinger, March 28, 1554: "A book has just been clandestinely printed at Basel under false names, in which Castellio and Curio pretend to prove that heretics should not be repressed by the sword. Would that the pastors of that church at length, though late, aroused themselves to prevent the evil from spreading wider."1216  A few days afterwards Beza wrote to Bullinger about the same book, and gave it as his opinion that the feigned Magdeburg was a city on the Rhine [Basel], and that Castellio was the real author, who treated the most important articles of faith as useless or indifferent, and put the Bible on a par with the Ethics of Aristotle.1217

Castellio wrote, however, only a part of the book. He adopted the pseudonym of Basilius (i.e. Sebastian) Montfortius (i.e. Castellio).1218

The body of this work consists of a collection of testimonies in favor of religious toleration, extracted from the writings of Luther (his book, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, 1523), Brenz (who maintain that heresy as long as it keeps in the intellectual sphere should be punished only by the Word of God), Erasmus, Sebastian Frank, several Church Fathers (Lactantius, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustin, in his antiManichaean writings), Otto Brunsfeld (d. at Bern, 1534), Urbanus Rhegius (Lutheran theologian, d. 1541), Conrad Pellican (Hebrew professor at Zürich, d. 1556), Caspar Hedio, Christoph Hoffmann, Georg Kleinberg (a pseudonym) and even Calvin (in the first edition of his Institutes). This collection was probably made by Curio.

The epilogue is written by Castellio, and is the most important part of the book. He examines the different biblical and patristic passages quoted for and against intolerance. He argues against his opponents from the multiplicity of sects which disagree on the interpretation of Scripture, and concludes that, on their principles, they should all be exterminated except one. He justly charges St. Augustin with inconsistency in his treatment of the Donatists, for which, he says, he was punished by the invasion of the Arian Vandals. The lions turned against those who had unchained them. Persecution breeds Christian hypocrites in place of open heretics. It provokes counter-persecution, as was just then seen in England after the accession of Queen Mary, which caused the flight of English Protestants to Switzerland. In conclusion he gives an allegorical picture of a journey through the centuries showing the results of the two conflicting principles of force and liberty, of intolerance and charity, and leaves the reader to decide which of the two armies is the army of Jesus Christ.

Castellio anticipated Bayle and Voltaire, or rather the Baptists and Quakers. He was the champion of religious liberty in the sixteenth century. He claimed it in the name of the gospel and the Reformation. It was appropriate that this testimony should come from the Swiss city of Basel, the home of Erasmus.1219

But the leaders of the Swiss Reformation in Geneva and Zürich could see in this advocacy of religious freedom only a most dangerous heresy, which would open the door to all kinds of errors and throw the Church of Christ into inextricable confusion.

Theodore Beza, the faithful aid of Calvin, took up his pen against the anonymous sceptics of Basel, and defended the right and duty of the Christian magistrate to punish heresy. His work appeared in September, 1554; that is, five months after the book of Martinus Bellius. It was Beza’s first published theological treatise (he was then thirty-five years of age).1220

The book has a polemic and an apologetic part. In the former, Beza tries to refute the principle of toleration; in the latter, to defend the conduct of Geneva. He contends that the toleration of error is indifference to truth, and that it destroys all order and discipline in the Church. Even the enforced unity of the papacy is much better than anarchy. Heresy is much worse than murder, because it destroys the soul. The spiritual power has nothing to do with temporal punishments; but it is the right and duty of the civil government, which is God’s servant, to see to it that he receives his full honor in the community. Beza appeals to the laws of Moses and the acts of kings Asa and Josiah against blasphemers and false prophets. All Christian rulers have punished obstinate heretics. The oecumenical synods (from 325 to 787) were called and confirmed by emperors who punished the offenders. Whoever denies to the civil authority the right to restrain and punish pernicious errors against public worship undermines the authority of the Bible. He cites in confirmation passages from Luther, Melanchthon, Urbanus Rhegius, Brenz, Bucer, Capito, Bullinger, Musculus, and the Church of Geneva. He closes the argument as follows: "The duty of the civil authority in this matter is hedged about by these three regulations: (1) It must strictly confine itself to its own sphere, and not presume to define heresy; that belongs to the Church alone. (2) It must not pass judgment with regard to persons, advantages, and circumstances, but with pure regard to the honor of God. (3) It must proceed after quiet, regular examination of the heresy and mature consideration of all the circumstances, and inflict such punishment as will best secure the honor due to the divine Majesty and the peace and unity of the Church."

This theory, which differs little from the papal theory of intolerance, except in regard to the definition of heresy and the mode and degree of punishment, was accepted for a long time in the Reformed Churches with few dissenting voices; but, fortunately, there was no occasion for another capital punishment of heresy in the Church of Geneva after the burning of Servetus.

The evil which Calvin and Beza did was buried with their bones; the greater good which they did will live on forever. Dr. Willis, though a decided apologist of Servetus, makes the admission: "Calvin must nevertheless be thought of as the real herald of modern freedom. Holding ignorance to be incompatible with the existence of a people at once religious and free, Calvin had the schoolhouse built beside the Church, and brought education within the reach of all. Nor did he overlook the higher culture."1221

CHAPTER XVII.

CALVIN ABROAD.

Calvin’s Correspondence in his Opera, vols. X.–XX.—Henry, III. 395–549 (Calvin’s Wirksamkeit nach aussen).—Stähelin, I. 505–588; II. 5 sqq.

§ 159. Calvin’s Catholicity of Spirit.

Calvin was a Frenchman by birth and education, a Swiss by adoption and life-work, a cosmopolitan in spirit and aim.

The Church of God was his home, and that Church knows no boundaries of nationality and language. The world was his parish. Having left the papacy, he still remained a Catholic in the best sense of that word, and prayed and labored for the unity of all believers. Like his friend Melanchthon, he deeply deplored the divisions of Protestantism. To heal them he was willing to cross ten oceans. Thus he wrote, in reply to Archbishop Cranmer, who had invited him (March 20, 1552), with Melanchthon and Bullinger, to a meeting in Lambeth Palace for the purpose of drawing up a consensus creed for the Reformed Churches.1222  After expressing his zeal for the Church universal, he continues (Oct. 14, 1552):—

"I wish, indeed, it could be brought about that men of learning and authority from the different churches should meet somewhere, and after thoroughly discussing the different articles of faith, should, by a unanimous decision, deliver down to posterity some certain rule of doctrine. But amongst the chief evils of the age must be reckoned the marked division between the different churches, insomuch that human society can hardly be said to be established among us, much less a holy communion of the members of Christ, which, though all profess it, few indeed really observe with sincerity. But if the clergy are more lukewarm than they should be, the fault lies chiefly with their sovereigns, who are either so involved in their secular affairs, as to neglect altogether the welfare of the Church, and indeed religion itself, or so well content to see their own countries at peace as to care little about others; and thus the members being divided, the body of the Church lies lacerated.

"As to myself, if I should be thought of any use, I would not, if need be, object to cross ten seas for such a purpose. If the assisting of England were alone concerned, that would be motive enough with me. Much more, therefore, am I of opinion, that I ought to grudge no labor or trouble, seeing that the object in view is an agreement among the learned, to be drawn up by the weight of their authority according to Scripture, in order to unite Churches seated far apart. But my insignificance makes me hope that I may be spared. I shall have discharged my part by offering up my prayers for what may have been done by others. Melanchthon is so far off that it takes some time to exchange letters. Bullinger has, perhaps, already answered you. I only wish that I had the power, as I have the inclination, to serve the cause."1223

This noble project was defeated or indefinitely postponed by the death of Edward VI. and the martyrdom of Cranmer, but it continues to live as a pium desiderium. In opposition to a mechanical and enforced uniformity, Calvin suggested the idea of a spiritual unity with denominational variety, or of one flock in many folds under one shepherd.1224  This idea was taken up in our age by the Evangelical Alliance, the Pan-Anglican Council, the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance, the Pan-Methodist Conference, the Young Men’s Christian Associations, the Christian Endeavor Societies, and similar voluntary associations, which bring Christians of different churches and nationalities together for mutual conference and co-operation, without interfering with their separate organization and denominational preferences.

A lasting monument of Calvin’s catholicity is his immense correspondence, which fills ten quarto volumes of the last edition of his works, and embraces in all no less than forty-two hundred and seventy-one letters. He left to Beza a collection of manuscripts with discretionary power to publish from it what he deemed might promote the edification of the Church of God. Accordingly, Beza edited the first collection of Calvin’s letters eleven years after his death, at Geneva, 1575. This edition was several times republished, and gradually enriched by letters discovered in various libraries by Liebe, Mosheim, Bretschneider, Crottet, Jules Bonnet, Henry, Reuss, and Herminjard.

No theologian has left behind him a correspondence equal in extent, ability, and interest. In these letters Calvin discusses the profoundest topics of religion; he gives advice as a faithful pastor; administers comfort to suffering brethren; pours out his heart to his friends; solves difficult political questions, as a wise statesman, in the complications of the little Republic with Bern, Savoy, and France. Among his correspondents are all the surviving Reformers—Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, Farel, Viret, Cranmer, Knox, Beza, Peter Martyr, John à Lasco; crowned heads—Queen Marguerite of Navarre, the Duchess Renée of Ferrara, King Sigismund Augustus of Poland, the Elector Otto Heinrich of the Palatinate, Duke Christopher of Würtemberg; statesmen and high officers, like Duke Somerset, the Protector of England, Prince Radziwil of Poland, Admiral Coligny of France, the magistrates of Zürich, Bern, Basel, St. Gall, and Frankfort; and humble confessors and martyrs to whom he sent letters of comfort in prison.

§ 160. Geneva an Asylum for Protestants from all Countries.

Calvin gave to Geneva a cosmopolitan character which it retains to this day. It became, through him, as already stated, the capital of the Reformed Churches, and was called the Protestant Rome. Philip II. of Spain wrote to the French king: "Geneva is the source of all misfortune to France, the refuge of all heretics, the most terrible enemy of Rome. I am ready at any time, with all the power of my kingdom, to aid in its destruction."  That city was, indeed, in the sixteenth century what North America has become, on a much larger scale, since the seventeenth century. It was an asylum for persecuted confessors of the evangelical faith without distinction of nationality, an impregnable moral fortress built upon the rock of the Bible.1225

Zürich, Basel, and Strassburg were the only places in that age which can be compared with Geneva in generous hospitality to strangers.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the city of Geneva numbered 12,000 souls, in 1543 not more than 13,000; but in the seven years from 1543 to 1550 it increased to 20,000, or at the rate of 1000 a year. This increase was chiefly due to the continuous influx of persecuted Protestants from France, Italy, and England. Some came also from Spain and Holland.1226  Most of them were educated men and not a few of them distinguished for learning and social position, as Cordier, Colladon, Etienne (Stephens), Marot, Ochino, Carraccioli, Knox, Whittingham. They had made sacrifices for the sake of religion, and thereby acquired the honor of confessors with the spirit of martyrs. There were special congregations for Italians and Englishmen, who were provided by the city with suitable places of worship. Calvin treated the refugees with great hospitality. He secured to them as far as possible the rights of citizenship. Some of them were even elected to the Large Council. An insult to a refugee from religious persecution was as punishable as an insult to a minister of the gospel. The favor and privileges accorded to these foreigners excited the envy and jealousy of the native Genevese, who opposed their admission to citizenship and their right to carry arms. This exclusive nativism gave Calvin a great deal of trouble.

The little Republic of Geneva was continually exposed to the danger of absorption by Savoy, France, and Spain, which hated her as the stronghold of heresy. It was in a large measure due to the wisdom and firmness of Calvin that in those critical times she preserved her liberty and independence. He also resisted the repeated attempts of Bern to interfere with the doctrine and discipline of the Church.

Geneva offers a wonderful aspect in modern history.

Embracing the élite of three nations, melted into one whole by the spirit of one man, it continues in the midst of mighty and bitter foes, without any external support, simply through its moral force. It has no territory, no army, no treasures, no temporal, no material resources. There it stands, a city of the spirit, built of Christian stoicism on the rock of predestination."

§ 161. The Academy of Geneva. The High School of Reformed Theology.

I. Calvin: Leges Academiae Genevensis, or L’Ordre du Collège de Genève, first published in Latin and French. Geneva, 1559. Republished by Charles Le Fort, professor of law at Geneva, on the third centennial of the founding of the Academy, June 5, 1859, and in Opera, X. 65–90.

II. Berthault: Mathurin Cordier. L’enseignement chez les premiers Calvinistes. Paris, 1876 (85 pp.).—Massebieau: Les colloques scolaires du seizième siècle et leurs auteurs. Paris, 1878.—Amiel et Bouvier: L’enseignement superieur à Genève depuis la fondation de l’académie jusqu’à 1876. Gen., 1878. Comp. Henry, III. 386 sqq.; Stähelin, II. 487–498; Gaberel, II. 109 sqq.; Buisson: Séb. Castellion (Paris, 1892), I. 121–151.

One of the most important institutions of Geneva which strengthened the Reformed religion at home, and extended it abroad, is the Academy founded by Calvin. Knowing that the ignorance of the Roman priesthood was a source of much superstition and corruption, he labored zealously for the education of the ministry and the whole people, and secured the best teachers, as Cordier, Saunier, Castellio, and Beza.

There was a college in Geneva, since 1428, called after its founder "College Versonnex," for the training of the clergy; but it had fallen into decay, and was reorganized after Calvin’s return in 1541. Tuition was free. To avoid overcrowding and to bring the facilities of education within the reach of every youth, four elementary schools were established for each of the four quarters of the city. At first a small fee was charged, but it was abolished by the council after 1571, at the request of Beza. A much larger attendance was the effect. Calvin is sometimes called the founder of the common school system.

He wished to establish a full university with four faculties, but the limited means of the little Republic would not permit that; so he confined himself to an Academy. He himself collected for it from house to house 10,024 gold guilders, a very large sum for that time. Several foreign residents contributed liberally: Carraccioli, 2954; Pierre Orsières, 312; Matthieu de la Roche, 260 guilders. Of the native Genevese, Bonivard, the old champion of liberty, bequeathed his whole fortune to the institution.1227  The Council put up a commodious building. Calvin drew up the programme of studies and the academic statutes, which, after careful examination, were unanimously approved.

The Academy was solemnly dedicated on June 5, 1559, in the church of St. Peter, in the presence of the whole Council, the ministers, and six hundred students. Calvin invoked the blessing of God upon the institution, which was to be forever dedicated to science and religion, and made some short and weighty remarks in French. Michael Roset, the Secretary of State, read the Confession of Faith and the statutes by which the institution was to be guided. Theodore Beza was proclaimed rector and delivered an inaugural address in Latin. Calvin closed with prayer. Ten able and experienced professors were associated with him for the different departments of grammar, logic, mathematics, physics, music, and the ancient languages. Calvin himself was to continue his theological lectures in connection with Beza.

The statutes which were read on this occasion lay great stress on French and Latin composition. The Latin authors to be studied are: Caesar, Livy, Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid; the Greek authors: Herodotus, Xenophon, Homer, Demosthenes, Plutarch, and Plato. There was also a special chair of Hebrew which was assigned to Chevalier, a pupil of Vatable and formerly tutor of Queen Elizabeth. Teachers and pupils had to sign the Apostles’ Creed and a confession of faith, which, however, wisely omitted the favorite dogma of predestination, and was abolished in 1576 in order to admit, Papists and Lutherans."  Religious exercises opened and closed the daily instructions.

The success of the school was extraordinary. No less than nine hundred young men from almost all the nations of Europe were matriculated in the first year as regular scholars, and almost as many, mostly refugees from France and England, prepared themselves by the theological lectures of Calvin for the work of evangelists and teachers in their native land. Among these was John Knox, the great Reformer of Scotland.

The Academy continued to flourish with some interruptions. It attracted students from all parts of Protestant Europe, and numbered among its teachers such men as Casaubon, Spangenheim, Hotoman, Francis and Alphonse Turretin, Leclerc, Pictet de Saussure, and Charles Bonnet  It was the chief nursery of Protestant ministers and teachers for France, and the principle school of reformed theology and literary culture for more than two hundred years. A degree from that Academy was equivalent in Holland to a degree of any University. Arminius was sent there by the city of Amsterdam to be educated under Beza (1582), who gave him a good testimonial, not knowing that he would become the leader of a mighty reaction against Calvinism.

In 1859 the third centennial of the Academy was celebrated in Geneva.

The evangelistic work of that Academy was resumed and is successfully carried on in the spirit of Calvin by the Evangelical Society and the Free Theological Seminary of Geneva, which numbered among its first teachers Merle D’Aubigné, the distinguished historian of the Reformation.

§ 162. Calvin’s Influence upon the Reformed Churches of the Continent.

Calvin’s moral power extended over all the Reformed Churches, and over several nationalities—Swiss, French, German, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Dutch, English, Scotch, and American. His religious influence upon the Anglo-Saxon race in both continents is greater than that of any native Englishman, and continues to this day.1228

Calvin and France.

Calvin never entered French soil after his settlement in Geneva, and was not even a citizen of the Republic till 1559; but his heart was still in France. From the time he wrote that eloquent letter to Francis the First, in dedicating to him his Institutes, he followed the Protestant movement with the liveliest interest. He was the head of the French Reformation and consulted at every step. He was called as pastor to the first Protestant church in Paris, but declined. He gave to the Huguenots their creed and form of government. The Gallican Confession of 1559, also called the Confession of Rochelle, was, in its first draft, his work, and his pupil Antoine de la Roche Chandieu (also called Sadeel) brought it into its present enlarged shape, in which it was presented by Beza to Charles IX. at the Colloquy at Poissy, 1561, and signed at the Synod of La Rochelle, 1571, by the Queen Jeanne d’Albret of Navarre; her son, Prince Henry of Navarre (Henry IV.); Prince Condé; Prince Louis, Count of Nassau; Admiral Coligny; Chatillon; several nobles, and all the preachers present.1229

The history of French Protestantism down to 1564 is largely identified with Calvin’s name. He induced the Swiss Cantons and the princes of the Smalkaldian League to intercede for the persecuted Huguenots. He sent messengers and letters of comfort to the prisoners. "The reverence," says one of his biographers, "with which his name was mentioned, the boundless confidence reposed in his person, the enthusiasm of the disciples who hastened to him, or came from him, surpasses all the usual experience of men. Congregations appealed to him for preachers; princes and noblemen for decisive counsel in political complications; those in doubt for instruction; the persecuted for protection; the martyrs for exhortation and encouragement in cheerful suffering and dying. And as the eye of a father watches over his children, Calvin watched with untiring care of love over all these relations in their manifold ramifications, and sought to be the same to the great community of his brethren in France what he was to the little Republic at home."1230

Roman Catholic writers have made Calvin responsible for the civil wars in France, as they have made Luther responsible for the Peasants’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. But the Reformers preached reformation by the word and the spirit, not revolution by the sword. The chief cause of the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the intolerance of the papacy. Bossuet charges Calvin with complicity in the conspiracy of Amboise, which was a political coup d’état to check the power of the Guises (1560). Calvin was indeed informed of the plot, but warned against it, first privately, then publicly, and predicted its disastrous failure. He constantly upheld the principle of obedience to the rightful magistrate, and opposed violent measures. "The first drop of blood," he said, "which we shed will cause streams of blood to flow. Let us rather a hundred times perish than bring such disgrace upon the name of Christianity and the cause of the gospel."1231  Afterwards when a war in self-defence was inevitable, he reluctantly gave his consent, but protested against all excesses.1232

Calvin did not live to weep over the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, nor to rejoice over the Edict of Nantes; but his spirit accompanied "the Church of the Desert," whose motto was the burning bush (Ex. 3:2); and every Huguenot who left France for the sake of his faith, carried to his new home in Switzerland, or Brandenburg, or Holland, or England, or America, a profound reverence for the name of John Calvin.

Calvin and the Waldenses.

The Waldenses are the only mediaeval sect which survives to this day, because they progressed with the Reformation and adhered to the Bible as their rule of faith.1233  They sent a deputation of two of their pastors, in 1530, to Oecolampadius at Basel, Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, and Berthold Haller at Bern, for information concerning the principles of the Reformation, and made common cause with the Protestants.1234 They were distinguished for industry, virtue, and simple, practical piety, but their heresy attracted the attention of the authorities. They were cited before the Parliament at Aix, and the heads of their families were condemned to death in November, 1540. The execution of the atrocious sentence was delayed till the king’s wishes should be ascertained. In February, 1541, Francis granted them pardon for the past, but required them to recant within three months. They adhered to their faith. On the 28th of April, 1545, a fiendish scheme of butchery—under the direction of Baron d’Oppède, military governor of Provence, and Cardinal Tournon, the bigoted and bloodthirsty archbishop of Lyons—was carried out against these innocent people. Their chief towns of Merindol and Cabrières, together with twenty-eight villages, were destroyed, the women outraged, and about four thousand persons slaughtered.

Great numbers of the Waldenses sought refuge in flight. The noble and humane Bishop Sadolet of Carpentras, received them kindly, and interceded for them with the King. Four thousand went to Geneva. Calvin started a subscription for them, provided them with lodging and employment at the fortifications, and made every effort to get the Swiss Cantons to intercede with King Francis in behalf of those Waldenses who remained in France. He travelled to Bern, Zürich, and Aarau for this purpose. He even intended to go to Paris, but was prevented by sickness. The Cantons actually wrote to the king in the strongest terms, but he rebuked them for meddling with his affairs. Viret visited the French court with letters of recommendation from the Swiss Cantons and the Smalkaldian League, but likewise without result.1235

Since that time there has been a fraternal intercourse between the Waldenses and the French Swiss, and many of their most useful pastors were educated at Geneva and Lausanne. The Waldensian Confession of 1655 is Calvinistic and based upon the Gallican Confession of 1559.1236  After many persecutions in their mountain homes in Piedmont, the Waldenses obtained freedom in 1848, and since that time, and especially since 1870, they have become zealous evangelists in the united kingdom of Italy, with a church even in Rome and a flourishing theological college in Florence.

Calvin in Germany.

Calvin labored three years in Germany; he felt closely allied to the Lutheran Church; he had the profoundest regard for Luther, in spite of his infirmities; he was the intimate friend of Melanchthon; he attended three colloquies between Lutheran and Roman Catholic divines; he once signed, the Augsburg Confession (1541), as understood, explained, and improved by its author. He followed the progress of the Reformation in Germany step by step with the warmest interest, as is shown in his correspondence and various writings.

He did not labor for a separate Reformed Church in Germany, but for a free confederation of the Swiss and Lutheran Churches. But the fanatical bigotry of such men as Flacius, Westphal, and Heshusius produced a reaction and drove a large part of the moderate or Melanchthonian Lutherans into the Reformed communion.

The Reformed Church in the Electoral Palatinate was the result of a co-operation of Melanchthonian and Calvinistic influences under the pious Elector, Frederick III. The Heidelberg Catechism is the joint work of Ursinus, a pupil of Melanchthon, and Olevianus, a pupil of Calvin. It appeared in 1563, three years after Melanchthon’s death, one year before Calvin’s death, and became the leading symbol of the Palatinate and the Reformed Churches in Germany and Holland.1237  It gives the best expression to Calvin’s views on the Lord’s Supper, and on Election, but wisely omits all reference to an eternal decree of reprobation and preterition; following in this respect Calvin’s own catechism. The well-known first question is a gem and presents the bright and comforting side of the doctrine of Election: —

"What is thy only comfort in life and in death?"

"That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me, that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him."

The influence of Calvinism and Presbyterian Church government extended, indirectly, also over the Lutheran Church and was modified in turn by Lutheranism.

John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and ancestor of the Kings of Prussia and Emperors of Germany, adopted the Calvinistic faith in a moderate form (1613).1238  Frederick William, "the great Elector," the proper founder of the Prussian Monarchy, secured the legal recognition of the Reformed Church in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and answered the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) by a hospitable invitation of the persecuted Huguenots to his country, where they settled in large numbers. King Frederick William III. introduced, at the third centenary of the Reformation (1817), the Evangelical Union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Prussia; and among the chief advocates of the union was Schleiermacher, the son of a Calvinistic minister, the pupil of the Moravians, and the renovator of German theology, which itself is the result of a commingling of Lutheran and Reformed elements with a decided advance upon narrow confessionalism.

We may add that, while Calvin’s rigorous doctrine of predestination in its dualistic form will never satisfy the German mind, his doctrine of the sacraments has made great progress in the Lutheran Church and seems to offer a solid basis for a satisfactory theory on the mystery of the spiritual real presence and fruition of Christ in the Holy Supper.

Calvin and Holland.

The Netherlands derived the Reformation first from Germany, and soon afterwards from Switzerland and France. The Calvinists outnumbered the Lutherans and Anabaptists, and the Reformed Church became the State religion in Holland.

Two Augustinian monks were burned for heresy in Brussels in 1523, and were celebrated by Luther in a stirring hymn as the first evangelical martyrs. This was the fiery signal of a fearful persecution, which raged during the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II., and resulted at last in the establishment of national independence and civil and religious liberty. During that memorable struggle of eighty years, more Protestants were put to death for their conscientious belief by the Spaniards than Christians suffered martyrdom under the Roman Emperors in the first three centuries. William of Orange, the hero of the war and a liberal Calvinist, was assassinated by an obscure fanatic (1584).1239  His second son, Maurice, a strict Calvinist (d. 1625), carried on and completed the conflict (1609). The horrible barbarities practised upon men, women, and unborn children, especially during the governorship of that bloodhound, the Duke of Alva, from 1567–1573, are almost beyond belief. We quote from the classical history of Motley: "The number of Netherlanders who were burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive, in obedience to the edicts of Charles V., and for the offences of reading the Scriptures, of looking askance at a graven image, or of ridiculing the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in a wafer, have been placed as high as one hundred thousand by distinguished authorities, and have never been put at a lower mark than fifty thousand. The Venetian envoy Navigero placed the number of victims in the provinces of Holland and Friesland alone at thirty thousand, and this in 1546, ten years before the abdication, and five before the promulgation of the hideous edict of 1550."1240  Of the administration of the Duke of Alva, Motley says: "On his journey from the Netherlands, he is said to have boasted that he had caused eighteen thousand six hundred inhabitants of the provinces to be executed during the period of his government. The number of those who had perished by battle, siege, starvation, and massacre, defied computation … . After having accomplished the military enterprise [in Portugal] entrusted to him, he fell into a lingering fever, at the termination of which he was so much reduced that he was only kept alive by milk which he drank from a woman’s breast. Such was the gentle second childhood of the man who had almost literally been drinking blood for seventy years. He died on the 12th of December, 1582."1241

The Bible, with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, was the spiritual guide of the Protestants, and inspired them with that heroic courage which triumphed over the despotism of Spain, and raised Holland to an extraordinary degree of political, commercial, and literary eminence.1242

The Belgic Confession of 1561 was prepared by Guido de Brès, and revised by Francis Junius, a student of Calvin. It became the recognized symbol of the Reformed Churches of Holland and Belgium.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Arminianism rose as a necessary and wholesome reaction against scholastic Calvinism, but was defeated in the Synod of Dort, 1619, which adopted the five knotty canons of unconditional predestination, limited atonement, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of saints. The Dutch Reformed Church in the United States still holds to the Canons of Dort. But Arminianism, although. temporarily expelled, was allowed to return to Holland after the death of Maurice, and gradually pervaded the national Church. It largely entered the Church of England under the Stuarts. It assumed new vigor through the great Methodist Revival, which made it a converting and missionary agency in both hemispheres, and the most formidable rival of Calvinism in the Anglo-American Churches. A greater man and more abundant in self-denying and fruitful apostolic labors has not risen in the Protestant churches since the death of Calvin than John Wesley, whose "parish was the world."  But he was aided in the great Anglo-American Revival by George Whitefield, who was both a Calvinist and a true evangelist.

Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty and free grace; Arminianism emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts the saving grace to the elect: the other extends it to all men on the condition of faith. Both are right in what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. If one important truth is pressed to the exclusion of another truth of equal importance, it becomes an error, and loses its hold upon the conscience.

The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism, and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.1243

§ 163. Calvin’s Influence upon Great Britain.

Calvin and the Church of England.

Calvin first alludes to the English Reformation in a letter to Farel, dated March 15, 1539, where he gives the following judgment of Henry VIII.: "The King is only half wise. He prohibits, under severe penalties, besides depriving them of the ministry, the priests and bishops who enter upon matrimony; he retains the daily masses; he wishes the seven sacraments to remain as they are. In this way he has a mutilated and tom gospel, and a church stuffed full as yet with many toys and trifles. Then he does not suffer the Scripture to circulate in the language of the common people throughout the kingdom, and he has lately put forth a new verdict by which he warns the people against the reading of the Bible. He lately burned a worthy and learned man [John Lambert] for denying the carnal presence of Christ in the bread. Our friends, however, though sorely hurt by atrocities of this kind, will not cease to have an eye to the condition of his kingdom."

With the accession of Edward VI. he began to exercise a direct influence upon the Anglican Reformation. He addressed a long letter to the Protector Somerset, Oct. 22, 1548, and advised the introduction of instructive preaching and strict discipline, the abolition of crying abuses, and the drawing up of a summary of articles of faith, and a catechism for children. Most of his suggestions were adopted. It is remarkable that in this letter, as well as that to the king of Poland, he makes no objection to the Episcopal form of government, nor to a liturgy. At the request of Archbishop Cranmer, he wrote also letters to Edward VI., and dedicated to him his Commentary on Isaiah. He sent them by a private messenger who was introduced to the King by the Duke of Somerset  His correspondence with Cranmer has been already alluded to.1244  As a consensus creed of Reformed Churches was found to be impracticable, he encouraged the archbishop to draw up the articles of religion for the Church of England.

These articles which appeared first in 1553, and were afterwards reduced from forty-one to thirty-nine under Queen Elizabeth, in 1563, show the influence of the Augsburg Confession in the doctrines of the Trinity, justification and the Church, and the influence of Calvin in the doctrines of the Eucharist, and of predestination, which, however, is stated with wisdom and moderation (Art. XVII.), without reprobation and preterition.1245

During the reign of Queen Mary, many leading Protestants fled to Geneva, and afterwards obtained high positions in the Church under Queen Elizabeth. Among them were the translators of the Geneva version of the Bible, which owes much to Calvin and Beza, and continued to be the most popular English version till the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was superseded by the version of 1611.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth Calvin’s theological influence was supreme, and continued down to the time of Archbishop Laud. His Institutes were translated soon after the appearance of the last edition, and passed through six editions in the life of the translator. They were the textbook in the universities, and had as great an authority as the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, or the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages. We have previously quoted the high tributes of the "judicious" Hooker and Bishop Sanderson to Calvin.1246  Heylyn, the admirer and biographer of Archbishop Laud, says that "Calvin’s book of Institutes was for the most part the foundation on which the young divines of those times did build their studies."  Hardwick, speaking of the latter part of the Elizabethan period, asserts that "during an interval of nearly thirty years, the more extreme opinions of the school of Calvin, not excluding his theory of irrespective reprobation, were predominant in almost every town and parish."1247

The nine Lambeth Articles of 1595, and the Irish Articles of Archbishop Ussher of 1615, give the strongest symbolical expression to the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation, but lost their authority under the later Stuarts.1248

Calvin, however, always maintained his commanding position as a commentator among the scholars of the Anglican Church. His influence revived in the evangelical party, and his sense of the absolute dependence on divine grace for comfort and strength found classical expression in some of the best hymns of the English language, notably in Toplady’s

"Rock of Ages cleft for me."

Calvin and the Church of Scotland.

Still greater and more lasting was Calvin’s influence upon Scotland. It extended over discipline and church polity as well as doctrine.

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, under the sole headship of Christ, is a daughter of the Reformed Church of Geneva, but has far outgrown her mother in size and importance, and is, upon the whole, the most flourishing of the Reformed Churches in Europe, and not surpassed by any denomination in general intelligence, liberality, and zeal for the spread of Christianity at home and abroad.

The hero of the Scotch Reformation, though four years older than Calvin, sat humbly at his feet and became more Calvinistic than Calvin. John Knox, the Scot of the Scots, as Luther was the German of the Germans, spent the five years of his exile (1554–1559), during the reign of the Bloody Mary, mostly at Geneva, and found there "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was since the days of the Apostles."1249  After that model he led the Scotch people, with dauntless courage and energy, and the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, from mediaeval semi-barbarism into the light of modern civilization, and acquired a name which, next to those of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, is the greatest in the history of the Protestant Reformation.1250

In the seventeenth century Scotch Presbyterianism and English Puritanism combined to produce a second and more radical reformation, and formulated the rigorous principles of Puritanic Calvinism in doctrine, discipline, and worship. The Westminster standards of 1647 have since governed the Presbyterian, and, in part, also the Congregational or Independent, and the regular Baptist Churches of the British Empire and the United States, with such modifications and adaptations as the progress of theology and church life demands.1251

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CLOSING SCENES IN CALVIN’S LIFE.

§ 164. Calvin’s Last Days and Death.

Calvin had labored in Geneva twenty-three years after his second arrival,—that is, from September, 1541, till May 27, 1564,1252 — when he was called to his rest in the prime of manhood and usefulness, and in full possession of his mental powers; leaving behind him an able and worthy successor, a model Reformed Church based on the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ; a flourishing Academy, which was a nursery of evangelical preachers for Switzerland and France, and survives to this day; and a library of works from his pen, which after more than three centuries are still a living and moulding power.1253

He continued his labors till the last year, writing, preaching, lecturing, attending the sessions of the Consistory and the Venerable Company of pastors, entertaining and counselling strangers from all parts of the Protestant world, and corresponding in every direction. He did all this notwithstanding his accumulating physical maladies, as headaches, asthma, dyspepsia, fever, gravel, and gout, which wore out his delicate body, but could not break his mighty spirit.

When he was unable to walk he had himself transported to church in a chair. On the 6th of February, 1564, he preached his last sermon. On Easter day, the 2d of April, he was for the last time carried to church and received the sacrament from the hands of Beza.

On the 25th of April, he made his last will and testament. It is a characteristic document, full of humility and gratitude to God, acknowledging his own unworthiness, placing his whole confidence in the free election of grace, and the abounding merits of Christ, laying aside all controversy, and looking forward to the unity and peace in heaven.1254

Luther, defying all forms of law, begins his last will with the words:, I am well known in heaven, on earth, and in hell," and closes: "This wrote the notary of God and the witness of his gospel, Dr. Martin Luther."

On the 26th of April, Calvin wished to see once more the four Syndics and all the members of the Little Council in the Council Hall, but the Senators in consideration of his health offered to come to him. They proceeded to his house on the 27th in solemn silence. As they were assembled round him he gathered all his strength and addressed them without interruption, like a patriarch, thanking them for their kindness and devotion, asking their pardon for his occasional outbreaks of violence and wrath, and exhorting them to persevere in the pure doctrine and discipline of Christ. He moved them to tears.1255  In like manner, on the 28th of April, he addressed all the ministers of Geneva whom he had invited to his house, in words of solemn exhortation and affectionate regard. He asked their pardon for any failings, and thanked them for their faithful assistance. He grasped the hands of every one. "They parted," says Beza, "with heavy hearts and tearful eyes."1256

These were sublime scenes worthily described by an eyewitness, and represented by the art of a painter.1257

On the 19th of May, two days before the pentecostal communion, Calvin invited the ministers of Geneva to his house and caused himself to be carried from his bed-chamber into the adjoining dining-room. Here he said to the company: "This is the last time I shall meet you at table,"—words that made a sad impression on them. He then offered up a prayer, took a little food, and conversed as cheerfully as was possible under the circumstances. Before the repast was quite finished he had himself carried back to his bed-room, and on taking leave said, with a smiling countenance: "This wall will not hinder my being present with you in spirit, though absent in body."

From that time he never rose from his bed, but he continued to dictate to his secretary.

Farel, then in his eightieth year, came all the way from Neuchâtel to bid him farewell, although Calvin had written to him not to put himself to that trouble. He desired to die in his place. Ten days after Calvin’s death, he wrote to Fabri (June 6, 1564): "Oh, why was not I taken away in his place, while he might have been spared for many years of health to the service of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ!  Thanks be to Him who gave me the exceeding grace to meet this man and to hold him against his will in Geneva, where he has labored and accomplished more than tongue can tell. In the name of God, I then pressed him and pressed him again to take upon himself a burden which appeared to him harder than death, so that he at times asked me for God’s sake to have pity on him and to allow him to serve God in a manner which suited his nature. But when he recognized the will of God, he sacrificed his own will and accomplished more than was expected from him, and surpassed not only others, but even himself. Oh, what a glorious course has he happily finished!

Calvin spent his last days in almost continual prayer, and in ejaculating comforting sentences of Scripture, mostly from the Psalms. He suffered at times excruciating pains. He was often heard to exclaim: "I mourn as a dove" (Isa. 38:14); "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it" (Ps. 39:9); "Thou bruisest me, O Lord, but it is enough for me that it is thy hand."  His voice was broken by asthma, but his eyes remained bright, and his mind clear and strong to the last. He admitted all who wished to see him, but requested that they should rather pray for him than speak to him.

On the day of his death he spoke with less difficulty. He fell peacefully asleep with the setting sun towards eight o’clock, and entered into the rest of his Lord. "I had just left him," says Beza, "a little before, and on receiving intimation from the servants, immediately hastened to him with one of the brethren. We found that he had already died, and so very calmly, without any convulsion of his feet or hands, that he did not even fetch a deeper sigh. He had remained perfectly sensible, and was not entirely deprived of utterance to his very last breath. Indeed, he looked much more like one sleeping than dead."1258

He had lived fifty-four years, ten months, and seventeen days.

"Thus," continues Beza, his pupil and friend, "withdrew into heaven, at the same time with the setting sun, that most brilliant luminary, which was the lamp of the Church. On the following night and day there was immense grief and lamentation in the whole city; for the Republic had lost its wisest citizen, the Church its faithful shepherd, the Academy an incomparable teacher—all lamented the departure of their common father and best comforter, next to God. A multitude of citizens streamed to the death-chamber and could scarcely be separated from the corpse. Among them were several foreigners, as the distinguished Ambassador of the Queen of England to France, who had come to Geneva to make the acquaintance of the celebrated man, and now wished to see his remains. At first all were admitted; but as the curiosity became excessive and might have given occasion to calumnies of the enemies,1259  his friends deemed it best on the following morning, which was the Lord’s Day, to wrap his body in linen and to enclose it in a wooden coffin, according to custom. At two o’clock in the afternoon the remains were carried to the common cemetery on Plain Palais (Planum Palatium), followed by all the patricians, pastors, professors, and teachers, and nearly the whole city in sincere mourning."1260

Calvin had expressly forbidden all pomp at his funeral and the erection of any monument over his grave. He wished to be buried, like Moses, out of the reach of idolatry. This was consistent with his theology, which humbles man and exalts God.

Beza, however, wrote a suitable epitaph in Latin and French, which he calls "Parentalia" (i.e. offering at the funeral of a father):—

"Shall honored Calvin to the dust return,

From whom e’en Virtue’s self might learn;

Shall he—of falling Rome the greatest dread,

By all the good bewailed, and now (tho’ dead)

The terror of the vile—lie in so mean,

So small a tomb, where not his name is seen?

Sweet Modesty, who still by Calvin’s side

Walked while he lived, here laid him when he died.

O happy tomb with such a tenant graced!

O envied marble o’er his ashes placed!"1261

On the third centennial of the Reformation of Geneva, in 1835, a splendid memorial medal was struck, which on the one side shows Calvin’s likeness, with his name and dates of birth and death; on the other, Calvin’s pulpit with the verse: "He held fast to the invisible as if he saw Him" (Heb. 11:27), and the circular inscription: "Broken in body; Mighty in spirit; Victor by faith; the Reformer of the Church; the Pastor and Protector of Geneva."1262

At the third centenary of his death (1864), his friends in Geneva, aided by gifts from foreign lands, erected to his memory the "Salle de la Reformation," a noble building, founded on the principles of the Evangelical Alliance, and dedicated to the preaching of the pure gospel and the advocacy of every good cause.

The Reformed Churches of both hemispheres are the monument of Calvin, more enduring than marble.

Zwingli, of all the Reformers, died first (1531), in the prime of life, on the battlefield, with the words trembling on his lips: "They can destroy the body, but not the soul."  The star of the Swiss Reformation went down with him, but only to rise again.

Next followed Luther (1546). He, too, died away from home, at Eisleben, his birthplace, disgusted with the disorders of the times, weary of the world and of life, but holding fast to the faith of the gospel, repeating the precious words: "God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son," and, in the language of the 31st Psalm, committing his spirit into the hands of his faithful God, who had redeemed him.

Melanchthon left this world at his own home (1560), like Calvin; his last and greatest sorrow was the dissensions in the Church for which he could shed tears as copious as the waters of the Elbe. He desired to die that he might be delivered first of all from sin, and also from "the fury of theologians."  He found great comfort in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and the first, and seventeenth chapters of John; and when asked by his son-in-law (Peucer), whether he desired anything, he replied: "Nothing but heaven."

John Knox, the Calvin of Scotland, "who never feared the face of man," survived his friend eight years (till 1572), and found his last comfort likewise in the Psalms, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and the sacerdotal prayer of our Saviour.

The providence of God, which rules and overrules the movements of history, raised up worthy successors for the Reformers, who faithfully preserved and carried forward their work: Bullinger for Zwingli, Melanchthon for Luther, Beza for Calvin, Melville for Knox.

The extraordinary episcopal power which Calvin, owing to his extraordinary talents and commanding character, had exercised without interruption, ceased with his death. Beza was elected his successor on the 29th of May, 1564, as "modérateur" of the ecclesiastical affairs of Geneva, only for one year.1263  But he was annually re-elected till 1580, when he felt unequal to carrying any longer the heavy burden of duty. He was willing, however, to continue the correspondence with foreign Churches. He divided his untiring activity between Switzerland and France, and exercised a controlling influence on the progress of the Reformation in those two countries. He saw a Huguenot prince, Henry IV., ascend the throne of France; he lamented his abjuration of the evangelical faith, but rejoiced over the Edict of Nantes which gave legal existence to Protestantism; and he carried, as the last survivor of the noble race of the Reformers, the ideas of the Reformation to the beginning of the seventeenth century. His theology marks the transition from the broad Calvinism of Calvin to the narrow, scholastic, and supralapsarian Calvinism of the next generation, which produced the reaction of Arminianism not only in Holland and England, but also in France and Geneva.

NOTE. A CALUMNY.

It is painful to notice that sectarian hatred and malice followed the Reformers to their death-beds. Fanatical Romanists represented Zwingli’s heroic death as a judgment of God, and invented the myths that Oecolampadius committed suicide and was carried off by the devil; that Luther hung himself by his handkerchief on the bed-post and emitted a horrible stench; and that Calvin died in despair.

The myth of Luther’s suicide was soberly and malignantly repeated by an ultramontane priest (Majunke, editor of the "Germania" in Berlin), and gave rise to a lively controversy in 1890. It must be added, however, that learned and honest Catholics indignantly protested against the calumny. (Cf. my article, Did Luther commit Suicide?  in "Magazine of Christian Literature," New York, for December, 1890.)

As to Calvin, it is quite probable that his body, broken by so many diseases, soon showed signs of decay, which put a stop to the reception of strangers, and may have given rise to some "calumnies," of which Beza vaguely speaks. But it was not till fifteen years after his death, that Bolsec, the Apostate monk, fastened upon Calvin’s youth an odious vice (see above, p. 302), and spread the report that he died of a terrible malady,—that of being eaten by worms,—with which the just judgment of God destroys His enemies. He adds that Calvin even invoked the devils and cursed his studies and writings. ("Il mourut invoquant les diables … . Même il maudissait l’heure qu’il avait jamais étudié et écrit.") But he gives no authority, living or dead.

Audin (Life of Calvin, p. 632, Engl. transl.) repeats this infamous fabrication with some variations and dramatic embellishments, on the alleged testimony of an unknown student, who, as he says, sneaked into the death-chamber, lifted the black cloth from the face of Calvin and reported: "Calvinus in desperatione furiens vitam obiit turpissimo et faedissimo morbo quem Deus rebellibus et maledictis comminatus est, prius excruciatus et consumptus, quod ego verissime attestari audeo, qui funestum et tragicum illius exitum et exitium his meis oculis praesens aspexi. Joann. Harennius, apud Pet. Cutzenum!"

We regret to say that a Roman Catholic archbishop, Dr. Spalding, whose work on the Reformation gives no evidence of any acquaintance with the writings of Calvin or Beza, retails the slanders of Bolsec and Audin, and informs American readers that Calvin was "a very Nero" and "a monster of impurity and iniquity!" (See above, § 110, p. 520.)

Calvin’s whole life and writings, his testament, and dying words to the senators and ministers of Geneva, and the minute account of his death by his friend Beza, who was with him till his last moments, ought to be sufficient to convince even the most incredulous who is not incurably blinded by bigotry.

§ 165. Calvin’s Last Will, and Farewells.

Calvin’s Last Will and Testament, April 25, 1564.

In Beza’s Vita Calv., French and Latin; in Opera, XX. 298 and XXI. 162. Henry gives the French text, III., Beilage, 171 sqq. The English translation is by Henry Beveridge, Edinburgh, 1844.

"In the name of God, Amen. On the 25th day of April, in the year of our Lord 1564, I, Peter Chenalat, citizen and notary of Geneva, witness and declare that I was called upon by that admirable man, John Calvin, minister of the Word of God in this Church of Geneva, and a citizen of the same State, who, being sick in body, but of sound mind, told me that it was his intention to execute his testament, and explain the nature of his last will, and begged me to receive it, and to write it down as he should rehearse and dictate it with his tongue. This I declare that I immediately did, writing down word for word as he was pleased to dictate and rehearse; and that I have in no respect added to or subtracted from his words, but have followed the form dictated by himself.

" ’In the name of the Lord, Amen. I, John Calvin, minister of the Word of God in this Church of Geneva, being afflicted and oppressed with various diseases, which easily induce me to believe that the Lord God has deter-mined shortly to call me away out of this world, have resolved to make my testament, and commit my last will to writing in the manner following: First of all, I give thanks to God, that taking mercy on me, whom He had created and placed in this world, He not only delivered me out of the deep darkness of idolatry in which I was plunged, that He might bring me into the light of His gospel, and make me a partaker in the doctrine of salvation, of which I was most unworthy; and not only, with the same mercy and benignity, kindly and graciously bore with my faults and my sins, for which, however, I deserved to be rejected by Him and exterminated, but also vouchsafed me such clemency and kindness that He has deigned to use my assistance in preaching and promulgating the truth of His gospel. And I testify and declare, that it is my intention to spend what yet remains of my life in the same faith and religion which He has delivered to me by His gospel; and that I have no other defence or refuge for salvation than His gratuitous adoption, on which alone my salva-tion depends. With my whole soul I embrace the mercy which He has exer-cised towards me through Jesus Christ, atoning for my sins with the merits of His death and passion, that in this way He might satisfy for all my crimes and faults, and blot them from His remembrance. I testify also and declare, that I suppliantly beg of Him, that He may be pleased so to wash and purify me in the blood which my Sovereign Redeemer has shed for the sins of the human race, that under His shadow I may be able to stand at the judgment-seat. I likewise declare, that, according to the measure of grace and good-ness which the Lord hath employed towards me, I have endeavored, both in my sermons and also in my writings and commentaries, to preach His Word purely and chastely, and faithfully to interpret His sacred Scriptures. I also testify and declare, that, in all the contentions and disputations in which I have been engaged with the enemies of the gospel, I have used no impos-tures, no wicked and sophistical devices, but have acted candidly and sin-cerely in defending the truth. But, woe is me! my ardor and zeal (if indeed worthy of the name) have been so careless and languid, that I confess I have failed innumerable times to execute my office properly, and had not He, of His boundless goodness, assisted me, all that zeal had been fleeting and vain. Nay, I even acknowledge, that if the same goodness had not assisted me, those mental endowments which the Lord bestowed upon me would, at His judgment-seat, prove me more and more guilty of sin and sloth. For all these reasons, I testify and declare that I trust to no other security for my salvation than this, and this only, viz. that as God is the Father of mercy, He will show Himself such a Father to me, who acknowledge myself to be a miserable sinner. As to what remains, I wish that, after my departure out of this life, my body be committed to the earth (after the form and manner which is used in this Church and city), till the day of a happy resurrection arrive. As to the slender patrimony which God has bestowed upon me, and of which I have determined to dispose in this will and testament, I appoint Anthony Calvin, my very dear brother, my heir, but in the way of honor only, giving to him for his own the silver cup which I received as a present from Varanius, and with which I desire he will be contented. Everything else belonging to my succession I give him in trust, begging he will at his death leave it to his children. To the Boys’ School I bequeath out of my succession ten gold pieces; as many to poor strangers; and as many to Joanna, the daughter of Charles Constans, and myself by affinity. To Samuel and John, the sons of my brother, I bequeath, to be paid by him at his death, each four hundred gold pieces; and to Anna, and Susanna, and Dorothy, his daughters, each three hundred gold pieces; to David, their brother, in reprehension of his juvenile levity and petulance, I leave only twenty-five gold pieces. This is the amount of the whole patrimony and goods which the Lord has bestowed on me, as far as I can estimate, setting a value both on my library and mova-bles, and all my domestic utensils, and, generally, my whole means and effects; but should they produce a larger sum, I wish the surplus to be divided proportionally among all the sons and daughters of my brother, not excluding David, if, through the goodness of God, he shall have returned to good behavior. But should the whole exceed the above-mentioned sum, I believe it will be no great matter, especially after my debts are paid, the doing of which I have carefully committed to my said brother, having confi-dence in his faith and good-will; for which reason I will and appoint him exe-cutor of this my testament, and along with him my distinguished friend, Lawrence Normand, giving power to them to make out an inventory of my effects, without being obliged to comply with the strict forms of law. I empower them also to sell my movables, that they may turn them into money, and execute my will above written, and explained and dictated by me, John Calvin, on this 25th day of April, in the year 1564.’1264

"After I, the aforesaid notary, had written the above testament, the afore-said John Calvin immediately confirmed it with his usual subscription and handwriting. On the following day, which was the 26th day of April of same year, the same distinguished man, Calvin, ordered me to be sent for, and along with me, Theodore Beza, Raymond Chauvet, Michael Cop, Lewis Enoch, Nicholas Colladon, and James Bordese, ministers and preachers of the Word of God in this Church of Geneva, and likewise the distinguished Henry Scrimger, Professor of Arts, all citizens of Geneva, and in presence of them all, testified and declared that he had dictated to me this his instrument in the form above written; and, at the same time, he ordered me to read it in their hearing, as having been called for that purpose. This I declare I did articulately, and with clear voice. And after it was so read, he testified and dec-lared that it was his last will, which he desired to be ratified. In testimony and confirmation whereof, he requested them all to subscribe said testament with their own hands. This was immediately done by them, month and year above written, at Geneva, in the street commonly called Canon Street, and at the dwelling-place of said testator. In faith and testimony of which I have written the foresaid testament, and subscribed it with my own hand, and sealed it with the common seal of our supreme magistracy.

"Peter Chenalat."

Calvin’s Farewell to the Syndics and Senators of Geneva, April 27, 1564.

From Beza’s Vita Calvini. The Latin text in Opera, XXI. 164 sqq. The French text in vol. IX. 887–890. Comp. Rég. du Conseil, fol. 38, in Annales, XXI. 815. Translated by Henry Beveridge, Esq., for "The Calvin Translation Society," 1844 (Calvin’s Tracts, vol. I. lxxxix-xciii).

"This testament’ being executed, Calvin sent an intimation to the four syndics, and all the senators, that, before his departure out of life, he was desirous once more to address them all in the Senate house, to which he hoped he might be carried on the following day. The senators replied that they would rather come to him, and begged that he would consider the state of his health. On the following day, when the whole Senate had come to him in a body, after mutual salutations, and he had begged pardon for their having come to him when he ought rather to have gone to them, first premising that he had long desired this interview with them, but had put it off until he should have a surer presentiment of his decease, he proceeded thus:—

" ’Honored Lords,—I thank you exceedingly for having conferred so many honors on one who plainly deserved nothing of the kind, and for having so often borne patiently with my very numerous infirmities. This I have always regarded as the strongest proof of your singular good-will toward me. And though in the discharge of my duty I have had various battles to fight, and various insults to endure, because to these every man, even the most excellent, must be subjected, I know and acknowledge that none of these things happened through your fault; and I earnestly entreat you that if, in anything, I have not done as I ought, you will attribute it to the want of ability rather than of will; for I can truly declare that I have sincerely studied the interest of your Republic. Though I have not discharged my duty fully, I have always, to the best of my ability, consulted for the public good; and did I not acknowledge that the Lord, on His part, hath sometimes made my labors profitable, I should lay myself open to a charge of dissimulation. But this I beg of you, again and again, that you will be pleased to excuse me for having performed so little in public and in private, compared with what I ought to have done. I also certainly acknowledge, that on another account also I am highly indebted to you, viz. your having borne patiently with my vehemence, which was sometimes carried to excess; my sins, in this respect, I trust, have been pardoned by God also. But in regard to the doctrine which I have delivered in your hearing, I declare that the Word of God, intrusted to me, I have taught, not rashly nor uncertainly, but purely and sincerely; as well knowing that His wrath was otherwise impending on my head, as I am certain that my labors in teaching were not displeasing to Him. And this I testify the more willingly before God, and before you all, because I have no doubt whatever that Satan, according to his wont, will stir up wicked, fickle, and giddy men, to corrupt the pure doctrine which you have heard of me!

"Then referring to the great blessings with which the Lord had favored them, ’I,’ says he, I am the best witness from how many and how great dangers the hand of Almighty God hath delivered you. You see, moreover, what your present situation is. Therefore, whether in prosperity or adversity, have this, I pray you, always present before your eyes, that it is He alone who establishes kings and states, and on that account wishes men to worship Him. Remember how David declared that he had fallen when he was in the enjoyment of profound peace, and assuredly would never have risen again, had not God, in His singular goodness, stretched out His hand to help him. What, then, will be the case with such diminutive mortals as we are, if it was so with him who was so strong and powerful?  You have need of great humbleness of mind, that you may walk carefully, setting God always before you, and leaning only on His protection; assured, as you have often already experienced, that, by His assistance, you will stand strong, although your safety and security hang, as it were, by a slender thread. Therefore, if prosperity is given you, beware, I pray you, of being puffed up as the wicked are, and rather humbly give thanks to God. But if adversity befalls you, and death surrounds you on every side, still hope in Him who even raises the dead. Nay, consider that you are then especially tried by God, that you may learn more and more to have respect to Him only. But if you are desirous that this republic may be preserved in its strength, be particularly on your guard against allowing the sacred throne on which He hath placed you to be polluted. For He alone is the supreme God, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who will give honor to those by whom He is honored, but will cast down the despisers. Worship Him, therefore, according to His precepts; and study this more and more, for we are always very far from doing what it is our duty to do. I know the disposition and character of each of you, and I know that you need exhortation. Even among those who excel, there is not one who is not deficient in many things. Let every one examine himself, and wherein he sees himself to be defective, let him ask of the Lord. We see how much iniquity prevails in the counsels of this world. Some are cold; others, negligent of the public good, give their whole attention to their own affairs; others indulge their own private affections; others use not the excellent gifts of God as is meet; others ostentatiously display themselves, and, from overweening confidence, insist that all their opinions shall be approved of by others. I admonish the old not to envy their younger brethren, whom they may see adorned, by God’s goodness, with some superior gifts. The younger, again, I admonish to conduct themselves with modesty, keeping far aloof from all haughtiness of mind. Let no one give disturbance to his neighbor, but let every one shun deceit and all that bitterness of feeling which, in the administration of the Republic, has led many away from the right path. These things you will avoid if each keeps within his own sphere, and all conduct themselves with good faith in the department which has been intrusted to them. In the decision of civil causes let there be no place for partiality, or hatred; let no one pervert justice by oblique artifices; let no one, by his recommendations, prevent the laws from having full effect; let no one depart from what is just and good. Should any one feel tempted by some sinister affection, let him firmly resist it, having respect to Him from whom he received his station, and supplicating the assistance of His Holy Spirit.

" ’Finally, I again entreat you to pardon my infirmities, which I acknowledge and confess before God and His angels, and also before you, my much respected lords.’

"Having thus spoken, and prayed to Almighty God that He would crown them more and more with His gifts, and guide them by His Holy Spirit, for the safety of the whole Republic, giving his right hand to each, he left them in sorrow and tears, all feeling as if they were taking a last farewell of their common parent."

Calvin’s Farewell to the Ministers of Geneva, April 28, 1564.

From Beza’s Vita Calvini. The Latin text in Opera, XXI. 166 sq. Translation by Henry Beveridge for "The Calvin Translation Society," Edinburgh, 1844 (I. xciii), from the Latin text. There is another report, in French, by minister Jean Pinaut, dated May 1, which is fuller as regards Calvin’s persecutions, and the confession of his infirmities, which always displeased him and for which he asks forgiveness. It also makes grateful mention of Farel, Viret, and Beza, and an unpleasant allusion to Bern, which always more feared than loved Calvin. It is printed in Opera, vol. IX. 891, 892, and in the Letters of John Calvin by Jules Bonnet, transl. by Gilchrist, vol. IV. 372–377.

"On the 28th of April, when all of us in the ministry of Geneva had gone to him at his request, he said:—

" ’Brethren, after I am dead, persist in this work, and be not dispirited; for the Lord will save this Republic and Church from the threats of the enemy. Let dissension be far away from you, and embrace each other with mutual love. Think again and again what you owe to this Church in which the Lord hath placed you, and let nothing induce you to quit it. It will, indeed, be easy for some who are weary of it to slink away, but they will find, to their experience, that the Lord cannot be deceived. When I first came to this city, the gospel was, indeed, preached, but matters were in the greatest confusion, as if Christianity had consisted in nothing else than the throwing down of images; and there were not a few wicked men from whom I suffered the greatest indignities; but the Lord our God so confirmed me, who am by no means naturally bold (I say what is true), that I succumbed to none of their attempts. I afterwards returned thither from Strassburg in obedience to my calling, but with an unwilling mind, because I thought I should prove unfruitful. For not knowing what the Lord had determined, I saw nothing before me but numbers of the greatest difficulties. But proceeding in this work, I at length perceived that the Lord had truly blessed my labors. Do you also persist in this vocation, and maintain the established order; at the same time, make it your endeavor to keep the people in obedience to the doctrine; for there are some wicked and contumacious persons. Matters, as you see, are tolerably settled. The more guilty, therefore, will you be before God, if they go to wreck through your indolence. But I declare, brethren, that I have lived with you in the closest bonds of true and sincere affection, and now, in like manner, part from you. But if, while under this disease, you have experienced any degree of peevishness from me, I beg your pardon, and heartily thank you, that when I was sick, you have borne the burden imposed upon you.’

"When he had thus spoken, he shook hands with each of us. We, with most sorrowful hearts, and certainly not unmoistened eyes, departed from him."

Beza modestly omits Calvin’s reference to himself which is as follows "Quant à nostre estat interieur, vous avez esleu Monsieur de Beze pour tenir ma place. Regardez de le soulager, car la charge est grande et a de la peine, en telle sorte qu’il faudroit qu’il fust accablé soubs le fardeau. Mais regardez à le supporter. De luy, ie sçay qu’il a bon vouloir et fera ce qu’il pourra."  Pinaut’s report, in Calv. Opera, IX. 894.

§ 166. Calvin’s Personal Character and Habits.

Calvin is one of those characters that command respect and admiration rather than affection, and forbid familiar approach, but gain upon closer acquaintance. The better he is known, the more he is admired and esteemed. Those who judge of his character from his conduct in the case of Servetus, and of his theology from the "decretum horribile," see the spots on the sun, but not the sun itself. Taking into account all his failings, he must be reckoned as one of the greatest and best of men whom God raised up in the history of Christianity.

He has been called by competent judges of different creeds and schools, "the theologian" par excellence, "the Aristotle of the Reformation," "the Thomas Aquinas of the Reformed Church," "the Lycurgus of a Christian democracy," "the Pope of Geneva."  He has been compared, as a church ruler, to Gregory VII. and to Innocent III. The sceptical Renan even, who entirely dissents from his theology, calls him the most Christian man of his age."  Such a combination of theoretic and practical pre-eminence is without a parallel in history. But he was also an intolerant inquisitor and persecutor, and his hands are stained with the blood of a heretic.1265  Take these characteristics together, and you have the whole Calvin; omit one or the other of them, and you do him injustice. He will ever command admiration and even reverence, but can never be popular among the masses. No pilgrimages will be made to his grave. The fourth centennial of his birth, in 1909, is not likely to be celebrated with such enthusiasm as Luther’s was in 1883, and Zwingli’s in 1884. But the impression he made on the Swiss, French, Dutch, and especially on the Anglo-Saxon race in Great Britain and America, can never be erased.1266

Calvin’s bodily presence, like that of St. Paul, was weak. His earthly tent scarcely covered his mighty spirit. He was of middle stature, dark complexion, thin, pale, emaciated, and in feeble health; but he had a finely chiseled face, a well-formed mouth, pointed beard, black hair, a prominent nose, a lofty forehead, and flaming eyes which kept their lustre to the last. He seemed to be all bone and nerve. He looked in death, Beza says, like one who was asleep. A commanding intellect and will shone through the frail body. There are several portraits of him; the best is the oil painting in the University Library of Geneva, which presents him in academic dress and in the attitude of teaching, with the mouth open, one hand laid upon the Bible, the other raised.1267

He calls himself timid and pusillanimous by nature; but his courage rose with danger, and his strength was perfected in weakness. He belonged to that class of persons who dread danger from a distance, but are fearless in its presence. In his conflict with the Libertines he did not yield an inch, and more than once exposed his life. He was plain, orderly and methodical in his habits and tastes, scrupulously neat in his dress, intemperately temperate, and unreasonably abstemious. For many years he took only one meal a day, and allowed himself too little sleep.

Calvin’s intellectual endowments were of the highest order and thoroughly disciplined: a retentive memory, quick perception, acute understanding, penetrating reason, sound judgment, complete command of language. He had the classical culture of the Renaissance, without its pedantry and moral weakness. He made it tributary to theology and piety. He was not equal to Augustin and Luther as a creative genius and originator of new ideas, but he surpassed them both and all his contemporaries as a scholar, as a polished and eloquent writer, as a systematic and logical thinker, and as an organizer and disciplinarian. His talents, we may say, rose to the full height of genius. His mind was cast in the mould of Paul, not in that of John. He had no mystic vein, and little imagination. He never forgot anything pertaining to his duty; he recognized persons whom he had but once seen many years previously. He spoke very much as he wrote, with clearness, precision, purity, and force, and equally well in Latin and French. He never wrote a dull line. His judgment was always clear and solid, and so exact, that, as Beza remarks, it often appeared like prophecy. His advice was always sound and useful. His eloquence was logic set on fire. But he lacked the power of illustration, which is often, before a popular audience, more effective in an orator than the closest argument.

His moral and religious character was grounded in the fear of God, which is "the beginning of wisdom."  Severe against others, he was most severe against himself. He resembled a Hebrew prophet  He may be called a Christian Elijah. His symbol was a hand offering the sacrifice of a burning heart to God. The Council of Geneva were impressed with "the great majesty" of his character.1268  This significant expression accounts for his overawing power over his many enemies in Geneva, who might easily have crushed him at any time. His constant and sole aim was the glory of God, and the reformation of the Church. In his eyes, God alone was great, man but a fleeting shadow. Man, he said, must be nothing, that God in Christ may be everything. He was always guided by a strict sense of duty, even in the punishment of Servetus. In the preface to the last edition of his Institutes (1559), he says: "I have the testimony of my own conscience, of angels, and of God himself, that since I undertook the office of a teacher in the Church, I have had no other object in view than to profit the Church by maintaining the pure doctrine of godliness; yet I suppose there is no man more slandered or calumniated than myself."1269

Riches and honors had no charms for him. He soared far above filthy lucre and worldly ambition. His only ambition was that pure and holy ambition to serve God to the best of his ability. He steadily refused an increase of salary, and frequently also presents of every description, except for the poor and the refugees, whom he always had at heart, and aided to the extent of his means. He left only two hundred and fifty gold crowns, or, if we include the value of his furniture and library, about three hundred crowns, which he bequeathed to his younger brother, Antoine, and his children, except ten crowns to the schools, ten to the hospital for poor refugees, and ten to the daughter of a cousin. When Cardinal Sadolet passed through Geneva in disguise (about 1547), he was surprised to find that the Reformer lived in a plain house instead of an episcopal palace with a retinue of servants, and himself opened the door.1270  When Pope Pius IV. heard of his death he paid him this tribute: "The strength of that heretic consisted in this,—that money never had the slightest charm for him. If I had such servants, my dominions would extend from sea to sea."  In this respect all the Reformers were true successors of the Apostles. They were poor, but made many rich.

Calvin had defects which were partly the shadow of his virtues. He was passionate, prone to anger, censorious, impatient of contradiction, intolerant towards Romanists and heretics, somewhat austere and morose, and not without a trace of vindictiveness. He confessed in a letter to Bucer, and on his death-bed, that he found it difficult to tame "the wild beast of his wrath," and he humbly asked forgiveness for his weakness. He thanked the senators for their patience with his often "excessive vehemence."  His intolerance sprang from the intensity of his convictions and his zeal for the truth. It unfortunately culminated in the tragedy of Servetus, which must be deplored and condemned, although justified by the laws and the public opinion in his age. Tolerance is a modern virtue.

Calvin used frequently contemptuous and uncharitable language against his opponents in his polemical writings, which cannot be defended, but he never condescended to coarse and vulgar abuse, like so many of his contemporaries.1271

He has often been charged with coldness and want of domestic and social affection, but very unjustly. The chapter on his marriage and home life, and his letters on the death of his wife and only child show the contrary.1272  The charge is a mistaken inference from his gloomy doctrine of eternal reprobation; but this was repulsive to his own feelings, else he would not have called it "a horrible decree."  Experience teaches that even at this day the severest Calvinism is not seldom found connected with a sweet and amiable Christian temper. He was grave, dignified, and reserved, and kept strangers at a respectful distance; but he was, as Beza observes, cheerful in society and tolerant of those vices which spring from the natural infirmity of men. He treated his friends as his equals, with courtesy and manly frankness, but also with affectionate kindness. And they all bear testimony to this fact, and were as true and devoted to him as he was to them. The French martyrs wrote to him letters of gratitude for having fortified them to endure prison and torture with patience and resignation.1273  "He obtained," says Guizot, "the devoted affection of the best men and the esteem of all, without ever seeking to please them."  "He possessed," says Tweedie, "the secret and inexplicable power of binding men to him by ties that nothing but sin or death could sever. They treasured up every word that dropped from his lips."

Among his most faithful friends were many of the best men and women of his age, of different character and disposition, such as Farel, Viret, Beza, Bucer, Grynaeus, Bullinger, Knox, Melanchthon, Queen Marguerite, and the Duchess Renée. His large correspondence is a noble monument to his heart as well as his intellect, and is a sufficient refutation of all calumnies. How tender is his reference to his departed friend Melanchthon, notwithstanding their difference of opinion on predestination and free-will: "It is to thee, I appeal, who now livest with Christ in the bosom of God, where thou waitest for us till we be gathered with thee to a holy rest. A hundred times hast thou said, when, wearied with thy labors and oppressed by thy troubles, thou reposedst thy head familiarly on my breast, ’Would that I could die in this bosom!’ Since then I have a thousand times wished that it had happened to us to be together."  How noble is his admonition to Bullinger, when Luther made his last furious attack upon the Zwinglians and the Zürichers (1544), not to forget "how great a man Luther is and by what extraordinary gifts he excels."  And how touching is his farewell letter to his old friend Farel (May 2, 1564): "Farewell, my best and truest brother!  And since it is God’s will that you should survive me in this world, live mindful of our friendship, of which, as it was useful to the Church of God, the fruits await us in heaven. Pray, do not fatigue yourself on my account. It is with difficulty that I draw my breath, and I expect that every moment will be my last. It is enough that I live and die for Christ, who is the reward of his followers both in life and in death. Again, farewell, with the brethren."

Calvin has also unjustly been charged with insensibility to the beauties of nature and art. It is true we seek in vain for specific allusions to the earthly paradise in which he lived, the lovely shores of Lake Leman, the murmur of the Rhone, the snowy grandeur of the monarch of mountains in Chamounix. But the writings of the other Reformers are equally bare of such allusions, and the beauties of Switzerland were not properly appreciated till towards the close of the eighteenth century, when Haller, Goethe, and Schiller directed attention to them. Calvin, however, had a lively sense of the wonders of creation and expressed it more than once. "Let us not disdain," he says, "to receive a pious delight from the works of God, which everywhere present themselves to view in this very beautiful theatre of the world"; and he points out that "God has wonderfully adorned heaven and earth with the utmost possible abundance, variety, and beauty, like a large and splendid mansion, most exquisitely and copiously furnished, and exhibited in man the masterpiece of his works by distinguishing him with such splendid beauty and such numerous and great privileges."1274

He had a taste for music and poetry, like Luther and Zwingli. He introduced, in Strassburg and Geneva, congregational singing, which he described as "an excellent method of kindling the heart and making it burn with great ardor in prayer," and which has ever since been a most important part of worship in the Reformed Churches. He composed also a few poetic versifications of Psalms, and a sweet hymn to the Saviour, to whose service and glory his whole life was consecrated.

NOTE.

Calvin’s "Salutation à Iésus Christ" was discovered by Felix Bovet of Neuchâtel in an old Genevese prayer-book of 1545 (Calvin’s Liturgy), and published, together with eleven other poems (mostly translations of Psalms), by the Strassburg editors of Calvin’s works in 1867. (See vol. VI. 223 and Prolegg. XVIII. sq.)  It reveals a poetic vein and a devotional fervor and tenderness which one could hardly expect from so severe a logician and polemic. A German translation was made by Dr. E. Stähelin of Basel, and an English translation by Mrs. Henry B. Smith of New York, and published in Schaff’s Christ in Song, 1868. ("I greet Thee, who my sure Redeemer art."  New York ed. p. 678; London ed. p. 549.) We give it here in the original old French: —

"Ie te salue, mon certain Redempteur,

Ma vraye franc’ et mon seul Salvateur,

Qui tant de labeur,

D’ennuys et de douleur

As enduré pour moy:

Oste de noz cueurs

Toutes vaines langueurs,

Fol soucy et esmoy.

"Tu es le Roy misericordieux;

Puissant par tout et regnant en tous lieux;

Vueille donc regner

En nous, et dominer

Sur nous entierement,

Nous illuminer,

Ravyr et nous mener

A ton haut Firmament.

"Tu es la vie par laquelle vivons,

Toute sustanc’ et toute forc’ avons:

Donne nous confort

Contre la dure mort,

Que ne la craignons point,

Et sans desconfort

La passons d’un cueur fort

Quand ce viendra au point.

"Tu es la vraye et parfaite douceur,

Sans amertume, despit ne rigueur:

Fay nous savourer,

Aymer et adorer,

Ta tresdouce bonté;

Fay nous desirer,

Et tousiours demeurer

En ta douce unité.

"Nostre esperanc’ en autre n’est qu’en toy,

Sur ta promesse est fondée nostre foy:

Vueilles augmenter,

Ayder et conforter

Nostre espoir tellement,

Que bien surmonter

Nous puissions, et Porter

Tout mal patiemment.

"A toy cryons comme povres banys,

Enfans d’Eve pleins de maux infinis:

A toy souspirons,

Gemissons et plorons,

En la vallée de plours;

Pardon requerons

Et salut desirons,

Nous confessans pecheurs.

"Or avant donq, nostre Mediateur,

Nostre advocat et propiciateur,

Tourne tes doux yeux

Icy en ces bas lieux,

Et nous vueille monstrer

Le haut Dieu des Dieux,

Et aveq toy ’és cieux

Nous faire tous entrer.

"O debonnair’, o pitoyabl’ et doux,

Des ames saintes amyabl’ espoux,

Seigneur Iesus Christ,

Encontre L’antechrist

Remply de cruauté,

Donne nous L’esprit

De suyvir ton escript

En vraye verité."

CHAPTER XIX.

THEODORE BEZA.

Sources: Beza’s Correspondence, mostly unprinted, but many letters are given in the Beilagen zu Baum’s Theodor Beza (see below), and in Herminjard’s Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de langue française (vols. VI. sqq.); and his published works (the list to the number of ninety is given in the article "Bèze, Théodore de," in Haag, La France Protestante, 2d ed. by Bordier, vol. II., cols. 620–540). By far the most important of them are, his Vita J. Calvini, best ed. in Calvin’s Opera, XXI., and his Tractationes theologicae (1582). He also had much to do with the Histoire ecclesiastique des églises reformées au royaume de France, best ed. by Baum, Cunitz, and Rodolphe Reuss (the son of Edward Reuss, the editor of Calvin), Paris, 1883–1889. 3 vols. small quarto.

Antoine de La Faye: De vita et obitu Th. Bezae, Geneva, 1606.—Friedrich Christoph Schlosser: Leben des Theodor de Beza und des Peter Martyr Vermili, Heidelberg, 1809.—*Johann Wilhelm Baum: Theodor Beza nach handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, Leipzig, I. Theil, 1848, with Beilagen to bks. I. and II. II. Theil, 1861, with Anhang die Beilagen enthaltend, 1862 (unfortunately this masterly book only extends to 1663).—*Heinrich Heppe: Theodor Beza. Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, Elberfeld, 1861 (contains the whole life, but is inferior in style to Baum).—Art. Beza by Bordier in La France Protestante.

Jerome Bolsec: Histoire de la vie, moeurs, doctrine, et déportements de Theodore de Bèze, Paris, 1682; republished by an unnamed Roman Catholic in Geneva, 1836, along with Bolsec’s "Life of Calvin," to counteract the effect of the celebration of the third centennial of the Reformation. It has no historical value, but is a malignant libel, like his so-called "Life of Calvin," as this specimen shows: "Bèze, toute so jeunesse, a été un trèsdébauché et dissolu, sodomite, adultère et suborneur de femmes mariées [Bolsec elsewhere asserts that Claudine Denosse was married when Beza seduced her], larron, trompeur, homicide de so propre géniture, traître, vanteur, cause et instigateur d’infinis meurtres, guerres, invasions, brûlemens de villes, palais et maisons, de saccagemens de temples, et infinies autres ruines et malheurs (ed. 1835, p. 188).

Much use has been made of the allusions to Beza in Henry M. Baird’s Rise of the Huguenots (New York, 1879), and Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1886), also of the article on "Bèze, Theodore de," in Haag, La France  Protestante, mentioned above. See also Principal Cunningham: The Reformers, Edinburgh, 1862; "Calvin and Beza," pp. 345–413 (theological and controversial).

§ 167. Life of Beza to his Conversion.

The history of the Swiss Reformation would not be complete without an account of Calvin’s faithful friend and successor, Theodore Beza, who carried on his work in Geneva and France to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

In the ancient duchy of Burgundy is the village of Vezelay. It was once the scene of a great gathering, for to it in 1146 came Louis VII. and his vassals, to whom Bernard preached the duty of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels so convincingly, that the king and his knights then and there took the oath to become crusaders. Four and forty years later (1190), in the same place, Philip Augustus of France and Richard the Lionheart of England, under similar pleadings, made the same vow.

The village clusters around the castle in which, in 1519, lived the rich Pierre de Besze,1275 the bailiff of the county, a descendant of one of the proudest families of the duchy. His wife was Marie Bourdelot, beloved and renowned for her intelligence and her charities. They had already two sons and four daughters, when on the 24th of June in that year, 1519, another son was born who was destined to render the name illustrious to the end of time. This son was christened Theodore. Thus the future reformer was of gentle birth — a fact which was recognized when in after years he pleaded for the Protestant faith before kings, and princes, and members of the nobility and of the fashionable world.

But the providential preparation for the part he was destined to play extended far beyond the conditions of his birth. Gentle breeding followed. His mother died when he was not quite three years old, but already was he a stranger to his father’s house; for one of his uncles, Nicolas de Besze, seigneur de Cette et de Chalonne, and a councillor in the Parliament of Paris, had taken him with him to Paris and adopted him, so great was the love he bore him, and when the time came he was put under the best masters whom money and influence could secure. The boy was precocious, and his uncle delighted in his progress. One day at table he entertained a guest from Orleans, who was a member of the royal council. The conversation turned upon the future of Theodore, whereupon the friend commended Melchior Wolmar, the famous Greek scholar at Orleans, who was also the teacher of Calvin, as the best person to educate the lad. The uncle listened attentively, and sent Theodore thither and secured him admission into Wolmar’s family. This was in 1528, when Theodore was only nine years old. With Wolmar he lived till 1535, first at Orleans and then at Bourges, and doubtless learned much from him. Part of this learning was not at all to the mind of his father or his uncle Claudius, the Abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Froimont in the diocese of Beauvais, who, on the death of his brother Nicolas, on Nov. 29, 1532, had undertaken the pious duty of superintending the boy’s education; for Wolmar, in common with many sober-minded scholars of that day, had broken with the Roman Church and taken up the new ideas inculcated by Luther, and which were beginning to make a stir in France. Indeed, it was his known adherence to these views which compelled his flight to Germany in the year 1535. Thus the future reformer, in his tenderest and most susceptible years, had impressed upon him the doctrine of justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ, heard much of the corrupt state of the dominant Church, and was witness to the efforts of that Church to put to death those who differed from her teaching.

Nothing was further from the mind of the father and uncle, and also from that of Theodore himself, than that he should be an advocate of the new views. The career marked out for him was that of law, in which his uncle Nicolas had been so distinguished. To this end he was sent to the University of Orleans. Although very young, he attracted attention. He joined the German nation—for the students in universities then were divided into factions, according to their ancestry, and Burgundy was accounted part of Germany—and rapidly became a favorite. But he did not give himself up to mere good-fellowship. He studied hard, and on Aug. 11, 1539, attained with honor the degree of licentiate of the law.

His education being thus advanced, Beza, now twenty years old, came to Paris, there, as his father desired, to prosecute further law studies; but his reluctance to such a course was pronounced and invincible, so much so that at length he won his uncle to his side, and was allowed by his father to pursue those literary studies which afterwards accrued so richly to the Reformed Church; but at the time he had no inkling of his subsequent career. By his uncle Claudius’ influence the possessor of two benefices which yielded a handsome income, and enriched further by his brother’s death in 1541, well-introduced and well-connected, a scholar, a wit, a poet, handsome, affable, amiable, he lived on equal terms with the best Parisian society, and was one of the acknowledged leaders.1276

That he did not escape contamination he has himself confessed, but that he sinned grossly he has as plainly denied.1277  In 1544 he made in the presence of two friends, Laurent de Normandie and Jean Crespin, eminent jurists, an irregular alliance with Claudine Denosse,1278 a burgher’s daughter, and at the time declared that when circumstances favored he would publicly marry her. His motive in making a secret marriage was his desire to hold on to his benefices. But he was really attached to the woman, and was faithful to her, as she was to him; and there was nothing in their relationship which would have seriously compromised him with the company in which he lived. The fact that they lived together happily for forty years shows that they followed the leading of sincere affection, and not a passing fancy. In 1548 he published his famous collection of poems—Juvenilia. This gave him the rank of the first Latin poet of his day, and his ears were full of praises. He dedicated his book to Wolmar. It did not occur to him that anybody would ever censure him for his poems, least of all on moral grounds; but this is precisely what happened. Prurient minds have read between his lines what he never intended to put there, and imagined offences of which he was not guilty even in thought.1279  And what made the case blacker against him was his subsequent Protestantism. Because he became a leader of the Reformed Church, free-thinkers and livers and the adherents of the old faith have brought up against him the fact that in the days of his worldly and luxurious life he had used their language, and been as pagan and impure as they.

The book had scarcely begun its career, and the praises had scarcely begun to be received, ere Beza fell seriously sick. Sobered by his gaze into the eyes of death, his conscience rebuked him for his duplicity in receiving ecclesiastical benefices as if he was a faithful son of the Church, whereas he was at heart a Protestant; for his cowardice in cloaking his real opinions; for his negligence in not keeping the promise he had voluntarily made to the woman he had secretly married four years before; and for the general condition of his private and public life. The teachings of Wolmar came back to him. This world seemed very hollow;. its praises and honors very cloying. The call to a higher, purer, nobler life was heard, and he obeyed; and, although only convalescent, leaving father and fatherland, riches and honors, he fled from the city of his triumphs and his trials, and, taking Claudine Denosse with him, crossed the border into Switzerland,1280 and on Oct. 23, 1548, entered the city of Geneva. He was doubtless attracted thither because his intimate friend Jean Crespin, one of the witnesses of his secret alliance, was living there, likewise a fugitive for religion’s sake—and there lived John Calvin.

From being the poet of the Renaissance, bright, witty, free, Beza, from the hour he joined the Reformed Church, became a leader in all its affairs and one of the chiefs of Protestantism.1281

§ 168. Beza at Lausanne and as a Delegate to the German Princes.

Beza’s earliest business after greeting Calvin was to marry in church Claudine Denosse. Then he looked around for an occupation that would support him. He considered for a time going into the printing business with Crespin, but on his return from a visit to Wolmar at Tübingen he yielded to the persuasions of Pierre Viret, who entertained him as he was passing through Lausanne, and on Nov. 6, 1549, became professor of Greek in the Academy there,1282and entered upon a course of great usefulness and influence. He showed his zeal as well as biblical learning by giving public lectures on the Epistle to the Romans and on the Epistles of Peter; and that he still was a poet, and that, too, of the Renaissance, only in the religious and not usual sense (of regeneration and not renascence), by continuing the translation of the Psalms begun by Clement Marot, and by publishing a drama, classically constructed, on the Sacrifice of Abraham.1283  All these performances were in the French language.

While at Lausanne, Beza was taken sick with the plague. Calvin in writing of this to Farel, under date of June 15, 1551, thus pays his tribute to the character of Beza: "I would not be a man if I did not return his love who loves me more than a brother and reveres me as a father: but I am still more concerned at the loss the church would suffer if in the midst of his career he should be suddenly removed by death, for I saw in him a man whose lovely spirit, noble, pure manners, and open-mindedness endeared him to all the righteous. I hope, however, that he will be given back to us in answer to our prayers."

Lausanne was then governed by Bern. It was therefore particularly interested in Bern’s alliance with Geneva, and when this was renewed in 1557, after it had been suffered to lapse a year, Beza considered it very providential. In the spring of that year, 1557, persecution broke out against the neighboring Waldenses, and on nomination of the German clergy and with special permission of Bern, Beza, and Farel began a series of visits through Switzerland and upon the Protestant princes of Germany in the interest of the persecuted. The desire was to stir up the Protestants to unite in an appeal to the king of France. Beza was then thirty-eight years old and had been for eight years a successful teacher and preacher. He was therefore of mature years and established reputation. But what rendered the choice of him still more an ideal one was his aristocratic bearing and his familiarity with court life. He accepted his appointment with alacrity, as a man enters upon a course particularly suited to him. Thus Beza started out upon the first of the many journeys which furnished such unique and invaluable services to the cause of French Protestantism.

The two delegates made a favorable impression everywhere. The Lutherans especially were pleased with them, although at first inclined to look askance upon two such avowed admirers and followers of Calvin. But when they had returned full of rejoicing that they had accomplished their design and that the Protestant princes and cantons would unite in petitioning the French king on behalf of the persecuted Waldenses, albeit to small effect, alas! they were called to sharp account because at Göppingen on May 14, 1557, they had defined their doctrine of the Eucharist in terms which emphasized the points of agreement and passed by those of disagreement.1284  This was in the interest of peace. They rightly felt that it would be shameful to shipwreck their Christian attempt upon the shoals of barren controversy. But the odium theologicum compelled their home friends to charge them with disloyalty to the truth!  Calvin, however, raised his voice in defence of Beza’s conduct, and the strife of tongues quickly ceased,

How little Beza had suffered in general reputation, or at least in the eyes of the powerful Calvin, was almost immediately manifest.

On the evening of the 4th of September, 1557, three or four hundred Protestants in Paris who had quietly assembled in the Rue St. Jaques to celebrate the Lord’s Supper were set upon by a mob, and amid insults and injuries haled to prison. Their fate deeply stirred the Protestants everywhere, and Beza with some companions was again sent to the Protestant cantons and princes to invoke their aid as before, and because the princes were quicker at promising than performance he went again the next year. But Henry II. paid small attention to the note of the Protestant powers.

§ 169. Beza at Geneva.

In 1558 the city of Geneva established a high school, and Beza was called, at Calvin’s suggestion, to the Greek professorship. Much to the regret of Viret and his colleagues, he accepted. He was influenced by various considerations, the chief of which were his desire to escape from the trouble caused by Viret’s establishment of the Genevan church discipline, which had led to a falling out with Bern, Lausanne’s ruler, and from the embarrassments still resulting from his well-meant attempts at union among the Protestants, and probably still more by his desire to labor at the side of Calvin, whom he so greatly revered and whose doctrines he so vigorously and honestly defended. He was honorably dismissed to Geneva and warmly commended to the confidence of the brethren there. When on June 5, 1559, the Academy was opened, he was installed as rector. Thus, in his fortieth year, he entered upon his final place of residence and upon his final labors. Henceforward he was inseparable from the work of Calvin, and however far and frequently he might go from Geneva, it was there that he left his heart.

On Calvin’s nomination, Beza was admitted to citizenship at Geneva, and shortly afterwards (March 17, 1559) he succeeded to the pastorate of one of the city churches.1285  But each new labor imposed upon him only demonstrated his capacity and zeal. The Academy and the congregation flourished under his assiduous care, and Calvin found his new ally simply invaluable. There was soon a fresh call upon his diplomacy. Anne Du Bourg, president of the Parliament of Paris, boldly avowed his Protestantism before Henry II., and was arrested. When the news reached Calvin, he despatched Beza to the Elector Palatine, Frederick III., to interest this powerful prince. The result of his mission was a call on Du Bourg from the Elector to become professor of law in his university at Heidelberg. But the intervention availed nothing. Du Bourg was tried, and executed Dec. 23, 1559.

Shortly after his return, Beza was sent forth again, July 20, 1560. The occasion was, however, quite different. The Prince de Condé, shorn of his power by the Guises, had fled to Nérac. He desired to attach to the Protestant party his brother, Antoine de Bourbon-Vendôme, king of Navarre. Calvin had already, by letter, made some impression on the irresolute and fickle king, but Condé induced his brother to send for Beza, who, with his eloquence and his courtly bearing, quite captivated the king, who declared that he would never hear the mass again, but would do all he could to advance the Protestant cause. His zeal was, however, of very short duration; for no sooner did his brother, the cardinal of Bourbon, arrive, than he and his queen, Jeanne d’Albret, who afterwards was a sincere convert to Protestantism, heard mass in the convent of the Cordeliers at Nérac. Beza, seeing that Antoine would not hold out, but was certain to fall into the power of the Catholic party, quietly left him, Oct. 17, and after many dangers reached Geneva early in November. The journey had taken three weeks, and had, for the most part, to be performed at night.1286

§ 170. Beza at the Colloquy of Poissy.1287

Beza was now considered by all the French Reformed as their most distinguished orator, and next to Calvin their most celebrated theologian. This commanding position he had attained by many able services. When, therefore, the queen-mother Catherine determined to hold a discussion between the French prelates and the most learned Protestant ministers, the Parisian pastors, seconded by the Prince of Condé, the Admiral Coligny, and the king of Navarre, implored Beza to come, and to him was committed the leadership. At first he declined. But in answer to renewed and more urgent appeals he came, and on Aug. 22, 1561, he was again in Paris, for the first time since his precipitate flight, in October, 1548—thirteen years before. The preliminary meeting was in the famous château of St. Germain-en-Laye, on the Seine, a few miles below Paris. There, on Aug. 23, he made his appearance. On the evening of that day he was summoned to the apartments of the king of Navarre, and in the presence of the queen-mother and other persons of the highest rank, he had his first encounter in debate with Cardinal Lorraine. The subject was transubstantiation. The Cardinal was no match for Beza, and after a weak defence, yielded the floor, saying that the doctrine should not stand in the way of a reconciliation. On Tuesday, Sept. 9, 1561, the parties to the Colloquy assembled in the nuns’ refectory at Poissy, some three miles away. It was soon evident that there was not to be any real debate. The Catholic party had all the advantages and acted as sole judges.1288  It was a foregone conclusion that the verdict was to be given to the Catholic party, whatever the arguments might be. Nevertheless, Beza and his associates went through the form of a debate, and courageously held their ground. In characteristic fashion they first knelt, and Beza prayed, commencing his prayer with the confession of sins used in the Genevan liturgy of Calvin. He then addressed the assembly upon the points of agreement and of disagreement between them, and was quietly listened to until he made the assertion that the Body of Christ was as far removed from the bread of the Eucharist as the heavens are from the earth. Then the prelates broke out with the cry "Blasphemavit! blasphemavit!" ("he has blasphemed"), and for a while there was much confusion. Beza had followed the obnoxious expression with a remark which was intended to break its force, affirming the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist; but the noise had prevented its being heard. Instead, however, of yielding to the clamor the queen-mother insisted that Beza should be heard out, and he finished his speech. The Huguenots claimed the victory, but the Roman Catholics spread the story that they had been easily and decidedly beaten. The prelates requested the points in writing, and it was not till Sept. 16 that they made a reply. The Cardinal of Lorraine was the spokesman. No opportunity was given the Protestants to rejoin, as they were ready to do at once.

On Sept. 24 a third conference was held, but in the small chamber of the prioress, not in the large refectory, and a fourth in the same place on Sept. 26. But the Colloquy had degenerated into a rambling debate, and its utterly unprofitable character was manifest to all. The queen-mother did, it is true, flatter herself that there might be an agreement, and zealously labored to produce it. But in vain. Her expectation really showed how shallow were her religious ideas.

Beza stayed at St. Germain until the beginning of November,1289 and then, worn out, and threatened with a serious illness, he sought rest in Paris. There he had a visit from his oldest step-brother, and also a pressing and affectionate letter from his father, who had learned to what honor his son had come, forgave him for his persistence in heresy, and expressed a great desire to see him. Beza started for Vezelay, but on the way met a courier with the intelligence that the Protestants required his instant attendance to help them at a crisis in their affairs, because acts of violence against them had taken place in all parts of France. And Beza, ever subordinating private to public duties, turned back to Paris, and no further opportunity of seeing his father ever came to him.1290

§ 171. Beza as the Counsellor of the Huguenot Leaders,

On the 20th of December an assembly of notables, including representatives from each of the parliaments, the princes of the blood, and members of the Council, had been called to suggest some decree of at least a provisional nature upon the religious question. It was January, 1562, before it convened. It enacted on Jan. 17 the famous law known as the "Edict of January," whereby the Huguenots were recognized as having certain rights, chief of which was that of assembling for worship by day outside of the walled cities.1291  The churches which they had seized were, however, not restored to them, and they were forbidden to build others.

Beza counselled the Protestants to accept the edict, although it gave them very much less than their rights; and they obeyed.

On Jan. 27, 1562, he was again at St. Germain by command of Catherine, to argue with Catholic theologians upon the use of images and the worship of saints. As before, the gulf between Protestants and Roman Catholics stood revealed, and the conference did no good except to show that the Protestants had some reason, at all events, for their opinions. Yet they did entertain hopes of maintaining the peace, when the news that on March 1 the Duke of Guise had massacred hundreds of defenceless Protestants, in a barn at Vassy, while engaged in peaceful worship, spread consternation far and wide. The court was then at Monceaux, and there Beza appeared as deputy of the Protestants of Paris to demand of the king of Navarre punishment for this odious violation of the Edict of January. The queen-mother received the demand graciously and promised compliance, but the king responded roughly and laid all the blame on the Protestants, who, he declared, had excited the attack by throwing stones at the Duke of Guise. "Well then," said Beza, "he should have punished only those who did the throwing."  And then he added these memorable words: "Sire, it is in truth the lot of the Church of God, in whose name I am speaking, to endure blows, and not to strike them. But also may it please you to remember that it is an anvil that has worn out many hammers."1292

Civil war now broke out, Condé on one side and the Guises on the other; and Beza, although so unwilling, was fairly involved in it.

In a lull in the strife the third national Synod of the Reformed Church was held at Orleans on April 25. Beza was present, and his translation of the Psalms was sung upon the streets.

On May 20, 1562, the Prince of Condé sent a memorable answer to the petition of the Guises that King Charles would take active measures to extirpate heresy in his domains. The reply was really the work of Beza, and is a masterpiece of argument and eloquence.1293

The necessity of securing allies induced Condé to send Beza to Germany and Switzerland. He went first to Strassburg, then to Basel, and at length on Friday, Sept. 4, he arrived at Geneva. How earnest must have been the conversations between him and Calvin!  How glad must his many friends have been to welcome back home the leader of French Protestantism!

Beza resumed his former mode of life. Two weeks passed and he had just begun to feel himself able in peace to carry out his plans for the Academy and the Genevan churches, when a messenger riding post haste from D’Andelot, a brother of Coligny, and his fellow-deputy to the German princes, announced the fresh outbreak of trouble in France. Beza was at first inclined to stay at home, mistrusting the necessity of his presence among the Huguenot troops, but Calvin urged him to go, and so he went, and for the next seven months Beza was with the Huguenot army. He acted as almoner and treasurer. He followed Condé to the battle of Dreux, Dec. 19, 1562, at which Condé was taken prisoner. It was made a matter of reproach that he took an active part in the battle. He did indeed ride in the front rank, but he denied that he struck a blow. He was in citizen’s dress. He then retired to Normandy with Coligny. The expected help from England did not arrive, and it was determined to send him to London. So utterly sick was Beza of the military life that he seriously meditated going directly back to Geneva from London. But the Pacification Edict of March 12, 1563 freed Condé and ended hostilities, and Beza did not make his contemplated English journey.

This unexpected turn in his affairs was brought about by an untoward event. On the 18th of February, 1563, the Duke of Guise was assassinated by a poor fanatical Huguenot wretch, who, under torture, accused Beza of having instigated him by promising him Paradise and a high place among the saints if he died for his deed.1294  The calumny was afterwards denied by the man who had made it, but Beza considered himself obligated to make a formal reply. He called upon all who had heard him to declare if he had ever favored any other than strictly legal measures against the late Duke. And as for his alleged promise, he said that he was too good a Bible student to declare that any one could win Paradise by works.1295

Peace having come, Beza was at liberty to return home. But his heart was heavy because the affairs in France were in a very unsatisfactory condition. Still, there was nothing to be accomplished by staying, and so, loaded down with thanks and praises from the leading Huguenots for his invaluable services in the field, in the camp, at the council-board, and in the religious assembly, surrounded with the leaders of the Huguenot army and the preachers and nobles, amid shouts and sighs, Beza, on Tuesday, March 30, 1563, took his departure from Orleans. On the Sunday before, he had preached his farewell sermon, in which he expressed his disappointment that the Edict of Pacification had brought the Huguenots so little advantage.1296

On his way back he passed through Vezelay. His father was dead, but there must have been many associations of childhood which endeared the place to him. Here he learned that his wife was safe at Strassburg with Condé’s mother-in-law. Bending his steps thither, he rejoined her, and together they made the journey home, where they arrived May 5, 1563.1297

As they journeyed they knew that they were in perpetual danger, but they did not know that some of their enemies were looking for them to turn towards the Netherlands. But so it was. In June of that year a rumor was circulated at Brussels that there had been a quarrel between him and Calvin, and that in consequence he would not return to Geneva. Margaret of Parma, then regent of the Netherlands, thought to do a splendid deed, and gave orders that if he entered her domains he was to be taken, dead or alive, and offered to his capturer or murderer a thousand florins. But there having been no such break, Beza, on the contrary, took the shortest practicable route for Geneva.1298

§ 172. Beza as the Successor of Calvin, down to 1586.

Beza received his warmest welcome from Calvin, who was already under the shadow of death. There was no one else whom the great Reformer could so confidentially take into his counsels. And as the time of his departure drew near, he relied more and more upon him. Their friendship was based upon respect and affection and was never disturbed. The relation of the two men resembled that between Zwingli and Bullinger, and was most useful to the Church.

It was of course perfectly understood by Beza that he was to be Calvin’s successor, so the year which passed before Calvin died was a year of preparation for the new duties. At last the time came, and Calvin passed away. Beza conducted the funeral, and shortly after wrote his classical life of his patron, friend, and predecessor. The city Council elected him Calvin’s successor; the Venerable Company of Pastors, as the presbytery of Geneva called itself, elected him their moderator, and continued him in this office till 1580, when he compelled them to allow him to retire. So he continued Calvin’s leadership in city and church affairs. He preached and lectured to the students. He received the fugitives from France, and the visitors from other lands. He gave his advice and opinion upon the innumerable things which turned up daily. He conducted an enormous correspondence. And every now and then he had to enter the field of controversy and repel "heretics," like Ochino and Castellio, or Lutherans like Andreä and Selnecker.

Nor could this leadership have fallen into better hands. For Beza, although inferior to Calvin in theological acquirements and acumen, was his superior in knowledge and experience of court life and in grace of manner. He was eminently fitted to be the host of the Protestant scholars and martyrs, who flocked or fled to Geneva from every quarter. And so the theological school became under him the most famous of its kind in the world, and the little republican city was the virtual capital of Continental Protestantism.

Incessantly occupied as he was by public affairs, but bearing his burdens with courage and faith, he was suddenly called upon to transact delicate business of a private nature. In 1568 the plague entered Geneva and carried off his stepbrother Nicolas,1299 who had succeeded his father as bailiff of Vezelay, joined the Huguenots, and come as a fugitive to Geneva with his wife, Perrette Tribolé, when Vezelay fell into Roman Catholic hands. He had been only a few days in the city when he died. Beza felt it incumbent upon him to go to Burgundy to see whether he could not save at least a part of their inheritance for his two nephews; and this errand, after a great deal of trouble, he accomplished successfully.

In 1571, after an absence of some eight years, he was again summoned to France, this time by Coligny and the young Prince de Béarn, to attend the seventh national Synod of the Reformed Church of France convened in La Rochelle. The Venerable Company of Pastors would not part with him without a protest, but yielded to the express wish of the Syndics of the Republic. Beza himself was reluctant to go, and indeed had declined a previous summons; but the crisis demanded an authoritative expression of the views of the Swiss Churches upon the proposed reforms in the discipline of the Church, and so he went. The Synod lasted from the 2d to the 17th of April. He was elected its moderator. A revised Confession of Faith was drawn up, and a vigorous reply made to the demand for increased authority on the part of the temporal chiefs. On his way back to Geneva he took part in another Synod, held at Nismes, and was specially charged with the refutation of the opponents to the established discipline.

On St. Bartholomew’s Day, Sunday, Aug. 24, 1572, very many Protestants were murdered in Paris, and for days thereafter the shocking scenes were repeated in different parts of France.1300  On the 1st of September the first company of fugitives, many covered with wounds, made their appearance in Geneva. A day of fasting and prayer was ordered, and Beza exhorted his Swiss hearers to stand firm and to provide all needed help to their stricken brethren. Four thousand livres were collected in Geneva, and the wants of the crowd of sufferers attended to.1301

In 1574 Beza met Henry of Condé by appointment at Strassburg, and successfully undertook the negotiations which resulted in enlisting John Casimir to come with an army to the succor of the Huguenots.

But Beza’s advice was not always considered prudent by the city authorities, who were more alive than he to the great risk the city ran of reprisals in view of its connivance with the Huguenot schemes. Thus in December of this year, 1574, Beza countenanced a bootless military errand in the direction of Mâcon and Châlons, and the magistrates gently but firmly called him to account, and plainly told him that he should never act so imprudently.1302

On Nov. 26, 1580, the Peace of Fleix brought rest to France for a little while. Beza showed his courage and fidelity on this occasion by writing to King Henry of Navarre, the Protestant leader, a letter in which he candidly informed the king that he himself and his court stood in great need of reformation. It is proof of the respect in which the Reformer was held that the king received the rebuke in good part, and of the king’s light-mindedness that he did not attempt to reform.1303

§ 173. Beza’s Conferences with Lutherans.

The bitter theological differences between Lutherans and Reformed had long been a disgrace. Beza had in early life brought trouble upon himself by minimizing them, as has been already recorded, but in his old age he made one more attempt in that direction. Count Frederick of Würtemberg, a Lutheran, but a friend of reconciliation, called a conference at Montbéliard (or Mömpelgard), a city in his domains in which were many Huguenot refugees, with whom the Lutherans would not fraternize. The count hoped that a discussion between the leaders on each side might mend matters. Accordingly he summoned Beza, confessedly the ablest advocate of Calvinism. On March 21, 1586, the conference began. It took a wide range, but it came to nothing. Beza showed a beautiful spirit of reconciliation, but Andreä, the Lutheran leader, in the very spirit of Luther at the famous Marburg Conference with Zwingli (1529), refused to take Beza’s hand at parting (March 29).1304

Undeterred by this churlish exhibition, Beza left Montbéliard for another round of visits at German courts to induce them once more to plead with France to restore to the Huguenots their rights of worship; for the Peace of Fleix had not lasted long, and the country was again plunged in the horrors of civil war.

The Montbéliard conference had an echo in the Bern Colloquy of April 15th to 18th, 1588, in which Samuel Huber, pastor at Burgdorf, near Bern, a notorious polemic, and Beza represented the Lutheran and Calvinist parties, respectively. It was Beza’s last appearance as a public disputant, and the hero of so many wordy battles once more carried off the palm. In fact, his victory was much more decided than such contests were usually, as the Bernese Council condemned Huber for misrepresenting Beza and Calvinism generally.

Beza had left Geneva with a heavy heart because his faithful and beloved wife had just died, and when he returned, found public matters in a critical condition. The magistrates had felt themselves compelled by the condition of the city treasury to economize as much as possible, and had dismissed two of the professors in the Academy, and contemplated other retrenchments. Beza knew that these extreme measures would probably greatly cripple the institution, and so, old as he was, and failing, he undertook to give a full course of instruction in theology, and persisted with it for more than two years,—until the crisis was passed,—and for these extra duties he would not take any compensation.

§ 174. Beza and Henry IV.

In the course of his long life Beza had few joys, aside from the abiding one of his religion, and many sorrows. His heart was bound up with the fortunes of the Reformed Church in France, and they were usually bad. Still he took courage every time a little improvement was noticeable. Much hope had he cherished in consequence of the accession of Henry of Navarre (1589), because he was a Protestant. But early in the summer of 1593, the news reached Geneva that the king, upon whom religion and morality sat very lightly, in the interests of peace and national prosperity, was determined to abjure the Protestant faith. Alas for all their hopes!  Beza was greatly moved, and addressed the monarch a letter in which he set forth the eternal consequences of the change the king was about to make.1305  He felt assured, however, that Henry would be delivered from the machinations of his and their enemies, and not take the fatal step. But ere Beza’s letter reached him the deed was done. In the ancient abbey church at St. Denis on the morning of Sunday, July 25, 1593, King Henry of Navarre, the son of Jeanne d’Albret, the only Huguenot who ever sat upon the throne of France, abjured his faith, and took a solemn oath to protect the Roman Catholic, and Apostolic religion.

Beza was deeply grieved at this apostasy. But when he learned that the king favored his old co-religionists in many ways, and especially, when in 1598, he published the Edict of Nantes, which put the Protestants on a nearly common footing with the Roman Catholics in France, Beza took a more hopeful view of the king’s condition. In 1599 the king, in the course of a war with Charles Emmanuel, approached near Geneva. The city saw in this a chance to obtain from the king the promise of his protection, especially against the Duke of Savoy, who had built a fort called St. Catherine, quite near Geneva. To effect this the city sent a delegation headed by Beza, and the interview between the monarch and the reformer was honorable to both. The king gladly gave his promise, and the next year the fort was destroyed. He also came to Geneva and received its hospitality.

§ 175. Beza’s Last Days.

Beza’s life was now drawing to its close. The weight of years had become a grievous burden. His bodily powers gradually deserted him. He partially lost his hearing. His memory became so enfeebled that the past only remained to him, while recent events made no lasting impression. It was the breaking up of an extraordinarily vigorous constitution, which had so supported him for sixty-five years that he had scarcely known what it was to be sick. Then he took the prudent course of giving up one by one the duties which he had so long discharged. In 1586 he was excused from preaching daily, and henceforth till 1600 preached only on Sunday. In 1598 he retired from active duty in the Academy, and sold his library, giving part of the proceeds, which were considerable, to his wife, and part to the poor. In 1600 he rendered his last public services in the Academy, and preached his last sermon—the only one preached in the seventeenth, by a reformer of the sixteenth, century.1306

Occasionally something of the old wit flashed forth. As when he made his reply to the silly rumor that he had yielded to the argumentation of François de Sales and had gone over to Rome. The facts are these: François came to Geneva in 1597 with the express purpose of converting Beza. He was then thirty years old, very zealous, very skilful, and in many other cases had been successful. But he met his match in the old Reformer, who however listened to him courteously. What argument failed to accomplish, the priest thought money might do, and so he offered Beza in the name of the pope a yearly pension of four thousand gold crowns and a sum equal to twice as much as the value of all his personal effects!  This brought matters to a climax, and Beza dismissed him with the polite but sarcastic and decisive rebuke, "Go, sir; I am too old and too deaf to be able to hear such words."1307

But from some quarter the report got abroad that Beza had yielded. This was added to as it passed along until it was confidently asserted that Beza and many other former Genevan Protestants were on their way to Rome to enter the papal fold. Their very route was told, and on an evening in the middle of September, 1597, the faithful people of Siena waited by the gate of their city to receive the great leader!  But for some reason he did not come. Then it was said that he was dead; but that ere he died he had made his peace with the Church and had received extreme unction.

When the friends of Beza heard these idle tales, they merely smiled. But Beza concluded to give convincing proof of two facts: first, that he was not dead, and second, that he was still a Protestant of the straitest Calvinistic school; and so quite in the old manner he nailed the lie by a biting epigram.

When in 1600 François would hold a public discussion with the Genevans, Beza, knowing how unprofitable such discussions were, forbade it. Whereupon it was given out that the Reformers were afraid to meet their opponents!

Another flare of the old flame of poetry was occasioned by the visit from King Henry IV., already alluded to. It was a poem of six stanzas, Ad inclytum Franciae et Navarrae regem Henricum IV. ("to the renowned King of France and Navarre, Henry IV.")  "It was his last, his swan song."1308

Wearied by the vigils of a perilous and exciting time, Beza had long anxiously looked for his final rest. He had fought a good fight and had kept the faith and was ready to receive his crown. On Sunday, Oct. 13, 1605, he died.

In his will1309 Beza ordered his burial to be in the common cemetery of Plain Palais, where Calvin was buried, and near the remains of his wife. But in consequence of a Savoyard threat to carry off his body to Rome, by order of the magistrates, he was buried in the cloister of the cathedral of St. Peter, in the city of Geneva.

Of the six great Continental Reformers,—Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, and Beza,—Beza was the most finished gentleman, according to the highest standard of his time. He was not lacking in energy, nor was he always mild. But he was able to hold court with courtiers, be a wit with wits, and show classical learning equal to that of the best scholars of his age. Yet with him the means were only valued because they reached an end, and the great end he had ever in mind was the conservation of the Reformed Church of Geneva and France.

His public life was an extraordinary one. Like the Apostle Paul he could say that he had been "in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own countrymen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils among false brethren; in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches" (2 Cor. 11:26–28). It was indeed a brilliant service which this versatile man rendered. Under his watchful care the city of Geneva enjoyed peace and prosperity, the Academy flourished and its students went everywhere preaching the Word, while the Reformed Church of France was built up by him. Calvin lived again and in some respects lived a bolder life in his pupil and friend.

It is pleasant to get glimpses of Beza’s home life. Men like him are seldom able to enjoy their homes. But Beza had for forty years the love and devotion of the wife of his youth. They had no children, but his fatherly heart may have found some expression in adopting his wife’s niece Genevieve Denosse, whom he educated with great care, and also in his parental solicitude for his brother’s children. It is perhaps to be taken as indicative of the domestic character of the man that, on the advice of friends, within a year after his wife died (1589), he married Catherine del Piano, a widow of a Genevese. He also adopted her grand-daughter. It is probable that he always lived in some state; at all events his will proves that he had considerable property.

§ 176. Beza’s Writings.

Beza’s name will ever be most honorably associated with biblical learning. Indeed, to many students his services in this department will constitute his only claim to notice. Every one who knows anything of the uncial manuscripts of the Greek New Testament has heard of the Codex Bezae, or of the history of the printed text of the New Testament has heard of Beza’s editions and of his Latin translation with notes. The Codex Bezae, known as D in the list of the uncials, also as Codex Cantabrigiensis, is a manuscript of the Gospels and Acts, originally also of the Catholic Epistles, dating from the sixth century.1310  Its transcriber would seem to have been a Gaul, ignorant of Greek. Beza procured it from the monastery of St. Irenaeus, at Lyons, when the city was sacked by Des Adrets, in 1562, but did not use it in his edition of the Greek Testament, because it departed so widely from the other manuscripts, which departures are often supported by the ancient Latin and Syriac versions. He presented it to the University of Cambridge in 1581, and it is now shown in the library among the great treasures.

Beza was also the possessor of an uncial manuscript of the Pauline Epistles, also dating from the sixth century. How he got hold of it is unknown. He merely says (Preface to his 3d ed. of the N. T., 1582) that it had been found at Clermont, near Beauvais, France. It may have been another fortune of war. After his death it was sold, and ultimately came into the Royal (now the National) Library in Paris, and there it is preserved.1311  Beza made some use of it. Both these manuscripts were accompanied by a Latin version of extreme antiquity.

Among the eminent editors of the Greek New Testament, Beza deserves prominent mention. He put forth four folio editions of Stephen’s Greek text; viz. 1565, 1582, 1589, with a Latin version, the Latin Vulgate, and Annotations. He issued also several octavo editions with his Latin version, and brief marginal notes (1565, 1567, 1580, 1590, 1604).1312

What especially interests the English Bible student is the close connection he had with the Authorized Version. Not only were his editions in the hands of King James’ revisers, but his Latin version with its notes was constantly used by them. He had already influenced the authors of the Genevan version (1557 and 1560), as was of course inevitable, and this version influenced the Authorized. As Beza was undoubtedly the best Continental exegete of the closing part of the sixteenth century, this influence of his Latin version and notes was on the whole beneficial. But then it must be confessed that he was also responsible for many errors of reading and rendering in the Authorized Version.1313

Beza was the chief theologian of the Reformed Church after Calvin. Principal Cunningham has shown1314 the part Beza played in bringing about the transition from the original Calvinism to the scholastic form, hard and mechanical, and so unconsciously preparing the way for the great reaction from Calvinism, viz. Arminianism; for Arminius had been a student in the Genevan Academy under Beza. Beza drew up in the form of a chart a curious scheme of a system of theology, and he published it in his Tractationes (mentioned below) along with a commentary, Summa totius Christianismi sive descriptio et distributio causarum salutis electorum et exitii reproborum, ex sacris literis collecta et explicata, pp. 170 sqq. Heppe reprints the chart.

The chief work published by Beza, though not acknowledged by him, is the famous and invaluable Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises Réformées au royaume de France, originally issued at Antwerp in 1580, 3 vols. 8vo. The best edition of which is that by Baum (d. 1881), Cunitz (d. 1886), and Rodolphe Reuss, Paris, 1883–89, 3 vols. small quarto. It is well known to scholars that the first four books are in a great degree composed of extracts from contemporaneous works, especially the Histoire des Martyrs by Crespin, and the Histoire de l’estat de France, attributed to Regnier de la Plancée, but no indication is given whence the extracts are taken. This defect in modern eyes is removed in the edition spoken of. The genesis of the work seems to be this, that Beza received reports from all parts of France in reply to the Synod’s recommendation that the churches write their histories for the benefit of posterity, that he arranged these, and inserted much autobiographical matter, but as he had to employ unknown persons to assist him, he modestly refused to put his name to the book.

Beza’s "Life of Calvin" was written in French, and immediately translated by himself into Latin (Geneva, 1565). It is the invaluable, accurate, and sympathetic picture of the great Reformer by one who knew him intimately and revered him deeply. It has been constantly used in the former chapters of this volume. It is by far the best of the contemporary biographies of any of the Reformers.

Beza collected his miscellanies under the title Tractationes theologicae, Geneva, 1570, 2d ed. 1582, 3 vols. folio. In these volumes will be found united his chief essays, including the De haereticis à civili magistratu puniendis, adversus M. Bellium (I. 85–169), already analyzed. The first part was reprinted as late as 1658 under the new title Opuscula, in quibus pleraque Christianae religionis dogmata adversus haereses nostris temporibus renovatas solide ex verbo Dei defenduntur.

In 1573 he published a curious volume of correspondence on theological subjects, Epistolarum Theologicarum. The letters are written to different persons and are variously dated from 1556 to 1572. The volume is printed in small italics and was so popular that the third edition appeared at Hanover in 1597. But the number of his letters published is greatly exceeded by those still in manuscript.

In 1577 he published Lex Dei, moralis, ceremonialis, et politica, ex libris Mosis excerpta, et in certas classes distributa. This is simply the legal portions of the Pentateuch classified, without note or comment, apparently under the theory that the Mosaic law is still binding.

In 1581 Beza, in connection with Daneau and Salnar, issued the Harmonia Confessionum Fidei, designed to promote Christian union among the evangelical churches.1315

Mention has already been made of Beza as a poet  His Poëmata, Paris, 1548, commonly called Juvenilia, consists of epigrams, epitaphs, elegies, and bucolics. They are classical in expression, and erotic in sentiment, though not so vicious as such a libeller as Bolsec would have us believe. His Abraham’s Sacrifice, already alluded to, was written in French (Geneva, 1550), and translated into Italian (Florence, 1572), English (London, 1577), and Latin (Geneva, 1597). It was republished along with the Poëmata, Geneva, 1597. Of much more importance is his translation of the Psalms, completing that begun by Clément Marot. It was undertaken at Calvin’s request, and published in sections, and finished at Geneva in 1560.

APPENDIX.

LITERATURE ON THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.

Comp. the literature in § 58, pp. 223–230; and Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 490 sq.

The best libraries on the history of Protestantism in France are in Paris (Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français, 54 rue des Saint-Pères), Geneva, Zürich, Basel, and Strassburg. The most important works are in the library of the Union Theological Seminary at New York.

I. Ecclesiastical History of Protestantism in France.

*A. L. Herminjard: Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française. Genève and Paris, 1866–1886. 7 vols. From 1512 to 1542. To be continued.

*Calvin’s Correspondence from 1528 to his death in 1564, in his Opera, vols. X.–XX.

[*Theodore Beza.]: Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, from the beginning of the Reformation to the first civil war (1521–1563). Anvers, 1580, 3 vols.; Toulouse, 1882, in 2 vols.; best ed. by Baum, Cunitz, and Rodolphe Reuss, with ample commentary and bibliographical notices. Paris (Fischbacher), 1883–1889, 3 vols. Part of Les Classiques du Protestantisme français, XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siècles, published with the patronage of the Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français.

This work was formerly ascribed to Beza, but is a compilation by several anonymous authors under the direction and with the co-operation of Beza. Some portions are literally borrowed from Crespin’s "Martyrology."  Senebier thinks that the first part was prepared by Beza, the other two under his direction. See Soldan, I. 88; Heppe, Theod. Beza, p. 382 sq.; La France Prot. (2d ed.), II. 535; and especially the notice bibliographique, etc., of R. Reuss in the third volume of Baum’s edition.

* Jean Crespin (a friend of Beza and publisher in Geneva; d. 1572): Livre des martyrs (Acta Martyrum), depuis le temps de Wiclif et de Jean Hus jusqu’à present, 1554. Latin ed.: Acta Martyrum, or Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum, etc. 1st ed. 1556. Enlarged edition, Genève, 1619, 2 vols. fol.; Amsterd., 1684. Several French, Latin, Dutch, English, and German editions. See Polenz, Gesch. des franz. Calvinismus, I. 723–735, and La France Protest., IV. 885–910. Latest and best edition, under the title Histoire des martyrs persecutez et mis hi mort pour la vérité de l’Évangile depuis le temps des apostres jusqu’à présent (1619), Toulouse, 1889. 3 large vols. 8vo. With notes, etc., by M. Lelièvre.

Florimond De Raemond (Rom. Cath.): L’histoire de la naissance, progrès et decadence de l’herésie de ce siècle. Paris, 1610.

Louis Maimbourg (Jesuit historian and controversialist, 1620–1686) Histoire du calvinisme. Paris, 2d ed., 1682, 2 vols. 12mo. He presents Calvinism as the direct road to atheism. Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, he says, (I. 110) "détruit absolument toute l’idée qu’on doit avoir de Dieu, et ensuite conduit tout droit à l’Athéisme."

Peter Jurieu (Protestant historian and controversialist, 1637–1713) Histoire du Calvinisme et celle du Papisme mises en parallèle, ou apologie pour les réformateurs, pour la réformation, et pour les réformez. Rotterdam, 1683. 3 vols. An answer to Maimbourg. He wrote also against Bossuet.

Pierre Bayle (sceptic): Critique générale de l’histoire du calvinisme. Rotterdam, 1684.

Bishop Bossuet: Histoire des variations des églises protestantes. Paris, 1688. 2 vols. Several editions and translations—not historical, but polemical and partial. The ablest French work against Protestantism, containing arguments derived from its divisions and changes.

*Elie Benoit (1640–1728): Histoire de l’Édit de Nantes. Delft, 1693–1695. 5 vols. 4to. English and Dutch translations. The first volume goes to the death of Henri IV. in 1610; vols. II., III., and IV. to 1683; vol. V. to 1688.

Serranus (Jean de Serres, historiographer of France, 1540–1598): Commentarii de statu religionis et reipublicae in regno Galliae, 1571–1580 (five parts).

Theod. Agrippa d’Aubigné (Albinaeus), a Huguenot in the service of Henry IV.; d. at Geneva, 1630): Histoire universelle (from 1550 to the end of the sixteenth century). Maillé, 1616–1620. 3 vols. Amsterd. (Geneva), 1626, 2 vols. Also in his Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1873.

Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay: Mémoires. Paris, 1624–1625, 2 vols. 4to; Amsterd., 1651. Mémoires et Lettres. Paris, 1824. 12 vols. Mornay was the most accomplished and influential Protestant nobleman of his age, a fertile author, soldier, diplomatist, and statesman, who lived under six reigns from Henry II. to Louis XIII.—Mme. Du Plessis-Mornay: Mémoires et Correspondance. Paris, 1868. 2 vols. On the life of her husband.

Jean Aymon (d. 1712): Tous les synodes nationaux des églises réformées de France. La Haye, 1710. 2 vols. 4to.

*John Quick (a learned Non-conformist, d. 1706): Synodicon in Gallia reformata; or the Acts, Decisions, and Canons of the National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France. London, 1692. 2 vols. fol. (with a history of the Church till 1685). Much more accurate than Aymon

E. A. Laval: Compendious History of the Reformation in France ... to the Repealing of the Edict of Nantes. London, 1737–1741. 7 vols. 8 vo.

W. S. Browning: A History of the Huguenots. 1829–1839. 3 vols. 8 vo. Reprinted at Philadelphia (Lea & Blanchard), 1845.

Edward Smedley (d. 1836): History of the Reformed Religion in France. London, 1832–1834. 3 vols. 12 mo. Reprinted New York (Harper & Bros.).

Charles Coquerel (1797–1851): Histoire des églises du Désert chez les Protestants de France depuis la fin du règne de Louis XIV. jusqu’à la revolution française. Paris, 1841. 2 vols. 8vo. New ed. 1857.

N. Peyrat: Histoire des pasteurs du Désert. Paris, 1842. 2 vols. 8vo.

Guill. de Félice (Prof. at Montauban, d. 1871): Histoire des protestants de France. Toulouse, 1851; with supplement by F. Bonifas, 1874. English translation by Lobdell, 1851. By the same: Histoire des synodes nationaux des églises reformées de France. Paris, 1864.

C. Drion: Histoire chronologique de l’église protestante de France jusqu’à la Révocation. Paris, 1855. 2 vols. 12 mo.

*W. G. Soldan: Geschichte des Protestantismus in Frankreich bis zum Tode Karl’s IX. Leipzig, 1855. 2 vols.  Frankreich und die Bartholomäusnacht, 1854. The same, translated by Charles Schmidt: La France et la St. Barthélemy. Paris, 1855. 147 pp.

E. Stähelin: Der Uebertritt Heinrich’s IV. Basel, 1856. (The change of Henry IV. was dictated by political and patriotic motives to secure himself on the throne, to give peace to France, and liberty to the Huguenots.)

*G. von Polenz: Geschichte des französischen Calvinismus bis zur Nationalversammlung i. J. 1789, zum Theil aus handschriftl. Quellen. Gotha, 1857–1869. 5 vols. 8vo.

*Eugene and Émile Haag (brothers): La France protestante. Paris, 1856 sqq. 10 vols.; 2d ed. revised, published under the auspices of the "Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français," and under the direction of Henri Bordier, Paris (Sandoz et Fischbacher), 1877 sqq. Biographies of distinguished Huguenots in alphabetical order. Very important. So far (till 1888) 6 vols. (The sixth volume ends with Gasparin.)

E. Castel: Les Huguenots et la Constitution de l’église réformée de France en 1559. Paris and Geneva, 1859. 16 mo.

J. M. Dargaud: La Liberté religieuse en France. Paris, 1859. 4 vols. 8vo.

H. de Triqueti: Les premiers jours du Protestantisme en France depuis son origine jusqu’au premier synode national de 1559. Paris, 1859. 16 mo (302 pp.). Popular.

Henri Lutteroth: La Reformation en France pendant so première période. Paris, 1859. 8vo (233 pp.).

*Merle D’Aubigné: Histoire de la Réformation en Europe au temps de Calvin. Paris, 1862–1878. English translation by William L. R. Cates. London (Longmans, Green, & Co.), 1863–1878. 8 vols. (Republished by the Carters in New York.) This great work comes down to 1542, and embraces the Reformation in French Switzerland, France, England, Scotland, and Spain. The author intended to carry it down to the death of Calvin, 1564, but died (1872) before he completed it.

H. White: Massacre of St. Bartholomew. London, 1868. 8vo. New York, 1868.

F. Puaux: Histoire de la Reformation française. Paris, 1868. 7 vols. 12 mo.

W. M. Blackburn: Admiral Coligny and the Rise of the Huguenots. Philadelphia, 1869. 2 vols. 8vo.

Adolphe Schaeffer: Les Huguenots du seizième siècle. Paris, 1870. (331 pp.).

*W. Henley Jervis: A History of the Church of France, from the Concordat of Bologna, A.D. 1516, to the Revolution. London, 1872. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. xxiv, 476, xi, 452.

Felix Bovet: Histoire du psautier des églises réformées. Neuchâtel, 1872.

*O. Douen: Clément-Marot et le Psautier Huguenot. Paris, 1878 sq. 2 vols. (à l’imprimerie nationale). Very important for the history of worship in the French Reformed Church, with a history of Marot and his relation to Calvin. The second volume contains les harmonistes du Psautier, a discussion of the influence of the Reformation on music, the Psalms of Goudimel, and the French bibliography on the Psalter.

O. Douen: Les premiers pasteurs du Désert (1685–1700) d’après des documents pour la plupart inédits. Paris (Grassart), 1879. 2 vols. 8 vo.

*Henri Bordier: La Saint-Barthélemy et la critique moderne. Genève and Paris, 1879 (116 pp., with illustrations).

Jules Delaborde: Gaspar de Coligny, Amiral de France. Paris (Fischbacher), 1879. 3 vols.

*Henry M. Baird (Professor in the University of the City of New York): History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France (1515–1574). New York, 1879. 2 vols. 8vo. The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1574–1610). New York, 1886. 2 vols. 8vo. The Edict of Nantes and its Recall. In the "Commemoration of the Bi-centenary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes" (Oct. 22, 1885), by the Huguenot Society of America. New York, 1886.

E. Muhlenbeck: Claude Rouget  Une église Calviniste au XVIme siècle (1551–1581). Histoire de la communauté réformée de Ste-Marie-aux-Mines (Alsace). Paris and Strasbourg, 1881 (515 pp.). 8 vo.

H. Baumgarten: Vor der Bartholomäusnacht. Strassburg, 1882 (263 pp.).

Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove: Les Huguenots et les Gueux (1560–1585). Bruges, 1883–1885. 6 vols. Includes the contemporary history of the Netherlands. A very partial book.

Eugene Bersier (Reformed pastor in Paris, d. 1889): Coligny avant les guerres de religion. Paris, 1884.

Ernest Gaullieur (archiviste de la ville de Bordeaux): Histoire de la réformation à Bordeaux et dans le ressort du parlement de Guyenne. Bordeaux and Paris, 1884 sqq. The first vol. extends from 1523–1563.

Theo. Schott: Die Aughebung des Ediktes von Nantes im Oktober, 1685. Halle, 1885. 8vo.

[Léon Pilatte]: Édits, Déclarations et Arrests concernant la religion prétendue réformée, 1662–1751, précédés de l’Édit de Nantes. Paris, 1885.

*L. Aguesse (d. 1862): Histoire de l’établissement du Protestantisme en France contenant l’histoire politique et religieuse de la nation depuis François Ier jusqu’à l’édit de Nantes. Paris, 1886. 4 vols. A posthumous work of twenty years’ labor, published by Charles Menetrier and Mme. Menetrier, née Aguesse.

*Edmond Hugues: Antoine Court. Histoire de la restauration du Protestantisme en France, Paris, 4th ed. revised, 1875, 2 vols.—Les Synodes du Désert. Actes et règlements des synodes nationaux et provinciaux tenus au désert de France de l’an 1715 à l’an 1793. Paris (Fischbacher), 1885–1886. 3 large vols. Supplément au tome premier, 1887.

N. Weiss (librarian and ed. of the Bulletin of the Soc. of the Hist. of French Prot.): La chambre ardente, étude sur la liberte de conscience en France sous Fran-çois Ier et Henri II (1540–1550) suivie d’environ 500 arrêts inédits, rendus par le parlement de Paris de Mai 1547 à Mars 1550. Paris, 1889 (432 pp.). 8 vo.

Philip Schaff: History of the Edict of Nantes. An address delivered before the Huguenot Society of America, March 21, 1889. New York, 1890.

*Charles Dardier: Paul Rabaut: Ses lettres à Antoine Court (1739–1755), Paris, 1884, 2 vols.; and Ses Lettres à Divers (1744–1794), avec préface, notes et pièces justificatives. Paris, 1892. 2 vols.

*Bulletin historique et littéraire. A monthly periodical published by the Société de l’histoire du Protantisme français. Paris (54 rue des Saints-Pères), 1853 sqq. (39e année, 1890). Contains historical studies and important documents of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

II. General Histories of France.

Franciscus Belcarius Peguilio (Beaucaire De Peguillon, bishop of Metz): Rerum Gallicarum Commentarii ab anno 1461 ad annum 1580. Lugd. 1625 fol. 1026 pp. Strongly anti-Calvinistic.

Choix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’histoire de France, in the Pantheon littéraire of J. A. Buchon. Paris, 1836–1838. 8 vols.

Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France, by Petitot, Michaud, and Poujoulat. 1er serie, tom. VI. Paris, 1839.

*Thuanus (Jacques Auguste de Thou, 1553–1617): Historiarum sui temporis libri 138, from 1546–1607 (several editions in 5, 7, and 16 vols.). The author was a moderate Catholic, witnessed the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and helped to prepare the Edict of Nantes. His history was put in the Index Expurg. 1609, but survived the papal condemnation.

Lacretelle: Histoire de France pendant les guerres de religion. Paris, 1814–1816. 4 vols.

Simonde de Sismondi: Histoire des Français. Par. 1821–1844. 31 vols. 8 vo (from vol. XVI.).

*Jules Michelet (1798–1876): Histoire de France. 1833–1862 (new ed. 1879). 14 vols. (Vols. IX. La Renaissance; X, La Réforme; XI. Les Guerres de Religion.)

Sir James Stephen: Lectures on the History of France. 1857, 3d ed. 2 vols.

* Leop. v. Ranke: Französische Geschichte namentlich im 16. und 17. Jahrh. Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1852–1868; 3d ed. 1877. 6 vols. (English translation in part, London, 1852. 2 vols.)

*Henri Martin: Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789. Paris, 1837; 4th ed. 1854–1878. 17 vols. (vols. VIII.–X.)

*Bordier and Charton: Histoire de France. Paris, 1858, 1872; nouvelle éd. 1881. 2 vols. with numerous illustrations. Gives very accurate information on the Protestant Reformation.

III. History of the Huguenot Refugees.

Charles Weiss (Prof. au lycée Bonaparte, d. 1881): Histoire des réfugiés Protestants de France depuis la revocation de l’édit de Nantes jusqu’à nos jours. Paris, 1853. 2 vols. English translation by W. H. Herbert. London and] New York, 1854. 2 vols.

Samuel Smiles: The Huguenots, their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. London, 1867 (Am. ed. with Appendix by G. P. Disosway, New York, 1867).

W. H. Foote (pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Romney, W. Va.): The Huguenots; or, Reformed French Church; their principles delineated; their characters illustrated; their sufferings and successes recorded. In three parts. I. The Huguenot in France, at home. II. The Huguenot dispersed in Europe. III. The Huguenot at home in America. With an Appendix. Richmond, 1870. pp. xx, 627.

David C. A. Agnew (Of the Free Church of Scotland): Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of Louis XIV.; or, the Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants in Great Britain and Ireland. 2d ed. (corrected and enlarged), 1871–1874. 3 vols. 3d ed. (remodelled and greatly enlarged), including the French-speaking refugees in former reigns. London and Edinburgh, 1886. 2 vols. pp. 457 and 548.

R. Lane Poole: A History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion at the Recall of the Edict of Nantes. London, 1880.

Charles W. Baird (brother of Henry M. B.): History of the Huguenot Emigration to America. New York, 1885.2 vols.

Le Baron F. de Schickler (President of the Soc. of the Hist. of French Protestantism): Les églises du refuge en Angleterre. Paris, 1892. 3 vols. (pp. 431, 536, 432).

Henry Tollin (minister of the Huguenot Church in Magdeburg): Geschichte des hugenottischen Refuges in Deutschland; Geschichte der französichen Colonieen der Provinz Sachsen, Halle, 1892; Geschichte der französichen Colonie von Magdeburg. Magdeburg, 1893. 3 vols.

Geschichtsbltätter des Deutschen Hugenotten-Vereins. Magdeburg, 1892 sq. (Ten numbers till 1893.)  Historical sketches of Huguenot churches in Germany.

The Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London of which three volumes, 8vo, have appeared (1885–1892) contain many historical papers of importance. Of the Publications of the same Society, six volumes, quarto, have appeared up to 1891. Vol. VI. contains the despatches of the Venetian ambassadors from France, 1560–1563.

Bulletin de la Commission de l’Histoire des Églises Wallonnes. The Hague. Five volumes, 8 vo, have appeared (1885–1892). Contains many articles on French Protestant Church History.

The Publications of the Huguenot Society of America. New York, 1886 sqq.

Lichtenberger’s Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses (13 vols.) contains many good articles on French Protestantism, especially vol. V. 186–191.